A Long Trip Home

[chimeramimicry]

The door is two yards away but I can't move from the top of the stairs.  It's been months, four or so, since I've been here, in this spot.  Gone were the days of trudging up the stairs with my satchel on the way home from work because my building's landlords refused to fix the elevators properly.  Gone too was the pleasure I had of returning to this apartment I paid for with my own money and not from my trust fund.  I donated all of that to charity the moment I turned twenty-five and finished paying off my loans to school.  It was two years ago.  It feels like forever.

I'm not the same man I had been.  I'm not a child anymore.  At least, I want to think that.

I'm still clutching the photograph of my brother and I in our tuxedos.  There's a smudge on it from my thumb and full of creases.  I've not let it go since I opened that box containing everything that I am.  Everything I was.  I left Ireland without looking back.  There was, there is only one thing on my mind.  Nathan.

Nathan.

Nathan.

I know he's here.  I've always felt a connection to him.  Mohinder Suresh called it part of my empathy, to feel things like that.  Funny to be so empathically linked to someone I spent my whole life pining for, who has always had a life to live without me.  He's never had time for me.  Never.

"Just walk, Peter," I whisper to myself as I move to a door I have not touched in a long time.  I swallow.  And knock.  I know he's in here without knowing it.  I almost lose the nerve to knock.  Please answer, Nathan.  Please.

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[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, I know," I whisper as I stroke his hair and kiss his forehead again. He's going into cold sweats and while I have already gone and picked up the medication I know he's going to need soon. Getting him to the bathroom is lesson in futility, but cleaning him up when we don't get there in time is pure love. I know he doesn't understand this, but he will.

When it gets really bad -- and it happens soon than I expect -- I hold my brother, my lover, close to my chest in the shower as he weakly pushes me away. The bruises he causes on my skin fade easily and I kiss the top of his wet head like a parent does to a child.

I make sure to tell him that I love him, over and over again. It's a mantra. A prayer. I rock him gently....but I am not sorry that I am doing this to him.

[law-anddisorder.livejournal.com]

I'm too weak to even fight him now, as he pulls my urine-soaked pants off me and puts me into the shower, holding me up, washing me gently. I'm a patient to him now. I'm dying. He's killing me. I just want to fall to my knees and give up. The pain so bad all I can do is cry.

"Peter, please," I moan, as he kisses my lips, my face. He pulls me in and I rest my head on his chest. "Please make it stop. Let me go. Please. It hurts. I can't do this...I'm going to die...Peter..."

He dries me with a soft white towel, leads me to the bed, professing his love for me even as I tell him I hate him. I find some strength deep within me to swing at him. I know I've split his lip with one errant punch, but he heals. I just hurt even more. I see his blood on my hand, and it makes me even sicker.

He lays me down, and I'm crying so hard I feel like I'm going to throw up. I need a drink so badly...that's all it would take to end this suffering. "Have mercy on me, Peter. Help me. Please. Please."

[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

It takes all of my soul and all of my strength not to let him go. It would be so easy to run down to the bar and snag a few bottles to let my brother pull himself together, but then all of this would have been for nothing. I can't allow that. His hands are tied now as he lays on his side and I press myself against his back, spooning him as he usually does to me.

I keep on singing against the back of his head, songs from Mass, songs from childhood, sweet little things that have no name and just came to me as I wait out this torture with him.

Sometimes, as the days stretch by in front of us, Nathan seems perfectly lucid. Other times, he offers me the things I know he would, wounding me with promises of marriage in Canada and a new life if I'll just pull him out of hell. Sometimes he laughs pitifully, shaking out his addiction. Or he's violent and tries to hurt me.

Or himself.

But it gets better. It always does. Even in the blackness, there's light. I'm going to save someone that means everything to me, even if it costs me the very thing I love.

[law-anddisorder.livejournal.com]

How many days has it been? Five, six? My brother is now my tormentor. He doesn't love me, not when he's doing this to me. He keeps telling me he does, whispering it into my hair when I'm shaking and crying, when I'm silent and refuse to talk to him. There's one day I spend completely out of the restraints, and I think maybe it's over, maybe he'll give in, but when I try to hit him, try to escape, he stops me with that Godforsaken telekinetic power, ties me to the bed again. I call him the worst names I can think of. I tell him I never loved him, that I only used him. He laughs and tells me he loves me anyway. I tell him that I'll take him away, spend the rest of my life with him, give him all of me, everything he's ever wanted. He just smiles and shushes me, kisses me, holds me.

He's killing me.

Sometimes I'm all right, and it's like we're just on vacation together, and we laugh and talk about sports, about my children, about when we were younger. Sometimes it's so bad I'm heaving nothing but bile into the ice bucket Peter's reserved for just that purpose. Sometimes I can't keep down anything that's not water and crackers. He loves me still.

There's some kind of medication that he's got stashed away, and I do my best to make him give it to me. But my tormentor, my brother, he always knows when I'm faking it, making it out to be worse than it really is, and when it's really bad and I need it. Then I feel the cool swipe of alcohol against my arm, a quick, almost painless slide of a needle under my skin. It never hurts after that, and it lasts sometimes for hours.

Maybe a few days more go by, I'm not sure anymore. They're marked by the good times and the bad times. Peter stops me from cutting myself with the safety razor that he leaves unattended while shaving me. He sings to me and rocks me as if I'm his child, and he tells me he loves me. But he doesn't love me. Not when he's hurting me like this.

Today I wake up, and something is different, maybe. I can't trust myself yet. I don't know. I'll let Peter decide. He's his brother's keeper. My tormentor. My savior.

[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

I'm so tired. My body regenerates itself with or without sleep, but the mental exhaustion is not something that even Claire's powers can cure me of. I am in the shower myself, sobbing away the pain I gather from him and purge when he is passed out, when my brother stirs. I don't need super hearing to figure that one out. Washing my face -- though it will take some time for the redness to leave my eyes -- I leave the shower and dry as quickly as possible.

Nathan's sitting up in bed. His hands are tied, but not to the headboard. He can get up, grasp things, feed himself...but he's still impaired. He can not get too far. And that's the point, really. I have to watch him at every step of the way. He's worse than a child. Worse than my patients.

It's all I can do not to break down on a daily basis.

This morning, though, his eyes are clear. He's not really looking at me, just at the sun spots on the wall, watching them as if he can actually see their patterns. I can't get my hopes up though. "Nathan?" It takes him a moment, but he looks at me with those striking eyes of his and I edge closer to the bed, t-shirt and hair sticking damply to my skin.

I smile. He does not, but I'm use to that. My lips find his the moment I crawl into bed with him, hands on either side of his face. He tastes stale, like morning breath.

"What do you want for breakfast?"