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]

"It's--" Christ. "The only place that didn't need a social security card." I'm embarrassed, more now than I had been getting the uniform. In the past week, I've managed to get use to being a woman. I can walk in heels now. I figured out that makeup makes you get bigger tips. And that a smile gets you anywhere.

I even flirted a little today with a man in a complete Armani suit that kept ordering pricey coffees just so I'd come over more.

It was a nice experience, strangely enough. Sort of like being in Philadelphia again, only this time, I wasn't letting five guys a night fuck me into oblivion. I'm moving on. Or trying to. Even if seeing Nathan chokes me right up.

I cross my hands over my cleavage, shy and for a good reason. He's been staring. I don't want to slip into his arm and smell his aftershave on his lapel.

"Maybe...you should go home. Won't the kids miss you?"