Percy had to look away from him, his calm crackling faster than he could stop it.
"What do you want from me, Fred?" Maybe he was being a bit loud too, but bloody hell. How much could he take?
"I've told you you're right. I'm staying away. If that's fine with you than just bloody well let me go! Why isn't it enough that I lost all of you? Why do I have to beg you to let me lose you all over again?" Damn him, Percy had just wanted a bloody pasty. Just a lunch, an escape from work. That's all he wanted.
"He called me useless, Fred." Percy was mortified to feel heat prickling at his eyes, but he fought hard to keep it back. "He said I would be nothing but a spy. He accused me of betraying the family because I was proud of a promotion that I worked my arse off for. He called me a traitor. And mum stood by and told him to lower his voice and not to do this now, but she never said no. She never said he was wrong. Shouldn't she have said that? She fights with him all the time, couldn't she have just said 'oh, Arthur, that's ridiculous?' Or anything?"
He scrubbed at his face, pushing back the emotions threatening to choke his words. "You call it taking the piss, but can you tell me, honestly, when the two of you ever said a single kind word to me? You took everything I thought was important and you humiliated me for it. Again and again and again."
He drew in a breath, and then another, and Merlin. He knew he sounded pathetic. He didn't care. If Fred was going to storm away hating him, he might as well speak some truth and earn that hate. "No one ever spoke up for me. And maybe it's me. It's got to be, doesn't it? Our dad doesn't have a bad word to say about anyone, but me he calls a traitor. And no one tells him he's wrong."