[MI] -- Can A Man Become a Magnet?

1974

"So am I next?" The voice, which struggled to sound coolly amused, brought Adam's eyes up from where he was studying his wine to meet the other pair of blue ones across the table.

"Pardon?" Wine the color of blood, deep and ruby, caught the candle light in the crystal.

"They're gone," Daniel pointed out with a small curve of his lips. "Off with the boy, and who knows for sure when they'll be back, and here we are with our wine and our fire and your inviting me alone is a heretofore unprecedented event..."

"God, you've been spending far too much time with Arthur if you're actually using 'heretofore unprecedented' in everyday conversation," Adam said, giving him a disbelieving look.

"Which doesn't answer the question."

Adam tilted his head and studied Daniel for a moment, then glanced back at his wine for a long moment before taking a slow sip. "I haven't decided yet."

Absolute silence reigned in the room between them, broken only by the crackle of the fire in the fireplace. When Adam glanced up again, he found Daniel just staring at him. One eyebrow lifted in inquiry and he held the other man's eyes until Daniel was forced to look away.

"My god, she was right. You are a bastard."

Adam smiled without a trace of humor. "You want to be next."

"I'm not so sure of that..." Daniel set his wine glass down and stood.

"Yes, you are," Adam said, sprawling back more in contrast, tilting his head back to study Daniel. "You wouldn't be here if you weren't. You've been watching me from the start, from the day Arthur brought you to meet me."

"Arthur..." Daniel started.

"Married Angela. Angela married Arthur. They have a beautiful bouncing boy. And here we are, you and I, and you've never stopped watching me, in all these years."

"All you want is to upset Arthur," Daniel said, with a flash of temper.

"That's not all I want," Adam said, voice almost a purr now.

Daniel swallowed. "I should go."

"That's not what you want."

"How would you know?" Daniel finally snapped, and Adam stood, moving around the table to lean against it, not quite in Daniel's space, but near enough.

"I've been watching, too."

Daniel rocked--a step back, and then he moved forward, forcing Adam to shift his legs to make room for him. Hands braced on the table on either side of Adam, Daniel pressed close until the only thing separating them was their clothing.

"What do you want?" he growled, something fierce in his eyes. "To take what's Arthur's, because he took Angela? To hurt her for leaving? To bend each of us until we break, so you can reshape us as you will?"

Adam lifted one hand, slowly, long fingers slowly tracing down Daniel's cheek, and his lips curved slowly, eyes lighting up with something bright that might have been triumph. "Yes." Daniel's eyes widened in something like shock, and Adam kept up his slow caress along bone and flesh, his thumb tracing the curve of Daniel's lips as he met his eyes again. "Yes," he repeated, his voice little more than a breath over the other man's lips as he leaned in until they were a whisper apart. "I want."

Daniel gave.

[MI] -- Positively Presidential....

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. -- John F. Kennedy

He couldn't write it on the walls. He tried, once, in the tenth year, no eleventh, maybe twelfth. Without a calendar it blurred and only Bob in a ridiculous Santa hat let him count where they were, sometimes. Twelve times the hat, so the which meant the beginning of the twelfth year, and in the spring he wrote it out in blood smeared across the walls. Twelve names. One for each year. It had an odd sense of symmetry and it made him smile.

Bob was not amused. They hauled him out and after a particularly brutal "testing" session they returned him to freshly painted walls that weren't quite white, because nothing could be that pure in here.

He tried to carve them once with a scalpel he palmed, sure that once he scratched them into the walls, not even paint would take them off, but somehow he found himself trying to carve the names into Bob's skin, and they took the scalpel and a syringe both and made the names go away with them, healed and cleansed by the blood, which only got him ranting about washing away sins with blood until Bob ordered him gagged and fed intravenously.

So, he was forced to form a litany of Proper Nouns, always capitalized, a list, lovers, friends, disciples, betrayers, each and every one. He tried to scratch them into his skin, but they only healed, and so it was back to names in his head.

Angela. Arthur. Daniel. Maury. Bob. Victoria. Carlos. Paula. Harry. Charles. Suzanne. Kaito. Always Kaito, which led him all the way back to Hiro, and a swirling morass of names remembered and if he could lay curses it would be on those houses, he thought. "A plague on both your houses," he muttered anyway, eyes closing. Petrelli. Nakamura. A plague. The vengeance of the Lord on Egypt, for betraying His people, enslaving them in darkness and refusing to let them go.

It came and went the moments of madness and moments of lucidity, and as he held to the list, the names, the purpose, the lucid moments ran longer and they smiled in relief that perhaps he would be of use again. But when he stepped into the free air, and looked at the list in his mind, only five remained. One quickly aligned with him, the sniveling coward, but he had his use for now. Two died, hard and brutal, may peace rest with their souls. Another returned, and was forgiven, and only one remained unshriven. But he knew that even when the final battle finished the list would remain, and he would never forget.

[WM] 27.9 -- Philosophy 101 -- A shepherd and his sheep

"Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter." - Law #42, "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene

He had been willing to go alone, to take care of it, to be done with it, to cease and desist dancing around the issue. The night they'd taken the kittens to Peter, he'd been ready to storm out of there and slit Bob's throat in his sleep, but one thing led to another, and he hadn't gone and then there was Angela. But he'd stuck to his resolve to get it done, to stop any holding back. He'd promised not to torture, but he needed a kill, some primal violence learned young and ingrained welling up until he nearly wandered to the Park to be a target just so he could fight back.

( Instead he was here, waiting with Nathan silent at his back. )

[OOC: Written based off of and to spark RP in nota_fairytale. Nathan is vote4nathan and used with permission of his mun. Bob and Elle are NPC's in that universe and nothing in here or any RP based off of this set up is binding on or meant to implicate itsjustbob, any other Bob muse/player, or any Elle muse/player.]

[WM] 24.6: Revenge

It was cold at the cemetery, but then, it was cold most everywhere in the City at the present moment, so Adam didn't figure that there was much to be remarked upon, except a passing comment only he was alive to remember.

Hell will freeze over before you touch her, or see the boy, again, Monroe.

Adam cast an amused glance at the frozen earth and wondered if New York City counted as hell. Doubtful, though he had his moments of thinking it had to be. For all its verve, it lacked the grace he preferred, and the hole in the skyline reminded him too much of how lost the world had become and how hamstrung he was to do anything about it. Everything was so inelegant now, rushing and dark, polluted, dirty, the snow not even able to fall pristine, and here it mixed with mud disturbing the sanctity of the dead.

He stood by the grave, looking down at it. Snow covered the stone, but he could still make out the name, the dates, the inscription. Kneeling a bit, he brushed the snow off, rendering the name visible of the man he'd thought to make a friend, but whom he'd spent forty years hating. Rivals, from the moment they met. For Angela. For Daniel. For power. For the boy. Fury laced through him, and he could almost see his face through glass that was no longer there.

Angie and I just got back from Rome. Nathan loved it there, and didn't want to come home.

Can I tell you, Monroe, I used to hate you, but this morning, I think I have to thank you. That little thing you taught Angie with her tongue...God. I am a lucky man.

A smirk, a chill in brown eyes staring mockingly at him while they strapped him down.

He's graduating today, Adam. Valedictorian. You should have seen him up there on the stage. My son. I'm so proud of the man I've raised...

Glancing around and seeing no one, Adam snarled and kicked the headstone hard, feeling the impact reverberate up his leg, welcoming the pain, because it meant one sure and solid thing.

He was alive.

His lips curved as he squatted back down, low voice murmuring to the stone before him. He told him, in the same exquisite detail he'd been told, exactly how Angela had looked, stretched out with nothing on but the necklace he'd given her for Christmas. The way his name caught in her throat like something holy; how she remembered, even now, exactly how he liked to be touched. He whispered the secrets only a few knew about how she tasted, and the way she screamed and begged him for more. Dinners spent lingering over wine and whiskey, and laughter and plans, and how she'd betray them all now, again, this time, to be by his side. Always his, no matter what she felt for the cowardly corpse rotting beneath him.

Settling more, he told Arthur about pool games and whiskey, and blood tests. About fragile trust, and a relationship starting. How Nathan asked him not to leave, wanted him here in New York. He talked about kittens and a boy longing for approval that the man beneath him never gave, and how he could give it, could love enough to overcome whatever stubborn pride had kept Arthur's lips sealed. He chuckled at the memory, of the two of them trying to carry seven cats onto a subway and the looks they'd gotten, and the coffee they'd shared and how Peter had grinned in absolute delight.

And then he told him about Peter. About forever. About love that forgave even mistakes such as his. About how the furniture all ended up on the beach, and they'd had nothing but melon balls and figs and that was perfection, because they had each other. His son, the boy he'd never mentioned, had hidden from Adam, but Adam had found him. Had loved him. Had made him love in return. Movies and popcorn and a life free of the rest of the mistakes they'd all made. Free of Arthur's corrupt legacy. Free of his violence. Free of Daniel's taint. The world at their feet and all the time in the world to play with it, to see it, finally, remade and whole.

By the end he was flushed, eyes bright and fevered, almost laughing with a near unholy glee. Leaning in he pressed his lips to cold stone.

"Rot in hell, you fucking bastard," he murmured, almost lovingly. "I win."