Title: the next best thing (is just what we both needed)
Author:
somehowunbroken Fandom: Sanctuary/SG1
Characters: Nikola Tesla/Sam Carter
Word Count: 1,227
Rating: NC-17/HET SEX. I feel the need to capslocky warn for that.
Notes: For
sfa_pornbattle - my first Sanctuary fic! Sam.Nikola - next best thing. It's mostly angst with a little porn tossed in, sorry.
Nikola spends a solid week comparing them when he first meets Samantha.
There are the obvious differences, of course: the hair, for one, and the accent. Their voices are similar, though, once he learns to listen past the inflection, and when he hears Samantha laugh he has to stop himself from looking for Helen.
Samantha swears she’s never met a Helen Magnus, hasn’t even heard of her, and Nikola’s known Helen for long enough to pick up on her tells. Samantha isn’t lying, or he doesn’t think she is, at least.
There are other differences, though, more subtle. Samantha smiles when he uses her full name, and she laughs at his jokes, and when she doesn’t tell him things she seems genuinely sorry that she can’t share with him.
“Deep-space radar telemetry,” she says when he asks what she does for a living, and the right side of her mouth pulls a little higher than the left when she smiles at him.
Nikola smiles back, as charmingly as he can. “That’s a lie, my dear.”
The left corner of her mouth rises a tiny bit more, and Nikola congratulates himself on being correct in his interpretation of the gesture. More and more like Helen.
“It’s classified,” Samantha says, and he nods. He’s sure it is. “I wish I could tell you,” she adds, and maybe she’s less like Helen, because Helen had never said that particular phrase with such conviction, such - it’s nearly longing, Nikola knows, and he’s starting to like her for how she’s not Helen, so he doesn’t say anything.
But he’s away from the Sanctuary for a reason, he remembers abruptly as Samantha looks back down to her plate, smile still playing on her lips. He’s tracking an Abnormal for Helen, looking for something tall and pale that sucks the life out of a person through a slit in its hand. It will be kept in the SHU fpr sure, and there’s a part of Nikola that wants to find it just to be near something vampiric again, even if it would be able to kill him in a split-second now.
Now that he’s normal, now that he’s boring, now that he’s human, and Nikola tries to turn his thoughts elsewhere, because it does no good to dwell on the past, and because thinking of it brings back Helen’s sympathy, the look in Helen’s eyes, and he loves her but he doesn’t want that, never wanted that-
“Nikola?” Samantha’s voice is gentle, concerned, and she’s got her hand halfway across the table to grasp at where his is clenching his napkin. There’s no pity in her eyes, nothing that tells him I’m sorry, nothing in her that almost tortures him just because he knows it’s there, because Samantha’s never heard of source blood or vampires or Abnormals.
There’s just Samantha across the table, Samantha who doesn’t know what he was, what he’s lost, and he loves Helen in a way that maybe only he understands but Nikola wants Samantha in a way even he can’t explain, sudden and sharp and fierce. It’s not fair to her, because he’s maybe using her to forget and he’s certainly not sticking around, but she’s the next best thing to what he wants (who he wants, he tries not to think, and mostly doesn’t succeed) that he’s willing to indulge himself.
He’s not sure he’s thinking straight, but Nikola rises with all of his not-inconsiderable grace and sends a smile-turned smirk in Samantha’s direction. “Might I have the honor of escorting the lovely lady home?” he asks gallantly, holding his hand out for her in a way he learned to do lifetimes ago, and the smile she sends him in return is pure Helen, elegance and humor and that hint of reckless defiance, and he might be using her but he thinks she just might be using him right back as she allows him to pull her out of her seat.
“I can drive,” she tells him, and he smirks at her again and follows her out the door.
The ride isn’t far, not long enough for things to get awkward, and then they’re in Samantha’s house, pressing into each other with a ferocity that Nikola hadn’t really been expecting. Samantha is strong, a lot stronger than he’d expected her to be; when she muscles him back and pins him to the wall, he doesn’t think about how easy it would have been to push her away a few months before. Instead, he pulls her head in and crushes their mouths together, and when she slips a leg between his Nikola remembers that he has to breathe now.
He rolls her rather inexpertly - she’s strong, stronger than he’s used to having to deal with, and he’s still not sure about this human body - but she goes willingly, her back to the wall now, arms pinned above her head, panting as he licks his way down her neck, bites harder than he’s dared to in decades, leaves little marks along her body.
Her bedroom is neat and clean and a little bare, like she doesn’t spend a lot of time there, but it’s not really something he notices as she leads the way inside, tugging at the sweater and jeans she’s wearing until she’s in her bra and panties.
“You, my dear, are stunning,” he tells her, and he really, truly means it - she’s beautiful, just as he’d imagine Helen is, but then again he’s not thinking about Helen now, is he?
“I’d love to return the compliment,” Samantha replies with a smirk, “but I’ve yet to see any more than I’ve already seen.”
Nikola grins and pulls at his own clothing, dropping it messily onto the floor before following Samantha onto the bed.
Samantha’s hands cup Nikola’s ass and pull them flush together, and she bucks up into him, both of them gasping as they slide together through the fabric. She does it again and a third time, and Nikola has to push up off of her to shuck his boxers and pull her panties from her body because he needs to be inside her now, right now-
They both groan as Nikola slides into her, tight and wet and hot, and she moves under him and it’s delicious, it’s a thrill unlike any he remembers over the past century or so, being fully human and buried inside someone. And then Samantha grabs at his hips and rolls until she’s sitting atop him, and she moves up and down, and all he can do is gasp and moan and revel in the sensation. When he comes, it’s not her name he says, but when she follows she doesn’t say his name, either.
Nikola hadn’t planned on staying the night, but then he’s got nowhere better to be, so he doesn’t protest when Samantha curls into his body and draws the blankets around them. Her head is resting on his chest, above where his heart is now beating, and her arm is resting casually across his stomach.
“She doesn’t deserve you,” Samantha says when he’s sure she’s asleep, and all Nikola can do is smile a little crookedly.
“And he doesn’t deserve you,” he replies, and they smile at each other, and Nikola realizes that he actually does feel a little better as he drifts off to sleep.