piscesnebula | I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror [ peter + adam ]

It's been a long few months.

For a long time, Peter had been content to rot in that cell, knowing he deserved it. Knowing he was too dangerous to be allowed to live among people. He'd been mostly convinced that he could handle Ted's power, and he'd been wrong. He'd lost control of it, and if it hadn't been for Nathan, the machinations of his mother and Linderman and others would have come true. He would have blown up New York city. Millions would have died. And how did Peter repay Nathan for saving the city? He gave him a lethal dose of radiation and third degree burns over most of his body.

And so, he had wallowed. He'd pushed Elle away when she tried to have some fun with him. He'd obediently taken his pills. Until the man in the next cell over had started chiseling cracks into his confidence in the program: they've been days away from finding that cure for decades, he'd said, this isn't safety, this is a prison. And the wool had begun to fall from his eyes, seeing this place for what it really was.

They'd escaped. They'd used Adam's blood to heal Nathan; the burns had started disappearing before his very eyes, though they hadn't erased any of his guilt. After they'd started to leave the hospital, Elle and the Haitian had been there -- but seconds too late. They'd gotten away, out of the Haitian's radius. Adam had hotwired a car, and gotten them on the road.

Exhausted, Peter had found himself dozing off in the passenger seat, head against the window. His dreams are fitful, full of poisonous radiation and hands slipping out of his grasp. And when he wakes, it's because Adam's pulling into a driveway.

"Where are we?" he asks, voice a rasp.

As Adam speaks, Peter's memory abruptly clutches as the whispers he'd heard muttered while Adam was sleeping. He hadn't remembered them as he'd woken, too warm and comfortable for anything else to distract him, but with that raspy-with-sleep voice had hit his ears, the memory had come back.

How could you. You monster. You'll be the first.

It serves as a reminder that Peter doesn't even know the half of what Adam went through in those cells. He's almost been too afraid to ask questions and dig deeper, because he's paranoid that the real story is much grislier than Adam has portrayed, with all of his light-hearted stories about fucking people to get Star Wars tickets. At the back of his suspicions lingers the question, if they were experimenting on biological weapons, what would they have done to the regenerating man in their cells.

The touch of Adam's hand on his only barely chases those thoughts away.

"Nah. This is nice," he murmurs, muffled against the back of Adam's shoulder, chin propped against bare skin. Peter huffs an almost-laugh. "I'm not exactly skilled at platonic bed-sharing either."

He's too much of a worrier to fully enjoy the moment with so many other concerns in mind, but he wants to take just... five minutes. Maybe a couple more. Five minutes to enjoy this. And then he can shift into world saving mode.

"How'd you sleep?" he asks, dark hair tickling the back of Adam's neck. "You were... talking in your sleep a bit. Bad dreams?

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