Fic: Science on Your Mind
Title: Science on Your Mind
Characters: Mohinder/Elle
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1839
Disclaimer: I don't own any aspect of Heroes or its characters
Spoilers/Warnings: AU after second season.
Summary: She smiled at him. He smiled at her. It was really awkward.
A/N: Written for a Ridiculously Specific prompt.
Mohinder loved everything about being a professor. He loved the reputation that came with being an academic. He loved the feeling of pride that accompanied seeing his name in the byline of an article he'd published. He loved lecturing to a riveted classroom, even if they weren't really all that interested in what he was teaching and more distracted by his halo of curls.
He especially loved working in the lab - the tintinnabulation of test tubes, the tinkling of stainless steel instruments, the countless supplies and state-of-the-art facilities provided by Primatech. Sure, his continued employment there involved certain compromising on his part - he did shoot Noah Bennet in the face, after all - but at least at Primatech he could have a little influence in what the future could hold. It was all for the greater good.
What he could do without, of course, was Elle Bishop walking by every day and leering at home through the tall windows. She never dropped by, never acknowledged him in any way as she went past. She simply glanced inside, sometimes making eye contact, sometimes not.
It was annoying.
Mohinder resolved to do something about it. During Bob Bishop's next check-in, Mohinder decided to bring it up.
"Mr. Bishop, is there something you do about Elle?" Mohinder interrupted.
Bob rubbed his temples with his first two fingers. "I don't know what you mean," he replied.
"She's a distraction."
Bob sighed and rolled his eyes. "You'll have to excuse her behavior, she's been benched from any active assignments," he explained. "Whatever she's doing to bother you, she's probably just acting out like a petulant child."
The barb wasn't directed at him, but still, Mohinder felt stung by it. "She's not bothering me, per se," he said.
Bob paused. "Oh?" he asked simply, his eyebrows peaking.
"She's just," Mohinder started, realizing halfway through his sentence how stupid he sounded, "she's just walking by all the time."
"All the time?"
"Well," Mohinder hesitated, "at least once or twice a day."
Bob adjusted the glasses on his face, a gesture which somehow managed to express his deep contempt for the professor. "All right, I'll be sure to tell her to take a different route, Dr. Suresh," he replied, in a tone that managed to make Mohinder feel like a total fool.
And so she stopped walking by. Mohinder found himself several times a day glancing up towards the glass, subconsciously searching for her, before inwardly chiding himself and focusing on the research at hand.
***
There was a knock at the door. "Finally, the research reports," he remarked, having waited for them to arrive nearly all day. "You can come in, bring them to me." Invested in his work, Mohinder didn't bother to tear himself away from his microscope until he heard a familiar voice call out.
"Whatever you say, Fight Club."
He hadn't heard the moniker since... well, it had certainly been awhile. He looked up to find Elle Bishop sauntering into his lab like a show pony. Mohinder couldn't help but stare as she strode across the lab, balanced precariously on four-inch heels that he noticed made her hips sway as she moved. "I know you don't like me, but it couldn't be avoided." She thrust a manila envelope into his chest, and he absently took it from her, his eyes still attached to the lower half of her body. "No one else was around to bring this to you, and they said it was important."
Needless to say, she had taken him completely by surprise. Mohinder cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair, trying to collect himself. "Yes, yes, thank you," Mohinder sputtered. "So, you are..." he said haltingly, his ability to chat normally rusty from disuse.
Elle raised an eyebrow in dismissive dubiety. "I'm Elle. We've met before. Remember that one time I saved you from Sylar?"
"I - I - I -" he stammered indignantly. "Of course I remember," he managed to spit out, defensive. He already got enough disparaging mockery from Bob; he didn't need it from his daughter, too. "I meant to ask you how your arm was."
Elle's eyes fluttered. "Oh," she replied. "It's -" she paused for a moment, flicking a spark from her finger - "it's fine. How's your nose?"
"Well, it seems to be working fine now."
"Good." she replied.
She smiled at him.
He smiled at her.
They were silent for a moment.
It was really awkward.
"Right," Elle said. "I should get going."
Mohinder hesitated as he watched her leave; part of him, however negligible, almost wanted her to stay. He opened his mouth to say something - anything - that might cause her to wait just a moment more. "Have a nice day," he said hastily.
She turned around, still smiling, and she winked at him and disappeared through the doorway.
He felt like a prodigious ass.
***
His days in the lab started seeming all the same - long stretches of time in which he felt confined in this room, trapped with the trappings of scientific progress. He didn't get the same breathless rush he used to feel when encountering a new ability or tracing the DNA lines that led to it. He wasn't as excited to sift through pages and pages of results, trying to find the pattern (or lack of pattern) in them.
All he knew was that at five, when he looked up at the clock, he realized that another entire day had passed without seeing her again. His days were empty, punctuated only by her absence from them.
He felt lonely.
He briefly considered telling her father to remove the injunction on her walking by, but his conversations with Bob Bishop only succeeded in making Mohinder feel like an idiot, and so he quickly pushed the idea from his mind. He thought of asking coworkers about her, but he met Primatech agents only briefly as they brought to him people to study or information to examine, and Mohinder couldn't even remember their names most of the time.
Just as he'd resigned himself to the way his routine now bored him, he looked up to the clock above the door, as had become his habit, and there she was.
The lights in the lab were low, and in the dim sunshine that came from the windows she looked like a silhouette, the edges of her figure traced with light from behind her. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what she might look like underneath her backless blue blouse and grey pencil skirt, but he quickly recovered from the thought.
"E-Elle," he stuttered. "What are you doing here? I wasn't expecting anything."
"I don't have anything for you," she told him, strutting towards him and smiling like a Cheshire cat. "I just felt like stopping by." Her fingers darted across the test tubes and scientific instruments left lying on the table, and she punctuated each step with a small spark that died immediately on the table's slate surface. "How's it hanging?"
"It... it hangs," Mohinder replied, unsure of the correct response. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as she came even closer, and as her hands ran curiously across the table, he tried to imagine the electric sensation she left.
Elle pulled her lips down in a pout as she scanned the room, her eyes darting this way and that. "Kinda boring in here."
"Well, Elle, it's a laboratory. It's not meant to be entertaining."
Elle frowned. "Too bad. No point in sticking around, then."
Mohinder's face fell as she started to leave. "See you later?" Mohinder said, his voice cracking as she reached the door.
Elle wordlessly turned around and raised her hand, wiggling her fingers in a flirtatious wave. Mohinder blushed like a teenager. An instant later, she was gone.
***
After that, his mind started to wander when left unattended in the lab for too long.
His daydreams always began the same way: Elle walking in, just as cool and casual as before. She'd be wearing some form-fitting blouse or tight slacks or curve-hugging skirt - something professional, but just barely so. Somehow, in his mind, he'd have shed his awkward shell to become Mohinder, ladies' man, suave and sophisticated. She'd say something catty, and he'd reply with a double entendre... he wasn't so clear on that part, never having made a double entendre before, but he could skip that part in his head. Elle would be impressed by the wittiness of the riposte and made curious by the surreptitious suggestion behind it.
Sometimes in his mind he'd be the one to make the first move, a gesture or caress, something romantic. Sometimes he'd imagine her moving first, roughly grabbing his curls and forcing a kiss onto his lips, unable to contain her lust. From that point in the dream they'd undress one another and conduct a different kind of experimentation in the laboratory.
He'd take her up against a lab table, the cool surface of the slate drawing heat away from their bodies as they pressed into one another. He'd lift her so that she could sit comfortably on the edge, legs apart. Sometimes he'd think of knocking all his precious lab equipment to the floor in order to utilize the entire tabletop. Sometimes he'd think of going directly down to the floor himself. He almost always jilted himself back into reality with a feeling of terrible longing and a need for new underpants.
He'd been caught up in just such a reverie when, once again, she appeared like a bolt from the blue. Mohinder was suddenly jolted when he heard her voice.
"...hard?"
"What?" Mohinder said, his daydream interrupted. He was louder than he meant to be, and his face flushed with the warmth of embarrassment as he leaned closer against the counter, trying to hide what he thought Elle was talking about.
"I said, 'Are you working hard?'" Elle repeated. "You looked really intense there for a moment, Fight Club." Elle was right beside him, and she relaxed against the table with a saucy smile on her lips. "Got science on your mind?"
"Yeah... biology," Mohinder hastily told her.
Elle's smile faded, and she sighed as though disappointed. "All right, Doc, I won't distract you then."
"You can stay!" Mohinder said, his volume once again seeming out of his control.
"Um," Elle hesitated, her eyebrows knitting above her nose. "That's okay. You look like you want to get back to what you were doing."
"Then at least... come again?" he asked.
"Oh, Fight Club," Elle grinned. "Don't flatter yourself. Your conversation isn't that good."
He blushed; her innuendo threw him off-balance. "Why don't you..." Mohinder faltered, almost losing his resolve. "Why don't you stay a while?"
Elle's hand rested on the doorway, looking back over her shoulder with an inscrutable expression on her face. It seemed, to Mohinder at least, that she took forever to speak.
"Well, Fight Club, all you had to do was ask."
Characters: Mohinder/Elle
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1839
Disclaimer: I don't own any aspect of Heroes or its characters
Spoilers/Warnings: AU after second season.
Summary: She smiled at him. He smiled at her. It was really awkward.
A/N: Written for a Ridiculously Specific prompt.
Mohinder loved everything about being a professor. He loved the reputation that came with being an academic. He loved the feeling of pride that accompanied seeing his name in the byline of an article he'd published. He loved lecturing to a riveted classroom, even if they weren't really all that interested in what he was teaching and more distracted by his halo of curls.
He especially loved working in the lab - the tintinnabulation of test tubes, the tinkling of stainless steel instruments, the countless supplies and state-of-the-art facilities provided by Primatech. Sure, his continued employment there involved certain compromising on his part - he did shoot Noah Bennet in the face, after all - but at least at Primatech he could have a little influence in what the future could hold. It was all for the greater good.
What he could do without, of course, was Elle Bishop walking by every day and leering at home through the tall windows. She never dropped by, never acknowledged him in any way as she went past. She simply glanced inside, sometimes making eye contact, sometimes not.
It was annoying.
Mohinder resolved to do something about it. During Bob Bishop's next check-in, Mohinder decided to bring it up.
"Mr. Bishop, is there something you do about Elle?" Mohinder interrupted.
Bob rubbed his temples with his first two fingers. "I don't know what you mean," he replied.
"She's a distraction."
Bob sighed and rolled his eyes. "You'll have to excuse her behavior, she's been benched from any active assignments," he explained. "Whatever she's doing to bother you, she's probably just acting out like a petulant child."
The barb wasn't directed at him, but still, Mohinder felt stung by it. "She's not bothering me, per se," he said.
Bob paused. "Oh?" he asked simply, his eyebrows peaking.
"She's just," Mohinder started, realizing halfway through his sentence how stupid he sounded, "she's just walking by all the time."
"All the time?"
"Well," Mohinder hesitated, "at least once or twice a day."
Bob adjusted the glasses on his face, a gesture which somehow managed to express his deep contempt for the professor. "All right, I'll be sure to tell her to take a different route, Dr. Suresh," he replied, in a tone that managed to make Mohinder feel like a total fool.
And so she stopped walking by. Mohinder found himself several times a day glancing up towards the glass, subconsciously searching for her, before inwardly chiding himself and focusing on the research at hand.
***
There was a knock at the door. "Finally, the research reports," he remarked, having waited for them to arrive nearly all day. "You can come in, bring them to me." Invested in his work, Mohinder didn't bother to tear himself away from his microscope until he heard a familiar voice call out.
"Whatever you say, Fight Club."
He hadn't heard the moniker since... well, it had certainly been awhile. He looked up to find Elle Bishop sauntering into his lab like a show pony. Mohinder couldn't help but stare as she strode across the lab, balanced precariously on four-inch heels that he noticed made her hips sway as she moved. "I know you don't like me, but it couldn't be avoided." She thrust a manila envelope into his chest, and he absently took it from her, his eyes still attached to the lower half of her body. "No one else was around to bring this to you, and they said it was important."
Needless to say, she had taken him completely by surprise. Mohinder cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair, trying to collect himself. "Yes, yes, thank you," Mohinder sputtered. "So, you are..." he said haltingly, his ability to chat normally rusty from disuse.
Elle raised an eyebrow in dismissive dubiety. "I'm Elle. We've met before. Remember that one time I saved you from Sylar?"
"I - I - I -" he stammered indignantly. "Of course I remember," he managed to spit out, defensive. He already got enough disparaging mockery from Bob; he didn't need it from his daughter, too. "I meant to ask you how your arm was."
Elle's eyes fluttered. "Oh," she replied. "It's -" she paused for a moment, flicking a spark from her finger - "it's fine. How's your nose?"
"Well, it seems to be working fine now."
"Good." she replied.
She smiled at him.
He smiled at her.
They were silent for a moment.
It was really awkward.
"Right," Elle said. "I should get going."
Mohinder hesitated as he watched her leave; part of him, however negligible, almost wanted her to stay. He opened his mouth to say something - anything - that might cause her to wait just a moment more. "Have a nice day," he said hastily.
She turned around, still smiling, and she winked at him and disappeared through the doorway.
He felt like a prodigious ass.
***
His days in the lab started seeming all the same - long stretches of time in which he felt confined in this room, trapped with the trappings of scientific progress. He didn't get the same breathless rush he used to feel when encountering a new ability or tracing the DNA lines that led to it. He wasn't as excited to sift through pages and pages of results, trying to find the pattern (or lack of pattern) in them.
All he knew was that at five, when he looked up at the clock, he realized that another entire day had passed without seeing her again. His days were empty, punctuated only by her absence from them.
He felt lonely.
He briefly considered telling her father to remove the injunction on her walking by, but his conversations with Bob Bishop only succeeded in making Mohinder feel like an idiot, and so he quickly pushed the idea from his mind. He thought of asking coworkers about her, but he met Primatech agents only briefly as they brought to him people to study or information to examine, and Mohinder couldn't even remember their names most of the time.
Just as he'd resigned himself to the way his routine now bored him, he looked up to the clock above the door, as had become his habit, and there she was.
The lights in the lab were low, and in the dim sunshine that came from the windows she looked like a silhouette, the edges of her figure traced with light from behind her. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what she might look like underneath her backless blue blouse and grey pencil skirt, but he quickly recovered from the thought.
"E-Elle," he stuttered. "What are you doing here? I wasn't expecting anything."
"I don't have anything for you," she told him, strutting towards him and smiling like a Cheshire cat. "I just felt like stopping by." Her fingers darted across the test tubes and scientific instruments left lying on the table, and she punctuated each step with a small spark that died immediately on the table's slate surface. "How's it hanging?"
"It... it hangs," Mohinder replied, unsure of the correct response. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as she came even closer, and as her hands ran curiously across the table, he tried to imagine the electric sensation she left.
Elle pulled her lips down in a pout as she scanned the room, her eyes darting this way and that. "Kinda boring in here."
"Well, Elle, it's a laboratory. It's not meant to be entertaining."
Elle frowned. "Too bad. No point in sticking around, then."
Mohinder's face fell as she started to leave. "See you later?" Mohinder said, his voice cracking as she reached the door.
Elle wordlessly turned around and raised her hand, wiggling her fingers in a flirtatious wave. Mohinder blushed like a teenager. An instant later, she was gone.
***
After that, his mind started to wander when left unattended in the lab for too long.
His daydreams always began the same way: Elle walking in, just as cool and casual as before. She'd be wearing some form-fitting blouse or tight slacks or curve-hugging skirt - something professional, but just barely so. Somehow, in his mind, he'd have shed his awkward shell to become Mohinder, ladies' man, suave and sophisticated. She'd say something catty, and he'd reply with a double entendre... he wasn't so clear on that part, never having made a double entendre before, but he could skip that part in his head. Elle would be impressed by the wittiness of the riposte and made curious by the surreptitious suggestion behind it.
Sometimes in his mind he'd be the one to make the first move, a gesture or caress, something romantic. Sometimes he'd imagine her moving first, roughly grabbing his curls and forcing a kiss onto his lips, unable to contain her lust. From that point in the dream they'd undress one another and conduct a different kind of experimentation in the laboratory.
He'd take her up against a lab table, the cool surface of the slate drawing heat away from their bodies as they pressed into one another. He'd lift her so that she could sit comfortably on the edge, legs apart. Sometimes he'd think of knocking all his precious lab equipment to the floor in order to utilize the entire tabletop. Sometimes he'd think of going directly down to the floor himself. He almost always jilted himself back into reality with a feeling of terrible longing and a need for new underpants.
He'd been caught up in just such a reverie when, once again, she appeared like a bolt from the blue. Mohinder was suddenly jolted when he heard her voice.
"...hard?"
"What?" Mohinder said, his daydream interrupted. He was louder than he meant to be, and his face flushed with the warmth of embarrassment as he leaned closer against the counter, trying to hide what he thought Elle was talking about.
"I said, 'Are you working hard?'" Elle repeated. "You looked really intense there for a moment, Fight Club." Elle was right beside him, and she relaxed against the table with a saucy smile on her lips. "Got science on your mind?"
"Yeah... biology," Mohinder hastily told her.
Elle's smile faded, and she sighed as though disappointed. "All right, Doc, I won't distract you then."
"You can stay!" Mohinder said, his volume once again seeming out of his control.
"Um," Elle hesitated, her eyebrows knitting above her nose. "That's okay. You look like you want to get back to what you were doing."
"Then at least... come again?" he asked.
"Oh, Fight Club," Elle grinned. "Don't flatter yourself. Your conversation isn't that good."
He blushed; her innuendo threw him off-balance. "Why don't you..." Mohinder faltered, almost losing his resolve. "Why don't you stay a while?"
Elle's hand rested on the doorway, looking back over her shoulder with an inscrutable expression on her face. It seemed, to Mohinder at least, that she took forever to speak.
"Well, Fight Club, all you had to do was ask."