Sorry for taking so long to update. I hope y'all are still interested. Thanks for reading.
That was lovely. Such a nice girl.
"I guess."
I do wish we could find a more convenient place to shop. It takes too long to get there now.
"It's only a twenty minute drive."
Twenty minutes is too long. After all, we have to find one once we get there. And you're never very helpful – you're much too nervous and you make me do all the work.
"What should it matter to you? You enjoy it."
I would enjoy it more if you weren't so picky. You should know I have high standards, but so long as she meets my structural requirements, I am not choosy. You, however, dismiss one after the other to satisfy your fanatical fancies only to go lily-livered once you find her.
"I'm not used to this. You were born for it."
Stupid, I'm just willing to do the things you want to do. We are the same. You want there to be a difference so that you can separate yourself from what you don't understand. That is ignorance – you are learning the power of doing what your mind tells you to do. Just enjoy yourself.
"I do. I—I just don't know if I can help you anymore. What if somebody catches us? I can't – I can't get caught."
We won't get caught. I have help – guidance. I know what we have to do. Now let's go. I'm bored.
…
This place looks nice. Pull over here.
"No, this is too close. Too close to us, we have to keep going."
Nothing is too close if you're careful. I always tell you how to be careful, don't I? Can you dispute that I am thorough?
"No, but-"
But you doubt me.
"NO, I just-"
You doubt the instructions.
"I guess so. I don't understand the point."
Never mind that. Just get out of the car. We'll have to check in soon.
…
Olivia burst through the lab doors in the late-afternoon, folders and pictures spilling out of her overstuffed arms and pleaded, "Peter, Walter, tell me you have some good news on this body, because the rest of the case is going terribly."
Peter walked up the stairs to help carry some of the files threatening to scatter across the floor.
"Well, Walter determined that yellow compound is a vanadium-based organo-ionic complex. As soon as he isolates the compound, he'll probably be able to give you a more concrete formula and an idea of its purpose."
"I guess that's good. Go get him another bagel if it'll make him work faster."
"Yeah, he has already had six and I don't like doing plumbing, so no."
"Then remind him that two girls have been killed in as many days and there are probably more to come."
"I think he knows that, he's been working non-stop since we got called fifteen hours ago."
Olivia was already walking down the stairs to her office as she yelled back in distracted exasperation, "Well he needs to speed up. And what have you been doing all day, other than running to the—"
"Hey," Peter interrupted her loudly, "think before you finish that sentence."
She turned around, mouth agape, trying to conjure up a way to retract her almost insult without anybody noticing, and saw everybody in the lab staring at her with various degrees of confusion and perturbation. So instead of acting apologetic, which probably would've worked, she affected indignation, huffing and slamming her office door shut.
Peter turned, shaking his head and swiped a handful of blood vials off the lab bench next to Walter. He popped them in the centrifuge and closed the lid, punching the button to initiate the swirling machine as he coughed violently into his shirt sleeve.
"You look pale, son," Walter murmured, assuming that look of concerned fixation he had whenever his boy so much as sneezed. It was one of the more disconcerting things he did.
Like he expects me to drop dead if I get a headache. He'll gladly hook me up to a dead guy and electrocute me, but he thinks the world's gonna end if I don't eat breakfast.
"You should take something for your cough," Walter continued. "You risk doing permanent damage to your vocal folds with the chronic irritation."
"Walter, I'm fine, thank you," Peter interrupted him with a pat on the shoulder. It had a patronizing overtone, but thinly veiled was a wary affection and appreciation for even the most disturbing attentions Walter could manage. After all, emotion comes easily, acceptance lags.
When the centrifuge beeped that shrill announcement that it was finished with its latest task, Peter retrieved the vials and held them open-handed towards Walter.
"Do you think you can isolate the compound now?" He almost whispered – an involuntary reaction to Walter's blank-eyed, burdened face. The old man's gaze slowly shifted into focus, landing on the blood samples. "Yes," Walter replied, almost inaudibly. He took the blood and walked over to his table, quietly extracting small quantities of the fluid with his pipette and transferring it to a series of test tubes.
Just like that, everything seemed dark. Peter had largely adjusted himself to Walter's oddities, but the man's sudden, unexpected mood shifts always irradiated any sense of balance he'd gained – like the swing from an ultimate high to a sad silence could still every molecule of his being and chill his congenial ignorance into half-conscious suspicion. More than anyone he had met Walter could unknowingly manipulate his mind. That fragile equilibrium between loving the sweet, bumbling, food fetishist, and loyally distrusting his well camouflaged volatile temper wavered with every cycle of his disorienting emotions.
That is one person I don't know how to work.
"Peter," a tired voice sounded behind him. "He's killed again."
