Fic: Where You Lay Down, There's My Bed
Mar. 8th, 2009 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brighteyedjillI was scrambling to finish this so I could go play over at the new kink meme! Now I'm off to wreak havoc. You should go play, too, if you, y'know, like hot, hot, kinky smex. And if you're reading this journal, you probably do.
Title: Where You Lay Down, There’s My Bed
Pairing: Nathan/Peter. Implied Peter/other.
Rating: NC-17
Warning: involves prostitution, amnesia, and the various consent issues therein
Spoilers: Through “Four Months Ago,” although this takes a slightly AU track of Season 2 events.
Author's Note: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
heroes_contest prompt "Jealousy"
Summary: After finding out that his brother is alive. Nathan gets a tip on where to find him, and goes looking. The man he finds is not quite what he expected.
Say the trail leads somewhere else. Instead of ending up in Ireland, the shipping container with Peter inside is routed to Amsterdam, and Peter falls in with an entirely different crowd.
Nathan tucked his scarf in again, only to have it torn loose immediately by the breeze. The wind didn’t seem to touch the men who lounged against the sides of the building lining the street. The people here weren’t as ostentatiously on display as the women flirting from behind red-lit windows in the official red light district, but Nathan detected a certain commercial air about them, and knew that he was in the right place.
He looked at each face as he walked, and got many appraising looks in return. The prostitutes called out to him in many languages: English, French, and Dutch. Even when he didn’t understand the words, he understood their intent. He kept walking.
--
It was the Haitian who’d taken pity on him. Nathan hadn’t even known the man could talk, but after months of fruitless searching for Peter, the Haitian had shown up on his doorstep.
“Ask yourself why you really want to bring him back,” he’d warned. “You may not like what you find.”
Nathan had thanked the Haitian for his advice, and then booked an open-ended ticket.
--
He saw Peter from a distance, first. Even in the midst of a group of other men, Nathan recognized the shape of him: his posture, his silhouette.
Nathan came closer, stepping into the pool of light cast by a street lamp. When no sign, no shout of greeting came from Peter, Nathan began to get anxious. The whole group turned to look at Nathan, but he could only look at—could only see—Peter.
His brother looked different with short hair: harder, less vulnerable. Peter had on a black shirt, unbuttoned partway down his pale chest. His jeans were tight enough to make Nathan’s eyes linger a moment, and his shoes were polished and more stylish than anything Nathan had ever seen in Peter’s closet.
The moment stretched on until Nathan looked up to Peter’s face, where he found only amused curiosity. Not what he’d been expecting.
“Hey,” Nathan said stupidly.
“Hey,” Peter replied. He pulled up a corner of his mouth in an expression that Nathan knew from experience was not a smile. “This your first time in Amsterdam?”
Nathan frowned. He’d met Peter here during Peter’s post high-school graduation backpacking trip. Of course, they hadn’t spent much time in the Red Light District, then. They’d been busy in the hotel. “You know it’s not.”
The other men laughed, and one of them said something in Dutch. Peter chuckled, too. “Sorry, sorry. Of course it’s not.” He reached out and grabbed Nathan’s wrist. “You want to go somewhere?”
The glint in Peter’s eye was alluring, but it wasn’t the warm, worshipful spark Nathan knew too well. Instead, he seemed distant, almost indifferent.
“Just a minute, pretty.” The man standing next to Peter put a hand on his shoulder. Nathan hadn’t really noticed him before. He was two inches taller than Peter, and sported several days’ worth of scruff. “Pay up front, friend,” he said. “Then he’s all yours.”
“You think an hour will be enough?” Peter purred, sliding closer to Nathan. “Or do you want me for two?”
“That’s not funny,” Nathan said with a growl. “Come on, Peter.”
“Tu as un fan, Peter!” chuckled one of the other men. “Il tu demande par leur nom.”
“Just pay him, and we can get out of here,” Peter said invitingly. He slid a hand down Nathan’s chest. “If you’ve had me before, you know I’m worth it.”
Nathan bit back his irritation and brushed off the hand on his chest. He pulled out his wallet, peeled off a handful of bills, and shoved it at the scruffy man. “I need him for the whole night,” he said.
--
Amnesia. Peter hadn’t been gone all this time because he was avoiding Nathan, or because he didn’t love him any more. He just didn’t remember that Nathan existed. Simple as that.
Nathan should have figured it out when he realized the Haitian was involved. But he hadn’t. It made it worse, somehow, that he’d had a moment of thinking he’d found Peter, that everything would be okay. But this man, as much as he looked and walked and talked like Peter, wasn’t Peter. He couldn’t really be Peter if he didn’t know Nathan.
--
They passed most of the walk to Nathan’s hotel room in silence.
“You really don’t remember me?” Nathan asked at last.
“Sorry,” Peter said with a genuine smile. “I’m a busy guy. I can’t remember everyone. But truthfully, I think I would have remembered someone like you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Peter said quickly. “Just that you probably didn’t need to give Raul fifteen hundred euros. Unless you’re really unpleasant in some way I don’t know about.”
They walked another two blocks in silence.
“I really don’t look familiar to you at all?” Nathan asked again.
“Sorry,” Peter said. He seemed to mean it. “Maybe a little. Like a memory of a dream. Or maybe you’ve got it wrong. Maybe I’m not the guy you think I am.”
“You are,” Nathan said shortly. He stopped walking. “This is my hotel.”
--
Nathan insisted on a shower before anything else. When Peter took his clothes off, Nathan stared. In the four months since Kirby Plaza, the skinny, sharp-angled body still clinging to its teenage years had become hard and tight, and muscled in all the right places.
Peter saw him looking and held his arms out, turning slowly so Nathan could see all of him. Nathan had never really believed that Peter was dead, but to see him so alive and healthy was a shock, especially since Nathan knew he himself was not in the best physical shape. A slow recovery followed by months of self-abuse had taken its toll.
When Nathan kept staring, Peter leaned against the sink and started to bend over. “You want to see more?” he asked.
“That’s enough.” Nathan stepped under the spray and held out his hand. He didn’t like the idea of Peter showing himself off so casually to a stranger. Peter didn’t know Nathan was any different from every other man who could buy him off the street, and Nathan cringed to think of Peter displaying himself for anyone else.
Peter took Nathan’s outstretched hand and joined him in the shower. “Turn the hot water up,” he said. “I’ll wash your hair.”
--
“Is it that I remind you of someone?” Peter asked.
Nathan had been staring again, a towel hanging from his hands as he watched water drip off of Peter’s body and onto the white tile of the bathroom floor.
“Yes,” Nathan said. He wrapped the towel around Peter’s shoulders and drew him in close. “You could be him.”
Peter’s hands slid up Nathan’s chest. “Did he hurt you?”
Nathan’s bark of laughter was dangerously similar to a sob. Peter had left Nathan half-dead, had let Nathan think he’d lost his brother, had left Nathan alone and hurting so badly he’d crawled into a bottle and stayed there for months. Worst of all, Peter didn’t care, because Peter didn’t remember he existed. “Yeah,” Nathan said. “You could say he hurt me.”
“It’s alright,” Peter said. “You can hurt me, if you need to.”
Nathan grabbed Peter’s wrists and shoved him back, letting the towel fall to the floor. “Don’t say things like that. You shouldn’t let people use you that way.”
“Sorry.” Peter smiled his lopsided smile. “Force of habit.”
--
Nathan lay next to Peter on the bed and touched him. He ran his hands over Peter’s pale chest, that magnificent tight belly, the delicate wrists. Nathan remembered how he himself had looked after Kirby Plaza: charred, oozing, broken. A monster. Even though he knew Peter could heal, Nathan had seen him in nightmares: disfigured that way, with chocolate brown eyes staring out from a mask of burned and blackened skin. His precious, beautiful baby brother, ruined beyond repair.
But Peter was here: hale and whole and beautiful as ever. Maybe even more beautiful. He touched Peter’s face.
"You can cry, if you want,” Peter said softly. “You'd be surprised how many of them want to cry."
Nathan growled, a low sound that resonated in his chest. "Stop talking about them. You're with me now."
"Does it bother you?" Peter looked at him closely. "Is that how he hurt you? He chose someone else?"
"Yeah, I guess he did," Nathan said. He ran a hand down Peter's flank. "I always knew he wasn’t all mine, but..."
"You thought you meant something different to him,” Peter supplied.
"Yeah.” And that was exactly it. Peter was just fine without Nathan. He was taking care of himself, after a fashion, while Nathan had only fallen apart without Peter. “How could he just forget me? Does he know that I’m nothing without him...?"
"It's okay," Peter said. He curled around Nathan. "You've got me. And we've got all night."
--
Nathan was profoundly grateful that Peter hadn’t laughed at him. No one had ever accused Nathan Petrelli of being sentimental, and if anyone had told him a week ago that he’d pick up a hooker in Amsterdam who would hold him while he cried like his soul was coming loose, he would have laughed himself sick.
--
Nathan felt calmer, afterwards, lying entwined on the bed with his brother. But the silence between him and Peter—this stranger who was Peter—had stretched into an unbridgeable gulf. As wonderful as it felt to be lying here, it wasn’t all that Nathan wanted.
“You hungry?” he asked at last.
Peter smiled kindly and shook his head. “I don’t eat while I’m working.”
Nathan reached for the phone anyway, and dialed room service. “Are you still a vegetarian?”
Peter frowned. “I’ve never been a vegetarian.”
“Are you sure?” Nathan asked.
Peter’s frown deepened. “Not that I remember,” he said curtly.
A sore spot, at last. When the concierge answered, Nathan ordered a fruit salad, penne pasta with artichokes, and chocolate cake.
--
Peter lay on his side on the bed, propping up his head with one hand and watching Nathan intently. “Are we going to do this all night?” Peter asked.
Nathan shrugged into the fluffy white robe that had been hanging in the closet. “Do you have somewhere to be?”
“It seems like you’re trying to work up the courage to fuck me.”
“Too nice a job to rush,” Nathan said. But Peter was right: he was afraid. And as soon as the thought occurred to him, it began to gall.
“You paid for me,” Peter pointed out. He stretched out across the bed like a giant cat. He was lovely, there was no denying that. His penis lay sort and warm against his leg, nestled in dark, curly hair. Nathan’s mouth watered as he remembered the taste of him. “You may as well get your money’s worth.”
Occasionally, Peter did give good advice. Nathan stalked toward the bed and grabbed Peter by the ankles to drag him to the edge. He knelt between Peter’s legs and leaned forward, breathing in the familiar scent. He let his lips press against Peter’s cock first, and then he flicked out his tongue to taste. It wasn’t enough. He opened his mouth to suck in as much of Peter as he could.
A glance up to Peter’s surprised face made Nathan hum with pleasure. If nothing else about tonight was familiar, at least he knew how to make his brother hard.
--
Peter had his hands braced behind him on the bed. Little twitches of his hips betrayed his self-control as he kept himself from thrusting up into Nathan’s mouth. For his part, Nathan was taking his time and enjoying himself. He was gratified to know that he hadn’t lost this knowledge of Peter, at least.
When a knock sounded at the door, Nathan pulled his mouth off of Peter’s cock. “Stay,” he said.
Peter’s look of incredulity turned quickly to defiance when Nathan re-tied his bathrobe and went to answer the door. The waiter pushed his cart into the room, and paused only for the barest of seconds when he saw Peter naked, legs spread, cock straining upwards, posed on the bed. The man pushed the cart to the center of the room. “Here, sir?” he asked Nathan.
“Fine,” Nathan said, without taking his eyes from Peter. He was enjoying the pretty flush that had spread across Peter’s chest and down his neck. Nathan grabbed a few bills off the top of the dresser and handed them to the waiter on his way out.
“I like you like this,” Nathan said when they were alone again.
Peter’s smile reached his eyes. “You’re kind of a bastard.”
--
Perched naked in a high-backed chair at the suite’s little dining table, Peter might have been the most elegant thing Nathan had ever seen. “Eat,” Nathan said.
Peter jabbed a piece of pineapple with his fork. “You sound like my mother.”
Nathan had to work not to choke on his pasta. “Is your mother Italian?”
“Maybe she is,” Peter shrugged.
So Peter wasn’t as sure as he seemed. He knew he was missing the memory part of his life. Most of his life. All of his past. The most important part. “How long have you been in Amsterdam?” Nathan asked.
“How long have you been in Amsterdam?” Peter countered. He snatched a forkful of pasta from Nathan’s plate, just to prove he was being playful.
“A few days,” Nathan said. He nudged his plate closer to Peter.
Peter obligingly helped himself to another dainty bite. “Here on business?”
“No.” Nathan pushed the pasta over for Peter to finish. “I told you, I’m looking for someone.”
“This is good,” Peter said, indicating the penne.
“I know. It’s your favorite.”
Peter put down his fork and looked searchingly at Nathan. “Do you know me? Really know me?”
Nathan wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell Peter who he was, and what they meant to each other, but he didn’t know where to start. How was Nathan supposed to explain that Peter was his brother, his moral compass, his heart? Instead, Nathan shrugged. “Would it make a difference?”
Peter let out the breath he’d been holding. “I suppose not,” he said. Nathan recognized the note of disappointment in his voice. “I’m just curious.”
“No,” Nathan said finally. It was better this way. “I don’t know you.”
--
Nathan stood with his hands braced against the window, looking out at the canal while Peter swallowed around his dick.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Nathan said.
Peter made a noncommittal sound and kept sucking.
Nathan cupped a hand around the back of Peter’s head—his hair was too short to grab hold of—and said, “You should not be doing this.” Or rather, Nathan shouldn’t be letting Peter do this when he didn’t know precisely how fucked up it was.
Peter looked up at him. He was gorgeous with his lips stretched around Nathan’s cock. Nathan had forgotten how pretty he was. Just four months, and he’d already his memories were fading. He took a good look at Peter now, so he could preserve this moment in his memory in case it never happened again.
--
Nathan thought only briefly of taking Peter home. He couldn’t fix Peter’s memory, and he didn’t know if anyone could. And in this condition, Nathan didn’t trust anyone at home to take care of him. Suresh might have good intentions, but the guy had enough issues of his own. Ma would only try to use him. Nathan himself was even worse: he couldn’t help but want Peter to be the man he used to be. But that wasn’t healthy. What was so wonderful about Peter’s old life that he needed to rush back to?
Nathan had caused Peter enough grief already; Peter deserved to be free of all of that. To be free of Nathan. But if Nathan was going to let that happen, he needed this. Just one more time to remember him by.
--
“It’s okay,” Peter said softly. “Let me.” He pushed Nathan down on the bed, on his back, and Nathan went willingly. Peter was smart that way; he always knew how to put people at ease, and he’d figured out by this point that if this was going to happen, he was going to have to help Nathan out.
Peter grabbed something from the pocket of the pants he’d ditched in the bathroom, and then he was back, swinging up on the bed to straddle Nathan’s waist. He squeezed some lube onto his hand and tossed the bottle and a strip of condoms onto the bed. Peter fingered his ass open with one hand while the other squeezed around his cock, still hard from Nathan’s earlier attentions.
He looked like something out of a wet dream. Nathan tried to memorize the image: Peter kneeling above him, fingering himself while fisting his cock, head thrown back, lost in sensation.
“Ready?” Peter asked at last.
Nathan nodded mutely. Peter tore open one of the condoms and expertly unrolled it over Nathan’s leaking cock. Another stab of jealousy hit Nathan as he was reminded that Peter saw him as just another customer: not the most important person in his life, not his lover, not his brother.
All of that was chased from his mind as Peter lowered himself onto Nathan’s cock. That first tight-slick slide of the head inside of Peter made Nathan gasp. He hadn’t forgotten how this felt, not really, but memory and experience were very distant cousins. He wrapped his hands around the sharp edges of Peter’s hips and held on tight in an attempt to keep himself from flying apart.
“You’re fine,” Peter whispered. “You’re doing great.” He kept pushing, letting Nathan slide in and in and in, until he thought he might disappear inside Peter.
--
Peter had to know that the slow, lazy circles he was making with his hips were driving Nathan crazy. He knew Peter wouldn’t get off this way, either. Even if he no longer knew his brother’s heart, he did know his body. And Peter had tastes that ran for something a little… stronger.
“Let me,” Nathan said. He pushed Peter off to the side. Peter started to get to his hands and knees, but Nathan pulled him back. “I want to see you,” he said.
Faint surprise slid over Peter’s features quickly before he schooled them into something more neutral. Nathan arranged him on his back and knelt over him. One rough shove had him lodged back in half way. Peter’s mouth formed a startled o. “That’s it,” Nathan said encouragingly.
He pulled out and shoved back in, deeper this time. Peter’s hands scrabbled at the sheets. ‘Is this what you like?” he asked. He knew it was. He knew every intimate detail of Peter’s body. But he needed to hear it from Peter.
Peter threw his legs around Nathan’s waist and canted his hips up to take Nathan deeper. “Harder,” he said. “I can take more.”
Nathan had always thought Peter had known him too well, but it turned out that Peter could just read people well enough to know what they needed. Nathan wondered momentarily if his needs were so obvious, and it stung to think that Peter showed this same care for all his clients. Nathan punished Peter by plowing into him mercilessly. Peter threw his head back and gasped for air.
Peter was too good at this. Anything Nathan did to him, he took without complaint. It felt amazing to be inside him again. But it wasn’t like it used to be. It wasn’t an inevitable compulsion they both needed. This was strictly business for Peter. If Nathan hadn’t come along, he would be in someone else’s bed. Peter might even be having fun, but he didn’t need this; he didn’t need Nathan, and he probably never had.
“Yeah, come on,” Peter said in that raspy fucked-out voice that had screamed Nathan’s name too many times to count. “Do it.”
Nathan looked down at Peter, laid out under him, wanton and writhing, and came with a pained moan.
Nathan slumped against Peter’s chest as his arms gave out. As he gasped in breaths against Peter’s shoulder, he felt Peter’s hard-on digging into his belly, and pushed himself up again to look Peter in the eyes.
“I want to see you come,” Nathan said. He wrapped a hand around Peter’s cock, which was slick with pre-come, and began to pull roughly in the way that never failed to get Peter off. “Please, Peter.”
“Yeah,” Peter said. He kept eye contact as Nathan touched him. His hips came up, chasing Nathan’s hand on every stroke.
Nathan let his softening cock slip out of Peter, and pressed three fingers of his other hand in instead, curving them expertly to reach the spot that would make Peter dissolve. He hit it unerringly. Peter’s whole body went rigid, and he came silently, his cock jerking in Nathan’s hand as he spurted. Nathan watched closely as Peter’s eyes squeezed shut and his mouth went slack. He wanted to remember that look.
--
Peter—this Peter—didn’t love him. What had always made the two of them work was the tangle of a thousand intertwined threads: all the things they’d done together in their lives, the trials and the triumphs they’d experienced together. Defying their parents, suffering through formal dinners, tending each other’s wounds, fooling around whenever they could get away, flying and fucking and loving each other with reckless abandon.
Without that common background, Nathan was nothing to Peter, and he couldn’t hope to be. He wasn’t particularly loveable: he wasn’t in the best physical condition, he had years of lies and enemies behind him, and he was kind of a bastard. Peter had no reason to love him. Nathan didn’t deserve it, he didn’t expect it, and he’d be damned if he was going to beg for it.
--
“Are you packing?” Peter asked sleepily.
“Yes.” Nathan threw the last of his wrinkled clothes into the suitcase and zipped it closed. “I’m going home.”
Peter sat up and ran his hands through adorably sleep-rumpled hair. “What about that guy? You’re not going to keep looking for him?”
Nathan pulled all the cash out of his wallet and set it in a stack on the table for Peter to find later. “It’s better for him if I don’t,” he said softly. “He doesn’t need me.”
--
It was barely light out yet, but the man hadn’t turned on any of the lamps, and he wasn’t looking at Peter anymore as he bustled around the room. Buyer’s remorse, maybe. It was a common occurrence. Peter just snuggled back under the covers and watched him pack, content to laze about until he was kicked out. Peter watched the man slip his coat on and gather up his belongings: one rolling bag and a briefcase.
“You can stay here until eleven,” the man said. “Just leave the key on the table.”
Peter sat up. “You’re leaving right now?”
“Yes. There’s nothing here for me.” He paused with his hand on the door and half-turned, as if he wanted to look back but didn’t quite dare. “Take care of yourself, Peter,” he said.
“Hey,” Peter called after him, and the man stopped. “You never told me your name.”
The man closed his eyes, creasing his brow in momentary agony before finally looking back at Peter. “It’s Nathan,” he said. He closed the door behind him.
“Nathan,” Peter repeated. He settled back against the headboard. He pictured the man in his mind’s eye, turning around the name in his head to see if it suited him. “Nathan…”
Then, like a bell striking a clear, sweet note, like a key turning in a lock, a memory slipped into place in Peter’s mind. He sat bolt upright. “Nathan!”
Title: Where You Lay Down, There’s My Bed
Pairing: Nathan/Peter. Implied Peter/other.
Rating: NC-17
Warning: involves prostitution, amnesia, and the various consent issues therein
Spoilers: Through “Four Months Ago,” although this takes a slightly AU track of Season 2 events.
Author's Note: Written for the
heroes_contest prompt "Jealousy"Summary: After finding out that his brother is alive. Nathan gets a tip on where to find him, and goes looking. The man he finds is not quite what he expected.
Say the trail leads somewhere else. Instead of ending up in Ireland, the shipping container with Peter inside is routed to Amsterdam, and Peter falls in with an entirely different crowd.
Nathan tucked his scarf in again, only to have it torn loose immediately by the breeze. The wind didn’t seem to touch the men who lounged against the sides of the building lining the street. The people here weren’t as ostentatiously on display as the women flirting from behind red-lit windows in the official red light district, but Nathan detected a certain commercial air about them, and knew that he was in the right place.
He looked at each face as he walked, and got many appraising looks in return. The prostitutes called out to him in many languages: English, French, and Dutch. Even when he didn’t understand the words, he understood their intent. He kept walking.
--
It was the Haitian who’d taken pity on him. Nathan hadn’t even known the man could talk, but after months of fruitless searching for Peter, the Haitian had shown up on his doorstep.
“Ask yourself why you really want to bring him back,” he’d warned. “You may not like what you find.”
Nathan had thanked the Haitian for his advice, and then booked an open-ended ticket.
--
He saw Peter from a distance, first. Even in the midst of a group of other men, Nathan recognized the shape of him: his posture, his silhouette.
Nathan came closer, stepping into the pool of light cast by a street lamp. When no sign, no shout of greeting came from Peter, Nathan began to get anxious. The whole group turned to look at Nathan, but he could only look at—could only see—Peter.
His brother looked different with short hair: harder, less vulnerable. Peter had on a black shirt, unbuttoned partway down his pale chest. His jeans were tight enough to make Nathan’s eyes linger a moment, and his shoes were polished and more stylish than anything Nathan had ever seen in Peter’s closet.
The moment stretched on until Nathan looked up to Peter’s face, where he found only amused curiosity. Not what he’d been expecting.
“Hey,” Nathan said stupidly.
“Hey,” Peter replied. He pulled up a corner of his mouth in an expression that Nathan knew from experience was not a smile. “This your first time in Amsterdam?”
Nathan frowned. He’d met Peter here during Peter’s post high-school graduation backpacking trip. Of course, they hadn’t spent much time in the Red Light District, then. They’d been busy in the hotel. “You know it’s not.”
The other men laughed, and one of them said something in Dutch. Peter chuckled, too. “Sorry, sorry. Of course it’s not.” He reached out and grabbed Nathan’s wrist. “You want to go somewhere?”
The glint in Peter’s eye was alluring, but it wasn’t the warm, worshipful spark Nathan knew too well. Instead, he seemed distant, almost indifferent.
“Just a minute, pretty.” The man standing next to Peter put a hand on his shoulder. Nathan hadn’t really noticed him before. He was two inches taller than Peter, and sported several days’ worth of scruff. “Pay up front, friend,” he said. “Then he’s all yours.”
“You think an hour will be enough?” Peter purred, sliding closer to Nathan. “Or do you want me for two?”
“That’s not funny,” Nathan said with a growl. “Come on, Peter.”
“Tu as un fan, Peter!” chuckled one of the other men. “Il tu demande par leur nom.”
“Just pay him, and we can get out of here,” Peter said invitingly. He slid a hand down Nathan’s chest. “If you’ve had me before, you know I’m worth it.”
Nathan bit back his irritation and brushed off the hand on his chest. He pulled out his wallet, peeled off a handful of bills, and shoved it at the scruffy man. “I need him for the whole night,” he said.
--
Amnesia. Peter hadn’t been gone all this time because he was avoiding Nathan, or because he didn’t love him any more. He just didn’t remember that Nathan existed. Simple as that.
Nathan should have figured it out when he realized the Haitian was involved. But he hadn’t. It made it worse, somehow, that he’d had a moment of thinking he’d found Peter, that everything would be okay. But this man, as much as he looked and walked and talked like Peter, wasn’t Peter. He couldn’t really be Peter if he didn’t know Nathan.
--
They passed most of the walk to Nathan’s hotel room in silence.
“You really don’t remember me?” Nathan asked at last.
“Sorry,” Peter said with a genuine smile. “I’m a busy guy. I can’t remember everyone. But truthfully, I think I would have remembered someone like you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Peter said quickly. “Just that you probably didn’t need to give Raul fifteen hundred euros. Unless you’re really unpleasant in some way I don’t know about.”
They walked another two blocks in silence.
“I really don’t look familiar to you at all?” Nathan asked again.
“Sorry,” Peter said. He seemed to mean it. “Maybe a little. Like a memory of a dream. Or maybe you’ve got it wrong. Maybe I’m not the guy you think I am.”
“You are,” Nathan said shortly. He stopped walking. “This is my hotel.”
--
Nathan insisted on a shower before anything else. When Peter took his clothes off, Nathan stared. In the four months since Kirby Plaza, the skinny, sharp-angled body still clinging to its teenage years had become hard and tight, and muscled in all the right places.
Peter saw him looking and held his arms out, turning slowly so Nathan could see all of him. Nathan had never really believed that Peter was dead, but to see him so alive and healthy was a shock, especially since Nathan knew he himself was not in the best physical shape. A slow recovery followed by months of self-abuse had taken its toll.
When Nathan kept staring, Peter leaned against the sink and started to bend over. “You want to see more?” he asked.
“That’s enough.” Nathan stepped under the spray and held out his hand. He didn’t like the idea of Peter showing himself off so casually to a stranger. Peter didn’t know Nathan was any different from every other man who could buy him off the street, and Nathan cringed to think of Peter displaying himself for anyone else.
Peter took Nathan’s outstretched hand and joined him in the shower. “Turn the hot water up,” he said. “I’ll wash your hair.”
--
“Is it that I remind you of someone?” Peter asked.
Nathan had been staring again, a towel hanging from his hands as he watched water drip off of Peter’s body and onto the white tile of the bathroom floor.
“Yes,” Nathan said. He wrapped the towel around Peter’s shoulders and drew him in close. “You could be him.”
Peter’s hands slid up Nathan’s chest. “Did he hurt you?”
Nathan’s bark of laughter was dangerously similar to a sob. Peter had left Nathan half-dead, had let Nathan think he’d lost his brother, had left Nathan alone and hurting so badly he’d crawled into a bottle and stayed there for months. Worst of all, Peter didn’t care, because Peter didn’t remember he existed. “Yeah,” Nathan said. “You could say he hurt me.”
“It’s alright,” Peter said. “You can hurt me, if you need to.”
Nathan grabbed Peter’s wrists and shoved him back, letting the towel fall to the floor. “Don’t say things like that. You shouldn’t let people use you that way.”
“Sorry.” Peter smiled his lopsided smile. “Force of habit.”
--
Nathan lay next to Peter on the bed and touched him. He ran his hands over Peter’s pale chest, that magnificent tight belly, the delicate wrists. Nathan remembered how he himself had looked after Kirby Plaza: charred, oozing, broken. A monster. Even though he knew Peter could heal, Nathan had seen him in nightmares: disfigured that way, with chocolate brown eyes staring out from a mask of burned and blackened skin. His precious, beautiful baby brother, ruined beyond repair.
But Peter was here: hale and whole and beautiful as ever. Maybe even more beautiful. He touched Peter’s face.
"You can cry, if you want,” Peter said softly. “You'd be surprised how many of them want to cry."
Nathan growled, a low sound that resonated in his chest. "Stop talking about them. You're with me now."
"Does it bother you?" Peter looked at him closely. "Is that how he hurt you? He chose someone else?"
"Yeah, I guess he did," Nathan said. He ran a hand down Peter's flank. "I always knew he wasn’t all mine, but..."
"You thought you meant something different to him,” Peter supplied.
"Yeah.” And that was exactly it. Peter was just fine without Nathan. He was taking care of himself, after a fashion, while Nathan had only fallen apart without Peter. “How could he just forget me? Does he know that I’m nothing without him...?"
"It's okay," Peter said. He curled around Nathan. "You've got me. And we've got all night."
--
Nathan was profoundly grateful that Peter hadn’t laughed at him. No one had ever accused Nathan Petrelli of being sentimental, and if anyone had told him a week ago that he’d pick up a hooker in Amsterdam who would hold him while he cried like his soul was coming loose, he would have laughed himself sick.
--
Nathan felt calmer, afterwards, lying entwined on the bed with his brother. But the silence between him and Peter—this stranger who was Peter—had stretched into an unbridgeable gulf. As wonderful as it felt to be lying here, it wasn’t all that Nathan wanted.
“You hungry?” he asked at last.
Peter smiled kindly and shook his head. “I don’t eat while I’m working.”
Nathan reached for the phone anyway, and dialed room service. “Are you still a vegetarian?”
Peter frowned. “I’ve never been a vegetarian.”
“Are you sure?” Nathan asked.
Peter’s frown deepened. “Not that I remember,” he said curtly.
A sore spot, at last. When the concierge answered, Nathan ordered a fruit salad, penne pasta with artichokes, and chocolate cake.
--
Peter lay on his side on the bed, propping up his head with one hand and watching Nathan intently. “Are we going to do this all night?” Peter asked.
Nathan shrugged into the fluffy white robe that had been hanging in the closet. “Do you have somewhere to be?”
“It seems like you’re trying to work up the courage to fuck me.”
“Too nice a job to rush,” Nathan said. But Peter was right: he was afraid. And as soon as the thought occurred to him, it began to gall.
“You paid for me,” Peter pointed out. He stretched out across the bed like a giant cat. He was lovely, there was no denying that. His penis lay sort and warm against his leg, nestled in dark, curly hair. Nathan’s mouth watered as he remembered the taste of him. “You may as well get your money’s worth.”
Occasionally, Peter did give good advice. Nathan stalked toward the bed and grabbed Peter by the ankles to drag him to the edge. He knelt between Peter’s legs and leaned forward, breathing in the familiar scent. He let his lips press against Peter’s cock first, and then he flicked out his tongue to taste. It wasn’t enough. He opened his mouth to suck in as much of Peter as he could.
A glance up to Peter’s surprised face made Nathan hum with pleasure. If nothing else about tonight was familiar, at least he knew how to make his brother hard.
--
Peter had his hands braced behind him on the bed. Little twitches of his hips betrayed his self-control as he kept himself from thrusting up into Nathan’s mouth. For his part, Nathan was taking his time and enjoying himself. He was gratified to know that he hadn’t lost this knowledge of Peter, at least.
When a knock sounded at the door, Nathan pulled his mouth off of Peter’s cock. “Stay,” he said.
Peter’s look of incredulity turned quickly to defiance when Nathan re-tied his bathrobe and went to answer the door. The waiter pushed his cart into the room, and paused only for the barest of seconds when he saw Peter naked, legs spread, cock straining upwards, posed on the bed. The man pushed the cart to the center of the room. “Here, sir?” he asked Nathan.
“Fine,” Nathan said, without taking his eyes from Peter. He was enjoying the pretty flush that had spread across Peter’s chest and down his neck. Nathan grabbed a few bills off the top of the dresser and handed them to the waiter on his way out.
“I like you like this,” Nathan said when they were alone again.
Peter’s smile reached his eyes. “You’re kind of a bastard.”
--
Perched naked in a high-backed chair at the suite’s little dining table, Peter might have been the most elegant thing Nathan had ever seen. “Eat,” Nathan said.
Peter jabbed a piece of pineapple with his fork. “You sound like my mother.”
Nathan had to work not to choke on his pasta. “Is your mother Italian?”
“Maybe she is,” Peter shrugged.
So Peter wasn’t as sure as he seemed. He knew he was missing the memory part of his life. Most of his life. All of his past. The most important part. “How long have you been in Amsterdam?” Nathan asked.
“How long have you been in Amsterdam?” Peter countered. He snatched a forkful of pasta from Nathan’s plate, just to prove he was being playful.
“A few days,” Nathan said. He nudged his plate closer to Peter.
Peter obligingly helped himself to another dainty bite. “Here on business?”
“No.” Nathan pushed the pasta over for Peter to finish. “I told you, I’m looking for someone.”
“This is good,” Peter said, indicating the penne.
“I know. It’s your favorite.”
Peter put down his fork and looked searchingly at Nathan. “Do you know me? Really know me?”
Nathan wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell Peter who he was, and what they meant to each other, but he didn’t know where to start. How was Nathan supposed to explain that Peter was his brother, his moral compass, his heart? Instead, Nathan shrugged. “Would it make a difference?”
Peter let out the breath he’d been holding. “I suppose not,” he said. Nathan recognized the note of disappointment in his voice. “I’m just curious.”
“No,” Nathan said finally. It was better this way. “I don’t know you.”
--
Nathan stood with his hands braced against the window, looking out at the canal while Peter swallowed around his dick.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Nathan said.
Peter made a noncommittal sound and kept sucking.
Nathan cupped a hand around the back of Peter’s head—his hair was too short to grab hold of—and said, “You should not be doing this.” Or rather, Nathan shouldn’t be letting Peter do this when he didn’t know precisely how fucked up it was.
Peter looked up at him. He was gorgeous with his lips stretched around Nathan’s cock. Nathan had forgotten how pretty he was. Just four months, and he’d already his memories were fading. He took a good look at Peter now, so he could preserve this moment in his memory in case it never happened again.
--
Nathan thought only briefly of taking Peter home. He couldn’t fix Peter’s memory, and he didn’t know if anyone could. And in this condition, Nathan didn’t trust anyone at home to take care of him. Suresh might have good intentions, but the guy had enough issues of his own. Ma would only try to use him. Nathan himself was even worse: he couldn’t help but want Peter to be the man he used to be. But that wasn’t healthy. What was so wonderful about Peter’s old life that he needed to rush back to?
Nathan had caused Peter enough grief already; Peter deserved to be free of all of that. To be free of Nathan. But if Nathan was going to let that happen, he needed this. Just one more time to remember him by.
--
“It’s okay,” Peter said softly. “Let me.” He pushed Nathan down on the bed, on his back, and Nathan went willingly. Peter was smart that way; he always knew how to put people at ease, and he’d figured out by this point that if this was going to happen, he was going to have to help Nathan out.
Peter grabbed something from the pocket of the pants he’d ditched in the bathroom, and then he was back, swinging up on the bed to straddle Nathan’s waist. He squeezed some lube onto his hand and tossed the bottle and a strip of condoms onto the bed. Peter fingered his ass open with one hand while the other squeezed around his cock, still hard from Nathan’s earlier attentions.
He looked like something out of a wet dream. Nathan tried to memorize the image: Peter kneeling above him, fingering himself while fisting his cock, head thrown back, lost in sensation.
“Ready?” Peter asked at last.
Nathan nodded mutely. Peter tore open one of the condoms and expertly unrolled it over Nathan’s leaking cock. Another stab of jealousy hit Nathan as he was reminded that Peter saw him as just another customer: not the most important person in his life, not his lover, not his brother.
All of that was chased from his mind as Peter lowered himself onto Nathan’s cock. That first tight-slick slide of the head inside of Peter made Nathan gasp. He hadn’t forgotten how this felt, not really, but memory and experience were very distant cousins. He wrapped his hands around the sharp edges of Peter’s hips and held on tight in an attempt to keep himself from flying apart.
“You’re fine,” Peter whispered. “You’re doing great.” He kept pushing, letting Nathan slide in and in and in, until he thought he might disappear inside Peter.
--
Peter had to know that the slow, lazy circles he was making with his hips were driving Nathan crazy. He knew Peter wouldn’t get off this way, either. Even if he no longer knew his brother’s heart, he did know his body. And Peter had tastes that ran for something a little… stronger.
“Let me,” Nathan said. He pushed Peter off to the side. Peter started to get to his hands and knees, but Nathan pulled him back. “I want to see you,” he said.
Faint surprise slid over Peter’s features quickly before he schooled them into something more neutral. Nathan arranged him on his back and knelt over him. One rough shove had him lodged back in half way. Peter’s mouth formed a startled o. “That’s it,” Nathan said encouragingly.
He pulled out and shoved back in, deeper this time. Peter’s hands scrabbled at the sheets. ‘Is this what you like?” he asked. He knew it was. He knew every intimate detail of Peter’s body. But he needed to hear it from Peter.
Peter threw his legs around Nathan’s waist and canted his hips up to take Nathan deeper. “Harder,” he said. “I can take more.”
Nathan had always thought Peter had known him too well, but it turned out that Peter could just read people well enough to know what they needed. Nathan wondered momentarily if his needs were so obvious, and it stung to think that Peter showed this same care for all his clients. Nathan punished Peter by plowing into him mercilessly. Peter threw his head back and gasped for air.
Peter was too good at this. Anything Nathan did to him, he took without complaint. It felt amazing to be inside him again. But it wasn’t like it used to be. It wasn’t an inevitable compulsion they both needed. This was strictly business for Peter. If Nathan hadn’t come along, he would be in someone else’s bed. Peter might even be having fun, but he didn’t need this; he didn’t need Nathan, and he probably never had.
“Yeah, come on,” Peter said in that raspy fucked-out voice that had screamed Nathan’s name too many times to count. “Do it.”
Nathan looked down at Peter, laid out under him, wanton and writhing, and came with a pained moan.
Nathan slumped against Peter’s chest as his arms gave out. As he gasped in breaths against Peter’s shoulder, he felt Peter’s hard-on digging into his belly, and pushed himself up again to look Peter in the eyes.
“I want to see you come,” Nathan said. He wrapped a hand around Peter’s cock, which was slick with pre-come, and began to pull roughly in the way that never failed to get Peter off. “Please, Peter.”
“Yeah,” Peter said. He kept eye contact as Nathan touched him. His hips came up, chasing Nathan’s hand on every stroke.
Nathan let his softening cock slip out of Peter, and pressed three fingers of his other hand in instead, curving them expertly to reach the spot that would make Peter dissolve. He hit it unerringly. Peter’s whole body went rigid, and he came silently, his cock jerking in Nathan’s hand as he spurted. Nathan watched closely as Peter’s eyes squeezed shut and his mouth went slack. He wanted to remember that look.
--
Peter—this Peter—didn’t love him. What had always made the two of them work was the tangle of a thousand intertwined threads: all the things they’d done together in their lives, the trials and the triumphs they’d experienced together. Defying their parents, suffering through formal dinners, tending each other’s wounds, fooling around whenever they could get away, flying and fucking and loving each other with reckless abandon.
Without that common background, Nathan was nothing to Peter, and he couldn’t hope to be. He wasn’t particularly loveable: he wasn’t in the best physical condition, he had years of lies and enemies behind him, and he was kind of a bastard. Peter had no reason to love him. Nathan didn’t deserve it, he didn’t expect it, and he’d be damned if he was going to beg for it.
--
“Are you packing?” Peter asked sleepily.
“Yes.” Nathan threw the last of his wrinkled clothes into the suitcase and zipped it closed. “I’m going home.”
Peter sat up and ran his hands through adorably sleep-rumpled hair. “What about that guy? You’re not going to keep looking for him?”
Nathan pulled all the cash out of his wallet and set it in a stack on the table for Peter to find later. “It’s better for him if I don’t,” he said softly. “He doesn’t need me.”
--
It was barely light out yet, but the man hadn’t turned on any of the lamps, and he wasn’t looking at Peter anymore as he bustled around the room. Buyer’s remorse, maybe. It was a common occurrence. Peter just snuggled back under the covers and watched him pack, content to laze about until he was kicked out. Peter watched the man slip his coat on and gather up his belongings: one rolling bag and a briefcase.
“You can stay here until eleven,” the man said. “Just leave the key on the table.”
Peter sat up. “You’re leaving right now?”
“Yes. There’s nothing here for me.” He paused with his hand on the door and half-turned, as if he wanted to look back but didn’t quite dare. “Take care of yourself, Peter,” he said.
“Hey,” Peter called after him, and the man stopped. “You never told me your name.”
The man closed his eyes, creasing his brow in momentary agony before finally looking back at Peter. “It’s Nathan,” he said. He closed the door behind him.
“Nathan,” Peter repeated. He settled back against the headboard. He pictured the man in his mind’s eye, turning around the name in his head to see if it suited him. “Nathan…”
Then, like a bell striking a clear, sweet note, like a key turning in a lock, a memory slipped into place in Peter’s mind. He sat bolt upright. “Nathan!”
