One-Shot Wonders

Short stories, drabbles, and one-shots featuring Matt, Mohinder, and Molly

by Jennifer Rubio (nee Wand)

Five Drabbles (three with guest stars and two without

One: Nathan

"Look, I thought we said we'd never talk about that!"

Nathan looked up from his hospital bed. "What's your issue, Parkman?"

"You. Told. Her." Matt slammed the table once with each syllable.

"Of course I told her. She asked me why you were in Alabama one minute and Louisiana the next. What was I going to say? You want me to lie to an eight-year-old kid?"

Matt tapped his foot. "Your kids still believe in Santa Claus."

"That's nonsense from their mother," Nathan snapped coldly. "Besides. You said we'd never talk about it. You didn't tell me I had to keep it a secret from your daughter. Who's very charming, by the way." He winked.

"Great. The world's biggest Casanova is macking on my kid." Matt rolled his eyes and leaned forward in confidence. "She told Mohinder," he whispered under his breath. "And now Mohinder's not talking to me."

Nathan broke out in a wide grin. "He's jealous."

"Wait, what?" Matt shook his head, confused. "Jealous? Of wha-- you think he just wants to go for a flying lesson or something? Well, by all means, then!" He threw up his hands. "When you get better, you know what, you go right ahead. In fact, you can fly him around the world. See if I give a damn."

The man in the hospital bad laughed. "For a mindreader, you sure are insecure," he said. "He wasn't jealous of you."

Matt stared at him blankly.

"So he won't talk to you? Fine, then." The politician smile faded into something more sinister. "Try doing something other than talking. See what kind of reaction you get."

Two: Chandra/Sanjog

Mohinder dreamed.

Sylar had returned and was at large. Molly was in danger. Matt was nowhere to be found. And Mohinder dreamed not the dreams of a tortured man but the dreams of one who is enlightened.

He was strolling along a promenade with his father. Seagulls were dotting the skies like dots of pepper. A barge was floating by. Children were playing.

"I don't understand," he said bemusedly as the energetic shouts of the children followed them down the path. "Nothing is happening. Everything is calm. That shouldn't be the case."

"Or, perhaps, it should," Chandra said to him. "Perhaps this is just the place you always wanted to be."

"But I'm not," Mohinder protested, his voice even louder against the young voices. "I'm nowhere close to finding that place. We're in such danger, and I can't trust anyone around me. How can you say I wanted to be here? This isn't what I asked for."

"Isn't it?" Chandra raised an eyebrow and smiled. The white hairs of his mustache spread like thin bolts of chalk until Mohinder could see the skin between each hair. "You have done everything I could have possibly asked you to do, Mohinder. You have found them. You have helped them. And you retain your humanity, which is so difficult to do among adversity. Trust me, I know." He chuckled.

"But it's not enough," Mohinder said, hearing a plaintive note in his own voice that he wasn't sure he liked. "Is this where you would have wanted to see me, were you still alive?"

The children ran back and forth, nearly tripping up the aged man. Mohinder rushed forward to catch him. "I'm grateful," he said as Mohinder's arms came around his.

"Of course."

"No, that is not what I mean." Chandra turned to face him. The barge blew a low note as the sun turned red in the sky. "I mean, I am grateful for all you have done in my memory. But know this, Mohinder. Had you thrown it all away, had you given all those ambitions up, you have found the one thing I always hoped you would find. You have something to love now. And if I can be grateful for nothing else, it is that."

Mohinder was about to respond, when something hit him in the shins. He looked down. A soccer ball had rolled to his feet. He picked it up and tossed it back to the child who had run up.

His smile was wide. His dark hair was shaggy.

Mohinder had seen him in a dream before.

Three: Bennet

"Damn. You look creepy, even for you."

It still hurt to talk, but Matt's sense of humor was stronger than his pain threshold, and it hung in there even when his lungs ached. Besides, the man who'd stopped by looked more or less like a bespectacled Johnny Cash.

"I'm actually on my way to the funeral. But I wanted to stop by and see how you were holding up," said Noah Bennet, adjusting his collar. "I thought you might want to have me pay your respects for you, so to speak."

Matt's voice broke a little. "Yeah. I appreciate that. Just, um. Put a rock near his grave, would you?"

Eyebrows arched beneath horn-rimmed glasses. "A rock? I'm happy to spring for some flowers, you know, if the hospital fees have already bled you dry."

Matt shook his head. "Flowers die. A rock is permanent. It doesn't go away. Besides, Ted wasn't much for flowers. Said he couldn't keep them alive even before he started lighting up. Convinced the things hated him."

"You knew him better than I did," Noah said. "Very well. A rock it is. I'm going to be late, Matt, I'm sorry."

"Thanks. Thanks for stopping by. I'm glad you did."

"Really? I wasn't sure. I know you said it hurts to talk."

Matt tried to hold back a sniffle. "Sometimes it hurts worse not to."

Four

When Molly wasn't with him, Mohinder visited only when Matt was asleep. He'd peer in the tiny window, and if the eyes were closed, he'd step inside. If Matt was facing away, or if the eyes were open, he'd beat a trail away.

Until, one day, Matt fooled him.

Mohinder saw the closed eyes and the rapid rise-and-fall of breathing and tiptoed inside. He brushed a few damp strands of hair off the man's forehead and sighed with longing. The pull of destiny was so strong it made his whole body ache. He wanted so badly to have the courage to talk to him, to get to know him, to tell him every insane dream that rocketed through his mind when he looked at him.

And then the eyes blinked open. "Why do you keep coming here?" Matt said.

Mohinder jumped. "You're awake. I'm sorry. Did I wake you?"

Matt's eyes were serious, and Mohinder knew then that he hadn't been sleeping at all. "Why?" he repeated.

"I just want to make sure that you heal well," he said noncommittally, looking away. Matt caught his wrist.

"I have a confession to make," he said. His grip was hot. Mohinder looked down at the place where their skin touched, white on brown.

"A confession?" he echoed stupidly.

"I know the real reason you come back," he said. "I can read minds. I hear your thoughts whenever you pass by, even when you don't come in."

Mohinder's jaw flapped open and shut. He felt the unsettling boom of a dream exploding and dying in flames.

"Stop that. Nothing's dying," Matt said. "It's OK." His hand trailed down Mohinder's wrist toward his hand, and he gently bent those slim fingers over his own.

"Great." Mohinder blinked away what he hoped were tears. "Everything's OK. Sure. I've just been caught red-handed falling in love with a man I just met. That sounds perfectly cheerful to me." He bit his lip.

"Mohinder. You're not falling in love," Matt said gently. He pressed his lips to Mohinder's knuckles. "We're falling in love."

Five

Straining at the handcuffs. "Please, Detective. Have some heart. I'm completely at your mercy here."

"Damn straight." Matt looked over his prisoner. "And do you know why you're completely at my mercy?"

Lips twitching. "That's because you put a gun on the table, Detective Parkman. Sir."

A satisfied smile itching to become a grin. "That's right. And when my gun goes on the table, what does that mean?"

"It means I have to do whatever you say..." The smile erupting. "Damn it, Matt, I can't..."

"I know." They both broke down laughing. Crying laughing. Stomach-hurting, lung-bursting laughing.

When he could stop doubling over, Matt shook his head. "OK. So we can say we gave serious bondage a try and it wasn't for us. Oh well, life is short."

"Oh, dear. Oh, I haven't laughed that hard in months," Mohinder gasped. Matt reached forward to brush the tears from his eyelashes.

"I kinda like you in the handcuffs, though," he said, brushing a kiss against his stomach.

Mohinder half-sighed, half-moaned. "Yes, the handcuffs are fun. But I've seen you with the stomach flu and with your toenails painted. So I think calling you 'sir' is just impossible at this point."