After Everything, I Got Nothing
Author's Note: Set during the '5 Years Gone" universe. Peter gets drunk after a fight with Nikki and allows himself to remember the girl he loved but let go of forever.
Yes, there is some smut in this but it's not too bad…actually, its pretty mild. Thanks for reading.
(Warning) Implied Paire.
He didn't know where she was and quite frankly, he couldn't bring himself to give a shit. Let her go and be pissed off at him. It wasn't the first time and it sure as hell wouldn't be that last. He could live without her and her bullshit, he could live without anyone - he had before and quite truthfully, it would be a welcomed relief to do it again.
Yeah, obligation - duty, fucking responsibility, you could call it by any name and it still meant that he was tied to her and would be until the day she decided to cut him loose.
He knew she never would.
He took another hard swallow of the burning liquor in front of him and then another, finishing off the glass.
He automatically reached for the bottle on the table and poured himself another. This one he threw back, pouring another one before he had finished swallowing the first.
Yeah, it was going to be one of those nights.
It wouldn't matter how much he drank, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from delving into his memories and once he was there; he sure has hell wouldn't be able to stop those all too familiar memories from nearly cleaving him in half like they always did.
He could close his eyes and see her face before him so clearly, so perfectly.
Her sweet smile and those big beautiful eyes of hers - somewhere she was out there and she was safe.
Why couldn't he find it within himself to be happy for at least that?
It wasn't enough, not when every moment since; he had spent his days aching with need for her, want and desire so strong nothing he drank and nothing he fucked could get her out of his system for good.
She was in there and now there would be no getting her out.
He had wanted her and in wanting her, he had nearly brought himself to the edge of yet another nightmare. One more heart to crush, batter - bruise. One more life to lie wasted in a smoking ruin.
He hadn't wanted that for her - he had wanted her to be safe, happy, loved.
He could never have given her any of that no matter how much he tried to delude himself into thinking that he could have.
That was the truth of it, he had only saved her and while it should have brought some comfort, it didn't - not when he was agonized, tortured and beaten down by the memory of her.
There one final moment after the explosion, when she learned he was alive.
They had met and by then, Nathan had already made it clear that he had to run - go into hiding even if he could deflect the "incident" as his brother had called it, away from him. He would still have to run.
"The world is going to get a whole lot darker, Peter," he had said and Peter had nodded, trusting his big brother to help him through the enormity of what he had just unleashed onto the world, the realization he was for a moment there, numb towards.
"You can't leave without me," she had said and he had heard her crying behind him as he had hastily set about packing his things.
He had turned slowly and looked at her and she gasped as she took in his face, the ragged scar running the length of it and he went to her as she drew up a trembling finger and touched him, closed her eyes and cried even harder.
He took her hand and lowered it.
"Why isn't it healing?"
"I don't know and I don't care," he said, gravelly as he met her eyes and then looked away.
"Take me with you," she begged him, "I can't stay here with them…without you."
"I can't," he had told her and then he had reached for her. He wanted her to know why he couldn't, why already the weight of what he had done and the guilt of it all had already started to fester inside him, eating away at the man he thought he was…already, the dark was closing in on him.
She backed away from him and he watched then as if trapped in slow motion as her beautiful face crumbled to pieces in front of him and the tears rained down her face and then before he could stop himself, he had her in his arms and he was kissing her.
She had snaked her arms around his neck and drew him closer, kissed him back just as hard and then and there he realized what he was doing and he couldn't!
He couldn't do that to her… she was too good to be sullied by him.
He pulled her from him and met her startled eyes, the look of lust, love and fear in them nearly took his breath away.
He remembered thinking very clearly then, a single thought: I have waited all my life for a woman to look at me with eyes like that and it had to be you, you who I am not suppose to have…
"I'm sorry," he said quickly as if the words had the power to erase what had just happened between them, the line they had crossed and could never return to.
"Don't you dare take that back!"
"I have to…"
"I love you and it doesn't matter…what he thinks or anyone, I am not a little girl…"
"Yes, you are," he told her somewhat roughly, and then seeing the stricken look in her eyes, reached over and ran his hands through her soft hair, "and you'll stay that way for me."
"This isn't going to change, if you need me someday - anywhere, find me, come back to me."
"Where I am going, you can't follow me."
"Do you understand never…"
Never
That final word and with that he had stepped past her and as he did, she grabbed his arm and made him look at her.
"I love you - you're still my hero," her voice a faint whisper.
"I'm no one' s hero," he said, feeling sick with the weight of it all.
He could feel her soft, insistent fingers burning a hole into his arms and he had wrenched free from her, hoisting a bag over his shoulder he had left, hearing her crying softly behind him.
---
He comes back from his thoughts to find the bottle empty and he is quite drunk now. He rests his head on his arms and he can feel the tears coming but he shakes them off.
He hears the door open and it knows it is her without her saying one word. She comes over and pries the empty bottle out of hand and he feels her cool, perfumed fingers smoothing back his hair.
"Peter," she says and he looks up with red eyes, a stricken expression and he sees that there is some tenderness on her hardened face. Her eyes, usually blue ice chips of steely resolve our now large with sympathy.
"Are you drunk?"
"Yeah, babe." he answers, sitting back against the sofa, he puts an arm across his eyes rather then look at her.
She comes and sits down next to him and he feels her start to nuzzle him with her nose, her moist lips on the sides of his face.
"I am sorry we had a fight," she says and he feels her hand slid down and start playing with the buckle of his jeans, he starts to resist but thinks better of it as he turns and seize her mouth with his own.
The kiss is a hot, angry thing - born of frustration and though he is rough, she doesn't complain. She moans against him, helping him twist their bodies so that she is pinned beneath him.
He tries to will her into someone else. Someone softer, sweeter.
He wants to feel her young, firm body under him - feel her beautiful tanned legs wrap around his waist, her full breasts pushed up against his chest.
He starts to mummer a name and Nikki doesn't protest as he calls her by it.
He gives her what she needs and she gives him back what he wants most. Both of them have come to an uneasy truce about it years ago.
"Peter…"
She starts to breathe his name back into his mouth as he moves inside her, roughly with no finesse, gripping her nails into his back, she settles herself in for the ride.
All she can hear is the sound of her own strangled breathing and the name he moans into her mouth over and over again.
Claire…