I’d like to clarify a few things.
Firstly, there was talk that went on behind the scenes, and it’s all amicable. I’m not just being an asshole and walking out. I haven’t affected anyone but Claire, as she was the only one that RPed with me, so I hope you guys are all okay.
I’d love to RP with you elsewhere, but as I’ve said, I don’t think that I can be the Peter this group needs. Maybe someday I’ll reach that level of maturity, maybe not. Who knows.
Y’all have an awesome day - I’m really sorry if I’ve hurt anyone’s feelings. I assure you it was not intentional.
-B.
Okay, this is really hard to do, but after looking at everything, I think I’m going to leave.
I love Peter, don’t get me wrong, I do. And I am in love with Claire, and I really like all of you, but I don’t like Peter’s new characterization and I’m uncomfortable playing it.
I think this is for the best.
It’s been a good ride, and I’ve loved every second, but this is me out.
All my love to you guys.
-Bones.
She feels him shifting closer on the couch, not just because of the movement of the upholstery, but because she’s sensitive to him, sensitive to every part of him. His breadth is so close, it’s a hovering question that dangles in the air, but her arms are heavy, she can’t seem to find the strength to reach up and grab it, nonetheless fathom it, seek it’s possibilities, fucking find it. Find him.
His hand reaches out, and her breath catches, what is he doing? Thats not in the script. Thats off-book, she doesn’t know her next line, his hand wafts away the blonde tendril his eyes seeking to find hers, seeking to see her not just look at her. And she can’t do anything but tear her gaze away. What is her next movement? She’s unprepared.
Why didn’t you just follow the rules? She wants to scream. And then it seems as if the water reaches the boiling point, the tension to too palpable, too hard, it’s crushing her lungs and she can’t breath, she can’t move, she’s intoxicated, paralyzed by Peter.
Peter.
She moves in, her movements not her own, her lips seek his, they take him over, from the inside out. Her twin flesh melding to his, almost not a kiss but a terrible gluttonous hunger to have him, to taste him, to be with him. Her tongue snakes out against his bottom lip, a small sigh escaping, her lips parting.
In flash it’s over, Claire is across the room, her hand attempting to scalp herself as she wavers. “I’m..sorry….Oh God, Pete I’m so sorry.” She looks back fleetingly.
“Maybe…maybe this wasn’t a good idea…” She manages, not us she wants to add, but this. This pretending, this game, this would kill them.
“Maybe I should go.” She breathes, allowing her lids to close, to gain her own small escape.
She’s looking at him, and he can almost feel it. He can almost hear her screaming at him, telling him to do something. Her eyes are blazing, her chest’s rising with the in-outs of her breaths and she’s beautiful. She’s beautiful and he’s a coward, but he thinks it’s for the best. He does, he really does until it’s a second later and her lips are on his.
It feels like coming home.
Claire’s mouth is hot, his lips are chapped, they’re breathing into each other’s throats. His hand comes up to tangle in her hair, his body automatically moving, seeking, finding; closer. Peter closes his eyes, breathes her in and imprints his name onto the soft skin of her neck with his fingertips. He relishes in the hot touch of her tongue against his bottom lip, opens his mouth and almost cries out against the jagged tingles that are stabbing his gut.
He tries to ignore the voice inside his head that’s screaming What have you done?! He tries to tell himself that he deserves this, that this is what’s supposed to happen. He tries to tell himself that this isn’t screwed up and…For a moment, Peter lets himself believe it.
But it’s only a moment.
The next, Claire’s 10 feet away, spilling apologies and looking at him like she hates herself. She doesn’t even meet his eyes, and Peter feels something like resignation settle in his gut. He drops his hands, looking down. The words “Maybe I should go,” barely register, but seconds later he feels his lips move, so he must have replied.
“Yeah, probably.”
He doesn’t even look at her; He can’t.
Fine. Claire hates that word, yet she falls under its spell time and time again. It’s the easiest one to say, it’s the type of word you use as an appetizer. A precursor to the main idea, or…the more apprehensive option, the word you use to push someone away. But Peter isn’t pushing her away…is he?
She can’t figure it out, her mind is a series of miscalculations, but this isn’t an equation, there is no right or wrong, there is only her and him, and there’s never just one way to get to the desired answer. Claire feels it with him. Something she hadn’t felt with either Damon or Stefan. Something that was purely for the two of them.
Fine. He wasn’t fine. He couldn’t just be fine. Why wouldn’t he talk to her? Give a little, get a little, didn’t Peter get it? She wanted to be with him.
The moment that thought crossed through her mind, she blanched, moving away from him slightly, facing forward, her hands flexing and unflexing, folding neatly in her lap.
The truth is always startling.
“I’ve been…” Wanting you from afar. “Nothing special, just all the usual stuff I guess..” She laughs fleetingly. “Keeping Damon and Stefan in line are you?” She winks.
She doesn’t know how long she can take this.
He wishes he could know what’s going on inside her head. He wishes that they’d just drop it all and be like they used to. He wishes he could just lean over and kiss her and just be able to brush it off with a raised eyebrow and a smile like they do this sort of thing all the time, but he can’t.
And she’s avoiding him, just as much as he’s avoiding her. Nothing special, it’s the same thing as fine except…
Peter moves closer, out of habit, and he wants to kick himself except he’s already done it and it’d look weird if he just moved away. He covers it (or tries to) by reaching for the cola on the table. The drink feels flat as it makes its way past his lips though, and the way he swallows does nothing to disguise the drumming of his heart or the way his breath’s not coming as even as it should. And she catches his eyes.
She’s not his Claire, not the person he knew, but he can’t help the seemingly slow motion movement of his hand as his fingers reach out and brush her hair behind her ear. His voice is false bravado and he wants to punch himself in the face as his arm draws back.
“I always do,” A wink as false as her own compliments the answer that’s also a lie.
He looks down at the bottle of soda in one hand, before meeting her eyes again. “Claire…”
Everything he wants to, or was going to say melts in his mouth and disappears. Peter honestly doesn’t know what to say anymore. What are they doing? His grip on the bottle tightens as he tries to reign in his emotions. He’s getting really tired of playing games.
He’s watching his watch -rather, he’s watching the hands chase each other around until one catches up to the other. It’s been an hour, and again, Peter’s left sitting empty handed in his apartment. Is he the only one who makes any effort around here? He’s trying, God knows he is but for the most part the only thing he wants to do to the other man is rip his fucking head off.
In retrospect, that’s probably why they’d had these little ‘bonding sessions’ set up for them. After all, what’s a circus without team work, right?
Except, this will be the fourth one Sylar’s missed. Does he even know about them? Peter’s not a patient man and he’s a step away from setting his door on fire and making sure that Sylar’s soon to follow. He’d be doing the circus a favor, after all. He’d be ridding them of -a glass shatters in front of him as Peter tightens his fist- and Peter frowns. He’d be ridding them of a lot of broken promises and false niceties.
“Asshole,” Peter stands, ready to leave the apartment.
He’s had enough waiting.
She smiles serenely at him, staying in her sanguine position, eyes never moving from him, they need to be on some part of him, just to see him, just to watch him move before her. She likes to admire the way his muscles move, the way his flesh ripples over top of them as they’re stringent and firm.
She licks her lips.
“I just…I really did miss you Peter.” She repeats herself from before but this time the words hang differently in the air. She can taste them, they’re raw, almost too tangent, almost too evident. She recoils slightly at her own emotional availability. She can’t have him anymore. She’s lost him, he won’t want her back. He won’t take her back.
Her synapses don’t work properly around him, her sentences fractured, her phrases fragmented, her tongue trips over itself, unable to approximate the right thing to say, it’s almost a life or death situation. A land mine lies just ahead. One wrong move and its all over.
“Tell me something. Tell me anything, I want to hear how you’ve been.” It’s a bland question, a bland statement, but her earnestness, and the way her eyes are mapping out his face, striving so hard, so incredibly hard to find the right destination to watch, that’s what speaks, thats what he’s answering to.
Don’t, He wants the word to come from his lips. He wants to tell her to go away and stop messing around. He wants to tell her that she’s a kid and doesn’t understand. He wants her so badly that it hurts and she’s not a little kid. She’s old enough to know what she’s doing and…
Why is she doing it?
She doesn’t know him anymore (how many times has he told himself that tonight?). She doesn’t know them anymore. She’s throwing a whole new dynamic into something that’s tentative and fragile as it is, and Peter has no fucking clue what to do with it. He barely even knows himself anymore, never mind whatever it is that Claire’s playing around with. She must know what she’s doing to him.
Or maybe, he’s making the whole thing up in his mind.
“Tell me something. Tell me anything, I want to hear how you’ve been.”
He hears the words, but doesn’t really listen. They’re just another blazing sign of how far apart they are. Maybe even worlds apart. Let alone the fact that he’s almost 10 years older than she is. He’s -
Claire looks at him, eyes sparkling and honest and…he’s so in love with her that it hurts. And he hates himself for it. Hates the way he can’t just answer her question with honesty and let her know everything. Mainly, he hates the way he’s feeling like this in the first place. She’s his best friend’s daughter. She’s out of bounds -she’s…
She’s Claire.
I’ve missed you, His mind spells it out, but what spills from his lips is different. It’s subdued, because this is the game they play now.
“I’ve been fine, y’know, just -hanging around,” A smile as he looks out into nothing, “Somebody needed to sort out things for Stefan and Damon.”
Peter shrugs, “You know they can’t do it for themselves.”
He wonders just how much she does know, but he doesn’t ask, he just returns her question.
“You?”
She fathoms a thousand ways to pull him in and kiss him in that moment, the sincerity, the divine simplicity of the moment, the Peter. She could wrap her hand around his neck, palm pressed tight and allow a sweet but terse kiss to envelope the two of them. She could throw the controller to the floor and straddle his lap, intertwining their tongues in a frenzy of passion. She could even stand from the couch, confuse him, before moving behind him and placing a delicate and intimate upside down kiss on his too perfect lips.
But she does none of the above. Instead she masks the thoughts with an impervious smiles and allows her eyes to follow him as he grabs the two personal pan pizzas, moving to dump one in her lap, falling their all too casually, as if he was trying to force the casualty of the movement.
She alters the angel of her head, the radius of her eyes shrinking slightly as she defines his pause, “Just like…I always liked it.” She finishes, daring him to change the tone. She lifts the lid and cradles a particularly warm piece in her hand, chewing slowly, taking it all in.
“I don’t want you to go easy on me Peter.” She says, her face void of any hints, of what meaning lies beneath. Her eyes sliding back to the TV screen, a small simmer of a smirk hidden amongst her features.
He bites his lip, looks away, eyes secretly searching hers out in the slight reflection that’s the TV screen. Peter feels the warmth that’s labelled with hot wisps of Claire invading his space, travelling through his lungs, and it’s all he can do not to lean over, twine his fingers through her hair and curl around her.
A savage little voice inside his head tells him that she doesn’t even know him anymore. That he’s not Peter, not hers. That they never had this to begin with so why should they have it now?
He remembers himself saying that it gets better after high school like a black and white film, and suddenly he wants to travel back and tell himself that he’s totally fucked, and to bail out now.
High School never ends.
Peter allows himself a glance, a slow trace over her skin with glowing eyes in the dark. He allows himself to write his name on her skin with invisible fingers as he talks her through the motions, the words “I don’t want you to go easy on me,” echoing through his head all the while. He allows himself a look, a smile reserved only for her. He lets himself shift slightly closer, telling his logical side to go fuck itself because it’s cold.
(It’s not cold.)
He lets her win, once, twice, before he knows that she’ll literally try and beat him up if he does it again. Then;
Then Peter can’t look at her at all, because the way her tongue wets her lips, the way her chest rises, the way she concentrates and the soft noises she’s making as she eats make him want to disappear.
