Bricks in the Wall, Chapter 10: Just Talking
A/N: Written for means2bhuman's prompt of wanting to see Sylar and Peter, in the Wall, discussing a pregnancy scare.
"So … you ever had a Claire situation? You know, missing a month?"
Peter gave Sylar a blank look, having no idea what Sylar meant. A … 'Claire' situation? Missing a month? Like when I lost all my memories? "What?"
Sylar leaned against the piano, settling in as Peter went about tuning the instrument. It was an endeavor Sylar approved of, even if he wasn't helping. Peter hadn't asked; Sylar hadn't offered. He was secretly pleased Peter had been unable to find tuning forks, which was probably part of why Peter was unsatisfied with the quality of sound from it. "Have you ever had a near-miss? Thought the rabbit might die?"
Oh! Peter finally got it. He breathed out a light snort and started plinking along, listening for a few notes before answering, "No."
"Hm," Sylar replied, moving out of the way as Peter opened the top for access to the mechanisms. He kept watching Peter expectantly, believing that would draw more of a response out of the man.
It did. Peter glanced over at him a few times, then reached in to tighten a peg. He said, "There were a couple times though that I didn't use protection and found out later she wasn't on the pill or anything." He shrugged. "Nothing ever happened, though."
Found out later? A 'couple' times? That Peter could be so casual about his bountiful love life made Sylar's envy flare up. One brow crept upward as he snarked, "You make a habit out of sleeping with women who lie to you?"
Peter gave him another blank look. "They didn't lie." There was a small amount of heat in that, but mostly Peter was confused as to why Sylar would think that.
Sylar huffed and elaborated, "They didn't tell you they weren't on the pill?"
Peter's eyes shifted back and forth uneasily as he telegraphed his guilt. He blamed himself for taking stupid risks - that was all. That and he understood the implied immorality, even if his personal beliefs were different. "I didn't ask."
Now both of Sylar's brows climbed. "How does that conversation not happen?"
Peter chuckled and checked a few more notes on the piano, thinking about one particular encounter in the back of a bar. Her name had been Chelsea. That was about all Peter knew of her, aside from general appearance and her loudly proclaimed decision to take revenge on her boyfriend for dumping her by screwing the best looking guy in the bar. Peter was flattered to be nominated. The conversation hadn't gone much past that. "Well, you know, sometimes it just doesn't happen." He smiled a little in memory.
Sylar frowned at him disapprovingly, even though it occurred to him that he'd never asked anything similar of Elle. Or Janice. Or Lydia. Or Maya, not that that ever went anywhere. But Sylar knew Nathan had tried to hammer into Peter the need for using condoms - Nathan's own experience with an unexpected child being the impetus for that. And Sylar also thought that mature, reasonable, experienced relationships - like the ones he imagined medically-trained, sexually confident Peter having had - always included the dreaded, if stereotypical, 'conversation'.
Just in case he needed that misconception corrected, Peter said, "I didn't always know them all that well."
"But you knew them well enough to fuck them." Sylar felt angry about that - jealous, really, though he wouldn't admit to that emotion any more than the envy. The idea of Peter ignoring his brother's good advice was part of it, but mostly it was that Peter might have had a lot of quick, meaningless-but-thoroughly-enjoyable hookups in his life while Gabriel had had nothing.
Peter gave him a brief glower before pointedly ignoring him. Sylar's rough language, his angry tone and the implication of moral judgment all bothered Peter.
Sylar allowed the glare, mentally giving himself a point for having provoked his companion without suffering any other retaliation for it. "So what would you have done if one of these bimbos had turned up pregnant?"
"What?" he asked in surprise.
"I said-"
Peter knew exactly what had been said, but he wasn't about to let that sort of disrespect stand towards the people who'd been kind enough to share themselves with him. He jerked towards Sylar, snarling, "They weren't 'bimbos'!"
Sylar's more usual reaction would have been to hold perfectly still and coolly stare Peter down. In a fraction of a second, though, he changed his mind. He let his face show surprise at the vehement reaction, and let his gaze travel down to Peter's white-knuckle grip on the screwdriver that he hadn't had in his hand a few seconds before. Lethal weapon, Sylar considered. He'd learned a few things about Peter, as they'd spent so much time together. First - Peter really was dumb enough to use that screwdriver as a weapon. It was something Sylar had to keep in mind when toying with the man. Second - Peter responded well to social pressures. Looking at Peter expectantly tended to elicit conversation; looking aghast at the screwdriver now had the expected result of making Peter back down far more effectively than a stare-down ever would.
Peter blinked, caught himself, and looked away, putting the tool on the keys and returning to his work. "They weren't 'bimbos'," he grumbled. Chelsea, and all the rest, had been human beings. There was no magical dividing line that said a person didn't deserve respect because you hadn't known them for a certain length of time.
Sylar was quiet for a moment, listening as Peter plinked on keys and made a few adjustments. Entertaining as it was to set Peter off, sheer emotional response wasn't the point of his questions. He was trying to find out how Peter handled relationships and pry a little more into what he needed to do to get Peter to look twice at him. Or do more than look. He adjusted his language to make it more palatable. "These women you had sex with - did you love them?"
Peter gave him a sidelong glance before continuing. Sylar waited patiently for Peter's answer and after a few moments more, Peter shrugged and said, "Sort of. Maybe. I could have."
"What you're saying is that you're willing to have sex with people you don't love." That was a vital piece of information to glean from the interaction. Sylar leaned against the wall, basking in the implications of it. Peter's standards might not be as impossibly high as Sylar had thought.
Peter made a grumbling noise and shrugged one shoulder, the other arm inside the piano as he started on a new set of keys. "Yeah, guess so." He didn't like the way it sounded, but it was true.
Sylar had other things he was curious about, though, and returned to the questioning. "It's possible - that maybe one of them, or maybe someone else you knew better - could have gotten pregnant."
Peter snorted. "No. I told you that. Nothing ever came of it." Peter admitted to himself that it was conceivable that someone had gotten pregnant and he didn't know about it, but it seemed pretty remote. It wasn't like he'd used a false name or tried to avoid anyone he'd hooked up with. His standard 'pick up line', if you could call it that, was a straightforward introduction, after all, last name included.
Sylar gave a single shake of his head and turned towards his companion. "That's not what I mean. Sure - nothing happened. But let's think about 'what-if'. What if one of them had gotten pregnant?"
Peter gave him another side-eye, wishing he knew where Sylar was going with this. Because he was always going somewhere. Yes, to some extent Sylar was just passing the time in idle conversation, but these little forays of Sylar's always struck Peter as having an undisclosed goal, like they were little ability-collecting missions, substituting some piece of information or trick of social interaction for abilities. "What if she had?"
"Well, would you have married them?"
Peter went through another octave on the piano, comparing sound and tweaking the results. "Yes." Sylar opened his mouth, then shut it, as something about Peter's demeanor looked like he wasn't quite done speaking. A moment later he confirmed this, adding, "If she'd have me."
Sylar resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. Why anyone would pass up Peter Petrelli was a mystery to him. A creepy serial killer obsessed with vivisection and out-of-date mechanical timepieces, and had to deceive and manipulate just to get people to tolerate him? Yeah, no questions as to why he wasn't a chick magnet. But Peter? It was weird. And unexplained. Especially given how Peter obviously had both normal sexual urges and the inclination to act on them.
"Would you even consider suggesting an abortion?" Sylar explored.
"No." There was no hesitation on that. It was a topic Peter had discussed at length with friends both male and female. He was firm - he was never going to have an abortion. Of course as a man, he was never going to face that decision. Should one of his partners face it, and his input was allowed, he'd argue against it. "That would be why I'd offer to marry her. So she'd know I was serious."
"Oh, you're very serious, Peter."
Peter glanced over at him, not sure what that bland statement meant. It might have been either compliment or derision and Sylar's tone left it open to interpretation. Peter decided to take it as merely observation and went on.
Sylar leaned against the wall, facing the room at large. "So if you're willing to have sex with people you're not in love with, and you're willing to marry people who happen to conceive of you, then it follows that you're willing to marry people you don't love."
Peter grimaced with one side of his face and continued tuning. That, too, was true enough. He wondered if this was a lead-up to Sylar trying to prove that love and marriage had nothing to do with one another, which was bunk. He hoped if he married someone he didn't love at the time that love would come eventually. He'd certainly do his best to try. Peter's idea of marriage, informed as it was by his Catholic upbringing, did not adhere to the popular romantic notions. If the people involved were madly in love, then that was wonderful. If they weren't, then they could work at it.
"That's quite a commitment," Sylar observed, knowing from Nathan's memories that Peter probably saw marriage as a lifetime obligation, much as Nathan had. Though that hadn't kept Nathan from straying. In fact, Sylar thought feeling trapped in a fairly loveless marriage had been a big part of Nathan's serial adultery.
"So's having sex with someone."
Sylar tilted his head. "How so? What commitment have you made?" His tone changed slightly to less preachy and more honestly interested. Peter had said something surprising.
Peter looked at him like Sylar was missing a few cards from the deck - not an unusual look between them, so Sylar ignored it. "You're having sex with someone. You're being with them. You're being intimate. That's … you're promising trust, and respect."
Sylar laughed out loud. "All right, Mr. Romance, I get it now. No wonder you manage to con so many people into the sack." What a hopeless dreamer. Nathan was right.
Now it was Peter's turn to tilt his head. "If you're having to con them, then you're doing it wrong."
"Fine. Whatever. Most people aren't quite as …" naïve? foolish? stupidly romantic? Sylar decided not to aggravate Peter more, so he picked a term less offensive than the other options, saying, "… sincere as you are." Does Peter really think that way? Sylar considered the man's irritation about the 'bimbos' comment and decided he probably did. He gave Peter a side eye as the man went back to his tuning. Sylar tried to work out what this meant about his odds with Peter. On the one hand, if he could ever get Peter in bed (willingly), then it sounded like Peter took that physical act as some sort of oath. It was a deal, maybe even a semi-permanent truce. That made the whole thing extra-appealing. On the other hand, it made it even less likely that Peter would extend that privilege to the likes of Sylar. It went an uncomfortably long way towards explaining why Peter had showed no interest in him at all. No, that wasn't true - Peter had shown interest, several times. He just didn't act on it, which was pretty much the same thing.
Sylar stood there quietly, looking off at the corner of the room, just sharing space with Peter. It was something he'd learned to do fairly recently. And it was nice. He supposed it was something friends did, but he wasn't sure, having never had one, other than maybe Luke. Nathan's memories on it were fuzzy and tainted by class and rank. All the friendships he'd seen on TV were always choked with dialogue and action. Television didn't value contemplative moments like this, where two people could relax with each other.
Sylar had always been defensive around Virginia. She was jittery, a different idea bound to strike her at any given moment, and when her sweet Gabriel was around, too many of those ideas involved him. Martin's company was decidedly worse, as Gabriel's very presence annoyed him. The longer the older man had to put up with Gabriel being in his sight, doing something other than following Martin's immediate orders, the more dangerous it became. Sylar hadn't realized how much he craved simple companionship. Peter, so rich with all things, probably didn't even realize the gift he gave as he finished up with the piano.
Or, rather, he should have been finishing up. Instead, Peter was doing nothing at all, which caused Sylar to turn his eyes back towards the Italian, without making any other change. Peter was staring forward, at where Sylar's fingertips were idly rubbing at the top edge of the piano, tracing and retracing one of many scratches in the battered finish - this one deeper than most. Since he had Peter's attention, Sylar kept doing it, making the gestures a little bigger, caressing the slick wood. What's he looking at? His eyes are focused. He's not staring off into space. He's watching me touch … Touch. We were just talking about sex. Is he thinking about me touching him?
Softly, in a deep, but indifferent voice, Sylar asked, "How long has it been for you?"
Peter snapped out of it, starting guiltily (which Sylar adored, but he kept the smirk off his face for the moment - he was stalking his prey now and needed the concerned expression he was wearing). Peter blinked at Sylar a few times, then sighed and sniffed, hitting a few keys at random on the piano. "Been years." He hit a few more keys, wondering about the wisdom of telling Sylar this. "A couple years. Two."
Sylar waited, but that was all the elaboration Peter seemed willing to give. If he assumed that Peter had time traveled here, or otherwise pulled a Rip Van Winkle, then what Peter was saying was that he hadn't been laid for two years back from roughly Nathan's death. Sylar's brows pulled together. "What about that Ellen woman?"
"Emma!" Peter bit out.
Sylar knew her name. He just didn't call her by it, quite intentionally. He resented that Peter was so fixated on saving her that he'd put aside the natural enmity he owed his brother's murderer and thought Sylar would just obediently play Peter's little game. It was insulting, and so Sylar routinely insulted her memory. Peter was being huffy, which meant he was done talking unless prompted. Sylar canted his body towards Peter, leaning on the piano and working at being inoffensive. He let his face relax and his expression open. "So you and … Emma … never …?"
Peter scowled at him. "No."
"Really?" Oh my. That's interesting.
"It wasn't like that." Peter started over with the first notes, checking one after another and listening. "Yet," he added about halfway through. He'd liked Emma. It's just that so many other complicated things were going on at the time. It seemed wrong to try for anything more than friendship.
Sylar's brows climbed a little. "So how is the hero act for getting people in bed?"
Peter glowered briefly at him, but answered fast, snapping, "I have no idea. I've only been with … two since I got my abilities."
"Ah, too busy saving the world?" Sylar asked sarcastically. And yet you still found time to bed two different people. I got three. Sort of. So there.
"Guess so," Peter answered blandly, not rising to the bait. He finished with the instrument and shut the top, packing away his tools.
"You don't have to save the world anymore, Peter," Sylar said, and for that brief moment, he wasn't acting. He was making an offer and he could tell Peter understood it. At least in a way. He could tell from the way Peter glanced at him and then back down at the shoebox he'd used for the tools he'd brought.
"No, I do but … yeah." Peter frowned and grimaced. "Come on. Let's go get some nachos. How's that sound?"
Sylar straightened, gracefully accepting Peter turning him down. It hadn't been complete, he noticed. There was that 'yeah' in there, and then the refusal was followed up with an offer to spend more time together. He was wearing Peter down, he knew. It was just a matter of time and time was very much on the watchmaker's side.