So, this is domestic bliss. Claire is shaking him awake, speaking in a loud, angry tone.
"Mmm—what?" he asks, groggy.
"My hand," Claire repeats for what feels, to her, like the umpteenth time. "It healed overnight—see?"
She waves it in Sylar's face, efficiently conveying the idea that she'd like to slam it down into his nose.
"Is my memory going haywire, or was that not supposed to happen?"
"Claire—" He rolls his bleary eyes and clears the hoarseness from his throat. "I was asleep."
"So what, you can't keep it up when you're sleeping?"
"I don't know . . . I've never tried before." He doubts it, however. The Haitian's ability is one of those powers that requires some modicum of conscious control. Now he wonders why it didn't occur to either of them during the long night before. Probably, they didn't want to think of it. He knows he didn't—with Claire in his arms, the last thing he wanted was to dissuade her by discussing the flaws in her plan.
"Shit." Claire stares at her smooth, unflawed palm. She's risen to her knees beside him, and he takes in the view. There are worse sights to wake to.
"God, I was stupid last night," she mutters. His appreciation evaporates instantly, and an ugly wave of irritation washes over his face.
"Oh, morning after with you is turning out to be even more fun than I imagined," he snaps.
Claire aims an exaggerated sigh at him.
"We didn't use any protection," she spells out, her voice full of exasperation.
"Oh—I thought you meant . . . Well, never mind."
Slightly mollified, he pushes himself up, leaning back on his hands.
"What's the problem, Claire Bear," he asks with a perplexed half-smile. "You don't want me to knock you up and make it stick this time?"
Choosing to ignore his crassness, Claire still can't help looking suddenly uncomfortable.
"I don't know if I want to be pregnant again," she says slowly. "And anyway . . . I'm sure you're not thrilled at the prospect, either."
Actually . . . Sylar isn't so certain.
On the one hand, he doesn't want a baby any more than the next man whose parents screwed up his life. What would he do with one? It would be a messy little animalistic creature. It would reek up his house and leave little sticky handprints all over everything once it was mobile. Naturally, when it was old enough to develop complex emotions, it would despise him.
However, taking all that into consideration, images of Claire burst into his mind—of her abdomen, round and firm to the touch, fluttering under his fingertips with the kicking of his creation; of her breasts, heavy with milk; of her face, exhausted and wet with perspiration, as she births a bloody, writhing thing that will tie her to him as long as it survives. It's enough to make him light-headed . . . and kind of hard.
Oh, god, I am a pervert.
He swallows and shifts his knee.
"What changed your mind?" he asks, truly curious. It seems to him that every time the subject of babies is broached, she goes nearly to pieces, and yet overnight she's decided she's content to remain barren. This doesn't add up.
"Well, you know . . ." She shrugs. "What you said back at the hotel—"
His eyes close for a second at the harsh memory and the accompanying wave of shame.
"Besides," Claire continues, injecting a lighter note into her voice, "I know it's hard for you to believe, but I really don't want your demon-spawn clawing its way out of me."
Oh. Now it adds up.
Claire means it in jest—or, at least, she expects him to take it that way. She isn't prepared for the wounded expression that surfaces on his face for an instant, as if she hauled off and slapped him without warning or cause.
"I was just joking," she mumbles.
"It's nothing to me," he parries with a flippant shrug, quickly collecting himself. "It just seemed important to you before, and—well, you never used anything with Rutherford. Obviously."
God, to think that disloyal, inconsequential jackass was allowed to spill himself inside of her, again and again and again. Thirty years worth of marking her. Now more than ever, Sylar wishes he had killed him, erased him for good. He still might.
"That's not entirely true," Claire denies. "After the second time, we got into that whole rhythm thing."
"Which worked swimmingly, I take it." Die, Rutherford. And like a dog, please. No, wait. I like dogs.
"Oh, obviously," she parrots him, then leans over and gently tries to kiss his frown away. Which is very sweet of her, he supposes, but he just isn't having it. She sighs and shoves him in the shoulder. "I don't get it, what's the big deal? You been harboring a secret latex phobia all these years?"
He exhales sharply. How can she joke when he feels so raw all over, arousal and anger coursing through his body with every accelerated pump of his heart?
"Just strikes me as odd," he says brusquely. "Suddenly you're appalled by the idea of carrying to term, whereas before you were doing next to nothing to prevent—well, you know. The unhappy alternative. As I see it, the only aspect that's changed is . . ."
He gestures pointedly, splaying his fingers. You know. Or more accurately, You know who.
Claire averts her eyes for a second and sidles up to him across the mattress. Sylar automatically suspects that the next words out of her mouth will be highly offensive, because he understands that bringing herself into closer proximity is her way of cushioning the blow, something like handing him a brightly colored lollipop with a secret ring of red poison and topping it off with a patronizing pat on the head.
"Starting a family is kind of a big deal," she tells him in that speaking-to-a-slow-child tone he loves so much. "That's not . . . well, that's just not for us, okay? It made sense for me and Rob, because we were already a family. 'Course, it's all shot to hell now, but we were."
"And what are we?" he wonders, every bit as affronted as he anticipated. "Enemies with benefits?"
"Not enemies," she tells him, then laughs at the glower that hovers like a black thundercloud on his brow. "God, you've got a house full of books and no TV, but you still turn into such a guy sometimes, you know that? Look, I'll go on the Pill. Is that better?"
Sylar can see that nothing good can come from pushing the topic. Reluctantly, he caves.
"I can live with that," he states after a brief consideration.
Claire rolls her eyes at this display of generosity.
"Easy with the leeway, Prince Charming," she replies sarcastically, drawing back. "First it's the Pill—next thing you know, I'm lobbying for the vote."
"That's not what this is about," he argues, before he throws the sheets back and climbs out of bed. There, he stops cold, one hand in his rumpled hair, looking down at himself.
"What?" Claire asks, noting his apparent surprise.
"Oh—" he replies absently. "Nothing, I'm . . . naked."
A series of high-pitched giggles erupts from Claire's throat, and she stretches out on her back.
"Well—yeah," she laughs, vibrating the mattress with her amusement. "That's generally how you wake up when you go to bed that way. Did you expect the Pajama Fairy to fly in and dress you?"
Shaking his head at the slip, he grabs the edge of the cover and rips it off of Claire, who releases a small, startled, but not displeased shriek at the sudden exposure. Chuckling, he drops back onto the bed and crawls over her like a predator, momentarily stopping her breath.
"I'm going to hit the shower," he informs her, then gazes at her, head tilted. "Feel like tagging along, Claire Bear?"
There's something that would definitely cheer him up: Claire, her hair wet and darkened against her scalp, suds sliding in the dip of her navel . . .
"No . . ." She wants it to come out more firmly, but it's difficult when he peers up at her from beneath his brow, his eyes suddenly, intentionally smoky. How does he do that so well? It should be a crime. As if he isn't criminal enough already.
"Why . . ?" All she can see is the top of his head as he kisses her stomach, causing a flash of heat to sear beneath the spot. "You probably need a shower, after—"
Claire reaches down and touches his hair.
"We can't do that again," she informs him with a valiant attempt at suppressing the very real regret that wells up inside her. "I mean, not without some kind of contraception. I'll make an appointment, but until then . . ."
He retreats from her, eyes down. At first she assumes he's merely displeased and feels aggravated by his flippancy toward her dilemma, but as he stands again, she notes embarrassment barely smothered by his false detachment.
"I don't actually have any," he divulges flatly.
"Nothing at all?" Claire lifts a skeptical brow. He's got to have to have something lying around. Everybody does. Perhaps he just shoved it in a drawer for a rainy, luckier day and then forgot about it in the midst of all his excitement over books and clocks and fascinating brains.
Or . . . maybe he simply never needed it before. Could it be that his previous consorts met rather grisly ends before the issue of unwanted pregnancy ever managed to rear its terrifying, alien head?
Remember Elle? she thinks, and wonders what sort of dialogue might ensue if she dared to ask the question aloud. Somehow, she doesn't think it would be pretty.
Catching her looking at him oddly, Sylar misconstrues her expression and lifts his hands as if to say You got me.
"Ran out on the flight to Texas," he says sardonically. "Honestly, Claire, what do you want me to say? I don't have any. It's not like I anticipated . . . this."
"It's fine," she assures him. "No reason to be embarrassed."
"I'm not," he insists, his lip curling slightly.
Why should he be? Simply because she's just been making him ill with talk of Rutherford and the rhythm method—because her dresser drawers back in Texas were peppered with negligees and the bed was clearly a bed meant for lovers—and because he's been living in New York, unattached, for fifteen years and is thrown off guard by awakening in the nude and doesn't have so much as a single goddamn condom stashed away in his wallet or the little-used medicine cabinet over the sink?
Why, no, that's not embarrassing. Certainly says nothing about the state of his social affairs.
You haven't had company over in fifteen years, Claire's voice taunts in his mind, and it occurs to him again that dropping that bit of information so idly was an immense mistake.
Well, for all Claire knows, he's been murdering his sexual partners. Who needs condoms when you're impervious to disease and enjoy the scent of blood the way some men enjoy a good smoke afterward?
"It's not like I haven't, you know—been with anybody," he protests impulsively, snatching an old but rarely worn pair of checked pajama bottoms from a drawer. He has no qualms baring a person's grey matter, but somehow he just cannot walk buck naked through his home to the shower, and their clothes from the day before are still lying abandoned in the living room. "I had a life these last thirty years, too, hard as that may be for you to believe."
Claire only smiles.
"I'm not the one being egotistical here, Sylar," she tells him. "Calm down; nobody called you a prude. So you don't keep birth control in stock—not really what I'd call a fatal flaw, considering most of your flaws are literally fatal."
He doesn't answer, merely flicks his eyebrows upward in concurrence. Claire watches him secure the string at his waistband.
"I'm naked, too . . ." she communicates thoughtfully.
"So I noticed."
"Shit."
He watches, nonplussed, as she presses her hand over her forehead in vexation.
"What?"
"I left all my stuff at the hotel," she reminds him. "I've only got one set of clothes, and you mutilated my shirt. Thanks again for that, by the way."
"My pleasure," he replies sincerely, and shrugs away her predicament. "I'll buy you more stuff. For the time being, just throw on one of my shirts."
Suddenly, he really, deeply wants to see her in one of his shirts. The idea evokes an even greater intimacy than what they shared last night.
"Maybe everything's still there," she hopes. "I should call. You can't just go replacing my entire wardrobe."
"I can, actually. Haven't we had this discussion before?" He remembers the olive-colored dress and feels a pang that he might not see her in it again. "And it's even more relevant now, I suppose, since we're sort of . . ."
The sentence trails away into a pensive nothingness.
"Sort of . . ?" she prods.
"What's the word for it? Dating sounds so . . . adolescent."
"Screwing?" Claire suggests.
Sylar glares at her.
"I wish you wouldn't be so facetious about us, Claire," he reproaches.
"Well, goddamn, I didn't mean to be facetious. I wish you wouldn't say us like you're talking about Zeus and Hera." He does that—pronounces it with some sentiment akin to reverence—and she finds it as unsettling as she found certain remarks he made in the midst of their foreplay.
"Well, the fact is, we're together," he points out, adding inwardly, Whether you like it or not. "Whatever you want to call it: dating, screwing, shacking up—"
"That's it." She snaps her fingers as he hits on the correct term.
"All right," he allows. "We're shacking up. Ergo, we are now a couple."
"Good lord!" she exclaims. He raises a brow, and she quickly apologizes, "Sorry, I just . . . realized you're right."
"Well, you don't have to sound so horrified."
"I do, actually," she argues heedlessly. "Although it might help if you wouldn't say it out loud like that."
"To continue," he presses on, "as one half of our happy little couple, I feel completely at liberty to buy you any damn thing I feel like. That includes clothing."
"Well, I don't like being looked after, Sylar. What about that?"
"Oh, Claire, don't think of it that way" he advises kindly. "Think of it as mooching. Pretend you're really sticking it to me and I bet you get a kick out of it. Besides—didn't Rutherford look after you, if that's the way you want to put it?"
Now she returns with interest the glare she received from him earlier.
"Which is exactly why I don't like it," she says. "Look how that little fairy tale ended."
He laughs.
"Rutherford had a midlife crisis and went insane," he explains. "You and I don't even have midlives. And I've always been a little off, a fact you're well aware of, so that won't be an issue, either."
"True . . ."
Claire lapses into silence for a moment, pondering, in particular, his comment about their lack of midlives. Sylar turns to go and is crossing through the doorway when she speaks again.
"You haven't turned it back on yet, have you?"
He glances back, eyebrows raised innocently. She lifts her hand, revealing her smooth palm.
"Our deal?" She knows he hasn't forgotten.
"I have," he says.
She appears to be trying to see into his skull.
"I have," he insists firmly. Huffing, he puts his hands on his hips and faces her full on. "Look, Claire, you're not going to start spouting blood every time I turn your ability off, so you might as well learn to trust me. You said last night that you would."
She's positive she said no such thing. Perhaps she implied it somehow, but those words never left her lips.
"Okay," she agrees with a slight coolness. She can feel him staring at her as she looks at her palm, tracing her fingertip over the spot where the beautiful cut used to be, for several long seconds before he leaves.
[] [] []
He uses a straight razor to shave. She finds it in the medicine cabinet alongside a few unwrapped bars of soap. Why he wants to use such an antiquated object she can't say for certain, though she guesses he takes satisfaction in the knowledge that he could commit murder with his grooming tools if he took a notion to do so. Trickier to kill with an electric razor, though she imagines he could pull it off if he wasn't opposed to bludgeoning someone repeatedly.
He's down in the kitchen now, making coffee. She can still see him—smell him— emerging from the bathroom clean and damp and shirtless, can still see his eyes sweeping her scant length and flashing at the sight of her in one of his long, black (is there any other color?), unbuttoned shirts, can still feel the thrill that flared inches beneath her navel.
She wants him. Wants his body, anyway. The desire has not dissipated at all. If anything, following the fulfillment of the previous night, it's grown larger, feasting on the kisses and caresses and awakening twice as ravenous the next morning. The excitement is equal only to her shame.
A couple, he called them. God, is it really true? Claire doesn't want to say arrangement any more than he wants to, but do they have to say couple? Is she a serial killer's girlfriend now? Is the man who slaughtered countless innocents—who made her adoptive mother cry and her biological mother die, for god's sake—is that same man her lover now?
Can't they call it something else?
These questions spur her on as she steps into the shower, unfolds the razor and settles with her bottom against the wall, bending her knee and turning the sole of her right foot up to her eyes.
She cuts into the skin there, carving a nice, long incision from pad to heel. Smiles as the blood patters against the shower floor with no immediate signs of slowing.
All right. Today she can trust him. Tomorrow, the cut will have healed. Undeniably, she's bitter about that, but on a more logical level, she realizes it can't be helped. She only wishes she had made that point during their squabble over babies. The fact that he can't activate the Haitian's ability while sleeping would have closed the topic once and for all. It isn't as if she can simply turn off a pregnancy until morning. Even Sylar in his most pigheaded obstinacy would have to understand that.
She decides to bring it up during breakfast. Make him accept it. Flipping on the shower, she recalls the sulky scowl that rested on his face and finds herself awash with belated impatience.
He doesn't even want a child; she's sure of that. Which is fortunate, since he's basically a big kid himself, cycling between carefree euphoria and those entertaining tantrums that Sandra would have termed hissy fits. Not to mention his tendency toward narcissism, that staple trait of small children . . .
No, he just wants her to want a baby, and then only because he would necessarily be the father.
Sylar.
As a father.
Ugh. Claire shudders in the steam as the hot water trickles down the drain, sweeping away the dwindling flow of her blood.