Archive of Our Own

“What do you mean you don’t have it?” Harley asked the girl behind the counter, his left eye twitching in the way it did whenever he got upset or stressed, his voice low and urgent. “I saw it in here not even two weeks ago.”

The girl shifted on her feet, his behavior probably making her uncomfortable. He internally winced—it wasn’t his intention to make anyone uncomfortable, but he needed this damn book.

“I’m sorry,” the girl started hesitantly, as if she was scared of what Harley’s reaction would be. “It must’ve gotten checked out sometime between then and now.”

“There were three copies,” he stressed, leaning forward. “Are you telling me that all three copies got checked out?” The girl shrugged, a helpless note to both the movement and her expression, and Harley’s shoulders slumped with a groan. “You’ve got be to fuckin’–” He cut himself off, remembering his manners and suddenly realizing that if he didn’t leave right the fuck now, the tears of frustration burning at the back of his eyes would spill over. He refused to let that happen. “Thanks,” he told the girl, his voice a little curter than either of them would’ve liked, and pushed away from the counter without another word.

As he pushed his way out of the campus library, running a hand through his hair, he muttered a few curses to himself and wondered why this was happening to him.

Harley liked to think that he was a good enough person. He tried to be one, at the very least. He kept his head down, and always did his best to do what was right, so he just... He didn’t know why the universe had decided to burst into his plans and blow them up now. Of all the fucking times in the world for this to happen, of all the times in the school year, it had to happen now. Great.

Honestly, he’d be more disappointed if there was a reason, now that he was thinking about it. There being a reason meant that he’d done something—it happening because ‘things like this just happened sometimes’ meant he could blame his woes on some higher power that he had no affect on or control over. Which still sucked, but such was life.

He needed a book. He’d seen the book, the very specific book he needed in the campus library, two weeks ago, just like he’d told the girl at the checkout area. He hadn’t checked it out because he hadn’t remembered he would need it for a very important, very big, and very heavily graded project in his mechanical engineering class. It wasn’t like the professor hadn’t told them that there’d be a big project in the middle of the semester, it wasn’t like he’d looked at the very specific book they needed, thought “Hey, that’s the book I need for the project coming up next month”, and still decided not to get it, or at least reserve it to keep tabs on it.

Because God forbid Harley be smart about anything, right?

“Stupid,” he muttered to himself, the fingers on his right hand tapping out a random pattern against his leg. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

He came to a stop outside the doors of Gwen’s dorm building, waiting for a guy in the door to walk through before he hurried into the building and raced up the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator. There was mounting pressure in his chest, one that whirled and raged and felt like it was threatening to tear him apart from the inside. Harley took deep breaths, willing it to go away, and fought against the shame rising up his throat, hot and thick and heavy, as tears once again pricked at his eyes.

He was just so done. With this whole situation, yeah, but also just done in general.

As he practically sprinted down the hallway to Gwen’s dorm and made his way around the few other people walking, his mind raced with thoughts of how he probably wouldn’t be able to afford the hardcover copy of the book but could probably find a PDF version online somewhere, even though it would be less useful. God, this entire thing was just so fucked up and also entirely Harley’s own damn fault.

He knocked on Gwen’s door, vibrating in place with barely restrained tension and hoping Gwen wouldn’t be mad at him for coming over. He wasn’t supposed to be at her dorm until later—after Gwen’s girlfriend had left, because they were spending the day together and Harley wasn’t allowed to interrupt—and Gwen’s roommate, a nice girl named Betty, had agreed to stay away for the day, too, to give Gwen with some privacy—and it caused something deep inside his chest to painfully clench in on itself because here Harley was, yet again bothering someone for selfish reasons that didn’t even matter, that weren’t all that important.

As he bounced on the balls of his feet with the amount of nervous energy he was currently keeping restrained by sheer force of will, the door opened, and Gwen’s face stared back at him. Her blonde hair was mussed, sitting in a messy bun on the top of her head, and a strap of the tank top she was wearing was hanging down past her shoulder; she seemed surprised to see Harley standing on the other side of the door, which she had every right to be considering Harley wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Harley?” she asked dubiously, squinting at him, her voice thick with sleep. “What’re you…” She trailed off, probably seeing the mess of emotions on his face, and her expression changed into one of sympathy and understanding and Harley hated that he was going to her like she could miraculously solve all his problems, hated that he relied on her as much as he did and fucking messed up her day because he couldn’t deal with his issues on his own. Gwen made a soft sound and opened her door wider. “Come on.”

Harley didn’t cry, thankfully, but his eyes did tear up once Gwen asked him what was wrong, against his better wishes. Because the problem always got bigger once somebody asked. It was like he internalized all of it, all his feelings, he stewed in them and let them fester, and as soon as somebody asked him if he was okay it all exploded in one giant mess of emotion. Which sucked. And was very embarrassing.

He figured it was okay, though, considering who he was with.

Gwen Stacy had been his best friend since his senior year of high school, two years ago. They’d met on an online forum for a really weird topic that had interested Harley at the time—he couldn’t exactly remember now, much preferring to block out most of his senior year experience, but he was pretty sure it had something to do with space—and immediately clicked. Most of the conversations and interactions were directly through the forum, on a couple of different conversation boards and then into the private messaging function, but Gwen had given Harley an email, most likely a fake one, considering that was what Harley had done, and they’d continued to talk from there.

They grew closer, sharing names and birthdays and real email addresses, and then eventually faces and homes and people close to them (and phone numbers, thankfully), and now they were as thick as thieves. Best friends.

Harley wouldn’t have it any other way, even if he acted like he couldn’t care less.

Originally, the plan had just been to keep talking from different parts of the country, Harley in Tennessee and Gwen in New York, but then Harley had gotten into one of the colleges Gwen had been accepted into, and things had just... fallen into place. Harley was going to the same college as his best friend, and it was great for a lot of different reasons. Currently, the most important one was that he could go to Gwen’s dorm and on the edge of a breakdown and be comforted in person, with hugs and touch, instead of just through a screen. Like now.

“Have you tried looking online for it?” Gwen asked him softly, threading a hand through his long, curly blond hair and staring down at his head, which was resting on one of her legs. Her eyes roved over his face, most likely searching for the metaphorical chinks in his emotional armor so she could help him patch them up. “A scanned version of it or something?”

“Not yet,” Harley answered, just as softly as she’d spoken. He didn’t know why Gwen was keeping her voice down, but he was talking low because he didn’t want Gwen’s girlfriend—Mikayla, or Millie, or whatever it was—overhearing. Based on what Gwen had told him about her, the unnamed girlfriend (and it really fucking sucked that Harley couldn’t remember her name because her and Gwen had been dating for almost three months now, but he was drawing a huge blank, and it wasn’t like he and Gwen’s girlfriend even interacted all that much to begin with) didn’t seem like the type of person to do that, but Harley didn’t know her personally, and he didn’t know her enough to be able to make an assessment of his own. Gwen was biased, anyway, considering she was dating the girl. “I’ll do it when I get to my apartment. I just.” He blew hair out of his mouth, brow crinkling as he stared up at the ceiling, the back of his neck practically molded to the top of Gwen’s thigh in a position that was extremely familiar, as they’d been in it multiple times before. “Everything always has to be so hard.” His voice cracked on the last word, but he didn’t have any time to dwell on it—it was as if opening his mouth had allowed the tangle of emotions sitting in his chest the opportunity to swell and surge upwards like they were trying to claw their way out of his throat. “Everything was hard when I was kid, and they’re hard now, and. I just wish it wasn’t. I just want something to be easy, you know?”

Harley knew he was being a bit of a child, blowing things out of proportion and making it seem to be a lot more of an issue than it both was and needed to be. He felt like such a piece of shit for complaining to Gwen, and for complaining in the first place, but he just... He just needed this. He needed to get all of this shit out of his system so he could move on and be rational about things and not let his emotions get in the way.

On her part, Gwen’s expression was soft as she stared down at him and nodded her head slightly. “I know.” She kept moving her hand through Harley’s hair, waiting until he took a deep breath and sat himself up and then stood up, to speak again. “Look, I’ll see if I can find the book for you, maybe from Amazon.” She took a step forward and wrapped her arms around him in a hug. Because Harley was a good four or so inches taller than her, he had to slump over uncomfortably for her to get her arms around him, so that wasn’t fun, but Gwen gave wonderful hugs that Harley loved being on the receiving end of, so he didn’t really mind it. “Don’t worry, okay?” she said, somehow sounding both soft and firm at the same time. “Your feelings are perfectly valid, even if you think you’re just overreacting.”

The thing was, as nice as that sounded, Harley knew it wasn’t really true.

“Alright.” He took a deep breath, wanting to physically grab the comfort she was offering him and hold it close to his chest to keep the tightness away. Forcing himself to release the hold he had on her, he said, “’M gonna go get some coffee, head back to my apartment.” He’d also probably stop by the gym, use physical exertion as a way to not deal with– this entire thing. His coping mechanisms were perfectly healthy, alright, and he wasn’t going to be questioning it.

Gwen nodded. “And take a nap.” Harley made a face. “For at least an hour and a half,” she added sternly, a fierce spark in her eyes. Harley knew Gwen well enough to know that spark meant she wasn’t going to take anyone’s—but definitely not his—bullshit, and that arguing against her would be pointless. He had half a mind to just agree and then not sleep, but that would also be pointless, and it’d be a huge mistake, too—Gwen always knew when he was lying, and she’d probably kill him for lying and not sleeping. And, as much as Harley was done with just about everything, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to go out that way.

“Fine,” he sighed, rolling his eyes a little despite the way warmth pulsed through his chest and calmed the pounding of his heart. “I’ll try.”

“Good enough.” Gwen leaned in to press a kiss to his cheek. “Call me later?”

Harley nodded his agreement and was out the door less than three minutes later. He might have rushed out a little quicker than he usually would have because Gwen’s girlfriend had started talking to Gwen through the bedroom door and it sounded like things were getting... a bit frisky, to put it lightly. Harley, obviously, did not want to be present for that.

He also didn’t leave without an additional couple of threats from Gwen. It was an important thing to note that he wasn’t scared of Gwen, he just... respected her a decent amount. That was what it was—respect. Nothing more.

Shaking his head, he made his way back down the hallway of the building. The feeling in his chest—the one that had felt like it was capable of consuming him without a second thought, the one that had seemed to grow a permanent place just behind his chest and under his throat, almost fighting for space with his heart—hadn’t disappeared, hadn’t even shrunk in size, but it had lessened a bit. All of his feelings and worries and fears were still there, but they seemed less powerful at the moment, thanks to Gwen.

And, even though he appreciated it so much, and was so fucking happy that he had Gwen in his life, he wasn’t sure how long he’d be feeling that way.

~*~

Crowds were not Harley’s thing. They hadn’t ever been, really. He didn’t like amusement parks, or museums, or any other place that was intended to house daily crowds. An abundance of people made his skin crawl, made his palms sweat, made his insides churn—he wouldn’t, ever, willingly put himself in situations where crowds were a big thing. It just didn’t happen. He didn’t like it.

It couldn’t be helped, though, not in high school and certainly not on a college campus, so he always did his best to power through it. He still didn’t enter large crowds willingly, not if he could avoid it, but he also didn’t– go out of his way to avoid it. Sometimes the quickest way to something was through a thick mass of a bunch of strangers and there was no other way around it. And, sure, sometimes the most comfortable way to something was better than the quickest, but... The entire thing was situational, okay, and Harley dealt with it as it happened.

The campus that Harley attended had three small cafés. There was probably more, honestly, but those were the ones that Harley knew about from his limited explorations. There was one smack in the center of campus that was well-known both for its proximity to the dorms and its quality of coffee and snacks, one that was closer to the academic buildings that was less well-known but still popular and widely used, and one that was at the edges of campus with some other shops that didn’t get much student traffic.

While the first two were good in their own rights, Harley much preferred to go to the third one. It was usually empty and quiet and slow-moving, and it helped soothe his frayed nerves on days where he felt he might burst out of his skin in a flurry of anxiety. Plus, they sold coffee cake muffins that were, in Harley’s opinion, the best ones he’d ever had. Another good thing about this particular café was that Harley had been there enough times to be considered a regular by most of the staff.

The entire staff consisted of the manager, who never came in; Lilah, a girl who usually worked the front counter; Jack, Lilah’s boyfriend and also the guy who did most of the baking in the kitchens; and Heath, who basically did a bit of everything, from helping Lilah at the counter, to helping Jack with the baking, to bringing orders to customers at their tables when things got busier than normal.

According to Lilah, regulars got special treatment. As far as Harley could tell, Lilah, Heath, and Jack—not the manager, Freddie, he seemed to have a bit of a problem with Harley—didn’t treat him differently enough to count as blatant favoritism. It was just little things. A cup of coffee on the house or covered by one of them, muffins fresh out of the oven, friendly conversation that made Harley feel like he had more friends than he did.

Harley couldn’t figure out where unprovoked rudeness factored into that whole thing when the first words out of Lilah’s mouth when he walked through the doors were, “You dick.”

Harley just rolled his eyes, more than used to it. Lilah had a small penchant for affectionate name-calling—and cursing—and while that had knocked him off-kilter at first, he was more than used to it now. “Yes, hi, hello,” he answered pleasantly, the tension in his shoulders flooding out at the relative emptiness of the café and the underlying warmth in Lilah’s voice. “It’s nice to see you too.”

Lilah sighed impatiently and rolled her shoulders, tilting her head from side to side a little and causing her red-haired ponytail to bob. She moved a lot, almost constantly, even if it was just the tapping of her fingers. Harley probably found it more endearing than he should have. “Hi,” she huffed out in response, “welcome back, Jack went to go get your stuff. Now.” She gave him a glare as he approached the counter, tilting her head back to stare up at him (she was so short and she hated it and Harley loved it). “You fucking dick.”

“You’re lucky this place is empty,” he told her, gesturing around to the tables and chairs—only two of which were occupied by people—with one hand as he leaned down to rest his other elbow on the counter between them, wanting to make himself closer to her height so she didn’t strain her neck. “It’s supposed to be a family-friendly establishment.”

She snorted, waving him away with one hand and pushing buttons on the cash register with the other. She wasn’t even looking at him, most likely already punching in Harley’s order—which wouldn’t be too much out of the realm of possibility, considering Harley ordered the same thing every time he came here—and it felt nice to know that she knew him well enough “You didn’t come in yesterday, we were worried.”

“Y’all were just upset that I didn’t come by to give away my money like I usually do,” Harley countered, something deep in his chest settling more and more every second he stood there and interacted with another human being. It was nice, even if the thought of doing it with an actual stranger, someone he’d never interacted with before, put him on edge.

Despite how he was sinking into the normalcy of the whole thing, into the feeling that Lilah and Jack and Heath and even the café itself sent directly into his muscles to force him to relax from the inside, he knew that he’d said something wrong. He knew because Lilah’s eyebrows had furrowed, almost angrily, like something bothered her. Like Harley had said something wrong.

“We were worried about you,” she insisted. “Because you promised you’d step in and then you didn’t, you ass.”

Harley wrinkled his eyebrows considering the chances that Lilah and everyone else had genuinely missed him and were worried, as opposed to what he thought was the truth.

Harley... wasn’t special. He wasn’t particularly funny, or smart, or responsible (no matter how much he tried), or even all that attractive, really. So, there really was no reason for anybody, especially those as epically awesome as Lilah and Jack and Heath were, to, like. Like him. At all. He was just plain old Harley, a struggling adult who couldn’t even make it a week without experiencing some kind of emotional problem or distress. Who would want to be friends with that?

“Nah,” he decided eventually. “It was definitely ‘cause of the money.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Lilah countered hotly, her cheeks beginning to flush as red as her fiery hair. She narrowed her eyes, making it so Harley could only just barely see her green irises. “I swear to God, Harley, I’m going to leap over this counter and beat my love into your thick skull if that’s what it takes to get you to understand what I’m trying to say.”

Jack swooped in from behind her, a coffee cake muffin and a cardboard coffee cup in his hands, and landed a kiss to her cheek, his black hair contrasting against the red of Lilah’s. “Let’s tone down the threats of violence, love, we’ve talked about this” he told her in a fond voice. He looked up to Harley, jerking his head to the side to force his black hair from over his forehead and out of his eyes. “We missed you here yesterday, Keener, what’s with that?”

“I dunno.” Harley shrugged. “I meant to, but things happened.” Meaning he’d actually meant to stop by, but had buried himself in the coursework he’d accidentally let pile up and had to pull what had ended up being extremely close to an all-nighter to get it all done. So, you know. Normal things. No biggie.

“Fucking hell, Harley,” Lilah said, a scowl on her face as she moved to cross her arms. “You’re lucky Heath’s a weirdo who likes cold coffee, because he had to drink yours yesterday.”

“It’s not my fault that y’all make coffee for me before I get here,” Harley defended, shifting to stand up straight. “Which is crazy, by the way, just wanted to say.”

Jack crowded against Lilah’s back, wrapping his arms around her so he could reach forward and uncross her arms. “We like you too much to make you wait. Plus,” he added at Harley’s shake of his head and an amused snort, comfortably resting his chin in the space between Lilah’s neck and shoulder. “You’re cool and you deserve it.”

Harley let out another snort. “Sure.” He put a ten-dollar bill on the counter, which was more than enough to cover the cost of what he’d gotten, and grabbed his cup of coffee and muffin. After shooting a quick look behind him, to make sure there wasn’t anybody waiting in line behind him, he shifted his weight to one leg and asked, “Where’s Heath?”

“Sick,” Lilah offered up helpfully. Harley could see the way she was putting all of her weight on Jack, trusting him to hold her up, and he was surprised at the amount and intensity of jealousy that ran through him. It wasn’t at the thought of Jack and Lilah together, of course not—it was directed more at the thought of what they had. They loved each other. They trusted each other, and took care of each other, and knew each other, and... Harley wanted that. It sounded both extremely appealing and fucking terrifying. “He was actually planning on coming in and I had to threaten to physically hurt them.”

“Which was very mean,” Jack butted in.

“I’m not getting sick because they have poor personal hygiene,” Lilah said with a sniff, though there was the beginnings of a smile playing at her mouth, the corner of her mouth twitching up. “It’s bad enough I have to share an apartment with the guy, I’m not letting him take away from the amount of money I get.” She shook her head. “That’s not the point.” She pulled away from Jack and jabbed a finger in Harley’s direction. “If you’re not here on time tomorrow I will personally find your mystery apartment and put your coffee and muffin down your throat.”

“Wow,” Harley laughed, choking on it a little, hearing Jack give a huff of laughter from where he stood behind his girlfriend. “Can’t believe I ever thought you were nice.”

“Alright, well now I’m doing all of that regardless of whether you show up tomorrow because you’re an asshole and you deserve to be hurt.”

Harley shrugged. “So I’ve been told. I got somethin’ to do, so I gotta go now. But,” Harley added at Lilah’s outraged squawk, barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes, “I’ll be back tomorrow. And I might even stay for a while.”

Lilah huffed, sending a strand of hair that had fallen into her face flying to the side and out of the way. “Fine. Come here.” Harley leaned forward again, but not as much as before, considering he was holding a cup of relatively hot coffee and didn’t want to spill it, and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. Lilah put a hand on the top of his hair and ruffled it, no doubt giving it a wild, just-got-out-of-bed look. He hated how his hair turned out when Lilah did that, but he liked the fact that Lilah wanted to do it, and the physical contact felt nice too, even if he’d never admit it.

“I don’t know why you do that,” he grumbled as he straightened back up, touching the knuckles of the hand holding his coffee to Jack’s outstretched fist. “It’s always a pain to fix.”

“Maybe if you weren’t a giant,” she sassed, twisting her face up obnoxiously, “I’d do something else.”

“Maybe if you weren’t so short, you mean,” Harley said back in the same tone of voice, taking extreme delight in her scowl. He started backing up towards the door. “I’ll see y’all tomorrow. Tell Heath I said hi.”

“Bye, Harley,” Jack called out, pressing a last kiss to Lilah’s cheek, edging close to the corner of her mouth, before he turned around and made his way through the back door leading to the kitchen.

Lilah, after closing her eyes and sighing at Jack’s kiss, gave Harley a stern look, setting her shoulders back and standing up straight. “Tomorrow. Two o’clock. Don’t be late.”

Harley rolled his eyes. “I won’t be. Bye.”

“Bye.” She drew the word out, elongating it with a grin on her face, and Harley rolled his eyes as he turned, wanting to make sure he didn’t accidentally run into anyone.

He cursed internally not even a second after he turned around, because he ran smack into someone else, their bodies crashing together. Surprisingly, he didn’t drop the things he’d bought—the impact, though catching him off-guard, wasn’t hard enough to cause him to drop his stuff. He sincerely doubted he would have cared if he had dropped anything, though, because he would’ve been too concerned with the boy that was currently staring back at him with the most beautiful brown eyes he’d ever seen and brown hair that tumbled down over his forehead, just barely brushing his eyebrows, and the cutest nose and–

Harley felt like something in his throat had closed up, and he cursed himself as he realized that he was at a loss for words because he thought the guy was cute, which was– embarrassing. It was all kinds of embarrassing. Was Harley really so much of a social mess that he could barely talk to people he found attractive, even fleetingly? (Nevermind the fact that Harley couldn’t even talk to people in general. That wasn’t important.)

And, God, it had already been too long of a silence, hadn’t it? It was weird now, which meant that the boy thought that Harley was weird, which wasn’t exactly the best thing in the world. A cough coming from behind him, where Lilah was probably still standing and watching and internally making fun of him, jarred Harley into action, and he choked out an awkward sounding, “Sorry,” and took a step back, belatedly realizing that he was all up in this person’s personal space. “My fault.”

The boy blinked at his words once, and then twice, before finally shaking his head. A grin grew on his face, one that seemed almost sheepish. “What, no, no, that’s on me, my bad.” Even his voice was pretty, what the fuck. His smile, almost unbelievably, widened a little, and Harley had to fight off the urge to swoon, or say something about it. “Glad you didn’t drop your stuff.”

Okay, well, fuck, it looked like Harley was attracted to cute, innocent-looking boys with beautiful smiles and friendly eyes, how about that.

Suddenly remembering that the guy had spoken and that, yes, he did have stuff in his hands, Harley tried to act like a normal person in any other situation similar to this one would. That manifested by him looking, stupidly, down at his cup of coffee and muffin and saying, “Oh. Oh, no, yeah, me too. Great.” What. A. Failure.

Was that even close to the right thing to say? He looked back up to see the boy still staring at him, his expression having changed to one of bemusement. And Harley may have panicked. Just a little. And when Harley was panicking, he turned into a bit of an ass. Like, a small one. A mini asshole. It was like his default setting—the one he reverted back to when he was nervous or under any sort of pressure—was to shut down and retreat into himself, which, more often than not, resulted in him coming off as a rude piece of shit. Because why shouldn’t that happen? Why shouldn’t Harley be a disaster who couldn’t talk to people without getting stuck inside his head and making a hundred mistakes? That totally made all sorts of sense.

“Just…” he started, the line of his shoulders tightening and tension flooded his muscles. But then he stopped. He didn’t know what he’d been about to say anyway, but he knew that it probably wouldn’t have been good. Like, at all. In the end, he finished his sentence by saying, “Sorry.”

And then he was walking, ignoring the sound of Lilah’s snicker-cackle coming from behind him, past the cute guy standing in front of him. He was out the door a few seconds later, pushing it open and getting hit clear in the face with a gust of cold, early December air, and determinedly not looking behind him to see what was happening inside the café. Harley may have been weak, but he wasn’t that weak. Usually.

He really was hopeless, wasn’t he?

~*~

Harley let out a garbled noise of frustration as he fought against the urge to hit his old laptop, choosing to, a little aggressively, close it instead. (He couldn’t be too rough with it—the thing was on its last legs and could, at any moment, choose to give out on him and Harley most definitely could not afford a replacement, and he also definitely didn’t want to be stuck using one of the computers on the campus library. No thank you.)

After his nap—which had only been for less than an hour, but it was something, so Gwen couldn’t kill him for it—he started on a frantic online search for the book he needed.

The specific book he needed was sold on the official school library website for two hundred and fifty dollars. Harley didn’t have that kind of money just laying around—he was a struggling college student who could barely afford the apartment he was renting, after all. He’d lucked into a cheaper price, because the landlady was, apparently, the godmother of one of his former classmates back in Tennessee, a classmate that had liked him well enough to remember him when his godmother had brought Harley up in a conversation, and a classmate who had also, apparently, liked him well enough to vouch for him.

Whoever said not making close friends in high school would only hurt you later in life was a fucking liar, okay, and Harley would be standing by that for the rest of his life. If he survived college, that was.

The point was, the book cost two hundred and fifty dollars, which Harley didn’t have—he’d checked, there was seventeen dollars and twenty-four cents in his back account, which was so fucking– Harley couldn’t even look at it for more than a minute at a time—so he couldn’t get the book directly from the school like most other people probably had, which meant he’d had to turn to less mainstream sources.

Those less mainstream sources had all flopped, too. The book was on Amazon—too expensive—and various other bookstores—also too expensive—and had countless reviews on GoodReads which wasn’t at all helpful. There weren’t any PDF versions, at least not any that Harley had been able to find, either, which sucked so much, and Harley was just about ready to let loose and have a good cry.

He wouldn’t, because he wasn’t a crier. He’d never been a crier, and he definitely wasn’t going to turn into one now, but... but the feeling. The– burning behind his eyes, the tension at the bridge of his nose, the lump in his throat—it wouldn’t go away.

He also wouldn’t be asking for help, which, in hindsight, wasn’t all that surprising. Not to him, anyway. Gwen would probably be willing to buy the book for him, but she also wasn’t doing so well money-wise. She was doing better than Harley was, that was for damn sure, but she still didn’t have a ton of extra money that she could just throw around any time she wanted. And Harley didn’t have many other friends he could ask for help. He didn’t have many other friends period, which sucked, but was also a corner he’d backed himself into. Harley—the introverted, socially awkward person that he was—was the source of all his problems, was the sole reason behind many of them, and, as a result, had no one to blame for it but himself.

He was well aware that he had other options, maybe a lot of them, even. He was well aware that there was something else he could try, something he hadn’t thought of. Because there always was, wasn’t there? But, the fact of the matter was that Harley had no clue what that something was, and he probably wouldn’t know until it was either too late to do anything about it or after he’d already found some other way to make things work. That was usually how it went: Harley, in a puddle of stress, overlooked some very important, and maybe very obvious, solution, and didn’t realize it until the situation was already over and had been handled.

Hindsight sure was a pain in Harley’s ass.

Another explosive sigh left him and he put his laptop on the floor, sliding it under his bed—was that safe? Could he even put the laptop on the floor and be able to not worry about it being damaged—before throwing himself back onto his bed, bringing a pillow up to press against his face. He had half a mind to scream into it, let out some of the tension—both physical and emotional—taking up residence in his entire body, but he relented at the last second.

This was shit, and school was shit, and things in general were, objectively speaking, of course, shit, and– Oh, look, the negative ball of emotion that had been gone for in his chest had decided that this would be a perfect time to return with a vengeance, which was so great. Harley loved the world, really, he did.

The next day was not fun, not that Harley had any high expectations for it to go well.

Harley didn’t have any classes, so he spent most of his day moping around with Gwen—who, like he’d thought, also couldn’t find a way to get the book without spending money she didn’t have—and he felt sort of bad for shortening the amount of time Gwen could spend with her girlfriend—and just generally feeling sorry for himself. Okay, not feeling sorry—he was angry. He was so, so angry at himself for somehow letting this happen, for being in his second year of college and still not thinking to start saving for the book at the beginning of the term, which he’d determined, in hindsight, was a thing he should have done. It was common sense! Preparing ahead for a course was School 101. It was practically one of the easiest things to do, and yet there Harley was, failing miserably at it.

So, all in all, he’d come to the conclusion that he was an idiot who was destined to do terribly on the project and ultimately drop his grade in the class. And it wasn’t like it would matter in the long run—Harley worked hard to make sure all his grades were extremely close to the perfect grade level, so getting a less than stellar grade on a project, even on one as big as this one was, wouldn’t substantially drop his grade. He supposed it was just the principle of the thing.

The project itself wasn’t going to be that hard to do. He knew it was simple, knew that he could just find another book and be done with it, but. Something in him was refusing to let it go. It felt like he’d sit there and wither away if his project didn’t include information from this one book, the one book he couldn’t find. And he didn’t know how to stop feeling that way.

Harley stepped into the café at two-twelve. He’d never gotten there any later than five past two, not since his first week going—it seemed like the whole ‘not being able to get the book’ situation was messing with him more than he thought if he was showing up more than ten minutes later than the time he usually did. Punctuality was one of the many names of the game, in Harley’s opinion; the other was consistency. Harley liked to stick with going to places he was comfortable with, and he liked to show up to those places at around the same time. It made something in his brain feel all tingly. He liked it.

Point was, by his standards, Harley was late. He’d been late yesterday, and he was late today, and it bothered him. Put him on edge. His brain still went all tingly, but it was a bad, staticky tingle, as opposed to the light and fuzzy tingle he got from being on time, even if the deadlines imposed were his own.

Whatever—he’d just ignore it.

Even if his... friends(?) probably wouldn’t.

Lilah, who was standing at the counter facing the door, immediately snapped her head up to see who it was as soon as the bell attached to the door rang. A glare was on her face before he had even taken two steps into the café.

“You’re late,” she called out as he moved closer.

He shrugged, forcing a grin on his face. It felt wrong to him, too tight at the corners of his mouth, or like paper-maché—he’d applied it on his face, but it hadn’t been correctly and now it was lumpy and torn and ill-fitting and– wrong. Lilah didn’t seem to notice the difference, though, so he powered on. “Sorry,” he told her. “I got caught up in somethin’, my bad.”

Lilah made a sound, one that Harley couldn’t decipher the meaning of before she turned around and called for Jack. Jack’s head popped out, hanging out of the back doors leading to the small kitchen, not even a second later, his face breaking out into a smile as he saw Harley. “Keener, what’s up?” He pushed the door open and walked to where Lilah and Harley were standing. “You’re a bit late there, but it’s alright ’cause at least you made it!”

Warmth flooded Harley’s chest and his lips curled up slightly, less forced than his previous smile had been, when Jack gave him a sort of sarcastic salute before turning away to go back into the kitchens. “This is why you’re my favorite,” he called after him, his lips curling up even more at the way Jack lifted a hand to wave over his shoulder. A punch—a hard one—landed on his arm, and he took a step back from the counter and stared accusingly at Lilah, holding his arm all the while. “Hey! What was that for?”

Lilah glared back, hands on her hips. “Why is he your favorite? I’m obviously the better choice.”

“He doesn’t cause me physical harm, for one,” Harley answered, scowling at her, releasing his hold on his arm. “And he’s not fuckin’ insane, either.”

“Honestly,” Lilah told him, like he hadn’t even said anything. She procured a dish towel, probably from under the counter, and threw it at him. He wrinkled his nose as he balled it up and threw it back, because it was damp, which was– no. “You’d think we weren’t friends, you piece of–”

“Okay,” Jack said, cutting Lilah off and making Harley jerk in surprise—he hadn’t even noticed him walk back to the counter, or even walk out of the kitchen in the first place. “It’s obvious I can’t leave you two alone, can I?”

“She started it,” Harley defended, motioning towards Lilah.

“I did not!”

“Children, the both of you,” Jack sniffed, keeping up his facade of disdain for a few seconds before melting back into his usual demeanor. “Guess I’m lucky Heath isn’t here, otherwise this,” He motioned back and forth between the two of them, “would be a hell of a lot worse than it already is.”

Lilah scoffed. “That’s because Heath’s an ass.”

“Lilah.”

“What? It’s not like I’m lying.”

Harley shook his head in amusement. “Can I get my order, please? I wanna go sit down before I lose the feeling in my legs.”

“Oh, you mean the order you never placed?” Lilah snarked back, making a face.

It probably wasn’t said out of a place of malice—there was a good chance that Lilah was just joking. She’d said it in that vaguely mean way of hers that made it difficult to decipher whether or not she actually was joking, though, which didn’t do a lot of good for Harley. His heart began to pound with the knowledge that he’d most likely fucked up. He hadn’t meant to assume anything, it wasn’t his intention, he just thought... They always had it ready, was the thing, and it seemed like he’d gotten used to it when he wasn’t supposed to.

Jack must have seen the mix of panic and dread on Harley’s face, because he softly nudged Lilah out from in front of Harley, seamlessly taking her place, and towards the direction of the kitchen. “Go get his muffin.”

“What?” she demanded. “Why do I ha–” She stopped talking at the meaningful look Jack shot her, Harley watching on in confusion. “Oh,” she said softly, shooting a quick and almost regretful glance at Harley before she spun on her heel and walked away without another word, shoulders sitting a small amount lower than they usually did.

“Listen,” Jack began, leaning to place his forearms on the counter between him and Harley. “You do know we have no problem doing this for you, right?” Harley blinked. “We do it because we like you, and because we want to. No other reason. Not because we think we have to, or anything else you must think every time you come in here.”

“I don’t–”

Jack shot him a look, one that was scarily like the ones Lilah was so fond of giving him, and Harley did the smart thing and stopped talking. “Harley,” Jack said on a sigh, dropping the look and replacing it with a softer one. “We like you. We’re friends. Friends do nice things for their friends and then pretend that it’s an inconvenience.” His eyebrows furrow. “Or. Lilah does that. She’s not good at being nice to people she cares about, it’s a whole thing, really–” He shook his head. “Not the point. The point is, we’re always going to have your coffee ready for you. We’re always going to start a batch of muffins at a certain time so they’ll be warm when you get here. And we, but mostly Lilah, are going to complain about doing it, because of a lot of different reasons, but we’re not going to just stop. Not without good reason. Got it?”

Harley nodded, his throat tight and his heart beating uncomfortably fast in his chest. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah, shit, okay. It’s y’all’s fault I’m gonna have to hit the gym soon, but. Yeah, I got it.”

“Good,” Jack nodded. A grin grew on his face. “But maybe you should cut down on the muffins every day, you’re starting to look a little heavy.”

Harley’s mouth dropped open, his mind scrambling at the switch from an apparently serious conversation back to their usual levels of teasing and bullshittery. He wasn’t questioning it, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to go back to the serious conversation, so he did his best to run with it instead. “Is that your way of sayin’ I’m getting fat?” he asked. “‘Cause that sure is an underhanded way of going about it.”

Jack shrugged his shoulders, straightening so he was no longer leaning against the counter and moving to press buttons on the register. “To-go?” he offered, and Harley shook his head.

“Nah, I’m gonna stay here so I don’t lose my head at my apartment.” As he spoke he pulled out his wallet, reaching for a ten he had. He handed it to Jack, who took it with a smile. “And I think Lilah would kill me if I left.”

“You’re damn right she would,” Lilah said, approaching the counter with a cardboard cup of coffee in one hand and the usual, delicious coffee cake muffin in the other. Harley’s stomach immediately started rumbling—he hadn’t eaten anything since the day before, the result of being both very broke and extremely stressed out. “My break is at three,” she told Harley, “so just stick around ‘til, like, three-thirty and I promise I won’t take offense.”

He wanted to argue—business at the shop usually began to pick up at around three—not a lot, but enough that there was a noticeable difference in the number of people that showed up at the time Harley usually showed up—but he hadn’t stuck around in a while, and he figured that staying would give him some time to catch up with Lilah, and give him the opportunity to talk to someone other than Gwen.

Gwen, along with most everyone Harley had ever been extremely close to, always said that Harley was too antisocial for his own good, so he did make an effort sometimes—he really needed to catch up and talk more in-depth with Lilah and her life anyway. And, sure, maybe it didn’t count as much if he was socializing with someone he knew and not a random person or someone who he wasn’t as comfortable around, but Harley knew his limits and, on most days, willingly interacting with someone he didn’t know, on a whim, without any prior planning, was pushing them.

“Sure.” Harley took his things from her. “I’m sittin’ over there,” he said, motioning towards a booth in the back of the café, the spot where he usually sat whenever he stayed for a while. Nobody really went to the back, preferring to stay near the front for some reason, so it allowed Harley some reprieve from feeling like there were eyes on him. There was probably something wrong with him.

Lilah rolled her eyes, shooing him away. “Yeah, I know, Harley, you always sit there.”

“I like being consistent,” Harley defended, resisting the urge to gesture wildly with his arms because that was sure to end in disaster. “There’s nothin’ wrong with that.” The only thing Lilah did was hum, and Jack was pointedly staring down at the counter he was wiping much harder than necessary, his shoulders seeming to shake with suppressed laughter. Harley huffed. “Y’all are weird. And mean. I’m leaving now, try not to, I dunno, spontaneously combust or burst into flames like the demons you are.”

The only thing he got in response as he turned and walked towards the back of the café was a cackle from Lilah and an amused, “Later, Keener,” from Jack. Bastards, the both of them.

~*~

The coffee shop was packed.

Harley didn’t like it.

A loud laugh sounded from the front of the coffee shop, across the room from where Harley was, and he scowled down at his half-empty coffee cup. The remaining amount of coffee in the cup was probably cold by now, but Harley had spent the last half-hour shifting restlessly in his booth and trying to hold out until three. He really wanted to just leave and go back to his empty apartment—he did have a project to be working on, after all—but he also wanted to stay and take the opportunity to talk with Lilah.

She didn’t look like she’d be up for much talking on her break, though. As far as Harley could tell, the uncommon influx of people had taken her off guard, too, and she seemed to be flustered as she took orders and collected money and told Jack what drinks to make and retrieved sodas or pastries and made change and did at least five other things simultaneously. Jack, on his part, was doing his best to calm Lilah down, but when Lilah got stressed out—which was so rare that Harley couldn’t even believe it was happening now—it usually took a lot more than the occasional elbow brush or kiss to do that.

Sitting there with people milling about and creating a low hum of noises that was usually missing from the café, the mess of emotion in Harley’s chest—the one that he’d succeeded in keeping pressed forcefully down and hidden away from the world and himself for a short, almost blissful period of time—decided that it’d be a good time to make a comeback. And a comeback it was.

Harley shifted again and let out a sigh before leaning to the side to dig his phone from his pocket.

did something happen to the coffee shop

He took a second to think about the text he’d just sent to Gwen, realizing it didn’t really make sense on its own. Harley did that—start up conversations with no prior context—a lot, and it was something he’d been working on fixing.

He typed out, the one by ur dorm, and sent it, figuring it would have to do.

babe, Gwen texted back.
yeah
a fire started and completely gutted out the kitchen
they closed it down to rebuild and shit

Harley blinked down at his phone screen.

srsly

ya

two people are in the hospital, one with major burns
did u really not know?

can’t say i did, no

they
they put it in the campus newspaper thing
that’s a thing

oh my god
harley
ofc it’s a thing it’s BEEN a thing for over like 3 decades now
it was in the presentation at the freshman orientation thing

oh
ngl i think i fell asleep during that

youre hopeless stop talking to me

Harley did as she asked.

Putting his phone face down on the table in front of him, he looked around. Because he was in a booth all the way at the back, he had a view of the rest of the café. People were laughing with their friends—in line at the counter, in booths or tables around the room, even standing in the middle of the open floor space. Like himself, the other two regulars who usually frequented the shop at this time, when it was normally quiet and empty, looked to be extremely out of sorts. One of them, Willow, caught his eye as she hastily shoved her books back into her bag, probably on her way to leave and study somewhere quieter.

He and Willow hadn’t ever spoken, not directly. Lilah, ever the outgoing individual that she was, had drawn them together a few times, doing her best to initiate a conversation. Harley, though, was the most awkward person ever—and Willow may have been, too; who knew, it wasn’t like Harley knew her well—so he was pretty sure that it never, like, worked. Or was even anywhere close to having worked.

People were complicated, and Harley didn’t tend to focus on his relationships with them all too much.

Harley would have been better off if he’d copied her and left to go back to his quiet apartment, but he was a sucker for his friends, even his maybe-friends like Lilah, so he knew he’d end up staying. If he was being honest with himself, he really should have been doing the same as Willow; he didn’t do well with being surrounded by a large group of people or being in loud places, and right now the coffee shop was full of a large number of people, making his normally safe and quiet space louder than he was used to.

And, again, he still had a project to be working on. He’d spent a good three or four hours complaining in his head about it and moping around, and now he was lacking the motivation to work on it, even for a little bit—more importantly, he had an opportunity to bail and actually go work on it, and he wasn’t taking it. How very nice of him, right?

Willow looked up at him then, pausing in her actions as their eyes met. Harley, not knowing what else to do and epically floundering, ended up giving her a one-shoulder shrug, one that she returned before looking back down and continuing to pack her things up.

There was still a good half-hour left until three, but Harley figured that it wouldn’t be a huge problem to stick around. A problem, definitely, but not a huge one. Staying in the café would probably make him uncomfortable and cause him to retreat into solitude for at least two days to recover from the amount of social stress he was being put under—and all he was doing was sitting alone in a café—but he decided that staying would make Lilah happy, and Harley was all about making other people happy.

His eyes shifted around the room for a while before settling on the empty booth in front of him so he could look out the window (his own booth didn’t have one). The sky looked grey and gloomy ad downright miserable; he wasn’t sure how much of that was because of the incoming bad weather—Harley hated storms—and how much of it was just regular New York. He usually didn’t watch the morning forecast so he didn’t know if it was supposed to rain today or not He figured that, with the storm on the way—which he only know about because Gwen had told him—there had to be at least some bad weather approaching soon, but whether or not it approached today or not, right at this moment, was undetermined. Or, it had been undetermined; it was like thinking about the weather had caused it to show its hand, because suddenly, out of nowhere, it was raining.

No, not raining—it was pouring.

Groans rang out around the room, and Harley turned his head just in time to catch about a fifth of the people inside the café running out. He assumed they didn’t want to be caught in the rain here, having to wait for it to stop before they could leave. Harley understood that—he would have preferred to be safely in his apartment at that moment, curled up in bed and trying to take a nap, or even working on his project.

Everybody else, though, the ones who hadn’t rushed out—which really wasn’t a lot of people—seemed to accept it and started to settle into the booths and tables around the room, which... was fine. Yeah. So very totally fine.

The booth in front of Harley got filled by a– boisterous group of friends. They laughed and joked and shouted and shoved each other as they slid into place, and Harley shifted again, barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes. His eyes once again went to the window, though now it was sort of blocked by all the movement, and he took a sip of his coffee. Cold, like he’d thought. He considered letting it sit until he got up to leave, so he could throw it away on his way out, but he figured that it’d be rude of him—and a waste of money—if he did, so he braced himself and took another sip. A barely-repressed shudder worked its way through him, but he was willing to deal with it. He’d already eaten his coffee cake and didn’t feel like being on his phone, and he sure as hell didn’t plan on interacting with anyone else anytime soon, so the coffee and staring out the window would be some of the only ways to keep himself occupied until Lilah’s break arrived. (Even if it was seeming more and more likely that she’d be putting it off to keep working.)

Movement to his left caught his attention, and Harley turned his head, putting his coffee back down on the table, to see a boy standing there. He had a lopsided grin on his face, a black, generic-brand backpack slung over one shoulder, and brown hair messy—not artfully messy, or anything, it was actually messy, like he’d forgotten to comb it and had settled for running his fingers through it to try and make it at least somewhat presentable.

But this boy wasn’t just any boy. This boy was the boy, the one from yesterday, the one Harley had run into on his way out. God.

“Hi,” the boy said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other and back again. Harley could barely hear his soft voice over the noise coming from the people around them. “I’m sorry, but it’s kind of crowded in here and that’s,” He motioned towards the window, most likely talking about the rain (of course he was talking about the rain, what else would he be talking about, God, Keener, seriously), “happening, and, again, so sorry, but I was wondering if you would mind if I sat with you?” Harley felt his eyebrows draw together in confusion, and maybe a little distress because what the fuck. “Not if it’ll make you uncomfortable, though,” the boy rushed to add, holding a hand out. “I just want somewhere to sit until the rain clears up, and then I’ll be gone.”

See, the thing was, Harley really didn’t want to let another person sit with him. He preferred being alone, and he wasn’t sure he was up for any kind of social interaction, even one as basic as sharing a booth with another person, even when he could make it through it without even talking to said person. But Macy had raised him to be polite to strangers—and everybody, really—so he didn’t want to refuse, either.

Was he even allowed to refuse? Or was there some unspoken social rule that said if someone wanted to sit with you and there weren’t any other available seats and they were generally polite about it, you had to let them? Had he missed that lesson, along with so many others, of life?

Harley held in the sigh that wanted to escape him. Better to be safe than sorry, right? And Harley figured this could act as an apology, of sorts, for running into him the other day, too. (And maybe the boy was kind of cute. Objectively speaking.)

“Yeah, go ahead,” he told the boy, reaching a hand up to brush his hair away from his forehead. He could hear the reluctance in his voice, and he found himself hoping that the boy wouldn’t be able to identify it—Harley might not have actually wanted the boy to sit with him, but that didn’t mean he had to let the boy know that.

The boy relaxed; Harley hadn’t even noticed he was tense. “Thank you.” He slid into the seat opposite Harley, putting his bag next to him and holding a hand out. “I’m sorry for, like, springing this on you, out of nowhere and everything, I’m sure you wanted to sit alone, or maybe you were meeting someone–” He cut himself off, eyes widening. “You’re not waiting for anyone, right, ‘cause I can go, it’s not a problem.”

Harley blinked. That... was a lot of words. “Nah, I’m not meeting anyone, I’m just sitting.” He grabbed his cup of coffee and raised it up a little. “And drinking coffee.”

Now that he was thinking about it, he remembered that he technically was meeting someone—the only reason he was still here was because he was waiting for Lilah to have her break so they could talk. But that wasn’t for another half-hour, and Harley figured that the rain should stop long before that, so he was sure it’d be fine.

The boy’s face went back to its previous expression: Happy and relieved. “Cool, cool, that’s good. Sorry if it seems like I’m getting all up in your business or whatever, I just wasn’t sure and didn’t want to be a nuisance or anything, but I guess it’s fine, right?” He didn’t wait for Harley to respond. Not that Harley was going to respond, considering his brain was still stuck at the beginning of the sentence. Or. Sentences, considering there were multiple. “Anyway, I’m just gonna be working on some stuff for my biochem class, ’cause I’m a bit behind on some things– Oh! I’m Peter, by the way.” He stuck a hand out. It was for Harley to shake, but Harley didn’t exactly catch that—or remember that handshakes were a thing people did when meeting another person—until it was too late and Peter’s face was falling and he was pulling his hand back. “Sorry, or we could just sit here, my bad, you’re probably really busy I don’t know why I, a complete and total stranger, just came in here imposing and talking your ears off, I’m sor–”

“Harley,” Harley interrupted, cutting Peter off. Peter tilted his head, looking confused. “My name’s Harley.”

The confusion went away, replaced by an impish grin. “Harley as in Davidson?”

Harley sighed, shaking his head and pushing down the smile that threatened to show itself on his face. The motorcycle jokes were something Harley had experienced for a good portion of his life, so he was used to it by now, but it still irked him. Only minorly. Or not at all, when it came to cute, smiling boys who looked extremely pleased of themselves.

“No,” he said, shaking his head again.

“Doesn’t matter,” Peter replied with a small shrug, grin still remaining in place. “It’s still cool.”

Harley shook his head again. They fell into silence, an extremely awkward one. In any other situation like this one, Harley normally would’ve been content to let the silence stew until the other person got too uncomfortable and left, but something in his head wasn’t letting him do that. His brain scrambled to pick up the last thread of conversation that they’d been on. “Biochem.” Nice, that was a totally normal thing to say. Not at all random. Yay.

He was hopeless.

Peter, though, seemed to know what Harley was talking about, because he perked up, another easy grin growing on his face. “Yeah.” He reached over to the space next to him, picking up his bag and beginning to take things out of it. “I’m taking biochemistry, thinking about majoring in it, even though I’m, like, really into photography, I guess, but that’s not–” He shook himself as he pulled out a textbook, like he was making the effort to stick to his first train of thought and not lose it, and Harley struggled to not laugh in amusement, not sure how Peter would take it. “I’m– busy most days, so I don’t get a lot of time to do, like, course work and stuff?” He took out a binder, along with a pack of colorful pens. Harley relaxed a bit, letting his back rest against the back of the booth. It was still hard to hear Peter over the noise of the other people, but Harley could manage. There was something really relaxing about letting Peter do all the talking. It was kind of obvious that Peter wasn’t expecting him to respond, and it took a bit of the pressure off of Harley. “It’s really stressful,” Peter continued, “but I put myself in that position so I can’t really complain, you know?” Harley nodded—he’d been put in the situation of being stressed out for not doing something when he was literally the one who hadn’t done it. “I swore I put it in here,” Peter muttered to himself, digging around in his bag. He let out an explosive sigh and pulled out a huge stack of books, unceremoniously placing them on the table.

Harley’s eyes quickly scanned the book titles, none of them registering at first. But as he turned his eyes back to Peter, who was still muttering to himself and rifling around in his bag, an alarm went off in his brain. His eyes snapped back to the stack of books, immediately going to one near the bottom. It was the book. It was the book, the one he’d been looking for, the one he’d been stressing out over. The book.

“Is that yours?” Harley asked abruptly, wincing once he realized that he’d cut off Peter’s ramble without entirely meaning to.

Peter didn’t seem to be offended. “What?” Harley motioned towards the stack of books between them, trying to make it look like his heart wasn’t pounding in his chest and practically singing with relief. Peter turned the stack of books towards him. He read off the title of the book at the top of the stack. “‘Principles of Biochemistry?’”

“No,” Harley said, shaking his head. “The one below it.”

Peter pulled the book—the book—out of the stack, looking down at the title and then turning it so it faced Harley. “This one?”

“Yeah. It’s yours?”

“Uh, technically?” Peter didn’t seem to be so sure of that, but he had an expression on his face that was a mix of fond and happy as he looked down at the book. “It was a gift from Mr. S– Tony. My friend,” he clarified, looking back up at Harley. “I had a project I was working on, and he had this book laying around and he gave it to me to help me out.”

Harley nodded, showing he was listening and that he understood. “Cool.”

“I guess.” Peter shrugged. “I read it sometimes, when I’m bored, but I don’t really use it ‘cause I don’t need it.” An exasperated kind of smile grew on his face. “I tried to give it back, once I was done with it, but Tony, same friend, said that he didn’t want it either so I might as well keep it.”

This was crazy. This was– insane. Here was a boy, a very cute one who also happened to be extremely nice, who had the exact book that Harley was looking for. It was almost too good to be true. It technically was too good to be true, considering Harley still had a find a way to actually ask Peter about borrowing the book for two weeks. Harley was a stranger—Peter had no reason to take Harley’s word about anything he said. Peter shouldn’t take Harley’s word about anything. While not all strangers had the intent to do harm, you never knew until you either grew closer to them or they turned out to actually have the intent to do harm, and Peter had to be safe about things.

Still. Harley needed the book.

Worst case scenario was that Peter refused, the rest of this sitting at the booth-sharing thing got extremely awkward, and Harley was going to leave just as stressed as he’d been when he’d come in. And Harley was more than willing to risk that, if the result of not asking was never knowing if Peter would have let him borrow the book or not.

Harley sighed, straightening up and resting his elbows on the table, nudging his cup of coffee slightly out the way. “I need that book,” he said with no preamble, immediately cursing himself in his head. He’d meant to start in slowly, ease his way into asking instead of just jumping right in, but sometimes his brain did things without Harley’s prior consent and approval. He was working on it. “Okay, wait,” he rushed out. “Let’s backtrack.” He let out a harsh sigh, reaching up again to brush his hair out of his face. “I’m taking a class. Mechanical engineering. Right?” This was going to be a disaster. “And there’s this huge project coming up, and I needed this very specific book. It’s kinda been stressin’ me out and I– That’s not important.” He tapped a finger against the table, feeling very uncomfortable with the way Peter was just staring back at him. “That’s the book I need.”

Harley was a miserable excuse of a human being.

“Um,” Peter said. “I– okay? Did you... want... the book?”

“No.” Harley shook his head. “I mean, yeah.” He let out a frustrated huff. “I don’t wanna take the book, if it’s somethin’ a friend gave you. I just wanna borrow it.” Peter’s eyebrows furrowed. “I’d give it back, you can ask those two,” He motioned towards the counter, where Jack and Lilah were still trying to fill orders, “and they’ll put in a good word, if you don’t trust me.” He was losing him, Harley could see that. Peter was slowly leaning back, like he was trying to put some distance between the two of them, and desperation shot through him. “Look. I’m not tryna– We can meet here every day. I’m usually here at two in the afternoon, we can meet, I’ll bring the book so you can see I still have it and haven’t lost it, and when I’m done with it I’ll give it right back. I’ll pay for coffee and food and anythingelse, even the actual book itself, I just. Please.”

Peter’s mouth opened and closed a few times, and Harley felt himself start to sag, eyes lowering defeatedly to his hands, with the knowledge that Peter was probably going to say no. Which was the smart thing to do, of course, Harley knew that, he did.

“Okay.”

Harley’s eyes snapped back up. “I... what?”

“Okay,” Peter repeated. “I’ll let you borrow it. I still want to talk to... your friends?” Harley nodded. “Yeah, I still wanna talk to your friends, just to make sure, but. Yeah. Okay.”

If he’d been standing, Harley probably would have fallen over, either from the shock that Peter had actually said yes or from the relief that Peter had actually said yes, oh my God. He was sitting down, though, and Peter was still studying him, eyes roving over his face, so he settled for saying, “Thank you, so much, seriously.”

He lost his breath, just a little bit, at the smile that Peter gave him in response.

~*~

Harley walked back to his apartment with his head high and his shoulders relaxed in a way they hadn’t been for the past two days. Or, okay, the past week, really. Month? Who knew, at this point. Harley could barely remember the last time he’d felt this high and light and carefree, and he was going to cherish it for as long as he could.

After Peter had talked to Lilah and Jack—which was an event full of shameless digs at Harley while still managing to reassure Peter that he wasn’t up to anything nefarious—he’d given Harley the book. Harley could see that it had taken a lot of effort, and trust, on Peter’s part, like a part of him still didn’t trust Harley or his friends, which he was well within his rights to believe, but it couldn’t have been too big of a mistrust, if Harley was walking home with the book now.

In all honesty, finishing the project wouldn’t take him that long. If he did things right, which he hopefully would, he could finish the project in less than a week and not fall behind in any of his other classes. That just went to show that Harley had no business being as upset as he was about not having had the book earlier, but it couldn’t be helped or changed now.

He took quick stock of his surroundings, wanting to make sure that he wouldn’t accidentally run into anyone—he wouldn’t—and then pulled out his phone.

found the book, he typed out, sending the message to Gwen.

really? how?

made a new friend
he let me borrow it

Harley figured, for many, very obvious reasons, that saying he made a friend was better than him saying he met some random guy and convinced him to let him borrow the book. Because that sounded creepy. Hell, it was creepy. And, okay, maybe him saying he and Peter were friends was a bit of a stretch, but it was the only thing that Harley was willing to admit to, even if it wasn’t true.

you. you made a friend?
a FRIEND?
like,, an actual human being
YOU??

fuck you

im kidding
good for you!!
i knew you’d be capable of social interaction lmao

i have no idea how we’re friends

it’s bc i can put up with your prickly butt
and you love me don’t lie
but hey are u still at the café???

im not prickly
<3
no im not, just left

damn
lilah owes me 20 bucks

why
do i even wanna know

probably not haha
i’ll text her
it’s nothing bad dw

anytime you say that it’s something i have to worry about

;)

Harley sighed, shoving his phone back in his pocket. Gwen would be a huge factor in the death of him, he was sure of that.

~*~

He was late. He was so late.

He hadn’t meant to be late, was the thing. He’d meant to leave for the café fifteen minutes early, to ensure that he wouldn’t be late, but that, obviously, hadn’t happened. He’d been working on his project since he’d gotten back to his apartment after getting the book from Peter. The rest of his day had been spent with him handwriting things out on a separate piece of paper instead of highlighting things straight from the book like he’d wanted to—the book wasn’t his, he wasn’t going to make things easier on himself if it meant ruining someone else’s property—and planning out what he’d be putting into his project and how he’d present the information and other things. Harley had stopped at around three in the morning to sleep for the rest of the day, but it was pointless; he’d woken up not even three hours later to jump back into it.

At one-forty-two in the afternoon, Harley had noticed the time and told himself he would leave in ten minutes to ensure that he wasn’t late. He’d even set an alarm on his phone! But then he went back to writing things out and figuring out what he was going to do for his project, and suddenly it was two-twenty-one and his phone was vibrating with a text from Lilah asking where he was. Harley didn’t even remember the alarm going off at first, but it had, he’d checked, and then he remembered seeing and hearing it go off and dismissing it without a second thought because he, like an idiot, hadn’t labelled the alarm and had ended up forgetting what it was for.

It was his own fault, like most things, and he was mentally beating himself up for it as he sprinted down the sidewalk leading to the café. He wanted to say that Peter wouldn’t have left yet, but the truth was he didn’t know if Peter would’ve left or not because he and Peter didn’t know each other like that.

The thought that he might’ve convinced Peter that he was abusing the trust he’d been given was an absolutely terrifying one, and the primary reason why Harley was going as fast as he was.

The café came into view, and Harley sighed with relief as best he could while running. He slowed down once he was close enough, heart racing and chest moving faster than it usually did at a resting heartbeat. He exercised as much as he could—meaning he went for jogs or to the gym when he had the time—or whenever he was stressed enough—but that wasn’t often. And he’d started booking it to the café as soon as he was on solid ground, and had been running as fast as he could with a book in his hand and his phone and wallet in the pockets of his sweatpants. All that meant that while he wasn’t going to pass out from exhaustion or anything else like that, he was going to be breathing a bit heavily and drinking some water wouldn’t hurt him.

He did his best to calm himself down outside of the doors of the café, taking a few deep breaths and hoping they went towards his effort of relaxing, and then pulled the door open. Immediately, his eyes scanned the surrounding area, ignoring the feeling of Lilah’s eyes boring into him, and he focused in on all the people taking up the booths around the edge of the building and the tables in the middle of the floor. There were still more people there than usual, but not as many as there were yesterday.

Harley didn’t let himself focus on it all that much, instead making a beeline for the counter where Lilah was glaring at him, taking off his beanie as he did. He felt like he had to be doing something very wrong friendship-wise if Lilah glared at him every time he showed up.

“You’re late,” she said, placing her palms on the counter between them and leaning forward a little. “But, then again, when are you not late, honestly.”

“Lilah,” Harley sighed impatiently, “This is only the second day in a while I’ve been late, calm down.”

She let out an indignant noise. “Yeah, okay, it’s only been two days, but then two days turns into three days, and that turns into a week, and then that turns into two months, and then next thing you know you’re not showing up at all!”

Harley blinked, taken off-guard by the vehemence in her tone, not sure of the reason it was present in the first place. “I…” he started hesitantly, blinking again when all Lilah did was quirk an eyebrow in expectation. Clearing his throat, he said, “Well. That’s never gonna happen, so don’t worry.”

“How do you know th–”

Harley, as much as he loved Lilah, really didn’t have time—or the energy, or extra bars left in his social meter (he was saving some for the conversation with Peter)—for this.

“He still here?" he interrupted. He felt a little bad about it, but his brain was focused on Peter and making sure he knew that Harley wasn’t a total piece of shit. And also, he didn’t think he liked where the conversation with Lilah was going. Tapping a finger against the outside of his thigh, doing his best to force himself to stay still and not explode out of his skin and into small, little pieces of himself, he clarified by saying, “Peter. Is he still here?”

Lilah’s glare immediately turned into a smile, as she seemingly forgot about the problem she’d been having with Harley. Oh great—Lilah liked Peter, which would only lead to disaster. “He’s so nice, Harley, he didn’t want to order anything until you got here, which is adorable, I love it. He did look a little sad when you weren’t here on time, and I had to tell him that you were late yesterday and that you’ve been really busy lately, and that he can probably expect you to be late tomorrow too, but that’s–”

“Lilah.”

She stopped talking, her eyebrows furrowing in irritation as she was interrupted yet again. “What?” Harley gave her a meaningful look. “Oh. Oh, right, yeah, he’s over there.” She turned a little, and pointed to Harley’s usual booth at the back.

Harley’s eyes followed her finger to the booth—and he wondered why he hadn’t thought to look there in the first place, considering that there was a good chance Lilah had told Peter to sit there, or that Peter had decided to sit there again today because that was where Harley had been at yesterday—his gaze immediately landing on Peter, who was staring back at him. Even with the distance, he could see the way Peter melted in relief, his body sagging with it, and that was... weird. A bit confusing, really, but Harley wasn’t going to question it.

He turned back to Lilah. “Coffee? And muffin?”

She waved him off. “I’ll drop it off. We got slammed earlier and started the muffins too late, sorry.” Harley shrugged, leaning forward. Lilah accepted the kiss to her cheek and ruffled Harley’s hair. A pang of guilt went off in Harley’s chest, and he held back a wince—he’d apologize for being a bit of a dick to her later. “Go get your mans.”

“He’s not my– Forget it, you’re a menace.”

Lilah’s cackle followed him as he walked away.

Harley was filled with nervous tension as he walked closer to where Peter sat, the book clutched awkwardly in his hands. He didn’t know why, exactly, he was nervous—he just knew that he was. It probably had something to do with the fact that Harley was going to be required to, like, actually talk to Peter, and engage with him, and he was a bit out of practice. Or, extremely out of practice. Harley barely interacted with anyone other than Gwen and the staff at the café—and the occasional person on the street, he supposed—and now he’d have to sit down across from someone and... talk.

From where he was already seated at the booth, Peter grinned as he watched Harley approach, jerking his head to the side to flick his hair—hair that was just about as long as Harley’s, maybe a little shorter—out of his eyes and making it rest higher up on his forehead. Harley kept his eyes trained on the strands as he walked closer, studying the way they curled almost haphazardly, like Peter had once again forgotten to brush his hair before he’d left.

He slid into the seat across from Peter, scooting until he was more in the center than at the edge, causing Peter to scoot with him. With an awkward smile, that was more of a grimace than anything else if he was being honest, he finally met Peter’s brown eyes. Had they been that brown yesterday? Probably. It wasn’t like Harley had, like, carefully examined Peter’s eyes or anything, how was he supposed to know? It did seem like they were a darker brown, though. But not darker, exactly, more like... deeper. Yeah. Peter’s eyes seemed like a deeper brown than they had been yesterday. Was that normal? Was that a thing that eyes did? Harley wasn’t really sure, as he’d never studied anybody’s eyes so intently before– and oh shit, how long had Harley been staring at Peter?

Peter was staring at him, oh God, Harley had been looking at Peter for a while now, it was weird now, oh holy fuck.

Why was Harley like this?

“Hey,” he choked out, aiming for casual and probably epically failing. He placed the book in the middle of the table, using it as an excuse to look away from Peter’s very beautiful brown eyes. “Sorry I’m late.”

Peter shrugged. “’S alright. No offense, or anything, but…” He gave a sheepish smile. “I didn’t really expect you to show up at all, so you’re still good in my book.”

Well... How in the fuck was Harley supposed to respond to that? What was he even supposed to say?

“Cool.” Right. Because that was obviously the right response. Totally. He pushed the book away from him and towards Peter, hoping to draw attention away from his words and move the conversation forward. “So. There it is, I didn’t rip any pages out or... highlight anything.”

Peter hesitated, like he was worried Harley would get upset if he checked. After Harley’s shrug, though, he picked up the book and quickly thumbed through some of the pages before setting it back down on the table, slightly pushing it back towards Harley. “Looks good. Thanks for not– damaging my property.” He gave a soft laugh, and Harley forced his eyes down to the tabletop, not sure when they’d even drifted up to stare at Peter in the first place.

Harley opened his mouth to... He guessed it was to say something, anything, but his mind was frustratingly blank. It happened more often than it didn’t—Harley went to speak and found that he had absolutely no clue what to say. Gwen said she thought it happened because he thought too much about everything, analyzed things so much that he couldn’t even tell up from down, couldn’t formulate his thoughts into words, but Harley had always thought it was more because he was just... hopeless. Not good at interacting with other people. It was embarrassing, but he had almost grown used to it by now, so he liked to think that being terrible at acting social didn’t really bother him.

A voice saying, “Hi again, Peter,” coming from his right drew Harley out of his thoughts. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping against all hope that there would be no one standing there, that he’d just imagined the voice and Lilah was still working behind the counter. “We only talked for a short time, and I didn’t get to introduce myself.” Please. Please, please, please. “I’m Lilah.” Nope. She was there.

“Hi,” he heard Peter chirp, and he chanced a quick look to see a big and friendly grin playing on Peter’s mouth. “I’m Peter.” Peter angled his body so he was facing more towards Lilah as he said, “It’s nice to meet you. Officially, I mean.”

Lilah smiled back at him, her grinning eyes shining with an emotion that Harley was honestly kind of scared to try and figure out the meaning of. Her eyes shifted to Harley and he tensed, dropping his gaze to look at the cup of coffee, muffin, and cinnamon roll she held in her hands, as her friendly smile turned into the one she wore when she was about to say something stupid. Or mean. Or both. Sure enough, she, after nodding in Harley’s direction, told Peter, “I’m this asshole’s friend.” Harley did his best to hold in his groan and the many curses that sat at the back of his throat, just waiting for their opportunity to leap out and unleash themselves on the world. Or Lilah’s ears, at the very least. “He’s very... prickly.” Harley scowled as he returned his look to the table, remembering how Gwen had texted him yesterday, saying just about the same thing. “But you get used to him.”

“I’m not prickly,” he grumbled down at the table, a scowl on his face, knowing he sounded like a child but not being able to help it. “Y’all are just. Happy. And friendly. All the time. Not my fault.”

Lilah laughed, her lips pulling wide into a grin and her cheeks puffing out a little. Harley shot her his meanest glare, but he was sure it was ruined by the way the edges of his own lips twitched up into a smile. “He loves us,” she said smugly, the words holding a fond edge. “Don’t let him tell you any different. Anyway.” She put the coffee and muffin down in front of Harley, and the glazed cinnamon roll in front of Peter. “Here’s your stuff, Jack and I already covered it.”

Harley frowned at her. “I could’ve gotten it.” He could have. He’d come prepared to pay for his coffee and muffin, so while Peter’s cinnamon roll would have been a bit of an extra expense, he still would have been more than willing to pay for it. He felt bad about it, the fact that Lilah and Jack kept paying for the things Harley was supposed to be paying for. “You didn’t have to.”

“It’s fine.” Lilah shrugged. “Seriously, don’t worry about it, Harley. Just bring Gwen around sometime, and we’ll be even.”

Against his best efforts, because he was trying to be serious and sincere and stuff, Harley smiled. “As much as I’m all for polyam,” And he was—he, for a variety of reasons, was actually kind of interested in being in relationships with multiple people, but that required getting to know those people, which sucked., “I still don’t think she’d be interested in doing that with you and Jack.” That was the plan, after all. Harley had no idea if it was serious or not, but after Gwen had joined Harley at the café and talked to Lilah a few times, Lilah had made it known that she wouldn’t be opposed to being in a relationship of three people. Again, Harley didn’t know if it was a serious claim or not, and he also didn’t know how Jack felt about Lilah saying it, so he usually just played it off as a joke. “And she has a girlfriend.”

Lilah waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” She sighed, almost wistfully, as she placed her hands on her hips and said, “It’s a shame, though. We could have been something great.”

“Wow,” Harley said, shaking his head in amusement. And maybe a little bit of confusion. He might have known Lilah for just about a year and a half, but he was just as close to understanding her as he was to understanding a random stranger. “That’s sad for you, I guess.”

“Damn right it is.” She looked over her shoulder, and then looked back at Harley and Peter. ”I gotta get back to work or Jack’s gonna kill me, so.” She reached out and began to aggressively ruffle Harley’s hair. “Bye Harley.” She turned to Peter with a bright smile, ignoring the scowl paired with a glare Harley was giving her. “And bye Peter, it was nice to meet you.”

Peter smiled back at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that Harley was most definitely not cataloging to store away for later. For later? What later was there going to be? Harley wasn’t going to go back to his apartment and... and... and think about Peter. Why the fuck would he? Who did that? That was creepy, and Harley might have been a lot of different and less than savory things but he wouldn’t let creepy be one of them. No way.

Harley picked up his coffee, some of the warmth seeping out to his hand despite the layer of cardboard. His eyes closed as he took a sip, the hot liquid burning his mouth a little and then traveling down his throat. God, he loved coffee. Some days it felt like it was the only thing keeping him going, the caffeine shooting through his system and sinking into him. He loved it.

“Bye,” Peter said, and that was when Harley remembered that, oh yeah, he was in public and with two other people. “If you want to talk some more, I’ll be here tomorrow.”

“You better.”

And with that, Lilah walked away, leaving Harley and Peter sitting in silence.

Sitting in an awkward silence.

An extremely awkward silence.

Harley, on his part, kept his eyes trained on the way his hands were fiddling with his coffee cup, resolutely not looking up. The silence between him and Peter was, admittedly, a little bit bothersome. The easy feeling of talking with Lilah had all but completely dissolved, being replaced by whatever the hell was going on now. Harley didn’t like it. At all. But he also had no clue how to fix it, or at least dilute it into something more tolerable.

Peter, apparently, did, if he’d noticed that anything was off in the first place.

“You kinda are, by the way.”

Harley froze, not sure how to go about the situation. He had no idea what Peter was talking about. The words didn’t sound like any conversation starter or ice breaker Harley had ever heard, and he didn’t know how to handle it. He blinked, examining the way Peter just stared back at him, waiting for a response that Harley couldn’t give. In the end, he settled for a, “What?” that hopefully sounded only mildly confused.

“Prickly,” Peter clarified without hesitation, brown eyes meeting Harley’s green ones and not straying. “Like, just your vibe.”

Oh. Because Lilah had called Harley prickly, and Harley had denied it, before she went back to the counter to work. Well, now things were starting to make some sense. Finally.

He knew he should probably have taken at least some sort of offense to Peter’s words but... he wasn’t exactly wrong, was the thing. Harley was prickly, and standoffish, and socially inept, and about a dozen other things that were basically synonymous with them. The only reason he’d claimed it wasn’t true when Lilah had called him prickly was because it was Lilah and Harley would be damned if he ever admitted she was right about anything, especially when it was in reference to him. Fuck that.

Harley was nothing if not petty.

“My... vibe,” he said slowly, wanting to be sure of... He didn’t know. He guessed he just wanted to buy himself more time to figure out how to continue the conversation—it had been extremely one-sided yesterday, and Harley felt a little bad that he was too much of a social disaster to be capable of talking to another person to make that not happen. Peter nodded in response, his expression still the same casual one it’d been for most of the time they’d been sitting in the booth. Harley stared for a few seconds, finally shrugging one shoulder after determining that it would be the best action to go through with. (The other options weren’t... worth mentioning.) “Yeah. I mean... I guess.”

“No offense.” Peter rushed out, seeming contrite. He ran a hair through his curly hair, messing up the brown strands even more than they already had been. Harley hoped it didn’t look like he was tracking the movement as intensely as he actually was. “I just. Yeah. Prickly.” Harley didn’t answer, too caught up in the way Peter’s eyes seemed to spark with some sort of... amusement, or something. Like he found something funny to be amused about, and Harley didn’t get it. He liked the look in Peter’s eyes, though. It was– happy. Mirthful. He’d call it adorable, even, if he was allowing himself to go down that road, which he wasn’t. “It’s okay, though,” Peter continued, and Harley firmly pushed away any and all thoughts about how adorable Peter was. Even if he– Nope, no, not going there. “‘Cause I’m like, the opposite of prickly. If you’re a cactus, I’m a... a baby seal.” Harley snorted against his best efforts to hold it down—a baby seal, wow—causing a grin to grow on Peter’s face as his head slightly tilted. “It totally makes sense, don’t laugh. You’re,” He waved a hand, “and I’m.” Another hand wave, this time paired with a shrug and that same grin still fixed in place. “It works.”

Harley laughed and dragged his coffee closer to him to try and distract from the smile he could feel growing on his face. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does to people who understand it.”

“That doesn’t make sense, either.”

“I stand by what I said.”

Harley huffed out another laugh. “You go on and do that, then.”

Peter tilted his head, his smile dimming some. Not in a bad way—it just seemed like he had something else on his mind. “So,” he said in a regular, conversational tone, “where are you from?” Harley blinked at the sudden topic change. Peter must have taken notice of it, because he rushed to clarify. “I’m not trying to, like, pry or be creepy or anything, I just.” He shrugged. “You have, like, this accent? A small one? That comes out sometimes, and I... yeah.”

“Oh.” Harley didn’t even notice he’d been letting it slip. He’d been living in New York for a little over a year and a half now, and he’d gotten good at masking the difference in the way he spoke. He still didn’t sound like he’d been living in New York all his life, but he’d been able to hide his natural accent and that was enough. “Yeah, no worries.” He let himself crack a grin, his insides lighting up at the way Peter smiled back. “Tennessee, born and raised.”

“That’s so cool,” Peter gushed. “Most everyone I know is from here.”

Harley kind of wasn’t listening—he was still a bit on edge about what had just happened. Peter had asked a question and... and Harley had answered it. Like, answered it without stumbling over his words, or feeling like his heart was about to beat itself right out of his chest. And that was... weird. Not the fact that Peter had asked the question, but that Harley had answered it. And the fact that he’d answered so– easily.

The whole talking thing didn’t come easy to Harley. The being social thing was even harder. He had to force words out, and wrack his mind for what to do and what not to do, and, in the end, it was just easier to put a scowl on his face and hope it kept people from wanting to interact with him. It probably wasn’t the nicest thing to do, or even the normal thing, but Harley did it anyway.

There were exceptions, of course. Like Gwen. Gwen had taken one look at him, had one conversation, and decided that she wanted to keep him in her life. Which was weird, but Gwen was the best friend anyone could ever ask for, so it wasn’t like Harley was complaining. And then there were Lilah and Jack and Heath. Harley still wasn’t really sure what had happened on that front—he was sometimes convinced that it was all one elaborate prank—but he also wasn’t questioning it as much as he’d used to. One day, Lilah had sat down with him on her break, and he’d said his first words to her outside of, “Medium caramel iced coffee and a cinnamon muffin with the cinnamon crumble on top, please,” and then Jack had followed, and Heath, gay disaster that they were, had fallen in, too. And things from there had progressed until Harley was where he was now.

But that was it! It wasn’t like Harley was making a ton of friends—or even acquaintances, or even classmates that he was sort of close to—left and right. Or at all. No, he kept everyone at a distance except the six people in his life that he was close to, and even that was touch-and-go. Not a lot of people made the effort to be friends with Harley, and Harley didn’t know how to go about putting in the effort himself, so he didn’t make a lot of new friends all that often. Or. Ever.

He knew his limits, alright.

And the realization that he kind of wanted to break those limits now, with Peter, was a terrifying one.

He didn’t even know Peter’s last name, why the fuck was this even happening. To Harley, of all people! Harley didn’t even like people. He didn’t! They were confusing and complicated and loud and a whole bunch of other shit that he didn’t have the time or the energy—or the understanding—to deal with. It was all one big mess, okay, and there was no reason, literally no reason at all, for Harley to feel so... comfortable. For him to feel so comfortable around a boy he’d only known for not even a week. Hell, he hadn’t even known Peter for three days. So. Weird. Crazy. Literally insane.

He wasn’t exactly all that bothered by it, though. Surprisingly.

What was so special about Peter?

“Are... you okay?”

Oh no.

Harley lifted his eyes. “Hmm?”

Peter tilted his head a little. “You kind of zoned out there,’ he said with a huff of laughter and a confused smile. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Harley immediately nodded. “Yeah, no, I’m... yeah, I’m fine.”

“Right.” Peter eyed him, almost suspiciously, for a few seconds before shaking himself a little and looking back down at his previously forgotten cinnamon roll. A grin, one that Harley was growing strangely accustomed to seeing, latched onto his face like it had never even left in the first place. “You know I love cinnamon rolls?”

It sure seemed like it—Peter was practically foaming at the mouth as he stared down at the dessert in front of him.

Instead of saying that, Harley settled for, “I never would’ve guessed.” Which wasn’t a lie. Peter looked muscular, his arms and chest flexing whenever he moved—and, wow, Harley didn’t even know he’d noticed that, okay, that was... fine—so Harley had just assumed that he’d be one of those guys who were obsessed with, like, eating right and stuff. (And that wasn’t Harley judging, alright, even if he himself was a guy who had a bit of a soft tummy and would eat a pack of gummy bears for breakfast.)

Peter let out a happy hum, thankfully oblivious to Harley’s inner thoughts. “It’s true. MJ, one of my best friends, says it’s because I am one, but that’s only because she’s known me since high school, when I was, like, dorky and sweet and whatever.”

He seemed dorky and sweet now too, but.

“That would probably lead to some bias,” Harley found himself admitting, feeling delighted at Peter’s responding laugh. And maybe he was also delighted that he’d connected this MJ person as one of his best friends, even though that made no sense and Harley’s feelings about it probably meant he was a terrible person.

“Yeah! You see, you get it.” Peter rolled his eyes, a discernible fondness to the action. “But everyone I’m, like, really close to now has known me since high school, so, you know.”

Harley did not know.

“Yeah, of course.”

Peter smiled at him, bright and happy.

~*~

Peter had left a few minutes ago, after his phone had let out a series of beeps. He’d apologized and said that he wished he could have stayed for a little longer, but still went on his way. Harley wasn’t too sad at seeing him go—he liked Peter, sure, and being around him wasn’t a huge strain, instead giving him almost the same feelings he got as being around Jack, but that didn’t mean he could handle it in large amounts.

See, the thing was that Harley probably liked Peter. Not liked liked him, but liked him well enough that his company didn’t turn him into a nervous wreck that he tried (and failed) to cover up by... using various tactics that just made him seem like more of a social disaster. Well, okay, backtrack: He was still a nervous wreck around Peter, objectively speaking—even just sitting across from him and letting Peter do most of the talking was taking a lot of concentration—but it was different. The feeling in his stomach felt different than it usually did, so Harley figured that it had to mean something. Not a huge something, but something regardless.

Another thing, the more important thing, in Harley’s opinion, was that Lilah and Jack could tell that Harley liked Peter. Maybe they had some misconceptions about in what way he liked Peter, but they knew he liked him. It made him glad that he’d chosen to stay when Peter had left, if only to allow them to get out all their teasing now and not the next day, when Harley and Peter were back. Or, worse, when they could probably get Peter alone and talk to him then.

And it seemed like they, Lilah especially, were content with getting all of it out now.

“Admit it, Harley,” Lilah called over her shoulder as she organized something behind the counter. “You think he’s cute.”

Harley rolled his eyes, even though Lilah wasn’t entirely wrong—Peter was definitely cute, with his laughing brown eyes, and curly brown hair that he was constantly shaking out of his eyes, and wide smile that never seemed to go away. And his vibes. Peter was, honestly, the most adorable guy Harley had ever met. He made Harley feel... comfortable, not on edge, and that was a rare thing for him to feel.

He shook himself, remembering that thinking those things would only give Lilah more ammo to use, and leaned down to rest his elbows on the counter to seem casual. “I guess he’s alright to look at.” Lies. Understatement of the century.

“That’s not what I meant,” she sang, turning around to look at him and placing her hands on her hips in a triumphant and victorious pose, her name tag glinting with the minimal amount of sunlight that shone through the open window. “You think he’s cute. Like, his personality and shit.” Harley scowled—because she wasn’t entirely wrong there, either—and Lilah pounced on the opportunity. “Oh my God, you do.” She dropped her hands from her hips, moving closer and resting her palms on the counter until their faces were inches apart. Harley wanted to move back, but that would probably let Lilah know that she was on the right track. “I was just joking, kind of, but you do, holy shit. This is great, finally, you’re–”

No, nope, Harley wasn’t going to be hearing this again.

“Jack!” he called out, interrupting Lilah. He did not want her to finish that sentence. “Lilah hit me!”

“Honey!” Jack shouted from where he was hidden from view in the back. “We’ve talked about this, you can’t hit Harley just because you think he’s being an ass.”

Lilah made an angry noise at Harley’s smirk. She started out glaring at him for a few seconds, but then her face melted to a smug expression that was much more terrifying. “You’ve won this round, Keener,” she told him, a twinkle in her eye that Harley did not like. “But just you wait.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, not getting an answer as Lilah gave him a smug smile and turned around to start making her way into the back of the café, where Jack was. “Lilah, wait, what does that mean?”

No answer, not that Harley was really expecting one.

~*~

As Harley was walking back to his apartment later that afternoon, after spending most of it at the café with Lilah, his phone buzzed with a text. Taking his phone out of his pocket and looking at the screen, he saw it was from Abi, his little sister, and he immediately slowed his pace down.

yo, it read. harleen. i miss you loser

hi to you too abigail

why don’t u talk to me anymore ;-;

That was a question right there. In all honesty, Harley just sucked at talking to someone every day, even over text. He sometimes forgot that he was, you know, an actual person who could actually interact with other people, and the various relationships in his life tended to suffer because of that.

sorry, he sent back, just been busy ig
shouldn’t you be in school

omg gwen was right

This was going to be good. Harley had made the grave mistake of introducing Gwen to Abi—and his mother, Macy—when he had gone back to Tennessee for a visit and had brought Gwen along with him, and now they were two little peas in a pod, especially when it came to making fun of Harley for anything.

about what

you really DONT use question marks
omg this is hilarious

knew i never should have introduced yall two

you love us
yk you dont use them when you talk either

well that’s just straight up RUDE abi

yes but it’s TRUE so
:P

you were nicer before u learn how to talk
*learned

probably yeah
but im awesomer now so
it’s gucci

never say that again

it’s
gucciiiiiiii

again
shouldn’t you be in school
?

yep lmao
but there was a thing
in which another thing happened
don’t wanna talk about it

you bet your ass we’re gonna talk abt it
what’s wrong kiddo

don’t call me that

k i d d o

not a kid >:(

yes a kid :)

No response came.

Harley abruptly stopped walking, twiddling his thumbs over the screen of his phone.

we’re gonna talk about it, he sent, taking more than three minutes to actually send the message out.
whether it’s now or when you’re actually out of school is up to you

fine
when im at home

alrighty then
wasn’t that easy

i hate you
(love you really)

i know
(love you too)

~*~

The next morning started like any other: with Gwen walking into Harley’s apartment like she owned the place.

“No,” Harley whined, his voice muffled from the way his head was buried underneath one of his pillows. He reached from under his blanket to lightly hit the person roughly shaking him awake. Yeah, roughly, like they weren’t the one who had broken into his apartment. “‘S not time yet, go ‘way.”

Gwen snorted. “I can’t do that.” She ripped the pillow off his head, and Harley retaliated by grabbing his other one and putting it in the same position the first pillow had been in. He wanted to sleep, because he hadn’t gone to bed until around three in the morning, wanting to work on his project as much as he could, and he also didn’t have a morning class today, and dammit he was going to make the most of it. “Come on, Harley,” she said, ripping his second pillow off his head and forcing him to groan and pull his sheets up instead. At this point, he was almost fully awake and most likely wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, but still. It was the principle of the whole thing. You didn’t just break into your friend’s apartment—Gwen had a key, but that wasn’t important—and forcibly awaken them against their will. It wasn’t right. “I know you’re tired, but you said we’d hang out today ‘cause Em’s busy and you’re not.”

Harley sighed to himself, beginning to work up the energy to move, but then his sheets, his wonderful, wonderful sheets, were ripped off of him, exposing his unclothed skin—he slept in his boxers, okay, he got hot at night—to the cold morning air. He rolled over onto his side, curling into a ball, and opened his eyes, squinting up at the blurry Gwen standing over him. “What the hell?” he asked as forcefully as he could manage, his words groggy and lacking the heat he’d tried to force into them.

Gwen just rolled her eyes. “Let’s go. Up and at ‘em, country boy.”

“Don’t call me that,” came Harley’s immediate, although halfhearted, as he wasn’t really offended by it anymore, reply. “And you could at least not look at me until I have clothes on, for fuck’s sake.”

“You’re acting like I haven’t seen you naked before,” she replied casually, dropping his sheets on the ground by her feet. “And I’m still traumatized from that, by the way.”

Harley gave up and swung his legs over the edge of his bed, running his hands through his hair to try and get it under control. His blond mess of curls was usually all over the place whenever he woke up from sleeping, and Harley hadn’t found a solution for it. It was long enough for him to be able to tie it back in a braid or a bun and have it out of the way so it wasn’t a rat’s nest in the mornings, but when he actually went to bed he was too tired to do anything more than collapse against the mattress, bury his head into his pillows, and hope for the best.

“Hurry up, Harley, damn.”

Harley made a noise that was somewhere in between a dying whale and an angry moose, dragging himself to his knees so he could sit up and rest the backs of his thighs on his heels. “It’s not my fault you just walk into other people’s places like they’re yours,” he told her with a glare, head swimming with exhaustion and the last remnants of slumber, “and even though I told you I had someone over.”

“I thought you meant for school or something,” she defended, stepping to the side as Harley stood up to make his way to his dresser to look for clothes and throwing herself down on his bed as soon as he was past her. “How was I supposed to know it was a booty call?”

Harley shot her a glare over his shoulder, grumbling at the fact that she looked prepared to take on the world, fully dressed and hair brushed and hanging down to a little past her shoulders, while he stumbled around his tiny apartment a lot more than half-naked. It was cold, holy fuck, and he was walking barefoot, which was really not a good combination.

“His name was Charlie,” he told Gwen, stopping in front of his dresser and pulling the top drawer open to reveal stacks of folded underwear and balled-up socks, “he wasn’t a booty call.” He grabbed a pair of socks and a pair of underwear and closed the drawer. “And that still doesn’t change the fact that you walked into my apartment after I told you not to come.”

Gwen snorted. “So you’re still more of an ass in the mornings, nice to know.”

Harley huffed, stopping in place to turn to her. He didn’t bother covering his chest or any other part of him because, like she’d said, Gwen had already seen him naked and sweaty and tangled in his bedsheets with another guy, so it wasn’t like it mattered.

And, okay, yes, Harley might have been the epitome of a social disaster but that didn’t mean he didn’t know enough things to get a guy to have sex with him. He was hopeless but he wasn’t that hopeless—sex was probably the only social interaction Harley was actually any sort of good at, crazy as it sounded. It was like getting a connection without having to really do anything more than flirt and give the occasional coy glance and tell guys what they wanted to hear. It was easy, and Harley was nothing if not an enjoyer of easy things.

Anyway, he and Gwen were both firmly rooted in their sole attraction to parties of the opposite gender. And Gwen was like a sister to him—literally; he had to remind himself that they weren’t really related on a pretty much daily basis—which reminded him that he needed to call home and see how Abi and Macy were doing—so it wasn’t like he’d ever want to do anything remotely romantic with her. They just weren’t like that.

And Gwen had a girlfriend, which was the most important factor.

“I am an ass,” Harley said, “because you came barging in here at the crack ass of dawn–”

“It’s noon.”

“At the crack ass of noon,” he corrected without any hesitation, “like an animal, when I was trying to sleep, like anybody in their right mind would be doing when they’re free for most of the day.”

Gwen smirked. “So you’re saying you’re free.”

Harley let out a, kind of dramatic given the situation, groan, swearing to himself that he’d stop making friends at all if it meant being surrounded by multiple Gwens—and Lilahs and Jacks and Heaths—for the rest of his life.

With another huff, he turned to his left and headed towards his small closet. “I have no idea why I even like you,” he told her over his shoulder as he looked through his clothes, searching for a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of pants.

“It’s because I’m amazing,” Gwen answered casually, maneuvering around on Harley’s bed until she was facing him, head propped up on her hand. “And you’re lame.”

“Fuck you.”

“You wish.”

Harley rolled his eyes, pulling pants and a shirt down from their respective hangers. “I haven’t wanted to have sex with a girl for a good eight years now.”

Technically, he’d never wanted to have sex with a girl, but eight years ago Harley was still trying to convince himself that he was straight, or into girls in general, so his statement was still true.

He tossed the shirt over his shoulder and shook the sweatpants out, inserting his legs through the holes as Gwen snorted. “Sucks to be you, then,” she said. “Girls are amazing. Em does this thing with her tongue–”

“Okay,” Harley interrupted, wincing. “Stop, I don’t wanna hear it.” He yanked on the grey sweatpants, pulling them up and over his hips to rest low on his waist. “Are you sure your girlfriend’s okay with you discussing y’all’s sex life?”

“Well, we’ve actually talked about it a little–”

“Of course y’all have.”

“And,” Gwen said loudly, glaring at him, “it’s really not that big a deal for either of us.”

Harley pulled his shirt over his head, yanking it down to cover his torso, and gave Gwen a meaningful look. “I don’t wanna know.”

Gwen scoffed. “You’re the one who asked.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not askin’ anymore.”

“It’s not my fault you’re such a wimp. And a sexually inexperienced individual.”

“Please stop talking.”

“You don’t tell me what to do, you’re not my mom.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Or my girlfriend, if you catch my drift.”

Harley gagged, taking his shirt off his shoulder. “You’re terrible, shut up.” As Gwen continued laughing, Harley stuck his head through the wide hole of the shirt and stuck his arms through the sleeves before pulling the entire thing over his head and then down his torso. He sighed as he stepped closer to his bed, crossing his arms. “Remind me why you’re here again?”

“Sit down,” Gwen said, motioning to the floor by the side of the bed. Harley rolled his eyes, but walked closer to the bed and lightly dropped to the floor, moving to lay down on his back. He wasn’t mad about their positions, because it was how they usually spent their free days. Gwen got the bed because she had spinal issues, and Harley almost always needed a way for him to not fall asleep—that was the usual result of not sleeping at night when you were supposed to—and laying on the floor was the most effective way to do that. And, besides, he kind of liked it, the fact that he couldn’t see Gwen but still knew she was there, could still hear her voice and the sound of her inhales and exhales. “So,” she started, and Harley heard her shift around on the mattress, her head popping out over the edge. “Tell me about your latest crush.”

“I don’t have a crush.” Harley’s eyebrows furrowed as he stared up at the popcorn ceiling, eyes picking out shapes of things in the bumps. “Wait, hold up, who told you I had a crush?”

“Lilah put it in the group chat,” was Gwen’s easy response, and Harley sat up so he could look at her better, scowling a bit at the amused expression on her face.

“The group chat,” he said, repeating her words, because he was in the group chat and hadn’t seen any message relating to anything about this so-called ‘crush’ he had. “No she didn’t.”

“She did,” Gwen confirmed. “In the one with me, her, and Heath.”

"Y’all have a separate group chat," he said, his voice flat with confusion. And maybe a little anger. But mostly confusion. “Why?”

“Because. Us girls and Heath wanted a way to talk about you and your– gayness without you around to see it.”

“My gayness?” Harley repeated in shock. “That sure is a fun way of putting it.”

“I know,” Gwen said, a smile on her face. She rolled to her side, propping her head up on her elbow, and Harley did the same on the floor so they were facing each other, with Gwen looking down at him and Harley looking up at her. “It’s great. Would’ve been better with Jack in it, too, but.” Gwen raised one shoulder. “You know how he is with secrets and stuff.” Jack was absolutely terrible with secrets, it was a known and accepted fact about him.

“That’s kinda mean.”

"It’s true."

Harley waved her statement off. “Not the Jack thing. The group chat thing. The fact that you have one without me in it. To– talk about me.”

A buzzing sound went off before Gwen could respond, most likely something to defend herself, and Harley watched as she shuffled around on the bed, face wincing in discomfort. She threw something at him, him barely having enough time to recognize that it was his phone so he could catch it.

He gave her an unimpressed look—she’d done it before and was the main reason why Harley’s phone had so many cracks in it—only receiving another one-shouldered shrug in response.

He looked down at the screen and saw a text from Lilah.

dude are u coming in today??

coming in for what

ok first of question marks: learn to use them
you’re a very dry texter and we need them to understand u
second off: WHAT DO YOU MEAN FOR WHAT
ARE U COMING INTO THE COFFEE SHOP
FOR PETER?? BOOK GUY??? REMEMBER HIM????
honestly

Harley panicked. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten. It was supposed to be an everyday thing and he’d forgotten. How was that an even remotely acceptable thing to do?

It was just that... Gwen had come over, and had started Harley’s day as she usually did whenever they were going to hang out for the entire day, and Peter had completely slipped his mind.

A quick glance at the time on his phone showed him that it was two-thirty, well past the time he was supposed to have been there. Fuck.

shit
peter’s there
?

yeah he’s here
looking VERY SAD!!!!
istg if u ruin my chances at being friends w him i’ll muder u

right
look im hanging out with gwen
i’ll just go by real quick and bring her along

ooooh
tell her i said hi please
and that i love her hair
and whatever perfume she uses

wtf that’s creepy, no

harley, you’re really not helping me out here

jfc i dont WANT to help you out

fuck you too then
i’ll tell her myself once she gets here
she has really pretty eyes, harley

Harley let out a frustrated noise. Not because of the insane things Lilah had said—though that, admittedly, did play a relatively big part in things—but because he’d have to go out and talk to Peter, and generally be social, after he’d already prepared himself for staying at home and hanging out with Gwen and being comfortable in a familiar, quiet place.

ask for his number, he sent.

whose number?

peter’s

harley
no
i am a taken woman
as cute as he may be

Harley rolled his eyes.

an idiot is what you are
put jack on

dfkjdjfdsdfl RUDE
fine

Harley waited, tapping his finger against the back of his phone impatiently and ignoring the feeling of Gwen’s eyes on him.

what’s up keener?

i need you to get peter’s number

finally making your move?

no
shut up
no
it’s literally only been 2 days
and i don’t like him
that much
i don’t have to explain myself to you wtf
just ask him for it

No response came through, so Harley sent a pls, hoping he hadn’t said something too mean, and that the one-word apology was enough to fix any damage he might have potentially caused.

Turns out, he hadn’t said anything mean, because Jack soon responded with, if he thinks I’m interested in him after this I’m blaming you

Another text followed, a phone number underlined and in blue, and Harley let out a breath of relief.

“What’s going on?” Gwen asked, and Harley looked up from his phone to see her watching him, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Harleen,” Gwen prompted with a roll of her eyes followed by another intense look. “Why do you look like a creep right now, what’s happening?”

Harley shook his head, smirking at Gwen’s groan and the sound of his bed shifting, and looked back down at his phone. He clicked on the number, automatically getting redirected to a new messaging screen, the number listed at the top. For a few seconds, he stared down at the blinking cursor in the empty text box, not entirely knowing what to say, but he eventually psyched himself up and started typing.

hey
is this peter
?

Goddamned question marks.

yeah
... Harley?

yep

cool
so
hi

hi

are you like. not coming?
it’s fine if you aren’t
and definitely none of my business
but
:/

no no i just forgot
im on my way dw

no it’s fine
uhh do you mind if i bring someone along then? i kind of had somewhere to be

A pillow hit Harley in the face, and he spluttered both from outrage and surprise as he glared up at Gwen.

She gave him a look, her elbows planted on his mattress and sinking in a little. “Lilah says you’re talking to him.” She leapt off the bed, arranging herself next to Harley on the floor and resting her chin on his shoulder, trying to catch a look at his phone. “What’re you saying?”

“Would you–” He shoved her away, crawling to rest his back against the side of his bed, turning to face her. “Personal space, Gwendolyne, learn it.”

She glared at him, most likely at the use of her full name, but then she snorted, obviously letting it go. “Please, you’re one to talk.” She moved closer again, but only so her sock-clad feet rested on Harley’s. “Come on, just show me,” she insisted. “I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but this is good and I’m excited!”

Harley narrowed his eyes at her, suspicious at first but then relenting under her earnest gaze. “Fine.”

He handed his phone over, watching as her eyes scanned the screen. She frowned up at him. “You forgot? How do you forget about something like this?”

He dropped his eyes. “I dunno.” A scowl grew on his face as he said, "I just did.” Gwen seemed to accept that answer, apparently not wanting to push for any more information, so Harley cleared his throat and tried to get them back on track. “So, you looked, can I have my shit back now?”

Gwen gave him another look but didn’t push it, handing his phone back to him before she laid down on her back, her knees remaining bent and her feet staying on top of Harley’s, so she was looking up at the ceiling.

Harley looked back down at his phone.

uhh do you mind if i bring someone along? i kind of had somewhere to be

See, now that was a hard question to answer. Did Harley want Peter to bring someone else along? No. Not really. But did he mind it? How could he, when he was bringing Gwen, someone Peter had never met? Was it fair of Harley to tell Peter he couldn’t bring someone to the café when Harley himself was doing the same thing?

no, he typed. no it’s fine go ahead

!!!
great ty
we’re on our way now :))

ok
im bringing someone to
if that’s alright w you

feel free to!!
it’s only fair right?

right
thanks
we’re about to leave too

alright see u there

bye

Harley stared down at his phone for a few seconds, reading their short conversation over and over again. When he finally looked up, remembering that Gwen was in his apartment and that they were supposed to be hanging out, it was to see her with a fond look on her face, paired with a soft smile.

He immediately took a foot and pushed her away from him as far as he could. “Don’t you say anything. Not even a word.”

Gwen mimed zipping her mouth shut, but Harley knew that this wasn’t going to be the end of things. And by ‘things’ he meant Gwen’s teasing, and her belief that she knew everything there was to know about Harley. She probably did know everything there was to know about Harley, but still. The principle.

~*~

Okay, so, Gwen was meeting Peter. And Harley was nervous.

Not because he thought that Gwen wouldn’t like Peter, but because he thought that Gwen would like him, because he knew her well enough to know that she would. Peter was great. He was nice and friendly and cute and made Lilah and Jack laugh, and, the thing was, as much as Harley hated to admit it, he was worried that Peter would swoop in and take his friends away.

It was dumb and stupid and he hated the fact that he was even thinking it, but he was. And he hated that he was, because now it seemed like every time he looked up Lilah was coming back to their booth when she was supposed to be at the counter, just to talk to Peter, and Jack was being his general Jack self but different... It was all getting to Harley’s head, probably more than it should have been.

Harley was naturally quiet. He didn’t like to offer things up in discussions or conversations, both because he didn’t want to and because he didn’t always know how to go about doing it. Thinking about talking and actually talking were two very different things. And, usually, he didn’t feel bad about it. Lilah and Heath and Jack and Gwen were good at making him feel like he was a part of the conversation, whether it was by teasing him or asking for his opinion or just talking to him. And now, things were different. And Harley was jealous.

God, he was jealous, like he was still in high school. Upset because he felt someone else was stealing his friends. It made him feel like shit, made something twist uncomfortably in his chest, made his head pound and his heart hurt and his stomach clench.

He knew that Peter wasn’t trying to steal his friends. Peter was too nice of a person for that. But that made it worse, somehow. The fact that Peter could be so friendly and could draw people in and make them comfortable around him without trying, making it seem like it was the easiest thing in the world, while Harley struggled with the most basic forms of social interaction... It hurt. It hurt a lot more than Harley wanted to let on, so he pushed it down and ignored it away.

He wasn’t mad at Peter, he knew that. It was more– He was just scared, he guessed. He’d worked hard, harder than he normally would’ve liked to admit to himself, to forge himself a group of people that actually liked him, and it just felt like it was being ripped away from him all too soon. But that wasn’t Peter’s fault. It was Harley’s own fault for being such a social fuck up that something like this could happen.

He’d deal with it.

Gwen Stacy was a sociable person. She could make friends without even blinking, and could have someone eating out the palm of her hand by the end of a three-minute-long conversation. It was just how she was. Gwen liked to talk, and talk to other people, and engage with the world around her. It made sense that Harley would be worried about her becoming fast friends with Peter, who seemed like he shared some key personality traits with her.

Except the more that Harley thought about it, actually thought about it, he realized that it was ridiculous. Like, so ridiculous. Gwen had met Lilah, for crying out loud, and hadn’t suddenly decided to be best friends with her. Lilah was the very definition of outgoing and extroverted, maybe even more than Gwen was, and yet Gwen still stuck around and hung out with Harley and called Harley her best friend. Best friend. Because that was what they were, right? Best friends? Harley was Gwen’s best friend, and Gwen was Harley’s, and that was just how things were, and there was no reason for Harley to be doubting that.

And the same went for Lilah and Jack! And Heath, whenever he’d be deemed well enough to go back into work. They liked him, wanted to be friends with him. It didn’t matter if they liked Peter more than they liked Harley because they would still like Harley. They’d still talk to Harley, and tease him, and want to be his friend, because they weren’t the type of people to just drop others like Harley was afraid they would do once they found someone better. They weren’t that type of people.

They weren’t that type of people.

It would all be fine.

“And what are you thinking about on this fine day?”

Harley shot a sideways look at Gwen as they walked down the sidewalk together. “It literally looks like it’s about to start pouring and thundering.” Dark and grey and gloomy. Gwen was an idiot.

“You got the point, okay,” Gwen said, rolling her eyes and moving closer to lightly elbow him in the side.

Harley just barely managed to keep himself from shoving her off the sidewalk. “You’re so dumb,” he grumbled, running a hand through his hair and wincing as his fingers got caught in a knot and he realized he’d forgotten to comb through it before he left. There was always something. He really needed to cut his hair—long and easily tangled, it wasn’t a thing Harley liked to have to deal with.

Gwen made a noise, giving him an unimpressed look. “Harley, please. I’ve known you since high school, your name should have been Dumbass McDumbassery.”

“You knew me for the last two years of high school, so that doesn’t count.” He shot her a glare as they crossed the street, maneuvering in and out of the other people walking. “And, wow, Dumbass McDumbassery, that’s so fucking mean, why do people even like you.”

She gave an unapologetic shrug. “Probably because I have a winning personality.” She skipped forward a bit, grabbing onto Harley’s arm and trying to pull him back. “And would you slow down? Jesus, you’d think you were going to see a rodeo.” Harley scowled at her but obeyed her request and slowed his pace, and Gwen smirked up at him as she added, “Or a hog-tying contest.”

Harley’s scowl grew. “I don’t know why I’m friends with you.”

Gwen threw her head back in a laugh, wrapping her arm around Harley’s waist, Harley dropping an arm around her shoulder in response. “Because I wouldn’t let you not be, Keener. And don’t lie,” she continued casually, pressing herself against Harley’s side as they squeezed through the spaces in between the other people walking. “You love me.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah you do,” she asserted with no hesitation as the café came into view, people coming in and out of the front doors at a relatively regular pace. Harley found himself wincing a little—seemed like the café was still gathering a lot of business. That was good for Lilah and Jack and Heath in terms of tips, but it wasn’t so good for Harley’s mental state. “It’s okay, you don’t have to deny it, everyone already knows.”

“I bet they do.”

They got closer to the café, approaching its doors. Gwen, with her arm still around Harley’s waist, pulled the door open, walking through and bringing Harley with her. Shooting an awkward smile at the person leaving through the other door with a cup of coffee in their hand, Harley walked forward, staying next to Gwen, and relaxing a bit once he saw that it wasn’t as crowded inside as he’d been expecting.

Almost immediately, Harley’s eyes went to his usual booth at the back of the café, landing on Peter sitting alone. He wondered, for only a second, where the person Peter had said he’d be bringing along was, but his unasked question was answered as another boy—with beautiful dark skin and a stout figure—approached the booth, one of the café’s brown wax bags, where they put their cookies, in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, and slid in to sit next to Peter. Harley watched as the boy settled himself, getting comfortable and leaning against the back of the booth seat, and handed the coffee cup to Peter, and he watched as Peter turned his head and grinned brightly down at the boy and then leaned in to press a kiss to his cheek.

Oh. Okay. That... that was fine.

“Gwen!” came an excited shout, and Harley latched on to the distraction almost eagerly. He turned his head to the front counter to see Lilah giving him and Gwen (but mostly Gwen) a big smile, the dimple in her left cheek out in full force. “Hey, you haven’t been here in a while!”

“Yeah,” Gwen said, laughing to herself a little. “Sorry about that, I’ve just been busy. And the café by my dorm is, you know, closer and everything.”

Lilah waved her off. “No, yeah, I get it.” She looked behind them, even raising up on her toes a little, as if she was expecting someone else. “Aw,” she pouted. “No scary girlfriend?”

Gwen snorted. “Em is a teddy bear, I don’t know why any of you are scared of her.”

Harley smiled in amusement as Lilah gave a fake shudder. “She’s so intimidating!” She sighed wistfully. “And she seems so cool, too, I’m sorry if I’m a little terrified of that.” Lilah straightened up then, moving to her right to be closer to the cash register. “So, what can I get you guys? Besides your,” She nodded to Harley, “usual.”

“Oh,” Gwen teased, smirking up at him. “Harley has a usual.”

“You bet he does,” Lilah responded, sounding giddy at the opportunity to rag on Harley with another person who enjoyed it just as much as, if not more than, Gwen did. “Did I tell you how he came in here every day at the same time for like two months and ordered the same thing each time before he ever considered getting anything else, and even then he didn’t actually get something different.”

“You did not do that, oh my God.” Gwen turned towards Harley, letting go of his waist and causing him to take his arm off her shoulder, and punched him in the arm. “Damn, Keener, the same thing every day for two months, that’s insane.”

Harley scowled at her. “I like the cinnamon muffin, okay, it’s good.”

Lilah’s smile turned into something less teasing and more proud, though Harley knew the pride wasn’t directed towards him. “He’s not wrong there,” she told Gwen. “The cinnamons are really good, but so is everything else Jack makes. Even Heath says that the muffins are good, and you know how picky they are.”

Heath was extremely picky. Harley remembered how they’d gone through all of Heath’s likes and dislikes in terms of food, and there had been way more of the latter than the former. It had certainly been an experience for Harley, because, yes, okay, Harley ate the same things over and over again, but not because he didn’t like anything else, but because he liked those specific things so much. There was a difference between wanting to eat something repeatedly because you liked it and wanting to eat something repeatedly because it was the only thing you liked. A huge difference.

Harley perked up. “Hey, wait, Heath’s here?”

“Yep,” Lilah answered. “He’s helping Jack out with something right now, but I’ll make sure he stops by later and says hi.” Harley nodded to show his acceptance of that, and Lilah turned her attention back to Gwen as Harley leaned a hip against the counter and pointedly didn’t look up at the booth Peter and his (most likely) boyfriend were sitting at. It was Harley’s booth, dammit, and now he’d probably be thinking about Peter and his boyfriend every time he sat down to eat at it. Fuck. “Do you want anything, oh lovely Gwen?”

“Nah,” Gwen shrugged. “I’m good. We’ll see how I feel in, like, half an hour, if we’re still here.”

“Okay.” Lilah tapped a few buttons on the register. “That’ll be six dollars and thirty-two cents, please.”

Before either Gwen or Lilah could protest, Harley was digging in his pocket for his wallet, and pulling out a ten dollar bill to drop it on the counter. He raised his eyebrows at Lilah, and then at Gwen, practically daring them to argue, and relaxed when Gwen rolled her eyes and didn’t say anything. Lilah, reluctantly, picked the bill up and gathered the change, passing it to Harley with a small smile.

And then Harley immediately dumped the remaining money in the tip jar to his right, feigning an innocent look when Lilah let out an indignant squawk. He raised his eyebrows at her—he’d call himself smug if there was really anything to be smug about—and she huffed at him before saying, “Get out of my face and go sit down already.”

“Love you too,” Harley responded happily, leaning in to let Lilah ruffle his hair and so he could press a kiss to her cheek. When he pulled away, he shouted, “Love you, Jack!” towards the back door, and just barely heard the faint, “And I love you, random citizen,” that was called back to him.

Harley also heard the responding, “Megamind? Really, Jacky?” and knew that it was probably said by Heath, but didn’t comment on it, instead snickering to himself. He moved to the side to nudge Gwen away from the counter and in the direction of the booth where Peter and Peter’s boyfriend were sitting together, wanting them to get a move on and go sit down.

Peter’s boyfriend, holy Christ in heaven, someone needed to take Harley out and not in the date way. Okay, maybe kind of in the date way. It all depended on, you know, who exactly would be the one taking Harley out in the date way.

Not the point!

Harley didn’t even know if he had a point, really, he just... Okay, he knew he didn’t like Peter. He didn’t. He knew that. It hadn’t even been that long of a time to start to like someone. Harley knew himself, and he knew that he didn’t like Peter.

But he also knew that he could have started to like Peter. Objectively. From a totally scientific standpoint. Because Peter was nice and friendly and open and excitable and cute and didn’t seem to be deterred by Harley’s lacking skills in the social interaction area. They fit, in a weird way. Or at least Harley thought they did. Just by going off the vibes.

There was however, the issue of Peter already having a boyfriend. That was a problem. Not a big one, maybe, considering Harley and Peter hadn’t flirted at all—had they? no, that was ridiculous—and hadn’t done anything else that could be taken as Peter cheating on a significant other who, apparently, made him very happy, but still. Peter had a partner. A very cute partner who gave out smiles that were just as warm as Peter’s, sure, but a partner nonetheless. And Harley wasn’t the type of person to be with someone who was already in a committed relationship. That just, personally, wasn’t for him.

Harley was well aware there was a small chance that Peter and this other boy weren’t dating at all. A miniscule chance, really, but a chance regardless. Could Peter and this guy just be a pair of really good friends? It was very well possible. Harley didn’t have that kind of luck, though, so that possibility had a good chance of not being true. Which was cool. It was fine. Things were good.

An elbow to Harley’s side snapped his view back into focus, and he realized that he’d zoned out pretty hard because he and Gwen were closer to the booth where Peter was sitting than he thought.

Gwen stopped them, grabbing him by the elbow and turning their bodies so they were facing each other. The noise of the café had faded to the background while Harley had been thinking, but it was all coming back to the forefront of his brain the longer he stood in the middle of the floor, surrounded by dozens of strangers who were probably staring at him and wondering why he looked so weird and out of it and, oh God, they were probably talking about him, too, weren’t they, oh–

“Hey.”

Harley looked back down at Gwen, wondering when his vision had strayed. Her mouth tilted down in a frown as she studied his face. “You alright?” she asked, her grip on his elbow tightening a little and grounding Harley a little further. “Is being here too much right now?”

He swallowed. Dammit. He’d gotten too far caught up in his thoughts. It happened sometimes, if he let the barrier between the harmful thoughts and the rest of his brain weaken too much—it happened even when he didn’t let it weaken, even when he felt strong and prepared for any hurtful and damaging thing his brain could cook up, too, but that wasn’t important right now—and it had happened now. Harley rolled his shoulders and forced himself to straighten up, wanting to seem like he’d steeled himself even though he hadn’t, not completely.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and said it again, pushing his voice to sound more confident in his answer than he actually was. “I mean, no, yeah, I’m. I’m okay, it’s fine.” Gwen gave him an intense look. She obviously didn’t want to outright accuse him of lying, but it was clear she didn’t fully believe what he was saying, so Harley sighed softly and let his shoulders fall a little. “Just... after this, is it cool if we go back to my apartment and, like…”

“Take a nap?” Gwen offered up. Harley scrunches his nose in disgust—a nap, ew—and Gwen rolled her eyes. “You need the sleep, dude. And it’ll be relaxing.”

She did have a point.

Harley sighed again. “Fine, yes, a nap.”

“Great!” She tugged on his elbow, a grin growing on her face. “Now let’s go meet this not-crush of yours.”

“He’s not my–” Harley paused in his words, thinking over Gwen’s previous statement, as they started walking once again, maneuvering around the various people and tables in the way. “Oh.”

Gwen laughed, the sound coming from her chest and traveling to fill the slightly empty space in Harley’s. “Yeah,” she said, drawing the word out. “Got you, bitch.” Harley shoved her away from him, and she shrieked in delight, breaking out into laughter again even though she’d almost crashed into a table (that, fortunately, didn’t have anyone sitting at it).

Harley slowed their pace down some as Gwen righted herself. “Try not to act like this much of an idiot once we sit down, okay?”

“Why?” Gwen wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Scared I’m going to embarrass you in front of the guy you ‘don’t like’ and his…” Gwen trailed off, her brow furrowing. “Wait, so who’s the other guy?”

Harley’s thoughts exactly.

“I dunno,” he answered. “Peter asked if he could bring someone along and I guess he’s that someone.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah. Now shut up.”

“You’re honestly so mean to me and I have no idea wh– Hi, you must be Peter, right? Harley has told me literally nothing about you.”

Harley rolled his eyes. “Ignore her,” he told the two boys sitting down. “It’s what I do.”

“Funny,” Gwen said to him sarcastically, making a face, before turning her attention back to Peter. Harley, who was assessing Peter’s boyfriend (who really was much prettier up close, damn), didn’t see her do a double-take until she was loudly exclaiming, “Oh my God, dude, I know you!”

Peter grinned, his head tilting to the side. “Oh yeah!” he said, shifting to the edge of the booth seat. “Yeah, you’re Gwen, right? MJ’s girlfriend?”

MJ. That was the name of Gwen’s girlfriend. Harley had been close when he’d tried to guess it the day before.

“That’s me,” Gwen replied, a big grin overtaking her face as she sat down in the booth and then slid until she was sitting right in front of Peter. “Dude, this is so weird.”

“Definitely,” Peter agreed, nodding a little. “Small world, right?”

Harley, who’d slid into the booth to sit down next to Gwen, didn’t catch the next bit of their conversation because it was at that moment that Peter’s boyfriend, now directly across from him, decided to speak up and introduce himself.

“Hi.” His eyes were... really pretty. And his entire demeanor screamed friendly, which Harley wasn’t not attracted to. Like, in a general sense. “I’m Ned,” the boy continued, sticking his hand out toward Harley.

Harley grabbed it, giving it three firm shakes—just like his mom had taught him when he was fifteen. He really needed to call her. Maybe later tonight; he could take the time to ask her if she knew if anything was wrong with Abi. Which, oh shit, reminded him that he was supposed to text Abi last night. She’d probably ‘forgotten’ in the hopes that Harley would forget about it too, which was what happened. Damn.

“Harley,” Harley answered, a smile naturally coming to his face. “Nice to meet you.”

Ned smiled back at him, his cheeks puffing up in a way that was extremely cute and adorable and all the best things. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

“Speaking of MJ,” Gwen said, looking down at her phone, and Harley abruptly remembered that there were two other people sitting in the booth with him and Ned. “She wants to know if I can go meet her to help her study, so do you guys mind if I…”

Harley frowned—Gwen couldn’t just - leave him here. Alone. With... with two boys who Harley was having some sort of emotional reaction to. That would only lead to disaster, and there was over a ninety percent chance that it wouldn’t end well. And they were supposed to go and nap.

“I thought y’all weren’t gonna hang out today,” he told her, casually, trying to keep his voice from sounding accusatory.

Gwen just shrugged. “We weren’t. Guess she changed her mind.” She lifted her head to look at Harley and grinned. “Which I’m not exactly mad about.” Jerking her head at him, Gwen said, “Move so I can get out.”

For a second, just a second, Harley hesitated. He really didn’t want Gwen to leave. Like, really didn’t. Gwen kept him in check! She made sure to smooth things over whenever he said anything weird or awkward or stupid, and Harley didn’t want to say anything weird or awkward or stupid in front of Peter and Ned. Gwen was like... Harley’s social crutch. Yeah. She helped Harley navigate social situations that he didn’t know how to handle. The chances of him being able to act like a normal human being throughout the duration of this conversation without Gwen were... low. Extremely low.

Still. Gwen was always complaining about the fact that her and MJ almost never got to see each other. And Harley knew that Gwen and MJ didn’t get to spend a lot of time together.

MJ, from what Harley had gathered, and from what he remembered Gwen telling him about, was the study type. She worked hard in school, and was currently pushing herself to make it through all her courses successfully. Kind of like Harley. Which wasn’t the point. MJ was busy most days, and, while she did like to spend time with Gwen and have her nearby while she studied, sometimes she required silence and solitude, and Gwen respected that. And now they were getting the opportunity to spend some time together, and... and Harley wasn’t willing to ruin that, even if it meant sacrificing his own comfort and wants.

So he moved.

He slid out of the booth and stood up, holding himself back from stuffing his hands in the pocket of his sweatpants—putting his hands in his pockets caused him to hunch over a little, raising his shoulders, too, and it just - didn’t make him look friendly or approachable. He knew that, and he always did his best to not do it, even if he couldn’t help it sometimes.

Gwen grabbed one of Harley’s upper arms and squeezed lightly, giving him a meaningful look—that Harley, a little ironically, didn’t fully get the meaning of—and then turned around to face Peter and Ned. “So I’m gonna go,” she told them. “But it was really nice meeting you two.” She sent a conspiratorial wink Peter’s way, and Harley tried not to sink too deeply into his embarrassment.

Ned gave her a friendly smile, seeming to be more focused on Harley, but Peter grinned back at her and said, “Yeah, definitely.”

Gwen turned back to Harley, telling him, “Um, I’ll go hang out with Em for a bit, and then I’ll go by your apartment, okay?” Harley nodded to show his agreement, giving Gwen a weak smile as he stepped aside to let her have more room to leave. Lowering her voice, she added, “Text me if you need anything.”

Harley nodded again, and Gwen squeezed his arm one last time before she pulled away completely, shot one last smile to the three boys, and then turned around and went on her way. Because he wasn’t quite ready to face Peter and Ned on his own, not yet, Harley watched Gwen as she walked toward the door—she stopped briefly to wave goodbye to Lilah, who energetically returned the sentiment with an enthusiastic wave of her own—and left the café with one glance back at Harley.

Okay. Okay, so, this was all fine. Harley could do this. He could make conversation. Wasn’t too hard.

He turned back to face Peter and Ned and almost immediately lost his nerve.

The other two boys, however, didn’t even seem to blink at the prospect of being alone with Harley. Which was… great. It was so great. Of course Harley was the only one at the table who found it hard to carry a conversation and be normal. That was just how things worked, apparently.

“So,” Peter said, smiling as he shifted a little in the booth, his jeans audibly moving against the seat material. Harley took the opportunity to sit down, scooting across the seat until he was sitting just about directly in the middle of them. “Harley, this is Ned. Ned, Harley.”

“Hi,” Ned dutifully responded at Peter’s introduction, despite having already introduced himself to Harley.

It was nice of him, Harley supposed, to go along with Peter’s word. Harley didn’t know, okay, it seemed like Ned was the calm to Peter’s perpetually excited state of mind, and… Maybe Harley wanted to be a part of their dynamic too.

Which, hold on. That was a weird want to have. Harley was weird. Fucking– He needed to stop thinking right now and just make it through this—he could go back to his apartment and stew in overthinking everything after he was done.

(He had the distinct, and very sad, feeling that he wouldn’t fit in with them anyway.)

Wanting to get things back on track and hurry the entire thing along, Harley said, “I, uh, forgot to bring the book.” He knew where it was and what its condition was, he just hadn’t brought it along because Gwen had been rushing him out of the apartment. Her impatience had never grated on Harley’s nerves more than it was at that moment. “But I promise I’ve been taking care of it.”

Peter grinned, giving a small shrug. “That’s good enough for me, dude.”

Ned cleared his throat, one of his hands messing with a corner of the wax paper baggie that, when he looked closer, Harley saw had a snickerdoodle cookie inside it. It was a good choice, Harley had to give him that—the snickerdoodles Jack baked were amazing. “So you’re in a mechanical engineering class?” he asked, sounding interested and curious and like he genuinely wants to know the answer.

Harley blinked. He didn’t… It sounded like he knew what book Harley and Peter had been talking about, which meant… which probably meant that Peter had told Ned, and now Ned was either asking to make sure Harley wasn’t a creep or a weirdo who was trying to lure Peter into a bad situation—which would have been completely understandable; if a total stranger had asked Harley to borrow a book he owned, he probably wouldn’t have agreed to it (which was probably why Harley found Peter so admirable)—or… or he was genuinely interested. Harley didn’t know what to think, not really. He was generally doubtful of everything. He overanalyzed everyone’s words and actions, and he sometimes worked himself up to a panic attack thinking about what the look on the sidewalk he’d gotten from a passerby could’ve meant—if his hair was too wild that day, or maybe he’d had a stain on his shirt, or maybe he’d been doing something weird, or any other possible thing—and it was just what he did.

“Yeah,” Harley answered after a couple long seconds of silence, his voice scratchy. He (kind of violently) cleared his throat and continued with, “Yeah, I am. ‘S why I needed the book, ha.”

There was a pleasant smile on Ned’s face as he said, “Understandable, I get that.”

Huh. Harley didn’t think this would actually be all that bad.

And it wasn’t.

Over the course of the next hour and a half, the three boys talked about… Harley couldn’t even remember everything they’d talked about, honestly. All he knew was that Peter and Ned hadn’t, not once, stopped smiling at him, Peter’s eyes crinkling at the sides and the tip of Ned’s shoe occasionally nudging against Harley’s shin.

It had been a little stressful at first—Harley had never been good at interacting with new people and probably never would be—but this interaction was different from all the others somehow. Yes, Harley was still nervous and worked up and just generally a social mess, but it was like he just fit. It was like he fit into these people’s lives in a way he hadn’t ever fit anywhere else with anyone else, and maybe Harley was a bit addicted to it despite him only having experienced it for a limited amount of time.

His favorite part of their whole almost two-hour-long sit-down was when he’d felt comfortable enough to actually talk to them. Peter had asked him about his project, and—after Ned had confirmed that he was more than okay with listening to Harley talk about it, even if he wouldn’t understand parts of it—Harley had started intricately explaining what the whole thing was about, why he even needed the book in the first place.

His excitement and genuine love for what he was doing had led to him talking and talking and talking, adding in gestures with his hands as he did.

Anytime Harley got too caught up in what he was saying and talked too fast for the words to come out right or be any sort of understandable, Ned stopped to ask for clarification. It was usually for something he hadn’t done a great job of explaining, and it forced him to back up and think of a way to further elaborate on his words.

Doing that not only made Ned nod with understanding and motion for him to continue talking with a smile, it also made Peter smile so hard that his eyes crinkled at the sides in a way that Harley was quickly beginning to watch for and he wanted to make Peter smile that hard all the time. It also, but less importantly, helped tremendously with his project—having to be clear with Ned forced him to be as in-depth as possible, which was a good thing.

It all just felt so… natural. And that was the really crazy part. Natural. When had any social conversation felt natural for Harley?

The answer was never, or at least somewhere in the general vicinity of never.

Honestly, Harley was a bit surprised at himself.

Being with Peter and Ned was different, but in a good way. Harley couldn’t even describe it, not really—all he knew was that it was good and he liked it and he wanted more of it.

And that was how he’d gotten Ned’s number.

Well. That was partly how he’d gotten Ned’s number. It was actually more the reason he’d asked—quite awkwardly, if he was being honest about it—for Ned’s number, but at the end of the day all that mattered was the fact that he and Ned and Peter’s numbers, and… yeah. It was good.

It was all so very good.

But it was weird, too. Harley couldn’t name it, couldn’t figure out why, exactly, the entire situation was one of the weirdest he’d ever been in, but… he knew it wasn’t the most normal thing in the world.

That being said, neither Peter nor Ned seemed to have any sort of problem with it. Not from what Harley gathered, that was.

And… And Harley was feeling a little selfish. He wanted it. Everything felt warm and nice and easy, in a way nothing else had ever been, and he just… he wanted that. He wanted to hold that close to him for as long as possible before it got ripped away from him.

So he let himself be selfish. He figured it was alright, just this once.

~*~

Two months went by. Harley had turned his project in—he wouldn’t know what grade he received until his professor could grade them all, which he said would take a few weeks, but the point was that he’d turned it in—and gave Peter his book back and things went back to normal.

Well. Almost normal.

What had previously been considered normal wasn’t what things turned into.

Before, Harley had spent most of his time alone or with Gwen, doing… nothing, really. He did whatever he could, or had to, to fill most of his free time. But now…

Now, things were different.

Now, he could wake up to a million texts from Peter and Ned—in the group chat they’d made, mostly, but also individual texts from each of them, too—and smile, and make plans to hang out for most of the day.

Most of the time it was the three of them doing something together, but sometimes Peter and Harley went out and got ice cream, or Ned and Harley went to the movies. And sometimes, Ned and Peter went on special little dates of their own. They always told Harley about them afterward—and before they actually went out to spend time together, so Harley could know what was going on—in varying amounts of detail depending on what they were actually going to do.

And it was… so nice.

It just felt natural, like everything Harley had ever wanted, wrapped up in the existence of two people. They didn’t get awkward when he didn’t want to talk and only wanted to comfortably relax as the two of them bantered back and forth, they didn’t try and force him out of any of his routines—though they did always ask if he wanted to do something different, just in case, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to Harley, considering once he said no they accepted it and moved on—and they just… they both smiled at him like he was something worth smiling at, which was probably the greatest thing about it all.

“Guys,” Peter said into the silent dorm, one that he shared with some guy named Harry. His head was propped up on Harley’s thigh as they both laid on the ground, and Ned was sitting on the couch behind him, one of his sock-clad feet resting near them and occasionally moving forward to softly nudge Harley’s shoulder. “I want cookies.”

Harley tossed his book—Neanderthal Man, a book that described the process behind extracting DNA from a Neanderthal bone and how it impacted the scientific community, a book that Peter had given him to read after he’d said he was bored; it was interesting, but not exactly what he’d been looking to do—to the side and stretched his arms out above his head, his skin rubbing against the wood floor of the room. “Me too, to be honest.” He smiled, tilting his head back a little, when Ned shoved his legs forward so Harley could wrap his hands around his soft shins. Ned grinned back at him, winking.

Lowering his head back down and turning it to face Peter, Harley asked, “The café?” because that was where they always went whenever one of them wanted something to eat. Harley usually wasn’t in the mood for cookies, but today he figured having one wouldn’t hurt, considering he’d already had a muffin earlier that day. It was a miracle he hadn’t gone entirely broke with how often he spent money.

Peter opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by Ned, who excitedly said, “Or!” followed by “Or, or, or!”

“Yeah?” Peter laughed out, Harley laughing along with him.

“I could make us cookies.”

Harley’s head tilted back again. “You bake?”

Ned shrugged casually. “I dabble.”

The movement and words were so casual that Harley almost believed that while Ned liked baking he probably didn’t think it was the best thing in the world to do in his spare time. He honestly would have believed that had Peter not chirped up, with a huge, eye-crinkling grin, “He does! Literally all the time, and he’s always coming up with new recipes to try out and stuff! And everything he does tastes amazing!”

When Harley looked away from Peter and back to Ned, he found that Ned was rubbing his chin in the way he always did whenever Peter got a little enthusiastic in his praise. Which was pretty much all the time, now that Harley was thinking about it—Peter was a fountain of praise, always ready to shower anybody with it. “Peter,” Ned said with a sheepish smile. “Come on, stop it.”

“I will do no such thing, you’re a good baker and everyone deserves to know it.” Peter sat up, lifting his head from Harley’s thigh, to look Harley directly in the eye. “Harls,” he started seriously, and Harley felt his face go hot at the nickname that Peter had given him about a week ago, and had taken to using whenever the opportunity arose. “Listen. He will never admit to it, but he loves baking, okay, and is really good at it, he’s been waiting weeks to find a way to casually bring up the fact that he wants to bake for you.”

“Peter,” Ned whined, drawing out the sound; he had his head buried in his hands when Harley looked up. “Stop embarrassing me in front of the pretty boy, please.”

Peter cackled. “I’m not, I’m just telling him about your amazingness.”

It took a second for Harley’s brain to catch up, mind still stuck on the thought of baking, on the thought of Ned smiling and laughing with flour on his nose and cheeks.

“Wait,” he said, shaking his head a little. “Do y’all mean me? Like, y’all think I’m pretty?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“Well, you are.”

“Oh.” Harley smiled softly—shyly, maybe—to himself. “Cool.”

“Yeah,” Ned said, smiling back. “Anyways, so, baking? Cookies? You guys down for that?”

Harley shrugged in answer, but Peter let out a series of excited whoops, and that was all it took.

Half an hour later, the kitchen was a mess.

Ned had insisted on them sitting out and letting him “work his magic”, but Peter had fought against that, saying that he didn’t want Ned to do all the work. Harley had agreed with Peter—he didn’t want to sit around and do nothing and be lazy while Ned puttered around and cooked (baked) for them.

In the end, Ned had relented and decided to let them help, which turned out to be a huge mistake—Harley and Peter were, apparently, incapable of remaining serious in a cooking space, because the first thing they did after getting the flour was start a playful fight, one that had Harley inhaling a lot more flour than was probably good for him.

Ned wasn’t too upset about it, as far as Harley could tell. He kept looking over at Harley and Peter as they messed around with a smile and a fond expression, and he didn’t call them out on horseplaying even when it interfered with the things he needed to do, only redirecting them elsewhere with a polite and cheerful and happy, “I need to use this now.”

It was nice.

Up until Peter had to leave.

They were right in the middle of threatening each other with eggs, Harley laughing so hard his stomach hurt as Peter asked, “Do you want egg hair? ‘Cause I can smash this over your head, okay, I’ll do it,” and as Ned watched on with a grin as he slid a tray into the oven and set a timer. And Harley was happy. He was having a nice time and he didn’t feel like he had to– to perform, to put on an act—he felt like he could be himself, like he could laugh and smile and joke and talk without the weight of other people tainting his actions and it was so nice and Harley loved it.

He loved–

And then Peter’s phone started beeping in the living room.

Immediately, Peter put the two eggs he was holding down on the counter, moving away without a word. He’d done that a few times before—his phone would let out a series of beeps, and Peter would stop whatever he was doing and hurry away within less than a minute.

Harley blinked, smiling waning as he tried to adjust to this new situation—he felt a little knocked off-center, the sudden change in atmosphere, going from playful and serious to just normal, throwing him off. He never knew just how to handle Peter’s random and rapid disappearances—Ned did.

Without hesitation, or even recognition that Peter had left, Ned shot Harley a teasing glance and said, “Of course you can help me clean up, Harley, thank you so much,” and Harley couldn’t—didn’t want to—fight off his grin.

“I was gonna help you anyway, sweetheart,” he drawled, heart pounding in his chest as the pet name slipped out of his mouth, his throat caressing the words as they left and made their way out into the world.

Ned grinned back at him. “I’m just making sure.”

Peter came back into the room, phone nowhere to be seen but presumably in one of the pockets of his sweatpants. “Hey, sorry, I have to head out real quick.” He moved closer to Ned as he spoke, and pressed a kiss to his cheek once he reached him. “I’ll be back in, like, an hour or so.”

He expected him to leave after that. He expected Peter to get his keys from the countertop by the sink and say goodbye to Harley and then walk out the dorm with one last glance and smile.

Peter did not do that.

Harley didn’t realize what had happened until Peter was already opening the door and shouting, “Don’t eat all the cookies!” over his shoulder.

And then he was gone, the door firmly closed behind him, Ned humming to himself as he walked to the sink and turned the water on to start doing the dishes.

Harley was still frozen in place, Peter’s kiss feeling like it was branded against his cheek.

Peter’s kiss. Peter had kissed him.

That was– Harley wasn’t–

What.

What the fuck was that? Did Peter… What.

He’d done it like it was second nature, was the main thing fucking Harley up. Peter had kissed Ned’s cheek and then had walked over to Harley and kissed him on the cheek too. Oh God, Peter’s lips had touched Ned’s skin. Harley had technically made contact with the skin of Ned’s face and that was literally everything but terrible, it was wonderful, Peter had kissed him and Harley’s face at microscopic pieces of Ned on it, transferred by Peter’s lips, and his brain was going offline, all systems were shutting down because holy shit–

“Harley?” Ned questioned, stepping away from the sink and closer to the boy who was on the verge of a complete mental breakdown right in the middle of the kitchen. “You okay? What’s wrong?”

God, did Ned even see it happen? Did–

Was Harley convincing Peter to cheat on the boyfriend he’d had since high school? Was that who he was now?

He could still feel them, Peter’s lips pressed to his skin, soft but also deliberate and warm, and it… it was the thing he’d been wanting for months and he hated that it was sending flutters into his stomach because Peter and Ned were in a relationship, for fuck’s sake, and Harley couldn’t just break that up. He wouldn’t let himself be that totally selfish enough to put an end to one of the things that made him the happiest he’d ever been, with two people who he was pretty sure he–

No.

The point here was…

What was the point?

The point most definitely had nothing to do with the way Ned was walking closer to Harley, drying his hands on a cloth towel, a concerned look set in stone on his face as he said, “Hey, Harley, is something wrong?” And it most definitely had nothing to do with the way every last part of Harley was aching to press a kiss of his own to Ned’s, cheek like Peter had done not even a minute earlier.

He just… He wanted them.

No, that made it sound like… like a sex thing, and it so was not a sex thing. It was… It was Harley wanting to wake up with them. It was Harley wanting to bake cookies with Ned and listen to Peter’s science rambles; it was him wanting to go walking in the park with them, all three of them bundled up in puffy jackets and hats and gloves and scarves when it was cold; it was him wanting to wear Ned’s shirts and Peter’s fuzzy socks, and him wanting to share his biggest, warmest hoodies with each of them in return.

Harley didn’t have sex because he strongly liked anything about the act itself. Sex wasn’t life-changing and orgasms weren’t heart-stopping—it was good, yeah, but never as good as everyone had seemingly made it out to be. To an extent, Harley had sex for the emotions behind it (even if, in most cases, the emotions weren’t really there). He had sex for the skin contact and the heavy, mingling breaths and to ease the ache of loneliness that he carried around with him constantly. He sought to please, not to be pleased.

With Ned and Peter, sex wasn’t…

Ned was asexual. The topic had come up a few weeks earlier—they’d been watching a movie and the two love interests had started engaging in some very passionate shower sex. Peter had shifted in his spot once, cleared his throat a couple of times, and then looked over at Ned and asked him if he wanted to watch something else. Ned had declined, saying it was fine; Harley was curious about the interaction, and that must have shown on his face because Ned explained, “I’m asexual. Probably aceflux, I haven’t really figured that out yet. Some days sex and,” He paused to wave a hand at the paused movie, “things are fine to see, or do, and other days they aren’t. I’m good today.”

Peter, on the other hand, liked sex. He said it “made him feel nice and floaty and out of his head” for a while. But he had sensory issues that sometimes acted up and made all that stimulation too much for him to deal with, so it wasn’t something that he sought out all too often.

And Harley honestly wasn’t upset about that. He honestly, genuinely wasn’t. None of them being particularly fond of sex—in their own, unique ways—meant things like cuddle piles of three, and arms pressed together as they sat smushed together in a single side of a booth seat, and footsies under tables, and fingers fixing hair and clothes and hats, and so many other good things that Harley loved with every last part of him.

Not that… they were all in a relationship together where sex was even an option. Or anything. Of course not. No matter how much Harley longed for it.

He forced himself to blink, and came face-to-face with Ned, who was holding his face, cradling his jaw in his hands, fingers slotted behind Harley’s ears.

“Hey,” Ned said softly, moving his fingers to play with the hair at the nape of Harley’s neck. “Hey, where’d you go, honey?”

Harley blinked again—he wasn’t sure when he had moved to the living room, when he had sat down on the couch, when Ned had gotten on the floor in front of him and grabbed his face—and said, “Hi.”

Ned grinned, wide, his cheeks puffing up. “There he is.” His hands didn’t move. “What happened back there? You looked like you were going to pass out.”

There were a million things running through Harley’s brain. Peter, Peter’s kiss, the warmth of Ned’s hands against his neck, what he was going to do–

But all he could force out was, “Peter kissed me.”

“Oh?” Ned’s eyebrows furrowed. “And… I’m guessing you don’t think that’s a good thing.”

Harley jerked backward, out of Ned’s hold. “Why– Of course it’s not a good think, why the fuck would it be. He– Y’all are dating and he just–”

“He could’ve just meant it in a friendly way,” Ned interrupted, and Harley flinched at the words, at the idea of that being true. “Platonic. It doesn’t have to mean anything, he shouldn’t have done it anyway.”

That was inexplicably worse.

Harley’s heart dropped down to his lower stomach, bile rising in his throat.

That explanation was worse.

“Like.” Harley tried to hold his tears back. Why was he crying? Crying wasn’t going to solve anything. He’d just thought… He’d thought a lot of things. “Like, because you didn’t want him to? Or because I don’t–”

He cut himself off—Ned somehow knew what he was going to say, because his eyes flashed with a kind of earnest anger that Harley had never seen from him before.

“Harley,” Ned said seriously, insistently. “You deserve it. Okay? You deserve all the love and affection and nice things in the world and we want to give it to you.” Harley couldn’t breathe. “We were just supposed to talk about it first. With you. Before doing anything. Peter just gets a little ahead of himself sometimes.”

And ‘ahead of himself’ meant kissing Harley on the cheek like it was normal, like it was natural, like it was something he did every day and something he’d continue to do for a lot longer.

It scared Harley a little, how much he wanted that. How much he wanted everything, how much he wanted Ned and Peter.

That must have been showing on his face, because Ned slowly reached out and rested his arms on Harley’s legs, fingers hesitantly wrapping themselves in the hem of Harley’s shirt; Harley relished the contact.

“You can do whatever you want,” Ned told him, holding Harley’s gaze. “I know you’re scared, but you have all the power here. If Peter kissing you made you uncomfortable, that’s fine. We can deal with it when he gets back. If you don’t want to talk at all, that’s fine too. But.” He scooted the slightest bit closer. “It would make me and Peter really happy if you would stick around and just… let us explain what we want? You don’t have to commit to anything, I promise, but we’d like to put an offer on the table.”

Harley was going to pass out.

“An– offer?” he questioned, repeating Ned’s wording.

Ned nodded. “An offer. For… being together.”

Harley didn’t know what to do with that. Everything he had wanted for the past two months was happening, he was so close to finally having it, and… he didn’t know what to do.

“I don’t– Y’all want– What?”

“Hey, no,” Ned said as Harley’s breathing picked up. “No, I’m sorry, I should’ve explained that better. Listen, okay, we just… Peter looks at you the way he looks at me. It’s a little different, yeah, but the same base is there. And you’re… you’re perfect to me,” he added softly, Harley too busy trying to force air into his lungs to argue. “And we both just want to make you happy, and we hope that you’re happy with us.”

“I am.”

Ned grinned. “I kinda figured.” His grin slowly faded, though, as he said, “I’m going to clean the kitchen up. If you’re going to leave, I’d rather know now so I don’t turn around and find you gone.”

They stared at each other as Harley tried to untangle his thoughts enough to formulate an answer.

There were a lot of things to consider—Harley couldn’t figure out what, exactly, those things were, but as soon as he did, he was going to make them known. At the moment, though, all he could manage to say was, “Do… Do you still want help?” Ned’s only response was a slow blink so he added, “Cleaning. Do you want help cleaning?” for clarification.

Harley’s words caused a soft smile to form on Ned’s face, the softest he’d ever seen. “Sure, honey. I’d love some help.”

By the time Peter came back, Harley was asleep. He woke up when the door opened, though he couldn’t offer up any reaction beyond mumbling out, “Hey, you’re back,” from where he laid on the couch, reaching a hand out in Peter’s direction like he could touch him.

Peter looked tired—his hair was a mess and the smile lines by his eyes and mouth seemed sad and exhausted—but he offered up a grin as he closed the apartment door behind him. “Hey, Harls. Did you and Ned finish baking?” he asked, slipping out of his shoes and dropping his keys on the small rack in the hallway before beginning to make his way towards the couch.

Harley nodded, blinking, tongue feeling too big for his mouth. “Yeah. Tasted good.”

“Told you so,” Peter teased in response. Making it to the couch, standing over Harley, he looked around, first in the living area and then in the kitchen. “Where is Ned?”

Sleepily, and closing his eyes, Harley muttered, “Bathroom. Said…” His eyebrows furrowed as he thought—he was slowly waking up, but his mind was still running slow enough to make any form of thought (beyond how much he wanted to touch Peter’s hair) extremely difficult. “He said he had to get somethin’ ready for you.”

“He’s a softie,” Peter said fondly before shaking his head and crouching down. He threaded a hand through Harley’s hair, and Harley, brain still fuzzy, pressed into the touch (though he doubted he wouldn’t have done the same even if he was entirely awake). “Were you sleeping?”

“Yeah,” Harley breathed out. “Not a lot, though. Was waiting for you to come back.”

Peter grinned at him. “You’re a softie too, huh?”

Harley couldn’t deny it. “For you, yeah. And Ned.”

“Why are you guys talking about me?” came Ned’s voice, and Peter’s eyes moved up and away from Harley. “Are you two gossiping or something?”

“Shhh,” Peter whispered loudly, looking back at Harley, lines by his eyes wrinkling as he smiled. “Act natural.”

Harley giggled.

Giggled.

He was so far gone for them.

Maybe Harley had said that last part out loud, because Peter’s expression transformed into one of softly expressed awe. Oops.

“You want to go get cleaned up, Petey?” Ned asked, and Harley stretched as Peter took back his hand and stood up. “I’ll stay with Harley, get him to fall back asleep.”

Harley frowned and said, “I’m not tired,” followed by a yawn so big his jaw cracked. Both Ned and Peter gave him matching looks of amusement; he shrugged, sitting up. “I’m a little tired,” he admitted. “Like, the tiniest amount. But,” He straightened, switching his gaze between the other two boys, “Ned said we’d talk.”

Peter looked at Ned. “Talk?”

Ned nodded. “You kissed him before you left.”

“What?” Peter furrowed his eyebrows. “No– Oh. Huh.” He turned a sheepish smile in Harley’s direction. “Um. Sorry?”

“I liked it, don’t worry,” Harley assured him, feeling weird as the words left his mouth but not making any moves to take them back. “But I just… I’m confused. On what this,” He waved a hand, motioning to the three of them, “is. Like, what we are, I mean.”

“Which is mainly what we need to talk about,” Ned added. He sat down on the couch, moving Harley’s legs out of the way and then dropping them on his lap. “That, and, like… what we want to do.” Harley nodded his agreement, and Ned shot him a smile where one side of his mouth lifted higher than the other, giving him a dopey look that Harley smiled back at.

“Right,” Peter said. “Of course. Let me go change, and then we can. Do that.”

His expression was… nervous, but also hopeful? Harley didn’t quite know how to describe it, but he knew that it meant something good—a nice, warm feeling rose up in his chest. He could do this. Harley could sit here and talk about his feelings and his wants, and listen to Peter’s and Ned’s, and everything would work out just fine in the end.

He clutched that hope close to his heart as Peter walked away to head into his bedroom, and clutched it even harder when he came back and settled on the floor in front of where Ned and Harley were seated.

In the end, Harley was fine—the three of them talked about everything: what they were looking for in a relationship, what a relationship even meant to them, sex, affection; everything even mildly important. Harley lost track of just how long they were talking about things, but it had to have been a long time because Harry, Peter’s roommate, had come back and already gone to bed.

They just… They weren’t perfect, of course not, wants and issues not always lining up—Harley didn’t do well with praise some days, for reasons he couldn’t explain; Peter and Ned accepted that without even blinking, even though it was in their nature to throw out love and affection without a second thought. They promised to try their best to be conscious of it, and always listen if Harley asked them to stop.

And that was how it went with most things. They talked about boundaries, and about respecting them, and sometimes they floundered, seeing no clear way to handle something, but they sat and talked about it and brainstormed until it was worked out.

When they were finally, finally done, Harley’s eyes burned as he struggled to keep them open. His impromptu nap hadn’t really done anything for him, because he was exhausted and just barely participating in the conversation (that had moved on from relationship things to talk about the cookies Ned had baked). Ned was the first one to take notice of that, and quietly interrupted what Peter had been saying—something Harley couldn’t remember—to softly suggest that they all head to Peter’s bedroom to get some sleep before the morning came.

Harley remembers getting up and being supported by Peter as they made their way to his bedroom, Ned turning lights off as they went, and then falling into bed—Ned in the middle, because he likes to be cuddled when going to sleep, and neither Peter nor Harley do—and then that was it. Darkness and warmth and him slowly fading into slumber to the words of, “Night, guys. Love you,” and, “Love you, Petey. You too, Harley.”

Harley loved them both—and couldn’t wait to wake up to them in the morning.

~*~

The reactions to the new relationship development were varied in how they came across, but all expressed genuine warmth and happiness.

Lilah flat-out squealed when Harley told her, leaping over the counter of the café to wrap him in a hug. Jack gave him a friendly pat on the back, mouth splitting into a wide grin. Heath feigned disinterest, only offering, “Cool,” in response to the news, but Harley saw the happy twist to his mouth and couldn’t stop a grin from forming.

Gwen cackled and told Harley, “Damn, Harleen, someone’s got game,” followed by a more genuine and heartfelt, “They’re good for you.” Harley was so happy he could have burst with it.

Abi texts: this is so unfair, you’ve got 2 boyfriends and i’ve never even had one you just gotta be the best at everything huh

Harley texts, i’ll fly you up to meet them soon, in response.

you better, is what Abi texts back. gotta make sure theyre good for you

lmao
i love you abi you know that?

yeah
love you too <333
im so happy for you btw
you deserve to be happy
tell anyone i said that and i’ll kill you

wouldnt dream of it <3

(Harley left the telling of his mom for a later date—that was a much bigger step than he was sure he wanted to take right at that moment. Peter and Ned were fine with it, didn’t push it past an initial show of confusion. And Harley loved them both so much he could barely breathe with the way his heart was swelling inside his chest.)