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Scott loves his brothers. He tells himself this many times a day, while they fight and steal his stuff and write in toothpaste on his bathroom mirror. He especially loves Alan, because Alan is the littlest at only age six, and so adorably sweet-natured that when he’s a little devil it’s hard to believe he’s responsible.
He’s trying to do his homework in the kitchen when he hears a blood-curdling scream, and something heavy thuds into the flowerbed outside the window. He’s out of his chair in an instant, throwing up the sash to see what happened. A second later, there’s another scream, and another thud as a textbook very nearly takes him out.
“Hey John?” Scott calls over his shoulder. John is eating ice cream out of the tub, but he acts like he was just about to put it in a bowl when his big brother turns around.
“It’s you who is studying genetics at school right now, right?”
“Yeah… why?” John asks, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.
Scott points upwards as a third, louder scream rips downwards, along with a thick book about constellations. John looks out, and up, and as he does so, two blonde heads disappear from sight.
With a muttered expletive that he would never let his father hear, Scott takes the stairs two at a time, John on his heels, his injured books in his arms. Together, they can be pretty intimidating when they want to be. Well, usually.
When they get to the bedroom over the kitchen, they find Gordon studiously colouring in on the floor, like he’s never found anything so interesting in his life. Alan is sitting at the foot of the bed, a strange look on his face that might be trying to be innocent, or trying not to cry.
“Oh, hello Scott, John,” Gordon says airily, adding a touch of red to Spider-Man’s boots.
Scott has to stop himself from sighing loudly. “Why are you throwing John’s books out the window?” he says, annoyed. Gordon looks up, all wide brown eyes.
“Who, me?”
“Yes, you, you little brat.”
“You wound me.” Gordon makes a fine show of looking hurt.
“You don’t treat books like that,” John scolds. “Books are important. And they’re MY books! Throw your own rubbish out the window!”
“But yourth are the heavietht!” Alan pipes up. Gordon shoots him a look of disgust and betrayal for giving the game up so easily, but Alan ignores it and runs over to John. “Look, thee?! It worked!”
And then Scott sees the dental floss wrapped around the books, and the little white tooth dangling from it. John sees it too, and makes a face like he’s going to be sick, holding the book as far away from his body as he can. Alan retrieves his tooth happily.
“Let me see,” Scott says, and Alan gives Scott a big, gappy grin. The two oldest look at each other, then at Gordon. They only just notice that Gordon is holding his mouth funny.
Gordon grins too, revealing an identical gap, but a lot more blood. Alan’s tooth had been wobbly for days, but Gordon’s was barely moving at dinner last night. Scott bends down and tips Gordon’s chin up to get a better look.
“So who was screaming?” John asks, unwrapping the dental floss and dropping it on the floor with a shiver of revulsion. He’s oddly squeamish with other people’s mouths.
“Alan,” Gordon says as Scott lets go of him. “Even when I went first to show him it wasn’t scary. And it wasn’t. It came right out!”
“Look John, my firtht tooth!” Alan crows. “I’m gonna thow Dad and the Tooth Fairy ith gonna come!” John pats Alan’s head and nods in pretend interest when he’s presented with the tooth.
Scott frowns at Gordon, but he knows how much of a fuss Alan has been making over his first wobbly tooth, not letting anyone else touch it in fear of it hurting. Gordon must be in a little bit of pain at pulling out a tooth that was only half ready, but he’s not letting on. Scott wants to scold him, but finds he can’t.
“Go and rinse your mouth. We’ll go downstairs and have ice cream, huh?”
Gordon gives him a warm smile, and his eyes light up. In a moment, he’s scrambled off with Alan to the bathroom to marvel over the gore as he spits it into the sink. Scott gets to his feet and looks at John, and neither of them can do anything except sigh and laugh.
Watching his two youngest brothers squirt ice cream through their tooth gaps at each other while John carefully wipes the dirt off the corners of his books, Scott reminds himself that he really does love his brothers, even when they throw expensive books out of windows and literally rip each others’ teeth out.