Song to Listen to for this chapter: Perfect - Selena Gomez
The flashing lights of the paparazzi just beyond the glass doors made it look as if the outside of the swanky downtown hotel was illuminated by a million little fireflies.
Klaus pulled Caroline quickly by the hand out of the building, pressing his body next to hers in an attempt to block the swarm of cameras on the sidewalk. He led her towards the corner of the street, sticking out the bottle he had swiped and hailing a cab.
"Klaus what about your car?", she shouted from next to him.
"Leaving it."
She opened her mouth and looked at him disbelievingly.
"You cannot leave a two hundred thousand dollar car in the possession of a group of seventeen year old valets!"
He smiled at the shocked expression on her face, managing to wave down a driver as a black hackney pulled up next to them.
"Worst case scenario they get a free joyride and an amazing tip in the morning, now let's go", he called while yanking open the back door of the taxi.
She rolled her eyes and climbed in the back seat alone, pulling the door shut and forcing him to shotgun. Klaus settled into the seat next to the driver and whispered something to him in a low voice before the car began to move.
Realizing a few moments in that they were headed in the direction of neither her hotel or his apartment, she leaned forward and tapped Klaus on the shoulder. His response was a quiet grunt.
"Do you want to tell me where we're going?", she demanded.
"Not really no."
Klaus glanced back at her and pulled a pack of cigarettes from the back inside of his coat, rolling down the window.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
"It wasn't really a question"
He grabbed a lighter from the car's center console and blew a puff of smoke out the window.
"Then you shouldn't have posed it as one", he countered.
"Klaus", she said with annoyance.
"Caroline", he mimicked, "While I understand the slightest lack of control seems to give you a great deal of anxiety, please try to just relax for once in your life."
"Relax? I'm locked in a Taxi with a stranger. You could be taking me to an opium den or some underground sex dungeon for all I know."
Although, Klaus couldn't really be called a stranger anymore considering he was feeling her up ten minutes ago.
He let out a low chuckle at her hysterics and nodded, "Ah yes, those famous 21st century London opium dens, because the city is absolutely crawling with them these days."
She held up her middle finger in the rear view mirror and looked out the window at the passing streets. While she wasn't that familiar with the foreign city, she knew enough to recognize Hyde Park. Klaus motioned for the cab to stop and quickly paid the driver, exiting the car along with Caroline.
She thought they looked a little ridiculous, their stark white designer outfits in the black of night, a bit like escapees of a very ritzy hospital ward. Caroline silently followed him along the sidewalk path before watching him wrench open a black gate and make his way through the grove of darkened trees.
A moment later Klaus stopped, indicating they had arrived at their destination.
She gave him a confused look illuminated by the street lamps overhead.
"Were in a park", she stated blankly.
Klaus threw his arms up with faux enthusiasm.
"By golly Sherlock! You've done it again!"
Caroline resisted the urge to kick him in the chin.
"I meant, why are we in a park?"
Klaus shrugged.
"I used to come here as a kid and sketch, now I come here as an adult and drunkenly sketch", he offered before falling back on a patch of grass and patting the spot next to him.
She looked at the muddy patch before raising an eyebrow.
After she remained standing Klaus looked up at her expectedly.
"400 pounds", she stated.
"What?", he asked confused.
"This dress cost 400 pounds and you can be bothered to put your jacket down for the lady."
Caroline shook her head.
"I'll have you know this suit was a gift from Giorgio Armani himself", he said haughtily.
"Well I'm sure Mr. Armani will be thrilled his contributions are going to the less fortunate", she quipped before taking a seat on the makeshift blanket.
Caroline reached over Klaus's lap and snatched the bottle of liquor from his side, taking a swig and scrunching her face together at the taste.
After a few seconds he pulled the bottle away from her lips and settled it in the space between them.
"Easy tiger", he warned.
Caroline's face turned to a pout. Klaus shook his head no and kept the handle locked in his grip.
"All this hypocrisy coming from the one who incited my alcoholism in the first place."
He grabbed his chest in mock offense, "And how is that Caroline Forbes?"
"You threw me into the ring with Satan, that's how!"
She held her hand open in front of her and he eventually relinquished the bottle.
"Only because you've earned it, Tatia is absolutely petrified of you."
"Ha", Caroline let out a single, curt laugh. "That's funny considering I'm pretty sure she wants to murder me and turn my skin into a new purse. I don't know if you've caught on yet but I have all the prowess of a teacup Chihuahua."
Klaus smirked and took his own pull of the bottle, "Caroline if she didn't fear you she wouldn't have looked at you twice, she fights because she's threatened."
Caroline made a small sound of disbelief.
"I still can't believe you subjected yourself to that for a year", she scoffed
"Two actually", he jeered
"Even better."
Caroline passed the bottle back as a consolation. He laughed at her gesture.
"How?", she asked.
Klaus took a drink of his own before answering. While she couldn't see the blue of his eyes in the dark, his stare still managed to hold her captive.
"There is a fine line between love and hate Caroline. They're both acts of passion, both require an extreme amount of devotion. Sometimes you don't quite realize when you've crossed it", he whispered.
Warmth bloomed across Caroline's face, blanketing her cheeks like a field of peonies hidden under the shroud of night.
"Believe it or not, Tatia wasn't always such a nightmare. Or maybe she was, a wolf in sheep's clothing all along. The point is that the person you met tonight wasn't the woman I loved", he said quietly, with an air of sadness to his words.
"So what was she?"
"She was wild, and free. When I met her two years ago, she was a young girl working in a bar in Vienna. Tatia was undeniably gorgeous, the kind of beauty that lacks no beholder. I asked her what she did when she wasn't pouring drinks for Europe's finest, and she told me she wanted to be a model", he paused and took a hearty gulp from the bottle.
"It was like the second I saw her she had this power over me, I would have bought the world twice over if she had asked. I told an agent friend back in London about her and two weeks later she was featured in British Vogue. Our relationship grew just as quick as her career, a year later she was England's favorite supermodel and moving into my flat. That was when things really started to change."
Klaus was laying back on the ground now, his eyes closed.
"The more designers she walked for, the more parties she attended...it was no longer enough to be with the quiet, mysterious Mikaelson brother. Anonymity doesn't do much for making a power couple in this city. That's what she would always say."
Caroline looked at him curiously.
"Maybe it's not your favorite but I saw you on that red carpet tonight Klaus, they were eating you up", she whispered, giving him a soft poke in the ribs. One of his signature half smiles appeared.
"I was raised under the watch of a camera Caroline. A part of me feeds off it, loves it. It always has and always will...but to her I was a glorified lap dog, meant to follow her around. Tatia didn't understand where her public life was to end and her personal life begin, in her eyes they were the same. There came a point where magazine editors knew more about my girlfriend than I did."
He let out an audible sigh.
"I proposed on her birthday. She said yes of course, I had given her access to an empire of wealth and fame...it was foolish, but I just wanted things to go back to the way they were."
Caroline was shocked. In all her tabloid perusal she had never once heard of Klaus' proposal to the model. It was like he heard the question on her tongue before she even had a chance to speak.
"Turns out the engagement only made things worse. I grew to resent her social climbing, refusing to attend events or premiers just to spite her. She grew to resent my reclusiveness, my insistence on keeping the proposal a secret. A month ago Elijah asked me if I really intended to marry Tatia."
Klaus quieted again, leaving Caroline on the edge of her seat.
"Well what did you tell him?"
"Yes. I told him yes. That girl could have planned us a wedding in the middle of Leicester Square and asked the queen to officiate and I still would have married her. I told him that we were just going through a rough patch, a rough patch that would be over once the movie was done and things settled down. Elijah always scolds me for that...running from my problems. According to him it makes for wonderful art but a terribly difficult younger brother."
She let out a quiet laugh at the permanent look of concern that seemed to be etched across Elijah's face at all times.
"I did heed his advice in some respect, decided to make more of an effort. A day later I visited her on set, next thing you know I'm walking into her trailer to see her naked and bent over a table with the film's director."
Caroline choked on the vodka she was sipping.
"Holy shit, you walked in on them?"
He nodded.
"Proceeded to lose my bloody mind as well. Tatia's poor little director boyfriend was sporting two black eyes for about three weeks. I told her assistant on the way out she had 2 hours to get her shit out of my apartment and to leave the ring on the table."
Caroline shook her head.
"And she just took it? She just left? No apologies?"
Klaus let out a humorless chuckle.
"She did anything but take it. She cried. She screamed for forgiveness. For a woman who claimed I was the one she was certainly quick to betray me", he growled.
"Tatia tried to make me a pawn in her game of success, and now she gets to be mine in a game of revenge", he said, his voice full of false apathy.
Caroline thought of Klaus' grand plan drive Tatia to jealous madness using her.
"Aren't I technically your pawn?", she asked tipsily.
He opened one eye and looked up at her.
"I like to think of you more as my queen Caroline", he said with a wink.
She tipped her head back and succumbed to a fit of drunken giggles.
"Niklaus Mikaelson, smoother than vodka."
Her laughter eventually stilled, and the pair sat in silence for a long time, staring at the sky or observing the London teens making their way to and from the pubs for the night.
She wasn't sure if it was the moonlight or the alcohol, but his face didn't look quite so cutting anymore.
There was something she wanted to ask him, but Caroline had come to find that Klaus was a bit like a land mine. He wasn't inherently dangerous, but take one misstep and he might explode.
"So she's the girl in your painting right?", Caroline asked quietly.
His entire body went rigid.
"Be more specific Love."
"The painting of a woman being pulled from a cliff, that's her isn't it?"
Although you couldn't see the woman's face in Klaus' painting, it was unmistakably Tatia.
"Yes", he answered simply.
"Kinda dark don't you think?", Caroline whispered.
"She kinda ruined my life, the least I could do was metaphorically end hers", he said snidely, pushing himself up onto his elbow and resting his head on his hand.
She turned her head and looked at him squarely, "Touché."
The drunker Caroline got, the less she liked the silence accompanying the space between them.
"You should be grateful you know", she said softly.
"Grateful for my slag of an ex-fiancé?", he clarified bitingly.
"Grateful you can turn pain into something beautiful. Most of us just have to live with it, try not to let it consume us."
Klaus stared at Caroline as she spoke. Unsure how to respond, he let their conversation lull once again.
"My turn", he said eventually.
She handed over the bottle assuming that was what he meant.
"My turn to ask a question", he clarified.
She shrugged and held the bottle close to her.
"Why did you agree to help me tonight?", he inquired.
She looked at him like he was idiot.
"Did you forget all about the contract where I pretend to like you and you make me an incredibly rich and famous art dealer?"
His laugh, his real laugh, was a soft barratone.
"Caroline I believe we both know no amount of money could make my company appealing, so honestly...why agree?"
Caroline bit her lip and looked up at the trees above, folding her hands across her stomach, the alcohol fizzling in her veins.
"The girl who is so eager to speak her mind is suddenly silent", he mused, "please don't tell me you're a psychotic fan and this was all a plot to fuck me", he shook his head disappointedly as if it was a common occurrence, "I mean, I'll still do it, but your efforts lack honor."
The corner of her eyelids crinkled and a shocked laugh bubbled up from inside her.
The thing was, some of her most trusted confidants didn't know the full extent of what happened between her and Tyler. And while she didn't distrust Klaus, she couldn't understand why she wasn't more afraid to tell him what she couldn't even tell her friends.
She exhaled the breath she had been holding in her chest.
"I guess I know what it's like to be cheated on", Caroline hummed.
She didn't turn to look at him, but he kept his eyes trained on her. His stare felt like an unspoken command to go on, or maybe she simply wanted to let go of the story she'd kept bottled up inside her for months.
"We dated for six years but things didn't get serious until after we graduated. His parents really wanted him to settle down, do the whole wife and two kids by twenty five thing. Then I got this job offer in New York and I had to take it. I mean, college in Virginia was one thing but I couldn't spend the rest of my life barefoot and knocked up in a two stoplight town. So we packed up everything, moved to a new city together, started new jobs...I think that was his first big sacrifice for me, leaving Mystic Falls. It was like I had forced Napoleón into exile. He never wanted to leave it, never wanted to stop being Tyler Lockwood, starting quarter back of the Timberwolves...Did you know he'd never been out of the country? I mean I hadn't either but I at least wanted to. He talks all the time about moving back one day, destined to be a small town boy", she whispered sadly.
Caroline felt like at some point while walking through the park she had tripped and fallen down a rabbit hole, her words and thoughts spiraling as she fell. But gravity and vodka already had their hold on her, she couldn't stop even if she wanted to.
"I just felt like we were building something there you know? Like building a life for each other."
She didn't wait for Klaus to respond. It seemed Caroline had opened the flood gates, and every drop of anger and resentment and bitterness she had felt after Tyler's betrayal raged through her like violent waters.
"We did it for two years and I mean things weren't perfect, Tyler sure as hell isn't fucking perfect but I tried you know? I tried so fucking hard at every stupid office dinner or Christmas party or coworker wedding. I was a goddamn Stepford wife. Even when he was angry and vindictive and busy and cruel I- I at least tried."
Tears began to prickle the edge of her lash line, and she tilted her head back to keep them at bay.
"He's really into his job too, and not in the way that normal people are into their jobs. It was like he couldn't stand to see anyone do better than him, even me. So I never batted an eye when he was gone on weekends or working late or doing whatever the fuck he did at the office because if he succeeded we succeeded. If he was happy we were happy. If he got a promotion, if he won a case, it was like we both got to ride this high he was on. I usually try to avoid the comedowns but sometimes things just get...heated", she whispered cautiously.
"This one weekend we really got into it", Caroline winced slightly at the memory.
"I had a gallery opening downtown that my boss let me spearhead. I did everything...the guest list, the decor, the press...It was my baby, the first art show I ever really got to call mine and he missed it. Weeks of planning and he treated it like some playdate I had organized myself...That night it was like every ounce of poise I showed in front of his colleagues, every ounce of fucking grace I tried to show his fucking psychotic mother...it all just came back as rage. And if I could get angry? Well then Tyler could get absolutely furious. I still don't think we'll ever get the security deposit back for the damage he did to the apartment that night. It was a real domestic as the Brits would call it."
She smiled at Klaus but it didn't reach her eyes, like the painted grin of a porcelain doll.
"The next morning he told me he was going home for the weekend to see his parents...help at his dad's firm. That's the routine. We fight, he leaves, we calm down, he comes home a whole new man. I figured he just needed a few days to cool off."
Caroline took another shot and then wrapped her fist around the jacket she sat on, squeezing the fabric impossibly tight.
"This time he brought this girl with him. She's a junior attorney at the firm. Hayley", Caroline tried to spit the world but all the venom in her voice was diluted by clear liquor.
"That's her name. Hayley Marshall."
Caroline laughed mirthlessly and turned her head in Klaus' direction, thinking of the jarring similarities between Tatia and the Marshall girl.
"She's young...smart...she likes nature and yoga and probably eats organic fucking granola for every meal. You would like her Klaus. She's pretty, like really pretty."
A familiar pang of jealousy rushed through her as she thought of the girl she'd once spent hours internet stalking.
"Stick thin, tan, dark hair...really pretty and nothing like me", she sighed running a hand through her golden locks.
"That made it worse I think. Was it too much to ask that he at least cheat with a pale blonde?", she whined drunkenly.
"He came back happy on Monday and I just thought- I thought everything was okay again", her voice came out as a small squeak.
"How did you find out?", he finally spoke.
"Believe it or not Klaus, I would have rather walked in on them a million times over than learn the way I did. You got to be the angry self righteous fiancé, the avenging angel of justice. You know what I got to be? The victim.", she narrowed her eyes and flared her nostrils.
"Poor little Caroline Forbes who couldn't keep a dad let alone a boyfriend", she chimed in a sing-songy voice, "Apparently he was fucking her all over town because it seems like everyone in Mystic Falls knew besides me. Most of us moved away after school so he only really had to keep it from my ex Matty. Luckily my friend April figured it out, flew up three days later to tell me in person. That afternoon Kat came over and helped me pack my shit. I was already boarding a plane by the time he got home and saw I was gone."
"Shit", he breathed.
Caroline turned her head back towards the stars.
"You asked", she said simply.
"I asked", he nodded in confirmation, "He sounds like a fucking wanker by the way."
"Yeah...he acted like a real wanker", she replied softly.
Klaus reached for her knee in a friendly gesture, a move of solidarity. But the jolt that swept through her body shocked her awake. If he noticed her reaction, it didn't show.
"At least you moved on", Klaus said, raising the bottle ceremoniously in a toast to her.
Caroline sat up and pulled her knees to her chest.
"What do you mean?", she asked.
"You got over him, found someone new...the boyfriend back home you told me about"
When her perplexed look didn't fade he was worried she might be gearing up to lash out at him again.
"I know it's unusual but this is me trying to be nice."
Caroline realized his mistake and sighed, holding back a choked sob. Once again would she have to sit there and justify her choices in front of yet another judge.
"I didn't find anyone new Klaus. Tyler and I are still together."
He looked confused, taking a pause and clearing his throat before speaking again.
"You're still with the guy who cheated on you?"
Her face became a resolute veil of steel and stone.
"Yes"
"And you honestly think he won't do it again?"
She ingnored the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"Yes."
"He works with this woman. He sees her each and every day while you're three thousand miles away and you honestly think it's not happening?"
Caroline bit the inside of her cheek until she could taste the hot metallic blood on her tongue.
"He knows how much he hurt me Klaus", she whispered.
He looked at her the way you might look at a puppy who had just been kicked.
"Caroline-", he started.
"No, I know what you're going to say and trust me I've heard it a million fucking times. He fucked up! He hurt me, yes! I'm not a fucking idiot, I mean I practically live with the fucking Tyler Lockwood Homicide Brigade but we have history okay? Six years of history and you don't just give that up without a fight."
"Caroline-"
She was on a tirade now, pleading with him, with anyone, to understand the reasons her friends couldn't.
"And he didn't just apologize Klaus, he begged for me back. Lockwoods don't beg. They yell and make demands and get defensive but they don't beg. But he did! Doesn't anyone get that? He followed me across an ocean and found me and promised me he would change. Kat and Stefan and Bonnie and Lexi...they only see the bad in him. They don't get that he can be good, he can be so good when he just tries."
"Caroline!", he exclaimed, attempting to pull her from her harangue.
She snapped her head in his direction, face red and chest heaving.
Klaus' hand still rested on her knee and he gave it a small squeeze, his eyes boring into hers.
"Do you want to be with someone who needs to try?", he asked.
"What?"
Caroline looked puzzled. Of all the things she expected to come out of Klaus' mouth, that was not one of them.
He exhaled and retracted his hand.
"Do you want to be with someone who needs to try to love you?"
Her mask of confusion was quickly replaced by one of frustration.
"That's what a relationship is Klaus! It takes work! It's sacrifice and compromise and sometimes you hurt each other but that's how it fucking goes!", she shouted at him, standing up and stumbling slightly.
"Relationships take effort Caroline but love shouldn't", he said, pushing to his feet as well.
She laughed icily, "You're telling me the great Klaus Mikaelson believes in unconditional love? Love without conditions doesn't exist, that doesn't mean it's not valid."
She was yelling again, but the conviction in her voice didn't quite meet her eyes. Klaus looked down at her.
"Caroline exactly how long have you practiced all these lies you tell yourself?", he asked harshly.
The liquor coursing through her veins burned like white hot rage. She was so tired of everyone thinking they knew better than her.
"I'm lying to myself? At least I'm not a twenty seven year old bachelor who's going to die alone because he thinks anyone whose ever made a goddamn mistake should be vilified for the rest of their lives!"
He scoffed at her insult and plastered a wicked smile across his face.
"And I didn't think you lacked so much self worth that you'd let some arsehole other than me use you for his own kicks, and this ones not even paying you."
Caroline stepped back, the words stinging her as if she'd been slapped across the face. He knew the instant the dig left his mouth that he had gone too far.
You know what Klaus? Go fuck yourself", she spat before taking off in a sprint towards the street.
She yanked open the back door of the first cab in sight, managing to choke out the name of her hotel just before the sobs began to rack her body.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: IT'S A LONG ONE KIDS
THIS CHAPTER WILL BE EDITED TOMORROW I JUST WANTED IT OUT ASAP BECAUSE I OWE YOU GUYS. I just want to start this author's note by saying thank you so fucking much for all the positive feedback! I was hoping for maybe 6 or 7 reviews on the last chapter and I got 17! SEVENTEEN. Plus I also got two incredibly sweet pm's. I really hoped to get this update out quicker but life has been crazy so I hope the extra few paragraphs make up for it. Like I've said before, this is my first story I've ever published and I seriously don't consider myself a writer so to see people say their really enjoying my work is wild and super encouraging. Now there's some less happy fun stuff that I kind of want to discuss. Numero uno is pacing. A lot of people don't really seem to be happy with the pacing of this fic and really want me to amp up the Klaroline right this moment so I just wanted to address that. When I write a relationship, I want it to seem really organic and for it to build upon itself naturally, like it did in the canon TVD universe. I know a lot of you were hoping for some wild ravenous sex in this chapter and I know I space out my chapters a lot for the frequent updates but many seem to forget that at this point in the story Caroline and Klaus have known each other for less than 72 hours. And while Klaus may be Klaus, his feelings for Tatia might still be lingering, you have to keep reading first *wink wink nudge nudge* You all watched the show, you know Caroline. She's not the type of girl to throw away a six year relationship for someone she barely knows, even though this is an AU, I don't interpret her that way either. That being said, this is a Klaroline fic and good things come to those who wait, but I want things to grow naturally. One of my biggest pet peeves when I'm reading is characters who have best friends or side characters who get matched together, but the author doesn't take the time to develop those relationships, I don't want to do that with this fic. Secondly, I hope this chapter gave some more insight on the dynamics of Tyler and Caroline's relationship, and if you're especially perceptive, give you some hints into plot points to come. I still have a lot to do with these characters before I just break them up and toss them aside. As always, if you are enjoying this story, please leave a review or consider following. If you have any questions shoot me a pm, I will answer for sure. XX and thanks for reading