Sylar

You wish you could remember. You should be able to remember. It almost seems laughable that you can't, especially like this, tangled up in the sheets with him, a hand pressed to his chest over his heart to hold him to you. Being this close, this intimate, you think something should come back to you -- something that's solely your own and not one of his memories, stolen from skin in soft touches -- but there's nothing. There's a connection, something that make your heart twist every time you set eyes on him, but you can't recall a thing beyond what he's told you. There's nothing solid; you're so barren, so empty that it hurts. You wonder if he feels it too.

Your fingers brush over his chest, steady with the rise and fall of a light doze, and you pretend for a moment that you can tell just by touching him. If this -- this lie, this convenience, whatever it is -- hangs just as heavily on him as it does on you. You're just playing, not really expecting anything to come, but it does. Hope and hurt, love and hate, all under your fingertips just as he's told you time and time again it should be.

You suck in a sharp breath through your teeth, wondering how that happened -- who you killed for that -- and he stirs in your arms, cold shoulders pressing back against your warm chest. He hums, and you flatten your hand back against his chest, murmuring something wordless against the shell of his ear. And as he settles back into sleep, you close your eyes and find yourself praying that somehow you remember.

You may be a monster, your life stained with blood and horror, but as you let his agony wind its fine tendrils back around your heart, you'd give everything just to take that from him. Just so he stops hurting; just so you never have to forget him again.


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 331

The sex he could at least say he understood. There had always been something between the two of them, something beyond the hate, as Mohinder's body had affirmed the first time he had come to him. That in place, that connection intact, it hadn't been that hard to get the Indian to be the one to initiate contact this time -- all he'd had to do was push the right combination of buttons and Mohinder's mouth had been ghosting his. He'd take that as a free pass to do what he'd wanted to for years, and they'd gone from there.

The fact that after, both of them spent and sated, Mohinder had curled up around him, however? That he couldn't quite say he followed. Nor did he understand why he'd mirrored the motion, wrapping his arms around the other man to hold him to his chest, or why Mohinder had fallen asleep like that. There might have been enough chemistry between them to warrant his fucking Suresh hard into the mattress, but the aftermath wasn't them. He couldn't help but wonder if Nathan was having a greater effect on him than he originally, though -- if this wasn't just one-sided, his influence bleeding into the senator without his meaning it to. He couldn't help but wonder if Mohinder had caught that, somehow, and latched onto it and the ghost of two men he'd become.

Frowning at the thought, he extricated himself from the sleeping geneticist carefully, and scooted to the edge of the bed. Whatever their reasons for what had happened after their stolen minutes of heat, and no matter how much he inexplicably may have wanted to, he knew he couldn't stay. He didn't get a morning after; he never really had. Not with Maya -- not that he'd wanted one. Not with Elle, thanks to Bennet. Not now. At least this time, it was his choice. Better to go out on his own terms than to shift involuntarily later, unable to hold his thoughts together, and have Mohinder watch and pity him.

He wanted so many things, but never that.

Casting a glance over his shoulder, watching the rise and fall of Mohinder's bare chest, and then sighed, looking away. He sat there for a moment, in the silence, and then soundlessly he was standing up, moving for the vanity case on the dresser. He opened it, palming Nathan's cufflinks -- the ones the senator had packed without real reason and carried so many of his memories -- and closed the box, heading back over to the bed. He settled back down on it lightly, stretched out next to the Indian, and draped an arm over his waist, slowly and carefully.

Mohinder stirred but didn't wake, and he waited a moment before putting his mouth near the other man's ear. He hesitated, poised to say something but unable to pin down the words, all the things he could say warring for a piece of the spotlight in his head. And he dismissed them all in the end, instead rehashing something he'd said earlier that night, the words barely a breath against Mohinder's ear. "Something beautiful before I die."

He leaned back, dropping his head to the pillow, and closed his eyes. Expertly, he shifted the cufflinks in his hand, pressing his thumb to the face of one, and slowly he pulled memory that wasn't his own from the jewelry. His breathing stuck in the back of his throat, he felt the change washing over him, hair suddenly short at the nape of his neck, bones and skin falling into riot. And sooner rather than later, the shifts quicker now for all the times he'd practiced them willingly or otherwise, black beyond what he could see on the insides of his eyelids swept down on him, stripping him of his consciousness.

Unaware, Nathan Petrelli slept through the night, fingers curled tightly around the cufflinks in his hand.


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 656

"Trust me."

On any other day, those words would have been a question, but at the moment they were a demand spoken in intentionally threatening tones against the shell of Mohinder's ear. The Indian shivered, palms pressing flat against his bare back, and for an instant Sylar was sure he could taste the fear on his skin as he pressed his lips there. Understandable, he supposed, given the fact that less than fifteen minutes ago, he'd be pacing the room like a caged animal, a sneer frozen on his mouth, full of anger at the situation and his inability to do anything about it or because of it, but it still annoyed him, somehow.

And so, viciously, he nipped at his earlobe before repeating the words with a little more force. "Trust me."

He whimpered, writhing under him in such a way that Sylar wasn't sure he if he was trying to get away or trying to get into his mouth. Then quietly, breathless, he was murmuring, "I trust you."

It wasn't a lie, despite the tang of unease that still clung to his skin, and it calmed him a little. Not enough to stop him from doing what he'd had in mind in the first place, perhaps, but enough to keep him from killing him in the process, maybe. Time and reaction would tell, he supposed, and that in mind, he pulled away, rocking back so that he could straddle his hips.

His knees dug into Mohinder's thighs a bit, and briefly his mind drifted to thoughts of Angela and murder. Mohinder all but jumped under him, eyes opening to stare up at him in something near horror, and he laughed quietly, reaching for his fly. "Don't worry, Mohinder," he assured him, unzipping his jeans slowly and deliberately in payback for the other night. "I won't kill you."

( Hurt was another story entirely, however, but he failed to mention that. )


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 1116
Note: Mohinder is witnessof_fate and is used with permission and with love. My muse is a sick sonovabitch. Set before anyone told Sylar that he could go kill the demon that was screwing with Claire.

Dissect a trillion sighs away -- will you get this letter?
Jagged pulp sliced in my veins, I write to remember
'Cause I'm a million miles away -- will you get this letter?
Jagged pulp sliced in my veins, I write to remember

War, he learns fairly quickly, is not pretty. Not that he was expecting it to be, but there's a difference between being told, hearing countless stories from Adam over the years, and actually seeing. Shadows of pain and death linger in every corner of the wasted battlefield, bathing him in horror as they latch on to an ability to empathize that's only grown stronger over the years. Could have dones and what ifs creep into the way he frames his shoulders, weighing him down. And all of it -- every corpse that used to house a friend that he stumbles by as his body puts itself back together; every voice he can make out, shrieking into the night as they suffer themselves to death, unable to be saved -- it takes a toll on him.

He manages to hide it from Claire, barely as she's known him for centuries now, and feigns tiredness after every battle, retreating to the barracks to try to remember how to breathe. It doesn't quite work for him, no matter how many times he tastes the horror that is war, but at least it gives him clarity of mind enough to block some of it out, pulling his arms away from his chest as the chill battle has left in its wake fades. He takes a moment, every time, to wonder why he came out here in the first place, and what it would cost to leave, and then he thinks better of it.

He's never been one to abandon the things that matter to him, too possessive even in his old age to change his opinions in that field, and he won't leave Claire to suffer the war alone. She's gotten so cold as the years have gone by, but he still likes to think things like this affect her in some way, and besides. He's seen what happens if he's not here -- his aptitude has gifted him with the ability to see how time lines run if he focuses hard enough, and he knows it's not pretty. He won't condemn her to that.

Pushing it out of mind, as he doesn't want to dwell too long on the things that hurt, in the wake of a sting of pain too sharp as it is, he sits on the bed for what feels like forever, blank. Then, slowly, he shifts, reaching for the trunk that he keeps at the end of the cot. He rifles through it, pushing away the things he's squirreled away over the course of the war -- clothing he never wears, weapons, and so on -- finding a stack of letters, bound in a leather cord, hiding at the bottom of the trunk.

He pulls them out, unwrapping them slowly, and sinks back into the cot as he settles them in his lap.

One by one, he reads them over, his own words, penned on anything he could find, and meant to be sent to Mohinder. He's never gotten around to sending them, isn't sure he even can this far out, but it doesn't stop him from writing them. The letters help him remember that somewhere, far away from here, things are saner -- that the Indian is waiting for him, somewhere. That the pain and fear and terror won't follow him home, when this is all over. That there's something untouched back home.

Marginally comforted, he pushes them out of his lap and leans over into the trunk again, pulling out a stub of a pencil he's managed to find and hold onto and a smattering of paper scraps. They're not much, but they're enough he figures, and that in mind, he rocks back, setting what little open space he has on folded legs and sets to writing. And slowly but surely, as he talks about things that have little to do with war and death, the chill falls away from his heart, giving him the strength to fight another day. Guiding him another day closer to being able to go home, to being able to see him.


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 663 (without lyrics)
Note: Lyrics are from One Armed Scissor by At the Drive-In, and were included for flavor because they helped inspire the writing.

There were plenty of things Sylar could say had happened in his life that just weren't fair. Chandra and Elle molding the innocent watchmaker into a super-powered psychopath, for one -- he'd never wanted that life, he'd just wanted to be someone special. The Shanti Virus, or the stabbing that had preceded it also ranked high on the list. Having to sleep with Maya, so she wouldn't find her brother's body. The Petrelli mindscrew and Mohinder beating his head in at Pinehearst. The list went on and on, really.

He thought he'd found the one thing that had taken the cake, ranked at the top of the list, in being forced to wear Nathan Petrelli's skin, however. In spite of all of his crimes and his own need for an eye for an eye, that was cruel and unusual punishment. He would have chosen dying -- really dying -- over being a prisoner to someone else's thoughts, but here he was. Trapped. Unable to even rely on himself, on the one person who had never left or betrayed him, and all because he wasn't around half the time, thanks to Ma Petrelli.

He thought that had been the worst possible injustice he would ever know, but he had been wrong. So wrong. And all because despite Mohinder's ultimate rejection of him in favor of the stranger in his head, despite telling Mohinder he quit -- that Nathan won, and he'd lock himself away forever, as had been the idea -- he was still aware. He couldn't hide in the senator's shadow or slip away to nothingness as he had hoped, letting Nathan become far more than just the dominant personality. He got to watch every waking moment, and with his latest decision to give in, it was more torture now than it had ever been.

( If he could have sighed, he would have, but instead he was stuck with what seemed to him to be a porn gone wrong. )


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 862
Note: Mohinder is witnessof_fate and is used with permission. Nathan is, um, mine I guess, since he's a figment of Sylar's imagination?

He pushes him into the wall. It's practiced, almost gentle but not quite, and certainly more than just a simple nudge, then he's pressing against him, chest to chest. His lips are on his a moment later, possessive, and Mohinder responds in kind, kissing him back, his fingers fisting in his shirt, briefly, before he's groping for the hem of it. He lets the Indian get his hands under cloth and onto skin, moaning against his mouth at the touch, before returning the favor, his own hand burying in Suersh's curls.

On a whim, a moment later, he's turning them, his other arm draped around Mohinder's waist for support as he guides him back towards their room. He wants him now, heat rising in his stomach with every light press of the other man's fingers at his side, but he's not stupid. There's a ten year old--nine? eleven? he's never stopped to ask Molly how old she is--lurking somewhere, and he doesn't want her walking into the living room to find them like this. He and Mohinder aren't exactly trying to keep their relationship hidden, but he still feels that's a little much. And judging by the soft, approving noise the geneticist makes, he figures the feeling is mutual.

A smirk of a smile tugs at the corners of his lips, and he breaks the kiss long enough to push Mohinder down on the bed, before he's joining him, a knee between his legs, dangerously close to his groin. Suresh arches up from the bed and into his knee with a groan before sinking back down, hands at his hips now to pull him down. Closer. Again, he's leaning into him so that their chest's come together, enjoying the feel of Mohinder's heart beating in time with his, and then he rolls away onto his side.

Mohinder turns sideways, too, eyes fixed on him in confusion for a moment, and he opens his mouth to voice a protest, but he never gets that far. Mostly because suddenly, Sylar darts in to brush his lips over the hollow below his ear, and his words evaporate into something near a whimper. He can't help but smile lazily against his skin; he loves the power he has over Suresh more than anything else.

That in mind, he captures the other man's earlobe between his teeth, lightly, before wrapping his mouth around skin. Another soft noise from Mohinder, another pleased look from him on his behalf, and he puts a hand to his chest, tracing his fingers down over his stomach. Funny, he thinks, he doesn't recall the Indian being quite so built, but he doesn't let it stop him, kneading lightly at muscle he doesn't remember, before letting his hand come to rest at his hip.

He murmurs something wordless into his ear, and the other man shudders, then reaches for the waist of his jeans, but he's not about to let Suresh have the power here. He can't, for some reason that won't come to him--it's getting to be a common occurrence over the course of the last few days, but he's living with it--and so he nips at Mohinder's ear again, half warning and half teasing. While it's enough to trap Mohinder's breath and his at the back of their throats for an instant, however, it doesn't stop him from working at his pants.

( Or, more accurately, practically tearing them open, the denim of his jeans protesting Mohinder's sudden violence. )


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 1015
Notes: Mohinder is witnessof_fate and is used with permission.

[locked]

1. Scent. Even before I picked up Mohinder's ability, there's something about the way people--particularly him--smell. And it's not even cologne or perfume. It's more ... well. Maya always smelled like something natural. Like the ground after it rains. Mohinder always smells like spice and something I can't put my finger on. It's intoxicating.
2. Taste. Again, before Mohinder's ability, it was a big thing for me. It's the salt on the skin. The tang of blood, when I bite him. That sort of thing.
3. Pulse. Heartbeat. Whatever. With my hearing, I can tell when I'm getting someone going. And to know I have that kind of power over someone? That I'm having that effect? I'll admit, it's a bit selfish, but knowing that does it for me.
4. Eyes. They say they're the windows to the soul. I'm not sure if I believe that, nor am I desperate enough to get turned on by someone just looking at me, casually, but ... the way he looks at me, before he kisses me. There's a darkness there. The kind of thing that makes you want to reach into it and see what reaches back. And the way he watches me, when we're having sex. I'm used to doing the watching, not being watched, so it's a nice changed.
5. Skintone. I've only slept with two people. Both of them have had dark skin. It does something to me, the contrast of light and dark, and I've never been able to say why. Especially since it's backwards. Both of them have been the good guys, and they have darker skin. I'm the villain. I have light skin. Maybe that has something to do with it, but there you go.
6. This is going to sound crass, but. I'm an ass man.
7. Thought process. Strange, I know, but I'm a telepath, and listening to someone else's thoughts wander? Particularly when it comes to the things they want to do to you? Or to have done? I can see why Adam wishes he had that ability, now. And even beyond that, there a--a sort of edge to conscious thought process that softens right before he breaks and stays like that for awhile even after he's put himself back together. Feeling that. Letting it pull me down with him. I love that.
8. Being able to watch him, when he doesn't know I'm there. Our relationship started that way, and it's a lot harder to sneak up on him now, but when I can? I savor those moments.
9. Facial hair. His facial hair, when he hasn't shaved in a few days. I like the way it feels. I'd like it if he had a beard, too, but I'm not sure he'd let it grow that far.
10. Touch. That is a product of Mohinder's ability, but it doesn't make it any less wonderful. To touch him. To be touched.

[/locked]


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count 476

( Spoilers for 3x13 - Our Father )


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 302
Notes: Written for witnessof_fate, who has had a craptastic week and deserves something shiny. Even if it came out much shorter than I originally intended.