musesandlyrics | 5.14. Dangerous Liaisons quote

[randybyname]

5.14. "And it's not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you."
Dangerous Liasons

Co-written with imgrounded
[Follows THIS]

Peter swept his hand down Randy's bare back as he lay next to her on the bed and smiled. Truth was she was beautiful all the time, but he really did think she was gorgeous covered in a post-coital glow. They'd made it a little way up the hall before he followed through on the hallway sex, then they'd taken a short break while Peter found something to eat, and Randy spoke to her sister. He hadn't wanted to pry too much, but she seemed content to relay what was going on. He still couldn't quite believe Mel had fallen pregnant, and it did make him wonder what it would be like to have a kid with Randy.

His fingers traced patterns on her lower back, dipping down to touch the soft curve of her ass as he leaned forward to press a kiss against her shoulder and went back to watching her. Their sexual activities had picked up like they'd never taken a break, and now they were passed out on the bed. Peter was aware that after a shift and a half he should probably be trying to sleep, but he couldn't. Not since he'd told Randy he'd wanted to talk to her. And he did. He wanted to tell her everything, but he was still trying to work out where to start.

Peter's tongue slipped out to wet his lips, and he cleared his throat. "Remember me telling you about my brother Nathan?"


Randy bit down on her lip. This was it. She promised him she wouldn't let her brain kick into overdrive about it, and she hadn't, but she swore now that not having the outlet of overstressing something to keep a blank brain was much worse. She had touched on it with Mel, and maybe a few stray thoughts had broken through. Then with everything going on with Nathan - Mel's Nathan - and the two blue lines and the fact that it was Mel going to make her an aunty first and not Matt like most thought, it was just surreal and she wasn't sure what she was really supposed to properly think anymore. But he needed to have her full attention, so she tucked Mel's issues close by to the side for the moment. She knew her sister wouldn't mind. She nodded. "The golden haired Petrelli brother who can do no wrong? He's a politician... but you didn't tell me a whole lot more than that. He has kids, that's it, I think," she said with a small frown of thought of her face.

"Yeah, that's him," Peter murmured, slightly amazed that she had actually remembered everything he'd told her. It made him wonder if he'd really told her that little, and so she was filing away any and all little snippets he gave her. "At one point he was running for Congress. His goal, and our mother's, was always the presidency. I was never good enough in that time. Everything I did came under scrutiny if it would be seen as affecting his running, or his image. I was just the annoying kid brother who was a nurse. But I loved him. I've always loved him. Nathan's been my hero since I can remember. Even if occasionally he's been not so shiny." Peter shifted and rolled onto his back as he tucked his arm under his head, and looked up at the ceiling. "I started having these dreams that I could fly. That I was standing on top of a building, and then I was flying. Not falling, flying. There's a difference. Then Nathan started appearing in them, and I didn't really understand what it meant. And then it started to be me saving him. Or I thought I was saving him. Turns out he saved me. Nathan was the one that could fly."

Randy couldn't be sure if his shifting positions was him pulling away from her or not, but she stayed where she was in case he needed space. She became starkly aware of how much she really didn't know him. She wanted to change it, but it seemed he was opposite to Nathan. Mel had admitted Nathan confided in her a lot, opened up from early on in the piece. Peter hadn't really been like that. He talked, but rarely about himself and she could see now how little she knew about him. But now he was talking, and he was telling her his brother could fly. Did she even hear right? She sat up abruptly in bed, tucking the covers around her middle so she had something her hands could do. She had always been a fiddler. At first, she wasn't sure what to say, and being a psychologist, she wanted to actually asked him if he maybe needed therapy. "Fly?" At least it was something. Better than staying silent. Her fingers threaded through the sheets and she looked at him a little nervously.

Peter's free hand went to her leg, and he tilted his head back to look at her as he renewed their physical connected. He hadn't been pulling away, he'd just needed to shift so he could better focus on his memories. Not that he was likely to forget any of this. "Yeah, I know... It's crazy. He actually had me convinced I was crazy. In fact, my Mom came to the hospital after I fell off the building to tell me that apparently our Dad committed suicide, and I'd inherited his mental problems. That I'd tried to kill myself. Nathan spun it a different way at one of his political parties. I was the family joke, the poor brother who had alcohol and mental issues. A secret Nathan was sharing with his public so that they could see what a kind, and considerate person he was caring for someone like me."

Randy just looked at him, horrified, her nose scrunching up in a deeper frown before she could stop it. "Your mom and your brother used an invented and frankly sad issue as a political yard stick? That's... that sick! There are people really out there with alcohol and mental issues, you know! It's not a bloody damn joke!" It was the psychologist kicking in inside her. He had said enough to assure her those weren't his problems, but the truth was, she would probably be relieved if that had been. "That's not even... I don't even..." She had to hold up her hand and shake her head before she started swearing harshly and verbally abusing his family.

Peter pulled himself up into a sitting position next to her and pulled her into his arms. She had been able to express the anger where he had failed. He'd yelled at his brother that night, and stormed off, but it wasn't the same. It was also the night he'd finally kissed Simone, but he didn't want to dwell on that. "Welcome the Petrelli family," he murmured. And he wasn't even near done yet. "These dreams... The flying, I knew it had been real. Nathan had flown even if he wanted to deny it. And it turned out I shared his power. I could share anyone's ability. We weren't the only special people. There were others. Evolution had taken a jump. There was something in us that made us extraordinary. Of course, later, I found out my mother and all her Company colleagues could actually manufacture the trigger. All of it is very... confusing. I'm not asking you to understand, I just need you to realise there's a reason I don't try and talk about this part of my life very often. It wasn't ever a happy time. Not once I realised that there was a killer after all of us, someone that wanted to collect our powers."

He let out a sigh, and his head fell back against the headboard. "I don't know if you'd even remember, but there had been a rash of killings where people's heads had been cut open and their brains taken out. It was all over the country, not just New York. A weird trail that no one seemed to be able to connect."

"Yeah... no," was Randy's pointless answer. She didn't remember anything like that, and didn't want to, either. It was bad enough that a colleague of her brother's had been shot in a hospital of all places, she didn't want to think about that sort of thing until a victim was sitting in her psych office wanting help to deal with the aftermath. She was hugging herself now, and she really didn't know how she was supposed to take all this talk of super powers and flying and serial killers. It was freaking her the hell out, especially after trying to process the fact Mel was pregnant. But she wanted to at least try to get some part of it. "What, so this dude is coming after you to eat your brains? I think I was happier thinking you were in the Mafia..."

"I really wish I was in the Mafia, baby," Peter admitted as he gave her a sad smile. "And no, not any more. He's... gone. He did used to want to, though. That's how I died. I was tracking down the author of a book on our genetic coding. The abilities, and what it means. I actually have it if you could ever bring yourself to read it. His son was in New York. The author was murdered by the brain guy. By Sylar. At the time I had inherited other abilities including invisibility. Sylar used shattered glass to try and get me because he couldn't see me. I had a shard of glass land right in the back of my skull. In the one spot the invulnerability isn't so invulnerable. That was an ability I got off my niece. My, um, brother's first daughter. The one he thought had died in a fire. She survived, just like she survives everything. She's the reason I'm alive now. I healed after she pulled the glass out. I'm skipping over some stuff because I realise it's going to be confusing as fuck, but let's just say that Sylar killing Claire would have been some seriously bad fucking juju. I had to save her, to save the world."

Randy put her hand up and started to restlessly play with the ends of her hair. "I-I don't know what I'm supposed to say or do..." she admitted in a small voice. Bottom line was, she was kind of terrified right at that moment. More than terrified. She wanted to cry to and go and hide behind her big brother for protection.

Peter cupped his hand against her cheek, his face twisting in pain when he realised that telling her all this was hurting Randy. "Do you understand now why I never wanted to tell you any of this shit? The past year, or so, really has not been a happy time for me. I became a human nuclear bomb, and Nathan flew me up into the atmosphere so I could explode safely, but I hurt him. I got him to hospital only to wind up fucking tasered by a crazy chick and taken to the Company where I was her plaything for four months. Then I lost my memory and woke up in a fucking shipping yard in Ireland." He kissed her forehead, and rest his head against hers as he dropped his voice to a low whisper. "I was trying to protect you by not telling you, because I'm only halfway done, and I'm already hurting you. I know I don't talk a lot about me, but I don't want to make you scared of me, or to make you hate me. I can't lose you because I'm only just letting myself fall in love with you, Miranda Murray. I just know it can't go both ways unless you feel like you can trust me."

"He hurt you!" Randy exploded before she could stop it and then put a hand up over her mouth, horrified. But it was true. Who gave a flying fuck if one was physical hurt one was emotional? As far as she was concerned, the long-standing hurt Peter's brother had caused him was way worse than some one off accident, even if it was playing out in her head like some weird movie she wasn't sure she was supposed to like or not, but really had a crush on the leading dude. "I'm not scared of you, I'm scared of all them! Are you telling me they're still after you, or whatever? Okay, so super powers. No, I don't understand it, and it's maybe really making my head feel like a squashed oyster right now, but I don't care, just so long as you aren't flying up to the ozone layer to move the bloody earth to the left or whatever people like you need to do! Can't you retire? Even James Bond gets to retire at some point. And Superman. He gets to be Clark Kent and run around pulling strip shows in phone booths and- what?" she suddenly stopped short, eyes wide as she blinked at him in surprise.

Peter combed his fingers through her hair as he watched her, and tucked some of the strands behind her ear as he smirked a little. "You caught that last bit, huh? I was trying to sneak it in between everything else. And okay, I agree about my brother. He's notched up a few other betrayals along the way. I think my favourite is still picking my fucked up father, and his plan to basically take over the world, over me." He moved so he could sit facing her, and pulled her up into his lap easily so that she was perched on top of him, and Peter could look up at her. "I am retired, don't you get it? That's why I'm in Princeton. That's why I've left it all behind, left New York, and my brother behind. I don't want that life. I want a life with you, and a life where I'm actually happy. You make me happy."

"Does that mean they stop coming after you?" Randy asked, her eyes locked on his. She pressed her lips together, still feeling overwhelmed. "Today has been epic, my stomach feels like it's in knots. Princeton isn't that far away from New York. Are you even safe? Am I safe? Is my family safe? My sister is having a baby! She needs to be safe! How can I even be enough after you've had all that sort of stuff in your life? That you're this... person, with something I don't understand. What if I never understand it?"

"Yeah, it does. I don't matter to them any more." He rubbed her stomach, and kissed her chest. "I would never put you in a position where you were in danger. I would never do that to your family. If anyone tries to hurt you, or them, I will kill them." He frowned, and snorted. "Randy, you're enough. Trust me on that. I didn't even realise you were what I needed until I found you. You've been this breath of fresh air, and I can't get enough. I'm still human. I'm still... me. I'm just Peter Petrelli. But I can't answer that question, only you can. If you can't take me as I am, then... there's nothing to understand, and we're on limited time." He glanced over at her bedroom window, and then looked back at her. "Do you trust me?"

Randy tucked her hand over Peter's, not answering straight away. She knew the answer, she just needed to process it all in her mind. She wasn't sure she would actually ever understand what he had just told her, but that didn't mean she didn't trust him. If he was still part of that other world, she wasn't sure she could trust him just because didn't trust what he was dealing with. But he was here, he had been here without incident for a few months now. In fact, the only incident was her hitting him with her car. Something suddenly dawned on her. "Why didn't you heal yourself with the powers or whatever when I hit you?" she asked in confusion. She put her hand over his mouth briefly. "Yes, I trust you," she promised.

Peter kissed her fingers, and smiled. "Because I'm just me. I don't have them any more. Not like that. My father took it all away. I injected myself with their version of a... genetic booster," Peter explained as he tried to find the right words, "and I can't have any power unless I touch the person that has it. Not like before when I could have everyone's by only just being near them. Last person I touched was my brother. So I can still fly. I just don't." He pulled her in for a kiss, trying like hell to put everything he was feeling, and everything she needed to understand into it. When it eased off his was looking at her again, his eyes studying hers. "So if you ever think you can handle me showing you, I can... I could give you the stars, Randy. But if you don't want them, then all I got left is me, and for once I would just like that to be enough for someone."

Randy had her hand on her stomach, trying to get it to stop doing sommersaults. "You don't need it to just be enough. You deserve so much better than that. Why should you just be enough for someone? You should be someone's world. Someone's want and need. To give someone a reason to come home each day. To maybe not always be perfect, but at least be fun..." She searched his eyes. "I want you to be my world."

This time it was Peter's turn to blink in surprise. He felt his mouth fall open for a moment before he smiled, and held her tightly, his hand rubbing against her back. "And I want you to be my world. I want us to be each other's worlds. Are you okay? Do you need something?"

"I need time to wrap my head around everything you tell me, so if I go into weird silences, it's not you," Randy had to warn. "Because it's just full on, and after my day, I feel a little like I've been smashed in the face with a dead bush or something. Not only is Mel knocked up, but they've also both got the gastro, which I think they got off Matty. Everything feels like it's fucked, so I just need you to be you, because I can handle that. I really, really can."

Peter pulled her into an embrace and kissed her temple. "That I can do. And I'm sorry if I hit you in the face with a dead bush. I need to work on my timing more."

"I'd rather bad timing than no timing at all," Randy murmured, happily melting into the embrace to try and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist for just a short time.

Word Count | 3,213