Title: Interested
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: PG/K+
Spoilers: 2x06
Warning: None, unbeta-ed
Characters/Pairings: Claire (Claire/May, Claire/West)
Disclaimer: All NBC's and none of mine. I make no money from this. Also, please remember that fiction is fictional.
Summary: God, life would be so much easier if she was just dating May.

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After their prank on Debbie, Claire was seriously reconsidering the whole West thing.

Okay, so after putting Brody through a wall, she knew she didn't exactly have the moral high ground on power use. But six months ago, she'd punched out the bitchy cheerleader and Zach had gotten her revenge by getting her elected Homecoming Queen. Now she was terrifying Debbie and getting her kicked off the squad and in trouble with the cops, not to mention completely risking being found out. Somehow she didn't think "laying low" involved being dropped from the sky and breaking her neck. (Apparently that whole "I never want to see you hurt" speech didn't apply to pranks.)

She liked being with West, really. She liked that she didn't have to pretend to be normal with him. She liked that questions like "I wonder if I can chop my arm off and it'll grow back" didn't completely freak him out. She liked that she didn't have to pretend that nothing horrible had ever happened in her life, even if she couldn't actually tell him what it was. She liked that she could use her powers without being told she was showing off or warned that The Company was going to come get her.

And, all that aside, she really did like flying.

Yeah, maybe dating a guy just because he had powers, especially the same powers as her bio-dad, wasn't exactly the healthiest basis for a relationship. (And no, it really hadn't escaped her notice that she hadn't called Nathan since she'd started dating West.) And that was ignoring that he'd apparently used those powers to spy on her. Not only that, but that he expected being able to fly made the fact that he'd practically outed her in class somehow okay. Which was all ignoring the fact that she was seriously dead once Dad and West inevitably met because they were both so going to kill her.

Okay, so her relationship with West seemed to involve a whole lot of ignoring.

God, life would be so much easier if she was just dating May.

The thought had crossed her mind way before the whole mess with Debbie, actually. And it kept reappearing in her brain in a way that was both weird and yet totally expected.

Claire knew her gaydar wasn't the greatest in the world. (After all, it had taken her asking him to Homecoming for her to finally figure out that, hey, maybe Jackie was on to something about Zach.) But even if she apparently couldn't figure out when someone wasn't interested in her, she definitely could tell when someone was.

And May? Totally interested.

It was just a little weird that Claire was interested back.

Claire had never been interested in a girl before, unless you counted the random girl-crush on some celebrity or other. But when her and the other girls were learning the cheer they were supposed to try out with, Claire found herself paying more attention to May than the cheer. And now that she was actually on the team, Claire was having just as hard a time focusing. She had thought cheerleading was hard work back in Odessa, but that was nothing compared to now. It was bad enough making sure she didn't get hurt and out herself without the added distraction of... well, outing herself by being way too distracted by the fact that May looked really good in her uniform.

And sudden fascination with the way other girls looked aside, May had stood up to Debbie for her. (And she hadn't resorted to a ski mask and public humiliation to do it.) She'd gone out on a limb for her and not the other girls, not to mention the fact that she'd been the one pushing for her to be on the team to begin with. And it was really nice to have someone call her amazing the way May did for something other than the fact that she could regrow a rib.

So yeah, maybe dating May would just lead to more secrets and lies. And yeah, West didn't exactly seem the type who would take being dumped well.

But when May smiled at her the way she did when she said Claire was on the team?

It was almost as good as flying.