A/N: Set during Chimera. I may have went a little overboard with the fluff on this one to make up for the last chapter. (There's also a very small SG1 reference.)

Enjoy!

When Helen walked into her office, Nikola was kneeling on the floor between two of the armchairs, fiddling with the device they would use to connect their minds to the computer. His back was to the door, and he didn't bother looking up.

"Come to see how hard at work I am? You'll notice I'm not even drinking your wine," he said without turning around to see her. Nikola had always enjoyed showing off his vampiric powers, and he had only gotten worse about it since being revamped.

"Yes, I appreciate how very seriously you're taking the situation," Helen said dryly. "Especially the part where you and Henry argued about which movie it most resembles for ten minutes." She looked around. "Where is he, by the way?"

"I sent him off the lab to fetch some equipment," Nikola said, crawling around to the other side of the computers and finally looking at her. "How about that? Alone at last."

Helen rolled her eyes. "Do you need my help with anything?" She had just finished preparing the system for what they were about to try, and decided it wouldn't hurt to see if Nikola and Henry needed any assistance. Judging from the current state of her office, though, Nikola was nearly done.

"Well, you know I usually never have any trouble thinking up activities for us to enjoy together, but –" He paused, grinning slowly. "Actually, now that you mention it, there is something just the two of us need to do tonight…"

"Dear lord, Nikola." Helen exhaled heavily. "Now is hardly the time –" She stopped. Nikola was chuckling.

"My, my. You have a filthy mind, Helen," he said with delight. "I was referring to helping you solve this unfortunate Sanctuary crisis. What did you think I was proposing?"

Helen pursed her lips with a withering look. "I hope you're going to test that thing before we download our brains into it," she said, gesturing to the device.

Nikola's overjoyed look at her less-than-subtle redirection dissolved into a somewhat more professional expression. "I already have. We're a little low on time, so I wasn't able to do anything very extensive, but it'll work."

"You're sure of that?" Helen asked.

"Helen," he said, raising his eyebrows. "It's me. Now all I have to do is make sure this'll work with your extraordinary brain as well as mine. I'd hate to heroically face this uncertain danger all by myself, just to save your Sanctuary…" He tilted his head thoughtfully. "You know, that actually doesn't sound too bad."

Helen shook her head, speaking with finality. "You're not going in alone. What do you need?"

Nikola looked up from his work, meeting Helen's eyes as the side of his mouth curved up in a half-smile. "Have a seat," he said, waving at the chair nearest him.

Helen sat down, watching Nikola untangle a headset with blue lights glowing at each end from the mass of wires and cables around him. Pulling it free, he got to his feet and went to stand behind her, then bent over and set it gently above her ears. His fingers brushed against her temples while he was adjusting it, lingering for just a second before he lifted his hands away.

"Your crown, my lady," he murmured. "Nice touch of symbolism that it involves electricity, isn't it?"

Helen snorted. "Blimey, you're in fine form tonight."

"Why, thank you Helen. I really think I'm onto something here though," he said, grinning. "Let's see: you go wherever you have to, kicking everyone's ass along the way. That's the definition of a queen."

"Remember that unfortunate Sanctuary crisis you were just taking so seriously?" Helen pointed out, though she was laughing.

"Which one was that?" he asked, but he went back to peer at the displays.

Nikola glanced at her as he began fiddling with his equipment again. "So Heinrich has been filling me in on some of the crazy stuff that's happened while I've been away," he said conversationally, then hesitated.

Helen could tell he desperately wanted to ask her about some of what she had experienced since the last time they'd really talked, her relived century no doubt first on the list. But even Nikola knew this wasn't the time, and an uncertain look had crept onto his face, as if he wasn't sure she would tell him if he asked.

So, in true Nikola fashion, he said instead, "He was a little vague on the details, though – mind telling me why you were all singing your conversations a few weeks ago?"

"Oh, dear Lord," Helen said, her lips twitching in spite of herself. "I thought we had all made an unconscious pact to never speak of the singing again."

"Are you kidding? That sounds great," he said. "Shame I wasn't here, though. I could have sung for you all night, dear Helen."

"I'm not so sure," she said. "Coming up with music, lyrics, all on the spur of the moment? It's not as easy as you'd think."

"Not if you do a cover," Nikola said triumphantly. He started humming. "Someday," he muttered in a singsong way, "when I'm awfully low…"

He looked at Helen, a grin spreading over his face as his voice got louder. "I will feel a glow, just thinking oooooooof youuuuuuu –"

"Alright," she interrupted him, holding up a hand. "I get the picture. Next time we're all forced to sing to each other, I'll make sure I give you a call."

"Thanks. I'd expect nothing less."

He worked quietly for a minute, the equipment scattered around them beeping in the background. There was an easiness about this silence that had been conspicuously absent in their last encounter. This was closer to the way they usually were around each other; this was her Nikola, and for the first time since Helen had resumed her life in the present, it seemed as if they had been properly reunited.

Now really wasn't the time – but later, perhaps, once this situation was dealt with and they had time to talk, she would tell him what he'd missed. There was so much, even from just his time, not to mention her extra hundred years. She couldn't tell him everything, not yet, but she could at least share some of it with him, and after a century of keeping it all secret, it might almost be a relief.

"Aren't you at all concerned about SCIU finding out you're here?" she asked after a while.

His eyes flicked over to her. "In bed with the enemy?"

Helen gave him a look.

"Figuratively," he added with a smirk. "And no, not really. After all, I blatantly embezzled all of the money they granted me. It's not really too hard to fool them if you know how. I can explain a day or two of absence, no problem. I'll say I got drunk, or discovered an alternate reality. Maybe both."

She closed her eyes, feeling an urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. Where to begin with a statement like that? "You can't get drunk," she pointed out.

"Yeah, but they don't know that," Nikola said cheerfully. "I'm the only vampire in the world, remember? If I say their data is wrong, who are they to argue with me? You'd be surprised how much mileage I've gotten out of that."

"I doubt that very much," she said. "But while we're on the subject of SCIU's data…"

"Mmm?"

"Everything you sent with Henry," she said, and he looked up immediately, his hands freezing in mid-air. "It's incredible, Nikola, thank you. It's going to be very helpful – it's already been helpful, as a matter of fact."

As usual, Nikola had gone overboard. They were still making their way through the extensive collection of SCIU's files that he had given them, but Helen was fairly sure they included quite a few things Nikola wasn't even supposed to know about.

"Good," he said after a moment. "That was the idea."

"But you could have given it to me in person, at SCIU's facility in New Mexico," she said. "If it was your intention to help me all along, why did you let me walk out of there thinking we were on opposite sides?" It had troubled her, more than she had shown to Henry, the thought that she and Nikola were enemies.

"Oh, lots of reasons," Nikola said. He was trying to sound flippant, but he was looking steadily at her, and his hands were still motionless. "For one thing, I know how attractive you find me when I'm acting tragically noble." He grinned.

Helen fixed her eyes on him coolly. "The real reason, if you don't mind."

"Alright," he said. "Fine. I had to make your righteous exit look as genuine as possible. SCIU's not exactly overflowing with trust in me. I cleared you to leave, but if they'd even had an inkling about what we were up to… Well, getting you shot might have put a damper on the wonderful day I was having and I didn't really want to take the chance. I wouldn't be a very effective defector if all my secret information smuggling got discovered before you made it out the door, now would I?"

"Defector?" Helen repeated. "So you've quit working for them? I must not have been paying attention." She raised her eyebrows at Nikola, giving him a sarcastic smile.

"It's so much more exciting like this, don't you think?" Nikola said. "This way I can be your vampire on the inside. Now we can have steamy, clandestine rendezvous filled with forbidden passion in seedy hotels – not too seedy, though, I expect a decent wine selection."

"I'm glad you have all this planned out," Helen said, amused.

He shrugged. "I like to be prepared."

"Or perhaps," she said, leaning towards him, "you just don't want to give up the expense account and the company jet."

"Maybe," he admitted. A mischievous smile flickered over his face. "Can you blame me for trying to have the best of both worlds?"

"You're going to have to actually choose a side, you know," she told him. "Sooner rather than later."

"Yeah, yeah." Nikola patted the monitor. "I'm all done. We'll be ready to go as soon as wolf-boy decides to get here. What's taking him so long, anyway?"

Nikola had probably loaded Henry down with too many requests, but Helen ignored his attempt to change the subject.

"Nikola."

He sighed. "I know… Goodbye, cutting edge laboratory and billions of dollars to play with. But until then," he added, brightening, "I can drain SCIU's bank account for my own research and help you. Face it, Helen, right now I'm more useful to you like this."

"I could use an inside line to SCIU's operations," she said. "Still…" She would have preferred not to spend the entire time traveling back under the impression that she had lost her best friend. She took the headset off and left the chair, kneeling on the floor next to him.

"You should have given me some idea of what you were planning while I was there," she said softly, laying her hand on his wrist.

The corners of Nikola's eyes crinkled as he smiled at her. "Why, was there something you would have done differently?"

Helen laughed, shaking her head. "Now you're just being difficult."

"That is kinda what I do," Nikola pointed out, and anything else he had planned on saying was cut short by Helen's mouth on his as she caught him by the shoulders and kissed him.

Nikola melted into her, his arms winding around her, fingers tangling in her hair. Their awkward half-kneeling position didn't lend itself well to this, but they crushed themselves against each other with as much force as they could anyway. Neither of them cared much when their unsteady balance faltered and they fell sideways onto the floor, the impact jarring them apart, though their arms were still wrapped around each other.

Nikola had twisted to take the brunt of the fall, but he was grinning. "Well, that was fun," he said, still so close that she could feel the movement of his lips next to hers. "Ouch, though."

Helen rolled onto him, sliding a hand behind his neck to touch where his head struck the floor, letting her fingers run through his hair. "Like me to take a look at it?" she asked, teasing.

"I have a better idea," he said, pulling her against him and kissing her again.

Even with Nikola as a cushion, the floor wasn't the most comfortable surface to lie on, and one of Helen's legs was bent at an awkward angle to avoid the chair right behind them. She could feel her earrings moving slightly, a strangely ticklish sensation and a sign that Nikola's magnetism was acting up again – never a good thing around metal tools and sensitive equipment.

In spite of all that, Helen would have stayed where she was under other circumstances. But even if their work was done until Henry got here, they were still in the middle of a crisis – she had intended this to be brief, but Nikola, as always, had distracted her. Helen was about to disentangle herself from him (with reluctance, even if she wouldn't let him see it) when she heard footsteps near the door. She froze.

"Whoa! Oh God, um." There was a clatter as Henry raised the box he had been carrying in front of his face as quickly as he could.

Helen and Nikola jerked apart so abruptly that Nikola banged his head against the floor again. He tilted it to look at Henry upside down, grimacing slightly.

"Heinrich!" he said, sounding rather stilted. His hands shifted on Helen's back as if he were trying to find a way to hold her that made this less awkward, but Helen could have told him that was a pointless endeavor. Nikola rallied. "Took your sweet time. Do you want Helen's computers to be overrun? Set that down, if you please." A second passed, then: "Oh, by the way, you've forgotten the –"

"I'll get it!" Henry fled. Helen watched him go, wincing.

"Don't feel too bad," Nikola said, looking back up at her and smirking. "You gotta admit it is kind of funny."

Her mouth twitched. "I'll apologize to Henry later," she said. "And so will you."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. Now where were we?

"You were about to ready the neural interface for use, now that Henry has brought you what you need," she told him.

"Ah, damn it," Nikola said. He looked at her plaintively. "One more, for luck?"

Helen smiled, leaning down to press her lips to his very briefly. She rolled away from him, getting to her feet and offering him a hand. "That'll have to do for now," she said.

"For now?" Nikola echoed, grasping Helen's hand and springing up with enviable energy: Helen's knee was aching slightly. "Works for me."

Raising her eyebrows, Helen gestured at the interface. Nikola nodded, waving a hand.

"Say no more. One virtual reality trip, coming up."

"Thank you," Helen said.

"If this turns out to be really fun, we could do it more often," he said. "You know, let our imaginations really run wild in there…"

Helen sighed. "Let's just worry about saving my computer system first," she said.

"As you wish," he said, grinning.

A/N: The song Nikola starts singing to Helen is "The Way You Look Tonight," and he quotes the Princess Bride at the end, because I couldn't resist. I'm a total sucker for characters + chess comparisons, so I also had to include my Sanctuary version of that.