grav_ity | New Fic: Venatus Debitum (Sanctuary)

AN: This is Oparu’s fault. Completely. And I’m a bit worried that I’ll have to turn in some kind of cred now that I’ve written melodramatic vampire fic, except it’s Tesla, so I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count. Which is good news for me, since I don't even 'ship the pairing I just wrote my longest random episode tag EVER for. *sighs*

Spoilers: This is an episode tag for “Sleepers”, and includes spoilers up to that point in the show.

Disclaimer: You know, for once I don’t even WISH it was mine, because it’s perfect the way it is.

Rating: M

Pairing/Characters: Tesla/Helen, for some odd reason, and they’re both a bit haunted by John.

Summary: Nikola Tesla hates calling in a favour

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Venatus Debitum

Nikola Tesla hates calling in a favour.

This, like so much else about him, is a blatant lie. Nikola loves to call in a marker. He love the superiority, the smug sense of knowing that someone owes him, and that he has manouvered them into a position where they’ve no choice but to pay. Probably because what’s owed is usually something that no one in their right mind would want to part with, much less give to him.

This is different. This is her. And if he hates anything in this blasted world aside from what he’s been reduced to, it’s the idea of being indebted to Helen Magnus.

It’s not like she’s never come to him with the same request. During those wretched years between the morning of Mary Kelly and his own rumoured demise at the end of World War Two, she had taken advantage of his feelings for her on more than one occasion, and unapologetically so at that. Helen rarely apologizes for anything, unless it was for something totally beyond her control. It’s one of the reasons he loves her.

But he’s never been the one to ask, the one who takes the lead. There’s never been anything remotely Victorian to that aspect of their somewhat twisted relationship, certainly not since The Ripper. He’s pretty sure that even if he did manage to drum up sincerity in measures for her to believe, she’d only rebuff him when he asks her, too quickly to understand the question, as she has every time she makes a move in the game they’ve been playing since before he stuck the needle in her arm.

It would be easier if he were just asking for sex, but it’s a moment of weakness he wants, just one black moment when can express his complete and utter desolation about what he’s lost. If he could, he’d just lay his head on her knee and weep, but even though that’s something she might actually allow, their dealings with one another are far, far too complicated for him to get what he needs out of so simple an action. What he needs is to be complete, even if only for a second, a breath, a heartbeat.

He finds her in her office, long after the children have gone to bed and the diurnal abnormals have settled in for the night. He hasn’t spent a lot of time in the Sanctuary, but now that he’s harmless, well, as harmless as someone of his intelligence and history can be, he has free run of the place. Of her place. It makes him shudder to think how quickly he’d trade that new found freedom of access. She pours the wine and he feels it slide around his consciousness and nervous system like a blanket, muffling him in a way he hasn’t been muffled in decades. It’s a bit of a rush, to be honest, but yet another thing that he would trade away in an instant.

When the tray slides into his hand, he laughs with her because that’s what she expects. On the inside, where she can’t see, he screams in pain to be so close to electricity and forced to settle for its bastard cousin. Aloud, he says only that he can work with it, and as soon as the words slide treacherously from his mouth, he realizes he’s still lying to her, even though tonight he meant to tell the truth.

She sees it, of course, in the way his fingers curl around the delicate stem of his wine cup, and in the way his smile stretches too wide across a face that no longer stretches to accommodate a monster. She sees the pain of losing something that was bad, not for him, but for those around him, and she can see it because she’s been living with her own such pain since Mary Kelly was gutted in her flat in Whitechapel all that time ago.

And just like that, Nikola has asked his favour. No words to obfuscate meaning or blur intent, just request and concession, as simply as if they’ve done this before. And they have done, after a fashion, but the inverse where it was her pain that grew too solitary to bear. She would come to him, and he would pretend not to know that she was pretending he was someone else. Her act will be different, he knows, but she will allow him to believe that she is a version of Helen Magnus who does not exist; one who loves him back.

He leans in to kiss her, setting down the cup as he does so and shaking off the tray as it tries to follow him across the table like a puppy. There will be time for that later. Now, he is only concerned with her mouth, and with the soft curve at the base of her skull where his other hand tangles in her hair. She tries to press into his kiss and lean back against his hand at the same time, and he shifts closer, taking that modicum of space from her so that she is caught. He feels her smile, and he takes advantage of the space between her lips to slide his tongue across her teeth. When she sighs, pressing against him, her mouth falls open enough to admit him, and he revels in the taste of her.

He’s tasted her before, of course. Her blood when he was freshly turned and victim to all manner of unsettling hunger, her heat through a white kid glove after a turn about the dance floor when kissing a lady’s hand was still fashionable, even her skin, during the trysts she’d instigated. But this time he has no cause to fear slicing her with razored nails, no reason to avoid the pulse point on her neck. For the first time with her, he can lose control. And he intends to, utterly.

Despite his rapidly heating thoughts, the kiss is almost lazy. It lingers while they break apart to breathe, though never far enough to catch more than the briefest wisp of air before being pulled back under. Her fingers have found purchase in his vest, and are slowly divulging him of it. When he realizes what she’s doing, he forces himself to pull back, breaking the kiss at last.

They sit staring at each other and gasping, him in a half unbuttoned vest and she with hair now more than stylishly tousled. He kisses her again, once and quickly, and very much to stall for time until he figures out how to voice the next part of his request. Because here on the sofa, desperately crammed into too small a space, or bent over her desk, with her skirt rucked up about her hips would be fine for any other day. But this is his one chance, and he knows it, and he’ll be damned if he’s doing this any place other than her bed.

Her eyes widen as she understands, and then flicker to the door on reflex. For the only time in his life, Nikola wishes that the blood had given him a destiny other than Sanguine Vampiris, because he’s not sure he remembers how to get from her office to her room, and possibly he’s even forgotten how to walk. She blinks, and he can tell she’s thinking the same thing. He promises himself that this will be the last time this evening either of them thinks of Druitt, and gathers her hands in his.

He stands, and she follows him to the door. Once there, he gives in to temptation and presses her up against the frame, capturing her mouth in a kiss far less casual than the first two. This one burns into his core, and he very nearly forgets his resolution, and the bed, in favour of having her right here. But she does not.

She slips into the hall, not relinquishing his hands, and pulls him along. He’s not stronger than she is anymore, made all the more weak by the smile on her face. It’s the same smile that used to drive them all mad at Oxford, the one she’d give while suggesting some unladylike creature related adventure or another, and the one that always guaranteed their full complicity in whatever scheme she was cooking up. Now, for him alone, it very nearly stops his heart, and he follows her as he has always done.

Her room is on the this floor, thank goodness, and he tries his best not to act like he’s walking into a shrine or a temple as he follows her through the door. She’s kissing him again, and reaching for buttons, before it’s swings shut behind him, and he barely hears the latch click over the sound of his own suddenly overflowing desire.

His vest and cravat are thrown carelessly to the floor as he slowly maneuvers them towards her bed. He fumbles with the buttons of her blouse, attention wavering between undoing them, steering her properly, and not simply being overcome with want. She finishes her task first, and when cool fingers brush across his chest, his eyes fly open and he jerks back. Vampires are not, despite what modern media seems to think, cold blooded, but they are typically cooler than humans, and he was not prepared for the shock of her skin against his. Being the source of heat, being warmer than anyone, seems all too human.

She takes in his reaction with a wicked gleam in her eyes, and trails her tongue across her lips before biting down ever so gently on the bottom one. He surges forward with renewed purpose, and makes fast work of her blouse and bra before she stumbles backwards against the bed and allows herself to fall. He stretches out on top of her, the trailing line of his unbuttoned shirt teasing against her skin and drawing forth a very satisfying hiss.

Her revenge come quickly, though, as her skirt must be unzipped from the back, and to reach the fastener she must press her hips up against his, and wiggle ever so slightly. He groans in exquisite frustration, and pulls down as soon as the fabric has the give to allow it. He crouches at her feet and leans up to kiss her just above the knee as his hands trace the laces on her right boot, before pulling to loosen them. His mouth moves high along her thigh, and he thinks about how grateful he is that he’s lived long enough to be in a world where women walk about with bare legs.

He moves to the left boot as her hands close in his hair. They pull not quite gently upwards, so he finishes his work with the laces quickly and removes his shirt as she draws him back over her, and he bends to catch her mouth once more.

He tangles his hands in her hair, laying it out in strands across the pillow with infinite care and deliberation, and was unsurprised to find a hard lump in her pillow. He curls his fingers around the handle of the sig sauer that she somehow managed to sleep on top of, and without his mouth leaving hers, checks to see if the safety is engaged. It is, and he loses no time in tipping it off the side of the bed. She laughs at the clunking sound it makes when it hits the floor, and he knows that there are probably at least three others within arm’s reach, but none of them pose a danger to him at the moment.

With his hands on either side of her shoulders bracing his weight, it falls to her to take care of his belt and trousers. She’s always been efficient, so she manages not only to completely undress him, once he kicks off his shoes and socks, but also to get out of her last remaining garment as well so that when he settles between her thighs there is nothing but skin.

He does not bite her, even though he really really wants to, particularly when he runs his tongue over the crescent shaped scar on the inside of her right shoulder, close to her collar bone, the scar he left that night in Dubrovnik during the Great Depression. Not even when she moans like she’s remembering his once too sharp teeth. He does not bite her because he has always bitten her before, when it was her game they were playing. His game has different rules , and he is determined to keep them separate so that he will remember. So that she will remember.

Instead, he closes his mouth around a nipple, shifting his weight on to one arm so that his free hand covers her other breast. She gasps as the sensation and at the added weight of his hips bearing down on hers. His arousal presses into her thigh, and her nails scrape down his back in an effort to pull him closer. He’s been hard since that first kiss, which feels like aeons ago, and as much as he wants this to take forever, he knows that he’ll have to take direct action sooner than later.

He returns his mouth to hers, swallowing her protesting moan, and slides his hand with infuriating slowness down across her stomach to the warmth at her core. She’s wet already, which should not surprise him, and he begins a slow tease, eliciting sharp jerks from her hips as he pushes her closer to the edge. He angles his hand so that his thumb can continue to draw its agonizing circles around her clit while two fingers enter her.

He pulls back from the kiss so that he can watch her face, watch her desperately try to keep her eyes open before giving in and throwing her head back into the pillows. It’s his name she moans when she comes, and it’s even better than he had imagined.

Before she’s even close to breathing normally again, he pulls back his hand and sinks into her. She’s tight around him, which means it’s been a while, but the way she cants her hips to meet his strokes reveal that she’s lost none of her expertise. Then, there is nothing in the world but her, and even when that world shatters in a release so complete he might have actually seen stars, she is still there when the dust settles.

* * * *

The sun does not gleam on nor dance across the waters of river that separate New City from Old, but this morning, he will pretend it does. It’s early, too early even for most of the beasties to be stirring, but he’s awake. He knows that soon she’ll wake up too, and then it will be over. He’ll rise and dress, and slink off to his own room, assuming he can find it. When he sees her at breakfast, she will be perfect and her hand will not brush his if he asks her to pass him the salt. They will act like nothing has happened, as they always have before. But this time, unlike the others, he is staying until she wakes.

His hearing isn’t what it once was, and it takes him a moment to notice that while her breathing has shifted, she has not. She’s awake, but she is letting him hold her, her face against his chest, her hair pooled out over her back and one leg far too close to being wrapped around his.

It isn’t over yet, his turn at the game. Her hand glides across his stomach to tangle with his, fingers running over nails that will no longer sprout into razor sharp claws, no matter what he wishes. It isn’t over yet, and suddenly he is afraid.

“I’m sorry, Nikola,” she sighs, cool air against his chest. Her arm tightens around him, preparing for the storm, as the weight of everything that’s happened since yesterday comes crashing down on his all too fragile human form.

For the first time in over a century, Nikola cries.

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finis

AN: For those of you who are still here, the title means “Game of Debtors”, because everything sounds cooler in Latin. The pronunciation is "Wain-ah-toos Day-bee-tomb", with the emphasis on the first syllable of both words. Much thanks to Oparu, even if it is her fault, for talking me through it and preventing me from giving up when Tesla just wouldn’t get a move on already.

Gravity_Not_Included, January 12th, 2011