Written for comment_fic on livejournal

Pheremone control was a useful ability. When he first got it, Sylar thought it would be nothing but fun. Mostly he used it to get attention from strangers who would then flatter him, only to be rejected by Sylar's sarcasm.

But the real fun came when he ran into old acquaintances.

Peter had at first looked at him warily, ready to fight but obviously still thinking of the brief time they were allies. But when Sylar stepped into close range, Peter - as always - let his feelings carry him to dangerous places. He flew at Sylar, knocked him down, and kissed him hard. Sylar let him. But as Petrelli got a little handsy ("Italian" as Sylar liked to call it), Sylar TKed himself free and decided to try it on someone else.

Nathan was even more aggressive. He also went back and forth between trying to make Sylar feel taken care of and alienated. Manipulative bastard.

Running away from Nathan, Sylar ran into Angela. He tried very hard to forget what she did next.

Bennet would be fun to mess with, Sylar knew. But as he approached, Noah just gave him that cold smile and siad, "What's that in the air? I guess you stole someone's super-attractiveness."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Noah. Are you saying you have feelings for me?"

"Come on, Sylar, I thought sociopaths were supposed to be GOOD liars. Don't worry, though. Lust and bloodlust are pretty much the same. All your power means is that I'll really REALLY enjoy killing you."

Sylar left pretty quickly. He knew he could defeat Bennet - his invulnerability alone pretty much guaranteed it - but he really didn't want to know Bennet's darkest fantasies. Some things even scared Sylar.

He thought he was saving the best for last when he took his new ability to Mohinder. Mohinder took one whiff and forgave him for everything.

That's my beautiful Mohinder, Sylar thought, ready to switch sides on a dime.

But Mohinder was one of those guys who confused love and lust, and soon he was telling Sylar about his day, and complaining that his genius was never acknowledged by the scientific community at large. He also subjected Sylar to long and not-particularly well-thought-out lectures on how myth, literature, and science related to their current predicament. Sylar hated those monologues.

So finally he turned off his pheremone ability, filed it away with those other useless powers he picked up along the way: the ability of reading of the history of objects, the ability to make small appliances turn inside out, the ability to predict which characters are cylons on television shows, the ability to achieve inner tranquility, the ability to eat his weight in gumdrops, and all the others. They had all seemed like fun at first, but Sylar always realized eventually that when it comes to powers, sometimes the classics really are best.