fic: passage (5/10) (elle/claire)
Title: Passage (5/10)
Rating: NC-17 (language, disturbing imagery, graphic sex)
Pairing: Elle/Claire; side Adam/Elle, Adam/Claire
Timeline: Post-“ So”
Prompt: “greed” at 10_themes
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing with them
Teaser: Ten stages between one thing and the next, between lust and love.
Notes: This is the only chapter I'm really wavery about, which is why there was such a long wait as I fiddled with it and fretted over it. Everything else? I got it. This one? Makes me nervous. Tell me if I failed, I need feedback on this one.
5, greed
Elle doesn’t sleep after Claire leaves her that night and she spends all of the next morning crying in the bathroom. The hours tick by but she can’t stop and between refusing to go downstairs for breakfast and the raging migraine that comes from the crying jag, she’s sick twice before she finally goes down when she knows the house is empty and no one will bother her.
She gags down a few saltines, and hates that she can’t swallow pills and so can’t take anything for the headache.
Drained, knowing she won’t sleep, she hobbles into the living room intending to watch whatever cartoons she can find at this time of day and eases down onto the couch, half-heartedly flipping through channels until she finds something on Nickelodeon. Intent on not crying anymore, she manages to make it through one cartoon before she starts looking around at the pictures in the living room and can’t look away.
She isn’t in any of them.
But Claire’s in most of them, and she fits in the frames and in Sandra’s arms where Noah can protect them all.
Elle is just Noah’s fancy new taser, and who says he actually cares about her at all?
It can’t mean anything that Sandra gives her extra pudding because she knows it’s Elle’s favorite dessert.
Same with Lyle, it didn’t mean anything when he pulled her aside and conspired with her to get into the Halloween candy that Noah and Sandra had brought for the trick-or-treaters. When he gave her the last Twix even though those were his favorite because she had done such a good job of keeping Sandra busy and he knew she liked them.
It can’t mean anything and still feel like this.
Because Claire-
Claire is just fucking her.
Head pounding, stomach aching, she wishes more than ever that Noah had just left her to die.
At least back then, she had thought things had made sense.
Not anymore, nothing makes sense anymore.
What’s worse, she doesn’t even know how to make things make sense again.
Because she can’t do the things other girls would do in her position.
She can’t go on spring break in a cute little bikini and flirt with other cute people in cute swimwear because she doesn’t know how to act with other people like that without weirding them out. She can’t sip tropical drinks right by the pool because the splashing spooks her when even a little touches her and when she spooks, she zaps, and things never go well after that-when she tried anyway, she learned the hard way she has to do it a good distance from the pool.
She doesn’t know what she likes to talk about, tries too hard and fumbles and gets upset.
She’s never gone on a roller coaster and she doesn’t know how to win a pretty girl a bear.
And none of that changes the fact that the vague ache she’s always felt has become something shredding her insides- she wants to do all the stuff on television you’re supposed to do when you like someone beyond just liking that person. She wants to whisper a little too loudly in movie theaters and sit too close in public, maybe even feed Claire in that overly cute way that people always complain about being too sappy.
Elle can’t compete.
She doesn’t know how.
Claire skips the next Friday and Noah’s cranky for the entire weekend.
He stalks around the house until Elle wants to jolt him, grind blue-white right into his skin because he’s scary when he’s like this and this is somehow worse than ever before because he keeps staring at her as if he can see into her head.
Elle spends as much of that weekend as she can in her room with her magazines.
When Monday finally rolls around, Noah abruptly heads out with a mutter about an emergency.
He’s gone for three days and Claire still hasn’t called.
The magazines are better than the happy pills ever were.
When Noah is gone, she slides her hand between her legs and pictures Claire in the magazines and pushes herself until she’s bucking and panting, eyes firmly glued to the glossy image open on the bed as her body tightens and locks up. But she keeps up the torture until she comes with a thin little cry into her mattress, keeps moving until she can’t anymore.
Fumbling, she snags the phone off the dresser with a wet hand, grips it tightly as she trembles.
But she doesn’t dial Claire’s number.
She doesn’t think she could survive Claire hanging up on her when she feels like this.
Elle has never felt like this before.
It’s as if someone’s cracked her open and scooped out some of her insides, and all that’s left is the stuff that hurts.
She can’t sleep, can only lay awake at night and stare up at the ceiling, unable to shut the light off.
She has no appetite but she eats because she knows she has to, picks through her food and puts some in her mouth and chews and then swallows. No matter what she adds to it, syrup or ketchup or salt, it all tastes like cardboard, settles in her stomach like a stone and just sits there until she pushes her plate away and excuses herself.
When she thinks about Claire, the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice, her hands shake and her lungs close.
She wants to scream, wants to hurt Claire but then she feels sick because she doesn’t want to hurt Claire anymore.
As she wanders around the house and tries to breathe, she can feel the ugly thing that used to be inside her, the thing that grew when she played with people in the rooms, twist into something else, something new, and now it’s eating away at her.
Elle can’t remember life ever feeling like this before.
Noah comes back with bags under his eyes and a tight look on his face, walks into his office with Sandra and tells Elle and Lyle to go out for a few hours before locking the door and snapping the blinds closed.
She and Lyle go out and wander around a nearby park for a few hours because neither of them wants to do anything.
What they really want is to put a glass against a door and listen in and though neither of them will ever admit it, they both know without any doubt that whatever is going on is all about Claire and they’re both too nosy for their own good.
So it’s weird at first- but then she finds the swings and this is familiar, flying up in the air and then back down, hair loose around her face and blinding her as she works herself into a chilled sweat. Finally, Lyle simply drops down into the sand exhausted until she wears herself out and lets them both leave the park, still avoiding any conversation.
On the way home, Lyle buys them both burgers and milkshakes and she actually tastes the food.
Claire calls the house that night with a promise to spend the weekend and Noah goes back to his restless stalking.
Elle’s been waiting for days, wants this.
But after long hours spent watching Claire out of the corner of her eyes, waiting for any glance her way, any flicker of emotion on a face that’s increasingly impossible to read, Elle almost cries in frustration when Claire comes to her bedroom again.
If Claire notices how miserable she is, the moisture gathering in her eyes, she doesn’t care.
Although it’s not surprising, so Elle doesn’t know why it hurts.
Instead, she grits her teeth and stares up at the ceiling in the dark, swallowing when the bed dips and a body settles almost on top of hers, shivers when Claire pulls the covers off and a mouth skims her body. Then teeth dig hard into her shoulder and she yelps helplessly, sudden pain making her jerk upwards, arms flying up to push against the other body.
A hand abruptly drops against her mouth and Elle shuts up, blinks rapidly and regrets it when the moisture escapes.
Claire’s hand leaves her mouth and she desperately wants it back because at least that touch is a little soft.
When she glances up warily and tries to focus in the dim light, wanting to reach up and touch a small body, she finds the same blank look on Claire’s face, only the slight twist of her mouth offering any kind of emotion when she searches for it.
Then fingers push inside her, flex, and she breathes out slowly, piecing together all the ways it could be different.
Imagines Claire touching her the way the Claire in her head does and tries to match it to what she’s feeling.
But it’s hard because the thrusts are too tight, too controlled, tug at her as her fingers curl into her sheets, as she tries to breathe through the vague ache from the rough angle that Claire’s using. She bites her lip and shifts her hips, lifts a leg and tries to make it feel a little better but Claire just moves brutally inside her and Elle freezes again, terrified she’s going to leave.
“Claire-” she whispers before she can stop herself, and the free hand pushes automatically against her mouth.
For a second, Elle almost panics, wants to push her hand away, wants to shove her off and away.
But then Claire presses her palm harder down against Elle’s mouth and she loses her balance and even though she’s wearing a shirt, Elle can suddenly feel the press of breasts against her own, the weight of a body on top of hers and the constant motion between her legs fumbles in mid thrust and-
Oh, god, it’s like when she touches herself, when the Claire is her head wants her.
Greedy desperation ignites and she can’t think, can’t stop herself, her hands catching at Claire’s hips and tugging her down, barely feeling the way Claire pushes violently against her as she finds the fly of her jeans, rips the zipper open and curves her hand beneath damp fabric. Hands shove at her shoulders but fingers hold her at the same time and there’s a grunt when her fingers push into Claire and begin to pump just to move, just to feel what’s there.
She can hear a whimper above her, a frenzied little sound, and Claire’s hips jerk down against her hand.
It’s clumsy, messy, and she keeps going the way she did so many months ago, other palm sliding up a soft belly to round breasts, gathering up one and kneading as well as she can without losing the pace she’s found. “Oh, god,” she hears and she thrusts more furiously, tries to see as well as she can in the dim light and wants to scream at what she can’t see because Claire’s head is bowed, hair falling around her face as she folds in on herself-
“Oh, god,” she hears again, and this time the voice breaks a little as Claire trembles and shakes and clenches around Elle desperately, as she shudders inside and Elle can’t see her face because she’s practically bent herself in half as she moves and keeps moving. “Oh, god, please-” Claire whimpers, and there it is, the way her whole body begins to go rigid.
She circles her palm around Claire’s middle when she feels it, pulls her down as Claire rocks and trembles, fingers digging into Elle’s shoulders as she finally lets out a breath against Elle’s chest, shivers violently and simply stops.
Her head falls forward against Elle’s chest and she just stops, breathing raggedly as her spine bends even more.
Claire just… stops, her body tight and her muscles tense.
She’s sweaty, that’s why Elle feels wetness between her breasts.
She’s still trembling, that’s why her shoulders are shaking.
Elle hasn’t come and she doesn’t care, she can’t, not when she feels like this.
But-
But there’s moisture on her chest- and Claire’s shoulders are shaking- and she’s suddenly heavy, a pressure bending Elle’s wrist in an odd angle as she tries to twist her fingers free and finds she can’t because Claire is perched awkwardly on top of her, hands still having a viselike grip on her shoulders.
Trapped, panicked, she rips her fingers free and it’s a little like being hit with a sledgehammer.
The hands on her shoulders slam her back and the top of her skull hits the wooden headboard, makes her groan a little in dazed pain as a body throws itself off the bed. She opens her eyes, reaches to click on the lamp but then the door is yanked open and Claire is gone, the door slamming shut behind so hard it makes the window rattle.
Elle drops her feet off the bed, is half on her feet when she hesitates, swallows and shudders and stops.
Slowly settles back down on the edge of the mattress and stares at the door that Claire disappeared through.
Her hand is cramped, still damp, and she hasn’t come.
Claire’s gone again and the wetness on her shirt isn’t sweat.
Rating: NC-17 (language, disturbing imagery, graphic sex)
Pairing: Elle/Claire; side Adam/Elle, Adam/Claire
Timeline: Post-“ So”
Prompt: “greed” at 10_themes
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing with them
Teaser: Ten stages between one thing and the next, between lust and love.
Notes: This is the only chapter I'm really wavery about, which is why there was such a long wait as I fiddled with it and fretted over it. Everything else? I got it. This one? Makes me nervous. Tell me if I failed, I need feedback on this one.
5, greed
Elle doesn’t sleep after Claire leaves her that night and she spends all of the next morning crying in the bathroom. The hours tick by but she can’t stop and between refusing to go downstairs for breakfast and the raging migraine that comes from the crying jag, she’s sick twice before she finally goes down when she knows the house is empty and no one will bother her.
She gags down a few saltines, and hates that she can’t swallow pills and so can’t take anything for the headache.
Drained, knowing she won’t sleep, she hobbles into the living room intending to watch whatever cartoons she can find at this time of day and eases down onto the couch, half-heartedly flipping through channels until she finds something on Nickelodeon. Intent on not crying anymore, she manages to make it through one cartoon before she starts looking around at the pictures in the living room and can’t look away.
She isn’t in any of them.
But Claire’s in most of them, and she fits in the frames and in Sandra’s arms where Noah can protect them all.
Elle is just Noah’s fancy new taser, and who says he actually cares about her at all?
It can’t mean anything that Sandra gives her extra pudding because she knows it’s Elle’s favorite dessert.
Same with Lyle, it didn’t mean anything when he pulled her aside and conspired with her to get into the Halloween candy that Noah and Sandra had brought for the trick-or-treaters. When he gave her the last Twix even though those were his favorite because she had done such a good job of keeping Sandra busy and he knew she liked them.
It can’t mean anything and still feel like this.
Because Claire-
Claire is just fucking her.
Head pounding, stomach aching, she wishes more than ever that Noah had just left her to die.
At least back then, she had thought things had made sense.
Not anymore, nothing makes sense anymore.
What’s worse, she doesn’t even know how to make things make sense again.
Because she can’t do the things other girls would do in her position.
She can’t go on spring break in a cute little bikini and flirt with other cute people in cute swimwear because she doesn’t know how to act with other people like that without weirding them out. She can’t sip tropical drinks right by the pool because the splashing spooks her when even a little touches her and when she spooks, she zaps, and things never go well after that-when she tried anyway, she learned the hard way she has to do it a good distance from the pool.
She doesn’t know what she likes to talk about, tries too hard and fumbles and gets upset.
She’s never gone on a roller coaster and she doesn’t know how to win a pretty girl a bear.
And none of that changes the fact that the vague ache she’s always felt has become something shredding her insides- she wants to do all the stuff on television you’re supposed to do when you like someone beyond just liking that person. She wants to whisper a little too loudly in movie theaters and sit too close in public, maybe even feed Claire in that overly cute way that people always complain about being too sappy.
Elle can’t compete.
She doesn’t know how.
Claire skips the next Friday and Noah’s cranky for the entire weekend.
He stalks around the house until Elle wants to jolt him, grind blue-white right into his skin because he’s scary when he’s like this and this is somehow worse than ever before because he keeps staring at her as if he can see into her head.
Elle spends as much of that weekend as she can in her room with her magazines.
When Monday finally rolls around, Noah abruptly heads out with a mutter about an emergency.
He’s gone for three days and Claire still hasn’t called.
The magazines are better than the happy pills ever were.
When Noah is gone, she slides her hand between her legs and pictures Claire in the magazines and pushes herself until she’s bucking and panting, eyes firmly glued to the glossy image open on the bed as her body tightens and locks up. But she keeps up the torture until she comes with a thin little cry into her mattress, keeps moving until she can’t anymore.
Fumbling, she snags the phone off the dresser with a wet hand, grips it tightly as she trembles.
But she doesn’t dial Claire’s number.
She doesn’t think she could survive Claire hanging up on her when she feels like this.
Elle has never felt like this before.
It’s as if someone’s cracked her open and scooped out some of her insides, and all that’s left is the stuff that hurts.
She can’t sleep, can only lay awake at night and stare up at the ceiling, unable to shut the light off.
She has no appetite but she eats because she knows she has to, picks through her food and puts some in her mouth and chews and then swallows. No matter what she adds to it, syrup or ketchup or salt, it all tastes like cardboard, settles in her stomach like a stone and just sits there until she pushes her plate away and excuses herself.
When she thinks about Claire, the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice, her hands shake and her lungs close.
She wants to scream, wants to hurt Claire but then she feels sick because she doesn’t want to hurt Claire anymore.
As she wanders around the house and tries to breathe, she can feel the ugly thing that used to be inside her, the thing that grew when she played with people in the rooms, twist into something else, something new, and now it’s eating away at her.
Elle can’t remember life ever feeling like this before.
Noah comes back with bags under his eyes and a tight look on his face, walks into his office with Sandra and tells Elle and Lyle to go out for a few hours before locking the door and snapping the blinds closed.
She and Lyle go out and wander around a nearby park for a few hours because neither of them wants to do anything.
What they really want is to put a glass against a door and listen in and though neither of them will ever admit it, they both know without any doubt that whatever is going on is all about Claire and they’re both too nosy for their own good.
So it’s weird at first- but then she finds the swings and this is familiar, flying up in the air and then back down, hair loose around her face and blinding her as she works herself into a chilled sweat. Finally, Lyle simply drops down into the sand exhausted until she wears herself out and lets them both leave the park, still avoiding any conversation.
On the way home, Lyle buys them both burgers and milkshakes and she actually tastes the food.
Claire calls the house that night with a promise to spend the weekend and Noah goes back to his restless stalking.
Elle’s been waiting for days, wants this.
But after long hours spent watching Claire out of the corner of her eyes, waiting for any glance her way, any flicker of emotion on a face that’s increasingly impossible to read, Elle almost cries in frustration when Claire comes to her bedroom again.
If Claire notices how miserable she is, the moisture gathering in her eyes, she doesn’t care.
Although it’s not surprising, so Elle doesn’t know why it hurts.
Instead, she grits her teeth and stares up at the ceiling in the dark, swallowing when the bed dips and a body settles almost on top of hers, shivers when Claire pulls the covers off and a mouth skims her body. Then teeth dig hard into her shoulder and she yelps helplessly, sudden pain making her jerk upwards, arms flying up to push against the other body.
A hand abruptly drops against her mouth and Elle shuts up, blinks rapidly and regrets it when the moisture escapes.
Claire’s hand leaves her mouth and she desperately wants it back because at least that touch is a little soft.
When she glances up warily and tries to focus in the dim light, wanting to reach up and touch a small body, she finds the same blank look on Claire’s face, only the slight twist of her mouth offering any kind of emotion when she searches for it.
Then fingers push inside her, flex, and she breathes out slowly, piecing together all the ways it could be different.
Imagines Claire touching her the way the Claire in her head does and tries to match it to what she’s feeling.
But it’s hard because the thrusts are too tight, too controlled, tug at her as her fingers curl into her sheets, as she tries to breathe through the vague ache from the rough angle that Claire’s using. She bites her lip and shifts her hips, lifts a leg and tries to make it feel a little better but Claire just moves brutally inside her and Elle freezes again, terrified she’s going to leave.
“Claire-” she whispers before she can stop herself, and the free hand pushes automatically against her mouth.
For a second, Elle almost panics, wants to push her hand away, wants to shove her off and away.
But then Claire presses her palm harder down against Elle’s mouth and she loses her balance and even though she’s wearing a shirt, Elle can suddenly feel the press of breasts against her own, the weight of a body on top of hers and the constant motion between her legs fumbles in mid thrust and-
Oh, god, it’s like when she touches herself, when the Claire is her head wants her.
Greedy desperation ignites and she can’t think, can’t stop herself, her hands catching at Claire’s hips and tugging her down, barely feeling the way Claire pushes violently against her as she finds the fly of her jeans, rips the zipper open and curves her hand beneath damp fabric. Hands shove at her shoulders but fingers hold her at the same time and there’s a grunt when her fingers push into Claire and begin to pump just to move, just to feel what’s there.
She can hear a whimper above her, a frenzied little sound, and Claire’s hips jerk down against her hand.
It’s clumsy, messy, and she keeps going the way she did so many months ago, other palm sliding up a soft belly to round breasts, gathering up one and kneading as well as she can without losing the pace she’s found. “Oh, god,” she hears and she thrusts more furiously, tries to see as well as she can in the dim light and wants to scream at what she can’t see because Claire’s head is bowed, hair falling around her face as she folds in on herself-
“Oh, god,” she hears again, and this time the voice breaks a little as Claire trembles and shakes and clenches around Elle desperately, as she shudders inside and Elle can’t see her face because she’s practically bent herself in half as she moves and keeps moving. “Oh, god, please-” Claire whimpers, and there it is, the way her whole body begins to go rigid.
She circles her palm around Claire’s middle when she feels it, pulls her down as Claire rocks and trembles, fingers digging into Elle’s shoulders as she finally lets out a breath against Elle’s chest, shivers violently and simply stops.
Her head falls forward against Elle’s chest and she just stops, breathing raggedly as her spine bends even more.
Claire just… stops, her body tight and her muscles tense.
She’s sweaty, that’s why Elle feels wetness between her breasts.
She’s still trembling, that’s why her shoulders are shaking.
Elle hasn’t come and she doesn’t care, she can’t, not when she feels like this.
But-
But there’s moisture on her chest- and Claire’s shoulders are shaking- and she’s suddenly heavy, a pressure bending Elle’s wrist in an odd angle as she tries to twist her fingers free and finds she can’t because Claire is perched awkwardly on top of her, hands still having a viselike grip on her shoulders.
Trapped, panicked, she rips her fingers free and it’s a little like being hit with a sledgehammer.
The hands on her shoulders slam her back and the top of her skull hits the wooden headboard, makes her groan a little in dazed pain as a body throws itself off the bed. She opens her eyes, reaches to click on the lamp but then the door is yanked open and Claire is gone, the door slamming shut behind so hard it makes the window rattle.
Elle drops her feet off the bed, is half on her feet when she hesitates, swallows and shudders and stops.
Slowly settles back down on the edge of the mattress and stares at the door that Claire disappeared through.
Her hand is cramped, still damp, and she hasn’t come.
Claire’s gone again and the wetness on her shirt isn’t sweat.