a/n: for hannah (aka but_seriously), when is this not. because she taunted me with this prompt: rebekah opens a brother au.
i literally sprung this up in, like, four hours. make of it what you will. utterly unbeta-ed.
warnings: prostitution, obviously, and some reference to abuse, domestic and otherwise.
Klaus does not care for whores, he never has. If you're going to extend that statement it is true that he does not care for anyone: but whores he finds especially distasteful, because they belong to the race of thieves and murderers, who will take what you give them and then ten times more. It's not that he's bitter; he wasn't burned, isn't some of those young fools who fall in love with a not-yet-spoiled body and a treacherous smile. But he's around Rebekah often enough —as well as overseeing the entire operation he is enough of a control freak to do the books methodically every month— and they're always there, milling around,with their oversized eyes and mirthless, absent smiles, trailing behind them the long smell of sweat and garish perfume. When he first arrived in this part of the city they laughed at him; then he fucked one or two too hard, lashed at them with his belt, thinking, then they will learn. And they did: now they mock him behind closed doors, and they fear him, always taking care to give him a wide berth. He's their boss now, in addition to being their tormentor; so they keep quiet. Whores understand better than anyone the value of knowing when to open your mouth.
For two centuries he has been here; before that he was elsewhere. He is timeless just like money is timeless, the money of dice and fights and prostitutes. As for him he does not meddle in those things, only, occasionally, to test the product. But he prefers the company of his peers: old money without morals, smoky dining clubs, cigars, elite memberships. He goes to the races; he wins. You only win at the races if you've fixed the race or if you've already got more money than you can handle, and Klaus has both. He leaves good tips; girls know he's a gentleman just by the tilt of his hat, the shape of a hand accustomed to doling out cash, presents. They do not know who he is underneath, which is fine because it is how he wants it: their eyes are not trained to see the secret rot inside of him, the sour pit of his stomach, the floury rest of unused bones. He has lived too long; he lives still. But whores he does not trust; sometimes his gaze strays on them and he thinks, fleeting and careless, that they have lived as long as he.
Unlike Elijah, who still finds the whole business as tasteless as he did when Klaus started, even though he will drop like clockwork twice a month for the sake of family unity to drain a mildly pretty girl with dark eyes, Rebekah has taken excellently to the guise of madame. To age herself —there is no madame under thirty-five in the business, and Rebekah will always be pretty enough that the clients mistake her for a whore herself— she has taken to wearing long silky kimonos with, attached to the half-undone obi at her waist, various trinkets: a whistle, a small ivory piece, and the small pouch in which she keeps the clinking change. She has a whip —her favorite method for dealing with over-enthusiastic clients— but she keeps it in the back, not to scare them. Of course, being Rebekah, she likes her girls too much, but that can't be helped.
Klaus has an office in a building two streets over, far enough to avoid the stench and close enough to be able to be there immediately if there is trouble. He sits in a tall, broad leather chair, looking out into the bay, and smokes the priciest cigars he owns.
—
To say that this is not quite what she had in mind when Klaus quirked his red, easy grin at her and said, "Do you want to get rich, sister?" would be an overwhelming understating. She had even opposed him, at first, and for quite a while, though she cannot remember the exact arguments she had given him —the point being, he won. Now it is a strange thing but she could not imagine herself anywhere, spending her days dealing with her girls' demands, dirty laundry, the police patrols when they get a little too nosy. She used to think that everything could be resolved by breaking someone's neck, but evidently not. Being sedentary adds to the challenge.
Still, she's comfortable here: the girls like her, or at least they seem to, which is really all Rebekah can ask of them. They like that she is keeping a clean place, not one of those rat-holes with a hundred girls in one bug-infested, smelly building; Rebekah prides herself on maintaining a classy establishment. She only keeps ten girls, twelve at the most, and they're all free to go when they've amassed enough to make a life for themselves, though there is less turnover than you would expect. Jobs are hard to come by in this town, especially for women.
Elena is the one who finds the stray, on a rainy October afternoon where business is lethargic, by virtue of simply of answering the door. From where she's sitting at the kitchen table drinking her tea and filling her account book, Rebekah can see her body lock into position as soon as her hand touches the knob, the flirty tilt of her hips, the wan, practiced on her lips. Nothing about that is unusual; what isunusual is the way all the pretense drops as soon as she sees what's on the other side of the door.
Rebekah is already halfway across the room when Elena calls out for her. She arches an eyebrow.
"What's going on?"
Elena just pushes the door closed, ushering the girl in. Even with her sopping wet hair and miserable clothes, Rebekah cannot help but assess her, eyes trailing her body: alabaster skin, fair blond hair, and she looks young. If Rebekah can keep her beyond what's obviously a search for asylum she will make them buckets of gold.
"I just need somewhere to spend the night," says the girl, teeth chattering. "I'll pay you, I have—"
"What do you have?" asks Rebekah, not unkindly. "Judging by the look of you, it's not much." She trails her eyes across the girl's body, all the places where the thin fabric is stuck idecently to her body. "If you're hiding a purse under there I don't even want to know where." She catches Elena's eye and they laugh.
The girl looks caught in a lie. She retreats against the door, says, fierce, "I don't —I thought this was—"
Rebekah takes a step forward. "Don't be stupid, darling," she says matter-of-factly, "if you open this door you'll only drag more of that storm inside."
There is a second where their gazes are warring: the girl looks ready to bolt and Rebekah is stable, strong, has just stated that she will not turn her away. Everything comes at a price, though; but Rebekah doubts the girl has many other prospects.
Eventually the girl seems to give up. Her shoulders drop, her lips sagging sadly. A tear or two slides down her cheek, invisible in the mess the rain has made of her. Rebekah folds her arm around her shoulder, pulling her towards the kitchen.
"Come now," she says, not quite a whisper, "we always keep a place for Jesus at the table."
—
Sometimes there is no way to know what you're running towards. Usually Caroline is always the best girl, the best planner; not this time. This time she just ran, as fast as she could, to get away, and she ended up here. In this city. In this rain. At this table, in this brothel —that part is obvious, at least, because all the rest is far from it—, with those women. The blonde one offers her tea. Caroline just nods, unsure of what will come out if she opens her mouth.
"So," says the dark-haired one, setting her chin on her hand, her eyes bored but not cruel, "what's your story?"
Caroline's teeth are still clacking with cold. The blonde woman's eyes swivel to her, interested. She is in charge, Caroline understand —she doesn't look older than the other one but there is something about her, and the way the other one's stance turned towards her when she talked, automatic.
"I don't—" Caroline takes a breath in through her nose, "there is no story, I just—"
She's saved from making up a lie by the rowdy noise of an ungraceful clatter: four other girls running down the stairs. When they see her they chuckle and crowd around her, almost predatory.
"Quiet, girls," says the blonde one. Then she sighs, "I suppose it is time for introductions, then." She holds out a pretty, manicured hand, "My name is Rebekah. I'm in charge here."
One of the girls behind her, who looks startlingly like the one who opened the door, snorts.
"Tell yourself that," she says under her breath, loud enough for everyone to hear —but Rebekah turns around and pins her down with her gaze, drawls, steely and deliberate, "I am telling myself that, Katherine. Just like my accounts, where I write down the price of every expensive cream and silk taffeta you order. Maybe you'd better remember that."
Katherine does not want to yield, Caroline can tell; but eventually she takes a step back and bows her head, just a fraction. A black girl holds her hand out to Caroline, her hip cocked, mouth painted gold.
"I'm Bonnie," she says. She points to the girl who opened the door, "Elena," and two other lingering behind her, "and that's Hayley and Victoria."
"Vicky," says Victoria, even though she does not seem welcoming in the least, her long, lupine face stretched with distrust.
The kettle hisses. Without Rebekah having to lift a finger, Elena rises obediently and pours it into a big teapot, then, after a few minutes of wondering silences, pours each of them a cup. Caroline burns her tongue but keeps the curse she wants to let slip inside, bites her bottom lip.
"I just needed to get away," she says after a while, softly, to no-one in particular.
Bonnie smiles a bitter smile at her. "This is rarely the good place for that, honey," she says.
The whole company show some sort of agreement to that declaration, nods and hums, and even Rebekah tilts her head to the side like she has to admit she can conceive of more rewarding occupations. Caroline waits, lips poised over the cutting edge of the porcelain; then, when it becomes obvious that nobody is going to offer her to leave, she takes a sip. The long slide of heat downs her throat feels like a damnation.
—
In many ways, it is similar to touring a plantation. Klaus arrives, and they all recognize him: the regulars tilt their hats at him, the other patrons evade his gaze, the whores bow their heads and curl their lips, disappearing back into their rooms, and Rebekah sighs.
She locks eyes with him, like she does every Saturday. "Brother," she greets, mocking. "You know there was no need to come all this way just to check on us."
"I could care less for them," says Klaus. "Is everything in order?"
Rebekah hums to indicate the positive. "New girl," she says succinctly. "Came in for shelter."
"Let me guess," says Klaus. "Didn't leave?"
"Few do."
"Well" —he has settled at the table and has his legs crossed, proprietary, a nail tapping on the wood of the table— "let's see her then."
"She's busy."
She excepts Klaus to kick up a fuss over it, but for all he does not respect them he respect their earning the money he lives on; he settles more comfortably on the chair. "How long?"
"Half an hour, give a take. She needs to be broken in."
Klaus sees a girl wondering past and hisses softly at her, chasing her away. Her eyes widen and she scampers down the corridor. He would be worried about her hearing Rebekah talk about them like cattle —no business is as two-faced as this one—, but he has long learned that they know how it is, and whether they believe Rebekah is handling him or just making the sacrifices her profession requires he does not care.
They sit in silence for a while. The house is humming, as always, the strangled, inelegant sounds of sex carrying over —not to mention their enhanced hearing, which picks up every hitch in breath, every slap of skin on skin. Klaus has done all the calculations: they have another five years before they have to move again, find a city to ravage which doesn't have burned into their retinas the slant of their smiles, the ebb and flow of their silhouettes. People think they can be young forever until they see it; it is only then that they realize how unnatural it truly is.
"I saw Elijah this week," Rebekah says, breaking the silence.
Klaus arches a mildy interested eyebrow. "Is that so? Did you take it upon yourself to visit, for once?"
Rebekah gives him a nasty curl of smile, the one she has always used to show him she knows something he doesn't. "No. He came here."
Now that warrants his attention. "Really?"
Rebekah nods smugly, the picture of the cat who got the cream, the bowl and the milkmaid all in one package. "He wanted to see Katherine."
Klaus has to think for a while before he places her, but eventually it cinches: Katherine, otherwise known as Katerina Petrova, the meanest of Rebekah's whores and, if Klaus has remembered well from his sister's meandering tales, a circus performer who plummeted into misery a few years back and went knocking at her door.
"I'll be damned," he says, mouth soft with wonder.
Rebekah laughs. "I think he went to one of her shows two years back," she says, a grin in her voice that does not show on her made-up face. "The girl threw that enchantment like a lasso."
"Do you think—"
Rebekah's brows furrow for a second. "Do I—oh, no, just a turn of phrase. Although she could be, I suppose." Her lips twist into a real grin this time, hard, twisted at the corners. "A luckless witch. I like the idea."
"Beware," says Klaus.
He is about to add another imprecation when a girl he has never seen steps into the kitchen, her arms folded over her ribcage. She looks defiant, yet beautiful: wide, luminous eye and the slim, tensile body Rebekah favors in her girls, and innocent enough to trick any unsuspecting patron. Klaus, though, is usually able to see under the pretense. His focus narrows on her.
She stills when she sees him. He had not realized, but he frowns when he does; she had been tilting on her feet, lolling imperceptibly around a personal center of gravity.
"Rebekah," she starts, but does not dare continue in his presence. He sees her appraise him, somewhat unsubtly: client or collector? He knows he does not look like police, at least; he has that going for him.
"Darling," purrs Rebekah, "this is Klaus." She rarely, if ever, tells them he is her brother. "I suppose you could say he's our benefactor."
One of them had dropped her eyes to the ground at the words, looking ready to kiss his feet if that was what it took; another had raised her chin defiantly, and yet another had giggled, then kissed his cheek, leaving a greasy lipstick trace behind. He had had to scrub twice harder that night, washing.
The new girl looks unsure, then decidedly crosses the room and, standing before him, presents him with her hand as though she expects him to kiss it.
"This is Caroline," says Rebekah's amused voice in the background, as Klaus is trying to decide: on one hand, that kind of behavior is borne either out of impertinence or good education, both of which have to be trained out of her —on the other hand, he does like her, that birdlike neck, the golden strands curled around her ear… So he will be magnanimous, for once.
He shakes her hand. "Pleased to meet you, Caroline," he drawls, keeping his eyes on her face and making sure to drag his fingers across her palm when he pulls away.
Something on her face stutters. Klaus feels something, like a rusty nail twisting in his stomach, painful and drawn-out; and he knows he is lost.
—
"Both my brothers on the same day," says Rebekah, omitting to mention that there are two left, somewhere in the world —dead, maybe, if she could believe they will ever learn how to die— "To what do I owe the honor?"
They both look caught out, ridiculous even: stuck at her front door, Elijah with his hand raised to knock —he would know, if he came here more often, that no-one ever knocks: too much noise that might alarm the neighbors— and Klaus jittery and nervous, his hands stuck deep in his pockets.
"Elijah," he grits out and, because for Klaus the best defense is always offense, "visiting your contortionist girl? I'm sure she's delightful. You must bring her over for family dinner."
Which they rarely, if ever, have: their best interactions happen where they are comfortable, in the grit and blood and dirt of city life. But Rebekah isn't about to remind him —she's having way too much fun for that.
Elijah responds, stony-faced, "Katerina used to swallow knives."
Klaus laughs, mean; Rebekah wonders if he is here to see Caroline, who had made him almost speechless two nights before. Rebekah had seen him like this before: looking at prey he wants to eat whole, and does, no leaving a scrap behind, no reminder that they were even there. "Katerina, is it? I thought she had changed her name, for the sake of this…" he waves a disdainful arm, "this. Hasn't she?"
"Some people prefer to know who they're really dealing with, Klaus," says Elijah.
Klaus bursts out laughing. The sound is ugly, a nail on chalkboard, or even worse, the long, sucking drag of ships into the port. "Brother dear, I'm sure you've noticed, but there are better places to drop the illusion of pretense." He drapes an arm around Elijah's shoulders, satisfied with this halfway victory. "But nevermind. I shall leave you to your amusements, brother, and head to mine. We're gentlemen after all."
This gets a wry grin out of Elijah. "Are we?"
"Of course! It is money who buys nobility, after all, brother, money and time—and we have more than enough of both."
He turns to Rebekah, because she is the only one who can share in the joke —it is like that often, her brothers turning to her because she is the last resort, the holdover, suddenly remembering that she exists—; that Elijah will never let go of his kingly guilt, or his absurd idea that nobility is somehow tied to honor. He would be hard pressed to find honorable men in this town, Rebekah sometimes feels tempted to tell, but doesn't; he has enough pressing down on his shoulders, there is no use overburdening him. After she knows better than anyone that men are useless when they feel in over their heads.
"Well," she says with a fake, honeyed smile, "may I lead you to your intendeds, then, gentlemen?"
Elijah is already following her, but she sees Klaus hesitate, a silvery hovering over the threshold —after which he shakes his coat back into place and favors her with an absent grin.
"Another time, Rebekah," he says quickly, his eyes darting everywhere but her face. "I've got business in town. Give my regards to your girls or, well…" a smile drips from his mouth, "don't. I'll see you Saturday."
"Farewell, brother," says Rebekah. She watches him go, a little, just for the wonder of seeing Klaus Mikaelson escape, before anything.
"Shall we—" says Elijah then, breaking her haze of wonder, as he holds out a hand; Rebekah sees Vicky staring at them from upstairs, her eyes round as pebbles, pregnant, dark.
"We shall," Rebekah says with a soft, perfumed sigh —she has things to do, after all, and no time to ponder over her brother's slowly wakening heart.
—
Carolined used to have a family, back home —it takes some time, but she discovers that it's the same way for every girl in the house. Katherine and Elena, in addition to looking so eerily like each other that Rebekah sometimes substitutes them when one of them is sick and Rebekah doesn't want to lose patrons, are even cousins.
"Kat used to be a real lady," says Elena, sounding only slightly vicious. "Used to come here and taunt me, say how much better than me she had made it out."
"What happened?"
"What happens to everyone," Elena says with a bitter moue, though she is not particularly bitter, Caroline doesn't think —it's just the turn her mouth has taken from habit and use. "She lost everything. Fall from grace, if you will."
Caroline can empathize with that; though whether she can empathize with Katherine is yet to be determined. Of all the girls, she is the one who has made the less effort to make Caroline feel at home —the only times Caroline has ever found her looking her eyes were filled either with disdain or with a white-hot sort of hunger, an animal's instinct for predation.
"My father died," Bonnie volunteers from where she's sitting, picking at Caroline's quilt. "Well. After my grandmother died. And my mother abandoned us a long time ago."
"I had a husband," says Hayley. When Caroline's inquisitive gaze falls on her, she elaborates, "he beat me. I didn't want to be beat. It was either this or jail."
Did she—? But before Caroline can ask, Alexandra —Lexi—, tall and brash, tells them to stop stacking up their tragic pasts.
"I'll win," she says with an enormous grin, as though losing your entire family to a sinking ship is something to smile about. Sometimes Caroline doesn't understand those girls; sometimes she remembers that laughing about it is the only way to keep surviving, the only automatism that doesn't involve falling back and opening your knees for a stranger.
There is only one boy in the house, which they keep out of sight unless someone specifically asks for him. He is a sweet boy, with a trim silhouette and a swarthy skin, and it is two weeks before Caroline understands that he is Elena's brother —"A family affair," Elena drawls when Caroline cannot keep her surprise to herself—, that they arrived to the house together.
Caroline —Caroline does not tell her story. Caroline keeps her secrets of boys and wolves, of being chased out of her own home, keeps her nightmares under lock and key. There is something to running, that wrestles the resistance out of you: that leaves you kneeling and bloody, whipped to shreds by the cold wind, asking for mercy. Caroline will keep her head down as long as is wise; past that, she'll flee, and surrender again somewhere kinder, if there is such a place.
Rebekah's benefactor —Klaus, Caroline has learned through some well-applied needling— comes to see her a few times. He does not ask anything of her, not even her name —though that he must know, if what the girls say is true and he looks meticulously over every one of Rebekah's books—, just sits there, cold, and asks that she talk to him. After a few meetings she coaxes him into taking off his coat, his expensive jacket —she cannot help but let her hands linger over the luscious fabric; once…—, and he takes to listening to her unspooling her lies sitting down, reclining against her pillows. He always leaves as soon as his time is spent; his money is good, she doesn't complain. He intrigues her, in a way a blade worrying at a wound might worry her. She can feel he is dangerous.
Still —there is no way to stop it, when it comes.
—
For all he might hate himself for it, by now Klaus would be hard pressed to say he wouldn't recognize the girl —Caroline— anywhere, any time she was presented to him. In a crowd he would recognize her: he is sure she would stand out, bright like a flame, unmoving and golden, a lighthouse in the chaos. And she is beautiful, she is —but Klaus would not be half the man he is if he committed to memory the details of every pretty girl's face. No, it is something else: it is a thrumming beneath the skin that appeals to him, a certain rage that she keeps from him; and though he is certain that she would lie back for him if he paid the right amount he also knows that there is something coiled there, just waiting to snap its jaw. It excites him.
It is a day like any other, when he goes to see her. He has just won at the races and his blood is pumping, hunger dampening his mouth. Caroline is like a beacon in his mind: he sees her outlined in a glow, rising above the waves of anger and exultation. For once he does not bother with Rebekah's sugary civilities, tears through the client she had waiting; bursts throug her door. Immediately she is on her feet, tense.
"What's going on?" she says.
He grins. "Love," he says; "I'm afraid I've caused quite a commotion."
What must he look like? He has been cautious all this time, but he is bored with caution; and if that man who was waiting to be bid in has his neck torn, what of it? Rebekah will take care of his messes; she always does.
"Step back," says Caroline. Even though his vision is vague and floating he manages to focus on her hand: a gun, big as her fist, its silver broken with swirls of ivory. A socialite's gun. Not for the time, Klaus wonders where she has come from. He does not step back.
"Oh, sweetheart," he says instead, laughing because he can't help it —not happiness but quite, quite, nearer than he has been in years— "you don't really think—"
"Watch me," she says, red high on her cheeks, the line of her mouth hard as steel.
He comes closer to her, overwhelmed with an urge to touch. He thinks, this is true; and she jerks backwards, knocking her elbow against the frame of the bed.
"Don't you dare," she says through gritted teeth. Someone is pounding on the door, a voice thick with worry. He has turned the key, Klaus realizes. What forethought.
"Come now," he says, his voice thick as syrup. "You won't shoot me."
There is a moment on which it all hinges: he catches her eye and there is something there, something he had managed to overlook that first time, and all the times after that, on account of how enchanting he had found her. A moment of those which tip history over, or at least the history between lovers; and he wants to step into her reach and offer himself to her, but he remembers how clipped her tone was, watch me, though of course she won't, she wouldn't—so he takes that step—
He has just the time to see the red tip of her nail glimmer; she pulls the trigger.
—
This time it happens in a second: she takes a dancer's step back, the kick of the gun throwing her stance off; the bullet goes through his shoulder, hits the bone, lodges there, hurts, hurts horribly; his fangs drop, his face shifts; and her mouth falls open, a soft 'o', and he sees her lips form the words, though she doesn't say them —I knew it.