Hi guys! This piece is somewhere between fluff and angst-and I'm leaning more towards fluff. I'm also skipping over the part where I revise any outstanding errors in favor of actually getting this up and out there, so feel free to tell me if I missed anything too egregious. Other than that, I think I'll shut up now, so enjoy reading and don't forget to drop me a lovely review if you have the time!
Disclaimer: It's safe to say that I still don't own.
It was a sharp, disjointed rattle that disrupted her from sleep, scattering what small fragments of a dream still clung to the inside of her eyelids as she groggily swatted at the source of the disturbance: the traitorous phone now escaping off the edge of her desk with its vibrations. Half in instinct, half in luck she managed to swipe it before it could catapult itself to its destruction, but she neglected to heed the intent of its short purr in favor of a glance to the clock atop the mantle.
Four thirty-seven exactly, the antique told her.
A jolt of frustration, mostly towards herself, gripped her at the realization that she'd fallen asleep on top of work that was expected to be completed roughly four hours ago.
In disdain, she punched the screen of her phone with a little more strength than intended, as if it was to blame. It had better be an emergency.
Instead of the Prime Minster, or Will, or any number of government officials that could have met her with complaints regarding the opening of a pickle jar or thereabouts (which was more often than not the case in light of most people's skittishness at her line of work), she was surprised by the appearance of Tesla's name in digitalized print at her fingertips.
He'd sent her a text message, and it made her frown as much in relief and delight as in irritation at his presumptuous and unwarranted behavior. The strangeness of it might have given her cause for worry had she not known that he was easily a couple floors down and a few corridors to the north.
Already expecting some attempt to talk himself into her sheets tonight, she was perplexed by what she read.
Helen. Meet me in 5. North lab.
P.S. I know you're up, so don't even try.
She wouldn't be up if it weren't for him, but neither could she lay all the blame at his feet knowing she'd been the one to fall asleep in the first place. At once baffled and intrigued by his sudden decision to contact her, more so by the method than the fact that he had, she agreed to indulge him at the expense of her forlorn paperwork.
Since it was already late as it was, she didn't see much of a problem.
With pursed lips and crossed arms, she skirted her way out of her office and down towards his location with the grogginess of sleep weighing heavy on her limbs. How long had it been since she'd gotten a good eight hours? Acutely aware of a hollow ache near the side of her neck and a petulant stiffness in the center of her shoulders, she judged that it was longer than she cared to remember.
There was a stillness and a silence enveloping the residence that felt marginally unreal, and a coldness seeped through her work clothes and into her skin that made the hairs on the backs of her arms stand on edge. Everyone was asleep. Everyone but her.
And Nikola, reminded the direction her feet carried her.
The crispness of the air mingled with a fresh throbbing in her skull made her sigh, and when she slipped through the door to the lab there was a sterile type of smell that greeted her at first breath.
No one came to greet her. There was no boisterous voice proclaiming triumph, no prattling and wheedling about the latest stroke of genius—in fact, there was no Nikola. There was no one in sight.
Immediately on the defensive, she set to scanning the room, peeling over it a good four times before she finally trusted that he was not anywhere in range. She did notice a platter of what looked like dinner that lay untouched on the nearest counter, a thinly sliced cut of beef and a few vegetables that she was willing to bet hadn't even been given the good grace of having been looked at.
Heels noisily striking on tile, she cautioned walking in a bit farther. This didn't make sense. He wouldn't so bizarrely beckon her to his side and then flounce off to bed—it was unlike him.
There was a heavy noise behind her, something she couldn't quite place, and without thinking she whirled.
"Boo."
There, standing before her with pristine lab coat and mussed hair in stark contrast, was the man of her search. She found she'd raised an arm, ready to strike, and as she froze in place she could feel the ricochet of her heartbeat off her ribcage. Her pulse pounded at her temple, and it was a good five seconds before her struggle to breathe again finally succeeded.
"Good Lord, Nikola," she expounded with an explosive sigh. "If you've discovered invisibility, I don't want to hear about it."
His next smile was drastically mischievous. "Did I scare you?" Of course, he was anything but apologetic about it. "Want to know how I did it?"
"Do I get a choice?" Something about what he'd said made her wonder if he really had invented some way to camouflage himself. She looked him over dubiously, but found nothing worthy of raising her suspicion besides his obvious state of health. Although she'd known he was adverse to bathing when he was in the thick of things, she imagined that he hadn't been at the receiving end of a good shower in at least three days. Collectively, with the glaringly noticeable lack of sleep visible in the shade under his eyes and the impressive lack of appetite, Helen was considering clocking him over the head and either dragging him to bed or shoveling his dinner down his throat.
Because she couldn't quite decide on the order in which she'd like to do these things, Nikola beat her to the chase.
"Behold—magnetism at its finest," he said. Arms spread wide in demonstration, he jumped, and she watched in almost fascination as he sailed upwards and promptly crashed into the ceiling. With a muffled groan, he managed to grin at her even as he winced. "Well, it's, uh…I'm still working out a few kinks, but I'm making progress."
He dropped back down, landing lithely, if a little breathlessly, in his spot in front of her. At her quizzical look, a voiceless question that glittered in her eyes, he conveyed a wide smirk. Directing her gaze from the man dusting himself off to the ceiling, she was no less puzzled.
"I thought…" Helen battled for words. "How…"
In the end, she could only turn her head at him in a look that clearly meant he had permission to intervene. Tease that he was, he let her hash it out a few more seconds before he finally provided her with a smug answer.
"It's the plumbing," he said matter-of-factly. "Impressed?"
She might have been, if there wasn't a steady banging on her skull and she wasn't ready to drop.
"You brought me down here to gloat over a newfound ability to—"
"Hey, I never gloated," he interjected quite rudely. "And it's harder than it looks! The first time I did it, I couldn't get down for another ten minutes."
"Goodnight, Nikola."
She made for the door, but he stopped her by stepping to block her. Without the wherewithal to stop herself, she bumped intelligently into his chest. The contact was unexpected, and she looked up at him to see his face arguably too close for comfort. It threw the lines of exhaustion there into sharp relief, and a pang of concern clenched the muscles of her stomach. He was working himself to death.
Before, he'd had the physical endurance necessary to withstand such negligence without much consequence, but Helen knew now that ignoring his limits was risky. He was no longer a vampire. No longer immortal, no longer able to bounce back from a fist through the stomach. Stress would drive him ragged, and this, if he kept it up, could be enough to throw him over the edge into illness. It was something she didn't need right now, another patient—and on examination, a friend in trouble. She couldn't stand to see him like this.
He needed food, and rest, and sleep. The image of his wearing himself down made her heart ache in a way she didn't fully know how to express. For fear of wounding him, of unnecessarily bringing up the fact that he was mortal, she knew she needed to approach the issue delicately.
"Nikola…" her voice came out softer than expected. "Go to bed."
The glint in his steely blue eyes let her know ahead of time where his mind took this. "With you? Gladly."
New tactic. "Will you at least eat something?"
But she'd set herself up yet again, and he leaned into her enough for her to realize that she hadn't backed up like she should have. "Perhaps…if that something is you."
She was too tired for this.
He smiled enough to show off a few teeth, though it probably wasn't intentional, and she couldn't help but glance towards his mouth at the gesture. The visual image wrapped itself around his words shamelessly, entering her imagination at a point where she found herself wondering what that would be like, the feel of his lips and his teeth, there. It sent a tingle down her spine that spiked a throb of heat somewhere around her thighs, and she had to close her eyes to block out the input.
She was much too tired for this.
"Nikola, please," she challenged, exasperated. "Just go eat a couple vegetables and go to sleep."
His smile fell flat. "Actually, I can't."
For her already addled brain, his words were mystifying. Flustered, she raised a skeptical eyebrow in his direction and finally stepped back a couple of feet from his enticing teeth. It meant relinquishing her exit, but she doubted the opportunity would have presented itself in the first place.
"Don't be ridiculous," she told him.
"It's true," he defended. "It's very trying to eat with a metal fork when you have all the electromagnetic forces of the earth at your disposal."
Still, she didn't buy it. She'd seen him nullify his powers in an instant, and it was implausible that something as small and powerless as a fork could give him any trouble.
Taking in her disapproving look, he sighed. "Still don't believe me? Watch this."
She was still dubious by the time reached the platter sitting on the counter and extended a spoon to his tongue, but the utensil did indeed stay stuck. He walked to her, wagging the spoon around outside his mouth in emphasis. "Thee?"
Squinting in disbelief, she watched him retrieve the platter next, lofting it into the air by the elbow. The sight of him had her biting down a small laugh, but when the platter dropped and the spoon did not, she had to concede that maybe there was truth to what he said.
"Methal conthuc's ethecthrithithy," he exclaimed jubilantly, pointing dramatically at the spoon hanging from his mouth. "My thongue thoo."
She saw his point.
In fact, it took both of them at once to rip the utensil from his mouth. Dexterously, he kicked away the tray on the floor and dropped the spoon with something akin to relief, and it took her a moment or more to compose herself enough not to laugh at him.
"Eat with your hands, Nikola," she said not unkindly, but for the look he served her she might as well have told him to go drown himself in the lake.
"Absolutely not. Do you have any inclination of how unearthly icky that is?" She did not. "It's filthy, Helen, not to mention barbaric."
Honestly, she'd had enough. Sick with him, she groaned. "I suggest you get over yourself. You need to eat."
Apparently, for reasons she didn't comprehend, this amused him. He approached her step by step, gracefully placing his hands behind his back as he came towards her, and the look in his eyes was entirely too leery for her taste. "Only if you make it worth my while."
Under normal circumstances, she would not even give this proposition the slightest consideration, but he'd finally managed to wriggle himself under her skin when she wasn't looking. She blamed this on her exhaustion, but somehow it didn't seem like that was quite right. He certainly did have magnetism, because she was fairly certain that their gravitating together wasn't necessarily all by his design.
"What is it, Nikola? What do you want?" she relented. The sooner this was over, the sooner she could go to bed.
The color in his eyes sparked, and his face lit up in cautious and pleasant surprise. He hadn't expected her to give into his relentless attempts at flirting, she could tell from the way he faltered with an uncertainty that could almost be labelled insecure. Having not seen it coming, the genuine excitement behind those two electric orbs, almost boyish in nature, was something she couldn't help but find the tiniest bit endearing.
"Really?" was his incredulous response, practically bouncing up to her. "You mean it?"
"Shockingly, yes. You might like to tell me before I change my mind."
She had a feeling she was going to regret this, what with the way he was now busy flitting through his thoughts in what, outwardly, mostly resembled exhilaration. It couldn't have been anything good, she knew. But then, he'd never purposefully overstepped their boundaries in the past. Though it might have seemed that he'd jump at the very chance to take this to the next level, she had to admit that he cared much more for her peace of mind than either of them would voice in words.
It was the reason that his smile in this moment was not wanton, but blissful.
The gleeful look in his clear eyes was something that reassured her he would not bring this into the realm of the sinister. Ever the arrogant bastard, but ever the gentleman.
He was a walking contradiction. Some days, it was almost charming.
The knowledge that he wouldn't ask her to do anything she wouldn't want was something that had a twinge of guilt arresting itself on her conscience, whispering in her ear the wrongness of the situation. She felt almost bad for having given him this kind of sick tease.
"Feed me?" he asked gently.
It was a little different than what she was expecting. His sincerity gave her pause, and she considered that his idea might not have been all that disagreeable: it gave each of them what they wanted. She couldn't say she was directly opposed to the suggestion, given the alternative.
At least he hadn't asked for a kiss, she consoled herself.
In resignation, Helen treaded to where his dinner sat, now platter-less and spoon-less, and she could feel his eyes burning into her from behind as she extended a hand to the assortment of vegetables.
"No, no," he admonished quietly, halting her. "The strawberries."
A roll of her eyes, astoundingly the first of the night, communicated that she knew exactly what he was trying to do. She didn't argue, though, because not only was it a miracle that he was agreeing to eat anything at all but, technically, it was his call.
Her only dispute was a small sigh, lifting one of the fruits from its dish and expectantly planting it somewhere in front of his mouth. Averting her gaze, she couldn't look him in the eye when he tilted forward to meet her, but she felt certain that he was smirking at his victory when, tenderly, he slipped his lips around the succulent piece of fruit and bit down halfway. When she glanced back, there was a drop of juice perched near the corner of his mouth that went painting a line down his chin.
His next bite took the tips of her fingers into his mouth, just for a split second, and she felt the heat of his tongue slip against her skin as he claimed his prize. On his retreat, the feel of his breath against the wetness he'd left behind sent a shiver racing down from the nerves of her scalp to her toes.
He was enjoying this far too much, her mind accused.
By the third strawberry, it was becoming exponentially difficult to ignore. The feel of his teeth scraping gently across the side of her thumb sent a flurry through her stomach, and when he went so far as to siphon off the remainder of the juice on her fingers with the expert practice of his tongue she couldn't help the strangled gasp that was choked out of her throat.
At the noise, he blinked up at her, eyes hooded and a little bleary as if unaware of what he'd been doing, of the effect he'd been having on her and the swirling in her abdomen. In a half-lidded glance, he drew himself away from her, and the shock of the look in his eyes, trained solely on her, coupled with the movement sent her mind to places she wouldn't dare vocalize, even to him.
She found her hands trembling by the last portion of his dessert, probably the first decent substance of any nutritional content he'd eaten in days, and it surprised her. As much as she wanted to end this, to slam down her walls and stride out of the room and hide from that look he was giving her and the way it made her feel, she was powerless to the storm of hormones that ravaged her system.
Perhaps the one thing she disliked most about her humanity was the lack of control with which she was sometimes presented, and it was altogether a somewhat terrifying and exhilarating experience each and every time. This time, he was just as human as she was.
Given the way he was staring into her, the way that stare had darkened, it was as much a blessing as a curse.
At the last second, she did something that surprised even herself. It was an action that even five minutes before would have seemed wholly abhorrent and disagreeable, and the knowledge gave her a sense of wickedness as, somewhere deep inside her consciousness, a tiny part of herself begged for her to stop because it was exactly this type of behavior that would land her in worse trouble than she was at this time capable of foreseeing.
The larger part of her awareness, the drained and desperate part, won out over this voice of reason with hardly a glimpse of a fight.
Before Nikola could protest (which she doubted he would), she'd popped the last fruit into her mouth and was holding it elegantly in her teeth. His reaction, a sharp intake of breath and a visible shudder, sent a fiery thrill through her veins.
His natural cadence of conceit slipped, and there was a flicker of vulnerability in his gaze when he searched her face in a stunned look that seemed to ask, "Are you sure?"
To answer his query, she closed the distance between him to nudge the bite against his lips, like asking permission for entrance. If only due to his disbelief, his lips parted to grant her that entrance, and then she was mouthing the fruit across to him, lips brushing over his in the gentlest of collisions. When he swallowed, she heard the juices sliding down his throat, and he claimed her lips in earnest.
When they met, there was both a sweetness and a tartness between them, and a shared electricity that had everything and nothing to do with his newfound power. A pleasant buzz threaded itself through her thoughts, driving away the earlier voice of caution in a wave of something she didn't care to identify, and at some point his hands had found their way to her waist.
It was more than either of them had bargained for, and yet she'd somehow known it would come to this by the way she didn't resist the change of pace. Perhaps, even if just the once, it was something she needed, and so she couldn't refuse—not tonight.
He was tugging her in closer, his kisses more urgent each time he dipped to her, and his breath ran ragged with the effort. She felt it, hot across her face in the space between intervals. Her hands, too, discovered the curve of his shoulders, the skin of his neck, and then his scalp where her fingers plunged through his shock of hair.
When his tongue found her neck, the pulse under her jaw, she clamped herself to him and pinned him to the bench at his back. Something clattered to the floor, but neither party chanced a look to identify the object.
Clenching the fabric that was his collar, she slipped his lab coat down his shoulders and pulled, allowing for him to shrug himself free of the sleeves before she banished it to the floor with a modest toss. It exposed the thin material of a pale dress shirt and ruby-colored vest, which she barely examined before continuing her exploration. Now, she could feel his heat radiating from beneath the material of his clothes, and it made her itch to peel away those layers.
He chuckled under his breath, hands falling to her hips. "My, Helen, I didn't know you had it in you."
"If by 'it' you mean you, you're mistaken."
"Oh, well we best remedy that, don't you think?"
She didn't know what to think. In fact, she tried very hard not to—because thinking would undoubtedly lead towards better judgment, and better judgment would not lead him to her bed. She let instinct take over, run by over a century of pent-up emotion, and kept her regrets for later. Later, there would always time for regrets, of which she had plenty; one more would neither make things better or worse for the long run.
Switching from his mouth to his jaw, his next vocal noise, something she suspected he'd started to say, was stopped short and transformed into a low kind of moan at the way she was now working her way downwards. He writhed against her, giving her a fairly accurate assessment of his anatomy, and then it was his turn to play the dominant role. Making quick work of it, he swiftly spun her around, faster than she could blink, so that her back was now to the bench and she was trapped against his body.
A shiver passed through her, and she saw his eyes flutter as he caught notice and, like a chain reaction, joined her.
"Helen—" he started, but she cut him off.
He made no complaint. Soon, he was crashing into her, taking her in with every sense like he couldn't get enough of her, and she reveled in the sensation.
Over the years, she'd had many lovers—none that she'd allowed so close to her as John, of course, but enough to sate her physical needs. Emotionally, she was no stranger to the prowess gained through distance, and it was part of what got her through the day.
With Nikola, it was different. He was neither someone that she could shrug off nor someone she could deny through her position. He was on another level altogether, and it was this, their long line of shared experience and the way they could understand what the other was thinking with only the judgment of a simple look, the way their entire lives had been lived parallel to each other until this very instant that they met, this that drove their passion to heights that she wasn't sure she could handle. Not only because she knew him, knew he'd need something more, but because she knew herself—and she'd need something too.
As suddenly as she realized what she was doing, of how utterly both good and bad this truly was with his mouth tangled against hers and his hands drifting terribly low, the lights started to flicker in a way that was very unnatural.
At first, she didn't notice it through his deluge on her senses, but then the fluctuation started to become painfully obvious when, as he made his mark upon the skin of her neck and sighed into it, the power made a frantic display of itself. When they were dropped into darkness, they froze against each other, and when they were again blinded with light she refocused to find him peering across at her.
She expected him to grin, to find this new development entirely delightful in its experimental value, but instead he only stood there looking raw and miserably guilty.
There was something about the loss of his warmth, of his hands over her and his lips on hers, that was disappointing, and something urged her to grab him and pull him back, but she did not. Instead, she only looked back at him and met his stare evenly, waiting for him to say something.
"You might be better off if you told me to stop," he said flatly. "I should stop."
Her mind agreed, but her body did not. Still missing his touch, she was glad for it when he again leaned into her, clutching at her and trailing kisses. There was something else between them this time, though, and it was plain in the way her mind no longer buzzed.
"Ask me to stop," he mouthed against her ear, his words almost inaudible. At once, it was both a command and a plea.
She wanted to answer him. Her mouth opened, but words would not come. No sound was emitted from her throat when she tried, again and again, to say what was necessary, and it frustrated her.
He was right; it would be irresponsible on both their parts to continue this. Stopping was a necessary precaution—necessary, because this was not something she was ready to take on. There would be a morning, and regrets would follow. She was not at a point where she was willing to face herself, and he was not willing to compromise: it was a date destined to be doomed.
Each of them did not have what it took to brace themselves for the waves that they would be making with such an impulsive act, and it was impossible for either to count on the other. It was hopeless, and she knew it.
He knew it, too. He knew it and still could not control his actions, lost to her devices as she was lost to his, swept up in a moment that was greater than either of them.
They were going down a road that led nowhere and was difficult to turn back on. She could feel it in his kisses, in the taste of him, that this was wrong. It didn't make sense to her body, alive and teeming at his affections, how something so wonderfully right, something she never wanted to end, could be so dreadfully wrong. But wrong it was, for now, and she hated it with such emotion that she gave good thought to defying this morality.
It would do her no good.
She felt the heat sting her eyes and blinked it away, but the wetness, which forewent her permission, pooled there and leaked over her lashes to make languid trails down her cheeks. The muscle in her throat clenched, choking her words when she finally pressed out a distressed sound.
"Stop, Nikola."
The words were painful to say. There was a physical ache in her chest, a weight that lay in their tone and settled over her stomach in unease. Though she didn't allow for more than a second's worth of exposure, her temporary weakness was enough to drive a rough number of three streaks down from where they accumulated behind her eyes, and Nikola caught them in their cascade with a swipe of his finger.
Fighting valiantly to hold back what remained of her striking distress, keeping it under wraps behind trained stillness, she could have fooled even the best of her team. Nikola, on the contrary, was not deceived in the slightest.
He played off of her cue, taking care to present himself with a veneer of carelessness and confidence. Together, they put on a show fit for kings.
"That's a good girl," he told her in seamless cheer. His lips finished their pursuit on hers, ending the connection with a lazy twang that left her empty and unsatisfied, her wits scrambled and twisted with the prying desperation for more. She could have slanted herself to him and pitched her lips firmly against his in a last-ditch effort, but she caught herself.
"I'm sorry," she said distantly, reeling herself in.
"Have no fear; I intend that you'll make it all up to me one day."
She couldn't quite tell if he was sincere or not between the glint in his eyes and the smirk on his face, so she decided to go with the safe route and play along. "I assume you have this all planned out?"
"Oh, most definitely. It's going to be marvelous."
"If it's comparable in any fashion to your previous strategies, I have to say I doubt that."
"A woman of little faith, I see. My plans would have gone swimmingly if you hadn't interfered, you know."
"And if I hadn't interfered, the world as we know it may be on the brink of total chaos and destruction. Take your pick."
"If I may, my liberty to make that decision was in recent times forfeit. I think I'll pass."
She was not blind to the hurt in his words, and she turned to him in a grave sort of candor. It seemed their attempts to reestablish their repertoire had come crashing down upon them, and she was suddenly and adamantly sorry to have said anything at all to the subject.
"Nikola, I—"
Shaking his head, he offered her a tart smile. "Oh no, don't feel obligated to make me feel better. By all means, go ahead and gloat. Now you don't have to come rushing every time I've made a ground-breaking discovery—that's grand news for you, being a busy woman and all. You've got much better items on your agenda than to thwart my evil schemes of ingeniously taking over the world. In fact, you should be thanking me for inventing the very device that's saved you the misfortune."
"Good heavens, such melodrama," she lamented.
"I have to compensate somehow, don't I? Don't tell me you don't love it."
"Compensation?" It was laughable. When they'd met at Oxford, he was never this exuberant and ostentatious; if anything, his dramatic farce had doubled since his transformation. "Is that what you've been doing down here, dangling from the ceiling? Compensating?"
He shrugged, noncommittal as ever. "Maybe. The bit about dangling was a little unintentional."
"Nikola," she exasperated, "listen to me. I will say this only once. You are, without a doubt, one of the brightest individuals I have ever known. Modern science, without your contributions, would pale in comparison. You are a dear friend to me, and I value that. It matters very little to me whether you are mortal or abnormal, because I do not consider those to be your defining characteristics. You are much more to me than whatever power you happen to possess, and believe it or not, there was a time in which neither you nor I possessed any such significant qualities."
The look on his face was devious. "But you liked me better as a vampire. Admit it—it was so much cooler."
Exhaustion was starting to seep back into her tired limbs, and she sighed. "Not quite the word I would use."
"How about sexy?"
"Nikola, really."
"Oh, Helen. We've known each other far too long to play this game. Just accept it, fess up—you find me utterly and intoxicatingly attractive."
She cleared her throat. "Useful is, I think, far as I would go."
The admission only fueled his growing appetite for mischief. "Well, that's certainly something I can work with."
On that note, she came to the conclusion that, as delightful as his company was, this was going nowhere fast. He was swiftly making a nuisance out of himself, and she was not apt to repeat their earlier incursion.
"I'm going to bed," she announced. "As should you."
"Is that an offer?"
Shouldering past him towards the doorway, she bit back a groan. "Believe me, when I make an offer, you will know."
There was a passing silence, an unfulfilling beat of nothingness that was oddly charged as she headed out towards the hallway, and she didn't hear him move until he was skipping at her heels, holding open the door. The grin on his face was nearly unbearable.
"When….?"
She did not grace him with an answer as she trudged down the hall, but he followed after her a ways so that she didn't miss the note of incredulity to his voice.
"When, Helen?"
Although he couldn't see and she didn't bother turning to face him, she allowed for a small smile to work its way across her lips. His formative enthusiasm and relentlessness was a little overwhelming at times, but she had to concede that this reaction was worth it.
Whether it was this century or the next, when they came together at last it would be a very stimulating experience, and very well met.