Disclaimer: Warehouse 13, the world and the characters that inhabit it do not belong to me in any way, though sometimes I lie away at night wishing that they did and what I'd do with them if they did. And then I write those thoughts down.
A/N:Maybe it's all the angst I've doled out. Maybe I'm just feeling weirdly gooey and romantic. I don't know. Whatever the reason, it's resulting in fluff. So here, have some utterly random, entirely pointless fluff.
Myka Bering had been at odds with her feet her entire life. As a child, she'd found out the hard way that she wasn't graceful enough for ballet, not like Tracy, and she'd attended only two tap dancing classes before pleading with her mother not to make her return. Fencing had come as a surprise. She'd taken to the sport like a veritable duck to water and like the finest swordsman, she prided her footwork when wielding any of the three weapons. With discipline and a relentless need to better herself, she'd become as graceful as a cat. But it had always come down to 'hard work'. She didn't resent that, relished the challenge, but it had been hard at times. To watch Tracy so effortlessly be good at everything she ever attempted. But that was all behind her now, most of the time, and Myka had grown more or less accustomed to the way her feet worked. She couldn't dance to save her life, but she could run circles someone brandishing a sword or pointed stick. She could kick a guy waving a gun around in the face pretty good too.
Still, while she was no longer a gawky teen who stumbled her way through the day, her feet still had a habit of betraying her, and so she berated them silently as she hung in the open doorway of H.G.'s room. There was little malice behind her chiding though; she appreciated the tenacity of her feet in that instance. Or would later, anyhow.
It wasn't long before the woman sitting in the armchair beside the small window, one leg crossed over the other with a book propped against her thigh, felt Myka's stare on her and glanced up. Myka watched her face change, watched shadows recede into some new light as a smile curve along her lips, and she let the hand gripping the door frame squeeze just a little bit tighter.
"Myka." Helena's tone was surprised, though not unpleasantly so, and she closed the book she was reading only after placing a Garfield bookmark – a gift from Pete – between the pages. She left the book lying against her thigh and draped her arms atop the rests of the chair. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" And the way she said it left little doubt as to whether or not Myka's presence actually was a pleasure, but that wasn't something Myka had ever doubted. She was well aware that H.G. liked spending time with her, had always liked spending time with her, enjoyed being in her company as much as Myka enjoyed being in hers; that was part of the problem. And maybe it was all of the pent up agitation that did it. The remnants of moments spent in too-close quarters, moments that H.G. seemed to simultaneously relish and thrive off of.
The woman could flirt with a rock.
And the rock would melt.
Maybe it was the way H.G. looked at her, or maybe it was the way Myka avoided looking at H.G. Maybe it was a lot of things. But it all boiled down to one single fact, and it leapt from Myka's lips like a La Quebrada Cliff Diver.
"I think I'm in love with you." Helena did not move, did not blink, appeared to no longer need to draw breath. Myka felt her heart sputter worryingly inside her chest and thought, for a moment, that she might go into cardiac arrest. Fortunately, or maybe not depending on your view, it started back up again and filled the silence. Finally, Helena blinked.
"Right." She drew the word out, as though she wasn't entirely sure it belonged in the conversation but knew it was too late to take it back. Myka let her grip on the door frame falter and her arm swung down bonelessly to rest at her side.
"And I just thought that maybe," she gestured, nervously waving an open-paled hand out towards the stupefied woman, "you should know." Myka could practically hear her cheeks sizzling in the hush that followed and felt them burn with the blush that threatened to swallow her face completely if she didn't do something to keep the angry red monster at bay. And then their beat of silence started to edge swiftly into a pause and suddenly Myka's whole body seemed to jerk, as if she'd just come back to herself. She dropped her head, just a little, and breathed a quiet, "Okay." She turned to leave.
"You don't sound entirely certain." Helena's voice stopped her in the same way it always stopped her, or eased her, or drove her to various points of insanity. She pivoted, turning back to H.G. with wide, apprehensive eyes.
"I'm not." She frowned, feeling the wrongness of the words against her tongue. "No, I mean, I am." She said, flustered, hurried. "I'm just not sure about this." She stopped, eyes widening impossibly further as she gestured frantically between the two of them. "Not this, this." She explained, or attempted to, stepping closer and then pointing to the ground between them. "I meant this. The moment, the timing." She tilted her head, staring at the inventor so intently it was as though she were looking through her. "Me talking, ever, at all." Helena's smile, tugged from her face by either her surprise or incredulity or maybe a mix of both, returned at that and her nose wrinkled in the way that let Myka know she was about to say something far too brazen or damningly charming.
"I quite like it when you talk." And she wasn't disappointed. She fidgeted nervously with the hem of her sweater sleeve as she pulled her gaze back until she was looking at Helena once more. One side of her mouth lifted in a half smile, and her heart calmed only long enough to find another, slightly different rapid rhythm to beat to.
"Yeah?" H.G. nodded, smiling never waning as she hummed her affirmation. And all at once Myka felt giddy. Giddy. In the same exact way that her younger, gawkier self had when Kurt Smoller had flashed her a smile or she'd managed to make it through a sentence without saying something mortifying or tripping over the air and falling at his feet. There were butterflies in her chest, ones that made her feel so terribly, violently, sickeningly giddy. "I kinda like it when you talk, too." It could have sounded dumb. It could have sounded so utterly, utterly stupid. But Helena archly rose a lone eyebrow and Myka didn't feel dumb at all. She felt giddy. It was disgusting and nauseating and wonderful, and Myka almost jumped a foot out of her own skin when Helena reached out towards the hem of the sleeve she was tugging at and lightly encircled Myka's wrist with her hand.
"I especially like it," she began and Myka had the strangest sense of deja vu as Helena tugged her forward. She was thrown back into the hallways of her high school, where she'd felt the same almost crushing weight against her chest and had thought the same vertigo-inducing thought. She was going to pass out. "When you talk to me." Myka blinked dazedly as H.G. finished, stumbling forward at the other woman's insistence until her socked toes brushed Helena's and she had to stop herself from falling against her.
"Uh..." she laughed then, a short burst of airy laughter, because she didn't know what else to do. She was so close she couldn't focus on the inventor, close enough to feel warm breath against her face. Close enough that she couldn't for the life of her pull her gaze up and away from Helena's lips and so she ultimately stopped trying. She stared at them as they parted to reveal white teeth and the hint of a pink tongue.
"Even more so when you say such wonderful things." And then Helena's hand was gone from her wrist and Myka barely had time to register the lack of contact before she felt the wayward hand against her back, and then she was being urged even closer and Helena's lips became a blur.
And then they were kissing.
And Myka's feet stood obediently still.
And no one needed to talk at all.