Toast of Friendship
Summary:
April 25, 1912, 5:37 pm EST: A small café in New York City, frequently habited by one Nikola Tesla and now, for the first time, his date. First of the "Toasts" collection.
Disclaimer: No matter how much I love the series, I can't even put a serious claim to Tesla. I've got ticket number 5270 or something equally ridiculous. I do own the café, though! And the information flower significance comes from a website I can give at request.
A/N: This story has evolved and evolved and evolved from when I started writing it. The very basic premise has always remained the same, although originally I was just going to write the sequel to this, but then I had to go back and write this.
Because the fic wouldn't let me make it abundantly clear: Helen has been staying with Nikola in New York since the Carpathia docked. (Who knows their Titanic trivia?) She had been invited to stay with him for a week/fortnight after he noticed she was feeling particularly upset about John all of a sudden. If I suddenly find myself with a ton of time (ie, I somehow manage to do all of my school work in a day or two), I may write out that week; I'm sure it has some wonderfully fun moments that I can tease out of their friendship.
This is going to be a collection of three which I'm going to call the "Toasts" collection because of the titles. I'll post them separately because they could really stand on their own, but this one demanded to be written first. As the first chronologically, I couldn't blame it. Future fics will be more overtly Teslen than this one is, don't worry.
(2374 words)
He couldn't stop staring at her.
It wasn't, of course, as if she minded: when Nikola Tesla was with her, unaccompanied by the near end of the world, the failure of one of his attempts at world domination, someone trying to kill him, or a new experiment, he was invariably staring at her. And, if more than thirty seconds had passed, he was invariably leering at her with all sorts of inappropriate thoughts running through his head which he, thankfully, only chose to voice half of the time. Their relationship simply ran that way, like water ran downhill or the Atlantic Ocean was cold, wet, and salty, and she wouldn't have kept his company if she truly took issue with it.
Nikola's usual waiter brought over a bottle of fine wine of the kind he usually ordered without being asked to do so and told his regular customer, with a conspiratorial wink, that this bottle was on the house. He poured the deep, red liquid into two fine glasses, but the vampire only noticed its similarity to blood when the woman in front of him raised it to her soft red lips whose colour it echoed and sipped slowly.
"What are we having for supper?" she asked after putting the glass back down on the table.
His expression turned into a proper leer, and part of her mind wondered if maybe she should cease talking altogether in front of him, for everything she had said to him with even the best intention to avoid approaching some inappropriate topic always completely backfired on her. This time was no exception. "You, if you'll let me," he answered with a smile that showed, only to her, a single canine extending into a vampire's fang.
"Nikola!" she protested. "You told me you were taking your medication!"
His grin widened, but the fang that had slightly worried her had disappeared. "I didn't mean like that, Helen."
She couldn't help but curse herself for giving him yet more fodder. She was Helen Magnus, for goodness' sake; there was a reason she had audited classes at Oxford, a reason she had befriended the great minds of the school; a reason she had been able to make her way as a female doctor in a world that had no faith in women's intellectual abilities. She was intelligent, and she could bloody well use that intelligence in every other situation, so why did a certain vampire always lead her into these traps?
A frown splayed across her face, and Nikola was more than certain that he knew exactly the source of its appearance. He was infuriating her with his ability to back her into a corner with her words, to twist even the most innocent thing she told him into a success for his none-too-secret plan to woo her into bed. Her frowns at him were all of that kind: somewhat surprised, disappointed at herself, and annoyed by his antics. It was so simple to guess what she was thinking, when she looked at him like that, and even if he couldn't, his genius could more than keep up with any change of topic she offered.
"But are you?"
Her tone surprised him, honestly questioning, as though she had seen some reason to doubt his resolve – or to doubt the promise he had given her those years ago. "You don't trust me?"
Helen answered his teasing with seriousness. "I do," she replied instantly. After a short pause, however, she added, "but is it still working?"
It was his turn to frown at her. Was she really questioning his ability to keep the supposed bloodlust in his genes at bay? "Have I given you reason to doubt that it is?"
"Your anger," she began, not sure how to continue until another moment had passed. "I've seen it flare so much in the past week."
She was afraid of his anger? The growls he let loose from his human – albeit influenced by Sanguine vampiris – throat at the men whose lust for pretty flesh brought their roving hands too close to her body? The anger that she had nearly drowned on her crossing from England because some fool hadn't seen an iceberg soon enough? The anger that, no matter what he had done to help her see the love right in front of her, she still cried over a man who had broken her heart and betrayed her trust?
"You've always known me to have a temper," he answered, the words spilling out of his mouth before he could stop to think about what he truly wanted to say. "And I am fully capable of keeping my anger in check, unlike some mortals we know."
Helen Magnus was not one to burst into tears, but if ever there had been a time she came close, this would have been it. Her body remained motionless, but the tears slid down her cheeks in silent torrents. If he hadn't already regretted the words from the moment they formed on his tongue, he certainly did now.
He reached a hand across the table to where hers was resting next to her wine glass, but she yanked it back to her lap before he could reach it. "Helen," he began softly, trying to comfort her, but she yanked back.
"No," she said softly but adamantly. "No!" she repeated, much louder, and angrily kicked her chair backwards and ran off.
Nikola heaved a great sigh and went after her, following her across the street and winding along paths he knew well, but she barely saw, through a park. He shouldn't have said it; he knew that. He knew that now, of all times, was the worst time to insult Jack the Ripper.
It was ironic, of course, when he thought about it like that – here he was, Nikola Tesla, famous inventor, and he couldn't go around insulting a convicted murderer without doing the same to his oldest and closest friend. It was ridiculous, nonsensical, and yet...
Helen had stopped in front of a small courtyard, utterly lost, incredibly worried she had insulted one of her best friends, and unspeakably angry at John for still being able to have this effect on her. She had been crying as she ran, which was never a good combination, and she was taking deep heaves to return the air to her lungs as she settled onto a marble bench at the edge of the courtyard.
When a warm presence settled next to her thigh, she opened her eyes, unsurprised to find her supper date at her side. He smiled gently at her and held out a hand. She took it gratefully and squeezed hard before offering a hesitant smile in return.
"I come here to talk to the pigeons," he said after a long, peaceful moment of silence.
"You used to do that at Oxford."
"You remember?"
Her smile was genuine now. "Who would forget the sight of the brilliant Nikola Tesla speaking to pigeons as if they had human souls?"
He pressed his lips, curling upwards in a smile, softly to loose auburn curls on her head. Auburn wasn't a colour that suited her, he thought, but he would happily bury his face or his hands in her hair as long as it curled. They sat quietly together, leaning on one another and happy in each other's company, for some time until the night began to creep up on them.
"I suppose we've lost our table," she said quietly, her words half lost in the fabric on his chest, which she leaned against.
He smiled. "I brought the important parts with me," he replied with a sly grin. From somewhere – she couldn't be sure where, as she had thought she was leaning close enough to him that she could tell if he had hidden anything under his jacket – he withdrew the bottle of wine and a loaf of bread.
The look Helen gave the bread made Nikola pull it back towards his chest, as if he felt he had to protect it from her gaze. "The bread was the important part of that meal?"
"Not for us!" he protested. When her gaze made it clear she didn't understand, he grudgingly elaborated, "For the pigeons."
She laughed brightly, and not for the first time in his life, he knew it was the most beautiful sound he ever heard. "The wine is for us, I presume?" she asked, even as she pulled it out of his grip and took a long drink from the bottle.
He shook his head as he grinned, not reprimanding, not truly incredulous – this was a woman he'd known for so many years now – but simply happy he had finally, after seven days, achieved the simple purpose he had put to this week: to make her happy, if only for a moment.
With a slight hand movement that she barely noticed, Nikola exchanged the loaf of bread for a surprise he had hidden in another pocket of his jacket. "May I have the wine, Helen, before you drink it all?" he teased lightly. "Here, we'll trade."
She handed him the bottle without waiting to see what he was trading it for, assuming it was still the loaf of bread, though not quite understanding why he couldn't hold the loaf in one hand and the bottle in the other. However, what entered her palm was a bouquet of flowers: apple blossoms interspersed with Lily of the Valley.
The expression he caught on her face almost made him laugh before making him worry. "You were once the marrying type," he said, unsure, after the fact, whether he could have chosen a better turn of phrase for the situation. "I trust you understand their significance?"
She fingered the apple blossoms. "Better things to come," she answered, but paused over the lilies. "And...?"
"The return of happiness," he replied.
It never occurred to her to stop and wonder why he – who had never been the marrying type – would know their significance.
"Helen," he said softly. "You are my closest friend, and my oldest friend. I can't stand to see what my..." He cut himself off before he could say my biggest rival, yet he couldn't feel comfortable saying my old friend, either. "What John did to you. I just want you to be happy."
Helen turned the flowers in her hand, rotating the bouquet back and forth in short little movements that helped her to think. There were thirteen of them, a baker's dozen. How funny that he had given them to her when she was expecting a loaf of bread. Finally, she settled on what she wanted to say. "I'd propose a toast, but I lack a glass."
He smiled, and she could just see the glint of his teeth in the quickly fading light. "To what?" he inquired.
"To friendship," she replied. To her surprise, he "toasted" her bouquet of flowers with the bottle of wine and was rewarded by another laugh. She sighed contentedly and leaned into his shoulder again. The night was truly arriving, and if they stayed on this bench much longer, he would have to lead her out of here. Not, if she were honest with herself, that she entirely minded a moment that she needed to hold Nikola's hand. She was growing tired, too; he may not need to sleep, but her body was still mortal, if gifted with physical youth, and the cool night air was just the right temperature for her to want nothing more than to stay where she was, sharing body heat with the sometimes-vampire and enjoying a peaceful moment with her friend. As anyone could expect of her, she wasn't just sitting idly by, but thinking about the future and hoping that she could count on these sorts of moments in that infinite abyss ahead of her. "A hundred years," she mumbled so quietly into his jacket that only his vampire-aided hearing could pick up on it.
"What was that?" he asked.
"In a hundred years," she said, "I want us to do this again. In a hundred years, I want us to go to that little café, and have the supper that we missed tonight."
"Helen..."
"Yes, Nikola, I know how unlikely it is for the café to still be open in a hundred years. But there has to be something there, doesn't there?"
"That's not what I was going to say."
She sat up. His tone was remarkably serious, but hesitant, like he was addressing a topic of conversation that he wasn't entirely sure he should address, which, considering his disregard for her ban on any mention of her ex-husband, was rather remarkable. "What were you going to say?"
"One hundred years is a long time to count on."
To a mere mortal, her frown would have been imperceptible in the darkness, but she knew his keen eyesight would pick it up, and indeed he did – and promptly berated himself for bringing the subject up. "Nikola, listen to me. We have very long lives in front of us. Centuries, at the very least."
"Helen, you don't know that!" he protested, throwing his earlier caution to the wind now that he had breached the subject. "We have no idea exactly how potent your... longevity, for lack of a better word, will be, or how long it will last."
Her hands sought out the sides of his head by instinct and the fact that she could find his eyes by their bright flashes. She tilted his head so those same bright eyes were looking directly at hers. "Nikola Tesla," she said, clearly and strongly. "No matter where I am in one hundred years, no matter what condition I am in, no matter what condition you are in, no matter anything except that we are both alive, I beg of you, please, as a gift to your oldest and closest friend, please, take me out to supper."
He had never come closer to kissing her in his life, but in the darkness, her weak, mortal eyes couldn't see the expression on his face and could only hear the tone of his words. "Oh, Helen," he teased. "You don't need to go to such lengths to ask me on a date."