darker_london | Circling the Drain (Peter, Aly, Kidses) (Reply)

Finger painting had been Anna's idea, and despite Peter's protests that his fingers would get ooky and finger painting wasn't his thing and what if he got paint in his hair, Anna and Caleb managed to drag him into it anyway. They gave him the eyes of doom and Peter just couldn't stand strong against the eyes of doom. Not from his children. Especially not when Anna added a little 'please oh please' whimper. Dammit. And now Peter had a smear of red paint across his forehead, not to mention all over his hands. It was Lydia who'd gotten the white in his hair. She'd done it on purpose and then giggled.

"Now that you have defiled me, I'm going to go wash up. That way I can clean all of you!" Peter grinned and gave Lydia a kiss. She reached out and touched his cheek with blue fingers. "Augh!"

"It's like a lipstick mark, but with fingers instead!" Lydia chirped.

"Does this mean I'm yours then?" Peter asked with a wink.

"Yep! My dad." Lydia went back to her swirly painting.

"And glad to be!" Peter retreated to his bathroom where he gazed at the tap, holding his hands aloft, looking quite confused. Hands painty. Tap pretty. Painty hands make tap less pretty. Aly could help. Aly pretty too. Aly pretty with top off...he could take her top off, even with painty hands. Oh the things he could paint on her skin... "Aly!" Peter yelled, snapping out of his thoughts as they drifted in a very male direction, as they inevitably did. "Er...help!?"

Aly wandered in and she raised her eyebrows. "What have you done?"

"We were finger painting because they gave me wooby eyes so I had to say yes which isn't fair you know and now I can't turn the tap!" Peter said, sounding rather helpless. "I'll get it all dirty!"

Aly just chuckled. "What will you do for me if I turn that tap on for you?" She grinned.

"Anything! Come on! My hands are all gross and it's driving me insane!" Peter flapped them about, but not enough for the paint to splatter. It felt like his skin was crawling.

"Will you go to the hospital to get a CAT scan today?" Aly said, crossing her arms.

"You...you evil woman!" Peter looked at her as if he was seeing her true form for the first time. And oh, it was a tricksy thing. "You probably got Anna to suggest this in first place! This is entrapment! This is...somethingism! This is...you being better at playing evil games than I am. Fine, fine, you win. Devil woman."

Aly grinned happily. "Fantastic!" She turned the tap and walked out of the bathroom feeling rather well for once. She did like winning.

Peter shoved his hands under the tap the second the water began to run and he gave a little contented sigh. He glanced at the water, tinted red, swirling down the drain into oblivion. And then he made a low horrified noise at the back of his throat. It was swirling down the drain like Katherine's blood had, all red and life-giving and gone. Peter backed up, horrified, dripping red all over the bathroom tiles from his wet hands. He looked up at himself in the mirror and there she was, staring back at him. Katherine. Her green eyes were trained on the water which was now rinsing the red paint from the sides of the sink, still slipping down the drain tinged pink.

Peter yelped and turned to face her, but she wasn't there. "Fucking ghosts!" He hissed and he shoved his hands through his hair before remembering they still had some paint on them. "Fucking...augh." His head hurt again, throbbing fitfully. Peter reached out to turn off the tap and he turned to grab one of the deep red towels that Aly loved. The leftover paint wouldn't matter on those. It wouldn't show up. His eyes drifted to the shower. Katherine was sitting there on the floor, staring at him, her jaw slack. "Get out of my shower!" Peter yelled and then he abandoned the bathroom all together. He had a headache and an evil (sexy) wife and he had to get his head examined and he couldn't deal with ghosts right now. Not even of Katherine.