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]

I sigh at my brother, bending down to help him up again. Does he think I'm going to leave him? I would have done so long before now, but I can not always be in my brother's head. Well. That's actually a lie, now isn't it?

I concentrate on his thoughts as I pull on Nathan's shirt and his boxers. I need to get him dressed first and foremost, even if I'm shocked to hear him think that I pity him. Pity him? Why I do I keep coming back to this man?

How can I possibly love him when he only thinks about himself? I'm out of his head as quickly as possible, setting him on the couch. Funny thought I still haven't found my voice, that I was forced into sex, that I've spent each moment of my return playing nurse to my brother, my tormenter. And I continue to do so, even fetching the man water.