Pairing: Mohinder/Peter
Summary: Mohinder thinks about what America lacks, but finds comfort in something he can get nowhere else.
Rating: PG
There was little comfort in this cruel country. Everyone was cold and so isolated, their interactions more like the slow and distant motions of planets. They orbited the same point but never met, only cared about the path of another if it seemed like to affect their own. People just weren't connected here,not like they were back in India.
Mohinder had given little consideration to how much he would miss his homeland. He had become so obsessed with the obsessions of his father that such sentiments had been dropped in his haste. The only drawbacks he had considered were the practical ones - money, work, etcetera. Even reputation, which had been shouted about so many times, failed to register as a real dilemma. But now he was here in this emotional wasteland of a country and he missed his family and friends so much that it hurt.
If he only had his father's research to cling to, it might have been too much to bear. He might have given up entirely and run home to the disappointment of his family and the mockery of his peers. There were some days that he became convinced his father had been mad, that the only genetic legacy to examine was the insanity that Mohinder had clearly inherited. Some days the weight of his work was enough to break him and there was almost nothing to bring him back from the brink of despair and futile anger.
Almost nothing.
Because America, for all its faults, had one thing that buoyed Mohinder's spirits. Every unhappy face he saw in the street was balanced by a special smile that belonged to the angel in his bed. Perhaps a true angel, since Peter Petrelli was convinced that he could fly. Mohinder was dubious, but enthralled enough to humour the young man. Peter was a friend of everyone, an anomaly in this country of strangers. So open and believing and trusting, it was hard to believe he had made it this far. And that fact alone could convince Mohinder that this land was not devoid of human warmth. How could it have raised Peter Petrelli if it was? Peter Petrelli with his crooked smile and his puppy-dog eyes and his childlike enthusiasm for everything. Peter Petrelli with his big heart, his soft skin and his beautiful hair? A nurse in a family of lawyers, a light in a city of darkness.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" mumbled a soft voice sleepily.
Mohinder smiled over at the figure on the bed, naked except for a bedsheet that draped across his body like a lover.
"The reason for my prolonged stay in America," Mohinder replied with a smile.
Peter chuckled slightly, closing his eyes. "Don't blame me. It's your research that keeps you here."
"And you keep me doing my research," Mohinder returned, grinning.
"Yeah, all those 'experiments', I let you perform on me," Peter said in an unmistakeably suggestive tone.
Peter Petrelli, with his insatiable body and irresistable wiles.
Mohinder knew he could never leave this country. Unless he took Peter with him.