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Peter wakes up on the wrong side of midnight with his sheets tangled around his legs and a sore throat. It’s not the first time this has happened; he knows what to do. He pads around the compound in his socks and his bedhead until F.R.I.D.A.Y. takes him to the lab.
“You should be in bed.”
Peter shoots an unimpressed look at the other boy in the lab, elbows deep in a suit. Whose, he has no idea. Harley and Tony have stacks of schematics and measurements for just about everybody on the team; the only way to tell whose gear they’re working on is by the paint, and this one hasn’t reached that stage of production.
“I’m serious, Parker. Don’t you have rehearsal tomorrow?”
“Happy will let me sleep in the car. And anyway, I slept a little bit. You, by the looks of it, have been up here all night. Where’s Mr. Stark?”
“Sleeping on the couch.”
Peter glances at the well-worn couch, shoved in the darkest corner of the lab. There lies the great Tony Stark, curled up on the ratty cushions, looking as young as Peter has ever seen him. He walks over to the corner and fixes the greasy blanket so it drapes more fully over Tony’s suddenly small-seeming body. He walks back over to Harley.
“He’s got the right idea. You look tired.”
“You saying I look ugly, Parker?”
Peter sighs. He slips out from where he’s been hovering behind Harley and lays his hands on the other boy’s elbow. “Come on, Harley. Take a break.”
There’s a moment’s hesitation, but then Harley extracts his hands from the half-finished suit. “Thought you’d be in the studio. It’s where you usually go after a rough night.”
“You know what how?” Harley gestures at an image hovering somewhere in the far right corner of his field of vision. It’s a collage of dark blocks with various names of those sleeping in the compound at the moment. “Oh. Nightmare watch.”
“Yours started flashing red like fifteen minutes ago. I thought I’d go check up on you in the studio once I finished this up, but here you are.”
“I wanted to hang out with you instead.”
Harley smiles. “Me and Tony snuck some leftover pizza up here after dinner. You hungry?”
“For some midnight pizza? You bet.”
They end up sitting on the floor with their backs against the fridge, sharing slices of cold pizza because the microwave will wake Tony up. Now that Harley’s workstation isn’t lit up, the lab is dark. Peter wonders if Harley can even see at all.
“Steve’s going to propose to Bucky,” Harley whispers around a mouthful of food.
“Really?”
“He came to the lab to get the measurements of Bucky’s left hand. Tony offered to make the ring, but Steve said he wanted to do it all old-fashioned and what not. He’s taking Natasha jewelry shopping with him tomorrow. Or, well, later today.”
“You think he’ll say yes?”
Harley shrugs. Peter feels more than sees the movement from the body pressed to his. He wonders why they’re sitting this close. “Why not?”
Peter thinks of the time Steve had joined him, Bucky, and Natasha in the studio. Peter had been warming up in a corner while Bucky and Natasha bickered in Russian. Music started playing abruptly — some haunting, Russian lullaby, and Bucky started dancing, moving in a way that a body built like a truck, like a weapon, shouldn’t have been able to. He thinks about the way Steve hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of Bucky and the way Bucky smiled at Steve when they’d all left the studio at the call for dinner.
He thinks, maybe, that he smiles at Harley the same way.
“You’re right,” he replies, with a shrug of his own. “Why not”
They’re quiet for a moment more, and Peter’s just about to suggest they go back to their rooms and catch some sleep when Harley quietly asks, “Do you ever wonder what it’s like?”
“What what’s like?” Peter asks, not quite following.
“Love,” Harley says, and Peter’s breath catches softly in his throat. “Like Tony and Pepper have, or like Steve and Bucky. That kind of love, it’s different from anything I’ve ever really seen. It lasts a lifetime. Multiple lifetimes,even. Everyone talks about love like it’s some fleeting thing, a moment of passion that ends almost as quickly as it began, leaving you more broken than you were in the first place. But love, real love, what’s that like?”
“I imagine it’s a lot like dancing.” Harley lets out a small huff of laughter, and before he can make a quip about how Peter compares everything to dancing, Peter stands up and offers a hand to Harley. “Let me show you.”
Peter expects a lot more protest from Harley, but to his surprise, the other boy just takes Peter’s hand and stands up. They stand there for a moment, facing each other, one of Harley’s hands held gently in Peter’s own embrace. Then, with all the tact in the world, Harley comments, “I hate to break it to you, Parker, but I can’t see a damn thing.”
With a soft laugh, Peter reaches out to the refrigerator door and opens it, flooding a small area, about a square meter in front of the refrigerator, in light. He asks F.R.I.D.A.Y. to play a song, and, as the strings lay out their first strokes of song, he takes both of Harley’s hands in his and begins to dance.
“Dr. Banner introduced me to this song,” Peter begins. “He heard it while in a cafe in France one time. Said he heard it, and it was like he felt the pain of centuries of the most tragic love stories in his heart, and most prominently, his own.”
Harley makes a little strangled sound, something like a laugh but sadder. Peter spins him gently as he asks, “So this is love?”
“Dr. Banner played it for me in the studio as soon as he got back from France. I told him I’d consider choreographing something to it, but I must have listened to the song a hundred times since then, and I still have no idea where to start.”
With an apologetic smile, Peter drops one of his hands to Harley’s waist and dips him quickly, pulling him back up close to his chest before the other boy even has a chance to take a breath. “The most dangerous thing is to love,” Peter whispers in time to the song, and Harley’s face flickers once, twice, before it crumbles.
Peter continues, “I’ve never been in love before, but I imagine it’s a lot like this. I’ve never choreographed something to this song because it’s not something I can dance by myself. I have people at my disposal. Most everyone at the studio is willing to be choreographed by their peers. But honestly? I’m scared. I don’t know if I’m good enough to choreograph something beautiful enough for this song, and I don’t know if anyone’s good enough to dance it.”
“You’re good enough,” Harley murmurs, lips ghosting Peter’s ear. Peter lets his eyes flutter shut for a moment.
“You,” Peter begins, but then he pauses. He pulls back from Harley a little bit — and when did they get so close to begin with? — and takes his face in both of his hands. He means you as in a general you for anyone seeking love, but he also means Harley. He stops himself from pressing his forehead against Harley’s and takes a deep breath instead. “If you’re lucky, you’ll fall in love. And maybe it’s not true love, but it’s real love. But maybe, if you’re one of the lucky few, you have a soulmate out there, and against all odds, you find each other. And you lose each other, and you find each other, again and again.”
“But why must we lose each other?” Harley asks, and Peter has to pause and tell himself that we did not necessarily mean himself and Harley. It’s a general we , applicable to any person finding love.
Peter replies with a question of his own. “Why do we feel pain? Why do we suffer?” Harley closes his eyes. “For love.”
“Does it hurt?” Harley asks, so child-like and vulnerable in this moment that Peter almost wants to look away.
“It’s love,” Peter answers. “We go out into this world, seeking people to spend our lives with. Seeking love. And in doing so, we sign up to lose each other. And it’s worth it, Harley. I believe that it is.”
They dance around each other in the last seconds of the song, Peter spinning them round and round in the glow of the refrigerator light. When the song ends, they stand there in silence, Peter’s hands on Harley’s waist and Harley’s hands clasped around Peter’s neck. Peter, slowly, rests his forehead against Harley’s and closes his eyes.
“The song,” Harley whispers. “Is it about Achilles and Patroclus?”
“I like to believe it is,” Peter replies. The story lies unspoken between them, of the warrior Achilles and his best friend and lover Patroclus. Patroclus, who dies trying to save his lover’s name, and Achilles, who dies to avenge his death. Peter doesn’t say it, but he knows that Harley knows: all he’s ever wanted is a love like that.
Harley is the one who says it. “Wouldn't it be nice to find a love like that?” He just hums his agreement, the words sticking in his throat.
Peter pulls away first and nudges the refrigerator door closed with his hip, dousing the lab in darkness. Silence falls heavily on the two boys, standing there with the hearts in their hands. Peter breaks the silence, choking on vulnerability. “Goodnight, Harley. Catch some sleep, won’t you?”
Harley nods, and Peter sees it despite the dark. “Goodnight, Peter.”
With a sad smile Peter knows Harley won’t be able to see, he slips out of the lab, blindly stumbling to his room and all but slamming the door behind him. He sinks to the floor, shaking, and he doesn’t even know why.
In the early hours of the morning, a knock drops lightly on Peter’s door. He untangles himself from his nest of blankets and opens it, revealing a tired-looking Tony. The older man hands him a Thermos. “Shall we have breakfast in the city before your rehearsal, bambino?”
Peter takes the Thermos with a weary smile. He grabs his dance bag from where he’d thrown it on the floor somewhere by the door and follows Tony to the garage. The compound is quiet at the early hour, though Peter knows at least half of its residents must be awake. It begins to drizzle as Tony backs out of the garage and takes off. At a stoplight, he touches a button, and a song begins playing.
It’s the song Peter and Harley had danced to the night before.
Peter, finally, begins to cry, curling up in the passenger seat of Tony’s car and shaking with the weight of his sobs. Tony takes a hand off the wheel and rubs it against Peter’s back. “You’ll fall in love one day, kid. You are so, so worthy of being loved.”