They sit on a sidewalk bench which is dressed in white mosaic and over them sweeps the black elaborate ironwork arch holding the street lamp that shines on the blond crown of Klaus's head.
It has got to be Europe.
People are walking up and down the avenue ignoring the two vampires taking in the sights (Hello! Killers on the loose! Why won't somebody scream?): carriages drawn by horses stroll past, bicycles seem to be very fashionable and the little quaint fragile looking cars so newly invented that the only thing they appear to do is spew smoke and make noise. Ladies with horrible hats and parasols are window shopping and sitting at the corner coffee shop stiff-backed, their skirts splayed like flowing water around them and all the men wear hats and cravats and flowers on their lapels, and it doesn't feel right because Caroline isn't watching a hundred year-old silent movie.
Her high-necked blouse is itchy and when she reaches for it she feels the same lace that is on her sleeves. Her long full probably navy - the lamp is skewing her night vision - skirt is incredibly soft and lifting the hem she finds she's wearing tightly laced ankle boots and pantaloons?
"Careful," Klaus says. "You don't want to show any more leg lest they take you for a strumpet."
Lest? Strumpet? There is no way-
"There's a bird sitting on my head!" she says panicky.
"It's a hat."
"It's got more feathers than a chicken!"
He shrugs. While taking it off she discovers a long thin sharp pin which she puts back into the abomination she's forced to leave sitting on her lap.
She finds Klaus is looking at her, dimples in sharp relief because of the lamp light. His bowler hat is sitting innocently between them.
"Why am I dressed like this?" she asks.
"I love it when you do your hair up and I can stroke your nape unhindered," Klaus says and his hand follows his words warm and soothing with just a hint of pressure.
"The lace itches," she responds. "And you can't see my neck."
"Yes, well a lower neckline wasn't appropriate at that time." If he wavered in his self-confidence she couldn't see. But it's true; no other woman around them is baring her throat, except the lace is gossamer thin and diaphanous, leaving the skin exposed sometimes all the way down to the dip between the breasts. Wow, kinky.
His fingers had kept caressing over her pulse and the line of her jaw until the sensation becomes unbearable enough.
"Would you mind?" she snaps and shrugs his hand off.
He lets her off with just a, "Hmm."
She feels frustration brimming out of her. "I like your tie," she says in compromise. Klaus looks good in a suit. He always looks good and not nearly like how a homicidal vampire terrorizing the world for a thousand years should resemble. Unless of course when he's tearing limbs out of people with his teeth, which is justly terrifying but not something he is doing at the time because the two of them are just sitting amiably watching a scene from the last century in real time no silver screen and no butter toffee popcorn.
Behind the packed line of seven-story buildings the sky was turning grey.
"Can't we go someplace else to watch the sunrise?"
"Are you bored, love?" he asks with real concern.
"Yes. No. Maybe." She can't elaborate and he doesn't ask her to.
"Very well. I know of a bell tower in Vienna..."
The sun peaked through the curtains as Tyler stirred against her back. Caroline opened her eyes.
Tyler stretched and sighed while the wall of her room kept switching to a bird's eye view of a white city trapped in pure blazing sunlight. His warm lips closed over her nape. "Good morning, beautiful."
"Good morning." She stretched too, fingers clenched in fists, toes pointed, letting her body know it was time to face the world.
"Slept well?" he asked in his gravelly thick with sleep voice.
"Yeah, you?"
"Like a log. So no more nightmares?"
She smiled into his concerned eyes. "Nope. All gone."
.
[ See your father open the window, do the one single thing you have come to fear in the short time of being a vampire. Not killing your friends because the mental place of truly comprehending the pain that comes with the death of a loved one cannot be imagined. But you know the touch of the rays of the sun, you have felt your own skin sear and you have smelled the stink of burning hair and fat. Your entire being abhors the sun. Your ring, a piece of ore and stone that you can never lose from your sight that you squeeze between your fingers when you wake up just to remind yourself it's there, that it lets you pretend you are human, a creature of light (because what fear has ever withstood the light of day? All but one) he has tossed aside. And you are again that mouse that never knew cats can disappear.
Your father is burning you. Your daddy is hurting you. Some pains can never be imagined. ]
.
She once asked Stefan, how long can a vampire go without sleep? Our hearts still beat even though we are dead, he answered, our blood still flows, we eat we drink we grow tired we ache. Sleep must find us or else humanity will abandon us.
So she sleeps and wakes up on a pillow soaked in saltwater, her throat knotted tight and hoarse with silent screaming, Tyler worries and she doesn't want him to. It's dreaming only dreaming no matter how life-like is its reproduction from crystallized memory of pain and sorrow and at least she can still squeeze between her fingers and know the ring is there. The sunlight in Vienna doesn't hurt.
.
A/N's: My first piece of vampire fiction ever. R'n'R?