In a brave new world everything is fixed. Though greeted with an initial distrust society adjusts and Claire never has to hide again, no one does. She finishes college with Gretchen at her side, the diploma gets framed and nailed to a wall at her Mom's. The mechanic stacking of bricks, she establishes her text book definition of life. Get a job, get an apartment, get a boyfriend. Inspired by Gretchen's new girlfriend she finds a boy with a nice smile. Her parents finalize the divorce, her mother marries Doug, her father blooms happily in a relationship with Lauren. Family dinners become tradition every Sunday night, even the boyfriend is invited. Everyone smiles, and she does it too though her teeth clench as they press too tightly beneath her upturned lips.
She smiles for them, but she doesn't sympathize and it doesn't make sense. The dream she's always wanted is no longer drifting along on a chain in front of her, it's there, in her hands, reality. Drinking coffee with Gretchen in the morning before work, sleeping in the warm arms of her boyfriend, the scrape of silverware against plates cuing the sound of an undisturbed dinner. Her skin is stretched too tight, too hot, and she realizes the world is smothering her. Normalcy, the mundane, is not perfection it's a mirage, and she rots within it.
At the other end of the spectrum Peter and Sylar are saving the world together. It's as hard to believe as her inability to live the life she'd always hungered for. An enemy turned ally is still the monster that haunted her shadows. Even when labeled a friend he remains the nightmare that once terrorized her dreams. Standing peacefully amoungst a circle of heroes Claire can spy something sinister in his eyes, and just like that she finds her crutch. The polar opposite sucks her in.
Like the shadow in his eyes, Sylar's smiles have remained taunting, lecherous. So, alone in the dark, together not by coincidence but by choice, she finds herself unafraid to make the first move. Claire blames his primary stillness on surprise, hell, she's shocked too and she knew it had been coming. It's ironic that the man who's supposed to understand everything is unprepared, but when it clicks, and oh how it feels when it does, he's like the flashing harsh light of a siren, clawing, biting, sweet relieving friction. Fucking against the wall of a dingy alley in the city is befitting for her partner. His arms are as powerful as his touch when he hoists her up the bricks, scratching her back, he pounds her for all he's worth. Her hands twist his hair and she screams into the night, her head tilted back, and eyes rolled up.
It becomes a trend, and he accepts her every time, the anticipation building with each occasion. His submission to her will is astounding, and yet she holds the charge in her palms. Hot as the slip of sweat between their bodies. She refuses his existence as long as the sun shines in the sky. Despite his best efforts to catch her smile, and despite the anger that follow when he notes her ignorance, she does what she must to survive. Just as strictly he figures out that she will be the one to come to him, and never will he be accepted the other way around. Looking her boyfriend in the eyes gets easier each night.
One night as she dresses in silence facing away from his bed, his naked body dabbling between states of consciousness, the realization hits that they've merged into a routine. It darkens the bags under her eyes, but loosens the shackles of her cabin fever. When her boyfriend strokes her cheek questioningly, she laughs it off, blames it on the stresses of work.
Sylar is rough, and it's everything she needs. His grip an iron clamp that binds her wrists, purples her skin. His mouth persistent on every inch of her body, with sharp teeth pinching out sensations she'd miss with anyone else. The curve of his body, the line of his chin, the throb of his passion, it's all hard and sharp. After all this time he's still fascinated when she leaves his cave without a scratch, and it's the insistent never breaking rock of their conjoined bodies that keeps her coming back.
The night he tries to be gentle is as predictable as it is detested. His fingers brush over her, and he kisses her lips almost chastely when he climaxes, her name tumbles softly from his tongue onto hers. When he raises his head to meet her stunned gaze, it only takes a moment for the anger to bubble up inside her, and it's his own misfortune that he's near by when she explodes. She shoves him off with all her might so he rolls from her body onto the floor. Stupidly resilient he jumps to his feet, tries to catch her, but she strikes him across the face, throws a book from his night stand at his chest, screams at him to never do it again. She doesn't spare him a glance as she storms away, knocking things over, and ripping her clothes as she pulls them on, caught up in the throw of her tantrum.
At home Claire breaks down in her boyfriends arms, and he's the one that strokes her as if she's a delicate flower, because he's allowed to. She doesn't answer when he asks her why she's upset, and it only makes him hug her harder. She burns internally cursing Sylar for letting her down, for breaking her equilibrium, but he's never gentle again when they start again.
Claire's hopeful enough to forget, pretend he never touched her as softly as he did. She attempts to maintain the illusion that he's the same, careless, heartless sadist she's known him to be. But he shatters it again. A different night after she gasps in unnecessary air, after she rakes her fingers down his back, after he finishes with his usual hedonistic grunt. He rolls off her as is customary, but when she moves to complete their pattern he reaches out, grasps her hand, tries to pull her down into his arms. She fails to squirm away, so instead digs her nails deep into his chest. He still feels pain and years of watching her father's manipulations have taught her to account her advantages. She scratches blood out of him, pulls across his flesh, makes him whine. She glares at him, and is elated when his eyes darken the way they used to. He throws her out himself that time, slams the door behind him, and leaves her naked and crouched in the hallway of his apartment building.
Claire Bennet gets married and Sylar is the only one not invited to the service. At the reception her mother cries, her father hugs her, Lyle wryly punches her in the shoulder, then Sylar makes his drunken entrance right in the middle of Hiro Nakamura's speech on true love and destiny. He laughs, and trips over his own feet, and is so shit-faced that when he finally makes it to his destination of the microphone, apparently intent on making a speech, the only thing he succeeds in doing is face-planting off the platform it's resting on. Noah Bennet's the one to escort him off the premises, and his shoving is perhaps a little rougher than is strictly necessary, but Sylar doesn't seem to care. Idle calls of congratulations are tossed over his shoulder, and he accidentally flips a table through the air while waving goodbye to the batch of concerned looking spectators.
One month of normalcy is all she can handle before she seeks him out again. It feels a lot like crawling on hand and knee to kiss the feet of an undeserving king. He's got a new apartment that's much bigger than the old one. They fuck the whole night through in every room he's got. It's ripping a band aid off a scabbed wound, it's an addict breaking free of a sober streak, it's a drop of water on the splintered lips of a man inching his way through the desert. And while she's freed, with her hands on his neck, and her legs tucked against his sides, the blaze that shines through Sylar's eye claims the opposite to what pulses in her core.
Her husband never asks her where she disappears to on the occasional night. The Bennets never suspect the depths to which their little girl has been corrupted. On the nights that she goes to him she feels his eyes hotter than his touch. When she dresses and he lounges she tries to ignore the way his hand slides over every bit of skin he can reach before she covers it up strip by strip. She doesn't throw him down anymore. Claire thinks he probably understands better than she ever will, which is why he never asks her why she continues to come to him night after night. Similarly, she'll never ask him why, after all this time, he still lets her. They simply exist, teeter-tottering between a lingering hatred and the constant ache for more.
This was inspired by the Sylaire kink-meme that closed years ago. Please let me know what you thought, I'd really appreciate some feedback.