9

Tweezers

February 25, 2006 - 19 days until 'Patient Zero' is discovered

"Jeez, don't you ever get cold?" Gabriel asked with a lighthearted laugh while he drew his coat tighter around himself to ward off the shiver rolling down his spine in the frosty winter air.

"Not really," Claire answered as honestly as possible while refraining from mentioning the fact that she couldn't even feel the numbness creeping into her fingers and the tip of her nose. "Warm-blooded I guess," she added with a small giggle. Seemingly on a whim she had told him that it would be nice to go for an afternoon stroll around Central Park, while in reality she secretly wanted to get some time away from being under the scrutinizing eyes of surveillance video. Knowing that the tracking device remaining attached to the underside of his coat's collar would appease the Haitian's worries, she had enjoyed getting some time to roam freely outdoors. Gabriel, being perpetually eager to please in exchange for attention hadn't even offered an argument for her suggestion of activities. In spite of his discomfort he had been content to indulge in simply being in her company.

People passing by the couple occasionally cast curious or suspicious glances in their direction along with whispers and gestures over their shoulders. All of which the pair had made an unspoken point to refuse acknowledgment of. Suppressing her own stings of temperament and the desire to openly declare that they should all mind their own business, Claire did have to admit that they made an odd sight when she rewarded his easy behavior with a joining of their hands. Undoubtedly some of the passerby were dredging up assumptions similar to the ones Gabriel himself had had in the beginning.

Her companion suddenly came to a dead stop which jarred her into an abrupt halt as well when she had become accustomed to his longer strides and sped up her pace slightly to match. She turned to see Gabriel standing still, his spine rigidly straight and half positioned as though he were ready to pursue something. "Gabriel?" He didn't even register the sound of her voice. Following his line of sight, Claire noted that he was watching after an attractive brunette woman down the walkway from them with his head tilted slightly to the side and his eyes narrowed critically. Anyone else may have misconstrued the action, believing that he may have just succumbed to a male tendency to admire the well-developed feminine form of someone closer to his own age, but she knew better. The expression on his face and the telltale darkening of his eyes was not that of a lustful nature. It was the same look that Sylar had given her on both occasions that he had come after her, determined to gain her ability for himself. The look of a hunter with prey in his sights.

"Gabriel?" she prodded again, giving his hand a healthy squeeze in an attempt to divert his attentions. "What's wrong?" She had to feign ignorance. While the notion of chasing after the woman screaming for her to run perked in the back of her mind and her fingers subconsciously slipped into her purse to wrap around the revolver's handle, an altercation with so many witnesses wouldn't be prudent if she had other options available.

"Huh?" he finally responded when she jerked her hand clean away from his.

"Already checking out other women? If I'm boring you, you can just say something you know." Playing the embittered jealousy card was the first thing that entered her mind, but she immediately regretted not being able to claw those words back out of existence with the hurt look that replaced the feral one on his features.

"I'm sorry," he sighed, hanging his head. "I wasn't checking her out though. I swear," he vowed fervently while glancing up at her from under his brows like a little boy that had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "There was just… something about her. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on."

"Something special?" she inquired with bated breath, knowing exactly what he was trying to describe.

"I don't know that I would necessarily call it 'special'," he insisted as though she needed placating. "Just something… I don't know. Different? Maybe? Sometimes there's just people that feel different from everybody else. Like there's something more under the surface waiting to get out." Gabriel carefully swept a rogue lock of her hair out from the breeze and tucked it back behind her ear again. "You have it too."

Her breathing hitched with the weight of that observation. "I do?"

"It was the first thing I noticed about you." Claire felt herself involuntarily frown. "I know it sounds cheesy or like a lame pick up line," he said, backing off and jamming his hands into his pockets to avoid fidgeting, completely misunderstanding her disgruntled state. "You're like this big puzzle to me that I can't quite put together. But I like trying." His face lit up with a boyish grin from ear to ear. "And you're not boring. You're the most beautiful and intricate puzzle I've ever found. All the others," he half gestured in the direction the other woman had gone, "don't even compare. And that is special."

Thanks… I think? Claire had absolutely no idea as to how she should have been feeling about his sentiments, and less of an inkling about how to react to them. Even without being aware of his power, Gabriel had managed to detect hers and those of others. He may not have known what it was that he had found or that it was possible to extract, but the interest and instinct to discover those answers was already firmly in place. She had hoped that his vast collection of books and manuals had either served as a simple cure for boredom or belonged to one of his other obsessive tendencies towards learning. But it began to appear that the restless devouring of any and all knowledge was the calling card of a barely constrained hunger lurking just beneath the shy quiet Gabriel exterior and ready to rear its ugly Sylar head at any queue.

"Was that too much?" he asked with concern when she had remained frozen in her reverie. "That was too much, wasn't it? I'm sorry." A light pink flushing coated his cheeks and the tops of his ears. She had been too distracted by her little epiphany to even notice the confession in his words.

"Let's go get some coffee and warm up for a bit." Her response may not have been along the similar lines that he had hoped for, but it wasn't a rejection. That was a starting point.

Once inside of the little coffee house that Gabriel favored on occasion, he removed his glasses to avoid the rapidly fogging lenses. While he ordered their drinks, Claire singled out a cozy little table for them to relax at. She watched with more than a little irritation as the barista he spoke to shot him a million dollar smile with a heavy dose of appraising eyes. Her mouth twitched when the young woman made a show of flipping her bottle blonde hair and bending over to grab another sleeve of lids, giggling like an idiot at something he had said throughout the whole process.

She could only see his back from where she sat but in her attempt to read his reaction to the obvious flirtations Claire discovered something she very nearly considered disturbing when she remembered exactly who it pertained to. With his knee-length winter coat concealing the prim collared shirt and drab sweater vest, Gabriel cut quite an appealing figure. His tall visage came equipped with a set of enticing broad shoulders and a visibly firm chest. And while he wasn't exactly muscular, even bordering on lanky, his trim figure was actually… attractive.

I just checked out Sylar. Oh my God, I can't believe I just checked out Sylar. How the hell did that happen? And why is that bimbo still hitting on him?

Fortunately her irrational pang of jealousy was relieved when Gabriel came sauntering over to her with drinks in hand and rolling his eyes in frustration. He sat down in a huff, muttering something under his breath about an "airhead".

"Somebody thought you were cute," she teased.

"Who?" he asked, quirking a curious brow. Claire almost felt the need to laugh out loud in triumph. Gabriel had been completely oblivious to the other girl's advances.

"The barista you were talking to."

He snorted at the ludicrous idea. "Yeah right. She might have thought I was a sap with money because I had to break a hundred, but not cute."

"I saw the way she was looking at you," she continued in her own flirty tone. He gave her a sullen smile laced with sarcasm and no humor, eyes flashing a warning signal to drop whatever it was that had made him uncomfortable. Apparently Gabriel enjoyed being teased even less than Sylar had. "Gabriel?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you trust me?"

He glanced up from the mouth of his coffee cup, interested but wary. "I guess?"

"I never imagined that the word 'I' in conjunction with 'guess' in reference to trust would lead to my downfall," he snarked playfully as Claire shoved him into a chair at the kitchen table in his apartment.

"Don't be so dramatic," she laughed. Carefully removing his glasses and setting them down on the faux wood surface, she took a long critical look at him that made him feel more than a little self-conscious. Claire held up a commanding finger and told him to wait there while she disappeared into his bedroom for a moment to snoop through his closet. She took a moment to wonder how she had managed to become so comfortable in the man's home and thumbing through his personal possessions before retrieving a smooth long-sleeved black shirt from its hanger and returning to the kitchen, pleased to find him patiently waiting as she had instructed with nervously fidgeting hands. "Put this on," she ordered, thrusting the shirt at him.

Gabriel quirked a thick eyebrow at her in question. "I haven't worn this since my grandfather's funeral ten years ago." Raising her own brow line to silently inquire what his point was, he sighed and held up his hands in surrender. He stripped off his sweater vest and began to loosen the buttons of his collar before he remembered the impropriety of taking off his clothing while she stood there with her arms crossed. Watching.

"Can you turn around or something?" he asked with an embarrassed blush rising in his face.

"Oh, sorry," she apologized in a rush after being reminded that the situation was significantly different from seeing her brother or uncle bare chested. Her own cheeks burned when she heard the rustling of fabric and an immature curiosity prompted her to sneak a quick glance over her shoulder and out of the very corners of her eyes. Gabriel had turned his back to her as well out of insecurity but in the second that she had caught her peek, her eyes trailed over a smooth expanse of skin with a surprising amount of taut muscle that rippled seductively when his shoulders moved.

He doesn't work out, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised he's in good shape. The guy never stops moving.

"Okay," he sighed, signaling that he was descent again. Claire noted that he had buttoned the shirt up all the way to the stiff collar as was habitual with him. Pushing him back into a seated position so that she could continue, she hesitated but willed her fingers to work out the top two buttons. Gabriel's eyes widened in surprise when the back of her hand brushed over the sensitive skin of his clavicles and the top portion of dark chest hair growing in the area, her own curious gaze lingering there long enough to become conspicuous.

Realizing that she was suffering a horrifying hormonal moment, Claire forced herself to focus on the task at hand. "Now this," she remarked playfully while fetching a slim plastic bottle of a clear jelly-like substance from a small shopping bag, "is called, and repeat after me, hair gel."

"Hair gel," he laughed, taking the container from her. Gabriel needed a second to satisfy his own inquisitive nature while he studied the gelatinous liquid and read the listing of ingredients before he doled out a healthy glob and worked it through his thick dark locks. She imagined a low purring sound vibrating outward from the depths of his throat when his eyes closed and his head rolled back while she combed out his hair. A serene smile of contentment hovered over his lips that she was hard pressed not to imitate.

"Okay, now take a look," she instructed, handing him a mirror.

Gabriel snickered at his reflection. "I look like one of those brain dead male models from a magazine - ridiculous," he laughed.

"I don't think it looks that bad." Claire scanned over her modest amount of makeover handiwork with pursed lips. The shirt displayed the contours of his body in a very flattering manner, and the dark color of it brought out the searing intensity of his eyes while the sleek, backcombed hairstyle she had given him kept his stubborn hair out of his face so that the features hidden there could be clearly seen. And then it hit her.

Holy crap. I just made him look like Sylar…

"I mean, it looks really nice?" Gabriel was trying to read her expression again to discern why she had suddenly appeared so troubled.

"Nah. It's not you," she said, quickly composing herself. She reached over him and tussled her hands through the hair to mess it up into a comically disheveled state. "You…" Claire stopped herself short. In the hurried effort to correct her mistake she hadn't given much thought to their positions and she found that when bent over as she was, her chest came perilously close to Gabriel's face.

He seemed to have temporarily forgotten any reality beyond the view directly in front of him for a moment. Once he sensed that she had noticed however, he quickly coughed out an apology and shook his head, rapidly blinking away whatever dirty thoughts were clouding his normally prude mind. Gabriel turned the full force of his lost puppy brown eyes on her, begging a silent inquiry as to what he was supposed to do in their predicament.

Her visual senses relayed the information about his high cheekbones and defined jawline, the fullness of his lips, the soulful eyes, and the long nose that on anyone else would have appeared overly large, but somehow managed to fit his face perfectly. The parts all coalesced into a whole that she had always been too terrified, or blinded by hatred and disgust to appreciate before. "You look good the way you are."

They both swallowed hard when she didn't move away. Instead, Claire slowly sat down on his thighs so that she was still facing him. She pushed a fallen length of hair away from the eye it obscured and roamed her fingers over the features that she had just admired. Sylar… good looking… What kind of bizzaro universe did Hiro leave me in?

Gabriel timidly rested his palms on her back, still unsure of himself, or how she would receive him. When Claire traced over his bottom lip, they parted slightly and his eyes fluttered shut. Leaning in a touch more, she dropped her own mouth onto his for a shy kiss. They had both acclimated to the behavior of stealing the occasional smooch, but their current situation tested unknown waters. The extent of contact being experimented with was unfolding an entirely new level of physical exploration.

Dainty fingers crept around the back of his neck to tangle in hair that was still sticky with gel while his hands lowered down her back of their own accord. A rumbling groan filled her ears when she flicked her tongue out to meet his and the large hands at her rear moved to grip her hips. Gabriel dragged her closer to him so that her chest crushed against the solid planes of his own, all the while tugging her steadily downward into the dizzying spiral kissing passion.

Claire couldn't place how much time they had spent battling for dominance with swollen lips, but her partner's actions began to take on a desperate urgency and evidence of his attraction to her made itself apparent. She shifted her face to the side in an effort to slow him down. He pulled a hand up to cup her neck, moving his oral fixations down to the slope of her jaw and throat. When she started to fear that he wouldn't stop, Gabriel easily picked up on her tension and dropped his hands to his sides, cracking open a set of nearly solid black eyes that had lost their sweetness to something decidedly more primal.

"Too fast?" She started to say something to the contrary but he pressed his fingers to her lips to silence the protest. "I don't want to do anything you don't want to do."

Claire smiled and offered him a few more tender kisses as a conciliation prize. "Now repeat after me," she joked. "Tweezers."

His eyes widened exponentially, all traces of arousal evaporating instantly. "No. Huh, uh. Not happening. No way."

To be continued...