Fic: I Count The Hours Since Last I Saw Your Face (Mohinder/Sylar, R)
Title: I Count The Hours Since Last I Saw Your Face
Rating: A light R
Characters/Pairings: Mohinder/Sylar, Peter
Words: 4000
Warnings: Mild sexual imagery. Angst.
Spoilers: Through season 2.
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not writing this for profit.
A/N: This was written for the table I claimed at
un_love_you , prompt #17: "Wish I didn't love you." I thought this was going to be short and sweet; 10 pages later, I'm finally finished.
X-posted at
un_love_you and
mylar_fic
Summary: Mohinder finally realizes there's a way he can trap Sylar. The problem is, pretending to care about someone for too long can make you actually start caring about them.
He keeps the postcards hidden snugly away in a box on the floor of the closet. It's probably not necessary to; only a handwriting expert with access to samples would be able to figure out who wrote them if they were found lying around, and the act of hiding them away is a red flag, a silent confession that there's a reason to fear someone learning the story behind them. But they're a part of his life that belongs only to him, and he doesn't want to invite anyone else in.
* * * * * * *
Mohinder clearly remembered the first time he realized.
He’d looked back over his shoulder to make a sniping remark to the killer hurrying him along, and the expression he’d caught hadn’t been angry, or vengeful, or truculent. It had just been...intent. On him. Then a shove to his back had almost sent him sprawling down the steps.
Physical contact. He always had to have it, didn’t he?
Still, Mohinder almost convinced himself that he was imagining things. Until Sylar bent over to hiss a command into his ear and lingered a little too long next to his cheek. Then he knew, with a certainty he couldn’t explain.
He wasn’t sure if he was repelled or terrified.
Then he realized what a chance he’d been given. A way to get in behind Sylar’s defenses, to lull him until he could be maneuvered to a point where he could be put down once and for all. The thought of enticing Sylar into his life made him sick, but then he thought of Molly’s terrified face, about Niki and her little boy, about an auto mechanic in Montana whose life he’d forced his way into, and all the names with DECEASED stamped next to them on his father’s list and the Company’s files...what was his life, compared to all theirs? It only took him an instant to decide.
When he stood up, he did it quickly and too close to the man standing behind him. Sylar’s eyes were startled as he stared into Mohinder’s face, but he didn’t even lean away. Mohinder could only look back for a few seconds before he felt himself flushing and turned away, for fear his real thoughts might make themselves plain on his face.
* * * * * * *
It took two weeks for Sylar to show up again, ostensibly to extort the whereabouts of a special Mohinder had once examined and whose existence Sylar had gleaned from reading his laptop. Mohinder stood his ground even when Sylar invaded his personal space, refusing to show fear though he knew his thudding heart gave him away.
Sylar threatened, blustered, and even, oddly, cajoled. And his eyes never left Mohinder’s face the entire time.
In the end, Mohinder produced an address, with a clear conscience. When he’d met this woman after one of his lectures in the days when he was trying to attract the Company’s attention, she was in a wheelchair, a Christian Scientist with end-stage cancer, a healer of others who refused to heal herself. Sylar probably wouldn’t be too happy when he discovered her current whereabouts were Glenview Memorial Gardens, but that would just give him an excuse to come back, wouldn’t it?
And he did, six days later, angry but somehow not vengeful, an undercurrent in his voice that Mohinder couldn’t quite figure out. Mohinder had floundered, trying to figure out how to handle the situation, until his phone rang. “Are you going to get that?” Sylar had asked him, eyebrows raised. He’d turned around to grab it, and when he’d turned back, Sylar was gone. Just gone. No threats or messages, no promises to return - but then, none were needed.
It became a way of life in a disturbingly short period of time. He never knew when or where Sylar might appear, sliding into another seat at his table at a coffee shop, falling into step next to him as he walked back to the subway after going to a school play. It went from a threat darkening every day, to an inconvenience, to an omnipresence that he barely even flinched from, like a ringing in his ears.
Sometimes he thought about telling someone else what he was doing, to ensure he had backup ready to go once he was certain he could take Sylar completely off-guard. But he always stopped himself. He told himself that anyone he might ask would insist on coming in right away, guns blazing, to try to take Sylar out before he could do any more damage. That would only end in bloodshed, and probably not Sylar’s. So he kept his mouth shut and counted the hours till the next time Sylar came back to him.
* * * * * * *
Sometimes the cards depict scenes far, far away from the place where they were dropped in the mail. The oddest is thick and heavy, an actual photo printed sometime before the first World War, a still life of fruit and a pitcher on an oddly-carved table with the caption "F I G U E R O A ~ S T U D I O S" typed below it. It was postmarked in Montreal, two days earlier. He traces a finger over the letters punched deep into the front of the card and tries to imagine Sylar buying such a thing. Did he glance up and see it beckoning from a shop window? Did he find amusement in rifling through antiques shops for something this incongruous, or muse absently about the life he could have lived in these places that have vanished into the past?
Sometimes they're obvious. One from Branson, Missouri, showing a theatre that manages to somehow be blandly garish, says, "I haven't killed anyone here. Yet." He feels a stab of guilt as he leans against the kitchen counter, laughing hysterically; God knows that statement could be as much grim boast as awkward joke. But the thought of Sylar standing glumly in the midst of a country music Las Vegas, surrounded by talkative tourists he would likely despise, is too much to be borne.
No matter where they come from, though, the cards all say the same thing, if he reads between the sparse lines.
* * * * * * *
One warm night he was cooking dinner while Sylar read at the table. Sylar had somehow taught himself Sanskrit (he didn’t want to know how) and was working his way through several books in the collection Mohinder had inherited. At first Mohinder had resisted letting him touch them - it was an invasion of something too close to him. But in the end, the lure of having someone to talk to was too great.
He refused to let the books out of his apartment, so Sylar had to come by every evening. It turned into an almost domestic routine, eating and then talking, sometimes late into the night. It took him back to the days when he’d read those poems for the first time and the future was full of hope. And, dammit, Sylar was more attentive than most of the students he’d taught, and so insightful when discussing the Vedas that Mohinder accused him more than once of spending his days reading criticism in order to appear more erudite. It was nice, though, to have someone who could speak knowledgeably about something he’d once spent so much time immersed in.
It was nice to have someone to talk to.
On this evening, he’d kept absentmindedly wiping his forearm across his face to try to brush the back the damp hair that was vaguely irritating him. He was startled in the midst of slicing an onion when Sylar’s fingertips suddenly raked across his forehead and along his temple.
“Is that better?”
Mohinder took a step backwards, eyes wide.
“You were driving me nuts, doing that over and over again,” Sylar said by way of an explanation. “Maybe you need to think about getting a haircut.” He brushed Mohinder’s hair back behind his ear again, unnecessarily.
Mohinder tried to gather his thoughts but before he could, Sylar’s lips were suddenly on his, gently, so quickly that he almost thought he’d imagined it. But Sylar smiled at him, his mouth moving just barely enough to be noticeable, before sitting back down again.
The rest of the time he stood in front of the stove, Mohinder kept sneaking looks at the thin frame hunched in his chair, watching the way his shoulders shifted under his dark blue shirt.
* * * * * * *
The ones that bother him the most are the ones postmarked in New York City and its environs. It’s not that they’re rude or threatening. It’s that they force him to think about how Sylar is close, and yet untouchable. Mohinder walks down a sidewalk and wonders if he’d walked down it earlier that week, earlier that day - he could even be standing on the other side of the street right now, watching, but Mohinder would have no idea.
That possibility doesn’t twist his stomach with fear. It makes him scan crowds in the hope of catching a familiar glimpse. And, yes, some part of him loathes himself for behaving that way, but at some point he’s stepped past a line that he didn’t even realize existed because it had been unthinkable that he would ever cross it.
* * * * * * *
There came a night when he walked in his door late, tired and discouraged, and just knew that he wasn’t alone.
He found Sylar staring out the window of the back bedroom. He paused in the doorway and said, “What are you doing?”
Sylar didn’t turn. “Looking at the stars.”
“How can you see any, here in the middle of the city?” Mohinder walked over to him.
“They’re still there,” Sylar replied. “Up above the bustle and the noise and the lights.” He paused. “People are so terrified of the night. They try to drive the darkness away, or to hide from it. But once they do that, they lose the beauty of the stars. You can’t have one without the other.”
Mohinder looked at him wide-eyed as he stood there, staring pensively up through the window. Then he kissed him.
Sylar flinched back, obviously startled, but Mohinder pressed up against him - hadn’t Sylar pushed him before, on many occasions? He slid his arms around the other man’s waist and after a few seconds there were hands on his shoulders, first tentative, then stronger, as he urged Sylar step by wordless step over to the bed.
That was the first time they had sex.
Yes, they’d touched before, and kissed more than once, but never like this. Never naked after pulling each other’s clothing off. Never with Sylar murmuring, “Tell me if I hurt you,” while sliding a hand up the inside of Mohinder’s thigh. And Mohinder found himself asking for things he hadn’t even realized he wanted, and getting them.
When he woke the next morning and looked at the figure curled up on the pillow next to him, he didn’t really think about anything. He watched the skin on the back of Sylar’s neck, and his slow steady breathing, and he waited for some sort of revelation to come to him about what to do next. But none did, so he just kept watching.
* * * * * * *
Mohinder knows part of the purpose of the postcards is control. They give Sylar a presence in his life even though he’s been banished. They won’t let him forget - they demand his attention.
But it works both ways. Memphis, Baton Rouge, Bismarck, Vancouver - wherever Sylar goes, keeping on the move to avoid detection or for his own purposes, he’s thinking of Mohinder, reaching out to him, trying to include Mohinder in his own life. In a sense, the stream of cards is an admission that Mohinder has control over him, even at this distance, even with no way to contact Sylar on his own.
That’s the thought that keeps Mohinder from anger, as he sits at the table in the place that Sylar liked to take and reads over the cards. On other nights, it keeps him from despair, too. Maybe, if someone he’d thought was cold and remorseless can actually feel a need for someone else, maybe there’s some hope for them both.
* * * * * * *
The one thing he’d gotten used to in dealing with Sylar was the unpredictability. He never knew how much time might go by before he’d hear from him again, and when he did, invasions of his privacy would be mixed with an oddly formal politeness. So when the knock came at his door four days later, his chest had tightened and memories of the night they’d spent together had flooded his mind. He’d paused with his hand on the doorknob and taken a deep breath to steady himself before turning it.
“Mohinder?”
Matt Parkman was standing there, holding on to a smiling and oblivious Molly’s hand, and staring at him with an expression somewhere between incredulousness and horror.
* * * * * * *
It was two more days before Mohinder heard the familiar sound of his deadbolt clicking open on its own. He was standing in the kitchen doing dishes, and he wiped his hands slowly on a towel and waited.
A long silence, and then: “What’s wrong?”
He couldn’t look up, even when Sylar crossed the room and came to stand behind him. Finally he said, “You have to leave.”
Sylar laughed disbelievingly in his ear. “What are you -”
“They know,” Mohinder said.
There was another pause before Sylar said, “And if I disappear, you can pretend to yourself that none of this happened. You don’t have to feel ashamed -”
“They know how to find you now,” Mohinder interrupted angrily.
Sylar laughed lightly. “Why would that worry me? I know Peter Petrelli’s sucked up your little Molly’s ability - you knew it, too. Haven’t you ever wondered why he hasn’t just come after me? I’ve got ways of keeping him from finding me.”
Mohinder turned, startled. “How -”
“Uh-uh.” Sylar smiled at him slightly. “That’s my little secret.”
Mohinder rubbed his still-damp hands over his face. “You don’t -”
“You know, it’s hard for me to take you seriously when you smell so lemony-fresh.”
“Dammit -”
“What do you expect me to say? Believe me, I can hold my own against your dear friends.”
“Peter doesn’t have to use an ability to find you now, you idiot,” Mohinder said. “All they have to do is watch me, expecting that sooner or later, you’ll show up. They could be watching right now. They could be on their way over here. You have to go.”
Sylar stared over his shoulder, eyes distant, but Mohinder caught the slight slackening of his face, and knew Sylar was admitting he was right. Then Sylar looked back at him directly.
“It wasn’t that long ago that you’d have liked to see that happen.”
Mohinder flinched. “That was then.”
“Why the change of heart?”
“I just...I...I don’t want your blood on my hands.”
“I seem to remember quite clearly a few moments where you felt otherwise.”
“Not any more. I’m...” He looked down. Sylar somehow moved closer to him, as close as he could possibly get without actually touching, only a few molecules of air between them that Mohinder wanted to make disappear. He forced himself to look back up into Sylar’s gaze.
“I...I didn’t mean for this to happen.” It hurt to be honest. To start admitting how he now felt.
“I know,” Sylar said, quietly stopping him before he could confess anything else. He leaned into Mohinder and touched his shoulder. “But it doesn’t matter. Because it did.”
Mohinder kissed him hard, clutching at his shirt. The hand on his shoulder tightened as if to reassure him, and it was only after he relaxed and slowed down that Sylar let go and then slipped his arms around Mohinder’s back, pulling them even more tightly together.
“I’m already here,” Sylar murmured against his lips. “I might as well stay a little while longer.”
* * * * * * *
One day he comes home and tosses his mail onto the table as he locks the door, and something slides out from under an advertising circular and onto the floor. Frowning, he picks the card up: a plain scene of mountains, looking cold and blue. He turns it over to see eight tiny letters printed precisely in the center of the message area:
I miss you.
It's amazing how a statement so simple and quiet can twist in one's chest. He sinks down on the couch, still clutching it, and concentrates on breathing evenly until he can see straight again.
He later hates himself for feeling that way, of course. But it doesn’t stop him from laying the card on top of the box, where he can glimpse it every time he opens the closet door.
* * * * * * *
He was at an academic meeting in Seattle. That night at the hotel, despite being exhausted from the early morning flight he’d taken, he propped himself up against the pillows with a stack of papers and abstracts and a highlighter. At some point, he nodded off.
He woke up at the feel of his reading glasses being removed. He blinked down at his empty lap, and then at the man seated on the edge of his bed.
“You must be getting old, professor, if you didn’t even hear me come in.”
Mohinder was torn between making an angry remark about the unfair use of abilities to invade his privacy, and just wanting to touch. He settled for asking, “How did you know I was here?”
“I always know where you are, Mohinder.”
“That’s either incredibly touching, or incredibly disturbing.” He tried to laugh.
“Or just honest.”
The warmth of Sylar’s hands bleeding through his shirt made it hard to think. Sylar slid closer and murmured, “Seven months without you is too long.”
Sylar nuzzled against his neck, and Mohinder bowed his head. “What’s wrong?” Sylar asked.
Mohinder tilted his head back to gaze at the ceiling. “It’s just...” He sighed and forced himself to look into Sylar’s eyes. “I shouldn’t want this. I should hate you for everything you’ve done. And I do - part of me still does.” His voice grew thick. “But having you here - suddenly, none of it matters. It feels like something that happened to someone else, in another lifetime.” He shook his head at himself. “It makes me feel weak.”
“You think I like this?” Sylar’s voice had an edge. “You think I don’t have times when I wish I could walk away and never think about you again? I’ve spent a lifetime being no one, wanting a way out. I finally proved that I was right. That I was special. And now? Now I’m using my abilities to sneak down dark corridors in middling hotels and pick locks. So I can see you again.” His voice dropped as he whispered, “Sometimes I hate you.”
“Why?” Mohinder asked, startled.
“For turning me into this. For making me this way. I can’t change.” Sylar took a deep breath. “And sometimes I hate myself...because deep down, I don’t want to.”
“Then why are either of us here?” Mohinder finally asked.
“Because we have to be,” Sylar answered. Mohinder laughed, and Sylar stroked his cheek.
“I do believe in fate, Mohinder. Even if I struggle against it sometimes.” He smiled then, and it was the warm shy smile of all those late-night discussions. When Mohinder was trying to trap him, but wound up trapping himself.
“You want a less mystical answer? We’re here because...because of the look on your face when you opened your eyes and saw that it was me. That one moment...it makes everything I’ve gone through worthwhile.”
Mohinder was struck dumb. Then he glimpsed a redness on Sylar’s wrist. He grabbed the thin rough hand and turned it over, revealing the top of a half-healed scar, thin like a knife cut. “What happened?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sylar said. Then he caught the change in Mohinder’s expression, and said, “We can talk about it later.”
“Will we?”
“We can talk about whatever you want to talk about.” Sylar sighed and shook his head slightly. “Mohinder...I’ve missed the sound of your voice.”
Mohinder kissed him, letting their tongues curl together, and thought, I’ve missed the sound of yours, too.
* * * * * * *
He’s walking into his laboratory, talking back over his shoulder at Peter, and absently shuffling through the periodicals and reports that get routed to him through the internal mail system, when he sees a small shiny colorful corner sticking out.
No. Not here.
Sylar had told him in Seattle that he wasn’t going to stay tucked away in the shadows forever. He hadn’t meant an attack - he’d meant that he’d given Mohinder plenty of time to come to terms with this, and that his patience was rapidly wearing thin. At the time, lying there with their bodies tangled together, Mohinder hadn’t objected. But in the cold light of day, this challenge, openly coming right into the Company for anyone to handle and read - he frantically thinks that it’s too dangerous, it will attract attention and questions, the card has probably already been photographed and analyzed -
He pulls the card out: an aerial view of a non-descript city, with the caption “Los Alamos” at the bottom. The message consists of a date that’s three days in the future, and the words: Give Peter my love. So that I don’t have to.
Mohinder chuckles despite the underlying threat. Then his uneasiness returns.
“What is it?”
For a paranoid instant, he wonders if Peter was ordered to hover over him when he received this, to gauge his reaction and report back - no. Peter’s never been willing to go along with those sorts of subterfuges.
“Just a note from a friend,” Mohinder answers as he quickly lays the card message-side down on the countertop.
“On vacation?” Peter asks curiously.
“Something like that.”
“Anyone I know?”
“No,” Mohinder says, and when he thinks about that, he realizes it’s not really a lie.
“I can’t resist a good mystery.” Peter grins and leans against the railing. “Any chance of getting to meet her?”
Mohinder takes a deep breath before saying, with an emphasis on the first word, “He’ll be back in town in a few days.”
“Oh. I...I didn’t realize...sorry.” Peter looks down, almost guiltily. “We all have things in our private lives that we don’t want each other prying into. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“It’s all right.” Mohinder does his best to smile. “Besides, I have a feeling that the two of you would be potentially explosive.” He realizes he’s still touching the postcard, and groans internally at the accidental joke.
“The jealous type, huh?”
Mohinder thinks back to the look on Sylar’s face when he’d talked about the work he was doing with Peter’s DNA, and about this latest message, and realizes: “I suppose he is.”
“Does he make you happy, though?” Peter looks at him intently.
I can’t change. And sometimes I hate myself, because I don’t want to.
“Yeah,” Mohinder says. There’s a piece of him that knows that giving in to that is a kind of betrayal, of everything and everyone, and that one day he may pay a price for it. But... “Yes, despite everything, he does.”
And he smiles a genuine smile as he picks the card up again and runs a finger across the handwriting on it.
Rating: A light R
Characters/Pairings: Mohinder/Sylar, Peter
Words: 4000
Warnings: Mild sexual imagery. Angst.
Spoilers: Through season 2.
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not writing this for profit.
A/N: This was written for the table I claimed at
un_love_you , prompt #17: "Wish I didn't love you." I thought this was going to be short and sweet; 10 pages later, I'm finally finished.
X-posted at
un_love_you and
mylar_fic
Summary: Mohinder finally realizes there's a way he can trap Sylar. The problem is, pretending to care about someone for too long can make you actually start caring about them.
He keeps the postcards hidden snugly away in a box on the floor of the closet. It's probably not necessary to; only a handwriting expert with access to samples would be able to figure out who wrote them if they were found lying around, and the act of hiding them away is a red flag, a silent confession that there's a reason to fear someone learning the story behind them. But they're a part of his life that belongs only to him, and he doesn't want to invite anyone else in.
* * * * * * *
Mohinder clearly remembered the first time he realized.
He’d looked back over his shoulder to make a sniping remark to the killer hurrying him along, and the expression he’d caught hadn’t been angry, or vengeful, or truculent. It had just been...intent. On him. Then a shove to his back had almost sent him sprawling down the steps.
Physical contact. He always had to have it, didn’t he?
Still, Mohinder almost convinced himself that he was imagining things. Until Sylar bent over to hiss a command into his ear and lingered a little too long next to his cheek. Then he knew, with a certainty he couldn’t explain.
He wasn’t sure if he was repelled or terrified.
Then he realized what a chance he’d been given. A way to get in behind Sylar’s defenses, to lull him until he could be maneuvered to a point where he could be put down once and for all. The thought of enticing Sylar into his life made him sick, but then he thought of Molly’s terrified face, about Niki and her little boy, about an auto mechanic in Montana whose life he’d forced his way into, and all the names with DECEASED stamped next to them on his father’s list and the Company’s files...what was his life, compared to all theirs? It only took him an instant to decide.
When he stood up, he did it quickly and too close to the man standing behind him. Sylar’s eyes were startled as he stared into Mohinder’s face, but he didn’t even lean away. Mohinder could only look back for a few seconds before he felt himself flushing and turned away, for fear his real thoughts might make themselves plain on his face.
* * * * * * *
It took two weeks for Sylar to show up again, ostensibly to extort the whereabouts of a special Mohinder had once examined and whose existence Sylar had gleaned from reading his laptop. Mohinder stood his ground even when Sylar invaded his personal space, refusing to show fear though he knew his thudding heart gave him away.
Sylar threatened, blustered, and even, oddly, cajoled. And his eyes never left Mohinder’s face the entire time.
In the end, Mohinder produced an address, with a clear conscience. When he’d met this woman after one of his lectures in the days when he was trying to attract the Company’s attention, she was in a wheelchair, a Christian Scientist with end-stage cancer, a healer of others who refused to heal herself. Sylar probably wouldn’t be too happy when he discovered her current whereabouts were Glenview Memorial Gardens, but that would just give him an excuse to come back, wouldn’t it?
And he did, six days later, angry but somehow not vengeful, an undercurrent in his voice that Mohinder couldn’t quite figure out. Mohinder had floundered, trying to figure out how to handle the situation, until his phone rang. “Are you going to get that?” Sylar had asked him, eyebrows raised. He’d turned around to grab it, and when he’d turned back, Sylar was gone. Just gone. No threats or messages, no promises to return - but then, none were needed.
It became a way of life in a disturbingly short period of time. He never knew when or where Sylar might appear, sliding into another seat at his table at a coffee shop, falling into step next to him as he walked back to the subway after going to a school play. It went from a threat darkening every day, to an inconvenience, to an omnipresence that he barely even flinched from, like a ringing in his ears.
Sometimes he thought about telling someone else what he was doing, to ensure he had backup ready to go once he was certain he could take Sylar completely off-guard. But he always stopped himself. He told himself that anyone he might ask would insist on coming in right away, guns blazing, to try to take Sylar out before he could do any more damage. That would only end in bloodshed, and probably not Sylar’s. So he kept his mouth shut and counted the hours till the next time Sylar came back to him.
* * * * * * *
Sometimes the cards depict scenes far, far away from the place where they were dropped in the mail. The oddest is thick and heavy, an actual photo printed sometime before the first World War, a still life of fruit and a pitcher on an oddly-carved table with the caption "F I G U E R O A ~ S T U D I O S" typed below it. It was postmarked in Montreal, two days earlier. He traces a finger over the letters punched deep into the front of the card and tries to imagine Sylar buying such a thing. Did he glance up and see it beckoning from a shop window? Did he find amusement in rifling through antiques shops for something this incongruous, or muse absently about the life he could have lived in these places that have vanished into the past?
Sometimes they're obvious. One from Branson, Missouri, showing a theatre that manages to somehow be blandly garish, says, "I haven't killed anyone here. Yet." He feels a stab of guilt as he leans against the kitchen counter, laughing hysterically; God knows that statement could be as much grim boast as awkward joke. But the thought of Sylar standing glumly in the midst of a country music Las Vegas, surrounded by talkative tourists he would likely despise, is too much to be borne.
No matter where they come from, though, the cards all say the same thing, if he reads between the sparse lines.
* * * * * * *
One warm night he was cooking dinner while Sylar read at the table. Sylar had somehow taught himself Sanskrit (he didn’t want to know how) and was working his way through several books in the collection Mohinder had inherited. At first Mohinder had resisted letting him touch them - it was an invasion of something too close to him. But in the end, the lure of having someone to talk to was too great.
He refused to let the books out of his apartment, so Sylar had to come by every evening. It turned into an almost domestic routine, eating and then talking, sometimes late into the night. It took him back to the days when he’d read those poems for the first time and the future was full of hope. And, dammit, Sylar was more attentive than most of the students he’d taught, and so insightful when discussing the Vedas that Mohinder accused him more than once of spending his days reading criticism in order to appear more erudite. It was nice, though, to have someone who could speak knowledgeably about something he’d once spent so much time immersed in.
It was nice to have someone to talk to.
On this evening, he’d kept absentmindedly wiping his forearm across his face to try to brush the back the damp hair that was vaguely irritating him. He was startled in the midst of slicing an onion when Sylar’s fingertips suddenly raked across his forehead and along his temple.
“Is that better?”
Mohinder took a step backwards, eyes wide.
“You were driving me nuts, doing that over and over again,” Sylar said by way of an explanation. “Maybe you need to think about getting a haircut.” He brushed Mohinder’s hair back behind his ear again, unnecessarily.
Mohinder tried to gather his thoughts but before he could, Sylar’s lips were suddenly on his, gently, so quickly that he almost thought he’d imagined it. But Sylar smiled at him, his mouth moving just barely enough to be noticeable, before sitting back down again.
The rest of the time he stood in front of the stove, Mohinder kept sneaking looks at the thin frame hunched in his chair, watching the way his shoulders shifted under his dark blue shirt.
* * * * * * *
The ones that bother him the most are the ones postmarked in New York City and its environs. It’s not that they’re rude or threatening. It’s that they force him to think about how Sylar is close, and yet untouchable. Mohinder walks down a sidewalk and wonders if he’d walked down it earlier that week, earlier that day - he could even be standing on the other side of the street right now, watching, but Mohinder would have no idea.
That possibility doesn’t twist his stomach with fear. It makes him scan crowds in the hope of catching a familiar glimpse. And, yes, some part of him loathes himself for behaving that way, but at some point he’s stepped past a line that he didn’t even realize existed because it had been unthinkable that he would ever cross it.
* * * * * * *
There came a night when he walked in his door late, tired and discouraged, and just knew that he wasn’t alone.
He found Sylar staring out the window of the back bedroom. He paused in the doorway and said, “What are you doing?”
Sylar didn’t turn. “Looking at the stars.”
“How can you see any, here in the middle of the city?” Mohinder walked over to him.
“They’re still there,” Sylar replied. “Up above the bustle and the noise and the lights.” He paused. “People are so terrified of the night. They try to drive the darkness away, or to hide from it. But once they do that, they lose the beauty of the stars. You can’t have one without the other.”
Mohinder looked at him wide-eyed as he stood there, staring pensively up through the window. Then he kissed him.
Sylar flinched back, obviously startled, but Mohinder pressed up against him - hadn’t Sylar pushed him before, on many occasions? He slid his arms around the other man’s waist and after a few seconds there were hands on his shoulders, first tentative, then stronger, as he urged Sylar step by wordless step over to the bed.
That was the first time they had sex.
Yes, they’d touched before, and kissed more than once, but never like this. Never naked after pulling each other’s clothing off. Never with Sylar murmuring, “Tell me if I hurt you,” while sliding a hand up the inside of Mohinder’s thigh. And Mohinder found himself asking for things he hadn’t even realized he wanted, and getting them.
When he woke the next morning and looked at the figure curled up on the pillow next to him, he didn’t really think about anything. He watched the skin on the back of Sylar’s neck, and his slow steady breathing, and he waited for some sort of revelation to come to him about what to do next. But none did, so he just kept watching.
* * * * * * *
Mohinder knows part of the purpose of the postcards is control. They give Sylar a presence in his life even though he’s been banished. They won’t let him forget - they demand his attention.
But it works both ways. Memphis, Baton Rouge, Bismarck, Vancouver - wherever Sylar goes, keeping on the move to avoid detection or for his own purposes, he’s thinking of Mohinder, reaching out to him, trying to include Mohinder in his own life. In a sense, the stream of cards is an admission that Mohinder has control over him, even at this distance, even with no way to contact Sylar on his own.
That’s the thought that keeps Mohinder from anger, as he sits at the table in the place that Sylar liked to take and reads over the cards. On other nights, it keeps him from despair, too. Maybe, if someone he’d thought was cold and remorseless can actually feel a need for someone else, maybe there’s some hope for them both.
* * * * * * *
The one thing he’d gotten used to in dealing with Sylar was the unpredictability. He never knew how much time might go by before he’d hear from him again, and when he did, invasions of his privacy would be mixed with an oddly formal politeness. So when the knock came at his door four days later, his chest had tightened and memories of the night they’d spent together had flooded his mind. He’d paused with his hand on the doorknob and taken a deep breath to steady himself before turning it.
“Mohinder?”
Matt Parkman was standing there, holding on to a smiling and oblivious Molly’s hand, and staring at him with an expression somewhere between incredulousness and horror.
* * * * * * *
It was two more days before Mohinder heard the familiar sound of his deadbolt clicking open on its own. He was standing in the kitchen doing dishes, and he wiped his hands slowly on a towel and waited.
A long silence, and then: “What’s wrong?”
He couldn’t look up, even when Sylar crossed the room and came to stand behind him. Finally he said, “You have to leave.”
Sylar laughed disbelievingly in his ear. “What are you -”
“They know,” Mohinder said.
There was another pause before Sylar said, “And if I disappear, you can pretend to yourself that none of this happened. You don’t have to feel ashamed -”
“They know how to find you now,” Mohinder interrupted angrily.
Sylar laughed lightly. “Why would that worry me? I know Peter Petrelli’s sucked up your little Molly’s ability - you knew it, too. Haven’t you ever wondered why he hasn’t just come after me? I’ve got ways of keeping him from finding me.”
Mohinder turned, startled. “How -”
“Uh-uh.” Sylar smiled at him slightly. “That’s my little secret.”
Mohinder rubbed his still-damp hands over his face. “You don’t -”
“You know, it’s hard for me to take you seriously when you smell so lemony-fresh.”
“Dammit -”
“What do you expect me to say? Believe me, I can hold my own against your dear friends.”
“Peter doesn’t have to use an ability to find you now, you idiot,” Mohinder said. “All they have to do is watch me, expecting that sooner or later, you’ll show up. They could be watching right now. They could be on their way over here. You have to go.”
Sylar stared over his shoulder, eyes distant, but Mohinder caught the slight slackening of his face, and knew Sylar was admitting he was right. Then Sylar looked back at him directly.
“It wasn’t that long ago that you’d have liked to see that happen.”
Mohinder flinched. “That was then.”
“Why the change of heart?”
“I just...I...I don’t want your blood on my hands.”
“I seem to remember quite clearly a few moments where you felt otherwise.”
“Not any more. I’m...” He looked down. Sylar somehow moved closer to him, as close as he could possibly get without actually touching, only a few molecules of air between them that Mohinder wanted to make disappear. He forced himself to look back up into Sylar’s gaze.
“I...I didn’t mean for this to happen.” It hurt to be honest. To start admitting how he now felt.
“I know,” Sylar said, quietly stopping him before he could confess anything else. He leaned into Mohinder and touched his shoulder. “But it doesn’t matter. Because it did.”
Mohinder kissed him hard, clutching at his shirt. The hand on his shoulder tightened as if to reassure him, and it was only after he relaxed and slowed down that Sylar let go and then slipped his arms around Mohinder’s back, pulling them even more tightly together.
“I’m already here,” Sylar murmured against his lips. “I might as well stay a little while longer.”
* * * * * * *
One day he comes home and tosses his mail onto the table as he locks the door, and something slides out from under an advertising circular and onto the floor. Frowning, he picks the card up: a plain scene of mountains, looking cold and blue. He turns it over to see eight tiny letters printed precisely in the center of the message area:
I miss you.
It's amazing how a statement so simple and quiet can twist in one's chest. He sinks down on the couch, still clutching it, and concentrates on breathing evenly until he can see straight again.
He later hates himself for feeling that way, of course. But it doesn’t stop him from laying the card on top of the box, where he can glimpse it every time he opens the closet door.
* * * * * * *
He was at an academic meeting in Seattle. That night at the hotel, despite being exhausted from the early morning flight he’d taken, he propped himself up against the pillows with a stack of papers and abstracts and a highlighter. At some point, he nodded off.
He woke up at the feel of his reading glasses being removed. He blinked down at his empty lap, and then at the man seated on the edge of his bed.
“You must be getting old, professor, if you didn’t even hear me come in.”
Mohinder was torn between making an angry remark about the unfair use of abilities to invade his privacy, and just wanting to touch. He settled for asking, “How did you know I was here?”
“I always know where you are, Mohinder.”
“That’s either incredibly touching, or incredibly disturbing.” He tried to laugh.
“Or just honest.”
The warmth of Sylar’s hands bleeding through his shirt made it hard to think. Sylar slid closer and murmured, “Seven months without you is too long.”
Sylar nuzzled against his neck, and Mohinder bowed his head. “What’s wrong?” Sylar asked.
Mohinder tilted his head back to gaze at the ceiling. “It’s just...” He sighed and forced himself to look into Sylar’s eyes. “I shouldn’t want this. I should hate you for everything you’ve done. And I do - part of me still does.” His voice grew thick. “But having you here - suddenly, none of it matters. It feels like something that happened to someone else, in another lifetime.” He shook his head at himself. “It makes me feel weak.”
“You think I like this?” Sylar’s voice had an edge. “You think I don’t have times when I wish I could walk away and never think about you again? I’ve spent a lifetime being no one, wanting a way out. I finally proved that I was right. That I was special. And now? Now I’m using my abilities to sneak down dark corridors in middling hotels and pick locks. So I can see you again.” His voice dropped as he whispered, “Sometimes I hate you.”
“Why?” Mohinder asked, startled.
“For turning me into this. For making me this way. I can’t change.” Sylar took a deep breath. “And sometimes I hate myself...because deep down, I don’t want to.”
“Then why are either of us here?” Mohinder finally asked.
“Because we have to be,” Sylar answered. Mohinder laughed, and Sylar stroked his cheek.
“I do believe in fate, Mohinder. Even if I struggle against it sometimes.” He smiled then, and it was the warm shy smile of all those late-night discussions. When Mohinder was trying to trap him, but wound up trapping himself.
“You want a less mystical answer? We’re here because...because of the look on your face when you opened your eyes and saw that it was me. That one moment...it makes everything I’ve gone through worthwhile.”
Mohinder was struck dumb. Then he glimpsed a redness on Sylar’s wrist. He grabbed the thin rough hand and turned it over, revealing the top of a half-healed scar, thin like a knife cut. “What happened?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sylar said. Then he caught the change in Mohinder’s expression, and said, “We can talk about it later.”
“Will we?”
“We can talk about whatever you want to talk about.” Sylar sighed and shook his head slightly. “Mohinder...I’ve missed the sound of your voice.”
Mohinder kissed him, letting their tongues curl together, and thought, I’ve missed the sound of yours, too.
* * * * * * *
He’s walking into his laboratory, talking back over his shoulder at Peter, and absently shuffling through the periodicals and reports that get routed to him through the internal mail system, when he sees a small shiny colorful corner sticking out.
No. Not here.
Sylar had told him in Seattle that he wasn’t going to stay tucked away in the shadows forever. He hadn’t meant an attack - he’d meant that he’d given Mohinder plenty of time to come to terms with this, and that his patience was rapidly wearing thin. At the time, lying there with their bodies tangled together, Mohinder hadn’t objected. But in the cold light of day, this challenge, openly coming right into the Company for anyone to handle and read - he frantically thinks that it’s too dangerous, it will attract attention and questions, the card has probably already been photographed and analyzed -
He pulls the card out: an aerial view of a non-descript city, with the caption “Los Alamos” at the bottom. The message consists of a date that’s three days in the future, and the words: Give Peter my love. So that I don’t have to.
Mohinder chuckles despite the underlying threat. Then his uneasiness returns.
“What is it?”
For a paranoid instant, he wonders if Peter was ordered to hover over him when he received this, to gauge his reaction and report back - no. Peter’s never been willing to go along with those sorts of subterfuges.
“Just a note from a friend,” Mohinder answers as he quickly lays the card message-side down on the countertop.
“On vacation?” Peter asks curiously.
“Something like that.”
“Anyone I know?”
“No,” Mohinder says, and when he thinks about that, he realizes it’s not really a lie.
“I can’t resist a good mystery.” Peter grins and leans against the railing. “Any chance of getting to meet her?”
Mohinder takes a deep breath before saying, with an emphasis on the first word, “He’ll be back in town in a few days.”
“Oh. I...I didn’t realize...sorry.” Peter looks down, almost guiltily. “We all have things in our private lives that we don’t want each other prying into. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“It’s all right.” Mohinder does his best to smile. “Besides, I have a feeling that the two of you would be potentially explosive.” He realizes he’s still touching the postcard, and groans internally at the accidental joke.
“The jealous type, huh?”
Mohinder thinks back to the look on Sylar’s face when he’d talked about the work he was doing with Peter’s DNA, and about this latest message, and realizes: “I suppose he is.”
“Does he make you happy, though?” Peter looks at him intently.
I can’t change. And sometimes I hate myself, because I don’t want to.
“Yeah,” Mohinder says. There’s a piece of him that knows that giving in to that is a kind of betrayal, of everything and everyone, and that one day he may pay a price for it. But... “Yes, despite everything, he does.”
And he smiles a genuine smile as he picks the card up again and runs a finger across the handwriting on it.