Candy - A Hallowe'en Fic

[takhallus]

Title: Candy
Author: takhallus
Pairing: Mylar
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2647
Spoilers: Season 3
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine
A/N: for megmatthews20 's Hallowe'en meme and mission_insane prompt 'Candy'

                        

 

Mohinder’s shoulders dropped as he heard the knock at the door. He’d never thought that a knock could be sarcastic, but this one seemed so. He heaved himself up from the battered old armchair which he’d dragged in from Isaac’s former bedroom and strutted towards the door, in no mood for what he knew would be behind it.

The opening door revealed a man in a heavy black wool coat, leaning provocatively against the frame and looking straight at Mohinder with mischievous eyes.

“Trick or treat?” Sylar said, smirking.

Mohinder rolled his eyes and turned away. “How long did it take you to come up with that?”

Sylar closed the door behind him, not done playing. He was carrying a brown paper bag which he set down by the door. “Where’s your pumpkin?”

“I really have no stomach for jokes tonight, so why don’t you just sit down and be quiet?” Mohinder went back to his workbench and started shuffling papers distractedly. Surveillance cameras were down at the Company and they had felt it necessary to have Mohinder watched by something more reliable tonight. Trust the boogeyman to come and babysit him on Hallowe’en.

“Do you have any candy?” Sylar was pulling open the cupboards. “Because it wouldn’t do to disappoint the children tonight.”

When Sylar turned to see Mohinder’s reaction the doctor was inches from his face. “Listen to me,” Mohinder spat. “I’m going to say this one last time. I despise you, and the fact that you’re working with the Company only strengthens my belief that they are naïve, deluded and headed for certain disaster. If you have to be here to act as their guard dog then sit down and be quiet so I can get on with something worthwhile.” He stormed off to the workbench and picked up a pen, scribbling something alongside his workings.

Sylar stared at the doctor, stung by the ‘guard dog’ comment. He had half a mind to mark Hallowe’en with a little customary blood and gore, but he had one trick up his sleeve. He walked purposefully to the door and grabbed the brown paper bag. Mohinder’s eyes flickered as he looked to see what Sylar was up to. He couldn’t quite believe that there was going to be no come back to his little rant.

Sylar put the brown paper bag on the bench in front of Mohinder, so that it was directly in his eye line. He slowly shrugged his coat off revealing a light beige sweater, never taking his eyes from Mohinder. The armchair he had previously occupied came floating over, and was placed gently facing the doctor’s workbench. Sylar took the brown bag and sat, with his right ankle sitting on his left knee, staring intently ahead.

Mohinder fought not to look at him, not wanting to give the satisfaction of recognition. He took up a ruler and started to draw a graph of nothing, just to keep his eyes from Sylar. He opened a book randomly and pretended to be engrossed.

Sylar wasn’t fooled. He continued to stare and dipped his hand slowly into the bag, pulling out a paper-wrapped ball of delicious stickiness and untwisted the wrapping noisily. Mohinder couldn’t help himself and glanced up for the briefest moment. Glanced for too long apparently.

“Oh I’m sorry, did I disturb you?” Sylar asked with mock concern.

Mohinder ignored him, and went back to not reading the book in front of him, which he hoped Sylar couldn’t see was upside down. He heard more cracking from the grease-proofed paper, and then a pause before Sylar moaned softly. Then less softly. Then he emitted a noise which Mohinder had never heard outside the bedroom.

Mohinder slapped his pen down and looked up, defeated. Sylar’s eyes were closed and he was heavily chewing, with a look of deep satisfaction. Mohinder watched as he swallowed and his adam’s apple bobbed up. Sylar’s lips opened and he lifted half of a small golden brown morsel to his mouth. As he bit down into the soft candy the syrupy coating clung to his shining lips. Mohinder was mesmorised as Sylar pushed the whole thing into his mouth, and then gently sucked his sticky index and middle fingers. Just as his lips left the tip of his thumb, Sylar’s eyes opened suddenly and Suresh jumped, embarrassed as being caught. He looked down hurriedly but then heard another crackle and realised that this little show was going to continue until he gave some reaction. He looked at Sylar and noticed exactly what it was he was unwrapping.

“Is that laddu?” Mohinder squinted at the Indian sweet which had been his favourite as a child. “Where did you get it?”

“Oh this?” said Sylar innocently. “Just a little place I know.” He offered the deep bag up to Mohinder. “Would you like one?”

Mohinder went to get up. Game playing it might be, but he hadn’t tasted laddu since he was a boy in Chennai and the sweet, sickly smell was now drifting towards him, making his mouth wet.

Sylar was on his feet. “Oh no, please, let me bring it over. I don’t want to interrupt your…work.” He said as he moved to the workbench and saw the upside down book and a graph which apparently had no factors or variables but did have a very cute dog drawn onto the x axis.

Mohinder flushed as he realised he’d been caught out. The smell of the sweets was intoxicating and it was all he could do not to grab the bag and devour them, paper and all. Sylar stood before him with a laddu poised temptingly between his thumb and forefinger. Mohinder reached for it, but Sylar jerked it away. “Ah ah, you don’t want to get syrup on your fingers do you? Your graphs will stick together and no-one will ever benefit from your exhaustive work on cartoon dogs.” He smiled and moved the sweet towards Mohinder’s lips.

Mohinder was not going to be part of this nonsense. A bored Sylar really is as irritating as any man could get. He went to move his head away but the sugary scent of the laddu worked its way into his nostrils and suddenly he wasn’t a geneticist being taunted by a maniac but a small boy in Chennai, celebrating the wedding of his aunt on a blistering summer’s day. He opened his mouth a fraction and Sylar pushed the sweet forcefully inside. The sugar rush was so intense that Mohinder gulped at the laddu, inadvertently sucking the tip of Sylar’s finger. Sylar gasped as Mohinder’s tongue ran over the sensitive skin and he drew back in surprise.

Mohinder swallowed, his eyes closing with pleasure. When they opened Sylar was still stood there, hand shaking.

“Sorry.” If this was a game, Mohinder had well and truly lost.

“Oh don’t mention it doctor, you must not have had them in a while” Sylar said, placing his hands on the bench and looking at them intently. He had meant to tease Mohinder but he’d never thought he’d take the bait.

“No, I was just thinking of the last time. My aunt’s wedding. Laddu are traditionally made for celebrations.”

“Like Hallowe’en?”

“We don’t celebrate Hallowe’en in India, it’s a European festival.”

“So you’ve never been trick or treating?” Sylar pulled up a stool to the bench and sat, his natural hunger for information derailing his attempts to mess with Mohinder.

“No, never. Don’t tell me you have!” Mohinder looked amused at the thought of the evil Sylar offering someone their life in exchange for a Snickers.

Sylar couldn’t disguise the hurt. Was he so terrible that the thought of him as an innocent, as a child, wouldn’t come to Mohinder? “Even I was a little boy once.” He said softly.

“Yes of course.” Mohinder tried to get the chit chat back on track. “Tell me about it.”  Where did that come from? He thought. He was reminiscing with a killer because he was too polite to ignore him.

“My father used to take me. Mom said it was dangerous for me to be out by myself so dad used to wait for me by the stairs on each floor while I went to the neighbours. Some of them wouldn’t answer the door and I used to get upset, so for every door that didn’t open he’d give me candy himself.” Sylar smiled at the memory and then gave an apologetic look to Mohinder, who was surprised at his own interest.

“How old were you?”

Sylar rolled his eyes up as if trying to remember. “I think I was about..17.”

There was a pause before both men laughed in spite of themselves. “Really, it was every year between the ages of five and nine. Then I was finally allowed to go out with my friends. After that, whenever I got home Dad would ask me how many doors didn’t open, and he’d count the number of candy bars out.”

“Sounds like he really entered into the spirit of things.”

“He did, you should have seen the pumpkins he carved, they were amazing. So intricate. It was the craftsman in him.”

“Did he teach you?” Mohinder had glanced into the bulging paper grocery bag whilst Sylar had been reminiscing, and he gestured towards it.

Sylar coloured. He had been planning on leaving it outside a random house like he’d done in previous years, a gift to a stranger now that it seemed…inappropriate to lead trick or treaters to his door. He had forgotten, and now the small pumpkin was grinning at him from the bottom of the bag, betraying his cool.

“Oh, that’s nothing, it’s….”

“Impressive!” Mohinder held the pumpkin up and turned it around. The design of the devilish face, with its toothy snarl and wicked eyes was too intricate to have been done by hand. “You did this with telekinesis?”

Sylar looked genuinely affronted. “No! No, I did it with craft knives. Like Dad used to.”

Mohinder stopped admiring the pumpkin and looked at Sylar. “Well, that’s a real talent.” He placed the pumpkin down on the desk.

Sylar shrugged, clearly pleased with this. “You can’t really appreciate it unless it’s been lit….” he glanced up at Mohinder hopefully, and the doctor was already getting up to fetch matches.

On the way back to the table Mohinder threw the lightswitch and struck a long kitchen match. Sylar’s eyes adjusted to the dark and he saw Mohinder’s face thrown into sharp relief by the flame, as he tilted it into the tealight sitting ready within the pumpkin. The devil’s face came snarling out of the darkness, its eyes burning as the two men reverted back twenty years in age and broke into huge smiles. Sylar looked to Mohinder to recognise the effect and found that the doctor was looking back. They passed an awkward moment, neither of them quite knowing how the night had led them to this.

Mohinder knew that the lights going on would change something. He didn’t know why but he wanted to keep talking. “So what else is Hallowe’en about?”

Sylar looked down, thinking. “I guess it’s about change. About having one night a year where you can be something you’re not. Where you can put on a disguise and get away with it.” He absent-mindedly ran his finger over the bench top, trying to explain. “It’s about doing things that you would never normally do.”

“Where do the devils and witches come into it?”

Sylar looked into Mohinder’s eyes, trying to gauge where this was going. “I guess most people don’t spend their days steeped in evil.”

“Yes,” Mohinder replied gently. “Some of the things we’ve seen….Hallowe’en doesn’t seem so scary anymore does it?”

Sylar smiled faintly. Thank you, he thought. Thank you for saying ‘we’.

“So!” Mohinder startled him as he dropped his hands flat onto the bench. “I’ve eaten candy and I’ve lit this pumpkin, what else can I do to have my first real American Hallowe’en?”

Sylar went along with him. “Well, you’ve had a treat, but not a trick. You’re only half done.”

“A trick? Forgive me for being nervous.” His eyes flashed mischievously, didn’t they? Or was Sylar imagining it?

“Well, as I said, it doesn’t have to be unpleasant, Hallowe’en is all about doing something you would never do the other 364 days of the year.” Sylar wondered how long he was going to have to stare into Mohinder’s eyes before he gave him a signal. Surely he couldn’t be the only one who thought this had been leading somewhere.

“I’m assuming that the element of surprise is key?” Mohinder leaned towards the pumpkin and blew the light out. Let what happens next be up to him, he thought.

Without the candle light the room really was pitch black. Mohinder’s eyes couldn’t adjust to the dark, and he listened for movement from Sylar but heard nothing. The smell of the extinguished candle hung in the air, and Mohinder’s heartbeat quickened as he began to question his own judgement. Had he just voluntarily put himself in a darkened room with a full-strength Sylar and a broken surveillance camera? Sylar really was good. He’d been completely taken in. Just as Suresh was about to reach for the matches he felt warm breath on the back of his neck. He bristled and sucked in a shallow breath as his groin swelled at the sensation. He had wanted this, so why was he still terrified?

He heard Sylar swallow hard and closed his eyes. Soft lips brushed from Mohinder’s collarbone up to the skin behind his ear and the relentlessly hot breath made him tremble. At once the sensation stopped and Mohinder was alone again. He turned on his seat to face the blackness. He searched the dark for any movement but held back from calling out. As if from nowhere, a firm touch came to his cheek. Mohinder stood and found himself bumping straight into Sylar, his hand reaching behind the man’s head to pull him closer. They both took audibly deep breaths, the only sound, before they smashed together in slow, deliberate heat. Sylar’s tongue was keen and rough and Suresh heard himself moaning as it entwined with his. The kiss broke and Mohinder’s head sank onto Sylar’s shoulder, holding him as the heat between their bodies intensified. 

Sylar ran the night’s events through as he gripped Mohinder tightly. What was this? Where did it come from? He drew back and let Mohinder go. He heard him scramble for something – probably a weapon if he was smart. Suddenly the pumpkin burned brightly again and Mohinder’s face was revealed. Sylar looked down, intensely embarrassed, but Mohinder put a warm hand to his cheek. As they looked at each other the memories of better, more naïve times came flooding back. This wasn’t the first kiss. It was the fourth. They never got any less awkward.

“How long are we going to do this?” Sylar was surprised to hear himself speak. He was so, so tired of this dance. It always started the same way, with sniping and backbiting. Then one of them would give, invite the other in. Every time they pretended to be taken by surprise. “How many more times are you going to send me away?” 

Mohinder shook his head. “Just because I send you away, doesn’t mean I don’t want you to come back.”

Sylar scoffed at this and went to leave, but Mohinder held him with a strength he didn’t know he had. “Wait.”

Sylar looked at him with tired eyes. “Wait for what?”

Mohinder blinked and his eyes wettened. “Me. Just please wait for me.” 

Sylar sighed sadly, as he’d done the last time, and held Mohinder close, nuzzling his neck as the doctor shook in his arms and the clock ticked into November.

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