"Anticipation," Nikola tells him once, "is a remarkably powerful aphrodisiac that can make even the most stalwart of men weak in the knees. Do you really think men will wait years to drink a bottle of wine because of the aging process?" A scoff against the inside of his elbow and long, nimble fingers trailing down his stomach, pausing just long enough at his bellybutton to send a toe curling charge through the piercing there. "There is, of course, some truth to it, but the normal human's palate isn't refined enough to truly taste the difference, even with training. No, the thing that makes that wine taste sweeter is the anticipation that has whetted the drinker's appetite. They aren't tasting the wine, but their expectations."
"This from the man who threw a bottle of wine into the SHU because he thought it was too oaky?"
Nikola pulls back, and there's something bordering on approval in his eyes. "Ah, but you're making the mistake of lumping me in with 'normal people'." The quotation marks are audible in his voice, even if he doesn't do anything so crude as make the actual motions. Henry rolls his eyes and lifts a hand in concession, and then Nikola's lips are following the path that his fingers had made. "The point," he says as he moves even lower, his elegant fingers unyielding on Henry's hip and his breath teasing over his hard, sensitive cock, "is that, in certain cases, when we allow our expectation time to build, the moment of completion can be exponentially enhanced."
Maybe it's his superior demeanor, the disdain that colors almost every word, the hard edge of each precise, cutting insult, or maybe it's the small, secret corner of Henry's brain that always whispers vampire in conjunction with his name, but whatever the reason, it still occasionally takes him by surprise when he reaches out to touch Nikola and his skin is no cooler than his own. The shock never lasts longer than a heartbeat, because even as Henry's registering the temperature of Nikola's arm or back or hip beneath his fingertips, Nikola's already doing or saying something else completely unexpected. It's always something, and sometimes, during the long months when Nikola's away doing whatever it is he does when he's not here, Henry wonders if he doesn't use at least a small fraction of the time they're apart to think of new, better, more creative ways to drive him insane.
The biggest surprise is how Nikola is during those small pockets of time when it's just the two of them, after the work is done and they're away from the others. At first he thinks it's some kind of game; just another one of Nikola's tricks to keep himself amused. Henry keeps his distance, stays professional, and tries to rein in the near awe he feels whenever he remembers that this is the Nikola Tesla, but eventually he realizes that he doesn't really care if he's being played or not, because Nikola looks at him the way he looks at a particularly complex problem. Like he wants to crack him open and see exactly what's going on inside of him, like he's the most fascinating thing on the planet. Or at least in the room. And that's a heady feeling, especially once he learns that during those times-oh, during those times-Henry can bring that proud, arrogant man to his knees.
He makes him work for it-he wouldn't be Nikola if he didn't-but Henry's slowly learning the rules. Like what it means when Nikola lingers in the lab, not correcting or insulting him or messing with his equipment. Just standing and watching and waiting. Henry takes his time. They both know he wants to rush through whatever experiment he's running, but he keeps his movements as slow and methodical as he would if he was alone, and doesn't acknowledge Nikola's gaze, even when it burns through him to his very core.
Because this is Nikola Tesla, the man who's so good at waiting for what he wants that he plots schemes spanning decades, but when Henry hesitates just a few extra minutes at his computer, all of that patience drains away. The air crackles with tension and snapping magnetic pulses, only easing when Henry finally turns and acknowledges that Nikola's still there.
It never starts slow or tender. Sometimes when Nikola's in a loose, generous mood or so blissed out that he couldn't tell a light bulb from a potato, it might turn into that, but that's not how it starts. Never. Not after that one time Henry tried anyway. No, Nikola gets off on the spike of adrenalin that jolts though him, more potent than electricity, when things are aggressive, and the way the tips of his ears go red and his breath catches is more than enough to appease any part of Henry that might want things to be different. Besides, it hardly matters how it starts as long as it does, so he slams Nikola back against walls or down onto tables with only the occasional second thought and grins when he feels the other man's arousal hard against his thigh.
Everything after that is halfway between an art and a science. A rough drag of fingertips over the back of his knee or the sole of his foot and he shivers. Wet suction across the sharp jut of his hipbone and he's arching up and digging short, carefully shaped fingernails into Henry's scalp and the back of his neck. A bite at the delicate skin under his jaw and his lips part on a harsh pant. Henry thrusts into him, his skin hot and sweat slicked under his palms, and he gasps out something in Serbian that's probably better off untranslated, and he can never help but marvel at how raw and vulnerable and undone Nikola is like this.
And when Henry's buried deep in Nikola's tight heat and his ears are filled with the other man's cries, he isn't ashamed to admit that he takes more than a little pleasure in the fact that he can reduce the great Nikola Tesla to begging.
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