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]

I haven't heard from Peter--Paige, I keep reminding myself because it makes it hurt less--in a month. Heidi and I are still doing well, because she pretends to be blind as a bat. She found a phone number in my pocket, lipstick on my collar. She leaves the evidence of my transgressions, my infidelity, on the bed for me to find before she goes to sleep in one of the guest rooms every night.

I haven't touched her since the last time, before I found Peter. She doesn't act any differently towards me in front of the children, but when we're alone together, she won't look me in the eyes. She loves me, and she hates me. It's how it's always been.

So I continue my affair with Tracy Strauss, and another woman who works in my office. An intern who can't be more than twenty-two years old, slight, top-heavy, and brunette just like the girl my brother is now.

The funny thing--her name is Vanessa. I wonder if it's that girl he lied to me about. I'll never ask her. I don't want to know anything about her. All I want to do is drink until I don't feel anything anymore, fuck until I can't see Paige, the devil-woman my brother's become to me.

That would work, only that at least once a week, I'm flying to California and back on "business", lying to everyone, something that's almost as fundamental to my existence as breathing.

I watch my brother as he flirts with men and brings them coffee, shaking his ass and shoving his tits in their face, taking their money and their advances and making his living. Little whore. I want to slap him.

I watch him in his apartment, having his little girlfriends over, watching Lifetime movies and eating ice cream and chatting about boyfriends and going out to the clubs, graduate school, sex.

One night he's actually in his bed, naked and fresh from a shower, and he's taught himself how to masturbate as a woman. It's one of the most beautifully erotic things I've ever watched, and I can't help it when my hand slides inside my pants and I come against the wall outside his window. He lives in a very secluded area, and no one will have seen me.

Something's strange about his body, I notice. He's a little fuller in the breasts, in the belly. He needs to start exercising if he wants to keep his girlish figure, I think darkly as I speed home to my perfect life, more ashamed of myself than ever.

A week later I'm back, in the cafe where he works, and I tell the hostess I want Paige as my waitress. He almost drops my coffee on me when he sees me, wearing my huge shark's smile. "Hello, Paige."

[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

"N-Nathan!" I want to run, but not only is that generally impossible in a place that has one main exit and is packed to the teeth on this Saturday afternoon, but it tends to be a bad thing to do in heels when you're almost three months pregnant. I gaze down at him with our matching eyes and take two steps back. "What the hell are you doing here?"

I have other tables to wait on, other customers to serve, but I can't move from this spot. I'm more afraid of him actually seeing what he's done to me than anything else. At least these uniforms hide a lot under their full and frilly skirts.

"What do you want? I have work to do." I will not put up with him, not when he ran out on me like that last time. I can't. I won't. I need stability right now and he's not stable.

We could never be stable.

I just hope he doesn't cause a scene. I need this job.

[law-anddisorder.livejournal.com]

I never stop smiling, and I make it painfully clear to some of the patrons around my table that yes, I know this girl, quite well. Not in the way they think I do, but just the same.

"Paige," I say very sternly. "This is how you treat all your customers? Be a good girl and get me some brandy for my coffee, hmm? And a piece of strawberry cheesecake, sweetheart." I toss a hundred on the table and fold my hands, trying not to laugh at how angry I know this must be making him.

He haunts my dreams? I'll haunt his fucking life.

He's definitely gained a little weight. But not everywhere. Just in the lower belly, and his chest. His sexy little work uniform hides it well, but not well enough. I wonder if any of the men in suits who are glaring at me have ever gotten a piece of my brother's tight little--

The thought stops my hand holding the coffee cup halfway to my lips, sloshing the hot liquid right into my lap.

Oh, my God. He can't be...Some of the things my brother's been telling me his whole life come rushing back to me--his wanting to marry me, have my children, his slightly feminine tendencies--this is why he likes being a woman. Because he's never really wanted to be with one. My brother's a homosexual man trapped in a female body. No, trapped isn't the right word. He wants to stay this way.

And look what it's got him. Knocked up. I swear I'll strangle the man who did this to him.

[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

"We don't serve alcohol," I mutter, keeping my voice low and my eyes down so that the anger doesn't course through me to him. This is not what I need right now. "But I'll get you your cake."

I'm in the kitchen when Peggy catches my elbow, giving me a look that speaks volumes. Is that the man whose child I'm carrying? I nod. I nod and burst into tears, crying against her chest as she holds me. "Let me bring that out to him, honey."

"No. No, no." Nathan could tell her that he's my brother and that would ruin the only friendships I've managed to hold down for longer than a few months. "No. It's all right. How's my makeup?"

She smiles sadly. "You look beautiful, honey," she tells me as she plates a piece of cake and sends it out with me. I want to dump it in his lap with the way he's eyes rake across me...but no. I'm classier than than.

"I get done in two hours," I tell my brother, frowning at how his eyes keep going to my budding belly. "If you want to talk. If you just want to cause a scene, you can just leave." Or I'll make him leave.

[law-anddisorder.livejournal.com]

"All right. I'll be waiting," I say with my ever-present smile, though it's plastered on now, not because I'm enjoying his anger and now his tears. I'm not, not at all. I actually want to hug him and take him home. But I'm still incensed.

I wink at him, though my stomach is sick. Peter's pregnant. What kind of fucking upscale place doesn't serve alcohol? Peter's fucking pregnant.

What in God's name did the Petrelli family do so wrong in the world to deserve these tragedies, one after another? No, don't fucking answer that, I scream at my conscience. I clean up the coffee I spilled on myself, and then very slowly eat my strawberry cheesecake. Peter's the one who likes strawberries. I don't really care all that much for them.

I finish my coffee and push my plate away, and don't even bother asking him for the check, then head for the door. There is a bar a few blocks down from his cafe, and I figure that's where I'll wait for him to get off work and then explain to me what the hell he's done this time.

He'll know where to find me, I think sarcastically as I toss back the first of many shots. I'll slow down once eight o'clock approaches--I don't want him to see me totally smashed. I still won't do that to him, even after everything he's done to me. wI was right when I said Peter would be the one to make me start drinking again.

There's a tall, classy-looking redhead next to me, and I offer to buy her one of whatever she's having.

[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

I feel ridiculous standing in the doorway of that bar, watching my brother flirt with yet another person that is not and will never be me. It's spirit crushing, as if my spirit wasn't already crushed. I place my hand over my purple shirt covered stomach and close my eyes for a long moment. Peggy and Slice offered to come with me -- the latter wanted to scratch his eyes out -- but I told them to stay where they are.

And that I'd call them later. And we could have too much chocolate. I'll admit it. I like being a woman. I like having female friends. I like not having to worry about how they'll think of me if I cry or scream or eat too much in front of them.

"Nathan?" I've gotten changed, and the bump is a little more noticeable now. The redhead glances over her shoulder at me. I can hear her thoughts. She's annoyed that the man she was smoozing -- dressed like someone important -- had a pregnant wife or girlfriend following him. She wrote him off, and vowed to throw out his number.

Nathan gave her his number... Christ.

I'm going to start crying again.

"Let's go back to my place...?"

[law-anddisorder.livejournal.com]

The redhead I've been talking to takes one glance at Peter and fires me a look of scorn.

"Fucking jerk," she hisses, and leaves me alone with my pregnant brother. For all intents and purposes, my pregnant sister. I think about calling after her, telling her that, but Peter would probably flip out, get all hormonal and start crying.

I'm sure I've got enough of that coming to me for the evening, so I just finish the rest of my drink and toss another hundred on the table.

Peter suggests we go back to his apartment, and I just nod my head, anger and alcohol mixing dangerously in my blood. The clothes he's wearing now make it extremely obvious that he's gotten himself into trouble.

He's still the brother who belonged to me when he was fourteen years old. Some of my memories have come back. Peter didn't take them away, he just pushed them down where they wouldn't be accessible. But he fucked up somehow. Just like he's done right now.

When the door slams behind me, I lace into him, all the bitterness and sadness and anger at what he's done to me since he left finally boiling over. I keep my voice low, though. It scares him more when I'm quiet.

"You've done a real good job as a woman, Peter. Three months and you've actually managed to get yourself knocked up. I guess you're a whore no matter what."

[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

My eyebrows raise in tandem and I blink at him with all of the hot pain I have been keeping inside for these long, lonely months. I turn to face him, fingers curling into my palms, and just shake my head, smiling lightly. "He's yours, Nathan." I'm not going to try and be noble and let him think it's anyone else's. I don't want his sympathy. I don't need his help. But he should known.

My lips slowly curl up and I head into the kitchen to put on some tea. I don't know where my obsession with it has come, frankly. I lean against the stove and watch my brother's face stay exactly as it had been before I said anything. He's floored. He hasn't even blinked. He hasn't moved a muscle.

"What, did you think I was with anyone else?" I move the kettle onto the stove and go to shift out tea from my caddy. It's chocolate cookie, Peggy bought it for me a few weeks ago to help cheer me up. "There's never been anyone else, Nathan. Not for me."