Mornings go like this.
Peter wakes up first. This is a constant, an unwavering fact. He is splayed across the mattress as if he’s been dropped from the hand of God, arms and legs spread wide. He comes to sharply, like he’s been shocked. His eyes open. It takes a few seconds for him to adjust to the light, but, once he does, he smiles. Morning sun is his favorite. It is fresh-faced. It kisses the dew. It’s honey-gold. He watches it set the bits of floating dust alight, like the room is filled with embers. The fireflies of the morning. Amber dawn dyes their floorboards into a field of wildflowers and Peter wants to run his hands through them all. He thanks the universe for all that it gives him. He is so, so grateful.
Harley takes longer to awaken, because he sleeps like the dead. Neither sun, nor sound, nor natural disaster can shake him up. Where Peter lies flat, he lies curled on his side, arms and legs tangled and stacked around Peter’s limbs, head rising and falling with each of Peter’s breaths. When he comes to, his eyes stay closed. He realizes it’s morning and he says no, absolutely fuckin’ not, and desperately tries to coax the sun back under the edge of the horizon, like it’s a wind-up toy with a crank he can spin the wrong way. He smushes his face further into Peter’s chest, lets his fingers twitch where they sit curved over the edge of Peter’s far ribs. He can smell his own breath. It’s ungodly. He hates mornings. He loves Peter. He doesn’t have an ounce of desire to rise.
Peter cards through Harley’s hair and lets him rest. They’ve earned this, this laziness. The universe is balanced, for the most part, and they can rest now. There are gaps, sure: namely, one the shape of Tony’s right arm. Natasha had been gone for a while, but now she’s back: some bargain Steve made with the soul stone, apparently. He never liked to talk about it. He’s smaller, now. Narrow shoulders and knobby knees like a strong thwap on the back would send him into his grave. Even though it’s been almost five years since that day, Peter will never forget the look on James Barnes’s face the moment Steve reappeared with wheezy coughs and suspenders slipping off of his shoulders. It was like he’d seen a ghost, which, he had, really. Steve Rogers, but the one from his past. The one he hadn’t seen in eighty years. He had stared, and he had said, “I thought you were bigger,” in this thin little voice. And everyone had thought, oh, no, something went terribly wrong, but by Steve’s laugh, his tiny arm around Natasha’s waist, it seemed something had gone terribly right.
The Avengers have been temporarily- is five years still temporary?- disbanded in favor of them becoming human-like again. War turns people into machines. That is not what any of them want. So, Peter, and Sam, and Bucky, and Carol, and T’Challa, and Brunnhilde all work independently on what they need to do. But there is no fighting team.
There is a living team, though. A family, in other words.
It’s nice. Tony, Pepper, and Morgan live in their lakehouse. Peter and Harley live on the other side of the lake.
They were all pretty adamant about it, when it came up two years ago. The discussion was handled as if they were all gearing for it to be a fight. Peter and Harley were ready to wax about how important it was for them to be here for Morgan’s formative years, and Tony was ready to plead with them to stay close to help him recuperate and become more functional with his disabilities. It all worked out quite nicely, really. It took an impressively short amount of time for them to finish building the place, when they all put their big brains together. It’s small, but they don’t need much. Just the two of them, and the sun, and the fresh air, and an extra room for Morgan when she wants to spend the night. The basement is a lab, the kitchen is homey and always well-stocked with fresh fruit and vegetables from Pepper’s garden or the Ithaca Farmers Market, the bathroom has a bathtub with grips on the bottom so they can’t fall— something they have become unfortunately infamous for in their bouts of study-fueled exhaustion.
They are both working on their graduate degrees at Cornell, and it sucks, but they’re doing it. The whole moving forward thing. They’re doing their damn best.
It’s a lot of tangoing, a few steps forward and a few back, on and on. But they have this. The mornings. The quiet of waking up. The sound of each other’s hearts, and the feel of each other’s skin, bared up for the other. Open, and raw, and so, so solid.
Peter brushes his fingertips over Harley’s temple. The ends of Harley’s hair, all loose waves and dandelion fuzz, tumble down onto his closed eyes. His lashes flutter. A long-suffering groan grinds in his chest. Peter chuckles, leans forward and drops a gentle kiss on top of his head.
Harley scoots himself further up the bed so he can press his nose into the junction of Peter’s neck, chin into his collarbone, one leg hiked up around his waist. A contented sigh slips from between his lips, a far cry from his earlier expression.
“Morning,” Peter whispers, holding the back of Harley’s head in place.
Harley mumbles something unintelligible back.
“Say it so I can hear it,” says Peter.
“Mornin’, darling,” Harley repeats dryly, scratching his fingernails lightly across Peter’s chest. He taps out a crooked little pattern, repeats it. It takes a few tries but Peter catches it: I love you, in morse code.
He slides his hand from Harley’s hair to the spot under his chin, raising it, catching his lips in a kiss. Harley’s lips are perpetually chapped, but they’re broad and sweet with the chapstick he applies liberally to no avail each night. “I love you,” he mumbles into Harley’s mouth. And then, “fuck. Morning breath. So nasty. Minus eight boyfriend points.”
Harley’s nose scrunches up. “How can I lose points for something that’s both of our faults?”
“You can take points from me, too,” Peter reminds him.
“Hypothetically, I can,” says Harley, pausing to stretch with a mewl like a cat, “but I cannot realistically do that because I cannot handle your little wounded puppy face when I do,” he finishes.
Peter scowls down at him. “I do not have a wounded puppy face.”
Harley looks at him.
Peter’s pout intensifies. “You’re wrong. You’re so wrong. I am a rock. I am an island. I am Simon and Garfunkel and not a puppy.”
Harley continues to look. A little fonder, now. He can’t help it: the longer he looks at Peter, the more he loves him. It’s like an absolute value equation: whether Peter is being a menace or an angel, the output is always Harley loving him more. He’s terribly irresistible.
Peter huffs a sigh and lays back into the pillows like a 1920’s picture star— all big-eyed beauty and drama but no real emotion.
“You love me,” Harley says.
Peter shuts his eyes and gives a pretend snore like a lawnmower.
“Tell me you love me,” Harley says.
The snores turn into playing dead, Peter’s tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth.
“Tell me I’m pretty!” Harley tries next in a shrill imitation of his childhood icon, the one Trixie Tang.
Peter leaps back to life at the shout, his hips bucking and a hand fluttering over his chest. “Jesus,” he breathes, pinning Harley with a glare.
Harley grins at him, that wide, contented thing with his eyes crinkled shut and his dimples on full display.
“I’m docking another boyfriend point for scaring three years off my life,” Peter tells him, but cushions the blow by smacking a kiss on his forehead. Harley leans forward, silently requesting another kiss. Peter obliges, fluttering them over his forehead, on his eyelids, the tip of his nose, and, finally, ghosting one over his lips. It’s really just breath and the slightest tap of skin, but it’s perfect. It’s addicting.
Harley feels it in the pit of his stomach. He pushes himself up further, catching Peter’s lower lip between his teeth, letting his tongue flick over it to soothe the sting.
A little breath puffs from Peter’s lips and Harley attacks, crawling up to sit over Peter’s hips and letting his hands slide up the expanse of Peter’s chest to settle in his hair. The kiss is firm, but slow, and Harley thinks that he has never been happier than he is in that moment.
Peter lets his fingers trail over Harley’s waist, dance over the spot where his boxers sit on his hips. It’s like touching a marble statue. Everyone says don’t, don’t touch, you’ll ruin the art. Peter thinks it’s a scam: that if you touch it, they’ll come alive. That is the only explanation for the man in his arms, after all.
“I love you,” Harley mumbles against his lips.
Peter sucks on Harley’s lower lip for a moment, and savors the little keening that comes right from Harley’s chest in response. “I love you too,” he says. “I love you so bad.”
“How bad?” Harley asks, his lashes fluttering and a little smirk crinkling his nose.
“So bad,” Peter repeats, accenting the word with a little thrust up against Harley’s groin. Harley groans, and his head falls forward to rest against Peter’s shoulder. Peter takes advantage of the position, boosting onto his elbow so he can press his face into Harley’s neck, nipping the skin there and then soothing it with quick kisses, a trail up to his ear. He captures the shell of it between his teeth, runs his tongue over the spot. The sound Harley makes in response is- inhuman. Jesus. Peter grinds up again, and Harley’s hands scramble over his shoulders for a grip. “So bad, baby,” Peter breathes into Harley’s ear, lips just brushing against it.
“God, Peter,” Harley mumbles, voice shaking. He turns his head and catches Peter’s lips in one sharp motion, the kissing becoming something like fighting, all teeth and tongue and a wild desperation that never seems to go away, no matter how long they’ve been together. They’re the stuff of the universe, the stardust that never forgot it was stardust and now strains to recombine into one whole star. Always grappling.
There’s a loud knock on the door.
The pull apart with a sound like a toilet plunger.
“Shit,” Peter says, lips bright red and swollen.
“Fuck,” Harley agrees, and stiffly moves himself from Peter’s lap. He looks down at the tent in his boxers. “You think they’ll notice that?”
Peter snorts, moving equally gingerly. “I dunno. You think they’ll notice mine?”
“We put our crotches next to each other and it’ll look like a full campsite,” Harley says while adjusting himself.
There’s another knock, this one twice as aggressive and three times as long. It comes with a message. “Open up, open up, open up,” calls Morgan Stark, her voice shrill.
“Oh, my god,” says Peter.
“Give us a second, Mo!” Harley yells. He turns to Peter and gestures helplessly. “I can’t fit this in jeans.”
“Sweatpants will be too obvious.”
“Can you go take a shit, like, right now? Door open? That should turn me off nice and quick.”
“I don’t have to shit!”
“Open up!” Morgan sings. She’s audibly jumping on the deck. The wood is creaking. It’s not the most sturdy deck.
“Is your dad with you?” Peter calls back, panicked, scrambling out of bed and waddling to find something suitable to wear. He picks up an overly large sweatshirt triumphantly. It’ll cover his tent. It’ll cover half his thighs, really.
“Good thinking,” Harley says, scrambling to find one of his own. “I knew you were a genius somewhere below all that dumb face.”
“No,” Morgan answers, “but Gerald is!”
“Oh my god,” Peter says, muffled as he tries to yank his sweatshirt over his ears. “Please bring Gerald back to your side of the yard. He doesn’t get along with Ginsberg, you know that.”
Ginsberg is Harley’s cat. Really. It’s just Harley’s cat. Much like Gerald, Peter wants nothing to do with him. He’s ginger and three-legged and only has one ear, and his mewl is closer to the sound a baby makes when it sneezes than it is anything catlike. Peter thinks Ginsberg is needy and cunning and a user. Harley thinks the cat is the best thing since the flu shot.
“Ginsy is inside,” Morgan reasons. Peter wonders idly how Allen Ginsberg, namesake of the cat, would react to being called Ginsy. “Gerald wouldn’t be coming inside.”
“I don’t trust you,” says Harley, combing through his hair with his fingers in an attempt to straighten it out.
“You should! Hurry up, before I pick the lock,” she says. This is a real threat. She has done it on four separate occasions.
“If you pick the lock, you will be so busted,” Peter says, finally in a position of modesty that allows him to leave the bedroom without informally announcing I was in the middle of trying to have sex with my boyfriend when you showed up.
He plods through the living room, leaping over Harley’s guitar- how many times he has to remind Harley to put it away, he will never know- and attempting to straighten out the pillows and throw blankets that rest upon the couch. Once the place resembles orderliness, he opens the door.
Morgan Stark is ten and she is vicious, but she looks like neither of these things. She is four feet tall exactly. (She gets that from her father.) Her hair is the same brown as Tony’s, as are her eyes, but she has creamy skin and a smattering of freckles on her nose like her mother. Adorable, truly, and you would think it carries on to her personality.
Oh, no. No, she’s fucking nuts.
“My favorite Morganism,” Peter greets her.
She nods primly. “Pancake man.” She pushes past him and walks into their living room as if she owns the place. (She probably does. She probably wrote up her own little deed and put it under her name. He wouldn’t be surprised.) Peter takes note of the fact that Gerald is absent. The little stink lied to him. Got him good, too.
At least the nickname lets Peter know why she’s here: pancakes. There are few things Peter can cook, and even fewer that he can cook well. But if there’s one thing he can do, it’s pancakes. His pancakes are God tier. They’re perfect.
The problem is, he taught Morgan to make them, and now she always wants to make pancakes. Tony and Pepper don’t want that, though, because they don’t want to do the dishes. (Peter doesn’t blame them.) So when Morgan wakes up feeling a pancake type of way, they ship her across the lawn to Peter and Harley’s place and have her turn their lovely kitchen into a cesspit and then she skips her way back home, belly full and grinning like a demon after her kill.
Harley slides out of the bedroom on sock feet to catch Morgan before she can find the cat. Morgan loves the cat. Morgan has stolen the cat no less than fifteen times. “M’lady,” he greets her, tipping an imaginary hat.
“M’Harley,” she answers, and mirrors the motion.
“You here for breakfast?” he asks, walking into the room with his hands deep in his sweatshirt pocket. Peter knows the look in his eye. It’s the same devious look Morgan gets when she’s plotting to drop a stink bomb in their air vents or something. So, he’s not particularly surprised when Harley grabs Morgan around the waist and tosses her over his shoulder like a sack, spinning them around until she’s screaming and hammering on his back and threatening to puke inside the neck of your sweatshirt, don’t test me, Harley.
He pulls her around so she’s on his hip, legs locked around his waist.
“We’re making blueberry pancakes,” Morgan says. “And I want your ugly Nutella on mine.”
Their ugly Nutella is not real Nutella. It is a knock-off version made of soy because Harley somehow managed to stay vegan since his sophomore year of high school and has no plans to stop in the future. This has, essentially, made Peter vegan by extension. He’s not complaining. Sweet Chili Doritos are vegan, and that’s a big hell yeah from him.
“That is the most disgusting flavor combination I can think of, Mo,” Harley tells her seriously. She leans her face forward so they’re forehead to forehead. This is a thing she does a lot. Probably because she thinks she’s part cat. “Why don’t we do banana pancakes and you put Nutella on those?”
She grabs a handful of his shirt and pulls like a cartoon bully. “We’re having blueberry pancakes or I’ll never come over again.”
This is literally the worst threat any of them can possibly imagine.
Harley tightens his arms around her, hugging her little body to his chest. “Ugh. You drive a hard bargain. But I have to take the deal. Right, Pete?”
Peter nods solemnly. “We better do it, Harls. Can’t risk it.” He steps forward to meet the two of them, wrapping his arms around them both and then activating his sticking powers. “I see your extortion and I raise you mine,” he says. “Now you can never leave!”
“Woah-oh, woah-oh, stuck like glue,” Harley sings under his breath.
Morgan blows a raspberry right next to his ear.
“Nasty! You’re giving me all your germs, and I don’t want ‘em.”
“Take the germs! They’re yours now!”
“This is how that scene in Romeo and Juliet should have gone,” Peter says. “No holding hands. Instead of swapping spit by kissing, they just blow raspberries at each other.”
“So much more romantic,” Harley says, peering around Morgan’s hair to shoot Peter a grin.
“That’s exactly how we fell in love,” Peter says, nudging Morgan to get her attention.
She lifts her head and glares at Peter. “You spit in each other’s mouths?”
Peter opens his mouth to respond and then closes it. “I plead the fifth.”
“I plead the eighth,” she answers. “Making me wait for pancakes is cruel and unusual punishment.”
Peter squints at her. “Who taught you the amendments?”
The way she looks at him. Jesus. It makes him feel like the dumbest pillbug to ever trek the earth’s crust. “I taught myself.”
“Of course you did,” Peter sighs, releasing them from his grip. “That was a stupid question.”
“Yup,” she agrees. She goes marching into their kitchen. She knows exactly where all of the ingredients are. She has the recipe memorized. She is scary.
Harley looks at Peter. “Do we leave her to it?”
“I don’t wanna clean up after her.”
“How about,” Harley says, then stops. “Hm. How about you make the pancakes and I distract her?”
Peter reaches over and grabs both of Harley’s hands in his. “I will give you a million boyfriend points if you can do that.”
Harley pulls him closer and pecks him on the lips. “Well, now I gotta do it, don’t I? Hey, Morgie, I’ve got somethin’ for you.”
“Is it a present?” she yells. She is standing on a stool with a mixing bowl in her hands. The bowl is filled with bags of flour and sugar and all varieties of baking needs. Peter foresees this going very badly, so he scurries over and helps her down before the chair can tip and she can fall on her head. Pepper would kill him if Morgan fell on her head. Peter would probably throw himself into the lake before Pepper even got the chance.
“Of course it’s a present,” Harley scoffs, but his gaze is helpless, dancing around the room in a light panic. When he catches his guitar stood in the corner, he grins. “It’s a song. You want to hear it?”
She stops in the middle of trying to descend from the stool and stands up sharply. Peter has to throw the baking supplies onto the counter to spot her. “I want to hear it,” she says calmly. “Pancake, get me down from here.”
Peter grabs her around the waist and places her on the ground dutifully. She marches into the living room and sits cross-legged on their coffee table as if there are no couches for her to sit on.
Harley rolls his eyes and grabs his guitar round the neck, swinging the strap over his shoulder. He sits himself on the couch directly across from her. “You ready, Morg?” he asks, leaning forward over the guitar to press his nose against hers.
She nods against it once, evenly. So unsettling. “Do it now,” she says.
Harley snorts and pulls away. “You got it, Madame Secretary.” He settles his fingers in position for the first chord, takes a breath, and strums.
Peter leans a hip against the edge of the counter and watches from a distance. He can’t help the smile that pulls at his lips. Those two. Together, they are going to cause mass-destruction one day. Until then, though, he’ll listen to Harley play guitar and watch Morgan’s eyes go squinty and calculating and her little fingers arch as if she’s memorizing the fingerings to attempt herself.
Peter won’t be surprised if she marches into their house in a few days with her own guitar, sits herself on their coffee table, and plays Fleetwood Mac’s entire discography.
Today, it’s City and Colour, though. The Girl. One of Harley’s favorites. Peter’s, too, by the transitive property.
“Just know that I’m yours to keep, my beautiful girl,” Harley sings in his husky voice, not particularly pretty but heartfelt and raw and always note-perfect, almost like Bruce Spingsteen and Frank Sinatra had taken out their vocal chords, tied them together, and given them to Harley. Peter has never heard another voice like it.
He never wants to hear another voice like it.
Morgan is still squinting at him. It’s almost like she’s angry, really. It’s a Pepper expression on her tiny Tony face and it’s so shocking that Peter needs to bring his sleeve to his face to stifle the laugh that bubbles in his stomach.
“You didn’t write that,” she tells Harley, as if he didn’t know.
He arches an eyebrow, as if to say go on.
“The lyrics say you wrote it,” Morgan says. “That’s why I wrote this song to sing my beautiful girl,” she warbles. It’s not good. Oh, lord. She has Pepper’s singing voice. Poor thing.
Harley pokes her with the end of his guitar. “Well, what do you want me to do? Change the words?”
“Or actually write me a song,” she says, as if this is the logical answer, Harley, jeez, don’t be stupid.
He claps a hand to his forehead. “Of course. I should have thought of that. What should your song be about, Miss Morgan?”
She looks him dead in the eye. “How I’m going to be president and abolish the patriarchy and enforce equal rights for all and take all the stupid people and lock them up in a big jail so that the population can advance without being held back by dummies.”
Harley blinks. “A song about how kind and pretty you are?! Sounds- perfect. That’s a perfect idea.”
Peter shakes his head and begins to stir the pancake batter. He shakes his head again as he throws in the blueberries. Blueberries and chocolate. He would never get it.
The pancakes are great. The best part is the fact that the kitchen stays clean. They send Morgan back home with a plate of leftovers, considering Tony and Pepper are probably planning on eating something boring like oatmeal for breakfast.
Peter washes the dishes. Harley dries and puts away. It’s a good system. They’re a good system.
~
The sun is high in the sky when it’s time for them to head down to campus for their classes. They drive a horrible old Prius that used to belong to May. She had gifted it to them when they moved out of the city, insisting that they needed something to remind them of her and she didn’t need it anyway, come on, public transport exists here and you don’t want to have to ride cows to get from place to place in Ithaca.
It’s faded blue and it whistles when it goes. The tires sag in the cold more often than not. The horn sounds like there’s a rubber duck lodged in it and they’re both crying out in harmony.
It’s the best car in the world, even when it fails.
The lakehouses are only fifteen or so minutes away from campus. The drive is never that short, though, as deer and squirrels quite love marching through the middle of the road at all hours of the day. Wild animals have no respect for their mortality.
This is balanced by Harley’s extreme respect for wild animals’ mortality. Harley is more likely to slam on the breaks and snap both their necks than he is to not stop in time for an animal crossing.
So their drives are a little choppy.
They always get there alive, though, and that’s the most important part. Right? Right.
Harley pulls them crookedly into a parking spot and yanks the key from the ignition. He doesn’t move to get up. He drops the key into the cupholder and turns to look at Peter through his eyelashes. “Hey,” he says.
“Hi,” says Peter bemusedly.
Harley reaches a hand out and grabs Peter’s, toying with his fingertips. He traces over the calluses web-slinging has given him, the pattern of bumps along his smooth skin. He presses a kiss to Peter’s palm and turns his cheek into it. His eyelashes brush against Peter’s thumb. His breath is warm.
Peter has never touched anything so precious.
“What’s up, baby?” Peter says. Harley is clingy, usually, but this is a new level. They’re not pursuing the same degree- Peter is going for Chemical Engineering and Harley for Mechanical- but they’re in the same department. Their classes are in the same building. They have two of their electives together today.
Harley shrugs, and presses his lips against Peter’s palm again. “Just thinkin’ a lot recently,” he says, muffled.
“What about?” Peter asks. He scoots closer to the center console so his arm can line up with Harley’s, pressing shoulder to wrist.
“Mm. Us, mostly.”
“Us?” Peter repeats. His stomach drops.
“In a good way,” Harley hurries to correct, pressing kisses against Peter’s knuckles. “In an our future typa' way.”
Oh.
“Oh,” says Peter.
“If you’re into that,” adds Harley.
“Oh. I’m. I’m into that,” Peter says. He has to mash his lips together to hide his smile. “Yup. That is… something I’m into.”
“Cool,” says Harley, and they both look constipated with the strain of hiding their grins. “I mean, I don’t mean right now or anything, we’re still in school and all-”
“Of course,” says Peter, “of course, we would have to wait for the right time, but-”
“I don’t ever want to not be with you-”
“So it’s good to know-”
“We’re on the same page,” they finish in tandem.
Harley’s smile is like sunset over the gorges, poking tangerine and russet through the tips of the trees, turning the water the holy shades of carmine and dust. Everything is gilded in his presence.
“Y’know,” Harley says quietly. “Something about Morgan. There’s just. Something about her that makes me want…”
“Your own,” says Peter quietly.
Harley’s gaze locks on his. “Our own,” he says.
The thought is so shocking- so wonderfully inspired- that Peter can’t help but let out a little keening noise of desire. Their children. Harley’s and his, together. God.
“Yeah?” says Harley.
“Yeah,” Peter agrees, choked. “Yes.”
“Cool,” Harley breathes. His eyes are wide and swimming like puddles on stone. “That’s. Well, that’s real cool.”
Peter lets out a breathy chuckle. Harley mirrors it, and they’re both laughing right from their chests, holding hands and staring at the blue, blue sky through the windshield of their shitty Prius and thanking every deity for letting them get to this point even in the face of destruction and dust and despair and hell fucking incarnate.
A miracle. It is a miracle.
~
They get a text from Pepper to come down for dinner at 6!
The bounds of Pepper’s culinary prowess extend from toast to salad. She is definitely making them a salad. They go anyway, because they love her.
They walk through the door without knocking, dressed in overlarge sweaters and joggers that might as well be pajamas. Tony alerts them to such from where he sits on the couch.
“You guys just get out of bed?” he says, but his eyes shine behind his glasses.
God. They love him.
“Nah,” Peter says, crossing to the couch. He leans over and presses a kiss to the side of Tony’s head. “Your little monster made sure we were up bright and early. Didn’t you get our care package?”
“Mhm,” Tony hums, and pats Peter’s knee twice. “I washed the dish for you. It’s next to the sink.”
Harley plops down on Tony’s other side. (Tony is the type to sit in the middle of the couch when he knows they’re coming so they can smother him from all directions. They are careful to maintain this arrangement.) He takes Tony’s prosthetic hand in his and holds it tight. “You did it all by yourself? I don’t believe it. Evidence or it didn’t happen.”
“He actually did do it himself, no bee-ess,” comes a voice. Pepper leans around the half-wall that separates the living room from the kitchen. “Good evening, boys,” she says, and smiles at them.
“Good evening,” Harley says back in a terrible Dracula impression.
It makes Tony laugh. Tonight is a good night for him, they can tell. He’s sitting almost completely relaxed on the sofa, which is a far cry from the tension he used to hold himself with. Peter can hear his heart when he tunes into it, and it’s about as steady as it gets, which is comforting. Though his hand still shakes from nerve damage and twists with arthritis, his eyes are as clear from pain as they ever are. The glasses have become a staple, what with the impairment in his right eye from the radiation of the Snap, and are round and tortoise-patterned. They are so different from the styles he used to wear when they met him- back when he dressed in sleek suits and was so paranoid that he wore sunglasses at all hours so he could watch a room without people noticing- that it’s almost comical. He’s full old-man these days, with knit sweaters and corduroy pants and thick, woolen socks.
It’s a good look on him. He always looks so happy, even when the pain is at its worst, because he has everything he wants. He’s got Pepper and Morgan, and now Peter and Harley right here. Rhodey spends weeks at a time in Tony’s guest room. Natasha is here every weekend. Their set-up couldn’t possibly be better. It’s a dream life, like when teenagers make a full plan of the best case scenario that could come for their future. They have that. They have that now.
Morgan throws herself down the stairs and into the room. Tony watches her like she’s his own personal sliver of purgatory.
“Hello,” Morgan says formally to the boys. She has a tutu on. It’s orange, and it’s spectacular. She has paired it with purple ballet slippers. She’s been training with Natasha when she comes to visit. She’s terrible, but she’s getting better. “Welcome to our humble abode.”
“Why, thank you,” says Peter graciously. “What a polite hostess we have.”
Harley hums his agreement and pokes Tony on the knee. “Much more welcoming than this old fart over here.”
Tony gives them something that might be a shrug. “What can I say. Figured since you practically live here anyway… didn’t need to welcome you home.”
Harley squeezes Tony’s hand. “Oh, you big ol’ sap. Look at you. You’ve gone soft.”
Pepper joins them on the couch, sitting on Peter’s other side and pressing a kiss onto the top of his head. “He was always soft. He just never showed it.”
“You used to be so emotionally constipated,” Peter recalls fondly, grinning at Pepper and Tony in turn.
“Mm,” Tony agrees. “Then I got some emotional Metamucil.”
“Fiber,” says Morgan solemnly.
They don’t quite know how to respond to that, so they pretend she didn’t say anything.
“I’ve got dinner ready in the kitchen,” Pepper says. “It’s-”
“Salad,” the boys say together, and she scowls at them.
“I make a damn good salad,” she tells them. “I don’t have to feed you, you know. I do it out of the goodness of my heart.”
“Your heart is so good, Pep,” Peter says emphatically, grabbing her hands and squeezing them in his. He presses a kiss to them. “Thank you for feeding us please don’t stop or we’ll starve and die.”
She laughs, an ugly, snorted thing. It’s Peter’s favorite thing she does. “Don’t you guys know how to cook anything by now?”
“Oh, I can cook just fine,” Harley says, leaning his chin on Tony’s shoulder. “I just don’t do it. Grad school is hard, Pep, I got no juices left to cook with.”
“Y’know what gives you juices?” she says.
They look at Morgan. She’s grinning evilly.
“Fiber,” she says.
They eat their salad. It’s got fresh avocado and a bunch of fancy stuff- like goji berries and pepitas- that makes the boys feel really healthy and adult-like. Pepper follows it up with popcorn and the promise of a movie, which Morgan picks because she is the supreme dictator of all of them and they all bow to her will. This is because they are unsure whether or not she has the physical power to kill them all for treason yet. It is better to be safe than sorry.
Morgan chooses well this time: the Anastasia animated film that gets no attention because it includes a Rasputin with magic powers and a talking bat that deliver a hard rock ballad in tandem.
“Dis mo’ie is incred’le,” says Harley around a mouthful of popcorn as Learn to Do It ends. He gulps. “The music is literally gold. Why didn’t they make a live-action version of this?”
“S’hard to find talking bats in nature,” says Tony. “They’re working on that one.”
“Dad,” says Morgan calmly. “You don’t need to pretend to be stupid for my sake.”
Tony eyes her. “You are so scary, you know that?”
Morgan preens.
She falls asleep before Dmitry and Anya elope, but she guessed the ending as soon as the movie started anyway.
The rest of them watch it through to the end, because there is nothing wrong with another happy ending. They collect happy endings, now. They take happy endings and shove them into the hollow where their organs live, preserve them in resin, save them like offerings to the dead. They’ve got happy endings up to the ears and it still isn’t enough. There is never enough happiness. They’re getting close, though. Slowly.
Peter and Harley offer to cart Morgan off to bed. They sit in the bathroom with her in silence as she brushes her teeth aggressively. Harley holds her hair back as she washes her face, and Peter pats her dry. They pull back her sheets while she changes into her pajamas and tuck her in when she’s done.
They each kiss her forehead.
“Night, Morgie,” says Peter.
“Good night, Pancake.”
“Sleep well, okay?”
“Mhmm.”
She grabs their hands before they can leave. Yanks them back to her side. Takes one of their chins in each of her hands, and kisses them each on the nose. Then she lets them go with a flippant wave of her hand, lifting her pillow and pushing her head under it.
“I want one,” Harley whispers matter-of-factly.
“Good,” says Peter.
Tony and Pepper are waiting on the couch for them, steaming mugs of tea on the coffee table. They return to their designated spots flanking Tony- always flanking Tony- and settle in. It feels like a breath released, clean lungs, being with these people.
Fuck blood. They don’t need any of that to love each other truly.
Pepper entertains them all for a while with dramatic retellings of Morgan’s Greatest Hits, including the moment Pepper found her scribbling pythagorean equations on the walls of her bedroom alongside artful depictions of Moana, her favorite Disney princess, and Jack Skellington, her ‘favorite Disney prince.’
Morgan’s Greatest Hits is their favorite show.
Tony follows it up with the story of the time he found Harley painting the word stinks under the name placards on the doors of all the Rogue Avengers when they had been pardoned and returned to live in the Compound.
Peter snorts into his tea at that one. “I never knew that,” he says, drying his chin with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “I am so pleased. I’d marry you for that alone.”
Harley shrugs. “Alright.”
Tony and Pepper just shake their heads at them. There’s nothing to comment on with them anymore.
They leave when Tuesday turns into Wednesday. Tony has been blinking heavily for half an hour, by that point, and they will see him the next day anyway. They have all the time in the world for this.
Tony kisses them goodbye: a peck on the cheek, by the ear. He insists on it. Every hello, every goodbye. No one complains. They don’t want to complain. It’s wonderful, having this. Having him.
“Buona notte, cucciolo,” he says to Peter, patting his cheek.
“E sogni d’oro, patatino,” he wishes to Harley, tweaking his nose.
“You do know we’re twenty-two, right?” says Peter, but he’s grinning contentedly. “The diminutive has pretty much lost its meaning.”
“Eh,” Tony says with a half-shrug. “You’ll always be my little boys, in my eyes.”
Harley sniffles a little and flicks Tony on the shoulder. “Sap. You’re a rat. Stop it. Stop doing that.”
The walk home is quick and quiet and peaceful. The grass is deep, dark green like swamp water. It’s like wading. Like storybooks. The sky is freckled with stars, bright white and bold, and Peter still hasn’t quite gotten used to them. The air is bitingly cold and thick with the scent of dew, of wildflowers, of Pepper’s chickens’ shit. A few brave fireflies wink in these last whispers of autumn. Crickets hiss. All is calm.
This is home, now. Peter has never been in a better place.
They shower slowly, together. It is languid, soap in their eyes, laughter bubbling from their lips, slick skin, fleeting kisses. Hands on shoulders, fingers wiping away streaks of foam, pressed back-to-front under the stream.
They dry off quickly. The chill tends to seep through the wood of the walls, sometimes, on days like this, and Peter catches a cold so easily. It’s best to be hasty.
Peter pulls his head through his shirt and they share a laugh when it catches over his ears. Like always. These are normalities, now; all of their good things have stopped being commodities.
Harley comes up behind Peter, resting his chin on Peter’s head and squeezing his shoulders in his hands. “Hey, sweetheart,” he says softly.
Peter relaxes into the touch, letting his back pressed against Harley’s front. “Hey, stranger.”
Harley stops squeezing. “If you let strangers do this to you then I think you have a problem.”
Peter turns in Harley’s grip and presses their chests together, smiling lazily. “Nah. Just you. You’re the only stranger I’d ever even talk to of my own volition.”
Harley snorts a laugh. “Yeah. I’m aware. I knew you when you were sixteen.”
Peter runs his fingers through the wet curls that dangle in Harley’s eyes, dripping over his cheekbones and onto the neck of his shirt.
He traces Harley’s nose, the little up-turned tip. Counts the freckles that spot it. Runs a thumb along the smooth skin beneath his eyes, over the creases at the corners. Harley’s lashes flutter against his fingertip.
His finger finds its way to Harley’s lips. Traces the points of upper, follows the swell of the lower one. Warm breath washes over his face, the biting smell of peppermint in his nose.
He leans forward and plants the softest of kisses at the very corner of Harley’s lips.
“Bedtime?” he asks quietly.
Harley hums.
The crawl beneath the sheets, settle down. The day elapsed weighs on their eyelids, and sleep catches them when they fall.
These easy days are theirs. They rest, now. They’re okay.