happy spooky season! for the prompts: 60. "If you say Halloween one more time-” “You’ll kiss me.” // you’re a doll and i adore you
Happy Halloween 🎃💖 What’s All Hallows’ Eve without a supernatural Parkner AU?
The ‘H’ Word
Peter Parker hadn’t meant to make a binding oath with his best friend over the ‘h’ word, but it just sort of…happened. It was a crisp, autumn day in New York City and exactly two weeks until Halloween. Peter, MJ, Ned and Harley were gathered around their usual table in the Student Union for lunch in between work and classes:
“Keener, I swear to God if you say Halloween one more time –”
“You’ll kiss me,” Harley stated matter of fact.
“What? Noooo,” Peter’s voice pitched an octave higher as his face scrunched up in confusion.
“No, I’m serious I had a vision. The next time I say ‘Halloween’ you, Peter Parker, are going to kiss me.”
“No.”
Harley was a little taken aback by the man’s response. “No like, no, you don’t want to kiss me?”
“No, as in, I don’t believe in visions dictating my future.” Peter was a little flustered by the straightforwardness of Harley’s question, but masked it by crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. He was resolute in his position on the matter. “I mean, how legit can it be anyway? What if you said ‘Halloween’ right now? No offense, Harls, but I definitely don’t have an urge to kiss you.”
MJ butt into their conversation, “Parker, when has he been wrong before?’
Peter frowned. He believed Harley’s visions, hell, they all did. They’d gotten the quartet out of some seriously sticky situations before. Peter just…didn’t like being told what to do – and that applied to visions of the future as well. His future, specifically.
“Yeah Parker, when have I been wrong before.” Harley’s smile was all teeth as he parroted MJ. It looked almost lupine. “Besides, if you’re so sure that I’m wrong, why don’t I just say it right now?”
“No!” Peter involuntarily held up a hand before Harley could continue. He almost surprised himself at the ferocity of his objection.
Harley didn’t speak, but the look he gave Peter spoke volumes: You do believe me. The two men held a mini staring contest from across the table before Harley finally yielded, breaking their eye contact.
“Fine, I won’t say Hal – the ‘h’ word unless you want me to.”
“Unless I…want…you to.” Peter’s ears started turning red as a steady flush made its way across his pale skin. He looked like his brain hadn’t quite caught up to Harley’s words.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m not gonna swear off saying the ‘h’ word my entire life just for you.” Harley arched an eyebrow at Peter. A statement and a challenge.
“Shake on it?”
“Sure,” Harley chuckled while he extended an arm across the table toward Peter.
“No, I mean shake on it.”
Peter stood up abruptly from the table, pushing his chair back in the process. The metal shrieked across the floor. As he looked down at Harley, Peter’s expression was dead serious. All traces of previous teasing were gone.
“Wha – Peter, you want to make a binding oath over one word?” Harley was flabbergasted at the request and stood up as well. He wouldn’t lie, he was a little offended too.
Peter jutted out his chin, face still flushed. “Yeah, and?”
“Oh, this is gonna be great.” MJ could barely suppress her laughter. Pearly white fangs glistened under the overhead lights when she grinned. Ned continued eating his sandwich beside her, wide-eyed as he stared at the two men squaring off with each other.
Harley rolled his eyes, but finally obliged. He pushed back the sleeves of his maroon sweater and extended his right arm once again. “Fine, but you have to do it.”
So Peter did. He met Harley’s handshake and uttered a few words. Their interlocked hands glowed a faint silver before going back to normal.
“I can’t believe you…” Harley trailed off as he gathered the remnants of his lunch and hefted his rucksack over one shoulder. The irritation was almost rolling off of him in waves; everyone else at the table could feel it too. With a turn of his heel, Harley stormed out of the Union. He dumped his trash along the way and never looked back at the trio.
–
The days immediately following Peter and Harley’s arrangement were like walking on eggshells. The two still hung out together, made stupid jokes and maintained their usual banter – but something in the air had shifted. Ned and MJ were right: when Harley saw something it always happened. The events leading up to the vision might change, but end result was inevitable.
Peter’s death sentence was as good as signed thanks to his own damn stubbornness.
“Harley, did you finish problem five?” Peter had attempted the question several times over and still couldn’t figure out the solution.
“Yeah, do you need help?” Harley pushed his textbook to the side in an effort to make more room on the crowded kitchen table.
The two were sitting across from each other in Peter’s apartment doing physics homework. It was the only class they had together this semester. Normally, they’d get together the night before the problem set was due to confer.
“All of my ideas are just wrong.” Peter’s paper was tainted grey from continuously writing and erasing. “Hey, with your visions do you ever just see the right answer? Like for a test or something?”
Harley snorted and put down his pencil, “You know it doesn’t work like that. They’re mostly linked to big events in my life – something that would…shift the usual flow of energy.”
“But like, what if the midterm was literally make-or-break for your grade? Is that life-changing enough?”
Harley snatched Peter’s paper from the table in response and started writing down the correct formulas to guide him. “Don’t you have a dead physicist relative you can contact?” He shot back.
“Touché, touché.”
After twenty more minutes of working in silence, Harley spoke again, “Are you going to Betty’s party this weekend?”
“What, her Halloween bash to celebrate the two-hundred-year anniversary of the Others’ liberation?” Peter scoffed, “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Don’t be rude now, Peter.” The ghost Mary Parker chided him from the empty chair beside him. Peter rolled his eyes and she fondly patted him on the shoulder. His mother had been sitting in the kitchen with Harley and Peter for quite a while now.
After the first time, Harley got used to Mary joining in on some of their quieter evenings together. Clairvoyance was a trait passed down to Harley through his mother’s side of the family. It meant that he could sense when spirits were around, but he couldn’t see and talk to them like Peter could.
“Sorry mom,” Peter mumbled under his breath.
“Why don’t you ask Harley to go with you as your date?” Mary winked at Peter as she knocked their shoulders together.
‘Too late for that now,’ Peter wrote down on the corner of his paper for her to see. This wasn’t a conversation he was having out loud in front of Harley with the ghost of his dead mother. Besides, she already knew why he couldn’t ask that of Harley.
“Honey, I tell you all the time that you need to start working on putting your pride aside. He’s a lovely boy.” Mary stood and floated through the table to Harley’s side. She put both of her hands on his shoulders in a comforting way. Harley smiled in return, feeling her there.
Peter abruptly stood from his chair. Metal legs scraped against wooden floorboards. Harley looked up in surprise. “Sorry mom, but you need to leave.” With the wave of his hand Peter blocked his connection to the other side.
Hurriedly, Peter started shoving papers and books into his backpack. “I need to leave too. Sorry, Harley.”
“No worries. We basically finished the rest of the problem set anyway. See you in class tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Class.” Peter gave Harley a smile and a nod before leaving the other man’s apartment.
–
The bass was so heavy that the floorboards shook no matter what part of the house Peter found himself in. Betty had put soundproofing charms on the apartment, but he wasn’t sure how she’d counter the fact that the unit was literally shaking. Peter sighed and made his way closer to the alcohol.
Betty’s spiked punch bowl was enchanted to self-serve the drinker and beer bottles floated about the apartment. The shot glasses were enchanted as well to refill on command so no one had to keep going back and forth from the kitchen. Peter picked himself up a floating beer and ducked back into the hallway. He pointedly ignored the living room, which had all of its furniture pushed back to act as a makeshift dance floor. Definitely not Peter’s scene.
“Having a good time?” Peter sidled up to MJ. They had an unspoken agreement at social functions. They would find each other, loiter in the quietest place they could find and wait until the rest of their group was ready to leave.
“I’ve been to worse.” MJ sipped from her blood bag through a curly straw. She was casually leaning against the wall while staring contemplatively into the living room.
Peter joined her and surveyed the scene before them. Looking past the multitude of sweaty, drunk teens and twenty-somethings, he laid eyes on Ned and Betty dancing near the mock-DJ stand. Cute. Peter’s eyes continued roving the room and found Flash trying to chat up some poor underclassman. He rolled his eyes; Peter had hoped Flash’s change would coincide with Betty’s party – but no such luck.
Slowly, his gaze landed on Harley. He was leaning in a little too close in a corner a little too dark to talk to some girl. Peter stiffened and bitterly looked down at his beer, wishing he had the luxury of becoming rip roaring drunk. His senses needed to be relatively unhindered though, lest his control over his abilities would slip.
“Technically, this is your fault,” MJ’s voice startled Peter out of his thoughts.
“Wh – what do you mean?”
“That could be you with Harley in a dark corner if you weren’t so stubborn,” MJ’s voice was monotone as she continued sipping from her blood bag.
Peter shifted uncomfortably and pushed off of the wall, suddenly desperate to escape MJ’s suffocating stare. So much for their antisocial camaraderie. Like a gravitational pull, Peter found himself slowly making his way closer and closer to where Harley was on the makeshift dance floor. The beating of his heart echoed the thump-thumping of the bass.
Harley saw him coming from across the room and excused himself from his current conversation. “Enjoying the party so far?” He asked Peter when they met in the middle.
“I’ve been to worse.” His phrasing mimicked MJ’s from earlier. Peter was sweating and he couldn’t tell if it was from nerves or the cloying heat trapped in Betty’s apartment.
The two stood in silence as the party raged on around them. The bass was felt down to their bones, sweaty bodies bumped into them left and right and the glare of overhead party lights flickered into their eyes on occasion. This probably wasn’t the right time for the conversation that Peter and Harley desperately needed to have, but if Peter didn’t say something soon he was certain that he’d burst.
“I’m sorry I went and made things weird,” the words felt foreign coming out of Peter’s mouth and he had to awkwardly shout to be heard over the music.
“No, it’s definitely my fault for springing it on you. I just…forget sometimes that, just because something is bound to happen, it doesn’t mean that everyone in my visions want it to.”
Peter was tiring of having to yell. He grabbed Harley by the arm and dragged him through the kitchen and into the adjoining hallway. Thankfully, MJ had wandered off at one point. Only a few other stragglers and couples inhabited the hall now.
“Well, that’s just the thing. I kind of want you to say it.”
“What?” The surprise of being manhandled into another part of the apartment had worn off. Now, Harley’s confusion was purely from Peter’s admission.
Peter started shifting uncomfortably and sighed, exasperated. “You know what, Harley.”
“Do I though?” Harley knew exactly what Peter meant, but it was more fun for him to play dumb.
“Yes! I want you to say the…the ‘h’ word.” Peter’s cheeks had taken on a nice rosy blush in the dim hallway lighting.
Harley arched an eyebrow. “Which ‘h’ word? Hello, help, hamburger, history, hollow –”
Peter abruptly cut Harley off before he could continue rattling off his mental list. “Halloween. I want you to say ‘Halloween.’”
“I thought you’d never ask.” A sly grin made its way onto Harley’s face as he gently pushed Peter back and against the adjacent wall. He leaned down until he was level with Peter’s ear and whispered into it, “Happy Halloween, Peter.”
Peter grinned as Harley made his way back to face him. He slipped a hand through Peter’s expertly gelled hair and gently cupped the back of his head. Using the hold as leverage, Harley tilted Peter’s head up so their lips could meet in a kiss.