[Heroes/The Godfather] Godblessed (Nathan/Peter, NC-17)
Title: Godblessed
Author: fiorediloto
Fandom: Heroes/The Godfather
Characters: Nathan Petrelli, Peter Petrelli, Angela Petrelli, Arthur Petrelli
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Nathan/Peter, mentions of Peter/OCs and Nathan/Heidi
Spoiler(s): None for Heroes. Some for The Godfather (Part I and Part II).
Word count: 5,047
Warning(s): Consensual incest, mentions of pedophilia and underage sex.
Summary: It's not easy to be the Godfather's son.
A/N: Thanks to eledh_3 and eryslash, who read the original version and drove me nuts to match their expectations about it. And many many thanks to juliettesaito and snopes_faith, who beta'd the first, rough translation, and made it work properly. Nothing of this would've seen the light without the four of them.
Written for: reel_heroes
» This fic won Best Peter Characterization at the Heroes Slash Fanfiction Awards: Winter 2008. «
(banner by eryslash)
Godblessed
A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.
-- The Godfather
“Praesta, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus, ut anima famuli tui Arthuri, quae hodie de hoc saeculo migravit, his sacrificiis purgata et a peccatis expedita, indulgentiam pariter et requiem capiat sempiternam. Per Dominum.”
It’s when the notes of the organ stretch and soar in a glorious crescendo that you remember it. Then a long, excruciating vibration sinks into your skin and makes your flesh crawl. Then you remember why you stopped going to church at thirteen.
For a moment you’re there again, at the feet of the cold and immobile corpse into the coffin; your father’s hand is on your shoulder and your aunt isn’t crying but hissing prayers between her chapped lips and her blood-stained teeth. Then the image dissolves like candle smoke and incense mist is burning your eyes, but you don’t need to pretend that’s what’s making you cry.
Dad’s face is peaceful, his wrinkles of worry finally smoothed out from his forehead. His hands are joined under his breastbone in a pose that was familiar even when he was alive, when he used to relax on the armchair. The memory is faded and consumed like an old photo, and yet still vivid and burning in your mind.
Nathan was the one who called you, it’s him who now keeps a hand upon your shoulder like Dad did that time.
The thought of that grip strikes you. It’s identical, and all the rest could be too - the people around you, the music of the organ, the numbing sweetish smell of burnt wax. But that time you didn’t cry, and they didn’t even let you go near enough to look at the dead’s face.
Yet, there’s still that strange heartbeat of yours - that twisted heartbeat of yours that you’ve spent fourteen years to be able to decipher, and now you know it’s nothing else but guilt.
Your mother is the nearest. You see her bend over Dad and kiss his forehead, lingering for a long moment, her movement like movie frames in a slow sequence. Just for a moment you wonder what it’s like, even if Dad can’t feel it anymore, what it’s like to be kissed like that. You must have had your mother’s kisses too, once, but you don’t recall them.
Angela Petrelli’s lips keep moving next to Dad’s face, quickly. Drawn by her red lipstick, they look like wounds in the flesh of her mouth.
You could bet that what she’s whispering is not a prayer. She’s a strong woman, your Mother, and you haven’t stopped loving her since the day you were born.
Then there’s Nathan, with the hard curve of his mouth that is both promise and threat of life and death. No kisses from him; Nathan rests a hand upon Dad’s and squeezes them briefly, like a brother in arms, brushing Dad’s forehead with the other hand where Ma left a faint mark of red. This time you’re near enough to catch the words (“I swear those bastards are gonna pay for this, Dad, I swear…”), but you choose to let yourself be captured by the sleepy whisper of the church, the clattering of the incense burner hanging from its support, the distant and distorted echo of suffocated crying. You don’t really think somebody’s crying. Men like Dad leave without a tear.
It’s your turn; Nathan passes by and you don’t need to watch him to know that his eyes are wet, and you don’t need to know him better to know that those tears will disappear, dried, absorbed, never shed anyway. You rest a hand on the edge of the coffin. Dad’s fingers are soft and fresh; they’re clean, unlike the other corpses you saw before.
It’s your time to tell him everything he never wanted to listen to, and if there’s a Hell maybe your message will come faster passing through his ears.
What was it for, in the end? Killed like a dog in the street.
“I’m sorry,” you mutter instead. Your throat aches and you know it’s hard to understand what you’re saying, but Dad doesn’t need you to repeat. “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
I’m sorry I told you the things your brother did to me. I’m sorry you died thinking I hated you. I didn’t want it to end like this. For either of us, I… didn’t want it to end like this.
Then a hand slowly strokes your back and you look up, drying your nose on the back of your hand. Nathan hands you his handkerchief.
When the coffin’s been closed upon Arthur Petrelli’s body and the bearers lift it up, everything you can see in the unfocused, wooden silhouette is your own life’s shape, waving and fading without direction, moving away from you.
+ + +
New York City, December 1945
“We need to do something.”
In the office with the closed curtains, the dim light devours the furniture. Your voice doesn’t sound stronger than a whisper. It’s like being thirteen again, you think, before your life started to wander off track. You watch Nathan sitting in Dad’s armchair and it bothers you to notice that the silhouette is the same, the hands are the same, only the face is a bit gentler.
“We?” he repeats slowly, without watching you. You know the refusal is coming, and that’s your only advantage.
“You don’t need to do anything, Peter. You’re going back to your apartment and you will stay there until this story ends. I’ll send somebody for your protection.”
“I don’t need protection. Nobody cares about me.”
Nathan’s bad mood is like a storm moving in rapid shades across his face.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
You’d hardly recall one time he did. “I want to help, Nathan. I can help.”
“We don’t need anybody to give us little pills and fluff up our cushions, thanks. Go back where you’re needed.”
Ten years, and he hasn’t forgiven you yet. Ten years, and all your conversations always go back to the same point, like nothing happened in the meanwhile. Like you didn’t stare Death in the face during the war. As if your life was marked forever the day you left. You wonder if Dad left him the incapacity of looking forward too, as a legacy.
“He was my father too, Nate. And he died. Murdered. And…”
“No, Peter. My father died. You gave up on him ten years ago. He gave you everything and you spat on his face. Now go back to that fucking apartment of yours and stay there. I don’t want to see you around here until it’s safe again.”
“You’re kicking me out of my own house?” you whisper, leaning toward him upon the desk. You’re leaning on your knuckles and you hear them creak painfully against the wooden surface.
“It wasn’t your house when you left. Nobody kicked you out, then. It was your choice.”
It’s so difficult with Nathan sometimes, and you’d laugh if it didn’t hurt so much. He doesn’t understand. He never did.
“Yeah, and how I’m here, Nathan. It’s my family. It’s my life. He was my father, and I tried, God, Nathan, I tried all my life, but now I know that it’s not enough to want to change who you are, because who you are follows you everywhere. You carry it inside yourself - you carry it forever. Now I know, Nathan. Now I understand Dad’s speech. You won’t kick me out.”
You’re used enough to rapid and smug glances to recognize that look, the one Nathan has when he is considering you. You feel his eyes burning into yours, but you don’t back off. It’s another little personal war, an open account between the two of you, until surrender digs its way nearly imperceptibly through his voice and breaks its toughness.
“It’s too dangerous for you.”
“But not for your wife and kids?”
“Linderman doesn’t touch women and children.”
“Good,” you reply. Is there something able to stop men like Linderman, men like Dad? Good. Maybe there’s hope for everyone. “Please, think about it, Nathan. Linderman won’t expect me to stay here. He’ll expect you to send me away, he’ll expect me to go back to my work. I’m the retarded one, am not I? The fag.”
“No,” hisses Nathan. “You’re not.”
You shake your head impatiently. That’s not the point. “He’ll underestimate me, Nathan. He won’t expect me to do something! Think about it just for a moment, think about it. What was that Dad used to say? People who underestimate you…”
“… don’t watch their back.” Nathan passes his hands through his hair combed backward and greased. You know it can’t be the same, but his dark waistcoat looks like the one he wore that time. The first time. “Okay. Let’s say - for instance - that I let you stay here. Let’s say that I don’t send you back to change the drips for your patients. Let’s say that I don’t send you back to do your duty for your Country.” His tone is sarcastic. It’s an open wound, but you ignore it. “What do you think you can do?”
The advantage, your father’s voice whispers in your ear. Use your advantage. But you’re not your father, Nathan is not your enemy, and this is not your battlefield. When it comes to convincing someone, you make your moves without strategy, you use a charisma you know you possess even if you don’t know where it comes from, you pull the right strings instinctively. It’s when you have to explain that you find yourself weak.
“I don’t know yet,” you admit. “I don’t know exactly, but…”
“But?” Nathan leans towards you, placing his elbows on the table and joining his hands while he observes you. It’s strange to see it now, but you didn’t ever notice that Nathan’s mouth is heart-shaped. It’s an oddly sweet detail on a face that never smiles.
“You have to tell me. I am… I’ll do what you tell me to. Anything. I know I have no idea how to manage this thing, but I’m ready, Nate. Use me.”
Respect trembles and vacillates in Nathan’s gaze and a mix of love, exasperation and pity that you know too well replaces it. He raises from the armchair, turns around the table, and you see the brotherly hug coming even before he reaches you. You neither back away nor answer it, sighing quietly.
“This thing,” Nathan says softly, taking your face between his hands, “it’s not a game, Peter. You can’t improvise. It’s a war, you understand?”
“I’ve been in war,” you answer, but Nathan shakes his head.
“Last time we’ve been in a war with the Families was more than twenty years ago. It started with an attack to Dad, like this, and then we had them on us. They came into our house, Peter. This was their doing.”
He turns the face aside to show you the scar on his jaw. “Believe me. You don’t know what it’s like.”
His hands are warm on your even warmer cheeks, but stubbornness is the only family trait you’re proud of. “I’m not scared, Nate.” You don’t know why you’re whispering, but it’s like having Nathan’s face so close is blocking you from speaking out loud, like it sucked your voice directly from your throat. “I can’t leave you alone. Not this time. You understand I can’t, Nate? You understand why I can’t?”
Such a long time, you think. The last time you hadn’t been in a war, you hadn’t seen a man die, you hadn’t written crosses on the foreheads of the ones who were hopelessly injured. You were a different person. This is what Nathan fails to understand. He thinks he’s talking to the same guy he used to say “This is the last one” to every time, and it never was. He doesn’t know how wrong he is, and you’ve got no words to help him understand.
When you kiss him, his lips are soft and surprised against yours, as if he was unprepared, but you know that Nathan read your intention in your eyes and left you the first move. Now it’s your fault again, but you’re not angry. You’re the one who can handle it better. What follows is a sequence of gestures so familiar they became part of the ritual - his hand on the nape of your neck, his arm around your waist, his lips lingering for a moment on yours before forcing them open to suck your tongue. Nathan’s body is solid every time, it’s a promise, your personal promise, the memory you kept hanging on to when nothing was making sense anymore.
You love him, and sometimes it hurts so much you want to scream.
“I missed you,” you whisper. You’re ashamed of your voice, it doesn’t sound as strong as you want; it betrays you the one time you’d like to appear strong and confident.
“I know.” Nathan kisses your cheek, the angle of your mouth, your lips again. “I know.”
Your father’s body’s been buried less than two hours ago and look at what you’re doing in his office. It’s always been his realm, the place the two of you could only enter on his terms. Even Nathan himself, who worked with Dad for twenty years, wouldn’t ever break them.
You used to do it in a hurry in other rooms of the mansion, or without haste in safer, anonymous places, or in your apartment’s bed with the screeching springs and the padding coming out from the holes in the mattress.
But Dad is dead, and this means his office is Nathan’s now, isn’t it? The rules have changed.
“Ah, God, Pete,” whispers Nathan, looking you in the eye. There’s a slight edge of guilt in his voice, and you know that once again the two of you are thinking the same thing. “This is so not the right moment.”
“In Europe any moment was the right moment,” you reply, and you feel him tense immediately, you see the gentleness drain from his face and his lips tighten in a line. You can nearly hear his teeth clench like the release of a trap.
You wonder if Dad was aware of some lacks in Nathan’s character, the ones that make him an awful candidate to be Godfather. For example you’ve always found him shamefully easy to surprise, and in some ways, Nathan can be as naïve as a child. You’ve always thought that his biggest problem is that he can’t call things by their own name.
“Nathan,” you call him, holding him firmly.
“Great,” he hisses. “I needed to know that my brother behaved like a whore all around the world.”
One of the few qualities you have, instead, is that words don’t hurt you. They never did. “If I’m a whore then I’m your whore, Nate. There’s never been anybody else, okay? A cock is just a cock.”
“You speak like a whore too,” Nathan replies, disgusted.
You know it’s not a pose. Nathan is many things, but not a hypocrite nor a puritan. You know that he respects you, in his own twisted way, but you also know that when Nathan respects you the boundaries cease to exist. It becomes all personal; it becomes all with him or against him. You know that the day Nathan started to respect you his judgment started too. And you know that his standards are the same of Dad’s, and you’ll never live up to them.
You kiss him again, strongly and desperately, and Nathan remains stiff and doesn’t answer but doesn’t back out either. He could push you away easily; he’s stronger than you. But also he’s trapped in this sick relationship that keeps the two of you together, this damnation for which he can’t ever have you completely nor drive you away. It’s a pain the two of you’ve been carrying on since before he fucked you in that hotel room ten years ago, before you asked him if his wife’d ever given him a “French”, even before your uncle dared to touch you where he shouldn’t and Dad had him killed.
This thing is older than you and it’s something you can’t fight. This is why Nathan surrenders quickly, even if his rage filters through when he grasps your throat and fiercely unbuttons your pants.
Even after four years, his hands keep moving confidently on your body and so do yours on his.
Time passed, and you know it, it’s evident: Nathan’s waist is a bit larger than you remember, while you’re much thinner; there are scars that weren’t there, on your body; and a few new wrinkles on his face.
But you also know that some things never change, that Nathan’s touch makes you vibrate every time with the same intensity, that he knows the sweet spots on your body. He knows, and he’s the only who knows.
This is how it must be. This is how it’s always been.
You push him towards the armchair and Nathan lets you, stepping back without watching. When he falls on the soft black leather there’s the noise of pressed air that deflates the padding and the one of held air escaping from Nathan’s lungs. You take off your jacket and black tie and pull down your suspenders, climbing on his thighs.
The position is new but strangely comfortable. In bed Nathan’s never gone for originality, and in six years you’ve always been doing it in the only way you knew. Not that you’ve ever complained. As far as your life was at the time, monotony was a luxury.
Nathan’s eyes follow you while he takes your cock in his hand, contemplating every wince and noise you make. You like it. It makes you feel clean, like there’s nothing to hide. You’re almost sorry to break the eye-contact, but there’s an inviting spot on Nathan’s neck and he’s already reclined his head aside to leave you more space.
His jugular vein pulses fiercely under your tongue.
“Ti amo*,” you whisper in his ear. Nathan flinches. You wonder if his wife tells him the same thing in the same way, with the same tone.
And then there are things you’ve never done, things he’s never let you do, but you’ve not survived to a war to find yourself back at square one. You slide on your knees on the floor, finish undoing Nathan’s belt and unbutton his pants.
“Peter,” comes the warning, brusquely.
You ignore it. Nathan could even feel offended by the fact you want to suck him off, but for once it’s not what he says or thinks that matters. You squeeze his cock in your hand and stroke it slowly.
“Peter.” The second warning is severe but calmer; Nathan’s voice is softer. He must have missed you. Four years ago he would’ve just kicked you away.
You caress the head with the tip of your tongue, a couple of slow, tentative licks before taking it inside your mouth. You hear Nathan hold his breath; the leather armrest creaks beneath his fingers. You can almost hear his thoughts, disgust and pleasure and denial and rage - because there’s still rage at the bottom, and you know that’s not going to fade soon.
“You used to suck off the soldiers in Europe like this?” murmurs Nathan, with his hoarse voice.
You don’t even raise your eyes. “This is the first time I‘ve done this.”
Nathan closes his mouth, you don’t know if because of what you said or the fact you resumed sucking him. What Nathan refuses to understand is that when you’re alone together you don’t need to prove anything. He doesn’t need to pretend he doesn’t like this, nor do you. You want to explain to him, teach him, but then Nathan rests a hand on your cheek and he looks at you with his intense, liquid eyes full of pleasure. (This is what you missed more than all. This. It almost hurts.)
Nathan brushes your lower lip with his thumb and you kiss and suck it gently between your lips, without stopping looking at him. His stare warms your face up and makes you even more painfully aware of your unsatisfied erection. His stare’s burning and possessive as always, but you also see his anger for the indefinite number of others who’ve had you. You can almost hear the question (How many? How many others?) echo inside his brain.
You rise to your feet and take off your shoes and socks, throwing them away. You put your thumbs inside the edge of your pants and underwear and slip out of them together. It’s December and your lower half protests for the sudden nudity, but those aren’t shivers of cold, when you climb on top of Nathan.
“I’ve always just wanted you,” you whisper, your voice trembling slightly for the arousal. “Always.”
His hands caress the small of your back, grip your cheeks, separate them gently. You feel him pressing between them and you know it’s going to hurt, but you don’t care.
“You sure?” asks Nathan, frowning a little.
You nod. It’s been only months but it seems like a lifetime. It seems like everything that happened in the last four years has been suddenly wiped out.
“Just… help me, okay?”
Nathan’s clothes rustle against your shirt and your naked legs. You shift a inch forward and your erection rub against Nathan’s for a moment long enough to leave you breathless.
Nathan penetrates you carefully with a finger wet with saliva and you instinctively lower your eyes, but he lifts your chin with his empty hand. He wants to look, and you realize the two of you never did it looking at each other. Thinking back to the other times, you recall just slices of bed, messed sheets and rusty headboards.
“You’re tight,” mutters Nathan, with the tone of a plain observation.
“Ah… I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
You shake your head and kiss him, gripping his arms. Nathan’s fingers move inside you, almost dry and not very gentle. It’s less than enough of a preparation, but in all the years you don’t ever remember the word, preparation. You’re used to the pain. With time, you’ve come to like it. “It’s okay. Come here.”
Nathan’s right, you’re tight, but you were the first time too and somehow you managed to make it work. You were fucking scared, too, and sixteen and trembling and that was your brother, Christ, and you couldn’t even look at his face while he fucked you. If it worked that time, it can work any time.
“You okay?” murmurs Nathan, while the two of you settle against each other with a slowness he must find exasperating.
You pant a yes, feeling him sink a little bit deeper. Nothing you can’t deal with, you repeat to yourself, as you used to do in the war. Once you got a bullet in your arm and it almost broke the bone. There’s nothing in the world you can’t deal with.
Nathan’s hands grasp your hips possessively while you move against each other, inside each other, breathing hard on each other’s mouth and kissing each other. The pain is still there, a slow, rhythmic basso continuo resounding at each thrust, but the good part in not being sixteen anymore is that now you know how to cover it. Now you know how to get the thrusts in the right spot, that one that makes you vibrate like a string and reminds you why it’s always, always been worth it - with Nathan more than anyone else.
The pleasure is that vibration that resounds amplified inside of you, growing stronger, in your groin and your throat, and Nathan has to kiss you to suffocate your voice, because the walls are thick but you can’t risk being too noisy. You stretch and lean on him, close, with the adrenalin rushing in your veins and making your head feel light, with the smell of Nathan’s cologne in your nostrils mixing with the sourer one of your sweat.
You’re right on the edge when the answer lights up in your brain, as limpid and clear as an epiphany, and for the first time in your life you finally know what to do. It’s a sense of triumph twisted and satisfying like a wish of death, and it all adds to the pleasure, the pain, the frustration, the grief, all compressed in a blinding cocoon that nests in your groin and then explodes in every direction, leaving you consumed, shaking, with your lips cut by your teeth in the attempt not to yell.
Nathan is everywhere around you, in a hug so tight that the two of you can barely breathe. You rest your forehead on his shoulder and let your arms slide along your hips. They’re weak and aching a bit.
In a couple of minutes he’ll reproach you for staining his shirt. You smile in the crook of his neck, licking a drop of sweat from his throat and waiting.
One day you’ll have infinite time, a king-size bed, sound-proof concrete walls, and you’ll do it calmly, without the haste, without the silence, without the desperation. But until that day, you think that this way is good enough.
+ + +
“I’ll kill him.”
Outside it’s night already. The two of you cleaned yourself up as best as you could and got dressed, Nathan reproached you for staining his shirt and you replied that next time he’d better take it off. Nathan shot you a glance but didn’t reply, and this was enough for you to smile. Even if you’re not sure that there will be a next time.
“What?”
You sit more comfortably in the armchair and lean your hands on the armrests. Nathan looks at you from the other side of the desk, his eyes darting threateningly upon the bright lamp.
You lick the scratch on your lower lip. It still vaguely tastes like blood.
“Linderman. Arrange a meeting. Something in a public place, maybe. Find a way to let me have a gun and I’ll kill him for you.”
Nathan’s reaction is a low, joyless laughter, brief and humiliating. Suddenly he looks at you like you were a kid who said rude words in front of the guests.
“Hilarious, Pete.”
“You think I can’t do it?”
“Let me think for a moment… Yeah. Exactly.”
You sigh. It’s so frustrating, sometimes. “I’m not kidding, Nathan.”
“I know you’re not kidding. That’s exactly the problem. That’s always been the problem. You’re convinced of the bullshit you say.”
“I can shoot. Dad taught me. I’m good at it.”
“It’s not like you going and shoot to a couple of cans, Peter. Here it’s you planting a bullet in a man’s head, and you have to look him in the eye while you do it. You have to look him in the eye while he dies. You can do that? No, you can’t. You’re a fucking nurse. What do you know of killing people?”
“I’ve already done it.”
Nathan frowns and studies you silently.
“Twice,” you continue. “And I know how it is, okay? I know it’s obscene. I don’t care. I can do it.”
Nathan lets himself fall in one of the two chairs in front of the table and sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Isn’t this exactly why you left? Last time you talked to Dad you called him “fucking killer”, if I remember right.”
Probably he’ll keep reminding you all your life. You wonder if Dad left it to him as a disposition in his testament.
“Yeah, and I was seventeen, and look, Nathan, I still think those things, okay? But now everything’s changed. This is my family too. And I want to protect it. I can. I don’t care if a man like Linderman dies - not after what he did to Dad - it’s just better if there is less like him around, isn’t it? Now think about some way to arrange this meeting, and I swear to you that my aim will be true.”
For an instant it looks like Nathan is going to give up; nothing more than a vague hint of surrender in his eyes, his hand moves in the air in a gesture you can’t interpret, then he raises his eyes again and his stare is like granite.
“No,” he answers. “You’re not going to kill anyone. I won’t send you to be slaughtered, right? It’s out of the question.”
“He won’t accept anyone less, Nate! If you send him one of your guys…”
“I told you, it’s not up for debate, Peter.”
You jump from your seat, sending the armchair against the wall. Nathan looks at you unimpressed, and you think that instead he should be. He doesn’t understand, he really doesn’t. God, that’s hard.
“Right, Nathan. We can do this thing together, and make it work, and nobody’s gonna get hurt. Or you can keep treating me like a backward child and I’ll go and handle this by myself. Don’t come and cry when I’m dead, okay?”
You pass him by heading towards the door, intentionally close to his chair, and Nathan lets all the air in his lungs exit with a sigh. He reaches out and takes your hand, blocking you at mid-way.
“C’mon. C’mon, Pete, now don’t fuck everything up. Calm down, okay? Come back.”
“It’s important,” you say, and you can’t help but sound a little childish to your own ears. “You don’t know how important it is, Nate. You have no idea.”
Nathan lowers his eyes and nods, holding your hand tight in his own.
“The bastard bought some police too. He’s got a corrupted cop, some Captain Parkman, on his Family’s payroll.”
You crouch on your heels in front of him. Nathan rests his hand on your cheek, stroking your cheekbone, and even if your heart keeps beating furiously in your chest, in your throat, even in your fingertips, you half-close your eyes and think that everything’s going to be alright. It has to.
“Where does it say that you can't kill a cop?”
-- The End
(*) “Ti amo” translates into “I love you”, with the not-so-slight difference that normally you can’t use it to show affection to a relative, but only to a lover.
Author: fiorediloto
Fandom: Heroes/The Godfather
Characters: Nathan Petrelli, Peter Petrelli, Angela Petrelli, Arthur Petrelli
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Nathan/Peter, mentions of Peter/OCs and Nathan/Heidi
Spoiler(s): None for Heroes. Some for The Godfather (Part I and Part II).
Word count: 5,047
Warning(s): Consensual incest, mentions of pedophilia and underage sex.
Summary: It's not easy to be the Godfather's son.
A/N: Thanks to eledh_3 and eryslash, who read the original version and drove me nuts to match their expectations about it. And many many thanks to juliettesaito and snopes_faith, who beta'd the first, rough translation, and made it work properly. Nothing of this would've seen the light without the four of them.
Written for: reel_heroes
» This fic won Best Peter Characterization at the Heroes Slash Fanfiction Awards: Winter 2008. «
(banner by eryslash)
Godblessed
A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.
-- The Godfather
“Praesta, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus, ut anima famuli tui Arthuri, quae hodie de hoc saeculo migravit, his sacrificiis purgata et a peccatis expedita, indulgentiam pariter et requiem capiat sempiternam. Per Dominum.”
It’s when the notes of the organ stretch and soar in a glorious crescendo that you remember it. Then a long, excruciating vibration sinks into your skin and makes your flesh crawl. Then you remember why you stopped going to church at thirteen.
For a moment you’re there again, at the feet of the cold and immobile corpse into the coffin; your father’s hand is on your shoulder and your aunt isn’t crying but hissing prayers between her chapped lips and her blood-stained teeth. Then the image dissolves like candle smoke and incense mist is burning your eyes, but you don’t need to pretend that’s what’s making you cry.
Dad’s face is peaceful, his wrinkles of worry finally smoothed out from his forehead. His hands are joined under his breastbone in a pose that was familiar even when he was alive, when he used to relax on the armchair. The memory is faded and consumed like an old photo, and yet still vivid and burning in your mind.
Nathan was the one who called you, it’s him who now keeps a hand upon your shoulder like Dad did that time.
The thought of that grip strikes you. It’s identical, and all the rest could be too - the people around you, the music of the organ, the numbing sweetish smell of burnt wax. But that time you didn’t cry, and they didn’t even let you go near enough to look at the dead’s face.
Yet, there’s still that strange heartbeat of yours - that twisted heartbeat of yours that you’ve spent fourteen years to be able to decipher, and now you know it’s nothing else but guilt.
Your mother is the nearest. You see her bend over Dad and kiss his forehead, lingering for a long moment, her movement like movie frames in a slow sequence. Just for a moment you wonder what it’s like, even if Dad can’t feel it anymore, what it’s like to be kissed like that. You must have had your mother’s kisses too, once, but you don’t recall them.
Angela Petrelli’s lips keep moving next to Dad’s face, quickly. Drawn by her red lipstick, they look like wounds in the flesh of her mouth.
You could bet that what she’s whispering is not a prayer. She’s a strong woman, your Mother, and you haven’t stopped loving her since the day you were born.
Then there’s Nathan, with the hard curve of his mouth that is both promise and threat of life and death. No kisses from him; Nathan rests a hand upon Dad’s and squeezes them briefly, like a brother in arms, brushing Dad’s forehead with the other hand where Ma left a faint mark of red. This time you’re near enough to catch the words (“I swear those bastards are gonna pay for this, Dad, I swear…”), but you choose to let yourself be captured by the sleepy whisper of the church, the clattering of the incense burner hanging from its support, the distant and distorted echo of suffocated crying. You don’t really think somebody’s crying. Men like Dad leave without a tear.
It’s your turn; Nathan passes by and you don’t need to watch him to know that his eyes are wet, and you don’t need to know him better to know that those tears will disappear, dried, absorbed, never shed anyway. You rest a hand on the edge of the coffin. Dad’s fingers are soft and fresh; they’re clean, unlike the other corpses you saw before.
It’s your time to tell him everything he never wanted to listen to, and if there’s a Hell maybe your message will come faster passing through his ears.
What was it for, in the end? Killed like a dog in the street.
“I’m sorry,” you mutter instead. Your throat aches and you know it’s hard to understand what you’re saying, but Dad doesn’t need you to repeat. “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
I’m sorry I told you the things your brother did to me. I’m sorry you died thinking I hated you. I didn’t want it to end like this. For either of us, I… didn’t want it to end like this.
Then a hand slowly strokes your back and you look up, drying your nose on the back of your hand. Nathan hands you his handkerchief.
When the coffin’s been closed upon Arthur Petrelli’s body and the bearers lift it up, everything you can see in the unfocused, wooden silhouette is your own life’s shape, waving and fading without direction, moving away from you.
+ + +
New York City, December 1945
“We need to do something.”
In the office with the closed curtains, the dim light devours the furniture. Your voice doesn’t sound stronger than a whisper. It’s like being thirteen again, you think, before your life started to wander off track. You watch Nathan sitting in Dad’s armchair and it bothers you to notice that the silhouette is the same, the hands are the same, only the face is a bit gentler.
“We?” he repeats slowly, without watching you. You know the refusal is coming, and that’s your only advantage.
“You don’t need to do anything, Peter. You’re going back to your apartment and you will stay there until this story ends. I’ll send somebody for your protection.”
“I don’t need protection. Nobody cares about me.”
Nathan’s bad mood is like a storm moving in rapid shades across his face.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
You’d hardly recall one time he did. “I want to help, Nathan. I can help.”
“We don’t need anybody to give us little pills and fluff up our cushions, thanks. Go back where you’re needed.”
Ten years, and he hasn’t forgiven you yet. Ten years, and all your conversations always go back to the same point, like nothing happened in the meanwhile. Like you didn’t stare Death in the face during the war. As if your life was marked forever the day you left. You wonder if Dad left him the incapacity of looking forward too, as a legacy.
“He was my father too, Nate. And he died. Murdered. And…”
“No, Peter. My father died. You gave up on him ten years ago. He gave you everything and you spat on his face. Now go back to that fucking apartment of yours and stay there. I don’t want to see you around here until it’s safe again.”
“You’re kicking me out of my own house?” you whisper, leaning toward him upon the desk. You’re leaning on your knuckles and you hear them creak painfully against the wooden surface.
“It wasn’t your house when you left. Nobody kicked you out, then. It was your choice.”
It’s so difficult with Nathan sometimes, and you’d laugh if it didn’t hurt so much. He doesn’t understand. He never did.
“Yeah, and how I’m here, Nathan. It’s my family. It’s my life. He was my father, and I tried, God, Nathan, I tried all my life, but now I know that it’s not enough to want to change who you are, because who you are follows you everywhere. You carry it inside yourself - you carry it forever. Now I know, Nathan. Now I understand Dad’s speech. You won’t kick me out.”
You’re used enough to rapid and smug glances to recognize that look, the one Nathan has when he is considering you. You feel his eyes burning into yours, but you don’t back off. It’s another little personal war, an open account between the two of you, until surrender digs its way nearly imperceptibly through his voice and breaks its toughness.
“It’s too dangerous for you.”
“But not for your wife and kids?”
“Linderman doesn’t touch women and children.”
“Good,” you reply. Is there something able to stop men like Linderman, men like Dad? Good. Maybe there’s hope for everyone. “Please, think about it, Nathan. Linderman won’t expect me to stay here. He’ll expect you to send me away, he’ll expect me to go back to my work. I’m the retarded one, am not I? The fag.”
“No,” hisses Nathan. “You’re not.”
You shake your head impatiently. That’s not the point. “He’ll underestimate me, Nathan. He won’t expect me to do something! Think about it just for a moment, think about it. What was that Dad used to say? People who underestimate you…”
“… don’t watch their back.” Nathan passes his hands through his hair combed backward and greased. You know it can’t be the same, but his dark waistcoat looks like the one he wore that time. The first time. “Okay. Let’s say - for instance - that I let you stay here. Let’s say that I don’t send you back to change the drips for your patients. Let’s say that I don’t send you back to do your duty for your Country.” His tone is sarcastic. It’s an open wound, but you ignore it. “What do you think you can do?”
The advantage, your father’s voice whispers in your ear. Use your advantage. But you’re not your father, Nathan is not your enemy, and this is not your battlefield. When it comes to convincing someone, you make your moves without strategy, you use a charisma you know you possess even if you don’t know where it comes from, you pull the right strings instinctively. It’s when you have to explain that you find yourself weak.
“I don’t know yet,” you admit. “I don’t know exactly, but…”
“But?” Nathan leans towards you, placing his elbows on the table and joining his hands while he observes you. It’s strange to see it now, but you didn’t ever notice that Nathan’s mouth is heart-shaped. It’s an oddly sweet detail on a face that never smiles.
“You have to tell me. I am… I’ll do what you tell me to. Anything. I know I have no idea how to manage this thing, but I’m ready, Nate. Use me.”
Respect trembles and vacillates in Nathan’s gaze and a mix of love, exasperation and pity that you know too well replaces it. He raises from the armchair, turns around the table, and you see the brotherly hug coming even before he reaches you. You neither back away nor answer it, sighing quietly.
“This thing,” Nathan says softly, taking your face between his hands, “it’s not a game, Peter. You can’t improvise. It’s a war, you understand?”
“I’ve been in war,” you answer, but Nathan shakes his head.
“Last time we’ve been in a war with the Families was more than twenty years ago. It started with an attack to Dad, like this, and then we had them on us. They came into our house, Peter. This was their doing.”
He turns the face aside to show you the scar on his jaw. “Believe me. You don’t know what it’s like.”
His hands are warm on your even warmer cheeks, but stubbornness is the only family trait you’re proud of. “I’m not scared, Nate.” You don’t know why you’re whispering, but it’s like having Nathan’s face so close is blocking you from speaking out loud, like it sucked your voice directly from your throat. “I can’t leave you alone. Not this time. You understand I can’t, Nate? You understand why I can’t?”
Such a long time, you think. The last time you hadn’t been in a war, you hadn’t seen a man die, you hadn’t written crosses on the foreheads of the ones who were hopelessly injured. You were a different person. This is what Nathan fails to understand. He thinks he’s talking to the same guy he used to say “This is the last one” to every time, and it never was. He doesn’t know how wrong he is, and you’ve got no words to help him understand.
When you kiss him, his lips are soft and surprised against yours, as if he was unprepared, but you know that Nathan read your intention in your eyes and left you the first move. Now it’s your fault again, but you’re not angry. You’re the one who can handle it better. What follows is a sequence of gestures so familiar they became part of the ritual - his hand on the nape of your neck, his arm around your waist, his lips lingering for a moment on yours before forcing them open to suck your tongue. Nathan’s body is solid every time, it’s a promise, your personal promise, the memory you kept hanging on to when nothing was making sense anymore.
You love him, and sometimes it hurts so much you want to scream.
“I missed you,” you whisper. You’re ashamed of your voice, it doesn’t sound as strong as you want; it betrays you the one time you’d like to appear strong and confident.
“I know.” Nathan kisses your cheek, the angle of your mouth, your lips again. “I know.”
Your father’s body’s been buried less than two hours ago and look at what you’re doing in his office. It’s always been his realm, the place the two of you could only enter on his terms. Even Nathan himself, who worked with Dad for twenty years, wouldn’t ever break them.
You used to do it in a hurry in other rooms of the mansion, or without haste in safer, anonymous places, or in your apartment’s bed with the screeching springs and the padding coming out from the holes in the mattress.
But Dad is dead, and this means his office is Nathan’s now, isn’t it? The rules have changed.
“Ah, God, Pete,” whispers Nathan, looking you in the eye. There’s a slight edge of guilt in his voice, and you know that once again the two of you are thinking the same thing. “This is so not the right moment.”
“In Europe any moment was the right moment,” you reply, and you feel him tense immediately, you see the gentleness drain from his face and his lips tighten in a line. You can nearly hear his teeth clench like the release of a trap.
You wonder if Dad was aware of some lacks in Nathan’s character, the ones that make him an awful candidate to be Godfather. For example you’ve always found him shamefully easy to surprise, and in some ways, Nathan can be as naïve as a child. You’ve always thought that his biggest problem is that he can’t call things by their own name.
“Nathan,” you call him, holding him firmly.
“Great,” he hisses. “I needed to know that my brother behaved like a whore all around the world.”
One of the few qualities you have, instead, is that words don’t hurt you. They never did. “If I’m a whore then I’m your whore, Nate. There’s never been anybody else, okay? A cock is just a cock.”
“You speak like a whore too,” Nathan replies, disgusted.
You know it’s not a pose. Nathan is many things, but not a hypocrite nor a puritan. You know that he respects you, in his own twisted way, but you also know that when Nathan respects you the boundaries cease to exist. It becomes all personal; it becomes all with him or against him. You know that the day Nathan started to respect you his judgment started too. And you know that his standards are the same of Dad’s, and you’ll never live up to them.
You kiss him again, strongly and desperately, and Nathan remains stiff and doesn’t answer but doesn’t back out either. He could push you away easily; he’s stronger than you. But also he’s trapped in this sick relationship that keeps the two of you together, this damnation for which he can’t ever have you completely nor drive you away. It’s a pain the two of you’ve been carrying on since before he fucked you in that hotel room ten years ago, before you asked him if his wife’d ever given him a “French”, even before your uncle dared to touch you where he shouldn’t and Dad had him killed.
This thing is older than you and it’s something you can’t fight. This is why Nathan surrenders quickly, even if his rage filters through when he grasps your throat and fiercely unbuttons your pants.
Even after four years, his hands keep moving confidently on your body and so do yours on his.
Time passed, and you know it, it’s evident: Nathan’s waist is a bit larger than you remember, while you’re much thinner; there are scars that weren’t there, on your body; and a few new wrinkles on his face.
But you also know that some things never change, that Nathan’s touch makes you vibrate every time with the same intensity, that he knows the sweet spots on your body. He knows, and he’s the only who knows.
This is how it must be. This is how it’s always been.
You push him towards the armchair and Nathan lets you, stepping back without watching. When he falls on the soft black leather there’s the noise of pressed air that deflates the padding and the one of held air escaping from Nathan’s lungs. You take off your jacket and black tie and pull down your suspenders, climbing on his thighs.
The position is new but strangely comfortable. In bed Nathan’s never gone for originality, and in six years you’ve always been doing it in the only way you knew. Not that you’ve ever complained. As far as your life was at the time, monotony was a luxury.
Nathan’s eyes follow you while he takes your cock in his hand, contemplating every wince and noise you make. You like it. It makes you feel clean, like there’s nothing to hide. You’re almost sorry to break the eye-contact, but there’s an inviting spot on Nathan’s neck and he’s already reclined his head aside to leave you more space.
His jugular vein pulses fiercely under your tongue.
“Ti amo*,” you whisper in his ear. Nathan flinches. You wonder if his wife tells him the same thing in the same way, with the same tone.
And then there are things you’ve never done, things he’s never let you do, but you’ve not survived to a war to find yourself back at square one. You slide on your knees on the floor, finish undoing Nathan’s belt and unbutton his pants.
“Peter,” comes the warning, brusquely.
You ignore it. Nathan could even feel offended by the fact you want to suck him off, but for once it’s not what he says or thinks that matters. You squeeze his cock in your hand and stroke it slowly.
“Peter.” The second warning is severe but calmer; Nathan’s voice is softer. He must have missed you. Four years ago he would’ve just kicked you away.
You caress the head with the tip of your tongue, a couple of slow, tentative licks before taking it inside your mouth. You hear Nathan hold his breath; the leather armrest creaks beneath his fingers. You can almost hear his thoughts, disgust and pleasure and denial and rage - because there’s still rage at the bottom, and you know that’s not going to fade soon.
“You used to suck off the soldiers in Europe like this?” murmurs Nathan, with his hoarse voice.
You don’t even raise your eyes. “This is the first time I‘ve done this.”
Nathan closes his mouth, you don’t know if because of what you said or the fact you resumed sucking him. What Nathan refuses to understand is that when you’re alone together you don’t need to prove anything. He doesn’t need to pretend he doesn’t like this, nor do you. You want to explain to him, teach him, but then Nathan rests a hand on your cheek and he looks at you with his intense, liquid eyes full of pleasure. (This is what you missed more than all. This. It almost hurts.)
Nathan brushes your lower lip with his thumb and you kiss and suck it gently between your lips, without stopping looking at him. His stare warms your face up and makes you even more painfully aware of your unsatisfied erection. His stare’s burning and possessive as always, but you also see his anger for the indefinite number of others who’ve had you. You can almost hear the question (How many? How many others?) echo inside his brain.
You rise to your feet and take off your shoes and socks, throwing them away. You put your thumbs inside the edge of your pants and underwear and slip out of them together. It’s December and your lower half protests for the sudden nudity, but those aren’t shivers of cold, when you climb on top of Nathan.
“I’ve always just wanted you,” you whisper, your voice trembling slightly for the arousal. “Always.”
His hands caress the small of your back, grip your cheeks, separate them gently. You feel him pressing between them and you know it’s going to hurt, but you don’t care.
“You sure?” asks Nathan, frowning a little.
You nod. It’s been only months but it seems like a lifetime. It seems like everything that happened in the last four years has been suddenly wiped out.
“Just… help me, okay?”
Nathan’s clothes rustle against your shirt and your naked legs. You shift a inch forward and your erection rub against Nathan’s for a moment long enough to leave you breathless.
Nathan penetrates you carefully with a finger wet with saliva and you instinctively lower your eyes, but he lifts your chin with his empty hand. He wants to look, and you realize the two of you never did it looking at each other. Thinking back to the other times, you recall just slices of bed, messed sheets and rusty headboards.
“You’re tight,” mutters Nathan, with the tone of a plain observation.
“Ah… I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
You shake your head and kiss him, gripping his arms. Nathan’s fingers move inside you, almost dry and not very gentle. It’s less than enough of a preparation, but in all the years you don’t ever remember the word, preparation. You’re used to the pain. With time, you’ve come to like it. “It’s okay. Come here.”
Nathan’s right, you’re tight, but you were the first time too and somehow you managed to make it work. You were fucking scared, too, and sixteen and trembling and that was your brother, Christ, and you couldn’t even look at his face while he fucked you. If it worked that time, it can work any time.
“You okay?” murmurs Nathan, while the two of you settle against each other with a slowness he must find exasperating.
You pant a yes, feeling him sink a little bit deeper. Nothing you can’t deal with, you repeat to yourself, as you used to do in the war. Once you got a bullet in your arm and it almost broke the bone. There’s nothing in the world you can’t deal with.
Nathan’s hands grasp your hips possessively while you move against each other, inside each other, breathing hard on each other’s mouth and kissing each other. The pain is still there, a slow, rhythmic basso continuo resounding at each thrust, but the good part in not being sixteen anymore is that now you know how to cover it. Now you know how to get the thrusts in the right spot, that one that makes you vibrate like a string and reminds you why it’s always, always been worth it - with Nathan more than anyone else.
The pleasure is that vibration that resounds amplified inside of you, growing stronger, in your groin and your throat, and Nathan has to kiss you to suffocate your voice, because the walls are thick but you can’t risk being too noisy. You stretch and lean on him, close, with the adrenalin rushing in your veins and making your head feel light, with the smell of Nathan’s cologne in your nostrils mixing with the sourer one of your sweat.
You’re right on the edge when the answer lights up in your brain, as limpid and clear as an epiphany, and for the first time in your life you finally know what to do. It’s a sense of triumph twisted and satisfying like a wish of death, and it all adds to the pleasure, the pain, the frustration, the grief, all compressed in a blinding cocoon that nests in your groin and then explodes in every direction, leaving you consumed, shaking, with your lips cut by your teeth in the attempt not to yell.
Nathan is everywhere around you, in a hug so tight that the two of you can barely breathe. You rest your forehead on his shoulder and let your arms slide along your hips. They’re weak and aching a bit.
In a couple of minutes he’ll reproach you for staining his shirt. You smile in the crook of his neck, licking a drop of sweat from his throat and waiting.
One day you’ll have infinite time, a king-size bed, sound-proof concrete walls, and you’ll do it calmly, without the haste, without the silence, without the desperation. But until that day, you think that this way is good enough.
+ + +
“I’ll kill him.”
Outside it’s night already. The two of you cleaned yourself up as best as you could and got dressed, Nathan reproached you for staining his shirt and you replied that next time he’d better take it off. Nathan shot you a glance but didn’t reply, and this was enough for you to smile. Even if you’re not sure that there will be a next time.
“What?”
You sit more comfortably in the armchair and lean your hands on the armrests. Nathan looks at you from the other side of the desk, his eyes darting threateningly upon the bright lamp.
You lick the scratch on your lower lip. It still vaguely tastes like blood.
“Linderman. Arrange a meeting. Something in a public place, maybe. Find a way to let me have a gun and I’ll kill him for you.”
Nathan’s reaction is a low, joyless laughter, brief and humiliating. Suddenly he looks at you like you were a kid who said rude words in front of the guests.
“Hilarious, Pete.”
“You think I can’t do it?”
“Let me think for a moment… Yeah. Exactly.”
You sigh. It’s so frustrating, sometimes. “I’m not kidding, Nathan.”
“I know you’re not kidding. That’s exactly the problem. That’s always been the problem. You’re convinced of the bullshit you say.”
“I can shoot. Dad taught me. I’m good at it.”
“It’s not like you going and shoot to a couple of cans, Peter. Here it’s you planting a bullet in a man’s head, and you have to look him in the eye while you do it. You have to look him in the eye while he dies. You can do that? No, you can’t. You’re a fucking nurse. What do you know of killing people?”
“I’ve already done it.”
Nathan frowns and studies you silently.
“Twice,” you continue. “And I know how it is, okay? I know it’s obscene. I don’t care. I can do it.”
Nathan lets himself fall in one of the two chairs in front of the table and sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Isn’t this exactly why you left? Last time you talked to Dad you called him “fucking killer”, if I remember right.”
Probably he’ll keep reminding you all your life. You wonder if Dad left it to him as a disposition in his testament.
“Yeah, and I was seventeen, and look, Nathan, I still think those things, okay? But now everything’s changed. This is my family too. And I want to protect it. I can. I don’t care if a man like Linderman dies - not after what he did to Dad - it’s just better if there is less like him around, isn’t it? Now think about some way to arrange this meeting, and I swear to you that my aim will be true.”
For an instant it looks like Nathan is going to give up; nothing more than a vague hint of surrender in his eyes, his hand moves in the air in a gesture you can’t interpret, then he raises his eyes again and his stare is like granite.
“No,” he answers. “You’re not going to kill anyone. I won’t send you to be slaughtered, right? It’s out of the question.”
“He won’t accept anyone less, Nate! If you send him one of your guys…”
“I told you, it’s not up for debate, Peter.”
You jump from your seat, sending the armchair against the wall. Nathan looks at you unimpressed, and you think that instead he should be. He doesn’t understand, he really doesn’t. God, that’s hard.
“Right, Nathan. We can do this thing together, and make it work, and nobody’s gonna get hurt. Or you can keep treating me like a backward child and I’ll go and handle this by myself. Don’t come and cry when I’m dead, okay?”
You pass him by heading towards the door, intentionally close to his chair, and Nathan lets all the air in his lungs exit with a sigh. He reaches out and takes your hand, blocking you at mid-way.
“C’mon. C’mon, Pete, now don’t fuck everything up. Calm down, okay? Come back.”
“It’s important,” you say, and you can’t help but sound a little childish to your own ears. “You don’t know how important it is, Nate. You have no idea.”
Nathan lowers his eyes and nods, holding your hand tight in his own.
“The bastard bought some police too. He’s got a corrupted cop, some Captain Parkman, on his Family’s payroll.”
You crouch on your heels in front of him. Nathan rests his hand on your cheek, stroking your cheekbone, and even if your heart keeps beating furiously in your chest, in your throat, even in your fingertips, you half-close your eyes and think that everything’s going to be alright. It has to.
“Where does it say that you can't kill a cop?”
-- The End
(*) “Ti amo” translates into “I love you”, with the not-so-slight difference that normally you can’t use it to show affection to a relative, but only to a lover.