[fanfic] Legacies, Chapter 4 (PG-13)
Feb. 7th, 2008 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiptoe39Title: Legacies
Chapter: 4 (of 8)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tiptoe39
Characters/Pairings: Matt/Mohinder; Maya; Elle
Rating: The fic as a whole is rated R; this chapter is rated PG-13 for language and innuendo
Warnings: Spoilers for all of Season 2 so far; slash. (The slash is integral to the plot, but it is not the plot itself.)
Summary: We are given legacies by those who leave us, but also by those who stay by our side.
Previous chapters: Prologue | One | Two | Three
Matt had a hard day that day. Well, the best days were hard. That was life as a cop, and it was the life he chose. He didn't choose, however, to hear Andrews recounting every noise the stripper had made in the back alley last night after the show. Or to hear Fuller thinking Ugh, slacker every time he walked by Matt's desk. Nor did he choose to have his car get a flat. Or to spill coffee on his freshly laundered shirt.
The worst part of all of this was, he wasn't sure what he had to come home to. He'd just been getting used to having a friend there to talk to, and then this thing had had to crop up and mess everything up. Last night was an endless loop playing in his head. What Mohinder had said about not being a family man hurt worst of all. He'd really thought they had their priorities in the right place. They were bringing up Molly together, and he figured that made them almost family. He'd pinned his hopes, his sanity on it. But he was still just a roommate, and now he was a roommate who had done something supremely stupid, to boot. And Mohinder didn't feel a thing for him. Not that he knew what he expected Mohinder to feel. Nor did he really know, at this point, what he felt for Mohinder. He just knew that whatever it was, it was making his life just plain suck.
So it was with some trepidation that he trudged up the stairs that night. Did he even want to go home? It was so late that he would end up just peeking at Molly from the crack in her bedroom door. Then there'd probably be some words, cursory and halfhearted, with Mohinder, and then bed. Hardly worth the price of admission. But the coffee stain would set if he didn't wash the shirt, and police uniforms were expensive when you had to replace them. So up the stairs he went.
He stopped when the whisper of thought reached him. It was translating rapidly from a blur of unintelligible Spanish to English, then from English back to Spanish again. It took him a moment to realize that he was hearing, through one mind, both sides of a conversation.
Como se dice... You were right. He asked, like you said he would.
My mistake... I was.... walking around with... file. Don't worry, chiquita. You told him the right story?
I got... a little upset.
...You didn't.
A flash of irritation just short of anger made Matt's lip curl. He stood outside the apartment door and listened.
Mohinder had dropped the subject of Maya's visit to the Company after her outburst. He knew one thing: whatever she'd been doing there was disturbing her, and he'd just as soon not punch her buttons. Not to mention that he didn't trust himself right now to hit the right ones.
He'd put a kettle on and left her in the kitchen to get herself settled as he tucked Molly into bed. When he emerged, he heard her voice. It took him a moment to realize she was on the phone.
"No," she was saying, "I didn't. But I don't know what I said."
She was talking in English. He felt a little lift of hope. Perhaps she'd found a friend at work. It was just what she needed.
"Yes, I will. I... have to go now." She looked up, saw him there. For a split second, a ghost of panic fluttered over her face. But then she gave a pleasant smile and snapped her phone shut, and he wondered if he'd just imagined it.
"I was thinking that I wish you could have met my brother, Doctor," she said a few minutes later, as she accepted a freshly brewed cup of tea. “I know he would have liked to meet you.”
“Alejandro, was that his name? Yes, from what you tell me he cared about you quite a bit.”
“Alejandro was my salvation,” she said soberly, sniffing the steam. “He helped me control my power before I knew how to do so myself. I look back now and think I was so foolish, that I could have thought my guardian angel fell from the sky, when he was truly with me all the time. From the start I did nothing but betray Alejandro, and yet I feel he would not blame me. He was so very forgiving and good to me.”
Her eyes were sad, and Mohinder felt a sting of pity. He thought back to the other fool who’d traveled across the country in a small car with a stranger who was not what he appeared. He wished he’d had someone there talking sense to him at that point, too. Even if he might not have listened.
It occurred to him that Matt might have been the ideal voice of sense. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. It had nothing to do with Matt’s unwavering sense of justice or his firm resolve. It was just that having a mind-reader might have been helpful in discerning Sylar’s true identity and purpose. That was all. Anyway, what did it matter? It was long gone now. That chance had passed.
“Your brother survived several manifestations of your ability,” Mohinder murmured. “You told me he was killed by Sylar, correct?” Maya nodded. “And you say he never suffered under the effects of the pheromone you emitted. His eyes never turned black, for example.”
“No, that’s not true,” Maya said. “Not much.”
“What do you mean, not much?” He leaned forward, interested.
“When it... would happen,” she explained reluctantly, shifting the hot mug between her two hands, “Alejandro would find me, and when... when he would touch my hands, his eyes became dark like mine. But he could breathe, and then I could breathe again. And then our eyes would clear... and then everyone was all right.”
“That’s odd.” Mohinder’s brow furrowed, and he took a long sip of his drink. “So he was able to neutralize the effect of the pheromone?”
Maya took a moment to translate the sentence in her mind, and when she had, she was shocked. “You mean my brother was... like me?”
“No, on second thought, that doesn’t work out,” he scowled. “Because you were able to control yourself after some practice, and Molly and I both survived long after your brother was gone. So whatever pheromone you were emitting, you also were able to emit the antidote.”
She looked disgusted. “I really don’t like to talk about this.”
He reached across the table, clasped one of her hands in a gesture of supplication. “I’m sorry. May I just ask one more question? And then I promise I will leave off for the evening. I promise.”
Her face softened. “Yes, of course.” She drew the mug to her lips with her free hand and turned her palm to clutch his. “I will try to answer.”
“Did anyone ever survive?”
“What?”
Mohinder knew he was being imprudent, but something about this piqued his interest. “Was there anyone, besides your brother, who ever survived one of your...” He waved his hand. “If he wasn’t there. Before you learned to control it.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Once.”
“Just once?”
“Everyone else died,” she said, looking down. “But he did not. He was just one man. Stronger than the others, perhaps. He looked like all the others. But he just... did not die. He kept breathing and moving... If the boat had not been there, we might...”
The teacup rattled in her hand, and they realized at the same time that she was shaking.
“I’m sorry,” Mohinder said quickly. “Finish your tea. I won’t ask you anything else.”
Feeling horribly guilty, he withdrew his hand. Maya looked away, a blush creeping up her neck beneath her tanned skin. Her face was serious. “Doctor?”
“Yes?”
Her eyes fluttered upward to catch his. “Do you think Alejandro would forgive me?”
The light caught and shimmered in the dark bulbs of her eyes. He smiled softly, feeling he was in the presence of a kindred spirit. “I often wonder if my sister would have forgiven me for living, although she died,” he said. “The tragedy of premature death is that we seldom know what they would have bequeathed to us had they known. In the end, the legacies of our brothers and sisters are not offered by them but chosen by us. Much like destiny.”
“Doctor Suresh, you are like a poet,” she said in a tone of awe.
“Oh...” He realized he’d been rambling. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” she replied. “It was beautiful.”
“Well. Thank you, I suppose.”
At this point, Matt crashed through the doorway and stomped to his room without even saying hello. A moment later, he was on his way out again, wearing a different shirt, the stained one folded under one arm, the box of detergent under the other. He was frowning.
After Maya had wisely taken Matt's sudden, grumpy appearance to be the get-the-hell-out it probably was, Mohinder sat at the table for a long time, sipping tea and thinking. There'd been a hell of a lot of information thrown his way today. Elle's foolishness, Maya's frighteningly perceptive questions... and now he was struck by a strange nostalgia. He found himself wishing Shanti had lived, had grown up. What advice might a sister have given him in this situation? He could use one.
She would have been a few years older than him. Approaching forty, at this point. He tried to imagine her, married, a few children, skinny like everyone in their family was, with a brilliant, beaming smile. Perhaps she was married to an American and lived here. Mohinder imagined he could walk to her house from here. He imagined she'd make chai and they'd sit up until long hours discussing everything from politics to personal troubles. He imagined she would be the one person he could tell about what had happened with Matt.
Then, unexpectedly, his dream sister gave him a pointed look. "Was it a nice kiss?"
He spit out his tea in both the reality and the dream. "I don't know! What does it matter?"
"Well, that is usually one of the criteria in deciding whether to move forward," she shrugged.
Mohinder frowned. His imagination was not supposed to tell him things he didn't want to hear. Even his mind was persecuting him. "Are you suggesting that I actually pursue a relationship with that man? With a man? That in itself is patently absurd!"
"Mohinder." She flipped the "r" still. In his dream world, she had not had the overseas education that allowed him to float in and out of Indian pronunciation patterns. It was deeply ingrained in her. She was a piece of home. "You are the one who just said that, not I."
"I am not a homosexual!" he burst out.
"And before I had Chandra, I was not a mother," she said, her eyes darting to the picture of her eldest son on the countertop. "We are the sum of our experiences, little brother. They define us; we do not define them."
Mohinder sighed. He was being foolish. Was he so bigoted that he had to imagine a dead sister back to life in order to find an environment in which he could even say those words? No. It wasn't that he found it morally wrong. He was well aware that there was a place in nature for homosexuality as there was for almost every other incongruity that marked a species. But it was the sort of thing that he didn't have time for. His life was about efficiencies, statistics, probable outcomes, and he was aware enough of the world's prejudices to know to avoid most of the unsuccessful ones. He did not bother with buying lottery tickets, and he did not want to bother with worrying about his sexual identity. Some chances were just not worth taking.
"It's not even a question of whether I am or not, at this point," he said despondently. "It's a matter of having to live with this man, day in and day out, and know that something happened between us that is so far beyond the bounds of propriety that I don't even know whether to talk about it."
"Always talk, Mohinder," she said, her lean face bright. "You'll never learn anything if you don't at least talk about it. You might learn something you don't want to know, but at least you won't be ignorant anymore. Isn't that the way of a true scientist? To always ask the hard questions and follow the evidence, no matter where it leads?"
"Sounds more like the way of a true detective," he answered.
"It's both," Shanti said. "Do you suppose that is a sign?"
Mohinder appeared in Matt's doorway a few minutes after he'd returned from the laundry room. "So, we should talk," he said.
Matt looked up. He was seated on the bed, folding his newly washed shirt. At Mohinder's appearance, though, the garment fluttered to the floor, forgotten. "We should?" Matt said, blinking.
"I think so, yes."
"Sit down." Matt scooted to the side. Mohinder looked suspiciously at the space he'd created. Side by side on his bed, having that conversation? But what other choice did he have? The room was like a prison cell. Bed, chest of drawers, mirror, small window too high up to look out from.
He came in out of the hall. The flood of light behind him waned and died as he shut the door. He sat down. They didn't look at each other.
"So."
"So."
In this context, Mohinder thought, the word didn't mean so. It meant you talk first.
"So what do we do now?" he finally asked.
"What do you think?" shrugged Matt. He was staring straight ahead, eyes dissecting a crack in the wall. Mohinder could tell this only out of the corner of his eye, as he was staring at the same crack. It was a wonder it didn't crumble.
"I think... we should consider our options." The minute he said, it, he regretted it. He didn't want to consider all of them. "In my view, our best possible outcome is if we are somehow able to maintain the status quo, keep living here just as we have with no ch--"
By the word just he was aware of a hand on his chin. By with he knew his face was being tilted upwards. And change was choked off by Matt's mouth on his. It was a brief, hot, possessive kiss. Mohinder's brain melted a little.
"Why did you do that?" he demanded once his mouth was his own again. To his chagrin, he couldn't tear his eyes off Matt's face.
"I wanted to."
"You wanted to? What about me?"
"Sorry." He actually looked sheepish. "I just... you didn't want to?"
"No! I mean, I don't know." He ran his fingers through his hair, looked down at his shoes before his eyes were drawn almost magnetically back to Matt's. The expression on his face was so unassuming, so... innocently confused. It made him ache a little and want to smile despite himself.
"I guess I'm, uh, disappointed a little to hear that," Matt said with a sigh. "I mean, you can say that you wish nothing had happened, but the fact is, I kissed you. We kissed. Twice, now," he added with a stifled chuckle. "That's not nothing."
"No," agreed Mohinder soberly, "it's not." Their eyes still would not let go. When Mohinder became aware of their helplessness, his toes curled slightly inside his shoes.
"That's what I thought. And I kept trying to remember what it felt like, and I just... I had to remember." Matt's face was red. "Sorry if it was-- not what you wanted." If it hadn't been for the eye contact, maybe he would have stopped there. Changed the subject. Walked away. Any of the panicky things those eyes seemed to be screaming for him to do. But they were locked into the gaze, and that meant no escape. "B... but I keep thinking it is. What you want. I keep getting that feeling." He leaned forward. Just a hair. Just enough to make Mohinder's breath catch. "Is it?"
Mohinder cursed himself before he drew the breath, cursed himself as he said the words, cursed himself as he heard them fade into silence. "Yes," he whispered. "I want it very much. And that is terrifying."
His stomach was turning, but his eyelids were drooping, and Matt's hand was on his face again. They both leaned in this time, and the kiss was spine-curlingly good, strong and fierce and needy. Mohinder groaned and pushed himself closer. Matt tangled the fingers of one hand in his hair, slipping the other around his waist. He could hear the disjointed babble of Mohinder's mind.
So strong... hot...
shouldn't want...
so wrong....
Oh God, oh no...
I can't...
have to...
let go...
And then all at once, like springs that had been pulled to their limits, they snapped back, stared at each other. Then Matt's gaze flickered downward, and Mohinder gulped at the recognition of what he must be looking at.
"I'm sorry," he began to say. Matt just kept staring, as though he'd just realized the natural next step of the path he'd been pursuing. It seemed to sober him somewhat. Maybe it'd be enough to knock some sense into him? Sense that Mohinder himself seemed to be sadly lacking, as he could only look at Matt's downcast eyes and trembling lips and remember how that kiss had melted on his mouth like hot brown sugar and cinnamon?
Then Matt gave a shaky little laugh. He lifted a hand to his mouth, chortled a little. Slapped his forehead against his palm. Leaned back, looked up at the ceiling. His mouth spread into a wide grin, and he kept letting out odd, shaky chuckles. "Shit!" he exclaimed. "Oh, wow. Oh, my God, unbelievable."
Mohinder didn't know what was so funny. He was a little afraid to ask. Part of him was still working through the fact that Matt had kissed him and he'd actually kissed back. He hadn't even arrived at the current moment.
Matt's hands flew into the air, making wild sweeps. "Oh, my God!" he said, still radiating whatever emotion it was he seemed saturated with. "Oh, my God, Mohinder! I'm.... Do... Do you know what this is?"
Not a clue, Mohinder thought dully. Not even the beginning of a clue.
"I was jealous!" Matt exclaimed. "She's here all the time and she's kind of attractive, and it was annoying the hell out of me. And I just figured it out. I was jealous! Doesn't that just blow your mind?"
"I... don't understand," Mohinder said slowly. His hands were white and trembling on the edge of the bed.
"OK, here's the thing." Matt's eyes were dancing. "I like you."
Mohinder just blinked.
"Like, as in, I really like you," Matt went on. "I want... I want to take you out on a date. I want to kiss you. I want to hold your hand in the movie theater." His words were effervescent. He was glowing. "I want that girl sleeping in the other room to be our daughter. I want to see you there in the morning when she's getting ready for school. I want..." His voice dropped. "I want to fall in love with you. I even kind of want to have sex with you, even though I have no idea what that's going to be like. But here's the thing-- it doesn't matter, because I want it. With you. I want you. I like you. God, that just about blows my mind."
Mohinder stared at him in disbelief. How was it possible that he could find that concept such a simple one? Did he really think this was going to be all puppies and rainbows? He was giddy, like a ten-year-old with his first crush. No thought, no worries about the implications of it all. The roommate part. The man part. The daughter part. The superhuman powers part. The secret operative of an amoral, extralegal Company part. None of that seemed to register with him.
But wait, it got worse. All of that stuff was slowly losing its potency with Mohinder, too. He found himself all too quickly able to dismiss each piece of it. Things were actually starting to look as absurdly simple as Matt seemed to think they were.
He did the only thing he could think to do. He leaned forward into Matt's arms.
He grabbed at his shirt with wildly shaking fists, pulled Matt's ear down to nearly meet his lips. "I'm frightened," he whispered, letting his chin land on that warm, broad shoulder. "This is so frightening. I'm so frightened."
Like heavy drapes closing, the big arms wrapped around him. He was in a cocoon of warmth, clinging to him, trembling. He felt lips brush his cheek, his hairline. "Me too," Matt said in a low, ardent smoke trail of a tone. "Me too. I'm scared to death. I haven't felt anything like this in years." The hands were flat and warm at the small of Mohinder's back. "Look, whatever happens, I'll be here, OK? I promise you. I'll be here."
And somehow that was all the comfort Mohinder could possibly ask for.
Next: Strange days and stranger alliances
Chapter: 4 (of 8)
Author:
tiptoe39Characters/Pairings: Matt/Mohinder; Maya; Elle
Rating: The fic as a whole is rated R; this chapter is rated PG-13 for language and innuendo
Warnings: Spoilers for all of Season 2 so far; slash. (The slash is integral to the plot, but it is not the plot itself.)
Summary: We are given legacies by those who leave us, but also by those who stay by our side.
Previous chapters: Prologue | One | Two | Three
Matt had a hard day that day. Well, the best days were hard. That was life as a cop, and it was the life he chose. He didn't choose, however, to hear Andrews recounting every noise the stripper had made in the back alley last night after the show. Or to hear Fuller thinking Ugh, slacker every time he walked by Matt's desk. Nor did he choose to have his car get a flat. Or to spill coffee on his freshly laundered shirt.
The worst part of all of this was, he wasn't sure what he had to come home to. He'd just been getting used to having a friend there to talk to, and then this thing had had to crop up and mess everything up. Last night was an endless loop playing in his head. What Mohinder had said about not being a family man hurt worst of all. He'd really thought they had their priorities in the right place. They were bringing up Molly together, and he figured that made them almost family. He'd pinned his hopes, his sanity on it. But he was still just a roommate, and now he was a roommate who had done something supremely stupid, to boot. And Mohinder didn't feel a thing for him. Not that he knew what he expected Mohinder to feel. Nor did he really know, at this point, what he felt for Mohinder. He just knew that whatever it was, it was making his life just plain suck.
So it was with some trepidation that he trudged up the stairs that night. Did he even want to go home? It was so late that he would end up just peeking at Molly from the crack in her bedroom door. Then there'd probably be some words, cursory and halfhearted, with Mohinder, and then bed. Hardly worth the price of admission. But the coffee stain would set if he didn't wash the shirt, and police uniforms were expensive when you had to replace them. So up the stairs he went.
He stopped when the whisper of thought reached him. It was translating rapidly from a blur of unintelligible Spanish to English, then from English back to Spanish again. It took him a moment to realize that he was hearing, through one mind, both sides of a conversation.
Como se dice... You were right. He asked, like you said he would.
My mistake... I was.... walking around with... file. Don't worry, chiquita. You told him the right story?
I got... a little upset.
...You didn't.
A flash of irritation just short of anger made Matt's lip curl. He stood outside the apartment door and listened.
Mohinder had dropped the subject of Maya's visit to the Company after her outburst. He knew one thing: whatever she'd been doing there was disturbing her, and he'd just as soon not punch her buttons. Not to mention that he didn't trust himself right now to hit the right ones.
He'd put a kettle on and left her in the kitchen to get herself settled as he tucked Molly into bed. When he emerged, he heard her voice. It took him a moment to realize she was on the phone.
"No," she was saying, "I didn't. But I don't know what I said."
She was talking in English. He felt a little lift of hope. Perhaps she'd found a friend at work. It was just what she needed.
"Yes, I will. I... have to go now." She looked up, saw him there. For a split second, a ghost of panic fluttered over her face. But then she gave a pleasant smile and snapped her phone shut, and he wondered if he'd just imagined it.
"I was thinking that I wish you could have met my brother, Doctor," she said a few minutes later, as she accepted a freshly brewed cup of tea. “I know he would have liked to meet you.”
“Alejandro, was that his name? Yes, from what you tell me he cared about you quite a bit.”
“Alejandro was my salvation,” she said soberly, sniffing the steam. “He helped me control my power before I knew how to do so myself. I look back now and think I was so foolish, that I could have thought my guardian angel fell from the sky, when he was truly with me all the time. From the start I did nothing but betray Alejandro, and yet I feel he would not blame me. He was so very forgiving and good to me.”
Her eyes were sad, and Mohinder felt a sting of pity. He thought back to the other fool who’d traveled across the country in a small car with a stranger who was not what he appeared. He wished he’d had someone there talking sense to him at that point, too. Even if he might not have listened.
It occurred to him that Matt might have been the ideal voice of sense. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. It had nothing to do with Matt’s unwavering sense of justice or his firm resolve. It was just that having a mind-reader might have been helpful in discerning Sylar’s true identity and purpose. That was all. Anyway, what did it matter? It was long gone now. That chance had passed.
“Your brother survived several manifestations of your ability,” Mohinder murmured. “You told me he was killed by Sylar, correct?” Maya nodded. “And you say he never suffered under the effects of the pheromone you emitted. His eyes never turned black, for example.”
“No, that’s not true,” Maya said. “Not much.”
“What do you mean, not much?” He leaned forward, interested.
“When it... would happen,” she explained reluctantly, shifting the hot mug between her two hands, “Alejandro would find me, and when... when he would touch my hands, his eyes became dark like mine. But he could breathe, and then I could breathe again. And then our eyes would clear... and then everyone was all right.”
“That’s odd.” Mohinder’s brow furrowed, and he took a long sip of his drink. “So he was able to neutralize the effect of the pheromone?”
Maya took a moment to translate the sentence in her mind, and when she had, she was shocked. “You mean my brother was... like me?”
“No, on second thought, that doesn’t work out,” he scowled. “Because you were able to control yourself after some practice, and Molly and I both survived long after your brother was gone. So whatever pheromone you were emitting, you also were able to emit the antidote.”
She looked disgusted. “I really don’t like to talk about this.”
He reached across the table, clasped one of her hands in a gesture of supplication. “I’m sorry. May I just ask one more question? And then I promise I will leave off for the evening. I promise.”
Her face softened. “Yes, of course.” She drew the mug to her lips with her free hand and turned her palm to clutch his. “I will try to answer.”
“Did anyone ever survive?”
“What?”
Mohinder knew he was being imprudent, but something about this piqued his interest. “Was there anyone, besides your brother, who ever survived one of your...” He waved his hand. “If he wasn’t there. Before you learned to control it.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Once.”
“Just once?”
“Everyone else died,” she said, looking down. “But he did not. He was just one man. Stronger than the others, perhaps. He looked like all the others. But he just... did not die. He kept breathing and moving... If the boat had not been there, we might...”
The teacup rattled in her hand, and they realized at the same time that she was shaking.
“I’m sorry,” Mohinder said quickly. “Finish your tea. I won’t ask you anything else.”
Feeling horribly guilty, he withdrew his hand. Maya looked away, a blush creeping up her neck beneath her tanned skin. Her face was serious. “Doctor?”
“Yes?”
Her eyes fluttered upward to catch his. “Do you think Alejandro would forgive me?”
The light caught and shimmered in the dark bulbs of her eyes. He smiled softly, feeling he was in the presence of a kindred spirit. “I often wonder if my sister would have forgiven me for living, although she died,” he said. “The tragedy of premature death is that we seldom know what they would have bequeathed to us had they known. In the end, the legacies of our brothers and sisters are not offered by them but chosen by us. Much like destiny.”
“Doctor Suresh, you are like a poet,” she said in a tone of awe.
“Oh...” He realized he’d been rambling. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” she replied. “It was beautiful.”
“Well. Thank you, I suppose.”
At this point, Matt crashed through the doorway and stomped to his room without even saying hello. A moment later, he was on his way out again, wearing a different shirt, the stained one folded under one arm, the box of detergent under the other. He was frowning.
After Maya had wisely taken Matt's sudden, grumpy appearance to be the get-the-hell-out it probably was, Mohinder sat at the table for a long time, sipping tea and thinking. There'd been a hell of a lot of information thrown his way today. Elle's foolishness, Maya's frighteningly perceptive questions... and now he was struck by a strange nostalgia. He found himself wishing Shanti had lived, had grown up. What advice might a sister have given him in this situation? He could use one.
She would have been a few years older than him. Approaching forty, at this point. He tried to imagine her, married, a few children, skinny like everyone in their family was, with a brilliant, beaming smile. Perhaps she was married to an American and lived here. Mohinder imagined he could walk to her house from here. He imagined she'd make chai and they'd sit up until long hours discussing everything from politics to personal troubles. He imagined she would be the one person he could tell about what had happened with Matt.
Then, unexpectedly, his dream sister gave him a pointed look. "Was it a nice kiss?"
He spit out his tea in both the reality and the dream. "I don't know! What does it matter?"
"Well, that is usually one of the criteria in deciding whether to move forward," she shrugged.
Mohinder frowned. His imagination was not supposed to tell him things he didn't want to hear. Even his mind was persecuting him. "Are you suggesting that I actually pursue a relationship with that man? With a man? That in itself is patently absurd!"
"Mohinder." She flipped the "r" still. In his dream world, she had not had the overseas education that allowed him to float in and out of Indian pronunciation patterns. It was deeply ingrained in her. She was a piece of home. "You are the one who just said that, not I."
"I am not a homosexual!" he burst out.
"And before I had Chandra, I was not a mother," she said, her eyes darting to the picture of her eldest son on the countertop. "We are the sum of our experiences, little brother. They define us; we do not define them."
Mohinder sighed. He was being foolish. Was he so bigoted that he had to imagine a dead sister back to life in order to find an environment in which he could even say those words? No. It wasn't that he found it morally wrong. He was well aware that there was a place in nature for homosexuality as there was for almost every other incongruity that marked a species. But it was the sort of thing that he didn't have time for. His life was about efficiencies, statistics, probable outcomes, and he was aware enough of the world's prejudices to know to avoid most of the unsuccessful ones. He did not bother with buying lottery tickets, and he did not want to bother with worrying about his sexual identity. Some chances were just not worth taking.
"It's not even a question of whether I am or not, at this point," he said despondently. "It's a matter of having to live with this man, day in and day out, and know that something happened between us that is so far beyond the bounds of propriety that I don't even know whether to talk about it."
"Always talk, Mohinder," she said, her lean face bright. "You'll never learn anything if you don't at least talk about it. You might learn something you don't want to know, but at least you won't be ignorant anymore. Isn't that the way of a true scientist? To always ask the hard questions and follow the evidence, no matter where it leads?"
"Sounds more like the way of a true detective," he answered.
"It's both," Shanti said. "Do you suppose that is a sign?"
Mohinder appeared in Matt's doorway a few minutes after he'd returned from the laundry room. "So, we should talk," he said.
Matt looked up. He was seated on the bed, folding his newly washed shirt. At Mohinder's appearance, though, the garment fluttered to the floor, forgotten. "We should?" Matt said, blinking.
"I think so, yes."
"Sit down." Matt scooted to the side. Mohinder looked suspiciously at the space he'd created. Side by side on his bed, having that conversation? But what other choice did he have? The room was like a prison cell. Bed, chest of drawers, mirror, small window too high up to look out from.
He came in out of the hall. The flood of light behind him waned and died as he shut the door. He sat down. They didn't look at each other.
"So."
"So."
In this context, Mohinder thought, the word didn't mean so. It meant you talk first.
"So what do we do now?" he finally asked.
"What do you think?" shrugged Matt. He was staring straight ahead, eyes dissecting a crack in the wall. Mohinder could tell this only out of the corner of his eye, as he was staring at the same crack. It was a wonder it didn't crumble.
"I think... we should consider our options." The minute he said, it, he regretted it. He didn't want to consider all of them. "In my view, our best possible outcome is if we are somehow able to maintain the status quo, keep living here just as we have with no ch--"
By the word just he was aware of a hand on his chin. By with he knew his face was being tilted upwards. And change was choked off by Matt's mouth on his. It was a brief, hot, possessive kiss. Mohinder's brain melted a little.
"Why did you do that?" he demanded once his mouth was his own again. To his chagrin, he couldn't tear his eyes off Matt's face.
"I wanted to."
"You wanted to? What about me?"
"Sorry." He actually looked sheepish. "I just... you didn't want to?"
"No! I mean, I don't know." He ran his fingers through his hair, looked down at his shoes before his eyes were drawn almost magnetically back to Matt's. The expression on his face was so unassuming, so... innocently confused. It made him ache a little and want to smile despite himself.
"I guess I'm, uh, disappointed a little to hear that," Matt said with a sigh. "I mean, you can say that you wish nothing had happened, but the fact is, I kissed you. We kissed. Twice, now," he added with a stifled chuckle. "That's not nothing."
"No," agreed Mohinder soberly, "it's not." Their eyes still would not let go. When Mohinder became aware of their helplessness, his toes curled slightly inside his shoes.
"That's what I thought. And I kept trying to remember what it felt like, and I just... I had to remember." Matt's face was red. "Sorry if it was-- not what you wanted." If it hadn't been for the eye contact, maybe he would have stopped there. Changed the subject. Walked away. Any of the panicky things those eyes seemed to be screaming for him to do. But they were locked into the gaze, and that meant no escape. "B... but I keep thinking it is. What you want. I keep getting that feeling." He leaned forward. Just a hair. Just enough to make Mohinder's breath catch. "Is it?"
Mohinder cursed himself before he drew the breath, cursed himself as he said the words, cursed himself as he heard them fade into silence. "Yes," he whispered. "I want it very much. And that is terrifying."
His stomach was turning, but his eyelids were drooping, and Matt's hand was on his face again. They both leaned in this time, and the kiss was spine-curlingly good, strong and fierce and needy. Mohinder groaned and pushed himself closer. Matt tangled the fingers of one hand in his hair, slipping the other around his waist. He could hear the disjointed babble of Mohinder's mind.
So strong... hot...
shouldn't want...
so wrong....
Oh God, oh no...
I can't...
have to...
let go...
And then all at once, like springs that had been pulled to their limits, they snapped back, stared at each other. Then Matt's gaze flickered downward, and Mohinder gulped at the recognition of what he must be looking at.
"I'm sorry," he began to say. Matt just kept staring, as though he'd just realized the natural next step of the path he'd been pursuing. It seemed to sober him somewhat. Maybe it'd be enough to knock some sense into him? Sense that Mohinder himself seemed to be sadly lacking, as he could only look at Matt's downcast eyes and trembling lips and remember how that kiss had melted on his mouth like hot brown sugar and cinnamon?
Then Matt gave a shaky little laugh. He lifted a hand to his mouth, chortled a little. Slapped his forehead against his palm. Leaned back, looked up at the ceiling. His mouth spread into a wide grin, and he kept letting out odd, shaky chuckles. "Shit!" he exclaimed. "Oh, wow. Oh, my God, unbelievable."
Mohinder didn't know what was so funny. He was a little afraid to ask. Part of him was still working through the fact that Matt had kissed him and he'd actually kissed back. He hadn't even arrived at the current moment.
Matt's hands flew into the air, making wild sweeps. "Oh, my God!" he said, still radiating whatever emotion it was he seemed saturated with. "Oh, my God, Mohinder! I'm.... Do... Do you know what this is?"
Not a clue, Mohinder thought dully. Not even the beginning of a clue.
"I was jealous!" Matt exclaimed. "She's here all the time and she's kind of attractive, and it was annoying the hell out of me. And I just figured it out. I was jealous! Doesn't that just blow your mind?"
"I... don't understand," Mohinder said slowly. His hands were white and trembling on the edge of the bed.
"OK, here's the thing." Matt's eyes were dancing. "I like you."
Mohinder just blinked.
"Like, as in, I really like you," Matt went on. "I want... I want to take you out on a date. I want to kiss you. I want to hold your hand in the movie theater." His words were effervescent. He was glowing. "I want that girl sleeping in the other room to be our daughter. I want to see you there in the morning when she's getting ready for school. I want..." His voice dropped. "I want to fall in love with you. I even kind of want to have sex with you, even though I have no idea what that's going to be like. But here's the thing-- it doesn't matter, because I want it. With you. I want you. I like you. God, that just about blows my mind."
Mohinder stared at him in disbelief. How was it possible that he could find that concept such a simple one? Did he really think this was going to be all puppies and rainbows? He was giddy, like a ten-year-old with his first crush. No thought, no worries about the implications of it all. The roommate part. The man part. The daughter part. The superhuman powers part. The secret operative of an amoral, extralegal Company part. None of that seemed to register with him.
But wait, it got worse. All of that stuff was slowly losing its potency with Mohinder, too. He found himself all too quickly able to dismiss each piece of it. Things were actually starting to look as absurdly simple as Matt seemed to think they were.
He did the only thing he could think to do. He leaned forward into Matt's arms.
He grabbed at his shirt with wildly shaking fists, pulled Matt's ear down to nearly meet his lips. "I'm frightened," he whispered, letting his chin land on that warm, broad shoulder. "This is so frightening. I'm so frightened."
Like heavy drapes closing, the big arms wrapped around him. He was in a cocoon of warmth, clinging to him, trembling. He felt lips brush his cheek, his hairline. "Me too," Matt said in a low, ardent smoke trail of a tone. "Me too. I'm scared to death. I haven't felt anything like this in years." The hands were flat and warm at the small of Mohinder's back. "Look, whatever happens, I'll be here, OK? I promise you. I'll be here."
And somehow that was all the comfort Mohinder could possibly ask for.
Next: Strange days and stranger alliances