Chapter Text
Today, of all days, see
How the most dangerous thing is to love
Gang of Youth, Achilles Come Down
‘What on earth are you doing, Klaus?’
‘I’m drawing us a bath,’ because she is still covered in blood. Because he never got to feel her against his skin.
Barefoot, she steps to his side. She cards through his hair, and he has to look up at her.
‘You are weird,’ Elena says. Her eyes are no longer empty.
‘I’m the weird one?’ Klaus has to ask.
Elena shrugs. ‘Matter of perspective’.
She sits on his knee, arms looped around his neck, while the bath fills with water. And yes, there might be a pink tint to it, but it’s good enough, Klaus thinks.
The water surrounding them, in Elena’s small bathtub, is still tinted pink, but Klaus doesn’t mind.
In this tiny nook of a world that doesn’t remember him, surrounded by the warmth of the woman who’s changed everything, Klaus feels almost settled; for the first time in endless weeks.
Klaus lets the water, the scent of her hair, soothe his jagged edges. Tapping his fingers against the side of the bathtub, he tries to unspool the jumbled mess of thoughts, of plans, of emotions that Elena’s revelations have caused. The revelation of her deaths, her many restarts.
(All for him.)
(It changes nothing.)
He tries to reclaim a sense of order, adding up the days, the weeks, the years.
‘It’s been two months for me. Forty two years for you,’ Klaus mouths against the little white scars on her shoulder blade. He feels her shrug, non-committal. ‘You put me in the freezer, Elena Gilbert,’ he growls, fighting against the urge to bite.
‘You'd have put me in the ground, Klaus, without as much as blinking.' Smart girl, he thinks, and he squeezes the softness of her waist with something akin to fondness. 'Are you proud of me?’ Elena asks, loose-limbed against him. As if she doesn't know.
‘I think I am, sweetheart.’ And then Klaus wraps a hand around wet, brown tresses, pull her head back, until her half-lidded eyes meet his. He lets his wolf flash, gold. ‘Never do it again’.
‘Or what,’ Elena’s voice is strained from the twist on her neck.
‘I will kill you first. I will kill you now, and I will be the only one to remember’.
Elena says nothing for a long moment. As if she’s learned the stillness of immortality, through all her repeated years. Klaus watches her watching him, and waits, as water drips from the faulty faucet in the sink.
‘You won’t,’ Elena decides, and rests her head against his collarbone. Relaxed, certain in her power over him.
And the beast in him, the remnants of what died in that New Orleans morning, it wants to argue. The best wants to strike first, before she has the chance. Because Elena will strike. This is a certainty. Today or tomorrow or in a year, she will strike. And the beast inside of Klaus wants to prove that he can strike first. Because he has plans, he needs to break the curse, he needs to be unshackled and free to bring upon horrors on the witches, and he can’t, he can’t do any of that if Elena has power over him.
But a greater beast still, the part of Klaus that was never able to let go, even when the tightness of his grasp made Rebekah bleed and howl, that part wants to prove nothing. That needy, starved beast, wants Elena to simply stay. Resting on his chest. Rendered immortal in this ephemeral space, the filtered glow of streetlights kissing her skin. Open against him, trusting. We’ll keep her here, his beast decides, for an eternity.
But she is a slippery thing, Elena.
‘Do you still want to die?’ Klaus asks. He keeps his voice low, lest she hears the fear that’s spilled from the broken box that is his chest.
Elena takes his hand, holds it tight against her chest under the lukewarm water. And Klaus realises, with startling clarity, that he’s been seen.
‘Don’t you?’ Elena says, playing with his fingers. ‘Isn’t your death wish the reason you’ve embarked on your campaign of terror against me, ever since you arrived here?’
‘That’s different, sweetheart,’ Klaus needs her to know. ‘I'm already dead’.
(But she’s not, because he was fast enough. She lives. Her pulse is a constant vibration against his skin.)
‘I don’t have a death wish, if that’s what you are asking,’ Elena says lowly, a confessional meant for him, and him alone. ‘Dying sucks. If I can, I’d like to avoid it. But at the same time, I’d like all the people you’ve made me kill today to not be dead’.
‘You are not a great shot, love,’ Klaus tries for mirth. ‘Maybe the ambulance got to them in time’.
'Sure it did,’ Elena stiffens in his arms. Confession over and done. And Klaus goes to say something light, teasing, anything. Anything to make Elena melt against him once more. But she speaks first. ‘No. Don’t say anything’.
And Klaus stops talking, his beast suddenly eager to prove that yes, it can be obedient. It can learn, it wants to learn - it learned, once. And she has to know that.
And so he says nothing more, using his silent lips to trace the length of her neck, to map the span of her clavicles.
He kisses the words he wants to spill, and Elena must accept them, him, she must, because slowly, she relaxes.
Maybe it is the smell of blood, still cloying in the humid bathroom, or the steady pulse under his fingertips, but the pang of hunger rears its ugly head.
Klaus wouldn’t care, on any other day. It’s been long centuries since the blood lust won over his tight control, centuries since it took him over, only to come back to himself drenched in gore, but today, oh today. He’s been playing god with his emotions for far too long, he’s been skipping meals far too often, and what little blood he’s been drinking feels like dust, barely sating the scratch in his throat. And Elena? Oh, Elena, and he often-spilt blood, it smells too good. What few dried flakes found their way through his lips, during their coupling, were too sweet. Too tempting.
(Elena smells like the only human in this world who won’t taste like dust, and that’s a dangerous thought indeed.)
So Klaus stands, moving her gently to the side, so he can get out of the bath.
‘Where are you going then?’ Elena asks, easy, as if they’ve done this, whatever this is, a hundred times before.
This: Sex, closeness, sharing a bath. But more than that, the easy back-and-forth of familiarity, like in a single evening they’ve scaled towers and moats and oceans, two long-lost lovers reuniting. Klaus feels a pang in his much-wounded chest.
(He’s never had this , Klaus realises. Not really. Not since that first flame, since Aurora. He spent a thousand years hiding from intimacy, then craving it, and now, here, post-death, it found him. And isn’t it all so funny, the crooked mistress they call fate and her tricks?)
It is late, dark outside, but Elena’s estate is sprawling. Maybe he can grab a neighbour.
But Elena would not approve, surely. So instead, Klaus can flash back to the Victorian house, grab a blood bag. He has some left, he thinks. Ten, fifteen minutes top, and then he can be back, before the water gets too cold.
‘Just feeling peckish, love. I will go retrieve a blood bag and I’ll be back in a-’ and Klaus stops, reality hitting him like a freight train.
The Victorian house.
The basement.
Maeve. In his basement. Well in her transition.
‘Klaus?’ Elena has half-pulled herself out of her bathtub, and she is looking at him. Concerned.
‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ Klaus shakes the water off his hair, puts his clothes on as fast as he can without ripping the stitches.
‘You, telling me not to worry, makes me worry,’ Elena says.
‘We will talk once I am back. You should probably put some clothes on,’ Klaus says, finding his phone. He texts Grigory, who’s still standing guard outside the building. He needs to come in, because the lock is broken, Elena’s door is broken, and someone has to keep her safe until he is back. Until he decides what to do with Maeve.
(And then there is Michael, the Irish witch, still stashed away in a traphouse somewhere South.)
(And then there is Gina, or whatever her name is, the nail in his side. She escaped, taking with her the answer to the curse, the key to his freedom.)
(And Klaus needs to sort out Maeve, and then get to Michael, get to Gina, break the curse, and Elena…)
‘Klaus,’ Elena is behind him, and he can smell her distrust.
(Elena is just a distraction.)
‘Sorry, love,’ he says without turning, and flashes away.
Klaus makes it downstairs.
He makes it to the end of the street.
He leaves Elena alone in that flat with the broken door, all alone with no one to keep her safe but Grigory. A nothing little compelled human.
And Elena, she is so much more than just a human. After all, she is the woman who freed his wolf. Who made Hope possible.
Who died seven times, only for a chance to have Klaus to hold her in a lukewarm bath, tinted pink with her life blood.
Klaus swears out loud, startling a teen on a skate, and turns on his heels.
‘Elena,’ Klaus announces his presence. He finds her in the bathroom, still, startled and breathing fast. She is wrapping a towel around the blushed expanse of her body.
‘What the hell Klaus? You can’t just come and go as you please with nothing but half-finished sentences! Oh, and inviting Grigory inside, while I’m butt-naked? Top move. Door slams open, and stupidly, I think you are back to apologise for running out on me, but no, surprise, it is my compelled bodyguard. Who has now seen my boobs, for free, mind you, and did you know he does not speak a word of English, Klaus? Why is there a compelled bodyguard on my living room’s couch, Klaus?’
Klaus breathes out, baring out her frustration, for as long as he can manage.
‘If you are quite done?’ Klaus asks, and doesn’t wait for a reply. ‘We need to go, now, so find something warm to wear,’ Klaus says, and then, when Elena doesn’t move, he heads to her room and starts pulling clothes out of her closet.
He pulls out shirts and trousers, nothing quite warm enough, but his rummaging has the intended effect. Elena has followed behind him.
‘Klaus,’ her voice comes from the doorway, and at least she is present enough to catch a pair of black underwear he throws her way. ‘Stop this. I’m not going anywhere before you tell me what’s going on’.
‘I’ve turned Maeve,’ Klaus says. Ripping off the bandaid, because she’s going to find out anyway, isn’t she?
‘Maeve, you,’ Elena starts. Stops.
Klaus doesn’t quite look at her.
‘I’ve turned Maeve into a vampire,’ he says, because he did that. And if that’s the last drop that shall make Elena’s cup overflow and strike back with her hidden claws, so be it.
(His body tenses, as she takes one step, two steps towards him.)
‘Why?’ Elena’s voice is gentle, almost.
‘Why? You said it, love, that’s what I do. I learned of your betrayal, and I exploded,’ Klaus says, measured. A half-truth.
‘No. No, you knew she was never part of my plans, betrayal or not. She is just an angry kid, Klaus, she’s not even a witch, not really. She shouldn’t be ruined by this…’ Elena stops talking, and Klaus dares to steal a glance, and she doesn’t look angry.
She looks sad.
‘Elena,’ Klaus pleads. For what, he does not know.
‘Maeve doesn’t deserve to be ruined by our chaos,’ Elena, the oxymoron, says. Elena, with her hidden sharp claws and her futile fantasies of a fair world.
‘Did either of us deserve the chaos we were ruined by, sweetheart? Back when we were nothing but kids?’
‘Klaus,’ And her voice catches. ‘Whatever happened to you? When you first turned?’
He can almost see the straw-covered dirt floor, he can almost smell the stench of spilled wine and blood drying on his chest, and Klaus feels his throat tightening.
‘No. Not now. This is not the time to reminisce or fight, Elena.’ Not when I can still taste you, sweetheart, and Klaus focuses on this, her bittersweet taste that’s clinging to his lips. ‘You want a reason? Fine. Maeve, innocent as she might have been, craved power. She asked me to turn her, and maybe I shouldn’t have offered,’ he keeps his voice as measured as can be, ‘but right now, none of this matters. Because it’s done. She is in transition, and, well. For all I know she might have already awakened’.
Elena makes a sound. He doesn’t dare look at her.
A moment passes.
‘Fine. We need to hurry then. Where is she?’
Klaus turns, at last, faces the woman who’s set his world, his end, aflame. She’s backlit, one hand still holding the towel against her chest, jaw set in a firm line. Switching from grief to stern determination, in a split second. She is a fighter, Elena is, and something warm and insidious pulses inside his chest, crawling inside his dusty hollows.
‘I left her in my house. Central London. How long do you reckon, sweetheart, how long until our little friend figures out how to break the door and starts feasting on my neighbours?’
Something hardens in her eyes.
‘Then move away from my closet,’ Elena says, throwing him her towel, ‘so that I can get ready’.
‘I can carry you,’ Klaus repeats, as they walk, oh so slowly, towards the main road. A couple of lost souls in their drawn-up hoodies are staring at them. Him, in his leather jacket, Elena in something pillowy, a light-plum coat so oversized and puffy he is surprised she doesn’t topple over.
‘The Uber will be here in three minutes,’ Elena says. Her words make little clouds in the winter frost, but her tiny legs, the only part of her body he can see, plough stubbornly ahead.
‘We’d be half way there, if only you’d let me carry you,’ Klaus says, mostly to the ground.
‘Yeah, but then I’d get dizzy. So Uber it is. Come on, hurry up, I’ve set the meeting point over there, that corner,’ Elena points and Klaus follows her oversized coat, his mind running over the time they have left.
(Sometimes the turning takes only a handful of hours, sometimes half a day, and he wishes there was rhyme and reason, a way to tell.)
Elena has stopped, mid-step. She stares into the bright display of her phone.
‘What now, Elena? If we waste any more time we’ll find her easy enough. We’ll only need to follow the trails of fresh blood around this damned city’.
‘Nothing,’ Elena says. ‘The uber cancelled on me. Now, if you could wait a moment, I’m booking another, it won’t be longer than -’
Klaus doesn’t bother to let her finish, already lifting her up and speeding off, bulky plum coat and all.
Elena is dry-heaving, on all fours, on his front porch. Like a mysterious, light-plum, four-legged creature.
‘Love,’ Klaus starts feeling the tiniest tinge of guilt.
‘Not a word,’ Elena says, supporting her head with both hands.
‘It couldn’t have been that bad,’ Klaus breathes in. No scent of fresh blood in the air, so at least Maeve hasn’t gone on a killing spree, just yet;.
Elena is taking forever to right herself, and Klaus breaks through whatever wall has been rising between them, and helps her up.
‘I hate you,’ Elena says, and it stings a little. And maybe he’s flayed open, because she sees it, and touches his cheek. ‘Not like that. I didn’t mean it like that. But try to speed me around like that again, and I make no promises, ok mister?’
Klaus rests against her palm, only for a second, feeling the sides of his mouth rise.
‘It wasn’t too pleasant for me either, sweetheart. Whatever possessed you to wear a blanket for a coat?’ Klaus unlocks the door. He walks in first, just in case.
‘You said dress up warm,’ Elena says, following him.
‘That, I did. She is in the basement,’ Klaus says, nodding towards the stairs.
‘Of course she is. Do you have any blood bags?’ Practical girl.
‘In the fridge,’ Klaus flashes back, with his last two bags.
‘Shouldn’t you have some?’ Elena asks, and Klaus swallows, suddenly hyper-aware of the dryness in his throat.
‘I’ll live,’ Klaus fakes a smile.
Elena shakes her head, seeing through him too easily. She takes the stair to the basement first, before he can stop her.
‘Not even an air mattress,’ Elena carries on listing off all the ways in which his basement falls short of her high expectations. ‘No running water, Klaus’.
Elena keeps circling the perimeter of the room, running her fingers over mouldy, exposed brick, fiddling with the string of the bare lightbulb, and well. If she’s trying to keep some distance between her and Maeve, Klaus can’t blame her. In fact, it’d be the smartest thing she’s done all year.
‘I was obviously not planning on keeping her here for long,’ Klaus says, touching Maeve’s neck once more, willing the purple hand-prints to fade away faster. Anytime now, love, he thinks.
‘So,’ Elena says.
‘So?’
‘What if she doesn’t wake up?’
Klaus snaps his head, staring at Elena, who’s now playing with her zipper, looking at Maeve.
‘What? You must have considered this possibility,’ she says, and her doe-like eyes are wide. So impossibly wide, so impossibly full of accusations.
‘I wasn’t exactly thinking, love,’ Klaus says, licking his dry lips.
‘Yeah, you weren’t,’ Elena says.
Yeah, because he wasn’t thinking, not really, whether his blood magic was compatible enough with the humans of this world, to change them, turn them.
If it would work at all, if it would only half-work, Maeve coming back only to sizzle and die, like so many of his failed hybrids.
Starting from his palms, moving upwards, an uncomfortable itch - listlessness - regret - weak, always too weak, always coming up short - spreads throughout his body.
But then he feels Elena moving to sit by his side, on the cold hard floor - at least the puffy coat should keep her comfortable enough.
Long minutes go by, only interrupted by Elena placing a hand against his head, pushing, until he is resting against her shoulder.
Klaus doesn’t fight her, because it’s warm and soft, and against the side of her neck he can close his eyes, just for a second.
All tranquillity is shattered by a loud gasp.
‘Oh,’ Elena says, and her voice is a little raspy. ‘It worked’.
And then Maeve screams.
Maeve stops screaming easy enough, when Klaus bites into the blood bag and pushes it under her nose.
It is a messy affair, newborns feeding. Klaus, instinctively, wipes a long streak of blood from her jaw, and Maeve chases his finger with her mouth and only when he yanks it away, does she snap out of her feeding frenzy.
‘Elena?’ Maeve blinks. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘How are you feeling?’ Elena smiles, all earnest, but still keeping a reasonable distance.
(This smile is so different from the ones she gave him.)
‘Is this blood?’ Maeve gets up, too fast, not used to her new body, and her back slams against the wall. She yells and then punches a respectably sized hole into the brick. ‘What the fuck. What the actual fuck?’
‘Maeve,’ Klaus snaps, before the very foundations of his bloody Victorian turn into cheddar cheese, ‘remember. I turned you. You are a vampire.
‘Luke, I am your father,’ Maeve mocks, and then she slaps her hands over her mouth. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I said that, I feel,’ she breathes, and then coughs blood flakes. ‘You killed me, oh my god I remember you killing me, and asking all kind of things -’
‘Maeve,’ Klaus warns.
‘You had no right to ask me about my mum, and actually, fuck you, you sodding creep,’ and then she lounges at him, and it’s slow and clumsy but spirited enough.
‘Lousy form,’ Klaus remarks, slamming her against the wall. She seems disappointed when a kick from her boot doesn’t push him away. ‘Sweetheart, I have a thousand years on you, you think you can hurt me?’
‘Newborn vampires are the strongest,’ Maeve grinds out.
‘In which universe?’
‘Twilight. Don’t twilight rules apply?’
‘Twilight,’ Klaus repeats, the thirst and the strain of the day culminating into something like a headache.
‘Yes twilight,’ Maeve carries on, as if Klaus wasn’t pressing her against the wall. ‘Not that I’m a fan or anything, we’ll smoke a spliff and watch it for the giggles, you know?’
The only thing that Klaus knows is that he’s created a problem, and that Elena won’t let him erase it. Probably.
(And there is a curse. Still. A curse to be lifted, and he can’t be wasting his breath on unruly baby-vampires with buzzcuts.)
Klaus slams that very baby-vampire against the wall once, and then again, for good measure, and comes closer to her blood covered face.
‘Maeve, love, listen to me carefully, because I will not be repeating myself. You are freshly turned. You will experience intense blood-lust, so stay well-fed and far away from any humans you might treasure. All your emotions will be heightened, and so will your senses and your strength. Maeve? Do nod if you are following along’.
Maeve, his cross-to-bear-made-flesh, blinks instead.
‘More importantly the sunlight will burn you, so we need to magic you a ring,’ Elena offers.
‘Sweetheart, I was getting to that,’ Klaus says with a tight smile. ‘I’ve given this speech a handful of times.’ A thousand times, maybe more.
‘And you’ve never thought about updating it?’
‘Whatfor Elena?’
‘The language is kinda archaic and, agh, let me, ok?’
And Klaus, parched and sandwiched between the two women, lets go of Maeve who simply stands there, blinking at him.
‘Of course,’ Klaus smiles at Elena, and if she sees the threat in it she ignores it. ‘Have at her’.
And so Klaus watches Elena sit back down, on the floor, and give his sireling a semi-accurate run-down on vampirism, with far too many references of Twilight, but at least that means Klaus does not have to answer the questions about periods and manicures.
‘Are you also a vampire?’ Maeve eventually asks, half-way through the second blood bag.
‘Vampire-adjacent,’ Elena says and well. Klaus can’t help the way his lips twitch. It’s true enough.
‘I can’t believe you’ve never told me,’ Maeve says and her voice lifts into a whine, ‘about any of this! All this time I was telling you about the spells I found online, and you were like wow, sounds awesome, and all this time you’ve had a vampire boyfriend?’
Elena stutters, and Klaus’ had enough.
‘You are free to go,’ he tells Maeve. She is no longer useful, and she’s had her vampire intro. She will be fine, or not, but Klaus has loose ends to take care off.
(He has Elena to take care off.)
Elena, who’s now on her feet, facing off against him.
‘Not a chance Klaus,’ Elena says, and her eyes have the fire of a young girl walking to her death.
Klaus doesn’t like his chances, but he tries.
‘Do you want to sleep in the same house as a newly turned vampire?’
‘I don’t know, can’t a thousand-year-old hybrid keep me safe?’
‘Sorry what now? Hybrid who? That sounds daft,’ Maeve says.
‘Shut your mouth,’ Klaus starts.
‘Maeve, shh,’ Elena finishes.
And then Elena is looking at him, a little breathless and it is, isn’t it funny?
Klaus is laughing, and Elena is tugging at his arm.
‘We should go upstairs,’ Elena says, wetting her lips.
‘There is no point,’ Klaus studies the glisten of her mouth, the way her eyes narrow. ‘She’d be able to hear us. Didn’t you cover vampire hearing during your little heart-to-heart?’
‘I don’t know, did we?’
He can hear her each and every heart-beat, his senses heightened by his third.
‘I don’t know love. I wasn’t listening,’ and if Klaus didn’t know any better, he’d think Elena herself was a vampire, with how intensely she looks at his lips.
(He wants to drain her. He wants her to drain him.)
‘Ok then,’ Elena looks away first, breaking the spell. She claps her hands together, as if to clear her head. ‘Ok. So. Please compel Maeve to stay here. In the house I mean, not the basement, and to stay away from the windows. Oh, and to avoid eating anyone, and we can bring her more blood bags in the morning’.
‘We?’
‘Yes we. We will be, well, at mine I guess,’ Elena offers. Something like a shadow passes over her eyes at the mention of her flat.
The cramped little flat that still smells of her blood, surely.
‘The door is still broken,’ Klaus says. ‘A hotel would be easier’.
‘A hotel. Right’.
‘What are you on about? Hotel rooms and making me do what?’ Maeve finally snaps. ‘Whatever, I’m out of here,’ she moves to pick up her jacket, but Klaus is faster, and the compulsion sets in before she has the chance to blink.
‘I didn’t get the grand house tour,’ Elena says. She is standing in the hallway, his hallway, surrounded by brown delivery boxes. The green and amber of the light fixture is painting her thoughtful expression in new-found shades, and Klaus has to shut his eyes for a moment, before he gets lost and takes her to the conservatory, spending the night drawing her likeness, until dawn kisses her skin golden.
‘No, you did not,’ Klaus says instead. Final. And then, softer. ‘Come, now’.
‘Uber?’
‘Bike’.
‘Right,’ she raises an eyebrow, but still, she follows him. ‘You should probably lock the door,’ Elena adds, and yes, sweetheart, Klaus knows how to lock a bloody door, it is just that he never needs to.
Still, he locks with an exaggerated click, and Elena gifts him with a little smile, and all thoughts of next steps and plans away, like so many flies.
‘I still don’t like riding,’ Elena says.
‘I know. I won’t crash’.
She spends a moment bellyaching in front of his bike, swaying from side to side, running her fingers down the leather of the seat. Knocking on the sides. As if appraising the structural integrity of the three-hundred-pound metal beast.
‘But you only have one helmet,’ Elena says, eventually.
‘Yes. Wear it,’ Klaus tries to be patient.
‘You know it is illegal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet? There are loads of traffic cameras. They get the registration number, and you’ll be getting a fine in the mail’.
‘Mhm,’ Klaus agrees. ‘Good thing the bike is stolen, then’.
Elena doesn’t quite laugh, but her body relaxes incrementally, and she climbs on behind him.
Klaus holds on to her thigh the whole way east, because there is no traffic, not really, and he isn’t even speeding, but she is still trembling slightly underneath her thick plum coat.
‘That’s the hotel?’ Elena asks, eyes going wide, once he’s helped her undo the helmet.
She is looking towards the grey marble entrance, where the minimalist sign ‘One Hundred Shoreditch’ gives away the name of the hotel. Around them, on the pavement, a few loose groups of partygoers are smoking, sparing them the odd glance. Shoreditch is hanging on to the spirit of merriment, the streets crawling with the last troops of the pub-going army stumbling into the small hours of the night.
‘It’s as good as any,’ Klaus says. And yes, for a moment he thought of taking her to the Savoy, to the Claridge’s, but picturing her, all of the particles that make her up, amidst their austere luxury of centuries gone by? It felt wrong. Stifling.
And so Klaus drove them to the one hotel he vaguely remembered from Michael’s drunken chatterings - and seeing at the downstairs bar, and the array of fashionably disarrayed patrons, it all made sense.
‘Maybe we could go to a Holiday Inn,’ Elena says, and before he can take her hand, a stocky security guard approaches.
‘Mate, nah. Move it along, you can’t park here’.
‘No,’ Klaus compels. He keeps it short and sweet, handing him the keys, because he’s had a long, long day. ‘But you can, and should, park my bike somewhere safe, and have it ready for me tomorrow’.
The guard drives off.
‘What if he didn’t know how to drive?’ Elena asks.
‘It would have made for a fun spectacle,’ Klaus says. ‘I’m joking, love, he would have said something, I’m sure’.
(Klaus isn’t sure, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.)
‘I don’t think I am dressed for this place,’ Elena says, and the edge of insecurity in her voice needles him.
‘Lesson number one,’ Klaus moves them along, past the crowd that’s now staring. ‘You act like you belong’.
‘Oh, duh. Why didn’t I think of that?’ Elena says, and she is mocking him, isn’t she.
‘It’s harder than it sounds, sweetheart. Putting on a show, for the humans,’ Klaus says, and maybe he hadn’t planned the words, because suddenly her eyes, dark and bottomless, are on him, and he feels like she sees too much.
‘A show. Let me try that then.’ Elena unzips her coat and hands it off to him, and he is too parched and tired to react before she is storming off towards the reception. Her loose hair bobs as she sways, and suddenly her form fitting jogging pants look downright scandalous the way she bends over the reception desk.
‘Hi babes,’ Elena smiles, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers. ‘I know it is so last minute, and I’m sooo sorry to ask, but long story short, my boyfriend got us locked out of our flat, yes, mad innit? But I was hoping you could sort us out with a room, like, if you had any no-shows… Boyfriend, hey, boyfriend!’ She calls out, and Klaus.
Klaus tells himself he is just playing along, as he dutifully approaches and smiles his most harmless smile.
‘Hey boyfriend,’ she smirks, like the devil. ‘You’d be happy to pay something extra if our friend,’ Elena looks at the name tag, ‘Sammy here, if she could sort us out, yeah? Since it’s all your fault, babe’.
‘Locking us out,’ Klaus smiles.
‘Yeah,’ and she brushes a finger through his hair, and he has to resist the urge to bite her wrist so hard he’d taste her fine bones.
‘Um, sorry,’ Sammy says, all East London and business casual. ‘We don’t have anything available in the system, but there’s a Holiday Inn down the road’.
Sammy smiles, Elena falters, and Klaus. Well, he could really do with a room.
‘Sweetheart,’ he compels, ‘I’d really appreciate it if you could give us the keys to the most remote suite you have available’.
‘501,’ Sammy responds, typing furiously. Her bright green nails click on the keyboard, grating his fraying nerves but then she is handing him the keycard, so Sammy can live, yet.
‘Thank you,’ Klaus says, and to Elena, ‘lesson number two, back that attitude with compulsion’.
‘That’s cheating,’ Elena says. They head towards the lifts, and he is still carrying her coat, and her hips are still swaying.
‘Debatable,’ Klaus says.
‘How so?’ Elena asks, as the lift’s doors open. Thankfully, there’s no one else waiting.
‘Because I don’t believe the game is fair to begin with,’ Klaus replies. The door shuts behind him, and then Elena is backing him against the mirror, and Klaus drops the coat because he needs to be touching her, her body, her flesh, instead of cheap polyester.
His head hits the mirror with a satisfying thud, and Elena is biting into his lips, and her legs, well-muscled, wrap around his torso, and surrounded by her, Klaus feels almost, almost sated.
The doors are opening once more and Elena lets go of him, and Klaus growls, because who? Who dares interrupt?
But there is no one at the door, and they are still on the ground floor because neither of them pressed the button.
Elena hits five, with a sigh, and rests her head against the panel.
Klaus hovers in front of her, as the lift takes them upwards, his fingers ghosting over the sides of her hips.
‘No,’ she whispers, eyes shut, eyelashes fluttering.
‘No?’ Klaus asks.
‘I don’t want to be the girl who does the deed in the elevator,’ and the corner of her mouth twitches, and Klaus breathes a laugh against her hair, just as the doors open once more.
This time, they open on the right floor.
The keycard works and the room, it’s nice enough for what it is. Heavy on white, stark white sheets and walls and everything, but nice enough, and then Elena plops down on the bed, and Klaus is no longer thinking about colours.
‘Would you like to take a shower?’ Klaus asks, approaching her, because that’s the polite thing to ask, isn’t it.
‘I think I had enough bathroom time for today,’ Elena says, and that’s fair enough.
He licks his lips, and they feel sandpaper dry.
‘I’ll call room service,’ he says, studying her face. For the inevitable reaction to his monster.
‘I’m not that hungry,’ Elena says and when he doesn’t reply, her eyes widen a fraction. ‘Oh. Not for me. For you’.
‘You should also eat something,’ Klaus says. ‘You are running high on my blood, but you will burn out, soon’.
‘Do they have burgers?’ Elena asks, and the horror is still well-hidden.
‘I’ll call and ask’.
They have burgers. It will take a while, and Elena gets comfortable in the bed, taking off her shoes. And then relaxing, dozing off gently, the crush hitting her hard.
Klaus takes out his phone, his not-Elena phone, and goes through the messages and the missed calls.
Michael.
Michael has been trying to call him, and that’s not right because he should be safely tucked away at some traphouse down south.
Without making a sound, he locks himself in the bathroom.
The pitiful gang that’s supposed to be looking after him is still sending him updates.
He calls the contact.
‘Is he still with you?’
‘Brav? What?’
Loud music is playing in the background, a cacophony of beats and voices.
‘Michael. The man you have abducted, is he still there? Remember, it’s forty grand for his safe return. To me.’
‘Oh my years,’ the voice becomes muffled, ‘bro, bro come ‘ere, it’s the vampire geezer on the phone!’
‘The what,’ Klaus asks, voice tight.
‘Mike is mad real bro, he’s been doin’ all sorts of wild shit in the house’ - ‘he is wildin’’ comes another voice, ‘Mike’s been telling us the best stories like, he is a prophet and there’s a magic blood that makes him superman - like, you are mates? You are like friends yeah?’ another voice pops up ‘nah man, he is his drug dealer’.
‘Yeah,’ Klaus almost bites through his lip. He needs Michael alive, he reminds himself. He needs Michael to get to Gina to break the curse.
(Why did he want to break the curse? A voice tingles in the back of his mind. Because isn’t immortality, true immortality what he wanted, once?)
(Hope, another voice whispers, and this time he does bite through his lip.)
‘Keep him alive,’ Klaus says, clipped. ‘Keep him alive, sober, well-fed, and I’ll throw in an extra twenty, how does that sound?’
‘Oh man,’ laughter, ‘yeah he is aright, he’s aright, he’s just smoking you know? Nothing hard’.
‘Sure,’ Klaus says, and next time. If there is a next time, he’ll only be working with ex-military personnel, because untrained teenagers with too much cash and too many drugs, are a plague on earth.
‘Is he really a vampire tho?’ comes yet another voice, and Klaus drops the call.
He breathes in, out.
There is a knock on the door.
‘Room service?’
Klaus hides the phone in his breast pocket, fangs pressing against his gums.
Good. That’s good. He’ll have a bite and it will all start making sense again.
Elena gets up by the time Klaus invites the man in the too-white shirt in.
‘Give me your hand,’ Klaus compels him. ‘Relax. Nothing hurts. You are doing the right thing,’ Klaus says, because he’s found that most humans want, more than anything, to feel that they are doing good. He speaks louder than usual because he can feel Elena’s eyes on him. Let her see, let her hear everything.
He undoes the shirtsleeve buttons, and the hotel employee is looking around the room.
Klaus wants to pluck the man’s too blue eyes out, but instead he bites down.
The blood tastes like dust, like it always does, and Klaus, he has to fight down a sob, because he should have known, and yet it still hurts, the wrongness, the way it burns down his throat.
But Elena is looking at him, so he swallows the blood. A mouthful, and another.
He meets her eyes, and she is getting up, coming closer.
He lets the man’s wrist fall.
‘Put pressure on it,’ Klaus remembers to say, because he bit hard, and then Elena’s lips are chasing the liquid in his mouth and her lips, her mouth, hell.
It doesn’t taste like dust, and Klaus kisses her deeply.
She pulls away, languidly.
‘How does it taste?’ He asks, as if she would know the difference.
‘Metallic,’ Elena shrugs.
‘We should talk,’ Klaus says, taking a step back, away from her temptation.
‘Right,’ Elena says. She sits back on the bed, picking at the burger, while Klaus heals the man without a name-tag and sends him on his merry way. ‘Will Maeve be ok?’
‘Define “ok”,’ Klaus does not move to sit next to her. He leans against the wall instead. Not that it helps. He can smell her scent across the room, a warm, bittersweet scent that cuts through the fatty acid of the meat, of the chips. Elena has already permeated the space.
‘So, before you appeared, in Mystic Falls. There was Caroline, who was turned, and she was fine, I think.’ Elena furrows her brows. ‘Oh screw it. Was she ok, in your world? In the end? Did she survive… everything?’
Caroline. Klaus wasn’t expecting her, he wasn’t ready for the images Elena’s question conjured. For their last goodbye. He has to shut his eyes for a moment.
‘The lovely Caroline.’ The way she carried him, through the darkness of his ending, all golden locks, sharp wit and care. Till the very end. ‘She is ok. She is excellent. She runs a school. She has a family.’ And if she is lucky enough, I was wrong. I will not have been her last love, Klaus doesn’t say.
‘You kept track of her?’ Elena marvels.
‘Is this really what you want to know, Elena?’ Klaus hears the sharpness of his tone.
Elena shrugs, her heather grey hoodie slipping higher, until a sliver of flesh, just above her leggings, is visible, and Klaus shuts his eyes once more. No, he isn’t sated.
‘You will tell me more about Caroline, later,’ Elena states, with a becoming sense of certainty. ‘What I was saying, is that Care, she took to vampirism well, yes? But there was a girl before her, Vicki Donovan. She did not’.
‘What about her?’ Klaus asks.
‘She was a little like Maeve,’ Elena looks down. ‘Smoked some weed. Had some issues. And then she was turned, and she was uncontrollable, Stefan had to…’ Elena’s hand squeezes the too-white bed sheets. ‘Well, she died for good’.
‘Vampirism exaggerates mental illness as it does everything else,’ Klaus says.
‘Vicki wasn’t, well, she wasn’t ill. Just going through a rough patch’.
‘You could have waited,’ Klaus says. ‘Stefan should know better than that. Illness, or disorder or whatever you call it in this century. Do you think that the ones who turn are the stable, model humans, sweetheart? Caroline was the exception. Stepping into a new existence is messy and bloody, and then you learn how to live with it. Or you don’t’.
Klaus knows he’s pushing her far enough, so he does not bring up her own struggles with vampirism. Maybe if she was to turn now, with all the years behind her, it would be different. Unsired, wiser to the cruel reality of the world.
‘So Maeve will be fine?’ Elena asks. ‘She will learn how to control all her anger?’
‘Not everyone can be like Caroline,’ like Elijah. He taps his fingers on the wall behind him. ‘She has good chances. I knew a vampire once. She was a mad thing, raging one minute, loving the next. She outlived me’.
‘You can’t go around calling random women mad, Klaus’.
‘Fine. Bipolar, then’.
‘Was she diagnosed, or are you a therapist now?’ Elena’s brow rises, disdainful. Challenging.
‘Diagnosed with everything the quacks of the times could think of, locked up in every sanatorium, exorcised by the Catholic church six times’.
‘And so? Does that mean that she is less than, less worthy of love?’ Elena starts.
‘Of course not. I was madly in love with her,’ Klaus says,
‘Of course you were,’ and Elena drops back into the bed with a great sigh.
‘She was my first great love. An epic, forbidden love story,’ Klaus says, and he can’t help approaching Elena, the tempting slice of flesh between her leggings and her top exaggerated by her slow stretching.
‘Better than Romeo and Juliette?’ Elena says, lifting one leg up. She is splayed, and the leggings, the material is so thin, like body paint on her skin.
‘A ridiculous facsimile of love between two sheltered kids,’ Klaus says, his voice so low he can feel it catch in his chest.
‘No please, tell me more about your ex you are still in love with,’ Elena says, but the way she wiggles her hips makes him want to use his mouth, no, find a better use for his lips than talking, so much talking.
‘I’m not,’ Klaus starts, and Elena takes off her leggings.
So much planning, and plotting, and, he runs a hand up her silken calf, pulls her down until her hips are resting at the very edge of the bed.
(There are plans to be made, and she is a distraction.)
There are so many better things to be done with the time they’ve been given.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ Elena says, lips twisted into a crooked little smile. And then she wraps against him, legs, arms, pulling him down with her, and all he can do is control the fall enough, so that he doesn’t crush her.
She clings on him, she hangs on him and the delicious pressure turns torturous as he has no purchase to grind against her.
‘Sweetheart,’ he breathes between two kisses.
‘Yes?’
‘I can’t take off my jeans if you don’t let go’.
Graciously, Elena lets him.
He is aware of her removing her hoodie, her naked breasts full, and he rushes back to her.
Something metal and sharp clings against the polished wood of the floor, and Klaus is pulled away from her.
The bloody daylight ring.
‘What’s that?’ Elena asks. ‘Wait, you haven’t been wearing your daylight ring?’
Your daylight ring.
Klaus turns and twists it, until the lapis lazuli catches the artificial light. And there should be, there should be a sharp little scratch there, a glanced bullet from half a century ago.
‘Not my daylight ring,’ Klaus says, because there is another identical one, isn’t there.
And Elena, sensing the trouble in his mind, or rather impatient for him (she wants him, Klaus realises with wonder,) takes the ring out of his hand. She places it on the nightstand, and then she is on him.
Alive, demanding, a distraction.
And Klaus lets her fill his mind, until he is bursting with her, kiss-swollen lips, hips bruising against him as she rides him with breathy little moans.
He comes with her long hair catching on his open lips, staring up at her wide, tear-brimmed eyes.
‘Klaus?’
‘Yes’.
‘Hold me’.
And he does, until he is lulled half-asleep, hands full of her. Too full to reach for the phone he can hear buzzing somewhere on the floor, inside his leather jacket.
Tomorrow, Klaus decides. Tomorrow he will leave her behind, and set his plans in motion.
‘No brother, it is a gift,’ Elijah says, somewhere behind him.
‘What?’ Klaus rubs his eyes. He has been walking, and he stops dead in his tracks. He breathes, senses invaded by the fluorescent street signs, the cloying sweet scents of New Orleans, and his heart flutters for just a moment. ‘What?’ He repeats, not daring to turn around lest the dream shatters around him.
‘It’s your chance, it’s our chance,’ Elijah continues and Klaus can’t help himself, he turns and stares at his brother, his lodestar, alive as a vampire can be, hand in the pocket of his dark navy suit jacket, quiet thunder in his eyes.
‘Our chance?’ Klaus parrots, trying to keep his eyes dry.
‘To start over. To take back everything we’ve lost’.
Klaus remembers that day.
‘We can’t start over though’.
‘That child,’ Elijah is insistent.
‘Hope,’ Klaus says, and his chest is, it is agony. Sweet agony because he gets to share it, once more, with someone who understands.
‘Yes, Hope,’ and Elijah’s mouth twitches with an understated smirk.
He reaches up, squeezes Klaus’s shoulder, and Klaus thinks he could let go of thinking. Of all the questions. He could let go and just lean into his touch, because he needs it, more than air itself. He needs Elijah, he needs him to be there, to fill in the torn parts of his soul, the hole he’s left behind. But even in his yearning, Klaus’ mind refuses to be tricked.
‘Hope. Only she hasn’t been born yet. You haven’t named her yet, Elijah’.
Elijah looks down, a flicker of a movement.
‘No, I suppose I have not’.
‘Is this a dream? Elijah? All the times I’ve seen you, all the times you were trying to warn me, were those dreams?’
‘It is what you need this to be, Niklaus,’ and Elijah doesn’t look away, not really, but his body moves back, imperceptibly. As if expecting his violence.
‘This is not a dream,’ Klaus says, and it feels right. And then it clicks, another little scratchy wrongness. ‘You were wearing black that day’.
Elijah eyebrows shoot up, and then he breaks into a smile, a real smile, fond and embarrassed.
The suit changes, in front of his eyes, black and slim-fitting as he remembers it.
‘Your visual memory was always impressive,’ Elijah says, looking up, into the starry sky.
‘And you always had a knack for remembering words. For playing with words’.
‘That I did’.
‘Why did you choose this memory?’ Elijah says nothing. ‘Fine. Why are you here then?’ Klaus asks, but what he means is why did you leave me?
‘Am I not allowed to visit my brother?’
There are tables, and chairs, soft music playing somewhere far away.
‘Will you stay?’ Klaus asks, the yearning making his skin feel raw.
‘Not yet’.
‘Tell me how to get to you.’ Despair feels ugly, and he can’t hide it, he can’t hide anything it seems.
‘Not yet, please Niklaus. Just hear me out. What I’ve told you, what I’ve been trying to tell you,’ and Elijah, the bastard, maybe he is not as unaffected as he looks because in a rare display of frustration, he stumbles over his words. He catches himself, scowls. Straightens the sleeve of his jacket. ‘This is a gift, brother. That world you are in. And you are willing to toss it away, falling back into your old ways. Breeding terror. Pain. Can’t you see?’
Klaus is shaking his head. No.
He throws a chair against a glass window. It shatters, and it’s almost satisfying enough. So he does it again.
No.
‘A gift? How dare you… It burns, Elijah! The hole you, you put in my chest, it burns with every moment I spend in there, my throat is parched, everything, everything hurts! Hope was a gift. I have nothing in this damned shadow world I’m trapped in. I’ve lost her, I’ve lost you! I’ve lost you all!’ And Klaus aches, he aches and there is no holding back the grief. The tears, as he pushed Elijah away, trying to hurt him as much as he’s been hurting.
(Not trying hard enough, not nearly hard enough.)
And Elijah, he is strong. He is strong, almost stronger than him as he embraces him and it is almost enough.
‘I will never leave you. Ever. And yet, how I wish you could let go. Only for a while. How I wish you would trust me, and let go and -’
‘What?’ Klaus feels his voice fading. The world, the sounds around him, fading.
‘Niklaus,’ Elijah starts.
‘Tell me,’ Klaus commands, clinging on to the dissipating form of his brother.
‘Nothing. Only… brother you are allowed happiness,’ and then Elijah is nothing but particles of dust, glinting in the first rays of the rising sun.
Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won't you get up off, get up off the roof?
You're scaring us and all of us, some of us love you
Achilles, it's not much but there's proof
You crazy-ass cosmonaut, remember your virtue
Redemption lies plainly in truth
Just humour us, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?