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Harley was exhausted, and it was only noon.
He'd been woken up at seven by sirens that belonged to a drill he didn't even get to be a part of, seeing that he wasn't an actual official Avenger or anything. He was just unlucky enough to live in the same place as where they lived (though he didn't even live on their floors! Why did that thing have to play through the entire upper quarter of the tower at seven in the damn morning? It had to be Cap's fault).
Then, he and his boyfriend got put to work in the lab and forced to clean a filing cabinet that hadn't been cleaned out since before JARVIS was implemented. Tony had literally moved the thing from Malibu to there just so he didn't have to deal with it. It was true, genuine busywork so they wouldn't do something destructive while the team was debriefing. Peter narrowly chose it over the debrief.
Next, he ended up having to finish the filing cabinet reshuffle while Peter got to actually go out on a mission. There'd been some wizard or something, Harley didn't really know the details. It was pretty villain-of-the-week stuff as far as he knew, so he didn't care enough to ask for more information while Peter was running out the door in that tight spandex with those thick ass thighs—.
Anyways, that was a pretty routine day, right? There wasn't anything weird about all that, right?
Wrong. Very, very wrong.
Harley pulled his head out of the half-empty filing cabinet as FRIDAY chimed in over his country mix (which he'd switched to as soon as Peter had left seeing as the boy absolutely hated it). "Harley, boss is requesting that you come to the common area. There's been a… situation."
"A situation?" Harley was already on his feet. Situations were never good, and he knew Peter could be anywhere from bleeding out (yes, that's happened) to dosed with truth serum (yes, that's also happened). "What kind of situation?"
"It's… best that you see for yourself." The AI didn't elaborate, and that only made Harley worry further as he practically sprinted to the elevator. He was in the common room in a minute flat. "Where is he? Peter?"
He looked around, but he couldn't see the boy. The only people in the room were Steve, who was straddling an armchair and looking like he was contemplating every single decision he'd made to get to that moment, and Tony, who was sitting on the couch with a… cat in his lap.
Harley blinked at the cat, who blinked back at him with big brown eyes. It was a small brown tabby, with a white belly and dainty white paws. A purr reverberated from its chest as Tony dragged a calloused hand over its head.
"…I thought you said no pets," Harley mused, moving to sit down next to Tony. "Did Peter finally talk you into it? Where is he, anyway?" He looked around again for his boyfriend, clearly confused. Steve watched him pityingly, but didn't say a word.
Tony lamely gestured to the cat, then scratched at its chin. It purred harder, half-shutting its eyes. "Can't get rid of him, CPS would get called on me. That's too much for PR to have to deal with."
Harley furrowed his eyebrows, reaching out to pet the cat himself. Said cat quietly scootched away, gaining as much distance as it could from the boy without getting off Tony's lap. "Who's calling CPS on a cat? Don't tell me you're that attached already."
"The cat's Peter." Tony didn't skip a beat between saying those words and adjusting the cat—Peter, apparently—on his lap.
Harley blinked once, then twice. His jaw worked for a second before he finally decided on words to push out of it. "…It's what?" He barked a half-laugh. The cat hissed at him as if it was personally offended.
"Peter. Your boyfriend." Tony rubbed at his goatee. "There was a magical mishap on the mission, and he was the lucky winner of one kitty-time vacation. No one else was hit, thankfully, but Dumbledore says he's going to be stuck like this for a few hours, at least. We don't know exactly how long. Isn't that fun?"
"Sure it is," Harley said, rolling his eyes before throwing his hands up. "I should've stayed in Tennessee. Nothing happens in Tennessee besides homophobia and Dolly Parton."
"You'd rather that than catsit for a few hours?" Tony asked. He was already pushing Peter off his lap.
"May— wait, I'm catsitting?" Harley asked, his tone immediately becoming incredulous.
"Yep. I've got meetings." Tony stood up and brushed the cat hair off of his dress pants. Harley could tell from that that he was off to somewhere business-based; he was a jeans guy. "Have fun, kid, don't lose the Spider-Cat or I'm shipping you back to that garage."
"You can't just—," Harley began to protest, but the elevator doors swallowed Tony before he could even finish formulating his words. He was left alone. Well, alone except for his cat-boyfriend. Lovely.
Harley stuck a hand out towards Peter, who had loafed on the far end of the couch. "Hey, city kitty. Come here, darlin'. You're pretty, aren't you?" He clicked his tongue at the cat, who flicked his tail before slowly extending his neck to sniff Harley's fingers. After deeming him satisfactory, he pushed his cheek against the outstretched hand, and Harley rubbed his forehead with his thumb. He leaned into the touch and purred.
"Y'know, you don't seem that different from your normal self," Harley mused with a soft chuckle, his hand migrating to Peter's chest. "You purr when I pet you, you secretly like Tony better, you—." He yelped when Peter bit him with sharp, needle-like teeth. "You bite me."
Peter just kept purring as he innocently blinked up at him, tail flicking back and forth. He crossed the couch to climb into Harley's lap, and Harley gasped a little.
"What do you think you're doing?" He frowned. "Get outta there. No lap til you're a person again." He started pulling Peter out of the spot, but the cat dug his claws in and hissed at him.
Harley stared down at him, rubbing at one reddening eye. "A ten-pound cat is not the boss of me. You can't even talk, you're not in charge right now." He sneezed on Peter, who scowled and immediately started cleaning himself with his tongue.
"Oh, like it's my fault?" Harley rubbed at his nose. "I think I'm allergic to you." The cat kept purring, as if triumphant. Harley hoped that Peter wasn't actually consciously Peter in there, because if so, his boyfriend was way meaner then he thought.
Harley heaved a sigh, then scooped Peter into his arms, starting to cradle him in the crook of his elbow before he chose to clamber up onto his shoulder. The blonde sneezed again, and in response Peter dug his claws in. Harley winced and attempted to pull him off, but he held fast. Harley groaned in defeat.
"Fine, stay on there," he huffed, standing up with the cat draped against his neck like a really itchy scarf. He made his way to his room, where he dropped two allergy pills down his throat.
"I can't believe I'm allergic to my boyfriend." He looked over to Peter, who promptly hopped off his shoulder and onto his bedspread. "Granted, I can't believe my boyfriend's a cat, either. You need to stop getting yourself into shit like this."
Peter mewled in response, padding along to Harley's pillow to rub his cheek against it. The one who still had thumbs went to pull his phone out to photograph the situation. He couldn't walk out of this with zero proof, okay? This was Peter's penance for getting cat-ified.
He looked down for about three seconds to pull his phone out.
When he looked up, Peter was on the damn ceiling.
Harley was going to kill Peter, and Tony was going to kill Harley. Violently. There would be a lot of blood.
Harley considered the sight for a moment, then snapped a series of photos of the Spider-Cat. He'd learned to make the most of every ridiculous situation by now. Then, he heaved a sigh and stepped up onto his bed to try to coax Peter down.
"Hey, sweetheart, could you come over here?" Harley asked in a gentle voice. Peter completely ignored him, instead moving to inspect a corner with serious purpose. Harley blinked at him, trying to problem solve with a mind that was slowly turning into allergy medicine-induced mush.
Then, he had a very, very stupid idea.
See, Harley wasn't tall enough to reach the ceiling even from his bed, so he definitely wouldn't be able to get to the corner. However, he also just so happened to have a suit of armor that could fly. That particular suit of armor was exactly one press of a button away. He'd just hover a few feet above the floor so he could grab his cat boyfriend. It'd be fine.
Harley pressed the button on his watch to activate his nanotech. "Hey, Carrie. FRI or Karen told you about the whole cat-Peter situation, yeah?" He pointed at the corner where Peter had curled up. "My job is to get him down. Your job is to make sure I don't crash through the ceiling," he told his AI.
"Understood, Harley. Setting boot thrusters to five percent." A low hum started up, and he slowly began to rise, aiming himself for the corner.
Apparently, Peter didn't like that very much, because he spooked and started moving away. His tail poofed out and he hissed at the faceplate.
It took about ten minutes and a fallen bookshelf for Harley to corner him, and it wasn't fun to pull him off the wall. If it weren't for the armor, he'd be ridiculously scratched. He dropped the foot or so to the floor as the nanotech returned to its housing, making sure that Peter was held tight in his arms. The cat was purring contentedly, actually.
Harley sat down on his bed, chest heaving. "You—." He pointed at Peter. "Are evil."
Peter just purred in response, nuzzling Harley's chest as he flopped back onto his comforter. The boy scowled as the cat laid down, too. "I hate you." The cat made a small sound that would certainly be 'no, you don't' if he was himself.
Harley lazily ran a hand up and down Peter's back as he purred. Both of their eyes were drooping shut, Harley because of the allergy medicine and Peter because being a cat was surely exhausting. They both wound up falling asleep within a few minutes.
:/
Harley woke up to a sudden heavy weight in the center of his chest. It was actually constricting his breathing a little; it was like there was a whole person settled there. What happened to the cat?
He slowly opened his eyes, and Peter was there, still asleep and still purring and still on his chest. However, as a key detail, he was a person. The spell was done.
Harley would've sighed in relief if he could properly breathe. Instead, though, he resigned himself to shoving his boyfriend off of his chest, then gasped. "Welcome back to having opposable thumbs."
Peter made a small sound of protest, smushing himself up against Harley's side before slowly blinking his eyes open and looking up at him. "Uh, hi…" He craned his neck to peck him on the lips, then frowned a little when he noticed the hair all over the boy's shirt. "You're covered in cat hair… where'd my clothes go?" he asked softly, tilting his chin against Harley's shoulder.
Harley paused for a moment to consider what Peter had just said, then laughed. "Do you not remember, darlin'?" He ran his hand up and down his boyfriend's bare back, and Peter started playing with Harley's hair. "Remember what?"
"The whole cat thing."
"What whole cat thing?" Peter asked, raising an eyebrow and looking around at the bedroom. "We don't have a cat, cowboy."
"We don't," Harley agrees. "The cat was you. You were the cat. A really bad cat, actually. I have pictures."
Peter blinked at him, taking a moment to process Harley's statement. "I was a cat?"
"Uh-huh," Harley answered, then yawned and pulled Peter in by the waist. "And a terrible cuddler. Come here so you can make up for the trauma."
Peter gasped a little, though he let Harley pull him in. "Like it was my fault. And can I put clothes on first?"
"No."
"…Fine."
Harley hummed contentedly, and Peter set his head against his neck with a purr that was far more spider than cat. He exhaled, shutting his eyes and slowly drifting to sleep. Being a cat was exhausting.