Hello to all my dear readers! Although this isn't the sequel to my piece titled Monster as some of you may or may not have hoped, it's still this thing that's been buzzing around in my head since the end of the semester. Let me know if you like it. It's pretty long. I snuck some Serbian into this one, and from past experience I know google translate can seriously butcher a language, so if you have a discerning eye for Serbian just let me know if I sound like a crazy, ridiculous American that makes no sense. I promise you won't hurt my feelings. :) Just in case you didn't notice, this piece is rated M, so if you have no interest in reading mature content, think sex is icky, or blush when you read the word penis, this story is not for you. Turn back now, while you still can. If none of those apply to you, then feel free to be extremely excited!
Edit: I had to remove the non-english alphabet symbols/letters from the Serbian due to the fact that the document did crazy things with it after I uploaded.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sanctuary.
A crisp static in the air echoed the icy buzz in her veins when she knocked on the mahogany door that stood before her, rich and sentry-like. The knock itself echoed in her mind, even after the wooden sentinel retreated inwards and she was led down a set of stairs, and then another, towards a basement. With a chill of uncertainty, she entered.
She was at a breaking point. Her control, once so neatly ordered and systematic, was now an echo of what it had once been; it was now a mere vestige of thin and fragile glass that protected her from that which was her worst and darkest desires. It terrified her, how close she was to something she would never dream of reckoning, and what she was doing now added to that fright a sense of insecurity that she couldn't quite shake.
It wasn't strictly a wise decision, but she'd done enough meddling to know that, as of today, there was no going back. She needed something, and he could provide. It was all in the plan, after all.
Specifically, aside from her steely designs towards the future, she didn't want to be alone anymore—and the knowledge that she was only a few feet from him, a man she'd known for the better part of her life and on whom she could on most days rely, was as much a comfort as a risk.
The year was both crucial and irrelevant.
His eyes, when he looked up from what he was doing at the sound of disturbance, flew over her as if in disbelief. He was momentarily frozen, his face a blank, but in a heartbeat his lips curled into a smile she knew for a fact she hadn't been privy to in quite a number of years.
As he approached her across the pristine floor of the laboratory, he was still beaming radiantly. She was reminded of the phrase 'a kid in a candy shop.'
"Helen," he breathed.
She didn't bother with pleasantries. Formal may have been the standard fashion of the time, but she'd been alive far too long to make an effort at playing by the rules—plus, that smile had caught her off-guard.
"Nikola," she managed between breaths, rushing to his side. He was distinctly different and same, and she recognized that the difference was vital to understand lest she ruin what was likely her most dedicated secret since her introduction to the continuation of her father's work.
She threw her arms around him and held on tight, suddenly stricken by the fact that it had been years since she'd had this type of physical intimacy with even the most distant of friends—years spent in the shadow of regret and echoes of her past, with dim hopes of brighter days.
Sensing in her boldness that something was off, he held himself apart from her to view her expression. "Something's wrong."
A shake of her head attempted to convince him otherwise, but she couldn't help the tightening in her throat, the cracks in glass. "Simply put, I'm just glad to see you."
He looked unsure, somewhere between a frown and a smile at her words, and it was oddly endearing. "Helen…I thought you were in Birmingham. Not that I'm not pleased to see you, but if you were looking for Alabama I'd advise you to take a closer look at an atlas."
It awarded him a sad smile. He was right. She was in Birmingham…at least, the Helen Magnus that belonged in this time frame was.
"Something's come up," she told him a little too brightly. "I need to ask a favor."
His expression darkened, and it surprised her. Clearly, an actively concerned Nikola Tesla was something that would take a little getting used to.
In the future, she could expect any number of painfully marked quips to this request; for one, even asking would be the opportunity to stroke his egregiously large ego.
"Anything," he said, with such sincerity it made her head spin. The lack of flirtation was actually a little disappointing at this stage, but neither was she complaining.
Struggling to keep her pulse in check, she didn't answer him straight away. Instead, she removed herself to a respectable distance and took his hands in hers. "Not now. Strictly speaking, it isn't an urgent matter."
They had at least a hundred years to go, after all.
His look conveyed confusion. An unannounced visit for a problem that could wait?
Yet there was another point of interest she had not verily admitted, even to herself, that was involved in the fissures creeping their way down her resolve and the way his veracity, something both old and new, skirted its way under her skin. She'd had more than one affair in mind in coming to him, more than one need—compulsion, really.
"I'm not in any danger, Nikola. This can wait."
He still didn't look very convinced. "Until…?"
"Until morning, I should think."
At that, his face lit up. "Then you're staying the night?"
Another crack, and she nodded. "Yes."
He was right there, right before her in the flesh, and it had been too long. Too, too long.
When she clutched at him anew, this time as a provocation rather than a welcoming, he caught her in alarm. She dug into him, verifying his reality with every ounce of her strength, and the feel of him shot through her a pang of need so deep she shivered, pressing herself to him in more than passion.
"Dear God," she whispered to his neck. "I've missed you."
It wasn't something she'd normally readily admit, but she was so close to the edge that it hardly mattered. He shifted under her grip, taken aback, but she didn't miss the effect on him: he was breathless.
"Why, I'm flattered." A touch of his wit cascaded tingles down the length of her spine. An echo of his future self. "Helen, you look terrible. Tell me; it's in your best interest."
Tell him how she was forced to endure sitting idly by whilst horrifying things, things she knew how to stop, played out in front of her? How she was trapped with her sufferings doubled, dually reminded of each of her regrets and failings? How she was forced to live with the knowledge that again, her daughter was going to die, and she was to simply let it happen? Let Ashley, her Ashley, become sentenced to death?
Tell him how she planned on singlehandedly turning the world on its head and destroying everything she knew and loved for the sake of survival?
She'd changed her mind at least a dozen times, but it was too late now. She could tell no one.
It was difficult enough to think of, let alone speak on.
She was trembling, and he noticed. He didn't dare hold her any tighter for propriety's sake, but he did a fair job of stroking at her back, soothing circles into an ache she hadn't even known existed there within the threading of her muscles. For as long as it took for her to regain a sense of composure, he waited.
When she still said nothing, he shifted so that he could better proposition her with a look that went straight through her eyes and down to the base of her spine. "Helen," he cautioned.
She could feel herself biting at her lip and knew it was a sure sign to him that all was not well. The last time he would have seen her this distraught, this close to the edge, was after John. Though this may not have rivaled that in its visible intensity, she had no qualms in admitting it was just as debilitating and left her just as raw. It was the same sort of throb, the same hollowness, the same kind of sucking her bone-dry, and she was tired. So tired.
She was losing it. Her resolve was slipping, and it was just as clear to him now as it would have been to him 100-some years in the future.
Without really meaning to, she leaned into him. Even though she felt a lot like collapsing on his floor and never moving from that position, never standing, never getting back up, she contradicted this with a small smile, for his sake.
"In the morning," she promised him finally. It was a little halfhearted, knowing the majority of what she promised him was strictly business, but that was not the only reason she had come to him specifically.
There was much, much more to her visit than simple talk of shop, and if she played her cards right then it would have little to no effect on her plans for the future.
Nikola did little to hide his disappointment, and she found it was refreshing. She did so miss this side of him and the clarity that had once graced their communication.
Interestingly, she found she missed his devilish flirtation, their little game of tit-for-tat, just as terribly as she missed the man himself, and it was an odd feeling to know she missed a man who was standing right in front of her, giving her a critical eye.
"Shall I show you to a room," he proposed, a little unsure, "or would you prefer to be left to your own devices?"
"A room, please," was her smooth reply.
He looked to be on the verge of saying something, but he stopped himself and switched tactics. "Might I suggest the eastern wing? You'll love the view, I promise."
"No, I don't think so," she said, with the pretense of thinking on it. It caught him off-guard, and she found some amount of distraction from herself in the amusement of his uncertainty.
"What do you have in mind?" He said it with a hint of slyness, and she adored it more than she would ever admit.
"Your room, I think." Tonight, she would not—could not—be alone.
He visibly balked. His mouth fell open, and he froze. It was telling of how he'd never expected his slight undertone of temptation to have succeeded, and the pure disbelief crawling across the distance between them, the unadulterated shock in the way he held himself, frozen, was a delight.
"My…" He looked her over in disbelief a moment longer, just to be sure, before recovering himself with a tremendous and unbearable grin. "My, my, Helen. It seems you're full of surprises tonight."
"Believe me, I've got plenty more where that came from."
His eyebrows shot up. "I always knew you were unpredictable, but this is rather unexpected."
"Hence the surprise."
Whatever project he'd been working on was immediately left to the spoils of abandonment in favor of briskly leading her out of the labs, down multiple hallways, and across the street. Inside this new building, several flights of stairs led them to a heavy-set pair of double doors, which he flung open without a second thought to reveal plush red carpeting and a bed that was a million miles wide.
"I believe you've outdone yourself," she remarked, trying and failing to sound nonchalant.
"You know me," he shrugged back at her.
There was a certain irony in his statement that he failed to catch, but there was no way for him to know. He had no idea just what the range of his statement was, and how desperately she wanted to tell him how close he actually was to the truth.
Her second step across the threshold of the thick carpeting was abruptly halted at the spot where he spun around to face her, entreating her with a sudden stillness and earnestness that ate at her heart. "If I may, my dear, make an inquiry as to your intentions?"
In other words, how far was she willing to take this?
In all honesty, she didn't know the answer to the question he was asking: a question she' d asked herself countless times before plucking up the amount of courage required to knock on his door. It was beginning to scare her, this uncertainty, and it was a symptom that urged her forward all the more readily.
"To have a good and satisfactory night, Nikola," she assured him, praying he didn't read into the statement more than he should. "Nothing more."
The look he gave her said he had, but neither did he badger her on the matter. She thanked God for small mercies.
Sweeping the inside of the space with a practiced glance, she was pleased with his efforts, however unintentional, of leaving the mark of his presence on the decidedly temporary residence. It was cleanly in a way that depicted careful vigilance in lieu of absence, and she reveled in the way it leant his particular streak of existence. There was his scent, subtle and strong, and a set of books showcasing cracked and thumb-worn bindings settled on the edge of the nearest table.
She couldn't spot a single wrinkle in the reams of sheets that cascaded over the expanse of his bed. In fact, the only visible flaw, if it could be so-named, was the way one of the windows, large-paned and spanning the entire stretch of the wall, was cracked open at its bottom.
And there he stood, standing at the center of it all with a gravity that was all his own, watching her survey his quarters and in turn taking her in. There was a slight movement on his lips that hovered like a smile, and it was an expression to which she wasn't sure she was meant to bear witness, like the face of one caught in a dream.
"As interesting a development as this is," posed Nikola casually, "in the interest of entertainment, might I suggest—"
"Wine," she implored hungrily. "Or something stronger. Scotch. Anything."
He aimed for a look of surprise at her sudden interruption, but missed the mark somewhere between studious delight and apprehension. Even before she urged him on with what was supposed to be reassurance, he was obliging her request with the hasty retrieval of a pair of crystal glasses and an unopened bottle of a dark wine that, if she was to trust the reputation of his taste, was far beyond excellent—and far beyond the standard of a normal budget.
The first sip flooded her senses rather smoothly, and it must have shown by her expression.
"Like it?" He sounded almost mischievous.
"You are to date," to any date, "the only man whose palate I'll ever trust to make selections without the benefit of my contribution."
"That would make you an exceptionally intelligent woman." He was getting bolder—probably a side-effect of the looseness of her attitude in accordance with the time, alongside the safeguard of the alcohol soon to be working against her system.
"Like it?" she parroted back.
She'd downed her first glass and was fast approaching her third as she swung herself onto the edge of his bed in a way that rumpled his sheets most agreeably. With two glasses and the unrelenting aspect of history sharp under her belt, the strain of living with herself a daily chore in the struggle provided by the past number of years, she was far past the ability to deny herself temptation.
"Exceptionally," he admitted, fairly serious. She liked this serious side of him—a trait she found she was not at all often accustomed to seeing in his future.
A single gesture on her part for him to join her had him immediately at her side. In the time it took for her to fling her glass, sloshing dangerously, to the nearest table-top she'd succeeded in dragging him down to the welcoming sheets. It was then that she remembered her extreme dislike of this century's clothing.
The style was choking her—a kind of suffocation she was proud to have suffered through the first time. When she sat up and began peeling away at her layers, clawing her way towards the removal of her corset, she found him incredulous.
"Not a word," she cautioned him, seeing the beginnings of a snide remark forming somewhere in his mind. When he looked even more daunted, she had to wonder whether or not she'd spoken too soon. This was a different Tesla, after all.
He looked away when her searching fingers tore away most of her dress, and she knew then that what she was doing was cruelty. As much as she had been, he was a product of the time.
To him, this was the equivalent of having stripped down to her underwear, and in a manner of speaking, this was her underwear. She couldn't quite contain a slight laugh.
"Pardon my impropriety," she goaded him softly, "but this is strictly a matter of comfort. And if you haven't burst into flames for looking upon the body of a woman by now, I'm afraid it's highly unlikely to occur."
That prompted him to smile again, but he was still hesitant to look anywhere but her eyes. Haughty and maddening as he had become, he was a gentleman, and it showed.
He swallowed. "How is old James doing?"
And so it came to that. …James had been giving her the eye around this time, hadn't he?
"Well enough, I expect," she answered in keeping with the stiff theme. Having broached the subject, there was a sudden stuffiness to the silence that surrounded them that she was intent on eradicating, and neither did she care to elaborate on the matter at hand.
A slight nod was his acceptance, his only remark before she laid herself at his side-dangerously close, but for whom she didn't know.
Even from a distance, she felt the presence of him weighting the mattress next to her and warming the air between them, his breath a whisper that she had to strain to catch. He returned her sweet smile a little more at ease, and she could pick out every line in the way his expression lent itself to the emotion, frozen in time.
He was very suddenly and very startlingly exactly what she needed.
Before she really even knew what she was doing, she was clinging furiously to his neck. If only out of reflex, his arms threw themselves haphazardly about her midsection when he caught her with a slight 'oof,' and his next question died on his lips when she completed the move by swooping forward to press her own lips quickly and firmly to a spot on his neck. With battered nerves, equal parts caution and exhilaration, she lacked the courage to kiss him on the mouth all in one go.
A flash of adrenaline, and she sucked in a breath while he drove one out. They balanced on a pinhead of pause, teetering there as they each waited for the other to make a move. His eyes were searching, and she knew he was trying desperately to figure out whether or not this was a good idea.
"Perhaps," he said slowly, "you'd better give me your outlook on what a 'good and satisfactory night' means to you. Because, if I'm not mistaken, I do believe we've stumbled across a minor snag that some may call misunderstanding."
"I didn't lie to you, Nikola."
"Of course you didn't. That isn't what you do; it's not your style. Your preferred method has always been to side-step over the important details, put a little guesswork into it…it's becoming something of a bad habit, from what I'm told. For instance, why you aren't in Birmingham."
"I said—"
"I know, I know. …I know. But I think I'm entitled at least a tiny little morsel of detail, don't you? Something to chew on?"
So there was the snark she knew and loved—a compliment, it seemed, of his uncertainty. Here were his walls, his boundaries, his shutting down and making a run for it all with the fancy footwork of a tart sarcasm. What really clamped down on her resolve was that he was right, and he didn't even begin to know how right he truly was.
On the second account, however, she knew that it was wrong of her to deny him at least some form of knowledge concerning her dubious behavior.
The thought of it, of what sort of position she'd put him in and what thoughts he must have been having, ate at some part of her chest that she was sure hadn't contained anything which had not already been trodden on and diffused into a thin line of bareness and nothing. She was surprised to find raw feeling, thick and sharp with all the guilt and concern she could muster without pain of eruption.
"I'm sorry," she said to the pulse in his neck, "but I promise…you will know everything when the time comes. You have my word."
"Is that everything you've been sweeping under the rug, or everything you see fit to tell me?"
The jolt that swept through her following his implication was unexpected. She'd almost forgotten how well he knew her, even now.
"Everything you'd like to know, Nikola," she said gently, cautiously. She recognized all too well the look he was harboring, and it didn't bode well. He peered across at her as he would his research, quantifying and calculating, and if she knew that if she wanted to put him at ease then she would have to do a little more than generalize.
She was losing him at a critical moment, watching the man she needed most disappear behind the same veil of equal parts affront and apathy that he reserved for the rest of the world. What brought chill-bumps to her skin was the sudden and daunting comprehension that she had been the one to bring out this sort of behavior in him, not just now, but years into their future.
She had thought he'd been the one to change first—that this less brazen side to Tesla had slowly dissipated into the years that separated them—but that was wrong. It had been her to uproot herself from his confidence, to write him off in distrust, and to seal off their correspondence in favor of her work. He'd only followed suit.
Small wonder, then, that their communiqué 100 years into the future consisted of only the most superficial of pleasantries.
Her breath came shorter than she was hoping, and she felt her tongue dry against the roof of her mouth as she leaned her forehead into the side of his jaw. Though he didn't shrink from the gesture, neither did he welcome it, and it cut deep in enough tender places to leave her with the taste of bile at the back of her mouth.
"I—" her voice shook, and she stopped. "I hope you'll forgive that I'll need to borrow your patience awhile yet." If she was looking to make amends, it might not have been the most diplomatic option, but she was taking a chance in the knowledge that Nikola was anything but conventional. The fact that she asked his forgiveness might have been enough.
His jaw tightened, and it was only when she felt the tug of his fingers in her hair that she knew he was smiling. "Za tebe, ja cu sacekati vecnost." For you, I will wait an eternity.
The tightness in her chest dissolved a fraction, but in its place there was something else. It came surging up from her core, settling just below her heart and seeping languidly throughout the rest of her like slow fire.
It had been a very long time since he had spoken Serbian to her.
On chancing a quick look to meet his eye, she saw such fondness there that she had trouble placing the expression. It looked so completely foreign on him that it was barely reconcilable with the Tesla she knew; she had to remind herself that the man before her was less the man to whom she'd grown accustomed and more a relic of her past.
The ease with which he let her off the hook was surprising, and relief had her clinging all the more to their shared warmth. She'd forgotten what it was like to have him this close—to have his fingers on her flesh and his breath fanning over the top of her head.
For a single, pristine moment, she lay still and subdued in his arms, fixed on the unyielding storm within herself and allowing its brutal existence to reach her brittle nerves. When she finally looked to him in earnest, drawing their lips together in the motion, there was a wetness at the base of her vision that Nikola didn't fail to notice.
In the precious seconds following her action he responded in kind, twisting to fasten his lips to hers in a series of gentle kisses that grew increasingly frenzied until, when he moved to release a jagged breath and cup her cheek, he felt the dampness on her skin and his eyes flew open. He cleaved ruefully away from her, frowning.
"Helen—"
"I'm fine."
He looked her over skeptically, want still clouding his gaze. "Perhaps we—"
"No."
He opened his mouth again, but she headed him off once more. "Yes, I'm quite certain. I…I'm only overwhelmed. It will pass."
Although he didn't seem fully convinced or thrilled about having been cut off, there was sincerity in the depths of the freckled azure that surveyed her. "This is really what you want?"
She nodded shakily, feeling the wine move the world around her. "Of course."
The distress and uncertainty gracing his expression then vanished into a brief and incredulous smile, but before she was able to fully appreciate this very human flash of delight he was kissing her again.
He kissed her in a way that made her feel guilty all over again. Beneath his kind touch and his shower of mild pecks, she was a sublime element of ethereal quality, a treasure, a thing of marvel. He cradled her closer, fingertips digging lightly into her back, and she slipped an arm around his waist to toy with the hem of his pants.
Sooner than she anticipated, she was sinking into a battle she had no intention of winning. The sensation of his mouth working against hers was a thing she had often tried extremely hard not to visualize, and now she was teasing her tongue along the corners of his lips and sneaking a leg into the gap between his, sighing as his hand found a place over the curve of her hip.
Throughout the lengthy ribbon of time their lives intersected, this was probably the worst point at which she might have come to him like this. It was wickedness in an era that took celibacy and frugality as remarkably serious matters—at a time when he had yet to brace himself against the challenges she presented.
Helen knew better than most how poignant a risk it was, yet she knew as she felt him shift into her that it was a risk she was more than willing to take.
His mouth twisted on hers and he made a small noise that surprised her, but before she had a chance to reflect on how she was going to take that—even as her insides lurched with the thrill—he was pulling back. The space between them was grievously still, yet it was charged with electricity. She realized she was holding her breath.
"Helen," he choked out. His voice seemed to come from far away, and she took a moment to consider how the look in his eyes implored her. "Last chance to leave with your dignity intact. I highly recommend you seize the opportunity. Given a choice between peace of mind and self-indulgence, the correct option seems to be abundantly clear, don't you think?"
His was a valid point that she might have agreed with, had they been working under the condition that she would regret her upcoming actions. As it was, she gave a slight shake of her head.
"No, Nikola," she whispered gently. "I do want this. I came here without peace of mind, without dignity…can I ask that you trust me?"
"You may, but I'd have to ask who told you I'd ever stopped." Of course he hadn't. Not yet, at least.
She couldn't quite bite back a smile, though. His candor was so refreshing that she felt almost lightheaded. …although, perhaps that was the wine.
After only a single moment of hesitation in which he drew forward to tickle the tip of her nose with his, Tesla was on her in a heartbeat, devouring the flesh of her lips at a pace that stole her breath. He wasted no time, and it was all she could do at first to keep up with the sudden change. There was a sense of urgency in the way he moved over her, and it was infectious. Although there was still a tinge of tenderness that lingered on the ends of his kisses, it was beginning to dissolve into something that made her muscles tremble.
"We really shouldn't, you know," he said huskily.
She only tugged his shirt out, sliding a hand beneath the fabric. "Frankly, that hasn't stopped either of us in the past."
His smirk was devious, and she felt the movement of his lips on the skin of her neck from where he brushed over her pulse. "If only our past was this fulfilling, hm?"
The softness of his voice and the heat of his tongue cast a shiver to raise gooseflesh over her frame, and she felt her breath come short as her heart hammered in her chest. Frantically, she twisted in his arms to allow him better access, but he had moved upwards again to slip past her teeth, prying into her with matched ferocity.
Each stroke of his hands, placed delicately at the base of her neck and the curve of her upper thigh, had her lower muscles twitching with little ripples of need. She teased him, drawing circles with a slender finger below the waistline of his pants until he was all but panting between kisses. He was the first to rock into her, achingly slow, and she found it difficult to ignore the rather physical manifestation of his need of her.
Devout in his worship of her body, he dipped as low as he dared before tracing along a clavicle towards the hollow of her neck, nipping at the skin he found there so that she struggled with the sharp sound caught in her throat. From where he buried a good portion of his face below her jaw he inhaled deeply, but his hands busied themselves working up and down the length of her sides to the point that she knew he could feel her shaking. One small slip of the hand around delicate skin, and his thumb grazed dizzyingly close to where she wanted him most.
"Bloody hell," she ground out, muscles taut, and he faltered briefly enough for her to tip the scale in her favor. Using the weight of her chest, she nudged him onto his back and straddled his hips, effectively pinning him in place.
He raked his eyes down her form in a way that boiled her insides to the core, and suddenly she was tearing at his cravat as his hands settled greedily at the base of her buttocks. She needed him, not only physically.
Years spent scraping the bottom of her soul made her realize that his presence in her life was essential. She needed his cunning, his wit, his judgment, and everything that on occasion made her want to snatch his emptied wine bottles and smash them over his skull. Their relationship was complicated and by any normal standards insane, but she couldn't pretend that she didn't keep letting him in and defending him.
Once his waistcoat joined the cravat somewhere on the floor, Tesla was lifting the trim of her thin gown up and over her head. Her skin chilled on exposure, and when he let the piece drop from his hand past the edge of the bed he brought his palms to rest at her waist.
He knew her. He'd known her for 162 years—plus the 113 it would take for her to return—or, at least, he would. Their relationship was built on a trust that was on one level in a constant state of flux, and yet she knew that their faith had deeper roots than this. Though their relationship was as versatile as the electrical current he'd originally conceived, it was also partially the reason that they—and modern electricity—worked so well. He kept her on her toes, but he supported her all the same.
As she lent herself to the buttons of his shirt he squirmed beneath her, impatient, and his movement sparked in her reason to hurry. He was arcing upward, pressing himself to her, and she swayed forward with the throbbing emptiness that was inside her.
They wounded each other often, but never outright. They were not afraid to confront one another, to criticize and rebuke. As a matter of fact, she almost enjoyed the bickering as much as the banter. More than Will had, he grounded her; they kept each other humble, or, in Tesla's case, less insolent.
His drawers were the last item to hit the floor, and for a moment they only stared across at each other. The tips of his fingers traced tingling trails down to her pelvis, and she didn't think she'd ever seen him more reverent.
Whatever feelings she had for him were not bound to the past but built upon it, and though she often ignored his advances it was not with the same reproach with which she handled John. Love, in the romantic sense, was an unpredictable and fleeting sort of term that she didn't prefer to use to categorize her life, and yet if she had to give it a definition, she was sure it was not the pursuit of a memory.
It was more the way they could, with barely a glance, know what one another was thinking, or how she always seemed to be willing to put up with his latest scheme. Perhaps the way she never really minded as much as she let on that he leeched from her wine cellar: how she always made certain that his favorite was in-stock. Even in how they waded through hypocrisy—when she'd striven to re-vamp him before it was strictly necessary, or when he'd given up the incessant plots to revive his race.
She didn't know quite what to think about these thoughts, so she didn't. Instead, she leaned forward to take his soft lips in hers, and then there was no danger of thinking. The length of the digit between her thighs twitched as she grazed over it, and his hands travelled searchingly between them until one found a post at her right breast. Here, he toyed with the darkened bud that met his touch, and she felt herself jerk into him with a small cry.
"Tebe ste lep," he murmured heatedly. You are beautiful.
It wasn't the first time this had been said to her, not the first time she'd believed the words—but it was the first time in a long and countless measure of life that she actually, tangibly heard and felt what was being said to her. And of course, it didn't hurt that he'd said it in his native tongue.
There was the beginning of a smile on his lips in the interval that they had parted, but it was quickly buried from sight in the next wave of their formative dance. Expert fingers explored the curvature of her spine as she tested the shape of his chest with the contour of her mouth, but both parties knew that this was a game that could not last.
What battered fragments of her reserve still remained were crumbling beneath his touch, and there was a part of her, deeper than the part still hung up over his past-future inclination towards disloyalty, that harbored an unrelenting desire for more.
Betwixt their movement he drifted a hand down to her entrance, gently at first, and she buckled into him as two fingers glided slick past the opening and back. He paused at her reaction long enough to let out a breathless half-chuckle, but she cut off his next remark, which started suspiciously with the word "how," after taking it upon herself to return the favor.
Fingers positioned with expert precision, pressure on the pad of her thumb, she slid up, around, and down with fluidity. The swell of his fullness beneath her fingertips siphoned her patience. She rolled her hips into his hand, and he accommodated with a ginger sweep towards the crux of her nerves, coaxing out a shudder from the point he rolled beneath a finger.
"M-oh," she gasped, words failing her. His lips parted in assent.
"I know."
Searchingly, he dipped into her, and she was boneless with something not quite relief. His mouth went slack with the continuation of his exploits, and she decided she liked the expression—liked the way both his stare and his steady movement pried into her. Their mouths met sloppily as caution receded, and she lurched again when he hooked his fingers into her.
"Helen—"
"What?"
"Please."
For a deadened moment, she was astounded that the word please had ever left his lips, and seconds elapsed where she disbelievingly attempted to figure out whether or not she'd heard him incorrectly. Tesla ended this moment prematurely with the retrieval of the hand not at her chest, tasting her soundly before swiveling her into a position on her back.
"May I?" he asked, unsure. That beckoned her mind away from reeling heights and into the present, again addressing the fact that this was her past.
At once, her attitude shifted. Remembering her purpose, she came forward to wrap her arms securely around his back and hang there until he lowered his weight to her, curious. For a time, she stayed with her face in the crescent of his neck and his body over hers. Being at his side was a salve to the cracks and bruises of her core during such a vulnerable time, and she found that she didn't want to relinquish a second of exposure.
He adapted to her change of heart somewhat cautiously, moving a tentative hand to comb through her hair. When she felt him throb against her thigh, she broke from her position to again indulge in the feel of him, and a terse shake of the head was her only acknowledgement of her moment of weakness.
"Nikola…" Here, her breath hitched as the dampened head of his girth nudged at her base. "You may do anything you bloody well please so long as you get on with it."
This was an instant for which he'd been waiting longer than he knew, and it was now that the wait was ended before it had effectively begun.
With little more deliberation, a deft aim and a solid maneuver of the hips brought him plunging straight into her, and she could feel her muscles clamp and flex around him as he gritted his teeth and gave a short, experimental thrust. She fastened her arms securely around his neck and pushed herself upwards, driving him deeper, and with every consecutive plunge she could feel him filling those spaces within her that had remained empty for a lifetime.
They shared a collective breath, and then his mouth was on hers and he began in earnest. The connection brought them closer than they had been in all her time, as one being, one entity, one panting, wailing monster that guided itself along the line marked with guilt between compassion and greed. They were as strong as they were self-destructive: a combination manifest in lethality.
For years they had played each other, and now at the start the game was at last brought to a close. A new game was developed: one in which the rules were still blurry and the stakes were high, yet they could move in one direction only.
He was slamming into her now, impaling her with such force that she could feel herself stealing upwards towards the headboard, and she clung to his body as her fingers struggled to find purchase at his back. They moved in tandem to the symphony of crickets outside, thoughts scattered and conscious only of themselves and the feeling between them.
She was saturated with his touch, his heat, his breathless and broken flood of appreciation—her body responded almost of its own will to his affections. Each beat, she grew more lightheaded, more eager, and hungrier for more.
"Helen," he rasped, and she whimpered at the sound. "Helen, I—I don't—I can't—"
His voice was an octave deeper, transformed, and when he bared his teeth her heart leapt into her throat. More quickly than she'd ever anticipated, she was flying apart, spasming into him, and she cried out. "Do it."
Before she really registered what was happening, she had tilted her head to the right and he had crashed down into her with a guttural noise, sinking jagged teeth into flesh that was not at her neck. He had sought out the top curve of her left breast, claiming her there, and when she regained herself from the devastating frenzy and the feel of each spot he pierced she came to the cloudy conclusion that this was the most intimate thing he could have done.
At her neck was the kill-spot, the hunter's target, the nondescript position at which all predators knew to strike; if he had bitten her here, she would have been undifferentiated from all the victims of his past and all the slaves of his ancestors.
The post he'd chosen for himself at her chest and at her heart was as a lover.
Prickling at her sides were his talons, trembling for his poise as he propelled into her again and again, ramming through to her center and sending tiny echoes of desire racing down her spine. He only broke from her to breathe, heaving large gulps of air after he rocked ferociously into her for the final time, and she could barely make a move for how exquisitely he bore into her.
The echo of the way he sounded, low and almost pained, would remain wedged into her memory for eternity, but it would take a century before she would bear witness to his next move in their new game.
She allowed him to lower himself to her, liked his weight on top of her, and relished the feel of his next sigh across her skin. The place he'd bitten her was stinging and cold, and it tingled when she pressed her lips to his. She committed all of this to memory and filed it away, because in the next moment it would be over.
After sufficient pause to regain his breath, he tried to speak, but his voice was thick. His syllables ran together, and she could barely make out her name and the words "tell me" before his attempt at speech was relinquished in favor of sleep.
She would not hear the end of that sentence for the next hundred years.
She had always considered her own body the best place to hide a weapon; it was why, second to scientific discovery, she'd held so much esteem for the source-blood experiment all those years ago. Though she herself wasn't a vampire, she could just as easily play off of the fact that Nikola was.
In lying low, she'd had plenty of time to commit herself to research, part of which happened to be vampiric stasis: what they had, or would, witness in the chamber with Afina. The technology was heavily tied to genetics; it was not a procedure that would work on a human.
She knew that if it came to this, which it had, then precautions would need to be taken. She'd drugged him, straight from her own blood: the chemical substance would tug on that ancient line of genetic structure just enough to put Tesla out of commission for the night.
It was cruel, but not as cruel as tampering with the natural course of his life.
In the morning when he woke, he might wonder at her scent on his pillow, but he would not find that she'd slept at his side. They would be clothed, and when she would not mention their nightly tryst and claim affront at his implications he would, in the end, consider it a dream. She would keep the wine where they'd left it; he would have drifted off sometime after they'd lain on his bed and sometime before she'd removed her dress. She would then have left with dignity.
The frailty that time lent to the mind would make this more believable. By the time he attended his own funeral, his skepticism would have faded. All that would remain would be an echo, and it would be this that she would bring into play when showing him the mark that he'd left on her heart.