Summary: He is everything but fine. Set after 3x09 "Marionette".
A/N: You have permission to call me an evil bitch. I apologise in advance to you, Reader. This story seized a hold of me and just wouldn't let me go.
Extra notes: Inspired by the Peter thread at TWoP. Not beta'd. Set right after 3x09 "Marionette". You guys need to start writing more sick Peter fics ASAP, because when I don't have any to read ... this happens.
Purple Never Goes Out Of Style
It takes Peter a few days to notice the bruising.
The blemish is small – a smudge of faint purple and dark black.
He notices it that night in the shower, as he is washing Olivia's anger, her resentment, and her disappointment down the drain – the words still reverberating in his ears. "I don't want to be with you." You are a bad person. I wish I had never met you.
The sight of the mark sends a spike of confusion throughout his body, from his chest through his lungs to his fingertips. It is a sudden respite, a brand new sensation. He eats it up.
Feeling oddly coy, Peter lets his fingertips run lightly over the small discolouration. It is a proud mark, an angry mark. It sits boldly beneath the tiny pinprick on his left arm – that arm – and a cynical grin tugs at his frowning lips.
Wouldn't it be just so fitting if that needle had been infected? It could turn septic. He could die.
Grinning, Peter shuts off the shower with the forceful turn of a newly empowered palm.
He leaves the little bruise alone.
Olivia's voice still drills at him in his head, demanding, harsh, battering his ears.
Let it do what it will.
Nothing will make this right.
It has been a week and a half and they are in the car. He and her. Peter and Olivia.
She drives them with a silent frown. She nibbles at her bottom lip, on occasion, a sure sign that she is upset. Peter wants to lean over and bite it off.
He lets his eyes slide lazily off Olivia's smooth, perfect face, and out the right-hand window. The world whips past him in a hurry, in a frenzy that he no longer feels. His eyelids are heavy, and eyeballs dry, and that may or may not have absolutely everything to do with her.
She hasn't spoken to him in half an hour. He's beginning to wonder if she ever will again.
They are ten minutes away from the suspect's house.
Running his right hand down the length of his left arm, wishing he were running it down hers, he fiddles with the loose, rough hem of his sleeve.
He cock feels suspiciously engorged, his jeans a spot too tight. He just may have a bit of an erection. Peter doesn't really know what to think of that.
He leans back in the seat and continues to fiddle. She'll never look.
The second bruise is worse.
He stands there – back straight, neck tilted – in the active Harvard laboratory. He is a frozen man.
He was, but a few moments ago, busy packing away used beakers, cleaning them up so that Astrid didn't have to. He was being helpful. He was being kind. He had gone to pull up his sleeves.
There it was.
Large – not like the other one. This bruise is deep, and Peter's eyes follow it, tracing downwards from his right wrist to the inside of his elbow and then over and around to the other side. It is a mixture, a careless splatter, an angry attack, of blacks and purples and small flecks of Prussian blue.
And it was not there this morning.
Peter stares at it, stuck. He is stopped in the centre of that busy room, and he is invisible, eyes fixed on a spreading problem that he no longer understands.
There is a crash behind him, and he jolts, yanking his sleeve back over the damning evidence. Someone calls his name, and he turns – suddenly opaque, suddenly real – and everything is tilting, tilting, tilting and Peter's breath catches in his throat.
A moment passes, and then the world rights itself again, rips him back into reality. He does not tip. He is set back atop of his two crumbling, stone feet ... and he is fine.
He is everything but fine.
It is four weeks and three days since it happened. Since she happened.
Two chances with the same girl and he couldn't even get it right once. There's a joke in there, somewhere.
Peter's biceps twitch, hiding just out of sight – tucked away underneath tarnished skin – and in a sudden burst of frustrated adrenaline he slams the filing drawer shut. It screeches harshly and braces with a smash. And while it is loud, it doesn't help.
He can see Olivia's head turn from the other side of the room but he just doesn't care.
She has been nice to him all day, so quiet, so gentle, so sweet – so Olivia. The old Olivia. The one that he misses so much he cannot sleep. Cannot breathe, cannot smile. Cannot live.
The one that he needs.
And that somehow makes it worse.
He stares at her from across the room, eyes boring into her, daring. Refusing to look away.
Let her think it's because of her.
Let her think it's because all he wants to do is shove her against the wall, panties hanging off one ankle, fucking her until she can't speak. Fucking her until he cannot hold on anymore, teeth sinking into her shoulder, spilling into her with a rough shout.
But he has a headache. He is irritated, he is tired ... and he is so sick of this case. And it has nothing to do with her.
He can hear Walter shouting something, excitedly, from over by the blackboard and his fists clench. He can feel the anger pounding in his ears, rushing against his eardrums, threatening him – deafening him.
Someone's going to get hurt today.
He isn't sure who.
It is a Friday afternoon, and Peter wakes up in a hospital.
He is lying – back flat – on an uncomfortable, stifling mattress. And Olivia is holding his hand.
He doesn't know how he got here.
He looks around, tries to regain his bearings, as she shifts by his side, strangely anxious. Strangely scared.
There is a tube coming out of his nose. He can't see where it leads.
Wires are stretching off his chest, winding their way over to a monitor on his left. Another one is attached to his finger. A cuff fitted upon his upper arm ... and lower down, lower down, on top of that terrible bruise – that terrible bruise that they can all see – there is the nastiest tube yet.
He is a machine man now, it seems. He can see that.
He is part man, part mechanical.
No longer really human.
The giggle bubbles out his throat unexpectedly, rushes out his mouth. He can see Olivia, and he can see that Olivia is taken aback. But he can't stop. The sound reverberates around the tiny, cramped hospital room and it just keeps coming.
Walter takes charge, then. He comes forward as Olivia moves back. He brushes Peter's sticky hair off his sticky, sticky, sticky forehead and Peter tries hard to calm down. Tries to breathe.
"It's the fever, son," Walter tells him, his voice caring, kind, gentle – smooth like warm honey – and Peter lets his eyes come unfocussed, his head loll to the side. "It's okay."
They both know it's not okay.
They release Peter the next day. It may be, it will be, a very big mistake. A poor lapse in judgement.
They do not understand.
He lasts twenty-seven hours, and then it all goes to hell.
Trying to lean further forward, Peter's mottled arms tremble uselessly under the weight of his torso. He shakes from head to toe, like a tiny terrified rabbit. His muscles twitching in places that muscle shouldn't exist.
He is retching down his top, slumped against a work bench in the Harvard lab. And what's worse is that he can barely even register, right now, how humiliating that is.
But it is so humiliating.
Walter is scrambling around on the bench above, searching for something, and there is a hand placed gently (uncomfortably, unhelpfully) upon his back. It might be Olivia's.
A container is produced in front of him – a nice gesture. It is far, far too late.
"We're taking you back to the hospital." Olivia tells him, her words nipping at his ear, firm and kind. Cruel.
Please don't, he wants to say, wants to plead with her, wants to cry. Please don't.
I may never come back.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Walter asks him, one day. Finally asks him.
His voice breaks on every word.
Peter is lying on that bed again. In that hospital. He is still tucked under those sheets, and they are always the same colour, always the same feel – rough against his aching, sensitive skin. Tucked just that bit too tight. They hurt.
He has been here for a week.
They say his kidneys are shutting down.
Walter sounds like a terrified child. He is crying, wringing his hands. He is staring straight at Peter with a desperate plea, mouth sunken, cheeks prickly.
Peter loves him, in that instance. Loves his dad like he has never loved Walter before. He wants to reach over and grab him, tuck his head into the older man's chest. Hold on to him forever. Let Walter make everything all right.
He can't handle this.
Peter peers down at himself and tries futilely to will himself away. Tries to escape this feeling, this love. Tries to escape this reality.
But his arms are bare. His chest is bare.
And they are all spattered in it – in that black, in that purple, in that blue. They are covered in it.
Why didn't he tell?
Somehow, throughout all of it, throughout all of this, Olivia has forgiven him.
He does not know why it happened. He did not notice when.
But she has.
She comes every day to see him. She is like clockwork, like time itself. She sweeps into the room like a goddess, a perfect, beautiful angel in her worn black trousers and button-up shirt – he can always feel when she is about to appear.
And she comes. And she sits. And she holds his hand.
He wants to spend the rest of his life with her.
It is during her stay – always – that Peter really feels it. Really feels this illness. Feels this disease.
His kidneys are gone. He can barely move anymore, barely speak. But he has so much to tell her.
She is sat with him again, today. Sadder than before. She is always sadder than before.
She has his left hand clutched in between both of hers, her lips resting softly on top of his thumb, with just a hint of her teeth showing through. They have been like this for an hour.
"I'm so sorry," she whispers, all of a sudden, and she gives him this look – this horrifying look, and her eyes are soaked and her cheeks are a patchy red and he can't.
"Why?" Peter manages to beg, the word barely more than a gasp, barely heard over the sound of her muffled sobs, as her head sinks, defeated, into his comforter. None of this is your fault.
And it is in this moment – in this terrible moment, as his heart begins to pound sharply, uncomfortably, unusually in his chest and his heart monitor blares– that Peter suddenly, desperately, truly does not want to die.
End.