The first time Peter and Harley met, Tony was there. But more importantly, Morgan was there, so absolutely no funny business. They shook hands, gave their names, very standard first meeting stuff. But Harley had this look to him that scared Peter a little. He looked Peter up and down and had a constant smirk on his face. Weeks went by with mostly the same. If they ever got to the lab at the same time, Harley would hit him with a "Mornin', darlin'" and hold the door, but other than that, not much was said between them.
Then one night, Peter's leaving work and Harley runs to catch him right outside the door. Peter assumes this is the moment he gets hit with a pickup line. After all, Harley seems like a player, but Peter refuses to be played with. Even though Harley was the prettiest man he'd seen in a while. He had a rebuttal planned for anything he could say. But that pickup line never came. Instead, Harley nervously ran his hands through his hair, looked Peter in the eye and said,
"I know we don't know each other that well, but you seem really cool and you're very attractive and I'd really like to get to know you. Um, so if you wanted to, maybe we could grab dinner together this weekend."
And all of a sudden, everything Peter had previously thought about Harley went out the window. His smirk was a crooked smile and his use of darlin was just his southern hospitality and Peter had checked people out before but that doesn't mean it's bad and also he's still the prettiest guy Peter had ever seen. He realized he hadn't said anything for too long when he looked up and Harley was shifting around.
"Yes. Yeah, yes, please, I mean- I do dinners with my Aunt May on Fridays but I'm free Saturday. Whenever."
"Okay. Okay, Saturday, I'll text you."
In other words I love the trope where the character everyone thinks is a player is actually a big softie and I love when characters are caught off guard by others being genuine.
