(no subject)
Title: Happiness is Just a Gash Away.
Rating: PG-13 to R.
Pairing: Nathan/Elle, onesided Peter/Elle, mentions of past Adam/Elle and Sylar/Elle, allusions to onesided Nathan/Claire.
Wordcount: 11,193(!)
Summary: S2 AU, but begrudgingly accepting new S3 Elle canon. He doesn't answer. He's a little (a lot) drunk, and Peter hasn't been home in over a week and he hasn't called Claire yet and his mother isn't speaking to him and he's wondering what Elle's fingers would feel like in his mouth. Elle, rather than Adam, helps Peter escape, and it has unexpected consequences.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.
Notes: I seriously do not know how this got so damn long, I never intended for it be, but Nathan and Elle kind of get into my head, and I haven't been able to do anything other than fuss of writing this for the past few weeks.
It should hurt more than this.
He knows why it doesn't; he knows that they pump him full of god only knows what through that intravenous drip that hangs beside his bed. He knows that they treat his burns four times daily, never let him feel more than a dull ache. But.
But it should hurt more. If he could feel something physically, maybe he could stop feeling everything emotionally.
-
The doctors say there's reconstructive surgery, physical therapy, counselling. They say that he still has the expectation of a good quality of life, if only he tries hard enough.
They still won't leave sharp objects in his room, but you know. That's just temporary.
Nathan's seen those pictures, though, the ones of people with severe burns, who have skin grafts and have to wear masks to hold their faces together. Life will never the same for them--
For him.
-
They get him on his feet - or close to it. Physical therapist says this is the first step.
Nathan doesn't appreciate the pun.
They dial back the pain relief too, and he was wrong; the physical does not cancel out the emotional, it just magnifies it, leaving him collapsed on the floor screaming at his family to leave him alone.
He's a monster, and they might not be scared of him, but he is.
-
He'll take the coward's way out, he decides. When they eventually discharge him, he'll find the most painless method and he'll end his life. His brother is gone, his mother is someone that he realises now he barely knows, his wife has left him and every one of his children would be better off without Nathan fucking Petrelli as a father. The resolution gets him through one more physio appointment, one more talk with the psychiatrist (and he doesn't mean to be an ass, but Nathan can run rings around this idiot even when he can't walk unaided), one more group of med students staring at him, talking about him, poking him.
Nathan's had his one heroic act, he may as well go back to being a coward.
-
Every night he goes to sleep and hopes that God will do the job for him. Generally he's disappointed.
They have to give him drugs to make him sleep, and the effects are like being knocked unconscious. Truth be told, it's his favourite part of the day, and the waking up from it is best he ever feels; when he's woozy and coming out of his dreams, the pain is like a separate entity; there but not there, and in those scant minutes he can pretend he's nobody at all. His whole existence hinges around those hours when he can rest, when he sees his family how they could have been if they weren't the Petrellis and he can look at mirror and see a man that doesn't terrify him. The dark has always been more real to him than the light, now more than ever.
-
Then he wakes up. And Peter's sitting on his bed, holding his unscarred left hand. Nathan flexes his fingers in his brother's grip, marvels at how they obey him, thinks, okay, I must still be asleep, even though he's never once had a lucid dream.
“You're not dreaming,” Peter says, “everything's going to be okay, now.”
-
Peter always brought home strays, starting with that mangy little spaniel that he inexplicably named Isabelle, but this is something else. Sure, she's blonde too, but there the similarities end.
“Who is she?” Nathan asks. She's sitting on his couch, pulling threads from the upholstery, he knows that much.
“She got me that blood that healed you, and she helped me get out of the cell the company had me in. Even if she put me in there in the first place.” Peter shrugs. “Her name's Elle, she needs a place to stay.”
-
Sparks of blue dance across her fingers more often than they don't; at the kitchen table eating his food, on the couch watching his television, probably in bed sleeping on his sheets - not that Nathan thinks about that.
It's her power, to manipulate electricity or lightning or something, and he's still getting used to that, the nonchalance with which a goddamn superpower is mentioned - he can barely form the sounds to utter that one syllable, three letter word: fly, and Miss Elle Bishop greets him with a handshake and an electric shock.
She's a chatty thing, always ready with a sarcastic comment or a sharp rejoinder, even if half the time Nathan doesn't have the first clue about what she's saying, and she certainly livens up his (big, empty) house.
And Peter doesn't like her. Of course, Peter disliking you is like Nathan loving you, but the fact remains; Peter doesn't like her. Nathan knows how Peter is with girls like her; soft, pretty, blonde girls, he's pretty much their lapdog, but not Elle. Elle he only speaks to fleetingly in the morning before he leaves - and those instances of leaving grow quickly, sometimes he's gone for days, and Nathan has only the company of this strange woman who's not really a woman at all.
“What do you do?” she asks him one day, over a bowl of Lucky Charms and an old copy of Hello from the magazine rack. He's currently deciding if he can skip breakfast and move straight to his liquid lunch, and he glances over his shoulder, hand on the bottle of whiskey that been taunting him since he got it out the night before, but found some last minute dredges of willpower.
“I'm an attorney,” he replies, and she idly holds a ball of electricity in her palm; he can't help but stare at it. “Used to be a politician,” he mumbles, and he means to turn away, but the ball grows bigger, her fingers adding new threads, and he's transfixed.
“I know that, silly.” She giggles, passing her other hand over the top of the ball and sort of... stretching it out. It looks like magic to his no longer sceptical eyes. “I mean what do you do, here, all day?”
The clap of her hands makes him jump, just a little, and the ball of light is collapsed, reabsorbed into a body he has trouble believing can actually hold it. His fingers close around the neck of the bottle.
“Same as you,” he replies, because she hasn't left the house once that he's aware of. “But drunker.”
-
“I can't leave the house, you know,” she says two days later, as if he can just pick up a conversation he barely recalls having. She's sitting as far away from him as she can on the couch, her feet tucked delicately under her, her hair falling all around her shoulders, and it occurs to him then (before then) that she really looks a lot like his pretty blonde daughter.
Her fingers are alive with power and he's staring.
“People are out to get me,” she says almost teasingly, laughter coming out in a whoosh of air that isn't teasing or amused.
He doesn't answer. He's a little (a lot) drunk, and Peter hasn't been home in over a week and he hasn't called Claire yet and his mother isn't speaking to him and he's wondering what Elle's fingers would feel like in his mouth.
She pouts. “You're not listening to me,” she snaps, and a spark jumps high from her hand. “You're not even looking at me.”
He grunts something and glances back at the TV. She jumps up, her hair static from the energy she's giving off, and she scowls down at him like a child. Maybe that's how Claire would have looked when she scowled. “God, you are so fucking weird, Nathan,” she hisses and storms to her room.
-
She stays in her room for days after that. He hears her banging around, having tantrums; sometimes the lights dim, and he tries to remember what Peter said the night he brought her here: sociopath, sadist, don't let her get too close.
And Elle says: used, hunted, given up everything for him. She screams, I know I know I know when Nathan points out, drunk and bitter, that Peter doesn't care.
“Doesn't care much about you, either,” she says, her shrill voice tempering down easily into the mock seductive tones of a little girl. “Where's Peter Pan now?”
She doesn't blink when his hand closes to a fist; her palms flare with blue and she holds them outstretched. Delight registers in her eyes when he backs down, and he recognises that need to win in her that once so consumed him.
So he's not surprised when she pursues him to the lounge; irritated, yes, but not surprised.
“What do you want, Elle?” he growls, and she hooks her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans, cocking one sharp hip bone towards him.
“You're scared of leaving this house,” she whispers, taking three steps towards him, hands ghosting around the curve of his shoulders; he doesn't glance back but he can feel the hair on his neck reach up towards her. He jerks away.
“So are you,” he shoots back, and in the reflection of the liquor cabinet door, he sees her eyes harden.
“I'd leave if I could,” she says quietly. “It's all Peter's fault that I can't. I don't want to be in this stupid house with you.”
“And where you would go? Back to your abusive daddy?” He opens a cabinet door, grabbing the first bottle that his hand hits, pulling it out, closing the door again. “You like it like that-?”
She doesn't have time to discharge the bolt of electricity she has ready for him before the bottle slips from his fingers, exploding into shards across the hard wood floor. Because he can still see her reflection in the glass, but the face in the foreground isn't his. Except it is; it's more him than what everyone else sees. It's his real face.
Elle's voice seems far away as she snaps something at him. He squeezes his eyes shut, tight like a kid's against a nightmare, but the nightmare's him, and when he opens his eyes again still all he can see is that twisted face snarling back at him.
He doesn't even realise what he's doing until it's over, until he's holding his right hand in his left and blood is dripping down between his knuckles to mix with the alcohol on the floor and both the curved and flat pieces of glass that glitter up at him.
“Let me see,” Elle says, something a little too close to wonder in her voice as she takes his hand and turns it over, uncurling his fingers. “Didn't anyone ever teach you to punch with a closed fist?” she asks, pushing at the piece of glass sticking out of his palm. He curses and she laughs, pulling out the glass with a definite twist. He whimpers through clenched teeth and she only laughs some more.
“I'll drive you to the hospital,” she says, wiping her hands on her jeans, leaving prints red with his blood.
-
She wears wide black frames, hood of her stained top over her hair as she drives his convertible.
“Incognito,” she whispers, and laughs, taking a corner too sharply, mounting the curb and jolting Nathan in his seat. His hand is wrapped in a dishcloth that was once pristine white but now is bright bright red, and both their clothes match it. Elle hasn't even washed her hands - there's still dried blood around the edges of her fingers.
When they get to the ER, the woman on the desk glances at his bleeding hand, deems it not that serious and slides a form across the desk. She hands him a pen, letting it dangle between her fingers, and he stares at it, then at his curled up hand.
“I'm right handed,” he says, and the receptionist looks at him passively, glances at Elle.
“Perhaps your daughter can fill it out for you.”
Elle skips up from the squeaky chair and takes the pen eagerly. “Oh yes, I can do that, daddy.”
-
Elle doesn't ask him a single question about what to put on the form; her hand dashes across the page, and she slaps it back down on the desk quickly. He wants to ask, what the hell? Just generally, really; 'what the hell?' but that smell of hospital disinfectant that makes his stomach do somersaults, coupled with his light-headedness from blood loss, keeps him quiet, and Elle sits next to him, nails covered in chipped paint tapping against the metal leg of the chair, her glasses still on, her hood still up.
When a nurse calls him through to a cubicle, Elle follows, and he can hear the crackle of her hands at his back. She smiles when he glances back nervously.
The nurse unwinds the dishcloth from his hand and makes noises about how, oh, that's a nasty one and, my, that must be painful, and asks, “How did you do it?”
“Punched a glass door,” Elle supplies before he can speak, and the nurse's mouth flattens, just a little. She sniffs, eyes his dishevelled appearance, glances at Elle with the blood on her top and her hood up and glasses on.
“It must be a little dark with those on, dear,” she says kindly, and maybe she thinks he's some kind of abusive asshole father. One of those adjectives is right, at least.
Elle smiles wide. “I can see just fine, thank you,” she says sweetly.
The nurse purses her lips and glances at him. “I'm going to get the doctor to come look at your hand now, Mr Petrelli.”
As she draws the curtain back and exits, Nathan leans over and grabs Elle's arm. “What the fuck do you think you're doing, Elle?” he hisses.
She shrugs. “I'm just getting into character, Nate. Do you think I'm more your shy, retiring, wallflower daughter, or your Lolita?”
His grip on her arm tightens and he pulls her closer. Her eyes widen and the smile on her face grows. “Lolita wasn't Humbert's daughter,” he growls, though that, perhaps, isn't the most important thing that he could have pointed out.
“Even better,” she whispers, and the air seems to hum between them as she leans in, his fingers still digging into her arm - though she makes no indication that it hurts her. His breathing hitches for second, and one lone blue spark hops from her thumb all the way to her pinky on her left hand. His lips part and he leans towards her, feeling the heat from her skin acutely and it's only the squeak of shoes on the linoleum outside that saves him. He jerks back and pushes her away as the curtain is pulled back again.
“Mr... Petrelli?” The doctor stands at the curtain, eyes on a clipboard. He glances up for a second, frowns, then looks back down. “It says here that you were treated for... burns over sixty percent of your body? That must be a misprint. Six percent, perhaps?”
“No, it was sixty,” Nathan says, almost feeling the pull of too tight skin on his face. The doctor peers at him thoughtfully.
“I... see,” he says eventually.
“Do you think we could get my hand dealt with at some point?” Nathan snaps, filling the momentary pause with an abrasive tone; Elle's staring at him and he's just glad that he can't see her eyes. “It kind of hurts.”
The doctor seems to startle a little. “Yes, of course. Now, I'm afraid there are no theatres available, so we're going to have to do it here, under local.”
The nurse from before joins them, a metal trolley full of needles and scalpels and scissors, and maybe he pales a little when she picks up the largest needle, because she says, “I'm just going to inject you with some local anaesthetic. This will hurt a bit, you might want to hold your daughter's hand.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but feels Elle's hand slide into his before he has the chance. The smile she gives him when he turns to look at her could almost be called shy if he didn't know better, and when he tenses as the needle is pressed into the base of his hand, she twists her fingers tight around his.
-
They send him off with a metre of gauze wound around his hand and prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers, and the nurse comes with them to the pharmacy under the proviso of 'showing them the way' but hangs back a couple of steps with Elle, talking in hushed tones that at this point Nathan doesn't care to hear. They're not exactly showing him the courtesy of allowing him to ignore them, though.
“-not been the same since the accident,” Elle's saying, and her pitch is completely normal; there's concern and pain in her tone that sounds almost real to his ears.
“Has he seen a counsellor?” the nurse asks, and Nathan rests his elbows on the counter as the pharmacist goes into the back to fill his prescriptions; stares vacantly at the shelves and shelves of medication.
“No, he refused to go. He says he 'fucking hates quacks'.”
Nathan smiles at the turn of phrase. Perhaps she's psychic; he'd said those exact words the first time the small grey man had shuffled into his room and tried not to stare at Nathan's newly unbandaged face.
“There are support groups,” the nurse says softly and, Nathan imagines, touches Elle's arm or shoulder comfortingly. “Al-Anon helps families like yours. You and your mother can get some support coping-”
“My mother's dead,” Elle says quickly, and Nathan thinks that maybe he hears a hitch in her voice; just a touch of real emotion constricting her throat. And then as quick as it's there, it's gone - she slips back into the part. “She died in a fire when I was a baby. It's just us. My grandparents, uncle; they've all given up.”
The pharmacist passes him a paper bag, and the nurse is saying how sorry she is, and Elle is saying it's okay, really. They'll be okay.
“Elle,” he snaps, turning to them huddled together, scheming. “Come on, we're going home.”
She skips to his side, throwing a wave over her shoulder to the worried nurse, and latches onto his right arm. He hisses with the pain of the jolt, but she just cups her hands around his and brings it to her chest. She smiles up at him, that odd light back in her eyes.
“This was fun, we should do it more often.”
-
The wait at the hospital must have been longer than he thought, because when he looks at the clock in the car, it says it's past three in the morning and almost on cue, his body starts to wind down. By the time they're halfway home, he can barely keep his eyes open. Not that Elle is willing to give him the luxury of sleeping.
A sharp pain blooms in his shoulder and he starts. The radio's playing some repetitive tune and Elle's smiling, humming, steering with one hand while the other plays with a perfectly circular ball of electricity. He stares at it for a second and it occurs to him then, fleetingly, that he should touch it. She collapses it before he can get the chance.
After a moment's pause, he asks, “Did you just shock me?” and she laughs, an odd, slightly off pitch sound, like it doesn't quite knows what do with itself.
She shocks him again, the spark hitting his arm and sending a shiver through his body that's almost like pleasure even as he winces at the pain. Her eyes glitter mischievously, and the third shock hits higher on his arm; he gasps and shivers more, pushing against the passenger seat and shutting his eyes. Another spark tickles against his wrist, and he wonders: are her fingers poised just there? If he shifts slightly to the right, will she be touching him?
The pain in his hand is a distant throb now, and he catches his bottom lip between his teeth to stop from making a sound, taking slow deep breaths. It feels like the last time a woman touched him was a lifetime ago - though it's only been three months since he successfully pushed Heidi away. The car jerks to one side and her hand makes contact with his wrist; it feels tingly and warm against his skin. He sucks in a breath and opens his eyes, stares for a second at the gravel driveway lit by the headlamps, then glances sideways at her.
“We're home, Nathan,” she says, and his eyes slide to the house - his house - in front of them, then to her hand on his wrist, then back to her face. She grins, leans forward while he remains perfectly still, holds one finger up in front of his face until his vision focuses on it, then shocks him quickly on the nose. He jerks back, eyes watering.
“What did you think was going to happen?” she asks, the beginnings of a laugh bubbling out of her, and when he fumbles for the handle and kicks the door open, jumping out angrily, she continues to laugh.
Inside, the lights are on, but that doesn't seem all that strange to him - they probably just left them on in the rush to have him not to bleed to death. Elle, though, grabs hold of his arm, eyes wide and blue and white now that she's pushed her sunglasses into her hair.
“I turned those off,” she whispers, and her fingers dig into his arm like his had into hers only a few hours ago. “Someone's here.”
He frowns, looks down at her and her head of tangled blonde hair. He's still stinging - physically and mentally - from the incident in the car, but his hand is hovering somewhere near the back of her neck, and he rests it between her shoulder blades, fingers buried in long hair. “Are you sure?”
She bobs her head anxiously, and her other hand comes up to grab at his t-shirt, dragging the material up half an inch or so. He feels a little dizzy, but that's probably just tiredness and the effects of the pain meds he's taken.
“You can just- shock them, can't you?” he says, and he's complicit in whatever this is now, bending his head and whispering into her ear.
“If it's my father,” she breathes. “If he's found me... He'll be so angry.”
“He can't hurt you,” he replies, because Elle's an electric girl - who can beat that? She just shakes her head, though, and won't answer.
“I'll go take a look, okay?” Nathan says after a moment's pause, and she lets him take a couple of steps before tugging him back.
“No, don't.”
He twists around in her grip until he's facing her and brings his hands down on her shoulders. “What are you so scared of, Elle?”
Her gaze is blank for a second, and he can see acutely that she's little more than a child. “I don't know,” she whispers at last. “I can't remember.”
He opens his mouth to say something else, but the floorboards creak, and he glances back, Elle's fear seeping into him and gripping at his chest.
In the doorway of the lounge, Peter stands, broken and bloody pieces of glass held in his hand.
“What the hell happened, Nate?”
-
“Elle's trouble,” Peter says as he washes the weeks' worth of dishes piled in the sink; Nathan doesn't eat much that necessitates a plate and Elle just goes through the crockery cabinet when there's nothing clean in the rack. Nana Petrelli would turn over in her grave if she knew that her ancestral china was being used to eat pop tarts off.
“You brought her here,” he mutters over a glass of whisky - it must be five pm somewhere in Asia by now.
Peter sighs, dries the dish he was washing, and braces his palms against the edge of the counter. “I know I did, I know. I just- I want you to be careful. She isn't what she seems.”
Nathan raises his glass to his lips. “Few are.”
“Yeah.” Peter shakes his head and turns around. “What's going on with you, Nate? Have you even left the house while I've been gone?”
Nathan raises his bandaged hand. “I've been out.”
“You know that's not what I mean.” Peter pinches the bridge of his nose and looks tired, like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Maybe he does. “You've trapped yourself in this place with Elle, of all people. Where's Heidi, where're Simon and Monty - jeez, where's Mom?”
Nathan pretends to think, though everything's getting a little vague. A little fuzzy around the edges. “Heidi took the kids up to her parents. It's an 'extended vacation'. She packed all her clothes. Ma is... you know, I'm not really sure what the old bitch is doing.” He smirks at the frown of disapproval on Peter's face at that; it makes him look even more like her. “And you, Pete, I don't know where you are.”
Peter cocks his head. “What do you mean? I'm right here.”
“Are you?” Nathan pushes his chair back and gets up unsteadily, gripping the table for support. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Elle now, her head poking around the edge of the kitchen door. She lifts a finger to her lips.
Peter crosses over to him, holds his hand out. Nathan doesn't take it. “I'm sorry, I really am. There's just a lot happening - there are a lot of dangerous people out there. I've been trying to help.”
“The world,” Nathan replies tonelessly, feeling the wall as he makes his way to the door; Elle skitters back, disappearing around a corner.
Peter smiles, and there's a light there that Nathan hasn't seen since his little brother decided to become a nurse. “The world.”
Nathan remembers when the family was Peter's world.
-
Peter says Nathan should go back to work. Find a position at some little law firm; a low pressure job, but something to get him out of the house. Nathan barely dignifies this with a response.
Peter says he has to stop drinking. There are AA meetings not far from here, held in a local church. Nathan says he probably shouldn't go into a church, lest he risk burning all over again.
Peter says he's suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. It's normal, here's a number of a good psychiatrist, she'll help. Later he'll find the piece of paper with her number crumpled up under the couch.
Peter says Elle is dangerous to be around. He should never have brought her to the house, he only did it because she needed to hide somewhere after helping him escape. He says she'll only make Nathan's 'condition' worse. Elle ends up curled in Nathan's lap one night when they're the watching the twenty four hour news at four in the morning.
Peter says he's home for good now.
Peter leaves exactly three weeks later.
-
Elle likes the news. Horror movies never did much for her - even when she was little, she knew that the blood was made of syrup and red food dye, that the decapitated heads were nothing more than plaster and clay, and that next month the shrill bimbo that had been so violently dealt with would be starring in some sappy comedy romance. The news, though, is real; the blood is real, the pain is real, the death is real.
Sometimes she wishes she could feel things they way the people on the screen do - they're real and she's just some fantastic comic book character.
Nathan watches the news with her, though, in that weird time when it's neither day or night, and she doesn't think he's a comic book character, even if he can fly. She's not sure what he is, and maybe neither does he.
“Fuck, this is miserable,” he mutters, slouching down the couch, his arms crossed, as they watch a report about the Middle East for the third time.
Elle picks up the remote, slides a fingernail under the zero key and flick-flick-flicks it until Nathan glances at her.
“Want me to turn over?”
He shrugs.
She jabs indiscriminately at the buttons for a second, split second clips of the world flicking past; pretty made up women selling bottles of anti-ageing cream, hysterical sports commentators screaming about basketball (and the ball passes to Cuuuurry), a girl that barely looks legal on her knees in front of a tanned muscled man - Nathan's eyebrows climb half an inch or so. Finally she settles on an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
“I love this show!” she exclaims, and Nathan even smiles a little - the corner of his mouth turns up just a touch. Peter's been gone for two days now, and Nathan doesn't seem to have slept since he left - he just sits around watching television.
“Hey,” she says, and scoots closer, tucking her feet beneath her, reaching out until her fingers just brush his shoulder. Elle's watched a lot of TV, and read a lot of books, so she knows things - maybe not first hand, but it's good enough. It's got her by okay before. She knows, for instance, that sometimes physical comfort is more welcome than verbal comfort - men don't like talking about their emotions, everyone says so, and she's read the company's file on Nathan. He's a proud man. Almost like her father.
“Hey,” she repeats, moving her hand to the back of his neck, rubbing tight circles on his skin. He sighs, long and low, and keeps looking ahead as she crawls over to him, bringing her other hand up to grip at his shoulders. “You're so tense, Nathan,” she says quietly, trying to remember what words they use on the TV. “You have- your back's full of knots.”
His brow creases with a frown, but he lets her push him forward to rub harder at his back. She balls her hands to fists, pushes and digs her knuckles in so hard that she wonders if there'll be bruises in the morning. She hopes there will be.
By the time Rocky and Bullwinkle has switched to The Flintstones, Nathan's soft and malleable and half-asleep. She pulls him around until he's laid out on the couch, then crawls on top and curls up, head resting on his stomach.
-
Inhibition is a foreign concept to Elle; she's never experienced peer pressure, never had a teacher put her in detention for some fleeting indiscretion. The line between right and wrong is wherever she wants it to be; it's wrong to hurt someone if they're stronger than you, can hurt you more. It's right if they're weak and you won't get caught. It's right if you enjoy it.
She's slave to her instincts.
Nathan does nothing on instinct, is never spontaneous. He carefully plans and thinks and weighs up his options, and when he can't, he does nothing at all. Peter's warned him off her, she knows that's why he's not taken things further; one piece of information is conflicting with another and he can't come to a decision. She catches him staring sometimes - when he's drunk too much he does it openly, his eyes following her around the house. She knows he has a weakness for blondes, and even more so for nice blondes in need of being taken care of - girls whose vowels are rounded and who make big eyes at him.
She can use that.
-
Showers are always an ordeal. It took her a good five years to learn how to control her powers, to get to the point where she could touch a light switch and not have the whole electrical system blow out, but her body still gives off tiny charges like a stripped power cable. Holding that charge in while the water beats on her skin is near impossible; she always ends up getting a hundred little shocks as she does an impromptu dance on the plastic tiles.
When she gets out from underneath the grand wide shower head - which drowns every inch of her body - the sun's just about to start its descent down, and she soaks the floor, leaving her hair to drip down her back as she opens the door, letting steam out to fill the hall. She leaves wet footprints that absorb quickly into the thick shag carpets behind her as she heads to the kitchen, the lure of yesterday's half eaten pizza drawing her down.
Her hair reaches almost down to the small of her back now, the ends frayed because there's no one to cut it for her any more - Eden used to do that, sometimes Candice, the Haitian once or twice when she could persuade him. She kind of likes it, though, there's something... real about it, something about the dryness of hair starved of the expensive types of potions that Heidi wasn't kind enough to leave behind, about her face fresh of make up, about her naked body in the harsh artificial light of the fridge's bulb, that pleases her. Her breasts aren't modestly covered by blonde ringlets, her locks hang in a tangled mess behind her, leaving puddles on the black and white tiles.
She shivers at the open fridge door, moving old cartons and packets of food around, reaching towards the back to pull out the square Dominoes box, flipping the lid up, turning on the spot, pausing a beat to enjoy Nathan's eyes on her again. Her skin sparks even more as he watches.
“Want a slice?” she asks sweetly, holding the box out.
Nathan tilts his chin up. “What the fuck?” he responds evenly.
She lifts a shoulder, acutely aware of how it raises her left breast to attention, making her hard nipples more noticeable. “It's a bit stale, but I didn't think you'd mind all that much.”
“You're naked,” he points out, a little redundantly, she feels.
She giggles, and turns, slowly closing the fridge door. “Nothing gets by you, does it?”
She walks delicately across the kitchen, stepping lightly over the puddles she's left, balancing the pizza box on one palm, and sits down at the table. Nathan stands at the door a few seconds longer, looking faintly confused, then shakes his head.
“Fuck,” he murmurs, taking the seat across from her, reaching over to grab a slice of cold pizza. She moves her hand over just a touch - enough that he doesn't notice the tiny movement - and the tips of their fingers brush together. She wills a tiny spark to jump to his hand, and he jerks but doesn't pull away, just stares at her with dark eyes so like his brother's, then takes a slice and leans back, not breaking his gaze. It almost makes her want to shrink back; he's intense in a way completely unlike Peter. With Nathan it feels like he'll go all the way - with what, she's not sure. It feels like his boundaries are paper thin. She pushes her chest out as she takes her slice. Nathan smirks.
“Cold?” he asks.
“Not really.” She pauses, squints out of the window at the once manicured garden bathed in the dying light of the day - now overgrown like a jungle. Nathan fired the gardener. “Nathan, why don't you turn the lights on in here?”
The room is lit in dull orange-yellow light from outside, and when Nathan turns to look out the window, it shines on one half of his face like fire. “Why don't you?”
She twists a mouth into a pout. “I don't know, it's your house. I thought maybe you were allergic or something. Are you a vampire?”
He almost laughs, giving a snort that makes her want to preen. “Vampires are only allergic to sunlight.”
“So what are you allergic to?” she asks. “People?”
His smile fades, and he shrugs, taking a bite of his pizza. She looks down at her own slice; there are anchovies on it. She doesn't like anchovies.
“I don't like anchovies,” she says, and glances up. “Do you want them?”
He swallows, wipes his mouth. “Sure.”
She picks them off quickly, collecting them in one hand, and uses the other to beckon him to lean in. “Open your mouth,” she whispers.
“Uh-” he stammers and maybe he flushes a little, she can't tell in this light. He opens his mouth a little though, tongue praised against his bottom teeth, and she takes an anchovy, placing it there, letting her fingers linger against his lips.
“Well, close then,” she says, quieter than she meant to, with a quiver that's altogether too girlish.
He closes, and her fingers are still there. There a look in his eyes that she can't place; it's different from anything she's experienced with Peter or Gabriel or even Adam. She pulls away first.
He swallows. “I'm not really... hungry any more, Elle.” His voice is rougher than it was the second before, and she kind of loves the way her name sounds when he says it. She nods and goes back to eating her pizza in silence.
She starts to wonder if she's disappeared altogether. Nathan's staring blankly at the table, and it reminds her of her father at his desk while she tried to do something to impress him; cartwheels, dance routines, murder. He'd look anywhere but at her.
Finally, Nathan stirs, propping his chin on his hand. “Does that hurt?” he asks, and she follows where he's pointing; her free hand is giving off tiny sparks. She hadn't noticed.
She frowns. “Why would it hurt?” she says, honestly perplexed. “It's just me. It's what I was made to do. It's not like flying hurts you, is it?”
He doesn't answer immediately, just scratches his pinky against his cheek.
“No, I guess not,” he replies eventually.
-
The first time Elle met Nathan, she was twenty four years old, and Peter had flown her halfway across New York, while her head was full of dreams of marriage and babies and houses with white picket fences. Nathan had wires and drips snaking out of him like legs of spiders, and Peter let go of her hand when he saw his brother, paused only long enough to get that extraordinary vial of blood from her that she'd worked so hard to get - Adam drove a hard bargain in negotiations for it.
When Nathan asked 'who's that?', held tightly in Peter's arms, Peter said it didn't matter.
The first time Elle saw Nathan, she was six years old, and her father had brought her to the big shiny clean Hartsdale facility that she'd so soon learn to call home. Her room in the hospital wing was boring; there weren't any toys or colouring books, and she'd wanted to know if grandma was mad at her, but her dad had just waved her off, turning his attention back to the tall man in little round glasses. She remembers pouting, stamping her foot, being told to not be a brat, and slipping out the door unnoticed by either of the men.
She'd thought that perhaps there might be other children to play with in the hall, and she'd been right; she'd caught the back of a dark-haired boy disappear into a room when his mother called for him. She'd run after to him and poked her head around the door, and that was the first time she saw Nathan Petrelli. He was sitting on a bed, his right arm held loosely by a nurse as she readied a great big needle and pressed it into his arm - he winced a little, but the boy asked, 'does it hurt?', and he smiled, replied, 'does what hurt?'. His blood flowed dark red through the tube into a vial, and she remembers thinking he's so brave and then running away when he glanced up at her.
It's strange that she remembers that, she thinks, because she doesn't remember anything for a long time after it, but ever since then, whenever she saw pictures of him, in her father's files, pasted on the sides of buildings, she smiled. Maybe that was why it was so easy for Peter to manipulate her. Getting Adam's blood was even her idea - it hadn't occurred to Peter that he could heal his brother when he'd held her hands and gazed at her with puppy dog eyes.
She didn't want Nathan's pretty face to be ruined.
-
At Primatech, she slept in a room on level one; there weren't any windows in there and she had to use a swipe card to get up to the first floor. Sometimes her dad confiscated her card, when she had tantrums or tried to hurt the psychiatrists, and she had to stay on the perennially lit floor - the bright light seeped in under her door when she tried to sleep and she could go days without knowing if it was day or night.
In the mansion, she has a room on the top floor strewn with detritus of Nathan's kids; little toy cars and planes, robotic dogs with run down batteries, teddy bears well loved and discarded . It's basically used for storage now, and Nathan says that she can have one of made up guest rooms, but she likes the window seat and the dusty curtains and the wrought iron bed much more than the pastel, colour-coordinated rooms downstairs.
She also finds an old box of papers, a crumpled photograph of a baby and a handwritten letter signed Meredith.
That night she dreams of being a cheerleader in a short flippy red skirt.
-
Spring comes around fast, and it's supposed to be the season of change, right? Baby animals get born and flowers blossom and people get married and enjoy the turn in the weather. Elle likes change, it's like a new page in a storybook, and when the snow on the path out front begins to melt, she starts to think that something's going to happen. Peter's going to come home and realise how badly he's fucked up, and she'll forgive him after a time, and Nathan will get a job, and maybe they can all live in the mansion together, because Peter's apartment is way too small.
Elle was a spring baby.
She wakes one April morning to Nathan's loud voice. She can hear him all the way up in her room, and he's yelling and swearing at someone who does not match his volume - that seems to make him angrier. She dresses quickly, creeping downstairs, and sits halfway down the ground floor staircase, peering through the banisters as Nathan's voice echoes around the wide hall.
“Well, maybe you could be afforded just a little bit of blame in the machinations of this monumentally fucked up family!” he shouts. “I didn't just get like this out of a clear blue sky, you know!”
She doesn't catch the reply, but he answers with: “Then why are you even here? If you're not going to fucking help-” he pauses a second, then continues, “-yeah, I meant help that's helpful, you coming here and making passive aggressive threats is not! But, hey, at least it only took you six months to remember me, huh?”
There are footsteps, and Elle draws her feet underneath herself and cranes her neck to get a look at who Nathan's arguing with. He walks out first, crossing to the front door and opening it with a sneer on his face and mock bow. “Out,” he says simply.
And then Angela comes into her view, and she gasps, scrambling up to hide.
“Oh, don't rush on my account, dear,” Angela says, looking her way. “Your father wishes you a happy birthday, by the way.”
Nathan slams the door behind her when she leaves, and mumbles something about getting drunk.
-
Later, she calls her father. It's not true, she tells herself. It's not it's not it's not. If her father knew where she was, he'd come get her. He'd miss her, he'd want her home.
She sits on a kitchen counter, listening for a second to Nathan banging around upstairs - swearing not too softly when he bumps into furniture - and clutches the phone hard, quickly dialling the number and holding it to her ear.
It rings eight times before it clicks through.
“Hello?” her father says. It's private number, only a few know it. He should know it's her.
She takes a couple of deep breaths, and he says 'hello?' again, and then, 'who the hell is this, how did you get this number?'.
Finally, she replies quietly, “Dad?”
He exhales slowly. “Elle,” he says, and he sounds sort of resigned, but that must just be sadness.
“Daddy,” she says, “daddy, I'm so sorry, I miss you, I'm sorry.” Salty tears run down her cheeks and her speech chokes off as she begins to cry in earnest.
“Elle,” he repeats, and sighs. “How long are you going to play house with Petrelli for? It's time you come back to work.”
She holds the phone away from her ear, then presses it back. “What?” she whispers. “You knew...?”
“Of course I did, Elle.” And he does sound resigned; resigned and long-suffering. She knows the tone well. “It's time to come back now,” he says, and she grips the receiver hard. Her arm shakes, and under her fingers she feels the plastic melt. She holds it until the plastic's so melted that it bends in two.
She throws the blackened lump across the room - it flies a couple of feet then springs back on its cord and slams into a kitchen cabinet. She sends a couple of hundred volts of electricity into the handset for good measure; it breaks with the impact, the plastic cracking apart, leaving a jagged black mark on the wall.
She jumps down off the counter and doesn't know what to do; she just stands there, her hands sparking, sucking in short panicked breaths that make her feel light-headed. Her legs still twitch with energy, though, and blood pounds in her ears. She starts forward and ends up running up the stairs, not sure of where she's going until she's pushing Nathan's bedroom door open.
He's asleep in his bed for once, and she climbs onto the mattress, pulling back the covers and shaking him, trying to rouse him.
“Nathan,” she whispers frantically. “Nathan, Nathan, Nathan,” she repeats over and over, and shoves hard at his shoulder.
“Uh,” he mumbles, face turned into the pillow, and she clings to his chest, whispering 'I hate him, I hate him' into Nathan's collarbone. His large hands feel out the shape of her body, patting her down from shoulder to hip, then settle around her waist. “What's wrong?” he slurs, and by the smell of him, he probably passed out rather than actually fell sleep.
“I hate him,” she repeats vehemently, lifting her head from his chest slightly. “Can I stay with you tonight?”
He squints at her in the dark, brushes at her wet face with his thumb, and cradles the back of her head, holding her against him. “Sure you can,” he murmurs into her hair. “Of course you can, Claire.”
-
The next day, she wakes up tangled in Nathan's sheets, and she smiles sleepily, pressing her face into the pillow and breathing in deeply. It smells of him, alcohol and the shampoo he uses, and he got up hours ago (she remembers that he stroked her hair when she pretended to still be asleep) but the scent remains.
She gets up slowly, rolling over and pushing herself up on an elbow, letting her feet slip out from under the covers to the floor. She feels stiff, and her face is itchy and raw from crying - she thinks that she must have continued to cry in her sleep, and she thinks she must have soaked the front of Nathan's t-shirt with her tears. She smiles at the thought.
Stripping down to her underwear, she throws her t-shirt and jeans over the end of Nathan's bed, and rifles through his wardrobe until she finds a pressed, perfectly unwrinkled, dress shirt. It's white with faint blue vertical lines, and it completely swallows her up, the cuffs extending beyond her fingertips and the tails reaching to her knees. She buttons it quickly and opens the door, practically skipping downstairs.
In the lounge, Nathan is talking softly to someone, and Elle lets her fingers trail along the wallpaper and over picture frames as she listens to snippets of conversation.
“That sounds great, buddy,” Nathan says, and laughs, quiet and strained. “Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna try. I'd love to see your new train set, maybe next week, okay? Are you going to remember to tell your mom that I called? No, I know you're not a baby. Okay, okay, see you soon. Bye, I love you.”
She peers around the door as he snaps his cell shut, and he beckons her in.
“Who was that?” she asks.
“One of my sons, Monty.”
“Oh.” She perches on the arm of the couch and crosses her ankles like the women in black and white movies do.
“I noticed that something happened in the kitchen,” Nathan says, his tone edging towards disapproval. He looks better today, she thinks; his hair's still scruffy and too long, but he's shaved and seems fully awake.
“I was upset.” She tugs the shirt she's wearing down, and the first four buttons are undone, so when she does it reveals the lacy edges of her bra.
He shuts his eyes for a second, then opens them again. “Okay. Well, anyway, Peter called this morning.”
“Really?” She leans forward. “Is he coming home soon?”
“As a matter of fact, he is.” Nathan smiles, and moves a little closer. “He managed to catch that guy... Sylar? Anyway, he brought him back to the Company, and all's forgiven apparently. Your father is going to leave Peter alone, and I guess life goes back to normal.”
“Normal?” she echoes, and recrosses her legs, tugging hair behind her ear, trying to hide the nervous tremor that's been running through her since he said 'Sylar'. “What do you mean?”
He hooks his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans, and tries to smile. “I think it's time you went home, Elle.”
“Home,” she says, repeating him again. “Back to my daddy.”
Nathan winces at the way she says 'daddy', and crosses one arm over his chest. “Elle,” he begins, but she cuts him off.
“I want to stay here, Nathan. I want to be yours. Yours and Peter's. Peter'll come home and then everything will be okay, we'll be happy-”
Nathan sighs. “Elle-”
“And and,” she continues, looking up at him with shiny eyes. “And I can be Claire if you want me to be.”
He raises an eyebrow, cocks his head, and says, “What?”
She jumps off the arm, wipes the back of her hand across her nose, and shakes her hair out. “That's what you want, isn't it?” She reaches back, parting her hair down the middle and twisting each half. “Pig tails and teddy bears, and everything that makes little girls nice. That's what you and Peter want.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Nathan snaps, backing up a couple of steps. “What the fuck is wrong with you? What kind of person do you think I am?”
“Don't try to pretend, Nathan,” she whispers. “Last night you thought I was Claire.”
“Last night,” he says witheringly, “I was drunk.”
She approaches him as he stares her down, reaches out and digs her fingers into his shoulders. “You're a lot more fun when you're drunk, then.”
“We didn't do anything,” he shoots back, taking hold of her wrists and pushing her away.
“Are you quite sure?” she asks, looking up at him through her eyelashes, a smirk playing on her lips.
“Yes. I'd know if I'd fucked you.” His mouth quirks up in a sneer and he gives her a little shove, letting go of her wrists.
She stumbles back and clenches her jaw. “Don't do that,” she hisses, letting a spark hit the ground and burn the rug.
“Don't do what?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest, allowing a glance for the ruined spot on the floor.
She holds her hand palm side up and lets a ball of electricity fill it. “I can hurt you, Nathan.”
He shakes his head. “No, you can't.”
“Really?” She walks back towards him until she stands on the burned rug.
He smiles, inclines his head. “Really.”
He doesn't get it, not at all. He just stands there and smiles like it's one big joke, like she's just a child. He's like Peter, like Adam; he underestimates her, and she wants to show him how he's oh so wrong.
She lifts her hands, slides them around his face, thumbs resting on his cheeks. He uncrosses his arms, lets them fall to his sides, but he doesn't break away. His skin feels smooth, newly shaven, under her hands, and she thinks that it's a shame, what she's going to do next. She builds up the charge in her hands, not enough to hurt him - not yet - but certainly enough for him to feel it. His eyes widen, just a touch, and he takes a deep breath, blinks rapidly, but otherwise stays absolutely still.
She's close enough that short strands of her hair pull towards her hands as the charge builds and builds and builds, and Nathan flinches as a spark jumps from her pinky to his temple, but he still doesn't move. Blue dances along her fingertips, and he gasps as she scrapes her nails across his skin, leaning into her and taking hold of her upper arms.
“Jesus, Elle,” he murmurs, and she pulls her hands away slightly as he keeps leaning in. “Don't,” he says softly, “don't.” And then his lips are pressed against hers, and she squeaks in surprise, opening her mouth enough for him to push his tongue in. She moves her hands from his face into his hair, and he moans into the kiss as she grips it hard, wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her flush against him. A spark jumps from her lips to his, and he only deepens the kiss in response, backing her up until she's pressed up against a wall.
A couple of seconds more of his frantic kissing and he pauses for breath, leaning his forehead against hers, his eyes shut.
“Nathan?” she whispers uncertainly, brushing crackling fingers over his jaw. She remembers doing the same action with Peter, sitting on his little single cot in his cell. It was the night of their great escape and he was all itchy and twitchy to get going, but she had the blood, and she knew he was a good guy, he wouldn't force her to give it to him. She'd wanted one thing before they left: him, and he begrudgingly gave, letting her kiss him and touch him and undress him, but with each shock he grimaced. She'd laughed at that, revelling in the familiar pain and fear that was everyone's reaction to her. She'd been happy that night, in her victory, but watching Nathan now, tucking his head down and trying to chase her fingers with his mouth, pressing his lips against them, she thinks that this has to be so much better.
“You aren't anything like Peter,” she breathes, and he opens eyes that seem darker as his pupils dilate.
“You noticed.”
-
He mumbles things to her, to himself maybe, as he kisses her, tongue playing across the underside of her jaw, holding her wrists loosely over her head. She isn't completely clear on how they got back upstairs, only that Nathan dropped her several times on the stairs, her elbows and back impacting painfully with the sharp edges of the steps, and that in retaliation she bit his lip hard enough to break it.
His knees press tight around her hips, trapping her there, and his mouth works down her neck, pausing briefly to suck and swirl his tongue against skin that's so sensitive she wants to scream.
“Do that again,” she whispers harshly, and he lifts his head slightly, his lips red and swollen and bleeding, his eyes questioning.
“My neck,” she says breathlessly, “I want a mark, a-a hickey.” She grins and he grins back, lowering his head, his teeth scraping and pinching her skin.
She squirms beneath him and runs her hands into his hair as he licks and sucks, and she feels more than hears him moan when she sends little sparks across his scalp. He shivers and lets go of one of her wrists, reaching down and pulling at the band of her underwear. When he moves from her neck and tries to kiss her, she quickly says, “Did you do it? Is there a mark?”
He glances down, smirks, says, “Yeah, there's a mark,” then goes to kiss her again.
“Really?” she asks, and he pauses, frowns, leans in again. “Oh, I want to see!” She wriggles to get out from underneath him, pulling her wrist from his grip, but he laces their fingers together before she can pull free.
“Later,” he says, and she feels something press against her inner thigh.
Oh.
“Okay?” he says.
“Yeah,” she replies, pushing hair from his face that's a mixture of desire and- and something she doesn't know. “Yeah, later.”
He sits back, letting go of her hand, and reaches for the buttons of her shirt. “This looks way better on you than it ever did on me,” he murmurs, and laughs, mostly to himself but it still makes her shiver.
She shivers more when he pushes the shirt open and stares down at her mostly exposed body. She sucks her stomach in and stomps down on the urge to giggle when he runs his fingers around the edges of her bra.
“It does up at the front,” he says softly, and she nods.
“I can't work the regular kind,” she confesses and flushes, but he just licks his lips and flicks the clasp undone.
“I like it,” he says, and reaches over to open the drawer of the bedside table, taking out a condom and tearing the packet open with his teeth.
She fumbles at his belt, and maybe she's too slow at releasing it or maybe her hands shake, because he looks down at her, and says, “Have you done this before?”, his tone all business-like.
“Yes, of course I have,” she responds, pulling the belt free and moving the work at the buttons of his fly. Why couldn't he have a zip like a normal person? “God, Nathan, I'm not a child.”
He cups her chin, forcing her to look at him. Her hands fall away his fly. “No, you're not, and I want to make it clear right now that I don't want you to be. You are not Claire, and I am not Bob Bishop.” His mouth twists unhappily. After a beat he adds, “And I'm not Peter either.”
“I know that,” she answers quickly. “I do.”
“We're us, okay? No pretending.”
“No pretending,” she agrees and pulls his hand up to kiss it. It's the one that got cut, and it's healed up now, just a pink line across his palm. She gives the scar a little shock with her lips, and he shuts his eyes. “Give me the condom, Nathan, I want to do it, I can do it.”
It's easy to get the packet out of his left hand as she sucks on the fingers of his right, him with his eyes still closed, humming happily. She gets his fly undone, and tugs his jeans and boxers down, pausing thoughtfully before running her nails across the head of his erection. He jerks into her hand, and she grins around his fingers, biting down lightly.
She's never actually had sex with a condom before; Adam had refused, and she'd forgot with Peter. The first night she stayed in the mansion, he'd brought her a cup of water and little white pill instead of a bedtime story.
Gabriel probably would have used a condom, she thinks - he was the cautious, though not cautious enough, type.
She rolls it on as steadily as she can, holds her breath as Nathan shimmies down until he almost completely covers her with his body. If she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine that it's Gabriel on top of her. Peter had been too lean, felt too fragile, like he'd break apart even though she knew he'd heal up from whatever she did. Nathan feels like he wants whatever she can give.
He'd probably disapprove of her ruminating on past lovers though (just us) so she focuses on wrapping herself tightly around him as he enters her, and pushes her hips upwards as he presses open-mouthed kisses to her hair.
He's surprisingly gentle, pressing into her with long, slow strokes, his face buried in her hair. She spreads her legs wider, hooking her legs around his waist and forcing her hips up. “God, Nathan, harder. I won't break.”
He turns his head so that she can feel his breath on her cheek. “You sure about that?”
Sinking her nails into his back, she grits her teeth. “Yes! Nathan, c'mon!” she whines, and he chuckles, holding her hips, thumbs digging in.
He bows his head and pants into her shoulder as her skin begins to tingle. He kisses her neck again, lips brushing against the rapidly forming bruise there, and moves faster and faster on top of her, moaning loudly when her fingers send sparks dancing across his shoulder blades.
Her head starts to buzz, and she knows that she's close, remembers this out-of-body feeling that comes just before she loses control. She presses her head back into the pillow and relishes the sensation as everything from her hair down to her toes feels as sensitive as a raw nerve. Nathan's enjoying it too, judging by the way he's moaning and cursing under his breath as his chest presses flush against her. His skin under her nails feels wet - blood, she thinks - and when he kisses her hard on the mouth she feels how dry and broken his lips are.
How fragile he actually is, even if he hasn't acknowledged it.
“Nathan,” she gasps, so so close, and moves her hands to his shoulder, pushing weakly at him. “Nathan! I'm going to hurt you!”
He raises his head, opening his eyes lazily, and stares completely uncomprehendingly at her.
She clenches her fists, holding in the force of her charge, though she can feel it all around her, wanting to escape out of every pore. “I'll kill you, it'll kill you,” she says hysterically, remembering how she had to wait for Adam and Peter to revive.
Nathan blinks, hands splaying out over her stomach uncertainly, and she shoves him hard enough that he pulls out of her just as the last of her control snaps and she throws her head back and yells unintelligibly. He gasps as electricity shoots up his arms, and the next few seconds are static and snow as she lets her body do what it earns to.
When she finally opens her eyes - it feels like it's been hours and every inch of her is exhausted - it's only because Nathan's calling to her. She thinks he must be very far away, because she can barely hear him, but when she looks up his face is inches from hers, and he looks kind of amazing, and all she can think is Nathannathannathan.
“Can I...?” he asks, and his voice sounds like it hasn't been in years. She shivers and smiles, and then he's kissing her deeply, pushing back into her hard and fast, and she thinks that maybe he's trying to eat her; if he's the Big Bad Wolf, does that make her Little Red Riding Hood?
She also wonders what's going to happen after this; when she was little and used to listen around doors, she would hear the adults talking; the red-headed lady who used to give her ejections but disappeared before Elle could learn her name, and Angela with hair as black as a witch's and nails as red as blood. They used to say, in whispered conversations of camaraderie, that men only wanted one thing: sex. 'Sometimes I have to beat him off with a stick,' Angela would say, and Elle was only seven, so she didn't understand.
And Bennet used to say that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, more specifically with pie, and, well, it had worked once.
“What kind of pie do you like?” she asks suddenly. She thinks she could probably learn how to make one herself. There are lots of cookbooks in the kitchen.
Nathan mumbles something vaguely obscene in reply, and she looks at him thoughtfully as he struggles to hold himself over her, the muscles in his arms spasming crazily. Lifting a hand, she brushes sweaty hair from his neck and touches her index finger to the top of his spine, sending a spark running downwards. He arches into it, shudders, curses, and collapses on top of her. He takes short sharp breaths to the point of hyperventilating, and she wraps her arms around him, rubbing his back.
Eventually he rolls off her, sits up, and she immediately misses the pressure. He sits with his back to her, legs hanging over the edge of the bed, and when she sees the bloody crescent shaped marks, she presses her knuckles into the bruise on her neck and smiles.
Nathan pulls off the condom and ties it with practised ease, throwing it into a nearby wastepaper basket, then swings his legs back onto the bed. She watches him with wide eyes as he leans over to pull the sheets over them, thumping down beside her. She waits another couple of minutes, until his chest settles into a steady rhythm of up and down, up and down, then moulds herself to his side, tucking her head against his shoulder.
“Apple,” he says, placing his arms around her. “I like apple pie.”
Rating: PG-13 to R.
Pairing: Nathan/Elle, onesided Peter/Elle, mentions of past Adam/Elle and Sylar/Elle, allusions to onesided Nathan/Claire.
Wordcount: 11,193(!)
Summary: S2 AU, but begrudgingly accepting new S3 Elle canon. He doesn't answer. He's a little (a lot) drunk, and Peter hasn't been home in over a week and he hasn't called Claire yet and his mother isn't speaking to him and he's wondering what Elle's fingers would feel like in his mouth. Elle, rather than Adam, helps Peter escape, and it has unexpected consequences.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.
Notes: I seriously do not know how this got so damn long, I never intended for it be, but Nathan and Elle kind of get into my head, and I haven't been able to do anything other than fuss of writing this for the past few weeks.
It should hurt more than this.
He knows why it doesn't; he knows that they pump him full of god only knows what through that intravenous drip that hangs beside his bed. He knows that they treat his burns four times daily, never let him feel more than a dull ache. But.
But it should hurt more. If he could feel something physically, maybe he could stop feeling everything emotionally.
-
The doctors say there's reconstructive surgery, physical therapy, counselling. They say that he still has the expectation of a good quality of life, if only he tries hard enough.
They still won't leave sharp objects in his room, but you know. That's just temporary.
Nathan's seen those pictures, though, the ones of people with severe burns, who have skin grafts and have to wear masks to hold their faces together. Life will never the same for them--
For him.
-
They get him on his feet - or close to it. Physical therapist says this is the first step.
Nathan doesn't appreciate the pun.
They dial back the pain relief too, and he was wrong; the physical does not cancel out the emotional, it just magnifies it, leaving him collapsed on the floor screaming at his family to leave him alone.
He's a monster, and they might not be scared of him, but he is.
-
He'll take the coward's way out, he decides. When they eventually discharge him, he'll find the most painless method and he'll end his life. His brother is gone, his mother is someone that he realises now he barely knows, his wife has left him and every one of his children would be better off without Nathan fucking Petrelli as a father. The resolution gets him through one more physio appointment, one more talk with the psychiatrist (and he doesn't mean to be an ass, but Nathan can run rings around this idiot even when he can't walk unaided), one more group of med students staring at him, talking about him, poking him.
Nathan's had his one heroic act, he may as well go back to being a coward.
-
Every night he goes to sleep and hopes that God will do the job for him. Generally he's disappointed.
They have to give him drugs to make him sleep, and the effects are like being knocked unconscious. Truth be told, it's his favourite part of the day, and the waking up from it is best he ever feels; when he's woozy and coming out of his dreams, the pain is like a separate entity; there but not there, and in those scant minutes he can pretend he's nobody at all. His whole existence hinges around those hours when he can rest, when he sees his family how they could have been if they weren't the Petrellis and he can look at mirror and see a man that doesn't terrify him. The dark has always been more real to him than the light, now more than ever.
-
Then he wakes up. And Peter's sitting on his bed, holding his unscarred left hand. Nathan flexes his fingers in his brother's grip, marvels at how they obey him, thinks, okay, I must still be asleep, even though he's never once had a lucid dream.
“You're not dreaming,” Peter says, “everything's going to be okay, now.”
-
Peter always brought home strays, starting with that mangy little spaniel that he inexplicably named Isabelle, but this is something else. Sure, she's blonde too, but there the similarities end.
“Who is she?” Nathan asks. She's sitting on his couch, pulling threads from the upholstery, he knows that much.
“She got me that blood that healed you, and she helped me get out of the cell the company had me in. Even if she put me in there in the first place.” Peter shrugs. “Her name's Elle, she needs a place to stay.”
-
Sparks of blue dance across her fingers more often than they don't; at the kitchen table eating his food, on the couch watching his television, probably in bed sleeping on his sheets - not that Nathan thinks about that.
It's her power, to manipulate electricity or lightning or something, and he's still getting used to that, the nonchalance with which a goddamn superpower is mentioned - he can barely form the sounds to utter that one syllable, three letter word: fly, and Miss Elle Bishop greets him with a handshake and an electric shock.
She's a chatty thing, always ready with a sarcastic comment or a sharp rejoinder, even if half the time Nathan doesn't have the first clue about what she's saying, and she certainly livens up his (big, empty) house.
And Peter doesn't like her. Of course, Peter disliking you is like Nathan loving you, but the fact remains; Peter doesn't like her. Nathan knows how Peter is with girls like her; soft, pretty, blonde girls, he's pretty much their lapdog, but not Elle. Elle he only speaks to fleetingly in the morning before he leaves - and those instances of leaving grow quickly, sometimes he's gone for days, and Nathan has only the company of this strange woman who's not really a woman at all.
“What do you do?” she asks him one day, over a bowl of Lucky Charms and an old copy of Hello from the magazine rack. He's currently deciding if he can skip breakfast and move straight to his liquid lunch, and he glances over his shoulder, hand on the bottle of whiskey that been taunting him since he got it out the night before, but found some last minute dredges of willpower.
“I'm an attorney,” he replies, and she idly holds a ball of electricity in her palm; he can't help but stare at it. “Used to be a politician,” he mumbles, and he means to turn away, but the ball grows bigger, her fingers adding new threads, and he's transfixed.
“I know that, silly.” She giggles, passing her other hand over the top of the ball and sort of... stretching it out. It looks like magic to his no longer sceptical eyes. “I mean what do you do, here, all day?”
The clap of her hands makes him jump, just a little, and the ball of light is collapsed, reabsorbed into a body he has trouble believing can actually hold it. His fingers close around the neck of the bottle.
“Same as you,” he replies, because she hasn't left the house once that he's aware of. “But drunker.”
-
“I can't leave the house, you know,” she says two days later, as if he can just pick up a conversation he barely recalls having. She's sitting as far away from him as she can on the couch, her feet tucked delicately under her, her hair falling all around her shoulders, and it occurs to him then (before then) that she really looks a lot like his pretty blonde daughter.
Her fingers are alive with power and he's staring.
“People are out to get me,” she says almost teasingly, laughter coming out in a whoosh of air that isn't teasing or amused.
He doesn't answer. He's a little (a lot) drunk, and Peter hasn't been home in over a week and he hasn't called Claire yet and his mother isn't speaking to him and he's wondering what Elle's fingers would feel like in his mouth.
She pouts. “You're not listening to me,” she snaps, and a spark jumps high from her hand. “You're not even looking at me.”
He grunts something and glances back at the TV. She jumps up, her hair static from the energy she's giving off, and she scowls down at him like a child. Maybe that's how Claire would have looked when she scowled. “God, you are so fucking weird, Nathan,” she hisses and storms to her room.
-
She stays in her room for days after that. He hears her banging around, having tantrums; sometimes the lights dim, and he tries to remember what Peter said the night he brought her here: sociopath, sadist, don't let her get too close.
And Elle says: used, hunted, given up everything for him. She screams, I know I know I know when Nathan points out, drunk and bitter, that Peter doesn't care.
“Doesn't care much about you, either,” she says, her shrill voice tempering down easily into the mock seductive tones of a little girl. “Where's Peter Pan now?”
She doesn't blink when his hand closes to a fist; her palms flare with blue and she holds them outstretched. Delight registers in her eyes when he backs down, and he recognises that need to win in her that once so consumed him.
So he's not surprised when she pursues him to the lounge; irritated, yes, but not surprised.
“What do you want, Elle?” he growls, and she hooks her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans, cocking one sharp hip bone towards him.
“You're scared of leaving this house,” she whispers, taking three steps towards him, hands ghosting around the curve of his shoulders; he doesn't glance back but he can feel the hair on his neck reach up towards her. He jerks away.
“So are you,” he shoots back, and in the reflection of the liquor cabinet door, he sees her eyes harden.
“I'd leave if I could,” she says quietly. “It's all Peter's fault that I can't. I don't want to be in this stupid house with you.”
“And where you would go? Back to your abusive daddy?” He opens a cabinet door, grabbing the first bottle that his hand hits, pulling it out, closing the door again. “You like it like that-?”
She doesn't have time to discharge the bolt of electricity she has ready for him before the bottle slips from his fingers, exploding into shards across the hard wood floor. Because he can still see her reflection in the glass, but the face in the foreground isn't his. Except it is; it's more him than what everyone else sees. It's his real face.
Elle's voice seems far away as she snaps something at him. He squeezes his eyes shut, tight like a kid's against a nightmare, but the nightmare's him, and when he opens his eyes again still all he can see is that twisted face snarling back at him.
He doesn't even realise what he's doing until it's over, until he's holding his right hand in his left and blood is dripping down between his knuckles to mix with the alcohol on the floor and both the curved and flat pieces of glass that glitter up at him.
“Let me see,” Elle says, something a little too close to wonder in her voice as she takes his hand and turns it over, uncurling his fingers. “Didn't anyone ever teach you to punch with a closed fist?” she asks, pushing at the piece of glass sticking out of his palm. He curses and she laughs, pulling out the glass with a definite twist. He whimpers through clenched teeth and she only laughs some more.
“I'll drive you to the hospital,” she says, wiping her hands on her jeans, leaving prints red with his blood.
-
She wears wide black frames, hood of her stained top over her hair as she drives his convertible.
“Incognito,” she whispers, and laughs, taking a corner too sharply, mounting the curb and jolting Nathan in his seat. His hand is wrapped in a dishcloth that was once pristine white but now is bright bright red, and both their clothes match it. Elle hasn't even washed her hands - there's still dried blood around the edges of her fingers.
When they get to the ER, the woman on the desk glances at his bleeding hand, deems it not that serious and slides a form across the desk. She hands him a pen, letting it dangle between her fingers, and he stares at it, then at his curled up hand.
“I'm right handed,” he says, and the receptionist looks at him passively, glances at Elle.
“Perhaps your daughter can fill it out for you.”
Elle skips up from the squeaky chair and takes the pen eagerly. “Oh yes, I can do that, daddy.”
-
Elle doesn't ask him a single question about what to put on the form; her hand dashes across the page, and she slaps it back down on the desk quickly. He wants to ask, what the hell? Just generally, really; 'what the hell?' but that smell of hospital disinfectant that makes his stomach do somersaults, coupled with his light-headedness from blood loss, keeps him quiet, and Elle sits next to him, nails covered in chipped paint tapping against the metal leg of the chair, her glasses still on, her hood still up.
When a nurse calls him through to a cubicle, Elle follows, and he can hear the crackle of her hands at his back. She smiles when he glances back nervously.
The nurse unwinds the dishcloth from his hand and makes noises about how, oh, that's a nasty one and, my, that must be painful, and asks, “How did you do it?”
“Punched a glass door,” Elle supplies before he can speak, and the nurse's mouth flattens, just a little. She sniffs, eyes his dishevelled appearance, glances at Elle with the blood on her top and her hood up and glasses on.
“It must be a little dark with those on, dear,” she says kindly, and maybe she thinks he's some kind of abusive asshole father. One of those adjectives is right, at least.
Elle smiles wide. “I can see just fine, thank you,” she says sweetly.
The nurse purses her lips and glances at him. “I'm going to get the doctor to come look at your hand now, Mr Petrelli.”
As she draws the curtain back and exits, Nathan leans over and grabs Elle's arm. “What the fuck do you think you're doing, Elle?” he hisses.
She shrugs. “I'm just getting into character, Nate. Do you think I'm more your shy, retiring, wallflower daughter, or your Lolita?”
His grip on her arm tightens and he pulls her closer. Her eyes widen and the smile on her face grows. “Lolita wasn't Humbert's daughter,” he growls, though that, perhaps, isn't the most important thing that he could have pointed out.
“Even better,” she whispers, and the air seems to hum between them as she leans in, his fingers still digging into her arm - though she makes no indication that it hurts her. His breathing hitches for second, and one lone blue spark hops from her thumb all the way to her pinky on her left hand. His lips part and he leans towards her, feeling the heat from her skin acutely and it's only the squeak of shoes on the linoleum outside that saves him. He jerks back and pushes her away as the curtain is pulled back again.
“Mr... Petrelli?” The doctor stands at the curtain, eyes on a clipboard. He glances up for a second, frowns, then looks back down. “It says here that you were treated for... burns over sixty percent of your body? That must be a misprint. Six percent, perhaps?”
“No, it was sixty,” Nathan says, almost feeling the pull of too tight skin on his face. The doctor peers at him thoughtfully.
“I... see,” he says eventually.
“Do you think we could get my hand dealt with at some point?” Nathan snaps, filling the momentary pause with an abrasive tone; Elle's staring at him and he's just glad that he can't see her eyes. “It kind of hurts.”
The doctor seems to startle a little. “Yes, of course. Now, I'm afraid there are no theatres available, so we're going to have to do it here, under local.”
The nurse from before joins them, a metal trolley full of needles and scalpels and scissors, and maybe he pales a little when she picks up the largest needle, because she says, “I'm just going to inject you with some local anaesthetic. This will hurt a bit, you might want to hold your daughter's hand.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but feels Elle's hand slide into his before he has the chance. The smile she gives him when he turns to look at her could almost be called shy if he didn't know better, and when he tenses as the needle is pressed into the base of his hand, she twists her fingers tight around his.
-
They send him off with a metre of gauze wound around his hand and prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers, and the nurse comes with them to the pharmacy under the proviso of 'showing them the way' but hangs back a couple of steps with Elle, talking in hushed tones that at this point Nathan doesn't care to hear. They're not exactly showing him the courtesy of allowing him to ignore them, though.
“-not been the same since the accident,” Elle's saying, and her pitch is completely normal; there's concern and pain in her tone that sounds almost real to his ears.
“Has he seen a counsellor?” the nurse asks, and Nathan rests his elbows on the counter as the pharmacist goes into the back to fill his prescriptions; stares vacantly at the shelves and shelves of medication.
“No, he refused to go. He says he 'fucking hates quacks'.”
Nathan smiles at the turn of phrase. Perhaps she's psychic; he'd said those exact words the first time the small grey man had shuffled into his room and tried not to stare at Nathan's newly unbandaged face.
“There are support groups,” the nurse says softly and, Nathan imagines, touches Elle's arm or shoulder comfortingly. “Al-Anon helps families like yours. You and your mother can get some support coping-”
“My mother's dead,” Elle says quickly, and Nathan thinks that maybe he hears a hitch in her voice; just a touch of real emotion constricting her throat. And then as quick as it's there, it's gone - she slips back into the part. “She died in a fire when I was a baby. It's just us. My grandparents, uncle; they've all given up.”
The pharmacist passes him a paper bag, and the nurse is saying how sorry she is, and Elle is saying it's okay, really. They'll be okay.
“Elle,” he snaps, turning to them huddled together, scheming. “Come on, we're going home.”
She skips to his side, throwing a wave over her shoulder to the worried nurse, and latches onto his right arm. He hisses with the pain of the jolt, but she just cups her hands around his and brings it to her chest. She smiles up at him, that odd light back in her eyes.
“This was fun, we should do it more often.”
-
The wait at the hospital must have been longer than he thought, because when he looks at the clock in the car, it says it's past three in the morning and almost on cue, his body starts to wind down. By the time they're halfway home, he can barely keep his eyes open. Not that Elle is willing to give him the luxury of sleeping.
A sharp pain blooms in his shoulder and he starts. The radio's playing some repetitive tune and Elle's smiling, humming, steering with one hand while the other plays with a perfectly circular ball of electricity. He stares at it for a second and it occurs to him then, fleetingly, that he should touch it. She collapses it before he can get the chance.
After a moment's pause, he asks, “Did you just shock me?” and she laughs, an odd, slightly off pitch sound, like it doesn't quite knows what do with itself.
She shocks him again, the spark hitting his arm and sending a shiver through his body that's almost like pleasure even as he winces at the pain. Her eyes glitter mischievously, and the third shock hits higher on his arm; he gasps and shivers more, pushing against the passenger seat and shutting his eyes. Another spark tickles against his wrist, and he wonders: are her fingers poised just there? If he shifts slightly to the right, will she be touching him?
The pain in his hand is a distant throb now, and he catches his bottom lip between his teeth to stop from making a sound, taking slow deep breaths. It feels like the last time a woman touched him was a lifetime ago - though it's only been three months since he successfully pushed Heidi away. The car jerks to one side and her hand makes contact with his wrist; it feels tingly and warm against his skin. He sucks in a breath and opens his eyes, stares for a second at the gravel driveway lit by the headlamps, then glances sideways at her.
“We're home, Nathan,” she says, and his eyes slide to the house - his house - in front of them, then to her hand on his wrist, then back to her face. She grins, leans forward while he remains perfectly still, holds one finger up in front of his face until his vision focuses on it, then shocks him quickly on the nose. He jerks back, eyes watering.
“What did you think was going to happen?” she asks, the beginnings of a laugh bubbling out of her, and when he fumbles for the handle and kicks the door open, jumping out angrily, she continues to laugh.
Inside, the lights are on, but that doesn't seem all that strange to him - they probably just left them on in the rush to have him not to bleed to death. Elle, though, grabs hold of his arm, eyes wide and blue and white now that she's pushed her sunglasses into her hair.
“I turned those off,” she whispers, and her fingers dig into his arm like his had into hers only a few hours ago. “Someone's here.”
He frowns, looks down at her and her head of tangled blonde hair. He's still stinging - physically and mentally - from the incident in the car, but his hand is hovering somewhere near the back of her neck, and he rests it between her shoulder blades, fingers buried in long hair. “Are you sure?”
She bobs her head anxiously, and her other hand comes up to grab at his t-shirt, dragging the material up half an inch or so. He feels a little dizzy, but that's probably just tiredness and the effects of the pain meds he's taken.
“You can just- shock them, can't you?” he says, and he's complicit in whatever this is now, bending his head and whispering into her ear.
“If it's my father,” she breathes. “If he's found me... He'll be so angry.”
“He can't hurt you,” he replies, because Elle's an electric girl - who can beat that? She just shakes her head, though, and won't answer.
“I'll go take a look, okay?” Nathan says after a moment's pause, and she lets him take a couple of steps before tugging him back.
“No, don't.”
He twists around in her grip until he's facing her and brings his hands down on her shoulders. “What are you so scared of, Elle?”
Her gaze is blank for a second, and he can see acutely that she's little more than a child. “I don't know,” she whispers at last. “I can't remember.”
He opens his mouth to say something else, but the floorboards creak, and he glances back, Elle's fear seeping into him and gripping at his chest.
In the doorway of the lounge, Peter stands, broken and bloody pieces of glass held in his hand.
“What the hell happened, Nate?”
-
“Elle's trouble,” Peter says as he washes the weeks' worth of dishes piled in the sink; Nathan doesn't eat much that necessitates a plate and Elle just goes through the crockery cabinet when there's nothing clean in the rack. Nana Petrelli would turn over in her grave if she knew that her ancestral china was being used to eat pop tarts off.
“You brought her here,” he mutters over a glass of whisky - it must be five pm somewhere in Asia by now.
Peter sighs, dries the dish he was washing, and braces his palms against the edge of the counter. “I know I did, I know. I just- I want you to be careful. She isn't what she seems.”
Nathan raises his glass to his lips. “Few are.”
“Yeah.” Peter shakes his head and turns around. “What's going on with you, Nate? Have you even left the house while I've been gone?”
Nathan raises his bandaged hand. “I've been out.”
“You know that's not what I mean.” Peter pinches the bridge of his nose and looks tired, like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Maybe he does. “You've trapped yourself in this place with Elle, of all people. Where's Heidi, where're Simon and Monty - jeez, where's Mom?”
Nathan pretends to think, though everything's getting a little vague. A little fuzzy around the edges. “Heidi took the kids up to her parents. It's an 'extended vacation'. She packed all her clothes. Ma is... you know, I'm not really sure what the old bitch is doing.” He smirks at the frown of disapproval on Peter's face at that; it makes him look even more like her. “And you, Pete, I don't know where you are.”
Peter cocks his head. “What do you mean? I'm right here.”
“Are you?” Nathan pushes his chair back and gets up unsteadily, gripping the table for support. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Elle now, her head poking around the edge of the kitchen door. She lifts a finger to her lips.
Peter crosses over to him, holds his hand out. Nathan doesn't take it. “I'm sorry, I really am. There's just a lot happening - there are a lot of dangerous people out there. I've been trying to help.”
“The world,” Nathan replies tonelessly, feeling the wall as he makes his way to the door; Elle skitters back, disappearing around a corner.
Peter smiles, and there's a light there that Nathan hasn't seen since his little brother decided to become a nurse. “The world.”
Nathan remembers when the family was Peter's world.
-
Peter says Nathan should go back to work. Find a position at some little law firm; a low pressure job, but something to get him out of the house. Nathan barely dignifies this with a response.
Peter says he has to stop drinking. There are AA meetings not far from here, held in a local church. Nathan says he probably shouldn't go into a church, lest he risk burning all over again.
Peter says he's suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. It's normal, here's a number of a good psychiatrist, she'll help. Later he'll find the piece of paper with her number crumpled up under the couch.
Peter says Elle is dangerous to be around. He should never have brought her to the house, he only did it because she needed to hide somewhere after helping him escape. He says she'll only make Nathan's 'condition' worse. Elle ends up curled in Nathan's lap one night when they're the watching the twenty four hour news at four in the morning.
Peter says he's home for good now.
Peter leaves exactly three weeks later.
-
Elle likes the news. Horror movies never did much for her - even when she was little, she knew that the blood was made of syrup and red food dye, that the decapitated heads were nothing more than plaster and clay, and that next month the shrill bimbo that had been so violently dealt with would be starring in some sappy comedy romance. The news, though, is real; the blood is real, the pain is real, the death is real.
Sometimes she wishes she could feel things they way the people on the screen do - they're real and she's just some fantastic comic book character.
Nathan watches the news with her, though, in that weird time when it's neither day or night, and she doesn't think he's a comic book character, even if he can fly. She's not sure what he is, and maybe neither does he.
“Fuck, this is miserable,” he mutters, slouching down the couch, his arms crossed, as they watch a report about the Middle East for the third time.
Elle picks up the remote, slides a fingernail under the zero key and flick-flick-flicks it until Nathan glances at her.
“Want me to turn over?”
He shrugs.
She jabs indiscriminately at the buttons for a second, split second clips of the world flicking past; pretty made up women selling bottles of anti-ageing cream, hysterical sports commentators screaming about basketball (and the ball passes to Cuuuurry), a girl that barely looks legal on her knees in front of a tanned muscled man - Nathan's eyebrows climb half an inch or so. Finally she settles on an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
“I love this show!” she exclaims, and Nathan even smiles a little - the corner of his mouth turns up just a touch. Peter's been gone for two days now, and Nathan doesn't seem to have slept since he left - he just sits around watching television.
“Hey,” she says, and scoots closer, tucking her feet beneath her, reaching out until her fingers just brush his shoulder. Elle's watched a lot of TV, and read a lot of books, so she knows things - maybe not first hand, but it's good enough. It's got her by okay before. She knows, for instance, that sometimes physical comfort is more welcome than verbal comfort - men don't like talking about their emotions, everyone says so, and she's read the company's file on Nathan. He's a proud man. Almost like her father.
“Hey,” she repeats, moving her hand to the back of his neck, rubbing tight circles on his skin. He sighs, long and low, and keeps looking ahead as she crawls over to him, bringing her other hand up to grip at his shoulders. “You're so tense, Nathan,” she says quietly, trying to remember what words they use on the TV. “You have- your back's full of knots.”
His brow creases with a frown, but he lets her push him forward to rub harder at his back. She balls her hands to fists, pushes and digs her knuckles in so hard that she wonders if there'll be bruises in the morning. She hopes there will be.
By the time Rocky and Bullwinkle has switched to The Flintstones, Nathan's soft and malleable and half-asleep. She pulls him around until he's laid out on the couch, then crawls on top and curls up, head resting on his stomach.
-
Inhibition is a foreign concept to Elle; she's never experienced peer pressure, never had a teacher put her in detention for some fleeting indiscretion. The line between right and wrong is wherever she wants it to be; it's wrong to hurt someone if they're stronger than you, can hurt you more. It's right if they're weak and you won't get caught. It's right if you enjoy it.
She's slave to her instincts.
Nathan does nothing on instinct, is never spontaneous. He carefully plans and thinks and weighs up his options, and when he can't, he does nothing at all. Peter's warned him off her, she knows that's why he's not taken things further; one piece of information is conflicting with another and he can't come to a decision. She catches him staring sometimes - when he's drunk too much he does it openly, his eyes following her around the house. She knows he has a weakness for blondes, and even more so for nice blondes in need of being taken care of - girls whose vowels are rounded and who make big eyes at him.
She can use that.
-
Showers are always an ordeal. It took her a good five years to learn how to control her powers, to get to the point where she could touch a light switch and not have the whole electrical system blow out, but her body still gives off tiny charges like a stripped power cable. Holding that charge in while the water beats on her skin is near impossible; she always ends up getting a hundred little shocks as she does an impromptu dance on the plastic tiles.
When she gets out from underneath the grand wide shower head - which drowns every inch of her body - the sun's just about to start its descent down, and she soaks the floor, leaving her hair to drip down her back as she opens the door, letting steam out to fill the hall. She leaves wet footprints that absorb quickly into the thick shag carpets behind her as she heads to the kitchen, the lure of yesterday's half eaten pizza drawing her down.
Her hair reaches almost down to the small of her back now, the ends frayed because there's no one to cut it for her any more - Eden used to do that, sometimes Candice, the Haitian once or twice when she could persuade him. She kind of likes it, though, there's something... real about it, something about the dryness of hair starved of the expensive types of potions that Heidi wasn't kind enough to leave behind, about her face fresh of make up, about her naked body in the harsh artificial light of the fridge's bulb, that pleases her. Her breasts aren't modestly covered by blonde ringlets, her locks hang in a tangled mess behind her, leaving puddles on the black and white tiles.
She shivers at the open fridge door, moving old cartons and packets of food around, reaching towards the back to pull out the square Dominoes box, flipping the lid up, turning on the spot, pausing a beat to enjoy Nathan's eyes on her again. Her skin sparks even more as he watches.
“Want a slice?” she asks sweetly, holding the box out.
Nathan tilts his chin up. “What the fuck?” he responds evenly.
She lifts a shoulder, acutely aware of how it raises her left breast to attention, making her hard nipples more noticeable. “It's a bit stale, but I didn't think you'd mind all that much.”
“You're naked,” he points out, a little redundantly, she feels.
She giggles, and turns, slowly closing the fridge door. “Nothing gets by you, does it?”
She walks delicately across the kitchen, stepping lightly over the puddles she's left, balancing the pizza box on one palm, and sits down at the table. Nathan stands at the door a few seconds longer, looking faintly confused, then shakes his head.
“Fuck,” he murmurs, taking the seat across from her, reaching over to grab a slice of cold pizza. She moves her hand over just a touch - enough that he doesn't notice the tiny movement - and the tips of their fingers brush together. She wills a tiny spark to jump to his hand, and he jerks but doesn't pull away, just stares at her with dark eyes so like his brother's, then takes a slice and leans back, not breaking his gaze. It almost makes her want to shrink back; he's intense in a way completely unlike Peter. With Nathan it feels like he'll go all the way - with what, she's not sure. It feels like his boundaries are paper thin. She pushes her chest out as she takes her slice. Nathan smirks.
“Cold?” he asks.
“Not really.” She pauses, squints out of the window at the once manicured garden bathed in the dying light of the day - now overgrown like a jungle. Nathan fired the gardener. “Nathan, why don't you turn the lights on in here?”
The room is lit in dull orange-yellow light from outside, and when Nathan turns to look out the window, it shines on one half of his face like fire. “Why don't you?”
She twists a mouth into a pout. “I don't know, it's your house. I thought maybe you were allergic or something. Are you a vampire?”
He almost laughs, giving a snort that makes her want to preen. “Vampires are only allergic to sunlight.”
“So what are you allergic to?” she asks. “People?”
His smile fades, and he shrugs, taking a bite of his pizza. She looks down at her own slice; there are anchovies on it. She doesn't like anchovies.
“I don't like anchovies,” she says, and glances up. “Do you want them?”
He swallows, wipes his mouth. “Sure.”
She picks them off quickly, collecting them in one hand, and uses the other to beckon him to lean in. “Open your mouth,” she whispers.
“Uh-” he stammers and maybe he flushes a little, she can't tell in this light. He opens his mouth a little though, tongue praised against his bottom teeth, and she takes an anchovy, placing it there, letting her fingers linger against his lips.
“Well, close then,” she says, quieter than she meant to, with a quiver that's altogether too girlish.
He closes, and her fingers are still there. There a look in his eyes that she can't place; it's different from anything she's experienced with Peter or Gabriel or even Adam. She pulls away first.
He swallows. “I'm not really... hungry any more, Elle.” His voice is rougher than it was the second before, and she kind of loves the way her name sounds when he says it. She nods and goes back to eating her pizza in silence.
She starts to wonder if she's disappeared altogether. Nathan's staring blankly at the table, and it reminds her of her father at his desk while she tried to do something to impress him; cartwheels, dance routines, murder. He'd look anywhere but at her.
Finally, Nathan stirs, propping his chin on his hand. “Does that hurt?” he asks, and she follows where he's pointing; her free hand is giving off tiny sparks. She hadn't noticed.
She frowns. “Why would it hurt?” she says, honestly perplexed. “It's just me. It's what I was made to do. It's not like flying hurts you, is it?”
He doesn't answer immediately, just scratches his pinky against his cheek.
“No, I guess not,” he replies eventually.
-
The first time Elle met Nathan, she was twenty four years old, and Peter had flown her halfway across New York, while her head was full of dreams of marriage and babies and houses with white picket fences. Nathan had wires and drips snaking out of him like legs of spiders, and Peter let go of her hand when he saw his brother, paused only long enough to get that extraordinary vial of blood from her that she'd worked so hard to get - Adam drove a hard bargain in negotiations for it.
When Nathan asked 'who's that?', held tightly in Peter's arms, Peter said it didn't matter.
The first time Elle saw Nathan, she was six years old, and her father had brought her to the big shiny clean Hartsdale facility that she'd so soon learn to call home. Her room in the hospital wing was boring; there weren't any toys or colouring books, and she'd wanted to know if grandma was mad at her, but her dad had just waved her off, turning his attention back to the tall man in little round glasses. She remembers pouting, stamping her foot, being told to not be a brat, and slipping out the door unnoticed by either of the men.
She'd thought that perhaps there might be other children to play with in the hall, and she'd been right; she'd caught the back of a dark-haired boy disappear into a room when his mother called for him. She'd run after to him and poked her head around the door, and that was the first time she saw Nathan Petrelli. He was sitting on a bed, his right arm held loosely by a nurse as she readied a great big needle and pressed it into his arm - he winced a little, but the boy asked, 'does it hurt?', and he smiled, replied, 'does what hurt?'. His blood flowed dark red through the tube into a vial, and she remembers thinking he's so brave and then running away when he glanced up at her.
It's strange that she remembers that, she thinks, because she doesn't remember anything for a long time after it, but ever since then, whenever she saw pictures of him, in her father's files, pasted on the sides of buildings, she smiled. Maybe that was why it was so easy for Peter to manipulate her. Getting Adam's blood was even her idea - it hadn't occurred to Peter that he could heal his brother when he'd held her hands and gazed at her with puppy dog eyes.
She didn't want Nathan's pretty face to be ruined.
-
At Primatech, she slept in a room on level one; there weren't any windows in there and she had to use a swipe card to get up to the first floor. Sometimes her dad confiscated her card, when she had tantrums or tried to hurt the psychiatrists, and she had to stay on the perennially lit floor - the bright light seeped in under her door when she tried to sleep and she could go days without knowing if it was day or night.
In the mansion, she has a room on the top floor strewn with detritus of Nathan's kids; little toy cars and planes, robotic dogs with run down batteries, teddy bears well loved and discarded . It's basically used for storage now, and Nathan says that she can have one of made up guest rooms, but she likes the window seat and the dusty curtains and the wrought iron bed much more than the pastel, colour-coordinated rooms downstairs.
She also finds an old box of papers, a crumpled photograph of a baby and a handwritten letter signed Meredith.
That night she dreams of being a cheerleader in a short flippy red skirt.
-
Spring comes around fast, and it's supposed to be the season of change, right? Baby animals get born and flowers blossom and people get married and enjoy the turn in the weather. Elle likes change, it's like a new page in a storybook, and when the snow on the path out front begins to melt, she starts to think that something's going to happen. Peter's going to come home and realise how badly he's fucked up, and she'll forgive him after a time, and Nathan will get a job, and maybe they can all live in the mansion together, because Peter's apartment is way too small.
Elle was a spring baby.
She wakes one April morning to Nathan's loud voice. She can hear him all the way up in her room, and he's yelling and swearing at someone who does not match his volume - that seems to make him angrier. She dresses quickly, creeping downstairs, and sits halfway down the ground floor staircase, peering through the banisters as Nathan's voice echoes around the wide hall.
“Well, maybe you could be afforded just a little bit of blame in the machinations of this monumentally fucked up family!” he shouts. “I didn't just get like this out of a clear blue sky, you know!”
She doesn't catch the reply, but he answers with: “Then why are you even here? If you're not going to fucking help-” he pauses a second, then continues, “-yeah, I meant help that's helpful, you coming here and making passive aggressive threats is not! But, hey, at least it only took you six months to remember me, huh?”
There are footsteps, and Elle draws her feet underneath herself and cranes her neck to get a look at who Nathan's arguing with. He walks out first, crossing to the front door and opening it with a sneer on his face and mock bow. “Out,” he says simply.
And then Angela comes into her view, and she gasps, scrambling up to hide.
“Oh, don't rush on my account, dear,” Angela says, looking her way. “Your father wishes you a happy birthday, by the way.”
Nathan slams the door behind her when she leaves, and mumbles something about getting drunk.
-
Later, she calls her father. It's not true, she tells herself. It's not it's not it's not. If her father knew where she was, he'd come get her. He'd miss her, he'd want her home.
She sits on a kitchen counter, listening for a second to Nathan banging around upstairs - swearing not too softly when he bumps into furniture - and clutches the phone hard, quickly dialling the number and holding it to her ear.
It rings eight times before it clicks through.
“Hello?” her father says. It's private number, only a few know it. He should know it's her.
She takes a couple of deep breaths, and he says 'hello?' again, and then, 'who the hell is this, how did you get this number?'.
Finally, she replies quietly, “Dad?”
He exhales slowly. “Elle,” he says, and he sounds sort of resigned, but that must just be sadness.
“Daddy,” she says, “daddy, I'm so sorry, I miss you, I'm sorry.” Salty tears run down her cheeks and her speech chokes off as she begins to cry in earnest.
“Elle,” he repeats, and sighs. “How long are you going to play house with Petrelli for? It's time you come back to work.”
She holds the phone away from her ear, then presses it back. “What?” she whispers. “You knew...?”
“Of course I did, Elle.” And he does sound resigned; resigned and long-suffering. She knows the tone well. “It's time to come back now,” he says, and she grips the receiver hard. Her arm shakes, and under her fingers she feels the plastic melt. She holds it until the plastic's so melted that it bends in two.
She throws the blackened lump across the room - it flies a couple of feet then springs back on its cord and slams into a kitchen cabinet. She sends a couple of hundred volts of electricity into the handset for good measure; it breaks with the impact, the plastic cracking apart, leaving a jagged black mark on the wall.
She jumps down off the counter and doesn't know what to do; she just stands there, her hands sparking, sucking in short panicked breaths that make her feel light-headed. Her legs still twitch with energy, though, and blood pounds in her ears. She starts forward and ends up running up the stairs, not sure of where she's going until she's pushing Nathan's bedroom door open.
He's asleep in his bed for once, and she climbs onto the mattress, pulling back the covers and shaking him, trying to rouse him.
“Nathan,” she whispers frantically. “Nathan, Nathan, Nathan,” she repeats over and over, and shoves hard at his shoulder.
“Uh,” he mumbles, face turned into the pillow, and she clings to his chest, whispering 'I hate him, I hate him' into Nathan's collarbone. His large hands feel out the shape of her body, patting her down from shoulder to hip, then settle around her waist. “What's wrong?” he slurs, and by the smell of him, he probably passed out rather than actually fell sleep.
“I hate him,” she repeats vehemently, lifting her head from his chest slightly. “Can I stay with you tonight?”
He squints at her in the dark, brushes at her wet face with his thumb, and cradles the back of her head, holding her against him. “Sure you can,” he murmurs into her hair. “Of course you can, Claire.”
-
The next day, she wakes up tangled in Nathan's sheets, and she smiles sleepily, pressing her face into the pillow and breathing in deeply. It smells of him, alcohol and the shampoo he uses, and he got up hours ago (she remembers that he stroked her hair when she pretended to still be asleep) but the scent remains.
She gets up slowly, rolling over and pushing herself up on an elbow, letting her feet slip out from under the covers to the floor. She feels stiff, and her face is itchy and raw from crying - she thinks that she must have continued to cry in her sleep, and she thinks she must have soaked the front of Nathan's t-shirt with her tears. She smiles at the thought.
Stripping down to her underwear, she throws her t-shirt and jeans over the end of Nathan's bed, and rifles through his wardrobe until she finds a pressed, perfectly unwrinkled, dress shirt. It's white with faint blue vertical lines, and it completely swallows her up, the cuffs extending beyond her fingertips and the tails reaching to her knees. She buttons it quickly and opens the door, practically skipping downstairs.
In the lounge, Nathan is talking softly to someone, and Elle lets her fingers trail along the wallpaper and over picture frames as she listens to snippets of conversation.
“That sounds great, buddy,” Nathan says, and laughs, quiet and strained. “Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna try. I'd love to see your new train set, maybe next week, okay? Are you going to remember to tell your mom that I called? No, I know you're not a baby. Okay, okay, see you soon. Bye, I love you.”
She peers around the door as he snaps his cell shut, and he beckons her in.
“Who was that?” she asks.
“One of my sons, Monty.”
“Oh.” She perches on the arm of the couch and crosses her ankles like the women in black and white movies do.
“I noticed that something happened in the kitchen,” Nathan says, his tone edging towards disapproval. He looks better today, she thinks; his hair's still scruffy and too long, but he's shaved and seems fully awake.
“I was upset.” She tugs the shirt she's wearing down, and the first four buttons are undone, so when she does it reveals the lacy edges of her bra.
He shuts his eyes for a second, then opens them again. “Okay. Well, anyway, Peter called this morning.”
“Really?” She leans forward. “Is he coming home soon?”
“As a matter of fact, he is.” Nathan smiles, and moves a little closer. “He managed to catch that guy... Sylar? Anyway, he brought him back to the Company, and all's forgiven apparently. Your father is going to leave Peter alone, and I guess life goes back to normal.”
“Normal?” she echoes, and recrosses her legs, tugging hair behind her ear, trying to hide the nervous tremor that's been running through her since he said 'Sylar'. “What do you mean?”
He hooks his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans, and tries to smile. “I think it's time you went home, Elle.”
“Home,” she says, repeating him again. “Back to my daddy.”
Nathan winces at the way she says 'daddy', and crosses one arm over his chest. “Elle,” he begins, but she cuts him off.
“I want to stay here, Nathan. I want to be yours. Yours and Peter's. Peter'll come home and then everything will be okay, we'll be happy-”
Nathan sighs. “Elle-”
“And and,” she continues, looking up at him with shiny eyes. “And I can be Claire if you want me to be.”
He raises an eyebrow, cocks his head, and says, “What?”
She jumps off the arm, wipes the back of her hand across her nose, and shakes her hair out. “That's what you want, isn't it?” She reaches back, parting her hair down the middle and twisting each half. “Pig tails and teddy bears, and everything that makes little girls nice. That's what you and Peter want.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Nathan snaps, backing up a couple of steps. “What the fuck is wrong with you? What kind of person do you think I am?”
“Don't try to pretend, Nathan,” she whispers. “Last night you thought I was Claire.”
“Last night,” he says witheringly, “I was drunk.”
She approaches him as he stares her down, reaches out and digs her fingers into his shoulders. “You're a lot more fun when you're drunk, then.”
“We didn't do anything,” he shoots back, taking hold of her wrists and pushing her away.
“Are you quite sure?” she asks, looking up at him through her eyelashes, a smirk playing on her lips.
“Yes. I'd know if I'd fucked you.” His mouth quirks up in a sneer and he gives her a little shove, letting go of her wrists.
She stumbles back and clenches her jaw. “Don't do that,” she hisses, letting a spark hit the ground and burn the rug.
“Don't do what?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest, allowing a glance for the ruined spot on the floor.
She holds her hand palm side up and lets a ball of electricity fill it. “I can hurt you, Nathan.”
He shakes his head. “No, you can't.”
“Really?” She walks back towards him until she stands on the burned rug.
He smiles, inclines his head. “Really.”
He doesn't get it, not at all. He just stands there and smiles like it's one big joke, like she's just a child. He's like Peter, like Adam; he underestimates her, and she wants to show him how he's oh so wrong.
She lifts her hands, slides them around his face, thumbs resting on his cheeks. He uncrosses his arms, lets them fall to his sides, but he doesn't break away. His skin feels smooth, newly shaven, under her hands, and she thinks that it's a shame, what she's going to do next. She builds up the charge in her hands, not enough to hurt him - not yet - but certainly enough for him to feel it. His eyes widen, just a touch, and he takes a deep breath, blinks rapidly, but otherwise stays absolutely still.
She's close enough that short strands of her hair pull towards her hands as the charge builds and builds and builds, and Nathan flinches as a spark jumps from her pinky to his temple, but he still doesn't move. Blue dances along her fingertips, and he gasps as she scrapes her nails across his skin, leaning into her and taking hold of her upper arms.
“Jesus, Elle,” he murmurs, and she pulls her hands away slightly as he keeps leaning in. “Don't,” he says softly, “don't.” And then his lips are pressed against hers, and she squeaks in surprise, opening her mouth enough for him to push his tongue in. She moves her hands from his face into his hair, and he moans into the kiss as she grips it hard, wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her flush against him. A spark jumps from her lips to his, and he only deepens the kiss in response, backing her up until she's pressed up against a wall.
A couple of seconds more of his frantic kissing and he pauses for breath, leaning his forehead against hers, his eyes shut.
“Nathan?” she whispers uncertainly, brushing crackling fingers over his jaw. She remembers doing the same action with Peter, sitting on his little single cot in his cell. It was the night of their great escape and he was all itchy and twitchy to get going, but she had the blood, and she knew he was a good guy, he wouldn't force her to give it to him. She'd wanted one thing before they left: him, and he begrudgingly gave, letting her kiss him and touch him and undress him, but with each shock he grimaced. She'd laughed at that, revelling in the familiar pain and fear that was everyone's reaction to her. She'd been happy that night, in her victory, but watching Nathan now, tucking his head down and trying to chase her fingers with his mouth, pressing his lips against them, she thinks that this has to be so much better.
“You aren't anything like Peter,” she breathes, and he opens eyes that seem darker as his pupils dilate.
“You noticed.”
-
He mumbles things to her, to himself maybe, as he kisses her, tongue playing across the underside of her jaw, holding her wrists loosely over her head. She isn't completely clear on how they got back upstairs, only that Nathan dropped her several times on the stairs, her elbows and back impacting painfully with the sharp edges of the steps, and that in retaliation she bit his lip hard enough to break it.
His knees press tight around her hips, trapping her there, and his mouth works down her neck, pausing briefly to suck and swirl his tongue against skin that's so sensitive she wants to scream.
“Do that again,” she whispers harshly, and he lifts his head slightly, his lips red and swollen and bleeding, his eyes questioning.
“My neck,” she says breathlessly, “I want a mark, a-a hickey.” She grins and he grins back, lowering his head, his teeth scraping and pinching her skin.
She squirms beneath him and runs her hands into his hair as he licks and sucks, and she feels more than hears him moan when she sends little sparks across his scalp. He shivers and lets go of one of her wrists, reaching down and pulling at the band of her underwear. When he moves from her neck and tries to kiss her, she quickly says, “Did you do it? Is there a mark?”
He glances down, smirks, says, “Yeah, there's a mark,” then goes to kiss her again.
“Really?” she asks, and he pauses, frowns, leans in again. “Oh, I want to see!” She wriggles to get out from underneath him, pulling her wrist from his grip, but he laces their fingers together before she can pull free.
“Later,” he says, and she feels something press against her inner thigh.
Oh.
“Okay?” he says.
“Yeah,” she replies, pushing hair from his face that's a mixture of desire and- and something she doesn't know. “Yeah, later.”
He sits back, letting go of her hand, and reaches for the buttons of her shirt. “This looks way better on you than it ever did on me,” he murmurs, and laughs, mostly to himself but it still makes her shiver.
She shivers more when he pushes the shirt open and stares down at her mostly exposed body. She sucks her stomach in and stomps down on the urge to giggle when he runs his fingers around the edges of her bra.
“It does up at the front,” he says softly, and she nods.
“I can't work the regular kind,” she confesses and flushes, but he just licks his lips and flicks the clasp undone.
“I like it,” he says, and reaches over to open the drawer of the bedside table, taking out a condom and tearing the packet open with his teeth.
She fumbles at his belt, and maybe she's too slow at releasing it or maybe her hands shake, because he looks down at her, and says, “Have you done this before?”, his tone all business-like.
“Yes, of course I have,” she responds, pulling the belt free and moving the work at the buttons of his fly. Why couldn't he have a zip like a normal person? “God, Nathan, I'm not a child.”
He cups her chin, forcing her to look at him. Her hands fall away his fly. “No, you're not, and I want to make it clear right now that I don't want you to be. You are not Claire, and I am not Bob Bishop.” His mouth twists unhappily. After a beat he adds, “And I'm not Peter either.”
“I know that,” she answers quickly. “I do.”
“We're us, okay? No pretending.”
“No pretending,” she agrees and pulls his hand up to kiss it. It's the one that got cut, and it's healed up now, just a pink line across his palm. She gives the scar a little shock with her lips, and he shuts his eyes. “Give me the condom, Nathan, I want to do it, I can do it.”
It's easy to get the packet out of his left hand as she sucks on the fingers of his right, him with his eyes still closed, humming happily. She gets his fly undone, and tugs his jeans and boxers down, pausing thoughtfully before running her nails across the head of his erection. He jerks into her hand, and she grins around his fingers, biting down lightly.
She's never actually had sex with a condom before; Adam had refused, and she'd forgot with Peter. The first night she stayed in the mansion, he'd brought her a cup of water and little white pill instead of a bedtime story.
Gabriel probably would have used a condom, she thinks - he was the cautious, though not cautious enough, type.
She rolls it on as steadily as she can, holds her breath as Nathan shimmies down until he almost completely covers her with his body. If she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine that it's Gabriel on top of her. Peter had been too lean, felt too fragile, like he'd break apart even though she knew he'd heal up from whatever she did. Nathan feels like he wants whatever she can give.
He'd probably disapprove of her ruminating on past lovers though (just us) so she focuses on wrapping herself tightly around him as he enters her, and pushes her hips upwards as he presses open-mouthed kisses to her hair.
He's surprisingly gentle, pressing into her with long, slow strokes, his face buried in her hair. She spreads her legs wider, hooking her legs around his waist and forcing her hips up. “God, Nathan, harder. I won't break.”
He turns his head so that she can feel his breath on her cheek. “You sure about that?”
Sinking her nails into his back, she grits her teeth. “Yes! Nathan, c'mon!” she whines, and he chuckles, holding her hips, thumbs digging in.
He bows his head and pants into her shoulder as her skin begins to tingle. He kisses her neck again, lips brushing against the rapidly forming bruise there, and moves faster and faster on top of her, moaning loudly when her fingers send sparks dancing across his shoulder blades.
Her head starts to buzz, and she knows that she's close, remembers this out-of-body feeling that comes just before she loses control. She presses her head back into the pillow and relishes the sensation as everything from her hair down to her toes feels as sensitive as a raw nerve. Nathan's enjoying it too, judging by the way he's moaning and cursing under his breath as his chest presses flush against her. His skin under her nails feels wet - blood, she thinks - and when he kisses her hard on the mouth she feels how dry and broken his lips are.
How fragile he actually is, even if he hasn't acknowledged it.
“Nathan,” she gasps, so so close, and moves her hands to his shoulder, pushing weakly at him. “Nathan! I'm going to hurt you!”
He raises his head, opening his eyes lazily, and stares completely uncomprehendingly at her.
She clenches her fists, holding in the force of her charge, though she can feel it all around her, wanting to escape out of every pore. “I'll kill you, it'll kill you,” she says hysterically, remembering how she had to wait for Adam and Peter to revive.
Nathan blinks, hands splaying out over her stomach uncertainly, and she shoves him hard enough that he pulls out of her just as the last of her control snaps and she throws her head back and yells unintelligibly. He gasps as electricity shoots up his arms, and the next few seconds are static and snow as she lets her body do what it earns to.
When she finally opens her eyes - it feels like it's been hours and every inch of her is exhausted - it's only because Nathan's calling to her. She thinks he must be very far away, because she can barely hear him, but when she looks up his face is inches from hers, and he looks kind of amazing, and all she can think is Nathannathannathan.
“Can I...?” he asks, and his voice sounds like it hasn't been in years. She shivers and smiles, and then he's kissing her deeply, pushing back into her hard and fast, and she thinks that maybe he's trying to eat her; if he's the Big Bad Wolf, does that make her Little Red Riding Hood?
She also wonders what's going to happen after this; when she was little and used to listen around doors, she would hear the adults talking; the red-headed lady who used to give her ejections but disappeared before Elle could learn her name, and Angela with hair as black as a witch's and nails as red as blood. They used to say, in whispered conversations of camaraderie, that men only wanted one thing: sex. 'Sometimes I have to beat him off with a stick,' Angela would say, and Elle was only seven, so she didn't understand.
And Bennet used to say that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, more specifically with pie, and, well, it had worked once.
“What kind of pie do you like?” she asks suddenly. She thinks she could probably learn how to make one herself. There are lots of cookbooks in the kitchen.
Nathan mumbles something vaguely obscene in reply, and she looks at him thoughtfully as he struggles to hold himself over her, the muscles in his arms spasming crazily. Lifting a hand, she brushes sweaty hair from his neck and touches her index finger to the top of his spine, sending a spark running downwards. He arches into it, shudders, curses, and collapses on top of her. He takes short sharp breaths to the point of hyperventilating, and she wraps her arms around him, rubbing his back.
Eventually he rolls off her, sits up, and she immediately misses the pressure. He sits with his back to her, legs hanging over the edge of the bed, and when she sees the bloody crescent shaped marks, she presses her knuckles into the bruise on her neck and smiles.
Nathan pulls off the condom and ties it with practised ease, throwing it into a nearby wastepaper basket, then swings his legs back onto the bed. She watches him with wide eyes as he leans over to pull the sheets over them, thumping down beside her. She waits another couple of minutes, until his chest settles into a steady rhythm of up and down, up and down, then moulds herself to his side, tucking her head against his shoulder.
“Apple,” he says, placing his arms around her. “I like apple pie.”