Fic: Pricking Thumbs (Primeval, Helen/Nick, R)
Title: Pricking Thumbs
Author: alyse
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Helen/Nick
Rating: R
Spoilers: Set post 2.7
Disclaimer: Primeval and its characters belong to Impossible Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended. This is fanfiction, written solely for love of the show.
Word Count: ~3,000.
Status: Complete
Author's Notes: Written as a pinch hit for the![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
primevalathon Primeval Ficathon for ![[info]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/d0900ce718c4/116335-606010/www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
blktauna, whose prompt was Nick and Helen facing off when he catches her spying on him. Verbal fighting, physical fighting and angry sex follow.
Many thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aithine for the beta services.
Summary: Something wicked this way comes.
-o-
Stephen had teased him more than once about being a creature of creature comforts. It wasn't a strictly accurate description - you didn't make professor in their field without serving time in the field - but he'd got what his friend and colleague had meant.
He loved the thrill of discovery, the way that bones took shape under his carefully wielded brush, inch by painstaking inch. He loved watching the past emerge before his very eyes, and he'd shared that love first with Helen and then with Stephen. But there was also no denying that at the end of each day what he looked forward to was a hot shower and a meal he didn't have to hunt and kill but just unwrap and nuke. All the comforts of home.
Stephen, though... Stephen had been different. While Nick stumbled over rocks, hands gesturing wildly as he tried to talk and walk at the same time, Stephen had moved through the world with sleek grace, his feet settling firmly on the ground with each carefully placed step. Stephen climbed mountains, walked through jungles, tracked beasts that were almost as deadly as the things they dug up had been. Stephen, who was as at home in the wild as Nick was in his en suite bathroomed, centrally heated house of brick and mortar.
Stephen had stalked through the world through the world like a predator. He'd had at least that much in common with Helen.
And now he was gone, predator turned prey. But he'd taught Nick something at least.
He'd taught Nick how to spot when he was being hunted.
-o-
At first it was subtle - a shadow in the darkness where one shouldn't have been, a light left on when he could have sworn he'd turned it off, papers disappearing from his desk where he'd left them. But when he glanced back, the street was empty and the papers turned up on the couch instead.
He put it down to stress. He was jumpy, hardly surprising given Stephen's death and Claudia's loss. He was imagining things, seeing Helen everywhere when she was long gone by now.
But Helen didn't do subtle for long. She never had. The signs started to add up, the spoor unmistakable. The stink of Helen's presence, laid over Nick's life.
Stephen had taught him how to spot when he was hunting, but Helen had taught him how to lay a trap.
-o-
He talked to Connor first. He thought he'd have talked to Connor first even if Stephen had still been alive, at least about this. It wasn't all about Connor's technical know-how either. Stephen would have mocked him, with varying degrees of heat, and dismissed it all as paranoia, even knowing Helen as he had. But Connor... Connor listened and asked questions and went off at wild tangents. But then Connor knew something that Stephen had never quite grasped.
Connor didn't have Stephen's predator's instinct but that was no use when it came to Helen. When it came to Helen, you had to think like prey.
So if Connor thought his request was strange, a little paranoid, he didn't say so. For all Nick knew, in Connor's world it might have made perfect sense and it wasn't like the boy was ever going to pass up the chance to be Q to Nick's James Bond.
He had to admit that the solution that Connor came up with was elegant in its simplicity: a hidden webcam linked into a small movement sensor, cannibalised from one of those sentry toys Nick has seen advertised to children. Once triggered, the images would be taken every few seconds and saved to an external hard drive attached to his home network.
All he had to do was wait.
He'd always been more patient than Helen.
-o-
Connor had configured the software to neatly title all of the pictures with the timestamp; they were laid out in a logical, numerical order, second after second after second, like the zoetrope Nick had had as a child. Spin it fast enough and it looked like the pictures were moving.
He clicked through them one by one and Helen wandered through the detritus of his life, touching things she had no place touching, not any longer. When he'd reached the end, he closed all but the best of the images; those he stared at for a long, long moment, looking for something, anything, a sign of weakness, of regret in her face. But the camera was cheap and fairly low quality and the outlines blurred and grainy; Helen remained as aloof, as unreadable as she had always been.
His finger clicked 'print' again and again. When he picked the images up from the printer, the ink was still wet around the edges and it left dark smudges on his fingertips. They stayed even after he rubbed his fingers on his jeans, marking him indelibly.
He left them on the desk for her.
-o-
There was something in the air when he got back that night, something like a scent, faint but still recognisable, and his stomach clenched, fierce and frightened all at once.
She was waiting for him in the study, all fluid lines and grace, draped over his office chair like she still belonged there. She didn't. There was very little of her left in this house now; he'd never believed in shrines.
He'd loved her once. It was strange to think that now.
He stood in the doorway, just looking at her, taking everything in. She'd changed her clothes - a neat, skirted suit had replaced the ripped leathers, worn and torn, that she'd been wearing the last time he'd seen her. There was something subtly wrong about her outfit, something out of place, even here in his study, which had never exactly seen couture - maybe it was the shape of it or the cut or the colour, or the way the fabric flowed and clung to her as she pushed herself to her feet. Or maybe that sense of wrongness was simply down to Helen herself.
She still favoured flashing vast amount of cleavage, he noted cynically. There would have been a time when that would have distracted him, dazzled him into submission. It had never been looking into her eyes that had worried him, hypnotising him into a sense of false confidence.
He was older now, though. Less inclined to be led around by his dick, even by Helen, who had known him once and had maybe even come close to understanding him. He didn't think she'd understand him now.
"Nick." She smiled, slow and sure, but he wasn't giving her the satisfaction, not this time. "I must admit, I thought this was slightly technically advanced for you. Let me guess," she tapped her blunt, neat fingernail on one of the photographs on the desk in front of her, "Connor?"
"What do you want, Helen?"
Straight to the chase, as blunt as he'd always had to be when she wanted to play games and he wasn't interested. She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow, not at all put off by his brusque tone. If anything, it seemed to provide her with some secret source of amusement; he knew her well enough to catch the slow, pleased smile that played around the corners of her mouth.
"How are things at the ARC? Tell me, have you found a replacement for poor Stephen yet?"
Yes, Helen had known and understood him once, and she still knew how to pack a punch - where to aim, how hard to throw it. She'd never been one for pulling them. She watched him, head tilted to one side and the light of avid curiosity in her eyes, hungry for some response.
"What do you want?" he repeated tonelessly, not willing to give her even that much satisfaction.
She let out a quiet sound, curious and amused both at once. "I need your help," she said, and when he laughed, the sound was sudden and harsh and bitter.
Her eyes narrowed dangerously, but he ignored her fit of pique, finally taking a step into the room, a step closer to her. His temper had always been his downfall.
"Help? What the hell makes you think I'll help you with your mad schemes? After..."
After Stephen, he thought, but didn't say. He didn't need to. For once Helen didn't pretend to misunderstand him. Instead she moved closer and he fought down his instinct to step away. You didn't show weakness with Helen. Not unless you wanted her to tear your bloody throat out.
She stalked around his desk and he twisted to face her, never letting her out of his sight because you didn't do that with Helen either. She didn't stop coming until she'd stepped into his personal space, like she still had a right to be there. He could smell her now, that scent of Helen - musky and heady, dangerous and alive. She didn't touch him, not yet, but she might as well have - there was barely an inch between them and still he didn't give way to her, not even when she pulled that trick of looking up at him, her expression far from demure.
"We could bring him back," she said and he jerked back like she'd hit him. "We could fix time." He could only stare down at her, transfixed and frozen. She tilted her head again, giving him that perverse, pleased little smile of hers. "Think about it, Nick. We could make it all right again."
He tried to push her off, step past her, but Helen knew him too well, knew all of his weaknesses. She stopped him with a hand to the chest.
"We could bring both of them back, if you wanted. Stephen and your Claudia Brown."
He thought of Jenny - of bright, brittle Jenny, with her shark-like smile and too high heels. Only, since Stephen's death the smile was less in evidence, and Jenny didn't wear couture now. She dressed in earth tones, muted greens and browns that suited her hair, now she'd stopped dying it, but didn't suit Jenny.
I've been feeling... different recently.
She'd disappear, Jenny. Cease to exist the way that Claudia had ceased to exist and something inside him twisted and ached, bone deep. She wouldn't be dead, not dead the way that Stephen was dead. There'd be no grave, nothing to mourn. She'd just be gone.
"You're mad," he whispered, and Helen smiled again, a cruel twist to her lips. Her fingers curled, became talons, the nails digging into the skin beneath his shirt. There was a light in her eyes, burning too brightly and fiercely, even for Helen.
"Think about it, Nick. We could find that spot, the place where everything started to go wrong. We could make it all right. And then..." The nails dug in even deeper, the pain blooming underneath her touch. "...maybe you can forgive yourself."
She was serious. He could tell that much and he stared down at her, the words stopped in his mouth by her surety. "Poor Nick," she crooned, reaching up to touch his face and he flinched back, drawing another smile. "I know how much losing Stephen hurts."
The surge of anger that rose up in him at Stephen's name gave him the strength to push her off him; she stumbled backwards, hitting the desk and steadying herself on it. She was still wearing that mocking half-smile as she straightened up, and her eyes burned.
"You bitch," he growled, the sound coming from deep in his belly, hard and tight with fury. It didn't scare Helen but then very little did; if anything, her smile grew and when she straightened up all the way, the movement was fluid, sinuous. Like a snake. "Stephen is dead because of you, because of the way you had to mess around with Leek, with everything, and you have the... the... How many more, Helen? How many more are going to die because of you? Get out! Just get the hell out!"
"Oh, Nick." She let out a laugh and it wasn't brittle, not like Jenny's these days. It was deep and amused and she was looking at him like he was a particularly entertaining pet. Dance, doggy, dance. "Always one for the social niceties." She straightened her jacket, tugging it down so that it tightened for a brief second over her breasts. "Yes, I asked Stephen to come when I realised how much Leek had lost it. But Stephen didn't die because of me. He died because he chose to save you. He died instead of you."
Her tone was conversational, like she was discussing the weather. Like it didn't matter - like leading Stephen by the dick straight to his death, like Claudia being wiped from time, like threatening to do the same with Jenny, was nothing. Like fucking around with time was nothing.
Like fucking around with him.
He was in her space, right up in her space, crowding her back against the desk and she didn't care. The light was in her eyes, but there was nothing behind it, absolutely nothing behind it but deep, dark wells where the Helen had loved once was lost forever.
"I've seen the future," she murmured, her breath ghosting over his lips. She reached up again, tracing his mouth with her fingertip, her nail catching on the dry skin, chapped by the weather, cracked and sore. He didn't stop her - he couldn't stop her, mesmerised by everything he no longer saw, frozen by his anger and her hunger for things that had nothing to do with him. "I've seen the future, Nick, and it's all gone."
Her nails dug in again, sharp and suddenly, and they cut the inside of his mouth. He jerked his head back and swore and she laughed, low and throaty and not entirely sane. He could taste blood, as sharp and metallic on his tongue as the sound of her laughter as it rattled around inside his brain.
"It's all gone," she whispered, and her lips brushed over his mouth, feather-light and treacherous, burning where he bled. "But we can bring it back."
She believed it - the vicious, conniving bitch actually believed that she could play God. In spite of everything. In spite of Claudia, Stephen. Nick himself.
"You're mad," he whispered against her touch and there was a kind of awe in it, even mixed in with the furious rushing of blood in his ears. "And I won't help you, Helen."
She bit him, no finesse in it, not this time, and her fingers grabbed his hair, holding him steady while she licked the blood from his lips, her body shaking against his - with rage or fear or laughter, he couldn't tell. They were all blended into one, blended into the entirety of Helen, like a whirlwind or a hurricane and just as destructive.
He swore against her mouth, trying to pull away, but she pressed harder against him, wrapping herself around him, her fingers still knotted tightly into his hair, holding him steady while she ravaged him, teeth and talons ripping into his flesh. Her skin was hot under his hands when he tried to pry her off, fever hot, and eight years of surviving creatures more dangerous than he'd ever be had given her a wiry, slippery strength.
He couldn't pull free, but he could punish her. Punish her and himself, because that was something they'd always been good at, even when things between them had been good.
Hurting each other.
She writhed against him, her mouth open against his, hot breath huffing out against his skin. She was laughing still, or panting, or both, her fingers tugging at his clothes, tearing them. The fabric of her skirt tore under his grip, his fingers curled into the fabric. He wasn't tugging but he didn't need to, not when Helen was moving. Not when Helen was this strong and holding on was all that he could do.
She pushed him away and held him close, legs wrapped around his thighs while her fingers busied themselves with his zip. There was no finesse in her this time, either; when the zip yielded to her, her look was one of savage victory, distorting the lines of her face into something demonic.
He didn't deserve anything less. Neither of them did.
Stephen was dead, and Claudia was gone, and Jenny was left an anxious, ghostlike shell.
He let Helen eat his heart, what was left of it, swallowing down her hunger and giving her all of his pain and his grief in return. When he thrust into her, it was fierce and furious and empty, but her howl of triumph echoed through the house they'd once shared.
Afterwards, he pulled away, leaving her lying on the wreckage of the photographs in the desk. His fingers shook as he did up his jeans, and she pushed herself up onto her elbows, languid and sated. Her skirt was tangled up around her waist and his come was drying on her thighs; he'd never thought he'd hate her, but he hated her now.
"Nick," she purred, almost serene, and licked her lips. It wasn't subtle. She'd got what she'd come for - or thought she had, which amounted to the same thing for Helen.
"I'll give you a head start," he said and she frowned, her brow furrowing as she sat up, suddenly twitchy and cautious, like a cat. "Twenty minutes and then I'm calling Lester. I think he'd like to talk to you. I think he'd like to talk to you very much."
Her expression changed, became baffled, thwarted. Dangerous, but he couldn't care about that now, not when he itched for a shower, something to wash this away, wash all of this away, when all he wanted was the creature comforts that Stephen had once teased him about instead of this creature he'd married.
"Twenty minutes," he repeated and her expression hardened.
"You'll regret this," she snarled, all of her serenity, her surety, blown away.
He looked at her again, really looked at her, past all of her defences, past their shared past. "I already do," he said.
-o-
After she'd gone, he called up all of the images, flicking through them, something inside him dying a little more with each one.
Then he deleted them, emptying the trash when he'd done. He'd call Connor tomorrow. He was sure that the boy had a way of wiping every single trace of them away.
The End
Author: alyse
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Helen/Nick
Rating: R
Spoilers: Set post 2.7
Disclaimer: Primeval and its characters belong to Impossible Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended. This is fanfiction, written solely for love of the show.
Word Count: ~3,000.
Status: Complete
Author's Notes: Written as a pinch hit for the
primevalathon Primeval Ficathon for blktauna, whose prompt was Nick and Helen facing off when he catches her spying on him. Verbal fighting, physical fighting and angry sex follow. Many thanks to
aithine for the beta services.Summary: Something wicked this way comes.
-o-
Stephen had teased him more than once about being a creature of creature comforts. It wasn't a strictly accurate description - you didn't make professor in their field without serving time in the field - but he'd got what his friend and colleague had meant.
He loved the thrill of discovery, the way that bones took shape under his carefully wielded brush, inch by painstaking inch. He loved watching the past emerge before his very eyes, and he'd shared that love first with Helen and then with Stephen. But there was also no denying that at the end of each day what he looked forward to was a hot shower and a meal he didn't have to hunt and kill but just unwrap and nuke. All the comforts of home.
Stephen, though... Stephen had been different. While Nick stumbled over rocks, hands gesturing wildly as he tried to talk and walk at the same time, Stephen had moved through the world with sleek grace, his feet settling firmly on the ground with each carefully placed step. Stephen climbed mountains, walked through jungles, tracked beasts that were almost as deadly as the things they dug up had been. Stephen, who was as at home in the wild as Nick was in his en suite bathroomed, centrally heated house of brick and mortar.
Stephen had stalked through the world through the world like a predator. He'd had at least that much in common with Helen.
And now he was gone, predator turned prey. But he'd taught Nick something at least.
He'd taught Nick how to spot when he was being hunted.
-o-
At first it was subtle - a shadow in the darkness where one shouldn't have been, a light left on when he could have sworn he'd turned it off, papers disappearing from his desk where he'd left them. But when he glanced back, the street was empty and the papers turned up on the couch instead.
He put it down to stress. He was jumpy, hardly surprising given Stephen's death and Claudia's loss. He was imagining things, seeing Helen everywhere when she was long gone by now.
But Helen didn't do subtle for long. She never had. The signs started to add up, the spoor unmistakable. The stink of Helen's presence, laid over Nick's life.
Stephen had taught him how to spot when he was hunting, but Helen had taught him how to lay a trap.
-o-
He talked to Connor first. He thought he'd have talked to Connor first even if Stephen had still been alive, at least about this. It wasn't all about Connor's technical know-how either. Stephen would have mocked him, with varying degrees of heat, and dismissed it all as paranoia, even knowing Helen as he had. But Connor... Connor listened and asked questions and went off at wild tangents. But then Connor knew something that Stephen had never quite grasped.
Connor didn't have Stephen's predator's instinct but that was no use when it came to Helen. When it came to Helen, you had to think like prey.
So if Connor thought his request was strange, a little paranoid, he didn't say so. For all Nick knew, in Connor's world it might have made perfect sense and it wasn't like the boy was ever going to pass up the chance to be Q to Nick's James Bond.
He had to admit that the solution that Connor came up with was elegant in its simplicity: a hidden webcam linked into a small movement sensor, cannibalised from one of those sentry toys Nick has seen advertised to children. Once triggered, the images would be taken every few seconds and saved to an external hard drive attached to his home network.
All he had to do was wait.
He'd always been more patient than Helen.
-o-
Connor had configured the software to neatly title all of the pictures with the timestamp; they were laid out in a logical, numerical order, second after second after second, like the zoetrope Nick had had as a child. Spin it fast enough and it looked like the pictures were moving.
He clicked through them one by one and Helen wandered through the detritus of his life, touching things she had no place touching, not any longer. When he'd reached the end, he closed all but the best of the images; those he stared at for a long, long moment, looking for something, anything, a sign of weakness, of regret in her face. But the camera was cheap and fairly low quality and the outlines blurred and grainy; Helen remained as aloof, as unreadable as she had always been.
His finger clicked 'print' again and again. When he picked the images up from the printer, the ink was still wet around the edges and it left dark smudges on his fingertips. They stayed even after he rubbed his fingers on his jeans, marking him indelibly.
He left them on the desk for her.
-o-
There was something in the air when he got back that night, something like a scent, faint but still recognisable, and his stomach clenched, fierce and frightened all at once.
She was waiting for him in the study, all fluid lines and grace, draped over his office chair like she still belonged there. She didn't. There was very little of her left in this house now; he'd never believed in shrines.
He'd loved her once. It was strange to think that now.
He stood in the doorway, just looking at her, taking everything in. She'd changed her clothes - a neat, skirted suit had replaced the ripped leathers, worn and torn, that she'd been wearing the last time he'd seen her. There was something subtly wrong about her outfit, something out of place, even here in his study, which had never exactly seen couture - maybe it was the shape of it or the cut or the colour, or the way the fabric flowed and clung to her as she pushed herself to her feet. Or maybe that sense of wrongness was simply down to Helen herself.
She still favoured flashing vast amount of cleavage, he noted cynically. There would have been a time when that would have distracted him, dazzled him into submission. It had never been looking into her eyes that had worried him, hypnotising him into a sense of false confidence.
He was older now, though. Less inclined to be led around by his dick, even by Helen, who had known him once and had maybe even come close to understanding him. He didn't think she'd understand him now.
"Nick." She smiled, slow and sure, but he wasn't giving her the satisfaction, not this time. "I must admit, I thought this was slightly technically advanced for you. Let me guess," she tapped her blunt, neat fingernail on one of the photographs on the desk in front of her, "Connor?"
"What do you want, Helen?"
Straight to the chase, as blunt as he'd always had to be when she wanted to play games and he wasn't interested. She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow, not at all put off by his brusque tone. If anything, it seemed to provide her with some secret source of amusement; he knew her well enough to catch the slow, pleased smile that played around the corners of her mouth.
"How are things at the ARC? Tell me, have you found a replacement for poor Stephen yet?"
Yes, Helen had known and understood him once, and she still knew how to pack a punch - where to aim, how hard to throw it. She'd never been one for pulling them. She watched him, head tilted to one side and the light of avid curiosity in her eyes, hungry for some response.
"What do you want?" he repeated tonelessly, not willing to give her even that much satisfaction.
She let out a quiet sound, curious and amused both at once. "I need your help," she said, and when he laughed, the sound was sudden and harsh and bitter.
Her eyes narrowed dangerously, but he ignored her fit of pique, finally taking a step into the room, a step closer to her. His temper had always been his downfall.
"Help? What the hell makes you think I'll help you with your mad schemes? After..."
After Stephen, he thought, but didn't say. He didn't need to. For once Helen didn't pretend to misunderstand him. Instead she moved closer and he fought down his instinct to step away. You didn't show weakness with Helen. Not unless you wanted her to tear your bloody throat out.
She stalked around his desk and he twisted to face her, never letting her out of his sight because you didn't do that with Helen either. She didn't stop coming until she'd stepped into his personal space, like she still had a right to be there. He could smell her now, that scent of Helen - musky and heady, dangerous and alive. She didn't touch him, not yet, but she might as well have - there was barely an inch between them and still he didn't give way to her, not even when she pulled that trick of looking up at him, her expression far from demure.
"We could bring him back," she said and he jerked back like she'd hit him. "We could fix time." He could only stare down at her, transfixed and frozen. She tilted her head again, giving him that perverse, pleased little smile of hers. "Think about it, Nick. We could make it all right again."
He tried to push her off, step past her, but Helen knew him too well, knew all of his weaknesses. She stopped him with a hand to the chest.
"We could bring both of them back, if you wanted. Stephen and your Claudia Brown."
He thought of Jenny - of bright, brittle Jenny, with her shark-like smile and too high heels. Only, since Stephen's death the smile was less in evidence, and Jenny didn't wear couture now. She dressed in earth tones, muted greens and browns that suited her hair, now she'd stopped dying it, but didn't suit Jenny.
I've been feeling... different recently.
She'd disappear, Jenny. Cease to exist the way that Claudia had ceased to exist and something inside him twisted and ached, bone deep. She wouldn't be dead, not dead the way that Stephen was dead. There'd be no grave, nothing to mourn. She'd just be gone.
"You're mad," he whispered, and Helen smiled again, a cruel twist to her lips. Her fingers curled, became talons, the nails digging into the skin beneath his shirt. There was a light in her eyes, burning too brightly and fiercely, even for Helen.
"Think about it, Nick. We could find that spot, the place where everything started to go wrong. We could make it all right. And then..." The nails dug in even deeper, the pain blooming underneath her touch. "...maybe you can forgive yourself."
She was serious. He could tell that much and he stared down at her, the words stopped in his mouth by her surety. "Poor Nick," she crooned, reaching up to touch his face and he flinched back, drawing another smile. "I know how much losing Stephen hurts."
The surge of anger that rose up in him at Stephen's name gave him the strength to push her off him; she stumbled backwards, hitting the desk and steadying herself on it. She was still wearing that mocking half-smile as she straightened up, and her eyes burned.
"You bitch," he growled, the sound coming from deep in his belly, hard and tight with fury. It didn't scare Helen but then very little did; if anything, her smile grew and when she straightened up all the way, the movement was fluid, sinuous. Like a snake. "Stephen is dead because of you, because of the way you had to mess around with Leek, with everything, and you have the... the... How many more, Helen? How many more are going to die because of you? Get out! Just get the hell out!"
"Oh, Nick." She let out a laugh and it wasn't brittle, not like Jenny's these days. It was deep and amused and she was looking at him like he was a particularly entertaining pet. Dance, doggy, dance. "Always one for the social niceties." She straightened her jacket, tugging it down so that it tightened for a brief second over her breasts. "Yes, I asked Stephen to come when I realised how much Leek had lost it. But Stephen didn't die because of me. He died because he chose to save you. He died instead of you."
Her tone was conversational, like she was discussing the weather. Like it didn't matter - like leading Stephen by the dick straight to his death, like Claudia being wiped from time, like threatening to do the same with Jenny, was nothing. Like fucking around with time was nothing.
Like fucking around with him.
He was in her space, right up in her space, crowding her back against the desk and she didn't care. The light was in her eyes, but there was nothing behind it, absolutely nothing behind it but deep, dark wells where the Helen had loved once was lost forever.
"I've seen the future," she murmured, her breath ghosting over his lips. She reached up again, tracing his mouth with her fingertip, her nail catching on the dry skin, chapped by the weather, cracked and sore. He didn't stop her - he couldn't stop her, mesmerised by everything he no longer saw, frozen by his anger and her hunger for things that had nothing to do with him. "I've seen the future, Nick, and it's all gone."
Her nails dug in again, sharp and suddenly, and they cut the inside of his mouth. He jerked his head back and swore and she laughed, low and throaty and not entirely sane. He could taste blood, as sharp and metallic on his tongue as the sound of her laughter as it rattled around inside his brain.
"It's all gone," she whispered, and her lips brushed over his mouth, feather-light and treacherous, burning where he bled. "But we can bring it back."
She believed it - the vicious, conniving bitch actually believed that she could play God. In spite of everything. In spite of Claudia, Stephen. Nick himself.
"You're mad," he whispered against her touch and there was a kind of awe in it, even mixed in with the furious rushing of blood in his ears. "And I won't help you, Helen."
She bit him, no finesse in it, not this time, and her fingers grabbed his hair, holding him steady while she licked the blood from his lips, her body shaking against his - with rage or fear or laughter, he couldn't tell. They were all blended into one, blended into the entirety of Helen, like a whirlwind or a hurricane and just as destructive.
He swore against her mouth, trying to pull away, but she pressed harder against him, wrapping herself around him, her fingers still knotted tightly into his hair, holding him steady while she ravaged him, teeth and talons ripping into his flesh. Her skin was hot under his hands when he tried to pry her off, fever hot, and eight years of surviving creatures more dangerous than he'd ever be had given her a wiry, slippery strength.
He couldn't pull free, but he could punish her. Punish her and himself, because that was something they'd always been good at, even when things between them had been good.
Hurting each other.
She writhed against him, her mouth open against his, hot breath huffing out against his skin. She was laughing still, or panting, or both, her fingers tugging at his clothes, tearing them. The fabric of her skirt tore under his grip, his fingers curled into the fabric. He wasn't tugging but he didn't need to, not when Helen was moving. Not when Helen was this strong and holding on was all that he could do.
She pushed him away and held him close, legs wrapped around his thighs while her fingers busied themselves with his zip. There was no finesse in her this time, either; when the zip yielded to her, her look was one of savage victory, distorting the lines of her face into something demonic.
He didn't deserve anything less. Neither of them did.
Stephen was dead, and Claudia was gone, and Jenny was left an anxious, ghostlike shell.
He let Helen eat his heart, what was left of it, swallowing down her hunger and giving her all of his pain and his grief in return. When he thrust into her, it was fierce and furious and empty, but her howl of triumph echoed through the house they'd once shared.
Afterwards, he pulled away, leaving her lying on the wreckage of the photographs in the desk. His fingers shook as he did up his jeans, and she pushed herself up onto her elbows, languid and sated. Her skirt was tangled up around her waist and his come was drying on her thighs; he'd never thought he'd hate her, but he hated her now.
"Nick," she purred, almost serene, and licked her lips. It wasn't subtle. She'd got what she'd come for - or thought she had, which amounted to the same thing for Helen.
"I'll give you a head start," he said and she frowned, her brow furrowing as she sat up, suddenly twitchy and cautious, like a cat. "Twenty minutes and then I'm calling Lester. I think he'd like to talk to you. I think he'd like to talk to you very much."
Her expression changed, became baffled, thwarted. Dangerous, but he couldn't care about that now, not when he itched for a shower, something to wash this away, wash all of this away, when all he wanted was the creature comforts that Stephen had once teased him about instead of this creature he'd married.
"Twenty minutes," he repeated and her expression hardened.
"You'll regret this," she snarled, all of her serenity, her surety, blown away.
He looked at her again, really looked at her, past all of her defences, past their shared past. "I already do," he said.
-o-
After she'd gone, he called up all of the images, flicking through them, something inside him dying a little more with each one.
Then he deleted them, emptying the trash when he'd done. He'd call Connor tomorrow. He was sure that the boy had a way of wiping every single trace of them away.
The End
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