The Things We Never Say

You’re acting on initiative
And you’re spelling out your love
You shouldn’t be alone in there
You could be above ground

&&&

Mohinder hadn’t expected Peter to stay, but he did.

&&&

Stale air circled the tired threadwork of his living space. It kicked up dust like glittering specks, dancing in the broken bands of light that cut through the almost-darkness, and speaking softly in that winding, circuitous way the other man had found so fascinating, he began to pace.

He said he could test him.

Pacing back around forth across the tracks of sunlight that bled fresh through the slivers of space between ancient wooden blinds, he spoke of evolution, destiny. Of cosmic symmetry, and a greater good. Just what all that good encompassed he could not yet say for sure, save that it was folding in closer and closer on them with each day. Like the rolling glissade of an octopus’ arms, alien, imminent; the squeeze is tight and stifling and so painfully, nightmarishly slow.

A cautious hope weighed heavily in the corners of his voice, spinning his words like gossamer cobwebs that hung low in the air between them, as though to catch splinters of afternoon light like dewdrops in a pasture, but settling instead to capture the younger man’s gaze as he simply watched, and listened. He had spoken as though the world itself hinged upon their shoulders, which suddenly felt imperfect and frail in light of their circumstances, small and fine as a sparrow’s wing. And as large eyes observed him from their owner’s loose-limbed perch on the edge of the tired leather settee, he supposed it did rest upon them after all.

Peter was special, just like he said he was. They could – they would – prove this, if he allowed him the chance. They could find a way to stop him from destroying the city.

They had to.

He hadn’t expected Peter to agree to anything. He hadn’t even expected Peter to agree to meet him again, after the sourness of their last encounter, and his own impatience and tendency towards distrust. But when he saw dark eyes light up beneath thin bands of sunshine like the spray of earth-green embers, he’d known he found the piece he’d been missing from this puzzle.

&&&

Peter would be his first subject, the first specimen he could rightfully validate through his father’s research. A Patient Zero of his very own. Of course Mohinder never actually said those words, patient, specimen, subject; when Peter was there it was nearly impossible to think in such terms. But if he really was going to explode they had to find out why.

He knew it went well beyond his baser scientific rationality, and there were nights as they sat together, and spoke in low tones by the pale gold glow of tired lamplight that he had to stop himself from romanticizing their efforts. But whenever he glanced out of the corner of his eye and caught the younger man’s gaze staring back at him, sharp and clear as ocher glass, he also knew it couldn’t be helped.

There was a hope in those eyes that he couldn’t rebuff and beyond it a basic understanding, a caring, soft and subtle but always there, like a flare in the dark. About the research and what it meant to him - to Peter, and to everyone. Even if he was just going to die.

Mohinder wasn’t always so sure the world was still salvageable, but when Peter spoke of it he wanted to believe that it was.

&&&

The arrangement was simple. When Peter was there, they worked.

Locked in the old apartment pouring through books and files and research for the answers to why Peter was going to explode, they were barely friends; barely anything in particular. They searched and they worked and that was all that mattered. And when it was too late or it had all been too much, Peter just stretched out on the beaten sofa to sleep. He hadn’t expected it but he didn’t find a reason to say no either, and so Mohinder retreated back to the bedroom or simply dozed off at the desk as he was often prone, but he never ventured too close.

It wasn’t – and they weren’t – like that. This was about finding answers.

Peter left in the mornings; back to his place to shower and dress for work, but once he was off-duty in the evenings he came back again. Each time Mohinder let him in his company felt less like a requisite and more like a reassurance. Someone he could count on, if he were feeling so inclined. And it was in that way that they could’ve been like friends, he figured, sleeping, sharing in the same space.

But they worked, and that was really all that mattered.

&&&

When they spoke they spoke of the things that men who were trying to keep the city from exploding would speak of. Like theories and predestination, logic and belief; of mysterious ills and broad psychic forecasts, and their sudden demises in a flash of blinding red light. Even then Peter did most of the talking, and Mohinder most of the listening.

He’d opened up like a floodgate, a torrent of fuzzy mental pictures and loosely termed allegories, and fractured visions that splintered at the edges and were real in all the ways that counted. Each night he came he spilled his thoughts and theories and hopes and dreams between the splayed fingers, absently gripping the spine of Mohinder’s father’s book, like a talisman or some archaic charm. Mohinder never dared to reproach him, and Peter had always seemed grateful for it in a way that he knew only too well.

In a way the book had been like a charm of some sort, he absently ventured in spaces towards the back of his mind, where idle thoughts like that still flared from time to time. And looking into the warming glow of big, dark eyes from over stale coffee and old research documents, he was willing to entertain the notion. He had been aware that if it hadn’t been for his father’s words he never would’ve ended up becoming acquainted with the boy in the first place, when he first landed on his doorstep all those weeks prior, all hope and nervous smiles and vast and wonderful promise. Had he been in a better state of mind he would’ve seen that then instead of now – maybe they could’ve found a way to change this – but Peter never called him on it.

“You’re here now,” he’d said, with those eyes like glass. “You’re trying…that’s something, right?”

They hadn’t spoken of it since, because when you’re trying to save the world the little things just kind of drift out of focus.

&&&

On the seventh night since Peter began coming over, they stopped talking about destiny and greater goods. And so they stopped talking at all.

On the eighth they found other things to talk about. Small things. Day jobs first, the city second, and family – or rather, fathers – third. It always came back to fathers, one way or another. But Mohinder knew what Peter had meant when he had called them “cheap knock-offs.”

&&&

Peter’s way of smiling even when he was upset had started to raise lines around his knuckles.

They never talked about Peter dying.

&&&

By the eleventh morning they were talking about books and current events. They could’ve passed for normal people by then. Friends, perhaps, in another time; another place where they needn’t worry about the city exploding and the world crashing down around their ears.

On the thirteenth day they weren’t really talking about anything in particular, because Peter had talked him into putting away the books and coming out of the apartment to have coffee with him at the café down the street. And over tea and lattes and idle discussion with the man who wasn’t quite a friend, Mohinder had eventually forgotten that was supposed to be irritated with Peter for keeping him from his work.

Somewhere down the line he’d managed to make him laugh; over just what he wouldn’t remember later but that wasn’t important. The laugh had been an honest one. Not cracked by waning patience or that spiny edge of bitterness that had often found a home in his humor. And with lips quirking in an inclining smirk, the younger man looked at him from across the table as though he’d just discovered something brilliant and new.

“You should do that more often,” Peter had said in that distant way that he does, as though he’s talking in your direction but more so to himself.

“Do what?”

“Smile.”

The way he could sit there and say that, and tell him to smile when neither of them could find a way to save him, it didn’t make sense. And the notion had stung in ways that brought the scientist up shorter than a slap.

Peter didn’t stay that night. Mohinder didn’t ask why.

&&&

Peter didn’t come back for two days. Mohinder didn’t ask about that either.

&&&

Sometimes he watched the younger man sleep. For only a moment, or two. Just the way black lashes fanned over the apples of cheeks that glowed like ivory in muted yellow lamplight. It’s only when he was sleeping that he remembered how young he really was, and how truly unfair the gods could be.

But this wasn’t – and they weren’t – like that.

&&&

“You could lead them, you know,” Peter had said one afternoon, jabbing his chopsticks at an errant piece of sesame chicken. He didn’t say ‘us;’ when he spoke of the others he never did. “They’ll be ok if they have you.”

After I’m gone.

They leaned against the door of Mohinder’s parked cab and ate the Chinese carryout that was going to pass as lunch. It had become another practice that fell into place between them; a part of a familiar routine that neither of them really remembered beginning but felt no need to stop. Peter coming by in the afternoon between his shifts with food, boxed and bagged, and taking lunch together before going back to their respective day jobs.

“I practically live with you, I might as well make sure you don’t starve,” Peter had teased once, by way of explanation, but that was as far as the conversation had gone. It had felt good, though, in some small, arcane way that ate at him when he wasn’t thinking straight. Just to pretend to be normal for a few minutes a day.

Mohinder frowned slightly, in the way he does when Peter catches him off-guard. “I don’t think you need me leading anyone,” he ventured, carefully inspecting a piece of crab wonton as he shot the other man a skeptical glance. He’d barely managed to keep himself alive and functioning for the last thirty-two years; how could he be expected to keep an entire human sub-species out of harm’s way? “I’d be better off trying to herd cats.”

“C’mon, we’re not that bad,” Peter smirked. He ignored the caustic remark about the time Nathan had gotten ahead of him and he was nearly sucked into a jet engine over Boston. “And I think you’d be good at the whole Professor Xavier thing, if you tried.”

An angled eyebrow. “Professor Xavier?” Oh, right. Mohinder had heard Hiro and Micah repeatedly debating their comic book and television equivalents; the full context of which Isaac had attempted on numerous occasions to translate for him, despite his lingering incomprehension. “And just who would that make you?”

Something strange crosses the other man’s ocher-glass eyes. Like there’s much more to be said than Mohinder had realized, and the feeling is somewhat disquieting. Peter’s cell phone rings in his jacket pocket; the phone’s ID reads “Simone.” He doesn’t answer.

He never answers Mohinder, either. It’s just another thing they don’t talk about.

&&&

In time he had begun testing the others as well. Those were the only nights that Peter didn’t stay.

The apartment had felt somehow emptier without the sounds of his footsteps on his floors and his breathing in the air. Not that he’d ever say that aloud.

&&&

Peter’s hand was bleeding.

He’d done something Mohinder had called “utterly foolish” without taking Claire with him, like he had told him to do. Cat herding, indeed.

He’d gone home instead of the hospital – just when he started calling the apartment home Mohinder couldn’t say for sure – and smiled sheepishly as he bandaged the wound. “S’ok,” he fibbed reassuringly, “I’ll just have to be more careful next time. And stop looking at me like that – I’m a nurse, I know what I’m doing.”

Leaning against the bathroom doorway with crossed arms, watching slender fingers wind gauze in a completely expert and artful way, Mohinder tried not to focus on the way droplets of blood stood out distressingly red on the white of his tiled floor.

We may not get a next time.

“It was still stupid.”

“Thanks Mom.”

&&&

The first time they kissed it was an accident.

Peter said something about “getting his wires crossed.” Mohinder just looked away and went back to working.

It didn’t come up again.

&&&

“I don’t want you here, if we can’t stop it.”

“You’re not going to die.” Lie. “I’ve already told you – ”

“Just, tell me you’ll go, ok?”

It was Mohinder who didn’t answer this time.

&&&

It had stopped being about work a long time ago. But they don’t talk about that either - because when you’re trying to save the world, the little things just kind of drift out of focus.

&&&

The second time Peter came back to him bleeding, their mouths had met in a way that didn’t require words to explain.

By the fourth and fifth and sixth there would be no going back to the way things had been.

&&&

With lips swollen and slick with saliva and ocher-glass eyes sparking like a spray of fireworks in intelligent earthen tones, he had never looked more perfect than he did when he was beneath him.

Light skin flushed and sweated freely, and Peter was beautiful without even realizing it. The thighs spread around Mohinder’s hips were like a living coil, all silk flesh and tight need, muscles taut and trembling to keep him, to hold him – them – together. With a measured breath his hips tilted inward and pushed slowly, carefully, inside a heat that was tense and needing and knowing and good, so artlessly and intrinsically good. Just like everything else about the man, it seemed.

Fingers threaded fingers, thin stripes of olive and burnt umber. Peter whispered and keened, and sighed breathy sighs and said his name, Please, Mohinder, as though it were a prayer. And Mohinder rocked back and kissed his face and throat, I know, and tried to touch and absorb and learn everything he could before the other man shook in his arms and went over the edge and pulled them both down with him.

He wanted to know everything about this man.

&&&

Mohinder finally understood why Peter referred to the others as ‘them’ and not ‘us.’
Us held a vastly different meaning, one that had less and less to do with evolution and more with the way their bodies fit together in the dark.

They never acted like a couple when the others were around; they never acted like they were anything at all.

&&&

They worked at night, and had sex in the mornings before Peter had to leave. Mohinder never wanted him to go but it didn’t matter if he said anything or not.

They were all running out of time.

&&&

“But what’re you going to do when I’m gone?” Not if, when.

Beneath his head Peter’s diaphragm trembled around a soft breath. A slender hand palmed downwards along the slope of his collarbone, fingertips grazing through the small fine hairs that gathered at the center of his naked chest.

But it was hard to think about anything when he was touching him like that.

&&&

You said you could help him.

Accusations and ugly words flew, anger and fear and painful resignation cutting through the air on blades made by sharp tongues and colliding egos. You have no right and he can make his own decisions and you lied to him and you lied to us. Because Peter was screwed up; he was broken and he was naïve and he needed to be helped, to be watched. He didn’t need to be pet and coddled and fucked by a man nearly ten years older who only gave a shit about them to try and please his dead father.

Mohinder’s lip was split; blood spotted the lines around lighter knuckles.

That was the day that Nathan had found out about them.

&&&

Peter kissed him like it was all going to be ok. If Mohinder had been a petty man he would’ve resented him for it.

&&&

Tense thighs trembled and skin colored darkly over the angles of softer cheekbones, dark strands falling to shield the blackness of pupils blown wide. Flattened hands held the edges of his shoulders for purchase and biting his lip Peter eased himself down onto Mohinder’s cock, hot and flushed and insistent beneath him. Letting out a shuddering sigh, he took Mohinder as deep as his still sensitive body would let him go; with a cry and an impulsive buck their hips meet, and in his lap Peter looked wanton and hungry and adored.

Just the way he always looked when they were together.

Around him his body shuddered gently. He was still wet and still open and still full from before, and the way he had still needed to feel the other man inside him burned at Mohinder in a way he could barely stand. And when Peter leaned forward to kiss him and murmur that he was ready, he couldn’t help but ache in the sweetness of it.

Because he was dying and they were all dying and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

And so they simply rocked together, and pretended it might not have been the last time.

&&&

“I don’t want to die.”

&&&

He smoothed away dark bangs as Peter sobbed into his chest.

It wasn’t fucking fair.

&&&

It’s early morning and the day and the time doesn’t matter anymore. Because Mohinder is sitting on the living floor amidst a mountain of opened books and research papers, and he’s looking up at Peter with the closest thing to hope in his eyes that had been there in weeks.

Once they find it he expects Peter to leave him.

Instead he just goes to his knees beside him, wraps his arms around his shoulders, and holds him the way Mohinder had held him the night before.

They stay that way for a while, until the first bands of sunlight bleed fresh through the ancient wooden blinds. Breathing.

And Peter stays for good.

&&&