[Heroes] You can sleep while I drive (Nathan/Peter, NC-17, FYG AU)
Title: You can sleep while I drive
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Nathan/Peter
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 6954 (W)
Warning(s): Underage sex, ideal (?) incest, infinite angst
Spoiler(s): 1x20, "Five years gone"
Thanks to: snopes_faith, the tireless beta.
Notes: It's a past fic of mine (written in November 2007) and I'm not totally satisfied with it, but it seems this is eryslash's fave among my AUverses - so I posted it. My knowledge of Texas's geography is quite close to zero, so I tried to make as accurate researches as I could, but don't hate me too much if I miscalculated distances or anything like that.
(banner by eryslash)
What is the feeling when you're driving away from people,
and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?
-- Jack Kerouac, ‘On the road’
He picks you up in a bar in Midland, Texas - a cozy, clean place called Burnt Toast Cafè. Your toast isn't burnt and the waitress is a nice twenty-years-old brunette with a sweet smile. She asks you if you want any more coffee and you nod and thank her, following her distractedly with your eyes while she moves away.
The coffee is terrible, but you're used to it.
He's sitting on your right. He's eighteen or nineteen (or twenty or fifteen - you're not good at guessing people's age) with a huge tuft of dark hair almost wilder than your beard and a faint stubble on his jaw. He's been looking at you obliquely since you've entered in the bar.
He could be a thief, a killer, a runaway. He could work in a Resettlement Squad. They say that some of you work with them now. Some - and you know it's not just a rumour because you've met a few - some can scent you out from miles away, as dogs do with hares. Maybe the boy's already called his accomplices, and when you get out of this bar there'll be a blow right to your nape and goodbye to your shitty life.
What would you do, you wonder, if you had something to lose.
The boy licks his lips and keeps looking at you furtively. You finish your toast and finally dart him a glance, too fast to establish a real eye-contact - in case the boy knows some trick - but long enough to see his face.
Eighteen at most. He's got his lips chapped from the cold and a couple of big and nervous eyes like a fugitive. In five years, you've seen dozens of eyes like those.
You brush a handful of crumbs from your lips and raise to go and pee.
You're washing your hands when the boy enters in the bathroom. The door behind your back is the only way out - you checked - and an alarm bell starts ringing furiously in your head. A trap?
You calmly tear out a sheet of blotting paper, dry your hands, ball it and toss it into the bin.
"Hey," says the boy, coming closer.
You nod, looking at his reflection in the mirror.
"The truck outside is yours, isn't it?"
"Aha."
"You mind giving me a ride?"
"A ride to where?"
The boy smiles vaguely, uncomfortably. "Well... it doesn't matter. Where you go it's fine."
"I don't carry hitchhikers, sorry." You turn back and step by him without looking him in the eye, heading towards the door.
"Hey, hey, wait a sec," he starts, gripping your arm. He's strong, even if his clothes seem like falling on his body as if they hung from naked bones. "Just to the next city. What do you say? I won't annoy you, I swear." A small hesitation, he tries with a warmer smile. "Nobody ever complained."
You free your arm with a tug and leave the bathroom without answering. The boy's got guts to ask for a ride like this. By now, hitchhikers are all vagabonds who escaped the Resettlements. If you were one of them, you'd have already called the special number.
In the hall somebody's turned the TV on; there's a rerun of the commemoration of the victims of the bomb. You've heard it so many times from the radio you know the words by memory.
The waitress watches the programme sitting on a stool and biting at her middle finger's nail. You leave the money on the counter, without bothering her, and leave the bar before the President's speech comes to "that one day wounds would be healed".
Unlike the President, you perfectly know that some wounds never heal.
The parking lot is behind the bar, and you're half way there when you notice the boy is following you. You keep walking towards the truck without hastening or slowing down your pace. You've got a shotgun, there, hidden behind the seat. Just in case. You don't think the boy is really dangerous, but you think more lucidly when you've got a shotgun at reach.
You're near the right side of the truck when he reaches you and puts a hand on your shoulder. It's a firm but not menacing grip, and when you turn he immediately backs off. Even if the parking is dark and deserted, you can see he's uncomfortable.
"What is it?"
There's a light thud, the noise of the boy's backpack falling next to your foot, then a decisive step that scratches a bit of ground under the shoe. You step back, but bump against the truck's side. One of the boy's hands digs under your jacket, the other one passes on your cheek in a long stroke before clasping your nape and pulling you close to his mouth.
The kiss is nervous and tense, teenager-like, with the boy's open lips and his tongue thrusting hastily in your mouth. Pressed against the metal wall behind you, you lean a hand on his back and feel him come closer. His fingers grip your sweater, then leave it and reach for the button of your jeans.
"I suck you off and you bring me to the next city, okay?" mutters the boy, pulling down your zip.
You should tell something, probably refuse, but you can just swallow down saliva. You catch a glint of moonlight shining on the boy's wet lips, then he lowers his head and falls on his knees in front of you.
He's rapid and hasty as if he was in a hurry to finish, and you feel pleasure and nausea knot your stomach together. Everything that remains of your noble person is this alcoholic who's getting a blowjob in a parking lot by a boy more desperate than him. And not even for money. There would be more dignity if you paid him, at least.
You throw a glance around, but you're completely alone. You let out a moan. His hot mouth around your cock is the most beautiful feeling you've felt in the last... months? years? You're not sure. Suddenly you don't care who he is anymore and you forgot why he's doing this, it's just a willing (yeah, willing) mouth and after you'll be ashamed to death, but after seems infinitely far if there's an orgasm to reach in the middle.
His hair tickles your fingers and you grasp it instinctively, not too strongly. You don't want to hurt him. You just want him to continue and finish and, for once, you want your thoughts to flow away with your sperm.
When you come you've got your half-closed eyes and the feeling is so desperately good that you forget to tell him. He doesn't seem like be angry for that. While you catch your breath against the side of your truck you hear him spit; he bends to pick his backpack and eventually rises up wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
"Are we going?" he asks calmly, moving towards the passenger's door.
You put your cock back in your pants and think: Nobody ever complained. You wait for the guilt to rush back in your veins, cleaning up your blood from the endorphins, and when you climb on by your side you're lucid again.
+ + +
The main reason why you don't give rides to hitchhikers is that you can't ever know if the guy will vomit sulfuric acid on the gears or suck the truck battery's charge and glow like a bulb. The second reason is that you don't like people to know about your family, and it's hard to avoid when they sit and see the photo attached on the dashboard.
It's a very small photo. Once it stayed in your wallet, then you stopped using it and some way it didn't seem, what was the word again, respectful to keep the only, the last memory of your beloved ones in the back pocket on your ass together with the money. With the years, the photo got burnt under the sun and the colours said goodbye, but you never thought about taking it away from there. It's part of the tapestry, now. The faded tapestry of your life.
Originally, there were two photos. In the one you kept framed in your office and got burnt with the rest, you had an arm around Heidi's waist and the other one around your mother's, the children were posing perfectly and the five of you smiled all with the same photo face. This is the failed version, with Heidi bent down to catch Monty who doesn't want to stay still, Simon with his open mouth pointing out at his brother, your mother trying to look annoyed but really hardly holding back a smile, and you're standing behind your son and laughing - laughed.
One night you got drunk and burnt your face with your lit cigarette.
"Your family?"
"Aha."
"They died in the explosion?"
You cast him a look. The boy watches you seriously. "You've got a New York accent."
You half-open your window and for some second you let the cold air in to wash away the smell like stale smoke and sweat.
"There's some beer down there. Give me one. You can have one too, if you're thirsty."
Next to the photo, you've attached a half-burnt leaflet of your campaign. You still don't really know why you did; you think it could be a sort of memento for the days to come. There your face is perfectly visible, with a shaven and bright smile like an advertising poster, and below it still reads the word VOTE and the first three letters of your name. The rest's been devoured by the flames.
"Nate? Nathan?"
"Nathan," you answer, uncorking the two beers with the bottle opener hooked at your bunch of keys. You hand the boy his.
"I'm Peter."
You nod absent-mindedly. Common name, maybe fake. Tomorrow you'll have forgotten.
"You got elected, then?"
"I failed miserably." And who knows why, now the memory makes you want to laugh.
Peter lifts his bottle and makes it tinkle softly against yours. "Good," he smiles. "I don't like politicians."
You smile vaguely too, as a reflex. The first times, when things were worse than now but there weren't Resettlement Squads all around the Country yet, you wondered what people would think of an ex lawyer of Manhattan ex Congressional candidate driving a truck. Then you realized that nobody got surprised about anything anymore, that nobody cared, and basically, that you didn't.
The boy swallows a long sip of beer and licks his lips, stretching forward to look better at the leaflet.
"You know what?" he says eventually, falling against his seat again. "You look better with the beard."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You look... dunno. More natural?"
"Natural?" you repeat, considering the word. It seems like with the years it slowly changed its meaning. Now it makes you think of Darwin, evolution and selection, mutations and DNA, and you don't like it. Those are things you prefer not to think about. "I don't think so."
Peter shrugs and turns towards the window, clasping his elbows. His reflection in the glass has a tired face. Now that you can give him a closer look, you notice that he wears only a shirt and a sweatshirt over it, and outside it must be 37° F at the most.
You reach out towards him and you see him turn with a jump, with the surprised and cautious eyes of an animal caught away from its lair. He would be almost sweet. You take the blanket folded behind his seat and throw it on his legs, without speaking.
"Thanks."
"It's nothing."
He wraps up in the blanket and turns back by his side, leaning his cheek against the edge of the backrest. After a couple of minutes he closes his eyes, and you're almost in Stanton when his breath, perfectly regular, too perfectly regular, reveals he's pretending to be sleeping. You don't wake him up. You've passed Big Spring too when Peter turns towards you and asks you where you're going.
"Houston."
You don't add anything else, and he doesn't ask. He turns back by his side again and after a minute he's really sleeping.
+ + +
You wake him up throwing the plastic card of his passport in his face. Peter awakes with a wince and reaches out to grab what hit him, lifts it up to his half-closed eyes, then jumps in his seat.
"When I told you I don't carry hitchhikers, that included underage ones too." Your voice comes out hoarser then you wanted to, filled with rage, in a growl. The truth is that guilt burns more, now that you know.
"Not underage hitchhikers that suck your cock for free," Peter mutters.
"Oh, for God's sake."
Peter puts the passport in a pocket of his jeans and bends down on the backpack you've left open, closing it nervously. "Who the fuck gave you the permission to look inside it, anyway? That's my stuff."
"Listen, Peter or whatever, if they stop us at a roadblock and something goes wrong that's me they slam in jail, okay? At the worst they send you back to Mommy."
"A bit late to think about it, isn't it, Mr. No-Underage-Sex? Stop the truck, I'm getting down here."
"In the middle of the state route? You want to get killed?"
"What do you care? Stop this thing, I want to get down."
"You stay at your seat. Peter. Peter!"
It's a frantic nightmare the moment in which the boy opens the door and throws himself down with a strange, almost slow, almost graceful flight; a moment before the right light is shining against the guardrail and a moment after you hear a bloodcurdling crash of metal and shattered bones. You plant your foot on the brake so hard that you almost fly against the windshield too, then you run out of the truck.
Peter lies on the asphalt fifty metres behind, his body twisted in a series of frightfully wrong angles. There's a sparkle of moonlight on the spike of a broken bone coming out from a leg.
"Holy God," you murmur, kneeling on the asphalt. "Peter. Peter!"
You touch his neck, but there's no pulse - only a scary, motionless silence. Now the blood is rushing in your temples like the roar of a fall. Compliments, Nathan, another dead on your conscience. Another photo to attach on your dashboard, maybe.
Ambulance. Help. Police. Cell. You stick your hands in your pocket but they're empty. You run back to the truck, grab your cell, dial the 9-1-1 and while you're waiting for them to answer you come back to Peter - to what remains of Peter.
Then, what remains of Peter moves. At first you think it's just your impression, a trickery of the dim-light - then a hand crawls slowly forward, the toe of a foot scrapes against the asphalt, you hear a throaty moan, a cough, and suddenly it's all a dreadful choir of creaks, groans and noises of beaten flesh like a meat chop turned over and over by the butcher's hands. It seems neverending ("Hello? Hello? Who's there? Hello?") and when finally Peter raises and sits there's blood everywhere, on his clothes, on his face, on the asphalt, and everything you manage to say is a weak: "My God".
Peter coughs a little more, then touches his jaw obscenely askew, pushes it back to its place with a moan. "This is new," he mutters, shaking his head.
... then you're on your seat, driving the truck again, and the last thing you remember is that you don't carry underage hitchhikers.
Peter turns back and forth under his blanket, uncomfortably. "Listen... I'm sorry, okay? I don't want to give you problems. I'll get down where you tell me to."
The words take a little time to reach your brain, as if they had to cross a thin mist of confusion that hangs all around you. You frown, while the dizziness slowly fades.
"You ran away from home?"
"Yes." He sighs softly. Crouched under the blanket, he seems even younger. "And I can't go back, okay? No lectures, please."
You don't want to lecture him; really, you don't want to say anything. You've never known how to treat teenagers. Your children were too young and you've never had a teenage brother or cousin or nephew. Sometimes you doubt you've ever been a teenager yourself.
You dart him a look. The sky got cloudy and Peter's face is hidden in shadows. You see him pulling up the blanket on his neck as if he were still cold.
"Wipe your face. You've got something on your cheek," you mutter, and you turn back and look at the road.
+ + +
It's three in the morning when Peter asks you to stop at a rest stop, grabs his backpack and gets down still muffled up in the blanket. While you wait, you open another bottle of beer and smoke a cigarette.
You never drink much when you're driving. In the morning, when you're not working nor sleeping, your body requires alcohol from you almost unceasingly, without a rule, without a schedule. (Your apartment is a cemetery of empty bottles.) But during the night you disciplined it to settle for three beers and not one more, because the last thing you want is to drive drunk and kill some casual car driver.
You always drive during the night. Less people, less questions. Less faces. Bennet approves.
At a quarter past three you get down of the truck and walk a bit to stretch your legs; at twenty past three you start worrying. After the passport thing, the suspicion struck your mind that Peter could make up an excuse to flee. And even if you're not happy to have him with you, you don't like the idea of losing a seventeen-years-old in a rest stop on the state route, either.
The place is large on the average and not particularly clean. You mutter a word of greeting to the barman and enter in the men's bathroom, ignoring his glance that follows you till the door. At the moment, you don't care much about people mistaking you for a pervert.
In the bathroom, the light is turned off and the switch doesn't work; you step in slowly, moving cautiously in the scarce light filtering from a little window up on the wall.
"Peter?"
No answer. Then, in a corner behind a sink you notice Peter's backpack with his clothes squeezed in a ball inside it and the blanket you gave him. In the sink there's a jackknife with its wet blade, as if somebody washed it under the water.
"Peter?" Yes, that's worry, hitting you as genuine and visceral as a blow to your stomach.
If he'd left the rest stop stepping out of the bathroom, the barman would've seen him for sure. He can't have just disappeared.
When the first drop wets your lips, you dry your mouth with the back of your hand and think it's water draining from a crack in the ceiling. Then another drop falls, and after that another - and you watch your hand and realize it's not water, but a dark and dense liquid that sticks your fingers together and it's odourless. You raise your eyes, without understanding, and Peter is there, standing at mid-air with his head pressed against the ceiling as if his body wanted to pass through it physically. He's wearing other clothes, his left sleeve is folded up to his elbow and from his hand the liquid that hit your face is still dripping. Now you recognize it as blood.
"I'm sorry, I didn't... Help me, please," Peter babbles, trying to stretch towards you, and he's desperate and hilarious at the same time, fluctuating there against the ceiling like a puppet hanging at mid-air by its strings.
Great, Nathan. Another huge problem unable to control his powers stumbled in your life. God takes care of everything.
You reach out, but he's too high and you can't even grab his foot. So you throw a single glance to the door and resign yourself to do one thing you haven't done in more than five years.
Once you could overcome the sound barrier without much effort, but now all you need is to rise high enough to grab him by his waist and pull him down gently. Peter clings to your shoulders with his heart bursting in his chest, whispering "I'm sorry" and "It was you" and something else you can't understand, because he's got his face pressed against your jacket.
"What did you do to your arm?" you ask him the second you put your feet back on the floor. You turn his wrist aside, but even in the dim light you can see there are no cuts. His skin is totally smooth, though wet with blood: a stain long till his fingertips and as large as his wrist, as if the blood dripped from an horizontal cut at half of his forearm.
Peter swallows, lowering his eyes. "I'm... I'm sorry. I was just... just testing it, and then I found myself up there. Sometimes, when I get a new ability, I... I can't control it immediately. I'm sorry," he raises his eyes, "Nathan."
You should be angry, because he's just a stupid brat who thinks that his powers are funny, and like it or not, now it's your responsibility to avoid him getting killed; you didn't ask for it, you didn't want it, but now it's yours, and the only sure thing is that it'll give you nothing but trouble.
Instead, you lean a hand on his shoulder and settle for a sigh.
"It's alright. I'm here. Now collect your stuff and let's go."
You press everything inside the backpack, the clothes, the blanket, the knife. You even dry a blood stain that dripped on the floor. If there's one thing it's better to avoid, it's leaving traces of DNA around in Texas.
When you pass by the barman, you put your arm around Peter's shoulder and pull him closer to your body, a gesture that, at the moment, you think will look fatherly - as if you went and catch your son back after he ran away. Then, thinking back, you wonder if it doesn't rather look like an affirmation of sexual ownership, and you end up feeling nauseated at yourself.
Peter takes your arm and moves it away from his shoulders. "Okay, dad, I'm not a child anymore," he mutters aloud, preceding you out of the rest stop. On the door, he casts you a glance with a crooked smile and you could swear his eyes are glinting.
"Okay," you tell him when you've left again. "What is this story of the new ability you can't control?"
Peter stretches forward in his seat, wearing his sweatshirt again even if it's blood-stained. "Well, I'm a kind of sponge, I think. I absorb the others' abilities. First it worked only when the person was near, but then the thing... evolved."
"What about the blood...?"
"It's mine." He exposes the arm, still a bit dirty, even if he washed it under the water in the bathroom. He scratches away a little stain of dry blood with his nails. "It seems like I've become undestructible."
"I'll remember that when you make me want to kick your ass," you mutter.
"You don't want to kick my ass," Peter replies, giggling.
"Another joke like that and I'll make you fly out of the window, okay? Without abilities."
"Already done. It wasn't a nice experience," Peter whispers with a grimace.
You look at him and don't understand.
"Never mind," he says, shaking his head.
+ + +
It's morning when you arrive to Houston. After the accident in the rest stop, Peter's been napping for most of the time, even if you think he's slept an hour at the most. When the sun starts filtering through the window and shining on his face, Peter turns by your side, grunting a protest, and keeps turning back and forth for half an hour, trying to hide his face in a corner far from the light. Eventually he gives up and sits with a sigh.
"Good morning," he greets you, yawning.
"Good morning."
In the sunlight, the blood stains on the blanket and his hair are even uglier to see.
"We're almost there."
"Great," he replies, with his flat voice.
You look at the road, ignoring your own thoughts.
"You know anybody in Houston?"
"No," he answers. "But it doesn't matter. I'm good at meeting people."
You are silent for a moment, considering the answer, then mutter: "I bet you are".
Peter darts you an annoyed look. "It's not what you think."
"You can read minds too?"
"Maybe."
You grimace. "And you didn't try to set free the people I'm carrying inside the truck? I'm delivering them to the Security Committee."
Peter watches you with his wide open eyes.
"Seriously?"
"No."
It's definitely too easy with a guy like Peter, but his face manages to make you laugh anyway. He's so naive. So young. The world will swallow him in two months and spit his bones away.
"Anyway," he resumes after a little, "I don't do it often. Only if I have to move quickly. If... I don't know, if something went wrong."
"What went wrong yesterday night?"
"The guy who brought me to Odessa. I felt that he suspected something. At one point he said he was going to pee, instead he went and call the special number. I found a bus for Midland and jumped on it."
You squeeze the steering wheel more strongly. "You're telling me they have your description and they're looking for you?" Around Odessa?
"Not really." You watch him. You don't like his tone. Peter sighs and passes his hand through his hair, avoiding your eyes. "I followed him. He'd just called them. I... erased his memory."
Your face must be expressing your thoughts, because Peter hurries to add: "Just a bit. Just the part I was in. A couple of hours, not more".
You shake your head. You don't know what to say. Peter continues: "I... I usually do this way. Before I go away, I erase the last bit of memory. But I'm careful, I don't touch anything else. It's just... I can't risk them remembering my face".
"Why are you telling me?"
Peter's smile is short and sad. "You won't remember, after."
You should get really angry now, and at first you do. You close up in a nervous silence, with the rage boiling inside you, while you wonder who gives this boy the right to play with your brain and decide what to take away and what to leave. But it's a feeling as brief as a match's flame, and when it fades you're alone with the awareness that eventually, when he's gone, you won't give a damn about him anymore, if he's alive or dead, because you'll have forgotten him. It's what you've looked for for five years, really. The chance to forget, dissolve the thorns stuck so deep that you've got no hope to extirpate them anymore.
"I'm sorry," Peter mutters, while you enter in Houston. "Really. Really, Nathan."
"What do you want me to say?"
"That... you're not mad."
"I'm not mad."
"But you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are. You're mad at me."
You sigh, tiredly. You need a rest. "I'm not mad, okay? It's not worth it. In any case, I won't remember this either. And you know what? I don't give a fuck."
When you reach the building for the delivery, you turn back and Peter and his stuff have disappeared, but your memories are still intact. Or at least that's what you believe. You can't verify.
+ + +
Around ten in the morning, you're in a motel room in Houston, a cheap but clean place - if with "clean" you mean that there aren't cockroaches behind the curtains and look, there are the curtains. By this point, they know you. You're a person of habit, and when you have deliveries to attend to in Houston, you always go to the same place.
You suspect the receptionist has a thing for you, but even though you see her every month, you barely remember her face.
You throw your sack with your clean clothes on the floor and step in the shower. The burning hot water helps taking off the rigidity caused by the night cold, transforms part of your tiredness into torpor and washes the bad thoughts away. You're alone as always. Nothing changed. You wank off thinking about yesterday's blowjob, but your turn-on comes and goes and when you leave the shower you feel dazed rather than satisfied.
The best moment is when you lean you face on the pillow and pull the sheets on your body. While you're slipping from consciousness to slumber, floating somewhere at mid-way, for some minute you can forget about everything that happened. You don't even need alcohol. Sometimes nightmares wait for you by the other side, but whilst you stay in the limbo it's all incredibly painless. It's all perfect.
You've been sleeping for ten minutes, maybe, when some jerk knocks at your door and wakes you. You ignore it once, twice, hoping they'll go away, but the knocking goes silent and resumes after a minute, more insistently. You get up, barefoot on the carpet with your shirt and boxers, muttering against winter, against assholes and against the world you can barely see through your half-closed eyes.
"Hi."
You lean an arm against the wall, passing a hand on your face. Half-asleep as you are, feelings tend to mix and get confused, but you think there's relief somewhere in the middle. A vague relief warming you up, even though you're freezing half-naked at the door frame.
"What are you doing here?"
"I thought that since I don't want you to forget me, it's better to leave you a nice memory," Peter answers, with his usual crooked smile.
You're still wondering what to answer when Peter steps in the room, lays a warm hand on your shoulder and reaches out to kiss you. With his free hand, he pushes the door closed. All his body is hot and soft and his clothes rustle while he hugs you, touching your body and pushing his tongue into your mouth.
"Wait. Peter... wait."
You take his face in your hands, confused but definitely awake now. Peter has got his hair still dirty with blood and a stain near his ear.
"It's alright. I want you, Nathan. Really. It's just this," Peter whispers, his cheeks hot.
You kiss him once, a brief peck on his lips, without tongue. You want him and you know you shouldn't, but he's there, offering himself with such a candor you don't know how not to reach out and take him. He's there. He's yours. He wants to be yours. And you shouldn't, but you want it.
"Give me a minute, okay?" You brush his hair away from his face. "Go have a shower."
Peter tries to protest, then he seems to understand. He nods and kisses you once more before stepping towards the bathroom. He strips along the way, sure you're following him with your eyes, and leaves the door open and eventually steps naked into the shower.
With the closed curtains that let just the tiniest bit of light filter in, the bathroom's light is like a yellow lighthouse opening a rip into the room's darkness. You sigh, trying to collect your thoughts, but your mind is a pile of conflicting feelings and you don't manage to reach any decision. It's been so long since you've needed to take one. Eventually you slip back under the sheets and resign yourself to wait for things to go their way.
When Peter steps out of the bathroom, you're turned on your side, your back towards him, totally awake. In the silence, you hear the click of the switch, the muffled steps, a light and rhythmic dripping on the carpet and the noise of the backpack's zip that is opened - or closed.
Peter plants a knee on the mattress, that creaks, and leans a slow and warm kiss in the crook of your neck. Your beard rustles against his skin and his damp hair wets your cheek. You sigh softly, just to let him know you're awake, and Peter puts a hand on your shoulder and turns you gently on your back.
He takes away the towel from his hips and tosses it on the floor, entering into the warm nest of the covers with his upper half still dripping water. He lies down on you with his open legs, his body trying to adhere to yours as much as it can. He's skinny and nervous and excited on you, with the same scent of cheap shampoo and soap of yours.
"God, I could be your father," you murmur, combing his hair back with your fingers.
He kisses your throat and rubs against your body, breathing in your neck. "But you aren't. There's nothing wrong if you want to fuck me. Do you want to?"
"Yes," you whisper. His hand clasps the edge of your boxers and pulls them down to your thighs, uncovering your erection.
He's resolute and insecure at the same time, and you find him beautiful, so tender, because he's just a boy while you are a man and you can feel all his fear of making a mistake. You close your hand around him and guide him for a bit, whispering that it's good this way, you like it this way, and he smiles and kisses you rubbing his erection against your hip.
"I did it once," he whispers, his breath uncertain, looking you in the eye and not looking, as if he were ashamed. "But you... go easy, okay?"
"Did he hurt you?"
Peter shakes his head, but you lean a hand on his ass cheek and this is enough to make him tense as if you had whipped him. You squeezes it gently in your palm, pulling him closer, and start stroking his inner thigh with your fingertips.
"I won't hurt you," you whisper. "Don't worry."
Peter nods and breathes near your mouth, kissing the corner of your lips. He relaxes immediately, docile, and when you suggest that maybe it's better if you stay on top, he shift on his back without saying a word.
You're more comfortable, like this. Peter strokes your arm, your chest, your waist, not totally sure about what's the next step, then he resumes jerking you off. You gently move his hand away and rest it on the mattress.
"Did I go wrong?"
"No. Don't worry. Let's think about you first, okay? Relax." You take it in your palm and Peter sighs gracefully, half-closing his eyes. He arches his back towards you, towards your hand, and it's one of the most beautiful things you think you've seen in all your life.
"Don't... don't make me come already," he murmurs, his voce broken. "I want to keep it for after. While you fuck me."
You smile though there's nothing to smile about, because Peter's tone is incredibly serious, and you don't want him to think you're laughing at him. But Peter has closed his eyes and he opens them back only when you leave him and move your fingers down. Then he swallows and whispers that on the nightstand there is something that should help. You raise your eyes and find a lube tube and two condoms.
You can't say he's not a provident boy.
"You hang around with this stuff in your backpack?" you ask him, squeezing the dense and cold fluid on your fingers. You rub it for some second between your fingertips to warm it up.
"No, I...", his breath catches when you start caressing him, "I took these before I came here. For... for us."
When you thrust a finger in, he clings to your arms and bends his head back on the pillow, exposing his throat. He bites his lower lip hard and you see a drip of blood come out, but when you take it between your lips the cut's already healed.
"Relax," you repeat, softly, adding another finger. Peter trembles under your body and moans aloud, tight and feverishly warm.
When he begs you to enter, both of you are on the edge and Peter's already grabbed a condom from the nightstand and unwrapped it with his teeth, helping you to put it on. You lift one of his legs and try to be gentle, so gentle that at the beginning you barely move.
"Tell me if I'm hurting you," you whisper, slightly breathless.
"No... no. It's okay. It's... good. Harder. Please, Nathan. Harder."
You can't remember the last time you've done such a thing, you can't remember if it was like this. You only know that Peter's body is tender and tight around you and burning, as if there was a flame inside, and you try to control yourself till the end but at some point it's too much, and too strong the tide of feeling it's mounting inside you and you can't hold it anymore.
He clings to you, plants his nails in your shoulders and back and asks for more, asks for Harder with that teenager voice with its deep shades, and all you can do is please him and please yourself at the same time, because the two of you want the same thing, and it's new and trivial and wonderful that all of this is happening, all to you and all together.
It's as sudden and poignant as Peter's voice when he crushes against you, and he opens his eyes and watches you come as if you were the most surprising thing that ever happened in his life.
It must be the same look you have in your eyes, you think. Then the orgasm carries you away and you don't think anything anymore.
+ + +
"I thought you'd erase my memory."
"I wanted to. But then... I don't know." He sighs. "Nobody remembers me. Not even my mother knows who I am."
"Your mother...?"
"I did it to protect her."
You stroke his hair gently, with your lids half-closed. You're tired and you would like to sleep, but inside you're afraid that if you let yourself go, Peter will disappear again.
"I just want somebody to cry, if I die."
"We all want that."
He raises his head, casting you a glance. "You'd cry if I died?"
"Yes," you answer calmly.
Peter leans his cheek back on your shoulder. "It's a bad thing to say, isn't it? I don't want people to suffer for me. I just... I don't know. Sorry. It's depressing."
"It's not bad. And it's not depressing."
Peter moves slightly against you, uncomfortably. "You miss them, don't you? I could... If you wanted, I could help you. I would be careful. I wouldn't take anything else."
The answer escapes from your mouth before you've had time to think about it, and it's a sort of revelation for you too. "Then nobody would cry for them."
Peter squeezes your hand upon the mattress and whispers softly: "I don't want you to suffer".
"It's okay. I'm used to it."
You lean a hand on his back, tracing the line of his spine with your fingertips, and Peter sighs contentedly like a cat.
"If I sleep a couple of hours, will you stay where I left you?"
"I think so. In this bed there's not much space to turn, anyway."
"It's a motel. People don't come here to sleep."
"But you do?"
"If you shut your mouth, maybe."
Peter snorts and mutters something - you catch only the words "for free". Then he rises to give you a peck on your lips and comes back to his position.
He manages to stay silent for a minute, maybe two.
"Nathan?"
"Mmm."
"Can I stay with you?" His voice sounds calm and tense at the same time. You feel his fingers caressing your wrist, your forearm, as if he couldn't stay completely still. "I'll pay you by having sex with you anytime you want," he adds, trying to joke. "How about that?"
"I don't know," you mutter, opening one eye. "You're not that good."
Peter goes silent, withdrawing his hand from yours, and for a moment he seems like he's shrinking, curling himself up small against you; his heart starts beating as hard against your ribs as a drum. You pass your fingers through his hair and pull him a bit closer, if it's possible.
"Can we talk about this when I'm awake? I slept for three hours last time and I can't remember when that was."
"Yes. Sorry," he answers you slowly.
"Peter? Don't be a girl. I was kidding."
"I'm not a girl."
"Your hair doesn't think so."
"If I let you fuck me, you'll give me money for a haircut?"
"If I give you money for a haircut, you'll let me sleep?"
"Yes. And I'll add a blowjob for free."
"Thanks. Sleep."
You fall asleep with Peter's hair tickling your neck, and this time there aren't nightmares by the other side.
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Nathan/Peter
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 6954 (W)
Warning(s): Underage sex, ideal (?) incest, infinite angst
Spoiler(s): 1x20, "Five years gone"
Thanks to: snopes_faith, the tireless beta.
Notes: It's a past fic of mine (written in November 2007) and I'm not totally satisfied with it, but it seems this is eryslash's fave among my AUverses - so I posted it. My knowledge of Texas's geography is quite close to zero, so I tried to make as accurate researches as I could, but don't hate me too much if I miscalculated distances or anything like that.
(banner by eryslash)
What is the feeling when you're driving away from people,
and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?
-- Jack Kerouac, ‘On the road’
He picks you up in a bar in Midland, Texas - a cozy, clean place called Burnt Toast Cafè. Your toast isn't burnt and the waitress is a nice twenty-years-old brunette with a sweet smile. She asks you if you want any more coffee and you nod and thank her, following her distractedly with your eyes while she moves away.
The coffee is terrible, but you're used to it.
He's sitting on your right. He's eighteen or nineteen (or twenty or fifteen - you're not good at guessing people's age) with a huge tuft of dark hair almost wilder than your beard and a faint stubble on his jaw. He's been looking at you obliquely since you've entered in the bar.
He could be a thief, a killer, a runaway. He could work in a Resettlement Squad. They say that some of you work with them now. Some - and you know it's not just a rumour because you've met a few - some can scent you out from miles away, as dogs do with hares. Maybe the boy's already called his accomplices, and when you get out of this bar there'll be a blow right to your nape and goodbye to your shitty life.
What would you do, you wonder, if you had something to lose.
The boy licks his lips and keeps looking at you furtively. You finish your toast and finally dart him a glance, too fast to establish a real eye-contact - in case the boy knows some trick - but long enough to see his face.
Eighteen at most. He's got his lips chapped from the cold and a couple of big and nervous eyes like a fugitive. In five years, you've seen dozens of eyes like those.
You brush a handful of crumbs from your lips and raise to go and pee.
You're washing your hands when the boy enters in the bathroom. The door behind your back is the only way out - you checked - and an alarm bell starts ringing furiously in your head. A trap?
You calmly tear out a sheet of blotting paper, dry your hands, ball it and toss it into the bin.
"Hey," says the boy, coming closer.
You nod, looking at his reflection in the mirror.
"The truck outside is yours, isn't it?"
"Aha."
"You mind giving me a ride?"
"A ride to where?"
The boy smiles vaguely, uncomfortably. "Well... it doesn't matter. Where you go it's fine."
"I don't carry hitchhikers, sorry." You turn back and step by him without looking him in the eye, heading towards the door.
"Hey, hey, wait a sec," he starts, gripping your arm. He's strong, even if his clothes seem like falling on his body as if they hung from naked bones. "Just to the next city. What do you say? I won't annoy you, I swear." A small hesitation, he tries with a warmer smile. "Nobody ever complained."
You free your arm with a tug and leave the bathroom without answering. The boy's got guts to ask for a ride like this. By now, hitchhikers are all vagabonds who escaped the Resettlements. If you were one of them, you'd have already called the special number.
In the hall somebody's turned the TV on; there's a rerun of the commemoration of the victims of the bomb. You've heard it so many times from the radio you know the words by memory.
The waitress watches the programme sitting on a stool and biting at her middle finger's nail. You leave the money on the counter, without bothering her, and leave the bar before the President's speech comes to "that one day wounds would be healed".
Unlike the President, you perfectly know that some wounds never heal.
The parking lot is behind the bar, and you're half way there when you notice the boy is following you. You keep walking towards the truck without hastening or slowing down your pace. You've got a shotgun, there, hidden behind the seat. Just in case. You don't think the boy is really dangerous, but you think more lucidly when you've got a shotgun at reach.
You're near the right side of the truck when he reaches you and puts a hand on your shoulder. It's a firm but not menacing grip, and when you turn he immediately backs off. Even if the parking is dark and deserted, you can see he's uncomfortable.
"What is it?"
There's a light thud, the noise of the boy's backpack falling next to your foot, then a decisive step that scratches a bit of ground under the shoe. You step back, but bump against the truck's side. One of the boy's hands digs under your jacket, the other one passes on your cheek in a long stroke before clasping your nape and pulling you close to his mouth.
The kiss is nervous and tense, teenager-like, with the boy's open lips and his tongue thrusting hastily in your mouth. Pressed against the metal wall behind you, you lean a hand on his back and feel him come closer. His fingers grip your sweater, then leave it and reach for the button of your jeans.
"I suck you off and you bring me to the next city, okay?" mutters the boy, pulling down your zip.
You should tell something, probably refuse, but you can just swallow down saliva. You catch a glint of moonlight shining on the boy's wet lips, then he lowers his head and falls on his knees in front of you.
He's rapid and hasty as if he was in a hurry to finish, and you feel pleasure and nausea knot your stomach together. Everything that remains of your noble person is this alcoholic who's getting a blowjob in a parking lot by a boy more desperate than him. And not even for money. There would be more dignity if you paid him, at least.
You throw a glance around, but you're completely alone. You let out a moan. His hot mouth around your cock is the most beautiful feeling you've felt in the last... months? years? You're not sure. Suddenly you don't care who he is anymore and you forgot why he's doing this, it's just a willing (yeah, willing) mouth and after you'll be ashamed to death, but after seems infinitely far if there's an orgasm to reach in the middle.
His hair tickles your fingers and you grasp it instinctively, not too strongly. You don't want to hurt him. You just want him to continue and finish and, for once, you want your thoughts to flow away with your sperm.
When you come you've got your half-closed eyes and the feeling is so desperately good that you forget to tell him. He doesn't seem like be angry for that. While you catch your breath against the side of your truck you hear him spit; he bends to pick his backpack and eventually rises up wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
"Are we going?" he asks calmly, moving towards the passenger's door.
You put your cock back in your pants and think: Nobody ever complained. You wait for the guilt to rush back in your veins, cleaning up your blood from the endorphins, and when you climb on by your side you're lucid again.
+ + +
The main reason why you don't give rides to hitchhikers is that you can't ever know if the guy will vomit sulfuric acid on the gears or suck the truck battery's charge and glow like a bulb. The second reason is that you don't like people to know about your family, and it's hard to avoid when they sit and see the photo attached on the dashboard.
It's a very small photo. Once it stayed in your wallet, then you stopped using it and some way it didn't seem, what was the word again, respectful to keep the only, the last memory of your beloved ones in the back pocket on your ass together with the money. With the years, the photo got burnt under the sun and the colours said goodbye, but you never thought about taking it away from there. It's part of the tapestry, now. The faded tapestry of your life.
Originally, there were two photos. In the one you kept framed in your office and got burnt with the rest, you had an arm around Heidi's waist and the other one around your mother's, the children were posing perfectly and the five of you smiled all with the same photo face. This is the failed version, with Heidi bent down to catch Monty who doesn't want to stay still, Simon with his open mouth pointing out at his brother, your mother trying to look annoyed but really hardly holding back a smile, and you're standing behind your son and laughing - laughed.
One night you got drunk and burnt your face with your lit cigarette.
"Your family?"
"Aha."
"They died in the explosion?"
You cast him a look. The boy watches you seriously. "You've got a New York accent."
You half-open your window and for some second you let the cold air in to wash away the smell like stale smoke and sweat.
"There's some beer down there. Give me one. You can have one too, if you're thirsty."
Next to the photo, you've attached a half-burnt leaflet of your campaign. You still don't really know why you did; you think it could be a sort of memento for the days to come. There your face is perfectly visible, with a shaven and bright smile like an advertising poster, and below it still reads the word VOTE and the first three letters of your name. The rest's been devoured by the flames.
"Nate? Nathan?"
"Nathan," you answer, uncorking the two beers with the bottle opener hooked at your bunch of keys. You hand the boy his.
"I'm Peter."
You nod absent-mindedly. Common name, maybe fake. Tomorrow you'll have forgotten.
"You got elected, then?"
"I failed miserably." And who knows why, now the memory makes you want to laugh.
Peter lifts his bottle and makes it tinkle softly against yours. "Good," he smiles. "I don't like politicians."
You smile vaguely too, as a reflex. The first times, when things were worse than now but there weren't Resettlement Squads all around the Country yet, you wondered what people would think of an ex lawyer of Manhattan ex Congressional candidate driving a truck. Then you realized that nobody got surprised about anything anymore, that nobody cared, and basically, that you didn't.
The boy swallows a long sip of beer and licks his lips, stretching forward to look better at the leaflet.
"You know what?" he says eventually, falling against his seat again. "You look better with the beard."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You look... dunno. More natural?"
"Natural?" you repeat, considering the word. It seems like with the years it slowly changed its meaning. Now it makes you think of Darwin, evolution and selection, mutations and DNA, and you don't like it. Those are things you prefer not to think about. "I don't think so."
Peter shrugs and turns towards the window, clasping his elbows. His reflection in the glass has a tired face. Now that you can give him a closer look, you notice that he wears only a shirt and a sweatshirt over it, and outside it must be 37° F at the most.
You reach out towards him and you see him turn with a jump, with the surprised and cautious eyes of an animal caught away from its lair. He would be almost sweet. You take the blanket folded behind his seat and throw it on his legs, without speaking.
"Thanks."
"It's nothing."
He wraps up in the blanket and turns back by his side, leaning his cheek against the edge of the backrest. After a couple of minutes he closes his eyes, and you're almost in Stanton when his breath, perfectly regular, too perfectly regular, reveals he's pretending to be sleeping. You don't wake him up. You've passed Big Spring too when Peter turns towards you and asks you where you're going.
"Houston."
You don't add anything else, and he doesn't ask. He turns back by his side again and after a minute he's really sleeping.
+ + +
You wake him up throwing the plastic card of his passport in his face. Peter awakes with a wince and reaches out to grab what hit him, lifts it up to his half-closed eyes, then jumps in his seat.
"When I told you I don't carry hitchhikers, that included underage ones too." Your voice comes out hoarser then you wanted to, filled with rage, in a growl. The truth is that guilt burns more, now that you know.
"Not underage hitchhikers that suck your cock for free," Peter mutters.
"Oh, for God's sake."
Peter puts the passport in a pocket of his jeans and bends down on the backpack you've left open, closing it nervously. "Who the fuck gave you the permission to look inside it, anyway? That's my stuff."
"Listen, Peter or whatever, if they stop us at a roadblock and something goes wrong that's me they slam in jail, okay? At the worst they send you back to Mommy."
"A bit late to think about it, isn't it, Mr. No-Underage-Sex? Stop the truck, I'm getting down here."
"In the middle of the state route? You want to get killed?"
"What do you care? Stop this thing, I want to get down."
"You stay at your seat. Peter. Peter!"
It's a frantic nightmare the moment in which the boy opens the door and throws himself down with a strange, almost slow, almost graceful flight; a moment before the right light is shining against the guardrail and a moment after you hear a bloodcurdling crash of metal and shattered bones. You plant your foot on the brake so hard that you almost fly against the windshield too, then you run out of the truck.
Peter lies on the asphalt fifty metres behind, his body twisted in a series of frightfully wrong angles. There's a sparkle of moonlight on the spike of a broken bone coming out from a leg.
"Holy God," you murmur, kneeling on the asphalt. "Peter. Peter!"
You touch his neck, but there's no pulse - only a scary, motionless silence. Now the blood is rushing in your temples like the roar of a fall. Compliments, Nathan, another dead on your conscience. Another photo to attach on your dashboard, maybe.
Ambulance. Help. Police. Cell. You stick your hands in your pocket but they're empty. You run back to the truck, grab your cell, dial the 9-1-1 and while you're waiting for them to answer you come back to Peter - to what remains of Peter.
Then, what remains of Peter moves. At first you think it's just your impression, a trickery of the dim-light - then a hand crawls slowly forward, the toe of a foot scrapes against the asphalt, you hear a throaty moan, a cough, and suddenly it's all a dreadful choir of creaks, groans and noises of beaten flesh like a meat chop turned over and over by the butcher's hands. It seems neverending ("Hello? Hello? Who's there? Hello?") and when finally Peter raises and sits there's blood everywhere, on his clothes, on his face, on the asphalt, and everything you manage to say is a weak: "My God".
Peter coughs a little more, then touches his jaw obscenely askew, pushes it back to its place with a moan. "This is new," he mutters, shaking his head.
... then you're on your seat, driving the truck again, and the last thing you remember is that you don't carry underage hitchhikers.
Peter turns back and forth under his blanket, uncomfortably. "Listen... I'm sorry, okay? I don't want to give you problems. I'll get down where you tell me to."
The words take a little time to reach your brain, as if they had to cross a thin mist of confusion that hangs all around you. You frown, while the dizziness slowly fades.
"You ran away from home?"
"Yes." He sighs softly. Crouched under the blanket, he seems even younger. "And I can't go back, okay? No lectures, please."
You don't want to lecture him; really, you don't want to say anything. You've never known how to treat teenagers. Your children were too young and you've never had a teenage brother or cousin or nephew. Sometimes you doubt you've ever been a teenager yourself.
You dart him a look. The sky got cloudy and Peter's face is hidden in shadows. You see him pulling up the blanket on his neck as if he were still cold.
"Wipe your face. You've got something on your cheek," you mutter, and you turn back and look at the road.
+ + +
It's three in the morning when Peter asks you to stop at a rest stop, grabs his backpack and gets down still muffled up in the blanket. While you wait, you open another bottle of beer and smoke a cigarette.
You never drink much when you're driving. In the morning, when you're not working nor sleeping, your body requires alcohol from you almost unceasingly, without a rule, without a schedule. (Your apartment is a cemetery of empty bottles.) But during the night you disciplined it to settle for three beers and not one more, because the last thing you want is to drive drunk and kill some casual car driver.
You always drive during the night. Less people, less questions. Less faces. Bennet approves.
At a quarter past three you get down of the truck and walk a bit to stretch your legs; at twenty past three you start worrying. After the passport thing, the suspicion struck your mind that Peter could make up an excuse to flee. And even if you're not happy to have him with you, you don't like the idea of losing a seventeen-years-old in a rest stop on the state route, either.
The place is large on the average and not particularly clean. You mutter a word of greeting to the barman and enter in the men's bathroom, ignoring his glance that follows you till the door. At the moment, you don't care much about people mistaking you for a pervert.
In the bathroom, the light is turned off and the switch doesn't work; you step in slowly, moving cautiously in the scarce light filtering from a little window up on the wall.
"Peter?"
No answer. Then, in a corner behind a sink you notice Peter's backpack with his clothes squeezed in a ball inside it and the blanket you gave him. In the sink there's a jackknife with its wet blade, as if somebody washed it under the water.
"Peter?" Yes, that's worry, hitting you as genuine and visceral as a blow to your stomach.
If he'd left the rest stop stepping out of the bathroom, the barman would've seen him for sure. He can't have just disappeared.
When the first drop wets your lips, you dry your mouth with the back of your hand and think it's water draining from a crack in the ceiling. Then another drop falls, and after that another - and you watch your hand and realize it's not water, but a dark and dense liquid that sticks your fingers together and it's odourless. You raise your eyes, without understanding, and Peter is there, standing at mid-air with his head pressed against the ceiling as if his body wanted to pass through it physically. He's wearing other clothes, his left sleeve is folded up to his elbow and from his hand the liquid that hit your face is still dripping. Now you recognize it as blood.
"I'm sorry, I didn't... Help me, please," Peter babbles, trying to stretch towards you, and he's desperate and hilarious at the same time, fluctuating there against the ceiling like a puppet hanging at mid-air by its strings.
Great, Nathan. Another huge problem unable to control his powers stumbled in your life. God takes care of everything.
You reach out, but he's too high and you can't even grab his foot. So you throw a single glance to the door and resign yourself to do one thing you haven't done in more than five years.
Once you could overcome the sound barrier without much effort, but now all you need is to rise high enough to grab him by his waist and pull him down gently. Peter clings to your shoulders with his heart bursting in his chest, whispering "I'm sorry" and "It was you" and something else you can't understand, because he's got his face pressed against your jacket.
"What did you do to your arm?" you ask him the second you put your feet back on the floor. You turn his wrist aside, but even in the dim light you can see there are no cuts. His skin is totally smooth, though wet with blood: a stain long till his fingertips and as large as his wrist, as if the blood dripped from an horizontal cut at half of his forearm.
Peter swallows, lowering his eyes. "I'm... I'm sorry. I was just... just testing it, and then I found myself up there. Sometimes, when I get a new ability, I... I can't control it immediately. I'm sorry," he raises his eyes, "Nathan."
You should be angry, because he's just a stupid brat who thinks that his powers are funny, and like it or not, now it's your responsibility to avoid him getting killed; you didn't ask for it, you didn't want it, but now it's yours, and the only sure thing is that it'll give you nothing but trouble.
Instead, you lean a hand on his shoulder and settle for a sigh.
"It's alright. I'm here. Now collect your stuff and let's go."
You press everything inside the backpack, the clothes, the blanket, the knife. You even dry a blood stain that dripped on the floor. If there's one thing it's better to avoid, it's leaving traces of DNA around in Texas.
When you pass by the barman, you put your arm around Peter's shoulder and pull him closer to your body, a gesture that, at the moment, you think will look fatherly - as if you went and catch your son back after he ran away. Then, thinking back, you wonder if it doesn't rather look like an affirmation of sexual ownership, and you end up feeling nauseated at yourself.
Peter takes your arm and moves it away from his shoulders. "Okay, dad, I'm not a child anymore," he mutters aloud, preceding you out of the rest stop. On the door, he casts you a glance with a crooked smile and you could swear his eyes are glinting.
"Okay," you tell him when you've left again. "What is this story of the new ability you can't control?"
Peter stretches forward in his seat, wearing his sweatshirt again even if it's blood-stained. "Well, I'm a kind of sponge, I think. I absorb the others' abilities. First it worked only when the person was near, but then the thing... evolved."
"What about the blood...?"
"It's mine." He exposes the arm, still a bit dirty, even if he washed it under the water in the bathroom. He scratches away a little stain of dry blood with his nails. "It seems like I've become undestructible."
"I'll remember that when you make me want to kick your ass," you mutter.
"You don't want to kick my ass," Peter replies, giggling.
"Another joke like that and I'll make you fly out of the window, okay? Without abilities."
"Already done. It wasn't a nice experience," Peter whispers with a grimace.
You look at him and don't understand.
"Never mind," he says, shaking his head.
+ + +
It's morning when you arrive to Houston. After the accident in the rest stop, Peter's been napping for most of the time, even if you think he's slept an hour at the most. When the sun starts filtering through the window and shining on his face, Peter turns by your side, grunting a protest, and keeps turning back and forth for half an hour, trying to hide his face in a corner far from the light. Eventually he gives up and sits with a sigh.
"Good morning," he greets you, yawning.
"Good morning."
In the sunlight, the blood stains on the blanket and his hair are even uglier to see.
"We're almost there."
"Great," he replies, with his flat voice.
You look at the road, ignoring your own thoughts.
"You know anybody in Houston?"
"No," he answers. "But it doesn't matter. I'm good at meeting people."
You are silent for a moment, considering the answer, then mutter: "I bet you are".
Peter darts you an annoyed look. "It's not what you think."
"You can read minds too?"
"Maybe."
You grimace. "And you didn't try to set free the people I'm carrying inside the truck? I'm delivering them to the Security Committee."
Peter watches you with his wide open eyes.
"Seriously?"
"No."
It's definitely too easy with a guy like Peter, but his face manages to make you laugh anyway. He's so naive. So young. The world will swallow him in two months and spit his bones away.
"Anyway," he resumes after a little, "I don't do it often. Only if I have to move quickly. If... I don't know, if something went wrong."
"What went wrong yesterday night?"
"The guy who brought me to Odessa. I felt that he suspected something. At one point he said he was going to pee, instead he went and call the special number. I found a bus for Midland and jumped on it."
You squeeze the steering wheel more strongly. "You're telling me they have your description and they're looking for you?" Around Odessa?
"Not really." You watch him. You don't like his tone. Peter sighs and passes his hand through his hair, avoiding your eyes. "I followed him. He'd just called them. I... erased his memory."
Your face must be expressing your thoughts, because Peter hurries to add: "Just a bit. Just the part I was in. A couple of hours, not more".
You shake your head. You don't know what to say. Peter continues: "I... I usually do this way. Before I go away, I erase the last bit of memory. But I'm careful, I don't touch anything else. It's just... I can't risk them remembering my face".
"Why are you telling me?"
Peter's smile is short and sad. "You won't remember, after."
You should get really angry now, and at first you do. You close up in a nervous silence, with the rage boiling inside you, while you wonder who gives this boy the right to play with your brain and decide what to take away and what to leave. But it's a feeling as brief as a match's flame, and when it fades you're alone with the awareness that eventually, when he's gone, you won't give a damn about him anymore, if he's alive or dead, because you'll have forgotten him. It's what you've looked for for five years, really. The chance to forget, dissolve the thorns stuck so deep that you've got no hope to extirpate them anymore.
"I'm sorry," Peter mutters, while you enter in Houston. "Really. Really, Nathan."
"What do you want me to say?"
"That... you're not mad."
"I'm not mad."
"But you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are. You're mad at me."
You sigh, tiredly. You need a rest. "I'm not mad, okay? It's not worth it. In any case, I won't remember this either. And you know what? I don't give a fuck."
When you reach the building for the delivery, you turn back and Peter and his stuff have disappeared, but your memories are still intact. Or at least that's what you believe. You can't verify.
+ + +
Around ten in the morning, you're in a motel room in Houston, a cheap but clean place - if with "clean" you mean that there aren't cockroaches behind the curtains and look, there are the curtains. By this point, they know you. You're a person of habit, and when you have deliveries to attend to in Houston, you always go to the same place.
You suspect the receptionist has a thing for you, but even though you see her every month, you barely remember her face.
You throw your sack with your clean clothes on the floor and step in the shower. The burning hot water helps taking off the rigidity caused by the night cold, transforms part of your tiredness into torpor and washes the bad thoughts away. You're alone as always. Nothing changed. You wank off thinking about yesterday's blowjob, but your turn-on comes and goes and when you leave the shower you feel dazed rather than satisfied.
The best moment is when you lean you face on the pillow and pull the sheets on your body. While you're slipping from consciousness to slumber, floating somewhere at mid-way, for some minute you can forget about everything that happened. You don't even need alcohol. Sometimes nightmares wait for you by the other side, but whilst you stay in the limbo it's all incredibly painless. It's all perfect.
You've been sleeping for ten minutes, maybe, when some jerk knocks at your door and wakes you. You ignore it once, twice, hoping they'll go away, but the knocking goes silent and resumes after a minute, more insistently. You get up, barefoot on the carpet with your shirt and boxers, muttering against winter, against assholes and against the world you can barely see through your half-closed eyes.
"Hi."
You lean an arm against the wall, passing a hand on your face. Half-asleep as you are, feelings tend to mix and get confused, but you think there's relief somewhere in the middle. A vague relief warming you up, even though you're freezing half-naked at the door frame.
"What are you doing here?"
"I thought that since I don't want you to forget me, it's better to leave you a nice memory," Peter answers, with his usual crooked smile.
You're still wondering what to answer when Peter steps in the room, lays a warm hand on your shoulder and reaches out to kiss you. With his free hand, he pushes the door closed. All his body is hot and soft and his clothes rustle while he hugs you, touching your body and pushing his tongue into your mouth.
"Wait. Peter... wait."
You take his face in your hands, confused but definitely awake now. Peter has got his hair still dirty with blood and a stain near his ear.
"It's alright. I want you, Nathan. Really. It's just this," Peter whispers, his cheeks hot.
You kiss him once, a brief peck on his lips, without tongue. You want him and you know you shouldn't, but he's there, offering himself with such a candor you don't know how not to reach out and take him. He's there. He's yours. He wants to be yours. And you shouldn't, but you want it.
"Give me a minute, okay?" You brush his hair away from his face. "Go have a shower."
Peter tries to protest, then he seems to understand. He nods and kisses you once more before stepping towards the bathroom. He strips along the way, sure you're following him with your eyes, and leaves the door open and eventually steps naked into the shower.
With the closed curtains that let just the tiniest bit of light filter in, the bathroom's light is like a yellow lighthouse opening a rip into the room's darkness. You sigh, trying to collect your thoughts, but your mind is a pile of conflicting feelings and you don't manage to reach any decision. It's been so long since you've needed to take one. Eventually you slip back under the sheets and resign yourself to wait for things to go their way.
When Peter steps out of the bathroom, you're turned on your side, your back towards him, totally awake. In the silence, you hear the click of the switch, the muffled steps, a light and rhythmic dripping on the carpet and the noise of the backpack's zip that is opened - or closed.
Peter plants a knee on the mattress, that creaks, and leans a slow and warm kiss in the crook of your neck. Your beard rustles against his skin and his damp hair wets your cheek. You sigh softly, just to let him know you're awake, and Peter puts a hand on your shoulder and turns you gently on your back.
He takes away the towel from his hips and tosses it on the floor, entering into the warm nest of the covers with his upper half still dripping water. He lies down on you with his open legs, his body trying to adhere to yours as much as it can. He's skinny and nervous and excited on you, with the same scent of cheap shampoo and soap of yours.
"God, I could be your father," you murmur, combing his hair back with your fingers.
He kisses your throat and rubs against your body, breathing in your neck. "But you aren't. There's nothing wrong if you want to fuck me. Do you want to?"
"Yes," you whisper. His hand clasps the edge of your boxers and pulls them down to your thighs, uncovering your erection.
He's resolute and insecure at the same time, and you find him beautiful, so tender, because he's just a boy while you are a man and you can feel all his fear of making a mistake. You close your hand around him and guide him for a bit, whispering that it's good this way, you like it this way, and he smiles and kisses you rubbing his erection against your hip.
"I did it once," he whispers, his breath uncertain, looking you in the eye and not looking, as if he were ashamed. "But you... go easy, okay?"
"Did he hurt you?"
Peter shakes his head, but you lean a hand on his ass cheek and this is enough to make him tense as if you had whipped him. You squeezes it gently in your palm, pulling him closer, and start stroking his inner thigh with your fingertips.
"I won't hurt you," you whisper. "Don't worry."
Peter nods and breathes near your mouth, kissing the corner of your lips. He relaxes immediately, docile, and when you suggest that maybe it's better if you stay on top, he shift on his back without saying a word.
You're more comfortable, like this. Peter strokes your arm, your chest, your waist, not totally sure about what's the next step, then he resumes jerking you off. You gently move his hand away and rest it on the mattress.
"Did I go wrong?"
"No. Don't worry. Let's think about you first, okay? Relax." You take it in your palm and Peter sighs gracefully, half-closing his eyes. He arches his back towards you, towards your hand, and it's one of the most beautiful things you think you've seen in all your life.
"Don't... don't make me come already," he murmurs, his voce broken. "I want to keep it for after. While you fuck me."
You smile though there's nothing to smile about, because Peter's tone is incredibly serious, and you don't want him to think you're laughing at him. But Peter has closed his eyes and he opens them back only when you leave him and move your fingers down. Then he swallows and whispers that on the nightstand there is something that should help. You raise your eyes and find a lube tube and two condoms.
You can't say he's not a provident boy.
"You hang around with this stuff in your backpack?" you ask him, squeezing the dense and cold fluid on your fingers. You rub it for some second between your fingertips to warm it up.
"No, I...", his breath catches when you start caressing him, "I took these before I came here. For... for us."
When you thrust a finger in, he clings to your arms and bends his head back on the pillow, exposing his throat. He bites his lower lip hard and you see a drip of blood come out, but when you take it between your lips the cut's already healed.
"Relax," you repeat, softly, adding another finger. Peter trembles under your body and moans aloud, tight and feverishly warm.
When he begs you to enter, both of you are on the edge and Peter's already grabbed a condom from the nightstand and unwrapped it with his teeth, helping you to put it on. You lift one of his legs and try to be gentle, so gentle that at the beginning you barely move.
"Tell me if I'm hurting you," you whisper, slightly breathless.
"No... no. It's okay. It's... good. Harder. Please, Nathan. Harder."
You can't remember the last time you've done such a thing, you can't remember if it was like this. You only know that Peter's body is tender and tight around you and burning, as if there was a flame inside, and you try to control yourself till the end but at some point it's too much, and too strong the tide of feeling it's mounting inside you and you can't hold it anymore.
He clings to you, plants his nails in your shoulders and back and asks for more, asks for Harder with that teenager voice with its deep shades, and all you can do is please him and please yourself at the same time, because the two of you want the same thing, and it's new and trivial and wonderful that all of this is happening, all to you and all together.
It's as sudden and poignant as Peter's voice when he crushes against you, and he opens his eyes and watches you come as if you were the most surprising thing that ever happened in his life.
It must be the same look you have in your eyes, you think. Then the orgasm carries you away and you don't think anything anymore.
+ + +
"I thought you'd erase my memory."
"I wanted to. But then... I don't know." He sighs. "Nobody remembers me. Not even my mother knows who I am."
"Your mother...?"
"I did it to protect her."
You stroke his hair gently, with your lids half-closed. You're tired and you would like to sleep, but inside you're afraid that if you let yourself go, Peter will disappear again.
"I just want somebody to cry, if I die."
"We all want that."
He raises his head, casting you a glance. "You'd cry if I died?"
"Yes," you answer calmly.
Peter leans his cheek back on your shoulder. "It's a bad thing to say, isn't it? I don't want people to suffer for me. I just... I don't know. Sorry. It's depressing."
"It's not bad. And it's not depressing."
Peter moves slightly against you, uncomfortably. "You miss them, don't you? I could... If you wanted, I could help you. I would be careful. I wouldn't take anything else."
The answer escapes from your mouth before you've had time to think about it, and it's a sort of revelation for you too. "Then nobody would cry for them."
Peter squeezes your hand upon the mattress and whispers softly: "I don't want you to suffer".
"It's okay. I'm used to it."
You lean a hand on his back, tracing the line of his spine with your fingertips, and Peter sighs contentedly like a cat.
"If I sleep a couple of hours, will you stay where I left you?"
"I think so. In this bed there's not much space to turn, anyway."
"It's a motel. People don't come here to sleep."
"But you do?"
"If you shut your mouth, maybe."
Peter snorts and mutters something - you catch only the words "for free". Then he rises to give you a peck on your lips and comes back to his position.
He manages to stay silent for a minute, maybe two.
"Nathan?"
"Mmm."
"Can I stay with you?" His voice sounds calm and tense at the same time. You feel his fingers caressing your wrist, your forearm, as if he couldn't stay completely still. "I'll pay you by having sex with you anytime you want," he adds, trying to joke. "How about that?"
"I don't know," you mutter, opening one eye. "You're not that good."
Peter goes silent, withdrawing his hand from yours, and for a moment he seems like he's shrinking, curling himself up small against you; his heart starts beating as hard against your ribs as a drum. You pass your fingers through his hair and pull him a bit closer, if it's possible.
"Can we talk about this when I'm awake? I slept for three hours last time and I can't remember when that was."
"Yes. Sorry," he answers you slowly.
"Peter? Don't be a girl. I was kidding."
"I'm not a girl."
"Your hair doesn't think so."
"If I let you fuck me, you'll give me money for a haircut?"
"If I give you money for a haircut, you'll let me sleep?"
"Yes. And I'll add a blowjob for free."
"Thanks. Sleep."
You fall asleep with Peter's hair tickling your neck, and this time there aren't nightmares by the other side.