Recalibrating 2
Characters: Mohinder and Sylar
Rating: PG
Words: 2870
Spoilers: Season two
Summary: Mohinder and Sylar are in Boston. They go to nice places, for a change.
A/N: Sequel to the little roadtrip story I posted recently. This was written very quickly, so apologies for the quality. I'm in a weird and cheesy mood today. Consider yourselves warned.
Part 1
The reception clerk looked the name up in the computer system. “Ah, yes. Dr. Mohinder Suresh. Two rooms, two nights, right?” he asked with a polite smile.
Sylar turned playfully to Mohinder. “You know, if we’re going to be upgrading from now on, it might make more sense to book just one room, not two.”
Mohinder looked at him studiously and furrowed his brow, trying to decipher exactly what meaning, if any at all, lay behind the ambiguous words. After a searching stare, he turned back to the clerk. “That’s right. Two rooms.”
“I meant with two beds,” Sylar murmured in an attempt to diffuse the unfortunately negative reaction his comment seemed to have elicited from Mohinder. He was miffed; the evening didn’t look like it was going to be as interesting as he had hoped.
Mohinder ignored him. “Non-smoking, please.”
Still feeling a little het up from their recent argument in the car, and this new embarrassment, Sylar interrupted petulantly, “What if I wanted to smoke?”
Mohinder sighed, gripped Sylar by the shoulders and spoke very seriously. “There are many things you can do, but smoking is not one of them. We both know you have a different kind of heat. So, unless you’ve been sneaking off…” Mohinder suddenly realized he was being baited into talking nonsense in front of strangers. He shook his head, trying to get back on track. “Shut up.”
The clerk coughed quietly and tried not to look scandalized. “Here are your keys. I hope you have a pleasant stay,” he whispered, and handed Mohinder the tiny folders with their card keys. Sylar scowled to himself, but then he remembered something.
“Hey,” he addressed the clerk. “Do you know of any nice restaurants around here? Maybe something French? We wanted something a little more civilized today.” He threw a sidelong glance at Mohinder, who, after arranging his luggage in his hands and putting some papers back into his coat pocket, was turning back around with a smile on his face.
The clerk thought for a minute. “No, nothing like that around here. Maybe if you go to Cambridge. There’s a place I recommend to everyone at the Charles Hotel. It’s kind of pricey, though. Around Harvard Square.”
“I don’t want to go to Harvard Square,” Sylar interrupted quickly. Both Mohinder and the clerk looked at him in confusion.
“Um, well, ok. Oh, I know. There’s a French-like place on Mass Ave called Central Kitchen. It’s right in front of the Central Square T-stop. You can’t miss it. It’s the nicest place in the area, but pretty low-key at the same time.”
“Thanks!” Mohinder said. The two men gathered their belongings and walked to the elevator.
“Mohinder, I think there’s some seismic activity going on,” Sylar whispered.
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a strange rushing sound coming from underneath the building.”
“I don’t hear any---” Mohinder countered. Then he stopped as he realized how Sylar had heard. “Oh. Right.”
They were silent during the ride in the elevator as they remembered various painful events of years ago.
“My key, please,” Sylar requested, and stretched out his hand as he stood by his door.
Mohinder handed him the little folder with a card in it. “See you in a minute, ok?”
“I’ll call a taxi,” Sylar replied in a complete non-sequitor.
Mohinder stopped on his way into his room. “What for? We have a car.”
“You got your way with staying somewhere nice. Now I get my way.”
“Is this about my driving again?” Mohinder asked with more than a hint of irritation.
Sylar shook his head. “No. Just for one evening, I don’t want to deal with parking and… everything. And we can have some wine and no one has to worry about driving.”
“Alright.” They both went into their respective rooms.
Less than a minute later, there was a knock on Mohinder’s door. He rolled his eyes and went to open it. “What is it now?” he asked a shocked-looking Sylar.
“We’re over the highway!” the other man cried.
“What are you talking about?” Mohinder asked as Sylar swept into the bedroom, walked past the two beds, and flung open the thick curtains to reveal Interstate 90.
“This. We're in that hotel built over the highway that we passed on our way here. That’s where we are. That’s what you get for $90.”
Mohinder walked to the window, registered the information, and laughed. “Ah well. The room is great, though. I’ll finally get a good night’s sleep. The noise doesn’t bother me. Probably because I haven’t, you know, killed anyone. Now, get out of here and let me change. I’m sick of you always thinking of these silly reasons to come to my room and annoy me.”
Sylar shuffled next door again, subtly taking note of the construction of Mohinder’s door while it was still open.
*************************************************
After the initial process of sitting down, ordering drinks and food, and settling into the restaurant were finished, an uncomfortable silence settled over the two men. Something about the transient nature of roadside diners had made talking or not talking a casual decision---not even a decision as much as something that happened or didn’t happen organically. Knowing they would leave again in a few minutes had always kept them from the discomfort or having to get into conversations that were personal. Their relationship, such as it was, had been forged in the car, where Mohinder always had his eyes on the road, and the presence of the radio had always made it easy for both of them to stop a conversation as soon as it became problematic and pretend to listen to the tunes.
“So what’s your problem with Harvard Square?” Mohinder finally broke the awkward silence.
Sylar looked at the table. “Nothing. Want some butter?”
“You didn’t react like nothing back at the hotel,” Mohinder pressed despite the digression.
Sylar snapped his head up and met Mohinder’s eyes. “Fine. I applied. I didn’t get in. My mother never let me live it down. Happy now?” And he furiously began slathering butter on his bread, even adding a bit of telekinesis to get it even further into the grooves.
Mohinder leaned back and watched Sylar and his bread. “That was a really hard year. Only 10.1% acceptance rate.”
Sylar looked up with a curious glint in his eye. “How do you know that off the top of your head?”
Mohinder blushed, but thankfully it was dark in the restaurant. “I didn’t get in either, and my father never let me live it down,” he admitted.
“Poor little genius, had to settle for Cambridge,” Sylar taunted.
“Stop it. No matter what, it’s always terrible to disappoint your parents.” Now it was Mohinder’s turn to fidget with things on the table. He started shaking salt all over the place.
Sylar watched him and nodded. “I get that. But in the end, you turned out alright.”
More salt spilled out of the shaker as Mohinder’s brooding increased. “I wouldn’t call being regarded as a crackpot by the scientific community, traipsing around the country with my father’s murderer, and not having any real friends ‘turning out alright’. Would you?”
There wasn’t too much Sylar could say in response to that. Mohinder started trying to think of a new topic, since this one seemed finished, but then Sylar uttered a soft, “I like you.”
There was a pause as they looked into one another’s eyes for just a shade longer than could be called casual.
“That’s such a comfort,” Mohinder finally quipped, his voice dripping with so much sarcasm, that the only thing Sylar could hope for was that it was out of overcompensation.
The waiter appeared with the wine. Both men breathed a sigh of relief.
*************************************************
A couple of hours and a couple of bottles later, they hailed a taxi back to the Sheraton. Things had loosened up considerably as the wine flowed, but not so much that Sylar felt they had quite breached the protective moat of sarcasm and antagonism that Mohinder maintained at all times. There was something gentler behind Mohinder’s eyes than usual, but every time Sylar hoped to place his hand closer to the other man’s, or do anything that might serve as a gauge of how well he was doing to slowly morph their relationship, he had found himself wordlessly cut off or the subject changed or the waiter called for. At one point, when Sylar had been trying to hold Mohinder’s gaze for a little longer than necessary, Mohinder had gotten up to go to the restroom.
The taxi ride was no different, except for the fact that Sylar had the feeling that Mohinder was now the one casting surreptitious glances at him and smiling to himself. But he couldn’t be quite sure. When he asked what was up, Mohinder had said nothing, but smiled to himself all the same.
They said goodnight outside their adjacent doors. In a final effort to take advantage of Mohinder’s slightly intoxicated state, he raised his hand to accompany his farewell with a shoulder rub, but Mohinder was too fast; he glided away and shut the door before there was any physical contact. Sylar was left with his hand hanging foolishly in the air.
While changing into pajama pants and a tee-shirt, Sylar kept his ears open for what was going on in the next room. Mohinder seemed to be more tired than usual (maybe it was the wine), for instead of watching the BBC as he usually did whenever there was cable TV, he brushed his teeth and went straight to bed. Sylar waited until he heard the calm measured breaths of sleep before creeping quietly into the hallway.
He did this almost every night. He pretended to himself not to know why. At first it had started because when they had first partnered up, one of their enemies had broken into Mohinder’s room with a knife. Sylar had saved the day by bursting in. For a little while after that, he had always woken up in a panic in the middle of the night, wondering if Mohinder was ok. He knew deep down that he could tell just by listening, but he convinced himself that the only way to stop worrying was to see for himself. But even though the danger had long since gone, and it was now highly unlikely that anyone would try to kill Mohinder in the night, Sylar had gotten into the habit of spending a couple of minutes of every night watching the other man sleep.
He stood barefoot in the hallway and analyzed the door in front of him. The mechanism was controlled by some sort of electrical switch that could not be pushed back and forth without the digital prompt. Sylar tried everything he could think of, and telekinetically poked all of the different gears he possibly could. Nothing worked. He considered melting the locks, but perhaps the metal would melt in such a way as to irrevocably fasten the door shut. Mohinder would definitely be not be amused by that. He considered radiating it, but he didn’t want to potentially give Mohinder cancer. He considered freezing it and then hammering the metal off, but that would most certainly wake Mohinder up and defeat the entire purpose.
With a sigh, Sylar finally gave up and went back into his own room, where he climbed into bed and pulled the covers over his head. He tried everything to drown out the sound of the highway. Finally, he ended up inserting earplugs and putting his pillow over his head. It didn’t really work, but between the wine and the beef and the advanced hour, he soon drifted off to sleep anyway. His last, frustrated, thought was that going forward, he was going to have to put his foot down about these fancy hotels. No matter what Mohinder said, they were going to stay in places with keys from now on.
*************************************************
The next thing he knew, sunlight was streaming through the thin crack between the curtains. Sylar had never been able to sleep past seven am, even as a child. During their time on the road, it had been a constant source of tension between himself and Mohinder, as the other man was a terrible morning grump. He moved the pillow away and stretched, thinking to himself that Mohinder had been right after all; he did feel better rested, and this was definitely better value for the money. And although uncomfortable at times, they had had a more intimate evening than usual. Perhaps awhile longer of this kind of living might lead to… Sylar sighed and shook his head in resignation of his own pipe dreams. He got up and started heading for the bathroom when an unexpected sight stopped him in his tracks.
He opened the curtains across the room with his mind to get a better look. A shirtless Mohinder was curled up like a baby in the other bed, curls askew and a bit of drool making a wet spot on the pillow. After gaping some more, Sylar sat down on the side of the bed. His hand hovered over Mohinder’s sleeping form as he deliberated whether or not this was actually happening and whether or not it was a good idea to do anything. Finally, his more basic instincts got the better of him, and he tentatively held the hand that was flung sideways.
“Mohinder?” he whispered.
“Mhrgmph.”
Emboldened, but still baffled, Sylar now let his other hand massage Mohinder’s exposed back. “Mohinder, what are you doing here?” he repeated in the same uncharacteristically gentle whisper.
He received another grumble in response. He wracked his brain trying to think of an interesting way to take advantage of the situation. It was the sort of thing he had always dreamed of, but now that it was actually happening, every single idea fled from his imagination. Finally, he thought of something almost too random, but for lack of anything else, he went for it. Something was giving him the irrational feeling that Mohinder was faking being asleep.
He gingerly climbed onto the bed. He bent forward and put his lips close enough to Mohinder’s right ear to nibble. “We don’t have to get going too early today. Maybe I’ll go back to sleep, right here.”
Mohinder suddenly pushed himself up with a frenzied burst of energy. One of his shoulder blades crashed into Sylar’s nose, and, as he flipped himself over, his knee made painful contact with Sylar’s groin.
“Ow!” Sylar cried, after landing on the other side of the bed and curling into the fetal position. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Now sitting up, Mohinder asked, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Even from his balled-up position, Sylar felt he had the right to the moral high ground. “No no. Given that this is my room, and I wake up to find you here, I think I get first dibs on that question.”
Mohinder disengaged himself from the covers with an indignant and unjustified annoyance. “I was sleeping, as you probably could tell.”
“How did you get in?” None of this made any sense, and Mohinder’s non-answer wasn’t helping things. Sylar couldn’t believe that Mohinder had succeeded in sneaking in after he, with countless abilities, had failed so miserably. But why?
Mohinder pulled a keycard out from under his pillow and grinned like a naughty schoolboy. “Reception gave each of us two. I gave you only one.”
Sylar grabbed it from Mohinder’s hand and flung it across the room. “No really, what are you doing here?”
“I started thinking about what you said. It wasn’t much more per room here than it was in a motel. But if we bunk together, we could upgrade even more without breaking the budget. I figured I’d experiment on what it would be like before committing.” Mohinder’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “And now that I know you don't snore or anything, I’m going to look into Hotel Sacher for our trip to Vienna next week. If that’s alright with you, that is.”
Sylar was still staring rather stupidly. It was a combination of awe over his confusion at the turn of events, his dismay at having been snuck up on like that, the nonsensical answers Mohinder was giving, the unexpected gratification of a long-held fantasy of a near-naked Mohinder, and genuine confusion about whether or not their relationship was progressing or if things were just as bitchily antagonistic-with-a-repressed-friendship-and-one-sided-crush as usual.
He finally willed himself to take a deep breath and reclaim control over the situation. “I couldn’t care less about your hotel fetish. The only thing I care about right now is that you clear out of here so I can shower.”
Mohinder shrugged and headed for the door. “Ok. I just thought maybe it would be easier than having you spend half of every night trying to sneak into my room,” he said on his way out, leaving Sylar speechless yet again. He wondered how Mohinder had known and how in the world he would defend his actions.
Alone in the room again, he took back his personal resolution to continue fighting Mohinder’s desire to stay in nice places. It seemed that keycards would no longer be a problem.
And now for a flashback!
Rating: PG
Words: 2870
Spoilers: Season two
Summary: Mohinder and Sylar are in Boston. They go to nice places, for a change.
A/N: Sequel to the little roadtrip story I posted recently. This was written very quickly, so apologies for the quality. I'm in a weird and cheesy mood today. Consider yourselves warned.
Part 1
The reception clerk looked the name up in the computer system. “Ah, yes. Dr. Mohinder Suresh. Two rooms, two nights, right?” he asked with a polite smile.
Sylar turned playfully to Mohinder. “You know, if we’re going to be upgrading from now on, it might make more sense to book just one room, not two.”
Mohinder looked at him studiously and furrowed his brow, trying to decipher exactly what meaning, if any at all, lay behind the ambiguous words. After a searching stare, he turned back to the clerk. “That’s right. Two rooms.”
“I meant with two beds,” Sylar murmured in an attempt to diffuse the unfortunately negative reaction his comment seemed to have elicited from Mohinder. He was miffed; the evening didn’t look like it was going to be as interesting as he had hoped.
Mohinder ignored him. “Non-smoking, please.”
Still feeling a little het up from their recent argument in the car, and this new embarrassment, Sylar interrupted petulantly, “What if I wanted to smoke?”
Mohinder sighed, gripped Sylar by the shoulders and spoke very seriously. “There are many things you can do, but smoking is not one of them. We both know you have a different kind of heat. So, unless you’ve been sneaking off…” Mohinder suddenly realized he was being baited into talking nonsense in front of strangers. He shook his head, trying to get back on track. “Shut up.”
The clerk coughed quietly and tried not to look scandalized. “Here are your keys. I hope you have a pleasant stay,” he whispered, and handed Mohinder the tiny folders with their card keys. Sylar scowled to himself, but then he remembered something.
“Hey,” he addressed the clerk. “Do you know of any nice restaurants around here? Maybe something French? We wanted something a little more civilized today.” He threw a sidelong glance at Mohinder, who, after arranging his luggage in his hands and putting some papers back into his coat pocket, was turning back around with a smile on his face.
The clerk thought for a minute. “No, nothing like that around here. Maybe if you go to Cambridge. There’s a place I recommend to everyone at the Charles Hotel. It’s kind of pricey, though. Around Harvard Square.”
“I don’t want to go to Harvard Square,” Sylar interrupted quickly. Both Mohinder and the clerk looked at him in confusion.
“Um, well, ok. Oh, I know. There’s a French-like place on Mass Ave called Central Kitchen. It’s right in front of the Central Square T-stop. You can’t miss it. It’s the nicest place in the area, but pretty low-key at the same time.”
“Thanks!” Mohinder said. The two men gathered their belongings and walked to the elevator.
“Mohinder, I think there’s some seismic activity going on,” Sylar whispered.
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a strange rushing sound coming from underneath the building.”
“I don’t hear any---” Mohinder countered. Then he stopped as he realized how Sylar had heard. “Oh. Right.”
They were silent during the ride in the elevator as they remembered various painful events of years ago.
“My key, please,” Sylar requested, and stretched out his hand as he stood by his door.
Mohinder handed him the little folder with a card in it. “See you in a minute, ok?”
“I’ll call a taxi,” Sylar replied in a complete non-sequitor.
Mohinder stopped on his way into his room. “What for? We have a car.”
“You got your way with staying somewhere nice. Now I get my way.”
“Is this about my driving again?” Mohinder asked with more than a hint of irritation.
Sylar shook his head. “No. Just for one evening, I don’t want to deal with parking and… everything. And we can have some wine and no one has to worry about driving.”
“Alright.” They both went into their respective rooms.
Less than a minute later, there was a knock on Mohinder’s door. He rolled his eyes and went to open it. “What is it now?” he asked a shocked-looking Sylar.
“We’re over the highway!” the other man cried.
“What are you talking about?” Mohinder asked as Sylar swept into the bedroom, walked past the two beds, and flung open the thick curtains to reveal Interstate 90.
“This. We're in that hotel built over the highway that we passed on our way here. That’s where we are. That’s what you get for $90.”
Mohinder walked to the window, registered the information, and laughed. “Ah well. The room is great, though. I’ll finally get a good night’s sleep. The noise doesn’t bother me. Probably because I haven’t, you know, killed anyone. Now, get out of here and let me change. I’m sick of you always thinking of these silly reasons to come to my room and annoy me.”
Sylar shuffled next door again, subtly taking note of the construction of Mohinder’s door while it was still open.
*************************************************
After the initial process of sitting down, ordering drinks and food, and settling into the restaurant were finished, an uncomfortable silence settled over the two men. Something about the transient nature of roadside diners had made talking or not talking a casual decision---not even a decision as much as something that happened or didn’t happen organically. Knowing they would leave again in a few minutes had always kept them from the discomfort or having to get into conversations that were personal. Their relationship, such as it was, had been forged in the car, where Mohinder always had his eyes on the road, and the presence of the radio had always made it easy for both of them to stop a conversation as soon as it became problematic and pretend to listen to the tunes.
“So what’s your problem with Harvard Square?” Mohinder finally broke the awkward silence.
Sylar looked at the table. “Nothing. Want some butter?”
“You didn’t react like nothing back at the hotel,” Mohinder pressed despite the digression.
Sylar snapped his head up and met Mohinder’s eyes. “Fine. I applied. I didn’t get in. My mother never let me live it down. Happy now?” And he furiously began slathering butter on his bread, even adding a bit of telekinesis to get it even further into the grooves.
Mohinder leaned back and watched Sylar and his bread. “That was a really hard year. Only 10.1% acceptance rate.”
Sylar looked up with a curious glint in his eye. “How do you know that off the top of your head?”
Mohinder blushed, but thankfully it was dark in the restaurant. “I didn’t get in either, and my father never let me live it down,” he admitted.
“Poor little genius, had to settle for Cambridge,” Sylar taunted.
“Stop it. No matter what, it’s always terrible to disappoint your parents.” Now it was Mohinder’s turn to fidget with things on the table. He started shaking salt all over the place.
Sylar watched him and nodded. “I get that. But in the end, you turned out alright.”
More salt spilled out of the shaker as Mohinder’s brooding increased. “I wouldn’t call being regarded as a crackpot by the scientific community, traipsing around the country with my father’s murderer, and not having any real friends ‘turning out alright’. Would you?”
There wasn’t too much Sylar could say in response to that. Mohinder started trying to think of a new topic, since this one seemed finished, but then Sylar uttered a soft, “I like you.”
There was a pause as they looked into one another’s eyes for just a shade longer than could be called casual.
“That’s such a comfort,” Mohinder finally quipped, his voice dripping with so much sarcasm, that the only thing Sylar could hope for was that it was out of overcompensation.
The waiter appeared with the wine. Both men breathed a sigh of relief.
*************************************************
A couple of hours and a couple of bottles later, they hailed a taxi back to the Sheraton. Things had loosened up considerably as the wine flowed, but not so much that Sylar felt they had quite breached the protective moat of sarcasm and antagonism that Mohinder maintained at all times. There was something gentler behind Mohinder’s eyes than usual, but every time Sylar hoped to place his hand closer to the other man’s, or do anything that might serve as a gauge of how well he was doing to slowly morph their relationship, he had found himself wordlessly cut off or the subject changed or the waiter called for. At one point, when Sylar had been trying to hold Mohinder’s gaze for a little longer than necessary, Mohinder had gotten up to go to the restroom.
The taxi ride was no different, except for the fact that Sylar had the feeling that Mohinder was now the one casting surreptitious glances at him and smiling to himself. But he couldn’t be quite sure. When he asked what was up, Mohinder had said nothing, but smiled to himself all the same.
They said goodnight outside their adjacent doors. In a final effort to take advantage of Mohinder’s slightly intoxicated state, he raised his hand to accompany his farewell with a shoulder rub, but Mohinder was too fast; he glided away and shut the door before there was any physical contact. Sylar was left with his hand hanging foolishly in the air.
While changing into pajama pants and a tee-shirt, Sylar kept his ears open for what was going on in the next room. Mohinder seemed to be more tired than usual (maybe it was the wine), for instead of watching the BBC as he usually did whenever there was cable TV, he brushed his teeth and went straight to bed. Sylar waited until he heard the calm measured breaths of sleep before creeping quietly into the hallway.
He did this almost every night. He pretended to himself not to know why. At first it had started because when they had first partnered up, one of their enemies had broken into Mohinder’s room with a knife. Sylar had saved the day by bursting in. For a little while after that, he had always woken up in a panic in the middle of the night, wondering if Mohinder was ok. He knew deep down that he could tell just by listening, but he convinced himself that the only way to stop worrying was to see for himself. But even though the danger had long since gone, and it was now highly unlikely that anyone would try to kill Mohinder in the night, Sylar had gotten into the habit of spending a couple of minutes of every night watching the other man sleep.
He stood barefoot in the hallway and analyzed the door in front of him. The mechanism was controlled by some sort of electrical switch that could not be pushed back and forth without the digital prompt. Sylar tried everything he could think of, and telekinetically poked all of the different gears he possibly could. Nothing worked. He considered melting the locks, but perhaps the metal would melt in such a way as to irrevocably fasten the door shut. Mohinder would definitely be not be amused by that. He considered radiating it, but he didn’t want to potentially give Mohinder cancer. He considered freezing it and then hammering the metal off, but that would most certainly wake Mohinder up and defeat the entire purpose.
With a sigh, Sylar finally gave up and went back into his own room, where he climbed into bed and pulled the covers over his head. He tried everything to drown out the sound of the highway. Finally, he ended up inserting earplugs and putting his pillow over his head. It didn’t really work, but between the wine and the beef and the advanced hour, he soon drifted off to sleep anyway. His last, frustrated, thought was that going forward, he was going to have to put his foot down about these fancy hotels. No matter what Mohinder said, they were going to stay in places with keys from now on.
*************************************************
The next thing he knew, sunlight was streaming through the thin crack between the curtains. Sylar had never been able to sleep past seven am, even as a child. During their time on the road, it had been a constant source of tension between himself and Mohinder, as the other man was a terrible morning grump. He moved the pillow away and stretched, thinking to himself that Mohinder had been right after all; he did feel better rested, and this was definitely better value for the money. And although uncomfortable at times, they had had a more intimate evening than usual. Perhaps awhile longer of this kind of living might lead to… Sylar sighed and shook his head in resignation of his own pipe dreams. He got up and started heading for the bathroom when an unexpected sight stopped him in his tracks.
He opened the curtains across the room with his mind to get a better look. A shirtless Mohinder was curled up like a baby in the other bed, curls askew and a bit of drool making a wet spot on the pillow. After gaping some more, Sylar sat down on the side of the bed. His hand hovered over Mohinder’s sleeping form as he deliberated whether or not this was actually happening and whether or not it was a good idea to do anything. Finally, his more basic instincts got the better of him, and he tentatively held the hand that was flung sideways.
“Mohinder?” he whispered.
“Mhrgmph.”
Emboldened, but still baffled, Sylar now let his other hand massage Mohinder’s exposed back. “Mohinder, what are you doing here?” he repeated in the same uncharacteristically gentle whisper.
He received another grumble in response. He wracked his brain trying to think of an interesting way to take advantage of the situation. It was the sort of thing he had always dreamed of, but now that it was actually happening, every single idea fled from his imagination. Finally, he thought of something almost too random, but for lack of anything else, he went for it. Something was giving him the irrational feeling that Mohinder was faking being asleep.
He gingerly climbed onto the bed. He bent forward and put his lips close enough to Mohinder’s right ear to nibble. “We don’t have to get going too early today. Maybe I’ll go back to sleep, right here.”
Mohinder suddenly pushed himself up with a frenzied burst of energy. One of his shoulder blades crashed into Sylar’s nose, and, as he flipped himself over, his knee made painful contact with Sylar’s groin.
“Ow!” Sylar cried, after landing on the other side of the bed and curling into the fetal position. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Now sitting up, Mohinder asked, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Even from his balled-up position, Sylar felt he had the right to the moral high ground. “No no. Given that this is my room, and I wake up to find you here, I think I get first dibs on that question.”
Mohinder disengaged himself from the covers with an indignant and unjustified annoyance. “I was sleeping, as you probably could tell.”
“How did you get in?” None of this made any sense, and Mohinder’s non-answer wasn’t helping things. Sylar couldn’t believe that Mohinder had succeeded in sneaking in after he, with countless abilities, had failed so miserably. But why?
Mohinder pulled a keycard out from under his pillow and grinned like a naughty schoolboy. “Reception gave each of us two. I gave you only one.”
Sylar grabbed it from Mohinder’s hand and flung it across the room. “No really, what are you doing here?”
“I started thinking about what you said. It wasn’t much more per room here than it was in a motel. But if we bunk together, we could upgrade even more without breaking the budget. I figured I’d experiment on what it would be like before committing.” Mohinder’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “And now that I know you don't snore or anything, I’m going to look into Hotel Sacher for our trip to Vienna next week. If that’s alright with you, that is.”
Sylar was still staring rather stupidly. It was a combination of awe over his confusion at the turn of events, his dismay at having been snuck up on like that, the nonsensical answers Mohinder was giving, the unexpected gratification of a long-held fantasy of a near-naked Mohinder, and genuine confusion about whether or not their relationship was progressing or if things were just as bitchily antagonistic-with-a-repressed-friendship-and-one-sided-crush as usual.
He finally willed himself to take a deep breath and reclaim control over the situation. “I couldn’t care less about your hotel fetish. The only thing I care about right now is that you clear out of here so I can shower.”
Mohinder shrugged and headed for the door. “Ok. I just thought maybe it would be easier than having you spend half of every night trying to sneak into my room,” he said on his way out, leaving Sylar speechless yet again. He wondered how Mohinder had known and how in the world he would defend his actions.
Alone in the room again, he took back his personal resolution to continue fighting Mohinder’s desire to stay in nice places. It seemed that keycards would no longer be a problem.
And now for a flashback!