Prologue
(In which Mohinder muses on his sexual orientation)
This prologue is rated PG-13.

Mohinder came back after midnight. After peeking in to see if Molly was all right (her nightmares did not seem to be plaguing her at that very moment—thank goodness for small favors), he headed into the kitchen to make a late-night sandwich. He was halfway through spreading the peanut butter when a sudden growling noise made him jump.

Matt was in an easy chair, snoring away. His hair and shirt were rumpled; he looked like he had stumbled in off a late-night beat and dropped off. His head was angled forward, giving him the illusion of having double chins. Somehow he looked older and larger there in sleep than he looked during the daylight. He looked like an old, musty, familiar pile of laundry: soft, limp, yet somehow comforting. There was even a smidge of drool on the bottom of his lip.

A breeze blew in through an open window, and he shivered in his sleep. Mohinder felt a sudden urge to find a blanket to put around the snoozing cop. He took a step forward and then stopped, his keen observation suddenly turned on himself. He had been scrutinizing Matt as he slept. Memorizing him, even. What an odd thing to be doing. What was it that fascinated him so about this (at least outwardly) very ordinary man in this very ordinary place? The question prickled at the back of his ears, and he moved toward the sleeping man again, crouching before him so he could look up into the languid face.

There was something warm about this scene, Mohinder thought to himself. Here he was, an academic, a man of reason and economy, not passion. And yet he'd been playing house these for four months, pretending this was his family, and he'd been thoroughly enjoying it. A lot of that was due to this man. Matt was infinitely more intuitive as a father than Mohinder was. (Well, Matt was going to be a father for real, albeit to a woman he had not seen in a month. But perhaps it was hormonal.) But during the months Mohinder had worked with Molly, he had not really developed a relationship with her until Matt had stepped in. Somehow the addition of Matt made things seem sunnier— more real— more human. Somehow Matt made Mohinder more human.

Inexplicably, Mohinder remembered Peter Petrelli. When he had first met him, Peter had been the very definition of a wild-eyed, idealistic child. So excited about the things he knew he could do and so sure that destiny had a grand role for him to play. He came off as a madman, and that's what Mohinder had thought he was. But there had been a thrill in the air surrounding Peter, an aura that buzzed and jittered around him in inaudible bursts of music. It was completely unscientific. And Mohinder had been fascinated by it as well.

He wasn't a stupid man, nor was he a bigot. Mohinder knew very well that it had been attraction. To the possibility that Peter presented, of course, but also to Peter himself. Mohinder recalled with a blush how Peter's face had come into his mind during his moments of weakness, alone in an unfamiliar city facing an unfamiliar future. The tension that the childlike face, with its bright eyes and its buzzing aura, created in him. It was a reservoir of fantasy that had to be periodically drained if Mohinder was going to be able to keep his head around the genuine article.

And here was a completely different man, one whose experiences had washed the idealism out of him. Matt would never again be a child; he was most certainly a man, one who had seen blood and death and abandonment and unfairness, one who carried the scars of those experiences. But his aura, too, was alive. With something that Mohinder wanted to drink up and soak in. Something that was good for him, that would make him glow if he learned how to use it.

Matt mumbled in his sleep, and the drop of drool hung precariously from his lip. Mohinder reached out and brushed it away. Matt's lips were warm to the touch, but somehow the contact made Mohinder shiver. As he wiped his hand on his worn jeans and got up, a thought occurred to him that made him grin. Tickled, he murmured it aloud to himself.

"Perhaps I'm herosexual."