So, the thing about healing: it's boring as hell and stupidly slow, and Peter's sick of it almost as soon as it starts.
Or he would be, if he could stay awake long enough to get irritated about it.
Sleep is the big one. Peter has a complicated relationship with sleep to begin with; he needs a lot of it when he overuses his powers, but his mind works so fast at its normal speed that it's impossible to come by, sometimes. He'll lie in bed for hours, waiting for each second to tick by on his mother's grandfather clock, every moment interminably longer than the one before, and his mind will run up a path and split on a fork and hop off onto tangents so he finds himself wanting to test a new theory (for example: walking on water) at three in the morning and end up soaking wet in the drunk tank until his mom comes to pick him up. Again. Then, invariably, he'll drift off into a nap at an unfortunate moment the next day, because after using his powers on and off for half a day to braid Wanda's hair and make them sandwiches and clean the entire house in under five minutes, the lack of sleep really catches up to him.
So it's not that he's entirely unused to the idea of dozing off in weird or unfortunate places at weird or unfortunate times; it's just that, usually:
1. The only witness to this is Wanda, and half the time she joins in on his naps*
2. There's generally a reason (a logical reason; a good reason) for the nap, like 'I just ran thirty miles and my body's tired'
3. The naps usually last like 30 minutes, tops.
*Usually, this is because Wanda joins in with her own powers when Peter plays around with his. Their mom gets nervous when Wanda uses her powers—especially since that time with the the stove and the barbie doll. So they practice controlling their powers when their mom's at work—and, to be entirely honest, Peter times it, sometimes, so the kid's out like a light when the afternoon news hits so he can look for any mentions of his dad without her asking awkward questions. Sometimes, when Peter can't fall asleep, he wonders if Magneto—if Erik—needs to sleep after using his powers, too, if Peter got that from him or if it's just another Peter thing.
Unfortunately, the Rules of Normal Naptime kind of fly out of the window at the mansion.
First, Peter's sleepy all. The damn. Time. Hank tells him it's his metabolism, that he'll go longer and longer periods without needing sleep as he starts to regain all the weight he lost. Hank also says 'I dunno, four weeks? Six?' in a very unconvincing tone when Peter asks how soon that will be. Peter's learned about that tone when it comes to Hank: it 's code for 'I have no idea, bro, so I'm going to make a guess so I can get out of this conversation and go build a plane in my secret underground bunker'. Granted, Hank's guesses are usually pretty good guesses, but four weeks is an eon and six an eternity, and Peter just wants to be up and about and to stop wasting time on stupid, stupid sleep.
Also, this sleep that is happening isn't happening for any good reasons. It just happens. Peter's stupidly tired as soon as he wakes up every morning. He's exhausted by the time he's eaten one of the Hank McCoy-Approved Peter-Fattening Breakfasts, and he is flat-out beat by Hank's pre-lunch Peter Check-In at a quarter to twelve.
“It's just going to take time,” Hank says the seventh morning, when he's got his head up ThisClose to Peter's face, looking down Peter's mouth with a flashlight like he's an actual dentist.
Hell, for all Peter knows, he might be. You never can know, with Hank.
“The gum around your molar's healing up well,” Hank continues. “We'll take you to a real dentist for an implant in a few weeks, and you'll be good as new.”
Peter makes a noncommittal noise, because—hey, there goes the 'Hank a secret dentist' theory, and, well. There is a very limited number of people Peter can stand to have this close to him, touching his mouth, without flailing out at them in panic, and Peter's pretty sure that smacking a helpless dentist in the face at ninety-five miles an hour would be bad.
Hank frowns at him, but he pulls away from Peter's mouth, finally, so Peter lets go his death grip on the duvet and breathes a little—because standing something without panicking is really, really different than liking it.
Hank quirks an eyebrow and purses his lips. “I could probably learn how to do it myself.”
For a second, Peter lets the happy feelings wash over him. Overwhelming relief and gratitude settle on him like a warm hug. He misses hugging (he misses Wanda. And she's only been gone a day). Then reality comes in and cracks it.
“What? Nah, nah, I'm totally good, bro. Dentist sounds fine. Wouldn't want you to strain your brain.”
Hank's eyebrows don't straighten out, but he bops Peter lightly on the head with the small flashlight—which probably still has Peter's slobber on it, gross—and says, “Okay.”
Hank, Peter soon comes to realize, very seldom says 'okay' when he actually means 'okay'. Hank's 'okay' can mean everything from 'Hmm,' to 'We'll talk about this later,' to 'No, Charles, that is completely unfeasible and probably illegal in twenty-seven states'. When Hank means 'okay', he usually says something like 'Sure, sure' if he's answering a question or thinking 'Wait, I'm a genius; why didn't I think of that?' and something like 'Yes! I'll jiggle the ion flux capacitors and you try it out!' if he's thinking 'That's genius? Why didn't I—know what, that doesn't matter. Fucking genius.' Hank, in general, is not really an 'okay' sort of guy.
But this is still the first week of Peter's residence at the mansion, the first three days of which he spent the bulk of unconscious, so while he's figured out the Tone of Conversation-Ducking, he just doesn't know Hank well enough to correctly parse a Hankean 'okay', and he lets Hank go without protesting further.
Thing is, Peter would way rather have Hank fix him up than go to the dentist; hell, he'd be content to go without a molar for the rest of his life to avoid the dentist, even if Charles and Erik give him twin pained looks when he mentions it. If Hank were the only person to ever go near his mouth again (well, y'know. In a clinical situation), Peter would be the happiest guy on Earth.
But dentistry isn't something you pick up in a couple hours, and if there's one thing that Peter's figured out this first week, it's that Hank's got plenty on his plate already. Everyone at the mansion does. The school's opening back up for the spring semester, less than five months away now, and there is a ton of work to be done before then. There's a lot of remodeling and plumbing, which Charles doesn't want to bring in outside workers for (and Peter's not saying he's sneaked into the underground labs; he's just saying he totally understands Charles's reasoning here). Heavy-duty remodeling, not really something Charles can help with, so it's been up to Hank and Alex until now. Then there are students to be found, and teachers to teach them, and hundreds of other time-consuming tasks to be got through. For example: kitchen staff.
The tenth night, Peter finds Alex hunched over the kitchen table at two in the morning, comparing several sheets of paper with lines names and data on them and drawing slashes through some of them.
“What's that?” Peter asks after taking a second to admire Alex's lean, hunched-over form.
Alex jumps in his chair. “Jesus, Pete, don't sneak up on me like that.”
Peter magnanimously doesn't point out that he didn't, that he in fact clambered down the stairs at a normal, noisy pace. Peter's nice like that. When he wants to be. “Sorry.”
Alex takes a breath and visibly forces himself to relax. Peter thinks, not for the first time, of war and trauma and outbursts like his ex-stepdad Rick used to have, and how it's kind of weird that a guy who's so obviously not a square as Alex should have such a square, military code-compliant haircut as Alex does. He doesn't say anything, though, because Peter is sensitive and kind and a great respecter of personal privacy.
Well. Okay. He actually doesn't say anything because Alex carried Peter's soaking wet and unconscious body all the way from the lake at the edge of the estate back to Peter's bedroom on the second floor, and he hasn't once asked Peter why he freaked out.
So Peter just zips over to the cupboard, grabs himself a box of Ding Dongs, and asks “So, what is that?” again. He flops down on a chair across from Alex—the better to look at him—and starts in on his first cream-filled cake of happiness.
Alex leans back. He stretches, yawns, and runs his fingers through his hair. “Aww, man. 'S nothing, just—just some paperwork. Didn't realize it was so late.”
“Uh-huh.” Peter polishes off his second Ding Dong and rips the aluminum off the third. “So what is it? It looks boring. Is it students?”
“Are you going to eat the entire box?”
Peter looks down at the box. Thinks it over. Debates just how much his entirely unreciprocated crush is worth to him.
“Unless you want one,” he offers eventually.
“Nah, thanks.”
Peter pulls the box back towards him and bites into his fifth Ding Dong. The crumpled ball of aluminum joins a steadily-growing pile to his right.
“So,” he says after he swallows. “Is it top secret?”
Alex laughs. He stretches again and his back pops. His eyes look watery when he blinks. “It's kitchen staff, for the school. Cooks. Charles wants to hire nearby so we don't have to bring anyone in, since we're only starting with twenty students, but it's, uh, difficult.”
Peter quirks an eyebrow.
“Well, Alex says, drawing out the word like there's a whole speech behind it that will follow inexorably like a train from a tunnel if he's not too careful. He reaches across the table, biceps rippling under his t-shirt, and grabs one of the tinfoil-wrapped circles. “We have to be careful. Charles can meet someone and know they're not working for the CIA or passing information to a paramilitary organization when he meets them, but he can't know for sure that they won't in the future, and he can't run the school and tap into everyone's head twenty-four seven, even if that was something he wanted to do. So we've got to vet everyone thoroughly. Hank was supposed to go through these, actually, but he—he's been busy, working on some other projects.”
But you got kidnapped, and he lost most of last week looking after you, is what he means. Peter gets it.
Alex frowns and fiddles with the Ding Dong and doesn't meet Peter's eyes. He looks down at Peter's neck instead, at where Peter's collar bones jut out and break the smooth line of his t-shirt, which hangs loose on his torso like he's playing dress-up.
“We have to be careful,” Alex repeats. “Charles wants to bring in students of all ages, even ones Wanda's age. Some of them don't even have their powers yet."
Peter tugs his soft, fleece blanket closer around his shoulders so it drapes around his neck and warms the hollow of his throat. “Makes sense.”
Alex picks the last of the tinfoil off the Ding Dong and flicks it over to Peter's pile.
“Jesus,” he says after a second. “How do you even eat these things?”
He ends up spitting half of it into a napkin.
It's a good thing, Peter thinks, that Alex is so good-looking and otherwise a decent human being, because that is as close an act to blasphemy in Peter's book as anything can get.
“There's something wrong with you, bro,” he contents himself with saying as he flicks the wrapper of his ninth hockey-puck-sized slice of heaven with well-practiced fingers.
Alex turns back to his paperwork. He compares pages and pages of names with illegible scribbles next to them and crosses some of at what looks like random. Peter leans back in his chair and watches for a while, occasionally reaching for a Ding Dong. His eyes ache so he shuts them while he chews, and it's more comfortable. Eventually, he runs out of Ding Dongs. He considers going back to his bedroom, but it seems like way too much work, so he curls up, brings his knees up to his chin and rests his forehead on them, and focuses on the unsteady scritch-scratch of Alex's pencil.
He wakes up to someone ruffling his hair and laughing, tittering low and soft so it sets his teeth on edge.
“You're doing so well,” says the man with the hands. His fingers curl around a clump of silver hair that's limp and lank and greasy from days and days of filth. He pulls it suddenly, jerks Peter's head flat against the back of the feeding chair. “You did such a good job today, I'm going to make it easy on you tonight.”
He sets his free hand on Peter's chin, and waves of peace and comfort and happiness curl out from it. They wash over Peter like soft, warm water. Peter opens his mouth for the feeding gag, and even as his body chokes on the cold, wet tube that scrapes down his throat past already-inflamed tissue, he's so grateful, so thankful, so blessed to be allowed nutrition that he tilts his head back calmly to accept it. And the man with the hands gently rubs his fingers over Peter's cheek and chin.
“Hey,” someone says, and that's wrong because it's not his voice, and no one else is allowed to speak. There's a rubber tube down Peter's throat and he wants it out, and no one else is allowed to speak, and something's wrong. “Hey, Pete. Peter. You okay?”
Peter jerks awake, tries to take a breath, and vomits all over himself instead.
“Shit! Peter—Hank! Kitchen! Now!”
Peter's vaguely aware of Alex moving around. He hears the intercom buzz over the sound of his own retching and grabs on to one of the wooden slats on the back of the chair to keep from falling.
Then Alex is behind him, grabbing his shirt, and just when Peter manages to stop and suck in a breath, Alex's arm wraps around his chest to steady him—
”You're not a person anymore,” he says. He rubs the palm of his hand up and down Peter's sternum, and Peter feels, deep in his heart, the sense of absolute sincerity exuding from him. “You're a weapon. You're my weapon.”
—and Peter gags, and off he goes again.
It's not like all he's eaten today is eleven Ding Dongs: Hank makes him eat every hour and a half, and he's had pudding and chicken and leftover pizza—and that's just since supper. He's still heaving when Hank runs in.
“Oh, Jesus. Peter. Shit.”
Alex holds him up through the last of it, arm strong around his chest, rubbing calming circles on Peter's back with his other hand. Hank bustles around the kitchen and does noisy things out of Peter's line of sight. When Peter finishes coughing, Hank is right at his side. He wipes Peter's cheeks and chin off with a wet towel while Peter catches his breath, and he sets a glass of water on the table within easy reach.
“What happened?”
It's only been a little over a week since two of Peter's ribs broke on the flight from the bunker, and they hurt like hell. His lungs burn every time he breathes, and he'd be flat on his face in his own vomit if it weren't for Alex holding him up. Alex's arm, much like most of Peter himself, is covered in vomit. There's sweat rolling down Peter's forehead, even though he's fucking cold, and his hands and arms are shaking and he can't make them stop.
“—woke up and just started throwing up everywhere like—”
Peter's eyes teared up when he heaved in a purely physiological reaction that Peter knows doesn't mean shit, but they're not drying now he's stopped throwing up; they're burning, and suddenly when he tries to breathe he realizes that there's watery snot about to drip out of his nose. He sniffs.
The conversation above him stops abruptly.
“Hey.” Hank's voice is soft, like he's trying to calm a kitten trapped in a cubby hole. “Hey, Peter.”
Peter sucks in a breath and it comes out ragged. He wishes he could sink through the floor and die. Hank reaches up, probably to ruffle his hair like everyone always does, and Peter can't help but flinch away. He blinks, hard, over and over, but it doesn't work. Fat, hot tears roll down his cheek, and his next breath catches in his throat and hitches.
Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck him. Peter is not going to cry in front of them, he's not. He grabs a bit of skin from his left wrist between the fingernails of his right thumb and index finger and squeezes as hard as he can.
It's only for a second, but it works. It sharpens his focus and clears his mind enough that he can take a deep breath again and let it out slowly, counting, and it's fine again. He's fine again. Everything is fine.
Then Hank folds long, lanky hands over Peter's with a “Whoah, hey, no,” and pulls them apart. The loss of the focus is palpable, but Peter's nothing if not quick on the uptake. He's worn and aching but steady as fuck when Hank squeezes his hand.
“Know what,” Hank says, “Why don't you go shower, and I'll set you up with an IV when you're done. We can talk in the morning.”
Hank lets go, stands up, and murmurs something to Alex behind Peter's back. Peter moves to stand while they're distracted—and almost flops right off his chair.
“Careful there, kid.” Alex's arm tightens like a vise, and then he's moving. He ducks down at Peter's side to sling Peter's arm over his shoulder and helps him stand. Peter slips on the wet floor, but Alex catches his weight and holds it. “C'mon, knucklehead, let's get you cleaned up.”
Alex helps him take his socks off at the edge of the kitchen so he doesn't track vomit through the living room. His socks hit the floor with wet splats when they fall. Peter looks back at the kitchen, and, yep, it's probably the most disgusting thing he's ever seen. There's vomit all over the floor, smeared over his chair, splattered across the table and all over Alex's painstaking paperwork. There are noticeable smears where he walked and where Hank crouched, and his favorite fleece blanket's a trampled, spattered puddle on the floor.
“Sorry about the mess,” he tries. His throat burns when he talks.
“It's fine.” Alex raises his voice as they cross into the living room. “It's not like Hank has anything better to do, anyway.”
“Fuck you, Summers,” drifts out of the kitchen, along with the sounds of cabinets being opened and buckets being filled with water in the sink.
Peter's panting by the time they make it up the stairs, even with Alex taking most of his weight. If it were up to him, he'd flop down on his bed as soon as he got in his room and worry about cleanup and IV's tomorrow.
But it's not up to him.
They're taking a breather on the landing—or, rather, Peter's taking a breather and Alex is taking the opportunity to rest Peter's weight against the banister—when the hall light flips on and Erik comes out of the corridor to the right of Peter's room.
“Is everything all right?” he asks. He's wearing sleeping pants and a plain white cotton undershirt, and his hair is actually messed from sleep. Peter's never seen him looking this disheveled. “Peter?”
Peter rubs his foot on the floor. It's sticky, still, even without his socks. “I'm fine.”
He is, really. He just wants this night to be over already. But he's fine.
“Peter's just going to shower,” Alex volunteers when it's clear Peter's done talking. He sets off for Peter's room again, pulling Peter along beside him. “Hank's in the kitchen.”
Peter doesn't want Erik to go down, doesn't want his—doesn't want Erik to see, but Erik's already moving past him, reaching out to ruffle Peter's hair and walking on.
They make it to the bathroom off of Peter's room without incident. Alex helps him out of his t-shirt, holding the collar away so it doesn't smear on his face when he takes it off, and he fiddles with the shower faucets and rinses off his arm while Peter leans against the sink and shimmies out of his pants.
“I'll be right outside in case you need anything. Just leave the door ajar, in case.”
“I'm fine,” Peter starts. “You don't have to--”
“Yeah, Hank finds out I left you alone with low blood sugar and trust me, I will be anything but fine.” Alex grins then, wide and easy as he walks out, like he isn't liberally flecked in vomit. “It's no problem, kid.”
Peter eyes the cracked-open door for a second, but he knows that locking a door is pretty pointless when there's a metal-bender in your kitchen. He strips out of his boxers and clumsily climbs into the shower.
The water's warm, and he is exhausted. He lingers, lets it flow down his body, until he remembers that Hank and Alex are probably waiting on him to sleep.
When he pulls back the shower curtain again, his filthy clothes are nowhere to be seen. There's a large, fluffy towel folded next to his toothbrush, and under it are his softest sleep pants and t-shirt.
Alex, as promised, is sitting in a chair right outside the bathroom door, though someone's obviously brought him a change of shirts. He doesn't help Peter over to his bed when Peter doesn't ask for it, but he hovers close enough to catch Peter if he stumbles.
Any urge to sleep vanishes as soon as Peter sees his bed, though the nausea's back by the time he makes it onto it. That's probably more due to Peter's stomach skipping past hunger straight to misery now that it's suddenly empty, though, so he's not too worried about a repeat. He's cold again, though, arms and legs uncomfortably covered in goosebumps that rub against the soft cotton of his pajamas. He knows his fingers must feel like ice when he grabs Alex's arm for leverage to sit up against some pillows.
Alex, of course, doesn't mention it. He pulls the visitor's chair near Peter's bed again. There's a tray on Peter's nightstand with two peanut butter sandwiches and a bottle of orange soda on it. Alex sets it over Peter's lap once he's set and flops down on the chair himself.
Peter doesn't even want to think of food, but he knows bad things are going to happen if he doesn't eat something soon. He's also pretty sure Alex is just going to sit there and stare him down until every last crumb is gone, so he takes a bite and washes it down. It sticks in his throat and settles heavy in his stomach, but he doesn't, thank fuck, feel like throwing up again, so he takes another.
Alex waits until he's halfway through the first sandwich to speak. “You know nightmares are nothing to be be embarrassed about, right?”
“Mmhmm.” It's harder to chew with a molar missing. Takes longer. It doesn't hurt any more when a piece of food gets stuck in the hollow where it used to be, though, so that's progress. “I'm fine.”
“What you went through was—”
“Seriously.” Peter takes a long drag of the soda. “I'm fine. It was probably the Ding Dongs. Too much sugar.”
Alex snorts. “Yeah, try again, kid. I've seen you eat an entire carton of--”
Hank takes that moment to come noisily in with Peter's old IV stand, for which Peter is forever grateful.
Peter says “Hey!” maybe a little too loudly and almost knocks over his soda. Hank looks taken aback, but Alex sighs and leaves with a 'Later, kid,' so whatever.
Hank quizzes him about how he's been feeling, shines a light at his eyes, and tells him not to think about getting out of bed for at least twelve hours. Which is more than fine by Peter; there's a pack of cards in the drawer of his nightstand and quiet fear gnawing at his gut, and he's planning on playing solitaire until he's worn himself out enough he doesn't dream when he sleeps.
Hank waits for Peter to finish eating to hook him up to the IV. It has glucose, vitamins, and a mild sedative; the last of these worries Peter, but he's pretty sure he's anxious enough to shake it off even on an empty stomach.
Peter lets Hank take away most of the extra pillows and the tray and lays back, waiting for Hank to leave so he can grab the cards from his nightstand and sit back up.
Except Hank doesn't leave.
He leans against the nearest bookcase instead. His head thumps back against the third volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and he shuts his eyes. He looks totally beat, like Peter's mom did that week when Wanda was a baby and had really bad colic. It makes sense; not only has he been working overtime to fit in Peter, Alex called him to the kitchen at just shy of three o'clock in the morning, but he was fully dressed and had tell-tale streaks of grease on his forehead.
“Dude,” Peter says. “You look like hell. You should go get some sleep.”
Hank smiles weakly and waves his hand. “I'm fine. I don't need as much sleep as everyone else thanks to my mutation, and Erik should be here any minute.”
“What.” Peter jerks straight up—then flops back down as the head rush catches up to him. But. “What's Erik got to do with it?”
Hank opens his eyes and blinks. “You just threw up probably a third of yesterday's calorie intake. Even with the IV, this could set back your recovery for days, and if you get sick again tonight—you couldn't honestly think I'd leave you unmonitored when your blood sugar's so low.”
Like fuck. Peter props himself up on his elbows, slowly this time so he can stay up, and steadies himself with the duvet. “Look, I feel fine now, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to puke again, so no one needs to—”
“But you're not fine.” And Hank's lips thin and he straightens up, and Peter's never seen Hank actually pissed off before, but he's seeing it now. He stalks over to Peter's bed and leans against the nightstand, jolting it a surprising amount for a guy his size. “Peter, on top of the actual torture, you do realize those bastards were starving you to death? And I'm not exaggerating, so don't roll your eyes at me. They were doing it on accident, probably, but if they'd kept you on that diet, you would have been dead within a week. At most ten days. You're still seriously underweight, you're not putting it back on fast enough because you keep using your powers, and you're obviously having trouble sleeping, which you didn't bother to tell us, but which is also affecting your recovery time. It doesn't matter if you feel like you could run four marathons, there isn't any scale where your health right now qualifies as 'fine'.”
Hank straightens up and knocks his elbow into the IV stand. Peter swallows. Erik, in the doorway, clears his throat.
“You're all set,” Hank says once he's double-checked the IV. “I'll be in my room if you need anything. Peter, you—you should feel better tomorrow.”
He leaves the door cracked an inch on his way out.
Peter blinks, repeatedly, and doesn't look up. His throat hurts.
Erik, for his part, sits down in the visitor's chair and makes himself comfortable. He's still in his cotton undershirt, though he's changed into a different pair of pants. Peter wonders if he got vomit on them.
“You're feeling better?”
Peter nods, because he doesn't trust himself to speak.
“Good.” Erik flicks off the lamp on the nightstand. A little bit of light streams in through the cracked door from the hallway, and if he looks to his left, Peter can see the moon hanging above the trees at the edge of the estate through his windows. “Get some rest.”
Erik ruffles his hair, and that's when it hits Peter, still on edge. And Peter's surprised, honestly, that he didn't notice earlier, because he's usually not bad at noticing that sort of thing, and in retrospect it's obvious. Because when his dad reaches over his head, Peter catches the scent of a very specific cologne which his dad has never used before, but which he saw a bottle of in Charles' bedroom. And once he notices that, he remembers, earlier, that Erik came out of the hallway to the right of Peter's room. Even though his own bedroom is to the left.
“You're sleeping in Charles' room.” And—yeah, Peter realizes immediately he should have kept his stupid mouth shut, not just because it's really none of his business, but also because his voice cracks full-on.
Erik actually winces. “We weren't keeping it secret from you. We've just been--”
“Busy. Yeah.” And that's fine. It's fine. Everyone really has been busy, all the time, except for Peter, who falls asleep a lot and gives everyone else more work to do.
His dad shifts in his chair and doesn't answer right away. “Charles told me he didn't think it would bother you. I assumed--”
“Yeah, no, it's cool.” And it is. It's not like he hadn't figured out there'd been something there the first day he was awake for more than two hours, and it would be massively hypocritical of him to judge the guy for being into men as well as women. But something uncomfortable squirms in his gut no matter what he tells himself. “It's just unexpected.”
And there his face goes, getting hot again, and Peter wonders if his dad can sense how much Peter doesn't want to have this conversation right now, because Erik just says, “All right.”
Of course, Erik immediately wrecks it by following up with, “Peter, about what Hank told you.”
And Peter is so done with this conversation.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Sedative.” And it's not entirely a lie, because he can feel the pull of the drugs on him, and he might have been deluding himself about how well he could shake them off.
“Peter.” His dad sets his hand on Peter's shoulder, and, yeah, nope. Peter stiffens, curls up on his side, and stares determinedly out the window.
When he was in the bunker, sometimes when he woke up from long stretches of clammy, uncomfortable sleep, he'd shut his eyes and imagine he was camping outside in the grass with Wanda instead of lying on a pile of hay in his cell, and sometimes he could actually feel like he was free. Except everything's backwards, because now he is free but it's the bunker in his head that won't leave him be.
He shuts his eyes, but the tears still roll down his cheek and the side of his nose and wet the sheets, and his nose clogs up again. He has to breathe with his mouth so he doesn't have to blow it, but fuck if he lets his dad see—fuck if he lets anyone see—and he grabs blindly at the extra pillow propped against his headboard and jams it over his head. The IV line snaps taut and jerks when he reaches for it. He can feel the tip of the needle scrape against his skin, but he ignores it and curls his fingers into the pillowcase.
The IV stand, after a moment, slides closer to the bed, and the line goes slack. Calloused fingers readjust the needle and smooth the tape out gently over the back of his hand.
Peter keeps his 'Thanks' in his throat and takes a deep breath and pretends he's somewhere else.
He's in the training room again. Today they have him hanging on a rope from the ceiling. It's looped under his armpits and curls up around his arms and wrists so there's no danger of his shoulders dislocating. They burn, and his hands feel numb, but the man with the hands reassures him there's no danger of permanent injury.
It's just the woman by herself this morning, though. She's got a cane with her, a thick but whippy thing with a carved wooden handle that leaves dark, raised welts wherever it hits.
It's not proper training, just punishment. A readjustment session, the man with the hands called it. Peter needs to learn his place. It's Peter's fault.
They took the collar off of him earlier for a few minutes; he'd fallen during training, and the plastic casing had cracked when he hit the concrete.
Peter—Peter didn't say anything when it was off. Didn't try. He knew things would go to hell for him if he did, and he'd already been through the training game so they could hurt him as much as they liked. So he didn't say a word. But he wanted to. He bit his lip and dug his fingernails into his palms and wished he had the guts to say something—anything--and didn't. Stay still, he told himself. Stay quiet. Hold on and wait.
It didn't matter. The man with the hands felt him, felt the wishing and hating and the quiet, helpless rage, and he grabbed Peter by the hair and slapped him across the face and made him feel sorry, so sorry, for having thought it, and when Peter came back to himself he was strung up in the training room and the woman whipped the cane across his chest.
They put the collar back on him, so he could learn what happens to those he speak out of turn. It's kind of a training game, too, because if he screams or begs or so much as gasps too hard, the calibrator on the collar interprets that as speaking, and 20000 volts hit his neck. Again. And again. And they've blindfolded him, so he learns, so he never knows when a stroke is coming or where it's going to land.
Usually they stop after one or two shocks when they're training, because they make Peter spasm so hard on the concrete that one time he ripped open a gash on the back of his head that took stitches before it stopped bleeding. But here, strung up in the air so the pads of his feet just barely find purchase on the smooth concrete, the worst that can happen to him is rope burn, and that won't hamper his ability to fight once he's brainwashed, so the man with the hands is more than fine with that.
He's sweating so much that the collar's chafing his neck, even though he's cold enough his fingers have gone numb.
The collar stops him from moving at speed, but his mind doesn't slow down at all, and every long, lazy whistle of the cane through the air feels like it takes minutes to pass.
His sense of time's all distorted. He doesn't know how long he's been up here, strung up, strung out, waiting for each slow-motion hiss of air to manifest into another aching, burning line on his skin. The woman never speaks—never has—but he thinks she gets upset when he goes for a long time without activating the collar, because the hits keep coming harder until she gets a reaction. He thinks the man with the hands must be watching. Maybe he still has to train her and the other silent helper. Maybe it doesn't take forever, no matter how much they train. Maybe—
It catches him off guard, a fucking brutal swipe low across the still-fleshy curve of his thigh, followed up before he has a chance to breathe with a backhand stroke low on his stomach.
It fucking hurts, but Peter bites his lip and doesn't make a sound. They'll have to try harder than that to—
The next one whips down like fire across his gut, driving out his breath and
“That's quite enough of that.”
The room's awash in warm, welcoming sunlight when Peter opens his eyes. He's flat on his back in a nest of pillows and blankets on his bed. The IV's still hooked up to his hand, though the needle site looks a little bruised.
The caning was thirteen days ago. The bunker's gone, the man with the hands is dead, and he's safe and fine in a mansion in Westchester.
Charles, who apparently has the ability to step into Peter's dreams and wake him up from his bedroom down the hall, whirs into Peter's a minute later. There's a tray on his lap loaded down with plates, along with an entire glass bottle of milk and a glass. There's french toast, bacon, eggs, more eggs, oatmeal, two slices of ham, still more eggs, and, at the very edge, a lone, unwrapped Twinkie.
Peter's starving, but there is so much food it makes him tired just to think of getting through it. His chest and stomach ache, and his back feels like he spent a full day picking potatoes. He'd really rather just lie here and sleep.
“Can you sit up, or shall I call Alex back to help you?”
“What, you're on babysitting duty now too?” He regrets the words as soon as he gets them out and grimaces. “Sorry. Long night.”
“So I heard.” Two of the plates clink against each other as Charles shifts in his chair. “Peter, if you'd told me you were having nightmares, we could ha—”
“I'm not ha—” Peter starts, then remembers that Charles literally just watched one of them. “It's not a big deal.”
Charles favors him with a particularly unimpressed expression.
“Really,” Peter says.
Charles takes a deep, deep breath and sighs. “Peter—no, actually, you need to eat. Breakfast first, then we can talk.”
“Not really hungry.”
He doesn't need to look up to know what Charles' face looks like. “Peter.”
He sighs. “'M just tired.”
He doesn't know how else to put it. He's exhausted, and it's not just the bone-deep ache from heaving last night. He's beat, mind and heart. He's tired of lying in bed all day long and falling asleep in the middle of Star Trek and taking everyone away from their work and making them miss sleep, and he's absolutely fucking sick of the memories in his head that have taken up residence and won't get out, and for all that Erik carried him out of the bunker eleven nights ago, he goes back every time he shuts his eyes and it's just so—he's just so—tired.
“Would you like some soup?” Charles asks. He's leaning over now, stuffy sweater brushing at the top of the milk bottle. “You really do need to eat something, but it doesn't have to be all this. Hank could whip up a protein shake with just as many calories, I'm sure.”
Please, Peter wants to say.
“Nah,” he says instead. He's pretty sure Hank has better things to do than act as personal chef. “This is fine. Sorry.”
He sits up, lets Charles fluff his pillows. He helps Charles settle the tray over his lap. His arms feel like lead, but he grabs a spoon and starts in on the oatmeal.
“There you go,” says Charles with an encouraging smile.
“'S good.”
“I'll be sure to let Hank know.”
Peter swallows. “I was kind of a dick last night.”
“To Hank?”
“To everyone.”
“Ah.” Charles shrugs. “Well. I'm sure they'll be around to see you later, if you'd like to apologize, which you should, of course, but honestly, we've all been pretty surprised you haven't lashed out sooner.”
Peter stops in the middle of a mouthful of eggs at that. Charles squints at him as if he's a very baffling specimen in a jar—but in a kindly genius sort of way rather than a crazy, mad scientist way.
“Hmm,” Charles says. “Well, you lived in a stable routine for years, then in the space of a month you were kidnapped, tortured extensively, rescued, moved away from your family, into a house with several strangers and your long-lost father of dubious reputation, and now, though you're used to speeding through every possible milestone known to man, you're stuck convalescing, quite slowly, in a boring, dusty mansion and won't be able to use your powers properly for weeks.”
“Yeah,” Peter says, swallowing half a slice of french toast in one go. “But 's not like it's your fault, or Alex or Hank's or—or my dad's. You guys—I mean, Erik's my dad, but I'm not anything to you, and you've been--”
“I like to think that breaking into a federal prison together is a solid basis for friendship, if nothing else, so you're wrong there. And Erik's your father, yes, but he's also my friend, and he came to me for help to find you and make sure you were safe, so even if you were an intolerable brat, you'd still be welcome, and you are most certainly not, Peter. You're a very brave, kind young man who faced an incredibly difficult situation with strength and equanimity, and helping you get your strength back is the least we could do after all you've been through.”
Peter doesn't really know what to say to that, so he sticks with “Oh,” and starts in on the ham.
Because he doesn't want to say it, knows if he does that Charles will sit him down and probably spend the entire afternoon lecturing him, but Charles is wrong.
Peter wasn't brave, in the bunker. Peter wasn't strong. All Peter faced it with was fear. He broke down his first day there and never scraped it back together again. He begged them to stop, did whatever they asked him to whenever they asked him to do it, just so they'd stop hurting him for a while. He had moments of anger, sure, couple times when he lashed out, but—but all Peter did, really, was hang on and wait for someone else to come and rescue him, and that's not very fucking brave at all. And his stupid, stupid plan to off himself before he turned? If Hank was right (and of course Hank's right, he's Hank), he would have been dead from starvation before that, anyway, so it doesn't mean a single fucking thing.
What a fucking waste.
“Peter,” Charles says with a tone in his voice that Peter's never heard before, and fuck his life but sometimes Peter forgets what Charles' power is, “You know I won't go in your head without permission, but you are thinking very loudly, and I'm not going to sit here and let you--”
There's a muffled explosion, suddenly, several floors below them, and Charles' fingers go to his temple and his eyes sort of glaze over.
“Damn it, Alex,” he says after a moment. He backs his chair up, but before he goes he fixes Peter with a Look. “You should get some rest now, because you and I are going to have a very long conversation when I'm done, and I want you awake for all of it.”
The room feels oddly empty when he's gone. Peter finishes his breakfast quietly and sets the over-sized tray on his nightstand when he's done.
He's still exhausted, for sure, but the thought of listening to Charles tell him—tell him everything he knows Charles is going to tell him, later, has him fidgeting.
His hair and the collar of his shirt are damp with sweat from his dream, so he takes advantage of the nervous energy and heads to the shower.
There's a window above the bathtub in his bathroom. It faces out to the grounds behind the house, where a man-made pond is taking shape beside an exceptionally striking tree. It's just greenery at first, but when Peter looks out after he lathers his hair, Hank and Alex and Charles are all outside, having a conversation that involves lots of pointing from Hank, lots of waving the arms around from Alex, and lots of headshaking from Charles.
It must be past ten, and the sun's high up in the sky. The light shines down on Alex's blonde hair and gleams like a fucking halo, and even at this distance Peter can make out the trim nip of his waist and the jutting curve of his ass when he turns to look at the tree.
It's the first time since he woke up that he's had a chunk of time absolutely to himself, where no one's going to check up on him and Charles isn't going to worry and poke around to make sure he's not in distress, and he should be wound up tighter than an industrial coil.
Any other time he’d let his thoughts go other places, maybe make some plans to sneak out of the mansion as soon as he has some strength back and find a hot blond partner to mess around with for a night, just to get it all out.
But the thought of being close to anyone outside this house has him feeling hard hands on his skin and a soft, light touch patting obscenely at his temples, and he feels sick.
He rests his head against the tile and lets the water run in rivulets down his back.
It's a quarter to eleven when he steps back in his room. His bed's been made up neatly, and someone's left him a pile of things.
The fleece blanket he's taken to using as an enormous shawl around the house is folded on his pillow. On top of it, there's an also neatly-folded, silver leather jacket in Peter's size. Next to it, there's a thin manila folder with a few loose papers in it. Peter puts on the jacket first, because he's always fucking chilly now, and opens up the folder. The first page he sees is a handwritten note on Xavier letterhead.
Charles told me you didn't know his name. It's important not to make him out to be more than he was: a mutant who liked to use his powers to hurt other people with.
The rest of the pages are from some sort of official file. A chunk of the lines are blacked out, but there's enough to piece together a profile of a boy who grew up in France, orphaned in the war, who first popped up when a girl at the university filed a complaint that he'd used some sort of drug on her to get her into his bed.
His name was Paul Devries.
Peter flips the folder shut and sits cross-legged on his pillow.
He feels empty, like his bedroom.
He looks at the clock again, just a moment later, and finds that nearly an hour's disappeared into thin air. He stands up, and the food's kicked in, finally, because he still feels weird but he's steady on his feet. He's just slipping the folder into the drawer of his nightstand when he hears voices downstairs in the kitchen.
He grabs the pair of goggles in the drawer without thinking, and he's gone.
It's the first time he's used his powers beyond running into the next room or cheat-shuffling cards during poker since he was kidnapped, and he knows it's a stupid idea before he's out of the house. He's feeling like shit to begin with, and by the time he makes it to the gate the nausea is back with a vengeance, but he can't bring himself to stop.
He can't stand the thought of Charles catching his thoughts, of knowing—of knowing, of Charles still forging on and continuing to be so fucking kind.
He does stop, finally, about five miles out, though it's less a conscious choice and more that his legs give out from underneath him and he just has time to slow down a bit before he trips and falls flat on his face on the sidewalk. It rubs his palms and the skin over his left cheekbone raw, and his ribs burn when he stands up.
Peter doesn't know what city he's in, exactly, but he's on a quiet street with a kitschy-looking diner thirty feet ahead.
He is, he realizes when he starts walking, in trouble. He didn't think to grab his wallet before he left, or change, and he's pretty sure he's not going to be running back to the mansion any time soon. He figures he'll see if there's a phone he can use to call the mansion, though the list of things he'd rather do than admit he just pulled a toddler-level tantrum in a particularly stupid way—yeah, it is a long, long list.
He heads for the bathroom in the back of the diner first, to dust himself off and pull himself together. He rinses his palms off and pats his cheek dry with some toilet paper. He ducks back in the stall for more. The door swings shut behind him, and the light bulb above him buzzes, and for a split second he's not in a white bathroom stall at a shitty diner in New York, he's in a cell in a bunker in British Columbia.
It's just a moment. A quick flash, and it's gone, and he's back. His head buzzes and his stomach hurts and his hands shake, but he's fine. He's perfectly fine.
He sits down on the toilet and sobs like a little girl.
The bathroom door swings open once or twice, but no one comes in, which is good, because once he starts, Peter can't seem to fucking stop.
He's just so tired of hauling it all around with him every minute he's awake.
He can't sit in a stall and cry forever, of course. He really does feel nauseated, and he's exhausted and hungry to the point of growing dizziness, and niggling in the back of his mind is the worry that the diner owners, concerned about a hysterical teenager occupying their bathroom, might call the cops on him.
But that stays distant enough for eight or ten minutes. He stops, eventually, winds down from heaving sobs to hiccuping gasps, then finally quiets entirely. He sits and waits until his hands stop shaking enough for him to blow his nose. He splashes some water on his face at the sink. It splatters onto his t-shirt, but it's already wet with tears and snot.
He looks like a total fucking mess.
On the bright side, they're more likely to let him use their phone if he looks this pathetic. And maybe he can lie down in a booth while he waits, because he's standing now, but he's pretty sure he won't be for long.
He takes a deep breath, straightens his jacket, and swings open the door.
And trips over Alex's foot.
“Whoah! Hey, careful there, kid.” Alex catches him around the waist and hangs onto him until Peter finds his footing.
It takes Peter a moment.
“You okay?” Alex asks when Peter's finally standing up straight instead of hanging off of Alex with all the grace of an octopus on dry land.
Peter blinks at him. He feels kind of fuzzy.
“Jesus, Pete, you really did a number on yourself.” Alex hooks his arm around Peter's waist and sets off towards the dining area. Peter follows, as much as he can, stumbling practically every other step.
Hank's in one of the round booths at the back of the restaurant, calmly sipping a cup of coffee. There are two large slices of apple pie in front of him. Alex herds Peter in first, sliding in after him so Peter's sandwiched between him and Hank.
“Eat,” Hank says as soon as Peter's settled in. He hands Peter a fork and slides both plates of pie over. “There'll be more in a few minutes. Don't worry; I ordered plenty of protein.”
It's not bad, and the sugar hits Peter like a jolt of adrenaline. This is both good, because the dizziness and the pounding headache recede enough to be bearable, and bad, because as he becomes more acutely aware of his surroundings, he notices how conspicuously silent Hank and Alex are being.
“So,” he says when he finishes the first piece, crust and all. “Uh. I'm sorry. About being a dick.”
“Eh, it's cool,” Alex says.
“Don't worry about it.” Hank pats him on the shoulder and then, of course, pushes forward the other plate. “I shouldn't have been so blunt last night.”
“We were just worried about you, buddy.”
Peter does not squirm, visibly, but he pokes at the crust of his pie with his fork. “You shouldn't have to be.”
He doesn't look up, so he feels more than sees the look they give each other over his head.
“You,” Alex says somberly, “Are such a knucklehead.”
“Charles will be crushed.” Hank nudges the plate again when Peter doesn't immediately take another bite. “He was hoping to help you get your GED so you can do a degree at the school, but if you're that moronic, it's hopeless.”
“Wait, what?”
The waitress, a motherly woman in her mid-forties, takes that moment to drop off two plates with bacon, egg, sausage and toast and a chocolate milkshake.
“Oh, honey,” she says when she catches sight of Peter's face. “I'm so sorry about your dog.”
Alex turns his laugh into a cough, barely. Peter doesn't ask.
“So how'd you guys find me?” Peter asks when she leaves.
Hank and Alex share another look.
“Well,” Hank says, and draws it out awkwardly. “We weren't sure if the mutants who took you the first
time were working alone, at first, so I thought I'd take some precautions. Just in case.”
“He sewed tracking devices into all of your pants.” Alex steals a sip of the milkshake and grimaces. “And your shoes.”
“That's, uh.” Peter swallows. “Nice. And disturbing.”
“Story of his life.”
“Fuck you, Summers.”
They bicker over Peter's head until the sheer exhaustion from running starts to overwhelm his body's need to keep him awake so he can eat. Alex helps Peter out to the car and sits him in the backseat while Hank settles the bill. They both completely ignore Peter's attempts to thank them for coming for him; Alex calls him an idiot, and Hank says something ominous about IVs and protein shakes.
It's only a ten minute drive back to the mansion. Peter starts to doze off about half a minute in, but he catches himself and jerks back to reality with a gasp.
“Hey.” Hank reaches back from the passenger seat and bumps Peter's knee with his fist. “We're right here.”
“Groovy,” Peter says. It comes out sounding kind of funny, and he thinks, if he just rests his eyes for a second, maybe it'll help.
Next thing he knows, low voices are murmuring in the background, someone's setting him down on a very familiar mattress, and his goggles are sliding themselves off of his head.
Magical goggles. Cool.
He turns his head into his pillow and gives back in to sleep.
Next time he wakes up, Charles is sitting by his bed. There's a thick book on his lap, but for once he's not reading it. He's just sitting there, staring at Peter.
Intensely.
“So tell me,” Charles says almost as soon as his face slides into focus. “If Wanda were kidnapped and tortured for two weeks, you'd do anything to find her, right?”
“Uh,” Peter starts.
“And once you found her, you'd do anything to help her?”
“But-”
“And if you had to move your schedule around and reprioritize some tasks so she could make a full recovery, you wouldn't hesitate to do so?”
“Yeah, but-”
“Peter.” Charles leans in and rests his hand on Peter's chest. It's warm. “When I said, earlier, you'd be welcome here, I meant it. We're not here because you're a mutant or because you're Erik's son; we're here because we care for you, very much, and we want you to be well. So let us help.”
Peter bites his lip and doesn't say the first things that come to mind, which he counts as a win.
“Okay,” he settles on eventually, and means it.
Charles gives him a satisfied smile and pats him on the shoulder before he leans back into his chair.
“Hey,” Peter continues before he can think better of it and stop himself. “Hank said you want me to get my GED?”
Charles nods. “We're going to partner with a university for long-distance education, for mutants who need a friendlier environment to study in, past high school, and Erik thought you'd be the perfect candidate to test it.”
Peter twists the top sheet in his fingers. “I dropped out my sophomore year. I don't—I never thought about college.”
Charles shrugs. “It will probably take some tutoring before you're ready for your GED, either way, so there's plenty of time to think about that. Meantime, I'll get Alex to bring some textbooks up so we can figure out where you left off and go from there.”
He waits for Peter to nod and backs his chair away from the bed.
“I'll let you get back to sleep for now; you need the rest. But Peter?” He waits until he's got Peter's full attention and raises an eyebrow. “I've confiscated your goggles. If I so much as think you're using your powers before Hank gives you permission, I promise you that you will regret it.”
He hums tunelessly under his breath as he leaves.
When Peter wakes up again, it's his dad who's at his side.
“Hank says to tell you he'll do your molar next Friday,” he says once Peter's up and chugging down the chocolate-flavored protein shake that Erik hands him first thing.
It's kind of pathetic, really, that the act of drinking a milkshake tires Peter enough that he needs to sleep the effort off, but that's life.
Erik takes away the extra pillows propping him up and helps him settle in again when he finishes.
“Hey,” Peter manages before his eyes drift shut, because it's important. “Sorry about last night.”
His dad huffs softly. “It's all right. Sometimes I forget how young you are. It's good to be reminded.”
“And thanks for the jacket. 'S nice.”
“It's hideous,” his dad says. “But you're welcome. Now get some rest.”
And Peter does.
It's a great note to stop on. Sweet. Comfortable. Full of hope and optimism. Unfortunately, real life's a little messier.
Peter spends the rest of the afternoon and early evening alternating between flipping through textbooks and dozing off on top of them. Hank whips up about a dozen shakes of protein powder blended with milk and oats and fruit and peanut butter, flavored with cocoa and honey. There's a new one on his nightstand every time Peter wakes up, along with a glass of water or juice to wash the chalky texture down. They bring him supper, too, lemon-baked chicken with rice and broccoli and two bottles of Coca-Cola straight from the fridge.
The last shake, at eight-thirty (and, yeah, this is Peter's life now; he goes to bed earlier than his seven-year-old sister), comes with a sedative courtesy of Hank so Peter can get some proper sleep instead of just the restless dozing he's been in and out of all day.
Peter knocks it back and settles in with a magazine until it kicks in. Except Hank must have upped his dosage, because it's all of three minutes before he drifts off. He's vaguely aware of someone taking the magazine off his chest and switching off the light a few minutes later, but after that it's all a big black nothing for hours until the dream starts.
It filters into being slowly. First he's conscious of being unconscious. He's lying on the floor of his cell, which is uncomfortably cold. His back and ribs and arms are screaming, and his head feels like it's splitting. His mouth is bloody, he realizes next, coppery tang on his tongue, in his throat, welled up in the folds of gum under his teeth. There's a line of tender skin around his neck that catches on hard plastic when he shifts like sweaty skin on hot rubber.
He nudges the collar up with trembling fingers and drops his hands on his chest when he's done because he can't hold them up. The collar rests heavy on his throat and weighs on his Adam's apple when he swallows.
His boxers and the hem of his t-shirt are soaked through with urine that's just starting to cool off.
It was the collar, he remembers now. He tried to take it off. Tried to break it apart by vibrating his hands on it. It buzzed, and everything's fuzzy after that. He doesn't remember—there's something he can't—
It takes him a moment to realize he's woken. He's lying on his back, still cold and wet and bone-heavy. Not entirely sure where he is or what's going on.
It's the moonlight that brings him back. In his white, claustrophobic cell in the bunker, the light bulb never went out. Peter learned to sleep with it, would drift off for hours on end seeing red on the back of his eyelids. He turns his head, now, and looks out the window at the dark, dense treeline in the distance and the edge of the lake shining silver in the night beyond, and the wild thumping of his heart slows.
For a moment.
Because the first thing he notices after coming to, this time around, is that he's still pretty cold, and he's still quite fucking wet.
Because he's pissed himself again, except this time without the relatively comforting excuse of electrocution.
He's going to need help with the bedding.
It's the first coherent thought that hits him. First there's a confusing jumble of feeling, shame and revulsion and disgust, any illusions of a New and Improved Peter vanishing like so much smoke. He rolls the soaked-through blankets down his legs and off and clambers out of bed. The loose, sodden fabric of his sleeping pants flaps around his thighs with light smacks, and when he stands up, several cold drops trickle down his legs.
He's dizzy when he stands, lightheaded even when he rests his hand on the edge of the mattress, and that's when he realizes, oh, he's going to need help with the bedding. Everyone's exhausted from nights and nights of watching him, from worrying about him constantly, and now he's going to have to go wake someone up because he wet the bed like a baby.
Peter feels sick.
He's not—he doesn't feel like crying again, thank fuck; that part of him feels like it's done for now. But he can't—he doesn't--
He pinches a bit of the skin on his wrist between his fingernails and takes a deep breath.
He's letting it out when the door to his room bursts open and his dad stumbles in.
“What—” Erik stops short. Takes in the bed with wet and rumpled covers. Turns his head to the right and speaks. “He's all right, Charles. I'll handle it. Go back to bed.”
Erik steps away from the door. It shuts and locks itself behind him, and Peter feels relief course through him. The others will probably still know, because fuck if there's anything remotely resembling privacy in this place, but at least they won't see.
“It's all right,” his dad says. And then, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” His dad's left toe is crooked, Peter notices. Like he broke it and it didn't set right. “I'm fine.”
His dad lets out a sigh of absolute exasperation. He starts to say something but cuts himself off. When Peter doesn't look up, Erik reaches out and circles each of Peter's wrists with his fingers and pulls Peter's hands apart.
“There's no need for that here,” he says. The thin crescent on Peter's wrist turns from white to red. Peter's fingers curl into his palms, and he takes a ragged breath.
“But it's easier,” he mumbles. Next thing he knows, his dad's pulled him into a hug.
“It won't be for long.” His dad squeezes his shoulders, then, quick enough that Peter almost doesn't notice, presses his lips against the crown of Peter's head and steps back. “Are you all right to shower by yourself?”
The change in subject throws Peter, but he nods. He might feel unsteady on his feet, but everyone in the mansion's seen him stripped naked more than enough times already.
Peter grabs a clean pair of pants and a t-shirt from his dresser and shuffles over to the bathroom. His dad's half done stripping the bed by the time he kicks the door shut behind him.
The door, naturally, is ajar when he steps out of the shower. Peter's tired enough he's slow and clumsy when he towels off, and he has to lean against the sink for support when he slips on his t-shirt.
The bed's all set, covers turned down, when Peter comes out, and his dad's sitting in the visitor's chair and flipping through one of Peter's magazines. He looks up from it when Peter stumbles over, but he doesn't get up and hover.
Peter falls back onto the bed harder than he expected to and finds he doesn't have the energy to move once he does. Just a second and he'll scooch back onto his pillow and pull the covers up.
He wakes up to his dad tucking him in a few minutes later.
“Sorry you had to get up,” Peter says with his big, stupid mouth instead of pretending he's still asleep.
His dad smooths out the covers and flips the light off, but instead of leaving he sits back down in the chair with a sigh.
“I'm not.”
And Peter thinks he might actually be a baby, because for the third time in under twenty-four hours, he feels himself tearing up.
“I'm sorry.” He turns his head away and hopes against hope his dad doesn't notice in the dim light. “It was an accident. I just woke up and—”
“Actually,” his dad says, scooching his chair closer to the bed. “It was the sedative. Charles asked Hank to raise your dosage tonight. He thought, correctly, you might have trouble actually resting after the stress of today. Unfortunately, that meant your body couldn't wake you up when it needed to. It's hardly your fault.”
Peter twists the edge of his pillowcase in his fingers and twists at it until the threads start to fray. He's here—he knows he's here, in his bed in his room in Westchester—but a part of him's still in the bunker, cold and scared with matted, greasy hair that stinks every time he fidgets. “But I wouldn't need the sedative if I wasn't—”
“If the next word out of your mouth is 'weak', I don't want to hear it.”
“But-”
Erik sets his hand on Peter's shoulder and pushes until Peter's flat on his back again. “Peter, look at me.”
Peter does. Eventually. He meets his dad's eyes and drops his gaze to his dad's chin after a second, because even in the dim light from the windows he can see well enough that his cheeks flush hot.
“Do you think I don't have nightmares about Auschwitz to this day? Did you think your mother doesn't? Devries spent two weeks torturing and mentally manipulating you with the sole purpose of making you think you were weak. And even if he succeeded at making you believe it, that you survived—and survived it like you did—just proves that you're strong.”
Hot shame squirms in Peter's chest. He swipes his hand across his eyes and pants. “But I'm not.”
“Well,” his dad says eventually, “You do have a remarkably thick skull, but reality can't help but sink in sometime. It's just going to take a while.”
Peter blinks, and holds his breath, and breathes with his mouth when he runs out of air. He reaches for his wrist again, but before he can dig into the skin his dad's hand clamps onto his. Erik pulls Peter's arm towards the edge of the bed so he can lean back in his chair.
“We're going to have a very long conversation with Charles tomorrow morning,” he says, “And you're going to clip your nails.”
Peter tugs at his hand, but his dad doesn't let go.
“Peter, no one knows more about self-destruction than I do, and that's a path I don't want to see you go down in any way.”
Peter's free hand's on the mattress near his thigh, where Eric probably couldn't see it.
He brings it up and rests it on the covers over his chest and worries his t-shirt between his fingers.
“Fine,” he says. He settles back and waits for the everything that's knotted up in his throat to pass. His dad squeezes his hand, and Peter still feels a little bit like digging his nails into his wrist, but otherwise it's not, y'know, godawful. Erik's still pretty ridiculous—and so melodramatic, Peter knows he's going to look back on this tomorrow when he's feeling better and cringe, but he's not the worst dad ever, really.
“Get some sleep,” Erik says.
Peter tries, he does. He shuts his eyes and takes deep, regular breaths like the girl who tried to teach him meditation that one time showed him.
He lasts about a minute before he remembers the cell with the light bulb that never turned off and the pile of hay that raised scrapes on his skin and poked into his ears when he slept.
“Yeah,” he says, “That's not gonna happen.”
His dad doesn't sigh, but—
—but he's still there, awake at god knows what o'clock of the morning when he could be in bed spooning his surprisingly handsome, genius boyfriend, knowing he'll be exhausted tomorrow and giving no shits because he wants Peter to be better. Him and everyone else in this fucking mansion, and back at home Peter's mom, and even Peter's baby sister, patiently working and giving and waiting.
So it's pretty shitty if Peter can't try to work on getting better too.
Peter takes a breath.
“He had this thing,” he starts, and his voice sounds like shit. “Devries. He called it the training game.”