Chapter Text
Tony started talking about Harley two days before the plane landed.
Not in the way he talked about work. That was clipped, already halfway into the next fire. This was the other voice, warmer, startled by itself, like he had opened a drawer and found a year he had forgotten he kept.
“Kid was this high when I met him,” Tony told the kitchen at large, good hand marking a height that would have come up to Peter’s chest. “Kid had a mouth. Stole my stuff. Saved my life. Now he’s in college building a propulsion module that shouldn’t work and apparently does. I haven’t seen him in- FRIDAY, don’t tell me the number, I’ll feel old.”
“Five years, seven months,” FRIDAY said.
“See. Cruel.”
Rhodey grinned into his coffee. “Tennessee’s coming to New York. Try not to adopt a third kid in the gift shop.”
Peter laughed on cue from the sink. He was already washing the mug Tony had left on the counter. “That’s great. Really. He can have the south guest room. I already put extra towels in.”
Tony pointed at him without quite looking away from the old photo on his tablet. “See. Responsible. Harley’s gonna think I run a hotel.”
Peter smiled until his cheeks ached and went to make the south room look like a place where someone who was wanted stayed.
He squared the corners of the duvet. He put a charger on the nightstand. He asked FRIDAY for the temperature Harley had liked last time if there was a last time, and FRIDAY said there was no record, so Peter set it a little warm because college kids were always cold in buildings like this. He stood in the doorway when he was done and tried not to think about how his room had started like this and now he wasn’t sure if he was permanent or a temporary stay until he got on his feet.
Tony passed behind him and paused. “You didn’t have to do all this, Pete.”
“It’s nothing.”
Tony squeezed his shoulder on the way by, already gone in his head toward the lobby.
Peter tried to not hold onto the warmth of the squeeze in case it was something else he had to lose.
--
Harley came off the elevator like a story Tony loved telling.
Taller. Broader in the way people got when they ate regular meals and slept full nights. A duffel that clanked. Hair that had not met a Tower barber. He saw Tony and the whole tired, complicated man in the penthouse dropped out of Tony’s face.
“There he is. Look at you. How tall are you now? Stop that. FRIDAY, make him stop being tall.”
Harley laughed and let himself be hauled into a one-armed hug that went on long enough for Peter, two steps left, to look at the floor. “You look old, Stark.”
“I’m distinguished. That’s the word. Say it.”
“You’re old.”
Rhodey came in from the hall and got a handshake that turned into a clap on the back. Happy actually smiled. Clint yelled something rude from the couch. Harley laughed and it seemed like he slotted right into place.
Peter waited until there was a gap and held out his hand. “Hey. I’m Peter. It’s really good to meet you.”
Harley took it, easy, friendly. “Harley. Thanks for the room. Tony said you did the towels. You didn’t have to.”
“It’s nothing,” Peter said again.
Tony slung an arm around Harley’s neck and steered him toward the lab like the penthouse was only a hallway. “Leave the bag. I want to see the module before Rhodey starts calling it a pipe bomb.”
“It’s not a pipe bomb.”
“That’s what people who make pipe bombs would say.”
They were already moving. Peter stood with the empty handshake still in his fingers.
“Pete,” Tony called over his shoulder, fond and distracted, “grab us coffee? Kid’s been on a plane. Use the good beans.”
Kid.
The word went to Harley.
Peter said, “On it,” and went to the kitchen.
He made the coffee with the good beans. He brought it down to the lab. Tony took the mug without looking up from the work bench, already mid-sentence about thrust curves and a professor who was going to eat his hat. Harley said thanks, and meant it, and then the two of them closed into the work like a door.
Peter stood there a second longer than he should have. Then he smiled at no one and went to check whether the guest room needed anything else.
It did not.
He sat on his own bed afterward and remembered Tony’s open expression and easy laugh and told himself that this was good. This was allowed. Harley had saved him. Harley was visiting. Peter lived here. Living here was not the same as being the person Tony lit up for in a lobby.
He could be the coffee.
Coffee was useful.
Useful stayed.