Shrunked #2
Title: The Healing Power of Mockery (Shrunked 2)
Author: Jiia
Rating: PG13
Summary: Peter and Sylar try to figure things out, Mohinder makes a call, and Mohinder the Lizard wonders about his master’s sanity.
Pairing: Mylar, Petlar, Pinder
Warnings: Talk of death. Talk of man love. Talk of Mohinder in bunny ears. The usual.
A/N: This took on a life of its own, I’m afraid. There will probably be more. So this isn’t really a sequel, I suppose. More like part of a series. Thanks go to everybody who commented, and more will go to those who comment on this. By the way, I have absolutely no idea what the actual plot of this is going to be, so any suggestions are welcome. Really. Help me.
Also, a Heroes beta would be wonderful, considering that’s all I seem to be writing these days. ^.^
~~~~
“Alright... Let’s just take this one step at a time, shall we?” Mohinder sighed, holding the two squirming miniature figures between his thumbs and his fingers and trying not to squish either too badly. “How about you two stop trying to kill one another before I let you both fall to your doom.”
“Hey!” Mini-Sylar whined, kicking his little legs into the empty air in protest. “That’s not fair! Peter can fly! He wouldn’t die!”
“I know.” Mohinder deadpanned, stalking over to a red-draped box sitting on a table behind the couch. “Which would be where Momo comes in.”
Mohinder somehow managed to elbow the cover off, revealing the massive form of his pet lizard, eyeing the two suddenly still figures in his master’s hands with a lazy sort of interest.
“If you don’t get along, I’ll stick you in with him. Maybe he’ll mistake you for grasshoppers, maybe he won’t. Do either of you really want to take that chance?”
Sylar shook his head, dark eyes wide with obvious terror at the hulking beastly reptile. Peter swallowed hard. He’d always felt an irrational fear of anything with scales, ever since a rather nasty incident involving a toy dinosaur, a G.I. Joe, a flashlight and a bored twelve-year-old Nathan.
“Good. I’m going to put you two down now, and I expect you to act like adults. Unless your tiny little brains can’t handle it, of course.”
Sylar grumbled something murderous as the giant man placed them as gently as possible upon the tabletop next to the glassy cage. It was strange; His voice sounded normal to Peter, having been shrunk down as well. Mohinder’s voice, however, was suddenly loud, low, a purring rumble that made the whole world tremble. It hurt his ears, and it made him feel like he should be running for cover or something.
“Alright, now, I’m off to call Bennett.” Mohinder winced at the simultaneous squeaking protests from the two little men. “I don’t like it either, but really, who else is there to call? It’s not like Claude even has a permanent address, is it?”
“Fine.” Sylar growled through grit teeth, probably sounding somewhat like a hamster in a blender to the larger man towering above them. “Go call Bennett. But if I end up locked in a Plexiglas fishbowl again, you’ll be the first person I go after when get out.”
Mohinder just laughed and waltzed off to find the phone.
Sylar sat down with a humph, leaning against the cold glass and crossing his arms over his chest in a classic pout. Peter resisted the urge to smile and sat down against the aquarium as well, a couple of ‘feet’ down. Awkward silence reigned, pressing down on them while Mohinder’s voice echoed out of the kitchen.
“You know...” Sylar said suddenly, watching the bobbing chord across the massive room with a strange sort of grudging affection slipping onto his hard features. “He’s probably phoning up everyone he knows and telling them about this.”
“Mohinder wouldn’t do that.” Peter snapped, doing a terrible job at ignoring the sudden surge of jealously threatening to overwhelm him. “He’s too serious for something so petty.”
To his surprise, the other man tilted his head back and laughed. He seemed honestly amused, like Peter had just said Mohinder took to wearing pink rabbit ears and a little polka dot bowtie. Peter found himself watching the other man, the way his face moved as the various expressions flew across it. They were always so unpredictable. He seemed angry one moment and joyful the other, shy and arrogant and charismatic all at once. It was like he really was two different people sharing one single body. It would probably take a lifetime to get to know them both.
“You obviously don’t know Mohinder that well.” Sylar smirked, pushing his hand through his short-cropped hair, shifting the ruffled mass in just such a way as to transform his unruly spikes from bed-head to sex hair. Peter flushed.
‘Oh, yeah, and you do?” He wasn’t comfortable with the directions his thoughts were taking. It made him nervous, and he got stupid when he was nervous.
“Well, yeah.” Sylar raised a thick eyebrow at him, as if beginning to doubt the other man’s sanity. “We are sort of... You know.” He waved his hand in a rather ambiguous gesture which somehow managed to convey Peter’s current mood perfectly.
Everything was just so frustratingly unsure. When he had first arrived at Mohinder’s apartment, things might not have been easy, but at least they seemed relatively straight forward. Now, less than ten minutes later, he was two inches tall, talking to a psychotic serial killer he had to try very hard not to be attracted to, waiting for the man he may or may not be in love with and also happened to be sleeping with said psychotic serial killer to come back from talking to a former agent of the company he had only just recently sworn to destroy on the phone so he could break up the sexual tension very quickly forming between them, probably by adding a third, even more awkward dimension to this little pickle he had somehow gotten himself into.
He just should have stayed home.
“How did that happen, by the way?” Peter asked, desperate to do anything to maintain the simmering level of anger that was currently keeping him somewhat sane. “You two hook up at his father’s funeral or something equally fucked up?”
Sylar just chuckled, shaking his head.
“I tried to kill him, and it didn’t quite work out as planned. Does that fall under the ‘equally fucked up’ category?” The man looked at him, dark eyes glittering with mirth.
“Yeah. I believe it does.” Peter looked away quickly, not at all liking the sudden pounding in his chest Sylar’s mischievous smile produced.
“So, Peter, how do you feel about knowing your best friend and your worst enemy are secretly doing it?” He smirked cruelly, revelling in the other man’s involuntary wince. “Does it bug you? Or maybe it turns you on. With your screwed up little family, you never know what can get a person going.”
Peter flushed, refusing to look at the laughing man. He didn’t answer, and Sylar seemed just fine with that, clambering to his feet and beginning to pace along the edge of the table, humming something absently under his breath. It seemed sort of odd, seeing as how Sylar wasn’t usually one for humming or pacing. It must have been the stress of resisting the urge to kill his arch nemesis driving him slowly but surely insane, until eventually his fragile little mind shatters and caves in to the homicidal urges.
Peter hoped Mohinder came back soon.
“Ok, seriously, Peter, that was meant to be a rhetorical question, but a little denial would be nice.” Sylar snapped at him, twirling on the ball of his foot to storm in the other direction the instant the last word left his lips.
Peter frowned, watching him wear a stripe in Mohinder’s table.
“What is wrong with you? Can’t you sit still for one second?”
“Of course I can! I’m a watchmaker, dumbass!” Sylar twirled again, black coat tails thumping against the glass and making ‘Momo’ raise his ugly scaly head. “Sitting still is practically what I do!”
“Then why are you running back and forth like a chicken with its head cut off?!” Peter jumped to his feet, both to avoid the possible wrath of an irked lizard and express his frustration. “And what was with that question in the first place?! Why the hell would I care if you and Mohinder are screwing?!”
“Oh, shut up!” The killer snapped, finally stopping about a foot in front of Peter’s face. “As if I can’t see the way you look at him!”
“Excuse me?!” Peter felt his eyes go wide with panic and tried desperately to pass it off as rage. “Are you saying that I...”
“Yes! I am! I, Gabriel Grey, am saying that you, Peter Petrelli, want to do my boyfriend! And don’t you dare deny it!” Sylar thrust his finger into Peter’s face, dark eyes burning. “You’ve got it written all over your stupid dopey face! But you can’t have him! He’s mine!”
“Why don’t we just ask him, huh?” Peter spat, loving the surge of anger flowing through him and letting him ignore how close they were, the flush in the other’s pale cheeks, the passionate glittering of his dark eyes. “Or are you too scared that he’ll dump your psychotic ass for someone who actually possesses a soul?”
“SHUT UP!”
Something in the killer’s voice hit a chord, stole his words from his lips and the rage from his heart. The clouds of anger faded from his eyes, and he realized, suddenly, shockingly, that there were tears in the other man’s eyes. Hot, angry tears, ripped out of him despite every effort to hold them back. He brought one hand up to shove them away, hiding behind the dark fabric of his sleeve.
Silence reigned. The world went still, condensed and faded until it was just the two of them. The hero and the villain, the taker and the giver. In that moment, Peter couldn’t honestly say which one of them was which. The look in the other’s eyes, that long, trembling moment before he had disappeared behind the width of his arm, remained frozen in his mind’s eye. He had seen something in that moment, something he had never before believed existed.
The guilty conscience of Gabriel Grey.
“I...” The man’s voice was quiet, shaking, trying to be strong and failing miserably. “I know what I am. I don’t... like being this. But it’s either this, or... invisible.”
The last word, barely whispered, sunk into Peter’s heart and touched the same dark place that Claude had brushed past, so long ago. The part of him that remained a little boy, standing in his brother’s shadow, so desperate to be noticed by somebody, anybody, that he’d do anything just to be seen. Long hair and black nail polish, dark clothing and depressing music. It didn’t matter what he did. He was always just a disappointment, nothing more.
If Peter hadn’t just been able to absorb the powers of others via osmosis... If he had to kill to take the abilities that made him impossible to ignore... If it took becoming a murderer to be special, to be wanted, to be someone...
Peter would have done it.
Sylar started, glittering eyes wide with shock as Peter wrapped his arms around the taller man, cradling his head against his shoulder. His elegant fingers (His hands really were lovely, no matter what size they were.) curled reflexively in around the fabric of Peter’s shirt, clinging to him like a frightened child. As the other relaxed against him, Peter felt himself smile.
Standing at the doorway to the kitchen, Mohinder watched the two toy-sized figures embrace. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he should be jealous, but it was hard to be angry at them when they were just so darn cute.
“Mohinder? Are you still there?” Bennett’s metallic voice on the other side of the telephone roused Mohinder from his amused contemplation.
“Yes. Sorry, I got a little distracted.”
“What’s going on over there? Was that them, or have you suddenly developed a hamster infestation?”
“That was them. They weren’t getting along very well, but I think it’s going to be alright now.”
“Right. I’ll be over as soon as possible, before one of them ends up dead. Hopefully Sylar.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Take your time. I can handle it.”
“... Be careful, Mohinder. This is Sylar we’re dealing with, after all. You know better than anyone how purely evil that man is.”
“... I suppose your right. I know him best of all.”
Author: Jiia
Rating: PG13
Summary: Peter and Sylar try to figure things out, Mohinder makes a call, and Mohinder the Lizard wonders about his master’s sanity.
Pairing: Mylar, Petlar, Pinder
Warnings: Talk of death. Talk of man love. Talk of Mohinder in bunny ears. The usual.
A/N: This took on a life of its own, I’m afraid. There will probably be more. So this isn’t really a sequel, I suppose. More like part of a series. Thanks go to everybody who commented, and more will go to those who comment on this. By the way, I have absolutely no idea what the actual plot of this is going to be, so any suggestions are welcome. Really. Help me.
Also, a Heroes beta would be wonderful, considering that’s all I seem to be writing these days. ^.^
~~~~
“Alright... Let’s just take this one step at a time, shall we?” Mohinder sighed, holding the two squirming miniature figures between his thumbs and his fingers and trying not to squish either too badly. “How about you two stop trying to kill one another before I let you both fall to your doom.”
“Hey!” Mini-Sylar whined, kicking his little legs into the empty air in protest. “That’s not fair! Peter can fly! He wouldn’t die!”
“I know.” Mohinder deadpanned, stalking over to a red-draped box sitting on a table behind the couch. “Which would be where Momo comes in.”
Mohinder somehow managed to elbow the cover off, revealing the massive form of his pet lizard, eyeing the two suddenly still figures in his master’s hands with a lazy sort of interest.
“If you don’t get along, I’ll stick you in with him. Maybe he’ll mistake you for grasshoppers, maybe he won’t. Do either of you really want to take that chance?”
Sylar shook his head, dark eyes wide with obvious terror at the hulking beastly reptile. Peter swallowed hard. He’d always felt an irrational fear of anything with scales, ever since a rather nasty incident involving a toy dinosaur, a G.I. Joe, a flashlight and a bored twelve-year-old Nathan.
“Good. I’m going to put you two down now, and I expect you to act like adults. Unless your tiny little brains can’t handle it, of course.”
Sylar grumbled something murderous as the giant man placed them as gently as possible upon the tabletop next to the glassy cage. It was strange; His voice sounded normal to Peter, having been shrunk down as well. Mohinder’s voice, however, was suddenly loud, low, a purring rumble that made the whole world tremble. It hurt his ears, and it made him feel like he should be running for cover or something.
“Alright, now, I’m off to call Bennett.” Mohinder winced at the simultaneous squeaking protests from the two little men. “I don’t like it either, but really, who else is there to call? It’s not like Claude even has a permanent address, is it?”
“Fine.” Sylar growled through grit teeth, probably sounding somewhat like a hamster in a blender to the larger man towering above them. “Go call Bennett. But if I end up locked in a Plexiglas fishbowl again, you’ll be the first person I go after when get out.”
Mohinder just laughed and waltzed off to find the phone.
Sylar sat down with a humph, leaning against the cold glass and crossing his arms over his chest in a classic pout. Peter resisted the urge to smile and sat down against the aquarium as well, a couple of ‘feet’ down. Awkward silence reigned, pressing down on them while Mohinder’s voice echoed out of the kitchen.
“You know...” Sylar said suddenly, watching the bobbing chord across the massive room with a strange sort of grudging affection slipping onto his hard features. “He’s probably phoning up everyone he knows and telling them about this.”
“Mohinder wouldn’t do that.” Peter snapped, doing a terrible job at ignoring the sudden surge of jealously threatening to overwhelm him. “He’s too serious for something so petty.”
To his surprise, the other man tilted his head back and laughed. He seemed honestly amused, like Peter had just said Mohinder took to wearing pink rabbit ears and a little polka dot bowtie. Peter found himself watching the other man, the way his face moved as the various expressions flew across it. They were always so unpredictable. He seemed angry one moment and joyful the other, shy and arrogant and charismatic all at once. It was like he really was two different people sharing one single body. It would probably take a lifetime to get to know them both.
“You obviously don’t know Mohinder that well.” Sylar smirked, pushing his hand through his short-cropped hair, shifting the ruffled mass in just such a way as to transform his unruly spikes from bed-head to sex hair. Peter flushed.
‘Oh, yeah, and you do?” He wasn’t comfortable with the directions his thoughts were taking. It made him nervous, and he got stupid when he was nervous.
“Well, yeah.” Sylar raised a thick eyebrow at him, as if beginning to doubt the other man’s sanity. “We are sort of... You know.” He waved his hand in a rather ambiguous gesture which somehow managed to convey Peter’s current mood perfectly.
Everything was just so frustratingly unsure. When he had first arrived at Mohinder’s apartment, things might not have been easy, but at least they seemed relatively straight forward. Now, less than ten minutes later, he was two inches tall, talking to a psychotic serial killer he had to try very hard not to be attracted to, waiting for the man he may or may not be in love with and also happened to be sleeping with said psychotic serial killer to come back from talking to a former agent of the company he had only just recently sworn to destroy on the phone so he could break up the sexual tension very quickly forming between them, probably by adding a third, even more awkward dimension to this little pickle he had somehow gotten himself into.
He just should have stayed home.
“How did that happen, by the way?” Peter asked, desperate to do anything to maintain the simmering level of anger that was currently keeping him somewhat sane. “You two hook up at his father’s funeral or something equally fucked up?”
Sylar just chuckled, shaking his head.
“I tried to kill him, and it didn’t quite work out as planned. Does that fall under the ‘equally fucked up’ category?” The man looked at him, dark eyes glittering with mirth.
“Yeah. I believe it does.” Peter looked away quickly, not at all liking the sudden pounding in his chest Sylar’s mischievous smile produced.
“So, Peter, how do you feel about knowing your best friend and your worst enemy are secretly doing it?” He smirked cruelly, revelling in the other man’s involuntary wince. “Does it bug you? Or maybe it turns you on. With your screwed up little family, you never know what can get a person going.”
Peter flushed, refusing to look at the laughing man. He didn’t answer, and Sylar seemed just fine with that, clambering to his feet and beginning to pace along the edge of the table, humming something absently under his breath. It seemed sort of odd, seeing as how Sylar wasn’t usually one for humming or pacing. It must have been the stress of resisting the urge to kill his arch nemesis driving him slowly but surely insane, until eventually his fragile little mind shatters and caves in to the homicidal urges.
Peter hoped Mohinder came back soon.
“Ok, seriously, Peter, that was meant to be a rhetorical question, but a little denial would be nice.” Sylar snapped at him, twirling on the ball of his foot to storm in the other direction the instant the last word left his lips.
Peter frowned, watching him wear a stripe in Mohinder’s table.
“What is wrong with you? Can’t you sit still for one second?”
“Of course I can! I’m a watchmaker, dumbass!” Sylar twirled again, black coat tails thumping against the glass and making ‘Momo’ raise his ugly scaly head. “Sitting still is practically what I do!”
“Then why are you running back and forth like a chicken with its head cut off?!” Peter jumped to his feet, both to avoid the possible wrath of an irked lizard and express his frustration. “And what was with that question in the first place?! Why the hell would I care if you and Mohinder are screwing?!”
“Oh, shut up!” The killer snapped, finally stopping about a foot in front of Peter’s face. “As if I can’t see the way you look at him!”
“Excuse me?!” Peter felt his eyes go wide with panic and tried desperately to pass it off as rage. “Are you saying that I...”
“Yes! I am! I, Gabriel Grey, am saying that you, Peter Petrelli, want to do my boyfriend! And don’t you dare deny it!” Sylar thrust his finger into Peter’s face, dark eyes burning. “You’ve got it written all over your stupid dopey face! But you can’t have him! He’s mine!”
“Why don’t we just ask him, huh?” Peter spat, loving the surge of anger flowing through him and letting him ignore how close they were, the flush in the other’s pale cheeks, the passionate glittering of his dark eyes. “Or are you too scared that he’ll dump your psychotic ass for someone who actually possesses a soul?”
“SHUT UP!”
Something in the killer’s voice hit a chord, stole his words from his lips and the rage from his heart. The clouds of anger faded from his eyes, and he realized, suddenly, shockingly, that there were tears in the other man’s eyes. Hot, angry tears, ripped out of him despite every effort to hold them back. He brought one hand up to shove them away, hiding behind the dark fabric of his sleeve.
Silence reigned. The world went still, condensed and faded until it was just the two of them. The hero and the villain, the taker and the giver. In that moment, Peter couldn’t honestly say which one of them was which. The look in the other’s eyes, that long, trembling moment before he had disappeared behind the width of his arm, remained frozen in his mind’s eye. He had seen something in that moment, something he had never before believed existed.
The guilty conscience of Gabriel Grey.
“I...” The man’s voice was quiet, shaking, trying to be strong and failing miserably. “I know what I am. I don’t... like being this. But it’s either this, or... invisible.”
The last word, barely whispered, sunk into Peter’s heart and touched the same dark place that Claude had brushed past, so long ago. The part of him that remained a little boy, standing in his brother’s shadow, so desperate to be noticed by somebody, anybody, that he’d do anything just to be seen. Long hair and black nail polish, dark clothing and depressing music. It didn’t matter what he did. He was always just a disappointment, nothing more.
If Peter hadn’t just been able to absorb the powers of others via osmosis... If he had to kill to take the abilities that made him impossible to ignore... If it took becoming a murderer to be special, to be wanted, to be someone...
Peter would have done it.
Sylar started, glittering eyes wide with shock as Peter wrapped his arms around the taller man, cradling his head against his shoulder. His elegant fingers (His hands really were lovely, no matter what size they were.) curled reflexively in around the fabric of Peter’s shirt, clinging to him like a frightened child. As the other relaxed against him, Peter felt himself smile.
Standing at the doorway to the kitchen, Mohinder watched the two toy-sized figures embrace. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he should be jealous, but it was hard to be angry at them when they were just so darn cute.
“Mohinder? Are you still there?” Bennett’s metallic voice on the other side of the telephone roused Mohinder from his amused contemplation.
“Yes. Sorry, I got a little distracted.”
“What’s going on over there? Was that them, or have you suddenly developed a hamster infestation?”
“That was them. They weren’t getting along very well, but I think it’s going to be alright now.”
“Right. I’ll be over as soon as possible, before one of them ends up dead. Hopefully Sylar.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Take your time. I can handle it.”
“... Be careful, Mohinder. This is Sylar we’re dealing with, after all. You know better than anyone how purely evil that man is.”
“... I suppose your right. I know him best of all.”