I need a P/M icon. I deleted them all from my account during season two...hrm.
Title: Lightning in an empty cup
Author:![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
eonism
Rating: Pg13
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to NBC. I'm just having a laugh at their expense
Characters/Pairings: Peter/Mohinder, Molly, Matt
Word Count: 1,711
Author's notes: General season two spoiler stuff, including character death.
Summary: He very well could not have liked Peter. That ship had sailed six months ago. When he had regarded Peter as a fool and Peter lashed out in his apartment at Mohinder’s offered help, and then Peter died and it made little difference that both of them had been wrong.
Who will I be when I'm with you again?
Silver jet in the sky.
--Goldfrapp, Eat Yourself
--
It first spells itself out in coffee stains on the Sunday paper. Something to do with brown blots on the crossword page and rings of condensation on the kitchen table from glasses left out overnight from dinner the night before, achieving a level of domestication Mohinder was not necessarily prepared for when this began. Skin-warmed sheets and the unmade bed are proof enough of that.
The words appear in chipped tea cups on the top shelf of the cupboard, all of which look entirely too large when held by slender white fingers that fidget beneath floppy sweater sleeves. The sounds they make stick to the roof of Mohinder’s mouth in thick liquid consonants, like pancake syrup or the peanut butter for Molly’s sandwiches that he makes every morning for her school lunch. It conjures up subway cars and taxi rides and broken glass, dizzy things on a train of thought that make his fingertips itch when he isn’t of mind.
They cross his t’s dot his i’s with the way Peter murmurs in his sleep, and in the wrinkles he gets in the corners of his eyes when he smiles. Peter does not do that hardly enough anymore, Mohinder thinks, and when he does it is still brilliant and sly, sloping down crookedly at one corner the way he remembered it. And it still leaves him clearing his throat and straightening in his seat, trying to look more like the scientist or the teacher or the parent Mohinder knows he ought to.
It had something to do with Peter on the living room sofa, sitting like a paper crane with broken wings and dim and tired eyes. Four days after the funeral, and the wake Mohinder was not invited to. He had seen him at the cathedral, standing by the burnished oak casket like a ghost in a borrowed Armani suit. No longer some explosion of stardust, or a pale shadow bleeding out in the back of his cab; Mohinder found himself reminded of that uncomfortably when Matt called from Texas to tell him what had happened, over the static of the cellular connection.
Sunshine filtered through the ornately colored windows and caught the muted gold in Peter’s hair and between the green in his eyes. From his pew in the back of the church, Mohinder tried not to notice.
Peter had come to the apartment four days later, standing in Mohinder’s doorway with a weathered edition of his father’s book beneath his arm, a dazed silhouette of déjà vu. He explained how he had found Mohinder’s name and address in the inside cover of the book, at his apartment, sitting on the coffee table in his living room amongst the contents of three photo albums and a lock box. There were gaps in his memory, Peter said, distantly, and on his sofa made quiet, pained gestures to which Mohinder could only swallow and clinically nod. Holes like moth-bites in his recent history that he could not account for and kept him awake at night, left over from the days of dark, liquid nothingness inside of a shipping crate between New York and Ireland.
Heidi could only tell him so much, shell-shocked and in mourning, from the outside looking in on the madness that captured their lives. Claire was gone without a trace, and Peter barely knew her well enough to track her down or know where to start. His mother was not telling him anything he was sure he could believe, and Mohinder – he lived with the cop that was with Nathan when he came to get him in Texas. Surely then, it seemed, he must have known something of value to have been in a book that his brother had kept in his absence. Mohinder knew that was not the case, but could not bring himself to say no when asked.
He told Peter everything he knew, or thought he knew, and everything he was told or learned by proxy or just by accident. With folded hands he treaded lightly around subway cars and broken glass, and felt somehow dishonest for having to be the one to explain it, as Peter looked to the floor between them with hollow eyes. It hardly seemed right that he was the only person in the city that knew who Peter was, before. No one deserved to be that alone in the world, especially not someone as…connected, to other people.
But three days later Peter came back, this time without the book. And Mohinder should have known then that things would begin to change.
They were hardly friends, not in any way that counted. Whatever it was, it happened in short bursts, just visits to the apartment. Random phone calls with no excuse or justification that Mohinder knew of, and so he stopped asking. Peter was angry at first, with himself above all else, making him look a little older, and act a little colder than Mohinder had ever remembered him being. He had done bad things, he said softly, voice strained; made stupid mistakes, trusted the wrong people. Now Nathan was dead, and there was no one else Peter had left to go to anymore.
Mohinder knew that feeling well enough, but said nothing of that, either. Niki was dead, trapped in a fire in New Orleans; Bennet still refused to speak to him, or to acknowledge his existence as anything more than an insect beneath his boot heel. Sylar was still out there, somewhere, in the dark. And when Peter showed up at his front door, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth with eyes ringed by sleepless circles, Mohinder could not bring himself to send him away then either. With his most patient face, reserved only for Molly on bad days at school, or after nightmares when he woke to see her standing over his bed, Mohinder opened the door, gestured to the kitchen table, and offered Peter some tea.
In time Peter was at the apartment once a week, and then twice. Talking about the future and blank concrete walls and a man named Adam. Mohinder just listened quietly, making what sense he could of the jumbled names and places, and just nodding his head when he couldn’t. Matt said nothing of it and tried to stay out of the way of whatever it was they did together, saying something about giving them “space.” Molly didn’t seem to care, or if she did she didn’t speak of it, not really, watching cartoons before bed or doing her homework like Peter had always been there. Maybe she just knew something that Mohinder didn’t, but he decided that was a paranoid line of thinking.
One day Peter fell asleep on the sofa and stayed the night. The next morning Mohinder awoke to the sound of clinking dishes to find Peter in his kitchen with the coffee on, smiling sheepishly, cleaning up the plates from dinner. Maybe Molly was on to something after all, but Mohinder said nothing of that either, because things were complicated enough without that.
He very well could not have liked Peter. That ship had sailed six months ago. When he had regarded Peter as a fool and Peter lashed out in his apartment at Mohinder’s offered help, and then Peter died and it made little difference that both of them had been wrong. There were worse things in their worlds than missed opportunities.
Still it was two days later that Peter kissed him, despite Mohinder’s best intentions. Matt was at work with a case and Molly was playing at Carrie Finch’s house down the street, and Peter stood in the kitchen and kissed him. It was slow at first, soft and fleeting, lips tasting like warm milk from the coffee he’d been drinking. Coffee, because earlier that morning Peter had smiled sheepishly in a way that made Mohinder’s mouth dry and said all the tea he had been driving him crazy.
No tongue or teeth between them, at first, just lips and short breaths and hands cupping his face gently like he was fit to break. Head just beginning to swim, Mohinder found himself with closed eyes, hands on the back of his neck and Peter’s callused thumbs stroking the curve of his jaw. He bristled and put his hands up on Peter’s chest; he meant to push him back, use that space Matt was always muttering about and say something about how inappropriate this was.
Instead he asked himself just when he decided that this was okay. Peter just smiled softly into his lips at the thought, and then it didn’t matter nearly as much.
In a week it didn’t matter at all. It was a foregone conclusion or slowly warming notion, making issues of tea cups and coffee stains. By then Peter is over every other night and Mohinder is fumbling dumbly with buttons, and feeling like he was getting away with something, and kissing a spot beneath Peter’s chin that makes him sigh.
And who cares about precedent these days anyway?
In the kitchen over coffee, it’s an hour since Peter has gone, slipping out the front door like a thief, all greedy hands and needing lips. He buttoned up jeans and slipped into a black t-shirt that he hoped was his, and looked just a little guilty with the stubble-burn on his neck and the flush of his mouth. In any case from the closet Mohinder cleared his throat and dressed, and tried not to look so...well, happy was not the word for it. But it was close.
Peter kissed him then, slowly and in full, and stole away still licking his taste from his lips. One day Mohinder would find a way to convince him to stay, but for now he made do with what they had.
Soon Matt will shuffle along, still fuzzy from sleep. With a yawn he’ll ask what’s with the racket so early in the morning, because Mohinder has been thinking too loudly again. Loud enough to wake the neighborhood, Matt says, and pours himself some coffee, before sitting down at the kitchen table with the newspaper.
Mohinder means to lie, or say something sharp in return, but looking to the chipped rim of his coffee cup, he simply sighs.
Title: Lightning in an empty cup
Author:
eonismRating: Pg13
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to NBC. I'm just having a laugh at their expense
Characters/Pairings: Peter/Mohinder, Molly, Matt
Word Count: 1,711
Author's notes: General season two spoiler stuff, including character death.
Summary: He very well could not have liked Peter. That ship had sailed six months ago. When he had regarded Peter as a fool and Peter lashed out in his apartment at Mohinder’s offered help, and then Peter died and it made little difference that both of them had been wrong.
Who will I be when I'm with you again?
Silver jet in the sky.
--Goldfrapp, Eat Yourself
--
It first spells itself out in coffee stains on the Sunday paper. Something to do with brown blots on the crossword page and rings of condensation on the kitchen table from glasses left out overnight from dinner the night before, achieving a level of domestication Mohinder was not necessarily prepared for when this began. Skin-warmed sheets and the unmade bed are proof enough of that.
The words appear in chipped tea cups on the top shelf of the cupboard, all of which look entirely too large when held by slender white fingers that fidget beneath floppy sweater sleeves. The sounds they make stick to the roof of Mohinder’s mouth in thick liquid consonants, like pancake syrup or the peanut butter for Molly’s sandwiches that he makes every morning for her school lunch. It conjures up subway cars and taxi rides and broken glass, dizzy things on a train of thought that make his fingertips itch when he isn’t of mind.
They cross his t’s dot his i’s with the way Peter murmurs in his sleep, and in the wrinkles he gets in the corners of his eyes when he smiles. Peter does not do that hardly enough anymore, Mohinder thinks, and when he does it is still brilliant and sly, sloping down crookedly at one corner the way he remembered it. And it still leaves him clearing his throat and straightening in his seat, trying to look more like the scientist or the teacher or the parent Mohinder knows he ought to.
It had something to do with Peter on the living room sofa, sitting like a paper crane with broken wings and dim and tired eyes. Four days after the funeral, and the wake Mohinder was not invited to. He had seen him at the cathedral, standing by the burnished oak casket like a ghost in a borrowed Armani suit. No longer some explosion of stardust, or a pale shadow bleeding out in the back of his cab; Mohinder found himself reminded of that uncomfortably when Matt called from Texas to tell him what had happened, over the static of the cellular connection.
Sunshine filtered through the ornately colored windows and caught the muted gold in Peter’s hair and between the green in his eyes. From his pew in the back of the church, Mohinder tried not to notice.
Peter had come to the apartment four days later, standing in Mohinder’s doorway with a weathered edition of his father’s book beneath his arm, a dazed silhouette of déjà vu. He explained how he had found Mohinder’s name and address in the inside cover of the book, at his apartment, sitting on the coffee table in his living room amongst the contents of three photo albums and a lock box. There were gaps in his memory, Peter said, distantly, and on his sofa made quiet, pained gestures to which Mohinder could only swallow and clinically nod. Holes like moth-bites in his recent history that he could not account for and kept him awake at night, left over from the days of dark, liquid nothingness inside of a shipping crate between New York and Ireland.
Heidi could only tell him so much, shell-shocked and in mourning, from the outside looking in on the madness that captured their lives. Claire was gone without a trace, and Peter barely knew her well enough to track her down or know where to start. His mother was not telling him anything he was sure he could believe, and Mohinder – he lived with the cop that was with Nathan when he came to get him in Texas. Surely then, it seemed, he must have known something of value to have been in a book that his brother had kept in his absence. Mohinder knew that was not the case, but could not bring himself to say no when asked.
He told Peter everything he knew, or thought he knew, and everything he was told or learned by proxy or just by accident. With folded hands he treaded lightly around subway cars and broken glass, and felt somehow dishonest for having to be the one to explain it, as Peter looked to the floor between them with hollow eyes. It hardly seemed right that he was the only person in the city that knew who Peter was, before. No one deserved to be that alone in the world, especially not someone as…connected, to other people.
But three days later Peter came back, this time without the book. And Mohinder should have known then that things would begin to change.
They were hardly friends, not in any way that counted. Whatever it was, it happened in short bursts, just visits to the apartment. Random phone calls with no excuse or justification that Mohinder knew of, and so he stopped asking. Peter was angry at first, with himself above all else, making him look a little older, and act a little colder than Mohinder had ever remembered him being. He had done bad things, he said softly, voice strained; made stupid mistakes, trusted the wrong people. Now Nathan was dead, and there was no one else Peter had left to go to anymore.
Mohinder knew that feeling well enough, but said nothing of that, either. Niki was dead, trapped in a fire in New Orleans; Bennet still refused to speak to him, or to acknowledge his existence as anything more than an insect beneath his boot heel. Sylar was still out there, somewhere, in the dark. And when Peter showed up at his front door, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth with eyes ringed by sleepless circles, Mohinder could not bring himself to send him away then either. With his most patient face, reserved only for Molly on bad days at school, or after nightmares when he woke to see her standing over his bed, Mohinder opened the door, gestured to the kitchen table, and offered Peter some tea.
In time Peter was at the apartment once a week, and then twice. Talking about the future and blank concrete walls and a man named Adam. Mohinder just listened quietly, making what sense he could of the jumbled names and places, and just nodding his head when he couldn’t. Matt said nothing of it and tried to stay out of the way of whatever it was they did together, saying something about giving them “space.” Molly didn’t seem to care, or if she did she didn’t speak of it, not really, watching cartoons before bed or doing her homework like Peter had always been there. Maybe she just knew something that Mohinder didn’t, but he decided that was a paranoid line of thinking.
One day Peter fell asleep on the sofa and stayed the night. The next morning Mohinder awoke to the sound of clinking dishes to find Peter in his kitchen with the coffee on, smiling sheepishly, cleaning up the plates from dinner. Maybe Molly was on to something after all, but Mohinder said nothing of that either, because things were complicated enough without that.
He very well could not have liked Peter. That ship had sailed six months ago. When he had regarded Peter as a fool and Peter lashed out in his apartment at Mohinder’s offered help, and then Peter died and it made little difference that both of them had been wrong. There were worse things in their worlds than missed opportunities.
Still it was two days later that Peter kissed him, despite Mohinder’s best intentions. Matt was at work with a case and Molly was playing at Carrie Finch’s house down the street, and Peter stood in the kitchen and kissed him. It was slow at first, soft and fleeting, lips tasting like warm milk from the coffee he’d been drinking. Coffee, because earlier that morning Peter had smiled sheepishly in a way that made Mohinder’s mouth dry and said all the tea he had been driving him crazy.
No tongue or teeth between them, at first, just lips and short breaths and hands cupping his face gently like he was fit to break. Head just beginning to swim, Mohinder found himself with closed eyes, hands on the back of his neck and Peter’s callused thumbs stroking the curve of his jaw. He bristled and put his hands up on Peter’s chest; he meant to push him back, use that space Matt was always muttering about and say something about how inappropriate this was.
Instead he asked himself just when he decided that this was okay. Peter just smiled softly into his lips at the thought, and then it didn’t matter nearly as much.
In a week it didn’t matter at all. It was a foregone conclusion or slowly warming notion, making issues of tea cups and coffee stains. By then Peter is over every other night and Mohinder is fumbling dumbly with buttons, and feeling like he was getting away with something, and kissing a spot beneath Peter’s chin that makes him sigh.
And who cares about precedent these days anyway?
In the kitchen over coffee, it’s an hour since Peter has gone, slipping out the front door like a thief, all greedy hands and needing lips. He buttoned up jeans and slipped into a black t-shirt that he hoped was his, and looked just a little guilty with the stubble-burn on his neck and the flush of his mouth. In any case from the closet Mohinder cleared his throat and dressed, and tried not to look so...well, happy was not the word for it. But it was close.
Peter kissed him then, slowly and in full, and stole away still licking his taste from his lips. One day Mohinder would find a way to convince him to stay, but for now he made do with what they had.
Soon Matt will shuffle along, still fuzzy from sleep. With a yawn he’ll ask what’s with the racket so early in the morning, because Mohinder has been thinking too loudly again. Loud enough to wake the neighborhood, Matt says, and pours himself some coffee, before sitting down at the kitchen table with the newspaper.
Mohinder means to lie, or say something sharp in return, but looking to the chipped rim of his coffee cup, he simply sighs.
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