Chapter Text
Harley Keener had told the story exactly forty times since freshman year started, and all those times, nobody had believed him.
He'd stopped counting after that. Or rather, he'd stopped counting out loud, because counting in his head didn't make the sinking feeling in his stomach go away when Brad Sallis leaned back in his chair during third period and said, loud enough for the whole back row to hear, "Hey, Keener, tell us again about how Iron Man broke into your garage."
"He didn't break in," Harley said, not looking up from his textbook. "The door was already busted from the missile."
"Right, right. The missile." Brad grinned at Connor Diaz, who grinned back, and that was the worst part, not the teasing itself, which Harley had built up a decent callus against over the years, but the way it never seemed to run out of fuel. Some jokes died. This one had had a good few years to die, and instead it just kept limping along, fed by every new kid who transferred in and heard the legend secondhand and decided it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard.
"Sure," Connor said. "And I bet he made you a metal hand too, right? Just whipped one up in your garage. With his tools. That he definitely needed, being a billionaire with unlimited resources."
"He used my tools," Harley muttered, which, okay, in retrospect, was not the detail that made the story more believable.
"Your tools," Brad repeated, like it was the punchline to something. "Tony Stark. Used Harley Keener's garage tools. To fix his suit. In Rose Hill, Tennessee."
"Population four thousand," Connor added helpfully.
"Population four thousand," Brad agreed, "and out of every mansion, lab, and Malibu cliffside available to him, Tony Stark chose Harley's garage."
Mrs Ferris cleared her throat from the front of the room, and the conversation dissolved into snickering rather than actual argument, which Harley had learned was usually how it went. Nobody really wanted him to prove it. They wanted the bit. The bit was funnier than the truth, mostly because the truth sounded exactly as insane as the joke.
He'd tried, once, freshman year, actually to convince someone. He'd described the missile crater. He'd described the kid-sized flashlight duct-taped to the arc reactor housing because the actual light had been busted, and how Tony Stark, the real one, sarcastic and twitchy and running on no sleep and a busted GPS, had eaten an entire box of pop tarts like a starving raccoon and then interrogated Harley about his homemade robot like it was the most interesting piece of engineering he'd seen in a decade. He'd described the part where Stark had, weeks later, sent an actual anonymous letter to him, no name attached, and how Harley knew -and I repeat, knew- it had come from him, because who else would bother.
Nobody had believed a word of it. If anything, the story had gotten worse for him after that, because now it wasn't just a good yarn; it was a good yarn he apparently expected people to swallow, and there was something about a kid insisting on a lie that made bullies sharpen their teeth just a little more.
So he'd stopped insisting. Mostly. He still said it, when it came up, because it was true, and some stubborn part of him refused just to let it go, but he'd stopped expecting anyone to nod along.
"You know what would actually be funny," Connor said, later, at lunch, loud enough to carry across the cafeteria table to where Harley was very deliberately not looking up from his sandwich, "is if we asked him. Next week. In front of everybody."
Harley did look up at that.
"Asked who what?"
"You haven't heard?" Brad slid into the seat across from him with the particular delight of someone who'd been sitting on a piece of gossip specifically to detonate it at the worst possible moment. "Assembly next Thursday. Some STEM outreach thing, Stark Industries is doing a tour of schools, sending reps to talk about internships and engineering programs and whatever. Guess who's the special guest speaker."
Harley's stomach did something complicated.
"Peter Parker-Stark," Connor said, savouring every syllable. "Tony Stark's actual son. In our actual gym. Next Thursday."
"There's no way," Harley said, and meant it, because Rose Hill High didn't get outreach visits from anyone more exciting than the National Guard recruiter, and the idea that Stark Industries' PR machine had somehow rolled its way down to a school with four thousand people in the whole zip code felt like a cosmic joke specifically engineered to torment him.
"Check it," Brad said, already holding out his phone, and there it was, in blandly official sans-serif on the district's own events page: Special Guest Speaker: Peter Parker-Stark, Stark Industries STEM Initiative. Thursday, 10 a.m., gymnasium.
"Huh," Harley said, because it was that or scream.
"So here's the plan," Brad said, leaning back to talk to Connor like a man about to pitch a heist. "We get called up for Q&A, there's always a Q&A, and somebody asks him if he's ever heard of you. Real casual. 'Hey, does the name Harley Keener mean anything to you?' And we watch this Tony Stark's-actual-son look at us like we've lost our minds, because obviously he's never heard of some hick kid from Tennessee, and then" Brad spread his hands like he was unveiling a magic trick. "Then it's over. Forever. No more garage. No more missile. No more 'my mom made him dinner.' Just, done. Case closed."
"That's not-" Harley started, then stopped, because arguing with the plan meant admitting the plan bothered him, and admitting it bothered him was blood in the water. "Whatever. Do what you want."
"Oh, we will," Connor said cheerfully, which felt, somehow, like the actual cruellest part of the whole exchange.
❁ ≖≖✿❁ ≖≖ ❁
Thursday arrived the way dreaded things always did: too fast and also, somehow, not fast enough.
The gymnasium had been rearranged with the kind of hasty grandeur reserved for events the administration wanted to look good for-folding chairs in careful rows, the good podium dragged out of storage, a banner someone had clearly made in Microsoft Word that read WELCOME STARK INDUSTRIES in a font that didn't match the school colours. Principal Denning kept adjusting his tie in a way that suggested he'd rehearsed a handshake in the mirror that morning.
Harley sat near the back with Brad and Connor on either side of him like a pair of extremely pleased bookends, and tried to focus on the fact that this was, on paper, a genuinely cool thing happening at his genuinely uncool school, rather than the fact that he currently felt like a man walking to his own public execution.
"Relax," Connor said to himself, not quietly at all. "It'll be quick. In and out. Like a bee sting."
"Bee stings can kill people," Harley said.
"Only if you're allergic."
"I feel like I might be finding out today."
There was a ripple of movement near the gym doors, teachers straightening, a couple of aides with walkie-talkies suddenly very busy, and then the doors opened, and Peter Parker-Stark walked in, and the entire gymnasium did the thing that gymnasiums full of teenagers do when someone famous walks in, which was pretend very hard not to react while also completely failing to pretend.
He was, Harley catalogued this with the detached, slightly hostile thoroughness of someone who resents another person's effortlessness, exactly the kind of good-looking that money and confidence produce in a person, though there was something looser about it than Harley expected, something almost goofy underneath the polish, like he hadn't quite decided whether to be the poster boy or the guy who made fun of the poster. He had on a blazer that fit like it had been made for him, because it probably had, and a pair of glasses with a faint bronze tint to the lenses that didn't look like they were doing anything as boring as correcting vision.
"He's so cool", Connor whispered, delighted, and Brad shushed him, though he was staring too.
Peter reached the podium, glanced at the note cards someone had clearly prepared for him, and then, with the unbothered confidence of a person who had never once in his life worried about being liked, set the cards face-down and started talking without them.
"So," he said, "I was told I'm supposed to talk to you guys about STEM initiatives and the future of engineering and the transformative power of internship programs, and I will, because apparently there's a very stern woman named Denise in PR who will be very disappointed in me if I don't hit my key messaging points." A pause. "Hi, Denise, if you're watching this. I said the thing."
A ripple of laughter went through the gym, genuine, surprised laughter, the kind kids gave when someone famous turned out to actually be funny instead of just famous.
"But honestly," Peter went on, "the more interesting version of this talk is probably: my dad builds robots for a living and occasionally flies around in a suit of armour punching problems, and somehow I ended up being the normal one in the family, which should tell you something about how low that bar is."
More laughter. Even Brad was smiling, damn him.
Harley kept his arms crossed and his eyes fixed somewhere around Peter's left shoulder, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a reaction, though privately he had to admit the guy had a rhythm to him, an ease, that made you want to keep listening even when you didn't especially want to.
The talk went the way these things went. Robotics programs, scholarship opportunities, a joke about how his dad still hadn't figured out how to load a dishwasher despite being, quote, "a genius, allegedly", and then it curved, as Brad had promised, toward the Q&A, with Principal Denning practically levitating with eagerness to open the floor.
"Any questions?" Peter said, scanning the rows with the easy confidence of someone who'd fielded this exact moment a hundred times before, at a hundred other schools, and knew every question that was coming before it landed. "And before anyone asks, yes, I've met the Avengers, no, I can't get you a job at Stark Industries just because you asked nicely, and no, my dad did not personally build my glasses out of spite."
Hands went up. Ordinary questions came first, what's it like, is he as annoying as he seems on TV, does Peter have any powers of his own (a question Peter deflected with a raised eyebrow and a "wouldn't you like to know") and Harley let himself relax by a single, cautious degree, thinking maybe Brad had lost his nerve, maybe this whole stupid plan had died quietly somewhere between the podium jokes and the scholarship pamphlet.
Then Brad's hand went up, and Harley's stomach dropped through the folding chair, through the gym floor, and several feet into the earth below.
"Yeah, you, in the blue," Peter said, pointing.
"Hey," Brad said, all wide-eyed innocence, "random question, but does the name Harley Keener mean anything to you?"
The gym went very quiet in the specific way it does when forty teenagers realise, simultaneously, that something is about to happen.
Harley did not breathe.
Peter's face did something Harley wasn't expecting at all. It wasn't confusion. It wasn't polite blankness, the practised non-reaction of a celebrity being asked about a stranger. His whole expression lit up, fast and total, the way a kid's does at the first sight of snow.
"Wait," Peter said. "Wait, wait, hold on...Harley Keener? From Rose Hill? Tennessee? The garage kid?"
Someone near Harley made a small strangled noise. It might have been Connor. It might have been Harley himself.
"You know him?" Brad said, and for the first time in all the conversation, the smugness had gone right out of his voice, replaced by something closer to alarm.
"Know him? Dude, my dad has told me that story probably two hundred times; I could recite it in my sleep. There's a screwdriver, there's a computer, there's...okay, is he actually here? Is Harley Keener actually in this room right now?" Peter was leaning forward over the podium now, scanning the rows with the frantic, delighted energy of someone at a concert trying to spot a friend in the crowd. "Because I have been asking my dad to bring me down here for actual years, he keeps saying it's not on the way to anywhere, which, first of all, is rude, and second of all-"
"Uh," Brad said.
Every head in the gymnasium had turned. Harley felt it happen in stages. First Brad and Connor on either side of him going rigid, then the row in front, then a slow-motion wave rippling backwards through the folding chairs, forty-some faces turning to land, with a kind of collective, dawning horror, directly on him.
"Oh my god," Peter said, spotting him, Harley would never, later, be entirely sure how, whether it was the way Harley had gone the colour of old drywall or simply the way the entire gymnasium's attention had converged on one spot like a tractor beam, and his whole face did the lighting-up thing again, brighter this time, unmistakable. "You're Harley Keener?"
"That's-" Harley's voice came out smaller than he wanted it to. He cleared his throat and tried again. "That's me. Yeah."
"No way." Peter had actually stepped away from the podium now, glasses catching the gym lights, and whoever was managing this event could be seen, in Harley's peripheral vision, having some kind of quiet crisis near the folded tables. "No way. Okay, this is- do you know how many times I've heard the gun thing? The Potato gun? My dad loves the Potato gun; he brings it up at dinner parties; there are grown adults in Manhattan who could describe your garage to you in detail-"
"That's not...that can't be-" Harley heard himself say, and some old, worn-down part of him, the part that had spent four years getting laughed at for exactly this story, refused to fully believe what was happening even as it happened directly in front of him. "You're messing with me."
"I'm not messing with you. Why would I mess with you? I've literally wanted to meet you since I was, like... fifteen" Peter stopped, seemed to actually process the stunned silence of the gymnasium around them, and grinned, an easy, unbothered, faintly wicked grin that Harley would come, eventually, to recognise as a very specific kind of trouble. "Oh, this is so much better than the outreach speech."
Somewhere near the back of the gym, a phone buzzed. Then another. Principal Denning's walkie-talkie let out a burst of static that made him jump half a foot in the air, and one of the PR aides near the door went visibly pale, pressing a hand to her earpiece and mouthing something that looked a great deal like no, no, no, sir, please-
And that was the exact moment the gymnasium's double doors, which had been closed and, Harley would later learn, specifically requested to remain closed by no fewer than three separate members of Stark Industries' security detail, blew open with a gust of wind that had absolutely no business existing indoors.
The doors didn't so much open as surrender, slamming back against the cinderblock walls with a crack that sent a poster reading FUTURE ENGINEERS START HERE sliding sideways off its tape, and through them came Tony Stark, sunglasses on despite being indoors, phone in one hand, and trailing behind him two very large men in dark suits who had clearly been asked to keep up and had clearly failed.
"Sir, we had a security perimeter", one of them was saying, in the strained tone of a man who had said this exact sentence several times already today and expected to say it several more.
"You had a security perimeter," Tony agreed, not slowing down, "and I had a helicopter, so really it's a question of whose plan had better acceleration." He scanned the gym with the quick, assessing sweep of someone used to walking into rooms and immediately identifying every exit, every camera, and every person worth talking to, and then his eyes landed on the podium, on Peter standing there with his arms half-raised in the universal gesture of I did not do this, and something in Tony's whole posture changed, lit up, the same unmistakable flare Harley had just watched happen on Peter's face thirty seconds earlier, except louder, and with worse impulse control.
"There he is," Tony said, to the entire gymnasium, pointing at Peter like he was introducing a headline act. "Look at this kid. Look at him. Killing it up there, giving a speech, being the responsible one, and meanwhile I'm getting a call from Denise saying there's a problem," he made air quotes with his free hand, phone still somehow balanced in it, "and I think, great, my son's finally snapped and started a riot, very on brand, very proud-"
"Dad," Peter said, and the word came out flat, mortified, and completely undercut by the fact that he was also, visibly, fighting a smile. "Dad, this is a school."
"I'm aware it's a school; I can read a banner, though whoever made that banner should maybe take a font class" Tony had reached the base of the podium now, security still trailing him like a pair of confused sheepdogs, and Principal Denning was hurrying toward him with the particular gait of a man trying to look calm while internally combusting.
"Mr Stark, this is such an honour, we weren't informed you'd be-"
"Yeah, that's because I wasn't invited," Tony said, not unkindly, already looking past him, "which, we'll workshop that later, very hurt, very wounded, but right now I need everybody to just...hang on." He'd stopped. He was looking past the podium, past Peter, out at the folding chairs, and Harley watched the exact moment it happened, watched Tony Stark's whole face go through something complicated and fast, disbelief and delight and something that looked, weirdly, dangerously close to being moved.
"No," Tony said. "No way."
"Dad-" Peter started.
"Is that?" Tony pointed, and every head in the gym that had turned to look at Harley the first time turned again, faster now, hungrier, because apparently this was becoming a pattern and nobody wanted to miss the next instalment. "Blondie. Rose Hill. That's...Peter, tell me that's not who I think it is."
"That's Harley Keener," Peter said, grinning now without any pretence of not grinning, "which, apparently, is a real coincidence, because that's who they were just asking me about"
"Get out of here," Tony said, and abandoned the podium entirely, walking straight down the centre aisle between the folding chairs while Denning trailed after him, making small aborted gestures like a man trying to redirect a river with his hands. Harley sat frozen, aware of Brad and Connor on either side of him going very, very still, aware of forty-some students craning their necks, aware, distantly, of the fact that his own heart was doing something that felt less like beating and more like slamming itself repeatedly against a locked door.
Tony stopped in front of him. Took the sunglasses off, which felt, somehow, significant. Looked at him for a second too long.
"You got tall," Tony said, like this was the most important information in the room. "You were like" he held a hand up around waist height, "this tall. You were a baby. Look at you. You have a jaw now. When did that happen?"
"I'm seventeen," Harley managed.
"You were ten. Ten and you fixed my chest plate with a soldering iron and a- what was it?"
"A rewired car battery," Harley said, before he could stop himself, some old defensive reflex kicking in even now, even with the actual proof standing four feet away from him. "Because you'd blown out three arc reactor fuses and didn't have replacements."
"Because somebody's GPS sent me to the wrong side of the state," Tony said, rounding on the room now, arms spreading, playing to the crowd with the ease of a man who had never once in his life been anything but the most interesting person in it, "and I ended up in a garage, in Tennessee, with a missile-shaped hole in the wall, being lectured about torque specs by a ten-year-old in a Christmas sweater"
"It was close to Christmas", Harley said.
"It was a very early Christmas sweater," Tony said, "and the kid made me nothing, made me feel bad about my life choices, which honestly, fair, I'd earned it, and then he built me a robot out of a leaf blower while I was borrowing his tools, and I am going to be very honest with everyone in this gymnasium right now: this is one of maybe five kids on the planet I have ever met who I thought, immediately, this one's smarter than me, and I include my own son in that count, don't tell him I said that-"
"I heard that," Peter called from the podium, not remotely offended, clearly delighted.
"You were meant to," Tony said, without turning around, "it builds character."
There was a beat of total, ringing silence in the gymnasium, the specific silence of forty-some teenagers recalibrating an entire worldview in real time, and then Brad, sitting a foot away from Harley with the particular pallor of a man watching his own life flash before his eyes, said, in a voice pitched for nobody in particular, "...huh."
"'Huh,'" Tony repeated, rounding on him with alarming speed for a man who, moments ago, had seemed entirely focused on Harley. "Was that a 'huh' of disbelief? Because I gotta tell you, my kid's face when he heard the name Harley Keener was not the face of a stranger, and my face right now is not the face of a stranger, so if there's some kind of 'huh' happening over here I would love to hear the theory behind it—"
"No, sir, I just" Brad's voice had gone up half an octave. "We just thought, I mean, he's told that story a lot, and it just seemed kind of-"
"Kind of what," Tony said, pleasantly, in the exact tone Harley had heard him use once, years ago, on a state trooper who'd pulled him over for going eleven miles over the limit, a tone that had somehow gotten the trooper to apologise.
"Kind of unbelievable," Connor finished, since Brad appeared to have lost the ability to complete sentences, "because, like, no offence, it's just a lot. Missile hole. Metal hand. It sounds like a movie."
"It was a movie," Tony said. "Several, actually, though they cut most of the Tennessee stuff, criminally; the kid deserved a whole act" and then, seeming to actually register the shape of what had happened, the years of it, turned back to Harley with something quieter in his face. "They didn't believe you."
It wasn't a question, exactly. Harley felt his jaw work for a second before anything came out.
"Not really, no."
"For how long?"
"Since I told the story the first time." Harley shrugged, aiming for casual and missing by a wide margin. "Freshman year."
"Three years," Tony said, and something flickered across his face, fast, gone before Harley could name it, replaced almost immediately by the returning showman's grin, though it sat a little differently now, a little more deliberate. "Well. We're fixing that today, apparently, so. Silver lining." He turned to the room at large. "For the record, and I will say this slowly so it gets fully absorbed, every single thing this kid has ever told you about a missile hole in his garage wall is true. The metal hand is true. The car battery is true. His mother's cooking, which was, incidentally, better than most of what gets served at galas I've paid four figures a plate for, is true. He built a robot out of a leaf blower, and it worked, which is more than I can say for half the engineering team I currently employ, no offence to my engineering team, some of whom are probably watching this go viral right now, hi guys."
A ripple of laughter went through the gym, but it had a different texture now, less at Harley, more with the room, more disbelieving in the good way. Brad had gone the colour of old paper. Connor was staring at his own shoes as they'd personally betrayed him.
"So," Harley heard himself say, before he'd fully decided to say it, some old grudge finally finding daylight, "was there a...is there anything else you wanted to say about the tools?"
Brad looked up.
"The tools you said I probably didn't need," Harley clarified, aware of Peter watching this now from the podium with unmistakable, delighted attention, aware that he had, for once, an audience that actually wanted him to land the joke instead of waiting for him to fall on his face. "Since a literal billionaire apparently needed them."
"I-" Brad started.
"He blew out three fuses and had no replacements," Harley went on, warming to it now, feeling something loosen in his chest that had been clenched for three years. "In a state he wasn't even supposed to be in, with a GPS he'd insulted so badly it probably did it on purpose. So yeah. He needed my tools. My mom's kitchen. My garage. Population four thousand." He looked at Brad, then at Connor, and felt, for the first time in longer than he could measure, something like the ground holding steady under him. "Population four thousand and one Tony Stark, apparently, for about six hours in December."
"Ohh," Peter said from the podium, grinning outright now, "I like him. Dad, can we keep him?"
"We're workshopping it," Tony said.
Brad, to his credit, or possibly just out of self-preservation, managed something that was almost a laugh. "Okay. Okay, that's...yeah. That's fair." He glanced sideways at Harley with an expression that wasn't quite an apology but was, Harley thought, in the neighbourhood of one. "Guess I owe you, like, three years of lunch money."
"I'll take it in cash," Harley said, and surprised himself by meaning it as a joke rather than a demand, and Brad actually laughed at that, a real one, startled out of him, and something about the whole exchange, the absurdity of it, the fact that the thing that had made him a target for three years had just been publicly, spectacularly vindicated by the actual subject of the story in front of the actual entire school, made Harley feel almost dizzy.
"Okay," Tony said, clapping his hands together once, sharp, the sound of a man who had decided the current scene was over, and a new one was starting. "Now that we've established that Harley Keener is, in fact, a real person, and not, as I am now hearing, a theory, a fictional composite, whose idea was that, by the way, I want a name, I want to send them a strongly worded letter. I would like to steal him."
"Steal him," Denning repeated, faintly, from somewhere near the podium, in the tone of a man whose day had officially exceeded his capacity to process new information.
"For a sleepover," Tony clarified, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to announce in a gymnasium full of teenagers and at least one visibly panicking PR representative. "My kid's been asking to meet him since he was fifteen; he does not ask for much, mostly asks for lab access and better Wi-Fi, so when he asks for something this specific I tend to indulge it. You," he pointed at Harley, "garage kid, you're coming to New York. Guest room's already better than anything in this school. I'm not saying that to be rude, I'm saying it because it's true, and Peter can show you the workshop, and you can tell him all the parts of the story he definitely embellished"
"I didn't embellish anything," Peter called.
"You told the ambassador from Norway that I built the suit blindfolded," Tony called back, without turning around.
"That's a separate story"
"And," Tony continued, riding right over him, "since apparently we're doing full disclosure today: when you graduate, there's a seat at Stark Industries with your name on it, actual paid internship, actual engineering work, not the kind where they hand you coffee and call it mentorship. I don't do that for everybody. I've done it for maybe two people ever, and one of them is standing at that podium being sarcastic about it, so you'd be in good company."
The gym had gone very quiet again, but it was a different quiet than before, less the anticipation of a joke landing and more something reverent, or possibly just stunned. Harley became aware that he had not said anything for several seconds, that his mouth had, at some point, come slightly open, and that everyone, including Peter, including Tony, including Brad and Connor, was looking at him waiting for a response.
"That's", Harley started, and stopped, because his voice had come out rougher than he meant it to. He cleared his throat. "That's a lot."
"It's supposed to be," Tony said, gentler now; the showman dialled down half a notch. "You don't have to answer right now. I'm aware I just detonated into your school gymnasium like a very expensive weather event; this is not the ideal negotiating environment, I'm aware of that." A beat. "But the offer's real. All of it. The sleepover, the internship, none of it's charity; I don't do useless charity, I do investing in things that are obviously going to be worth it, and you were worth it when you were ten and rewiring car batteries in a blackout, so."
"I don't even have your number," Harley said, which was, of everything he could have said, possibly the least dignified, and immediately wanted to sink through the gym floor.
"You will in about four seconds," Peter said, already crossing from the podium, phone out, and there was something easy in the way he did it, no ceremony, like this was simply the next obvious step rather than some enormous gesture, and Harley found himself holding his own phone out without entirely deciding to. "Here. Put your number in, I'll text you so you have mine, and then you can panic about the sleepover thing privately instead of in front of your entire school, which, no offence, seems like it's had enough excitement for one day."
"Understatement," Harley muttered, but he was smiling now, he realised, actually smiling, an unguarded one he hadn't used in a gym this size in longer than he wanted to think about.
"For what it's worth," Peter added, quieter, just for him, while Tony had rounded back on Denning to apologise with visible insincerity for the door and was already negotiating, loudly, for the school to receive a very large equipment donation "to make up for the property damage, which, in fairness, was minimal, that door's basically fine"
"I really have wanted to meet you for years. Not, like, as a bit. He tells that story so much I used to think you were kind of made up, like a bedtime story he'd invented to make himself sound heroic. And then he'd get this specific voice, this" Peter gestured vaguely, "this voice he doesn't use for anything else, and I figured, whoever this kid is, he must actually be real, because my dad doesn't fake that voice for anybody."
Harley looked at him for a second, at this kid he'd built up in his head for three years as some abstract punchline, some impossible detail in a story nobody believed, standing here now handing his phone over like it was the easiest thing in the world.
"He talks about me," Harley said. Not quite a question.
"Constantly," Peter said. "It's actually a little exhausting. I'm glad you exist so I can finally tell him to stop, or, well," he grinned, "redirect the exhaustion to you instead. Teamwork."
Somewhere behind them, Tony's voice rose, cheerful and completely unbothered by the chaos he'd caused, informing Principal Denning that he'd also be funding a new robotics lab "with Harley's name on the door, obviously, don't argue with me, Denise will handle the paperwork," while security stood by looking like men who had given up trying to have a plan sometime around the missile-hole story and had simply resigned themselves to damage control.
Harley looked down at his phone, at the new contact blinking into existence: Peter Parker-Stark, and underneath it, because apparently Peter had typed it himself while talking, a small line that read (garage kid's new best friend, obviously) and felt something in his chest that he hadn't expected to feel today, walking into this gym three hours ago dreading exactly this moment.
"Okay," he said, and it came out steadier than he felt, but steady enough. "Okay. Text me. I'll think about the sleepover."
"You'll say yes," Peter said, with the easy, unbothered confidence of someone who had clearly inherited it from somewhere very specific. "Everybody says yes eventually. It's kind of our whole thing."
Behind them, the gym doors, still hanging slightly askew on their hinges, let in a fresh gust of very normal, very indoor-appropriate air, and Harley Keener, for the first time in three years, walked out of that gymnasium without a single person laughing at him.
The End