#rosedestiny

“Peter, stop it. Don’t say everything’s okay when it’s not. It’s not okay. Get off of me right now. Let me go,” he ordered with deadly calm, jerkily shrugging away to round on his brother with only a slight shudder through his injured arm. Peter Three stopped up short under his narrowed eyes, as did Peter One, frozen in the bathroom doorway with the first aid kit clutched to his chest.

“W-We shouldn’t be wasting any more time,” Three tried again after a beat of uncertain silence, gesturing at the couch. “Your arm—”

“I can deal with my arm myself. What you can do,” Peter Two shot back, “is explain what you were thinking out there.”

Peter One swallowed hard. Peter Three’s jaw twitched and then set. Inhaling deeply, he shifted testily back and forth for a moment or two before lifting his chin and folding bloodstained hands over his chest. When he spoke again, his voice was clipped. “Just doing what I had to do.”

“I told you last time, Peter, I told you as clearly as I could that something like that could never happen again—”

“Yeah, well, that was before you needed my help!”

“I didn’t! I didn’t need your help, and certainly not that kind of help!”

“So I was just supposed to leave you to fight a whole gang alone with a busted arm?! I was protecting you!”

“You were lashing out irrationally and causing even more damage and chaos and bloodshed instead of doing your job with a clear head! You think I couldn’t have handled those meatheads on my own? I’ve taken on twice that number, twice that size and I came out on top just fine, thank you very much. You were supposed to focus on evacuating the civilians! Remember them, the people who actually need protecting? If I needed backup, I would’ve called.”

“No, you wouldn’t!” Peter One exclaimed, drawing an incredulous glance from the eldest. “You wouldn’t! If he hadn’t noticed anything was happening, you would’ve just tried to power through it on your own like always. You could have pieces of broken bone sticking out through your skin now if he hadn’t been there to help!”

“I beg your pardon? You’re supporting him on this?!” Peter Two couldn’t help but reel back at his words. “You remember what happened last time Peter Three stopped pulling his punches, don’t you? That was supposedly for your sake and you called him out right off the bat! What happened to setting boundaries between protection and paranoia? What’s changed?”

Peter One flushed hotly, sputtering for what could be a reasonable response. “T-That was different!”

“How?”

“Well, I’m not you!”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What is this double standard where you’re allowed to draw a line against his methods and I’m not? Can’t you trust me to take care of myself?” They hesitated just a fraction of a second too long. Peter Two’s mouth dropped open, disbelief and hurt filling his face as he stared between them. “I…I’m sorry, I’ve been doing this job longer than the two of you have combined and somehow you’ve convinced yourselves that I’m more helpless than those civilians on the street today? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“No, but—!”

“Deny it all you want if it makes you feel better about yourself and what you can do but you needed me out there. That’s a fact,” Peter Three snapped. “And if you don’t think I wouldn’t do anything—anything to keep you safe, then you don’t know me at all!”

“You’re the one who’s lying to yourself, if you seriously believe that I’d ever ask or want such drastic measures from you!” Two let out a shaken breath, stumbling a few more steps back until he bumped and rattled the coffee table. “I-Is that how badly you think of me, that I’m too—what, too old or s-stupid or useless to get by without you there to be my guard dogs? I can’t believe this, I can’t…”

“No, no, no, no, no, it’s not like that!” Peter One heaved a hurried, tremulous breath, trying and failing to reign in the anxiety spiking. “It’s not—That’s not—We’re just trying to—!”

“We’re trying to get it through your thick skull that you’re not invincible!” Three spat. “You’re one to talk about double standards, asking us to trust you on this when you lied to our faces how many times before!”

“Before? Before what? W-What are you—?”

“Three, please…”

Peter Three was undeterred by the stressed, whimpered plea from the youngest. If they were going to have it out, they were going to have it all out here and now.

“Oh, I bet it was easy for you to forget, Peter Two, since you were the one who got to sleep it all off, but we didn’t have that luxury! We were the ones who had to sit here with you in limbo for six weeks, never knowing when you might—” There was a wet glimmer in dark, fierce eyes then and he hissed, shaking his head viciously against it. “You could’ve died! You lied to us, you pasted on that stupid big brother smile and told us everything was fine and dandy and we believed you and then look what happened! You went into a coma and you could’ve died and it would’ve been our fault because we weren’t paying attention and t-taking care of you and making sure you were safe when it counted!”

By now most of the color had drained from Two’s face as it started to dawn on him. The gang war wasn’t the real battle his brothers had been fighting today.

“‘I’m not supposed to need help!’ That’s what you said, isn’t it?! You think just cos you’re older and more experienced, you can do it all yourself and you don’t need us but we—”

“We need you.” Peter One’s words came out as a sob, the first aid kit slamming onto the floor as he sagged against the bathroom doorframe and buried his face in half-shaking, half-flailing hands. “We can’t lose you, we can’t risk it—I still get nightmares about h-how pale you were, y-you were barely breathing and—we were right there with you and we couldn’t even do anything, we had no idea if you would—we made a promise, we promised each other we’d never let it get that far again, we can’t, we can’t! I c-can’t lose anyone else!”

The glare twisting Peter Three’s face deepened, if only to prevent his chin from wobbling as he moved to pull Peter One against him. Peter Two could only look speechlessly on for a few minutes, trying to absorb everything. Now that he was thinking back on the time that had passed since the six week cycle…how had he overlooked the change in their behavior for so long?

Peter One’s “innocent” interest when he left on any unexpected outing. “Where are you going? What street is that on again? How long are you gonna be gone? You want some company? I can come with—Oh, okay, um, that’s fine. Stay in touch, let me know when you’re on your way home!” Demands a helicopter parent should be making, not a younger brother. The way he wheedled and whined to convince him to stay in for a movie night rather than patrol…The days that their scheduled rendezvous seemed to get pushed back earlier and earlier…

Peter Three’s retaliation against anyone who offended him: shoulder-checking someone who tried to cut him in line or steal his taxi, easily dressing down anyone who made snide remarks—and that time someone had snagged the last box of his comfort food on the store shelf right in front of him, only for it to mysteriously materialize when they were unloading the cart at the checkout counter. Three said he’d found one more on another shelf. Was that true or had he actually gone out of his way to steal it back from that other shopper when neither they or Peter Two were looking?

Pettiness like that could be addressed later. Today, however, was a real matter of life or death, as were their motivations behind all of those seemingly insignificant matters. Inhaling deeply, he approached to trail his good hand over Peter One’s shaking shoulders.

“Peter? Can you look at me, please?”

Red-rimmed, puffy eyes peeked miserably over.

“Both of you.”

Peter Three sniffed harshly, defiantly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how much I’d hurt you, with everything I didn’t say. I’m not…I’ve never been very good at confiding in others. When I’m vulnerable, I-I tend to just…shut down, in more ways than one. I have a lot of work I need to do on that but the only way I can is if you let me be vulnerable. What you’re doing, what you’ve been doing, it’s not healthy for any of us. I need autonomy and you need a break from stressing about my safety. I know I can’t just say ‘Don’t worry about me.’ You’re worrying about me because you love me but this isn’t the right way to show it—not at the expense of your wellbeing or the people out there. They have people who love them too, remember? We have to look out for them first.”

“At our expense,” Three muttered. “At your expense, every single time.”

“Yep.” His blunt affirmation seemed to startle them a little and he forced a thin, rueful smile. “Every time. I’m not saying it’s fair. If life was fair, none of us would have this job; none of us would need to but these are just things we have to accept. I will always be Spider-Man—and even if I wasn’t, I’d still get hurt. And even if I didn’t, even if you managed to keep me exactly where you wanted me to be, all perfectly cocooned in unbreakable bubble wrap, I’d still die someday.”

The small, muffled sound Peter One made at those words hurt his heart, but he kept his hand gentle, circling against his back.

“I know, bud. Honestly, I’d rather not. The thought of it scares me just as much as it scares you—because I do know I’m not invincible, Peter Three, I’m very well aware. But neither are you. You won’t always be there to protect me, you can’t be, and you don’t have to treat that like your personal failure. The risks I take are my choice—and sometimes they’re stupid, unnecessary ones that I end up paying for and that’s not your failure either. That’s just life—and I’ll have you know that despite my many, many, many mistakes, I’ve lived a good one. I want that for you guys too, I don’t want you living just for me, like…vicariously through me, like there’s nothing else worth living for.”

“…There isn’t. You’re all I have.” Peter Three’s flat, hushed tone cracked on the edge.

“You have each other! You know that; you had each other every day while I was checked out for six weeks. That’s how you got through! I’m sure some of the time you’ve dedicated to hovering over me since then could be better spent watching each other’s backs because contrary to popular belief, I can in fact look after myself more often than I can’t. That being said, I’ll…I’ll try to get better about letting you know when I do need a hand.”

Hiccupping faintly against the lump in his throat, Peter One blinked away the tears still welling. “Promise?”