A/N: I guess I should really get over it, but I can't help myself. Knowing that Heroes Reborn is rapidly approaching, I've been rewatching the first series, and, of course, my mind turned to my OTP. I had a couple partially written fics sitting on a flash drive and thought, eh, why not?

This fic will be AU, no special abilities. Gabriel Gray, on business in Texas, will find his quiet life shaken up after he comes to Claire Bennet's rescue.

Relevant warnings: This is cheerleader!Claire. She's underage. I haven't decided precisely where the Gabe/Claire relationship will go, but it does involve decidedly non-platonic feelings. In addition, there will be references to sexual assault (unrelated to the main pairing).

I plan to keep the chapters short (though maybe not THIS short). Hopefully, updates will be a bit more reliable that way. Probably not, though; I'm awful.

Gabriel slammed his foot onto the brake, heedless of the water on the road. The rental car slid on angry, screaming tires. For a moment he knew he was going to plow right into the figure which had loomed up so suddenly in the rainy night. He could visualize the disaster. The chrome bumper would catch the person in their legs and snap the bones like dry branches. Would the impact hurl them onto the hood or through the windshield? Would they be dragged beneath?

Even as he braced for the inevitable collision, the car jerked to a halt. For one instant, his body strained against the seat belt. Then, he fell back with a soft thud.

Gabriel remained as he had been in the preceding moments: fingers nearly merged with the wheel, shoulders up around his earlobes, lungs heaving air through his clenched teeth.

Jeez! I could spit out my heart right now, he thought, when he was able to think. Who is that crazy son of a bitch? I bet he's drunk!

He opened his eyes, brow dropped low in adrenaline-fueled fury, and resettled his glasses. He saw it was a woman blocking his way. This was obvious even in the downpour, because the yellowish beams from his headlights were causing her rain-streaked breasts to glisten and glow like champagne goblets. She was naked.

"Oh my god," he blurted.

Disconcertingly, the woman—or perhaps girl; she looked young—did not move from her position in the middle of the lane. Perhaps she was as paralyzed as he. Her only motion was to lower her arms, having thrown them up as the car rushed her. She now crossed them over her chest. Stretching her mouth wide, she shouted something, but her voice was lost in the rain and the hum of the idling motor. Gabriel's only response was, with a fumbling motion of trembling hands, to ascertain the car's automatic locks were engaged.

She came closer, bending slightly at her shapely waist to make her face more visible and to better peer at the tinted windows. Her soaked hair fell like a liquid cap over her scalp, clinging to the curvature of her skull, her forehead, her cheekbones. She shouted again. Gabriel tried to read her lips in spite of the instinct which told him to turn his eyes from her, steer the car into the opposite, empty lane, maneuver around her, and never look back until he reached the airport.

Please, she was saying. Please.

Later, he would demand of himself, Why did you do it? What were you thinking? But, as he watched her mouth and listened to the whish-whish whish-whish of the wipers, he abandoned all ambition of reaching the airport in time for his late flight out of Texas. He couldn't do it. He could not leave her naked in the elements, pleading with a stranger who had almost inadvertently ended her life. He could not simply call the police and drive around her as though she were a dead deer.

Ultimately, it was her feet that got him. Not her chilled, now-hidden breasts, their image printed indelibly in his memory, nor the triangle of her sex, nor her lips moving soundlessly amid the chaos. It was her feet, resting in the rippling sheet of rain which slicked over the asphalt. Gabriel suspected it might be a crime against humanity to leave her standing barefoot in a quarter inch of cold water.

He had an uncanny notion the rain would swirl up around her ankles, thence to her knees, and finally sweep her away.

Mercy. That was the sole possible answer to the question he had not yet asked. Something in his soul bade him be merciful.

Cursing beneath his breath—the only way he ever cursed aloud—he unfastened his seat belt, disengaged the locks, and opened the driver-side door. Stepping halfway into the night, one shoe splashing onto the pavement, he shielded his glasses and yelled at her:

"Get in."