Be Near Me (9)
Title: Be Near Me (9)
Pairing: Peter/Claire
Rating: NC-17 (explicit sex and language)
Length: about 4000 words
Spoilers: Through 1-11: Fallout
Summary: Peter and Gabriel exchange memories in dreams, and Peter and Claire wake up in each other's arms and take it from there. PLEASE READ DISCLAIMER.
Be Near Me (9): Physical Therapy
Someday suppose that my curious nervousness
stills into prescience, clairvoyant consciousness
I will be calmer than cream, making maps out of your dreams...
--TV On The Radio, "Young Liars"
Manhattan had never seemed so vast.
It felt like he had been heading home forever, and never getting any closer. It was four-thirty in the morning, the legitimate bars had stopped serving, and the Lower East Side was still teeming with rejects, the fashionably fucked up, and the desperate. He cursed himself for living in such a happening neighborhood as he was pummeled by stray thoughts of the most desperate and unlovable kind. Was my skirt too short?... She could totally tell I'm balding... He saw my tracks, didn't he? Well, fuck me for living, I'm not putting that shit up my nose... I've got to be in to the office by eight and I haven't seen pink panties yet... Once upon a time Peter would have found it all funny, but now he was wiped out, and the morphine he'd gotten from Matt Parkman was riding his shoulders like the metaphorical monkey.
It seemed like a lifetime ago he felt good, leading a deliciously fun masturbation session, caught up in the low hum of Matt's wordless sexual thoughts. Even though Peter had really wanted to make physical contact, it had been almost good enough just to watch the big cop driving himself further and further into sexual pleasure. Peter tried to grasp the memory of it, to blot out the thoughts of the unhappy people lining the streets; anything to distract himself from the last few blocks of the walk home from the subway stop. He tried to listen for Claire, but heard nothing through all the interference. He guessed that she was asleep.
When he dragged himself at last into his apartment, he saw her curled up on the couch by the window, her hair a golden comma on the cushions. He would have let her stay there undisturbed, thinking only of his own bed, but she straightened up and opened her eyes, thinking, Oh, fuck you, Peter, I saw it on her face. You tried to make her fall for you, and then you just left. You're a dick. She's not even going to bother to dump you. "Hey," she said aloud, "I wasn't asleep."
Peter couldn't say anything. He sat down beside her, his eyes aching and then overflowing with miserable tears. After a moment of watching him, Claire took him in her arms and hugged him, and he broke down sobbing. "Peter, Peter, it's OK," she said, squeezing him tight. "It's OK." Oh my God... poor guy. He's losing it.
He forced himself under control, lifted his head, and gazed into her eyes. "Just... I need to sleep," he mumbled. "Let's just go to bed, OK? I want to fall asleep holding you. You don't have to stay there, but right now I need to hold onto you. I owe you that. I owe you everything." He kissed her lips, her cheeks, her ears, drying his face against her hair. "I love you. I love you religiously."
Claire blinked at him, astonished, her heart pounding so hard that Peter could feel it against his chest. What the...? Oh please no. Oh please yes. I don't want to get into this with you, not now... but, oh, I've wanted him... Oh, God, help us; please, God, if you're out there, please help us. "I... I love you, too."
"Love me religiously," Peter insisted. "Love me beyond girls and boys and valentines and sex. Love me beyond that. And if you can't do that, please, don't love me." Despite his best efforts, he was crying again, pain and despair like a black stone spike in his heart. He couldn't say what needed to be said; he couldn't find the words. He was isolated. "I don't want--I don't deserve--"
Yep. He's lost it. "Shh," Claire whispered. "Let's just go lie down."
He let her lead him to his bed, but once there, he took off his own clothes, and then took off her hoodie, her yellow T-shirt, her jeans, her eyelet lace bra and panties. "Just sleep with me," he said, taking her in his arms and lying back, pulling up the covers over them. "Let's just sleep and let go. Tomorrow, everything will be different." He kissed her forehead, and she snuggled down against him with her head under his chin, her arms tucked in to her chest. He took in a deep breath, and as he slowly let it out again, he slipped away into sleep.
***
Salt spray air, nice smell of cotton candy and funnel bread. Sun out, but a little chilly; Peter was glad of his hoodie and windbreaker. Sand crunched underneath his sneakers as he shifted his feet on the wooden slats of the boardwalk. If he looked to his right he could see the Ferris wheel, the metal arches of the other amusement park rides.
They were just standing there together, hanging out, both of them with their elbows balanced along the wooden railing of the boardwalk, looking out to sea. The salty breeze ruffled the hair along Gabriel's brow, and his eyes narrowed against the wind for a moment before widening again, looking upward at a circling, screaming seagull overhead.
"Coney Island," Peter recognized. "It's been a long time since I've been here."
"Me too," replied Gabriel. "I used to come a lot when I was a kid." Dark-blue ribbed sweater, light-brown trousers, white-soled deck shoes with neatly tied shoelaces. Faint marks on his nose from his glasses, which were tucked into his pocket. So normal; just a quiet, ordinary guy. He chuckled, and continued, "I remember one time, here with my dad... dropping a brand-new ice cream cone, that I hadn't even licked yet, in the sand. I never got another one."
"Never?"
"Never," he confirmed. He looked back out to sea, a faint smile on his face. "If I couldn't hang onto it, I wasn't going to get another one. Taught me a lesson about holding on tight to precious things, because if they slip away, I might never get another chance."
"How old were you?"
"Five."
Peter was quiet for a moment, letting that sink in. "This one time, I got so cold, wading in the water," he said, "that I couldn't walk, and Nathan had to carry me back to shore. Then he punched me in the head for being so dumb. Nobody saw it happen, so he got away with it. I wished I could kill him, but he was so much bigger than me. I realized that I was completely powerless."
"And how old were you?"
"Five." Peter watched the gull circle closer, heard Gabriel sigh next to him. "Is this the next step?"
"That's up to you," said Gabriel.
The gull dropped something on the boardwalk next to where Peter was standing, and sped away. Peter bent down to examine it. It had once been a toy soldier, but the sea and sand had worn it down into a faceless twist of army-green plastic. It was slimy from being in the gull's mouth, so Peter didn't pick it up. He straightened up again, standing beside Gabriel, looking at all the sand, sun umbrellas, beach towels, the shifting waves of the ocean.
There was no one else on the beach.
Another gull swooped in, startling Peter, and dropped what looked like a piece of bread on the boards; a third spit out a tiny plastic toy that turned out to be a badly faded, doll-sized ice-cream cone with teeth marks on it. Peter stared at it for a while, then bent and picked it up, wiping the gull spit on the hem of his windbreaker, and handed the toy to Gabriel. Gabriel blinked and accepted it into his palm.
"Thank you," Gabriel said softly.
"I don't know what's going on. Are you creating this?" Peter stared around as more gulls flew in, each one of them dropping something--bread, popcorn, cheap plastic baubles warped by exposure to the elements.
"We're both creating it," was the reply. "We can come here whenever we want."
"This only happens when I'm asleep. I have to be helpless."
"Is it helplessness, or is it openness? Is it purity? Your conscious mind, the things you've learned, the things you supposedly believe, keep you away."
"What if I don't like it?"
"Have you ever done physical therapy, Peter?" Gabriel asked. "It hurts, doesn't it? But without it, you never recover; you're broken and bent for the rest of your life."
"Well, who hurt me in the first place?" Peter asked.
That seemed to throw Gabriel for a moment; he lowered his eyes, thinking hard, before he responded with a wide, satisfied smile. Happy to have searched his mental database and found an answer that fit. "Nobody and everybody," he replied. "It's just the way it is. It's destiny."
"You hide behind that word a lot." Peter frowned at the accumulating pile of crap next to him. The gulls weren't leaving now; instead they were hanging out, waddling around on the ground, squawking at each other when they got too close. It was starting to get freaky and Hitchcockian, and Peter felt his calm being replaced with fear and anger. "You hide, you kill, you lie--"
"I have not ever, and I will never lie to you, Peter," Gabriel said, suddenly intense. "You keep saying that I lie, when I don't--that's the problem, don't you get it? I tell the truth and you can't deal with it. I don't want to fight with you. Why do we have to fight?" He shook his head and turned back to the ocean view.
"These fucking gulls..."
"Send them away," Gabriel told him, not looking at him.
Peter stared at the flock of gulls gathered around at his feet, all of them silent now, looking up at him as if awaiting directions. He opened out both hands, just slightly, lifting his fingers all at once, and the gulls rose up as one, in a perfectly coordinated, silent cloud of birds. Peter lifted one arm, and made a faint arc in the air with his hand, and the flock took off toward the Ferris wheel in the distance.
"See?" Gabriel said quietly. "It's yours, too. You're here under your own power. You control this as much as I do. We approach balance. That's the goal, for me. To attain balance with you."
"To bring balance to the Force," Peter murmured, unable to think of any other way to put it.
Gabriel answered with a smile. "Yeah," he said. "From a certain point of view."
They were silent after that, standing beside each other, watching the sun on the water, in that quiet, empty place created from their shared memories. Peter wondered if Sylar was dreaming too, if they were both always dreaming at the same time, if any of this had ever been real in the first place.
***
Peter awakened suddenly; his eyes were open and he stood at the beach in bright sunlight, and then his eyes were really open, and he was in the dim, shaded light of his bedroom, lying down in bed, with Claire stroking her finger up and down the hollow of his stomach.
Completely by instinct, he grabbed her hand and brought it to his mouth, sliding her tongue between his lips and sucking on it. She smiled slowly, watching him, saying nothing, her other hand fondling and stroking her own breast, fingertips toying absently with her nipple. Peter half-rose, taking her other hand away, replacing it with his own hand. Claire's sleepy smile grew. Her hand went straight for his straining cock, gripping it lightly, giving it a slight squeeze. He squeezed back on her breast, trapping her nipple between his thumbnail and forefinger, slowly and steadily increasing the pressure until she gasped and let go of him.
"Good morning," he whispered.
"It's three in the afternoon," she whispered back, hissing. He hadn't released her nipple yet, and his thumbnail built up pressure again.
"I'm rested," he said, bringing the nipple to his mouth.
"I--guess so," was all she managed to get out before dissolving into quiet gasping and moaning. Peter licked and sucked one nipple while pinching the other, rolling it tightly between his fingers. By the time he slid his hands between her legs, she was dripping wet, and his fingers slid inside her without resistance.
He linked one of her legs over his back, opening her up, and rhythmically thrust his fingers inside her, marveling at her luscious tightness. After a moment, he paused, then withdrew his fingers, sucking them clean as he stared at her intently. She lay, exposed and supine, breathing heavily through her mouth, staring back at him.
He's gonna fuck me really hard, went through her mind. He's going to tear me apart.
She didn't know about his new ability, and he decided to keep it that way for the time being, and just have fun with it before things inevitably went to hell again. "You want to get fucked hard?" he asked her softly. "You want to get torn apart?"
"No," she replied aloud, her voice thick with lust and fear, and a hint of surprise. I just thought that. He's so intuitive, it's freaky.
"Don't you want it, though?" he teased with a smile. "Haven't you been wanting it, from the moment you first saw me? What are you afraid of? You afraid of getting hurt?"
Claire laughed a little, embarrassed. "No, I guess not."
"Well, here's a solution." Peter lay back and took his cock in his hand. "Why don't you fuck me as hard as you want to be fucked. Give me everything you've got. I'll tell you if it's too much, but it's almost never too much. I won't hurt you unless you ask me to. If you ask me to, though... oh, I'll hurt you, and I'll enjoy every second of it."
Kinky freak. He knows me too well. She climbed on top of him, and sat with her knees spread over him, and his erection standing up between them, agonizing inches away from her pussy. "I'm not sure what I'm doing," she confessed.
"Just do whatever feels good. Trust me. You know exactly what you're doing."
She arched up onto her knees, and, trembling, positioned herself where she thought she should be. She wasn't, but Peter enjoyed her lips sliding down over him and the feel of her buttocks against his balls and his thighs. She enjoyed that, too, eyes rolling back, tossing her tangled hair over her shoulder, arching and rubbing against him. "I could just do this," she murmured.
"That's not what you want," Peter replied. He allowed her a moment more, then took her pelvis into his hands--one in front, balanced along her pubic bone, the other at her lower spine, and brought her into true position, raising his hips so that the head of his cock was right against her opening. She bit her lips, and lowered herself, flinching slightly as she forced her way down onto him.
Being inside her was as wonderful as he had always thought it would be, as tight and wet as the interior of a sucking mouth. They moaned in unison. Peter kept his hips high off the bed until he felt that he was inside her all the way, then slowly lowered himself back down. Then back up again. The girl cried out, but not in pain; she sat still, immobilized with pleasure. Peter took her hips in his hands, holding her steady, and fucked into her from below. He guessed correctly that she would learn the rhythm, and get addicted to the sensation, and after a minute or two, he was able to relax his back entirely against the bed, and she kept going, using all the muscles between her shoulders and her knees to ride him, faster and faster.
Her balance and strength were enough that she didn't need to use her hands to brace herself. Peter took her right hand and put it against her pubis, fingers down towards her slippery clit. Her middle finger curved inward, catching up against it, and her breath came out in shudders.
Peter wasn't close enough yet. He held her still, then turned her over so that she was against the bed, and turned her face down, pulling her hips up so that she was half-kneeling, half-lying down. A yoga starter pose. He slid into her again, from behind, and gave her short, sharp, even strokes. Her voice followed the movements of his hips. "Yeah--yeah--yeah--yeah--oh! Yeah! Oh! Oh!"
"You gonna come?" Peter asked. "Hmm? You gonna come?
"Oh my God--oh, Jesus--I don't know."
"C'mon. C'mon. Come with me inside you. I want to feel that."
"I don't want to stop!"
"We don't have to stop. I don't want to stop. I want to fuck you all day. I want to come all over you. I want to come so much that there's nothing left inside me. I want to come a thousand times while you watch--and I want to come a thousand times that take you by surprise. Is that all right? Can I fuck you that much? Will you let me? Will you let me do whatever I want?"
She sounded near tears. "Yes--oh, God, yes, anything. I'll do anything."
"Come for me, right now," Peter commanded. "Come with me. Come right now. C'mon. You can come for me, because I'm going to--I'm going to--Ahhhh." He thrust himself inside her deeply, giving a low, savage moan, every cell in his body lighting up with electrical energy, building and then suddenly releasing, like a switch had been thrown. He felt like he could light up Times Square. "Ohhh. Fuck yeah. Yeah." He didn't stop, driving with his hips between her legs, forcing her toward the head of the bed. Her cunt spasmed hard against him, wringing further ecstasy out of him. "Is that it, yeah?"
Oh God Oh God Oh God there it is, there it is again...
Peter echoed her thoughts out loud. "Oh, my God, there it is. There's her coming. Yeah, that's it, you made it. Oh, God, I'm having another one. That's so perfect; that's so perfect. Let me have it. Let me fucking have it." It was almost like how he felt in the midst of his apocalyptic vision--a huge surge of energy coursing through his body, stronger than he could withstand, almost frightened of letting go but having no choice in the matter.
It's me.
"Peter--oh, God, I--"
They both fell silent and still at the same time, wrapped up, enfolded in mounting pleasure that grew and grew rather than dying away. Peter heard the note rising up again (it had never really gone away, it had only receded to such a quiet level that he wasn't aware of it), this time joined with another note, forming a strange but beautiful harmony.
And Peter could see things that hadn't happened to him.
"Do you still love me?"
"Of course I do. I never stopped."
"What about Peter?"
"I don't know. He's in his own... slutty, messianic world right now. I believe him, but... I don't know if I can deal with that, you know? I just..."
"You don't have to, you know. I'm here. I don't blame you. He's cute. And persuasive."
"That's for damn sure. I figure... we're even. He and I and you. But for now... You should come back to my place, since we can't go to yours."
"I'd be happy to."
"Just us, though. Hiro and Ando can... figure something else out."
"Are you going to call him back?"
"I haven't decided yet..."
Peter opened his eyes. Claire lay next to him, staring at him with a worried expression. "Are you OK?" she asked. "You got really... that was... I don't know..."
"I had another vision," Peter managed to say. "You're right; she's not going to bother to dump me."
"What are you talking about?" Claire furrowed her brow in confusion.
"I gotta go..." He sat up and pushed his hair back out of his face. "I'm gonna... go to the bathroom. Brush my teeth." He attemped a smile for her benefit, even though he didn't feel it in his soul; there was a yawning hollow where his heart used to be. "It's not fair to make you kiss me when I've got really severe morning breath. Three o'clock in the afternoon morning breath."
She smiled back. "I didn't mind," she said. "Seriously, are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he lied, bending over and kissing her. "Just sometimes... I shouldn't see certain things, and I can't not see them. But you were amazing. Really. I'll be back in a minute, and we can do it again. You down?"
"I'm down," she replied, hands shyly held between her thighs, looking very young, very vulnerable.
He gave her another kiss, longer this time, but finally stood up and walked to his bathroom, closing the door behind him. He sat down for a moment on the edge of his bathtub, sighing heavily. There was such a difference between intuitively knowing that someone didn't want you, and hearing the proof of it as though he had been standing in the room with them. Simone and Isaac, talking quietly amongst themselves in Peter's bedroom at three in the morning, Isaac gently massaging the small of Simone's back with his ink-stained fingers, and Simone casually twirling a strand of Isaac's curly hair around her index finger. Not kissing, but wanting to. They were probably fucking right now, Peter imagined; under a different circumstance, the idea would be immensely hot, but it hurt too much to be erotic right now.
He tried to shake it off, taking a piss, washing up in cold water, and brushing his teeth with baking soda. He didn't want to glimpse himself in the mirror, but it was inevitable, and surprisingly pleasant. He looked ten times better than the last time he'd seen himself; he was still far too thin, but his skin was perfect, rosy and glowing, his wide eyes clear. "Good old Claire," he murmured to himself. "She gives good love--"
A muffled thud came from behind the closed bathroom door.
"Claire?" Peter called out, but received no response. Hurriedly, he rinsed and spit and wiped his stubbly face with a towel, and listened closely at the door.
God, look at those tits. I'd cop a feel, but I draw back a stump, with this guy. Not to mention that Haitian'd make me wear my balls as a bow tie; he loves that girl. He'd hit it if he could, but since he can't... heh heh. Ah well, it's a living.
C'mon, sleeve. Fuck. I say we just toss her in the trunk naked.
I'm sorry, honey. You'll be all right soon. It's for your own good.
Peter burst out of the bathroom, shouting. "Who are you? What have you done with--"
Mr. Bennet looked up calmly at Peter, away from the bed, where two strange men were finishing tugging loose sweatpants and front-buttoning shirt onto Claire's limp body. What looked like a metal pencil, with black rubber grips on one end and sharply pointed on the other, protruded from her head, maybe six inches, on either side. The pointed end was scarlet with blood. One of the men had a weird object, like a miniature crossbow, holstered at his side, and a clip of three or four more of those metal arrows strapped to his thigh. The other men looked up at Peter, and didn't seem surprised at all.
"Spike him," Bennet said flatly.
"Fuck you!" Peter screamed.
He heard a quiet "thwip", and a sting against his temple, and the world went black.
...TO BE CONTINUED...
Note: High stakes, huh? Hang in there... More quoting "Young Liars". The above quote is so amazingly like something that could have inspired Heroes (but I'm certain that it didn't. But still.) I guarantee that the next chapter is going to blow your mind, or at least, try to blow your mind. That's all I can do.
previous::next
Pairing: Peter/Claire
Rating: NC-17 (explicit sex and language)
Length: about 4000 words
Spoilers: Through 1-11: Fallout
Summary: Peter and Gabriel exchange memories in dreams, and Peter and Claire wake up in each other's arms and take it from there. PLEASE READ DISCLAIMER.
Be Near Me (9): Physical Therapy
Someday suppose that my curious nervousness
stills into prescience, clairvoyant consciousness
I will be calmer than cream, making maps out of your dreams...
--TV On The Radio, "Young Liars"
Manhattan had never seemed so vast.
It felt like he had been heading home forever, and never getting any closer. It was four-thirty in the morning, the legitimate bars had stopped serving, and the Lower East Side was still teeming with rejects, the fashionably fucked up, and the desperate. He cursed himself for living in such a happening neighborhood as he was pummeled by stray thoughts of the most desperate and unlovable kind. Was my skirt too short?... She could totally tell I'm balding... He saw my tracks, didn't he? Well, fuck me for living, I'm not putting that shit up my nose... I've got to be in to the office by eight and I haven't seen pink panties yet... Once upon a time Peter would have found it all funny, but now he was wiped out, and the morphine he'd gotten from Matt Parkman was riding his shoulders like the metaphorical monkey.
It seemed like a lifetime ago he felt good, leading a deliciously fun masturbation session, caught up in the low hum of Matt's wordless sexual thoughts. Even though Peter had really wanted to make physical contact, it had been almost good enough just to watch the big cop driving himself further and further into sexual pleasure. Peter tried to grasp the memory of it, to blot out the thoughts of the unhappy people lining the streets; anything to distract himself from the last few blocks of the walk home from the subway stop. He tried to listen for Claire, but heard nothing through all the interference. He guessed that she was asleep.
When he dragged himself at last into his apartment, he saw her curled up on the couch by the window, her hair a golden comma on the cushions. He would have let her stay there undisturbed, thinking only of his own bed, but she straightened up and opened her eyes, thinking, Oh, fuck you, Peter, I saw it on her face. You tried to make her fall for you, and then you just left. You're a dick. She's not even going to bother to dump you. "Hey," she said aloud, "I wasn't asleep."
Peter couldn't say anything. He sat down beside her, his eyes aching and then overflowing with miserable tears. After a moment of watching him, Claire took him in her arms and hugged him, and he broke down sobbing. "Peter, Peter, it's OK," she said, squeezing him tight. "It's OK." Oh my God... poor guy. He's losing it.
He forced himself under control, lifted his head, and gazed into her eyes. "Just... I need to sleep," he mumbled. "Let's just go to bed, OK? I want to fall asleep holding you. You don't have to stay there, but right now I need to hold onto you. I owe you that. I owe you everything." He kissed her lips, her cheeks, her ears, drying his face against her hair. "I love you. I love you religiously."
Claire blinked at him, astonished, her heart pounding so hard that Peter could feel it against his chest. What the...? Oh please no. Oh please yes. I don't want to get into this with you, not now... but, oh, I've wanted him... Oh, God, help us; please, God, if you're out there, please help us. "I... I love you, too."
"Love me religiously," Peter insisted. "Love me beyond girls and boys and valentines and sex. Love me beyond that. And if you can't do that, please, don't love me." Despite his best efforts, he was crying again, pain and despair like a black stone spike in his heart. He couldn't say what needed to be said; he couldn't find the words. He was isolated. "I don't want--I don't deserve--"
Yep. He's lost it. "Shh," Claire whispered. "Let's just go lie down."
He let her lead him to his bed, but once there, he took off his own clothes, and then took off her hoodie, her yellow T-shirt, her jeans, her eyelet lace bra and panties. "Just sleep with me," he said, taking her in his arms and lying back, pulling up the covers over them. "Let's just sleep and let go. Tomorrow, everything will be different." He kissed her forehead, and she snuggled down against him with her head under his chin, her arms tucked in to her chest. He took in a deep breath, and as he slowly let it out again, he slipped away into sleep.
***
Salt spray air, nice smell of cotton candy and funnel bread. Sun out, but a little chilly; Peter was glad of his hoodie and windbreaker. Sand crunched underneath his sneakers as he shifted his feet on the wooden slats of the boardwalk. If he looked to his right he could see the Ferris wheel, the metal arches of the other amusement park rides.
They were just standing there together, hanging out, both of them with their elbows balanced along the wooden railing of the boardwalk, looking out to sea. The salty breeze ruffled the hair along Gabriel's brow, and his eyes narrowed against the wind for a moment before widening again, looking upward at a circling, screaming seagull overhead.
"Coney Island," Peter recognized. "It's been a long time since I've been here."
"Me too," replied Gabriel. "I used to come a lot when I was a kid." Dark-blue ribbed sweater, light-brown trousers, white-soled deck shoes with neatly tied shoelaces. Faint marks on his nose from his glasses, which were tucked into his pocket. So normal; just a quiet, ordinary guy. He chuckled, and continued, "I remember one time, here with my dad... dropping a brand-new ice cream cone, that I hadn't even licked yet, in the sand. I never got another one."
"Never?"
"Never," he confirmed. He looked back out to sea, a faint smile on his face. "If I couldn't hang onto it, I wasn't going to get another one. Taught me a lesson about holding on tight to precious things, because if they slip away, I might never get another chance."
"How old were you?"
"Five."
Peter was quiet for a moment, letting that sink in. "This one time, I got so cold, wading in the water," he said, "that I couldn't walk, and Nathan had to carry me back to shore. Then he punched me in the head for being so dumb. Nobody saw it happen, so he got away with it. I wished I could kill him, but he was so much bigger than me. I realized that I was completely powerless."
"And how old were you?"
"Five." Peter watched the gull circle closer, heard Gabriel sigh next to him. "Is this the next step?"
"That's up to you," said Gabriel.
The gull dropped something on the boardwalk next to where Peter was standing, and sped away. Peter bent down to examine it. It had once been a toy soldier, but the sea and sand had worn it down into a faceless twist of army-green plastic. It was slimy from being in the gull's mouth, so Peter didn't pick it up. He straightened up again, standing beside Gabriel, looking at all the sand, sun umbrellas, beach towels, the shifting waves of the ocean.
There was no one else on the beach.
Another gull swooped in, startling Peter, and dropped what looked like a piece of bread on the boards; a third spit out a tiny plastic toy that turned out to be a badly faded, doll-sized ice-cream cone with teeth marks on it. Peter stared at it for a while, then bent and picked it up, wiping the gull spit on the hem of his windbreaker, and handed the toy to Gabriel. Gabriel blinked and accepted it into his palm.
"Thank you," Gabriel said softly.
"I don't know what's going on. Are you creating this?" Peter stared around as more gulls flew in, each one of them dropping something--bread, popcorn, cheap plastic baubles warped by exposure to the elements.
"We're both creating it," was the reply. "We can come here whenever we want."
"This only happens when I'm asleep. I have to be helpless."
"Is it helplessness, or is it openness? Is it purity? Your conscious mind, the things you've learned, the things you supposedly believe, keep you away."
"What if I don't like it?"
"Have you ever done physical therapy, Peter?" Gabriel asked. "It hurts, doesn't it? But without it, you never recover; you're broken and bent for the rest of your life."
"Well, who hurt me in the first place?" Peter asked.
That seemed to throw Gabriel for a moment; he lowered his eyes, thinking hard, before he responded with a wide, satisfied smile. Happy to have searched his mental database and found an answer that fit. "Nobody and everybody," he replied. "It's just the way it is. It's destiny."
"You hide behind that word a lot." Peter frowned at the accumulating pile of crap next to him. The gulls weren't leaving now; instead they were hanging out, waddling around on the ground, squawking at each other when they got too close. It was starting to get freaky and Hitchcockian, and Peter felt his calm being replaced with fear and anger. "You hide, you kill, you lie--"
"I have not ever, and I will never lie to you, Peter," Gabriel said, suddenly intense. "You keep saying that I lie, when I don't--that's the problem, don't you get it? I tell the truth and you can't deal with it. I don't want to fight with you. Why do we have to fight?" He shook his head and turned back to the ocean view.
"These fucking gulls..."
"Send them away," Gabriel told him, not looking at him.
Peter stared at the flock of gulls gathered around at his feet, all of them silent now, looking up at him as if awaiting directions. He opened out both hands, just slightly, lifting his fingers all at once, and the gulls rose up as one, in a perfectly coordinated, silent cloud of birds. Peter lifted one arm, and made a faint arc in the air with his hand, and the flock took off toward the Ferris wheel in the distance.
"See?" Gabriel said quietly. "It's yours, too. You're here under your own power. You control this as much as I do. We approach balance. That's the goal, for me. To attain balance with you."
"To bring balance to the Force," Peter murmured, unable to think of any other way to put it.
Gabriel answered with a smile. "Yeah," he said. "From a certain point of view."
They were silent after that, standing beside each other, watching the sun on the water, in that quiet, empty place created from their shared memories. Peter wondered if Sylar was dreaming too, if they were both always dreaming at the same time, if any of this had ever been real in the first place.
***
Peter awakened suddenly; his eyes were open and he stood at the beach in bright sunlight, and then his eyes were really open, and he was in the dim, shaded light of his bedroom, lying down in bed, with Claire stroking her finger up and down the hollow of his stomach.
Completely by instinct, he grabbed her hand and brought it to his mouth, sliding her tongue between his lips and sucking on it. She smiled slowly, watching him, saying nothing, her other hand fondling and stroking her own breast, fingertips toying absently with her nipple. Peter half-rose, taking her other hand away, replacing it with his own hand. Claire's sleepy smile grew. Her hand went straight for his straining cock, gripping it lightly, giving it a slight squeeze. He squeezed back on her breast, trapping her nipple between his thumbnail and forefinger, slowly and steadily increasing the pressure until she gasped and let go of him.
"Good morning," he whispered.
"It's three in the afternoon," she whispered back, hissing. He hadn't released her nipple yet, and his thumbnail built up pressure again.
"I'm rested," he said, bringing the nipple to his mouth.
"I--guess so," was all she managed to get out before dissolving into quiet gasping and moaning. Peter licked and sucked one nipple while pinching the other, rolling it tightly between his fingers. By the time he slid his hands between her legs, she was dripping wet, and his fingers slid inside her without resistance.
He linked one of her legs over his back, opening her up, and rhythmically thrust his fingers inside her, marveling at her luscious tightness. After a moment, he paused, then withdrew his fingers, sucking them clean as he stared at her intently. She lay, exposed and supine, breathing heavily through her mouth, staring back at him.
He's gonna fuck me really hard, went through her mind. He's going to tear me apart.
She didn't know about his new ability, and he decided to keep it that way for the time being, and just have fun with it before things inevitably went to hell again. "You want to get fucked hard?" he asked her softly. "You want to get torn apart?"
"No," she replied aloud, her voice thick with lust and fear, and a hint of surprise. I just thought that. He's so intuitive, it's freaky.
"Don't you want it, though?" he teased with a smile. "Haven't you been wanting it, from the moment you first saw me? What are you afraid of? You afraid of getting hurt?"
Claire laughed a little, embarrassed. "No, I guess not."
"Well, here's a solution." Peter lay back and took his cock in his hand. "Why don't you fuck me as hard as you want to be fucked. Give me everything you've got. I'll tell you if it's too much, but it's almost never too much. I won't hurt you unless you ask me to. If you ask me to, though... oh, I'll hurt you, and I'll enjoy every second of it."
Kinky freak. He knows me too well. She climbed on top of him, and sat with her knees spread over him, and his erection standing up between them, agonizing inches away from her pussy. "I'm not sure what I'm doing," she confessed.
"Just do whatever feels good. Trust me. You know exactly what you're doing."
She arched up onto her knees, and, trembling, positioned herself where she thought she should be. She wasn't, but Peter enjoyed her lips sliding down over him and the feel of her buttocks against his balls and his thighs. She enjoyed that, too, eyes rolling back, tossing her tangled hair over her shoulder, arching and rubbing against him. "I could just do this," she murmured.
"That's not what you want," Peter replied. He allowed her a moment more, then took her pelvis into his hands--one in front, balanced along her pubic bone, the other at her lower spine, and brought her into true position, raising his hips so that the head of his cock was right against her opening. She bit her lips, and lowered herself, flinching slightly as she forced her way down onto him.
Being inside her was as wonderful as he had always thought it would be, as tight and wet as the interior of a sucking mouth. They moaned in unison. Peter kept his hips high off the bed until he felt that he was inside her all the way, then slowly lowered himself back down. Then back up again. The girl cried out, but not in pain; she sat still, immobilized with pleasure. Peter took her hips in his hands, holding her steady, and fucked into her from below. He guessed correctly that she would learn the rhythm, and get addicted to the sensation, and after a minute or two, he was able to relax his back entirely against the bed, and she kept going, using all the muscles between her shoulders and her knees to ride him, faster and faster.
Her balance and strength were enough that she didn't need to use her hands to brace herself. Peter took her right hand and put it against her pubis, fingers down towards her slippery clit. Her middle finger curved inward, catching up against it, and her breath came out in shudders.
Peter wasn't close enough yet. He held her still, then turned her over so that she was against the bed, and turned her face down, pulling her hips up so that she was half-kneeling, half-lying down. A yoga starter pose. He slid into her again, from behind, and gave her short, sharp, even strokes. Her voice followed the movements of his hips. "Yeah--yeah--yeah--yeah--oh! Yeah! Oh! Oh!"
"You gonna come?" Peter asked. "Hmm? You gonna come?
"Oh my God--oh, Jesus--I don't know."
"C'mon. C'mon. Come with me inside you. I want to feel that."
"I don't want to stop!"
"We don't have to stop. I don't want to stop. I want to fuck you all day. I want to come all over you. I want to come so much that there's nothing left inside me. I want to come a thousand times while you watch--and I want to come a thousand times that take you by surprise. Is that all right? Can I fuck you that much? Will you let me? Will you let me do whatever I want?"
She sounded near tears. "Yes--oh, God, yes, anything. I'll do anything."
"Come for me, right now," Peter commanded. "Come with me. Come right now. C'mon. You can come for me, because I'm going to--I'm going to--Ahhhh." He thrust himself inside her deeply, giving a low, savage moan, every cell in his body lighting up with electrical energy, building and then suddenly releasing, like a switch had been thrown. He felt like he could light up Times Square. "Ohhh. Fuck yeah. Yeah." He didn't stop, driving with his hips between her legs, forcing her toward the head of the bed. Her cunt spasmed hard against him, wringing further ecstasy out of him. "Is that it, yeah?"
Oh God Oh God Oh God there it is, there it is again...
Peter echoed her thoughts out loud. "Oh, my God, there it is. There's her coming. Yeah, that's it, you made it. Oh, God, I'm having another one. That's so perfect; that's so perfect. Let me have it. Let me fucking have it." It was almost like how he felt in the midst of his apocalyptic vision--a huge surge of energy coursing through his body, stronger than he could withstand, almost frightened of letting go but having no choice in the matter.
It's me.
"Peter--oh, God, I--"
They both fell silent and still at the same time, wrapped up, enfolded in mounting pleasure that grew and grew rather than dying away. Peter heard the note rising up again (it had never really gone away, it had only receded to such a quiet level that he wasn't aware of it), this time joined with another note, forming a strange but beautiful harmony.
And Peter could see things that hadn't happened to him.
"Do you still love me?"
"Of course I do. I never stopped."
"What about Peter?"
"I don't know. He's in his own... slutty, messianic world right now. I believe him, but... I don't know if I can deal with that, you know? I just..."
"You don't have to, you know. I'm here. I don't blame you. He's cute. And persuasive."
"That's for damn sure. I figure... we're even. He and I and you. But for now... You should come back to my place, since we can't go to yours."
"I'd be happy to."
"Just us, though. Hiro and Ando can... figure something else out."
"Are you going to call him back?"
"I haven't decided yet..."
Peter opened his eyes. Claire lay next to him, staring at him with a worried expression. "Are you OK?" she asked. "You got really... that was... I don't know..."
"I had another vision," Peter managed to say. "You're right; she's not going to bother to dump me."
"What are you talking about?" Claire furrowed her brow in confusion.
"I gotta go..." He sat up and pushed his hair back out of his face. "I'm gonna... go to the bathroom. Brush my teeth." He attemped a smile for her benefit, even though he didn't feel it in his soul; there was a yawning hollow where his heart used to be. "It's not fair to make you kiss me when I've got really severe morning breath. Three o'clock in the afternoon morning breath."
She smiled back. "I didn't mind," she said. "Seriously, are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he lied, bending over and kissing her. "Just sometimes... I shouldn't see certain things, and I can't not see them. But you were amazing. Really. I'll be back in a minute, and we can do it again. You down?"
"I'm down," she replied, hands shyly held between her thighs, looking very young, very vulnerable.
He gave her another kiss, longer this time, but finally stood up and walked to his bathroom, closing the door behind him. He sat down for a moment on the edge of his bathtub, sighing heavily. There was such a difference between intuitively knowing that someone didn't want you, and hearing the proof of it as though he had been standing in the room with them. Simone and Isaac, talking quietly amongst themselves in Peter's bedroom at three in the morning, Isaac gently massaging the small of Simone's back with his ink-stained fingers, and Simone casually twirling a strand of Isaac's curly hair around her index finger. Not kissing, but wanting to. They were probably fucking right now, Peter imagined; under a different circumstance, the idea would be immensely hot, but it hurt too much to be erotic right now.
He tried to shake it off, taking a piss, washing up in cold water, and brushing his teeth with baking soda. He didn't want to glimpse himself in the mirror, but it was inevitable, and surprisingly pleasant. He looked ten times better than the last time he'd seen himself; he was still far too thin, but his skin was perfect, rosy and glowing, his wide eyes clear. "Good old Claire," he murmured to himself. "She gives good love--"
A muffled thud came from behind the closed bathroom door.
"Claire?" Peter called out, but received no response. Hurriedly, he rinsed and spit and wiped his stubbly face with a towel, and listened closely at the door.
God, look at those tits. I'd cop a feel, but I draw back a stump, with this guy. Not to mention that Haitian'd make me wear my balls as a bow tie; he loves that girl. He'd hit it if he could, but since he can't... heh heh. Ah well, it's a living.
C'mon, sleeve. Fuck. I say we just toss her in the trunk naked.
I'm sorry, honey. You'll be all right soon. It's for your own good.
Peter burst out of the bathroom, shouting. "Who are you? What have you done with--"
Mr. Bennet looked up calmly at Peter, away from the bed, where two strange men were finishing tugging loose sweatpants and front-buttoning shirt onto Claire's limp body. What looked like a metal pencil, with black rubber grips on one end and sharply pointed on the other, protruded from her head, maybe six inches, on either side. The pointed end was scarlet with blood. One of the men had a weird object, like a miniature crossbow, holstered at his side, and a clip of three or four more of those metal arrows strapped to his thigh. The other men looked up at Peter, and didn't seem surprised at all.
"Spike him," Bennet said flatly.
"Fuck you!" Peter screamed.
He heard a quiet "thwip", and a sting against his temple, and the world went black.
...TO BE CONTINUED...
Note: High stakes, huh? Hang in there... More quoting "Young Liars". The above quote is so amazingly like something that could have inspired Heroes (but I'm certain that it didn't. But still.) I guarantee that the next chapter is going to blow your mind, or at least, try to blow your mind. That's all I can do.
previous::next