heidi8
in
pear_vodka
FIC: HEROES - Four Months, Four Holidays (Petrelli-centric, PG)
Title: Four Months, Four Holidays
Author: heidi8
Genre: Gen
Characters/Pairings: Nathan/Heidi, somewhat
Spoilers: All of S1, S2.01
Rating: PG, at most
Word Count: 1500 or so
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended; fair use only. Not created for profit.
The last few years, they've spent Halloween out in the Hudson River Valley, but this year, with the election only days away, Nathan's insisted they stay in the city. He takes the boys trick-or-treating by elevator, and they stop at every apartment in the building that has a cut-out pumpkin by the door. The doormen have been handing them out all week, and this is the first year that Heidi's hung one up. She sits by the door with a tiara on and a feathered Venetian mask in her hand and the boys come by three times in their pirate costumes, pretending to ambush her for chocolates.
She unwraps a tiny Crunch and pops it into Nathan's mouth as he leans in for a kiss before he sprints down the hall to chase them again. Next she chooses a fat, pink piece of bubble gum, and then another so when they come back again at the end of the night, she makes them laugh by blowing massive bubbles for the boys to pop. Nathan hasn't really been campaigning tonight - it's assumed that everyone in the building will vote for him or at least lie about it - and it's been a nice break for everyone.
A few more days, she thinks, and then this campaign will be over and we can get back to normal. She doesn't expect him to win, the polls are making both of them pessimistic, and she knows the real reason Nathan's running in the first place. So when he does win, only a few hours after she's miraculously able to walk again, she wonders what's happened to change her life so completely.
She resolves to ask Nathan about it as soon as he arrives at the Cape, but he never gets there.
Nathan isn't home for Thanksgiving. He says he's looking for Peter, but why he thinks he can find him in Bermuda, Heidi doesn't know. Angela, who usually plans a sumptuous and mostly-formal mid-afternoon dinner, agrees to join Heidi's family in Upper Merion but she is so quiet, even in the face of the boys' rambunctiousness, that Heidi wonders if celebrating anything was a good idea this soon, even if the dinner is relatively low-key.
It's better to be out of the city right now anyway. The press has been at Angela's townhouse and outside their apartment building almost constantly since Nathan announced that he would not take his seat among the New York delegation, but they can't get close enough to the Hudson Valley house to be much of a nuisance. They've gone leaf-jumping and apple-picking and horseback-riding, and a driver's been taking the boys to Westchester for school each morning and bringing them back home every afternoon.
It's good for her recuperation - she has a physical therapist every afternoon, a masseuse every other day, and a doctor who visits on Tuesdays and Fridays.
She doesn't really need any of it.
She's been out of the wheelchair for a few weeks now, and her doctor in the city doesn't understand it, and frankly, she doesn't either, but she's not going to think about that now. The PT and the trainer are helping; even if technically, she's completely healed, her stamina isn't what it was. She wants to be able to go on a long run with Nathan again, or go to the shore and walk the Boardwalk from end to end, even in the November cold. She will take him to their bed and remind him of everything they haven't done in almost seven months.
She will distract him from his grief.
Or, at least, she will when she sees him again, whenever he comes back from chasing this lead that she's sure is false. For this moment, it's a pleasure to sit on the floor, jump up to get the boys more train tracks, crawl across the room to find a particular block, and especially to stand up and reach to the stereo to turn on some Christmas tunes.
They always go to pick out a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, but she tells the boys, this year they're going to wait for Daddy to get home before they go.
Heidi insists they go out for New Year's Eve. She plans to meet Nathan at the pied-a-tierre after eight, after she's left the boys behind at Angela's with the nanny (no, of course she doesn't trust Angela alone with the boys, not with the year she's had and the grief she's consumed by), so they can make it a romantic evening, rediscover their marriage and mark the end of this terrible, terrifying year and the start of a new - and hopefully less tragic - one with friends at a party only a few blocks away.
But she walks in and while she'd hoped to find Nathan in the shower or even getting dressed in front of the TV, he's bleary-eyed in the armchair in a darkened corner of the living room, staring out the window down to Midtown. The Kirby Building is lit in blue and a giant snowflake hangs down each side, illuminating the snow as it falls.
She kisses him and touches the beard that he started growing about a month ago. "One hour warning," she tells him, then makes her move. "But if you meet me in our room, we can make the time fly!" He looks up and says he'll be there in a few minutes and her hopes are high that tonight will be the night the finally reconnect. She won't even mind if they're late to the party, or if they miss it entirely.
Heidi's hardly been in the apartment since the election. Nathan's called her five nights out of seven, though, making an excuse to stay in the city - Angela needs him, there's a lead on Peter, he has a meeting with someone from the DA's office, all sorts of reasons why he can't come home, to her. She got suspicious a few weeks ago and popped by the apartment mid-afternoon, laden down with bags from Christmas shopping, but the apartment was empty. The maid seemed to be doing such a good job that if she didn't know better, she'd have thought Nathan hadn't slept there in days.
But that's staff efficiency - the place is supposed to feel like a hotel, where every day everything is newly scrubbed and refreshed - and at least he wasn't in bed with anyone else and there was no half-empty box of condoms in the nightstand or the bathroom, so she'd passed off her suspicions as a misdirected assessment of Nathan's grief over Peter, scribbled a quick "I love you!" note and left it on under the duvet, on top of his pillow.
He hadn't mentioned it, and neither had she, when he came out to the country two days before Christmas, and she was so consumed with the boys over the holiday that she really forgot to bring it up herself, so it's a shock when she goes into the bedroom to pull the covers down and slip between them, but finds the note, completely untouched, atop his pillow.
He's moved out of the Hudson Valley house on Epiphany, and isn't that ironic?
He says he's staying at the pied-a-tierre, but she doesn't believe him anymore, and it almost doesn't matter. He meets the boys at school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the driver takes them for pizza or Chinese in Westchester and the boys are home before seven o'clock every time. She cuddles and tickles and reads to them for an hour or so before they're smiling and laughing again, and when she asks what they talked about with their dad, they say, "Stuff."
Angela comes out every Friday evening and leaves every Sunday morning, but she's hardly seen Nathan at all. He leaves messages sometimes, asking her to send a specific book or photo album or left-behind shirt with the driver, and she always does so. When a change-of-address confirmation shows up from the postal service, she realizes where her husband is staying.
He's at Peter's apartment, the apartment that must still be full of everything that was Peter's. Nathan had sworn that he would box everything up - donate the clothing, put the books in storage, sell the electronic gadgets on eBay, whatever needed to be done. She'd offered to help, all those months ago, but he'd promised he would do it all himself.
He must have been lying.
So that's where she leaves him, in her mind. Sitting and probably drinking his way through the bottles of wine and tequila and Jack Daniels that people had brought to Peter's party last spring, surrounded by his dead brother's left-behind life, waiting for the return of someone who is gone, who will never come back.
Author's Note: Yes, it was weird as hell to write a fic about a character named Heidi, and I kept typo-ing it and writing Heisi and Hiede and isn't that disturbing? Thanks to gwendolyngrace for beta and feedback and to longtimegone for emotional support
Author: heidi8
Genre: Gen
Characters/Pairings: Nathan/Heidi, somewhat
Spoilers: All of S1, S2.01
Rating: PG, at most
Word Count: 1500 or so
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended; fair use only. Not created for profit.
The last few years, they've spent Halloween out in the Hudson River Valley, but this year, with the election only days away, Nathan's insisted they stay in the city. He takes the boys trick-or-treating by elevator, and they stop at every apartment in the building that has a cut-out pumpkin by the door. The doormen have been handing them out all week, and this is the first year that Heidi's hung one up. She sits by the door with a tiara on and a feathered Venetian mask in her hand and the boys come by three times in their pirate costumes, pretending to ambush her for chocolates.
She unwraps a tiny Crunch and pops it into Nathan's mouth as he leans in for a kiss before he sprints down the hall to chase them again. Next she chooses a fat, pink piece of bubble gum, and then another so when they come back again at the end of the night, she makes them laugh by blowing massive bubbles for the boys to pop. Nathan hasn't really been campaigning tonight - it's assumed that everyone in the building will vote for him or at least lie about it - and it's been a nice break for everyone.
A few more days, she thinks, and then this campaign will be over and we can get back to normal. She doesn't expect him to win, the polls are making both of them pessimistic, and she knows the real reason Nathan's running in the first place. So when he does win, only a few hours after she's miraculously able to walk again, she wonders what's happened to change her life so completely.
She resolves to ask Nathan about it as soon as he arrives at the Cape, but he never gets there.
Nathan isn't home for Thanksgiving. He says he's looking for Peter, but why he thinks he can find him in Bermuda, Heidi doesn't know. Angela, who usually plans a sumptuous and mostly-formal mid-afternoon dinner, agrees to join Heidi's family in Upper Merion but she is so quiet, even in the face of the boys' rambunctiousness, that Heidi wonders if celebrating anything was a good idea this soon, even if the dinner is relatively low-key.
It's better to be out of the city right now anyway. The press has been at Angela's townhouse and outside their apartment building almost constantly since Nathan announced that he would not take his seat among the New York delegation, but they can't get close enough to the Hudson Valley house to be much of a nuisance. They've gone leaf-jumping and apple-picking and horseback-riding, and a driver's been taking the boys to Westchester for school each morning and bringing them back home every afternoon.
It's good for her recuperation - she has a physical therapist every afternoon, a masseuse every other day, and a doctor who visits on Tuesdays and Fridays.
She doesn't really need any of it.
She's been out of the wheelchair for a few weeks now, and her doctor in the city doesn't understand it, and frankly, she doesn't either, but she's not going to think about that now. The PT and the trainer are helping; even if technically, she's completely healed, her stamina isn't what it was. She wants to be able to go on a long run with Nathan again, or go to the shore and walk the Boardwalk from end to end, even in the November cold. She will take him to their bed and remind him of everything they haven't done in almost seven months.
She will distract him from his grief.
Or, at least, she will when she sees him again, whenever he comes back from chasing this lead that she's sure is false. For this moment, it's a pleasure to sit on the floor, jump up to get the boys more train tracks, crawl across the room to find a particular block, and especially to stand up and reach to the stereo to turn on some Christmas tunes.
They always go to pick out a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, but she tells the boys, this year they're going to wait for Daddy to get home before they go.
Heidi insists they go out for New Year's Eve. She plans to meet Nathan at the pied-a-tierre after eight, after she's left the boys behind at Angela's with the nanny (no, of course she doesn't trust Angela alone with the boys, not with the year she's had and the grief she's consumed by), so they can make it a romantic evening, rediscover their marriage and mark the end of this terrible, terrifying year and the start of a new - and hopefully less tragic - one with friends at a party only a few blocks away.
But she walks in and while she'd hoped to find Nathan in the shower or even getting dressed in front of the TV, he's bleary-eyed in the armchair in a darkened corner of the living room, staring out the window down to Midtown. The Kirby Building is lit in blue and a giant snowflake hangs down each side, illuminating the snow as it falls.
She kisses him and touches the beard that he started growing about a month ago. "One hour warning," she tells him, then makes her move. "But if you meet me in our room, we can make the time fly!" He looks up and says he'll be there in a few minutes and her hopes are high that tonight will be the night the finally reconnect. She won't even mind if they're late to the party, or if they miss it entirely.
Heidi's hardly been in the apartment since the election. Nathan's called her five nights out of seven, though, making an excuse to stay in the city - Angela needs him, there's a lead on Peter, he has a meeting with someone from the DA's office, all sorts of reasons why he can't come home, to her. She got suspicious a few weeks ago and popped by the apartment mid-afternoon, laden down with bags from Christmas shopping, but the apartment was empty. The maid seemed to be doing such a good job that if she didn't know better, she'd have thought Nathan hadn't slept there in days.
But that's staff efficiency - the place is supposed to feel like a hotel, where every day everything is newly scrubbed and refreshed - and at least he wasn't in bed with anyone else and there was no half-empty box of condoms in the nightstand or the bathroom, so she'd passed off her suspicions as a misdirected assessment of Nathan's grief over Peter, scribbled a quick "I love you!" note and left it on under the duvet, on top of his pillow.
He hadn't mentioned it, and neither had she, when he came out to the country two days before Christmas, and she was so consumed with the boys over the holiday that she really forgot to bring it up herself, so it's a shock when she goes into the bedroom to pull the covers down and slip between them, but finds the note, completely untouched, atop his pillow.
He's moved out of the Hudson Valley house on Epiphany, and isn't that ironic?
He says he's staying at the pied-a-tierre, but she doesn't believe him anymore, and it almost doesn't matter. He meets the boys at school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the driver takes them for pizza or Chinese in Westchester and the boys are home before seven o'clock every time. She cuddles and tickles and reads to them for an hour or so before they're smiling and laughing again, and when she asks what they talked about with their dad, they say, "Stuff."
Angela comes out every Friday evening and leaves every Sunday morning, but she's hardly seen Nathan at all. He leaves messages sometimes, asking her to send a specific book or photo album or left-behind shirt with the driver, and she always does so. When a change-of-address confirmation shows up from the postal service, she realizes where her husband is staying.
He's at Peter's apartment, the apartment that must still be full of everything that was Peter's. Nathan had sworn that he would box everything up - donate the clothing, put the books in storage, sell the electronic gadgets on eBay, whatever needed to be done. She'd offered to help, all those months ago, but he'd promised he would do it all himself.
He must have been lying.
So that's where she leaves him, in her mind. Sitting and probably drinking his way through the bottles of wine and tequila and Jack Daniels that people had brought to Peter's party last spring, surrounded by his dead brother's left-behind life, waiting for the return of someone who is gone, who will never come back.
Author's Note: Yes, it was weird as hell to write a fic about a character named Heidi, and I kept typo-ing it and writing Heisi and Hiede and isn't that disturbing? Thanks to gwendolyngrace for beta and feedback and to longtimegone for emotional support