"Your young apprentice asked me about my relationship with my mother." Nikola announced crossly, gliding into the lab and idly examining various instruments and machines. "Are you sure you checked his references?" He deftly adjusted settings and levels of several in-progress experiments without pausing. Helen watched him with a degree of awe. He really was, as he frequently pointed out of himself, a genius.
"Oh, Sigmund wasn't so bad. And you were so awful, teasing him all the time." Helen said comfortably. "He really had no sense of humor and didn't understand you were joking."
"Was I joking? He ruined cigars for me forever and he was a pervert. Always trying to see down your blouse." Nikola declared. He peered into a microscope, his curious energy driving him from station to station.
"As did you, I recall." Helen said wryly.
Nikola grinned at her and held up a finger. "Ahh, but I'm not a pervert."
"That's debatable." She rejoined with a twinkle in her eye.
"I haven't heard any complaints from you in the past few nights." Nikola said confidently, coming up behind her and pulling her back against his chest. He tugged her hair out of the way and kissed her neck. "You smell like heaven." He murmured against her soft skin. "You've no idea how nice it is to do this without getting hungry."
"So nice to hear you've found a silver lining to your devamping." Helen smiled, tilting her head to allow him better access and humming in her throat with pleasure. His clever hands started to wander and she stifled an impulse to moan. Nikola's creativity, cleverness, and confidence extended to his lovemaking, but his selfishness did not. She had been kicking herself since their first night together for resisting him for so many years. She straightened, pulling away from him. "Control yourself, Nikola." She admonished sternly.
"Yes, teacher." He said in a silky tone that brushed down her spine and caused her to shiver.
"Pervert." She accused with a laugh. His eyebrows rose and he grinned.
She walked to a small set of stainless steel shelves and removed a plastic tray of capsules. "I think I've managed to create an effective oral version of the serum. I'd like to try it starting today. You're bending syringes when I give you the injections already and I'd like to start a trial of the drug taken orally to ensure it works before you become too tough to be injected."
Nikola inspected the tray and picked up a capsule between his fingertips to look more closely. "How often should I take it?" He asked.
"I'd like to start with one a day and see if your cells remain intact over the course of a week. The mutation has ceased and I would like to work toward determining how low a dose will maintain your cell structure but still allow a certain level of vulnerability in your skin. I worry about the side effects impermeability might cause." Catching his disappointed expression, Helen shrugged and smiled. "Sorry, Superman." She scooped capsules into a plain prescription bottle and handed it to him.
He took the bottle with his fingertips, held it up and shook it, and tucked it away neatly in an invisible pocket of his jacket. "Have dinner with me." He said.
"Was that a request?" Helen asked, teasing him. "I have dinner with you all the time."
"I mean come out to dinner with me." Nikola clarified impatiently, shifting uncomfortably. "I haven't courted you properly."
"It's a bit late for that, isn't it?" Helen asked. She was bemused by his shift in mood and the sight of the self-assured genius shuffling his feet like a shy suitor.
"It's never too late. It's just a date, Helen. Dinner, conversation, wine, dessert…then we'll come back to the asylum and work it all off." His eyes gleamed at her.
"Alright then." Helen said with a smile, already feeling her body grow warm and her mind wander. "I can be finished here at six."
"I'll come by your rooms at seven." Nikola bowed, a slight tilt from the waist in the old-fashioned European way, and lifted one of her hands to his lips to lightly brush it with a kiss. He smirked at her as if he were reading her mind and strolled out of the lab without turning back.
Promptly at seven, a firm knock sounded at Helen's door. She slid her feet into her highest high heels and finished fastening an earring as she went to the door. She swung open the door and Nikola stood before her. He was crisp perfection in a tuxedo tailored to a razor fit and an elaborate bouquet of flowers. He wore an expression on his face that told her he knew how good he looked.
"Did you ask me to go out just so you could show off in a tux, Nikola?" Helen teased.
"Ohw!" Nikola exclaimed, clapping a hand over his heart as if mortally wounded. "How offensive. Although I really don't get the opportunity to wear it as often as I'd like to." He glided into the room and circled her, his eyes glowing. "You're beautiful." He said with conviction. "I do prefer the modern styles on you."
Helen looked down at the sapphire blue sheath dress that left her shoulders and legs bare. The nude colored heels made her legs look a mile long, which was why she had paid so much for them. "Too many petticoats before?" She asked, pleased with his compliments.
"And corsets! Lord, what you ladies endured then. Anyway, you're perfect." He said. He held out the bouquet. "These are for you."
Helen took them, recognizing that they came from the Sanctuary gardens. "How lovely! Did you pick and arrange this yourself?" She went to put them into a vase.
"I did." Nikola replied. "I was staying on a commune in the late 60's, laying low, having passionate, indiscriminate sex, and got bored enough to dip my toes into handicrafts. That was rampant back then, of course."
"Sex?" Helen smothered a smile. She placed the flowers in a vase on a low table in front of the fireplace.
"No. Well…yes. But I meant handicrafts. I can also macramé, Papier Mache, weave, and knit. But I tell you all this in the strictest confidence, of course." Nikola smiled.
"Naturally." Helen said soberly. "Shall we go?"
"Beauty before brains." Nikola gestured her through the door first, then stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "I think, in light of your brilliance this week and how splendid I look tonight, we had better proceed together." Helen laughed. He took her hand and they left the room together.
Almost immediately, they encountered Will and Henry waiting for the elevator. Henry, always anxious and uncomfortable in Tesla's presence – perhaps even more than ever since the devamping – actually took a step back when he saw Tesla's hand was clasping Magnus's. Will narrowed his eyes but said evenly. "You look lovely tonight, Helen. Going out for dinner?"
"Thank you, Will. Yes." Helen gave him a Mona Lisa smile, revealing nothing. Nikola gave the two younger men a smug smile.
Henry, as if someone had prodded him, blurted. "You look good."
"Thank you." Nikola replied with all the pomp and vanity at his disposal.
"No!" Henry sputtered. "I mean, you look fine. But Magnus! Magnus looks really good." He finished miserably.
"Thank you, Henry." Helen said graciously, giving Tesla an unsubtle elbow in the ribs. He frowned at her elbow and then at her.
"What was that for?" He asked indignantly.
"You're a genius, you tell me." Helen said mildly, smiling at him.
"I can't help it if Tiny…Henry is uncomfortable with me." Nikola said, waving a dismissive hand at Henry. Henry glared at Tesla.
"It would help if you stopped calling him Tiny Tim." Helen pointed out.
"Yes, dear." Tesla sighed a long-suffering breath. The elevator door opened and he ushered Helen into the cubicle with a hand on the small of her back.
Henry and Will, witnessing this exchange, met each other's eyes speculatively and joined the pair of geniuses in the elevator.
"So where are you going to dinner?" Will asked in a conversational tone.
"Felidia." Nikola responded impatiently, not one for small talk.
Henry's eyes widened and he grew bold. "Great place. Pricey. How did you get a table?"
"How does one always get a table? I'm over a hundred and fifty years old. I have more money than God." Said Nikola condescendingly.
Helen rolled her eyes. "Humility thy name is Nikola." She said.
"I've never been there, of course." Will continued, doggedly trying to have a normal conversation with the smirking Serbian. "But I love Italian food. It might be worth a four month wait for a table."
"It's worth it." Henry said in a near-religious tone.
"How is it that you went?" Will asked.
"Girl asked me out." Henry said with a shrug. Seeing the group's collective look of surprise he said defensively. "Hey, some people think werewolves are sexy."
"Man's best friend." Nikola muttered, but he was looking at Henry with something akin to approval now.
"Anyway, if you're into Italian, Felidia is The. Best." Henry declared.
"This will be my first Italian dinner in over eighty years." Nikola mused. "Italian food was always so frustrating to a vampire palate. Looks all rich and red and bloody, smells fabulous, tastes like chalk."
"Really?" Will was intrigued now.
"And, incidentally, Italians themselves a little disappointing in their flavor as well." Nikola added wickedly. Henry's eyes rounded.
"Nikola!" Helen reproached.
"I'm teasing, Helen." Nikola rolled his eyes. "I've never broken a vow I made to you." He said this last sentence in a pointed way.
Helen gave him a narrow look, and then frowned thoughtfully. "You're right, you haven't." Nikola looked appeased. Helen continued. "Henry, he never ate people. He's just being ill-behaved and showing off as usual."
"Ohw!" Nikola said. "You impugn my character." His eyes gleamed with humor and mischief. "I have a mind to cancel our dinner plans and take you back to your room just to punish you."
Will's eyes shifted between the well-dressed couple, catching Helen's rosy blush and quickly smothered smile and Nikola's eyes skimming her with naked ardor. He held up an index finger and pointed between them. "What…is going on here?" He asked slowly.
"Yeahhhh." Henry drew out the word with suspicion.
Helen and Nikola looked at each other cagily.
Nikola sighed. "Helen, I'm afraid we're going to have to have the birds and bees talk with the children earlier than we expected." He said flippantly. The elevator finished its descent and the doors opened. He continued on in a condescending tone. "You see, boys, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much they like to give each other a special hug…"
Helen was in silent hysterical laughter as she dragged Nikola out of the elevator and through the front door of the Sanctuary. Henry and Will exited the elevator with matching expressions of mixed embarrassment, bemused horror, and fascination.
"Really?" Henry said with wonder. "Tesla?"
"Women, man." Will said, clapping Henry on the shoulder. "Who knows what they like?" Henry met Will's eyes in consensus and the two friends turned down the corridor toward the dining room.