Chapter Text
Harley doesn't love Gwen Stacy.
Though he does care for her.
There's too much history there, and in-between, for him not to. And while that caring runs deep - further than he has ever cared to admit to himself.
He knows that he had only ever sought after her again, so intensely, due to his parents.
She had been a means to an end - a definite return to that time before Summer - before the break. Before the divorce...
His mother had liked Gwen - his father too. They had often joked to one another about their future. The in-separation of the two being rooted there since seventh grade. They're actual try at a relationship marked between freshmen year and the start of their junior year. Summer having had just ended.
"Inevitable," his mother had often remarked. Her mind over the matter going as far as to have had planned their wedding colors. A spring wedding, naturally. Lilac and silver.
At the time, it had been entirely mortifying - now, Harley had only wished to hear his parents tease him as they once had. Only they hardly laughed around one another nowadays. And Gwen is less of a future - barely even a present - with Winter drawing nearer each day. Essentially reminding him that yes, another Summer had, in fact, come and gone. And soon, Fall too, would come to fruition.
"Black sheep, come home - black sheep, come home...," he begins slowly, the keys of the piano sounding harsh in the lone and quiet auditorium, "hell-o again, friend of a friend...-"
Its melancholic - and off-key. And he knows that. Though he can only play that very first verse - the notes barely even recognizable to the ear. And it's to be expected. He doesn't actually play piano. Nor does he feel inclined to do so.
"Geez - who died?"
Harley isn't at all perturbed by that voice. With the goings as they are, it's near impossible to find oneself alone in the theater department, let alone the schools auditorium during the day. Not that he had frequented the place much. He simply knew the ins and outs of the building as a go to escape if leaving campus had proved too futile.
And yet he had hoped against the odds that perhaps he could simply have a moment besides himself. Even if only a minute longer than the one he had been given.
"I'm not in the mood," he says to Peter Parker, who comes in through the access door - which sits just off from the main stage, amidst the first row. The light from behind only shadowing the younger boys face as he struts himself forward.
"Its a joke, Harley. Relax."
The junior casually lifts himself onto the stage then, forgoing the auditorium steps, which Miss Potts cautiously advised against doing each and every time. Not that anyone would ever listen.
"I am allowed to joke, you know." The amusement in his voice lingers, though Harley hardly stirs - nor takes any true notice of. Instead, he sighs and begins to shuffle his things around. Bag ready and pressed into his hands in seconds time. It's a dramatic display, he knows - yet it's a much needed shift in an otherwise dwindling atmosphere. And God would be a cruel and unjust creature if he were to deny him theatrics in a goddamn theater of all places.
"You don't have to go-" Peter then says, though he doesn't make to stop him. Instead, he casually shoves his hands into his pockets and lingers. "I wasn't trying to be annoying-"
"It comes naturally then?"
If Harley is surprised by his frankness, then Peter Parker must be physically floored. Else his crestfallen face is but a mere trick of the light. And Harley's only partially - if near half - of an asshole than usual.
"Sorry," he eventually says - his eyes straying, tough not taking heed of anything in particular, "really, that was uncalled for-"
"You're not sorry," Peter says firstly, "you always say sorry. But you never mean it."
"And how would you know that?"
"You hate me."
Its simple, the way Peter says it. And yet, like everything else in Harley's life - it's anything but. He doesn't hate Peter Parker, though he certainly acts like he does. Had convinced himself that he had. And perhaps that convince-ment had gone further than intended, leaking it's way into a near truth that had fed into a distasteful indifference between them.
"Well," Harley says, the pause over the matter having had lingered for only a second or two longer than necessary, "you hate me. So what's your point?"
The scoff Peter releases is harsh and dry, echoing forth into the theater in rivets. Much as the piano had done.
"Hate you?" He says, "I don't hate you. I mean, are you a bit infuriating? Yes. Was I upset that you hid my gym clothes that one time? Also yes. Did you once steal my answers in chem-?"
"Right. Clearly you hold no animosity whatsoever-"
"I don't hate you," Peter repeats, "though I have been set on ignoring you for the most part."
The rebuttal to that comment is silent, though Harley's face must ask it in droves considering the way in which Peter seems to study him.
And its apparent - really, yet another epiphany within the span of a half hour - that the two haven't spoken like this to each other since their photography class of last year. Not without jests, or the metaphorical knives protruding from their eyes each time they had happened into the same lane. Their final project, in which they had been paired to, had been a near failure - with Mr. Barton handing them a rather generous, and delusional looking, graded C minis for their efforts.
"I don't know," Peter continues with a shrug, "clearly I'm no good at ignoring you-"
"I hadn't noticed."
"Course you hadn't. You've been too busy hating me to notice anything about me. And all because I asked Gwen to homecoming."
"She was my girlfriend-"
"You took MJ-"
"Well, we were on a break then-"
"Ew, no," Peter says, "don't be a Ross, Harley-"
"What? I don't even know what that means."
"How do you not-? Whatever - so you broke up, and I asked her. As a friend. What was I supposed to do? Let her mope about because you decided to call it quits a week before? Do you not realize how hard she took it?"
"I know," he says, "but... - I really didn't mean to hurt her like that."
The sigh he releases is true and deeply rooted. With the familiar edgings of a defensive streak kicking in from the amount of vile that surfaces from having had said those words.
The old Harley, known in spades from back in the days of Spring, would have had bolted by now. The shop door being the closest means of an exit. Hell, current Harley wasn't exactly keened in the idea of standing here either. Yet he had remained. With his fists balled into the hem line of his maroon colored hoodie.
"I knew that the two of you were just friends... She always talked about you. I had just felt bad about it, you know?"
"And you took it out on me," Peter nods. "'Cause that's entirely healthy."
"I thought this was about how you didn't hate me?"
"I don't hate you."
The admittance is odd to say in the least - with Harley still on the cusp of deciding whether or not to leave, and Peter, for once, keeping an attentive eye on him without any sense of perceived animosity.
"Not even a little?" He asks. "Even after I tripped you and you broke your nose? Or when I hid your math-geek jacket-?"
"I knew that was you! Everyone was trying to convince me that the janitor had tossed it into the trash can-!"
"In my defense, you told me that I looked like a chicken without a head-"
"Only when you run."
The scoff - just as the last - is deep and garish, echoing - but sounding much more rich and moving than the hollowish sound from before. And, unlike then, it's followed by a laugh - one that isn't of Peter's own doing, or Harley's, but a fine mixture of both boys lost in raw diversions. Two sides of the same fuse.
"You know," Harley tries for again, "I did feel a bit guilty about it."
"Really?"
"Yeah," he nods, "dragging Mr. Coulson's name like that. Sheesh."
"You're a cheeky bastard Harley Keener, you know that?"
The laughs gradually crescent into a peak - the after weight settling into a series of light giggles that flutter about the air between them. Falling into a somber state of ease once a new breathe of air had been needed. A state that had collectively pulled at the two still laced in close proximity.
"So," Peter begins again. "with the risk of sounding like I care - are you okay?"
Again, the rebuttal is surely seen - though Harley certainly makes haste to try and remove it. Directing his mind elsewhere, in order to skew any such physical manifestation from crossing his features. "What do you mean?"
"You've kinda been out of sorts lately. Everyone's noticed."
"Oh," he says, "awesome."
"But that's okay. You know? We all get those days. But... - are you, actually, okay?"
Harley, despite the continuous feeling of squandering self loathing, smiles and nods in affirmation. Which Peter returns easily enough. And yet - the way in which his face settles - well, Harley isn't entirely sure what is actually mirrored there. For within his deep brown eyes, lays some hidden affliction. A sort of odd budding that Harley all at once decides he doesn't care for in the least.
"Yeah. It's nothing."
"Its not nothing," Peter says. "Maybe to me, or to other people. But not to you."
Sincerity isn't a keen aspect of life for Harley Keener. Neither is it a welcoming admittance when others gift it to him. And yet, with Peter - really, with how his heart swells thinking back to where he had been only minutes before now - he breaks. Even if only in slights.
"Its my parents."
"The divorce?" Peter asks, opting for a shrug a second after, "there aren't many secrets in this school. Surely you must know that by now."
"Right," he nods, "well, yeah - my mom started selling parts of the furniture - her furniture. She even bought me a new desk. As if that just solves everything, you know?"
He nods, though knows he doesn't necessarily have to. Though Peter manages to meet it with his own, his motions urging him to continue. But only if he had so wished to do so.
"I tried to build it today - but it got so damn frustrating. I couldn't get the screws in right - and... I broke it. I took it to the garage and just, destroyed it."
Harley isn't exactly sure what he expects from this confession. Most of the time, he doesn't - not when it comes to people and their reactions to things he may say or do- but especially with Peter of all people. So when the younger teen leans in, he's hardly had a chance to process it. And his body simply goes slack against his frame - too late in noticing the arms that have come to wrap around him.
"That really sucks, Harley."
The words are cool. Yet the skin beneath his ear trickles in warmth, spreading outward and skirting against the corners of his eyes and nose.
"I'm... - I can't entirely say that I understand what you're going through, but it's terrible that you have to deal with these things."
"Its hard," he says into Peter's shoulder, which only pulls in closer as his voice filters out, "I - I'm so mad, at everything. But sad - ...and I just need it all to stop."
Peter pulls back at that, swiftly - though not in total separation. Rather he continues to hover close - the feeling of pressed warmth sustained and pleasantly comforting.
"What does that mean?"
"Everything keeps moving forward- and I just wish it could stop, or revert back."
"Time doesn't work that way."
"I know. I just wish that it could."
It sounds pleasantly pathetic out loud, though the weight of those words seem to decrease once they're spoken. As if they had essentially been crafted out of actual mass and volume. And not as a creation of thought and weak-hearted affections.
"Why aren't you trying for her anymore?"
The question is nearly mute. Though it isn't entirely unexpected. Though no one outside of Peter has had ample courage to ask it directly from the source.
"I messed up," Harley says in earnest. "And she's trying this whole independent thing now. I owe her that. Plus I'm trying to work on myself-"
"For her?"
"For me. If I'm only changing for her then it's only pretend. And I don't want to pretend to be someone I'm not."
"That's oddly uncharacteristic of you," Peter smiles, "I'm impressed. The great Harold Keener improving himself."
"Is that a compliment?" Harley asks, ignoring the use of his legal name for the sake of clarity. That - and his mind refusing to find any strength to argue with. "I never thought I'd live to see the day."
Peter's smile remains, bright and full of every bit of terrifying truth that Harley finds sickeningly contagious.
Though he doesn't permit the remainder of his answer over Peter's question to complete itself.
He isn't in love with Gwen Stacy is how that entire truth goes after all. But Peter Parker doesn't need to know that.
"Everything will be fine," the other then says to the nothing stilled between them, "it's like you always say, challenges are nothing to you. Harley Keener always wins."