The Deep End: One
Summary: Peter tries to work through some of his problems, then Claude gives him some more.
Characters: Peter, Claude
Word count: 2,280.
Spoilers: Up to 1.13, "The Fix"
Rating: PG for peril and stuff that I guess the movie people would call "dark themes".
A/N: Takes place somewhere between the end of 1.13 ("The Fix") and the end of 1.14 ("Distractions"). Ish. I may be taking very minor liberties with the timeline. Also, I have no clue where this is going except that I really don't think the next part is going to be rated PG. Totally un-Beta'd. Oh, and that's British spelling below the cut ;o) Last edited 6/05/07.
Disclaimer: None of these guys are mine and I'm not making any money here. I just like to play with them, though maybe I'm not in the mood to play nice right now.
Peter does laps in the pool. He's had enough late nights down there in the echoing, chlorine-soaked basement to guess that nobody will find him; residents of the Upper East Side normally do their swimming at 6am, before they hit the office.
Not for the first time, he reflects that he really has no idea what normal is, anymore.
He ploughs up and down relentlessly. Kick kick kick, pull. Kick kick kick, pull. Lit from underwater, the pool glows a brilliant aquamarine, projecting demented patterns of light onto the low ceiling as he disturbs the surface. Kick kick kick, pull.
Swimming is less tiring than thinking. Unfortunately, he seems to be doing both.
It goes around and around in his head. Save the cheerleader, save the world. He has saved the cheerleader. At least, he thinks so. Maybe. But how is that going to help him save the world? How can he save the world from himself? All five foot nine of Peter Petrelli, in downtown New York, goes critical in seconds. He feels the burning in his hands, and it rips him apart from inside as the explosion engulfs first him and then the city. Save the cheerleader, save the world. Save me. Around and around in his head it goes. Kick kick kick, pull. Kick kick kick, pull.
He's probably racked up over a hundred lengths - it's not really that big a pool - by the time he starts to tire; but he wants to push himself, damn it. He wants to sleep like he used to sleep, crashing out from sheer exhaustion. Nathan told him once that when Peter was a kid he used to run around talking non-stop until he pretty much fell asleep in mid-sentence. One of those cutesy stories that's kinda funny until Nathan is telling it to one of the girls Peter occasionally brings home, at which point he wishes that Nathan would just shut the hell up.
He'd actually prefer not to think about Nathan right now. Nathan, who really doesn't need to know that his baby brother has been thinking about jumping off another building.
Up on the roof, first thing that morning. Claude is tending to the pigeons. Peter walks to the edge and looks down. Thirty storeys. It would be easy, and there's no way Claude would be able to stop him in time. He's seen enough traumatic head injury cases to know that it will be quick enough.
And then the nightmares will stop.
He knows it's ironic that he should be up here, sounding an ugly echo of his first, tentative attempts to fall from a height and not die. But he's so tired of the nightmares, and of waking to a fear that will not go away.
There are easier ways, for a nurse. Morphine. Sleeping pills and a nice snug plastic bag. But still he's drawn to the edge of the roof. Maybe I'll fly.
But then he sees Claude, out of the corner of his eye, grab one of his sticks, and somehow the moment passes.
Instead of kicking off for another turn, he stops. Rests his forehead against the cool tiles that form the side of the pool. His breathing, which has been coming pretty hard these last few laps, starts to slow. The rise and fall of his shoulders, decorated with tiny sequins of poolwater, becomes less frequent.
But he's still thinking hard. Kick kick kick, pull. His mind never stops swimming laps, these days.
The exercise has made his skin hot, and he allows himself to sink below the surface, exhaling a string of silvery bubbles - sugared almonds - until his knees bump gently against the bottom of the pool. The water is pleasantly cool against his face. The light down here seems gentler, and even a small movement of his head makes his dark hair sway, sort of seaweed-like. It's oddly peaceful, as though he has shaken off the thoughts that hunt him by running through water, like a fox.
Too soon, his lungs are pinching; he kicks off the pool floor and breaks the surface, sucking in the warm, chlorine-rich air as he pushes the hair out of his face. And with the air, his thoughts come back, too, as he knew they would. Maybe I gotta meet someone who can breathe underwater.
He's too tired to go back to doing laps. Instead, he floats on his back, giving the occasional languid kick until he's drifted the whole length of the pool. Passing beneath the stainless steel light-fittings, he sees bits of himself, pale olive-white skin against a brilliant turquoise background, his body distorted by the round casings like a fairground mirror. He waves to his bloated reflection with one arm until he has drifted past and can no longer even see his toes. But he's still thinking about the cheerleader and wondering how not to blow up downtown. He absently pushes off from the end and drifts again.
Claude is supposed to be teaching him control, but they haven't got very far yet. He rubs his ribcage, remembering a particularly nasty encounter with one of Claude's sticks that afternoon. Well, he guesses they must be getting somewhere, or he'd be in the Emergency Room right now. But it's going to take more than being a human first-aid kit to stop him from going boom.
Claude seems to find it funny that he is - was? what is he now? - a nurse, though that afternoon, on the roof, after the seventh variation on "physician, heal thyself", Peter had managed to take Claude's feet out from under him, which had shut him up for a little while, at least. As if anyone could actually shut Claude up.
He doesn't notice until he's almost past the second light-fitting that he has no reflection, and it's enough to stop his heart in his throat for a moment, hands splashing suddenly as he tries to propel himself back in the other direction. He half swallows some water and spends a few seconds not-really-choking, treading water under the light, almost afraid to look again. But he does look, and is rewarded with lapping reflections of water and light that do not feature Peter Petrelli at all.
I can do it. I can do it! Hope swells in his chest.
If he can control this, then maybe - maybe the nightmares won't come true.
He is caught completely off guard by an enormous splash right behind him that leaves his heart thumping, hard. Claude.
Which means that his little reflection trick had nothing to do with control after all.
Claude's head breaks the surface. "Evenin'", he says, cheerfully. He catches sight of Peter's expression. "What's the matter - did your hamster die?"
Claude is fully clothed, which strikes Peter as weird; but then, when he thinks about it, a fully-clothed invisible man in a swimming pool is really no more weird than an invisible man in a speedo in a swimming pool. He shrugs, still treading water.
" 'S good practice, this," Claude says, splashing a bit, but treading water too. "Much harder for you to run away while I thrash you."
Not if I can work out how to fly again, Peter thinks. But Nathan is far away - not just at home, across town, but in Vegas or somewhere. If he's going to fly at all, it's going to have to come from him.
He eyes Claude, warily. Or, rather, the spot where Claude was a moment ago. He barely has time to draw breath as strong hands grab his legs and yank him down under the surface in a hail of bubbles.
Being punched underwater is weird. It's slower, but it still hurts, and it feels every bit as slow when he tries to dodge. Like fighting through treacle or something. He manages to kick Claude in the jaw and uses his other foot to push away off Claude's chest. He surfaces, gasping for air. Only to be grabbed by the shoulders and dragged under again.
At least he's had time to take a breath. Shoals of bubbles swim past him to the surface as he struggles to free himself from the headlock. He catches a glimpse of Claude's ribcage and underarm, exposed. Plants a pointed thumb, sharply, and is rewarded with an abrupt underwater gargle and a brief lessening of the pressure around his neck. It's all he needs: he seizes the moment, smashing the offending arm back against the tiled wall of the pool and striking out for the surface. Air is good, and he breathes it in greedily.
Claude surfaces, next to him. "Better, but I was hoping you'd pull out one of your little tricks."
Peter starts to say "I can't," but Claude is dragging him below again.
"Come on, poodle. Is that all you've got? Good job you're not trying to avoid blowing up Atlantis, innit, if this is what fighting underwater does to you."
Actually, he only hears half of that, because Claude keeps pushing his head underwater.
It doesn't really get any easier after that, either. After a while he starts to feel kind of dizzy and lightheaded. He tries to bat Claude away, but Claude whoops and drags him under again.
His vision starts to cloud and he is no longer sure whether or not he is even underwater. He hears fragments "- bloody poodle -" "- making it easy for you-" but they don't make much sense to him. His head seems to be caught inside a washing-machine. He thrashes, feebly, but the tumult continues around him, gradually fading in intensity. After a while, it's not actually unpleasant at all.
The next thing he's aware of is the feeling of cool wet tiles under him. His body feels oddly heavy, like someone's turned up the gravity. Way to go with the first grade comic-book imagery, Pete.
He opens his eyes. Claude is perched insouciantly on one of the white plastic recliners. "There you are, mate. What kept you?"
Peter starts to speak, but there's a sudden rush of something up his airway and he's coughing up half the pool, it feels like. Claude sits and watches impassively as he heaves up the last of it, elbows digging into the hard floor as the muscles in his abdomen cramp and contract.
The water out of his system, he starts to feel somewhat better; a little less leaden. Angry, maybe.
"You nearly drowned me, you bastard." He's still feeling kind of lightheaded and it's actually almost funny, but he's not about to give Claude the satisfaction. Twenty-six years of being Nathan's little brother has seen to that.
"Pffft." Claude is unimpressed. "You're useless, Trust Fund. It'd be a kindness to humanity if I tied you in a sack and left you at the bottom."
Peter stands, unsteadily. Tries to square his shoulders to ward off the feeling of vulnerability that comes from being half drowned and almost naked in front of a near-stranger.
Claude continues to berate him. "You gave up. You can't - ever - give up. One lapse of concentration and it's sayonara, New York. Is that what you want?"
"No, but-"
- Never going to make it -
The thought, delivered in Claude's irritated mutter, slices clean through him, leaving him cold. Where did that come from? And - Oh god, I'm-
Going to explode, and it can't happen, it can't. Oh god.
This whole time, he's been assuming that Claude believes in him, believes he can get a handle on his abilities. That pretty soon he'll be able to fly and hear thoughts just as easily as he can heal, now. That the beatings and the haranguing are just Claude's way, a bit of tough love to harden him up before it all goes off.
It scares him, the idea that Claude's really been holding back. That Peter is not, in fact, anywhere close to being ready. It's actually more frightening than the view of the sidewalk from 30 storeys up.
He gulps, straightens. "Let's go again. I'm gonna learn how to do this."
"Oh, for crying out loud." Claude rolls his eyes. "You've had enough for one night. Go home and sleep in that big posh bed of yours."
Peter can do what his old drama teacher called "inhabiting the space" well enough when he wants to. He doesn't usually bother - it's not exactly a nursing skill - unless he's out late somewhere by himself or in a neighbourhood he doesn't know. It's all about the set of your shoulders and how you hold your jaw. He's seen Nathan do something like it during press conferences, seen it work, seen the other guy back down.
But then, the other guy wasn't Claude. Claude who's been kicking his ass for two days - though it might just have been two years.
Heart in his mouth, he steps up, anyway. He has to try. He can't think of an alternative. "I said, I'm gonna learn how to do this. Let's go again." Straining to keep the tiredness from his voice.
Claude isn't smirking anymore. "And I said, I think you've had enough. Or don't you need to listen to me anymore? Too good for me, Peter Petrelli?" Claude, who doesn't normally make a lot of eye-contact, is staring him down, and Peter notices how pale blue his eyes are - like the pool, only much colder.
"You don't know what you're asking, what you have to go through. You might want to reconsider dying. Hell of a lot easier."
Peter swallows. "Let's find out."
[A/N: Did I mention that I don't know where this is going?]
[Update: well, I know now. Part Two.]
x-posted to
heroes_peter,
heroes_claude,
heroes_fic,
peterandclaude
Characters: Peter, Claude
Word count: 2,280.
Spoilers: Up to 1.13, "The Fix"
Rating: PG for peril and stuff that I guess the movie people would call "dark themes".
A/N: Takes place somewhere between the end of 1.13 ("The Fix") and the end of 1.14 ("Distractions"). Ish. I may be taking very minor liberties with the timeline. Also, I have no clue where this is going except that I really don't think the next part is going to be rated PG. Totally un-Beta'd. Oh, and that's British spelling below the cut ;o) Last edited 6/05/07.
Disclaimer: None of these guys are mine and I'm not making any money here. I just like to play with them, though maybe I'm not in the mood to play nice right now.
Peter does laps in the pool. He's had enough late nights down there in the echoing, chlorine-soaked basement to guess that nobody will find him; residents of the Upper East Side normally do their swimming at 6am, before they hit the office.
Not for the first time, he reflects that he really has no idea what normal is, anymore.
He ploughs up and down relentlessly. Kick kick kick, pull. Kick kick kick, pull. Lit from underwater, the pool glows a brilliant aquamarine, projecting demented patterns of light onto the low ceiling as he disturbs the surface. Kick kick kick, pull.
Swimming is less tiring than thinking. Unfortunately, he seems to be doing both.
It goes around and around in his head. Save the cheerleader, save the world. He has saved the cheerleader. At least, he thinks so. Maybe. But how is that going to help him save the world? How can he save the world from himself? All five foot nine of Peter Petrelli, in downtown New York, goes critical in seconds. He feels the burning in his hands, and it rips him apart from inside as the explosion engulfs first him and then the city. Save the cheerleader, save the world. Save me. Around and around in his head it goes. Kick kick kick, pull. Kick kick kick, pull.
He's probably racked up over a hundred lengths - it's not really that big a pool - by the time he starts to tire; but he wants to push himself, damn it. He wants to sleep like he used to sleep, crashing out from sheer exhaustion. Nathan told him once that when Peter was a kid he used to run around talking non-stop until he pretty much fell asleep in mid-sentence. One of those cutesy stories that's kinda funny until Nathan is telling it to one of the girls Peter occasionally brings home, at which point he wishes that Nathan would just shut the hell up.
He'd actually prefer not to think about Nathan right now. Nathan, who really doesn't need to know that his baby brother has been thinking about jumping off another building.
Up on the roof, first thing that morning. Claude is tending to the pigeons. Peter walks to the edge and looks down. Thirty storeys. It would be easy, and there's no way Claude would be able to stop him in time. He's seen enough traumatic head injury cases to know that it will be quick enough.
And then the nightmares will stop.
He knows it's ironic that he should be up here, sounding an ugly echo of his first, tentative attempts to fall from a height and not die. But he's so tired of the nightmares, and of waking to a fear that will not go away.
There are easier ways, for a nurse. Morphine. Sleeping pills and a nice snug plastic bag. But still he's drawn to the edge of the roof. Maybe I'll fly.
But then he sees Claude, out of the corner of his eye, grab one of his sticks, and somehow the moment passes.
Instead of kicking off for another turn, he stops. Rests his forehead against the cool tiles that form the side of the pool. His breathing, which has been coming pretty hard these last few laps, starts to slow. The rise and fall of his shoulders, decorated with tiny sequins of poolwater, becomes less frequent.
But he's still thinking hard. Kick kick kick, pull. His mind never stops swimming laps, these days.
The exercise has made his skin hot, and he allows himself to sink below the surface, exhaling a string of silvery bubbles - sugared almonds - until his knees bump gently against the bottom of the pool. The water is pleasantly cool against his face. The light down here seems gentler, and even a small movement of his head makes his dark hair sway, sort of seaweed-like. It's oddly peaceful, as though he has shaken off the thoughts that hunt him by running through water, like a fox.
Too soon, his lungs are pinching; he kicks off the pool floor and breaks the surface, sucking in the warm, chlorine-rich air as he pushes the hair out of his face. And with the air, his thoughts come back, too, as he knew they would. Maybe I gotta meet someone who can breathe underwater.
He's too tired to go back to doing laps. Instead, he floats on his back, giving the occasional languid kick until he's drifted the whole length of the pool. Passing beneath the stainless steel light-fittings, he sees bits of himself, pale olive-white skin against a brilliant turquoise background, his body distorted by the round casings like a fairground mirror. He waves to his bloated reflection with one arm until he has drifted past and can no longer even see his toes. But he's still thinking about the cheerleader and wondering how not to blow up downtown. He absently pushes off from the end and drifts again.
Claude is supposed to be teaching him control, but they haven't got very far yet. He rubs his ribcage, remembering a particularly nasty encounter with one of Claude's sticks that afternoon. Well, he guesses they must be getting somewhere, or he'd be in the Emergency Room right now. But it's going to take more than being a human first-aid kit to stop him from going boom.
Claude seems to find it funny that he is - was? what is he now? - a nurse, though that afternoon, on the roof, after the seventh variation on "physician, heal thyself", Peter had managed to take Claude's feet out from under him, which had shut him up for a little while, at least. As if anyone could actually shut Claude up.
He doesn't notice until he's almost past the second light-fitting that he has no reflection, and it's enough to stop his heart in his throat for a moment, hands splashing suddenly as he tries to propel himself back in the other direction. He half swallows some water and spends a few seconds not-really-choking, treading water under the light, almost afraid to look again. But he does look, and is rewarded with lapping reflections of water and light that do not feature Peter Petrelli at all.
I can do it. I can do it! Hope swells in his chest.
If he can control this, then maybe - maybe the nightmares won't come true.
He is caught completely off guard by an enormous splash right behind him that leaves his heart thumping, hard. Claude.
Which means that his little reflection trick had nothing to do with control after all.
Claude's head breaks the surface. "Evenin'", he says, cheerfully. He catches sight of Peter's expression. "What's the matter - did your hamster die?"
Claude is fully clothed, which strikes Peter as weird; but then, when he thinks about it, a fully-clothed invisible man in a swimming pool is really no more weird than an invisible man in a speedo in a swimming pool. He shrugs, still treading water.
" 'S good practice, this," Claude says, splashing a bit, but treading water too. "Much harder for you to run away while I thrash you."
Not if I can work out how to fly again, Peter thinks. But Nathan is far away - not just at home, across town, but in Vegas or somewhere. If he's going to fly at all, it's going to have to come from him.
He eyes Claude, warily. Or, rather, the spot where Claude was a moment ago. He barely has time to draw breath as strong hands grab his legs and yank him down under the surface in a hail of bubbles.
Being punched underwater is weird. It's slower, but it still hurts, and it feels every bit as slow when he tries to dodge. Like fighting through treacle or something. He manages to kick Claude in the jaw and uses his other foot to push away off Claude's chest. He surfaces, gasping for air. Only to be grabbed by the shoulders and dragged under again.
At least he's had time to take a breath. Shoals of bubbles swim past him to the surface as he struggles to free himself from the headlock. He catches a glimpse of Claude's ribcage and underarm, exposed. Plants a pointed thumb, sharply, and is rewarded with an abrupt underwater gargle and a brief lessening of the pressure around his neck. It's all he needs: he seizes the moment, smashing the offending arm back against the tiled wall of the pool and striking out for the surface. Air is good, and he breathes it in greedily.
Claude surfaces, next to him. "Better, but I was hoping you'd pull out one of your little tricks."
Peter starts to say "I can't," but Claude is dragging him below again.
"Come on, poodle. Is that all you've got? Good job you're not trying to avoid blowing up Atlantis, innit, if this is what fighting underwater does to you."
Actually, he only hears half of that, because Claude keeps pushing his head underwater.
It doesn't really get any easier after that, either. After a while he starts to feel kind of dizzy and lightheaded. He tries to bat Claude away, but Claude whoops and drags him under again.
His vision starts to cloud and he is no longer sure whether or not he is even underwater. He hears fragments "- bloody poodle -" "- making it easy for you-" but they don't make much sense to him. His head seems to be caught inside a washing-machine. He thrashes, feebly, but the tumult continues around him, gradually fading in intensity. After a while, it's not actually unpleasant at all.
The next thing he's aware of is the feeling of cool wet tiles under him. His body feels oddly heavy, like someone's turned up the gravity. Way to go with the first grade comic-book imagery, Pete.
He opens his eyes. Claude is perched insouciantly on one of the white plastic recliners. "There you are, mate. What kept you?"
Peter starts to speak, but there's a sudden rush of something up his airway and he's coughing up half the pool, it feels like. Claude sits and watches impassively as he heaves up the last of it, elbows digging into the hard floor as the muscles in his abdomen cramp and contract.
The water out of his system, he starts to feel somewhat better; a little less leaden. Angry, maybe.
"You nearly drowned me, you bastard." He's still feeling kind of lightheaded and it's actually almost funny, but he's not about to give Claude the satisfaction. Twenty-six years of being Nathan's little brother has seen to that.
"Pffft." Claude is unimpressed. "You're useless, Trust Fund. It'd be a kindness to humanity if I tied you in a sack and left you at the bottom."
Peter stands, unsteadily. Tries to square his shoulders to ward off the feeling of vulnerability that comes from being half drowned and almost naked in front of a near-stranger.
Claude continues to berate him. "You gave up. You can't - ever - give up. One lapse of concentration and it's sayonara, New York. Is that what you want?"
"No, but-"
- Never going to make it -
The thought, delivered in Claude's irritated mutter, slices clean through him, leaving him cold. Where did that come from? And - Oh god, I'm-
Going to explode, and it can't happen, it can't. Oh god.
This whole time, he's been assuming that Claude believes in him, believes he can get a handle on his abilities. That pretty soon he'll be able to fly and hear thoughts just as easily as he can heal, now. That the beatings and the haranguing are just Claude's way, a bit of tough love to harden him up before it all goes off.
It scares him, the idea that Claude's really been holding back. That Peter is not, in fact, anywhere close to being ready. It's actually more frightening than the view of the sidewalk from 30 storeys up.
He gulps, straightens. "Let's go again. I'm gonna learn how to do this."
"Oh, for crying out loud." Claude rolls his eyes. "You've had enough for one night. Go home and sleep in that big posh bed of yours."
Peter can do what his old drama teacher called "inhabiting the space" well enough when he wants to. He doesn't usually bother - it's not exactly a nursing skill - unless he's out late somewhere by himself or in a neighbourhood he doesn't know. It's all about the set of your shoulders and how you hold your jaw. He's seen Nathan do something like it during press conferences, seen it work, seen the other guy back down.
But then, the other guy wasn't Claude. Claude who's been kicking his ass for two days - though it might just have been two years.
Heart in his mouth, he steps up, anyway. He has to try. He can't think of an alternative. "I said, I'm gonna learn how to do this. Let's go again." Straining to keep the tiredness from his voice.
Claude isn't smirking anymore. "And I said, I think you've had enough. Or don't you need to listen to me anymore? Too good for me, Peter Petrelli?" Claude, who doesn't normally make a lot of eye-contact, is staring him down, and Peter notices how pale blue his eyes are - like the pool, only much colder.
"You don't know what you're asking, what you have to go through. You might want to reconsider dying. Hell of a lot easier."
Peter swallows. "Let's find out."
[A/N: Did I mention that I don't know where this is going?]
[Update: well, I know now. Part Two.]
x-posted to
heroes_peter,
heroes_claude,
heroes_fic,
peterandclaude