I don't own The Vampire Diaries or any characters within.
This is a crack-fic. I will be stretching the plausibility of this universe, but I think I can make it passably believable in the long run. Kind of. Maybe. I guess that'll be up to the reader. I've had this idea kicking around in my head for a LONG time, and it was bothering me so badly lately that I couldn't help putting it to paper. I've officially given myself a full plate of fanfic to write.
Constructive criticisms appreciated.
Klaus first realized something was treacherously wrong when the cravings began. He was the formidable Original Hybrid, whose names sent shudders throughout vampires and werewolves everywhere. Time had only strengthened his terrible infamy. He was a monster. Vlad the Impaler, if the conqueror had had the stomach to do the awful things Klaus had done century after century. Worse than Adolf Eichmann, with a thirst for blood greater than even Elizabeth Báthory. His heart was stone. His emotions frigid. When the life of his enemies and victims flowed through his veins, he was the greatest unstoppable force in history.
Ergo, he didn't. Crave. Sugar.
Yet Klaus found himself eyeing the young trick-or-treaters early Halloween evening. His stroll through one of the many Mystic Falls neighborhoods was anything but innocent. Over the years, folks had come to distrust a full-grown man alone amongst children. And, to be fair, some of the parents probably thought his ogling was predatory. And it was. But not for the children. Not even for the adults, with blood flowing so freely and richly beneath their delicate flesh.
It was the impertinent whiffs of milk chocolate, dark chocolate, coconut stuffing, almonds, peanuts, caramel, nougat…. Why Klaus salivated at these scents, he had no idea. But he knew instantly it meant there was something going sideways with his head or body.
At least he was in control, Klaus assured himself. To prove it, he walked up to a lit, well-decorated home. With no children currently around, it would do for a brief snack. Perhaps he'd leave the dead body for the next guests to muse over whether or not it was yet another decoration before they noticed the sanguine red pouring from the poor sap's jugular.
When a man answered the door, before he could tell the scruffy yet devilishly handsome Original to get lost, Klaus caught his eyes and began his compulsion.
"Go find the most innocuous bag you have, and fill it with all the bloody candy you have remaining in your home."
What?
Before Klaus could reverse his order, the man nodded dully and shambled off to obey. Bewildered at his own behavior, he found the only thing he could do was wait until the man returned with a large black briefcase. Upon ensuring it was, in fact, full of what he'd ordered, Klaus decided to feed on him.
When he left, he carried the briefcase.
His return to the Mikaelson Manor was, fortunately, lonely and unwelcomed. He strode purposefully to his room, where he stashed the briefcase under the bed. He still had things to do, he decided, and the damn briefcase wasn't going with him.
Halfway out the door he paused. Sniffed.
That impertinent smell. Why was it kicking in such hunger, as though the cheap corporate candy contained the nutrients he needed?
Somehow he found himself back in the room, sitting upon his bed as he tore into piece after piece. All small bites, nothing that could completely satiate his hunger. He ate ravenously, licking melted chocolate off his fingers and wiping his mouth every so often so that a smear of melted sugar stained his left arm.
Once the candy was gone he felt okay again. Normal.
What the hell was going on? Perturbed, but determined not to let on anything was wrong, Klaus quickly swiped the discarded wrappers into the briefcase and stashed it beneath his bed again. He then hopped into the shower, scrubbing off the damnable evidence of his insanity.
Nobody must know. He was the fearsome Klaus Mikaelson, and he had no weaknesses. Certainly not the horrid, vile mess that was human sweets.
As he scrubbed his skin, Klaus grew angrier. The water was hot as could be, and he deliberately used a loofa he'd stolen from Rebekah out of spite. Hard as he washed, his wounds healed rapidly, and the knowledge of the bizarre, shameful thing he had just done only served to fuel his temper.
People were definitely going to die tonight.
That was how he found himself on the streets again. Freshly scoured with the stubborn intensity of a brillow pad taken to a filthy pan, he still somehow felt unclean and he needed to remedy that sensation.
He wasted no time finding another house, this time swiftly passing a mother and her son to an already open doorway. He glared at the woman in the threshold, who watched him with befuddled brown eyes and a gigantic bowl full of that sweet, succulent—horrendous, atrocious, abominable Halloween candy.
Fortunately, her arms were outside the threshold, and he yanked her forward, intent on biting into her.
But then the bowl dropped, and candy spilled everywhere. He heard the delighted cry of the child behind him, and Klaus whirled around to snarl at him.
"Get your bloody hands off my things."
The mother moved to scold him for making her child cry, her voice a piercing screech that drove needles into his eardrums. Fed up, Klaus snapped the neck of the owner of the house before granting the pervasively irritating mother the same treat. All in the holiday spirit.
And the child stood before him, gaping in disbelief as horror slowly bled into his eyes. His small hands were frozen, clutching some of the fallen candy he had attempted to collect.
Klaus glowered at the child, baring his vampire fangs in warning.
Once the little lad had run screaming into the distance, Klaus scurried to gather his dishonorable tiny prizes in the bowl before he used his supernatural speed to run off. Away from the humans, into the forest, deep within the darkest crevices the rapidly falling night had to offer.
And for whatever reason, because if there was a deity above he or she clearly loathed him (and he couldn't argue; he was quite deplorable), that was where she happened to be when she stumbled upon him scarfing down the last of the sugary confections like a rabid hog at the trough.
"Klaus?" Caroline Forbes, the baby vampire with glorious sun-spun hair and critically beautiful blue eyes, approached him from behind.
And he froze.
Hands buried in unwrapped candy, stained with the proof of his humiliation, his stomach rumbling with unsatisfied hungers that he simply couldn't comprehend. He wanted to turn, to greet her with a smooth smile and his own brand of morbid wit. Had she only come across him with a human draped across his arms, limp and throat torn asunder. That he could have saved himself from.
But not this.
Anything but he, the indomitable Klaus, the man who had taught Empress Wu how to enact cruelty, crouching in the woods like the hungry, ugly beast that better suited the contemptible Lockwood boy, slobbered head to finger in the leading cause of human obesity in the first world.
Caroline started to round him, and she was too close to getting a better look. "Klaus, what are you—"
And he hurried off, clutching the bowl, wrappers dancing in the air behind him like errant snowflakes in a winter sky.
Leaving behind an astounded Caroline, who could swear she had just seen easily the most nonsensical scene of her entire dramatic vampire life.