"Hello, love."

Elena greets him the same even after all these years. With feigned excitement, she jumps into his willing arms, hands wrapped around his neck, their embrace a little awkward because of the noticeable bump pressing against his smooth stomach.

"I'm sorry I'm late," he whispers, noticing the slight tightening of her arms— if he were human, he would've choked and died, but he was not. The thought brings comfort to his heart. She does not speak, using her lips to silence his mouth. It was easier for her this way.

"Eirikir is asleep, Niklaus," he lowers her down on the carpeted ground and lets her tug him to the kitchen where his dinner has been prepared immaculately the way he likes it— his Tagliata steak still steaming on the hot plate and a bottle of his favorite wine served on the table. Klaus raises an eyebrow in question at the splendor arrangement, but Elena leaves him alone— presumably to collect something that warranted the celebration.

Moments later after he'd gotten rid of his jacket and rolled his white shirt to his elbows, Elena emerges with a sleeping curly blonde child in her arms. He stills, eyes twinkling at the spitting image of himself.

"Eirik," Elena rouses their child from his sleep and Klaus watches as his boy's eyelashes flutter, revealing dazed blue eyes.

"Papa?"

His heart stops— the word knocks the wind out of his lungs. Elena beams at him as Eirik sticks his tiny, grabby hands out. Klaus lifts the boy in his arms, still in disbelief and shock over what had transpired in just mere moments. He feels her support from behind him, a hand on his shoulder— warmth he'd never felt before.

"Yes, my boy. I'm your father." Eirik giggles when his stubble rubs against the child's soft cheek.

"Papa. Pa? Papa... Papa?"

Elena is there to ground him the moment he falls apart. Klaus pulls the child close to him, ears pressed against the boy's heart, hearing the loud beating of Eirikir's heart to assure him that it's real. He isn't dreaming. the child— their childtheir boy uttered his first word, a word so insignificant to others, but it was everything to him— to Niklaus Mikaelson who valued family above all. Always and forever.

Klaus turns to look upon the woman who made it possible, finding a speck of disgust and hate in her searing gaze— he finds no anger simmering underneath his veins. Niklaus cannot find it in himself to lay a hand on her— not when she had brought him the personification of happiness on earth. He cannot harm the mother of his child, and of the others that would follow his lovely firstborn, Eirikir.

It was everything he had hoped for, his hopes and dreams manifested in a two-year-old chubby child— Eirikir Mikaelson, conceived by the original hybrid, Niklaus Mikaelson and the current Petrova doppelgänger, Elena Gilbert-Mikaelson.