Love Bites
by adlyb
Pairing: Klaus/Elena
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through season 4 of TVD
Warnings: Explicit sex, excessive bloodplay, angst, more angst, depression, canon-typical violence
Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.
His affair with Elena ends without any sort of formal dénouement.
Everything is different after she returns.
Not in the ways that would be obvious to the casual observer, but in all the ways that matter to him.
There's a school dance, and with Caroline split from Tyler Lockwood, she asks him, somewhat shyly, if he would escort her.
A few months ago, he would have jumped for the opportunity to have the lovely Miss Forbes on his arm for an entire evening.
Now, he cannot help but think that if there is a school dance, then Elena must be there, and he will have the chance to set things straight between them.
He is right, at least in part.
No sooner does he escort Caroline in to the darkened school gym, transformed by white ribbons and silver festoons into a supposed winter wonderland, than he spots her, at the center of the dance floor surrounded by reedy boys and coltish girls, fawning for her attention. She's dressed in a daring white dress that plunges in the back all the way to her waist and shows off miles of long legs and acres of glowing, flushed skin. A few weeks of regular feeding has put weight back onto her body, filling out lush and tempting curves. Elena giggles, the sound sweet but sharp, and takes one of the girls by the hand, leading her off of the floor and out the back. That dress will show every last speckle.
Neither of the Salvatores are in attendance, but he's not certain what that might signify.
Caroline notes his attention. "Don't worry, she's being careful," she says. "She won't risk us."
"I thought she was averse to feeding from live donors."
"She was afraid to. And we were afraid to let her try." Which still doesn't explain why no one had thought to bring her a bloodbag in all the months since Elena had turned.
"And you don't think she runs the same risk now?" he asks, carefully.
Caroline looks at him gravely. "She has to sink or swim on her own at some point. And when she sinks… I'll be there. We all will." Because, at some point, all vampires make a mistake. He's surprised by Caroline's pragmatism.
A new song starts up, and Caroline loops her arms over his neck. "Dance with me," she orders, coquettish and soft. He cannot possibly tell her no. She fits into his arms like a dream. It's not enough to distract him from keeping an eye out for Elena's safe return.
Return she does, finally, some three dances later. The other girl returns with her, swaying like she's had too much to drink.
"Let me get you some punch," he tells Caroline, and doesn't wait for her reply. Very quickly, he's able to find Elena and pull her aside, into the shadows by the folded back bleachers.
"Where's your date?" Elena asks him. Her breath smells like vodka.
"No doubt finding a way to make last minute improvisations to the décor. Why, does it bother you that I'm here with Caroline?"
"I think it's for the best." She glances over his shoulder, back toward the gaggle of teens. Looking for her next bite. There's a faint red mark on her chin, but a casual observer would think she had simply smeared her lipstick. She hadn't been wearing any lipstick earlier. Sure enough, a constellation of red flecks the shimmering white fabric over her bust.
"Let's leave," he suggests, ignoring her jab. "I'll take you back to mine and I'll take care of you."
"I don't need you to take care of me. I'm fine," she tells him distractedly.
"It's a clever trick, giving that girl you bit a nip from your flask, so everyone will think she's just smashed, but it's risky too. You have blood splattered all down the front of your dress. Anyone who cared to notice could see." Then, in a softer tone, "I'm worried about you, my dear one."
Elena glances back up into his face. Something unguarded flickers there, and his heart surges, triumphant. He has her now.
"Come away with me," he coaxes her, repeating an earlier offer, meaning it for something more than just come home with me.
That remoteness he had noted before falls over her face. "Don't you understand that I can't? Not ever."
She tries to brush past him, but he won't let her. Not yet. He crowds her back against the wall.
"What's changed? What did Damon Salvatore say to you?"
"It's not Damon, Klaus. It's you."
He doesn't understand. Can't understand as she shoulders past him, as though he hadn't meant anything at all to her.
"Is that it, then? You're just going to walk away?"
She glances at him over her shoulder, tells him, bewilderingly, "I mean to go where you can never follow."
There is no place he would not hunt her.
He watches as she grabs a cup of fruity punch from a passing classmate, begrudgingly admiring how she artfully trips and spills the red juice down the front of her dress, obscuring the bloodstains. She laughs and twirls through the crowd and finds another pretty girl to whisper with behind cupped hands. She's a menace to the room. An irresistible lure. Lovely to watch. Deadly, maybe, in the right circumstances.
She never turns back, not even once, and it becomes unbearably clear that she does not intend to ever do so again. Their conversation feels more and more final the longer it sits with him. He feels outside of himself, a stranger to his past, when he finally turns away from that bright shining star that was Elena Gilbert.
"Where were you?" Caroline asks when he returns with her punch.
"Did you miss me?" he asks her with his most winning smile. Amazing how easy it is to play along despite the vast cavern he feels opening up within him.
She says something back, and he responds on automatic.
They dance and he gathers her in close and focuses on the feel of her in his arms. It doesn't help.
For the rest of the night, he tries very hard not to think any more on Elena Gilbert. A mere two months ago, he was convinced that he was half in love with Caroline Forbes. It shouldn't be so difficult to fall into the same folly again, even if he now fears he knows the difference.
She rests her head against his chest and murmurs, "This is nice. It always feels right, when I'm dancing with you."
"You've been in need of a proper partner."
"Do you think that's you? My friends wouldn't think that."
"I think that's up to you, isn't it?"
She looks up from beneath her lashes and bites her pretty pink lower lip. Her heart beats very fast in her chest. This should be enough.
"And what if I did say you were the right one? What then?"
He's taken aback by this tact from her. "Do not play games with me, Miss Forbes. Cruelty doesn't suit you." Not the way it suits others.
She frowns at that, and doesn't press him any further on the topic.
Their conversation turns to other things after that—his plans for the hybrids, mostly, what he will do with them now that he cannot make others, the upcoming Miss Mystic Falls pageant and where he might go if he chooses to leave. He thinks about inviting Caroline along when he does leave, because it's becoming clearer and clearer to him as the night presses on that he will leave, but he does not quite.
Not yet.
The next morning dawns gray and misty. It's the first morning After Elena.
No, that is not right. The first morning was weeks ago. He just hadn't known it for sure.
The first morning without her was probably the one and only when he'd awoken in her bedroom, encircled in her arms.
She'd fixed on him a strange, melancholy look, that had left him feeling exposed and restless. Hungry for her arms and her mouth and the way she looked at him with her eyes wide open.
He'd had her still, in that moment.
But then, he had risen from her bed, and kissed her farewell, and had not known how final their parting was to be.
That morning, he compels a human to slit the Hunter's throat, then snaps the human's neck. One of his hybrids buries the bodies in the woods out back.
A/N: Thanks for reading.