Chapter Text
They find a new normal.
The two of them have been through a lifetime’s worth of drama, trauma, and everything in between. Neither of them ever expected this for themselves, and neither did the authors of their lives who were just kids when they put the words to the screen, just like the kids that Peter and Harley still feel like, despite everything they’ve gone through.
Moments get immortalized in ways you’ll never appreciate until you’re looking back. Memories will blur, but they’ll stick to you in the ways that shape you. It’s the choices you make, the bonds you form, the things you fight for that meld together to create the person you are today.
There will be times that will always be kept frozen in rose tinted glass and others that will always be tainted by the hurt that rots away at the edges of the truth.
But you have to keep moving forward, or the world will move on without you.
Sometimes it feels impossible to move past what still clings to you, trying to keep you trapped in a version of yourself you’ve grown out of, a butterfly that can no longer fit in its cocoon. Sometimes you want to stay, even when you know it’s not what’s good for you.
And that’s when the people you love and who love you even more come to pull you out and to show you why your future’s worth more than living in your past.
Because sometimes you need to be saved and that’s okay, even if it’s from yourself.
When Harley and Peter met, they would’ve never imagined the love that would grow between them.
When they had met, they had been to people who had lost everything barely coping.
And somehow, along the way, they healed together.
They didn’t fix each other. They didn’t have the magic words to spark an epiphany. Their love wasn’t what filled the holes that were left from their losses or mend what tore them apart.
But their love gave them hope. And their love made them realize that they were worthy of healing. That they were capable and they were allowed to.
Their love gave them strength. There were times where they didn’t feel strong at all, but they held each other up when they didn’t have the strength to hold themselves together. And when they couldn’t, they fell apart together.
But to say that they were a harmonious duo, always in tune with each other, would be disingenuous.
Because they also brought the worst out in each other. And they broke each other a little more.
But when they were able to learn how to forgive and learn, they came out even stronger than before.
What you don’t realize when you’re going through the worst of your life is that one day you’ll look back and realize that you’re okay. And you don’t know how you could ever forget how it felt, but you do. Because you’re happy. You’re actually, really happy. You used to be happy once. And then you lost it. And suddenly you’ve found it again and it’s like you never lost it in the first place.
Sometimes they’re afraid to lose it again. They’ve lost it before.
But it’s worth it. To love, to live, to find happiness and contentment, it’s worth it knowing that you have it now.
Because there’s no way to know what comes ahead. There’s no knowing if your annoying roommate is actually a web slinging vigilante or if the once party-holic nuisance you fell in love with gets kidnapped or you’re being tossed around from Rose Hill to Boston and suddenly finding a home in a tiny two bedroom apartment in New York with your brother and his not-boyfriend-boyfriend.
And it’s scary. It’s scary not knowing what the future brings.
But what you have to remember is that it can also bring so much good.
It’s brought you good before.
So you can’t lose faith in the future. You can’t be paralyzed between past and present waiting for the worst.
The worst may come.
So make the best with what you have now and remember that you don’t have to face the future alone.
.-~*~-.
Harley and Peter sit on the couch, Abby asleep and sprawled across their laps, the screen paused at the credits of the movie they’d just watched.
Peter runs his fingers through her hair unthinkingly, his head leaning on Harley’s shoulder.
“Guess what?” Harley says, voice low to not wake Abby.
“Hm?” Peter asks, turning his head to look up at him.
“We met today.” Harley pauses. “Or. Well. Today a year ago.”
Peter lets out a mirthful huff of disbelief. “God. Can you believe it? It’s been a year. Somehow it feels both longer and shorter than that.”
“No,” Harley says. “Definitely longer. This last year could’ve spanned six books.”
Peter snorts. He gnaws at his lip as he thinks. “Did you ever think we’d be here? When we met?”
“Fuck no,” Harley says. Peter stifles a startled laugh. “I’m pretty sure I had planned to be out of New York and somewhere with Abby, far, far away from you.”
Peter hums thoughtfully. “Yeah. I mean, I did get one thing I wanted.” Peter grins cheekily. “An apartment that doesn’t reek of weed and shitty, shitty booze.”
“How do you know they were shitty?” Harley says. “You never drank any.”
“Oh, I got a taste with your vodka watermelon monstrosity—”
“Will you ever let that down?”
“No! I won’t! Because you put vodka in a watermelon and I ate it because why were there be vodka in my watermelon?!”
Harley cuts him off with a kiss and he melts against his lips. Harley can’t help his growing smile.
“I promise I won’t put any vodka in any watermelons anymore.”
Peter shakes his head with a chuckle, knocking it against Harley’s shoulder. “We’ve been through a lot, haven’t we?”
Harley’s smile falls as the mood sombers. “Yeah. We have.”
“But we got through it, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” Harley says, pressing a kiss to Peter’s temple. “We did.”
“What do we do now?” Peter asks, voice small.
“We live. Whatever that means, whatever that is we want to do. We just… live and keep living.”
“I don’t think I’ve done that in a long time,” Peter admits.
Harley feels his breath catch in his throat. “Yeah. Me neither.”
“I guess we’ll figure it out together,” Peter says, lips tilting up.
“We’ve figured it out this far, right?”
“You’re right,” Peter says. “And we’ll keep figuring it out until there’s nothing left to figure out.”
“Together?”
“Yeah,” Peter says, looking down at Abby with a smile, and then back at Harley. “Together.”
.-~*~-.
Time doesn’t pause for anyone even though you wish it did. But the world keeps moving and we can’t stop moving on. Don’t think of it as forgive and forget. Think of it as forgive and learn. Learn from your mistakes. Learn from who you loved. Someday it’s going to be your turn to teach someone else how to feel, how to cope, and how to get through it all. Let me catch you as you fall. Let yourself hurt. Let yourself heal. It’s real. It’s going to be real for a while.
- An excerpt from a song I, impravidus, wrote when I was fifteen.