Be Near Me (6)
Title: Be Near Me (6)
Pairing: Peter/Claire, Peter/Sylar
Rating: NC-17 (intense sexual situations, language, and descriptions of injury)
Length: about 4300 words
Spoilers: Through 1-11: Fallout
Summary: Peter tries with mixed success to keep Claire at arm's length, Sylar visits Peter's dream again, and a future Hiro warns Peter about staying on course. PLEASE READ DISCLAIMER.
Be Near Me (6): Keeping Secrets, Telling Lies
Somehow, they were flying.
"Whoo-hoo!" Claire yelled. "Omigod! Awesome! This is so cool!"
Peter thought so too, even though he noticed that he wasn't gaining much altitude, coasting along at running speed maybe seven or eight feet off the ground. He didn't know where to watch or what to look at; he didn't know how to fly. It wasn't like in his dreams; maybe that was just what it was like for Nathan. Even now, he couldn't draw or paint as well as Isaac; he guessed he couldn't fly as well as his brother, either.
Still - definitely flying, and Nathan hundreds of miles away. Sure, Peter sucked at it now, but a little practice, a little training--
Claire tugged his earlobe, snatching his attention back. "Peter...? Peter--Peter--Peter, look out!"
Peter had been too busy musing and gazing at the moon, and hadn't noticed a big tangle of twisted dead tree trunks, bushes and brush right up ahead. With Claire's scream and his shout of "Oh, shit!" echoing in his ears, he tried to turn to avoid it, felt his arm clipped by a sharp, pointed branch, and a sick vertigo of spinning and falling. Claire had at the last minute let go, but it was too late. Both of them plowed at high speed into the rocky ground. The last thing Peter saw was an extreme closeup of a fat little brown squirrel, or maybe a prairie dog, goggling its eyes in disbelief at the flying human slamming face-down onto the dirt.
When Peter regained consciousness, he wished he could pass out again. Unbelievable pain stabbed at him from every angle; head and neck, pelvis, spine, neck, both arms and one leg. He concentrated on the leg that didn't hurt, and lifted his head from the ground, feeling blood pouring from his ripped cheek. He moved the good leg, then the bad one; the bad one was broken at the thigh, but even as he realized this, he felt that it didn't hurt as bad as it had a moment ago. Instinctively, he used his fingers to push the edges of the broken bone together.
That felt good. That actually felt good. He should have been screaming in pain, but as soon as the bone was back in place, it felt just fine. With a good solid shrug, his back didn't hurt anymore, either, and when he put his fingers to his cheek to assess the damage, he pushed the loose skin back into place like he was wiping away a tear.
"Claire," he said.
She was several feet away, face down, moving feebly. Then she sat up onto her knees, rolling her neck around as if trying to get rid of a cramp, and his stomach lurched when he realized that her neck spinal bones had actually been broken, and those cracking noises were the sound of her just shrugging them back into place. He suddenly wished he hadn't aced physiology when he was in school, because he could visualize exactly what it would look like under the skin.
But now everything was intact again. She turned and looked at him, wiping blood from under her nose, then stood up and brushed the dirt off her now ripped jeans. Her red T-shirt with her high school's mascot logo was dark on one side, her denim jacket stained with blood.
"You all right?" she asked, rushing over to him.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she said. She knelt beside him and stroked her fingers across his face, tucking his hair, grimacing. "That looks painful," she said, examining his face.
Peter couldn't help smiling. That hurt a little more than he expected, but it was a good, sore kind of pain. The cut on his face didn't hurt at all. "Think it'll leave a scar?" he half-joked.
She smiled back, and shook her head. "Not as long as you're with me," she said. "I guess. Can you stand up?"
"Yeah, yeah." She helped him up, and he tested the leg that had been broken; it was completely fine, like nothing had ever happened. He began to laugh. "Yeah, I'm fine."
Back at the car, she trapped him against the side door, and kissed him hard. He couldn't say that he minded; he needed a kiss after all that, too, after sharing something so miraculous with her. She had her hands up under his shirt, grabbing his back muscles and pulling him tighter and closer to her, never letting his mouth go for a moment. She gripped his buttocks, then slid her hands down the loose back of his pants and dug her fingers deep into his flesh. She was completely owning him, not in the least bit tentative or self-conscious; she handled him as though she had already memorized him and knew where everything was, and just where to go and what to do.
He wished he could just give in to her.
Peter slid sideways, as he couldn't move back, and put his hands against her collarbones. She grinned at him, bright color in her cheeks and her eyes sparkling. "What?" she said, thinking he was playing with her. She straightened her back, throwing her chest out toward him, and Peter forgot what he was going to say for a good long moment, blinking at her display. It had been a long time since a girl had come on to Peter like that, let alone a girl like that--so young, so fresh, so horny he felt like he was drowning in pheromones.
At any other time, he wouldn't have even hesitated; they'd be doing it right now, and then they'd be twice-a-day fuck-pals until either she got a real boyfriend, got busted by her parents, got bored, or left for college. But now...
It wasn't like that. It could never be like that. He wouldn't have ever known her if she wasn't who and what she was, if he wasn't who and what he was, if he didn't have to do what he had to do.
"What's the matter?" she asked silkily.
"Could we just... get a room?" Peter mumbled, with a helpless giggle.
"Sure," she said, with a tiny shrug, and a Mona Lisa smile. "Can I drive?" She looked back toward the road, and lost her smile. "I know where we should go."
Peter felt dazed on the drive there, limp in the passenger seat, alternately staring at Claire, who drove with the instinctive precision of a cop and never took her eyes off the road, and out the window at the glaring moon. He was having a hard time wrapping his mind around it; it had been only 28 days since the eclipse, and he had died and come back to life so many times he had only the barest understanding of what his own death really meant.
His thoughts knocked him around. I've gotta get through this. I've gotta get through this. Do not look at her tits. No, don't do that. Stop doing that. Don't look at her. Look outside; check out the moon... Oh God, it might be easier just to look, so I can stop imagining what she looks like naked. See? Look. There they are; her breasts. Be nice. They're not that great, are they? Well, yeah, they are. But saving the world, Peter. You have to stop thinking of her like that. She is not a sex object. She's a comrade. She's a fellow soldier. She's... driving me completely crazy. What the hell's wrong with me? Don't I have any mental control, or am I just a drooling caveman?... God, even the way she drives is sexy. Peter kept his hands safely tucked into his lap and kept silent.
After the longest twenty minutes of Peter's entire life, Claire drove up to a nondescript chain motel, parked in the back, and then turned and looked at him. "Total no-tell," she said, "but it's decent."
"Oh yeah?" Peter asked shakily. "How would you know? Do you bring whores here?"
"Yeah, I'm the pimp," she quipped back. "Just kidding. I've just been told about it. One of the other cheerleaders is hooking up with this college guy, but he's Jewish, and her parents would freak. So they meet here. And even on the weird off chance of us running into them, the other girls don't even know... She was dying to tell someone, and I've kept her secret for more than a year. I could have her life destroyed." Claire smiled and shrugged. "But I don't want to throw my weight around, because you know, I've got secrets, too. It's really brutal. Dad thinks cheerleading is..." Her voice trailed off as she suddenly thought of her father, and his part in everything. Her face became abruptly very adult. "Sock hops and malt shops. And instead it's politics.. negotiation, diplomacy... Anyway, we're fine here. And I'm going to get my own room. I hit my credit card's cash advance like, a week ago. You go first."
Peter was too spaced out to protest. He paid for a night, got the keys, and went up a flight of concrete stairs to the room. Before he could even toss his messenger bag on the chair by the window, Claire was in behind him, shutting the door quietly and then knocking him onto the bed with a skillful tackle. He laughed and protested, his head clearing a little, and tried to reach back for her. She quickly grabbed both his wrists and pulled them to the small of his back, giggling. She straddled his back, like he was a horse, and began to rub the crotch of her jeans against his spine. He had to give her points both for the wrestling move, and for ingenuity; she was smart enough to know where to go for intense stimulation, riding his back, keeping him way off balance without hurting him. Either she was a makeout queen (not unusual for a southern girl of virtue; in his experience, those girls knew how to come thirty ways without anyone ever getting undressed), or she read a lot of books. It might even have been a combination of both. My God, he thought, she's Junior Miss Me.
She was even sort of giving him a back massage with the pressure of her thighs, making soft hissing, moaning sounds just at the edge of hearing.
God, she was good.
Letting go of his wrists, she rolled him over between her legs, and bent over to kiss him again. This time, she was taking her time, maintaining the same stroking, arching movement with her hips, this time with her crotch positioned directly over his. She sat up, even though Peter didn't want her to, didn't want to stop kissing her, didn't want to have full view of her breasts swelling overhead. She gazed down at him with a combination of adoration and assessment.
"You can fly," she whispered. Tendrils of hair had worked themselves loose from her ponytail and twirled like golden floss around her face. Too pretty.
Too much.
"Oh..." Peter sighed, struggling to speak, struggling to think. "Claire... we shouldn't..."
In response, she ground against him more fiercely, almost enough to hurt but not quite; the heat between her legs burned along his groin. She even ran her hands up underneath his shirt and rolled both his nipples between thumbs and forefingers, and he bucked underneath her. The smile on her face, and the rolling of her eyes, told him that she'd been hoping he'd do that.
"Why not?" she asked, bouncing a tiny bit, but continuing to do it, hypnotic and maddening. "I know it's not because you don't want to. It's obvious that you want to. So why don't we?"
Peter dug his fingers into the hems of the pockets of her jeans so tight he worried that he was going to rip the pockets off; he grit his teeth and stifled the groan behind them. He just wasn't used to holding back, for any reason.
Momentarily, there wasn't any reason; he came so hard he thought he would pass out, the basket of his pants soaking wet, completely outside of his control like he was a teenager himself. He could almost hear his cry echoing off the ceiling. It was too fast to enjoy, and he was too disconnected, even now, when they were so close.
He begged, "Sorry, sorry."
"I'm sorry," Claire said, not sounding sorry at all. "That was my fault, wasn't it?" She began to unfasten his pants, frowning a little, cutely, at the stain spreading across the waistband. Peter put his hand down to stop hers, much more resolute than he'd been with anything for hours, and she looked up and met his eyes.
He could barely keep his eyes open, and he felt drunk and woozy. "I'm really sorry...Claire, but I have to... get some sleep," he said with effort. "I would love... nothing more... than to fuck you 'til you can barely stand up. But... right now..."
"Oh, OK," she said, snapping out of temptress mode instantly, into her open-hearted practicality. "Should I leave?"
"No, no," Peter said. "I want you to stay. I'm scared... to sleep by myself right now."
She nodded, and what might have been a flash of hurt feelings showed on her face, but Peter couldn't really tell; his eyes fell closed like a slamming door and within less than a minute, he was asleep.
***
It was good to be together again, Peter felt. Good to get fucked again. Nice to be held in those big, strong arms, be held still and comforted, feel those lips on his neck again, so gentle, so right. Their legs were woven together, one of Peter's, one of his, one of Peter's, one of his.
Not even moving, really. Just... together. To the hilt, paused deep, taking the time to caress each other, gaze at each other. Peter never wanted the moment to end. Because when it ended...
Never mind that. Here now. His face was so beautiful. That was still a little weird for Peter, even if, at the moment, he couldn't remember why it would be weird to adore that face, and love the shy, tentative smiles that curved those full lips, fleeting away only to return, and wanting to kiss the smile to keep it there.
"Is that OK?" he asked, his voice transmitted through their touching chests into Peter's heart.
"Yes," Peter whispered, arching his hips a little, and feeling the resistance of the cock inside him, "yes, Gabriel, that's OK."
"That's good," Gabriel murmured back, his eyelashes brushing Peter's ear as he kissed and nipped at Peter's neck. Even though it tickled, Peter knew better than to move too suddenly. Restraint was erotic; double restraint, from inside him, and from his wrists, trapped in Gabriel's hands, was almost overwhelming. "I love to make you happy. You're mine, baby, you're mine."
Peter wanted to just agree, but for some reason, he couldn't. Instead he smiled, and was rewarded with a smile from Gabriel, a beautiful, open, slightly silly smile, and a kiss, and a gentle surge forward with the hips. Peter raised his knees with a lustful groan--it was what he had been waiting for--and was hit with a sudden dizzy sense of displacement. Gabriel glanced down, noticing this, and his expression hardened slightly. It was strange; Peter felt for a moment that he didn't recognize Gabriel, that their relationship wasn't real, or at the very least, wasn't like this. He tried to look around the room they were in, but Gabriel grabbed the sides of his face and forced Peter to look into his eyes. His soft purring voice suddenly had a vicious tinge. "What are you looking for, lover?"
"I...I don't know..."
"Tell me."
"I don't know--really--just that something seems--this can't be right."
"Nothing could be more right than this," Gabriel said, his eyes gleaming. "You and me together? Nothing could be more perfect. You want this as much as me."
"I don't want this at all," Peter replied, his blood suddenly running cold.
Gabriel laughed indulgently. "Lie to me some more, liar," he murmured. "It makes my dick hard when you lie to me."
"Sylar--" Peter's voice caught on the name. "Please. You have to stop this."
"Oh, I can't stop," was the reply. "It's not me. It's destiny."
"Don't say that..."
"Only the good guys get to talk destiny?" Gabriel chuckled. His hands on Peter were still gentle. "You're amazing, you know that? Can you imagine what I'd become if I had your abilities? Can you imagine?" He smiled. "You can never defeat me, Peter. You have to know that. I don't want to destroy you. Don't make me destroy you." He lay down a barrage of kisses, one falling after another, on Peter's lips, forehead, jaw, neck; no way to escape them, no way to deny them, no way not to take pleasure from them.
"Oh, God... I wish you were Gabriel Gray," Peter moaned.
He was answered with a lazy chuckle. "But then I'd be insignficant. And I can never go back to that. And neither can you..."
***
At last, Peter wrenched himself out of sleep, his hand instinctively going for his dick, intending to wank the nightmare out of his system, only to find that there was a hand already there.
His eyes followed the strange hand up a smooth, shapely arm to Claire's face, watching him with a little smile. "Sleep well?" she asked.
Early morning daylight outlined the curtains on the window, and threw bands of light across the bed. Both Peter and Claire were naked under the covers, and she slid closer to him, her lips parting with anticipation.
"Claire, no, hang on, hang on," Peter said, sitting up, his head clearing immediately. "We can't."
"Why not?" she asked, slightly outraged. "I mean--we have to, right?"
"Well, technically, yeah," Peter said. "But not yet." At her confused look, he said, "The list is in a certain order and you're not up yet."
"Well, can't you... skip around?" She sat up too, and crossed her hands over her breasts impatiently.
"I don't know," Peter confessed, smiling. He hadn't thought she could get any cuter. "I don't think so. And I don't know what would happen if I did; it might make me sick again. I can't really do that much good if I'm in a coma." He gently unlocked her arms, and rested them at her sides. He then gave himself a present for having been solid enough to keep his wits about him right after waking up, and cupped her right breast in his hand, caressing it. Claire took a deep breath and blinked hard. "It'll be great when it's the right time. But for now, I can..." He kissed her between her breasts, and ran his hand down her side. "...Help you out."
"Really?" Her voice was so full of obvious longing that she got embarassed. "I mean, don't, if you don't want to."
"No," said Peter, "I want to. See, we don't have to fuck; that's not what it's about. If I thought I could fuck you without coming, I'd do that, and if I thought I could have any kind of sexual contact with you where you didn't come, I'd try that, but it's just against my principles to keep someone from coming." He kissed her on the lips for a long time, stroking his hand between her legs, fingering her gently. "I mean, I want to see you come. I want to know I made it. You've been so good to me. I don't know what I'd do without you." With lips and tongue, he caressed and teased the lobe of her ear, while his fingertips found all the tiny pressure points all over her body, and hidden inside her, that even she didn't yet know about.
Within minutes, she gave a quiet, broken little moan, grabbed his wrist, and held it in place while she rubbed herself up against it, his fingers digging deep inside her. She grit her teeth a little, and he sensed that she felt a brief stab of pain, but she didn't falter or draw back in the slightest. A deep red flush spread over her face and chest. Peter practiced careful and measured breathing, fighting against being caught up in her feelings; his twitching cock was still hard from the sensuality of his dream, and he was in danger of losing control and popping like an uncorked bottle of champagne. Somehow, though, he maintained control, and even gave Claire a wicked little smile and sucked his fingers clean.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked innocently.
Her expression was priceless. "No, I liked it," she replied.
"Did it hurt, though."
"Yeah," she grinned back. "Like I said, I liked it. Now, you better take that away," she said huskily, waving in his general direction. "There's some leftover ice in the bathroom sink; you might want to use that."
"Yeah," said Peter, glancing down, "not such a bad idea."
He settled for a ten-minute, ice-cold shower, only getting out when he couldn't stop his teeth from chattering. It was so difficult not to touch himself. When he came out of the bathroom, Claire was gone, but by the time he had gotten dressed, she returned, also changed into fresh clothes. "I think we should take some time to discuss what we're going to do next," Peter said, "maybe over some breakfast."
"Well, we're in Midland," Claire said, "so, I think it's probably OK to go out."
"Midland, huh?" Peter perked up. "I've got an idea of where I want to go. But please do me a favor and keep your eyes out for anything weird."
Peter found himself disappointed to walk into the Burnt Toast Diner and not see anyone he recognized. Then again, he supposed he should be glad that there also was no one there who wanted to kill him, as far as he knew. They ordered some coffee, and checked their messages.
Claire had none on her secret mobile, which was good, and dozens on her Sidekick, which kept her silent and frowning for quite some time. Peter had a text message and a voicemail. The voicemail was from his mother, explaining that she'd transferred a couple of thousand dollars from Peter's trust into his checking account, "just in case you run into an emergency while you're travelling." She was trying to sound like she didn't care, which she was terrible at; he could always tell. He could also tell, just by the sound of her voice, that Nathan had talked to her, gave her some bullshit story, and asked her to kick Peter some money.
Peter smiled and shook his head. Nathan wasn't such a bad brother, even if he was a total prick sometimes.
The text was from Isaac Mendez.
Watch for Hiro.
Peter sent a text back--I always do--and set down his phone, lifting the coffee cup to his lips.
He drank down half the cup in one go, savoring the quiet of the morning. Then he frowned. Quiet, in a busy diner in the middle of the airport breakfast rush? That was fast. He looked around and didn't see any incarnation of Hiro, so he set down the cup, and slowly, carefully walked through the frozen restaurant to the back.
Hiro stood there in the pantry room, pensively staring down at the floor. He still didn't have his hair back in a ponytail, but it was long enough that he probably could have. "You're forgetting your mission," Hiro said without preamble. "You're veering dangerously off course."
"Off course? You mean Claire, probably." Peter watched as Hiro gave a brief nod. "I'm sorry, but she called for my help."
"You're still not seeing the big picture," Hiro said. "You must return to New York immediately. You should have returned last night. There is no time to lose."
"Bennet told me that, too," Peter remembered. "'Time is of the essence,' he said."
Hiro nodded, and gave one of those sad smiles that meant "too true".
"Is it OK if I keep Claire with me?" Peter asked. "I think she's safer with me."
"You're worried about her safety?" Hiro replied, raising his eyebrows, then giving him a nod and a decisive "Hmm." "Of course. Because that is who you are. That's why you're you."
"You're getting really woo-woo shee-shee New Agey here, man--can you be more specific?"
Hiro actually put on a real smile. "I apologize. Keep her close. You will need the protection of her power until it becomes yours," he said. "Beware her father; he is closer by far to your next contact at the moment than you are. If things go his way, you haven't got a chance. Now I must go. Please be careful. This is not over." He gave Peter a tight little formal bow; Peter ducked his head a little in reply.
Hiro walked out the back door of the diner, and Peter headed back toward the dining room and his table. Time moved forward again before he made it, though, and Claire looked up in surprise from her Sidekick. "Oh, I didn't even notice you getting up," she said. "Are the bathrooms back through there?"
"Yeah, I guess," Peter said. "Oh, shit."
"What, did you forget to wash your hands?" Claire smirked, taking a ladylike sip of her coffee.
"No," Peter said, "I forgot to..." He had forgotten to ask Hiro about Sylar's presence in his dreams, what it meant, whether they were dreams at all, or messages transmitted through the subconscious. But somehow he didn't want to tell Claire about that; he didn't want to tell her he'd been in the back room with the time traveller, and he didn't know why. He hadn't told her about this most recent dream, either, about how beautiful things were, how right it felt to be wrapped in Gabriel's embrace.
He didn't want to share everything with her.
"I think your dad's in New York," Peter said. "When was the last time you talked to him?"
"Yesterday morning," she said. "At breakfast. He was telling mom that he was going on another business trip again today. I didn't think anything of it; he's always away on business and I thought it would be a good time for me to skedaddle. So, I shouldn't have?"
"No," Peter said, "I think this is exactly how things are supposed to play out. What I wonder is, what flight is he taking, and how can we make sure we're not on the same one?"
"I wish I knew," she sighed. "I've never seen a bank statement or a credit card bill or a ticket stub--he's completely anal about stuff like that."
"Wouldn't you be?" Peter shrugged. "All right... well... here's my card; book us some tickets for the next flight to Newark. I don't know if your dad is desperate enough for secrecy that he'd fly into Jersey, but we sure as hell are."
...TO BE CONTINUED...
Note: no offense to New Jersey. :) Also, in my state (and in hers) Claire is of legal age...
previous:: next
Pairing: Peter/Claire, Peter/Sylar
Rating: NC-17 (intense sexual situations, language, and descriptions of injury)
Length: about 4300 words
Spoilers: Through 1-11: Fallout
Summary: Peter tries with mixed success to keep Claire at arm's length, Sylar visits Peter's dream again, and a future Hiro warns Peter about staying on course. PLEASE READ DISCLAIMER.
Be Near Me (6): Keeping Secrets, Telling Lies
Somehow, they were flying.
"Whoo-hoo!" Claire yelled. "Omigod! Awesome! This is so cool!"
Peter thought so too, even though he noticed that he wasn't gaining much altitude, coasting along at running speed maybe seven or eight feet off the ground. He didn't know where to watch or what to look at; he didn't know how to fly. It wasn't like in his dreams; maybe that was just what it was like for Nathan. Even now, he couldn't draw or paint as well as Isaac; he guessed he couldn't fly as well as his brother, either.
Still - definitely flying, and Nathan hundreds of miles away. Sure, Peter sucked at it now, but a little practice, a little training--
Claire tugged his earlobe, snatching his attention back. "Peter...? Peter--Peter--Peter, look out!"
Peter had been too busy musing and gazing at the moon, and hadn't noticed a big tangle of twisted dead tree trunks, bushes and brush right up ahead. With Claire's scream and his shout of "Oh, shit!" echoing in his ears, he tried to turn to avoid it, felt his arm clipped by a sharp, pointed branch, and a sick vertigo of spinning and falling. Claire had at the last minute let go, but it was too late. Both of them plowed at high speed into the rocky ground. The last thing Peter saw was an extreme closeup of a fat little brown squirrel, or maybe a prairie dog, goggling its eyes in disbelief at the flying human slamming face-down onto the dirt.
When Peter regained consciousness, he wished he could pass out again. Unbelievable pain stabbed at him from every angle; head and neck, pelvis, spine, neck, both arms and one leg. He concentrated on the leg that didn't hurt, and lifted his head from the ground, feeling blood pouring from his ripped cheek. He moved the good leg, then the bad one; the bad one was broken at the thigh, but even as he realized this, he felt that it didn't hurt as bad as it had a moment ago. Instinctively, he used his fingers to push the edges of the broken bone together.
That felt good. That actually felt good. He should have been screaming in pain, but as soon as the bone was back in place, it felt just fine. With a good solid shrug, his back didn't hurt anymore, either, and when he put his fingers to his cheek to assess the damage, he pushed the loose skin back into place like he was wiping away a tear.
"Claire," he said.
She was several feet away, face down, moving feebly. Then she sat up onto her knees, rolling her neck around as if trying to get rid of a cramp, and his stomach lurched when he realized that her neck spinal bones had actually been broken, and those cracking noises were the sound of her just shrugging them back into place. He suddenly wished he hadn't aced physiology when he was in school, because he could visualize exactly what it would look like under the skin.
But now everything was intact again. She turned and looked at him, wiping blood from under her nose, then stood up and brushed the dirt off her now ripped jeans. Her red T-shirt with her high school's mascot logo was dark on one side, her denim jacket stained with blood.
"You all right?" she asked, rushing over to him.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she said. She knelt beside him and stroked her fingers across his face, tucking his hair, grimacing. "That looks painful," she said, examining his face.
Peter couldn't help smiling. That hurt a little more than he expected, but it was a good, sore kind of pain. The cut on his face didn't hurt at all. "Think it'll leave a scar?" he half-joked.
She smiled back, and shook her head. "Not as long as you're with me," she said. "I guess. Can you stand up?"
"Yeah, yeah." She helped him up, and he tested the leg that had been broken; it was completely fine, like nothing had ever happened. He began to laugh. "Yeah, I'm fine."
Back at the car, she trapped him against the side door, and kissed him hard. He couldn't say that he minded; he needed a kiss after all that, too, after sharing something so miraculous with her. She had her hands up under his shirt, grabbing his back muscles and pulling him tighter and closer to her, never letting his mouth go for a moment. She gripped his buttocks, then slid her hands down the loose back of his pants and dug her fingers deep into his flesh. She was completely owning him, not in the least bit tentative or self-conscious; she handled him as though she had already memorized him and knew where everything was, and just where to go and what to do.
He wished he could just give in to her.
Peter slid sideways, as he couldn't move back, and put his hands against her collarbones. She grinned at him, bright color in her cheeks and her eyes sparkling. "What?" she said, thinking he was playing with her. She straightened her back, throwing her chest out toward him, and Peter forgot what he was going to say for a good long moment, blinking at her display. It had been a long time since a girl had come on to Peter like that, let alone a girl like that--so young, so fresh, so horny he felt like he was drowning in pheromones.
At any other time, he wouldn't have even hesitated; they'd be doing it right now, and then they'd be twice-a-day fuck-pals until either she got a real boyfriend, got busted by her parents, got bored, or left for college. But now...
It wasn't like that. It could never be like that. He wouldn't have ever known her if she wasn't who and what she was, if he wasn't who and what he was, if he didn't have to do what he had to do.
"What's the matter?" she asked silkily.
"Could we just... get a room?" Peter mumbled, with a helpless giggle.
"Sure," she said, with a tiny shrug, and a Mona Lisa smile. "Can I drive?" She looked back toward the road, and lost her smile. "I know where we should go."
Peter felt dazed on the drive there, limp in the passenger seat, alternately staring at Claire, who drove with the instinctive precision of a cop and never took her eyes off the road, and out the window at the glaring moon. He was having a hard time wrapping his mind around it; it had been only 28 days since the eclipse, and he had died and come back to life so many times he had only the barest understanding of what his own death really meant.
His thoughts knocked him around. I've gotta get through this. I've gotta get through this. Do not look at her tits. No, don't do that. Stop doing that. Don't look at her. Look outside; check out the moon... Oh God, it might be easier just to look, so I can stop imagining what she looks like naked. See? Look. There they are; her breasts. Be nice. They're not that great, are they? Well, yeah, they are. But saving the world, Peter. You have to stop thinking of her like that. She is not a sex object. She's a comrade. She's a fellow soldier. She's... driving me completely crazy. What the hell's wrong with me? Don't I have any mental control, or am I just a drooling caveman?... God, even the way she drives is sexy. Peter kept his hands safely tucked into his lap and kept silent.
After the longest twenty minutes of Peter's entire life, Claire drove up to a nondescript chain motel, parked in the back, and then turned and looked at him. "Total no-tell," she said, "but it's decent."
"Oh yeah?" Peter asked shakily. "How would you know? Do you bring whores here?"
"Yeah, I'm the pimp," she quipped back. "Just kidding. I've just been told about it. One of the other cheerleaders is hooking up with this college guy, but he's Jewish, and her parents would freak. So they meet here. And even on the weird off chance of us running into them, the other girls don't even know... She was dying to tell someone, and I've kept her secret for more than a year. I could have her life destroyed." Claire smiled and shrugged. "But I don't want to throw my weight around, because you know, I've got secrets, too. It's really brutal. Dad thinks cheerleading is..." Her voice trailed off as she suddenly thought of her father, and his part in everything. Her face became abruptly very adult. "Sock hops and malt shops. And instead it's politics.. negotiation, diplomacy... Anyway, we're fine here. And I'm going to get my own room. I hit my credit card's cash advance like, a week ago. You go first."
Peter was too spaced out to protest. He paid for a night, got the keys, and went up a flight of concrete stairs to the room. Before he could even toss his messenger bag on the chair by the window, Claire was in behind him, shutting the door quietly and then knocking him onto the bed with a skillful tackle. He laughed and protested, his head clearing a little, and tried to reach back for her. She quickly grabbed both his wrists and pulled them to the small of his back, giggling. She straddled his back, like he was a horse, and began to rub the crotch of her jeans against his spine. He had to give her points both for the wrestling move, and for ingenuity; she was smart enough to know where to go for intense stimulation, riding his back, keeping him way off balance without hurting him. Either she was a makeout queen (not unusual for a southern girl of virtue; in his experience, those girls knew how to come thirty ways without anyone ever getting undressed), or she read a lot of books. It might even have been a combination of both. My God, he thought, she's Junior Miss Me.
She was even sort of giving him a back massage with the pressure of her thighs, making soft hissing, moaning sounds just at the edge of hearing.
God, she was good.
Letting go of his wrists, she rolled him over between her legs, and bent over to kiss him again. This time, she was taking her time, maintaining the same stroking, arching movement with her hips, this time with her crotch positioned directly over his. She sat up, even though Peter didn't want her to, didn't want to stop kissing her, didn't want to have full view of her breasts swelling overhead. She gazed down at him with a combination of adoration and assessment.
"You can fly," she whispered. Tendrils of hair had worked themselves loose from her ponytail and twirled like golden floss around her face. Too pretty.
Too much.
"Oh..." Peter sighed, struggling to speak, struggling to think. "Claire... we shouldn't..."
In response, she ground against him more fiercely, almost enough to hurt but not quite; the heat between her legs burned along his groin. She even ran her hands up underneath his shirt and rolled both his nipples between thumbs and forefingers, and he bucked underneath her. The smile on her face, and the rolling of her eyes, told him that she'd been hoping he'd do that.
"Why not?" she asked, bouncing a tiny bit, but continuing to do it, hypnotic and maddening. "I know it's not because you don't want to. It's obvious that you want to. So why don't we?"
Peter dug his fingers into the hems of the pockets of her jeans so tight he worried that he was going to rip the pockets off; he grit his teeth and stifled the groan behind them. He just wasn't used to holding back, for any reason.
Momentarily, there wasn't any reason; he came so hard he thought he would pass out, the basket of his pants soaking wet, completely outside of his control like he was a teenager himself. He could almost hear his cry echoing off the ceiling. It was too fast to enjoy, and he was too disconnected, even now, when they were so close.
He begged, "Sorry, sorry."
"I'm sorry," Claire said, not sounding sorry at all. "That was my fault, wasn't it?" She began to unfasten his pants, frowning a little, cutely, at the stain spreading across the waistband. Peter put his hand down to stop hers, much more resolute than he'd been with anything for hours, and she looked up and met his eyes.
He could barely keep his eyes open, and he felt drunk and woozy. "I'm really sorry...Claire, but I have to... get some sleep," he said with effort. "I would love... nothing more... than to fuck you 'til you can barely stand up. But... right now..."
"Oh, OK," she said, snapping out of temptress mode instantly, into her open-hearted practicality. "Should I leave?"
"No, no," Peter said. "I want you to stay. I'm scared... to sleep by myself right now."
She nodded, and what might have been a flash of hurt feelings showed on her face, but Peter couldn't really tell; his eyes fell closed like a slamming door and within less than a minute, he was asleep.
***
It was good to be together again, Peter felt. Good to get fucked again. Nice to be held in those big, strong arms, be held still and comforted, feel those lips on his neck again, so gentle, so right. Their legs were woven together, one of Peter's, one of his, one of Peter's, one of his.
Not even moving, really. Just... together. To the hilt, paused deep, taking the time to caress each other, gaze at each other. Peter never wanted the moment to end. Because when it ended...
Never mind that. Here now. His face was so beautiful. That was still a little weird for Peter, even if, at the moment, he couldn't remember why it would be weird to adore that face, and love the shy, tentative smiles that curved those full lips, fleeting away only to return, and wanting to kiss the smile to keep it there.
"Is that OK?" he asked, his voice transmitted through their touching chests into Peter's heart.
"Yes," Peter whispered, arching his hips a little, and feeling the resistance of the cock inside him, "yes, Gabriel, that's OK."
"That's good," Gabriel murmured back, his eyelashes brushing Peter's ear as he kissed and nipped at Peter's neck. Even though it tickled, Peter knew better than to move too suddenly. Restraint was erotic; double restraint, from inside him, and from his wrists, trapped in Gabriel's hands, was almost overwhelming. "I love to make you happy. You're mine, baby, you're mine."
Peter wanted to just agree, but for some reason, he couldn't. Instead he smiled, and was rewarded with a smile from Gabriel, a beautiful, open, slightly silly smile, and a kiss, and a gentle surge forward with the hips. Peter raised his knees with a lustful groan--it was what he had been waiting for--and was hit with a sudden dizzy sense of displacement. Gabriel glanced down, noticing this, and his expression hardened slightly. It was strange; Peter felt for a moment that he didn't recognize Gabriel, that their relationship wasn't real, or at the very least, wasn't like this. He tried to look around the room they were in, but Gabriel grabbed the sides of his face and forced Peter to look into his eyes. His soft purring voice suddenly had a vicious tinge. "What are you looking for, lover?"
"I...I don't know..."
"Tell me."
"I don't know--really--just that something seems--this can't be right."
"Nothing could be more right than this," Gabriel said, his eyes gleaming. "You and me together? Nothing could be more perfect. You want this as much as me."
"I don't want this at all," Peter replied, his blood suddenly running cold.
Gabriel laughed indulgently. "Lie to me some more, liar," he murmured. "It makes my dick hard when you lie to me."
"Sylar--" Peter's voice caught on the name. "Please. You have to stop this."
"Oh, I can't stop," was the reply. "It's not me. It's destiny."
"Don't say that..."
"Only the good guys get to talk destiny?" Gabriel chuckled. His hands on Peter were still gentle. "You're amazing, you know that? Can you imagine what I'd become if I had your abilities? Can you imagine?" He smiled. "You can never defeat me, Peter. You have to know that. I don't want to destroy you. Don't make me destroy you." He lay down a barrage of kisses, one falling after another, on Peter's lips, forehead, jaw, neck; no way to escape them, no way to deny them, no way not to take pleasure from them.
"Oh, God... I wish you were Gabriel Gray," Peter moaned.
He was answered with a lazy chuckle. "But then I'd be insignficant. And I can never go back to that. And neither can you..."
***
At last, Peter wrenched himself out of sleep, his hand instinctively going for his dick, intending to wank the nightmare out of his system, only to find that there was a hand already there.
His eyes followed the strange hand up a smooth, shapely arm to Claire's face, watching him with a little smile. "Sleep well?" she asked.
Early morning daylight outlined the curtains on the window, and threw bands of light across the bed. Both Peter and Claire were naked under the covers, and she slid closer to him, her lips parting with anticipation.
"Claire, no, hang on, hang on," Peter said, sitting up, his head clearing immediately. "We can't."
"Why not?" she asked, slightly outraged. "I mean--we have to, right?"
"Well, technically, yeah," Peter said. "But not yet." At her confused look, he said, "The list is in a certain order and you're not up yet."
"Well, can't you... skip around?" She sat up too, and crossed her hands over her breasts impatiently.
"I don't know," Peter confessed, smiling. He hadn't thought she could get any cuter. "I don't think so. And I don't know what would happen if I did; it might make me sick again. I can't really do that much good if I'm in a coma." He gently unlocked her arms, and rested them at her sides. He then gave himself a present for having been solid enough to keep his wits about him right after waking up, and cupped her right breast in his hand, caressing it. Claire took a deep breath and blinked hard. "It'll be great when it's the right time. But for now, I can..." He kissed her between her breasts, and ran his hand down her side. "...Help you out."
"Really?" Her voice was so full of obvious longing that she got embarassed. "I mean, don't, if you don't want to."
"No," said Peter, "I want to. See, we don't have to fuck; that's not what it's about. If I thought I could fuck you without coming, I'd do that, and if I thought I could have any kind of sexual contact with you where you didn't come, I'd try that, but it's just against my principles to keep someone from coming." He kissed her on the lips for a long time, stroking his hand between her legs, fingering her gently. "I mean, I want to see you come. I want to know I made it. You've been so good to me. I don't know what I'd do without you." With lips and tongue, he caressed and teased the lobe of her ear, while his fingertips found all the tiny pressure points all over her body, and hidden inside her, that even she didn't yet know about.
Within minutes, she gave a quiet, broken little moan, grabbed his wrist, and held it in place while she rubbed herself up against it, his fingers digging deep inside her. She grit her teeth a little, and he sensed that she felt a brief stab of pain, but she didn't falter or draw back in the slightest. A deep red flush spread over her face and chest. Peter practiced careful and measured breathing, fighting against being caught up in her feelings; his twitching cock was still hard from the sensuality of his dream, and he was in danger of losing control and popping like an uncorked bottle of champagne. Somehow, though, he maintained control, and even gave Claire a wicked little smile and sucked his fingers clean.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked innocently.
Her expression was priceless. "No, I liked it," she replied.
"Did it hurt, though."
"Yeah," she grinned back. "Like I said, I liked it. Now, you better take that away," she said huskily, waving in his general direction. "There's some leftover ice in the bathroom sink; you might want to use that."
"Yeah," said Peter, glancing down, "not such a bad idea."
He settled for a ten-minute, ice-cold shower, only getting out when he couldn't stop his teeth from chattering. It was so difficult not to touch himself. When he came out of the bathroom, Claire was gone, but by the time he had gotten dressed, she returned, also changed into fresh clothes. "I think we should take some time to discuss what we're going to do next," Peter said, "maybe over some breakfast."
"Well, we're in Midland," Claire said, "so, I think it's probably OK to go out."
"Midland, huh?" Peter perked up. "I've got an idea of where I want to go. But please do me a favor and keep your eyes out for anything weird."
Peter found himself disappointed to walk into the Burnt Toast Diner and not see anyone he recognized. Then again, he supposed he should be glad that there also was no one there who wanted to kill him, as far as he knew. They ordered some coffee, and checked their messages.
Claire had none on her secret mobile, which was good, and dozens on her Sidekick, which kept her silent and frowning for quite some time. Peter had a text message and a voicemail. The voicemail was from his mother, explaining that she'd transferred a couple of thousand dollars from Peter's trust into his checking account, "just in case you run into an emergency while you're travelling." She was trying to sound like she didn't care, which she was terrible at; he could always tell. He could also tell, just by the sound of her voice, that Nathan had talked to her, gave her some bullshit story, and asked her to kick Peter some money.
Peter smiled and shook his head. Nathan wasn't such a bad brother, even if he was a total prick sometimes.
The text was from Isaac Mendez.
Watch for Hiro.
Peter sent a text back--I always do--and set down his phone, lifting the coffee cup to his lips.
He drank down half the cup in one go, savoring the quiet of the morning. Then he frowned. Quiet, in a busy diner in the middle of the airport breakfast rush? That was fast. He looked around and didn't see any incarnation of Hiro, so he set down the cup, and slowly, carefully walked through the frozen restaurant to the back.
Hiro stood there in the pantry room, pensively staring down at the floor. He still didn't have his hair back in a ponytail, but it was long enough that he probably could have. "You're forgetting your mission," Hiro said without preamble. "You're veering dangerously off course."
"Off course? You mean Claire, probably." Peter watched as Hiro gave a brief nod. "I'm sorry, but she called for my help."
"You're still not seeing the big picture," Hiro said. "You must return to New York immediately. You should have returned last night. There is no time to lose."
"Bennet told me that, too," Peter remembered. "'Time is of the essence,' he said."
Hiro nodded, and gave one of those sad smiles that meant "too true".
"Is it OK if I keep Claire with me?" Peter asked. "I think she's safer with me."
"You're worried about her safety?" Hiro replied, raising his eyebrows, then giving him a nod and a decisive "Hmm." "Of course. Because that is who you are. That's why you're you."
"You're getting really woo-woo shee-shee New Agey here, man--can you be more specific?"
Hiro actually put on a real smile. "I apologize. Keep her close. You will need the protection of her power until it becomes yours," he said. "Beware her father; he is closer by far to your next contact at the moment than you are. If things go his way, you haven't got a chance. Now I must go. Please be careful. This is not over." He gave Peter a tight little formal bow; Peter ducked his head a little in reply.
Hiro walked out the back door of the diner, and Peter headed back toward the dining room and his table. Time moved forward again before he made it, though, and Claire looked up in surprise from her Sidekick. "Oh, I didn't even notice you getting up," she said. "Are the bathrooms back through there?"
"Yeah, I guess," Peter said. "Oh, shit."
"What, did you forget to wash your hands?" Claire smirked, taking a ladylike sip of her coffee.
"No," Peter said, "I forgot to..." He had forgotten to ask Hiro about Sylar's presence in his dreams, what it meant, whether they were dreams at all, or messages transmitted through the subconscious. But somehow he didn't want to tell Claire about that; he didn't want to tell her he'd been in the back room with the time traveller, and he didn't know why. He hadn't told her about this most recent dream, either, about how beautiful things were, how right it felt to be wrapped in Gabriel's embrace.
He didn't want to share everything with her.
"I think your dad's in New York," Peter said. "When was the last time you talked to him?"
"Yesterday morning," she said. "At breakfast. He was telling mom that he was going on another business trip again today. I didn't think anything of it; he's always away on business and I thought it would be a good time for me to skedaddle. So, I shouldn't have?"
"No," Peter said, "I think this is exactly how things are supposed to play out. What I wonder is, what flight is he taking, and how can we make sure we're not on the same one?"
"I wish I knew," she sighed. "I've never seen a bank statement or a credit card bill or a ticket stub--he's completely anal about stuff like that."
"Wouldn't you be?" Peter shrugged. "All right... well... here's my card; book us some tickets for the next flight to Newark. I don't know if your dad is desperate enough for secrecy that he'd fly into Jersey, but we sure as hell are."
...TO BE CONTINUED...
Note: no offense to New Jersey. :) Also, in my state (and in hers) Claire is of legal age...
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