[ Nathan just listened, and watched him, and it was raw and honest in a way that they just couldn’t have been with each other for years. Peter rarely every spoke about their relationship – neither did Nathan – and now they’d both laid it out. That was how it was—that they needed each other, relied on each other, and that even if everything was broken, even if they were hurt and angry and believed in different things, at the core of it they were still brothers.
It was a difficult realisation to come to for Nathan, but everything had been brought up again, made so raw out of seeing Peter like this that it might as well have been a year ago, sitting by his bedside wringing his hands together as his brother lay impotent and potentially dying in the bed beside him. All the feelings that had been smashed out of existence by Peter’s disappearance and the things that followed; the election, Linderman, the explosion—everything after that, had all come crashing back together, smothering him, hurting in ways that Nathan had thought he was long past. He’d believed he could do anything to make sure that the world was safe, even sacrifice his brother, but the real question was that when it actually came down to it, when it was Peter’s life on the line, would he actually ever be capable of it?
Or would those feelings have come back anyway? The understanding that even at the risk of the world, or his career, he didn’t want his brother – his only brother, his little brother – to die by his own selfishness, his own hand, and call it a ‘necessary evil.’ Could he be that callous? That cold? After this, he really didn’t think he could.
And this was his little brother who was still upset by the idea that Nathan would have to see him struggling, that he wanted to be perceived as stronger than that by his older brother even now, after everything that Nathan had – that he would - put him through. This was his little brother who still missed him despite that, and he dropped forward and wrapped his arms around him again, pressed his nose into Peter’s neck and took a deep, shuddering breath as he impressed the feeling of salty tears against his own hairline. He drew back just a moment later, looked him in the eye and nodded. ]
That’s what I’m saying, Pete. Crazy as it sounds I missed you too.
action;
It was a difficult realisation to come to for Nathan, but everything had been brought up again, made so raw out of seeing Peter like this that it might as well have been a year ago, sitting by his bedside wringing his hands together as his brother lay impotent and potentially dying in the bed beside him. All the feelings that had been smashed out of existence by Peter’s disappearance and the things that followed; the election, Linderman, the explosion—everything after that, had all come crashing back together, smothering him, hurting in ways that Nathan had thought he was long past. He’d believed he could do anything to make sure that the world was safe, even sacrifice his brother, but the real question was that when it actually came down to it, when it was Peter’s life on the line, would he actually ever be capable of it?
Or would those feelings have come back anyway? The understanding that even at the risk of the world, or his career, he didn’t want his brother – his only brother, his little brother – to die by his own selfishness, his own hand, and call it a ‘necessary evil.’ Could he be that callous? That cold? After this, he really didn’t think he could.
And this was his little brother who was still upset by the idea that Nathan would have to see him struggling, that he wanted to be perceived as stronger than that by his older brother even now, after everything that Nathan had – that he would - put him through. This was his little brother who still missed him despite that, and he dropped forward and wrapped his arms around him again, pressed his nose into Peter’s neck and took a deep, shuddering breath as he impressed the feeling of salty tears against his own hairline. He drew back just a moment later, looked him in the eye and nodded. ]
That’s what I’m saying, Pete. Crazy as it sounds I missed you too.