Behind the scenes / AU for Normandy, on the premise that Nikola and his lieutenant were secretly getting naked and sweaty together. This baby grew from teeny tiny drabbles to this monster, I hardly recognise it. I am kinda so fucking thrilled I managed to get it into some semblance of order. It was originally based on one line from Normandy that caught my imagination and wouldn't let go for a month. More gratuitous second person POV and general smut. Also, just so you know, my field of expertise is around the 4,000 word mark, a one shot this long is foreign territory for me. Let me know if I fuck it up too badly. I know next to nothing about the Allies in World War II. Let me know if I fucked that one up, too.
Disclaimer: Amanda Tapping is apparently coming to Melbourne next month. If I sell my soul, my car, and my David Tennant poster, I might just be able to get there. Also, I don't own anything you recognise. Title taken from the epic Garbage song The World Is Not Enough.
what to show, and what to conceal
So you're an agent of the SS.
This is nothing new to you; you were recruited in West Point and now you are here. You've lived with this secret for too long now; other spies have been weeded out long before this but you? You learned to hide your heritage too well. You are an American and you support the Reich; these two ideals are contradictory and the fiery clash they once inspired in your soul has long since cooled to a simmering heat, rarely flaring into anything more.
They introduce you to your new task at 0700 sharp. You'd been briefed the day before, and the day before that too. A Serbian genius, rumoured to be (among other things) a vampire and more than a few cards short of a full deck in the sanity stakes. Nevertheless, he is brilliant and the Allied Forces would prefer he has a liaison - that is their terminology, of course. You come to realise you are more of a glorified errand boy, but in terms of your subtle collecting of information, you are ideally placed. You also come to understand that Tesla has had seveal English liaisons, and after a period of time they all have requested transfers away from the genius. You're not sure whether that's a commentary on the English armed forces or on Tesla. You suspend judgment.
General Eisenhower escorts you himself to meet Tesla, and that is more than a little terrifying. You half expect the great man to take one look at you and know you are a spy, but instead he shakes your hand and inquires after your family. "He's a live one," he warns on the way to Tesla's 'office'. "You'll have your hands full, son."
You've had your hands full for years now. One more thing to juggle isn't going to make much difference. And so after days of briefings here you are meeting the man who perfected the use of electricity, the inventor of the radio, and so on. His accomplishments are a list longer than your arm. You might find it intimidating, if you were concerned about such things. Instead you merely think of what an advantage this could be, the information that could so easily be gathered when working in close proximity to such a key player in the Allied war command. And a civilian, no less. He probably leaves classified files lying by his breakfast tray. Oh, you know he's a genius, but in your (admittedly limited) experience geniuses tend to be rather scattered. Still, you mustn't underestimate him. There's a reason he has even General Eisenhower so rattled.
Despite everything you've heard, somehow you're still expecting an old man - a Bela Lugosi lookalike hunched over in a darkened room, fangs grown down past his lips and a girl shivering in the corner with fang marks all over her throat. Instead you're escorted into a light, airy room, sharp with the scent of wine and chalk and a hint of cologne.
"This is the new one?" asks a tart voice, and that is another surprise. First of all, there is no one there, and second of all, almost completely unaccented. It lilts, but it does not have the accent on the syllables you'd expect from a Serb.
"Yes, Professor Tesla," replies Eisenhower, his eyes moving all over the room.
"Hmm."
A thin man in a sharp suit appears around a corner from another room. You're utterly taken aback, but you are a spy, after all - none of it shows on your face. Steely eyes study you from top to toe and you have to force yourself not to fidget - his gaze is both impersonal and physical, an examination that sees everything and leaves nothing unobserved. The man himself is pale, dark haired and light-eyed, with elegant hands stained with ink up to the wrists. "Well, run along, Ike," he snaps, moving over to his chalkboard with the stealthy grace of an animal of prey. "Don't you have an invasion to plan?"
Eisenhower's lips thin and it looks to you as though he is barely managing not to roll his eyes. "Of course, Tesla," he snaps, and shoots you a look of pure sympathy, as though wishing you good luck.
You will need it. Tesla ignores you for the first few hours before demanding tea, and then criticises you for adding sugar even though he'd asked for it. He asks for a bottle of sauvignon blanc and then swears at you in vicious Serbian (what you assume is Serbian) for your choice of vintage. Eventually, while knocking back a handful of tablets and a glass of something reddish and foul looking, he quizzes you on your family, your home, your education, your training, your previous posts, and what brought you here. In that exact order, as though mentally reading a list of appropriate small talk and getting it out of the way now. Or maybe he's just curious or needs some distraction while he drinks his red liquid and washes it down with a nice Bordeaux.
The man appears to subsist entirely off of tea and wine, and his medication and the odd glass of that reddish liquid. You don't even dare to hazard a guess as to what it is, only that it doesn't look quite like blood which is what you'd expect to a vampire to eat anyway. You're a little disappointed you don't get to see him bite people, but then again, the Allied Forces would probably not be too impressed with him snacking on the staff. In Germany it would be different. Tesla would be supplied with as many victims as he wanted in exchange for his knowledge. Oh, they'd probably be Jewish victims though, and you're not entirely sure Jews are fit to drink. Maybe this vampire, as with his wine, only drinks the premium vintage.
More importantly, though, only a few hours into the day you peg him automatically as... into musical theatre, as a girl back home used to put it. You used to take her out on Friday nights dancing. You'd smiled at her comment at the time and never once let on you were more interested in eyeing up your classmates than kissing her. You're well aware that your home country frowns on homosexuality, almost as much as they frown on Jews, and the US is none too welcoming about it either. So you've learned to hide it, if only because it's easier than having to field questions about it or have people take offense to the fact you like to bugger men.
The day is excruciatingly long and by the time Tesla sends you away, the blackout curtains are drawn and it is well into the night. Nikola Tesla examines you through steely eyes and then smiles, thin lips pulling back to reveal a mouthful of very sharp teeth. "See if you can keep up," he drawls, and turns back to his chalkboard, erasing an equation and beginning again.
Oh, you'll keep up, if only to find out more about this man.
And so begins your battle of wits with this wildly intelligent man. You haven't a hope in hell, really, but you get the feeling he enjoys talking to someone who isn't intimidated by him. You're nowhere near his equal and that's all right, but the thrill you get when he doesn't have a single thing to complain about regarding your conduct at the end of a day makes you dizzy. And that's bad. Dizzy is bad. Dizzy means letting your guard down and making mistakes and next thing you know, you'll be behind bars for life as a traitor and a war criminal.
Professor Tesla sleeps - if he ever sleeps at all - at headquarters, usually in an armchair. Partly because Eisenhower likes to keep an eye on him and partly because of the infrequency of the Professor sleeping. You're assigned to him during the day and then as things step up in the war you are assigned to him 24/7. You're not a guard so much as a liaison, and everyone knows that one man - that twenty men would not be enough to stop Professor Tesla if he tried to get away. So you sleep in a cot in a room off of his lab, and are usually woken several times in the middle of the night by him experimenting, decoding, or breaking things as the mood takes him. Before dawn you rise, tousled and still tired, and eat and shower to return with Tesla's tea tray and morning bottle of wine. It is a cycle, rinse and repeat, along with delivering communiqués between Eisenhower and Tesla. You learn tiny drabs of information. And gradually one week becomes two, and two becomes three, and even though it drives you mad you have been with Tesla for months and there has been no need to request a transfer. Except for the fact that he really is a difficult man, a crusty, tactless, bitter ass with a sharp mind and sharper tongue, and he uses it on you frequently. (Verbally, of course.)
For the most part, your attacks in this war of words are non-verbal. Occasionally a word might be a tad sharper than it should be, but predominantly your sallies are actions, getting something right so Tesla has nothing to complain about. And something else after that, and something else after that - the list of mundane but maddening chores he manages to dream up for you is insane. Well, he is a genius, after all, but even with a war on and Eisenhower and the Allied command breathing down his neck, he still remains insouciant and sarcastic, and still manages to drive you mad. Until finally one day he snarks at you something about your home and you reply, challenge in your voice. The Professor falls silent but you catch him gazing at you with new respect in his icy eyes, as though you've surprised him.
After that he is different. He tells you little smidgens of information - not vital military intel your superiors in Germany would die for, but little things, about him. You ask where he studied and he tells you about his country instead; you inquire as to his health and get a fast, barely legible explanation of what he's working on. Anyone else would think he was merely boasting but you've been with Professor Tesla too long and you can see how genuinely excited he is. When he's working he's a different creature than outside his office - he attends a briefing and as you walk in you see him physically turn inward, as though all of this human interaction both irks, bores, and frightens him just a little. You stand outside and escort him back to his rooms, ignoring the way he collapses onto the sofa fully dressed, closing his eyes in the sun, and only now relaxes, spine unbending as he curls up around himself under the quilt you place on him later in the day. It's beginning to chill, after all. The sight of him sleeping is so rare that a horde of unnecessary people tiptoe by, if only to catch a glimpse of the infamous Nikola Tesla sleeping.
And after that, it's harder to see him as just an assignment.
One day a couple walk in and Professor Tesla cracks a smile - not the sardonic twist of lips you know so well but a real, legitimate beam of happiness. He embraces the woman close and kisses her cheek; he shakes her partner's hand and does not resist when the other man pulls him in for a quick, back slapping hug.
They talk long into the night, and you're falling asleep on your feet when the Professor finally remembers your presence. The woman - Helen, you have learned - reminds him of you and he waves you away with an irritated, "What are you still doing here?"
You lie in your cot in the next room and listen to the woman's even, beautiful voice. "You like him, Nikola," she accuses lightly, and Professor Tesla's exhale of irritation can be heard even as far away as you are.
"I tolerate him," he replies acidly. "Of course, I also tolerate you and James, so I'm not sure what that says about me - ouch! No need to elbow me! James, control your woman, she's abusing vampires again."
"You're on your own, Tesla," says the other man - Watson, you've overheard - and laughs.
This is a side of the Professor you neither know or understand, and you turn over, bury your head in your pillow. This is not a side of the Professor you want to see, either. It is much easier working day by day with this eerily beautiful man if you pretend he is both inhuman and unavailable, if there is nothing remotely lovable or mortal in him at all.
The next day, exhausted and barely able to keep your eyes open, you drag yourself out of bed. Hoping Professor Tesla has passed out from talking so late, you stumble through his lab shirtless and oh, God, there he is, standing at his chalkboard with his hands on hips, his head whipping around even as you shrink back in the doorway. Damn vampiric hearing. But you have the (sort of) satisfaction of rendering him speechless; you can practically feel his eyes take you in, up and down. You're a soldier, after all; a warrior. You're in excellent shape and you know it, and now so does he. You see his throat work as he fights to swallow, and he manages a droll, "I can't speak for the Americas, Lieutenant, but here in England they prefer it if one wears clothes in their military facilities."
Were you not so accustomed to holding your tongue, you would be fumbling for words, but you instead respond with a calm, "We do the same back home, sir." Professor Tesla's eyebrow arches and his eyes dip down to your chest again; you cross your arms over your pectorals self-consciously. It only serves to make your biceps bunch and Professor Tesla's eyes flick there instead.
Well, damn. Looks like you were right.
He waves you away and you're grateful to get away from his piercing eyes, so sharp it feels as though they could sear right down to your very soul. You shower and dress and nothing really changes except sometimes he looks at you as though he's staring straight through you, outlining your body with his eyes and filling in the gaps with his memory. It's more than a little flattering, really, but those steely eyes fixed on you at any given moment are unnerving.
And maybe things would have stayed in that half-life playing field, an arena of maybes and perhaps, but for the shower.
Sometimes Tesla forgets to bathe when he gets caught up in his work or when he's stressed out. You're guessing he's stressed. It takes more than a few suggestions from you and two of the other scientists who work on this floor to get him to go bathe, early in the morning when you walk in with his tea tray and it's obvious he has neither slept nor changed. Of course, as is the law of the universe, only a few minutes after he leaves an urgent communiqué comes in from Eisenhower for his attention. Go figure.
You find your way to the communal showers in the basement of the complex. There are single ones but there is no one down here this time of day anyway and you have a feeling Tesla might not have a high regard for enclosed spaces. And there he is, a slim, almost emaciated figure silhouetted in the steam, leaning against the wall. Any doubt he is not a vampire vanishes at the sight of claws emerging from his elegant fingers, hands up by his face against the tile, a rare moment of stillness in a man who never stops moving. And the sight of him is enough to almost undo you. He is slim but not skeletal; slender but not frail. He doesn't need muscles on top of muscles to be a threatening man; you know that well enough. He's so pale; white shoulders and ribs taper down to a narrow hips and a pert ass, and legs that seem to go on for days. Impossibly vulnerable and perfectly human.
You know, except for the claws. You start to sweat, and you tell yourself it's from the steam.
"Sir." You can barely hear yourself over the steam but Tesla manages to, switching off the water and wrapping a towel around his waist faster than you can blink. Wow. Vampire speed and all.
"What is it, Lieutenant?" he quips out in a voice dripping with anger, arms folded over his chest, slick and flushed from the heat. You don't reply, looking him over as he had done you, from his irate expression down his chest and belly to the trail of dark hair that starts at his bellybutton and traces down below the fabric of the towel. Gently, giving him ample time to pull away, you unknot the towel with trembling fingers and slip your hand inside, manoeuvring just enough to take him in hand. You don't look away from his face. He is half hard beneath your fingers but that changes soon enough, and soon the towel is on the floor and his eyelids are fluttering, chest heaving in pleasure.
You know what to do. Haven't you done it often enough by now? The tutor at West Point who got a little too curious about your skill with German language, the handful of guys back home, even a CO to get a promotion and a better pay check. You know what to do - hell, when it's for pleasure and not for gain, you even enjoy it. But this is Tesla, the Professor - Nikola. This is the cleverest man you've ever met, a genius in more ways than you'd ever dreamed possible, and he is like no one you've ever known before.
And so when you take him in your mouth it is with a sense of total immersion in a new world, a washing away of everything else in the universe other than him and you. He groans and it sparks life in your veins, pressure and heat and joy, and anyone who says this is a sin has clearly never met a creature so beautiful as Nikola. No sooner have you thought that than you glance up and receive a sharp shock. Unless you've very much mistaken his eyes are pitch black and elongated, and his teeth are more like that of shark than a man. It's unnerving and more than a little bizarre, but his mouth closes and his eyes slip shut and he could be any slender, sensual man coming undone, even as his hand slips into your hair and you feel talons scratch lightly at your skin.
It doesn't last long - you hadn't expected it to. Tesla is a man too tightly wound to take any great length of time and you can practically hear the gears in his mind turning, wondering what news you could have brought that was urgent enough to bother him while he showered. He comes with his hand twisted tight in your hair and another against the wall, holding him up; he gasps and you see fangs. You swallow out of habit before realising you're swallowing vampire semen and have a brief moment of oh-God-what-the-hell before deciding not to worry about it. Maybe you'll live a little longer.
His recovery time is next to nil; Tesla wraps his towel back around his waist and sweeps past you without a word. Maybe he needs time to work out what's just happened; maybe he's angry. Maybe he doesn't give a shit - hell, maybe's he's too blissed out to think. You can't know, so you go about your business as usual. Calmly you change your trousers - you have wet spots on the knees - and collect Tesla's tea tray like usual. You walk in and set it down next to the message from Eisenhower - shit, you'd forgotten about that. Tesla reads it and then swears - he was due at a briefing half an hour ago. Shooting you an expression of pure blame, he darts out the door, tugging on his suit jacket and doing up his cuffs as he goes. You follow. What else is there for you to do? You are his liaison, after all.
Days pass and he returns to his earlier behaviour of pretending you don't have a brain in your head. You'd find it insulting if you weren't acutely conscious of how he looks at you, the way you can't sip tea without his eyes watching your lips. Everything is changed and he is desperately trying to pretend nothing has, but you're going to wait it out. He will be the one to make the first move, you're sure of it.
And you're right. The fourth night after that morning in the basement, you snap awake as though someone has poured cold water over you. He is leaning against the door, watching you. He crooks a finger in your direction, a wordless command to follow. The clock says 3.12am. Shrugging, you lurch out of bed and follow him.
"Why did you do what you did?" he asks, hands on hips in front of that damn chalkboard, back to you. You try and wake up enough to compute what is going on. Damn, couldn't he ask you this while you were awake?
"You seemed like you needed it," you reply carefully. This whole damn situation is charged, as though one wrong word and Tesla will combust. "Didn't you?" Oh, you're so going to get fired for this.
"Oh, very much so," he sighs, and that in itself is a surprise. You hadn't expected him to admit it so easily, and again you're reminded of the manifold contradictions in him. "You have no idea how much." Fuck. What do you do now?
"Is this a problem then, sir?" He wheels on you so fast you half expect him to fall from the motion, but of course he doesn't. Vampire grace.
"Of course it's a bloody problem!" he snarls. "I can't stop thinking about it when I should be working! You just - why did you - I mean - " Well, goddamn. You've rendered Nikola Tesla speechless.
"It can mean nothing if you want, Professor," you say, and hope to hell it's the right response. What does he want? In the time you've been his liaison, you've met only three people who can tolerate him for any extended period of time. He works and drinks and rarely sleeps, and that's the end of it. Surely he doesn't want a lover...
"Mean nothing?" he echoes, as though trying it on for size. "Mean nothing. Yes. Of course. It was foolish of me, to think someone like you would want to be with me." And the hopelessness in his voice stops your breath. He does want a lover. Underneath the sarcasm and the arrogance and the pride Nikola Tesla wants to be held as much as any member of the human race. "Lieutenant, I apologise for my - "
"Shut up, Professor!" you reply in exasperation and, taking his face in your hands, you kiss him. Kissing Tesla is like combustion and paranoia and surrender, except it's none of those things and when he moans against your lips and tugs you closer to him you feel like something has finally clicked into place.
He's hard against your belly and he must be able to feel that you're similarly excited, because he pulls you into the next room with vampiric speed and you find yourself back on your bed before you can blink. The difference is this time you have a Serbian genius vampire looming over you, sliding his suit jacket off with painstaking grace, skin flickering a little in the light of the lone candle.
"Let me." The thought of undressing him, pristine spotless Nikola and sliding skin to skin with him here, so close to the throbbing heart of the Allied command, is one of mind boggling proportions. "We really shouldn't," you whisper, thumbing at his waistcoat buttons, forcing yourself not to rip them open. "Our professional relationship will go straight to shit." Nikola snorts, a decidedly ungentlemanly noise. "And..." You ease the waistcoat off, starting in on his shirt buttons with more fervour than dexterity. He arches an eyebrow as he waits for you to coordinate your thoughts. "Did you do this with all your other liaisons?" you ask in a moment of lucidity, and this time Nikola throws back his head and laughs, the line of his neck white and clean and for some odd reason, very vampiric.
"No," he assures you, chortling. "They were all stiff-necked boring English boys with no class and girlfriends back in their little country villages." You think there's a compliment for you in there somewhere, but like everything else Nikola says, it's hidden deep below the sarcasm.
"Guess I should count myself lucky, then," you reply tartly, but you can't hide your grin as he shakes off his shirt and his hands go to the fastenings of your trousers.
"Very much so," he purrs, and blows out the candle.
The next day, aching a little but utterly satisfied, you expect things to be different. For Nikola to be different. You can barely look at him without remembering the weight of him on top of you, the low moans he made in the back of his throat, the way his hips pushed tight and hard against yours when he came and you felt a little like God to bring him so far down from his usual heights. But he regards you with the usual detachment crossed with mild annoyance when you bring the tea tray first thing in the morning, the annoyance only heightening when he discovers camomile tea in the pot instead of his usual black. More vicious Serbian curses and it wouldn't matter except for the way he'd cried out in his native tongue when he'd came, last night, and afterwards when you'd rested your chin against his lightning-fast heartbeat and he'd stroked his claws through your hair.
Somehow you get through the day, to collapse down on your cot and sigh, loudly, into your hands. There is a brief pause in the scratching of the chalk in the next room and then it goes on, just another of the noises that come at all hours from Nikola's lab. The hum of electricity followed by flickering lights and the whine of machinery, the whir of engine parts and the delighted laughter of a genius utterly entranced by his work - all of these you have grown accustomed to, relish, even. And maybe you think he wouldn't come, but you remain dressed and waiting and sure enough there he is, half an hour later, at the door with a bottle of wine. Go figure.
"I want to know everything about you," he murmurs later, the sound of his voice the only discernable noise left in the world. And the feeling's mutual. It might be your job to collect information but you want Nikola's real secrets, the tiny unknown scraps that make up the entire fascinating whole. He might want to hear you talk but you want to dive right into him and find out every secret, every fleeting thought, about you or otherwise. Nikola has over eighty years of thoughts and dreams and ideas; you have had just over twenty. You can't imagine anything you have to say could be of interest to him, but he listens to you with an expression not quite calculating but close, as though he's taking everything you say and fitting it into a profile of what he knows about you, slotting the pieces into place with great difficulty.
You like that. You like that he can't quite figure you out as easily as he does the rest of the universe. On a purely survival based level, yes, but on a personal one too, as you lie here with him, unravelling from the inside out. Your favourite poet is Whitman and your favourite singer is Billie Holiday. You prefer beer to wine - Nikola calls you a philistine and you accept it with good grace - and if you had a thousand bucks you'd give most of it away. You never want to be hungry again like you were as a kid and then a teenager, and maybe you'd be more than a little crooked if you hadn't ended up in the forces. You've never been in love.
So many truths you confide to Nikola, but never the great, obvious, shrieking one that demands every iota of your attention save for when you and Nikola are lying together, spent, and he speaks of the universe in the darkness. Of mysteries, both those he has solved and he is yet to discover the solutions to, but all of which that set his genius mind humming. Only when his soft, clipped voice speaks in the dark does your mind be set at ease, and it both relieves and frightens you. Relieves, because the weight of your burden is enough to nearly drive you mad, and frightens, because you fear the day will come that you slip up and someone - Nikola - finds out your status as a double agent.
The hidden sweetness in him astounds you. One night he makes a few necessary bribes - you scold him, of course, but he grins and you dismiss your ire - and the two of you stroll through a deserted, moonlit public garden, scant light illuminating a world where all is dark. You can see the stars, all of them, wartime necessary lightlessness recast as romantic. The bombs for once do not fall and Nikola holds your hand as you wander along. Bathed in silvery light he is a true vampire, a gentleman fiend of the night stalking his prey, and you have never wanted him more.
When you tell him such, on a whim, he goes quiet until you reach a rotunda, and then sets up one of his inventions, a small oddly shaped device - you have so far been unable to tell what it does. But then In The Mood issues from it, soft and slow and devastatingly sweet, and you save the praise you know he'll want later as he swings you into his arms under the stars. Being happy has never been so easy.
But it is not all moonlight and roses, of course, not with Nikola as a lover. You've never understood that phrase, for roses have thorns and the night holds many dangers, but now you do. Now you've had one of those ridiculous, cliched moments your sisters used to read from their romance novels aloud, sighing with longing. You'd exchanged eye rolls with your brothers, cracking jokes that made your sisters throw things at you. But now you have, thanks to your surprisingly romantic paramour. Regardless, Nikola is the same as he ever was in terms of his personality, and sometimes he can cut.
"Lieutenant," he begins barely a week into the arrangement, standing with hands on hips before his chalkboard.
"David," you reply. It is your name, after all, but glares at you with icy eyes that call you a fool without him needing to utter a word. It cuts you adequately down to size, a colleague at best, by no means a lover.
"Lieutenant," he stresses. "Please deliver these to Eisenhower immediately and - "
"Don't you want to call me by my name?" you ask later, curled up against Nikola's chest in bed. This time, you've both remembered to lock the door. Nikola shifts under you, as though uneasy.
"It's not that. We just... it is imperative we keep our professional and personal relationships separate," he replies. "David," he teases.
"I get it," you nod. "No distractions."
But you've been distracted for years now, worn down by your double role to the point you'll have an affair with your charge just to feel something other than weariness and doubt and shame. It's difficult to admit that, to simplify your complex feelings for Nikola down to something so basic, but it's true.
He tousles your hair affectionately. When his guard is down he is playful, affectionate really, his sharp edges softened until his barbs no longer sting but rather fizz pleasantly, a sign of his regard rather than an expression of his superiority. Sometimes you look at him during the day and hardly believe he is the same man that whispers filthy murmurs in your ear in bed, words so indecent you can't help but reach involuntarily for a bar of soap to wash his pretty mouth out with. Your mother used to do that when you said bad words as a kid, the habit is ingrained in you. A vestige from childhood, a fleeting echo that causes a dual sensation of nostalgia and relief.
Overall this time is sweet, but with overtones of something dark lingering on the horizon. D-Day advances like a bird of prey swooping overhead, and the atmosphere at Allied command goes from tense to impossibly taut, as though one false move and the entire building will erupt and collapse into miserable chaos. Doctors Magnus and Watson and Mr Griffin stop by again; Nikola throws a fit when he discovers he can't go with them to France. Eisenhower has to be brought in to expressly tell Tesla he will be shot if he attempts to get on a plane, and the resulting Serbian tirade has the three operatives rolling their eyes and Eisenhower throwing up his hands in disgust.
Calming him down takes four expensive bottles of wine, Doctor Magnus stroking his arm gently, and the combined reasoning of Doctor Watson and Mr Griffin. Eventually Nikola perks up enough to explain how his autotype works; you see Griffin's eyes glaze over while Doctor Watson looks mildly envious and Doctor Magnus encouraging crossed with a little awe. You know how she feels. Nikola's intelligence is beyond parallel.
You're reading files in the next room when she pokes her head in. You stand automatically, surprised and a little bemused. You've barely exchanged a dozen words with her; honestly, you find her intimidating. "Don't get on my account," she says, holding one hand up as if to emphasise her words. "I only wanted a word with you."
"I'm at your service," you reply, and something hard moves into her eyes.
"I wanted to talk to you about your relationship with Nikola," she enunciates crisply, and you feel your eyebrows jerk up in shock.
"My relationship, ma'am?"
"You're with him now." It is not a question. Her eyes are blue steel, beautiful lips set in a hard line. You can appreciate her loveliness objectively, like a statue or a painting, but it leaves you cold. There is coldness behind those eyes, no way of lying to her.
"Yes." For a moment you fear she can see your secret, perceive it with some unknown and alien sense you have no knowledge of, but then she smiles.
"Take care of him," she requests, and you nod even as she's stepping away, back towards the figure who has just stepped through the door. Nikola.
"Stealing my liaison as well as my ideas, Helen?" he drawls, but there's acid in it. She loops her arm through his and the sight doesn't hurt, no it doesn't, not a bit, not at all. Keep telling yourself that.
"Of course," she agrees lightly, steering him back towards the hum of conversation from the others. "When have I not?"
And so the afternoon passes. They will be in France tomorrow, and if all goes well, it may well be recovered. This is your cue, your time. What you have been so ideally placed for. You don't need to speak to your superiors to know that this is what they have been waiting for all along, and your task is at hand. But God, you don't have to like it.
Nikola's keen eyes watch his friends go and betray nothing, and you think perhaps he might be all right now. But that night in bed he is harsh, forcing you to pleasure with an unerring single-mindedness. He needs something to take his mind off of his friends' imminent departure to a war zone. You get it. But coupled with your own concerns and fears it is just one more weight dragging you down, and Nikola can tell, you know. It's only a matter of time before he works it out. After your lovemaking he leaves to return to his chalkboard and you turn over to face the wall, acutely aware that tomorrow will be the day your world changes.
It starts out ordinarily enough. You bring in the tea tray like normal, are sharply rebuked for the heinous crime of bring camomile instead of black, and insulted a little. The quips are especially harsh this morning. He's out of his head with worry about his colleagues in France, particularly Doctor Magnus. It doesn't take a genius to work out how much he cares for her, loves her, even. It's just another reminder he is a different creature to you, that there are parts of him you will never be able to claim. And that's all right. You always knew this wouldn't last forever.
So you trade off the usual barbs with him. He mentions the Japanese invasion of China, and you can't help but roll your eyes, knowing you're in for another outlandish story that nevertheless will keep you on the edge of your seat. It's probably even true.
By the time the message comes through, fragmented, barely useful, he's finished up and you're waiting with him. You manage to talk him into letting you take the message to Eisenhower and then calmly, deliberately, you walk downstairs to the empty showers and lean wearily against the wall, waiting for enough time to pass that it makes sense for you to have seen Eisenhower. Today will be the last day.
You'd better go back upstairs and screw Nikola.
You make some half-assed excuses and feel like your duplicity is written on your forehead, but amazingly he doesn't spot it, consumed in his own frustration. You know how it feels, when it's as though every cell of your body is screaming to be in a place other than where you are. And so when he turns and growls, tension bubbling over, it doesn't surprise you at all, only that he bothered to turn away to hide his vampirism in the first place.
He straightens his jacket, muttering about damning the protocols, and you panic. "Sir, you're too late." The planes are oveheard on their way to France.
"Those damn fools," he whispers, and you wish, oh you wish, that you could change everything. That you are just a normal soldier and that when this war is over you and Nikola could have a life together. But you have been a spy of the Reich forever and a day and there's only one thing left to do, to take with you to prison or death or whatever comes your way.
NIkola is still stunned and abruptly you drop your Lieutenant persona, casting it away like so much unwanted baggage. You smile, advancing towards him, swinging your hips like a back alley whore, but it works. He's distracted already. "Stop fretting," you whisper into his ear, see the hairs stand up on the back of his neck from your breath. "They'll be fine."
"What if they're not?" he worries. "What if they need me? I am a vampire, you know, I'd come in handy in an assault - "
It's not the first time you've kissed him to shut him up, but it might be the last. He goes rigid and then relaxes, hand fisting in your hair. "Not playing fair," he informs you when you separate for air, and you reply to that blatantly untrue fact by kissing him again.
You're glad you locked the door. You've been intimate with Nikola in a few less than standard places; closets, disused offices, of course the showers in the basement that very first time... but never here in his lab. This is sacred space, where he does his work, and then you realise you don't care even as you're tugging off his clothes, careful not to tear or rip anything. He's fastidious like that.
You hoist him straight of the ground, depositing him on the desk by the autotype, and a hasty accidental movement sends the machine whining. "Watch the damn autotype!" Nikola orders, except his words get a little lost in the middle when you yank off his trousers. "Stupid, sloppy American - Christ, do that again..."
You fumble for the vial of oil in your trouser pocket - always come prepared; you are a soldier, after all - but one press of your slicked fingers and Nikola slaps your hands away. "Get on with it," he hisses, and you oblige, sinking into him in one quick movement that knocks the breath from your chest.
Nikola groans, and then again. Fuck.
The whole building is on massively high alert and your lover isn't exactly keeping his voice down, the rocking of the table aside. You bite his ear warningly after a particularly loud moan. "Niko, you have to be quiet!" you pant, and a moment later he responds by biting you hard where your shoulder meets your throat. The ease with which the skin gives is an indication he's lost control, and sure enough when you raise your hand to the wound it comes back slick with blood.
Nikola looks absolutely horrified. "God, are you all right?" he asks, and with a sudden illumination of an idea you thrust hard and fast, and simultaneously tug him forward so his lips meet the bleeding wound.
Nikola gasps and then laps at the blood, and then comes, still suckling at your throat even as he shivers against you. It doesn't take you long after that, not with the way his tongue is fluttering against your skin and the boneless way he slumps against you.
"Bloody hell," he murmurs and shocked, you begin to laugh.
"They'll make an Englishman of you yet, Nikola," you tease, and he swats at you half-heartedly. Good thing he's just come, otherwise that swat might have hurt.
It takes a few minutes for you to gather up the energy to move. Nikola needs far less time, of course, but he waits patiently for you. There's little else for him to do now but wait, you know - he's far too worried to get any real work done.
Sighing, you pull away from him, one hand going to the wound on your throat as the other fumbles your trousers back on. The wound is still oozing, tacky with drying blood. "Nice one," you mutter.
"Don't be so melodramatic. Wait a minute," he says. You obey. Nikola nips his thumb and then presses it against your wound. When he draws his hand away, it is sealing. You touch it, a little horrified. "Will I be - "
"No," he replies, wiping away the excess blood with a dampened handkerchief. "It takes a great deal more blood than that." He looks down, looks away, looks anywhere other than you and moves to the other side of the room before he seems able to murmur, "Would that be so terrible?"
You can't bring yourself to look him in the eye. "I have to change," you reply - you're still in your blood-spattered shirt and your trousers are more than a little torn.
"Yes, of course." You can practically see Nikola retreat into himself and on a whim you cross the room, kissing him one more time, pulling away only when he responds.
"No," you murmur. "Forever with you wouldn't be that bad at all."
There will be no forever. This has been the last time.
All your interfering has not been enough to stop Magnus, Griffin, and Watson from succeeding in their task. They will succeed, and the Reich will fall.
When you return, Nikola is sprawled out in a chair, wine (as ever) in hand and a contemplative expression on his face, neat and tidy once more. Despite your best efforts before, tension is still written into every line of the body you've come to know as well as your own. You kneel automatically, picking up scattered papers knocked from the desk in the height of passion.
The message comes through and he hands it off to you with the air of a sacred trust. And once more you retreat and hide, in the showers where that first encounter had occurred, feeling the presence of him here. Knowing you are betraying him and loathing it, but you have long been a servant to a stronger cause than love and you can see the signs; the war will soon be over. The Reich will lose and eventually, one way or another, someone will recall something odd about your behaviour at one point or another and you will be discovered. Or perhaps sooner. In a few hours it will all be ended. When Nikola sees Eisenhower again he will discover your duplicity - if he doesn't work it out on his own, of course. The man is a genius. You can't imagine the kind of revenge he'll take, and you don't particularly care to. You've always known you might die young, that spies take all manner of risks and you've been lucky to survive this long. It hardly matters anymore. You've always wanted to know what being in love was like, and now you do.
Yet when you enter the lab for the last time you open the dossier on the desk, pull out your notebook, write down the intel. You wait. And when the autotype clicks to life it is as if the weight of the world is leaving you.
Auf wiedersehn.
"What was it?" asks Nikola in German, and you cannot see him. Just like the first time you ever met him. But then there he is, advancing towards you with the slow grace of a true predator. And as he comes into the light you have to physically repress your recoil of fear. You've seen fragments that piece together a whole but never Nikola in all his vampiric glory - or should you say monstrosity? He's horrific.
He's also the man you're in love with.
"German parents? Ancestry in the Fatherland?" He switches to English, but you hardly notice. There are more pressing things to be dealt with. "Or just plain old garden variety greed?" His hand is on your throat with unimaginable speed, where he'd bitten down only hours ago. The skin is sensitive, newly healed, and you lean away from the murderous talons that are your lover's hands. "How long?"
"I was recruited by the SS when I was still at West Point. My family supports the Reich. It was my duty." He sighs, as though that was exactly what he had expected, and lets you go.
"You were good. I was better." He shrugs a little as if to say, I'm better than everyone, and you half smile. You didn't need to be told that.
"How did you figure it out?" you ask, morbidly curious.
"Simple logic, really. You see, Ike would never have launched Overlord if he knew Druitt was in France. But then it suddenly dawned on me, what if the good general wasn't actually getting any of the information I've been providing him with? Or worse. What if someone tipped off the SS in Carentan about Helen and her mission?" Those claws are back again, this time light against your skin, Nikola's voice low enough to send a thrill of fear down your spine. You crossed the line when your actions affected Doctor Magnus and the rest of the Five.
"Oh, but you made me like you," and that's all the admission you're ever going to get.
"Professor, I - " Something tightens in his face at the title and God, oh, God, why didn't you call him Niko, Nikola - hell, sweetheart would have been better than his title right at that particular moment.
"Enjoy your tribunal, Lieutenant," and no, oh God, no, this can't be how it ends, not these months of frustration and fear and sheer exhilaration and love -
The last you see of him, he is standing immobile, in the middle of the room, watching you go. Human once more. Part of you likes to imagine he is standing there watching you go, stands there thinking of you long after the sun has sunk below the horizon, but you know that is foolishness.
He has his work to be getting on with, after all.
epilogue
Time is a curious thing.
When you have little of it, it runs as fast as sand trickling through fingers. You remember those fleeting weeks with Nikola as though they flew by, and you were little more than an observer in your own life story. But now? Now every minute is elongated, extending far beyond its usual capabilities into a fearsome, stretched-tight thing distorted far out of reason. In prison time is as a great an enemy as the walls and the guards and the monotony, and you have a very real horror of the clock on the wall, quietly shortening the time you have left, an enemy you cannot kill.
How did you get here?
The answers are easy, but finding the will to ask the questions is the difficult part. You'd been taken away and locked up, tried and found guilty, another one of those fiendishly speedy processes. In no time at all you'd been here, staring at your four walls and wondering how many minutes your body has left to grant you. You do a lot of thinking these days, about the fevered and terrifying years of the war, about that frantic time back when you thought the Reich might still win the war. Prison has been a relief, in one sense, at least. You don't have to lie to anyone here, everyone knows what you did and everyone judges you for it. There is no need to hide anything. And God, that is a hell of a relief. The Reich has fallen and Germany has been chopped up in order to be rigorously controlled, so that nothing of this nature ever occurs again. You keep hearing words: atrocity, barbaric, monstrous. You read about the concentration camps and vomit every night for a month. You didn't know they were doing this. Oh, you knew that they were systematically reducing the rights of the Jewish people, chipping away at the liberties, but murder? State sanctioned murder? And that in itself infuriates you, partly because in your deepest heart you knew there was an endgame, a consummation to the horror unravelling within the Reich. You'd suspected. You just hadn't admitted it to yourself.
You're thirty three and you've been in prison for a decade, and you've had a long time to think. You can't imagine how the world has changed out there; you only know that it is a certainty that it has. So many of the boys you knew at West Point are dead; the rest would probably kill you on sight. You are a traitor in their eyes, after all, but your allegiance was always to the Reich, except of course when it wasn't.
And your parents have retreated from you like you're carrying a plague, traitor disease, and no one comes too close for fear it will spread from you. Your brothers and sisters had been horrified, and your parents just pretended they had never so much as thought of the Reich as anything other than a bane on the world. You were the oldest, the sacrificial lamb. They are done with you and you are done with them. There is only one person left in the world that matters to you, and here he is.
You'd been informed you had a visitor, and obligingly you'd shuffled out in your chains to the small, cramped visiting room. He'd had his back to you when you walked in and you hadn't recognised him from behind, until you looked down at the perfect ass you'd frequently thought about over the last decade. And when he turns around you can't stifle a gasp. It makes him smirk. Of course it does, the smug bastard.
It's hardly fair. Nikola looks as though he's stepped out of your memories (aside from the clothes, of course) and you find a new wrinkle every day, a new line to mark the slow and unavoidable march that is your aging body. You're not exactly ancient, of course, but you're no longer young in any real way that counts. War makes men of boys and you were a man long before you saw a battlefield, before Portsmouth. And his clothes... is this how people dress these days? Gone are his pristine suits and slicked back hair; in their place is slacks and a button down shirt, and hair so wild your fingers ache a little to bury themselves in it. Sighing, you sink into the hard chair. You feel too old for all of this. You look older than he does, now.
"Professor," you acknowledge coolly. He smirks and the sight of it sends your head spinning down a hundred memories, of that lab at Portsmouth where he changed your world. Didn't really matter in the end, did it? You're still rotting in jail.
"Lieutenant," he acknowledges, and you frown.
"Not anymore," you remind him, and he nods.
"Neither am I," he replies, and you snort.
"Never really were, were you? Except none of us had any idea what else to call you, back then."
He exposes one eyetooth in a predatory grin, but the memory of his gleaming shark fangs is enough that anything less has no effect on you. "Too true," he purrs, but the expression is disintegrating on his face like paper in flame. You feel your own carefully maintained expression of apathy melt away into shock as he crumples from the inside out, eyelashes fluttering like mad and face drawn taut. He's falling apart right in front of you and you can hardly believe it. You were a bit on the side during a war, for God's sake, not his beloved, not even the same species. He has always had little regard for humans. There is no sane reason for the tears gathering in his eyes.
Except maybe that he was as much in love with you back in Portsmouth as you'd been with him.
No. You've gone mad. It's the only explanation to the current fantasy rattling around in your brain, that Nikola is here, sobbing into his hands over your betrayal. "Why'd you do it?" he practically whimpers, sinking down to the table for support. You can't see his face but you know his lips better than you know your own and you can picture them in your mind. It makes your heart hurt. "Didn't you love me?" he asks, and there, there in his voice is your Professor Tesla, the one who lay in your arms and explained the mysteries of the universe.
"Of course I loved you," you reply in pure spontaneity, reaching for him. Your shackles only allow your hands to move a little but it is enough, just enough to brush a few strands of electrified dark hair. "I still do."
At that he stills, quiets. Long minutes pass as he gets control of himself and his breathing evens, and he finally removes his hands from their protective covering of his expression . A coldness steals across his face; it's an unfamiliar pain that frosts over to a cool resolve. "Yes," he murmurs, inspecting his taloned fingers - his hands might be claws but his face remains human, eyes that steely blue. "Yes, you would say that, wouldn't you?"
You know exactly what he's getting at. "Why would I say that, Nikola?" you inquire, retracting your fingers and folding them together. "Go on, tell me."
He smirks, but there is a river of ice beneath his words. "You'd tell me anything... anything to be free."
"Free?" you ask, knowing exactly what he's thinking. "I'll never be free."
"You could be," he replies, waving one elegant hand at you. "Vampire, remember?"
"I remember," you assure him, and his eyes melt, just a little. "You can free me?"
"If I want," he retorts noncommittally, and that makes you smile. You feel the ugly set of it start in your heart and work up to your lips, and by the time it's there Nikola is looking more than a little disturbed.
"You could but you won't," you murmur, leaning towards him as far as you can. It isn't much. "That's not the reason you're here. You just want me to know you could, if you wanted to, and you don't. That I'm going to rot here until I die, and you don't care. Let me tell you one thing, Professor. You can't hurt me," you enunciate, rattling your chains for emphasis. "You can kill me or you can taunt me with your little words, but I'm dead. I died when the Reich did." Somehow you manage to stand, thumping the table to get the guard's attention. "Guard! Mr Tesla is finished with me."
Nikola stands, electric eyes locked onto yours. "So wise," he drawls, even as the guard approaches. "So many thoughts you must have time for in this... place." Still as sarcastic as ever. You don't know why you'd have expected him to have changed. "But you're wrong. That's not why I came."
"No?" you ask, more than a little surprised and refusing to show it. "Then why are you here?" Nikola leans close to you, one eyebrow cocked, and you can't help but lean into him. Maybe he'll do you a favour and rip your throat out.
"I just liked the thought of you in chains," Nikola whispers with the air of a secret. Amused against your will, you begin to laugh, and Nikola's eyebrows crinkle at the corners in a hidden smile. "Until we meet again, Lieutenant," he drawls, and you're reminded of the first time you met him, that gauging expression, weighing and measuring and finding you not quite wanting. And you smile back.
"Auf wiedersehn," you call to his retreating back. He flashes you a wink over his shoulder.
Next time you meet, you'll be ready.