[Heroes/Survivor] May you die with all your work complete (Nathan/Peter, NC-17)
Title: May you die with all your work complete
Fandom: Heroes/Survivor [novel by Chuck Palahniuk]
Pairing: Nathan/Peter
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Incest, angst, underage sex, strange religious cults.
Spoiler: None for Heroes. A lot for Survivor.
Word Count: 2549 (W)
Notes: If you haven't read the novel, you will probably lose something. But if you don't think you'll want to read it (or don't care having part of the plot spoiled), I'm adding a few notes to make the references clear. And, of course, I took some liberty from the novel.
Thanks to: snopes_faith, the amazing beta I keep feeding with unbearable angst and doesn't ever complain.
Notes:
In the Creedish cult, every male firstborn is given the name Adam, while all the others are given the name Tender. All the daughters are called Biddy. All the Tenders (and all the Biddies who don’t marry any Adam) are sent to work in the outside world and they’ll receive only food and an accommodation for the rest of their life, while the Church gets the profits. They’re called “labour missionaries” and must live in chastity. When the Church members feel that the Apocalypse is coming, they “deliver themselves to God” and all the Tenders and the Biddies all over the world must do the same the moment they hear the news. It’s called The Deliverance.
+ + +
Nathan cuts your hair with a pair of long scissors that look like shears and shortens your sideburns trying to keep them the same length. In the meanwhile, he explains to you what the outside world is like.
He tells you about the noise the cars make when they run all together down the road, like a hundred horses galloping free on a plain, and their horns shouting against each other like enraged animals. He tells you to be careful, because people inside the cars are sinners, slaves of the things they possess, and that’s why they won’t mind running over you if you don’t pay attention. He tells you about televisions, that hypnotize and numb people and make them believe whatever they want - that’s why you won’t have one, nor you will stop and look at the ones exposed in the shops.
He tells you that people in the outside world talk without looking at each other and look without seeing, because they’re always guilty of something, and they are afraid people will read it right on their faces. But they’ll look at you, Nathan says chopping your too long bangs, and you’ll ignore what they tell you because it will be all bullshit.
He says right so: bullshit. You think he means “falsities inspired by the Devil”, but sometimes, when the two of you are alone, Nathan swears. You think it’s against the Church’s rules, but there are things - many things - you can turn a blind eye to.
“And the most important thing,” continues Nathan, while a thick tuft falls upon your nose, “is that you must always, always remember that I love you.”
Nathan with his square jaw and his big light eyes and his too long eyelashes. Nathan with the long and white scar on his jaw - when he was fifteen he fell from the tractor and cut his face with a spade. He’s twelve years older than you. All your siblings between the two of you, you don’t know how many, died at birth or right after, and eventually your mother died in giving birth to you.
You know your father never forgave you for this, even if he’s always said it was God’s will to summon her. You know he didn’t forgive you because it’s your fault that the Petrelli family has only two sons, and the other families make fun of you, or worse, pity you. But Father is proud of Nathan, who already has three children, a girl and two boys, and a healthy and tough wife who looks like she can give him other four or five.
You instead, you are seventeen and your bus is going to leave tomorrow. The Elders of the Church told you you’re going to make the world a better place - because this is what the Church does, it improves the world one piece at time, sending its Peters and its Angelas to work and construct the earthly paradise that was prophesied.
And you believe in this, because you want whole-heartedly to improve the world and make it the wonderful place they told you, and you want to work and work for your great purpose until you can’t stand. But when Nathan speaks like that you don’t know anymore, you feel nothing but a sharp pain in your chest and you suddenly run out of air.
You don’t want to go. You know it’s the right thing to do - the only possible one - but it can’t be if it hurts so much. There must me something wrong with you.
The crickets chirp in the high grass and the air gets colder. Your tufts keep falling regularly.
“Nathan,” you mutter, with your closed eyelids to avoid the cut hair getting into your eyes. “You want to do it tonight?”
The scissors’ ticking stops, and with it the rain of hair. You half-open your eyelids, uncertainly. Nathan’s lips are clenched in a thin line.
You don’t even know how to call this thing, you’ve never known. The first time, Nathan told you that it didn’t have a name. He told you he loved you and everything was alright if you wanted it, but if you didn’t, it was alright just the same - he still loved you. He’d always love you the same way. You asked him if this was the same thing he did with his wife and he told you she had nothing, nothing to do with this. That this would be just for the two of you. And you felt like dying, because it was the first time somebody promised you something yours.
You fully open your eyes. Nathan’s put down the scissors and you have no idea what you look like. There aren’t mirrors in your house, and you’ve not seen your reflection since that night Nathan said you were beautiful and the day after you ran and looked at yourself in the river. But the face in the water wasn’t beautiful nor ugly, just as trivial as the rest of you.
You want to feel Nathan’s hands on your body and the smell of hay and sperm mixed together. You want to suck the saliva from his tongue and hear him say that you’re beautiful, that you’re important, that you’re loved. That nobody will ever be as loved as you are. You want to open your legs for him and feel him deep inside, feel him make you burn like a torch and melt you with pleasure.
Twenty-nine, with his arms strengthened by the work in the farm, Nathan could do anything he wants to you. Instead he strokes your smooth cheek with the palm of his hand and kisses your mouth the way he’d kiss your forehead, slow and calm with his lips still against yours. You slightly open yours, leaning a hand on his nape and inhaling his smell of wool and hay.
You want to do it against the wall, with your legs around Nathan’s hips and the rough wall scratching your back.
“In the hayloft?” you whisper, feeling Nathan’s fingers stroking your belly. You hardly repress a shiver. You’re a pervert, a dissolute, you’ll burn in Hell and all your work won’t be enough to save your depraved soul. You’ll work and work until God summons you, but it won’t be enough, never enough.
You want to take Nathan’s virility in your mouth and suck it until his semen fills your throat.
“Yes. Come,” whispers Nathan, hurriedly, and the two of you rise up leaving the scissors and your hair on the steps. In the street there isn’t anybody while you turn around your house’s corner and find the entrance of the hayloft. Nathan closes it from inside, very carefully.
At home he should keep a hand on your mouth for the whole time, and even so you’d risk your father or his wife and the kids to hear you. Here instead, you can be as noisy as you want - and even if you never get used to the way your voice sounds when you say that things Nathan likes so much, you like saying them anyway, you like how wrong and sinful they sound in your mouth, and you like their effect on Nathan.
You take off your shirt, made with that rough wool that tingles all the time, and you feel Nathan’s glance on you across the darkness, his steps and his breath that finally joins your mouth. You hug him and feel the same wool of his shirt tingle against your fingers. You pull it from his back to touch his skin, and Nathan sucks your lips and squeezes your ass in his hands, lifting you slightly and pulling you closer.
You know sex should horrify you, even if you can’t remember why. You know it’s dirty, it’s wrong - not because this is Nathan, not because this is your brother, it’s just so and you shouldn’t do it in any case. You know it’s not for you.
But your body thinks differently, and when Nathan pushes you on the nearest haystack, you close your arms around him and open your legs to let him touch you. You must be the only Peter in the Church district who does such a thing. You think about it every time, and every time it gives you shivers.
“God,” you murmur, when Nathan’s hand encloses around your cock and starts stroking it slowly. “Oh, god, Nathan, please.”
“Do not call Him in vain,” Nathan mutters, severely.
You reach out and let your hand slip inside his trousers, your fingertips touching the hair around the base. It’s not true. Nathan likes hearing you swear, because only he can make you feel so good to make you forget how bad you are any time you do. Only he can bring you so out of yourself to make you forget everything they taught you. You’d die if anyone else heard you. If Nathan himself heard you, in another time and situation. But here and now, it seems just the right thing to do.
“Fuck me,” you whisper. It was Nathan who taught you this word - this one and all the others. “Please, Nathan, please, just fuck me.”
You cling to the slippery heap of hay beneath you, while Nathan takes off your roughly hewn leather shoes, your socks, trousers and pants. You stick your feet in the hay and wait to hear the rustling of Nathan’s clothes when he strips. You can’t see anything, and if you can picture Nathan’s naked shape laying upon you, it’s just imagination and memory, because the darkness wraps the two of you completely.
When Nathan spits on his fingers, you tremble with expectation and wait to damn another little piece of your soul.
“I’ll come and see you,” he says while a finger enters in you with very little gentleness. “I’ll have your address. I’ll come any time I can.”
You nod and don’t believe him, because you’ve never heard of a guy of the Church district, a Nathan with wife and kids, leaving his house to go and see his brother. You wouldn’t ever ask him such a thing.
“I’ll come,” repeats Nathan, and you imagine him frowning. He sticks another finger in - it hurts but you don’t protest. You take your knees in your hands, trying not to think about it. “I’ll come and fuck you in the daylight, Peter. I promise.”
You smile breathlessly. “And you’ll kiss me on the mouth in the middle of the street? Among the people?” Nathan told you that people out of the Church district use to do it, and nobody’s surprised.
“Yes,” answers Nathan, his fingers moving inside you and stretching and burning - but Nathan can do anything he wants to you. “Yes, I promise.”
And even if you don’t believe a single word, you cling to this thought while Nathan lifts your legs and enters quickly, stealing from you a long moan that becomes a cry. He’s not gentle, Nathan, he never is, but the two of you always have too much work and too little time, and you are good at dealing with pain. You’ve never been a snivelling child. Your father would have sent you to sleep in the cold with the pigs.
It’s a torrent of obscenities that escapes from your mouth while Nathan fucks you, a sequence of swear words and invocations you would never say if you hadn’t your brother on you and your cradle in the hay didn’t look so warm and comfortable, sheltered from God’s ears. Nathan keeps a hand around the back of your thigh and the other one between your legs, and you feel your head so light and your body so heavy that it seems like you’re sinking in the hay while your thoughts fly away.
In the end it’s all here, you think, all you have: Nathan and your fucks in the hayloft. And tomorrow you’re going to lose it all and you’ll be alone with yourself - your person that’s not even yours - and you’ll invent monologues and work unceasingly for the rest of your life. And Nathan will never come and visit you, because they won’t let him, and every day you’ll wonder if he’s dead or alive.
One day, if you’re lucky, you’ll receive the news of the Deliverance and you’ll swallow a bottle of dish soap and you’ll know that, with doing that, God has forgiven you. But at the moment you couldn’t care less about God’s forgiveness. God will never love you as much as Nathan does.
Nathan hugs you, taking the hay from your hair and wipes your face with his fingers. He kisses your forehead. Your ass stings and tomorrow it’ll make your eyes wet at every step, but Nathan is warm and solid and you cling to him without complaining. Eventually, you find the strength to tell him.
“I-I don’t wanna go. Nathan, please. I don’t wanna go away.”
“Don’t be a baby,” he mutters.
“I feel...”, you swallow, “I feel like this isn’t the right thing for me. This isn’t my d-destiny.”
“Of course it is,” he replies patiently. “You know, Peter. You know the rules.”
“Fuck the rules, Nathan! It’s easy for you, you have a wife and three children and you can do whatever you want and...”
Nathan leans a hand on your nape, pulling you back on the hay. He’s not gentle, he never is with you. Your voice fades in your throat.
“Don’t say it again,” murmurs Nathan. “Don’t say it again that it’s easy for me, Peter, or I’ll wash out your mouth with soap.”
You close your eyes so tightly that tears can’t slip out. Nathan runs a hand through your short hair and keeps stroking it until you’ve lost any wish to cry and your breath gets calm and regular.
“Let’s pray a little together. Would you?”
You answer ‘yes’ weakly.
Later, when Nathan is sleeping, you collect your clothes and shoes in the darkness and climb on the little stairs that bring to the roof of the hayloft. If your counts are right, there will be enough confusion for Nathan to get dressed and exit without anyone noticing.
Your father will say that you were given God’s Call in your slumber, that he heard you stepping down the corridor but didn’t stop you because, if God’s will was such, it had to be fulfilled. But really he will be pale with rage, and he will curse you until the end of his days for escaping your duty.
The wind blows and bites slipping underneath your clothes, refreshing your skin congested by Nathan’s kisses and irritated by the hay. Since it’s not rained in weeks, the ground will be as hard and thick as concrete.
You close your eyes and say loudly: “Praise and glory to the Lord for this day…”. You stop, uncertainly. You know how it continues, but there are other words that push to exit. “Please, Lord, if you can, make it not hurt too much. Amen.”
While you’re flying, you think you see Nathan standing below, a few metres far from your rapid falling, with his arms along his hips and smiling.
You smile back, but it’s just a hallucination.
Fandom: Heroes/Survivor [novel by Chuck Palahniuk]
Pairing: Nathan/Peter
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Incest, angst, underage sex, strange religious cults.
Spoiler: None for Heroes. A lot for Survivor.
Word Count: 2549 (W)
Notes: If you haven't read the novel, you will probably lose something. But if you don't think you'll want to read it (or don't care having part of the plot spoiled), I'm adding a few notes to make the references clear. And, of course, I took some liberty from the novel.
Thanks to: snopes_faith, the amazing beta I keep feeding with unbearable angst and doesn't ever complain.
Notes:
In the Creedish cult, every male firstborn is given the name Adam, while all the others are given the name Tender. All the daughters are called Biddy. All the Tenders (and all the Biddies who don’t marry any Adam) are sent to work in the outside world and they’ll receive only food and an accommodation for the rest of their life, while the Church gets the profits. They’re called “labour missionaries” and must live in chastity. When the Church members feel that the Apocalypse is coming, they “deliver themselves to God” and all the Tenders and the Biddies all over the world must do the same the moment they hear the news. It’s called The Deliverance.
+ + +
Nathan cuts your hair with a pair of long scissors that look like shears and shortens your sideburns trying to keep them the same length. In the meanwhile, he explains to you what the outside world is like.
He tells you about the noise the cars make when they run all together down the road, like a hundred horses galloping free on a plain, and their horns shouting against each other like enraged animals. He tells you to be careful, because people inside the cars are sinners, slaves of the things they possess, and that’s why they won’t mind running over you if you don’t pay attention. He tells you about televisions, that hypnotize and numb people and make them believe whatever they want - that’s why you won’t have one, nor you will stop and look at the ones exposed in the shops.
He tells you that people in the outside world talk without looking at each other and look without seeing, because they’re always guilty of something, and they are afraid people will read it right on their faces. But they’ll look at you, Nathan says chopping your too long bangs, and you’ll ignore what they tell you because it will be all bullshit.
He says right so: bullshit. You think he means “falsities inspired by the Devil”, but sometimes, when the two of you are alone, Nathan swears. You think it’s against the Church’s rules, but there are things - many things - you can turn a blind eye to.
“And the most important thing,” continues Nathan, while a thick tuft falls upon your nose, “is that you must always, always remember that I love you.”
Nathan with his square jaw and his big light eyes and his too long eyelashes. Nathan with the long and white scar on his jaw - when he was fifteen he fell from the tractor and cut his face with a spade. He’s twelve years older than you. All your siblings between the two of you, you don’t know how many, died at birth or right after, and eventually your mother died in giving birth to you.
You know your father never forgave you for this, even if he’s always said it was God’s will to summon her. You know he didn’t forgive you because it’s your fault that the Petrelli family has only two sons, and the other families make fun of you, or worse, pity you. But Father is proud of Nathan, who already has three children, a girl and two boys, and a healthy and tough wife who looks like she can give him other four or five.
You instead, you are seventeen and your bus is going to leave tomorrow. The Elders of the Church told you you’re going to make the world a better place - because this is what the Church does, it improves the world one piece at time, sending its Peters and its Angelas to work and construct the earthly paradise that was prophesied.
And you believe in this, because you want whole-heartedly to improve the world and make it the wonderful place they told you, and you want to work and work for your great purpose until you can’t stand. But when Nathan speaks like that you don’t know anymore, you feel nothing but a sharp pain in your chest and you suddenly run out of air.
You don’t want to go. You know it’s the right thing to do - the only possible one - but it can’t be if it hurts so much. There must me something wrong with you.
The crickets chirp in the high grass and the air gets colder. Your tufts keep falling regularly.
“Nathan,” you mutter, with your closed eyelids to avoid the cut hair getting into your eyes. “You want to do it tonight?”
The scissors’ ticking stops, and with it the rain of hair. You half-open your eyelids, uncertainly. Nathan’s lips are clenched in a thin line.
You don’t even know how to call this thing, you’ve never known. The first time, Nathan told you that it didn’t have a name. He told you he loved you and everything was alright if you wanted it, but if you didn’t, it was alright just the same - he still loved you. He’d always love you the same way. You asked him if this was the same thing he did with his wife and he told you she had nothing, nothing to do with this. That this would be just for the two of you. And you felt like dying, because it was the first time somebody promised you something yours.
You fully open your eyes. Nathan’s put down the scissors and you have no idea what you look like. There aren’t mirrors in your house, and you’ve not seen your reflection since that night Nathan said you were beautiful and the day after you ran and looked at yourself in the river. But the face in the water wasn’t beautiful nor ugly, just as trivial as the rest of you.
You want to feel Nathan’s hands on your body and the smell of hay and sperm mixed together. You want to suck the saliva from his tongue and hear him say that you’re beautiful, that you’re important, that you’re loved. That nobody will ever be as loved as you are. You want to open your legs for him and feel him deep inside, feel him make you burn like a torch and melt you with pleasure.
Twenty-nine, with his arms strengthened by the work in the farm, Nathan could do anything he wants to you. Instead he strokes your smooth cheek with the palm of his hand and kisses your mouth the way he’d kiss your forehead, slow and calm with his lips still against yours. You slightly open yours, leaning a hand on his nape and inhaling his smell of wool and hay.
You want to do it against the wall, with your legs around Nathan’s hips and the rough wall scratching your back.
“In the hayloft?” you whisper, feeling Nathan’s fingers stroking your belly. You hardly repress a shiver. You’re a pervert, a dissolute, you’ll burn in Hell and all your work won’t be enough to save your depraved soul. You’ll work and work until God summons you, but it won’t be enough, never enough.
You want to take Nathan’s virility in your mouth and suck it until his semen fills your throat.
“Yes. Come,” whispers Nathan, hurriedly, and the two of you rise up leaving the scissors and your hair on the steps. In the street there isn’t anybody while you turn around your house’s corner and find the entrance of the hayloft. Nathan closes it from inside, very carefully.
At home he should keep a hand on your mouth for the whole time, and even so you’d risk your father or his wife and the kids to hear you. Here instead, you can be as noisy as you want - and even if you never get used to the way your voice sounds when you say that things Nathan likes so much, you like saying them anyway, you like how wrong and sinful they sound in your mouth, and you like their effect on Nathan.
You take off your shirt, made with that rough wool that tingles all the time, and you feel Nathan’s glance on you across the darkness, his steps and his breath that finally joins your mouth. You hug him and feel the same wool of his shirt tingle against your fingers. You pull it from his back to touch his skin, and Nathan sucks your lips and squeezes your ass in his hands, lifting you slightly and pulling you closer.
You know sex should horrify you, even if you can’t remember why. You know it’s dirty, it’s wrong - not because this is Nathan, not because this is your brother, it’s just so and you shouldn’t do it in any case. You know it’s not for you.
But your body thinks differently, and when Nathan pushes you on the nearest haystack, you close your arms around him and open your legs to let him touch you. You must be the only Peter in the Church district who does such a thing. You think about it every time, and every time it gives you shivers.
“God,” you murmur, when Nathan’s hand encloses around your cock and starts stroking it slowly. “Oh, god, Nathan, please.”
“Do not call Him in vain,” Nathan mutters, severely.
You reach out and let your hand slip inside his trousers, your fingertips touching the hair around the base. It’s not true. Nathan likes hearing you swear, because only he can make you feel so good to make you forget how bad you are any time you do. Only he can bring you so out of yourself to make you forget everything they taught you. You’d die if anyone else heard you. If Nathan himself heard you, in another time and situation. But here and now, it seems just the right thing to do.
“Fuck me,” you whisper. It was Nathan who taught you this word - this one and all the others. “Please, Nathan, please, just fuck me.”
You cling to the slippery heap of hay beneath you, while Nathan takes off your roughly hewn leather shoes, your socks, trousers and pants. You stick your feet in the hay and wait to hear the rustling of Nathan’s clothes when he strips. You can’t see anything, and if you can picture Nathan’s naked shape laying upon you, it’s just imagination and memory, because the darkness wraps the two of you completely.
When Nathan spits on his fingers, you tremble with expectation and wait to damn another little piece of your soul.
“I’ll come and see you,” he says while a finger enters in you with very little gentleness. “I’ll have your address. I’ll come any time I can.”
You nod and don’t believe him, because you’ve never heard of a guy of the Church district, a Nathan with wife and kids, leaving his house to go and see his brother. You wouldn’t ever ask him such a thing.
“I’ll come,” repeats Nathan, and you imagine him frowning. He sticks another finger in - it hurts but you don’t protest. You take your knees in your hands, trying not to think about it. “I’ll come and fuck you in the daylight, Peter. I promise.”
You smile breathlessly. “And you’ll kiss me on the mouth in the middle of the street? Among the people?” Nathan told you that people out of the Church district use to do it, and nobody’s surprised.
“Yes,” answers Nathan, his fingers moving inside you and stretching and burning - but Nathan can do anything he wants to you. “Yes, I promise.”
And even if you don’t believe a single word, you cling to this thought while Nathan lifts your legs and enters quickly, stealing from you a long moan that becomes a cry. He’s not gentle, Nathan, he never is, but the two of you always have too much work and too little time, and you are good at dealing with pain. You’ve never been a snivelling child. Your father would have sent you to sleep in the cold with the pigs.
It’s a torrent of obscenities that escapes from your mouth while Nathan fucks you, a sequence of swear words and invocations you would never say if you hadn’t your brother on you and your cradle in the hay didn’t look so warm and comfortable, sheltered from God’s ears. Nathan keeps a hand around the back of your thigh and the other one between your legs, and you feel your head so light and your body so heavy that it seems like you’re sinking in the hay while your thoughts fly away.
In the end it’s all here, you think, all you have: Nathan and your fucks in the hayloft. And tomorrow you’re going to lose it all and you’ll be alone with yourself - your person that’s not even yours - and you’ll invent monologues and work unceasingly for the rest of your life. And Nathan will never come and visit you, because they won’t let him, and every day you’ll wonder if he’s dead or alive.
One day, if you’re lucky, you’ll receive the news of the Deliverance and you’ll swallow a bottle of dish soap and you’ll know that, with doing that, God has forgiven you. But at the moment you couldn’t care less about God’s forgiveness. God will never love you as much as Nathan does.
Nathan hugs you, taking the hay from your hair and wipes your face with his fingers. He kisses your forehead. Your ass stings and tomorrow it’ll make your eyes wet at every step, but Nathan is warm and solid and you cling to him without complaining. Eventually, you find the strength to tell him.
“I-I don’t wanna go. Nathan, please. I don’t wanna go away.”
“Don’t be a baby,” he mutters.
“I feel...”, you swallow, “I feel like this isn’t the right thing for me. This isn’t my d-destiny.”
“Of course it is,” he replies patiently. “You know, Peter. You know the rules.”
“Fuck the rules, Nathan! It’s easy for you, you have a wife and three children and you can do whatever you want and...”
Nathan leans a hand on your nape, pulling you back on the hay. He’s not gentle, he never is with you. Your voice fades in your throat.
“Don’t say it again,” murmurs Nathan. “Don’t say it again that it’s easy for me, Peter, or I’ll wash out your mouth with soap.”
You close your eyes so tightly that tears can’t slip out. Nathan runs a hand through your short hair and keeps stroking it until you’ve lost any wish to cry and your breath gets calm and regular.
“Let’s pray a little together. Would you?”
You answer ‘yes’ weakly.
Later, when Nathan is sleeping, you collect your clothes and shoes in the darkness and climb on the little stairs that bring to the roof of the hayloft. If your counts are right, there will be enough confusion for Nathan to get dressed and exit without anyone noticing.
Your father will say that you were given God’s Call in your slumber, that he heard you stepping down the corridor but didn’t stop you because, if God’s will was such, it had to be fulfilled. But really he will be pale with rage, and he will curse you until the end of his days for escaping your duty.
The wind blows and bites slipping underneath your clothes, refreshing your skin congested by Nathan’s kisses and irritated by the hay. Since it’s not rained in weeks, the ground will be as hard and thick as concrete.
You close your eyes and say loudly: “Praise and glory to the Lord for this day…”. You stop, uncertainly. You know how it continues, but there are other words that push to exit. “Please, Lord, if you can, make it not hurt too much. Amen.”
While you’re flying, you think you see Nathan standing below, a few metres far from your rapid falling, with his arms along his hips and smiling.
You smile back, but it’s just a hallucination.