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“What are you still doing up?” Harley asked accusingly, padding into the living room.
Peter looked up from where he was curled up in their chair. He glanced at the time on his phone– he really hadn’t noticed how late it had gotten, though Harley knew Peter well enough to not believe him on that.
He closed out of the social media app he’d been mindlessly scrolling through. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Harley scowled. “It’s not about me.” He grabbed Peter’s wrists, gently but firmly pulling out of the chair.
“Like you haven’t been going to bed later than me every night.”
Peter wasn’t even technically sure if it was true. Harley tended to stay out of his room later than Peter, but it wasn’t like Peter was falling asleep as soon as he got to bed. Regardless, he let himself be pulled along towards his room. Harley’s hands always felt nice on his, warm and slightly calloused but still gentle.
“Okay, fine,” Harley said. “From now on, I’ll go to bed when you go to bed.”
That’s how it started.
At that point, they’d only known each other for a handful of months, two strangers with teary eyes in a bathroom at a funeral. When Harley went back to Tennessee after said funeral, Peter didn’t think he’d ever see the other boy again. But then Peter was looking for a roommate, and Pepper had suggested just staying at Stark Tower– but Peter couldn’t do that, couldn’t be remind of that name every day of his life, and Harley understood, and Harley was looking for an apartment, too, so they’d signed the lease before spending more than a few days together.
Peter couldn’t say when he and Harley became friends– he was pretty sure they shot straight past the friend zone to land in some far away cornfield– but they clicked as roommates instantly. Peter didn’t have many friends and Harley didn’t either, and they both stayed up way too late as if the ghosts in their minds had a curfew. Peter understood Harley– he understood Harley’s exoskeleton of wild smiles and sarcastic remarks, he understood the soft sadness that was hiding underneath. And Harley understood him, even when Ned and MJ didn’t.
Which is how they ended up being something to the left of friendship, and how they ended up dragging each other to bed when it got too late. It was always easier for Peter to get up and go to bed with Harley pulling him along, and Peter couldn’t deny that he got a little bit of satisfaction by dragging Harley to bed sometimes.
But all of Harley’s best efforts to actually get Peter into bed didn’t mean he was sleeping. If he wasn’t on the verge of exhaustion– as bad as that sounded– then every dark corner and faraway voice only served to remind him of everything that had happened to him– going to space, getting Snapped, Tony dying, Mysterio.
If he fell asleep quickly, then he woke up in the middle of the night. Sometimes gasping, sometimes screaming.
“You’re having nightmares, aren’t you?”
It was dark outside, but not late enough that the frat house across the street had started blasting party music yet. Harley was standing beside the stove, eating a bowl of ramen, staring as intentionally non-judgmentally as possible. Peter refused to look up from his physics homework.
“I get them too, sometimes,” Harley continued, ignoring the fact that Peter hadn’t answered. “Does it help if someone sleeps with you?”
Peter snorted. MJ had been his last attempt at trying to date someone, and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to trying again. “I haven’t exactly gotten the chance to test that out.”
He wasn’t sure if he’d want to sleep with someone, anyway. Wouldn’t it be weird having someone invade his bed space like that?
“The offer still stands.”
Peter did a double-take, looking up to meet Harley’s eyes. “Oh,” Peter said intelligently. “You meant…” he trailed off. He could imagine Harley in his bed, invading his space, all too easily. “You don’t have to do that.”
Harley shrugged. “‘I go to bed when you go to bed’ applies to nightmares, Pete. And, like I said, it helps me too.”
“Okay then,” Peter said. “I guess we’ll try that.”
Leading up to the impending bedtime routine where Harley would sleep in his bed, Peter felt himself getting nervous. A different kind of nervousness than his Peter Tingle, which sparked fire in his stomach and made his hair stand on end– this was an excited kind of nervous. Who cared if it didn’t help the nightmares go away? Peter knew it’d be nice just not being alone trying to fight off whatever his brain decided to draw up in the darkness.
Harley, on the other hand, didn’t seem nervous at all. As soon as he got into bed with Peter– wearing the bare amount of clothing that was required when you were sleeping with a platonic friend– he wrapped one of his arms around Peter’s chest, anchoring him in place.
For a minute, it was awkward. Peter’s senses latched onto everything they could– the frat house across the street was at it again, and the person below them was throwing up, and the air conditioner was humming again, and the sheets suddenly felt scratchy on his skin, and he was sharply reminded of how it felt to have his skin scratched away, turning into dust, even as–
“Come here often?” Harley asked. His voice was drowsy, meaning his accent was more pronounced than ever.
“I hope you don’t.”
“Ah, Peter, I’m crushed. Next you’re going to tell me that you ate the last bagel.”
“Well, you’ll find out tomorrow morning, won’t you?”
And just like that, Peter could feel them sliding from awkwardness straight to somewhere to the left of friendship again. Harley stilled, his arm still thrown over Peter’s chest, and Peter coild feel his own eyelids getting heavier. He could still hear the frat party across the street, but somehow, the steady rhythm of Harley’s heartbeat drowned it out.
But basking in the glow of a peaceful morning only lasted so long, as Peter learned it was a little hard to get out of Harley’s grasp.
“You’re like a seatbelt,” Peter muttered. “A seatbelt with a Southern accent.”
Peter didn’t realize he needed to know what Harley’s laugh felt like on the back of his neck.
After that, they always slept together. It wasn’t weird, like Peter thought. It was nice. It made the idea of sleeping a lot more appealing. He got nightmares a lot less frequently.
And they talked more when they were laying in bed together. Sometimes about whatever random philosophical debate Harley was thinking about, sometimes about the classes they were taking, sometimes about Tony.
“He invited me to come to New York for the summer one time,” Harley said. They were in Harley’s room this time, mostly because Harley’s room was just a few feet further away from that god-awful frat house. “I said no. I don’t really remember why.”
“You probably would’ve blown up the lab.”
“He could’ve afforded to fix it. Small price to pay for a better potato gun.”
Silence settled over them.
“I still think about him all the time,” Peter admitted finally. It was always easier to admit things here, in the dark, with Harley. “If he’d be proud of me.”
He was still Spiderman– he still had the vivid costume and punchy one-liners and he still swung around New York when he could, saving the day and getting paid in churros from little old ladies. But being Spiderman wasn’t the same after everything that happened with Mysterio.
“He would,” Harley said softly. His arm tightened around Peter’s stomach, a reassuring squeeze. “He told me about you, once. I didn’t know it at the time, but it makes sense now.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were one of the smartest kids he’d ever met. That if we ever worked together, we’d either explode a building or do something great.”
Something warm spiked in Peter’s stomach, but it was drowned out in guilt– he didn’t have anything to give Harley. Thankfully, Harley didn’t press.
“Do you ever think he planned it?” Harley’s voice was unusually small, almost inaudible over the hum of the air conditioner.
“Planned what?”
“Us meeting.”
Peter wanted to believe it. They wouldn’t’ve met if they both hadn’t been trying to escape the cloying pity of the funeral by hiding in the bathroom. Well, that wasn’t exactly true, Peter thought, trying to force back the tears– they might’ve still met if Tony was alive.
Harley’s insistence on staying up until Peter got back from patrol was nice, especially on days like this, when Peter got hit with a stray bullet and he needed someone to bandage him up. To Harley’s credit, when Peter came limping through the front door, he made it seem like there was nothing he wanted to do more than stay up with Peter a little while longer.
“That guy from physics asked me out,” Peter said, as Harley applied the bandage.
Harley’s hands stilled. Peter could feel warmth radiating from them, sending little currents of electricity under his skin. “What did you say?”
He resumed what he was doing, and it was enough to make Peter question if the hesitation had happened at all. Maybe he was reading too much into things. Maybe Harley thought they were just friends, brothers. Maybe they weren’t far enough left for that little gesture to be jealousy.
Was it bad that Peter wanted Harley to be jealous, just a little? Would it ruin things?
“I said no. I didn’t– I couldn’t…” He trailed off. Harley would understand, he always did.
“But if you did…” Harley’s tone felt forcibly light, and something other pain bloomed in Peter’s stomach. “Who would it be?”
Peter was glad Harley couldn’t see his smile or his blush. “Someone who understands.”
When Peter imagined him and Harley getting together, it was usually with big dramatic confessions and frantic, searing kisses after life-or-death situations. In hindsight, he wasn't sure why he'd thought of it like that; he and Harley had always done things small and private and soft.
"Do you want to go to dinner sometime? With me?" Harley asked, lingering awkwardly in Peter's bedroom doorway, hands stuffed into the pockets of his ripped jeans.
"Like a date?"
"Only if you say yes," Harley replied, with a self-deprecating little smile.
Peter said yes. Of course he did.
Their first date went well, really well, and Peter was still smiling when Harley got up to drag them both to bed.
“Does this count as sleeping together on the first date?” Harley asked, stripping down to his boxers and climbing into Peter’s bed, his chest against Peter’s back.
“You can always go back to your own bed if you’re that worried about it.”
Harley, his ever-present seatbelt, pulled Peter closer to him, pressing an exaggerated kiss on Peter’s shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re trying to get rid of me. Don’t tell me you have another Southern guy hiding in your closet right now.”
“Yeah, but he’s not as comfortable as you are.”
“Good.”
Harley sat up, leaning over just enough to press a kiss to Peter’s forehead, before settling back down.
Peter quickly learned that being Harley’s boyfriend wasn’t really that much different from being his pseudo-dad’s other pseudo-kid or being his roommate or being his friend. The forehead kisses were new, though. Harley did it every time they were about to fall asleep.
He kissed Peter in plenty of other ways, too– light kisses on Peter’s knuckles when they were sitting on their tiny couch in their tiny apartment together, exaggerated “healing” kisses when Peter came back from patrol bruised, pointed kisses on Peter’s cheek whenever Harley saw that guy who asked Peter out once. They kissed on the lips, too– sometimes dry and quick, sometimes desperate and clinging, always comforting in a way that only Harley could be.
But the forehead kisses were Peter’s favorite, somehow. He could sleep anywhere, now, if Harley was there to kiss his forehead first. He hadn’t tested this theory, not technically, but it felt true anyway.
The nightmares were getting better, the loss didn’t sting as badly. But Harley’s arm around his waist was as warm as ever, his breath coming out in steady, light puffs that ghosted across the back of Peter’s neck. If there was one thing that could chase away the ghost that haunted Peter’s nights, it was this.
He wasn’t sure how to thank Harley for all of it. He hoped Harley understood anyway.