fic: passage (6/10) (elle/claire)
Title: Passage (6/10)
Rating: NC-17 (language, disturbing imagery, graphic sex)
Pairing: Elle/Claire; side Adam/Elle, Adam/Claire
Timeline: Post-“ So”
Prompt: “fear” at 10_themes
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing with them
Teaser: Ten stages between one thing and the next, between lust and love.
6, fear
Claire’s wrong.
Elle has known it for a little while, been aware of a vague fear in the back of her mind, but now the knowledge of it sits in her gut as if someone’s knotted her insides, a bleak realization that’s made as she sits in her bed in a damp shirt.
Hands shaking, brain struggling to work through the awareness, she sheds rumpled, sweaty clothes and washes herself off before pulling on new clothes. When she finally climbs into bed, she dreams of Claire slipping into her room in the dark, working her open and taking her apart until she’s in tears because she can’t touch Claire back.
Waking up as sparks crawl frantically between her fingers, she spends the night staring at the wall in the dark.
Claire’s gone again the next morning.
When Elle dials her cell phone number after two nights in which she barely sleeps, she gets no answer and isn't brave enough to try again.
That night she doesn’t sleep at all.
She thinks about asking Sandra for help but then dismisses that thought, terrified.
Noah is a more constant thought, going to him with this, telling him everything.
Except-
Noah still scares her and the scars her daddy left go deeper than the bullet wound he gave her.
Elle’s left feeling more alone than ever, restless and anxious.
There’s something brittle and painful inside her now, and while she’s felt something similar at rare moments in her life, this is new, jarring in its intensity. It hits her when she doesn’t expect it, strikes her with a chill down her spine and a hard shudder of some vicious emotion, leaves her frantic to-
She doesn’t know but it’s there, tucked away with the brittle something inside her.
Because Claire is wrong and she has no idea what to do with this information, can only think about how she knows she’s a sick girl, how she has never needed the labels to know is and has become increasingly aware of the thing inside her.
But she has no actual understanding of how it happened.
She can only barely remember empty places in her head that she knows will never come back to her, can only vaguely recollect long days spent with cotton in her skull and a sting in her arm, people coming in to peer at her and poke at her, see how she made the needles jump.
She remembers when she learned to control her power enough to leave her own room and travel around the facility more clearly though, and that scares her. Because she remembers zapping the orderlies when nobody was looking because it was always fun to see people jump the way they only did when you hurt them, fun to hear the sounds they made.
Elle thinks about the sounds she makes when Claire’s with her, the way she jerks and whimpers-
And the chill’s back as the brittle thing inside her trembles dangerously.
Elle has no idea where Claire is actually staying beyond “with a friend”.
Too scared to go into Noah’s office, flustered by the emotional upheavals devastating her, she starts with what she knows from the last months of tense conflict- Claire’s apparently packed college schedule.
Once again, she steals Sandra’s car for her plan, sets out a little past dawn for the campus where Claire is studying. It’s not far away but it’s also not close, and it’s several teeth-grinding hours before she spots the sprawl of buildings, tracks the swarms of young people crawling through the university grounds.
Couples stroll hand in hand and single people talk into phones, large groups laughing together.
No sign of the small form she’s looking for, of long blonde curls.
So she circles the property as well as she can, searching for any sign of Claire’s car.
But there’s nothing.
Hissing out an angry breath, she repeats her first plan, carefully sliding between lines of cars until she’s once again at her starting place and rolls to a stop, trying to think. She’s watched people sometimes on jobs but she’s not good at it, can’t focus on one thing long enough to spot whatever it is she’s looking for.
She remembers Claire mentioning some of her classes, the weird ones with the creepy pictures, but she doesn’t think popping her head into every classroom is going to work.
Wired, too restless to think, she parks as close to the front building as she can and leaves the car, stalking fast across the street and ducking warily past an elderly security guard near the doors. Walking faster, she flings herself into the building as soon as the doors slide open, blinking a few times before cautiously heading for the woman typing at a computer.
Stands there awkwardly as the woman keeps typing, finally clearing her throat nervously.
Clears it again, and smiles innocently when the woman looks up, eyebrow cocked. “I’m looking for someone.”
“I see.”
Elle takes a slow breath, holds it, and finally lets it out even more slowly, trying to ignore the pressure under her skin.
“My sister,” she finally offers, ridiculous thought popping into her head and allowing her to create the lie out of thin air. “She goes here and I’ve been out of the picture for a while, my parents…” She makes her smile a bit more tragic, a little sad. “I’m only going to be in town for a few days and all I know is that she goes here…”
“I really don’t-”
“I just want to know if she’s taking classes today, that’s all.”
“That’s privileged information,” the woman insists but Elle has some idea of what she’s doing now.
“I heard that she’s taking history classes but I don’t know what her schedule is,” she babbles, digging into her pocket for her wallet with the fake ID Noah has for her. She doesn’t have any pictures in there but she flips through it anyway, swiping at her face and allowing her hair to fall forward a little. “Her name is Claire Bennet-” She stops, freezes, catching the way the woman’s eyebrows immediately shoot up.
“Claire?” She frowns, reaches up to fiddle with her nametag. “Small girl, long blonde hair-”
“Oh, yes-”
“She’s such a sweetheart,” the woman announces, entire face lighting up as she leans forward, beaming. “Always chats with me when she comes in and, oh, she’s got the prettiest smile I’ve ever seen.”
“She does-” Elle realizes her own weakness, corrects herself. “My sister does.”
“Well, I didn’t see her today but I usually don’t today…” The woman trails off for a moment before finally pointing vaguely to the side. “This is when she usually gets in, you might see her over in the science building, but I don’t know exactly the class. You can go wait over there- it’s just a short walk- there’s a bench by the elevators-”
“So I can sit?”
“Oh, of course, and you can catch her if you just wait, she always does the same thing.”
“Thank you.”
“Good luck, dear-”
But Elle’s already gone, walking out the sliding doors and heading straight for the science building, feeling ridiculously out of place but intent enough on her search that she can ignore the awkwardness.
She’s almost there, in the shadow of the building and muttering to herself about what she’s actually going to do if she finds Claire, when she happens to glance up just in time to see the side doors open, a man step out easily.
For just a second, she’s blessedly ignorant.
But then Elle really sees him, and it takes only a heartbeat for her to recognize him.
She feels hot for a moment, seared all the way through, nails digging hard into her palms as her breath catches in her throat and then struggles into her lungs, as her body tightens-
Still except for the trembling that’s started, she watches with wide eyes as he turns and sets off down the sidewalk, looking as attractive as ever in his jeans and a white button-up with what she knows are pleasant blue eyes behind his dark glasses. Figure moving with the easy stride she’s never seen in anyone else, he looks completely normal, albeit a little odd, something too calm about his movements that somehow belie how young he looks.
It’s been years but-
She’d slipped into his room countless times through the years, realized early on just what kind of fun it was to play with a doll that would put himself back together after she broke him. He’d let her most of the time, didn’t seem to care what she did to him, but he’d hit her once when she’d gone too far. She'd been thrown off the bed and to the floor by a hard blow to her face that had left her cheek swollen, her pride splintered before she could realize what had happened.
When she’d gone back to his room a few days later, infuriated by the bruise that decorated her face and how badly she had embarrassed herself, her father had ended up coming in to stop her and that had been the end of her fun with Adam.
Now- now he’s crossing the street after leaving Claire’s college building, folding himself into a car. The lights flicker on, red dim in the sunlight, and he pulls out of his parking place, turns cleanly out of the lot.
Her heart thuds painfully but the angry heat is gone and now she just feels cold.
Rating: NC-17 (language, disturbing imagery, graphic sex)
Pairing: Elle/Claire; side Adam/Elle, Adam/Claire
Timeline: Post-“ So”
Prompt: “fear” at 10_themes
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing with them
Teaser: Ten stages between one thing and the next, between lust and love.
6, fear
Claire’s wrong.
Elle has known it for a little while, been aware of a vague fear in the back of her mind, but now the knowledge of it sits in her gut as if someone’s knotted her insides, a bleak realization that’s made as she sits in her bed in a damp shirt.
Hands shaking, brain struggling to work through the awareness, she sheds rumpled, sweaty clothes and washes herself off before pulling on new clothes. When she finally climbs into bed, she dreams of Claire slipping into her room in the dark, working her open and taking her apart until she’s in tears because she can’t touch Claire back.
Waking up as sparks crawl frantically between her fingers, she spends the night staring at the wall in the dark.
Claire’s gone again the next morning.
When Elle dials her cell phone number after two nights in which she barely sleeps, she gets no answer and isn't brave enough to try again.
That night she doesn’t sleep at all.
She thinks about asking Sandra for help but then dismisses that thought, terrified.
Noah is a more constant thought, going to him with this, telling him everything.
Except-
Noah still scares her and the scars her daddy left go deeper than the bullet wound he gave her.
Elle’s left feeling more alone than ever, restless and anxious.
There’s something brittle and painful inside her now, and while she’s felt something similar at rare moments in her life, this is new, jarring in its intensity. It hits her when she doesn’t expect it, strikes her with a chill down her spine and a hard shudder of some vicious emotion, leaves her frantic to-
She doesn’t know but it’s there, tucked away with the brittle something inside her.
Because Claire is wrong and she has no idea what to do with this information, can only think about how she knows she’s a sick girl, how she has never needed the labels to know is and has become increasingly aware of the thing inside her.
But she has no actual understanding of how it happened.
She can only barely remember empty places in her head that she knows will never come back to her, can only vaguely recollect long days spent with cotton in her skull and a sting in her arm, people coming in to peer at her and poke at her, see how she made the needles jump.
She remembers when she learned to control her power enough to leave her own room and travel around the facility more clearly though, and that scares her. Because she remembers zapping the orderlies when nobody was looking because it was always fun to see people jump the way they only did when you hurt them, fun to hear the sounds they made.
Elle thinks about the sounds she makes when Claire’s with her, the way she jerks and whimpers-
And the chill’s back as the brittle thing inside her trembles dangerously.
Elle has no idea where Claire is actually staying beyond “with a friend”.
Too scared to go into Noah’s office, flustered by the emotional upheavals devastating her, she starts with what she knows from the last months of tense conflict- Claire’s apparently packed college schedule.
Once again, she steals Sandra’s car for her plan, sets out a little past dawn for the campus where Claire is studying. It’s not far away but it’s also not close, and it’s several teeth-grinding hours before she spots the sprawl of buildings, tracks the swarms of young people crawling through the university grounds.
Couples stroll hand in hand and single people talk into phones, large groups laughing together.
No sign of the small form she’s looking for, of long blonde curls.
So she circles the property as well as she can, searching for any sign of Claire’s car.
But there’s nothing.
Hissing out an angry breath, she repeats her first plan, carefully sliding between lines of cars until she’s once again at her starting place and rolls to a stop, trying to think. She’s watched people sometimes on jobs but she’s not good at it, can’t focus on one thing long enough to spot whatever it is she’s looking for.
She remembers Claire mentioning some of her classes, the weird ones with the creepy pictures, but she doesn’t think popping her head into every classroom is going to work.
Wired, too restless to think, she parks as close to the front building as she can and leaves the car, stalking fast across the street and ducking warily past an elderly security guard near the doors. Walking faster, she flings herself into the building as soon as the doors slide open, blinking a few times before cautiously heading for the woman typing at a computer.
Stands there awkwardly as the woman keeps typing, finally clearing her throat nervously.
Clears it again, and smiles innocently when the woman looks up, eyebrow cocked. “I’m looking for someone.”
“I see.”
Elle takes a slow breath, holds it, and finally lets it out even more slowly, trying to ignore the pressure under her skin.
“My sister,” she finally offers, ridiculous thought popping into her head and allowing her to create the lie out of thin air. “She goes here and I’ve been out of the picture for a while, my parents…” She makes her smile a bit more tragic, a little sad. “I’m only going to be in town for a few days and all I know is that she goes here…”
“I really don’t-”
“I just want to know if she’s taking classes today, that’s all.”
“That’s privileged information,” the woman insists but Elle has some idea of what she’s doing now.
“I heard that she’s taking history classes but I don’t know what her schedule is,” she babbles, digging into her pocket for her wallet with the fake ID Noah has for her. She doesn’t have any pictures in there but she flips through it anyway, swiping at her face and allowing her hair to fall forward a little. “Her name is Claire Bennet-” She stops, freezes, catching the way the woman’s eyebrows immediately shoot up.
“Claire?” She frowns, reaches up to fiddle with her nametag. “Small girl, long blonde hair-”
“Oh, yes-”
“She’s such a sweetheart,” the woman announces, entire face lighting up as she leans forward, beaming. “Always chats with me when she comes in and, oh, she’s got the prettiest smile I’ve ever seen.”
“She does-” Elle realizes her own weakness, corrects herself. “My sister does.”
“Well, I didn’t see her today but I usually don’t today…” The woman trails off for a moment before finally pointing vaguely to the side. “This is when she usually gets in, you might see her over in the science building, but I don’t know exactly the class. You can go wait over there- it’s just a short walk- there’s a bench by the elevators-”
“So I can sit?”
“Oh, of course, and you can catch her if you just wait, she always does the same thing.”
“Thank you.”
“Good luck, dear-”
But Elle’s already gone, walking out the sliding doors and heading straight for the science building, feeling ridiculously out of place but intent enough on her search that she can ignore the awkwardness.
She’s almost there, in the shadow of the building and muttering to herself about what she’s actually going to do if she finds Claire, when she happens to glance up just in time to see the side doors open, a man step out easily.
For just a second, she’s blessedly ignorant.
But then Elle really sees him, and it takes only a heartbeat for her to recognize him.
She feels hot for a moment, seared all the way through, nails digging hard into her palms as her breath catches in her throat and then struggles into her lungs, as her body tightens-
Still except for the trembling that’s started, she watches with wide eyes as he turns and sets off down the sidewalk, looking as attractive as ever in his jeans and a white button-up with what she knows are pleasant blue eyes behind his dark glasses. Figure moving with the easy stride she’s never seen in anyone else, he looks completely normal, albeit a little odd, something too calm about his movements that somehow belie how young he looks.
It’s been years but-
She’d slipped into his room countless times through the years, realized early on just what kind of fun it was to play with a doll that would put himself back together after she broke him. He’d let her most of the time, didn’t seem to care what she did to him, but he’d hit her once when she’d gone too far. She'd been thrown off the bed and to the floor by a hard blow to her face that had left her cheek swollen, her pride splintered before she could realize what had happened.
When she’d gone back to his room a few days later, infuriated by the bruise that decorated her face and how badly she had embarrassed herself, her father had ended up coming in to stop her and that had been the end of her fun with Adam.
Now- now he’s crossing the street after leaving Claire’s college building, folding himself into a car. The lights flicker on, red dim in the sunlight, and he pulls out of his parking place, turns cleanly out of the lot.
Her heart thuds painfully but the angry heat is gone and now she just feels cold.