without all the screaming of headcanons that i do with anne, raoul the romanion eurovision vampire would never have been born. i love him, he is part of me now, i'm sure we'll see more of him soon. conversation between caroline and a certain original on linguistic devices were airlifted straight from our conversations, because anne is a genius that way.
also, ishi is a great source of inspiration for writing as well because half the things she yells at me ends up being straight up dialogue here. this fic is my shrine to them.
a little easy on the bamon this chapter - perhaps a bit too casual, but i'm saving all the good bits for the next chapter.
hope you read, and review too!
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12:51
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Part Two
Call It Fate, Call It Karma
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Removed from the mayhem and massacre of New Orleans, there wasn't much for Klaus to do in New York. He tried his hand in being protector of the night, but after Caroline realised he'd been tailing her for some time, she was quite angry with him.
She realised he'd been tailing her when she heard his admiring cheers after kicking a newly-turned vampire in the jaw.
"Couldn't have done it better myself, sweetheart!" Klaus applauded, pocketing his binoculars.
"How long have you been following me?" she demanded. She craned her neck to look up at him.
From his perch on the rooftop, he said, "A few hours."
Caroline stared at him, unimpressed.
"Four nights now," he admitted.
Caroline waited, still.
"Two weeks," he sighed, figuring it best to be truthful. He crossed his fingers behind his back.
Caroline, without a word, left.
He noticed she was more careful with the way she walked now because he hardly heard her at all. His apologies had been met with silence. He resolved to amend his mistake and reduced his stalking to just twice a week, until it became increasingly harder to track her down.
Klaus visited the apartment four times the following week and managed to miss Caroline every single time. Damon, elbow deep in a tub of Bonnie's Phish Food, was disgusted to find Klaus in his sanctum sanctorum, poking a finger into the tall stack of books Bonnie had fake-borrowed from the library.
The books fell with a clatter, or would have, had Klaus not put his super speed to good use to pick them up before they hit the floor.
"Bored much?"
"I was locked up for nearly a decade. It doesn't take much to amuse me." Klaus had moved on to Caroline's collection of small cacti lining the windowsill. They used to be grouped in the middle of the kitchen island, but Damon had moved them there to prove a point. When Bonnie easily stepped over them to venture out into the night, Damon figured he might have underestimated the peril of the prickly plants.
"If you like it here so much, why don't you just move in?" Damon asked with a mouth full of ice-cream. He followed that mouthful with several hasty gulps of JD. "That was rhetorical. Get the hell off my couch."
Klaus peered owlishly at him. "Are you worry-drinking?"
"No," Damon said, dumping the now-empty bottle for a new one.
Klaus went ahead on his prowl around the room, studying things, touching things. He had a particular way of observing an object, meaning: if it wasn't Caroline's, it was discarded into a pile in a corner of the room.
All of the things in that pile belonged to Damon.
"What are you doing?" Damon screeched, scandalized.
"Making room for me, of course," Klaus said.
"Of course?" Damon pitched his bottle at Klaus's head, but forgot that Klaus was more than a thousand years old and knew how to duck. The bottle bounced – miraculously – against the mantelpiece and then landed squarely in the middle of the pile.
Klaus looked satisfied. "Good, that's the living room sorted. Now which one's your room?"
—
Word of Bonnie and Caroline's plight for the seemingly-impossible had taken Dumbo by storm. Sometimes, in the middle of Bonnie levitating a drunk werewolf by the ankles, a fan would come and ask for a picture.
"Where'd you learn how to do that?" Kieran from the grocery store asked in awe.
"YouTube," Bonnie answered. She turned her palms upwards and the werewolf crumpled against the alley wall.
"Dude, does he have fur—"
"Hi, Kieran," Caroline appeared out of nowhere as she greeted him warmly. She made sure to deepen her voice. It sounded a bit like a growl now, and probably diminished the warmth. Kieran looked like he was going to piss his pants from excitement.
"How do you know my name?" he asked, mouth agape. "Should we exchange numbers now? I'm good at texting. Holy shit, your eyes – holy fuck, are you a va—?"
"You short-change me every week. Also? If you're trying to clean up the environment, why even offer plastic bags at the counter?" Caroline narrowed her eyes, wondering if that counted as criminal activity.
Bonnie inclined her head. It was only a small shake, but Caroline sighed and understood.
"Anyway. You saw nothing. You were probably on the way home to go marathon Homestuck and jerk off to how many people you scam daily with the price of your so-called free range eggs. I checked your supplier, buddy. All caged! Caged by fiends—"
"Caroline," Bonnie said in her let's-get-a-move-on voice.
Caroline finished compelling him and sent him on his merry way. "How's Fluffy doing?"
"He'll live," Bonnie said. She inspected a nick in her arm that Fluffy had managed to scrape with his one sharp canine. His other had fallen off when Bonnie punched his face with a wall. "What's next on the list?"
After carefully pocketing Fluffy's freshly inked contract, Caroline pulled out her phone. Her shadowed eyes appeared darker in the light the screen provided in the alleyway. "Gotta check out that warehouse in Midtown. Klaus said it'll be hot tonight."
"Klaus," Bonnie repeated. Her tone implied she didn't like the idea, but she didn't despise it either, which Caroline chose to view with optimism. "Is this going to be a thing now?"
"No," Caroline said too quickly. She straightened her spine and managed to look dignified even as she said, "I just agreed, very unenthusiastically might I add, that he could be our intel. Since he does know the seedy underbelly of this stinkhole city."
"He probably gave birth to the seedy underbelly of this stinkhole city," Bonnie muttered. "Anyway, that's like, what – forty minute walk? Forget it, I'll Uber there."
"Jeez, Bonnie." Caroline rolled her eyes. "Not like you haven't done this before. Hop on."
A breeze and thirty-five blocks later they arrive at their destination, Bonnie's cape whipping behind her as she lopes gracefully to her feet. Caroline grudgingly admired it, despite hating how impractical it was.
But then again, it made Bonnie look incredibly cool, especially when she did that thing where she lifted herself into the air.
"I see you hating," Bonnie notes, "and I raise you your mask and how it does almost nothing to hide your identity."
"I like them to be able to hear me talk," Caroline shot back. "When we start going after actual creatures of the night instead of undead jock types, maybe I'll take more care—"
"Shh." Bonnie pressed a finger to her lips. She stood stock-still, chanting something under her breath. A minute later a light wind blew strands of her hair away from her forehead. "I sense at least twelve."
"Now there's a party," Caroline said and snapped out her extendable baton. She didn't need it, but appreciated the aesthetics.
—
Damon returned from grocery duties laden with things they did not usually buy. He knows this because he would edit the grocery list heavily whenever Caroline left it on the counter for Bonnie to find. Today, Bonnie followed him to the corner market because he refused to show her where he'd hidden the list.
"Why do we need kale?" He pulled a face.
"It's amazing how you still think you're included in this pronoun," Bonnie said. She walked right past the pork rinds and into the grains aisle, where she reached for the quinoa. "I spend my nights jumping up buildings. It's called maintenance, Damon."
"Qui-NO -a," Damon tossed the pack back on the shelf. "Am I just going to starve, then?"
"There's Mike's Pizza right around the corner," Bonnie replied, unfazed. She grabbed the quinoa again. "Why don't you just go home?"
Uncharacteristic silence is all that comes from Damon's mouth, which opens and closes and opens again. His eye twitches, his mouth pulls into something other than his token smirk, for once. "It's getting… harder."
Bonnie bites her lip. She'd been avoiding the conversation, clearly. "I see."
"Seeing you is a nice reprieve," he offered.
"Got it." Bonnie sized up the contents of the trolley, then put the quinoa back on the shelf. Damon perks up. "Wanna get a pie to-go? It's been a while since scrabble night."
"Are- are you sure?"
"The crime can wait." She shrugged. "I just got a manicure anyway – not really feeling like punching much tonight."
"Don't you usually just—?" Damon waved his arms around, fingers jerking. "Levitate 'em? Make brain matter leak out of their ears?"
"You tell me," Bonnie snickered. "Aren't you supposed to be the first ever foremost best quality expert on my alter ego life?"
Damon gasped. "So you do read WatchOutVillainz dot com!"
—
Caroline's room was a hive of secrecy. The only person who was ever allowed in there was Bonnie, who usually came in through the adjoining bathroom. Whenever Bonnie did so, they let the shower run and talked in whispers, just because they knew it would grate at Damon.
There was something tugging at the corner of her mind as she swept down the street and climbed up her fire exit and into the window of her room.
The night before last, when she and Bonnie had ambushed those twelve vampires in the middle of their midnight snack, three of them had managed to skedaddle their way out of there. She had beat the others to an inch of their undead lives, Bonnie keeping them in place by simmering the blood in their necks, and only one name had come up.
Her bedroom did not really reflect her work ethic. When she decorated, she had placed comfort, coziness and warmth above efficiency, with quilted throw pillows and Moroccan rugs and a leather ottoman inherited from her late grandparents.
Her walk-in closet told a different story.
Pushing aside winter wear, she found what she'd been looking for: a safe. Inside the safe was a file cabinet, meticulously organized. It took a while to find the file, because she wasn't sure whether it had been filed under R, E or V.
In the end, it was in the 'MISC.' section. She pinched the file firmly between her fingers and out slid all her surveilled information on Raul the Eurovision Vampire.
She had caught him in a shady bar, after he'd eaten the entire room because he'd lost in the Man! I Feel Like A Woman!: A Tribute to Shania Twain karaoke competition. He'd eaten them because in addition to not applauding him after he finished his rendition of You're Still The One, they also didn't believe he was the same Raul who had won the annual international TV song competition back in 1959, simply because if he truly had, he'd be dead by now.
Mostly it was the applause thing.
Raul the Eurovision Vampire had on a long cape that trailed across the blood-smeared floor. He liked wearing high-heeled stiletto boots that gave the appearance of him hovering in mid-air, and brought them up in conversation any chance he got. He ditched those boots when he discovered Caroline was not above clawing up a drainpipe to chase after him.
She skimmed through his contract and found his number; a few seconds later she had her phone out.
Raul answered on the fourth ring. "I'm not home," he hissed, and hung up.
Caroline tried again.
"You are nothing but persistent!" Raul announced despairingly. "Is it not enough that you've banished me from the only home I've ever known; denied me the simple splendour of finally belonging?"
"Weren't you born in Romania or something?"
There was a sound akin to a hurricane as Raul breathed into the phone. "Those are fighting words, square and true! I will vomit on your possessions, insolent mushrump!"
"Uh – yeah. I need you to do something for me."
"A favour, she seeks!" He's still exclaiming. It's giving her a complex.
Caroline quickly explained the situation. "…and now I'm pretty sure you're my one way in."
"You want me to help you capture my friends?"
"Just draw them out. And are you sure they were your friends?" Her lips twitched. "They gave you up so easy."
Raul scoffed, but that was all.
Caroline put her offer on the proverbial table. "I'll let you come back to New York every third weekend."
"What makes you think I'd ever return?" Raul sniffed. "That vile city was a coxcomb that never wanted me. Never was there a city that made me wish more for the eternal wiles of death."
Honestly, she thought the same about this phone call. With an eyeroll she said, "I'll give you back your boots."
There was a long, ugly pause. It was so long and so ugly that Caroline thought he had put down the phone.
At long last he announced, with vigour, "Seduction certainly becomes you, Lady Distraction."
"Actually, my name is—"
"Alas, I have a party to plan!"
"Wait, party?"
"Good bye!" Raul exclaimed. The line did not go dead immediately: there was the sound of a fumble and then the background chatter of Raul watching a tutorial on how to cook moussaka, before an incredulous Caroline ended the call for him.
—
As luck would have it, Caroline met Klaus at the party. Or rather: Klaus's hand was conveniently in the way when she was reaching for a cheese stick.
When she looked up, he was looking at her with astonishment.
"Can it, Mikaelson," she said immediately.
Klaus frowned. "But I haven't said anything."
"You're going tell me how ravishing I look. I'm going to ignore the comment and focus, instead, on why you're suddenly and miraculously standing by the cheese platter of the first party I've been to in three years. Sure, it's actually a stage for my vamp round-up later, but—I mean, come on. You've got to cool it on the stalking."
"For one, I was going to tell you how arresting you looked," Klaus corrected. He actually sounded offended. "And despite the evidence of the contrary, I'm not stalking you. I was invited."
He pulled out an invitation from his pocket, raising his eyebrows in challenge.
Caroline put her cheese stick back on the platter. "You know Raul the Eurovision Vampire. Seriously."
"You mean Rah-OOL?" Elijah asked.
Caroline could have kicked herself for even being surprised. They probably spent the better half of a century perfecting the art of making an entrance.
"He's changed over the years, his vowels not so pronounced." Elijah had a slight kink between his eyebrows, as if it wasn't even worth frowning over, but he was anyway. "If you listen closely, you can tell he used to have an Indo-European accent; it's quite distinct. I detected clear derivations from the original Proto-Indo-European, but it's unmistakable. A fool he has been making of the people in this room, but not us."
Klaus nodded quite seriously, sipping his gin.
"It is difficult to find likeminded company these days; people these days hardly have time to consider the nuances of language shifts and devolving case systems," Elijah was saying with a solemn shake of his head.
"That is so interesting." Caroline strained to smile and ended up baring her teeth instead. She turned back to Klaus. "How do you know Raul?"
("Rah-OOL," Elijah interjected.)
At that moment, Raoul got up on a makeshift stage in the center of the room and started belting out a welcome song he'd penned just two hours before the party (as he'd reminded each one of them as they walked in earlier).
He was back in his cape, boots, and white face paint. Everyone was understandably distracted.
"He's a mate of Kol's." Klaus said absently, and then returned his gaze to her. "Kol turned him some time around the 14th century. He used to sing for Marie Antoinette," Klaus added, like it was supposed to impress her.
Raoul placed a hand to his chest and screeched.
"Man, what a bummer I wasn't alive then," Caroline said dryly.
—
Klaus insisted on walking her home after she had 'created a scene' by making three grown-ass vampires cry in the middle of Raoul's fourteen-minute percussion solo.
Caroline's only response was to rustle their freshly-signed contracts against his jaw.
When they swung open the front door, Bonnie and Damon tumbled, both quite shirtless, from the couch to the floor.
Caroline backed away until her head hit the door. "I didn't know scrabble was euphemism for sex!"
Damon chose that moment to stand, all the better to deliver his comeback, but Caroline gave a shriek that rivalled Raoul's, and Klaus quickly ushered her out.
—
The sun set in a brilliant burn of orange and red. Caroline and Klaus were sitting on a bench, his coat around her shoulders.
"Why doesn't Damon have a room?" Klaus asked, once he'd placated her with ice-cream. Copious amounts of it.
Caroline shuddered at the memory of seeing his erect nipples. And then the shudder turned to rage, and she stabbed her spoon into her double chocolate. "Because he doesn't live with us."
"But he's there all the time."
"So are you," she pointed out.
Klaus has the grace to look abashed. "Only because my situation at home isn't… the most ideal." He gave her a sidelong glance. "But I am leaving tomorrow. It's time, I think."
Caroline looked up. She hadn't expected to hear that, not so soon. He'd been here for maybe a month, skulking around, loudly expressing admiration. He noticed her lack of enthusiasm for Damon's pancakes whenever she got back from a fight and nudged mugs of blood from questionable origins, but it was always hot and pulled flavours deep and rich from her tongue. Sometimes he'd intentionally give her the wrong addresses to vampire cult gatherings just so he could be there ten minutes earlier to "observe her progress". Once, after a werewolf had scraped her arm with his teeth, Klaus had readily shown her his wrist.
The look he'd given her that night had sent her to bed with uncertain, dark, thoughts—and a want, too, that made it difficult to sleep.
She stood up, took Klaus's untouched ice-cream and dumped it in the trash along with hers.
He didn't object then, nor did he object when she retook her seat next to him, turned her face upwards and closed the space between them with a kiss. Klaus made a sound of surprise, and deepened the kiss.
He didn't object when she tugged him off the bench onto their feet, nor did he object when she all but dragged him out of the park with great difficulty, because he still insisted on kissing her while she do it. They could have hailed a cab, but it turned out making out in alleyways could be great fun, especially when Klaus put his mouth to her neck and palmed her breasts through her thin cotton shirt.
"Do you mind if we make a detour?" Klaus asked hoarsely when she'd slammed him to the crumbling alley wall and had looked deviously close to getting down on her knees.
"Detour?" she worried at his belt with playful fingers. "Where do you have in mind?"
"My place in the Upper East Side," he said with a half-grin, because his eyes are closed to the ministrations of her hand through the front of his jeans, which soon stopped when she spluttered.
"You have a place—" she cursed and flashed to her feet, shoving his shoulders. "You sly asshole."
"Honestly, love – if you can see yourself how you look in the comfort of your own home—" Klaus tried to beseech her, but she snorted and stalked off.
Klaus appeared in front of her and stopped her in her tracks. "You were slipping on your mask one night and I saw how fearless it made you look – how sharp and cunning and ready to strike fear into hearts. You exuded this understated sensuality. I was in love with it."
Caroline looked at him curiously. "Was?"
"Am," Klaus amended.
"Good. I'll have sex with you with that in mind." She cleared her throat and stared ahead. "Take me there."
Klaus smiled. He smiled all through hailing a cab, and the smile only just faltered when she was standing in the foyer of his townhouse, looking around with her mouth agape.
"Wait until you see my bedroom," Klaus tried for a joke, but it died when Caroline started undressing.
Sleeping with Caroline was not like the green call of the forest all those years ago. It was like slipping into sleep, a tumble of instinct and touch, a lull that kept on lulling. He pushed into her with a groan. Her neck was wet with her blood; it had spilled from his mouth when she'd wrapped her thighs around him and squeezed. She cursed and damned him when he thrusted deeper, and then she kissed him with the same mouth.
Ten years shackled behind a wall had left him starving for touch, and she met his need with an urgency – but also with a practiced care, a tenderness she didn't realise she had kept in her breast all this while. Caroline could be soft when she wanted, and she wanted to be soft now, with him. When she came, she came with his name on her tongue in a long, keening sigh.
Before he left, Klaus woke her up. They shared a kiss in the shower—nothing more.
He was about to duck into his car when he paused, struggled with something internally, and then turned back to her. The kiss he left on her knuckles lingered, and he gave her a long look weighed down by layers of things she didn't know how to interpret just yet. She just looked back. Whatever he found in her eyes, he seemed content.
And then he said good bye, and was gone.
Caroline didn't know it yet, but it would be four years until she would see him again.
—
tbc
do let me know what you think!