eponis
in
heroes_fic
FIC: "A Cord of Three Strands" (NC-17)
Title: A Cord of Three Strands
Pairings: Claire/Peter, Nathan/Peter, some allusions to Nathan/Claire (but no sexual contact)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~6000 words
Spoilers: Through 1x14 ("Distractions"), but canon-compliant through 1x16.
Disclaimer: Heroes and its characters are the property of NBC. I am not NBC.
Summary: When Claire moves to New York, her life becomes increasingly entangled with the Petrellis'.
Notes: Many thanks to my beautiful and talented beta readers, bookofjude and linaerys, for accompanying me through this process. Cross-posted to paire_love.
A Cord of Three Strands
- by Sinope -
Much later, when the world didn't end and Nathan didn't become the First Transhuman Congressman (though he's already talking about 2008 on the talk-show circuit), Peter and Nathan take Claire flying. They soar upwards at a steady pace, giving her time to let her ears pop with the altitude, avoiding the clouds. She's got her arms wrapped around Peter's neck, Nathan cradling her from behind, and she's leaning her head on Peter's chest to listen to his calm, deep breaths. Peter and Nathan are discussing all the things they can't say when the press might be listening, ears and lips tilted together so their words don't get lost in the wind. Claire thinks she ought to feel cold, but all she can feel is the heat radiating around her. I've never been this close to two people in my life, she thinks, resisting the temptation to fall asleep in this human cradle.
They reach an altitude so high that the horizon becomes a stark black arc in every direction, so high that Claire can feel Nathan breathing in quick shallow gulps behind her. "Take me higher, Peter," she says into his chest, and - after another exchange of words too soft for her to hear - Nathan lets her go, brushing the back of her hair with a whisper or a kiss.
She and Peter fly higher, higher; her skin and lungs are tingling with a frisson of not-quite-pain, regenerating just fast enough to keep up with the lack of oxygen or heat or sun-filter. Her chest aches from the absence of breath, and Peter's eyes are wide and black as the sky, focused somewhere far in the distance.
She doesn't have the breath to say stop any more, nor the desire to descend. The whole world reduces to the wind against her cheek and the faint, fading pulse of Peter's heart. When she looks at her hands, wrapped behind Peter's neck, her skin's translucent, clear and blue as the atmosphere below. She can feel his erection jutting into her hip; Peter tilts his head in apology, too pale now to blush.
They fly higher. Claire's vision swirls around her like her sharp yellow strands of hair, until she closes her eyes in submission. The darkness swallows her up, a whirlpool twisting her until she can't tell whether she's flying or -
- falling -
- she opens her eyes to the words "I'm sorry." She's lying on the hot rubbery surface of a suburban playground, her spine crackling as it shifts back into position, her arms still wrapped around Peter's neck. Nathan is clutching the two of them with hands like steel. "I'm sorry," Peter says again, and it's in that moment, when Nathan takes a furious breath and opens his mouth, that she realizes how much Nathan loves them both.
Claire had known, when she moved to New York and her bio-family, that publicity was inevitable. Nathan had always been careful in public - never inviting her to guest-and-family events, limiting the amount of time she could spend at his house - but when the first tabloid published a photo of her shopping with Peter, he called a meeting at Peter's apartment with the two of them.
"I'm going to say you're Peter's new girlfriend," he said.
"What?" Peter blinked, then said, "No! That's crazy."
"There's only going to be more publicity. Either Claire gets a legitimate reason to be spending so much time around you, or you stop seeing her."
"I guess 'tell the truth' isn't an option, then," Claire said.
Nathan raised a skeptical eyebrow, giving her a familiar are you really that naive? look. "The press has had a field day with my family life as it is. I'm not going to give them more fodder, and I'm not going to subject my wife to constant questions about my infidelity."
Claire felt Peter lace reassuring fingers into hers before he spoke. "Don't you care how your own daughter feels about being whitewashed away?"
Nathan opened his mouth to respond, but Claire cut him off. "I think he's right, Peter. It's not like it really matters; I'm not dating anyone else, and we spend so much time together that we might as well be dating. I'd rather keep that than go back to a city where everyone thinks I'm a freak."
And that ended the argument. Later that night, as Peter and Claire watched the end credits of Spiderman 2 scroll by, Claire shifted from where she'd been leaning on his shoulder, looking up at his eyes. "So if we're dating now, does it mean I get to sleep over?"
When he gave her an odd, quick look and hesitated, she continued, "I mean, the hotel room is great and all, but it's . . . not home, you know?"
"Yeah, I do," Peter said, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "The couch is yours any time you want it."
That's where she's been staying since then, though she still tells her parents that her bio-dad is providing her a hotel room. Peter keeps saying he'll get her a roll-out bed, but she doesn't mind sleeping on the couch, not really. On nights when she can ply Peter with enough beers and Hugh Grant movies, he gets so sleepy that he falls asleep right there with his arms wrapped around her, breathing the slow whispery breaths that nobody else gets to hear.
Claire has nothing, in theory, against the way that Peter and Nathan show affection. Mind you, she knows what everyone would think down in Odessa - but that's what everyone thought about Zach, and he ended up dating some cute Goth girl he met at a Wiccan meet-up. Up here, nobody seems to notice them, so she guesses that it's normal for some families. And she doesn't care. Really.
Well, maybe a little. What makes it frustrating is that they're constantly touching each other - hugging, kissing, stroking backs and arms and faces - and they never touch her that way. The most that Nathan's ever given her is a stiff hug and a kiss on the forehead, but even then, the kisses only say aren't you a nice girl, or go away now, I'm busy. Peter gets long, tender kisses, kisses that say I never want to leave you, and I never will, and sometimes Claire finds herself hating him for it.
So since she can't get that from Nathan, Claire starts maneuvering to touch Peter, everywhere and anywhere she can. She'll hold his hand while they're walking together, and clutch his arm during the scary scenes in movies. In the mornings, when he's barely awake and hunched over his cereal, she'll greet him by ruffling his hair; in the evenings, when she can't persuade him to sleep on the couch with her, she'll hug him goodnight and linger in the embrace until just before it gets awkward.
One night, she comes home from a club, tipsy with illicit alcohol, and finds him home already from a fundraiser with Nathan. He's sitting on the couch, staring at a blank television, and his tailored tuxedo is rumpled and half-unbuttoned. "Hey there," she says, and gets no response. She's gotten used to Peter's mood swings, so she busies herself around the flat, arranging her stilettos in a neat row in the closet and emptying out her cute new purse. He still hasn't moved by the time she's down to jeans and a skin-tight tube top whose zipper refuses to open.
"Mind giving me a hand?" she asks him, and crouches beside the sofa with her back to him, feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable.
"Sure," he says, quietly. His fingers fumble on the zipper for a minute, slipping over the fabric and skin. With a creak of protest, the zipper finally springs open, and he slides it down halfway, then pauses. Claire can feel the suddenly-loose nylon rubbing against her bare breasts, an oddly arousing sensation, but she doesn't dare move.
She can see it all in her head: Peter unzipping the rest of the top, so it falls open and tumbles to the floor. His hands smoothing their way around her body, cradling her breasts and rolling each nipple between his thumb and forefinger. His lips kissing her neck and suckling on bits of skin, so hungry she can feel the sharp imprint of teeth. His breath, hot against her cheek as he turns her around and guides her onto the sofa until she straddles him, rubbing her body shamelessly against his, her bare breasts against his dinner jacket and her jeans rough on her clitoris as she slides over his crotch. He'd guide her hands as she slid his stupid tuxedo pants down past his knees, and she'd crawl backwards on the couch so she could bend down more easily and swallow his -
- "God, stop," Peter says, his hands trembling on her mid-back. "I can't -" And he scrambles from the couch and walks to the bedroom, looking back just once before he closes the door. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" Claire's feeling so embarrassed she thinks she might sound hysterical, and her top's half-exposing her breasts already.
"I didn't mean to look, I swear. I'm sorry. God." He closes the door, and she can see him collapse onto his bed through the glass wall, a shadow in a pool of darker black.
I'm sorry, too, she thinks, as hard as she can, in case he's still listening in her head. More softly she adds, Fucking telepathy. Then she curls up on the couch in the imprint of his body heat, breathing in the lingering traces of his scent from the pillows.
She sits there, thinking, until the silence is broken by a muffled creak from the bedroom. It sounds a bit like when he's turning in bed, but - there. The creak turns into a rhythmic rocking, and when it's broken by a quiet, teeth-gritted groan, Claire flushes as she realizes exactly what's going on. She can see Peter in her head; he's tangled in cool bedsheets, his face contorted as he bites his lip, his hand pumping up and down in quick, desperate strokes. She wonders if he can see her images of him and whether it's turning him on. Almost without thinking about it, she undoes the top button of her jeans and slides her hand under her panties.
Just as she comes - which doesn't take long, with the images thrumming in her head and the slickness between her legs - she can hear him come in the other room, a high keening exhalation.
It's the first time that they've masturbated, knowing that the other person was listening. It's not the last.
Now that the media's accepted Peter Petrelli's new girlfriend - she even got interviewed for a New York Times article on "transhumans in love" - Nathan doesn't stop her from visiting his house. Claire loves the Petrelli mansion. She feels a bit like Cinderella, an unacknowledged princess wandering her rightful castle. But there's no evil stepmother lurking in this tower - just a sad-eyed woman in a wheelchair. Mrs. Petrelli still doesn't know who she is, and Claire sometimes thinks that she feels more guilty about that than Nathan does.
She and Peter come to visit one hot afternoon, hoping for admittance to the house's massive custom-built swimming pool. They find the house empty; the maid tells them that Nathan's at work and everyone else is visiting the beach for the day. She and Peter make a beeline for the pool, splashing each other and racing at laps until they're both cheerfully exhausted. They make ham sandwiches and lemonade in the kitchen, then eat them outside while bathing in the sunlight, and before Claire knows it, she's yawning deeply.
Looking pretty wiped out himself, Peter guides her to a spare bedroom upstairs, where she collapses onto a cloud of crisp Egyptian cotton. She's asleep before she can bother to close the curtains.
When Claire wakes up, the sunlight's faded to a richer golden hue, and she can feel a crick in her neck from sleeping on her ponytail. She rolls out of bed, shakes her limbs and straightens her hair, then wanders out in search of a Coke. Halfway down the hall, she passes the door to Nathan's office, left cracked open, and she's about to walk onward when she hears a murmur of voices from inside. She can't help but push the door ever so slightly further and look.
The room's dark, shrouded by blinds covering the windows, and the two bodies inside are illuminated by ruler-straight lines of light that stripe their skin. They're sitting on the leather loveseat, Peter and Nathan, curled into each other's body, and Nathan is rocking Peter back and forth in his arms. They speak to each other in muted, intimate voices, but the house is so quiet that Claire can hear every word.
". . . never have to know," Peter's saying. "And I can't stop thinking about it. It's crazy, like everything I've ever felt for Simone and you is all tangled together and multiplied by a thousand. The things I want to -"
"- you think I haven't felt it too?" Nathan says, and he's speaking in his sympathetic voice, but underneath it is something tight and strangled. "Even Heidi's started noticing the way I look at her, though she won't say it. And if she knew, if anyone knew - you know what would happen. It's sick."
"Then I'm sick too. Come on, Nathan," he says, "it's not like we don't know how to keep secrets."
"No. Not this one."
Peter's face is buried in his brother's neck, but the light's too dim for Claire to tell whether he's crying or kissing. And then their hands are moving, clutching at clothing, clinging to flesh, and Nathan's sucking on Peter's earlobe and working his way to his lips, pressing him into the loveseat with the fiercest kiss Claire's ever seen. As Nathan moves one hand down to cup Peter's erection, Peter glances over, and his eyes meet Claire's for one infinitely long gaze. Then he's arching into his brother's touch, making sounds of please and need this, but Claire can't look away. She can't look away.
Until then, she'd managed not to think of Nathan That Way. Afterwards, though she and Peter go back to pretending that everything is normal, images of the two men become all she can think of. She goes online on her new laptop and Googles "gay incest," cringing at the pictures and stories she finds, then wipes her browsing history twice to be sure all traces are gone. She practices saying nursery rhymes over and over in her head, just in case Peter listens in again. She wonders if Nathan would let her watch.
One morning, she emerges from the shower, still towel-drying her hair, and thinks, Today's the day that I'll seduce Peter. He doesn't look up from his Raisin Bran, so Claire concludes that he's not listening, and she visualizes his face on the body of the kinkiest photo she can remember, just because she can. "Morning," she says. He looks up at her with a warm, slow smile.
Today's the day that I'll seduce Peter. She thinks the words to herself while she walks to Victoria's Secret and buys matching black lingerie, because Cosmo said that men think black is sexy. While she's checking out (and that's one credit card receipt she can't wait to have show up on Nathan's report), she tells the saleswoman that she's planning an extra-special night for her boyfriend, and needs advice on how to set a sexy mood.
The woman laughs at her. "Sweetie, with a body like that and underwear like this, you won't need to do anything. We're the ones who want a romantic mood; all they want to hear is that they turn you on."
Claire blushes, sure that her inexperience shows all over her face. "But - he knows that already, and I know he likes me, but he keeps stopping himself before he makes the move."
She shrugs. "Then you make the move. It's the twenty-first century, girl; you're allowed to say what you want."
Claire makes herself smile. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am. Thanks."
Today's the day that I'll seduce Peter.
When she gets home, she slips on the new underwear and changes into her tightest, silkiest shirt, because "saying what she wants" is well and good, but she needs a backup plan. In this case, said plan consists of two bags of microwaveable popcorn, a DVD of Superman Returns, and as many vodka mixers as the corner store sells. She's thought herself quite virtuous to have ignored the bottle of Stoli that Peter thought he'd hidden on the top shelf of the pantry, but tonight it's coming out for Peter to open.
From there, it's easy. "I thought we could have a movie night," she says when he gets home. "You know, see how the superhero thing is supposed to be done." She smiles and thinks Mary had a little lamb / its fleece was white as snow, in case he's trying to look for deeper motives. From the expression on his face, he isn't.
They eat delivery pizza, and Claire hand-feeds Peter the last few pieces of mushroom that she picked off her side, lingering long enough for him to lick away the last traces of flavor from her fingertips. As they watch the movie, she scoots a little closer to him every time she sits back down with a fresh drink, sipping her mostly-juice screwdriver while she fetches him another Cape Cod, heavy on the alcohol. By the end of the movie, she's resting her head on his chest and her arm on his leg. She can feel his fingers, playing with her hair, more intimate than any of her boyfriends ever managed.
And then the movie's over, and the lights are still out, and the only thing keeping them in the couch is each other. It's the easiest thing in the world for Claire to tilt her head up and meet Peter with a kiss.
They kiss for a brief moment, silent, affirming. It feels like Claire imagines Nathan's kisses would feel. Then, she supposes, the shock's worn off, because Peter turns his head away and says "We shouldn't -"
"We should," she says. "You want it too, right? Everyone else thinks we're dating already, so we might as well enjoy it."
"Nathan will know."
"You think I care?" she says, and kisses him again. She cups his chin and runs her fingers down his neck, the way she saw Nathan do, so that Peter arches upward and gasps into her lips. She can feel the pulse in his throat, the delicate rush of blood under his skin, and she thinks, Both of us are safe in each other's hands.
He's touching her like a porcelain doll, a feather-light touch making her skin glow and shiver in its wake. "I want you inside me," she whispers, and she means it in every possible way.
Claire's had sex before, good sex, but this is completely different. She feels like she's dissolving into Peter, becoming him instead of just screwing him. As she comes, she thinks, this is the culmination of my whole life. Nothing has ever felt more right.
After that night, they can't stop touching each other. It's not always sexual - Peter has a job, after all - and sometimes it's as simple as Claire tilting her head to rest on his arm as he fries eggs for breakfast, or Peter standing with her in the shower, running the sponge over her with gentle reverence.
They attend a party together one evening, a birthday celebration for Nathan's mother. Mrs. Petrelli invites so many people that Peter's Girlfriend would be expected to attend, without being singled out for too much paparazzi attention. The evening starts with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, which Claire avoids by hiding in Peter's bedroom to flip through his collection of comic books. (Peter comes looking for her, and her spaghetti-strap neckline just happens to fall down; she ends up writhing between him and his bedroom wall, biting her lips to keep from moaning too loudly.) She only has a few minutes to pat her makeup and hair into respectable order before they have to race downstairs for the sit-down dinner.
She's been seated beside Peter, of course, with some sleazy state representative to her right. Nathan, Heidi at his side, sits to Peter's left. Throughout the seven courses, Claire gets to listen to speech after speech about Mrs. Petrelli's charms - none of which, Peter assured her beforehand, she should listen to or believe. By the time she's nibbling on the remnants of her roast lamb, she's bored out of her mind.
So she decides to play. Peter looks as bored as her, his eyes so distant they're practically glazed over. Finishing the last bite of meat, Claire rests her hands on her legs, below the tablecloth, and ever-so-carefully slides her hand over to Peter's thigh. (Distantly, she hears Someone Important talking about Mrs. Petrelli's love for children's libraries.) She can feel his muscles shiver at the contact, but his face betrays nothing but a too-quick blink. Careful to stay hidden by the tablecloth, she grazes her fingers over his leg in gentle, teasing circlets, a spiral that dips downward to caress his inner thigh, then slides back up, closer and closer to the warm core.
And that's when she runs up against another hand. It's all she can do to bite her lips and stop herself from crying out. Breathe, she thinks, and sneaks a glance at Nathan. He's sitting perfectly normally; his lips are curved into the calm, complacent smile that he wears at these dinners like a uniform. Then he looks at her - so briefly she could have imagined it - and the fingers curve around her own. His thumb, softer than she ever would have expected, traces lines in her palm. His fingertips wrap around hers as if memorizing their shape for the first time.
Then he takes her hand in an effortlessly firm grip and guides it upward to Peter's erection, until it's sandwiched between the warm damp cloth and Nathan's warmer hand. She's never stroked Peter like this, fully clothed, but the action feels so intimate, like reading his secret thoughts. Nathan guides her, showing her how to cup and squeeze his balls, then slide upward and circle her thumb over his head. They fall into a steady rhythm, and for a brief bitter moment she wonders whether it's Peter's natural pace or Nathan's own. Somewhere in the distance, someone is saying "- still found time to be a beloved mother to her two sons," and Nathan is nodding at his mother, the model of a grateful, mature son. They're still stroking Peter, gradually speeding their pace; his expression still hasn't changed, but Claire can see his breaths coming fast and shallow, his eyes widening the way they do when he's about to orgasm.
And with that, the speaker finishes talking and the room bursts into applause, and Peter is shuddering and coming in his pants, coating her fingers through the fabric with a sticky residue. This is so fucked up, she thinks, and returns her hand to her own lap.
The final course of the meal is a fantasy of spun sugar, panna cotta, and blood-red raspberry sauce. Claire picks up the last fragments of sugar with her hand, places them in her mouth, and sucks her fingers clean. In the corner of her eye, she can see Peter flush.
By the time that the party finishes, Claire's too sleepy from alcohol and small talk to protest very much when Mrs. Petrelli suggests that she and Peter stay over. Everyone trails into guest rooms; Nathan helps Heidi into bed and banishes his kids (my half-siblings, she thinks, but that's too weird to think about for long) to somewhere quiet. In the spare bedroom, she undresses and slips on borrowed clothes from when Peter was her age, worn-thin boxers and a t-shirt for someone called the "Cocteau Twins." Cutting off thoughts about the evening, she tries to go to sleep.
It doesn't work. Eventually, long after the last of the caterers have left and the lights have gone out, she hears heavy footsteps walking down the hall, past her door. Claire slides out of bed and pulls open the door just in time to see Nathan turning a corner into the kitchen. Bare feet padding on the rug, she follows him at a distance and watches him from the edge of the doorway.
Claire's never seen him look this tired. Nathan pours himself a glass of milk and pops it in the microwave; once it's heating, he leans forward, elbows on the countertop, hands on his face, and breathes in harsh, arrhythmic pulses. The moment of raw vulnerability doesn't last. By the time that the microwave beeps, he's pulled out a bottle of whiskey, which goes into the hot milk, a quick shake distributing it evenly.
She steps forward, an uncertain smile on her face. "Can I have some of that, too?"
He looks up. "When you're old enough to buy liquor at a bar, you'll be old enough to drink yourself to sleep."
She walks up to him, close enough to touch his shoulder and see if his muscles feel as tense as they look, but turns at the last minute and pulls a glass out of the cupboard. As she fills it with filtered water from the tap, Claire speaks in a playful tone. "What do you suggest instead, then?"
Nathan swallows the rest of his whiskey and milk before replying and sets down his glass. His voice reflects none of her banter. "Claire, I need you to understand that you cannot flirt with me. Ever. Not here, not in public, not when you think we're alone. It's inappropriate, it's dangerous, and it's wrong."
This time, her voice is low and tinged with bitterness. "And what you do with Peter isn't wrong?"
"That's different."
"How?"
"Let me count the ways," he says, eyes hardening. "One, he's not a minor. Two, he can't get pregnant. Three, what he and I do is an occasional outlet, and you want more than that. And four, he knows how to avoid making a public spectacle of himself. Even my mother's noticed the way you've been acting around him; I've had to lie to her just to stop her from forcing one of you two out of the city. The slightest hint of that behavior toward me, and the investigations would start; I'd have to deal with accusations that could send me to jail."
She gives him a glare as good as the one she's getting. "So you do want to do it; you're just too scared of getting caught."
"Yes, I am scared," he says. "There's a reason I have a bodyguard; politicians have to be scared, or they never make it."
She doesn't know what to say to make this better, but she can't stop herself. "All I want to do is touch you. You and Peter. Please, Nathan - please let me?"
And it's the please that seems to break him, because he doesn't respond, just goes rigid. His hand still clutches the milk-painted glass. "Go to Peter, Claire," he says, but he won't meet her eyes.
Claire steps closer to him from behind, wraps her arms around his waist, and leans her head on his back. From here, she can feel the muscles in his back and ribcage, the secret pulses of his heart and lungs, and the warmth radiating through his shirt, but most intoxicating of all is his skin's scent, buried beneath the cologne and sweat of the evening. Breathing it in feels like coming home.
Through all this, Nathan doesn't move - not stiff and frozen, merely still. Waiting. Claire slows her breathing so she falls into his rhythm, and the two stand there, body against body, until she feels like she's sinking into his flesh. "I love you," she says, and he says nothing.
Three weeks later, when the weather's so hot that a sweltering wind blows in through the windows at night, Claire and Peter sit on the sofa, finishing up a game of Trivial Pursuit. She wins - mostly because Peter's crap at sports questions, which Claire finds hilarious in boys - and they end up making out on the couch, trying to avoid bending the scattered trivia cards. Peter's just unclasped the back of her bra, when they hear a knock on the door.
Not many people show up on Peter's doorstep at 2 AM, so Claire's unsurprised when she sees Nathan's silhouette; she doesn't even bother redoing her bra. Peter lets him in and locks the door behind them. "You okay?" he asks. Nathan doesn't answer; he just gives Peter one of those long looks that Claire still hasn't learned to decipher.
Peter's face softens in sympathy. "It's okay," Peter says, guiding Nathan to a chair in the kitchen. "It's going to be okay. Is it Heidi?"
"She said she'd divorce me," Nathan says, and he sits down and stares at his hands. "She said she'd finally do it, and do you know what I told her? I said, 'good luck paying for all that physical therapy on your own.' Peter, when did I become such a bastard?"
"Shhh," Peter says, squeezing his brother's shoulder. "It'll be okay. Want me to get you something to drink?"
Nathan raises his eyes to Peter; even from the couch, Claire can see how red they are. "Believe me, I've already had more than I should have." Then he casts a glance at Claire, taking her in for the first time. "I'm sorry. I'm intruding on your little love nest. I'll go."
"No, don't," Claire and Peter say simultaneously. It's almost funny. They move toward him as one - Peter to crouch at his height and embrace him, Claire to clasp his hand and stroke it, uncertain if she can go further.
Then Nathan twists his head around and kisses Peter on the lips, open-mouthed and shatteringly needy. He pulls away, a fraction of an inch, and says, "Touch her." For me, Claire can hear at the end.
Peter stands up and guides Claire to stand beside him. Tilting her chin up, he places a kiss on her mouth, then marks a trail down her throat, tipping her head back so he can taste her and mark her. His hands wrap behind her, sliding under her blouse and bra, and he pulls both off and over her head, leaving her nude above her jeans. Claire's nipples harden almost painfully - not because of the air, warm as Peter's breath, but because she can feel Nathan's eyes on her skin. His hands dig into the arms of his chair; he is otherwise motionless.
Claire unbuttons Peter's shirt, distracted by his fingers as they skim under the waistline of her jeans, touching her skin where it's milky and sensitive. Eventually they get each other's clothing open; there's a moment's pause for her to shimmy out of her jeans while Peter steps out of his own. Then they're standing naked, and Claire's skin prickles; she feels like she ought to feel self-conscious, but this is Nathan watching them. Peter's erection stands free, trapped between their stomachs, so she snakes a hand down and starts stroking him. She closes her eyes as she mouthes kisses onto his chest, imagining Nathan pressing against her from behind.
When Peter bends down to suck on her nipple, simultaneously sliding his fingers down to flicker over her clit and delve into her vagina, Claire lets out a whimper, spreading her legs wider for him and wondering how long she'll be able to support herself. She's already so wet that she glistens on Peter's hand.
Soon the question's moot; Peter lifts her and sets her on the kitchen table, spreading her knees wide apart. Claire leans backward, bracing herself with her arms for support, and Peter is kneeling before her, burying his head in her pussy and sliding his tongue down her slit, then up to circle her clitoris. As if that weren't enough, his change in position means that she can see Nathan's eyes again, boring into her, sliding over her breasts and waist and thighs like a physical touch. Claire's moaning please, arching herself to press harder onto Peter's face. Some frantic part of her wishes she had telepathy right now, but she can imagine exactly what Nathan's seeing: bare legs splayed apart, muscles taut, breasts quivering with each abortive thrust, and glimpses of swollen crimson folds whenever Peter shifts his head. Peter's fucking her with two fingers, now, and still lapping at her clitoris so hard she's dizzy with the desire to come.
"Please," she says, still looking into Nathan's eyes, and whether he's reading her thoughts or just knows her that well, Peter withdraws his fingers and stands up, nodding. He pulls her to an upright position and kisses her, his lips soft and damp with her own juices; distantly, she can hear the crackle of a condom being unwrapped, and she doesn't want to know where in the kitchen he's been storing it. Then, without preamble or warning, he's slamming his cock into her, filling her in the time it takes her to gasp yes.
He fucks her tenderly and relentlessly, making the table shift beneath them with every stroke. When Peter's not covering her face with earnest, imprecise kisses, she's looking over her shoulder, watching Nathan watch the two of them. His hands still haven't left the sides of the chair, but he's leaning forward slightly, and Claire shivers at the sweat shining on his face and the hunger in his eyes. "I'm going to come soon," Peter says unsteadily.
"Then do," she replies, looking straight back into his eyes. She clenches her hips tight around him, rocking back and forth to meet him in time with his thrusts. Before long, Peter tips his head back and clenches his face in a wordless oh, pounding into her with final arrhythmic desperation, and Claire lets herself go, feeling the waves of orgasm ripple over her and shuddering into his arms.
They hold each other for a moment, feeling the air cool their skins. Claire looks up from Peter's shoulder, and in Nathan's eyes she can see something more than a question and less than a demand. Peter catches and follows her gaze, withdrawing from her and twisting around to read his brother's silent entreaty. He nods.
With movements so casual he has to have practiced them a hundred times, Peter kneels at Nathan's feet and undoes the fly of his pants, never breaking contact with his eyes. When Peter slides Nathan's cock out of his boxers and into his mouth, Nathan closes his eyes for a moment, a whisper of a self-indulgent smile on his face. "That's really good, Pete," he murmurs.
Claire can see Peter's lips stretched until they're pale, swallowing until his nose presses against Nathan's groin, then sliding back out with a slick pop. He rocks back and forth on his knees, humming muffled encouragement, until Nathan's breathing speeds up and his eyelashes flutter, torn between watching Peter and closing in pleasure. By the time that Claire realizes he's coming, it's over; Peter is standing up, licking his lips and kissing Nathan, utterly unselfconscious of his own nude body against Nathan's fully-clothed form.
Nathan buttons himself up, shifts as if about to stand, then sinks back down into the chair, oddly vulnerable. "Stay here," Peter says, holding out one hand.
"It's just us," Claire says and offers her own hand.
Nathan looks from one face to another, hesitates for a moment, then clasps both of their arms. "Petrellis do stick together, don't they," he says in a dry voice, and he pulls himself up to join them.
finis.
Pairings: Claire/Peter, Nathan/Peter, some allusions to Nathan/Claire (but no sexual contact)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~6000 words
Spoilers: Through 1x14 ("Distractions"), but canon-compliant through 1x16.
Disclaimer: Heroes and its characters are the property of NBC. I am not NBC.
Summary: When Claire moves to New York, her life becomes increasingly entangled with the Petrellis'.
Notes: Many thanks to my beautiful and talented beta readers, bookofjude and linaerys, for accompanying me through this process. Cross-posted to paire_love.
A Cord of Three Strands
- by Sinope -
Much later, when the world didn't end and Nathan didn't become the First Transhuman Congressman (though he's already talking about 2008 on the talk-show circuit), Peter and Nathan take Claire flying. They soar upwards at a steady pace, giving her time to let her ears pop with the altitude, avoiding the clouds. She's got her arms wrapped around Peter's neck, Nathan cradling her from behind, and she's leaning her head on Peter's chest to listen to his calm, deep breaths. Peter and Nathan are discussing all the things they can't say when the press might be listening, ears and lips tilted together so their words don't get lost in the wind. Claire thinks she ought to feel cold, but all she can feel is the heat radiating around her. I've never been this close to two people in my life, she thinks, resisting the temptation to fall asleep in this human cradle.
They reach an altitude so high that the horizon becomes a stark black arc in every direction, so high that Claire can feel Nathan breathing in quick shallow gulps behind her. "Take me higher, Peter," she says into his chest, and - after another exchange of words too soft for her to hear - Nathan lets her go, brushing the back of her hair with a whisper or a kiss.
She and Peter fly higher, higher; her skin and lungs are tingling with a frisson of not-quite-pain, regenerating just fast enough to keep up with the lack of oxygen or heat or sun-filter. Her chest aches from the absence of breath, and Peter's eyes are wide and black as the sky, focused somewhere far in the distance.
She doesn't have the breath to say stop any more, nor the desire to descend. The whole world reduces to the wind against her cheek and the faint, fading pulse of Peter's heart. When she looks at her hands, wrapped behind Peter's neck, her skin's translucent, clear and blue as the atmosphere below. She can feel his erection jutting into her hip; Peter tilts his head in apology, too pale now to blush.
They fly higher. Claire's vision swirls around her like her sharp yellow strands of hair, until she closes her eyes in submission. The darkness swallows her up, a whirlpool twisting her until she can't tell whether she's flying or -
- falling -
- she opens her eyes to the words "I'm sorry." She's lying on the hot rubbery surface of a suburban playground, her spine crackling as it shifts back into position, her arms still wrapped around Peter's neck. Nathan is clutching the two of them with hands like steel. "I'm sorry," Peter says again, and it's in that moment, when Nathan takes a furious breath and opens his mouth, that she realizes how much Nathan loves them both.
Claire had known, when she moved to New York and her bio-family, that publicity was inevitable. Nathan had always been careful in public - never inviting her to guest-and-family events, limiting the amount of time she could spend at his house - but when the first tabloid published a photo of her shopping with Peter, he called a meeting at Peter's apartment with the two of them.
"I'm going to say you're Peter's new girlfriend," he said.
"What?" Peter blinked, then said, "No! That's crazy."
"There's only going to be more publicity. Either Claire gets a legitimate reason to be spending so much time around you, or you stop seeing her."
"I guess 'tell the truth' isn't an option, then," Claire said.
Nathan raised a skeptical eyebrow, giving her a familiar are you really that naive? look. "The press has had a field day with my family life as it is. I'm not going to give them more fodder, and I'm not going to subject my wife to constant questions about my infidelity."
Claire felt Peter lace reassuring fingers into hers before he spoke. "Don't you care how your own daughter feels about being whitewashed away?"
Nathan opened his mouth to respond, but Claire cut him off. "I think he's right, Peter. It's not like it really matters; I'm not dating anyone else, and we spend so much time together that we might as well be dating. I'd rather keep that than go back to a city where everyone thinks I'm a freak."
And that ended the argument. Later that night, as Peter and Claire watched the end credits of Spiderman 2 scroll by, Claire shifted from where she'd been leaning on his shoulder, looking up at his eyes. "So if we're dating now, does it mean I get to sleep over?"
When he gave her an odd, quick look and hesitated, she continued, "I mean, the hotel room is great and all, but it's . . . not home, you know?"
"Yeah, I do," Peter said, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "The couch is yours any time you want it."
That's where she's been staying since then, though she still tells her parents that her bio-dad is providing her a hotel room. Peter keeps saying he'll get her a roll-out bed, but she doesn't mind sleeping on the couch, not really. On nights when she can ply Peter with enough beers and Hugh Grant movies, he gets so sleepy that he falls asleep right there with his arms wrapped around her, breathing the slow whispery breaths that nobody else gets to hear.
Claire has nothing, in theory, against the way that Peter and Nathan show affection. Mind you, she knows what everyone would think down in Odessa - but that's what everyone thought about Zach, and he ended up dating some cute Goth girl he met at a Wiccan meet-up. Up here, nobody seems to notice them, so she guesses that it's normal for some families. And she doesn't care. Really.
Well, maybe a little. What makes it frustrating is that they're constantly touching each other - hugging, kissing, stroking backs and arms and faces - and they never touch her that way. The most that Nathan's ever given her is a stiff hug and a kiss on the forehead, but even then, the kisses only say aren't you a nice girl, or go away now, I'm busy. Peter gets long, tender kisses, kisses that say I never want to leave you, and I never will, and sometimes Claire finds herself hating him for it.
So since she can't get that from Nathan, Claire starts maneuvering to touch Peter, everywhere and anywhere she can. She'll hold his hand while they're walking together, and clutch his arm during the scary scenes in movies. In the mornings, when he's barely awake and hunched over his cereal, she'll greet him by ruffling his hair; in the evenings, when she can't persuade him to sleep on the couch with her, she'll hug him goodnight and linger in the embrace until just before it gets awkward.
One night, she comes home from a club, tipsy with illicit alcohol, and finds him home already from a fundraiser with Nathan. He's sitting on the couch, staring at a blank television, and his tailored tuxedo is rumpled and half-unbuttoned. "Hey there," she says, and gets no response. She's gotten used to Peter's mood swings, so she busies herself around the flat, arranging her stilettos in a neat row in the closet and emptying out her cute new purse. He still hasn't moved by the time she's down to jeans and a skin-tight tube top whose zipper refuses to open.
"Mind giving me a hand?" she asks him, and crouches beside the sofa with her back to him, feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable.
"Sure," he says, quietly. His fingers fumble on the zipper for a minute, slipping over the fabric and skin. With a creak of protest, the zipper finally springs open, and he slides it down halfway, then pauses. Claire can feel the suddenly-loose nylon rubbing against her bare breasts, an oddly arousing sensation, but she doesn't dare move.
She can see it all in her head: Peter unzipping the rest of the top, so it falls open and tumbles to the floor. His hands smoothing their way around her body, cradling her breasts and rolling each nipple between his thumb and forefinger. His lips kissing her neck and suckling on bits of skin, so hungry she can feel the sharp imprint of teeth. His breath, hot against her cheek as he turns her around and guides her onto the sofa until she straddles him, rubbing her body shamelessly against his, her bare breasts against his dinner jacket and her jeans rough on her clitoris as she slides over his crotch. He'd guide her hands as she slid his stupid tuxedo pants down past his knees, and she'd crawl backwards on the couch so she could bend down more easily and swallow his -
- "God, stop," Peter says, his hands trembling on her mid-back. "I can't -" And he scrambles from the couch and walks to the bedroom, looking back just once before he closes the door. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" Claire's feeling so embarrassed she thinks she might sound hysterical, and her top's half-exposing her breasts already.
"I didn't mean to look, I swear. I'm sorry. God." He closes the door, and she can see him collapse onto his bed through the glass wall, a shadow in a pool of darker black.
I'm sorry, too, she thinks, as hard as she can, in case he's still listening in her head. More softly she adds, Fucking telepathy. Then she curls up on the couch in the imprint of his body heat, breathing in the lingering traces of his scent from the pillows.
She sits there, thinking, until the silence is broken by a muffled creak from the bedroom. It sounds a bit like when he's turning in bed, but - there. The creak turns into a rhythmic rocking, and when it's broken by a quiet, teeth-gritted groan, Claire flushes as she realizes exactly what's going on. She can see Peter in her head; he's tangled in cool bedsheets, his face contorted as he bites his lip, his hand pumping up and down in quick, desperate strokes. She wonders if he can see her images of him and whether it's turning him on. Almost without thinking about it, she undoes the top button of her jeans and slides her hand under her panties.
Just as she comes - which doesn't take long, with the images thrumming in her head and the slickness between her legs - she can hear him come in the other room, a high keening exhalation.
It's the first time that they've masturbated, knowing that the other person was listening. It's not the last.
Now that the media's accepted Peter Petrelli's new girlfriend - she even got interviewed for a New York Times article on "transhumans in love" - Nathan doesn't stop her from visiting his house. Claire loves the Petrelli mansion. She feels a bit like Cinderella, an unacknowledged princess wandering her rightful castle. But there's no evil stepmother lurking in this tower - just a sad-eyed woman in a wheelchair. Mrs. Petrelli still doesn't know who she is, and Claire sometimes thinks that she feels more guilty about that than Nathan does.
She and Peter come to visit one hot afternoon, hoping for admittance to the house's massive custom-built swimming pool. They find the house empty; the maid tells them that Nathan's at work and everyone else is visiting the beach for the day. She and Peter make a beeline for the pool, splashing each other and racing at laps until they're both cheerfully exhausted. They make ham sandwiches and lemonade in the kitchen, then eat them outside while bathing in the sunlight, and before Claire knows it, she's yawning deeply.
Looking pretty wiped out himself, Peter guides her to a spare bedroom upstairs, where she collapses onto a cloud of crisp Egyptian cotton. She's asleep before she can bother to close the curtains.
When Claire wakes up, the sunlight's faded to a richer golden hue, and she can feel a crick in her neck from sleeping on her ponytail. She rolls out of bed, shakes her limbs and straightens her hair, then wanders out in search of a Coke. Halfway down the hall, she passes the door to Nathan's office, left cracked open, and she's about to walk onward when she hears a murmur of voices from inside. She can't help but push the door ever so slightly further and look.
The room's dark, shrouded by blinds covering the windows, and the two bodies inside are illuminated by ruler-straight lines of light that stripe their skin. They're sitting on the leather loveseat, Peter and Nathan, curled into each other's body, and Nathan is rocking Peter back and forth in his arms. They speak to each other in muted, intimate voices, but the house is so quiet that Claire can hear every word.
". . . never have to know," Peter's saying. "And I can't stop thinking about it. It's crazy, like everything I've ever felt for Simone and you is all tangled together and multiplied by a thousand. The things I want to -"
"- you think I haven't felt it too?" Nathan says, and he's speaking in his sympathetic voice, but underneath it is something tight and strangled. "Even Heidi's started noticing the way I look at her, though she won't say it. And if she knew, if anyone knew - you know what would happen. It's sick."
"Then I'm sick too. Come on, Nathan," he says, "it's not like we don't know how to keep secrets."
"No. Not this one."
Peter's face is buried in his brother's neck, but the light's too dim for Claire to tell whether he's crying or kissing. And then their hands are moving, clutching at clothing, clinging to flesh, and Nathan's sucking on Peter's earlobe and working his way to his lips, pressing him into the loveseat with the fiercest kiss Claire's ever seen. As Nathan moves one hand down to cup Peter's erection, Peter glances over, and his eyes meet Claire's for one infinitely long gaze. Then he's arching into his brother's touch, making sounds of please and need this, but Claire can't look away. She can't look away.
Until then, she'd managed not to think of Nathan That Way. Afterwards, though she and Peter go back to pretending that everything is normal, images of the two men become all she can think of. She goes online on her new laptop and Googles "gay incest," cringing at the pictures and stories she finds, then wipes her browsing history twice to be sure all traces are gone. She practices saying nursery rhymes over and over in her head, just in case Peter listens in again. She wonders if Nathan would let her watch.
One morning, she emerges from the shower, still towel-drying her hair, and thinks, Today's the day that I'll seduce Peter. He doesn't look up from his Raisin Bran, so Claire concludes that he's not listening, and she visualizes his face on the body of the kinkiest photo she can remember, just because she can. "Morning," she says. He looks up at her with a warm, slow smile.
Today's the day that I'll seduce Peter. She thinks the words to herself while she walks to Victoria's Secret and buys matching black lingerie, because Cosmo said that men think black is sexy. While she's checking out (and that's one credit card receipt she can't wait to have show up on Nathan's report), she tells the saleswoman that she's planning an extra-special night for her boyfriend, and needs advice on how to set a sexy mood.
The woman laughs at her. "Sweetie, with a body like that and underwear like this, you won't need to do anything. We're the ones who want a romantic mood; all they want to hear is that they turn you on."
Claire blushes, sure that her inexperience shows all over her face. "But - he knows that already, and I know he likes me, but he keeps stopping himself before he makes the move."
She shrugs. "Then you make the move. It's the twenty-first century, girl; you're allowed to say what you want."
Claire makes herself smile. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am. Thanks."
Today's the day that I'll seduce Peter.
When she gets home, she slips on the new underwear and changes into her tightest, silkiest shirt, because "saying what she wants" is well and good, but she needs a backup plan. In this case, said plan consists of two bags of microwaveable popcorn, a DVD of Superman Returns, and as many vodka mixers as the corner store sells. She's thought herself quite virtuous to have ignored the bottle of Stoli that Peter thought he'd hidden on the top shelf of the pantry, but tonight it's coming out for Peter to open.
From there, it's easy. "I thought we could have a movie night," she says when he gets home. "You know, see how the superhero thing is supposed to be done." She smiles and thinks Mary had a little lamb / its fleece was white as snow, in case he's trying to look for deeper motives. From the expression on his face, he isn't.
They eat delivery pizza, and Claire hand-feeds Peter the last few pieces of mushroom that she picked off her side, lingering long enough for him to lick away the last traces of flavor from her fingertips. As they watch the movie, she scoots a little closer to him every time she sits back down with a fresh drink, sipping her mostly-juice screwdriver while she fetches him another Cape Cod, heavy on the alcohol. By the end of the movie, she's resting her head on his chest and her arm on his leg. She can feel his fingers, playing with her hair, more intimate than any of her boyfriends ever managed.
And then the movie's over, and the lights are still out, and the only thing keeping them in the couch is each other. It's the easiest thing in the world for Claire to tilt her head up and meet Peter with a kiss.
They kiss for a brief moment, silent, affirming. It feels like Claire imagines Nathan's kisses would feel. Then, she supposes, the shock's worn off, because Peter turns his head away and says "We shouldn't -"
"We should," she says. "You want it too, right? Everyone else thinks we're dating already, so we might as well enjoy it."
"Nathan will know."
"You think I care?" she says, and kisses him again. She cups his chin and runs her fingers down his neck, the way she saw Nathan do, so that Peter arches upward and gasps into her lips. She can feel the pulse in his throat, the delicate rush of blood under his skin, and she thinks, Both of us are safe in each other's hands.
He's touching her like a porcelain doll, a feather-light touch making her skin glow and shiver in its wake. "I want you inside me," she whispers, and she means it in every possible way.
Claire's had sex before, good sex, but this is completely different. She feels like she's dissolving into Peter, becoming him instead of just screwing him. As she comes, she thinks, this is the culmination of my whole life. Nothing has ever felt more right.
After that night, they can't stop touching each other. It's not always sexual - Peter has a job, after all - and sometimes it's as simple as Claire tilting her head to rest on his arm as he fries eggs for breakfast, or Peter standing with her in the shower, running the sponge over her with gentle reverence.
They attend a party together one evening, a birthday celebration for Nathan's mother. Mrs. Petrelli invites so many people that Peter's Girlfriend would be expected to attend, without being singled out for too much paparazzi attention. The evening starts with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, which Claire avoids by hiding in Peter's bedroom to flip through his collection of comic books. (Peter comes looking for her, and her spaghetti-strap neckline just happens to fall down; she ends up writhing between him and his bedroom wall, biting her lips to keep from moaning too loudly.) She only has a few minutes to pat her makeup and hair into respectable order before they have to race downstairs for the sit-down dinner.
She's been seated beside Peter, of course, with some sleazy state representative to her right. Nathan, Heidi at his side, sits to Peter's left. Throughout the seven courses, Claire gets to listen to speech after speech about Mrs. Petrelli's charms - none of which, Peter assured her beforehand, she should listen to or believe. By the time she's nibbling on the remnants of her roast lamb, she's bored out of her mind.
So she decides to play. Peter looks as bored as her, his eyes so distant they're practically glazed over. Finishing the last bite of meat, Claire rests her hands on her legs, below the tablecloth, and ever-so-carefully slides her hand over to Peter's thigh. (Distantly, she hears Someone Important talking about Mrs. Petrelli's love for children's libraries.) She can feel his muscles shiver at the contact, but his face betrays nothing but a too-quick blink. Careful to stay hidden by the tablecloth, she grazes her fingers over his leg in gentle, teasing circlets, a spiral that dips downward to caress his inner thigh, then slides back up, closer and closer to the warm core.
And that's when she runs up against another hand. It's all she can do to bite her lips and stop herself from crying out. Breathe, she thinks, and sneaks a glance at Nathan. He's sitting perfectly normally; his lips are curved into the calm, complacent smile that he wears at these dinners like a uniform. Then he looks at her - so briefly she could have imagined it - and the fingers curve around her own. His thumb, softer than she ever would have expected, traces lines in her palm. His fingertips wrap around hers as if memorizing their shape for the first time.
Then he takes her hand in an effortlessly firm grip and guides it upward to Peter's erection, until it's sandwiched between the warm damp cloth and Nathan's warmer hand. She's never stroked Peter like this, fully clothed, but the action feels so intimate, like reading his secret thoughts. Nathan guides her, showing her how to cup and squeeze his balls, then slide upward and circle her thumb over his head. They fall into a steady rhythm, and for a brief bitter moment she wonders whether it's Peter's natural pace or Nathan's own. Somewhere in the distance, someone is saying "- still found time to be a beloved mother to her two sons," and Nathan is nodding at his mother, the model of a grateful, mature son. They're still stroking Peter, gradually speeding their pace; his expression still hasn't changed, but Claire can see his breaths coming fast and shallow, his eyes widening the way they do when he's about to orgasm.
And with that, the speaker finishes talking and the room bursts into applause, and Peter is shuddering and coming in his pants, coating her fingers through the fabric with a sticky residue. This is so fucked up, she thinks, and returns her hand to her own lap.
The final course of the meal is a fantasy of spun sugar, panna cotta, and blood-red raspberry sauce. Claire picks up the last fragments of sugar with her hand, places them in her mouth, and sucks her fingers clean. In the corner of her eye, she can see Peter flush.
By the time that the party finishes, Claire's too sleepy from alcohol and small talk to protest very much when Mrs. Petrelli suggests that she and Peter stay over. Everyone trails into guest rooms; Nathan helps Heidi into bed and banishes his kids (my half-siblings, she thinks, but that's too weird to think about for long) to somewhere quiet. In the spare bedroom, she undresses and slips on borrowed clothes from when Peter was her age, worn-thin boxers and a t-shirt for someone called the "Cocteau Twins." Cutting off thoughts about the evening, she tries to go to sleep.
It doesn't work. Eventually, long after the last of the caterers have left and the lights have gone out, she hears heavy footsteps walking down the hall, past her door. Claire slides out of bed and pulls open the door just in time to see Nathan turning a corner into the kitchen. Bare feet padding on the rug, she follows him at a distance and watches him from the edge of the doorway.
Claire's never seen him look this tired. Nathan pours himself a glass of milk and pops it in the microwave; once it's heating, he leans forward, elbows on the countertop, hands on his face, and breathes in harsh, arrhythmic pulses. The moment of raw vulnerability doesn't last. By the time that the microwave beeps, he's pulled out a bottle of whiskey, which goes into the hot milk, a quick shake distributing it evenly.
She steps forward, an uncertain smile on her face. "Can I have some of that, too?"
He looks up. "When you're old enough to buy liquor at a bar, you'll be old enough to drink yourself to sleep."
She walks up to him, close enough to touch his shoulder and see if his muscles feel as tense as they look, but turns at the last minute and pulls a glass out of the cupboard. As she fills it with filtered water from the tap, Claire speaks in a playful tone. "What do you suggest instead, then?"
Nathan swallows the rest of his whiskey and milk before replying and sets down his glass. His voice reflects none of her banter. "Claire, I need you to understand that you cannot flirt with me. Ever. Not here, not in public, not when you think we're alone. It's inappropriate, it's dangerous, and it's wrong."
This time, her voice is low and tinged with bitterness. "And what you do with Peter isn't wrong?"
"That's different."
"How?"
"Let me count the ways," he says, eyes hardening. "One, he's not a minor. Two, he can't get pregnant. Three, what he and I do is an occasional outlet, and you want more than that. And four, he knows how to avoid making a public spectacle of himself. Even my mother's noticed the way you've been acting around him; I've had to lie to her just to stop her from forcing one of you two out of the city. The slightest hint of that behavior toward me, and the investigations would start; I'd have to deal with accusations that could send me to jail."
She gives him a glare as good as the one she's getting. "So you do want to do it; you're just too scared of getting caught."
"Yes, I am scared," he says. "There's a reason I have a bodyguard; politicians have to be scared, or they never make it."
She doesn't know what to say to make this better, but she can't stop herself. "All I want to do is touch you. You and Peter. Please, Nathan - please let me?"
And it's the please that seems to break him, because he doesn't respond, just goes rigid. His hand still clutches the milk-painted glass. "Go to Peter, Claire," he says, but he won't meet her eyes.
Claire steps closer to him from behind, wraps her arms around his waist, and leans her head on his back. From here, she can feel the muscles in his back and ribcage, the secret pulses of his heart and lungs, and the warmth radiating through his shirt, but most intoxicating of all is his skin's scent, buried beneath the cologne and sweat of the evening. Breathing it in feels like coming home.
Through all this, Nathan doesn't move - not stiff and frozen, merely still. Waiting. Claire slows her breathing so she falls into his rhythm, and the two stand there, body against body, until she feels like she's sinking into his flesh. "I love you," she says, and he says nothing.
Three weeks later, when the weather's so hot that a sweltering wind blows in through the windows at night, Claire and Peter sit on the sofa, finishing up a game of Trivial Pursuit. She wins - mostly because Peter's crap at sports questions, which Claire finds hilarious in boys - and they end up making out on the couch, trying to avoid bending the scattered trivia cards. Peter's just unclasped the back of her bra, when they hear a knock on the door.
Not many people show up on Peter's doorstep at 2 AM, so Claire's unsurprised when she sees Nathan's silhouette; she doesn't even bother redoing her bra. Peter lets him in and locks the door behind them. "You okay?" he asks. Nathan doesn't answer; he just gives Peter one of those long looks that Claire still hasn't learned to decipher.
Peter's face softens in sympathy. "It's okay," Peter says, guiding Nathan to a chair in the kitchen. "It's going to be okay. Is it Heidi?"
"She said she'd divorce me," Nathan says, and he sits down and stares at his hands. "She said she'd finally do it, and do you know what I told her? I said, 'good luck paying for all that physical therapy on your own.' Peter, when did I become such a bastard?"
"Shhh," Peter says, squeezing his brother's shoulder. "It'll be okay. Want me to get you something to drink?"
Nathan raises his eyes to Peter; even from the couch, Claire can see how red they are. "Believe me, I've already had more than I should have." Then he casts a glance at Claire, taking her in for the first time. "I'm sorry. I'm intruding on your little love nest. I'll go."
"No, don't," Claire and Peter say simultaneously. It's almost funny. They move toward him as one - Peter to crouch at his height and embrace him, Claire to clasp his hand and stroke it, uncertain if she can go further.
Then Nathan twists his head around and kisses Peter on the lips, open-mouthed and shatteringly needy. He pulls away, a fraction of an inch, and says, "Touch her." For me, Claire can hear at the end.
Peter stands up and guides Claire to stand beside him. Tilting her chin up, he places a kiss on her mouth, then marks a trail down her throat, tipping her head back so he can taste her and mark her. His hands wrap behind her, sliding under her blouse and bra, and he pulls both off and over her head, leaving her nude above her jeans. Claire's nipples harden almost painfully - not because of the air, warm as Peter's breath, but because she can feel Nathan's eyes on her skin. His hands dig into the arms of his chair; he is otherwise motionless.
Claire unbuttons Peter's shirt, distracted by his fingers as they skim under the waistline of her jeans, touching her skin where it's milky and sensitive. Eventually they get each other's clothing open; there's a moment's pause for her to shimmy out of her jeans while Peter steps out of his own. Then they're standing naked, and Claire's skin prickles; she feels like she ought to feel self-conscious, but this is Nathan watching them. Peter's erection stands free, trapped between their stomachs, so she snakes a hand down and starts stroking him. She closes her eyes as she mouthes kisses onto his chest, imagining Nathan pressing against her from behind.
When Peter bends down to suck on her nipple, simultaneously sliding his fingers down to flicker over her clit and delve into her vagina, Claire lets out a whimper, spreading her legs wider for him and wondering how long she'll be able to support herself. She's already so wet that she glistens on Peter's hand.
Soon the question's moot; Peter lifts her and sets her on the kitchen table, spreading her knees wide apart. Claire leans backward, bracing herself with her arms for support, and Peter is kneeling before her, burying his head in her pussy and sliding his tongue down her slit, then up to circle her clitoris. As if that weren't enough, his change in position means that she can see Nathan's eyes again, boring into her, sliding over her breasts and waist and thighs like a physical touch. Claire's moaning please, arching herself to press harder onto Peter's face. Some frantic part of her wishes she had telepathy right now, but she can imagine exactly what Nathan's seeing: bare legs splayed apart, muscles taut, breasts quivering with each abortive thrust, and glimpses of swollen crimson folds whenever Peter shifts his head. Peter's fucking her with two fingers, now, and still lapping at her clitoris so hard she's dizzy with the desire to come.
"Please," she says, still looking into Nathan's eyes, and whether he's reading her thoughts or just knows her that well, Peter withdraws his fingers and stands up, nodding. He pulls her to an upright position and kisses her, his lips soft and damp with her own juices; distantly, she can hear the crackle of a condom being unwrapped, and she doesn't want to know where in the kitchen he's been storing it. Then, without preamble or warning, he's slamming his cock into her, filling her in the time it takes her to gasp yes.
He fucks her tenderly and relentlessly, making the table shift beneath them with every stroke. When Peter's not covering her face with earnest, imprecise kisses, she's looking over her shoulder, watching Nathan watch the two of them. His hands still haven't left the sides of the chair, but he's leaning forward slightly, and Claire shivers at the sweat shining on his face and the hunger in his eyes. "I'm going to come soon," Peter says unsteadily.
"Then do," she replies, looking straight back into his eyes. She clenches her hips tight around him, rocking back and forth to meet him in time with his thrusts. Before long, Peter tips his head back and clenches his face in a wordless oh, pounding into her with final arrhythmic desperation, and Claire lets herself go, feeling the waves of orgasm ripple over her and shuddering into his arms.
They hold each other for a moment, feeling the air cool their skins. Claire looks up from Peter's shoulder, and in Nathan's eyes she can see something more than a question and less than a demand. Peter catches and follows her gaze, withdrawing from her and twisting around to read his brother's silent entreaty. He nods.
With movements so casual he has to have practiced them a hundred times, Peter kneels at Nathan's feet and undoes the fly of his pants, never breaking contact with his eyes. When Peter slides Nathan's cock out of his boxers and into his mouth, Nathan closes his eyes for a moment, a whisper of a self-indulgent smile on his face. "That's really good, Pete," he murmurs.
Claire can see Peter's lips stretched until they're pale, swallowing until his nose presses against Nathan's groin, then sliding back out with a slick pop. He rocks back and forth on his knees, humming muffled encouragement, until Nathan's breathing speeds up and his eyelashes flutter, torn between watching Peter and closing in pleasure. By the time that Claire realizes he's coming, it's over; Peter is standing up, licking his lips and kissing Nathan, utterly unselfconscious of his own nude body against Nathan's fully-clothed form.
Nathan buttons himself up, shifts as if about to stand, then sinks back down into the chair, oddly vulnerable. "Stay here," Peter says, holding out one hand.
"It's just us," Claire says and offers her own hand.
Nathan looks from one face to another, hesitates for a moment, then clasps both of their arms. "Petrellis do stick together, don't they," he says in a dry voice, and he pulls himself up to join them.
finis.