Authors note: This story is from Elijah Mikaelson's point of view, remembering Hayley after her death and musing upon his appearance versus reality. Things are not always as they appear and Elijah's suit and manners often belie his thought and feelings.
These are not my characters, I have borrowed them for a bit, I hope you all enjoy!
Remembering a Taste.
'What did mom see in that stuffed shirt,' Hope shrugged and turned to her father who was looking at Elijah with a small smile on his face.
'Mum was always so vibrant, so loud, so, so, so ….,' Hope stopped turned to her father and shrugged her shoulders trying to think of the appropriate word
Alive, Elijah wanted to add, Hayley was always so alive, so beautiful, so…...
'I just can't see what she would see in him, I can't understand it. He's so, very, very proper and prim and suited and straight laced'. Hope shouted the last bit for effect, to ensure that Elijah heard. Klaus smirked at the last bit. He thought they had bonded at least a bit, well nothing was more abhorrent to a teenage child than thinking of their parent's sex lives.
Elijah looked at Klaus and touched his mouth as he was want to do when he was amused or thinking or just being proper. He smirked and looked at his hand as he put it back in his pocket.
The last thing Elijah heard before he exited the family room was Klaus laughing, when Hope had said she could understand the hate banging just not the other you know banging; followed by Klaus's muttered 'he's not always that proper'.
Later, in his study, Elijah sat and thought about what Hope had said. How proper and correct and stuffy was he really? Certainly he valued manners and eschewed vulgarity. They were his cover, his armour to face the world. He could be Elijah Mikaelson, 'the original who always wears a suit'. It covered his true self very, very effectively.
Was he a stuffed shirt and always so prim and proper? Really though, was he?
He knew he was a monster; he had always been a monster and always would be a monster in a suit. He was every bit as bad a Klaus, in fact he was likely worse. He enjoyed killing his prey, he enjoyed the adrenalin, he enjoyed the blood. Taking of blood for him was sacred and profane, it was almost always linked with power, or violence or sex, or sometimes all three. The image of biting the Strix Seer, Ariane flitted across his memory. That had most definitely been about violence and power and in the end sex too. He couldn't pretend he hadn't enjoyed that.
Hope couldn't see what her mother had seen in Elijah the man, and at times in Elijah the monster. Elijah knew that Hayley had seen all sides of him and had loved him anyway. Sadness flashed in his eyes. He was thinking of the dance, in fact he remembered all their dances. He had particularly enjoyed their short circuit of the Strix Mansion dancefloor. He liked Hayley in red, it suited her, was sexy as hell. He remembered choosing the dress she had worn at the mansion, holding it up to her body and listening as she undressed to change. He had told her later that he liked to listen to her. He remembered twirling a laughing Hayley on the dance floor and holding her close, intimately, far more intimately than the other dancers. His hand flat on her waist. He was remembering, during that dance, what her body had felt like against his in the safe-house. He had enjoyed that dance! He remembered his high hopes that their next dance would be like that. Intimate, satisfying, promising things to come. The dance in the Strix house had been their last though.
Jolted back to the now, he sat down on the big leather chair behind his desk, head in hands and recalled the last time with Hayley. The last time that bought him any measure of happiness anyway. Not the last time he ever saw Hayley alive, he didn't want to think about that. Recalling that memory made him want to scream and pull his hair from his head. So, no he had to push that to the back of his mind, if he still had an intact red door that's where the memory would definitely be deposited.
In his memory though, he liked to live in his memory these days, in his last happy moment with Hayley, he had been dressed in his favourite suit and forest green tie complete with his waistcoat and full hunter. His pocked square had been in place and pewter and silver inlaid cufflinks were shining against his white shirt cuffs. He had rattled the Viking bracelet down his wrist. He liked to feel the weight of it against his skin, it reminded him that he had been human once, even if his memories of humanity were somewhat sketchy. He had looked at himself in his full-length dressing mirror and straightened his tie.
His monster was definitely not showing, not on that day.
He remembered touching his mouth, he knew it grounded him, and he had looked at Hayley asleep in the bed. He was able to tell by her breathing that she was dozing, and she had smiled with her eyes closed aware that he was watching.
'Are you watching me sleep again, that's so creepy Mr Mikaelson.' She had whispered, voice slightly hoarse.
Elijah had smiled at the now awake Hayley whose image he could see in the mirror as he was not facing the bed. He had watched her look him up and down, her eyes resting on him. He remembered turning slowly, oh so slowly, to ensure that she could look her fill at him. He liked it when she did that. He particularly like to hear and smell her body's response to him when she approved of his wardrobe. Truth be told he often ordered more suits that obtained just that response from her. He had walked over to her and kissed her on the forehead. She had put her arm round his neck, pulled him back down again and kissed him back, full on the mouth whilst stroking her hand down his face, her hand had rested under the scar on his jawbone usually hardly visible but obvious to her in the harsh morning light.
'Remember,' she said, 'you are never alone, not anymore.'
Elijah had nodded once to her, whilst smiling enigmatically and left the bedroom. Stopping on the way down the stairs he turned in his tracks, looked back to the French doors at the entrance to the bedroom and walked slowly back up the stairs, giving Hayley ample time to hear his footsteps. Standing in the doorway to the bedroom with his hand resting on the wall he watched Hayley who was laid on the bed sideways with her hands under 'his' pillow, face down in the sheets. She hadn't moved when he'd walked in, she knew he was there, he knew she could smell his hunger too. He sat on the edge of the bed, one foot back a bit, bracing his leg. He turned around suddenly and on impulse placed his hands on either side of Hayley's face.
Immediately they were transported back to his imprisonment by his mother, his mad mother, he was chained up and his mother was talking to him about remembering.
In his recall, Hayley rushed his mother, bit her on the neck to stop her body jumping and knelt in front of the starving Elijah. His relief at being found had shuddered through his whole body.
She bit her wrist, hard, and offered him her pulse point.
The smell of her blood had been intoxicating, he'd turned his head away quickly before she had seen what he wanted.
He craved her with every cell of his being. He'd let Hayley into not just the memory but his experience of it, so she could feel as he felt, hear his thoughts and experience what it felt like to be rescued by her and mostly to feel his great desire of her blood. He remembered a line from an old film, 'blood is the life' that was ever true now.
He had wanted to taste her, to love her and ultimately to take her essence inside himself, so she could be part of him as he so often was of her. He couldn't trust himself especially when she was bleeding for him. He'd known he was lost. Just totally lost in that moment a defining moment for him, as he had realised his total need of her.
In the memory he had turned to her and urgently whispered ' I crave you, my hunger, it could overwhelm me' her response the only encouragement that he had needed that and her bared jugular of course.
Out of the vivid memory and back in the bedroom, Elijah's tongue darted out to touch his lips, waiting for her response at experiencing such an intense moment. One sadly that she had never been part of. He had told her before about his imagined rescue of course, and what had happened, but she had never felt it before, not like she was experiencing it now.
She had stared at him for long seconds, squinting her eyes, making her decision. She'd turned around on the bed and lifted the hair from her shoulders exposing her neck, just as he had imagined. For long seconds Elijah could see her fast heart beat mirrored in the pulse on her neck. He'd heard the song of the blood as it pumped through her veins. His eyes had become black with the tell-tale veins round his eyes, they had been proof of his arousal, as if he'd needed any. He'd breathed in, opened his mouth and angled his head back as his incisors lengthened. He could smell Hayley, could smell her blood. He leant down to kiss and suck on her neck to pull the vein closer to the surface and struck with lethal accuracy. He knew that Klaus and the others in the house could hear him and smell Hayley's blood; he didn't care. When Elijah had taken his fill he lifted his head and swallowed, Hayley's blood had rolled round his mouth, he remembered inhaling as his tongue touched his top lip.
In that moment at that time she had been perfect and beautiful, gazing up at him from beneath her hair whilst she whispered, 'go get some of Klaus's blood so I can return the favour'.
When he'd walked outside of the bedroom Klaus had smiled up at his brother opened his mouth and laughed.
'Need some blood brother?' was his amused comment, no one did an innocent/amused enquiring face better than Klaus.
Klaus wasn't one to pretend he hadn't heard their earlier exchange. Not shy that one, at all! Elijah had laughed and carried on walking down the stairs to his library to begin the days work. He remembered Hayley's blood working its way round his system. He would ask Klaus for a vial of blood later if one didn't materialise on his desk; later when he was about to leave his library he noticed the vial and smiled.
In the present Elijah stood and looked out of his window onto the street below, how prim he always looked, what must others think of his monstrous appearance all suit and manners and blood. He didn't always like people seeing what kind of man he really was. He didn't want them to see the crouching blood lust nor the barely concealed violence. He thought about Hope's words again and turned them around in his brain. Hayley would have laughed at her comments about his proper behavior, he was sure she would have shouted her amusement and cited at least a dozen occasions when he hadn't been entirely proper, she had always told him that those moments, when he let the shields slide was when she had loved him the best, when she could see the real man.
Hope was wrong, he was a man and monster concealed behind the façade of a five-thousand-dollar suit.
Of late, sometimes when he first woke addled by sleep, in the haze between unconsciousness and wakefulness he thought he heard laughter. Once he had heard guitar music and bits of a raucous song, it was so vivid that he couldn't get the chorus out of his head all day. At other times he smelled the woods and the acrid and ashy smoke of fire and the clean sweet smell of trees and flowers. Last night he had felt the swish of silk against skin and thought that the silk had swept across his forearm. When he had awoken the hairs on his arm were raised as if they had been touched. He knew it was probably his imagination, after all he thought about nothing else, and played scene after scene in his head of Hayley, meeting her in the afterlife or whatever was left of the otherside. He hoped that in the next life, if there was a next life he would be transported to his dream place. Many hundreds of years ago he and his brother used to greet each other by clasping forearms and wishing for peace and for blood to always flow.
He still wished for blood to flow, but not here, maybe in another place a place where a woman in a silk dress was waiting for him. He didn't just wish for it, he longed for it. In fact he couldn't think of anything else he had ever wanted more.
The very proper Elijah Mikaelson then turned back in silence to his library, touched his lip and sat down, the heel of one of his thousand dollar boots braced against the back of his chair.