Be Careful What You Ask For (Closed to Peter)

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Liz walked numbly through the Inn after having spoken with Emma. It was as if her body were on autopilot as her mind couldn't really focus or process anything directly. What it all meant, how she felt, if she was around to see it happen - these questions were like vague fog in her mind that she couldn't quite grasp.

She thought, ever so briefly, that she might find herself in front of Kitty or Piotr's door, but it was Peter's door she came to a stop at. Liz swayed a little as she stood there, staring blankly at the door. She did that for a good five minutes before she was able to will herself to lift her hand and knock. It was a quiet two rap knock.

When the door opened, when she lay eyes on Peter, the numbness seemed to ebb a little. She stared at him silently, then slowly her face began to twist and contort as anguish spread through her features. She didn't move an inch except for her face. Everything suddenly felt intense and Liz stood there, stiff, and started to cry unabashedly. Cried with every fiber of her being.

Comments

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She forced her gaze back to Peter's eyes and she worried her bottom lip thoughtfully. "Would you just be saying that or, um. Would you really mean it?"

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"I wouldn't make a promise I didn't intend to keep," Peter says, extending a pinky finger.

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She bit her bottom lip and he pulled a small smile at the corner of her lips. Liz reached over and pinky-swore with him.

The more she looked at him while smiling, the warmer and wider her smile seemed to get. Then Liz went in for a hug. A big, tight thank you of a hug.

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Peter lets a soft oof as Liz pulled him in, but he didn't mind it. He wrapped his arms around her, too, and squeezed her tight.

He has to bite back the You okay? he wants to ask before finally settling on a "Are you doing better?"

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She lifted her head again to look at him. "... It's hard to stay upset when I'm around you. You're, um. You're good at cheering me up." The smile seemed to linger in her eyes.

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Peter feels a sudden sense of pride at this. It seems silly for him to be proud of being able to cheer his girlfriend up, but this knowledge doesn't stop him from feeling that way, anyway.

"I'm glad," he says. "But I still want you to spend the night."

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Liz felt her heart flip flop which was odd since it wasn't the first time he asked and it definitely wasn't first time they spent over night. It was, however, the first night they would be spending the night in Peter's room. Somehow that felt different.

She shifted on the bed and kissed him. This time it was slower and less frantic, though maybe with a touch of need. Max's betrayal wasn't going to be forgotten easily. At least she wouldn't have to be reminded of him every day.

She pulled back a little and looked at him. "That was just for you." Not some weird payback thing she might have wanted moments ago.

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Peter smiles at her. He was sure that he would be able to commit to not making things weird before he made that promise. But now he was sure that things would be okay. As long as they were okay with Liz.

"You want me to put a sock on the door?" he asks. "That's our Do Not Disturb signal. Me and Alec's I mean."

And before Liz gets the wrong idea:

"It's just for privacy. So he doesn't interrupt us when we're talking."

He doesn't want her thinking that he's ready to do anything with her yet, because even though she says she's fine, he's not entirely convinced she is. And he doesn't want to fool around with her until he's positive.

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She flushed for a moment when he mentioned he sock, but seemed to relax a little when he clarified. "Um. Yeah, sure." She eyed the door to Alec's room, then back to Peter. "Will,um will he be okay?"

Alec seemed rough around the edges but Like knew from experience that didn't tell you much about a person. Not really.

[st_arkintern]

"Yeah, Alec has people he can stay with," he says. Or at least that was the impression he got from their discussion. "When he gets a girlfriend, I might have to crash over at your place sometimes since I think he'll have someone over more then."

Peter pushes himself out of bed and then rummages through the bottom drawer where he keeps his underwear and socks and fishes out a single blue sock. He opens the door just long enough to slip the sock over the doorknob and shut it down behind him.

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She wondered as she watched Peter putting the sock on the door if people were going to think they had sex. She wondered if Kitty was going to say something to them.

Liz sat up, cross-legged on the bed as he fixed the blue sock on the door.

"Does he like someone?" Peter made it sound like he had someone lined up to be a girlfriend already.

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"I don't think so," Peter says, returning back to the bed. "But I don't think he'd tell me if he did anyway."

Alec could be pretty private about those things for some reason.

Peter settles down cross-legged on the bed across from Liz.

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"But, you guys are friends, right?" Maybe it was different for guys than girls, but she and Maria talked all the time. Even Alex listened to 'girl talk' once in a while.

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"Yeah, but Alec's a pretty private guy. I have to ask him about a million questions before he gives me an answer."

Maybe not quite a million, but sometimes it felt like it.

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"But eventually he answers." Which she thought was saying something. She thought of Michael and how Maria often lamented on how he 'didn't talk about his feelings'.

"Do you like having him as a roommate?"

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"Yeah," Peter says. "Other than you, he's probably my best friend here."

Ned was still his best friend at home.

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She smiled at being included in that. She felt the same way about him, though obviously not of Alec - she didn't really know him all that well. Actually, she wasn't sure she had a 'best friend' here like Maria. Maybe it was Kitty, even though they weren't around the same age at all. Could you best friend be your teacher too? Liz wasn't so sure.

"I'm glad you guys get along. He seems like he needs friends. He reminds me of Michael back home."

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"Yeah? What was Michael like?"

Liz tended to talk about Kyle and Max a lot more than she did Michael, for obvious reasons. Peter idly draws a circle on on her knee with one of his fingers.

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"He's, um." She thought about him for a moment. "He comes off as very distance. He doesn't like really talking about himself and he and Maria argue a lot, but that's just because Michael is not a talker and Maria definitely is." Liz couldn't help the fond smile that spread across her features. "He's guarded, but really loyal and he'd do anything for Max or Isabel or Maria."

She paused, her expression faltering just a little. "He didn't have a good time growing up. Max and Isabel were found by the Evans and they adopted them and they're great. Michael... his foster dad wasn't very nice to him. He drank a lot and, um. hit him." She let her eyes move down to Peter's finger on her knee. It would be a lie to say the touch went unnoticed, but at the moment she was just thoughtful.

"He, um. Well, Michael petitioned to be an emancipated minor, so he has his own apartment now and he's doing a lot better." She smiled.

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There are occasionally times where Peter becomes acutely aware of how it might feel like to be the person without the dead parents talking to the person with the dead parents instead of the other way around. This was one of those times. Even though he'd lost his parents and later his uncle, he was sure that the family he had left -- May -- was better than most.

If not for Ben and May, he might have ended up in the same kinda place after his parents died.

"I'm glad he got out," Peter says. "I just wish he wasn't put in that situation to begin with."

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"Yeah, me too." She thought about the first few times she had been around Michael and then now.

"A lot of people think Michael's this like, big jerk with no feelings, but he's actually really sweet. You just have to get through a bunch of walls first."

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"Yeah," Peter says lightly. "Sounds like Alec."

Peter stops tracing circles on Liz's knees and instead redirects his attention back at his girlfriend.

"How long did it take before you and Michael became friends?"

Peter considers Alec his best friend here at the inn, but he was pretty sure Alec didn't feel the same way.

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"He didn't trust me at first. I think - I think he was angry at Max for using his powers to save me." Not really the 'saving' part as much as the alien-involvement part.

"He was especially angry when I told Maria, but she's my best friend and she was there when I was shot and she'd have been more dangerous not to tell than to tell." She stopped because somehow she felt like she was, again, justifying why she included Maria. Of course, Michael wouldn't necessarily object now.

"He stole my journal, actually." She had freaked out. "It was went Topolsky was around, too, so I was really worried she stole it."

Liz shifted a little on the bed. "I think after he read it, he realized I could be trusted." She tilted her head to the side, thoughtful. "But... I think it took a long time for him to realize I considered us friends. I think he's so used to people hating him or whatever that he just assumed we were all putting up with him instead of actually caring."

Even now, she was sure Michael might question if they'd come to help him. "I think after we helped him out with his dad, he figured out we might not just be because he hangs around, you know?"

She didn't know for sure. Like she said, Michael wasn't a sharer.

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Peter doesn't say anything while Liz talks. He just listens and takes it all in because even though he's not friends with any of these people and there's a chance that he's never going to meet them, they're Liz's friends, and on some level, it kind of feels like they're his friends, too.

"What did you do to help Michael with his dad?"

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"He refused to ask for help and was threatening to leave Roswell. We just.. we just tried to remind him he had people here." It had seemed to work. "But, to be honest, I think, um. Max.. and Maria. They helped him the most. He really loves both."

Differently, of course.