<3
Tony didn’t know what time it was. Coffee. He needed coffee.
That’s how he ended up stumbling onto the common floor at Odin-knows-what-hour (it was actually midday. Midday Tony, please get some sleep) but abruptly stopped when he saw the shenanigans occurring in the common room. He wanted to know why he thought it was a good idea to design this floor so that the kitchen was connected by an archway from the common room. He just wanted coffee.
Peter was hanging upside down off the tall ceiling, giggling his head off as Harley stood underneath him, throwing m&ms into the spider’s open mouth. Tony regretted his life decisions and almost turned to leave but he really needed coffee, and he was already here now. Anyway, the teens hadn’t noticed him yet and the longer he stood there and watched, the more amusing he found it. Harley threw a red m&m up to the ceiling but to the side, forcing Peter to have to scuttle along upside down to catch it on his tongue before it fell, sending Harley below him close to hysterics while he wheezed, “darlin’, y-you look like a crab,”
The more Harley laughed, the more Peter did too, and he was giggling relentlessly while he tried to gasp out a response. “I d-didn’t know crabs c-could walk along the ceiling.”
Harley threw another one, this time to the opposite side and Peter started scuttling for it when Tony cleared his throat from the corner, making both boys jump in shock- only, Peter was on the ceiling. So when he jumped his feet detached from solid ground (sky?) and he fell, not very gracefully, landing with an ‘oof’ right on top of Harley, knocking them both to the floor. Peter pushed himself off a little but didn’t get up, and they somehow ended up staring into each other’s eyes again.
Harley’s first thought was that Peter’s dumb brown eyes were too pretty to ever look away from. His second was that he could feel all of Pete pressed against all of him, and didn’t want it to end. And woah. Okay. Harley couldn’t think that-either of those things- about his best friend. His third thought was that he was a complete moron for not noticing his own goddamn feelings for the spiderba- for Peter.
At the same time, Peter had frozen, too. Since The Revelation at the pool, he just tried to ignore it (Because, isn’t that how all gen z’ers deal with problems?). He couldn’t not be Harley’s friend, and he knew that Harley would notice if he started acting differently, jumping away from physical contact and blushing when he called him all those stupid pet names like he always did and feeling his stomach flip when Harley laughed. They were pretty (extremely) close for friends, but it couldn’t exactly be changed abruptly or Harley would know something was up. So, he ignored it all, pushed it all to the side. He wasn’t going to ruin this friendship; Harley was too important to him.
Only, right now, he was right on top of the guy, looking into his ocean blue eyes that were gleaming with tears of laughter, though his laughter had faded, his body pressed up against Harley’s, making it desperately difficult to ignore everything he had been trying so hard to. And yeah, it’s not like they hadn’t fell asleep cuddled up before, but that’s not the point. Peter didn’t know then.
Tony could practically see a hurricane swirling around the two of them, their brains being swooped up and thrown around by all their thoughts as they started at each other intimately. It was kinda awkward. He should save them, he guessed, and cleared his throat again while strolling towards the kitchen, where the c o f f e e was. This seemed to work: Peter jumped up to his feet and held his hand out to Harley, because no matter how painful it was he was raised to be kind. The other boy blinked, trying to catch up with what just happened, and then grabbed his hand and popped up to his feet too, way too close to Petey, so that he could feel his breath on his face and he took a quick step back before his thoughts got out of control again and he thought about something stupid like kissing him.
The air around them felt different. Harley didn’t like it. So, naturally, he tried to fix it by grabbing an m&m and launching it at Peter’s face without warning, knowing that Peter’s spider sense would tell him how to move, only it didn’t, and it hit Peter right in the forehead before falling pathetically to the floor.
“Um. I thought your tingle made you do that stuff automatically, how’d you miss?”
Peter bristled and seemed to be contemplating his answer. “Well, um that’s not actually how I was catching them. I was just using my hearing and fast reflexes because the sixth sense only goes off around danger... and um, it doesn’t work around you?”
Harley seemed stunned. “It ‘doesn’t work’ around me?” He questioned, and Peter wondered whether he had shared too much, but Harley felt warm swell inside of him.
“Yeah, I guess because I trust you?”
“Aw, darlin’ you trust me!”
‘Darling.’ ‘Spiderbaby.’ ‘Petey’ or ‘petey boo’. They slipped out his mouth without his brain’s permission and he apparently almost never called him by his actual name. Welp, couldn’t stop now (not that he necessarily wanted to) and Peter hadn’t said anything about it before, so maybe he liked it. Or hadn’t noticed.
“Of course I trust you,” he said quietly, snapping Harley back to the present at which time he felt his heart would burst. He needed to diffuse the situation again.
“Less than three, Petey boo,” he yelled while walking away for a dramatic exit, and he forced himself to not look back at Peter’s brown curls. God those curls. He had noticed them the first time they met- hadn’t he literally called him a cutie and not been joking?- so how the hell how was he idiotic enough to be so oblivious? (Peter was thinking the exact same thing, having a flashback to when he literally had the thought: “how can he be so hot with that dumb smirk”, which he promptly forgot about when they became friends- how convenient)
“Less than thr- did you just- say a heart at me out loud?”
“Yes.” Harley deadpanned, turning and standing in the centre of the elevator and making brief eye contact before the doors shut.
Peter scoffed fondly and went into the kitchen in search of Tony, who he found asleep with his head on the counter, his arms hugging the coffee pot. He was probably trying to absorb it by osmosis, or something.