Blacktail Deer Plateau pearls and swine bereft of me

Coming from anyone else, the insult might have provoked him to violence. The tensions were certainly high enough to trigger such a response. But oddly, coming from Peregrine, it was a comfort. There was normalcy in vulgarity. It was something he understood; he could gauge his brother, could tell the thickness of the ice beneath his feet, so to speak, by the garbage that fell from Peregrine's lips. As long as there were insults and obscenities, he felt that things could be okay.

He felt a flutter of relief inside when Peregrine told him Atticus he didn't want him to pack up and leave. For a moment, awkward silence reigned. They'd had no shortage of disagreements and squabbles before, but they'd never been faced with one this big before. It had almost torn them apart.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably and, sitting down, shifted restlessly. "I called you here so I could uh…well, apologize," he wasn't good at the whole humility thing. "I've been a dick, Perry. I know that. And I'm sorry. I hope you understand why I felt the way I did, but I also hope you can forgive me for being such a shithead about it. I…didn't really know how to deal with it all. It was kinda…too much too soon, y'know? I freaked big-time. I needed time to myself to process things." His eyes had fallen to a scrubby bush off to the side and he now gazed distantly through it, feeling the weight of his shame mixed with the choking exhaust fumes of his departed anger. How could he have been so rash? He was normally more logical and level-headed.