tampered | Log; Ongoing

Log; Ongoing

When; Thursday, October 16th
Rating; PG, unless Claire tries to kill herself in gruesome ways.
Characters; Peter Petrelli

totallyyourhero and Claire Bennet

adamantined
Summary; Cupcakes are baked and other things happen.
Log; Peter had never made cupcakes before. Well, apparently he had when he was in the City before, but he couldn't remember that so as far as he was concerned it didn't count. So he was going to be doing it for the first time with Claire. If what he had heard was any indication Claire was some sort of cupcake making goddess, so he didn't know if he was intimidated by that or glad to be learning from the master.

Either way, he was glad to be spending some time with Claire. He needed to talk to someone and out of everyone here he trusted her the most. Not that Mohinder and Hiro weren't trust worthy, it was just that he was always more comfortable trusting family. At least, family that wasn't his mom. He knew that she loved him but sometimes... she just had a different idea of what was right than he did. So he was coming to Claire with all of this, all of where he had been the past few months and why he had gone there. He wasn't looking for answers exactly but he just needed to let it out.

And Claire would understand, she could understand wanting to be normal but also the responsibility having an ability gave you. Claire was just... the perfect person to talk to about this. Not only that, but she was fun to be with. He could count on her to keep things from getting too serious. So maybe that was a lot of pressure to put on her but the last thing he had asked of her was to kill him, so this seemed relatively small.

"Right, which makes it all okay, doesn't it?" he muttered to himself before knocking on the door to her apartment.

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Maybe there weren't elves under there, but she'd found Mr. Muggles hiding and digging through the bottom of the cupboard once, just after they'd moved in. The animal in question was currently curled up on the footstool in the living room and only looked up to stare at Peter when they walked by. Claire privately thought Mr. Muggles counted as an elf.

"I never joke," she responded, rolling up her sleeves. She'd already started on the batter, because she was impatient, so she just slid the bowl across the counter and said, "Here, you can stir. Try not to get too excited, and don't start eating it until it's in the pan. I'm watching you."

She still had to resist the urge to hug him. Claire was huggy with everyone but with Peter it was always different. He helped her feel safe.

"Right, never?" he asked, arching an eyebrow as he washed up his hands before he started to stir the bowl.

"And how do you know I won't just turn invisible and run off with the bowl?" he said, stirring. He wondered if this was the sort of thing that Claire normally did. If it was he couldn't blame her for wanting to live a normal life. "I mean, other than the fact that I'm obviously waiting for the bowl of icing to do that."

"Well... maybe sometimes. But never about elves! Because elves are serious business." She somehow managed to maintain a look of complete and utter seriousness while saying this, though had to turn away a moment later to hide the fact that she was laughing. Because you can never laugh when you're trying to be serious: it completely ruins the intended effect.

"Because that would be mean and I know where you live and there's no escaping me," Claire pointed out, bringing the tray with all the little individual sections for cupcake-baking over to him, so he could pour. It was a stretch, but she managed to hop up on the counter, watching to make sure he didn't get anything on the floor, so she wouldn't miss the opportunity to laugh. "I mean, you could try, but I would totally hunt you down."

Peter watched practically in shock as she just hopped up on the counter. In the kitchen. His mom would give reprimands if you put your elbows on the table at dinner, let alone do what Claire was doing.

"Yeah, and I've already seen how relentless you can be," he said, concentrating as he tried to pour the batter into the little cups. That was a lot harder than it looked too. A giant glob entirely missed the bowl and fell towards the floor... only to suddenly stop mid air. Smirking a bit he looked up at Claire.

"I guess telekenesis isn't just useful for saving the world."

In Texas they did things a little bit differently. Her mom probably would've had a fit if the counter had been set or something - same with the table - but this was as natural as anything, and she kicked her feet back and forth now and then, stealing bit of batter before scowling as that huge, chocolate glob went toward the floor.

She had visions of Mr. Muggles rushing in from the next room, because he did things like that, but Peter stopping it chased anything like that away. Claire was still stuck in the stage between nonchalance and shock at things like that: it was two parts cool and one part normal. So it's no surprise that's she's grinning when she says, "That's not useful, it's cheating!"

Peter just grinned some more and brought the glob up and placed it into one of the spots in the tin for batter to go. It would probably be easier to do all the cupcakes like that, but that didn't seem to be as fun. It was almost ridiculous to use one of his powers like that, for something so mundane. But maybe that was part of accepting them and learning to deal with them.

"Fine, next time I'll let it hit the floor and that can be one of your cupcakes that gets short changed," he argued, furrowing his brow as he concentrated again on pouring the batter.

"What?" She was practically yelling by now. "No way! It's not my fault you don't know anything about technique." Just because her mother had been showing her how to bake anything and everything since Claire was tall enough to see over the stove - so, basically, not long ago - didn't mean that she should get penalized for Peter's inability to pour batter correctly.

God. What was the world coming to?

"I feel like I shouldn't let you have any for being mean." You're getting pinched, Peter.

Peter was beginning to realize just how serious Claire took her cupcakes. Or how serious she took teasing other people and giving them a hard time. It was a really, really different family dynamic for Peter but not one that he didn't like.

"Look, it's my first time, okay?" he said. "Don't make me ask your mom how much batter you've dropped if she comes here."

"I'll have you know,," she began, somewhat condescending, "that I haven't dropped any to date."

Which was a lie. Once, when she was fourteen, she'd upended an entire pan on top of the kitchen rug. Lyle had laughed at her for like an hour and a half and no amount of punching him in the arm repeatedly had gotten him to stop. Stuff like this... it was something that she did take seriously. Not the action itself but the idea behind it: the need and desire to still be a family, to still be just a teenager, to be normal. This was normal, so she was going to do it.

But Peter's cupcakes didn't look too terrible. They looked miles better than Regulus's had - so did most compost heaps - and she was sure that with some icing, they'd be pretty. "Yours don't look too bad, anyway. For being the cupcakes of a cheater."

It was a good thing Peter was above reading Claire's mind, otherwise he would be laughing for about that long as well while looking rather smug. He was pretty proud of how well he'd done so far though, even if all he had done was stir and pour.

"Fine, do you want me to pour it all back in the bowl and start over?" he asked. "Because I will. I wouldn't want you to eat cheater tainted cupcakes, Claire."

Claire laughed. "Noooooo! This time, I'll just make an exception this one time," she said, slipping off the counter to take the pan from him, so she could slide it in the oven and set the timer. When that was finished, she turned to face him again, realizing, almost immediately, that she had nothing to say. Or that she at least didn't know what to say.

So she just kind of stood there until she decided that the air was too still and she was feeling too awkward. "Sooo...."

Which was totally smooth, too.

Yup, that was a pretty awkward silence there. Peter realized it was probably due to the fact that before now every time they had been together someone's life or the world had been in danger. He felt comfortable around Claire and he trusted her, he just didn't know much about her. Still, Peter wasn't about to let the awkwardness hang on Claire's lame "sooo..."

"So I just spent the last few months locked in a cell at the Company because I thought they could take away my abilities," he blurted out. Which, blurting for Peter meant he said the words almost as quickly as a normal person regularly spoke. Now things were really awkward.

There was a lot of staring. It wasn't so much the amount of awkward silence that made her go all wide-eyed and dumbfounded. It was the fact that someone like Peter would ever trust an organization like the one her father had worked for to do anything without wanting to make his life a living hell first. Noah Bennet had a reason for keeping Claire a secret as long as fate and circumstance allowed.

"Why would you ever let them... how did... I think the phrase locked in a cell says how much you can trust those people," Claire replied, crossing her arms and leaning back against the refrigerator. "They're bad guys, Peter. Why would you even want to have them taken away? Because of... New York?" Well that much was obvious. "I don't think they can do that, you know."

Peter flinched slightly at her she was giving him, mostly because the fact that she was so dumbfounded was a reminder of how dumb he had been to trust the Company in the first place. Still, Peter knew he could be dangerous and they had offered to help.

"Yeah, because of New York," he said, running a hand through his hair and avoiding eye contact. "Because of Nathan and the fact that if you or Nathan weren't there I would have blown up and killed millions of people, Claire. They found me after that and told me they were working on a cure. They gave me these pills in the meantime to stop my powers, like the Haitian does. But they made me feel... I don't know... numb."

Claire pushed her hair out of her face and sighed heavily. She wondered if this was the sort of information she shouldn't be privy to. Her father had told her that he was from a time ahead of her, had and continued to be incapable of telling her, outright, things that she would have wanted to know, had she the ability to ask or wonder about them. Was this that sort of situation? Was this something he should rightfully be telling her?

She wasn't sure, but she still wanted to know. It was something to ask her father the next time this sort of conversation came up, maybe something to ask Mohinder when she could get him by himself.

"But we were there," she reminded him, in that sort of tone which suggests 'We will always be there.' Claire didn't know what happened before or during or after the explosion. She still wasn't sure if she wanted to know, but so long as she could heal she would chase exploding Peters all around the world if she had to. "And you believed them? They probably wanted to experiment on you. That's what they do. They take you away and they ruin everything."

The Haitian had been on her side, had helped her, had helped her father. Claire didn't know specifically if what she was saying was true or not, but regardless of the fact, she'd never be able to trust anyone who worked for those people, who had split her family up the way that it had, who had forced her father to take a bullet to the gut. She couldn't forget any of that and she couldn't forgive it either.

Peter picked up on all the unsaid things that Claire wasn't saying. He wished that he could express how much it meant to him that she was willing to be there for him.

"At that point I think I just wanted so badly to believe them," Peter admitted. "I thought I was supposed to be a hero and I ended up being the villain. I thought I had a higher calling but... if I'm this dangerous I just wanted to be normal."

He wasn't sure what had been more foolish, wanting to be normal or trusting the Company to help make it possible.

"No, they didn't experiment on me," he said. "They just kept me locked up. I think they did want to help me, or at least some of them did. I think Elle did, in her own way."

"Elle is insane," Claire replied, nearly immediately, bypassing all the other things that she wanted to say. "In case you hadn't noticed." She hadn't ever met Elle in person, not yet, not ever if she could help it, but Claire trusted her father, and he had no reason to lie about someone like Elle. It wasn't like what he had done to her mother: he had told her to protect her, this time, rather than kept things from her, like all the others.

Plus, Claire had a brain and it worked, too, and anyone with half a shred of intelligence could tell that there wasn't something altogether correct with the way Elle Bishop conducted herself.

"You aren't dangerous," she finally pointed out to him. Yeah, so she couldn't get hurt. Yeah, so she was the only person who could get close enough to keep him from blowing up. But she wasn't afraid of him. Peter made her feel safe. No one she had ever perceived as a threat had ever made her feel that way. "Things just... happen, but you aren't a bad guy. Don't put yourself on the same level as someone like Sylar."

"I know she is," Peter admitted. He wasn't denying that Elle was a lot bit crazy, he knew that better than probably anyone. But she had tried to help him in her own seriously screwed up way. "But she was raised by the company, can you imagine what that would be like? It's not completely her fault. Her dad just died and I think I can help her..."

Peter shook his head. He didn't want to get in an argument about Elle with Claire. Besides, what she said was true, at least about the fact that he wasn't on the same level as Sylar. He didn't want to hurt people, and that had to count for something.

"I know I'm not like him, but I am dangerous," he insisted. "But I'm getting better at controlling these abilities and if I keep working at it maybe I can be dangerous to places like the Company."

Claire wanted to say that sometimes you couldn't help everyone. That sometimes there were just people out there who were beyond that kind of thing, but she didn't know Elle. She only knew what her father had told her, only knew that Claire could have become something like that had her father not been the man she was. She was lucky. She was fortunate. "I can imagine," she eventually said, crossing the room to come stand next to him, leaning across the counter.

She looked up at him, somewhat unsure. "If I can help, I don't know how, but if I can..." She didn't need to finish that.

There was something nice about Claire being close and wanting to help him. Claire made him feel like a hero, like a real hero who could do just about anything that he needed to. She also made him feel cared for, like... family.

"Hugs are a good start," Peter admitted, giving her a smile and spreading his arms out.

Claire knew she was good at hugging, at least. For a moment, she thought about saying something smart, just to be silly, but she decided not to, wiping her hands off on her apron and hugging Peter tightly. He always made her feel like she was a part of something, like she was important, like she could help even if she had no idea where to begin. It was important to her, and so was he.

"Hugs I can do," she said. Simple. Matter-of-fact. She could be there. He could count on her.

"Hugs you're good at," Peter said, hugging her back tightly.

When Peter had first learned that he had a niece he had been upset that his parents had kept that from him. Part of him understood why they would do something like that even if he could understand their reasons for doing it. In the end though, he was glad that Claire had been raised by someone else. Peter loved his parents but he knew that there was no way Claire would have turned out like she had if she had been raised amongst the Petrelli family.

"No wonder you want to be normal," Peter told her. "You get hugs and back cupcakes with your family. I'd want that too if I were you."

Claire pulled back and looked up at him, serious for a moment and then sliding into something more along the lines of joking. "Are you saying you weren't hugged enough as a child, Peter?" she asked, trying to keep her tone light. Claire was interested in that kind of an answer, because she had her own opinions about Angela Petrelli and what being hugged by her was like. And Claire had always been hugged, for as long as she could remember. It was strange to think that a family could ever exist without it.

That was a really hard question for Peter to answer. How much was enough? He certainly never doubted his parents' affection for him but they weren't exactly huggers. Or physically affectionate at all, really.

"I... always knew I was loved," he said, saying the worlds slowly and making sure that it came out like he meant it.

It was entirely likely that Claire and Peter's situation had been entirely different growing up. When Peter had been dead in the Petrelli mansion, Claire had seen his mother's grief, she'd seen what it had done to her, so there was no doubt in Claire's mind that Angela Petrelli loved her son. Families were just different, and Claire respected it.

"That's all that matters," she said, stepping away finally and leaning back against the counter again. "My dad has done things that I don't agree with, but I know that he did it because he loves me. Parents are weird."

"Yeah, it makes me want to say I'd never do anything crazy like that with any kids I might have but I'm sure our parents said that too," Peter said. Of course, it was hard to imagine his parents as anything but his parents so who knew what they did when they were younger. Well, he did have something of an idea and part of him knew he could probably travel back in time and see what they were like, but the idea of time traveling was still a bit scary to him.

"I think I like this concept of families giving hugs though," he added with a smile. "Or maybe it's just the hugs you and your family gives. Is your dad around, I could hug him and see how that goes."

Claire paused.

Well. Had she been speaking, she would have paused. There was something she wanted to say regarding the idea of parents not doing anything crazy to their children, but her brain was stuck on the mental image of Peter trying to hug her father and the kind of expression that would end up on the latter's face.

"I don't know... what would happen," she said, actually finding herself incapable of laughing in the face of such devastating shock. "I think the world might explode."

"I've had enough of exploding for a while," Peter said, rather amused at how stunned Claire seemed to be. Was it that weird? Peter was the brother of Claire's biological father, so that practically made he and Noah brothers, right?

"So I guess your dad is safe from sneak hugs for now."

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Log; Ongoing

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You need to not stay up so late, Mary. So sayeth Di.

yeah 1130 am is probably not a good bedtime. >>

No, that is a nap time.

but D:

Not buts, earlier sleepytimes.

okay fine ._.

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