A/N: The Surrogate update is coming, I promise! Meanwhile, I watched Altered Carbon and was forever compromised by Takeshi and Ortega. So I needed an outlet. Anastasia-G also totally twisted my arm too, you know how she is (you should check out her new series "no one hears you say my name" for some amazing torture). This story takes place during 3x21, when Bonnie channels Jeremy to stop Klaus' heart. You know the drill: we make canon our bitch. Lol, get ready to feel things about Klaus!Jeremy cuz I sure did.


1/2

The last time he had felt it, he had been listening to Bizet. He was sitting in the velvet seat of the opera box, his lorgnette forgotten in his lap. He watched Nadir grasp Leila's long dark hair, pulling it towards him like a noose around his neck. Les pêcheurs de perles had never been his favorite opera, but something happened to him as the actors sang.

I think I still hear,

hidden under palm trees,

her voice soft and sound

like a song of wood pigeons…

He started crying silently where he sat, the tears spilling irreverently on his white gloves. He almost wished he could gather them and pour them back into his eyes. He hoped no one could see him.

He cried because he wanted something inexpressible. He wanted to be someone else, somewhere else. He wanted to forget his own name.

Two hundred years later, he felt it again as Stefan sank his treacherous hand into his heart, and across town, Bonnie Bennett pressed her shaking fingers over the Gilbert boy's chest.

The transfer was meant to desiccate him, to render him a mere husk.

He felt consciousness receding, the world shrinking to the size of a pearl…and on the shore of this dormant sea there was the fisherman, Nadir, searching for Leila. Klaus heard the first strings of Bizet…the palm trees shivering in the breeze…their malachite green contained in a heart-shaped face.

He blinked.

The world spun out of him with his first exhale.

He recognized her. The witch was bent over him and her tear-streaked cheeks shone like a mother of pearl. Her veins pulsed black with fresh magic. She choked on a sob and rushed forward, cradling his head to her chest. She embraced him with complete abandon, closing her eyes.

"It worked, it worked," she chanted, kissing the top of his head repeatedly.

Klaus stood frozen in place. He felt that one wrong move might shatter the illusion. But he would not have known how to move. He had not been touched like this in two hundred years or more.

Had anyone ever held him so close without fear of consequence?

You ought not to keep the snake at your bosom, was the old saying. But his mortal enemy was nursing it for dear life.

He suddenly felt the witch's lips on his eyes, on his nose, on his cheeks, on his lips. She peppered him with small, feverish kisses before returning to the top of his head.

He shuddered and recoiled. Perhaps she was the snake. He felt infected. He had never known such a swift weapon.


When he finally managed to stand up, he was shaking. Bonnie Bennett placed his arm around her neck and guided him out of the forest.

"Lean on me," she said, her voice laced with concern.

His gait was different. Each step was like sinking into a pit of sand. Stripped of his powers and cast into this boyish mold, he was uncertain, untried. He faltered. But she was there to catch him.

Her small frame was strong enough for the both of them.


He could step over the Gilbert threshold without any restrictions now. Bonnie climbed the stairs with him, one at a time. He stared at the family portraits on the wall. The doppelganger and her brother, playing with a litter of pups. Sunshine reflecting off their white teeth. He felt nauseated.

She deposited him on the edge of the boy's bed.

"I'll go get you a drink. You just stay put."

"…thank you," he said, tasting the words on his tongue. His voice had a different tonality, like wood dipped in milk.

He thought, next time say thanks. Contractions work better.

Already he was plotting, already his reptilian brain was forging a strategy.

Once Bonnie was out of sight, he dashed into the bathroom across the hall.

He gripped the sink's edge as he stared at his new reflection in the mirror. He was bug-eyed and sallow and so very young. His dark-brown hair was damp with sweat. He ran a trembling hand over his face.

"Fucking hell…" he muttered in complete dissonance with the boy in front of him.

He was that boy now. This was the price of survival.


He had stopped needing nourishment a thousand years ago. Food was blood and blood alone. Everything else was mere décor. Even champagne tasted like bottled dust. He drank it more as an exercise than a luxury.

Bonnie placed the sandwich in front of him. She opened a can of Coke.

Klaus' senses swarmed. It was only peanut butter and jelly. A silly meal for children. Yet his eyes widened and his mouth filled with saliva. He had never felt this kind of appetite before. It had ebbed out of him long ago.

It returned with a vengeance now. True to his nature, he wolfed down the sandwich in two bites and drank every last drop of soda. Every morsel tasted like sweet nectar.

Klaus wiped his mouth self-consciously. He needed more. This had barely scratched the surface.

"Could – could you get me another one?" he ducked his head, wondering if this was something the Gilbert brat would say.

Bonnie blinked. And then a small grin spread across her lips. "Sure thing! I'm so glad you're feeling up to it."

She leaned forward, pecking him on the lips.

Klaus flinched. He'd felt her lips, fleetingly, on the forest floor, but now they burned a singular mark against his Cupid's bow.

She ran out of the room before she could tell he was unsettled. He wiped his mouth again, but the burning mark was still there.


He had to play his part now and play it well. If he ever wanted to recover his body, he had to make good use of this one. He had to embody Jeremy Gilbert in every respect.

He tried to learn as much as he could about the boy. He went over every inch of his room, ransacking the drawers and cracking the notebooks open. Fishing for secrets.

He was surprised to find that Jeremy could draw. Not very well, it seemed, and his subjects were often juvenile: beastly fangs, nightmarish ghouls, broken hearts stabbed through with a knife, tattooed fingers interlaced. But there was some aptitude there. He couldn't help but appreciate fate's chance irony. This was one talent he needn't struggle to emulate. On the contrary.

He read through his grammar-free texts and emails. Jeremy didn't bother with apostrophes. Klaus cringed through his jargon but did his best to implement it. His Internet browser history was unappetizing. The boy's tastes in porn were violently boring. He was average, by all accounts. This shouldn't be hard.

But it was.

He could fool his "sister" fairy well. It was easy to act tetchy and aloof around someone as self-involved as her. He'd lie on the bed with his headphones on, pretending to sketch gory hearts and knives. If she knocked on his door, he'd just tell her to go away. If she insisted, he'd yell about privacy and not being ten anymore. Normal adolescent fits.

But it was hard to do the same with Bonnie Bennett.

He was supposed to be her doting boyfriend.

The witch had sharp, intrusive eyes. If he was ever too quiet or moody, she would interrogate him, ask him what's wrong. He preferred silences, because he was afraid the words might betray his borrowed identity, but she pestered him with questions. She demanded to hear his voice, needed his confirmation.

It was taxing to some extent. But what was truly inescapable was her touch…her kiss…The assault on his skin made it hard to breathe.

The second day of his new existence, he did not go to school. He wasn't even aware he was supposed to go.

She stormed into his room like a morning gale, brewing panic in his stomach.

"I talked to Tina and she said you can borrow her notes for the day, but you better show up tomorrow, Mister. We don't want a repeat of last year."

She dumped her school bag at the foot of his bed and ran her fingers through his hair.

"Already back to school?" he couldn't help but ask with salt in his voice. "You took him out only two days ago."

"Who?"

"You know who."

Bonnie frowned, tilting his chin up, scanning his features. "I'm fine, Jer. I'm just glad he's gone."

"But he's not gone completely," he insisted foolishly. "I mean…the body…"

"Stefan took care of that. He can't hurt us anymore," she said crisply. "I don't want to talk about him anyway."

Klaus forced himself not to glare. He wanted to drag her body down on the bed and choke the life out of it. He wanted to grin wide as he let her know he could still very much hurt her.

But instead – instead Bonnie crawled into his lap of her own volition and pulled his head towards her.

His anger was channeled into their first proper kiss.

She parted her lips shyly for him, but he didn't have the patience for her fluttering affection. He didn't want to know what she tasted like; he didn't want her smell in his nostrils. He grabbed the side of her head and crushed her mouth against his, trying to drown it out. Drown out the sensation of her mouth, her body. He ignored her muffled gasp and focused on punishing her, silencing her. Teeth scraped against each other. Lips bruised lips. He wanted to draw blood. And then halfway through, he realized how foolish he was being, how much he was risking. He slowed down… he almost stopped. He let Bonnie take charge. She whimpered against his lips and caressed his jaw. Klaus winced. Their mouths crested and fell together. Her tongue traced his bottom lip, forcing him to taste her after all. He inhaled the scent of her shampoo. Hatred and fear and something else, something darker coursed through him.

When they parted, slightly breathless, he looked away, straining to hide his eyes. "Sorry, I got carried away."

He was still angry, still hurting.

Bonnie laughed nervously. "It's okay. We're making up for lost time."

Klaus wished he knew what she meant. He had no knowledge of her romantic history and before today, never thought he would need it except to threaten her.

He remembered how easy it had been to make her do his bidding when he had sent Kol after Jeremy.

She wore her vulnerabilities on her sleeve. Was there anything she wouldn't do for this boy?

That sort of blind loyalty – he mocked it. He craved it. He'd made hybrids for a taste of it.

And now, here it was, on his tongue.


She snuck behind him, quiet as a cat. Without his heightened senses, he didn't hear her. She tackled him from behind, putting her hands over his eyes, shrouding him in darkness.

"Guess!"

Klaus was so startled in the moment that he turned around and grabbed her. If he had still been an immortal being, he would have ripped her apart. For a moment, time stood still and Bonnie widened her eyes.

But then, he forced a wry smile on his lips and pulled her into an embrace, hands gliding helplessly along her spine. He could do so much to her, yet nothing at all.

Metal lockers snapped shut behind him. The floor squeaked with the sound of sneakers and heels.

"Study hard!" she told him with an uneasy smile as she disentangled herself.


He retreated into the antisocial persona he suspected fit Jeremy like a glove. But one of the boys who sat next to him in Biology pointedly rolled his eyes.

"Dude, you're not doing the emo thing again, are you? Ninth grade was last year."

He hunched over his minuscule desk, pretending to take notes while he stabbed the same hole into his notebook.

He managed to stay silent until English.

The teacher kept strutting between the desks, demanding an answer. "Has no one done their reading? Come on, what unique perspective does Thomas Hardy give us in the Mayor of Casterbridge? Hint, it's not human."

Silence stretched on like a dank miasma. Their collective ignorance grated on his skull.

One particularly challenged individual whispered "does she mean it's an alien?"

He shot his hand up, disgruntled.

"It's a fucking bee. That's the unique perspective. Christ."

The teacher's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "That's…correct, but I'm afraid I don't tolerate that kind of language in class, Mr. Gilbert."

"But you tolerate idiocy?"

He shouldn't have said that. He lost his temper out of nothing. But he had managed to avoid high school for one thousand years. To top it off, he'd earned himself a trip to the principal's office.

Perfect.


Gym class was a whole other slice of hell. Without his supernatural stamina, he was just a pack of clumsy meat. He did not want to struggle for supremacy with a bunch of sixteen year-olds. He would not chase a ball.

He chose track. Speed was another ability he had taken for granted. He'd always flown from place to place. Now he trudged. He slogged. He lumbered.

He ran until his lungs burned. He almost fell to his knees. And still, he'd covered no distance at all. He was drenched in sweat.

He saw a mountain of limbs rising in the distance. But no, in fact, it was a pyramid of cheerleaders in their short red skirts. They cartwheeled and spun into his vision, perfect victims. He would have drunk from each one, leaving a carmine trail in his path.

And then there was Bonnie.

He blinked. He had not expected her here.

She waved at him emphatically, twirling in her uniform, white sneakers and dark legs.

Klaus bent down and retied his shoelaces. He stared at her from the corner of his eye.

It was dizzying, knowing that he didn't have to compel or force that young thing to come to him and give herself to him.

All he had to do was call her name.


He bled now. He had bled before, but it always healed too quickly to be memorable. His present scrapes lingered like paint on canvas. Bruises, too. He knocked his elbow against the bedpost and the blue butterfly of broken vessels stayed with him for days. It was obnoxious to suddenly care about your body, to look after it.

Bonnie noticed the bruise. She planted a kiss on the afflicted spot. "There, all better."

He wanted to say, no, it's not. He wanted to say, nothing you could do could make me better.

But she did not deny herself. His body seemed to belong to her. She lay on the couch next to him. She leaned her back into his chest. He could do nothing but open his arm for her. He had to welcome her.

He suspected her relationship with this boy had always been fraught, just on the edge of withdrawal. She needed him close to be sure he was there.

He could hear her animal heart beating against his. It was sickening, because he could hear his heart too.

They watched TV, but the images on screen never registered for him. All his attention was focused on this little creature, burrowing into him, stealing his warmth.

He let himself relax by degrees. He let his body simply be. It was difficult to do, because all his life he had kept guard. He had imposed rigid strictures. No one could lie in his arms for very long, not without repercussions. You couldn't take chances when you were at the top of the food chain.

He ran his knuckles against her bare arm. He liked the way her skin reacted to his touch.

Bonnie raised her head for a kiss and he only hesitated for a fraction of a moment. He dipped down and captured her lips, relishing the trust she placed straight into his mouth. Even her taste was becoming familiar.

He almost smiled. She had no idea.

You are kissing the monster and you don't even suspect.


"Are you taking drugs again?"

Elena whispered the question, afraid of the answer.

Klaus rolled his eyes. "Are you?"

"Jer!"

"Well, you asked."

"Only because I'm worried…you're distant and sulky."

"As opposed to your sunny personality?" he drawled. Living with her hadn't improved his opinion of her very much.

Elena folded her arms, waiting.

"I'm clean," he sighed. "Search my room for needles or weed or …whatever else the kids take these days."

"The kids? Jeremy, you're a kid."

"Thanks for reminding me."

He thought the bickering went well. It's what siblings did, after all.


The Salvatores shared little with the Gilbert brat. Damon felt nothing short of contempt for Jeremy, and Stefan was loath to include him in any unsavory discussion, lest his overly protective sister found out.

He had to wrack his brains for a way to extract the information from them.

Where have you hidden my corpse? Where are you keeping it? His eyes begged the question every time he saw thebesotted brothers.

Love, yes. Love was the rusted key. The brothers were chained to Elena. And Bonnie was chained to Jeremy. He had to use the connection.

Help was coming from no other quarters. His own family had fled into the mist. Did they know he had "died"? Were they planning to avenge him?

He could think of no way of contacting them without betraying himself.

Moreover, he was afraid that if he did, they would not heed the call. They might simply turn a blind eye. Maybe they thought they were better off without him.

Maybe…he laughed to himself. There was no maybe.

A lesser being would have fallen into despair. A lesser being would have given up.

But he had stolen into graves and he had robbed cradles. He had sunk his teeth into the devil's tail. This would not break him.

"What are you thinking about?" Bonnie asked with slanted eyes.

"You," he replied, truthfully.


He wrapped one of her curls around his finger. He tugged. Bonnie swatted his hand away.

"We're studying. Focus."

"I can't focus when you're being so …adorable." The words stung the back of his throat. But this was Jeremy's hapless vocabulary, after all.

Bonnie tapped the pen against her notebook. "I'm not doing the homework for you."

"I didn't ask you to," he murmured, stealing another lock of hair.

He knew he wasn't supposed to shine academically, but he'd been truly appalled by Jeremy's intellectual performance. He'd made some small efforts to push him forward. He couldn't really stand by while the teachers threw him pitying looks.

"What do you want then?" she asked, circling a chemical reaction on the page.

I want you to tell me where my body is. And then I want you to take me to it. I want you to look into the corpse's eyes and see your paramour trapped there. I want you to wail by his side. I want you to tear out your heart for him. I want to watch.

Klaus pulled the lock of hair behind her ear. The answer was simple, again.

"You."

Bonnie leaned forward. He circumvented her lips and went straight for her throat. He latched his mouth to the staccato of her pulse, licking the memory of blood. A remnant part of him still thirsted for it. Still wished he could rip her from ear to ear. He sucked the life from her skin, if only in thought.

Bonnie sighed, dipping her head back.

He liked the sounds she made, the delicate symphony of pleasure.

He had always witnessed her in battle or in pain. He'd often caused that pain. This was a different kind of power.

He remembered Elijah lecturing him about manners. It's far easier to hurt than to please, Niklaus.

He would be proud to see him now.


"Who's this Mussorgsky guy?"

Klaus snatched the iPod back with stumbling fingers. "Russian composer."

Bonnie laughed. "You're listening to classical music? What happened to Panic at the Disco?"

"Maybe I've outgrown them."

"And you skipped straight to chamber music?"

"Uh, Mrs. Kowalski said it makes you smarter," he fumbled, deleting his entire track list. "Helps with brain waves."

"Mrs. Kowalski told you that in Math?"

"Yeah, she did. She kept me after class. Hey, stop laughing at me," he muttered, feeling warmth in his cheeks. He had not blushed in centuries.

"I'm not laughing! I think it's cute. Why do you want to be smarter?"

"Because I can't keep up with you," he teased, pecking her lips. He'd grown used to their texture, their plumpness. He liked knowing he could always taste them. That her naïve little mouth belonged to him and him alone.

The thought went straight to his cock. It was the first time he let it. He'd managed to control his mind so far…he'd made considerable efforts to check himself. This was the girl who wanted him dead, who had actually killed him. Wanting to bed her would be lunacy. Sheer lunacy. Except of course…the lure of death made it all the more attractive.

The image came unbidden in his head. It parched his throat.

Her tiny body under his, clinging to him, nails raking his back. She'd be screaming his name into oblivion.

No.

It would be Jeremy's name she'd be screaming.

Suddenly, there was bile in his throat.

He rose from the desk, toppling the pile of textbooks in his wake.

"Hey, what are you –"

"Gotta pee," he offered lamely.

He locked himself in the bathroom. He rested his forehead against the colored tiles. He breathed in the smell of detergent and mouthwash. The modest world he inhabited. His prison.

She was a kind of prison too. She, with her choking presence, her young body.

He shook his head stubbornly. Would he be undone by a teenage witch? Or would he take charge?

She adored Jeremy. That was all that mattered. She could hate Klaus forever, as long as she gave him what he wanted.


A/N: someone is gonna suggest it, so i'm gonna tell you now that yes, the second part will definitely use the "jeremy is also an artist" gimmick. no worries. and smut. let's not forget the smut. anyway, thank you for reading, leave me your thoughts!