#so pls excuse if this is kind of one-sided and unfair to pete

[pharawee]

What really gets me about PeteKenta this week (and by that I mean that it causes me emotional damage), much more so than in the episode before (or in the whole of season 1 even though the seeds were already there) is how emotionally careless Pete acts towards Kenta (and the mission against Tony but maybe that's for my PeteChrisWay post). And it's all such a mess -- their shared past, their individual traumas, their current preoccupation with second chances -- that I can't even blame Pete, even if I'm fully on Kenta's side here.

Pete treats (and, let's be honest here, this isn't even the first or fifth time) Kenta as an afterthought. I know he means well and that he's driven by trying to make amends for something that was never even his fault to begin with. I also understand that with the way things are right now in canon, his feelings for Kenta were always platonic (even though that makes the one kiss they shared kind of questionable in retrospect because at the very least he was acting very inquisitive, inviting even) which is fair enough. I wish they'd kept the whole "the one that got away" angle because it feels so much more realistic to me than the revelation that all this time Pete was himself secretly pining after Way.

(adding a sprinkle of gifs to this post because clearly I'm not suffering enough already)

The secret pining COULD however at least partially explain why Pete never put a stop to Kenta's one-sided pining either. Because he must always have known. He can repeat the "he thinks of me as a brother" line a hundred times, but he's a telepath. Kenta and he kissed, and every time they've since met and touched, Kenta's thoughts are very obviously all but screaming his longing at him.

And yet Pete has never said anything -- either to spare Kenta's feelings or (judging by how he handled his secret crush on Way) because he found the situation to be overwhelming. Again, I don't blame Pete in the slightest, it's not like he had an emotionally healthy childhood to learn how to approach these things. I don't even blame him for the third possibility: that Kenta's crush is a very useful thing for him to keep around, especially since in the past it's kept him out of Tony's reach (plus, feeling wanted when your own love is unrequited probably feels very nice too).

There's no way Kenta would have let him leave over and over again if it wasn't for his feelings (and remember, Kenta never extended the same courtesy to any of his other brothers until much later). Unrequited or not, not addressing the elephant in the room left Kenta in limbo for years. He's kidnapped children for Tony, probably even killed for Tony, yet as soon as Pete starts leaning into Kenta's longing for him, Kenta can't bring himself to stop Pete (much less harm him or rat him out to Tony) -- which is a really convenient secret weapon to have in a fight against someone as ruthless and powerful as Tony. It's not even deliberate manipulation but pure self-preservation. Babe and Jeff and Charlie and Way have all learned to survive on less than that. It's about time we see the damage that Tony caused in Pete.

And not only that. I think now we also get to see that Pete doesn't know or understand Kenta nearly as well enough as he believes. He literally asks the go-it-alone guy to not go it alone when that's kind of his whole thing (not to mention that OF COURSE Kenta will do the thing for him and not care for the consequences -- it's all he knows to do to earn appreciation). He's essentially leaving Kenta on stand-by, not like the brother he claims to be, but like a thing he can just pick back up whenever it's most convenient for him. And he deals out praise to Kim while openly reprimanding Kenta in the next sentence -- which ironically is such a Tony thing to do because it keeps Kenta small and loyal.

Pete is so willfully blind towards Kenta's feelings and to who Kenta is as a person that it makes him look like a total dick here. And the thing is, his defence doesn't even hold up: you wouldn't treat your brother like that either, someone you claim you share a bond with. Hell, if Pete treated Kim that way -- someone who's only marginally involved -- Kim would surely let him have a piece of his mind. But Kenta has learned to suffer in silence so why bother changing the status quo (and never mind that the status quo was Tony)?

As things are right now, Pete's allowed to have priorities (currently these priorities lie with neglecting everyone's safety by dicking down Chris on every imaginable surface in his condo while not even using a secure password on his private computer) while all Kenta is allowed to do (all that he KNOWS to do) is switch masters from Tony to... what? a very absent Pete?

I'll always love PeteKenta, and I'll always love the could-have-beens from Pit Babe Season 1, but with how things are playing out right now I either need Kim to put Pete in his place (good) or Kenta to walk away and leave Pete on read (even better).