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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[law-anddisorder.livejournal.com]

Peter and I laugh our way back into his apartment after the sweet little neighbor of his closes her door.

"Jesus Christ, Pete," I say, shaking my head in disbelief. "That was close." My body is thrumming with the arousal of moments before, the adrenaline of Peter tackling me to the ground. Not to mention the fact that his neighbor almost caught us making out, on top of each other in his hallway.

I take a few breaths to calm myself, run my fingers through my hair. I toss my suit jacket on the back of the chair, loosen my tie, roll up my sleeves. Why did I dress so formally to come see my brother? Just a force of habit, I guess.

Maybe I just like the way I look in a suit.

I look around his apartment, waiting for one of us to break the now uncomfortable silence. I stare at the blue paint job, now marred by the splatter of beer running down the wall. I didn't even really want it; I was just drinking it to make a point.

"So, Pete...it's my birthday. What do you want to do?" I definitely know what I don't want to do: fight with him. There's been enough of that in the past few months. I give him my bright Cheshire-cat smile.

[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

"If you give me a few, I'll shower and we can go to dinner." I can literally see the wheels turining around in his head. What am I suppose to do, though? Drop my pants and bend over for him? Getting Nathan out of my head is not helped by sleeping with him whenever I can.

Of course, there's no help in these matters. I don't know how it happened, but one moment I was in the bathroom getting undressed for the shower and the next, I was in Nathan's arms. In my bed. Flushed and whining and pleading for him to go slow. To keep on moving. To never let me go. I know that I'm asking for too much of him.

I can not have everything. It's simply impossible.

We make love, real love, after that. And when we are both satisfied he wraps his arms around me from behind, his flaccid cock between my thighs.

"There's got to be a better way," I whisper to him, feeling like that thirteen year old kid who spent each afterglow with my brother dreading the inevitable. He'd get up. He'd leave. And it would be awhile before he came back to hold me again.