Back on Track - Heroes - Mohinder/Audrey
Title: Back on Track
Pairing: Audrey/Mohinder
Word Count: 2902
Rating: PG
Warning: Character death
A/N: Written with 25_streetsigns 'Detour' prompt.
Summary: When Agent Hanson turns up, arms crossed over her chest, Mohinder is forced to finally start looking at the mess his life has crumbled into since Matt died.
Matt dies on a Tuesday.
The coroner says it was over quickly - a flash of blood then sinking into the black - and tells Mohinder in a quiet, sympathetic voice that Matt never felt any pain. One gun shot wound in the centre of his forehead, almost a perfect circle, and that was all it had taken to wipe him from the word. One bullet, one gun, one pumped-up idiot with something to prove. The killer was just a kid, really. Barely out of his teens, but on edge and spaced out. He'll probably spend long, lonely years in prison, but Mohinder's jaw clenches and he knows that can't be enough.
He isn't sure how to feel about Matt's death, not intellectually. Despite the living arrangement they'd found themselves tumbling into, he'd never liked the man a great deal when he was alive - something he's certain was reciprocated. Polar opposites, they'd grated on each others' nerves and had struggled to find a rhythm to settle into. The teachers had said that Molly needed a stable environment at home. Mohinder still doesn't know how they'd ever intended on providing that for her.
Not that it matters now. With Matt's death came Molly's departure. The apartment echoes around him as he lies on the couch, listening to empty memories. He's allowed to see Molly at the weekends, but today is Tuesday. Saturday seems a long time from now. Mohinder closes his eyes and listens to the pounding of his heart, wishing that he could fade into the upholstery and cease to be. I should go home, he thinks, just as he does every day. Perhaps there is a job waiting for him back in India. Perhaps he can settle into an ordinary life with Mira, far away from the heartache that has happened here.
He almost laughs at the idea, such an impossibility.
Slowly he lapses into despairing thought again, ready to lose himself for yet another day, but a harsh rap on the door halts him.
He looks towards it without moving, clinging onto the hollow possibility that whoever it is might go away. He hasn't been visited in the weeks since Matt's funeral, something he finds himself glad for. He was never a social creature and the steady collapse of his life has hardly turned him into one, but the knocking only pauses for a few moments before it restarts when it isn't immediately answered - restarts and continues, blunt and steady.
"I know you're in there, Suresh," a hard female voice calls through the door. It isn't a voice he recognises, and the very fact that she already knows his last name ought to strike alarm into his heart.
Instead he sighs and has to force himself to sit up again. His muscles complain with movement, creaking and whining like a window that hasn't been opened in too long, rust gathering. He can feel that same rot in his brain as he tries to wake that side of his mind up once more, as he struggles to reengage with the rules of interaction. Snapping at a stranger on his doorstep won't help. For all he knows she's another Peter Petrelli, here to beg for his assistance with her ability. The idea makes his heart sink.
The woman on his doorstep has her arms folded over her chest when she looks up at him, her face framed with a bolt of blonde hair. "You're Mohinder Suresh?" she asks.
He nods reluctantly, trying to work out who she is. She isn't Matt's Janice: he met her at the funeral and was forced to feel the stab of guilt as he saw her heavily pregnant belly. Matt had never told him why it was that he'd so readily fled from his old life. He'd never really known the man at all, he supposes. "Yes, that's me," he confirms. "And you are?"
"Agent Hanson," she answers, with a flash of a badge that he never gets a chance to look at properly. "Can I come in?"
He should step back instantly, but he stays leaning against the door and blocking her way. "Why?"
"I've got some questions." She meets his eyes easily. "It's about Officer Parkman's murder."
The investigation's closed, Mohinder thinks, but he backs out of her way all the same and waves his hand to beckon her inside. The air in the apartment is stuffy and thick. He hasn't opened the windows in far too long, but Agent Hanson doesn't appear to notice that as she stalks inside as if she owns the place and as if she has always belonged here. She looks around, alert eyes taking in every detail.
"Parkman lived here?" she checks with a scant glance back at him.
"He did," Mohinder confirms. "For a while. It was never…" He shakes his head and doesn't know how to complete that sentence. It was never supposed to be permanent - yet Matt had been such a long-term fixture in that apartment that Mohinder had stopped noticing him, like part of the scenery: the worn-out couch that creaked and looked ready to fall apart at any moment. "I'm sorry, who are you?"
"Agent Ha-"
"I know your name; I want to know who you are."
She purses her lips at him, a gesture that seems almost aggressive in its passivity. "I work for the FBI."
Mohinder nods, but that still doesn't tell him what he needs to know. "I wasn't aware that the FBI were interested in what had happened," he says, sitting down against the arm of the couch. "Why are you here?"
"I told you, I'm-"
"Don't lie to me," he says. "I'm so fed up with you people lying to me. How did you know Matt?"
Her eyes seem cold as she watches him, her expression giving away nothing but frustration. He supposes he's being difficult, shedding what few social skills he possesses, but he can't allow this stranger to hide behind her badge; if she does actually work for the FBI, he can still make a good guess that she isn't here for official business. If she doesn't work for them, then he has to be twice as on edge as that's confirmation that she isn't really here to ask about Matt.
"I worked with him," she says eventually, snapping the words out like an accusation. "Back in California, before…" A wave of her hand encompasses his apartment. He wonders, for the first time, how Matt explained his move to the people from his old life. Judging from the hard expression on Hanson's face, he'd guess that he didn't explain it well - if at all.
"And you're here to…?"
"I don't know," she snaps. "I just- I missed the funeral. I only found out about a week ago what happened. His wife never told me. No one did."
"I'm sorry," Mohinder says. If he'd ever heard of her he would have called - but he'd known so little about Matt's life and friends beyond Molly. "Is there anything I can do?"
She looks at him with shaded eyes and keeps her arms crossed over her chest. There doesn't appear to be an answer for that question; she probably doesn't even know herself why she stormed in here. It's one of those 'it seemed good at the time' ideas. Mohinder's had his fair share of those.
"You live here?" she asks, and he can sense the disapproval. The place is a dingy, dark mess.
"Yes," he confirms with a half-hearted attempt to rearrange the cushions on the couch. It's something of a lost cause by this point. "It was my father's apartment." Even now he can't stand to let it go, although he knows that it would probably be best for his sanity if he did.
"Huh," she says, nodding as if she's gained some great insight.
"Agent Hanson, I really-"
"Audrey," she interrupts. "My name's Audrey."
Grudgingly given, but the name makes Mohinder pause where he'd been ready to politely ask her to leave. His mouth closes. Audrey… The name doesn't mean anything to him and he's certain he'd never heard Matt mention her before, but that hardly seems to matter. "Would you like a seat?" he asks her, gesturing towards the couch.
It's not much, but it's a start.
*
He's asleep on Friday, curled up in bed, when he grumbles awake at the sound of a key turning in the lock. His head feels full of dirty air and he pulls the covers further up: he's not ready to wake up, not ready to encounter the real world, but the first stirrings of alarm are there as he remembers that no one but him is supposed to be coming in here any more - Molly can't visit and Matt is gone, gone, gone.
His eyes open two seconds before there's a cushion from the couch chucked at his head, hitting with an accurate thud. "Get out of bed," Audrey says, standing in the doorway with her head tilted at an angle as she watches him. "You look a mess."
"I am a mess," he grumbles as she turns to walk into the kitchen - but he still finds himself scrambling reluctantly into the cold air, changing his clothes to quickly come and investigate what bizarre events are taking place in his apartment.
"How did you get in here?" he asks, sleep-slurred, when he slouches from the bedroom. The water in the kettle is quietly rumbling to life, and Audrey is raking her way through his cupboards to try and find where he keeps the mugs.
"I talked to your landlord," she says, finally locating two and resting them on the counter. "He gave me a key."
Mohinder's eyebrows rise. "He did?"
"Yeah. You should really look into that." She runs cold water into the mugs then pours it down the sink. Probably wise, Mohinder thinks. There's no telling how long they've been in there untouched. "I mean, you hardly know me. What if someone dangerous wanted a key?"
"Mm," Mohinder agrees, as he sits down at the kitchen table. He wonders what time it is. "What are you doing here, Audrey?" He asks. He's freshly awake and he's only met this woman once before; he's a little beyond the point where he feels capable of being polite.
She shrugs and turns around to look at him. "I figured you needed someone to drag you out of bed."
She meets his eyes and her gaze doesn't drop, holding his until it becomes uncomfortable for both of them. He should by all rights throw her out of the apartment and then track down his landlord to yell at him. What if Audrey had been someone altogether more sinister? Mohinder has already gathered more than enough enemies without giving them easy access to the place where he lives, where he sleeps. Right now, however, Audrey's challenging stare feels a lot more intimidating than Sylar ever could. He brushes a hand over his face and desperately wishes to wake up from this - but Audrey stays in front of him, hard face and cold eyes, until he is forced to accept reality.
"Alright then," Audrey says, non-verbal battle won. She turns once more and with one mighty pull of her arm jerks open the kitchen blinds. Sunlight floods into the grimy kitchen and attacks Mohinder's eyes like acid. "Get your shoes. We're going out."
*
'Going out', as it turns out, doesn't mean to anywhere in particular - it means leaving the apartment and aimlessly roaming the crowded New York streets as you complain endlessly to the FBI agent who is tormenting you, and it means having to do that every morning for at least a week. Mohinder starts to set his alarm clock again, because there's something extremely demoralising about having Audrey slamming into his bedroom every morning to find him sprawled on his front and drooling into the pillow.
"You look better," Molly says with an impish grin when he sees her three weekends later.
"I do?"
"Yeah. Less… gross."
Ah. Less gross. A barbed compliment if ever he heard one, but it's from Molly so it makes him smile and hold onto her. Her hair smells different from how it did when she was staying at home with him - a different shampoo, he supposes. Everything's different now but there's no way of reclaiming the family he once had. There's no way of going back.
Only forward, always forward, so he forces a smile when Audrey comes to visit him that Monday. "I'm okay, you know," he tells her as they leave the apartment block and find themselves on the busy street outside. "I know you think I'm falling apart, but I'm not. I'll get back on track. I don't need your help."
She rolls her eyes at him. "Suresh?" she says. "Shut up."
And, well, he does - because there's not much use arguing with something like that, is there?
*
She takes him to see a movie on Thursday, a garish blockbuster crammed full with explosions and chase scenes. Mohinder loses track of the plot about one quarter of the way through, but there's popcorn and soda and the explosions are still rather exciting even if he doesn't remember the significance of them. Painted in silver colours by the glow of the screen, Audrey's skin seems paler than ever, her cheekbones carved at sharp angles. He can't imagine her and Matt as friends: they're different people, very different.
"You're staring," she hisses at him.
"I know," he says, just to see her smile before he settles his gaze back on the screen to try and pick up on the general thrust of the action. She slouches down into the depths of her seat and, out of the corner of his eye, he can see that she's still grinning. The warmth that spread through him from his stomach upon seeing that is so very far from alarming. He holds back a smile as well and tries to focus on the film until the credits roll.
Once the screen turns black and a thousand names starts skimming past, the lights go up to reveal the rest of the audience as they yawn and begin to retrieve their coats from where they've been stashed beneath the seats. The floor feels sticky with split soda. Mohinder rolls his shoulders and stands up, watching as Audrey takes a final sip from the straw in her Coke - it makes a loud gargling sound as she does - before he reaches out a hand to help her to her feet. She takes it with a faint roll of her eyes; her hand feels warm in Mohinder's, her palm sweaty.
They discuss the movie on the walk back to his apartment, once their hands are thrust into their pockets and their shoulders are hunched protectively. Mohinder looks down, watching the cracks in the pavement - and fatal silence falls, leaving a knot in his throat and an anxious burning in his stomach.
"So…" he murmurs. There are several blocks left to go until they reach his apartment. He's beginning to wonder if they'll make it or if this cloak of awkwardness will smother them first.
"So," Audrey agrees, with a purposeful nod. "Was this a date?"
"What?!"
"'cause I didn't come here planning on going on a date with you. I came here for Matt." And she's never said that before, she's never admitted it, but Mohinder's too busy feeling his heart race to be able to focus on that. "But tonight was nice. You're nice full stop, actually, and that's not-"
"It could be a date," he says. The words are practically yelped. "If you wanted that, I mean. It's… It could be."
She nods then shrugs then shoves her hands deeper into her jacket pockets. "Cool," she says - as if it's that simple and as if it isn't entirely messed up and as if they aren't really, truly the worst two people in the world to be thrown together. Neither of them should even be contemplating something like this, and he hardly knows her. He doesn't know her at all: she just stormed into his apartment one day and pushed and shoved her way into his life. She's rude and she's blunt and she's always smirking at him when he does something stupid - and yet knowing that this silly little cinema trip had been a bona fide date leaves him smiling like an imbecile.
"You're such a dork," she says, but it sounds like a compliment and he can't stop himself from grinning more.
When they reach his apartment, she stands by her car where it's parked outside and glances up the long tiers of the building. Shabby and bland, it's hardly the most impressive of buildings, but it's his home now and has been for so long now. He'd never be able to dream of moving anywhere else.
"Guess I'll see you tomorrow?" she suggests, but she's Audrey. She never 'suggests' anything, she just does it. At least, Mohinder supposes, he's getting a warning this time.
"Yes," he confirms. "I guess so."
For the first time since Matt's funeral, he can feel that light at the end of the tunnel, as if his life is finally beginning to head in the right direction. He finally has something to look forward to.
Pairing: Audrey/Mohinder
Word Count: 2902
Rating: PG
Warning: Character death
A/N: Written with 25_streetsigns 'Detour' prompt.
Summary: When Agent Hanson turns up, arms crossed over her chest, Mohinder is forced to finally start looking at the mess his life has crumbled into since Matt died.
Matt dies on a Tuesday.
The coroner says it was over quickly - a flash of blood then sinking into the black - and tells Mohinder in a quiet, sympathetic voice that Matt never felt any pain. One gun shot wound in the centre of his forehead, almost a perfect circle, and that was all it had taken to wipe him from the word. One bullet, one gun, one pumped-up idiot with something to prove. The killer was just a kid, really. Barely out of his teens, but on edge and spaced out. He'll probably spend long, lonely years in prison, but Mohinder's jaw clenches and he knows that can't be enough.
He isn't sure how to feel about Matt's death, not intellectually. Despite the living arrangement they'd found themselves tumbling into, he'd never liked the man a great deal when he was alive - something he's certain was reciprocated. Polar opposites, they'd grated on each others' nerves and had struggled to find a rhythm to settle into. The teachers had said that Molly needed a stable environment at home. Mohinder still doesn't know how they'd ever intended on providing that for her.
Not that it matters now. With Matt's death came Molly's departure. The apartment echoes around him as he lies on the couch, listening to empty memories. He's allowed to see Molly at the weekends, but today is Tuesday. Saturday seems a long time from now. Mohinder closes his eyes and listens to the pounding of his heart, wishing that he could fade into the upholstery and cease to be. I should go home, he thinks, just as he does every day. Perhaps there is a job waiting for him back in India. Perhaps he can settle into an ordinary life with Mira, far away from the heartache that has happened here.
He almost laughs at the idea, such an impossibility.
Slowly he lapses into despairing thought again, ready to lose himself for yet another day, but a harsh rap on the door halts him.
He looks towards it without moving, clinging onto the hollow possibility that whoever it is might go away. He hasn't been visited in the weeks since Matt's funeral, something he finds himself glad for. He was never a social creature and the steady collapse of his life has hardly turned him into one, but the knocking only pauses for a few moments before it restarts when it isn't immediately answered - restarts and continues, blunt and steady.
"I know you're in there, Suresh," a hard female voice calls through the door. It isn't a voice he recognises, and the very fact that she already knows his last name ought to strike alarm into his heart.
Instead he sighs and has to force himself to sit up again. His muscles complain with movement, creaking and whining like a window that hasn't been opened in too long, rust gathering. He can feel that same rot in his brain as he tries to wake that side of his mind up once more, as he struggles to reengage with the rules of interaction. Snapping at a stranger on his doorstep won't help. For all he knows she's another Peter Petrelli, here to beg for his assistance with her ability. The idea makes his heart sink.
The woman on his doorstep has her arms folded over her chest when she looks up at him, her face framed with a bolt of blonde hair. "You're Mohinder Suresh?" she asks.
He nods reluctantly, trying to work out who she is. She isn't Matt's Janice: he met her at the funeral and was forced to feel the stab of guilt as he saw her heavily pregnant belly. Matt had never told him why it was that he'd so readily fled from his old life. He'd never really known the man at all, he supposes. "Yes, that's me," he confirms. "And you are?"
"Agent Hanson," she answers, with a flash of a badge that he never gets a chance to look at properly. "Can I come in?"
He should step back instantly, but he stays leaning against the door and blocking her way. "Why?"
"I've got some questions." She meets his eyes easily. "It's about Officer Parkman's murder."
The investigation's closed, Mohinder thinks, but he backs out of her way all the same and waves his hand to beckon her inside. The air in the apartment is stuffy and thick. He hasn't opened the windows in far too long, but Agent Hanson doesn't appear to notice that as she stalks inside as if she owns the place and as if she has always belonged here. She looks around, alert eyes taking in every detail.
"Parkman lived here?" she checks with a scant glance back at him.
"He did," Mohinder confirms. "For a while. It was never…" He shakes his head and doesn't know how to complete that sentence. It was never supposed to be permanent - yet Matt had been such a long-term fixture in that apartment that Mohinder had stopped noticing him, like part of the scenery: the worn-out couch that creaked and looked ready to fall apart at any moment. "I'm sorry, who are you?"
"Agent Ha-"
"I know your name; I want to know who you are."
She purses her lips at him, a gesture that seems almost aggressive in its passivity. "I work for the FBI."
Mohinder nods, but that still doesn't tell him what he needs to know. "I wasn't aware that the FBI were interested in what had happened," he says, sitting down against the arm of the couch. "Why are you here?"
"I told you, I'm-"
"Don't lie to me," he says. "I'm so fed up with you people lying to me. How did you know Matt?"
Her eyes seem cold as she watches him, her expression giving away nothing but frustration. He supposes he's being difficult, shedding what few social skills he possesses, but he can't allow this stranger to hide behind her badge; if she does actually work for the FBI, he can still make a good guess that she isn't here for official business. If she doesn't work for them, then he has to be twice as on edge as that's confirmation that she isn't really here to ask about Matt.
"I worked with him," she says eventually, snapping the words out like an accusation. "Back in California, before…" A wave of her hand encompasses his apartment. He wonders, for the first time, how Matt explained his move to the people from his old life. Judging from the hard expression on Hanson's face, he'd guess that he didn't explain it well - if at all.
"And you're here to…?"
"I don't know," she snaps. "I just- I missed the funeral. I only found out about a week ago what happened. His wife never told me. No one did."
"I'm sorry," Mohinder says. If he'd ever heard of her he would have called - but he'd known so little about Matt's life and friends beyond Molly. "Is there anything I can do?"
She looks at him with shaded eyes and keeps her arms crossed over her chest. There doesn't appear to be an answer for that question; she probably doesn't even know herself why she stormed in here. It's one of those 'it seemed good at the time' ideas. Mohinder's had his fair share of those.
"You live here?" she asks, and he can sense the disapproval. The place is a dingy, dark mess.
"Yes," he confirms with a half-hearted attempt to rearrange the cushions on the couch. It's something of a lost cause by this point. "It was my father's apartment." Even now he can't stand to let it go, although he knows that it would probably be best for his sanity if he did.
"Huh," she says, nodding as if she's gained some great insight.
"Agent Hanson, I really-"
"Audrey," she interrupts. "My name's Audrey."
Grudgingly given, but the name makes Mohinder pause where he'd been ready to politely ask her to leave. His mouth closes. Audrey… The name doesn't mean anything to him and he's certain he'd never heard Matt mention her before, but that hardly seems to matter. "Would you like a seat?" he asks her, gesturing towards the couch.
It's not much, but it's a start.
*
He's asleep on Friday, curled up in bed, when he grumbles awake at the sound of a key turning in the lock. His head feels full of dirty air and he pulls the covers further up: he's not ready to wake up, not ready to encounter the real world, but the first stirrings of alarm are there as he remembers that no one but him is supposed to be coming in here any more - Molly can't visit and Matt is gone, gone, gone.
His eyes open two seconds before there's a cushion from the couch chucked at his head, hitting with an accurate thud. "Get out of bed," Audrey says, standing in the doorway with her head tilted at an angle as she watches him. "You look a mess."
"I am a mess," he grumbles as she turns to walk into the kitchen - but he still finds himself scrambling reluctantly into the cold air, changing his clothes to quickly come and investigate what bizarre events are taking place in his apartment.
"How did you get in here?" he asks, sleep-slurred, when he slouches from the bedroom. The water in the kettle is quietly rumbling to life, and Audrey is raking her way through his cupboards to try and find where he keeps the mugs.
"I talked to your landlord," she says, finally locating two and resting them on the counter. "He gave me a key."
Mohinder's eyebrows rise. "He did?"
"Yeah. You should really look into that." She runs cold water into the mugs then pours it down the sink. Probably wise, Mohinder thinks. There's no telling how long they've been in there untouched. "I mean, you hardly know me. What if someone dangerous wanted a key?"
"Mm," Mohinder agrees, as he sits down at the kitchen table. He wonders what time it is. "What are you doing here, Audrey?" He asks. He's freshly awake and he's only met this woman once before; he's a little beyond the point where he feels capable of being polite.
She shrugs and turns around to look at him. "I figured you needed someone to drag you out of bed."
She meets his eyes and her gaze doesn't drop, holding his until it becomes uncomfortable for both of them. He should by all rights throw her out of the apartment and then track down his landlord to yell at him. What if Audrey had been someone altogether more sinister? Mohinder has already gathered more than enough enemies without giving them easy access to the place where he lives, where he sleeps. Right now, however, Audrey's challenging stare feels a lot more intimidating than Sylar ever could. He brushes a hand over his face and desperately wishes to wake up from this - but Audrey stays in front of him, hard face and cold eyes, until he is forced to accept reality.
"Alright then," Audrey says, non-verbal battle won. She turns once more and with one mighty pull of her arm jerks open the kitchen blinds. Sunlight floods into the grimy kitchen and attacks Mohinder's eyes like acid. "Get your shoes. We're going out."
*
'Going out', as it turns out, doesn't mean to anywhere in particular - it means leaving the apartment and aimlessly roaming the crowded New York streets as you complain endlessly to the FBI agent who is tormenting you, and it means having to do that every morning for at least a week. Mohinder starts to set his alarm clock again, because there's something extremely demoralising about having Audrey slamming into his bedroom every morning to find him sprawled on his front and drooling into the pillow.
"You look better," Molly says with an impish grin when he sees her three weekends later.
"I do?"
"Yeah. Less… gross."
Ah. Less gross. A barbed compliment if ever he heard one, but it's from Molly so it makes him smile and hold onto her. Her hair smells different from how it did when she was staying at home with him - a different shampoo, he supposes. Everything's different now but there's no way of reclaiming the family he once had. There's no way of going back.
Only forward, always forward, so he forces a smile when Audrey comes to visit him that Monday. "I'm okay, you know," he tells her as they leave the apartment block and find themselves on the busy street outside. "I know you think I'm falling apart, but I'm not. I'll get back on track. I don't need your help."
She rolls her eyes at him. "Suresh?" she says. "Shut up."
And, well, he does - because there's not much use arguing with something like that, is there?
*
She takes him to see a movie on Thursday, a garish blockbuster crammed full with explosions and chase scenes. Mohinder loses track of the plot about one quarter of the way through, but there's popcorn and soda and the explosions are still rather exciting even if he doesn't remember the significance of them. Painted in silver colours by the glow of the screen, Audrey's skin seems paler than ever, her cheekbones carved at sharp angles. He can't imagine her and Matt as friends: they're different people, very different.
"You're staring," she hisses at him.
"I know," he says, just to see her smile before he settles his gaze back on the screen to try and pick up on the general thrust of the action. She slouches down into the depths of her seat and, out of the corner of his eye, he can see that she's still grinning. The warmth that spread through him from his stomach upon seeing that is so very far from alarming. He holds back a smile as well and tries to focus on the film until the credits roll.
Once the screen turns black and a thousand names starts skimming past, the lights go up to reveal the rest of the audience as they yawn and begin to retrieve their coats from where they've been stashed beneath the seats. The floor feels sticky with split soda. Mohinder rolls his shoulders and stands up, watching as Audrey takes a final sip from the straw in her Coke - it makes a loud gargling sound as she does - before he reaches out a hand to help her to her feet. She takes it with a faint roll of her eyes; her hand feels warm in Mohinder's, her palm sweaty.
They discuss the movie on the walk back to his apartment, once their hands are thrust into their pockets and their shoulders are hunched protectively. Mohinder looks down, watching the cracks in the pavement - and fatal silence falls, leaving a knot in his throat and an anxious burning in his stomach.
"So…" he murmurs. There are several blocks left to go until they reach his apartment. He's beginning to wonder if they'll make it or if this cloak of awkwardness will smother them first.
"So," Audrey agrees, with a purposeful nod. "Was this a date?"
"What?!"
"'cause I didn't come here planning on going on a date with you. I came here for Matt." And she's never said that before, she's never admitted it, but Mohinder's too busy feeling his heart race to be able to focus on that. "But tonight was nice. You're nice full stop, actually, and that's not-"
"It could be a date," he says. The words are practically yelped. "If you wanted that, I mean. It's… It could be."
She nods then shrugs then shoves her hands deeper into her jacket pockets. "Cool," she says - as if it's that simple and as if it isn't entirely messed up and as if they aren't really, truly the worst two people in the world to be thrown together. Neither of them should even be contemplating something like this, and he hardly knows her. He doesn't know her at all: she just stormed into his apartment one day and pushed and shoved her way into his life. She's rude and she's blunt and she's always smirking at him when he does something stupid - and yet knowing that this silly little cinema trip had been a bona fide date leaves him smiling like an imbecile.
"You're such a dork," she says, but it sounds like a compliment and he can't stop himself from grinning more.
When they reach his apartment, she stands by her car where it's parked outside and glances up the long tiers of the building. Shabby and bland, it's hardly the most impressive of buildings, but it's his home now and has been for so long now. He'd never be able to dream of moving anywhere else.
"Guess I'll see you tomorrow?" she suggests, but she's Audrey. She never 'suggests' anything, she just does it. At least, Mohinder supposes, he's getting a warning this time.
"Yes," he confirms. "I guess so."
For the first time since Matt's funeral, he can feel that light at the end of the tunnel, as if his life is finally beginning to head in the right direction. He finally has something to look forward to.