Work Text:
The bed is in disarray, pillows forgotten on the floor, sheets twisted and wrinkled and disappearing amidst the equally disturbed folds of her skirt. Her blouse went missing somewhere on the stairs and the bra she wears is one of those modern inventions which does all the work of a corset without covering up all that lovely skin. And it is lovely, bathed as it is in sunlight and bearing the marks of his recent attentions.
He hopes to capture the particular way the light turns her hair and skin to liquid gold, but that will be for later. For now, he sits in a chair at some distance, his sketchbook on his knee as he hurries, even with his preternatural speed, to sketch the moment before he loses the light.
It has never, in a thousand years, ceased to amaze him, this impulse. Men through the ages have been gripped by the madness of the muses, the need to recreate the world around them in paint and stone and word. He has indulged in every vice, every pleasure this world has to offer, and they have only ever seemed to increase his hunger for artistic release. It is terribly human of him.
A sharp hum cuts across the gentle scraping of charcoal across paper, the result of her fingers lightly tracing the rim of the whiskey glass she stole from him when he crossed the room too close to her. The delicate curve of her wrist would be easier to capture if it would stop its circuit and he has a sudden flash of desire to bury his teeth in it just to hear her gasp. But that would hardly aid him in his work, so he contents himself with lightly reminding her, “I told you to remain still. Or should I have tired you out more?”
She doesn’t smile at his joke or even look at him. He should be pleased that her gaze remains fixed on the ceiling but finds himself irritated by her faraway look when she should be happily reminiscing.
“I was thinking,” she says as if that explains her disobedience.
“About me, I hope.”
“About Damon Salvatore.”
It is only years of experience which stills his hand rather than sending the charcoal dragging straight across her clavicle. “And why,” he asks tightly, “are you thinking about another man while in my bed?”
Her head does turn now and he remembers why he sought her out when, seeking his enemies in that diner they frequent, he found her alone instead. Elena’s little human pet. He thought, at first, that she was a relic, a piece of the old life the doppelgänger once had before she learned of her true nature, but one which she is unable to let go of, no matter how much it might benefit the poor girl. But those eyes… Ignorant of the greater nature of the supernatural world operating all around her, Klaus expected her to be vapid, naive. But when he introduced himself, she met his secretive smile with one of her own. She knew his name, his address, the amount he had spent to renovate the mansion, his whereabouts prior to Mystic Falls. In short, she knew everything there was to know about the human Niklaus Mikaelson. It would have been somewhat frightening had it been real.
She knew of his feud with the Salvatores as well, though admitted she did not know what caused it, and that her best friend had warned her to leave any room he entered.
When he asked her what prompted her to stay now, she shrugged one shoulder in a way he wasn’t sure hadn’t been calculated to make her hair sway invitingly down her back. “I wasn’t done eating,” she said and took a delicate sip of her shake.
“The truth, if you please,” he said with just a hint of compulsion. “I’ll have no lies from you, Miss Know-It-All.”
She lifted her chin. “I have better taste in men than Elena.” That flip of her hair was absolutely calculated.
It was a challenge Klaus could not ignore. He met it head on with a grin that had once turned a king’s consort to jelly in his arms. Caroline Forbes only sat back in her seat with a proud grin of her own as if she’d won a point off him.
On principle, he took one of her chips. “You’re paying for that,” she said immediately.
“Perhaps,” he allowed. He did. For her entire meal and the cab to the mansion. She challenged him all the while and he met each with increasing good humor, winning his points in her smiles and sighs and the blouse still dangling from his banister. And to find out now, after all of that, she’s thinking about Damon Salvatore. He really can’t wait to find out why.
Those eyes of hers are sharp as daggers when she says, quite simply, “You’re both vampires.”
It’s hardly surprising. He knew it was a fool’s errand for Elena to keep her friend in ignorance and with all that’s gone on, there must have been cause to compel her back to that ignorance. Perhaps even more than once. Damon must have shut her memories of his true nature up and it was only Klaus’ compulsion to tell the truth which brought them to the fore.
Why that means she should be thinking of him in Klaus’ bed still remains to be explained. As does how she ascertained that he is a vampire as well. He was quite polite. Never fed on her once—though she was quite tempting.
“You’ll have to forgive me, Caroline,” he says, “I don’t see what Damon has to do with our current circumstances.”
Caroline props herself up on one arm, catching the glass beneath her hand to stop it spilling over his imported sheets and fixing him with a look that would turn Perseus to stone.
“Ah,” he says, setting aside his sketchbook as easily as he sets aside the sudden tightness in his lungs.
“Exactly.” She throws herself out of bed and sets to pacing the floor in her bare feet, gesticulating with the whiskey so her every statement has him wincing in fear for his upholstery. “Damon Salvatore blows into town and he’s too late to get Elena, Stefan’s already hit her with the puppy eyes—” Klaus has to stifle a laugh at the, admittedly accurate, image of his old ripper— “so what does he do? He sees second-choice Caroline Forbes sitting alone and decides ‘what the hell? She’s probably a decent fuck.’ And she is! You know she is!” She points an accusing finger at him. “So he doesn’t kill her! He just … makes her wish he would. He eats her out and eats her and drives her absolutely insane.” Her voice is nearly a shriek. Utterly at odds with the casual way she shrugs out her next words. “Until one day—he gets bored. He doesn’t even care enough to kill her.”
She sits, heavy and spent, on the edge of the bed. Her knees knock together beneath her skirt and her feet twist in the carpet and she nurses the whiskey while meeting Klaus’ eyes.
“And now,” she sighs, “it’s happening again.” She makes to throw the drink back, but Klaus is faster, crossing the room to catch that wrist of hers before it can move more than an inch.
He is gentle. Those delicate bones of hers would be painfully easy to break beneath his strength—just as easy as it would be for Damon to break them while she struggled. Or perhaps, given her tirade, while she did not.
Klaus does not allow his thumb to trace her pulse. Such a motion would calm him, but he highly doubts it would be so beneficial for her. Instead he provides just the slightest pressure, enough to spur her to lower her arm of her own accord. Then he takes the whiskey and sets it aside, all while keeping his eyes locked with hers.
“I told you to be truthful with me. Do you understand what that means?”
“I have to be,” she says with a touch of bitterness.
He lets that go with a faint nod. She is entitled to it, after all. “Then I want you to tell me: did you come here of your own free will? Did you do anything with me that you did not wish to?”
He fears for a moment she might bite her own tongue off before she would answer. But pragmatism wins out. “No. I wanted to be with you.”
“Why?” he asks. Knowing will hardly help her, but he would like to.
“Because Elena told me to stay away from you.”
Spite as a motivation is hardly foreign to Klaus, though it might have soothed his pride a bit had she practiced some restraint there.
Though, studying her tight jaw and the way her knuckles whiten on the edge of the mattress, he wonders whether it’s her own pride she’s protecting.
“Do you want me to kill you?” he asks.
“No.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to.” He means it as a reassurance, but she shows it for what it is in only three words.
“Neither did Damon.”
Another point for her.
He returns to his chair, allowing her the empty reassurance of distance.
“Do you want to know why I brought you here?”
“To hurt Elena,” Caroline says. She looks away from him, eyes fixing on one of those pillows they had no need for. “It’s why everyone hurts me.”
Yes, he can imagine. Elena Gilbert is incredibly valuable. It’s taken him five hundred years to find her. But her friends? The people she cares for? Their lives are cheap. And none cheaper than a pretty little human with no powers, whose name no one will remember in a hundred years, who readily calls herself a decent fuck like it’s all the value she can expect others to see in her.
She is terribly human, Caroline Forbes.
“I will not hurt you,” he hears himself say and finds he means it. He did not, after all, allow himself to feed on her even while she begged and gasped his name. If he can resist that temptation, surely he can keep a simple promise. “Unless you would like me to.” He says it hoping to resume their earlier easy companionability, but when he sees her flinch he makes another hasty promise. “I will not let anyone hurt you.”
It is more foolhardy than the first. Compelled into ignorance or not, she is the easiest path to Elena and there are many who would readily spend her life to get to the doppelgänger. Klaus himself might have been one of them only a few hours ago, had their conversation gone differently. But Caroline has charmed him, a rare accomplishment at his age. He would like to keep her.
“You can’t promise that. Stefan couldn’t even stop Damon and he’s his brother.”
Klaus grins toothily. “Ah, but I am not a Salvatore. They are pups, barely a century old. I am an Original. My siblings and I were the first vampires.”
He reaches for his sketchbook, making the statement a casual one and allowing her the dignity of hiding her reaction. That he can hear hear heartbeat race and her breath catch at the revelation, he pridefully keeps to himself.
“Now.” He flashes her the unfinished drawing. “Might I continue my work or would my muse like to accuse me of other men’s sins some more?”
She studies him for a long moment, her hands sliding back along the sheets. “Who said I was your anything?”
“You. Later. If you’d like.”
Those eyes of hers darken and she lays back upon the bed. He waits until her heart rate eases before rising, bringing her the whiskey glass—he really does want to get the curves of her wrist just right. He kisses her pulse before he presses the glass to her fingers, meeting her eyes while his lips hover there, willing her to see his control.
She gives a faint nod and he grins, placing her arm just so before resuming his seat.
“Now stay still, sweetheart.”
Caroline is much like the late afternoon light that shines through the window, bright and golden and surprisingly complex when given proper attention. And, of course, constantly moving so as to ruin his work. It is only a few minutes later that the hum of her finger on the rim of the glass resumes. This time, he allows it.