(no subject)
fandom: sanctuary
author: cata_clysmiic
characters: Helen, Will (Helen/Will, Helen/John all over the place if you squint)
title: a sailor on your open book (write it down in code) - (aka five times Helen and Will got closer)
rating: m
word count: just shy of 7,000 (sweet jesus)
disclaimer: I own nothing. NOTHING. D: HOLD ME.
notes: so cartography and I came up with this idea for a “five times Helen and Will got closer” double-entendre kinda thing in one of our weird scary moments of clairvoyance and telepathy. so obviously I had to do it. (ISA. I’ve hidden a few Leverage references in here, bb, 10 points to Ravenclaw if you can find them). title from the incredible Emily Wells. set mid-late season 3 (although for the sake of this fic let's pretend like Haunted takes place closer to season 3 on the Sanctuary timeline, as there's reference to it here).
edit: OHMYGOD THIS FIC HAS SET ME INTO A FIT OF HYSTERICS. I SINCERELY HOPE IT WORKS FOR YOU, DEAR READER, BECAUSE I GAVE UP TRYING TO WRITE WELL AFTER THE 800TH ATTEMPT. /overdramatic /leaves in a huff
summary: Someday, all of this between them will end like a slow bullet in the back.
so maybe we’re a bliss
of another kind
-tori amos
hopelessly i’ll give you everything
if the moment ever comes
-muse
I.
He walks into her office one morning as the sunlight splashes like yellow paint against the walls and she’s standing, perched precariously on a tall wooden stool, reaching for the highest bookshelf.
“Whoa, Magnus. Don’t you have a robotic arm or something that could do that for you?”
“I like to fetch my own books myself, thankyouverymuch.” She grunts slightly with gallant effort; he shoves his hands into his jean pockets and when it’s apparent that she’s not going to elaborate further he allows himself to take in a few more details about the scene before him: the heels abandoned on the floor, the files and hot tea things spread haphazardly on her desk, the way her bare calves look beneath the black skirt she’s decided to wear today as she flexes, rocks back and forth on her toes against the mahogany.
“Bloody bookshelves,” she murmurs aloud now and Will recognizes this as the beginning of a Helen Magnus thought-commentary; he smiles and says nothing because he really wants to hear the rest of this. “It’s my comeuppance for the one time I foolishly chose aesthetics over utility. I usually only keep the rather dull ones up here but something came up warranting a brief look into the mating habits of-“
-he’s noticing other things now, too, how high that top shelf really is, the book of Shakespeare sonnets on the shelf just below it, the way her dark hair hangs, curled and dangling far down her back as she tilts her head up in earnest. The way her blouse rises slightly on her hips to show a sliver of bare skin as her arms lift high above her head.
“Well why didn’t you say so? You know I’m a world-acclaimed expert on all manner of abnormal breeding ritual.”
She laughs at that and he swells with a familiar sense of triumph, the one he feels whenever he can manage to genuinely amuse her. She stops reaching, rests her forehead against the ledge at her eye-level. “You could give a lady a hand, Will. I’m loosing balance here.”
“I thought you liked to ‘fetch’ things yourself,” he teased, but he was already taking strides across the room toward her.
“I’ll thank you to just get over here,” she mumbles in faux-agitation, but she’s trying not to smile.
“You look good up there, if it makes you feel any better.” It’s an observation, a cryptic, vague one that sounds almost entirely objective, and he wraps his hands around her ankles bracingly as he speaks.
She pauses. “Are you suggesting that I don’t look good otherwise?”
It’s such a ridiculous query that he doesn’t even grant her a reply. He does, however, catch her eye as she looks questioningly down at him when nothing but silence greets her. He’s grinning, and she’s got an incredulous eyebrow raised.
“Well?” She asks, and drops a hand to rest sardonically on her hip. “When I ask a question, Dr. Zimmerman, I expect an answer.”
She’s being coy; it happens from time to time, and Will adores these rare moods like he adores a good cup of coffee: it makes him feel jittery and buoyant and this sort of give-and-take reminds him why he wakes up every morning at the Sanctuary, thrilled and challenged by his work, by his boss (it also reminds him why every other woman seems a little dull in comparison - Helen Magnus has ruined him in more ways than one).
“Maybe if you asked me a question you didn’t already know the answer to so that I could actually feel helpful,” he counters. “Actually, I’m not sure if such a question exists.” He adds this contemplatively, to be fair. His fingers slip a little against her bare skin as she wobbles atop her perch.
“Oh please. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a mind-reader, Will.” She turns back to the shelf.
“Could’ve fooled me.” He grins again, but notices there’s a ruffled edge to her now, some sort of passing tension she’s trying not to let him see. “Wait-you’re serious? You seriously wanted an answer to that?”
She doesn’t look back down at him but he sees her roll her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Oh my god you totally wanted a real answer. You did.” He’s grinning like the cat that ate the canary, like he’d just called an enormous bluff that’s won him a fortune.
She huffs a little, and she’s finally slid the book out from its impossible hiding place. She straightens her skirt and turns back to face him on the stool; he offers his hand to help her down and she takes it. It’s a pretty big step and she teeters just a bit but he catches her around the waist and waits until she gains her balance again. Without heels, they’re nearly the same height.
In the split second before she bends to pick up her shoes, before he releases her free hand, he tugs against her to get her attention and when she looks into his eyes he says, “If there’s ever a day you don’t look good to me, Magnus, then have me committed - I’ll have gone completely insane at that point.”
He swears he sees her bite her lip and smile before she turns away.
II.
“Oh come ON,” Henry yells out loud again, and a fistful of popcorn explodes at the screen like confetti. “That’s not even, like, a little bit accurate!”
It’s movie night in the Sanctuary screening room and they’re watching something Henry found on Netflix and seemed pretty excited about; funny, because all he’s done the entire time is point out everything they’re doing wrong.
It’s a stupid movie, Will knows it, but okay, the thing is: he’s vaguely uncomfortable because the plot centers almost entirely around a little boy who’s told his parents he sees monsters in his closet, but they won’t believe him, they keep telling him to go back to bed, he’s just a kid, he’s seeing things. It’s stupid, this ridiculous way he’s relating to it. It’s not even worth the memories it’s stirring up, and so Will just keeps quiet and rationalizes to himself as he sits next to Magnus on the love seat, his eyes unmoving from the screen while Henry and Kate argue over whether or not the monster is really a breed of half-dilophosaurus half-yeti and the Big Guy rolls his eyes a little dangerously.
Magnus herself is awfully quiet too, although that’s not a telling thing at all. She could just be tired, or amused by the commentary, unwilling to interrupt, or maybe she’s going over new inventory in her head (wouldn’t be the first time).
Except she keeps stealing glances over to Will, who feels her eyes on him every few minutes like a tangible thing, something warm and sharp and welcome and unsettling all at the same time.
Will’s been having bad dreams, lately. He feels especially raw tonight, and so the timing of all this is pretty uncanny. He rubs a pair of knuckles against his unshaven face and blinks his eyes blearily as Henry and Kate howl with laughter at something that has nothing to do with the movie and the little boy onscreen pulls his spaceship bedcovers more tightly over his face.
Will closes his eyes, now. He feels kind of alone.
There’s some movement from Magnus at his left, a shuffling and a reshuffling as she reaches back behind the couch for something - her wine glass, probably, Will thinks in passing - but then suddenly there’s something soft and warm and wide being spread out over his lap and chest and arms and he opens his eyes to find Magnus pulling the other half of the blanket up over her own shoulders.
She’s not looking at him, her eyes are still staring dead ahead, and he’s about to lean his head back against the couch and tune out the movie again when he feels her hand slide against his forearm beneath the covers, brush against his hand and then grasp it firmly in her own. She squeezes it once, meaningfully. He turns his head to look at her. She’s looking right back at him now, the moving light pictures on screen reflecting in her eyes.
She’s been worried about him the entire time (he probably should have realized this, because nothing escapes this woman). It’s not stupid that you’re feeling this way, that’s what the touch means. I’m here, and I understand. I've always believed you (she's the only one who ever did).
It means all these things, and it means I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Will.
He exhales, and as her thumb strokes small circles against the pressure points along his skin, something inside of him begins to settle down.
III.
Some people dream of plane crashes or suffocation, guns and knives and bullets flying, heavy bodies that won’t move out of the way of danger until it’s too late.
Helen Magnus dreams of cobbled London streets and fog-hugged alleyways, razor blades and John Druitt’s voice a sand papery rasp against her ear right before the blood gushes forth, dripping a red velvet trail down her neck.
forgive me, Helen
She wakes in a panic on those rare, torturous nights, and the cold handle of the .45 is already grasped with bright white fingers.
And she knows: tonight is going to be hell.
Will’s peripheral vision finds her with two knuckles against her lips as he works silently. He allows himself a brief glance away from her skin and the bloodied gauze, watches her hand clench - a tear tips clumsily, tumbles down her cheek, and suddenly it’s her whole hand covering her face.
He doesn’t know what to do, so he keeps working, trying to let his own hands show all the frenzied tenderness of emotion he feels inside. He wants to wrap her up and never let her go. He wants to say something to her, something like I don’t understand - how is this okay? What if next time he kills you?
“Two cracked ribs and the bruises are gonna be a bitch. They’re deep. It’ll take at least a few months to heal.” But Will knows she knows this already. He’s reminding her not as a doctor, but as a friend.
She eases her arm out from around his neck where she’d been bracing herself, and reaches out for her blouse, her face screwing up with pain as she shrugs it back over her shoulders and fumbles with the buttons.
Her hands are shaking.
“Hey. Let me.” Will takes over the task, and she doesn’t protest. Her hand falls to her side, rests gingerly on the bright white expanse of bandage. She hisses in a breath, and then slowly lets it out.
“It’s complicated, Will.” She says finally, and meets his gaze. Her tone is like rusted steel, like she’s justifying something he never asked her to.
“I’m not judging,” he assures her.
Her eyes are so distant as his fingers slide the last button through its hole and linger against the soft pale fabric. She looks like she’s judging herself enough for the both of them.
“I can’t begin to imagine-“
“-no. You cannot.”
He’s almost hurt because that voice ringing in the silent lab is nothing but venom. He should probably have the foresight to back away before she strikes again, because she will, she’ll do it impulsively because she doesn’t have another outlet right now - and she’ll hate herself for it later, she’ll want to jump through fiery hoops to apologize but she won't, because Helen Magnus is nothing if not outwardly unapologetic to the core. Still, Will knows better than to think that inwardly she won't be cursing her irresponsibility, her misplaced blame and anger (especially towards him). He has the power to save her that private self-loathing. All he has to do is leave.
But instead of uncoiling and snapping with cold eyes and more harsh words she reaches suddenly for his face and he freezes right where he is, her fingers curl under his chin and she’s looking at him with tears pricking the bright blues of her eyes. She looks a little lost and like she needs him pretty badly right now and she’s trying to tell him so the only way she knows how (it’s a testament to their relationship that those tables have started to turn so smoothly).
He cants his head slightly so that his cheek now rests against the cupped palm of her hand; she adjusts her fingers and tightens her hold.
“It’s one of the things I love about you, Will. You don’t presume.”
He shifts again, presses his lips to her skin. The smile she gives him then is indescribable, an anchor, recognition and a thank you that goes straight into the center of him like a perfect bull’s eye.
IV.
“Will, could you come in here a moment please?”
He’s waiting outside her bedroom door in a tux, checking text messages and glancing at his watch. The gala is on the upper east side of the old city and he knows it’s going to take at least thirty minutes to get there in evening rush hour - even with Biggie driving.
“I’m assuming you know what time it is,” he drawls as he slides into the room, leaving the door cracked.
She’s standing with her back to him but he can see her face in the mirror’s reflection, in the soft, warm lamp light; she’s got two hands up near her cheek fastening an earring. “I do. The term ‘fashionably late’ comes to mind.”
There’s a brief moment wherein he tries for nonchalance, leaning with an arm up against the doorway, but it’s pretty hard to aim for breezy and careless when Helen Magnus is standing in front of you wearing an unzipped Euro vintage evening dress that you never even knew she had and there’s so much exposed skin you think you might drown just looking at it, when her eyes are lined heavy and precise with some magical, shimmery black-and-gold concoction.
“So, you. You look, uh...” And then whole scene turns a little ridiculous because the ellipsis goes on so long that she glances up to catch his gaze in the mirror, eyebrows raised - something in the back of his mind reminds him (again) that she’s his boss, has been for three years, and to settle down, kid. It’s not the first time he’s paid her a compliment on the way she looks. His mind runs a loop of follow-up possibilities: a collector’s doll, one of those really expensive, delicate ones you’d find at an auction. A vampiress or a siren; some sort of immortal, unearthly creature. A queen of vast empires. Outrageously hot.
“… really good, Magnus.” This, lamely, is what he finally settles on. “You look really good. Have I seen that dress before?”
She does that thing with her lips, the half-purse, half-smile, and ignores the question. “You look quite handsome yourself, Will. That cut suits you. Would you mind?” And she gestures towards the nape of her neck, indicating she needs to be fastened up.
“So I’m not going to fall asleep at this thing, am I?” He’s behind her now, trying not to let his hands linger too long against her bare back. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to embarrass the both of us, but if it’s anything like those stuffy scenes in ‘Titanic’ we might have a problem.”
Her arms are braced on the vanity in front of her, those earrings dangling long, nearly sweeping her collarbones - she glances up to watch him in the mirror again, feels his knuckles brush against her spine as the zipper slides. “You know better than to mention that film in my presence.” When his fingers fall away she turns to face him. Her hands are suddenly at his chest, straightening his tie (he wonders if it was even crooked), and she adds, “Don’t worry, Will. I’ll keep you thoroughly entertained.”
Later, as the night proceeds and she’s pulled off like taffy in a million different directions by a million different people, their eyes meet across the room and she smiles (this goddamn smile, he’ll never get the image out it of his head) and tips her flute of champagne just a millimeter in his direction, as if even among all these socialites in their Versace dresses and billion-dollar caviar he’s still the center of the room to her.
V.
It’s the wafting sound of music like an aroma of some charming thing baking that draws Will away from his emails sets him wandering in the dark down the grand staircase of…well, this giant manor house in…where were they again?
England? Switzerland? One of the lands, at any rate.
He finds her at the piano in the sitting room, a fire blazing behind her in the hearth and all that dark hair gathered up at the base of her neck, fingers against the keys.
“Hello, Will,” and she doesn’t stop playing, “couldn’t sleep either, I take it.”
It figures that she would know he was there anyway, silent as he is with her back turned. It’s almost impossible to take her by surprise. He doesn’t try to guess the how of it anymore - Helen Magnus has a million and a half superpowers that normal human beings don’t; small relics and talents picked up like souvenirs from over a dozen decades of life lived in a half-mystical world.
“Nah. Guess the Zürcher Geschnetzeltes isn’t sitting all that well with the airplane food from this morning.” He cracks a grin, and in the firelight sees that she mirrors it.
She slides to one side of the bench, pats a hand on the empty space beside her. “Come. Sit with me.”
It’s an hour or two later and the winter wind is beginning to howl a lonely, icy tune past the windows while a familiar calm nestles itself sleepily between the two of them. They’ve nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and it’s shamefully past both their bedtimes but hey - Will figures they don’t get to do this very often. They’ll be spending the rest of the week sorting through piles of tedious paperwork in order to transfer an abnormal through the proper channels back across the Atlantic; he thinks they deserve this time to unwind tonight.
She’s got an elbow propped up on the ledge of the piano, her hand cradles her jaw comfortably and her eyes are sparkling bright like those Eastern European stars he can see out the frosty picture window. She’s nodding slowly and he’s staring at her, a little speechless (yet again).
“No, really. Magnus. I mean-really.”
“Mm, in this very room.”
“You swapped ghost stories with Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde?” He should really, really be used to this by now.
She raises a brow slightly and nods. “This was before the Florence Balcombe debacle, of course. Not that I necessarily bought into that charade - at any rate, Sir Arthur and James were here as well. Two whole weeks,” she smiles wistfully, a little wickedly, “of nothing but dark gothic romance and cases upon cases of incredible Swiss wine.”
“That’s like, god, that’s like a Modern Villa Diodati. I mean,” he amends quickly, gesturing absentmindedly, “well, modern for you guys. At the time.”
“That was the idea. I grew up hearing these stories of ‘those nights on Lake Geneva’ and Shelley and Byron-“
Will doesn’t even bother acting surprised this time; he should have seen this coming. “-of course. Your father was actually at Villa Diodati.”
Magnus, however, does look a little surprised. “Yes, in fact.”
Will rakes two hands back through his messy hair. “Listen, pardon the expression, but these little revelations of yours are never not going to be a mindfuck for me.”
She purses her lips together in an effort not to smile, and does a poor job of it. “And nearly a century later here I am again at the villa, alone on a cold January night with my hapless, foulmouthed protégé and there’s obviously far less amusement to be had.” She’s teasing him. Again.
He faux-frowns and clutches a hand to his heart. “Ouch.”
Magnus reaches out to punch his arm playfully.
“I’ll just leave you and the piano alone then, shall I? No, no, seriously, it’s fine. You two have fun.”
“Oh, stop it.” She’s chuckling under her breath and then suddenly her eyes squint, and she looks over to him pointedly as if she’s just had a revelation herself. “William Zimmerman, you’ve never had a piano lesson in your life, have you?”
Will mulls this over and finally lands on the word “no”, which he responds aloud with, but it goes up at the end like a question.
“Oh, my poor, darling Will. I was hoping that prejudice had changed since my time. Hands on the keys, now.”
The laugh he gives in response sounds a little bizarre, but he obeys. He reaches both hands out toward the keys even though it’s obvious he has no idea what he’s doing, his fingers feel huge and clunky and he taps one of them clumsily - the loud shock of a note that rings out in the silence sounds nothing like the music she had filling the house earlier.
“Will.” Her voice is stern, but in that loving, teasing, maternal sort of way. She reaches across his lap to take one hand in hers, lacing her fingers between his before she guides them forward again.
“First rule: you stroke them gently. No, Will, not like that either-oh, honestly. Haven’t you ever held a tiny, trembling creature in your hands? Treat this with the same reverence.”
It was pointless though, because Will wasn’t even looking at the piano anymore: his eyes hadn’t left her face since she’d taken his hand. She’d begun to play a few simple notes, and they echo up from deep inside the old instrument in the quiet, fire lit space; she sweeps their fingers slowly from key to key, and inches herself closer to him. Their shoulders are touching, her other hand grasping the ledge of the bench just behind where he’s sitting (everything is getting just a little quieter in the room, the air between them a little clearer; even the wind outside is beginning to bend in submission to the weight of this sudden intimacy).
She’s so close he can smell her hair and his eyes flutter closed and then open briefly before he says, “There was that one time the jackalope had a litter and three of the newborns were so small we had to hand-feed them for two weeks.”
“There you go,” she murmurs, and her breath tickles his neck. If she dropped her chin an inch or two, it’d be resting on his shoulder. “It’s just like that.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“Who, uh, who taught you to play? Oh wait, let me guess. Giacomo Puccini? On a trip to Italy, after dinner in Naples and wine in Capri?”
She graces him with a laugh, but then there’s another pause and Will swears he can feel her decision to tell him the truth when it tips the scale and the moment grows tense for a fraction of a second before she says, “It was John, actually. Violin was my instrument of choice before he came along and showed me all the beauty and joy there was to behold here.” She demonstrates by traveling their hands back up the keyboard, starting the journey over again.
Will takes a deep, even breath, and says nothing even though its clear he’s biting something significant back.
A few seconds later Magnus has caught on, he feels her other hand come to rest flat against his back. In his peripheral vision, he watches her gaze shift; she’s looking right at him.
Something’s changed between them in these last moments, something heavy and full of dark static and some sort of uneasy promise like an electrical storm about to break. It's sudden and strange and off-putting but it's most definitely there, and it has something to do with her words, with the way she's touching him, with the way he's been watching her watching their hands at the keyboard. It's not the first time an exchange between them has taken a drastic turn in the opposite emotional direction.
“Will.”
“Was he gentle with you, back then?” The words come out before he can stop them. What’s more surprising than the words is the choked voice they’re wrapped in, like he’s not going to be able to stand her response either way (he’s wanted to ask her this question for as long as he can remember).
She doesn’t evade it like she might have done three, four, five months ago. She doesn’t tell him I’m sorry, Will, but I’m not going to answer that, nor does she insult him by pretending like she has no idea what on earth he means. In some ways she's not at all surprised, she's seen this coming. They’d both been in that cold, white laboratory on a night similar to this one when a veil had lifted irrevocably between them.
“Before or after?”
“Either.”
“Yes. He never treated me unkindly.” There was something reluctant in her voice, though, tightness in the corner of her eyes.
“But did he treat you gently?” Will is barely breathing; something inside of him is growing, building, becoming irrationally angry - he’d told her it was fine, he wasn’t going to presume, he wasn’t going to judge, but the memory of those bruises on her ribs is still fresh, those primary colours that had flowered broken blossoms across her pale, swollen skin in a way that might have been beautiful in a sick, morbid way if they hadn’t been wounds inflicted by the man who claimed to have been in love with her for two lifetimes.
He’s involved now. He cares (maybe more than he should - she doesn’t need any more men trying to lend her their armor, she has enough of her own).
Still, Will’s anger, the frustration at his desire to understand but knowing he never will, makes him bold. “You said you have to be gentle with the keys. You said he taught you that.” He grasps her fingers tightly, and then trails them across the ivory like she’d done before, but this time soundlessly. “Was he gentle with you the same way?” His fingers relax, now; she’s silent but receptive as he plays his hand softly against hers until their palms touch. “Like this?”
Their eyes lock. She feels the tension, understands the implication. He still wants to know why. She can’t blame him, but she also can’t help the way her features harden or the way she immediately wants to run a mile in the opposite direction. The way she wants to lock herself back in that cold room she’d lived in for decades and slam down any window she may have accidentally or purposefully left open.
She looks upset, but not enough for him to regret the question.
“Will, I told you-it’s complicated. I understand where this is coming from, but I assure you-“
“-I know.” He’s not blinking; he’s not looking away. He feels a little reckless and he knows he doesn’t have a right to feel protective of Helen Magnus, but he does, he feels it like a drug raging hot and heavy through his veins. And she’s allowed him just enough of herself these last few months to make him crave more, to make him realize she trusts him unreservedly now and he means to test it (because she can deny it, but he knows better now, he almost knows her as well as she knows herself - she needs someone to trust so badly and he’s it, whether it was a conscious decision on her part or not).
He leans toward her. He lifts a lock of hair away from her neck slowly, gauging her reaction - she doesn’t break the gaze, doesn’t move at all, she’s still as a painting and the only thing that tells him she’s still present there with him and not lost in other memories with other people and emotions that have nothing to do with him is the way her blue eyes darken (not in warning, but in uncertainty of what he’s going to do next).
He watches her closely, even as he leans nearer, and the fire snaps and crackles (maybe this is the warning) loudly as he throws caution to the wind and presses his lips to the spot of skin he’s cleared away at her pulse point.
She turns rigid against him and he hears (feels) her breathing growing a little heavier, a little more rapid and his heart flutters blatantly, helplessly in his chest because she isn’t stopping him.
When he brings the hand that isn’t tangled in hers to curl against the other side of her throat she furrows her brows and clenches her fingers around his, but nothing else. It isn’t until he opens his mouth to suck gently at her skin that she snakes the hand at his back up into his hair and finally pulls him away.
“Will.”
“Magnus-“
“Stop.”
“I-“
“Just…stop.”
She breathes in deeply and closes her eyes like she’s either steeling herself to do something she isn’t sure about, or gathering her wits about her so that she doesn’t smack him in the face right then and there. It only takes him a split second to decide that he’ll back off if she tells him to, no questions asked, he’ll do whatever she wants, whatever she asks, just like he’s always done.
To his surprise, she neither voices protest nor looks necessarily upset. She looks down into her lap for a moment and when her eyes dart back to his he doesn’t see any uncertainty or resentment there, just a flash of clear irises and that devastating mouth before she tugs him back to her with palpable finality and decisiveness.
There’s little else for him to do besides take her face in both his hands and kiss her the way he’s wanted to kiss her probably since he first laid eyes on her, and a little bit more every day that’s passed since then (and it’s not just a kiss, because she’s given him a life and a purpose and for a long time he’s wanted to thank her in more than words, but he wasn’t sure how - now he is). Deep down in that locked away place this want blows like a Santa Ana that he’s got to keep at bay for a million and a half different reasons, not in the least because sometimes he’s not sure if he’s actually mistaking respect for desire, friendship for love, or if maybe he’s just mixing up his own tangled longings with everything he feels for her (he’s pretty sure, though, it’s hard to mistake the signals his body is giving). Still, there’s this line here between them that’s become increasingly blurred the longer they’ve known and worked together; they’ve danced around it and pulled it taught and tip-toed back and forth across it over and over and over again like it was beyond their control since they’d met.
But she hasn’t missed a beat, and if any of these doubts hold truth or if she has any of her own she promptly renders them irrelevant: her hands reach to cradle the back of his head and neck in a way that makes him feel like they share a secret, in a way that’s nurturing and sensual at the same time while her mouth pulls deeply (finally) at his.
“Magnus-“ he breaks away long enough to gasp, and he’s feeling a little frantic and uncertain and dizzy and fucking hot all over. Not a lot of planning has gone into this; he’s going against his painfully logical nature and acting entirely on impulse here, he’s not thinking about consequences, and like Pandora opening that goddamn box he’s gone and flipped the latch but he really has no idea what to do now that the entire universe has started to pour out (he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, he doesn’t know whether or not he’s allowed to touch her now, whether or not she’ll be okay with him shoving her against the wall like he wants to and dropping to his knees in front of her).
“Shh, this is all right. It’s all right, Will.” She’s using her lips like she means to take something from him, something he’s not even realized he’s willing and ready and able to give to her (there’s not a whole lot left that isn’t hers already). They’ve abandoned the piano bench and she’s un-tucking his shirt as they stumble toward the couch; she’s pressing herself into him, her fingernails trail down his abdomen and he seizes her neck suddenly, reflexively, with both hands.
“Jesus-christ-“
He’s so unsteady, his body is humming and fluttering and rushing and burning, he feels like he might fall apart before he finishes what they’ve started. She understands without asking, without even looking into his eyes: he needs prompting and assurance, and she needs to take the reigns for a little bit. On some level he’d always known that she wouldn’t be surprised if he ever took this step (it was the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn’t looking back), but he never imagined that she'd initiate it. He's not the one who keeps her up at night, and he never will be.
(What he doesn’t know, what she’s deciding to show him now, is this: when she needs relief from what does keep her up at night, from that vast, knotted century of hurt and love and betrayal and confusion and scars that will never truly heal, she takes refuge in the thought of him. He’s disconnected from it all, untouched by it - he cares about her in the most innocent, whole-hearted, blindingly trusting way she could ever imagine being cared for and she knows her life's work is safe with him, that she is safe with him. He’s blissfully mortal; he’s Will, and this is why he's special, this is why her love for him is different - not less or more, just different - than the others.)
Her fingers catch his mid-air and their chests are heaving, hearts pounding; she quickly smears a kiss into his hand and then slips it down between them so that he can feel for himself what this means to her.
“Ohgod-“
She can’t help but laugh (low, breathless and trembling) even though it's far from funny, because they’ve only just begun. She’s only shown him a fraction of what this is; they’ve barely even gotten to the first of the many difficult, complicated, confusing, aching things she feels for him (the things she shouldn’t feel for him), let alone the things she wants to do to him (the things she definitely should not want to do to him).
So she looks into his eyes and says, even as both their hands are still between her legs, “We can slow down, Will. It’s all right.”
“-No, no no no this is good, this is, it’s so good, I just-“
He doesn’t finish his sentence, or maybe he does, in the way his mouth crashes back to hers (a perfect punctuation).
She smiles against his lips and he can feel it, that smile; he knows in that moment that this woman could very easily end up being the death of him (he’s always known this, but the death he’d always imagined came by gunfire or by venom or maybe asphyxiation, maybe hypothermia - certainly not this, this slow storm of fingertips trailing and tongues slipping, stroking like paintbrushes on canvases of skin).
They’ve tangled themselves up in each other in more ways than one; she’s pushed his shirt off his shoulders and drawn him down into the soft cushions. With her legs wrapping around his waist and her breath hot against his ear he’s provoked enough to slip a hand up her shirt, to sweep his fingers across her breasts while she arches into him like a bow.
She’s already shown him that she wants this, but when his mouth trails down her neck, chest, stomach, and it’s apparent he means to clear all obstacles of fabric that separate them, she still clenches a warning hand into his hair. There’s something overwhelmingly raw about this whole situation and if they’re not careful, if they’re not honest, it might tip out of their control and redefine all the things they take comfort in, all the things they depend on to remain solid. Even through this haze, they realize they won't let that happen. They want to keep that integrity between them and so even as Will makes easy work of stripping away her clothes, even as he slips her panties down her legs and lets them drop to the floor, he makes sure to catch her gaze and hold it until the moment feels right and she tips her head back (unmistakable permission). He winds his arms beneath her thighs and curls his tongue against her, begins to coax down the barriers that remain between them (he undoes himself in the process and it's all he can do to keep upright when her breath finally hitches, when she twists and arches up against his mouth and comes silently for what feels like days; but she’ll pick him back up, put him back together with gentle hands and kind eyes that challenge and look endlessly into the places inside himself he didn’t know existed).
Later, she pulls him down onto the fire-warmed rug and lingers above him, makes slow work of removing the rest of his clothes (it’s a relief to be rid of them), whispers things to him that make him feel like he’s had the wind knocked out of his lungs, things that make his eyes snap shut and make his fists clench in her long, dark hair. When he can't take it anymore, when she spreads her legs against him like she'd give him anything he needs, he rolls her onto her back and buries what feels like his entire self inside of her. He doesn't think he'll ever want to come back out; everything about him belongs to her in that moment. When she releases him from that high, when he comes back down, he comes in a slow whirlwind with her name on his lips.
They make love in front of the fire until only gold and crimson flecked embers remain, until the grey morning light begins to peek through the clouds outside. At some point during the night Helen has tugged a quilt down from the settee, spread it over them and pulled Will closer beneath it. His head is nestled in the crook of her neck and he drowses, falling in and out of consciousness, loosing track of time and forgetting everything about the waking world except the way his body curves into hers. Each time he wakes, he wakes to the feel of her fingers: first trailing along his spine, then his thigh, and his neck, his jaw, between his eyebrows where she knows the muscles are always tense. She kisses his lips and his temples, his cheeks, his fingertips, and he wonders (not for the first time) what she’s thinking.
At one point he presses his lips to the spot of skin just behind her ear, breathes it all in sleepily; her hair is damp and her skin is hot to the touch.
“Dare you to get rid of me now,” he murmurs.
She closes her eyes for a moment before she opens them to meet his gaze. “As if I would have before." They'd both made up their minds years ago about so many things; some of them they'd only just begun to realize.
"As if you could have," he challenges.
He’ll never tire of the way she looks at him; the way she lays a palm against his cheek like it's something so precious. “My dear, sweet Will.” She smiles another perfect bull’s eye.
Someday, all of this between them will end like a slow bullet in the back.
It’ll be too fast and not fast enough and a long time coming, and Helen will bury him like she’s buried the others and she’ll withdraw back into her shell until someone else with that same look in their eye, with that same strong heart in their chest, comes along to coax her out again.
That was the pattern.
But she’s not sure if it’ll hold this time. Patterns have to break eventually and this time, she thinks (as she strokes Will’s hair, stares unblinking into his sleeping face and just aches, aches with a bone-deep throb that she hasn’t felt in a very, very long time) that maybe, just maybe, when the time comes and she has to let this one go, she may never come back out.
---
author: cata_clysmiic
characters: Helen, Will (Helen/Will, Helen/John all over the place if you squint)
title: a sailor on your open book (write it down in code) - (aka five times Helen and Will got closer)
rating: m
word count: just shy of 7,000 (sweet jesus)
disclaimer: I own nothing. NOTHING. D: HOLD ME.
notes: so cartography and I came up with this idea for a “five times Helen and Will got closer” double-entendre kinda thing in one of our weird scary moments of clairvoyance and telepathy. so obviously I had to do it. (ISA. I’ve hidden a few Leverage references in here, bb, 10 points to Ravenclaw if you can find them). title from the incredible Emily Wells. set mid-late season 3 (although for the sake of this fic let's pretend like Haunted takes place closer to season 3 on the Sanctuary timeline, as there's reference to it here).
edit: OHMYGOD THIS FIC HAS SET ME INTO A FIT OF HYSTERICS. I SINCERELY HOPE IT WORKS FOR YOU, DEAR READER, BECAUSE I GAVE UP TRYING TO WRITE WELL AFTER THE 800TH ATTEMPT. /overdramatic /leaves in a huff
summary: Someday, all of this between them will end like a slow bullet in the back.
so maybe we’re a bliss
of another kind
-tori amos
hopelessly i’ll give you everything
if the moment ever comes
-muse
I.
He walks into her office one morning as the sunlight splashes like yellow paint against the walls and she’s standing, perched precariously on a tall wooden stool, reaching for the highest bookshelf.
“Whoa, Magnus. Don’t you have a robotic arm or something that could do that for you?”
“I like to fetch my own books myself, thankyouverymuch.” She grunts slightly with gallant effort; he shoves his hands into his jean pockets and when it’s apparent that she’s not going to elaborate further he allows himself to take in a few more details about the scene before him: the heels abandoned on the floor, the files and hot tea things spread haphazardly on her desk, the way her bare calves look beneath the black skirt she’s decided to wear today as she flexes, rocks back and forth on her toes against the mahogany.
“Bloody bookshelves,” she murmurs aloud now and Will recognizes this as the beginning of a Helen Magnus thought-commentary; he smiles and says nothing because he really wants to hear the rest of this. “It’s my comeuppance for the one time I foolishly chose aesthetics over utility. I usually only keep the rather dull ones up here but something came up warranting a brief look into the mating habits of-“
-he’s noticing other things now, too, how high that top shelf really is, the book of Shakespeare sonnets on the shelf just below it, the way her dark hair hangs, curled and dangling far down her back as she tilts her head up in earnest. The way her blouse rises slightly on her hips to show a sliver of bare skin as her arms lift high above her head.
“Well why didn’t you say so? You know I’m a world-acclaimed expert on all manner of abnormal breeding ritual.”
She laughs at that and he swells with a familiar sense of triumph, the one he feels whenever he can manage to genuinely amuse her. She stops reaching, rests her forehead against the ledge at her eye-level. “You could give a lady a hand, Will. I’m loosing balance here.”
“I thought you liked to ‘fetch’ things yourself,” he teased, but he was already taking strides across the room toward her.
“I’ll thank you to just get over here,” she mumbles in faux-agitation, but she’s trying not to smile.
“You look good up there, if it makes you feel any better.” It’s an observation, a cryptic, vague one that sounds almost entirely objective, and he wraps his hands around her ankles bracingly as he speaks.
She pauses. “Are you suggesting that I don’t look good otherwise?”
It’s such a ridiculous query that he doesn’t even grant her a reply. He does, however, catch her eye as she looks questioningly down at him when nothing but silence greets her. He’s grinning, and she’s got an incredulous eyebrow raised.
“Well?” She asks, and drops a hand to rest sardonically on her hip. “When I ask a question, Dr. Zimmerman, I expect an answer.”
She’s being coy; it happens from time to time, and Will adores these rare moods like he adores a good cup of coffee: it makes him feel jittery and buoyant and this sort of give-and-take reminds him why he wakes up every morning at the Sanctuary, thrilled and challenged by his work, by his boss (it also reminds him why every other woman seems a little dull in comparison - Helen Magnus has ruined him in more ways than one).
“Maybe if you asked me a question you didn’t already know the answer to so that I could actually feel helpful,” he counters. “Actually, I’m not sure if such a question exists.” He adds this contemplatively, to be fair. His fingers slip a little against her bare skin as she wobbles atop her perch.
“Oh please. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a mind-reader, Will.” She turns back to the shelf.
“Could’ve fooled me.” He grins again, but notices there’s a ruffled edge to her now, some sort of passing tension she’s trying not to let him see. “Wait-you’re serious? You seriously wanted an answer to that?”
She doesn’t look back down at him but he sees her roll her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Oh my god you totally wanted a real answer. You did.” He’s grinning like the cat that ate the canary, like he’d just called an enormous bluff that’s won him a fortune.
She huffs a little, and she’s finally slid the book out from its impossible hiding place. She straightens her skirt and turns back to face him on the stool; he offers his hand to help her down and she takes it. It’s a pretty big step and she teeters just a bit but he catches her around the waist and waits until she gains her balance again. Without heels, they’re nearly the same height.
In the split second before she bends to pick up her shoes, before he releases her free hand, he tugs against her to get her attention and when she looks into his eyes he says, “If there’s ever a day you don’t look good to me, Magnus, then have me committed - I’ll have gone completely insane at that point.”
He swears he sees her bite her lip and smile before she turns away.
II.
“Oh come ON,” Henry yells out loud again, and a fistful of popcorn explodes at the screen like confetti. “That’s not even, like, a little bit accurate!”
It’s movie night in the Sanctuary screening room and they’re watching something Henry found on Netflix and seemed pretty excited about; funny, because all he’s done the entire time is point out everything they’re doing wrong.
It’s a stupid movie, Will knows it, but okay, the thing is: he’s vaguely uncomfortable because the plot centers almost entirely around a little boy who’s told his parents he sees monsters in his closet, but they won’t believe him, they keep telling him to go back to bed, he’s just a kid, he’s seeing things. It’s stupid, this ridiculous way he’s relating to it. It’s not even worth the memories it’s stirring up, and so Will just keeps quiet and rationalizes to himself as he sits next to Magnus on the love seat, his eyes unmoving from the screen while Henry and Kate argue over whether or not the monster is really a breed of half-dilophosaurus half-yeti and the Big Guy rolls his eyes a little dangerously.
Magnus herself is awfully quiet too, although that’s not a telling thing at all. She could just be tired, or amused by the commentary, unwilling to interrupt, or maybe she’s going over new inventory in her head (wouldn’t be the first time).
Except she keeps stealing glances over to Will, who feels her eyes on him every few minutes like a tangible thing, something warm and sharp and welcome and unsettling all at the same time.
Will’s been having bad dreams, lately. He feels especially raw tonight, and so the timing of all this is pretty uncanny. He rubs a pair of knuckles against his unshaven face and blinks his eyes blearily as Henry and Kate howl with laughter at something that has nothing to do with the movie and the little boy onscreen pulls his spaceship bedcovers more tightly over his face.
Will closes his eyes, now. He feels kind of alone.
There’s some movement from Magnus at his left, a shuffling and a reshuffling as she reaches back behind the couch for something - her wine glass, probably, Will thinks in passing - but then suddenly there’s something soft and warm and wide being spread out over his lap and chest and arms and he opens his eyes to find Magnus pulling the other half of the blanket up over her own shoulders.
She’s not looking at him, her eyes are still staring dead ahead, and he’s about to lean his head back against the couch and tune out the movie again when he feels her hand slide against his forearm beneath the covers, brush against his hand and then grasp it firmly in her own. She squeezes it once, meaningfully. He turns his head to look at her. She’s looking right back at him now, the moving light pictures on screen reflecting in her eyes.
She’s been worried about him the entire time (he probably should have realized this, because nothing escapes this woman). It’s not stupid that you’re feeling this way, that’s what the touch means. I’m here, and I understand. I've always believed you (she's the only one who ever did).
It means all these things, and it means I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Will.
He exhales, and as her thumb strokes small circles against the pressure points along his skin, something inside of him begins to settle down.
III.
Some people dream of plane crashes or suffocation, guns and knives and bullets flying, heavy bodies that won’t move out of the way of danger until it’s too late.
Helen Magnus dreams of cobbled London streets and fog-hugged alleyways, razor blades and John Druitt’s voice a sand papery rasp against her ear right before the blood gushes forth, dripping a red velvet trail down her neck.
forgive me, Helen
She wakes in a panic on those rare, torturous nights, and the cold handle of the .45 is already grasped with bright white fingers.
And she knows: tonight is going to be hell.
Will’s peripheral vision finds her with two knuckles against her lips as he works silently. He allows himself a brief glance away from her skin and the bloodied gauze, watches her hand clench - a tear tips clumsily, tumbles down her cheek, and suddenly it’s her whole hand covering her face.
He doesn’t know what to do, so he keeps working, trying to let his own hands show all the frenzied tenderness of emotion he feels inside. He wants to wrap her up and never let her go. He wants to say something to her, something like I don’t understand - how is this okay? What if next time he kills you?
“Two cracked ribs and the bruises are gonna be a bitch. They’re deep. It’ll take at least a few months to heal.” But Will knows she knows this already. He’s reminding her not as a doctor, but as a friend.
She eases her arm out from around his neck where she’d been bracing herself, and reaches out for her blouse, her face screwing up with pain as she shrugs it back over her shoulders and fumbles with the buttons.
Her hands are shaking.
“Hey. Let me.” Will takes over the task, and she doesn’t protest. Her hand falls to her side, rests gingerly on the bright white expanse of bandage. She hisses in a breath, and then slowly lets it out.
“It’s complicated, Will.” She says finally, and meets his gaze. Her tone is like rusted steel, like she’s justifying something he never asked her to.
“I’m not judging,” he assures her.
Her eyes are so distant as his fingers slide the last button through its hole and linger against the soft pale fabric. She looks like she’s judging herself enough for the both of them.
“I can’t begin to imagine-“
“-no. You cannot.”
He’s almost hurt because that voice ringing in the silent lab is nothing but venom. He should probably have the foresight to back away before she strikes again, because she will, she’ll do it impulsively because she doesn’t have another outlet right now - and she’ll hate herself for it later, she’ll want to jump through fiery hoops to apologize but she won't, because Helen Magnus is nothing if not outwardly unapologetic to the core. Still, Will knows better than to think that inwardly she won't be cursing her irresponsibility, her misplaced blame and anger (especially towards him). He has the power to save her that private self-loathing. All he has to do is leave.
But instead of uncoiling and snapping with cold eyes and more harsh words she reaches suddenly for his face and he freezes right where he is, her fingers curl under his chin and she’s looking at him with tears pricking the bright blues of her eyes. She looks a little lost and like she needs him pretty badly right now and she’s trying to tell him so the only way she knows how (it’s a testament to their relationship that those tables have started to turn so smoothly).
He cants his head slightly so that his cheek now rests against the cupped palm of her hand; she adjusts her fingers and tightens her hold.
“It’s one of the things I love about you, Will. You don’t presume.”
He shifts again, presses his lips to her skin. The smile she gives him then is indescribable, an anchor, recognition and a thank you that goes straight into the center of him like a perfect bull’s eye.
IV.
“Will, could you come in here a moment please?”
He’s waiting outside her bedroom door in a tux, checking text messages and glancing at his watch. The gala is on the upper east side of the old city and he knows it’s going to take at least thirty minutes to get there in evening rush hour - even with Biggie driving.
“I’m assuming you know what time it is,” he drawls as he slides into the room, leaving the door cracked.
She’s standing with her back to him but he can see her face in the mirror’s reflection, in the soft, warm lamp light; she’s got two hands up near her cheek fastening an earring. “I do. The term ‘fashionably late’ comes to mind.”
There’s a brief moment wherein he tries for nonchalance, leaning with an arm up against the doorway, but it’s pretty hard to aim for breezy and careless when Helen Magnus is standing in front of you wearing an unzipped Euro vintage evening dress that you never even knew she had and there’s so much exposed skin you think you might drown just looking at it, when her eyes are lined heavy and precise with some magical, shimmery black-and-gold concoction.
“So, you. You look, uh...” And then whole scene turns a little ridiculous because the ellipsis goes on so long that she glances up to catch his gaze in the mirror, eyebrows raised - something in the back of his mind reminds him (again) that she’s his boss, has been for three years, and to settle down, kid. It’s not the first time he’s paid her a compliment on the way she looks. His mind runs a loop of follow-up possibilities: a collector’s doll, one of those really expensive, delicate ones you’d find at an auction. A vampiress or a siren; some sort of immortal, unearthly creature. A queen of vast empires. Outrageously hot.
“… really good, Magnus.” This, lamely, is what he finally settles on. “You look really good. Have I seen that dress before?”
She does that thing with her lips, the half-purse, half-smile, and ignores the question. “You look quite handsome yourself, Will. That cut suits you. Would you mind?” And she gestures towards the nape of her neck, indicating she needs to be fastened up.
“So I’m not going to fall asleep at this thing, am I?” He’s behind her now, trying not to let his hands linger too long against her bare back. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to embarrass the both of us, but if it’s anything like those stuffy scenes in ‘Titanic’ we might have a problem.”
Her arms are braced on the vanity in front of her, those earrings dangling long, nearly sweeping her collarbones - she glances up to watch him in the mirror again, feels his knuckles brush against her spine as the zipper slides. “You know better than to mention that film in my presence.” When his fingers fall away she turns to face him. Her hands are suddenly at his chest, straightening his tie (he wonders if it was even crooked), and she adds, “Don’t worry, Will. I’ll keep you thoroughly entertained.”
Later, as the night proceeds and she’s pulled off like taffy in a million different directions by a million different people, their eyes meet across the room and she smiles (this goddamn smile, he’ll never get the image out it of his head) and tips her flute of champagne just a millimeter in his direction, as if even among all these socialites in their Versace dresses and billion-dollar caviar he’s still the center of the room to her.
V.
It’s the wafting sound of music like an aroma of some charming thing baking that draws Will away from his emails sets him wandering in the dark down the grand staircase of…well, this giant manor house in…where were they again?
England? Switzerland? One of the lands, at any rate.
He finds her at the piano in the sitting room, a fire blazing behind her in the hearth and all that dark hair gathered up at the base of her neck, fingers against the keys.
“Hello, Will,” and she doesn’t stop playing, “couldn’t sleep either, I take it.”
It figures that she would know he was there anyway, silent as he is with her back turned. It’s almost impossible to take her by surprise. He doesn’t try to guess the how of it anymore - Helen Magnus has a million and a half superpowers that normal human beings don’t; small relics and talents picked up like souvenirs from over a dozen decades of life lived in a half-mystical world.
“Nah. Guess the Zürcher Geschnetzeltes isn’t sitting all that well with the airplane food from this morning.” He cracks a grin, and in the firelight sees that she mirrors it.
She slides to one side of the bench, pats a hand on the empty space beside her. “Come. Sit with me.”
It’s an hour or two later and the winter wind is beginning to howl a lonely, icy tune past the windows while a familiar calm nestles itself sleepily between the two of them. They’ve nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and it’s shamefully past both their bedtimes but hey - Will figures they don’t get to do this very often. They’ll be spending the rest of the week sorting through piles of tedious paperwork in order to transfer an abnormal through the proper channels back across the Atlantic; he thinks they deserve this time to unwind tonight.
She’s got an elbow propped up on the ledge of the piano, her hand cradles her jaw comfortably and her eyes are sparkling bright like those Eastern European stars he can see out the frosty picture window. She’s nodding slowly and he’s staring at her, a little speechless (yet again).
“No, really. Magnus. I mean-really.”
“Mm, in this very room.”
“You swapped ghost stories with Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde?” He should really, really be used to this by now.
She raises a brow slightly and nods. “This was before the Florence Balcombe debacle, of course. Not that I necessarily bought into that charade - at any rate, Sir Arthur and James were here as well. Two whole weeks,” she smiles wistfully, a little wickedly, “of nothing but dark gothic romance and cases upon cases of incredible Swiss wine.”
“That’s like, god, that’s like a Modern Villa Diodati. I mean,” he amends quickly, gesturing absentmindedly, “well, modern for you guys. At the time.”
“That was the idea. I grew up hearing these stories of ‘those nights on Lake Geneva’ and Shelley and Byron-“
Will doesn’t even bother acting surprised this time; he should have seen this coming. “-of course. Your father was actually at Villa Diodati.”
Magnus, however, does look a little surprised. “Yes, in fact.”
Will rakes two hands back through his messy hair. “Listen, pardon the expression, but these little revelations of yours are never not going to be a mindfuck for me.”
She purses her lips together in an effort not to smile, and does a poor job of it. “And nearly a century later here I am again at the villa, alone on a cold January night with my hapless, foulmouthed protégé and there’s obviously far less amusement to be had.” She’s teasing him. Again.
He faux-frowns and clutches a hand to his heart. “Ouch.”
Magnus reaches out to punch his arm playfully.
“I’ll just leave you and the piano alone then, shall I? No, no, seriously, it’s fine. You two have fun.”
“Oh, stop it.” She’s chuckling under her breath and then suddenly her eyes squint, and she looks over to him pointedly as if she’s just had a revelation herself. “William Zimmerman, you’ve never had a piano lesson in your life, have you?”
Will mulls this over and finally lands on the word “no”, which he responds aloud with, but it goes up at the end like a question.
“Oh, my poor, darling Will. I was hoping that prejudice had changed since my time. Hands on the keys, now.”
The laugh he gives in response sounds a little bizarre, but he obeys. He reaches both hands out toward the keys even though it’s obvious he has no idea what he’s doing, his fingers feel huge and clunky and he taps one of them clumsily - the loud shock of a note that rings out in the silence sounds nothing like the music she had filling the house earlier.
“Will.” Her voice is stern, but in that loving, teasing, maternal sort of way. She reaches across his lap to take one hand in hers, lacing her fingers between his before she guides them forward again.
“First rule: you stroke them gently. No, Will, not like that either-oh, honestly. Haven’t you ever held a tiny, trembling creature in your hands? Treat this with the same reverence.”
It was pointless though, because Will wasn’t even looking at the piano anymore: his eyes hadn’t left her face since she’d taken his hand. She’d begun to play a few simple notes, and they echo up from deep inside the old instrument in the quiet, fire lit space; she sweeps their fingers slowly from key to key, and inches herself closer to him. Their shoulders are touching, her other hand grasping the ledge of the bench just behind where he’s sitting (everything is getting just a little quieter in the room, the air between them a little clearer; even the wind outside is beginning to bend in submission to the weight of this sudden intimacy).
She’s so close he can smell her hair and his eyes flutter closed and then open briefly before he says, “There was that one time the jackalope had a litter and three of the newborns were so small we had to hand-feed them for two weeks.”
“There you go,” she murmurs, and her breath tickles his neck. If she dropped her chin an inch or two, it’d be resting on his shoulder. “It’s just like that.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“Who, uh, who taught you to play? Oh wait, let me guess. Giacomo Puccini? On a trip to Italy, after dinner in Naples and wine in Capri?”
She graces him with a laugh, but then there’s another pause and Will swears he can feel her decision to tell him the truth when it tips the scale and the moment grows tense for a fraction of a second before she says, “It was John, actually. Violin was my instrument of choice before he came along and showed me all the beauty and joy there was to behold here.” She demonstrates by traveling their hands back up the keyboard, starting the journey over again.
Will takes a deep, even breath, and says nothing even though its clear he’s biting something significant back.
A few seconds later Magnus has caught on, he feels her other hand come to rest flat against his back. In his peripheral vision, he watches her gaze shift; she’s looking right at him.
Something’s changed between them in these last moments, something heavy and full of dark static and some sort of uneasy promise like an electrical storm about to break. It's sudden and strange and off-putting but it's most definitely there, and it has something to do with her words, with the way she's touching him, with the way he's been watching her watching their hands at the keyboard. It's not the first time an exchange between them has taken a drastic turn in the opposite emotional direction.
“Will.”
“Was he gentle with you, back then?” The words come out before he can stop them. What’s more surprising than the words is the choked voice they’re wrapped in, like he’s not going to be able to stand her response either way (he’s wanted to ask her this question for as long as he can remember).
She doesn’t evade it like she might have done three, four, five months ago. She doesn’t tell him I’m sorry, Will, but I’m not going to answer that, nor does she insult him by pretending like she has no idea what on earth he means. In some ways she's not at all surprised, she's seen this coming. They’d both been in that cold, white laboratory on a night similar to this one when a veil had lifted irrevocably between them.
“Before or after?”
“Either.”
“Yes. He never treated me unkindly.” There was something reluctant in her voice, though, tightness in the corner of her eyes.
“But did he treat you gently?” Will is barely breathing; something inside of him is growing, building, becoming irrationally angry - he’d told her it was fine, he wasn’t going to presume, he wasn’t going to judge, but the memory of those bruises on her ribs is still fresh, those primary colours that had flowered broken blossoms across her pale, swollen skin in a way that might have been beautiful in a sick, morbid way if they hadn’t been wounds inflicted by the man who claimed to have been in love with her for two lifetimes.
He’s involved now. He cares (maybe more than he should - she doesn’t need any more men trying to lend her their armor, she has enough of her own).
Still, Will’s anger, the frustration at his desire to understand but knowing he never will, makes him bold. “You said you have to be gentle with the keys. You said he taught you that.” He grasps her fingers tightly, and then trails them across the ivory like she’d done before, but this time soundlessly. “Was he gentle with you the same way?” His fingers relax, now; she’s silent but receptive as he plays his hand softly against hers until their palms touch. “Like this?”
Their eyes lock. She feels the tension, understands the implication. He still wants to know why. She can’t blame him, but she also can’t help the way her features harden or the way she immediately wants to run a mile in the opposite direction. The way she wants to lock herself back in that cold room she’d lived in for decades and slam down any window she may have accidentally or purposefully left open.
She looks upset, but not enough for him to regret the question.
“Will, I told you-it’s complicated. I understand where this is coming from, but I assure you-“
“-I know.” He’s not blinking; he’s not looking away. He feels a little reckless and he knows he doesn’t have a right to feel protective of Helen Magnus, but he does, he feels it like a drug raging hot and heavy through his veins. And she’s allowed him just enough of herself these last few months to make him crave more, to make him realize she trusts him unreservedly now and he means to test it (because she can deny it, but he knows better now, he almost knows her as well as she knows herself - she needs someone to trust so badly and he’s it, whether it was a conscious decision on her part or not).
He leans toward her. He lifts a lock of hair away from her neck slowly, gauging her reaction - she doesn’t break the gaze, doesn’t move at all, she’s still as a painting and the only thing that tells him she’s still present there with him and not lost in other memories with other people and emotions that have nothing to do with him is the way her blue eyes darken (not in warning, but in uncertainty of what he’s going to do next).
He watches her closely, even as he leans nearer, and the fire snaps and crackles (maybe this is the warning) loudly as he throws caution to the wind and presses his lips to the spot of skin he’s cleared away at her pulse point.
She turns rigid against him and he hears (feels) her breathing growing a little heavier, a little more rapid and his heart flutters blatantly, helplessly in his chest because she isn’t stopping him.
When he brings the hand that isn’t tangled in hers to curl against the other side of her throat she furrows her brows and clenches her fingers around his, but nothing else. It isn’t until he opens his mouth to suck gently at her skin that she snakes the hand at his back up into his hair and finally pulls him away.
“Will.”
“Magnus-“
“Stop.”
“I-“
“Just…stop.”
She breathes in deeply and closes her eyes like she’s either steeling herself to do something she isn’t sure about, or gathering her wits about her so that she doesn’t smack him in the face right then and there. It only takes him a split second to decide that he’ll back off if she tells him to, no questions asked, he’ll do whatever she wants, whatever she asks, just like he’s always done.
To his surprise, she neither voices protest nor looks necessarily upset. She looks down into her lap for a moment and when her eyes dart back to his he doesn’t see any uncertainty or resentment there, just a flash of clear irises and that devastating mouth before she tugs him back to her with palpable finality and decisiveness.
There’s little else for him to do besides take her face in both his hands and kiss her the way he’s wanted to kiss her probably since he first laid eyes on her, and a little bit more every day that’s passed since then (and it’s not just a kiss, because she’s given him a life and a purpose and for a long time he’s wanted to thank her in more than words, but he wasn’t sure how - now he is). Deep down in that locked away place this want blows like a Santa Ana that he’s got to keep at bay for a million and a half different reasons, not in the least because sometimes he’s not sure if he’s actually mistaking respect for desire, friendship for love, or if maybe he’s just mixing up his own tangled longings with everything he feels for her (he’s pretty sure, though, it’s hard to mistake the signals his body is giving). Still, there’s this line here between them that’s become increasingly blurred the longer they’ve known and worked together; they’ve danced around it and pulled it taught and tip-toed back and forth across it over and over and over again like it was beyond their control since they’d met.
But she hasn’t missed a beat, and if any of these doubts hold truth or if she has any of her own she promptly renders them irrelevant: her hands reach to cradle the back of his head and neck in a way that makes him feel like they share a secret, in a way that’s nurturing and sensual at the same time while her mouth pulls deeply (finally) at his.
“Magnus-“ he breaks away long enough to gasp, and he’s feeling a little frantic and uncertain and dizzy and fucking hot all over. Not a lot of planning has gone into this; he’s going against his painfully logical nature and acting entirely on impulse here, he’s not thinking about consequences, and like Pandora opening that goddamn box he’s gone and flipped the latch but he really has no idea what to do now that the entire universe has started to pour out (he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, he doesn’t know whether or not he’s allowed to touch her now, whether or not she’ll be okay with him shoving her against the wall like he wants to and dropping to his knees in front of her).
“Shh, this is all right. It’s all right, Will.” She’s using her lips like she means to take something from him, something he’s not even realized he’s willing and ready and able to give to her (there’s not a whole lot left that isn’t hers already). They’ve abandoned the piano bench and she’s un-tucking his shirt as they stumble toward the couch; she’s pressing herself into him, her fingernails trail down his abdomen and he seizes her neck suddenly, reflexively, with both hands.
“Jesus-christ-“
He’s so unsteady, his body is humming and fluttering and rushing and burning, he feels like he might fall apart before he finishes what they’ve started. She understands without asking, without even looking into his eyes: he needs prompting and assurance, and she needs to take the reigns for a little bit. On some level he’d always known that she wouldn’t be surprised if he ever took this step (it was the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn’t looking back), but he never imagined that she'd initiate it. He's not the one who keeps her up at night, and he never will be.
(What he doesn’t know, what she’s deciding to show him now, is this: when she needs relief from what does keep her up at night, from that vast, knotted century of hurt and love and betrayal and confusion and scars that will never truly heal, she takes refuge in the thought of him. He’s disconnected from it all, untouched by it - he cares about her in the most innocent, whole-hearted, blindingly trusting way she could ever imagine being cared for and she knows her life's work is safe with him, that she is safe with him. He’s blissfully mortal; he’s Will, and this is why he's special, this is why her love for him is different - not less or more, just different - than the others.)
Her fingers catch his mid-air and their chests are heaving, hearts pounding; she quickly smears a kiss into his hand and then slips it down between them so that he can feel for himself what this means to her.
“Ohgod-“
She can’t help but laugh (low, breathless and trembling) even though it's far from funny, because they’ve only just begun. She’s only shown him a fraction of what this is; they’ve barely even gotten to the first of the many difficult, complicated, confusing, aching things she feels for him (the things she shouldn’t feel for him), let alone the things she wants to do to him (the things she definitely should not want to do to him).
So she looks into his eyes and says, even as both their hands are still between her legs, “We can slow down, Will. It’s all right.”
“-No, no no no this is good, this is, it’s so good, I just-“
He doesn’t finish his sentence, or maybe he does, in the way his mouth crashes back to hers (a perfect punctuation).
She smiles against his lips and he can feel it, that smile; he knows in that moment that this woman could very easily end up being the death of him (he’s always known this, but the death he’d always imagined came by gunfire or by venom or maybe asphyxiation, maybe hypothermia - certainly not this, this slow storm of fingertips trailing and tongues slipping, stroking like paintbrushes on canvases of skin).
They’ve tangled themselves up in each other in more ways than one; she’s pushed his shirt off his shoulders and drawn him down into the soft cushions. With her legs wrapping around his waist and her breath hot against his ear he’s provoked enough to slip a hand up her shirt, to sweep his fingers across her breasts while she arches into him like a bow.
She’s already shown him that she wants this, but when his mouth trails down her neck, chest, stomach, and it’s apparent he means to clear all obstacles of fabric that separate them, she still clenches a warning hand into his hair. There’s something overwhelmingly raw about this whole situation and if they’re not careful, if they’re not honest, it might tip out of their control and redefine all the things they take comfort in, all the things they depend on to remain solid. Even through this haze, they realize they won't let that happen. They want to keep that integrity between them and so even as Will makes easy work of stripping away her clothes, even as he slips her panties down her legs and lets them drop to the floor, he makes sure to catch her gaze and hold it until the moment feels right and she tips her head back (unmistakable permission). He winds his arms beneath her thighs and curls his tongue against her, begins to coax down the barriers that remain between them (he undoes himself in the process and it's all he can do to keep upright when her breath finally hitches, when she twists and arches up against his mouth and comes silently for what feels like days; but she’ll pick him back up, put him back together with gentle hands and kind eyes that challenge and look endlessly into the places inside himself he didn’t know existed).
Later, she pulls him down onto the fire-warmed rug and lingers above him, makes slow work of removing the rest of his clothes (it’s a relief to be rid of them), whispers things to him that make him feel like he’s had the wind knocked out of his lungs, things that make his eyes snap shut and make his fists clench in her long, dark hair. When he can't take it anymore, when she spreads her legs against him like she'd give him anything he needs, he rolls her onto her back and buries what feels like his entire self inside of her. He doesn't think he'll ever want to come back out; everything about him belongs to her in that moment. When she releases him from that high, when he comes back down, he comes in a slow whirlwind with her name on his lips.
They make love in front of the fire until only gold and crimson flecked embers remain, until the grey morning light begins to peek through the clouds outside. At some point during the night Helen has tugged a quilt down from the settee, spread it over them and pulled Will closer beneath it. His head is nestled in the crook of her neck and he drowses, falling in and out of consciousness, loosing track of time and forgetting everything about the waking world except the way his body curves into hers. Each time he wakes, he wakes to the feel of her fingers: first trailing along his spine, then his thigh, and his neck, his jaw, between his eyebrows where she knows the muscles are always tense. She kisses his lips and his temples, his cheeks, his fingertips, and he wonders (not for the first time) what she’s thinking.
At one point he presses his lips to the spot of skin just behind her ear, breathes it all in sleepily; her hair is damp and her skin is hot to the touch.
“Dare you to get rid of me now,” he murmurs.
She closes her eyes for a moment before she opens them to meet his gaze. “As if I would have before." They'd both made up their minds years ago about so many things; some of them they'd only just begun to realize.
"As if you could have," he challenges.
He’ll never tire of the way she looks at him; the way she lays a palm against his cheek like it's something so precious. “My dear, sweet Will.” She smiles another perfect bull’s eye.
Someday, all of this between them will end like a slow bullet in the back.
It’ll be too fast and not fast enough and a long time coming, and Helen will bury him like she’s buried the others and she’ll withdraw back into her shell until someone else with that same look in their eye, with that same strong heart in their chest, comes along to coax her out again.
That was the pattern.
But she’s not sure if it’ll hold this time. Patterns have to break eventually and this time, she thinks (as she strokes Will’s hair, stares unblinking into his sleeping face and just aches, aches with a bone-deep throb that she hasn’t felt in a very, very long time) that maybe, just maybe, when the time comes and she has to let this one go, she may never come back out.
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