Chapter 3: His Creepy Alien Power was Hypnosis Through His Dimples
Author's note: Thank you for your patience waiting for me to get the next chapter out for this one — I had a rush of inspiration for my Klaroline one-shot series, A Beautiful Symmetry, and wanted to get those written first. Thank you for your thoughtful reviews and support of this work so far. In particular, ssklarolinewrites sent me an incredibly helpful critique for the last chapter regarding Caroline's reactions/motivations. Hopefully, I've provided more details about her that explains her characterization better. Happy reading!
"So your theory is that he's an alien sent to study earthlings and was testing your knowledge by purposely getting facts wrong," the man walking next to Caroline summarized from her previous 20-minute rant about Klaus.
Caroline rolled her eyes at the over-gelled bouffant that her friend was sporting today. "Honestly Stefan, you act as though encountering aliens would be any more illogical than encountering vampires. Who are college professors. Walking toward their weekly department meetings." She huffed in irritation, adding, "Besides, he called himself a hybrid. That's a car for pretentious lip-service hippies, not a respectable monster species."
Stefan chuckled, "And you submit that his creepy alien power was hypnosis through his dimples?"
"Which so didn't work on me, by the way. I could see the surprise in his beady little eyes when he realized it wasn't working," she retorted as they walked past the recently remodeled library.
"Oh you mean those expressive, stormy gray eyes that were a window into his troubled immortal soul," he asked with a silly grin.
She elbowed him harshly in the side, nearly knocking him into a group of Kappa Mu freshman pledges who were wearing cow costumes and moo-ing balefully on all fours. "You know damn well that's not how I described his eyes at all, Stefan!" She added in a much smaller voice, "They were actually more of a steel gray."
She smiled at Stefan's delighted laughter. He had become her closest friend and confidant nearly from the moment she met him when she was a newly turned vampire over a century ago. How she became a vampire was a source of fear and frustration for her — she recalled being roughly pulled into an alley by a dark shadow who drank from her neck until she collapsed in a heap on the cold ground. Then, a cut wrist was jammed between her teeth until she swallowed the stranger's bitter blood. After that, everything went dark and when she opened her eyes again, she could tell she was different.
She couldn't seem to stop sweating and shaking, and she managed to drag herself to the home of a doctor who called on her family occasionally. She had enough presence of mind not to want to worry them about her condition. However, before she could knock on his door, she was overcome by a terrible, aching hunger that caused her to collapse on the front step. While she was shivering and panicking in equal measure, Stefan happened by. He took one look at her and flashed her back to his place where she proceeded to throw as many of his possessions at his head as she could until he had calmed her down enough to explain that he wasn't trying to hurt her. He slowly earned her trust and eventually everlasting friendship as he patiently guided her through the transition. It was a debt she could never repay.
"Hey, where did you just go," Stefan asked worriedly, squeezing her shoulder.
She blinked rapidly, not realizing that her blue eyes had started to water. "It's nothing. I was just thinking about your ugly green glassware that I tried to lodge into the back of your skull when we first met," she said with a wicked smile.
"They were Waterford Clarendon emerald green wine goblets! Do you have any idea how long it took me to find that set," Stefan asked in exasperation.
"Doesn't change the fact that they were hideous and a crime against humanity that they existed," Caroline said with a shrug. "Besides, I completely made it up to you later that year when I pretended to be your scorned wife so that clingy redhead you gave piano lessons to would quit stalking you."
They climbed the steps leading to the main campus square, where they could see students hurrying to class while others lounged on metal benches or on the lawn itself. All that was missing was a Frisbee being thrown and it would be a live-action college brochure. "Fine, we're even," Stefan conceded grudgingly. "Now back to your bizarre inability to properly flirt with someone when they clearly express an interest."
Caroline rolled her eyes and said in irritation, "Seriously? There was no clearly expressing an interest with this dimpled-weirdo douche! He attended my lecture about a curse hoax he perpetuated and then proceeded to rattle me and possibly subtly threaten me. He's obviously up to something and wants to drag me into his mess." She pushed an errant blonde curl away from her cheek and said in a much more subdued tone, "Besides, any time someone who looks like that comes around, it's just better to be safe."
"Than sorry," Stefan asked gently. He hesitated, clearly weighing his words carefully before he continued. "Look, Caroline, I know you haven't had the best luck with men; for generations, you've had to put up with a narrow-minded society discounting you because of your looks and dismissing your contributions as less important."
Caroline snorted derisively. "And then there's my personal life where it's always the ones who seem the most charming, sincere and attractive that are also the ones who turn out to be assholes. And let's face it, with Klaus' ridiculously unfair combination of dimples, sculpted body and his quick wit, he definitely should come with a warning label."
Stefan sighed as they rounded a corner toward Dubois Hall where he taught music. "Caroline, they can't all be like that. You need to let people in, otherwise, you're sentencing yourself to an incredibly long, lonely immortality."
"But it's better than ending up with someone who could be worse than Damon," she said defensively. Her nose immediately wrinkled as she thought of Stefan's cocky, screw-up brother whom she had met multiple times over the course of her friendship with Stefan. While he was attractive, the shiftless way he spent his immortality, merely drinking and fucking his way through the decades, diminished whatever beauty he might have otherwise possessed for Caroline.
He paused at the door to his building and rubbed his right temple tiredly. This was an old argument of theirs, well-worn but he clearly deemed it important enough to mention the highlights every so often. "The good news is that there's only one Damon, Caroline. As well as those other losers you've known. Try to remember that. Who knows? This time it could be different. If you let it be different."
Caroline favored him with a small smile. Stefan was a true friend, and only wanted the best for her. She couldn't imagine an immortal life with him and his quirky 'emergency fedora' and 'backup emergency fedora' he kept in his car at all times, you know, just in case. "I'll think about it, I promise." She rolled her eyes at his triumphant smile and headed to her history department staff meeting in Petrova Hall.
Alaric Saltzman, the head of the history department, threw an irritated look at Caroline when she ducked into their weekly staff meeting a few minutes late. "As I was saying," he aggressively cleared his throat, clearly trying to call attention to Caroline's tardiness, "We have had an unexpected increase in our fundraising, which has resulted in the board's approval for two additional faculty positions as well as a visiting professorship grant."
Caroline quickly sat down at the oval conference table with her colleagues and tried to refrain from gazing longingly out of the sunshine-filled windows. She pulled out her tablet and pretended to take notes while Alaric droned on, instead accessing her latest research. With Klaus' unexpected revelations regarding the Sun and Moon Curse hoax, she had a list of journal article ideas she wanted to write, but likely would be unable to swallow her pride long enough to interview him. Besides, she thought disdainfully, it's not as though I would be able to cite him as a credible source in my references. How would you even apply MLA-style to the reference immortal hybrid dimpled asshat who created curse artifacts to perpetuate a hoax? She could just imagine the editors' reactions if she included such a citation in her submissions to the Journal of Interdisciplinary History or Comparative Civilizations Review.
Still, it was a shame she wouldn't be able to tap the wealth of knowledge that Klaus obviously possessed. Sure, it was his knowledge she wanted to tap. Her mind wandered back to their tension-filled but somehow electric encounter and how she had no choice but to acknowledge how invigorating their verbal sparring over history had been. She sighed inwardly as she tuned back in to Alaric's announcements as he explained, "With our new budget allocation model, our university is striving for transparency with its donors, faculty, staff and students." Caroline rolled her eyes as she caught the smug smile on Tyler's face as he leaned back in his chair. The only thing transparent about the budget was the suspicious amount of funding Tyler received. The Lockwoods had held a board seat for generations; it was a wonder that Tyler's middle name wasn't nepotism.
Finally, Alaric appeared to be wrapping up the meeting's agenda, touching briefly upon the ongoing renovations in the Tunde Annex and the revised orientation program for international and transfer students. As everyone started to rise from the table, he cheerfully called out, "And don't forget, the provost plans to review all department budgets by the end of this quarter, so please send me your proposals by the 20th. The resulting groans and grimaces caused him to grin in a sadistic manner that only school administrators seemed to achieve.
A knock at the open doorway caught Alaric's attention. The department head eagerly weaved through his staff to greet the arrival. "Excellent, you're right on time. We're so pleased to have you join us!"
She was sliding her tablet back into her bag when Alaric stopped her and said excitedly, "Caroline, I want you to meet Professor Mikaelson. He's accepted our department's visiting professorship grant."
Heart pounding, Caroline looked up to see Klaus standing next to Alaric, wearing his signature smirk.
