Starring:
Summary: Peter has had way, way too much to drink. Hints of crudeness follow. You have been warned.
Date It Happened: December 24th, 2007
Too Much To Drink
Nathan's Study
It's getting into the evening hours. The mansion has less people, with preperations for early Christmas Eve services for Heidi and the boys, but there's someone rummaging around in the study. Nathan's Study. His personal zone. And that someone would happen to be the man's younger brother, who let himself in the backdoor and is now going through his desk, of all things. The bottle of scotch has been moved, a glass already emptied, resting on a nearby table. Peter looks disheveled, dirty in fact. His clothes don't match as well as normal. A button in the front is hooked into the wrong hole, like he got dressed with clumsy hands and just hasn't noticed yet. He's unshaven, stubble standing out. A rather interesting smudge of dirt rests on one side of his face…
And from the way he's holding himself, the way he smells, that glass of scotch wasn't his first — or even his fifth for that matter.
The door creeeeaks open. Ominously. Because that's the sound it makes when you're discovered places you're not meant to be. Nathan steps inside his office, hands sliding into the pockets of his slacks as he narrows his eyes across at his brother and his rummaging. Maybe Peter even encounters the handgun tucked away in the top drawer, if he found the key to it - which is sort of sitting in plain view, so it's likely.
"Peter. What the hell are you doing?"
Yes. Creeeeeek would be an ominous sound. Peter hears it as soon as it happens, jumping mildly as his eyes dart up from going through drawers. Not that the drawers had what he'd been looking for, but— he still has that guilty-caught look that flashes across a rather drunk face. People all over the states are getting wasted on Christmas Eve. But it's not exactly what one would expect of this man. "Nathan. Hi— I was just…" he closes the drawer he'd rifled through. A whole lot of paper work and documents.
"I was just— looking for— Porn?" Even when he was a teenager, he never admited to going through his brother's various collections. That's a lot of alcohol…
Now, Nathan's eyes dart to the shifted around and emptier bottle of expensive scotch, and his temper flares for a moment— before Peter admits… that. He closes the door, pointedly. "You were looking for porn?" he repeats, blinking across at Peter in pure disbelief. A beat. "Aren't we a little past this stage? I don't k— I don't have any porn. Christ, you're drunk." He finally makes his way further into his den, watching Peter.
Just one glass couldn't hurt anything, right? Peter can always pay him back later with a golden glass or something. Or— if such a comment is true, he can always pay him back with porn. "Now that's a lie if I ever heard one… Even I have porn at home," he admits in quiet and amused tones, almost laughing. There's a lopsided smirk that starts to form as he begins to move a bit— stumble— move some more— stumble again. He has to catch himself on the edge of the desk. Drunk is an understatement, almost. The only thing worse would be him passed out on the floor.
Nathan gets close enough that he can raise a hand to semi-steady Peter, looking his disheveled self over critically. Why does this seem so very familiar? "Then uh, maybe you should… enjoy your porn. That you… have at home," Nathan says, slowly, a hand on his brother's shoulder. Anger has flipped into amusement, head tilted to the side. "You're okay, right?" Because when Peter drinks excessively, it means everything is wrong in the world, but this doesn't seem to be the same deal.
Familiar, yet out of place. Peter accepts the steadying hand, even leans into it a little. "My apartment was further than your house," he admits with a hint of a shrug from his shoulders. "Hey, I found out that Niki's a stripper again. I even came across her club by accident today. You should go check it out sometimes. She has really nice legs." His speech is a little slurred, so maybe he's not saying the words it sounds like he's saying. But on closer examination… he really and truly is.
"She was a stripper before?" Nathan feels moved to ask. Never mind that Peter just suggested Nathan go watch the woman he had extramaritial relations with dance naked on a pole. Okay, no, mind that. Mind that very much. Nathan moves to pour himself a drink. "Okay, short of getting drunk as hell," he starts to say, watching as he fills the glass with whiskey, "watching strippers and stealing my porn, maybe I should call you a cab and you can sleep this off."
"S'what she said," Peter shrugs a bit, not really knowing how much she worked in it before. "I know she was in the future— I saw her there, too. She actually was a stripper in two futures apparently. The one where I blew up New York, and the other one. I didn't see that one… I guess Hiro did. And Isaac. Painted it, sketched it." He's rambling a bit now, moving to fall into a chair. "You'd call me a cab? Great. I lost my phone somewhere… I can't remember where it ended up." He actually starts to search his pockets a bit as if he might have just missed it.
"That so?" Nathan's own phone is extracted from his pocket, still eyeing Peter with bemused amusement. "Pete," he says, as he dials in a number of some reliable cab company, "when you cut loose? You sure do cut loose." Loaded with irony, is that statement, but the lines at his eyes only relatively recently developed deepen along with a barely concealed smile as he turns from Peter to rattle off his address into the phone.
"You're the one who got me drunk when I was around Simon's age," Peter says from his seat in the chair, giving up on his search for his phone. Where did that thing end up anyway? Looking down at his empty hand, all of a sudden a card appears there. He remembers seeing advertisement cards at the strip club, Therapy, when he first entered. Flicking the card between two fingers, a lot more gracefully than he walked around to the seat, and holds it out. "Really, you should stop by. She was all done up in white and frosting. Smelled good too. Doesn't hurt to look right?"
"Thank you," is muttered into the cellphone, Nathan catching only most of what's said to him as he turns back to Peter, narrowing his eyes, looking down at the card. His hand twitches with the automatic compulsion to take it, but, he doesn't. The amusement bleeds into something slightly more exasperated. "Peter, I'm not going to a strip club to watch the woman I— " He pauses, then sort of shrugs. "Well, you know. I definitely don't need to know from you what she smelled like, either - what's wrong with you?"
"I've been cooped up in a warehouse with a serial killer for the last week… what do you think is wrong with me?" Peter responds in one of those rhetorical question kind of ways. "I had to get out and do something…" A lot of pint up frustrations that finally burst, from the looks of it. His brother doesn't want the card, though. When it isn't taken from his hand he pushes it into his pocket. Hopefully it won't fall out… Though his brother might want to check the chair and the floor after he gets out of the room. "I didn't know it was her strip club," he adds idly, reaching up to rub his cheek a little. That smudge looks a good deal like someone's fist might have ran into his face.
"So you were just browsing strip clubs at random," Nathan says, trying to grapple with this… this. But the fact that Peter isn't cooped up with Sylar is something to be appreciated, and he nods a little in vague understanding. He moves towards where he'd poured himself a drink, taking a generous sip. Then, he actually adds one last splash of the alcohol into the glass Peter had been using, and hands it over. "Well here's to getting out on Christmas Eve," he says, lifting his glass in offer of *clink!*age.
One last splash of alcohol. Peter takes it willingly, even making an effort to sit up from his slouch as he clinks the rim against his brother's. "Merry Early Christmas." It's not quite the same toast, but it works well enough as he draws the glass to his mouth and empties it yet again. Just a splash, it won't kick him around too much worse than the state he's already put himself in, but it will top off the evening. "Maybe after I sleep a bit I can sneak over and visit Elena. Now she has really nice legs… and everything else… Always tastes good, too." So not a topic should be shared with older brother.
Nathan carefully doesn't choke on whiskey. It's too expensive to waste. Then, he attempts to speak through mentally wrestling his mind out of the gutter. "Okay let's go see if your cab— if you cab is— god. Just come on." Jack does this. But he's used to Jack doing this. He can prepare himself. These words out of his brother— well he did drink a lot. He heads for out, shaking his head.
"Cab, right…" Peter says, moving to get out of the chair that he's lounged in, but without the help of his brother, he'll take a moment to stumble the rest of the way out to the direction his cab would be. "Never said this before, buy you got really good taste in whiskey." At least alcohol is a better topic than women. He could have started talking about even more women they know in a crude light… the longer he stays in the house, the more likely it'll be that it would happen. Best to usher him outside quickly.