look up (fireworks). peter/claire.
Title: Look Up (Fireworks)
Author: missaliceblue
Pairing: Peter/Claire
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: around 2300
Summary: He loves her most of all when he sees the firelight in her eyes. Smutty and angsty Peter/Claire, with a soundtrack to go along (found here).
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
VI
4 July 2014
New York City
“Look up, Peter!”
He was looking at her instead.
She glanced at him quickly, threw him a silly grin. “Don’t watch me, you can see me any dumb day. Look at the fireworks!”
They were sitting on the roof of his apartment building. It wasn’t as great a view as it would have been from Nathan’s, but they were alone here, at least.
“You’re still not looking!” Her face fell, and she pouted dramatically. “Don’t you like fireworks?”
Peter laughed a little as he answered softly. “Yeah. Fireworks are nice.”
“What’s so funny?” Her mouth was parted in that sort of silly half-grin that she did when she thought he was being especially amusing.
“Nothing,” he said, his mouth twisting as he refused to look at her.
“Tell me.” Tell me she said, like there was any way to explain it. He was smiling because she asked him if he liked fireworks on every 4th of July. Almost every.
“It’s nothing, seriously.” Peter rocked up onto his knees, grabbed the beer bottles by their feet with his right hand. “Want another?”
“I’m good.” She’d had almost two. That was a decent amount for her. A born lightweight, which had given him a little trouble to think about when she had been in college, but she had been (was) too smart for that.
Peter walked over to the dented tin trashcan that was nudged against one corner of the roof. He tossed the bottles into it, heard them rattle down to the bottom and he wondered if, for a minute maybe, it might not happen.
“I’m gonna sit on the edge,” called Claire, and he nodded over his shoulder and winced as someone lit a very loud, screeching firework.
“Ugh. One’s enough of that,” said Claire as he swung a leg over the edge of the building to join her. They’d long ago lost any fear of heights, even as their feet dangled a good thirty stories above the warm pavement below them. “I hate the loud ones. The little loud ones.”
“I don’t see the point of the little ones. They’re just annoying. I think the big ones are the ones that’re worthwhile,” said Peter, gesturing to the large flashes of gold and red that were exploding in the sky. They were glinting off of the windows of New York apartments and reflecting in the hair of the little golden niece that had been a niece for eight years now. Long enough for him to get the picture.
“They make me tired. The big ones do, I mean.” She paused. “Is that weird?”
Peter shook his head. “You tired now?” He swung off of the edge of the building.
She turned from the edge too. “No. No, I don’t want to go home yet.”
Peter nodded, and he started to feel the deep part of his gut shake - the part that started to shake sometime in mid-May every year and wouldn’t quit till, oh, around the time he was eating Thanksgiving turkey in his brother’s house.
“I’m glad I’ve got you to hang out with,” said Claire lightly. “Seriously. I’ve always been lucky to have you in that way.”
“Yeah. Pretty convenient that we get along, huh?” Peter said, and he felt like he was reading the back of a cereal box.
An especially loud and highly illegal firework burst a few building down. “Oh!” Claire grabbed his elbow and didn't let go, which wouldn’t have been unusual on any other day but this one.
“Do you remember our first 4th of July together?” She asked him this with soft breaths he could feel on his face as she pointed her chin at him.
“I do.” Of course he did.
“We were in Japan,” said Claire. “We were there for…” she paused and looked at him, waiting for him to pick up this part of the story. They often told stories in tandem, but he didn't want to tell this one, on this day.
Peter sighed. “We were there for one of the Doctor’s presentations.”
Claire nodded. “It was the 4th of July and there were no fireworks.”
“And I told you it was because it was an American holiday, and you were sad,” said Peter.
“So you went and got me some. Japanese fireworks. Do you remember? You set them off for me in the courtyard of the hotel. I watched from the balcony.” Another loud firework exploded, and Claire flinched her fingers onto his arms tighter. “Do you remember?”
Peter closed his eyes so he could avoid her gaze. “Of course I remember.”
“Look at me.” She spoke in her low, serious tone.
Peter exhaled slowly, and opened his eyes. She was just a few inches away from his face, her skin soft and shimmering in the fire-lit sky above them.
“Don’t do this, Claire.” He said the words but he didn’t mean them and he knew that as they came out of his mouth. He didn't even try to make them convincing.
She didn't argue with him because why should she when she pressed her lips to his, gentle and firm and knowing instead? She cupped the back of his head with her tiny hand, slid the other around his neck. She kissed him sensuously and slow, not at all awkward or tentative. She pushed his body against his and for a split-second he thought about trying to fight it.
But he couldn’t, he’d known that for quite a while now. It didn't seem like his choice at all to wrap his arms around her back, hands sliding up and down slowly over the thin cotton that was loose and he could feel every tender muscle, every plane of skin beneath it.
She kissed him and he let her lead, let her pull his mouth down to hers, and he was rocked by a little jolt of surprise when she boldly pushed her tongue in his mouth. He gripped her tighter, and she moaned.
A loud boom rattled the glass in the buildings around them. The fireworks show off the Hudson had just begun, a few blocks away from Peter’s place.
That’s when things happened very quickly.
He did not want things to go quickly. He wanted them to be slow and good, because this was new and unspoiled and he felt himself spoiling it but he couldn’t, could not slow down. He spun her around, walking her backwards a few feet, her feet stumbling in her high sandals. She moaned again when he pressed her back against the rough brick of the stairwell.
A bright red firework burned in the sky above him, and he didn't know if it was the fireworks or him that made her cheeks look so flushed. She was saying his name in his ear, her voice breathy and breathing, repeating his name like he was the giver of some great pleasure when it was all he could do not to rip her clothes off at this point.
It was light now, as light as day as he pulled her shirt open, tugging and unpracticed, his fingers greedy and beyond any sort of subtle seduction. Underneath her shirt she was wearing a black bra, which he would later regret not paying proper attention to. No, he was too concerned about getting it off to appreciate it. She tugged at the button of her jeans, shimmied them down her hips.
He pulled her to the ground, and pushed himself on top of her, even though he knew the roof’s ground was uneven and uncomfortable but she didn't seem to mind and he knew by now that she could take it. She pushed her hands underneath his shirt, ran them over his chest and stomach. The curves of her face tightened as lights flashing gold and silver bounced off of them.
It was not to his credit that he didn't take his shirt or pants off properly. There should have been long minutes of them peeling one another’s clothes off. There should have been minutes, maybe hours of sweet and teasing foreplay. He could have made this really good for her. He could have explored every inch of her body, kissed her thighs and knees and forehead and turned her whole body dewy and pink.
But that wasn’t how it went because he wanted to be inside of her, and at the moment he wanted that more than he wanted anything in the whole world that was exploding around him. He knew it was irrational and too abrupt - they’d been kissing chastely just a minute or two ago.
But now her clothes were off and she was spreading her thighs underneath him. He awkwardly - but quickly and that was the point - tugged his slacks down a few inches and pulled himself out, pushed past the tiny strip of cloth that was between them, and then he was in.
He slid into her slowly, and the crackle of a fizzling firework died above their heads.
She gasped and he moaned as he roughly thrust in the last few inches. She was warm and wonderful and he wished that he could have just leaned his head on her, just for a minute or two. Just to enjoy the feeling of being there.
But she was clawing at his neck, pulling his lips to hers, tangling in an unsophisticated sort of kiss. She didn't let him go as he began to move inside her. She kept him right there, right there with her tongue inside his mouth and her arms clasping him tightly to her. He felt her legs quiver as he lifted her right knee and shifted just a bit deeper, felt goosebumps break out over her neck and shoulders as he found the right angle.
“Ohmigod. Peter. Oh.” Hearing that breathless little hitch in her voice, followed by her rapid plea to the heavens made him think of the fireworks in Japan, the ones she had been talking about earlier.
“I know it. You think I don’t know it?”
“I want you. God, I want you,” she said in a broken sort of voice, her fingers pulling his hair tightly, it hurt but it felt wonderful in this moment. “I’ve wanted you forever,” she said.
He shuddered a sigh between his lips, and kissed her face, all over, wildly. Nose and eyelids and cheeks and hair, and it only made her hands more wanton and rapid. It was going so, so fast now, and he couldn’t stop it nor did he want to. Peter increased the rhythm between them, and then he leaned back a little, to watch her.
“I’m strong, you know. I don’t break. And neither do you.”
She orgasmed beautifully - dark lashes on her cheek, lips that she bit shut until the very end, when a soft little whimper left her throat. Knowing that he’d done that to her - him - made him clutch her body tighter to him, holding the moment and her with all his strength.
He didn't look at her, because he wanted to keep the memory of that expression in his mind, and it was fresh enough that it would be perfect and unspoiled there. Her lips whispering his name. Her beautiful eyes closed and crinkling at the edges. He memorized it, tasted it in his head again and again as he held her body tightly against his own.
He was pretending at this point because he knew there was no way in hell that it wasn’t over.
He felt her trembling beneath him as he came inside of her. Her breath was quivering and she had already covered her face with her hands, tears pouring out underneath them.
All of this was wasted, and all because of his overeager…selfish body that couldn’t wait. It could have been longer. Didn’t matter now though. It was over.
He stared at the tiny freckle on her shoulder. He stared forever.
Finally she spoke.
“Oh, Peter.” Her voice was broken.
He lifted himself off of her, because he knew that was what she would want.
“Oh, Peter, what’d we do?”
Her hair was mussed, pins sticking haphazardly out of her once-neat chignon. On a gravel rooftop - quick and satidying, but with no sort of finesse or tenderness. A mere taste of how good it could have been. Peter’s face twisted with guilt and he rubbed his forehead. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her that this is not what he thought of her, not what he thought she deserved. But he didn't speak because she wouldn’t want to hear it.
Her underpants were still on, he could see that as she sat up and rested her head on her knees. He knelt in front of her, his face just a few inches from her head.
Her breath was shaking as she lifted her face to his, and the bright explosions in the sky lit the tears on her cheeks, turning them the color of gold and silver and crimson. She was crying harder now, could barely speak through her tears.
“I want to forget it. I’ve got to forget this ever happened.”
He doesn’t even try to talk her out of it. He put his hand gently on her forehead and he sighed and he shut off that part of him that wanted to refuse. Her hitching sobs made her forehead tremble under his hand, and he closed his eyes.
This is what she wants, and he’s never been able to deny her anything she wanted.
Author: missaliceblue
Pairing: Peter/Claire
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: around 2300
Summary: He loves her most of all when he sees the firelight in her eyes. Smutty and angsty Peter/Claire, with a soundtrack to go along (found here).
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
VI
4 July 2014
New York City
“Look up, Peter!”
He was looking at her instead.
She glanced at him quickly, threw him a silly grin. “Don’t watch me, you can see me any dumb day. Look at the fireworks!”
They were sitting on the roof of his apartment building. It wasn’t as great a view as it would have been from Nathan’s, but they were alone here, at least.
“You’re still not looking!” Her face fell, and she pouted dramatically. “Don’t you like fireworks?”
Peter laughed a little as he answered softly. “Yeah. Fireworks are nice.”
“What’s so funny?” Her mouth was parted in that sort of silly half-grin that she did when she thought he was being especially amusing.
“Nothing,” he said, his mouth twisting as he refused to look at her.
“Tell me.” Tell me she said, like there was any way to explain it. He was smiling because she asked him if he liked fireworks on every 4th of July. Almost every.
“It’s nothing, seriously.” Peter rocked up onto his knees, grabbed the beer bottles by their feet with his right hand. “Want another?”
“I’m good.” She’d had almost two. That was a decent amount for her. A born lightweight, which had given him a little trouble to think about when she had been in college, but she had been (was) too smart for that.
Peter walked over to the dented tin trashcan that was nudged against one corner of the roof. He tossed the bottles into it, heard them rattle down to the bottom and he wondered if, for a minute maybe, it might not happen.
“I’m gonna sit on the edge,” called Claire, and he nodded over his shoulder and winced as someone lit a very loud, screeching firework.
“Ugh. One’s enough of that,” said Claire as he swung a leg over the edge of the building to join her. They’d long ago lost any fear of heights, even as their feet dangled a good thirty stories above the warm pavement below them. “I hate the loud ones. The little loud ones.”
“I don’t see the point of the little ones. They’re just annoying. I think the big ones are the ones that’re worthwhile,” said Peter, gesturing to the large flashes of gold and red that were exploding in the sky. They were glinting off of the windows of New York apartments and reflecting in the hair of the little golden niece that had been a niece for eight years now. Long enough for him to get the picture.
“They make me tired. The big ones do, I mean.” She paused. “Is that weird?”
Peter shook his head. “You tired now?” He swung off of the edge of the building.
She turned from the edge too. “No. No, I don’t want to go home yet.”
Peter nodded, and he started to feel the deep part of his gut shake - the part that started to shake sometime in mid-May every year and wouldn’t quit till, oh, around the time he was eating Thanksgiving turkey in his brother’s house.
“I’m glad I’ve got you to hang out with,” said Claire lightly. “Seriously. I’ve always been lucky to have you in that way.”
“Yeah. Pretty convenient that we get along, huh?” Peter said, and he felt like he was reading the back of a cereal box.
An especially loud and highly illegal firework burst a few building down. “Oh!” Claire grabbed his elbow and didn't let go, which wouldn’t have been unusual on any other day but this one.
“Do you remember our first 4th of July together?” She asked him this with soft breaths he could feel on his face as she pointed her chin at him.
“I do.” Of course he did.
“We were in Japan,” said Claire. “We were there for…” she paused and looked at him, waiting for him to pick up this part of the story. They often told stories in tandem, but he didn't want to tell this one, on this day.
Peter sighed. “We were there for one of the Doctor’s presentations.”
Claire nodded. “It was the 4th of July and there were no fireworks.”
“And I told you it was because it was an American holiday, and you were sad,” said Peter.
“So you went and got me some. Japanese fireworks. Do you remember? You set them off for me in the courtyard of the hotel. I watched from the balcony.” Another loud firework exploded, and Claire flinched her fingers onto his arms tighter. “Do you remember?”
Peter closed his eyes so he could avoid her gaze. “Of course I remember.”
“Look at me.” She spoke in her low, serious tone.
Peter exhaled slowly, and opened his eyes. She was just a few inches away from his face, her skin soft and shimmering in the fire-lit sky above them.
“Don’t do this, Claire.” He said the words but he didn’t mean them and he knew that as they came out of his mouth. He didn't even try to make them convincing.
She didn't argue with him because why should she when she pressed her lips to his, gentle and firm and knowing instead? She cupped the back of his head with her tiny hand, slid the other around his neck. She kissed him sensuously and slow, not at all awkward or tentative. She pushed his body against his and for a split-second he thought about trying to fight it.
But he couldn’t, he’d known that for quite a while now. It didn't seem like his choice at all to wrap his arms around her back, hands sliding up and down slowly over the thin cotton that was loose and he could feel every tender muscle, every plane of skin beneath it.
She kissed him and he let her lead, let her pull his mouth down to hers, and he was rocked by a little jolt of surprise when she boldly pushed her tongue in his mouth. He gripped her tighter, and she moaned.
A loud boom rattled the glass in the buildings around them. The fireworks show off the Hudson had just begun, a few blocks away from Peter’s place.
That’s when things happened very quickly.
He did not want things to go quickly. He wanted them to be slow and good, because this was new and unspoiled and he felt himself spoiling it but he couldn’t, could not slow down. He spun her around, walking her backwards a few feet, her feet stumbling in her high sandals. She moaned again when he pressed her back against the rough brick of the stairwell.
A bright red firework burned in the sky above him, and he didn't know if it was the fireworks or him that made her cheeks look so flushed. She was saying his name in his ear, her voice breathy and breathing, repeating his name like he was the giver of some great pleasure when it was all he could do not to rip her clothes off at this point.
It was light now, as light as day as he pulled her shirt open, tugging and unpracticed, his fingers greedy and beyond any sort of subtle seduction. Underneath her shirt she was wearing a black bra, which he would later regret not paying proper attention to. No, he was too concerned about getting it off to appreciate it. She tugged at the button of her jeans, shimmied them down her hips.
He pulled her to the ground, and pushed himself on top of her, even though he knew the roof’s ground was uneven and uncomfortable but she didn't seem to mind and he knew by now that she could take it. She pushed her hands underneath his shirt, ran them over his chest and stomach. The curves of her face tightened as lights flashing gold and silver bounced off of them.
It was not to his credit that he didn't take his shirt or pants off properly. There should have been long minutes of them peeling one another’s clothes off. There should have been minutes, maybe hours of sweet and teasing foreplay. He could have made this really good for her. He could have explored every inch of her body, kissed her thighs and knees and forehead and turned her whole body dewy and pink.
But that wasn’t how it went because he wanted to be inside of her, and at the moment he wanted that more than he wanted anything in the whole world that was exploding around him. He knew it was irrational and too abrupt - they’d been kissing chastely just a minute or two ago.
But now her clothes were off and she was spreading her thighs underneath him. He awkwardly - but quickly and that was the point - tugged his slacks down a few inches and pulled himself out, pushed past the tiny strip of cloth that was between them, and then he was in.
He slid into her slowly, and the crackle of a fizzling firework died above their heads.
She gasped and he moaned as he roughly thrust in the last few inches. She was warm and wonderful and he wished that he could have just leaned his head on her, just for a minute or two. Just to enjoy the feeling of being there.
But she was clawing at his neck, pulling his lips to hers, tangling in an unsophisticated sort of kiss. She didn't let him go as he began to move inside her. She kept him right there, right there with her tongue inside his mouth and her arms clasping him tightly to her. He felt her legs quiver as he lifted her right knee and shifted just a bit deeper, felt goosebumps break out over her neck and shoulders as he found the right angle.
“Ohmigod. Peter. Oh.” Hearing that breathless little hitch in her voice, followed by her rapid plea to the heavens made him think of the fireworks in Japan, the ones she had been talking about earlier.
“I know it. You think I don’t know it?”
“I want you. God, I want you,” she said in a broken sort of voice, her fingers pulling his hair tightly, it hurt but it felt wonderful in this moment. “I’ve wanted you forever,” she said.
He shuddered a sigh between his lips, and kissed her face, all over, wildly. Nose and eyelids and cheeks and hair, and it only made her hands more wanton and rapid. It was going so, so fast now, and he couldn’t stop it nor did he want to. Peter increased the rhythm between them, and then he leaned back a little, to watch her.
“I’m strong, you know. I don’t break. And neither do you.”
She orgasmed beautifully - dark lashes on her cheek, lips that she bit shut until the very end, when a soft little whimper left her throat. Knowing that he’d done that to her - him - made him clutch her body tighter to him, holding the moment and her with all his strength.
He didn't look at her, because he wanted to keep the memory of that expression in his mind, and it was fresh enough that it would be perfect and unspoiled there. Her lips whispering his name. Her beautiful eyes closed and crinkling at the edges. He memorized it, tasted it in his head again and again as he held her body tightly against his own.
He was pretending at this point because he knew there was no way in hell that it wasn’t over.
He felt her trembling beneath him as he came inside of her. Her breath was quivering and she had already covered her face with her hands, tears pouring out underneath them.
All of this was wasted, and all because of his overeager…selfish body that couldn’t wait. It could have been longer. Didn’t matter now though. It was over.
He stared at the tiny freckle on her shoulder. He stared forever.
Finally she spoke.
“Oh, Peter.” Her voice was broken.
He lifted himself off of her, because he knew that was what she would want.
“Oh, Peter, what’d we do?”
Her hair was mussed, pins sticking haphazardly out of her once-neat chignon. On a gravel rooftop - quick and satidying, but with no sort of finesse or tenderness. A mere taste of how good it could have been. Peter’s face twisted with guilt and he rubbed his forehead. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her that this is not what he thought of her, not what he thought she deserved. But he didn't speak because she wouldn’t want to hear it.
Her underpants were still on, he could see that as she sat up and rested her head on her knees. He knelt in front of her, his face just a few inches from her head.
Her breath was shaking as she lifted her face to his, and the bright explosions in the sky lit the tears on her cheeks, turning them the color of gold and silver and crimson. She was crying harder now, could barely speak through her tears.
“I want to forget it. I’ve got to forget this ever happened.”
He doesn’t even try to talk her out of it. He put his hand gently on her forehead and he sighed and he shut off that part of him that wanted to refuse. Her hitching sobs made her forehead tremble under his hand, and he closed his eyes.
This is what she wants, and he’s never been able to deny her anything she wanted.