Sylar

i.

"I have something for you."

Mohinder looks up, smiling. "What?"

His fingers curl around the box in his pocket. It's not a ring, that part of their relationship almost two weeks behind them, but it's just as good and he's just as nervous. So much so that he finds he can't find the words, no matter how much he wants this.

Somewhere in the distance, bells toll the start of the new year, giving him an out, and he darts around the table to crush his lips against Mohinder's, wordlessly. He has all the time in the world to ask later.



ii.

The new year comes with a raucous cry and an explosion of color, and despite the fact that he was damn sure he wouldn't be awake to see it, the sound is more than enough to rouse him from dozing. He shifts a bit, straying just far enough away from Claire to glance at the clock, and then he curls up around her again.

He waits, counting the minutes until the fireworks stop making the shadows shudder, and leans to brush a kiss over her lips. She smiles against his mouth, never really asleep either, and kisses him back, softly.



iii.

( "It's midnight on the East Coast." )



Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 1000
Note: Each of these ficlets are 100 words exactly. May I never, ever decide I want to do something like this again.

You don't love him. Not anymore. Maybe you never did. Maybe all you ever got was a sense, a hope, that there could be something more, that things could be simple. That you could be just Zane Taylor, and he could be just Mohinder Suresh, and that would be enough for you both. You don't know, and it's too late to think about it, because the whole world has grown dark around the edges, like something out of a Stephen King novel. Your whole world has gone dark, and whatever embers of hope for your own soul that you might have tried to fan have long since died.

You're hollow. Cold. The only thing that matters anymore, the only feeling that doesn't turn to ash the second it strays too near to your heart, is power. And maybe that's why you bring him to you.

He held so much power over you at one time, that you want to return the favor and make him yours. It's slow going, as you can't tip your hand too much, or you risk exposure--if only to him--and destroy the game, but you can be patient. It's a courtesy he never afforded you, but you're the better man here. In more ways than just matters of manners.

So, you bring him in and you make him your scientific adviser. You smile at him with a face that isn't yours, and snub the wife you'd sooner kill than bed with in favor of him. You write it off as working hard--you're the President, after all--and everyone seems to buy it. Or almost everyone, as sometimes, you wonder if Parkman isn't on to you, but it doesn't matter.

What matters is that it works, that the whole thing snowballs. That one minute, he's just a member of your staff, the same as everyone else, and the next, he's in your bed. Or up against the bookshelves in the Oval Office. Or anywhere you feel like. You take him to dinner occasionally, of course, under the guise of talking business, but you both know that's not why you're really there.

He doesn't seem to mind, though, even if he always seems distracted when you eat out together, because this is what lovers do. And you tell him you love him, in the heat of more intimate moments because that's what lovers do. That's how people make other people stay. That's how they trap them--cage them--and you know it because your mother did it to you for years, because it works. And now that you have all this glorious power over him, you're not going to let him go.

You never give up what's yours, after all, and he's been yours for so very long now, even if you're too far gone for love.


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 463