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.
Weeks pass.
He stays in town.
Waiting.
For what—he's not certain.
Ignoring Elena Gilbert has never been an easy task for him, but now it is utterly impossible. He notices her wheresoever he goes. At the edge of the crowd on the town green, her head tilted like a bird's as she studies the milling throng. Spilling into and out of shops and coffee houses with Caroline or the Bennett witch or with teenagers he has never seen before, who smile too brightly and agree too readily, and, once, walking along the edge of the highway late at night, the moon behind her shoulder her only company. His girl and the moon, and what a lovely pair they make, he catches himself thinking before he reminds himself that she has inexplicably stopped being his girl, and that he has not found himself up to the task of reclaiming her.
He's not sure what he was expecting from the much talked about Miss Mystic Falls Pageant. How he thought it could be in any way different from the innumerable other town soirees he has taken to attending with what he realizes in his most introspective moments is a nerve-wrecking level of enthusiasm.
When the girls come out for their dance, he tries to imagine what Elena had looked like the previous year.
He can't.
It's impossible to imagine her life this simple, this provincial.
He can no longer remember what she had been like as a mortal.
What is even more impossible to imagine is the sight of Elena Gilbert as she is now, slipping through the crowd in a black lace cocktail dress, sleek and predatory. Gone is the ghost. To think she would embrace her vampiric nature so swiftly, so completely.
He cannot fathom it.
Cannot fathom her.
The news that she has ended things with Stefan as well reaches him just as he is about to leave.
There should be nothing particularly mysterious about Elena Gilbert throwing over calm, steady Stefan for his wilder, more charismatic brother. Except, it is not Elena's way.
An ill feeling creeps over him.
There's a bar with a much less wholesome clientele than the Mystic Grill, strictly 21 and older. The entrance may face the same back alley as the one behind the Grill, but the two establishments are worlds apart.
He likes to come here, sometimes, because it is the closest which Mystic Falls can offer to the illicit comfort of a hole in the wall speakeasy. The bouncer guarding the entrance knows him well enough, and lets him through without the password.
Inside, the place is dark and crowded.
It should not surprise him that Elena has found her way into this one refuge, nor should it surprise him to find her at the epicenter of the chaos unfolding inside. Her body slithers between two human men, long and sinuous and sinful in its fluidity. She whispers something to one, licks the other's throat, and ducks out of the way as the first one throws a mean looking left-cross at the second one's face. His nose crunches, and blood sprays, and Elena saunters to the bar for a shot. She's back before either of her marks realize she left their sides, fussing over the one with the broken nose and leading him off to get him cleaned up. Klaus orders a drink and waits. She doesn't return with him.
Now that she's embraced the change, Elena shows a real, intriguing streak of creativity for the hunt. That's always been something he's admired in a younger vampire. Anything to keep an eternity of inevitably successful hunts entertaining.
He watches her pull three more people—a college boy she makes out with before brazenly latching onto his neck, for all the world looking like a drunk girl giving an embarrassingly overworked hickey, and two girls who dance just a little too close to her—before he decides he's had enough. If Elena means to make this her new stalking grounds, then he's done with it.
Unexpectedly, Elena intercepts him at the door.
"Are you leaving?"
"You haven't said a word to me in weeks," he reminds her.
"I'm saying one to you now." Her voice dips into a rougher register, low and husky and baiting. She had often sounded just this way right before he fucked her senseless.
He assesses her a bit more critically. Her pupils are blown, and a fine sheen of sweat glimmers on her skin. She licks her lips, and her mouth parts while she waits for him to respond. Her pulse hammers at her throat and her breasts, revealed by the plunging neckline of her gauzy blouse, heave with rapid breaths. There's a subtle, musky scent to her that teases at the edges of his senses when she shifts her wait and presses her thighs together, and he cannot help looking at those long, tanned legs exposed by her miniskirt.
It hits him all at once. She's high on blood, hot and bothered and out of her mind.
He could have her right now. One more time, to purge himself of any last remnant of her.
Silently, he grabs her by the arm and propels her through the door and out into the very same alley where this thing between them had originally begun.
She's on him in an instant, mouth tearing at his own, hands shoving up under his shirt and nails clawing at his back. He yanks her flush against him and plunges his tongue into her mouth, needing to dominate her, to conquer her, to wipe the taste and feel of all others from her memory. Their legs tangle. He flips her around, presses her into the rough brick wall as he grinds into her. Her gossamer thin shirt shreds, and blood beads on her back, the smell of it urgent and cloying and mouth-watering. She growls against his mouth, and it's all the encouragement he needs to lift her up so that she can wrap her legs around his waist. Swiftly, he rips her knickers off and plunges two fingers inside of her.
Elena is hot and slick and tight, and the memory of his time with her washes over him like a wave, the sort with a deadly undertow that could take him far, far out to sea if he is not careful. He breaks away from her ferocious kisses and leans his forehead against the crook of her neck and shoulder, breathing in the salt-smoke scent of her. He knows this body so well. Thought he knew her so well. She groans when he twists his fingers just so, and the insides of her thighs twitch against his hips, where his shirt has ridden up and they are pressed skin to skin. Impatiently, Elena seeks out his mouth again, and he feels that deadly current between them, sucking him back in. He knew she could be deadly under the right circumstances.
He can forgive her, he thinks, as her clever fingers work his belt and trousers open and her hand fists on his cock, working him with an edgy intensity. She nips at his throat but doesn't break the skin, and his knees nearly give out. He'll take her back and he can show her everything this world has to offer her. Everything he can offer her.
The thoughts are swirling madly through his head when he thrusts himself inside of her. He's drunk on her, he knows. He'd been an idiot to ever think one more taste would satisfy him. Not when she's moaning so prettily, not when her arms are wound tight around his neck and her kisses taste like salvation at hand.
Except that when he pulls back to look at her, she does not look back at him. Instead, she screws her eyes shut and leans back, against the wall, bracing herself against his shoulders as she bears down on him.
"Elena, look at me" he pants in her ear.
She doesn't respond.
"Look at me," he urges, grabbing her by the jaw to force her.
Elena Gilbert looks down on him with a flat, empty predator's regard. Everything he had so cherished in her is so far gone he cannot remember in that instant what had been so special about this.
And as he looks into her eyes, he has the sudden, lurching feeling that he has gotten this all wrong.
None of this is about him, or them, or anything that they had shared. For her, it's not even a final goodbye tryst. It's not even that. It's worse. It's so much less.
She's high on blood and the thrill of the chase and she'd needed to get her leg over. He knows what it's like, remembers the overpowering physical urges from his fledgling days. He'd been a fool to overlook those drives for the sake of romance. It could have been anyone she'd dragged out into this alley. Could have been Damon Salvatore or that Matt or any one of her hapless victims tonight. He'd just been the convenient body willing to offer her that hard fuck against a wall without even waiting for a proper proposition.
White hot fury blinds him.
Somehow she has escaped him, driven herself as far away as she can go, to that place inside of herself where he cannot follow. The drive to wrench her back, to claim her and possess her so that she can never run from him again, rips through him like sheet lightning, burning out all other thoughts.
Elena twists her hips and tightens around him, and all the while looks at him like he is nothing and he can't stand it. He wraps a tress of that long, gorgeous dark hair around his fist and uses it to yank her head back and bites down hard on her exposed throat. Elena Gilbert's blood bursts onto his tongue. He barely has a taste before Elena twists out of his embrace. She staggers a few feet away from him, legs unsteady beneath her.
"What the fuck?" She claps a hand over her neck and fumbles at the edges of the bite. When she pulls her hand away, the blood on the tips of her fingers transfixes her. "Why would you do that?" she asks shakily. There's an edge of hysteria in her voice.
Klaus tongues at a stray drop of blood rolling over his lip. "If you lay down with wild things, dear, expect to get bitten."
She splutters something, but he's rapidly losing interest. He'd been a weak and sentimental fool to ever indulge her, and he had reaped the painful fruits of his follies. Now she would reap hers. He feels much better now. As though he can now look at all of this with a level of composure and measured perspective. Really, what did he think he was doing, engaging in this ill-starred love affair with Tatia Petrova's needy spawn?
For the first time, it occurs to him that this isn't just the same alley where she'd first led him out back. It's also the same alley where this girl had helped destroy his brother. Tantamount to slaying a god, that had been. Would she be capable of the feat today? He doubts it. She'd been an inexplicable force of nature, once. For a little while, he had fallen under her spell. Had gone mad with desire for her. Now he sees that she really is just an ordinary girl, one of thousands to have died and transitioned young, in over her head and whining about it.
The bite still hasn't closed. It will kill her if he doesn't intervene. She tries to say something else to him.
He walks past her like she's not even there.
A/N: One more chapter to go! Thanks for reading!