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Harley grew up in a world that was pretty fundamental, in more ways than one, in some very uncomfortable ways. It was fundamental in ways like burning crosses and the flags of traitors and the phrase GOD HATES FAGS plastered on the rusted bumpers of pickup trucks that park outside the shitty bar in town. Rose Hill is not a nice place, but his mom and sister make their own world, make it plenty nice. That said, there is nothing Rose Hill is more fundamental about than the bond.
Eleanor Marcus was from Nashville, and when she was young and idealistic and so in love with the concept of a bondmate, she threw away everything for hers. Ellie followed Adam Keener to the godawful little town he came from, dealt with him working his deadend job and drinking cheap beer, dealt with him sealing off the bond from his end for hours at a time, and even dealt with it when he couldn’t be bothered to do her that simple courtesy while he fucked Missy Perkins from down the road. He was her bondmate, her soulmate, and it would work.
Then he slammed the bond shut on her so hard she couldn’t even feel it, and walked away, leaving her with a seven year-old and a two year-old, and she finally accepted that it hadn’t worked. After that, they all learned just how fundamental Rose Hill could be about the bond. Constant side glances were directed at Ellie whenever she ventured into town. If there was ever an incident involving Harley, the people would whisper to each other how it was inevitable that he’d end up like that, coming from a mother who couldn’t keep her bondmate down and a father who’d walked out on his soulmate.
Two years after Adam left, while she’s standing in the kitchen talking to Harley as he comes home from school, Ellie Keener drops to the ground like a puppet without a master, eyes rolling so far back in her head that only the whites are visible.
Thirty seconds later, she gasps like she hasn’t taken a breath for her entire life and screams, the kind of scream that even horror movies can’t fake. Eleanor screams and screams and screams and that is how Harley learns that his daddy had gotten drunk and driven off the side of the highway, wrapping his front end around a tree and burning to death in the resulting conflagration, and that his mom had felt every accursed second of it.
That is the day he learns to fear the bond.
+
The bond, the educational pamphlet in Peter’s hand reads, is the most sacred union in our society. A joining of two minds, of thoughts and senses, of people in a way that is fundamental and key. Here are some basic statistics!
- The locked bond forms when both bondmates have begun puberty.
- The bond only unlocks when the two bondmates are close together. Most times this is about 50 feet, but can be as far as a mile or as close as touching.
- Powerful emotions and physical feelings can cross the bond even before it is unlocked.
- Most bonds are romantic, but 30% of them are not.
- 15% of bonds are between two people of the same sex.
- Less than 2% of bonds form between people further than fifty miles apart.
There are other facts, too, like the fact that bondmates maintain their connection no matter how far away, even the astronauts on the moon could still talk to theirs, but he’s not very interested in them. Why would he be, when they’re finally talking about the bond?! They already did the puberty talk, which, gross. At least they showed them the BrainPop video instead of something from the ‘60s or whatever. But the bond!
Peter lost his parents so young that he can barely remember them, but he does remember that they loved each other very much, and he’s seen the way Ben and May are together. They move like gravity, like two suns orbiting each other. Their conversations, more than any other pair Peter has seen, are a constant mixture of mental and verbal speak. He once asked if they’d sealed off the bond even once, and they easily replied that they hadn’t. The two of them had nothing to hide from one another and their connection ran soul deep.
Seeing the way his aunt and uncle are makes Peter want a soulmate more than anything else in the world. He knows that he’s only ten, and that it’ll probably be a few years, maybe even another whole ten, before his bond forms, but he’ll wait forever if that’s what it takes. Just as long as he can have something even half as good as Ben and May, he knows he’ll never be sad or lonely again in his life.
He’d even be happy to have a platonic bond. After all, there are plenty of commercials for websites for people with broken bonds or platonic bonds to find others like them, and they were taught a long time ago that just because two people in a relationship aren’t bondmates, it doesn’t mean that what they have isn’t as special as a bonded relationship.
There are a few kids in Peter’s grade, almost all of them girls, who already have had their bonds form. There’s one, Janice Delia, who’s even met her bondmate, a boy two grades ahead of them, and he’s all she can talk about. David this and David that and Peter kinda seethes with jealousy about it, since he wants something like that more than anything.
“Peter? Are you paying attention?” The gym coach’s voice breaks, interrupting his thoughts.
“Oh, uh, yeah!” He quickly answers, sighing.
The teacher continues her lecture on the bond, before long getting to the point everyone wonders about– the wanderlust. “If two bondmates haven’t found each other by the time they’re nearing the end of puberty, they’ll begin to experience a draw towards one another, what we call wanderlust. The wanderlust has driven bondmates to cross oceans to reach one another, has created some of the greatest stories we tell each other. Statistically, at least some of you will feel this urge to seek out your bondmates.”
There’s more stuff, too, like the history of famous outlier bonds. The longest distance between bondmates ever measured was in 2004, when a boy from Wellington, New Zealand bonded with a girl in Medina del Campo, Spain, literally exactly halfway around the planet, and the widest age gap between bondmates is thirty-nine years, when a woman formed a bond with an orphan girl when she was fifty, and adopted her to raise alongside her own children.
That night, when Peter is settling in to go to sleep, he can only wonder about what his bondmate will be like, and he hopes that whoever they are, whatever role they’re meant to fill in his life, that they’re every bit as wonderful for him as Ben is for May.
+
The night that Tony Stark appears in Harley’s garage wearing a poncho is the very same night that he feels the beginnings of… something within his mind. Like the fluttering of a bird’s wings, feather-soft and definitely foreign but almost undetectable. It starts in the center of his skull and branches out until it feels like fingers along the inside of his braincase, swirling gently. It’s not painful, but definitely a very unusual sensation.
Then he starts to smell something, like warm, melted chocolate, until he can just get a phantom taste of hot cocoa in the very back of his throat. Harley gasps aloud as he realizes what’s happening. It’s forming. All at once, there’s a flood of absolute joy, radiant and so warm that he can only lean into it. There’s nothing but an unconditional love that’s radiating so strongly that Harley can feel it in his very bones, and he wonders exactly what it is he was so afraid about.
The excitement fades, leaving only a very vague awareness of his bondmate, but still a sense of pure love that he doesn’t really understand. They don’t even know each other, but here this person is, practically half in love with Harley already. He knows that they can’t hear him, but he still tries to project a Hi across the bond, and, by the way a spike of foreign warmth runs through him afterwards, it works. That’s when he sees some weirdo hauling what looks like a corpse into his garage, and Harley’s world explodes all over again.
After Tony leaves and a giant supply of the most amazing tech Harley has ever seen appears in his garage, he gets used to having someone else in his head. What’s really the most amazing part is that the love that radiated so powerfully when their minds first touched hasn’t faded. Sure, it’s not so overpowering as it was at the beginning, but it’s just as strong, just as real as it was in the beginning. That’s the amazing thing, whoever it is Harley will one day share a mind with, their life seems to be nothing but joy and love. Sure, there’s moments of anger, sadness, even a few days where his arm throbs because his bondmate broke theirs, but there’s so much joy.
It becomes infectious, he just can’t help it. It’s no surprise that Abbie, who’s far too brilliant for her age and so good at reading people you’d think she was bonded to them, is the first to figure it out. She approaches him one day when he’s in the garage, tinkering on an old motorbike that his mother got him to fix up for his birthday.
“How come you’re so… happy lately?” She asks, frowning like his happiness is a crime.
Harley turns to his sister and raises both his eyebrows. “Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s a weird thing. You’re my moody big brother, you’re not supposed to smile all the time.” Abbie replies. “So spill. What’s got you so happy?”
“If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell Mom.” He demands, sticking out his pinky finger to the seven year-old in that oldest of oaths made between children. She takes it with ease, and nods once. “My bond formed back at Christmastime, and whoever I’m bound to they’re just… they’re super happy, y’know? It’s contagious.”
“Like a cold? Ew!” She cries. “I don’t wanna catch somebody else’s feelings!”
“Not like that, ya squirt. I mean that I just can’t help feeling what he feels.”
“He?” Abbie asks, now intrigued.
That brings pause to Harley. He did say he, but is that who they are? He funnels back into the part of his brain where the bond rests, and presses against it, really searching. Yeah, there’s not much, but the color that flashes in his brain a soothing Prussian blue and there’s a definite maleness to the presence he’d never consciously taken notice to.
Huh. He’s bonded to another boy. Harley supposes he should be panicked about this fact, especially since same-sex bonds are so heavily frowned upon in a place like Rose Hill, but there’s also a feeling of distance between them as he leans into the bond as heavily as he can. Oh, wow. He’s far, like, really far.
Doing the mental calculus, at one-point-six percent of all bonds happening at more than one hundred miles apart and with fifteen percent of bonds being same-sex, that’s… holy shit, a point two-four percent chance of their bond existing, and it does. That’s gotta be some kinda record.
Abbie snaps her fingers in front of his face. “Hel- lo, Harley James, where’d you go?” She sing-songs.
Harley shakes his head, realizing that he’d spaced. “Sorry, Abs. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s a boy that I’m bonded to.”
Fear enters her eyes. For a seven year-old, Abbie is way too wise to the world, and to just how small-minded a place like Rose Hill is. There are stories of what happened the last time a bonded pair between two boys formed here in 1958, of forced surgery on their telepathy glands to null it out, and how both they killed themselves not two days after the operation, driving a car into the Little Tennessee River.
“It’ll be okay, kiddo. He’s far away from here, I can feel it. I’ll go find him.” He replies before she can voice her concern. “Now, go play, and remember, you promised not to tell Mom.”
“I know. Talking about bonds makes her sad.”
+
Peter is sitting by the tree on Christmas Eve, sipping on hot chocolate and watching the snowfall over Queens from the window when he feels it, or, more accurately, smells it. There’s the barest hint of motor oil filling his nostrils, and then he can feel the cool, smooth texture of metal in his hands, and a sensation like a gentle breeze blowing all through his skull. There’s an alien flare in his brain, and he realizes it, before he’s just so freaking excited that he can barely breathe, because his bond is forming!
“May, Ben!” He yells, scrambling up from his seat and running into the kitchen. “Guys, guys, guysguysguys-!”
“Peter, sweetheart!” May cries out, laughing at the stunned joy painting her nephew’s face, “What is it?!”
“My- my bond! My bond just formed!”
Twin expressions of excitement instantly form on their faces, and she and Ben both scramble in to pull him into a tight hug. “Congrats, buddy!” Ben says, ruffling his hair and kissing him on the top of his head.
“What did you feel, honey?” May asks, her eyes bright with curiosity.
“I could smell oil and feel metal in my hands, I think he’s a gearhead or something! Maybe he likes science like I do!” Peter answers, still grinning wider than the moon.
The adults exchange a quick look. “Your bondmate’s a boy?” Ben asks.
He pauses for a moment, leaning in to the bond as much as he’s capable, until he gets a solid sense of confusion, trepidation– that’s a new vocab word from this week’s spelling list –and something else he doesn’t really have the words for, as well as a flash of a rich burgundy in his mind’s eye. He would stake his life that his soulmate is another boy.
Peter nods. “Yeah, he’s definitely a boy. I think he’s pretty far, too.”
“Well,” May says, “I’m sure that whoever and wherever he is, he’s absolutely wonderful, because he’s bonded to you.”
“I can’t wait to meet him!”
Ben chuckles. “I’m sure he’s every bit as excited as you are, kiddo.”
Peter’s bondmate is pretty different from him, he can tell, but that’s fine. His end of the bond is always quiet, but when it flares to life there’s a sense of caring for him, and Peter radiates it back as strongly as he can. He’ll project his thoughts at the blocked link, knowing that he can’t hear him on the other end, but still hoping that he’ll at least feel something.
The first time Peter’s ankle aches ever-so-slightly even though he’s sitting in class, not doing anything at all, a little spike of panic overwhelms him. His soulmate is hurt! He pushes all his worry against the bond, trying his best to make it into a question, and in return, there’s an immediate feeling of calm pressed against him from the other side.
Relieved, he goes back to his worksheet, and just sets aside the little pain in his ankle. A little pain is definitely worth having someone to share his soul with.
+
When Harley is thirteen, his mother looks at him in the kitchen one day and asks him. “Your bond formed yet?”
He nods. “Yes, ma’am. When I was eleven.”
Ellie nods, and there’s no further discussion of bonds.
In the intervening years since the bond formed, Harley has gotten quite used to having someone else there. His bondmate is a constant presence of gentle warmth in the very center of his brain, one that flares to life intermittently, usually with happiness. He sometimes wonders what he thinks of Harley, who is so much more tranquil on the interior. There’s no denying that the constant happiness that drifts across their link has rubbed off on him, especially since Abbie pointed it out, but he certainly isn’t the bundle of joy that his counterpart is.
Sometimes, late at night, something that feels like a question will press against the blockage that separates their thoughts, and Harley will push back. I’m still here, he thinks, even if the other boy can’t hear him, I’m still with you.
That’s the other thing, how amazingly attached he’s become to this person. He doesn’t know if he’s in love, but he certainly loves him. Harley worries every time he stubs a toe or cuts himself that he’s just inflicted pain on his bondmate, and the longer they’re joined by the bond, the more he can’t imagine not having it.
One April day when he’s fourteen, as Harley is just walking into the kitchen after school, he feels a spike of raw terror that starts in the place he knows the bond is built and goes sprinting down his spine. Only seconds later, he runs through more feelings than he’s ever felt in a single moment. Fear, shock, rage, holy God the rage, and then the center of his brain turns to ice, and it feels like his chest has been hollowed out and replaced by something cold and far bigger than the space containing it.
“Ma,” He gasps, leaning against the counter as tears that are not his own begin to flow as he feels the grief cross the bond and settle into his heart like a gaping void, “Ma, somethin’s happened. It’s… it’s him, Ma, there’s something wrong, I don’t-”
Harley breaks down then, sobbing great, heaving sobs that he doesn’t even have a reason to. The distant, rational part of his brain, the one that is capable of thinking around this alien agony, informs him that whatever has just happened, it must be colossal in its scale. Even the first meeting of their minds was not so powerful as this. He can only imagine what it must be like for his bondmate.
It doesn’t get any better as the hours tick by. Harley is consumed by despondence that is not his, and he takes it all. This is the tradeoff, after all. He’d witnessed it himself when he’d watched his mother burn even as she was a hundred miles away from the fire. A part of him is silently thankful that the bond is still closed, because at least the blockage is serving to dampen some of this pain, but then he realizes that if that’s the case, then his bondmate is in a worse agony than he cares to imagine.
He doesn’t sleep that night, instead devoting all of his energy to radiating as much calm and love through the barrier as he can. Harley hadn’t realized just how much he’d coasted off of the other’s own happiness until it was gone, and now he’s resolved to give him something besides pain.
When he finally passes out sometime around sunrise, Ellie peeks into her son’s room and resolves right then and there to call him off from school for the rest of the week. She knows exactly what he was up to, and while she can’t say she approves, she understands. Once upon a time, she’d have done the exact same thing. Even years later, she can’t help but reach towards the place where her own bond once was, like tonguing at the spot of a missing tooth.
God help you, little boy, cause you’re in deep and you don’t even know it, she thinks to herself.
+
A month after Ben is shot in front of him, Peter is approached by May, who sits next to him where he lays on his bed and rests a hand on his shoulder.
“Peter, this has gotta stop.” She declares. “We need to try and get to something even close to normal, and you coming home from school to just lay there until dinner is not healthy.”
“Have my grades dropped? Am I out drinking and doing drugs? Have I been getting arrested?” He numbly replies. “No? Then I don’t see the problem here.”
“The problem is that you are just existing. That’s not living, baby, and you need to live.”
He shakes his head, locking despondent brown eyes, Ben’s eyes, onto her. “You didn’t see it, May. You weren’t there.” He whispers.
“I felt it, Pete. I felt the bullet go through him just like if it went through me. Felt the pain, the fear, all of it. The bond was wide open the entire time, even when he… when he went. Speaking of bondmates, have you considered how this is affecting yours? There’s no way that something like this didn’t make it across your link.” She replies, her tone suddenly sharp.
He doesn’t reply, because he knows that she’s correct. The boy on the other end of the link has been nothing but warmth and comfort since he lost Ben, a constant light in the swirling darkness of his grief, and he hasn’t even tried to keep his pain from spilling over. He’s been really selfish, if he’s being honest. Peter has just sat in his agony while letting it bleed through their bond, even with its extreme limitations.
Finally, he nods. “Okay. What do I need to do?”
+
It takes a long time, and there are still spikes of pain now and then, but Harley’s counterpart eventually makes it back to the joy he held before. By the time Tony video calls and invites him up to New York for the summer between sophomore and junior year, instead of out to California or coming to visit him there in Rose Hill, the seemingly endless days where Harley had to carry both of them are fading from memory, though he still puts in just as much to remind his bondmate that he is loved. He doesn’t want to go back to the inequity they held before, and he’s long since accepted that he’s in love with whoever it is he’s been joined with for nearly five years now.
Harley often wonders when the wanderlust will begin to press against his brain, demanding that he seek out his other half. He’s already been saving up since last summer for travel costs, and the wanderlust can be quite expensive. It’s an extremely imprecise thing, trying to bring two bondmates together, especially ones as far apart as he and his. Those who experience it describe it as just a vague sense of direction, knowing little more than roughly which way their bondmate is and experiencing it become more precise the closer they draw together.
Of course, Tony himself would be the one to fly a plane all the way out to Knoxville to pick him up. Big gestures are most definitely Tony’s love language, and Harley is impressed that someone who hates surprises as much as Pepper hasn’t strangled him yet. Ellie and Abbie drive him out to the airport in the muscle car Tony left for him that he’s treated like his baby for all these years since, and kiss him goodbye and make him promise to call and text often throughout the summer, and then he’s being swept into the private jet with Tony and they’re northbound to New York.
“I think you’re really gonna like the tower, kid. More lab space than you’ll know what to do with and tech that makes my little present to you look like sticks and stones.” Tony says, slugging back a can of Coke as they cruise at thirty thousand feet. “Plus, there’s Peter.”
“Peter?” Harley asks, raising an eyebrow. “You and Pep have a kid while I wasn’t looking?”
He chokes on his soda, before leveling an acidic glare at Harley. “God, do not even joke about such things. I am terrified at the thought of having a child. Do you remember what I was like with you?”
“Yeah, you were a curmudgeonly asshole.”
“Exactly, and you were like eight.”
“Eleven.”
“Whatever, my point is, imagine me with an infant.”
Harley nods. “Yeah, that’s an image, that’s for sure. So, if Peter isn’t your newborn, who is he?”
“Peter is my intern,” Tony explains, “And a damn good one. Kid’s smarter than me, though don’t tell him I said that, I’ll never live it down.”
“He’ll rip on you like you deserve? I think I’m gonna like this kid.” He laughs.
He shakes his head. “No, Peter is much too sweet to disrespect me, unlike certain other improbably adopted children of mine, but he’ll tell everyone, and they will never let me hear the end of it.”
“So, will I get to meet everyone when we get there?”
“Everyone is currently out of town on various matters both personal and Avengers-related, but I’m sure the bastards will float by sooner or later, they always do.” Tony replies, before raising his hands in surrender at the look the teen gives him. “I know, I know, we’re all peace and love now, I get it, but wait till you meet Rogers, you’ll agree with me that he has a stick lodged so far up his ass it’s a miracle he isn’t spittin’ splinters.”
After touchdown, Harley retreats into the center of his mind to just check in with his bondmate, and the responding pulse back is flavored with surprise. Whoa. He feels closer. Much, much closer.
“Tony?” He says, loading his bag into the trunk of the town car that is to take them from JFK to the Avengers Tower. “I think… my bondmate is here. In New York, I mean.”
Surprise flashes across Iron Man’s face. “Seriously? Well, we gotta get you to her.”
“Him,” He quietly corrects, “It’s a him.”
“Him, my apologies.” He says. “Well, either way, let’s get this on the road. We’ll get back to the tower, get you settled in, and Hell, I’ll strap you into a suit and have FRIDAY fly you over every building in New York until your bond unlocks.”
Harley laughs, shaking his head. “I don’t think that’s necessary. If it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen.”
“That is… a very wise way of looking at things. Who said you could be wise? You’re supposed to be a foolish, lovesick teenager aching to find your soulmate.”
“And you’re supposed to be dead like… fifty times over, so let’s leave the supposed to’ s out of this, huh?” He smartly retorts.
+
Peter is practically vibrating out of his skin, because he’s here, his freaking bondmate is in New York! He wants nothing more than to tear out of the tower and abandon his project to go in search of him, but he knows that’s a bad idea for a multitude of reasons, most of which being that it’s some very important work that he really doesn’t want to get behind on.
Instead, he resolves to go out looking as soon as he’s able, because why wouldn't you try to find your soulmate after feeling apart for so long?! He knuckles down on the project, determined to find perfection even as the barrier in his brain is practically vibrating with the demand to finally be broken down.
Once his assigned lab hours are done, Peter makes his way to the penthouse in the tower and pours himself a glass of lemonade in the kitchen. Just as he’s leaning against the countertop, from the other end of the apartment there’s the sound of the elevator opening, and Mr. Stark’s voice carries to his enhanced ears.
“... and this is the penthouse, where you’ll be staying with us. FRIDAY told us Pete was up here, so you’ll get to meet him.”
The voice that answers is laced with just the slightest hint of a southern drawl, and it feels familiar, like a scent that takes Peter back to a place he just can’t name. “I just hope he likes me, I’m the one intruding for the summer.”
That’s when they round the corner, and from across the room, the very second that Peter makes eye contact with the boy next to Tony, the barrier that’s blocked off his bond since it formed that Christmas Eve four-and-a-half years ago explodes like a supernova, and his mind is completely flooded as he drops the full glass of lemonade to shatter on the kitchen floor.
What the-
I don’t-
What’s happening?
He’s beautiful.
I-
Holy shit.
We’re…
It’s you.
It’s you.
His name is Harley James Keener. He was born on March 4, 2001. He has a sister named Abbie and a mother named Ellie. His father skipped out when he was seven and died when he was nine. He helped Tony during the Mandarin crisis, and he’s been involved in his life ever since. He’s Peter’s soulmate.
Like that, a ghostly overlay comes through his vision, and Peter realizes that he’s seeing himself through Harley’s eyes. Without even acknowledging Tony, he’s crossing the kitchen as quickly as he can without running, before stopping directly in front of Harley.
Hi, he sends across the bond, which is practically singing with so many feelings he can’t even begin to process them.
Hi there, darlin’, Harley thinks back, his face awash in pure wonder.
Of course, leave it to Tony to ruin the moment. “Uh, Underoos, what the Hell are you doing?”
Underoos? Harley thinks, immediately confused.
Later, he replies, before speaking. “Well, Mr. Stark, if you must know, Harley here… is my soulmate.”
The look on Tony’s face is so worth having to sweep up the glass and mop the lemonade off the floor.
+
Peter is… so much more than Harley ever thought was possible. In just the few brief hours they’ve had their bond open, he’s seen that there’s hardly ever a dark thought in that beautiful head. He thinks about so much, too, that it’s almost dizzying to keep up with, but still so absolutely incredible.
Then there’s the fact that he’s soulmates with Spider-Man! That’s still hard to wrap his head around, but there are no secrets there, not any more. He has absolutely no intention of hiding anything, because he’s seen what hiding does, how it can even tear apart soulmates, and in just this little span of time, he’s already resolved that he’ll never lose Peter.
Tony, bless his head, had insisted the two of them spend the day together, and now, as the sun sets over the distant Appalachian Mountains to the west, the two of them are back in the tower, standing on the balcony and watching the sun slip to the horizon. They lean against one another, just enjoying the warmth of each other’s thoughts and the instant, unconditional love that flows between them.
Until now, Harley has never understood how so many people could meet their soulmates and marry them within just a few months, or even a handful of days, but here, sharing a connection that’s deeper than any other with Peter, he gets it. He wants forever, and he wants it as soon as he can. The amazing part is, Pete is right there with him.
Just as he’s beginning to formulate the thought, Peter beats him to the punch, and pulls Harley in close for a kiss that takes both of their breaths away. They delve deep into the bond, deep enough to feel what the other feels and redouble their own sensation.
You’re wonderful, Peter says across their link, So fucking wonderful.
Harley gives a mental chuckle. And I’m all yours.