Chapter Text
The thing about having a secret identity was that it made normal teenage problems feel weirdly trivial by comparison.
Getting lectured by someone who’d befriended your bully? Annoying, sure. But Peter had also been thrown through a building by a guy in a mechanical rhino suit, so his perspective on “bad days” was pretty skewed.
Still didn't mean Harley Keener wasn't pissing him off.
Peter adjusted the microscope lens, studying the molecular structure of his new web fluid formula. He'd been at it for the last hour and a half, and the solution was finally starting to stabilize. The tensile strength was up by almost twenty percent without compromising flexibility, which meant his webs would hold better under stress without becoming brittle.
“FRIDAY, can you run another simulation on the stress test parameters?” Peter asked, making notes in his tablet.
“Running now, Peter.” FRIDAY’s voice filled the lab with its usual calm efficiency. “Preliminary results suggest a fourteen percent improvement in load-bearing capacity compared to your previous formula.”
“Yes!” Peter pumped his fist, then immediately felt self-conscious even though no one was watching. “Okay, that’s good. That’s really good. Can you—”
“Model the performance under variable temperature conditions? Already queued.”
“You’re the best, FRIDAY.”
“I am programmed to be highly competent, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
Peter smiled despite himself, turning back to his work. This was good. This was exactly what he needed—just him, science, and problems that actually had solutions. No complicated social dynamics. No people who acted like you were an inconvenience one minute and then had the audacity to give you life advice the next.
His workspace was in the corner of Tony’s main lab, tucked between a half-disassembled Iron Man gauntlet and what appeared to be an experimental coffee maker that Tony swore would revolutionize morning beverages. Peter’s area was organized chaos—beakers and vials arranged in a system that made sense only to him, schematics spread across two monitors, and his Spider-Man suit laid out on the table like a patient mid-surgery.
The suit was what he was really working on. The web fluid was part of it, but he also wanted to upgrade the shooters themselves. Make them more responsive, maybe add a secondary cartridge system so he could switch between web types mid-swing. He'd been sketching out designs for weeks, and now he finally had uninterrupted time to actually build something.
Uninterrupted being the keyword.
Normally Friday evenings meant lab time with both Tony and Harley—three science nerds arguing about physics and engineering while AC/DC played in the background and Tony made increasingly elaborate coffee drinks that no one asked for.
But Harley wasn’t here.
And Peter was absolutely, completely, one hundred percent fine with that.
“FRIDAY?” Peter said, carefully not asking the question that kept trying to surface.
“Yes, Peter?”
“Nothing. Just—making sure you’re still running those simulations.”
“I am capable of multitasking approximately eight million processes simultaneously. Your simulation is well within my operational capacity.”
“Right. Yeah. Obviously.”
Peter bent over his work, trying to focus. The new web shooter design needed a smaller firing mechanism, which meant re-engineering the trigger assembly. He pulled up the CAD program on his tablet, rotating the 3D model to see it from different angles.
His mind was not thinking about why Harley wasn't here.
Definitely not wondering if Harley was actually sick or just avoiding him.
Not even slightly curious about whether Harley felt bad about their conversation yesterday or if he'd just written Peter off entirely.
Nope.
Peter was thinking about torque ratios and spring tension and absolutely nothing else.
“You know,” FRIDAY said conversationally, “your heart rate has elevated by approximately twelve beats per minute in the last three minutes, and you've been staring at the same section of that schematic without making any changes.”
Peter blinked, refocusing on his tablet. “I was thinking.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Whatever is causing your elevated stress response.”
“I’m fine, FRIDAY.”
“You've said 'I'm fine' fourteen times today across various conversations. Statistical analysis suggests you are, in fact, not fine.”
Peter set down his tablet with more force than necessary. “Okay, has everyone suddenly become a therapist? First MJ, then Ned, now you?”
“We’re concerned. You’ve been displaying signs of emotional distress since yesterday afternoon. I’m not—” Peter stopped, took a breath. “I’m just frustrated. So I’m working through it by doing science. That’s healthy, right? Productive coping mechanisms?”
“In moderation, yes. However, avoidance behaviors—”
“I’m not avoiding anything. I’m just choosing to focus my energy on things that actually matter.”
“Mmm,” FRIDAY said, in a tone that somehow conveyed deep skepticism despite being generated by an algorithm.
Peter went back to his web shooters, determinedly not thinking about Harley Keener’s stupid face or his stupid accent or the stupid way he’d looked at Peter like Peter was the problem.
He was doing great.
Two hours later, Tony strolled into the lab like he owned the place—because of course he did—carrying two coffee mugs and wearing an AC/DC shirt that had definitely survived one too many explosions.
“Parker!” he announced loudly, as if Peter might have somehow missed the dramatic entrance. “How goes the web-work? Still trying to make your spider juice more spider-y?”
Peter didn’t even look up, just sighed like a man carrying the burdens of the world on his teenage shoulders. “It’s not spider juice,” he said automatically, accepting the mug Tony shoved at him. “And thanks. This is… wow, this is your fancy espresso blend. Did you—did you bribe FRIDAY again?”
“I don’t bribe my AI,” Tony said indignantly. “We have an understanding.”
Peter snorted. “Right.”
Tony ignored that entirely as he leaned over Peter’s shoulder like an annoying but somehow lovable vulture. “So? Whatcha got for me? New shooter design?”
“Yeah.” Peter rotated the hologram so Tony could see better. “I wanted to add a dual-cartridge system, so I can switch between regular webs and impact webs without having to reload manually.”
Tony took a thoughtful sip of coffee. “Smart. I like it. And also disgusting. How are you, seventeen and already better at this than half of MIT? Irritating. Very irritating.”
Peter tried to hide a grin behind his mug. “Sorry?”
“You’re not sorry,” Tony shot back. “You enjoy tormenting me with your brilliance.”
“Nooo,” Peter said, stretching the word with the most unconvincing innocence ever produced in a lab.
Tony looked around like he was expecting hidden cameras, then his gaze drifted—just briefly—toward the far side of the lab, where Harley’s half-finished arc reactor prototype sat surrounded by scattered tools, screws, and what Peter was pretty sure was a dismantled toaster.
Peter very deliberately did not follow Tony’s line of sight.
The silence stretched just a little too long.
So Peter broke it the only way he knew how—by being awkward and mildly rude.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” he asked, trying (and failing) to sound annoyed instead of self-conscious. “Like… a meeting? Or Pepper making you be an Actual Responsible Adult™?”
Tony gasped, hand clutching his chest dramatically. “Did you just try to kick me out of my own lab?”
“I’m just saying,” Peter mumbled, “you usually have… stuff. Billionaire genius stuff.”
Tony narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Are you trying to hide something? Did you blow something up? Did Ned drop by again? Did Morgan give you another experimental cupcake? Did you—”
“Mr. Stark,” Peter groaned, “I’m trying to work.”
“Oh! Oh, now you’re being professional? Now?!” Tony threw his hands up. “Suddenly I’m the problem? Me? Your generous benefactor? Your mentor? Your caffeine dealer?”
Peter snorted into his coffee. “You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m always dramatic,” Tony said proudly.
"Yeah, we know."
“So,” Tony said, in that carefully casual tone that meant he was about to say something he thought was subtle but absolutely wasn’t. “Quiet in here today.”
“Yep.”
“Usually, there’s at least two of you science nerds cluttering up my lab.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“But I guess Harley’s got that whole ‘being sick’ thing happening.” Tony made air quotes around ‘being sick’ in a way that suggested he didn't believe it at all.
Peter’s jaw tightened, but he kept his eyes on his work. “Guess so.”
“Yeah, except he didn't really seem sick when I saw him earlier. More like he was thinking through something. You know that look teenagers get when they're having an existential crisis? All broody and dramatic?”
Peter’s hands stilled on the web shooter component he’d been adjusting.
Harley wasn't even actually sick.
He’d just—what? Decided school wasn’t worth attending? Decided the lab wasn’t worth showing up to? Couldn’t even be bothered to commit to a decent excuse?
Something hot and sharp twisted in Peter’s chest.
“Cool,” Peter said, and his voice came out flatter than he intended. “That’s great.”
Tony’s eyebrows rose. “That’s great? Really selling the enthusiasm there, kid.”
“I mean—” Peter set down his tools, turning to face Tony. “It’s just funny, isn’t it? Like, we’ve been in school for a week. One week. And Harley’s already pulling the ‘I’m sick but not really’ card. Must be nice to just opt out whenever things feel inconvenient.”
“Whoa.” Tony held up a hand. “Okay, that came out way more bitter than I think you intended.”
Peter nearly choked on his coffee. “I DON’T—! I—I was just—! I'm not bitter!”
“Uh-huh,” Tony said, clearly unconvinced. “Sure, kid. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Tony was watching him with that too-perceptive look now, the one that meant he was trying to figure out what was actually going on. “You want to tell me what’s happening between you and Keener?”
“Nothing’s happening. We’re lab partners. That’s it.”
“Uh-huh. And that’s why you’ve been weird?”
“I haven’t been weird.”
“Peter. Kid. Light of my life, heir to my scientific legacy, et cetera.” Tony set his mug down. “You’ve been aggressively focused on your work since you got here, you haven’t asked about Harley once—which is unusual because you’re basically a golden retriever in human form and you ask about everyone—and you just used the word 'inconvenient' with enough venom to kill a small animal.”
Peter opened his mouth. Closed it. Couldn’t actually argue with any of that.
“Look,” Tony continued, his voice a little gentler. “I don’t know what happened. And you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But if there’s something going on, I’m here. You know that, right?”
“I know,” Peter said quietly. And he did. Tony had made that abundantly clear over the years—Peter could come to him with anything. Problems, questions, weird Spider-Man situations that required Iron Man backup.
But this? This felt too small and too big at the same time. Too much like regular teenage drama to bother Tony with, but also somehow important enough that it was currently taking up way too much space in Peter’s head.
“It’s just—” Peter started, then stopped. He wasn’t going to complain to Tony about Harley. That felt petty and small and like exactly the kind of thing that would make Tony try to fix it, which would make everything worse.
“Just what?” Tony prompted.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” Peter picked up his web shooter again, focusing on the mechanism. “It’s fine.”
Tony was quiet for a long moment, and Peter could feel him thinking.
Peter went back to his work, not trusting himself to say anything that wouldn’t come out wrong.
Tony clapped him on the shoulder—that same casual gesture that somehow managed to be comforting and grounding at the same time. “Anyway. Your web shooter design is solid. You need any help with the fabrication?”
“Nah, I got it. Thanks, though.”
“Anyway—since SOMEONE clearly doesn’t appreciate my presence, I’m going to go… elsewhere. Where people love me. And don’t accuse me of interrupting them.”
He marched toward the door with all the righteous indignation of a man deeply offended by a teenager.
After Tony left, the lab felt very quiet again.
Peter turned back to his schematics, but it took him a solid thirty seconds to realize he’d been holding his stylus upside down.
For the next hour, Peter cranked music low and drowned out everything else. He set a new patch for suit insulation. He'd finished the initial prototype for the dual-cartridge web shooter, and FRIDAY had run six different simulations that all showed promising results. He watched a calibration sequence.
He was so committed to the bit he didn’t even notice the time, until FRIDAY politely reminded him: “It is now 8:08 pm, Peter. I have detected a mild case of hypoglycemia. You may wish to seek nutrition.”
Peter's eyes were starting to blur from staring at tiny components. Peter rolled his eyes, forced a yawn, and started shoving his textbooks into his bag.
He packed up his stuff, carefully storing the Spider-Man suit in the specialized compartment Tony had built into his workstation. Tomorrow, he'd do some actual test fires, but for now, he was satisfied.
The lab was quiet—Tony had left an hour ago to put Morgan to bed, and the tower had that peaceful evening stillness that Peter always found a little surreal. This building that was normally full of people and activity, just—quiet.
Peter took the elevator up to the penthouse level. He wasn't staying over tonight—May was expecting him home—but he wanted to say goodnight to Morgan before he left. It had become a routine over the last few months. Morgan insisted on it, actually. Said Peter wasn't allowed to leave without at least one goodbye, and who was he to argue with a six-year-old?
The penthouse was dimly lit, most of the lights turned down for the evening, and it was unusually quiet as he entered, except for the faint sound of a movie playing from the living room—probably Pepper watching something. At the same time, she worked through the pile of contracts that never seemed to get smaller.
He found Morgan in her bedroom, already in pyjamas covered in planets and rockets, sitting cross-legged on her bed with a picture book spread in front of her. His annoyance fizzled a little; Morgan had that effect, a sort of gentle emotional sandpaper.
“Hey, Mo,” Peter said softly, leaning against the doorframe.
“Pete!” Morgan spotted him immediately, scrambling to her feet and grabbing his sleeve. “Look, I made you see-saw cereal!” She presented a bowl filled with Lucky Charms and pretzel sticks, arranged in what might have been a chemistry experiment gone very cute.
“See-saw cereal, huh? Experimental food science—now that’s what I like to see.” He sat beside her, letting Morgan plop down and lean into his side like a barnacle.
“You look tired,” Morgan announced. “And you lost the smile. Did you misplace it at school?”
Peter coughed. “Yeah, must have left it in, uh… calculus class.”
Morgan was unperturbed, tipping the bowl closer. “Sugar helps. My dad says so. Mom doesn’t agree.”
“Both your parents are geniuses. I trust your scientific method.” Peter accepted a pretzel stick and gnawed it, feeling tension he didn’t realize he was carrying drain away a notch.
“Did you finish your science stuff?”
“Most of it. I'll work on more tomorrow.”
“Was it cool science or boring science?”
“Very cool science. I made my web shooters better.”
“Can I see them?”
“Not tonight. It's past your bedtime.”
Morgan pouted, but it was half-hearted.
“So, what did you do today?”
“Math. And robot club,” She patted the bed next to her.
“Come look at my book. It’s about black holes.”
Peter couldn’t help but smile, settling down beside her. Morgan had inherited both her parents’ genius and their complete inability to be interested in age-appropriate topics. Most six-year-olds were reading about talking animals. Morgan was reading about gravitational singularities.
“Black holes are awesome,” Peter said, looking at the colorful illustrations of space phenomena.
“Daddy says they’re like nature’s vacuum cleaners. Except you can’t turn them off and they eat everything.” Morgan turned the page, showing a diagram of an accretion disk. “And nothing can escape. Not even light.”
“That’s right. The gravity’s so strong that once something crosses the event horizon, it’s stuck.”
“What’s an even horizon?”
“Event horizon. It’s like the point of no return.” Peter pointed at the illustration. “Once you cross that line, you can’t come back out. You’re pulled all the way into the center.”
Morgan considered this seriously. “That’s scary.”
“A little bit, yeah.”
“But also cool.”
“Also very cool,” Peter agreed.
They looked through the rest of the book, Morgan asking questions that were way too advanced for her age and Peter doing his best to explain concepts like spaghettification and Hawking radiation in six-year-old-friendly terms.
“Okay,” Peter said finally, closing the book. “You should sleep. Your mom’s going to kill me if she finds out I kept you up talking about physics.”
“But physics is important!”
“It is. But so is sleep. Your brain needs rest to process all this cool information.”
Morgan sighed dramatically but snuggled down under her covers. “Fine. But tomorrow you have to tell me about the cool web shooters.”
“Deal.” Peter stood up, pulling the blanket up to her chin. “Goodnight, Mo.”
“Night, Petey.” She paused, her expression shifting to something more thoughtful. “Hey, is Harley okay?”
Peter froze. “What?”
“Harley. Is he okay? I saw him earlier, and he looked sad.”
“You saw him?”
“Yeah, this evening. I went to ask if he wanted to watch a movie with me, but he was just sitting in his room with his laptop. He said he was busy, but he looked sad.” Morgan’s brow furrowed. “He should get outside more. Or bounce with us.”
“Yeah. Or something.” Peter reached over and ruffled her hair.
Morgan giggled. Then, unprompted and absolutely on brand: “Hey, don’t be sad, Bug Boy. If you’re grumpy, you should share. That’s what Mom says about feelings.”
Peter almost laughed; he almost wanted to tell her everything, unload all the pent-up static still fizzling in his head. But Morgan was six, and her best advice usually involved glitter. So he just smiled and said, “Thanks. I’ll try harder. Get some sleep, okay?”
“Okay. Love you, Petey.”
“Love you too, Mo.”
Peter left her room, closing the door quietly behind him. In the hallway, he leaned against the wall for a moment, feeling the end of the day pile up in his bones, processing. Harley might be sad for some reason. But being the better person was starting to feel a lot like being the only one who cared to try.
Harley had discovered there was a particular kind of silence that lived in Stark Tower bedrooms.
It wasn’t like the quiet back home in Rose Hill—the soft hum of the fridge, the far-off bark of some neighbor’s dog, Lucy’s music leaking under her door, the TV murmuring from the living room if Mom fell asleep on the couch. That was lived‑in noise, human noise.
This was… sterile. Filtered air, distant elevator whoosh, a faint vibration from the city pressed up against the glass. It made the inside of Harley’s skull feel too loud.
Harley had made it almost three hours into his grand plan of “pretend the world doesn’t exist” before his own brain staged a revolt.
At first, hiding in his room had almost worked. He sat cross‑legged on his bed, laptop balanced in front of him, dark mode IDE open, lines of code marching down the screen, opened up the project he’d been tinkering with—some optimization script for Stark’s internal diagnostics—and thrown himself at the code like it could drown out everything else.
It should have been comforting. Logical. Predictable. If there was a bug, there was a reason. If something crashed, it was his fault, and he could fix it.
Not like the mess he’d made of an actual human being.
Harley had written exactly three lines of code in the last forty minutes, and two of them were comments that just said “this is stupid” and “so is this.”
The cursor blinked accusingly at him from the middle of an unfinished function, the IDE’s light theme suddenly too bright against the dim of his room. His laptop’s fans hummed softly, the only real sound besides the distant, muted thrum of Manhattan through the glass.
“FRIDAY?” Harley asked, after a beat.
“Yes, Harley.”
“Is Peter…in the lab?”
“Yes. He arrived at 17:06 and has been working since.”
Of course he had. Of course Peter was down there, doing his job, keeping his commitments, being the exact kind of person Harley had spent a week assuming he wasn’t.
Harley had swallowed hard, muttered something noncommittal, and then… stayed right where he was. Doing absolutely nothing.
Coward.
Harley’s fingers hovered over his keyboard, then dropped uselessly to his lap.
“Do you wish to join them?” FRIDAY asked.
“No.” The word came out too fast, too sharp. He swallowed. “No. I’m good. I’m… busy.”
“As you wish,” FRIDAY said, and if an AI could sound unconvinced, she did.
He scrubbed both hands over his face and tried to focus on the screen.
He couldn’t face Peter. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not ever.
“Harley?” FRIDAY’s voice was unobtrusive, coming from the room speakers instead of the overheads. “Your respiration rate has increased significantly. Do you require medical attention?”
“Yeah, well, it does that.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Go bother Tony. I’m not your favourite emotionally constipated project.”
“You are all equally emotionally constipated projects.”
A huff of laughter escaped him, unwilling, small. “Yeah. Sounds about right. But, I’m fine,” Harley lied, the words automatic and useless. “Just… tired.”
“You have said that six times today,” FRIDAY noted. “Each time, you were demonstrably not fine.”
“Can you—maybe not quantify my emotional failures right now?”
There was a tiny pause, almost like she was considering how far to push. “I can lower the ambient light and play one of your focus playlists, if you’d like.”
He swallowed. “Yeah. Sure. That’d be… good.”
The room dimmed another notch, and soft instrumental guitar started playing quietly. The tightness eased a fraction. Not enough, but it was something.
He tried to code again. Lasted maybe thirty seconds.
By the time the wall clock ticked past six, the walls felt like they were inching closer. The knowledge that Peter was two floors down—or had been, at least—made the air feel thicker somehow. It wasn’t logical, but logic clearly had the night off.
He barely had time to straighten before there was a soft knock, followed by the door pushing open without waiting for permission, because Morgan had long since decided closed doors were more of a suggestion.
“Harleeey,” she sing-songed, already halfway into the room, socks sliding on the floor, hair pulled into two slightly crooked ponytails, Stark Industries kid‑sized hoodie hanging off one shoulder. Her socks didn’t match.
“Hey, menace.” Harley forced something like a smile. “Shouldn’t you be in bed? Plotting world domination in your dreams?”
“It’s not bedtime yet,” she lied easily, slipping fully into the room. “It’s movie time. I came to collect you.”
“Collect me?”
“Yeah.” She marched right to his bed and flopped onto it, bouncing. “I’m watching a movie in the living room. You’re supposed to come watch, too.”
“Says who?”
“Me.” She shot him a look that was disturbingly close to Pepper’s. “And Daddy. But mostly me.”
He’d expected it. Friday. Lab day. If Peter was downstairs with Tony, Morgan would be prowling around looking for someone else to hang out with before bed.
Normally, this was the part where he would cave. Let her drag him out to suffer through animated talking animals or space documentaries or whatever she’d decided on, because Morgan Stark was impossible to say no to, and he kind of…liked being included in the chaos.
Today, the thought of sitting on a couch with people felt like trying to breathe underwater.
“I can’t, kid,” he tried for his usual teasing drawl and heard it wobble halfway out. “Can’t. Busy.”
She stopped beside his bed, glancing at the still-closed laptop and the lack of literally anything else going on.
“That looks like not busy,” she said flatly.
Harley shrugged, picking at a loose thread on his comforter. “Got…work. Tony stuff. Code. Boring grown-up things. You should go rope your dad into watching something.”
“He said he has a call,” Morgan said, making a face. “And Mommy said if I ‘stall bedtime again’ she’s taking away my tablet. So you’re my only option.”
“I really can’t tonight, kiddo.” He kept his eyes on the blanket, not trusting himself to meet hers. “Just tired.”
There was a pause. He could feel her looking at him.
“You sound weird,” she said immediately, with the blunt accuracy only six-year-olds got away with.
“Wow,” Harley muttered, but his mouth tugged up a little. “What gave it away?”
“You’re doing the thing,” Morgan said, climbing up to sit at the foot of his bed. “You do that when you’re thinking too hard and being dumb about it.”
“Is everyone in this tower reading from the same script today?” he grumbled. “Or did FRIDAY start a group chat about my psychological flaws?”
“I do not have a group chat,” FRIDAY said primly. “But the idea has merit.”
“I’m fine,” Harley lied, and even he winced at how unconvincing it sounded.
“Uh-huh.” Morgan climbed up onto the edge of the bed anyway, leaning in. “Are you sick-sick or sad-sick?”
He huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Didn’t know there was a difference.”
“There is,” she said firmly. “Sick-sick is when you throw up and Daddy panics. Sad-sick is when you stare at walls and think you’re hiding it but you’re actually really obvious, like when Mommy says she’s ‘just tired’ but then doesn’t sleep and stares at her laptop all night.”
Harley swallowed. “I’m not—”
“Harley,” Morgan cut in, sounding uncannily like Pepper for a split second. “Okay. But if you change your mind, we’re starting in ten minutes. It’s the one with the dragon that looks like a lumpy dog.” She slid off the bed, then paused at the door, then stepped forward and bumped her forehead lightly against his shoulder—her version of a hug when she was pretending she was “too big for baby stuff.”
“Night, Har,” she mumbled, then padded out of the room.
The door clicked shut behind her. The silence that followed felt heavier than before.
Harley pressed his palms over his eyes until white sparks bloomed behind his lids.
He couldn’t keep doing this. Circling the same guilt, the same stupid decisions, over and over in his head until they squeezed the air out of his lungs.
He needed something familiar. Something grounding. Something that wasn’t Stark Tower and its glass walls and its too-bright reminder of just how badly he was screwing this up.
He needed home.
“FRIDAY, can you—” He stopped, grimaced. “No, never mind, I got it.”
He stared at his half-closed laptop for another full minute before sighing and picking up his phone out from under the pillow, thumb hovering for a second over the screen.
He hit call before he could talk himself out of it and lifted the phone to his ear.
The call rang twice.
The familiar grainy camera quality of their kitchen loaded slowly, then all at once—yellow light, cluttered counter, the dented fridge covered in Lucy’s drawings and old magnets.
Jane’s face appeared first, hair scraped into a bun, flour on her cheek again, like the universe was running on a loop.
“Harley!” she said, smile blooming so fast it hurt to look at. “Well, look who remembered he has a family. I was starting to think New York stole you.”
“Technically, it did,” he said, dropping back onto his bed, phone propped against his knees. “But, you know. Voluntarily abducted.”
“You vanish for almost a whole week,” Jane Keener continued, mock-scolding softened by relief. “No calls, no texts, just one message that you ‘got in okay’ and then radio silence. I was two seconds from calling Tony and asking if my son had been abducted by aliens.”
“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened in this tower,” Harley muttered.
Lucy’s voice crashed into the call before he could elaborate.
“HE FINALLY CALLED?” she yelled. “MOM, PUT IT ON SPEAKER, I WANNA YELL AT HIM.”
Harley groaned. “Please don’t.”
“Too late,” Jane said, and he heard the beep as she switched modes.
“Harley!” Lucy yelled, barging into frame with the chaos of a small tornado. “You look like garbage.”
“Nice to see you too, Lucy.”
“I mean, you always look like garbage, but this is, like, extra.” She narrowed her eyes at the camera. “Have you slept in the last century?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Define slept.”
Jane’s expression shifted from amused to concerned, the way it always did when she realized the joking was covering something real. “What’s going on, Harley?”
He deflected automatically. “How are you guys? Lucy, what’d you blow up this week?”
“I had to eat dinner with just Mom for four days. Do you know what that does to a person?”
“Enlighten me,” Jane said dryly.
“She asks questions, Harley. About my day. And feelings. She made vegetables. There was broccoli.”
“I like broccoli,” Jane protested.
“You’re a monster.”
Despite everything, a laugh pushed its way out of Harley’s chest, raw but real. “You survived, didn’t you?”
“Barely,” Lucy sniffed. “What’s your excuse? Why haven’t you called? Get too fancy up there in your billionaire sky fortress?”
“I’m fine.”
“You say that like you think I’m gonna believe it.”
“Yeah. Just… busy.” He glanced at the laptop beside him. Closed. “Internship. School. Tony’s coffee machine staging a coup. You know. Life.”
“Tired, busy, fine,” Lucy listed, leaning closer, squinting at the screen. “Those your three flavors today? Mom’s right. Something’s off. His face does that thing when he’s thinking too hard. The ‘I broke something and haven’t told anyone yet’ face.”
“I did not break anything,” Harley said, automatically offended. “This time.”
“But you did something,” Lucy sing-songed. “Spill.”
“Can we not do this interrogation thing? I just wanted to check in, okay?”
There was a brief silence. When his mom spoke again, her voice had lost the teasing edge.
“Hey,” Jane said softly. “I’m glad you called. Really. But I know your ‘I’m fine’ voice, Har. I’ve known it since you were five and insisted you didn’t need a band-aid while bleeding all over my kitchen floor.”
His throat went tight.
He could lie. He could say he was stressed about classes, about Tony, about the city. All technically true. None of it was *the thing*. The weight in his chest wasn’t budging, and keeping it there felt like trying to hold his breath indefinitely.
“Is it that lab partner again?” Lucy cut in, eyes bright with psychic little-sister energy. “Peter? Did he do something? Do I need to come over there and challenge him to a robotics duel?”
Harley huffed out a humorless laugh. “He didn’t do anything, Lucy. I did.” He swallowed. “I messed up.”
There was a beat, then Lucy again, immediate and vindicated.
“Called it. I told Mom, ‘He’s gonna do something stupid socially in, like, three business days.’”
“Lucy,” Jane warned. “Go easy.”
“I am going easy. I didn’t say catastrophic.”
“That’s not helping,” Harley muttered.
Jane exhaled. “Okay. Harley. What did you do?”
He let his head fall back against the wall, eyes fixed on a crack in the paint near the ceiling.
“You remember how you both said I should maybe, possibly, someday consider not being a complete jackass to him?” Harley said. “Give him a chance. Try to actually talk to him?”
“Peter,” Jane said quietly.
“Yeah. Him.” Harley nodded, even though she couldn’t see it.
“I recall being extremely wise,” Lucy added.
“And I did the exact opposite of that,” Harley said, the words scraping their way out.
Lucy snorted. “Shocking.”
“Luce,” Jane warned, but there wasn’t much heat in it.
“I’m serious,” Harley said, and something in his tone wiped the teasing from Lucy’s face. “I never gave him a shot. From day one, he was—Peter. Friendly. Too friendly. Tried to be welcoming, asked if I needed help. And from day one, I decided he was some golden-boy Tony replacement. I saw how everyone talked about him, how much Tony trusts him, and I just… made up my mind.”
“And then acted like it was fact,” Jane said quietly.
He nodded. “Yeah. I shut him down every time he tried to be nice. Gave him one-word answers. Snapped at him. Avoided him. Whatever the opposite of ‘giving someone a chance’ is, that’s what I did.” He hesitated. “I made it clear I didn’t want to be friends. I literally befriended his bully instead.”
Lucy’s eyebrows flew up. “You WHAT?”
“Yeah.” Shame crawled up his neck, hot and prickly. “I didn’t know the history at first, okay? I just saw a loud, annoying guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer and thought it would be easier. And Peter kept being… Peter. He was still polite. Still tried. Even when I made it really obvious I wasn’t interested.”
Jane’s expression settled somewhere between sad and disappointed. Harley had always hated that look.
“Let me make sure I understand,” she said. “You befriended the boy who’s been tormenting the kid you were supposed to be looking out for.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds worse,” he muttered.
“It is worse,” Lucy said. “Was Thompson literally the only other person in that whole school? Did no one else have a free chair?”
“It wasn’t—” He broke off, dragging a hand down his face. “It was easier.”
Jane’s voice dipped. “Harley.”
“I know,” he said. “And even after I figured out Flash was… Flash, I still stayed. I still laughed sometimes. I still let him talk about Peter like—like that. I sat there and let it happen.”
Lucy leaned closer. “Did you join in?”
“Not really,” Harley said. “Not overtly. Didn’t stand up for him either. Which is… just a less honest way of joining in, I guess.”
Jane nodded once, eyes sad. “Go on.”
“Peter knew,” Harley said. “He knew I’d picked Flash’s table over his. He still tried to be civil. Came up to me in the lab, in class, in the hall. Tried to keep things professional. And I kept—” He huffed out a humorless laugh. “You’re gonna love this part.”
Lucy groaned. “Oh no.”
“Yesterday,” Harley said, “I decided to lecture him. I told him he was doing it wrong. That letting Flash get to him just made things worse. That he should ignore it. Walk away.”
Lucy scrubbed a hand over her face. “Wow.”
“Meanwhile,” Harley continued, “I’m literally hanging out with the guy at lunch. Being his buddy of convenience.”
Jane closed her eyes briefly, like she was in actual pain. “Oh, honey.”
“Peter snapped,” Harley said. “Not yelling. Not dramatic. Just… done.” He swallowed. “Said he’d been dealing with Flash long before I showed up. That he could handle it. That I don’t get to tell him how to deal with something I’m actively making worse.”
His throat tightened. “And he was right.”
Lucy was quiet for once.
“He was so right I wanted to crawl out of my skin,” Harley finished.
Lucy finally spoke. “Harley Keener, you absolute idiot.”
“Thanks.”
“That’s the polite version,” she added.
Jane leaned closer to the camera. “Is that all?” she asked. “Because I hear something else in your voice.”
He hesitated. This was the line. The part that made his stomach twist because saying it out loud made it real.
“I didn’t trust him,” Harley said. “And I decided something had to be wrong with him.” The words came quicker now, like a dam had cracked. “Nobody’s that good all the time. Nobody’s that helpful and humble without an angle. And instead of talking—asking—I did what I always do when something feels off.”
“I went digging.”
Jane’s eyes sharpened. “What kind of digging?”
“The bad kind.” He rubbed his forehead. “I used the access I had here, plus some stuff I shouldn’t have used, to pull records. Police reports. Patterns.”
Lucy’s mouth dropped open. “Harley, you did not.”
“I did,” he said, voice cracking. “Because I thought there had to be something. Some reason Tony hired him. Some dirt. Some secret.”
“And?” Jane asked, already knowing.
“And I found… everything,” Harley said. “I saw stuff no one should see except him and whatever cops filed it.”
Jane’s face went very still. “You read all of it?”
“Enough,” he said miserably. “Enough to realize I have never had a bad day in my life compared to him.”
He swallowed.
“Enough to realize every time I’ve thought my life was tragic, I was being a self-centered idiot.”
Lucy went quiet.
“Enough to realize he has every reason in the world to be angry and bitter,” Harley continued, “and somehow he’s not. Not the way I’d be.”
“You violated his privacy,” Jane said, the disappointment in her voice making his chest ache. “On purpose.”
“I know,” he whispered. “It was wrong.”
“It didn’t feel wrong in the moment,” he admitted. “It felt justified. Like I was protecting myself. But then I realized I took someone who’s already had everything ripped away from him and treated him like a puzzle instead of a person.”
“And then what?” Jane asked.
“Then I sat there like a coward and did nothing.”
Lucy’s voice was flat. “You’re such a moron.”
“Lucy—”
“No, Mom, he is.” She leaned in, eyes blazing. “You’re supposed to be smart, Harley. And this is what you do with that?”
“I know,” he said desperately. “I get it now.”
“Hey.” Jane’s tone snapped sharp. “We’re not doing that. You did something wrong. You are not something wrong.” She exhaled slowly. “But this is bad.”
“I’m aware.” His throat hurt. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t go to school. I faked being sick and hid up here like a coward while he—” He cut himself off.
There was a long silence.
“I am disappointed,” Jane said. “Not because you made a mistake. But because you knew better. You know what it’s like to be judged before anyone knows you. And you did that to someone else.”
He let out a tiny, humorless laugh. “Yeah. Me too.”
“But,” she continued, softer now, “I am glad you called. And I’m glad you’re not twisting this into excuses.”
“Doesn’t make it better,” he muttered.
“No,” Jane said. “But it’s the beginning of making it right. You owe that boy an apology.”
He laughed weakly. “There isn’t an apology big enough.”
“We’re not talking about how tonight,” Jane said. “We’re talking about the fact that you have to.”
“I don’t even know where to start,” he admitted.
“That’s guilt,” Lucy said. “Congrats.”
“You’re not in a place to plan anything,” Jane added.
Lucy huffed. “He’s barely the comic relief right now.”
“Thanks, Luce.”
“But you’re still my idiot brother,” Lucy said quietly. “Which means I don’t get to wash my hands of you.”
“You can’t just feel bad and hide,” she added. “No self-indulgent pity party.”
He winced.
“You’re not irredeemable,” Lucy said. “Just profoundly stupid sometimes.”
He pressed the heel of his hand into his eyes. “How am I supposed to even look at him again?”
“I don’t know,” Jane said honestly. “You don’t get to control that part. All you control is what you say and what you do next.”
“That’s the worst part,” Harley admitted. “That he gets to hate me.”
“Yeah,” Lucy said. “That sucks. But you earned that one.”
There was no teasing now.
“You are a good kid,” Jane said softly. “Stubborn. Defensive. Overthinking everything. But good. And good people can still do hurtful things.”
Harley laughed weakly. “You guys suck.”
“So,” Jane asked gently, “how are you feeling now?”
“Like I can’t stay in this room,” he said. “But I can’t go anywhere else either.”
“Classic anxiety spiral,” Lucy said. “Ten out of ten.”
“Shut up.”
“I should let you guys go,” Harley added. “Don’t wanna keep you from your exciting Rose Hill Saturday.”
“Oh yeah,” Lucy deadpanned. “The tractor parade is wild.”
“Get some rest, honey,” Jane said. “Real rest.”
“I’ll try.”
“Call us tomorrow,” she added.
“My memes are quality.”
“Goodnight, Harley.”
“Night, Mom.”
“Night, moron,” Lucy said softly.
“Night, menace.”
The call ended.
The screen went dark, reflecting his own tired face back at him for a second before it went black. The silence crept back in. He lay there, listening to the low hum of the tower, thoughts circling the same worn tracks.
“Harley?” FRIDAY’s voice was softer than usual.
He groaned. “Yeah?”
“Mr Stark asked me to remind you: you are expected in the lab at 9:30 tomorrow morning.”
His eyes snapped open. “Wait, what?”
“Mr Stark specifically requested your presence. He did not specify the reason,” FRIDAY continued. “But he used his ‘serious voice’ and added that it was ‘non-negotiable’ and that he would ‘drag you down there himself if necessary.’ His phrasing.”
“Great,” Harley muttered. “Fantastic. Amazing. Ten out of ten timing.”
Of course, Tony had decided tomorrow was the perfect time to force both his idiots into the same room.
His stomach twisted. “Is…Peter gonna be there?”
“Peter has a standing Saturday lab block with Mr Stark at 10:00,” FRIDAY said. “I have no indication that the schedule has changed.”
So yes. Absolutely yes.
He swallowed.
“Cool,” he said, voice thin. “Great. Love that for me.”
“You will need to sleep if you wish to function adequately,” FRIDAY pointed out. “Would you like me to set an alarm for 8:30 AM?”
“Yeah,” he said, suddenly so tired his bones ached. “Do that. And… maybe make the lights do the gradual sunrise thing. Less chance I’ll throw my phone at you.”
“I will adjust the lighting accordingly,” she said.
“Goodnight, FRIDAY,” he murmured.
“Goodnight, Harley.”
Eventually, he rolled onto his side, pulling the blanket up even though the room wasn’t cold, phone still beside him, laptop forgotten at the foot of the bed.
Sleep didn’t come easily. It took its time, circling him the way his thoughts did, refusing to settle. But when it finally dragged him under, he went with the knowledge that tomorrow, he would have to walk into that lab.
And Peter would be there.
No hiding behind sick days. No dodging in the hallway. No pretending he didn’t know exactly what he’d done.
Just Harley, the mess he’d made, and whatever courage he could scrape together to start cleaning it up.