somewhere only we know {Parkner Oneshots}

i wanna be the one you would put up a fight for

Peter makes grabby hands towards him, hair already curling wildly, and coughs into his shoulder.

"You okay?" Harley checks again, making himself comfy against the headboard and pillows, legs spread to allow Peter to sit between them, back against his chest. He rubs a hand over Peter's chest and sternum to try to help with his coughing.

"Still cold."

They pull the blankets up over them, tucking Peter into Harley's arms and legs. Harley tries not to worry about the heat of Peter's skin, it's not surprising that he's catching a cold after his night. But a cold is just a cold, it's not a big deal.

"Sorry for making you worry again," Peter says. It always seems to help him open up when they're like this. Alone in the dark, Peter unable to see Harley. "I've been trying to be extra careful because I hate making you worry so much, I hate waking you up at this ungodly hour to patch me up, it's not fair on you... But apparently the criminals didn't get the same memo."

Harley's never really loved anyone before. He cares his mom, of course, even if she'll never understand him the way he needs her to, even if his mom still sets him up on dates with the girls around Rose Hill when he returns for holidays, even if she always calls Peter 'that boy' or 'that friend of yours', even if she never accepts him, he still cares about her, she still tries.

Between his dad leaving when he was little, and Abbie running off with some motorcycle-riding, mullet-wearing, high school dropout when she was fourteen, he doesn't exactly have a lot of faith in permanence.

He knows that when his mom sent him to New York for 'better education', she just wanted an excuse to get him out of her house.

He's never had anything that mattered to him.

Until Peter fell onto his fire escape in the middle of the night, bruised-up and absolutely breath-taking under the moonlight, and asked if he had some ice, Harley finally understood what people were talking about when they talked about destiny.

And if this is the price he has to pay in order to feel this just-on-the-right-side-of-unbearable warmth, so be it.

"I love you," Harley says instead. It's not easy for him to say, but if it makes Peter light up like a child on Christmas morning, he'll fight every engrained instinct he has.

Peter coughs in response, back shuddering against Harley's chest, and Harley laughs, pressing a kiss to Peter's damp hair.

*

Harley wakes up, disoriented and confused, to strange noises which certainly isn't his alarm.

He tightens his grip on Peter, blinking his eyes open and desperately trying to get his bearings. Peter's having a coughing fit, that's what woke him up. He pats his back, gently at first, and then more firmly when he continues coughing.

It takes a few tries for Peter to catch his breath and even then his breathing is short and labored. He's too warm against Harley, sweat clinging to their skin, turning their blanket haven into an absolute sauna. His fever must've gotten worse while they were sleeping.

"Let me grab you a water bottle."

He extracts himself from beneath Peter, propping him up against the pillows.

By the time he returns, barely two minutes later, Peter's gone.

For a moment, he panics. He thinks that Peter's left Spider-Manning in his condition, that somebody kidnapped him right out of Harley's bed, that Harley turned his back for two minutes and Peter's slipped through his fingers.

And then he hears the coughing coming from his bathroom.

Peter's sitting on the bathroom tiles, sweat dripping from his forehead, coughing hard again.