[fanfic] 30 First Kisses - Kiss #15
Title: 30 First Kisses - Kiss #15
Author: tiptoe39
Rating: PG
Summary: A bright, sweet, short summer romance, set in spring, to get you through the winter.
This is the 15th of 30 possible ways Matt and Mohinder could share their first kiss, written for 30_kisses. The prompt/theme was "perfect blue." Previous kisses are here.
"Hey, Mohinder," Molly announced after dinner one night, "I bet your favorite color is pink."
Matt, at the sink, burst into loud laughter. Mohinder looked at Molly as though she'd just declared that Elvis was not only alive, but down at the corner store buying organic tofu. "What makes you think that?"
"Because you wear so much of it." This set Matt into a fresh round of giggles.
"Well, nice try, princess, but you're wrong." Mohinder pressed a finger to her pert little nose, and she squeaked. "I don't have a favorite color."
"That's not true. Everyone has a favorite color," Molly declared with the certainly only an eight-year-old could muster with a straight face. "Mine's green. Hey, Matt, get him to tell me what his favorite color is."
"Uh, OK," Matt said, half-turning around. "Hey, Mohinder, what color is DNA?"
Mohinder pouted. "It is a conspiracy. I can't win."
He was, of course, lying. Mohinder did have a favorite color; he just didn't know its name. It was the color of the light in Matt's eyes when he talked about a case he was working on or the latest thing he couldn't believe Molly was smart enough to say. It was the color of Mohinder's heart when he watched Matt going about his domestic duties in his usual good-hearted, slightly grumbly way. It was the color that tinted his fantasies of throwing his arms around those huge shoulders and whispering into his ear all the things he'd been feeling and hoping and dreaming about. It was a bittersweet color, something like amber, but Mohinder couldn't name it.
Molly had changed targets. "You have a favorite color, Matt, don't you?"
"Yep." Matt dried his hands on the dishtowel and turned toward her.
"Well, what is it?"
No hesitation. "Blue."
Molly was decidedly nonplussed by this answer. "Blue? That's so boring. Besides, there's a million kinds of blue. Which one?"
Mohinder had half expected Matt to say "NYPD blue," which would have been funny as hell and flown right over Molly's head. But instead, those eyes gained the light that took Mohinder's breath away. "I'll take you to see it," he said quietly.
A few weeks later the three of them were on a train bound for Maryland. It wasn't too long a trip, and it was Molly's first time on a train. She oohed and ahhed and wanted to go see the locomotive and the boxcar and the caboose, which made the both of them laugh and explain to her pouting face that these days trains really didn't have them anymore. At Baltimore they got off the train and rented a car, and an hour later they pulled up to a large, staid house surrounded by rushes and tall grass.
An elderly woman in an apron, who had about six chins, rushed out to greet them. "Matty!" she gushed. "Oh, Matty, look at you! It's been forever. You are the spitting image of your father, you know that?" He did not seem too pleased at the comparison, but he smiled and nodded appropriately. "Oh, and these are your friends? Welcome, you two! What's your name, dearie?" She bent down and produced a lollipop from a pocket of her apron, which Molly grabbed and unceremoniously popped in her mouth. The woman straightened up. "Pardon me, I'm so rude. I'm Donna, this is my husband Herb." (The man in the overalls carrying their luggage inside stopped to wave one suitcase-laden arm.) "Welcome to our little place. Matty and his dad used to come up here in the summer and catch us all crabs for supper. How is your father, by the way?"
Matt looked decidedly uncomfortable. "He's... doing all right," he said noncommittally.
Donna didn't seem the slightest bit suspicious. "Well, we saved the balcony room for you, Matty, oh, don't worry, the balcony is for everyone, it's just he likes to be close to it, he was always out there on evenings..." She went on in that way for several more minutes, talking a blue streak to all of them by turns, until they were on the second floor of the small bed-and-breakfast. Each had a key to one of the three bedrooms, and they were standing just inside a set of sliding glass doors that opened out onto a spacious wooden balcony. Beyond the trees that lined the property, Mohinder could see the calm blue of the Chesapeake Bay stretching out into infinity. He glanced at Matt. The eyes were shining, and there was a big grin spread out across his face. Mohinder swallowed hard in a vain effort to get his heart out of his throat and back where it belonged.
A flock of seagulls squawked noisily at Molly as she went tearing down the beach, kicking up a small cloud with every pound of her feet into the soft sand. She'd wiggled out of her shoes several yards back, and Matt was carrying them loosely by his side. He was wearing flip-flops, and Mohinder was carrying his own shoes and socks after giving up when the scratchy sand had thoroughly invaded them. He hoped his bare feet weren't having too much of a corrosive effect on the environment; he was fairly sure they were a biohazard of some sort.
The water was cold and too full of seaweed for swimming, and there was a bit of a nip in the air, it being still the beginnings of spring. But that was just as well. The tourists hadn't yet come out, so the beaches and marinas were sleepy. An old man sat not too far away, fishing line in hand, but he was the only other person in sight.
"Bet he's crabbing, like we used to," Matt mused as they walked by.
"Your father took you here?" Mohinder asked.
"Before he flew the coop, yeah." Matt's face betrayed no emotion, and Mohinder wished he knew a way to borrow his ability just for an instant, just long enough to divine what he was feeling. But Matt had fallen silent and was gazing out past the bobbing white sailboats. All Mohinder wanted was to take his hand and continue to walk along the beach with him, following the small ray of sunshine who was running from the waves and squealing when the surf tickled her toes. That would be ideal.
Sometimes, when Matt wasn't around to hear, Mohinder let himself want more than just to hold his hand. Sometimes he fantasized about running his fingers along that well-worn cheek, dipping a thumb into the chapped lower lip, turning that face to his for a kiss. Sometimes he even dared fantasize beyond that.
Matt hadn't been Mohinder's "type" to start out with. He'd always enjoyed looking at the skinnier, baby-faced, lithe men who were pretty rather than built, and he'd always been drawn to personalities that were larger than life. But something about Matt's presence-- how commandingly it could fill a room in a moment of crisis, and yet how modestly it sat at the table in the morning, demanding nothing of its surroundings-- had taken him by surprise. Matt was a bundle of contradictions. He was strong yet agile, a combination Mohinder hadn't thought possible, and he had confidence with a gun yet fear of a pen. At first Mohinder had thought he was merely fascinated with the paradoxes of Matt Parkman, the man inside a child inside a man that he was. But time had tempered Mohinder's ability to lie to himself.
Take, for example, the time Matt had been coming out of the shower, and Mohinder had been captivated by the way an errant drop of water from his wet head landed on and clung to his shoulder, then streaked along the muscles of his upper arm before diving to its death from his elbow. Or the time he had been moving Molly's new chest of drawers into her room, and his T-shirt was heavy with sweat, and Mohinder had actually closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of a man working hard for his family. It was pretty clear, by the third or fourth time Mohinder caught himself thoroughly enjoying Matt in his tightest pair of jeans, that, type or no type, he was attracted to him. Hell, he flat-out wanted him.
And now Matt had run forward to catch up to Molly playing in the surf, and now he'd rolled his jeans up to his calves and had hoisted her on his shoulders. And they were braving the seaweed together, and he was lamenting the coldness of the water in a high falsetto, and she was laughing as he kicked seaweed off his foot and it flew so high it nearly landed on her. A wave broke against his knees, the spray flying upward, little prisms reflecting three, four, a thousand colors against the light. And Mohinder laughed and cheered and cried a little inside, because he knew he was in love with him.
Molly had turned in for the night after a long and rollicking dinner of crab cakes and crab jokes and crab impressions and finally Molly becoming quite crabby herself, as she was pretty exhausted and wanted to stop hanging with the grown-ups and go to her room. It was her very first time to have a hotel room all to herself, so there were no arguments when they told her to go in and get to bed. They were all very aware that she would probably not be sleeping for a good long while, but God bless this B&B for actually having parental controls on the TVs, so they could rest easy.
Afterwards, Mohinder had wandered downstairs, where Donna had told him tales of Maury and Matty Parkman and their infamous August crab-fishing expeditions, while Herb fixed him a martini in the kitchen from supermarket drink mix. Mohinder felt he understood a little bit more now how betrayed Matt had felt when his father left. He'd worshipped him. Much as Mohinder had his own father, but Mohinder had been a grown man when his father left. Matt had been but a child.
He took his half-finished drink upstairs and stepped out onto the balcony. The sky was a brilliant red, with burnt purple flecks of clouds. The sun was behind him, and the water looked like burnished copper beyond the trees. Matt was at the railing, gazing out on the water.
"She's a very nice lady," Mohinder said, striding up to stand beside him. "I suppose this place holds a lot of memories for you."
Matt nodded. "I've known her all my life. When we moved to the West Coast when I was 10, this place was one of the hardest to let go of. I wanted so badly to write them letters, but it was so hard to do. I couldn't ever make the addresses look right."
"I see." Mohinder drained his martini and set the glass down on a small wicker table. There was just the slight beginning of a breeze ruffling Matt's hair and kissing his skin. Mohinder was horribly jealous of it. He wanted to run his fingers down that neck and make him shiver, too.
"The best memory I have of this place," said Matt, a small secret smile on his face, "is from when I was eight or nine, and Dad was letting me cast the line myself for the first time. It was still early in the morning when we started, and the water had been all pink because of the sunrise. I'd kind of fallen asleep with the line in my hands. Then it started to tug, and I woke up and pulled it in and I had actually caught a crab, little old me, with my own two hands!" His face was rosy with remembered excitement. "I remember taking it out of the trap and feeling it wriggle in my hands, and being afraid it was going to pinch me. It felt all slimy, like it slept in seaweed. It probably did, actually. And I looked up, and this is the part that's my favorite."
Matt leaned forward further, and a bit of an ache crept into his voice. "I saw my dad through the crab's little spindly legs. And he was smiling so proudly. I thought he was going to fly away, he looked so proud. And then I could see the water behind him, and it had changed color, because the sun was up now." His voice dropped nearly to a whisper-- an awed, hushed tone. "The bay was this gorgeous, incredible shade of blue. Perfect blue. That blue is still my favorite color."
He looked up, a little chastened and amused at having gone on so long, but his rueful words of apology died along with his smile. Instead, his face went slack, and he stared at Mohinder. Silver tears were sliding down his dark cheeks.
"I'm in love with you," Mohinder said quietly.
Matt stared. For several minutes. Mohinder gazed back through unwavering eyes.
Matt's lips twitched and began to move several times, as though trying to find the shape of the right words to say. Every time, his jaw dropped into uselessness again. Finally, he just sighed.
"I... I thought you ought to know," Mohinder said. "No, that's a lie, I didn't. I wasn't going to tell you. But now you know."
"You're...?" Matt started to step forward. His hand extended, then fell back to his side. "But you can't be. That would mean..."
Mohinder felt bitterness rising up, regret at what he'd said, fear of Matt's response, uncertainty about the one thing in his life that, no matter what else went wrong, could always be counted on to be a sure thing, until now-- his family, his home. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I... I'll try not to... to love you as much as I do. I'll try to figure out how to stop. There must be a way. Please don't... don't... I don't even know what, just please don't do it."
The sadness was breaking him apart. He wished his frozen limbs would return to life so he could run away. And the only part of him that was still moving was on overdrive. "It wasn't intentional. It was just that I watched you with Molly all the time and how you handled her was so wonderful, and I wished I knew all the things you did about raising a child..."
"Like lullabies in foreign languages and fairy stories she had never read before in any book?" The words went unheard.
"...And then I started watching you at other times, and I was struck by your sense of justice, your absolute determination to do what was right..."
"A man selling his own soul to help a sick woman and prevent a deadly disease from spreading...?" Still, the words flew into empty air.
"...And I really did try to fight it, even though I knew I had never met a man like you before and probably never would again..."
"...who took in not only a little girl with nowhere to go but a man at the end of his rope and made them both his family?"
And Mohinder's words disappeared as the last of his functions froze up because now he heard what Matt had been saying all this time, and because Matt had moved forward and taken his hands and then put an arm around his waist, and because Matt was gazing into his eyes, and because Matt was smiling.
"Why would a guy who was all of that want with a dumbass, divorced, closeted cop? So I didn't tell you how I felt." His eyes were sparkling with Mohinder's favorite color.
"Matt, please," Mohinder begged breathlessly, "go back and start from the beginning, I wasn't listening."
"Sorry, too late," breathed Matt as he kissed him.
Softness and sweetness blossomed inside Mohinder like a carpet of roses. His arms wound around his neck, Matt's hands on his waist tightening, and he melted backward into those strong hands until he was clinging to him just for balance. Matt's kiss was as glorious as the rest of him. Mohinder's eyes slitted open briefly. The last of the sunlight had disappeared, and the canopy of sky, dotted with pale stars, was perfect blue.
They remained on the balcony for a long time that night, talking, sharing, kissing, smiling, amazed at how they'd finally come together. From her bedroom window, Molly watched them for a time, then smiled and turned out the light.
And the next summer, Molly and Mohinder both learned how to fish for crabs.
:end:
Author: tiptoe39
Rating: PG
Summary: A bright, sweet, short summer romance, set in spring, to get you through the winter.
This is the 15th of 30 possible ways Matt and Mohinder could share their first kiss, written for 30_kisses. The prompt/theme was "perfect blue." Previous kisses are here.
"Hey, Mohinder," Molly announced after dinner one night, "I bet your favorite color is pink."
Matt, at the sink, burst into loud laughter. Mohinder looked at Molly as though she'd just declared that Elvis was not only alive, but down at the corner store buying organic tofu. "What makes you think that?"
"Because you wear so much of it." This set Matt into a fresh round of giggles.
"Well, nice try, princess, but you're wrong." Mohinder pressed a finger to her pert little nose, and she squeaked. "I don't have a favorite color."
"That's not true. Everyone has a favorite color," Molly declared with the certainly only an eight-year-old could muster with a straight face. "Mine's green. Hey, Matt, get him to tell me what his favorite color is."
"Uh, OK," Matt said, half-turning around. "Hey, Mohinder, what color is DNA?"
Mohinder pouted. "It is a conspiracy. I can't win."
He was, of course, lying. Mohinder did have a favorite color; he just didn't know its name. It was the color of the light in Matt's eyes when he talked about a case he was working on or the latest thing he couldn't believe Molly was smart enough to say. It was the color of Mohinder's heart when he watched Matt going about his domestic duties in his usual good-hearted, slightly grumbly way. It was the color that tinted his fantasies of throwing his arms around those huge shoulders and whispering into his ear all the things he'd been feeling and hoping and dreaming about. It was a bittersweet color, something like amber, but Mohinder couldn't name it.
Molly had changed targets. "You have a favorite color, Matt, don't you?"
"Yep." Matt dried his hands on the dishtowel and turned toward her.
"Well, what is it?"
No hesitation. "Blue."
Molly was decidedly nonplussed by this answer. "Blue? That's so boring. Besides, there's a million kinds of blue. Which one?"
Mohinder had half expected Matt to say "NYPD blue," which would have been funny as hell and flown right over Molly's head. But instead, those eyes gained the light that took Mohinder's breath away. "I'll take you to see it," he said quietly.
A few weeks later the three of them were on a train bound for Maryland. It wasn't too long a trip, and it was Molly's first time on a train. She oohed and ahhed and wanted to go see the locomotive and the boxcar and the caboose, which made the both of them laugh and explain to her pouting face that these days trains really didn't have them anymore. At Baltimore they got off the train and rented a car, and an hour later they pulled up to a large, staid house surrounded by rushes and tall grass.
An elderly woman in an apron, who had about six chins, rushed out to greet them. "Matty!" she gushed. "Oh, Matty, look at you! It's been forever. You are the spitting image of your father, you know that?" He did not seem too pleased at the comparison, but he smiled and nodded appropriately. "Oh, and these are your friends? Welcome, you two! What's your name, dearie?" She bent down and produced a lollipop from a pocket of her apron, which Molly grabbed and unceremoniously popped in her mouth. The woman straightened up. "Pardon me, I'm so rude. I'm Donna, this is my husband Herb." (The man in the overalls carrying their luggage inside stopped to wave one suitcase-laden arm.) "Welcome to our little place. Matty and his dad used to come up here in the summer and catch us all crabs for supper. How is your father, by the way?"
Matt looked decidedly uncomfortable. "He's... doing all right," he said noncommittally.
Donna didn't seem the slightest bit suspicious. "Well, we saved the balcony room for you, Matty, oh, don't worry, the balcony is for everyone, it's just he likes to be close to it, he was always out there on evenings..." She went on in that way for several more minutes, talking a blue streak to all of them by turns, until they were on the second floor of the small bed-and-breakfast. Each had a key to one of the three bedrooms, and they were standing just inside a set of sliding glass doors that opened out onto a spacious wooden balcony. Beyond the trees that lined the property, Mohinder could see the calm blue of the Chesapeake Bay stretching out into infinity. He glanced at Matt. The eyes were shining, and there was a big grin spread out across his face. Mohinder swallowed hard in a vain effort to get his heart out of his throat and back where it belonged.
A flock of seagulls squawked noisily at Molly as she went tearing down the beach, kicking up a small cloud with every pound of her feet into the soft sand. She'd wiggled out of her shoes several yards back, and Matt was carrying them loosely by his side. He was wearing flip-flops, and Mohinder was carrying his own shoes and socks after giving up when the scratchy sand had thoroughly invaded them. He hoped his bare feet weren't having too much of a corrosive effect on the environment; he was fairly sure they were a biohazard of some sort.
The water was cold and too full of seaweed for swimming, and there was a bit of a nip in the air, it being still the beginnings of spring. But that was just as well. The tourists hadn't yet come out, so the beaches and marinas were sleepy. An old man sat not too far away, fishing line in hand, but he was the only other person in sight.
"Bet he's crabbing, like we used to," Matt mused as they walked by.
"Your father took you here?" Mohinder asked.
"Before he flew the coop, yeah." Matt's face betrayed no emotion, and Mohinder wished he knew a way to borrow his ability just for an instant, just long enough to divine what he was feeling. But Matt had fallen silent and was gazing out past the bobbing white sailboats. All Mohinder wanted was to take his hand and continue to walk along the beach with him, following the small ray of sunshine who was running from the waves and squealing when the surf tickled her toes. That would be ideal.
Sometimes, when Matt wasn't around to hear, Mohinder let himself want more than just to hold his hand. Sometimes he fantasized about running his fingers along that well-worn cheek, dipping a thumb into the chapped lower lip, turning that face to his for a kiss. Sometimes he even dared fantasize beyond that.
Matt hadn't been Mohinder's "type" to start out with. He'd always enjoyed looking at the skinnier, baby-faced, lithe men who were pretty rather than built, and he'd always been drawn to personalities that were larger than life. But something about Matt's presence-- how commandingly it could fill a room in a moment of crisis, and yet how modestly it sat at the table in the morning, demanding nothing of its surroundings-- had taken him by surprise. Matt was a bundle of contradictions. He was strong yet agile, a combination Mohinder hadn't thought possible, and he had confidence with a gun yet fear of a pen. At first Mohinder had thought he was merely fascinated with the paradoxes of Matt Parkman, the man inside a child inside a man that he was. But time had tempered Mohinder's ability to lie to himself.
Take, for example, the time Matt had been coming out of the shower, and Mohinder had been captivated by the way an errant drop of water from his wet head landed on and clung to his shoulder, then streaked along the muscles of his upper arm before diving to its death from his elbow. Or the time he had been moving Molly's new chest of drawers into her room, and his T-shirt was heavy with sweat, and Mohinder had actually closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of a man working hard for his family. It was pretty clear, by the third or fourth time Mohinder caught himself thoroughly enjoying Matt in his tightest pair of jeans, that, type or no type, he was attracted to him. Hell, he flat-out wanted him.
And now Matt had run forward to catch up to Molly playing in the surf, and now he'd rolled his jeans up to his calves and had hoisted her on his shoulders. And they were braving the seaweed together, and he was lamenting the coldness of the water in a high falsetto, and she was laughing as he kicked seaweed off his foot and it flew so high it nearly landed on her. A wave broke against his knees, the spray flying upward, little prisms reflecting three, four, a thousand colors against the light. And Mohinder laughed and cheered and cried a little inside, because he knew he was in love with him.
Molly had turned in for the night after a long and rollicking dinner of crab cakes and crab jokes and crab impressions and finally Molly becoming quite crabby herself, as she was pretty exhausted and wanted to stop hanging with the grown-ups and go to her room. It was her very first time to have a hotel room all to herself, so there were no arguments when they told her to go in and get to bed. They were all very aware that she would probably not be sleeping for a good long while, but God bless this B&B for actually having parental controls on the TVs, so they could rest easy.
Afterwards, Mohinder had wandered downstairs, where Donna had told him tales of Maury and Matty Parkman and their infamous August crab-fishing expeditions, while Herb fixed him a martini in the kitchen from supermarket drink mix. Mohinder felt he understood a little bit more now how betrayed Matt had felt when his father left. He'd worshipped him. Much as Mohinder had his own father, but Mohinder had been a grown man when his father left. Matt had been but a child.
He took his half-finished drink upstairs and stepped out onto the balcony. The sky was a brilliant red, with burnt purple flecks of clouds. The sun was behind him, and the water looked like burnished copper beyond the trees. Matt was at the railing, gazing out on the water.
"She's a very nice lady," Mohinder said, striding up to stand beside him. "I suppose this place holds a lot of memories for you."
Matt nodded. "I've known her all my life. When we moved to the West Coast when I was 10, this place was one of the hardest to let go of. I wanted so badly to write them letters, but it was so hard to do. I couldn't ever make the addresses look right."
"I see." Mohinder drained his martini and set the glass down on a small wicker table. There was just the slight beginning of a breeze ruffling Matt's hair and kissing his skin. Mohinder was horribly jealous of it. He wanted to run his fingers down that neck and make him shiver, too.
"The best memory I have of this place," said Matt, a small secret smile on his face, "is from when I was eight or nine, and Dad was letting me cast the line myself for the first time. It was still early in the morning when we started, and the water had been all pink because of the sunrise. I'd kind of fallen asleep with the line in my hands. Then it started to tug, and I woke up and pulled it in and I had actually caught a crab, little old me, with my own two hands!" His face was rosy with remembered excitement. "I remember taking it out of the trap and feeling it wriggle in my hands, and being afraid it was going to pinch me. It felt all slimy, like it slept in seaweed. It probably did, actually. And I looked up, and this is the part that's my favorite."
Matt leaned forward further, and a bit of an ache crept into his voice. "I saw my dad through the crab's little spindly legs. And he was smiling so proudly. I thought he was going to fly away, he looked so proud. And then I could see the water behind him, and it had changed color, because the sun was up now." His voice dropped nearly to a whisper-- an awed, hushed tone. "The bay was this gorgeous, incredible shade of blue. Perfect blue. That blue is still my favorite color."
He looked up, a little chastened and amused at having gone on so long, but his rueful words of apology died along with his smile. Instead, his face went slack, and he stared at Mohinder. Silver tears were sliding down his dark cheeks.
"I'm in love with you," Mohinder said quietly.
Matt stared. For several minutes. Mohinder gazed back through unwavering eyes.
Matt's lips twitched and began to move several times, as though trying to find the shape of the right words to say. Every time, his jaw dropped into uselessness again. Finally, he just sighed.
"I... I thought you ought to know," Mohinder said. "No, that's a lie, I didn't. I wasn't going to tell you. But now you know."
"You're...?" Matt started to step forward. His hand extended, then fell back to his side. "But you can't be. That would mean..."
Mohinder felt bitterness rising up, regret at what he'd said, fear of Matt's response, uncertainty about the one thing in his life that, no matter what else went wrong, could always be counted on to be a sure thing, until now-- his family, his home. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I... I'll try not to... to love you as much as I do. I'll try to figure out how to stop. There must be a way. Please don't... don't... I don't even know what, just please don't do it."
The sadness was breaking him apart. He wished his frozen limbs would return to life so he could run away. And the only part of him that was still moving was on overdrive. "It wasn't intentional. It was just that I watched you with Molly all the time and how you handled her was so wonderful, and I wished I knew all the things you did about raising a child..."
"Like lullabies in foreign languages and fairy stories she had never read before in any book?" The words went unheard.
"...And then I started watching you at other times, and I was struck by your sense of justice, your absolute determination to do what was right..."
"A man selling his own soul to help a sick woman and prevent a deadly disease from spreading...?" Still, the words flew into empty air.
"...And I really did try to fight it, even though I knew I had never met a man like you before and probably never would again..."
"...who took in not only a little girl with nowhere to go but a man at the end of his rope and made them both his family?"
And Mohinder's words disappeared as the last of his functions froze up because now he heard what Matt had been saying all this time, and because Matt had moved forward and taken his hands and then put an arm around his waist, and because Matt was gazing into his eyes, and because Matt was smiling.
"Why would a guy who was all of that want with a dumbass, divorced, closeted cop? So I didn't tell you how I felt." His eyes were sparkling with Mohinder's favorite color.
"Matt, please," Mohinder begged breathlessly, "go back and start from the beginning, I wasn't listening."
"Sorry, too late," breathed Matt as he kissed him.
Softness and sweetness blossomed inside Mohinder like a carpet of roses. His arms wound around his neck, Matt's hands on his waist tightening, and he melted backward into those strong hands until he was clinging to him just for balance. Matt's kiss was as glorious as the rest of him. Mohinder's eyes slitted open briefly. The last of the sunlight had disappeared, and the canopy of sky, dotted with pale stars, was perfect blue.
They remained on the balcony for a long time that night, talking, sharing, kissing, smiling, amazed at how they'd finally come together. From her bedroom window, Molly watched them for a time, then smiled and turned out the light.
And the next summer, Molly and Mohinder both learned how to fish for crabs.
:end: