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Peach light spills over Peter’s sleeping form at Harley’s side. Sunrise, then.
Harley hasn’t slept a minute.
It’s the dreams again, the dreams of being on set, being called for, over and over. Harley! Is this lens really cool or just weird? Harley, they’ll be out of makeup and ready in ten. Hey, Harley, I think the spear got kinda fucked up while it got transported…
The neverending energy flow of it. By the time production wrapped on this feature film, Harley felt as large as a planet and as wrung-out as a gnarly tissue you’re not supposed to mop shit up with but you made do with.
Seeing that shot you’ve been daydreaming about fall into place at the last second, that’s a joy that Harley wishes he could inhale.
The inevitable call of that’s a wrap, the applause, the hugs, the endless goodbyes, the final packing-up of the set, that’s a chisel driven into his heart. It was magical, but not any more. Now all he has is the dregs of hastily gathered-up memories and his own gnarly-tissue self.
And this morning, when Harley traces the curls of Peter’s knitted eyelashes with his gaze, he still feels bereft of something.
It isn’t the first bout of post-film blues he’s weathered. Not by a long shot. But each feels special. This felt so special.
They all do, he reminds himself.
It doesn’t lift his heart from beneath the floorboards.
A shifting at his side. Harley lets his heavy eyelids fall shut, feigning sleep without a thought.
“Mornin’, baby,” Peter mumbles, and Harley catches that hint of Southern his voice becomes thoughtlessly tinged with now and then. He wills for that, then, to give him joy. It’s closer to striking a faulty flint and steel.
Peter nudges close to Harley and kisses his shoulder. The mattress dips, then springs back up.
“Sleep it out,” he hears his husband murmur from the edge of the room. “Maybe you could make breakfast for him. Pancakes…”
And pancakes he gets. Peter opens the door with a hip about an hour later, his hands already paint-splattered, a--a fucking Kiss The Cook apron on and all and his vest and jersey shorts he wore in bed and a heap of fluffy pancakes and Harley knows they’ll taste like heaven on a plate but he can’t eat.
“What’s this?” Peter says. Eminem is rapping from the bedside speaker. Harley is sprawled inconsolably across the unmade covers, lost in the emotional chills that song now imbues him with. It’s the song that concludes the film, his film, his film that he made, his film that’s over now. Just like that.
It doesn’t make sense.
“Emotions,” Harley mumbles. He hasn’t the energy to interact. The mundanity of everyday interaction is unbearable.
Peter gives him a sad look. It only makes Harley sadder, makes him retreat further into his own head. “Emotions? Is that what you said?”
Harley turns onto his stomach, aware he’s being immature. It’s embarrassing for people to see him when he’s so gripped by one of his projects. It’s just a film, you know?
And yet, it’s everything. It’s the world in a seashell.
But it’s stupid.
But it’s tearing him down.
“Pancakes?” Peter asks.
Harley cranes his head clear of the covers for a moment. “Don’t think I can… I dunno. I just feel weird. You put forest fruits on them, didn’t you?”
A soft snicker from Peter at Harley’s forlorn tone. “Yeah. I can probably just refreeze them.”
“No, you can’t. You put syrup on them already. I saw.”
The tray thunks, then, just as abruptly, Peter flops down beside him on the bed.
“You know you’re being a grump, Harls?”
“I do. I just don’t want… I don’t wanna do life yet.”
“What do you wanna do?” Peter asks him, and it’s the perfect thing for him to say.
Except Harley doesn’t really know.
“Not… much,” he tries. “I want--I need--to chill. To just get out all the thoughts in my brain and rest. But I’m all pent up still, I think.”
“You think?” Peter echoes with gentle derision.
“Okay, I am. I think, therefore I am.”
“Har, har. How about a break from the rapping for a while? I could hear you telling Alexa to repeat it a bunch of times. You know you can just say
loop mode on.”
Harley just groans.
“Alexa, stop,” Peter says, and then there’s an oh-so-familiar weight straddling his hips. Peter bends low to his back, sticks his cold nose at the base of his neck, darts his lips in and out.
One of Harley’s eyebrows shoots up. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, I don’t think it’ll be much fun for you.”
Peter mock-gasps. “Mind out of the gutter, Keener!” he cries. “But I do want you to take off your shirt, please.”
Harley snorts at that, saying with no small amount of derision, “Okay,” and shrugging off his t-shirt, probably one of Tony’s because it’s an AC/DC one. Tony’s shirts are basically public property at this point. Pepper, Peter and Harley own more than Tony himself.
Peter rubs his hands together. Harley tries to twist his neck round to see what possible kinky shit he might have up his sleeve, but Peter taps his cheek in reprimand. “Hey, that’ll only make it worse.”
“Make what worse?”
“Your--” Peter wiggles his fingers-- “Tension.”
And when he begins to knead his palms into Harley’s shoulders, it makes sense to Harley.
“My--oh. Hnggh. Mmm. Fnnnnh.”
“Noises are weird,” Peter comments. “Maybe stop the noises.” His hands, those firmly gliding movements up and down and arcing around Harley’s shoulder blades and scratching lightly at the back of his neck, are curiously detached from the vaguely floating voice above Harley, separate again from the grounding body straddling him. “But maybe you can talk about the film? If that’s a good way to get out all of the thoughts. What’s the Eminem?”
So Harley talks about the final shot of the film, the move from an intensely emotional closeup on the battered protagonist outwards to a war-torn landscape and the refrain echoing all around: Step by step, heart to heart, left right left, we all fall down. He talks about humanity’s inherent capacity for good, even when surrounded by no end of evil. He talks about the fantastic eyes of the actor playing the protagonist, the excruciating depth of emotion that they showed the camera in that final shot on the last day, the last hour, the last minute of filming. He talks about how it feels like he’s delivered a baby and given it away before he got to hold it.
And all the while, Peter kneads and scratches and smooths his back, arms, legs, just there, just listening, just easing his knots until he’s a little less tangled.
Harley’s so damn lucky.
The thought surfaces in his mind like an unlikely fish from a long-stagnant pond. Something coherent, something about now, from amid all the desperate relivings of production, the scrabbling for the unsustainable magic of the past.
“Maybe we can just do a little walk today,” Peter is proposing while he massages the palm of Harley’s hand, this tight area Harley didn’t know he had. There’s such a tenderness to the fact that Peter can feel these painful parts of Harley he wasn’t even aware of. “Take Kobol to the little park. Just watch the trees and stuff. People watch. I know that always helps me when I’m dissociating. It brings you back into the present.”
“Yes, please,” Harley says. “I love you so fucking much, do you know? I can never… you’re so perfect.”
“You know that’s not true. You saw me on Tuesday.”
“I always forget about when you’re a mess. It always seems like I’m the mess and that I’m not allowed to be. I don’t know.”
“You know that’s not true either,” Peter tells him. “Be a mess now. We’ve got time. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be better,” says Harley, wetly.
“Whenever.” Peter throws it away. “But I also know it’ll be three days max. You always forget that. I get it. When you’re in something, it’s forever.”
Harley is a lovely limp noodle when Peter’s finished with him. He finds himself thinking of absolutely nothing. It’s a fucking relief.
Peter rolls him up into the covers, crying, “Burrito!” as he goes, and Kobol finds his way towards Harley with that steadfast sad-person radar he has, nuzzling around until Harley pets him. Peter’s smile skateboards right off his face when he looks at Harley just then. A glow in the depths of Harley’s buried heart.
“Sleep?” he asks.
Harley sighs. “Maybe.”
Peter waves his paint-y hands about, dawdling in the doorway now. “I’ll be in the loft.”
“You’re not getting dressed?”
“Figured we could both have a chill day. I remember being a kid and always wanting to wear PJs all the time. Did you get that?”
“Everyone got that.”
“It was this mythical thing. Nowadays, it’s just… a thing.”
Kobol shuffles under the covers with Harley and he chuckles.
He tries to get some sleep, but without much success. But it’s okay. He’s got time to sleep. For now, he thinks. He reminisces.
Then he takes a break. They take Kobol to the park. The leaves are turning brown, falling, becoming indeterminate mush beneath people’s feet. Sad, Harley guesses, but then again, there’ll be plenty more soon.