Notes: Another one from the Writer's Month prompts!
Heart's All Aglow
(Prompt: Writer's Month Day Two – trope prompt: hurt comfort. It which both Caroline and Klaus have magic and Klaus runs afoul of a curse. Rated M for brief smut.)
When Klaus stops breathing, Caroline bursts into tears. The loud, noisy kind, that come with snot and splotchy skin. She's been holding them back for days with furious blinks and her teeth clenched tight. First, because she'd been so certain would find a solution and, once Klaus was healthy and himself again, he'd be insufferable if he'd realized that she'd been concerned.
A year older than Caroline, from a family who can trace their magical lineage back a thousand years, he's been a constant in her life – less annoying than she claims and more distracting than she'll ever admit – since she'd arrived in Mystic Falls to finish her magical education.
They're supposed to graduate this month, provided they complete one final task. They'd trekked for days to reach the manor house that The Traveler Coven had abandoned a century ago. Their task: to successfully perform a spell thought lost to history.
Caroline had feigned displeasure when she'd found out Klaus was her assigned partner. Secretly, she'd been pleased. Klaus' arrogance made it easy to ignore that he was extremely clever, that he was gifted at nearly all the branches of magic he'd chosen to study – the same ones she did and Caroline's positive that hadn't been a coincidence.
Klaus had never been anything but obvious in his interest in her.
As his condition had worsened she'd then refused to give into the urge to cry because she'd hadn't wanted to waste time. Klaus had gotten quieter and quieter, his eyes clouding and while his movements grew slow and pained. They're far from anyone who might help, had camped for the final days of the journey, no people or villages to be found. Caroline, the books and the journals she'd found in the manor's massive library, had been Klaus' only hope.
She'd failed him.
Caroline will be furious in a minute; will vent her rage with the pile of useless old spell books that she's been poring over. She'll throw candlesticks and smash windows. She'd been in awe of the precious artifacts, magical objects, painting and tapestries the Travelers had hoarded a week ago. Had hissed at Klaus to be careful, gentle when he'd handled them. Every room is stuffed to the brim with treasures any witch would kill to own.
Now they're just things. One of them had cursed Klaus, the others hadn't offered her the secret that would allow Caroline to save him. For those offenses they can burn.
"Carollll…" the rest of her name is a mumble of a sound, the indrawn breath that follows a rattle.
Caroline jolts, leaps from her seat. She barely notices the aches in her muscles, the protesting of her joints, as she crosses the room. She snatches up a candelabrum on the way to Klaus' side and it flares to life with her distracted incantation. She scrubs her sleeve across her face as she sits at Klaus' side, sets the light down next to the wide chaise she'd deposited him on when he'd no longer been able to remain upright.
He's far too pale, his face and chest damp. Yesterday, at midday, Klaus's temperature had begun to spike. By the time the sun set he'd been burning up, skin pink and sweaty even stripped to his underclothes and across the room from the hearth. He'd gone quiet, had slept fitfully and Caroline had found she'd missed his voice, had regretted all the times she'd implored him to just stop talking.
She'd vowed she'd never again complain about his questions, his taunts, the little endearments she'd always rejected as too familiar.
She'd let the fire die down to embers, had burrowed into both his cloak and hers, and warmed her hands with her breath when they became too chilled and stiff to write.
She rubs them briskly now, in hopes they'll warm enough not to startle Klaus. Caroline rests her hand against his chest, and his heartbeat – too fast but undeniably there – assures her that she hadn't hallucinated his voice. Klaus twitches under her palm, his eyes hazy when he manages to open them. They focus after a moment, and then narrow. He swallows harshly, "How long have you been awake?"
For a man who's barely conscious he manages a healthy dose of disapproval.
Normally, Caroline would bristle, and snap back. It would be the start of a bickering session that would have their classmates clearing the room. Fighting with Klaus makes her magic surge under her skin, crackling and itching, desperate to flow from her and meet and tangle with Klaus' power.
Caroline's control is flawless, carefully honed from two decades of tiptoeing around her own home, her mother fearful and distrustful of the abilities Caroline's father had passed down but never fully explained.
It has always unsettled her, how close Klaus has come to cracking lose it.
"How long has it been since you thought investigating a secret passageway with minimal precautions was a good idea?" she counters. Klaus' mouth opens but the sound that comes out strangled so Caroline bends, retrieves the water she'd left beside him. She waits a moment, concentrates until it cools, then leans close to him, slipping her hand behind his neck to help him drink.
He watches her as he takes careful sips, and she's pleased when he manages to swallow on his own. He relaxes once he's drained the goblet, licks a lingering drop from his full lower lip. Caroline follows the movement out of habit – she's spent far too much time wondering what he'd taste like. When Klaus speaks again he has an easier time, "I smelled blood." It's the exact same argument he'd trotted out days ago when she'd been pulled from her explorations on the second floor by his screams.
She'd found him unconscious, crumpled on the stone floor of the lowest level of the house. She'd felt for the source of his injury, had found that an angry red stain had bloomed over his back.
"I maintain that makes no sense," Caroline mutters. She sets the cup down, her hand coming to rest once more over his heart. She should probably stop touching him now that he's lucid but she finds the reminder that he's alive, with her, too comforting.
"The full moon is coming," he tells her.
The abrupt topic change confuses her. "I know. I was hoping to use it." She's barely slept, sure that drawing power from the moon was her best chance to banish whatever curse Klaus had walked into. She just needed to put together a ritual.
Klaus struggles underneath her palm and he's so weak it takes barely any effort to hold him down. Still he manages to sound commanding and he doesn't stop trying to get up, "You can't. I need to get outside and you need to lock yourself in a room. Behind a thick door, Caroline. With your strongest barrier spell keeping me out."
So far, the curse hasn't seemed to alter Klaus' personality at all. She adds delusions – because he is obviously addled if he thinks she's dumping him outside, alone, in his condition – and paranoia to the mental list of symptoms she's compiled, hopes it helps her narrow down the exact curse he's under. She takes his hand with her free one, presses their palms together in an attempt to sooth him. "You've been sick for days. It's been storming. Going outside will only make you worse."
Make him weaker but she won't say that. It will only make him more determined.
A low noise rumbles from him, frustration. At himself or at her, Caroline doesn't know. "You don't understand. If I'm near you when the moon rises I'll…"
She hums softly, lets her thumb stroke the skin of his chest in hopes of calming him. "Klaus, I know you wouldn't hurt me."
He stills, blinking up at her. He's a bit shocked, a little pleased. But mostly determined. He squeezes her hand, "I wouldn't but I'm not worried about hurting you. I'm worried I'll…That…"
Caroline waits patiently for the rest of the sentence. She only prods when it's not forthcoming, when she can feel that the words, whatever Klaus has to confess, are causing him distress. "That you will…"
He takes a deep breath, "I'm a werewolf," he says, all in a rush.
"You're a sorcerer," she replies. It's automatic. She's seen Klaus cast and conjure a hundred times, tricky, precise spells, and she knows, or at least she's always been told, that if a werewolf wields magic it's blunt, all imprecise surges and crashing waves.
But Klaus has never lied to her.
"I'm both. It's complicated."
Caroline barely hears him, recalling things she's read, what she's been taught. How Klaus has made her feel, how determined she's been to keep him at arm's length because she'd known, instinctively, from the first day he'd slid into a chair next to her at breakfast and introduced himself that she could fall fast and hard and forever if she let herself.
Falling had never worked out well for her and so she'd told herself she couldn't.
"You're a werewolf," she says, slowly, more to herself than to him.
"I am."
"I thought you died."
"You did."
She hadn't had time to process what she'd felt, the pain and the anger and the gnawing empty craving that would have spiraled into numbness. "Did I…"
This time it's Caroline who can't say what she's thinking. If she's wrong she won't be able to bear it.
Klaus doesn't need the words, "You did. You accepted me and you brought me back. You're my…"
She presses her lips to his before he can tell her what she already knows. He inhales sharply but his lips soften, cling to hers eagerly. Caroline's the one to deepen the kiss, to tease the seam of his mouth open with her tongue but Klaus is quick to catch up, a hand sinking into her hair to draw her closer, his strength returning growing as she comes to lay over him.
She loses herself in the kiss, in tracing the angles of his collarbones and learning how the muscles of his abdomen and back clench and twitch under her caresses. Caroline's been freezing for days and the growing of warmth she feels now has her pulling back with a gasp once it becomes unbearable. She sits up enough to struggle with the clasps of the cloak at her throat. Klaus' eyes are bright, his color returning and he searches for an opening in the piles of fabric that cover her, seeking skin.
They get her down to her blouse and skirt quickly and Caroline moans when he palms her breast, reaches down to flick open her buttons. Klaus doesn't stop her but he stills, not moving even when she arches impatiently into his hand, and she glances down at him, a flicker of concern building. "Are you okay? Am I hurting you?"
He swallows and sits up until they're eye to eye, serious despite the heat and want she can see in his expression. "If we do this it means something, love. There will be no other for you, after. You'll be mine."
"And you'll be mine," Caroline counters, giving up on the buttons and reaching for the hem of her shirt. Klaus groans when she lifts it over her head, the movement grinding their hips together. She does it again, because it feels good, pressing her palm to the back of Klaus' hand so he'll get the hint that she needs him to keep touching her.
It's good when he strokes her nipple, better when he yanks the cup of her bra aside and sets his mouth to the stiffening point. She threads her fingers through the damp curls at the back of his neck, reaches down to yank up her skirt so there's one less barrier between where he's hard and straining and she's growing slick.
His lips are wet when he pulls back, he drags them up her throat until he can rasp another question in her ear, "Are you sure?"
She shudders when his teeth sink lightly into her pulse point, digs her nails into his back to press him closer, "I'm sure. If you'd died I would have burned this house down. I would have found every witch descended from the coven that built it and I would have made them hurt like I hurt. And then I would have found a way to bring you back."
It's the truest thing she's ever said. She'd brought him back when she'd acknowledged the truth of their bond in her grief, healed him by accepting it. She'll have more to say when she's had time to think, probably a few complaints because he should have told her they were mates ages ago.
It's a good thing fighting with Klaus is one of her very favorite things.
Klaus hesitance is gone in a flash. "Good," he grits out, a wealth of feeling – satisfaction and joy and need - in the short word. Then she's on her back, his hand cradling the back of her head to save it from impact with the other end of the chaise. His eyes are gold now and he tears her thick wool skirt away like it's the flimsiest of paper.
She'd protest but she's never liked the scratchy uniform skirts and his hand is quick to press between her thighs, to slip under her panties. He watches her carefully, searching out the spots that give her the most pleasure, has her panting and pleading by the time he slips his fingers inside of her.
He carries her to bed, after. They stay there, skin to skin, learning each other, occasionally dozing, only venturing out briefly when hunger or thirst demand it.
The next night Klaus builds a fire outside, strips the few articles of clothing he'd put on, changes and leaves her to stay warm by the flames. She can hear him in the woods, never far, as she bends her head over one of the books she'd dragged out with her.
They'd traveled this far for a reason and though the path she'd planned for herself has changed, widened, so Klaus can walk beside her, she still has goals.
Klaus will protest tomorrow, when she insists upon researching during the day. Caroline is confident they can reach a bargain that suits them both.