Disclaimer: All belongs to Damien Kindler and Stage 3 Media and Ms. Tapping and all the usual suspects who aren't me. Just borrowing these beautiful people. Thanks for the favor)
Pairings: Helen/Will

For a meme on LJ, Kat_Rowe asked me "Magnus and Will... when/where/how was their first time? And what I thought was going to be a a quick comment-drabble, turned into a proper fic. Oops.:)

"One Night"
By
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2009

Their night came after the loss of Ashley. Far after. Because he knew Helen was broken for a long time (maybe fractured for all eternity), even when she seemed to be utterly composed. He was her friend first and always. He would never not be there for her. Even as hard she pushed him away. He was her pillar, her saviour, her everything when her world fell apart, and as much as she asked for so little, hardly took anything he held out to her, he was the sole force keeping her standing. On some level they both knew this. They were family from those days forward.

They were a team.

Helen Magnus and Will Zimmerman moved together, synchronious. They spoke more often in unison when ideas seemed to leap between them on a current of thought.

One night, in the only hotel room left in a small town in Mexico (apparently thick with shapeshifters), they threw caution to the winds of exhaustion, and didn't flinch when the clerk said there was only one bed. They showered and changed out of their dirt and sweat-crusted clothes and fell gratefully into bed. The first night they just slept like the dead, staying on their own sides without fail, woke in the morning, took turns in the bathroom and all was clean and neat.

The second night, Helen jerked awake in the dark from one hell of a nightmare, and a sleep-grogged Will acted before his daytime censors kicked in.

"Magnus...hey, easy...," he murmured, and he reached out and pulled her against him, tucked her into his arms like they had done this time and again. He didn't consider maybe he shouldn't have done this, until she was resting on his pillow, back to his chest, her hair tickling his throat. "You all right?" he said into her wavy locks, asking as much about whether he had done something she couldn't handle as he was about her dream.

She was shaking. Her chest rose and fell beneath his arm with her accelerated breath. But she nodded, and she didn't pull away. "I'm all right," she said. Her voice breaking.

Will whispered to her and stroked her hair. They fell asleep still tangled.

In a first class seat, on a commercial flight from Mexico City to Atlanta, Helen Magnus sipped her tea and brushed the backs of her knuckles against Will's wrist. "I'm getting used to you, Will," she said softly, words near inaudible above the engine's roar. Her gaze never lifted to his. "I didn't want to do that," she whispered.

Will looked at her with tender concern, but he didn't speak. He couldn't fathom the pains and needs of a century and a half of life. Of being suspended in time, removed from the simplest human comforts.

One night, in a restaurant in Old City where the team was celebrating Henry's birthday, Henry jogged out onto the rickety elevated dance floor and drug Kate with him. He motioned to the others to join, and Will looked at Helen and held out his hand. She accepted his offer as a slower song began. They danced, moving with the same synchronicity that had infused their working lives. When the song ended, and Will expected he should back away, Helen tightened her hold on his shoulder and said softly, "One more. Please."

He looked into her eyes for what felt like forever, and something changed.

On a warm Sanctuary balcony in the beginnings of spring, Will discovered that brushing his fingers against the soft skin at the small of Helen's back, right along the inward curve of her spine, would make her soften and sigh. That his touch could take away the years.

He noticed more often how quite simply...beautiful she was. He wished more often that he had known her before the world had beaten her down so damned hard.

Casual touches grew warmer. Hugs turned to holds. Forehead to forehead comforts merged into reassuring lips pressed to lips.

Helen and Will's first time was incredibly simple, for the exotic complexity of their lives. They were seated by the library fire, reading through casefiles, researching an ancient paranormal with dusty books spread all around; making correlations and connecting the dots. Will said something goofy and Helen dissolved into giggles that drastically defied her years and melted his soul. Then she was teasing him, and she crawled over near, pointing a mocking and accusing finger at his chest, and without forethought he caught the finger and kissed it.

Gazes softened, lips met through lingering smiles. Then Helen was half across his lap, and he had her solidly in his arms.

That night, they didn't stop on a whispered lie. There was no brilliant declaration, no passionate trigger or breathtaking scenery. Just a warmth and a kind of intimacy and comfort neither of them had felt in a long long time. A mixture of contentment and sadness colored Helen's eyes, and Will's stomach hurt as he watched her and he nestled his fingers into her hair. He couldn't fix her life. He couldn't promise she wouldn't lose him breath by breath and day by day. She couldn't promise he wouldn't lose her in a flash of horror.

But for this night, for the foreseeable future, they were all right. They were together.

Will was correct in his theory about the ancient abnormal. Helen agreed and wanted another cup of tea.

But they had made their way to Helen's bedroom before breaking the rules of decorum, left the books and the tea set haphazard across the library. They lay together, entangled and warm in the aftermath, and neither of them felt the slightest inclination to move.

**