Five Times When Matt Parkman Uses His Abilities Without Any Thought Towards Saving the World [fic]
Author: KleenexCow
Title: Five Times When Matt Parkman Uses His Abilities Without Any Thought Towards Saving the World
Summary: Five somewhat fluffy scenes involving Matt, Mohinder, Molly, telepathy, and purely personal gain.
Rating: PG-13 (for an f-bomb)
Pairings: Matt/Mohinder, of course. And a Petrellicest joke, much to Peter’s dismay
Spoilers: Matt and Mohinder live together. Sorry if you didn't know that.
Notes: My first M3! :) My NaNo cries for its neglect. Comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated, particularly because I had a few more little ideas that didn't quite fit in terms of length and tone with the rest of these but that might make an appearance another day.
I.
It was all relatively simple. Mohinder was a very attractive man. Matt had always known that, had had a little bit of a crush on him from roughly Kirby Plaza on, and if things had been different perhaps Matt wouldn’t have waited so long. But then Mohinder invited Matt to move in so that they could raise a daughter, sweet Molly, this little girl who was the sun and the moon to both of them and who had been though a lot lately. After that, even though Matt knew Mohinder fairly well, knew that he was a fairly decent guy-Matt was a mind reader, after all, he knew a lot of things about people-the last thing that Matt wanted to do was risk saying how he felt, offending Mohinder and upsetting their fragile domestic balance.
But then, one night, when they were sitting across the kitchen table talking after Molly had gone to bed and Matt had said something that was making Mohinder, in a rare un-Mohinder-like moment, laugh so hard that Matt was afraid he would wake Molly, and so Mohinder was trying to quiet himself down but he was laughing way too hard for that and so his laughs came out as these choked snorting noises instead that weren’t any quieter, and then all of the sudden Matt heard-
God, I want to fuck him.
The thought wasn’t Matt’s. The voice was refined and educated, and most importantly, it was a little turned on.
"I heard that.” Matt said with a little bit of a smile, and Mohinder’s laugh stopped abruptly.
“No, that-that wasn’t-“ Mohinder began to stammer, but Matt cut him off, just leaned right across the table and kissed that way-too-intelligent mouth. And it turns out that Mohinder had felt that way about Matt for a long time, too, but hadn’t wanted to undo the balance, either, and so had been incredibly strict about keeping his thoughts pertaining to his baser instincts out of his mind and away from Matt, his mind-reading and apparently incredibly attractive roommate-slash-co-father. It was impressive, really. The man had been living like a monk inside his own head.
But that was the end Mohinder’s monkish ways. They kissed a lot more that night, and in the morning, and eventually Matt moved off of the couch and into Mohinder’s bed. They had a talk with Molly about different kinds of love all being valid but she didn’t really seem that fazed to begin with. Perhaps she had always assumed that Mohinder and Matt had a relationship just like the one that Mommy and Daddy had had (whatever that means to an eight-year-old), or maybe she was just so grateful to have these two men in her life who had both proven that they were willing to go to the ends of the earth to keep her safe, that it didn’t even matter.
Whatever the reason, their little family seemed to grow that much stronger by the day, now that each one of them loved the other two deeply. After that, the Walker-Parkman-Sureshes (there are too many hyphens. Much later, in high school, Molly will begin to refer to herself as “Molly Walkmanesh,” and both Matt and Mohinder will think that it sounds silly at first but then the name will stick) were inseparable. They were the Three Musketeers. For all three of them, this family was a calm island, a paradise after the terrible family struggles each of them had gone through over what seemed like an eternity.
II.
Molly brought home a note from school and thrust it in front of Mohinder, not meeting his eye contact. She said abruptly, “Sign this, please. Don’t ask questions.” Mohinder looked at Matt, who laughed. This will be the beginning of a trend: for the next forty years or so, Molly will always go to Mohinder, her non-mind-reading father, first about anything that makes her a little bit ashamed.
Mohinder of course looked at the form. “A permission slip for you to participate in sexual education class?” he asked. “Excuse me? What is this about?”
“I said not to ask questions,” Molly said weakly.
“You’re in fourth grade!” Mohinder exclaimed. “What is your school thinking?”
Matt crossed the kitchen and took the paper out of Mohinder’s hand. “Standard operating procedures in America, Mo,” he said. “It’s not really about...” he looked at Molly and then back to Mohinder, “...you know. It’s about growing up. Believe me,” he said, leaning close to Mohinder and lowering his voice. “It’s far better if we let her female teachers have this talk with her instead of us.”
They let Molly take the class. But the fact did remain that there wasn’t a woman around for all of those personal things. It wasn’t that Molly couldn’t talk to them about nearly anything so much as there were just some things that they knew nothing about. Tampons and bras and makeup. And this worried them a little. Until one night when they were lying in bed, Mohinder’s head resting against Matt’s chest, Matt’s hand tracing little circles on Mohinder’s back, that they came up with a solution. “If you sense that anything is wrong, though,” Mohinder said. “You have to call the deal off.”
In the darkness, Matt nodded. “Agreed.”
He picked up the phone the next day, dialed the number. “It isn’t that we don’t love her or can’t talk to her,” he said. “But I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. You have the same problem that we do. How about an exchange, just for an afternoon?”
She agreed.
Two days later, there was a knock at the door. Matt and Mohinder jumped (even after working with her, Mohinder was still terrified, and so was Matt. His gun was under the couch.), and waited a second to make sure that she was going to wait outside and not punch the door in.
Matt got up off of the couch, reluctantly, and opened the door.
“Hi, Matt,” Niki said, but Matt didn’t answer, choosing instead to narrow his eyes as he stared her down.
It’s just me, Niki thought. Matt kept listening, peering as deep as he could into her head, but there was no other voice inside her head screaming.
“She’s good!” Matt called back as he stepped aside and let her into the apartment. Micah peered from around his mother, smiled shyly at Molly. She smiled back.
Niki walked into the apartment, but not very far. “Hi, Mohinder,” she said. “I really appreciate it, you guys are a godsend. Micah, you’re going to stay here with Mohinder and Matt.’ She cocked her head in the direction of the door. “C’mon, Molly. Let’s go buy you a bra.”
“Don’t kill anyone while you’re out,” Mohinder said.
It was Molly who answered, grinning up at Matt as she left the apartment. “We’ll try.”
III.
If there were a way for Molly and Mohinder to talk to each other telepathically, Matt reflected, then the three of them would probably never speak aloud at all. In no time at all, Matt become Mohinder’s favorite test subject, his at-home science project. Mohinder was all about Matt using his abilities as much as humanly possible, and would sometimes go days without uttering a sound to him, even enlisting Molly in the scheme.
This was slightly difficult for Matt. First of all, it was difficult for him to tell when Mohinder wanted to talk to him and when Mohinder was just, you know, thinking. He tried to stay out of Mohinder’s mind most of the time, for privacy reasons, sort of, but also because the things that Mohinder thought about during the course of the day were kind of boring: generally either mundane stuff, like grocery lists or wondering where he left his keys, or stuff that Matt would need a doctorate to understand, like theoretical genetics or...well, theoretical genetics. But Mohinder didn’t really get this, continued to think that he could mentally dial up Matt just as easily as he could dial a cell phone. Sometimes Matt would look up and see Mohinder sitting behind the computer monitor, staring at him with raised eyebrows. “What?” he’d ask, and look into Mohinder’s mind.
Matthew, I’ve been trying to talk to you for the last half hour! Mohinder would be thinking.
Once Matt began to develop the ability to speak to others, Mohinder would add to his tactics ignoring anything that Matt said audibly. Of course, his ability to transmit was still new, and in the beginning he would have to stare at Mohinder for as much as ten minutes, repeating the same thing in his head over and over again, before anything would actually get out. He did get much better at it, though, which of course encouraged Mohinder. Then he started timing Matt, and then Mohinder started trying to get Matt to project images, instead of just words-
Do you have an image in mind? Mohinder asked, and Matt nodded silently. Go, Mohinder said, and Matt heard the beep of the stopwatch.
Matt imagined a cake, a white one with ten candles and pink frosting that said “Happy Birthday, Molly” on it. The little stopwatch beeped off.
“I got it! That was practically instantaneous, Matthew!” Mohinder exclaimed. He was so excited that he jumped out of his chair, wrapped an arm around Matt’s neck, and kissed him thoroughly.
Is this how you reward all of your test subjects when they do well? Matt asked.
Mohinder let go and shrugged. “Just the ones that I really like,” he said. Practice for the day was, apparently, over. if Matt was lucky, maybe it was even over for the week.
“Well, I wasn’t kidding, Mo. I’ve given you that image five times during practice today. Molly’s birthday is less than a week away, and we still haven’t ordered the cake yet!”
“I’ll make a mental note to self,” Mohinder said.
“I hate your mental notes to self,” Matt grumbled. “Because they end up being mental notes to Matt.”
IV.
There were several unexpected bonuses that came with dating a telepath. Mohinder loved quite a few of them, but his favorite was undoubtedly the way that he and Matt could carry on a conversation anytime, about anything, without anyone knowing.
This was particularly welcome when they were supposed to be paying attention to something boring. Like dinner with the Petrellis, which they were occasionally invited to and felt somehow obliged to accept. While Angela droned on and on and all of the Petrellis were handsy (Italian, Mohinder said; Yeah right, Matt replied) with everyone present but non-family members, having Matt around was a welcome distraction.
“Will you two shut up?” Peter yelled at Matt and Mohinder. Well, without almost anyone knowing. Nathan looked at Peter and raised an eyebrow.
“Pete, what are you talking about?” Nathan asked. “They aren’t saying anything.”
“Yeah, they aren’t saying anything out loud. But they have been broadcasting explicit images to each other back and forth for the past ten minutes, and I’m sorry and all, but I’m trying to pay attention to the G-rated conversation going on out here, and I can’t concentrate when I keep overhearing a gay porn channel!”
Mohinder and Matt looked at each other. Mohinder felt a little guilty, but Matt started laughing, which set Mohinder off, too. Matt sent Peter a particularly filthy image involving Peter and his brother, and Peter threw down his napkin and stormed out of the room.
See? One of Mohinder’s favorite quirks.
V.
They stood at the front doors of the grocery store, looking over the list. Not the list, of course, but the grocery list. “Divide and conquer,” Matt said.
“I’ll take care of the produce section,” Mohinder replied. That was a given: if Matt were in charge of the vegetables, all they’d come away with would be maybe a few tomatoes and a banana. “I need you to handle the-“
“-bread, pasta, and cereal aisles. Got it.”
“And remember, this time don’t get-“
“-any sugary cereals. I know. Molly doesn’t need them,” Matt said as he grabbed a hand cart, heading off into the store.
As Mohinder walked in the other direction, the check-out girl called out to him. “You two are cute together,” she said. “It’s almost like he can read your mind.”
Mohinder smiled to himself. “I know. Surreal, isn’t it?”
Title: Five Times When Matt Parkman Uses His Abilities Without Any Thought Towards Saving the World
Summary: Five somewhat fluffy scenes involving Matt, Mohinder, Molly, telepathy, and purely personal gain.
Rating: PG-13 (for an f-bomb)
Pairings: Matt/Mohinder, of course. And a Petrellicest joke, much to Peter’s dismay
Spoilers: Matt and Mohinder live together. Sorry if you didn't know that.
Notes: My first M3! :) My NaNo cries for its neglect. Comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated, particularly because I had a few more little ideas that didn't quite fit in terms of length and tone with the rest of these but that might make an appearance another day.
I.
It was all relatively simple. Mohinder was a very attractive man. Matt had always known that, had had a little bit of a crush on him from roughly Kirby Plaza on, and if things had been different perhaps Matt wouldn’t have waited so long. But then Mohinder invited Matt to move in so that they could raise a daughter, sweet Molly, this little girl who was the sun and the moon to both of them and who had been though a lot lately. After that, even though Matt knew Mohinder fairly well, knew that he was a fairly decent guy-Matt was a mind reader, after all, he knew a lot of things about people-the last thing that Matt wanted to do was risk saying how he felt, offending Mohinder and upsetting their fragile domestic balance.
But then, one night, when they were sitting across the kitchen table talking after Molly had gone to bed and Matt had said something that was making Mohinder, in a rare un-Mohinder-like moment, laugh so hard that Matt was afraid he would wake Molly, and so Mohinder was trying to quiet himself down but he was laughing way too hard for that and so his laughs came out as these choked snorting noises instead that weren’t any quieter, and then all of the sudden Matt heard-
God, I want to fuck him.
The thought wasn’t Matt’s. The voice was refined and educated, and most importantly, it was a little turned on.
"I heard that.” Matt said with a little bit of a smile, and Mohinder’s laugh stopped abruptly.
“No, that-that wasn’t-“ Mohinder began to stammer, but Matt cut him off, just leaned right across the table and kissed that way-too-intelligent mouth. And it turns out that Mohinder had felt that way about Matt for a long time, too, but hadn’t wanted to undo the balance, either, and so had been incredibly strict about keeping his thoughts pertaining to his baser instincts out of his mind and away from Matt, his mind-reading and apparently incredibly attractive roommate-slash-co-father. It was impressive, really. The man had been living like a monk inside his own head.
But that was the end Mohinder’s monkish ways. They kissed a lot more that night, and in the morning, and eventually Matt moved off of the couch and into Mohinder’s bed. They had a talk with Molly about different kinds of love all being valid but she didn’t really seem that fazed to begin with. Perhaps she had always assumed that Mohinder and Matt had a relationship just like the one that Mommy and Daddy had had (whatever that means to an eight-year-old), or maybe she was just so grateful to have these two men in her life who had both proven that they were willing to go to the ends of the earth to keep her safe, that it didn’t even matter.
Whatever the reason, their little family seemed to grow that much stronger by the day, now that each one of them loved the other two deeply. After that, the Walker-Parkman-Sureshes (there are too many hyphens. Much later, in high school, Molly will begin to refer to herself as “Molly Walkmanesh,” and both Matt and Mohinder will think that it sounds silly at first but then the name will stick) were inseparable. They were the Three Musketeers. For all three of them, this family was a calm island, a paradise after the terrible family struggles each of them had gone through over what seemed like an eternity.
II.
Molly brought home a note from school and thrust it in front of Mohinder, not meeting his eye contact. She said abruptly, “Sign this, please. Don’t ask questions.” Mohinder looked at Matt, who laughed. This will be the beginning of a trend: for the next forty years or so, Molly will always go to Mohinder, her non-mind-reading father, first about anything that makes her a little bit ashamed.
Mohinder of course looked at the form. “A permission slip for you to participate in sexual education class?” he asked. “Excuse me? What is this about?”
“I said not to ask questions,” Molly said weakly.
“You’re in fourth grade!” Mohinder exclaimed. “What is your school thinking?”
Matt crossed the kitchen and took the paper out of Mohinder’s hand. “Standard operating procedures in America, Mo,” he said. “It’s not really about...” he looked at Molly and then back to Mohinder, “...you know. It’s about growing up. Believe me,” he said, leaning close to Mohinder and lowering his voice. “It’s far better if we let her female teachers have this talk with her instead of us.”
They let Molly take the class. But the fact did remain that there wasn’t a woman around for all of those personal things. It wasn’t that Molly couldn’t talk to them about nearly anything so much as there were just some things that they knew nothing about. Tampons and bras and makeup. And this worried them a little. Until one night when they were lying in bed, Mohinder’s head resting against Matt’s chest, Matt’s hand tracing little circles on Mohinder’s back, that they came up with a solution. “If you sense that anything is wrong, though,” Mohinder said. “You have to call the deal off.”
In the darkness, Matt nodded. “Agreed.”
He picked up the phone the next day, dialed the number. “It isn’t that we don’t love her or can’t talk to her,” he said. “But I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. You have the same problem that we do. How about an exchange, just for an afternoon?”
She agreed.
Two days later, there was a knock at the door. Matt and Mohinder jumped (even after working with her, Mohinder was still terrified, and so was Matt. His gun was under the couch.), and waited a second to make sure that she was going to wait outside and not punch the door in.
Matt got up off of the couch, reluctantly, and opened the door.
“Hi, Matt,” Niki said, but Matt didn’t answer, choosing instead to narrow his eyes as he stared her down.
It’s just me, Niki thought. Matt kept listening, peering as deep as he could into her head, but there was no other voice inside her head screaming.
“She’s good!” Matt called back as he stepped aside and let her into the apartment. Micah peered from around his mother, smiled shyly at Molly. She smiled back.
Niki walked into the apartment, but not very far. “Hi, Mohinder,” she said. “I really appreciate it, you guys are a godsend. Micah, you’re going to stay here with Mohinder and Matt.’ She cocked her head in the direction of the door. “C’mon, Molly. Let’s go buy you a bra.”
“Don’t kill anyone while you’re out,” Mohinder said.
It was Molly who answered, grinning up at Matt as she left the apartment. “We’ll try.”
III.
If there were a way for Molly and Mohinder to talk to each other telepathically, Matt reflected, then the three of them would probably never speak aloud at all. In no time at all, Matt become Mohinder’s favorite test subject, his at-home science project. Mohinder was all about Matt using his abilities as much as humanly possible, and would sometimes go days without uttering a sound to him, even enlisting Molly in the scheme.
This was slightly difficult for Matt. First of all, it was difficult for him to tell when Mohinder wanted to talk to him and when Mohinder was just, you know, thinking. He tried to stay out of Mohinder’s mind most of the time, for privacy reasons, sort of, but also because the things that Mohinder thought about during the course of the day were kind of boring: generally either mundane stuff, like grocery lists or wondering where he left his keys, or stuff that Matt would need a doctorate to understand, like theoretical genetics or...well, theoretical genetics. But Mohinder didn’t really get this, continued to think that he could mentally dial up Matt just as easily as he could dial a cell phone. Sometimes Matt would look up and see Mohinder sitting behind the computer monitor, staring at him with raised eyebrows. “What?” he’d ask, and look into Mohinder’s mind.
Matthew, I’ve been trying to talk to you for the last half hour! Mohinder would be thinking.
Once Matt began to develop the ability to speak to others, Mohinder would add to his tactics ignoring anything that Matt said audibly. Of course, his ability to transmit was still new, and in the beginning he would have to stare at Mohinder for as much as ten minutes, repeating the same thing in his head over and over again, before anything would actually get out. He did get much better at it, though, which of course encouraged Mohinder. Then he started timing Matt, and then Mohinder started trying to get Matt to project images, instead of just words-
Do you have an image in mind? Mohinder asked, and Matt nodded silently. Go, Mohinder said, and Matt heard the beep of the stopwatch.
Matt imagined a cake, a white one with ten candles and pink frosting that said “Happy Birthday, Molly” on it. The little stopwatch beeped off.
“I got it! That was practically instantaneous, Matthew!” Mohinder exclaimed. He was so excited that he jumped out of his chair, wrapped an arm around Matt’s neck, and kissed him thoroughly.
Is this how you reward all of your test subjects when they do well? Matt asked.
Mohinder let go and shrugged. “Just the ones that I really like,” he said. Practice for the day was, apparently, over. if Matt was lucky, maybe it was even over for the week.
“Well, I wasn’t kidding, Mo. I’ve given you that image five times during practice today. Molly’s birthday is less than a week away, and we still haven’t ordered the cake yet!”
“I’ll make a mental note to self,” Mohinder said.
“I hate your mental notes to self,” Matt grumbled. “Because they end up being mental notes to Matt.”
IV.
There were several unexpected bonuses that came with dating a telepath. Mohinder loved quite a few of them, but his favorite was undoubtedly the way that he and Matt could carry on a conversation anytime, about anything, without anyone knowing.
This was particularly welcome when they were supposed to be paying attention to something boring. Like dinner with the Petrellis, which they were occasionally invited to and felt somehow obliged to accept. While Angela droned on and on and all of the Petrellis were handsy (Italian, Mohinder said; Yeah right, Matt replied) with everyone present but non-family members, having Matt around was a welcome distraction.
“Will you two shut up?” Peter yelled at Matt and Mohinder. Well, without almost anyone knowing. Nathan looked at Peter and raised an eyebrow.
“Pete, what are you talking about?” Nathan asked. “They aren’t saying anything.”
“Yeah, they aren’t saying anything out loud. But they have been broadcasting explicit images to each other back and forth for the past ten minutes, and I’m sorry and all, but I’m trying to pay attention to the G-rated conversation going on out here, and I can’t concentrate when I keep overhearing a gay porn channel!”
Mohinder and Matt looked at each other. Mohinder felt a little guilty, but Matt started laughing, which set Mohinder off, too. Matt sent Peter a particularly filthy image involving Peter and his brother, and Peter threw down his napkin and stormed out of the room.
See? One of Mohinder’s favorite quirks.
V.
They stood at the front doors of the grocery store, looking over the list. Not the list, of course, but the grocery list. “Divide and conquer,” Matt said.
“I’ll take care of the produce section,” Mohinder replied. That was a given: if Matt were in charge of the vegetables, all they’d come away with would be maybe a few tomatoes and a banana. “I need you to handle the-“
“-bread, pasta, and cereal aisles. Got it.”
“And remember, this time don’t get-“
“-any sugary cereals. I know. Molly doesn’t need them,” Matt said as he grabbed a hand cart, heading off into the store.
As Mohinder walked in the other direction, the check-out girl called out to him. “You two are cute together,” she said. “It’s almost like he can read your mind.”
Mohinder smiled to himself. “I know. Surreal, isn’t it?”