Work Text:
Peter scrapes the ink off his third sheet. Anymore, and he thinks he’ll leave a hole in the paper. The Fine Arts Centre is going poorly. The circulation in the basement floors are a mess; his atrium will most likely stifle a few of the visitors if its head count goes any higher than fifty and the windows- he’s not certain, but Peterkin has pointed out that the south facing façade looks particularly fragile on the second floor. He can resize the windows, of course; but that ruins the view: a row of buttresses would take care of the fragility, but that ruins the view just as well.
He rolls up the drafts, takes his sketches for good measure, even though he knows that they’ll be brushed aside; and heads upstairs.
“Roark.” Peter coughs outside the door. He doesn’t bother to wait and throws the door open. “I need your-”
He’s cut off by the strange sight of Howard Roark changing out of his wet clothes.
It wouldn’t be so strange a sight if Peter hadn’t noticed the obvious: Roark’s bare chest under the half-lifted undershirt; white cotton clinging onto pale breasts.
Peter sputters and stumbles back. “I- I don’t understand.”
“I did warn you that if you keep barging in, you'd see things that you'd rather not see.” Roark doesn’t seem very surprised, apathetically surveying the sheets in Peter's hand. “Now, are you going to close the door?
Peter hastily throws the door shut on impulse, and storms into the room. He stops when the thought strikes him: “Is this some kind of disease?” He quickly steps back to keep a distance.
Because Roark has pulled off his wet clothes and replaced them with a dry undershirt; now there’s nothing to see and Peter is half-afraid that he has been hallucinating. Breasts.
On Howard Roark.
“Why do you have- that-” His voice rises in disbelief with each word; until it turns into one final squeak: “-those-?”
Roark sighs, putting on his flannel shirt and rolling the sleeves up.
“Because I am a woman, Peter.”
Howard Roark, Peter recites in his shell-shocked mind, had donned the disguise of a man to enroll at Stanton Institute of Technology’s school of architecture- a college that accepts only men, in a profession that has been largely dominated by men for centuries. He cannot even imagine coming up with such an absurdity.
Suddenly, Peter realizes that the world has handed him his ace on a silver platter.
A woman in architecture, good lord.
“I'll tell the school!” He chuckles to himself. He’s still incredulous and perhaps just slightly manic. “One word, and that’ll be the end of you!”
Roark stares at him blandly. Peter knows one too many people who hate that look. The one that practically slaps them back with his apathy. “What does that make you, I wonder.”
Peter’s smile falters. “What do you mean?
Roark looks coolly at the rolls of half-inked vellum. “Someone who needs a woman to design his projects.”
Peter laughs, barely able to hide his hysteria. “Who's going to believe you over me?” In his three years at Stanton, Roark hasn’t managed to make a single friend. Hasn’t even tried.
The latter gestures to the door. “I don’t know.” He means, ‘I don't really care.’
Peter rushes to the door, all too ready to run over to the college and meet the Dean. He pauses.
“You'd let me throw it away? After going through all this trouble to get in?”
Howard shrugs. He’s learnt all he can from Stanton. It’ll hinder his prospects as an architect; but then Roark had made his opinions on pandering to clients clear to anyone who’s asked.
He’s about to step out when Roark continues.
“You're the one who needs me here.”
Peter turns red with embarrassment, because it's true. The rolls in his hand is damning proof. He knows he can't manage to keep his gold medal without Roark.
When Peter returns to the desk, Roark smiles. “That's what I thought.”
Peter spreads the south elevation of his Palace of the Fine Arts. “This one, for my silence.”
Howard throws him a dirty look that drills home that there's nothing stopping him from walking away and leaving Peter to cobble together this disastrous Fine Arts Centre by himself.
“Please.” He knows the drill. Roark will do it; but Peter has to abide by his terms.
“Where are you stuck?”
Peter sits in one of the hard wooden chairs and watches Roark work.
“Your name.”
Roark doesn't like to be disturbed. His- her?- eyebrows draw together in a scowl.
“It couldn't be Howard.”
Strange, he thinks; that Roark has lived under his roof for three years now, he’s harboured a private rivalry against the younger student and obsessed over it; and yet, Peter does not know a single thing about the latter.
“Well, it's Howard now.”
Peter leans forward. He can’t help the cheek. “Couldn't I know?”
Howard stops drawing and looks at him in disbelief.
“I'm the only one who knows your secret, anyhow, and you just said it yourself; it's in my best interests to keep it that way.
“And when it stops being in your best interests?
Peter doesn’t have an answer for that.
It feels like the distance between them has widened and yet shortened. There's a secret between them, sparking like a firework, either to rise and give a magnificent show or explode in right their faces. Peter shows up to watch Howard work more often. He's not entirely sure on whether he's welcome, but Howard hasn't said a word- other than to not interrupt him when he's working.
He's not sure if he has still grasped the matter around his head- but when there's nothing physically apparent to differentiate the before and the after of that revelation- Peter looks at Howard Roark and sees Howard Roark.
Only, he knows that something has shifted.
His eyes linger on Howard's hands. They're heavily calloused. He knows Roark does construction work in the summers to afford the rent and the tuition. He's not entirely sure on what to feel about that, knowing what he does now.
He can’t imagine it. Howard as a delicate, sweet thing; like the homely girls around Stanton that Peter chats up sometimes. Or the rare society ladies that sometimes visit their college-going beaus. Can’t imagine him aging into an older woman like his mother, pleasant and warm, shuffling around the house in starched gingham dresses. Or even into an unhappy nag like his aunt, disavowing men, throwing herself into various social movements and living in New York by herself.
Roark doesn’t fit any of these labels.
Roark is... Roark.
Just as he has always been.
The man with the absurd designs and plain, ugly structures of concrete brutishness, just like him- but no. Peter doesn’t think that, really. Peter sees the mastery in Roark’s lines; that he can appreciate the abstraction of glass and steel like he appreciates the beauty of the fiery red hair and sun-kissed skin. It’s just not something that he would admit, even to himself. Ever.
Howard still doesn't say a word. Not when Peter's eyes move along the open collars of Howard's shirt, along the sharp cheekbones and the thick, ink-stained fingers and his mouth goes dry.
It was odd; that Howard being a woman had only increased his admiration for him- her?- when it should have fueled Peter's sense of inferiority.
That's what it is, he realises, in front of the bathroom sink with his razor paused on his cheek.
He's letting himself look more.
To see Howard as more than a threat.
If Howard is a woman- he supposes it's alright for Peter to look. To feel these things- that he had noticed all along, but had never allowed himself to acknowledge.
It’s normal. Natural, even, that the spirit would know long before the mind.
“What do I call you?” Peter asks, fumbling in his nervousness. “He? She?” He’s yet again in Howard’s room, now with his own drafting board. Trying to ink over the clean lines of Roark’s design. The aesthetics of Peter’s own structure hasn’t been altered much. But he’s sure that the foundations are solid and that the south façade won’t collapse under spindly walls.
Roark is not correcting Peter’s sheets right now; Peter has no business being here.
“I mean, if- between the two of us- should I- if it pleases you-?” Peter cuts off. He suddenly thinks that Roark would be better served if Peter kept to calling her a he, even in private. A secret spoken aloud is no longer a secret, after all. “Or not. Never mind. I’ll shut up now.”
Peter looks up.
Roark is smiling at him.
It’s just a quirk of the lips, but it’s more sincere than anything Howard has ever given anyone at Stanton.
Peter finds himself blushing to the roots of his hair.
~