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“ You gotta take him to a hospital,” Peter begs, terrified yet strangely emboldened.
“I can’t just--”
“Yes, you can. Take him to a hospital. Please. Take him.”
As Larry approaches, Peter gets the overwhelming urge to back away, but he stays by Tony’s side out of sheer willpower. Larry hooks his hands under Tony’s legs and torso then lifts him bridal-style with a grunt of effort.
“Don’t hurt him.”
Larry looks back at him, stares for a moment or two--Peter’s heart batters against his ribs --before turning and leaving.
Just before the door shuts, he catches a glimpse of grey morning sun, grass, the back of a house--
Click.
And then there’s no-one left.
---
No-one and nothing. Nothing but that vague imprint he imagines on the insides of his eyelids. Sun, grass, house. Sun. He would batter down the heavy metal door for sun.
Nothing but blood on his hands.
He wants to wash it off at the cramped sink they use for everything, but then he would lose every last piece of Tony. A shirt of his is still folded in that dusty corner by the bathtub which is crawling with mould and limescale but where else do you put all your shirts in a twelve-by-twelve-foot space? Peter crouches to take it. His hips fizz with pain as they brush against his pants. Sore from the floor, the back and forth. Larry managed to rip them this time. No spares except Tony’s, beneath the shirts, much too big. He kicks them off.
Old and greying and ragged, he buries his face in the shirt’s lint-frothing tartan.
Oh, God. Tony.
He never thought to wonder how Tony knew the Room was twelve by twelve feet. Now he knows. In a deep part of him that now paces, runs, smacks palms against the wall’s cracked but heavy concrete, it’s clear: he measured. He had that long.
When he was twelve and full of soon-decayed hope about these things, he’d sit on the cold damp floor and crane his arms up to the number pad by the door, tapping in combinations, crossing them off in his head. It would never last long: five wrong codes and it locked for the rest of the day. Plus, Tony was always scolding him away from it, as if the public display of this hope was unacceptable. Painful to him, probably, Peter now realises.
He taps in nine numbers.
He knows it’s wrong. He was good enough at math back in the real world to understand a nine-digit code was too long to guess. It just… it feels like…
Buzz. Wrong.
This is when the taste of it starts to fill his mouth in the way blood pools when you bite your tongue. That door isn’t going to open to Tony any time soon. Maybe never.
Nobody.
Nobody to sing Jim Croce to him until he cracks a smile. Nobody to turn off the lamp at night, guard the shadows. No watch--no time--the air must be thinning, is the vent blocked?--no Tony, no learning to cook, no book swapping, no pretending like twelve feet is two hundred--
Peter can’t. He can’t hold up this place by himself.
He rushes to the vent, gasping. Still, his lungs are a vacuum. Collapsing.
This can’t happen. He rests his forehead against the wall, the unyielding hardness of it. Thumps his head once against it. Checking he hasn’t gained any superpowers.
His thumbs ache for the keypad. Well, what else is there to do?
He’s forgotten now that he’s in his boxers and Tony’s big shirt, that there’s blood on his hands and face and in his hair and the inside of his thighs. Something huge and heavenly must be stirring in his throat, harps and angels. His fingers fly across the pad, detached from his brain, all sinew and soul.
Buzz.
Buzz.
Only two codes left until what is beginning to feel like an abyss you don’t climb back out of. Peter lets himself assume that years-old position, legs crossed, arms outstretched in awkward prayer. But this time, he doesn’t even look. Fixes his gaze on a crack in the wall instead, half-wondering if it’ll burn away on sight.
Buzz.
He jolts up then. One chance left.
One chance? Really? Thinking he has a chance at all is a delusion. When has he ever been lucky? When has chance ever shown itself to Peter Parker?
You’ve lost him, he thinks. He knows. You’ve lost everything.
Peter is cold, he realises. Like Tony took away the warmth.
“Fuck,” he whispers, shuddering. He’s never said it before. It always felt like there was enough badness in the Room that it would make it worse. And Larry says it, says it when he’s with Peter, says it like it’s something delicious.
Something inside him is renting in two.
“Tony.” He gets on his knees and lets the sobs tear out of him. “Tony, I need out. I need, I need you to open the door. I need you…”
And maybe what happens next is simply an improbability. But maybe his plea was heard, even in a tinny trickle through the vent, through the blinking of the keypad, through the harsh concrete. Maybe the universe finally saw a boy who needed its damn help.
Peter’s faltering fingers find the pad. Somehow, he knows not to think. Just do.
Click.
He forgets for a moment that it’s not Larry - it’s him who opened the door.
Light.
There’s light. Just a sliver of it through the barely-ajar metal.
The sun?
Peter puts his knuckles against the door and more light streams in. It strikes across his face. He has to cry out.
This is what midday feels like.
The sun is hot, scalding. It pulses. Peter thought he’d love to feel the sun on his face again, but it burns him. He shuffles away, hangs his head out of the unbearable brightness. He finds he can’t see anything of the Room’s sudden gloom. Nothing is visible. He doesn’t fit anywhere.
Tony needs you.
Peter stands with a heavy hand on the doorknob. It used to be this immutable thing, something that never changed, the same way the Room’s dim light and shadows crept across it in the same dance every day and night. Now the door swings under his unsteady grip and a blade of light has lasered across Tony’s bed.
One foot then another, bare and pale, brings Peter across the threshold.
His feet touch grass. The sun throws itself across the full length of his face and half-knocks him out, sending a woozy rush through his bloodstream. He clutches the outside wall and heaves for a moment, just flounders. The outside wall. He’s on the outside.
Sun might be tortuous, but the grass is wonderful. Gentle as an embrace. Peter’s feet start to take him somewhere. He doesn’t think about his swaying steps, his tremors, or the red-stained boxers and ratty shirt that are all he has on, or even the massacre of blood on him. He can’t possibly think about what it means that he’s in the world now. Won’t think about the shrunken-garment feeling he has as he traverses the outside. There’s an untidy yard around the small box that is the shed, that somehow managed to earn the title of the Room. A gate at the side closest to the house. Peter could go into the house, but he doesn’t. The thought is too terrifying.
A road sign is warm under his hand. He squints with his useless eyes. Most of his vision is a frantic blur, but this close he can read it: Ochre Street.
Some years-old memory lights up. Ochre Street is in his neighbourhood. It’s six blocks from his school.
So close.
The world is mountain-huge yet matchbox-tiny.
On the street stand birch trees in their wrought-iron boxes. They feel insurmountably ornate. Peter starts to hobble along the road. The sidewalk pains his over-sensitive feet. The police station is about fifteen blocks away--at the edge of the town, he remembers--so he guesses he’ll go there.
Coherent thought. This is good.
He’ll go to the desk and say… And say…
He doesn’t know what hospital Tony’s at. Larry might have taken him far away so nobody would recognise them. He doesn’t even know if Larry did take him to a hospital.
Just go to the police station.
A deafening approaching rumble makes Peter crouch down to the ground, expecting some huge machine to trim hairs from the crown of his head. Maybe there’s new technology in 2020. It sounds like someone’s standing behind him with an active chainsaw.
But the noise recedes. A car has driven down the road. Just a car.
Peter starts up walking again, feeling stupid tears prick at his eyes. He doesn’t understand all this stuff that’s happening. He used to know when a car was a car. Now he doesn’t know anything and the sun burns him and yet he’s got goosebumps and the driver doesn’t stop to ask him if, perhaps, he’s a victim of four years of kidnapping inside that shed a few houses back. Did they even see him? Or did they just not care enough?
Then there’s the patter of sneakers. Peter watches a tall man running along the other side of the sidewalk, earbuds in.
He doesn’t spare Peter a glance.
But does he want a glance? From a strange man he doesn’t know?
Whump.
He’s crashed into somebody. An off-white polo shirt and slack jeans. Garlic carried on startled breath. Peter doesn’t dare raise his head.
The man is saying half-sentences: “Oh, what’s… what the hell happened to… is that… hello?”
I’m Peter Parker, Peter had been practicing in his head. I need to find Tony Stark. I just escaped a kidnapping and Tony is still with the kidnapper. His name is Larry Miller. He needs to be arrested. I need to find Tony.
“I’m…” he manages.
“Hey, kid,” the man suddenly says as if talking to a toddler. “What’s happened to you, huh? Where’s that blood from? Where are your parents?”
Peter can’t find the wherewithal to process a single one of his questions. His mouth opens and closes soundlessly. Still, he looks at the ground.
“Should I call the police, kiddo? Can I call anyone for you? Do you think you’re bleeding?”
Peter stands and shivers in a breeze and prays for safety.
The man notices his shivering. He shrugs his windbreaker off his shoulders. Peter cowers away from him before he can think better of it. Please please no. Not again.
Then the instinct kicks in - the instinct that says you flinch, it gets worse. He gets stuck there, half-crouched in fear, half-frozen in self-reprimand, trembling like a coward.
The creak of a door sounds on his left, and footsteps like a rescue or a curse. Another set follows, one that skitters.
The voice that comes is female and Southern. “Fabian. What’s going on here?”
“I think we need to call someone for this kid.”
“I think we do. You found him here?”
“I’m trying to get something out of him but he’s just--shaking. I think he’s terrified, Mavis.”
Peter sees Fabian’s sneakers approach him in his tilted vision and he can do nothing but clench his fists painfully.
“Fabian, could you step away from him?” Mavis says very calmly.
“Why would I need to…?”
“Take a step away from the kid.”
“I didn’t do anything, Mavis.”
Firmer, Mavis says, “Step away.”
And he steps away. Peter could collapse with relief.
“I’ve got this handled, Fabian. Have a nice walk.”
The sneakers recede heavily.
“Wanna come up here?” Mavis calls from her place on the steps. All he can see of her right now is a pair of sturdy boots. Four furry paws beside them. Blowing out a splintered breath, he forces himself to uncurl and finds her--a woman. Just--a woman, standing there in overalls and an old work shirt in tartan like the one of Tony’s Peter is wearing right now. There’s a dog at her side, a Jack Russell. Dogs don’t look the way Peter remembered. Still, his heart leaps to see a dog. He remembers he likes dogs.
And then his gaze lifts to Mavis’ face, and he’s inexplicably blinded by Aunt May.
It’s as if the air of the real world is letting in all that grief he’d packed so desperately away inside the Room.
“You look wiped out,” Mavis tells him in the way you’d point out a stain on somebody’s shirt. “I have a seat out on the porch if you’d like to rest there a while. Was gonna walk Theodore, but he can wait a while.”
Peter struggles up the steps on somebody else’s legs.
Mavis is sat already and pats a space a little way away from her on a bench. “There you go, kid.”
He sinks down. Mavis’ flippancy and the glints of Aunt May in her face and something about the lilt of her accent eases his tongue. “I’m Peter Parker,” he croaks. Off the nod he gets from Mavis, he tries to continue: “I’m looking for… I, I need to… Tony. I need to find Tony. Stark. He’s…”
He can’t stop looking at the blood still drying on his hands. He knuckles his blaring eyes.
“I don’t know where he is,” he admits brokenly.
A sudden wave of blackness threatens to swamp his vision. He thinks he almost passes out. He slumps against the arm of the bench.
“Woah,” Mavis says softly.
Peter swallows. “I don’t feel good.”
“I can tell you don’t. How about I get you some water and something to eat, okay? And when I come back we can talk a little.”
“Okay,” breathes Peter.
Someone must be messing around with time, because there’s this silk-smooth period of haziness and then there’s a glass of water in Peter’s hand that he’s spilling a little onto his boxers because his hand is shaking. He puts it on the table beside him and there’s a sandwich on a plate there.
Mavis has wavered into his vision. A blanket is held between her hands. “I know it’s hot, but I thought you might like this anyway.”
Peter thinks he nods. The fabric is set across his lap. It’s so soft. The world still isn’t making sense with its piercing crystalline sun rays and the rational lines of the street.
Something nudges at his hand and he blinks at a brown shape. Theodore.
Damp tongue licking his face warm and shocking giggling throwing arms around a furry neck playing catch in the park it’s time to go home Peter
He lets Theodore weave around under his hand. He almost doesn’t want to stroke him because of all the dried blood on his hands but it’s like magnetism, he needs to stroke this dog, he needs the calmness of it.
Mavis says something about the dog, chuckles. Peter’s lips lift a little.
“How old are you, kid?”
Cautiously, waveringly, the sun is sinking in the sky. Whispering leaves.
“Sixteen.”
“Only sixteen? You look young.”
“I know.”
Theodore curls up against his hip, warm against the bruising there.
“Think you can tell me anything about what’s happened to you?”
The quiet outside feels satisfyingly loud. Outside, music is always underscoring life. Peter eats a sandwich, nibbling then gulping, and downs the water.
“There’s a shed. Over there. I was there.”
“Okay.”
“Number 99. in the backyard. I was there. For a long time. For--I didn’t want to be. Living there. Stuck there.”
“Stuck?”
“For four years.”
“Stuck for four years?”
“Larry.”
“He kept you stuck? In a shed?”
“Larry Miller. Yeah.”
“Hang on, what’s your name?”
“Peter.”
“Parker? You’re Peter Parker?”
“Yeah.”
“Hold on, honey. You’re doing great. I need to make a call for a minute.”
She takes out a phone that’s long and flat.
“Hi--yes. Reporting--I have Peter Parker. I’ve found him.”
There are cops, but before there are cops there’s Mavis and Theodore on the porch and this infinite-seeming pocket of sunset. This breathing space where he sits and peels the blood off his hands in tiny rivulets, keeping some to keep Tony with him, and scratches between Theodore’s ears, and Mavis hums a tune.
Then there are cops. There are wailing sirens and a flurry of cars screeching towards him and red and blue lights, radios crackling, doors slamming, and all headed for him like arrow points. Men. Five men, six. Uniforms and boots.
“Quiet the hell down,” Mavis says a lot. Still, the men burst onto the porch and crouch down to him and all ask him things at once which of course he can’t answer and he has to bury his head in his knees to escape it.
Through the blanket, he says, “Tony.”
“What’s that, kid? Peter, right?”
“Tony Stark. Tony Stark.”
He doesn’t get to say goodbye to Mavis. At least they don’t touch him when they lead him to the cop car. There’s an ambulance, too, and a paramedic asks him how he is and where the blood came from. He says he’s fine and the blood is Tony’s and he needs to get to Tony and they need to arrest Larry. He says it until his own voice plays in his head as he sits in the backseat of the cop car with the flashing lights all around him now, tires and tarmac whizzing, all the other cars in the road swerving to let them through.
A painful rhythm thunders through Peter’s chest.
Because when has luck ever been on his side?
This is his first car and his first road and all around him are his first real people, not TV people but flesh and bone and three dimensions. Soon it’ll be his first building. All these firsts and he doesn’t care. He just wants Tony. He wants the image in his mind that is Tony to be free from blood and open-eyed and smiling.
Are you going to arrest Larry? He wants to ask but he’s too scared. The cops driving him are women because he didn’t want to get in a car with any of the men but they’re still terrifying. What do you do with real people? They could do anything.
HOSPITAL, says a sign. The hospital. They’re there. Tony. Tony Tony Tony.
The door bends like chewing gum under Peter’s hands, corded all at once with need. He sprints through the doors bent low like a sprinter or a madman.
The glass doors. The white lights whining, receding, whining beneath his head, again receding. People people people bashing into him or he’s bashing into them. Someone on a bed. Tony? Not Tony.
“Third floor,” a voice calls from behind him. “Fourth on the left.”
He takes the stairs, not the lift, feet hovering, never once feeling them connect to something so mundane as floor. Breath hurling itself from his throat. Get to Tony. Run. Sprint.
There’s the door, fourth on the left. The door. Tony. Footsteps behind him--cops.
Door bangs against the wall. Peter’s in the room.
Tony’s in the room.
Eyes shut but there’s a monitor beeping. Concrete proof that his heart beats on. Peter staggers to his bed and falls against it. Grabs his hand.
“Tony,” he breathes.
And Tony’s eyes slide open.
“Kid,” Tony croaks.
Peter falls into his arms and never parts from them again.
The moment the story is out of Peter’s head and into the air of the counselling office, it turns saccharine and silly. Even the snake plant on Simone’s desk turns up its leaves, he swears.
“Do you feel good that you’ve shared that dream version of events?” Simone asks him, all level-headed like she always is, and Peter feels twelve, not twenty-six.
“No,” he says. “It feels stupid.”
“We all dream about how events might have turned out if things were different. It’s a common thing. The problem is when you begin to believe you might have achieved that different outcome if you had acted differently.”
“It does feel like… if it had been like that, it would have been better. For me and Tony. I would have taken care of myself.”
“Peter, I’ll remind you that you were sixteen and under an incredible amount of duress. You’re allowed to let other people take care of you. Particularly that sixteen-year-old version of yourself. Do you feel that the young version of yourself in your head doesn’t deserve a rescue?”
“No. I don’t know. It’s just a scene in my head. I don’t know.”
“I think it holds a lot more significance under the surface. I’d like to keep exploring it, if you’re willing to.”
“Okay. Psychoanalyze me, I guess.”
Simone arches a brow at him.
“Yes,” Peter amends. He can’t help but grin a little.
“Let’s see if we can alter this dream scenario. This alternate ending. Where is Larry in this version of events?”
“Just… I didn’t want to put him in. I just didn’t think about him.”
“The police didn’t have any concrete evidence against him yet. What if he was still with Tony?”
Door bangs against the wall. Peter’s in the room.
Tony’s in the room.
Larry’s in the room.
He’s in his old lumberjack coat and he’s sitting at Tony’s bedside like he’s a family member. Tony’s eyes are shut but his monitor is beeping.
Larry gets up, surprised, and when his eyes find Peter they narrow into points.
Peter stops short, breath stoppered.
Larry isn’t moving either.
Peter thinks he’s about to scream. Something to tell the cops this is a bad man. But Larry moves before he can. Larry steps towards him and Peter can’t think anymore.
Larry hugs him.
“Oh, thank God. You’re safe. I was so worried, Pete.”
Peter stiffens in his grip. Cedarwood scent. Too close too close.
But he can’t speak. He can’t get out. Even in the real world, he can’t disobey.
Yes he can yes he can--
“Anna,” he whispers, just barely, to the cop looking askance at them both. He pleads to her with his eyes.
Larry doesn’t see the glance they share, but he hears Peter.
And he tightens his grip like a vice.
Peter tips to the floor and Larry’s weight is over him and it’s the floor of the Room all over again. This time, in the real world, it’s a million times worse. It’s tainting the clean of the outside. It’s sullying a new chance at purity, however false.
“Bitch,” Larry spits in his ear. “Whore. Fuck everything up.” Hands circling his throat, tightening. Peter flails his hands and they land uselessly against Larry’s chest.
“Put your hands up!” hollers a cop. But Larry doesn’t stop.
“Get away from the kid right now! Put your fucking hands up!”
Peter’s vision is pulsating. Larry’s breath is hot on his face. He chokes.
Then, air. Relief. Hands scrabble at his T-shirt but the two cops have wrestled Larry away from him. He slumps on the floor and coughs and coughs.
“You’ll fucking get it, kiddo!” Larry screams. He might as well be against Peter’s ear still. The words strike him. “I’m gonna tear you apart. You both. You both. I’m in your head, right? You’re never gonna get me out of your mind.”
He’s pulled out of the doorway and suddenly there’s quiet.
“Peter?”
Quiet and croaked.
Peter scrambles up. This is the last leg of his race.
“Tony.”
He crashes against the hospital bed and there is Tony. His eyes are half-lidded. His eyes.
“Kid,” Tony breathes.
Peter crumbles into his dad. He sobs. He lets go. Tony’s hand lifts and settles on his back.
“So Larry proves his guilt by assaulting you.”
“Yeah.”
“So your first option to prove his guilt in your mind is having him harm you.”
Peter sighs. “Yeah.”
“Okay, we can work on that. I’m interested in a few other things, too. The Southern woman with the dog. The fact that, even in this idealistic scenario, you can’t find the words to talk to the people you need to communicate with. And your overriding instinct to reunite with Tony, the strength of your parent-to-child bond.”
“You think they mean things?”
“Well, the woman being Southern feels very specific, right? And having a dog? Sounds a lot like your husband and your dog, doesn’t it?”
Peter’s tongue catches his teeth.
“Huh,” he says. “It does.”
“This woman and this dog, they’re the only characters in your scenario you can really communicate with and feel calmed by. Although even with them, it takes time before you can say what you need to say. Do you feel that there’s anything you need to say to Harley?”
Peter searches. He wanders through a corridor in his mind and finds a kid at the end of it. Blurry, almost formless. All he knows is that they need his help.
“And the single mindedness about finding Tony, being with him. I’m sure you felt that when you were reunited with him in the real version of that moment, but do you think there’s any depth to the connection you have in the dream scenario?”
They turn these questions over until they’re worn smooth and Peter’s honestly still not sure what the hell his head has made up for him.
But he knows he has something he wants to talk to Harley about.
---
The covers lift over Harley as he flops into bed at Peter’s right, sending a gust of cold air running across Peter. He pouts, suctions himself to Harley’s warmth. Without a word, Harley threads his legs between Peter’s, warming Peter’s feet. Perfect man.
Peter buries his face into the back of Harley’s neck.
“D’y wnn h’v a k’d?” he garbles into Harley’s toasty skin.
Harley snorts.
“What?” he mumbles, shuffling round so they’re face-to-face. Twenty seconds in bed and he’s already got a bedhead. Of course.
Peter combs away the hair from Harley’s eyes with his fingers. “How do you feel… about kids?”
“Annoying. Gross. They can be weird and cute, I like those ones. But others are total dicks.”
Through a chuckle, Peter says, “I reckon we could find a weird and cute one.”
“For what? You don’t want me to make a kid’s movie, do you?”
“I want us to have one.”
“A…?”
“A kid, Harley.”
He watches Harley’s Adam’s apple surge upwards.
“Why would you want a kid?” Harley says with alarm.
“Do you hate them that much? You were a kid once.”
“They’re so gross, Peter. I wasn’t lying. They lick walls.”
“You cannot tell me that you haven’t licked a wall in the last year. I can--no, yeah, I can literally directly recall you licking a wall.”
“I didn’t lick a wall.”
“You were so high, I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”
Harley arches an eyebrow. “Is this gaslighting? Why do you want me to have licked a wall?”
“We would be fucking amazing parents,” Peter says, prodding at him. “We would!”
Harley just ploughs right past him with, “And expensive, they need all this shit like clothes they just grow out of and instrument lessons they quit after a year--”
Peter crawls on top of him, the twisted-up sheets between them, and talks at his rambling face. “Why do you hate kids?”
“--and you take ‘em to football and they just go, no, Dad, I want to do ballet, and when you take them to ballet they say I just want to play video games and if we got a baby it would cry all the time--”
“Why are you deflecting why are you deflecting why are you deflecting--”
Harley jerks out from under Peter. “Jesus, stop!” He palms his face. Peter tries and fails to find his eyes. “I don’t… want a kid. I don’t want one. Okay?”
“I just want a reason,” Peter says, reaching for his forearm, to hold him, to level with him.
Harley’s eyes stay glued to the popcorn ceiling, but he lays a hand over Peter’s.And it’s enough to connect the dots.
“OhhhhmyGod,” Peter blurts. “Shit, I’m the biggest fool.”
Quietly, Harley says, “‘S okay.”
“No. No. That was so insensitive and I didn’t think… about your family and your dad…”
“Shut up, Pete,” Harley says to him, rolling to face him. “Okay? I’m not--let me talk about it.”
Peter finds the jut of his collarbone where it rises from the neckline of his pyjama shirt. He thumbs it, finger-paints the crest of it. He stays quiet.
“All I want… my biggest thing, in life, it’s to be better than him. Different from him. It, having a kid, that feels like--toeing a line. Too close. I couldn’t bear it if I ended up being like him.”
There’s a too-bright shine in Harley’s side-turned eyes.
“Do you remember,” Peter says eventually, “Harls, you remember last Christmas with Pepper’s family? With Pepper’s niece’s daughter. You two hanging out, it was so sweet. You were, what were you playing?”
“Uh…” Harley smothers a grin. Hushed in the dusk, he says, “I was Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon and she was Princess Jasmine, if I remember it right.”
“Oh my God, it was the coolest thing, with you running around giving her a ride, and Harley, it was perfect. I know--this isn’t coercion, you know, it’s not me going we have to have a kid because of this one nice moment, it’s just me saying that was a moment. And you both looked happy.”
Harley smiles, draws a breath from his nose. “I was happy.”
“Well, there you go. You were.”
“Not gonna lie, Pete, this sounds a teeny bit like coercion.”
“No. It’s a gentle prompt, is all.”
“Blackmail.”
“Don’t guilt me. You’d be the coolest dad.”
“I would, wouldn’t I?” Harley says, brightening. Then he wriggles in sudden excitement. “Dibs on introducing her to Star Wars.”
“Will it be a girl?”
“Oh. I don’t know,” Harley says, and he’s adorable. “Maybe?”
“I like a girl.” Peter nods.
Harley licks his lips. “Maybe, like, eight or nine,” he says very seriously.
Peter grins. “Oh, you’re sold.”
“I was hypothesizing.”
“I got you so good.”
But Harley sobers again.
“Hey, Peter?”
Peter watches him. Smiles. “Hey, Harley.”
“Do you think… with our mental health. Would they let us have a kid?”
A little pang goes off in Peter’s chest, like that potential kid catapulted a pebble between his ribs.
“They’ll let us,” he says eventually.
“Is it right, though?”
“Well, the kid will likely have gone through trauma too, right?” He’s convincing himself now. “We can all be messed up together. We can all be vulnerable little shits.”
“Vulnerable little shits,” Harley cackles, rolling over Peter and smothering himself in his chest. Peter koala-s his arms and legs around him to capture him right there. Splayed and bony and the same but different--somehow new every night.
“You could dress her up like Princess Leia,” Peter breathes into the crown of his head.
A warm exhalation against his chest. “Or Darth Maul.”
“You’re not dressing our kid up as Darth Maul.”
Harley grinds up towards him along the mattress, meets Peter’s lips in a kiss. “Am I not?” he says. “Am I?” Another kiss, lingering, the type of kiss that demands more. Who is Peter to deny him that?
Okay, he’s already hard. Shut up.
He reciprocates eagerly, sliding a hand beneath Harley’s t-shirt. “We’re having a kid,” he says, amused with himself now. “We’re expecting.”
“What?” huffs Harley.
Peter pats Harley’s belly. “Congratulations.”
Harley’s laugh splits their next kiss apart. He falls down beside Peter, lets Peter climb on top, nose-to-nose, chest-to-chest, feet-to-feet. In the lamplight, Peter swears Harley glows. He gathers up Harley’s shirt so his pasty torso shines in the sliver of moonlight from the half-opened curtains, hunches over that spot at the base of his stomach where a faint scattering of dirty blond hair trails beneath his navel, and kisses him there, messily, hungrily. Harley’s nails are on his scalp, scratching deliciously.
At the centre of Harley’s ribs, inches from his rumbling heart, Peter says, “So you’ll think about it?”
Harley’s head isn’t tilted back against the pillow as Peter expects but tucked into his chest, his eyes steady on Peter.
“Definitely.”
He tugs Peter up and pulls him free from his pants. His touch. It’s thrilling.