Vampire's Kiss 3/6? (Bennet/Claude, teen)
Title: Vampire’s Kiss
Author: nina_ds@ninamusing
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Bennet/Claude, traces of Bennet/Sandra, Claude/Peter, Claude/various OCs, even a wee hint of possible-maybe Sandra/Claude; also Claire and, as requested, Mr. Muggles in a cameo
Rating: Teen
Challenge: written for brave_new_slash’s Morally Grey November.
Author’s notes: Sincere thanks to Indyhat for a fantastic beta, hacking through the verb tenses in this one.
Part One
Part Two
***
Bennet sits at his desk, nerves still jangling as he watches Claire sitting on the edge of the bed across the basement. She holds Claude’s hand carefully in her lap as he sleeps.
Her fury is spent, their argument having been hissed in virulent whispers in the far corner of the room. His usual equilibrium had been lost because he knew, better than she did, how right she was to accuse him of being arbitrary, unfair, and even mean. The jealousy he had long kept buried kept seeping back as he parried his daughter’s accusations.
“It was to keep him safe.”
Even when he had spoken the truth, Claire had not believed him. “Give him some of my blood, then.”
“That’s not what he needs,” he had said, and she had pushed at him with both hands as he tried to get closer.
“You never know what anybody needs,” she had retorted, and returned to her vigil.
She wasn’t wrong.
***
Fifteen years before…
That kicker bar in Abilene was six kinds of hell, as far as Bennet was concerned. Not least because repeated visits had yet to yield concrete results, but the smoke, the smell, the cheap beer, the uncomfortable chairs, and the atrocious band all contributed to its specific lack of charm.
As Claude tucked folded bills under the beer bottle, Bennet saw amusement flicker through the grey eyes. But there was also perhaps a bit of sadness as Claude turned to leave with the curvaceous redhead plastered against him.
The two of them had danced a couple of times, and Bennet had sat at the table, watching. Because that’s what he did. Surveillance. Observation.
She was a good ten years older than Claude, and the red hair came out of a bottle, that much even he could figure out. But there was a kind of innocence in her open face, rather pretty under the heavy make-up, a slightly pathetic gratitude and wonder at the attention from the gangly but charismatic foreigner.
Claude was actually not bad at the two-step and seemed to enjoy it. He was wearing faded jeans, cowboy boots, and a white, pearl-snapped Western shirt, and he didn’t look like an idiot. How does he do that, Bennet wondered. He himself had been born and raised in Midland and still looked like a “complete prat” -Claude’s succinct opinion - in that sort of get-up. But with his swimmer’s build, the style worked on Claude. The shirt fit perfectly across broad shoulders, the snug jeans and heeled boots accentuated the length of his legs and that runner’s ass-
Bennet took a swig of beer, half-glaring at Claude’s back as they headed out the door. Much later, in the motel room, he waited until he heard the key in the lock before turning over to go to sleep, studiously ignoring the quiet sounds of his partner undressing and sliding into the double bed on the other side of the room, not five feet away.
It had been the first time, but was certainly not the last. Bennet was not deluded enough to think he had the guy entirely figured out, but for a dirty blond with a big nose, big ears, and a big mouth, Claude had a way with people. And people included the ladies. There was a flirtation with a pretty blonde waitress at the pancake house on I-40, a tender empathy for the shy, bookish graduate student with the ability to absorb languages like a sponge, and more than one date with Cheryl from Primatech’s accounts receivable. Bennet had been unable to discern a physical type or even an age range as long as it was legal, and Claude flirted across ethnicity and race lines, sometimes in contexts where it was less than wise. He did, however, seem to gravitate toward a kind of sweetness which seemed at odds with his smartass attitude toward Bennet, and toward the occasional recalcitrant target.
To Bennet’s amazement, Sandra seemed to like Claude, too. Which, frankly, Bennet found irritating. He liked to keep work and home neatly compartmentalized, but one fateful flat car battery in the bitter February cold, and his worlds had crossed accidentally but irrevocably. He had been forced to accept a lift home, Sandra had been in the driveway unpacking groceries, Claude had volunteered to help, and his infiltration of their home - Bennet’s life - had begun.
***
Eleven years before…
Claude shifted Claire on his shoulders so that she could put the angel on the top of the Christmas tree, and he cheered as she applauded her efforts.
“That’s beautiful,” sighed Sandra, her hand resting on the full curve of her belly beneath the red Christmas sweater. “I love this time of year for all the family traditions. My grandmother made that angel.”
“My mum had one kind of like that,” said Claude, stepping back beside her to view their handiwork. “She knitted it when she was a girl. She was gonna teach me how, since I was her last chance.”
“You were going to knit?” Bennet seized on the incriminating tidbit with a cool glee as he tugged on a dead fairy light, firmly stuck in its socket, with a pair of needle-nosed pliers.
Claude drew himself up a little taller with feigned offense. “I’ll have you know, Noah-” he only ever used that name when Sandra was around, and always in that incipiently sarcastic tone “-that I do knit. Very well, thank you. I just never learned how to make little fussy things like that. Socks and jumpers, now, that’s real knittin’.” He grinned at Sandra’s amused amazement. “That’s what you get for bein’ the accident at the end of five boys.”
Sandra laughed, her smile softening as she looked up at her small daughter, intent on trying to braid his rumpled hair. “Thank you so much for helping,” she said warmly, rubbing his arm.
“No worries,” he said easily, swaying slightly from side to side to provoke a little giggle from Claire, who clung on to his hair as if to reins. “Thanks for letting me help. It’s been a while.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, squeezing his arm. “You’re more than welcome. You’re obligated - you’re part of the family, too, you know.”
The light came out of its socket with a sudden tinkle of glass, and Bennet grunted as Claude’s smile lit up his bony face. “I know.”
Sandra grinned and gave him a half hug. “You want some coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, please.”
“Are you sure you’re still English?” she teased, and he grinned.
“Yeah, it’s just you Yanks can’t make proper tea.”
“I am not a Yankee,” she retorted, giving him a little thump. “I am a Southerner, born and bred.”
“What’s a Yankee?” asked Claire, and Sandra rolled her eyes.
“See what you did?”
Bennet brushed the remains of the little light from the coffee table onto a piece of paper with the side of his hand, while Claude laughed and swung Claire down into his arms. She shrieked with laughter, grabbing his sweater to steady herself, and it pulled away from his shoulder, revealing a nasty scar just beneath the curve where his neck met his shoulder. It was basically two parallel lines, but the scar tissue was rough and thick, as if they had been gouged and ripped, perhaps even burned, rather than cut.
“What’s that?” asked Claire, her tiny forefinger tracing the ragged lines, and Sandra watched Claude’s face closely, but only the slightest of shadows passed across it as he slung Claire onto his hip and said casually,
“Ah, that’s just where the vampire kissed me.”
Claire “ooohed”, impressed and intrigued, and Claude winked at Sandra, who turned to her husband, sitting on the couch with a string of lights across his lap and tools meticulously arranged on the low table before him. “Want some coffee, Noah?”
“Yes, please, thank you,” he replied with a nod, and she left the room as Claude eased a restless Claire down onto her feet. She promptly skittered out of the room with Shortcake on her heels.
Claude turned to Bennet and slid his hands into the rear pockets of his jeans, his weight on one foot in a stance that was somehow questioning. The neckline of his burgundy sweater was still pulled away from the side of his neck, and the angry, ugly scar seemed livid in the coloured lights of the Christmas tree.
“What do you think?” he asked softly, eyes so dark that they no longer seemed blue, and Bennet put his hands on his knees, looking up at him as levelly as he could muster.
“It was a good cover. Guaranteed to impress Claire.”
Claude rolled his eyes and stepped to the side, gesturing sharply behind him in equal parts exasperation and amusement.
“I meant the tree, you pillock!”
“Oh.” It took Bennet a moment to recover, and he carefully laid the pliers in their place amongst the tools and wound the string of lights around a cardboard holder before stepping around the coffee table, coming to stand next to his partner. He studiously ignored the scar and the exposed collarbone and concentrated on the tree, though the heat pouring off Claude’s skinny, overmetabolized body seemed stifling. “It’s nice.”
Under his breath, Claude muttered, “Jesus wept…” and headed for the kitchen, pushing open the swing door with a stiff-armed palm.
Bennet looked up at the pink knitted figure on the top of the tree. If his glasses misted a little, he found, it created a lovely angel-hair effect with the lights.
***
Claire spoons ice chips between the chapped lips. There is a split in Claude’s lower lip, and a large, fading bruise on his left elbow. The adhesive tape on the edges of the stained gauze pad on the side of his neck is beginning to separate from the skin, and Claire sets aside the cup of ice chips on the small bedside table, searching through the drawers until she finds what she’s looking for.
“I’m going to put on a fresh bandage, okay?” she asks, and he responds with a unique combination of snap and tenderness.
“Yes, ma’am.”
They exchange grins, and Claire carefully teases the edges of the tape away from his skin, checking to see if the gauze is adhering to the wound before she removes the bandage altogether. Her eyebrows draw taut as she examines the ragged flesh.
“It looks like something clawed you. Or bit you.” Her voice is concerned as she soaks a clean gauze pad in alcohol.
“Ah, ’s nothing,” he says, eyes twinkling like silver up at her in the low light, and from his place at his desk in the corner, Bennet hears his daughter chime in with a soft laugh, “It’s just where the vampire kissed me.”
Author: nina_ds@ninamusing
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Bennet/Claude, traces of Bennet/Sandra, Claude/Peter, Claude/various OCs, even a wee hint of possible-maybe Sandra/Claude; also Claire and, as requested, Mr. Muggles in a cameo
Rating: Teen
Challenge: written for brave_new_slash’s Morally Grey November.
Author’s notes: Sincere thanks to Indyhat for a fantastic beta, hacking through the verb tenses in this one.
Part One
Part Two
***
Bennet sits at his desk, nerves still jangling as he watches Claire sitting on the edge of the bed across the basement. She holds Claude’s hand carefully in her lap as he sleeps.
Her fury is spent, their argument having been hissed in virulent whispers in the far corner of the room. His usual equilibrium had been lost because he knew, better than she did, how right she was to accuse him of being arbitrary, unfair, and even mean. The jealousy he had long kept buried kept seeping back as he parried his daughter’s accusations.
“It was to keep him safe.”
Even when he had spoken the truth, Claire had not believed him. “Give him some of my blood, then.”
“That’s not what he needs,” he had said, and she had pushed at him with both hands as he tried to get closer.
“You never know what anybody needs,” she had retorted, and returned to her vigil.
She wasn’t wrong.
***
Fifteen years before…
That kicker bar in Abilene was six kinds of hell, as far as Bennet was concerned. Not least because repeated visits had yet to yield concrete results, but the smoke, the smell, the cheap beer, the uncomfortable chairs, and the atrocious band all contributed to its specific lack of charm.
As Claude tucked folded bills under the beer bottle, Bennet saw amusement flicker through the grey eyes. But there was also perhaps a bit of sadness as Claude turned to leave with the curvaceous redhead plastered against him.
The two of them had danced a couple of times, and Bennet had sat at the table, watching. Because that’s what he did. Surveillance. Observation.
She was a good ten years older than Claude, and the red hair came out of a bottle, that much even he could figure out. But there was a kind of innocence in her open face, rather pretty under the heavy make-up, a slightly pathetic gratitude and wonder at the attention from the gangly but charismatic foreigner.
Claude was actually not bad at the two-step and seemed to enjoy it. He was wearing faded jeans, cowboy boots, and a white, pearl-snapped Western shirt, and he didn’t look like an idiot. How does he do that, Bennet wondered. He himself had been born and raised in Midland and still looked like a “complete prat” -Claude’s succinct opinion - in that sort of get-up. But with his swimmer’s build, the style worked on Claude. The shirt fit perfectly across broad shoulders, the snug jeans and heeled boots accentuated the length of his legs and that runner’s ass-
Bennet took a swig of beer, half-glaring at Claude’s back as they headed out the door. Much later, in the motel room, he waited until he heard the key in the lock before turning over to go to sleep, studiously ignoring the quiet sounds of his partner undressing and sliding into the double bed on the other side of the room, not five feet away.
It had been the first time, but was certainly not the last. Bennet was not deluded enough to think he had the guy entirely figured out, but for a dirty blond with a big nose, big ears, and a big mouth, Claude had a way with people. And people included the ladies. There was a flirtation with a pretty blonde waitress at the pancake house on I-40, a tender empathy for the shy, bookish graduate student with the ability to absorb languages like a sponge, and more than one date with Cheryl from Primatech’s accounts receivable. Bennet had been unable to discern a physical type or even an age range as long as it was legal, and Claude flirted across ethnicity and race lines, sometimes in contexts where it was less than wise. He did, however, seem to gravitate toward a kind of sweetness which seemed at odds with his smartass attitude toward Bennet, and toward the occasional recalcitrant target.
To Bennet’s amazement, Sandra seemed to like Claude, too. Which, frankly, Bennet found irritating. He liked to keep work and home neatly compartmentalized, but one fateful flat car battery in the bitter February cold, and his worlds had crossed accidentally but irrevocably. He had been forced to accept a lift home, Sandra had been in the driveway unpacking groceries, Claude had volunteered to help, and his infiltration of their home - Bennet’s life - had begun.
***
Eleven years before…
Claude shifted Claire on his shoulders so that she could put the angel on the top of the Christmas tree, and he cheered as she applauded her efforts.
“That’s beautiful,” sighed Sandra, her hand resting on the full curve of her belly beneath the red Christmas sweater. “I love this time of year for all the family traditions. My grandmother made that angel.”
“My mum had one kind of like that,” said Claude, stepping back beside her to view their handiwork. “She knitted it when she was a girl. She was gonna teach me how, since I was her last chance.”
“You were going to knit?” Bennet seized on the incriminating tidbit with a cool glee as he tugged on a dead fairy light, firmly stuck in its socket, with a pair of needle-nosed pliers.
Claude drew himself up a little taller with feigned offense. “I’ll have you know, Noah-” he only ever used that name when Sandra was around, and always in that incipiently sarcastic tone “-that I do knit. Very well, thank you. I just never learned how to make little fussy things like that. Socks and jumpers, now, that’s real knittin’.” He grinned at Sandra’s amused amazement. “That’s what you get for bein’ the accident at the end of five boys.”
Sandra laughed, her smile softening as she looked up at her small daughter, intent on trying to braid his rumpled hair. “Thank you so much for helping,” she said warmly, rubbing his arm.
“No worries,” he said easily, swaying slightly from side to side to provoke a little giggle from Claire, who clung on to his hair as if to reins. “Thanks for letting me help. It’s been a while.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, squeezing his arm. “You’re more than welcome. You’re obligated - you’re part of the family, too, you know.”
The light came out of its socket with a sudden tinkle of glass, and Bennet grunted as Claude’s smile lit up his bony face. “I know.”
Sandra grinned and gave him a half hug. “You want some coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, please.”
“Are you sure you’re still English?” she teased, and he grinned.
“Yeah, it’s just you Yanks can’t make proper tea.”
“I am not a Yankee,” she retorted, giving him a little thump. “I am a Southerner, born and bred.”
“What’s a Yankee?” asked Claire, and Sandra rolled her eyes.
“See what you did?”
Bennet brushed the remains of the little light from the coffee table onto a piece of paper with the side of his hand, while Claude laughed and swung Claire down into his arms. She shrieked with laughter, grabbing his sweater to steady herself, and it pulled away from his shoulder, revealing a nasty scar just beneath the curve where his neck met his shoulder. It was basically two parallel lines, but the scar tissue was rough and thick, as if they had been gouged and ripped, perhaps even burned, rather than cut.
“What’s that?” asked Claire, her tiny forefinger tracing the ragged lines, and Sandra watched Claude’s face closely, but only the slightest of shadows passed across it as he slung Claire onto his hip and said casually,
“Ah, that’s just where the vampire kissed me.”
Claire “ooohed”, impressed and intrigued, and Claude winked at Sandra, who turned to her husband, sitting on the couch with a string of lights across his lap and tools meticulously arranged on the low table before him. “Want some coffee, Noah?”
“Yes, please, thank you,” he replied with a nod, and she left the room as Claude eased a restless Claire down onto her feet. She promptly skittered out of the room with Shortcake on her heels.
Claude turned to Bennet and slid his hands into the rear pockets of his jeans, his weight on one foot in a stance that was somehow questioning. The neckline of his burgundy sweater was still pulled away from the side of his neck, and the angry, ugly scar seemed livid in the coloured lights of the Christmas tree.
“What do you think?” he asked softly, eyes so dark that they no longer seemed blue, and Bennet put his hands on his knees, looking up at him as levelly as he could muster.
“It was a good cover. Guaranteed to impress Claire.”
Claude rolled his eyes and stepped to the side, gesturing sharply behind him in equal parts exasperation and amusement.
“I meant the tree, you pillock!”
“Oh.” It took Bennet a moment to recover, and he carefully laid the pliers in their place amongst the tools and wound the string of lights around a cardboard holder before stepping around the coffee table, coming to stand next to his partner. He studiously ignored the scar and the exposed collarbone and concentrated on the tree, though the heat pouring off Claude’s skinny, overmetabolized body seemed stifling. “It’s nice.”
Under his breath, Claude muttered, “Jesus wept…” and headed for the kitchen, pushing open the swing door with a stiff-armed palm.
Bennet looked up at the pink knitted figure on the top of the tree. If his glasses misted a little, he found, it created a lovely angel-hair effect with the lights.
***
Claire spoons ice chips between the chapped lips. There is a split in Claude’s lower lip, and a large, fading bruise on his left elbow. The adhesive tape on the edges of the stained gauze pad on the side of his neck is beginning to separate from the skin, and Claire sets aside the cup of ice chips on the small bedside table, searching through the drawers until she finds what she’s looking for.
“I’m going to put on a fresh bandage, okay?” she asks, and he responds with a unique combination of snap and tenderness.
“Yes, ma’am.”
They exchange grins, and Claire carefully teases the edges of the tape away from his skin, checking to see if the gauze is adhering to the wound before she removes the bandage altogether. Her eyebrows draw taut as she examines the ragged flesh.
“It looks like something clawed you. Or bit you.” Her voice is concerned as she soaks a clean gauze pad in alcohol.
“Ah, ’s nothing,” he says, eyes twinkling like silver up at her in the low light, and from his place at his desk in the corner, Bennet hears his daughter chime in with a soft laugh, “It’s just where the vampire kissed me.”