"Dad."
Nathan was still unused to hearing that syllable in Claire's voice, and he looked up from his desk uncomprehendingly before turning to find his daughter at his study door. "Hey, Claire."
She didn't sit down on the sofa that lined the wall, but walked slowly up to him, arms crossed, looking at the floor.
He swivelled his chair around and leaned back, dropping his pen onto his desk.
The olive eyes under the heavy eyebrows found her own green ones, and Nathan smiled slightly, waiting.
"There's something different about Peter."
One of Nathan's eyebrows crept up a few millimetres.
"Just...maybe it's just me," Claire muttered to herself. And then, louder, "Just - can you talk to him?"
There was a confident rap on the door, done with the brisk authority only his brother possessed around him these days. Then, without waiting for an invitation, Nathan stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.
"Jesus, Nathan, what if I'd been doing something private?"
"Then hopefully," Nathan said, moving to sit on the bed beside Peter, "You would have learned to lock the door."
Peter flushed. The memory from his teenage years refused to be forgotten.
1995 - Peter is sixteen, Nathan is twenty-four
Peter sat on the bed, staring sourly at his brother's engagement photo. So he was going to marry the woman in the picture. Heidi. It wasn't that Peter didn't like Heidi; it was more he didn't like Nathan being married.
It was probably normal for siblings to feel that way, Peter thought. But Oh God. His Nathan.
That felt right. His Nathan.
He looked down at the photo again, and inappropiately the thought of them being married led to the two of them sleeping together...and before he knew why Peter's teenage brain was wondering what his brother was like in bed. And Peter found himself doing it, caught up in the moment of fantasy. Knew it was wrong his brother turned him on; knew it was wrong it was his brother fucking him in his brain; but Goddammit, who gave?
And then as he was coming the door opened; it was so cliched; Peter managed to lock the door everyday and not today? But it was too late. Nathan stuck his head in, called, "Pete?" and met the sight before him.
"Christ, Peter," he said, his eyes staying on Peter's stricken face, and then he'd shut the door and Peter heard his footsteps fading down the hallway.
Peter never knew if his brother had heard the Nathan he'd no doubt been moaning in the moment of release. How could he not have? But Nathan had never commented, never even hinted at the topic.
When Peter entered the dining room later that night, to meet his brother for the first time since the encounter, hands scrubbed fairly raw with soap, Nathan gave him a perfectly normal smile and "Pete."
And that was also the day Peter fell - in love? in lust? - for his brother. It had happened so suddenly; the photo incident, and then the dinner, where Peter found himself following Nathan with his eyes, feeling ridiculous swoops in his stomach akin to the flutters he'd got in junior high whenever he saw his first crush.
He noticed that night how Nathan's lashes were dark and longer than Rachel's, how they made his olive eyes look smoky, the lazy manner they swept low, shadowing crescents onto his face.
