Drabble dump: Heroes non-Mattmo post 2
Sep. 6th, 1998 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiptoe39You've never seen this many drabbles. They all have somewhat sexual or romantic themes. Please enjoy them... Dubcon implications but nothing explicit in some.
This comes from a poll I posted in the other comm where I listed a bunch of random pairings/prompts from a generator and said I'd write 100 words for each vote each pairing got. If you'd be interested in voting in another poll of that sort, let me know, because I really enjoyed doing this.
(I didn't include all of the things I wrote because some of them kind of sucked. but the ones i didn't post are over at the other comm.)
(Eden/Elle - written all over your face - 400 words)
"You are so jealous. It's written all over your face."
"Shut up. Am not." Elle shoots her a dirty look and continues to electrocute each individual blade of grass into brown cinders.
"You are." Eden's voice is gaily thick. You took one look at that painter and said, 'Oh, he's dreamy, I want to play with him. Why does Eden get the job?'"
Elle pouts. "I don't see why you get to talk him all the way to Texas to rehab him wen he could just come out here."
"It has to do with Bennet's cheerleader, Ellie!" Eden sits behind her on the grass, tickles her waiste.
Elle mopes, grabs her hand. "It's just that," she says petulantly, "first the scientist and now the painter--"
"Oh, Ellie." Eden ruffles her hair. "I know, sweetie. It's not fair I should get them both, right?"
Elle looks at her for a long moment. Her pert nose. It's always been an object of her fixation. She wants to run currents up and down that adorable button of a nose. Tentatively, still pouting, she reaches out to touch it. A shock makes Eden jump, and her squeal is cute enough to bring the words rushing madly forward. "It's not fair they should both get you."
Eden gazes back at her, her tight mouth drawn into a pucker of concentration. Elle's a spastic child, all flails and temper tantrums, and she's just incinerated a whole patch of grass without even thinking. Eden feels a rush of sisterly affection. Elle doesn't really know the difference between different kinds of love, perhaps, because she's treating Eden like a jealous lover would. But Eden herself can't deny the girl has her charms. Would it be such an awful thing if she were to show her affection in a way Elle couldn't write off?
So she tries. It's not as if she's corrupting the child any more than she's already been corrupted. Eden bears some responsibility for that. She knew of it and never said a word. And she never will.
Elle shivers under her kiss.
"Silly girl," says Eden. "Don't be jealous."
Elle whimpers and grabs her and pulls her down on top of her and Eden laughs as the girl's mouth is suddenly ravaging every inch of her skin, tickling and tingling in the oddest places. Her fingertips may be charged, she's not sure. It doesn't matter. The current is low enough that it doesn't hurt.
(Sandra/Noah - unconventional - 300 words)
Sandra knew from the start that her husband led a very unconventional life. He was away for days, sometimes weeks at a time. There were whole years of his life before he met her that he just would not talk about. Sandra suspected the NSA, the FBI, the Mafia, Skull and Bones, and everything in between. She spends her days in pleasant speculation, dreaming of Noah's unconventional lifestyle and whistling as she goes about her own life. Because it doesn't much matter, not really. It doesn't change what happens when he's here.
He comes in the room like a conquering hero, grabbing up his children and holding them tight, treating them like treasure he's combed the world to find. He listens to their complaints and trials and conceits, he spends time with them, he's a father in the most conventional sense. And after their off to bed, or at least happily lost in their cell phones and computers, he slides next to her on the couch and she falls into him like a leaf into water. He cups her face gently in his hands as they kiss, a kiss like an early autumn day, gentle and bracing all at once. That kiss leaves her no reason to doubt, not about the things that are truly important.
He smiles at her in the low light, and his shoulders edge upward a bit. Just a fidget, a dim gesture that says "Shall we retire to the bedroom?" clear as if his voice was rumbling into the air between them. His eyes are smiling. She nods. He stands and holds out his hand to her. She takes it like a princess consenting to her knight. Perhaps chivalry should be dead in this day and age, but their love has always been a touch unconventional.
(Elle/Mohinder - release me - 200 words)
"I'd really like it if you'd let me go, now."
This time his voice was pleading. He'd tried every possible tone in the past several minutes, from coy to threatening. Elle had only laughed as his voice changed octaves several times, and that didn't even count the panicked squeals of pain when the shocks rocketed through his form. She giggled. "That's nice," she said, jabbing her breasts suggestively against the cuffs that held his wrists. "I like it when you are so polite."
His hand tried to curl around the swells of flesh, and for an instant she almost lets him. It feels good when he does, but he's breaking the rules of the game. He's not supposed to touch her. So she shocks him again, and he gives another panicked, squeaking cry that makes her double over in laughter. "You're like the mouse in that cartoon," she says, and imitates his squeal.
"I'm sorry," he gasps, and now he's touching her the only way she permits, with his eyes. Lustful, begging. "But I'd really prefer if you released me."
She walks up to him, grabs his erection in her hand. "Oh, I'll give you some release, all right," she says.
(Sylar/Janice - victims - 300 words)
He'd come for the child. That was the supreme irony of it all, that he'd come because the child was special. But the moment he saw that face -- that smug, grinning face -- he was undone, and he was no longer interested in his victim. Now he was the victim himself and he was helpless and cowering.
She came in with a cup of tea and saw him, crumpled and crying, and didn't even think twice. Intruder in her house or not, he was in need, and she gave him the cup of tea and had him sit down and talk to her.
It was the strangest conversation of his life. She was unerringly normal. Nothing but a woman, a mother. But she had been his wife, and Sylar's outrage at him for stealing his one and only true desire melted almost without a single hitch into outrage that he'd abandoned her.
She didn't know what he was doing now, or with whom he was doing it. He had a strangely strong urge to protect her from the truth. He didn't want her to be as utterly destroyed as he was. Her utter innocence so ably stoked the fires of his hate. He would find him and kill him. Not only now for what he'd stolen from Sylar himself, but for what he'd done to this creature of understanding and forbearance.
Her tea tasted of cinnamon, and her hands were warm from holding the cup. The baby cried in the other room but fell back into sleep shortly after.
"We have to go on," she said, her face full of stoicism. "We just have to make do with what we've been given. The sun will rise."
The sun was rising in her patient smile and soft eyes. He kissed her then.
(Adam/Noah - curious - 100 words)
"You know, I have a daughter," Noah whispered in his ear. "She can do pretty much the same thing you can. Isn't that interesting?"
Adam, bound and gagged, nodded silently.
"She's my daughter, so of course I take care of her. But I have to admit that I've been curious about a lot of things." Noah's finger slid across the line of Adam's hair, fingernail biting just slightly. "What happens to a body like yours when it's hurt. When it's violated?" He grinned. "I'd die before I let anyone violate my daughter, you know that."
"But with you, I can indulge my curiosity."
(Ted/Niki - one-night stand - 100 words)
He meets her in a bar in Nevada, near the desert. She has a sort of lost look about her, like she isn't quite sure how she got there. Makes sense. He isn't quite sure how he got there, either.
Her name's Niki, she says. She is pretty sure that's her name. It might be something else. She might be someone else entirely.
She knocks back a ton of rum and looks at her hands like Lady Macbeth wanting to burn the sin off the skin with only her searing gaze. He shares her guilt. They drown their sorrows blithely together.
(Ando/Nathan / outside - 100 words)
"Here I am again," Nathan says, throwing up his hands as Peter and Hiro disappear to wherever or whenever they're heading. "Stuck on the outside."
"He does it to me, too," Ando says. "All the time."
"Why do we even waste time on them?" Nathan says. "We were supposed to be the mature ones. Why are they the heroes all of a sudden?"
Ando grins and claps him on the shoulder. "Hey, we have each other, right?"
Nathan grimaces. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that."
"What is the phrase?" Ando asks. "Misery..."
"..loves company." A slight smile breaks through the scowl. "That's true."
(Sandra/Haitian - trial and tribulation - 300 words)
In her dreams sometimes she saw a black shadow. A voice whispered to her that this was a trial she'd have to bear. And the black hand wrapped around her head, and her vision blurred there in the dream, until her eyes were watering and she didn't know which direction was up.
Sometimes in the dream she was lying on an airy bed in a room she didn't recognize, curtains blowing cold air across her brow. The black shadow was there with her, and he whispered to her in French and trailed long kisses like black holes down her arms.
There were times when he protested. "We mustn't," he would say. "I am here to make you forget, nothing more."
"If you must make me forget," she would respond, opening the latch of his belt and kneeling at his feet, "why nothing more?"
"But I would not forget," he'd say, but then she'd be against him and his silence would return.
He was so silent in those moments, only the barest grunt of effort and passion as the sweat beaded on his brow. His body was warm and she wanted to curl herself against it, wrap herself around it. He'd pause above her and whisper "I'm sorry," right before ecstasy and oblivion claimed her body.
She would awaken in her bed, next to her husband, where she should be. Flushed and perspiring and smelling the scent of someone that was not the man beside her.
She saw him in real life every so often and he was polite, silent. Intriguing. She blushed and stammered whenever he was there. He made her nervous. She shouldn't have such dreams of him and then have to face him,
Why should she be nervous? It was merely a dream, after all. A fantasy. What person could really make you forget?
(Claire/Hiro - unique - 400)
He bends time and space. And time stops for me. We're both unique. We can live in a world, in a time all our own.
Sometimes we travel back to a beautiful moment in history. A coronation, a feast, a total solar eclipse. No amount of jumping can hurt me. I have seen Marie Antoinette's head fall from her shaking shoulders. I have seen the Constitution signed. And I have seen the end of the world, so many times. And as the fireworks begin, he holds me tight and we kiss in a frozen moment of ultimate beauty and passion.
At first it was a thrill seeking sort of thing. Let's make love in front of the Eiffel Tower, as the Civil War rages around us. Let's immerse ourselves in the beauty of a volcanic explosion and feel none of its heat. But after a while it became more than a gimmick. It became a celebration of our sad situation. Fire does not burn us; time does not touch us. We only ever feel when we are together. He undresses me on the moon and we don't need to breathe. There is no air in our world, and no pain.
Hiro doesn't age when time is stopped. It took us a while to discover this. His body behaves in a strange way. There's no air pressure or molecule movement for him to be influenced by. It's as though he's dead. We think it's his will that does it. He doesn't feel it,I don't feel it. To us, our bodies are as alive and vibrant as ever. I can feel his heart beat. When he's inside me I feel the heat. It's just that the air around us doesn't move. Nothing is tugging on our bodies saying here, now, you're older than you were before.
I'm all right with that. Even if it it's all in our minds. I need to pretend someone else lives the way I do. I need to pretend that forever isn't my domain and mine alone.
I'm so afraid that one of these days, while we're together, I'll dare glimpse at the truth and see myself as I truly am, lying in the arms of a corpse. Just like everyone else I've ever loved, a corpse crumbling to dust.
But in the strength of Hiro's belief, his will, I find the strength to shut my eyes and continue to dream this dream.
(Audrey/Matt - heartbeats - 700 words)
It's shortly after he returns home, shortly after they go to the doctor's together and he can hear the infant's heartbeat in the doctor's stethoscope that the truth comes out. From thrilling to freezing in the space between those fast and hot heartbeats, as his eyes slide over the doctor's flowchart and see a date of conception and a blood type that should be impossible. He keeps the smile forced on his face and pats her hand, and she smiles up at him in a sickly sort of way. How has he missed until now the calculated deliberation in that smile? She knows just how much to furrow her brow and bite her lip to look brave and loving. It's false. It's fake. He never had to do that even in his worst days in that godforsaken hospital with a strange man and a beautiful little girl his only companions. But he wipes her forehead with a handkerchief and says to her, "You're doing great, honey."
She's doing great, all right. It's a great performance.
The moment she's asleep he rifles through his cell phone directory trying to think of someone to call, someone who might understand.
He gets a hell of a greeting. "Parkman, hot shit, are you out of the hospital already?"
"Nice to talk to you too," he chuckles, "I'm back in L.A. Look, any chance you could meet up for a drink? I'm in a bad place right now and I... well, I need a friend."
He leaves a note for Janice, because who needs another phone thrown at them, and tiptoes to the garage.
Audrey's already nursing a scotch when he gets there, and the amber liquid is casting a sheen upward through the bottom-lit counter onto her hair. It's a neat effect, and he smiles. She doesn't look at him, and he doesn't expect her to. They know each other, after all. This isn't some first encounter between two nervous thirtysomethings looking for love. Audrey's a known quantity. His pulse is even and steady.
"Heard the baby's heartbeat today," he says as he sits down beside her. He motions for a beer.
"What was that like?" Cool, detached. No interest. She's not a maternal type. That's good.
"Woulda been better if I..." He trails off. He's not ready to say it out loud.
"If you what?" Evasiveness does interest her, and she holds her drink up and gazes at him. He shrinks from her inquisitive look. He doesn't want an interrogation. It's not why he's come here.
He takes her free hand. Her pulse goes to sonic speed beneath his thumb.
"Audrey, I'm a little scared," he confesses.
She's red now, blushing, staring. "You're scared!" she exclaims.
A few minutes later and he's coaxed her on to the dance floor. It's good to just hold someone, feel a body against his, let reverberating saxophone and drilling drums waft through him. How long has it been since he and Janice had danced? Months. Years, it feels like. He forgot the exhalation of breath on the shoulder, the minute shifts of hands to avoid getting too sweaty, too clingy. He loves them. It's like holding a real person, holding Audrey. Not a Wife or Mistress or Girlfriend but a real person, someone he knows well and can relate to.
She apologizes after they kiss for the first time. "That was inappropriate, I..."
He rubs a thumb on her lip. "No disclaimers. Please."
They dance a little longer and she clutches his shoulders and whispers in his ear, "Parkman, are you going to take me to bed tonight?"
He chuckles. "I was thinking about it."
"Then don't make me wait," she hisses.
She's shirtless before the motel room door is closed. He had no idea how much desire she'd held in reserve. Her teeth are all over his chest and he's groaning as she climbs on top of him. So much for a known quantity. But afterwards, when he's tingling and paralyzed with relief, she's purring low into his throat and he can hear her heartbeat matching his own.
Tomorrow Janice will be mad that he was out all night and there will be a blowout fight he really ought to sell tickets to. It'll be the end of the world. But there's comfort here tonight, and that's something.
(Eden/Mohinder - dangerous - 400 words)
The kiss she stole from him was a dangerous one, that's for sure. She shouldn't have turned her head. He wasn't interested. She forced it. Still, what a nice memory to have later on, when facing off against an even more dangerous man.
God, she wished it wasn't fated to be the last time she'd see him.
She sits on the floor of the shower stall and thinks about the things she's had to do since she saw him last. She didn't want to tell that painter what to do. He was a good man, she'd seen it in his eyes. He wanted to get clean for the right reasons. A girl at home, she guessed. In his desperation he never once looked at her with an untoward thought in his head. She could have used him, certainly, to get rid of that dangerous heat that has stayed in her, floating like a half-lit balloon in her gut ever since that kiss.
She'd loved her job until the day she'd had to say goodbye to him.
She would have liked to know what it was to touch him all over. To wake up next to him without subterfuge. To run long fingers along the line of his shoulder and whisper to him all the secrets she knew. She could have betrayed the Company for him. She could have thrown it all away for him. Like a girl in a James Bond movie, she was hopelessly enthralled by the simple seductiveness of his innocent facade. But like Bond, he was too dangerous to be trusted. That's what her boss said. She reminded herself of it time and time again.
It didn't matter.
He fascinated her. He warmed her heart. He made her feel like a girl. But she knew all too soon that there was no heat in his gaze. No matter how she connived, what subtle suggestion she tried, he would not turn her way. And she wanted him too badly to force him. That's when she knew it was over. This game had become too dangerous. That's when she knew she loved him.
Now she had one final task and she didn't have any illusions about how it would end. She got out of the shower, stood up, got dressed, and prepared to face her death.
She'd lost Mohinder. It didn't matter what else she lost, not now.
This comes from a poll I posted in the other comm where I listed a bunch of random pairings/prompts from a generator and said I'd write 100 words for each vote each pairing got. If you'd be interested in voting in another poll of that sort, let me know, because I really enjoyed doing this.
(I didn't include all of the things I wrote because some of them kind of sucked. but the ones i didn't post are over at the other comm.)
(Eden/Elle - written all over your face - 400 words)
"You are so jealous. It's written all over your face."
"Shut up. Am not." Elle shoots her a dirty look and continues to electrocute each individual blade of grass into brown cinders.
"You are." Eden's voice is gaily thick. You took one look at that painter and said, 'Oh, he's dreamy, I want to play with him. Why does Eden get the job?'"
Elle pouts. "I don't see why you get to talk him all the way to Texas to rehab him wen he could just come out here."
"It has to do with Bennet's cheerleader, Ellie!" Eden sits behind her on the grass, tickles her waiste.
Elle mopes, grabs her hand. "It's just that," she says petulantly, "first the scientist and now the painter--"
"Oh, Ellie." Eden ruffles her hair. "I know, sweetie. It's not fair I should get them both, right?"
Elle looks at her for a long moment. Her pert nose. It's always been an object of her fixation. She wants to run currents up and down that adorable button of a nose. Tentatively, still pouting, she reaches out to touch it. A shock makes Eden jump, and her squeal is cute enough to bring the words rushing madly forward. "It's not fair they should both get you."
Eden gazes back at her, her tight mouth drawn into a pucker of concentration. Elle's a spastic child, all flails and temper tantrums, and she's just incinerated a whole patch of grass without even thinking. Eden feels a rush of sisterly affection. Elle doesn't really know the difference between different kinds of love, perhaps, because she's treating Eden like a jealous lover would. But Eden herself can't deny the girl has her charms. Would it be such an awful thing if she were to show her affection in a way Elle couldn't write off?
So she tries. It's not as if she's corrupting the child any more than she's already been corrupted. Eden bears some responsibility for that. She knew of it and never said a word. And she never will.
Elle shivers under her kiss.
"Silly girl," says Eden. "Don't be jealous."
Elle whimpers and grabs her and pulls her down on top of her and Eden laughs as the girl's mouth is suddenly ravaging every inch of her skin, tickling and tingling in the oddest places. Her fingertips may be charged, she's not sure. It doesn't matter. The current is low enough that it doesn't hurt.
(Sandra/Noah - unconventional - 300 words)
Sandra knew from the start that her husband led a very unconventional life. He was away for days, sometimes weeks at a time. There were whole years of his life before he met her that he just would not talk about. Sandra suspected the NSA, the FBI, the Mafia, Skull and Bones, and everything in between. She spends her days in pleasant speculation, dreaming of Noah's unconventional lifestyle and whistling as she goes about her own life. Because it doesn't much matter, not really. It doesn't change what happens when he's here.
He comes in the room like a conquering hero, grabbing up his children and holding them tight, treating them like treasure he's combed the world to find. He listens to their complaints and trials and conceits, he spends time with them, he's a father in the most conventional sense. And after their off to bed, or at least happily lost in their cell phones and computers, he slides next to her on the couch and she falls into him like a leaf into water. He cups her face gently in his hands as they kiss, a kiss like an early autumn day, gentle and bracing all at once. That kiss leaves her no reason to doubt, not about the things that are truly important.
He smiles at her in the low light, and his shoulders edge upward a bit. Just a fidget, a dim gesture that says "Shall we retire to the bedroom?" clear as if his voice was rumbling into the air between them. His eyes are smiling. She nods. He stands and holds out his hand to her. She takes it like a princess consenting to her knight. Perhaps chivalry should be dead in this day and age, but their love has always been a touch unconventional.
(Elle/Mohinder - release me - 200 words)
"I'd really like it if you'd let me go, now."
This time his voice was pleading. He'd tried every possible tone in the past several minutes, from coy to threatening. Elle had only laughed as his voice changed octaves several times, and that didn't even count the panicked squeals of pain when the shocks rocketed through his form. She giggled. "That's nice," she said, jabbing her breasts suggestively against the cuffs that held his wrists. "I like it when you are so polite."
His hand tried to curl around the swells of flesh, and for an instant she almost lets him. It feels good when he does, but he's breaking the rules of the game. He's not supposed to touch her. So she shocks him again, and he gives another panicked, squeaking cry that makes her double over in laughter. "You're like the mouse in that cartoon," she says, and imitates his squeal.
"I'm sorry," he gasps, and now he's touching her the only way she permits, with his eyes. Lustful, begging. "But I'd really prefer if you released me."
She walks up to him, grabs his erection in her hand. "Oh, I'll give you some release, all right," she says.
(Sylar/Janice - victims - 300 words)
He'd come for the child. That was the supreme irony of it all, that he'd come because the child was special. But the moment he saw that face -- that smug, grinning face -- he was undone, and he was no longer interested in his victim. Now he was the victim himself and he was helpless and cowering.
She came in with a cup of tea and saw him, crumpled and crying, and didn't even think twice. Intruder in her house or not, he was in need, and she gave him the cup of tea and had him sit down and talk to her.
It was the strangest conversation of his life. She was unerringly normal. Nothing but a woman, a mother. But she had been his wife, and Sylar's outrage at him for stealing his one and only true desire melted almost without a single hitch into outrage that he'd abandoned her.
She didn't know what he was doing now, or with whom he was doing it. He had a strangely strong urge to protect her from the truth. He didn't want her to be as utterly destroyed as he was. Her utter innocence so ably stoked the fires of his hate. He would find him and kill him. Not only now for what he'd stolen from Sylar himself, but for what he'd done to this creature of understanding and forbearance.
Her tea tasted of cinnamon, and her hands were warm from holding the cup. The baby cried in the other room but fell back into sleep shortly after.
"We have to go on," she said, her face full of stoicism. "We just have to make do with what we've been given. The sun will rise."
The sun was rising in her patient smile and soft eyes. He kissed her then.
(Adam/Noah - curious - 100 words)
"You know, I have a daughter," Noah whispered in his ear. "She can do pretty much the same thing you can. Isn't that interesting?"
Adam, bound and gagged, nodded silently.
"She's my daughter, so of course I take care of her. But I have to admit that I've been curious about a lot of things." Noah's finger slid across the line of Adam's hair, fingernail biting just slightly. "What happens to a body like yours when it's hurt. When it's violated?" He grinned. "I'd die before I let anyone violate my daughter, you know that."
"But with you, I can indulge my curiosity."
(Ted/Niki - one-night stand - 100 words)
He meets her in a bar in Nevada, near the desert. She has a sort of lost look about her, like she isn't quite sure how she got there. Makes sense. He isn't quite sure how he got there, either.
Her name's Niki, she says. She is pretty sure that's her name. It might be something else. She might be someone else entirely.
She knocks back a ton of rum and looks at her hands like Lady Macbeth wanting to burn the sin off the skin with only her searing gaze. He shares her guilt. They drown their sorrows blithely together.
(Ando/Nathan / outside - 100 words)
"Here I am again," Nathan says, throwing up his hands as Peter and Hiro disappear to wherever or whenever they're heading. "Stuck on the outside."
"He does it to me, too," Ando says. "All the time."
"Why do we even waste time on them?" Nathan says. "We were supposed to be the mature ones. Why are they the heroes all of a sudden?"
Ando grins and claps him on the shoulder. "Hey, we have each other, right?"
Nathan grimaces. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that."
"What is the phrase?" Ando asks. "Misery..."
"..loves company." A slight smile breaks through the scowl. "That's true."
(Sandra/Haitian - trial and tribulation - 300 words)
In her dreams sometimes she saw a black shadow. A voice whispered to her that this was a trial she'd have to bear. And the black hand wrapped around her head, and her vision blurred there in the dream, until her eyes were watering and she didn't know which direction was up.
Sometimes in the dream she was lying on an airy bed in a room she didn't recognize, curtains blowing cold air across her brow. The black shadow was there with her, and he whispered to her in French and trailed long kisses like black holes down her arms.
There were times when he protested. "We mustn't," he would say. "I am here to make you forget, nothing more."
"If you must make me forget," she would respond, opening the latch of his belt and kneeling at his feet, "why nothing more?"
"But I would not forget," he'd say, but then she'd be against him and his silence would return.
He was so silent in those moments, only the barest grunt of effort and passion as the sweat beaded on his brow. His body was warm and she wanted to curl herself against it, wrap herself around it. He'd pause above her and whisper "I'm sorry," right before ecstasy and oblivion claimed her body.
She would awaken in her bed, next to her husband, where she should be. Flushed and perspiring and smelling the scent of someone that was not the man beside her.
She saw him in real life every so often and he was polite, silent. Intriguing. She blushed and stammered whenever he was there. He made her nervous. She shouldn't have such dreams of him and then have to face him,
Why should she be nervous? It was merely a dream, after all. A fantasy. What person could really make you forget?
(Claire/Hiro - unique - 400)
He bends time and space. And time stops for me. We're both unique. We can live in a world, in a time all our own.
Sometimes we travel back to a beautiful moment in history. A coronation, a feast, a total solar eclipse. No amount of jumping can hurt me. I have seen Marie Antoinette's head fall from her shaking shoulders. I have seen the Constitution signed. And I have seen the end of the world, so many times. And as the fireworks begin, he holds me tight and we kiss in a frozen moment of ultimate beauty and passion.
At first it was a thrill seeking sort of thing. Let's make love in front of the Eiffel Tower, as the Civil War rages around us. Let's immerse ourselves in the beauty of a volcanic explosion and feel none of its heat. But after a while it became more than a gimmick. It became a celebration of our sad situation. Fire does not burn us; time does not touch us. We only ever feel when we are together. He undresses me on the moon and we don't need to breathe. There is no air in our world, and no pain.
Hiro doesn't age when time is stopped. It took us a while to discover this. His body behaves in a strange way. There's no air pressure or molecule movement for him to be influenced by. It's as though he's dead. We think it's his will that does it. He doesn't feel it,I don't feel it. To us, our bodies are as alive and vibrant as ever. I can feel his heart beat. When he's inside me I feel the heat. It's just that the air around us doesn't move. Nothing is tugging on our bodies saying here, now, you're older than you were before.
I'm all right with that. Even if it it's all in our minds. I need to pretend someone else lives the way I do. I need to pretend that forever isn't my domain and mine alone.
I'm so afraid that one of these days, while we're together, I'll dare glimpse at the truth and see myself as I truly am, lying in the arms of a corpse. Just like everyone else I've ever loved, a corpse crumbling to dust.
But in the strength of Hiro's belief, his will, I find the strength to shut my eyes and continue to dream this dream.
(Audrey/Matt - heartbeats - 700 words)
It's shortly after he returns home, shortly after they go to the doctor's together and he can hear the infant's heartbeat in the doctor's stethoscope that the truth comes out. From thrilling to freezing in the space between those fast and hot heartbeats, as his eyes slide over the doctor's flowchart and see a date of conception and a blood type that should be impossible. He keeps the smile forced on his face and pats her hand, and she smiles up at him in a sickly sort of way. How has he missed until now the calculated deliberation in that smile? She knows just how much to furrow her brow and bite her lip to look brave and loving. It's false. It's fake. He never had to do that even in his worst days in that godforsaken hospital with a strange man and a beautiful little girl his only companions. But he wipes her forehead with a handkerchief and says to her, "You're doing great, honey."
She's doing great, all right. It's a great performance.
The moment she's asleep he rifles through his cell phone directory trying to think of someone to call, someone who might understand.
He gets a hell of a greeting. "Parkman, hot shit, are you out of the hospital already?"
"Nice to talk to you too," he chuckles, "I'm back in L.A. Look, any chance you could meet up for a drink? I'm in a bad place right now and I... well, I need a friend."
He leaves a note for Janice, because who needs another phone thrown at them, and tiptoes to the garage.
Audrey's already nursing a scotch when he gets there, and the amber liquid is casting a sheen upward through the bottom-lit counter onto her hair. It's a neat effect, and he smiles. She doesn't look at him, and he doesn't expect her to. They know each other, after all. This isn't some first encounter between two nervous thirtysomethings looking for love. Audrey's a known quantity. His pulse is even and steady.
"Heard the baby's heartbeat today," he says as he sits down beside her. He motions for a beer.
"What was that like?" Cool, detached. No interest. She's not a maternal type. That's good.
"Woulda been better if I..." He trails off. He's not ready to say it out loud.
"If you what?" Evasiveness does interest her, and she holds her drink up and gazes at him. He shrinks from her inquisitive look. He doesn't want an interrogation. It's not why he's come here.
He takes her free hand. Her pulse goes to sonic speed beneath his thumb.
"Audrey, I'm a little scared," he confesses.
She's red now, blushing, staring. "You're scared!" she exclaims.
A few minutes later and he's coaxed her on to the dance floor. It's good to just hold someone, feel a body against his, let reverberating saxophone and drilling drums waft through him. How long has it been since he and Janice had danced? Months. Years, it feels like. He forgot the exhalation of breath on the shoulder, the minute shifts of hands to avoid getting too sweaty, too clingy. He loves them. It's like holding a real person, holding Audrey. Not a Wife or Mistress or Girlfriend but a real person, someone he knows well and can relate to.
She apologizes after they kiss for the first time. "That was inappropriate, I..."
He rubs a thumb on her lip. "No disclaimers. Please."
They dance a little longer and she clutches his shoulders and whispers in his ear, "Parkman, are you going to take me to bed tonight?"
He chuckles. "I was thinking about it."
"Then don't make me wait," she hisses.
She's shirtless before the motel room door is closed. He had no idea how much desire she'd held in reserve. Her teeth are all over his chest and he's groaning as she climbs on top of him. So much for a known quantity. But afterwards, when he's tingling and paralyzed with relief, she's purring low into his throat and he can hear her heartbeat matching his own.
Tomorrow Janice will be mad that he was out all night and there will be a blowout fight he really ought to sell tickets to. It'll be the end of the world. But there's comfort here tonight, and that's something.
(Eden/Mohinder - dangerous - 400 words)
The kiss she stole from him was a dangerous one, that's for sure. She shouldn't have turned her head. He wasn't interested. She forced it. Still, what a nice memory to have later on, when facing off against an even more dangerous man.
God, she wished it wasn't fated to be the last time she'd see him.
She sits on the floor of the shower stall and thinks about the things she's had to do since she saw him last. She didn't want to tell that painter what to do. He was a good man, she'd seen it in his eyes. He wanted to get clean for the right reasons. A girl at home, she guessed. In his desperation he never once looked at her with an untoward thought in his head. She could have used him, certainly, to get rid of that dangerous heat that has stayed in her, floating like a half-lit balloon in her gut ever since that kiss.
She'd loved her job until the day she'd had to say goodbye to him.
She would have liked to know what it was to touch him all over. To wake up next to him without subterfuge. To run long fingers along the line of his shoulder and whisper to him all the secrets she knew. She could have betrayed the Company for him. She could have thrown it all away for him. Like a girl in a James Bond movie, she was hopelessly enthralled by the simple seductiveness of his innocent facade. But like Bond, he was too dangerous to be trusted. That's what her boss said. She reminded herself of it time and time again.
It didn't matter.
He fascinated her. He warmed her heart. He made her feel like a girl. But she knew all too soon that there was no heat in his gaze. No matter how she connived, what subtle suggestion she tried, he would not turn her way. And she wanted him too badly to force him. That's when she knew it was over. This game had become too dangerous. That's when she knew she loved him.
Now she had one final task and she didn't have any illusions about how it would end. She got out of the shower, stood up, got dressed, and prepared to face her death.
She'd lost Mohinder. It didn't matter what else she lost, not now.