Caught in the machinery (Slave Verse 1, Chapter 5)
For a moment, Sylar just blinked in surprise, overwhelmed by contradictory desires. He wanted to push him away, knock him to the floor and make him suffer, watch him writhe and beg. And he also wanted… this kiss. By Peter Petrelli, his slave. Who wanted to kiss him. Despite everything. Even if it was probably some sort of manipulative ploy. Was it really so bad what Peter was asserting? That he was human?
Well, Sylar might quibble with him on semantics on that, because Sylar didn’t think either of them were something as pedestrian as merely human, but that wasn’t the point. He moved his lips against Peter’s while he considered what he wanted to do here. It felt really good. Peter was sneaking his arms around his hips, inside the waistband of his slacks, almost like Sylar wouldn’t notice if he moved them furtively enough, if he distracted him with the darting pressure of his tongue at his master’s lips, begging entry but not demanding it.
“Master,” Peter moaned and that did it. Sylar forgot whatever the hell he was supposed to be doing here and forced his tongue into Peter’s mouth, fucking it into him like he wanted to fuck his ass. He pressed him between himself and the countertop, bringing his hands up to hold Peter’s head exactly where he wanted it. Peter made a small mewling sound of submission that brought out a completely involuntary hitch from Sylar’s hips.
He jerked back, panting, realizing he not only wasn’t in control of Peter, but he wasn’t in control of his own body anymore. He wiped his mouth, looking at Peter’s kiss-swollen lips and heavy-lidded eyes, more from passion than sedation, he was sure. Sylar shook his head. “No. No.” He was in control here. He’d say when they had sex and when they didn’t. What the hell was going on anyway, him letting Peter practically seduce him?
Sylar shook his head, trying to clear the fog from it. He pointed at the soup. “Eat that. Then go…” where? To him, to suck him off? No! Sylar was in control of when they had sex, not… whatever. He couldn’t think. His mind was too filled with regrets that he’d become so obsessed with hurting him that he’d made it impossible to get what he really wanted here. Even if… he was confused now as to what that was.
Visions of Peter tied on the bed, himself moving in him, stroking his sides… “Then… go… to your place in the bedroom.” Sylar staggered out of the kitchen, trying to dredge up the horrific visions of anal gangrene Dr. Mark had threatened if he tried to have Peter again that way, too soon. It was probably a good thing that he didn’t see Peter smirk at him as he went and then look down to check the device he’d palmed.
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Later, when he went to bed, he dutifully brought Peter’s nightly antibiotic and a glass of juice. His pet was exactly where he’d directed, but he had built a nest with the comforter and pillow he’d been provided earlier. Sylar hadn’t given any orders against it, but it annoyed him to see Peter taking the liberty. He yanked the blanket out from under him and then snatched away the pillow too. Peter blinked away sleep and looked confused. Sylar threw the bedding in the corner.
“That is not yours. Not until I say it is. Do you understand?”
“Yes, master.” His tone seethed with resentment.
Sylar dug through his pockets for the remote, intending to do something about that tone of voice, but it wasn’t there. He was pretty sure he’d had it on him. Or had he tossed it on the bed and left it there? He couldn’t remember. Peter was glaring up at him from his mat, watching his search. He didn’t want to let on that he’d lost it somewhere. It didn’t matter anyway. Peter was impotent and if he wasn’t broken, he at least seemed well on the way to being trained. Sylar supposed he could deal with that.
Sylar stared at him for a long moment until Peter dropped his gaze, then he picked up the juice and pill from the nightstand and gave them to him. “Take these.”
Peter opened his mouth to speak, to ask something, then shut it. Sylar grunted, pleased. Peter drank and did as directed. As Sylar was still standing there over him, he offered the glass back. He hunched his shoulders and bowed his head, looking at Sylar’s feet, and asked, “Master?”
It sounded appropriately submissive, so Sylar decided to allow the question. “Yes?”
“May I use the bathroom?”
He started to answer right away, but then pondered the enjoyment of watching Peter squirm over the next couple hours, with two glasses of juice and a pint of soup in his body, working itself inexorably downward. On the other hand, he really hadn’t enjoyed cleaning up the vomit this morning and even if he made Peter clean up any mistakes - which he certainly would - there would still be the smell and his floor would be tainted. He had to walk across that floor, sometimes bare-footed. “Yes, you may.”
Peter nodded. “Thank you, master.” He was back to being solicitous. Sylar sighed and shook his head, not really understanding what was going on. But right now he was tired. He got out another blanket for his bed since Peter’s blood was on the comforter, shifted himself into bed clothes and got in. A few moments later Peter pattered off to the bathroom, flushed, washed himself and came back to lie on the rubberized mat, naked and open to the air. Sylar acknowledged that it was probably pretty uncomfortable. On the other hand, the life of a slave wasn’t supposed to be good.
xx-----xx
Hours later, the bed dipped and the sheets lifted. Sylar woke immediately. A body slid into the bed with an attempt at stealth. A number of things ran through Sylar’s mind, one tumbling after the next: he hadn’t leashed Peter; he had knives in the kitchen; Peter didn’t know Sylar could regenerate; he’d already demonstrated a willingness to do violence at the slave pens. He stiffened. He was fine with losing the sheets, but if Peter managed to wound him badly enough that his blood stained the mattress too then he would be seriously angry. Otherwise, he had every intention of lying there and letting Peter find out just how futile it was to try to hurt him.
After a long pause, Peter scooted towards him. Sylar waited, hyper-alert, for the knife to go in. Instead he felt Peter’s fingers brush along his bicep, questing and exploring. Okay, Sylar thought, not only is he bad at sneaking, but he’s incompetent in how to kill someone in the dark. The fingers brushed lower, across Sylar’s side and then to his hip, pausing on the elastic waistband of his pajamas. Sylar blinked. Is he intending to stab me in the ass or something idiotic like that?
Then Peter confused him more by scooting a little closer and kissing him in the middle of the back. Sylar began to understand that he wasn’t here to try to kill him. The fingers on his hip slid under the waistband and circled towards the front of Sylar’s body. He inhaled sharply and Peter paused for a moment, then moved up closer behind him so his bare body was touching Sylar’s clothed one. His skin felt very cool where they were touching.
Maybe that’s it, Sylar thought. Maybe he just got cold and he’d just trying to buy his way into my bed. It seemed unlikely though. Wasn’t it? Was it possible he’d just wanted to make him happy? Peter’s fingers brushed up and down his penis, discovering how it lay folded over and downward. It was slowly swelling. Sylar let himself breathe more deeply and relax, not asking, not questioning. Asking might give the wrong answer. Without knowing, he could more easily entertain the fantasy that Peter actually wanted to please him.
Peter spoke instead, but it wasn’t disappointing. It was like he knew what Sylar wanted to hear. “You’re my first,” he whispered, pulling down aside the pajama top to kiss his shoulder delicately, carefully. “This is special,” he murmured and kissed him again a little stronger, his fingers wrapping around Sylar’s shaft and beginning to tug slowly. He was in no hurry and somehow that made Sylar’s body rush all the more. “I’m always going to remember this,” Peter said, molding his body to Sylar’s, spooning him. “My master…” he crooned and Sylar shivered all over. He kissed his shoulder again, dragging his teeth across the skin while Sylar groaned.
He was as good at a hand job as he was with his mouth, spitting copiously in his hand to lubricate him once Sylar was fully hard. It didn’t take long. Sylar was sort of embarrassed by that, but he didn’t see a reason to drag it out. He just went with it, thrilled to be approached and touched and to have the illusion that it had nothing to do with abilities and maybe even was happening in spite of how he’d treated Peter. It was almost like someone wanted him. Almost.
When he was done, Peter withdrew as slowly as he’d approached, crawling back out of bed and unknowingly refuting the possibility that he’d just wanted to get warm. He was nearly gone before Sylar rolled over, acting on a spur of the moment thought and dragged him back. He pulled Peter against him, spooning him in turn now, and wrapped an arm possessively around his stomach to cinch them together. Peter lay quietly and said nothing. After a moment, he started breathing normally and relaxed. Sylar nuzzled his shoulder and murmured, “Mine,” before going back to sleep.
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Sylar woke to the sensation of hands gripping his forearm tightly. Peter was still in his arms and that was disorienting enough by itself. Sure, Sylar had been with plenty of people, but he’d only very rarely slept with them. Sometimes he wanted to, but it was rarely safe. He jumped a little at Peter’s grip, but Peter didn’t notice. He was dreaming, or having a nightmare, making small noises and twitching. He held onto Sylar’s arm for dear life.
Sylar wondered what was going on behind those closed lids. There was one way to find out and he’d been intending to take a look anyway. Dreams were uncontrollable and unpredictable, but they were also unguarded. He leaned his head forward, bumping his forehead to the back of Peter’s head.
In the dream, Peter was flying… or falling. He clung to someone’s arm as they spun crazily through the sky, between buildings in a burning city. He needed to hold on, to learn to fly. He knew he could fly and at random moments he felt the lift, just like he’d felt in the elevator with Sylar, when he’d touched Sylar’s arm and thought that maybe… maybe he was the one.
Sylar was fairly sure the person in the dream with Peter was Nathan, but Peter did not. The face was indistinct. He was white and male and Peter knew him, knew him intimately even if he had no recall of details. Sylar sucked in his breath as he realized. This was the one Peter had remembered, or thought he might have remembered… this person who had an overwhelming impact of Peter’s life. Sylar’s fingers had been stroking in and out of his ass so slowly and hypnotically, unintentionally duplicating Nathan’s style, and the feeling was familiar, but Peter was still clueless. It was someone important to him, very important… and maybe that person was Sylar, holding him now.
The dream ended in a sense of fading confusion and disappointment as Peter’s mind returned to deeper sleep. Sylar pulled back before he was sucked into slumber himself. He wanted to think about this. He hadn’t realized the president had fucked his brother. He wondered how early it had started. He was aware of the age gap.
He was familiar with the story that Nathan had taken the role of Peter’s father, raising him when he was a child and then taking guardianship again after Arthur Petrelli had been murdered at Pinehearst by Nathan (of course, that wasn’t the public story - the public story was a tragic accident that destroyed the whole building, leaving no survivors other than Nathan’s personal goon squad of newly injected marines). The pretense was that Peter was depressive and emotionally unstable. He had been declared incompetent, which even Sylar had thought was ludicrous. He had clearly become Nathan’s tool after that, until he escaped a few years ago to operate on his own, leading resistance cells against his brother’s operations.
If Peter had been groomed and conditioned from youth… if he’d been programmed after Nathan got hold of him the second time… then it explained a great deal of Nathan’s desperation in trying to find the young man. He hadn’t cared while Peter was out leading bands of resisters, but the moment he found out Peter had been captured by the twisted machinery Nathan himself had set into motion against specials, he’d lost it. The president had had a melt down and the media was beginning to notice.
But it had already been too late. It made Sylar wonder if Peter hadn’t been leading those resistance groups for real… if instead he’d been continuing to act at Nathan’s behest, because the resistance had experienced quite a run of bad luck shortly after Peter had begun to lead them. Ostensibly this was because of another government crackdown, but it just seemed a bit suspicious. Any group where Peter was personally present had always fared well, until this last mission. Emile Danko, who had been leading the group that finally caught Peter, had already been publicly executed for some flimsy excuse.
That machinery was designed to work fast, so when a special was caught, they were rendered faceless and not worth saving quicker than a rescue operation might be mounted. By the time Nathan even knew, Peter had been wiped clean, sterilized, deliberately mixed with several thousand other slaves and lost in the system. It was an efficient system - a frighteningly efficient system. Now Nathan’s only recourse was individual visual identification, tracking down every slave that had been sold in any of the related lots. Obviously, if Sylar simply kept Peter out of public sight, he’d never be found.
But that conditioning also explained why Peter reacted so well to being abused, how he was so comfortable with using sex to manipulate a more powerful man, why the power dynamic was acceptable to him on a deep level, even if he did not appreciate the brutality with which Sylar applied it.
He had an opportunity here, Sylar knew. Peter’s mind still retained just enough of the patterns and the behaviors, but there was enough missing that he was open to having someone new in that role. A slow smile graced Sylar’s face. He didn’t fall asleep again, his mind was busy plotting. The game had changed. He didn’t have to break Peter. He just had to mold him a little.
Chapter 6: game-byrd.livejournal.com/2143.html