Fic: Paper and Ink, Nathan/Peter, PG-13
Title: Paper and Ink
Author: Corona
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Peter/Nathan
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Incest
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: How many pictures make something inevitable.
Peter can see what he's drawing, there's a moment between every blank page where the world slides back and he can see the picture. One long snapshot before his hand starts on the next.
There's no conscious thought involved, he knows this because he wouldn't draw this, jesus he wouldn't draw this. Every curving line of flesh is smoother than the last. Every picture that comes after the one before it is more exact, clearer and with bolder, braver lines.
They become more real, more alive, the ragged stick-like figures become smooth lines and folded limbs, shaded and perfected until there's no question left who he's drawing, what he's drawing. What he's drawing is some sort of insanity.
How many pictures make something inevitable? Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred? Jesus the carpet is littered with them and it's like a seizure he can't fucking stop.
"This doesn't happen..." His voice is thin, the words sound cracked and strange...and he has to be lying because this is all his hand wants to draw, all his eyes can see when the world slides away, and it's vivid enough to be real; vivid enough to have happened already. The smear of pencil on the side of his hand feels like a betrayal, like someone else has taken over his skin. Someone who's scratching twisted visions of a future that's impossible and unthinkable. A future that's obscene.
He angrily shoves the pad off of his knee with a picture half drawn, lets it thump to the floor it's pages splayed and bent and curved enough to show him the edges of his last drawing, to show pencil drawn fingers dug into the soft edges of flesh and he thinks he could see it under a thousand pages. The edge of his fingers slide over what's left of the undrawn sheets, smoothes across blank paper, turning the pad just enough so the whole picture is exposed, every drawn line.
"Stop doing this to me!" He tells no one at all and hurls the pencil against the wall, watches it snap into splinters, watches it clatter and drift to the floor and disappear into the carpet.
He yanks the picture out of the pad, frayed and untidy and bent from it's fall, and rips it in rough, angry, frustrated movements, rips it until there's nothing left. Until it's just falling from his fingers in tiny pieces.
He drags every half torn picture that's in reach and destroys it utterly, removes any hint that it was ever drawn, that it ever existed and his teeth are clenched so hard his jaw aches but there's too much behind his teeth to do anything else.
He tears every piece he can find, wrenching paper until it's so small it won't tear anymore, until he has to let the pieces fall apart and rip them one at a time, crush them in his hands until there's nothing left but lead smeared confetti and the dark grey of his own fingers.
Until he's left in the middle of it all, hand dug in his own hair, foot crushing what's left of the sketchpad.
He's still there when Nathan appears in the doorway, holding keys and his own coat, eyebrow raised at where Peter's sat with an expression of patient enquiry. He looks like nothing less than the Angel of fucking Judgement.
"So now you're a temperamental artist?"
Peter's still sitting among the wreck of tangled scrunched balls and pea sized pieces of paper. They're strewn around him in a way that's, if nothing else, evidence of his own madness.
"It's not me," Peter tells him, which is a fucking lie, because his hand aches and he can still feel every single picture in the way the edge of his hand is shiny and grey from sliding across paper. "It's not me!" He tells Nathan again, which pulls something taut and worried into Nathan's expressions.
"What's not you? Peter what have you been doing?" Peter tilts his head until he can gesture at the mess scattered around him, a loose, lost gesture that ends abruptly when there's no more to gesture at. He must look like hell because Nathan's frown deepens, makes his face both harder and softer at the same time.
"Peter?"
"I keep drawing the same thing." Peter says softly. "I can't make it stop, I can't draw anything else, I can't do anything else."
Nathan steps carefully through the papery debris, crouches to scour the pieces but Peter doesn't think he's left anything big enough in the wreckage to show what he's been drawing, anything that isn't torn into tiny pieces or wrenched and twisted into tiny mangled white balls. Nathan's intent though, eyes serious, because he knows what the first paintings started, what they promised. Peter has to laugh, soft and helpless because this is nothing like that, this isn't explosions and fire and death this is...this is worse.
Nathan's on one knee next to him, frowning over Peter's laughter, one hand looped easily round the back of his neck, and his face is so determined that it's impossible to look anywhere else.
"Peter what have you been drawing?"
He lifts the book, drags one of the pens off of the table...and this time it's easy, it's.....born of frenzied practice and surrender. The picture falls free in a collection of lines and curves, and Peter doesn't need to see the future to make them real, to make it disturbingly real. He can feel Nathan watching him; watching the drift of his eyes, gone white and deep and faraway, but he could draw this without needing to see.
He tears the picture off of the pad and hands it to his brother without a word.
"Jesus," Nathan says softly, all the air just falling out of him in that one shocked word.
The silence goes on for too long, far too long.
"Say something," Peter's voice is quiet but desperate.
"Do you..." Nathan's voice is lost somewhere in the space of Peter's apartment, he finds it again after a long tense moment. "Do you want this?"
It's such a simple question, with such a simple answer. All he has to do is breathe a 'no.' Steal the paper from Nathan's loose fingers and tear it into a hundred pieces. All he has to do is say 'no.'
All he has to do is lie.
Author: Corona
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Peter/Nathan
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Incest
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: How many pictures make something inevitable.
Peter can see what he's drawing, there's a moment between every blank page where the world slides back and he can see the picture. One long snapshot before his hand starts on the next.
There's no conscious thought involved, he knows this because he wouldn't draw this, jesus he wouldn't draw this. Every curving line of flesh is smoother than the last. Every picture that comes after the one before it is more exact, clearer and with bolder, braver lines.
They become more real, more alive, the ragged stick-like figures become smooth lines and folded limbs, shaded and perfected until there's no question left who he's drawing, what he's drawing. What he's drawing is some sort of insanity.
How many pictures make something inevitable? Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred? Jesus the carpet is littered with them and it's like a seizure he can't fucking stop.
"This doesn't happen..." His voice is thin, the words sound cracked and strange...and he has to be lying because this is all his hand wants to draw, all his eyes can see when the world slides away, and it's vivid enough to be real; vivid enough to have happened already. The smear of pencil on the side of his hand feels like a betrayal, like someone else has taken over his skin. Someone who's scratching twisted visions of a future that's impossible and unthinkable. A future that's obscene.
He angrily shoves the pad off of his knee with a picture half drawn, lets it thump to the floor it's pages splayed and bent and curved enough to show him the edges of his last drawing, to show pencil drawn fingers dug into the soft edges of flesh and he thinks he could see it under a thousand pages. The edge of his fingers slide over what's left of the undrawn sheets, smoothes across blank paper, turning the pad just enough so the whole picture is exposed, every drawn line.
"Stop doing this to me!" He tells no one at all and hurls the pencil against the wall, watches it snap into splinters, watches it clatter and drift to the floor and disappear into the carpet.
He yanks the picture out of the pad, frayed and untidy and bent from it's fall, and rips it in rough, angry, frustrated movements, rips it until there's nothing left. Until it's just falling from his fingers in tiny pieces.
He drags every half torn picture that's in reach and destroys it utterly, removes any hint that it was ever drawn, that it ever existed and his teeth are clenched so hard his jaw aches but there's too much behind his teeth to do anything else.
He tears every piece he can find, wrenching paper until it's so small it won't tear anymore, until he has to let the pieces fall apart and rip them one at a time, crush them in his hands until there's nothing left but lead smeared confetti and the dark grey of his own fingers.
Until he's left in the middle of it all, hand dug in his own hair, foot crushing what's left of the sketchpad.
He's still there when Nathan appears in the doorway, holding keys and his own coat, eyebrow raised at where Peter's sat with an expression of patient enquiry. He looks like nothing less than the Angel of fucking Judgement.
"So now you're a temperamental artist?"
Peter's still sitting among the wreck of tangled scrunched balls and pea sized pieces of paper. They're strewn around him in a way that's, if nothing else, evidence of his own madness.
"It's not me," Peter tells him, which is a fucking lie, because his hand aches and he can still feel every single picture in the way the edge of his hand is shiny and grey from sliding across paper. "It's not me!" He tells Nathan again, which pulls something taut and worried into Nathan's expressions.
"What's not you? Peter what have you been doing?" Peter tilts his head until he can gesture at the mess scattered around him, a loose, lost gesture that ends abruptly when there's no more to gesture at. He must look like hell because Nathan's frown deepens, makes his face both harder and softer at the same time.
"Peter?"
"I keep drawing the same thing." Peter says softly. "I can't make it stop, I can't draw anything else, I can't do anything else."
Nathan steps carefully through the papery debris, crouches to scour the pieces but Peter doesn't think he's left anything big enough in the wreckage to show what he's been drawing, anything that isn't torn into tiny pieces or wrenched and twisted into tiny mangled white balls. Nathan's intent though, eyes serious, because he knows what the first paintings started, what they promised. Peter has to laugh, soft and helpless because this is nothing like that, this isn't explosions and fire and death this is...this is worse.
Nathan's on one knee next to him, frowning over Peter's laughter, one hand looped easily round the back of his neck, and his face is so determined that it's impossible to look anywhere else.
"Peter what have you been drawing?"
He lifts the book, drags one of the pens off of the table...and this time it's easy, it's.....born of frenzied practice and surrender. The picture falls free in a collection of lines and curves, and Peter doesn't need to see the future to make them real, to make it disturbingly real. He can feel Nathan watching him; watching the drift of his eyes, gone white and deep and faraway, but he could draw this without needing to see.
He tears the picture off of the pad and hands it to his brother without a word.
"Jesus," Nathan says softly, all the air just falling out of him in that one shocked word.
The silence goes on for too long, far too long.
"Say something," Peter's voice is quiet but desperate.
"Do you..." Nathan's voice is lost somewhere in the space of Peter's apartment, he finds it again after a long tense moment. "Do you want this?"
It's such a simple question, with such a simple answer. All he has to do is breathe a 'no.' Steal the paper from Nathan's loose fingers and tear it into a hundred pieces. All he has to do is say 'no.'
All he has to do is lie.