#also i'm moving house rn and it's murdering me ded

[averseunhinged]

*runs at full speed shrieking through the room and hurls wip at the curse*

If you’d told Klaus a month ago that he’d be spending a Tuesday evening in January winding his Land Rover through one of the poshest areas of the Hollywood Hills, submitting himself to more security checkpoints than Buckingham Palace, shouldering a provisional contract and an NDA so dense and complicated that even Finn, the dullest, most detail-oriented entertainment attorney Klaus had ever known, had been winded by it, and getting an uncomfortably thorough pat down from a woman whose physique put Finn's wife, a former professional wrestler, to shame, he would have called you delusional.

It's a pity he can’t tell Rebekah he’s been conscripted into the Fang Bunny Army. He's lived through five or six rounds of his sister’s membership. Of every album release becoming an event, every award on par with a coronation, every tour a gauntlet of ticket sale shenanigans and elusive meet-and-greet passes, weeks of outfit crises, and transportation horrors. Bekah would shriek herself hoarse when she found out he hadn’t so much as hinted at having been personally summoned by her favorite popstar.

It isn’t only the money that's brought him to this point. For the first time in years, he feels truly intrigued by a potential project. His bread and butter might be plentiful and filling, but his greatest achievement to date is an obnoxiously catchy, instantly recognizable twenty second loop from Kitten Crashers, a cat racing game from 2011, that rarely leaves the trending sounds list on both TikTok and Instagram. It's work, and he's glad to have it, but it isn't high profile by any stretch of the imagination. Not anywhere near the level of Caroline Forbes.

Her teen years spent playing the shrewish, older sister on some Disney Channel nightmare and later a starring turn in Vampires of Venice Beach, an inexplicable mega-hit at the box office, it included an original ballad by Caroline herself on the soundtrack. Critics weren't kind to the song, but it was everywhere you turned for over a year. Their assessment wasn’t entirely incorrect. The melody was banal and the instrumentation derivative, but there was something to the lyrics and more than something to Caroline's voice. The song netted her first Grammy nomination. It was by no means her last.

Which is to say, he's not sure why he's being escorted by security into an old mansion in the Hills. He does just fine these days with scores and commercial background music and thirty second hooks for social media, but he's not famous for it. He'd barely been famous before The Originals had flamed out spectacularly. He and Elijah are far better off without differing opinions on creative direction and an unfortunate predilection for falling for the same woman at the same time. The fallout from the Petrova twins had been explosive and there hadn't been any option but to break up the band at that point. His fifteen minutes certainly aren't anything to recommend him to one of the most successful recording artists of the 21st century.

He's shown into a beautifully restored and tastefully appointed room that is mostly end to end glass, looking out over both an outdoor space and a lot of the city in the valley below, blurring in the golden sodium light of late afternoon. The man who'd taken charge of Klaus at the entrance to the house hasn't bothered introducing himself with the sort of smarmy assuredness Rebekah laps up, always to her detriment, gestures disinterestedly to a bank of comfortable seating where someone has obviously been working all day. There are notebooks, binders, an assortment of pens and highlighters, a MacBook, and two tablets on the coffee table. Two guitars sit in stands: a newer Martin with an intricate floral inlay and a vintage Gretsch he desperately wants to put his hands all over. Propped up in one corner of a sprawling couch is the same brilliant cobalt Jumbo she's famously played since she was eighteen. The woman in question is pacing by the pool, phone in hand, having an animated conversation.

The other man doesn't bother going all the way to the open doors before bellowing, "Wrap it up, gorgeous! Your five o'clock's on time."

Without turning around, the queen of Spotify lifts one hand and presents them with her raised middle finger.

"She'll be with you in a moment," the man says, mild and amused, on his way out of the room. "Don't worry. You're probably already in her good books. Loves punctuality, that one. Bit of a freak that way."

Even though Klaus knows how all of this works, the photoshoots and the costumes, the makeup and wigs, he's still a little surprised by how different she is in person. She looks well enough when she trots inside, but she's still barefoot in leggings and an old, worn soft shirt, advertising the Mystic County Sheriff's Department softball team in faded, cracking letters. Her blonde curls are piled artlessly on top of her head, and there's red irritation around her eyes, nose and mouth from wearing and removing stage makeup every day for months on end.

"Hey, I'm Caroline," she says, as though her name hasn't been synonymous with breathy, acoustic pop for the past decade, and waves a little awkwardly.

"Klaus Mikaelson," he replies automatically, as though she doesn't know who's been delivered to her very nice home with its very expensive view. And then she smiles at him with her own, slightly imperfect teeth, and the only thought he has is oh no. He digs his own grave when he, without any higher cognitive input whatsoever, says, "You must never meet my brother."