Chapter Text
Harley Vincent Stark hadn’t been an only child ever since he was three years old, when his younger brother Pietro Cassidy had been born. He never once wished to experience being an only child again, even when he and Pietro fought, but most especially when his younger sister Alia Dashielle had been born.
Harley was six years old when he became familiar with the chaos brought by three children in the penthouse of the Stark Tower.
"Mama!" Pietro would scream, bare feet pattering against the floor as he ran to where their mom was. "Harley's being mean!"
"Am not!" He would defend himself, hot on his brother’s heels. "Peter keeps trying to give Tasha Legos!"
Their mom would take one fleeting second to look at them both before sighing, "Wear your slippers and come back."
Harley was nine when his usual call by the door was met with ominous silence, rather than two sets of a call back and little feet running.
"Pietro and Alia aren’t here, bud." His dad forced every word out, as if everything he said pained him. "They—"
"—are playing hide-and-seek, right?" He couldn’t let him finish, not when he could sense something was very wrong. "Peter and Tasha love hide-and-seek."
"Harley, honey, listen—" His mom tried to wipe her tears discreetly, but more just kept flowing down.
He shook his head, his fist clenched on both sides — nails digging onto his palms. "We— We just need to find them. Right, mom? Dad?"
Harley was nine when he became reacquainted with the silence of being an only child of the two most influential people in the world.
Harley Stark, eldest of Tony and Pepper Potts-Stark, soon found how great his siblings had become at hide-and-seek while he was away. He never gave up searching every nook and canny, though, even as years passed, still believing that either Peter or Tasha would be there — stifling a laugh as they wait for him to find them.