I've Got Nine Lives. I'll Share One With You.
Title: I've Got Nine Lives. I'll Share One With You.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Peter/Claude
Warnings: None
Spoilers: References to Season Three
A/N: For saena17 and her call for roadtrip!Plaude. This is gen with a dollop of pre-slash.
It's an Indiana morning--dry earth, dull sky, horizons drawn bleak. One mile bleeds into another and another and another. Everything is quiet. Everything is tired.
Peter hates it.
Glass and flat fields and a world gone tedious.
He hates it.
But he cannot change it. Not yet. He can only suffer through it.
Because there's nothing left to return to; and there's nothing left to chase. There is just here and now and the terrible desperation.
He's being... hunted.
They all are.
By a sad little man with sad little dreams.
Danko.
He knows of them now, has declared a secret war. Bullets and blood and careful strategy: he claws their names onto state lines and blurs the ink.
And it's Peter's fault.
His brother's insistence, his mother's apathy... They mean nothing.
It was his failure that started this. It was his loss that brought them to their knees. And now the fate of an entire species (because that's what they are, a new breed of humanity; fragile and tentative and strange) is uncertain.
We'll be dead before we have the chance to start.
And all he can do is... run.
He's tracing through the country, a ghost now, a shimmer; hiding from the ones who have betrayed him. The seers. The psychics. The wet-handed painters. They follow Danko now, bartering power for days. He doesn't blame them. He doesn't even hate them. They're just... existing.
So is he.
And he's not alone.
Claude is beside him, sulking as he drives. Because he always sulks and he always drives; refuses to let Peter even suggest otherwise.
"Poodles should just sit back and look pretty. Leave everythin' else to them that ain't useless."
They found each other three months before, unexpectedly sharing the same abandoned home. He had seen a shadow move across the floor and screamed--the sound dragging nails from the walls and sending them spinning.
Claude had survived only by the virtue of Peter's weak aim.
He still hasn't forgiven him for it.
Jerk.
But they somehow agreed to travel together; knew the consequences of solitude were too dangerous. There was safety in compromise, they said. Now... Now he isn't sure.
Because Claude is furious and fickle and forever mocking.
He reaches for the radio, wanting anything beyond the wails of anarchy, the shrieking middle classes. But, before he can even touch the dial, his hand is swatted away. He frowns. "Hey-- What gives?"
"We're not changin' the channel."
"We've been listening to this for hours," he stresses. "They've played the same Morrissey song three times."
"Doesn't matter. It stays."
"But--"
"Listen here, mate." Blue eyes peer bold in the mirror. "I'm already havin' to deal with your need to talk every five seconds. I'm not puttin' up with your music too."
"My music?" he asks, before he can stop himself.
"Emo or pop or summat. Whatever 's called. Buncha little poofters cryin' 'bout their parents not understandin' them or their hair not bein' greasy enough. I want no part of it."
"And yet," he murmurs, "you seem to know so much about it."
".... Shut up."
And he did.
Silent. Silent.
He was never meant for such lonely miles. He was never meant for surly truces. They remind too much of family and hurt.
He has to say something. If only for relief.
“I--”
“There’s a diner up ahead,” interrupts Claude, scratching at the clean span of his cheek. He’s all angles now, shorn and thin. “We’re not stoppin’.”
Peter blinks. “And you’re telling me this because...?”
“Didn’t want you bein’ all sad when you couldn’t order off the kids’ menu.”
He stares, mouth crooking to a scowl. “I think I’ll live.”
“Y’sure about that? You don’t have the healin’ anymore.”
“No, but I do have the ability to send you flying out of this car.”
Claude looks over at that, glaring. As if offended. As if he’s earned the right.
Peter merely glares back.
And it’s been like this since they began; all bristle and blame. But there’s a perverse... pleasure he now takes in the way an expression darkens, in the whorl of thoughts he can see twisting beyond. They’re preparing a campaign; swords and sarcasm. He won’t allow them the chance. Offers, “You’d better watch the road. I didn’t plan on crashing and dying today.”
“If y’don’t shut up, you’re gonna die anyway. And it won’t be from crashin’.”
But he still peers back to pavement and a boy thinks victory.
Until Claude then reaches for the radio, searching channels with no intention. Just static and superior glances. Again and again.
Son of a--
“Quit it.”
“No.”
“I said quit it.”
“And I said no. You wanna keep playin’ parrot?”
“I’ll show you parrot,” he snaps, ignoring that the threat is without sense or even venom. Instead his hand darts out, tries to steal the sound.
He’s quickly denied. Chastised. “Children don’t get to pick the music,” chimes Claude, grinning insincere. “They just need to mind their betters.”
“Well show me someone better and I will,” he growls, lunging forward.
They wrestle at the knob, songs shrilling out in protest.
Turn. Turn. Snap.
The knob falls away.
And traps them to fiddle strings and Appalachian sirens. The caterwauls and warbles.
Oh crap...
“Get it off! Get it off!”
“I’m trying!” he yells, hurrying at the controls. He finally succeeds in quiet, the volume wrenched down, down, down.
“Fantastic,” Claude mutters. “Now we’re stuck with it.”
“It’s all your fault,” Peter counters.
“Me? I’m not the one who broke it.”
“No, you’re just the one who wouldn’t leave it alone!”
“Well that’s a first! It’s usually you who can’t leave it alone! Gotta pick at everythin’ till it bleeds! Guess what, Pete? That just leads to your fingers gettin’ wet!”
“Would you just shut up, you hillbilly Yoda?”
“Who you callin’ a--”
There’s a blare of a horn. A screech against gravel lines. A whirl of metal and glass.
Peter screams as they’re forced to swing onto the shoulder, barely avoiding a passing motorcycle swerving between lanes and convoys. They sway dangerously toward the bank beyond, are able finally to brake. And the car wrenches to a stop, making them both strain against their seats, grip frantic at the curves.
They don’t speak.
They don't breathe.
Until Claude finally... laughs.
Sharp. Sudden.
A boy peeks up, shy-eyed and a little helpless. “Are you-- Okay?”
“Okay?” he asks. “Okay? I’ve been shot, fell off a bridge, fell off a building, had all kinds of cracked bones and the like from my tosser of a father. And now I managed to keep myself out of a ditch. Okay, boyo? I must have nine lives.” He grins, manic.
And Peter does too.
---
It’s the reek of smoke and industrious bleach, stains stretched across the ceiling; the profane calligraphy. There are skittish, scratching noises between the walls. The rats are calling.
And he thinks, perhaps, that this is the worst hotel they’ve chosen. And he thinks, perhaps, that Claude would consider that a challenge.
“Well,” the man drawls, slinging his bag onto a bed. The sheets wriggle, dirty. “It ain’t exactly the Ritz but it’ll do. Unless it offends your delicate sensibilities?”
“It’s fine,” he lies. He’s not afraid of cheap, just filthy.
“Bet it’s nothin’ like you’ve ever seen. Being from the aristocracy.” The word is elongated, cruel.
“I wasn’t like that,” he defends, tired of this argument, of the accusations. He cannot change his past; he can only steady his future; and it's not fair to brand him a Petrelli when he wanted only to escape them.
“Oh no,” says Claude, cheerful. “You were nothin’ like that. You were just a bleedin’ heart out to save the dead and dyin'.”
“Haven’t exactly been doing a lot of saving recently...” There's pity in the tone, the selfish martyrdom.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
And it’s a sudden pounce, a tangle of hands and hips and surprise. He’s shoved down to the bed, pinned beneath old scars and older anger. Dizzy.
"What--"
"Shut up."
"No," he hisses. "Get off!"
"Don't y'think I should buy you dinner first?"
He startles, stunned into a brief silence, the implications of that too much to even consider; rouses himself barely enough to sputter, "I'm serious!"
"So am I." And Claude leans near, expression solemn. "I don't like you."
Peter snorts. "Well thank you for clearing that up. Now if you don't mind--"
"Shut up," he growls again. "'M tryin' to tell you somethin'."
Dark eyes narrow but do not spark.
"I don't like you. I think you're annoyin'. With your silly hair and silly habits and downright stupid need to help every thing you see. Gettin' kittens out of trees is your idea of a good time. Takin' old ladies across the street is what you live for. I can't stand it. But you know why I make myself? You know why I put up with every single idiotic thing you do?" He's close now, intention hot against Peter's cheek; soft and certain. "Because I know, when the right day comes, you're gonna be the one to save us all."
A boy... stares. Forgets to breathe. Forgets to think.
"You're gonna be the one to end this, Pete. I know it. You’ll fix it. Fix us. So stop putting yourself down about not bein' good enough. You're already too good for it, mate. You always were."
"Claude..." he chokes, overwhelmed. "Claude, you--"
A man simply scowls, rolls away; lays sprawling beside him. Embarrassed and fierce.
And Peter should say... something. Something with meaning. Something with depth. But he's somehow sure that would only break the moment, chasm them again. They are gossamer hesitations. They will fly away. So he smiles a little instead, asks, "Can I have a hug?"
And the slap is worth it.
.