-Kol listen to me. You don't have long-
Rebekah stands as the car backs into her, speeding away when it hits her and watches Elena's confusion as she stumbles out the car. It's easy to push the bitch against the car, the fear and blood creating an intoxicating mix as her real face draws into her eyes, her fangs dropping as her dark eyes peers over Elena's terrified face.
Elena squeals pleasantly.
Then Elijah comes, with his pathetic admiration for Elena and his threats.
She runs home in anger and disgust, careful not to make a sound as she sneaks back inside. She doesn't want to endure Klaus' anger quite yet, or mother's disappointment. She closes the door behind her and freezes, over at the doorway to her right, Kol sits, leaning against the open door frame with two empty blood bags by his hip. He murmurs, twitching somewhat. Asleep.
Rebekah breathes a sigh of relief. Kol would no doubt tell on her, still irritated at her for her betrayal if the way he acted last evening was an indicator. He hadn't been quite as vicious as she'd expected, but there was clearly something wrong with her brother if his tears upon awakening had been any indication, or maybe it was mother's presence that made him refrain himself. Kol always did act like a lost duckling with mother, following her around as she went about her day, only leaving for pranks, magic, their controlling father.
Creeping up the stairs she freezes and bends down, hiding behind the railing when Kol launches from his position with a scream, grabbing out for something. He slumps, a ragged breath coming out his lips as he runs a hand through his hair. His heart is beating wildly, the sound deafening in Rebekah's ears as he pulls out a phone, he must have compelled of some poor sod, and turns it on, showing the lock screen that has a picture of a cat under the text detailing the date and time. "It's okay," he whispers and puts the phone away, closing his eyes again. "You're fine." he whispers one last time.
Rebekah stays still, not making a single movement until Kol's breath evens out and he begins twitching with a nightmare again, then she leaves careful on each step as she stares down at her brother in pity.
Something is definitely wrong with him- Kol who relishes in chaos and murder doesn't have nightmares, and certainly not two in a row.
As she lies in bed, Rebekah decides that it isn't her problem, Kol can take care of himself like he's always had. (and if her stomach clenched painfully in worry as she watched him in the doorway, well-)
-I am hoping you will help your baby sister out-
Her brother shoves a handful of popcorn into his mouth and takes a long sip of (oddly sweet smelling) blood from a blood bag as he watches a blonde geeky girl sprout some nonsensical lawyer talk to retrieve a dog. Kol laughs and popcorn flies out onto the sofa as his shoulders shake.
"What the bloody hell are you doing!?" Rebekah snaps, increasingly annoyed at the voice coming from the screen.
Kol looks over at her, he's dressed in Klaus's too big clothes, they look ridiculous on him. "I'm watching… Legal blondes, I think it was called. A truly amusing play, the humans keeps being offensively dumb, but the girl is quite good at this lawyering."
"And you like it?" She asks dubiously, the image before her is too bizarre for her.
"Sure." Kol says, stuffing more popcorn into his throat before sipping at his blood as he watches a chick flick.
"Klaus!" she shouts desperately, running out the living room, immediately regretting it as she watches the stairs and Klaus comes speeding out, (he'll be angry that she tried to kill his Doppelganger) catching himself on the rails before he accidentally goes off the sides.
"What is it!?" Klaus asks, eyes wild as he watches her, not with anger but concern. Elijah and Elena hasn't snitched on her attempt on the traitorous humans life yet.
Rebekah points in the direction of Kol, fleeing the fear at the anger Klaus will hold away. "Kol likes chick flicks!" she screeches, uncaring for the enhanced hearing of the vampires living with them. When she'd discovered the dramatic change in films, she'd pegged Elijah to like the more quiet thought provoking films the girls at the high school so hated- Kol she'd suspected would love the violent horror movies so like the plays he used for force on humans in the past. But there he was, when she leans back, looking through the rooms and watching his side as he sips blood, watching a dull chick flick. Rebekah hadn't lasted half a chick flick film the one time one of the girls from the school had invited her with them to a slumber party, and Kol seemed to be relishing in it.
"I don't know what that means!" Kol calls back, his eyes never leaving the screen as Klaus descents the stairs. Rebekah watches him stop in his tracks, just like she herself did, the moment he spots Kol sprawled out on the sofa. Kol turns to look at them for a few seconds, "Are you two going to stand there all day? I quite enjoy my privacy you know. Also don't you have school of all things Rebekah? it's getting late! It's at least six in the morning already. What if you get detention?" he mocks.
Rebekah bristles and runs up to slap the back of Kol's head, his whole body launches forwards, popcorn scattering everywhere. "Well?" she asks, spiteful, "Don't you have cleaning to get to? What if mother grounds you for the mess Kol?" Klaus snickers behind her as Kol glares, but instead of retaliating like usual, he rolls his eyes and turns back to his stupid movie.
"Nik, won't you be a darling and compel someone to clean up this mess Bekah made?"
Klaus snorts as he pats Kol on his shoulder and leaves. After a minute of watching Kol genuinely being engrossed in the stupid film, Rebekah goes and swoops up her bag, she has some dinner to hunt. It's Saturday, so there's no school. But if that was what she was leaving for, a part of her had hoped their mother would be awake to see her off, just like the human girls at the school gets their parents to do every morning.
-And as happy as I am to see you, Davina Claire, I... I truly wish you didn't join this particular coven-
He's through his third chick flick, Klaus having fled when the second one booted up, the fourth is running through its trailers a room over. Two of the DVD's he'd snatched from the store didn't allow for him to skip to the menu, giving him plenty of time to prepare and indulge in some sad, unhealthy binge eating. (If he was a human) During the third films trailers he'd thrown together a chocolate cake that needs maybe a few more minutes, he isn't quite sure, the smell of blood is overpowering his ability to smell how far along the cake is.
The bloods smell is just turning right as he stirs the pot before him, the blood slowly being heated. He pulls the pot of the stove just before the blood can begin to congreal and swirls it around, pours half into a cup and leans against the cupboards. He sips at the blood, enjoying the heat as it the blood goes down with closed exhausted eyes.
"What are you doing brother?"
Kol startles, jumping as his eyes fly open to catch Elijah standing in the doorway with his hand hovering over the kitchen table, his dark eyes flicker from Kol, to the blood and lastly the oven half hidden by him before returning back to Kol's face. "Uh," he says intelligently and looks down into his cup which he knows Elijah can smell isn't just blood. "Eating?" he says innocently, behind him he knows a syrup bottle lies knocked over from when Elijah had startled him, still standing upright is the baking materials he'd used. A few chocolate bars lie besides a large flat metal plate on the island between he and Elijah. Kol feels like taking them and bolting.
He'd thought everyone had gone out.
"You're… Cooking..." Elijah proclaims dubiously.
"Yes," Kol says and decides- he doesn't care- he'd needed to act like Davina was still there to spoil. The past nights constant berrange of nightmares leaving him weary for anything familiar, (the last one hadn't let him sleep despite his exhaustion, the image of Davina never knowing him, dying because of his interference with the past. The image flashes behind his eyelids when he blinks) so for a minute he needed to just be able to pretend. "So what?" he asks and takes a sip of his sweetened blood, it almost feels like too sweet, leveling an uncaring and bored look at his brother.
"I did not know you knew how to bake," his brother comments softly, drawing closer to Kol who shifts on his feet. "I am sure mother will be pleased."
Kol bristles at the assumption and hisses, Elijah stops. "What are you even doing here? Leave me be Elijah, it's not like you care anyway." he steps back but doesn't leave, instead he watches Kol as he puts his cup down and crouches down to peer into the oven. It's good enough, he decides and slips on some muffs before pulling the cake out and smacking the form upside down onto the metal plate. The cake releases, from the form and he quickly scatters the squares from the chocolate bars over the surface of it, letting them melt themselves.
Elijah watches in silence as Kol quickly gulps down the last of his blood. Slowly, as Elijah watches him, irritation crawls over Kol. "Where's Finn and Esther? Can't you go annoy them?" He snaps and aggressively drains the last blood from the pot into his cup, spilling some out from his rushed pouring. "Want some?" he juts the cup out at Elijah with hostility flooding off the gesture.
His brother squints at him and hesitantly takes the cup, he sniffs at it, grimacing before taking a taste and making one of the funniest disgusted faces Kol has ever seen his brother make. Kol laughs, grabbing his cup back and placing it on the counter as his lungs begin to hurt from excessive laughter.
"I don't see what was so amusing about your horrendous drink." Elijah comments as Kol slowly calms himself, giggling in small bursts when he makes the mistake of looking up at his brothers face.
Eventually Elijah leaves with a frown when Kol keeps giggling hysterically and carefully using a spoon to spread the chocolate out on a nice somewhat even layer. He stabs the spoon down into the cake once when his giggling gets a bit too hard for him to control the spoon. (Davina would laugh at the holes and take a picture, just to show him when he claims to be the best cook in the world)
He abruptly stops giggling and sags, dully watching the slowly drying chocolate. He downs the remaining blood in one gulp and feels frustrated hunger flare in his gut and snarls. Resisting the urge to throw the cup at the opposing wall, he slides down to the floor and puts his face into his hands.
After a while he hears the television shut off.
-What a precious family moment. Pardon me while I go and gouge out my eyes with a hot poker-
Kol eventually leaves the kitchen with the cake in his hands, and finds his mother sitting at the dining table eating with Finn and Elijah. Their conversation ends- they were talking about the upcoming dance, making preparations as Elijah, on the phone, conveys their mothers wishes- when Kol puts down the cake in the middle of the room and leaves, quickly returning with plates, forks, and a knife. He sits down at the table and crosses his arms, staring defiantly at Finn and his mother. Elijah clears his throat and returns to his phone call.
"Aren't you going to ask for a slice Finn?" he asks hauntingly, a smirk crossing his face as he turns to Esther. "Mother?"
"I would love to Kol," Esther says so he quickly slides a slice over to her, it almost smashes into her wine glass but stops just before. She takes a small bit into her mouth and widens her eyes with surprise. "So this is what chocolate tastes like!" she says with a weird happy tilt to her voice, both his brothers look at her oddly as she takes another bite.
Putting up another slice onto a plate Kol snorts as he slides it over to Elijah before sending a last piece at Finn. His eldest brother looks at the cake suspiciously, like Kol would poison it, which he probably should have and made up a lie about mother being allergic to chocolate. Elijah ends his call eventually and takes his own taste of the cake, there's hesitancy in his hands when he brings the bite to his mouth, Kol smirks. Apparently his syrup blood left a bad impression.
"It's quite delicious Kol," Elijah praises and leans the other way on his chair, "But I must admit that I'm curious when exactly you learned how to create human foods."
"Why Elijah, you'd almost say you didn't know me at all," He mocks and hefts himself a slice as he stands and slips a piece of paper with his phones number to Elijah. Elijah doesn't know him, none of his siblings ever really knew him at this point in their lives, and now they don't know anything about him at all. "I'll be going out, call me when I'm needed." mother looks disappointed, and its clear Kol inherited his ability to deceive from her, she's quite good at looking like she genuinely wants to spend time with her monstrous children.
He's only out on the courtyard when his phone rings and he picks up with a quick "Hello?" knowing it won't be any of the previous owners contacts as he'd blocked all their numbers.
"We need you in ten minutes Kol, that's when the tailor will arrive," Elijah says in a voice that tells Kol that he's well aware he's being obnoxious. "Do be on time, I'd hate for our time schedule to need more reshuffling."
Kol wretches the phone from his ear, observing the time when Elijah promptly hangs up before he can reply. "You're a bag of dicks Elijah!" he calls into the mansion and walks off to sit on one of the benches that's been moved there during the night as he struggled to sleep. He chooses the one remotest from his family, where he can remain undisturbed.
He eats in peace, watching nature and kills a bird that flaps a bit too close to his face, getting blood on Klaus' clothes. Suck it, Kol thinks like a child as he looks at the almost unnoticeable blood on his elbow, he's also pretty sure there's colorful feathers in his hair but Rebekah always did say he preens like a bird, why not make some litterallity to that statement.
-:-
"You're late," Elijah says shortly when Kol finally joins his family, off to the side Finn is being shoved into a suit that somehow already perfectly fits him. "I said ten minutes, it's been almost two hours."
"Ah," Kol says and takes out his phone. "I'm afraid I'm still getting used to… Technology, brother, I am a senior citizen from the early nineteen hundreds after all, it's only to be expected." Rebekah snorts from where a woman is putting finishing touches on her nails with a metal file, at her side sits a piece of his cake, they mustn't have told her he made it. Or Rebekah would never have eaten it.
"I see you're enjoying my cake." he comments mildly, watching her choke on it as a compelled tailor rushes over to to him and basically begins stripping him from his clothes to take his measurements.
"W-what?" Rebekah stutters, dropping the fork in her hands to her lap.
"Yes, It would seem our brother is a man of hidden talents." Elijah comments mildly as he sorts through ties.
Rebekah ignores the cake and them after that, remaining silent with all but mother who walks in a few times, now in a newer dress than the one she'd worn a few hours ago.
The Tailor slides the last piece of clothing onto Kol's shoulders, he looks in the mirror and just like last time, he looks great. Really, a lot of morderen clothes fit him better than the older styles that's been normal throughout the centuries. At least that's what his wife tells him when she throws a piece of clothing at him she wants him to try out.
Mother is fitting them them out in almost identical suits, Kol thinks as he glares at Finn through the mirror. It's quite creepy when he thinks of it like that, like some creepy harem of her own children
He slides his eyes from his own body and spots Rebekah watching him in the mirror, "There's that face-" she starts and is interrupted as Nik comes barging in.
"You went after Elena… What is wrong with you!?" Nik says, a large departure from the easy amusement of this morning when Rebekah had been bullying Kol.
Rebekah wiggles in the couch, "Here we go." she says expectantly, a devil may care smile on her lips.
"Do you want another dagger in your heart?" Klaus asks predictably.
Kol snorts, "Always the daggers," he whispers, "So creative, come up with something better- like, do you want your fingers ripped off? There's probably enough time for them to regenerate before mothers ball."
"Oh, go back to staring at yourself Kol."
"Well, it's certainly more pleasant than staring at your face," he returns, grinning when Klaus' face darkens. "It's all weird and twisted- ah, exactly like that."
"Be quiet Kol."
"Let me guess- do as I say, or get a dagger in the heart?" Kol mocks, shifting his voice to sound more like Klaus.
"No, but this is my house." Nik threatens.
Kol grins, "Oh that's just perfect! Just what I was waiting for, a reason to leave this dump. I'll go pack my nonexistent things right now! Oh and when I'm gone remember to take some cake and celebrate my release from this family."
"Nicklaus," Mother interrupts before Klaus can throw Kol out and thus giving his mom no way to get the stubborn Klaus to let him in again. "Come with me." Nik glares at Kol one last time and follows mother, getting an earful of his past treatment towards them.
Kol smirks down at Rebekah who mirrors his expression with a bit more glee.
-:-
Kol spots the doppelganger sitting with the girl Klaus has a crush on, Caroline, watching her for a beat before looking away. He follows Bekah further into the uncomfortable and claustrophobic atmosphere of the grill and groans to himself when she immediately intrudes in on the two girls conversation.
"Careful Caroline, it's all well and good until she stabs you in the back." his sister snarks, glaring daggers at the doppelganger.
"What are you doing here?" Klaus' blood bag asks in the corner of his vision. He's taken to watching Caroline instead, "I know your mom's rules, no murdering the locals."
"Get over yourself Elena, it's not all about you," Rebekah says to her and half turns to Kol. "You, stay and don't cause trouble."
One of his eyebrows pull up as if to say, and you aren't here to cause trouble? Bekah snorts and leaves, approaching one of the humans, a vaguely familiar boy. She rummages around her bag for a second and hands him an invitation, that's who he is, Kol thinks, remembering the boy Rebekah had asked him to kill, only to want him alive after a small display of kindness. Matt, if Kol remembers correctly.
"Oh my God. She's inviting him to the ball," Caroline huffs, watching the two before turning to the doppelganger. "Why is she inviting him"
"Probably to get this reaction from us." the living bloodbag says.
"Probably." Kol agrees reluctantly, earning a yelp from the blood bag as she whips around to stare at him.
"Who the hell are you?" Caroline demands narrowing her eyes at him without fear. He can see why Klaus would like her.
"Kolby Claire," Kol says, using the pseudonym he's gone by the last seven years with Davina. "Rebekah is showing me around your little town."
"Are you like her boyfriend or something?" Caroline presses further.
Kol snorts with disgust. "Ew, never."
"Then why are you here? How do you know Rebekah?"
"I've known Rebekah for almost a thousand years, she's like a sister to me. Really Darling, if you want to inquire if I'm available just plain ask." he smirks, leaving over the seat besides the bloodbag.
"What?" Caroline startles, her eyes flashing over to the doppelganger for a second.
Kol snickers. "Don't worry darling, I'm afraid I'm already spoken for," he winks rising as Rebekah turns from Matt and gestures to Kol to follow her, "I'll see you at the ball." he says and leaves, catching up to Rebekah by the exit, finally able to breathe as he hits the fresh air.
"What was that?" Bekah asks. "They're the enemy Kol."
"I was just having some fun. What about you dear sister? What were you doing with that human boy?"
"He's Elena's friend," Rebekah explains, giving the same reasons as the last time- "If he dies, she suffers."
"How devious Bekah, you can't touch the doppelganger so you go after her friends."
"Well," she says, turning to him. "I've already been scolded once today, so I hoped you'd help your baby sister out."
"And kill him? Now why would I do that, maybe some human contact will temper your bratty predisposition," he teases and gets whacked in the arm for his words, "I'm kidding! I'd love to spit mother in her face, just tell me when you want the boy dead."