meddlers

In which Kol, Klaus, and Finn decide to interfere in Elijah's love life. Because what else are little brothers good for?

IMPORTANT NOTE:

This story is set slightly after the events of the episode "Dangerous Liaisons" (the famous Mikaelson party episode), with one small change: Esther and Finn haven't plotted the downfall of the entire Original family we all know and love. Therefore, none of the events/episodes after "Dangerous Liaisons have occurred—Esther didn't try to murder her children, Elijah didn't skip town, Finn's not dead, Elena's still human etc. etc. The possibilities of such a dynamic family reuniting and living together were endless, and I'm sorely disappointed that the Vampire Diaries writers didn't choose to explore that scenario more.

It was a normal day in Mystic Falls.

Or, as normal as a day could truly be when in a town inhabited by a unique array of bloodthirsty vampires (both of the human and bunny-desiring variety), rabid werewolves, and witches who had the uncanny ability of setting things on fire with merely a single glance.

So…normal.

Unfortunately, there was one vampire who was not being afforded the privilege of enjoying what had earlier promised to be an ordinary, relaxed day, courtesy of one of the greatest annoyances known both to human and supernatural kind:

Little brothers.

Because, in an elegant mansion situated on the outskirts of the aforementioned little town, a particular Original was finding his serene perusal of his books interrupted by one such hindrance.

At first he had tried to stolidly ignore Kol's unrelenting whispers and exaggerated movements meant to ensnare his notice, burying himself deeper into the ancient scripts and scrolls he had discovered in Niklaus' keeping (his brother had disturbing magpie-like qualities of picking up whatever he fancied at the time and discarding it into an obscure corner just as easily). However, when an ornamental tea pot came flying at his head with harmful intent, Finn wisely decided to donate his attentions to his younger brother before the tea pot was followed by a rather heavy-looking encyclopedia Kol was eyeing speculatively.

Effortlessly catching the spinning projectile and replacing the tea pot back on a nearby table, he sent his sibling a wry look. "What, Kol?"

"Brother," Kol hissed, beckoning Finn over with a rapidly flapping hand in the universal 'come hither' signal. Finn rolled his eyes (which looked decidedly odd on a vampire of his sophistication and maturity) but joined his younger sibling on the posh living room couch nonetheless, far too used to Kol's ridiculous antics to do much else.

Finn sighed, sinking gracefully beside his little brother and dryly asking him again, "What?"

"He's at it again," Kol huffed exasperatedly, his body nearly falling off the furniture as he stretched to get a better look out of the expansive window lining the eastern wall. "Look."

And, complying with Kol's request and following his insistently pointing finger, Finn looked.

Promptly after doing so, he was highly tempted to roll his eyes yet again (he usually refrained from doing so, as Rebekah had complained more than once of how frighteningly demonic it made him look, given the large size of his eyes). "Kol," he grumbled in disinterest. "It is only Elijah."

"But he's doing it again!"

"So our brother enjoys taking walks," he said gruffly. "Not all of us indulge in annoyance as our pastimes. Cease acting like such a simpleton." He reached one large hand up and yanked his brother down with ease, watching dispassionately as Kol allowed himself to tumble dramatically from his perch on the couch to sprawl on the floor.

"Walks," Kol repeated in disbelief, shaking his head despairingly at Finn. "Brother, you were in that coffin for far too long," he said pityingly. "Don't you know when someone's mooning over a girl?"

Finn adopted a stony face, lips compressing into a thin line. "Elijah does not moon," he replied in disgust, making Kol snicker lowly at his older brother's automatic defense of Elijah. While it wasn't difficult to call Elijah the favorite of each of the siblings (Kol would never stoop to admitting it, but that included him as well), Finn had always hero worshipped their eldest brother, clinging to him as a child and trying his best to copy his mannerisms as an adult.

It was cute, really.

But even cuteness had its limit.

"Finn, Finn, Finn," the Original vampire on the floor droned out teasingly, in that gratingly maddening voice that usually had Rebekah leaping on him in under a minute, trying to whack him around the head with whatever object happened to be nearest (normally some exquisite sixteenth century Chinese vase that Klaus seemed to have a disturbing number of lying about—again, those magpie tendencies of his…). "Our dear big brother goes out nearly twice a day, every day, to walk around aimlessly in these stupid forests, and when he's not doing that he just stands at the window, staring out of it with a forlorn expression. What else would you call it, if not…" He paused, a wide grin spreading across his face. "Lovesick?"

Finn was silent, his handsome visage serious…but that really wasn't much of a change. Finn was always so serious and sober.

"Seeeeee," Kol drawled, attempting to draw out a response from his stoic brother. "I'm right, aren't I?"

Silence.

"Go on, say it. I'm always right. Always."

Silence.

"Of course I'm always right. I'm Kol the Magnificent, Kol the Mystic, Kol the Unbearably Handsome—"

Silence.

"Finn, did you die? Like, really, really die? Given that you really only have one facial expression, it'd be sort of difficult to tell if you ever truly kicked it, to be honest with you brother." Kol yawned as he once again received no reply. "You should probably work on that."

"…"

"I wonder who she is?" Kol mused to himself out loud, idly twisting his silky brown locks of hair through nimble fingers as he unconsciously preened (if Klaus was a magpie, Finn thought, then Kol was certainly the narcissist of the family). "Maybe we've met her? Hm. Probably blonde. Maybe redhead? Finn, what type of girls does Elijah fancy anyways? Can't say I've ever seen him care for anyone other than Tatia. Then again, we've been dead for a while now, missed out on quite a lot probably. So…brunette? Maybe. Most likely tall, striking. Well endowed? Brother certainly doesn't seem like he'd favor that, but you never know, do you Finn? …Finn? What'd you think, huh? Could use a little input here—"

"Kol."

The word was barely more than a whisper, but it was a whisper full of spidery cracks threatening to break and unleash a torrent of violent emotion.

It must be mentioned that Finn, unfortunately, had been in a coffin for over nine hundred years.

And after nine hundred years, you tended to forget a few things.

Namely, you tended to forget certain details about people. Such as Rebekah's infernal need to be eternally right, Elijah's overprotective tendencies, Klaus's manic mood swings…

Finn stared hard at the deceptively innocent looking young man grinning up at him from the floor.

…and Kol's obnoxious habit of rambling to himself when he was bored.

That was yet another trait that usually had Rebekah leaping on him, snatching up the nearest object to whack him over the head with. Finn had to make a note to place one of Klaus's conveniently heavy artifacts within her immediate reach the next time she decided to do so. It was such a pity, he thought dispassionately, that his family had so hastily burned down the only tree in existence that could possibly do them any sort of harm.

"What is it, brother?" Kol replied guilelessly, withdrawing Finn from his morbidly-pleasing thoughts of how to find a more lasting solution to Kol's unceasing blathering.

"Your idle prattle is impeding my ability to think," Finn told him.

Kol's brow wrinkled. "Huh?"

Finn sighed. "You're being annoying," he clarified to the particularly obtuse one in the room. On occasion Finn had to wonder what among Rebekah's general smarminess, Klaus's sharp-tongued retorts, or Kol's single-minded thick-headedness had thus far proven to be responsible for the greatest numbers of headaches.

Elijah, of course, was his elder brother and utterly perfect in every aspect, and therefore above Finn's scrutiny as an object of aggravation.

A loud huff came from Kol, his mouth tilting downwards in an indignant frown. "Fine, fine. Be that way then, brother." Curling up petulantly on his side, hiding the now-vindictive smile that had appeared on his face, he muttered, "I really should have known better though, asking for romantic advice from a virgin."

Kol sneaked a daring peek at his frozen brother, repressing a slight snicker as he noted the twitchy look he wore. Unwisely, perhaps, he decided to push just a little more in revenge for the 'annoying' comment. "After all, Finn," he began coyly, "You and Sage never went all the way did you? Your honor prevented you from doing so unless you were married." He paused delicately at the last word, nose screwing up in disgust. "It's really no wonder she left, eh?"

There was a heartbeat's moment of silence.

And then Kol found himself abruptly winded from the sizable bulk of his brother pinning him down, a deep scowl marring Finn's features.

Aha, Kol thought gleefully to himself. Success.

Normally that wasn't what one thought when being assaulted by one's irate older sibling, but Kol had never fit in with the traditional description of 'normal', as his family could earnestly attest. And managing to elicit a rise from the brother that was by far the most difficult to tease was most certainly a victory by Kol's standards.

Kol fought back half-heartedly, wrestling with his older brother. It wasn't much of a fight, as Kol was laughing much too hard to be any sort of a challenge. Just when Finn had managed to restrain Kol's wriggling form and trap his arm behind his back, preparing to introduce his face to the uncarpeted floor, an aggravated voice rang out.

"Could you two kindly refrain from destroying my house?"

Kol and Finn simultaneously looked up from their entanglement on the floor as Klaus heatedly stomped into the room and threw himself onto the lavish couch in his usual dramatic fashion, his fingers locked tightly upon his drawing pad and a barely repressed snarl concealed on his face.

A smirk crept across Kol's boyish visage as he regarded his fresh teasing bait; for if there was one person easier, nay, more amusing to rile, it was Nik. Sensing his little brother's intentions (and being loathe to interfere in any sort of sibling torture that involved Niklaus—nine hundred years in a coffin that bastard—) Finn swiftly released his arm without a word of warning, allowing Kol to smoothly straighten up and saunter over to Klaus with a grin.

He leaned over the back of the couch, draping himself across it until his face was placed directly beside Klaus's—the ideal bothersome position. "Rough day, brother?" He asked with mock sympathy.

"Sod off, Kol," was the grumbled retort from Klaus, his eyes never leaving the white sheet of drawing paper spread out on his lap, his charcoal pencil furiously outlining a dark figure on the page—a figure that is rapidly assuming the shape of a young woman with tumbling curls.

"Oh, I see, now," Kol lilted in delight as his eyes scanned the page, lips curling upwards deviously. "Woman troubles, hmm? Little Miss Blonde and Bouncy still managing to refuse your irresistible advances? How shocking!"

This time, Klaus tells Kol to go do something that would have been anatomically and physically impossible.

Even for a vampire.

Kol pressed his hands against his chest where his heart would have been, had it not shriveled up into a dry lump of black coal long ago, according to Rebekah. "Why Nik, I'm hurt. Is that any sort of language to use around your little brother?"

"Kol," Klaus bit out tersely, fingers curling tightly around his drawing pad until crinkly imprints of ten digits were quite visible. "We all know that you can out-swear a sailor in any language of your choosing—" A proud nod from Kol made him roll his eyes disparagingly. "—so kindly do me a favor and, once again, bugger off."

"You're hardly being nice," Kol complained loudly, and with an utter lack of respect for Klaus's eardrums given that he was still quite near. "Really, what would you feel like if tomorrow I should end up daggered and dead in a coffin again and the last words you ever spoke to me were 'bugger off'?"

"Exultation and pure unfettered joy, most likely," Klaus mumbled to himself, only half-paying attention as he penciled in soft waves of imagined golden hair and a bright, sunny smile onto his drawing.

Klaus gave no heed as a mock cross expression overtook Kol's face, the latter easily vaulting over the back of the couch to land next to his brother in a lazy heap. It was then that Klaus deigned to tear himself away from where he was immersed in his drawing and eye Kol with displeasure. These couches were rare antiquities, after all.

"Would it have taken you much effort to just walk?"

Kol's head tipped forwards in a lackadaisical nod. "I make it a point not to expand more energy than strictly necessary."

"You just spend a century lying on your back."

A hurt frown worked its way across Kol's mouth. "And whose fault was that, Nik?" In the blink of an eye, the frown morphed into a wily smirk and Kol was leaning forwards eagerly. "You can make it up to me by answering a simple question, however."

Raising his eyes to the high heavens and wondering what in his life he'd done to deserve this (the probable answer: quite a lot), Klaus sighed and capitulated. "About what, Kol?"

Sensing his victory, Kol leaned in eagerly. "About what's got our eldest brother looking like we just killed his puppy?"

"We never had a puppy, Kol. We were deprived children."

"Rebekah had a puppy once," Finn supplied tonelessly (and rather randomly) from his chair in the corner of the room that he had relocated to.

"No, she had a rabbit," Klaus corrected him, barely glancing his way. "And only for about four days, mind you, before Kol here had the brilliant idea of making it into stew."

"Oh yes. Did she ever forgive him for that?"

Klaus's lips curled. "Hardly. Why do you think she shoots him venomous looks whenever we pass a pet shop?"

"Moving on," Kol interrupted loudly, shooting an anxious glance at the door as though Rebekah would fall through it at any given moment, most probably shouting tearfully about rabbits and soulless murdering brothers before attempting to bash his head against a wall, as she was often wont to do. "Finn and I—" a sharp and meaningful cough emanated from Finn, causing Kol to sniff and amend, "Oh alright, I was wondering if you knew anything about Elijah's current paramour, or whatever bird's causing him to be a big moping vampire?"

Elijah's current paramour?

Once again, Klaus had to wonder at his younger brother's mental faculties—more specifically, just how many brain cells he had actually retained upon making the transition from human to vampire. Because really, one would most certainly have to be blind, deaf, and beyond all else, dumb not to notice Elijah's preoccupation with one Miss Elena Gilbert.

Klaus snorted to himself, shaking his head derisively as he thought of Elijah's overwhelming guilt, written plainly on his face, following his betrayal of Elena during Klaus's first transformation; of Rebekah's relentless sulking for days after Elijah had immediately put a stop to her intended Elena-torture in the parking lot; of Elijah's eyes sweeping the mansion ballroom with a shadowed fervor during their Mother's party, and his subsequent slipping away after catching sight of a certain lovely brunette sheathed in a gown of shimmering black entering the room.

Contrary to what he liked to think, emotional subtlety was hardly one of Elijah's strong points, Klaus mused to himself. It was rare to find fault in his reserved, well-mannered brother, but Klaus sometimes wondered if Elijah even bothered to attempt masking his near-devotional affection for the Doppelganger, given how easily he could be read in her presence.

He laughed slightly to himself again, absently pondering, "Isn't it obvious?"

The ruminative words caught Kol's attention like blood to a shark. However, Klaus paid no mind to his younger brother's suddenly avid gaze upon him, instead choosing to tilt his head and scrutinize his drawing. He frowned to himself, squinting as he examined the sharp curve of pencil-Caroline's jaw, wondering if he ought to have made it softer, more round to capture the sweetness of her girlish face. A few embellishments with his charcoal pencil and it would be—

He snarled as the pad was whipped from his grasp, spirited away to the opposite end of the room by the blur that was none other than Kol.

Klaus's eye twitched as he attempted to summon the patience of an elder brother that he hadn't needed to call upon in nigh on a century. After all, he had just laid down the Parisian rugs in this room but a few months ago—he had absolutely no desire to stain the intricate designs with the distasteful sight of a graying, lifeless body were he to stake Kol. In addition, he wasn't feeling quite up to the long, grueling lecture that would ensue should Elijah return home only to discover the family sans one bothersome little vampire brother.

(Because really, no one could give a shame-inducing lecture like Elijah could.

Klaus sometimes thought it was some mysterious power that eldest siblings were blessed with, given that he had witnessed Elena Gilbert bestowing a few on young Jeremy a time or two…though nothing in the impressive realm of his older brother, of course).

His temper suitably brought back underneath his control once again, Klaus's eyes flicked back to Kol almost wearily. "Are you planning on giving that back anytime soon and putting an end to your childish display?"

The drawing pad was tauntingly tossed from hand to hand. "Not until you tell me what you know, Nik."

Still twirling the pad around mockingly, Kol cast a speculative look at the open window.

Klaus warily followed the direction of his gaze, barely repressing a snarl as he practically divined the obvious way in which his younger brother's thoughts were heading. A brief trill of panic shot through him as he entertained a very real scenario of spending the next few hours hunting through the woods for his catapulted sketchpad, courtesy of Kol's damnably good throwing hand (unbeknownst to most, Kol had taken an earnest interest in baseball in the early nineteen hundreds).

"Elena Gilbert," Klaus bit out curtly, immediately extending an expectant hand out. "More likely than not, that's who's responsible for Elijah's…mood."

Kol appeared confused, and made no move to return Klaus's precious sketchpad to him. Not that that was out of the ordinary for him, but Klaus caught the expression and exhaled irritably. "The Doppelganger. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Wears a holier-than-thou look ninety-nine percent of the time?"

"Oooooh!" The enlightened crow of comprehension was short-lived, and quickly descended into a quieter "Oh." Kol rubbed his cheek in contemplation. "Is that the girl who's been coming over all hours of the night lately to talk to Elijah?"

"Your powers of observation are truly astounding Kol."

The insult flying straight over Kol's carefully-styled head, he asked, "And she's the one that made that peace treaty with you and Mother, hm? The really annoying one about being allowed to stay here as long as we didn't kill anyone or try to take over the world?"

"Yes."

A thoughtful frown appeared on Kol's face. "Isn't she the one those two buffoons were chasing after at the ball?"

"Be more specific about the buffoon part. There are plenty of those around here." The pointed look Klaus shot at Kol was, once again, entirely missed. A quietly observing Finn had to smother an amused smile behind one hand.

"I mean those two brothers, one of which our dear little sister decided to add to her impressive repertoire of conquests recently."

"Damon and Stefan Salvatore, yes," Klaus pronounced their names with quite a bit of abhorrence, his features darkening at the mere mention of the vampires he and Rebekah had privately renamed Impulsive Idiot #1 and Broody Idiot #2.

A low whistle rent the air, courtesy of Kol. "And our brother couldn't beat out those cretins? Or rather, this Elena girl actually had the gall to choose two baby vampires over Elijah?" He suddenly looked very understanding. "Man, no wonder brother's moping. Hell, I'd be depressed if I had over a thousand years of experience and got served the friend-zone treatment from a girl I fancied."

He glanced up, wincing as he noticed the two incredulous stares aimed at him. "What?" He said defensively.

Klaus merely snorted. "'Friend zone?' Really, Kol?"

"I've been trying to learn the modern day lingo, Nik!" Kol sneered, crossing his arms. "Otherwise Bekah said I'd end up sounding like you—a pretentious, stuffy git."

"You—"

"Stop it," Finn injected, an expressive exasperation in his voice. "And Kol, how many times must I say it? Elijah does not mope, moon, pine, sulk, or any variation thereof. Your conjectures are groundless, and I am growing tired of hearing them."

There was a surprised pause, for that had quite possibly been the longest amount of speech anyone had heard from Finn in a very long time.

Then came Kol's peevish snap of, "Oh, stop being such a brown-nosing brother's boy, Finn!"

And thus the argument was brought around full circle.

They spent another hour debating whether or not Elijah was, as Kol had put it, lovesick over Elena Gilbert.

Or rather, Kol had spent an hour talking nonstop at his brothers; Finn only half-listening with a highly skeptical expression, and Klaus silently weighing the pros and cons of daggering his brother and risking the wrath of his Mother and Elijah. It would only be temporarily, and it was quite possible that he could dagger Kol, stuff him in a closet somewhere for a few hours' peace, and then awaken him in time for the family dinner with no-one being any the wiser.

Much to Klaus's relief, the unceasing flow of babble coming from Kol suddenly grinded to a halt.

Unfortunately, it had only been due to the fact that something appeared to have caught Kol's attention.

"Oh!" Kol breathed, wicked anticipation flashing through his gaze as he sat up straight. "Hear that? Elijah's on his way in!" He cackled in a way that was a little worrying to his brothers. "Now I'll prove that I'm right about our big brother."

Finn and Klaus watched expressionlessly as Kol sped over to the small alcove at the opposing end of the room and beckoned pointedly to the other two. Knowing that it was the only way to appease the insistent Kol, Klaus groaned and set aside his notebook, reluctantly joining him. Finn followed suit with no greater degree of enthusiasm.

The three brothers, one fair haired and two dark, gathered in a tight huddle at the other end of the room. They watched silently as their eldest brother crossed the threshold of the foyer, shutting the large doors behind him with a resounding thud.

"And now," Kol muttered under his breath, the low hum easily carrying to the keen ears of Fin and Klaus. "He's going to go over to the window and stand there for a while."

Elijah entered the room then, quirking an eyebrow as he noticed his brothers blatantly staring at him in an eerie and uncommon display of alliance (it was a rare day, after all, when one would happen upon Kol, Finn, and Niklaus peacefully coexisting in one area without leaving a trail of ruin in their wake). However, he apparently made the wise choice of ignoring his younger siblings in favor of idly wandering over to the sunlit window, all thoughts of his brothers fading as his face became an unreadable mask and his eyes darkened in rumination.

"See?" was Kol's triumphant murmur to the other two nonplussed Originals. "I told you so." His eyes narrowed as he critically observed Elijah. "Now he's going to sigh," he mouthed inaudibly to Klaus and Finn, barely allowing even a breath to escape him, lest it disrupt his brother from his reverie. However, it was a tribute to Elijah's troubled preoccupation that he took absolutely no notice of his brothers' whisperings.

A deep, weary sigh emanated from their eldest brother.

"Then he'll tap his fingers on the windowsill."

A soft rhythm of tap tap tap was played out as Elijah absentmindedly caressed the sill with restless fingers.

"And then he leans against the wall and stares some more."

There was the barest rustle of cloth as Elijah allowed his body to lean upon the white-washed walls, the hue of his dark hair in stark contrast to the paler color when he closed his eyes, resting his head against the wall as well.

Finn and Klaus blinked; Kol just looked victorious.

"Kol?" Klaus said pleasantly, his voice a whispery undertone.

"What?"

"You have far too much time on your hands."

"No, Kol."

"But—!"

"No. Non. Nein. Ne."

The above conversation was one oft-repeated over the course of the ensuing week, as Klaus and Finn soon became experts at fending off their mutual younger brother's relentless attacks. Because somehow, Kol had gotten it into his head that his time would be best spent in the service of endeavoring to bring lifelong happiness to Elijah, and that his two brothers were best suited to aiding him in this noble venture.

Kol had figured that the most efficient way to go about bringing that lifelong happiness to Elijah would be by none other than coercing the object of Elijah's affections to admit similar feelings for him.

In other words, after a thousand years of existence, Kol was finally delving into the previously untried career of matchmaker, much to the continued suffering of Finn and Klaus. Rebekah was wisely not invited to join in on his mad plans given that her hatred of Elena was common knowledge, and she would probably invest more time in trying to subtly push the Doppelganger off a cliff than she would trying to convince the girl to go for her brother.

Klaus had forgotten that Kol, boredom, and the possibility of a wicked scheme with which to occupy his time was a surefire combination for disaster on some monumental scale.

The last time Kol had sought entertainment to cure the drudgery of everyday life, it had been the 15th century and Klaus had one morning awoken to a hysterically chortling brother, a horde of angry villagers with torches and pitchforks outside his front door, and a cacophony of villager voices screaming out "Witch!" while simultaneously trying to break down his door and drag him off to be burned at the stake. That little interlude hadn't ended well for either Kol or the villagers and had taught Klaus a valuable lesson in being infinitely wary of his little brother's plotting.

Finn, despite having just spent the last nine hundred years in a coffin and therefore not as much time around Kol and his ludicrous ideas, was no less hesitant to join. After all, he had just rejoined the world of the living—his simplest desire was merely to reacquaint himself with a strange new time that involved moving pictures, noisy vehicles, and, perhaps the most wonderful invention of all, indoor plumbing.

Unfortunately for them, Kol was nothing but tenacious. Determined to rescue his favorite brother from the bowels of doomed-love hell, he was similarly bent on dragging Finn and Klaus into his preposterous schemes. He dogged them relentlessly, popping up in the oddest of places (Finn had memorably locked himself in the bathroom the other day in a desperate bid for peace and quiet) with his bright eyes shining and an eager grin firmly fixed on his face, ready to badger whichever brother he had managed to corner.

That afternoon, Klaus and Finn had retreated to the mansion's library in the hopes that Kol's legendary dislike of the written word and philistine personality would give them some measure of respite, but they had no such luck.

A heavy sigh left Klaus' lips as a loud bang of the library doors announced his riotous little brother's presence for the umpteenth time in five days. Leaning against a bookshelf across the room, Finn was seemingly holding the same wearying thoughts, his eyebrows gathering together in a frown as he stared blankly at an indignant Kol.

"I don't see how you two could possibly be so coldhearted," Kol professed without any ado or ceremony, with enough hurt in his voice that Klaus almost believed he was genuine.

But then again, this was Kol—the master of falsified emotions and one of the most unstable personalities known to man (Klaus included).

Klaus flipped through the musty book he was holding in a bored manner, set on firmly ignoring his irksome sibling in the hopes that he would lose interest and leave.

"Nik! Don't you think you owe it to Elijah, after daggering him so cruelly, brother?"

Klaus glowered at Kol, his posture tensing at the reminder.

"And Finn! Wouldn't you do anything to make our dear big brother happy?" Kol queried with a disturbing amount of sincerity, causing Finn to shift uncomfortably. "I mean, come on! Remember the time he rescued you from that rampaging bear when we were young?"

"Kol…you were the one he rescued…" Finn pointed out slowly. "Seeing as you found it amusing to poke a sleeping bear with a stick."

Kol blinked, ignoring Klaus's not-so-subtle cough of "idiot". "Oh…right. Huh." He shrugged, spinning to face Klaus. "But Nik! What about that one instance where Elijah saved you from going over that waterfall, just as you were about to topple over the edge and into a watery grave!"

"Kol…that was not me," Klaus said with an irritated scowl on his face.

"It wasn't?"

"Hardly, you idiot. That was you."

"Really? Could have sworn…" Kol murmured to himself, before allowing his shoulders to move up and down in another carefree shrug. "Oh well." Then he brightened. "Wait! What about that time when he stopped a hundred savage natives from skinning you alive and roasting you over a fire?"

"You," Klaus and Finn chorused wearily.

"Rebekah and the abnormally large pumpkin of doom?"

"You."

"Stampeding buffalo?"

"You."

"See, now I think you're just lying," was the sulky accusation from Kol, his brows furrowed in consternation.

Klaus smirked. "We're not lying, Kol. But of all the things to carry over from your human life, did it really have to be your abysmally horrendous memory?" He ducked just in time to avoid the first edition copy of War and Peace that lodged itself in the wall where his head had been but a moment before. He eyed the newly-made hole in his previously pristine wall with displeasure, before directing his irked gaze to a smug Kol. "I hope you know you're fixing that."

"Bite me, Nik."

"Well, since you asked," Klaus drawled, allowing his eyes to darken and fangs to elongate noticeably. However, his entertainment was cut short as Finn stepped forwards with a thunderous expression, placing a restraining hand on Klaus's shoulder and sending a warning glance at a bristling Kol.

"Enough, both of you. This behavior is senseless." His deep tone brooked no room for argument; his grave face cowed both brothers into momentary silence. "Kol."

"Yes?" Kol's voice squeaked slightly as he spoke—understandable considering that while Finn spent a majority of the time as a rather mellow person, he'd inherited their intimidating father's crazy eyes and uncanny talent for freezing a man's blood with a single look.

"Should we aid you in this, you must agree to two items." Finn ignored the ironic expression of betrayal that flashed on Klaus's face at his defection.

Suitably quelled, Kol gave a questioning, "Uh, yes?"

Tightening his hold on a still-grumbling Klaus, Finn continued, "One: you will grant Niklaus and myself a three-week recuperation period afterwards in which you will refrain from speaking, and if you absolutely must will only do so in nothing louder than a whisper."

Moping, Kol replied with a piqued "Fine."

Nodding in satisfaction, Finn finished, "Two: in the all-too-inevitable event that Elijah discovers what it is that has been happening, you will accept full responsibility and blame."

Kol paled at that condition, but only hesitated for a moment before giving a markedly more resigned "Fine."

Elijah's wrath was not something to be taken lightly. Still, he would merely have to ensure that Elijah remained completely unaware of what was going on until he and the little Doppelganger were happily in the throes of relationship bliss, and Elijah would be so grateful to his little brother that there would be absolutely no urge to pulverize him for meddling. The scenario whirling through Kol's head was easier said than done, given that he had never yet managed to pull the wool over Elijah's eyes yet…but Kol was an optimistic vampire.

Or he was a vampire lacking that little conscientious voice in his head that tells us when our ideas are utterly ludicrous and stupid to the extreme, but why quibble?

"Very well, brother," Kol said with a nod. "It's a deal, then."

Klaus gave Finn a long-suffering stare as Kol bounded out, satisfied at having pestered his victory out of his brothers and clearly already plotting on how best to end the drought that was Elijah's love life. "I have absolutely no idea of why I'm being forced into this, Finn."

An unnaturally smug smile spread across Finn's normally impassive face, and he patted Klaus's shoulder lightly as he passed by. "Look at it this way, brother: you have about nine hundred years worth of family bonding time to work off." He could practically feel his half-brother's glare burning a vicious hole through his back. "Enjoy."

This is going to be a short little multi-chaptered story, maybe three chapters if all goes well. And best of all, it's definitely going to be a light-hearted Elijah/Elena story, with little angst or drama. It's hard to resist spinning tragic stories for these two (potentially) star-crossed lovers (and I'm definitely among the guilty ones that do so XD), but even Elijah and Elena deserve a little cuteness now and then right?

While I'm truly going to attempt to keep everyone as in character as possible, I might take a few liberties with Kol's personality, but not too many. From his teasing interactions with Rebekah, and from Klaus's amusing and snippy bantering with him, I really think Kol is probably the most mischievous and amusement-loving Original sibling. We don't see much of him or Finn on screen anyways, so I feel some creative interpretation is quite justified in this case.

Please read and review, I'd love to know what my fellow Elejah shippers think!