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apocalypsosTitle: Twenty Things Learned On Road Trips
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Heroes
Spoilers: "Company Man"
*** Twenty Things Learned On Road Trips ***
1.
Janice can’t go on a car ride longer than two hours without at least three rolls of chocolate Necco wafers, which Matt tells her on more than one occasion is like watching her eat slivers of brown sidewalk chalk.
2.
Lyle falls asleep on road trips.
Okay, he doesn’t just fall asleep. He practically goes comatose. Mom’s a stickler for seat belts not just because of the whole "if your father slams on those brakes, out the windshield you’ll go" issue.
Claire finds few things funnier than watching Lyle slide from the back seat and puddle onto the floor behind the passenger seat as if he’s melted.
3.
Ando quickly finds out that Hiro can solve the golf-tee game on most of the restaurant tables they’ve seen down to the last tee.
4.
Hiro quickly finds out that Ando will never admit that he likes the word finds on kids’ menus but that he can finish them in the time it takes Hiro to go to the bathroom.
5.
Every road trip with Peter when he’s a kid means a stop at a greasy fast-food place that his mother complains about the entire time and his father avoids and Nathan quietly suffers through if he has to come along.
The Petrellis stop taking long road trips when a ten-year-old Peter tries to convince the driver to take them through a particularly cramped Burger King drive-thru.
Nathan never admits how much he misses those trips.
Them, and the kid’s meal toys Peter always gave him.
6.
DL’s got a bladder the size of a thimble.
The only time Niki manages not to laugh every time they pull over is when she’s pregnant with Micah, who sits on just the right spot to have her racing DL to the bathroom for a good five months straight.
7.
Nathan’s eldest son is conceived in the tilted-back driver’s seat of the black convertible he’d had the first year of his marriage on their way to the beach for the weekend.
Of course they didn’t learn about that until six weeks later, but still.
8.
The first time Eden convinces a cop to let her off with a warning in her own special way, she doesn’t even realize until he’s gone that it’s the first time she hasn’t cried to get her way out of a speeding ticket since she was sixteen.
9.
Karen used to get ridiculously carsick.
It made Ted sick just looking at her, because he’d never actually seen someone literally go green but she’d make a hell of an attempt to do so. After a while they both start popping Dramamine to make it through road trips, and he thinks that’s maybe why they missed the real cause of the nausea for longer than they might have otherwise.
He never tells that story to Matt, but he doesn’t really have to.
Not when he pops twice the recommended dosage from California to Texas.
10.
When it’s just the two of them in the car Dad does this thing where he turns on the radio at random and says, "All right, kiddo, who sings this?"
If Micah knows a damn thing about music, that’s why.
11.
Claude tells the worst jokes when he’s bored and there’s not much he considers more mind-numbing than a three-hour car ride with a by-the-book partner.
It takes a few years after his disappearance and two small children in constant need of amusement for Mr. Bennet to realize how many bad limericks and groan-worthy knock-knock jokes he still remembers.
12.
Zane can stare out the car window for hours, watching every cornfield and old barn and cheap roadside stand from one side of the country to the other.
Mohinder keeps expecting him to stick his head out the window and pant happily.
13.
Mohinder sleeps sprawled out in his motel room bed, takes up as much space as possible and messes up the sheets like they’ve been balled up and flung at the mattress or something. He gets separate rooms for the two of them because he claims he can’t sleep through snoring but he seems to sleep just fine through the click of the room’s lock, the door opening, the heavy sound of footsteps.
Sylar finds out that Mohinder sleeps like the dead, and that it would be so simple to kill him if he weren’t an easy step to more power, more strength, more everything.
14.
Zach should not eat onion rings on a road trip.
Claire tells him so over and over again the entire way home from Kermit, in between her giggles and his loud obnoxious burps.
15.
Kimiko can read novels and magazines and textbooks in the limos they ride in as if the car never even started moving in the first place, a trick Hiro never pulls off without getting a headache.
She can finish a book on business management in about the same amount of time it takes him to defeat Super Mario Land.
16.
Meredith thinks her high school Spanish is good enough until she’s halfway to Guadalajara and insults the wrong carload of men as they hoot and holler at her while driving past.
It’s less fun to watch a car explode into flames than you’d think.
17.
Peter learns he should not mix beer and anything else stronger than water on spring break and he should never do drunken karaoke again without spotters.
The broken wrist makes for a pretty crappy souvenir, all things considered.
18.
Claire calls him "dada" for the first time halfway to Sandra’s parents’ house.
And he learns that he can drive straight and steady even with Sandra cheering happily in the passenger’s seat and his vision clouded with tears he won’t dare acknowledge.
19.
Nathan’s baby girl is blonde, grown and petite and pretty, with a sadness in her eyes that pulls at something in his chest hard enough to hurt.
And she‘s alive. Don’t forget about that one.
20.
The Haitian only speaks when he needs to, which is why everybody thinks that he’s mute. Even if you know he’s not, though, he still keeps it up.
When Claire reaches for the radio knob and flashes him a questioning look, he just nods.
He zones out the rap and country stations and cocks an eyebrow when she flips to the classical channel like she can’t possibly be serious. He openly frowns at the religious music. The rock channels make him smile, and five minutes of bubble-gum pop has him sighing heavily like the most put-upon man on the planet.
Claire finally leaves the salsa station on.
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel along with the music and it makes her feel just a little bit better for the first time in hours, somehow droning out the lingering memory of an echoing gunshot.
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Heroes
Spoilers: "Company Man"
1.
Janice can’t go on a car ride longer than two hours without at least three rolls of chocolate Necco wafers, which Matt tells her on more than one occasion is like watching her eat slivers of brown sidewalk chalk.
2.
Lyle falls asleep on road trips.
Okay, he doesn’t just fall asleep. He practically goes comatose. Mom’s a stickler for seat belts not just because of the whole "if your father slams on those brakes, out the windshield you’ll go" issue.
Claire finds few things funnier than watching Lyle slide from the back seat and puddle onto the floor behind the passenger seat as if he’s melted.
3.
Ando quickly finds out that Hiro can solve the golf-tee game on most of the restaurant tables they’ve seen down to the last tee.
4.
Hiro quickly finds out that Ando will never admit that he likes the word finds on kids’ menus but that he can finish them in the time it takes Hiro to go to the bathroom.
5.
Every road trip with Peter when he’s a kid means a stop at a greasy fast-food place that his mother complains about the entire time and his father avoids and Nathan quietly suffers through if he has to come along.
The Petrellis stop taking long road trips when a ten-year-old Peter tries to convince the driver to take them through a particularly cramped Burger King drive-thru.
Nathan never admits how much he misses those trips.
Them, and the kid’s meal toys Peter always gave him.
6.
DL’s got a bladder the size of a thimble.
The only time Niki manages not to laugh every time they pull over is when she’s pregnant with Micah, who sits on just the right spot to have her racing DL to the bathroom for a good five months straight.
7.
Nathan’s eldest son is conceived in the tilted-back driver’s seat of the black convertible he’d had the first year of his marriage on their way to the beach for the weekend.
Of course they didn’t learn about that until six weeks later, but still.
8.
The first time Eden convinces a cop to let her off with a warning in her own special way, she doesn’t even realize until he’s gone that it’s the first time she hasn’t cried to get her way out of a speeding ticket since she was sixteen.
9.
Karen used to get ridiculously carsick.
It made Ted sick just looking at her, because he’d never actually seen someone literally go green but she’d make a hell of an attempt to do so. After a while they both start popping Dramamine to make it through road trips, and he thinks that’s maybe why they missed the real cause of the nausea for longer than they might have otherwise.
He never tells that story to Matt, but he doesn’t really have to.
Not when he pops twice the recommended dosage from California to Texas.
10.
When it’s just the two of them in the car Dad does this thing where he turns on the radio at random and says, "All right, kiddo, who sings this?"
If Micah knows a damn thing about music, that’s why.
11.
Claude tells the worst jokes when he’s bored and there’s not much he considers more mind-numbing than a three-hour car ride with a by-the-book partner.
It takes a few years after his disappearance and two small children in constant need of amusement for Mr. Bennet to realize how many bad limericks and groan-worthy knock-knock jokes he still remembers.
12.
Zane can stare out the car window for hours, watching every cornfield and old barn and cheap roadside stand from one side of the country to the other.
Mohinder keeps expecting him to stick his head out the window and pant happily.
13.
Mohinder sleeps sprawled out in his motel room bed, takes up as much space as possible and messes up the sheets like they’ve been balled up and flung at the mattress or something. He gets separate rooms for the two of them because he claims he can’t sleep through snoring but he seems to sleep just fine through the click of the room’s lock, the door opening, the heavy sound of footsteps.
Sylar finds out that Mohinder sleeps like the dead, and that it would be so simple to kill him if he weren’t an easy step to more power, more strength, more everything.
14.
Zach should not eat onion rings on a road trip.
Claire tells him so over and over again the entire way home from Kermit, in between her giggles and his loud obnoxious burps.
15.
Kimiko can read novels and magazines and textbooks in the limos they ride in as if the car never even started moving in the first place, a trick Hiro never pulls off without getting a headache.
She can finish a book on business management in about the same amount of time it takes him to defeat Super Mario Land.
16.
Meredith thinks her high school Spanish is good enough until she’s halfway to Guadalajara and insults the wrong carload of men as they hoot and holler at her while driving past.
It’s less fun to watch a car explode into flames than you’d think.
17.
Peter learns he should not mix beer and anything else stronger than water on spring break and he should never do drunken karaoke again without spotters.
The broken wrist makes for a pretty crappy souvenir, all things considered.
18.
Claire calls him "dada" for the first time halfway to Sandra’s parents’ house.
And he learns that he can drive straight and steady even with Sandra cheering happily in the passenger’s seat and his vision clouded with tears he won’t dare acknowledge.
19.
Nathan’s baby girl is blonde, grown and petite and pretty, with a sadness in her eyes that pulls at something in his chest hard enough to hurt.
And she‘s alive. Don’t forget about that one.
20.
The Haitian only speaks when he needs to, which is why everybody thinks that he’s mute. Even if you know he’s not, though, he still keeps it up.
When Claire reaches for the radio knob and flashes him a questioning look, he just nods.
He zones out the rap and country stations and cocks an eyebrow when she flips to the classical channel like she can’t possibly be serious. He openly frowns at the religious music. The rock channels make him smile, and five minutes of bubble-gum pop has him sighing heavily like the most put-upon man on the planet.
Claire finally leaves the salsa station on.
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel along with the music and it makes her feel just a little bit better for the first time in hours, somehow droning out the lingering memory of an echoing gunshot.
