Author's Note: I'm terribly sorry, I know I've been inactive for awhile, I've been having issues with the story a little. The timeline of the chapters isn't linear, more like bits and pieces and snippets of one story all jumbled up into one happy mess, but there's a huge event that happens in an upcoming chapter that isn't quite finished yet, which is a pain because the events that come after that huge event were pretty easy to write and I'd like to publish them, I just don't know if it would be confusing without the missing event. I apologize for how long-winded that was, I have an inability to shut up. Comments on my current predicament are very welcome, and without further ado; enjoy!
"Love," Klaus urged, voice barely above a whisper, breath brushing against the skin of Caroline's collarbone.
"Mmm," Caroline groaned, turning in pestilence away from the source of her disturbance and settling back under the blankets. She was too sleepy, and frankly too smart, to even begin to wonder how he broke into her apartment without alerting her, or the bad ass witch that would surely give him an aneurysm if she knew he was there, slumbering in the next room.
"Sweetheart, come on." He tried again, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her back to him gently. Her blonde locks dragged lightly against the pillows and she sniffed, irritated at the strands that clung to her face. Left with no choice, she rolled over to face Klaus, eyes still screwed shut stubbornly.
"What?" She hissed at him, her voice not dripping with as much venom as she would like, more slumber and hoarseness, but she ignored that tiny detail in favor of pointedly jerking the covers up to under her chin.
"I want to show you something." Klaus' voice was soft in contrast, and she peeled open one eye.
"Does it have to be right this second?" She asked him, watching the glow of her nightstand lamp illuminate his features and give him an attractive countenance. The look on his face was not helping matters, he was gazing at her half in amusement and half in adoration, like the way she used to look at her grandmother's cat when she cuddled up to her on the couch even though she seemed to hate pretty much everyone else.
"Well, no, but I was excited to show it to you," Klaus' face adopted a sheepish expression, and just like that, her other eye was open. Now she was curious.
"Fine. Give me five minutes to get dressed." Caroline relented, throwing her blankets off herself and raising an eyebrow at him to move so she could get off her bed. He quirked a brow in response and she sighed, moving to straddle him with more force than necessary, making him puff out a breath of air and grin at her. She swung both her legs to one side, sliding down his ribs and onto her cold tile floor, cursing him the entire way to her closet.
Half an hour later, Klaus was leading a grumbling Caroline down the street, her tiny hand in his, absently dragging a finger over her daylight ring. Caroline pretended not to feel the shivers crawling up her spine, focusing instead on bouncing her guesses of their destination off the excited hybrid. It had only been a month since she drove out of Mystic Falls, windows down and the sun in the horizon with Bonnie in her front seat, shouting the lyrics to Miley Cyrus' Party In The USA, and their bags spilling out of the trunk, packed for a one-way trip to New Orleans. She had been on a couple of dates with Klaus, and they had all been wonderful, but she had been busy transferring credits from Whitmore to Tulane and setting up her and Bonnie's expensive new apartment across town, courtesy of their hosts, the Mikaelsons. Besides, she figured she would take it slow with him, she had already moved states for him, which she would deny until her dying breath if you asked her, she was sticking with the fact that she would not settle for a second-rate education when she was exposed to better choices. Caroline Forbes did not chase men, even if said men were gorgeous, thousand year old hybrids with eyes only for her and an accent to die for.
"Warehouse where you keep all the dead bodies of the witches you kill, lest they magically resurrect and plot your untimely death?" Caroline drawled sarcastically. Klaus stopped suddenly and turned back to her, a shocked how-did-you-know expression on his face. "Wait seriously?" Caroline screeched, only to punch him in his firm bicep when he began laughing at her reaction.
"You truly have no patience," he tutted, digging a bunch of old keys out of his pocket and unlocking the rusty padlock of a door hidden in the back alley of what looked like the French Quarter. Funny, Caroline thought to herself, this place looked eerily familiar. The large, black iron door swung open with a painful whine, making both supernaturals with enhanced hearing cringe. The corridor Klaus led her through was even darker than the streets, and Caroline held onto his hand tighter, unknowingly making Klaus' dimples indent his cheeks in the dark. They took a few more turns, went up a flight of stairs and finally came to a stop in a big, airy room. Now she knew why it was so familiar. Klaus had been renovating an ancient building in the Quarter to make into a gallery for his art, and it would be open to the public in less than a month now. She had found him there quite often, he was putting his heart and soul into the place, claimed to be making it for the upcoming artists in New Orleans that struggled to get their art featured somewhere worthwhile. When she prodded further about why, he just mumbled something about an artist at midnight painting demons on the street or something like that and she had let it go. It was a nice gesture, and she was not about to demean his charitable acts. She had even offered to paint it when the woodwork was done on the floor, and had been monitoring its slow but steady growth for awhile now. They were standing in what was to be the main gallery, a massive room with big windows to its sides, and one huge wall that had been torn down and replaced entirely with glass, to let light in. The room smelled of varnish and wood, there were empty cans lying on the floor, amidst tiny piles of sawdust, and nails and they had to step over broken building bricks to get to the center.
"Here it is," Klaus said to her excitedly, squeezing her hand. Caroline wondered if his age was making him senile, because she saw nothing but the same, unfinished room she had always seen.
"Here what is?"
"Give it a minute." He shushed her, pointing to the newly finished glass wall. The sun was about to rise over the horizon, and there were faint streaks of yellow and pink crossing the sky before them. Slowly, the sun came up, illuminating the glass from top going down. Caroline stood absolutely still, taking it all in, and that's when she saw it. The sun was highlighting a pattern ingrained in the glass with light strokes of paint, barely visible but very much present. As the sun rose higher, the picture became clearer and clearer. It was a silhouette of a woman, of her. She recognized the curve of her cheek and the curl of her eyelash from there, eyes roving over the accurate depiction of the voluminous curls she had a hard time taming, down to where they spilled over her shoulder, and the length of her neck. It was so beautiful. The sun made the whole thing glow, but the glass was tainted a shimmery yellow that made her hair look like it had little stars woven through it. Screw the jukebox and the pouring rain outside her window. This was by far the sweetest gesture she had ever seen. And it was for her. She spun on her bunny slipper clad heel to lunge herself at Klaus, squealing in glee. He caught her with a nervous chuckle, face buried in the scarf wrapped around her neck.
"I take it you like it?"
"Like it? Are you kidding me? It's perfect, Klaus, thank you so much." She gushed sincerely, shimmying back to the floor and beaming up at him happily. He returned her blinding smile with a satisfied smirk and wrapped his arms around her waist.
"Worth the early wake up call?" He inquired, ducking his head down to nuzzle her throat playfully.
"Worth so much more." Caroline replied, tone soft and serious, tangling her fingers in his hair and pulling him up for a kiss, bathed in the morning sun. So maybe she had come to New Orleans for a little more than just an education.