Rubik's vs. Rubix
Title: Rubik's vs. RubixCharacters: Sylar/Gabriel Gray and Peter Petrelli
Rating: PG (some swearing?)
Word count: Short
Setting: Inside the Wall, S4 (MBU)
Summary: Peter plays fair.
A/N: Written for Game_byrd. To give her a smile in crappy weeks and cheer her up in challenging Boom writing. Also, its from Peter's POV, people! It's a big deal.
Peter eventually came around to the idea of ‘playing games’ with Sylar, albeit reluctantly. He was, he admitted to himself, only doing it to avoid conversation/fights and boredom. But he also wanted to see how Sylar handled winning and losing in a card game-board game setting. He wasn’t sure what the outcome would be; it could be a lot of things. Sylar could fly off the handle or he could stew about it or just get pissy (which seemed to be his default state anyway, so that made no difference). Flying off the handle would be bad for Peter - he was hesitant to begin playing with the man because he didn’t want to be a punching bag for amusement’s sake; who ever wanted to be?
He was shown the game and entertainment store and from that, eventually, he decided to try to master the elusive Rubik’s cube. It was not his first choice nor was it his life-long aspiration. But it was kind of symbolic; and so maybe he wanted to rub it in Sylar’s face - the man who thought he Knew All, that he, Peter, had conquered the above-average game.
Months past. Peter could only handle the damn thing in increments before getting too frustrated with all its symbolism. Sylar knew Peter possessed the toy, had rolled his eyes on seeing it. Peter didn’t ask him to clarify his thoughts on the cube - Sylar’s thoughts were irrelevant to its existence right now. Its existence ever, actually.
He knew it annoyed the other man as it took away Peter’s conversation. A few times Peter had had the toy swiped and tossed from his hands, mid-move, because Sylar was angry and acting out. The endings to those stories varied from fights to silence to what Peter took to be pleading from Sylar. Whatever.
One day, he didn’t know what day or how many days he’d been here (Sylar did, the insufferable ass), when Sylar was being particularly snitty. The man’s body language said he was uptight and energetic, not a good combination Peter had found; hands waving, shoulders set oddly and walking just a little too fast.
“Will you quit with that already? It’s above your IQ level,” Sylar snapped when Peter took too long to answer whatever question.
“Says the man who’s acting like a two year old,” was Peter’s absent reply, not taking his eyes from the cube. He’d tried different colors over the months; maybe that was the trick. Currently he was on red; he had two reds in the middle row (the hardest he’d discovered) and was twisting the third around a bunch of blues and greens when an idea struck him.
“Fuck you.”
“You’re so smart, do YOU know how to finish one of these?” Peter asked, looking dead at his companion, raising his eyebrow in challenge as he extended the toy. Sylar could never resist. (Peter chose to ignore his own immaturity at rising to the annoyance that was Sylar and his manipulations).
“Of course,” was the killer’s deadpan, one of his large rather fuzzy eyebrows quirking slightly as he stared back, unreadable.
Peter watched him after he’d taken the cube, holding it in his right hand. His left index finger was raised to….wait, what?
Peter frowned, sighing.
Quickly enough Sylar worked a short fingernail under the sticker and had removed the third red one from its misplacement and had swapped it out for the yellow that had foiled Peter. The cube was complete.
Sylar smirked smug and evil as could be at Peter’s glare. “That’s cheating, asshole.”
“Duh,” was the confident reply, almost a scoff that made Peter want to smack him for thinking cheating was acceptable. At least, that’s what he told himself.
Sylar folded his arms over his chest after regifting the toy, leaning back in his chair, slouching as comfortable as an athletic cat would after eating. He tilted his head and delivered with those penetrating dark eyes that told a million stories yet revealed nothing, “Work smarter, not harder.”