Fic: "with those who favor fire" (Sylar/Claire)
Title: with those who favor fire
Author: Steph (andbless_mybaby)
Pairing: Sylar/Claire
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Consensual sex. This takes place four years before the events of FYG, so do the math on the age thing.
Spoilers: “Five Years Gone”
Summary: AU for FYG. In a post-apocalyptic New York, Sylar finds Claire changed.
Word count: 2,754
A/N: I did some extensive research (ok, fifteen minutes on wiki) trying to discern whether or not Claire would have known that Peter was the bomb. Also, when exactly Sylar killed Nathan. For my purposes, this takes place about one year after FYG, with Claire ignorant and Nathan already dead.
For
missaliceblue, in appreciation of our shared Sylar
_
She’s dancing in a seedy club in the Meatpacking District, whiling away the long hours of the night with other kids who are trying to not give a fuck that the world’s ending. There’s no bouncer outside the door of the abandoned factory, just the deafening beat of a roaring baseline to announce the party. For him, it’s so loud that it’s an invading rhythm in his body. A vibration that drowns his heartbeat when he crosses the threshold. At half-past-midnight, the vast room reeks of sex and death, mixed with the petrochemical tang of the deserted street outside baking in the August heat.
It’s not so hard to find her; she smells alive.
Claire’s writhing in a crush of comely young things in the center of the floor. Clearly drunk, she teeters on a pair of killer spike heels and keeps clutching one of her girlfriends for support. Her hair screams clear across the room for his attention - it’s streaked a kaleidoscope of bright colors interspersed with her sunny blonde, and caught through with itty bitty braids that are beaded at the ends and swing long against her bare shoulders. The white miniskirt riding her tanned thighs is so brief that the boys in her periphery are getting a clear view straight up to Paradise when she bends to sip her drink at a nearby table.
The kid behind the bar, whose eyes seem to be receding into the hollow sockets of her skull, serves him a shot which he downs in one gulp. She looks like a Munch print come to life. The contours of her skull pull her downy skin taut, her head so much like a light bulb that he can almost hear the tungsten filaments crackling and burning out within.
“To Life,” he says coolly, pounding the little glass on the bar.
The bartender stares just a bit at the deliberately oblique toast before moving on to one of the wraiths crowding the end of the bar. It’s not hard to tell where any one individual lies on the scale of sickness; radiation poisoning is anything but subtle. The overhead lights are a sickish green, and the dust filtering through the fluorescent glow seems to glint like sparks with evil electricity. He has to concentrate hard to keep his own skin from crawling at the overwhelming specter of the invisible toxins hanging heavy in the air, reminding himself that he will not be here long. Besides which, he doesn’t worry about his own blood.
Claire’s face glistens with perspiration. It’s matting her hair to the sides of her face, and smearing the heavy layer of kohl over her eyes, making her look ghoulish. A gloss of sparkly body glitter glazes her joints and the deep vee between her breasts, sweat-stuck in places where it hasn’t rubbed off. She’s an even, healthy tan under the straps of her halter, like a beach girl who needs a good scrubbing. He waits patiently until nature calls and she slips away from her gaggle of twigish hangers-on. Outside the restroom, he lets her pass him by one, two, three steps, before reaching out and grazing her bare shoulder with his hand.
“Fallout kids,” he says, knowing she will hear him. “Waiting for the end. How poetic.”
“What the fu-” Claire spurts, in the instant before turning her neck and realizing that it is him. To her credit, she blanches only a little, and doesn’t do anything stupid, like screaming and/or flailing. It’s patently obvious how pointless that would be in the present environment, which is, above all things, loud and dark. He admires her brain, quick-thinking even when soused, and can’t help imagining its mechanisms.
“Does hanging around the dying give you a rush?” he asks her. She doesn’t immediately respond, and she doesn’t turn around.
“Is there a point to me asking what you’re doing here?” she wonders aloud.
“They’re like June bugs,” he continues. “Dying from the moment they fly in. You, on the other hand…” he cocks an eyebrow. “They come and go, and you just stay.”
“You killed these people. All of them.” She yells a little to overcome the background chatter, the noise of the band.
“I can hear you,” is all he replies.
“What?”
“I can hear you.” He leans close, and bends to her ear. “You don’t need to shout.”
“You have some nerve, showing up at a place like this,” she says, normal tone, but fury is etched across her face and laced through her voice.
“Oh, yes.” His laugher comes out like a bark. “How dare I disturb the sanctity of suicidal emo kids fucking each other in the dark?” After all, it suits his purposes not to correct her. Her mouth opens and gapes closed again. Her lower lip is trembling with indignation, like a little fishy on a line. At the same time, though, her mere proximity is astounding to him, and it’s not completely his will when he reaches out to fold an errant plait of wispy blue-blonde hair behind her ear. “No-one forces them to take a holiday in Manhattan, sweetheart.”
“Why are you here?” she challenges him, leaving the issue aside.
“To see you,” he replies, with the closest as he gets to complete honesty.
A storm of conflicting emotions besieges her face, and he wonders if she knows how very readable she is. There is no art to divining her process. It’s not even a challenge. She’s had a lot to drink, and it’s slowing down the connections between one thought and the next, jamming the rails. She looks him up and down, sizing him up. His eyes never leave hers, because she is a study that he finds fascinating. Almost audible is the sound of her mind working, and it’s as if something’s lit a spark in the booze and smoke-sloshing cavern decision-making center of her head.
“Dance with me,” she says flatly.
“I don’t dance,” he tells her, smirking.
“You do now,” she replies, with a smile that is inscrutable even to him.
They only want you when you're seventeen
When you're twenty-one
You're no fun
With his arm around her waist, he thrills at how thin she is. She’s at least ten pounds lighter than she should be, and her joints are all sharp angles when she lifts her arms above her head. The urge to grab her birdlike wrists and squeeze until the delicate bones crush together is heady, and he has to check the mental image quickly, because he almost can’t control the hot wave of arousal that blankets him at the thought. She wriggles languidly and he feels her jutting hips and the bump of her iliac crest against his thighs. Revises his estimation to fifteen pounds, and imagines the shift of her skeleton, so quiet inside her. Claire’s dancing like a drunk girl, crowding in his space, not minding her boundaries.
They take a Polaroid and let you go
Say they'll let you know
So come on
“You’re overdressed for this scene,” she tells him, as if the thought had just occurred to her. The collared cotton shirt is sticking damply to his back and chest, and he does not stop her from undoing it down the front. It was one of Nathan’s, but she does not recognize it (of course). He shoulders off the garment, and folds it over a chair back. Underneath, he’s wearing a ribbed undershirt, and she was right, he really does fit in much better, now. Her deft little fingers pause on the fly of his jeans. There’s a wicked smile playing on her lips, but he closes his hand over her fingers and pushes them away.
“Careful,” he murmurs.
“You came here to kill me, but you don’t want to play first?” She bites her lip. “Huh.”
Interest, and arousal too, pique him.
“Who,” he asked slowly, “said anything about killing you?”
It’s easy as anything to guide her off the open dance floor, into the shadows of a corner. Hands spanning her waist, he walks her backwards and makes her giggle loosely. He backs her up against the wall, which is unfinished brick, with unforgiving sharp edges. Her breath escapes her in a grunt when her back finds contact against the stones. She looks up at him, and he realizes that she has sobered up more than a little, her eyes swimming sapphire.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to play with fire, Claire?” An ironic grin spreads across his face. “Even you might get hurt.”
Leaning in for a kiss, he dips his head to hers, but she averts her face. He pursues her lips with his own, clutching her to him, but she arches her neck, turning away. So he takes the hint and latches his lips to the area behind her ear. This, she likes. He scrapes the sensitive skin over her jugular with his teeth, eliciting a sharp gasp that he feels on his jaw. Against his lips, her pulse beats swift as a butterfly’s wing, and he gnaws bluntly on her skin, imaging panic thickening her blood like mercury. As if for payback, she kisses him then, smushing her lips against his. He opens his mouth wide for her darting tongue, with tastes like sugar and liquor. She bites down on his lower lip, and he does not think for one moment that it is an accident. The bitterness of blood splashes his palate, hot and sour.
Sylar lifts her effortlessly, and slams her against the wall, before grabbing her knees and pulling them to his hips. Between her legs, his cock throbs in his jeans, and he wants her to feel it, to know what she does to him. Her thin little sliver of a skirt is crumpled to her waist, and the little whore isn’t wearing any panties. She is breathing hard, and the trampled-flower fragrance of her commingled perfume and sweat fills his nose. So he reaches behind her and yanks the glossy ribbon holding together her halter top, tears it from the fabric altogether. The top is loose now; it’s torn and useless as a garment, affording him access to her breasts underneath.
They are less full and plump then they used to be - and he would know; he had photo-memorized the exact shape and dimension and bounciness of that luscious jailbait flesh - but still delicious, high and taut, with stiff mauve nipples that peak in the air. She’s better than naked this way, with the scraps of her blouse and the cursory band of her skirt shoved high below her belly button. Lewder, more suggestive. The power of the imagination. Her hips roll and rock against his, and he laps at her soft, small tits until she bucks and moans and the wet spot on his crotch seeps heat like oil. She is so wet for him already. Sloppy, dirty girl. Against his stubbled cheek, her quicksilver heartbeat throbs like it will burst.
He grabs her grinding ass with one hand and sinks his fingers cruelly into her tender flesh until she slows and he can reach between their bodies to rub her clit. The slippery, hard little nubbin is set below a hood piercing, which he tweaks as an amused smile ghosts over his lips. She mewls like a kitten, at the sensation, and arches into him, stretching her back. He fingers the metal barbell and knows he is teasing, wonders what kinds of game she thinks they are playing.
“You can’t hurt me,” she exhales brokenly.
“You keep telling yourself that,” he replies.
The jagged bricks of the wall hold her up so that he can spare a hand to unzip his fly and loose his almost painful erection. His balls feel heavy and tight, and a glistening drop of pre-cum weeps from the slit of his engorged glans. His shaft between her legs replaces his fingers, which taste salty-tangy, like sweat and girl and seashells when he sticks them in his mouth and sucks them up to the knuckles. It makes him groan. At the apex of her thighs, Claire’s sex is leaking molten heat, and she shamelessly jerks against his cock, trying to draw him in. She twists up rather beautifully, his girl. He rewards her eagerness by tilting her hips against the wall and impaling her slowly. Just the head at first, expanding the tight passage of her pussy, and then all of him, unable to control himself as he thrusts inside. He wants to crush her into diamonds, into nothing, and pierce his hands on the splintered shards of her. Two fingers still coated in saliva rub her clit in tight circles, round and round, quick, quick, quick.
Because he knows it’s the rhythm that’s going to get her off, just like it’s the irregular pulse of her heartbeat thudding in his ears that’s getting him. Her breath paints his face, and it’s a hot, red shade, crimson and nuclear, as he works her against the wall. He grabs out blindly with a hand to support their shared weight, and knows that the bricks must be tearing up her back. His other arm is jammed between their bodies, losing sensation from the crush as his fingers yet stimulate her, goading the pleasurepain he can almost feel osmosing through her flesh. Legs anchored around his waist, Claire lets her head fall forward on his shoulder. The sightfeelsmell of her all around him is an exquisite yellow Roman candle, something worth burning your fingers on. The dying kids writhe in time to the throbbing baseline, which he can feel down to his fingertips, and the whole world is wrapped up in the tempo of her blood flowing. When she comes, it’s a high, keening wail that’s swallowed almost seamlessly in the din, but he, of course, hears it perfectly. In the last moment, her eyes are lambent, round and blue as the sky, as hard and clear as poison.
He thinks of how far she has come from being Daddy’s girl, the plump little cheerleader with the soft face. Something - all the death, all the sadness, the filth, the anger - has made her hard. There are words for girls like what she has become - succubae, cocksucker, slut - who will make you loose rationality like this. Drive you mad, suck you dry, steal your breath - not the type of girl you bring home to mother. He fucking loves it, loves her, wants to eat her whole. Because, inside? He knows that it was him who sent the ball rolling. He blows his load inside her, with her pussy still quivering. A hoarse-throated shout gives noise to her name.
She looks like a dazed angel, Claire does, after coming. Her hair is an electric cloud shot through with rainbow lightening, and her carmine lipstick is smeared all over her face, now. Matches her eyes. Her arms are wrapped around his neck, and his cock is still buried inside her. He lets her down gently, but not before stealing a glimpse at her back. The last of the abrasions from the bricks is healing over, leaving just a plane of smooth white girl-flesh.
She rolls her sweat-sticky skirt down her hips, and his attentive eyes don’t miss how she shudders, just a little, and teeters on her bang-me shoes. (Because he fucked her.) Her pin-skinny legs are unsteady. (Because he fucked her.) Her top is a lost cause, hanging torn over her breasts. (Because he fucked her.) He reaches over for his -Nathan’s- shirt, and pulls her arms through it like a doll’s. He even cuffs the sleeves high on her elbows, and does up the middle four buttons for her.
“I’ll be seeing you, Claire,” he tells her, touching her sharp little chin tenderly. “Sooner than you think.”
“We’ll see about that,” she replies simply.
He watches her blaze a path outside through the middle of the dark club and the crowd crash together like the sea in her wake. The door opens, and she disappears into the fatal night. So many heartbeats crackle with one turn of his head, like a Geiger counter, like clockwork. Above them all, he can hear her exhale and the unaccountable shiver that shakes her with the first click of her heel on the sidewalk.
“Yes.” A smile cuts across his lips. They are bruised and bleeding but the pain is delicious. Her taste is ripe in his mouth, blooming like a bouquet. “Yes. We will.”
_
A/N (2): This fic owes its existence to an old Buffy/Spike story by the amazing Annie Sewell-Jennings called “The Last Summer.” I’ve never written apocalypse!fic before, and the themes of that story were a simply fabulous guideline.
The song that Sylar and Claire dance to is “Seventeen” by Ladytron.