"It was certainly true in this case," Mohinder answered, thinking back to that first meeting on the beach. He let their legs brush as they would and continued. "I had not been given to drinking, either, since, as the President put it, I hadn't slept in five years. Enter Daniel, recently split with Ianto, playing basketball with a broken wrist, a full bottle of moonshine he couldn't open, and stories of a world beyond ours that, shall we say, turned a boy's head? It took us three meetings and several arguments to get around to fucking and insisting, despite evidence to the contrary, that we could have an exclusive relationship and that I was the one he wanted to be with."
Mohinder lifted an eyebrow and offered a wry, pained smile. "You recall I mentioned Jack Harkness flirting with anything? Daniel was...is...very much in love with him, although I think he's gotten past it. As it happened, he also had deep feelings for Owen, who at the time was engaged to Toshiko."
The steam from the pot suggested it boiled, so Mohinder rose and went to make tea to ply his guest with. Over his shoulder, from the bottom of the stairs, he added, "Already it sounds like a Greek tragedy, doesn't it? Or perhaps a teen drama."
It was not, he reflected, at all the same as making tea on a stove, but very like making it at home in India. And it did have the advantage of allowing him to give Rupert the lines of his back while he spoke.
"Perhaps because all humans retain vestiges of their adolescence," he teased, then continued the story as though he had not stopped. "I learned from Owen that Daniel had feelings for him and confronted Daniel, Daniel then confronted Owen and kissed him, someone reported to Toshiko that Owen and Daniel were kissing. As you can imagine, she took that not well and broke off the engagement. Very shortly before that, one of Daniel's teammates had arrived on the island and was living with Daniel. I found Owen, more alcohol involved, and invited him to live with me."
Standing again, this time burdened with two cups of tea, Mohinder returned to the porch. "Daniel and I saw less and less of each other, then we agreed to take a bit of a break. Daniel fucked Jack. We broke things off. I fucked Jack--" He handed Rupert the tea, eyelashes lowered and mouth curved into a wicked smile. "Or rather he fucked me. Ianto and I became friends, then Owen and Daniel started fucking, even though Owen confessed he'd have rather been with me. And then, now, as we had all only put aside the childish drama for Owen to admit he loved Daniel and Daniel him, Owen is gone. Will you want milk in your tea?" he added entirely without pause, precisely for the humor of it.
"You have no idea." His eyes traced the lines of Mohinder's back, and he smirked, thinking of chocolate bars and ill-fated liasons. "I have stories to that end. But yours first."
The humor caught a smile out of him; he took the cup as it was. "Ah, no. I prefer mine black and bitter as romance."
"I imagine I have some. You did mention an incident with leather pants, as I recall."
Rupert's smile met with one from him, as much confirmation for his assessment of romance and in echo of the smile. Still, he found something faintly reassuring in that smile, that for all their lunacy had been mockworthy, he was not, in fact, being mocked.
"I fear the story ends there, more or less. Poor Alcuin was caught in the middle, as he and Daniel and I taught French together." That was not all they'd done together, but speaking of Alcuin to Rupert with what he knew, seemed out of turn. Daniel, Jack, and dear departed Owen were another matter. "Bitter indeed. But perhaps, considering the temper tantrums we all threw, more bitterly humorous than simply bitter."
"If we didn't have regrets, there'd be no point to memories." He blew on the tea, sending the steam scattering before he took a careful sip. "I hope, for your sake, that Owen doesn't return until it's all untangled at least."
Mohinder considered that a moment, warming his hands around his tea. "Daniel and I are very nearly able to be in a room together without the sky falling again. I imagine it won't be long at all before we can share a cup of coffee." His smile tipped wicked again, this time in amusement for that feeling of a new and private innuendo forming. "Not tea, however. I suspect that will be some time yet."
He tilted his head to study his companion, in whose company he found himself calmer, steadier than he had perhaps ever been. "Do you really believe that about memory, especially in a place like this? Memory... When all we have our past is memory in most cases... it would seem we must remember that which we don't regret and hold onto it tightly."
Hm. Tea. He smirked for that, shot Mohinder the look that one always gives a friend when he tells a private joke -- amused and pleased and secretive.
"Of course. You can find joy anywhere. We have an infinite capacity for it, we humans -- that's our gift, as a species. All we have to do is allow it and we'll find it. But regret, ah." He watched his tea swirl in the cup. "From regret, we learn."
His gut warmed for the look, intimate and amused. He lifted his tea again to sip and give his mouth something to do that was not learn the fit of their lips together.
"And there," Mohinder answered quietly wry, "Is my cue, I believe, to ask for the story that occasions your certainty on the subject, or at very least that which supports your philosophy."
"Hmm. Well. My father was a British father, to say the least. Exacting, humorless, and ambitious on my behalf. When I was ten, he let me know that I had a great destiny -- one that was, unfortunately for his plans, escapable. He drove me through secondary school, into university, require extra courses, perfect marks ... until I was ninteen, and I'd made some new friends. And they gave me the courage to drop out. I tried to simply walk away." He half-smiled, at that. Foolish.
"Ethan, Philip, Diedre, Wendy, Robin... they took me in. For a while, they were the first real family I ever had."
Mohinder considered that his own had been rather different. Always trying to drive him out of following in his footsteps, rather than encouraging him. Always tell him he didn't have it in him. Watching Rupert over the rim of his tea cup, he wondered what sort of man he would have been, whether he would have followed Nathan, if he had not sought his father's approval so constantly.
He said none of this, as they'd discussed it already. "Ethan. The one for whom you took a year off, if I recall correctly," Mohinder said instead.
He nodded. "He said they needed me. That's why I went with them. We were into everything. If there's a chemical I haven't ingested, it wasn't for lack of trying. A page of the kama sutra... or Penthouse, for that matter." He took off his glasses. In other circumstances, he couldn't have spoken so easily.
"They needed me to get deeper. If you want to get high... there's nothing like magic. You can do amazing things with magic. Loose your spirit, or take in others -- spirits of ecstasy, spirits of pain. Every new high, you need to get higher. Eventually we'd do anything to feel. And Ethan was guiding us."
"It is compelling, isn't it, when someone charismatic and powerful tells you he needs you." He swirled the tea in the cup, watching the steam in the night air, the way the wisps hung like scraps of memory then dissipated, perhaps like a spell.
"Couple that with an addiction, one would lose all sense of perspective, of right and wrong." His own addiction had been science. Abruptly wanting the comfort of closeness, even with a friend so new, Mohinder hooked behind Rupert's ankle and rubbed it with the bridge of his foot.
The touch was appreciated; he needed the perspective. "Ethan told us about this demon named Eyghon. The Sleepwalker. Imagine sleep banished. Unconsciousness, banished. Imagine what you could do with your mind opened to the dream plane." He shifted a little. "All we had to do was summon him."
He glanced up and smiled, pained. "It didn't go that way. That summoning broke up our family, killed half our friends, haunted me for thirty years. Ethan, too, but he'd done it on purpose. He reveled in the chaos. He was a disciple of it. And my father... my father saved my life. And I hated him for it for the rest of hislife."
Bitter on Rupert's behalf, his voice when he spoke was touched with acid. "I imagine I'd still not have found a way to reverse the mutation, and genocide still would have seemed a tactically sound option to the President. And I would literally not have slept in five years."
But he inclined his head, mug-warmed fingers reaching across the space to rest against Rupert's wrist. "I'm sorry. It could not have been easy."
"It wasn't. I regret it, of course -- but I wouldn't want to forget it." He put his hand on top of Mohinder's. "I've never had the Mark removed. We destroyed the demon, in the end, and the only thing it can do to me now is make me remember. And I want to remember."
Mohinder lifted an eyebrow and offered a wry, pained smile. "You recall I mentioned Jack Harkness flirting with anything? Daniel was...is...very much in love with him, although I think he's gotten past it. As it happened, he also had deep feelings for Owen, who at the time was engaged to Toshiko."
The steam from the pot suggested it boiled, so Mohinder rose and went to make tea to ply his guest with. Over his shoulder, from the bottom of the stairs, he added, "Already it sounds like a Greek tragedy, doesn't it? Or perhaps a teen drama."
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"Perhaps because all humans retain vestiges of their adolescence," he teased, then continued the story as though he had not stopped. "I learned from Owen that Daniel had feelings for him and confronted Daniel, Daniel then confronted Owen and kissed him, someone reported to Toshiko that Owen and Daniel were kissing. As you can imagine, she took that not well and broke off the engagement. Very shortly before that, one of Daniel's teammates had arrived on the island and was living with Daniel. I found Owen, more alcohol involved, and invited him to live with me."
Standing again, this time burdened with two cups of tea, Mohinder returned to the porch. "Daniel and I saw less and less of each other, then we agreed to take a bit of a break. Daniel fucked Jack. We broke things off. I fucked Jack--" He handed Rupert the tea, eyelashes lowered and mouth curved into a wicked smile. "Or rather he fucked me. Ianto and I became friends, then Owen and Daniel started fucking, even though Owen confessed he'd have rather been with me. And then, now, as we had all only put aside the childish drama for Owen to admit he loved Daniel and Daniel him, Owen is gone. Will you want milk in your tea?" he added entirely without pause, precisely for the humor of it.
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The humor caught a smile out of him; he took the cup as it was. "Ah, no. I prefer mine black and bitter as romance."
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Rupert's smile met with one from him, as much confirmation for his assessment of romance and in echo of the smile. Still, he found something faintly reassuring in that smile, that for all their lunacy had been mockworthy, he was not, in fact, being mocked.
"I fear the story ends there, more or less. Poor Alcuin was caught in the middle, as he and Daniel and I taught French together." That was not all they'd done together, but speaking of Alcuin to Rupert with what he knew, seemed out of turn. Daniel, Jack, and dear departed Owen were another matter. "Bitter indeed. But perhaps, considering the temper tantrums we all threw, more bitterly humorous than simply bitter."
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He tilted his head to study his companion, in whose company he found himself calmer, steadier than he had perhaps ever been. "Do you really believe that about memory, especially in a place like this? Memory... When all we have our past is memory in most cases... it would seem we must remember that which we don't regret and hold onto it tightly."
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"Of course. You can find joy anywhere. We have an infinite capacity for it, we humans -- that's our gift, as a species. All we have to do is allow it and we'll find it. But regret, ah." He watched his tea swirl in the cup. "From regret, we learn."
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"And there," Mohinder answered quietly wry, "Is my cue, I believe, to ask for the story that occasions your certainty on the subject, or at very least that which supports your philosophy."
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"Ethan, Philip, Diedre, Wendy, Robin... they took me in. For a while, they were the first real family I ever had."
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He said none of this, as they'd discussed it already. "Ethan. The one for whom you took a year off, if I recall correctly," Mohinder said instead.
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"They needed me to get deeper. If you want to get high... there's nothing like magic. You can do amazing things with magic. Loose your spirit, or take in others -- spirits of ecstasy, spirits of pain. Every new high, you need to get higher. Eventually we'd do anything to feel. And Ethan was guiding us."
Reply
"Couple that with an addiction, one would lose all sense of perspective, of right and wrong." His own addiction had been science. Abruptly wanting the comfort of closeness, even with a friend so new, Mohinder hooked behind Rupert's ankle and rubbed it with the bridge of his foot.
Reply
He glanced up and smiled, pained. "It didn't go that way. That summoning broke up our family, killed half our friends, haunted me for thirty years. Ethan, too, but he'd done it on purpose. He reveled in the chaos. He was a disciple of it. And my father... my father saved my life. And I hated him for it for the rest of hislife."
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But he inclined his head, mug-warmed fingers reaching across the space to rest against Rupert's wrist. "I'm sorry. It could not have been easy."
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