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Notes: I was looking back at my Wordpress blog drafts and found this little drabble! I wrote it almost exactly a year ago in July 2008. So much has changed on Heroes since then – I’ve even stopped watching the show because I couldn’t stand the new storylines >_< Not to mention real-life couple Hayden Panettierre (Claire) and Milo Ventimiglia (Peter) have since broken up, and apparently Hayden has been throwing bitch-fits on set about not wanting to work with Milo anymore, hence the decrease in scenes with Claire and Peter together. Please don't let this become another Alias - after Jennifer Garner went and got knocked up by Ben Affleck, ex-boyfriend Michael Vartan became a little drama queen about not wanting to work with her, which is why the character of Vaughn was "dead" and practically absent for almost the entire duration of Season 5. It also explains why the plot of Season 5 was so effing crappy, but that's a whole other story.
Ranting aside, I've always been intrigued by the pairing of Peter/Claire, even if it's not canon - there's just way too much chemistry between the two of them that screams for further exploration. So if Tim Kring won't do it, I guess it's up to us fanfiction writers. So enjoy my angsty little drabble, fellow Peter/Claire lovers.
Title: Unspoken Dance
Series: Heroes
Pairing: Claire/Peter
Spoilers: None, really.
*
Raindrops fall from everywhere
I reach out for you but you’re not there.
So I stood waiting in the dark
With your picture in my hands,
story of a broken heart…
…and I don’t want to know
What it’s like without you
So stay with me
– “Stay With Me” – Danity Kane
*
She knows it’s wrong, knows she shouldn’t feel this way. If she were a better person, she would tuck her feelings away, plaster the biggest, most insincere smile she can muster onto her face, and forget every single feeling she has for him.
Why? Because they’re not supposed to be together.
Because they’re not allowed to have each other.
Because she’s not supposed to want him.
Because he’s not supposed to want her, and all the other myriad reasons in the world that simply vanish when she sees him and her breath catches in her throat.
She doesn’t know if he feels the same way. Doesn’t know if he feels the same tortured longing, the same desire and love and hate all rolled into a tangled, complicated morass of emotion. He barely meets her eyes these days, and when he does speak to her, it’s in a perfunctory, clinical manner, as if she were merely a passing acquaintance instead of his niece or even the cheerleader he saved all those months ago.
She wishes he would look at her, talk to her, anything but the terrible, distant silence that sits between them. He must feel something for her, if he’s going to such lengths to avoid her, but she can’t ever get him alone long enough to inform him that his martyrdom is unwanted and unappreciated.
And so they continue their unspoken dance, pushing and pulling, but neither one willing to give in to the other.
