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Peter has been pretty sure over the years that he was only attracted to girls. He's only ever liked girls; only ever had girlfriends. Just...girls, females, the opposite sex. Girls with their soft skin, their long legs and smooth curves, the swing in their hips when they walked; with their lips and eyes and hands, crop tops and short skirts. Girls are all he's ever been used to.
But then, at Tony’s funeral, he met Harley Keener and despite it being one of the worst days of his life, he can’t stop thinking about the guy. It’s like he’s somehow stuck himself into his brain and is occupying the space that Tony’s left behind in his wake, taunting him with things that a guy like him shouldn't be noticing about a guy like Harley or...any guy, really.
Like how he walks, similar to Tony somehow and yet completely different in his own way, or how he speaks; the things he says and the idiotisms he’d brought with him from the south that Peter’s never heard, but missing somehow despite only interacting with the guy maybe once or twice in his [suddenly renewed] life. He even paid attention to how he thinks, the way he talks about Tony like he’s on some untouchable pedisital and he’ll never get to it.
Peter’s pretty sure he’s only a little in love with Harley Keener.
Pepper, who he’s been helping out for a while since Tony’s passing, stares at him at dinner the next evening, given his eyes keep drifting over to a newly arrived Harley who is talking about his college program, he can’t blame her.
Peter is only slightly weirded out by it as Pepper felt practically like his mom if he didn’t have Aunt May to fill that role and a part of him quakes as Harley turns his attention to him and he gets stuck in his eyes. Why? He isn't quite sure.
"Hey, Pete, you okay..or..?" Harley’s voice calling him ’Pete’ makes him want to scream, but he chokes it down quickly, the tips of his ears turning a little pink. “Fine, I’m fine. Sorry, was eating. Zoned out halfway through, how knew robotics could be so boring?”
“You think you’re more interesting, Pete?” Harley smirks and Peter can’t help but take the challenge. “Well, no, but at least I got a pair of real balls. Yours are made of potatoes so I heard once upon a time.”
It makes Harley laugh at least and he can’t help but smile at the sound before he suddenly thinks that Harley even looks good, hell may be better with a smile and a laugh, which makes the smile fade into embarrassment and horror. Wait, what the hell..?
With a sinking feeling, Peter’s now only mildly sure he’s a little in love with Harley Keener.
"Hey, Pete-" He’s hanging out with Morgan in the backyard of Pepper and Tony’s “farmscape cottagegore thing” he’s taken to calling it when he encounters Harley next.
The guy has the gall, the /gall/ to strut up to him and the girl he’s teaching to play with a spider web, in nothing but jeans and a white singlet that leaves nothing to his still young and working imagination, wearing garden gloves and half dusted in dirt. "You know where Tony kept his tools?"
Peter stutters for a moment, attempting not to embarrass himself in front of the resident five-year-old, before spitting out. “There’s a shed. Somewhere. Might have to look for it.”
“Oh, well, can you help me? The property’s so goddamn big that Tony most likely has the smallest shed known to mankind.” He picks dirt from his arm and Peter resists the urge to get up straight away and manhandle him somehow.
“Sure, looks like we’re going on an adventure Morgana.” He smiles down at Morgan, who laughs before asking Peter to piggyback her straight after.
That smile soon turns into a dreamy shit-eating grin on his face 5 seconds later when Harley offers at first and Morgan turns him down faster than he could swing across New York and clambers onto Pepper’s back expertly when Harley just looks devastated before noticing Peter’s expression and gives him The Finger, Peter having to laugh before catches himself and immediately cools it before following Harley in the assumed direction of where they were going to look for the shed first, Morgan clinging to his shoulders.
Peter’s now only slightly sure he’s a little in love with Harley Keener.
Harley is standing in front of him, no, towering over him as his lips meet his collarbone and shoulder, groaning a string of words and curse into the sweaty skin.
As he comes back up for air, his eyes are heavy and he looks so handsome like this, almost perfect, holding him down somehow while he’s spread out underneath him like a map, able to mark up every inch of him.
He doesn’t know what comes over him, but it’s a stronger feeling than he had with Liz or even MJ, like he wants to be the one sucking markings onto Harley’’s skin, neck and jaw so that no other girl or boy or anyone will come near him again in a flirty or sexual way, because he's Peter Parker’s and Peter Parker’s property only.
"Fuck, Pete-" He hears his partner groan from above him as his hand snakes around its prize and pulls, tugs and Harley’s hips jerk like he’s been touched by a cattle prod.
"C’mon Harls, c’mon, don’t tease m,e, I’m- fuck!- I’m there. Please-"
"Yeah...yeah, okay, I’m coming, I’m coming-" Harley is still muttering obscenities under his breath as he talks back, hands practically tearing open the button on Peter’s jeans, and pulling his them and his underwear down, down, down-
There is no ending sadly, as Peter suddenly shoots up in bed and hits the ceiling with a thankfully soft bang before falling back down to the squeak of his mattress springs, panting like he’d fought a crime 20 minutes aga and dripping in sweat and other fluids as he tried to wrap his brain around what had just transpired.
It didn’t take him long to remember. "Mother...fucker-" He seethes, mostly to himself, one half of him wishing he hadn't woken up yet, the other half thinking of how dumb this is.
Peter’s now marginally sure he’s a little in love with Harley Keener.
It takes a surprisingly small incident to turn the tables in Peter’s favour and honestly, he doesn’t exactly get how it happened himself.
One minute, Peter and Harley are walking, side by side after watching a movie marathon at the local cinema after taking Morgan for ice cream beforehand, the next his arch-nemesis Eugene “Flash” Thompson, who is hanging out with some other students from their high school, has spotted him and is insulting him with jibes and names he’s long used to.
He doesn’t know what happens between offhandedly telling Harley the guy and turning his head, but suddenly, Harley’s no longer beside him and in looking for him, finds the aforementioned slightly older guy practically holding Flash up by the collarbone nose to nose with his slightly taller figure and asking him how much time he wants to stay alive for.
It takes his breath away, the look in Harley’s eyes something he’d never seen before.
He can see that he’s not the only one who notices because Flash’s posse of friends are all nervously hovering, some of the girls who were laughing quiet and pale and a few guys here and there looking ready to take off if needed.
He doesn’t exactly know what Flash says next, given he’s looking at Harley’s face and comparing it more and more to Tony’s, but for some reason, Harley lets him go and puts him back on his feet, turning to go back over to Peter’s side.
However, Flash muttering something under his breath is all it takes for Harley’s foot to turn sharply and his fist to enter the side of Flash’s cheek and eye socket and send him careening to the ground, a dark bruise blooming on his face as his friends try to assist him up from the ground and Harley walks away, shaking out his hand as his knuckles turn a little red from the impact. “Asshole. Anyway, as I said Parker, The Revenant is a fucking masterpiece and superhero or not, I won’t have your East Coast ass slagging it-”
He doesn’t know what comes over him, but he suddenly surges forward and finds himself meeting Harley’s lips before pulling back suddenly. Shit. What the hell has he done?
Harley’s face is shocked and Peter feels like he’s crossed a very large, very terrible line, when Harley suddenly sighs in what seems to be relief at what must be a fucking horrified expression on Peter’s face, stepping towards him before he can move away. "Come back here, you web wasted idiot." He says, and what is, oh my god- Harley’s is kissing him softly on his own volition and Peter is aware of everything, every detail he’s put off until now.
Harley’s hands are around his neck, pulling him in close to his body and the neurons in his brain are suddenly like cheese skippers (which is so, so gross to think about, but true), hopping around excitedly like this is the best day of his life.
He doesn’t care that the whole of fucking New York or at least the Upper East Side is watching them make out in the middle of the street, that Flash and his mob are most likely filming or watching with slack jaws or have hopefully scattered off as Harley’s lips stay on his, but he somehow finds that he doesn’t care.
In fact, he only cares about one thing in this moment.
Peter’s now absolutely sure he’s a little in love with Harley Keener.