In a windowless room, cocooned from the world, it might've been easy to lose all sense of time. Being snuggled up against the man you loved never helped, but sadly for Magnus, decades of literally living underground had given her an impeccable internal body clock. It seemed that, even injured, her brain couldn't rest much more than an hour above what she might on any other day.
At least she wasn't alone. Nikola had never been much of a sleeper, even before the Source Blood, and when she begrudgingly opened her eyes it was to the sight of him gazing, watching over her.
"Hi," He smiled jauntily.
"Hmm," she smiled back, leaning in to kiss him briefly with every ache and pain screaming at her as she did, "Hi." God, her voice felt about as thready as it sounded.
He held her tighter for a moment, breathing deep, and for a moment the world evaporated. The soft light around them from the bedside table made a nice stand-in for the warm glow of the artificial dawn of the New Sanctuary, warming her down to her toes. No baby crying today, just the two of them, like all those years before Sofija. It was astounding how quickly she had forgotten what it was like, how children managed to insert themselves into your life as if they had always been there until you struggled to recall the time before.
The sound of Nikola's contentment reverberated through her skin, God she could just stay here, all day. If it wasn't for that growing maternal urge to see her baby girl again, or the work that was almost certainly piling up on her desk back home, she certainly would've.
With that all-too practical thought she shifted, just enough to properly take in her surroundings. Surroundings which, she remembered, had been suspiciously convenient last night. She scanned the room properly in a way she'd been too tired to before. The decor was simple, efficient, clean - but for the layer of dust which had accumulated on all the dark wood. The giveaway was the wine-rack built into the bookcase, deprived of all but one very distinguished looking vintage.
"So if I get up in search of the bathroom, am I going to find some ancient laboratory," she challenged with a knowing glint, "or just embarrassing photographs of you in 1967?"
Nikola's eyes lit up at the way she'd correlated embarrassing evidence with the Summer of Love, "Well, well, well, Dr Magnus," he came closer again, noses almost touching, "what did you get up to in '67?"
An awful lot, actually, but he didn't need to know that. He kissed her, briefly, and she pulled back from his sly smirk, an unimpressed expression on her face that refused to be side-tracked by such perceptiveness. That's when it hit her - "Oh dear Lord," she chuckled disbelievingly, trying to untangle herself from him and sit upright, "it's both, isn't it?"
He sighed too dramatically to really mean it, "Must you always presume-"
"Do you really want me to answer that?"
They met each other's eyes, amusement lighting them up from the inside.
"Okay, fine," he started tracing fingers up her sides, reaching to brush the hair from her face as she leant over him, "I may… have... sorta, used to live here. A long time ago."
"And…" she pushed, playing him at his own game and brushing fingers down from the hollow at the base of his neck right down to his navel.
"And," he sighed out, sinking into the caress, "...own it."
"Still?"
"Well I'd kinda forgotten to be honest."
She gave him a disbelieving look, "You'd forgotten you had an entire lab and apartment? In West Africa."
"I thought I'd sold it…" he squirmed where he lay, glancing around her to see if everything was actually as he recalled, "but…"
"Evidently not."
"Yeah, well, it's not like it was worth the hassle anyway. I mean, it's West Africa - hardly million-dollar real estate - and the experiment was a complete dead-end." A thoughtful look came over him, memories long since ignored of solitude and moments of solace, of laboratories and those brief forays into the world outside cut short by that never-ending feeling of being out of time, out of place… adrift. Without a radio and a television he would've probably become an ignorant hermit, but he had always preferred to stay abreast of events. If only to have an opinion on whatever debacle humanity had gotten themselves into this time – if only to strengthen his belief that the world could be made to be better. Looking back, he had to admit, that crushing disappointment with humanity's slowing progress into that bright utopian future they'd all dreamed of had twisted into something far darker than he'd ever really intended. "It's been decades since I came here." He mused aloud, "We were halfway into town last night before I even realised where we... were..." he frowned as something dawned on him. Noting the 'care to explain' look on Helen's face, he started to elaborate: "Zimmerman was being all Captain Boy Scout when we landed," Helen almost sniggered at the nickname despite herself, managing to curb it to a simple shake of her head in half-hearted admonishment, "that's why I didn't make the connection - I was blocking everything out. I mean… once you've seen a desert you've seen them all right?"
When she looked back at him he was hovering just far enough away that his smirk and half-lidded eyes made her skin bristle in anticipation.
"You know…" he murmured lullingly, "an entire apartment all to ourselves? We should make the best of this."
She raised an eyebrow along with the corner of her lips and her body, as she sat a little more upright, "oh, you mean catch up on some sleep?"
She was such a tease. He could feel his body react to the gauntlet as if she'd pounced on him then and there.
"Or..." she jumped in before he'd come up with some witty retort, her hand resting subtly, knowingly on his thigh as he sat up to meet her, "maybe we should clear out your old lab. Make sure you haven't left behind any unpleasant surprises from world-takeover-bids past?"
He breathed in with a hiss of frustrated desire, then his mind supplied him with a pleasing solution that made his eyebrows quirk, "Only if we can do it naked."
She laughed as he pulled her in, kissing her, hands roaming over her toned muscles as she held his head in her hands, the bristle of his unshaven face a welcome texture on her palms. She could feel him ready for her, and it made her insides melt at the thought.
Then a shrill electronic sound shrieked from her mobile phone, cutting through the moment like a knife. Helen pulled back as if stung, on full alert, but emergency call or not, Nikola seemed more reluctant to acknowledge the interruption. He was slow to let her arm go as she stretched round, groaning at the resistance of her stiff muscles as she followed the sound back to the heap of clothes they'd had the wherewithal to gather up from the entrance hall last night.
"Yes?" she answered abruptly, not even bothering to look at the call sign, still half-tangled in sheets and hanging over the bed.
"Oh thank God, Magnus are you ok?"
Will. Unconsciously she sighed in relief, as she righted herself on the edge of the bed, "I could ask the same of you."
"We're... fine. Magnus, what happened? You just dropped off the map this morning. We sent a car and they said the place was just trashed."
"I take it you had a quiet night then?" she bit on her bottom lip, looking studiously down at the sheets.
He sighed over the line, probably scratching his forehead with his thumb as he did so, "Yeah. Everyone's fine."
"Thank God."
She could feel Nikola shift in the bed long before his warm body snuck in behind hers, before his hand brushed along her upper arm and held her there.
"What the hell happened?"
"They'd followed us right to the safe house," glancing momentarily her eyes caught Nikola's, and like a truck the memory of him being zapped by that torturous device hit her. She gently cleared her throat, "ambushed us. Missed you by bare minutes it seems, I don't think Mujahid was among them."
Will breathed deep, taking it all in, his analytical mind filling in the gaps, connecting the dots, "We need to get you out of the country stat - what's your position?"
The GPS on her burner phone was always turned off – a precaution which on an occasion such as this was always a royal pain in the ass – and Tesla, speaking of pains in the ass, didn't typically bother to carry his own, preferring instead to pinch other people's and waste their credit instead.
"It's fine, Will, concentrate on the mission. Get a team to join you and evac the researches as soon as you can - we'll find out own way back."
"Magnus they found you onc-"
"Er, you've got quite enough to worry about already," she cut in authoritatively, unwilling to be lectured to about her own situation, "and if they can find us again, I don't want them finding any of you by proxy. We're safe, for now, and we'll draw a whole lot less attention as two… holidaymakers trying to get back, than with some kind of contracted security escort."
Nikola's arms hugged her waist at that, and she suspected it was a not-so-subtle hint to blow her second in command off so they could get back to their somewhat accidental alone-time.
"If you're sure…" Will hesitated, "I'm just glad to hear the sound of your voice."
"Oh, come on now," Magnus cheered with her typically British brand of cynicism, "it's hardly the first time I've dropped off the map."
She could hear the smile in his voice, "No, it's not, but for your information it doesn't get any easier when you do… besides, with Tesla in tow…?"
"Hey," Nikola piped up beside her, "watch your mouth Scooter."
He could hear Zimmerman's good-natured laugh on the other side, "Seriously though, I really wasn't looking forward to the day I had to explain to Sophie how she'd become an orphan."
If the half-joke hadn't hit quite so close to the mark for Helen's already raw state of mind, she might have chuckled. Instead, she felt her lips turn to lead, her stomach drop out on her and make her feel belatedly sick. There it was - the acknowledgement that she had cut too fine a line on this.
Risking one of them was one thing - she still believed being honest with Sofija from the start was the right thing to do - but risking them both at the same time, on purpose, was quite another and, she was far too stubborn to admit it but... Will had been right. She felt her eyes moisten, unbidden, unshed tears catching in the corners of her eyes. God, for all the logic in the world she was still human. Human enough to feel the terror of loss, of losing all those years of watching her daughter grow up. More distressingly, for all their preparedness, for all their luck and confidence in each other, Nikola too had come close to meeting a force capable of killing him. Sofija could have lost them both. They couldn't do that to their daughter, couldn't put themselves in that position again and she almost felt ashamed at the fact that she had. After all, she'd never put Biggie – the closest thing Ashley ever had to a father – right on the front line whilst she was still a child, and though Maga was like a favourite Aunty to Sofija it wasn't quite the same.
Yesterday was a gamble she and Nikola had made for decades on their own terms but… Magnus was beginning to realise just how little they'd valued their own safety all these years. It wasn't so easy anymore, and Helen wasn't sure whether she was okay with that. Not yet. Judging from his peculiar silence at her side, even at Will's purposeful use of the English version of his daughter's name (an ongoing verbal battleground), she wasn't sure Nikola was either.
There she was thinking that having brought up one child she'd be prepared for all this but, it had been over a century ago for her. In many ways she was a different person… and still a fool.
"Mangus?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you sure-"
"We're fine Will. I look forward to reading your report."
He groaned at the impending paperwork, "Sure. Okay. Give Sophie my love."
"Will do," she smiled, as much at the thought of seeing her baby again and sweeping her into the biggest hug imaginable, as that stubborn streak of his. She ended the call before Nikola could vocalise his objection to the misnaming of his child and, robbed of his chance to argue with Will, he actually paused for a moment.
"Not bad..."
She twisted in his arms to see the ever so slightly leery smile she could hear in his voice.
"...for our first mission together post-offspring." He nuzzled against her ear and murmured, "I'm especially liking this peaceful, just-you-and-me-after-sex thing."
Her response lay trapped in her throat by the wandering of his hands low against her body - he was right, it had been quite some time since they'd had the luxury of morning sex. Sofija usually exhausted them with feedings and nappies and God knows what else, before the day had even begun. Not that they would've given it up for anything, but by God it made them appreciate adult moments like this, like never before.
"Do you think next time we could just make the mission-part up and get straight to this? Ow," he complained as she slapped him. "Uncalled for."
"If I catch you falsifying missions to justify calling for a babysitter Nikola, there will be a whole lot less sex in that equation."
He smirked at her with a nonchalant shrug, "Well how else am I supposed to get you out of the house?"
Her expression hung momentarily on a rather devious notion, a pause that made him swallow in anticipation as it extended, as he realised she was concocting some scheme. Holding his eyes with a positively sinful relish she pushed him back against the bed and lay across him, slipping against his hardening cock and making him grunt at the sudden sensation.
"Surely," she whispered heavily, emphasising her words with purposeful shifts of her hips, and a quirk of an eyebrow, as she leaned in, "the point is to keep me in?"
"Hmm," his sentence was swallowed up in the kiss he eagerly pressed into her, drawing her close. Until he breathed, "I think I can manage that."
Author's Note: Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot – man I love these two. Well that's all folks. :( Hope you enjoyed the ride. My thanks to all who have read and reviewed, faved and followed! :) If you want more smut why not check out Howl to the Moon or The White Dove.
Also, please do check out Vienna in Springtime, I am still updating, though I'm attempting to get a few chapters ahead right now as I'm reaching a critical point. Also, for those of you who love the Five, I will be updating Immortals All… from time to time, and hope to write Nikola's first encounters with James and Griffin very soon. DFTBA.
Update: 15/04/14 - minor edits mostly, but I realised I erroneously called it East Africa - my bad - I have this problem sometimes remembering East to West (I have no idea why because I know how to tell the difference - and read a map!) but always intended it to be WEST Africa. Like... Timbuktu kinda area, you know? Anyways. Peace out, and thanks to people who are still reading this thing!