Chapter Text
Harley slowly clawed his way to consciousness.
His hearing came back first. There were echoes of whispered voices - two men, maybe? - at the far end of what sounded like a very large room.
“You sure he isn’t wearing a tracker?”
“Relax. I scanned him from head to toe. Twice. He’s clean.”
“Check him again.”
His sense of touch returned next. Harley began to feel the cold kiss of a metal pole at his back, and the hard bite of plastic keeping his wrists bound together behind it. A thick vertical line of some hard material kept his arms to his sides, allowing for little movement. His body was extremely stiff and sore to the point of actual pain, which meant that he’d been crammed into this position for a substantial amount of time.
“You think I’m lyin’?”
“No, I just think you’re an idiot.”
“I don’t mess around when it comes to one superhero, and ‘specially not when it comes to three. He’s clean , Rick.”
Finally, his sight came back. He blinked against the blinding glare of fluorescent lights and found himself… in an office building? A very run-down office building, anyway. The carpet was torn and stained, the cubicles and other furnishings little better than scrap metal.
Still feigning unconsciousness by keeping as still as possible with his eyes slitted, Harley attempted in vain to identify what he was tied to.
“This entire plan hinges on them not knowing where he is in this building. If they find him too soon -”
“He’s been out for over a day. They would have been here by now if they knew where he was.”
“Boss is about to send them our address, if you screw this up -”
“You don’t trust my work, check yourself. In the meantime, I’m getting coffee.”
The other man’s response was too low to hear. After a few seconds, though, there was the sound of an opening door, then a closing one. A minute later, an elevator pinged in the distance.
Silence permeated the air, and Harley opened his eyes a little wider to ensure that he really was alone.
There was no one in his field of vision at least. The hallway he was tied up in was empty.
It had to be good enough. He had to risk it. It was now or never, and Harley wasn’t a never kind of person.
He needed to do something. Anything. These people had clearly taken him to lure Peter and Tony and Stephen - and he had to screw up their plans somehow. The three could handle themselves in a fight, obviously, but this was a trap designed to ensnare them and he was the bait. He was sure that his captors had something up their sleeves to take the heroes down.
His lack of powers had been annoying before, but now it was downright dangerous. It made him a liability, an easy way to get to the people he loved. If one of them was hurt trying to rescue him, and he’d done nothing to at least attempt to fight back, he’d never forgive himself.
And if he lost one of them, if Peter or Tony or even Stephen ended up dead because of him…
Nope. Nope nope nope. He wasn’t gonna go there.
And so Harley turned around as much as he could and craned his neck, and found that he’d been zip-tied to the thin metal pole of an office divider, which had just enough space between the frame and the glass panes on either side to fit an arm through. Unfortunately, the edges wouldn’t be sharp enough to cut through the zipties.
He stood with a wince, his joints and back popping and cracking in protest of their treatment. The teen did his best to stretch them out, given his limited mobility - what he had in mind would be much more difficult if he was stiff.
After a moment, he exhaled deeply and began. He bent over and began to twist his right shoulder, giving himself enough room to step through the loop of his own arms while his wrists were still zip-tied together.
Harley had one leg through when he accidentally pushed his shoulder past its limits. It gave way with a painful pop, and suddenly Harley’s whole arm was on fire. He bit down on the inside of his cheek, hard, just barely keeping himself from crying out in agony.
He had to keep going.
Harley tried his best to ignore the intense, burning pain that was now radiating down all the way from his neck to his fingertips. He managed to get the other foot through, so now his hands were in front of him rather than behind. Good. He could work with that.
Harley sat back down, whimpering at how the motion jostled his shoulder.
The teen untied his shoelaces, threaded one between his wrists and around one side of the first ziptie, then knotted them together as best he could with one hand. From there, he moved the strings in a kind of sawing motion to break the plastic band. It would have gone faster if he’d been able to use his right shoulder, of course, but at the moment it was next to useless. Every little motion made it hurt beyond belief, but he still kept going. He had to.
The first ziptie gave, and so he moved onto the second, and then the third.
Until finally, finally, he was free.
Harley carefully stood, and immediately called upon his old first aid training to put his shoulder back into place. He grabbed the wrist of his injured arm with his uninjured one, pulled, and slowly moved it up so it was straight in front of him at ninety degrees.
The bone slid back into place with another sickening pop that made Harley gag, but it helped a lot with the pain. He forced himself not to puke through sheer willpower - the stars in wilderness shows and movies never puked when they had to do this kind of thing, and he was determined not to either.
With that taken care of, the teen began to search the office space quickly and efficiently. There wasn’t much that could help him. It was best not to try opening any of the doors scattered around the floor, in case one of his captors was on the other side and saw the knob jiggle. The furniture was busted but didn’t look dangerous enough to use as an improvised weapon. There were no pens or paper or writing implements either - and what would he have done with those anyway? Write Peter a nice little love letter to say goodbye? There was no way to contact them. The villains had taken his phone, and even if he’d had a pen and paper there was no way to get a written message to them.
Suddenly an idea struck, sharp and fast as a bolt of lightning.
Windows.
He was an idiot. There had to be windows somewhere in this room.
The teen raced down the narrow hallway as quickly and quietly as possible, terrified of being heard, until he reached its very end. Sure enough, he soon found a panel of floor-to-ceiling windows covered up from the inside by huge sheets of dark paper.
He peeled up one edge of the paper at the bottom corner, leaving him with a small gap of clear, unobstructed glass. Harley pressed his face against the disgusting carpet, ignoring its stickiness against his cheek in a desperate attempt to see where he was being held.
What he saw didn’t tell him much. It was nighttime. He could see the distant Manhattan skyline from wherever he was, but the only things in the immediate vicinity were warehouses and apartment buildings that looked like they had seen better days. The snow had stopped by now, and Harley recalled that his captors said he’d been out for over a day. God, what were Peter and Tony thinking by now? If the situation were reversed and Peter was the one who’d been taken, he would be beside himself with worry and fear.
Harley took a deep breath and straightened back up so that he was kneeling, pushing away the pointless, painful thoughts. Okay. Where did he go from here?
When he’d overheard the men talking, they’d said it would ruin their plan if the heroes knew his exact location in the building. So, he needed a way to signal what room he was in. He didn’t have the supplies to write a note, and something small and unobtrusive like that would be easy to miss anyway in their haste anyway.
He searched his pockets, wincing as every movement of his right arm made his shoulder throb like a broken tooth. The pain was well worth the end result, though - his watch was tucked into his right front pocket. He’d taken it off when they were leaving the Sanctum because it didn’t fit under his gloves, and stuck it there for safekeeping. Perfect.
Harley glanced at its digital face, and the red glowing numbers told him that it was ten past eleven. This information wasn’t particularly useful in his situation, but fortunately this specific watch - which he’d personally modified while fooling around in Tony’s lab - could do more than just tell time. He twisted the outer metal rim three clicks to the left, and a small grouping of the pixels on the watch’s face shone brighter. Another three clicks, and the glowing dot became a laser pointer.
This added function wasn’t very useful for most things. It made him look cool, like James Bond, except this laser couldn’t burn through metal like his did. It was perfect for teasing Peter’s cat, which is why he’d designed the damn thing in the first place. It was good in Stark Industries meetings, when the office laser pointer died mid-presentation. But in any other scenario, it was pretty much pointless.
Except in this one, apparently. The light was bright enough that Tony’s suit should pick it up with its initial scans once they got here. When FRIDAY zoomed in on the source to investigate, she’d recognize his watch. God, he wanted to kiss his past self for investing so much time into getting Peter’s stupid cat to like him.
He tucked the watch in the gap between the glass and curled edge of the black paper, positioning the face so that the beam of light cut a path through the dark winter sky.
Okay, he’d done what he needed to do. Should he try to escape now?
No. He’d be caught before he made it to the front door. And if they knew he had freed himself from his bonds, they may very well decide to relocate him and try a different method of restraining him.
So it was back to the pole for him, to pretend as if nothing had happened. He couldn’t redo his zipties, of course, but he could at least hide the evidence and hold his hands behind his back again.
Harley’s timing was damn near perfect. Less than a minute after he’d located the right pole and sat back down in front of it, he heard the door on the far side of the room open once more.
He closed his eyes and let his head droop forward, hoping to avoid an encounter with his captors by feigning unconsciousness.
No such luck, this time.
“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” said a gruff voice, and a moment later he felt a sharp kick on his outstretched leg.
His eyes flew open. There were eight men standing in front of him, seven armed to the teeth and one wearing an expensive suit. Well, he certainly knew who was in charge here.
“Rough him up a bit before you take the picture,” said the boss brusquely, tossing a small silver cellphone to the man closest to Harley. “Be sure to get his face, it’ll make them more desperate. And boy, I bet it’ll hurt Stark’s pride that he couldn’t track down the kid on his own.”
“My pleasure,” the man grinned.
“The rest of you, guard the doors. Once we send the address they’ll be here damn quick.”
The man holding the cellphone grabbed Harley by the hair and pulled him up the pole to his feet.
As the first punch landed on his jaw, Harley flinched but remained silent.
As the man’s fist buried itself in his stomach, he doubled over as the breath was forced from his lungs.
The third got his face again, and while the hit itself didn’t hurt any more than the last two, it did succeed in knocking his shoulder into the glass pane of the space divider.
Harley screamed in pain.
The man smirked. “Bad arm, huh? Thanks for the tip.”
It took every last ounce of Harley’s willpower not to make a run for it. He endured blow after blow over the course of what felt like an hour until he felt more like a well-tenderized steak than a teenager. All the while, he continued to pretend that he was tied up, even though every inch of bruised skin and every muscle in his shoulder cried out for him to let go and run.
He forced himself to think of Peter , repeating the three words like a mantra in his head once the pain had become unbearable.
Finally, the abuse ceased.
“Alright, I think you’re photogenic enough by now. Say cheese.”
Harley stared defiantly at the camera, even as his tears and blood continued to stream down his face. He knew he must look like a painful, pathetic mess right now, truly. And Peter was going to be forced to see him like this. If the situation was reversed, if he’d been sent a picture of his battered, kidnapped boyfriend, he would appreciate any little sign that Peter was really still there underneath all the black and blue and red.
The bright light of the camera’s flash blinded him momentarily, and before his vision had fully cleared another needle jabbed into his neck.
“Sorry kid,” said the man, “boss’s orders.”
He didn’t sound the least bit sorry.
Once again, Harley felt himself grow lax as the world faded. He tried to twist his rapidly weakening body into a position where the glass panes of the divider would keep his arms behind the pole even while he was unconscious, but there was no way to tell whether it would work until it was already too late.
This was it, then. When he woke up - if he woke up at all - he’d know whether his efforts had been enough.
After a few more moments, Harley completely lost control of his body. In those last split seconds of consciousness, though, he at least knew one thing - the positioning of his hands held. They wouldn’t know that he’d escaped, unless they looked directly at his wrists and saw that the zip ties were missing.
The darkness claimed him, and this time Harley went willingly.
Stephen portaled into the large office space, guided by the steady beam of the little red laser. With a twirl of his wrist he cast a shield to defend against the hail of bullets that began to rain down on him from all sides.
“God fuck, how’d they find him so fast?!” he heard a man shout over the chaos, and he smirked. He’d known from the moment they’d met that Harley was whip smart, but even he was surprised and impressed with the teen’s ingenuity in this scenario.
A moment later, there was a large crash as Tony smashed his way through the covered glass wall. Though his head was covered by the Iron Man helmet, Stephen didn’t need to see his face to know that his expression right now was murderous.
“You’ve got ten seconds to hand over my kid before I start blowing stuff up.”
There was no reply besides the steady stream of bullets, all of which bounced harmlessly off Stephen’s shield.
“Nine, eight, seven…”
“Is the pulse ready?” one of the shooters shouted.
“... six, five, god if you make me do this and he gets caught in the crossfire, there won’t be enough of you all left to bury...”
“The machine’s down on the fifth floor, we’re screwed!” another responded.
“... four, three - fuck it, Underoos go find him!”
There was a sound of firing repulsors from behind him, and Stephen watched grimly as the shooters began to fall one by one.
“Fuck you, fuck you too, go straight to hell and do not collect two hundred dollars,” growled Tony as he picked them off easily.
“ Harley! Doctor Strange, I need you!”
The panic in Peter’s voice made Stephen’s hair stand on end. He froze.
“Doc, go to him!”
Tony’s words broke the spell. Following the sound of Peter’s cry for help, he dashed through the labyrinth of rusting cubicles and etched glass space dividers.
After what felt like an eternity even longer than the one he’d spent suffering at Dormammu’s hands, he rounded a corner and found them.
Harley was sprawled on the carpet, with his head in Peter’s lap. He’d pulled off the mask, revealing a sheet-white face and wide, frantic eyes. He held one of Harley’s hands in both of his own, desperately searching for a pulse.
At the sound of Stephen’s arrival, he looked up from Harley’s battered face and words began to pour from his mouth. “Please, I - I found him like this, he was against the pole but he wasn’t tied up, he hasn’t moved - god I can’t find a pulse - “
Stephen leaned over Harley’s supine figure and gently pressed a hand against the underside of the boy’s jaw. He let out a shaky breath of relief as he felt the slight throb of blood under his fingertips. “It’s faint. The drugs they gave him weakened it, and he’s probably dehydrated as well. But it’s there, Peter.”
Peter let out a small sob of relief, bending over to press a kiss to the crown of Harley’s head.
Stephen began to perform a preliminary exam, pressing an ear to the boy’s chest to hear his lungs and heart. Breath sounds were there too, thank god - extremely shallow, but there. Whatever they’d dosed him with had hit him hard.
The sounds of gunfire and repulsors ceased, and moments later Tony came sprinting around the corner. “How is he?” he asked. He stood a few paces away, trying to gauge the atmosphere as his faceplate retracted back into the suit. “Please don’t tell me -“
Stephen shook his head. “I want to get him back to the med bay to give him fluids and supplemental O2, and I need to run some tests, but he’s alive. Unless there’s any damage hiding inside that I can’t see, he should make it through just fine.”
“Portal him to the Tower then. Take Peter. I’ll be right behind you.”
Harley woke to the feeling of fingers carding through his hair. “Pete?” he murmured sleepily, feeling like a mess of bruises.
“Hey kid,” he heard Tony say quietly. “Are you really awake this time? You’ve been fading in and out for a while.”
“I - I think so?” He blinked open his eyes slowly, and found that he was lying in bed in a room with sterile white walls and dark tiled floors. When he tried to move, he found that he was hooked up to an IV and some sort of tube was running to his nose. “Where am I? Did you, did they - “
“Shhhh, easy does it. You’re in the med bay at the Tower. We took care of those assholes, don’t worry.”
“Is everyone okay?”
“Not even a scratch, thanks to you.” The hand on Harley’s head stopped brushing through his curls and instead ruffled them fondly.
Harley fidgeted with a loose thread in the blanket covering him as the sensation began to return to his fingers. “I mean, I don’t have magic or a suit or anything like you guys. If I did, they wouldn’t have been able to take me in the first place.”
“Harls, look at me,” instructed Tony. Once the teen had complied, he continued. “I know it must be hard not to compare yourself to me and Peter and Stephen sometimes. But believe me when I say that just because you don’t have powers doesn’t mean you’re powerless. You proved that today. I didn’t have my suit when I was kidnapped in Afghanistan - I made it because I was thinking on my feet, like you were. When you’re feeling up to it, we all want to hear the full story. But in the meantime, you did really good, and I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks Tony,” Harley murmured, surprised and touched that his mentor had chosen to open up to him like this. And maybe he was just a teensy bit proud of himself as well, for working his way out of a kidnapping like Tony had.
“Anytime, kid. Now, I didn’t want to wake up Underoos in case this was another false alarm, but it seems like you’ve fully returned to the land of the living, at least for the next minute or two. So…” He watched as the man stood with a groan and took a few steps toward the corner of the room.
Harley followed with his eyes and saw Tony bend down to shake a sleeping figure who was curled up in an armchair wearing a too-large leather jacket.
Peter .
The moment Peter’s eyes opened, he bolted upright and ran to Harley’s side. He reached down to gently cradle Harley’s face in his hands as they both began to cry. “You’re okay,” he whispered, and Harley’s heart broke at the pain and desperation and relief and joy that his boyfriend managed to convey with just those two words.
“Hey darlin’,” he replied wetly, turning his head to press his lips against the other boy’s palm.
Peter choked on a small sob. He leaned down to hug Harley -
- who hissed in pain as the movement jostled his right shoulder.
Peter’s eyes grew panicked as he hastily put his hands in the air and stepped back from the bed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. What did I do?”
“It wasn’t you, don’t worry. I dislocated my shoulder, back… there. Popped it back into place, but of course it still hurts like hell.”
Peter’s expression grew stormy. “They dislocated your shoulder?”
“No, I did. It was an accident, but it helped me get free. It’s gonna take some time to explain.”
“We have all the time in the world,” Pete replied softly, with a gentle smile that made Harley feel warm and safe. “But you should probably rest first. We’ll get Doctor Strange to check out your shoulder later.”
Harley nodded, already feeling tendrils of sleep rising up to reclaim him. It was frustrating - he’d spent the majority of the past several days unconscious, and yet his body needed more sleep? This hero business really did suck.
“I love you,” he admitted in a small voice, afraid of the response he might receive. He had hoped to use those words for the first time in a more romantic setting, but it felt strangely urgent that he tell Peter now, before he went back under.
Pete leaned down to press a gentle kiss to Harley’s forehead. “I love you too.”