Chapter Text
Peter’s room was a relic.
Harley hadn’t even meant to go in, honestly. He had been aiming for the bathroom the two of them had shared, but overshot in his sleep-deprived state.
And there he was. Door pushed halfway open, one foot in the door of his best friend’s room. If he could even still call it Peter’s room. Tony was the one who owned the building, and Peter wasn’t around to lay claim to anything anymore, much less the bedroom he’d spent every weekend in since he was fourteen, the first room Harley had ever been in with him.
Peter was gone, and his room reflected that in several ways. The bed was made neatly, something Peter hardly ever did. That had been Harley’s own doing, he’d snuck in here to push the pillows back to the head of the bed and to return the comforter to its correct position the last morning he’d seen Peter.
“So you and MJ have somewhere clean to sit,” he’d joked. Peter had snarfed out a laugh over his cereal, cheeks scarlet.
Once he’d recovered, he turned towards Harley to retort that “MJ likes my room just fine, thank you! Besides, we’re not, uh, doing anything involving my bed anyways.”
Tony, standing a few feet away at the coffee pot, had raised an eyebrow at that statement. Peter had raised his hands helplessly toward himself as if to indicate his innocent nature. The three of them had laughed, and Peter had smiled ruefully at the situation before the moment broke, and he and Harley stood to get ready to leave.
Harley remembered Peter best of all in moments like that. Where he was bright, unguarded, and smiling.
His room held echoes of him, and it was all Harley had besides the memories.
So, against his better judgment, he stepped further inside. Peter’s desk was crowded with stacks of papers. Harley spotted the chemistry notes he had been certain he’d lent to Ned sitting beside a photograph he’d never seen before. Crumpled notes and wadded-up papers sifted through the carpet as Harley moved to grab the photo. He held it gingerly, fingers only brushing the very edges, so as not to smudge the image at all.
He saw himself grinning in the still, arms looped around Peter’s shoulders. His glasses looked as if they were slipping off, likely a result of Peter’s hand on his face. They were sitting on the grass together, piles of fallen leaves strewn around them. Harley’s hair in the image was longer than it was now, indicating that this was from the fall. Peter was laughing, his smile growing to crinkle the skin around his eyes and make him scrunch his nose. It seemed like this photo was taken in order to capture a moment of crisis, specifically one that featured Harley as Peter wrestled him in the leaves.
MJ must have taken this the last time they all had gone to Central Park. Ned’s birthday.
Three days before Peter disappeared.
The day he’d gone, Peter had sat on his bed while he tied his shoes and tried to convince Harley to give him his math homework.
“It’s one time,” Peter had insisted, one hand tying his lace while the other reached behind him to unzip Harley’s backpack.
“I told you I would do it during lunch, now give it ba-
Hey!”
Peter had succeeded in stealing Harley’s unfinished worksheet and was now attempting to escape from Harley’s clutches. He ducked out from under Harley’s outstretched arms and began scrambling out the door. Of the two of them, Harley was the faster runner, and Peter knew it.
He stuck one hand to the wall of the hallway and began scaling it, Harley’s statistics homework tucked safely inside his own backpack.
“Not fair, Petey-pie! You can’t just use your powers to get your way every time you want something,” Harley insisted, swiping for a strap on Peter’s backpack, which dangled loosely from his shoulders as he knelt on the ceiling, furiously copying his answers onto Harley’s homework. Peter reached down with his right hand to grab Harley’s wrist.
“Cut it out, I’m nearly finished.”
And he was. Seconds later, Peter was flipping down, feet reconnecting with the floor with a resounding clunk, the laces on his left shoe had untied themselves in his haste to get away.
Harley pointed it out, and Peter returned Harley’s homework to him as he bent down to retie it.
“When did you learn how to copy my handwriting?”
Peter waved a hand in a noncommittal motion as he straightened.
“Doesn’t matter. Race you to the garage?”
And off he went.
He was gone before he reached the bottom floor.
Tony had spent the last five months tearing the Tower apart from top to bottom, but there was no sign of Peter. It felt like some cruel trick from the universe, that Peter’s last act had been one of genuine kindness, with no hope of repayment, and Harley hadn’t even had a chance to thank him for it.
He’d never handed that homework in, either. Their teacher had told Harley that all late work policies had been revoked for the rest of the term and that he should only do the work he felt capable of “while his brother was gone”. Harley had mumbled an excuse about needing to use the bathroom and had walked to his guidance counselor’s office.
He’d left fifteen minutes later with a note saying that he’d be taking his classes online for the remainder of the year. He hadn’t been back to Midtown since. The halls felt suffocating without Peter’s easy smile and sarcastic commentaries on their way to class.
Pepper had picked him up that day. He’d sobbed on the curb of the parking lot until she arrived, and it took an embarrassing amount of time for her to be able to coax him into the car.
Peter’s room was the same. He lived in Harley’s memory and haunted him like an extremely friendly ghost. There wasn’t a second of Harley’s day when he didn’t wish for Peter back.
It hurt to exist without him. Like someone had ripped Harley open and stolen his soul straight from his body. But even that might not have been as painful as losing Peter.
Harley held the photo reverently as he shut the door to Peter’s room. He did so softly, so as not to disturb any dust or lingering souls that might be inside.
He could not find his friend through the objects in his room. Peter would just have to come back so that the air inside felt light again, and Harley could walk the halls without being followed by a ghost.
Tony was in the lab when Harley found him, photo in hand. He set it on the desk, alight with determination for the first time in months.
When Tony looked to him for an explanation, all Harley said was, “Find him.”