Notes: not mine, no profit garnered. Title and opening quote from Suddenly Appear by Nate Pritts. Peter's career as a college professor is contradictory in canon. Was he a professor? Did he fake being a PhD student? Who knows, urgh. So in this story, which is definitely AU, I chose this path. I reserve the right to choose differently next time. In this story, Peter is bisexual because in my head, he is always bisexual. Additionally, I've moved around the timeline of Olivia moving to Boston and partnering with John Scott. Thanks to the JAM! and A for beta help.
One word
will change my life, this life I want
changed. I'm bringing you
some healing for the pain I didn't cause.
New sails for the ship, a trajectory
plotted, a course or a destination
& some devices for arresting
the panic.
Peter applied for the adjunct position at Brown because he wanted to show off. It was a masterwork of forgeries and email spoofing and changing his voice on the phone. He even used his real name, real social security number, all of it, to make it harder. If he got anywhere, he'd have a perfect example to sell himself, the whole process. He could brag about it and make money off it, which was the best kind of thing to do.
He was offered the position three weeks before the semester started, presumably because someone else said no. Peter had just spent a hot two months in Iraq and he wanted the break. He took the position.
Peter was barely 24 as classes started but all the students, even the ones only 2 or 3 years younger, looked like wet behind the ears babies. He knew nothing about teaching and he was using the syllabus the last adjunct had left behind. So he went with his strengths, he pretended he knew what he was doing. It had worked so far in his short life when he faked it, mostly.
He wrote a paper, sent it off to be peer reviewed and all the other vetting. He was surprised when they published. He was surprised when the Dean patted his arm in the 8 week review and told him his students seemed to like him and better, were learning from him.
"Hey, Peter," the barista said every morning. Instead of packing his bags and erasing his existence, he smiled back.
It was a nice campus, pretty. A regular paycheck, people who smiled when they saw him. He had an apartment and a car. He got a second paper published, just for fun, and deciding to take grading the midterms seriously. He was surprised again that he enjoyed it. Of all the things he'd done in his life, and there had been quite a few jobs so far, this one seemed to be the best.
There was, then, Raisa, an actual Russian ballerina. She mostly taught classes at two exercise studios but she performed in a few community productions. He went to three of them and waited for her after the show. She let him pick her up after she taught classes. She hated her car and called it cheap and shitty. The first Russian he learned was how to say cheap and shitty.
Raisa swore under her breath in Russian all the time. When she brought him home to her apartment the first time, she muttered that he better not insult her housekeeping since his was shit. He told her he was pretty good at keeping his apartment clean and he wasn't judging her place. Her eyes widened and she smiled. "What else have you learned in Russian?"
"Not much," he said. She talked in her sleep when they slept at her apartment, it wasn't the greatest way to learn. He doubted "march to the sea, march to the carrots" would be useful in the future.
She ran her hand down his naked back one night, told him to get a tattoo. "Nope," he said. He turned over and grabbed both her wrists with one hand. She had a feral grin. She struggled and smiled and feigned biting him. She underestimated his strength, consistently. She saw him jog in his carefully aged MIT shirt, she didn't know how long he'd been fighting. He learned to fight when he was a chubby, sickly kid with a crazy dad, he kept hitting as hard as he could until someone pulled him away. He'd gotten a little smarter and more strategic.
He was never really fighting with Raisa. He held her wrists and she pressed herself against him, legs wide. She kissed his neck, freeing her hands to grab at his dick.
She was fun.
She paced around his apartment, muttering in Russian about what kind of professor didn't have his diplomas up. Peter watched her gnaw at the edge of her fingernail and turn back to look at him. He said, "My diplomas are on display at the office, dear."
She shrugged and started stretching. He liked her hair, it was only long enough to be a tight small bun at the base of her neck. They ate Thai food on the floor of her apartment and she told him about her ballet teacher back in Moscow. He wondered if she was making it up. They were interesting stories at least.
He looked young and his students kept coming to his office hours, hitting on him. He grew a beard. Raisa didn't like it, but she kissed him anyway. She said he should let his hair grow out, be a wild man.
One day, he woke up from a nightmare and realized he was worried, genuinely worried that he would get caught. He pressed his fingers against the meat of his palm to the point of pain in his knuckles. He wasn't the type to settle down. It shouldn't have been seductive to go home to the same place, to drive the same route in his car every day, be a regular at the coffee shop. He liked all of it. He was also grinding his teeth in his sleep.
He published another paper and the Dean said he should apply for grants. Peter didn't want to risk being discovered, the feds would be tougher to scam. Foundations might be even harder. He said, "But I do all this for so little money, just making you look good."
The Dean smiled but he said, "Grants make us look better, Peter."
Instead of blowing town, Peter tried to shore up his fakery. He'd done a great job, he needed to do an even better one if he wanted to stay. He apparently wanted to stay.
One day, to scare himself and convince himself to run away, he drove to St. Claire's. He sat in the parking lot and didn't go in. He drove home and started grading his finals. He even got them in early. He looked around his tiny office, where he didn't have any diplomas displayed, and grabbed the framed picture of his mother from off his desk. He should pack it up and run. He didn't know why he wasn't running. He rubbed his jaw, the places where it ached.
Instead he stayed in his apartment and wrote out his own syllabus, picked a different, cheaper textbook. He skimmed a text on teaching methods, browsing at the library.
Two nights before New Year's, he woke up at 2 am. He watched Raisa pacing in the half light, grabbing things of hers, putting them in a bag. She saw he was awake. She said, "I'm leaving. This was never very serious, you know. My name's not even Raisa."
He said, "Have a good year," as she was closing the door.
The second day of 2003, he went over to her apartment with a bag of her things she'd missed when she was packing to go. He was hoping to get a few things of his from her apartment. But he pushed the unlocked door open at her place and everything was gone. She had the right idea. He should have been doing that. Instead he went home again, put the bag by the door in case she came by, knowing she wouldn't.
He smoked on his porch. He'd stopped going out there once the cold really set in, but stress made him smoke and he wasn't allowed to do it in his apartment. He cared about his deposit. Peter scratched at his palm.
Someone knocked on the door and Peter went to the door. A millisecond after opening the door, Peter knew he was talking to a cop. He intentionally relaxed his jaw and shoulders. The cop said he was FBI agent Charlie Francis. Unfortunately, Francis looked smart. Peter preferred his cops stupid.
"What's going on?" Peter went with confused concern.
Francis held out a picture of Raisa, a recent one. "You knew her, right?"
"Did something happen to Raisa? Is she in trouble?" These were genuine questions, Peter could be genuinely worried.
"Why do you think she would be in trouble?"
"Well," Peter said. "When she broke up with me, she said her name wasn't even Raisa."
"You didn't find that weird?"
"I guess, I thought she was just trying to make it clear how little I knew her. We weren't that serious. I liked her, a lot, but." Peter let that trail off and looked at the picture again. "Is she okay?"
"She seems to have disappeared," Francis said.
"And the FBI is investigating?" Peter picked up the bag by his door. "I tried to return these things to her a few days ago, and her whole apartment was cleaned out. Do you want this? Would it help you find her?"
"Sure," Francis said, taking the bag. "Tell me how you met."
Peter smiled, genuinely, at the memory. He leaned in the doorway, still not letting the FBI man in. He said, "I get coffee at the place on the corner, which is right next to one of the studios where Raisa worked. She's beautiful and not a student or staff at Brown, so I asked her out."
"You work at Brown," Francis said.
"Yeah, I don't like to mix work and other."
"To your knowledge, she worked at the exercise studio -"
"She worked at two," Peter said. He told the agent both places' names and watched him write them down. "I know she did because I picked her up from work at both of them. She danced in a few shows, do you want to know where those were? I saw them." Peter gave the names and watched Francis write those down.
"You two weren't serious but you were together for nearly three months," Francis said.
Peter shrugged. "Yeah. I hope she's okay, do you think she's okay?"
"Not upset she dumped you?"
Peter shrugged again. "I was a little, I guess, but she's pretty, uh, mercurial. I like that sometimes. She got tired of me or whatever happened, it comes with the territory."
Francis nodded, nearly smiled. He said, "Mercurial."
Peter said, "Do you need anything else?" He didn't press it, people with nothing to hide weren't scared of spending time with the FBI.
"No," Francis said. "Just, did she ever ask you about yourself? Your family?"
Peter clenched his jaw. "You mean my father, right?"
"Did she?"
"No. I told her my mother was dead and my father was in jail, we didn't talk about again after our first date," Peter said. He let himself show a little anger.
"He's in a institution for the criminally insane," Francis said.
"Yeah," Peter said.
"Thanks for your help," Francis said, as he turned and left.
Peter packed his bag. He started scanning his bookshelves for things to keep. He didn't keep books, he thought. The next day he got up at his normal time, dressed for class, got a coffee and drove to campus. He taught a class and supervised lab time. He stayed in the lab and continued an experiment he'd been working on for another paper.
He went home and ordered take out, then turned on his tv. He didn't want to do anything in particular, he walked around the box on his living room half full of books.
He wanted to stay in Providence.
In a week, he'd filled one box with books. He'd unpacked his bag because he wanted the shoes in there.
Francis was waiting by Peter's car. FBI man wore rather nice sunglasses. Peter said, "What happened?"
"We found her body, I'm sorry." He handed a picture to Peter, Raisa on a coroner's slab. Peter closed his eyes and shoved it at the man.
"What happened to her?"
"Her name was Raisa, actually. Different last name than she gave you. She was working for the Russian Mafia. She was supposed to use you to get to your father, but it looks like she didn't. It seems like she got bored of the assignment, wanted out of the mafia altogether. She did figure out you're just a high school dropout." Francis carefully put away his sunglasses. "She didn't die because of you. She turned down a man who was high up in the organization, he killed her. We managed to catch him, but we're using him as informant."
Peter stared at Agent Francis. He said, "What do you want from me? I haven't done anything you can really prosecute me for."
"Fraud springs to mind," Francis said.
Peter smiled. "Brown University isn't about to ruin its reputation admitting they had a high school dropout teaching their privileged little students and publishing peer reviewed papers. They'd probably just fire me and they'd do that at the end of the semester. Is that what happens here?"
"No," Agent Francis said. "We're going to meet my boss. You'll like him."
