#peterroman

“That makes me think you’ve tried.” Roman says, looking over at Letha who is smiling weakly at her lab partner.

“Get me a scalpel.” Peter says instead, waving his hand. “I’m sure you’ve got a knife on you somewhere.”

“You have tried, haven’t you?” Roman turns to Peter, delighted. “Oh my god. Dumb dog.”

“Roman, give me a fucking scalpel.” Peter says, far too loudly. People turn to look at them, and Peter flips them off.

“Angry dog.” Roman chides, but hands him the scalpel all the same. “Shall I spray you with some water?”

“I’ll bite your fucking hand off.” Peter threatens.

Roman reaches out, taking hold of Peter’s jaw. He tilts Peter’s face up to look at him, and their eyes bore into each other for too long. Roman wets his bottom lip, and Peter jerks his head sharply to the side so Roman is forced to let go.

Peter looks down at the frog, twiddling the scalpel between his fingers. Roman thinks it looks like a magic trick, that the scalpel will disappear up Peter’s sleeve and be replaced with a rose stem, or a tarot card.

“Is it a boy frog or a girl frog?” Peter asks.

“Why, are you planning to fuck it?” Roman asks.

Peter rolls his eyes, and stabs their worksheet with the scalpel. “It’s a fucking question on the sheet Roman.”

“Oh I’m sorry.” Roman says sarcastically. “Look at its genitals, I don’t know.”

“Apparently the thumb should be bulbous and fat if it’s a girl.” Peter says, prodding the frog.

“I can show you something bulbous and fat.” Roman says, just as there’s a gasp from Letha.

Both Roman and Peter lurch towards her, Letha standing as far away from her frog as possible, one hand over her mouth. Her other hand is protectively over her stomach, even though there’s nothing there anymore. According to the doctor’s, there will be never anything there again.

“What’s wrong Ms Godfrey?” The teacher asks from the front desk, barely looking up. He has papers to mark, and students to ignore.

“Our frog is pregnant.” Letha says, not looking at anyone. “She has eggs. Inside of her.”

“Well remove them Ms Godfrey, and continue with the dissection.”

“I can’t remove them!” Letha says, “I’m not scraping her babies out of her!”

“Your frog is already dead Ms Godfrey, and as unlikely to come back to life as jellyfish suddenly falling from the sky.”

Peter clears his throat. “Actually jellyfish fell from the sky in Australia in 1935.”

The teacher turns to him. “Mr Rumancek, did I ask you to comment?”

“No Sir.”

“Then don’t.”

“She’s clearly in distress!” Peter says, raising his voice.

“And if she wants to pass Biology, she will have to dissect the frog, whether she likes it or not!” The teacher says, matching Peter’s tone. “I don’t care what may have happened-“

“Shut up.” Roman interjects, his voice ringing out across the classroom. “Everyone stop.”

The teacher’s mouth snaps shut at once, apparently frozen in time. The other students are also still, standing in poses like a freeze frame. Letha, Roman, and Peter are the only ones who aren’t affected, but they are motionless all the same.

“Letha…” Peter says slowly, as if talking to a wild animal. Letha is crying, in a hot angry way.

“It’s all so stupid!” She says, and stomps her foot. “The baby is dead. End of story.”

“You’re allowed to-“ Roman starts, and Letha turns to him.

“What, Roman? What am I allowed to do? I can’t even grieve! I can’t even be upset! Nobody will let me!” She screws up his fists, and for a moment, Roman thinks she will hit herself, punch herself in the stomach.

“I hate this fucking teacher.” Peter says. His voice is calm, Roman likes him when he’s like this. “He’s a dick.”

“A cunt.” Roman agrees. “Not even good enough to be a cunt. Doesn’t have the depth or the warmth.”

“You two are terrible.” Letha tells them, but her voice is quiet. “You should only use your powers when it’s necessary Roman.”

“This was necessary,” Roman tells her, leaning over to give her a little shake. “You’re important.”

She gives a little embarrassed hiccup, and then wipes her eyes. Roman wishes that she didn’t have to go through this, the public humiliation, the grief and shame on display for everyone to see. He wishes everything could go back to normal.

“We could skip class?” Peter offers. “Go to that ice cream place you like?”

“I’ll pay.” Roman says, even though he would have paid anyway.

Letha gets a wistful look in her eye, that Roman wants to bottle up. They used to go the ice cream parlour when they were kids, trying out combinations of flavours until their stomachs hurt. Those are Roman’s childhood memories, of being physically sick outside Godfrey manor, as Letha patted his back.

“I need to pass Biology.” Letha says with a shake of her head, “If I want to get out of here.”

University is on the cards for Letha. Owning the Godfrey company is on the cards for Roman. Peter, on the other hand, has had no future carefully mapped out for him since birth. Roman can see Peter in his future though, if he peers deep into his crystal balls.

“Make everyone come to life again.” Letha tells Roman, “I can handle it.”

“Are you sure?” Peter asks, and she nods, smiling at him softly.

“Positive.” She says, and reaches out for both their hands, squeezing tight. “Thank you.”

“Anything for you.” Roman says, and then looks back at the teacher. “Start up again.”

The classroom is once again filled with noise, and the teacher blinks, shaking his head as if trying to clear buzzing in his ears.

“Ms Godfrey-“ He starts, and then catches sight of the three of them holding hands. “What is going on?”

“Nothing.” Letha says, letting go of Roman and Peter. “I’ll get back to my work now.”

The teacher looks from Letha, to Roman, to Peter, and then down at the papers he’s been reading through. “Very well then.”

Then everyone in the classroom starts to scream, jumping back from their desks and clinging to one another for dear life. The room is a chaos of yelling, and shouting, and frog ribbits.  

“What-“ Peter starts, and then looks at their frog, which is currently hopping about on the dissection tray, very much alive. “Roman!”

“Whoops.” Roman says, watching the now alive, if slightly flayed, frogs jump about the room. “My mistake. Full credit. I take blame.”

Letha gives a giggle of laughter, swooping in to save her pregnant frog which was in danger of falling off the desk. “I think I have a new pet.” She says, stroking her frog’s head with her finger.

“Your father will be thrilled.” Roman says sarcastically.

“Oh, I don’t think he’s in the position to complain about what I do.” Letha says, and then gives her frog a little kiss. “Oh.”

“Oh what?” Peter asks, picking up their own frog with only mild revulsion

“It didn’t turn into a handsome princess.” Letha pouts, and Peter blinks.

“That reminds me.” He says, the frog tries to make a bid for freedom. “Destiny asked for your number.”

“Did she now?” Letha asks, curiosity in her voice. “How very interesting.”

“Power couple of the decade.” Roman drawls, and then darts forward to save Peter from whatever frog based terror he’s got himself caught up in.

There are rumors swirling about the new kid before he even sets foot in school. That he’s a gypsy, that’s he’s trash, a thief just like this uncle or grandfather or whoever it was that had owned the cheap trailer on the outskirts of town. People had seen him swimming in the creek, and hiking through the woods near the edge of the estate. 

“Freak,” Roman hears someone mutter, the sharp way you do when you want someone to overhear. 

There are a lot of rumors about gypsies. That they can steal your heart right out of your chest along with all your valuables. But some say they can mend broken hearts, or conjure you a new one. Some even swear they can grant you wishes, though what that’s supposed to cost Roman doesn’t know.

He knows Olivia used to go see the old man who lived there. That he used get something for her. Something illegal, probably, but Roman doubts it had anything to do with his mother’s so-called heart.

He flicks the remainder of his cigarette away and heads to class.

Roman and Peter become friends on a bloodstained playground; Roman watches Peter strip naked and transform; Roman watches Peter eat his heart whole and have another bloom in his chest like a night flower, while Peter’s wolf mouth snarls and chews his own steaming flesh. 

Olivia sneers the word Gypsy as though shit drops from her mouth every time she says it, but Shelley grins whenever Peter’s name is mentioned. Letha shares her fruit salad with him at lunch. The front seat of Roman’s car becomes scattered with long, dark hairs, bits of loose tobacco, a faintly dusty smell. He learns Peter’s heart flares up like a fire alarm when he’s scared and glows like an ember when he’s happy. If they sit close together, shoulder to shoulder, sharing a beer or a smoke or driving in the car, Roman can feel it bounce around in Peter’s chest. It’s the loudest heart Roman’s ever heard, and almost as bright as Shelley’s, and he wants to bask in it like a snake in sunlight.

They rob graves, they sift through the lives of these dead girls, they lie and lie and lie and it doesn’t matter. Roman presses one hand to the ache under his collarbones and thinks, this is probably what love is.

Roman and Peter find the other half of Lisa Willoughby’s body at the old steel mill. Her chest is torn open, ribs splayed out like broken piano keys, and something has eaten her heart.

“Jesus,” Peter says, and kisses the necklace he keeps tucked under his shirt. 

“Messed up,” Roman agrees. He coughs to cover up the way he wants to gag at the smell.

The rest of his night consists of letting Officers Neck and Nose arrest him, even though the mill is practically his, then getting lectured to within an inch of his life by his mother. He thinks that’s the cherry on top until he tries to get in touch with Peter. 

Peter, who wants him to go away. Who says they’re done. 

Done what? Roman wants to ask. What was this, what’s done? And the sick feeling inside him spreads and spreads and spreads, like his ribs can no longer contain it. Just like Lisa Willoughby.

Roman decides to do a lot of coke. Roman decides to visit the White Tower. Roman steals the security guard’s badge and tries to break into the basement. Because Roman is a bad decision making fuck up of a person anyway, right?

“Where is it?” he asks Pryce. His knuckles are bleeding from banging on the door, one fingernail hanging off where he’d tried to pry the card-reader open. “Where is it? Where’s Atreus?” and the scaly motherfucker just smiles.

Atreus is housed in a sub-basement, down a locked staircase, tucked away from the rest of the labs. The lights there are softer, and older, and flicker with an instability not allowed anywhere else in the facility.

Pryce is still smiling when he opens the door.

“What. What is it.”

“It’s a heart, of course,” Pryce says.

“Outside a body?” Roman asks, dumbly, because of course outside a body. It’s sitting in a fucking tank.

“Oh yes,” Pryce continues. “For now.”

Then there’s a sharp pain in Roman’s neck, and - for a while - nothing at all.

get up, the voice tells him, get up get up GET UP--

“Catabasis,” not-Shelley explains. Roman only knows who she is because her heart is the same; the outside is much more beautiful. “Because you can’t even fall into a coma without doing it dramatically.”

“But what does it mean?”

“A catabasis is a ritualized descent into the underworld to accomplish a necessary task or defeat a dangerous adversary,” Shelley recites, sing-song.

“Uh.”

 “You’re not like other people, Roman.” Shelley’s hand is soft in his. “You’ve always known this.”

Norman is sitting behind his desk. His doctor desk, his solid fuck-you-I’m-the-authority desk. It’s made of Carpathian Elm, and his aunt had it shipped from Spain for their fifth wedding anniversary. 

“Which wolf are you feeding, Roman?” his uncle asks. His tapping fingers echo like war drums. “Which wolf do you want to win?”

“But I only know one wolf,” Roman protests, and Norman laughs and laughs.

Chasseur is sitting on the lawn next to him, cross-legged. 

“Do you even know what you’re feeding it?” she asks. “A heart is traditional, of course, but that’s a little out of your purview.” She has blood on her hands and on her face, but not between her teeth. He can see that when she smiles.

People have hearts.

Ergo, Roman has a heart.

Right?

“Plenty of people have no hearts,” Shelley tells him matter-of-factly, swinging her feet. 

Of course she’s right. There are people who have given them away, or had them stolen, or even had them broken so badly they crumbled to dust. You could live without a heart, sometimes, if you were strong enough. 

Roman never really thought of himself as strong, if he was being honest.

“I don’t think I’m that kind of person,” he says. He’d never done any of those things.

Shelley’s eyes - a warm brown, a perfect matched set - are kind. “Oh Roman,” she sighs. “You always were.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise to find his mother last, strolling the halls of the mansion in a dress so white it glows. 

“You really should snap out of this,” Olivia says, flicking her cigarette so the ash scatters. “It’s tiresome.”

“Tiresome,” Roman repeats. “You know what’s fucking tiresome? Being in a coma!”

Olivia tilts her head back, a delicate roll of her eyes. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, darling? You can leave any time you like. Any time you admit it to yourself.”

Admit what, Roman wants to ask. It sticks in his throat.

"You were born with the caul, Roman,” his mother continues. “I waited years for you. Many years, and many children. Don’t you think you got the better end of this particular bargain?”

“People have hearts!” he yells, voice cracking.

“People do,” his mother agrees. “But you’re not people, darling. You never were.”

He’s starting to think she doesn’t mean it as metaphorically as everything else around here.

“My little emperor,” she says, the light spilling out of her chest so bright it blinds him. “Mine.”

When Roman wakes up, Peter is at his bedside.

Roman figures that’s as much a sign as anything that happened in the coma.

“You know, right,” Peter asks him, later. They’re sitting on the front steps of the trailer, stomachs full of Lynda’s stroganoff, cans of beer at their feet. “I mean, you... know now.”

“Yeah,” Roman says. “I do.” He passes Peter a cigarette. “Weird, huh?”

“Buddy, I’m a werewolf,” Peter says. He takes a drag from the cigarette before handing it back. “But yeah. Pretty weird.”

This close, arm to arm, Roman can feel the way Peter’s heart thumps around in his chest.

There’s a story among Peter’s family, and like so many stories there are as many versions as there are tellings. But the bones remain the same -- 

There is a Romani man who lives in a forest. He falls in love with a girl who is sometimes Romani like him, and sometimes a gadjo. Sometimes the girl is a witch who can transform into a wolf, or who has been cursed to become one. Sometimes the wolf is her familiar, or her pet. 

There is always a wolf.

Sometimes the witch must be vanquished before the lovers can be together. Sometimes the wolf-girl wants a wolf-husband to chase through the forest. Sometimes the man loses his heart and the girl must save him. Sometimes the story is a romance, or an adventure, or a tragedy. But it will always end in the lovers sharing the wolf-heart.

“For the Rumanceks have been werewolves ever since!” Nicolae would declare, sometimes jovially. He preferred to tell the story as an adventure. 

Peter bought more into the tragedies himself.

Roman Godfrey is beautiful. Roman Godfrey is a monster. Roman Godfrey makes Peter’s teeth ache whenever he gets near. The wolf wants to tear his chest open like a crackerjack box, angry there’s no toy inside.

Instead, Peter makes a friend. They bond over dead girls and thinking each other is a murderer, but, hey. Still.

“You are so stupid,” Destiny tells him. She has a heart that beats fast and precise, a foxtrot or something, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, dizzying. “Honey, I’m not trying to be mean, but a boy with no heart? You know what that means?”

Lydna has only one rule, the rule that has been driven into Peter’s head since he was a boy - tell no one what he is. Every twenty-eight days Peter eats his heart and grows another. Nothing else in the world can do such a thing. There is nothing in the world as grotesquely miraculous as a werewolf.

Roman watches Peter transform, watches him devour his skin and his guts and his heart, and he calls him beautiful.

Peter doesn’t know what else to say. There are any number of girls at school who would gladly have given Roman their heart, or at least offered to share them. Roman doesn’t know - Roman doesn’t even realize he’s missing anything. 

“Forget it,” Peter says. “Can you help or not?” and before he knows it he’s making plans to rob a grave.

“What’s it like?” Roman asks. They’re sitting outside the trailer drinking beer. The cat is twining in and around their ankles, yowling whenever they reach down to pet it. Cantankerous. 

“What’s what like.”

“You know,” Roman says. He sounds plaintive, almost like a little kid. “What’s it like?”

Peter shrugs. “I don’t think it’s really something you can translate.” Trying would be useless.

Roman seemed to accept that, but only for a minute. “Have you always been a werewolf? Why isn’t Lynda, or Destiny?”

Peter pauses. “It’s not blood. Well, it’s not genetics. Anyone can be a werewolf. If you eat a werewolf’s heart.” Peter steals a look at Roman, but Roman only stares back with his ridiculous, coke bottle green eyes. 

“Gnarly.”

“Gnarly. So. After Nicolae died, it had to be someone. Someone has to have it. Because otherwise, someone always finds it, you know?”

“Like a fairy tale,” Roman says after a moment.

Peter nods. “When a werewolf dies, someone takes the old heart and puts it in their chest. And on the full moon, the wolf eats the old one.” Symbolic, or some shit, probably. “When I was just a little kid, I mean - knee high to fucking grasshopper, I don’t even know, little - Nicolae told me it had to be me, that I had years yet. He’d dreamed about it.”

“Well. Shee-it,” Roman says, and they clink their beers together.

They find another girl in the steel mill. Well. They find half a girl, and that’s when they realize her heart is gone. Ripped out. Gnawed on. Stolen from her body before she’d died, and all of a sudden Peter can’t do this anymore. can’t fuck around with the Godfreys, and this whole fucking town and the sick feeling he gets between his ribs. Something is wrong here.

“We’re done,” Peter says, over and over, yelling into Roman’s face. He looks like his heart’s breaking but he doesn’t even have one, Peter reminds himself. 

And if Peter’s is cracking, well, he’ll grow a new one soon enough.

Peter likes Letha because her heart is quiet, serene, maybe too honest; it flashes in steady, low intervals, sending out everything she’s feeling. Shelley’s is as monstrous as the rest of her, and it speaks when she can’t, shining like a beacon. Olivia has a heart, hilariously, frighteningly, because Peter would bet his last dollar it wasn’t originally hers. It’s too big for her; it seeps out of her chest and people mistake it for beauty. Chasseur’s is hidden, deliberately, inscrutable as her face and her motives. Lynda’s is well-worn but strong. Sometimes Peter rests his head on her chest to feel the warmth she radiates like no one else.

But Roman has no heart, Peter thinks, listening to the machines beep around them. The little statue of Ganesh he brought sits near the headboard. 

Peter presses his clenched fist into his own chest. The beat underneath is hard, pulsing. There’s a dull ache. He’d pull it out, he thinks, but who knows if it would help anyway.

“I stole it,” Christina confesses. “Just a bit, just a little piece, so small you didn’t even notice.”

Peter feels faint. Light-fingered enough to steal the heart from a Gypsy’s chest, isn’t that a surprise. This is what being friendly gets you. 

“I just wanted to know,” she continues. She’s weeping now, sobbing, white hair falling around her face like a curtain. “I thought I wanted to know.”

Shelley snaps Christina’s neck, but Roman is the one to eat her heart. 

“Will it do anything?” Roman asks, holding it in his hand. It’s bloody red, and steam rises off it in the cold of the church. 

“I don’t know.” Peter shrugs. He’s never heard of anything like this. Maybe they should ask Destiny.

Roman looks at it for a moment before holding it out towards Peter. “It’s yours. Sort of.”

It is, sort of. And probably wolf enough to not let it leave the room one way or another. 

Peter closes his eyes. “You go ahead.” He pats his stomach, filled with his own heart and skin and guts, the ones he’s wearing now all shining and new from changing back. “I’m full up.”

He feels Roman hesitate. He doesn’t watch.