Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

One.

“There, that’s the last one,” said Nathan. He set his box of books down on top of another one, and sat on top of it, legs splayed, leaning toward Peter, forearms resting on his thighs. He had a thin sheen of sweat on his upper lip, and his white t-shirt was darkened in places. “You know, it’s common courtesy to offer your mover a beer or pizza, or something.”

“I don’t even have the fridge plugged in yet,” said Peter. And I’m under age, he added to himself, but Nathan wouldn’t think that a necessary consideration.

“I’ll be right back,” said Nathan. “You start unpacking.”

“Sure,” said Peter. Fridge first, he decided. Nathan liked to give him these little pieces of advice, and sometimes Peter wanted to resent them, but Nathan was right; Peter should have refreshments for guests. Even in a tiny dorm room at NYU, even if he was underage. He imagined the advice Mom would add: “Nothing too rich, don’t try too hard.” The Petrellis clung to their middle class pretensions long after they no longer fit. Maybe Nathan would help him stock his fridge with some beer, maybe a bottle of vodka for his freezer—girls, he knew from high school parties, usually liked screwdrivers. He could provide the OJ himself.

Nathan came back while Peter was hanging up clothes in the closet. Peter didn’t intend to be this neat once the semester started, but Nathan would have words about a messy dorm room in the first week. Nathan, who could wear a pair of jeans and a thin white t-shirt and still look sharper than most men did in a suit.

Nathan set down the pizza and a six-pack on top of a moving box Peter hadn’t unpacked. Peter handed Nathan his college key chain—it had a bottle opener on it, so maybe this underage thing wasn’t going to be a problem; it never had been in high school. The beer was Brooklyn Lager, cold and flavorful—no Bud for Nathan—and it did taste good in the heat of the afternoon.

“I thought I was supposed to stay out of trouble,” said Peter, taking another swig. He held the bottle between his forefinger and middle finger, consciously echoing the casual way Nathan held it. It looked good, like he knew what he was doing, and if Peter was always playing catch up to Nathan, at least Nathan set a high enough bar to make it worth the effort.

Nathan wrinkled his eyebrows at the beer, wearing an indefinable expression that mixed worry, irony, and a touch of humor. “It’s only trouble if you get caught, Pete,” he said. “You know what to do, if you do get caught, right?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Do what you do? Call dad?” Which wasn’t fair—Nathan didn’t get into trouble—or if he did, he handled it himself, and always had.

Nathan stood up and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder, instead of giving him friendly punch for being a bratty younger brother. “Listen to me, Peter,” he said. “Don’t call Dad, call me.” Nathan didn’t have to say it, but Peter could read it anyway, written across the worry lines that weren’t a put-on, the ones etched too early onto Nathan’s face. You don’t want to pay the price of Dad’s help, they said.

Peter returned the look as significantly as he could, but didn’t really know this language yet—the one that Nathan spoke in glances full of meaning, in unearned camaraderie. The most time he’d spent with Nathan before this was the summer of Nathan’s accident. Christmas and Thanksgiving or the odd family vacation didn’t count as time spent together; those times were always full of relatives’ visits and Nathan always had friends home for the holidays to visit.

Peter found Nathan’s undivided attention was a little overwhelming now, his presence too large and focused for a dingy dorm room on a muggy August day. You okay, Peter tried to ask with his eyes, but Nathan didn’t want to talk about it, so Peter shrugged, and said, “Sure thing,” as lightly as he knew how.

“Look, Pete, I have to get going,” said Nathan, handing Peter the rest of the six-pack. He looked at his watch, as an afterthought, and Peter imagined Nathan’s to do list: gym, deposition, bond with brother, drinks with boss. At least Nathan had fit him in.

Nathan flipped open his cell phone to call for a car back to the office. “You wanna shower here or something?” asked Peter.

“Dorm bathroom?” asked Nathan, and Peter felt a crinkle of annoyance. Nathan never tried to hide it when he thought something was beneath him. “No, there’s a locker room at the office, and I have an extra suit there.”

“Thanks for helping me move,” said Peter as he walked Nathan down the stairs to the front door of the building. “Come by after classes start and I’ll take you to dinner.” Nathan looked at him questioningly. “I get a couple dining hall bonuses a semester,” Peter explained.

“I’ll come by,” said Nathan, leaving the dining hall question open.

Peter walked back up the concrete stairs to his room, which seemed smaller and dimmer without Nathan in it, and Peter felt flattered, again, that Nathan had taken time out from work to move him in. Their father wouldn’t have done that. Nathan moved into college and law school on his own, except for some hired movers, and had never even mentioned what it had felt like, alone in a new place, without a friendly face to see him off.

Well, their father was busy, and moving boxes wasn’t Mom’s style. Peter couldn’t picture her without one of her collarless suits, or her pearls, and she only wore slacks when she was in the garden. Peter looked out the window and saw portly dads tugging up the waist bands of their Dockers while moms in shorts and fanny packs turned to the front stage-managed the moving of boxes and TV sets. That wasn’t the Petrelli way.

The first few weeks of classes were a blur, as Peter got used to the strange lack of structure. He had classes almost continuously on Tuesday, but none on Wednesday, and on Friday had one at 9:30 but then none until 1:00pm. His laconic RA had said that soon he would figure out how to schedule classes so he could sleep in the morning.

Everyone in Peter’s dorm liked him, and he tended to take it for granted that he would be well-liked. He had been in high school: reasonably friendly with all the boys, confidante of all the girls, and the same thing happened at college. And Nathan helped: he stocked Peter’s bar and provided him with a fake ID and the instructions, “If you get caught using this, I’ll bail you out, but you didn’t get it from me.”

Peter had no idea what he wanted to study, so his classes were an odd assortment from every department: Linear Algebra, because that came next after his high school Calculus, The Biological World, a science-for-dummies kind of class, the required freshman writing class, Psych 101, and a class in the History of Democratic Countries from Antiquity to the Present. When Peter had filled in his course requests over the summer, Nathan had vetoed some of his more outlandish choices.

“Feminism in the Civil Rights Movement?” Nathan had said. “What else, basket weaving?” Peter steeled himself for something even ruder next—occasionally Nathan channeled their father’s more backward acquaintances, and working in the D.A.’s office hadn’t made him any more tolerant of the city’s less privileged, but all Nathan asked was, “What does Mom think?”

“She says I should take the classes that make me happy.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “You can take electives after you get your required classes out of the way. Majoring in Women’s Studies is a surprisingly bad way to meet women.”

“Why?” said Peter. “Didn’t it work for you?”

Nathan took a phony swing at him, and Peter ducked out of the way, and that was the end of the discussion. Anyway, Dem History would be good for him, if he wanted to be a lawyer like every other Petrelli. It wasn’t really an ambition he had, just an inevitability. Peter had been the problem child, in his way, but it was pretty mild. His teachers called him day-dreamer, who got good grades when he “applied himself” and bad ones when he didn’t.

He’d made the usual trips to the adolescent psychologist when he had some depression in his early teens, but that didn’t set him apart from his peers at all, and all it taught him that he was the textbook younger brother, the pleaser, the scapegoat, favored by his mother, ignored by his father, but nothing extraordinary. He just lived up or down to everyone’s expectations of him.

Peter went home the weekend after the second week of classes for dinner with his mother. He took the subway to Grand Central and took the train up to Westchester, then a cab to the house, and even though he had made the trip before, it felt different coming home from college. Visiting home, instead of just going back there.

“You look taller,” said his mother when Peter walked through the door with a duffle full of laundry over his shoulder.

“Freshman fifteen, huh, Pete?” said Nathan from where he stood in the door behind her.

“Nathan!” said Peter, going to hug him. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Mom invited me under duress,” said Nathan, returning the hug.

Mrs. Petrelli took Peter’s other arm, the one that wasn’t around Nathan, and led him into the living room. “Well, I didn’t want to share you,” she said, patting Peter’s hand.

“Is Dad coming?” Peter asked.

“Working late.” His mom smiled a little sourly.

Dinner was fettuccine Bolognese, since Mrs. Petrelli liked to pretend to be an authentic Italian matron, but Peter knew that the furthest his mother ever got in the kitchen was heating up garlic bread under the broiler. The dinner was probably from Pasquerello’s, what passed for home cooking in this house.

After the plates were cleared away, his mother asked him, “Peter, how is college life?”

“And I signed up for the Blue Light Escort Service.” Nathan snorted derisively, and Peter could imagine what the word “escort” caused him to think, but he continued, “It’s a group of students that walk people home within a certain radius of the main campus areas, if they’re out after dark and feel threatened.”

“It’s a valuable service,” said Peter with a stern look at Nathan. “We walk always walk in pairs, a male and a female escort—stop it, Nathan. It’s once a week.”

Nathan shrugged and smiled. “I think it sounds very noble,” said Mrs. Petrelli. “Any girlfriends?”

Peter rolled his eyes, of course, and Nathan said, “Yeah, Peter, any girlfriends?” a little too pointedly.

Peter frowned a “what?” at him, but didn’t say anything and instead mentioned a T.A. he had a crush on, and a few of the girls in his dorm. “No one special yet, Mom,” he said.

“A T.A., Peter? Already with the older women,” said Mrs. Petrelli into her glass of wine. “Just like your brother.”

“What?” asked Peter. “I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Peter,” said Nathan. He narrowed his eyes at his mother. “Water under the bridge.”

Nathan gave him a ride back into Manhattan—his mother wanted Peter to stay the night, but Peter wanted to the opportunity to talk with Nathan. “What was that about?” Peter asked after they pulled onto the parkway. It was a warm autumn night, and Nathan put the top down on his convertible. Peter stroked the leather seats. Nothing but the best for Nathan, Peter thought. Sometimes he seemed like something out of a movie, remote but charismatic, not someone that Peter should be related to.

“One of Mom’s friends. It really is ancient history.”

“Whoa,” said Peter. He filed away the information for future reference. It was a delicious little bit of gossip. Peter often felt as all the best Petrelli stories, the most tantalizing gossip, had passed before he was old enough to appreciate it, and he lived now in the tattered remains of some golden age long passed. “I didn’t mean that, although feel free to tell me more. I meant you and Mom. What’s with you two?”

“It’s just they way they are, you know.” Nathan was a fast but careful driver, and he changed lanes quickly, his hands moving gracefully on the wheel. He didn’t look at Peter, but kept his eyes on the minimal traffic. “She likes to keep you to herself.”

“You get Dad,” said Peter. “I think you got the better deal there.” He didn’t mean it, really, but it seemed like that was what Nathan needed to hear.

“I doubt that,” said Nathan, reading Peter too well. “You have any big plans tonight?”

“Nah, I just wanted the chance to talk with you on the way back. I haven’t seen you since the beginning of school and I missed you.”

“Huh,” said Nathan, the way he always did when Peter said something a little too emotional. “It’s good to see you, too,” he said, after a long pause. “I was going to go out, but if you want to come over, and watch a movie or something . . .”

Peter looked at Nathan’s profile, trying to decide if the offer was serious. He’d grown up hoping, and longing for a few minutes with Nathan, while his mother explained that his brother was busy and destined to be important, and wasn’t she company enough? Nathan came home every so often, like a visiting prince, and the family rolled out the red carpet. Peter had been six when Nathan went to college, and then Nathan had summer internships, semesters abroad, years in the navy, law school and now working late nights in the D.A.’s office.

“Why are you doing this?” Peter asked. “You never had time for me before.” Peter sounded petulant, even to himself.

“Do I need a reason?” asked Nathan, his tone light. And yes, you do, thought Peter. Nathan needed a reason for everything.

“Most people wouldn’t,” said Peter.

“I want us to get to know each other.”

“And?” Peter prompted.

Nathan sighed. “There are things going on with Dad. One of these days Linderman is going to be indicted for something bigger than tax evasion. The FBI is putting pressure on local law enforcement to make arrests, and you know what that could lead to.”

Peter pictured it, Petrelli against Petrelli, their faces in the tabloids. He remembered reporters camped out in front of their house when he was in middle school, during a high-profile trial. This would be much worse. “What can I do?”

“For now, just listen and walk lightly. But I think we both might need an ally in the future.”

“You make it sound like a soap opera.”

“In soap operas people come back from the dead,” Nathan said ominously, but then he laughed out loud. “Maybe I’m being too dramatic. You coming over or not?”

“Sure,” said Peter. “You’ve told me about your great new TV . . .”

Nathan had a decent sized one-bedroom apartment in a high rise in Hell’s Kitchen. Nathan took off his tie, rolled it up neatly into a cylinder, then unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves before sitting down next to Peter on the brown leather.

“Don’t get too casual,” said Peter. “You never know when there might be a tie emergency.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “I have some pajama pants if you want them.” Peter smiled at him, blandly. “I’ll get casual, too.”

They changed and Nathan ordered some pizza. Peter was always hungry these days, so he didn’t mind. Peter wanted to watch The Matrix, Nathan wanted to watch A Few Good Men. So Nathan suggested taped episodes of The Sopranos.

“You like that show?” asked Peter, “or are you just trying to make a point?” Peter had always liked The Godfather better; all the events took place a safe twenty years in the past.

“It paints a picture,” said Nathan grimly. Then he shrugged, “Wanna watch something else?”

“Yeah, The Matrix. That’s not our family.”

Nathan smiled quickly. “No, it’s more like that girl you dated in high school, what was her name, Marnie?”

“Marissa, yeah, with the Roche Bobois furniture, and her mom wanted to be Mom’s best friend because they were both Italian.”

“Mom likes to pretend our family doesn’t have any of those guys.” Nathan took a swig of his beer and looked studiously at the TV instead of at Peter.

“Yeah, so do I,” said Peter. He knew Dad’s connections weren’t the most savory, but what did that matter now? Nathan was cleaning the taint from their family name, one case at a time in the D.A.’s office. Someday Dad would be forgotten.

Nathan leaned back against the cushions. “So, The Matrix, huh?”

“I can’t believe you haven’t seen it. I got it for you when you got your DVD player, remember?”

“It’s not really my kind of movie,” said Nathan, but he got up to find it anyway. “Fantasy is more your thing.”

Peter snorted. “Yeah, and A Few Good Men is realistic. ‘You can’t handle the truth.’”

They extended the pullout couch and turned down the lights. Peter fell asleep halfway through the movie—college made him more tired than he realized, and sitting next to Nathan was comforting, more than the constant chatter of the dorm. When he woke up the lights and TV were off and Nathan wasn’t next to him anymore. He could hear someone moving around and saw the light coming from under Nathan’s door, so it was probably Nathan getting up that had woken him. Peter sat up and took off his sweatshirt, and then fell back asleep.

At first Peter wasn’t sure he was dreaming, but he’d had dreams like this before, and recognized the too-vivid sensations, like life, but more intense. Every touch in these dreams burned, the lights were too bright, and the darks too dark.

He’s in Nathan’s bathroom, with something pressing his face into the tile wall. The wall is cold, and the arm pushing on his back is muscular and hot and belongs to someone about the same size as Peter. He knows it’s Nathan, but doesn’t want to think about that, how violent and out of control this feels. Peter pulls his head back from the wall and something drips down his forehead: blood or sweat, he doesn’t know. He feels a thrill of fear, a half-pleasurable, almost sexual fear.

He sees himself through Nathan’s eyes, feels Nathan’s fear and anger. “I thought you were…” says Nathan hoarsely. “You shouldn’t…”Nathan can’t finish a sentence and Peter can feel the confusion in his mind, the things that Nathan can’t admit even to himself.

And there are details here Peter doesn’t want to acknowledge, but can’t ignore: he’s hard and his cock is pressing into the wall—no reason for it, except he can feel that Nathan is hard too, that there is something between them other than anger. The body confuses anger and sex, sometimes, Peter tells himself, but that’s doesn’t explain it. Nathan lets go of Peter’s wrist and Peter turns to face him. In the darkness of the bathroom, all Peter can see is the line of Nathan’s jaw, silhouetted against the mirror, but he doesn’t have to see Nathan’s face to know what comes next.

Peter woke up again, and before he had a chance to think, he jumped off the pullout bed, put back on his jeans, his sweatshirt, his sneakers, and stumbled out the door of Nathan’s apartment. He pulled it shut but without the key, he had to leave it unlocked. Well, this was a doorman building and Nathan could take care of himself. Nathan might yell at him later for being irresponsible, but he couldn’t stay there, not with that incubus vision in his head. And he knew he wouldn’t be able to forget this dream; it would work its way into his mind and memories like a splinter until Peter forgot whether it had been real or not.

The street outside Nathan’s apartment was dark and silent, at least for New York. As Peter walked down 9th avenue, he thought about hailing one of the cabs that passed by. Maybe talking to a real person like a taxi driver would help him exorcise that vision, but he also wanted to put distance between himself and Nathan’s apartment, step by step.

Peter had been thirteen the last time he had a dream like that, a dream that burned with skin-scorching hyper-reality. Nathan had been with the navy in Bosnia and Peter hadn’t seen him in six months, but he dreamt Nathan as if they were standing next to each other . . .

In his dream he saw Nathan and a girl. He saw a flash of a crowded bar, languages not his own swirling up to the ceiling with the smoke, and Nathan’s dark hand resting on the waist of a slim, curly-haired girl with Eastern European cheekbones, and a harsh look in her eyes that Nathan’s pneumatic American girlfriends never had. Then flashes of a dark and dangerous walk, gunfire in the background, and the thrill of fear mixing with the anticipation of sex.

Nathan and the girl kissed more on the stairs of a half-gutted apartment building. Somehow Peter saw the bullet scars on the walls, even through the haze of Nathan’s craving—the instinct that drove him to find a way to feel alive here in the midst of death. Peter saw double: the blood on Nathan’s hands and then this girl’s skin under those hands, memories of combat and mass graves somehow blending with the dream-present, and Peter could feel the shreds of the dream slipping away from him. Part of him had wanted to hang onto the dream, because he could feel Nathan’s excitement, and the girl’s, but the other part him had recoiled from the terrible intimacy of it. He had been watching them, and he had been them, and it was more arousing than any of the Playboys Peter had found under Nathan’s bed.

Peter had sat up in bed, gasping and sticky. It had still been dark out, and he got up and went into the bathroom to get a glass of water, then back to bed. He rolled over to his other side, but as soon as he had fallen asleep, the dream returned, and now the girl was on top of Nathan, and Nathan was inside of her, and this revelation had jolted Peter awake again.

After that Peter turned on his bedside lamp and got his stack of Superman comics down from the shelf in his closet. He read through three different flavors of kryptonite before his alarm went off.

The dream had stayed with him, though, worked its way into Peter’s fantasies, until it wore out in his memory, like a tape played too many times, and Peter could no longer remember what it had felt like when he was inside Nathan’s mind and experiences . . .

But now he remembered again.

By the time Peter walked south of 14th street, people were starting to wake up. Some of the bagel shops had opened their shutters, and Peter went into a Murray’s on 12th and 6th to get a coffee and a cinnamon raisin bagel, fresh out of the oven. He should probably sleep, but he had reading to do today, and the thought of going back to sleep with that still rattling around in his brain unsettled him.

Peter spent the day in Washington Square Park alternately doing reading for classes, watching the girls try to sunbathe in the unseasonably warm weather, and watching some students play hacky-sack. Peter wanted to join them; he was pretty good—being bored in high school had its compensations—but the interrupted sleep of the night before made him lethargic, so instead he just watched and tried to make his mind blank.

Nathan called Peter once on his cell phone, but Peter couldn’t think of picking up. He didn’t even look at the phone in case Nathan’s caller id flashed on the screen and it dragged up whatever that was from last night into Peter’s mind again.

It wouldn’t be shut away forever, though, and in the early hours of the next morning, when the noises of the dorm had quieted to the occasional footstep or a cab going by on the street, Peter thought about it again: the darkness, the danger, and the arousal of the dream moment.

He couldn’t tell whose sensations he’d been feeling, his own or Nathan’s or some feedback loop between the two of them. He picked at the memory of the dream, as he might a scab, as the weeks went by, until he didn’t know if he was remembering the dream, or remembering thinking about the dream. He woke every night from splintered images of that dream, scenarios of what might happen after that moment of anger and tension in the bathroom.

Whenever Peter walked to class, he started back from the men in suits walking to work. He caught a focused expression, a forceful look out of the corner of his eye, and his body reacted. After a jumpy week of this, Peter decided maybe he was into guys. That would explain away all of this, and it made sense from a purely academic standpoint: a younger brother, with a close, possibly overbearing, relationship with his mother. Right out of the Psych 101 textbook. He managed to train his dreams away from Nathan, and onto a faceless man in a suit, and to move the action from Nathan’s bathroom to an abandoned alley, which seemed like progress.

He started hanging out with a clique that contained boys as interested in “experimenting” as the girls—all bi-curious, if not outright bisexual, all members of the Gay-Straight Alliance. Sometimes it seemed like their poses were more about being self-consciously edgy than about getting laid, but it was a start.

A week later Peter had slept with one of the girls in the experimental clique half by accident (the girl wasn’t sure if she was a lesbian and wanted Peter to help her figure it out). Her girlfriend then chewed Peter out in front of half of NYU in Dojo Restaurant the next night, and he had decided that if he was into guys, it wasn’t 20-year-old NYU students with too much hair and narrow, sunken chests. Bi-curious girls on the other hand, might be worth pursuing, provided they were single.

***

The next time Nathan called, Peter answered the phone without thinking.

“Hey there, Pete.” False casual or real, Peter couldn’t tell. Nathan was good at that—creating intimacy where there had been none before, playing the good older brother until it became reality. No one else called him “Pete.” Peter couldn’t even say if he would have liked it from anyone else.

“Hey, Nathan, what’s up?” Peter could hear the clink of something in the background.

“Just at the gym. You should check it out some time—there’s a good one in my club.”

Peter nodded, forgetting for a moment Nathan couldn’t see him. “Oh, yeah?” he said after a moment.

“Yeah. Anyway, I wanted to see if you were free tonight. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Peter laughed. “Only studying, hanging out. You know, the usual.”

“The usual,” Nathan echoed. “I have a reservation at Dylan Prime at 8pm, under my name. It’s in Tribeca, you know how to get there?”

“Yeah, that’s not too far.”

They were both silent for a moment, and Peter could hear a grunt of effort in the background, Nathan’s or someone else’s, he couldn’t be sure. “Is that it?” he said after a moment.

“Is everything okay with you, Pete?” asked Nathan. “You left and I had to call Mom to find out if you were still alive.”

“Ah, yeah, look, I’m sorry about that. I was just having trouble sleeping. Sorry I didn’t lock up.”

“That’s okay. I should get you a key anyway. Nothing happened, did it?”

“Happened? Uh, no.” Peter felt a weird rushing in his ears, but powered through it. “So, tonight? Eight?”

“Yes. No jeans,” said Nathan, and he hung up.

Peter looked at the phone in his hand for a moment, as if it might have some answers. Something happened? What could Nathan have meant by that? And now he wanted to introduce Peter to someone? Had to be a girlfriend, right? Peter wondered why Nathan would keep that hidden. Maybe it was a boyfriend. Wouldn’t that derail Nathan’s political ambitions, Peter thought. The idea was almost pleasing, but Peter felt a surge of jealousy for this unknown, likely non-existent, man.

Anyway, it was probably a woman. Peter remembered a few of Nathan’s girlfriends from high school—they always cooed over Nathan’s adorable younger brother. One of them—Clarissa, Clarice?—had more time for Peter than Nathan did. Maybe she’d been a baby sitter. But Nathan hadn’t mentioned anything about this one.

And no jeans, huh, thought Peter. At least that was a problem he could get a handle on right now. Most Tribeca restaurants didn’t care that much, Peter remembered from outings with his mother. No sweatshirts, maybe, but everyone wore jeans like a uniform. Nathan must be bringing someone he wanted to impress.

Peter didn’t have any khakis, but he did have some vaguely boot-cut trousers picked up from Canal Jeans when he was shopping with one of his new girlfriends. Well, friend who was a girl. Peter collected those, as well as the more involved variety of girlfriend, more easily than he liked sometimes. Girls looked at him and saw someone they could talk to. Peter sometimes wished that he could attract guy friends as easily—they looked like less work, but they usually liked Peter for the gaggle of girls around him more than for Peter himself.

Dylan Prime was on the corner of Greenwich St. (not Greenwich Ave, Peter had been careful to note) and Laight St., in a neighborhood all but deserted after dark, except for a few well dressed couples who got out of cabs and into the three star restaurants that dotted the streets. He arrived a few minutes early, and when he told his name to the hostess, she showed him to a lovely brunette sitting at the bar.

“You must be Peter,” she said, with a warm smile that lit up her face. “I’m Heidi.” Peter must have looked blank for a moment because she continued. “Nathan didn’t tell you about me?” She rolled her eyes. “That’s typical.”

“Yeah,” said Peter, after a longish pause. “I’m Peter Petrelli. Are you . . .?”

“We’re dating. He’s told me a lot about you, though.” She grimaced slightly, and took a sip of her drink—something pink in an oversized martini glass.

“Really?” asked Peter. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine Nathan talking about him, couldn’t imagine that he existed for Nathan when he wasn’t around.

“Of course,” said Heidi, laughing and touching him on the arm.

“Like what?”

“You know, the usual stuff.” She leaned in closer and smiled a bit more. She really did have a lovely smile: warm and sweet and unassuming. “Ummm, he told me about a fishing trip you went on.” Peter nodded, and she continued. “He told me you’re going to NYU. Do you know what you’re going to study?”

Peter realized he was coming off a little strange, too interested in what his brother said. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “Probably history, pre-law, something.” The bartender came over and asked for Peter’s drink order. Peter pointed at Heidi’s drink and asked her, “Is that good?” He deepened his voice and stood up straight in case the bartender felt like questioning his age, but the man didn’t bat an eyelash. Heidi shrugged, still smiling. “You know what, I should probably just have a beer,” said Peter.

Heidi smiled into her drink. “Yeah, probably,” she said, once the bartender had left. Peter thought she might be laughing at him, but she was so good-natured, he couldn’t help but feel happy that he’d amused her.

“How long have you and Nathan been dating?” Peter asked.

Heidi licked her lips and looked out the window. “About a year,” she said.

“Huh,” said Peter. “He sure can keep a secret.” Heidi’s face fell, and Peter reached over to touch her hand. “Look, him and me haven’t been all that close until recently.”

“I haven’t met his—your—parents either.”

“Well, no problem there.” Peter looked at her intently. “It’s them he’s probably worried about, not you.”

She smiled again, but a little wanly this time, not quite believing him. “Ummm, what do you do?” asked Peter, to keep the conversation going. He saw Heidi look away from him toward the door, and her expression grew nervous and hopeful again.

Nathan walked in the door and toward them. He kissed Heidi on the lips and gave Peter a close hug, then looked back and forth between them, one hand on each of their shoulders. “I see you two have already met.”

“You were late, honey,” said Heidi, with just a hint of an edge in her voice.

“Sorry, meeting,” said Nathan, with a perfunctory glance at his watch. He jerked his chin up at the bartender and had handed him a credit card in the time it took Peter to take a swig of his beer. It was so smoothly done, Peter caught himself wondering if he could pull that off, or if you also had to walk in like Nathan, confident and sure of your place at the top of the food chain.

They were seated soon after, and had the traditional head of iceberg lettuce with blue cheese for an appetizer. Heidi had a healthy appetite for filet mignon, and after a cursory glance at the menu, Nathan said, “Hey, Pete, you want to share the porterhouse for two?”

It was kind of an obscene amount of steak when it arrived, and the waiter put it between them. “If either of you has a heart attack, don’t blame me,” said Heidi, as she watched Peter and Nathan work methodically in from the outside to the bone.

“What about you, honey?”

“Filet is lean,” she said fondly, like this was an argument she and Nathan had had before.

Heidi, it turned out, was a special education teacher in Westchester, but she had an apartment in Manhattan so she could enjoy New York. Peter read “family money” into that, but Heidi was very accessible, and it wasn’t as if Peter was in a position to judge.

After the steak and wine, the waiter tried to bring the dessert menu, but Nathan waved it away and asked for the check instead.

“I’m going to find my way home now,” said Heidi after Nathan paid the check. Nathan frowned at her. “You boys probably want to talk about me,” she explained.

“Well, let me at least get you a cab,” said Nathan. He stood up, smoothing the front of his suit as he did. He took her arm, and walked her out to the door, then came back in a few minutes later.

“Well,” said Nathan, putting his napkin on the table in front of him.

“Well,” said Peter. “Why the big secret? She’s great.”

Nathan smiled, half to himself. “She is, isn’t she? But I couldn’t exactly introduce you to her last year without introducing her to Mom and Dad.” He shrugged. “And anyway, I wanted to be sure.”

“Sure?” said Peter. The wine had made his head a little fuzzy.

“I’m going to ask her to marry me,” said Nathan.

Peter put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “That’s great news, Nathan.”

Nathan sighed. “Yeah. I thought it would be better if Mom and Dad met her after it was a done deal.”

“Why? What’s wrong with her?”

Nathan laughed a little incredulously at that. “Nice tact, Pete. Nothing’s wrong with her. She comes from a prominent Democratic family. Lots of fundraising connections. Not so much that it would look like I’m riding my wife’s coat tails but enough—.”

“Wait,” said Peter, turning to look at Nathan intently. “You do love her, don’t you?”

“Of course,” said Nathan, waving his hand dismissively, “but with her family, if I brought her home. Mom would say something. Dad would say something. You know I want to run for office someday, I just didn’t need Heidi thinking that’s why I’m with her. Especially not in the beginning.”

“Okay,” said Peter slowly. “That’s not why you’re with her, is it?”

“She wants to be a politician’s wife. I want to be a politician. Love is great, Peter, really. But commonality of goals is what makes a marriage work.” Nathan smiled, winningly. “We’ll have both.”

“It just sounds so calculated,” said Peter. He wanted to think better of Nathan, but Nathan’s political ambitions had been a part of him as long as Peter had known him, and every step he took was along the path to achieving those goals.

“Everyone does things for selfish reasons,” said Nathan.

“Not everyone,” Peter muttered. “I’m happy for you, Nathan,” he said. He gave Nathan’s shoulder a squeeze. “As long as you love each other, and you’re honest with each other.” He looked into Nathan’s eyes, trying to see what was there, if Nathan would look away and try to dissemble, but he didn’t. He returned Peter’s intent gaze and nodded.

“Thank you Peter,” he said in a low voice. “That means a lot to me.”

“Just . . . she deserves someone who loves her,” said Peter.

Nathan gave him a slight, indulgent smile. “Don’t ever change, Pete. There’s too many cynical people in the world already.”

They stood up, got their coats, and walked to the door of the restaurant where a couple of cabs waited. The evening had the bite of coming winter in it. Peter opened the door to the first cab and leaned on it. “When are you doing it?”

“This weekend,” said Nathan. “So expect a family dinner some time after that.”

Peter grinned, a little mischievously. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.” Then he smiled more broadly. “I hope it goes well.”

Nathan shrugged. “Yeah, me too.” He ruffled Peter’s hair, and then gave him a hug. Peter kissed Nathan on the cheek, before he realized he was doing it. He probably would have without thinking about it a few weeks earlier—it was a fairly standard Petrelli greeting between the men and the women of the family—but now it seemed strange and fraught. Nathan returned the kiss with one of his own on Peter’s cheek before Peter could get too worked up about it, and then Peter got into the cab, and it drove away.

Two.

Peter had all but forgotten Nathan’s offer to bail him out of trouble until one night in early November, when he walked across campus with his co-escort, Jaime, and the girl who had called them, a perky freshman named Madison. She hooked her arm around Peter’s, much to Jaime’s disgust. Peter didn’t mind. She was cute and blonde, and every time she turned she pressed her breasts against his arm.

She recognized Peter from one of her classes, or claimed to, and Jaime fell further and further behind them, as they walked across Washington Square Park.

“When does your shift end, Peter?” she asked, turning again and lifting her long wavy hair out of her face.

“Not until 6am,” said Peter, wishing it ended earlier.

Peter didn’t see the dark-haired guy walking toward them until he grabbed Madison’s arm. “What the fuck?” said the guy, and he pulled on her hard enough to spin her away from Peter.

They’d covered this in his Blue Light training. Peter grabbed the guy’s other arm and pinned it behind his back, but he didn’t even seem to notice Peter. “You’re such a slut—we just broke up yesterday. Hey, dude, get off me.” He tried to shake free of Peter, but Peter twisted his arm behind him more.

“Let go of her. Jaime, call campus security.” Campus security came in a few minutes and took the guy away. Madison told Peter tearfully that the guy was her ex-boyfriend. She gushed over Peter saving her, and kissed him on the cheek, and all was well.

Until the next day when Peter walked into his History section, and it seemed as if everyone had just stopped whispering about him. When he got back to his dorm room, there was a message waiting from the guy’s lawyer. The guy was Greg Cooperman, and the lawyer said the name to Peter as if it should mean something. He wanted to discuss a settlement for a torn rotator cuff.

Peter called Nathan at work. “What the hell? He was attacking her,” said Peter after an abbreviated version of events.

“I can meet you in about an hour,” said Nathan. “Come downtown.” He gave Peter the address for a coffee shop near the courthouse.

“Well, at least you’re not in jail,” said Nathan, when he saw Peter. He gave Peter a careful kiss on the cheek, and then they slid into seats across from each other. “Now tell me what happened.”

Peter told him the story and Nathan looked more and more exasperated. “I knew that escort thing was going to be trouble. You just can’t leave well enough alone.”

“Hey, I’m trying to help. Greg Cooperman, who the hell is that, anyway?”

Nathan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You couldn’t have punched someone else, could you?”

“I didn’t punch him, I just held his arm back. What, who is he?”

“That family’s connected to the Roosevelts by marriage, and even if they weren’t—they own all of downtown Manhattan that the Catholic Church doesn’t.”

“Roosevelt? Like the President?”

“Yes, Peter, like the President.” Nathan voice sounded snide, and Peter rolled his eyes. “His lawyer is going to be good. I’ll ask Dad if he knows anyone, and there’s a guy I went to law school with who would be perfect for this.”

“What about you?”

Nathan put his hand on Peter’s forearm. “I’m an A.D.A., Peter, not a person injury lawyer. This isn’t my kind of case.”

“Okay, well, sure,” said Peter, ducking his head. He had expected sympathy, understanding, and maybe some extra attention from Nathan, like the time he’d been suspended from his private Catholic high school for going with a friend to the Planned Parenthood downtown. One of the protestors recognized him from a picture of his family that had been in the paper, and called the school. Peter spent a week suspended from school for refusing to say who he’d been with, and Nathan came home from law school to help him pass the time.

“If there’s a hearing, I’ll go,” said Nathan. “But it’ll probably just be a settlement.”

“That’s bullshit. Madison should press charges. He grabbed her arm.”

“It’s how it works.” Nathan patted Peter’s arm again, and looked at his hand where it lay there on Peter’s paler wrist. Then he raised his eyes to Peter’s. “Okay?”

Peter brushed his hair out his eyes with the hand that Nathan wasn’t holding captive. “Yeah, I’m sure. Hey, isn’t tonight the night?”

Nathan smiled to himself, a private smile, and Peter felt a pang of exclusion at how far ahead of him Nathan always seemed to be. “Yes,” he said. “Tonight.”

Nathan had good reason to be sure of himself with Heidi, and at the end of the week Peter found himself taking the train north to his parent’s house for a family dinner with Heidi, after a late Friday afternoon class. He took a cab from the station, and when he arrived at the house, Nathan, Heidi and his parents were already in the living room, drinking champagne.

“Peter,” said Mrs. Petrelli happily when she saw him. “Where’s your laundry?”

Peter brushed his hair out of his face. It was growing out from his preppy high school haircut, and he liked the look of it. “I didn’t think I should, tonight.”

Dinner went well enough. Heidi had a few acquaintances in common with Peter’s mom. Peter’s dad asked after Heidi’s father, whom he had met at various fundraising luncheons in Western Connecticut. Heidi and Nathan smiled at one another, and kissed a few times, when Mrs. Petrelli offered a toast.

After dinner, their father dragged Nathan off for some consultation about a case he was working on, and Peter went with his mother and Heidi into Mrs. Petrelli’s sitting room. Eventually, though, the talk turned to weddings and flowers and invitation lists, and Peter grew antsy. He could feel some kind of tension coming from Dad’s side of the house, something that reached out to deaden even this little haven.

Peter excused himself while Heidi saying something about flowers; she and his mother seemed oblivious to the storm hanging over the other side of the house. When he neared his father’s study, he heard raised voices. The door was open, and he could see Nathan and his father leaning toward each other across the desk. Nathan had his sleeves rolled up, and his head bowed in frustration. Peter stayed out of his father’s line of sight.

“What I don’t understand is why they’re putting such a junior ADA on this one,” said Mr. Petrelli scornfully.

“Maybe they think I’m good at what I do,” said Nathan, his voice even more clipped and raspy than usual.

“Maybe they just want to make a splash, drag the Petrelli name through the mud.”

“They don’t have to work very hard at that, Dad.”

Peter edged around the frame of the door a little more until Nathan saw him. Nathan raised his eyebrows, a slight smile on his face. “Come in, Peter. You should hear this,” he said, his voice hard.

Peter brushed his bangs out of his face and tucked them behind one ear. Nathan looked at him warmly for a moment, and Peter could see he wanted to say something like, “you should cut those,” but he turned back to his father instead.

“Hear what?” asked Peter. He walked over to stand next to Nathan.

“Dad doesn’t want me to prosecute the Antinelli extortion case. But that family isn’t connected to ours at all, is it?” asked Nathan pointedly.

“You can’t tell the D.A.’s office what to prosecute,” said Peter, recoiling.

“I can remind my son what is best for our family. We don’t want our name linked to that piece of trash.”

“Any more than it already is, right?” asked Nathan.

Mr. Petrelli opened his mouth to say something, glanced at Peter and seemed to think better of it. “I need to get back to school and study,” said Peter, meeting his father’s eyes. Nathan looked back and forth between them, then took Peter’s elbow and tugged him toward the door.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to the train station.”

“Shouldn’t you tell, Heidi you’re leaving?” Peter asked as they walked out toward the car. He watched Nathan’s long fingers as he disabled the alarm so they could open the door to from the kitchen to the garage. That was new. Usually they left it off until they went to sleep. Their father must be getting even more paranoid.

“She’ll be wedding planning for hours yet. They wouldn’t thank me for the interruption,” said Nathan.

He and Peter got into Nathan’s car, but Nathan didn’t turn on the engine. Instead Nathan put his hand on the back of Peter’s seat and turned to face him. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry I put you in the middle of that.”

Peter was tempted to ask, “Are you?” because it had seemed fairly calculated, but he only waited for Nathan to say more. “I guess I just want you to know. What he’s really like. The name above all.”

Peter snorted. “I knew that.”

“He could be right. It might drag our name into the papers. If Antinelli gets off, then I helped him.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Dad could make trouble about this just to teach me a lesson. Or this could be the break I need. A new Petrelli for the media, this one doing some good. It’s a big gamble. I don’t know.”

“So you’re going to do what he wants? Nathan, you can’t do that.”

“I might have to,” said Nathan. “It could look unethical either way. It’s probably best to keep my head down on this one.”

“And do what he wants? Then he’ll just do it to you again!”

Nathan started the engine and pulled out onto the quiet street. Peter looked out at the huge houses, with porch lights casting circles of light in front of them on the dark lawns and then back, at Nathan who frowned and bit his lower lip.

“How bad is it?” asked Peter.

“Hard to say. Dad’s in deep, and you’re right, this will happen again. Some day he’s going to get burned by this. I just hope I’m not the one holding the torch.”

“If he’s helping criminals, then he’s a criminal,” said Peter.

“He’s our father. We owe him loyalty.”

To Peter’s ears that sounded like a test. “Maybe you do,” he said, uncertainly, leaving the rest unspoken, that he didn’t. Mr. Petrelli had chosen one son, and his wife the other. This was the consequence. “Some day the family name is going to be ours, not his.”

“Mmmm,” said Nathan noncommittally. “Maybe Antinelli will take the deal.”

Nathan dropped Peter off at the train station, and Peter started out the window during the long, dark ride back. He looked at his reflections: his pointed chin, his jaw softer than Nathan’s—a legacy from their mother’s side of the family. That night Peter dreamed.

It’s dark again, and now they’re facing each other, still in Nathan’s bathroom. A trick of the light makes it seem like the mirror is brighter than the rest of the room, and all Peter can see is the silhouette of Nathan, in front of the mirror.

“What were you doing there?” says Nathan, in a low harsh whisper. They’re close enough that Peter can feel warm breath on his face. The tile floor is cold.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Peter. They are so close; Peter can feel the vibrating tension coming off Nathan’s body. Anger and possessiveness barely held in control.

“It matters to me. The family--.” Anger chokes off Nathan’s words.

Fuck the family, thinks Peter, and then a hysterical bubble of laughter threatens to escape him. Exactly, he thinks, that’s the problem.

“Actions have consequences,” says Nathan, and this time his voice is as dry as dust. Nathan closes any remaining distance between them, and although it’s still sexual, Peter feels a need even deeper than that from himself or from both of them. A need to push themselves together, two broken halves to make a whole. One who dares too much, and one who dares too little, but together they will be right.

Actions have consequences, Peter’s dream self thinks. Nathan should have let him go home, back to his apartment. Together they are dangerous. Together there are no boundaries.

Peter awoke and tried to sit up, but the sheets of his bed felt like hands strangling him, holding him down. He tore them off and got up, shivering and sweating and then went to his liquor cabinet, well-stocked by Nathan, and methodically drank warm vodka until the room was spinning and he drifted into a thin, dreamless, stupor of sleep.

He woke up, still drunk, five hours later, and stumbled into the dorm bathroom to puke up the liquid in his stomach until there was nothing left. He washed his face, and looked at himself in the mirror. He was starting to get the Petrelli facial hair, finally. Short stubble covered his chin and upper lip, and his eyes looked hollow and shadowed. Nathan was going to know something was wrong when they met up.

Nathan had invited Peter over to help put up shelves, with the added lure of beer to take back to his room. Peter didn’t know anything about sawing or hammering or whatever might be involved, but clearly, this was just an excuse for some brotherly bonding. Peter went to the dining hall and drank coffee and ate hash browns until he felt somewhat more close to human, then took a shower. He took the subway up to Nathan’s apartment, swaying sickly against the ceiling bars, dreading every stop. The acceleration and deceleration made his stomach even queasier.

“You look like shit,” said Nathan when he answered the door. He was wearing loose stained jeans, and a t-shirt, and at Peter’s confused look said, “Shelves, painting, remember?”

Peter just blinked at him. Traces of the previous night’s dream seemed to cling to Nathan, and every time Peter looked at him, he remembered another piece of that dark vision. He squinted at Nathan and shaded his eyes from the bright light coming in through the open windows. “Do you have to have those open?” he asked.

“What did you do last night? Here, sit down.” He pulled out a seat at the breakfast bar.

“Party . . .,” said Peter, sitting down gently, so as not to jar his head. Not quite a lie, his room had hosted the smallest, least fun party on campus last night.

“If you’re going to puke, you know where the bathroom is.”

“No, nothing like that.” Peter shook his head and wished he hadn’t. “I don’t think I can be here.”

“Yeah,” said Nathan, putting his hand on Peter’s shoulder. Peter struggled not to lean into it or pull away—his body wanted to do one or the other, and neither one seemed appropriate.

“Look, I know you’re not feeling well, but I didn’t want to bring it up at dinner . . . the Cooperman thing.”

“What about it?”

“You have to apologize to Greg Cooperman, and Dad’s going to pay the settlement, and it’s going to be all over. It’s scheduled for next Tuesday.”

“Apologize? I was doing my job.” Peter lifted his head up and pointed at Nathan. “He should be apologizing.”

“Peter, we want this to go away. You understand that, don’t you?”

Peter’s head was throbbing and it didn’t seem worth the effort to fight this, not now, not with Nathan sounding so reasonable. “Okay, if it goes away.”

“And you have to quit the escort service, or whatever.”

“Blue Light Escorts,” said Peter, glaring at Nathan. Then he sighed. “They didn’t want me back after that. I was doing what they trained me to do.” He slumped against Nathan. Nathan put his hand on Peter’s forehead and the coolness felt wonderful.

“You want to lie down here?” Nathan asked. “Or I can call a cab.”

Peter pulled away. “You don’t have to take care of me all the time,” he said angrily, then wondered where the anger came from. “I can take care of a hangover myself. Sorry about the shelves.”

“Go home, Pete. This can wait.”

Peter couldn’t face the subway again, and caught a cab back to 4th St. Now Nathan would think he was even more irresponsible, but that was better than him knowing the truth.

Peter couldn’t avoid thinking about the dream as he lay in bed that afternoon, willing his head to stop throbbing. Why was he there, in Nathan’s bathroom, head bleeding, mind full of knowledge he didn’t want? Was it prophetic, or a fantasy? Peter couldn’t decide which was worse. One true dream all those years ago didn’t mean they all were.

Peter spent the rest of the afternoon on the common room couch, watching re-runs of The Simpsons and getting up every few hours to go to the bathroom and get a new bottle of Gatorade. By sunset he was feeling almost human again.

Madison had left a note on his door, some club she wanted to go to in the Meat Packing district tonight. Peter’s headache had faded with the sunlight, and the notion of pounding music, loud enough to drive out any thought, was appealing.

Peter set his alarm clock for 11:30pm and napped until it was time to shower and get ready. He met up with Madison and her gaggle of Long Island girlfriends. Madison was vivacious and sweet, and had adopted Peter as her protector, a role that Peter accepted because it was easier than fighting it.

The girls wore too little for the chill of the night, and their laughter sparkled in the cold air, brittle and glittery. They piled into taxis for the short trip west, and got out in front of the club at midnight. The whole group had begged or borrowed fake IDs, and Peter’s fake, from Nathan, was flawless.

Inside, the club was dark, with occasional flashing lights. Madison and some of the other girls tugged Peter deeper into a warren of rooms. Each one had a different kind of music pouring from it. “Oooh, eighties!” said Madison as they passed by one of the rooms. “I love oldies!” So in they went.

Peter danced with all of the girls. He knew the trick of making them all happy by spreading his attention evenly, and he could do it without thinking; some sense alerted him if any of the girls were feeling left out. But something on the edge of the dance floor kept pulling his attention away. A crisp flash of white shirt, a sardonic smile, but whenever he looked, whomever it belonged to was gone.

Peter walked over to the bar. The smoke in the air was burning his throat, and he started to feel a slump in his energy from the night before. He couldn’t hold his shoulders up anymore, and he let them slouch forward. He felt a warm, tantalizingly familiar hand on his shoulder and he turned to look at its owner. The man was tall and dark, but not Nathan.

“You come here often?” the man said mockingly, voice pitched somehow under the music, so Peter could feel it more than hear it.

Peter shook his head, obscurely embarrassed by the suggestions in the man’s voice. The man put his hand on the small of Peter’s back, and its heat was transmitted through Peter’s dance-sweated shirt. “I’m Derek,” he said, and to Peter, drunk and exhausted, the name was a promise of something dark and wonderful, the kind of promise Peter had stopped believing in. Peter spared a glance for the girls on the dance floor. “They can take care of themselves,” said Derek.

Derek pushed Peter ahead of him, down a corridor, through a door into a tiny supply closet. Before the door even shut behind him, Derek’s lips were on Peter’s, his hands running up under Peter’s shirt. He kissed invasively, but Peter liked the way it allowed him to be passive. What happened here tonight would not be Peter’s fault.

Peter was hard and shaking when they disengaged. Derek reached down between them and rubbed the palm of his hand along Peter’s dick through his pants. “Good,” he said against Peter’s lips. Then he pushed Peter’s head down.

“Wait,” said Peter. “I’m not . . .”

“You were looking for me,” said Derek, in a tone that allowed no argument. He undid his pants and let them pool around his ankles. Peter took hold of Derek’s cock; it didn’t feel all that different from his own. He wondered what he was doing there, until Derek’s hand, strong and heavy, kneaded his shoulder, and took Peter out of himself again. He sucked Derek down, rocking back on his heels where he squatted on the floor. He dug his hands into Derek’s thighs and they told him what the rhythm should be.

Derek kissed him sloppily afterwards, seeming to like the dirtiness of it. “You’re pretty,” he said with an un-Nathan-like grin, more young, more boyish than any smile Nathan had ever worn. “Your turn.”

Peter leaned against the wall as Derek licked and sucked him expertly. He cupped Peter’s balls in his hand, and when he stroked the skin behind them, Peter exploded without meaning to. Derek got to his feet and Peter did his pants back up hastily, before whatever might come next. His lips felt bruised, and he decided he’d learned enough for one night—no more kisses, no handshakes, he had to get out of there.

He stumbled out of the club into the pale, yellow-pink light of the street lamps and retched from the smell of rotting meat that covered this area of Manhattan. He thought about telling Madison where he was going, but he couldn’t go back in there, to see Derek’s leer, and his familiar, stylish gestures. He was nothing like Nathan, not really, except in those few details, but that was enough.

Peter walked home through the knife-edged, cold wind that blew through the West Village. He wove among people stumbling out of bars. He could feel their drunken neediness like nails scratching along his nerves, and he wished he could just shoot up into the sky out of here, away from New York, away from everything.

He fell asleep heavily on his bed, without bothering to take off his shoes, but the sleep was dreamless, free of Derek, and free of Nathan.