Title: Scared to Turn
Author: NoCleverSig
Season: NA/Future Fic
Genre: Pure Romance
Characters: Will and Helen
Rating: MA
Author's Note: This is a fic for my Will/Helen shipper friends. While I am a John/Helen person myself, I think this is rather sweet. (Forgive me John Druitt, for I have sinned :) Enjoy, and please review. It is much appreciated. Peace. NCS

Scared to Turn
(copyright 2010, NoCleverSig)

He'd just made love to Helen.

Not Magnus. Not Dr. Magnus. Not Helen Magnus.

Just…Helen.

And in the past two hours of lovemaking he learned more about her as her lover than he had learned in eight years as her friend.

She liked to be kissed on the neck. It sent goose bumps down her arms and legs and sometimes it made her giggle.

Giggle! He smiled.

She liked to kiss. Deep, passionate kisses that tasted of lavender and honey and sweet English tea. He hadn't always had lovers that kissed. Some just preferred the act of lovemaking itself and very few kisses were shared. But Helen kissed constantly, his lips, his neck, his shoulders, his chest… and he found it more erotic, more passionate, more intimate than the very act of intercourse itself.

She liked to play. She whispered in his ear suggestions that were so scandalous, so unexpected coming from her proper British tongue that it made him blush and her chuckle at his reaction. But she did so quietly, softly, so much so he wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly, except when she looked down at him with that mischievous grin, her dark hair swirling around him. Then, he was certain.

She liked him to lead. That surprised him the most. Magnus…Helen, he corrected himself, was a powerful woman. When he'd thought about having her in his bed, and he had thought about having her in his bed many times, he confessed, he assumed she would be the domineering one. But instead she was soft and gentle, slow and deliberate. She let him set the pace, the position, and she followed suit. That didn't mean she didn't make suggestions, subtly. And sometimes, directly, if need be. If she wanted something, she wasn't afraid or embarrassed to ask. But her sexual style, if you will, was one born of romance rather than mindless physical need, and it charmed him senseless.

But most of all, he liked how she completed him. Just as she'd been completing him for the last eight years. They'd shared so much in that time. Life, death, pain, joy….They'd reached a point over the years where one began a sentence and the other ended it. Over time, where she began and he ended became almost imperceptible to him. And perhaps it was that realization that had led to this moment.

It was just another job. This time in Vienna. They had taken care of business quickly and Helen had suggested, since they had finished much sooner than expected, that they spend some time in the city. She rarely made such offers, so he took her up on it before she reconsidered. They visited the Albertina Art Gallery and gazed at the drawings of da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rubens, and Raphael and the watercolors of Manet and Cezanne. Helen had known Cezanne, she said. They toured St. Stephens Cathedral, one of the greatest gothic structures in Europe. He'd never seen it, so Helen showed him the fine, wood carvings and explained the restoration that had taken place after the war, a war she had been so intimately involved in. They ended up in Prater Park and ate a hot dog of all things for dinner. Helen suggested they ride the giant Ferris wheel, the Riesenrad, which she said she hadn't done since 1914. The views of Vienna from there were spectacular, she told him, so he relented despite a niggling fear of heights.

She was right. The view was spectacular. But Vienna paled in comparison. Perhaps it was the freedom with which they'd spent their day. Their lives were so hurried, so stressed to the point of breaking that the time they'd spent together today, just being a man and a woman, felt like stepping out of a maelstrom into a warm pool of light. Whatever it was, something turned inside of him, and he leaned in as the wheel reached its apex and she was pointing out the top of the cathedral and kissed her. He didn't spend time thinking about the rightness or wrongness of it, it just…was. A natural extension of this life force they shared between them.

She smiled at him, ignoring Vienna now. "I've often wondered when you would do that," she said and then took his hand and leaned against his shoulder, the two of them silent for the rest of the ride.

They left the Ferris wheel, hand still in hand, walking through the park away from the amusements to the green space full of forest and meadow. The day was all sun and blue sky, almost too perfect, he thought, years of training to watch your back, stay alert, be on guard too hard to simply shake off. She must have noticed because she stopped him and suggested they sit for awhile under a tree, the sunlight filtering through its five-pointed leaves. The wind was cool, and Helen pulled her white sweater tighter over her light blue top and jeans. She'd actually changed for their excursion. She looked almost…normal, he thought, smiling at her.

"What?" she asked, smiling back.

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head, and he put his arm around her partially to warm her but mostly because he could. And this time, she kissed him, leaning in, seeking his lips. He could smell her shampoo and the soft scent of Chanel (a classic, she once said) on her skin, and she tasted and felt as sweet and as soft as he always knew she would. And nothing felt awkward or wrong or even the slightest bit askew. It only felt…complete. Another turn of the circle. Another moment where he began and she ended or she began and he ended and neither one of them could tell the other apart.

She pulled back and looked at him. Her eyes were a smoky blue, a look he'd only seen when she'd talked of Druitt or some other intimacy from her past. But her blue eyes were on him now, and her voice was low and shaky and tinged with uncertainty, something Magnus rarely revealed.

"We should go back to the hotel," she said. "Somewhere more private," she added, so he would be certain what she meant and not think she intended for them to leave Vienna.

"I'd like that," he answered, and they walked arm and arm slowly across the park through the filtered sunlight to the street and hailed a cab.

And now he lay there on her bed, staring at the ceiling, Helen asleep by his side, thinking of how she liked to be kissed and to kiss and to play and to let go and to cry when she came and to hold him so tight when she did that he could barely breathe but he didn't care because nothing in the world had ever felt so pure and so perfect.

And suddenly, he was scared.

Scared this would be the only time. Scared he couldn't compete with the men she'd known. Scared he didn't, couldn't meet her expectations. Scared he was reading too much into this day, this night.

Just scared.

He felt her reach out a hand and stroke his hair. He turned to look at her, knowing his heart was in his eyes and she would see.

She lay naked beside him, completely at ease with her body, her dark hair sweeping over her blue eyes. She turned onto her stomach arms on his chest and began drawing imaginary circles slowly, lazily on his stomach. He watched her, mesmerized, not wanting to say anything to break the spell she wove.

"Do you know what I like about circles, Will?" she said, still drawing imaginary lines on his chest.

He never thought of anyone caring one way or another about a geometric shape.

"What?" he asked, quietly, content just to watch her. Praying she'd never stop.

"Once you've finished it," she said, tracing the path on his chest, "You don't know where it began or where it ends. It simply turns." She looked up at him. "We've turned, Will. And it makes me happy."

He laid his hand atop of hers to still her. She looked up at him, her hair floating on his chest and smiled at him.

He didn't know where he began and where she ended, where she began and where he ended. All he knew was that he loved her, and he wasn't scared to turn.

End