Marvel/Peter Parker One Shots!

I Told You We Were Brothers

A/N Written by @Lisa-Sina-912. This is a three part story.

Dedicated to my_corner2k19.

Harley is not a little kid. He's not in the age range in which a child would eagerly anticipate or ask for a sibling. He already had one - a sister he would do anything to protect. He never thought about having a brother. He may have wanted one at some point in his life, but by now he was way over it.

So, he wasn't that excited when he first heard that he now has a brother as well. That doesn't mean that he was against it, either. He just accepted it - took it as a fact more than anything. There were no negative feelings as much as there were no particularly positive ones. Having a sibling was just that; having a sibling.

He was willing to be a brother to someone new (if not a good one). He was willing to try. The only remaining question was whether the new kid was, too.

Harley has to admit that he is a little disappointed. Peter seemed like an okay human being. Yet, during the few days after Peter moved in, Harley hardly ever interacted with him. On the first day, he showed Peter around the tower. The two of them and Tony had meals together every morning and evening. Peter used the room right across from his, and they ran into each other practically every single day. Still, those little encounters never evolved into an actual conversation. Peter stayed quiet while he ate his food. He even tried to skip breakfast for the first two days until Tony practically forced him to eat. When Harley introduced each part of the tower to him and asked some casual questions, all Peter gave were short simple answers. During the daytime, Peter had a part-time job. When he was not working at God-knows-what-place, he spent most of his time in his room.

Harley tries to understand. He knows that Peter has had a hard life. He sees why he is so defensive.

Still, he cannot help feeling disappointed. A relationship involves both sides - without the participation of the other, one can never build a connection. Harley was willing to make one with Peter; he just wasn't sure if Peter was as well.

Harley now walks through the street with a pair of earphones plugged into his ears. It's quite early in the afternoon, right after lunchtime. Peter left earlier for his part-time job and Tony is trapped in the board meeting, which means Harley is left to spend the day alone. He initially considered tinkering in the lab but concluded that he was not feeling it. That is why he decided to wander around the city instead.

He took a random bus and got off at a random stop. It was quite an unfamiliar part of the city. The street signs told him that he is in Queens.

Looking around, Harley starts to stroll, letting his feet take him wherever they can. Unlike Manhattan, Queens is relatively a quiet town. Of course, like any other part of New York, it doesn't seem to lack the overwhelming number of cars and terrible traffic manners. Still, the streets are not as busy as those in the central part of New York and the buildings are much lower, given that most of them are for residence usage than business purposes.

Quiet means peace, but it also means boredom - and it was not a surprise that Harley loses interest sooner than later. No matter how many streets he walks and how many buildings he passes by, everything looks the same. By the time he reaches the fourth block from where the bus dropped him off, he thinks he can use a cup of coffee and some fries. Thus, from the fifth one, he casually starts searching for a small diner or a burger place. He walks past a deli called Delmar's and passes by a Thai restaurant. It takes him a little longer than he anticipated until he finds a small and cheap-looking diner on the corner of a building.