Warnings: Slash. OT3. The wildly improbable Peter/Hiro pairing (eventually). Spoilers for 2nd Volume. Potentially appallingly written Adam!POV!.
Set: Post 2nd Volume finale.
Songlist: Sigur Ros, Sæglópur

Day Seven
Adam

When the world stops moving, Adam does not let go of Peter’s arm immediately. He speaks before opening his eyes, into darkness, the material of Peter’s shirt clenched in his fingers, embarrassingly tight.

“So I was right,” he says finally, searching the silence for even footing.

“Right?” Peter asks, sounding, as he always does, extremely reluctant to engage Adam in any conversation.

“About the mind reading.” Passion creeps into his voice and he unclenches his fingers. “It’s a beautiful talent, Peter. Such a perfect, sublime little skill…so useful, too, I’d imagine…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Adam opens his eyes. They’re in a corridor, a long, darkened corridor with stone walls. Confusion gives way to understanding the longer he looks: a church. It’s incongruous and delightful, like a murderer crying sanctuary. He wonders if he shouldn’t try it, some day.

“What are you so happy about?” Peter asks, drawing Adam out of his thoughts. There is surprising, but quite pleasing ring of pugnacity in Peter’s tone and question, so Adam turns to face him with something like anticipation. The travel through the dark and the material of Peter’s shirt has left him with a certain viciousness in his mouth that he is anxious to be rid of.

“Well, Peter…you can’t deny this is very…picturesque.” Adam waves a hand towards the dark stone walls and the low, arched ceiling. “Even gothic. Though I would guess”—he traces a finger down the wall, as though he is inspecting for dust—“that it was built after the gothic era, from the architecture—”

“If Ando dies while you’re examining the architecture—”

Adam raises an eyebrow. For some reason, the interruption annoys him; he wipes his mouth in a gesture of frustration which immortality has made hard to unlearn.

“Hiro’s friend is fine,” he tells Peter bitingly, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Screaming echoes, my dear Peter—and churches have wonderful acoustics.” He cocks his head to the side in the wonderful silence that follows; like releasing a breath, Adam suddenly he feels calm again. “Now,” he says, pleasantly. “After you.”

There is a pause before Peter moves, but Adam is feeling patient, relief still pooling in his chest. He even manages a show of obedience, mainly for his own amusement, following Peter with an affected little down-tilt of the head and rehearsed shuffling.

“I hate you,” Peter announces to the corridor ahead, and they keep walking.

“Then why bring me along?”

Really, it’s hard not to smile when Peter’s eyes flicker like that.

“Because it’s Sylar,” Peter answers finally, reluctantly. “Because I need back up. Because…because I’d rather risk you than Hiro.”

Adam almost laughs: honesty surprises him, these days—especially from Peter.

“Is that so? And I thought we’d shared so much.”

Peter doesn’t say anything, and Adam has to swallow a barbed comment. He’s not a fool; he long ago learnt to read silence better than speech, and he knows Peter’s lack of comeback isn’t a meaningless lack of quick thinking. No; Adam knows he’s running out of time—days, if his guess is correct. One month…but which? 30 days has September…why didn’t he ever think to ask what month it was? For all he knows, limbo might only last 28 days. And as much as he hates it, as much as he flinches away from suddenly feeling, it’s a chance—an opportunity. Adam will be an opportunist till the day he dies, and the sad fact is that there are few opportunities for young upcoming manipulators in the grave.

“What are you thinking?” Peter asks, forcing Adam from his thoughts yet again. His tone makes the question much less pleasant than the words imply; Peter’s face is twisted with suspicion, the furrows of his brow barely visible in the low light. “What are you planning?”

Oh, what a difference a verb makes! Adam fights back a smile.

“Why don’t you just read my mind?” he suggests, watching Peter’s expression closely. “Find out for yourself?”

“I told you, I don’t—” The empath breaks off, breathing loud in the sudden silence. He looks shaken. “I can’t,” he amends it to after a second. “Your thoughts are jumping around too much.”

Adam doesn’t answer immediately, because it takes him a moment to understand the situation and the expression on Peter’s face. Limbo is an odd state to be in; emotionless— more so than usual—and sometimes when Adam swallows he can taste earth. Far worse than the small, little physical discomforts, however, is his isolation from intuition, his quarantine from humanity. Concepts that were foreign but easy to grasp are now totally alien, and it makes it hard for him to measure his taunting—pouring a cup of water on the sand and testing for dampness with gloves on. He would tear them off, except he knows that this is preferable, infinitely preferable to being the weak, frightened, needy boy he becomes if he is allowed to marry sensation to memory. No: let his grave remain ghostly, the dirt remain an after-taste; he will make do anesthetized rather than feel the full extent of his injuries. They would cripple him, but he can work blind; it isn’t so hard to figure out the expression on Peter’s face, after all. Frailty. Adam attacks.

“Would you like me to let them settle?” he offers innocently. “Here—try reading my mind now!” and before Peter can answer, Adam closes his eyes and thinks of the crudest thing he can. There is a hilarious pause before Peter shoves him, hard, and he is forced to blink his eyes open.

“What’s wrong with you?” Peter spits out, genuinely disgusted, and for once, Adam is too distracted to give a wry response. They continue walking down the corridor in silence, and Adam pulls up scenario after scenario in his head, adding details with every step.

A darkened, red-tinted room, he decides, choosing the colour most people associate with lust. A long leather couch—a couch, not a bed, because a bed implies domesticity and Peter isn’t quite house-trained yet. And on the couch…himself, as he knows he looks, as he has seen himself in the mirror, every portion of his body that has once been wounded and subsequently inspected re-imagined flawlessly, blood-free and pale against the dark upholstery.

“Stop it,” Peter growls, and Adam stops walking suddenly, almost taken by surprise.

“I beg your pardon?” he tries, letting a bit of a smirk play around his mouth—Peter may deny it, but Adam knows he looks good smug. He stealthily amends his fantasy to include this factor, and Peter physically jerks at the addition, spinning around and grabbing onto his forearms with unnecessary force.

And Peter’s there too. Adam takes a certain self-satisfied pleasure in the mapping of his body, cramming the image with as many details as he can and knowing each one will be a knife of embarrassment, of anger, of arousal. Oh yes, Peter is there as well, on the couch that suddenly doesn’t seem so long, or so big, when there are two bodies on it, entwined, chest against chest, Peter’s hand braced against the swelling armrest so he can loom over Adam and take in every detail of his nakedness, his vulnerability, the sensuality of his black-rimmed eye and the slash of red across his mouth, blood spotted just beneath his lip and over his cheek—

Pain derails Adam’s thoughts: his back meets the wall bruisingly hard, his head knocking back against the plaster. Peter glares at him, face millimetres away, angry and uncontrollable and almost moving in the sheer strength of his fury.

“Stop it right now!”

“Oh, why should I?” Adam asks. “Why should I? That’s how you like it, isn’t it, Peter?”

And before he can answer, Adam hits him, full in the face, an open-handed slap that makes him stagger backwards where Adam finishes the job. Peter crumples after the second blow, eyes shuttering closed—out cold.

Peter, for all his thinness, is bizarrely heavy and difficult to drag. He also comes close to waking several times, frustrating Adam beyond measure as he is forced to pause and gauge whether or not this is a false alarm, or whether he needs to deliver another swift punch to Peter’s oddly delicate face.

“Hush,” he coos, trying to disguise the biting impatience in his tone as he fingers open the first door he finds singlehandedly. “Hush, hush, love. It’s alright. Never let it be said that I do not protect what is mine.” The room’s empty, predictably, so he drops Peter, places a half sarcastic, half convincing kiss on his forehead and begins rifling through drawers. It takes him a few precious minutes to find a pen in an unlocked draw and some paper in the wastebasket. Once he’s finished, he pins the note to Peter’s shirt lapels before leaving him there, closing the door softly behind him and starting down the hallway again.

“Parlay!” Adam calls out as he walks, theatrically, remembering another era with both fondness and derision. “Parlay, sir!”

He has not gone too far before a voice answers.

“Parlay?” it repeats. “Parlay? I don’t think you understand your situation…sir.” The politeness is a blatant mockery, not the way Adam’s is, but different, a cold sneer sliding along the words. “Allow me to explain. You’re a lamb. A lamb, bleating uselessly at a wolf. And I just can’t wait to get my teeth around your throat!”

Abruptly, the corridor is no more—the space has opened up into a small but comparatively spacious room. It isn’t until he crosses the threshold that he realizes the corridor behind him ends in a doorway, one that slams behind him with predictable force. The light fixture shakes, casting a strong, white light into his face that soon gets so impossibly bright its source cannot be natural. When he takes another step, a wind picks up about him, deafening him and reducing his march to a staggering limp. After a moment Adam gives in and stops walking, closing his eyes after another second—refusing to be cowed by such theatrics.

“The watchmaker,” he remembers aloud. After a second, Adam sticks out his hand with his eyes still closed, mockingly. “I am very pleased to meet you, Mr…Sylar, is it?”

There is a growl—animalistic and uncouth—before his hand is slapped to the side by some supernatural force and Adam reluctantly opens his eyes. A familiar figure stands before him, expression murderous—which is also familiar—and totally unaffected by the storm surrounding him.

“Mr Sylar?” Adam repeats, amiably, almost yelling in order to be heard over the wind. “My name is Adam Monroe. I believe you’ve been trying to kill me.”

The man sighs, and the room is suddenly calm again.

“Talk fast.”

Adam decides to take this advice. “This feud between us is futile,” he begins, earnestly. “Surely you must see our efforts would be put to much better use were they directed together, against the many enemies we have in common.”

Sylar seems to genuinely consider his proposition, but clearly sarcasm is too deeply ingrained because after a moment he tilts his head to the side and drawls, apathetically, “But I suppose you want me not to kill your friends?”

“I’ll admit I’ve gotten attached,” Adam concedes, a little coldly. “But I hardly think you’re in a position to comment, Mr. Sylar. Peter Petrelli mentioned a certain Dr. Suresh…?”

“He’s useful,” Sylar defends, and Adam allows himself a smile.

“As are Peter and Hiro. Do not misunderstand me—I ask only for a little time. And that if…when…they die, it be because I killed them, and no one else. Do I make myself clear?”

Sylar does not look pleased. “Remind me why I’m not killing you, right now?”

The million dollar question, as it were. Not for the first time, Adam hopes his assumptions are correct. But then, he has always been an excellent gambler; the higher the risk, the greater the reward. Besides, if it were easy, it wouldn’t be fun.

“Because in sparing me, you gain more than immortality: you gain immortality, and an ally. I think in time you will appreciate how…valuable…I can be. Really, Mr. Sylar, I think you’ll find my demands are few—my own life, of course, and a one month’s grace for two of my…friends.”

Sylar’s brow furrow. “One month?”

It is an arbitrary guess, really, but likely to fit—weeks are too short, years too long, and he’s got an inkling Sylar isn’t exactly going to keep count. He just needs time. And confirmation, but that comes later.

“One month,” Adam promises. “After which I really would appreciate your intervention. I’ve developed an abhorrence of graveyards; and I would rather not spend any more time entombed. Regretfully,”—he spreads his hands—“I am harmless compared to Peter and Hiro; defencelessly, really…and this is where you would come in.”

Sylar laughs. “Harmless wouldn’t be my word of choice. But I’m a reasonable man, Adam. You have yourself a deal.”

They shake on it, and then stand staring at each other, slightly awkward. After a moment Adam turns around and goes for the door, which Sylar, in his most ridiculous move of all, opens for him.

“Safe passage,” Adam reminds him, distrustful to the last, and Sylar gives him a sarcastic look again.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Implicitly.”

He gets half way down the corridor before he senses it’s time to turn and say, affectedly spur-of-the-moment, “Oh—one more thing. I need you to tell me exactly what happened the last time we met.”

For a moment Sylar looks surprised. Then he merely looks disgruntled. “No, you don’t,” he says finally. “You remember perfectly. That’s why you’re here.”

Adam shrugs. He supposes, after all, that Sylar is right. For some reason, it’s disappointing, but that feeling vanishes when he finds Peter and two others waiting for him in the odd little church office from earlier. He can tell which one’s Ando immediately, and gives the other man a look of curiosity.

“Who’s the spare?” he asks, ignoring the blatant fury Peter is exuding. Time and a place, Peter, he thinks loudly, and sees the empath’s eyes flash at being told what to do—apparently it’s a selective fetish. If only Peter didn’t heal so quickly; a bruise would suit him marvellously, and a little lasting pain might make him less reckless. Still, one thing at a time.

“I’m Adam Monroe.” Adam takes a step forward and the man gives a tentative smile, and sticks a hand out at the same time as Adam does, and there’s a little feigned awkwardness, and then they finally shake. “I am very pleased to meet you.” Life-insurance, Adam thinks, and after a moment, in a surge of generosity, returns Mohinder’s smile as well.