Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

5 – burnout is really scary, actually 

Finding balance can be pretty hard to do. 

Harley tends to hover when he’s worried about his loved ones. There have been multiple times where one of his dads has had to take him out of the tower while one of his sisters is sick in order to get him out of their hair while trying to take care of their ill kid. He doesn’t do it on purpose—according to his therapist, it’s a result of his anxiety, wanting to be present for every moment so that he can jump in and help if anything goes wrong. For the first fourteen years of his life, he genuinely didn’t realize what he was doing until someone pointed it out to him. However, thanks to his psychiatrist recommending proper therapy after his anxiety meds proved to not be enough to completely halt his occasional spiraling thoughts and his dads being quick to follow through on that recommendation, he’s now able to recognize his hovering before it gets to a point of creating tension in his personal relationships or of causing so much stress for himself that he ends up experiencing a panic attack. His anxiety thankfully doesn’t manifest itself in that way very often, but it has happened enough to be something he needs to be aware of and watch out for. 

“It also sounds a bit like a control thing,” his therapist told him once. Her name is Sarah and she’s a lovely woman who is amazing at her job and always brings him hot chocolate from her favorite coffee shop, as his dads pay her extra for her to come to the tower for his sessions. “You are very self aware in a lot of ways, Harley. Like you’ve stated before, you have lived a comfortable life and have been fortunate enough to not have experienced many struggles, but there is still a certain lack of control.” 

At the time, Harley had been confused. His dads, while having rules and expectations and boundaries, have always given Harley a lot of freedom. He’s allowed to decorate his room however he wants, has full control over his wardrobe and how he does his hair and every other way he can express himself. While his dads purposefully and intentionally kept Harley out of the spotlight while he was growing up, they’ve told him that it’s up to him, now that he’s old enough to understand the impact of his decisions, how much he wants to be seen in media and how he wants to present himself online. 

He did have to sit through a very in depth meeting with the head of the PR department and his fathers in order to make sure he was fully aware of just how much impact he’s capable of having, as well as the wide scope of people that his impact can potentially effect, but after that, it’s been entirely his choice. 

When he told Sarah this, she had nodded. He could see the approval in her eyes—according to her, the way his dads have handled raising their kids while being rich and in the spotlight is very much admirable. 

“That’s true,” she said. “And it’s very important that you have that freedom to express yourself how you choose to and that your parents support you so much while also preparing you the best they can to understand the potential consequences of your choices, but there is still an element of control that is out of your hands. You are still a minor, and until you reach adulthood, your parents have control over many aspects of your life, which I know you’re already aware of. They give you plenty of freedom and choice, but with your anxiety, it sounds like a part of you is aware that the freedom they give you is something they could take away.” 

Harley frowned. “They wouldn’t do that,” he said, absolutely certain of that fact. 

Sarah tucked her chin in a small nod. “From my observations, I believe that they wouldn’t, but that doesn’t necessarily diminish the fact that they could.” She folded her hands over her knees and offered him a warm smile, helping to dissipate Harley’s urge to defend his family before he had the chance to realize the urge was even there. “We’ve explored the way your head works many times, and we’ve established the fact that there are many things your brain clings to without you being fully aware of it. We have also established that your anxiety tends to focus on the people you care about and the need to be prepared for times where your ability to help is essential. I could be wrong, of course, but it sounds like your anxiety is aware of the fact that the control you have over your life could be taken away and, as a result, you have the tendency to cling to any control you have, especially in regard to your family.” 

It had made sense when she said it, and it still makes sense now, but Harley tries not to think about it too much because thinking about it makes him uncomfortably aware of his anxiety in a way that often, ironically enough, leads to a whole new anxiety spiral that is incredibly hard to get out of. 

He’s managed to keep his hovering in check with Peter, outside of moments where it is entirely justified and necessary to make sure that Peter is safe—like when Peter’s blood sugar drops and Harley is the only person there to make sure it comes back up. Ever since doing his initial deep dive into type one diabetes and learning how easy it is to die because of it, he’s carried a lingering anxiety about it that’s hovered in the back of his mind 24/7, but it hasn’t been a huge problem or anything. 

But then he learned about Peter’s diagnosis story, and ever since, his anxiety has ramped up quite a bit. 

Sarah was able to explain this to him pretty easily at the next session he had with her following Peter’s one year diagnosis anniversary. “Sometimes,” she told him, “it can be easy to logically know something but not really get a grasp on it until something real happens to back up the logic. You already knew about the fact that Peter being diabetic can be scary and life threatening, but until learning about how close he came to dying once, it probably didn’t seem real. Now that you know, your brain is probably struggling to understand just how real it is, and it’ll likely take a bit for you to become used to the realness of it. Once you do, your anxiety about it will likely become less intense, but it’s still new and extra scary.” 

He appreciates her assurance, even though he’s pretty damn sure that his anxiety about Peter dying is never going to become less intense. He thinks he’ll get better at managing it as time goes on, but it’s not going to fade in the slightest, because losing Peter has become just as terrifying a concept to him as losing his parents or his sisters. Which, honestly, that on its own is pretty terrifying. Knowing that his feelings for Peter have become so strong that he’s on the same level as his family is oddly scary—even more so when Harley acknowledges the fact that it isn’t because of the fact that his feelings are on the romantic side of things, because he’ll happily go his whole life as Peter’s friend and lose the romantic feelings entirely and still be terrified of Peter ever leaving his life. It feels borderline codependent, but Sarah has assured him that it makes sense and that he shouldn’t worry about it too much right now. 

Ever since having to confront the fact that there could have been a world where Harley never got to meet Peter at all, where Peter might not have survived long enough to even reach the hospital, his anxiety has been at an all time high. He’s noticed some of his hovering habits starting to appear because of it and has been trying to get a hold of it before it gets out of hand, because he’d be so fucking furious at himself if he made Peter uncomfortable or upset with him because of his behavior becoming overbearing.  

Plus, Peter told Harley that he’s the only person that he feels normal around, even when his diabetes stuff comes up. With May, Ned, and MJ, he struggles with feeling guilty about burdening them, but also struggles with feeling like they assume he can’t handle his disability himself, and Harley doesn’t want to lose that trust, not only because he absolutely loves the fact that Peter feels that comfortable around Harley, but also because he doesn’t want to take that comfort away from Peter and leave him struggling with his feelings without having someone he can feel completely and absolutely comfortable around. 

Sometimes he has to stop himself from texting Peter to ask what his blood sugar is. At school and when they’re hanging out, he has to remind himself that staring at Peter to make sure that he isn’t about to suddenly drop dead isn’t a normal thing to do (even though, if he’s being totally honest with himself, half of the time he’s staring at Peter because he just loves to look at him, to see the way his features shift as he speaks, which is just Harley’s crush rearing its head, but still). It’s annoying and he keeps getting frustrated with himself because of it, but as their junior year goes on, he gets better at managing himself. 

He reminds himself that Peter knows what he’s doing and doesn’t need Harley there every two seconds to make sure that he’s okay. He reminds himself that he knows how to recognize potentially dangerous situations—knows all the signs and symptoms of lows and highs and anything else that might come up. 

Months pass by, slowly but surely. Harley redevelops a bad habit of chewing on his nails, but by the time winter break comes around, it’s only a once-a-week kind of thing instead of daily. Peter gets him the first book in a series that Harley’s been wanting to read, and a copy of his own favorite book that he’s taken the time to go through and annotate, since Harley’s started relying on reading more to try and distract himself when his anxiety starts to bubble up in his chest and has become a bit obsessed with it. He loved reading in middle school, never stopped enjoying it, but his love for it has definitely come back full force. 

Harley, in turn, gets Peter a king-sized plush blanket and an IOU for three trips to the movies that Harley will pay for, snacks and drinks and all, that Peter can use whenever he wants, for whatever movie he wants to see. Peter grinned when he saw it, glasses a little bit lopsided where they sat on the slope of his nose, and told Harley, “I’m going to be very annoying about this, I hope you know.” 

“It’s your present,” Harley had replied with a shrug. “Be as annoying about it as you want.” 

School picked back up and Harley continued to work on his urge to hover until, like he assumed, he got better at managing it. The anxiety doesn’t lessen in the slightest, but it no longer grips him by the throat and makes him feel like he needs to have proof that Peter’s still okay every single second of the day. 

Because of this, he stops paying as much attention to Peter as he was before. Not enough so to not notice the lows and the highs and the other things that he always keeps an eye out for, but just enough to make it so he isn’t constantly scanning Peter over to make sure he’s still in one piece and hasn’t somehow developed a life-threatening ailment in the five minutes since the last time he checked. This is a good thing, he knows—but the timing couldn’t be worse, because it’s around this time that things start to go wrong, and Harley doesn’t realize until it gets really, really fucking bad. 

Later down the road, Sarah asks him, “You know it isn’t your fault, right?” 

Logically, sure—but when Harley opens his mouth, not a single world comes out. 

- 

- 

- 

Harley is embarrassingly gay and even more embarrassingly in love with his best friend. 

He thinks this causes some distraction once he’s got a better grip on his anxieties. Once he’s no longer so focused on the constant need to ensure that Peter is alive and okay, it’s easier for his horrendously strong feelings to make themselves known again—not that they ever went away, because they absolutely didn’t, but it seemed a lot less urgent in comparison to his ever present fear of Peter dying.  

The thing is, when he looks back on it later, every single sign was right in front of him, and that is probably the most infuriating part because he knows that he could have seen it had he just managed to look long enough, to think about it for a few more moments here and there. 

Peter’s words float into his head from the night he told Harley about his diagnosis: 

…the signs were pretty obvious, but no one realized because it was so gradual, so subtle… 

It makes him feel like he’s maybe going a little bit crazy, because he had been so sure that he would never miss any of those signs, actively reassured himself that he knew what to look out for in order to help him calm his constant anxiety, but it still happens. He manages to miss it for so fucking long. 

It’s February when he first (finally) starts to clue in on something being wrong. 

Peter’s weight fluctuates with his diabetes. Sometimes he’s boney and thin, which usually means he’s not getting enough insulin. Sometimes, in the first few weeks after an endocrinologist appointment where his insulin dosage is upped again and his body has yet to build a resistance to it, he fills out a bit more, until his wrists no longer look so fragile and his cheeks dimple when he grins. Harley absolutely adores Peter no matter what, but it can make his chest ache when Peter is thinner because he knows it’s a sign of his body not working in his favor, a sign of him not being as healthy as he should be. 

At the start of January, Peter had an endo appointment and followed the pattern, filling out a bit in the weeks that followed until, around the end of January, his weight began to drop once more. Harley has become used to this cycle and doesn’t think too much of it outside of that usual ache—until mid-February, when him and Peter are hanging out in Harley’s room and the sun, which is peaking out from the winter clouds that have been consistently filling the sky, shines through the window in a way that illuminates Peter like a spotlight. It makes Harley’s breath catch, his focus fading as he takes in the way Peter’s eyes turn golden in the light, watches how Peter’s lips move as he continues to ramble about the essay he was assigned a few days ago, unaware of Harley’s attention drifting elsewhere, and— 

And he realizes, quite suddenly, that something isn’t how it’s supposed to be. 

It takes a moment for him to narrow down what it is that’s making him falter. Peter is beautiful and bright, as Harley always thinks he is, but the way his heart is thundering doesn’t feel like a product of his crush. Right now, it feels like when his anxiety kicks up a notch, and he scans over Peter’s features three more times before it clicks in his head. Peter is thin. 

Which, yeah, it’s been about a month and a half since his last appointment, and he’s always thinner at this point in the cycle, but Harley thinks back on how Peter usually looks when he’s skinnier and finds that this is undoubtedly different. Peter’s cheekbones become more prominent with the weight loss, but right now, with the sun making him so bright and highlighting each of his features, it’s clear that Peter’s cheeks are starting to become… sunken, in a way. Like, they curve in towards his teeth in a way that reminds Harley of a skeleton. Once he’s able to recognize it, his mind pulls up one of the pictures that he’s seen from before Peter’s diagnosis, a picture that Peter has chosen to show him when it popped up in a Snapchat memory on his phone. Harley’s stomach had bottomed out when he saw it, when he took in the way Peter had looked so sick, so weak and small and completely unlike the Peter he knows. 

But now, like this, Peter resembles the photo in a way that makes Harley’s hands shake. 

He shoves his hands under his thighs to hide the way they tremble and tries to tune back in to Peter’s ramble, but even when the words begin to process in his, Harley feels the fear bubbling up in his gut. 

- 

- 

- 

The next time Peter comes over, Harley talks to Jarvis first. It feels like an invasion of privacy, guilt curdling in his stomach, but he still asks Jarvis how much the elevator weighs, steps on a scale to take note of his own weight, and then, when Peter’s in the bathroom, he asks Jarvis how much the elevator weighed when him and Peter had taken it up from the lobby of the tower. 

Once he sorts the numbers out in his head, he figures out that Peter is about 105 pounds. 

Sure, his process isn’t entirely full proof, he knows, so the number he comes up with probably isn’t exact, but it’s a close estimate that leaves Harley swallowing down a slight gasp. Peter isn’t much shorter than Harley is, about 5’6, and when Harley looks it up after Peter leaves, even the BMI scale—which Harley knows is bullshit and tends to call people overweight even when they’re perfectly healthy—classifies 105 pounds as underweight for a 5’6 sixteen-year-old boy. 

He isn’t really sure what to do with this information. It’s a red flag, for sure, but he can’t comfortably jump to conclusions based on one singular observation. There’s the option of bringing it up to Peter, which he knows he probably should, but that fear of making Peter uncomfortable or becoming overbearing with his concern is enough to make him hold back on that for now. 

After a weekend of consideration, he decides to continue to observe and see if anything else catches his eyes. There’s a chance that this isn’t a major thing to worry about—sure, Harley’s never seen Peter look so thin before—but that doesn’t automatically point towards a bigger issue. Maybe Peter’s insulin resistance is just kicking up a notch this time around, enough so to make him lose more weight than he usually does, and Harley is stressing about something that isn’t all that big of a deal. 

Either way, he’s gonna go with the classic better safe than sorry motto by keeping a closer eye on things, but dip into that hope for the best, prepare for the worst mentality that he’s been trying to live by, too. 

- 

- 

- 

For a couple weeks, nothing else jumps out at Harley that strikes him as unusual or concerning. 

Peter is tired, but not to the point of it being a red flag. He’s quieter than normal, but Harley figures that if it is an insulin resistance issue then Peter is bound to not be full of energy. Besides, despite his lethargy and softer tone, Harley also notices how Peter smiles more, how he laughs longer, how he appears almost peaceful in a way that Harley hasn’t really seen him before. It’s like he’s shaken off stress that he had been carrying around for as long as he can remember. Harley isn’t sure what to make of it, but it balances out in his head enough that he no longer feels as concerned as he did before. 

And then Peter is staying the night at the tower and he doesn’t have his kit with him. 

“You forgot it?” Harley asks, something bitter on the back of his tongue. 

Peter shrugs, his glasses slipping down the slope of his nose as he continues to look at the screen of his phone, far too unbothered for Harley’s liking. “Yeah. I guess I didn’t put it back in my bag or something.” 

Back in his bag, right, ‘cause Peter keeps his kit on his desk right next to his bed while he sleeps. It isn’t too farfetched to think that Peter was in a hurry and accidentally skipped a step this morning—but that was this morning, and it’s currently past six-thirty in the afternoon. Harley frowns. “Doesn’t the school have a spare kit for you in the nurse’s room?” 

“Yeah,” Peter says. 

Harley blinks at him. “And you didn’t grab it?” 

And again, Peter shrugs. “Didn’t really need to.” 

It doesn’t make any sense. Harley gives himself a minute to think about it, because—because it doesn’t make any sense. What does Peter mean, he didn’t really need to? If he’s gone all day without his kit, that means he hasn’t checked his blood sugar since before leaving for school this morning, but maybe he didn’t even do that since he forgot to bring his kit with him. So maybe it was this morning, but maybe it was yesterday. Harley has seen the way Peter’s blood sugar is make a turn for the worst at the drop of a hat, and Peter is sitting here acting like it isn’t a big deal that he hasn’t checked it all fucking day? 

Harley sucks in a sharp breath—holds it for a few seconds, then lets it out slowly, steadily. It doesn’t help much, but it gives him a moment to smoothen out the sharp edges of his anxiety that are trying to slice away at his insides. Instead of losing his shit the way he wants to, he simply gets to his feet and makes his way over to his dresser. “That’s okay,” he says, pulling open the top drawer and taking out one of the kits his dads bought for him to have on hand upon learning about Peter being diabetic. “I have extras.” 

When he turns back around, Peter has finally pulled his attention away from his phone and is staring at the kit in Harley’s hands with a scarily blank expression. Harley falters, but before he can say anything, Peter’s lips pull up into a tense smile. “Oh, thanks,” he says, taking the kit when Harley holds it out to him. He makes no move to use it, only sets it in his lap and looks back at his phone. 

“Um.” Harley hovers, a battle happening in his head as he tries to figure out if the urge to say something is justified or if it’s a manifestation of his hovering tendencies that his anxiety causes. He doesn’t get the chance to figure it out before Jarvis speaks up, letting them know that dinner is ready. 

When they sit to eat, Harley doesn’t look away from Peter until he unzips the kit. Some of that anxiety calms as he watches Peter go through the usual steps to test his levels, and Peter gives no sign of his sugar being too high or too low, only mechanically following the routine until the kit is zipped back up and settled under his thigh. Harley makes himself stop staring, trusting Peter to be able to take care of himself. 

He also tries to assure himself that it’s okay, that his anxiety is just getting the best of him, but he can’t shake away the uneasy feeling that follows him the rest of the night. 

- 

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- 

He almost asks his dad about it. 

Rhodey is sitting on the couch to his left, a movie is on that neither of them are watching. Tony took Olivia to get a haircut, and Morgan is in a mood today where Tony leaving the room is equal to the world ending, so she went with. Rhodey and Harley chose to hang out in the living room together and the movie was put on as background noise, but Harley has his laptop out and Rhodey is going through his emails on his tablet. At some point he sets his tablet down to stretch his neck and asks, “What are you working on?” 

Harley isn’t working on anything. He should be—he has an essay that’s due next week that he should probably start working on soon—but he isn’t. Instead, he’s scrolling through signs of diabetic ketoacidosis, even though he already has every symptom committed to memory, and he’s comparing each bullet point to Peter. When Rhodey asks, he looks over at his dad and part of him feels like a little kid again, feels ready to burst into tears and ask for help because he doesn’t understand and he’s scared, but the rest of him knows that he isn’t a little kid anymore. He’s sixteen (closer to seventeen, now that the school year is over halfway through) and he’s still not sure if this is serious or if he’s reading into it. 

Still, the question sits on the tip of his tongue. He even parts his lips to let the words fall, almost gives in to that childish need to have his parents fix the problem for him, but Peter isn’t a problem, and even if this is something bigger, it isn’t something his dads can just fix. 

“Homework,” he finally says, his voice somehow not shaky. “I have an essay due next week.” 

Rhodey hums. “You need any help?” 

Yes, Harley thinks. “No, I got it,” he says. “But thanks.” 

“If you change your mind, just ask, okay?” Rhodey waits until Harley nods his understanding before picking his tablet back up, and Harley feels like he’s going to puke when he looks back at his laptop and sees a hard time paying attention or confusion next on the list and remembers a few days ago when Peter had taken a full thirty seconds to understand an equation that he can usually solve in half that. 

It’s becoming harder to tell himself that there’s nothing to be worried about. 

He swallows down his concern and tries to actually work on his essay instead. 

- 

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- 

It’s a Wednesday and they’re in AP Statistics. 

Peter’s been especially off today, something that Harley clocked the second that he saw Peter in the hallway this morning. He’s barely spoken, his cheeks are flushed like he has a fever, and even when in the middle of saying hi, Peter had looked unfocused and unsure, completely out of it. Harley tried to ask if he was feeling okay, but Peter had only hummed a soft little mhm in response before heading to class. 

Thankfully, they have quite a few classes together, so Harley’s been able to keep a pretty close eye on him. Peter hasn’t raised his hand once, hasn’t spoken more than a few words all day, and doesn’t seem to be aware of the way that Harley has been worriedly watching him all day. 

In AP Statistics they share a table, and usually spend the whole class knee-to-knee and murmuring to each other or passing notes—or, one time, sharing Harley’s headphones to listen to music when they couldn’t get away with talking. Harley is antsy with concern and tries to bring it up shortly after class has started. 

He leans over to whisper, “Are you sure you’re okay?” 

“Hm?” Peter hums, slowly turning his head to look at Harley with something blank and confused in his eyes. Harley knows that during class is not the time to have a full talk, but he decides here and now that he can’t keep trying to dismiss these things—decides that the moment the bell rings, Harley is going to try and talk to Peter about everything that he’s noticed, to talk about his concern, because he’s so scared that something might be really wrong that the idea of Peter being upset with him isn’t as important anymore. 

Setting his jaw, Harley sets his mind to it. He won’t let himself change his mind now that he’s made his decision, and in preparation, he starts running through his plan in his head. The bell will ring, he’ll walk out of the room with Peter, and then he’ll ask if they can talk, maybe go sit in the stairwell by the gym that’s usually empty and that teachers never seem inclined to check between classes. Once they have some kind of privacy, he’ll bring up his observations, the weight loss and the quietness and the way Peter’s been acting kind of different recently, and then— 

And then Peter is throwing up. 

It happens suddenly, with literally no warning at all. Harley only sees it happen because he’s already looking at Peter with determination to get to the bottom of everything. one second Peter is sitting there calmly, and the next second he’s hunching down on himself and vomiting on the linoleum floor. 

Their class reacts quickly, everyone around them jumping out of their seats with loud exclamations that Harley doesn’t hear nor care about. He sees their teacher freeze at the front of the room, and he sees when she starts to move their way, but he doesn’t care to wait for her. Honestly, he doesn’t care about anyone else in the room, because the second he processes what happened, he finds himself moving out of his seat and kneeling beside Peter’s, his heart stomping a heavy beat in his chest and his hands shaking, but still he rests one on Peter’s shoulders and keeps his voice gentle when he murmurs, “Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay.” 

Peter groans, shoulders heaving as he struggles to breathe. His own arms are curled around his stomach, his face—previously vacant—is now scrunched up in pain and discomfort. Harley uses his other hand to push some of Peter’s hair out of his eyes and feel his forehead. He frowns at the heat. 

“You’re burning up, Pete,” he says softly, mostly to himself, but Peter’s eyes squint open and he hiccups, one arm unfurling so that he can reach out and grip onto Harley’s sweatshirt. 

“I—” Peter starts, but he cuts himself as he hunches forward again, giving one painful sounding gag before more sick joins the puddle on the floor. In the back of Harley’s mind, he registers that it’s pretty fucking gross—acknowledges, at least on some level, that there’s a mixture of upsetting aspects to this moment, from the sound of Peter trying to gasp for air before getting cut off by more puking to the way it smells and the way he can see their classmates hovering on the edges of the room as their teacher falters a few steps away. Harley glances at her, brows furrowed and a little bit annoyed by her lack of movement. 

And he’s kind of freaking out, at least on the inside, because he knows that throwing up is bad, and he knows that Peter being diabetic and also throwing up is even worse, and he knew something was wrong and he’s kind of pissed that he didn’t say something before now—but he also clocks pretty quickly that he’s the only person in the room who seems to have any semblance of an idea of what to do. 

Harley has helped Peter with diabetes stuff before, after all. Sure, all of their teachers know about Peter being diabetic and, in theory, should know how to handle these kinds of situations, but when their teacher looks back at him, he can see the uncertainty and cluelessness in her eyes. 

“Can you call the nurse or something?” Harley asks her, managing to not lose his shit now that he’s realized he’s going to have to be the one to handle this until someone more qualified is able to. She hesitates a second before nodding and turning back to walk to her desk, but Harley doesn’t pay enough attention to see her reach her phone, instead putting all of his focus back on Peter. The next thing he has to do is obvious, because before he can figure out what to do next, he has to know what’s wrong. 

Peter looks back at him, eyes a little bit watery and red. He seems to be done throwing up for now, but he doesn’t look any less sick, any less frail or out of it. 

“Do you have your kit?” Harley asks him, because Peter has been forgetting it more often recently. Peter swallows thickly, still catching his breath, and shakes his head. Although that isn’t the answer that Harley wanted to hear, he’s prepared for it anyway, reaching for his backpack and digging out the kit he’s been carrying with him at school since the school year began. Peter doesn’t look surprised by this, though his eyes flutter shut and he looks, for a moment, defeated by the sight of it. Harley chooses to acknowledge that later, instead focusing on unzipping the pouch and getting right to work, somehow managing to keep his anxiety at bay as he uses an alcohol wipe to clean one of Peter’s fingers, puts the test strip in the monitor, uses the finger poker, lines up the drop of it, watches the countdown— 

High. 

That’s all it says. Not even a number, just that one, single word. High. 

“S’rry,” Peter slurs out softly, apparently seeing the shock and panic that rises on Harley’s face, because Harley knows what that means. Each company makes their testing kits differently, so the number can vary depending on brand, but Harley knows for a fact that this brand reads up to a blood sugar of 600. Anything above that, it can’t read properly. Which means Peter’s blood sugar is, at the very least, over 600 right now, and that’s—that is definitely not okay. 

But Harley can freak out about that later. “It’s okay,” he says, though Peter just looks away from him with something guilty on his features, something shameful, that Harley wants to question but knows he can try to talk to Peter about after making sure that he’s okay. “Which pocket is your insulin in?” 

Peter doesn’t respond right away, so Harley grabs Peter’s bag and starts rummaging through it. It isn’t until he comes up empty handed that he connects the dots—Peter keeps his insulin and his syringes in his kit, usually, which he doesn’t have. Unless he has those things tucked somewhere different, but Harley basically turns Peter’s bag inside out and still can’t find a single damn thing. 

Harley looks back at Peter in confusion, and that guilty look starts to make a little bit more sense. 

“Sorry,” Peter says again, more of a whisper this time. He won’t look at Harley anymore. 

Although he parts his lips to respond, Harley finds that no words are willing to form and instead seals his mouth shut, trying to come up with a new game plan. There’s no insulin in Peter’s bag, and Peter’s blood sugar is scarily high, and the only way to bring his blood sugar down is to give him insulin. It’s a loop that he isn’t sure how to solve—until he hears the classroom door open and the nurse comes in, moving fast and efficient, kneeling next to Harley in mere milliseconds. She doesn’t have it with her, but he thinks about the clear bag holding spare supplies that May gives the school as needed—including, he knows, a vial of insulin and a pack of syringes. 

“His blood sugar’s high,” Harley tells her thickly, feeling a little less calm now that there’s someone here capable of—and more qualified to—take control of the moment. “Over 600.” 

She looks at him with a frown, and he holds up the meter to show her the way it still says High on it. 

“He also doesn’t have his insulin in his bag,” he says when she looks at Peter’s backpack. 

“Okay,” she says, voice soft and calm despite the way her brows are knitting together. When she turns back to Peter, she has a soft smile on her face. “That’s okay. We have some in the office, okay? Do you need help walking so we can bring you to the health room?” 

Peter blinks at her sluggishly, swallows convulsively, and then looks at Harley. 

Harley doesn’t hesitate to slide his hand from Peter’s shoulder down to intertwine their fingers. “I can help you,” he offers. He doesn’t say that he’ll follow after them whether Peter wants his help or not, but there’s a shimmer of relief in Peter’s eyes that makes it clear that he was hoping Harley wouldn’t stay behind. With a curt nod, Peter grips Harley’s hand with a shaky strength and lets Harley and the nurse help him out of his chair. His knees shake, but Harley keeps him as steady as he can and only spares their backpacks a short glance before leaving them behind. He has his phone and everything else they need is in the health room. He can come back for their bags later. 

“Thank you,” Peter mumbles to him, head lolling a bit to rest on Harley’s shoulder as he takes stumbled steps down the hall, being steered by Harley as they follow the nurse. 

“You don’t have to thank me,” Harley says. 

Peter hums. “Sorry.” 

“You don’t have to be sorry, either.” 

Although it’s clear Peter disagrees, he stays quiet the rest of their walk. 

- 

- 

- 

Peter doesn’t go to the hospital.

Well, he does, kind of, but not an actual one. Harley had called Tony while standing in the hall outside of the health room and tried not to cry as he explained what happened, and when May showed up fifteen minutes later, it was with both of Harley’s dads and a game plan to bring Peter to their medical team.

He has to grab their bags from their classroom, which has been cleared out by the time Harley stops by, and then the car ride is mostly quiet. Harley can’t stop fidgeting from where he sits in the far back row, able to see where Peter is slumped into May’s side. May is murmuring to him and petting his hair. Harley isn’t sure what it is she’s saying, but when they get to the tower, Peter is asleep. Harley watches as May shakes him awake and trails after them to the elevator. He goes to follow them when they stop at the Med Bay, but Tony settles a hand on his shoulder and shakes his head.

Harley isn’t one to blatantly ignore his parents or go against what they want, but he doesn’t even think about it, pulling his shoulder out of Tony’s grasp and following anyway. He’s just entering the room that Peter’s been given as Peter is settling shakily into the bed, and he hovers for a moment, wondering if maybe he should have gone upstairs with his dads, but then Peter sees him standing there and his features shatter into something relieved and vulnerable. He reaches a hand out.

Without hesitating, Harley steps forward and grabs Peter’s hand, claiming the chair next to his bed.

May is watching them. Although the concern is still there, she’s sporting a small smile.

-

-

-

Harley opens to a fresh page in his notebook about Peter.

Peter, who is laying in Harley’s bed looking exhausted, is peering at him with his glasses a bit askew on his face. “You really have a whole notebook for this stuff?”

“Yeah,” Harley tells him, digging in his desk drawers for a pen. “My anxiety is a bitch, and it really likes to tell me that I’m never going to be prepared to handle things that need to be handled, specifically when it comes to my loved ones. Like, to the level of having nightmares about it. It helps me feel like I’m prepared to help make sure you’re okay if I have this to keep track of important information.”

Finding a pen, Harley makes his way back to his bed and settles at the foot of it. Peter is watching him with a pinched frown. “You have nightmares?”

It’s kind of weird, how easy it feels to tell Peter about this when he only ever really talks about it with his therapist. His dads know about his anxiety and his nightmares, of course, since his therapist had to explain (with Harley’s knowledge and consent) why she was recommending anxiety medication, but Harley doesn’t typically tell them about it in detail. The words always get all gummy in his throat when he tries. Now, though, it feels as easy as talking about the weather.

Maybe that’s because he’s become more comfortable around Peter than he has around anyone else. Maybe it’s his crush. Maybe it’s both. Either way, Harley answers him all the same.

“Not as often as I used to,” he replies. “Usually only when I’m worried.”

“Have you had any about me?”

“Yes,” Harley says. He’s not going to lie to Peter. Thankfully, Peter doesn’t ask for details about the nightmares he’s had, so Harley clicks the end of his pen and writes BURN OUT at the top of the page. “You don’t have to tell me about it,” Harley says. “But if you’re okay with sharing, I’d like to hear it.”

Peter glances from Harley’s face to the notebook propped on his knee. Harley is about to offer to put the notebook away—he can do research on burn out later instead of making notes based on what Peter has to say—but then Peter looks back at Harley and sighs. “It’s really stupid,” he says “Like, really stupid.”

Harley bites back his instinctual reply of no it’s not. Instead, he asks, “What do you think is stupid?”

“I—” Peter cuts himself off, huffs a heavy, frustrated breath, and brings Harley’s blanket up to his shoulders to curl up under it. “I know it’s not rational, you know? It’s just, like—like, being me, being diabetic, having to deal with it, it’s—it’s a 24/7 kind of thing, you know? I’m always having to think about my stupid fucking blood sugar and how much insulin to give myself, I’m always supposed to have syringes and insulin and be ready to give myself shots and—and fucking stab myself in the finger to see what my blood sugar is and, just—it’s always. All of the time. I can’t ignore it or not think about it or pretend it isn’t there without being at risk of killing myself. But I… I thought I could try.”

“Try to pretend it isn’t there?”

Peter shrugs beneath Harley’s blanket. “I guess. I just wanted a break.”

For a moment, Harley considers that. He looks down at his notebook and can’t figure out what to write, and after a second of contemplation, he closes the notebook and sets it on his nightstand, pen on top. He can figure out the right words to write down later. For now, he crawls up the bed and pulls the blanket back just enough to lay by Peter’s side. “That makes sense,” he tells Peter. “To want a break, I mean.”

“But it doesn’t make sense to think I could actually have one,” Peter grumbles.

Harley ponders for the next five minutes or so, watching as Peter relaxes into the mattress, buries himself further into Harley’s pillow. The problem is that Peter is right—being diabetic isn’t something he can take a break from. But there are things that could make it easier, right?

Like, there’s newer technology. Insulin pumps and things like that. Peter’s only mentioned wanting to get one once, but he’d said it with a wistful sigh and pointed out that their health insurance wouldn’t cover it.

Maybe there’s something that they can do about that.

For now, Harley watches Peter drift to sleep, a vague plan forming in the back of his mind.

6 – cool new technology is awesome, but it doesn’t solve everything

Peter is pretending like he isn’t excited, slouched in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest and a dramatic pout pushing out his lower lip. His glasses sit crooked on the edge of his nose, looking a small breeze away from falling off. Harley reaches over and pushes them up, and Peter glares at him.

“You’re not actually mad,” Harley tells him.

“I could be,” Peter responds. Then, with less gusto: “I was.”

Harley nods. “I know you were. But you aren’t anymore. You can be excited about it.”

That makes Peter roll his eyes, but his lips twitch, just slightly, into the hint of a smile. “I don’t like being mad at you,” he says then. “I mean, I—I didn’t like it. I don’t want to do it again.” That barely-there smile drops into a frown, and he adds, “I don’t like you going behind my back about things, Harley.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Harley replies. It’s not the first time he’s said as such, but it is the first time that Peter’s seemed in the mood to hear him out about it. And Harley is all ears about where he went wrong, because he thought it was a good plan—until he revealed it to Peter, unveiled his goal with a grin, and Peter had visibly shut down in front of him, putting up a wall higher than the one he had up when Harley first met him. The past couple weeks have been hard, trying to fix this whole thing.

Peter tells him, “I don’t want things related to my diabetes to be a surprise. I never had a choice in becoming diabetic, and I don’t get to choose when I have bad days and good days with it, you know? But I have a choice in how I manage it, and what I do with it, and this didn’t… it didn’t feel like a surprise, okay?” He sighs, put-upon and heavy. “It felt like… like I had a bad burnout episode, and because of it, you thought that I couldn’t make decisions for myself anymore, or something. Which—” he continues on, before Harley can interject, “—I know I was making bad decisions for a while, and I understand not wanting me to do that again, but it still—I still get to decide, you know? And you didn’t let me decide.”

Every part of Harley wants to insist on how that wasn’t his intention—because it wasn’t, not at all. He’d talked with his dads about helping Peter get an insulin pump and a CGM because he thought it would be helpful. He knew Peter would be wary at first, just like he always is when Harley’s family does something for him and May, the Parker’s both stubborn and insisting that they can take care of themselves, but he thought that Peter would be excited after accepting the help, like he usually seems to be.

But protesting feels like not listening, at least in this sense, because it’s not Harley’s intentions that really matter right now. What matters is that Harley misjudged his approach and made Peter upset, and he doesn’t want to do that ever again. He never wants Peter to feel the need to put those walls back up.

“Okay,” Harley says slowly, brows twitching together as he thinks of how to move forward in a way that’s productive. He starts by saying, “To be clear, I don’t think you can’t make decisions for yourself, and I didn’t realize that what I was doing would make you think I did. I don’t, um... I don’t want to make you feel like that, and I don’t want to hurt you, and I’m gonna make sure I don’t do that again.”

Peter shrugs. “I mean, I knew, logically, that you didn’t really think that. It still sucked, though.”

Harley hums lightly, nodding once. “So, no surprises for diabetic things,” he states. “If I have an idea that I think might be helpful, I bring it to you? Leave the surprises to birthday gifts and Christmas? Yeah?”

That makes Peter smile, which makes a knot in Harley’s chest that he hadn’t even recognized was there loosen, allowing his next breath to fully fill his lungs and ease the anxiety bubbling in his gut. He’s been on edge, scared that he may have fucked up his relationship with his first friend—his only best friend, and the boy he’s been head over heels infatuated with since his sixteenth birthday. Before then, probably. He only realized it then, but he’s probably been steadily falling in love since the day they first met.

“Yeah,” Peter agrees. And then, as if the past couple weeks never happened, he leans forward with bright eyes and asks, “Which pump do you think sounds the best? ‘Cause I’m leaning towards the Omnipod right now, but I also read up on the t:slim and it looks really cool, too, but I’m not gonna make my mind up on anything until I look at all the options, obviously, but—”

Peter’s excited rambling settles the last of Harley’s lingering anxieties. He nods along and adds his own thoughts here and there, until they’re called back by the specialist they’re here to see.

Harley goes with Peter when Peter prompts him to follow. He sees how Peter looks over his options, fiddles with the buttons, and examines all the supplies needed for them to work. The Omnipod is definitely cool, but Harley watches the way that Peter keeps coming back to the t:slim, flipping through the packet repeatedly, rereading different sections and asking questions. Although Peter doesn’t say it just yet by the time they’re getting into the car that technically belongs to Rhodey but has basically been Harley’s ever since he got his license, Harley is pretty confident that he knows what Peter will choose.

-

-

-

So, Harley was right, and Peter gets the t:slim. The pump and six months of supplies, along with his Dexcom G6, get delivered to the Parker’s apartment two days later. Peter shows up at the tower before he sets it up, his eyes bright as he pushes his way into Harley’s room with a level of familiarity and comfort that makes Harley’s gay little heart do flips in his gay little chest. He stupidly thinks my space is your space, but he’s pretty sure that’s too much to say when he hasn’t even told Peter about his crush yet.

Which, like... he should probably do that at some point, before he does something stupid.

Not now, though. Not yet. Soon. Maybe. Or never. But probably soon.

“Why didn’t you do it all at home?” Harley asks him, as Peter unloads the abundance of materials onto Harley’s bedroom floor, laying it all out and flipping open the front page for the instruction booklet. He’s not complaining—he was actually wondering if it’d be weird to ask to come over for this exact reason, to be honest—but he’s surprised Peter waited longer just to bring it over like this.

But Peter gives him a look like it’s obvious. “You’re my person,” he says simply. “And you set all this up in the first place. Your approach wasn’t perfect, but you meant well, and it led to me getting all of this, and I—I mean, I’ve told you already, you’re, like... the only person that I feel one hundred percent comfortable with. Like, in general, obviously, but especially when it comes to the diabetic stuff. I just... I don’t know. Maybe it’s stupid.” He frowns slightly, lowering the instruction book. “Nevermind.”

Harley rapidly shakes his head, hard enough that his glasses damn near fly off his nose. “It’s not stupid,” he says quickly, insistently. “Definitely not stupid. Absolutely not. What were you going to say?”

“How do you know it’s not stupid if I haven’t said it yet?” Peter teases. It lands a little flat.

“You—”

Harley stops. You’re the love of my life is the wrong thing to say. They’re still stupid high schoolers, and even if he does tell Peter about how he feels (soon?), he can’t just jump right into the deep end like that. It’d be a crazy thing to do. Peter makes Harley feel kind of crazy, but Harley can still be reasonable.

Instead, he decides that Peter had said it in the best way. “You’re my person,” he says. “You could tell me the sky is green and the grass is red, and I still wouldn’t think that what you're saying was stupid. Very much incorrect, maybe, but not stupid.” He waves a hand vaguely, almost dismissive, trying to come across as a bit more chill than he is, which is not chill at all. “Nothing you say is stupid ‘cause you’re the one saying it, and everything you say matters to me. So, what were you going to say?”

“I, um…” Peter blinks once, a bit lethargic, and then again. Then, tone a bit softer than before, he tells Harley, “I was going to say that I want to share these moments with you, ‘cause it makes it easier to enjoy them. Because, like… it feels stupid, sometimes, to get excited about something like an insulin pump, or my A1C dropping some, or anything else that’s diabetic-related, because no one else really understands why it’s a big deal, or what there is to be so excited about. Sure, they kind of get it, like—like, Ned and MJ both understand that having a pump and a CGM is going to help me manage my diabetes better, and May is obviously a nurse and understands the positive impact that these things will have on my life, so they’re excited about it, too, but sometimes I feel like they’re excited because they see these things as me getting closer to normal. Like, how I was before I was diagnosed, normal, you know? And I’m never going to be how I was before, with these things or without. And I—I think the fact that you didn’t know me before helps, kind of, but also, you’re just the only person who doesn’t make me feel like my diabetic shit is getting in the way, and you get just as excited as I do about these things, and I—”

He stops for a moment. Breathes in, slow and steady, and then lets it out, long and low.

“I want to have good memories associated with my diabetes,” he says definitively. “Because I’m going to be diabetic until the day I die, and if I only carry negative shit with it, then the rest of my life is going to be miserable, and I don’t want that. And the only person that I want to make those good memories with is you. So it just… it made sense to come here and take this step with you next to me.”

Harley kind of wants to cry.

Actually, he almost does—he feels tears burning the backs of his eyes, and he has to rapidly blink them away as he heavily plops himself on the floor to sit next to Peter. “I want to be part of the good memories,” he says, words a bit wobbly. “I like being part of them. I like being here for it.”

The smile that Peter gives him is blindingly beautiful. Harley wants to kiss him senseless, but there are more important things at hand. He scoots closer, until him and Peter are shoulder to shoulder, and looks at the instruction book, ignoring the way his heart is picking up speed due to their close proximity. Peter takes the que for what it is and holds the booklet up high, going back to reading through the steps.

It’s not all that hard to get going. Eventually, Peter’s input all of the settings that he’d calculated with his endocrinologist at his most recent appointment, has clicked through all the options he can choose from, and all that’s left is to actually put the pump on. Which is kind of the scary part.

“It’s fast,” Peter says, mostly to himself, as he stares at the infusion set with determination. “It might hurt a bit, but it won’t be worse than my usual injections, and I only have to do it every couple of days.”

Harley nods along, taking in the little contraption with intrigue. He watched some videos on how to do this, so he’s familiar, but this is real life, and that needle both looks longer than Harley would have thought, but also not nearly as long as he feared it would be. Although Peter is putting on a hard mask, Harley can see the way that his fingers are slightly shaking, and without thinking about it, Harley offers, “I can do it first.” Peter glances up at him, and Harley quickly elaborates with, “Like, obviously not the insulin-giving part, but my dads ordered a bunch of supplies and can get more if you need it, so I can use one of them on me. If you think it’d help, I mean. I wouldn’t mind.”

“You don’t—” Peter stops, nose scrunching up on his face in an adorable way as he looks back at the infusion set with a slight frown. Something thoughtful crosses his features, and Harley can practically see the way an idea forms in Peter’s head. Then, he looks back at Harley and says, “I don’t want you to use it on you.” He picks up the infusion set and holds it out in his palm. “But I—I want you to help me with it.”

For a moment, Harley doesn’t understand. He blinks once, slowly, and looks at the infusion set with a pinch to his brows—and then it clicks. “Oh,” he says. “Like, help you put it on?”

Peter nods. “I’m—I mean, I’m used to needles, but I haven’t done this. I’m nervous. I’m nervous enough to not really know if I can… make myself do it, I guess? And I think—I think I’ll feel better if you help me for this one, and then I’ll know what it feels like, and I’ll feel more confident about doing it myself.”

“Okay,” Harley says, giving his brain a moment to settle into the idea of it. He recalls the videos of people using these infusion sets and flickers his eyes to the instruction manual, and then he nods. “Okay,” he repeats, more sure of himself this time. He’s checked Peter’s blood sugar for him on many occasions, has practiced using the glucagon shot that Peter carries around in case of emergencies (or, as Peter likes to call it, his oh shit shot), and has become a lot more familiar with needles and sharp things in a way he never was before. It’s... kind of intimidating, the idea of handling the infusion set, but the way Peter is looking at him is hopeful and aweing, and Harley thinks he would learn how to perform heart surgery if Peter needed it done and only trusted Harley to be the one behind the scalpel.

“Okay?” Peter parrots back to him, a small smile twitching at the ends of his mouth.

Harley reaches forward and grabs the instruction booklet. “You fill up the cartridge and put it in,” he says, gesturing towards where the insulin pump is plugged in and charging. “I’ll read the instructions at least five more times to make sure I know what the hell I’m doing, and then we’ll get it done.”

With another nod, Peter reaches for one of the boxes of cartridges and syringes with one hand and pulls his pump off the charger with the other. Harley watches for a moment, intrigued as Peter figures out how to do it—screws the needle cap onto the syringe and fills it with his insulin, then unwraps the little cartridge and scans it over for a moment before finding the spot where he’s supposed to insert the needle and filling the cartridge with a slow, cautious precision. It takes him a moment too long to realize he’s stopped watching the process of setting up the insulin pump and started just watching the concentrated look on Peter’s face, and then he reminds himself that he has a job to do right now, too.

Turning his attention back to the manual, he scans over the directions—and then he scans over them again, and again. And then he grabs the infusion set, scoots closer to Peter, and they figure out how to undo the tubing, how to twist the tubing connection to the insulin pump, and then go through the process of filling the tubing. It doesn’t take long—and Harley knows the process will be even faster once Peter has the time and experience to not have to check the instructions multiple times—but then they get to the part where the only thing left is to use the infusion set to attach the insulin pump to Peter’s body.

“There are a few options for where to put it,” Harley says. “Where are you thinking?”

And then Peter lifts the hem of his shirt up, which—okay. Okay. Harley is not stupid, and he knows that a lot of people tend to put their insulin pump sites on their stomachs, and he knows that Peter tends to rotate his insulin shots around his stomach, too, so it makes sense, right? And Harley is used to seeing Peter’s stomach because of him giving himself his insulin injections, so it’s not necessarily the sight of bare skin that makes Harley’s gay little heart start to race dangerously fast in his chest.

It’s the fact that Harley is about to be in very close proximity to said bare skin. And potentially touch it.

Which is fine. Harley isn’t some idiot incapable of keeping his cool because of something as simple as visible tummy. He’s gay beyond belief and he thinks he’s on the brink of literally exploding in an incredibly dramatic and unnecessary fashion, but he can push past that for the sake of being the calm and collected person that Peter needs him to be right now.

“Here,” Peter says, poking at the fattier part of his stomach, to the right and below his belly button. “The places with more fat hurt less when I give myself shots,” he comments. “I’m assuming this’ll be similar.”

“Right,” Harley agrees, nodding, because that makes sense. Trying to push his inner gay panic into a box (closet?) in the back of his brain, he reaches for a few of the alcohol wipes and focuses on doing this right. Peter trusts him, and Harley will not fuck it up. “Lean back. Or lay down, whichever works.”

Peter shuffles until he’s able to lean back against Harley’s bedframe, far enough that he’s halfway towards laying back entirely. Harley scoots closer and tears open one of the alcohol wipes, then waits for Peter to point at the spot he poked at before, just to make sure he’s got the placement correct, and then he gently wipes a circular area that’s plenty big enough to make sure the spot is sanitized. For the sake of comfort, he waits for it to dry, opens a second alcohol wipe, and wipes it down again. He sees Peter’s stomach jump from the coldness of the wipe and has to internally scream at himself to remember that his big gay crush is not important enough to distract him right now.

The infusion set is pretty nifty from, like, an engineering standpoint. It’s simplistic and he’s pretty sure he could make some changes that would improve it—and he’s certain his dads could create their own things that would be a million times better—but as it is, it’s pretty easy to figure out. He pulls back the spring loader and checks to make sure that the cannula isn’t covering the needle, and then he presses it against Peter’s stomach. Then he looks at Peter. “Do you want a countdown?”

“No,” Peter says, only to falter, clearly unsure. “Maybe? I don’t know. You pick.”

Harley blinks at him, brain scrambling for a moment, and then says, “Count down from three.”

Nervously, Peter does as instructed, keeping his eyes locked on Harley as he starts. “Three, two—”

And Harley squeezes the indentations like the instructions said to, until the spring loader is released and the infusion set snaps into place. Peter sucks in a sharp breath, eyes widening, and Harley waits a few moments before anxiously asking, “Are you okay? Is it bad?”

“No, it’s... it’s not that bad, actually,” Peter breathes out, slowly relaxing. “It’s weird, and it kind of stung for a second, but that’s it.”

“Okay,” Harley nods. “That’s good. Um, it says to like—like press down on it, to make sure the adhesive is sticking, and then I’ll pull the needle out. I don’t know if that’ll hurt or not, but I’ll wait until you tell me you’re ready, okay? Just tell me when.”

For a moment, Peter focuses on taking a few deep breaths, and then he says, “Go ahead.”

It’s odd, but Harley lightly presses on the back of the inserter and watches Peter’s face, just in case he’s causing any pain. Peter frowns slightly, but he doesn’t flinch or anything, so Harley takes that as a good sign and waits a moment before gripping the white tabs of the infusion set and pulling it back, slow and careful, until the needle comes out and he’s able to put the lid onto it and set it to the side.

“Weird,” Peter murmurs as he sits up, holding his shirt up and peering down at the site setting with something almost like awe on his face. Then he looks at Harley with a grin. “I only have to do that every couple of days,” he says. “And once I have the CGM set up, I’ll only have to do finger pokes every once in a while, to make sure it’s calibrated and accurate. I—I won’t have to jab at myself all the time.”

The excitement on Peter’s face is bright and obvious. Harley thinks he’s going to die in the warmth radiating from Peter’s grin, but he ignores that thought and grins back. “Do you want to put your CGM on now? Or do you want to wait a little bit before having to be stabbed again?”

“Now,” Peter says quickly, already reaching for the box.

-

-

-

For the first couple of weeks, Peter is in a great mood.

It’s helpful, which Harley knew it would be, but he’s still glad to see just how helpful it is. Peter’s pump uses Control IQ to automatically adjust how much insulin he’s getting, so he stops spiking as easily as he used to, and it helps catch—and stop—lows before they happen. Plus, Peter’s CGM has a follow app that Harley instantly downloaded on his phone, so he gets updates on Peter’s blood sugar and has alerts set for if he goes high or starts to drop. It’s extremely soothing for his anxiety, to be honest. Not that it’s about him, but he finds himself spending less time worrying about Peter somehow dropping dead in the blink of an eye, thanks to his ability to pull up the app and show himself that Peter is literally fine.

Peter’s clearly ecstatic about how much easier dealing with his diabetes becomes. He still has to count carbs, has to keep his syringes and his long-acting insulin in case his pump fails, he’ll always have to carry around his glucometer kit so that he can check the accuracy of his Dexcom whenever something feels off, and his blood sugar still has a mind of its own, but it’s a significant difference.

Harley almost stops waiting for the other shoe to drop, but when his phone loudly rings out an alarm to alert him to Peter having a high blood sugar, he knows that it’s going to be a hard day.

It’s nearly two in the morning, and the Dexcom app just tells him HIGH with two arrows pointing up, which means that Peter’s blood sugar is above 400 and rising rapidly. Harley is immediately alert, scrambling to pull up May’s contact and pressing call. He presses his phone to his ear and anxiously waits, then feels his heart plummet as he’s sent to voicemail. He tries a second time, and a third time, and then he tries to call Peter, only to get sent to voicemail again.

Maybe it’s not the worst thing. Maybe Peter’s CGM is wrong, because that’s definitely something that can happen. Maybe May is already helping Peter and neither have their phones on them.

He glances at the date. It’s nearing two in the morning on a Wednesday.

May works overnight shifts on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s.

“Shit,” he hisses, and then tries calling May one more time. For as long as Harley has known the Parker’s, he’s known that May keeps her phone on her at work in case of emergencies, so, theoretically, she should be picking up, but again he only gets her voicemail. “Shit.”

Any attempt to talk himself down is pushed away, because yeah, maybe Peter’s CGM is wrong, maybe something is off, maybe Peter is fine—but he’s home alone, the follow app is saying something concerning, and Harley is not going to risk assuming it’s okay when making an assumption like that could lead to him waking up to horrible news that could have been avoided. He will do anything—sell his soul, for all he fucking cares, if that’s what it takes—to make sure Peter wakes up in the morning, too.

He remembers to text his dads before he leaves, and this time he isn’t breaking any laws when he gets behind the wheel and starts driving to Queens.

There’s a key on his keychain, a deep, dark blue and a bit scratched from use. He still isn’t sure why May gave it to him—there was no lead up, no conversation, just a random study session at the table in the Parker’s kitchen where May walked by, dropped it on his book, and told him that he was always welcome in their home—but he hasn’t had to knock before entering their apartment for months. This time is no different, the key familiar in his hand as he twists it in the lock and hurries inside.

It’s quiet.

Peter’s door is already ajar when Harley shoulders his way through it, eyes taking a moment to adjust to the darkness before he’s able to make out Peter’s sleeping form on his bed. For a moment he pauses, his brain freezing as he tracks the movement of Peter’s chest—relieved beyond belief to find the steady rise, and fall, and rise, and fall. Then he moves forward, reaching out to grab the glucometer kit that Peter keeps on his desk and gently sitting on the edge of Peter’s bed.

Now that he’s closer (and with the help of the bi flag nightlight that Peter has plugged in by his bed), Harley can see the way that Peter’s brow is furrowed in discomfort, can tell that he’s curled into himself in the way he usually does when his blood sugar is high, making his stomach feel sensitive. It confirms that his CGM is high, but how high it is remains up in the air.

Although he hates to do it, he reaches out with the hand not clutching the kit and shakes Peter’s shoulder, keeping his voice pitched low enough to not be startling yet loud enough to be heard. “Pete,” he says, and is surprised to find Peter’s eyes blink open groggily right away. He turns his head, looks up at Harley with a sleepy confusion that’s unfairly adorable. Harley offers him a small smile. “Hey, I’m gonna check your blood sugar, okay? Your CGM says that it’s high.”

“What’re…?” Peter’s nose scrunches up, clearly trying to piece together where Harley came from, which is fair. Ultimately, though, he seems to decide it’s not worth the effort to figure out, instead just murmuring out a soft, “’Kay,” and holding a hand out towards Harley with an airy sigh.

Harley is well aware of Peter’s trust in him, but every time he sees proof of it, Harley can’t help but to feel the significance of it like a fire in his chest. Peter closes his eyes and rests his head on his pillow without an ounce of concern or uncertainty, and Harley thinks the amount of love he feels is literally going to burn him from the inside out, flickering flames within his ribcage that are licking their way between his bones and lighting him up from within.

It's entirely too dramatic for a stupid teenager, but he doesn’t really care about being dramatic, to be honest. He cares about Peter, and he cares about not fucking up, and that’s kind of it right now.

“Sorry,” Harley mumbles as he does the finger poking, but Peter hums at him uncaringly and keeps his hand lax, allowing Harley to maneuver it. Soon enough, he’s got the drop of blood on the testing strip and the glucometer is counting down. It reads 418, which—well, that isn’t good, but it’s also not as bad as Harley’s brain was trying to insist on his way over. With the double arrows up, though, it’s still worrying. Throwing the strip away and setting the kit back on Peter’s desk, Harley asks, “Where’s your pump?”

The little snuffle noise that Peter makes is clearly disgruntled, but he sleepily searches his blankets until he finds his insulin pump and then turns over so that he’s facing Harley, eyes half-lidded as he hands it over with a quiet huff. “Is it bad?” he asks, frowning. Then, softly, he admits, “Feels kinda bad.”

Harley thinks he’d rather die than tell Peter a lie, but he keeps it light as he says, “A bit over 400 and rising, so it’s not great, but could be worse. Just wanna try and figure out why it’s shooting up like this.”

“Hm.” Peter’s frown deepens, and he throws his blanket off with an annoyed huff, then tugs up the hem of his shirt to squint down at the pump site on his stomach. Even if there was no light in the room, Harley would be able to realize the problem thanks to the unfortunate and easily recognizable smell of insulin, a unique scent that’s impossible to describe as anything other than medical and strong.

There are a lot of perks to having an insulin pump, and the past few weeks have been great, but one of the risks is having the pump site leak—for one reason or another, the site has been compromised, and Peter hasn’t been getting all, or possibly any, of the insulin that his pump was trying to give him.

Makes sense, then, why his levels jumped so quickly. He probably rolled over in his sleep and yanked on the tubing or something. It’s one of the cons of using a pump, and it’s something that they’ve all known to be a possibility since Peter got his pump, but it’s the first time it’s happened. It’s the first significant bump in the road since he was put on his pump, and while Harley is somewhat relieved to know it’s something fixable, he can also see the way that Peter’s face falls a bit as he sees his pump site damp with the insulin.

It’s quiet as Peter lets out a heavy breath and pushes himself into a sitting position. There’s a discontent twist to his features that makes Harley feel oddly guilty—not because any of this is his fault, but because he can’t fix the problem somehow, because there’s not much of anything that he can do other than stay nearby and offer a supportive smile as Peter goes through the motions of replacing his pump site with a new infusion set, looking like he’s bit into something sour the entire time. Harley has been around for plenty of Peter’s bad moods, but he also knows that Peter still works his ass off to keep the depths of his anger to himself, and this stewing silence feels closer to the reality hidden deep below.

He doesn’t leave, even when ten minutes pass and Peter hasn’t glanced at him. He sits and he waits, watches quietly until Peter leans back against his pillows with a huff, and then Peter looks over, meets Harley’s eyes with a soft fury burning in his eyes. It eases into a gentle, background frustration, and then that melts into a tilted head look of confusion. “You didn’t stay the night,” he states slowly.

“Um.” Harley shrugs clunkily, a little embarrassed. “No. I drove over.”

Peter looks at his alarm clock, brows shooting up as he sees the time—now nearing three in the morning, about an hour since the follow app alerted Harley into consciousness and fear—and when he looks back at Harley, it’s with some kind of disbelief. Not the angry kind, just... blatantly unsure. “Why?”

There are a few different answers that Harley could give, and all of them are honest, but his feelings for Peter feel too big to keep ignoring, and he’s been telling himself that he needs to bring it up soon. Not necessarily with any expectations—like, yeah, he hopes it goes both ways, of course, but—but he feels like he’s lying by not telling Peter, and even if Peter doesn’t feel the same, he thinks he needs to say it.

So he considers it, and he weighs the words in his mind, and he decides to throw caution to the wind by putting the full truth out there.

“I have a ridiculous and embarrassingly huge crush on you,” he says. Peter sucks in a sharp breath, his eyes going wide, but Harley pushes forward, feeling oddly calm despite the usual nerves that buzz beneath his skin when he’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Peter like this. “I mean, that’s not—that isn’t the reason I drove over, to be clear. Dexcom said your blood sugar was high with two arrows up and I called May, and she didn’t answer, and then you didn’t answer, and then I was convinced that if I didn’t come over to make sure you were okay, I was going to wake up in the morning to hear that you were in the hospital or worse, so I came over. But part of it is that, like—like, you’re my person, and I really like you, and the idea of you not being okay is one of the scariest things in the world, and—and... yeah. So…"

Peter blinks at him slowly, clearly caught off guard. Then he lurches a bit abruptly and says, “I’m gonna throw up,” before rushing, very suddenly, out to the hall and into the bathroom. Harley feels frozen for exactly two seconds, but then he’s following after him, mentally cursing himself—Peter's blood sugar being high isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but Harley should know better than to move past it so quickly, even when Peter appears to be fine. It’s not his fault, but he kind of feels like an idiot anyways.

He ends up sitting on the bathroom floor next to Peter, running a comforting hand up and down Peter’s back as he spits bile into the toilet bowl. It’s as pleasant as a person throwing up can be, which isn’t pleasant at all, but Harley doesn’t mind, just flicks the bathroom fan on when it seems necessary and slips to the kitchen to grab a glass of water once Peter’s body has nothing left to expel. Peter takes the glass with gratitude, sips at it with a scowl for a few minutes, and then stands on wobbly legs to brush his teeth and rinse his mouth out with mouthwash. Only then does he make his way back to his room, and Harley follows after him, as he’s always happy to do, wondering if he should bring up what he said before.

Before he makes up his mind, Peter speaks up, voice a bit rougher than it had been before as he sheepishly glances at Harley and then quickly looks away. “That was bad timing,” he says.

“You had no control over that,” Harley tells him.

Peter huffs a half-laugh and shakes his head incredulously, and when he looks at Harley this time, he doesn’t look away, instead just peering at Harley with clear awe and disbelief. “You’re unreal,” he states, and the way he says it makes it sound like it’s something he’s thought before. Harley isn’t sure what to make of it—what Peter means by it—but the way Peter’s mouth twitches up at the end, forming a miniature smile that’s as beautiful in the dim illumination coming from the nightlight as it is under the light of the sun, though it feels oddly more intimate now with their proximity and the soft warmth hanging in the air. Harley thinks he might pass out in the face of it.

“I’m pretty sure I’m real,” he says, words coming out a bit slow, not entirely sure what he’s expected to say or what to do next. Peter’s smile grows, toothy and amused.

“I feel like most people would be reasonably offended if they confessed their feelings and the person they were confessing to barfed right after,” Peter tells him, and Harley just shrugs, because he doesn’t really care what most people would do or feel, to be completely honest. The following laugh is a delighted sound, and the whole world shifts out of place and then falls right back into it the second that Peter tells him, "I like you, too, by the way. And I'm sorry for throwing up when you told me."

Harley takes a second to let the words process, and then he's ducking his head down with a grin pulling at the ends of his mouth. For a moment he feels giddy like a little kid, but just as fast as a rush of adrenaline floods him, it fades with the late hour. As if perfectly timed, Peter lets out a yawn, then looks away sheepishly, a slight blush climbing up his neck and reddening his cheeks.

"Sorry," he says again. "This is, um, not—not really romantic, huh?" His laugh is gentle yet self depricating. Harley is so gone for him, it's embarrassing.

"It's perfect," Harley says, even though it definitely isn't what he had imagined for when he inevitable confessed his feelings, but it's him and it's Peter and that makes it perfect. "It's also almost four in the morning. And—" Harley checks his phone, relieved to see that Peter's blood sugar is now at a steady decline. It still reads as high, but it's coming back down. Harley grins, swivels his phone to show Peter, then says, "I'd say it's safe for you to go back to sleep."

Peter yawns again mid-nod, shuffling back on his bed to lay down. Harley freezes, suddenly unsure, looking between Peter and the door. Peter either doesn't notice this or chooses not to acknowledge it, instead yanking back his duvet and then looking at Harley with a frown. "You gonna sleep standing up?"

Harley shuffles his feet. "Sorry, just—am I—should I leave? I can drive home—"

Peter only looks confused. "You're already here."

"Y-Yeah, but—"

"You've slept over so many times that you practically live here," Peter points out. "May gave you a key, Harley. And it's not the first time you've shown up in the middle of the night and stayed over."

All of that is true, and Harley usually wouldn't question if staying was okay, but he finds himself faltering nonetheless. It takes him a moment to figure out what the holdup is, and then another to untangle his tongue and fight back the rising heat in his face. He's not sure how best to phrase it but he still tries, words coming out jumbled as he asks, "Isn't it—isn't it different, though?"

Peter blinks at him slowly, not following. "Isn't what different?"

Harley isn't sure if the two of them are just flagging from the late hour or if he's legitimately overthinking this, but he only hesistates a moment before rushing out, "I told you I like you and you said you like me and I feel like that changes things."

Understanding crashes over Peter's features and he stammers out a few nonsensicle half-words for a moment before cutting himself off, pressing his lips together with a furrow to his brows, and then a sharp shake of his head. "No," he says decisively. "It doesn't. I mean, other than, like—like, I want to—I'd like to be more than friends, obviously, to be boyfriends, or something, if you'd want that. So, the label, I guess, and like, I want to kiss you and stuff. When I haven't thrown up twenty minutes ago, I mean. So, yeah, some things are gonna change if we want them to, but you—"

Peter stops, sucks in a sharp breath. Determination burns in his eyes.

"You're my person," Peter states, like it's simple and easy. "You've been my person since we became friends. Some things might change, but you're still you and I'm still me and I want you here if you want to be here. Do you want to be here?"

Emotion clogs up Harley's throat to the point that he fears he might actually start crying. "I always want to be here," he admits thickly.

"I always want you to be here," Peter parrots. "Now are you gonna lay down or not?"

Harley opens and closes his mouth hopelessly for a moment, finds that words don't want to cooperate with him, and jerkily nods before making his way forward. It takes a few quite moments and some shuffling, but it doesn't take long before they've settled into their usual spots. And something about that makes the lingering anxiety in Harley's chest settle, because this is still the normal. And that makes him realize what's got him so nervous in the first place—losing that sense of comfort and normalcy in the face of change, even if that change is inherently good.

It sounds like something to bring up with his therapist next week. He's sure Sarah will have a lot to say, and he's not so sure he wants to hear it, but oh well.

"Can I move closer?" Peter whispers in the soft glow of his bi pride nightlight, features soft and eyes wide. He doesn't look ill the way he did when Harley first got here—his levels are coming back to where they should be.

Harley turns onto his side, faces Peter fully. "Are you sure?"

When Peter nods, Harley shifts so that Peter can scoot over some, until he's closer to the center of the mattress is able to lean his head forward, resting his forehead against Harley's shoulder. He lets out a sigh, slow and shaky.

"Are you okay?" Harley murmurs.

Peter nods against Harley's shoulder. "You're a good distraction," he murmurs back. "But I'm not exactly happy about my pump site leaking like that."

Harley hums. "We knew it would happen at some point."

"Yeah, but it still sucks," Peter says. "Like, it's awesome, having my pump and my CGM. It helps a lot, and it makes the mental toll a lot easier to deal with, but, like… I'm still diabetic, you know? And I know that's not gonna change, but it still—it was nice, letting myself think that I wasn't gonna have days like this anymore." Harley isn't sure what to do to that, instead rests his cheek against the crown of Peter's head, listening as Peter chuckles. "It's not all bad, though," he muses. "Not if it means you show up. My own knight in shining armor."

The snort Harley lets out is far too loud to match the softness of the room. "I was fighting off a panic attack the whole drive here," he says.

Peter pulls back to meet Harley's eyes. "You're still my hero."

They're nose to nose. Peter's breath is minty fresh and Harley is forgetting his nervousness from before, blinking owlishly before asking, "Can I kiss you?"

Peter's inhale is sharp. "I threw up less than half an hour ago."

"You brushed your teeth," Harley counters quickly. "And you used mouthwash. I watched you do it. It was very thorough." Then, just as quickly, he backtracks with, "But it's obviously fine if you don't want to. I mean, like—like I know you said you do, but that doesn't mean I expect you to, or—like, it's not—"

Peter kisses his cheek, which does an excellent job of shutting Harley's gay ass up, leaving him silent and wide eyed. "Tomorrow," Peter tells him. Then he grimaces and corrects himself with, "Today, I guess, but not until after we sleep."

"Okay," Harley whispers. Neither of them closes their eyes just yet, but they settle into a comfortable silence for a few minutes until Harley clears his throat and softly asks, "Did you mean it about wanting to be boyfriends? 'Cause I—I'd really like that."

The smile that pulls at the ends of Peter's mouth is brighter than the sun itself. He nods and curls forward, rests against Harley's shoulder again, grips onto Harley's shirt and sighs once more, only this sigh is one of content as he melts beneath the duvet. "Boyfriends," he ghosts against Harley's collarbone, sounding satisfied.

Harley grins, then bites back a yawn and peers over at Peter's alarm clock. It's officially rounding on four in the morning and the exhaustion is hitting him as the past two hours really catch up with him. He wants to check on Peter's blood sugar again, flickers his gaze towards where his phone sits next to Peter's on the desk, but then looks down at Peter in time to see his features smoothen out with sleep. Reaching for the desk would jostle their position enough to potentially disturb the peaceful half-snores that puff out from Peter's mouth. Although it's difficult, Harley just reminds himself that he's got his phone set up to ring out if Peter's level become concerning again—that's what woke him up in the first place. If something changes, the alarm will wake him up again, and he can do whatever he has to.

A voice that sounds a hell of a lot like Sarah echoes in his head, telling him that he can't wait for bad things, he can only prepare for the possibility of them happening. If he waits for them, he sets himself up for failure and takes away his ability to enjoy what's in front of him, and he'd very much like to enjoy this.

His boyfriend (boyfriend!!!) breathing out airy sleep-snuffles. The warmth where Peter's lips had been pressed to his cheek. The comfort of curling up with him.

If something goes wrong, the alarm will wake me up, he thinks.

If the alarm wakes me up, I will know how to handle it, he tells himself—quickly lists out where all the low supplies in the apartment are stored and reminds himself of the oh shit shots stashed in every room in case Peter's blood sugar tanks, takes mental note of where the syringes are if his levels spike and he needs a manual injection to bring it down. He's plenty prepared, even if it still scares him.

It's okay to relax now. It's okay to sleep.

With a content hum and his nose buried in Peter's hair, he does.