fic: passage (8/10) (elle/claire)
Title: Passage (8/10)
Rating: NC-17 (language, disturbing imagery, graphic sex)
Pairing: Elle/Claire; side Adam/Elle, Adam/Claire
Timeline: Post-“ So”
Prompt: “hate” at 10_themes
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing with them
Teaser: Ten stages between one thing and the next, between lust and love.
Notes: I have been epically busy with college and some real life changes. So I fail at the long space of time since my last update but be not afraid, I am firmly attached to finish this fic, trust me. And, again, dark stuff ahead.
8, hate
Elle has tried to be a good girl.
At first because the alternative possibility after Noah took her in was so much worse but then because of Claire.
Claire has changed things, redefined the world and everything in it and now Elle’s sure that she’s included in that- her insides feel different, more bruised than she can ever remember, and her skin feels thin, fragile, like it’ll split open. The closest she can compare it to are the eggs that Elle always breaks too hard when she tries to cook breakfast for the Bennets- the outside cracking and the insides spilling out so fast she can’t stop the mess.
And, more than just trying to be a good girl, she’s tried to do everything right.
From the attempts at cooking for Claire when she’s home to the sex toys to make what they do better, the jobs with Noah and the confusing minutes of bonding with Sandra, she’s tried to do everything right.
And none of that matters.
Her outside’s cracked open and she’s bleeding out, and it’s worse than what daddy did before Noah found her.
When Elle sleeps and dreams, Adam’s always there now- sometimes greeting her as if they’re old friends but usually just sitting comfortably at Claire’s side, as if she was fucking born for him or something. During one particularly jarring nightmare, he sits in the background when Claire’s fingers are pulling her into a painful climax, looking bored but not leaving.
Even her head is turning against her.
Claire comes back.
She shows up on the weekend with college stories and short laughter, ignores Elle unless it’s to offer a stinging comment about her hair or clothes. Adam’s presence is there now, and she can’t pull them apart in her head- when she looks at Claire, she remembers her frequent visits to Adam. When she catches sight of the strip of skin between Claire’s top and jeans, all it does is make her think of Adam tracing it, and she bites her cheek to keep from screaming.
By the time the house goes dark and Claire slips into her bedroom, Elle feels completely undone.
Remembering the last time they were together, Claire’s body heavy on top of hers, she grits her teeth and closes her eyes in the dark, trying not to think about Adam with Claire and wanting Claire too much to push her off and away.
It’s worse than ever before.
Claire’s tense on top of her, muscles tight as she peels fabric up and pushes harder than she has to, legs shifting to pin Elle down, mouth open and damp as her fingers curve between Elle’s thighs. There are sparks where Claire touches her but they sting, and she grimaces until her body gets used to it and her head falls back.
Her nails dig into her palms, and her teeth grind together, her insides tugging as Claire’s tongue sweeps broadly.
There’s a sound from Claire, a murmur, but when she tries to listen, it’s gone.
Behind her eyelids, Adam’s watching and, shaken, she blinks rapidly in the dark, feeling moisture gather and then escape, sliding down her face and into her hair. She opens her mouth, words about to escape, but then she clicks her teeth together again, goes out of her way to tilt her head back and away, watching shadows move in the dark.
Claire has become skilled enough, is insistent enough, that Elle comes despite how it feels, groan muffled behind her teeth as she shudders.
When it’s over, she feels a mouth open at her hip, hears quick breaths for a moment but then Claire pulls away, body lifting off the bed, turning away in the dark and opening the door, slipping out as quietly as she earlier slipped in.
In the dark, Adam is staring at her with chilly dislike.
Elle wakes up all at once when the sky is still dark.
There are images behind her eyes, and she feels numb where Claire touched her hours before.
After a few minutes spent feeling empty, she throws back her covers and gets out of bed.
Heading for the bathroom, she scrubs her skin red and then heads back to her room with what she needs. Blows her hair dry and brushes it neat, pulling it back to keep it off her neck; she dresses in the most casual clothes she has in the closet, snags her sneakers and starts down the hall.
Stopping halfway to the stairs, she finds Claire’s room door open, Claire standing shirtless in the doorway of her closet as she selects what she’s going to wear for the day. Her feet are bare under her jeans and she must have used the shower while Elle was using the blow dryer because her hair looks damp in its ponytail.
At this angle, Claire can’t see her, shouldn’t know she’s here.
Right.
So Elle lets her eyes follow the lines of her back, her spine, the sweep of her neck and shoulders.
Claire turns a little to reach into the closet, the scrape of a hanger promising she’s still searching for what she’s looking for, and Elle can see the swell of a breast. It’s more skin than the older woman can actually remember seeing in months but the heat it causes is only vague warmth, and she ignores it even as she enjoys the sight.
“What if Noah walks by?” she asks after a minute, emotion feeling oddly muted.
“He left early,” Claire says without startling, “and Lyle’s already at school.” She finally pulls on one of those tank tops she likes so much, not gifting Elle with a glance as she picks out something soft and white and then closes the closet. “I’ve got plans today, do you want something?”
“I was just…”
Elle trails off, hesitating for the first time as she watches Claire slip on ridiculously green flip-flops, muscles in her arms flexing as she opens the white thing from before and draws that on, leaving the worn-looking shirt open as she grabs her purse she brought the night before, glances through it and then finally looks up at Elle.
Claire looks like a real girl, looks like she’s ready to go to the beach with her little friends, sneak away to make out behind a dune with some surfer guy and giggle about getting to whatever base she got to.
But there’s nothing on her face and everything in Elle somehow… settles.
“I need a ride.”
“You can’t drive anymore?”
“You’re going out anyway.” She takes a minute, decides on a lie without any real trouble. “Noah was supposed to take me this morning but he must have forgot. I’ll call him later to bring me back, but you’re going out.” Something kind of… twitches on Claire’s face but Elle doesn’t know what it is. “Where are you going?”
Claire doesn’t say anything, still staring at her, eyes dark and wary and sort of… blank.
“So?” she prods, pressing her fingers against the doorframe absently, steadying herself.
“Fine,” Claire says without blinking, pushing past her down the hall. “Why not?”
By the time Elle gets down the stairs, Claire has already yelled back a goodbye to her mother and is out the front door, halfway to the car. Moving faster as she realizes what’s going on, Elle jerks the door open as Claire starts the ignition, flings herself clumsily into her seat as the car lurches back out of the driveway.
She slams the door, glances over in half-hearted annoyance, but Claire has already put on her glasses.
Elle is being baked alive.
“I thought you had air in this car.”
“Just open the window.”
Elle searches for the switch, breathes out a sigh as the glass slides down and wind strikes her face, blasts away some of the heat that’s probably been building in the damn car since Claire parked the night before.
Beside her, Claire seems unbothered by the oven she’s sitting in despite how flushed and sweaty she is.
No, she’s still wearing her glasses, and she still looks blank and stiff and fake, and there’s nothing there except for a new edge in her voice when she asks, for the third time, “Where am I taking you?”
Elle doesn’t let herself respond, tongue pressed against her teeth as she stares out the window, keeping an eye on the streets that they pass. There’s the convenience store with the really bad muffins, and the place that sells the good Slushos, and she points at an upcoming turn, offers a careful, “Right.”
Down another street, she points again, waits as Claire slows and then stops as she reaches the fence.
When she finally looks over, searches for any emotion, there’s nothing on Claire’s face, no response to Elle’s choice of a destination. Instead, Claire just looks… bored, fingers loose around the steering wheel.
But things still feel… settled inside Elle and the world still feels comfortably muted so the sting is only a pressure that she shrugs off, too mellow to hesitate now. “I followed you,” she says because there’s nothing else to say and she’s not good with words anyway. “You have a little love nest with Adam.” She hears herself take a breath, let it out. “You do know what kind of shit he’s done, right?”
“Nothing worse than you.”
Still nothing to find on her face, in her voice, and those stupid glasses…
“Are you having sex with him, too?”
Elle knows, she knows, but the words slip out as she stares at Claire’s profile, searches for anything… and the muted feeling is gone before she realizes it is, her insides raw and exposed again, nails biting into her palms.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elle doesn’t mean to ask but then the words are out and it doesn’t matter because Claire kind of startles a little, her shoulder jerking and her tongue flicking out to lick her lips. A twitch like before, gone before Elle can grasp it, and then she says, “you wouldn’t understand” in a voice Elle can’t recognize.
After months of waiting for something, Elle panics when it’s there.
“I had sex with him too,” she blurts, wanting Claire to know that fucking Adam isn’t such a hard thing to do.
“Yeah, I know, he told me.” Her voice is blank again as she takes her glasses off, folds them and drops them to the side, pulling back away from the fence. “He said it was like that thing with the cattle prod I read about once.” Elle can’t say anything, rattled at the fact that Adam actually did tell her, and Claire adds, “That wasn’t all the time, I know. He said he actually liked some of the free sex after all those years without, but-” Claire stops, glances over at Elle blandly. “He said he’d drown you if he ever saw you again.”
Elle thinks about that, Adam drowning her, and swallows down the bile it causes.
“You’re having sex with him.”
“I thought we covered that already.” Claire switches lanes, slips between cars just below the speed limit.
“You-” Nothing about this reaction matches any of the possibilities Elle came up with earlier, and she’s at a loss trying to think, to process and figure out what to do now. “Where are we going?” she demands, surprised when she realizes that Claire is heading in a new direction, away from not only Adam’s little love shack but also the Bennets’ house and the college. “Claire-”
“Shut up, Elle,” and the tone is so rough that Elle obeys without thinking, slumping back into her seat as the world rushes by outside the car. “Why can’t you ever just…” A muffled noise, tight and angry, and Elle bites her cheek, fingers laced together and clamped between her thighs. “Fuck.” And then again: “Fuck.”
The car jerks, tires screech, and Elle closes her eyes tightly, feeling the world twist as Claire turns sharply into what has to be a parking lot. A glance through the windshield proves Elle’s suspicions and something in her middle lurches at the sight of the L-shaped building. “I don’t want to,” she says without thinking, completely sure she doesn’t want to, but she’s ignored.
Claire rolls into a spot to the side of the motel, jerks the keys from the ignition. “Come on.”
“No,” but Claire is already hopping out of the driver’s seat, slamming the door and striding around the front of the car to open Elle’s door with more force than necessary. “I don’t want to-”
Claire grabs her arm, grip stronger than Elle expects, and the older woman panics a little. Electricity sparks, snaps, and Claire stumbles back a few steps, grunting in pain. “Elle,” she snaps a heartbeat later, already healed, and Elle panics a little bit more. Years of training abandon her and she doesn’t even think about her power, about how she could hurt even Claire enough to get herself the hell out of dodge.
Instead she twists, grabs at the seat and heaves herself into the back, scrambling faster when she feels Claire make a grab for her waist, not caring how ridiculous she looks trying to get away from a woman as small as her.
“No,” Elle starts but Claire grabs her leg with a force she doesn’t expect. Kicking, hearing a sound when her foot connects to what has to be a face, she swears when she bends awkwardly and then tumbles onto the back seat.
“Elle, get the fuck out of-”
“I’m not having sex,” and Elle's surprised when it comes out as a little shriek, high-pitched and furious. Bent between the seats to get her, Claire stops and studies her- and then spits out something and disappears, slamming the front door again and jerking open the back.
Shit.
Elle grabs the handle of the other door but Claire gets a grip on her jeans and yanks and Elle’s down again, breathless as Claire climbs over her. Knees press into the seat on either side of her hips, Claire hooking her arms under Elle’s and trying to pull her back. “We’re going in-”
“Fuck you,” Elle spits out, angry all at once as she bucks, hears Claire’s skull hit the back window as the former cheerleader loses her balance. “Fuck you,” she repeats, yanking at the door and almost getting it open before Claire’s fingers lock around her wrist, tear it back. “You fucking-”
“Come on-”
“I don’t want to,” and she doesn’t.
She doesn’t want to go into a motel like some fucking whore because she isn’t, because it’s bad enough that Claire won’t even touch her except to have sex with her and she’s not a damn whore.
Claire locks her thighs more tightly around her middle, her fingers tugging at Elle’s shirt, and it takes a few moments for Elle to realize Claire is wrestling it up, starting to shake in her desperation to get it off.
There’s a second, as Claire’s fingers slip across her skin to push her bra up, when she’s stunned.
Then Claire touches her breast, palm cupping in a way that Elle has come to associate with her darkened bedroom, and something in her snaps, cracks open and apart as she shrieks, bucks and twists and tears at whatever she can get her hands on, nails raking across Claire’s face and neck, hands tangling in a now-messy ponytail. “You bitch-” The body braced half on top of her sways, balance lost, but she tastes salt and she can barely see but she’s too enraged to care. “You fucking bitch, you can’t fucking treat me like this, you fucking-”
Claire slips, topples back, and it only upsets Elle more.
“I’m so sick of you,” she spits out, for a second startled when it sounds like a sob, but then Claire shifts, starts to push herself up, and Elle shoves her down again, pushing a leg between Claire’s and trying to breathe past the weight in her chest. “You can’t treat me like this, I hate- I hate feeling like this- I hate you-”
Her words run dry, her anger wavering for a heartbeat when she gets a good look at Claire.
The younger woman looks… odd, face pale and hair shining from where it’s hanging off the seat, the door still opened from minutes before. As Elle watches, she swallows, tongue slipping to lick her lips the barest bit before it’s gone, mouth left parted when she goes still again.
Elle feels the fabric of her bra bunched up painfully, feels her breast pressing against the cloth of her shirt and a thigh pressing up between hers, feels a strip of warmed skin when she reaches down cautiously to brush where Claire’s tank top has slid up in their struggle.
When she feels the last, Claire’s eyelids flutter, so lightly she almost misses it.
Almost.
On impulse, she touches Claire’s lips, feeling breath flutter against her fingertips.
When Claire just stares up at her, gaze dim, she bends, hesitating for a moment before brushing her mouth against the one still open against her fingers. For a second there’s nothing- but then Claire’s breathing feels a little quicker than normal against Elle’s lips.
Struck mute by the sensation, trying to think but unable to, Elle finally gives up, slants her mouth against Claire’s, her tongue slipping forward when she finds no resistance to stroke Claire’s, coax a reaction.
When it comes, it’s slight, a barely perceptible little shiver that makes Elle pull back, the loss of the feeling pulling a breath out of her as she shifts on top of Claire, settles again and tries to process everything. Claire still looks odd, feels tense and stiff, but now she’s staring at Elle in a way that’s… different.
Something has settled, and Elle swallows, breathes out softly.
When she bends to open her mouth against Claire's a second time, the reaction is different, a completely foreign sensation as the younger woman returns it, a soft little noise greeting Elle. Heat is building low inside her when she finally draws back, shifts into a more comfortable position.
“No motel,” Elle says after a minute, and gets a nod in response, slow but sure.
Reaching over Claire, catching the door, Elle pulls it closed carefully.
Rating: NC-17 (language, disturbing imagery, graphic sex)
Pairing: Elle/Claire; side Adam/Elle, Adam/Claire
Timeline: Post-“ So”
Prompt: “hate” at 10_themes
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing with them
Teaser: Ten stages between one thing and the next, between lust and love.
Notes: I have been epically busy with college and some real life changes. So I fail at the long space of time since my last update but be not afraid, I am firmly attached to finish this fic, trust me. And, again, dark stuff ahead.
8, hate
Elle has tried to be a good girl.
At first because the alternative possibility after Noah took her in was so much worse but then because of Claire.
Claire has changed things, redefined the world and everything in it and now Elle’s sure that she’s included in that- her insides feel different, more bruised than she can ever remember, and her skin feels thin, fragile, like it’ll split open. The closest she can compare it to are the eggs that Elle always breaks too hard when she tries to cook breakfast for the Bennets- the outside cracking and the insides spilling out so fast she can’t stop the mess.
And, more than just trying to be a good girl, she’s tried to do everything right.
From the attempts at cooking for Claire when she’s home to the sex toys to make what they do better, the jobs with Noah and the confusing minutes of bonding with Sandra, she’s tried to do everything right.
And none of that matters.
Her outside’s cracked open and she’s bleeding out, and it’s worse than what daddy did before Noah found her.
When Elle sleeps and dreams, Adam’s always there now- sometimes greeting her as if they’re old friends but usually just sitting comfortably at Claire’s side, as if she was fucking born for him or something. During one particularly jarring nightmare, he sits in the background when Claire’s fingers are pulling her into a painful climax, looking bored but not leaving.
Even her head is turning against her.
Claire comes back.
She shows up on the weekend with college stories and short laughter, ignores Elle unless it’s to offer a stinging comment about her hair or clothes. Adam’s presence is there now, and she can’t pull them apart in her head- when she looks at Claire, she remembers her frequent visits to Adam. When she catches sight of the strip of skin between Claire’s top and jeans, all it does is make her think of Adam tracing it, and she bites her cheek to keep from screaming.
By the time the house goes dark and Claire slips into her bedroom, Elle feels completely undone.
Remembering the last time they were together, Claire’s body heavy on top of hers, she grits her teeth and closes her eyes in the dark, trying not to think about Adam with Claire and wanting Claire too much to push her off and away.
It’s worse than ever before.
Claire’s tense on top of her, muscles tight as she peels fabric up and pushes harder than she has to, legs shifting to pin Elle down, mouth open and damp as her fingers curve between Elle’s thighs. There are sparks where Claire touches her but they sting, and she grimaces until her body gets used to it and her head falls back.
Her nails dig into her palms, and her teeth grind together, her insides tugging as Claire’s tongue sweeps broadly.
There’s a sound from Claire, a murmur, but when she tries to listen, it’s gone.
Behind her eyelids, Adam’s watching and, shaken, she blinks rapidly in the dark, feeling moisture gather and then escape, sliding down her face and into her hair. She opens her mouth, words about to escape, but then she clicks her teeth together again, goes out of her way to tilt her head back and away, watching shadows move in the dark.
Claire has become skilled enough, is insistent enough, that Elle comes despite how it feels, groan muffled behind her teeth as she shudders.
When it’s over, she feels a mouth open at her hip, hears quick breaths for a moment but then Claire pulls away, body lifting off the bed, turning away in the dark and opening the door, slipping out as quietly as she earlier slipped in.
In the dark, Adam is staring at her with chilly dislike.
Elle wakes up all at once when the sky is still dark.
There are images behind her eyes, and she feels numb where Claire touched her hours before.
After a few minutes spent feeling empty, she throws back her covers and gets out of bed.
Heading for the bathroom, she scrubs her skin red and then heads back to her room with what she needs. Blows her hair dry and brushes it neat, pulling it back to keep it off her neck; she dresses in the most casual clothes she has in the closet, snags her sneakers and starts down the hall.
Stopping halfway to the stairs, she finds Claire’s room door open, Claire standing shirtless in the doorway of her closet as she selects what she’s going to wear for the day. Her feet are bare under her jeans and she must have used the shower while Elle was using the blow dryer because her hair looks damp in its ponytail.
At this angle, Claire can’t see her, shouldn’t know she’s here.
Right.
So Elle lets her eyes follow the lines of her back, her spine, the sweep of her neck and shoulders.
Claire turns a little to reach into the closet, the scrape of a hanger promising she’s still searching for what she’s looking for, and Elle can see the swell of a breast. It’s more skin than the older woman can actually remember seeing in months but the heat it causes is only vague warmth, and she ignores it even as she enjoys the sight.
“What if Noah walks by?” she asks after a minute, emotion feeling oddly muted.
“He left early,” Claire says without startling, “and Lyle’s already at school.” She finally pulls on one of those tank tops she likes so much, not gifting Elle with a glance as she picks out something soft and white and then closes the closet. “I’ve got plans today, do you want something?”
“I was just…”
Elle trails off, hesitating for the first time as she watches Claire slip on ridiculously green flip-flops, muscles in her arms flexing as she opens the white thing from before and draws that on, leaving the worn-looking shirt open as she grabs her purse she brought the night before, glances through it and then finally looks up at Elle.
Claire looks like a real girl, looks like she’s ready to go to the beach with her little friends, sneak away to make out behind a dune with some surfer guy and giggle about getting to whatever base she got to.
But there’s nothing on her face and everything in Elle somehow… settles.
“I need a ride.”
“You can’t drive anymore?”
“You’re going out anyway.” She takes a minute, decides on a lie without any real trouble. “Noah was supposed to take me this morning but he must have forgot. I’ll call him later to bring me back, but you’re going out.” Something kind of… twitches on Claire’s face but Elle doesn’t know what it is. “Where are you going?”
Claire doesn’t say anything, still staring at her, eyes dark and wary and sort of… blank.
“So?” she prods, pressing her fingers against the doorframe absently, steadying herself.
“Fine,” Claire says without blinking, pushing past her down the hall. “Why not?”
By the time Elle gets down the stairs, Claire has already yelled back a goodbye to her mother and is out the front door, halfway to the car. Moving faster as she realizes what’s going on, Elle jerks the door open as Claire starts the ignition, flings herself clumsily into her seat as the car lurches back out of the driveway.
She slams the door, glances over in half-hearted annoyance, but Claire has already put on her glasses.
Elle is being baked alive.
“I thought you had air in this car.”
“Just open the window.”
Elle searches for the switch, breathes out a sigh as the glass slides down and wind strikes her face, blasts away some of the heat that’s probably been building in the damn car since Claire parked the night before.
Beside her, Claire seems unbothered by the oven she’s sitting in despite how flushed and sweaty she is.
No, she’s still wearing her glasses, and she still looks blank and stiff and fake, and there’s nothing there except for a new edge in her voice when she asks, for the third time, “Where am I taking you?”
Elle doesn’t let herself respond, tongue pressed against her teeth as she stares out the window, keeping an eye on the streets that they pass. There’s the convenience store with the really bad muffins, and the place that sells the good Slushos, and she points at an upcoming turn, offers a careful, “Right.”
Down another street, she points again, waits as Claire slows and then stops as she reaches the fence.
When she finally looks over, searches for any emotion, there’s nothing on Claire’s face, no response to Elle’s choice of a destination. Instead, Claire just looks… bored, fingers loose around the steering wheel.
But things still feel… settled inside Elle and the world still feels comfortably muted so the sting is only a pressure that she shrugs off, too mellow to hesitate now. “I followed you,” she says because there’s nothing else to say and she’s not good with words anyway. “You have a little love nest with Adam.” She hears herself take a breath, let it out. “You do know what kind of shit he’s done, right?”
“Nothing worse than you.”
Still nothing to find on her face, in her voice, and those stupid glasses…
“Are you having sex with him, too?”
Elle knows, she knows, but the words slip out as she stares at Claire’s profile, searches for anything… and the muted feeling is gone before she realizes it is, her insides raw and exposed again, nails biting into her palms.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elle doesn’t mean to ask but then the words are out and it doesn’t matter because Claire kind of startles a little, her shoulder jerking and her tongue flicking out to lick her lips. A twitch like before, gone before Elle can grasp it, and then she says, “you wouldn’t understand” in a voice Elle can’t recognize.
After months of waiting for something, Elle panics when it’s there.
“I had sex with him too,” she blurts, wanting Claire to know that fucking Adam isn’t such a hard thing to do.
“Yeah, I know, he told me.” Her voice is blank again as she takes her glasses off, folds them and drops them to the side, pulling back away from the fence. “He said it was like that thing with the cattle prod I read about once.” Elle can’t say anything, rattled at the fact that Adam actually did tell her, and Claire adds, “That wasn’t all the time, I know. He said he actually liked some of the free sex after all those years without, but-” Claire stops, glances over at Elle blandly. “He said he’d drown you if he ever saw you again.”
Elle thinks about that, Adam drowning her, and swallows down the bile it causes.
“You’re having sex with him.”
“I thought we covered that already.” Claire switches lanes, slips between cars just below the speed limit.
“You-” Nothing about this reaction matches any of the possibilities Elle came up with earlier, and she’s at a loss trying to think, to process and figure out what to do now. “Where are we going?” she demands, surprised when she realizes that Claire is heading in a new direction, away from not only Adam’s little love shack but also the Bennets’ house and the college. “Claire-”
“Shut up, Elle,” and the tone is so rough that Elle obeys without thinking, slumping back into her seat as the world rushes by outside the car. “Why can’t you ever just…” A muffled noise, tight and angry, and Elle bites her cheek, fingers laced together and clamped between her thighs. “Fuck.” And then again: “Fuck.”
The car jerks, tires screech, and Elle closes her eyes tightly, feeling the world twist as Claire turns sharply into what has to be a parking lot. A glance through the windshield proves Elle’s suspicions and something in her middle lurches at the sight of the L-shaped building. “I don’t want to,” she says without thinking, completely sure she doesn’t want to, but she’s ignored.
Claire rolls into a spot to the side of the motel, jerks the keys from the ignition. “Come on.”
“No,” but Claire is already hopping out of the driver’s seat, slamming the door and striding around the front of the car to open Elle’s door with more force than necessary. “I don’t want to-”
Claire grabs her arm, grip stronger than Elle expects, and the older woman panics a little. Electricity sparks, snaps, and Claire stumbles back a few steps, grunting in pain. “Elle,” she snaps a heartbeat later, already healed, and Elle panics a little bit more. Years of training abandon her and she doesn’t even think about her power, about how she could hurt even Claire enough to get herself the hell out of dodge.
Instead she twists, grabs at the seat and heaves herself into the back, scrambling faster when she feels Claire make a grab for her waist, not caring how ridiculous she looks trying to get away from a woman as small as her.
“No,” Elle starts but Claire grabs her leg with a force she doesn’t expect. Kicking, hearing a sound when her foot connects to what has to be a face, she swears when she bends awkwardly and then tumbles onto the back seat.
“Elle, get the fuck out of-”
“I’m not having sex,” and Elle's surprised when it comes out as a little shriek, high-pitched and furious. Bent between the seats to get her, Claire stops and studies her- and then spits out something and disappears, slamming the front door again and jerking open the back.
Shit.
Elle grabs the handle of the other door but Claire gets a grip on her jeans and yanks and Elle’s down again, breathless as Claire climbs over her. Knees press into the seat on either side of her hips, Claire hooking her arms under Elle’s and trying to pull her back. “We’re going in-”
“Fuck you,” Elle spits out, angry all at once as she bucks, hears Claire’s skull hit the back window as the former cheerleader loses her balance. “Fuck you,” she repeats, yanking at the door and almost getting it open before Claire’s fingers lock around her wrist, tear it back. “You fucking-”
“Come on-”
“I don’t want to,” and she doesn’t.
She doesn’t want to go into a motel like some fucking whore because she isn’t, because it’s bad enough that Claire won’t even touch her except to have sex with her and she’s not a damn whore.
Claire locks her thighs more tightly around her middle, her fingers tugging at Elle’s shirt, and it takes a few moments for Elle to realize Claire is wrestling it up, starting to shake in her desperation to get it off.
There’s a second, as Claire’s fingers slip across her skin to push her bra up, when she’s stunned.
Then Claire touches her breast, palm cupping in a way that Elle has come to associate with her darkened bedroom, and something in her snaps, cracks open and apart as she shrieks, bucks and twists and tears at whatever she can get her hands on, nails raking across Claire’s face and neck, hands tangling in a now-messy ponytail. “You bitch-” The body braced half on top of her sways, balance lost, but she tastes salt and she can barely see but she’s too enraged to care. “You fucking bitch, you can’t fucking treat me like this, you fucking-”
Claire slips, topples back, and it only upsets Elle more.
“I’m so sick of you,” she spits out, for a second startled when it sounds like a sob, but then Claire shifts, starts to push herself up, and Elle shoves her down again, pushing a leg between Claire’s and trying to breathe past the weight in her chest. “You can’t treat me like this, I hate- I hate feeling like this- I hate you-”
Her words run dry, her anger wavering for a heartbeat when she gets a good look at Claire.
The younger woman looks… odd, face pale and hair shining from where it’s hanging off the seat, the door still opened from minutes before. As Elle watches, she swallows, tongue slipping to lick her lips the barest bit before it’s gone, mouth left parted when she goes still again.
Elle feels the fabric of her bra bunched up painfully, feels her breast pressing against the cloth of her shirt and a thigh pressing up between hers, feels a strip of warmed skin when she reaches down cautiously to brush where Claire’s tank top has slid up in their struggle.
When she feels the last, Claire’s eyelids flutter, so lightly she almost misses it.
Almost.
On impulse, she touches Claire’s lips, feeling breath flutter against her fingertips.
When Claire just stares up at her, gaze dim, she bends, hesitating for a moment before brushing her mouth against the one still open against her fingers. For a second there’s nothing- but then Claire’s breathing feels a little quicker than normal against Elle’s lips.
Struck mute by the sensation, trying to think but unable to, Elle finally gives up, slants her mouth against Claire’s, her tongue slipping forward when she finds no resistance to stroke Claire’s, coax a reaction.
When it comes, it’s slight, a barely perceptible little shiver that makes Elle pull back, the loss of the feeling pulling a breath out of her as she shifts on top of Claire, settles again and tries to process everything. Claire still looks odd, feels tense and stiff, but now she’s staring at Elle in a way that’s… different.
Something has settled, and Elle swallows, breathes out softly.
When she bends to open her mouth against Claire's a second time, the reaction is different, a completely foreign sensation as the younger woman returns it, a soft little noise greeting Elle. Heat is building low inside her when she finally draws back, shifts into a more comfortable position.
“No motel,” Elle says after a minute, and gets a nod in response, slow but sure.
Reaching over Claire, catching the door, Elle pulls it closed carefully.