More Between Us, Chapter 32/? "Complete Physical"
Chapter 32/? "Complete Physical"
Day 10, Evening
“Anything?” Sylar stopped to ask, swallowing as he realized it put him closer to Peter, his headache was unappreciative and he was basically fondling Peter’s back…for a good cause.
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Sylar started … rubbing him. And all the frightened, angry, emotionally-knotted tension started to bleed away, leaving Peter feeling woozy. His death grip on Sylar’s shoulder slackened and he leaned his weight forward more with a subtle and entirely unintentional shift of his back towards the motion. His brain started working again, coinciding with the point where Sylar probed at the erector muscles on the side of his spine. That feels way, way better than it should. For a few quiet seconds, he let it go on; feeling the pleasurable surcease of pain and the evaporation of whatever upset had been drowning him. Filling that vacuum was the wonderful feeling of a set of warm, massaging fingers working on muscles that were sore just from general participation in yesterday’s fray. Then, No.
Abruptly, Peter’s hand left Sylar’s shoulder and gripped Sylar’s forearm, gentle but firm. “No. No. That doesn’t hurt, but you’re gonna stop.” He was very certain of that and his voice carried that certainty. He would not let Sylar make him feel better. Not that much. Not like that. He pulled Sylar’s hand from him and pushed him back slowly. “Gimme some space here.”
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Sylar inhaled at being grabbed, not as hard as he expected (not really hard at all); his hand twitched once, then lay flat and still on the man’s back. He leaned away and looked up at Peter, suddenly remembering that he might actually get socked for that. No? A mental giggle went up in his head. No what?
His brows lowered because concussed or not he was not happy to be told no. ‘You’re gonna stop’, oh, is that how you think it goes? You’re hardly in a position to stop me. It’s for your own damn good. “I’m not doing a-“ he started before Peter demanded space. Sylar’s jaw set as his hand was moved away, but the push was what really pissed him off. I wasn’t touching anything! It made him want to punch Peter in the kidney or smack his left hand away.
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Peter said, “You can’t feel the psoas major back there anyway. It’s overlaid by a different set of muscles.” Not that that didn’t feel good … really good … but no. No. Peter pulled in a deep breath and let it out. Right hand on the arm of the couch, he reached down with his left to retrieve his fallen pants. He gave Sylar a glance as he bent, trying to gauge the man’s reaction to Peter putting on the brakes.
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Sylar glared at him, rolling his well-gripped shoulder away. “Then you should have said so before,” Before I started feeling you up, not on purpose. His was voice snappish and quick, but he slumped down in the couch, making it clear it was of his own desire to. Damn idiot won’t take care of himself and won’t let me do it, what does he fucking expect? Sylar rubbed at his eye socket, trying to ease some of his headache or sinus pressure and ignore Peter long enough to cool down a bit. He wasn’t angry about being told to back off necessarily, the pushing was what got him going but even that, sadly, wasn’t completely negative. Peter was presenting a challenge, throwing down the gauntlet, daring him to fix him almost. He just had to wait.
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Peter watched as Sylar leaned back and then glanced down at his jeans, catching the highest point of the garment. He felt a wash of vertigo and had the humorous mental vision of falling head first into Sylar’s arms. That would be difficult to explain. He stood slowly so as to make sure that did not become a reality. “I wasn’t sure it was the … still not sure,” he finished lamely. But there’s nothing on my back there that’s causing me to limp around. Stand funny, yes, but not … He had the mental equivalent of a sigh as he fastened his jeans. That felt really good, though. Peter grumbled at himself, complete with faintly audible noises.
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What were you doing? I don’t even know. That was really stupid of you, practically massaging him like that. I…wasn’t paying attention, just trying to help. I can touch people and be helpful just like he can. Now we’re both upset because he didn’t speak up. How was I to know that? I said as much and asked twice. He was ignoring how Peter felt, desperately trying to ignore the sensation of that much skin under his hands and how Peter’s hand felt grasping his arm like that. It was still tingling hard through him. Enacting the no-touch rule early, I see. “You need a complete physical, Peter,” he dropped his hand to look at his companion steadily, his anger on the back burner. “Same as me.”
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Peter moved over to the other end of the couch. Roughly the other end - actually it was most of a third of the way from the end, which featured Sylar’s pillow if Peter needed to give some excuse why he didn’t sit as far away as he could from Sylar. Not that he would - sit as far away at the moment, or give an excuse. He was more likely to say the exam wasn’t necessarily over (though it might be - Sylar had said eye and hip; these had been checked, at least partially on the hip); though yeah, Peter knew the real reason was that Sylar’s touch had felt really good and he wasn’t inclined to move too far away from that at the moment. That such positioning was pointless if Peter wasn’t going to take Sylar up on it had nothing to do with it; it was like looking at a picture of a loved one you couldn’t embrace. The idea of comfort was comforting by itself.
Peter looked over at Sylar’s words, then copied the other man’s body language for the most part - slumping back against the couch and reaching up to rub lightly at his left eye. Peter dropped his hand with the same put-out exasperation he was reading from Sylar. Now this - Peter was doing this intentionally, just because it amused him. Sylar was being melodramatic in Peter's opinion, plus Peter was kind of subconsciously high on having asserted a boundary with Sylar and having that taken well. Or well enough. It occurred to him that Sylar might not appreciate his humor, or might find it mocking. I should stop. What was he saying - I need a physical, huh?
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Sylar’s eyes turned into slits. He’d better not be doing what I think he’s doing; little shit. Concussed or not, I will smack your ass, Petrelli. At least Peter wasn’t copying him verbally. He waited to see it the annoying-as-hell behavior continued. It didn’t.
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“Okay. I agree.” Not sure I want to let you do one. Don’t want you touching me. I should probably tell him that. His mouth opened to say something, but he couldn’t think of how to phrase it. Instead, he frowned and lifted his right knee, bringing it vertical without too much trouble with his torso, leaned back as it was. The thigh hurt from where he’d been kicked, but it didn’t keep him from flexing it. He let it drop slowly and repeated with his left. Or at least tried to repeat, grimacing and giving a slow grunt as it hurt the higher he moved it. He got it up to about forty-five degrees before giving it up. Yep, that muscle - hip flexor, adductor, psoas, ilia-something - one of those. Probably the psoas major. I think that’s the big one. Sighing, he volunteered, “I tried to do stairs last night, when I went out. I was still pretty messed up. Got down one flight before I had to find the elevator. Couldn’t get up ‘em at all. I suppose I could if I had to, but a one-legged man can get up stairs, too, if he’s determined about it.”
He looked over at Sylar. “What’s this ‘complete physical’ involve?”
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Sylar gave a grunted hum of approval. Last night? When were you climbing stairs…What was last night? He watched Peter stretch and flex around, cheerful and childlike. And not paying attention. One-legged- ah, who the fuck cares. His gaze came up to meet the others. That’s a good question, Sylar. Hoo boy…I’m out of my league. Helping people? Not my thing, Petrelli, you may have noticed. “Checking out your injuries,” Sylar said bluntly, keeping constant eye contact, “Same as you did for me.” It’s only fair. You wan walk me through it…you’ll probably have to. “Visually at the very least.” A concession. I have to fucking police your own self-care? I don’t think you’ll do it if I don’t. I dunno, man, I’m not all here right now.
“Your concussion? What did you do earlier for me…check your back for glass - you landed then got slammed,” he tried not to smirk at his unintentional wording. “Um…your knee was scraped up, your elbows might be, too. Your bandage is coming off your hand,” Sylar pointed at it. Think, try to think. I hate this feeling like he’s…watching me, waiting for a mistake but he won’t take over, no, he wants to watch me fail. Have to impress him with this shit that he knows I don’t know.
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Peter frowned at the bandage on his left hand. It did look kind of messed up. He wiggled his fingers together and realized it was wet as well. How the hell did that get wet? Dammit. I’ll look at that later. Fine. He has a point. Peter sighed. And I might as well see what I can teach him to do. This isn’t going to be our last fight, that’s for sure. Would he take care of me if our positions were swapped? Well … if he doesn’t know how, then he can’t. But if I showed him how … he might.
Peter sat up to a more proper posture, reaching up to rub at his jaw again. “Okay. Let’s see. First thing any emergency responder should do is assess the ABCs. I went over those before - Airway, Breathing, Circulation.” Well, assuming the scene is safe and everything. I think I’ll skip that and focus on the exam he wants to do. “If your patient is breathing, looks able to continue breathing, and has some blood circulation going, then you do a head-to-toe exam. What I did with you earlier was backwards, toe-to-head, but I was at your feet already and it doesn’t matter too much as long as you’re thorough. The reason to start with the head on someone when you don’t know their condition is because that’s …” He looked at Sylar, then glanced at his forehead briefly, thinking about the man’s interest in people’s brains. “That’s the most important part.” As you obviously know. He looked back at Sylar’s eyes. Peter’s expression was serious and at least at this point, nonjudgmental.
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Interesting. Sylar hadn’t asked for assistance, or a rundown or even a ‘WWPD?’ but he was getting one, slowly but surely. My patient? Sylar’s lips quirked a noticeably. That would be you, Peter. You wanna play doctor? If you can’t breathe, do CPR? He wanted to get the ball rolling as Peter was throwing a lot of (as he saw it) useless information at him. Not that I’d remember a whole lot of it anyway, the way things are going. Sylar gave him a very pointed stare, just waiting for Peter to say something, but he didn’t. The brain doctor, I see. His face was getting a real workout today, glaring and narrowing his eyes and frowning.
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Peter gestured at his own body parts as he described the route of the exam. “You start with the head. You go systematically down the torso, then the legs, then the arms. Whole body, even the parts you don’t expect to have injuries. Even if the patient says they don’t have injuries there. Even if they look at you like you’re an idiot for checking. Check the whole patient, every time.” He was pretty sure he was repeating nearly verbatim something his teachers had told him. Sylar’s description earlier of what he wanted to check was all over Peter’s body, haphazardly. An exam was a lot more effective if it had a pattern and stuck to it.
“All over, you’re going to be looking for deecap-ballistics. Um … well, D-C-A-P-B-L-S-T-I-C.” He hesitated. It was a long acronym, branded into his brain by repetition, but even as a paramedic, he couldn’t recall what all the letters stood for. “Erm, never mind. You’re looking for abnormalities, injuries, wounds, that sort of thing. You’re also looking for blood, fluid and foreign objects. So for the head - go over the skull, feel of it, check for soft spots and firmness. Then look at the face. Check for facial stability, look at eyes and pupil reaction. Talk to your patient. Assess orientation and alertness.”
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Sylar was pretty sure he looked lost now. I need to take notes. Can I even write like this, now? Peter moved on and he was relieved, focusing on drinking in what Peter said about head injuries because they’d probably get popular around here.
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He waited a few moments, thinking over what he’d said, what Sylar had said earlier, Sylar’s expression thus far, and what Peter was trying to achieve here. I need to do this in sections. His retention is going to suck. Break it up with physical activity and hands-on. That’s what they always did in the classes I liked. “Okay,” Peter said, perking up since he had a plan. “Head-to-toe, start with the head. Look for blood and any other damage. You said earlier you wanted to check my concussion.” Peter turned his torso towards Sylar and dipped his head, more or less presenting it for examination. He was pretty sure he could handle touch that was straight-forward and not quite so … friendly. “Go ahead and check.”
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I thought that I wanted to check your hair…Head! Check your head! Yes. Sylar blinked at being presented such a rare and important opportunity. Sylar scooted closer, not that he needed to move much, but he wanted to see what he was doing. His hands lifted and began to reach out, pausing halfway. A faraway thought floated by that this might be a trick question or a fluke, a joke maybe. Peter couldn’t hurt him with his head unless he tried to head-butt him again, maybe bite his hands - being wary when Peter was putting his head literally in his hands was useless. And oh-so ironic. He really hadn’t thought this out. How could Peter Petrelli be even vaguely comfortable letting Sylar feel up his head? He wrote it off for now as one of those things he needed to think on later.
To the task at hand: Where did he get hit exactly? Sylar’s fingers inched to Peter’s temples, stuck between caressing into the hair to avoid pain and using his fingertips as feelers. Wow. His hair is…nice. He swallowed and tried to stay focused as his fingers moved behind the ears towards the neck, feeling nothing abnormal. Just…silky, live, human hair. This was tripping him in so many ways - Peter’s smell and shampoo this close, body heat and a pulse; all this after Peter had grabbed his hips, shoulder and arm. The nurse, usually so touchy with everyone but his enemies, sure didn’t seem to notice those things. Sylar didn’t care; it was delicious and long overdue. His hands went to the top of Peter’s head and began to test there, this time going straight to the axis of the neck and spine, aiming for what he assumed was the impact site.
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Peter made a slight noise as Sylar’s fingers crossed a spot that was sore. The guy was probably touching too lightly to have felt it - a very shallow hematoma and the heat from an irritated section of scalp at the very back of Peter’s head. Peter reached up with his left hand and indicated the spot. “Here. I hit my head on the pavement here after you landed on me. I’d already hit the ground, for the most part, so I don’t think I hit very hard, but right there.” He pointed, digging through the hair with the casualness one used on one’s own body. “You can feel it’s a little hotter, a little puffy.” Maybe he could show Sylar what to look for and that would help ... somehow.
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“Oh. Yeah, okay,” Sylar agreed when he went back and felt the spot Peter showed him. Peter’s so funny. He knows its there, he knows where it is, but he’s still gonna let me find it? Maybe even overlook it?
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He was beginning to get the impression that Sylar was feeling him up. There was something about the gentle, careful way Sylar was moving his hands, running them through his hair and skimming over his scalp. It was nothing at all like the utilitarian pokes and prods Peter was accustomed to, and he was more or less accustomed to it. His nursing classes had included plenty of hands-on and his paramedic training, which he had to take classes yearly to stay certified, required even more. The cheapest and easiest ‘dummy’ patients were one’s classmates, so nearly every exam and procedure they tested and practiced on one another. The more invasive ones were simulated, but you still got to lay on the backboard and have a pair of EMTs move you around.
That was not the way Sylar was touching him now. Peter’s mind suddenly put together what he’d been so upset by just earlier, with the way Sylar had been feeling around his hip and back. Peter’s brain had been trying to tell him this was okay, it was normal, but his subconscious, his empathy, or something else, had known better. Stroking, sliding hands across his skin, caressing, rubbing gently - Sylar hadn’t been trying to find where it hurt. He’d been … doing something else. Gooseflesh pimpled across Peter’s forearms. He sniffed and shifted his feet nervously, trying to figure out what, if anything, he should do.
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“Nothing’s open so no bleeding. No bumps or soft spots,” Sylar repeated back, loath to withdraw his hands, but Peter’s head came up, looking expectant. Right. Sylar inspected first one eye, then the other, doing his best to gauge the hazel iris’s dilation. “Your eyes look even to me.” He put a finger on Peter’s jaw to turn his head to the side so Sylar could see the cut over his eyebrow but a bandage covered it so he assumed it was alright enough. See how much better this is now you’re cooperating, Peter? His thumbs went to the guy’s cheekbones, then his nose because he had no idea what he was supposed to be checking here, but they seemed likely spots that might’ve been damaged as contact points for his fists. Next the bridge of his nose and on to the forehead, his touch only deep enough to feel the bone and passing by.
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Sylar’s touches were a little more practical on Peter’s face, but then again, Peter was looking straight at him so maybe that put him on better behavior. He knows I’m not into him. He knows that. Right? This is just … just him taking the opportunity. Peter sniffed again and flexed his shoulders, feeling awfully stiff across them and a little warm-faced. He did not, as yet, resent Sylar’s … interest, or whatever this was. What would I do if I thought I’d been alone for three years and here’s some guy who …? First thing he did when I showed up was touch me. Peter’s expression relaxed from the tense, wooden look it had adopted since he’d lifted his head for the facial exam.
“Um,” Peter hemmed, raising his hands and looking at them. He was undecided about what to do: minimize contact altogether, or show Sylar how to check his face properly? He exhaled, blinked a few times, and decided to do the right thing. Sylar was not, in actuality, doing anything inappropriate. That his intentions might be wasn’t something Peter wanted to dwell on.
He spoke in a ‘teaching’ voice, plain and somewhat disinterested. “You need to be using more pressure when you touch. You’re not tr-, um, you shouldn’t be trying to make me feel good. You’re trying to find out if I’m injured. It sucks, but hurting your patient a little is required. You can’t always trust what someone self-reports about their condition, so you poke, you prod, and you watch for reactions.” He lifted his hands towards Sylar’s face, keeping them low so as to avoid the impression he might be going for the forehead. “I’ll demonstrate, okay?”
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While he knew this wasn’t what Peter was trying to say, his first thought was, You want me to hurt you? And a whole side order along those lines before Well, he did hurt me. He didn’t baby me. Sylar blinked when Peter made the same move on him. You want to…touch my face? Okay, His expression loosened and he moistened his lips, moving into easier reach, I won’t bite.
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Peter put his right hand behind Sylar’s head, touching it only a little. “Now stay put, there.” He used his right to keep Sylar from swaying backward from what he was going to do. With his left, he splayed his fingers with index on Sylar’s nose, middle on his cheekbone, ring finger and pinkie in front of the ear, with the thumb on the side of Sylar’s stubble-strewn chin. Peter pressed and moved his fingers back and forth once before pulling them away, as well as dropping his right hand back to his side.
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Sylar choked on a chuckle and ducked his head when Peter released him, that he had to hold him at all was amusing by itself, but this…His sense of humor was usually off-the-cuff, but now it was off the wall. I’m so out of it. “Yeah, okay.” Peter’s fingers had been calloused and warm, the pressure firm and almost uncomfortable, strange on his face.
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“Like that. I can’t really do it on the right side - my hand’s jacked. But you have to press enough to see if the plates move.” Peter glanced up at Sylar’s forehead, then down at his eyes. “You do the same thing with your fingers on the bridge of the nose to the temple, across each brow, with your thumb under the nostrils. Just enough of a push to make sure everything’s seated right.” That one he did not try to demonstrate, not wanting to push his luck.
The back of Peter’s mind pointed out traitorously, He really is good-looking. Even all bruised up and with his hair sticking out like that. He felt like his face was heating again.
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Continued...