{ and baby, i wished for you }
Dear canon, you will never crush my dreams, \o/ The end.
Also, this is for Karolyn. She knows how and why. <3
Title: In The Wake of Giants
Characters/Pairings: Mohinder/Peter
Rating: PG13 (so fluffy it HUUUUURTS me)
Spoilers: General spoilers for 1x16, and flagrant abuse of the hallway scene from 1x13
Summary: "Maybe super powers are not everything after all."
Background song: Fiona Apple, Love Ridden.
Love ridden, I've looked at you
With the focus I gave to my birthday candles
I've wished on the lidded blue flames
Under your brow
And baby, I wished for you
&&&
Peter has a way of hiding in plain sight that always makes Mohinder’s mouth quirk at its corner. Just a little, when he’s sure he isn’t looking at him to see it.
It’s there, disguised in the fleeting shimmer of morning light at the bedroom window, when sunlight just began to filter through the blinds drawn half-open. Like fuzzy transitional outlines sketched lazily in strips like intangible cellophane, crisp and clean in thin bands of hoary white dawn catching around his unseen form for only a moment, and only if he’s of the mind of catch it.
A fleeting shimmer in the shape of lean back and smooth shoulder blades and the warm planes where his hands so easily fit, and of dark hair slipping to obscure hooded eyes that would otherwise shine in earthen tones. And shine still, in quieter moments like these, even after all has been said and done.
A trick of his peripheral vision, Mohinder always used to assure himself, of splinters of sunshine and flitting particles of dust reflecting the clean glow in tiny dots of lights. Just a trick of his sleep-blurred eyes, when he wakes once again to find himself in an empty bed, cold sheets untouched and pillow painfully bereft of that familiar scent of warm clean skin. Alone, save the sensory echoes in knowing that Peter was there when he fell asleep the night before, coiled within his hold where he always is.
And without seeing him he knows that Peter’s still there, in a way that comes with intimacy he’s given up trying to rationalize. And the little part of him where he still lets his thoughts stray knows a little better of it as he slips from beneath the blankets, to pad with bare feet across the cold bedroom floor.
Peter refers to moments like these as simply “thinking,” or “needing space”; they both know by now words and definitions don’t stand for much.
Recent history reminds Mohinder to quiet the natural unease that flickers to life at the notion of this particular “gift.” The last six months have retrained him; corrected his lines of perception and milked these moments of their sting. For better or worse, but nearly always for the better. Perhaps it’s time that wore his defenses down, he still catches himself pondering, in some distracted way that makes Peter roll his eyes when he’s been casting too loudly…or simply the way his body reacts to the touch of softer hands. Rationality compromised by sentiment, he can very nearly hear in his dead father’s voice, senses lulled by warm kisses and the promise in the cores of warmer eyes.
Neither would surprise him, really, because it makes no difference in the end. Six months have taught him many things since they stumbled across each other again, lost. Cracked like glass, broken around the edges but not quite yet shattered; good intentions brought down by the airs of tragedy that clung to their skin, in their clothes like the smell of the blood of those neither of them had been able to save. Since old wounds and ugly words were made pale in the face of hands that held understanding, left small and cold by eyes that seemed to put a name to the hollow feeling that had made home inside his empty chest.
The little things that had struck him with apprehension before now just slip between them both unnoticed, like gestures made unseen with time and tempering. Like the way doors in the apartment would swing shut from across the room, windows rattling open with a thought; the way the sky outside would darken like Peter’s eyes would darken when they argued, differences marked by bolts of static and empty rolls of thunder echoing in the horizon. The way the cuts and scrapes and aches Peter always came home to him with would pull themselves shut, zippered closed again before Mohinder’s eyes when he held him close, brushing sweat-matted hair from his face as he fell into fitful sleep.
Understood, filed away and finally forgotten; accepted as much a part of his lover as his voice or his touch or his lopsided little smile. The one that always leaves him feeling more grateful for it now than he can remember being, since all this began.
On the cold floor his feet make no sound in the hollows of this conventional silence. Without thought his fingers drift apart, feeling the cool air between the thin webs of skin that held his digits together, splayed on instinct like a blind man seeking purchase in an unfamiliar place. Because in a way he is blind, he supposes. Small and shut out from the larger picture by the fate of his genes, living in the wake of the giants themselves; unconscious of so many of the tiny miracles of evolution that he’s lucky enough to be in the presence of each day.
And it’s the murmur of breathing that guides him now, the shallow in out in out shushing from across the room where the sunlight peeking through half-drawn blinds catches the dust drifting in the air. Because he doesn’t need to see him to know that he’s still there. He’s learned he doesn’t need a lot of things.
The shush turns to a flutter and the sound of bare skin on cold wood. Practice brings his hands up just enough to glide across the smooth definitions of the body he can’t yet see and patience tells him to wait, stopping just shy of where the light was playing its tricks. Skin is warm, keen, perfectly real beneath his hands, tangible in ways his brain doesn’t register but his senses cling to, always, as he draws in on the breath of another blowing gently across his mouth.
Palms turn, sliding upwards until they settle over the hollow tha-thump of life against the fine white bones guarding the flutter of the pulse that perks beneath his touch, and where patience stops shy knowledge gives rise. Perhaps it is with a touch arrogance that he brings their lips to brush, just, intent to coax Peter from his hiding, compelled by the warmth of the body still unseen. To savor the familiar taste of the mouth that knows well the way to kiss him until it isn’t arrogance anymore, only intimacy sighing between their shared breath on the wings of the flutter beneath his hands.
He closes his eyes to kiss him, as he always does.
He knows that when he opens them again he won’t be alone.
“How do you always do that?” in a whisper that breaks their shared silence. Peter, his warm breath on his lips, his hands on his wrists, holding him place. Palms over his heart, tha-thump tha-thump. “How do you always find me?” Mohinder doesn’t have to see him now to know the look that he is giving him, with sunlight turning half-circles in rounder eyes, lidded beneath the sweep of long dark bangs. The sweet little tilt at the corner of his mouth.
But he has no answer for him, because he never does, and because like a lot of things, it makes no difference anymore. And leaning into him again, he simply smiles into the kiss.
“Maybe super powers are not everything after all.”
Also, this is for Karolyn. She knows how and why. <3
Title: In The Wake of Giants
Characters/Pairings: Mohinder/Peter
Rating: PG13 (so fluffy it HUUUUURTS me)
Spoilers: General spoilers for 1x16, and flagrant abuse of the hallway scene from 1x13
Summary: "Maybe super powers are not everything after all."
Background song: Fiona Apple, Love Ridden.
Love ridden, I've looked at you
With the focus I gave to my birthday candles
I've wished on the lidded blue flames
Under your brow
And baby, I wished for you
&&&
Peter has a way of hiding in plain sight that always makes Mohinder’s mouth quirk at its corner. Just a little, when he’s sure he isn’t looking at him to see it.
It’s there, disguised in the fleeting shimmer of morning light at the bedroom window, when sunlight just began to filter through the blinds drawn half-open. Like fuzzy transitional outlines sketched lazily in strips like intangible cellophane, crisp and clean in thin bands of hoary white dawn catching around his unseen form for only a moment, and only if he’s of the mind of catch it.
A fleeting shimmer in the shape of lean back and smooth shoulder blades and the warm planes where his hands so easily fit, and of dark hair slipping to obscure hooded eyes that would otherwise shine in earthen tones. And shine still, in quieter moments like these, even after all has been said and done.
A trick of his peripheral vision, Mohinder always used to assure himself, of splinters of sunshine and flitting particles of dust reflecting the clean glow in tiny dots of lights. Just a trick of his sleep-blurred eyes, when he wakes once again to find himself in an empty bed, cold sheets untouched and pillow painfully bereft of that familiar scent of warm clean skin. Alone, save the sensory echoes in knowing that Peter was there when he fell asleep the night before, coiled within his hold where he always is.
And without seeing him he knows that Peter’s still there, in a way that comes with intimacy he’s given up trying to rationalize. And the little part of him where he still lets his thoughts stray knows a little better of it as he slips from beneath the blankets, to pad with bare feet across the cold bedroom floor.
Peter refers to moments like these as simply “thinking,” or “needing space”; they both know by now words and definitions don’t stand for much.
Recent history reminds Mohinder to quiet the natural unease that flickers to life at the notion of this particular “gift.” The last six months have retrained him; corrected his lines of perception and milked these moments of their sting. For better or worse, but nearly always for the better. Perhaps it’s time that wore his defenses down, he still catches himself pondering, in some distracted way that makes Peter roll his eyes when he’s been casting too loudly…or simply the way his body reacts to the touch of softer hands. Rationality compromised by sentiment, he can very nearly hear in his dead father’s voice, senses lulled by warm kisses and the promise in the cores of warmer eyes.
Neither would surprise him, really, because it makes no difference in the end. Six months have taught him many things since they stumbled across each other again, lost. Cracked like glass, broken around the edges but not quite yet shattered; good intentions brought down by the airs of tragedy that clung to their skin, in their clothes like the smell of the blood of those neither of them had been able to save. Since old wounds and ugly words were made pale in the face of hands that held understanding, left small and cold by eyes that seemed to put a name to the hollow feeling that had made home inside his empty chest.
The little things that had struck him with apprehension before now just slip between them both unnoticed, like gestures made unseen with time and tempering. Like the way doors in the apartment would swing shut from across the room, windows rattling open with a thought; the way the sky outside would darken like Peter’s eyes would darken when they argued, differences marked by bolts of static and empty rolls of thunder echoing in the horizon. The way the cuts and scrapes and aches Peter always came home to him with would pull themselves shut, zippered closed again before Mohinder’s eyes when he held him close, brushing sweat-matted hair from his face as he fell into fitful sleep.
Understood, filed away and finally forgotten; accepted as much a part of his lover as his voice or his touch or his lopsided little smile. The one that always leaves him feeling more grateful for it now than he can remember being, since all this began.
On the cold floor his feet make no sound in the hollows of this conventional silence. Without thought his fingers drift apart, feeling the cool air between the thin webs of skin that held his digits together, splayed on instinct like a blind man seeking purchase in an unfamiliar place. Because in a way he is blind, he supposes. Small and shut out from the larger picture by the fate of his genes, living in the wake of the giants themselves; unconscious of so many of the tiny miracles of evolution that he’s lucky enough to be in the presence of each day.
And it’s the murmur of breathing that guides him now, the shallow in out in out shushing from across the room where the sunlight peeking through half-drawn blinds catches the dust drifting in the air. Because he doesn’t need to see him to know that he’s still there. He’s learned he doesn’t need a lot of things.
The shush turns to a flutter and the sound of bare skin on cold wood. Practice brings his hands up just enough to glide across the smooth definitions of the body he can’t yet see and patience tells him to wait, stopping just shy of where the light was playing its tricks. Skin is warm, keen, perfectly real beneath his hands, tangible in ways his brain doesn’t register but his senses cling to, always, as he draws in on the breath of another blowing gently across his mouth.
Palms turn, sliding upwards until they settle over the hollow tha-thump of life against the fine white bones guarding the flutter of the pulse that perks beneath his touch, and where patience stops shy knowledge gives rise. Perhaps it is with a touch arrogance that he brings their lips to brush, just, intent to coax Peter from his hiding, compelled by the warmth of the body still unseen. To savor the familiar taste of the mouth that knows well the way to kiss him until it isn’t arrogance anymore, only intimacy sighing between their shared breath on the wings of the flutter beneath his hands.
He closes his eyes to kiss him, as he always does.
He knows that when he opens them again he won’t be alone.
“How do you always do that?” in a whisper that breaks their shared silence. Peter, his warm breath on his lips, his hands on his wrists, holding him place. Palms over his heart, tha-thump tha-thump. “How do you always find me?” Mohinder doesn’t have to see him now to know the look that he is giving him, with sunlight turning half-circles in rounder eyes, lidded beneath the sweep of long dark bangs. The sweet little tilt at the corner of his mouth.
But he has no answer for him, because he never does, and because like a lot of things, it makes no difference anymore. And leaning into him again, he simply smiles into the kiss.
“Maybe super powers are not everything after all.”