This was written while I was watching Season 1 so it disregards anything that happens in the following series.
Disclaimer: Don't own Heroes. Not making money.
Dedicated to A.
Control is for the Weak
Peter loved watching his brother as he interacted with people. He was always so calm, soft-spoken and self-assured that anybody naturally listened to whatever it was he was saying. He always captured everyone's full attention, even while talking about the dullest, most insignificant matter. People were riveted. Mostly it was only Nathan's public persona that bordered on the dull and insignificant: bragging about the record-breaking trout he'd caught over the weekend, golf scores… The essential to keep any self-respecting, obnoxious businessman involved, really. Peter liked to watch him because, as he described the new vintage sports car he had seen at a collector's store ("and would you believe it? From zero to 120 in less than..."), he always managed to catch a glimpse of what his brother was really thinking. And it was addicting to watch because it had nothing to do with rev counters, mileage and shiny paint but always dripped in a pool of amused contempt. He owned them, with their expensive suits, trophy wives and ridiculous ties. He ruled them and he knew it.
Right then, he was standing in the middle of their family's living room, his hands in his pockets and his good-guy smile playing on his face. His laugh, in the rare occasions when he did laugh, was rough and throaty but seemed to flow over whoever it was that had coerced it out of him like a blessing of some sort. It was always a relief to hear it.
Nathan's name added to any guest-list was enough to notch the event up a little higher. Even when he was a nobody (if there was a time when he had been a nobody). Even before the politics and the fancy universities. Even back in high school, whenever anyone had a party, if Nathan Petrelli showed up, then it gained an automatic extra gold star in the 'popularity rating'. Peter was never unpopular either but he always managed to get tangled in the 'nice guys' category: the token guy that was always invited to parties but whose presence was never particularly noticed. He was the guy that could joke around with jocks and nerds alike without disrupting the social hierarchy. He was never quite enough. He wasn't confident enough, dorky enough, sporty, or loud enough to belong to any of those groups. He was simply the 'nice guy': the one whose name you always struggle to remember at your ten-year reunion.
Sometimes he wondered if maybe it was all his brother's fault.
Whether he always ended up seeking the shadows because he was always' brought up in Nathan's. Some try to kill themselves trying to match their eldest sibling's successes while Peter always settled in his inferiority because Nathan never made it weigh on him. Sure, Peter got frustrated from time to time… Like with family emergencies: it was always Nathan that got the phone calls. Nathan's advice that everyone followed even after Peter had just spent the last thirty minutes trying to explain a particular course of action. It only took a shake of the head from big brother and it never mattered how good and well thought out the reasoning was. He could never figure out if people truly were convinced by Nathan's mannerism or were just frantically looking for ways to appease him.
He never really resented him though. He never really wanted that strange kind of control over people. He never really felt like he needed it. He knew that his brother at least, listened to him. He knew that if he ever had a problem with anything his brother would swoop in and debate his way into it. He always wondered why he had so much control over him, Nathan Petrelli, whose every word pierces the skin and seals itself inside everyone who hears it. And he always did wonder where that control stopped. Where he would push and Nathan would crack and finally say no to him.
So it was with a mind filled with curious intent that he approached his brother, gently touched his arm to capture his attention and said:
"Hey, I need to talk to you."
Nathan nodded and excused himself from the exhilarating fly-fishing anecdote some short man in a Daffy Duck tie was busy gesticulating over.
They walked through the crowd on the way to the study leaving a trace of stale 'hellos' and polite nods behind them.
"What is it, Pete?" Nathan crossed his arms after closing the door behind them.
Peter felt his fingers tingle with what little inexistent hesitation he had left and for a second tried to think of something to say. Then he gave up on that because everything seemed too clichéd or surreal, really, to be spoken out loud anyway. Instead he decided to stifle the silence. He kissed him. It was open-mouthed and messy and he felt Nathan's lips mouth words he couldn't really understand. It wasn't until he began to nip at his jaw bone, at the coarse skin right under it, that he finally heard a hoarse:
"What the fuck Pete?"
He answered by adding a swirl of the tongue against the same spot. He heard his brother inhale sharply and he felt him shatter against him as he slumped against the door in a way he had thought him incapable of up until this point. He kissed him again then, simply to taste him kissing back. And when he tilted Nathan's head back and deepened the kiss he heard a faint, guttural whimper escape his throat that almost made him pity his brother. And Peter wondered what it would take to finally break him for real.