Fic: Recovering from the Shock
Title: Recovering from the Shock
Characters: Mohinder/Elle, Bob Bishop
Rating: PG-13 for almost-portrayal of maybe-sex, and two f-bombs
Word Count: 2813
Disclaimer: I don't own any aspect of Heroes or its characters
Spoilers/Warnings: AU from the end of season 2.
Summary: Elle makes Mohinder realize that it does count.
A/N: Written for a Ridiculously Specific prompt. Sexily beta'ed by dragynflies!
It had been a particularly long and strenuous assignment, cataloguing people with powers from coast to coast. He'd left the morning after the Primatech holiday party, celebrated in the week between Christmas and New Year's. He would have never considered the Company as a particularly fun crowd, but as it turned out, they needed to unwind just as much as anyone - probably moreso. He'd had a good enough time at the actual party, but it had quickly devolved into bumbling debauchery that he'd rather have forgotten.
Unfortunately, the debauchery hadn't forgotten him. He found her sitting on a stool in his laboratory, apparently awaiting his return.
"Mohinder!" Elle exclaimed as he came through the door. "I'm glad you're back. Did you have a good mission?"
"Hello, Elle," he said, eyes averted. The last time he'd seen her had been during a rather embarrassing intimate moment, and seeing her made his face flush all over again. "It was successful, yes."
"Good to hear it," Elle said, smiling too widely for his comfort. He set down his briefcase and opened it, trying to look busy in hopes that she would leave. When she didn't make a move, he opened his mouth to say something, but she managed to get something out first. "So how about that Christmas party, right?"
"Um, yeah, right," Mohinder replied coolly, unsure of whether Elle's remark was even grammatically a question. "I'm going to make some tea - would you care for any?"
"None for me, thanks," Elle said, her voice lilting irritably, and she continued on even as Mohinder walked away towards the hot plate and teapot he kept in the corner of the room. "I don't know about you, but I had a lot of fun. I mean, a lot."
"Hmmm," Mohinder sighed, fumbling with the hot plate and biting his lip in growing frustration.
"So, like, remember how drunk we both got?"
"Vaguely," he said, beginning to lose patience. He'd really rather not be reminded of that evening any more than absolutely necessary.
Elle laughed at his reply, but it was forced and high-pitched - an unnatural and jarring sound that made Mohinder wonder whether there was something wrong. The teapot began to whistle but Elle managed to speak over the sound. "And then we left the party together and came back here, to your lab?"
"Um, yes, yes - I do remember that." He turned towards her now, letting the tea in his mug steep as he tried to determine whether Elle had a point in bringing all this up. If she was just going to use a particularly aberrant occurrence to make fun of him...
"You remember because I smashed all those beakers, right? You weren't very happy about that."
"Elle, is there a point to this story?" Mohinder interrupted, lifting the mug to his lips and taking a tentative sip.
"Oh, oh yeah," Elle paused, taking a few strands of her hair in her hand and twirling it girlishly. "See, the thing is - I'm pregnant."
While he stammered and struggled with the pain of having hot tea through his nose, hot tea on his hands, hot tea all down the front of his khakis, Mohinder mentally tried to reconstruct the events of that night.
******************************************************
The memory came back to him - fuzzy at first, perhaps because of his reluctance, but the more he thought about it, the more he was able to recall what had happened.
They'd stumbled out of the party together. He still clutched the neck of a beer bottle, long since empty, in one hand, and Elle pressed him up against the wall of the corridor and kissed him shamelessly. Her mouth tasted like cranberries, tart and tangy.
"Not here," he'd whispered, taking her by the hand and leading her through the labyrinthine passageways until they'd reached his most familiar haunt, the laboratory he'd come to think of as his second home.
He had wrapped his hands around her tiny waist and hoisted her onto the slate surface of the lab table. Unwittingly she knocked Mohinder's lab equipment over; a few beakers fell onto their sides and rolled off the edge of the tabletop, falling to the floor with echoing crashes.
"Elle, for God's sake!"
"No one's going to hear it," Elle purred. "We're far, far away from everybody else."
"This is delicate equipment, Elle, and not all of it's easy to replace..."
"They're just beakers. Shut up and kiss me already."
They pawed clumsily at each other. She tangled her fingers into his hair and he grimaced as she accidentally sparked his scalp. Still, their lips connected desperately as Mohinder slid his hands up her skirt, tugging her panties down over her thighs. At the same time Elle fumbled with his belt buckle and struggled to undo the button of his pants.
She scooted forward to the edge of the lab table, spreading her legs apart. Mohinder leaned into her, letting his lust lead the way, sighing as he felt the inside of his thighs meet hers. The sensation was electric. Mohinder almost couldn't believe it; she was the boss's daughter, forbidden fruit, and such luscious fruit, at that...
"I think you're forgetting something, Fight Club," Elle giggled. "Hold on, I have a condom in my purse." She squinted in the darkness, scanning the tabletop and the floor for where she set her bag.
But Mohinder couldn't wait. "Elle, I don't think I can..."
"Wait, Mohinder, I'm... Ah! There it is." She spotted it on the floor near Mohinder's feet, surrounded by tiny slivers of glass from the shattered beakers. Indelicately she leaned forward, reaching for the handles, inadvertently pressing against Mohinder even more.
Mohinder groaned as Elle finally grabbed her purse, clutching it in one hand while holding onto Mohinder's shoulder for balance. "Don't move, Elle," he warned. "If you move, I'm going to..."
Following instructions had never been Elle's strong point, especially when those instructions were given by Mohinder. She pulled herself upwards, and in that instant, Mohinder lost control. He was caught in the midst of both release and embarrassment - it showed on his face - and even if Elle didn't feel quite as satisfied, she was immeasurably amused.
"That... that was it? Are you done? Were you even inside? Because I'll tell you what, I didn't feel a thing!" Elle doubled over with laughter.
He couldn't recall how their evening progressed from there - he never quite recovered from the shock - but one thing was certain: he was absolutely mortified.
******************************************************
And his mortification carried over into his present state of mind. Now, though, his early... ahem... arrival seemed more like an acquittal than an emission of guilt.
"I... I don't understand," Mohinder muttered, absolutely baffled. "What we did... it doesn't count as sex, does it?"
"I didn't think so either, at first," Elle replied. "But, as it turns out, you have remarkable aim for such a long-distance shot."
"And you're sure that it's.... that it's mine?"
Elle crossed her legs and folded her hands across her knee. "I know, right? You'd think someone as hot as I am would get laid more often."
Mohinder's mind was reeling - there was so much to think about that he couldn't get his head around it all. What baffled him most, however, was Elle's apparent nonchalant attitude about everything. "How can you be so... so...?"
"So... thin still? You'd be surprised how morning sickness keeps the weight off. They should market early pregnancy as some sort of diet plan."
"No, not... not that. How can you be so flippant, so calm?" His voice pitched unpredictably in his panic; he sounded like a teenager.
"Wow, Mohinder, you need to chill. It's not, like, an emergency," Elle replied, rolling her eyes. "We're not having a baby right now."
"But soon!" Mohinder cried out, boggling at the math in his head. How long ago was the Christmas party? How long was the normal gestation period for human beings? What could be done to rectify this obvious error? "Christ, Elle... what are you going to do?"
"I don't know," Elle shrugged, her tone a little more solemn. "But Daddy might make you marry me."
There were two things wrong with that sentence, and Mohinder couldn't decide which issue to address first. He decided to start with the one least likely to get him electrocuted. "Your father knew before I did?"
"Oh, relax, Fight Club - no need to get your hackles up." Elle uncrossed her legs and rose to her feet, striding over to him as she cocked her head and smiled. Girlishly she traced the her finger along the curve of Mohinder's shoulder - if it were possible to make him any more uneasy, Elle sure knew the way to do it. "He doesn't know it's yours. I haven't told him, and he doesn't have the security tapes from that night. Everyone knows that I short out the surveillance cameras for the party every year - otherwise we'd never have any fun."
"Fun, Elle? Is this funny to you?" Perhaps this was all a joke. Maybe she'd found a way to creatively push his buttons for being... less than satisfactory. She had to be pulling his leg! "You're kidding me, right?" he asked, hopeful. "This is some sort of prank?"
Suddenly she burst into tears. "You think I'd lie to you about something important like this? You think I like having to deal with this?"
His jaw fell slack at her swift change in mood. "I was under that impression, yes," he replied, mustering all the sincerity he had. She had seemed to calm, cool, and collected for it to be real. Now he wasn't so sure.
"You didn't notice that my boobs are already bigger?" Elle's face turned red as she shoved her finger into his face. "I'm tired and bloated and I have to pee all the time! I've had to give up caffeine and alcohol and most of my shoes already don't fit anymore!" She threw her hands down to her sides as she turned towards the exit, seething. "Fuck you, Mohinder! Just... fuck you!"
"Apparently you already have!" Mohinder shot back as Elle stomped out the door, ruining her stiletto heels.
She spun around when she reached the threshold. "That didn't even count!"
"It kind of pretty much did, as far as I can tell!" Mohinder yelled as she slammed the door behind her, but while he had the last word, he had the distinct feeling that there was no winner in that argument.
******************************************************
As though Mohinder could regret his recent interactions with Elle any more, he arrived in his lab the next morning to find Bob Bishop already there, leaning up against the very table where his grandchild-to-be had been conceived. Mohinder wasn't sure he believed Elle when she told him that her father was still in the dark about their rendezvous the night of the party, but he decided he'd better play dumb anyway.
"Good morning, Mr. Bishop," he said, hoping that his friendly tone masked his anxiety. "What brings you here so early? I was about to make some tea, would you care for any?"
"No, thank you, Dr. Suresh. I simply wanted to let you know how much your recent work has mattered. The data you accumulated on this last mission is invaluable to this company," Bob said heartily.
"I'm glad, sir," Mohinder replied with deference, fiddling with his tea pot and hoping that was all Bishop intended to say.
It wasn't, of course. "Creating a comprehensive catalogue of people with powers will hopefully reduce the need for these bag-and-tag missions all the agents are so fond of. With just a handful of men like you, we can revamp the way this company operates - a way that's more efficient, more streamlined, more... humane."
Mohinder nodded, clutching his mug of tea in a way that made his palms uncomfortably hot. As his boss continued speaking, he meandered aimlessly around his lab, trying to look busy. The strategy hadn't gotten Elle to leave yesterday, but it was too early to think up a new way to get people to leave him alone.
"It's a great relief to us all that there are people like you working so vigilantly to safeguard the future," Bob said, striding over and patting Mohinder on the back. "And the statistics will prove to be quite useful when predicting the possibilities of the next generation."
Mohinder smiled, his nervousness fading as Bob turned towards the door.
"Oh, and on that note, Dr. Suresh," Bob said, looking over his shoulder as he reached the doorway. "You had better make an honest woman out of my daughter. Otherwise you might concentrate more on safeguarding your own future," he added, his hand twisting the brassy doorknob so that it squeaked as he went out.
Mohinder gulped. Even after such a threat, he wondered whether his fate could really be any worse than a lifetime of commitment to a woman who'd always been a few wires short of a complete circuit.
******************************************************
Later that day Mohinder set aside the work he'd planned to work on that afternoon - procrastination wasn't his usual strategy, but he couldn't keep his mind from wandering. Instead he spent an hour winding his way through the Primatech hallways, hoping to straighten out all his thoughts.
He idly glanced into open doorways as he went by, until he accidentally passed an office where Elle sat staring at a computer screen, scowling as she held her head in her hand. He hesitated in the hallway, debating whether or not he should go in. On the one hand, their conversation the day before hadn't ended at all well, and he couldn't leave things with her as they were. On the other hand, she could electrocute him into oblivion, and he'd prefer to live at least one more day. Of course, she could always look up to see him waffling there at the door, unable to make even a simple decision, and he eventually just went with his gut and went in.
Mohinder shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked casually inside, hoping that his mere presence wouldn't be enough to merit an electric shock to his gonads. He sidled up to her, his ears burning already with awkward anticipation, but she didn't even look up from her errand.
"Why do all these clothes have bows on them?" Elle groaned, scrolling through a website of designer maternity wear. "I can't be the only woman ever knocked up who doesn't want to look like a Christmas present."
"I... I don't know why that is," Mohinder answered, realizing that it had been a rhetorical question as soon as the words were said out loud.
"So Daddy said he saw you this morning," she said, clicking and scrolling on a page of fancy diaper bags.
"He did."
"You know, if you came here to propose, you could have chosen a more romantic moment," Elle sighed. "I feel like shit right now."
Without thinking Mohinder placed his hands on her shoulders and gently rubbed his thumbs in circles at the base of her neck, his other fingers fluttering across her soft skin. "I didn't come to propose," Mohinder said quietly, hoping that she wouldn't find it necessary to kill him while he massaged the tight muscles in her neck. "I just came to talk to you. We didn't leave things on too bright a note yesterday."
"That feels nice," Elle sighed, letting her hands fall into her lap as her head fell backwards until she was looking up at Mohinder upside-down. "What did you want to talk about?"
"I'm sorry for how I reacted yesterday. I was taken off-guard, but I wasn't very mature about the whole affair." He moved from her neck and started rubbing her shoulders. "I thought for certain that you'd come to tease me about... well, you know."
Elle smiled. "You know, it isn't fair. We didn't really have sex, and still this happened."
"But we did really have sex. Sort of."
"I don't think it really counts." With Elle tilting her head like that, Mohinder had a perfect view down the front of her shirt. She hadn't been exaggerating about her more-ample bosom, and it was distracting. "I'm pretty sure it counts," he replied.
Elle furrowed her brow. "For as smart as you're supposed to be, I don't think you're getting the gist of this conversation."
"I beg your pardon?"
Elle swiveled on her computer chair until she faced him, and with a few swift motions Mohinder's belt came undone. She smiled wickedly. "Let's make it count this time."
Characters: Mohinder/Elle, Bob Bishop
Rating: PG-13 for almost-portrayal of maybe-sex, and two f-bombs
Word Count: 2813
Disclaimer: I don't own any aspect of Heroes or its characters
Spoilers/Warnings: AU from the end of season 2.
Summary: Elle makes Mohinder realize that it does count.
A/N: Written for a Ridiculously Specific prompt. Sexily beta'ed by dragynflies!
It had been a particularly long and strenuous assignment, cataloguing people with powers from coast to coast. He'd left the morning after the Primatech holiday party, celebrated in the week between Christmas and New Year's. He would have never considered the Company as a particularly fun crowd, but as it turned out, they needed to unwind just as much as anyone - probably moreso. He'd had a good enough time at the actual party, but it had quickly devolved into bumbling debauchery that he'd rather have forgotten.
Unfortunately, the debauchery hadn't forgotten him. He found her sitting on a stool in his laboratory, apparently awaiting his return.
"Mohinder!" Elle exclaimed as he came through the door. "I'm glad you're back. Did you have a good mission?"
"Hello, Elle," he said, eyes averted. The last time he'd seen her had been during a rather embarrassing intimate moment, and seeing her made his face flush all over again. "It was successful, yes."
"Good to hear it," Elle said, smiling too widely for his comfort. He set down his briefcase and opened it, trying to look busy in hopes that she would leave. When she didn't make a move, he opened his mouth to say something, but she managed to get something out first. "So how about that Christmas party, right?"
"Um, yeah, right," Mohinder replied coolly, unsure of whether Elle's remark was even grammatically a question. "I'm going to make some tea - would you care for any?"
"None for me, thanks," Elle said, her voice lilting irritably, and she continued on even as Mohinder walked away towards the hot plate and teapot he kept in the corner of the room. "I don't know about you, but I had a lot of fun. I mean, a lot."
"Hmmm," Mohinder sighed, fumbling with the hot plate and biting his lip in growing frustration.
"So, like, remember how drunk we both got?"
"Vaguely," he said, beginning to lose patience. He'd really rather not be reminded of that evening any more than absolutely necessary.
Elle laughed at his reply, but it was forced and high-pitched - an unnatural and jarring sound that made Mohinder wonder whether there was something wrong. The teapot began to whistle but Elle managed to speak over the sound. "And then we left the party together and came back here, to your lab?"
"Um, yes, yes - I do remember that." He turned towards her now, letting the tea in his mug steep as he tried to determine whether Elle had a point in bringing all this up. If she was just going to use a particularly aberrant occurrence to make fun of him...
"You remember because I smashed all those beakers, right? You weren't very happy about that."
"Elle, is there a point to this story?" Mohinder interrupted, lifting the mug to his lips and taking a tentative sip.
"Oh, oh yeah," Elle paused, taking a few strands of her hair in her hand and twirling it girlishly. "See, the thing is - I'm pregnant."
While he stammered and struggled with the pain of having hot tea through his nose, hot tea on his hands, hot tea all down the front of his khakis, Mohinder mentally tried to reconstruct the events of that night.
******************************************************
The memory came back to him - fuzzy at first, perhaps because of his reluctance, but the more he thought about it, the more he was able to recall what had happened.
They'd stumbled out of the party together. He still clutched the neck of a beer bottle, long since empty, in one hand, and Elle pressed him up against the wall of the corridor and kissed him shamelessly. Her mouth tasted like cranberries, tart and tangy.
"Not here," he'd whispered, taking her by the hand and leading her through the labyrinthine passageways until they'd reached his most familiar haunt, the laboratory he'd come to think of as his second home.
He had wrapped his hands around her tiny waist and hoisted her onto the slate surface of the lab table. Unwittingly she knocked Mohinder's lab equipment over; a few beakers fell onto their sides and rolled off the edge of the tabletop, falling to the floor with echoing crashes.
"Elle, for God's sake!"
"No one's going to hear it," Elle purred. "We're far, far away from everybody else."
"This is delicate equipment, Elle, and not all of it's easy to replace..."
"They're just beakers. Shut up and kiss me already."
They pawed clumsily at each other. She tangled her fingers into his hair and he grimaced as she accidentally sparked his scalp. Still, their lips connected desperately as Mohinder slid his hands up her skirt, tugging her panties down over her thighs. At the same time Elle fumbled with his belt buckle and struggled to undo the button of his pants.
She scooted forward to the edge of the lab table, spreading her legs apart. Mohinder leaned into her, letting his lust lead the way, sighing as he felt the inside of his thighs meet hers. The sensation was electric. Mohinder almost couldn't believe it; she was the boss's daughter, forbidden fruit, and such luscious fruit, at that...
"I think you're forgetting something, Fight Club," Elle giggled. "Hold on, I have a condom in my purse." She squinted in the darkness, scanning the tabletop and the floor for where she set her bag.
But Mohinder couldn't wait. "Elle, I don't think I can..."
"Wait, Mohinder, I'm... Ah! There it is." She spotted it on the floor near Mohinder's feet, surrounded by tiny slivers of glass from the shattered beakers. Indelicately she leaned forward, reaching for the handles, inadvertently pressing against Mohinder even more.
Mohinder groaned as Elle finally grabbed her purse, clutching it in one hand while holding onto Mohinder's shoulder for balance. "Don't move, Elle," he warned. "If you move, I'm going to..."
Following instructions had never been Elle's strong point, especially when those instructions were given by Mohinder. She pulled herself upwards, and in that instant, Mohinder lost control. He was caught in the midst of both release and embarrassment - it showed on his face - and even if Elle didn't feel quite as satisfied, she was immeasurably amused.
"That... that was it? Are you done? Were you even inside? Because I'll tell you what, I didn't feel a thing!" Elle doubled over with laughter.
He couldn't recall how their evening progressed from there - he never quite recovered from the shock - but one thing was certain: he was absolutely mortified.
******************************************************
And his mortification carried over into his present state of mind. Now, though, his early... ahem... arrival seemed more like an acquittal than an emission of guilt.
"I... I don't understand," Mohinder muttered, absolutely baffled. "What we did... it doesn't count as sex, does it?"
"I didn't think so either, at first," Elle replied. "But, as it turns out, you have remarkable aim for such a long-distance shot."
"And you're sure that it's.... that it's mine?"
Elle crossed her legs and folded her hands across her knee. "I know, right? You'd think someone as hot as I am would get laid more often."
Mohinder's mind was reeling - there was so much to think about that he couldn't get his head around it all. What baffled him most, however, was Elle's apparent nonchalant attitude about everything. "How can you be so... so...?"
"So... thin still? You'd be surprised how morning sickness keeps the weight off. They should market early pregnancy as some sort of diet plan."
"No, not... not that. How can you be so flippant, so calm?" His voice pitched unpredictably in his panic; he sounded like a teenager.
"Wow, Mohinder, you need to chill. It's not, like, an emergency," Elle replied, rolling her eyes. "We're not having a baby right now."
"But soon!" Mohinder cried out, boggling at the math in his head. How long ago was the Christmas party? How long was the normal gestation period for human beings? What could be done to rectify this obvious error? "Christ, Elle... what are you going to do?"
"I don't know," Elle shrugged, her tone a little more solemn. "But Daddy might make you marry me."
There were two things wrong with that sentence, and Mohinder couldn't decide which issue to address first. He decided to start with the one least likely to get him electrocuted. "Your father knew before I did?"
"Oh, relax, Fight Club - no need to get your hackles up." Elle uncrossed her legs and rose to her feet, striding over to him as she cocked her head and smiled. Girlishly she traced the her finger along the curve of Mohinder's shoulder - if it were possible to make him any more uneasy, Elle sure knew the way to do it. "He doesn't know it's yours. I haven't told him, and he doesn't have the security tapes from that night. Everyone knows that I short out the surveillance cameras for the party every year - otherwise we'd never have any fun."
"Fun, Elle? Is this funny to you?" Perhaps this was all a joke. Maybe she'd found a way to creatively push his buttons for being... less than satisfactory. She had to be pulling his leg! "You're kidding me, right?" he asked, hopeful. "This is some sort of prank?"
Suddenly she burst into tears. "You think I'd lie to you about something important like this? You think I like having to deal with this?"
His jaw fell slack at her swift change in mood. "I was under that impression, yes," he replied, mustering all the sincerity he had. She had seemed to calm, cool, and collected for it to be real. Now he wasn't so sure.
"You didn't notice that my boobs are already bigger?" Elle's face turned red as she shoved her finger into his face. "I'm tired and bloated and I have to pee all the time! I've had to give up caffeine and alcohol and most of my shoes already don't fit anymore!" She threw her hands down to her sides as she turned towards the exit, seething. "Fuck you, Mohinder! Just... fuck you!"
"Apparently you already have!" Mohinder shot back as Elle stomped out the door, ruining her stiletto heels.
She spun around when she reached the threshold. "That didn't even count!"
"It kind of pretty much did, as far as I can tell!" Mohinder yelled as she slammed the door behind her, but while he had the last word, he had the distinct feeling that there was no winner in that argument.
******************************************************
As though Mohinder could regret his recent interactions with Elle any more, he arrived in his lab the next morning to find Bob Bishop already there, leaning up against the very table where his grandchild-to-be had been conceived. Mohinder wasn't sure he believed Elle when she told him that her father was still in the dark about their rendezvous the night of the party, but he decided he'd better play dumb anyway.
"Good morning, Mr. Bishop," he said, hoping that his friendly tone masked his anxiety. "What brings you here so early? I was about to make some tea, would you care for any?"
"No, thank you, Dr. Suresh. I simply wanted to let you know how much your recent work has mattered. The data you accumulated on this last mission is invaluable to this company," Bob said heartily.
"I'm glad, sir," Mohinder replied with deference, fiddling with his tea pot and hoping that was all Bishop intended to say.
It wasn't, of course. "Creating a comprehensive catalogue of people with powers will hopefully reduce the need for these bag-and-tag missions all the agents are so fond of. With just a handful of men like you, we can revamp the way this company operates - a way that's more efficient, more streamlined, more... humane."
Mohinder nodded, clutching his mug of tea in a way that made his palms uncomfortably hot. As his boss continued speaking, he meandered aimlessly around his lab, trying to look busy. The strategy hadn't gotten Elle to leave yesterday, but it was too early to think up a new way to get people to leave him alone.
"It's a great relief to us all that there are people like you working so vigilantly to safeguard the future," Bob said, striding over and patting Mohinder on the back. "And the statistics will prove to be quite useful when predicting the possibilities of the next generation."
Mohinder smiled, his nervousness fading as Bob turned towards the door.
"Oh, and on that note, Dr. Suresh," Bob said, looking over his shoulder as he reached the doorway. "You had better make an honest woman out of my daughter. Otherwise you might concentrate more on safeguarding your own future," he added, his hand twisting the brassy doorknob so that it squeaked as he went out.
Mohinder gulped. Even after such a threat, he wondered whether his fate could really be any worse than a lifetime of commitment to a woman who'd always been a few wires short of a complete circuit.
******************************************************
Later that day Mohinder set aside the work he'd planned to work on that afternoon - procrastination wasn't his usual strategy, but he couldn't keep his mind from wandering. Instead he spent an hour winding his way through the Primatech hallways, hoping to straighten out all his thoughts.
He idly glanced into open doorways as he went by, until he accidentally passed an office where Elle sat staring at a computer screen, scowling as she held her head in her hand. He hesitated in the hallway, debating whether or not he should go in. On the one hand, their conversation the day before hadn't ended at all well, and he couldn't leave things with her as they were. On the other hand, she could electrocute him into oblivion, and he'd prefer to live at least one more day. Of course, she could always look up to see him waffling there at the door, unable to make even a simple decision, and he eventually just went with his gut and went in.
Mohinder shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked casually inside, hoping that his mere presence wouldn't be enough to merit an electric shock to his gonads. He sidled up to her, his ears burning already with awkward anticipation, but she didn't even look up from her errand.
"Why do all these clothes have bows on them?" Elle groaned, scrolling through a website of designer maternity wear. "I can't be the only woman ever knocked up who doesn't want to look like a Christmas present."
"I... I don't know why that is," Mohinder answered, realizing that it had been a rhetorical question as soon as the words were said out loud.
"So Daddy said he saw you this morning," she said, clicking and scrolling on a page of fancy diaper bags.
"He did."
"You know, if you came here to propose, you could have chosen a more romantic moment," Elle sighed. "I feel like shit right now."
Without thinking Mohinder placed his hands on her shoulders and gently rubbed his thumbs in circles at the base of her neck, his other fingers fluttering across her soft skin. "I didn't come to propose," Mohinder said quietly, hoping that she wouldn't find it necessary to kill him while he massaged the tight muscles in her neck. "I just came to talk to you. We didn't leave things on too bright a note yesterday."
"That feels nice," Elle sighed, letting her hands fall into her lap as her head fell backwards until she was looking up at Mohinder upside-down. "What did you want to talk about?"
"I'm sorry for how I reacted yesterday. I was taken off-guard, but I wasn't very mature about the whole affair." He moved from her neck and started rubbing her shoulders. "I thought for certain that you'd come to tease me about... well, you know."
Elle smiled. "You know, it isn't fair. We didn't really have sex, and still this happened."
"But we did really have sex. Sort of."
"I don't think it really counts." With Elle tilting her head like that, Mohinder had a perfect view down the front of her shirt. She hadn't been exaggerating about her more-ample bosom, and it was distracting. "I'm pretty sure it counts," he replied.
Elle furrowed her brow. "For as smart as you're supposed to be, I don't think you're getting the gist of this conversation."
"I beg your pardon?"
Elle swiveled on her computer chair until she faced him, and with a few swift motions Mohinder's belt came undone. She smiled wickedly. "Let's make it count this time."