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Peter tried to pretend that he didn't hear Nathan breaking into their father’s liquor cabinet. In the dark of his bedroom he closed his eyes and did his best to block out the loud clicking of glass against glass. There was muffled cursing when one of the shot glasses tumbled to the floor. Peter let the tension in his chest out in one long breath. His brother didn’t have a problem. This was perfectly normal. MTV said it was. Nathan had finals to deal with, Nathan had girls to deal with, Nathan had a stack of half completed college applications on his desk.
This was the third night in a row.
He had tried to talk to Nathan about it on the first night. Peter had paraded down the stairs and yelled for a good five minutes. Nathan laughed, already drunk from the adrenaline rush of breaking into something that shouldn’t be broken into by an eighteen year old boy. It had ended in a yelling match and several shot glasses being thrown against the wall. On the second night day Peter hadn’t done anything. He lay in his bed until the clinking of the glasses stopped sometime after midnight and he had drifted off into a guilty sleep.
Peter squeezed his eyes tighter and gathered up all the courage he could find, which didn’t seem like much. He slipped out of bed. His wiggled through his cracked-open door and winced when the hinge let out a shriek.
The glass clinking stopped.
Peter didn’t breath. He didn’t know how long he stood there. Time hung still. What if Nathan had heard him? What if he was already drunk? What if Nathan was like dad when he was drunk? Angry and ready for vengeance against his disappointment of a son. The usual hiding places wouldn’t work, Nathan had shown him all those. Even the little crawl space in the back of the linen closet. Where to hide then? Where was safe –
--a shot glass slammed against the table. Peter let out the breath he’d been holding. He was safe. His bare feet padded down the stairs. He crouched down so Nathan wouldn’t see him from the parlor. Like he’d seen all the spies do in the movies. Not that he really needed to hide. Nathan was already bent over the table, laughing at thin air.
Nathan was what dad probably would have called a light weight.
“Nathan?” Peter whispered, he clung the banister, ready to launch himself back up the stairs at the first sign of trouble.
“Oh hey Petey,” Nathan turned around, a wide smile stretched across his face.
Peter shivered. Nathan didn’t smile. Nathan would sometimes make a face that people would call a “smile”. But Peter knew that it really wasn’t. It was just Nathan lifting up the corners of his mouth and looking more approachable. A minor inconvenience to get what he wanted.
This was an actual smile. And it was terrifying.
“Hey Nathan, what’re you doing?” he asked, he curled around the banister and felt like an idiot. He knew what Nathan was doing. He was getting drunk with his math notes sprawled across the table. Math notes, the perfect drinking companion.
“I’m-uh- studying” Nathan’s words slurred together.
“How’s that going?” Peter crept off the last step. He eyed his brother warily, like a doctor coaxing in patient zero in a movie where a virus destroys the human race. Carefully and with a healthy sense of fear.
Nathan frowned, looking down at the last problem he had done. It was scratched out in thick frustrated lines. “Not well I guess.”
Peter let himself take a few steps away from the stairs. Nathan wasn’t dangerous. Even if he was drunk, this was Nathan. This was his older brother who would tuck him in at night when their parents worked late and would try to give him advice about girls. He wasn’t dangerous. Still every muscle in Peter’s body was tensed.
He counted how far away from his room he was in steps. 29. Nathan could easily outrun him, but Nathan was drunk so he should be able to get up to his room in time if anything happened.
Which it wouldn’t.
Nathan looked at the math problem, slowly shook his head, and took another shot. His noise wrinkled in disgust but he poured another. “You want one?”
“Nate I’m eleven.” He tried to grin but the most he could managed was a grimace.
“Petey I’m eighteen. It’s not like the cops are going to break into the house if you take a drink.” Nathan held out the shot glass. He gave Peter the expectant look that Peter thought was reserved for teachers who wanted spelling homework turned in.
Peter glanced over his shoulder, looking longingly up at his room. He could have just stayed in bed. But it was too late for regrets now. Peter grabbed the glass filled with amber liquid and downed it fast. That’s how they did it on TV. The liquor burned its way down his throat. He wanted to spit it out. Every last bit. He coughed and gagged and sputtered.
Nathan laughed.
Peter glared between coughs.
“I’m sorry but your face—”
“How do you drink that shit?” he gagged.
Nathan’s smile fell. His eyes were distant and foggy. “I’m not sure.”
Peter put the shot glass down on top of a stray textbook. Gingerly he pried the bottle of alcohol out of his brother’s hands. Nathan barely seemed to notice.
“Come on Nate let’s get you to bed. We have school tomorrow and you gotta apply for college and stuff.”
Nathan nodded slowly, like he didn’t quite hear what Peter said. He pushed the chair back and stood up, staggering a few steps before Peter rushed to support him.
He tried not to breath too deeply. Every inch of Nathan smelled like liquor and stress, like he had opened every bottle in the cabinet and poured it all over himself instead of actually drinking it. Nathan was pretty drunk; maybe he actually had poured it all over himself. Peter would never know. Holding his breath he mumbled “Why’re you so heavy?”
“Whyreyousocrawny” which Peter thought was “Why’re you so scrawny” in drunk.
“Because I’m eleven that’s why” Peter huffed “come on.”
Peter wasn’t sure how they made it up the stairs. He gripped the bannister with one hand and his intoxicated brother with the other. One step at the time they made it up to the top. They had to stop twice for Nathan to start swearing and once when Peter tripped on a step. Peter was silently thankful their parents were in Vegas for business. It wouldn’t have been easy to explain why a kid was trying to drag is older brother up the stairs.
They must have looked ridiculous.
It wouldn’t have been the first time. Although usually it was Peter making Nathan embarrassed and not the other way around. When they finally reached the top step both of them were nearly out of breath. Huffing and wheezing.
Nathan swayed on his feet. “Just up me down here.”
“You’re not sleeping in the hall.” Peter said in his most maternal tone. He yanked open Nathan’s bedroom door with his freehand and pushed his brother inside.
Nathan fumbled in the dark until he finally ran into his bed, rolling right in fully clothed.
Peter edged his way in. He held his breath. He hadn’t been in here for more than a year. Ma said that they needed boundaries. Even in the dark it looked pretty much the same as it did when he was ten. The walls were still light blue with little airplane stickers left over from when Nathan was a kid. His bed was shoved against the wall. The only thing that was different was the desk, covered in thick layers of paper and manila envelopes. Peter didn’t need to turn on the light to know what they were. Applications. SAT scores. ACT scores. Letters of Recommendation. And probably fifteen other types of documents detailing a life in numbers of Nathan Petrelli.
He pulled the roll-y computer chair across the room so he was sitting by the bed, kicked up is feet on the night stand, and picked up the nearest book. The History of the Americas, his favorite.
“Petey what’re you doing?” Nathan moaned through the pillow that he had covered his head with.
“I’m going to read you a bed time story.”
“Why?”
Peter glared at his brother. “Because. That’s why.” He opened the book and flipped to a random page. Not that he could read the small font in the dark. But he didn’t need to see the words to know that story that he wanted to tell.
“Once upon a time—“
“Go to bed Peter.”
“—there was a kingdom. The kingdom had castles that reached up high enough to scrape the clouds. Their towers glistened so brightly that legend said that in the kingdom it was always sunny. Even at night, the sun shone along with the other stars in the sky. And no one had to be afraid of anything in the kingdom because they were ruled by a benevolent king and queen who would do anything to protect them.
“There was a Prince in the kingdom too. He was smart, and kind, and someday he would be king. Every morning he would get up with his father and follow him around the winding golden streets of the market. While is father greeted their subjects the boy would hide behind his father’s legs, afraid to say or do anything wrong. Sometimes the subjects would try to talk to him and the boy would run and hide. When other children tried to talk to him the Prince’s face would turn to stone in fear. Because of this the Prince had few friends.
“Then when the Prince was eight years old the king and the queen had another Little Prince. And for the first time in his life the Prince had a friend. The Prince took the Little Prince everywhere. He would carry the Little Prince on his back to the tallest of the seven towers so they could watch the stars come out. The Prince would sit his little brother on the railings of the tower so his legs dangled over the sides and he would tell the little boy all the legends and heroes of the kingdom that lived on in the stars.
“As the Little Prince got older the Prince got bolder. When the other children would tease the Little Prince for how small he was the Prince would chase them away. He learned to fight with a sword, even though the kingdom was a peaceful one and had no need any more for the knights and great sword fighters of legend. But the Prince was determined to protect the Little Prince with all his heart.
“On the Prince’s seventeenth birthday he went to his brother’s chambers so they could walk up to the tallest of the seven towers and watch the stars come out like they did every night. But when he opened the door to the chambers he found a man standing there is a hand over the Little Prince’s mouth and a dagger to his neck.
“The Prince did not hesitate. He pulled his sword from its sheath and ran it through the man, who fell to the floor dead in an instant. The Prince rushed over to his brother, hugging him close so the rest of the world could not hurt him. The king’s guard rushed into the room followed quickly by the queen.
‘What have you done?’ the queen asked her son.
‘That man was going to kill the Little Prince. So I killed him before he had the chance.’
‘Is that so?’ the queen asked
‘It is.’
‘I would suggest you look harder then.’
“So the Prince did look harder. And his eyes widened in terror at what he had done. Lying in a pool of blood was not a murderer and a kidnapper, but the king. Their father. His eyes glassy like stars.
‘I-I don’t understand.’ The Prince fumbled for words.
“The queen rolled her eyes. If she felt any sadness for her deceased husband she did not show it. ‘The Gods told him that to maintain eternal peace in the kingdom he would have to sacrifice the Little Prince to them. He was going what needed to be done. And you have ruined everything. Be gone from my sight and never return to this shining kingdom.’ Her words were stony and sharp.
“The Prince obeyed his mother, because that is what Princes do. He kissed the Little Prince on the forehead and promised that one day he would return. Even though he could not possibly know that for sure. He whipped his bloody sword on his cloak and walked through the shining gates of the kingdom into the Forrest of Night without shedding a single tear.
“The Prince lived in the Forrest of Night for a year. Under the dead black canopy that never let in the light from the sun or the stars he battled monsters that had only been heard of in legend. He smashed the spinning wheel of the fates with his bare hands, allowing everyone in the kingdom to decide their own destiny. He vanquished the harpies that terrorized travelers. But whenever he went to the shining gates in hope that they would open for him so he could return to his home, they remained closed.
“Every night the Prince would go to the gates and try to see the stars. And every night he could not see them. The sky was an inky black with not a drop of light. Sometimes he would try to pull on the gates so they would open. But the enchanted gates would only burn his hands and make in scream in pain and frustration.
“On the night of his eighteenth birthday the Prince once again went to try to see the stars. He promised himself that if the gates did not open tonight and he did not see the stars then he would leave his sword at the gate and walk into the Forrest of Night for the final time. Never to return and to face all the monster’s with nothing but his hands and wits. He craned his neck to try to see over the dense canopy cover, but just like any other night there was no hope to be seen. The Prince let out an anguished moan and reached for the gates a final time. He wrapped his hands around the golden bars and waited for the pain to surge forward.
“But the pain never came. Startled the Prince looked at the gate and realized that the lock was rattling. After a few minutes of rattling the gate opened. And there stood the Little Prince, with a key made of starlight in his hands a smile on his face.
‘I couldn’t fight like you’ said the Little Prince ‘and I couldn’t go against the queen so every night I went up to the tallest of the seven towers. Every night I took a star from the sky and I finally had enough to make you this key. So we could be together again.’
“And so the Little Prince saved the Prince from the Forrest of Darkness.”
Peter closed the History of the Americas textbook that he’d been reading from. He leaned forward and kissed his sleeping brother’s forehead. He didn’t even care about the stench. “I hope that I can learn to make a key to stars for you Nathan.” The Little Prince whispered and quietly tip toed out of the room.