Author's Note:

1. This story takes place a week or so after "Brave New World." It assumes that Peter and Sylar became lovers sometime during the events of "The Wall" and that they've agreed to continue that relationship in the real world. However, most of the M/M sex happens off-screen; the on-screen sex happens while Peter is shape-shifted into a woman. So you probably need to be comfortable with both slash and het to read this story.

2. I'm brand-new to Heroes fandom (I lived in a TV-free household for a couple of decades, so I've just now seen the show for the first time), so please be gentle with me.

Feeding the Hunger

Peter looked across the breakfast table at Sylar. "You've been ducking this question, and I'm not going to let you get away with that this time." He leaned forward and looked at his lover more intently. "I want to know how you intend to deal with the Hunger now that we're back in the real world and the crisis with the carnival is resolved."

Sylar sighed, somewhat theatrically. "My reformation is sincere, Peter. I don't intend to kill anyone except in self defense or in defense of another."

Peter pointed at Sylar. "That's what I'm talking about! I know your reformation is sincere, but whenever I ask about the Hunger, you pretend that I don't trust you. It took me awhile to catch on, but I've finally realized that you're pretending to be wounded to get out of answering the question. Your reformation may be real, but so is the Hunger. I've had the damned thing, so I know. Don't duck, don't deflect, don't lie, don't prevaricate. Tell me. Talk to me. What are you going to do about the freaking Hunger?"

Sylar looked down and stirred his coffee to give himself time to think. He looked back up at Peter and put down his spoon. "You had it for a short time, so you might not have had the time to analyze it. I lived with it for a long time, though, so I know that the Hunger has several different components. The largest component is a desire to know, to understand, to acquire esoteric knowledge. I fed that component of the Hunger by taking powers, but I can feed the desire to amass knowledge in other ways."

Peter smiled and leaned back in his chair. "That's why you've been getting all those books from the library!"

Sylar nodded. "I'm starting with Biology and Chemistry. It's hard right now, because I'm mostly acquiring basic knowledge, the background I need to understand the more advanced stuff." He took a sip of coffee, then put the cup back down. "Once I'm knowledgeable enough to understand cutting-edge research, that will feed the Hunger better. I'm not sure why, but knowledge held by only a few satiates the Hunger better than general knowledge."

Peter tilted his head to the side as he contemplated his lover. "Have you thought about going to college? With your ability to turn stuff into gold, tuition shouldn't be a problem, and God knows you're smart enough."

"I've thought about it, and I'll end up there eventually, but college is too slow. Most students only want to study desultorily, so they can spend half their time socializing or getting wasted." Sylar shook his head. "That's not fast enough for me; the Hunger won't wait that long. I thought I'd study on my own at my own pace, then test out of the basic courses when I was ready to do graduate-level work. Eventually, I'll need to work in a lab, so I'll probably have to get a doctorate." He sighed. "I'll need to find someone very secure to work under, so they won't need to slow me down to keep from feeling threatened."

Peter laughed. "How little they know, if they think getting a college degree in half the time is you at your most threatening!"

Sylar chuckled. "Yeah." He sobered. "But it is a problem, Peter. Most people want to make their reputations and their livings with their research; they aren't learning as fast as they can in order to keep themselves from turning into monsters. Professors at big research universities are notoriously driven, but no one really knows what driven is like if they don't have the Hunger snapping at their heels."

Peter looked challengingly at Sylar. "What other components does the Hunger have?"

Sylar looked away. "I'd rather not talk about the other components."

Peter took a fortifying swig of coffee, thinking about how to handle this, then set the cup down with a decisive clatter. "I know. There's nothing scary about reading textbooks or doing research in a university lab, so it must be this other component that freaks you out. What is it?"

Sylar shook his head. "You don't really want to know, Peter. I'll manage it, and no one will die. That's all you need to know."

Peter reached across the table and laid his hand on Sylar's, squeezing it supportively. "You can tell me, Sylar. We're in this together. If we're gonna be partners out here in the real world, that means that what affects you affects me, too. When you try to hide stuff from me, that just tells me that it's important, and that makes me feel that I don't just want to know, I need to know."

Sylar slumped, looking weary and defeated, then after a minute he straightened and looked steadily at Peter. His voice was confrontational, and it seemed that he expected to be rejected. "The Hunger isn't nice, Peter. It isn't pleasant or civilized or sane. I can feed the need to know with facts and research, but there's also a need to take and ..." He swallowed. "And a need to hurt." He shook his head. "There's a reason why my first attempt to feed the Hunger involved taking the powers of other specials. Doing that got me knowledge that was both very rare and extremely useful. It let me take — both powers and lives — and both the fear and the pain of my victims felt delicious to the Hunger." He looked bleakly at Peter. "The Hunger is a monstrous thing."

Peter nodded encouragingly and squeezed Sylar's hand again. "Hey, hey, it's okay. I know the Hunger isn't daisies and puppies and laughter."

Sylar laughed sourly. "No, it isn't. If I feed the knowledge component in another way, I can change it from blood and death to blood and pain, but ... I can't get rid of it; I can only manage it."

"Blood and pain IS an improvement on blood and death," Peter said. "Don't downplay the difficulty of what you're trying to do by minimizing that."

Sylar took a deep breath and nodded, looking at Peter in wonder, surprised that the idealistic paramedic was able to handle the thought of his lover's dealing out blood and pain.

"How..." Peter swallowed. "How will you find someone to, um, use to feed the Hunger on? And how will you make sure you can stop at pain and not progress to death, once the Hunger is riding you?"

Sylar closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. "I haven't really decided yet. As I see it, I have two main options." He held up one finger. "Option 1 is that I can go to a BDSM club and look for heavy players. That's good because the person I feed the Hunger on would be willing. It's bad because people who are willing to play hard enough to feed the Hunger are likely to be in short supply, and of those few... most of them will probably be pretty high-maintenance."

He held up two fingers. "Option 2 is that I patrol the streets at night in the high-crime parts of town and dole out punishment to would-be muggers, rapists, and murderers. That's good because I'd be cutting the crime rate and hurting people who actually deserved it. It's bad because I'd have to be in the right place at the right time, and that would be difficult, since most criminals don't commit crimes in front of witnesses."

Sylar looked down, sighed, then looked back up. "Plus I don't really have the moral high ground for deciding that some criminal deserves punishment. If a mere mugger deserved the kind of punishment that the Hunger demands I inflict on someone, I'd deserve to be tortured until the end of time, myself, for the murders I've committed."

Peter shook his head. "I don't like either of those options, because no matter how good your intentions are, once the Hunger is driving you, it may be hard to stop short of death or maiming. You definitely can't kill or maim someone you play with, so Option 1 is out. And only the most heinous crimes deserve the death penalty. Trying to mug some old lady is awful, but you can't kill or maim somebody for doing that; even most murderers aren't assigned that kind of penalty. So Option 2 is out, too."

Sylar glared across the table at Peter. "Then what would you have me do, Peter? Should I go back to murdering specials? Or is suicide my only option? It was the first option I considered, right after I got my power, before Noah and Elle suckered me into my second murder. I'd hoped to avoid that, but if you think I can't feed the Hunger in any other way ... I'm out of options."

Peter rolled his eyes. "No, no, of course I don't want you to go kill yourself! And I know that you don't want to kill anybody, you're going to be trying not to kill anybody, but there's a chance that you'll slip and hurt somebody more than you mean to. So obviously, you should feed the Hunger on someone who has regeneration. And no, I don't mean Claire."

Sylar blew out a long breath. "You mean you."

"Of course." Peter held up one finger. "Who believes that you really have changed, and you really are good now?" He added a second finger. "Who is already in an intimate relationship with you?" He added a third finger. "Who, besides Claire, has or can get regeneration?" He pointed the fingers at himself. "I'm the obvious choice!"

Sylar shook his head. "Two of those are reasons why I don't want it to be you. If I spend a couple of hours torturing you every other week, even you won't be able to hold on to the idea that I've reformed." He ran a shaky hand through his hair. "Hell, I didn't want you to even know about it, much less be the victim of it."

Peter smiled. "You should have more faith in me. Or maybe you'd forgotten that I had the Hunger for awhile, myself. I'm impressed that you think you can handle the damned thing without killing anyone, but you've always had a strong will." He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. "What's the other reason why you don't want to do this with me?"

Sylar looked shocked. "You have to ask why? I love you! I don't want to spend the rest of my life torturing you on a bimonthly basis. I don't want to think about your screaming in pain every time I see your face. And I don't want you to think about my hurting you every time you see my face. I don't want the things the Hunger will drive me to do to taint our relationship, especially considering that it's the one good thing in my life."

Peter looked sympathetic but implacable. "Sure, in an ideal world, you'd use someone else, some other person who was willing to do this for you, some other person who had regeneration, some other person who was available whenever you needed them."

Sylar put his face in his hands. "You really are the only possible choice, aren't you?"

Peter pointed to emphasize what he was about to say. "I'm the only practical choice, but more importantly, I'm the only moral choice, because I'm the only person who would agree to do this while knowing just how far you need to go."

Sylar raised his head and looked at Peter. "How do we keep this from tearing us apart, then?"

Peter thought for awhile, then smiled. "I have an idea! You give me shape-shifting, and I'll shift into someone very different from me, someone who doesn't remind you of me at all. Once I'm shifted, then you give me regeneration. After you're finished hurting me and I'm all healed up, you can give me shape-shifting again, and I'll turn back into myself."

Sylar tilted his head to one side as he considered this. "That ... might reduce the damage to our relationship. I guess I should shift, too, so that you don't think of pain when you look at me."

Peter shook his head vehemently. "No. I can only do this with you because it's you, because you need this and I love you. If you look like someone else, that'll make it a lot harder for me."

"Oh." Sylar frowned. "I guess you know your own psychology best." He thought for a moment. "Can you get René's power? I don't want to hurt him, but I'll need it for this plan, and I can get it from you via empathy if you have it."

"Sure," Peter said, "He'll let me copy it. But I don't quite understand what you need it for."

"We need you to have regeneration, in case I slip and kill you accidentally. But if it's active while I'm, uh, doing things to you ..." Sylar paused and looked away.

"You need to pick a verb," Peter said in the completely matter-of-fact voice that paramedics use to talk about things that most people would prefer not to think about. "We can say 'playing,' since that's what BDSM enthusiasts call it, or we can call it 'torturing,' since that's what you say it'll be like, or we can call it 'feeding on,' to remind us that this is because of the Hunger and not because you're a bad person. But don't tap-dance around it; pick a freaking verb!"

Sylar looked consideringly at Peter. "I think I'd forgotten that blood and pain are the things you work with, all day, every day, as a paramedic. They aren't frightening or confusing or unfamiliar; they're just part of the job for you."

Peter smiled. "I'm usually trying to relieve the patient's pain and stanch their bleeding, but yes, those things are certainly not unfamiliar. I don't have the same relationship to pain or to blood loss that most people do. I work to prevent them — I work very hard to prevent them — but they're commonplace, the stuff of everyday life for me."

Sylar took a deep breath. "That helps. It helps a lot, actually. In the past, during the ... the murders, I've been red with blood halfway to my elbows. And whenever people have caught a glimpse of that, the sight of me wearing so much blood has always shocked them nearly as much as the ending of a life. But the blood won't shock you." He looked at Peter. "The cruelty might, though."

Peter looked down. "Yeah," he said softly. "I have a hard time with cruelty, in general, but I've seen an awful lot of it in the past few years." He looked up again. "I never thought I'd see American citizens hooded and chained, shuffling along while their own government trained guns on them. And I never thought it would be my brother who was behind it, who would have not only set up the program but deliberately sent me there." He blew out a breath and looked intently at Sylar. "I don't care what you do to me; nothing could hurt as much as what Nathan did that day."

Sylar reached across the table and held Peter's hand. "I'm sorry that happened, but it will never happen again," he said gently. His voice hardened, and he released Peter's hand and clenched a fist. "WE will make sure that it never happens again."

Peter nodded grimly. "We will." He took a deep breath and looked lovingly at Sylar. "And that's just one more reason why I need to help you with this. We all need for the world's most powerful special to be on the side of good. I can't let the Hunger force you to give that up."

Sylar smirked. "Between loving me and needing to save the world, your martyr complex is fully activated."

Peter laughed. "I guess I deserve that. But if I were you, I wouldn't laugh at the guy who's gonna let you torture him twice a month."

Sylar grimaced. "No, that's not the verb I want. I think I like your suggestion of 'feed on,' since it reminds you that I'm not doing this out of desire, and it reminds me to take only as much as is necessary to appease the Hunger, not to get carried away by," he stopped abruptly.

"By how good it feels," Peter finished Sylar's sentence matter-of-factly. "Feeding the Hunger feels good — no, it feels awesome — and we both have to be able to acknowledge that. You're not just gonna feed on me, you're gonna look like you're having the time of your life while you're feeding on me, and I have to be able to handle that." His face took on the look of determination that Sylar knew so well. "I will handle that, because we have no other options."

Sylar picked up Peter's hand and kissed it. "What did I ever do to deserve you?"

Peter smirked at him. "You must have been awfully good in a past life, because I don't think it could have been anything you did in this one."

Sylar laughed, surprised that his lover was willing to allude so freely to his murderous past. He kept underestimating Peter, kept thinking that "gentle" meant "soft" or that "kind" meant "weak." He knew better — spending five years alone with Peter had taught him better — but he couldn't always put aside the habits of a lifetime.

"So," Peter said, "What do you want me to look like? Tell me so I know whose DNA to borrow when I go into work this afternoon. You said you wanted someone real different from how I normally look. You want a blonde, an African-American guy, or maybe an Asian?"

Sylar gave him a devilish grin. "I want you to be a woman, Peter."

"A woman!" Peter ran a hand through his hair. "Okay, that IS different, but ..."

"Peter," Sylar said seriously. "I want to hurt body parts that you don't normally have, to keep this as far away from our normal life as possible. And I want to turn as much of the Hunger as possible to rough sex, so that the actual, uh, torture part will be shorter. If I don't want to contaminate our regular sex life with those memories, then it should be a completely different kind of sex from what we have normally."

"But, I like rough sex," Peter said. "You know that."

Sylar shook his head. "Not this rough. I'm calling it a slightly more bearable alternative to torture, Peter. Remember that I didn't just say that I needed to know and to hurt ..." He looked away.

"Oh. I remember now. You also said you needed to take." Peter thought for a second. "You'll need to rape me, then? Consensual sex wouldn't hit the 'take' button?"

Sylar swallowed. "Yeah. Either that or ... torture you for a lot longer."

Peter nodded. "Okay, that makes sense. I guess we can try things a couple of different ways, see which is better."

Sylar blew out a breath. "Yeah." He picked up his coffee cup, and Peter could see that his hands were shaking.

Peter pointed at Sylar's hands. "Tell me about that. Are you just nervous, or is something else going on?"

Sylar put the cup down. "I, ah, it's been long enough that the Hunger is riding me hard. Talking about feeding it makes it a lot harder to refrain from actually doing it."

"Oh." Peter swallowed. "I hadn't realized that things had ... progressed to that point. But you did say that the studying you were doing wasn't really helping much yet. You expect it to help you later, but too many people know the things you're learning now."

Sylar clenched his jaw. "Right."

"So you'll need to feed on me soon," Peter said matter-of-factly. "I have tomorrow off; does that work for you?"

Sylar relaxed. "Yeah. Yeah, tomorrow would be great. Are you ... are you sure?"

Peter nodded determinedly. "I'm not letting you murder someone, and I'm not letting you kill yourself, so yeah, I'm sure." He paused, tilted his head to one side, and looked at Sylar, deliberately putting on a more playful tone. "So, what kind of woman do you like? There's an awful lot of DNA floating around the hospital, and I could grab any of it. Do you want tall or short? Slender or curvy? Blonde, brunette, or redhead?"

Sylar smiled unwillingly, touched by Peter's courage. "I want pale skin, so I can see bruises and other wounds as clearly as possible. And breasts of average size or larger, since I'll be paying special attention to them, and the larger the canvas, the easier for you."

"Part of that thing where you hurt body parts I don't normally have."

"Right."

"Okay," Peter said. He put on the kind of voice that movie advertisements usually used. "One pale-skinned woman with medium-to-large tits, coming soon, to a torture chamber near you!"

Sylar goggled at him.

Peter grinned. "What, you want me to be serious? Fuck that! Any paramedic who lasts longer than a year knows that dark humor is the only way to see bad stuff and stay sane. If I use bleak humor to cope with blood and pain on the job, you'll just have to put up with my using it for this!"

Sylar nodded gravely. "I bow to your superior knowledge of the subject."

Peter shook his head. "I know how you used to be, back when you were killing. I know you have that same sense of humor. You need to stop protecting me from who you are and what you've done; if we're gonna be lovers, you have to show me the real you, and that includes letting this side of yourself out."

"Oh, Peter." Sylar leaned forward and reached across the small table to push back a lock of Peter's hair. "Peter, don't tempt me quite so hard, or I might forget about that new leaf that I've turned over."

Peter gave him a sultry look, and Sylar growled. Peter shivered, and seeing that, Sylar picked him up with telekinesis and began walking to the bedroom with Peter floating along beside him like a Peter-shaped package. He stopped the telekinesis when Peter was floating over the bed, letting him drop a foot to the mattress with a small thump. Sylar straddled Peter, grabbed his wrists, and pressed them to the mattress over his head, holding him down and growling into his face. "Tell me again about how you like it rough. Tell me again, Peter."

And Peter licked his lips, stared into his lover's smoldering eyes, and told him again.

.

.