Peter Pan

Characters: Nathan and Peter
Words: 700
Disclaimer: All characters belong to NBC, not me.
Rating: G
Summary: Nathan flies.

Nathan looks out windows more now, those tall, sealed floor-to-ceiling windows found in Manhattan's tallest, newest buildings, in the most luxurious offices. He wonders, while listening with half an ear to a laundry-list of legislation proposed by today's big donor, how much force it would take to break one. Never mind the winds that would suck the donor's body out the window, onto the street below (an appealing thought)—Nathan could fly up into the sky, stripped pure and clean by air and speed.

He doesn't break a window, but he does pretend to take a call, pays a maintenance man a twenty for access to the roof, and flies up into the sky. The air is wet, rushing by his cheeks, as he streaks up into the air. He can't identify the muscles or the mental processes that make it happen, what happens between wanting to fly and flying. It just happens, like his money-winning smile—it's on some autopilot that he can't turn off.

But he tries not to think of that as he flies—that way lies guilt and madness. Even the dirty air over Manhattan feels cleaner than the filtered air in that office, and his speed will dry his hair and clothes before he has to see anyone again. His hair may be mussed, but his wife always tells him it looks better that way.

Nathan lets the wind carry him where it will—a little chaos to balance his control—and he wishes he could tell Peter. Peter wants him to embrace this, and he would love to hear about it; the idea of escaping those corrupting meetings by flying away would make him smile. But it's not like Nathan's been saving kittens or anything, and Peter would ask him to help, look at Nathan with those innocent eyes that no one has ever said "no" to for long, and Nathan would feel like a heel.

He floats and dives on the strange currents above Manhattan's twilit canyons. So peaceful from up here, he thinks—a cliché, but true for all that. And, Peter would love this.

"I'm Peter! I get to be Peter Pan!" he remembers a six-year-old Peter saying, on one of those evenings when his parents made him stay home and baby-sit. Nathan should have been out on a date and the Petrellis certainly had money for a nanny, but every so often Mama would insist.

"They need to be closer," she would say. "Nathan has his own life and Peter won't even know him after he leaves for college." Their father didn't pay much attention to parenting, so Mama's word was law, and Nathan had learned long before not to fight it.

"Then I'm Wendy?" asked Nathan, raising one eyebrow, sarcastic as only a teenager saddled with his kid brother can be. "Whatever." He picked Peter up by and arm and a leg and swung him around and around in circles again. When he set Peter down he couldn't walk straight, and Nathan laughed at his confused attempts to walk across the polished wooden floor.

Peter should have gotten this power—he would have known what to do with it, besides this aimless flying. Or Nathan could share it with him, could come to his window like an aging Peter Pan and fly him toward the second star to the right. Peter was wrong, there was no Neverland to fly to, no storybook place where pirates could be battled and beaten, only the twinkling-fantasy lights of Manhattan's bridges, strung out like a necklace around the city. This was as close as any of them could get to Neverland.

He would take Peter's hand, and Peter would step fearlessly out the window, trusting that Nathan would never let him fall . . . Stop it, he tells himself. One of the Petrellis has to keep his feet on the ground. Nathan looks down at the city below. He always thought that would be him.


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