AN: I really did try to write fluffy Victorian Helen/John. Seriously. Written for the prompt "electricity".

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I should be so lucky.

Rating: M

Pairing/Characters: Helen Magnus/Nikola Tesla

Summary: Then comes the lightning.

Every hair on her body is straining away from her skin. Usually when she feels that way it's an exaggeration, only the hair on her arms or perhaps the back of her neck is standing on end while goose bumps are raised from cold or fear. But this is different.

She is naked and splayed out on the bed beneath him. He's holding her hands, not hard but firmly enough that she'd have to really try to extricate herself, on either side of her head, and the fingers that stroke the inside of her wrist have created a small current that sweeps down through her body more torturously than his hands ever could.

"Did you know," Nikola says lazily, his hands stroking her skin with a maddening slowness, "that there is a moment right before something gets struck by lightning when it is totally surrounded by electricity? It's how the lightning knows where to go."

She knows this, of course, because she is not an idiot, and because over the years she has learned almost as much about electricity as he has, because she's the only one who was patient enough to sit around and listen to him talk. She can't say this to him now, though, because she's caught up in that moment, frozen by it almost, and if she doesn't break out of it soon, she feels like she might fly apart.

"In fact," Nikola continues in that same unhurried manner, "once an object has been struck by lightning, the field stays around it forever. This makes it even more likely to get struck again."

This is why she avoided sleeping with him for so long. She knew that once she did, once she gave in that first time, it would only make giving in again all the more easy. And here they are again, and this time he's feeling experimental, and so help her, he is going to pay for it later, if only she's able to just –

"I had to practice this on myself, you know," he says conversationally, and she really wishes he would touch her, beyond that teasing caress "to make sure it would really work. The downside, of course, was that when I reached a certain point, I became both the lightning and the lightning rod, at which point it got a bit awkward for any wiring that happened to be close by."

She is going to kill him. As soon as he finishes her.

"But you shouldn't have that problem," he says. "Unless you've been keeping secrets of course."

He looks at her with a seriousness that is so very, very feigned then, and it's almost like he expects her to answer, even though it's taking everything she has to remember how to breathe.

"Helen?" He might as well be asking for a cup of tea. She will not scream, but she's probably going to have to beg, because if he leaves her like this she might never recover.

"Please," she hisses, and the smile she gets in return is beyond wicked.

Then comes the lightning.

fin

Gravity_Not_Included, January 26, 2011