Fight or Flight; Mohinder/Bennet; Heroes; For Veet; PG13
Title: Fight or Flight
Words: 2578
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Mohinder/Bennet
Warnings: Takes place after 2x04, therefor spoiler warning up til then. Supremely blink and you'll miss spoilers for 2x09
Summary: "They were sitting on the elevator floor, kissing, and his leg didn’t hurt so much anymore."
A/N: Written for veetvojagig who has radical dreams that provided the plot. Thanks to futuresoon for the awesome beta. Any other mistakes are mine. Feedback appreciated.
Fight or Flight
“Where are you?”
Mohinder sighs. There is no such thing as hello or how are you anymore these days; only tart, short questions regardless of whether one is running along the road, sitting in the bus and getting bored or - in Noah’s case right now - hiding somewhere in a photocopying shop.
He misses those days where a phone call was a long, rambling important event. But these phone calls were a measure of distraction, he guesses, to a certain extent. His nerves were on their ends ever since he managed to break away from the Company and be on the run again.
“A shopping mall.” Mohinder answers. There is a short pause at the other end before Noah retorts rather unhappily.
“This isn’t the best time to be going shopping, Mohinder.”
Okay, fine, he expected that.
“I’m not shopping. I wish I had the luxury to.” Mohinder responds in the flattest tone he can summon. “This is the only place I can find so far to give my lectures without too much publicity. The Company wants to stop me from spreading information, but I’m going ahead with it because people need to know. People need help.”
“In a shopping mall?” He still sounds incredulous.
“A back room in the shopping mall. I got it for free.”
Noah sighs.
“Still, I’m not sure it’s the best idea to do any lecturing right now. We had a deal. You’re just supposed to keep your end by being alive.”
Mohinder chuckles. That man is worse than a conscience. He keeps telling him that he needs to be alive, as if he doesn’t want to, really. “Oh yes, the Company wants me dead, that I know. Well, not before they draw out all my blood before I actually die anyway.”
Calling your lover again, Butler? I should let your wife know one of these days, you know?
Mohinder hears the squeaky, condescending voice in the background, one he has heard enough of to recognise as Noah’s boss at the copy company. He rolls his eyes even as he feels his cheeks heat up from anger, embarrassment, or something else, he doesn’t know.
“Never mind him. He always picks on me when I’m on the phone because I don’t do a damn thing about it. At least he doesn’t bother me about taking phone breaks anymore,” Noah explains, and Mohinder smirks quietly, remembering how Noah had related how he had gotten his extra privilege of making phone calls whenever he wants to.
“I need to get back to my lecture. I’m not exactly the busiest person in the world now, but most of my students are on schedules so I’d like to be able to finish-”
Mohinder breaks off when he hears his name. People from the front of the store. They are asking for him, for a Dr. Suresh. The person at the counter says she can’t help them because she hasn’t heard of anyone by that name.
“Damn.” He curses, but he doesn’t hang up. His students turn from their makeshift seats of battered chairs and boxes uneasily, looking over at the professor crouching in a corner with his phone, whispering.
“What’s wrong?”
“People here asking for me. I hope it’s a mistake-”
“It’s no mistake. They found you.” Noah says, and Mohinder is expecting him to say you and your stupid lectures giving yourself away, but it never comes. Instead, he asks for his location.
“What are you-”
The people out at front are making a scene. Company people are never that sloppy. They know that he is in the back room. They are making distractions.
“I’m coming over. To bail you out. You can’t beat them all,” Noah tells him before he can finish his sentence.
“I can-” He gets cut off again. This time Noah is stern, gruff and impatient.
“Listen, you don’t know what it’s like. You need my help.”
“You need the job. You’ll get fired,” Mohinder hisses into the phone, even as he keeps flickering his gaze toward the small window that shows him the front.
His students are on their feet, eyes glazed, hesitantly trying to get the professor’s attention. Mohinder nods curtly and puts a finger to his lips, shushing them.
“I need an excuse to get out of this stupid purple shirt anyway. And I’m on my way now as we speak.” Noah reasons, and Mohinder would almost find it funny if he weren’t in this situation right now. “Leave your cell phone on, I can track you from there. But so can they, unfortunately. But it can’t be helped. Just pray that they don’t have your number.”
“I’m Mr. Jack Andrews on this phone.” he reminds him. He looks up when he hears the footsteps, seeing the shadows moving towards the backroom where he was. “Damn, they’re coming.”
He puts the phone down by his side, hustling the four students he had in his lecture towards the door in the back, partially hidden by stacks of boxes and papers. He points, whispers urgently to the students.
“See that door over there? It leads down to the staircase, then the fire escape. I want you to take that in pairs. Go!”
They move off without protest.
Before he can move himself, however, the door opens and three men storm in. There is one inexplicably slow moment where he stares at them in the eye, dilated pupils and determined intent behind them; he is sure he looks like the hunted.
“You!” One man snarls, lifting his gun to shoot at Mohinder and he ducks as the gun fires, jumping over a pile of boxes and landing hard on the dusty concrete floor. The phone tears from his grasp, drops onto the floor and slides away from reach.
“Dammit!” Mohinder swears again, out of reflex. He scrambles up, takes the gun he always carries out of its holster and starts weaving towards the phone. He’s a professor, not goddamn 007. He can’t do this running around without getting shot in a tiny room thing for long.
A figure blurs past and he shoots blindly. Then a punch, which he dodges only to feel hard metal connecting with his leg, pain shooting through him and he grunts, falling onto the floor, where the men pin him down easily. Another fist to his skull. More pain.
“And now where do you think you’re going, Dr. Suresh?”
Breathe. Pain. A foot is on his chest, pinning him face down with his hands beneath him. The world is tilting, swimming and he almost passes out. No, no, no. He wills his body not to. He can’t pass out. He’ll die.
“Away from you bloody predators.” Mohinder finally spits back, his eyes closed.
“We’re not predators, see. We’re trying to help the special people, like us.” At that, Mohinder opens his eyes, straining to look behind him only to find that only one man is standing in front of him. The man who smirks and decidedly splits into three men again, just for show. “And you and your big mouth there want to tell the whole world.”
The three men smirk at him. Then only one.
One who holds up a hypodermic syringe.
Oh God, not the syringe. No syringe.
“I see you know what this is, doctor, but I’ll tell you anyway.” The man is relishing in this, a hint of a canine peeking out through his twisted grin. “This is pentobarbital, which will put you under an induced coma while we pull your precious blood from you. However, if we ever decide that you are no longer of an asset, we will just up your dosage and… you get the drift.”
Mohinder swallows, struggles and grunts, biting his lip so hard his teeth gnash against the tender flesh and draws blood. His face falls back to the floor as the man - no, men - kick him again.
This is an absurd time to be thinking about Noah Bennet but he does, even as he sees red and black blending in a violent circle. He also thinks about his deal to try to keep alive.
Seemingly easy end of the deal to keep, but didn’t work out that way, he tells himself; he almost laughs, finding humour in it, of all things.
The man leans down to jab him, and if it were a movie, Noah Bennet would burst in right now and put two bullets into the man’s head. Then Mohinder would quickly clamber to his feet, hurt but alive, and be eternally grateful to his knight who had come in his shining grey suit to rescue him.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.
Mohinder, however, manages to take advantage of the movement and push his weight to one side, loosening his gun and arm. He doesn’t know how or why - maybe it’s the charge of adrenaline or his body fighting for survival - but he rolls to one side just before the needle plunges into him and fires.
The three men look at him, startled.
Then they shimmer, disappear. All except one who collapses, dead.
Mohinder is still breathing, panting, feeling the aches running through him now that short-lived relief is coursing through his veins. He hasn’t made sense of anything yet when Noah Bennet walks in from the empty front of the store. Police sirens wail in a distance. The first shot has been reported.
“Thought I’d find you here.” Noah says. He is wearing a white shirt, hastily buttoned and slightly crumpled. Mohinder wonders whether he just pulled that out from the boot of his car. He did have a certain contempt for the purple polo, after all.
“You could have come earlier.” Mohinder retorts, scrambling up from the floor, bleeding. Noah just smiles.
“I would have in a perfect world. But it looks like you took care of him well enough.” Noah looks pointedly at the dead man just in front of him, but then he quickly flicks his eyes towards the front, grabbing Mohinder by his arm and walking towards the back exit. “No time to talk, we’ve got to leave. There are more of them.”
“More? What the-”
“Where did you park?”
Mohinder tries to keep up as Noah nearly literally drags him through the doors down the stairwell. Surprisingly his injuries aren’t slowing him down, as much, yet.
“Down at the fire escape in the back alley,” He answers. Noah nods, still moving them along quickly, hardly any hesitations in his steps.
“Let’s go there, then. It’s the nearest.”
Just before they make it to the fire escape, two Company men catch up with them and start shooting. Noah forces Mohinder out onto the fire escape stairs and the door melts behind them. Mohinder doesn’t turn, just clambers down the metal-grate stairs, feeling the billowing heat behind him and hearing shots.
His footsteps on the metal go clang. The shots billow out from behind.
He just runs.
He only looks up when he reaches the bottom, five flights of stairs later and suddenly Noah is barrelling down at him, unscathed. Mohinder unconsciously mutters a thanksgiving prayer under his breath, he doesn’t know why.
They head for his car, parked merely a few feet away.
Which melts in front of them.
Mohinder almost starts cursing again, stopping in his tracks; but Noah swivels, shooting upwards at the man leaning over the railing at the fire escape. A cry, then he topples down into the dumpster below.
“Power of liquefaction.” Noah breathes. “He can even do it without being in contact with the object. Unfortunately for him it doesn’t work for humans.” He tilts a nod of a head towards Mohinder, and in a low voice, tells him “Don’t ask how I know.”
They stand there for a moment, both staring at the melted puddle of what used to be Mohinder’s car.
Noah speaks first.
“Well, that’s inconvenient.”
A blatant understatement, Mohinder thinks, but then again, that’s Noah.
“We’ll have to use my car, then,” Noah sighs after a beat, as if it were a mere detour on their way to a picnic. He swerves, turns back towards the building and strides quickly. Mohinder tries to follow, but suddenly he grimaces, clutching his leg. The adrenaline has worn off and the pain shooting up his leg is almost unbearable.
He makes it through the double doors himself before he puts an arm around the older man - intimacy be damned, he can’t walk - and tries to hook his foot over his calf, which earns a pointed look from Noah.
“Can’t walk?”
“Certainly not at this pace.” Mohinder groans even as they make their way into the interior of the mall. Noah drags him to the service elevator and nudges the button with an elbow, eyes still darting around for anyone who may have followed them in. It seems safe.
“Let’s take the elevator. We seem to have lost them. We just need to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
Mohinder nods in response but doesn’t speak. When the elevator arrives, Noah shoves him in and moves in himself, punching the buttons and the door slides shut.
Escape. Sweet, blissful escape.
At least for now.
Mohinder collapses on the floor, leaning against the elevator walls. The lights are too bright and the stark, peeling walls are tilting, swimming, as he blinks. Then there is someone in front of him, someone cupping his chin and calling his name.
“Mohinder.”
“Noah.” Mohinder finally says. He looks at the man in front of him and the ceiling stops swimming. He manages a small smile. “Thank you. For coming for me, I mean. I probably would have died already.”
“You’re welcome. It’s part of our deal, isn’t it? We’re supposed to take the Company down. Together.”
“I haven’t forgotten that, you know. And I’m just as committed to doing it as you are.” Mohinder laughs, but stops quickly as the cold shard of pain pierces him again. “Probably even more so now.”
Noah reaches over, threads his fingers through Mohinder’s. The geneticist looks up, surprised, and finds himself swallowing hard when he looks into those stark blue eyes.
“They say kissing releases endorphins which relieve pain. Is that true, Dr. Suresh?” Noah says, in a gravely low voice that Mohinder is sure is intentional.
“It should be, as far as I know.” Mohinder clears his throat, the pain a dull throb in his leg. He breathes. “But we could… try it out. No harm done.”
“Mmm. Experiment, you mean?”
“Maybe.”
“Mohinder, do you trust me?” Noah asks when he slides his hand over Mohinder’s cheek, a rough but gentle touch, all the while still holding his gaze, as if they were locked in a dance of power play.
“Do you?” Mohinder asks quickly, although he is not sure why.
“I do.” Noah says firmly.
“I do too.” Mohinder finally says after a long pause. And they kiss.
Mohinder could remember feeling of the overwhelming of his senses - the hard press of glasses onto the ridge of his nose, the gentle tangle of lips and tongue; the burning, racing pulse of his heartbeat, the rush to his head that made the kiss go by in a blur that seemed like hours and seconds at the same time.
They were sitting on the elevator floor, kissing, and his leg didn’t hurt so much anymore.
Science was right. Kissing does release endorphins that relieve pain. Hypothesis accepted.
Words: 2578
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Mohinder/Bennet
Warnings: Takes place after 2x04, therefor spoiler warning up til then. Supremely blink and you'll miss spoilers for 2x09
Summary: "They were sitting on the elevator floor, kissing, and his leg didn’t hurt so much anymore."
A/N: Written for veetvojagig who has radical dreams that provided the plot. Thanks to futuresoon for the awesome beta. Any other mistakes are mine. Feedback appreciated.
Fight or Flight
“Where are you?”
Mohinder sighs. There is no such thing as hello or how are you anymore these days; only tart, short questions regardless of whether one is running along the road, sitting in the bus and getting bored or - in Noah’s case right now - hiding somewhere in a photocopying shop.
He misses those days where a phone call was a long, rambling important event. But these phone calls were a measure of distraction, he guesses, to a certain extent. His nerves were on their ends ever since he managed to break away from the Company and be on the run again.
“A shopping mall.” Mohinder answers. There is a short pause at the other end before Noah retorts rather unhappily.
“This isn’t the best time to be going shopping, Mohinder.”
Okay, fine, he expected that.
“I’m not shopping. I wish I had the luxury to.” Mohinder responds in the flattest tone he can summon. “This is the only place I can find so far to give my lectures without too much publicity. The Company wants to stop me from spreading information, but I’m going ahead with it because people need to know. People need help.”
“In a shopping mall?” He still sounds incredulous.
“A back room in the shopping mall. I got it for free.”
Noah sighs.
“Still, I’m not sure it’s the best idea to do any lecturing right now. We had a deal. You’re just supposed to keep your end by being alive.”
Mohinder chuckles. That man is worse than a conscience. He keeps telling him that he needs to be alive, as if he doesn’t want to, really. “Oh yes, the Company wants me dead, that I know. Well, not before they draw out all my blood before I actually die anyway.”
Calling your lover again, Butler? I should let your wife know one of these days, you know?
Mohinder hears the squeaky, condescending voice in the background, one he has heard enough of to recognise as Noah’s boss at the copy company. He rolls his eyes even as he feels his cheeks heat up from anger, embarrassment, or something else, he doesn’t know.
“Never mind him. He always picks on me when I’m on the phone because I don’t do a damn thing about it. At least he doesn’t bother me about taking phone breaks anymore,” Noah explains, and Mohinder smirks quietly, remembering how Noah had related how he had gotten his extra privilege of making phone calls whenever he wants to.
“I need to get back to my lecture. I’m not exactly the busiest person in the world now, but most of my students are on schedules so I’d like to be able to finish-”
Mohinder breaks off when he hears his name. People from the front of the store. They are asking for him, for a Dr. Suresh. The person at the counter says she can’t help them because she hasn’t heard of anyone by that name.
“Damn.” He curses, but he doesn’t hang up. His students turn from their makeshift seats of battered chairs and boxes uneasily, looking over at the professor crouching in a corner with his phone, whispering.
“What’s wrong?”
“People here asking for me. I hope it’s a mistake-”
“It’s no mistake. They found you.” Noah says, and Mohinder is expecting him to say you and your stupid lectures giving yourself away, but it never comes. Instead, he asks for his location.
“What are you-”
The people out at front are making a scene. Company people are never that sloppy. They know that he is in the back room. They are making distractions.
“I’m coming over. To bail you out. You can’t beat them all,” Noah tells him before he can finish his sentence.
“I can-” He gets cut off again. This time Noah is stern, gruff and impatient.
“Listen, you don’t know what it’s like. You need my help.”
“You need the job. You’ll get fired,” Mohinder hisses into the phone, even as he keeps flickering his gaze toward the small window that shows him the front.
His students are on their feet, eyes glazed, hesitantly trying to get the professor’s attention. Mohinder nods curtly and puts a finger to his lips, shushing them.
“I need an excuse to get out of this stupid purple shirt anyway. And I’m on my way now as we speak.” Noah reasons, and Mohinder would almost find it funny if he weren’t in this situation right now. “Leave your cell phone on, I can track you from there. But so can they, unfortunately. But it can’t be helped. Just pray that they don’t have your number.”
“I’m Mr. Jack Andrews on this phone.” he reminds him. He looks up when he hears the footsteps, seeing the shadows moving towards the backroom where he was. “Damn, they’re coming.”
He puts the phone down by his side, hustling the four students he had in his lecture towards the door in the back, partially hidden by stacks of boxes and papers. He points, whispers urgently to the students.
“See that door over there? It leads down to the staircase, then the fire escape. I want you to take that in pairs. Go!”
They move off without protest.
Before he can move himself, however, the door opens and three men storm in. There is one inexplicably slow moment where he stares at them in the eye, dilated pupils and determined intent behind them; he is sure he looks like the hunted.
“You!” One man snarls, lifting his gun to shoot at Mohinder and he ducks as the gun fires, jumping over a pile of boxes and landing hard on the dusty concrete floor. The phone tears from his grasp, drops onto the floor and slides away from reach.
“Dammit!” Mohinder swears again, out of reflex. He scrambles up, takes the gun he always carries out of its holster and starts weaving towards the phone. He’s a professor, not goddamn 007. He can’t do this running around without getting shot in a tiny room thing for long.
A figure blurs past and he shoots blindly. Then a punch, which he dodges only to feel hard metal connecting with his leg, pain shooting through him and he grunts, falling onto the floor, where the men pin him down easily. Another fist to his skull. More pain.
“And now where do you think you’re going, Dr. Suresh?”
Breathe. Pain. A foot is on his chest, pinning him face down with his hands beneath him. The world is tilting, swimming and he almost passes out. No, no, no. He wills his body not to. He can’t pass out. He’ll die.
“Away from you bloody predators.” Mohinder finally spits back, his eyes closed.
“We’re not predators, see. We’re trying to help the special people, like us.” At that, Mohinder opens his eyes, straining to look behind him only to find that only one man is standing in front of him. The man who smirks and decidedly splits into three men again, just for show. “And you and your big mouth there want to tell the whole world.”
The three men smirk at him. Then only one.
One who holds up a hypodermic syringe.
Oh God, not the syringe. No syringe.
“I see you know what this is, doctor, but I’ll tell you anyway.” The man is relishing in this, a hint of a canine peeking out through his twisted grin. “This is pentobarbital, which will put you under an induced coma while we pull your precious blood from you. However, if we ever decide that you are no longer of an asset, we will just up your dosage and… you get the drift.”
Mohinder swallows, struggles and grunts, biting his lip so hard his teeth gnash against the tender flesh and draws blood. His face falls back to the floor as the man - no, men - kick him again.
This is an absurd time to be thinking about Noah Bennet but he does, even as he sees red and black blending in a violent circle. He also thinks about his deal to try to keep alive.
Seemingly easy end of the deal to keep, but didn’t work out that way, he tells himself; he almost laughs, finding humour in it, of all things.
The man leans down to jab him, and if it were a movie, Noah Bennet would burst in right now and put two bullets into the man’s head. Then Mohinder would quickly clamber to his feet, hurt but alive, and be eternally grateful to his knight who had come in his shining grey suit to rescue him.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.
Mohinder, however, manages to take advantage of the movement and push his weight to one side, loosening his gun and arm. He doesn’t know how or why - maybe it’s the charge of adrenaline or his body fighting for survival - but he rolls to one side just before the needle plunges into him and fires.
The three men look at him, startled.
Then they shimmer, disappear. All except one who collapses, dead.
Mohinder is still breathing, panting, feeling the aches running through him now that short-lived relief is coursing through his veins. He hasn’t made sense of anything yet when Noah Bennet walks in from the empty front of the store. Police sirens wail in a distance. The first shot has been reported.
“Thought I’d find you here.” Noah says. He is wearing a white shirt, hastily buttoned and slightly crumpled. Mohinder wonders whether he just pulled that out from the boot of his car. He did have a certain contempt for the purple polo, after all.
“You could have come earlier.” Mohinder retorts, scrambling up from the floor, bleeding. Noah just smiles.
“I would have in a perfect world. But it looks like you took care of him well enough.” Noah looks pointedly at the dead man just in front of him, but then he quickly flicks his eyes towards the front, grabbing Mohinder by his arm and walking towards the back exit. “No time to talk, we’ve got to leave. There are more of them.”
“More? What the-”
“Where did you park?”
Mohinder tries to keep up as Noah nearly literally drags him through the doors down the stairwell. Surprisingly his injuries aren’t slowing him down, as much, yet.
“Down at the fire escape in the back alley,” He answers. Noah nods, still moving them along quickly, hardly any hesitations in his steps.
“Let’s go there, then. It’s the nearest.”
Just before they make it to the fire escape, two Company men catch up with them and start shooting. Noah forces Mohinder out onto the fire escape stairs and the door melts behind them. Mohinder doesn’t turn, just clambers down the metal-grate stairs, feeling the billowing heat behind him and hearing shots.
His footsteps on the metal go clang. The shots billow out from behind.
He just runs.
He only looks up when he reaches the bottom, five flights of stairs later and suddenly Noah is barrelling down at him, unscathed. Mohinder unconsciously mutters a thanksgiving prayer under his breath, he doesn’t know why.
They head for his car, parked merely a few feet away.
Which melts in front of them.
Mohinder almost starts cursing again, stopping in his tracks; but Noah swivels, shooting upwards at the man leaning over the railing at the fire escape. A cry, then he topples down into the dumpster below.
“Power of liquefaction.” Noah breathes. “He can even do it without being in contact with the object. Unfortunately for him it doesn’t work for humans.” He tilts a nod of a head towards Mohinder, and in a low voice, tells him “Don’t ask how I know.”
They stand there for a moment, both staring at the melted puddle of what used to be Mohinder’s car.
Noah speaks first.
“Well, that’s inconvenient.”
A blatant understatement, Mohinder thinks, but then again, that’s Noah.
“We’ll have to use my car, then,” Noah sighs after a beat, as if it were a mere detour on their way to a picnic. He swerves, turns back towards the building and strides quickly. Mohinder tries to follow, but suddenly he grimaces, clutching his leg. The adrenaline has worn off and the pain shooting up his leg is almost unbearable.
He makes it through the double doors himself before he puts an arm around the older man - intimacy be damned, he can’t walk - and tries to hook his foot over his calf, which earns a pointed look from Noah.
“Can’t walk?”
“Certainly not at this pace.” Mohinder groans even as they make their way into the interior of the mall. Noah drags him to the service elevator and nudges the button with an elbow, eyes still darting around for anyone who may have followed them in. It seems safe.
“Let’s take the elevator. We seem to have lost them. We just need to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
Mohinder nods in response but doesn’t speak. When the elevator arrives, Noah shoves him in and moves in himself, punching the buttons and the door slides shut.
Escape. Sweet, blissful escape.
At least for now.
Mohinder collapses on the floor, leaning against the elevator walls. The lights are too bright and the stark, peeling walls are tilting, swimming, as he blinks. Then there is someone in front of him, someone cupping his chin and calling his name.
“Mohinder.”
“Noah.” Mohinder finally says. He looks at the man in front of him and the ceiling stops swimming. He manages a small smile. “Thank you. For coming for me, I mean. I probably would have died already.”
“You’re welcome. It’s part of our deal, isn’t it? We’re supposed to take the Company down. Together.”
“I haven’t forgotten that, you know. And I’m just as committed to doing it as you are.” Mohinder laughs, but stops quickly as the cold shard of pain pierces him again. “Probably even more so now.”
Noah reaches over, threads his fingers through Mohinder’s. The geneticist looks up, surprised, and finds himself swallowing hard when he looks into those stark blue eyes.
“They say kissing releases endorphins which relieve pain. Is that true, Dr. Suresh?” Noah says, in a gravely low voice that Mohinder is sure is intentional.
“It should be, as far as I know.” Mohinder clears his throat, the pain a dull throb in his leg. He breathes. “But we could… try it out. No harm done.”
“Mmm. Experiment, you mean?”
“Maybe.”
“Mohinder, do you trust me?” Noah asks when he slides his hand over Mohinder’s cheek, a rough but gentle touch, all the while still holding his gaze, as if they were locked in a dance of power play.
“Do you?” Mohinder asks quickly, although he is not sure why.
“I do.” Noah says firmly.
“I do too.” Mohinder finally says after a long pause. And they kiss.
Mohinder could remember feeling of the overwhelming of his senses - the hard press of glasses onto the ridge of his nose, the gentle tangle of lips and tongue; the burning, racing pulse of his heartbeat, the rush to his head that made the kiss go by in a blur that seemed like hours and seconds at the same time.
They were sitting on the elevator floor, kissing, and his leg didn’t hurt so much anymore.
Science was right. Kissing does release endorphins that relieve pain. Hypothesis accepted.