Constant Friction
Title: Constant Friction
Author: jaune_chat
Fandoms: Heroes
Characters/Pairings: Sylar/Luke
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6,111
Spoilers: 3x16 - “Building 26”
Warnings: Violence, gore, slash, movie references, humor at the expense of daytime television and porn dialogue.
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring, NBC et al.
A/N: perdiccas won me at hope_in_sight and requested a Sylar/Luke bromance fic, where friendship evolved into something more. Thanks to brighteyed_jill for betaing!
Summary: Sylar decides to keep Luke around, and realizes beneath the talkative brat is someone he actually wants to know.
For five seconds, Sylar considered locking the door. He had his father’s address; he didn’t need Luke anymore. He didn’t need to drag around an inexperienced kid, not when his goal was so firmly in sight.
“You ought to see me around pacemakers.”
“…He said I reminded him of his son.”
“Please help me!”
Sylar hesitated a split second, uncertainty clouding his inner vision. Luke’s excited, fearful face was framed in the passenger side window, and he was reaching for the door handle. The agents would be out in a second, guns blazing, and the bullets were still burning their way out of Sylar’s body as it knitted back together. Luke’s hand came down.
Sylar flipped the lock open. He revved the engine and peeled out of the parking lot the second Luke was inside.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Luke was dead asleep, completely worn out from the adrenaline rush of escaping the diner unscathed. He’d been talking a mile a minute, nonstop, from the moment he’d gotten in the car to the moment his head had hit the pillow, and all Sylar had to do was listen. It was just as well Luke didn’t even need Sylar to say anything, because he wasn’t sure of what to say.
However, he knew exactly what he had to do. While Luke was passed out, Sylar left and followed the directions to Sampson’s house. He sat outside in the car in the dark for several hours, staring at the pathetic, dirty hovel, willing it to give up its secrets. Memories long-buried had intruded as he drove to his father’s place, memories of being alone, of being sold, of seeing an argument and blood and his mother’s body. Memories that had driven him into a searing rage, and then had been quenched as effectively as throwing himself into ice water when he’d seen Sampson’s house.
An hour before dawn, he left the car to find out everything he could. Every touch gave him answers to questions he hadn’t even formed yet, and not a single one of them was satisfying. Prowling around the back of the house, Sylar felt himself recoiling in disgust from the carcasses in various states of preparation. Discarded oxygen tubes and old bottles of medicine let him know the state of the man inside was even worse than the dirty and broken-down home he lived in. Every drying hide and mounted specimen showed technique and precision, cold, sterile, and lifeless, but not the tiniest amount of regret or thought for what he’d done to his own flesh and blood.
Sampson Gray’s house was a cancer. A self-contained tumor, a perfect representation of the cold-hearted bastard inside that had set Sylar on the path to becoming what he had become. Powerful. Special. Hunted. Alone.
“I’m not anyone. I don’t have any friends.”
No longer alone.
A half-hour before dawn, without ever needing to lay eyes on his father, Sylar left Sampson Gray’s house to rot.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Luke was waiting when he came back, a bag of fast-food breakfast sandwiches by his side, the TV blaring about the diner shoot-out and the two dangerous fugitives on the run.
“Hey,” Luke said in greeting, mouth full of eggs and sausage. Heat shimmered around his hand right before he threw two sandwiches in Sylar’s direction. Catching them reflexively, Sylar sat on the edge of the bed and automatically turned the volume on the TV down.
“Check it, we’re famous!” Luke said, grinning. “They don’t have pictures or anything, but-.”
“We have to leave soon,” Sylar cut in abruptly. “They’re going to track us.”
“We’ll just kick their asses!”
“No!” Sylar snapped, and Luke scowled.
“Where’d you go this morning anyway?” he asked, cramming the last of the food into his mouth.
Sylar glared at Luke, who only looked back and shrugged. “To see my father.”
Luke swallowed abruptly and seemed wary. “Yeah?”
“You were right about him.”
Luke’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion briefly, and he paled as his expression cleared. “Oh.”
Luke had said Sampson told him he reminded him of his son. And Luke was a loner with a broken family, abused and with no friends. That said more than a little about him. About them.
“Hey, if we’re gonna go, can I like trash the place? Set it on fire?” Luke asked hopefully.
Sylar almost let out a surprised laugh at that, quickly suppressed. He’d been contemplating something similar, just out of sheer frustration. “No,” he said shortly, but didn’t bother to reinforce that with a telekinetic cuff to the side of Luke’s head. “I don’t want to make it easy for them to find us.”
“Oh.” Luke looked a little thoughtful at that, and shook his head. “I’m gonna go get my shit.”
Ten minutes later, on the road, Sylar exasperatedly discovered Luke had emptied the minibar into his bag.
~~~~~~~~~
“Get down,” Sylar yelled, ducking and rolling out of the door. Glass rained down on him from the shattered windows as the hunters turned the station wagon into Swiss cheese. The hunters had blindsided them, coming up from a half-hidden side road forcing them into a ditch, and covering them with a hail of gunfire.
Sylar felt two bullets hit him in the chest, burning all the way through and making him choke. Gasping as his lungs began working again, he shoved out with his mind, hearing thuds as two agents were flung against the side of their truck. Off to his left, he heard pained screams, and looked up to see Luke burning two more hunters who had come too close to him.
Shouting in surprise and pain, the hunters raised their rifles, only to have them flung out of their grasp as Sylar took advantage of their surprise. Taking a deep breath, he screamed; sonic waves shattered the car windows and flattened the hunters to the ground with their force. Luke popped his head up in the next second, looking surprised.
“That was so fucking cool!” he said, eyes bright. One of the hunters stirred weakly and Luke let out another microwave blast. Sylar could hear the hunter’s flesh sizzle as he jerked back reflexively and plastered himself to the ground in surrender.
“Keep them down,” Sylar said, and strode over the fallen forms of the hunters to get inside the truck. Sitting on the passenger side was a metal-cased laptop showing the elaborate series of cameras and satellites that had been letting the hunters find him and Luke. Smiling slightly, Sylar snatched up his prize and jumped down from the truck, hearing screams fading into silence as Luke lifted his hands away from the fallen hunters.
“They wouldn’t stay down,” Luke said, smirking. There was something slightly brittle under Luke’s bravado, and Sylar decided not to try to shatter it. He didn’t need to see what was underneath; he thought he already knew.
“Good job,” he said shortly, and reached into the wrecked station wagon to get his bag. “Let’s go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“So…” Luke said, hitching his bag farther up his shoulder. “Like what’s your goal now?”
Sylar walked in silence for several minutes, lengthening his stride enough that Luke had to jog to keep up with him.
“Dude, seriously,” Luke panted. “I’m dying here!”
He slowed marginally, still thinking. Meeting his father had been his driving force for the past few months, overshadowing his old goals of gaining powers and becoming truly special. With that done, or at least no longer necessary Sylar felt like he was drifting, directionless…
“I don’t know,” Sylar said almost involuntarily.
“Well,” Luke said, stumbling over a clump of grass and almost banging into Sylar. “That makes two of us.” He waited for a second, a strange grin on his face. He was, Sylar realized, waiting for the punch line. When it didn’t come, Luke started to look worried.
“Uh, are you still looking for powers?” he asked tentatively.
Sylar had a brief surge of panic, suppressed when Luke made the suggestion, and Sylar nodded, scowling slightly to make sure he didn’t look relieved. Yes, he could break Luke in half for any smart remarks he could have made about Sylar’s lack of direction, but Luke hadn’t decided to push it when Sylar was feeling a bit brittle. He didn’t want to see what was underneath either. Maybe he didn’t want to know what he’d find.
“So if we’re gonna find you some new powers or something, can we get a set of new wheels?” Luke asked hopefully.
Sylar nodded shortly, relaxing, and Luke began scanning the horizon, looking ahead to the highway they were coming up to.
“What kinda car do you want?”
“Inconspicuous.”
“Yeah, ok, I mean for like hiding and stuff, but what about really? What do you really want?” Luke asked.
Sylar raised an eyebrow, distracted from his own concerns. “You’re a gearhead?”
Luke snorted. “Not really. I watch some TV shows and movies. Like that Ferrari from Ferris Bueller’s Day off? Aweome.”
“James Bond’s Aston Martin,” Sylar said after a moment.
“Which movie? One of the old ones or the new ones?”
Sylar gave Luke a frank gaze. “All of them. Obviously.”
“Sweet,” Luke said. “With the all the guns and shit-.”
“And leather seats.”
“Leather seats? Dude, those cars had fucking satellite TV and rocket launchers and you’re popping a boner over the leather seats?” Luke said, laughing so hard he had trouble walking in a straight line.
“You use the leather seats every time you drive. The rocket launchers would only be for every now and then,” Sylar pointed out, and Luke, still laughing, gave him the point.
“What about some of those cars in Fast and the Furious? With the lights underneath them? Chick magnets!” Luke declared.
“High maintenance and power-draining,” Sylar said dismissively.
“Yeah, now who’s a gearhead?” Luke accused, and Sylar didn’t quite manage to completely repress a smile. “Ok, what about the Transporter’s car?”
“Don’t get me started,” Sylar warned.
“Knight Rider and KITT?”
“Eighties version only.”
“Pfft, duh.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Wanna watch something?”
Sylar glanced over to see Luke pointing at the TV with the remote, flipping through the channels. They’d walked for almost four hours down the highway after taking out the agents, until a too-trusting driver had pulled over his silver pick-up truck. The man never knew what hit him, never even saw their faces, and Sylar and Luke had a new ride. That had been two days ago, and since then Sylar had been doing his level best to put the maximum amount of distance between them and any nearby hunters. Two days of almost constant driving and looking over his shoulder, while Luke looked over the other one, sleep only caught during brief roadside naps. This had been the first time since then that Sylar had felt certain enough of their safety to find a motel.
The channels flipped by too rapidly for Sylar’s fatigued eyes to focus, and he waved his hand in vague dismissal. At some point, Luke had stopped flinching every time Sylar moved his hand, but he couldn’t remember when the change had happened. He wondered briefly if it even mattered if Luke wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and finally closed his eyes, unwilling to think any further.
“Just keep the volume down and watch for trouble,” Sylar said shortly, and felt himself drifting into darkness.
What woke him was not splintering wood and breaking glass from a hunter assault, or sirens and shouting from a police raid, but soft, pained whimpering from the next bed. Luke was sprawled over the covers, remote still in his hand, TV flickering on some late-night infomercial. Luke’s head tossed from side to side restlessly, and tiny, repressed whimpers worked their way from his throat. His face was twisted up in fear, and tears leaked from his closed eyes.
Sylar stared at him in the shifting lights, and finally reached out to shake his shoulder. Luke didn’t need that, didn’t need to wake up in the morning more tired than if he’d never slept. Sylar just didn’t want to deal with it, the long minutes of almost palpable terror; he’d never get back to sleep that way with Luke practically poisoning the atmosphere with fear. Luke started awake at Sylar’s touch, one had blazing with red light, and Sylar jerked himself back out of danger, scowling ferociously.
“You were snoring,” he said blandly.
Luke looked around frantically, the remnants of the nightmare finally dissipating as he realized where he was and whom he was with. And what Sylar had just said. Quickly scrubbing away the remains of his tears, his hand ceasing its glowing, Luke just scowled back.
“I don’t snore,” Luke protested.
“You were,” Sylar said, glaring. “Don’t wake me up again.”
Luke snorted softly in derision as he turned off the TV and flopped back on the bed. Neither of them mentioned someone was supposed to be on watch.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“You want the whole list?” Luke said, scrolling down the screen full of names of specials the government was intending to capture. He had the laptop balanced easily between his knees and the glove box, at complete ease in the truck as if he’d been at a table.
“Of course.”
“But, like, what if one of their powers is super-lame? Like blue spit or super snot or something?”
Sylar was torn between wanting to smack Luke up against the truck window for that and needing to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. He hadn’t felt like laughing for a very long time, and it surprised him every time Luke brought up something absurd like that. It felt like a year since he’d laughed at anything honestly, instead of sardonically. It had been almost two weeks since he picked up his volunteer passenger, and there had been more occasions for humor in that time than Sylar had had in maybe a decade. Traveling together, now that the pressure from trying to find Sampson was gone, was letting them have the teenage years neither of them had ever had.
“Then they get to keep it,” Sylar managed solemnly, once he had himself back under control. Luke smirked slightly and looked at the list again.
“So… do you want my power?” he asked abruptly.
Caught off-guard, Sylar didn’t have an answer ready, and Luke shrugged at Sylar’s silence.
“It’s ok if you do.”
The resignation in that bare statement gave Sylar a pit in his stomach, something between nausea and pain, and he desperately needed to purge it.
“I don’t want it,” he said finally.
“Why the hell not? My power’s cool!” Luke insisted.
“No, it’s super-lame.” The words were a deliberate mocking of Luke’s, but Sylar’s tone was deadly serious.
Luke swallowed hard and looked back at the screen.
“Thanks,” he said, in a very small voice.
Sylar let a beat of silence go by before talking again, the pit in his stomach fading. “Who’s closest?”
Luke dove back into the list again, and surreptitiously scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Chicago, near the Indiana border. His name’s… Bruce Garber.”
“Then let’s go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Come on, dude. It’s cheating!”
“It’s been two months. You can’t pull the ‘cheating’ card after two months,” Sylar pointed out.
“Hey, I never pulled it before. You can see in the dark now, so doing this at night is cheating! How am I supposed to help if I can’t see jack?” Luke said stubbornly.
Sylar pressed his lips together for a second, and gave a grudging nod of acceptance. “Fine, we can wait until dawn.”
“We don’t have to wait until fricking dawn! Just don’t turn out the lights before we go in, that’s all I’m saying. I know the drill by now,” Luke said.
Sylar shot him a look, and nodded shortly. As one, they opened the doors to the truck and walked around to the back door of Jane McCoy’s central Oklahoma abode. Luke had picked her mostly for her lack of proximity to any of the hunters’ active search nets, that and the fact that Sylar hadn’t taken a new power in almost two weeks. Luke had been remarkably adept at learning Sylar’s style, and didn’t seem to be bothered with all the inevitable screaming and bloodshed that accompanied Sylar’s acquisition of a new ability.
The first time they’d done it, taking Bruce Garber’s immoveable stance (with it, nothing could move Sylar from his place, when he chose, and he’d accidentally wrecked the car when he’d activated it on the highway in proving its efficacy), Luke had been the one to distract Garber, allowing Sylar a clean shot at the man’s head. Sylar hadn’t needed the help, but Luke had been very eager. He’d watched the slicing and brain examination with utter fascination, one hand on Sylar’s shoulder as he’d leaned over to watch him work. Having an appreciative audience somehow made acquiring abilities exciting again, exhilarating.
At the back door, Luke raised his hand to test the doorknob, only have it snatched out of his hand when it opened under him.
“You boys lost?” The pale-eyed, middle-aged woman squinted at them both, her face a study in concern.
“Kinda,” Luke piped up. “We were looking for the Clover Motel? The direction said to turn off on Highway Five…”
“Oh, you’re miles off from there-,” she started, and reeled off a lengthy explanation as to how to get back to the interstate. Luke was clearly not even listening, just nodding vaguely until she stopped talking.
“Yeah, ok, hey, you’re Jane McCoy, right?” he asked.
“Well yes, I-. How did you know…?” she trailed off as Sylar moved a little closer into the light, looking down at her at an angle that made his eyes look positively evil. The look rarely failed to unnerve, and Jane was not made of very stern stuff. She paled and took a single step backward in involuntary panic.
Sylar and Luke followed, matching the steps in a well-worn dance. Her mouth was telekinetically shut before she could scream, and Luke had grabbed her before she could run. He hauled her back to the kitchen and presented her to Sylar like a present. Smirking, Sylar raised his hand, and made the final cut. Luke knew when to loosen his grip so he wouldn’t get blood on his clothing (he’d figured that out after the second time), and lowered her to the table so Sylar could get a good look at her head.
He slid around to her head as Sylar began his examination, squinting to see if he could see what Sylar was looking for. He couldn’t; Sylar didn’t always know it himself until he’d actually physically touched the microscopic anomaly that meant an ability, but Luke always looked. Something about Jane’s eyes made Sylar consider the possibility of a visual ability, and he spent time examining the occipital lobe until he’d found what he was looking for.
“Bingo,” Luke said softly. He might not realize what Sylar was hunting for, precisely, but he knew the expression on Sylar’s face when he’d found it. “A good one?”
Sylar closed his eyes and took the ability into himself, opening them again to look around the world with eyes charged with new power. He could see straight through the walls of the house, the plaster, wood, bricks, and mortar, right to the truck outside. Concentrating, looking closer, he could see inside closed cabinets, inside cans and boxes, even-.
“I can see through everything,” Sylar whispered, almost reverent. It was the single moment of anything like spirituality that he ever allowed himself. Even Luke didn’t profane the moment until Sylar had come back to himself with a start. Then he issued a purely Luke statement to sum up the entire evening.
“X-ray vision? Kick-ass.”
Sylar turned his gaze to Luke and looked him up and down, smiling faintly.
“Your eyes go clear when you do that,” Luke said, staring at him. He seemed supremely unconcerned that Sylar might have been looking through his clothes, fixated instead on the manifestation of the new ability. “It’s kinda cool.”
Sylar wanted to see for himself what he looked like with the ability in force, but the very nature of it rendered it immune to examination. He couldn’t very well look at himself in a mirror if he was also looking through the mirror.
Luke leaned forward, actually putting one hand on Sylar’s face so he could look at his eyes. Sylar stared back, actually looking through Luke’s muscle and bone and skin to see his brain underneath. With a bit of a start, he realized he could get a preview of someone’s ability by examining their brain this way, to see if it was worth taking without ever having to confront a potential victim. It could be an enormous time-saver, letting both of them spend time doing other things than going on a fruitless hunting expedition. They’d had a couple of those, and they had wasted entire evenings on useless abilities.
Sylar raised an eyebrow after a long moment, bringing them both back to themselves, and nodded towards the door. Luke preceded him out, so easy in Sylar’s presence that he barely seemed to register the fact that he was traveling with someone who killed as easily as some people breathed. It only hit Sylar viscerally in these moments, that any normal person would have run screaming for the hills after five minutes in his unguarded company, considering precisely what had just happened, but Luke was sticking with him.
Luke was a constant. Sometimes a constant irritant, but a constant. Sylar hadn’t had a constant in his life before that also hadn’t been intent on smothering him into a life he hadn’t wanted. His mother, the Company, Angela and Arthur Petrelli… Luke didn’t smother; like his power, he ignited. That was a constant Sylar could appreciate, constant friction to keep him on his toes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“This movie’s supposed to be awesome,” Luke was saying, as Sylar tripped the lock on the exit door to the auditorium. “Lots of shit blowing up and monsters and gunfights and-.”
“You haven’t had enough of that in real life?” Sylar asked, raising his eyebrow at the irony of it all. Almost five months on the road with him, over a dozen kills to their name, and Luke hadn’t lost a drop of enthusiasm. He treated every day with Sylar as the best day ever, even when they had to lie low in their motel room for days on end. Luke, he had discovered, had a knack for mocking daytime television, turning them from soul-crushing inanity into exercises in Sylar’s self-control, trying to contain himself from laughing himself sick. Even when they were both bored of their surroundings, Luke always had something to say, even if it was some completely ridiculous question he’d clearly thought up on the spur of the moment, just to keep Sylar engaged.
Luke looked at him frankly. “Dude, you can never have enough big-screen gunfights and shit blowing up.”
The darkness of the theater kept Luke from seeing Sylar’s return smile. They claimed prime middle seats, Luke popping them popcorn fresh from the microwaveable bags he had filched from a convenience store yesterday. Few people were at the matinee, which left Sylar and Luke in virtual isolation in the middle of the theater, ears vibrating with all the screaming, exploding, shooting, and swearing coming from the screen. Luke was practically on the edge of his seat the entire time, which made his overly casual slide back into his seat during the second act rather suspect. During one of the few quiet scenes, a quick pause for exposition before the next bout of pyrotechnic violence, Luke stretched a bit, yawned, and settled his arm across Sylar’s shoulders.
Sylar froze, his eyebrows coming to an abrupt collision in the middle of his forehead. He had not just had the old “yawn and stretch” maneuver pulled on him. Luke’s arm was tense across his shoulders, almost trembling, clearly ready to be snatched back if Sylar showed the slightest disapproval. Hesitating a moment, Sylar stretched his own arm back across Luke’s shoulders, and felt the tension drain away from both of them as they settled back in their seats.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Sweet, they have pay-per-porn!”
Sylar knew his regeneration had to have figured out the exact of science of healing the inside of his cheek when he bit it, because he didn’t even taste blood this time when he tried to keep himself from laughing out loud.
“You’re tired of ‘The Young and the Restless?’” Sylar asked, keeping his face perfectly straight.
Luke just dug out a credit card he’d swiped from… Well, Sylar wasn’t exactly sure where he’d taken it, or from whom, but it didn’t particularly matter. They were holed up here for the next two days while the current hunter group moved out of the area. Every time that happened, the two of them tried to figure out something to do. Once Sylar had tried to teach Luke how to reassemble a watch. Another time Luke used every disposable item in the bathroom to construct a booby trap of epic proportions… in the neighboring room. Of the entire row of rooms. Sylar made Luke think, Luke made Sylar laugh.
What had started out as a road trip had become practically a lifestyle. Sylar didn’t want it to end, and saw no reason why it should. Even, or especially, if it involved pay-per-porn.
“Dude, choice between bad dialogue with clothes on or clothes off? Not a choice,” Luke said seriously, clicking on the screen to scroll through the titles. “What do you want? Busty Asian Beauties? Fill All My Holes Volume Five? Biker Gang-Bang? Cockfest Fourteen? Huh. They don’t have Cockfest Twelve. That one was the best.”
Sylar’s eyebrow went up and stayed there. He’d never taken the opportunity to watch the stuff; between Catholic guilt, his mother, and his overwhelming drive to be special, porn had always been fairly low down on the list of things to examine in detail. Then again, since Luke talked about it incessantly, he’d gotten quite an education by contamination over the past few months. By now Sylar had learned to sift through Luke’s almost compulsive talking to figure out what he was really trying to say, as much as Luke had learned to read Sylar’s silent eyebrow expressions.
“Your choice,” Sylar said with an indulgent wave of his hand. Luke grinned and flipped through the titles rapidly. Neither of them had said anything, but Luke’s eighteenth birthday had been last week. Sylar had trying to been coordinate a couple of days of hideout time with one of the better motels for just that purpose, so Luke could do what he wanted.
Luke finally selected a title and made his purchase with all the confidence and panache of someone twice his age. He settled back in the bed next to Sylar with a self-satisfied grin as the cheesy music and panting breaths came up on the screen. Sylar had gotten them a room with a single king-sized bed, something neither of them had commented on, and Sylar just relaxed into the mattress as Luke began to snark at the tooth-achingly bad dialogue.
It was just natural that Sylar would eventually stop trying to keep himself from laughing, that Luke would begin to throw heavily-laden innuendos into every sentence he spoke, that Sylar would eventually throw a hand over Luke’s mouth to keep him from uttering one more thing like, “Oh yeah, tab A into slot B, baby! I’m so ready for your pulsing love fountain!”
Completely normal that Luke would press Sylar’s hand to his mouth, sucking in the fingers with as much enthusiasm as he’d been putting into talking just a second before. Sylar didn’t hesitate, didn’t question Luke’s acquiescence when he slid his other hand up Luke’s shirt to lightly scratch and caress along his sides. He knew he’d like it. Luke thrashed a little under the ticklish touch, and opened his eyes to stare at Sylar, grinning around his fingers.
“Think you’re so clever,” Sylar whispered, breath hitching just a bit as Luke fluttered his tongue between Sylar’s fingers.
“Yeah,” Luke said, drawing his mouth back. “Yeah, I do.”
Sylar just kept up the languorous slide of his hand along Luke’s chest and ribs, filling his eyes with him, cheating and peering through his clothes to see Luke’s skin redden and blush all over.
“You’re a lot hotter than any porn star I’ve ever seen,” Luke blurted out as Sylar just kept watching him. He was blushing harder now, and Sylar furrowed his brow a bit as Luke’s hands kept twitching, like he was trying to figure out where they should go and where they couldn’t. Despite the undeniably arousing sucking on Sylar’s hands, Luke was nervous and trying to cover it with his desperate display of skill.
Sylar slid his hand further down, onto Luke’s stomach, and watched his eyes dilate sharply. A mental twist to undo Luke’s button and zipper on his jeans, and Luke started to whimper slightly. He blinked and seemed to come back to himself, then lunged to catch Sylar’s mouth in an unexpected kiss, wet and hot.
“Fuck, you’re sexy,” Luke said, breathing hard. He twisted, bracing himself with one hand so he could wrestle his t-shirt off. Sylar halted him when the shirt was just barely over his head, trapping his arms, and pulled him into the kiss again.
“Who said you could stop?” Sylar asked briefly, before sealing his lips over Luke’s again. Luke panted in about a half second of surprise, before committing himself fully, wiggling himself out of his shirt without breaking contact with Sylar. His tongue wrapped around Sylar’s, pulling and sucking in a way that Sylar could feel all the way in his stomach, making his cock throb.
Luke grabbed one of Sylar’s hands and put it back on his undone jeans, then wrapped his arms around Sylar, clutching and releasing, running down his flanks and then halting again. Sylar lowered them both down onto the bed, letting his hand wander over the bulge in Luke’s jeans, pressing gently, learning more from Luke’s gasp of pleased shock than he had from anything else.
“Ever done…?” Sylar asked in between kisses, neither of them willing to stop the connection between them. Now that they’d started, Luke didn’t seem to be able to pull himself away.
“No,” Luke gasped. “Not really. Just…” He kissed Sylar again, the heat of him rising, his hands getting almost dangerously hot. A faint thrill shot down Sylar’s spine, and he arched into Luke’s hands. “Ok?”
“Keep going,” Sylar said, and moved his hands under the waist of Luke’s jeans, threading through his boxers, until he had Luke’s hot, smooth hardness in his hand. “Ok?” he asked in return.
“Yesyesyesyesyesyes-,” Luke babbled, cutting himself off to kiss Sylar again, deeper, tongue seemingly trying to discover every part of his mouth.
Sylar pulled back briefly to look at Luke with some surprise; that kind of kissing hadn’t been part of Sylar’s practical experience before. “You have a new tongue power you didn’t mention to me?”
Luke actually giggled and snorted at the same time, cutting himself off to gasp as Sylar stroked him firmly. “God, that feels fucking awesome,” he cursed, hips rising to meet Sylar’s hand.
Behind them, someone groaned on the screen, but both of them ignored it. Writhing, Luke flailed briefly at the nightstand until he managed to wrestle something out of a drawer. He thrust the tube of lube at Sylar and arched his head back, moaning.
Sylar withdrew his hand, making Luke sputter a protest and sit up, only to silence himself when he saw Sylar was watching him again.
“You want to do this?” Sylar asked, trailing one hand down Luke’s chest slowly, questioningly. His own experience was… fairly ephemeral at best. A lot of fantasy, a little self-experimentation, Elle, that summed up everything. Luke didn’t even have as much as that to go on.
“I-,” Luke stopped himself, looked over at the screen again, and briefly closed his eyes. He finally opened them again and looked up at Sylar. “I want to see you naked.”
That sounded confident, genuinely so, and Sylar dropped the tube so he could slowly pull his sweater and shirt off. By the time he’d come out from under his clothes, Luke had gotten completely naked, and had himself in one slick hand, enjoying the show. Sylar smirked a bit, and got rid of the rest of his clothes just as slowly. Luke always did like to watch him work.
“Awesome,” Luke murmured. Sylar stepped out of pants and crawled back up on the bed, then lay down close to Luke, enjoying the feel of his own erection against Luke’s thigh. The nervousness had fled now, and Luke was looking at Sylar with all of his new confidence, eyebrows waggling a little as if to say, “Yeah, you know I’m cool.”
Sylar tried to stifle laughter again, and Luke pulled him down in kissing range, touching a slick hand to Sylar’s hardness. His lips were completely assured, but his hand was not, and Sylar reached down to firm Luke’s grip on him.
“Like that,” Sylar said, and reached over to return the favor, stroking Luke’s hardness slowly. Luke nearly swallowed Sylar’s tongue along with his own, but didn’t let go for a second, trying to keep up with everything Sylar did to him. Sylar could scarcely keep up with Luke’s mouth, and so poured the rest of his attention into Luke’s body. Telekinetic fingers started up where Sylar had originally begun, stroking softly along Luke’s skin, making him squirm into Sylar’s grasp.
“Not fair,” Luke said quickly, and captured Sylar again, hands and lips speeding up to match his own frantic and urgent arousal. Sylar let himself get swept along, cock feeling fantastic in Luke’s hand, his heated grasp desperate to make Sylar come. It felt easy, assured, solid, and Sylar smiled against Luke’s mouth, letting go to slide his hand around to Luke’s ass, resting lightly.
Luke tensed up, and his kiss faltered, even though his arousal was still pressed into Sylar’s stomach. Sylar bit his lip, muscles aching to push a little farther, use his powers to take things higher, but then Luke’s hand kept moving on him, finding a rhythm they both liked. Everything he was doing was an uncharacteristic silent plea of “please, wait.”
“Ok,” Sylar whispered, and slide his hand back home, gripping Luke firmly and stroking fast.
Sounds poured out of Luke’s throat into Sylar’s mouth, talking constantly without saying a word, giving Sylar everything he needed to hear and more. Heat pooled between them, arms sliding against each other, legs tangled up, Luke writhing and squirming to get more contact as Sylar stroked him with hand and mind. Luke arched first, moaning Sylar’s name into his mouth, spurts of burning heat striping onto the skin of Sylar’s stomach. Luke’s hand never stopped moving, the moan sliding into something wonderfully needy that seemed to pull Sylar’s orgasm right out of him, heat blossoming and body relaxing into Luke’s grasp. Sylar pulled them together, not wanting the heat to die down, and breathed with him for long, silent moments broken only by the murmur and buzz of the distant porn film.
“Fuck,” Luke managed after five minutes. “I wanna do that some more.”
Sylar pulled Luke to him harder and laughed, letting Luke hear it.
“We have time. We can do anything we want together.”
Luke squirmed around until he could get an arm around Sylar, and pushed up so they were lying side by side, watching the slick slide of sweaty bodies on the screen. Sylar winced at the sticky mess between them and telekinetically snatched washcloths and the watery ice bucket to clean them. Luke yelped at the cold and swiped the washcloths to warm them, trying to glower at Sylar’s smirk.
“Think you’re pretty funny?”
“Looks aren’t everything,” Sylar quipped back, startling a huge laugh out of Luke. Finally setting the washcloths aside, they settled back together on the bed, Luke with his hands behind his head, looking smugly satisfied, Sylar with his hand protectively on Luke’s stomach.
“More porn?” Luke asked, jerking his chin at the ending orgy on the screen. Smiling slightly, Sylar nodded, and Luke picked up the remote, handing it to him. “You pick this time.”
“And you won’t argue?”
“’Course not!”
Luke settled back at Sylar’s side as they made their choice together.
Author: jaune_chat
Fandoms: Heroes
Characters/Pairings: Sylar/Luke
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6,111
Spoilers: 3x16 - “Building 26”
Warnings: Violence, gore, slash, movie references, humor at the expense of daytime television and porn dialogue.
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring, NBC et al.
A/N: perdiccas won me at hope_in_sight and requested a Sylar/Luke bromance fic, where friendship evolved into something more. Thanks to brighteyed_jill for betaing!
Summary: Sylar decides to keep Luke around, and realizes beneath the talkative brat is someone he actually wants to know.
For five seconds, Sylar considered locking the door. He had his father’s address; he didn’t need Luke anymore. He didn’t need to drag around an inexperienced kid, not when his goal was so firmly in sight.
“You ought to see me around pacemakers.”
“…He said I reminded him of his son.”
“Please help me!”
Sylar hesitated a split second, uncertainty clouding his inner vision. Luke’s excited, fearful face was framed in the passenger side window, and he was reaching for the door handle. The agents would be out in a second, guns blazing, and the bullets were still burning their way out of Sylar’s body as it knitted back together. Luke’s hand came down.
Sylar flipped the lock open. He revved the engine and peeled out of the parking lot the second Luke was inside.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Luke was dead asleep, completely worn out from the adrenaline rush of escaping the diner unscathed. He’d been talking a mile a minute, nonstop, from the moment he’d gotten in the car to the moment his head had hit the pillow, and all Sylar had to do was listen. It was just as well Luke didn’t even need Sylar to say anything, because he wasn’t sure of what to say.
However, he knew exactly what he had to do. While Luke was passed out, Sylar left and followed the directions to Sampson’s house. He sat outside in the car in the dark for several hours, staring at the pathetic, dirty hovel, willing it to give up its secrets. Memories long-buried had intruded as he drove to his father’s place, memories of being alone, of being sold, of seeing an argument and blood and his mother’s body. Memories that had driven him into a searing rage, and then had been quenched as effectively as throwing himself into ice water when he’d seen Sampson’s house.
An hour before dawn, he left the car to find out everything he could. Every touch gave him answers to questions he hadn’t even formed yet, and not a single one of them was satisfying. Prowling around the back of the house, Sylar felt himself recoiling in disgust from the carcasses in various states of preparation. Discarded oxygen tubes and old bottles of medicine let him know the state of the man inside was even worse than the dirty and broken-down home he lived in. Every drying hide and mounted specimen showed technique and precision, cold, sterile, and lifeless, but not the tiniest amount of regret or thought for what he’d done to his own flesh and blood.
Sampson Gray’s house was a cancer. A self-contained tumor, a perfect representation of the cold-hearted bastard inside that had set Sylar on the path to becoming what he had become. Powerful. Special. Hunted. Alone.
“I’m not anyone. I don’t have any friends.”
No longer alone.
A half-hour before dawn, without ever needing to lay eyes on his father, Sylar left Sampson Gray’s house to rot.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Luke was waiting when he came back, a bag of fast-food breakfast sandwiches by his side, the TV blaring about the diner shoot-out and the two dangerous fugitives on the run.
“Hey,” Luke said in greeting, mouth full of eggs and sausage. Heat shimmered around his hand right before he threw two sandwiches in Sylar’s direction. Catching them reflexively, Sylar sat on the edge of the bed and automatically turned the volume on the TV down.
“Check it, we’re famous!” Luke said, grinning. “They don’t have pictures or anything, but-.”
“We have to leave soon,” Sylar cut in abruptly. “They’re going to track us.”
“We’ll just kick their asses!”
“No!” Sylar snapped, and Luke scowled.
“Where’d you go this morning anyway?” he asked, cramming the last of the food into his mouth.
Sylar glared at Luke, who only looked back and shrugged. “To see my father.”
Luke swallowed abruptly and seemed wary. “Yeah?”
“You were right about him.”
Luke’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion briefly, and he paled as his expression cleared. “Oh.”
Luke had said Sampson told him he reminded him of his son. And Luke was a loner with a broken family, abused and with no friends. That said more than a little about him. About them.
“Hey, if we’re gonna go, can I like trash the place? Set it on fire?” Luke asked hopefully.
Sylar almost let out a surprised laugh at that, quickly suppressed. He’d been contemplating something similar, just out of sheer frustration. “No,” he said shortly, but didn’t bother to reinforce that with a telekinetic cuff to the side of Luke’s head. “I don’t want to make it easy for them to find us.”
“Oh.” Luke looked a little thoughtful at that, and shook his head. “I’m gonna go get my shit.”
Ten minutes later, on the road, Sylar exasperatedly discovered Luke had emptied the minibar into his bag.
~~~~~~~~~
“Get down,” Sylar yelled, ducking and rolling out of the door. Glass rained down on him from the shattered windows as the hunters turned the station wagon into Swiss cheese. The hunters had blindsided them, coming up from a half-hidden side road forcing them into a ditch, and covering them with a hail of gunfire.
Sylar felt two bullets hit him in the chest, burning all the way through and making him choke. Gasping as his lungs began working again, he shoved out with his mind, hearing thuds as two agents were flung against the side of their truck. Off to his left, he heard pained screams, and looked up to see Luke burning two more hunters who had come too close to him.
Shouting in surprise and pain, the hunters raised their rifles, only to have them flung out of their grasp as Sylar took advantage of their surprise. Taking a deep breath, he screamed; sonic waves shattered the car windows and flattened the hunters to the ground with their force. Luke popped his head up in the next second, looking surprised.
“That was so fucking cool!” he said, eyes bright. One of the hunters stirred weakly and Luke let out another microwave blast. Sylar could hear the hunter’s flesh sizzle as he jerked back reflexively and plastered himself to the ground in surrender.
“Keep them down,” Sylar said, and strode over the fallen forms of the hunters to get inside the truck. Sitting on the passenger side was a metal-cased laptop showing the elaborate series of cameras and satellites that had been letting the hunters find him and Luke. Smiling slightly, Sylar snatched up his prize and jumped down from the truck, hearing screams fading into silence as Luke lifted his hands away from the fallen hunters.
“They wouldn’t stay down,” Luke said, smirking. There was something slightly brittle under Luke’s bravado, and Sylar decided not to try to shatter it. He didn’t need to see what was underneath; he thought he already knew.
“Good job,” he said shortly, and reached into the wrecked station wagon to get his bag. “Let’s go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“So…” Luke said, hitching his bag farther up his shoulder. “Like what’s your goal now?”
Sylar walked in silence for several minutes, lengthening his stride enough that Luke had to jog to keep up with him.
“Dude, seriously,” Luke panted. “I’m dying here!”
He slowed marginally, still thinking. Meeting his father had been his driving force for the past few months, overshadowing his old goals of gaining powers and becoming truly special. With that done, or at least no longer necessary Sylar felt like he was drifting, directionless…
“I don’t know,” Sylar said almost involuntarily.
“Well,” Luke said, stumbling over a clump of grass and almost banging into Sylar. “That makes two of us.” He waited for a second, a strange grin on his face. He was, Sylar realized, waiting for the punch line. When it didn’t come, Luke started to look worried.
“Uh, are you still looking for powers?” he asked tentatively.
Sylar had a brief surge of panic, suppressed when Luke made the suggestion, and Sylar nodded, scowling slightly to make sure he didn’t look relieved. Yes, he could break Luke in half for any smart remarks he could have made about Sylar’s lack of direction, but Luke hadn’t decided to push it when Sylar was feeling a bit brittle. He didn’t want to see what was underneath either. Maybe he didn’t want to know what he’d find.
“So if we’re gonna find you some new powers or something, can we get a set of new wheels?” Luke asked hopefully.
Sylar nodded shortly, relaxing, and Luke began scanning the horizon, looking ahead to the highway they were coming up to.
“What kinda car do you want?”
“Inconspicuous.”
“Yeah, ok, I mean for like hiding and stuff, but what about really? What do you really want?” Luke asked.
Sylar raised an eyebrow, distracted from his own concerns. “You’re a gearhead?”
Luke snorted. “Not really. I watch some TV shows and movies. Like that Ferrari from Ferris Bueller’s Day off? Aweome.”
“James Bond’s Aston Martin,” Sylar said after a moment.
“Which movie? One of the old ones or the new ones?”
Sylar gave Luke a frank gaze. “All of them. Obviously.”
“Sweet,” Luke said. “With the all the guns and shit-.”
“And leather seats.”
“Leather seats? Dude, those cars had fucking satellite TV and rocket launchers and you’re popping a boner over the leather seats?” Luke said, laughing so hard he had trouble walking in a straight line.
“You use the leather seats every time you drive. The rocket launchers would only be for every now and then,” Sylar pointed out, and Luke, still laughing, gave him the point.
“What about some of those cars in Fast and the Furious? With the lights underneath them? Chick magnets!” Luke declared.
“High maintenance and power-draining,” Sylar said dismissively.
“Yeah, now who’s a gearhead?” Luke accused, and Sylar didn’t quite manage to completely repress a smile. “Ok, what about the Transporter’s car?”
“Don’t get me started,” Sylar warned.
“Knight Rider and KITT?”
“Eighties version only.”
“Pfft, duh.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Wanna watch something?”
Sylar glanced over to see Luke pointing at the TV with the remote, flipping through the channels. They’d walked for almost four hours down the highway after taking out the agents, until a too-trusting driver had pulled over his silver pick-up truck. The man never knew what hit him, never even saw their faces, and Sylar and Luke had a new ride. That had been two days ago, and since then Sylar had been doing his level best to put the maximum amount of distance between them and any nearby hunters. Two days of almost constant driving and looking over his shoulder, while Luke looked over the other one, sleep only caught during brief roadside naps. This had been the first time since then that Sylar had felt certain enough of their safety to find a motel.
The channels flipped by too rapidly for Sylar’s fatigued eyes to focus, and he waved his hand in vague dismissal. At some point, Luke had stopped flinching every time Sylar moved his hand, but he couldn’t remember when the change had happened. He wondered briefly if it even mattered if Luke wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and finally closed his eyes, unwilling to think any further.
“Just keep the volume down and watch for trouble,” Sylar said shortly, and felt himself drifting into darkness.
What woke him was not splintering wood and breaking glass from a hunter assault, or sirens and shouting from a police raid, but soft, pained whimpering from the next bed. Luke was sprawled over the covers, remote still in his hand, TV flickering on some late-night infomercial. Luke’s head tossed from side to side restlessly, and tiny, repressed whimpers worked their way from his throat. His face was twisted up in fear, and tears leaked from his closed eyes.
Sylar stared at him in the shifting lights, and finally reached out to shake his shoulder. Luke didn’t need that, didn’t need to wake up in the morning more tired than if he’d never slept. Sylar just didn’t want to deal with it, the long minutes of almost palpable terror; he’d never get back to sleep that way with Luke practically poisoning the atmosphere with fear. Luke started awake at Sylar’s touch, one had blazing with red light, and Sylar jerked himself back out of danger, scowling ferociously.
“You were snoring,” he said blandly.
Luke looked around frantically, the remnants of the nightmare finally dissipating as he realized where he was and whom he was with. And what Sylar had just said. Quickly scrubbing away the remains of his tears, his hand ceasing its glowing, Luke just scowled back.
“I don’t snore,” Luke protested.
“You were,” Sylar said, glaring. “Don’t wake me up again.”
Luke snorted softly in derision as he turned off the TV and flopped back on the bed. Neither of them mentioned someone was supposed to be on watch.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“You want the whole list?” Luke said, scrolling down the screen full of names of specials the government was intending to capture. He had the laptop balanced easily between his knees and the glove box, at complete ease in the truck as if he’d been at a table.
“Of course.”
“But, like, what if one of their powers is super-lame? Like blue spit or super snot or something?”
Sylar was torn between wanting to smack Luke up against the truck window for that and needing to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. He hadn’t felt like laughing for a very long time, and it surprised him every time Luke brought up something absurd like that. It felt like a year since he’d laughed at anything honestly, instead of sardonically. It had been almost two weeks since he picked up his volunteer passenger, and there had been more occasions for humor in that time than Sylar had had in maybe a decade. Traveling together, now that the pressure from trying to find Sampson was gone, was letting them have the teenage years neither of them had ever had.
“Then they get to keep it,” Sylar managed solemnly, once he had himself back under control. Luke smirked slightly and looked at the list again.
“So… do you want my power?” he asked abruptly.
Caught off-guard, Sylar didn’t have an answer ready, and Luke shrugged at Sylar’s silence.
“It’s ok if you do.”
The resignation in that bare statement gave Sylar a pit in his stomach, something between nausea and pain, and he desperately needed to purge it.
“I don’t want it,” he said finally.
“Why the hell not? My power’s cool!” Luke insisted.
“No, it’s super-lame.” The words were a deliberate mocking of Luke’s, but Sylar’s tone was deadly serious.
Luke swallowed hard and looked back at the screen.
“Thanks,” he said, in a very small voice.
Sylar let a beat of silence go by before talking again, the pit in his stomach fading. “Who’s closest?”
Luke dove back into the list again, and surreptitiously scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Chicago, near the Indiana border. His name’s… Bruce Garber.”
“Then let’s go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Come on, dude. It’s cheating!”
“It’s been two months. You can’t pull the ‘cheating’ card after two months,” Sylar pointed out.
“Hey, I never pulled it before. You can see in the dark now, so doing this at night is cheating! How am I supposed to help if I can’t see jack?” Luke said stubbornly.
Sylar pressed his lips together for a second, and gave a grudging nod of acceptance. “Fine, we can wait until dawn.”
“We don’t have to wait until fricking dawn! Just don’t turn out the lights before we go in, that’s all I’m saying. I know the drill by now,” Luke said.
Sylar shot him a look, and nodded shortly. As one, they opened the doors to the truck and walked around to the back door of Jane McCoy’s central Oklahoma abode. Luke had picked her mostly for her lack of proximity to any of the hunters’ active search nets, that and the fact that Sylar hadn’t taken a new power in almost two weeks. Luke had been remarkably adept at learning Sylar’s style, and didn’t seem to be bothered with all the inevitable screaming and bloodshed that accompanied Sylar’s acquisition of a new ability.
The first time they’d done it, taking Bruce Garber’s immoveable stance (with it, nothing could move Sylar from his place, when he chose, and he’d accidentally wrecked the car when he’d activated it on the highway in proving its efficacy), Luke had been the one to distract Garber, allowing Sylar a clean shot at the man’s head. Sylar hadn’t needed the help, but Luke had been very eager. He’d watched the slicing and brain examination with utter fascination, one hand on Sylar’s shoulder as he’d leaned over to watch him work. Having an appreciative audience somehow made acquiring abilities exciting again, exhilarating.
At the back door, Luke raised his hand to test the doorknob, only have it snatched out of his hand when it opened under him.
“You boys lost?” The pale-eyed, middle-aged woman squinted at them both, her face a study in concern.
“Kinda,” Luke piped up. “We were looking for the Clover Motel? The direction said to turn off on Highway Five…”
“Oh, you’re miles off from there-,” she started, and reeled off a lengthy explanation as to how to get back to the interstate. Luke was clearly not even listening, just nodding vaguely until she stopped talking.
“Yeah, ok, hey, you’re Jane McCoy, right?” he asked.
“Well yes, I-. How did you know…?” she trailed off as Sylar moved a little closer into the light, looking down at her at an angle that made his eyes look positively evil. The look rarely failed to unnerve, and Jane was not made of very stern stuff. She paled and took a single step backward in involuntary panic.
Sylar and Luke followed, matching the steps in a well-worn dance. Her mouth was telekinetically shut before she could scream, and Luke had grabbed her before she could run. He hauled her back to the kitchen and presented her to Sylar like a present. Smirking, Sylar raised his hand, and made the final cut. Luke knew when to loosen his grip so he wouldn’t get blood on his clothing (he’d figured that out after the second time), and lowered her to the table so Sylar could get a good look at her head.
He slid around to her head as Sylar began his examination, squinting to see if he could see what Sylar was looking for. He couldn’t; Sylar didn’t always know it himself until he’d actually physically touched the microscopic anomaly that meant an ability, but Luke always looked. Something about Jane’s eyes made Sylar consider the possibility of a visual ability, and he spent time examining the occipital lobe until he’d found what he was looking for.
“Bingo,” Luke said softly. He might not realize what Sylar was hunting for, precisely, but he knew the expression on Sylar’s face when he’d found it. “A good one?”
Sylar closed his eyes and took the ability into himself, opening them again to look around the world with eyes charged with new power. He could see straight through the walls of the house, the plaster, wood, bricks, and mortar, right to the truck outside. Concentrating, looking closer, he could see inside closed cabinets, inside cans and boxes, even-.
“I can see through everything,” Sylar whispered, almost reverent. It was the single moment of anything like spirituality that he ever allowed himself. Even Luke didn’t profane the moment until Sylar had come back to himself with a start. Then he issued a purely Luke statement to sum up the entire evening.
“X-ray vision? Kick-ass.”
Sylar turned his gaze to Luke and looked him up and down, smiling faintly.
“Your eyes go clear when you do that,” Luke said, staring at him. He seemed supremely unconcerned that Sylar might have been looking through his clothes, fixated instead on the manifestation of the new ability. “It’s kinda cool.”
Sylar wanted to see for himself what he looked like with the ability in force, but the very nature of it rendered it immune to examination. He couldn’t very well look at himself in a mirror if he was also looking through the mirror.
Luke leaned forward, actually putting one hand on Sylar’s face so he could look at his eyes. Sylar stared back, actually looking through Luke’s muscle and bone and skin to see his brain underneath. With a bit of a start, he realized he could get a preview of someone’s ability by examining their brain this way, to see if it was worth taking without ever having to confront a potential victim. It could be an enormous time-saver, letting both of them spend time doing other things than going on a fruitless hunting expedition. They’d had a couple of those, and they had wasted entire evenings on useless abilities.
Sylar raised an eyebrow after a long moment, bringing them both back to themselves, and nodded towards the door. Luke preceded him out, so easy in Sylar’s presence that he barely seemed to register the fact that he was traveling with someone who killed as easily as some people breathed. It only hit Sylar viscerally in these moments, that any normal person would have run screaming for the hills after five minutes in his unguarded company, considering precisely what had just happened, but Luke was sticking with him.
Luke was a constant. Sometimes a constant irritant, but a constant. Sylar hadn’t had a constant in his life before that also hadn’t been intent on smothering him into a life he hadn’t wanted. His mother, the Company, Angela and Arthur Petrelli… Luke didn’t smother; like his power, he ignited. That was a constant Sylar could appreciate, constant friction to keep him on his toes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“This movie’s supposed to be awesome,” Luke was saying, as Sylar tripped the lock on the exit door to the auditorium. “Lots of shit blowing up and monsters and gunfights and-.”
“You haven’t had enough of that in real life?” Sylar asked, raising his eyebrow at the irony of it all. Almost five months on the road with him, over a dozen kills to their name, and Luke hadn’t lost a drop of enthusiasm. He treated every day with Sylar as the best day ever, even when they had to lie low in their motel room for days on end. Luke, he had discovered, had a knack for mocking daytime television, turning them from soul-crushing inanity into exercises in Sylar’s self-control, trying to contain himself from laughing himself sick. Even when they were both bored of their surroundings, Luke always had something to say, even if it was some completely ridiculous question he’d clearly thought up on the spur of the moment, just to keep Sylar engaged.
Luke looked at him frankly. “Dude, you can never have enough big-screen gunfights and shit blowing up.”
The darkness of the theater kept Luke from seeing Sylar’s return smile. They claimed prime middle seats, Luke popping them popcorn fresh from the microwaveable bags he had filched from a convenience store yesterday. Few people were at the matinee, which left Sylar and Luke in virtual isolation in the middle of the theater, ears vibrating with all the screaming, exploding, shooting, and swearing coming from the screen. Luke was practically on the edge of his seat the entire time, which made his overly casual slide back into his seat during the second act rather suspect. During one of the few quiet scenes, a quick pause for exposition before the next bout of pyrotechnic violence, Luke stretched a bit, yawned, and settled his arm across Sylar’s shoulders.
Sylar froze, his eyebrows coming to an abrupt collision in the middle of his forehead. He had not just had the old “yawn and stretch” maneuver pulled on him. Luke’s arm was tense across his shoulders, almost trembling, clearly ready to be snatched back if Sylar showed the slightest disapproval. Hesitating a moment, Sylar stretched his own arm back across Luke’s shoulders, and felt the tension drain away from both of them as they settled back in their seats.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Sweet, they have pay-per-porn!”
Sylar knew his regeneration had to have figured out the exact of science of healing the inside of his cheek when he bit it, because he didn’t even taste blood this time when he tried to keep himself from laughing out loud.
“You’re tired of ‘The Young and the Restless?’” Sylar asked, keeping his face perfectly straight.
Luke just dug out a credit card he’d swiped from… Well, Sylar wasn’t exactly sure where he’d taken it, or from whom, but it didn’t particularly matter. They were holed up here for the next two days while the current hunter group moved out of the area. Every time that happened, the two of them tried to figure out something to do. Once Sylar had tried to teach Luke how to reassemble a watch. Another time Luke used every disposable item in the bathroom to construct a booby trap of epic proportions… in the neighboring room. Of the entire row of rooms. Sylar made Luke think, Luke made Sylar laugh.
What had started out as a road trip had become practically a lifestyle. Sylar didn’t want it to end, and saw no reason why it should. Even, or especially, if it involved pay-per-porn.
“Dude, choice between bad dialogue with clothes on or clothes off? Not a choice,” Luke said seriously, clicking on the screen to scroll through the titles. “What do you want? Busty Asian Beauties? Fill All My Holes Volume Five? Biker Gang-Bang? Cockfest Fourteen? Huh. They don’t have Cockfest Twelve. That one was the best.”
Sylar’s eyebrow went up and stayed there. He’d never taken the opportunity to watch the stuff; between Catholic guilt, his mother, and his overwhelming drive to be special, porn had always been fairly low down on the list of things to examine in detail. Then again, since Luke talked about it incessantly, he’d gotten quite an education by contamination over the past few months. By now Sylar had learned to sift through Luke’s almost compulsive talking to figure out what he was really trying to say, as much as Luke had learned to read Sylar’s silent eyebrow expressions.
“Your choice,” Sylar said with an indulgent wave of his hand. Luke grinned and flipped through the titles rapidly. Neither of them had said anything, but Luke’s eighteenth birthday had been last week. Sylar had trying to been coordinate a couple of days of hideout time with one of the better motels for just that purpose, so Luke could do what he wanted.
Luke finally selected a title and made his purchase with all the confidence and panache of someone twice his age. He settled back in the bed next to Sylar with a self-satisfied grin as the cheesy music and panting breaths came up on the screen. Sylar had gotten them a room with a single king-sized bed, something neither of them had commented on, and Sylar just relaxed into the mattress as Luke began to snark at the tooth-achingly bad dialogue.
It was just natural that Sylar would eventually stop trying to keep himself from laughing, that Luke would begin to throw heavily-laden innuendos into every sentence he spoke, that Sylar would eventually throw a hand over Luke’s mouth to keep him from uttering one more thing like, “Oh yeah, tab A into slot B, baby! I’m so ready for your pulsing love fountain!”
Completely normal that Luke would press Sylar’s hand to his mouth, sucking in the fingers with as much enthusiasm as he’d been putting into talking just a second before. Sylar didn’t hesitate, didn’t question Luke’s acquiescence when he slid his other hand up Luke’s shirt to lightly scratch and caress along his sides. He knew he’d like it. Luke thrashed a little under the ticklish touch, and opened his eyes to stare at Sylar, grinning around his fingers.
“Think you’re so clever,” Sylar whispered, breath hitching just a bit as Luke fluttered his tongue between Sylar’s fingers.
“Yeah,” Luke said, drawing his mouth back. “Yeah, I do.”
Sylar just kept up the languorous slide of his hand along Luke’s chest and ribs, filling his eyes with him, cheating and peering through his clothes to see Luke’s skin redden and blush all over.
“You’re a lot hotter than any porn star I’ve ever seen,” Luke blurted out as Sylar just kept watching him. He was blushing harder now, and Sylar furrowed his brow a bit as Luke’s hands kept twitching, like he was trying to figure out where they should go and where they couldn’t. Despite the undeniably arousing sucking on Sylar’s hands, Luke was nervous and trying to cover it with his desperate display of skill.
Sylar slid his hand further down, onto Luke’s stomach, and watched his eyes dilate sharply. A mental twist to undo Luke’s button and zipper on his jeans, and Luke started to whimper slightly. He blinked and seemed to come back to himself, then lunged to catch Sylar’s mouth in an unexpected kiss, wet and hot.
“Fuck, you’re sexy,” Luke said, breathing hard. He twisted, bracing himself with one hand so he could wrestle his t-shirt off. Sylar halted him when the shirt was just barely over his head, trapping his arms, and pulled him into the kiss again.
“Who said you could stop?” Sylar asked briefly, before sealing his lips over Luke’s again. Luke panted in about a half second of surprise, before committing himself fully, wiggling himself out of his shirt without breaking contact with Sylar. His tongue wrapped around Sylar’s, pulling and sucking in a way that Sylar could feel all the way in his stomach, making his cock throb.
Luke grabbed one of Sylar’s hands and put it back on his undone jeans, then wrapped his arms around Sylar, clutching and releasing, running down his flanks and then halting again. Sylar lowered them both down onto the bed, letting his hand wander over the bulge in Luke’s jeans, pressing gently, learning more from Luke’s gasp of pleased shock than he had from anything else.
“Ever done…?” Sylar asked in between kisses, neither of them willing to stop the connection between them. Now that they’d started, Luke didn’t seem to be able to pull himself away.
“No,” Luke gasped. “Not really. Just…” He kissed Sylar again, the heat of him rising, his hands getting almost dangerously hot. A faint thrill shot down Sylar’s spine, and he arched into Luke’s hands. “Ok?”
“Keep going,” Sylar said, and moved his hands under the waist of Luke’s jeans, threading through his boxers, until he had Luke’s hot, smooth hardness in his hand. “Ok?” he asked in return.
“Yesyesyesyesyesyes-,” Luke babbled, cutting himself off to kiss Sylar again, deeper, tongue seemingly trying to discover every part of his mouth.
Sylar pulled back briefly to look at Luke with some surprise; that kind of kissing hadn’t been part of Sylar’s practical experience before. “You have a new tongue power you didn’t mention to me?”
Luke actually giggled and snorted at the same time, cutting himself off to gasp as Sylar stroked him firmly. “God, that feels fucking awesome,” he cursed, hips rising to meet Sylar’s hand.
Behind them, someone groaned on the screen, but both of them ignored it. Writhing, Luke flailed briefly at the nightstand until he managed to wrestle something out of a drawer. He thrust the tube of lube at Sylar and arched his head back, moaning.
Sylar withdrew his hand, making Luke sputter a protest and sit up, only to silence himself when he saw Sylar was watching him again.
“You want to do this?” Sylar asked, trailing one hand down Luke’s chest slowly, questioningly. His own experience was… fairly ephemeral at best. A lot of fantasy, a little self-experimentation, Elle, that summed up everything. Luke didn’t even have as much as that to go on.
“I-,” Luke stopped himself, looked over at the screen again, and briefly closed his eyes. He finally opened them again and looked up at Sylar. “I want to see you naked.”
That sounded confident, genuinely so, and Sylar dropped the tube so he could slowly pull his sweater and shirt off. By the time he’d come out from under his clothes, Luke had gotten completely naked, and had himself in one slick hand, enjoying the show. Sylar smirked a bit, and got rid of the rest of his clothes just as slowly. Luke always did like to watch him work.
“Awesome,” Luke murmured. Sylar stepped out of pants and crawled back up on the bed, then lay down close to Luke, enjoying the feel of his own erection against Luke’s thigh. The nervousness had fled now, and Luke was looking at Sylar with all of his new confidence, eyebrows waggling a little as if to say, “Yeah, you know I’m cool.”
Sylar tried to stifle laughter again, and Luke pulled him down in kissing range, touching a slick hand to Sylar’s hardness. His lips were completely assured, but his hand was not, and Sylar reached down to firm Luke’s grip on him.
“Like that,” Sylar said, and reached over to return the favor, stroking Luke’s hardness slowly. Luke nearly swallowed Sylar’s tongue along with his own, but didn’t let go for a second, trying to keep up with everything Sylar did to him. Sylar could scarcely keep up with Luke’s mouth, and so poured the rest of his attention into Luke’s body. Telekinetic fingers started up where Sylar had originally begun, stroking softly along Luke’s skin, making him squirm into Sylar’s grasp.
“Not fair,” Luke said quickly, and captured Sylar again, hands and lips speeding up to match his own frantic and urgent arousal. Sylar let himself get swept along, cock feeling fantastic in Luke’s hand, his heated grasp desperate to make Sylar come. It felt easy, assured, solid, and Sylar smiled against Luke’s mouth, letting go to slide his hand around to Luke’s ass, resting lightly.
Luke tensed up, and his kiss faltered, even though his arousal was still pressed into Sylar’s stomach. Sylar bit his lip, muscles aching to push a little farther, use his powers to take things higher, but then Luke’s hand kept moving on him, finding a rhythm they both liked. Everything he was doing was an uncharacteristic silent plea of “please, wait.”
“Ok,” Sylar whispered, and slide his hand back home, gripping Luke firmly and stroking fast.
Sounds poured out of Luke’s throat into Sylar’s mouth, talking constantly without saying a word, giving Sylar everything he needed to hear and more. Heat pooled between them, arms sliding against each other, legs tangled up, Luke writhing and squirming to get more contact as Sylar stroked him with hand and mind. Luke arched first, moaning Sylar’s name into his mouth, spurts of burning heat striping onto the skin of Sylar’s stomach. Luke’s hand never stopped moving, the moan sliding into something wonderfully needy that seemed to pull Sylar’s orgasm right out of him, heat blossoming and body relaxing into Luke’s grasp. Sylar pulled them together, not wanting the heat to die down, and breathed with him for long, silent moments broken only by the murmur and buzz of the distant porn film.
“Fuck,” Luke managed after five minutes. “I wanna do that some more.”
Sylar pulled Luke to him harder and laughed, letting Luke hear it.
“We have time. We can do anything we want together.”
Luke squirmed around until he could get an arm around Sylar, and pushed up so they were lying side by side, watching the slick slide of sweaty bodies on the screen. Sylar winced at the sticky mess between them and telekinetically snatched washcloths and the watery ice bucket to clean them. Luke yelped at the cold and swiped the washcloths to warm them, trying to glower at Sylar’s smirk.
“Think you’re pretty funny?”
“Looks aren’t everything,” Sylar quipped back, startling a huge laugh out of Luke. Finally setting the washcloths aside, they settled back together on the bed, Luke with his hands behind his head, looking smugly satisfied, Sylar with his hand protectively on Luke’s stomach.
“More porn?” Luke asked, jerking his chin at the ending orgy on the screen. Smiling slightly, Sylar nodded, and Luke picked up the remote, handing it to him. “You pick this time.”
“And you won’t argue?”
“’Course not!”
Luke settled back at Sylar’s side as they made their choice together.