"Er," Sylar said articulately at Peter's rude suggestion. It was shocking. Kind of offensive. Funny. Disturbing that Peter sounded so serious and was watching his face so intently. "Peter, I have to live here. And admittedly, I can move and I'm always ready to, but I'd rather not."

Peter cocked his head. "Why would you have to move? Because people know you're having sex up here? Do they think you're a monk or something?"

"No, Peter!" Sylar shook his head, exasperated, trying to disengage himself from Peter's arms around his neck, but Peter didn't cooperate. "Are you… normal? What the hell, Peter? The vid-phone thing was bad enough, but the kind of freak that would-" He didn't get to finish his comment. His neck snapped and wrenched and his last startled thought was surprisingly unsurprised, almost bland: I wonder if I can die from having my head torn off?

Then it was dark and he woke up with the taste of blood in his mouth - a gelatinous blob of the stuff that made him aware that he'd been "dead" a lot longer than the usual second or two that passed before regeneration restored him. He coughed and gagged and spat it out. The rest of his body felt cool and stiff and was only slowly coming back to life. He blinked the grittiness out of his eyes, saw he was in the hall now instead of the bathroom, and started to lift himself from the floor.

He froze though. Peter was sitting a few feet away, cross-legged, with a take-out container in his lap, one next to him and two glasses of wine beside him. Sylar moved nothing other than his eyes, rolling them up in his head to see. Without Peter speaking or even looking at him, the other take-out box scooted across the floor to Sylar, followed a moment later by one of the glasses. Sylar swallowed and wet his lips, then coughed again as his lungs expressed their recently-acquired unfamiliarity with breathing.

He shifted and sat up, then scooted to the opposite wall behind him and pulled his food the rest of the way over. He opened the box: meatloaf, green beans and rice pilaf. He swallowed a few times. He'd lost his appetite. He looked up from under his brows at Peter, who was eating small bites, one at a time, steadily. Almost mechanically.

Sylar had no idea what to say or do. Apologize - but for what? Thank him for the food? Act normal? Demand an apology? Be afraid? Or be angry?

"Peter?"

"Sylar." Peter wasn't looking at him - just studying the middle distance before him, eyes looking a little out of focus.

Sylar swallowed again. He fiddled with the take-out box, opening and closing it, opening and closing it. "What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it. You're kind of okay. I kind of like you. That's why I'm still here. Would you let me feed you?"

"What?" It seemed like a bizarre question and it came after the other statements without much change in inflection, like there was nothing unusual to it at all. "Uh… yes. I guess." All he could think was that Peter was proposing a reversal of their roles. No, not proposing - reversing. Peter put his food aside and walked on hands and knees over to Sylar's side, taking the box out of his hands and opening it. The plastic ware was taped to the top of the box along with a napkin in a plastic sleeve. He ignored them, pinching off a piece of meatloaf and raising it to Sylar's mouth.

Sylar took it from his fingers carefully, not sure how he was supposed to do this. Was he supposed to act all begging and solicitous like Peter had? The enthusiasm wasn't there so he just ate it as matter-of-factly as he could. Peter didn't draw back his hand immediately. There was ketchup sauce on his fingers. Sylar leaned forward and licked them tentatively. Peter turned his hand to make it a little easier and Sylar cleaned the sauce from them.

He looked at Peter to gauge if he was doing right, but Peter still wasn't looking at him. He just picked up a green bean and offered it. So Sylar ate in silence, feeling a bit silly, until finally Peter took a deep breath, blinked and set aside the food. He leaned forward, head down and put his arms around Sylar, scooting in. He didn't quite hug him. It was more like he was asking very determinedly for a hug, or miming one around Sylar's body, but only inadvertently touching him. Sylar drew back a little, not sure what was going on.

Peter shrank from him at that withdrawal and bent at the waist. He drew away slowly and curled on his side, turning to face away, all in silence.

Sylar stared at his weird behavior. He still had no idea of what to say or do, but he had a distant urge, an instinct probably, that Peter was showing he was hurt and needing to be comforted. It made no sense at all. Peter had been the one to lash out for whatever reason, after all. Sylar sighed and looked around. He could see an empty grocery sack on the floor of the kitchen. Obviously, things had arrived and even been put up. Peter was still naked, but he no doubt could have appeared as anyone he wanted to the staff, clothed or not.

He looked back at Peter, who was still curled in on himself and perfectly quiet. Sylar sighed again, still feeling unsure of what he was supposed to be doing. Finally he decided to follow that vague instinct and he reached out to put his hand on Peter's back. Peter flinched and did nothing else. Sylar rubbed him and said haltingly, "Come… come here?"

Peter turned, still wordless, and crawled into Sylar's lap, hugging him like a baby monkey might its mother, clutching Sylar's sides. He was awful big for it, so after a moment he ended up kneeling, legs straddling Sylar's, which were together, and arms folding in front of himself, head down, as he pressed against Sylar's chest.

A few moments passed in silence until Peter finally shifted and relaxed just a little. Sylar looked at his food, set off to the side. He called it to himself and tore off another bit of meatloaf. He offered it to Peter, who took it solemnly then sucked on his fingers more than was really necessary. He fed him a little more before Peter sat up and did the same in return, offering Sylar the last piece. He took it and watched Peter close the container. Neither of them had eaten anything of it the other did not feed them.

"What are we doing here?" Sylar asked, still confused.

"We're making up," Peter said, folding himself on Sylar's chest again.

Sylar sighed and put his arms around him. "I… Peter… I don't even know what I did."

He felt Peter tense and then relax, take several deep breaths, and then he said, "Don't call me a freak. I know I'm not normal. I'm sorry. I wish I was. I really… really wish I was."

Sylar snorted. "I'm told there's a shot that can give you that. Strip you of all your powers."

Peter shook his head. "That wouldn't help."

"Well… okay." He stroked Peter's back. "What would help?"

"We've got to stop Nathan. We've got to kill him."

Sylar didn't say anything right away. Nathan had been a pain in the ass all right, but honestly he'd thought more along the lines of forcing Nathan to his will than outright killing him. The man was the president, after all. Third term and nearing fourth, admittedly, but no one else had been able to wield the power of those with abilities. The second election had been marred by deaths and disasters, but most people believed Nathan had won it fairly.

The last one had been completely invalidated - two candidates were shown to have abilities (which stripped them of the rights of citizens, such as voting or running for office) and another had been propped up by a cadre of specials. After the ballots were finally cast, the tallying system was discovered to be corrupted and attempts to form a physical assembly of the electoral college for a hand vote failed repeatedly.

Theoretically, legally, they should have another election, but even the Supreme Court had agreed it should be put on hold until measures could be taken to ensure such an election would be valid. While the more optimistic of the citizenry imagined these measures would be implemented soon, most didn't much care, being swept along by the cultural revolution that was swamping not only the US, but the world.

It had been the loss of the southern California coast that had really done it for everyone. One man with an ability had formed a cult of personality around himself, then become pissed about being jilted by some poor woman he'd been stalking. So he'd activated the San Andreas fault, split off a sizeable chunk of the continent and caused worldwide tsunamis, volcanic upwellings and tremors everywhere else. His single act of pique had killed over a million people.

Samuel Sullivan. He'd been Peter's first great foe. Sylar patted Peter's back, thinking of the power Peter had even now, to break the world - Samuel's power. And what power he must have when he stood surrounded by Nathan's goon squad. It was double the size of Samuel's cult, after all… a frightening thought, even to Sylar.

The incident with Samuel was one of many that had come to the public eye in mostly unvarnished infamy, told true and simple. Sylar was sort of sorry they hadn't needed to lie. All they'd needed to do was tell the truth about those with abilities and everyone, even many of those with abilities, had agreed they had to be controlled.

The injection that stripped abilities was not, however, disclosed. Instead, they came up with all these other elaborate protocols that amounted to slavery and within a few years, as the program was rapidly expanded to include criminals and the homeless and illegal immigrants and various other classes of undesirables, the public began calling it exactly what it was.

And so Nathan was still in office and the world was changing with frightening speed. Sylar hadn't thought, didn't think, that eliminating Nathan would cure the problem. Instead, since Nathan seemed to have such a good grip on things, he'd thought just to enslave him in turn and leave it at that. Ruling the world meant you had to turn the administration of large parts of it over to other people. Nathan seemed like an able enough flunky. All the man could do was fly, after all. It was a ridiculous, limited ability.

Sylar shrugged. He could always find another flunky. "Yeah, okay. We can kill him. Do you want to do that right now, or after lunch?"