hackthis_archive | Heroes - In My Dreams it's Always You (Nathan, Nathan/Peter, R)

a) I put up The Fratellis 'Chelsea Dagger' last week, except, whoops, wrong file! This is Chelsea Dagger. Last week was 'Whistle for the Choir' *Thanks

saturnalia

2)

them0rgue wrote an absolutely beautiful Peter & Nathan story Not All Words are Truths, which I urge you to hightail it over to her El Jay and read. One of the things I adore about Morgan's writing is her exquisite attention to detail and that's here is spades, so you know, LOVE THE AUTHOR! Why? Because if you want to get it -- you have to give it. Duh.

c) Peter/Nathan vid to Snow Patrol's You Could Be Happy by

kaiyote. Yes, I am still on Snow Patrol strike, but that's no reason not to enjoy the vid. Also, you know, support your fandom, people!

d) Yesterday, it was Sylar/Mohinder. Today, it's Nathan/Peter. OMG! People! WTF! I have, like, real shit to do.

antheia this is your fault.

slodwick you really didn't help.

Heroes
Nathan, Nathan/Peter
Spoilers through 1.18

In My Dreams it's Always You

Nathan Petrelli once had a dream that he was late for school, and when he got there, he didn't have his homework, and he wasn't wearing shoes, and when he sat at his desk, he was too big and didn't fit. All the other children stared at him. He probably would have stared at a 38-year-old man trying to fit in a chair built for a six-year-old too. This is what he thinks having a (super)power is like. Being stared at, and being unprepared, and feeling naked and exposed all the time. He's only had this dream once. He doesn't want to have it again.

*

Everyone has dreams. Dreams of who they are. Who they want to be. What they want to be. Who they don't want to be. What terrifies them. Some dreams occur when we're awake. Others happen when we're asleep.

Some dreams are so lifelike that we mistake them for memories. For example: Nathan dreams of having wings. Long, luscious, white wings that shed feathers on the carpet and are connected by thick knots of muscle and tendon to every fiber of his being. Nathan dreams of binding his wings to his body with long leather straps, of hiding them from the world in the same way he hides everything else. He's only free at home. There's a cavern underneath the house in Westchester where he can fly freely, but it's not enough, because it's never enough. Nathan wants to be free. He wants to touch the sun and prove that he is not made of wax. He wants to perch on his toes on the gargoyles on top of City Hall and flap his wings. He wants to feel the air currents shift around his bare skin.

He wakes up the morning after this dream and feels as though lead is coursing through his veins, tethering him to the ground. That afternoon, while Heidi's at physical therapy, he takes the boys to see X-3, and it's more traumatic than his first tour of Rwanda.

He watches with growing horror as the little boy on the screen tries to grate the wings growing on his back onto the pristine marble floor. There's blood and wailing, and the desperation on screen crawls up Nathan's spine. The sourness tickles at the back of his throat, and he barely makes it into the bathroom before he's vomiting into the toilet.

*

One of Nathan's most frequent dreams is the one where Peter is adopted. This is the one where they are related by nothing more than the air they breathe and the space they share and where every touch they've ever exchanged isn't tinged with something that's dirtywrongbad. This is the dream where it's okay to want things that Nathan knows he shouldn't. This is the one where at least some of what they have is valid. Familiarity breeds contempt. This is why the psychologists say incest is so rare. Well, maybe not that rare. But the doctors say that if you raise your children together, then they will grow sick of each other, build up walls, build relationships. They will know that certain things are just wrong and bad and should never ever happen. If his parents had kept Nathan at home... If there hadn't been such a disparity between their ages. If Nathan hadn't been sent to boarding school and then gone straight to college and then joined the Navy and been so fucking independent. He is what his parents made him. They are what their parents have made them. They are individuals. They are so individual that they might as well be strangers -- except that they're not.

Nathan's not a fan of this dream despite how many times he has it. He knows he's trying to justify this to himself. Trying to make himself feel better about feelings he shouldn't have. It's not a bad dream. Not bad at all. Except Nathan can't shake a lingering disappointment in the dream -- that it's not quite perfect. That something is missing when they're not related. It makes their bond stronger. It makes them who they are.

Even when Nathan has everything, he wants more.

*

He wants them to have it all. Always. Nathan will die before he'll give his family anything less. The night Nathan dreams of Peter exploding in fiery bits in the Manhattan street, he wakes up with his fists clenched in the sheets and his jaw aching because of his grinding teeth. He stays awake for three days instead of risking a repeat of the way he failed Peter the one time he needed him the most.

*

The tenth day of Peter's coma, Nathan has a dream of Peter and a man with a grey scruffy beard and a strong accent. The man is cruel, callous. He laughs at Peter in a way that only Nathan is allowed to do. He's sharp and rough. He throws Peter off of the roof of Peter's apartment building the way Nathan sometimes wants to. And when Nathan looks over the edge -- because in his dream he always looks over the edge -- Peter is impaled on a taxi cab frame. This man -- this grizzled horror -- kills the most important person in Nathan's life, and then just walks through Nathan as though Nathan weren't even there. And then Nathan watches as Peter climbs off of the taxi cab frame, broken and bleeding, and he lets this interloper care for him. This man gets to touch Peter when Nathan doesn't, and all Nathan can think is mine and not right and no.

If he ever sees the laughing man, who looks like a vagrant, he's going to punch him hard enough to send his nose bone into his brain. If Nathan can find the laughing man with the scratchy accent, maybe Peter will wake up -- and this is the only way to explain why Nathan is on the roof of Peter's hospital, standing on the ledge with the toes of his shoes just over the edge. He doesn't even realize he's levitating, floating -- flying -- until he's whipping through the Manhattan night, looking for some man who probably doesn't even exist.

This is crazy and stupid and foolish, but Nathan can fly, and so is that.

*

Nathan dreams of Peter's mouth on his own. Peter's hands on his body. He dreams of Peter's cool hair slipping between his fingers and the way Peter's back arches when Nathan fucks him. Nathan's fingers fit perfectly in the groove of Peter's hip bones and these dreams are the worst because they're so graphic. So real. Too real. Too much like Peter was there in the middle of the night and Nathan didn't even know until he woke up sweaty and flushed and spent.

Nathan blames their parents for this. Nathan blames their parents for a lot of things, but he definitely blames them for this. If their parents had been more hands-on, less hands-off. Less let's just send them to boarding school and that will make everything better. Except, Nathan remembers that despite all his years at Philips, they sent Peter to a day school in the city. By then it was a little late, though. Too little too late. Peter was born a month before Nathan's twelfth birthday. Nathan didn't hold Peter until summer vacation three months later. And then two days later it was off to the Azores with Billy Parker-Hayes and Sophia Astor. Peter was just an idea. He was just a blob. He wasn't even real until Nathan was almost fifteen and Peter was three and starting to form sentences. The first time Peter said Nathan's name he almost dropped the phone. For years their entire relationship consisted of brusque phone calls, and then Nathan was in college and then there was the Navy.

Nathan came home one day and Peter was fifteen, and Nathan didn't even know who he was. There was a stranger living in his house. A sullen, dark-haired fifteen-year-old stranger who watched Nathan like a hawk from behind too long bangs. Peter went from non-existent to Technicolor overnight.

It was like Nathan had been sleepwalking through his entire life and Peter woke him up.

*

Sometimes Nathan's dreams are like someone locked him in the batting cage and turned on the ball machine, and now the balls are bouncing against his unprotected skull. Dreams about Heidi realizing how he feels about Peter before Peter does. About Peter finding out that he loves Heidi more and walking out. Linderman finding out -- well, shit, maybe he already knows. There are dreams that Nathan can't differentiate anymore. Like the one where Linderman's goon drops off photos of Peter and Lex. Or Peter and Simone. Or Peter and Isaac. Or Peter and everyone but him. The photos are different every time Nathan opens the envelope, but he keeps them all in a little compartment of his mind.

*

(There is no one more important to Nathan than Peter. Nathan doesn't need his subconscious to tell him this. Sometimes though. Sometimes he dreams of a baby girl with blonde curling hair and eyes like fire. And then he wakes up. Again.)

*

For the first 11 years of Nathan's life, it was all about him. Wait, that's not really right. For the first 11 years of Nathan's life, it was all about who he was supposed to be. Not who he was, but who he was supposed to be. And then Peter came along. No one knows what it's like to be the first born child except for other first born children. The stress, the anxiety, the expectation. By the time the second child comes along, standards have been made, expectations have either fallen apart or been met. It has to be less stressful to be the second born, because the first born has either already run over the barriers or run into them and learned you don't go that way. The first born is the guinea pig. Nathan feels like he's still being tested. He wonders if it will ever stop. Even his dreams are tests. He feels like he's failing all over again. He's so tired of the dream where he's taking his SATs in his pyjamas and the entire test is in German. It's never something he speaks, like French or Italian. What he needs -- what he wants -- is always just outside of his grasp. Some things never change.

*

When Peter tells Nathan about his dreams; Nathan scoffs, because what is he going to say? Really? He's certainly not going to share his own. That way lies -- well, that way there are just lies.

So, when Heidi studies him quietly over breakfast, her eyes lingering on the circles under his eyes and the stubble dotting his jaw, Nathan concentrates on The Times. He's been reading the same line for 15 minutes. He knows she wants to ask him what's wrong. He knows she wants to help. Her wheelchair shouldn't come between them. It's not his fault. He knows what she'll say, "They're only dreams. They don't mean anything."

Except that Nathan also knows that a week before the accident, he was in a meeting with the head of some community group or another where he took notes on a yellow pad of legal paper. And the longer the community leader talked, the more Nathan took notes, except his notes weren't notes but doodles. Doodles of scales and blind justice and birds with large white wings and red silk ties.

Nathan sat in that meeting and dreamt of flying. He dreamt that Linderman was a god, sitting in a judge's robes in a court high in the clouds, and God -- Linderman -- put Peter and Heidi on a golden scale before Nathan and told him to choose.

So Nathan did.

And then Nathan woke up, and he found out that he wasn't asleep at all

-end-

Beta by

serialkarma, from whom all awesomeness flows.