[fanfic] Roommates (PG)

[tiptoe39]

Title: Roommates
Author: tiptoe39, who is having a good day fanficwise
Rating: PG
Summary: Dorky, WAFFy AU. Matt and Mohinder are college roommates. Thanks to kleenexcow and ilsaluvsrick for the suggestions.



It was absolutely a match made in hell.

Mohinder knew from the moment he walked in the door that he was going to share a room not with a Fascinating American but with a Dumb American.

The guy's sneakers were in the middle of the floor. That was the first clue. The ambient noise of the too-loud music in the speakers was the second. And the bleary eyes that greeted him when his new roommate turned around were the final piece to the puzzle.

Pre-med in the States, his foot. He should have stayed in Madras.

"Yo," said the boy, getting up from his chair and losing the headphones. An ungodly noise issued forth from the abandoned earpieces. "Matt Parkman. What's up."

"Mohinder Suresh," He shook his hand and stepped back a moment, stunned. Matt was attractive. Not handsome, in the strictest sense of the word-- there was no chiseled jaw or delicate line to his face. But he was solid, strong-looking, with a disarmingly easy grin. Perhaps first impressions would be deceiving. Perhaps he was actually supremely lucky.

Then Matt said, "Nice to meet you, Mo," and his hopes were shattered.

There was very little in the next few days to mitigate that conclusion. He did note that Matt was a good-hearted kid. He helped Mohinder unpack and showed some interest in his life. He invited him down to dinner with his friends (Mohinder went the first time, then politely refused the offers, which he was sure were only polite). But the fact remained that Matt was annoying to live with. He read out loud from his textbooks, often fumbling over the words, and although he tried not to draw attention to himself, the muttering still got on his nerves. He had an annoying habit of saying whatever he was thinking, and sometimes whatever Mohinder was thinking but had decided against saying, as well. He was also a huge stickler for the rules, which seemed odd to Mohinder, considering the guy hung out with a group of frat boys who spent half their time making jokes at the expense of people of Mohinder's type, skin color, and/or sexual orientation. (Oh yes, that was another thing-- he would feel decidedly uncomfortable telling Matt about that little detail. Besides, what did it matter? As the old saw went, it just meant he wasn't having sex with men instead of not having sex with women.)

At least that last point meant that Matt was cognizant of the rules for visitors. Specifically, it meant he wasn't constantly bringing girls up to the room. There seemed to be a distinct lack of that, in fact. Matt just wasn't one for the sex talk. Sports talk, sure. Complaints about professors, sure. Pestering questions about what India was like, all night long when Mohinder was trying to sleep, sure as hell. But he didn't talk about women. Well. One fewer thing for Mohinder to have to pretend he cared about.

But it wasn't long before his patience began to run out. Mohinder had pegged Professor Sanders as a tricky one from the get-go: sweet as candy to those she liked and practically murderous with all the rest. Try as he might, he couldn't figure out how to get on her good side. He was fairly sure that despite her appearance, she could throw not just the book but the whole desk at him if he raised his hand one more time. So that meant Mohinder had to figure out the subject matter from textbooks and the Net, and that involved online research and bookmarking and things that the computer lab would render unwieldy. So the big clunky desktop he'd been foolish enough to buy was his only choice. He was shifting between PubMed, three separate science blogs, and a wildly unsuccessful Google search trying to decipher a certain concept when the muttering began from the opposite bed.

"...controlled by the raw... the warring face... factions of ..."

"Do you mind?" Mohinder snapped.

"Oh. Sorry," Matt said. He flushed. Mohinder turned back to the screen, trying to forget how those cheeks filled with innocent color. How the eyes went round and shivering at being confronted. How Matt was just like a child, so naive, so good-hearted, the sort of innocence you wanted to cherish and rip away at the same time.

"Damn it!" Mohinder got up from the computer in one stiff, violent movement. He whirled toward the wall and smacked it with a fist. It stung all over.

"Geez. Everything OK?"

He tried not to turn. "I can't concentrate."

"I'll try to be quiet, man. Honest. I just have some trouble with the words." Matt closed his book and came to sit on the end of Mohinder's bed. "Mo, dude, you look like you're having a real hard time. You wanna talk about it?"

Why did he have to be on his bed? Mohinder tried desperately not to look at him. Not that he needed to. He knew the expression of concern very well. Achingly sincere, his features soft, his shoulders rounded forward... He turned away again, this time just to hide his reaction. "No, I have no desire to talk about it with you," he said, gritting his teeth and trying to think about molecules or Professor Sanders in 50 years or something else decidedly unsexy.

"Man, I wish you wouldn't do that." He was actually whining at him!

"What? What am I doing?"

"Shutting me out. I'm your roommate. We should talk about stuff." Did he have to be so irritatingly good-hearted?

"You don't want to talk to me," Mohinder snapped, turning back toward him. "I'm sure you have a million other people you'd rather talk to. Don't feel you need to make an effort out of some misguided sense of chivalry. I neither want nor need your pity, so bugger off already and let me be!"

Matt burst out laughing. Immediately Mohinder felt like a fool.

"I'm sorry, man... it's just..." He could barely contain his giggles. "Did you just say bugger off? F'real? Do they still say that back in India?" And he let loose with a fresh round of laughter, his head knocking back against the wall. "I'm sorry... it's just... it's great!" He curled up on Mohinder's bed, laughing hiimself silly, clutching his stomach.

Mohinder watched him, both fascinated and horrified. He really was such a child.

Matt wiped his eyes and looked up. Mohinder's frown seemed to sober him somewhat. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to make fun of you," he said. "I know what it's like to be laughed at. I didn't mean it that way."

Mohinder sat down on the bed without saying a word. He wanted to draw up his knees to his chest and just melt into the mattress. Just go away.

"Look, if there is something I'm doing that's driving you up a wall. Or even a lot of things. You've gotta tell me. I can't read minds, you know?"

Yes. There is the fact that I'm don't think I could come out to you unless I were to come on to you. There is the fact that you are impossibly sexy. There is the fact that I will be hiding from you in my own room my entire freshman year, and frankly, I have other things to worry about.

Mohinder wasn't entirely sure where that train of thought came from. He had very real issues with this kid. "I just... I feel like it's obvious this isn't going to work out."

"What isn't?"

"Us."

"Us?" Ugh. That look of confusion that reminded Mohinder why he could never be himself in front of him.

"The point is..." Mohinder drew a deep breath. "I think I'm going to request a move."

"Wha-a-a-t?" The sheer shock in Matt's voice threw him. "Without even talking to me about your problems? What the hell kind of guy are you? First of all, you think you're gonna get anyone better than me?"

"Aren't we confident," remarked Mohinder, turning up his nose.

"No! I know I'm a dumbass and a slob. It's just that... well, how do I say this?" His face was going red. "A lot of the guys on campus? Drink. Have sex right in front of you. Listen to loud music, which I know you hate."

"How did you--"

"You sort of glanced at my headphones the first day you moved in." Come to think of it, Mohinder realized, that'd been the first and last time he'd been annoyed by Matt's music. But to think he'd stopped specifically because of one glance...! Who would have thought he'd be that perceptive, let alone that considerate? "Anyway, the point is, there are plenty of geeky science nerds like you out there, sure. But you don't have any guarantee you're not gonna get someone even more obnoxious than I am. With me, you've got a dumbass, sure, but at least I'm a dumbass who cares what his roommate thinks and will go out of his way to make you feel comfortable."

Mohinder sighed. For the first time, he actually felt kind of close to Matt. It was a good start. "Thank you," he said. "I appreciate that."

"So you won't leave?" Mohinder corrected his analogy-- he wasn't a human child. He was a puppy. Desperate for affection, afraid to be abandoned.

"Not... yet," he admitted.

"Great!" Matt was tickled pink. Mohinder half-expected him to roll onto his back and demand to be scratched on the belly.

"But may I ask you something?"

"Anything." Just like that, he was serious again.

"Why do you read out loud like that?"

"Oh. Heh." He scratched his head nervously. "I'm kinda dyslexic. Sometimes I have trouble getting the words to stay in place. So that helps. Sometimes."

Mohinder's eyes widened. He felt like such an insensitive idiot. How he wished he hadn't said a word.

"Oh, but don't worry about it!" Matt said, as though anticipating his regret. "I mean, you're a person, too, right? Annoying is annoying. I will make an effort to keep it down. Promise."

Mohinder nodded. "Is there..." he started.

Matt tilted his head curiously.

"Is there anything I do that annoys you?"

Matt laughed. "Well. Maybe you could start talking to me? I mean, we don't have to be best friends, but a good morning or good night would kind of be nice once in a while."

For what was perhaps the first time since they'd met, Mohinder couldn't help but smile at him. "I think I can handle that," he said.

---

Things got significantly better after that. Mohinder flew into a rage when he saw tissues lying on the ground next to the overflowing garbage, and Matt got pissed when Mohinder saw he was in a foul mood and decided to let him be rather than asking him what was wrong, but at least this time the fights were out loud and right up front instead of being bottled up for days. And even when they weren't fighting, they were talking, and that was worth all the fights in the world.

They became each other's default dinnertime companion. Matt would go on about how badly he wanted to be a cop someday. He'd ask Mohinder a million questions about pre-med, although he seemed to be kind of disappointed when he discovered he was still on the cellular level and thus was not dissecting dead bodies yet. One late night during midterms, Mohinder offered to read a particularly vexing textbook to Matt, and he aced his exam the next day. And complimented Mohinder's accent. Mohinder had no idea what he was talking about-- it was Matt who had the accent. They laughed about it. It was actually almost a friendship.

Then something happened that changed everything.

A girl named Janice had been coming onto Matt something fierce. She was in his psychology class, and she'd tried several times to get up to his room. Matt, being the stickler for the rules that he was, had told her repeatedly that he was going to respect the dormwide ban on non-studying visits from members of the opposite sex after seven o'clock-- a rule that everyone else trampled on mercilessly. (Like the security guard had any way of knowing if you were really studying!) But all of this happened in hushed tones or in class, and Mohinder knew none of it.

One night, as Mohinder was leaving the building to go get a snack, he overheard her talking with the security guard.

"Please, it's only nine! There's no reason he has to sign me in. Look at your logs. Matt Parkman. P-a-r-k..."

"I can sign her in," volunteered Mohinder. "Matt's my roommate."

She turned on him like he had just floated down from heaven. "Hey, thanks! You're the best." He filled out the form and went on his way, figuring he'd just saved Matt a trip downstairs to vouch for her.

He was wrong. Matt was furious when he returned. Mohinder took one look at his scowl and dropped the grocery bags full of munchies. A Cracker Jack sailor peeked innocently up from his toppled box.

"You let her in, didn't you?" Matt said. His face was red, his lips tight with rage. He didn't wait for a reply. "You did, didn't you?" he demanded as he slammed Mohinder up against the wall, fists at his shoulders.

"Matt, what the... what the hell!?" Mohinder tried to shake free, but Matt was too livid, too strong. "Yes, I let her in-- what the hell are you so mad about?"

"I've been telling her and telling her," he seethed, "that you and I follow the rules. And you have to go and blow it!" He let go and paced to the center of the room, leaving Mohinder gasping for breath against the wall.

"Wait a moment," he said between panicked wheezes, "you're upset because I broke the rules? I know you're an aspiring policeman, but don't you think that's a little excessive?"

"Of course it's not about the rules!" Matt roared. "It's about having a decent excuse!"

"An excuse?"

"For keeping her away! Jesus, Mohinder, are you blind in one eye and stupid in the other? Those rules don't apply to me!"

This was the polar opposite of everything Matt had ever said to him. Mohinder sat down on his bed, massaging his poor bruised shoulder with his other hand. "I don't know what you're on about," he complained, "but I'm tempted to ask who you are and what you've done with my roommate."

"Aw, jeez--" Matt did a certain thing with his hand behind his head when he was frustrated, and Mohinder always found it ridiculously adorable. He tried not to look. "I thought-- no, never mind that. I just hoped by now you'd figured it out and chose not to say anything. Like you usually do. I guess I should have come right out and told you."

"Not all of us have your detective skills," Mohinder remarked, relieved that Matt's anger seemed to have dissolved. "So what is it you should have told me?"

Matt looked out the window. He looked at the floor. He looked at Mohinder briefly and then looked away.

Mohinder watched this, fascinated. This was the same guy who'd told him to say whatever was on his mind? Seriously? It was like they'd switched bodies all of a sudden. Matt (Mohinder tried not to think about the concept of Matt being in his body) was over here, trying to get him to open up. And Mohinder (ditto for the opposite situation) was over there, pacing by the window, stony-faced and frustrated.

Finally, Matt sat down. "OK. I think this is the easiest way to do this," he said. "Um, the rules say you don't have girls up to your room at night unless you're studying, right?"

"Right." Mohinder nodded.

"So these rules. They don't apply to me." Matt waited and watched his face.

Dawn didn't seem to break. "Because?" Mohinder prompted him.

"Because, I'm not going to have a girl in my room if it's not to study."

"Why--"

And then Mohinder stopped talking and gaped.

"Now you might want to see about moving, I guess," Matt muttered, turning away.

The words fell out of his mouth and clattered loudly onto the floor. "You're gay?"

"Thanks, you want to tell the whole floor?" Matt snapped. "Yeah. I'm gay. Thanks for finally picking up on it."

"And you didn't tell me this why?"

"I don't tell anybody this!" he hissed. "It's kind of hard for me to talk about, in case you hadn't noticed."

Mohinder wasn't sure whether to sing or scream. This was beyond unexpected. He supposed he should be happy. After all, it was one more thing they had in common. But he was suddenly consumed by dread. Could he keep this up? Living with a guy he knew could (if only in his feverish dreams) potentially become more than a friend to him? How could he keep control of himself if he woke up and saw that lazy grin in the bed across the way? And how could he survive knowing that if he were to wander into that bed, he'd be met not with the old familiar revulsion but with simple rejection?

No. It was hopeless.

"I see," he said stiffly. "Thank you for telling me the truth."

"You're OK with it?" Matt said hopefully.

"Yes, of course," Mohinder lied. "Don't worry about it."

"Don't let that crazy girl in here again," Matt pleaded, grinning.

"I won't. I promise." Mohinder forced a smile onto his face. But his mind was busy making plans. It was clear what he had to do.

---

A half-week later, Matt came home from classes to find Mohinder gone. All of his things had vanished. Except for a note on the ugly, bare striped mattress, it was as if he'd never been there.

Matt wandered over to pick it up. There was one line scrawled on the torn-out sheet of notebook paper:

It's not what you think.

It wasn't even signed.

"Like hell it's not," Matt said, tears prickling his eyes. He kicked at the mattress, and it jumped like a punching bag. Without saying a word! Without a single clue! Without a goodbye!

Matt looked for him. The directory said he'd moved off campus and hadn't registered a forwarding address. Student Affairs wouldn't give him a phone number. He didn't answer his e-mails. Matt had to resign himself to the sad truth: Mohinder didn't want to be found. Whatever tenuous friendship they'd built together was over. Just a passing dream. The first guy Matt had ever felt really understood him, liked him for who and what he was, accepted him and was willing to work with him to build trust and friendship-- he'd turned out to be just another bigoted asshole like all the others. Another guy who wasn't even willing to give it a chance.

And yet Matt couldn't hate him. He'd liked him too much. Mohinder had been great fun, a perfect guy to spend an evening with. A low-stress, low-stakes partner in crime who was equally comfortable discussing politics and watching football. His company had been a soothing counterpoint to the stressful world of freshman year. And now Matt was spending his days without that relief.

They were hell, those days. Mornings without the smell of tea. Dinnertime alone, or worse, with acquaintances he didn't much care about. Evenings and late, lonely nights without anyone to talk to. And through it all, the blank walls and empty mattress, laughing at him. Reminding him of what and whom he'd lost.

It was almost too much. No, scratch that, it was too much. Matt would be damned if he'd ever come out to anyone ever again. The closet was looking more and more comfortable by the day. Hell, he was even considering calling up Janice.

Then there was a knock on his door.

"Mohinder," Matt said blankly as the face in the hallway was illuminated by the room's light.

"Hi," Mohinder said blankly.

"C-- come on in," Matt said. He felt a little like he was in a dream.

Mohinder walked into the room, looked around. "It's so empty," he commented.

"I thought about putting up some posters up, but they felt..." like they weren't you. "...kinda wrong, you know?"

"I just figured that by now you'd be using my bed as a desk, or laundry basket, or trash can, or something." Mohinder tried to smile, but even Matt could see it was futile.

"Hey, you, uh, trained me well," Matt was at such a loss. His emotions were churning so hard, he was numb just out of survival instinct. "Not to toss stuff on your side."

Mohinder nodded. They stood there, looking at the garish stripes and white walls.

"Matt," Mohinder began, "I came here to explain."

"What's there to explain?" Matt tried to stay casual. "You obviously couldn't handle it. Your loss, man. Did you get a geeky pre-med roommate just like you? The kind you wanted in the beginning? Or did you score a single or something?"

"I told you it wasn't that."

His anger rushed to take command. "No, you didn't tell me. You wrote it down." Matt faced him, jabbed a finger into the center of his chest with each word. "I should have known you'd be too chickenshit to even say how you really felt out loud."

"I left because if I had told you the truth, you would have asked me to leave, and I didn't have a place to go!" Mohinder said, the shame and remorse turning his voice to a keen cry.

"You left so you could be free to tell me the real reason you left? Do me a favor, Mohinder. Never commit a crime. Because your alibis SUCK." He turned away, unable to face those pleading eyes. "Well, now you have a place to go, so go on, say what you came here to say. Tell me I'm a freak of nature and you left because you were afraid I'd sodomize you in your sleep and we'd fall into the lake of fire together. It's nothing I haven't heard before. Go on."

"I left because I'm in love with you."

Matt stopped.

As in stopped moving. As in stopped breathing. As in, his heart stopped pumping blood. He could have been declared clinically dead at that moment.

Then everything started up again, in double time, and he was flushed, feverish, hyperventilating. "You WHAT?" He turned to face him. He couldn't not.

Tears were welling up in Mohinder's eyes. "I left because I fell in love with you the moment I met you," he said, a pleading ache in his voice. His eyes held Matt's hypnotically with their wavering wetness. "It was so much easier to live with you if I thought you were straight, because then anything I felt would never happen and I could just be another poor sap suffering through an unrequited love," he said. "But I couldn't handle it knowing that you could care for me but just didn't."

The words were pouring out instead of the tears, which stayed glassy and contained in his eyes. "Homophobia can be such a convenient excuse," he said, spreading out the fingers of his hands and staring at them as though they contained the words he was desperately searching for. "It's so much easier to just fool yourself into thinking everyone around you would be disgusted if they knew. That way, you can stay unhurt. You never have to put yourself out there, allow someone to get to know you. I could deal with being rejected because I was a man," he said. "I couldn't deal with being rejected because I was me."

Matt was shaking his head back and forth. His hand was at his mouth as though holding words behind his lips to keep them from slipping out. Mohinder was silent, watching him, waiting.

Then one of the corners of Matt's mouth turned upward. And he snickered.

Inch by inch, the smile widened. And still shaking his head back and forth, he let his head fall forward, gazed down at his shoes, chuckling. "Oh, man," he said, and as he went on his voice crescendoed to a full-throated roar. "Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man. You know what? I think I might have done the same thing. Jesus. This is why you shouldn't do stuff without talking, you big idiot!!" His head flew back upward, and his eyes locked with Mohinder's. "I'm crazy about you! Have been for weeks!" He laughed loudly. "Why do you think I didn't tell you until I had to? I've been terrified!"

Mohinder was still looking at him like he hadn't said a single word. His face didn't register any change.

"Mohinder. Mo. Dude. You in there?" Matt came over and took his hands. The warmth was like a jolt of electricity. Mohinder started; he opened his mouth as though to speak, then shut it again; the tears welling in his eyes began to snake down his cheeks. He was the picture of confusion, all round lips and round eyes.

Finally his voice began to work again. "Y-- you--" He looked around the room, as though for hidden cameras or some other indication that this was all a joke. "Matt, I--"

"Me too," said Matt. This time his smile was gentle.

"I'm not going to move back in," Mohinder said abruptly.

"What?!"

"I'm an old-fashioned gentleman. I'd prefer to take things slow." He turned up his nose again in that haughty way. But there was laughter in his eyes.

"OK, so I'll take you out to dinner, then? Ask your mom if I can give you my pin?" Matt's lips quirked.

"Not quite that slow," Mohinder smiled, his first genuine smile of the night. Matt wiped it away again, with a long, slow, measured kiss that melted on his lips like warm chocolate. When he pulled away, Mohinder staggered a little bit.

"Ya know," Matt said, his arms going around Mohinder's waist to steady him, "even if you're not moving back in, Student Affairs told me that mattress is staying empty until the end of the semester."

"I have no desire to use that mattress," Mohinder said slyly.

"No," whispered his once and future roommate, kissing him gently. "We'll use mine."