fic: potential (heroes: passage)
elle/claire, r, ~3150
follows discorrupt in the passage series; notes must be read here
Five months and six days between then and now.
Before Claire, with Daddy, Elle dreams of things she never remembers.
Not that she knows why that bothers her, since they’re just dreams.
It takes Elle Bishop a month to realize that sleeping with Claire Bennet is difficult.
On a good night, when she’s acting like herself after a day spent bitching about the chick in her class who keeps trying to show her up, Claire squirms and rolls under the sheets, stretches out her limbs and steals whatever space she can. Bad nights are almost the same but the bed is filled with short violent movements instead of fumbling sleepy ones, and her skin is slick with sweat no matter how cool the room is. Her breathing goes ragged those nights, her legs pushing against the mattress as if trying to run, and Elle is kicked regularly.
Elle really… doesn’t like the bad nights.
But no matter which kind of night Claire has, Elle never gets the sleep she needs on the weekends. She commonly wakes up the next morning hours later than usual with a headache and bruises on her legs. On the other hand, her clean clothes are always laid out on the end of the bed and lunch is always waiting for her downstairs. Claire usually already has their day planned out even though all of their days are the same.
Eat, watch TV, eat some more, wander around the house, watch TV while complaining about what’s on, avoid Sandra’s attempts to get them to help with the housework, watch more TV, complain, blah, blah, blah.
Still, at least Claire is home all weekend now instead of just whenever she has to be, and at least she’s starting to actually sleep with Elle instead of just pushing fingers too hard inside of her.
That’s nice, that’s… enough for Elle not to want anything else.
Elle wants to go out to eat. Not anywhere fancy but it’s something she wants, a thought that pops into her brain every two seconds and nags at her constantly. Not some burger joint, either. She wants a place with clean tables and chairs that don’t hurt her ass where they can sit for an hour or two and eat together.
Maybe some place Italian? Claire’s technically Italian but then she doesn’t sound very proud of it when she comes up. Or maybe she’s just not proud of the crazy family she got the Italian from. So maybe Mexican or Chinese or something, Elle doesn’t know but she knows she wants to go out to dinner.
With Claire, like, together with Claire.
Then they go out together to one of those big stupid wall stores or whatever where Sandra sends them with a list as long as Elle is tall. She’s forced to push the cart through the racks of clothes even though they’re only here for food, and has to stand there like an idiot watching Claire’s bag while the girl tries on clothes.
“I don’t wanna be here,” she tells Claire a half-dozen times, and is ignored.
She doesn’t like being in crowds, not anymore.
Before she didn’t really care but now Elle hates it, feels like they’re all watching her, like they’re all waiting for her to turn her back so they can-
Do something to you, a little voice in her head is sure, but she doesn’t know what the hell that means.
She tightens her grip on the plastic and metal cart she’s pushing, pointedly ignores the gaggle of women shopping nearby except to watch them out of the corner of the eye for sudden movement, and follows Claire through aisles of jeans and tank tops, boots and jackets. This stuff is all Claire seems to wear now, things she can replace easily that can hold up to some rough treatment, and Elle, she’s only allowed to shop with Sandra.
“Are we almost done?”
Claire ignores her of course, because she’s just watching the bag and pushing the cart and- and is the little old lady with the umbrella following her?
“Hey.” She jerks suspiciously, guiltily, swings her head around to find Claire coming at her with something blue hanging from a hanger. “No, don’t-” Elle barely manages not to smack the hanger away, startled and confused as the shirt, yes, it’s a shirt, is held up in front of her top half. “You should try it.”
“It’s stupid-”
“Try it.” Without the tightness around her mouth, the hardness in her eyes, Claire is frighteningly easy for Elle to stare at too intensely, last softness of baby fat long since burned away to show a woman Elle is sure most people are too dumb to see. “You’ll look good in it, I want to see.”
Crowds abruptly forgotten, exhilarated by the affection in Claire’s gaze, Elle tries it.
Asleep, this isn’t the weirdest dream Elle’s had since Noah saved her.
It’s not nearly as weird as the fires that don’t actually destroy the house she’s never been in or the guy in the wheelchair even though he can walk or the one where her hands have been frozen solid and shattered.
It’s so not weird, in fact, that she won’t remember it (yet).
Wide-eyed, breathless, the girl clutches an old spiral notebook to her chest and shivers in the cold, white-blonde hair flattened to her skull as she shifts awkwardly on one foot. There’s blood there, Elle notices too slowly, and the girl’s teeth are chattering, and she looks like she’s going to pass out any second, collapse right there.
The girl’s staring at someone in obvious panic, grimace of fear and dislike unmistakable on her features, but Elle can’t see who she’s looking at, can do nothing but stand where she is and wish Claire were there.
And Elle’s getting cold now, clothes stuck to her body as the sprinklers over the girl’s head just keep going off, it’s so fucking annoying and she can’t wake up, her brain won’t let her. There’s shouting somewhere, she doesn’t know where, and the girl jerks her head, shakes harder and looks frantic and cornered and Elle knows this look somehow. Knows the confusion and terror and urge to scream and cry and the insistence that I don’t want to care this much what happens next.
The girl wavers, clutches the notebook, and refuses the urge to just run-
When Elle wakes up eager for comfort that she knows will be gone for who knows how many days, the new shirt is laid out on the bed in a silent order and all she gets is Claire’s voicemail.
Fine, that’s fine, she’s fine with this.
One time Elle wakes up to a Slusho being held in front of her face, lifts her head to find Claire looking tired but sure of herself, waving the cup slowly. She always brings back something when she leaves for her trips, shows up with Elle’s favorite fast food or her favorite ice cream or a Slusho so big Elle’s left intimidated.
Not that Elle ever refuses what she’s decided is a food apology.
“Blue raspberry?”
“Cotton candy.”
Elle snags it without hesitation, props herself up on an elbow and stares at Claire as she sucks what she can up though the straw. She lowers the drink when she senses an approaching ice cream headache but doesn’t stop watching Claire, her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth as she takes in dirty clothes that she didn’t bother to change out of before coming back to the house.
“I could go with you.”
Claire ignores her, peeling off her jacket and lifting her shirt off her head and crawling into bed with her.
Elle’s halfway to the bathroom before she’s fully awake, smashes her knee into the toilet and almost goes down in a heap before she catches herself, doubling over to empty her stomach. Something touches her back and her hair is pulled from her face, but then she’s puking again and all she can focus on is trying not to bring up her intestines along with everything else.
She hears her name when the ordeal is over but Elle manages only a shaky whimpering sound while Claire tilts her head, swipes her face and then her neck with a wet cloth. Far away, she’s aware of a cold floor under her bare ass, of Claire awkwardly tangled up with her on the tiles and that little noise that comes from the toilet after someone flushes it. She blinks once, tries to make the world less fuzzy, and manages on the fourth attempt to discern something past the painful brightness coming from the light Claire flipped on.
Elle wants it off, wants to focus on the little nightlight Sandra bought her but it’s useless now, soft blue-tinted light bleached under the harsh glow and making it hard to focus on anything other than the raw feeling in her throat. Claire’s still wiping her down, cleaning her off as well as she can without putting her in the shower. Her arm, too, she can feel her arm, her elbow, the bend of her elbow, it hurts, burns, stings-
She starts digging at the spot with her nails in a blind panic but Claire grabs her fingers, pries them open and pulls her arms down into her lap. She wrenches away, body reacting before her mind can process anything other than the fact that she’s sick and in pain, and it’s only the palm cradling her neck that keeps her skull from cracking against the tiles.
“Elle-”
She whines, thoughtless, and something pops.
The sudden darkness strips away the panic with such speed that Elle goes silent in mid-shriek, eyes blinking comically in the blackness as Claire pants quietly. There are palms smoothing down Elle’s arms and a dim blue glow above them and Elle has no idea what it was, has no way to process the already fading emotion, but it’s gone and Claire’s holding her, breasts against her back and legs around her hips.
Elle decides with utter certainty she doesn’t want to figure out why the tile under her feels like metal.
“Claire-” Lips press to her shoulder and her neck, and she manages to draw a breath. Lets it out with a spike of shame. “I peed on myself.”
(Pissed on yourself, a voice corrects with annoyance, amusement in her head.)
“It’s fine.” Palms stroke down her arms again, damp and warm on her skin, and Claire shifts behind her, pushes Elle forward just enough that she can stagger to her feet. “It’s fine,” is repeated again, and the lack of anger is the last thing Elle expects, “it’s fine, you’re allowed to have nightmares.”
Even in the dimness of the little nightlight, Elle can see the blackened bulb over the bathroom mirror as Claire strips her underwear off and starts on her own. “I peed on myself,” she feels the urge to admit a second time, unsure why it bothers her so much, but Claire isn’t looking at her, focused on starting the shower. “I haven’t done that since-”
Nails scratch the inside of her head and her teeth snap shut around her tongue.
Elle sways back automatically, pain gutting the inside of her head before Claire catches her arms, pulls her to the shower. “No,” slips out, something close to a whimper, but the water’s only warm (what else would it be?) and then her head’s being tilted back carefully to rest on Claire’s shoulder as she’s rinsed off. Unsure, she stands stiff and wary for the first minute, relaxes only when Claire covers her eyes to run the water through her hair, protecting her face. She jerks in a breath when the hand drops a minute later, sure something is about to happen, but then the water’s shut off and a towel is being wrapped around her, tucked tight.
It all happens so fast she can’t even panic about the fact that she’s just showered with someone and not shocked herself or someone else and she seems okay, and she goes willingly when Claire pushes her out of the bathroom and back to the bed.
Dazed, she stands where she is as Claire strips the covers from the bed and replaces them, oddly tense until Claire grabs clothes, comes back to her. “It was just a nightmare,” she tells Elle as she drags a nightshirt over her head, and sits on the edge of the bed to help her into her underwear. “You’ve probably been stressing over something, that’s all.”
“I don’t remember-”
“Forget about it.” The tone is firm but not sharp, and Claire won’t meet her eyes but she doesn’t look angry, just focused. “You need to get some sleep-” The towel is flopped almost playfully over her head, and Claire is half-dressed by the time Elle summons enough energy to yank it off. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But-” The bedroom doesn’t feel real, feels like a picture someone’s holding up to her face and the only thing that’s real is metal under her bare feet and something digging into her arm. Confused, waiting for Claire’s mood to snap back because it’s going to happen (of course it’s going to happen, it always happens) except she doesn’t know what’s-
Static gathers between her fingers, whine escaping her. “Claire-”
The blanket is yanked back, Claire standing beside the bed. “Get in bed,” she says when Elle just stares in confusion, and looks too calm. “Come on, get in.” Elle shakes once, an all-over shudder of nervous emotion and she doesn’t know, looks over her shoulder for the window and the man watching but she can’t find him, oh god, is he hiding? “Elle.”
A hand touches Elle, jerks once at the jolt that tears through Claire’s palm and up her arm but doesn’t let go until Elle whimpers and scuttles to the bed. “It’s fine,” she hears as Claire crawls in beside her, stiffens for a moment and then relaxes as Elle locks arms and legs around her. “It’s fine, it was just a nightmare.” The blanket is drawn over her and Elle can’t open her eyes as a palm settles on the back of her head, cradles her skull almost protectively. “Go to sleep.”
She’s heard this before, doesn’t like the words.
Except Claire is touching her back and protecting her head, and she’s tired and really wants to relax and sleep. And if her eyes close and she dozes, Claire is still there each time she jerks back to awareness, wide-awake and vigilant.
So she finally falls asleep because she’s too tired not to and dreams of Claire glaring angrily at the blue Slusho she can’t let go of even though it’s freezing her hand.
When she wakes up, Claire is long gone and there’s only a voicemail when she calls.
Elle does not remember questioning her father.
Never, not once, not until after Noah stole her and burned her up inside and drew her attention to empty places she’d managed to ignore. Not until after there was that spark of something sudden and white-hot under her skin as that girl in the blue uniform stared right into her and didn’t blink.
It’s a crystal-clear memory now, and the more she’s tried to make sense of her life before the ordeal, there’s nothing tangible before the crackle-snap in her head and the perplexed familiarity in hostile green eyes the first time she met them head-on.
But there are fragments of being punished for something in the back of her head, bits and pieces of things she’s almost convinced didn’t actually happen and she wakes up sometimes trembling slightly in the dark and feeling sure she’s being swallowed up, like she’s running down a beach but the sand keeps shifting and her feet can’t keep her steady and if she could just understand-
But she can't.
Claire is panting already, fingers buried deep as their hips rock together, as Elle grips the sheets and hopes that Claire is going to stay tonight instead of leave too quickly to do things she won’t talk about.
As she focuses on the bare skin of the body settled on top of hers in the dim light, tangled blonde hair and closed eyes and there’s no resemblance to the slim Asian woman with the bullet in her forehead from her dream last night.
One part says, you’ve done worse and there are funner ways to do it but that part of her is drowned out by the ache of fingerprints across her legs, the jolts of pleasure building as Claire moves harder.
In a moment of weakness, voice splintering because she doesn't remember being five but that was the last time she was this scared: “Claire-”
Claire makes a noise that straddles tenderness and frustration, curves fingers around her throat and licks eagerly into her mouth until Elle jerks, shudders, and sees Claire swinging a Company-issued pistol up with teary eyes and a hard jaw behind her eyes.
She’s not alone that night, has Claire curled around her like a cat until dawn, but she doesn’t sleep.
Not that it matters.
(You’re supposed to care, Adam says because he can’t anymore to a man behind the business desk, and between the fire racing up the curtains and Uncle Maury threading fingers like sausages through her hair, Elle watches with burning eyes as a torrent of rain highlights the figure of a man who isn’t there as he strides down the alley away from her.)
“I’ll be back in a couple of weeks…” Elle says nothing, wrapped up in the dirty sheets and the blanket like a cocoon and feeling curiously empty in a way that’s familiar. “… know I can’t answer so don’t call.” A moment of hesitation, Claire shifting oddly on her feet before her face hardens, before she drops her gaze and closes her bag, grabs it off the bed. “I’ll be back when I can,” she promises like it’s actually a promise, and is gone two minutes later with Noah and his car and whatever it is they’re doing together for the next two weeks.
Elle waits an hour before she dresses and takes the Company pistol out of the box under her bed (she'd almost forgotten it was there) and heads downstairs. She dodges Mr. Muggles and pointedly ignores Sandra and Lyle talking together in the kitchen (they don’t even look at her, like she isn’t even there) as she grabs Sandra’s keys off the hook.
(The blue shirt is still lying in the corner of the bedroom where she’d thrown it an hour before.)
If Claire’s mother rushes out after her as she’s tearing out of the driveway, Elle doesn’t hear her.
an: and we have the full plot in motion, guys. at this point? prepare yourself for the kind of crazy shit you guys know me for. and explosions. and porn. don't forget porn.
follows discorrupt in the passage series; notes must be read here
Five months and six days between then and now.
Before Claire, with Daddy, Elle dreams of things she never remembers.
Not that she knows why that bothers her, since they’re just dreams.
It takes Elle Bishop a month to realize that sleeping with Claire Bennet is difficult.
On a good night, when she’s acting like herself after a day spent bitching about the chick in her class who keeps trying to show her up, Claire squirms and rolls under the sheets, stretches out her limbs and steals whatever space she can. Bad nights are almost the same but the bed is filled with short violent movements instead of fumbling sleepy ones, and her skin is slick with sweat no matter how cool the room is. Her breathing goes ragged those nights, her legs pushing against the mattress as if trying to run, and Elle is kicked regularly.
Elle really… doesn’t like the bad nights.
But no matter which kind of night Claire has, Elle never gets the sleep she needs on the weekends. She commonly wakes up the next morning hours later than usual with a headache and bruises on her legs. On the other hand, her clean clothes are always laid out on the end of the bed and lunch is always waiting for her downstairs. Claire usually already has their day planned out even though all of their days are the same.
Eat, watch TV, eat some more, wander around the house, watch TV while complaining about what’s on, avoid Sandra’s attempts to get them to help with the housework, watch more TV, complain, blah, blah, blah.
Still, at least Claire is home all weekend now instead of just whenever she has to be, and at least she’s starting to actually sleep with Elle instead of just pushing fingers too hard inside of her.
That’s nice, that’s… enough for Elle not to want anything else.
Elle wants to go out to eat. Not anywhere fancy but it’s something she wants, a thought that pops into her brain every two seconds and nags at her constantly. Not some burger joint, either. She wants a place with clean tables and chairs that don’t hurt her ass where they can sit for an hour or two and eat together.
Maybe some place Italian? Claire’s technically Italian but then she doesn’t sound very proud of it when she comes up. Or maybe she’s just not proud of the crazy family she got the Italian from. So maybe Mexican or Chinese or something, Elle doesn’t know but she knows she wants to go out to dinner.
With Claire, like, together with Claire.
Then they go out together to one of those big stupid wall stores or whatever where Sandra sends them with a list as long as Elle is tall. She’s forced to push the cart through the racks of clothes even though they’re only here for food, and has to stand there like an idiot watching Claire’s bag while the girl tries on clothes.
“I don’t wanna be here,” she tells Claire a half-dozen times, and is ignored.
She doesn’t like being in crowds, not anymore.
Before she didn’t really care but now Elle hates it, feels like they’re all watching her, like they’re all waiting for her to turn her back so they can-
Do something to you, a little voice in her head is sure, but she doesn’t know what the hell that means.
She tightens her grip on the plastic and metal cart she’s pushing, pointedly ignores the gaggle of women shopping nearby except to watch them out of the corner of the eye for sudden movement, and follows Claire through aisles of jeans and tank tops, boots and jackets. This stuff is all Claire seems to wear now, things she can replace easily that can hold up to some rough treatment, and Elle, she’s only allowed to shop with Sandra.
“Are we almost done?”
Claire ignores her of course, because she’s just watching the bag and pushing the cart and- and is the little old lady with the umbrella following her?
“Hey.” She jerks suspiciously, guiltily, swings her head around to find Claire coming at her with something blue hanging from a hanger. “No, don’t-” Elle barely manages not to smack the hanger away, startled and confused as the shirt, yes, it’s a shirt, is held up in front of her top half. “You should try it.”
“It’s stupid-”
“Try it.” Without the tightness around her mouth, the hardness in her eyes, Claire is frighteningly easy for Elle to stare at too intensely, last softness of baby fat long since burned away to show a woman Elle is sure most people are too dumb to see. “You’ll look good in it, I want to see.”
Crowds abruptly forgotten, exhilarated by the affection in Claire’s gaze, Elle tries it.
Asleep, this isn’t the weirdest dream Elle’s had since Noah saved her.
It’s not nearly as weird as the fires that don’t actually destroy the house she’s never been in or the guy in the wheelchair even though he can walk or the one where her hands have been frozen solid and shattered.
It’s so not weird, in fact, that she won’t remember it (yet).
Wide-eyed, breathless, the girl clutches an old spiral notebook to her chest and shivers in the cold, white-blonde hair flattened to her skull as she shifts awkwardly on one foot. There’s blood there, Elle notices too slowly, and the girl’s teeth are chattering, and she looks like she’s going to pass out any second, collapse right there.
The girl’s staring at someone in obvious panic, grimace of fear and dislike unmistakable on her features, but Elle can’t see who she’s looking at, can do nothing but stand where she is and wish Claire were there.
And Elle’s getting cold now, clothes stuck to her body as the sprinklers over the girl’s head just keep going off, it’s so fucking annoying and she can’t wake up, her brain won’t let her. There’s shouting somewhere, she doesn’t know where, and the girl jerks her head, shakes harder and looks frantic and cornered and Elle knows this look somehow. Knows the confusion and terror and urge to scream and cry and the insistence that I don’t want to care this much what happens next.
The girl wavers, clutches the notebook, and refuses the urge to just run-
When Elle wakes up eager for comfort that she knows will be gone for who knows how many days, the new shirt is laid out on the bed in a silent order and all she gets is Claire’s voicemail.
Fine, that’s fine, she’s fine with this.
One time Elle wakes up to a Slusho being held in front of her face, lifts her head to find Claire looking tired but sure of herself, waving the cup slowly. She always brings back something when she leaves for her trips, shows up with Elle’s favorite fast food or her favorite ice cream or a Slusho so big Elle’s left intimidated.
Not that Elle ever refuses what she’s decided is a food apology.
“Blue raspberry?”
“Cotton candy.”
Elle snags it without hesitation, props herself up on an elbow and stares at Claire as she sucks what she can up though the straw. She lowers the drink when she senses an approaching ice cream headache but doesn’t stop watching Claire, her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth as she takes in dirty clothes that she didn’t bother to change out of before coming back to the house.
“I could go with you.”
Claire ignores her, peeling off her jacket and lifting her shirt off her head and crawling into bed with her.
Elle’s halfway to the bathroom before she’s fully awake, smashes her knee into the toilet and almost goes down in a heap before she catches herself, doubling over to empty her stomach. Something touches her back and her hair is pulled from her face, but then she’s puking again and all she can focus on is trying not to bring up her intestines along with everything else.
She hears her name when the ordeal is over but Elle manages only a shaky whimpering sound while Claire tilts her head, swipes her face and then her neck with a wet cloth. Far away, she’s aware of a cold floor under her bare ass, of Claire awkwardly tangled up with her on the tiles and that little noise that comes from the toilet after someone flushes it. She blinks once, tries to make the world less fuzzy, and manages on the fourth attempt to discern something past the painful brightness coming from the light Claire flipped on.
Elle wants it off, wants to focus on the little nightlight Sandra bought her but it’s useless now, soft blue-tinted light bleached under the harsh glow and making it hard to focus on anything other than the raw feeling in her throat. Claire’s still wiping her down, cleaning her off as well as she can without putting her in the shower. Her arm, too, she can feel her arm, her elbow, the bend of her elbow, it hurts, burns, stings-
She starts digging at the spot with her nails in a blind panic but Claire grabs her fingers, pries them open and pulls her arms down into her lap. She wrenches away, body reacting before her mind can process anything other than the fact that she’s sick and in pain, and it’s only the palm cradling her neck that keeps her skull from cracking against the tiles.
“Elle-”
She whines, thoughtless, and something pops.
The sudden darkness strips away the panic with such speed that Elle goes silent in mid-shriek, eyes blinking comically in the blackness as Claire pants quietly. There are palms smoothing down Elle’s arms and a dim blue glow above them and Elle has no idea what it was, has no way to process the already fading emotion, but it’s gone and Claire’s holding her, breasts against her back and legs around her hips.
Elle decides with utter certainty she doesn’t want to figure out why the tile under her feels like metal.
“Claire-” Lips press to her shoulder and her neck, and she manages to draw a breath. Lets it out with a spike of shame. “I peed on myself.”
(Pissed on yourself, a voice corrects with annoyance, amusement in her head.)
“It’s fine.” Palms stroke down her arms again, damp and warm on her skin, and Claire shifts behind her, pushes Elle forward just enough that she can stagger to her feet. “It’s fine,” is repeated again, and the lack of anger is the last thing Elle expects, “it’s fine, you’re allowed to have nightmares.”
Even in the dimness of the little nightlight, Elle can see the blackened bulb over the bathroom mirror as Claire strips her underwear off and starts on her own. “I peed on myself,” she feels the urge to admit a second time, unsure why it bothers her so much, but Claire isn’t looking at her, focused on starting the shower. “I haven’t done that since-”
Nails scratch the inside of her head and her teeth snap shut around her tongue.
Elle sways back automatically, pain gutting the inside of her head before Claire catches her arms, pulls her to the shower. “No,” slips out, something close to a whimper, but the water’s only warm (what else would it be?) and then her head’s being tilted back carefully to rest on Claire’s shoulder as she’s rinsed off. Unsure, she stands stiff and wary for the first minute, relaxes only when Claire covers her eyes to run the water through her hair, protecting her face. She jerks in a breath when the hand drops a minute later, sure something is about to happen, but then the water’s shut off and a towel is being wrapped around her, tucked tight.
It all happens so fast she can’t even panic about the fact that she’s just showered with someone and not shocked herself or someone else and she seems okay, and she goes willingly when Claire pushes her out of the bathroom and back to the bed.
Dazed, she stands where she is as Claire strips the covers from the bed and replaces them, oddly tense until Claire grabs clothes, comes back to her. “It was just a nightmare,” she tells Elle as she drags a nightshirt over her head, and sits on the edge of the bed to help her into her underwear. “You’ve probably been stressing over something, that’s all.”
“I don’t remember-”
“Forget about it.” The tone is firm but not sharp, and Claire won’t meet her eyes but she doesn’t look angry, just focused. “You need to get some sleep-” The towel is flopped almost playfully over her head, and Claire is half-dressed by the time Elle summons enough energy to yank it off. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But-” The bedroom doesn’t feel real, feels like a picture someone’s holding up to her face and the only thing that’s real is metal under her bare feet and something digging into her arm. Confused, waiting for Claire’s mood to snap back because it’s going to happen (of course it’s going to happen, it always happens) except she doesn’t know what’s-
Static gathers between her fingers, whine escaping her. “Claire-”
The blanket is yanked back, Claire standing beside the bed. “Get in bed,” she says when Elle just stares in confusion, and looks too calm. “Come on, get in.” Elle shakes once, an all-over shudder of nervous emotion and she doesn’t know, looks over her shoulder for the window and the man watching but she can’t find him, oh god, is he hiding? “Elle.”
A hand touches Elle, jerks once at the jolt that tears through Claire’s palm and up her arm but doesn’t let go until Elle whimpers and scuttles to the bed. “It’s fine,” she hears as Claire crawls in beside her, stiffens for a moment and then relaxes as Elle locks arms and legs around her. “It’s fine, it was just a nightmare.” The blanket is drawn over her and Elle can’t open her eyes as a palm settles on the back of her head, cradles her skull almost protectively. “Go to sleep.”
She’s heard this before, doesn’t like the words.
Except Claire is touching her back and protecting her head, and she’s tired and really wants to relax and sleep. And if her eyes close and she dozes, Claire is still there each time she jerks back to awareness, wide-awake and vigilant.
So she finally falls asleep because she’s too tired not to and dreams of Claire glaring angrily at the blue Slusho she can’t let go of even though it’s freezing her hand.
When she wakes up, Claire is long gone and there’s only a voicemail when she calls.
Elle does not remember questioning her father.
Never, not once, not until after Noah stole her and burned her up inside and drew her attention to empty places she’d managed to ignore. Not until after there was that spark of something sudden and white-hot under her skin as that girl in the blue uniform stared right into her and didn’t blink.
It’s a crystal-clear memory now, and the more she’s tried to make sense of her life before the ordeal, there’s nothing tangible before the crackle-snap in her head and the perplexed familiarity in hostile green eyes the first time she met them head-on.
But there are fragments of being punished for something in the back of her head, bits and pieces of things she’s almost convinced didn’t actually happen and she wakes up sometimes trembling slightly in the dark and feeling sure she’s being swallowed up, like she’s running down a beach but the sand keeps shifting and her feet can’t keep her steady and if she could just understand-
But she can't.
Claire is panting already, fingers buried deep as their hips rock together, as Elle grips the sheets and hopes that Claire is going to stay tonight instead of leave too quickly to do things she won’t talk about.
As she focuses on the bare skin of the body settled on top of hers in the dim light, tangled blonde hair and closed eyes and there’s no resemblance to the slim Asian woman with the bullet in her forehead from her dream last night.
One part says, you’ve done worse and there are funner ways to do it but that part of her is drowned out by the ache of fingerprints across her legs, the jolts of pleasure building as Claire moves harder.
In a moment of weakness, voice splintering because she doesn't remember being five but that was the last time she was this scared: “Claire-”
Claire makes a noise that straddles tenderness and frustration, curves fingers around her throat and licks eagerly into her mouth until Elle jerks, shudders, and sees Claire swinging a Company-issued pistol up with teary eyes and a hard jaw behind her eyes.
She’s not alone that night, has Claire curled around her like a cat until dawn, but she doesn’t sleep.
Not that it matters.
(You’re supposed to care, Adam says because he can’t anymore to a man behind the business desk, and between the fire racing up the curtains and Uncle Maury threading fingers like sausages through her hair, Elle watches with burning eyes as a torrent of rain highlights the figure of a man who isn’t there as he strides down the alley away from her.)
“I’ll be back in a couple of weeks…” Elle says nothing, wrapped up in the dirty sheets and the blanket like a cocoon and feeling curiously empty in a way that’s familiar. “… know I can’t answer so don’t call.” A moment of hesitation, Claire shifting oddly on her feet before her face hardens, before she drops her gaze and closes her bag, grabs it off the bed. “I’ll be back when I can,” she promises like it’s actually a promise, and is gone two minutes later with Noah and his car and whatever it is they’re doing together for the next two weeks.
Elle waits an hour before she dresses and takes the Company pistol out of the box under her bed (she'd almost forgotten it was there) and heads downstairs. She dodges Mr. Muggles and pointedly ignores Sandra and Lyle talking together in the kitchen (they don’t even look at her, like she isn’t even there) as she grabs Sandra’s keys off the hook.
(The blue shirt is still lying in the corner of the bedroom where she’d thrown it an hour before.)
If Claire’s mother rushes out after her as she’s tearing out of the driveway, Elle doesn’t hear her.
an: and we have the full plot in motion, guys. at this point? prepare yourself for the kind of crazy shit you guys know me for. and explosions. and porn. don't forget porn.