Vampire's Kiss 5/6? (Bennet/Claude, teen)
Title: Vampire’s Kiss, 5/6?
Author: nina_ds@ninamusing
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Bennet/Claude, traces of Bennet/Sandra, Claude/Peter, Claude/various OCs
Rating: Teen
Challenge: written for brave_new_slash’s Morally Grey November.
Author’s notes: Thanks again to indyhat for a detailed and encouraging beta.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
***
“Why aren't you dead?”
Claude stares intently at him for a moment, then laughs. It's still a bit weak and hoarse, but a reasonable facsimile of his normal raucous, full-bodied laugh. “Y'know, I'd forgotten just how adept you aren't at diplomacy.” As the laughter fades, bitterness curls through like smoke, darkening his eyes. His voice softens, takes on a rich edge that skims over Bennet's skin like silk, raising every tiny hair on his body to alert status. “I don't know why, but time is short enough, and I'll be damned if I let any bugger take what's left of mine. I've survived worse than you, Noah Bennet. And I've survived better.”
***
Sixteen years before…
Bennet was aware that the file he had been given was incomplete. The redaction was far more subtle than swathes of black Marks-a-Lot across the pages, but it gave him enough to get a glimpse of the man with whom he was going to have to share an office and a car and a working life.
Photograph of a surprisingly photogenic invisible man.
Claude Rains. Clearly not his real name.
Born Salford, England. No kidding.
Height, weight, hair colour, eyes…
Distinguishing marks: mole on right cheek, appendectomy scar, thin crescent-shaped scar on inside of right ankle. (Later, he would wonder if the blatant omissions were tactical, strategic, or simply a product of the Company's fascination with firewalls.)
Employed by the Company for twelve years. That meant he had been thirteen or fourteen when first employed. Illegal, of course; but interesting.
Part of a Company-run youth program for two years and three months before that. The existence of a youth outreach program was new information. He'd have to find out more about that. (And he would, in horrifying detail.)
Previous partners: Haram el-Adjani, for four years up until seven months ago; before that, a brief ten months with an Anna Gavenda, and then a notation of nine weeks “administrative assignment.” Before that, an annual pattern of ten months partnered with a “KT” and six weeks' “administrative assignment”, going back to his first two and a half years, without any specifics as to his duties.
An assortment of commendations sprinkled with the occasional reprimand (most of them for insubordination - now there's a surprise).
And a sheaf of field report summaries, in short, declarative sentences, the more recent ones laced with Claude's mordant wit. He'd have to take over reporting duties. (Little did he know, he'd have to anyway, as Claude only did paperwork when absolutely forced. It wasn't that he couldn't do it efficiently and even with a certain flair, he just found it a challenge to find ways to avoid it.)
Bennet was impressed that so much information should impart so little knowledge.
***
Fifteen years before…
Bennet lay in bed, pretending to read a file, when the door opened. He expected Claude to be smug, or contrite, or something, but he was simply matter-of-fact, like always, a bit of a smile as he tossed his keys on the nightstand. He sat on the side of the bed to take off his shoes and socks, and only when wiggling his freed toes did he ask, “Are you going to freak out on me?”
Bennet returned his eyes sharply to his reading. “I don't know what you mean,” he said, sounding unbearably prim even to his own ears, and Claude's chuckle did little to improve his mood.
“You seemed - were you honestly surprised?”
Bennet pursed his lips thoughtfully. In the hour or so since he got back from the restaurant, he'd realized how blinkered he had been. Claude's flirtation had always been equal opportunity, and yet his flirtation was always also genuine interest. It was hard to tell where his focus crossed the line into sexuality. The intensity was sometimes overwhelming.
“I can't believe you'd be so careless - you could have been caught by someone else a lot less open-minded.”
“I knew you and I were the only customers left in the dining room.” Claude was calm as he stood up, unbuttoning his shirt. “And Ramiro seemed to think it was safe enough with the rest of the crew.”
“That's not all there is to being careful.”
Claude looked at Bennet intently, a gleeful glint in his eyes as he worried at his cuff button. “Do you want to know if I'm having safe sex? Or is that you want to know what we did?”
Bennet felt his face flush. “Of course not.”
“It's natural curiosity,” said Claude, finally freeing his cuff and starting on the other. “If you've never been in a position to ask before. And don't-” Claude held up one rather beautiful hand to forestall his protest. “Don't get all defensive. If it makes you feel any better, yes, we used a condom. But no, we didn't fuck. Not in the way you think.”
“I don't need to know this,” protested Bennet, looking back at his file.
“No. You don't.” His partner watched him for a long moment, then turned and went into the bathroom.
The shower seemed to go on forever, and Bennet was glad of the opportunity to calm his nerves. He wasn't sure why he was so rattled by Claude's forthrightness - it was as much a part of the man as his big beak and his sarcasm. He wasn't sure, either, why knowing that Claude and the waiter hadn't “fucked in the way that he thought” unsettled him more than knowing that they had.
When Claude finally emerged from the bathroom, his hair was slicked back, as usual, but a thin, white motel towel was wrapped around his waist, a concession to modesty he had never offered before.
His gaze at Bennet was thoughtful, careful as he came to sit on the side of his bed, opposite his partner. An undertone of defiance ran beneath the odd tranquility of his voice. “I thought you knew.”
The Englishman's honesty disarmed him enough to speak without dissembling. “I may have chosen unconsciously to filter that part of your behaviour.”
Claude lifted an eyebrow, visibly suppressing the quirk of his lips, and he took a moment to unfasten his wristwatch, checking the time before setting it aside on the nightstand. “I don't think Thompson will allow a transfer,” he said, almost lightly as he turned his intense focus back to Bennet. “And I'm not going to stand for any homophobic crap.”
“No, I'm not-” Bennet felt a vague sense of panic that Claude would think that of him. “It just didn't occur to me. I'm fine with it, I'm just…”
“Curious?”
Bennet felt the flush climb his face all the way up to his hairline, warming his ears.
Claude smiled, a little teasingly, and he stretched out on the bed with a tired groan. “That I can handle.” He stretched, the towel staying demurely in place as he folded his hands behind his head. “Ask me any question you like.”
“I don't need to ask any questions.” Bennet made a conscious effort to sound unflustered, and Claude grinned at him, that sharkish grin that made him nervous at the best of times.
“Yeah, but you want to.” He hitched over onto his side, propping his head on his hand, his leg curling underneath him.
Giving up any pretence of reading the file, Bennet heaved a sigh and shut the folder. “So. You're gay.”
Claude looked a little surprised. “Nope. Bisexual. Like 'em both.”
“I didn't think that was - y'know…”
Claude sighed. “I know. I get that from both sides.”
“Thought you might like that sort of thing,” muttered Bennet before he thought, and Claude burst out laughing, a deep, genuine laugh.
“Oh, God.” He lay on his back, shaking his head. “Didn't think you had it in you.”
The tension broken, Bennet couldn't help grinning in response.
Then Claude turned his face to him again, eyes twinkling unusually blue in the lamplight. “But I wouldn't turn it down.”
The heat that suddenly bloomed low in his belly shocked Bennet, and he shifted his gaze back to the file, although the afterimage of Claude's smile hovered between him and the page. He could barely breathe, and he was highly aware that Claude's gaze was still on him.
He blinked, if not banishing the Cheshire cat image then at least making it more transparent. Not that he could concentrate on anything but the long, lean body stretched out on the bed opposite him.
His breath fluttered in his throat, and he froze as Claude sat up, swinging his long legs over the edge of the bed. The flimsy motel towel dropped to the floor, the covers of the bed were flung back, and Bennet felt as though the motion of fabric had stirred up some heady scent that hovered between intoxicating and sickening. Claude was bending toward him, and he murmured softly, “Goodnight, rookie,” before switching off the lamp over his bed and slipping between the sheets.
Bennet took a deep breath, but it felt raw in his throat. His eyes flickered over the edge of the manila folder. The light from the lamp over his bed fell weakly across a bare shoulder, a sharp cheekbone. A wiry arm curved across the rise and fall of the sturdy ribcage, a thin sliver of scar running underneath from armpit to elbow the only visible trace in the sickly yellow light.
Bennet lay back, taking another deep breath, holding the folder up more directly into the weak beam. Gnawing at the inside of his lower lip, he forced himself to concentrate on the job and not the vague miasma of relief and disappointment churning his gut.
***
Ten months before…
The indistinct colours swirled, separated, circled each other, and merged. The dance was beautiful, and it sat like a hot stone on his stomach. As his eyes adjusted, his heart twisted in recognition at the angle of the taller figure bending toward the shorter one. The red at the center of the smaller swirl suddely deepened, stretching toward the ill-defined edges, and taller hesitated a moment before they merged once more.
His finger twitched on the trigger, the memories ricocheting along his nervous system, and he imagined he could feel the impact through the wires. His arms suddenly felt like lead, and taser and infrared goggles fell heavily to his sides as the electrodes clattered to the roof.
The tall, shaggy figure in the big overcoat was almost unrecognizeable, but the short exhalations of agony echoed across the years. As he stumbled to his knees, the young man stood protectively in front of him, one arm curved over his huddled back with a gesture of such tenderness that Bennet lost a step in response.
A step that allowed the Petrelli kid to get Claude to his feet and roll him over the side of the building. City night flickered with overcast grey as Bennet rushed to the retaining wall, and he saw only the glow of streetlamps, weakly illuminating the dry riverbed of the dirty alleyway. Suddenly, Petrelli was shooting past him, soaring toward the full moon with Claude slung across his shoulders, the invisible man's ridiculously long legs threatening to overbalance him and mar the romance of his perfect getaway.
***
“Why couldn't you just let me die?”
The steely eyes cut right through him.
“You couldn't even give me that?”
Bennet's hands tighten on the railing as he gazes at his former partner, his scarred body naked and weak, but the intervening years have only increased the power behind that fierce gaze.
The mouth that could snark or cajole or draw shrieks of pleasure from him in ways he had never even imagined twists into a rueful smile. “No, of course not.” The brightening of the grey eyes startles him. “Ol' Ken must be so proud. You really are the Company Man he always wanted.”
He takes a quick breath, his heart settling back into its rhythm. “Thompson's dead.” He is gratified by the relief that softens the sharp features. But then, doubt creeps in, and he reaches out to grip the thin forearm, careful of the bruising from the IVs. “I killed him.”
Claude sinks back into the pillows, his eyes closing. His lashes are suspiciously wet, and Bennet allows himself a small caress with his thumb.
“He's gone.”
“Yeah, but the Company still goes on.” Claude twitches the sheet across his waist, and his palm comes to rest over the ugly scars on his belly. “It's not going to be as easy to open me up anymore. Been a while, and then there's all the new body work.” He takes a deep breath and his eyes are clear blue, almost sympathetic when they turn to him. “Have they gotten to Claire yet?”
He shakes his head firmly, his throat thick as he forces out, “No.”
“Look, Noah-” The name startles him, more than the hand that comes up to grasp his own forearm, pulling him down. “I'll be your bargaining chip. Just - get Claire away from them. As far away as you can get her.”
“Claude.” He slides his hand down to curl his hand around the man's in a firm clasp. “I'm not turning you in.”
Doubt clouds the blue gaze.
“I'm working against the Company now, too.”
“Riiiight.” The wariness is back, beneath the tiredness. “That explains why you shot me. Three times.”
“Third time's the charm, right?” Bennet dares reach up and brush his curled fingers against the hollow temple, ignoring the flinch away. He lays his palm against the sharp cheekbone, resting his thumb against the parted lips, stilling the protest. He is leaning down before he realizes it, whispering, “This time, I did it to save you.”
Author: nina_ds@ninamusing
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Bennet/Claude, traces of Bennet/Sandra, Claude/Peter, Claude/various OCs
Rating: Teen
Challenge: written for brave_new_slash’s Morally Grey November.
Author’s notes: Thanks again to indyhat for a detailed and encouraging beta.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
***
“Why aren't you dead?”
Claude stares intently at him for a moment, then laughs. It's still a bit weak and hoarse, but a reasonable facsimile of his normal raucous, full-bodied laugh. “Y'know, I'd forgotten just how adept you aren't at diplomacy.” As the laughter fades, bitterness curls through like smoke, darkening his eyes. His voice softens, takes on a rich edge that skims over Bennet's skin like silk, raising every tiny hair on his body to alert status. “I don't know why, but time is short enough, and I'll be damned if I let any bugger take what's left of mine. I've survived worse than you, Noah Bennet. And I've survived better.”
***
Sixteen years before…
Bennet was aware that the file he had been given was incomplete. The redaction was far more subtle than swathes of black Marks-a-Lot across the pages, but it gave him enough to get a glimpse of the man with whom he was going to have to share an office and a car and a working life.
Photograph of a surprisingly photogenic invisible man.
Claude Rains. Clearly not his real name.
Born Salford, England. No kidding.
Height, weight, hair colour, eyes…
Distinguishing marks: mole on right cheek, appendectomy scar, thin crescent-shaped scar on inside of right ankle. (Later, he would wonder if the blatant omissions were tactical, strategic, or simply a product of the Company's fascination with firewalls.)
Employed by the Company for twelve years. That meant he had been thirteen or fourteen when first employed. Illegal, of course; but interesting.
Part of a Company-run youth program for two years and three months before that. The existence of a youth outreach program was new information. He'd have to find out more about that. (And he would, in horrifying detail.)
Previous partners: Haram el-Adjani, for four years up until seven months ago; before that, a brief ten months with an Anna Gavenda, and then a notation of nine weeks “administrative assignment.” Before that, an annual pattern of ten months partnered with a “KT” and six weeks' “administrative assignment”, going back to his first two and a half years, without any specifics as to his duties.
An assortment of commendations sprinkled with the occasional reprimand (most of them for insubordination - now there's a surprise).
And a sheaf of field report summaries, in short, declarative sentences, the more recent ones laced with Claude's mordant wit. He'd have to take over reporting duties. (Little did he know, he'd have to anyway, as Claude only did paperwork when absolutely forced. It wasn't that he couldn't do it efficiently and even with a certain flair, he just found it a challenge to find ways to avoid it.)
Bennet was impressed that so much information should impart so little knowledge.
***
Fifteen years before…
Bennet lay in bed, pretending to read a file, when the door opened. He expected Claude to be smug, or contrite, or something, but he was simply matter-of-fact, like always, a bit of a smile as he tossed his keys on the nightstand. He sat on the side of the bed to take off his shoes and socks, and only when wiggling his freed toes did he ask, “Are you going to freak out on me?”
Bennet returned his eyes sharply to his reading. “I don't know what you mean,” he said, sounding unbearably prim even to his own ears, and Claude's chuckle did little to improve his mood.
“You seemed - were you honestly surprised?”
Bennet pursed his lips thoughtfully. In the hour or so since he got back from the restaurant, he'd realized how blinkered he had been. Claude's flirtation had always been equal opportunity, and yet his flirtation was always also genuine interest. It was hard to tell where his focus crossed the line into sexuality. The intensity was sometimes overwhelming.
“I can't believe you'd be so careless - you could have been caught by someone else a lot less open-minded.”
“I knew you and I were the only customers left in the dining room.” Claude was calm as he stood up, unbuttoning his shirt. “And Ramiro seemed to think it was safe enough with the rest of the crew.”
“That's not all there is to being careful.”
Claude looked at Bennet intently, a gleeful glint in his eyes as he worried at his cuff button. “Do you want to know if I'm having safe sex? Or is that you want to know what we did?”
Bennet felt his face flush. “Of course not.”
“It's natural curiosity,” said Claude, finally freeing his cuff and starting on the other. “If you've never been in a position to ask before. And don't-” Claude held up one rather beautiful hand to forestall his protest. “Don't get all defensive. If it makes you feel any better, yes, we used a condom. But no, we didn't fuck. Not in the way you think.”
“I don't need to know this,” protested Bennet, looking back at his file.
“No. You don't.” His partner watched him for a long moment, then turned and went into the bathroom.
The shower seemed to go on forever, and Bennet was glad of the opportunity to calm his nerves. He wasn't sure why he was so rattled by Claude's forthrightness - it was as much a part of the man as his big beak and his sarcasm. He wasn't sure, either, why knowing that Claude and the waiter hadn't “fucked in the way that he thought” unsettled him more than knowing that they had.
When Claude finally emerged from the bathroom, his hair was slicked back, as usual, but a thin, white motel towel was wrapped around his waist, a concession to modesty he had never offered before.
His gaze at Bennet was thoughtful, careful as he came to sit on the side of his bed, opposite his partner. An undertone of defiance ran beneath the odd tranquility of his voice. “I thought you knew.”
The Englishman's honesty disarmed him enough to speak without dissembling. “I may have chosen unconsciously to filter that part of your behaviour.”
Claude lifted an eyebrow, visibly suppressing the quirk of his lips, and he took a moment to unfasten his wristwatch, checking the time before setting it aside on the nightstand. “I don't think Thompson will allow a transfer,” he said, almost lightly as he turned his intense focus back to Bennet. “And I'm not going to stand for any homophobic crap.”
“No, I'm not-” Bennet felt a vague sense of panic that Claude would think that of him. “It just didn't occur to me. I'm fine with it, I'm just…”
“Curious?”
Bennet felt the flush climb his face all the way up to his hairline, warming his ears.
Claude smiled, a little teasingly, and he stretched out on the bed with a tired groan. “That I can handle.” He stretched, the towel staying demurely in place as he folded his hands behind his head. “Ask me any question you like.”
“I don't need to ask any questions.” Bennet made a conscious effort to sound unflustered, and Claude grinned at him, that sharkish grin that made him nervous at the best of times.
“Yeah, but you want to.” He hitched over onto his side, propping his head on his hand, his leg curling underneath him.
Giving up any pretence of reading the file, Bennet heaved a sigh and shut the folder. “So. You're gay.”
Claude looked a little surprised. “Nope. Bisexual. Like 'em both.”
“I didn't think that was - y'know…”
Claude sighed. “I know. I get that from both sides.”
“Thought you might like that sort of thing,” muttered Bennet before he thought, and Claude burst out laughing, a deep, genuine laugh.
“Oh, God.” He lay on his back, shaking his head. “Didn't think you had it in you.”
The tension broken, Bennet couldn't help grinning in response.
Then Claude turned his face to him again, eyes twinkling unusually blue in the lamplight. “But I wouldn't turn it down.”
The heat that suddenly bloomed low in his belly shocked Bennet, and he shifted his gaze back to the file, although the afterimage of Claude's smile hovered between him and the page. He could barely breathe, and he was highly aware that Claude's gaze was still on him.
He blinked, if not banishing the Cheshire cat image then at least making it more transparent. Not that he could concentrate on anything but the long, lean body stretched out on the bed opposite him.
His breath fluttered in his throat, and he froze as Claude sat up, swinging his long legs over the edge of the bed. The flimsy motel towel dropped to the floor, the covers of the bed were flung back, and Bennet felt as though the motion of fabric had stirred up some heady scent that hovered between intoxicating and sickening. Claude was bending toward him, and he murmured softly, “Goodnight, rookie,” before switching off the lamp over his bed and slipping between the sheets.
Bennet took a deep breath, but it felt raw in his throat. His eyes flickered over the edge of the manila folder. The light from the lamp over his bed fell weakly across a bare shoulder, a sharp cheekbone. A wiry arm curved across the rise and fall of the sturdy ribcage, a thin sliver of scar running underneath from armpit to elbow the only visible trace in the sickly yellow light.
Bennet lay back, taking another deep breath, holding the folder up more directly into the weak beam. Gnawing at the inside of his lower lip, he forced himself to concentrate on the job and not the vague miasma of relief and disappointment churning his gut.
***
Ten months before…
The indistinct colours swirled, separated, circled each other, and merged. The dance was beautiful, and it sat like a hot stone on his stomach. As his eyes adjusted, his heart twisted in recognition at the angle of the taller figure bending toward the shorter one. The red at the center of the smaller swirl suddely deepened, stretching toward the ill-defined edges, and taller hesitated a moment before they merged once more.
His finger twitched on the trigger, the memories ricocheting along his nervous system, and he imagined he could feel the impact through the wires. His arms suddenly felt like lead, and taser and infrared goggles fell heavily to his sides as the electrodes clattered to the roof.
The tall, shaggy figure in the big overcoat was almost unrecognizeable, but the short exhalations of agony echoed across the years. As he stumbled to his knees, the young man stood protectively in front of him, one arm curved over his huddled back with a gesture of such tenderness that Bennet lost a step in response.
A step that allowed the Petrelli kid to get Claude to his feet and roll him over the side of the building. City night flickered with overcast grey as Bennet rushed to the retaining wall, and he saw only the glow of streetlamps, weakly illuminating the dry riverbed of the dirty alleyway. Suddenly, Petrelli was shooting past him, soaring toward the full moon with Claude slung across his shoulders, the invisible man's ridiculously long legs threatening to overbalance him and mar the romance of his perfect getaway.
***
“Why couldn't you just let me die?”
The steely eyes cut right through him.
“You couldn't even give me that?”
Bennet's hands tighten on the railing as he gazes at his former partner, his scarred body naked and weak, but the intervening years have only increased the power behind that fierce gaze.
The mouth that could snark or cajole or draw shrieks of pleasure from him in ways he had never even imagined twists into a rueful smile. “No, of course not.” The brightening of the grey eyes startles him. “Ol' Ken must be so proud. You really are the Company Man he always wanted.”
He takes a quick breath, his heart settling back into its rhythm. “Thompson's dead.” He is gratified by the relief that softens the sharp features. But then, doubt creeps in, and he reaches out to grip the thin forearm, careful of the bruising from the IVs. “I killed him.”
Claude sinks back into the pillows, his eyes closing. His lashes are suspiciously wet, and Bennet allows himself a small caress with his thumb.
“He's gone.”
“Yeah, but the Company still goes on.” Claude twitches the sheet across his waist, and his palm comes to rest over the ugly scars on his belly. “It's not going to be as easy to open me up anymore. Been a while, and then there's all the new body work.” He takes a deep breath and his eyes are clear blue, almost sympathetic when they turn to him. “Have they gotten to Claire yet?”
He shakes his head firmly, his throat thick as he forces out, “No.”
“Look, Noah-” The name startles him, more than the hand that comes up to grasp his own forearm, pulling him down. “I'll be your bargaining chip. Just - get Claire away from them. As far away as you can get her.”
“Claude.” He slides his hand down to curl his hand around the man's in a firm clasp. “I'm not turning you in.”
Doubt clouds the blue gaze.
“I'm working against the Company now, too.”
“Riiiight.” The wariness is back, beneath the tiredness. “That explains why you shot me. Three times.”
“Third time's the charm, right?” Bennet dares reach up and brush his curled fingers against the hollow temple, ignoring the flinch away. He lays his palm against the sharp cheekbone, resting his thumb against the parted lips, stilling the protest. He is leaning down before he realizes it, whispering, “This time, I did it to save you.”