But you, you know, you were my favourite
Gloria croons into the microphone from across the club, her slinky charcoal-coloured dress swaying with her body. There are a number of couples dancing to the music, but Stefan and Klaus are not among them. They sit away from the crowd, at a table where only two nights earlier Stefan had fed Liam Grant his wife's blood.
Klaus watches the dancing couples, only occasionally letting his gaze wander to Rebekah. His bratty sister has found someone interesting to stalk, and the two of them are dancing. It's strange that Klaus still feels the need to protect her - he knows perfectly well that Rebekah can handle herself. It's his nature, he supposes, and leaves it at that.
Stefan sits only a few centimetres from him, nursing a glass filled with expensive wine. The vampire hasn't taken his eyes off the glass for most of the night. He's too busy caught up in his thoughts. Nursing the memories of feeding just as he does his wine. He thinks that if he did feel, this would certainly be guilt. But he doesn't feel. His emotions as a vampire were heightened. When he has them turned off they are so...silent. He feels them like he hears music coming from two houses down. The drumbeat that passes through the wall in his heart without bringing the full power of the song.
The previous night, Klaus had labeled himself an abomination. Stefan had called him a king.
It'd been said only once, by only one, but Klaus believed it as gospel. The self-loathing he'd been building for so long had begun to corrode away, aided by the man by his side. Stefan had achieved in one night what Klaus had not been able to achieve in centuries. That should have told Klaus something more about the vampire.
Klaus knows that soon he will have to leave Stefan behind. When Mikael inevitably catches up to them and it becomes too dangerous for Stefan to be around them. He hates that it must always come to that. Why must he run, if what Stefan says is true? Kings do not fear anything. Kings do not run.
"You look troubled, my friend," Stefan says airily, though the same could be said about him.
When the Original looks up, he smiles weakly. "Not at all, Stefan."
He receives a look that clearly says you cannot lie to me. Stefan follows it quickly with, "Tell me. If it's a someone troubling you, I could always help you out."
Klaus studies him, thinking that for someone who looks so sweet and pure, Stefan is a deep well of evil.
It's part of what he admires about the vampire.
"You told me I am king."
"If you want me to take it back I'm afraid I don't offer refunds," Stefan says with a grin.
"I want you to tell me why," Klaus says, hoping that it doesn't sound like a beg.
"Because you're the strongest vampire to ever live. And you could be stronger yet. If you accept who you are nobody could stop you."
"And how do you propose I do that?" He sounds weary, even to his own ears. His voice is a perfect representation of the swell of emotions within him.
"Break the rules," Stefan retorts, but not hotly. "Show them that you live by the rules you create. Not their laws. You are stronger than all of them, the only law you need live by is the laws that you yourself choose."
Klaus thinks he's correct. For a long time, he's felt wrong. But that was when he lived by the standards of the world around him.
It was time to live by the standards he laid for himself.
So he leans in, drawing Stefan's jaw closer and pressing his lips to the skin at the base of the vampire's jawbone. Stefan tenses under the contact, his jaw setting in place, and Klaus quickly retracts. He curses his lack of control. To think such a fascinating creature could ever reciprocate.
Stefan doesn't feel. And Klaus should've known better than to ask.
That's when Stefan finds his mouth and seals their lips together in a rough kiss. Hands move across bodies, uncaring of their surroundings or anything but the kiss.
When they break apart, Klaus watches the ripper carefully.
"You see?" Stefan manages eventually. "You make your own rules."
"So what you're saying is I made you who you are by telling you to break the rules? I thought you liked me because of my methods of torture, but now I think I was wrong. You liked me because I was the first person to ever tell you that you shouldn't be bound to expectations," Stefan says after a long time. The memory is one Klaus has raised from the depths, something the ripper part of him buried so deeply he could not find it alone.
Klaus laughs into his beer, then sets the bottle down on the table. "I like you because you showed me what it was like to be free. Hide it all you want Stefan, but I know you liked it too."
And the vampire falls silent. Klaus could not have been more right. Stefan Salvatore is a man bound to rules, bound to people. But the ripper - the ripper had been free. In a way, the 1920's had left them in each other's lives - Klaus the free man afraid of nothing and Stefan the man who never let himself have what he truly wanted.
"What would you do without me, darling?" Klaus says, and it's enough to make Stefan laugh.
"I did alright for the last hundred years."
Klaus sneers at him. "You survived, of course. But you didn't live until that night you came to me begging for me to save your brother's life. Like it or not, Stefan, I brought you back to life."
With one hand, Stefan mirrors his actions from the bar that night, summoning Klaus' lips to his and kissing his lover deeply. Both of them remember that night in the bar.
Only one thing makes this night better than that kiss from the 20's. It's that Stefan feels every emotion from it.
He finally hears the song.
So there it is, I hope you enjoyed.
I own nothing.