A/N: I spent time in between class and meetings writing this Klonnie drabble named after a lyric from a Lifehouse song because this is the kind of person I am. 1) Any Norse enthusiasts who might be reading: forgive me if the holidays are appallingly incorrect. 2) Any Byron enthusiasts: I'm sorry, I don't know why Klaus hates Byron, but rest easy knowing I'm personally a fan.
Hope y'all enjoy! And happy Valentine's Day!
He blames the witch for this.
He's lived a thousand years just fine without sullying his feet in the deplorable slime of corporate American holidays. He is not averse to holidays themselves, mind. Occasionally, when the fancy strikes him, he did as his forefathers had done and marked the old, agrarian ones. But those did not require endless themed commercials and ridiculous greeting cards. He needed no artificially (terribly) flavored confections to celebrate Ostara and Disting and Walpurgisnacht, nor did he care that these celebrations had largely faded from popular memory save for the occasional, laughable recreation by bereft urbanites who wouldn't know real magic if it burned the hair off their heads.
He remembered, he lit the fires, and the world shuffled on.
But Valentine's Day?
Of all the ludicrous amalgamations of scattered motifs that constituted "holidays" in the United States, this particular one was the most absurd and blatant money-grab preying on human loneliness since George Gordon Byron went around the English countryside charming widows out of their fortunes in exchange for trite poetry.
(The fact that, centuries after the man's death, the western world continued to plaster his cheap rhymes across every imaginable surface come February gave him yet another reason to despair of human progress and despise Valentine's Day from the bottom of his irritable heart)
And yet, here he stands in the candy and gifts aisle of a local CVS like some plebeian, wanting to believe that Lindt really did import their chocolate from Switzerland, and that heart-shaped boxes are charming rather than artistically repellant.
And it was, he decided, entirely her fault.
They had both been busy dealing with their respective constituencies within the supernatural population of New Orleans - Bonnie negotiating peace between two irascible witch covens both accusing the other of intruding on ancestral land, and he himself brokering yet another truce between the vampires and werewolves over a bar fight that had begun escalating into a gang war - and scarce had time to glance at a calendar. And so February 14th might have come and gone unnoticed for him as it had done for centuries, were it not for Rebekah's casual question to him the week prior.
"Got anything planned for Valentine's Day?"
"Having my nails individually and painfully removed at the cuticle by a medieval torture enthusiast. Why do you ask?"
His sister had rolled her eyes and continued stirring blood into her morning latte. "Yes well, have you considered that Bonnie might be expecting something? Seeing as how, you know, she's an actual person with feelings instead of a cantankerous old cadaver."
And as loathe as he was to admit Rebekah was right about anything, her remarks had given him pause. Over the next few days he observed Bonnie even more closely than usual, watching for any signs or hints that she might have hitched her hopes to a Valentine carriage, so to speak. But she was, simply, Bonnie. Bonnie who indulged his morbid humor, who smiled at him in a way that was frighteningly disarming, who kissed him in the mornings smelling of herbs and magic, who shared the long hours of solitude with him in his studio in tranquil silence.
And subtly, damnably, he began to panic.
He realized that she did not, in fact, expect anything from him on Valentine's Day, and that somehow made it worse. That here was a woman he deemed worth all manner of adulation and praise who expected nothing extravagant from him triggered a mild existential crisis that found him driving to every boutique in New Orleans to purchase anything with even a hint of pink.
"That'll be $40.65."
He glares at the cashier as though she, and not the little Bennett witch, were responsible for this indignity before handing over his Visa. Her eyes widen a little at the sleek card and she gives him a surreptitious glance. He supposes not many people with a black Visa shop at CVS and once again shakes a hopeless figurative fist at the predicament in which he finds himself. He is then promptly distracted by a bunch of heart-shaped balloons emblazoned with the words "love" and "sweetheart."
"Anything else for you today?"
He swallows the last, tiny shred of his dignity.
"I'll take the balloons as well," he mutters.
"I'm sorry could you speak up-,"
"The balloons, woman! Give me the bloody balloons."
He snatches up his purchases and stalks outside, head held high and daring any to question him.
"Bloody blithering hell."
He returns home after a battle with rush hour traffic he is sure would have tested the mettle of his most fierce Viking ancestor only to find that Bonnie Bennett has bested him once again.
He drops the multitude of shiny pink packages to survey her conquest.
The living room is aglow with several dozens of candles - in old fashioned candelabra like he prefers, trailing thick tresses of wax - and a haphazard trail of rose petals leads invitingly up the stairs to his room.
He mills about for a few more seconds, casting for a way - any way - to salvage a victory before running a hasty hand through his ruffled hair, dropping his jacket on the chair, and making his way upstairs.
He imagines even his mighty forefathers would agree that, in some cases, one had no choice but to concede a dignified defeat.
He finds the room similarly bedecked with candles and flowers and, there on the center of his bed she had once called "obnoxiously huge", clad in some pink lingerie with a ridiculous amount of ribbons, is Bonnie Bennett sleeping like the dead.
Perching beside her, he runs a slow hand up her leg to rest on the half-bare waist. He's tugging amusedly at a ribbon when she startles awake.
"Nik! You're home already... what time is it?"
"Evidently, time for ribbons," he says dryly, playing with a bow on her hip.
"Crap," she looks at the clock as her shoulder slump in defeat. "I was supposed to be laid out Eartha Kitt style when you walked in, not lingerie Rip Van Winkle."
"What exactly is this thing?" he pokes at the frothy pink lace encircling her thigh.
"It's Valentine lingerie," she explains sheepishly, fighting a yawn, "I was trying to surprise you. Ugh, but I was so tired I just passed out."
"Long day at the Quarter?"
"It took forever," she sighs, falling back against the pillows. "But I finally convinced them to share the building for now until we figure out a time to do the Land Binding ceremony. That's probably gonna take another four weeks of negotiations."
He clucks sympathetically, stroking her leg and trying to ascertain just how she got into the lacy, ribbony negligee by herself.
"What did you do all day?" she questions.
"Oh, this and that. I may have purchased ah...one or two boxes of candy."
"You were trying to buy Valentine presents?" she arches an eyebrow.
"You scattered rose petals up the stairs to my room?"
She shrugs a little, fiddling with a pink bow above her breast. "I thought - I dunno, other couples do all kinds of stuff for Valentine's, I thought we'd try it. Caroline's been driving me crazy talking about her twenty eight little gifts for Stefan."
"Twenty eight? Surely not-,"
"One for 'every day of the month of Love'," she finishes, rolling her eyes. "Gross, right?"
"Revolting." He lies down beside her, still fascinated by the intricacies of her nightie. "How ever did you get this thing on?"
She laughs, and he thinks it's a sound he will never tire of hearing. "I don't even know. I think it's on backwards, there's just so many ribbons...," she flings an arm over her face. "I look ridiculous don't I?"
"Well, that isn't quite the word I would use-,"
"It's okay, you can say it," she groans from beneath her arm.
"Decorative is a far more accurate term," he supplies, a smile in his voice. "Like the marzipan roses they put on pastries-,"
He allows her to whack him with a pillow, resulting in a pillow fight he is happy to lose when Bonnie ends up atop him in her adorable ribboned glory.
She drops her fluffy weapon and suddenly collapses atop his chest. Klaus holds her there for a few moments, rubbing light circles over her back, burying his nose in her hair and inhaling the warm, sweet scent of her layered beneath all the other scents that have followed her home. His little witch has been busy, as always. He can see her in his mind's eye, holding court between witches twice her age, her little frame girded with power and poise. The familiar surge of pride and fierce protectiveness wells up inside him and he has to bury the ensuing desire to charge forth and solve those witch problems himself thoroughly and swiftly so he could keep her by his side safe and content every day, keep her sweetness and warmth all to himself.
"Nik?"
"Hmm?
"I'm so tired."
"I can't say I'm feeling vivacious myself," he murmurs.
She nuzzles a little into his shoulder. "Wanna watch TV in our pjs?"
"Depends on what we will be watching-,"
"The History Channel has-,"
"You've already lost me."
"Snob."
"I prefer 'historically aware' thank you."
"HBO is doing a documentary on Byzantine art-,"
He starts to interrupt but she cuts him off, an irresistibly coaxing look on her face. " You can tell me all the stuff they get wrong while we're watching it?"
She knows him entirely too well.
He harrumphs in agreement and kisses her, and kisses her again, and for a while there is only the soft sound of her quickened breathing and his murmured words.
Later, surveying the mess of pink tissue paper and guttering candles that is now his living room while Bonnie dozes on his shoulder midway through the documentary, he reflects on their evening. He'd discovered that Lindt chocolate wasn't entirely terrible but tasted much better licked off her fingers or lips, that HBO knew next to nothing about Byzantine religion, and that the small witch curled up by his side was somehow, maddeningly, worth consuming any amount of mediocre chocolate and historical inaccuracy.
He blames her entirely for the creeping thought that perhaps... perhaps there is something to marking certain modern holidays. She burrows into his chest some more and he gathers her close, allowing his own eyes to drift close. After a day battling traffic and cashiers and boutique managers, his heightened supernatural senses are no less grateful for the quiet and warmth and ease of their shared evening.
"Can we do this every year?" she mumbles into his shirt.
Klaus pulls a blanket over them, ignoring the chocolate wrappers that fall to the floor like tinsel wings, musing on the benefits of innovating a tradition or two of your own, and supposes that if someone at some point had decided, together with their loved ones, how Ostara and and Disting and Walpurgisnacht would be celebrated, then perhaps he and the witch could decide a few things of their own.
"This," he says at last, "this, we can do."