Heroes fic: "perfect just like me" (Sylar/Claire)
Title: perfect just like me
Author: Steph (andbless_mybaby)
Pairing: Sylar/Claire
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: serious non-con and general Sylar-as-predator ickiness.
Spoilers: Up to, and including #1.18, “Parasite.”
Summary: “Lovely girl, you’re the murder in my world, dressing coffins for the souls I’ve left behind.”
Word count: 3,462
A/N: Inspired heavily by the lyrics to the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Ava Adore,” to which this fic also owes its title. Writing this made me feel more than a little dirty! It doesn’t take spoilers to say that, by the time the hiatus is over, this will be seriously AU.
~+~
Claire came to slowly, her vision slipping in and out of variegated layers of dark as she swam upwards through the depths of unconsciousness. When she finally became aware, she found herself bound in a room she did not recognize, her wrist strapped to the wall with thick leather braces.
Ohshitohshitohshit she thought, fear like a hot net over her head, face, and chest.
Instinctively, she tried to yank her arms down. The straps, however, were tight and have no give, and she knew she’d dislocate something if she kept pulling - that sort of thing tended to happen when you didn’t let pain stop you. She tried to clear all the panic from her brain, but her terrified thoughts were like so many marbles on a table - rolling everywhere, scattering, unable to sweep up.
She looked around, and saw that she was in what seemed like a closet, it was so small. It had to be someone’s room, though- there was too much stuff cluttered in the infinitesimally cramped space. There was one of those fold-down beds - she could see the edges of the sheets sticking out- and a little table with a stack of papers and (ohshitohshit… chill, Claire, can’t get it) a cell phone on it. There was a plastic laundry basket with some clothes on it resting atop two pairs of men’s shoes, and a laptop plugged into the wall where the bed would fold down. A bare light bulb was screwed into a socket in the ceiling. Oh, and the freaking industrial-quality leather mounted on the wall.
Wracking her brain to try and remember what had happened to her, she found that she still felt fuzzy around the edges, and that the room was still spinning if she held her head up. That means drugs, she thought. She had been in her room… well, the room that had been given to her at her grandmother’s oversized, insanely opulent home. It was still a bit boggling to refer to Mrs. Petrelli (call me whatever you are comfortable with, dear heart) that way. They had dinner with - Nathan - which was its own ten kinds of bizarre, and she had gone to bed, and watched something stupid on TV. She was dozing off, thinking of how, a few weeks ago, she’d be calling one of her girlfriends to prattle about “American Idol” right about this time, then…
Oh, god. Yes. She remembered now.
Him opening the door and walking into the barely-could-call it-a room would have jogged her memory, regardless. Ducking his head under the low frame of the doorway, sliding off his jacket, grinning his jackal’s smile…
“Sylar” she said quietly.
“Hello, Claire” he said as he looked around cursorily for a place to lay his jacket, before dropping it on the floor. “It’s good to see you awake.”
“Would have been better if you hadn’t knocked me out and kidnapped me” she muttered.
“Ah, but then we would not have had this time together, would we?” he parried her calmly. As if she wasn’t there, he flipped open the cell phone on the table, checked that he had no messages, and took his shoes off. “For the record,” he told her. “We are in an abandoned miners’ lodging in West Virginia. I thought you might enjoy the solitude of the mountains. You can make all the noise you want, and no-one will hear you.” He grinned at her. “You see, of course, where that has its benefits.”
She didn’t reply, but her mouth went dry, and she tried to wrap her brain around that last factoid. Geography had never been her forte, so she thought New York to West Virginia… that’s, um, down and to the left? (Southwest, you retard.) OK. So one inch equals, like, five hundred miles? Or is that one hundred miles? Oh my god…”
“Eight and a half hours by car” he said coolly. She stared at him in shock. “Don’t worry, Claire. I didn’t read your mind. Can’t do that one yet. But your face is very easy to read, and that’s something anyone can do, yes?”
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked him angrily. “If you wanted to kill me…”
“I would have” he finished brightly. “Just like your daddy. Two bird with one stone, as they say. Well, one bird and one indestructible cheerleader.” He looked amused at the witticism. “But that’s not how the saying goes.”
Claire felt a rush of vertigo. The room spun, and she got dizzy, dizzy from standing still.
“Nathan?” she whispered. “He’s…”
“One dead politician,” Sylar confirmed.
“You… you…” Claire began, hot tears of bereavement for the father she hadn’t really gotten to know stinging her cheeks.
“Flying” Sylar continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Great. Beautiful thing. I thought about swooping you out here in my arms, very Lois Lane and all, but the luggage is a bitch, and there’s no CD player.”
“Sylar-” Claire hissed.
“Gabriel” he corrected her. “You may call me Gabriel, or Gabe, if you wish.”
“Your name is Sylar, you bastard!”
“Yes, well, I know my name, Claire” he replied patiently. “But I thought you and I, you know, had real intimacy between us. Both of us here, and you like this, so ready for me…” he gestured at her, and she shuddered. “I thought it was more fitting. I do not let anyone else call me that anymore.”
“You’re fucking demented” she sobbed. “What, you decided you needed to play with me before you ate my brain?”
“On the contrary” he replied, drawing a hand to his chest as if offended. “I have no intention of killing you.”
“What?” she exclaimed, disbelieving what she heard.
“Claaaiiire” he drawled. “Remember your little prom? Remembered when I killed your friend? Huh. Should have known better. She wasn’t nearly as pretty as you are. Not nearly as sweet. And certainly not special, like you.” He shook his head in a mockery of sadness. “That sucked. Sucked for me, sucked for you… well, really sucked for her.” He grinned. “Yeah. What was her name again?”
“Jackie.”
“Jackie!” he smiled, pleased. “Of course. Yes. Poor Jackie.”
“You’re sick” she told him sharply. “You need a freaking intervention.”
He laughed softly at this.
“Claire, I’m sure I know what this seems like to you…” he dropped his gaze from her to the cuffs of his shirt as he undid them, and began to roll the sleeves to his elbows. “But, I assure you, my aims are all for the good.”
She glared at him.
“People like your adopted father's cohorts and Dr. Suresh want a plan for us, Claire.” He stood up, apparently done fiddling with his shirt, and crossed the space between them.
He stood before her, smirking inscrutably. She refused, refused to meet his eyes. He put his hands forward, and she flinched, but he shook his head lightly and showed her his palms up, not touching. Two inches from her, maybe, but not touching.
“Thing is, I’ve got my own plan,” he told her. “I’m going to keep making myself better. More perfect. I’m going to be the ideal.”
“The ideal freak” she challenged him.
“Yes” he confirmed. “And such a specimen needs a fitting companion, I think.”
This stopped her dead in her (immobile) tracks. “No. That would not be me.”
“So sure about that, Claire? I’ve been thinking about it, and you and me might have more in common that you’d think.”
He reached a hand out, and affectionately stroked her disheveled curls. Claire ground her teeth, and shot him a glare of cold death. Sylar stepped back into his previous position.
“Special” he murmured. “More special than all of them.”
Claire spat on him. Sylar chuckled as he wiped it off.
“Such spirit” he said admiringly, tensing the tips of his fingers. “Claire. You almost make me regret my previous decision not to kill you for that talent of yours… but I think this will be even more fun.”
And then he flexed his palm, and she felt him. He was not touching her, but she felt his hands, exactly on the places they would have been if he were a step closer, brushing her shoulders under her sweater, thumbs on her collarbones. She screamed, and she saw him curl his fingers in midair, felt the corresponding threat dig into her skin.
“Here’s the deal, baby girl.” He bent slightly, so that he was at eye level with her. “You keep up all that, and I stop playing with you. We’re having fun here, you and me. But if you don’t appreciate that, I can turn off the fun, just like that.”
She shivered almost uncontrollably as he straightened again. He turned his back to her.
“Have you ever been touched by a man? Sexually?” His voice drifted over his shoulder. “Claire? I don’t think so. You don’t smell like it. Not like a whore.”
“Sy… S-s-ss… Sylar….”
“Gabriel” he corrected her, spinning around again. “Gabriel. No, Claire, I do not think that you have ever had that experience, beautiful as you are. I don’t think you’ve ever let yourself be pawed by some idiotic boy.”
And then he had his hands before him again, and her sweater was being rent down the middle. She could hear it tearing, watch the yarn break and unravel as the center seam split as if dragged along the surface of a knife. A cry stuck in her throat, and she felt the split halves of the garment hang by her sides, loose off her arms with the front gaping open.
He laid a palm -really and truly, skin on skin- against her bare side, and this, she thought, was worse than any way he could violate her telekinetically.
“So sweet, baby girl.” He was nuzzling her hair, brushing his nose against her temple as he pressed his hands lightly against her middle. “So soft.”
She throttled her arms in the straps, and twisted her body, contorting away from him as best she could.
“Now, now” he tutted, spinning a finger in her face. “Struggling will hurt you, Claire. And believe it or not, there’s nothing I want less.”
She focused on his hands, wondering what he would do next. Hands and mind, they were both stronger than her. He must have caught her staring at his hands, because he looked down, grinned boyishly, and clasped them behind his back.
“Is that disturbing you?” he asked solicitously. “Because it’s just a habit of mine, really. The hands? I don’t need them.” He shrugged. “You just get used to these things, you know?”
And then he showed her, by undoing the buttons of her skirt and the hooks of her boots, and sliding both down her legs. This time there was no force, not like with her top, but simply the non-presence of the fingers necessary to handle such small motor functions. The fasteners seemed to do the trick themselves, giving way to air, as Sylar watched each one fixedly, keeping his hands out of sight, as he promised, but widening his eyes or cocking a brow visibly at each challenge.
Claire was hysterical by now, body quaking with each heaving onslaught of sobs. Tears rolled freely down her face, and she screwed up her eyes tightly, as if willing herself not to see. She huddled in on herself, on her mostly bare body, as much as she could, given the restraints.
Stepping back, he lazily flicked open the button of his jeans, and met her eyes when dragging down the fly. His cock sprang free, thick and erect. Claire did not make a sound. He slid a hand down his stomach, and gripped the shaft forcibly, audibly sighing when he did so. Apparently more focused on watching her than his pleasure, he stroked himself a few time with no rhythm.
“Wow, Claire” he leered at her. “You see what you do to me?”
She tried to look away, but found that she could not, that the spectacle held her gaze as if spellbound.
“I’ve waited so long for this” he told her, breathing in deeply and rolling his eyes up. “To be here with you, like this. You know - ” he dropped his voice confidentially. “The first thing I did after I escaped from Mr. Glasses Man was jerk off on the thought of you in your little uniform, quivering in front of me on those steps.” He winked at her. “I have you to thank for getting me through all that torture, Claire. You kept me hard for months.”
“You disgust me” she told him, conjuring all the loathing and hatred she could muster… and coming up short, despite her best efforts.
Sylar came towards her, and although she twisted and craned, she was no match for him. He gripped her arms below the restraints until she settled down, too weakened by fear and sadness to fight more. She went limp, and his hands fell down to her sides. He held her up, supporting her so that her wrists did not chafe under the restraints, touched her body with perverse care, as if she was breakable.
And then he kissed her. His mouth was on hers, lighter than she expected, and she clamped her jaw down savagely, biting his lower lip. That just made him smile against her face, feeling the upward curve of his lips pull her own, and she tasted blood when he insinuated his tongue into her mouth.
He kissed her like that for a good long while - god knew how long - one-sided, though apparently enjoying it. He pressed his body against hers, and she could feel his erection, unflagged, pressing against her thigh.
“You’ll find that I am generous, Claire” he told her seriously. “I plan on putting your pleasure before my own.”
“No. No, no…” she pleaded, figuring out what he planned to do, the puzzle pieces flying into place on the ghastly picture as he knelt before her.
“Yes, yes, yes” he insisted, echoing her. “You’ve never had the opportunity to let a man treat you the way you ought to be treated.”
He was correct, of course. No-one… god, she never would have imagined… would have done this to her in her world. No-one would have tangled their fingers in her panties, her last cuirass, and pulled, skimming them off her struggling legs. (But not before crushing them in his fist and inhaling deeply, wolfishly, without trying to hide it.) Not tilted his face up like a penitent between her thighs, eyes closed, breathing her in like salvation.
His tongue darted out of his mouth and licked her, there, and Claire wanted to die. Longed for death on a visceral level deeper than shame, deeper than fear of her defiling her like this. He clenched her ass in his hands and mouthed her labia reverently. His eyelids fluttered shut, and this physicality, this willingness to get his hands dirty, as it were, was the scariest aspect of him. Sylar, the physical man, was so much more of this, that, everything than Sylar, anti-hero, was. He suckled her clit, and began to crook his index finger - his trepanning hand, his murder tool - at her entrance. He hummed tunelessly, meanderingly, and she felt the vibrations spread through the seat of her body as if he played her directly, like an instrument.
She had never felt like this. Her sense memory of that was a flame-flicker, a sweet haze she brought on when she touched herself. It was something she had learnt from experience, a slow-blooming beauty she had awoken in herself. Not dirty. Not shameless.
In contrast, his mouth - his damned, accursed mouth - was drawing guttural, animal noises out of her that she did not recognize, coaxing them from her lips as if pulled by an invisible string. His face was flush with the sweating, hot press of her inner thighs, his nose and chin assaulted by her bucking hips, but he did not seem to care. His mouth and hands and everything were one burning onslaught, and Claire was so wanton, so needful…
…and she was coming, half - screaming and half - sobbing, all over his face, and he just did not care. He lapped her hungrily, savoring the rush of fluids she presented him, slurping greedily.
She had tears in her eyes and her fingers tangled in her hair, wanting to rip it out by the roots when she looked down at him, at the tousled thatch of his dark hair where it tickled her thighs. She let out a low moan, half-sobbing as her oncoming quicksilver second orgasm ratcheted her nerves up as if pulled along a big wheel, her legs feeling weightless, senseless, dead weight with a swirling, bottomless nexus between her thighs, where he ate her out with the tenderest attention.
What surprised her, once she could get around to thinking coherently enough to deal with it, was that he was gentle with her. He took his time, stimulating her, teasing her, exploring her, until her traitorous body opened to him, and she accepted him without pain. With sick, twisted desire that was contradicted every moral, stripped off every shred of decency that she possessed.
And he would not stop talking.
“You’re my goddess, Claire” he told her. “I’m your supplicant. I could worship you, if you’d let me.”
“Shut up,” she wailed, heady from the tension he was building in her extremities, the riptide of yearning that his hands and lips and all those words created dragging her further and further from shore.
“All day” he swore. “All night. Don’t fight me. Don’t.”
And again, it was as if he could directly command her will, because she was losing the will to struggle. His gaze bore into her, so she closed her eyes, and tried to keep herself quiet and still.
When he was inside her -oh god, she could not think about it, though the sense memory was seared on the forefront of her consciousness- he enjoyed her at length, drawing out her pleasure with every languorous thrust, supporting her weight around his slender, solid hips as he fucked her slowly.
“Say my name, lover” he encouraged her. She was taut and strung out on the verge of bursting again, and, he reached between their sweating bodies and touched her clit, as if to send her plummeting over. “Say it for me.”
She bit her lips which were stubbornly shaping it, bit hard against the urge until she tasted copper for a second time. Her head was light, her body was heavy, she was being tossed around the seas of her senses like a doll, limp-necked and weak, so weak. He met her half-lidded gaze and winked at her, ran his tongue visibly over his teeth before licking her punctured (already healing) bottom lip, lapping her blood.
“Come for me, Claire” he said, perfectly composed.
And that was all it took. She screamed and fell, down, down, down, and distantly felt him, heard him grunt as he came, slamming her hips into the wall, kissing her deeply.
“I killed for you, lover” he told her coolly. “Your daddy, and your miserable uncle, and your little grandma, too. Think of that. That’s real. No-one could love you like I can.”
And, on that note, she blacked out again.
~+~
And then, later, he was holding her, caressing her, touching her lightly all over and brushing the tears from her eyes. He had taken her down from the wall, and pulled down the bed. She was cocooned in a blanket and he was fully clothed again, pressing her against his heart. For a brief second, she almost wanted to sink into the comfort of his embrace, just to feel a touch that didn’t burn, and she started wildly from that thought, going stiff all over, hard as cardboard in his touch. He ignored it, though, and smoothed over her angles, over her resistance.
“Shhh, baby girl, no more tears” he soothed her. “Calm down for me, now. Shhhh, baby, shhhh.”
And still she wept uncontrollably, crying like she wished her face would melt, ducking against his shirtfront.
“Yes, my sweet baby” he crooned, rocking her in his arms like an infant, like a beloved, dear thing. “I’ll be your daddy now. I’ll be everything you need.”
And she felt like she must be drugged again, because he was lulling her with the even cadence of his voice, soothing her like a hypnotic, petting her hair.
“That’s right, Claire, hide in me” he encouraged her. “Be in me. Love me. Want me.” She felt him smile against her forehead as she sank, helplessly, into his arms. “That’s right, baby. I’m all you have, now.”
~+~
End.
A/N (2): I am aware that Sylar’s rejection of his given name has been established firmly in canon. However, in conceiving this story, I imagined him insisting Claire use it. I think I at least tried to establish that he’d have his own reasons (so to speak) in wanting her to do so.