Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The worst part wasn’t the confusion. It was the fear.

Peter started reacting to things that weren’t there - flinching away from empty air, tracking invisible movement along the walls, fingers clawing at his own arms like something was crawling just beneath the surface. Sometimes he begged Harley to make it stop. Sometimes he accused him of causing it.

“You did this,” Peter said one night, eyes glassy, breath coming too fast. “You brought me back and now I’m-” He broke off, hands shaking violently. “I can feel it. It wants out.”

Harley’s heart stuttered painfully in his chest. “Peter, listen to me. There’s nothing there. You’re okay.”

Peter stared at him, pupils blown so wide the brown nearly disappeared. “Don’t lie to me,” he whispered.

There were restraints after that, though not all the time. It was just when Peter got too agitated, when he hurt himself trying to claw something imaginary out of his skin, when he tried to bolt for the door like flight was still an option. Harley hated them with a quiet, simmering fury that never went anywhere productive. He hated the way Peter sagged against them, exhausted and humiliated. He hated the way the meds made him too foggy to even fight properly.

Most of all, he hated the way Peter stopped asking him for help.

The lucid moments, when they came, were devastating. Harley almost hated when Peter was there more than he wasn’t, because he was just so incredibly sad.

Peter would blink like he was waking from a nightmare and suddenly he was there - really there - eyes focused, voice carefully even. He’d take one look at Harley and his face would crumple with understanding.

“Oh,” he said once, hoarse. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Harley swallowed hard. “You’re… having a rough stretch.”

Peter huffed a weak laugh. “That’s one way to put it.” He shifted, wincing at the ache in his joints. “How long was I gone?”

Harley didn’t answer right away.

Peter’s gaze sharpened. “Harley.”

“A few days,” Harley admitted.

Peter closed his eyes. When he opened them again, there was grief there, raw and naked. Peter stared at him, something raw and desperate flickering in his eyes.

“You shouldn’t come near me,” Peter said.

Harley didn’t hesitate. “I’ll always come as close as I’m allowed.”

Peter laughed weakly. “You hate it. You hate being here.”

“I’d hate you dying alone more,” Harley said.

That did it. Peter’s face crumpled. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he sobbed. “I don’t want to be a monster.”

Harley’s voice broke despite himself. “You’re not.”

“I am,” Peter whispered. “I can feel it. My body’s wrong.” 

Peter didn’t even seem fully conscious anymore. He dozed off again, just murmuring whatever surfaced first in his damaged, exhausted brain.

—

Harley learned, somewhere in the middle of it all, that loving someone to the end meant learning how to stand still while everything in you wanted to run.

Harley was older now - not old in any way that mattered to the world, but old enough to have grieved. Old enough to have watched enough things end that he knew the shape of it when it started to curve inward, when hope stopped being a horizon and started being a wall you kept walking into.

Peter reached that place before anyone else did.

It wasn’t a speech or a breakdown or some cinematic moment of clarity - not tears or screaming or anything like his episodes. It was quiet, almost gentle, the way he arrived there. There was just this awful, evil, tired understanding that settled behind his eyes during one of his clearer stretches, and Harley saw it before Peter ever said it out loud.

He saw it in the way Peter watched him through the glass, gaze steady, and in the way his questions shifted from what comes next to how long do I have like this. In the way he stopped asking about the next round of experimental drugs and started asking about people.

“Did May ever finish that sweater?” Peter asked one night, voice thin but focused.

Harley blinked, caught off guard. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s ugly as hell.”

Peter smiled faintly. “She’ll be mad you said that.”

“She’ll never hear me say it,” Harley replied, smiling back even as his chest tightened.

Peter hummed, satisfied. He rested his head against the glass, eyes half-lidded. “Good.”

There was a long, long stretch of silence.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to make it out of this,” Peter murmured.

Harley didn’t answer right away. 

“...What makes you say that?” he asked instead.

Peter shrugged weakly. “I can feel it,” he said. “My body’s already letting go. My brain’s just… lagging behind.”

Harley pressed his palm to the glass. “That doesn’t mean it’s over.”

Peter smiled, small and sad. “That’s what everyone keeps saying.” He looked at Harley then, really looked at him. “You don’t have to.”

That was the thing about it. Harley didn’t have to pretend.

Tony did. May did. Cho did, in her careful clinical way, constantly recalibrating protocols and dosages like the right combination of effort could pull Peter back from the edge. They were all still fighting the problem, still treating Peter like something that could be solved if they were clever enough or brave enough or stubborn enough.

Harley wasn’t smarter than them. He just had more distance in a way he’d never thought he’d have.

He wasn’t Peter’s parent. He wasn’t his doctor. He wasn’t responsible for saving him. He was the one person in the room who loved Peter without needing him to survive to justify it, and that made all the difference.

He loved Peter. But he had no power over him.

Peter came to acceptance early, and early enough that it terrified everyone else.

He started asking for things that sounded like endings. Time alone with people. Certain books brought down from upstairs, or music played softly through the speakers instead of the constant hum of monitoring equipment.

Every time Peter settled into something that looked like peace, someone intervened. A new medication. A new protocol. A new idea that Tony had chased down at three in the morning, eyes bright with hope and terror in equal measure.

“Just a little longer,” Tony kept saying. “We’re so close. I can feel it.”

May nodded through tears, fingers clenched around a coffee mug like it was the only thing holding her together. “We can’t give up on him.”

Peter tried to argue at first, because he said he was tired. He said it hurt. He said he didn’t want to spend what awareness he had left nauseous and confused and strapped to machines. 

He didn’t say he wanted to die, but Harley heard it anyway.

Eventually, Peter stopped arguing, and that was the worst sign. The treatments continued anyway, because stopping felt like killing him, and everyone was afraid of what it would mean to let go.

—

Harley found Peter halfway out of bed at four in the morning, squinting suspiciously at the IV line connected to his arm like it had personally offended him.

“What’s this?”

Harley’s stomach dropped hard enough that he felt it physically, but he kept his face smooth this time.

The panic from the school incident still sat under his skin - he’d replayed it over and over afterward - the moment Peter stopped recognizing the room, the terror in his voice when he thought he was trapped. Cho had called it neurological progression in the same detached tone she used for lab reports.

Harley called it horrifying.

Peter tugged weakly at the line again. “Why am I hooked up to stuff?”

Harley moved closer slowly, deliberately casual. “Hydration.”

Peter frowned. “Why?”

“You’ve been throwing up all day, remember?”

A pause. Then Peter’s face shifted slightly with recognition - not real memory exactly, but enough familiarity for his brain to settle around it.

“Oh,” he said.

Harley nodded like that explained everything, while Peter looked down at the IV line another moment before apparently deciding it wasn’t worth fighting anymore. Two seconds later he got distracted by the monitor clipped to his finger instead.

“Huh.”

Harley almost laughed from relief, because at least this time it was calm.

—

Other times, the confusion came wrapped in old memories like his brain was pulling random files from damaged storage. One afternoon Peter was biting his nails over missing a dentist appointment he’d apparently had when he was fourteen.

“They charge you if you cancel late,” he insisted anxiously, pacing the length of the isolation room with his socked feet whispering against the floor.

Harley sat cross-legged on the bed watching him carefully. “Then we’ll call and reschedule.”

Peter stopped pacing. “Really?”

“Sure.”

Peter worried his lower lip between his teeth. “May’s insurance sucks.”

“Mm. Total disaster.” That got a tiny snort out of him, and Harley took the opening immediately. “C’mere.” Peter wandered back over after another second of visible uncertainty. Harley tugged him gently down onto the mattress beside him before the pacing could start up again. “You wanna watch something?”

“What?”

“Dunno. Pick.”

Peter stared blankly at the television mounted into the far wall. Then, abruptly: “Can we watch Star Wars?”

“Again?”

“You said we could finish the trilogy.”

Harley smiled before he could stop himself, tired and wet. Peter had absolutely no memory of watching all three movies already last week. “Yeah, okay.”

Peter settled against his side while Harley queued the movie up, confusion dissolving almost visibly once he had something else to focus on.

Cho had explained it pretty clinically after the third episode; arguing against false memories could increase distress - though confirmation wasn’t ideal either, but emotional reassurance mattered more than factual correction once confusion escalated.

So Harley adapted, because watching panic bloom across Peter’s face every time reality slipped sideways was unbearable. 

One night Peter spent nearly twenty minutes searching frantically through drawers and cabinets because he thought he’d lost his web shooters. Harley found him crouched on the floor beside the storage cabinet breathing too fast. 

“I can’t find them.”

“They’re probably upstairs.”

“No, they’re not.” Peter’s hands shook as he rifled through folded clothes that had no chance whatsoever of containing anything related to his suit. “I had them this morning.”

“Then we’ll look later.”

“What if someone took them?”

“Nobody took them.” Peter looked up sharply at that. Harley corrected immediately before the contradiction could cause problems. “Or if they did, we’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

Peter’s expression stayed tense. Harley crouched beside him carefully.

“Hey. You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you’re exhausted.”

“I’m not.”

“You fell asleep sitting up earlier.”

Peter hesitated.

“…Did I?”

“Yep.”

That uncertainty again. That awful searching look.

Harley touched his shoulder lightly. “C’mon. Bed first. Web shooters later.”

Peter considered it with genuine seriousness, and then he nodded. “Okay.”

Harley helped him up slowly, one hand hovering near his waist automatically in case his balance gave out. Peter leaned into him without seeming to notice he was doing it. When they stood, Peter caught his reflection in the vanity by the open bathroom door, and he turned before Harley could redirect him fast enough.

“…Why do I look like that?”

Harley stopped in the doorway.

Peter looked thin all over now. Hollow-cheeked, with his skin almost gray under the fluorescent lights. The radiation sickness had taken chunks out of him piece by piece despite everything they pumped into his system to slow it down.

“You’re sick,” Harley said softly.

Peter touched his own face carefully like he’d never seen it before. “I look awful.”

“No,” Harley lied automatically.

Peter glanced sideways at him. “You’re a terrible liar.”

That startled a laugh out of Harley before he could help it. “Yeah, maybe.”

Peter kept staring at the mirror another second. Then quietly, he murmured, “I used to be stronger.”

Harley didn’t know what to do with statements like that, because they weren’t confusion, and somehow those moments hurt worse. “...You’re still you,” he said finally.

Peter’s expression did something complicated. Sadness maybe, or disbelief.

Then it vanished almost instantly. 

“Did you eat my protein bar?”

Harley blinked. 

“What?”

“The chocolate one by the bed.”

“I absolutely ate it,” Harley said thickly. “You snooze you lose.”

Peter narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Then, to Harley’s immense relief, the moment passed like that. A terrifying sentence one second, an argument about protein bars the next. The unpredictability exhausted him - not physically. Harley could handle physical exhaustion. He’d practically lived inside this containment level for months already surviving on vending machine coffee and fractured sleep - but the emotional whiplash was brutal.

Every conversation felt unstable now, because if he gave one wrong response and Peter panicked. So Harley learned, never say You’re confused. Never say That didn’t happen. Never force him to confront missing memories directly unless absolutely necessary.

Instead, it was only we’ll handle it tomorrow. Everything’s okay. You’re safe. Come sit down for a second.

I love you.

He didn’t say it, but it stuck there in the back of his throat regardless.

—

Harley didn’t know when everything had changed from lover to friend to caretaker.

Caretaking, he learned, wasn’t a single act.

It wasn’t heroism or sacrifice in the way people liked to imagine it - instead of this beautiful, romanticised thing, it was just repetition. It was a monotonous slog of showing up again and again to do the same small, quiet tasks with no guarantee they would ever matter in the way you hoped. 

It meant bathing Peter when Peter could no longer bathe himself.

The first time it happened, Harley thought he was going to throw up from the terror of it. Peter had been slumped in the medical chair, barely conscious, head lolling against the padding, hands curled weakly in his lap. Cho had looked at Harley with that careful, neutral expression she wore when she was trying not to make something worse by acknowledging it.

“He needs to be cleaned,” she said gently. “I can sedate him and do it myself, but he barely lets me around him as is…”

“I’ll do it,” Harley said immediately.

The words came out before he had time to think about them.

Cho hesitated, then nodded. She didn’t offer further instructions. She didn’t need to. Harley had already learned this kind of care the hard way, long before Peter. Chronic illness had taught him how bodies failed quietly, how dignity eroded in increments so small you didn’t notice until it was already gone. He knew what it meant to help someone without making them feel like they were being reduced.

He just hadn’t expected it to be Peter.

Getting him to the bathroom was an ordeal. Peter was light now - too light - but he was also unsteady, limbs moving with a jerky, half-conscious resistance that made every step precarious. Harley supported most of his weight, arm braced firmly around his waist, murmuring reassurances that felt more like prayers than words.

“It’s okay,” he kept saying. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

Peter didn’t respond. His eyes were open, unfocused, and sliding over something Harley couldn’t see. When Harley eased him onto the bench under the shower, Peter startled, hands flailing weakly until Harley caught them and held them still.

“Hey,” Harley whispered. “It’s me. You’re okay.”

Peter’s breathing slowed, just a fraction.

Harley stripped him carefully, movements slow and deliberate. He kept his eyes focused on the practical, useable details - the way fabric snagged on Peter’s hip, the faint tremor in his hands, the mottled bruises that bloomed too easily on fragile skin. He don't let himself think about how natural this once would have been, how casually they used to peel clothes off each other in laughter and heat and want.

This was different. 

This was love stripped of desire and expectation, laid bare to its most essential form.

Harley turned on the water and adjusted it with his wrist until it was warm but not hot. He helped Peter lean forward as the spray hit his back, one hand steady between his shoulder blades, the other bracing his ribs. Peter sagged under the water immediately, a low, exhausted sound leaving his throat that made Harley’s chest ache.

Sometimes, when Peter was like this - barely there, pliant in Harley’s hands - Harley had to fight the terrible urge to make it easier by pretending it was a kindness to rush, and maybe Peter was right about everything. But letting Peter go, helping him go, made Harley think of it like giving a dog chocolate before the end. One last indulgence. One last soft thing before everything went dark.

The thought horrified him, because Peter wasn’t a pet, and this wasn’t mercy yet.

So Harley took his time.

He washed Peter’s hair slowly, fingers massaging shampoo into his scalp with the same careful patience he used when Peter was sick but still himself. He rinsed it gently, cupping water in his hands to keep it from running into Peter’s eyes. He talked the entire time, a low, steady stream of nonsense and memory and reassurance.

“You remember the first time we did this?” he murmured, even though he didn’t know if Peter could hear him. “In your bathroom upstairs. You got grease all over yourself trying to fix that stupid fan. You complained the whole time.”

Peter made a faint sound that might have been a hum, or maybe it was just water and breath.

Harley chose to believe it was recognition.

Afterward, he wrapped Peter in a towel and held him until the shaking stopped. He dressed him in soft clothes, guided him back to bed, settled him under the star-patterned sheets that had once felt like a joke and now felt like a prayer.

There was no thanks. There was no smile. There was no moment of connection he could cling to as proof that this mattered.

And still, Harley stayed.

—

Everyone else drifted, slowly. Not out of cruelty, but of fear, and despite how angry it made Harley, he got it.

Tony started sending messages instead of visiting, burying himself in labs and calculations and frantic brainstorming sessions that never came close to fixing anything, really. He told himself he was sparing Peter the pain of being seen like this, and he told himself distance was mercy.

May came less and less, because when she did come, she stayed only minutes, tears spilling freely, hands trembling too badly to reach for the glass.

Harley never blamed them. He just didn’t follow.

He stayed even when Peter was feral - when he lashed out, when he snarled and recoiled from touch, when instinct overtook reason and left only fear and agitation behind. Harley learned how to approach him slowly, how to keep his voice low, how to make himself familiar even when Peter didn’t know why he was.

He stayed when Peter didn’t recognize him at all. He stayed when Peter recognized him only as something safe without knowing why. He stayed when Peter was gone for hours at a time, staring at nothing, body alive and mind elsewhere, because Harley had already lost Peter once.

The Blip had taken him without warning, without choice, and without closure, and that grief had hollowed him out and taught him something brutal and essential: you don’t get to choose whether you love someone enough to survive losing them.

This time was different. This time, the loss was slow. This time, Harley had to look it in the eye and choose not to run.

It was harder than not having the choice at all.

Still, he sat with Peter and read aloud even when Peter didn’t respond. He fed him carefully, spoon by spoon, wiping his mouth without comment when food dribbled down his chin. He cleaned him when his body failed him, preserved his dignity when Peter could no longer ask for it himself.

He expected nothing in return.

That, Harley realized, was the point.

Love didn’t always get to be mutual. Sometimes it was a one-way act of witness, and sometimes it was simply refusing to look away when someone else had no strength left to perform for you.

On the rare nights when Peter was calm enough to sleep steadily, uninterrupted and peaceful, Harley sat beside the bed and let himself remember the way Peter used to laugh too loudly, or how he’d cling to Harley when nightmares woke him up.  

Harley cried quietly, then wiped his face and went back to work.

Because caretaking wasn't about catharsis, it was about continuity. It was about being the last person in the room who still knew who Peter was, even when Peter couldn’t prove it himself, and if that was the price of loving him to the end - if that was the burden Harley had to carry alone - then he would carry it.

He had already grieved Peter once.

This time, he would not abandon him before the grief was done.

—

By the time winter settled over the tower in gray light and freezing rain, Peter hadn’t left the room in months.

The mutation instability spread through him like rot beneath floorboards. Exhaustion hollowed him out until standing upright for too long became difficult. His coordination deteriorated, and bruises bloomed dark beneath pale skin from the slightest impacts. Sometimes his hands shook so badly he couldn’t hold utensils properly anymore, and he relied on Harley more and more.

The pain got bad too.

Harley learned that mostly from the sounds Peter made when he thought nobody could hear him - the quiet broken noises muffled into pillows at three in the morning, or the sharp inhales whenever he moved wrong. The awful exhausted silence afterward when even complaining took too much energy.

Eventually they started keeping him medicated most of the time.

Peter hated it. Harley hated it more.

Painkillers blurred the sharp edges off Peter’s thoughts until conversations drifted strangely sideways halfway through them. Sometimes Peter stared blankly at walls for long stretches before blinking back into focus again, and most of the time he forgot what day it was. Once he looked directly at Harley and called him Ned before confusion crumpled painfully across his face afterward.

Harley pretended that hadn’t shattered something inside him.

Most nights he slept in the chair beside Peter’s bed because the first time he tried leaving, Peter had gotten confused enough afterward to nearly rip out his own IV trying to find him.

So Harley stayed.

The medbay slowly transformed around Peter in little pieces - blankets from home. Harley’s clothes kept right by Peter’s. One of May’s sweaters draped over the chair. Takeout containers nobody finished. A broken web-shooter Peter kept insisting needed repairs even though he no longer had the strength to lift it properly.

Hope lingered stubbornly for longer than it probably should have, because this was Peter. Peter survived impossible things. Harley clung to that harder than he clung to sleep.

Then one evening Peter forgot who Tony was for almost thirty full seconds because he hadn’t been down in three days, and the silence afterward nearly killed everyone in the room.

Peter had looked up from the bed confused and frightened and asked quietly, “Who are you?”

Tony froze.

Harley felt physically nauseous watching it happen.

Then Peter blinked hard and recognition crashed back into place all at once. “Oh my god,” he whispered immediately. “Mr. Stark, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

Tony recovered faster than anyone else. “Hey,” he said quickly, calm in that terrifyingly even way he got. “No harm done, kid.”

Peter looked horrified anyway.

That night Harley heard May crying quietly as the elevator doors closed behind her. He didn’t know what to say to her anymore. He barely knew what to say to Peter.

Peter drifted in and out constantly now. Some days better. Some days terrifyingly worse. The medication softened him around the edges until Harley sometimes caught flashes of the Peter he remembered before everything got complicated by grief and age and loss.

Other times Peter looked almost feral with pain.

Those moments scared Harley most.

Peter would lash out blindly when confused enough - not intentionally, and never cruel. He was just frightened and hurting and trapped inside a body rapidly betraying him. Once he snapped at May hard enough to make her flinch backward before immediately bursting into tears afterward because he thought he’d hurt her.

Harley held him through that too.

Peter cried against his chest while apologizing over and over again in a voice gone ragged with exhaustion. Harley kissed the top of his head and told him it was okay until his own throat hurt.

Nothing was okay anymore.

—

There was an aching moment of clarity that came three weeks later, and Harley almost missed it at first because the day had started so badly.

Peter woke up disoriented and violent with panic around dawn. He didn’t recognize the room he was in and thought strangers were touching him. Harley had to physically hold him still while Cho administered sedatives because Peter’s own strength still flared unpredictably even now.

Afterward he slept most of the afternoon, and by evening, the rain outside had softened into mist against the tower windows and Harley sat half-asleep beside the bed with his head tipped back against the chair.

Peter stirred quietly, and Harley looked up immediately. 

Peter looked clearer. Not healthier. God, no. He still looked heartbreakingly thin beneath the blankets, and pale skin stretched too tightly across sharp cheekbones. Dark circles hollow beneath his eyes. His curls damp against his forehead from fever sweat.

But his eyes were clear and he looked present, and Harley’s chest tightened painfully.

“Hey,” he said softly. Peter looked at him for a long second before smiling faintly. There he was. For one impossible moment, there he was again.

“Hi,” Peter whispered.

Harley nearly cried from relief. Instead he leaned forward quickly, reaching for the water glass beside the bed. “You thirsty?”

Peter nodded slightly. Harley helped him sit up carefully because Peter couldn’t really manage it alone anymore. His body felt frighteningly fragile beneath Harley’s hands now. Too light. Too weak.

Peter drank slowly from the straw while Harley steadied the glass. Afterward he sagged back against the pillows with a tired sigh.

“You okay?” Harley asked quietly.

Peter looked at him strangely for a second. Then he laughed, just soft and exhausted and painfully fond around the edges. “That’s kind of a stupid question now,” he murmured.

Harley swallowed hard. “Yeah,” he admitted quietly.

Peter studied him silently afterward.

The room felt very still around them. Machines hummed softly nearby, and Harley could imagine rain whispering faintly against the windows twenty stories up.  

Finally Peter said, “Can you get May and Mr. Stark?”

Something cold twisted instantly through Harley’s stomach. “Why?”

Peter hesitated. Then softly, “Please.”

FRIDAY called, and Tony and May arrived within minutes. May crossed the room toward Peter’s bedside, and Tony followed slower behind her, expression carefully unreadable. Peter waited until everyone settled before speaking again. Harley stood near the wall beside the door. Peter looked between all of them quietly.

Then he said, very clearly, “I need you guys to let me go.”

The room stopped breathing.

May froze outright, and Tony’s face went blank in the frightening kind of way. Harley felt suddenly dizzy.

“No,” May whispered immediately.

Peter looked at her with heartbreaking gentleness. “May-”

“No.” Her voice cracked hard. “Absolutely not.”

Peter swallowed once. Harley stared at him in horror, because Peter looked lucid enough now that every word landed sharp and devastating instead of confused rambling. He knew what he was saying. That somehow made it worse, because this was the second time he’d asked for it, and it was beginning to sound like it was something Peter actually wanted, and-

“There’s no saving this,” Peter whispered.

Tony stepped forward finally. “Kid-”

“No, listen to me.” Peter’s voice shook slightly but stayed steady underneath it. “Please.”

Harley’s stomach churned violently.

Peter looked down at his own hands resting weakly against the blankets. “I don’t…” His breathing hitched slightly. “I don’t want you to remember me like this.”

Silence, heavy and thick and awful.

Peter’s eyes lifted again slowly, glassy with tears already forming there. “I want to be Peter,” he whispered.

Harley thought something inside him physically tore apart, but Peter kept going anyway.

“I don’t want to keep getting worse until I don’t know who anybody is anymore.” Tears slipped quietly down his cheeks. “I don’t want May scared of me. I don’t want Mr. Stark looking at me like…” He swallowed hard. “Like this.”

May was crying openly now. Tony looked pale. Harley couldn’t breathe.

Peter’s gaze drifted toward him last.

God.

Harley wished desperately it hadn’t, because Peter looked at him with so much exhausted sadness and quiet understanding that Harley immediately felt sick. “Please,” Peter whispered again. “Let me die while I’m still me.”

The words slammed through the room like a bomb. Harley recoiled physically. “No.”

Everyone looked toward him. Harley hadn’t even realized he’d spoken out loud. Peter’s expression crumpled slightly.

Harley shook his head hard immediately. “No,” he repeated, voice breaking this time. “Absolutely not.”

Peter looked like he might cry harder from the reaction alone. “Harley-”

“No.” Harley’s chest heaved painfully now. “Don’t ask me that. Stop asking me that.” Peter’s eyes filled completely. “You don’t mean it,” Harley said desperately. “You’re scared right now.”

“I am scared,” Peter admitted softly, and the honesty in it nearly killed him. “But I mean it too.”

Harley felt nauseous. “No,” he said again, weaker now. “No, Peter.”

Peter’s mouth trembled, and Harley could see the exact moment hope that Harley would understand left his face. The realization made everything worse, and Peter turned away slowly in the bed afterward - just rolling carefully toward the opposite wall because even that movement clearly hurt now.

Then he started crying, quietly at first - little broken breaths shaking through him beneath the blankets. 

Harley felt flayed alive listening to it, and May moved immediately toward the bed, reaching for Peter instinctively, but Peter curled tighter away from everyone instead. Harley stood frozen near the wall unable to move at all.

Because Peter was asking them to kill him. Because some horrible shattered part of Harley understood why. Because another part of him wanted to scream until the entire tower collapsed around them.

Tony finally crossed the room slowly and rested one hand against May’s shoulder while Peter cried silently facing the wall.

Harley couldn’t stop staring at him.

At the sharp line of Peter’s spine beneath the blankets, or the trembling in his shoulders. The way he pressed his face hard into the pillow like he was trying to disappear inside it.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, because Peter was seventeen. Peter was supposed to survive impossible things forever.

Harley thought suddenly about the first time they kissed years ago in a cluttered workshop smelling like motor oil and soldering smoke. Peter laughing breathlessly into Harley’s mouth afterward because Harley had nearly fallen backward over a toolbox trying to pull him closer, alive and bright and warm.

Now Peter cried quietly in a hospital bed asking permission to die while everyone who loved him stood helplessly around him.

Harley hated the universe so much in that moment he thought it might hollow him out completely.

—

By the end, Peter stopped fighting.

Harley realized it gradually, in the terrible way people notice catastrophes after they’ve already happened. There wasn’t one specific moment where Peter gave up - there was no dramatic collapse, no final argument. No sudden acceptance. The fight just… leaked out of him a little more every day until one morning Harley walked into the room and understood, with cold certainty, that the person he loved was no longer clawing his way back toward life, and somehow that hurt worse than all the screaming had.

The anger disappeared first.

For months Peter had still fought everything around him. He’d ripped IV lines out with shaking hands and tried to force himself out of bed on legs that couldn’t support him anymore. He’d panicked whenever strangers touched him unexpectedly, and he’d woken up gasping from nightmares so severe Harley sometimes had to physically hold him down to keep him from hurting himself in confusion.

Harley would have given anything to go back to that, because at least the fear meant Peter was still present enough to feel something.

Now the panic attacks faded into silence. The frustration disappeared. Even the crying stopped eventually.

Peter just looked tired.

It was a deep, unreachable exhaustion that sat inside his bones and hollowed him out from the inside. Harley saw it every time Peter opened his eyes, and he saw it in the slow blinks. The delayed reactions. The way his gaze drifted around the room like he no longer fully understood what he was looking at.

The room became unbearably quiet.

Some mornings Harley arrived before sunrise carrying coffee he never actually drank, only to find Peter already awake and staring blankly toward the light in the corner of the room. Harley could almost imagine, if the room did have windows, the pale winter light that would spill across the blankets while Peter watched nothing at all, expression empty and distant.

“Hey, Peter,” Harley would say softly. Sometimes Peter looked toward him immediately. Sometimes several seconds passed first. Occasionally he answered, but mostly he didn’t.

Harley kept talking anyway.

He talked because silence terrified him now. Silence made the room feel too much like a grave already waiting to happen, so he filled it constantly with nonsense and stories and anything remotely normal he could think of.

He talked about the workshop upstairs that he hadn’t been to in weeks, but he talked about stories that had happened months ago because he knew Peter wouldn’t remember them anyway. He kept talking about some ridiculous argument he’d gotten into online about the Iron Man suit, or about the vending machine on the fifth floor that kept stealing everyone’s money. About movies Peter used to love.

Especially the movies.

“You remember that shark movie you made me watch?” Harley asked one afternoon while helping Peter sit upright long enough to drink water. “The one with the tornado full of sharks?”

Peter blinked slowly.

Harley smiled anyway, even though it hurt. “You defended that thing like it deserved an Oscar.”

A pause.

Then, faintly, Peter whispered, “It was funny.”

Harley almost burst into tears right there from relief, because that was Peter. That tiny spark of humor, that soft stubborn insistence on finding joy in garbage movies and terrible jokes. Harley grabbed onto moments like that desperately, hoarding them inside himself like they could somehow stop what was happening.

But they grew rarer every week. 

Eating became difficult first, then swallowing.

Harley learned everything by necessity. How to support Peter’s head while helping him drink. How to measure medications. How to keep his own hands steady while cleaning vomit from sheets at three in the morning. How to hide fear behind softness because Peter always noticed fear, even now.

Especially now.

Some part of him still recognized when people looked at him like he was already gone. Harley refused to do that, even privately. 

He washed his hair, and changed blankets and rubbed lotion into painfully dry skin. He learned how to lift him without causing pain. He learned exactly how many pillows Peter needed beneath his back to breathe comfortably. He learned the shape of every rib in Peter’s body because there wasn’t enough weight left to soften any of them anymore.

That part haunted him most.

Peter had always felt warm and solid and alive, and even at rest he used to vibrate with restless energy, like he could never fully contain himself inside his own skin. Harley remembered sneaking up behind him in the workshop years ago, wrapping both arms around his waist while Peter laughed and nearly dropped a screwdriver.

Now Harley could lift him too easily.

Peter hated needing help, too, or maybe he used to. It became harder to tell. There were days where Peter reacted so little Harley genuinely wondered if he understood anything happening around him anymore. He’d stare vaguely at walls or windows for long stretches of time, expression distant and strangely calm. Not peaceful, just absent.

Harley sat beside him for hours anyway. Sometimes he read aloud from books Peter used to like. Sometimes he played music quietly through the speakers because the silence pressed too heavily against his ribs otherwise. Sometimes he simply held Peter’s hand and talked about absolutely nothing.

The weather. The city traffic.

Anything normal enough to make the room feel human again.

Peter rarely responded, but occasionally Harley caught tiny signs that the words still reached him somehow. A faint twitch at the corner of his mouth. A slow blink when Harley said something particularly dumb. Once, very late at night, Harley complained loudly about the cheap instant coffee and Peter made the weakest, tiniest sound that might have been a laugh.

Harley went into the bathroom afterward and cried quietly into a hand towel so Peter wouldn’t hear him.

—

Tony refused to stop searching for solutions, and at first Harley admired that, but then eventually it started feeling like another form of grief.

The lab upstairs never slept anymore. Harley would pass through at two or three in the morning and still find holograms glowing across the walls while Tony tore through simulations with bloodshot eyes and trembling hands. Every surface overflowed with research notes and half-finished prototypes and formulas Harley barely understood.

New treatment plans or wonder drugs, or new impossible ideas.

Harley understood the impulse because he felt it too. The desperate refusal to accept reality - but reality kept happening anyway. Peter kept disappearing, and no amount of genius seemed capable of stopping it.

Sometimes Harley caught Tony staring at Peter through the thick basement glass with an expression so shattered it physically hurt to witness. Then the moment would pass and Tony would disappear back up the elevator and bury himself back into work with renewed desperation, as though exhaustion itself had become preferable to helplessness.

May stopped visiting as often, and Harley understood immediately why, too.

The guilt of understanding nearly destroyed him. She still loved Peter with everything she had, and that was exactly the problem. Loving him made this unbearable.

The last time she tried feeding him, Peter forgot how swallowing worked halfway through.

One second Harley had been adjusting medication nearby and the next Peter was choking violently while May panicked beside him, hands shaking so hard she could barely hold the water glass upright. Harley fixed it quickly and cleared Peter’s airway, but afterward May sat beside the bed crying silently while Peter drifted in and out of awareness, too exhausted to even understand why she was upset.

“I can’t do this,” she whispered eventually.

Harley looked at her and realized with sudden horror that she didn’t mean taking care of him, she meant watching him die.

Harley should have judged her for leaving more often after that.

Instead, he envied her, because he stayed, every single day.

He stayed through the confusion and the weakness and the endless slow unraveling because the idea of Peter waking up alone even once felt unbearable to him. So Harley made himself part of the room, and part of the routine. Always nearby in case Peter became frightened or lucid or needed something.

Even when it was killing him too. Especially then.

—

The conversations - the requests - haunted him constantly because Peter had still been more himself back then - weak and terrified, but present.

“Don’t let it get bad,” Peter had whispered.

Harley’s chest tightened painfully even now remembering it. “It’s not gonna-”

“Harley.”

That had stopped him immediately. Peter looked at him then with terrifying clarity, more lucid than he’d been in weeks, like whatever was destroying him had loosened its grip briefly just long enough for him to speak honestly.

“If I stop being me,” Peter whispered shakily, “please don’t make me stay.”

Harley had reacted badly.

He knew that now.

He’d snapped at Peter for talking like that and told him not to give up, and told him Tony would figure something out because Tony always figured things out eventually. He told him he wasn’t allowed to talk about dying like it was inevitable.

Peter had listened quietly. Then he’d started crying with silent tears sliding sideways into his hair while he stared toward the ceiling.

“I’m tired,” he whispered.

Harley remembered grabbing his hand hard enough to hurt both of them. “You’re not dying,” Harley had said fiercely.

Peter closed his eyes.

“You promise?”

That question destroyed Harley because Peter sounded so young when he asked it. Not Spider-Man. Not an Avenger. Just a scared seventeen year old asking the person he loved to promise something impossible.

Harley lied anyway. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, bug. You’re gonna be just fine.”

Now that memory lived inside Harley like broken glass, because Peter had been right. That was the unbearable truth underneath everything else, and Peter had understood before any of them did.

This wasn’t living anymore.

Not really.

The boy Harley loved existed only in fragments now; in tiny flickers surfacing unpredictably before vanishing again beneath the exhaustion and confusion swallowing him piece by piece.

Harley missed him so violently it sometimes felt difficult to breathe.

He missed Peter laughing too hard at his own terrible jokes. He missed the constant motion of him. Missed waking up tangled together after accidentally falling asleep in the workshop because Peter insisted he was “just resting his eyes” before immediately passing out against Harley’s shoulder.

He missed being kissed spontaneously in hallways.

Missed hearing his name said normally.

That realization hit Harley hardest one night around three in the morning. Harley sat beside the bed half asleep himself, one hand loosely wrapped around Peter’s wrist just to feel the pulse there.

Peter woke briefly. His eyes opened halfway, unfocused at first before eventually landing somewhere near Harley’s face. Harley smiled immediately despite exhaustion. “Hey, sweetheart.”

Peter stared at him blankly, with no recognition. Just that… distant, exhausted gaze that Harley had come to hate. He felt something inside himself start cracking, because suddenly he realized Peter hadn’t said his name in over a week.

No Harley. No dumb nicknames. Nothing.

The person who used to say his name like it mattered had vanished so slowly Harley hadn’t even noticed the silence settling in until now.

He went into the bathroom afterward and pressed both hands over his mouth to smother the sound that came out of him.

Three days later, Peter looked directly at him and whispered, “Please.”

Just that single word, barely audible, and Harley froze immediately. Peter lay limp against the pillows, breathing shallow and uneven. His eyes looked cloudy with exhaustion, fever-bright and fragile.

“Please,” he whispered again.

Harley knew.

God help him, he knew exactly what Peter meant, because there was only one thing left Peter could possibly still be asking for.

The realization hollowed Harley out completely.

After that, he couldn’t unknow it.

The idea settled into him slowly over the following days. Not impulsively or recklessly; if anything, Harley fought it with everything he had.

But every morning he walked back into the room and saw Peter thinner than before. Every night he listened to him whimper weakly in his sleep from pain medication no longer fully working. Every hour he watched more of Peter disappear.

Love started changing shape inside Harley after that, because it stopped looking like hope and started looking like mercy instead, and that terrified him.

Because once the thought existed, everything else rearranged around it.

Tony still searched desperately upstairs. May still cried in hidden corners when she thought nobody noticed and when she could even bring herself to see him at all. The tower kept functioning around them with this horrible fragile pretense that recovery still existed somewhere ahead if they all just endured long enough.

Meanwhile Peter vanished in real time, and Harley watched it happen every day with his own eyes.

Eventually he stopped asking himself whether Peter would survive, or even how long they had left. The only question left became how much suffering counted as cruelty.

The answer came quietly, and inevitably.

The night it happened, the tower felt unusually still.

Rain tapped softly against the windows again as Harley made his way down, and he thought distantly that maybe thunderstorms would ruin the rest of his life after this. Every important moment seemed to happen during rain now.

Peter slept most of the evening, or drifted through it. It was difficult to tell anymore. The machines surrounding the bed glowed pale blue in the darkness while monitors tracked every fragile breath. Harley sat beside him for nearly two hours without moving, listening to the steady mechanical sounds filling the room.

He memorized everything.

The rise and fall of Peter’s chest. The curls falling across his forehead. The shape of his hands resting limply against the blankets.

Harley’s own heartbeat felt violently loud.

Tony was in the lab, and FRIDAY confirmed it quietly when Harley checked for the fourth time.

“Boss remains in the lab upstairs,” the AI informed him gently.

May had gone home earlier after nearly falling asleep in the chair beside Peter’s bed. Harley had helped her into the elevator himself. “You should rest,” she whispered tiredly.

He almost laughed at that, because sleep didn’t exist for either of them. When the elevator doors closed, Harley stood alone in the hallway for a long time staring at his reflection in the metal. He barely recognized himself anymore either.

Then eventually he went back to Peter, and hours passed. The rain continued upstairs.

Harley sat beside the bed holding Peter’s hand while his thoughts looped endlessly around the same unbearable certainty.

This is wrong.

This is mercy.

I can’t do this.

Nobody else will.

Peter asked.

Peter asked.

Peter asked.

By the time Harley finally stood up, his legs shook hard enough he nearly lost balance. Peter didn’t react immediately to the movement - he lay motionless beneath the blankets except for the shallow rise and fall of his breathing. His face looked frighteningly thin now, cheeks hollowed sharply beneath dim monitor light.

Harley swallowed against sudden nausea.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Peter’s eyes opened slowly, clouded and distant, but aware enough.

And Harley thought maybe some buried surviving part of him understood immediately what was happening, because Peter relaxed slightly instead of looking confused, and that nearly destroyed Harley on the spot.

He turned away before he completely lost nerve.

Everything afterward happened mechanically, like his body moved independently from his mind. Harley crossed the room with shaking hands, and his chest hurt so badly he thought for one irrational moment he might actually collapse before finishing.

Part of him wished he would, because then someone else would have to make this choice instead.

But nobody else was going to. Tony couldn’t. May shouldn’t.

Peter had asked Harley, and Harley loved him enough to listen.

The machines kept beeping, and Harley noticed that first. Not Peter’s breathing. Not the rain against the windows twenty stories up. Not even the violent pounding of his own heart. Instead it was just the monitors continuing their steady artificial rhythm around the room like nothing irreversible was about to happen.

The sound suddenly felt unbearable to him. Too clinical, too detached, like the machines still believed there was something left to save.

Harley stood beside the bed staring at Peter while his hands shook so badly he had to curl them into fists just to keep control of them. His entire body felt wrong, numb and feverish at the same time. Every instinct inside him screamed at him to stop, to walk out, to go upstairs and drag Tony back up here and make somebody smarter take responsibility for this instead.

But underneath all of that panic lived another truth; Peter had asked him.

Not Tony. Not May.

Harley.

Because Peter trusted him to listen when everyone else was too afraid, and the thought nearly split him open.

Peter’s eyes drifted toward him slowly from where he lay against the pillows. Exhaustion clouded them so heavily now that Harley couldn’t even tell how much awareness remained behind them. Right now Harley thought he saw recognition there, enough that Peter looked calmer when their eyes met.

Harley inhaled shakily.

“Hey,” he whispered. His own voice sounded wrecked.

Peter blinked once, slowly, and Harley swallowed hard enough to hurt. He moved toward the machines first because if he stayed looking at Peter much longer he knew he was going to lose whatever courage he had left. His legs felt unstable beneath him as he reached for the oxygen line. The tube rested lightly beneath Peter’s nose.

Harley stared at it.

Such a small thing. Ridiculous that something so fragile could separate life from death. His fingers hovered for several seconds before finally closing around the tubing. The plastic felt cold against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, though he wasn’t even sure whether he was speaking to Peter or himself anymore.

Then he disconnected it, and the soft hiss of oxygen stopped immediately. Peter barely reacted, and that hurt worse than if he had panicked.

Months ago Peter would have fought him, confused or frightened or angry. There would have been questions or resistance. Now there was only exhaustion.

Peter’s eyes followed Harley’s hands vaguely before drifting away again.

Harley’s stomach twisted violently. One by one, he disconnected the monitors. Heart monitor. Respiratory support. IV line. Each soft click sounded horrifyingly final in the quiet room. The steady beeping slowed, disappeared, leaving behind a silence so heavy Harley suddenly understood why hospitals filled rooms with noise in the first place. Machines disguised death. They created the illusion that something active was still happening.

Without them the room became intimate, and more horribly, awfully human. Now it was just Harley and Peter and the unbearable reality sitting between them.

Peter shifted faintly against the sheets, making a tiny weak sound in the back of his throat.

Harley immediately abandoned the machines and leaned over him. “Hey, hey. I’m here.”

Peter’s breathing had grown shallower already without the oxygen support. Each inhale looked fragile and effortful.

God.

Harley wanted to stop.

He wanted to throw himself across Peter’s body and beg forgiveness and reconnect everything he had just removed. He wanted another week. Another day. Another hour.

But another hour of what?

More confusion? More suffering? 

More watching Peter disappear piece by piece while everyone pretended they were helping him by refusing to let him go?

Harley felt sick.

Carefully, he slid one arm beneath Peter’s shoulders.

The motion earned another weak sound from him, instinctive discomfort more than real protest. Harley murmured apologies immediately while adjusting his grip with desperate gentleness.

Peter weighed almost nothing.

That realization made his chest hurt everytime he touched him now. Peter used to launch himself into Harley at full speed after patrols, all solid warmth and restless energy and terrible impulse control. Harley remembered laughing breathlessly while trying to keep both of them upright against workshop counters or elevator walls because Peter never understood the concept of personal space once he got affectionate.

Now Harley could lift him like glass, like bones wrapped in skin and blankets and fading breath.

The grief of it nearly crushed him outright.

“I’ve got you,” Harley whispered shakily.

He drew Peter slowly against his chest, making sure he was carrying him firmly enough, making sure he had one hand supporting his back, the other looped under his knees. Peter folded into him easily, and Harley could feel his breath tickle his neck.

The elevator ride up was so, so quiet.

The whole time, Harley thought he was going to be sick. At one point, Peter relaxed and Harley thought that he’d died into his arms right there and then.

But then the doors opened, and they were on the roof, and the rain had dulled to a barely-there sprinkle, the beginnings of spring taking the worst of the chill off.

Harley carefully lowered himself onto the floor under the cover. The movement took concentration, and Harley kept one hand cradling the back of Peter’s head the entire time, terrified of hurting him accidentally.

Eventually they settled together, and Peter rested limp in Harley’s lap, head tucked weakly against his shoulder.

Perfect fit. Always had been.

That thought hit so hard Harley almost choked on it.

He stared out at the skyline, and he wondered if Peter recognised it. He wondered if there was any sort of feelings Peter had at all to the view anymore - Harley fucking hated heights, but Peter used to talk about how nice it was to be high up. He used to talk about how pretty the city lights were, or about how if he was lucky he could see the stars some nights, or how the breeze made him feel more alive when he swung through the city.

He wound an arm around Peter a little tighter, pulling him into him a little more, because he suddenly felt too cold. Or maybe Harley himself felt cold. He couldn’t tell anymore.

Peter’s eyes drifted unfocused across the city.

Empty - not fully empty, but close enough that Harley could barely stand looking at him without feeling physically ill from grief.

This wasn’t fair.

The thought screamed through him suddenly, vicious and useless, because Peter was good.

Harley had known cruel people his entire life. Men who hurt others casually, and [eople who took and took and took without remorse. Meanwhile Peter apologized to furniture after bumping into it. Peter rescued stray animals during patrols. Peter cried over people he couldn’t save even after everyone else moved on. 

Peter loved the world so earnestly it bordered on painful sometimes, and the world had done this to him anyway.

Harley pressed his face briefly into Peter’s curls because he thought if he looked directly at him another second he might break apart completely. Peter still smelled faintly like himself underneath the hospital soap, and that almost ruined Harley.

His chest cramped violently around the breath he tried to inhale.

Not yet.

Not yet.

He couldn’t fall apart yet.

With trembling fingers Harley reached into his pocket.

The pill rested against his palm, tiny and white and impossibly ordinary-looking. Weeks of work hidden quietly beneath sleepless nights. Harley had engineered it in secret while Tony searched endlessly for cures instead of endings. Something specifically designed around Peter’s altered biology. Fast acting and peaceful. There would be no pain.

Merciful.

At least Harley prayed it would be merciful.

Now that it sat in his hand, reality crashed into him all over again.

This was real. There would be no undoing this. No miracle afterward. No sudden cure arriving thirty seconds too late.

Harley stared at the pill so long his vision blurred.

He remembered building things with Peter at three in the morning while music blasted too loudly through the workshop speakers. Remembered Peter stealing fries off his plate constantly despite always insisting he “wasn’t hungry.” Remembered kissing him breathless after patrol while both of them still smelled like rain and smoke and city air.

He remembered Peter alive, not this slow fading ghost curled weakly against his chest.

Alive.

Harley made a broken sound under his breath. Peter’s gaze drifted slowly back toward him at the noise. He had tired eyes. He was so, so tired, and suddenly Harley understood with terrible clarity that Peter was waiting for him.

Not impatiently, or fearfully. He was just… waiting.

He was trusting him, and that trust nearly destroyed Harley more than anything else had, because Peter wasn’t fighting him. Even now. Even here.

Harley tipped his head down before he could lose nerve completely and kissed him, softly and carefully, his hands cradling Peter’s face.

Peter’s lips barely responded beneath his. There was no strength left for it, but Harley felt the faintest exhale afterward, warm against his mouth, like instinct still remembered love even when memory itself had started slipping away.

Harley’s vision flooded instantly.

He rested his forehead against Peter’s for one shaking second.

“You asked me to help,” he whispered, and the words scraped raw out of him. “Okay?”

Peter blinked once, slow. Harley nearly shattered from relief and horror simultaneously, because that was consent. That was Peter still being here enough to answer him.

Harley brought the pill carefully toward Peter’s mouth with trembling hands. He almost dropped it trying to steady himself.

“Open your mouth for me, sweetheart,” he whispered.

Peter obeyed after a moment, weakly and automatically. The trust of it cut straight through Harley’s ribs. He placed the pill gently onto Peter’s tongue. His fingers brushed Peter’s lower lip in the process, skin cool and frighteningly dry.

“Swallow,” he whispered.

Peter tried.

God, he tried.

His throat worked weakly before suddenly hitching wrong. A small cough tore out of him, sharp and painful sounding in the quiet of the rooftop, and Harley panicked instantly.

“Hey, hey, easy.” He shifted Peter upright against his chest immediately, rubbing carefully along his spine while Peter coughed again, frail body trembling with the effort.

Terror exploded through Harley all at once, because what if he choked? What if this hurt? What if Harley had promised mercy and failed even at that?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered frantically. “I’m sorry, bug, just breathe-”

Finally Peter swallowed hard, and the coughing eased. The pill disappeared.

Done.

The realization hit Harley so violently his entire body went cold. There it is, some horrible part of his brain whispered. That was the moment. That was the line.

Peter sagged heavier against him afterward, exhausted by the effort of swallowing alone, and Harley tightened both arms around him immediately. “There you go,” he whispered miserably. “Good job. Good job, sweetheart.”

His voice sounded like someone else’s.

Peter’s head rested beneath Harley’s chin now, curls brushing softly against his throat. Harley could feel every fragile breath against his skin, and for a few seconds he simply held him trying desperately to memorize everything at once.

The shape of Peter in his arms. The warmth still lingering in his body. The sound of rain on the rooftop, and the kaleidoscopic lights that reflected in the puddles in front of them.

The exact weight of Peter’s hand resting weakly over his knee.

Harley knew this would haunt him forever. Every second of it. He knew years from now he would still wake up hearing these sounds and feeling this exact second wrapped around him like a nightmare, but none of that mattered compared to Peter hurting anymore.

That was the only thing Harley could focus on now.

Peter’s comfort. Peter’s peace.

His own devastation would come later, or maybe it would never stop coming.

Harley buried his face briefly into Peter’s hair and inhaled shakily.

“I love you,” he whispered.

The words came automatically and reflexive. He had said them thousands of times before, sleepy and laughing and distracted and breathless and half drunk on cheap takeout nights and love alone.

This time they felt sacred.

Peter’s fingers twitched faintly against the blanket, and Harley immediately found his hand. Cold skin met his palm; too cold already. Harley threaded their fingers together carefully and held on tight. Peter’s hand curled weakly around his in response, and that tiny movement nearly made Harley sob.

Instead he swallowed the sound back down so hard his throat burned.

Don’t scare him, he told himself desperately. Don’t make this harder.

So Harley forced softness into his voice. “It’s okay,” he whispered into Peter’s hair. “I’ve got you.”

Again.

Again.

Again, like repetition itself could protect them somehow.

Peter relaxed little by little against his chest, and the medication worked quickly. Harley noticed the changes almost immediately because he knew Peter’s pain so intimately by now. He recognized every tight line in his body. Every strained breath. Every unconscious flinch.

Now the tension started draining away. Peter’s shoulders loosened first beneath Harley’s arm, then the tiny crease that constantly lived between his eyebrows slowly softened.

His breathing gentled.

“There you go,” Harley breathed shakily.

God.

Harley couldn’t remember the last time Peter looked comfortable. Months, maybe. The realization gutted him. Peter’s eyes drifted halfway closed, and Harley kissed his forehead carefully. Then his temple. Then the top of his head because he couldn’t stop touching him, couldn’t stop reassuring himself Peter was still physically here in his arms right now.

He kept talking quietly even after he wasn’t sure whether Peter still understood the words, and all he could say was that he loved him and that he was safe and that he didn’t have to stay awake anymore.

“You can rest,” Harley whispered. “You can just relax now, okay? I’ve got you.”

Peter made the faintest sound - not really a word, but soft, still - contented, almost, and Harley’s composure cracked dangerously. 

He remembered Peter delirious with fever weeks earlier, clutching weakly at Harley’s sleeve while whispering, “Don’t leave me.”

Harley had stayed awake thirty-six straight hours after that because the idea of Peter opening his eyes alone felt unbearable.

Now he was the one asking Peter to leave, and the contradiction tore him apart internally - but this wasn’t abandonment.

Harley clung to that truth desperately.

This was love too. The worst kind.

The kind that hurt so badly Harley thought it might physically kill him.

Peter relaxed further against him with every passing minute. The pain lines disappeared almost entirely now from around his mouth. His breathing slowed, and deepened briefly before growing softer again.

He was at peace, finally.

Harley’s vision blurred completely. He pressed trembling kisses into Peter’s curls while tears spilled silently down his own face at last. He couldn’t stop them anymore. “I’m sorry,” he whispered helplessly. “God, I’m so sorry.”

Peter exhaled softly against Harley’s throat with warm breath. Tiny.

Harley waited automatically for the inhale afterward.

It never came.

The rooftop went still, and Harley froze. For one impossible second his brain refused to understand what had just happened. He kept waiting for another breath. Another small movement. Anything.

Nothing.

Peter rested motionless against his chest. His fingers slackened slowly inside Harley’s hand.

Gone.

The word detonated silently through Harley’s entire body.

Gone.

Harley stopped breathing himself.

The world narrowed violently around the impossible weight in his arms. Peter felt exactly the same physically. Same curls against Harley’s jaw. Same body curled trustingly into his chest, but something essential had vanished so completely Harley felt it instantly.

Absence filled the rooftop, and Harley closed his eyes hard enough to hurt.

A broken sound escaped him despite every effort to hold it back. Then another. His entire body shook once violently under the force of grief finally crashing through him unchecked.

He bent over Peter instinctively, clutching him tighter against his chest like he could somehow reverse this through sheer desperation alone, but Peter stayed still.

No pain anymore, no confusion, no fear.

Just stillness.

Harley cried then; small wrecked sounds dragged out of him while he buried his face against Peter’s hair and held him with both arms like letting go would destroy the entire world.

He had known this was coming, but that didn’t matter. Nothing could prepare someone for the exact moment the person they loved stopped existing beside them.

Minutes passed, or seconds. Harley lost all sense of time entirely, and eventually his sobbing quieted into trembling breaths. Peter remained cradled against him peacefully, head resting in the curve of Harley’s shoulder exactly where it had always belonged.

Harley forced himself to look at him.

Peter’s face looked different already. The strain and pain that had haunted him for months were gone now. No tension remained around his eyes or mouth. For the first time in longer than Harley could remember, Peter looked like he was sleeping naturally instead of suffering through unconsciousness.

Harley brushed shaking fingers through his curls carefully.

“There you go,” he whispered again to himself. The words came from somewhere deep inside him, because this finally looked like Peter again somehow.

Harley leaned down and pressed one final kiss into Peter’s hair.

Then he held him there in the silence while rain sprinkled softly against the rooftop and the world continued existing stupidly around them despite the catastrophic emptiness now sitting inside Harley’s chest forever.

Harley thought about the boy Peter used to be before all of this.

The way he laughed with his entire body. The way he talked too fast whenever he got excited about something. The ridiculous dramatic gasps he made during movies whenever Harley spoiled scenes on purpose just to annoy him.

Peter had loved living, and that was what hurt most.

Even at his worst, Peter had always reached toward people. Toward the world. Toward tomorrow. He had loved stupid little things with this huge fragile openness Harley never fully understood until he started losing him. And near the end, that openness had turned into exhaustion instead, and not because Peter was weak, but because he was tired. Harley finally understood the difference.

He looked down at him carefully.

Peter’s face remained peaceful against his shoulder, all the strain finally gone. He looked years younger somehow. Softer. Harley brushed his thumb lightly beneath Peter’s eye and remembered all the nights he had sat awake terrified of this exact moment.

Now that it had happened, the horror was still there, but so was certainty. Peter had asked him not to let it get worse. Harley had listened. Too late, maybe, but he still had. The thought hurt enough to split him apart, but it also steadied something inside him. Harley pressed another lingering kiss into his curls.

Harley stared out at the city for a long time. Then, slowly, he lifted his head.

The grief remained crushing. It always would. Harley understood that now with terrible clarity. There would never be a version of his life untouched by this night again, because Peter existed too deeply inside him for that. But for the first time in months, Peter wasn't hurting, and somehow, impossibly, Harley thought Peter would have hated knowing he destroyed himself trying to keep him alive.

That thought felt almost like hearing Peter laugh softly beside him again. 

You’re so dramatic, Harley.

A miserable little smile twitched briefly across Harley’s face before crumpling again. “Yeah,” he whispered hoarsely into the quiet. “I know.”

He tightened his arms around Peter one final time before finally, carefully, beginning to let him go.