New Sanctuary Fic: "Drive"
No, I haven't forgotten "Interview With the Protege", it's just that this story insisted upon being told.:)
DISCLAIMER: All belongs to Damien Kindler and Stage 3 Media and Ms. Tapping and all the usual suspects who aren't me. Just borrowing these beautiful people. Thanks for the favor.:)
TITLE: Drive
RATING: Teen
CATEGORIES: Hurt/comfort, Helen/James friendship and UST, Implied Helen/Other
TIMELINE: 1965
Massive beta thanks to helenhighwater7, taliatoennien, and annienau08!
DRIVE
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2010
London, 1965
He never used the word love for her. Not in that way.
He loved her. Of course, he loved her. They all loved one another. In inexplicable and indefinable ways without end. The five geniuses, the five clowns, the five friends. They were twined together at the cellular level.
They would die for one another. Even Nikola, if he could manage.
James Watson's love for her was different. He knew this. He never spoke the words, never changed his behavior. That wasn't how things were between them. Wasn't how they ever should be.
*****
The party was a required task, but he was far from dreading the event. They were hobnobbing with the proper political figures, buttering up the thickest wallets. International networks for the shelter of abnormals did not fund themselves.
James arrived as the first round of drinks was making its way around the elegantly lit parlor of the London Sanctuary. He dropped the proper charming remarks, shook the influential hands he passed. He snagged a glass of champagne from a silver tray. And all the while his gaze swept the room in search of a particular silhouette.
Two drinks into the night, he caught the image he desired on the balcony beyond the open French doors. Her hair ruffled behind her in the breeze. A wide scarf held some of the mass of dark waves from her face, and the silken tails tangled with her windblown mane. The cross breeze pulled through the stuffy parlor, bringing some hope of breathable air, and James couldn't blame Helen for seeking out the cool of the night. But he knew her, knew her profile, her carriage, the angle of her jaw and the twist of her ankle. He knew when something was....off.
James made his way through the milling crowd of expensive suits and pretentious cologne, all smiles and suave glances. He marveled at how little things had changed in the 115 years he'd walked this Earth. Suits remained suits, drinks remained drinks, and false flattery remained simple and profitable.
Helen barely turned as he stepped up behind her; he knew she recognized his footsteps as he had memorized her breath.
"Ah, far more lovely an evening out here," he said smoothly.
Helen glanced his way, offered a smile that failed to brighten her eyes. "I suppose so." The detachment from her surroundings was not lost on him.
"I'm quite certain the company's better, at the very least. Did you see McKenzie's hat?"
Helen shook her head.
"Oh, good God. The man is the living embodiment of bad taste, why does no one ever tell him? Speaking of which, where is our dear Richard? I've seen neither head nor tail of him tonight."
Helen gazed across the grounds, past the carefully manicured hedges and the stone fountain, to the heavy brick wall in the distance. "He's not coming," she said.
James sputtered into his drink, lowered his glass. "Richard, not come to a party? With all this alcohol spilling so freely? Must indeed be a crisis of the highest order."
Helen let go the smallest breath, indulged a soft sound at the back of her throat. Only a split second's subtle inflection. But to James it was all but a scream. He set his drink precariously on the balcony railing, and turned his complete attention to Helen's profile.
"Helen?"
"Richard is...he's preparing to travel. He's going to be gone for quite a while. Extended research mission to Africa."
James watched her for several beats, sorting the truths from her words of distraction. She was quiet and controlled but just the slightest bit hesitant, and hesitant was something Helen Magnus did not do. Her gaze skipped from the railing to the hunter's moon above.
Her beauty was striking -- dark liner and glossed lips, filigree earrings that sparkled with reflected light. Jaw line and cheekbone and graceful swan's throat, strokes of a profile woven into his psyche, forming the patterns for whom he might love.
Tonight it was all wrong. Something was wrong.
James spoke each word with measured care. "But you're not going to Africa?"
"No."
Her dress was simple, black. Scoop necked and formfitting and classically in fashion. Her tall boots hugged slender calves and the heels gave her a regal and elegant line. Bare skin glowed in the space between her boots and the hem of her skirt.
"For a long time..." he probed.
Helen cleared her throat, tipped a foot back onto its heel and shifted her weight. She was restless, impatient. "Yes. I'm not going. James, look, you'll hear it soon enough, but... We're not...Richard and I...are no longer...together." She gave him a moment's eye contact, softened for the briefest breath, a quivering crinkle at the corner of her eye, then she turned to the moonlight again and the cool wind pushed at her throat and shifted her necklace.
"What are you...? Helen...you can't actually mean..."
This time she turned and gave him a taste of true eye contact, pale blue gone grey with the shadows, and she watched him, lifted her eyebrows and exhaled into the night.
He felt ill. "Oh, bloody hell. Helen..."
"It's all right, I...it...," but her moment of rallying wouldn't hold, and her words faded on a sigh. She offered a bittersweet twist of her mouth and nothing more. His ancient bones ached.
"Helen...do you want to tell me what happened?"
Her mirthless laugh rang painfully loud in the quiet. "Reality happened, James. Nothing more. The simple truth of existence. Or rather of mine."
James stood with her. He retrieved his drink from the railing and held it in her direction. Helen gave the offer a cursory glance and shook her head.
"Have all the usual suspects arrived?" she asked, giving a half-hearted glance toward the party as the sea of voices rose on a wave of laughter.
"I believe so. I made the rounds a bit," he said softly.
"Good. The isolation cells need a complete overhaul, and don't forget, we're still supplying Mr. Allendale with--"
"Helen."
He took a step toward her, reached a hand toward her elbow.
She caught her breath with a sharp hiss and stepped away. "Don't."
"Don't what? Don't...be your friend? Don't act like I've known you for a century? Don't acknowledge that seven years is a damned long relationship?"
Helen closed her eyes and let her chest rise and fall with her accelerated breath. "Can we get out of here?" she said at last. "Could you...could you take me for a drive?"
"Anywhere you want to go."
"I don't care. Away from people. Let's just go."
"After you, my dear."
*****
He told himself he had bought the convertible because he loved it.
He had bought the convertible because she loved it. Because when she drove it, her leather-gloved fingers draped over the stick shift knob with indescribable grace. Because when he let her drive, he could watch the power in her thighs as she worked the peddles and her skirt rode up, the way she let her hair tumble in the wind and drowned in the sound until she could almost forget all that had come before.
She wasn't driving tonight. She was letting him take her anywhere he wanted to go.
She had woven through the party like the elegant hostess she knew how to be. She had tossed around just enough smiles and cheek kisses and gentle hands down expensive sleeves, made her way to the hall, and threaded her arm through his own as they strolled through silent corridors, down the stairwell, to the garages.
They were flying through the countryside, on streets too narrow for two directions of travelers. Daring fate at every curve. The farther they flew from civilization, the more stars appeared above.
Helen rode beside him, her booted ankles crossed on the door at the edge of the windshield, skirt hem ruffling in the wind.
This was the Helen he knew, the Helen the Sanctuary executives would never know, the abnormals, the crime lords, the presidents and senators and czars.
This was the free spirit, the restless adrenaline junky, the wildfire who had brought them to this strange world in which they now breathed and explored. This was the Helen who led them down the rabbit hole onto ground no human was meant to tread.
She shifted position, angling sideways in her seat, and let her head fall back onto his shoulder as she gazed up at the stars.
James kept his eyes forward and didn't draw attention to the touch.
*****
"You'd think out of 112 years, seven wouldn't seem so long."
They had stopped at an overlook, and she was half-sitting on a rugged stone wall, overlooking the valley below. They had been here a long time, and this was the first real thing she had said.
"Why would I think that? Time is relative, my dear. You of all people on this Earth should know that. You're still human."
Her jaw hardened, and for a moment he wondered if his words were true. If they were true for any of them, anymore.
Richard was human. Monster hunter. Scientist. Tall, dark, and just strong enough to smash through Helen Magnus's cast iron walls and shout her down when needed. James had really thought the two of them would make it. At least for a good long while. He'd liked Richard. And Richard had loved Helen, that much had been clear, even to those less observant than he.
Seven years ago, a young abnormal had died on Helen's operating table. Watson had goaded his friend with all his best charms and gotten no reply save that she was "fine", they'd done all they could and should move on. Hours later he'd caught a glimpse of her melting into tears over the blood screening paperwork, and Richard Matthews pulling Helen into his lap to let her cry. James had accepted Richard after that. So had Helen.
"I find I don't want to go home."
The wind rose and nearly drowned her soft words. But the syllables reached James's keen ears, echoed in his aural canal, sent messages to his brain and nerve responses through his body and effectively broke his heart.
"I'm so sorry, Helen."
She sat down on the rock wall and swung her legs up beside her. He wanted to grasp her arm, pull her safely back from the edge. But Helen Magnus couldn't be held back from the edge. Her nature rode the cliffs of life.
Some days he still kept a hand gripping her coattails.
"What happened?" he said, watching her profile as she watched the night. The pool of light at the entrance to the overlook cast faint illumination over her graceful form. She'd been part of the night for decades. He thought of blond curls and bright laughter and sunlit gardens.
She didn't speak. Then, "I spent years convincing Richard that he and I couldn't...that we shouldn't... Convincing him that he wouldn't be able to handle it, as time went on, and the truth divided us. He spent those same years convincing me that he could. He was very convincing."
"Richard loves you."
Helen nodded. "In a way."
"Did you let him?"
Her tongue slipped out across her lips, and she tossed her head to throw her hair behind her shoulders. The wind had turned colder away from the city and James watched the breeze raise gooseflesh on Helen's chest, but he knew the cold never bothered her. "That's just it, Jimmy...I actually did. And then he woke one morning and realized...I'd been right all along."
Helen combed a hand through her hair, and James searched his mind for words of comfort that didn't exist.
The hatred surging through his veins, toward a man he had hours ago called friend, surprised him with its vehemence.
"Doesn't this remind you of the valley up in Ireland?" Helen asked, turning to meet his gaze for the first time in a while. He took a moment to switch gears with her, to catch up. "You remember," she went on, "the one where we spent the night, looking for faeries? In that tent by the river?" A hint of amusement turned her mouth.
"Oh, good heavens what a night! What in God's name convinced you to follow that story, anyway? Your 'reliable source' was one of the battiest frizz-haired old geezers I've ever met in my life!"
"Jedidiah Conrad was a brilliant scientist! Discoveries about the physics of light and its myriad applications to medical work that others haven't even come close to since." Helen's expression slipped into a genuine smile. "But do you remember Nigel? Trying so hard to look serious at the interview, all the while giggling like a schoolboy beneath the surface. He turned so red I thought he might choke to death on the spot."
"Oh, my God, I'd forgotten all about that. Oh, I do miss the poor man. I'd never seen another creature of the male species so prone to wickedly contagious giggles."
Helen gave a soft hint of a laugh at the memory.
They had all three been asked to leave a lecture hall, once, when Nigel's whispered comments on the twat of a professor droning on before them had broken them all into hopeless peals of giggles.
James couldn't recall the last time he'd felt such unadulterated glee. He doubted Helen could, either.
"Richard made me laugh," she said, as though in answer to his unspoken thoughts.
The words took his breath away. "Helen."
"We need to get back. I shouldn't be out of reach for so long. The gardoins could be hatching any moment, and--"
"Helen..."
She swung her legs to solid ground and turned away from him, folding her arms across her chest. But not before he caught the tremor in her voice or saw the glare and flash of tears in the glow of the lamplight.
James stepped into Helen's personal space, pressed his presence into her heart and her touch. "Richard Matthews is an idiotic bastard," he breathed.
Helen shook her head, biting her lip in a lost battle against her tears. "No, he's not," she whispered; the truth of her reality encapsulated in three simple words. When James reached his arms around her, she turned into his shoulder with so little resistance it weakened his legs.
The wind rose around them and James felt the brush of loose leaves against their legs. Helen's breasts pressed against his chest, and her fingers dug into his shoulders. Her breath warmed his neck and her heartbeat echoed in his bones. And for a moment in his life it seemed to James there was nothing beyond this tiny circle of golden light beneath the sodium vapor lantern, and the world had faded to nothing in the blackness without.
Helen's defenses had fallen, no walls remained to keep them apart (save one). She held on as tight as he.
Helen tucked her face into the crook of James's throat, whispered in broken tones, "Why didn't he love me enough to stay? I would have stayed with him. No matter what, I would have stayed with him."
"I know," he said into her silken hair.
He would give the world to make this right.
He would never let go.
He had less years in him than she.
"I won't leave," he said, anyway.
James had spent the night with her once before, when the world fell apart. Sitting side by side until they witnessed the dawn. Convincing one another the sun hadn't fallen for the last time.
She was 80 years older and stronger, tonight. But no less fragile in those few key places.
He held her for a long time. She didn't let go.
"Please let me kill him," James said at last. "Or at least sock him properly in the jaw in a respectable gentlemanly fashion." His words at last brought laughter to mix with her tears, and he felt the emotion shimmer through her core.
Helen pulled back, bodies still close, arms intertwined.
"My dear James." She drew the backs of her fingers along the line of his jaw. "My dearest James..."
"Always yours, my dear."
James gathered Helen's hair from her face, cradled her cheek in his palm. She closed her eyes at the gentle touch.
"We're losing money as we stand here," she said softly.
He shrugged. "Easily solved. One of us will simply have to sleep with a strategic benefactor in the next week or two."
Helen fell into a tearful laughter. She leaned in and kissed his cheek, lips warm, dampness of her tears soaking into his skin. "Let's go back," she said, stepping past him toward the car.
James watched her for a moment, then made his way around the front of the convertible, gaze on his polished shoes. Helen's voice carried to him on the wind. "May I drive?"
James looked up, caught the flash of blue eyes in the darkness. A single beat, then he slipped the gold key ring from his pocket and tossed it her way.
Helen caught the keys with a sharp clap.
"Always," he said.
Helen nodded her thanks. Her gaze lingered just long enough...that he could hear all she was thanking him for.
They climbed in the car and Helen braided her hair and tucked the tail into the back of her dress. She shifted into gear, thighs tensing with the pressure on the clutch, skirt hedging up her leg. She rested long fingers on the polished knob of the gear shift, and they sped into the night.
*****
#
DISCLAIMER: All belongs to Damien Kindler and Stage 3 Media and Ms. Tapping and all the usual suspects who aren't me. Just borrowing these beautiful people. Thanks for the favor.:)
TITLE: Drive
RATING: Teen
CATEGORIES: Hurt/comfort, Helen/James friendship and UST, Implied Helen/Other
TIMELINE: 1965
Massive beta thanks to helenhighwater7, taliatoennien, and annienau08!
DRIVE
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2010
London, 1965
He never used the word love for her. Not in that way.
He loved her. Of course, he loved her. They all loved one another. In inexplicable and indefinable ways without end. The five geniuses, the five clowns, the five friends. They were twined together at the cellular level.
They would die for one another. Even Nikola, if he could manage.
James Watson's love for her was different. He knew this. He never spoke the words, never changed his behavior. That wasn't how things were between them. Wasn't how they ever should be.
*****
The party was a required task, but he was far from dreading the event. They were hobnobbing with the proper political figures, buttering up the thickest wallets. International networks for the shelter of abnormals did not fund themselves.
James arrived as the first round of drinks was making its way around the elegantly lit parlor of the London Sanctuary. He dropped the proper charming remarks, shook the influential hands he passed. He snagged a glass of champagne from a silver tray. And all the while his gaze swept the room in search of a particular silhouette.
Two drinks into the night, he caught the image he desired on the balcony beyond the open French doors. Her hair ruffled behind her in the breeze. A wide scarf held some of the mass of dark waves from her face, and the silken tails tangled with her windblown mane. The cross breeze pulled through the stuffy parlor, bringing some hope of breathable air, and James couldn't blame Helen for seeking out the cool of the night. But he knew her, knew her profile, her carriage, the angle of her jaw and the twist of her ankle. He knew when something was....off.
James made his way through the milling crowd of expensive suits and pretentious cologne, all smiles and suave glances. He marveled at how little things had changed in the 115 years he'd walked this Earth. Suits remained suits, drinks remained drinks, and false flattery remained simple and profitable.
Helen barely turned as he stepped up behind her; he knew she recognized his footsteps as he had memorized her breath.
"Ah, far more lovely an evening out here," he said smoothly.
Helen glanced his way, offered a smile that failed to brighten her eyes. "I suppose so." The detachment from her surroundings was not lost on him.
"I'm quite certain the company's better, at the very least. Did you see McKenzie's hat?"
Helen shook her head.
"Oh, good God. The man is the living embodiment of bad taste, why does no one ever tell him? Speaking of which, where is our dear Richard? I've seen neither head nor tail of him tonight."
Helen gazed across the grounds, past the carefully manicured hedges and the stone fountain, to the heavy brick wall in the distance. "He's not coming," she said.
James sputtered into his drink, lowered his glass. "Richard, not come to a party? With all this alcohol spilling so freely? Must indeed be a crisis of the highest order."
Helen let go the smallest breath, indulged a soft sound at the back of her throat. Only a split second's subtle inflection. But to James it was all but a scream. He set his drink precariously on the balcony railing, and turned his complete attention to Helen's profile.
"Helen?"
"Richard is...he's preparing to travel. He's going to be gone for quite a while. Extended research mission to Africa."
James watched her for several beats, sorting the truths from her words of distraction. She was quiet and controlled but just the slightest bit hesitant, and hesitant was something Helen Magnus did not do. Her gaze skipped from the railing to the hunter's moon above.
Her beauty was striking -- dark liner and glossed lips, filigree earrings that sparkled with reflected light. Jaw line and cheekbone and graceful swan's throat, strokes of a profile woven into his psyche, forming the patterns for whom he might love.
Tonight it was all wrong. Something was wrong.
James spoke each word with measured care. "But you're not going to Africa?"
"No."
Her dress was simple, black. Scoop necked and formfitting and classically in fashion. Her tall boots hugged slender calves and the heels gave her a regal and elegant line. Bare skin glowed in the space between her boots and the hem of her skirt.
"For a long time..." he probed.
Helen cleared her throat, tipped a foot back onto its heel and shifted her weight. She was restless, impatient. "Yes. I'm not going. James, look, you'll hear it soon enough, but... We're not...Richard and I...are no longer...together." She gave him a moment's eye contact, softened for the briefest breath, a quivering crinkle at the corner of her eye, then she turned to the moonlight again and the cool wind pushed at her throat and shifted her necklace.
"What are you...? Helen...you can't actually mean..."
This time she turned and gave him a taste of true eye contact, pale blue gone grey with the shadows, and she watched him, lifted her eyebrows and exhaled into the night.
He felt ill. "Oh, bloody hell. Helen..."
"It's all right, I...it...," but her moment of rallying wouldn't hold, and her words faded on a sigh. She offered a bittersweet twist of her mouth and nothing more. His ancient bones ached.
"Helen...do you want to tell me what happened?"
Her mirthless laugh rang painfully loud in the quiet. "Reality happened, James. Nothing more. The simple truth of existence. Or rather of mine."
James stood with her. He retrieved his drink from the railing and held it in her direction. Helen gave the offer a cursory glance and shook her head.
"Have all the usual suspects arrived?" she asked, giving a half-hearted glance toward the party as the sea of voices rose on a wave of laughter.
"I believe so. I made the rounds a bit," he said softly.
"Good. The isolation cells need a complete overhaul, and don't forget, we're still supplying Mr. Allendale with--"
"Helen."
He took a step toward her, reached a hand toward her elbow.
She caught her breath with a sharp hiss and stepped away. "Don't."
"Don't what? Don't...be your friend? Don't act like I've known you for a century? Don't acknowledge that seven years is a damned long relationship?"
Helen closed her eyes and let her chest rise and fall with her accelerated breath. "Can we get out of here?" she said at last. "Could you...could you take me for a drive?"
"Anywhere you want to go."
"I don't care. Away from people. Let's just go."
"After you, my dear."
*****
He told himself he had bought the convertible because he loved it.
He had bought the convertible because she loved it. Because when she drove it, her leather-gloved fingers draped over the stick shift knob with indescribable grace. Because when he let her drive, he could watch the power in her thighs as she worked the peddles and her skirt rode up, the way she let her hair tumble in the wind and drowned in the sound until she could almost forget all that had come before.
She wasn't driving tonight. She was letting him take her anywhere he wanted to go.
She had woven through the party like the elegant hostess she knew how to be. She had tossed around just enough smiles and cheek kisses and gentle hands down expensive sleeves, made her way to the hall, and threaded her arm through his own as they strolled through silent corridors, down the stairwell, to the garages.
They were flying through the countryside, on streets too narrow for two directions of travelers. Daring fate at every curve. The farther they flew from civilization, the more stars appeared above.
Helen rode beside him, her booted ankles crossed on the door at the edge of the windshield, skirt hem ruffling in the wind.
This was the Helen he knew, the Helen the Sanctuary executives would never know, the abnormals, the crime lords, the presidents and senators and czars.
This was the free spirit, the restless adrenaline junky, the wildfire who had brought them to this strange world in which they now breathed and explored. This was the Helen who led them down the rabbit hole onto ground no human was meant to tread.
She shifted position, angling sideways in her seat, and let her head fall back onto his shoulder as she gazed up at the stars.
James kept his eyes forward and didn't draw attention to the touch.
*****
"You'd think out of 112 years, seven wouldn't seem so long."
They had stopped at an overlook, and she was half-sitting on a rugged stone wall, overlooking the valley below. They had been here a long time, and this was the first real thing she had said.
"Why would I think that? Time is relative, my dear. You of all people on this Earth should know that. You're still human."
Her jaw hardened, and for a moment he wondered if his words were true. If they were true for any of them, anymore.
Richard was human. Monster hunter. Scientist. Tall, dark, and just strong enough to smash through Helen Magnus's cast iron walls and shout her down when needed. James had really thought the two of them would make it. At least for a good long while. He'd liked Richard. And Richard had loved Helen, that much had been clear, even to those less observant than he.
Seven years ago, a young abnormal had died on Helen's operating table. Watson had goaded his friend with all his best charms and gotten no reply save that she was "fine", they'd done all they could and should move on. Hours later he'd caught a glimpse of her melting into tears over the blood screening paperwork, and Richard Matthews pulling Helen into his lap to let her cry. James had accepted Richard after that. So had Helen.
"I find I don't want to go home."
The wind rose and nearly drowned her soft words. But the syllables reached James's keen ears, echoed in his aural canal, sent messages to his brain and nerve responses through his body and effectively broke his heart.
"I'm so sorry, Helen."
She sat down on the rock wall and swung her legs up beside her. He wanted to grasp her arm, pull her safely back from the edge. But Helen Magnus couldn't be held back from the edge. Her nature rode the cliffs of life.
Some days he still kept a hand gripping her coattails.
"What happened?" he said, watching her profile as she watched the night. The pool of light at the entrance to the overlook cast faint illumination over her graceful form. She'd been part of the night for decades. He thought of blond curls and bright laughter and sunlit gardens.
She didn't speak. Then, "I spent years convincing Richard that he and I couldn't...that we shouldn't... Convincing him that he wouldn't be able to handle it, as time went on, and the truth divided us. He spent those same years convincing me that he could. He was very convincing."
"Richard loves you."
Helen nodded. "In a way."
"Did you let him?"
Her tongue slipped out across her lips, and she tossed her head to throw her hair behind her shoulders. The wind had turned colder away from the city and James watched the breeze raise gooseflesh on Helen's chest, but he knew the cold never bothered her. "That's just it, Jimmy...I actually did. And then he woke one morning and realized...I'd been right all along."
Helen combed a hand through her hair, and James searched his mind for words of comfort that didn't exist.
The hatred surging through his veins, toward a man he had hours ago called friend, surprised him with its vehemence.
"Doesn't this remind you of the valley up in Ireland?" Helen asked, turning to meet his gaze for the first time in a while. He took a moment to switch gears with her, to catch up. "You remember," she went on, "the one where we spent the night, looking for faeries? In that tent by the river?" A hint of amusement turned her mouth.
"Oh, good heavens what a night! What in God's name convinced you to follow that story, anyway? Your 'reliable source' was one of the battiest frizz-haired old geezers I've ever met in my life!"
"Jedidiah Conrad was a brilliant scientist! Discoveries about the physics of light and its myriad applications to medical work that others haven't even come close to since." Helen's expression slipped into a genuine smile. "But do you remember Nigel? Trying so hard to look serious at the interview, all the while giggling like a schoolboy beneath the surface. He turned so red I thought he might choke to death on the spot."
"Oh, my God, I'd forgotten all about that. Oh, I do miss the poor man. I'd never seen another creature of the male species so prone to wickedly contagious giggles."
Helen gave a soft hint of a laugh at the memory.
They had all three been asked to leave a lecture hall, once, when Nigel's whispered comments on the twat of a professor droning on before them had broken them all into hopeless peals of giggles.
James couldn't recall the last time he'd felt such unadulterated glee. He doubted Helen could, either.
"Richard made me laugh," she said, as though in answer to his unspoken thoughts.
The words took his breath away. "Helen."
"We need to get back. I shouldn't be out of reach for so long. The gardoins could be hatching any moment, and--"
"Helen..."
She swung her legs to solid ground and turned away from him, folding her arms across her chest. But not before he caught the tremor in her voice or saw the glare and flash of tears in the glow of the lamplight.
James stepped into Helen's personal space, pressed his presence into her heart and her touch. "Richard Matthews is an idiotic bastard," he breathed.
Helen shook her head, biting her lip in a lost battle against her tears. "No, he's not," she whispered; the truth of her reality encapsulated in three simple words. When James reached his arms around her, she turned into his shoulder with so little resistance it weakened his legs.
The wind rose around them and James felt the brush of loose leaves against their legs. Helen's breasts pressed against his chest, and her fingers dug into his shoulders. Her breath warmed his neck and her heartbeat echoed in his bones. And for a moment in his life it seemed to James there was nothing beyond this tiny circle of golden light beneath the sodium vapor lantern, and the world had faded to nothing in the blackness without.
Helen's defenses had fallen, no walls remained to keep them apart (save one). She held on as tight as he.
Helen tucked her face into the crook of James's throat, whispered in broken tones, "Why didn't he love me enough to stay? I would have stayed with him. No matter what, I would have stayed with him."
"I know," he said into her silken hair.
He would give the world to make this right.
He would never let go.
He had less years in him than she.
"I won't leave," he said, anyway.
James had spent the night with her once before, when the world fell apart. Sitting side by side until they witnessed the dawn. Convincing one another the sun hadn't fallen for the last time.
She was 80 years older and stronger, tonight. But no less fragile in those few key places.
He held her for a long time. She didn't let go.
"Please let me kill him," James said at last. "Or at least sock him properly in the jaw in a respectable gentlemanly fashion." His words at last brought laughter to mix with her tears, and he felt the emotion shimmer through her core.
Helen pulled back, bodies still close, arms intertwined.
"My dear James." She drew the backs of her fingers along the line of his jaw. "My dearest James..."
"Always yours, my dear."
James gathered Helen's hair from her face, cradled her cheek in his palm. She closed her eyes at the gentle touch.
"We're losing money as we stand here," she said softly.
He shrugged. "Easily solved. One of us will simply have to sleep with a strategic benefactor in the next week or two."
Helen fell into a tearful laughter. She leaned in and kissed his cheek, lips warm, dampness of her tears soaking into his skin. "Let's go back," she said, stepping past him toward the car.
James watched her for a moment, then made his way around the front of the convertible, gaze on his polished shoes. Helen's voice carried to him on the wind. "May I drive?"
James looked up, caught the flash of blue eyes in the darkness. A single beat, then he slipped the gold key ring from his pocket and tossed it her way.
Helen caught the keys with a sharp clap.
"Always," he said.
Helen nodded her thanks. Her gaze lingered just long enough...that he could hear all she was thanking him for.
They climbed in the car and Helen braided her hair and tucked the tail into the back of her dress. She shifted into gear, thighs tensing with the pressure on the clutch, skirt hedging up her leg. She rested long fingers on the polished knob of the gear shift, and they sped into the night.
*****
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