Nathan Petrelli has been president for six months, and Mohinder already knows his way around the White House. His research is high on this administration’s agenda, and there are monthly meetings held to discuss it - some times in a West Wing conference room filled with financial advisors and scientific experts, other times, like tonight, just he and Nathan in the Oval Office.
The room is familiar by now, but he still feels a ripple of awe as he crosses the threshold, briefcase in hand, seeing Nathan standing by the curved windows, looking out at the night sky. A sense of amazement, that they should find themselves in this place, and, with it, the ever-present sadness at the circumstances that brought them here.
"Mr. President," he says, and Nathan turns, hands in his pockets, to face him.
There is a smile on his lips.
Later that night, when the president sits too close to him on the couch, brushing his hand with his fingers as he points something out in the research report they’re reviewing, he will think of this smile.
Later still, it will burn on his retinas as he closes his eyes, tilting his head back to let the president kiss him.
It isn’t a smile you give a friend you talked to on the phone only yesterday.
It’s a smile you save for a loved one you haven’t seen in years. A smile for someone you were afraid you’d never see again.
Mohinder can’t help but smile back.
"Working late again, Professor?" Nathan Petrelli’s voice says from behind him, and he spins around, startled, nearly knocking over the vials of blood he’s been sorting.
The clock on the wall makes it 2.15 in the morning, and a second ago he was alone in the lab. There is still no one here but the two of them, and he knows what that means.
The president didn’t drive up from Washington in a car with bullet proof windows, surrounded by secret service agents. The president burst into the sky and flew, faster than sound, to land here with him.
It’s hardly strange if that thought makes his heartbeat quicken.
"I always work late," he says, smiling. "You know that, Mr. President."
"You always work," the president amends, crossing the shadows between them. "You should play with me tonight, Mohinder."
There is a soft sing-song in his usually level voice, like a dare or a promise, a threat of pleasure. It makes every hair on Mohinder’s body stand on end.
He never does ask how Nathan could get inside the lab without setting off the alarms.
"They told me it was Hiro Nakamura," Mohinder says, watching the president pace back and forth behind his desk. "And your brother?"
"Yes." Nathan’s voice is rough, filled with rage, and something almost like longing. "Peter."
Peter Petrelli, who had come to him, before everything, with his hair in his eyes and his heart bursting with a need to do right. And now this. All those people at the Science Center, killed. If he asked Nathan, he would probably call it an acceptable loss, and it seems Peter would, too. They’ve all seen millions die before their eyes, and this is war.
"What’s your assessment, Professor?" the president asks, and of course he isn’t wondering about the body count. He’s got other people to brief him on that.
"If they managed to destroy all the genetic samples, along with the raw data that hadn’t been processed yet… I’m afraid this may have set us back by a year, maybe more."
The president comes to a halt, leaning on his desk. Head bent, palms pressed flat against the wood. Not holding himself up, but holding himself back. The anger emanating from him is so palpable that Mohinder almost takes a step backwards, so powerful the very air in the room seems to curve from the pressure of it. He’s only felt fury like this once in his life - physical, solid as a blow - and the sudden flash of memory is a cold fear in his veins.
But then the moment breaks, and the president straightens, tilting his head. Looking Mohinder dead in the eye.
"Well," he says, "thank God at least that you weren’t there. I wouldn’t have known what to do without you."
The truth in his eyes is stronger than any memory.
He wakes in the night, opening his eyes to see the president sitting in the bed beside him, back against the antique headboard, long legs outstretched beneath the sheets. It’s dark in the room, but he knows there are eyes watching him, and he thinks he can make out the quirk of a smile.
"I didn’t mean to fall asleep," he says, pushing up on his elbow. "I should go."
"I’ve told you, there’s not going to be a scandal. I’ve made…"
"No…" Nathan’s wife died in the explosion, along with his sons. There is no first lady to share this bed, and if now and then the president wants him here instead, Mohinder isn’t going to object. Except… "You never seem to sleep when I’m here."
The silence stretches so long that he begins to think he’s said something fundamentally wrong, but then the president reaches over, softly brushing his hair back from his forehead.
"Do you ever sleep anywhere else?" he asks.
"I…" He works all night until he passes out from exhaustion, and wakes up too early in a cold sweat, fighting back dreams. It isn’t sleep.
"Then trust me and get some rest," the president says. "Everything will look the same in the morning. I’ll make sure of that."
Mohinder smiles and shakes his head, but he really is so very tired, and his body aches from things he’s fairly sure should cause a scandal.
"Well," he says, turning his head to brush his lips against the hand that’s still stroking his hair. "I guess I do serve at the pleasure of the president."
He can hear Nathan’s laugh above him as he lies back down, shutting his eyes and shifting closer.
As he falls asleep again, there is a surreal moment when he thinks he can feel the hand in his hair changing, the fingers lengthen and stretch, but he knows that’s just his mind, already dreaming.
