Poses
Title: Poses
Author: puckkit
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character: Bennet/Claude [implied]
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the show Heroes, therefore all of this is false and made up from my charmingly eccentric imagination.
Author's Notes: Working on my third chapter for my other story and what should appear, but this. Figures. No spoilers (unless you don't know who Claude is). Set before Claire, during their joint time at the Company. Cut-text lyrics from Poses by Rufus Wainwright.
He goes out every Thursday night, draped in a heavy feeling that resembles resignation but is, in truth, a distant cousin of despair. He doesn’t admit to strong emotions, those that bog the senses down in a thick mire of too much thought and not enough action, but just because those feelings aren’t acknowledged doesn’t mean they aren’t real.
So he goes out on Thursday.
Sandra knows, and although he’s never given her an explanation, she doesn’t ask questions. He aches a little when he thinks about it, the way she implicitly trusts him (or trusts that he won’t tell her the truth, were she to ask) so he doesn’t think about it.
His head is a minefield of situations, places, and people he can’t think about, but he’s grown accustomed to it. It’s been a long time since his mind belonged to him.
Just another perk of the job, he supposes wryly.
On Thursday he returns from work to a barren house, Sandra having volunteered for the past year or so to help out at the local animal shelter. Friday afternoon he will come home to stories of the loneliness she witnessed, a glimmer of harsh empathy hiding in her eyes. The force of the ache he will feel will almost be enough to bring him to... but it doesn’t matter. Not on Thursday.
On Thursday, he leaves before the sun has completely set.
The keys jangle in his hand, clanging disharmoniously as he climbs into his car and pauses.
There’s always a moment of hesitation, no matter how many Thursdays he spends in this routine. He pauses and contemplates his house, its empty rooms and the single light left on in the living room. Inevitably, though, he retreats from his flawless image of a life and allows memory to guide him away.
The day hovers on the edge of night, falling slowly and peaceably with rain lingering on the edges of street lamps, lending a glimmering sheen to the pavement.
The bar is less than half full, with corner booths remaining unoccupied as the majority of pasty, tired occupants flock towards others of their similar disposition. They congregate at the bar in the middle of the room, worshipping the bartender with weary faces and chipped fingernails, pausing for brief, meagre conversation.
But he doesn’t seek out the others. Instead, he finds the one booth away from the light and quiet noise and allows himself to settle into it. When the waitress comes around he doesn’t even glance up, orders a house brew and closes his eyes while the woman disappears with fast clicks of her heels.
The atmosphere washes over him and he goes along with it, lets himself travel from table to table, conversation to conversation. Puts together bits and pieces with more skill than one would think he had by looking at him, allows himself to concoct fanciful stories about their lives as he attempts to escape his own.
Later, how much later he doesn’t know, the night grows into its own instead of clinging to the day like a younger sibling. Particularly loud footsteps approach his booth and he opens his eyes slowly.
Claude doesn’t even try to look pleased. This is not a place for masks. This is a place for clichés and whatever demons they can’t escape during the daytime, with families and lives and purposes.
Again he hesitates and Claude, showing uncharacteristic patience, waits with eyes that bore into him and make him feel like perhaps at least part of his mind may still be his own. Eyes that make him feel like perhaps, even if he’s a drag racer on the road to hell, he has some company. The question has never been who will get there first; rather it’s which one of them will blow up along the way.
He’s pretty sure that he and Claude have their bets placed on the same person. At the thought, he raises his glass and allows the last of the bitter liquid to slide, unaided, down his throat.
Still, there are no real choices, and although his hesitation is a sign of him attempting to reassert his control, they both know that they are nothing more than minions to something they have seen only the tiniest edge of.
Claude doesn’t touch him as he rises, not until much later in the night when they can both be delirious and absent about it, trying to shed their calculated personas like so many clothes and finding that perhaps the personas aren’t separate from them at all. It is a night of ignorance and shelter in the feel of calloused hands, of like minds.
So when he leaves the bar on a Thursday, follows Claude’s car with his own, he thinks not of Sandra and the misery she doesn’t acknowledge. He doesn’t contemplate the things he will have to do tomorrow or the things he has done today.
He lives in the feeling of the moment and, when he wakes up on Friday with nothing but sheets touching his bare skin, he thinks of next Thursday.
Survival, he has learned, isn’t about living in the moment. It isn’t about living at all.
Survival, for him, has become the struggle of keeping himself from complete and utter isolation while not destroying those who help him to accomplish that task.
He isn’t sure he’s doing a very good job but, as with all things, it will have to do for now.
There is no other choice.
Author: puckkit
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character: Bennet/Claude [implied]
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the show Heroes, therefore all of this is false and made up from my charmingly eccentric imagination.
Author's Notes: Working on my third chapter for my other story and what should appear, but this. Figures. No spoilers (unless you don't know who Claude is). Set before Claire, during their joint time at the Company. Cut-text lyrics from Poses by Rufus Wainwright.
He goes out every Thursday night, draped in a heavy feeling that resembles resignation but is, in truth, a distant cousin of despair. He doesn’t admit to strong emotions, those that bog the senses down in a thick mire of too much thought and not enough action, but just because those feelings aren’t acknowledged doesn’t mean they aren’t real.
So he goes out on Thursday.
Sandra knows, and although he’s never given her an explanation, she doesn’t ask questions. He aches a little when he thinks about it, the way she implicitly trusts him (or trusts that he won’t tell her the truth, were she to ask) so he doesn’t think about it.
His head is a minefield of situations, places, and people he can’t think about, but he’s grown accustomed to it. It’s been a long time since his mind belonged to him.
Just another perk of the job, he supposes wryly.
On Thursday he returns from work to a barren house, Sandra having volunteered for the past year or so to help out at the local animal shelter. Friday afternoon he will come home to stories of the loneliness she witnessed, a glimmer of harsh empathy hiding in her eyes. The force of the ache he will feel will almost be enough to bring him to... but it doesn’t matter. Not on Thursday.
On Thursday, he leaves before the sun has completely set.
The keys jangle in his hand, clanging disharmoniously as he climbs into his car and pauses.
There’s always a moment of hesitation, no matter how many Thursdays he spends in this routine. He pauses and contemplates his house, its empty rooms and the single light left on in the living room. Inevitably, though, he retreats from his flawless image of a life and allows memory to guide him away.
The day hovers on the edge of night, falling slowly and peaceably with rain lingering on the edges of street lamps, lending a glimmering sheen to the pavement.
The bar is less than half full, with corner booths remaining unoccupied as the majority of pasty, tired occupants flock towards others of their similar disposition. They congregate at the bar in the middle of the room, worshipping the bartender with weary faces and chipped fingernails, pausing for brief, meagre conversation.
But he doesn’t seek out the others. Instead, he finds the one booth away from the light and quiet noise and allows himself to settle into it. When the waitress comes around he doesn’t even glance up, orders a house brew and closes his eyes while the woman disappears with fast clicks of her heels.
The atmosphere washes over him and he goes along with it, lets himself travel from table to table, conversation to conversation. Puts together bits and pieces with more skill than one would think he had by looking at him, allows himself to concoct fanciful stories about their lives as he attempts to escape his own.
Later, how much later he doesn’t know, the night grows into its own instead of clinging to the day like a younger sibling. Particularly loud footsteps approach his booth and he opens his eyes slowly.
Claude doesn’t even try to look pleased. This is not a place for masks. This is a place for clichés and whatever demons they can’t escape during the daytime, with families and lives and purposes.
Again he hesitates and Claude, showing uncharacteristic patience, waits with eyes that bore into him and make him feel like perhaps at least part of his mind may still be his own. Eyes that make him feel like perhaps, even if he’s a drag racer on the road to hell, he has some company. The question has never been who will get there first; rather it’s which one of them will blow up along the way.
He’s pretty sure that he and Claude have their bets placed on the same person. At the thought, he raises his glass and allows the last of the bitter liquid to slide, unaided, down his throat.
Still, there are no real choices, and although his hesitation is a sign of him attempting to reassert his control, they both know that they are nothing more than minions to something they have seen only the tiniest edge of.
Claude doesn’t touch him as he rises, not until much later in the night when they can both be delirious and absent about it, trying to shed their calculated personas like so many clothes and finding that perhaps the personas aren’t separate from them at all. It is a night of ignorance and shelter in the feel of calloused hands, of like minds.
So when he leaves the bar on a Thursday, follows Claude’s car with his own, he thinks not of Sandra and the misery she doesn’t acknowledge. He doesn’t contemplate the things he will have to do tomorrow or the things he has done today.
He lives in the feeling of the moment and, when he wakes up on Friday with nothing but sheets touching his bare skin, he thinks of next Thursday.
Survival, he has learned, isn’t about living in the moment. It isn’t about living at all.
Survival, for him, has become the struggle of keeping himself from complete and utter isolation while not destroying those who help him to accomplish that task.
He isn’t sure he’s doing a very good job but, as with all things, it will have to do for now.
There is no other choice.