Warning: Swearing and implied swearing.
Disclaimer: Heroes (c) Tim Kring/NBC.
Say a Little Swear for Me
by Jack Velvet
There are friends that you can make, and then there are friends that you have to adjust your personality to keep.
Everyone has that one friend: the guy or girl who is overly crude and probably swears earlier than a kid should. The one who dares you to swear in conversation with their odd looks at your attempts to not do it, lest your mother or father secretly sewed a listening device into your clothes.
Peter has a friend like this. His name is Jason Smith, or Jay.
When Jay and Peter were eight years old, Jay would say, "Sonofabitch!"
When Jay and Peter were eight and a half, Jay would say, "Damn, you fairy!"
Jay had no idea what these things meant, but only that it seemed to make the older kids look cooler. Sometimes his mom or dad or older brother or uncle would say things like that too.
Once, when Jay and Peter were eight and three-quarters, Jay and Peter were in the Petrelli Mansion (or "Petey's awesome big house"), having what Peter's mom liked to call a "play-date." Jay and Peter built a huge racing-car track in Peter's bedroom; Peter later bragged to his older brother Nathan that it was "bigger than the ones in those commercials."
Well, Jay wasn't as good at racing the cars on the track as Peter was. Jay's car kept stalling (flying off the track) at the loop-de-loop. Finally, Jay grabbed the car, banged it on the floor, and swore, "Damn it, you fairy! Drive that bitch through the damn loop!"
"Oh no, Jay!" Peter exclaimed, seeing his mother enter the room at that rather inconvenient and movie-like moment.
Angela Petrelli sent Jay home, and didn't want Peter hanging out with him anymore. But Peter still saw Jay at school, and Jay would still try to hang out with Peter during lunch and gym class and in the hall and where ever they were when they were together.
So when Jay and Peter were nine, Jay gave Peter that look during lunch. Jay said, "My mom is such a gaping-" A lunch monitor yelled at another student then, but Peter heard it. Jay continued as if he were never interrupted. "I hate peanut butter and jelly! Stupid bitch! Gaping-"
Nathan called it the seaward. Peter didn't understand what that word had to do with ships, but he thought the word-play was amusing, since the word also started with a "C."
So Jay gave Peter that look, because Jay was pretty pissed about having PB and J, and he'd be damned if that stupid idiot Petey didn't agree with him. So Peter looked about for a lunch monitor, and finally said, "Yeah, my mom can be a bitch too." Jay smiled, nodding with approval.
Later that month, Peter was grounded for not cleaning his room. The car track was still there from when Jay was over for the last time. Peter was upset, and didn't realize that in thinking about the car track, that he was thinking about Jay, and that in thinking about his new swear-buddy Jay, that he became Jay.
So when Nathan visited him, and asked him what was wrong, Peter replied, "That dumb bitch grounded me!"
Nathan's eyes went wide, but his lips curled into a smile. He knew he couldn't laugh at how hilarious it was to hear a nine-year old swear, because Peter had to learn manners, and plus, his mother would kill him.
"Hey, Pete, you don't want Mom to hear that, do you?" Nathan patted him on the head and crouched next to the track. "Come on, I'll help you take this apart."
"No, she's being a gaping-"
And the door swung open, once again, and Angela Petrelli heard it.
And Nathan laughed, because he couldn't contain it anymore, even though he knew it was wrong.
And Peter cowered as close as he could to the floor, because Mom was threatening to tell his father, and yelling at Nathan, and threatening to tell his father again, and threatening another two weeks of grounding, and talking about calling Jay's mom, and then completely calming down and leaving the room.
That was the scariest thing to Peter, because now he really knew that his mom wasn't any of those things, and that he hurt her feelings. So the whole time that he and Nathan deconstructed the track, Peter was crying, and he swore that he would never swear again.
(Until he turned 18.)
The End.