Bite-Sized

Disclaimer: I own nothing, except these words.

"Stop courting my doppelgänger behind my back."

"Does it really count as going behind your back if I asked her out right in front of you?" Kol asks as he throws himself onto a leather sofa.

Klaus massages his temples. When he'd built this home for his family and more or less accepted their universal undaggering, he had never anticipated the frustrations that living in such close quarters with his siblings would entail.

He had also failed to anticipate the attention his doppelganger would garner from the lot of them, or the…. discomfort that those attentions would produce within him.

"Did she say yes?" he asks his brother tightly.

Kol snorts. "She slapped me good and proper."

Just as Klaus is allowing himself to feel an iota of relief, Kol continues, "I think slapping may be a bit of foreplay for that one though. She strikes me as the kind of girl who likes to play dirty before– well, before playing dirty."

She'd never slapped him before, he finds himself thinking before he catches himself.

"I ever find out you've laid a finger on my doppelganger, and I'll remove it. Do you understand me, Kol?"

Kol grins up at him. "You're clear as a mountain stream."

And it's not just Kol that Klaus must deal with.

Rebekah, understandably, wants Elena dead for literally stabbing her in the back, except it's not really convenient for his sister to spend so much time plotting his prized possession's untimely demise.

"You're just as bad as Elijah," Rebekah pouts.

Klaus ruffles. He hadn't even considered what affect Elijah's presence could have upon the girl. Best to find out now what exactly their history together entailed.

"First," Rebekah continues, "he drags me off of her by the scruff of my neck like I'm no more than a kitten, and then you throw the actual hissy fit just because I may have left a few fingerprints on the girl."

"This isn't a hissy fit," Klaus mutters from amidst a rain of broken crystal decanters.

So he may have thrown a fit of some sort, but it definitely hadn't been hissy. He's a wolf. If anything, it was a growly fit.

Rebekah doesn't seem to hear him. "You know, I think had I been mortal that your precious Elena would have left some marks on me." A sly smile creeps over her full lips. "She has a lot more fight in her than I anticipated. I rather like that in a woman."

Klaus frowns at her. "Rebekah, I have been very forgiving of your ill-conceived little games thus far–"

"How do you think she would respond to a bit of bondage? I have class with her in another hour. It would be simple enough to kidnap her after."

Rebekah does, of course, despite Klaus's admonitions that she is to do no such thing because if anyone is going to kidnap the doppelganger, it's going to be him.

He runs into her in one of the upstairs hallways, her wrists bruised from the velvet ropes Rebekah had used to bind Elena to her bed, a slim dagger clenched in her fist.

"Oh, it's you," Elena breathes in audible relief.

He raises an eyebrow at her. "I see you're in no need of a rescue. How'd you slip free?"

"Rebekah likes to flirt. I used that to lure her close enough to the bed for me to… work some magic."

Klaus's eyebrows shoot up his forehead. His stomach flips at her words, but he's not sure why. "Must I assume she'll be very angry with you when she gets free?" he asks her lightly.

Elena purses her lips. "I wouldn't say that."

He watches her go, his stomach sinking with every step away from him she takes.

"She's a gentle soul with a pure heart and a noble spirit. She doesn't deserve to be pulled into your web of sin and infamy time and time again."

Klaus stares at Finn, who glares at him with such righteous certainty that he thinks he should record his expression for Elijah to study later in private.

He realizes his mouth is hanging open. He shuts it, but that doesn't make any of his acute disbelief go away. "Since when do you have such strong opinions on the subject of my doppelganger?" he finally gathers himself to ask.

"Since I sat down with her this afternoon at the local tavern and had a long discussion with her. She's an impressive young woman. Thoughtful, kind. Exceedingly beautiful, in mind and spirit as well as in countenance."

"You have a crush on her."

Finn blushes. His stoic older brother actually blushes. "It's true I admire her, yes, but I am no Icarus– I dare not fly so close to her sun. Only– to grant her my protection where I might, and to insist that you remove her from your future plots and allow her to live in the peace and security she deserves."

The idea of removing himself from Elena Gilbert's life is completely unacceptable. He won't hear of it.

"Did she ask you to say this to me?"

"Miss Gilbert would never be so untoward. I volunteered."

"After a lengthy discussion with her."

"I just said as much."

It's obvious Elena Gilbert has manipulated his eldest brother.

The thought should grant him more relief than it actually does. After all, it's not as though Finn has discovered some aspect of Elena Gilbert's nature that had heretofore been obscured to him. She had only revealed those aspects of herself which would most appeal to his brother's sickeningly chivalrous disposition.

And yet, the thought that Elena would open up to any of his siblings in ways she refuses to open herself up for him lingers like a thorn in his mind.

Elijah is the final straw.

He spies the two of them walking together through the town green, their heads bent close together as they talk. Elena links her arm through Elijah's and leans intimately into his body as they walk. It really is becoming more and more imperative that he discover the exact nature of their shared history together–

Just then, the wind blows, streaming Elena's hair around her face in a cloud. With infinite gentleness, Elijah tucks her hair back behind her ear. The two of them lock eyes for a very long time, until a smile spreads so deeply over her face that it lights up her very eyes into dark pools as deep and glittering as the night sky.

His heart lurches in his chest.

It is one thing to know that Kol has been attempted to date his doppelganger ever since he first laid eyes on her at the disastrous family ball. That Rebekah gets to spend each day with her at school and has even, apparently, bedded her a time or two. That Finn has forged a true emotional connection with her.

But this. This looks an awful lot like love stamped across Elena Gilbert's face as she gazes up at Elijah.

He finally understands the feeling that's been twisting and boiling within him as his siblings have gotten deeper and deeper under Elena Gilbert's skin.

Jealousy, it seems, is something even he is not immune to.

He's rip-roaring drunk, leaning heavily against the sweating grain of the Mystic Grill & Bar's eponymous bar, when he sees her enter out of the corner of his eye. Well, he sees two of her enter, but unless Katerina is back in town, that's hardly important.

Wait. Actually, he should probably sober up, just in case the doppelgangers really are about to double-team him.

Ah, and that's a lovely thought–

He's just ordered himself a pot of coffee when he the two girls resolve into one, who sits down next to him with a huff.

"Have you seen Elijah?" Elena Gilbert asks him.

Klaus cocks his head at her. "Not for a few hours, no." Not since he'd seen the two of them canoodling on the green.

She glances at her watch. "Weird. He was supposed to meet me here fifteen minutes ago. I'm the one who's running late."

"No, what's weird is Elijah deigning to meet you here. You must really have laid a spell on him."

Elena smiles. Orders herself a rum and coke from the extraordinarily lax barkeep who doesn't even bother to card her. "Careful, you sound jealous." She accepts her drink with a twinkling smile and sips delicately through the cocktail straw.

"Of course I am."

Elena freezes, staring at him. Collects herself. "Ha ha, very funny."

"No, truly. I didn't want to admit it for the longest time, but there it is."

"You've basically turned making my life into a living hell your daily pastime ever since we met."

"Apparently I've never matured past pulling the pigtails of the girl I adore."

Elena practically collapses onto the barstool next to his. She works on her drink with a fervent intensity that puts him in mind of other things she might be able to do with her cherry mouth.

"What about your siblings?" she asks at last.

"What about them?"

"They've all been acting weird."

"I don't know what you mean."

"It's not normal for all five of you to pursue me at once." She sets her drink down. "They haven't… they haven't been… courting me for you, have they?"

"Why would they do that?"

"Because after spending so much time with them and hearing so much about you from their perspectives for the past few weeks, this whole you like me! thing doesn't seem as terrifying or apocalyptic as my common sense tells me it should. The way they talk about you, you actually seem kind of… sweet."

Klaus smiles at her. He doubts that had been any of their intentions, but far be it from him to correct her when she's just stumbled on such a delicious thought.

"I could be very sweet to you."

Elena bites her lip. Notices the way his eyes track the movement.

"Fine. Consider this my official lapse in judgment. Show me."

Within the week, it's him courting Elena Gilbert.

Naturally he calls a family meeting to gloat.