FIC: Twilight [Chapter Three] (Heroes)
Jul. 31st, 2008 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Twilight
by
ashinae and
linden_jay
Pairing: Nathan/Claire
Rating/Warnings: NC-17; prostitution, dub-con, mention and aftermath of rape (by original, not canon, characters).
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of season 2. This would take place within the first few episodes, but doesn't follow the established plot.
Disclaimer: Not written for profit.
Summary: "I wasn't trolling for a hooker. I just happened to bump into one."
Note: This is a multi-part, but complete, story. This is not a work in progress.
Previous Parts: Teaser, Chapter One, Chapter Two
Twilight: Chapter Three
It was almost starting to get light again when Claire came back, the soft sound of the key in the lock before she opened the door, keeping her movements quiet. She'd even taken her boots off in the hallway so she'd make less noise. She didn't want to wake Nathan up. Closing the door again, she looked over to the couch, where Nathan was either sleeping or passed out. It was hard to tell, but judging by the smell of alcohol in the air, it could be either.
Rubbing her eyes, exhausted, she pulled the money she'd made out of her bra and set it on the table, placing Nathan's key, and one she'd cut for herself, beside it, then went over to the couch and shook him gently. "Nathan. Nathan, come on, it's time for bed."
It took a moment for him to blink his eyes open, staring blearily up at her. "Claire?" He sat up a little straighter, groaned at the crick in his neck. "What time is it?"
"Early... it doesn't matter. Come on, I told you that you were too big for that couch," she said, offering him her hand to help him up.
He looked at her a bit longer. "Sent you for groceries," he said. "But you... I know what you were doing. Don't think I don't."
"I know you know," she said, offering him her hand again. "I'll get groceries for real later. You need to sleep it off, Nathan, come on."
He took her hand and got unsteadily to his feet, standing too close to her. He blinked, slowly, and kept watching her. "Don't need to keep doing that, Claire. I can help, you know."
"I don't need your help," she said, taking a step back, then starting to tug him toward the bedroom. "I can take care of myself. And no offence, Nathan, but you can barely help yourself right now." She kept pulling him, drawing the covers down once she had him beside the bed.
He ran his fingers across her cheek, over her mouth, staring intently down at her. "Do you like what you do?" he asked.
Her breath caught as Nathan's fingers moved over her face, a soft sigh escaping before she came back to herself, clearing her throat and looking down, giving Nathan a gentle push to off-balance him and make him sit down on the bed. "It doesn't matter."
"Sure it doesn't," he said. He looked up at her from where he sat, reached out more than a little unsteadily to put his hands on her waist. "At least you're good at pretending you do."
Claire closed her eyes, then opened them again, gently reaching down and removing his hands from her waist. "Nathan, you're drunk. Sleep it off," she said, pushing his hands back toward him and giving his shoulders another push, reaching down and neatly lifting his feet, tucking him up and onto the bed surprisingly smoothly, considering how small she was. It wasn't the first time she'd tucked a drunk man into bed.
He mumbled something, incoherent, voice rough. But his head was on the pillow and he was gone in seconds, falling into a mercifully dreamless sleep.
She sighed in relief as he finally dropped off, the back of her hand smoothing against Nathan's mercifully smooth cheek before she pulled the covers up the rest of the way. Checking to make sure the blinds were down before she left the room, she returned with a bottle of water and another of Tylenol before closing the door and leaving Nathan alone.
Twenty minutes and a scalding hot shower later, Claire was settled in on the couch, wearing nothing but Peter's shirt and a pair of panties, tucked under the coat Nathan had been wearing, since she didn't want to go searching for a blanket and risk waking him again. She was asleep almost as quickly as Nathan.
*
Nathan frowned as he looked in the fridge. "Didn't you go for groceries yesterday?"
Claire murmured something incoherent and pulled the coat up over her head, protesting the voices that were being all...questiony. It was barely noon, not even close to time to get up.
Nathan huffed out a sigh and closed the refrigerator door. "Claire?"
"Oh, God, what?" Claire groaned, dragging the coat lower and peering bleary-eyed over the back of the couch.
"There's nothing to eat," Nathan said, accusingly, standing over the back of the couch.
She blinked at him. Did Nathan remember... no, of course he didn't remember anything from this morning, when he'd still been drunk. "I forgot to take the money... I couldn't buy food," she lied, dragging her hand through her hair, then pushing up off the couch, carefully laying Peter's coat over the back. "I'll go grab something."
He frowned. He really didn't remember much after she left. He'd started drinking by then, of course. Bad habit. He should consider breaking it one day. "Oh," he said, and dug around for a box of cereal. "Well. Fine, then," he said. "Go."
"Thanks for your permission," she muttered, rubbing her eyes, then trying to think if she had any clothes she could wear out on the street that weren't completely obvious.
"See if someone'll sell you some wine," he said, absently, pouring cereal out into a bowl. It was worth a shot.
Claire looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. "Right... I look old enough to buy alcohol." Granted, she did know a bartender or two who would sell to her, but that wasn't so much the point.
"Hey, you never know," Nathan said with a shrug. "I'll see you in a while, then." He leaned against the counter to eat his breakfast. Sitting down and standing up again wasn't really an option right now.
"Yeah," Claire said, watching him for a few moments, then grabbing her clothes. "You don't... there's nothing in here that's going to fit me, pants-wise, is there?"
He looked at her. "Pete and I might not exactly be gangly, but we've both still got longer legs than you do."
She sighed. "That's about what I figured. There's got to be a second hand place somewhere around here... I don't exactly have much of an every day wardrobe. It's a little conspicuous." She picked up the skirt she'd been wearing the day before and headed into the bathroom to change.
"Could at least buy yourself a pair of jeans," he called after her. His voice was too loud. He winced. Back to quietly eating.
She came back a few minutes later, her face still washed clean of makeup from the shower earlier in the day, her skirt almost hidden beneath Peter's shirt. "I'll be back soon... need anything else?" she said, collecting money--hers, not Nathan's--off the table, and tucking it into a pocket.
"Just the essentials. Milk, bread, some kind of meat, maybe some eggs. Cheese. Whatever works." He looked at her legs again, then back up at her face. Without the makeup, she was a little more noticeably Claire.
"Okay. See you in a bit. I cut myself a key, hope you don't mind," Claire added, pocketing that as well. She headed over to the door, then paused. "Drink some more water and take some Tylenol, Nathan. You look like shit."
He squinted at her. "Thanks for the advice," he said, dryly. "Be careful."
She rolled her eyes. "Thanks for the advice," she said back, in almost the identical tone Nathan had just used. Because really, going out grocery shopping was hazardous, compared to her night job.
*
Nathan looked better when she came back; within a few hours, he was practically bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to tackle a proper dinner that included real cooked food. He wasn't particularly talkative, but he bustled around the kitchen with the stereo on, playing quiet, down-key music.
"You could probably steal a pair of his sweat pants or something," Nathan said. "Roll them up, maybe there's some safety pins. If you're cold. Until you decide to buy some clothes that actually cover your legs."
"Yeah, maybe," Claire nodded. "I should wash my stuff anyway... it's been awhile since I've been able to make it to a Laundromat. Is there a washer and dryer in here, or should I just use the sink in the bathroom?"
"Basement," Nathan said. "Not exactly the best stuff down there--anything delicate, wash it in the sink."
"Everything's... kinda delicate," Claire admitted, starting toward the bedroom, then pausing. "Is... do you mind?" She felt like she should ask before going in and going through Peter's things.
"It's okay," he said, softly. A sudden grin broke across his face. "If you find any really dirty pornography, it's his, not mine. The more run-of-the-mill stuff's mine, though."
Claire wrinkled her nose, then laughed--she couldn't help it. "Great, something to hope for. Do you really think anything's gonna shock me though?" she pointed out, raising an eyebrow at Nathan.
Nathan shrugged a shoulder. "Sadly, we're not quite that kinky," he said, and just sort of left it at that. He had chicken to dice.
She raised her other eyebrow, wondering about Nathan's use of 'we' there, but Claire decided she was just letting her imagination go somewhere...really, really strange. Leaving it at that, she went into the bedroom and looking through Peter's drawers, not finding any pornography, kinky or otherwise, but finding a pair of sweatpants that looked like they could be rolled and pinned up, at least for long enough for her to get some laundry done.
Hesitating for a moment at the bed, she impulsively stripped the sheets off, bundling them up and carrying them out into the living room. Dropping them on the couch, she went about gathering other things, feeling an almost compulsive need to get things cleaned up.
Nathan turned a little and watched her. "Are you just taking everything and leaving?" he asked.
"The sheets smell, Nathan. I know what kind of bars you've been spending your time in, and the sheets smell like them."
"I washed them... a while ago..."
Claire doesn't even want to know how long a while ago was. "Whatever. I'm doing laundry, you're making dinner. It's a fair trade."
"I suppose it is," he agreed. "Feel free to take one of the puzzle books lying about or something. Dinner'll be ready in a couple hours."
A pencil tucked behind her ear, and a puzzle book on top of the pile of clothes and laundry soap, Claire headed off for the basement, trying not to let how weirdly domestic this all was get to her. Nathan was a drunk, she was a hooker, Peter and her father were missing and God knew where. Nathan didn't remember her leaving the night before, didn't remember her putting him to bed when she came home. They were all pretty fucked up, really.
Dinner was a quiet affair.
Nathan had tried to help Claire make the bed, but he'd started in on the beer since there wasn't much in the way of wine left, and he was just getting in the way. He did an admirable enough job serving up dinner when she'd shooed him out of the bedroom, but he was quiet and sullen, like a child who'd just been told off.
It took Claire a few minutes to even realize that Nathan was being sullen, since she was eating too much and too fast to pay all that much attention, and once she did clue into it, she really wasn't all that sure what to say. She didn't really know him that well, after all. Most of what she knew about him, she didn't wildly like. And there was so much that was just utterly awkward that she hardly knew what to say that wouldn't lead back to somewhere they'd rather not go. So, she stared at the plate, twirled her fork, and ate as much as she could, trying to ignore Nathan drinking.
After a while, he got up from the table and dumped his plate and the cutlery in the sink. He didn't look at her, knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that he was being childish, but he didn't fucking care. He didn't. What was there to care about? He wandered back into the other room and fumbled a bit through Peter's DVD collection, and settled on a movie that had a few explosions and a car chase. Might keep him awake a while.
Checking a sigh, Claire cleared her own plate, although she didn't bother to do anything special with it, dumping it in the sink beside Nathan's. She watched him watching the movie for a few moments, then reached down into the bag of things she'd picked up when she was shopping, lifting a bottle of red wine out of the bag, and leaving it on the counter. It turned out that he was right about her being able to buy alcohol after all... of course, she did know a few people. He'd find it sooner or later. She got the puzzle book out again and sat down at the table to finish the one she'd started while doing laundry.
When he'd finished off the latest bottle of beer, he got unsteadily to his feet to go deposit the bottle on the counter and get another from the refrigerator. That's when he noticed the wine. "Oh," he said, "you found some."
"Yeah... I know a guy," she said, looking up at Nathan and quickly counting the beer bottles on the counter. She'd already decided not to ask why it was he wasn't with his wife and kids any more. The answer seemed a little obvious.
"Thanks," he said, grabbing a glass and the bottle and returning to the couch to settle in for the night. He fell asleep within the hour.
Claire thought about getting him settled into his actual bed before she left, but in the end, she took away the bottle and glass and left him curled up there, finding a blanket out of the bedroom and draping it over him. Peter's shirt and sweatpants were abandoned in the bathroom while she got dressed and her makeup done, leaving her shoes until last and carrying them out the door to put on in the hall, quietly locking the door behind her. Nathan couldn't help himself right now, let alone her, that much was clear. Maybe she could do something for the both of them.
*
by
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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
Pairing: Nathan/Claire
Rating/Warnings: NC-17; prostitution, dub-con, mention and aftermath of rape (by original, not canon, characters).
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of season 2. This would take place within the first few episodes, but doesn't follow the established plot.
Disclaimer: Not written for profit.
Summary: "I wasn't trolling for a hooker. I just happened to bump into one."
Note: This is a multi-part, but complete, story. This is not a work in progress.
Previous Parts: Teaser, Chapter One, Chapter Two
It was almost starting to get light again when Claire came back, the soft sound of the key in the lock before she opened the door, keeping her movements quiet. She'd even taken her boots off in the hallway so she'd make less noise. She didn't want to wake Nathan up. Closing the door again, she looked over to the couch, where Nathan was either sleeping or passed out. It was hard to tell, but judging by the smell of alcohol in the air, it could be either.
Rubbing her eyes, exhausted, she pulled the money she'd made out of her bra and set it on the table, placing Nathan's key, and one she'd cut for herself, beside it, then went over to the couch and shook him gently. "Nathan. Nathan, come on, it's time for bed."
It took a moment for him to blink his eyes open, staring blearily up at her. "Claire?" He sat up a little straighter, groaned at the crick in his neck. "What time is it?"
"Early... it doesn't matter. Come on, I told you that you were too big for that couch," she said, offering him her hand to help him up.
He looked at her a bit longer. "Sent you for groceries," he said. "But you... I know what you were doing. Don't think I don't."
"I know you know," she said, offering him her hand again. "I'll get groceries for real later. You need to sleep it off, Nathan, come on."
He took her hand and got unsteadily to his feet, standing too close to her. He blinked, slowly, and kept watching her. "Don't need to keep doing that, Claire. I can help, you know."
"I don't need your help," she said, taking a step back, then starting to tug him toward the bedroom. "I can take care of myself. And no offence, Nathan, but you can barely help yourself right now." She kept pulling him, drawing the covers down once she had him beside the bed.
He ran his fingers across her cheek, over her mouth, staring intently down at her. "Do you like what you do?" he asked.
Her breath caught as Nathan's fingers moved over her face, a soft sigh escaping before she came back to herself, clearing her throat and looking down, giving Nathan a gentle push to off-balance him and make him sit down on the bed. "It doesn't matter."
"Sure it doesn't," he said. He looked up at her from where he sat, reached out more than a little unsteadily to put his hands on her waist. "At least you're good at pretending you do."
Claire closed her eyes, then opened them again, gently reaching down and removing his hands from her waist. "Nathan, you're drunk. Sleep it off," she said, pushing his hands back toward him and giving his shoulders another push, reaching down and neatly lifting his feet, tucking him up and onto the bed surprisingly smoothly, considering how small she was. It wasn't the first time she'd tucked a drunk man into bed.
He mumbled something, incoherent, voice rough. But his head was on the pillow and he was gone in seconds, falling into a mercifully dreamless sleep.
She sighed in relief as he finally dropped off, the back of her hand smoothing against Nathan's mercifully smooth cheek before she pulled the covers up the rest of the way. Checking to make sure the blinds were down before she left the room, she returned with a bottle of water and another of Tylenol before closing the door and leaving Nathan alone.
Twenty minutes and a scalding hot shower later, Claire was settled in on the couch, wearing nothing but Peter's shirt and a pair of panties, tucked under the coat Nathan had been wearing, since she didn't want to go searching for a blanket and risk waking him again. She was asleep almost as quickly as Nathan.
Nathan frowned as he looked in the fridge. "Didn't you go for groceries yesterday?"
Claire murmured something incoherent and pulled the coat up over her head, protesting the voices that were being all...questiony. It was barely noon, not even close to time to get up.
Nathan huffed out a sigh and closed the refrigerator door. "Claire?"
"Oh, God, what?" Claire groaned, dragging the coat lower and peering bleary-eyed over the back of the couch.
"There's nothing to eat," Nathan said, accusingly, standing over the back of the couch.
She blinked at him. Did Nathan remember... no, of course he didn't remember anything from this morning, when he'd still been drunk. "I forgot to take the money... I couldn't buy food," she lied, dragging her hand through her hair, then pushing up off the couch, carefully laying Peter's coat over the back. "I'll go grab something."
He frowned. He really didn't remember much after she left. He'd started drinking by then, of course. Bad habit. He should consider breaking it one day. "Oh," he said, and dug around for a box of cereal. "Well. Fine, then," he said. "Go."
"Thanks for your permission," she muttered, rubbing her eyes, then trying to think if she had any clothes she could wear out on the street that weren't completely obvious.
"See if someone'll sell you some wine," he said, absently, pouring cereal out into a bowl. It was worth a shot.
Claire looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. "Right... I look old enough to buy alcohol." Granted, she did know a bartender or two who would sell to her, but that wasn't so much the point.
"Hey, you never know," Nathan said with a shrug. "I'll see you in a while, then." He leaned against the counter to eat his breakfast. Sitting down and standing up again wasn't really an option right now.
"Yeah," Claire said, watching him for a few moments, then grabbing her clothes. "You don't... there's nothing in here that's going to fit me, pants-wise, is there?"
He looked at her. "Pete and I might not exactly be gangly, but we've both still got longer legs than you do."
She sighed. "That's about what I figured. There's got to be a second hand place somewhere around here... I don't exactly have much of an every day wardrobe. It's a little conspicuous." She picked up the skirt she'd been wearing the day before and headed into the bathroom to change.
"Could at least buy yourself a pair of jeans," he called after her. His voice was too loud. He winced. Back to quietly eating.
She came back a few minutes later, her face still washed clean of makeup from the shower earlier in the day, her skirt almost hidden beneath Peter's shirt. "I'll be back soon... need anything else?" she said, collecting money--hers, not Nathan's--off the table, and tucking it into a pocket.
"Just the essentials. Milk, bread, some kind of meat, maybe some eggs. Cheese. Whatever works." He looked at her legs again, then back up at her face. Without the makeup, she was a little more noticeably Claire.
"Okay. See you in a bit. I cut myself a key, hope you don't mind," Claire added, pocketing that as well. She headed over to the door, then paused. "Drink some more water and take some Tylenol, Nathan. You look like shit."
He squinted at her. "Thanks for the advice," he said, dryly. "Be careful."
She rolled her eyes. "Thanks for the advice," she said back, in almost the identical tone Nathan had just used. Because really, going out grocery shopping was hazardous, compared to her night job.
Nathan looked better when she came back; within a few hours, he was practically bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to tackle a proper dinner that included real cooked food. He wasn't particularly talkative, but he bustled around the kitchen with the stereo on, playing quiet, down-key music.
"You could probably steal a pair of his sweat pants or something," Nathan said. "Roll them up, maybe there's some safety pins. If you're cold. Until you decide to buy some clothes that actually cover your legs."
"Yeah, maybe," Claire nodded. "I should wash my stuff anyway... it's been awhile since I've been able to make it to a Laundromat. Is there a washer and dryer in here, or should I just use the sink in the bathroom?"
"Basement," Nathan said. "Not exactly the best stuff down there--anything delicate, wash it in the sink."
"Everything's... kinda delicate," Claire admitted, starting toward the bedroom, then pausing. "Is... do you mind?" She felt like she should ask before going in and going through Peter's things.
"It's okay," he said, softly. A sudden grin broke across his face. "If you find any really dirty pornography, it's his, not mine. The more run-of-the-mill stuff's mine, though."
Claire wrinkled her nose, then laughed--she couldn't help it. "Great, something to hope for. Do you really think anything's gonna shock me though?" she pointed out, raising an eyebrow at Nathan.
Nathan shrugged a shoulder. "Sadly, we're not quite that kinky," he said, and just sort of left it at that. He had chicken to dice.
She raised her other eyebrow, wondering about Nathan's use of 'we' there, but Claire decided she was just letting her imagination go somewhere...really, really strange. Leaving it at that, she went into the bedroom and looking through Peter's drawers, not finding any pornography, kinky or otherwise, but finding a pair of sweatpants that looked like they could be rolled and pinned up, at least for long enough for her to get some laundry done.
Hesitating for a moment at the bed, she impulsively stripped the sheets off, bundling them up and carrying them out into the living room. Dropping them on the couch, she went about gathering other things, feeling an almost compulsive need to get things cleaned up.
Nathan turned a little and watched her. "Are you just taking everything and leaving?" he asked.
"The sheets smell, Nathan. I know what kind of bars you've been spending your time in, and the sheets smell like them."
"I washed them... a while ago..."
Claire doesn't even want to know how long a while ago was. "Whatever. I'm doing laundry, you're making dinner. It's a fair trade."
"I suppose it is," he agreed. "Feel free to take one of the puzzle books lying about or something. Dinner'll be ready in a couple hours."
A pencil tucked behind her ear, and a puzzle book on top of the pile of clothes and laundry soap, Claire headed off for the basement, trying not to let how weirdly domestic this all was get to her. Nathan was a drunk, she was a hooker, Peter and her father were missing and God knew where. Nathan didn't remember her leaving the night before, didn't remember her putting him to bed when she came home. They were all pretty fucked up, really.
Dinner was a quiet affair.
Nathan had tried to help Claire make the bed, but he'd started in on the beer since there wasn't much in the way of wine left, and he was just getting in the way. He did an admirable enough job serving up dinner when she'd shooed him out of the bedroom, but he was quiet and sullen, like a child who'd just been told off.
It took Claire a few minutes to even realize that Nathan was being sullen, since she was eating too much and too fast to pay all that much attention, and once she did clue into it, she really wasn't all that sure what to say. She didn't really know him that well, after all. Most of what she knew about him, she didn't wildly like. And there was so much that was just utterly awkward that she hardly knew what to say that wouldn't lead back to somewhere they'd rather not go. So, she stared at the plate, twirled her fork, and ate as much as she could, trying to ignore Nathan drinking.
After a while, he got up from the table and dumped his plate and the cutlery in the sink. He didn't look at her, knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that he was being childish, but he didn't fucking care. He didn't. What was there to care about? He wandered back into the other room and fumbled a bit through Peter's DVD collection, and settled on a movie that had a few explosions and a car chase. Might keep him awake a while.
Checking a sigh, Claire cleared her own plate, although she didn't bother to do anything special with it, dumping it in the sink beside Nathan's. She watched him watching the movie for a few moments, then reached down into the bag of things she'd picked up when she was shopping, lifting a bottle of red wine out of the bag, and leaving it on the counter. It turned out that he was right about her being able to buy alcohol after all... of course, she did know a few people. He'd find it sooner or later. She got the puzzle book out again and sat down at the table to finish the one she'd started while doing laundry.
When he'd finished off the latest bottle of beer, he got unsteadily to his feet to go deposit the bottle on the counter and get another from the refrigerator. That's when he noticed the wine. "Oh," he said, "you found some."
"Yeah... I know a guy," she said, looking up at Nathan and quickly counting the beer bottles on the counter. She'd already decided not to ask why it was he wasn't with his wife and kids any more. The answer seemed a little obvious.
"Thanks," he said, grabbing a glass and the bottle and returning to the couch to settle in for the night. He fell asleep within the hour.
Claire thought about getting him settled into his actual bed before she left, but in the end, she took away the bottle and glass and left him curled up there, finding a blanket out of the bedroom and draping it over him. Peter's shirt and sweatpants were abandoned in the bathroom while she got dressed and her makeup done, leaving her shoes until last and carrying them out the door to put on in the hall, quietly locking the door behind her. Nathan couldn't help himself right now, let alone her, that much was clear. Maybe she could do something for the both of them.