She was always delightful.
She was like an angel always and the moments he spent with her, the soft moments where they just /were/, those moments made his heart swell to an almost painful thrashing in his chest and the light behind her eyes was almost blinding and to be bathed in it for those moments was something he'd come to seek out like a junkie.
She /was/ his drug after all.
Perhaps he should have been worried at how she was so quickly invading him but he couldn't seem to find it within himself to panic over it.
But perhaps he should have. Perhaps he should have worried when the first lie crossed his tongue when he called her collateral damage and that it was indeed something personal. He saw in her something he'd longed to feel for so long he'd nearly forgotten the taste of it; love.
He felt it then though he didn't know it then for what it was even as he cradled her delicate fever ridden body on his lap and let her feed from him.
He let her feed from his veins and he'd not done that ever in all his whole long life. He let her have him this way and as she suckled prettily he whispered things to her in several languages, old Norse, his milk tongue the chiefest amongst them.
It was really just him giving her more of himself and binding himself to her in ways he didn't consider even then.
And now, now he sought her out, let her seek him out and let their weird little orbit dictate how each encounter would go, let her light bathe him into a base thing craving her where she was now writ like runes in his bones.
And he loved her.
He loved her with all the broken pieces of him and he watched her love that Tyler and he mourned and loved her still more.
But then her looks changed.
Her eyes beheld him differently in the sunlight when he told her of hummingbirds and feeling human, wistful and wanton and honest and true things.
Things he told no one ever.
And he beheld her and she him.
And at night, when it was dark and sleep didn't come he sat silent and still as a statue and watched her sleep. His eyes traced the lines of her and he wondered how she would taste over all the different places his eyes roamed now in the dark.
Like sunlight and hope he thought.
He didn't invade her dreams, he left her there might after night with her sweet smile and her soft murmurs and he wondered if she perhaps dreamed of him too.
Desperate thinking that made his heart thud.
Moments many and dreams countless he continued, orbiting around her, wanting her, aching to lay his lips on her pulse and then, then he had her there in his mouth and though she cried out in terror, her hands pulled him closer and he knew that she felt something then, felt something when he filled himself with her.
And she with him later.
And he whispered to her again and she turned knowing eyes up after she'd had her fill.
"You spoke like that the first night you saved my life, what are you saying to me?"
He took a long moment and thought on how he should admit to his feelings.
Stupid lovesick hybrid that he was.
"I'm...telling you how much I love you...in the old tongue...because when I spoke that way...I was human mostly and what you make me feel..."
What she made him feel was human.
What she made him feel was love.
He can't continue and he carded his fingers through her hair like sunlit silk and he shuddered out air he had no clue he was holding.
"You're in love with me."
A whisper here in the dark and, was that hope she was right?
His mouth opens and closes and part of him wants to put her down and retreat to the far side of his magical prison but the other part, the part that belongs to her and has for a long time stays still beneath her eyes and he waits.
Then the words come, affirmation, confession, sorrow all.
"I am."
She blinks not havering expected that and he waits for her to reject him, again, reject his love, reject all that lay between them.
A thousand years and he'd never been so vulnerable before.
"I could...have wanted to...I wanted to forget the awful things you did, forget the pain and hurt...and I'm trying to...because I know you aren't pure evil..."
He swallows.
She knew.
And she...
"Can you see past all that?"
Hope again. Love again.
And need burgeoning again for her acceptance.
A thousand years he waited for her.
"I want to..." her eyes closed and she held his arm over her pounding heart.
And the orbit continued.
He needs to go to New Orleans, he needs to stop this, he needs to stay and be near her.
But he leaves anyway. He kills witches and stops the conspiracy and then, he gets word Katerina is human and dying.
He wants to gloat.
But she is there and he can't and he's promising her things, things he knows she doesn't want really.
"Good."
And then hope again.
Hope in his mouth that she kisses, hope in her hands as they curl in his hair, hope in his body where he presses against her, and a blur as he pushes her against a tree and fits himself to her her like he belongs and oh, oh he fits like he'd always imagined, made for her and her for him and her skin...
Calloused touches and brushes and sweeps of desire and the dappled light over her body and her mouth as it sobs his name and her eyes slow and dark as she watches him taste her.
Buttons rain when he tears her shirt and his buckle tinkles like bells as she pulls it free and he has to breathe against her skin.
"Caroline..?"
A question as to whether she's sure this is what she wants, however long it takes he would wait for her if she said no now, he'd leave and leave her and wait for her to want him.
She arches and drags his chin up to look him right in the eye, voice so soft he barely hears it over his thundering heart.
"I want this, want you..."
It's all he needs right now and he breathes apology to her collar bone as he all but rips her jeans down and off, gasping at her perfection, her skin so pale and white. He drops his own pants as he stands and presses them as close as they can be here, shaking like it's his first time.
She's shaking too and she gasps when she feels him thick and hard against her hip.
"Klaus.."
"I'm sorry...this is all I can manage love...this time..."
He drives himself into her as he apologizes and then he butchers his growled curses when he finds her wet already and she's clawing at him and begging him and crying in some sort of screaming relief.
Need.
Want.
Have.
He moves with her, moves into her and she hooks her long coltish legs over his hips and undulates and he's lost.
The first round doesn't take long for either of them and the tree barely makes it through round three and by the time the sun is hovering over the horizon and bathes them in shadowed orange light, he's got his mouth pressed to her shoulder, the shoulder he'd bitten those months before, both apology and promise that this was more than a tryst in the woods and that she was more than that to him always.
Like he was making love to her and loving her now in the sunlight.
And he loves her still.
He startles and stills her with his words.
"I love you..."
She can't say it back right now with all there is between them still with the ghosts of past hurts still beckoning them both.
But she kisses him then like she feels the same way and he knows she might just; love him in her way.
This last time is slower, sweeter, a way for them to memorize one another, a way for them to heal.
They kiss like they're dying when they part finally and she sheds tears he kisses away and he knows then that he's now had all the pieces of her in him.
No more words now and he leaves and so does she.
Months where they try to build lives and learn what it is to want what you cannot have now.
He called her on Christmas Day, and the ringing phone he heard outside his flat startled him and when he opened the door it's her there dressed in red and smiling wide and gorgeous.
They spend the day in bed, spend the day learning what it is to be together, and he learns what it does to his heart to see her wearing his shirt and perching on his counter and feeding him with her fingers and kissing him, and whispering to him between all of it and he learns that he is happy.
She can't stay and he knows why.
Easter finds him outside her Parisian hotel room and he's holding her against the glass, her dress bunched and rustling around her waist and his fangs buried as deep as he is elsewhere, and her hands buried in his hair and his name on her lips and in her lungs.
They orbit closer.
And she dancing in front of him in a bar in Tahiti and then she's moving on his lap in his hut on the beach and he's sobbing her name and his love as he comes and she whispers that she always knows where he is, and that she's his.
It's as close as she's come to saying she loved him as she has ever come.
He finds her two years later in their forest, leaning against their tree, and she looks the some though it's been nearly a decade since they were last here.
And the eclipse begins.
They kiss like they are dying and he breathes her in and feels his heart hurt and he hears her whispering, whispering to him in old Norse, telling him how much she loves him, how long she's loved him, that he is as much hers as she is his.
And then she gives him her eyes and he cups her face.
He would gladly die for her if she asked and instead does something even more profound.
He gives her his heart.
"I've loved you my whole life Caroline..."
"I love you too, I think I always have..."
And she always would he knew.
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