A/N: A bit of a note about the timeline in this series.
Originally I began writing it under the assumption that Klaus and Caroline had actually known each other for two years (there's actually a blooper in the 2nd fic referencing the longevity of Klaus' crush). When I wrote about Caroline's birthday in the last one-shot, I actually originally wrote her as turning 20...and then I remembered that she hadn't even turned 19 yet, because TVD's seasons cover something more like half a year rather than a full one, as I for some reason erroneously assumed. I can only defend myself by saying that season 4 so completely spun my head around that I didn't know which way was up anymore.
Basically, if this series feels like it takes place over a longer period of time than it probably should be able to in relation to TVD, that's because it kind of does. Several months pass in between graduation and Caroline's first appearance in NOLA, and she's been in the city for a good several months now. I hope this hasn't niggled at anyone, and I sincerely apologize if it has. I'm trying to juggle a coherent plot, lots of historical research, the actual writing of the series and the editing all on my lonesome, and regretfully, a few small things may slip through the cracks. I will try my best to catch them.
Anyway, enough babbling. You guys have enough to read as it is.
What awaits you is not hot white stage, Vaseline teeth, sequin fire, a skirt to trip you up and judges to stare you down.
But though this crown you won dies its cheap nickel death on a bureau you have long since left behind, you marched off to conquer it like any soldier in his boots and his uniform, gun ready, heart thundering, and though you understand not the femoral gush of a leg stomped to splinters by stampeding cavalry, though you have never lain with feet fresh from the trench, too large for your boots, counting down these fragile grenade moments that at any second may blow you all to pieces, you know all about arming yourself for the fight and charging out to meet it.
Curls: just touching the shoulders.
Eyes: winged flawlessly, lashes dark, lids darker.
Lips: plumped, lined, glossed to slick red mirror.
And never forget those talismans of woman, Traffic Stopper and Car Accident, these weapons that no gas can match, no rifle supersede, no bomb overthrow.
One quick adjustment, not too far over the neckline, now, girls, the rule is slut legs, reserved boobs, it's a hint not a slap, peek yourself just slightly out-
A last touch to the hair, a pucker of the lips, eyes fluttered, teeth checked, skirt adjusted-
And-
Smile.
He watches from his perch on the rooftop of the nearby Hyatt Regency, thumb to his chin, and now as she emerges from the toilet he drops soundlessly over the side, and he lands like a cat in the alley far below, knees bent, hands braced on the pavement.
Do you know, he feels just a touch sorry for the lad.
"Hi," she breathes, and Chad Resner looks up with a smile to match her own and he shuts the cash register with a resounding tink to lean his elbow attentively down on the countertop.
He steps out from behind the rubbish bin with his hands behind his back as he hears her little heels clicking away across the marble, her perfume preceding her by a step, her laughter loud, her lashes going.
A rat after the pipe, is this insignificant man with his sly little asides.
He smiles.
The back door opens.
"Chad. Mate," he says in that accent that still curls her toes just a little, if she is being entirely honest with herself.
It is so totally freaky, how adorable he looks with dimples in his cheeks and murder in his eyes.
"Do you know who I am?" he asks, and the boy widens his eyes, drops his jaw, turns to run.
He just loves a little acknowledgment. Isn't that all any man desires, just a bit of recognition, a sign- you have not been swallowed, mate, this great teeming anthill of a world remembers you yet, your accomplishments have not sunk beneath the brine, your name echoes not on lonely winds that reach no other, your life, your death, your name- all of it will be sealed away between pages that know nothing of this fatal shortness of mankind who though he perishes in body immortalizes his memory in print.
He stays where he is.
Caroline reaches out in a flash as the boy turns round for the door and puts his head to the wall hard enough to crack his skull.
"Did you hear what he said to me earlier?" she snaps.
He takes a step closer. "I can pull off his arms, if you like."
"I think Marcel might notice if one of his little minions suddenly shows up armless. And that would kind of defeat the purpose of all this, don't you think?"
"I'm still willing. Marcel's got plenty where this one came from; we can always find another."
"Has anyone ever told you what a gentleman you are?"
He smiles.
He takes another step. "I admit I'm a bit old-world. The youth of today just don't know how to treat a lady."
"Right. It's threaten, flirt, then murder. Everybody knows that. I mean, they taste so much better when they're flooded with that last little jolt of oh-God-I'm-going-to-make-it-after-all adrenaline."
"As uncouth as he was, Chad here is not entirely without my sympathy."
"You don't have any sympathy."
"I do for anyone with functioning eyes who had things to accomplish today and happened to encounter you before completing any of those tasks."
"Stop hitting on me and get to it, would you?" she demands, but she is biting down on just a little hint of a smile, and with one of his own he crouches down, lifts the boy by his hair, tears into the side of his neck.
"He's on vervain," he confirms.
"Great. So how do we drain him, compel him, and stuff his completely lame did-you-like-that-line-I-found-it-on-the-internet ass back behind that counter before anyone misses him?"
"Like this," he says, and he clamps his fingers tightly round the boy's femoral artery and he yanks until it sprays. "That ought to bleed him out in a moment."
"And nobody saw you come back here."
He tightens his lips regretfully. "Actually, love, I'm afraid I was detected by most of the block. I apologize- I'm a bit new to all this."
"Ok, you could have just said 'no'. You didn't have to be an ass about it." She nudges the boy delicately with the edge of her heel, her lip curling distastefully. "Well, at least I took one for the team, I guess. He was drooling all over one of the guests when I walked up. I'm sure come his break she was going to wind up perv food."
"Ah, you know us vampires. Always looking for our necks victim." He looks down with a pleased little smile.
Her head whips up.
She blinks very slowly. "You did not just say that."
"What?"
"Ok, you have done a lot of horrible things in your time, a gajillion of which I still do not know about and probably do not want to, but that is literally the worst thing you have ever, ever done."
"It was a joke."
"No. It was an atrocity."
"I thought it was funny."
She works her jaw from side to side, flicks her eyes up to the sky for just a moment, presses her lips tightly together, holds carefully at bay the laugh he knows is just trickling up that supple little throat of hers.
"It was a little funny," he presses her.
"No."
"Just a bit."
"No."
"It'll come round," he says with another little smile. "Just like our friend here."
The boy stirs.
He hoists him to his feet by the throat. "Good to see you again, mate. Now, I'd like you to listen very closely. I believe you're under the impression you're working for Marcel, isn't that right? Well, you've just come under new employment."
"And luckily for you, the benefits are non-existent, the hours are sucky, and your retirement package consists of a swift and merciless death for a job well done."
"Caroline, love, let's not rile the employees, hmm? Next thing you know they'll be striking, calling up the unions, all that nasty sort of business, and you know I've only got two hands, capable though they may be. I can only punish so many dissenters at once." He waves his hand dismissively and turns his attention back to the boy and his dilated eyes.
"Are you wearing cologne?" she asks abruptly.
"You'll keep your position here at the hotel. You'll report to Marcel just like always. You will not in any way inform him of this little incident. You have never seen myself or Caroline. You will never, in any of our dealings, recognize us afterward. You will report punctually and truthfully to either one of us whenever we require it of you. Is that understood?"
"Yes."
He sighs dramatically.
"You're wearing cologne. Is this like a date for you or something?"
"Chad, I don't mean to press my authority, but what do we say, when addressing our superiors?"
"Yes, sir."
He pats the boy's cheek. "Now that's more like it."
The boy's feet touch the ground once more and he whisks away into the hotel from whence Caroline drew him as those children followed on eager jiving feet the piper with his tune, and he turns to her with a smile. "Do you want it to be?"
She cocks her head, folding both arms over her chest. "You're wearing cologne, you are shaved, and that is, like, fancy restaurant dinner shirt you're wearing. This is a date, isn't it?"
He smiles wider.
"Tch. You are just a little weird, Klaus. No flowers or chocolates- or jewelry…you're not about to present me with, like, a severed head in lieu of more traditional date gifts, are you?"
"I can get you three, if you like."
"Ok, while I have a couple of people I actually would not terribly mind filling that order with, I'll pass. Why don't you just walk me back to my hotel so I can de-ho into something a little more comfortable? You know, since you're such a mannered gentleman and all."
He crooks out his arm, eyebrow lifted.
She takes it without so much as a pause.
"So."
She presses her shoulder blades back into the door of her suite, propping one hand on her hip and looking up from beneath her chemically-enhanced eyelashes. "I suppose you're expecting a good night kiss or something."
"It is fairly standard procedure, I'm told."
"Ok, well, yes, but!" She holds up a finger. "Not even being aware that I was on some freaky murder date, I have no social obligations whatsoever to fulfill right now."
"He didn't die. Permanently."
"Fine. Freaky pseudo murder date. Either way, it's also standard procedure to, you know, ask a girl out first, rather than just making assumptions."
He purses his lips contritely, nodding as he casts a look down round his shoes. "Well, in future I'll be more obvious about my affections."
"Ok, I think it needs to be established right now that if I catch you installing cameras in my bathroom, or, like, braiding yourself a new necklace out of all the hair you have collected from my brush, that's crossing a line, and you cannot just Christian Gray your way out of it."
"Who the hell is Christian Gray?"
"A totally skeezy creeper who skates by on his Greek god-like appearance and genetically-gifted…pants region. Actually, you two might get along pretty well."
"No; creepers never mesh well, sweetheart. It's all a bit peacocky: check out this mobile bug, mate; I'll see your mobile bug and I'll raise you a surveillance van- always escalates terribly."
This time the laugh she tries to hold back escapes after all, and now she uncrosses her arms and she presses herself harder back into the door, and he is again struck just a bit dumb by this woman's smile, he with his thousand years of accumulated eloquence, his myriad languages, his fine literature.
Never have they failed him so thoroughly as when she turns upon him these eyes that reduce him to the stuttering boy ineptness of that shy human 'Niklaus', tiptoeing about his village in fumbling invisibility.
"Ok, well, I'm gonna' go change. I'm sure I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Right." He links his hands behind his back. "Good night, then, Caroline." He lets her name linger just a bit on his tongue, savoring the texture of it.
She leans forward to press her moist red lips to his cheek and he keeps his eyes shut for a very long time, drawing out this moment that will never extend itself far enough.
He opens them slowly.
She slips the keycard to her room from her bra, smiles, darts her hand behind her to blindly unlock the door in a lurid flash of green and an electronic whirring of the mechanism.
She opens the door.
She yanks him by the collar after her.
What an aggressive little thing she is.
She already has his jacket halfway down his arms when he kicks the door shut behind them, her lips at his throat, his jaw, one hand fisted in his hair, hips ground into his own, and with a little shaky breath, he pins her back against the wall and he traps her arms tightly against her sides with his own.
He rests his forehead against hers and gives her three little pecks to the lips, lingering on the last, allowing himself to just lean into her, to feel every bit of her pressed against him not in writhing terror but winded anticipation.
Do you know, the last woman he held like this was Tatia.
Oh, he's bedded thousands of women, of course, perhaps just as many men, but not since that frantic human love with its fleeting joys and its lingering bruises has he embraced another in such a way, as though he cares whether they break beneath his touch.
"Caroline," he whispers, gently kissing the side of her neck as he slips his arms round her waist and he leans his head down onto her shoulder.
How fantastically the last ended for him, sweetheart, but having been shattered a time or two yourself you will not crush him similarly, will you- you will not take this thing he has tried so hard not to feel and tear it to pieces, Caroline, you wouldn't-
He squeezes out her name once more but what he means to follow it with sits in lead refusal on his tongue, and so instead he kisses her again, a little more desperately this time, and when she reaches out to lift his shirt by the hem he lets go of her waist and he raises his arms up over his head.
They make it to the bedroom with her round his waist, his trousers unbuckled, her hands busy at his zipper, and with his lips still to hers he sets her down on the bed and he pushes her gently back, running his fingers back through her curls, stroking them up out of her eyes as he untangles his tongue from her own and he kisses over her chin, down her throat, onto her breasts.
"Lie back," he tells her as she sits up to chase his zipper with her eager, shaking fingers, her shoulders heaving.
"Take off your pants."
"I don't need them off, for what I'm about to do." He smiles and he leans down to kiss her knee, sliding his hand up her thigh.
He kneels at the foot of the bed.
She throws her head back with a shuddering breath and he parts her knees.
He hooks both her legs over his shoulders and kisses first one thigh and then the other, working his way up her soft skin to the knickers he hooks by the waistband and he slides off onto the floor, leaving her skirt intact.
He feels all her muscles contract as he leans in for that first stroke of his tongue, just a brief caress, and then he slides it down to dip it inside her as she inhales sharply and arches up off the bed.
"Oh, God," she breathes.
"I prefer 'Klaus', but if you insist."
The hand she has reached down to seize him by the hair opens to give him a good blow to the head, and he pulls away for just a moment to laugh.
"You are such a narcissistic freaking-"
"None of that, now, Caroline; you'll hurt my feelings." He sucks her clit gently between his lips, flicks his tongue out once more, feels one of her heels twitch against his shoulder.
He pulls away, and he lifts his head to meet her hazy eyes as he slips a finger into her. "Tell me what you want, Caroline."
"What?" she asks thickly, her hand falling from his head to grip the forearm he braces against the bed as he adds a second finger.
"Whatever you want," he whispers. "Tell me what you like."
"You're not doing too bad right now," she pants, her eyes flickering as both her thighs tense involuntarily against him.
"Well, I've learned a thing or two over the centuries. I mean it, though, sweetheart. Don't be shy. Anything at all."
He slides his thumb over her clit as his fingers pump on, watches her lids flutter, clench shut, pop open once more.
What a magnificent sight she is to behold, spread out before him.
He rotates his free hand palm-up, locks her fingers between his own as they slide off his forearm.
"Tell me, Caroline."
He circles his thumb gently.
She exhales another long shuddering breath, seizes his hand with a grip to powder bone, squeezes her slick thighs even tighter round him. "I want to tie you up and feed on you."
He stops.
He slips his hand from between her legs and rises to his feet, leaning forward to press his hands down on either side of her head, his hips flush to her own. "Really, now." He brushes a strand from her face, and he tucks it tenderly behind her ear. "You want to be completely in control. You want me at your mercy. You want to prey on me."
"Is that creepy?" she whispers, and how suddenly lost she looks, this little newborn with so much still to learn.
"Of course not, Caroline. It's completely normal. You're a predator now, love." He pulls back just slightly and he smiles fondly at her, smoothing her hair. "Not that I expect you weren't quite a nasty little one, even before your transformation."
"I did eat a prom committee or two for breakfast each morning. And a few cheerleaders."
He leans in to kiss her, not taking away, as he so typically does during activities such as these, all tongue and teeth and rough hands on soft skin, leaving nothing of himself behind, taking his pleasure as he likes and then disposing of its receptacle, but very carefully, gently, coaxing her lips to respond, her hands to follow after, one leg slinking up over his hip, their breathing ragged, his dead heart roused not by war, famine, poverty thundering in his ears.
He sits back on his heels, and with lifted eyebrow and welcoming smile, he holds out his hands, wrists together.
She props herself up on her elbows.
"I admit, I'm not usually the one tied up," he says, and he watches this little whisper run itself like a touch down her spine, her knees closing themselves with quite the ladylike little snap, her hair in a thick halo round her shoulders, those breasts which have nearly spilled themselves from her top straining away at the inadequate little scrap he could have apart in a moment. "But I suppose I can make an exception."
"And what am I supposed to use to tie you up?" she demands, sitting up a little more, sliding her heels down the bed as she goes.
"It was your idea, Caroline." He smiles innocently. "Might I suggest your knickers?"
"No. You are not ruining another pair. I know men don't get this because you can buy your panties in, like, five dollar bricks at Wal-Mart, but women are a little more particular about theirs, and when we find a pair we like? Well, you've heard the saying about a woman scorned. The same goes for a woman whose sexy underwear has just been completely dismantled by a rude, egotistical monster who still hasn't replaced them." She gives him a very stern look as she pushes all the way up onto her knees, her curls spilling in tangled clumps over her shoulders. "But you know- this shirt actually has some nice stretch to it," she says musingly, and then in one smooth movement she slips it off over her head, and she takes him by the shoulders, her fingers bruising, her nails cutting, and she slams him back against the headboard so hard it cracks beneath his spine.
She whips the shirt round his wrists, loops it back through the little cutouts in the headboard, gives it a firm jerk with her hand, knocking his wrists against the wood.
He tilts his head back against the board to look at her as she looms over him, her bra still in place, that skirt bunched up her thighs, her hands shaking just a little as she undoes that last bit of zipper she never was able to finish off, her soft little fingers hooking round the waistband of his trousers and pulling them just far enough down to get them out of her way.
He sits with his arms suspended docilely above him, just looking at her, the flushed cheeks, the half-open lips, the eyes with their bit of uncertainty, those hands in a tentative crawl up his stomach, onto his chest, over nipples, shoulders, round his throat-
She jerks his face up to hers, and she kisses him brutally.
She pushes his head back against the board, still hovering over him, and now her thighs hug his just a little closer, and she lowers herself just a bit, just enough for him to feel everything underneath that skirt she has yet to shed right up against him.
He flexes his hands, arches up just a bit, tips his head back to find her chin with his lips, to kiss from jaw line to ear lobe, and now a hand in his hair jerks his head back until his entire throat is bared to her, and down she sinks, everything slick, warm, bloody tight, and with a harsh little breath he flares open his fingers, and he hooks them round the headboard, and he holds on as she begins to rock.
She makes her way across his throat with her lips, kissing down its arch to his collarbone, back up over one shoulder, along the side of his neck to his ear, bloody hell-
"I'm going to remember this one," she whispers, sucking the lobe once more into her mouth as his eyes roll back and his hips surge up, his breaths chafing his throat, his fingers denting the headboard, the ceiling hazy above him as he fights his lids back open, everything tinged black, the walls a blur, the door beyond the bed merely a smear.
She speeds up just a little, and she takes his bottom lip between her teeth.
There remains before him still a girl, a thing of shining hair, bright eyes, cream skin, but now a peek from beneath those heavy black lashes and suddenly she is no longer girl but creature, her bright eyes gone to tar, her cream skin shot through with these crawling black vines of not age but malady, this sickness that travels in both their veins which she fights yet but he gave himself over to long ago.
She lets him just sit there for a moment, breathing heavily, his throat heaving, vulnerable, his lip with its bright red drop of blood slick beneath her fangs, and then she bites down hard enough to make him jerk, her hips rolling languidly.
He never makes much noise.
Just those harsh little breaths rattling in the back of his throat, the noisy fluttering of his lashes, the grating of curls against headboard, the creaking of wood beneath his fingertips, the mattress squeaking underneath him, his jeans sliding along rumpled blankets, chaotic sheets-
Once a boy held her down until she cried.
And look at her now.
"Go on," he pants as she hesitates at his throat, tilting his head to one side. "Have at it."
The first puncture is tentative.
A testing of the flesh, its spring, its softness, its remarkable fragility.
Her tongue carefully licks away the blood she draws forth with her monster's teeth, and then suddenly she latches on, and he tenses until the headboard cracks within his fingers and his bonds loosen against his wrists as she rips into him, still on with her bloody hips, her fingers drawing blood where they grip him by the shoulders.
One of her hands darts up to grasp his hair once more, to yank his head to the side, to bare him further, to offer up that vital carotid she digs into until he feels her lips flush against his skin, slipping about in all the blood he feels in a warm gush down his neck, her hips hammering now, her other hand sliding down to his hip, to crack the bones, to guide his strokes-
He pulls his hands free of her blouse.
Lost in this instinctive mauling she does not even lift her head as he brings his arms round her back and he digs in helplessly with his fingers, his head still lolling against the headboard, his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth open, his toes curling as she brings him so bloody close to the edge-
She pulls away just slightly, panting, his blood in a ruined lipstick round her lips, down her chin, and unconsciously he fists his hand in her hair and he presses her back to that open wound, slamming up into her, loosening this fist to a caress, his other hand spasming against her back as she works her hips with mindless abandon against him-
She pries her fangs loose and with just her lips against his neck she cries out, both her hands clenching against his shoulders, her nails puncturing him as she leans her cheek down into the crook of his neck and she lets loose with an entire barrage of pleas, of filthy language, of his name choked out against his skin.
Three more thrusts and he is done, his face buried in her hair as he comes, his breaths jerked out of him in little wheezing gasps, his hands shaking against the knotted muscles of her back as she stills against him, her lips still warm against the sealing gash of her bite.
He tips his head back against the board, keeping his hands loosely splayed across her spine.
She lifts her head from his shoulder.
He slides one of his hands from her back to wipe the blood from her lips, smiling languidly as he smoothes it away, and now slowly her fangs retract and through that creature murk emerge pupil, iris, sclera, the lashes coming down to blink away the last of this demon film.
"You almost made it," she says, still straddling his lap, her thighs slick against his own, her skirt rough against his lower stomach where it lies bunched up in a messy heap. "My shirt, however, didn't, I'm guessing."
He laughs just a little, his head still tipped back, his eyes shut. "Can't I have a little credit for letting you do it in the first place? I'm not usually on this particular end of the restraints, you know."
"You were a real slut, weren't you?"
"I wasn't a choir boy."
He opens his eyes.
He swallows hard, working his throat over this sudden terror that has solidified itself as blood seals off the airway of a dying man, his arms going tighter as his head comes up.
"But I'm willing to significantly narrow the pool from which I draw my sexual partners. Indefinitely."
Why is it, that when a man most needs his centuries of prose, of poems, of orations -Caroline- when he…when he has a thousand years of language, of life stored away behind his tongue and he reaches down within himself to find only the fumbling silence of that shy village boy-
What he needs is just a little nudge, sweetheart: Here is the cliff, but you do not step alone over its edge, you have not a long plunge with no one to share your journey, you do not fall in solitude, Tatia threw you aside for another but I would never dare-
"Caroline," he whispers.
Are you going to break him, sweetheart, he wants to know, and he brings one hand up to cup her cheek, so carefully, love, he with his fingers that know only destruction.
Once before, he made this declaration to a woman who smiled, who touched his cheek softly, who said nothing in return.
Tatia never offered it, Mother took it away, but she who has born its absence for so long wouldn't deny him; isn't there something of what he feels in the way she holds him back? Doesn't she brush the curls from his forehead out of tenderness and not habit- doesn't she smile with all of her, lips, eyes, cheeks stretched until they must ache, because she experiences within her this same leaping of the heart, the churning of the stomach, the inevitable, insufferable gladness of just seeing his face?
He isn't so terrible anymore, is he, sweetheart, not when he has tried to show her something more, not when, clumsily though he has gone about it, he has offered up all the little pieces he buried so long ago- she has noticed and appreciated and accepted this, hasn't she?
He takes a breath.
He wets his lips.
"Caroline," he says as steadily as he can manage.
She pulls back just a little, her hands sliding from his shoulders down onto his forearms.
"Caroline, I love you."
He's so earnest about it.
But though it hovers just on the tip of her tongue to return this declaration, what happens instead is a locking up of all her muscles, a sealing-off of her throat, a gumming-up of all these words that jumble together somewhere inside of her, burning where they stick.
You spend so much of your life, waiting for these three little words.
And then how easily they're taken back.
Klaus Mikaelson of the eternal birthdays, the forever years, deals only in absolutes. Nothing ever ends, for this man who puts centuries behind him like miles, never tiring as he runs.
But here's the thing.
It does end.
Daddy says it one morning, and disappears the next.
Your new boyfriend stammers it out over an entire decade, and retracts it in a moment.
Ask her how many people who have said to her these three little words still remain at her side.
God, she doesn't want to hurt him, that's not what this is about, don't look at her like that, with those same eyes she sees when she looks in her mirror and she spots all the little myriad reasons why these three little words can never just stay-
It's just that you have to understand.
She is so, so afraid.
You feel, you flare up, you just freaking ignite with all these sensations you have spent so very long suppressing- and then you die out.
You scatter this thing called 'love' in a few fond cinders somewhere down deep, and then you move on, you leave her behind.
She has been reduced to a rearview speck too many times.
She looks down at the same time he does, pressing her lips together, raising one hand self-consciously to the blood she can still feel drying on her chin, and then with her other, she reaches out, and she runs her thumb gingerly over his cheekbone, all the way up to his hairline.
Nothing for him, then?
Not a sigh, not a breath, not a word?
Just that bloody touch of the cheek, and if she so much as hints at that little conciliatory flash of the teeth pathetic little Niklaus got, he'll puncture her throat, he'll pin her down 'til she screams, he'll leave her behind to rot-
She shifts herself off him and smoothes down her skirt.
He pulls up his trousers wordlessly.
"Klaus-"
"I don't need you to pet my wounded feelings, Caroline," he snaps.
"I wasn't going to." She hops off the bed to retrieve her knickers and slips them on underneath her skirt. "Just shelve the bitch tone for a second, ok?"
"I'll use whatever tone I please."
"Ok, you know, this isn't really the way to bring a girl around to weepy return declarations-"
"Well, it looks as though there's nothing to bring the girl round to, so I think-"
"Well, if you would just shut up for a second-"
"Don't tell me what to do!" he roars, up in her face in a blink, she just level with his chin in her bare feet, both her little hands suddenly darting out to give him a push that does not budge him.
"Stop trying to bully your way through everything- God, you are such an asshole sometimes."
She stomps away out of the bedroom, into the connecting room.
"Where are you going?" he demands, flashing after her.
"I am not going anywhere. It's my hotel room. But you are going to walk your half-naked ass all the way home if you don't stop all your d-bag posturing and give me three freaking seconds to talk, got it?"
"I don't, actually," he says, crowding her against the wall she instinctively presses herself back into, his hands coming up to cage her where she stands, his tongue flicking out to moisten his lips. "You do not order me around, Caroline. You are nothing," he hisses roughly into her ear.
"No," she snaps right back, tilting her head back to meet him eye to eye. "I'm not. Not after everything I have been through, not after he tried to make me feel the same way, not after he took everything away from me, not after Katherine murdered me on a freaking in between year and I still, I still chose to keep going, when you said you could let me die, if that was what I wanted," she screams, and then she reaches up, and she shoves him so hard even he is startled into a few stumbling steps he checks in a moment.
And then she picks up the vase from the end table to her left, and she hurls it at his head.
He catches it easily.
She flings the table after.
He dodges, he throws down the vase, he seizes her about the wrists and whirls her round to hold her roughly against him as she starts forward with her fangs lowered and her veins protruding.
She kicks his shins, bites his hand, whips her head back into his nose.
"Bloody knock it off!"
She struggles harder as he grips her tighter, flailing her heels against his knees as he hefts her up off her feet and he crushes her writhing back against him, the stream of blood from his nose already clotting to a trickle, the wound in his hand patching itself back over with fresh pink skin.
"Maybe if you want me to say it back, you shouldn't go all psycho raging douche bag on me and try to cut me down more just because I hurt your feelings! Maybe, sometimes you should just deal with having your feelings hurt. Like all the rest of us who have to move on when some stupid jerk tells them they're nothing, that he was just using them, which, by the way is something they've heard a lot, their whole life, because they were never good enough-"
He whips her round into the wall, propping a hand on either side of her head as he leans in to kiss frantically down her neck to her shoulder, nuzzling her as he goes, his hands slipping down off the wall as she arches back against him, dimpling her hips, pulling her flush against his cock, grinding her roughly against him, her breaths sharp, his even more jagged, both their hips moving in tandem now, her hand in his hair, her blunt human teeth worrying his lip until he bleeds-
He rips her skirt away with one hand, unbuckles his trousers shakily, shifts her panties aside, thrusts himself all the way in with one brutal push.
"Oh my God," she cries out, her hand faltering in his hair, her back arching even more, one palm slithering shakily up the wall in front of her for support-
He kisses the back of her neck, her shoulder, her spine, squeezes her hips in his hands, lets go with one to feel down her stomach, into her knickers, finds with his practiced fingertips her slippery clit-
"Oh God, oh God- Klaus-"
"Say it, Caroline" he pants, cradling the back of her neck in his palm as he works along the line of her jaw with his lips, still pounding away, lifting his other hand to slide it down into her bra, to pinch her nipple, to savor her little gasp as she jerks just a bit and she pushes her hips back into him even harder. "Whatever you wanted to tell me earlier." He plants three frenzied, open-mouthed kisses on the corner of her mouth, jerks her head back to pry his way inside her lips with vicious tongue and teeth, his knees buckling just a bit as she pricks the edge of his tongue experimentally with her fangs.
"That you're a jerk," she gasps. "And maybe…oh God…right there!"
He presses her even harder into the wall, brings both hands back to her hips, holds them immobile as he moves his lips roughly back to her neck, his throat burning with each breath he takes, his chest heaving, his pulse in an ocean roaring within his ears-
"And maybe what?" he demands as her hips twitch between his fingers. He gives one hard thrust with his own, kissing her shoulder as hard as he can bring his lips to her skin without breaking the surface, dragging his teeth after, nipping his way along the curve of it to her neck, down her throat, over her breast-
He presses his lips to her ear.
He thrusts again.
"Did you want to say it back, Caroline?" he whispers raggedly.
Another thrust, his jaw clenching with the force of it.
She gulps air, she shudders all the way down to her toes, she starts to pulse around him.
He pulls back, he slams into her, he starts to work his hips in earnest once more, wrenching her own back against him, keeping his lips to her ear as she tips her head back against his and she cries out, her knees failing her, her voice cracking, her fingers digging through paper to powder plaster-
He bites her shoulder, first with his human incisors and then his creature canines, listens to the crumbling of the wall, to all the jagged little sounds of her orgasm, to the wet slapping of his soaked chest against her damp back, the squelching of his fangs in her gaping shoulder, the friction of heels against carpet, the jingling of belt, the thundering of her blood, his pulse-
"Yes," she gasps, her breaths nearly sobs, her legs gone to rubber, all of her trembling, his hips bruising her, his teeth bleeding her-
He loops his arm round her waist.
He feeds until a second ripple grips him tight, until she rasps his name, until he empties himself with a hot spurt inside her, so hard the walls swim and the floor reels and he slides in a sweaty pile to the carpet with her limp in his arms, slipping himself out of her as her knees go and the rest of her follows after.
He tucks himself back into his trousers, leaving them unzipped, and opens his wrist in a haze, holding it to her lips.
She drinks slowly, just pressing his wrist to her mouth, her breath lifting the little hairs on his arm, her head falling back against his bare chest.
She unlatches her fangs at last with a shuddery little breath, and leans back into him.
He brings his arms shakily round her.
They sit in silence like this for a very long time.
Jane-Anne is buried on a gray November morning.
It's one of those in-between days, not quite a storm, neither a picnicker's golden dream, a drizzle here, a patch of sun there, fuck you, God, Lucifer, whoever's holding the switch, make up your goddamned mind, give her some real fucking clouds, you no-balls cockknocker, she wants the skies to fucking scream.
You don't watch from a distance your victim laid down to rest among old dust and new flowers, comfortable in your light jacket, no wind to gouge your spine, no rain to soak your head, temperate, balanced, all your limbs loose, your heart still ticking away its endless grandfather minutes while hers lies in fragile human silence.
Klaus Mikaelson snaps her fucking neck, and it is you who is slid away into your crypt, bricked over, sealed away, left to fucking bake.
One year, Jane-Anne, and from your bones drips your flesh, off your head crisps your hair, all of you reduced to powder by this steaming fucking soup of a city with its goddamned oven summers.
And you know where she is going to be, twelve months from now?
Still not-quite-fucking-dead, little Sophie Frankenstein with her irregularly rushing blood and her unnatural fucking lusts.
She shifts her feet.
She tucks her hands into the pockets of her jacket.
She does not let the burning in her throat make its way up into her eyes, but don't think she doesn't want to, Jane-Anne.
But, hey.
Spilt fucking milk and all that.
She slammed your head into that fucking window until it cracked your skull all to shit and isn't it the least she can do, to stand here stopped up, without release, burning on?
Doesn't she breathe on, after all; doesn't she feel the soft marsh of the grass beneath her shoes; can't she smell not just the tempting new perfume of all the little human meals half a street over but the crackling fat of the beignets popping in their skillets, the steaming po' boys in their greased wax paper- doesn't she still get to fucking hear, to taste, to fucking go on while you sleep away your dreamless black nothing?
She hears someone step up behind her.
"Sophie Devereaux?"
She spins on a heel to give this intrusive little shit the eye.
He's got this real boyish little smile, all bright eyes, deep cheeks, everything framed by these pale brown wisps that sneak out from beneath his worn Donegal hat.
Just a regular fucking choirboy, with his cheeks pinker than hers and his lashes to his brow bone.
Great.
This fucker's here to kill her, isn't he.
"Klaus is looking for you," he says, and he snakes his hand out to seize her throat hard enough to blacken that too-cheerful sky after all.
"Have you been to the Hotel Monteleone? To its Carousel Bar and Lounge? It was a frequent haunt of mine, back when I was originally here in the city. Not the bar- that wasn't installed until a good few decades after we fled Mikael, but the hotel. Itself. Kol and I were regular patrons- it was the, uh, Commercial Hotel, for our first several years. Very popular, with some of the literary greats of the 20th century. Hemingway; Faulkner; Tennessee Williams. It was featured in many of their works, and they made it their home, whenever they came to the city. It revolves every fifteen minutes- the bar, of course, not the hotel. It's actually- it's actually quite a sight."
Mr. Original Big Bad himself is babbling.
He has jogged on ahead of her and spun around to face her, walking backwards as he talks, his jacket flapping as he goes, his face way too freaking adorably animated for someone who murders mothers, who tortures innocents, who is still kind of in the doghouse for his earlier douchebaggery.
She gives him her best unimpressed eyebrow arch. "Nope."
Do not give her the dimples, she is completely impervious to their charm, ok, no matter how shyly you flash them or how long you draw them out; she knows what lurks underneath, she's seen beyond their surface, and excuse her very much, but wasn't Lucifer himself, like, the sculpted Edward Cullen of his day?
She walks on, her heels clicking, elbows bouncing just a little as she digs her hands further into her jacket pockets.
"Would you like to see it?"
She darts a look at him.
He hasn't stopped smiling since they left the hotel, since he leaned down to kiss her while she lay draped across his lap and she did not push him away, since she pulled his shirt back down over his head and she just barely grazed his chest with her lips, saying nothing, just letting them both feel out this monumental moment.
"I could compel everyone to leave."
"And nothing says romance like brainwashing a bunch of strangers into fleeing for their lives."
He lengthens his strides as she picks up her pace, tilting his head. "Cognacs at your fingertips, cordials, some of the best single malt scotch this side of the Mississippi. No one to jostle your elbow, to attempt their pathetic flirting out of the hope that you might be inebriated enough to take pity on them."
"Ok," she says, clicking along, arching that eyebrow just a little higher. "But if you compel everyone to leave, who is going to serve me all these drinks right at my fingertips? I'm going to assume you probably weren't a bartender in another life."
"No, but I did eat one once."
"Ok, so, what, you like, assimilated all his knowledge while you were digesting him? I haven't been at this whole vampire thing for very long, but I don't think that's how it works, Klaus."
His smile stretches a little more. "Not exactly. But I did pick his pocket before I had him for lunch. He had all these recipes scribbled down on one of the cocktail napkins; he must have been new. I threw it out of course- I was after the pocket watch he had it wrapped round, very nice, an 18th century William Addis- but I've been told I have a rather magnificent memory for the little things."
"You are such a klepto. Do you actually own anything in your house?"
"I own all of it. The transference of the original ownership in a few instances may have been a bit sketchy, but it's all mine."
"Well. Once, in second grade, we had show and tell time, and I didn't have anything to share with the class, so I stole one of the other kid's toys and pretended it was mine, and got up in front of everyone with this little speech about it that I pulled completely, one hundred percent out of my ass. It was some kind of action figure- I didn't even know what it was, but by the time I was done talking, you'd have thought I was a legitimate expert on all things related to whatever the hell that thing was."
"Your mother must have had her hands full, with such a delinquent."
"I burned down a playhouse or two in my day."
"I set in motion the downfall of The House of Romanov, ending over three centuries of rule."
"Heather Maken tried to upstage me in the 5th grade talent show, and I bit her."
He wets his lips, and he is really smiling now, his teeth flashing, his dimples natural and not calculated, his hands slipping into his pockets as he stays just ahead of her, the slight breeze that kicks up ruffling his sex-disheveled curls. "Kol and I sent the entire Vatican into a tizzy over a very public display of affection with one of their most pious priests."
She scoffs. "Ok, for the record, a thousand years has made you way too comfortable with your siblings. Also? I set up an entire summer-camp-wide protest after the cafeteria ran out of chocolate pudding. It was very bloody. Numerous free crafts hours were sacrificed for the sake of the cause. And I didn't need any help to do it."
"During WWI I single-handedly took down a good portion of the German front line."
"I got the oldest monster in the world to save my life before he knew anything about me, and while I was all sick and sweaty and totally makeup less, to boot."
He lifts both his eyebrows, still on with that freaking smile. "All right, you win."
She smiles triumphantly, angling her nose up just a little.
"So, then-"
There is a sudden seizuring of her throat, from pipe to pinhole this unseen force crushes her esophagus, and now she leans forward with both hands on her knees, gasping, pulling deep, fighting for just one little jambalaya-scented thread of this air she can no longer get-
She feels Klaus' hand on her elbow, his other coming up to touch her shoulder, her name so freaking frightened on the lips of this guy who for an entire millennia has inspired the nightmares of monsters-
Another gasp, a lurching of chest, of lungs, of diaphragm, and she breathes once more without noticing, everything smoothly subconscious.
"Are you all right?" he asks, holding her by both shoulders now.
"Yeah," she says, feeling her throat carefully. "But Sophie-"
His phone dings from inside his pocket.
He cups her cheek, slides his free hand down to retrieve it.
He glances just briefly down at its screen, and breaks out into his smile of before, his entire face lighting up.
"Not to worry, love. That was an associate of mine. Sophie's sister, Jane-Anne, passed away recently. I sent him round the funeral to have a look while I was otherwise occupied; he's collected her now. You'll be all right; he's been very firmly instructed to handle carefully, and I trust him to follow those orders implicitly. He's an old…friend." He smiles a little on the last, not this dimpled, boyish remnant of the human Niklaus he gives her so often, but the same little smirk Carol Lockwood must have seen before he shoved her head down deep and he held her in place until she stopped fighting.
She feels a little shiver slither its way down her spine.
"I've got to get back to the house," he says. "I assume you'll want to come?"
"Yeah. I mean, if you want to keep her, you're going to have to figure out some way to strap her down that doesn't involve, like, vervain chains, or needles through her eyeballs or whatever."
"I'm a creative soul." He smiles again, and she is not sure whether to be aroused or repulsed. "I'm sure I'll come up with something," he says, and then with a brief hesitation and a quick sideways dart of his eyes as he falls into step beside her, he reaches out, and he wraps his hand around hers.
He is all old-world gestures, proffered arms, reserved waltzes, and he slips his fingers so awkwardly down through her own, fumbling a little as he goes, his palm sweaty, his eyes carefully straight ahead, and it is just so seriously creepy, how endearing this is.
She lets him hold her hand all the way back to the mansion.
"We've got visitors, Nik."
"I'm well aware of that, Bekah, thank you very much. I-"
There are two heads, peeking up over the top of the divan beyond her, and in neither of them is the gloss of a woman's meticulous eye to personal hygiene.
The first rotates around to reveal his brother.
The second rises before he pivots, turning to face them with his hands in both his trouser pockets.
Caroline jerks away from him hard enough to wrench his arm. "Stefan?"
Oh God oh God oh God her mother-
Stefan- oh God Stefan don't tell her- Liz Forbes is all she has left- she knows she's going to lose her eventually, ok, she knows one Time will step in and it will sever this bond that neither long work hours nor surging teenage hormones could dismember, she freaking knows that while her hands remain forever unblemished and her forehead eternally unmarked her mother will one day crumple to powder and matchstick, but not now not so soon they just kind of found each other again, ok, ok-
He sees all of this play out across her face and he steps forward now, both hands coming out of his pockets to dismissively wave away this conclusion she has jumped to, his brow furrowed. "No, no, no, Caroline- she's fine. Damon's keeping an eye on her."
She sags down a little into herself, bringing one hand shakily to her forehead.
"Then, nothing's wrong? Elena's-"
"Elena's fine. She misses you, though." He smiles just a little. "Everyone's fine, Caroline."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"You had on your everything-is-just-fine voice, when I talked to you last week. Which means that things are way worse than you're letting on. So I tracked down Elijah, and got the address for this place out of him. I didn't think either you or Klaus would be terribly forthcoming with the information. And, as it turns out, Elijah was already heading down here, so I just sort of tagged along for the ride."
"And here I thought you'd come all this way to see me," Klaus puts in lightly, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees him clasp his hands behind his back and take a step forward.
Rebekah sits down on the back of the couch and crosses her legs. "Just because you missed your boyfriend terribly, Nik, does not mean he spent every waking moment of your separation thinking of you."
Klaus shoots her a look.
"So…you came because you were worried about me?" she whispers, and he smiles again.
"Well, I can't leave my sober sponsor just swinging in the wind, can I? Besides, I haven't been chewed out for putting a party streamer in the wrong place for a very long time."
She's not quite sure whether she is laughing or crying, when she steps into his arms and she presses her cheek to his chest, shutting her eyes to inhale the light scent of this aftershave she has not smelled in way too long.
Well now.
Isn't this picturesque.
"Niklaus," his brother says with a straightening of his sleeve cuffs as he watches Caroline throw herself so easily into the embrace of the elder Salvatore, something clenching round his heart. "We have matters we need to discuss."
"No Katerina, Elijah?"
"Understandably, she is hardly eager to be anywhere remotely within reach of you."
"That's a shame." He smiles with only his lips. "I had hoped the three of us could catch up a bit." He holds up a finger as Elijah opens his mouth to go on. "Of course I fancy a little family reunion with someone who would rather see me go mad than not indulge his dear sister's fleeting whims, but I'm expecting company in just a moment. It'll have to wait."
He hears the clattering of footsteps down the sidewalk, the heavy trod of boot, the lighter clicking of howitzer, and with Caroline still folded joyfully in Stefan's arms, he locks his hands once more behind his back and he tilts his head. "If I'm not mistaken, that would be them. I told him to just let himself in- he is, after all, an old friend," he says as the door gives way with a loud creaking of the hinges and that pretty young face with its scrubbed pink cheeks and its lashes abundant as a girl's makes its way across the threshold.
Sophie gives him quite the little look, the spirited thing.
He smiles.
He holds up one hand.
"May I introduce Tim? We had a bit of a time of it, back in the day. Elijah, Bekah, perhaps you remember him?"
"Of course," Elijah says, his face not flickering as he folds his hands in front of him.
Rebekah looks at him as she might glance over something which must be scraped off her shoe.
"I ran into him the other day. It just so happened he was very amiable to giving me a bit of a hand while I was otherwise occupied."
"I'm sure he was." Bekah smirks just a little.
"Sophie, Sophie, Sophie." He clicks his tongue.
He takes a step forward.
"It's good to see you again." He pivots on his heel, holding both arms out to either side as he turns. "Bit of a conundrum, family, Stefan. You see, the late Sophie here was once a witch of middling powers, who managed, through the assistance of several of her coven, to link herself to Caroline, her thought being, of course, to control me and to spare herself." He purses his lips regretfully. "Unfortunately that rather deft dodging of the bullet doesn't seem to have extended itself to her sister. My condolences, by the way."
He takes another step closer as Tim holds her firmly round the elbow. "So, what. To. Do." He swirls his tongue thoughtfully round his mouth. "I can't kill you, of course, at least for the moment. And I'm afraid Caroline would find vervain chains, or needles through your eyeballs, or perhaps even a vervain-soaked crucifix- wouldn't that be poetic, among these devout southerners- terribly uncomfortable. Caroline, love- any suggestions?"
"Hang her upside down by her toenails. It wouldn't be the first time you've done that, now would it, Nik?"
"Thank you, I like my toenails where they are," Caroline butts in, crossing her arms. She eyes the witch. "Don't you have some kind of creepy dungeon you can just lock her up in?"
"He does have his little play room," Rebekah replies.
He presses his hands together and slips his pointer fingers just beneath his lower lip. "That is for those who have been very naughty." He smiles until his dimples show. "I'm afraid it would be a bit of a tease, though, all those little toys round, and no chance to use them. One day, sweetheart."
Sophie tries her best to keep her face neutral, to let none of this show in the nervous tic of her fingers, the slight flinching of her eyes, the little frisson which runs itself from neck to spine, but fear is a tangible thing, for one such as him, love.
He can smell it all over you.
He lets his hands slowly down, savoring this subtle backward leap of the witch, everything straining away from him, shoulder, legs, torso, all of her poised for the flight, her nostrils positively distended with this instinctive animal suppression of the terror which draws in so eagerly the cautious creeping of the predator.
"Well." He tosses up his hands. "If there are no suggestions."
He smiles again.
"I've actually got just the thing."
Klaus leads her upstairs to this entire fucking palace of a prison cell.
"Circumstances being what they are, I want you to be comfortable, Sophie. You may consider yourself a guest in this house, until we've got this link business all sorted out, and I murder you as slowly and painfully as my countless centuries of experience enable me. Did I ever mention I ran with the Spanish Inquisition for a bit? Fantastic chaps. Quite inventive." He pauses in the doorway of the room he has cracked open with that creepy goddamned smile of his. "Anyway. I've taken the liberty of rearranging Caroline's old room a bit."
He pivots around to face Caroline, who lingers in the hallway behind him. "I don't want you to take this as a slight, love. You're always welcome to stay in my room, of course. As I said, I wanted her to be comfortable."
He smiles again. "The door is reinforced steel, rated a bit above even the strength of an angry newborn vampire." He knocks playfully just below the little slit of a window, the metal echoing back this lighthearted grazing of his knuckles. "I had it special-ordered from Europe, actually. There's also a bit of a trick to it. It's cursed- warded, actually, centuries ago. Very powerful, ancient magic. Let's just say I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy."
"We get it," Caroline says. "You're the vampire Godfather."
He looks so goddamned pleased with himself.
He gestures expansively to the room beyond, and she steps across this threshold she isn't going to cross again for a very long time, squaring her shoulders just slightly, lifting her chin, putting her back to this sick little shit like he does not matter, like he does not churn her guts all to froth, because he will not beat her, she is not going to fucking bend, Klaus Mikaelson-
"I hope you enjoy the décor," he says politely. "I wanted you to have something familiar, to comfort you."
There's this thing your heart does, in moments like this.
It stutters, it doubles its beat, it trips right the fuck over itself, trying to make a break for your throat.
Feel it everywhere, your neck, your thighs, your wrists, you are all pulse, you thud, your roar, you thunder, nothing exists beyond these million little fragments of this thing inside your chest, leaping, leaping, leaping.
From these walls that are to hold her for however long she has left stares Jane-Anne's face, distorted by newspaper grain, skin too white, hair too black, eyes mere blobs in this granular reproduction of this girl whose boyfriend she broke just for an indiscretion, whose blood she smeared all over a window.
Jane-Anne Devereaux, 26, of New Orleans passed away November 17th, 2013 after an unexpected accident, she reads a hundred different times with her new eyes.
"You fuck."
He dimples.
"Feedings promptly at 7:00 every night."
He shuts the door.
"Tim," he says, jogging lightly down the stairs to Stefan and his waiting family.
The boy pushes off the wall he has leaned himself up against, that little hat of his jostling itself down over his eye. "Yes, sir. Klaus." He straightens his jacket nervously.
How rewarding that little tremor of shame in his voice still is.
He holds up a crisply-folded hundred dollar bill with a smile, and he tucks it into the lad's jacket with a deepening of this smile that sets the boy's eyes to skittering. "For your troubles, mate. Go on and buy your mother something nice."
The boy pales.
He winks.
He turns back to his family. "Bit of an inside joke. Elijah? I believe I've some time to spare at the moment. Why don't we get this little reunion on the move, then?"
"There are rumors beginning to coalesce outside this city, Niklaus."
He leans back in his chair and swirls his drink round his mouth. "Right; terrible surge in recent gang activity. Spree of serial murders. A general swell in the statistics this city is so accustomed to. Marcel's contacts in the media have all the recent…difficulties well excused, as always. This isn't the first time this city has seen this sort of upheaval between certain factions."
"No, it certainly isn't. But during the original uprisings of the early 20th century, technology was not lurking around every corner, just waiting to capture these particular sorts of upheaval for posterity."
Elijah snaps open his phone and hands it across the desk.
"What's this?"
"It's a video posted to something called 'youtube'. It's been dismissed as part of a movie production."
He watches some disheveled young boy take a stake to the chest and drop with stone suddenness to his knees, desiccating as he goes.
He hands it back. "And? You said it's already been dismissed."
"Not by everyone. Katerina has many…clandestine contacts thanks to her numerous years on the run. She has wind of murmurings. You draw too much attention, Niklaus. Not everyone is so sure of those excuses anymore."
He waves this off and takes another drink, putting his feet up on his desk. "There are always theorists."
"This will not be contained forever, brother. Just because father is no longer on our heels, does not isolate us from all harm." He tucks his mobile back into his dress jacket. "Where is the hunter?"
"Kept your eye on me, big brother, have you? I'm flattered."
"Where is the hunter, Niklaus."
What a tone, brother.
He sets his glass down slowly.
"In the city."
"Where?"
"It's under control, Elijah. You know I always have everything under control."
"You know as well as I do, Niklaus, that one man does not wage a war. There are many spokes. No single one turns the wheel on its own."
"How poetic."
"This is not a joke, brother. Things are beginning to simmer, beyond the city limits." He straightens his cuffs once more, gives a tweak to his tie, brushes down either side of his jacket with a distasteful flick of his hand.
"Stop them before they reach a boil."
A/N: YOU DEMAND PORN, I DELIVER.
Also, that little anecdote Caroline told about swiping the kid's toy for show and tell and claiming it as her own may have been based off a certain incident perpetrated by a certain author. I'm not going to point fingers, but goddammit, I would not have my spotlight stolen for lack of my own toys to share. (Apparently, even as a preschooler I was good at thinking on my feet. I made up a whole little story about that action figure I'd never before seen in my life.)
The pun Klaus told during their 'date' is sadly not of my own invention. I found it on a random pun website, being unfortunately lacking in a talent for puns. I really do need to hone that; you never know when a good pun might come in handy.
There will be a second part to this fic. We've still got a flashback to go, and quite a lot of modern day plot.
And let me just say before I leave, that the fan is going to get very shitty in this series. Not that you guys probably didn't expect that, but, yeah, shit everywhere.
Thank you so much for your favorites, your follows, your reviews, your tumblr messages. I greatly appreciate that you guys take the time to talk to me, and I love hearing from you. I hope this series continues to be something those of you disappointed in the actual spin-off can turn to to assuage that disappointment, if only a little.