Fic: Ritual (30): Ganymede and Endymion
Title: Ritual (30): Ganymede and Endymion
Pairing: Peter/Adam; implied Peter/Nathan, Adam/Elle
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: through 2.11, "Powerless"
Word Count: about 9500
Warnings: explicit sex (slash, het, and solo), language
Summary: Peter becomes very close to Adam... and Adam twists Peter's devotion to Nathan to his own ends. Continuance of the "truth" story arc begun in Ritual 29. Feedback is extremely welcome as always!
Previous rituals:
(1) :: (2) :: (3) :: (4) :: (5) :: (6) :: (7) :: (8) :: (9) :: (10) :: (11) :: (12) :: (13) :: (14) :: (15) :: (16) :: (17) :: (18) :: (19) :: (20) :: (21) :: (22) :: (23) :: (24) :: (25) :: (26) :: (27) :: (28) :: (29)
Heroes is the property of NBC/Universal and Tailwinds Production. This is a work of fan fiction and no claim of ownership is implied for the characters or storylines. Contains dialogue and situations from "Four Months Ago..." written by Tim Kring, excerpted and remixed.
NOVEMBER 2006
Five pills in a plastic cup. Five pills, once a day, and Peter wouldn't be a danger to himself, or anyone he loved, ever again. Five big pills; a red-tipped capsule and a green-tipped one, two shiny blue pills, and a big round pink one. That was it. Five pills to bring peace on earth. They looked like candy and went down bitter.
He mostly just lay on his bed in the small gray room during the first few days, not daring even to test his powers to see if they had become weakened. He didn't imagine that he'd ever had much control over them in the first place. What the hell had he been thinking? His abilities were far too big, too powerful, too much for him to control. He didn't want to hurt anybody else.
And he didn't want to feel anymore. He was getting there. As the medicine kicked in, he felt more and more like he was wrapped in layers of fine cotton wool, or spider silk. He wondered if one of the pills was an antidepressant, a sedative, an anxiolytic. He didn't recognize any of them. Peter didn't like pills. He'd never taken a lot of drugs. Nathan had told him a long time ago to steer clear, because he'd probably like them too much.
Nathan.
"You go - I go!"
"You go, I go," Peter whispered an echo to his memory. "You go, I go," he repeated, taking in his breath in a shudder. Tears welled from his eyes; he blotted them on his pillow, making it too soggy to rest his aching head. He lay twisted up with his face in his hands. "You go, I go..." Cultivating and treasuring his discomfort. Nathan was dying, and it was Peter's fault. He was a monster. He had the stupid idea that he could save the world, but he'd never thought that he had to save the world from himself. And then, when it came time to do it, he couldn't even do that. And yet, Nathan wouldn't leave him, even to save his own life. "You go, I go..."
All night, softly, to himself.
He didn't really sleep, and he wasn't really awake. He just lay there, with the moment playing endlessly in his mind. The skin blistering, burning, cooking off Nathan's face. Nathan screaming his name as they lost their grip on each other, as the world flipped over and over and came to an abrupt white halt. And then it started again.
"You go, I go..."
The drugs helped with the nausea; Peter only vomited once, while it was dark, and then crept back to his bed and his whispered litany.
Morning was just the overhead lights turning on.
In the room next door, the English guy tried again.
"Do you know any jokes?"
Peter fell silent and didn't move, hoping the voice would shut up and leave him alone. "I've got one," the voice chirped brightly. "What do you get when you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic?"
Peter rolled over a little.
"About halfway," the English guy finished. "Ha ha."
"That's not very funny," said Peter before he thought.
"Well, you come up with one, then."
"I don't know any jokes," Peter grumbled. "I really just want to sleep... could you be quiet, please?"
"Sleep? How can you sleep in here? It's daytime. The lights are on. Elle'll be round with your breakfast any minute now - and I can tell you right now, don't let her catch you sleeping."
The English voice spoke truly. Elle, the bizarrely perky little blonde who had the first person Peter had seen when he woke up in this facility, came in, shook her head at him lying curled up on his bed, and shot pretty blue sparks from her fingertips at his hair. The sparks didn't actually touch his skin, but they made all the rest of the hair on his body stand up - even his eyebrows - and he jumped to his feet and yelled. She giggled at him. "Time to take your medicine."
Peter sat back down and was quiet, and did what he was told. The girl gave him a Clif bar and a demure little kiss on his head. "You're so cute with your new haircut," she said as she left. "See you tomorrow."
He didn't bother unwrapping the nutrient bar, only set it on the table away from him. He had no appetite. He lay back down and curled up, praying for silence.
"So... why are you in 'ere?"
Peter sighed and rolled his eyes. "Leave me alone," he said.
There was no reply. After a matching sigh from behind the wall, Peter got his desired silence. It would be one of the last times that would happen.
***
After a few more periods of light and dark, Peter opened his eyes and looked around, and realized that he had just woken up. He hadn't been aware of falling asleep; one moment he had been spinning and screaming and feeling the sun burst from his every pore, and the next, he was lying here on the bed with cotton mouth and a growling stomach. The lights were on. He slowly sat up, and groaned at his sore muscles.
"Bit stiff this morning?" came the English-accented voice. It startled Peter; he hadn't heard it for a long time. Days, he realized. "Comes from just lying there. You ought to get moving. You might as well exercise; there's not much else to do here."
Before Peter could reply, Elle was there, in a frilly white dress and red fuck-me sandals. She grinned at him like a cute, blonde crocodile. "Good morning, sunshine," she said.
"Morning," Peter countered reluctantly.
She handed him the plastic cup of pills and another of water, and watched expectantly while he swallowed them. He stood up, went to the sink, and drank three more cups in rapid succession. He felt different today - more alert, more solid, even if he did ache all over. "Is there a... gym, or something?" he asked.
Elle laughed at him. "You're not ready for that yet," she said. "You just sit tight and relax, and let the medicine do its work. You're still not out of danger yet. Get on the Stairmaster, you might just explode." She shrugged. "Now just stay here and be a good boy, and tomorrow I'll bring you something special," she added. "How's that?" Without bothering to wait for a reply, she spun around, fluttering her skirt, and left.
"There isn't a 'gym or something,'" came the English voice. "Not that we can access. You know how to do isometrics, I'm sure. Or yoga. I suggest you start." The voice paused. "You must be quite dangerous, to put you out here with me."
"I'm very dangerous," Peter replied.
An impressed, slightly lascivious laugh. "Oh, I bet you are. What are you here for again?"
"I'm -" Peter stopped short, and then thought that if whoever this voice belonged to was here, he had to know about strange abilities. Maybe he'd even read about it in the paper. Peter shuddered to think of what was happening in the world outside. "I absorbed the power of emitting radioactivity and - I don't know how to use it. How to control it."
"You absorbed the power," said the voice, very calmly, matter-of-factly. "And it got you into some trouble, because it's not your power. It's not what you're used to. Right?"
"Right," said Peter.
"Right."
"I'm getting cured, though," Peter added. "I can't do it on my own, you know? I can't control it. I can't be trusted."
"Ah," said the voice. "It's not that you're so dangerous - it's that you can't be trusted. That's why you're down here with me. I can't be trusted, either." The voice sounded profoundly amused.
"Why not?"
"I really am dangerous." A soft laugh. "Now, have you remembered any jokes?"
"Yeah, I remember a joke," Peter said. "Fuck off."
"That's a great joke. It's my favorite."
"So fuck off and leave me alone."
"But you're right there, and I'm bored."
"Read a book," Peter said.
"Read 'em. All of 'em. Couple of times."
"Please just leave me alone," Peter begged. "Please."
"Solitary," said the voice. "Hmm... must be agony, for you."
"Life is agony for me," Peter murmured.
"Aww. You're the only person in the history of the world that bad stuff has ever happened to. How d'you manage?" When Peter didn't reply, there came a sigh from behind the wall. "All right, I'll be quiet. But for God's sake, try to think of some jokes, would you? The more tasteless, the better? If you're going to be whinging, at least try to be funny now and again."
Peter just shook his head, stricken with the memory that he always tried to be funny for Nathan, and Nathan would laugh and say that Peter wasn't funny, and it was their stupid little joke, and now both their lives were over. He wished he had more pills to take. He was feeling things again.
That night, after the lights went out - Peter had no idea what time it was - he lay in bed and let the loneliness and regret wash over him. He missed Nathan so much - he missed everyone so much - his mother, his father, Simone, Claire... Claude... even Charles. His eyes flooded with tears, and he began to sob quietly, trying to muffle the sound with his pillow.
"I know it's hard, Peter."
Peter held his breath, clamping down the sobs.
"It's all right." The English voice whispered soothingly, like wind through willow trees.
"Fuck off," Peter replied.
Silence for a moment. "Are you familiar with Bulfinch's Mythology?"
"What?"
"Stories of Gods and Heroes. Particularly the Greek myths. Are you familiar?"
Peter lay in stunned silence. He hadn't revisited them in years, but he'd spent his entire early childhood as obsessed with Greek mythology as he had been with Batman or Indiana Jones. "Yeah," he answered. He stopped crying.
"What's your favorite?"
"The Minotaur," Peter said. "The labyrinth."
"All right," the Englishman responded, and cleared his throat. "Let's see if I can remember. I have the entirety of it committed to memory, or I used to. Let's see... 'The Athenian people were in a state of crisis' - no wait - 'deep affliction, on account of the tribute they were forced to pay to Minos, king of Crete. This tribute consisted of seven youths and seven maidens, who were sent every year to be devoured by the Minotaur, a monster with a bull's body and a human head.'" He recited beautifully, his tone smoothing as the words came to him, and his accent adding just the right storytelling vibe. Peter took a deep breath and actually smiled, his entire being suffusing with pleasure. He hadn't had a bedtime story since he was a kid, maybe even this story, in a slightly different form, in a different, deeper, more velvety voice.
It made him feel young, and soothed and protected. Safe.
He slipped easily into sleep, and that night he had no nightmares at all.
***
"You've been through something awful, haven't you? I'm sorry."
There he went, that disembodied, very proper voice, being nice again. Pointy and sarcastic most of the time, but when he was nice, when he spoke the truth, it was ten times kinder, just in contrast. Peter had to give him something. "I'm Peter."
"Hello, Peter. It's nice to meet you. I'm Adam."
"Adam," Peter echoed.
"Peter," was the reply, soft at the edges, arch and amused. Teasing.
Peter smiled until he remembered how serious this all was. "I'd still rather be left alone, though."
"Oh come now. Let me tell you more Bulfinch. You don't have to listen; I'm doing it for myself as well. It's good for me to test my memory now and again, to make sure I keep it. I don't want to lose Bulfinch. It comes in so handy in situations like these."
"Like these?"
"Like being stuck somewhere for a long time," Adam explained. "On a ship, say. In prison. On a very long journey alone. It's the only book I've memorized, you know. It's the only one I need. Go on, I'm up to Endymion." He loudly and ostentatiously cleared his throat and began, "'Endymion was a beautiful youth who fed his flock on Mount Latmos.' Sound familiar?"
Peter snickered but didn't reply. Adam kept going, and Peter did some more push-ups. He could now do seventy without pausing, and Adam seemed to speak to a particular cadence that made the exercise easier. It was like working out while listening to music. Adam was a skilled orator - or at least a big ham; he did all kinds of vocal acrobatics to enhance the words he spoke, and make the stories come to life.
Peter wouldn't admit it, but he knew that he owed a lot of his sanity to Adam talking to him, telling him the stories of gods, demigods, and mortals, some of which he recognized and some which were new to him. At night, sometimes, Peter still cried, but if he made a sound, Adam would soothe, "There there. You're not alone."
He wondered if he'd ever see Adam again if he got better and went home, then realized that he'd never actually seen Adam, only heard his voice. Peter wondered what he looked like. He had to be old, but he didn't have the voice of an old man; Adam's voice was crisp and vibrant and knowing. Peter had no idea what kind of shape he was in, because he only exercised a little, nowhere near as often as Peter did. He might have had totally different clothes than Peter had, the gray T-shirt, loose pajama bottoms and deck shoes without laces, like a dangerous mental patient. He might have been black or Asian, bearded or shaven. Ugly or handsome.
Peter didn't ask.
***
After dinner one night, Peter sat quietly at his desk, reading an actual book, the first one he'd seen in ages. It was a cheap paperback thriller, but he was completely gripped. He loved books so much. The man named Bob had given it to Peter, after Peter had asked if he could have a book to read, or some paper and a pen so that Peter could write a letter to be given to Nathan. "How is he?" Peter dared to ask. Bob promised to find out, and gave Peter the book that he'd had in his jacket pocket.
When Peter had told Adam about this, Adam had just given a "Hrmmm." He was quiet tonight. Peter wondered if Adam was jealous of the book. He vowed that the next time Bob brought him into the lab for a checkup, he'd ask if Adam could have a book, too.
The door to Peter's room opened and Elle slinked in. Black wrap-front dress this time, shoes with leopard print on them (for all Peter knew, it was real leopard, and she'd killed it herself), her hair down, all loose and messy. A little mascara and red, red lipstick. Peter wished he didn't notice every single detail of her every day, but he did - she was the only spot of color he ever saw, the only girl, and she seemed to wear new shoes every single day. And she was wearing perfume, too. Too much perfume. Peter looked her up and down and tightened his jaw.
She leaned against the desk and bent one leg, her skirt sliding up her bare thigh. Peter stared at her feet. She didn't touch him, for once. "Do you like your book?" she asked.
Peter looked unflinchingly into her eyes. He hated being afraid of her; it made him hostile. He was hostile a lot, these days. "It's shitty, actually," he replied.
"I'll tell Daddy you said that." She grinned and quirked her eyebrows, and Peter squirmed and had to look away. She scooted even farther back onto the surface of the desk, her feet almost leaving the ground, and shifted her skirt aside, slipping further and further up her thighs, and -
Oh, God.
Panties had not been in her wardrobe plan for the evening.
Peter immediately blinked and turned half away, wishing he could forget what he had just seen. Elle giggled at him. "Are you gonna be naughty or nice?" she said.
"Go away," said Peter. "Now, please."
She laughed some more. "Oh, Peter, you know it's not like that," she said. "Now, c'mon, hold out your hand... it'll be fun. It's always fun."
"Fun for you, not me," Peter whispered, but he held out his hand, steeling himself against the anticipated shock. It didn't really make it better. He didn't flinch away, though; his fingers jerked back from the electric contact, but he didn't snatch his hand away anymore. He didn't like it, like she seemed to think he did, but he could take it now. Elle drew in her breath with a fluttery moan and let it out in a sigh.
Then she wrapped her arms around him and kissed the side of his jaw. "Now, c'mon, Peter," she said, sliding off the desk, standing next to him, and hiking up her skirt again. "Take a look. My treat. How long's it been? I should think you'd want to see."
"You're wrong," Peter said, proud of himself because his voice didn't waver. And he didn't look. Oh, but he wanted to look. He was amazed that he wasn't drooling. He despised her with every fiber of his being, but that didn't mean she wasn't ridiculously hot. It was awful. She was like the Bizarro-world version of Claire, and that made him feel even more hostile and confused and lonely and horny. Those feelings were returning, too. Under any other circumstances, he would have had her underneath him on the bed before she could take another breath. But that was before. "I'm not interested. Go away."
Elle frowned, and let her skirt fall back to her calves. It was strange to see genuine hurt in her eyes, but there it was. She sent a sharp blue jolt at Peter's bare ankles, knocking him backwards off his chair, and flounced angrily away, slamming the door behind her. Peter picked himself up and lay down on the bed, trembling with adrenaline.
The sound of Adam's laughter trickled through the grate at the bottom of the wall. "So, it seems that Elle has given you 'the Christmas present.'"
"What?" said Peter, half disbelievingly, half genuinely confused. He laughed a little, too, the sound of Adam's voice relieving the tension. "Has she done the same thing to you?"
"Oh, indeed," Adam said dryly. "Years ago. I was much less gentlemanly than you."
"Gentlemanly?" Peter echoed, then realized, "Did you fuck her?"
Adam gave another "Hrmm," sounding unsure. "I slapped her in the face. And then I fucked her." He laughed slyly, and when he spoke again, his voice was sharp and ruthless. "With my finger. It was as far as I could get. It took me a day or so to heal from the charring she gave me. She told her daddy she was just testing to see if I still had any healing ability left. That's why she doesn't come round here. She knows that next time, it'll be my cock, and I'll know to knock her out first. Can't give off electrical shocks when you're unconscious, after all."
Peter found himself laughing helplessly. "God," he said, "that's fucked up." And thrilling, and awesome, and what was he becoming? The old Peter wouldn't have laughed. He would have been horrified. But the thought of Elle being slapped in the face was just too good.
"Eh... it's what she's dying to have happen to her, whether she can admit it to herself or not. There's a reason why she didn't tell Daddy that I raped her; it's because I didn't. She somehow knows that it was her own hot-to-trot stupidity that brought her to me that night, and she knows that I know that she had an orgasm." Adam laughed, and Peter stopped laughing, wondering if he was telling the truth. "Don't let her get to you."
The lights went out, and Peter retreated to his bed, while Adam continued to recite Bulfinch. Peter was now hopelessly aroused, between Elle flashing him the pink and getting her feelings hurt, and Adam's story about her. He hadn't masturbated since he got here, not seriously, not more than a few comforting strokes and squeezes meant more to reassure himself that he was still all there. He hadn't had an orgasm since... before he'd gotten to the facility.
That was too long. No wonder he was losing his mind a little bit. He was losing touch with who he was. He hadn't gone that long without an orgasm since he was a child. It was as much a part of him as breathing.
"'There, too, flush'd Ganymede, his rosy thigh half buried in the eagle's down, sole as a flying star shot through the sky above the pillared town,'" Adam murmured, sounding half asleep.
Meanwhile, Peter moved as little as possible, and tried to be completely silent; only the soft, faint whisking sound of his wrist against the bedsheet seemed audible, and Peter provided some false deep-sleep breathing to try to cover it up. But he came a lot faster than he had imagined he would - within thirty seconds, certainly no more than a minute - and he came with sharp, blistering intensity. He let out a surprised little moan before he could stop himself, and lay stock-still, his cheeks burning with embarrassment.
After a few seconds, Adam said silkily, "Good night, Peter."
Peter stared at the ceiling all night.
***
"I heard you last night," Adam said, after the lights had been out for a while.
"Yeah... sorry," Peter replied sheepishly.
"No, that's not what I mean," said Adam. His voice became very husky. "It was beautiful. I'd like to hear more." As Peter lay in stunned silence, Adam continued, "It is lonely here. You and I both know that. And we have physical needs, as well as emotional ones, am I correct? But we are alone here. And all we have is our hands, our imaginations... and each other."
"You want to... listen to me?"
"I want you to share with me." Adam's voice dropped to a prayerful whisper. His breath shuddered audibly, and Peter found himself flushing hot all over. "Tell me what you think about."
Peter giggled uncomfortably. "I can't," he said, squirming, squirming out of his clothes. He was too hot to stay dressed. It didn't matter that it was late December. And maybe even Christmas; he had no way of knowing. He'd lost track a while ago. The drugs muddled his sense of time, the drugs, which had taken away everything... well, apparently, not this. He was still himself.
Adam didn't miss a beat. "All right then," he murmured, "I'll start."
The unseen Englishman began to speak in a slow, hissing, urgent rasp that traveled straight into the core of Peter's body. "Tits. Soft, full, supple tits... hard nipples. Like pearls. Pointing right at you, eager to be sucked. Just a suggestion of a drop of... milk... at the tip? No... it's come. My come. I lick it off and add more off the tip of my cock. Come all over them. All over her tits. All over her face. She loves me." He paused for a moment, and Peter heard the rhythm of Adam's hand, and thought he would explode. This was so wrong, and yet so exactly what he needed. Everything was different now. Nothing made sense, but this did, in a way that Peter couldn't even try to understand. "She loves me. So I fuck the bitch hard. Fuck her arse, fuck her cunt, everywhere. Make her beg me for it. Fill her up and make a mess of her. Use her and throw her away. And still she loves me."
Peter lay still and quiet, more than a little horrified at the words Adam was saying, but understanding. It was a persona, it wasn't real. Adam wasn't really like that. It was an act, pretending, the way Nathan had done. It was just a fantasy. Peter's cock felt like it was made out of lead - but how could lead be ticklish? He wished there was someone there to suck it; that's what he wanted more than anything. Nathan there to suck it better.
Adam let out a haggard, throaty moan. Peter listened enthralled, gingerly massaging his cock. If he used too much pressure, it'd be like last night, over all too soon. Adam really hadn't lasted long.
"Your turn," Adam said, calm if slightly breathless.
"I can't," Peter insisted.
"No - tell me. Tell me who you'd use."
Peter couldn't answer that. He just didn't know what to say. Nathan was the obvious answer, and Peter certainly couldn't say that.
After a moment, Adam said, "Ohhhh... it's you who wants to be used. I see, I see."
"No," Peter protested, but his cock, his balls, his prostate, his soul had other ideas. His dick jumped in his hand and he just barely caught the hard jet of thick semen in his T-shirt. Peter stared at it for a while. He didn't think he'd ever seen his come that thick before. Even Nathan's come wasn't that thick... and then there was more of it spurting out of him, and Peter flopped his head back onto his pillow and moaned out loud, so thankful that he was on the meds, because surely he would have actually gone nuclear right then. It felt the same; the power of the sun blasting from between his skin cells, from the hot core inside his body. But now, he didn't even glow. He just came, like any normal, idiotically horny, completely hard-up young man.
Adam was laughing delightedly. "Good night, flush'd Ganymede; good night."
Peter could only smile, still too moved to speak.
***
Two and a half weeks later. Peter had kept track with little tick marks he made with his thumbnail on the edge of the desk. He still didn't know what day it was, just that it was nineteen days since he'd started his tally. January, sometime, probably. He wasn't allowed to keep a pen and paper in his room; he could borrow one and write a letter, but then everything was taken away again as soon as he was finished. They promised that the letters were mailed, but Peter never got anything back. Bob told him that the family was too busy dealing with Nathan to have time to respond.
It had been a long and trying day - awakened by Elle shocking him, and then endless lab tests on an empty stomach. They told him it had to be that way for accuracy. When he got back to his room, his small collection of bad paperback books was gone, and they had brought in a new desk.
He kicked his chair around for a while and cursed, then sat down and wolfed down his dinner. "I'd kill for a falafel sandwich," he grumbled. "This is bullshit. I just wish I knew what day it was."
"I know what day it is. Any time, you could ask me. I have my own ways of keeping track. I'm sorry about your books. I'll tell you as many stories as I can remember. I've got plenty."
"Thanks," Peter replied.
The lights clicked off.
"It's a damn shame they did that to you, though," Adam added. "For nothing, you know?"
"Tests," Peter shrugged. "They have to test me. Make sure the meds're working."
"Right, right," Adam said. "The meds." He gave a contemptuous little laugh. "I forgot. You're dangerous. Oh well. Just us now." He was quiet for a long time, then asked softly, "D'you want to get off?"
"I usually do," said Peter. Every night. Now that he knew it was okay. The anticipation got him through the days. Adam's stories, Adam's fantasies, the quiet, gruff grunts of Adam's orgasms, in contrast with Peter's own breathless moans.
"Go on, then." They were both quiet for a moment, but for the sounds of shifting clothes on bedsheets, and bodies reclining. Peter sighed and relaxed, and let his fingers play over himself. His arm ached where they'd taken the blood out of him, and there was still a little pinprick in the crook of his elbow. He smiled at it. He was almost cured, almost normal again.
Adam let out a long sigh. "Tell me what you're thinking," he said.
At the moment, Peter wasn't really thinking of anything erotic; he was just savoring his feeling of hope, of optimism, of unwinding. The pleasure of his own fingers against him. "Nothing really," he said.
"Oh, surely, there's something coming to mind... A damp-lipped stripper in high heels, a diamond necklace, and nothing else? Maybe holding a whip?"
Peter usually lay still and let Adam go on about whatever he wanted to talk about, but tonight, he was in far too contrary of a mood. He spoke sharply, if quietly. "Actually I'm thinking about cock, if you want to know the truth."
Adam gave a quick laugh of delighted surprise. Not the reaction Peter had been expecting. At all. "Why didn't you say so in the first place?"
"Because it's none of your business," Peter said, feeling his face go hot. He hadn't intended to blurt out the truth, especially not... He'd never hear the end of this. Maybe he didn't want to.
"You can't shock me," Adam said. "You can't offend me. I've seen it all. I've done it all. You should have said."
"I just like girls, too," Peter mumbled.
"What? Speak up."
"I like women. I'm sexually attracted to women."
"Of course you are," Adam said caressingly. "But that's not all you are. You're thinking of a cock in particular."
He sounded so smug. Peter glared at the concrete that separated them, wondering if his silky tone meant that he was flattered, imagining Peter was thinking about him. Peter hadn't given Adam's cock a moment's thought. Well, not before now, anyway. "Yeah. I'm thinking about one in particular. Not yours."
"You haven't seen mine," Adam replied. He sounded amused. "You can't picture a cock you haven't seen. You can imagine it, but... it's not as good as remembering. Whose cock is it, Peter?" He sighed deeply. "Are you picturing it? Remembering it? Hard and throbbing, so sensitive, but so blunt and rough and demanding at the same time... Cock's wonderful... What's your favorite thing about it?"
"Feeling it inside me," Peter replied. "Feeling it up against me."
"In your mouth?"
"Yeah... where I wanted it... for so long... and finally he let me."
"He let you suck his cock?" Adam said, an edge of irony in his voice. "He let you? He lowered himself to it... because he saw how much it meant to you... and so little to him."
"Oh, no," Peter protested. "No. It meant everything to him. I meant everything to him. At first he wouldn't let me. He didn't want to hurt me."
"Your lover," Adam whispered. "Your man. But he did hurt you, didn't he?"
"Yeah, but it was... I wanted..." Peter gasped and bit his lip. Lust felt different when it was about Nathan. Nathan didn't even have to be physically present; all Peter had to do was think about him, and instead of the heavy core of desire he felt with everyone else, he felt desire in every single part of him, in every breath, every heartbeat, every swallow. "It's part of the experience. I wanted him, no matter what happened. It wasn't too much for me to take. It's worth it."
"Oh, but it hurts, doesn't it? So hot, so stiff, splitting open your arse. Deep inside you, deeper than anyone should ever go, but you let him because... you love him."
"I didn't let him - I begged him." Faintly: "Fuck me. Please."
For a moment, neither spoke, only panted and gasped, and the quiet, damp, repetitive sounds of their fingers on their cocks quivered in the still, dark air. "Did he - use you and throw you away?" Adam growled at last.
"No," said Peter. "Never. He loves me."
"Doesn't matter! Who is it, Peter?"
Peter said nothing, only cried out as he came, making it sound good for Adam, because he was alone with his imagination, too. Adam's answering sound was only a low moan, followed by the same question again, "Who is it?"
But Peter just closed his eyes and became still, wrapping his arms around himself, and kissing his own semen-sticky hand, pretending to be Nathan kissing him, pretending to kiss Nathan, pretending they were together, and that he tasted tears intermingling, and not just his own. Blessedly, Adam was quiet too, saying no more, letting Peter fantasize himself to sleep.
***
So it seemed Adam had been right. Peter was a prisoner after all. They had no intention of letting him free, to see Nathan or contact him in any way, or anybody else. They hadn't delivered his letters; he'd even seen Elle walk out of his cell with one, and then drop it directly into a garbage bin as she went down the hall away from him. Peter hated being lied to more than anything, and when he thought of all the things he'd carefully written out in those letters to his brother, and knowing that Nathan hadn't heard any of it, probably thought Peter was dead, and dying himself, never knowing Peter was alive and wanting him every single minute of the day... almost more than he could take.
"Nathan." It had become a prayer to say his name; now it felt like the ferocious prayer of a warrior, a focusing of rage.
"Just a small amount of my blood could heal him," suggested Adam. "End his pain. Even after everything you put him through."
The feelings were coming back. First the lust, then hostility, then self-awareness, and now curiosity, restlessness, impatience. Shame. Intense hunger to have a chance to set things right. He'd had his vacation, his down time, his rest and exercise. He was up to two hundred push-ups without even getting out of breath; four hundred sit-ups. As good as Nathan at his fittest, maybe more, because Peter was doing yoga, too. His body was tightly sculpted and layered with muscle, his eyes were dark, keen, and calculating; he looked ten years older than he had six months ago. He had to show Nathan how far he'd come. He had to show Nathan that he'd survived. He had to fix this. "How do we get out?" he asked.
Adam gave a short hum of satisfaction. "First of all, quit taking those stupid pills," he said, in a low voice, right next to the wall. "They're already starting to lose their effectiveness. I can hear it in your voice. Four or five days, you'll be back to your normal level of power - and then there's not much that can stop us."
"I don't want to hurt anybody," Peter insisted.
"They'd try to kill you before they'd let you go. If you're smart, nobody has to die. Even the bastards that deserve it."
"I wish we could go now," Peter said, rolling his eyes at his concrete cage, disgusted at himself for accepting it for so long. But he'd just wanted to get better. (And to hide.) He might as well face it, and stand up to that weak part of himself; he'd told Nathan to do it enough times. Still, it was repulsive and humiliating, and hard to accept. But it was in the past. Another Peter. Maybe, here was his chance to walk away from it, and become someone else.
"Play along," Adam advised. "Be everything they want you to be. Play it cool, and we'll be walking free on the street by the weekend."
"Do you know what day it is?" Peter asked sheepishly. "I can't keep track."
"It's Monday, February fifth," Adam said. "And believe me, you'll want to get out of here before Valentine's Day. Elle's got it bad for you. If she can't have you, she'll see you dead - or at least try. But be careful. Depending on how strong your transferred regenerative power is, she might be able to." His voice quieted. "That'd be a shame. I'd hate to lose you."
After dark, Peter sat in bed in lotus position, calming his breathing and centering his mind. What he was about to attempt would take immense concentration and strength; this time he'd try to do it right, instead of jumping in too fast, without thinking.
"Thanks for being there for me," he said.
"You were in shock when you came in," Adam replied. "You barely responded at all for days. And Elle's systematic torture didn't help. I shudder to think of what she did to you while you were unconscious. No wonder you couldn't remember anything. And you've been here for me, too." He sighed. "Thirty years in this room. How I've wanted someone to talk to. I guess the facility is running out of room - I've only once before had someone in that room next to mine, and that only for a few weeks. One day he just disappeared. I imagine he was taken away and euthanized. That was... sixteen years ago."
"Did you guys jack off together?" Peter asked teasingly.
Adam chuckled. "Put you to shame," he confirmed. "Filthy-minded bastard."
"What was his ability?"
"He could look at you and tell how you were going to die." Adam laughed oddly. "Good thing he never saw me... but I wonder what he saw when he looked into the mirror. Any rate, you're welcome, and cheers. I look forward to getting out. There are so many things I miss."
"Like what?" Peter unfolded his legs and lay back.
"Whiskey," Adam said. "Beer. Wine. Gin." He paused and laughed. "Cigarettes. Oh, I miss cigarettes. I don't know why they wouldn't let me have them in here - it's not as though they're bad for me. A nice, cold martini. Fanny. Obviously. I had a lovely woman out there before they got me. Gorgeous, brown skin, eyes like... diamonds. Diamonds in disguise as coal." Adam laughed a bit more. "But you're not interested in hearing about girls, are you? You miss cock."
"Yeah," Peter replied. "I mean, I'm not sick of hearing about girls, but... yeah."
Adam's voice could be so sweet, so kind sometimes. "Who are you thinking of, Peter?"
Peter had to give him something.
"Nathan," he whispered. "I miss Nathan the most."
"Yes," Adam replied, softly, soothingly. "I thought as much. Castor and Pollux, trading their lives for each other. Perfect. You cannot shock me, you cannot offend me, Peter. I don't judge you for that. I've done everything - well, not that, I had no brothers... but it's not as though I've never seen it before or heard about it. Of course. It's beautiful. So neat and efficient; all that love encapsulated so close to you. Share that with me. This excites me."
"It's not neat," Peter said. "It's... very sloppy. We don't know what we're doing."
"Oh, but you do."
"When we're alone... yeah."
"Lights out," Adam whispered. "In private. No one else around. Tell me about his cock. Tell me how you made love."
Peter shook his head, feeling tears springing up in his eyes. Dammit. He would have to get over being so tearful all the time; there wouldn't be time for it, once he and Adam made their escape. "It'll never happen again," Peter said miserably.
"I'll make sure it happens," Adam said. "That's what we're doing. You're getting Nathan back. We're going to save him. Bring him back. Make him whole again. Yes, you deserve that." Adam shifted and sighed. "Are there others? Other men?"
"No," Peter said. "Just him, ever."
"Ever?"
"Well..." Peter turned onto his side. "Yeah. He made me promise... I wouldn't fuck other men." He smiled. "He insisted. And it was easy, so I said yeah. I'm only attracted to other guys in the most, like theoretical sense. Like I'll like someone's body or someone's smile, but I'm not thinking about how I want to suck their cock. Not like Nathan. I was obsessed with him. I'm... still obsessed."
"You like sucking cock?" Adam asked.
"Nathan's, yeah..."
"And you've never done it with any other man."
"No," Peter admitted.
Adam said, "Hmmm," and Peter gave a nervous laugh. "Do you prefer fucking, or being fucked?"
"I guess... with Nathan... I prefer being fucked. What, are you taking a poll?"
"I'm feeding my imagination, nothing more. Ganymede," he murmured, and gave a husky laugh. "Cup-bearer. Vessel. Fuck-slave of the god. I want to hear you come. I want to hear you call out his name. Pretend that he's there. Pretend... he's pressing you down, ravaging you, one moment holding you like a delicate blossom and the next, stabbing into you so deep that you scream."
"You're talking about you," Peter gasped softly, fingers rapidly stroking his cock. "That's the way you do things..."
"Never mind me - it's what you want."
"Fuck! Ohh, God, oh..." Peter bit his lip, and then whispered at the edge of his voice, "Nathan." His cock jumped and throbbed in his right hand, and he bit and kissed the other wrist, jamming his thumb into his mouth the way Nathan had done - but it wasn't the same. Still. The motion was enough. He pulled his thumb out of his mouth and rubbed the wetness along the shaft of his cock, making his entire body tingle. "Nathan!" he moaned, full-voice, semen spilling back over his hard, flat belly. "Aaaah... lick it off me..." he murmured. "Don't waste a drop...."
"I won't," said Adam.
Peter flinched a little at the sound of his voice, startled to hear it. But it was all right. It was Adam, and Adam didn't judge him; Peter wouldn't judge, either. And it was all just fantasy. But if Adam was telling the truth - and his blood really could heal Nathan - there wasn't anything Peter wouldn't do for him.
***
"Come on, Peter. You can do it."
So Peter just walked through the wall that separated his cell from Adam's. Concrete and wood and brick, whatever. Just like walking through air. And on the other side, a man stood wearing the same clothes as Peter, roughly the same height, and apparently, roughly the same age. White and blond, bright blue eyes, and an expression of bemused impatience, which made him seem much older. Thinner than Peter, but muscular. Maybe cute; Peter couldn't really tell. At the moment he was just the most beautiful thing Peter had ever seen - his ticket out of here.
Peter stared at him, overwhelmed. "It's nice to finally meet you," he marveled. And finally, he thought up a joke. "You know, for four hundred years, you've held up pretty well."
Adam crinkled his eyes. Definitely cute. "Come on. Let's go heal your brother."
Peter smiled at him obligingly, and turned to face the other wall. Adam's hand came down on Peter's shoulder, and Peter took a deep breath. Together, they walked through the walls, finding themselves in a hallway. Peter stood still for a moment, shut his eyes, and remembered the sharp pang of a bo stick hitting him on the cheekbone, and the clench of rough fingers underneath his throat. There was no reflection in the glass windows of the cells as they passed. There were a few dozen other prisoners, and Peter stared at them in dismay, but Adam urged in a low voice, "Forget about them now. We'll come back for them later. We know where they are. But for now, we have to get out, and we have to save Nathan's life. There isn't much time. You know the slow wasting of burn victims as well as I." And Peter gritted his teeth and continued on.
Peter grabbed a couple of coats off the rack in a closet they passed through, then kept walking until his shoes crunched frozen grass.
They were out.
Real night darkness enfolded them, real outdoor cold seeped into their lungs. They stood in the shadows of the back of the building, only one of a small cluster on what appeared to be nothing more than a neatly-kept research campus. "Well done," Adam hissed. He took his hand back, and hurriedly shrugged into a coat. "Now... let's try you using two or more of your abilities at once. You can do this, Peter. I know you can. Make us invisible and ephemeral." Adam's eyes glinted. "We shall be as ghosts. Come on, Peter. Let's go. Focus."
Peter nodded, and let it come to him, and let no thought of danger enter his mind. Adam had repeated that phrase like a mantra for the last week, since they'd first spoken of escape. Let no thought of danger enter your mind. Mental discipline to keep him from thinking about Ted Sprague, or Sylar, or panic. The power of repetition. It worked.
When Peter walked, with Adam's hand on his shoulder, their feet didn't dent the grass. They passed through layers of chain-link fence and cast no shadow, leaving only the swishing sound of their clothes. They stood at the side of a small road, looping away into the trees; the sound of a highway in the distance. Peter let his concentration relax, and they both shimmered into solid visibility again. "We shan't get far on foot," said Adam. "See if you can get us a car."
Peter slowly turned to him with a grin. "Have you forgotten I can fly?"
Adam just smirked at him. "I was wondering if you'd forgotten," he replied. Then he just stared at Peter for a moment. His expression was impossible to read. "You're extremely good-looking."
Peter looked away and shrugged a bit. "You don't need to flatter me," he said dryly, unable to keep the smile off his face. He was so bad at jokes. "I'll give you a ride."
"You will, won't you," said Adam, with that same odd look.
"Are you hitting on me?" Peter said, rolling his eyes. "Because that's like... beneath you."
"You're so..." Adam shook his head. "...young."
Peter shrugged. "It's one of my charms." He bent his knees slightly and held up his arms; Adam climbed onto his back.
And then let all his thoughts of Nathan out, and owned the sky.
***
He flew over farmlands, towards a river, not recognizing where he was, but as he descended and got a look at the license plates on the cars, realized that they were now in Connecticut. "I went the wrong way," Peter said after he'd come to a sloppy landing on the roof of a warehouse. "Give me a second to catch my breath, and we'll go back and go to the hospital where Nathan is."
"No, no, Peter, we shouldn't. We need to lay low for just a little while longer. We need to assess the situation. And we need money." Adam didn't seem even slightly impressed that he'd just flown through the air on Peter's back.
"I might still have some credit cards at home," Peter said. "Back at my apartment. I'll go in invisible. It won't be a big deal." Then his shoulders sagged. "Oh... the cards might be flagged. Dammit. I wish Nathan was here."
"Let's just go rob the till someplace," Adam said, not even trying to hide the boredom in his voice. "We are talking about saving lives here. Who'll miss a hundred dollars? Come on, Peter. Get us to the ground, and we'll get cash." Peter was looking right at Adam, otherwise he'd have sworn he heard Adam say out loud, For God's sake, do stop yapping so we can get a room and get in bed.
Peter flew them off again until he saw city lights under him. It wasn't much - an upper-crust town all made of cemeteries, golf courses, and country clubs - but he managed to find a bar that was open, walk in invisible, and swipe the entire contents of the cash register. He walked back outside and rejoined Adam on the sidewalk, holding hands, unseen, Adam counting out the cash.
"Four hundred twenty-three," Adam announced. "Plenty."
"About enough for a Best Western, around here," Peter said. "Money's not worth as much as it was before you were in jail."
"Any place that's not that cell is fine with me. I'm tempted to sleep outside."
Another brief journey through the air and they found a cheap, nondescript motel. The desk clerk didn't seem to notice the fact that they were wearing pajamas and coats, and had no luggage. Adam requested a single-bed room, and Peter stared into space, trying to grasp more thoughts from Adam's mind. But there was nothing. Adam's mind was as cool and blank as an obsidian slab.
In the room, Peter shrugged off his coat and draped it over the chair, then sat down and wiped his hands over his face. Adam took off his coat, too, more slowly, approached Peter and held out his hands. Peter took the hands, and Adam pulled him backward over to the big bed, lying down, pulling Peter along with him. He half sat up, angling over Peter, looking down at him. Peter watched him. Adam hooked his thumb under the hem of Peter's T-shirt. "You really are the - most exceptionally beautiful boy I think I've ever seen."
"Something impresses you? Adam, who's seen it all? And I'm not a boy anymore."
Adam pulled the shirt up more, exposing Peter's belly. He stroked the skin lightly with his fingertips - amazingly soft, smooth fingers, much smoother than Peter's - then lowered his head and kissed Peter's belly. Peter squirmed, not quite ticklish, but almost. His skin tingled. "You're still a boy," Adam said. "A child, almost." He sat up and stripped off his clothes, not really displaying himself, just getting things out of the way. Slender, muscular and pale, his cock at rest, hiding between his legs.
Peter wanted to show himself, too, and get out of his hated prison pajamas. Naked, he lay back against the bedspread again, and Adam reached out toward him and cupped his balls in one hand. Peter lay still, feeling his cock responding to the touch and the proximity, and the strange look on Adam's face. Finally a stray thought made it to Peter's mind.
Yes, I'd like to keep him.
Peter smiled slowly. "I belong to somebody else."
"You don't belong to anybody," Adam said, squeezing his handful, stroking up the base of Peter's cock with his fingers. "You make your own decisions, Peter. You fuck who you want to fuck."
"I promised him."
Adam lay beside him, nuzzled his chest, sucked a nipple into his mouth and scraped it with his teeth. "Give me something," Adam urged. "Thirty years, Peter. Just lie there, and let me have you. I'll give you back. Promise." He shifted on the bed, and there was his cock, hard now, peachy-pink and stiff and looking delicious. Peter's fingers drew toward it, and Adam caressed his balls again. They moaned together. "Let's not wait. Give me your mouth." Adam roughly slid his fingers between Peter's lips, drew them out again, and rubbed his own cock with his hand. Peter lay passively, but opened his mouth to Adam's cock, let it in, tasted it. Nice. A little dirty, a little delicate. Smaller than Nathan's, for sure. Smaller than his own. Thick, though, and getting thicker in his mouth. Adam went down on him, too, making up for Peter's passivity with ravenous sucking.
Too hard; too sharp. But oh, yes, good. And spit-wet fingers stroking and penetrating his asshole; yes, good. Locked in it, trembling and helpless, but with a cock for him to suck, too, when he could stop moaning. "Nathan," he said out loud, begging, praying to him that he wasn't forgotten. Sharing with him as best he could. "Oh Nathan..." Trying to say something, to explain, while Adam was trying to suck him inside out.
Out the corner of his eye, Peter saw Adam's eyes glint. "He wouldn't begrudge you this," Adam said. "You wouldn't forbid him, would you? After three months in jail?" He jammed his fingers into Peter hard, and sucked harder, too, and Peter dissolved under the onslaught. He tried to keep his eyes open while he came, to make sure his hands weren't glowing, but he couldn't help it. When he closed his eyes, he saw Nathan's smiling face, from his dream, and the orgasm ripped through him like a hurricane.
Before Peter had a chance to recover, Adam was on top of him, fucking down into Peter's mouth with long, deep, sharp thrusts. Peter could hardly breathe, but it was good, the hard, sharp pleasure. He wanted to taste Adam's pre-come, but he couldn't; maybe Adam wasn't a dripper. Maybe it was a Petrelli thing. But the texture was there, slickening the inside of his mouth, making it easier for Adam to fuck.
He tried to tap out, but Adam didn't understand that signal. The immortal was lost, hips jerking, filling that hole, not caring which one. He held Peter's jaw steady so he couldn't move away. "Now," Adam gasped, "now, Peter..."
Peter gave him a slight shove, enough to get Adam's cock out of his mouth. "No - don't make me swallow," Peter said. Adam just stared at him and nodded, held him down, and let his semen fly in runny trails over Peter's chest and stomach.
Then he rubbed the come into Peter's nipples, and brought the still-dripping tip of his cock back to Peter's mouth and slipped it inside, and Peter didn't mind that so much. His come hardly had any taste at all, maybe because he was a regenerator. Adam's cock stayed hard, and Peter sucked some more. He gazed up at Adam and flicked his tongue expertly, letting Adam see. For the first time in days, Adam didn't seem bored; he seemed relaxed, cheerful, religious, perfectly in his element.
Peter smiled and hugged Adam's leg. Adam might want to use him, but he wasn't going to throw Peter away. And tomorrow morning, they'd go save Nathan... and then... well, Peter resolved, he'd deal with that then.
First: Save Nathan's life. Even more first: Get Adam off as many more times as he could. Adam had given Peter his freedom; Peter had to give something back. But what could he give Adam for giving Nathan back his life?
He'd figure it out tomorrow.
TO BE CONTINUED IN RITUAL (31)...
And yes, things will escalate from there. Thanks to betas airspaniel and darkbloom_85.
Pairing: Peter/Adam; implied Peter/Nathan, Adam/Elle
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: through 2.11, "Powerless"
Word Count: about 9500
Warnings: explicit sex (slash, het, and solo), language
Summary: Peter becomes very close to Adam... and Adam twists Peter's devotion to Nathan to his own ends. Continuance of the "truth" story arc begun in Ritual 29. Feedback is extremely welcome as always!
Previous rituals:
(1) :: (2) :: (3) :: (4) :: (5) :: (6) :: (7) :: (8) :: (9) :: (10) :: (11) :: (12) :: (13) :: (14) :: (15) :: (16) :: (17) :: (18) :: (19) :: (20) :: (21) :: (22) :: (23) :: (24) :: (25) :: (26) :: (27) :: (28) :: (29)
Heroes is the property of NBC/Universal and Tailwinds Production. This is a work of fan fiction and no claim of ownership is implied for the characters or storylines. Contains dialogue and situations from "Four Months Ago..." written by Tim Kring, excerpted and remixed.
NOVEMBER 2006
Five pills in a plastic cup. Five pills, once a day, and Peter wouldn't be a danger to himself, or anyone he loved, ever again. Five big pills; a red-tipped capsule and a green-tipped one, two shiny blue pills, and a big round pink one. That was it. Five pills to bring peace on earth. They looked like candy and went down bitter.
He mostly just lay on his bed in the small gray room during the first few days, not daring even to test his powers to see if they had become weakened. He didn't imagine that he'd ever had much control over them in the first place. What the hell had he been thinking? His abilities were far too big, too powerful, too much for him to control. He didn't want to hurt anybody else.
And he didn't want to feel anymore. He was getting there. As the medicine kicked in, he felt more and more like he was wrapped in layers of fine cotton wool, or spider silk. He wondered if one of the pills was an antidepressant, a sedative, an anxiolytic. He didn't recognize any of them. Peter didn't like pills. He'd never taken a lot of drugs. Nathan had told him a long time ago to steer clear, because he'd probably like them too much.
Nathan.
"You go - I go!"
"You go, I go," Peter whispered an echo to his memory. "You go, I go," he repeated, taking in his breath in a shudder. Tears welled from his eyes; he blotted them on his pillow, making it too soggy to rest his aching head. He lay twisted up with his face in his hands. "You go, I go..." Cultivating and treasuring his discomfort. Nathan was dying, and it was Peter's fault. He was a monster. He had the stupid idea that he could save the world, but he'd never thought that he had to save the world from himself. And then, when it came time to do it, he couldn't even do that. And yet, Nathan wouldn't leave him, even to save his own life. "You go, I go..."
All night, softly, to himself.
He didn't really sleep, and he wasn't really awake. He just lay there, with the moment playing endlessly in his mind. The skin blistering, burning, cooking off Nathan's face. Nathan screaming his name as they lost their grip on each other, as the world flipped over and over and came to an abrupt white halt. And then it started again.
"You go, I go..."
The drugs helped with the nausea; Peter only vomited once, while it was dark, and then crept back to his bed and his whispered litany.
Morning was just the overhead lights turning on.
In the room next door, the English guy tried again.
"Do you know any jokes?"
Peter fell silent and didn't move, hoping the voice would shut up and leave him alone. "I've got one," the voice chirped brightly. "What do you get when you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic?"
Peter rolled over a little.
"About halfway," the English guy finished. "Ha ha."
"That's not very funny," said Peter before he thought.
"Well, you come up with one, then."
"I don't know any jokes," Peter grumbled. "I really just want to sleep... could you be quiet, please?"
"Sleep? How can you sleep in here? It's daytime. The lights are on. Elle'll be round with your breakfast any minute now - and I can tell you right now, don't let her catch you sleeping."
The English voice spoke truly. Elle, the bizarrely perky little blonde who had the first person Peter had seen when he woke up in this facility, came in, shook her head at him lying curled up on his bed, and shot pretty blue sparks from her fingertips at his hair. The sparks didn't actually touch his skin, but they made all the rest of the hair on his body stand up - even his eyebrows - and he jumped to his feet and yelled. She giggled at him. "Time to take your medicine."
Peter sat back down and was quiet, and did what he was told. The girl gave him a Clif bar and a demure little kiss on his head. "You're so cute with your new haircut," she said as she left. "See you tomorrow."
He didn't bother unwrapping the nutrient bar, only set it on the table away from him. He had no appetite. He lay back down and curled up, praying for silence.
"So... why are you in 'ere?"
Peter sighed and rolled his eyes. "Leave me alone," he said.
There was no reply. After a matching sigh from behind the wall, Peter got his desired silence. It would be one of the last times that would happen.
***
After a few more periods of light and dark, Peter opened his eyes and looked around, and realized that he had just woken up. He hadn't been aware of falling asleep; one moment he had been spinning and screaming and feeling the sun burst from his every pore, and the next, he was lying here on the bed with cotton mouth and a growling stomach. The lights were on. He slowly sat up, and groaned at his sore muscles.
"Bit stiff this morning?" came the English-accented voice. It startled Peter; he hadn't heard it for a long time. Days, he realized. "Comes from just lying there. You ought to get moving. You might as well exercise; there's not much else to do here."
Before Peter could reply, Elle was there, in a frilly white dress and red fuck-me sandals. She grinned at him like a cute, blonde crocodile. "Good morning, sunshine," she said.
"Morning," Peter countered reluctantly.
She handed him the plastic cup of pills and another of water, and watched expectantly while he swallowed them. He stood up, went to the sink, and drank three more cups in rapid succession. He felt different today - more alert, more solid, even if he did ache all over. "Is there a... gym, or something?" he asked.
Elle laughed at him. "You're not ready for that yet," she said. "You just sit tight and relax, and let the medicine do its work. You're still not out of danger yet. Get on the Stairmaster, you might just explode." She shrugged. "Now just stay here and be a good boy, and tomorrow I'll bring you something special," she added. "How's that?" Without bothering to wait for a reply, she spun around, fluttering her skirt, and left.
"There isn't a 'gym or something,'" came the English voice. "Not that we can access. You know how to do isometrics, I'm sure. Or yoga. I suggest you start." The voice paused. "You must be quite dangerous, to put you out here with me."
"I'm very dangerous," Peter replied.
An impressed, slightly lascivious laugh. "Oh, I bet you are. What are you here for again?"
"I'm -" Peter stopped short, and then thought that if whoever this voice belonged to was here, he had to know about strange abilities. Maybe he'd even read about it in the paper. Peter shuddered to think of what was happening in the world outside. "I absorbed the power of emitting radioactivity and - I don't know how to use it. How to control it."
"You absorbed the power," said the voice, very calmly, matter-of-factly. "And it got you into some trouble, because it's not your power. It's not what you're used to. Right?"
"Right," said Peter.
"Right."
"I'm getting cured, though," Peter added. "I can't do it on my own, you know? I can't control it. I can't be trusted."
"Ah," said the voice. "It's not that you're so dangerous - it's that you can't be trusted. That's why you're down here with me. I can't be trusted, either." The voice sounded profoundly amused.
"Why not?"
"I really am dangerous." A soft laugh. "Now, have you remembered any jokes?"
"Yeah, I remember a joke," Peter said. "Fuck off."
"That's a great joke. It's my favorite."
"So fuck off and leave me alone."
"But you're right there, and I'm bored."
"Read a book," Peter said.
"Read 'em. All of 'em. Couple of times."
"Please just leave me alone," Peter begged. "Please."
"Solitary," said the voice. "Hmm... must be agony, for you."
"Life is agony for me," Peter murmured.
"Aww. You're the only person in the history of the world that bad stuff has ever happened to. How d'you manage?" When Peter didn't reply, there came a sigh from behind the wall. "All right, I'll be quiet. But for God's sake, try to think of some jokes, would you? The more tasteless, the better? If you're going to be whinging, at least try to be funny now and again."
Peter just shook his head, stricken with the memory that he always tried to be funny for Nathan, and Nathan would laugh and say that Peter wasn't funny, and it was their stupid little joke, and now both their lives were over. He wished he had more pills to take. He was feeling things again.
That night, after the lights went out - Peter had no idea what time it was - he lay in bed and let the loneliness and regret wash over him. He missed Nathan so much - he missed everyone so much - his mother, his father, Simone, Claire... Claude... even Charles. His eyes flooded with tears, and he began to sob quietly, trying to muffle the sound with his pillow.
"I know it's hard, Peter."
Peter held his breath, clamping down the sobs.
"It's all right." The English voice whispered soothingly, like wind through willow trees.
"Fuck off," Peter replied.
Silence for a moment. "Are you familiar with Bulfinch's Mythology?"
"What?"
"Stories of Gods and Heroes. Particularly the Greek myths. Are you familiar?"
Peter lay in stunned silence. He hadn't revisited them in years, but he'd spent his entire early childhood as obsessed with Greek mythology as he had been with Batman or Indiana Jones. "Yeah," he answered. He stopped crying.
"What's your favorite?"
"The Minotaur," Peter said. "The labyrinth."
"All right," the Englishman responded, and cleared his throat. "Let's see if I can remember. I have the entirety of it committed to memory, or I used to. Let's see... 'The Athenian people were in a state of crisis' - no wait - 'deep affliction, on account of the tribute they were forced to pay to Minos, king of Crete. This tribute consisted of seven youths and seven maidens, who were sent every year to be devoured by the Minotaur, a monster with a bull's body and a human head.'" He recited beautifully, his tone smoothing as the words came to him, and his accent adding just the right storytelling vibe. Peter took a deep breath and actually smiled, his entire being suffusing with pleasure. He hadn't had a bedtime story since he was a kid, maybe even this story, in a slightly different form, in a different, deeper, more velvety voice.
It made him feel young, and soothed and protected. Safe.
He slipped easily into sleep, and that night he had no nightmares at all.
***
"You've been through something awful, haven't you? I'm sorry."
There he went, that disembodied, very proper voice, being nice again. Pointy and sarcastic most of the time, but when he was nice, when he spoke the truth, it was ten times kinder, just in contrast. Peter had to give him something. "I'm Peter."
"Hello, Peter. It's nice to meet you. I'm Adam."
"Adam," Peter echoed.
"Peter," was the reply, soft at the edges, arch and amused. Teasing.
Peter smiled until he remembered how serious this all was. "I'd still rather be left alone, though."
"Oh come now. Let me tell you more Bulfinch. You don't have to listen; I'm doing it for myself as well. It's good for me to test my memory now and again, to make sure I keep it. I don't want to lose Bulfinch. It comes in so handy in situations like these."
"Like these?"
"Like being stuck somewhere for a long time," Adam explained. "On a ship, say. In prison. On a very long journey alone. It's the only book I've memorized, you know. It's the only one I need. Go on, I'm up to Endymion." He loudly and ostentatiously cleared his throat and began, "'Endymion was a beautiful youth who fed his flock on Mount Latmos.' Sound familiar?"
Peter snickered but didn't reply. Adam kept going, and Peter did some more push-ups. He could now do seventy without pausing, and Adam seemed to speak to a particular cadence that made the exercise easier. It was like working out while listening to music. Adam was a skilled orator - or at least a big ham; he did all kinds of vocal acrobatics to enhance the words he spoke, and make the stories come to life.
Peter wouldn't admit it, but he knew that he owed a lot of his sanity to Adam talking to him, telling him the stories of gods, demigods, and mortals, some of which he recognized and some which were new to him. At night, sometimes, Peter still cried, but if he made a sound, Adam would soothe, "There there. You're not alone."
He wondered if he'd ever see Adam again if he got better and went home, then realized that he'd never actually seen Adam, only heard his voice. Peter wondered what he looked like. He had to be old, but he didn't have the voice of an old man; Adam's voice was crisp and vibrant and knowing. Peter had no idea what kind of shape he was in, because he only exercised a little, nowhere near as often as Peter did. He might have had totally different clothes than Peter had, the gray T-shirt, loose pajama bottoms and deck shoes without laces, like a dangerous mental patient. He might have been black or Asian, bearded or shaven. Ugly or handsome.
Peter didn't ask.
***
After dinner one night, Peter sat quietly at his desk, reading an actual book, the first one he'd seen in ages. It was a cheap paperback thriller, but he was completely gripped. He loved books so much. The man named Bob had given it to Peter, after Peter had asked if he could have a book to read, or some paper and a pen so that Peter could write a letter to be given to Nathan. "How is he?" Peter dared to ask. Bob promised to find out, and gave Peter the book that he'd had in his jacket pocket.
When Peter had told Adam about this, Adam had just given a "Hrmmm." He was quiet tonight. Peter wondered if Adam was jealous of the book. He vowed that the next time Bob brought him into the lab for a checkup, he'd ask if Adam could have a book, too.
The door to Peter's room opened and Elle slinked in. Black wrap-front dress this time, shoes with leopard print on them (for all Peter knew, it was real leopard, and she'd killed it herself), her hair down, all loose and messy. A little mascara and red, red lipstick. Peter wished he didn't notice every single detail of her every day, but he did - she was the only spot of color he ever saw, the only girl, and she seemed to wear new shoes every single day. And she was wearing perfume, too. Too much perfume. Peter looked her up and down and tightened his jaw.
She leaned against the desk and bent one leg, her skirt sliding up her bare thigh. Peter stared at her feet. She didn't touch him, for once. "Do you like your book?" she asked.
Peter looked unflinchingly into her eyes. He hated being afraid of her; it made him hostile. He was hostile a lot, these days. "It's shitty, actually," he replied.
"I'll tell Daddy you said that." She grinned and quirked her eyebrows, and Peter squirmed and had to look away. She scooted even farther back onto the surface of the desk, her feet almost leaving the ground, and shifted her skirt aside, slipping further and further up her thighs, and -
Oh, God.
Panties had not been in her wardrobe plan for the evening.
Peter immediately blinked and turned half away, wishing he could forget what he had just seen. Elle giggled at him. "Are you gonna be naughty or nice?" she said.
"Go away," said Peter. "Now, please."
She laughed some more. "Oh, Peter, you know it's not like that," she said. "Now, c'mon, hold out your hand... it'll be fun. It's always fun."
"Fun for you, not me," Peter whispered, but he held out his hand, steeling himself against the anticipated shock. It didn't really make it better. He didn't flinch away, though; his fingers jerked back from the electric contact, but he didn't snatch his hand away anymore. He didn't like it, like she seemed to think he did, but he could take it now. Elle drew in her breath with a fluttery moan and let it out in a sigh.
Then she wrapped her arms around him and kissed the side of his jaw. "Now, c'mon, Peter," she said, sliding off the desk, standing next to him, and hiking up her skirt again. "Take a look. My treat. How long's it been? I should think you'd want to see."
"You're wrong," Peter said, proud of himself because his voice didn't waver. And he didn't look. Oh, but he wanted to look. He was amazed that he wasn't drooling. He despised her with every fiber of his being, but that didn't mean she wasn't ridiculously hot. It was awful. She was like the Bizarro-world version of Claire, and that made him feel even more hostile and confused and lonely and horny. Those feelings were returning, too. Under any other circumstances, he would have had her underneath him on the bed before she could take another breath. But that was before. "I'm not interested. Go away."
Elle frowned, and let her skirt fall back to her calves. It was strange to see genuine hurt in her eyes, but there it was. She sent a sharp blue jolt at Peter's bare ankles, knocking him backwards off his chair, and flounced angrily away, slamming the door behind her. Peter picked himself up and lay down on the bed, trembling with adrenaline.
The sound of Adam's laughter trickled through the grate at the bottom of the wall. "So, it seems that Elle has given you 'the Christmas present.'"
"What?" said Peter, half disbelievingly, half genuinely confused. He laughed a little, too, the sound of Adam's voice relieving the tension. "Has she done the same thing to you?"
"Oh, indeed," Adam said dryly. "Years ago. I was much less gentlemanly than you."
"Gentlemanly?" Peter echoed, then realized, "Did you fuck her?"
Adam gave another "Hrmm," sounding unsure. "I slapped her in the face. And then I fucked her." He laughed slyly, and when he spoke again, his voice was sharp and ruthless. "With my finger. It was as far as I could get. It took me a day or so to heal from the charring she gave me. She told her daddy she was just testing to see if I still had any healing ability left. That's why she doesn't come round here. She knows that next time, it'll be my cock, and I'll know to knock her out first. Can't give off electrical shocks when you're unconscious, after all."
Peter found himself laughing helplessly. "God," he said, "that's fucked up." And thrilling, and awesome, and what was he becoming? The old Peter wouldn't have laughed. He would have been horrified. But the thought of Elle being slapped in the face was just too good.
"Eh... it's what she's dying to have happen to her, whether she can admit it to herself or not. There's a reason why she didn't tell Daddy that I raped her; it's because I didn't. She somehow knows that it was her own hot-to-trot stupidity that brought her to me that night, and she knows that I know that she had an orgasm." Adam laughed, and Peter stopped laughing, wondering if he was telling the truth. "Don't let her get to you."
The lights went out, and Peter retreated to his bed, while Adam continued to recite Bulfinch. Peter was now hopelessly aroused, between Elle flashing him the pink and getting her feelings hurt, and Adam's story about her. He hadn't masturbated since he got here, not seriously, not more than a few comforting strokes and squeezes meant more to reassure himself that he was still all there. He hadn't had an orgasm since... before he'd gotten to the facility.
That was too long. No wonder he was losing his mind a little bit. He was losing touch with who he was. He hadn't gone that long without an orgasm since he was a child. It was as much a part of him as breathing.
"'There, too, flush'd Ganymede, his rosy thigh half buried in the eagle's down, sole as a flying star shot through the sky above the pillared town,'" Adam murmured, sounding half asleep.
Meanwhile, Peter moved as little as possible, and tried to be completely silent; only the soft, faint whisking sound of his wrist against the bedsheet seemed audible, and Peter provided some false deep-sleep breathing to try to cover it up. But he came a lot faster than he had imagined he would - within thirty seconds, certainly no more than a minute - and he came with sharp, blistering intensity. He let out a surprised little moan before he could stop himself, and lay stock-still, his cheeks burning with embarrassment.
After a few seconds, Adam said silkily, "Good night, Peter."
Peter stared at the ceiling all night.
***
"I heard you last night," Adam said, after the lights had been out for a while.
"Yeah... sorry," Peter replied sheepishly.
"No, that's not what I mean," said Adam. His voice became very husky. "It was beautiful. I'd like to hear more." As Peter lay in stunned silence, Adam continued, "It is lonely here. You and I both know that. And we have physical needs, as well as emotional ones, am I correct? But we are alone here. And all we have is our hands, our imaginations... and each other."
"You want to... listen to me?"
"I want you to share with me." Adam's voice dropped to a prayerful whisper. His breath shuddered audibly, and Peter found himself flushing hot all over. "Tell me what you think about."
Peter giggled uncomfortably. "I can't," he said, squirming, squirming out of his clothes. He was too hot to stay dressed. It didn't matter that it was late December. And maybe even Christmas; he had no way of knowing. He'd lost track a while ago. The drugs muddled his sense of time, the drugs, which had taken away everything... well, apparently, not this. He was still himself.
Adam didn't miss a beat. "All right then," he murmured, "I'll start."
The unseen Englishman began to speak in a slow, hissing, urgent rasp that traveled straight into the core of Peter's body. "Tits. Soft, full, supple tits... hard nipples. Like pearls. Pointing right at you, eager to be sucked. Just a suggestion of a drop of... milk... at the tip? No... it's come. My come. I lick it off and add more off the tip of my cock. Come all over them. All over her tits. All over her face. She loves me." He paused for a moment, and Peter heard the rhythm of Adam's hand, and thought he would explode. This was so wrong, and yet so exactly what he needed. Everything was different now. Nothing made sense, but this did, in a way that Peter couldn't even try to understand. "She loves me. So I fuck the bitch hard. Fuck her arse, fuck her cunt, everywhere. Make her beg me for it. Fill her up and make a mess of her. Use her and throw her away. And still she loves me."
Peter lay still and quiet, more than a little horrified at the words Adam was saying, but understanding. It was a persona, it wasn't real. Adam wasn't really like that. It was an act, pretending, the way Nathan had done. It was just a fantasy. Peter's cock felt like it was made out of lead - but how could lead be ticklish? He wished there was someone there to suck it; that's what he wanted more than anything. Nathan there to suck it better.
Adam let out a haggard, throaty moan. Peter listened enthralled, gingerly massaging his cock. If he used too much pressure, it'd be like last night, over all too soon. Adam really hadn't lasted long.
"Your turn," Adam said, calm if slightly breathless.
"I can't," Peter insisted.
"No - tell me. Tell me who you'd use."
Peter couldn't answer that. He just didn't know what to say. Nathan was the obvious answer, and Peter certainly couldn't say that.
After a moment, Adam said, "Ohhhh... it's you who wants to be used. I see, I see."
"No," Peter protested, but his cock, his balls, his prostate, his soul had other ideas. His dick jumped in his hand and he just barely caught the hard jet of thick semen in his T-shirt. Peter stared at it for a while. He didn't think he'd ever seen his come that thick before. Even Nathan's come wasn't that thick... and then there was more of it spurting out of him, and Peter flopped his head back onto his pillow and moaned out loud, so thankful that he was on the meds, because surely he would have actually gone nuclear right then. It felt the same; the power of the sun blasting from between his skin cells, from the hot core inside his body. But now, he didn't even glow. He just came, like any normal, idiotically horny, completely hard-up young man.
Adam was laughing delightedly. "Good night, flush'd Ganymede; good night."
Peter could only smile, still too moved to speak.
***
Two and a half weeks later. Peter had kept track with little tick marks he made with his thumbnail on the edge of the desk. He still didn't know what day it was, just that it was nineteen days since he'd started his tally. January, sometime, probably. He wasn't allowed to keep a pen and paper in his room; he could borrow one and write a letter, but then everything was taken away again as soon as he was finished. They promised that the letters were mailed, but Peter never got anything back. Bob told him that the family was too busy dealing with Nathan to have time to respond.
It had been a long and trying day - awakened by Elle shocking him, and then endless lab tests on an empty stomach. They told him it had to be that way for accuracy. When he got back to his room, his small collection of bad paperback books was gone, and they had brought in a new desk.
He kicked his chair around for a while and cursed, then sat down and wolfed down his dinner. "I'd kill for a falafel sandwich," he grumbled. "This is bullshit. I just wish I knew what day it was."
"I know what day it is. Any time, you could ask me. I have my own ways of keeping track. I'm sorry about your books. I'll tell you as many stories as I can remember. I've got plenty."
"Thanks," Peter replied.
The lights clicked off.
"It's a damn shame they did that to you, though," Adam added. "For nothing, you know?"
"Tests," Peter shrugged. "They have to test me. Make sure the meds're working."
"Right, right," Adam said. "The meds." He gave a contemptuous little laugh. "I forgot. You're dangerous. Oh well. Just us now." He was quiet for a long time, then asked softly, "D'you want to get off?"
"I usually do," said Peter. Every night. Now that he knew it was okay. The anticipation got him through the days. Adam's stories, Adam's fantasies, the quiet, gruff grunts of Adam's orgasms, in contrast with Peter's own breathless moans.
"Go on, then." They were both quiet for a moment, but for the sounds of shifting clothes on bedsheets, and bodies reclining. Peter sighed and relaxed, and let his fingers play over himself. His arm ached where they'd taken the blood out of him, and there was still a little pinprick in the crook of his elbow. He smiled at it. He was almost cured, almost normal again.
Adam let out a long sigh. "Tell me what you're thinking," he said.
At the moment, Peter wasn't really thinking of anything erotic; he was just savoring his feeling of hope, of optimism, of unwinding. The pleasure of his own fingers against him. "Nothing really," he said.
"Oh, surely, there's something coming to mind... A damp-lipped stripper in high heels, a diamond necklace, and nothing else? Maybe holding a whip?"
Peter usually lay still and let Adam go on about whatever he wanted to talk about, but tonight, he was in far too contrary of a mood. He spoke sharply, if quietly. "Actually I'm thinking about cock, if you want to know the truth."
Adam gave a quick laugh of delighted surprise. Not the reaction Peter had been expecting. At all. "Why didn't you say so in the first place?"
"Because it's none of your business," Peter said, feeling his face go hot. He hadn't intended to blurt out the truth, especially not... He'd never hear the end of this. Maybe he didn't want to.
"You can't shock me," Adam said. "You can't offend me. I've seen it all. I've done it all. You should have said."
"I just like girls, too," Peter mumbled.
"What? Speak up."
"I like women. I'm sexually attracted to women."
"Of course you are," Adam said caressingly. "But that's not all you are. You're thinking of a cock in particular."
He sounded so smug. Peter glared at the concrete that separated them, wondering if his silky tone meant that he was flattered, imagining Peter was thinking about him. Peter hadn't given Adam's cock a moment's thought. Well, not before now, anyway. "Yeah. I'm thinking about one in particular. Not yours."
"You haven't seen mine," Adam replied. He sounded amused. "You can't picture a cock you haven't seen. You can imagine it, but... it's not as good as remembering. Whose cock is it, Peter?" He sighed deeply. "Are you picturing it? Remembering it? Hard and throbbing, so sensitive, but so blunt and rough and demanding at the same time... Cock's wonderful... What's your favorite thing about it?"
"Feeling it inside me," Peter replied. "Feeling it up against me."
"In your mouth?"
"Yeah... where I wanted it... for so long... and finally he let me."
"He let you suck his cock?" Adam said, an edge of irony in his voice. "He let you? He lowered himself to it... because he saw how much it meant to you... and so little to him."
"Oh, no," Peter protested. "No. It meant everything to him. I meant everything to him. At first he wouldn't let me. He didn't want to hurt me."
"Your lover," Adam whispered. "Your man. But he did hurt you, didn't he?"
"Yeah, but it was... I wanted..." Peter gasped and bit his lip. Lust felt different when it was about Nathan. Nathan didn't even have to be physically present; all Peter had to do was think about him, and instead of the heavy core of desire he felt with everyone else, he felt desire in every single part of him, in every breath, every heartbeat, every swallow. "It's part of the experience. I wanted him, no matter what happened. It wasn't too much for me to take. It's worth it."
"Oh, but it hurts, doesn't it? So hot, so stiff, splitting open your arse. Deep inside you, deeper than anyone should ever go, but you let him because... you love him."
"I didn't let him - I begged him." Faintly: "Fuck me. Please."
For a moment, neither spoke, only panted and gasped, and the quiet, damp, repetitive sounds of their fingers on their cocks quivered in the still, dark air. "Did he - use you and throw you away?" Adam growled at last.
"No," said Peter. "Never. He loves me."
"Doesn't matter! Who is it, Peter?"
Peter said nothing, only cried out as he came, making it sound good for Adam, because he was alone with his imagination, too. Adam's answering sound was only a low moan, followed by the same question again, "Who is it?"
But Peter just closed his eyes and became still, wrapping his arms around himself, and kissing his own semen-sticky hand, pretending to be Nathan kissing him, pretending to kiss Nathan, pretending they were together, and that he tasted tears intermingling, and not just his own. Blessedly, Adam was quiet too, saying no more, letting Peter fantasize himself to sleep.
***
So it seemed Adam had been right. Peter was a prisoner after all. They had no intention of letting him free, to see Nathan or contact him in any way, or anybody else. They hadn't delivered his letters; he'd even seen Elle walk out of his cell with one, and then drop it directly into a garbage bin as she went down the hall away from him. Peter hated being lied to more than anything, and when he thought of all the things he'd carefully written out in those letters to his brother, and knowing that Nathan hadn't heard any of it, probably thought Peter was dead, and dying himself, never knowing Peter was alive and wanting him every single minute of the day... almost more than he could take.
"Nathan." It had become a prayer to say his name; now it felt like the ferocious prayer of a warrior, a focusing of rage.
"Just a small amount of my blood could heal him," suggested Adam. "End his pain. Even after everything you put him through."
The feelings were coming back. First the lust, then hostility, then self-awareness, and now curiosity, restlessness, impatience. Shame. Intense hunger to have a chance to set things right. He'd had his vacation, his down time, his rest and exercise. He was up to two hundred push-ups without even getting out of breath; four hundred sit-ups. As good as Nathan at his fittest, maybe more, because Peter was doing yoga, too. His body was tightly sculpted and layered with muscle, his eyes were dark, keen, and calculating; he looked ten years older than he had six months ago. He had to show Nathan how far he'd come. He had to show Nathan that he'd survived. He had to fix this. "How do we get out?" he asked.
Adam gave a short hum of satisfaction. "First of all, quit taking those stupid pills," he said, in a low voice, right next to the wall. "They're already starting to lose their effectiveness. I can hear it in your voice. Four or five days, you'll be back to your normal level of power - and then there's not much that can stop us."
"I don't want to hurt anybody," Peter insisted.
"They'd try to kill you before they'd let you go. If you're smart, nobody has to die. Even the bastards that deserve it."
"I wish we could go now," Peter said, rolling his eyes at his concrete cage, disgusted at himself for accepting it for so long. But he'd just wanted to get better. (And to hide.) He might as well face it, and stand up to that weak part of himself; he'd told Nathan to do it enough times. Still, it was repulsive and humiliating, and hard to accept. But it was in the past. Another Peter. Maybe, here was his chance to walk away from it, and become someone else.
"Play along," Adam advised. "Be everything they want you to be. Play it cool, and we'll be walking free on the street by the weekend."
"Do you know what day it is?" Peter asked sheepishly. "I can't keep track."
"It's Monday, February fifth," Adam said. "And believe me, you'll want to get out of here before Valentine's Day. Elle's got it bad for you. If she can't have you, she'll see you dead - or at least try. But be careful. Depending on how strong your transferred regenerative power is, she might be able to." His voice quieted. "That'd be a shame. I'd hate to lose you."
After dark, Peter sat in bed in lotus position, calming his breathing and centering his mind. What he was about to attempt would take immense concentration and strength; this time he'd try to do it right, instead of jumping in too fast, without thinking.
"Thanks for being there for me," he said.
"You were in shock when you came in," Adam replied. "You barely responded at all for days. And Elle's systematic torture didn't help. I shudder to think of what she did to you while you were unconscious. No wonder you couldn't remember anything. And you've been here for me, too." He sighed. "Thirty years in this room. How I've wanted someone to talk to. I guess the facility is running out of room - I've only once before had someone in that room next to mine, and that only for a few weeks. One day he just disappeared. I imagine he was taken away and euthanized. That was... sixteen years ago."
"Did you guys jack off together?" Peter asked teasingly.
Adam chuckled. "Put you to shame," he confirmed. "Filthy-minded bastard."
"What was his ability?"
"He could look at you and tell how you were going to die." Adam laughed oddly. "Good thing he never saw me... but I wonder what he saw when he looked into the mirror. Any rate, you're welcome, and cheers. I look forward to getting out. There are so many things I miss."
"Like what?" Peter unfolded his legs and lay back.
"Whiskey," Adam said. "Beer. Wine. Gin." He paused and laughed. "Cigarettes. Oh, I miss cigarettes. I don't know why they wouldn't let me have them in here - it's not as though they're bad for me. A nice, cold martini. Fanny. Obviously. I had a lovely woman out there before they got me. Gorgeous, brown skin, eyes like... diamonds. Diamonds in disguise as coal." Adam laughed a bit more. "But you're not interested in hearing about girls, are you? You miss cock."
"Yeah," Peter replied. "I mean, I'm not sick of hearing about girls, but... yeah."
Adam's voice could be so sweet, so kind sometimes. "Who are you thinking of, Peter?"
Peter had to give him something.
"Nathan," he whispered. "I miss Nathan the most."
"Yes," Adam replied, softly, soothingly. "I thought as much. Castor and Pollux, trading their lives for each other. Perfect. You cannot shock me, you cannot offend me, Peter. I don't judge you for that. I've done everything - well, not that, I had no brothers... but it's not as though I've never seen it before or heard about it. Of course. It's beautiful. So neat and efficient; all that love encapsulated so close to you. Share that with me. This excites me."
"It's not neat," Peter said. "It's... very sloppy. We don't know what we're doing."
"Oh, but you do."
"When we're alone... yeah."
"Lights out," Adam whispered. "In private. No one else around. Tell me about his cock. Tell me how you made love."
Peter shook his head, feeling tears springing up in his eyes. Dammit. He would have to get over being so tearful all the time; there wouldn't be time for it, once he and Adam made their escape. "It'll never happen again," Peter said miserably.
"I'll make sure it happens," Adam said. "That's what we're doing. You're getting Nathan back. We're going to save him. Bring him back. Make him whole again. Yes, you deserve that." Adam shifted and sighed. "Are there others? Other men?"
"No," Peter said. "Just him, ever."
"Ever?"
"Well..." Peter turned onto his side. "Yeah. He made me promise... I wouldn't fuck other men." He smiled. "He insisted. And it was easy, so I said yeah. I'm only attracted to other guys in the most, like theoretical sense. Like I'll like someone's body or someone's smile, but I'm not thinking about how I want to suck their cock. Not like Nathan. I was obsessed with him. I'm... still obsessed."
"You like sucking cock?" Adam asked.
"Nathan's, yeah..."
"And you've never done it with any other man."
"No," Peter admitted.
Adam said, "Hmmm," and Peter gave a nervous laugh. "Do you prefer fucking, or being fucked?"
"I guess... with Nathan... I prefer being fucked. What, are you taking a poll?"
"I'm feeding my imagination, nothing more. Ganymede," he murmured, and gave a husky laugh. "Cup-bearer. Vessel. Fuck-slave of the god. I want to hear you come. I want to hear you call out his name. Pretend that he's there. Pretend... he's pressing you down, ravaging you, one moment holding you like a delicate blossom and the next, stabbing into you so deep that you scream."
"You're talking about you," Peter gasped softly, fingers rapidly stroking his cock. "That's the way you do things..."
"Never mind me - it's what you want."
"Fuck! Ohh, God, oh..." Peter bit his lip, and then whispered at the edge of his voice, "Nathan." His cock jumped and throbbed in his right hand, and he bit and kissed the other wrist, jamming his thumb into his mouth the way Nathan had done - but it wasn't the same. Still. The motion was enough. He pulled his thumb out of his mouth and rubbed the wetness along the shaft of his cock, making his entire body tingle. "Nathan!" he moaned, full-voice, semen spilling back over his hard, flat belly. "Aaaah... lick it off me..." he murmured. "Don't waste a drop...."
"I won't," said Adam.
Peter flinched a little at the sound of his voice, startled to hear it. But it was all right. It was Adam, and Adam didn't judge him; Peter wouldn't judge, either. And it was all just fantasy. But if Adam was telling the truth - and his blood really could heal Nathan - there wasn't anything Peter wouldn't do for him.
***
"Come on, Peter. You can do it."
So Peter just walked through the wall that separated his cell from Adam's. Concrete and wood and brick, whatever. Just like walking through air. And on the other side, a man stood wearing the same clothes as Peter, roughly the same height, and apparently, roughly the same age. White and blond, bright blue eyes, and an expression of bemused impatience, which made him seem much older. Thinner than Peter, but muscular. Maybe cute; Peter couldn't really tell. At the moment he was just the most beautiful thing Peter had ever seen - his ticket out of here.
Peter stared at him, overwhelmed. "It's nice to finally meet you," he marveled. And finally, he thought up a joke. "You know, for four hundred years, you've held up pretty well."
Adam crinkled his eyes. Definitely cute. "Come on. Let's go heal your brother."
Peter smiled at him obligingly, and turned to face the other wall. Adam's hand came down on Peter's shoulder, and Peter took a deep breath. Together, they walked through the walls, finding themselves in a hallway. Peter stood still for a moment, shut his eyes, and remembered the sharp pang of a bo stick hitting him on the cheekbone, and the clench of rough fingers underneath his throat. There was no reflection in the glass windows of the cells as they passed. There were a few dozen other prisoners, and Peter stared at them in dismay, but Adam urged in a low voice, "Forget about them now. We'll come back for them later. We know where they are. But for now, we have to get out, and we have to save Nathan's life. There isn't much time. You know the slow wasting of burn victims as well as I." And Peter gritted his teeth and continued on.
Peter grabbed a couple of coats off the rack in a closet they passed through, then kept walking until his shoes crunched frozen grass.
They were out.
Real night darkness enfolded them, real outdoor cold seeped into their lungs. They stood in the shadows of the back of the building, only one of a small cluster on what appeared to be nothing more than a neatly-kept research campus. "Well done," Adam hissed. He took his hand back, and hurriedly shrugged into a coat. "Now... let's try you using two or more of your abilities at once. You can do this, Peter. I know you can. Make us invisible and ephemeral." Adam's eyes glinted. "We shall be as ghosts. Come on, Peter. Let's go. Focus."
Peter nodded, and let it come to him, and let no thought of danger enter his mind. Adam had repeated that phrase like a mantra for the last week, since they'd first spoken of escape. Let no thought of danger enter your mind. Mental discipline to keep him from thinking about Ted Sprague, or Sylar, or panic. The power of repetition. It worked.
When Peter walked, with Adam's hand on his shoulder, their feet didn't dent the grass. They passed through layers of chain-link fence and cast no shadow, leaving only the swishing sound of their clothes. They stood at the side of a small road, looping away into the trees; the sound of a highway in the distance. Peter let his concentration relax, and they both shimmered into solid visibility again. "We shan't get far on foot," said Adam. "See if you can get us a car."
Peter slowly turned to him with a grin. "Have you forgotten I can fly?"
Adam just smirked at him. "I was wondering if you'd forgotten," he replied. Then he just stared at Peter for a moment. His expression was impossible to read. "You're extremely good-looking."
Peter looked away and shrugged a bit. "You don't need to flatter me," he said dryly, unable to keep the smile off his face. He was so bad at jokes. "I'll give you a ride."
"You will, won't you," said Adam, with that same odd look.
"Are you hitting on me?" Peter said, rolling his eyes. "Because that's like... beneath you."
"You're so..." Adam shook his head. "...young."
Peter shrugged. "It's one of my charms." He bent his knees slightly and held up his arms; Adam climbed onto his back.
And then let all his thoughts of Nathan out, and owned the sky.
***
He flew over farmlands, towards a river, not recognizing where he was, but as he descended and got a look at the license plates on the cars, realized that they were now in Connecticut. "I went the wrong way," Peter said after he'd come to a sloppy landing on the roof of a warehouse. "Give me a second to catch my breath, and we'll go back and go to the hospital where Nathan is."
"No, no, Peter, we shouldn't. We need to lay low for just a little while longer. We need to assess the situation. And we need money." Adam didn't seem even slightly impressed that he'd just flown through the air on Peter's back.
"I might still have some credit cards at home," Peter said. "Back at my apartment. I'll go in invisible. It won't be a big deal." Then his shoulders sagged. "Oh... the cards might be flagged. Dammit. I wish Nathan was here."
"Let's just go rob the till someplace," Adam said, not even trying to hide the boredom in his voice. "We are talking about saving lives here. Who'll miss a hundred dollars? Come on, Peter. Get us to the ground, and we'll get cash." Peter was looking right at Adam, otherwise he'd have sworn he heard Adam say out loud, For God's sake, do stop yapping so we can get a room and get in bed.
Peter flew them off again until he saw city lights under him. It wasn't much - an upper-crust town all made of cemeteries, golf courses, and country clubs - but he managed to find a bar that was open, walk in invisible, and swipe the entire contents of the cash register. He walked back outside and rejoined Adam on the sidewalk, holding hands, unseen, Adam counting out the cash.
"Four hundred twenty-three," Adam announced. "Plenty."
"About enough for a Best Western, around here," Peter said. "Money's not worth as much as it was before you were in jail."
"Any place that's not that cell is fine with me. I'm tempted to sleep outside."
Another brief journey through the air and they found a cheap, nondescript motel. The desk clerk didn't seem to notice the fact that they were wearing pajamas and coats, and had no luggage. Adam requested a single-bed room, and Peter stared into space, trying to grasp more thoughts from Adam's mind. But there was nothing. Adam's mind was as cool and blank as an obsidian slab.
In the room, Peter shrugged off his coat and draped it over the chair, then sat down and wiped his hands over his face. Adam took off his coat, too, more slowly, approached Peter and held out his hands. Peter took the hands, and Adam pulled him backward over to the big bed, lying down, pulling Peter along with him. He half sat up, angling over Peter, looking down at him. Peter watched him. Adam hooked his thumb under the hem of Peter's T-shirt. "You really are the - most exceptionally beautiful boy I think I've ever seen."
"Something impresses you? Adam, who's seen it all? And I'm not a boy anymore."
Adam pulled the shirt up more, exposing Peter's belly. He stroked the skin lightly with his fingertips - amazingly soft, smooth fingers, much smoother than Peter's - then lowered his head and kissed Peter's belly. Peter squirmed, not quite ticklish, but almost. His skin tingled. "You're still a boy," Adam said. "A child, almost." He sat up and stripped off his clothes, not really displaying himself, just getting things out of the way. Slender, muscular and pale, his cock at rest, hiding between his legs.
Peter wanted to show himself, too, and get out of his hated prison pajamas. Naked, he lay back against the bedspread again, and Adam reached out toward him and cupped his balls in one hand. Peter lay still, feeling his cock responding to the touch and the proximity, and the strange look on Adam's face. Finally a stray thought made it to Peter's mind.
Yes, I'd like to keep him.
Peter smiled slowly. "I belong to somebody else."
"You don't belong to anybody," Adam said, squeezing his handful, stroking up the base of Peter's cock with his fingers. "You make your own decisions, Peter. You fuck who you want to fuck."
"I promised him."
Adam lay beside him, nuzzled his chest, sucked a nipple into his mouth and scraped it with his teeth. "Give me something," Adam urged. "Thirty years, Peter. Just lie there, and let me have you. I'll give you back. Promise." He shifted on the bed, and there was his cock, hard now, peachy-pink and stiff and looking delicious. Peter's fingers drew toward it, and Adam caressed his balls again. They moaned together. "Let's not wait. Give me your mouth." Adam roughly slid his fingers between Peter's lips, drew them out again, and rubbed his own cock with his hand. Peter lay passively, but opened his mouth to Adam's cock, let it in, tasted it. Nice. A little dirty, a little delicate. Smaller than Nathan's, for sure. Smaller than his own. Thick, though, and getting thicker in his mouth. Adam went down on him, too, making up for Peter's passivity with ravenous sucking.
Too hard; too sharp. But oh, yes, good. And spit-wet fingers stroking and penetrating his asshole; yes, good. Locked in it, trembling and helpless, but with a cock for him to suck, too, when he could stop moaning. "Nathan," he said out loud, begging, praying to him that he wasn't forgotten. Sharing with him as best he could. "Oh Nathan..." Trying to say something, to explain, while Adam was trying to suck him inside out.
Out the corner of his eye, Peter saw Adam's eyes glint. "He wouldn't begrudge you this," Adam said. "You wouldn't forbid him, would you? After three months in jail?" He jammed his fingers into Peter hard, and sucked harder, too, and Peter dissolved under the onslaught. He tried to keep his eyes open while he came, to make sure his hands weren't glowing, but he couldn't help it. When he closed his eyes, he saw Nathan's smiling face, from his dream, and the orgasm ripped through him like a hurricane.
Before Peter had a chance to recover, Adam was on top of him, fucking down into Peter's mouth with long, deep, sharp thrusts. Peter could hardly breathe, but it was good, the hard, sharp pleasure. He wanted to taste Adam's pre-come, but he couldn't; maybe Adam wasn't a dripper. Maybe it was a Petrelli thing. But the texture was there, slickening the inside of his mouth, making it easier for Adam to fuck.
He tried to tap out, but Adam didn't understand that signal. The immortal was lost, hips jerking, filling that hole, not caring which one. He held Peter's jaw steady so he couldn't move away. "Now," Adam gasped, "now, Peter..."
Peter gave him a slight shove, enough to get Adam's cock out of his mouth. "No - don't make me swallow," Peter said. Adam just stared at him and nodded, held him down, and let his semen fly in runny trails over Peter's chest and stomach.
Then he rubbed the come into Peter's nipples, and brought the still-dripping tip of his cock back to Peter's mouth and slipped it inside, and Peter didn't mind that so much. His come hardly had any taste at all, maybe because he was a regenerator. Adam's cock stayed hard, and Peter sucked some more. He gazed up at Adam and flicked his tongue expertly, letting Adam see. For the first time in days, Adam didn't seem bored; he seemed relaxed, cheerful, religious, perfectly in his element.
Peter smiled and hugged Adam's leg. Adam might want to use him, but he wasn't going to throw Peter away. And tomorrow morning, they'd go save Nathan... and then... well, Peter resolved, he'd deal with that then.
First: Save Nathan's life. Even more first: Get Adam off as many more times as he could. Adam had given Peter his freedom; Peter had to give something back. But what could he give Adam for giving Nathan back his life?
He'd figure it out tomorrow.
TO BE CONTINUED IN RITUAL (31)...
And yes, things will escalate from there. Thanks to betas airspaniel and darkbloom_85.