A/N- No smut in this chapter I'm afraid.
"We're too white."
Time was, being woken up by someone barging into his room shouting would have terrified Klaus.
Now, he merely groaned as he ran a hand over his face and kept his eyes closed as Caroline turned on his bedside lamp.
"What?" he grumbled as she sat down by his hip, her legs curled under her,
"We're too white," she repeats, "And too straight, we're attracting some bad viewers."
Alright then.
He sniffed and opened his eyes, setting them on her and noting the trench coat wrapped around her slim frame.
"Are you naked under that?" he asks interestedly but she only rolls her eyes,
"Seriously?! It's like…forty degrees out there!"
And two-fifty-one in the morning according to his phone,
"We're too white?" he echoes and she nods, "Yep, and we're getting some male viewers who are way too into our…Germanic complexions."
He's pretty sure she means Aryan but is simply avoiding that term.
"Well, that's sadly a common thing for porn audiences," he notes, "Have we not covered this before? White or passing white actors always noticed a loss in followers or revenue whenever they're paired with non-white actors and typically porn stars consider interracial videos their final frontier."
Caroline moans, "I know," she admits, "But…I want our site to be diverse!"
This again.
"We can start looking for actors now," he suggests, "As in, tomorrow, and when we finish our first year, in the black, we can offer them temporary contracts, depending on whether or not they manage to draw new viewers to our site or increase our numbers."
She beams and he realises that he'd said exactly what she'd hoped he would.
"I actually have some suggestions about people we could use," she reveals, dropping down onto her stomach, propping herself on her elbows and tapping on her phone.
"I've been going through the sites looking for actors based on their stats, if they have people who subscribe to them, watch them regularly etc…"
"Sweetheart," Klaus groans, "It is three o'clock in the morning."
She reaches over and pats his chest, "You said I could come over any time," she reminds him, "That's why you gave me a key."
"I gave you a key so you could let yourself in when we started filming here," he argues,
"Or if you wanted a booty call."
"We're in the first year of our business venture," she counters, a touch of self-righteousness in her tone, "We have to put in the effort or we'll go under."
Not bloody likely with their subscription numbers and the site traffic they're getting.
Then again, from what Klaus gathered, a lot of businesses in various industries could start strong and after two years had folded and been forgotten in favour of the next big thing.
If they did fail, perhaps Katherine would give them jobs in her store?
She hands him her phone and he squints, blinking repeatedly as he struggled to adjust his eyes to the bright screen. After a minute, she takes pity on him and darkens the screen, so he can look at it without his eyes watering.
He studies the pictures she shows him and gives his approval,
"They're gorgeous." he judges and she nods, "And I've watched their videos and studied their social media, I reckon they'd be good additions."
Humming to show he was listening, Klaus closed his eyes and shifted position, settling back in the pillows and letting the comfort lure him back to unconsciousness.
"Nik," she called, poking him in the arm, "Are you falling asleep?"
"Three in the morning," he reminded her, "Typically a good time for resting, love."
She scoffed, "Fine, but I want to meet these two as soon as possible!"
He might have said something in confirmation, he didn't really remember, he only registered that she reached over him to turn off the light, took off her trench coat, and crawled into bed beside him.
Probably so she could start hassling him again as soon as he woke up.
As long as that was sometime after nine am, he'd be fine.
If he'd thought about it, Klaus would have reckoned that starting his own porn site would have meant being in charge of his own schedule, choosing when to work and how many hours he did so.
Yet, here he was on a Sunday, pulling his car into the parking lot of Katerina's for a scheduled shoot.
'Public sex' was a popular category in porn, but in reality, filmed in heavily controlled scenarios- if the company doing the filming was in a regulated state.
God only knew what the hell kind of situations they were filming the 'public sex' scenes in when it came to unregulated states and countries.
They'd decided to film at the store, as it gave Katherine free publicity, the potential to draw more customers and it was a controlled environment for them to work in.
Especially because her store was closed on Sunday, so she wouldn't be losing business.
Although, most of her profits were being made online, Caroline had shown him the numbers that she'd sent them and explained that a lot of the customers that went through their site were impulse buyers, purchasing either the toys that had been shown in the video or the lingerie or costumes that she had been wearing at the time.
Still, she had enough foot traffic that she didn't want to risk loss of business by shutting down on a weekday.
He heads in the employee entrance, sending off a quick message to Caroline to let her know he'd arrived and hears the notification sound on her phone.
He follows it to a door, knocking briskly and calling her name, receiving a scuffle and high pitched 'Enter' in reply.
The room is an office, with a leather couch that Klaus wouldn't touch with a ten ft pole, but which Caroline is apparently okay being half naked on.
She blushes slightly, running a hand through her hair as she sits up, her perky breasts on full display as Katherine looks over her shoulder.
Her skirt was hiked around her waist and she was kneeling over Caroline's torso, so it didn't take a genius to figure out what he'd interrupted.
"Should I come back?" he offers politely as Caroline wipes at her mouth,
"Um…" she trails off, "Maybe?"
Katherine only rolls her eyes and clicks her tongue, "Ten minutes."
He shrugs, "Fair enough, I'll see if the crew is setting up."
The cameramen had arrived and Luke was already pacing the store, checking the script against the locations and double-checking that the light and positioning would work.
Klaus' costume required changing from a Henley to a white t-shirt and checking in with Luke before wandering the aisles, admiring the interesting or tasteful sex toys and taking photos of the bizarre ones to send to mates.
He was in the middle of admiring the complex manicure on the female rubber hand used for fisting when there's a commotion at the front door.
One of their people opens it to let them know that the store was closed, only to turn around a second later and wave him over,
"Hey man, Marcel and Aya here for you and Caro…"
"Hi!"
Klaus looked over his shoulder to where Caroline swept through the store, her clothes in place, her hair neat and her face slightly flushed but otherwise, there was no evidence of what she'd been up to mere moments before.
He was impressed.
Falling into step behind her, he shakes hands with Marcel and Aya, seeing a glint of surprise in her eyes when he doesn't go for the typical cheek kiss.
But Caroline had determined that they were going to win both actors over by treating them with equal respect.
"Thanks for agreeing to meet us," she grins, "Can we get you anything?"
Aya looks pointedly around the store, "Is that an actual option?" she asks,
"We have drinks," Klaus tells her, "Some basic snacks until we order food later, but there's a café up the street if you're interested."
Marcel is fine, Aya gives a complicated coffee order that seems to give one of their workers a traumatic flashback to their Starbucks days.
Katherine had set up chairs around a table with a red silk tablecloth that Klaus hadn't even known was an option in sex toys and equipment, and he'd checked under it earlier to see that the furniture was supposed to be used for bondage.
However, with Caroline sitting down, it suddenly loses any sensuality and takes on a business-like quality that he didn't think it was possible for a porn star to achieve.
Especially in an adult toy store.
"I've been following your site," Marcel says, "Your scripts are simple but pretty unique in our industry."
"Thanks," Caroline chirps, "That's actually why we wanted to meet with you both…"
"You want us to be part of your company," Aya interrupts, "You're hoping to attract the black version of your current audience, for which you need black actors."
Klaus has a pretty good poker face, he leans back in his chair but otherwise, doesn't react to Aya.
"Obviously you figured it out when we contacted you," Caroline guesses, "But yes, that's why we asked to meet with you."
"And obviously, we're both interested," Marcel replied, giving Aya a quick glance, "Otherwise we wouldn't be here."
Caroline threw him a grateful smile, "Okay, so if you're aware of our brand, you know we do videos that appeal to women looking for consensual, respectful porn. Right now, our main audience is white women, but we are looking to diversify and cater to more people."
"What kind of videos would you be having us do?" Marcel asks, resting his ankle on his opposite knee, "Copies of yours or…something else?"
"Something else," Klaus answers, quickly glancing to Caroline and receiving a nod,
"Right now, Caroline's doing most of our instructional videos, we don't really need to waste time and effort doing the same thing again, so we'd have you portraying a couple having consensual sex."
"That's it?" Marcel queried, a hint of doubt in his tone, "Regular sex?"
"Eventually we'll probably cover anal, but that'd be a few videos down the line and we won't have you do anything you're uncomfortable with." he offered as reassurance.
"What's in it for us?" Aya demanded, still clearly unconvinced,
"A three-month trial period on our site, a six-month target in site traffic and subscriptions that you agree upon with our company after which point, if you're successful you'll be paid the same rate as Nik and I."
"Assuming your site is still running next year," Aya points out, "And that we're okay with being used by white people to make profit."
"You're already being used by white people to make profit," Klaus argues, "Our industry is notoriously racist, statistically speaking you will both have much shorter careers than any white actors, be expected to perform more taboo and degrading acts, have people refuse to work with you because they don't do interracial porn and I checked with your agencies, you're both paid less than a beginner white girl doing regular boy-girl videos."
"I know this isn't ideal for you," Caroline interjected smoothly, "But we guarantee safe work places, control over your narratives and promise that with us you won't ever have to play stereotypes. Marcel," she turns to him, "You won't have to play a drug dealer, car jacker, or thief, and Aya, you won't have to play a maid, a slave or a third wheel in a three-way."
Marcel tilted his head in consideration, "I'm willing to give it a shot," he allows, cautiously,
"Provided there's a contract and share-options once that becomes available."
Well, that was one at least. Klaus reckoned they might have to go back to the drawing board for a female actress.
No doubt Caroline had backups planned.
She's standing up now with a smile, "Of course, this deal is on the table until the end of next week," she informs them, her tone friendly even as she makes it clear that there is a time limit,
"But you should stick around, meet our people and see how we work, Katherine Pierce provides us with our equipment in return for publicity."
As if she'd been waiting for this exact moment, Katherine sashays into the store, having changed into a blue dressing gown and matching kitten heeled slippers.
While she introduces herself and flirts wildly with both Marcel and Aya, Klaus and Caroline
"Think they'll drink the Kool-Aid, love?" he asks quietly as Caroline begins changing into the pastel pink bandage dress pulled right off the shelf that looked like it could come from a regular store, except that it had a hidden zip in the front that went from collar to hem.
"Hope so," she mutters, "Marcel is gorgeous, and I want our male porn stars to be hot, not just every guy stand-ins and Aya isn't conventionally beautiful but she's really charismatic on screen, which isn't something you see a lot in porn."
She did look like she should have been a stage actress, but Klaus figured none of them had chosen porn as their career goal in life.
Working in porn, you had to get used to being naked around various people pretty quickly, even on small, closed sets, there was usually one or two virtual strangers staring intently at you.
Caroline and Klaus had a good relationship with their crew and Katherine was more interested in her phone than she was in the shoot, so they do a quick walk-through with Luke and then get into position.
And he reckons it's a testament to how well they work together that they manage to stay focused even when he can feel Aya scrutinising their every movement from across the store.
Caroline is a little stiff when he puts his hands on her hips and backs her into the shelf of vibrators, kissing her softly as she pulls on the collar of his shirt. She remembers too late that she's supposed to start playing with the zip on her dress, tugging it down just a little bit to tease him and Luke calls cut.
"Okay," he says, coming over and lowering his voice, "We can do all the store scenes now and the sex scenes after all non-essential personnel have left."
There's a scene or two with Caroline walking through the aisles, picking up a few items of interest before she checks the lingerie, growing more aroused and stopping to tug down her zipper until the dress was open almost to the point of exposing her nipples, at which point, Klaus came back in, saw her and began guiding them to the change room.
He moves out of shot, sitting down and sipping on a bottle of water when Aya joins him,
"How long have you two been romantically involved?" she enquires.
"We're not," he tells her, "Just friends-with-benefits."
She crosses her arms, "I have no intention of mixing business and pleasure with anyone I work with."
"We wouldn't expect you too," he snaps, somewhat offended, "We're running a production company, not a bloody escort service."
Her perfectly groomed left eyebrow is raised, "Do you want the exact number of producers who have tried to make me have sex with them for film roles?"
Nope.
He knew the business was exploitative enough for white actors, he didn't even want to know how bad it was for actors of colour.
"You're never going to get a better deal than what Caroline and I are offering," he points out,
"You might deserve better, you might want better, but in this industry, you're not going to get it."
"I'm aware," she seethes, "And perhaps in time I will be grateful, but it still stings that two-white people are going to get applauded for being woke while profiting literally off Marcel and my backs."
He makes a noise of sympathy but doesn't offer anything else. They were in an industry of exploitation, with little to no means of getting out, even if they could imagine walking away from this life.
So, he watches Aya walk out the door, shakes hands with Marcel- who is much friendlier and enthusiastic about the idea, although clearly aware of the same issues- and wanders over to Katherine.
"What do you think?" he asked her, leaning against the counter and glancing back,
"I hate you." She commented, not even looking up from her phone.
"And I hate you," he replied, "but you're on the ground floor of this operation, so what do you think about Marcel and Aya?"
"I think that if it works, Caroline will then want to include more couples on your site," she says, "I'm guessing she either go with lesbian or gay actors next, the only issue will be expanding too quickly, and they'll all need original scripts and plots, otherwise you'll be accused of sitting on your laurels, being repetitive, whatever."
Tilting his head in reluctant agreement, Klaus watches as Caroline finishes her scene and bounds over to Luke, her enthusiasm and excitement for the future infecting everyone around her.
He supposed he would have to be the one to burst her bubble from time to time, keep her on the ground.
But it was worth it.
Especially when, for the first time in years, he was ending his work days without a pressing urge to drink or drug himself into numbness.
Caroline had done this for both of them, and he did love her for that.