I wound up rewriting/rearranging a lot of this chapter, and due to that I failed to respond to any reviews (I feel like I'm being horribly ungrateful when I do that, now that I'm aware of the reply button). So--thank you, to everyone who read/reviewed/etc. This fic would die without your support.
By the way, I went back and read over the first 14 chapters or so, and it seems SO obvious now that I began this fic several episodes before Invisible Thread aired. Oh, well. :)
Sylar never really envisioned it this way. Not that he ever actually envisioned it—not consciously . . . not on purpose . . . Ahem.
But somehow, he never imagined Claire being the instigator. Maybe it's because he always assumed their first time would be angry and desperate and mostly his doing, Claire succumbing to the sorrow and isolation brought on by modern humanity's final calamity. They'd fight, each of them lonely and bitter and scared like hell of the infinite calm stretching out before them, and end up going at it like animals, probably still snarling at each other and slightly clueless as to how it happened. Claire would blame him, of course—for the collapse of civilization, for the sex, for everything that was his fault and everything that wasn't—and tell him that she hated him, always would, and god damn him for still being here at the end of it all, even as she came apart beneath him, around him.
The idea held a certain romance for him.
This is better. This is much, much better.
She's so involved, as she pounces on him, legs coming up around his hips, as she bites down on his lower lip just hard enough to give him a short, sweet sting, that he can't possibly feel as though he's taking advantage of her. Hell, if anyone's getting conned, it's him, and he's hardly complaining. She can pick his pocket if she wants, while her hands are roaming like that, and he won't say a word.
Truthfully, he's borderline ashamed of his own behavior—or would be, if there was adequate circulation going to his brain. Sylar wants to go slow, make it good—incredible, even. He wants to make love to her, damn it, take her and shake her every sense so that anyone who's gone before him pales in comparison. He wants to be, not merely better, but special. But it's hard, once he finally gets his hands on something he's wanted for around half a century, whether he knew it or not.
So he's afraid it's not so much making love to her as it is going to town on her. His hands are all over, and Claire realizes he must be using his telekinesis to keep her so weightless. His mouth is everywhere he can reach, and he when he finds he can't reach, he works to get at it, uncover it, so he can continue his rapid-fire testing and tasting of her.
Her shirt, for instance, that light pink, fitted number she wore to work. The top three buttons come open easily, but when the swell of her breasts is barely exposed, he becomes impatient. Getting her naked suddenly seems like less a desirable task and more an imperative—sexual, sure, but also evolutionary. God knows Sylar adores his evolutionary imperatives, and he's all too willing to believe that Nature wants him to mate with Claire Bennet.
So it's Nature telling him to rip her shirt open. Why, certainly. Who is he to accuse Nature of being cliché?
Sylar reaches between them—there's not much space, really—and hooks his fingers in her shirt. He pulls sharply, and it comes apart with a pleasing series of muffled pops, showering the floor with round buttons.
"Hey!" Claire exclaims breathlessly, as he knocks her head back with his so he can kiss at her throat and clavicle while he maps the newly exposed region of her flesh with his fingers. "You ruined it . . ."
She bites his earlobe, a bit too seriously, to scold him. He grunts slightly at the pinch of her teeth.
"Sorry," he says, but he doesn't sound it, so Claire returns the favor. She has to put a little more effort into it, but after two good tugs, his black shirt comes open down to his belt, where it's tucked in. She jerks out the remainder to finish the job.
"Oops," she says snidely. "My apologies, Sylar—I realize that's the only shirt you own."
A few steps, and her upper back collides with the wall.
"Say that again," he commands.
"You want me to insult your wardrobe some more? That do it for you?"
"My name." He pushes her shirt off her shoulders, down her arms, onto the floor.
"Oh—Sylar."
He goes for the clasp on her bra and can't find it. Feels like an inexperienced teenager, fumbling in back for a hook that won't come undone.
"What the--?"
"It's in the front . . . Sylar."
"How convenient," he growls.
Claire traps his arms as she removes his shirt; the cuffs catch around his hands, holding them up, so Sylar unfastens her bra telekinetically with little more than a blink. It springs open as his shirt finally drops, and he simply gazes at her.
So this is what she looks like . . . and looked like. She's beautiful and always has been.
"It's, um, impolite to stare," Claire chides uncertainly after several seconds, during which she develops a heat flush beneath his fixed line of vision.
Blinking, he ducks his head as if to hide and ghosts his bottom lip along her shoulders, pushing her bra straps off one at a time. And his hand slides up her torso, over her ribcage—hard, as if he wants to memorize every ridge and valley—and curves over one of her breasts.
Claire almost laughs breathlessly, because she doesn't quite fill up his large hand, but she sucks the gathering laughter back into her lungs when the pad of his thumb strokes her nipple, making it rigid.
God. She can remember a time when his touch disgusted her, when the barest hint of his fingertips brushing her cheekbone made her cringe visibly. First First Lady indeed, god what an arrogant—
"Sylar—ohhhh, Sylar . . ."
His mouth has found her. Thoughtlessly, she curls her legs tighter, digging her heels into the muscle of his buttocks to press him closer. He responds, grinding into her, and her head rocks back, banging into the wall.
There's a clock right above her. It looks heavy, like it could probably crack her skull apart if it fell.
This man cracked my skull once, she reflects, and her hips momentarily still, though her fingers remain knotted in his hair. What would they say if they knew?
Who are they? Peter, Nathan, Sandra—Noah, who spent a lifetime trying to protect her from this man?
Damn it, this is no time to think of her father.
Shut up! she snaps at herself. I want this, god damn it. I need this. To hell with—
No, no, no . . . Sshhhh . . . She's not ready to go there just yet.
To ground herself, she focuses on the bottom of the clock and inexplicably notes that her heart is racing ahead of the loud, ticking second hand. Something that needs to be fixed, pronto. Experimentally, she moans another name.
"Gabriel . . ."
He stills, and he lifts his eyes level with hers once more.
"Not that one, please," he says, and the please is cursory. We played that game already. I never win that game.
Because he looks vaguely put out, Claire moves in, sucking at the pulse in his neck so she can feel it race against her tongue. With her hand, she caresses her own chest, wanting to feel the warm dampness he left behind. The sudden sear in his groin that accompanies the sight of her touching herself forces a small moan past his lips, parted and still slightly swollen from the last kiss. The sound makes Claire feel ridiculously proud of herself. She wants more of that feeling, so her other hand makes a path down his chest, his stomach, over his navel and the thin, dark line of hair that shoots down from it.
"Oh, god, don't do that," he groans, hand clamping down around her wrist as she slips her fingers past the border of his belt.
"Why?" teases Claire, soft words vibrating against the shell of his ear. "What'll happen?"
"Claire . . ."
She retracts her fingers, but not to heed his request. His belt swooshes out of the loops and hits the floor with a metallic thud from the buckle, and she presses the heel of her hand against the button on his jeans.
"Claire," he repeats, slightly dazedly, and she's starting to understand why he gets such a kick out of hearing his name come off her lips. He's not even sure if he's warning her or encouraging her anymore. Certainly, he's not moving to stop her.
She gets his fly open so deftly he can't help but be reminded uneasily of all the practice she's had. He tries to rid himself of that notion—which isn't difficult, because when she slips her hand in, she looks him dead in the face.
Sylar lets loose a quiet swear, and an ill-suppressed smirk finds its way onto Claire's lips. Somehow, it's gorgeous.
But, actually . . . it's all a little too much. It's that teenager feeling again, all need and no control. Damn it, why is he like this with Claire? Eternal youth, and he suddenly feels younger than ever, but in the horrid, awkward sort of way that he forgot about long ago. And he's afraid if she keeps that up--
No, he needs to stop her. Now. Or he'll never live it down. He'll spend the rest of his life reflecting on the fact that he had Claire Bennet half-naked and willing in his home, and he never even made it to bed with her.
The rest of his life . . . Oh, shit, he will literally never live it down.
In a moment of panic, he releases his pointlessly slack grip on her wrist, flings out his fingers, and Claire finds her arms beside her, hands by her head. She has a split second to lift her eyebrows in surprise before she's flipped around, her naked chest flush against the wall.
Sylar clears his throat in a formal, almost prim fashion that makes her want to snort, because she can tell he's trying to hide how breathless he is.
"I take it this is going somewhere," she says, still riding the high of almost making him lose control.
He makes a noise of irritation in his throat at her joking attitude as he comes up behind her. His hands fall on her waist.
"I said not to . . . do that," he reproaches weakly. He reaches around and starts to unfasten her slacks, and she kind of loves that he's doing it with his hands instead of his power.
"Well, considering what we're doing here, I didn't realize I was entering forbidden territory," she points out.
"That's not—" He rolls his eyes, then lowers them as he pushes off the rest of her clothing.
She's naked, and it's strange, because he can't remember her looking so breakable, so very vulnerable, not even when he had her on her back in California, brain exposed and tears on her face.
It's exciting. He presses against her back, pushes her hair aside, and softly kisses the nape of her neck. Claire's eyes drift shut, and a sigh works its way up from somewhere deep in her lungs.
"That's not why I said it," he finishes, but he's not quite certain how to explain without coming off the worse for it. Finally, he tries, "Claire, what's the longest you ever waited for somebody?"
"I—ah!"
He's exploring with his fingers now, returning the favor, and the violence of her reaction when he finds the exact spot thrills him. As she cries out, she tosses her head and hits him square in the mouth; Sylar tastes a hint of copper, and then, like always, it's gone.
"Sorry, I . . ."
Her head is still back, chin against the wall, and he's breathing against her ear—wants to grind into her again from this new angle, but holds off. Focuses on making her moan. Slips his hand further into the apex of her legs and is once more reminded jarringly of Costa Verde, how her blood was warm and wet and slick. In his present state, the memory feels wrong, dirty. He shoves it away, closing his eyes and burying his face in her soft, un-bloodied hair.
Claire, realizing what he's implying by his question, emits something between a laugh and a pant as she derisively states, "You weren't waiting for me, Sylar. You were going around head-hunting—and, I'm sure, screwing a bunch of other women in the process."
She pushes back as she says screwing, and he pushes forward, slamming one of her hip bones and, on the other side, his own wrist into the wall. Now he is grinding against her, shoving himself up between her thighs, and it pisses him off to think she's deliberately misunderstanding him.
"I didn't ask what's the longest you ever waited for sex," he clarifies harshly into the sensitive skin behind her earlobe. "I said . . . for somebody."
Claire doesn't give an answer. She suspects the truth might anger or hurt him. He seems to know this, pressing on with a slightly bitter laugh.
"Besides . . . you were busy screwing people, too, and . . . whatever the hell you were doing in Texas. Baking pies . . . skinny-dipping in your lake . . ." He's getting faster, rougher in his movements, and he doesn't even realize it, he's so focused on the infuriating speculation.
The idea occurs to Claire that he might be trying, however unconsciously, to hurt her. In truth, she doesn't really want to stop him—or, at least, her body doesn't want to. His motions at her back, accompanied by his still-active fingers, are tipping her over the edge, as well. But when he moans and bites out--
"I should've dried up the goddamn lake . . ! Drowned the bastard in it first . . ."
--she knows she has to.
"Hey."
He doesn't respond.
"Hey!" Claire reaches back and knots her fingers into his hair, forcing him to look at her. "Stop," she commands, the word coming out in a chastising but strangely soothing whisper.
His eyes widen slightly as he complies.
"It's over, okay?" she tells him firmly. "No lake, no . . . Rob. No gold band on my finger. There is no Texas—not anymore. You need to let it go."
He swallows, looking down, away from her eyes.
"You need to," she reiterates, "or we can't do this."
"You're the one who—" he begins and stops abruptly. He's not sure where the sentence is headed. You're the one who wanted to do this? You're the one who can't let it go? Now that he thinks about it, both statements would be true—but she's right; they could be equally applied to him. He has to get a grip.
"Can you at least say you're sorry?" he asks in a whisper.
"Wh--? For what?"
"Marrying him." He thinks it should be fairly obvious. You fool. I still don't understand how you could do that to . . . yourself. If he can't make her take it back, he'll settle for a decent apology.
"You want me to apologize for the last thirty years of my life?"
"Yes." Is there a problem?
Claire pushes her arms against the wall, craning her spine to look at him more fully.
"You first," she says. "Say you're sorry for something—anything. So long as it's true . . ." She flicks her eyes down his bare shoulder. "You know, you've got blood on you."
Sylar, too, glances down, and she's right. She must have touched him there while the shallow cut in her hand was still bleeding. But somehow, he doesn't think she's referring to that.
Costa Verde, indeed. Is he sorry?
No.
"Fair enough, Claire Bear," he replies, falling back from her. "I guess you don't owe me an apology, after all."
And he was all ready to forgive her, too.
Claire can hear him removing his jeans and, presumably, boxers. She has to admit she's relieved; when the warmth behind her disappeared, she was afraid she'd pushed too much with her words, pushed him away. She isn't sure which she's more afraid of losing: his power to repress her ability or the solid feel of his form.
"Remember when I first got here?" she asks lightly in an attempt at recovering the situation. "And I said if we got bored you could pin me against the wall?"
She reminds him only because she wants him to laugh, which he does, quietly.
"I can make it nicer," he informs her. "More comfortable. Shift your center of gravity so that you're sort of . . ."
He does something she can't see, and suddenly she's not pinned against the wall—rather, she's lying upon it, her weight shifting impossibly forward. Even her hair obeys, falling around her face.
"Huh," she laughs, running her hand flat over the wall, marveling that she'd swear she was on the floor if she didn't know better, if there were no clocks or shelves about.
His hand falls over hers.
"I got it from a physicist in Washington. He was just wowing the scientific community with his so-called discoveries—you can imagine. I'm not sure even he knew he was a fraud . . . Then, I didn't bother to ask him."
Claire thinks he's telling her to be vindictive, to assert how very unsorry he is for all that he's done. And to taunt her, because he believes she's so desperate for the Haitian's ability that she'll stay anyway.
He's right.
"I read about it," she says with deliberate nonchalance. Then, "You're not going to do me from behind, are you? 'Cause I kind of wanted to watch you."
Sylar feels his knees go weak, so he lets them collapse forward, one on either side of Claire's calves.
"If you have your heart set on it, you should probably turn over," he says.
Claire does, reclining with her arms over her head. She peers down her own body to examine his. There's an instant in which he appears uncharacteristically bashful—Gabriel coming out, she thinks, or Gabriel running to hide—and then he's all silent defiance, as if he suspects her of drawing comparisons. The funny thing is, he knows how good he looks—he must—but he still wants her approval.
She pushes herself up (Dear lord, I do believe I'm sitting on the wall) and kisses this bitter, wonderful, funny, horrible, beautiful Grim Reaper long and hard. At the same time, she pulls her legs out from between his, draping them on either side of him. When he pulls back, he hooks one over his shoulder and, stroking the bend of her knee absently with his thumb, begins kissing his way down her inner thigh.
Claire watches, her abdomen a tight, hot ball. He pauses at the fleshy base to suck lightly. Halting, he observes the red spot on her skin and seems deeply pleased with it.
Claire also stares wonderingly at it.
"You're the first man who's ever left a mark on me," she expresses for both of them, reaching down to brush the spot.
He captures her fingers in his and does something with his mouth and tongue that makes her clench her thighs around him, heel pressing into his back.
"And the last," he says, crawling up the wall, moving his lips up her body, kissing her everywhere as he promised himself nights ago under the influence of the tequila.
Claire knows he's right—technically. No one else will ever be able to leave a mark on her, unless she loses her mind and invites Sylar over to get his Haitian on and maybe run a highly critical commentary as she sleeps with someone else. But his words still ring ominously in her ears . . . She has a hunch he isn't speaking on the basis of technically.
"Did you know you always smell like peaches?" he asks as he nuzzles into her hair, and now she's sure of it.
"Sylar . . ." Is he lying to her, or to himself? They're both aware this is a very limited engagement.
He's poised to enter her.
"Wait a second—"
Claire squeezes her thighs around his hips, stopping him
He jerks his eyes up to hers and finds they're wide, anxious.
Suddenly, he regrets that remark about the physicist. God, she's not backing out, she can't back out, not now—
"Sylar, I—"
Claire blinks.
"It's just . . ."
He's looking at her with raised eyebrows, body shaking with want, the expression on his face a bit too readable for her liking, and she just can't do it to him. Not yet. Not now. So she finds herself blurting:
"Well—just so you know . . . Every time I—I mean, the way I am, the way I heal—so every time, it's always like . . . you know. The first time. Just, um, seemed like something you ought to know. In case you could tell."
Her face is pink, and it isn't due to arousal. Well, not entirely, anyway.
He nods hastily.
"Yes. No, of course."
He already knew that, obviously, but he isn't telling her that. Right, your husband told me when we were discussing your sex life. He can just imagine saying that while they're skin to skin.
"Course, I guess this'll be the last time . . . for a little while," she adds, hoping the hint will fail to bounce off him for once. She can't tell if it registers as she looses her hold on his hips, and he sinks down, pressing a deep but strangely tender kiss against her mouth.
"It doesn't hurt," she says quietly, eyes closed, as his lips leave hers and she feels him shifting against her cautiously, almost experimentally. "You don't have to be gentle or anything . . ."
She doesn't want him to be gentle.
"I know," he says.
He pierces her.
Claire gasps, but as she told him, there's no pain. It's simply the sensation of being filled so suddenly, so utterly, that takes her breath away for a second. She can't even remember the last time she enjoyed sex. Whenever Rob touched her during the last few months of their sinking marriage, she detected a suspicious perfume hanging about him, magnified to suffocation by her growing mistrust. It was enough to put a damper on things.
Sylar stills at the noise, stalling his movements to allow her to become accustomed to the breach. That's what he's supposed to do with a virgin, he guesses. Which is laughable in a way, because she isn't, by a good seventy-five years or so.
Bizarre, Rutherford termed it. The bastard.
There's no Texas, he reminds himself, wishing he believed it, wishing it were true in the literal sense. Wishing away the lacey negligees he saw in her house and every single one of the faux first times she experienced before now.
"Claire, I—"
She hugs him closer, wrapping her arms around him. Wriggling her lower body beneath his weight, she draws him in deeper and gives him a brief squeeze with her muscles. She wants him to gasp. He doesn't, but he flinches with an almost imperceptible narrowing of the eyes, and takes it as a signal.
He starts easy. Not because he wants to—he feels as if they've had eighty years of foreplay, and all he wants is to crash into her until he can't anymore—but because he thinks he's supposed to. And, he admits, because he wants to make it last and doesn't quite trust himself. Being with Claire isn't like being with some random woman he'll never see again, and whom he just might kill afterward if the getting is good. Claire feels . . . different. Is different. He thinks he could lose himself in Claire.
But she doesn't want easy. Running her hands down his back, she reaches as low as she can, clutching at him, trying to force his pace.
"Quit being such a goddamn gentleman!" she finally snaps in desperation. He never was before, and she thinks this is a hell of a time to start.
After that, it's all rather frantic. They slam into one another repeatedly with more greed than grace, more force than skill. He bruises her lips, and she leaves little red crescents all over his upper arms, which heal in the wake of her nails as she moves on to press another set into his back, his buttocks, anywhere she happens to be touching him when he makes her fingers and toes clench.
She loves the noises he makes, loves seeing if she can turn a growl into a groan. He's absolutely enamored of the brief moans that drift intermittently from her throat, and he finds himself bringing his lips to her breast again, sending a spark of electricity into the peak simply to see if he can turn up her volume.
It's over too quickly . . . but contrary to his fear, it's Claire who goes first. She tries to hide her face against his clavicle, but he twists his fingers into her hair with unintentional cruelty, forcing her head back so he can watch her. From sternum up, she's so flushed she looks almost sunburned, and her expression is more agony than ecstasy: eyes squeezed tightly shut, lips parted as if she wants to cry out or maybe scream. He wants her to, but she doesn't—just more of her sweet little moans. It isn't until she's finished quaking that she exhales his name.
He shudders against her an instant later, but he cheats, burying his face in the sanctuary offered by her neck and shoulder. He holds his breath without realizing it, though Claire notices.
The two slide away from the wall slowly, still joined, cheek to cheek. He drops to his trembling knees, depositing Claire on the floor with her feet flat and legs bent close to her chest. Breathing shallowly, he looks her over. His eyes linger when they reach a certain location, and his head tilts.
Frowning, Sylar drags his fingertips along her inner thigh. When he draws them back, they're bloody. Claire watches him bring the glistening scarlet close to his face, and for the first time she experiences a moment of unpleasantness, her heart thudding high in her throat.
Are you gonna eat it?
But of course he doesn't do anything of the kind. Just peers at it with something akin to curiosity, or possibly reflection, a deepening furrow in his brow.
Claire, that's disgusting.
She shuts her eyes and drops her head back. Catches her breath. Allows herself to accept that, yes, she just had crazy wall-sex with a man she once stabbed in the brain for being such a murder-happy psychopath. For shame, Claire Bennet.
But is she sorry?
"I want to do it again," she says, opening her eyes to look at him.
He drops his hand, curling her blood into his fist.
"God damn it, Claire . . ." He reclines on the floor, blinking up at the ceiling. "Give me a minute."
She can see his chest is still rising and falling with heightened rapidity, and he's still hanging onto her blood, tapping his knuckles absently against the floor at his side. He glances over at her sharply, studying her, and feels charmed by the way a few strands of blond hair have flattened against the dampness on her forehead.
"There is one thing I'm sorry about," he confesses in a low tone. "But you may not want to hear it."
"This should be interesting."
"I'm sorry I never killed Hiro Nakamura," he states honestly. "It was all I could think about on the flight to Texas, right after you called me. How I could have been there in a second. I kept on kicking myself, over and over." He stares at her, but her face registers no obvious response. "I hated seeing you on that carpet, Claire."
Dead bodies rarely turn Sylar's stomach, but he could have happily spent eternity without the sight that greeted him in her living room. As far as he's concerned, Nakamura was just a vessel with something valuable stashed inside. Harder to crack than most, unfortunately.
Claire isn't sure what to say to this revelation.
"You probably could've kept that one to yourself," she replies after a moment. He shrugs one shoulder and returns his gaze upward. Claire shifts from the wall and stretches out on her stomach, resting her head just above his navel. He strokes her languidly, and she lifts a hand to his chest, her middle finger doing idle figure-eights in the dusting of dark hair.
"I'm sorry I married Rob," she allows him reluctantly, and his hand pauses on her head. "I mean, I'm not—but I am . . . you understand?"
Homecoming. Costa Verde. Just now. How many times has he made her bleed? He wonders.
"Completely," he answers, and he means it.