Heroes Shouldn't Play With Dead Things
Title: Heroes Shouldn't Play With Dead Things
Author: jaune_chat
Fandom: Heroes
Characters/Pairings: Nathan/Peter, Matt, Adam
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 5,270
Spoilers: End of S2
Warnings: Consensual incest, slash, zombie apocalypse, mega angst
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring, NBC et al.
A/N: Written for mumblemutter for the Summer 2010 Heroes Fic Exchange. Thanks to redandglenda for betaing!
Summary: When Adam releases the Shanti virus, it doesn’t do what he expects. While the world is ending in a zombie apocalypse, Peter tries to believe he can do anything to make a difference.
Peter thought he was doing the right thing when he let Adam into the Primatech vault. Then Nathan and Matt had arrived, first disrupting Peter’s conviction with telepathy, and then obliterating it with the sight of the brother he hadn’t been able to speak to in months. Suddenly realizing he’d made a fundamental error, Peter had run back to the vault, heart in his throat.
Adam stood triumphant, a broken vial at his feet. His grand plan had been realized, and he had Peter to thank for it all.
“What did you do?” Peter whispered, horrified.
“Saved the world, pet.”
Peter grabbed his erstwhile mentor roughly and twisted his hands behind his back. Adam had stood still for his confinement, not having any reason to flee. He’d realized the deadly airborne Shanti virus was released, and most of the world was doomed to death, which would stop the cycle of madness and pain he’d been witness to over the four hundred-odd years of his life. His plan was complete.
“Pete, it’s over. Don’t listen to him. The Company has a cure for the virus-,” Nathan started, seeing the despair Peter’s face. It was expression he’d worn after losing a hospice patient, after battling Sylar and losing, just before he’d exploded and nearly taken Nathan with him.
“Mohinder was working on it. I saw his notes. We can still make this right,” Matt added hastily, smirking just a bit when Adam jerked in surprise at that news.
The battered quartet of heroes and villains had come up from the Primatech basement to see, not people slumped over in the first stages of death and dying, as Adam had clearly expected, but instead running about with swift efficiency, skin pale and eyes bloodshot, mouths bloodstained where they had been setting upon those slowest with ravenous desire.
For the first time, Peter had seen Adam quail with genuine fear, even over and above the horrified surprise everyone else was feeling.
“This was not supposed to happen,” Adam whispered. The virus should have been like a killer strain of flu or pneumonia, slaying at will with the virus alone, not cause this animalistic desire for flesh! But during Adam’s thirty years of confinement, the virus had been tampered with, or been contaminated, or mutated. Something had happened, something that reduced its victims to hungry ghouls. Who then turned to the four in the doorway and run at them, screaming wordlessly for blood.
Adam made a split-second decision, seeing Peter getting ready to grip Matt and Nathan to teleport them to safety.
“I’ll use my blood to cure them, just take me with you!” he cried.
Peter could already see the paleness setting into Matt and Nathan’s faces, bit back something that might have been a sob, and put Adam into his embrace too. He had to believe he was doing the right thing.
A lurch later, space bending around them, they were back in Peter’s apartment.
Nathan actually pushed himself away from Peter, dragging Matt with him, fear turning his face into a mask.
“Pete, do it,” he choked out, voice rasping, a hectic flush touching his cheeks. Matt growled something incomprehensible, and Adam shook Peter out his numb daze.
“Nurse, needle,” he commanded, and reached over to pull Peter’s belt out of his jeans. Peter gaped at him, stunned, before he saw Adam tighten the belt above his elbow with one hand and his teeth, slapping his arm for a vein with all the expertise of a junkie. Finally moving, Peter went to a locked cabinet where he kept his medical supplies and withdrew a sterile syringe. Adam didn’t bother with the niceties of alcohol swabs, just filled the syringe with his blood and handed it over to Peter wordlessly.
Peter inwardly cringed at the lack of procedure and safety protocols he’d practiced for years as he jammed the needle first into Nathan’s arm, then into Matt’s. Within seconds, proper color returned to their faces, and their eyes cleared. Matt seemed to come back to himself with a start, and Nathan sagged into the wall, letting out a sigh of relief.
“Are you ok? Nathan?” Peter demanded, holding onto his brother so hard he almost didn’t hear the faint words of reassurance. It took them both long minutes to even think about letting go, realizing they had been seconds away from losing each other again. It was only when Matt surreptitiously cleared his throat that they looked up.
Then all of them turned on Adam.
----
When the fireworks of yelling had subsided, Adam pointed out that as of right now he was with them, as he had no desire to become an ever-renewing feast for hoards of hungry, mindless, infected-.
“-Zombies,” Matt finished, looking over his shoulder, frightened. Nathan scoffed, Peter shook his head slightly, but Adam only nodded.
“You can’t be serious, Monroe,” Nathan said.
“I’ve lived a long time. I’ve seen many things I can’t explain.”
“How about explaining what the hell we’re going to do to save those people we abandoned in Texas?” Peter demanded.
“It’s too late.”
“It’s been less than an hour. We can go back, establish quarantine, warn people about the symptoms, get working on producing the cure Mohinder was working on…”
“Peter, it’s airborne,” Adam said curtly. “You saw it spreading right before your eyes. Quarantine won’t stop the wind. I’m afraid you’re already too late.”
“No! I don’t believe that! We can stop it, we can save them!” Peter shouted. He caught himself and turned to Nathan, his expression torn. Nathan could tell Peter didn’t want to leave him, but his semi-suicidal impulse to save the world had just gone into overdrive to make up for what he’d let Adam do. “You and Matt call everyone you can and warn them. I’m going back to Texas.”
Peter teleported out before anyone could protest, and Nathan nearly growled at the empty air. He hadn’t had a single moment to be alone with his brother, to get any clear sense of what was going through his head, before he’d gone again. Nathan and Matt might have a chance of making people believe them, if they could somehow get a press conference going. Between Nathan’s latent fame (or infamy) and Matt’s telepathy, they could possibly get the word out in a legitimate fashion. But with Peter flying off the handle, they would all have their hands full just trying to make sure people didn’t think he was crazy. Revealing abilities to the world under this kind of situation could precipitate another crisis on top of the virus.
“Damn it, Pete,” Nathan swore softly. He grabbed Peter’s phone off the wall and tossed it at Matt, while flipping open his own phone. “Monroe, any idea how much time we have?”
Adam had strolled to the window while the others were talking, and was leaning his head against the glass, seemingly taking in the limited view from Peter’s grimy apartment with an unusual amount of pleasure. Then again, after thirty years in confinement, Nathan supposed, any change in view would look good.
“A week. Perhaps less, depending on the weather.”
Nathan tightened his jaw and his fist in the wash of rage that flooded him. Adam was so casual about it, so very calm about the fact that he’d corrupted Peter, convinced him to take part in something that could spell death for billions of people, that for an instant Nathan couldn’t even breathe for the anger. Taking a few steps forward, he grabbed Monroe, spun him around, and landed a right hook across his face that shattered the man’s nose and spurted blood against the glass. Adam staggered at the force, one hand outstretched to ward off another blow, the other tugging his nose back into place. A few moments later, he was whole again.
“Done?” Adam asked conversationally.
Nathan’s hand still throbbed with the impact. Gritting his teeth, he turned back to his phone and began flipping through his contacts.
“No,” Nathan said shortly. “You asked to come with us. We want answers, Monroe. Now talk!”
--
The campaign to save the world ended with a whimper, rather than a bang. Most of the specials the quartet had tried to contact were already in hiding for one reason or another. The Bennets, Mohinder, Molly, Angela Petrelli, even Heidi, Simon, and Monty, no one would answer their phones. Peter’s increasingly frantic warnings to the CDC and the National Guard eventually garnered the beginnings of a response, but even quarantining Odessa and the surrounding communities wouldn’t stop the spread of the deadly virus. Repeated teleporting to the surrounding communities saw the infections leapfrogging through towns at an unstoppable pace. Attempting to go back in time was out, as Peter’s control of that power was so uncertain that he was terrified of ending up in some horrible future he couldn’t escape.
Peter’s final desperate suggestion of doing a kamikaze act of nuking Odessa in an effort to save the world was met with shocked silence from the other three men. The fact that he’d managed to shock Adam Monroe had finally broken through Peter’s hero complex. That and the expression of agony on Nathan’s face at the thought of Peter taking on an impossible burden of responsibility on shoulders that seemed too slender to bear it.
Eight hours after the virus had been released, Peter Petrelli, arguably the most powerful person on the planet, was out of options to stop the apocalypse he’d help unleash.
“Pete, you have to rest, just for a few hours,” Nathan counseled reluctantly, taking his younger brother by the shoulders to get him to meet his worried eyes. “You’ve been on the go for days, using your powers all this time… And I just found out you were alive again. Don’t make me lose you again. We can’t help anyone if you aren’t here.”
With those words, the stresses of the past few days seemed to suddenly all descend at once. Every worry, every fear, every repressed reaction to what he’d done seemed to return tenfold. Peter almost collapsed in Nathan’s arms, at the end of every form of strength, as he let someone else share his burden, at least for once. Nathan steered him into the bedroom and laid him down on the bed, putting his hand on Peter’s head like he had when they were little.
“Rest, just for a couple hours, got that Pete? We’ll do what we can” Nathan said, placing a chaste kiss on Peter’s hair before returning to the other room.
Peter drifted at the edge of sleep, dragged there by exhaustion, unwilling to let himself take the plunge into oblivion quite yet. He heard Nathan talking, asking Matt to try to locate Mohinder again. Then furniture moving, Peter’s kitchen table being braced up against the front door, just in case. Adam was being oddly silent, probably because he had so very little to add to the increasingly-desperate efforts to save the world. Nathan and Matt’s voices rose and fell over and over again, before Matt finally yelled something in frustration.
“Ok. Everyone just take five. Get your breath,” Nathan commanded more loudly. Matt had murmured something back, and Nathan sighed. “Keep watch.” Those were the last intelligible things Peter heard him say before Nathan returned to Peter’s bedroom and decisively shut the door behind him.
Peter turned over to blink at Nathan, his longer, tousled hair making him look more vulnerable than Peter had ever seen him. Toeing off his shoes, Nathan quietly lay down next to Peter on the bed and drew him close, burying his nose in Peter’s hair and inhaling his scent.
“God, I missed you.”
Peter felt himself clutching Nathan almost hard enough to bruise, as he struggled not to let his tears fall. For a minute, for an hour, the world could wait.
--
Peter awoke to being kissed, feeling Nathan’s warm mouth closing over his own, wet tongue tracing his lips, strong arms turning him from his side to his back, so Nathan could have more access. Blinking in the early morning dark, Peter let himself be manhandled, wanting this sudden understanding and closeness from his brother more than he could say. He’d spent painfully long minutes trying to explain himself to Nathan before exhaustion had finally claimed him, and there’d been no time to make up the way they usually did.
Now, suddenly, Nathan wanted that contrition, and Peter was more than willing to give it.
He tried to whisper Nathan’s name, but his tongue and lips were hostage to Nathan’s ardor, and Peter didn’t want to try to cool it. He clutched at Nathan’s strangely long hair, burying himself in the endless kiss, feeling shivers of arousal running through his body. They hadn’t just kissed like this in a long time, not since Peter was a teenager and a make-out session was all he needed to get off. But now…
Peter groaned as Nathan slowly slid from his lips to kiss and lick down the line of his jaw, nipping down his throat, sucking the blood to the surface by the juncture of his shoulder and neck. Frantically, Peter shed his shirt, barely interrupting Nathan’s eager lips as they continued downward, strong tongue probing the planes of muscles and bone, teeth nipping lightly at every sensitive spot. Peter repressed gasps as Nathan teased his body to ever-increasing heights, and quickly wriggled out of his pants and underwear as Nathan showed no signs of slowing his southward plunge.
Peter’s arousal was becoming more urgent, his cock throbbing and twitching in time to Nathan’s patient mapping of Peter’s skin. He had to clutch at the sheets when Nathan’s stubble rasped over the delicate juncture of his leg and turned his head to bury a muted shout in the pillow when Nathan unhesitatingly took Peter into his mouth. No hands, just his mouth, sucking and probing at Peter, tongue touching seemingly everywhere. Peter couldn’t last, not when Nathan was fulfilling needs neither of them had been able to do anything about for half a year or more, and sobbed when Nathan let him go.
The first pulse landed deep in Nathan’s throat, and then he pulled away, letting Peter stripe his passion on his own stomach and chest. Nathan returned to suck away every trace of salt from Peter’s softening cock, and then, to Peter’s amazement, began his torturously slow ascent up Peter’s body again, avidly licking away every drop of white from his skin.
“You taste so good, Pete,” Nathan rumbled. “Smell so good…”
“Nathan, God,” Peter whispered, head arched back in the pillows. Nathan had never been so attentive before, so willing to give without even a hint of wanting something in return. Peter didn’t know if it was the same guilt he was feeling, but if it was, Nathan’s own arousal must be driving him mad by now.
Finally remembering how to move his limbs, Peter reached out to run a hand down Nathan’s still-clothed hip, and then around to where he was certain he’d find a hot, hard lump. Instead, nothing. A faint chill touched Peter’s spine as Nathan kissed hard up his neck, nipping at his throat.
Forcing his hand to action, Peter undid Nathan’s belt one-handed and dipped his hand inside. Nathan moved his hot mouth back to Peter’s, and seemed ready to suck the breath from him, he was so intense. And seemingly completely unaware of Peter’s hand inside his pants. Fear knotting his stomach, Peter delved his hand past Nathan’s briefs to find his skin cool and clammy, Nathan’s cock flaccid and almost cold.
Just then Nathan nipped hard at Peter’s lips.
“You taste s’good, Pete. S’good, s’good…” Nathan slurred, almost as if drunk.
Peter’s other hand flailed for the touch-base lamp by his bed as he pulled back slightly from Nathan. As light finally flooded the room, Peter could see blood on Nathan’s mouth. He raised a hand to his own, and realized Nathan had bitten the numb part of his lip. He watched, horrified, as Nathan’s tongue seemed to come out of its own accord to lick away the blood. His brother’s bloodshot eyes and pale, cold skin were the same as they’d been earlier today, right before he’d been given a shot of Adam’s lifesaving blood. When he’d been infected by the mutated Shanti virus.
“Pete, m’hungry. Smell s’good.” Nathan swayed and then fell forward, mouth leading. Shouting, Peter reflexively shoved Nathan’s away with Sylar’s telekinesis, pinning him to the wall.
“No. Nathan, no!” For an agonizing minute, Peter couldn’t even breathe, the shock was so great. Then Adam Monroe came crashing through the door, a red-eyed, pale-faced Matt Parkman hard on his heels. Adam’s clothes were in bloody rags, and Matt’s face was tinged scarlet.
“Hold him, Petrelli, damn it!” Adam shouted, spinning away from the slower Parkman. Peter shook himself free of his shocked paralysis and pinned Matt next to Nathan. “Syringe, Peter. Now!” Adam commanded, finding Peter’s belt on the floor to wrap around his arm.
A few moments later, Adam had injected both Nathan and Matt again. Again, their color improved, and finally they sagged in their telekinetic bonds. After another moment, Peter dared to let him go. Then he turned on Adam.
“What the hell was that?!” Peter demanded.
“A resurgence, a reinfection, I’m not terribly certain,” Adam said testily.
“Your blood should have cured them. It should have given them immunity!” Peter yelled, touching two fingers to the already-healed place on his lip.
“Oh, yes Peter, I forgot, my left arm is where I keep my temporary cure blood, and my right is for the permanent cure,” Adam said sarcastically.
“Why didn’t it work, then?”
“The virus mutated, it was only my cells that were keeping the symptoms at bay, the virus is a very fast multiplier, take your pick. I’m not a scientist,” Adam said. “It wasn’t supposed to work like this in the first place.”
Peter stared at the collapsed form of his brother and his friend, breathing raggedly as the implications hit him. His own regeneration would keep him safe, but to keep Nathan, Matt, and whoever else they found alive and healthy, they needed to keep Adam with them. The man who’d caused this in the first place. Who’d used and betrayed Peter for his own destructive ends.
“Petrelli, do you know you’re naked in a room with your own brother?” Adam asked casually.
Peter’s reflexive backhand carried all of Niki’s strength, and bounced Adam off the opposite wall, all but pulverizing his nose. It took a few minutes for Adam to pull himself together, but then he walked out as if nothing had happened.
“I suppose we’re all in this together now,” he remarked cheerfully.
--
“What the hell do we do now?” Nathan asked, still unable to look Peter in the eye.
“Find Mohinder,” Matt suggested. “He’s the only expert we know.”
“You do realize that if he isn’t already, he’ll be infected within a week,” Adam pointed out. “It seems the infected aren’t big on conversation, if what happened last night was any indication.”
Matt turned an interesting shade of red, while Nathan adopted a stone-faced mien Peter knew from Nathan’s campaigns as his most inscrutable poker face.
“Do you remember anything?” Peter asked gently, and then added quickly, “Symptoms, I mean. What you felt, anything… When we find Mohinder, we have to be able to give him as much information as possible.”
Nathan coughed slightly, the briefest of blushes touching his cheeks. “I couldn’t really feel anything but my mouth. And I could smell you. I could smell the blood inside you, and I was hungry.”
Matt nodded so hard he must have given himself whiplash, agreeing with everything Nathan was saying.
“Lovely. Write those down, would you, nurse?” Adam said with a negligent wave of his hand. “Getting back to the original matter. If you’re so determined to find one currently M.I.A. scientist in the hopes he can save this putrid pustule of a planet, then we’d best get going.”
“Shut the hell up. You were the one so frantic to go with us to avoid becoming a damn all-you-can-eat meat buffet,” Peter snapped.
“You get snarky when you get angry. Get angry more often, Peter, it suits you.”
“Cool it! Both of you,” Nathan cut in, separating the two with a stern expression that melted into a “Can’t we all work together?” smile. “Peter, Matt, you know places that Mohinder might go, right? His apartment? Let’s check there, and start looking for Claire and Mom. We can do this, we can make this happen.”
Peter closed his eyes as his brother rallied them like supporters at a fundraiser. He let himself get swept along in the rhetoric, the belief that they could make this right. That he could resist trying to destroy Adam for what he’d done, in order to keep his brother alive. That he could do fifty impossible things to save the world, all before breakfast. He had to believe that.
---
Three months later
Something was happening. Peter could see it in Nathan’s face, his skin, the way he walked and spoke, even how he loved. The cycles of infection required twice-daily infusions of Adam’s blood, and a person would have to be blind to not notice the changes. Some of Nathan’s ragged edges were smoothing, joints no longer cracking from long nights in cold, uncomfortable beds, no complaints or stiffness from sore muscles from long days searching the deserted city. Peter could see the scars on Nathan’s body start to fade, fine lines disappearing, seeming to strip away the years between them.
Matt was being affected too; he was no longer wheezing when they dashed from cover to cover to hide from the infected, no longer balked at climbing a dozen flights of stairs to get a good vantage point. From information learned from Matt and Nathan when they’d been on the edge of infection, they knew the infected had a powerful sense of smell, and that regenerators had a particularly tasty scent. That meant every movement within the city had to be planned out. And every place they hid had to be beyond the reach of the infected.
Now they were looking out from the top floor of one of downtown’s luxury hotels, the stairs sabotaged behind them leaving flying out as the only option. They’d been there for almost a week, searching that part of the city meticulously, trying to find a hint of any of their loved ones. Angela was gone without a trace, all of Molly’s things were gone from Mohinder’s apartment, and as for Mohinder himself… nothing. Still nothing. Months after months of nothing.
Peter had repeatedly teleported to California in an attempt to find Claire, or Noah, or anyone else they knew, but had come up dry. The failure to rescue the one other person who should have been immune to the effects of the mutated virus had been another hard blow for Peter. He’d once rescued a cheerleader, so he could save the world. Now he could barely save himself. He couldn’t even save his own brother from the virus that lay temporarily quiescent inside him, held at bay by Adam’s blood.
“Don’t let me bite you.” That was Nathan’s new mantra. Whenever they found enough time and privacy for intimacy (and with an entire empty city at their disposal, both were too easy to find), that was Nathan’s sole directive. No biting. He didn’t want to taste Peter’s blood, fearing it would set off an early relapse of the infection. But Peter… didn’t mind. He didn’t mind the way Nathan reached for him, wanting to possess him. He didn’t mind his mouth claiming every inch of Peter’s skin, his teeth grazing, probing, searching for a weakness to the rich blood beneath the surface. He didn’t mind Nathan inhaling his scent like it was the breath of life. He didn’t mind being pressed so close together that Peter felt like their bones would fuse.
In the nadir of sorrow, when Peter would look out the window of the building they’d claimed to see the city laid to waste, the staggering forms of the infected shambling around below, he wondered if it would be so bad to wait to give Nathan one of his injections. Peter looked down at the world below and wanted to die. When he caught Adam looking, the immortal was smiling at the bleak scene. He’d help Adam create this living nightmare, and it wasn’t something he could easily escape by flying back into the past. But sometimes he wanted to escape into Nathan’s kiss. Forever.
Then Nathan would growl in an animalistic tone, or Adam and Matt would start yelling in the other room, and the momentary urge to throw everything away subsided as Peter’s delayed survival instincts came to the fore.
But it never seemed to last long enough. And each time it seemed take longer for survival kick in.
Peter? I think I found him. I hope.
Matt’s thought rang through Nathan and Peter’s heads, startling them out of an early-morning nap. Well, if a nap could be construed as Peter clutching the headboard, spreading his thighs as Nathan’s blessedly-warm body, freshly cleared of the infection, opened him up.
Matt what? Peter thought back incoherently.
Matt thought back the one word they’d been desperately trying to find for months. Mohinder
---
“My God,” Nathan whispered, peering over the edge of the third floor balcony. It wasn’t because of the carnage below, the decayed bodies of all those eaten by the infected (they were all-too-used to that by now), but the sight of the once-normal scientist staggering around in the loft that still bore the faintly-visible mural of New York exploding, vaguely repeating motions over and over again in a shambling parody of scientific exploration.
They’d checked Issac’s loft before. They’d checked it over and over again, just on the off-chance that someone would be there, and this time it had paid off. If one could call it that. Mohinder staggered around the dirty floor, one foot bloody and infected, a chunk of flesh missing from one arm, his handsome face scabbed over with what looked like fingernail scratches, and his mouth covered with crusted, dried blood. He picked up a broken beaker and put it on a knocked-over stand, then shuffled over to a broken microscope and stared at it, idly twisting the knobs with all the finesse of an infant.
“How is he still alive?” Matt asked quietly.
“He doesn’t feel pain,” Adam said, and looked over at Nathan and Adam. “The infection, you’ve said you can’t feel anything but your mouth when you’re… in a transit state. He can’t feel his wounds and doesn’t know they’re killing him. That’s what the infected are dying of; it’s like leprosy in that way.”
Peter shot Adam an astonished glance and he shrugged expansively.
“I once had to hide in a leper colony for six months. I picked up a few things.” Adam had become almost friendly in the three months since the world had effectively ended. The decay and destruction around him seemed as soothing to his soul as it was corrosive to Peter’s.
“Let’s just grab him. I can hold him back while we give him some of Adam’s blood-.”
“Peter, honestly, what do you think is going to happen?” Adam cut in. “Assuming it works, and he regains his senses, where do you think he’s going to find all the supplies he needs to make a worldwide cure? If one even exists, which I very greatly doubt.”
“Just because you’ve given up on everything doesn’t mean the rest of us have!” Peter hissed. He hoped Adam couldn’t tell how hollow Peter’s protest felt to him.
“Pete,” Nathan said, putting a restraining hand on his brother. “We know where Mohinder is. But it’s getting late. Let’s go back, think this over, and then we can get him in the morning, all right?”
Peter stared at him, at Adam, and then flicked his gaze back down to Mohinder, with red eyes and strands of bloody drool smearing down his chest. With a growl, Mohinder suddenly lunged forward and grabbed a squeaking rat, which he devoured with great relish, grunting in satisfaction over its protesting squeals.
Sickened, Peter nodded, and grabbed the others to teleport them back home.
---
“Do you think anyone else is left?” Peter asked, curled up in the hollow of Nathan’s belly in what had been the Presidential penthouse of a hotel that hadn’t seen a paying guest since the end of the world.
Nathan slowly ran his hand through Peter’s hair before he answered. “I don’t know.”
Peter could hear the lack of conviction in Nathan’s tone; he didn’t need telepathy to tell him that Nathan believed the only people left in the world were in this hotel. For all his short speeches to Matt and Adam earlier, he didn’t believe a word of it.
“What about Claire?”
“Maybe Claire.”
“No one else?”
A pause, and Nathan moved his face closer to whisper in Peter’s ear, a secret so deadly he dared not tell another living soul. “No Pete, I don’t think there’s anyone else.”
Peter felt the quiet words kick through his body with all the force of a car crash. His innermost fears being spoken from his brother’s lips carried more weigh than either of them could bear.
Peter saw, in his mind’s eye, the shuffling form of Mohinder in the remains of his laboratory, and heard Nathan’s words that they’d get him in the morning. But to what purpose? Adam was right. How could they fight any sickness so vicious? For the second time Peter had been thrown into a virus-devastated future, but this time there was no escape for him, here in this place of his own making. Only an idea, a conviction that he could survive and pull the world with him.
“What do you think Matt and Adam are doing?” Peter asked, turning in Nathan’s grasp and laying a kiss on the center of his chest.
Nathan didn’t even look behind him at the closed door as he raised Peter up for a soft kiss on the lips. “The same thing we are. Neither of them is made of stone.”
“You think they’ll be ok?”
Nathan could feel Peter’s conviction dying as his own skin cooled, and would have wept, if his reddening eyes could have spared tears.
Nathan’s kissing became more ardent, harder and insistent, his mouth almost hot to the point of burning as he began to touch his tongue and lips to every point on Peter’s body. Peter could feel his blood rising to Nathan’s lips, and gave himself up to his brother’s touch.
He looked past Nathan, out the huge windows that showed a city that had once never slept, now dark and silent. Where his family had once lived, where impossible things had once happened, where he had once had had hope. Where now an immortal looked out the window with satisfaction at its silence, secure in his conviction that the world had truly been saved. Saved from the likes of him, who had destroyed everything he loved in trying to protect it. In trying to do the right thing.
Peter looked over at the syringe of blood on the nightstand as Nathan nipped at his throat.
“I love you,” he whispered, and pressed his body to his brother’s.
You have been assigned to: mumblemutter
mumblemutter's information:
Rating requested (G-NC-17): anything
Characters or pairings requested: nathan/peter
Prompts requested (please list at least 4; you may list more if you wish):
1. there's a zombie apocalypse, an actual one. what are our intrepid heroes to do?
2. girl!peter in which peter becomes a stubborn little baby dyke who refuses to dress like a lady
3. IABD verse Nathan/Peter
4. there are no sushi restaurants in the afterlife
Things you DON’T want in your fic (squicks, triggers, genres you dislike etc): no extreme kinks, i will take plot above porn (although porn is always appreciated).
Author: jaune_chat
Fandom: Heroes
Characters/Pairings: Nathan/Peter, Matt, Adam
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 5,270
Spoilers: End of S2
Warnings: Consensual incest, slash, zombie apocalypse, mega angst
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring, NBC et al.
A/N: Written for mumblemutter for the Summer 2010 Heroes Fic Exchange. Thanks to redandglenda for betaing!
Summary: When Adam releases the Shanti virus, it doesn’t do what he expects. While the world is ending in a zombie apocalypse, Peter tries to believe he can do anything to make a difference.
Peter thought he was doing the right thing when he let Adam into the Primatech vault. Then Nathan and Matt had arrived, first disrupting Peter’s conviction with telepathy, and then obliterating it with the sight of the brother he hadn’t been able to speak to in months. Suddenly realizing he’d made a fundamental error, Peter had run back to the vault, heart in his throat.
Adam stood triumphant, a broken vial at his feet. His grand plan had been realized, and he had Peter to thank for it all.
“What did you do?” Peter whispered, horrified.
“Saved the world, pet.”
Peter grabbed his erstwhile mentor roughly and twisted his hands behind his back. Adam had stood still for his confinement, not having any reason to flee. He’d realized the deadly airborne Shanti virus was released, and most of the world was doomed to death, which would stop the cycle of madness and pain he’d been witness to over the four hundred-odd years of his life. His plan was complete.
“Pete, it’s over. Don’t listen to him. The Company has a cure for the virus-,” Nathan started, seeing the despair Peter’s face. It was expression he’d worn after losing a hospice patient, after battling Sylar and losing, just before he’d exploded and nearly taken Nathan with him.
“Mohinder was working on it. I saw his notes. We can still make this right,” Matt added hastily, smirking just a bit when Adam jerked in surprise at that news.
The battered quartet of heroes and villains had come up from the Primatech basement to see, not people slumped over in the first stages of death and dying, as Adam had clearly expected, but instead running about with swift efficiency, skin pale and eyes bloodshot, mouths bloodstained where they had been setting upon those slowest with ravenous desire.
For the first time, Peter had seen Adam quail with genuine fear, even over and above the horrified surprise everyone else was feeling.
“This was not supposed to happen,” Adam whispered. The virus should have been like a killer strain of flu or pneumonia, slaying at will with the virus alone, not cause this animalistic desire for flesh! But during Adam’s thirty years of confinement, the virus had been tampered with, or been contaminated, or mutated. Something had happened, something that reduced its victims to hungry ghouls. Who then turned to the four in the doorway and run at them, screaming wordlessly for blood.
Adam made a split-second decision, seeing Peter getting ready to grip Matt and Nathan to teleport them to safety.
“I’ll use my blood to cure them, just take me with you!” he cried.
Peter could already see the paleness setting into Matt and Nathan’s faces, bit back something that might have been a sob, and put Adam into his embrace too. He had to believe he was doing the right thing.
A lurch later, space bending around them, they were back in Peter’s apartment.
Nathan actually pushed himself away from Peter, dragging Matt with him, fear turning his face into a mask.
“Pete, do it,” he choked out, voice rasping, a hectic flush touching his cheeks. Matt growled something incomprehensible, and Adam shook Peter out his numb daze.
“Nurse, needle,” he commanded, and reached over to pull Peter’s belt out of his jeans. Peter gaped at him, stunned, before he saw Adam tighten the belt above his elbow with one hand and his teeth, slapping his arm for a vein with all the expertise of a junkie. Finally moving, Peter went to a locked cabinet where he kept his medical supplies and withdrew a sterile syringe. Adam didn’t bother with the niceties of alcohol swabs, just filled the syringe with his blood and handed it over to Peter wordlessly.
Peter inwardly cringed at the lack of procedure and safety protocols he’d practiced for years as he jammed the needle first into Nathan’s arm, then into Matt’s. Within seconds, proper color returned to their faces, and their eyes cleared. Matt seemed to come back to himself with a start, and Nathan sagged into the wall, letting out a sigh of relief.
“Are you ok? Nathan?” Peter demanded, holding onto his brother so hard he almost didn’t hear the faint words of reassurance. It took them both long minutes to even think about letting go, realizing they had been seconds away from losing each other again. It was only when Matt surreptitiously cleared his throat that they looked up.
Then all of them turned on Adam.
----
When the fireworks of yelling had subsided, Adam pointed out that as of right now he was with them, as he had no desire to become an ever-renewing feast for hoards of hungry, mindless, infected-.
“-Zombies,” Matt finished, looking over his shoulder, frightened. Nathan scoffed, Peter shook his head slightly, but Adam only nodded.
“You can’t be serious, Monroe,” Nathan said.
“I’ve lived a long time. I’ve seen many things I can’t explain.”
“How about explaining what the hell we’re going to do to save those people we abandoned in Texas?” Peter demanded.
“It’s too late.”
“It’s been less than an hour. We can go back, establish quarantine, warn people about the symptoms, get working on producing the cure Mohinder was working on…”
“Peter, it’s airborne,” Adam said curtly. “You saw it spreading right before your eyes. Quarantine won’t stop the wind. I’m afraid you’re already too late.”
“No! I don’t believe that! We can stop it, we can save them!” Peter shouted. He caught himself and turned to Nathan, his expression torn. Nathan could tell Peter didn’t want to leave him, but his semi-suicidal impulse to save the world had just gone into overdrive to make up for what he’d let Adam do. “You and Matt call everyone you can and warn them. I’m going back to Texas.”
Peter teleported out before anyone could protest, and Nathan nearly growled at the empty air. He hadn’t had a single moment to be alone with his brother, to get any clear sense of what was going through his head, before he’d gone again. Nathan and Matt might have a chance of making people believe them, if they could somehow get a press conference going. Between Nathan’s latent fame (or infamy) and Matt’s telepathy, they could possibly get the word out in a legitimate fashion. But with Peter flying off the handle, they would all have their hands full just trying to make sure people didn’t think he was crazy. Revealing abilities to the world under this kind of situation could precipitate another crisis on top of the virus.
“Damn it, Pete,” Nathan swore softly. He grabbed Peter’s phone off the wall and tossed it at Matt, while flipping open his own phone. “Monroe, any idea how much time we have?”
Adam had strolled to the window while the others were talking, and was leaning his head against the glass, seemingly taking in the limited view from Peter’s grimy apartment with an unusual amount of pleasure. Then again, after thirty years in confinement, Nathan supposed, any change in view would look good.
“A week. Perhaps less, depending on the weather.”
Nathan tightened his jaw and his fist in the wash of rage that flooded him. Adam was so casual about it, so very calm about the fact that he’d corrupted Peter, convinced him to take part in something that could spell death for billions of people, that for an instant Nathan couldn’t even breathe for the anger. Taking a few steps forward, he grabbed Monroe, spun him around, and landed a right hook across his face that shattered the man’s nose and spurted blood against the glass. Adam staggered at the force, one hand outstretched to ward off another blow, the other tugging his nose back into place. A few moments later, he was whole again.
“Done?” Adam asked conversationally.
Nathan’s hand still throbbed with the impact. Gritting his teeth, he turned back to his phone and began flipping through his contacts.
“No,” Nathan said shortly. “You asked to come with us. We want answers, Monroe. Now talk!”
--
The campaign to save the world ended with a whimper, rather than a bang. Most of the specials the quartet had tried to contact were already in hiding for one reason or another. The Bennets, Mohinder, Molly, Angela Petrelli, even Heidi, Simon, and Monty, no one would answer their phones. Peter’s increasingly frantic warnings to the CDC and the National Guard eventually garnered the beginnings of a response, but even quarantining Odessa and the surrounding communities wouldn’t stop the spread of the deadly virus. Repeated teleporting to the surrounding communities saw the infections leapfrogging through towns at an unstoppable pace. Attempting to go back in time was out, as Peter’s control of that power was so uncertain that he was terrified of ending up in some horrible future he couldn’t escape.
Peter’s final desperate suggestion of doing a kamikaze act of nuking Odessa in an effort to save the world was met with shocked silence from the other three men. The fact that he’d managed to shock Adam Monroe had finally broken through Peter’s hero complex. That and the expression of agony on Nathan’s face at the thought of Peter taking on an impossible burden of responsibility on shoulders that seemed too slender to bear it.
Eight hours after the virus had been released, Peter Petrelli, arguably the most powerful person on the planet, was out of options to stop the apocalypse he’d help unleash.
“Pete, you have to rest, just for a few hours,” Nathan counseled reluctantly, taking his younger brother by the shoulders to get him to meet his worried eyes. “You’ve been on the go for days, using your powers all this time… And I just found out you were alive again. Don’t make me lose you again. We can’t help anyone if you aren’t here.”
With those words, the stresses of the past few days seemed to suddenly all descend at once. Every worry, every fear, every repressed reaction to what he’d done seemed to return tenfold. Peter almost collapsed in Nathan’s arms, at the end of every form of strength, as he let someone else share his burden, at least for once. Nathan steered him into the bedroom and laid him down on the bed, putting his hand on Peter’s head like he had when they were little.
“Rest, just for a couple hours, got that Pete? We’ll do what we can” Nathan said, placing a chaste kiss on Peter’s hair before returning to the other room.
Peter drifted at the edge of sleep, dragged there by exhaustion, unwilling to let himself take the plunge into oblivion quite yet. He heard Nathan talking, asking Matt to try to locate Mohinder again. Then furniture moving, Peter’s kitchen table being braced up against the front door, just in case. Adam was being oddly silent, probably because he had so very little to add to the increasingly-desperate efforts to save the world. Nathan and Matt’s voices rose and fell over and over again, before Matt finally yelled something in frustration.
“Ok. Everyone just take five. Get your breath,” Nathan commanded more loudly. Matt had murmured something back, and Nathan sighed. “Keep watch.” Those were the last intelligible things Peter heard him say before Nathan returned to Peter’s bedroom and decisively shut the door behind him.
Peter turned over to blink at Nathan, his longer, tousled hair making him look more vulnerable than Peter had ever seen him. Toeing off his shoes, Nathan quietly lay down next to Peter on the bed and drew him close, burying his nose in Peter’s hair and inhaling his scent.
“God, I missed you.”
Peter felt himself clutching Nathan almost hard enough to bruise, as he struggled not to let his tears fall. For a minute, for an hour, the world could wait.
--
Peter awoke to being kissed, feeling Nathan’s warm mouth closing over his own, wet tongue tracing his lips, strong arms turning him from his side to his back, so Nathan could have more access. Blinking in the early morning dark, Peter let himself be manhandled, wanting this sudden understanding and closeness from his brother more than he could say. He’d spent painfully long minutes trying to explain himself to Nathan before exhaustion had finally claimed him, and there’d been no time to make up the way they usually did.
Now, suddenly, Nathan wanted that contrition, and Peter was more than willing to give it.
He tried to whisper Nathan’s name, but his tongue and lips were hostage to Nathan’s ardor, and Peter didn’t want to try to cool it. He clutched at Nathan’s strangely long hair, burying himself in the endless kiss, feeling shivers of arousal running through his body. They hadn’t just kissed like this in a long time, not since Peter was a teenager and a make-out session was all he needed to get off. But now…
Peter groaned as Nathan slowly slid from his lips to kiss and lick down the line of his jaw, nipping down his throat, sucking the blood to the surface by the juncture of his shoulder and neck. Frantically, Peter shed his shirt, barely interrupting Nathan’s eager lips as they continued downward, strong tongue probing the planes of muscles and bone, teeth nipping lightly at every sensitive spot. Peter repressed gasps as Nathan teased his body to ever-increasing heights, and quickly wriggled out of his pants and underwear as Nathan showed no signs of slowing his southward plunge.
Peter’s arousal was becoming more urgent, his cock throbbing and twitching in time to Nathan’s patient mapping of Peter’s skin. He had to clutch at the sheets when Nathan’s stubble rasped over the delicate juncture of his leg and turned his head to bury a muted shout in the pillow when Nathan unhesitatingly took Peter into his mouth. No hands, just his mouth, sucking and probing at Peter, tongue touching seemingly everywhere. Peter couldn’t last, not when Nathan was fulfilling needs neither of them had been able to do anything about for half a year or more, and sobbed when Nathan let him go.
The first pulse landed deep in Nathan’s throat, and then he pulled away, letting Peter stripe his passion on his own stomach and chest. Nathan returned to suck away every trace of salt from Peter’s softening cock, and then, to Peter’s amazement, began his torturously slow ascent up Peter’s body again, avidly licking away every drop of white from his skin.
“You taste so good, Pete,” Nathan rumbled. “Smell so good…”
“Nathan, God,” Peter whispered, head arched back in the pillows. Nathan had never been so attentive before, so willing to give without even a hint of wanting something in return. Peter didn’t know if it was the same guilt he was feeling, but if it was, Nathan’s own arousal must be driving him mad by now.
Finally remembering how to move his limbs, Peter reached out to run a hand down Nathan’s still-clothed hip, and then around to where he was certain he’d find a hot, hard lump. Instead, nothing. A faint chill touched Peter’s spine as Nathan kissed hard up his neck, nipping at his throat.
Forcing his hand to action, Peter undid Nathan’s belt one-handed and dipped his hand inside. Nathan moved his hot mouth back to Peter’s, and seemed ready to suck the breath from him, he was so intense. And seemingly completely unaware of Peter’s hand inside his pants. Fear knotting his stomach, Peter delved his hand past Nathan’s briefs to find his skin cool and clammy, Nathan’s cock flaccid and almost cold.
Just then Nathan nipped hard at Peter’s lips.
“You taste s’good, Pete. S’good, s’good…” Nathan slurred, almost as if drunk.
Peter’s other hand flailed for the touch-base lamp by his bed as he pulled back slightly from Nathan. As light finally flooded the room, Peter could see blood on Nathan’s mouth. He raised a hand to his own, and realized Nathan had bitten the numb part of his lip. He watched, horrified, as Nathan’s tongue seemed to come out of its own accord to lick away the blood. His brother’s bloodshot eyes and pale, cold skin were the same as they’d been earlier today, right before he’d been given a shot of Adam’s lifesaving blood. When he’d been infected by the mutated Shanti virus.
“Pete, m’hungry. Smell s’good.” Nathan swayed and then fell forward, mouth leading. Shouting, Peter reflexively shoved Nathan’s away with Sylar’s telekinesis, pinning him to the wall.
“No. Nathan, no!” For an agonizing minute, Peter couldn’t even breathe, the shock was so great. Then Adam Monroe came crashing through the door, a red-eyed, pale-faced Matt Parkman hard on his heels. Adam’s clothes were in bloody rags, and Matt’s face was tinged scarlet.
“Hold him, Petrelli, damn it!” Adam shouted, spinning away from the slower Parkman. Peter shook himself free of his shocked paralysis and pinned Matt next to Nathan. “Syringe, Peter. Now!” Adam commanded, finding Peter’s belt on the floor to wrap around his arm.
A few moments later, Adam had injected both Nathan and Matt again. Again, their color improved, and finally they sagged in their telekinetic bonds. After another moment, Peter dared to let him go. Then he turned on Adam.
“What the hell was that?!” Peter demanded.
“A resurgence, a reinfection, I’m not terribly certain,” Adam said testily.
“Your blood should have cured them. It should have given them immunity!” Peter yelled, touching two fingers to the already-healed place on his lip.
“Oh, yes Peter, I forgot, my left arm is where I keep my temporary cure blood, and my right is for the permanent cure,” Adam said sarcastically.
“Why didn’t it work, then?”
“The virus mutated, it was only my cells that were keeping the symptoms at bay, the virus is a very fast multiplier, take your pick. I’m not a scientist,” Adam said. “It wasn’t supposed to work like this in the first place.”
Peter stared at the collapsed form of his brother and his friend, breathing raggedly as the implications hit him. His own regeneration would keep him safe, but to keep Nathan, Matt, and whoever else they found alive and healthy, they needed to keep Adam with them. The man who’d caused this in the first place. Who’d used and betrayed Peter for his own destructive ends.
“Petrelli, do you know you’re naked in a room with your own brother?” Adam asked casually.
Peter’s reflexive backhand carried all of Niki’s strength, and bounced Adam off the opposite wall, all but pulverizing his nose. It took a few minutes for Adam to pull himself together, but then he walked out as if nothing had happened.
“I suppose we’re all in this together now,” he remarked cheerfully.
--
“What the hell do we do now?” Nathan asked, still unable to look Peter in the eye.
“Find Mohinder,” Matt suggested. “He’s the only expert we know.”
“You do realize that if he isn’t already, he’ll be infected within a week,” Adam pointed out. “It seems the infected aren’t big on conversation, if what happened last night was any indication.”
Matt turned an interesting shade of red, while Nathan adopted a stone-faced mien Peter knew from Nathan’s campaigns as his most inscrutable poker face.
“Do you remember anything?” Peter asked gently, and then added quickly, “Symptoms, I mean. What you felt, anything… When we find Mohinder, we have to be able to give him as much information as possible.”
Nathan coughed slightly, the briefest of blushes touching his cheeks. “I couldn’t really feel anything but my mouth. And I could smell you. I could smell the blood inside you, and I was hungry.”
Matt nodded so hard he must have given himself whiplash, agreeing with everything Nathan was saying.
“Lovely. Write those down, would you, nurse?” Adam said with a negligent wave of his hand. “Getting back to the original matter. If you’re so determined to find one currently M.I.A. scientist in the hopes he can save this putrid pustule of a planet, then we’d best get going.”
“Shut the hell up. You were the one so frantic to go with us to avoid becoming a damn all-you-can-eat meat buffet,” Peter snapped.
“You get snarky when you get angry. Get angry more often, Peter, it suits you.”
“Cool it! Both of you,” Nathan cut in, separating the two with a stern expression that melted into a “Can’t we all work together?” smile. “Peter, Matt, you know places that Mohinder might go, right? His apartment? Let’s check there, and start looking for Claire and Mom. We can do this, we can make this happen.”
Peter closed his eyes as his brother rallied them like supporters at a fundraiser. He let himself get swept along in the rhetoric, the belief that they could make this right. That he could resist trying to destroy Adam for what he’d done, in order to keep his brother alive. That he could do fifty impossible things to save the world, all before breakfast. He had to believe that.
---
Three months later
Something was happening. Peter could see it in Nathan’s face, his skin, the way he walked and spoke, even how he loved. The cycles of infection required twice-daily infusions of Adam’s blood, and a person would have to be blind to not notice the changes. Some of Nathan’s ragged edges were smoothing, joints no longer cracking from long nights in cold, uncomfortable beds, no complaints or stiffness from sore muscles from long days searching the deserted city. Peter could see the scars on Nathan’s body start to fade, fine lines disappearing, seeming to strip away the years between them.
Matt was being affected too; he was no longer wheezing when they dashed from cover to cover to hide from the infected, no longer balked at climbing a dozen flights of stairs to get a good vantage point. From information learned from Matt and Nathan when they’d been on the edge of infection, they knew the infected had a powerful sense of smell, and that regenerators had a particularly tasty scent. That meant every movement within the city had to be planned out. And every place they hid had to be beyond the reach of the infected.
Now they were looking out from the top floor of one of downtown’s luxury hotels, the stairs sabotaged behind them leaving flying out as the only option. They’d been there for almost a week, searching that part of the city meticulously, trying to find a hint of any of their loved ones. Angela was gone without a trace, all of Molly’s things were gone from Mohinder’s apartment, and as for Mohinder himself… nothing. Still nothing. Months after months of nothing.
Peter had repeatedly teleported to California in an attempt to find Claire, or Noah, or anyone else they knew, but had come up dry. The failure to rescue the one other person who should have been immune to the effects of the mutated virus had been another hard blow for Peter. He’d once rescued a cheerleader, so he could save the world. Now he could barely save himself. He couldn’t even save his own brother from the virus that lay temporarily quiescent inside him, held at bay by Adam’s blood.
“Don’t let me bite you.” That was Nathan’s new mantra. Whenever they found enough time and privacy for intimacy (and with an entire empty city at their disposal, both were too easy to find), that was Nathan’s sole directive. No biting. He didn’t want to taste Peter’s blood, fearing it would set off an early relapse of the infection. But Peter… didn’t mind. He didn’t mind the way Nathan reached for him, wanting to possess him. He didn’t mind his mouth claiming every inch of Peter’s skin, his teeth grazing, probing, searching for a weakness to the rich blood beneath the surface. He didn’t mind Nathan inhaling his scent like it was the breath of life. He didn’t mind being pressed so close together that Peter felt like their bones would fuse.
In the nadir of sorrow, when Peter would look out the window of the building they’d claimed to see the city laid to waste, the staggering forms of the infected shambling around below, he wondered if it would be so bad to wait to give Nathan one of his injections. Peter looked down at the world below and wanted to die. When he caught Adam looking, the immortal was smiling at the bleak scene. He’d help Adam create this living nightmare, and it wasn’t something he could easily escape by flying back into the past. But sometimes he wanted to escape into Nathan’s kiss. Forever.
Then Nathan would growl in an animalistic tone, or Adam and Matt would start yelling in the other room, and the momentary urge to throw everything away subsided as Peter’s delayed survival instincts came to the fore.
But it never seemed to last long enough. And each time it seemed take longer for survival kick in.
Peter? I think I found him. I hope.
Matt’s thought rang through Nathan and Peter’s heads, startling them out of an early-morning nap. Well, if a nap could be construed as Peter clutching the headboard, spreading his thighs as Nathan’s blessedly-warm body, freshly cleared of the infection, opened him up.
Matt what? Peter thought back incoherently.
Matt thought back the one word they’d been desperately trying to find for months. Mohinder
---
“My God,” Nathan whispered, peering over the edge of the third floor balcony. It wasn’t because of the carnage below, the decayed bodies of all those eaten by the infected (they were all-too-used to that by now), but the sight of the once-normal scientist staggering around in the loft that still bore the faintly-visible mural of New York exploding, vaguely repeating motions over and over again in a shambling parody of scientific exploration.
They’d checked Issac’s loft before. They’d checked it over and over again, just on the off-chance that someone would be there, and this time it had paid off. If one could call it that. Mohinder staggered around the dirty floor, one foot bloody and infected, a chunk of flesh missing from one arm, his handsome face scabbed over with what looked like fingernail scratches, and his mouth covered with crusted, dried blood. He picked up a broken beaker and put it on a knocked-over stand, then shuffled over to a broken microscope and stared at it, idly twisting the knobs with all the finesse of an infant.
“How is he still alive?” Matt asked quietly.
“He doesn’t feel pain,” Adam said, and looked over at Nathan and Adam. “The infection, you’ve said you can’t feel anything but your mouth when you’re… in a transit state. He can’t feel his wounds and doesn’t know they’re killing him. That’s what the infected are dying of; it’s like leprosy in that way.”
Peter shot Adam an astonished glance and he shrugged expansively.
“I once had to hide in a leper colony for six months. I picked up a few things.” Adam had become almost friendly in the three months since the world had effectively ended. The decay and destruction around him seemed as soothing to his soul as it was corrosive to Peter’s.
“Let’s just grab him. I can hold him back while we give him some of Adam’s blood-.”
“Peter, honestly, what do you think is going to happen?” Adam cut in. “Assuming it works, and he regains his senses, where do you think he’s going to find all the supplies he needs to make a worldwide cure? If one even exists, which I very greatly doubt.”
“Just because you’ve given up on everything doesn’t mean the rest of us have!” Peter hissed. He hoped Adam couldn’t tell how hollow Peter’s protest felt to him.
“Pete,” Nathan said, putting a restraining hand on his brother. “We know where Mohinder is. But it’s getting late. Let’s go back, think this over, and then we can get him in the morning, all right?”
Peter stared at him, at Adam, and then flicked his gaze back down to Mohinder, with red eyes and strands of bloody drool smearing down his chest. With a growl, Mohinder suddenly lunged forward and grabbed a squeaking rat, which he devoured with great relish, grunting in satisfaction over its protesting squeals.
Sickened, Peter nodded, and grabbed the others to teleport them back home.
---
“Do you think anyone else is left?” Peter asked, curled up in the hollow of Nathan’s belly in what had been the Presidential penthouse of a hotel that hadn’t seen a paying guest since the end of the world.
Nathan slowly ran his hand through Peter’s hair before he answered. “I don’t know.”
Peter could hear the lack of conviction in Nathan’s tone; he didn’t need telepathy to tell him that Nathan believed the only people left in the world were in this hotel. For all his short speeches to Matt and Adam earlier, he didn’t believe a word of it.
“What about Claire?”
“Maybe Claire.”
“No one else?”
A pause, and Nathan moved his face closer to whisper in Peter’s ear, a secret so deadly he dared not tell another living soul. “No Pete, I don’t think there’s anyone else.”
Peter felt the quiet words kick through his body with all the force of a car crash. His innermost fears being spoken from his brother’s lips carried more weigh than either of them could bear.
Peter saw, in his mind’s eye, the shuffling form of Mohinder in the remains of his laboratory, and heard Nathan’s words that they’d get him in the morning. But to what purpose? Adam was right. How could they fight any sickness so vicious? For the second time Peter had been thrown into a virus-devastated future, but this time there was no escape for him, here in this place of his own making. Only an idea, a conviction that he could survive and pull the world with him.
“What do you think Matt and Adam are doing?” Peter asked, turning in Nathan’s grasp and laying a kiss on the center of his chest.
Nathan didn’t even look behind him at the closed door as he raised Peter up for a soft kiss on the lips. “The same thing we are. Neither of them is made of stone.”
“You think they’ll be ok?”
Nathan could feel Peter’s conviction dying as his own skin cooled, and would have wept, if his reddening eyes could have spared tears.
Nathan’s kissing became more ardent, harder and insistent, his mouth almost hot to the point of burning as he began to touch his tongue and lips to every point on Peter’s body. Peter could feel his blood rising to Nathan’s lips, and gave himself up to his brother’s touch.
He looked past Nathan, out the huge windows that showed a city that had once never slept, now dark and silent. Where his family had once lived, where impossible things had once happened, where he had once had had hope. Where now an immortal looked out the window with satisfaction at its silence, secure in his conviction that the world had truly been saved. Saved from the likes of him, who had destroyed everything he loved in trying to protect it. In trying to do the right thing.
Peter looked over at the syringe of blood on the nightstand as Nathan nipped at his throat.
“I love you,” he whispered, and pressed his body to his brother’s.
You have been assigned to: mumblemutter
mumblemutter's information:
Rating requested (G-NC-17): anything
Characters or pairings requested: nathan/peter
Prompts requested (please list at least 4; you may list more if you wish):
1. there's a zombie apocalypse, an actual one. what are our intrepid heroes to do?
2. girl!peter in which peter becomes a stubborn little baby dyke who refuses to dress like a lady
3. IABD verse Nathan/Peter
4. there are no sushi restaurants in the afterlife
Things you DON’T want in your fic (squicks, triggers, genres you dislike etc): no extreme kinks, i will take plot above porn (although porn is always appreciated).