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one.
"It's just a cold, Nikola, honestly. Your time trapped underground likely compromised your immune system temporarily; you'll have to be more careful about that now that you're mortal again."
"I believe you're minimizing the seriousness of my condition, Helen," Nikola said, draping himself over one if the infirmary beds with a dramatic sigh. His skinny arms and legs hung off the sides of the bed in a way Helen was quite certain was precisely calculated for the maximum pity-inducing effect. "I haven't felt this terrible since the day I had to miss Maxwell's guest lecture on electromagnetic theory and the rest of you went along without me."
"I think you'll live." Helen managed not to roll her eyes as she turned to put some supplies away.
"But what if I don't?" Nikola covered his eyes with his forearm, other hand clutched to his chest, then shifted his arm so he could peek out at her beneath it. "These might be our last moments together, Helen. A brilliant vampire--"
"--former vampire," Helen corrected.
"A brilliant former vampire, wasting away on his deathbed, depriving the world of all his genius. Future generations will never benefit from the momentous discoveries I could have made, all because you wouldn't give me one little kiss to bolster my will to live. Come on, Helen. For the good of humanity?" Nikola grinned at her, a grin she knew was meant to be charming but in reality translated into equal parts smug and confident. "Just one kiss."
Helen laughed, shaking her head, and was spared from answering by a growl and the loud clang of china and steel on the wood of Nikola's bedside table. "Soup," grunted the Big Guy, in a tone that clearly said if you touch anything but this food, I will throw you out on your head.
She bit the inside of her lip and tried very hard not to smile too much as Nikola loudly protested the fact that the soup was accompanied by tea instead of a choice vintage from her cellar.
two.
"Nikola--this is our own planet! Right here, right now."
"Miles below the surface," Nikola mused, examining the projection hovering before them, a complex representation of tunnels and networks that covered the Earth.
Helen came to stand beside him, looking at it from his angle. She could hardly believe what she was seeing, or how serendipitiously they had arrived at this next level--she'd simply spoken one of the symbols aloud, unaware that it was voice activated. "We're looking at an atlas. A 3-D map of Hollow Earth."
They studied it for a little while, gathering as much data from it as they could, and while they made some progress, it still wasn't quite enough. Finally they put it away for the evening, when it was apparent that they would make no more discoveries before dawn.
"I think that is cause for celebration," Nikola said, sounding extremely pleased with himself.
"And by 'celebration' you mean 'helping yourself to choice bottles from my wine cellar'." Helen gathered up her papers and reshelved some books; she could not abide disorder in her library.
"Of course," he replied. "Though if you'd like to reward me for my considerable accomplisments this evening, that would be even better." He grinned at her, slipping an arm round her waist as she came down from the ladder, having returned the books on ancient Sumerian cuneiforms to their proper places.
Helen eyed his hand, resting on her hip, then looked at Nikola, who was grinning at her with a look that she could never quite think of as anything but vampiric. She sighed, removed his hand from her person and kept on walking, heels clicking smartly against the library floor as she crossed it. "I'll refrain from billing you for the replenishment of my wine cellar," she called over her shoulder.
three.
There was a knock at the door, but Helen didn't look up the pile of paperwork that covered her desk--paperwork that she had no inclination to actually do at the moment, but it was busy work, and she needed the distraction. She knew all their knocks by now; Nikola's staccato rhythm was easy to distinguish from Will's (three raps, usually accompanied by a cleared throat) or Henry's (two taps, always). Kate usually blurted out "Doc, you got a minute?" in lieu of knocking, and John simply walked into the room as though he were expected, even when he wasn't. "Come in, Nikola."
She expected he would harangue her about recent developments--Worth, the map, her radiation sickness. What she did not expect was for him to place a tea tray on her desk, and she finally looked up in expectation of some sort of explanation. "The hairy one was waiting outside with it," Nikola explained, shrugging. "I told him to give me that and go dust something."
"It's not necessary," Helen said, resenting the way it made her feel like an invalid, but he poured for her and she felt she had no choice but to take it. She'd had very little to eat since her return from Cambodia, and knew she was running on reserves of energy that would cost her dearly later. Perhaps tea would not be a bad idea at the moment.
"It's not my drink of choice, but your wine cellar's nearly empty." Nikola said this with a voice full of regret. Helen suspected the true reason he'd brought her tea was wine wasn't the best choice for her right now, and she appreciated him not saying it. "So tea it is. You know, for someone so big and hairy, he actually makes decent tea. I suspected there must be some reason you kept him around."
Normally, Helen would quickly come to her dear friend's defence, but her fight with Will and her conversation with John had exhausted her, and she simply didn't have it in her to banter with Nikola right now. "Was there something you wanted, or did you just come to my office to irritate me?"
Nikola affected an expression of shock and hurt. "An old friend can't simply come by with tea? Must there always be some ulterior motive?"
"With you? Yes."
"Oh, yes, I see your point." Nikola sat in one of the chairs across from her desk, leaning back in a way that suggested a schoolboy balancing a chair on its rear legs and daring his teacher to scold him. "I suppose I do have an ulterior motive, if you count inquiring into your well-being. But I don't think I'll do that, in case you bite my head off the way you bit off young William's head earlier."
"You've seen the tests," Helen said. Her hands were beginning to shake, and she carefully placed the teacup on her desk to hide it. "You needn't ask about my well-being when you're perfectly aware what's going on. I'd prefer not to talk about it, if you don't mind."
Nikola shrugged a little, giving her a bland look that Helen was sure was meant to hide the fact that he'd noticed the trembling. Far from hiding it, it only highlighted that he'd noticed, but again she was thankful that he hadn't commented on it. "Suit yourself," he said. "I just brought the tea. But I'm not clearing it away; you have your butler to take care of that."
He stood, placing his cup on the edge of her desk, and turned to leave; then apparently thought better of it, crossing behind her desk. Helen wasn't sure what he was about to do. Ask her to kiss him, perhaps, since he'd been persistent in that endeavour ever since he'd taken up residence. But Nikola didn't do that; instead he touched her shoulder lightly, for such a brief second that Helen wondered if she'd imagined it. "I'll be in the library," he said quietly, then left her there with her paperwork and her long-cooled teacup.