the worms crawl out and the worms crawl in
Oh God help me. There is definitely more here. Can I say this is done and get away with it?
And have I, or someone else, named a fic this already? *sigh* Oh well, forgive me if you, or I, have. I'm not good at naming things. ;)
Title: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Sylar/Claire
Disclaimer: Heroes was created by Tim Kring. These characters are his.
Rating: R
Prompt: dark!Claire/complicated!Sylar
Teaser: She wanted him to want her; he didn't. That pissed her off most of all. His obsession was entirely platonic and some nights she'd get off just at the idea that he was out there somewhere.
Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
--Niccolo Machiavelli
People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over.
--Jim Morrison
+
It wasn't all fear. Because - let's be honest - what did she have to be afraid of? By his own words, he admitted he couldn't kill her. By his own words, he claimed not to want to.
But part of it was. A big part that Claire got totally sick of quick.
It's not that it didn't make sense. If you take into account that a lot of people's fears are irrational, a lot based on unlikely events, it makes more sense than most. Seventy percent of the world is afraid of snakes they never encounter, heights they can easily avoid. Thirty percent are afraid of the ridiculous, the number 13 or cracks in the sidewalk. Didn't she have the right to fear the man who split open her skull, took away something she didn't miss until it was gone?
It's just - it wasn't all about blood and pain or lack there of. It was also about the way he went about it. The way he forcefully took over her life by taking up every thought, driving every action. It was the way she ran and ran and ran and one day he just walked right in.
It was the lack of control, and total helplessness, that turned her on more than any touch from West, or any dirty fantasy about Peter. It was the way that when he had her held down on the coffee table it didn't feel anything like it had when Brody tried to date rape her at the bonfire.
She wanted him to want her; he didn't. That pissed her off most of all. His obsession was entirely platonic and some nights she'd get off just at the idea that he was out there somewhere.
She wanted him dead, if just to get a good night's sleep, if just to avoid dreams that left her panties soaked and sweet spot aching when she woke up unsatisfied.
Her hands couldn't cut it. Not big enough by half, and too gentle with all the wrong angles.
It wasn't all fear, and not all of it fear of him.
Claire reserved a good amount of fear for the person she'd become.
+
She waited (impatiently) for him to come back, to kill again, to get captured.
When he didn't she lost a little of what was left of her mind and found Molly Walker.
The girl was hidden away, safe and sound the way her father's had always wanted her. Ready, willing, and able to have her flames of rebellion fanned by the woman who lived her life first.
They were a lot alike, and eternally different, a fact that scared Claire and gave her hope. Molly was young enough to forget most of what she vowed to always remember.
She promised she was going to kill him, skipping over the part where she was going to fuck him first.
She left out the part where she didn't know how she was going to do either.
+
His father's house was surrounded by ravens, keeping sentinel over the dead. Nathan's agents were lined up side by side in the backyard, along with a boy Claire was almost sure didn't deserve a shallow, unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere.
If either Gray was surprised to see her they didn't show it. Sylar introduced her like she was a business associate and he wasn't pondering patricide. The old man shook her hand like it was Christmas and she was his son's new girlfriend.
Sylar didn't ask why she came, why she was staying. Just showed her a room that his father said they could share like he already knew her motivation.
"They aren't going to take me alive." He said, when it got dark outside and the silence inside was enough to make her scream.
"They can't kill you." Was her response, a fact she didn't really consider until he was right in front of her.
A fact she nevertheless knew, a fact that damned her to her other options. Plan B, the losers fate, that had her loving her enemy and turning the other cheek.
"I thought I'd feel differently when I found him, when I knew him. But I'm still an orphan, still an outcast. Now more than ever."
"Take it from a girl who has her fair share of daddies - the issues that come with them far outweigh any sense of belonging you try to get from them."
Touching him was a big mistake, not her first, but the last one she made that night. Enough to make her flinch when he did, and her blood boil when he rolled decidedly away without saying goodnight.
+
"What are you playin' at?" His father asked, but the question could have come from herself or Sylar.
Three days of keeping house with sociopaths, of sharing meals with a killer and the man who sold him as a baby.
She wishes she didn't fit right in.
Claire continues to look out the cabin's front window, as if waiting for the calvary to save her or shoot up the joint. "I don't know. Guess I was tired of running."
"From what?" He counters, sitting down at the table with his logbook, a lifetime of times and dates, of Yellow-beaked Finches and Fat bellied Whooping Cranes.
"Him." She points, thumb hooked to the side where Sylar stands close enough to bump. "Me. Therapists believe if you face your fears you take away their power over you."
Putting on his glasses, he flips the pages to the very end, writes the cabin's location in longitude and latitude. "What about you, son?"
Sylar's grumble sounds like "What?," but she can't be sure when he's not really interested in making himself clear.
"Same question, Gabriel."
The pained expression he gets on his face when his father uses that tone, makes Claire think he would answer if he had one.
It's just - none of them know what Sylar wants, or what he is getting out of the insane game of convoluted cat and mouse.
+
He's got his father by the throat one morning when she stumbles out of their room for breakfast. It makes her stop short, for multiple reasons. One - she's jealous.
And what strikes her as worse than that is - she's not inclined to stop him. She doesn't really care who he hurts anymore. She's starting to think that people get what is coming to them.
Fear has nothing to do with her decision to take a walk. The sun is out; the lake is right there. She picks up Mr. Gray's favorite reference book on her way out the door and doesn't even wonder what she will come back to find.
There is a pier with a chair and binoculars. The water is placid and deceptively deep. She's flipping pages and watching ripples for an hour before Sylar comes and sits down in front of her.
"I didn't do it." He states when she raises an eyebrow.
"You never do anything." Is an accusation he can't miss.
He pitches her forward before she can really register the feel of his hands on hers and she can't help but be a little satisfied that he used brute force instead of telekinesis.
She goes under, the freezing temperature stealing her breath. She swallows because she can, enjoying the involuntary panic that comes with suffocation and lungs filled to capacity with something other than oxygen.
He's with her a second after she comes back to life, pumping the water out, letting air in. Then she's pushing him back in, jumping in after.
Frostbite is going to be a bitch, but she's never felt more alive. His lips on hers are salvation and curse.
+
The house is empty when they get back, but she doesn't think he's lied. She's sure his father is in the woods somewhere, regrouping with his feathered friends.
He lights the fire with a snap of his fingers and it's not that she's impressed - she's not. At the same time she's not sickened by the display of his obviously stolen powers (like she should be).
She's undressed before she can unthaw, pin pricks she can't feel make the invisible hair on her arms stand on end.
She proves he can still feel everything by digging her nails into his back, sliding them forcefully down as he mimics the movement within her.
It's her first time and she feels nothing but pleasure, heat, an urgency that tells her to go faster, a need that begs her to slow down. That's his fault.
There's no choice, no chance for her to change anything. He's got her arms pinned over her head to prevent further slice and dicing. Her lips in a fierce kiss that keeps words at bay, words that might make this more, or less, than what it is.
She has nothing to say anyway. This is fine with her.
His punishing grip and the dull dig of natural wood floors into the flesh of her shoulders.
His body looming over hers like the stuff of old nightmares.
+
She comes and he comes. Mind-numbing, toe-curling, life-altering seconds where she forgets who she is, what he's done. Then he's half way across the room, running his fingers through his hair like she's messed up all his plans.
She's pretty sure when he storms into the back, fingers crackling like Elle on a bad day, that he's not coming back.
She knows if she had any self-respect left she'd get up and leave herself.
+
She puts her jeans back on and goes to the kitchen to make herself lunch.
When the frying pan is hot enough to melt butter for the grilled cheese she is craving - she lays her palm flat against the surface.
And have I, or someone else, named a fic this already? *sigh* Oh well, forgive me if you, or I, have. I'm not good at naming things. ;)
Title: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Sylar/Claire
Disclaimer: Heroes was created by Tim Kring. These characters are his.
Rating: R
Prompt: dark!Claire/complicated!Sylar
Teaser: She wanted him to want her; he didn't. That pissed her off most of all. His obsession was entirely platonic and some nights she'd get off just at the idea that he was out there somewhere.
Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
--Niccolo Machiavelli
People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over.
--Jim Morrison
+
It wasn't all fear. Because - let's be honest - what did she have to be afraid of? By his own words, he admitted he couldn't kill her. By his own words, he claimed not to want to.
But part of it was. A big part that Claire got totally sick of quick.
It's not that it didn't make sense. If you take into account that a lot of people's fears are irrational, a lot based on unlikely events, it makes more sense than most. Seventy percent of the world is afraid of snakes they never encounter, heights they can easily avoid. Thirty percent are afraid of the ridiculous, the number 13 or cracks in the sidewalk. Didn't she have the right to fear the man who split open her skull, took away something she didn't miss until it was gone?
It's just - it wasn't all about blood and pain or lack there of. It was also about the way he went about it. The way he forcefully took over her life by taking up every thought, driving every action. It was the way she ran and ran and ran and one day he just walked right in.
It was the lack of control, and total helplessness, that turned her on more than any touch from West, or any dirty fantasy about Peter. It was the way that when he had her held down on the coffee table it didn't feel anything like it had when Brody tried to date rape her at the bonfire.
She wanted him to want her; he didn't. That pissed her off most of all. His obsession was entirely platonic and some nights she'd get off just at the idea that he was out there somewhere.
She wanted him dead, if just to get a good night's sleep, if just to avoid dreams that left her panties soaked and sweet spot aching when she woke up unsatisfied.
Her hands couldn't cut it. Not big enough by half, and too gentle with all the wrong angles.
It wasn't all fear, and not all of it fear of him.
Claire reserved a good amount of fear for the person she'd become.
+
She waited (impatiently) for him to come back, to kill again, to get captured.
When he didn't she lost a little of what was left of her mind and found Molly Walker.
The girl was hidden away, safe and sound the way her father's had always wanted her. Ready, willing, and able to have her flames of rebellion fanned by the woman who lived her life first.
They were a lot alike, and eternally different, a fact that scared Claire and gave her hope. Molly was young enough to forget most of what she vowed to always remember.
She promised she was going to kill him, skipping over the part where she was going to fuck him first.
She left out the part where she didn't know how she was going to do either.
+
His father's house was surrounded by ravens, keeping sentinel over the dead. Nathan's agents were lined up side by side in the backyard, along with a boy Claire was almost sure didn't deserve a shallow, unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere.
If either Gray was surprised to see her they didn't show it. Sylar introduced her like she was a business associate and he wasn't pondering patricide. The old man shook her hand like it was Christmas and she was his son's new girlfriend.
Sylar didn't ask why she came, why she was staying. Just showed her a room that his father said they could share like he already knew her motivation.
"They aren't going to take me alive." He said, when it got dark outside and the silence inside was enough to make her scream.
"They can't kill you." Was her response, a fact she didn't really consider until he was right in front of her.
A fact she nevertheless knew, a fact that damned her to her other options. Plan B, the losers fate, that had her loving her enemy and turning the other cheek.
"I thought I'd feel differently when I found him, when I knew him. But I'm still an orphan, still an outcast. Now more than ever."
"Take it from a girl who has her fair share of daddies - the issues that come with them far outweigh any sense of belonging you try to get from them."
Touching him was a big mistake, not her first, but the last one she made that night. Enough to make her flinch when he did, and her blood boil when he rolled decidedly away without saying goodnight.
+
"What are you playin' at?" His father asked, but the question could have come from herself or Sylar.
Three days of keeping house with sociopaths, of sharing meals with a killer and the man who sold him as a baby.
She wishes she didn't fit right in.
Claire continues to look out the cabin's front window, as if waiting for the calvary to save her or shoot up the joint. "I don't know. Guess I was tired of running."
"From what?" He counters, sitting down at the table with his logbook, a lifetime of times and dates, of Yellow-beaked Finches and Fat bellied Whooping Cranes.
"Him." She points, thumb hooked to the side where Sylar stands close enough to bump. "Me. Therapists believe if you face your fears you take away their power over you."
Putting on his glasses, he flips the pages to the very end, writes the cabin's location in longitude and latitude. "What about you, son?"
Sylar's grumble sounds like "What?," but she can't be sure when he's not really interested in making himself clear.
"Same question, Gabriel."
The pained expression he gets on his face when his father uses that tone, makes Claire think he would answer if he had one.
It's just - none of them know what Sylar wants, or what he is getting out of the insane game of convoluted cat and mouse.
+
He's got his father by the throat one morning when she stumbles out of their room for breakfast. It makes her stop short, for multiple reasons. One - she's jealous.
And what strikes her as worse than that is - she's not inclined to stop him. She doesn't really care who he hurts anymore. She's starting to think that people get what is coming to them.
Fear has nothing to do with her decision to take a walk. The sun is out; the lake is right there. She picks up Mr. Gray's favorite reference book on her way out the door and doesn't even wonder what she will come back to find.
There is a pier with a chair and binoculars. The water is placid and deceptively deep. She's flipping pages and watching ripples for an hour before Sylar comes and sits down in front of her.
"I didn't do it." He states when she raises an eyebrow.
"You never do anything." Is an accusation he can't miss.
He pitches her forward before she can really register the feel of his hands on hers and she can't help but be a little satisfied that he used brute force instead of telekinesis.
She goes under, the freezing temperature stealing her breath. She swallows because she can, enjoying the involuntary panic that comes with suffocation and lungs filled to capacity with something other than oxygen.
He's with her a second after she comes back to life, pumping the water out, letting air in. Then she's pushing him back in, jumping in after.
Frostbite is going to be a bitch, but she's never felt more alive. His lips on hers are salvation and curse.
+
The house is empty when they get back, but she doesn't think he's lied. She's sure his father is in the woods somewhere, regrouping with his feathered friends.
He lights the fire with a snap of his fingers and it's not that she's impressed - she's not. At the same time she's not sickened by the display of his obviously stolen powers (like she should be).
She's undressed before she can unthaw, pin pricks she can't feel make the invisible hair on her arms stand on end.
She proves he can still feel everything by digging her nails into his back, sliding them forcefully down as he mimics the movement within her.
It's her first time and she feels nothing but pleasure, heat, an urgency that tells her to go faster, a need that begs her to slow down. That's his fault.
There's no choice, no chance for her to change anything. He's got her arms pinned over her head to prevent further slice and dicing. Her lips in a fierce kiss that keeps words at bay, words that might make this more, or less, than what it is.
She has nothing to say anyway. This is fine with her.
His punishing grip and the dull dig of natural wood floors into the flesh of her shoulders.
His body looming over hers like the stuff of old nightmares.
+
She comes and he comes. Mind-numbing, toe-curling, life-altering seconds where she forgets who she is, what he's done. Then he's half way across the room, running his fingers through his hair like she's messed up all his plans.
She's pretty sure when he storms into the back, fingers crackling like Elle on a bad day, that he's not coming back.
She knows if she had any self-respect left she'd get up and leave herself.
+
She puts her jeans back on and goes to the kitchen to make herself lunch.
When the frying pan is hot enough to melt butter for the grilled cheese she is craving - she lays her palm flat against the surface.