And Today Nobody Needs Love

There are many things that could be said about how and why it happens. I was drunk, I was lonely, I got carried away… and the most cliché of all, it just happened. And somewhere around Mt. Olympus, Eros cringes because these days, you rarely hear the reason that his existence is there for, and it's as if he might as well not exist.

Alcohol, check. There's enough bottles of vodka on the bedside table to get a whole freakin' neighborhood drunk, and almost all of them are empty. That's not a bad number for one night, considering that a vampire's alcohol tolerance is way higher than a human's. (If you're like her who uses the buzz to deal with emotions, in which case you will readily swallow anything that can be shoved into your mouth, then thirty two bottles is not at all surprising.) If her mother could see her now, the sheriff would be horrified about the fact that her daughter was able to drink that much because only a few years ago the Mystic Grill bartender was arrested for letting her get drunk on three shots of vodka.

And when Liz Forbes finds out who she drank it with, the matriarch would scream.

Loneliness, check. Her Dad once told her that the people you miss aren't the people you think of when you're alone – it's who you think of even when you're happy with a crowd. It's been almost three years and there's been many other people, but the sad truth is that there had been nobody quite like him, or the way he made her feel.

If she could, she would actually turn back time so she could do things differently. When Rebekah asks her, "Do you have feelings for my brother?" she would not deny it; when Bonnie pleads, "But you love him and he loves you, why should you care about the fact that she has a kid with that trailer trash slut!" she would listen; and when he… whenKlaus looks at her right in the eye says "Tell me you love me and I'll spend the rest of this life showing you the world just like I promised - I'll leave New Orleans and everyone else behind.", she would not hold back her tears, turn around and walk away. She might even say what he wanted to hear.

"But he has a child, Bonnie. And that child needs a family. Her father and her mother. Klaus is his her father, but I… I'm not Hope's mother. Hayley is."

And then maybe things would turn up differently. And maybe she wouldn't be lonely.

Emotional overwhelm, check. Because a fingertip gently pressed to the lips can do more than silencing someone who speaks. It can close eyes and ease breathing too. (It's also a more sexually arousing that torrid French kisses, no matter what those Mexican soap operas say.) There's just something tenderly comforting about the way light fingers gently trace their way from pale soft cheeks to saccharine pink lips. It might just be the best way to get acquiescence, and when you have acquiescence, you can proceed with everything else.

Who said you need a grappling background to elicit a submission?

It just happened, check. She was at a bar in another country far far away, wasting the night away when he came in. She recognized him (how could she not, she would never forget that he was there at the bar with his brother that night Klaus asked her about her hopes and dreams) and although she knew that Kol Mikaelson had many reasons to want revenge from her for everything that she and her friends did, she did not do anything but sit there because at that point there wasn't really anything in her life that still mattered. She doesn't know how he saw her and why he went up to her, nor how they got out of the bar and into some room in some corner of this crazy world. It just happened.

It just happened. That's what we all say when we can't or don't want to explain why certain things happened. It's just seldom the truth.

And love?

Frankly, she couldn't care less if there was love or not that night. When she woke up the next morning the sheets were all messed up and clothes were strewn all over the floor and the stench of alcohol was drenching in the air and the headache – god, the headache – it was terrible. (Whoever thought that vampires could still get hung over.) There might have been some feelings of guilt or regret (she did at least wanted to be in love the next time she slept with somebody) but it was hard to tell because the feelings of soreness and nausea were all that she could recognize.

But it was ok since she was not alone and there was nobody saying "I intend to be your last love" only to reveal that he had a child – something she will never be able to give him – with someone else a few year laters. There's just… Kol. Beside her, eyes closed and chest rising and falling as he breathed soundlessly in his sleep.

She does her best to will the nausea away and get out of bed as quietly as she could because this is the kind of headache that makes you go to the bathroom and kneel in front of the toilet bowl. Her hair falls all over her face she proceeds to throw up, (puke, if you will) last night's dinner, the taste of alcohol returning to scorn her weary senses as the retching sound of vomiting echoed mockingly all over the bathroom.

"You should've told me you were a light drinker." He says, an eyebrow slightly raised as he leaned indifferently against the wall, his arms folded nonchalantly across his chest as he watched her from the doorway.

She doesn't raise her head to look at him, but her lips turn up into a faint tired smile. "Maybe you would have known that if you insisted I take that drink you offered at the Grill back then."

He shakes his head as another wave of nausea causes her to gag once more. But he walks towards her anyway, bending down to gently gather the strands of her limp, blonde hair and hold it back for her while she vomits again. And again. And again.

"Women..." He says hopelessly, his nose wrinkling at the sight and the stench of it all.

But he stays beside her anyway, and she doesn't tell him to go away.

And today, just today, nobody needs love.