#cheesecake's chook scratchings

[queencarolinemikaelson]

Rootless Tree II

Hello lovers, here is a short second part to a drabble I wrote for a fandom event I think in April! Hope you like! You can read part one on AO3, FF, or here! 

/

Fifteen Years Later

Klaus was in a bar. It wasn’t a particularly uncommon occurrence for him, but he usually wasn’t completely alone, as he was that day.

He finished work, some meaningless hours before, and joined a couple of colleagues for an after work drink.

When they left for their homes, he stayed; waiting at his home was more of the same melancholy loneliness that had been nipping at his insides for a few months now.

He wasn’t there to drown his sorrows, by any means; he wasn’t particularly sorrowful for anything. Nor had he been having a rough trot of it. But the fact of the matter was he was staring down the barrel of thirty-five, and he wasn’t all together too sure what he had to show for it.

He had a family and group of friends who loved him – he was lucky. A well-paying, rewarding job – better than many around him. A house – check. With a mortgage – double check.

He had nearly all of the things a thirty-five-year-old should have, he supposed.

But Klaus was not a naïve man. He knew for all his bluster over the years about singlehood, he did want someone to share his life with.

His baby sister was to be married in a few months, and then it would be just him and his 21-year-old brother who were unmarried. Even Kol was tied by the ring finger to someone, and he barely stood still long enough to brush his teeth.

And it was fine, of course it was fine, but on that day, in that moment, Klaus knew he wanted something more.

Something real.

As he called for another drink, a smattering of applause broke his concentration on his own plight.

About an hour before, a folk singer and her guitar had become the soundtrack to Klaus’ musings. She really did have a beautiful voice, and the few lyrics he tuned in to hear were quite meaningful. Though he couldn’t see her, closeted away in a dark booth as he was.

She began speaking softly to the audience after the clapping was silent again.

“This will be my last song…” she said, a little nervously. “It was written by a truly incredible songwriter, and I strive daily to craft stories, and weave emotions the way he does.”

Klaus took a sip, and decided to tune in fully for the final song.

“I’ve been really feeling this lately,” she continued. “A lot has been happening in my life, and this song… really grounds me. Maybe because I heard it for the first time when I was still very young. Maybe because it has the kind of energy I want to convey. Maybe just because it expresses how I’m feeling. Anyway… here it is.”

The woman began to pluck her guitar strings in an effortless rhythm, and familiar notes washed into Klaus’ ears, and he could hardly believe it.

What I want from you, is empty your head

He grabbed his beer and left his booth.

But they say, be true, don’t stain your bed

He settled on a stool by the bar, and had a clear line of vision to the source of the voice.

And we do what we need to be free

And it leans on me, like a rootless tree

Klaus watched saw the light crease in the woman’s forehead as she sang through the words, and he could tell she deeply connected with what she was singing.

What I want from us, is empty our minds

He watched her fingers pick furiously, though noted how her eyes remained firmly closed the whole time. He wondered just how many times she played that song, to be so comfortable with it that she didn’t need to ever look at what she was doing.

But we fake, we fuss and fracture the times

Her voice was truly remarkable, Klaus thought, and he wished he paid more attention to her earlier in her set. 

We go blind when we needed to see

And this leans on me like a rootless

She shook her head from side to side as she played, causing her bob-length blonde hair dance around her face in such and enchanting way.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and all we’ve been through

The harsh words falling from her lips didn’t seem as wrong as he thought they might, for once again, he was struck with the emotion she was weaving into the song.

I said leave it, leave it, leave it, it’s nothing to you

He gazed on her face, still transfixed by the small crease in her brow that he noticed earlier. It signalled to him that she felt the song in the same way he did.

And if you hate me, hate me, hate me, hate me so good

It was almost liberating to know someone understood it. Someone knew what he felt so many times.

That you just let me out, let me out, let me out it’s hell what you’re around

Klaus listened in a trance for the remainder of the song, and couldn’t help but stand to applaud her when she finished.

“Thanks for coming, have a good night now,” she said, almost abashed into the microphone, before leaving the stage.

Klaus sat back down, feeling strangely empty.

He had gone to the bar that day to feel connected to something, and he found that connection. For it to be so fleeting, and for it to be now over…

He turned his back on the now empty stool where she once sat, opting instead of stare into his beer despondently.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting that way when he heard a soft voice order a glass of wine next to him. The voice was familiar enough for Klaus to glace up.

It was her.

He gave her a smile, one which she returned almost slyly.

He was a little taken aback, she had seemed far too demure to slyly smile at him.

“Well, fancy seeing you here,” she said, and Klaus was suddenly awash with dread. Was he supposed to know her?

“I don’t know love, I’d say the same about you,” he said, cockily, hoping if he blustered through confidently enough he could give himself time to place her face. It was familiar, now he saw her up close he could see that, but didn’t know why.

She let out a tinkling laugh in response to his comment.

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” she giggled, her whole face alight.

“Is it that obviously,” he replied, grinning sheepishly.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, I think the last time we spoke I was like eleven, you played me Rootless Tree in your 1970-something Corvette!”

“Caroline?” he asked.

She nodded kindly, and took her place on the stool next to him.

“Has it honestly been fifteen years since I spoke to you?” Klaus said, bemused.

“Pretty much,” she replied.

“Time really does have a way of getting away from us all, doesn’t it?”

He tried to say it without the wistfulness he felt, but didn’t quite manage it.

“It sure does,” she replied, and Klaus was comforted to hear she too sounded wistful.

They both sat in silence for a few minutes, taking sips from their drinks, lost in their own thoughts.

“What have you been doing with yourself these past fifteen years, Mr Mikaelson?” she asked, pulling his mind away from more sombre things.

From there, the two of them began chatting away, as though they were old friends. Which really was at odds with what they really were – which was barely more than a much older brother who met his much younger sister’s friend once over a decade ago.

He shared everything from why he chose to go to law school in London, to his favourite breakfast cereal, all the way to the existential dread he had been dealing with over the past few months. She in turn told him about her career, her music, her fears of the future and everything in between.

Klaus had forgotten that, yes, it could just be instantly easy with someone. That someone could actually fully capture his attention.

He wasn’t sure what he would do when she inevitably had to go. No matter how much it felt like there was no world beyond them, the hours had marched on. How could he go back to a world where he wouldn’t see her.

“So will I see you at Bekah’s wedding?” he asked, hopefully.

Maybe she would be there, and they would dance. He could hold her, whisper into her ear, and everything would feel alright, just like it did now.

But, Caroline stiffened, her contentment dissipating, causing his heart to sink.

“I’ve been invited,” she said, simply.

Klaus turned his body so he could study her face. It was truly beautiful, but had well-covered sadness suddenly pinching at the corners of the mouth.

“Will you attend?” he probed.

She looked down into the depths her wine glass, taking a moment to answer.

“Bekah and I aren’t really as close anymore,” she said, carefully, still maintaining eye-contact with her wine glass. “I haven’t spoken to her much in the last few years.”

“Oh, really,” Klaus said. “I wasn’t aware.”

He supposed he had lived away from his family for a very long time, and of course people changed. But it stung somewhat that things couldn’t be easy, just this once.

“The two of you always seemed so close, and she and Stefan still talk about your college days often… I just assumed.”

Klaus caught an infinitesimal flinch on Caroline’s face as he mentioned Stefan, and suddenly wondered whether it was less of a losing touch between two friends, and more of a rift.

“Oh you know, life happens,” she replied, vaguely. “I feel as though I’m a bit of an obligation-invite. So I guess we’ll see how I feel on the date of RSVP.”

Caroline let out a tinkling laugh, and downed the rest of her wine, making a move to stand up.

“I better get going anyway,” she said, and it was Klaus’ turn to flinch, as he wished he never mentioned Rebekah, and that their moments together could continue. “Early morning.”

“Same here, love,” he replied, disappointment niggling at his insides.

She placed her hand on his arm and gave it a little squeeze.

“It was really nice to see you, Klaus,” she said earnestly. “You gave me such an important gift back then. My music can be linked so strongly back to that car ride with you. And I think my life would look a whole lot different without it. Bye for now.”

He smiled at her, the kind of genuine smile he didn’t know whether he still had.

Their eyes locked, and for the most fleeting of moments, Klaus’ heart filled and his mind flashed through the life he could have with Caroline if things had been different, if she wasn’t his little sister’s friend, if he didn’t feel like his best years were gone, if they could be in the same place at the same time. 

“I hope to see you around, Caroline.” 

/

This is the song Caroline is singing. Listen, and love Damien Rice.

[wamurancountrylife]

Amor Vincit Omnia, love conquers all things

G’day Dear reader,

I know it’s not been long since our last update, but I’ve wanted to bring you up to speed with the developments in our chicken flock.

It’s always interesting, to watch the feathered ones when we disturb the social hierarchy. If we add a few extra girls to the harem, they fight ferociously to work out who gets first dig at the scrap bucket. If something happens and a new boy chook arrives on the scene, there’s turmoil for days.  Some chicken Sheila’s try to gain favour with the new lad, and some stick close to their known and trusted knight in shinning feathers. Also, the ruler of the roost now must re-negotiate his authority, so days of jousting between suitors begins.

We’ve watched this process a few times, and to the chooks, it’s a serious issue. We told the story last year of a dear friend returning an egg after its chromosomes weren’t what he wanted… that upset the flock for a while. Another time, when a good friend and neighbour had to downsize his poultry project, we gleefully accepted his purebred prized pets and added them to our menagerie. And recently when a dear relative had to re-home her entire flock, we once again threw open the door to the poultry palace and laid out the welcome mat.

This hierarchy thing never quite unfolds how we expect either. These chickens aren’t kind to each other dear human. If you think they put the kettle on and invite the newcomer over for coffee when the dust from the delivery van settles, you’re delusional. It appears tolerance is a trait that’s yet to be taught in chicken school. Things were going along nicely a few months back. The immigrants had settled in. The rooster roster had been sorted, as we hadn’t had to run after them trying to prevent chicken murder…

And that brings me to the point dear reader. I now understand why women who say “I’ll never have any more” when Princess Penelope is born, a few years later turn and look loving into hubby’s eyes and whisper “ Penelope could do with a play friend” I know because I’ve now done it. I looked at my adoring wifey-poo and said, “we should raise another brood”.  Now if you haven’t noticed dear reader, the Bride is “The Rock” in this household. I’m the one that races of filled with caffeine and optimism, in search of a liter of milk and a loaf of bread, only to return with some oranges, some chocolate, a new pair of pliers because they were on special, and a great idea for recycling used bicycle parts… I think that’s why the Cook still loves me, I keep her stuck between panic and dread, and in that way, she hasn’t got time to realise that life’ d be quieter without me…

Now I’ve probably just gone and upset the whingers again by calling the misses “The Cook”, So in an attempt to redeem myself before the thought police come screaming down the interweb at me, I better clarify things. Here at The Rustic Resort, we diligently practice what in the Business world is called “Segregation of duties”, and for good reason. You see, as good as the Wonder Wife is, I just can’t seem to get her interested in using the chain saw. Not only does she find it scary, she can’t start it and can’t lift it above her waist. She also has this uncanny ability to list a dozen things that are urgent and must be done immediately every time I try to strap her into the tractor and send her off to terrorise the grass. But to be fair dear reader, it’s a two-way street. When I’m cooking, I struggle to understand if a dish needs more salt, more chili, or if I need to hide it at the bottom of the compost bin and quickly call Uber Eats before anyone finds out that I just abused a hundred dollars’ worth of ingredients, and now even the dog won’t eat it. I’m a bit like that with the laundry also. I know we have a washing machine, and I have no problem with stuffing my grease-soaked shorts and smelly socks into it, along with The Brides frocks, but I can’t find where to add the petrol and apparently “more is not better” when it comes to soap…

So, if I’ve gone and upset anyone that’s been to university, by calling my beloved “The Cook”, well I’m not partial to doing dishes either…

Anyway, back to the chickens dear reader. If playing hop scotch over fresh chicken poo while juggling bags full of groceries isn’t enough, and if three Roosters trying out for Australia’s Got Talent at 2am every morning isn’t enough… The chickens have taken to molting like it’s a contest. I’m worried that any day now, I’ll walk outside after the news bulletins finish telling me what I’m going to die from, to find a flock of naked chickens sun-baking in the back yard. There were so many feathers out there yesterday I thought the misses must have run over them with the lawn mower.

So, for me to look at The Bride all misty eyed, and tell her how I wanted more of the feathered things…I’m sorry but that must have been the wine talking… I know they recycle grasshoppers and caterpillars into eggs, and eggs can be used to make Cheesecake. But according to the health guru on the tele the other night, Cheesecake’s also going to kill me.

It’s a bit of a worry dear reader, I can’t shake the hand of friends and strangers anymore for fear of one of us dying. I used to give close friends a hug, but now I get looked at like I’m toxic if I pass by someone closely at Bunnings. If I leave the house, I could kill half the population of Australia, and if I eat anything that provides comfort in these times of turmoil, I’ll likely wake up dead. Between the Chinese, and their propensity to share new and interesting afflictions on humanity, and the people on the Tele pointing out that breathing is now more hazardous that not breathing, it’s good to have something to take our minds of all this chaos.

And that’s where Chickens come in dear reader… while I’ve had a bit of a rant above on how annoying they can be, and they will turn your garden upside down ever second day (in search of the earth worms you’re trying to encourage), and they will leave poo everywhere… … … especially on the path outside the front door…

But they are endearing little creatures… their clucking and chirping’s have a calming effect. My beloved has a couple that will sit on her lap for a scratch. The mirth and comfort provided by a dozen chickens is greater that an episode of friends. We’ve seen them grab a bone from the dog and race off, leaving our Pound Hound bewildered in front of an empty food bowl, and if you’re really in need of cheering up, I defy anyone to not crack a smile when watching a plump chicken run towards you for a handout.

So yes, dear reader, I’m crap at foraging for bread and milk, and I’m no better in the laundry… and The Misses can’t start the chainsaw and fears the tractor… But we’re emotive little things and we feel better when we have chickens in our life… … … So, let me see, where’s that egg incubator stored?

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[queencarolinemikaelson]

A Mystery Never Fully Explained

//Klaroline AU Week// - Day 1 - All Human AU

x

There really was no two ways about it, Klaus Mikaelson was a diva.

A prima donna, even.

There was an urban legend in the theatre industry that once, while rehearsing his role as Beast in Beauty and the Beast, Klaus opted to sit his dressing room, rather than ‘save’ his leading lady from the wolf attack at the beginning of act two.

“I was just throwing the moron to the wolves,” Klaus allegedly said smugly, to the rightly irate director.

Yep, he was biggest drama queen in the theatre industry.

All who worked with him agreed Klaus was actually a soprano in a baritone’s body. Though they would never say it to his face. Nope, to his face, all were perfectly lovely.

Because, no matter how many three-year-old-esque tantrums he threw, or crazy demands he slung at a company, or assistants he fired, Klaus Mikaelson was still the best.

Contemptuous he may have been until the very last second, but once he was under the spotlight, he was magic.

No note, nor line was missed. His honey voice caressed every ear like a lover. His impeccable acting could bring to life every character from King Herod to Jean Valjean.

So naturally, when casting for a reinvigorated West End production of Phantom of the Opera, whom else was to set to play the titular character?

Rehearsals certainly weren’t easy for the crew.

The nature of the show meant already two divas needed to be cast for the roles of Christine and Carlotta. How were they to cope with a third.

But they had managed to make it to opening day without too many scuffles until – 

“What the bloody hell do you mean Bonnie’s in the hospital!?” Klaus roared. “Who is going to do my make up?”

“Have some compassion, Niklaus!” Elijah, Klaus’ brother – who also happened to be his manager, (and what was more pertinent, the only one who could make any sense of a tantrumming Klaus) – sighed. “She is in the hospital, after a car accident!”

“We are opening in three and a half bloody hours, Elijah! I refuse to have my Phantom butchered by some blonde-bimbo-beauty-school-drop-out, playing face paint, just because Bonnie decided to have an accident!”

“Oh be reasonable,” Elijah snapped, though made the mental note to tell Ms Bennett just how indignant Klaus was about working with anyone else. Surely that was some vote of confidence? “She was hit by a car!”

Klaus glowered, but didn’t return fire. Even Klaus, diva or not, knew car accidents were bad.

“There are two options,” Elijah said, after both men had a moment to calm themselves. “You can have your makeup done by the associate head of make up. This will require you to leave your dressing room, and join some of the other cast members.”

“I don’t mingle with the peasants, Elijah,” Klaus pouted, petulantly. “They chatter and natter about inane things, and I cannot focus on what is important. Which is the work!”

“Fine! The second option is you trust Bonnie’s substitute. A Ms Caroline Forbes, currently the head of artistry on Broadway’s Phantom of the Opera.”

Klaus rolled his eyes intensely. He hated Broadway. He hated working on Broadway. And with people who worked on Broadway. And just people in general, but that was beside the point.

“Brother, my feelings about Broadway aside, I’m not sure if you’ve seen a globe recently. But this is London. Not New York City.”

It was Elijah’s turn to roll his eyes – honestly maybe it was time to quit, and live as far away from Klaus as possible.

“I’m well aware of the geography, Niklaus,” Elijah groaned, rather uncharacteristically. “Ms Forbes, an old friend of Ms Bennett, is currently visiting London. Had tickets for tonight’s show, in fact, so is very well placed to aid us tonight.”

“Fine,” Klaus grumbled, after a moment of contemplation – though there wasn’t much to contemplate, no make up was so bad that he would endure the blather of other cast members. “This Broadway woman will have to do. But I refuse to be pleasant to her.”

“I would expect nothing more of you, Niklaus.”

Just then, there was a knock at the door of Klaus’ dressing room.

 “Ahh, that will be her.”

 “You did not just approve her to come backstage before consulting me brother!” Klaus growled.

“Well,” Elijah said, buttoning his suit jacket as he stood up, an air of finality in his tone. “As you so eloquently put it, brother you’re ‘opening in three and a half bloody hours’, there really isn’t any time for your arguments.”

Elijah strode away from the sulking Klaus, and greeted the woman on the other side of the door.

“Ms Forbes,” he said politely. “Please come in, and thank you so much for this, the company is indebted to you.”

“Please, call me Caroline,” Klaus heard a bright, cheery voice say, though she was still blocked from his sightline. “Anything for Bonnie!”

“And how is she after the accident?”

“Shaken,” the woman said, her bubbly voice suddenly laced with worry. “Her injuries are mostly superficial, but her arm will be in plaster for the next few weeks.”

“I see,” Elijah said, before they both came round the corner, and Klaus was able to get a good look her for the first time. “This is Niklaus.”

“Hi!” she said, smiling a smile so bright, he should have been wearing sunglasses. “Caroline.”

She held out her hand for him to shake, but Klaus just looked spitefully at it, before looking away.

Klaus couldn’t believe his misfortune. She was a blonde bimbo.

“Right,” Caroline said, a little disheartened, as she withdrew her hand.

“Anyway, Miss Forbes, I’m terribly sorry, but I have to dash. The world does not cease for Niklaus, although he’d like to believe it would. I’ll catch up with you both later.”

The two of them chuckled together, much to Klaus’ chagrin, and then Elijah left, the same way Caroline had just arrived.

“So,” Caroline said, sitting herself daintily beside him. “You and Bonnie have been working on some pretty cool techniques for your look.”

Klaus said nothing, just stared pointedly at her.

“She took me through her plans for tonight, anything you –”

“We actually open very soon, and I would very much appreciate it if you just got on with it,” Klaus snipped. “Though try not to talk, love. It will be a bit painful otherwise.”

“There’s no need to be rude,” she said, as she raised her eyebrows coolly. “I was just going to ask, if there’s anything you wanted to tell me before you get started. Latex allergy, warm ups that need doing, that kind of thing.”

“No, nothing to share,” he muttered. “And as if I would need to do warm ups.”

“Okay!” Caroline said brightly, trying to ignore his cockiness. “Then let’s get –”

“I do warm up, but not near the help,” Klaus interrupted. “If you want a free show then go back to Broadway.”

“Yep, I get the picture. I’m just going to –”

“Urgh, the quality of Broadway is nothing on the talent of those of us on West End.”

“Mmhmm, I understand, Broadway is the worst. But please –“

“In fact, I swear Broadway casting directors just goes to Times Square and nab any old riff-raff street performer to make up their ensembles. It’s lunacy _”

“Uh huh, I get it, Broadway suck, but Klaus I really –“

“I’m literally the best in the country. I have won multiple tony awards, even a grammy award. I have more original cast recordings under my belt than –”

In years to come, Caroline would swear herself black and blue that it was an accident. That it was a mere, yet mildly severe, slip of the hand brought about by loss of concentration because of Klaus’ continual ramblings.

And she would never live it down. But she would also be revered by many because she actually managed to make Klaus Mikaelson shut the hell up for once in his life.

For, at that exact moment, Caroline’s deft hands wiped fast drying liquid latex over Klaus’ mouth, and Klaus, who was completely stunned by the movement, did not move quickly enough before the latex dried.

Sealing it completely shut.

“Oh my god, Klaus, I’m so sorry!” Caroline said, with all the correct emotions. She certainly sounded convincingly mortified, until she followed up the with a quirked eyebrow and the comment, “though, try not to talk, love. It will be a bit painful otherwise.”

And, to Caroline’s amazement, Klaus stopped squirming, stopped trying to form words when his amplifier was completely blocked, and Caroline was finally able to get to work.

“What a happy little accident,” Caroline said, jovially, now a little more at ease that he wasn’t being so obnoxious. “Might just snap a little picture, I’m sure Elijah would appreciate it.” 

Klaus narrowed both his eyes at her.

“Oh? Don’t like that idea?”

Klaus just remained stock still, the menacing look still etched on his face.

“But you are so cute when you’re not talking!” Caroline joked, before quickly realising what she said, and going a lovely shade of magenta.

Somehow, Klaus managed to smirk, even without full use of his mouth.

“Oh don’t look at me like that,” Caroline said, with all the bravado of someone trying to dig themselves out of a hole. “You know you’re cute, why deny it?”

Klaus just shrugged, and dismissively inspected his nails.

“Fine, let’s get on with it,” Caroline said. “And if you’re a good sport, I’ll dissolve the latex before it’s time to sing!”

xxx

“All done!” Caroline beamed, happily inspecting her work.

It was a little under two hours since Caroline began Klaus’ transformation, and a little under twenty minutes since she freed him from his gag.

In the past twenty minutes, even though he had the option of railroading her for having the audacity to seal his damn mouth shut, Klaus found himself, funnily enough, keeping his damn mouth shut.

Experiencing Caroline as she worked was rather mesmerising.

She certainly wasn’t anywhere near just a blonde-bimbo-beauty-school-drop-out as he feared. She was very talented, extremely precise, and had an almost unparalleled eye for detail.

But further than that, at any given moment, her face was liable twist and change, letting him know exactly what was going on. It was rather endearing.

She filled the silence in with bits of chatter, about the different steps she was up to in his transformation, about her life, and just about many inane things really.

And, though Klaus despised the inane, coming from Caroline it felt natural and a little bit lovely.

“You do look fantastic,” Caroline said, proudly, spinning him around in his chair so he could more closely inspect her work. “Definitely like a weird dungeon dweller who’d fall in love with beautiful young things who sing to you!”

“Then you nailed the brief love,” Klaus quipped. “I don’t recognise myself.”

“Well, I would be worried if you did!” Caroline giggled, squeezing his shoulder briefly. “Then you would have to admit to me that you’re a weird dungeon dweller who’d fall in love with beautiful young things who sing to you!”

“I’d never admit it, love,” he said nonchalantly. “Though, I have to say sincerely, your work is impeccable. Bonnie’s work is excellent, but you’ve provided just an extra spritz of something else.”

“Not bad for a Broadway babe, huh?” Caroline winked, nudging him with her hip.

“Not bad at all.”

In that moment of eye contact that so often follows a tease, Caroline was stolen by the glint in Klaus’ eye.

“So umm,” she said, looking away. “Where to next for you, Mr Phantom, sir?”

“Warm up, last minute director notes, back here for a costume and touch ups.”

“I’ll stay here until you’re ready for your touch ups.”

“I look forward to it.”

And with a wink, Klaus was off.

xxx

A few hours later, Caroline was back in front of Klaus’ face, tenderly wiping away the residual make up.

The show had gone off seamlessly. And honestly, Klaus was so completely on cloud nine by how it all went, he was actually being pleasant to those around him.

And now he was with Caroline again, and that was a joy in and of itself. Though he’d never ever admit it to anyone.

Klaus couldn’t help noting how soft and delicate Caroline’s fingers, and the stroked along his skin at different places.

“Nearly done,” Caroline murmured, concentrating on removing a particularly stubborn strip of latex. “Nearly done.”

“Not a problem, love,” Klaus said, absently. “This is the most relaxed I’ve felt in months.”

“Opening night behind you,” she replied. “That’s got to be a relief.”

“Mmm.”

He shut his eyes, and felt himself get mildly lost in the sensations, until –

“Klaus,” she said, softly.

“Mmm?”

“We’re finished.” 

“Oh.”

“Umm,” Caroline said, searching for something to say. “I guess I’m done for the night, unless…”

“Unless?” Klaus prompted.

“Well, I’m really hungry, but I don’t know where is any good around here…”

“Are you asking me out?” Klaus smirked.

“What! No?” Caroline blustered. “I mean, I am asking you to go out, but not out. Not like on a date out.”

“Glad to hear you’re so indignant at the idea of a date with me,” Klaus teased in mock offence.

“I’m not indignant! Dating you would be fun, I think! But this wasn’t a date! I’m just hungry, and I thought you would be too!”

“Dating me would be fun would it?”

“Oh shut up. I’m leaving.”

Caroline grabbed her coat and huffily stalked from the room.

“But you’re hungry, and don’t know where to eat,” Klaus grinned, hurriedly gathering his own things so he could follow her out.

“I can google it, I just thought company might be nice,” she snipped. “Glad you arrested me of my illusions so promptly.”

“You wound me, love!” he laughed, catching her hand in his, and stroking a thumb along it gently – apparently her skin was as soft under his hands, as it was on his face. “Come on, let me take you to my favourite post show hang out. You’ll love it.”

Caroline stopped walking, and narrowed her eyes at him.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“Not a chance, love,” Klaus quipped.

Caroline couldn’t help the wry smile stretch across her lips.

“Fine.”

And so it was, the two went to that post show hang out that night. And the night after that. And the one after that. Until Caroline had to leave, back to her home, back to Broadway.

And, in a mystery never fully explained, Klaus put aside his distaste for the iconic New York creative hub, and somehow ended living in New York, reprising his role as the Phantom on Broadway, only a few short months later. Before going on to perform many more incredible shows there.

It was a mystery.

Unless you were familiar with Caroline Forbes.

Then it wasn’t much of a mystery after all.

 xxx

This prompt came from ~somewhere~ literal years ago! “You’re the one person who can do my elaborate stage makeup so every night you spend half an hour in close proximity to my face and I am distressed”. I started writing this in 2015, and it finally was in a state that was nice and shareable. Hope you enjoyed! Happy AU week klaroliners!

[queencarolinemikaelson]

The Other Side of Sacrifice - Chapter 5: The Tests New chapter! Let me know what you think! Read from the start on AO3 or FF.

/

When Caroline woke the next morning, it was to her mother gently knocking on her door.

"Caroline, sweetie, I have to go to work, but Elena's on the phone for you."

"Mom, I'm sleeping," she said, waspishly.

"Okay, honey, I'll tell her to call you back."

Caroline rolled her eyes at Elena.

"No, mom, I'll talk to her now, I guess."

Liz tentatively brought the phone in, and handed it to Caroline.

"I'm off to work, can we have lunch at the Grill, maybe around 1pm?"

Caroline nodded in agreement, bid her mother farewell, before picking up the phone to talk to Elena.

"Caroline, I'm so glad you're alright!" the other girl gushed. "When I didn't hear from you, I just thought you'd gone away for a few days, or something. It never crossed my mind that you were in danger!"

Caroline rolled her eyes at Elena, for the second time in as many minutes.

"It's fine 'Lena," Caroline said, a little bored. "You couldn't have known."

"Why do you come here for the day?" Elena pressed. "I'm at Damon's, we can just relax, maybe go to the lake. Whatever you want!"

"No thanks," Caroline said. "I'm not really up for doing much."

Caroline didn't offer and alternate plan, testing to see whether Elena would be willing to do anything else when –

"Oh, that's okay then. Well, I'll see you really soon, promise."

"Bye Elena."

Caroline hung up before she heard Elena's response.

"Someone seems a little short with their friends this morning," Klaus stated sardonically, from where he was inspecting his nails leaning against her door jamb. "Should I be worried?"

Caroline lay back in her bed and didn't answer right away.

"You shouldn't be worried," she said, after a moment. "She shouldn't be either, really, I'm just not ready to extend any empathy to her right now."

"I see," he said, slowly. "Did you want to spend the morning exploring our connection, or would you rather stay here for a while?"

She rolled onto her side to face him, contemplating her answer. She looked far less worn than the previous day, but her eyes still held a haunted quality to them.

"I guess I'm awake now," she said. "Let's go do some testing."

Keep read on AO3 or FF!

[queencarolinemikaelson]

After a solid number of years: Chapter Nine of care-bear-forbes and the-lonely-hybrid. You can read chapters 1-8 HERE on ff.

//

Caroline woke from her fitful sleep only a few short hours after falling into bed.

She honestly couldn't believe the night she had.

Surreal.

It was the only word for it.

Caroline knew she would have to go in to work at some point, but in that moment, she decided on some self-care. She rose briefly to make some breakfast and a cup of tea, before snuggling back bed to process what she was feeling.

Firstly, there was the opening party of her very own club! It was happening! All those years of planning and dreaming, coming to spectacular fruition. The next goal to focus on was the official first official day of regular trade, which was just four nights away, and there was still plenty to do to make sure they were ready.

Secondly, she met Klaus Mikaelson. Klaus Mikaelson; of all the people to attend a party she threw. That was a thing all to itself! Add the completely insane revelation that Klaus was actually her old friend Nik made it all the wilder.

Nik.

Nik.

Nik, who she had loved and hated in equal measures, who both saved and damned her. She could hardly wrap her mind around the fact that he had been standing as close as two feet from her, mere hours ago.

She never thought her life could share so many plot points with a romantic comedy, but here she was.

Also, how the hell had she not noticed the similarities between Klaus and Nik? Surely she wasn't that dull. She had been blogging him like a maniac for years? Was she just blind, or just stupid?

Though, if the feeling she was experiencing right now was anything to go by, it was just too bizarre to reconcile the two as the same person. She always kept them so specifically apart from each other in her mind, so the connection was never obvious. Add the physical changes one goes through during their 20s, and maybe she was neither blind, nor stupid.

She took a sip of her tea, and let her head fall back onto her bed's headboard.

What on earth could she do with all this new found information?

If she was deeply honest with herself, Caroline knew her instinct was to run. Run away from the big city, back to her country town life. Where she could live away from this dread,and all the emotion being trudged back into her life.

But even as she considered it, Caroline knew she would never be happy if she did – as tempting as it was. She spent too long coming to terms with Nik's disappearance to let to control her life again. She also spent far too long working toward her dream business to walk away, for that matter.

As Caroline took another sip of tea, she realised that was what she kept coming back to.

Her life, her dream; that's what was important now.

She spent too long sifting through grief, too many hours crying, too many days of numbness to just forgive and forget. No matter how long Klaus promised.

The prize of his love may have been sweet, but to be swept up in grand romance… That wasn't who she was anymore.

A deep understanding settled over her, and it was terrifying to finally know what she wanted. To relinquish something she held so tightly, for so long.

But it nestled into her heart resolutely.

xxx

Klaus woke with a splitting headache. His metabolism was good, but it wasn't that good.

He was wrapped in a blanket on a semi-comfortable couch, far from his hotel bed, and Klaus groaned as he remembered his somewhat-drunken, extremely early visit to his sister. He also remembered drinking a little bit more after Rebekah went back to bed, to try and wipe Caroline completely from his memory

Fat lot of good it did him, though. Not only was his hangover worse, but he could still remember every detail of every moment of their conversation.

"Morning!" the cheery voice of his sister sang. "You look like absolute death, Niklaus. What sweet comeuppance."

"Thank you sister," he grumbled, immediately regretting it, as a wave of nausea hit him. "I'm going back to sleep."

"Uh huh, you do that," she smirked, in uncanny resemblance to her brother. "I'll make you something greasy when you wake next time."

Klaus fell back asleep almost immediately.

Why he'd insisted on stirring in the first place, he didn't know.

A few more hours passed before Klaus regained consciousness again. While he felt a damn side better this time, he was still feeling pretty rotten.

"He lives!" Bekah said, who was sitting next to him on the couch watching some trashy show on the television. "How about bacon?"

Klaus just nodded as he sat up, but didn't say anything.

Though, again, why he bothered trying to be awake was beyond him, because now, instead of waves of nausea hitting him, it was waves of utter mortification.

He would never admit it to anyone, but Klaus had imagined a reunion with Caroline many times. But none of them had involved him being slovenly drunk at 3am. How had that happened?

And to tell her he loved her and still did? What was he thinking!

Klaus sat in his humiliation silently, hoping it would relent somehow, until Bekah placed a steaming pile of bacon and eggs in front of him, as well as a very strong black coffee and a glass of water.

"So," she started, and Klaus just knew he wasn't going to be able to dodge these questions. "You met the love of your life."

"I did," Klaus said, forfeiting all pretext. It was Rebekah after all.

"And you told her you loved her."

"Yes."

"And you that you wanted to be her last love."

"I did," he said again.

"Very smooth," Rebekah said sardonically, inspecting her nails for non-existent imperfections. "Though, given the state you were in when you got here, I guess there's more to it than instant happily ever after?"

"I suppose," Klaus said, taking a big bite of bacon to save him having to respond more substantively.

"Oh, Nik," Bekah sighed. "Who even is this woman?"

"She's someone I knew a long time ago," Klaus said carefully, thinking it would be safe to answer that, given that Klaus barely told anyone about Caroline back when he knew her.

"Do you mean that online friend of yours?" Rebekah asked.

"How did you…?"

Rebekah just shrugged, innocently.

"You told me once about her, then told me another time you had a crush on someone who could never know the real you. Plus, you spent so much time on that website when you were a teenager," she replied. "Two and two."

"That's some pretty thin reasoning, Bekah," Klaus said, a bit defensive.

"Perhaps," she replied, coolly. "But your reaction confirmed it."

"It could have been anyone. It could have been Tatia!"

"Oh pish," Rebekah said, dismissively. "Tatia was a witch, and we both know it. All the women you've ever dated are not last love material, Nik."

Klaus shrugged, she was right of course. His track record with woman was visually stellar, but none of them were an epic love.

"Do you actually love her?" Rebekah asked, blunt as ever.

Klaus' cautious silence answered her question better than he could with words. Because the truth was, of course, how could he know he loved her?

Marshalling his thoughts into something resembling coherent, Klaus knew the major takeaway was of course he'd jumped the gun on telling her he loved her. He hadn't spoken to her in a decade. That kind of lack of communication wasn't a basis for love.

But he knew he wanted to try. Needed to try. Needed to see if she was what he remembered, needed to discover if his selfishness had ruined them completely, needed to understand the part of him that really was convinced he was still in love.

"I need to find out I do," Klaus said, for once, incredibly vulnerable.

But, Klaus realised he was always vulnerable when it came to Caroline. She was perhaps the only person beyond his blood that he volunteered his vulnerability to.

Perhaps that was why he cut her out so completely, because his reinvented Klaus Mikaelson was never vulnerable. A weakness like Caroline wasn't something he wanted the luxury of back when. He wanted the luxury of power.

"I best be on my way, little sister," Klaus said, as he pulled himself up from the couch, unable to sit still any longer. "Things to do. I suppose I have to make my way to the airport at some point. Thank you for breakfast, and the place to stay."

"Any time, Nik," Rebekah said, softly. "Good luck with everything."

He pressed a quick kiss to his sister's forehead, and slipped out the door before deciding where to go.

xxx

Two weeks later

Caroline sat in her office, staring at her paperwork.

She had been staring at it for days, really, and the more time separating her from her first encounter with Nik, the less she was able to push him from her mind.

It was now two weeks after the opening party. And nearly two weeks since they begun official trade.

Opening night, much like the party, had been a wild success. They had been at capacity for a few hours, and even had a queue for a while there, on a Wednesday.

And the days since had been exceeding what she had hoped for her first couple of weeks open. While there were some obvious kinks and stumbling blocks, as there was with any new business, Caroline let herself consider the idea that maybe this wasn't the completely crazy, doomed-to-fail venture others thought it was.

They were due to open for in a few hours, and she was excited. It really was exhilarating, running her own business. But, despite the success and excitement, Caroline was really struggling to the find motivation to do the pencil pushing part of her chosen business.

Because all she could think about was him.

In the two weeks since their encounter, Caroline had felt a myriad of things.

While she started off with whole-hearted conviction in what she wanted to say to him, after a few days, and some more lonely nights, she let herself imagine, wonder on all the what-ifs of life with Klaus. The life they could explore and discover together, what being his last love would be like…

Then she got mad. Filled with fury at the gall of him, after a decade to blind sight her with wild declarations of love, and empty promises of forever.

Then she was back to swayed by the romance of it all.

The underlying link connecting all her conflicting emotions was that it took a miracle for her not be consumed by thoughts of him, with work as the only thing that seemed to take her mind away.

But, now with opening day behind her, and a couple of weeks under her belt, apparently even that wasn't enough.

And so, she was back to being frustrated and upset with him.

Who the hell goes around saying I intend to be your last love and then vanishes.

Who the hell has the audacity to show up, after ten years, confessing an unending love, then doesn't even have the decency to provide contact details.

His complete lack of contact since he showed up out of the blue, solidified in Caroline's mind, that she was right. That her resolution to be frank and honest with him was exactly what she needed to do, even as much as she wanted to fall into him and never look back.

So imagine the storm of emotions she felt as someone tapped on the shoulder – hours after giving up on pretending to do paperwork, while gazing upon the second night of her dream – and she looked straight into the eyes of a man who never seemed to be too far from her mind.

"Klaus."

//

This has been such a long time in the making. Review HERE if you feel inclined. I’d love the feedback O:) and I love you all. Watch this space for part ten, which is written! So will not be another three years from now. Woohoo!!

[queencarolinemikaelson]

//Chapter Ten//

"Klaus," Caroline breathed, her words barely audible over the noise of the bar.

"Hello, love," he said, smiling softly at her.

She gaped at him for a few moments, unable to find any of the words she was scrambling for. Though she was saved the trouble, as two mildly drunk patrons squealed as they caught sight of him.

"Are you Klaus Mikaelson?" one of the girls cried.

"Oh my god, you are Klaus Mikaelson!" the other tittered, excitedly. "Can we have a photo?"

Ever the gentleman, Klaus agreed, and the girls both thrust their phones in Caroline's hands, who graciously snapped some pictures.

"This is the best place ever," Caroline heard one of them say as they stumbled away, and it made her feel a bit proud. But she was quickly pulled away from the moment when –

"Sorry about that," Klaus said, absently rubbing the back of his head, a little embarrassed.

"No problem," she replied, before jerking her head in the direction of her office. "Follow me."

Caroline was off in an instant, grateful for the distraction, and the moment to collect herself. She murmured in the ear of one of her employees that she was going to take a break for a moment, then slipped down the hallway that housed the room.

Once she closed the door to the noise, and turned to face him, she couldn't help but note the neat picture of him in her office, after so many days of fretting about him, while in her office.

"So… how are you?" she asked, still a little tongue tied.

"Well, thanks," he responded, as he took in the room around him. "You?"

"Yeah fine," she said vaguely. "Two weeks in and business seems to be going how we predicted, which is comforting."

"I see," he said, before lapsing into silence.

They stood awkwardly for a few moments, before Caroline said, "Drink?"

"Please."

She opened a cupboard by the door and pulled out a couple of wine glasses, and a bottle of red.

"Hope red is fine," Caroline said, self-consciously. "I can basically get you whatever you want, I just have to grab it from behind the bar."

"Red is fine, sweetheart."

Caroline gave him a tight-lipped smile as she handed him the glass.

Her mind was honestly in overdrive, she'd rehearsed what she wanted to say enough times, but now he was here, and she was completely bare.

"This place is incredible," Klaus said of the bar, after another minute of uncomfortable silence. "Everyone I know who went to the party the other night has raved about it. I remember you saying to me, way back, that you wanted to open your own venue."

"Mmm," Caroline intoned, her lips still tight, and mind still racing.

"It's been a funny couple of weeks," Klaus said, valiantly trying to find some flow for conversation. "Lots of flying back and forth. I'm currently shooting primarily in Canada, but have commitments in both LA, Atlanta and here, in New York as well. Plus, obviously, I wanted to see you."

He gave her his most charming smile, and was disheartened when she frowned a little, even as she nodded in acknowledgement.

"Caroline, I was wondering if –"

"Klaus, wait," Caroline said, finding her voice in time to cut off the question. "I want to say something."

"Yes?" he said gently, his heart sinking.

Caroline didn't speak right away. She leaned against her desk, and fiddled with the wine glass in her hand, her eyes darting around, as though she was still trying to pick the right words.

"I have waited so long, Nik," she began, her voice so soft, so exploratory. "So long."

"I've waited too," he said, the tiniest bit defensive, though he couldn't ignore the way his heart flipped when she called him Nik.

She frowned at him.

"Have you though?" she replied, sceptically. "Because you can't have waited the same way I have. You left me, remember?"

"Yes I left, if you can call it leaving…"

"Umm, what else would you call it?" she interjected, suddenly dubious.

"I don't know, love, taking a break, finding myself – but just because I left, doesn't mean you weren't on my mind!"

"You took a pretty long break, if that's what you're calling it. And, besides, being on your mind, isn't the same as being the one who was was left in the lurch, Klaus," Caroline said, her frustration growing. "I don't want to wait anymore."

The words gave Klaus hope that maybe she wanted to try.

"That's why I'm here, Caroline," Klaus said, imploring. "I'm here, and I don't want to wait either."

"Are you kidding me?" Caroline exclaimed. "I had to wait two whole weeks, again with absolutely no contact mind you, just to have you spring up, unexpectedly at my place of work, again."

"I had to work, Caroline! What was I supposed to do? Blow off my work to chase you?"

"That's the point, Klaus!" Caroline exclaimed. "You could have contacted me; you could have let me know something. You have the world at your fingertips, you could have worked out how to contact me – communication is so freaking easy! And you just left without any indication of whether I would ever see you again?"

"I'm not sure what you want from me," Klaus said, bemused. "You just said you don't want to wait, but now I'm here, I came, and you don't want that either?"

"I… I… umm…" Caroline fumbled. "That's not… not what I meant…"

"Then enlighten me, Caroline, because I want to give us a try –"

"Please, Klaus –"

" – I want to know whether we can make something of what we had, –"

"– Klaus, just let me say what –"

"– and from who we are now. I'd like to know what you want from –"

"Can you just let me get a word out!" Caroline cried, finally cutting over Klaus, who instantly snapped his mouth shut. "Because I'd like to know too!"

She sighed, and ran a hand down her face, trying to regain some semblance of ordered, well-thought-out speech she had been rehearsing for the past two weeks.

"When it happened…" she began, stiltedly. "When you left – because you did leave – I was so young, so lost…"

She paused to chew the inside of her lip and furrow her brow even deeper.

"Back then, I was trying to learn who I was as a person, and that is hard. And when you left… I grieved you. It felt like I was drowning. And I couldn't talk about you because no one understood. No one really knew about you, about us. And I certainly know anytime I brought you up, my friends just brushed me off because I was 'over-reacting'… just get over it Caroline."

Caroline shook her head, bitterly remembering how isolated she felt during that time.

"I don't want you to think I spent ten years just pining for you… waiting for you to grace me with your presence, or anything like that," she added quickly. "I've laughed, loved, lusted. And, sure, there were times I cried over you. There were times when I just needed to connect with you. But I got over that, I learned how to be okay, even though I was completely dropped by my best friend."

She looked back at him, many years of hurt swimming there.

"You showing up here, surprising me like this, it's not romantic. It's not charming." She was almost callous in her cutting words. "It's just proof that I need to close this chapter, once and for all, because I don't want to wait for you anymore."

Klaus' heart clenched; a painful feeling he didn't realise he could still have.

"I don't want to wait around for whatever gesture you're planning. I don't want to wait for you to show up out of the blue again, to declare your never-ending love. Grand gestures are probably nice when you're nineteen and don't know what love means. But I've hurt and loved deeply since then. I've grieved real friends who I've lost. I've had toxic friendships scar me, and beautiful ones that fill me with joy. And none of those experiences involve you. All of them are mine, and only mine."

"This place…" she murmured, looking around her office, and rubbed her hand tenderly on the hardwood of her desk. "This place is mine. It's my dream. I'm not going to put it on some backburner for the maybes and what ifs of life with you. I refuse to bet on you being there, like I did before. Especially not when I could back myself."

Klaus' brows were knitted firmly together, and he could barely register the entirety of the moment, needing her to keep talking, if only because he knew this would all be over after she stopped.

"And so what I want from you, Klaus, is this…"

She stood tall before him, jaw set resolutely.

"I want your confession. I want you to tell me how you really felt. To admit you loved me, and you ran because you were scared. I want you to say it fully sober, and not just because you were afraid you might lose me, or because it seemed like the right grand statement to make in the dead of night the first time we physically met. Tell me now, so I can finally know I wasn't crazy – that our connection was real. So we can just shut this book we started writing lifetimes ago, and just let it go. Because, at the end of the day, Klaus, we don't owe each other anything… only this… only closure."

She flicked her eyes around his face, taking in the total devastation his perfect features.

"And I know I blamed you for a lot the other night…" she said, so softly, he had to lean into to make it all out. "My insecurities and anxieties. I was overwhelmed, so I lashed out, and that was not fair. So I'm sorry about that. But I'm not sorry about this."

Caroline placed her glass that was still loosely in her grasp on her desk, and closing her eyes desperately, anything to keep the words she didn't want to say in her mouth.

"This is how I feel. This is what I want. I want closure. I want to put this teenage fantasy of us behind me, because I can't jump headlong into love with you, not now, that would be too reckless. And I don't want to be reckless."

She finished her speech, and kept her eyes shut, unsure whether she could keep her resolve if she looked at him in that moment.

"I did love you," Klaus said quietly, after what felt like hours of silence.

Caroline opened her eyes, and could see such deep honestly etched into his face.

"I never truly understood why I left you so absolutely."

Klaus began to blink away tears, a tiny gesture had tears springing to her own eyes.

"I cared for you so deeply, and didn't know how on earth to tell you," he said, vulnerability scratching his throat with every word. "To let you know you were the one shining star in my life. And I could never process that. So I ran. Running seemed easier than trying back then, sweetheart. And spent ten years loathing the part of me that did, and loathing even more the parts of my that wished I didn't."

In a move filled with brazen courage, Klaus reached out and caught Caroline's hand in his, intertwining their fingers. And it heartened him, ever so slightly, that she didn't pull away.

"I wanted to tell you," he said softly, almost as if it was a promise.

Despite the tears, an inexplicable feeling peace settled between them, and Caroline knew – she just knew –she could finally put it behind her.

"I don't want this to be it," Klaus breathed.

"This is it, for who we were," Caroline breathed back. "We're not Carebear, and you're not Nik anymore. We are Klaus and Caroline."

"Caroline, I… please," Klaus croaked, but she just held up a finger, her speech unfinished.

"We are adults now, Klaus, with real life adult wants and needs. And now we've finished writing this dumb book we started so so long ago now so…"

She squeezed his hand slightly, and gave him a mere hint of a smile.

"Maybe we can start writing a sequel in months to come."

//

Hi there everyone, I promised at the end of the last chapter a long note on my absence. Not that you really need to know, the nature of ff is that people just stop writing, but it got hella long. So you can read it HERE if you want.

I don't know if I've ever really articulated this, but the dynamic between Caroline and Klaus in this story is modelled closely on a relationship of mine. Of course, my relationship was a lot more mundane, and less fantastical than this story, but he was my best friend for a very long time, and when he moved overseas from me, about six years ago now, it was as though our friendship never existed.

We had a very strong friendship, but a very fraught romance. But it was there, it was real, and I know it was reciprocated, even if it was never spoken out loud. I tell you this not for sympathy, nor as an excuse. I'm merely sharing a part of this story that isn't in the actual story, if you know what I mean. What took me so long, I think, is I have been trying to work out what I want from him, from my Klaus. In some of the versions of this chapter, there were grand declarations of love, in some very solid banishments of hate. And as I wrote Caroline's monologue from this version of this chapter, I finally knew this is what I want from him. And I'm proud that I found my way to writing the end of this chapter on my own.

Anyway, cheers for listening to my process. Let me know what you think. xx

[queencarolinemikaelson]

Just a Normal Day

Hey there! Just a quickie for pre-V-day! The eftpos machine was down at my cafe today, and I attempted to make this joke, and it fell probably flatter than it did for Caroline. Hope you like. 

For one moment, one quiet, shining moment, Caroline Forbes stared longingly out the glass windows, onto the street. She gazed at the faces of those hurrying happily by – the faces of people who weren’t trapped in the grips of Monday employment.

Being a third year college student, Caroline didn’t have all that much time to work, what with class, extra-curricular activities, and a steady social life. But through some horrible twist of fate, she had Mondays completely free. 

Which meant, while all her friends were recovering from their weekends, she had to be peppy and perky while serving perfectly pooncey coffee orders to pretentious patrons who preferred their tri-daily caffeine fix about as complicated as their particularly promiscuous impertinences.

To add insult to injury, the café’s wireless was down that day, which mean no cards whatsoever. Just those little bills that seemed so illusive in the digital climate.

On top of that, it meant that every second hipster complained about not being able to share their almond turmeric latte with a shot of decaf and chai with the entirety of their – rather lacking – Instagram following. The alternative to the Insta-whinger, were the try-hard-hippy-dippy folks who flagellated about how ‘we’re all too involved in the internet’, and ‘how in an age with such connectivity we’re rarely truly connected to others’ and how refreshing it was to disconnect for a while. They made these proclamations as if they didn’t have cell data constantly ringing notifications in like they were going out of style.

Needless to say, Caroline’s day was sucking.

It had been hours of triple caff, half almond, half soy mochas, and the repeated line “I’m really sorry, but our wireless is down at the moment! So, we’re only taking cash!” 

And she was sick of it. 

It was the day before Valentine’s day, and she was feeling absolutely no love toward the customers, her job, her boss, her anything.

“Hi!” she said, faux-brightly to the next customer to step through the door. “It’s typical, isn’t it! The day before Valentine’s and our wireless connection is about as dead as my stale, stagnant relationship! So, just like the hooker I have to hire to get any action these days, we’re only taking cash!”

She had her sunniest smile on when she delivered her line.

But her unfailing confidence completely failed, as she made eye contact with the customer. 

He did not seem amused.

At all.

The scowl he had worn through the café’s door, deepened considerably, and he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Why anyone believes in this Valentine’s nonsense is beyond me! It is just a normal day, but with all this meaning attached? What? If I don’t bring my loved one a red rose on that day, that means I don’t love them? Ridiculous.” 

Caroline hadn’t expected her joke to fall so flat, but by-gum if she was going to take such petulance from a grumpy stranger with a stick up his butt.

“Oh, how endearing, another man who wants to preach the insignificance of Valentine’s day,” she said dryly, sarcasm dripping from her every pour. “You must be a real hoot at Christmas.”  

The man opened his mouth, ready to fire back an equally sarcastic response when she cut him off.

“If you must know, I don’t have a boyfriend, nor an escort. Some might say I was making a humorous statement, sometimes known as a joke. Perhaps if you pulled your head out of your ass long enough to listen to tone and timbre, you may have got that. What can I get for you today?”

She looked down her nose at him, pursing her lips haughtily, impatiently waiting for his order and the man’s cold exterior cracked, his lips forming a tiny smile. 

“I’ll have a large flat white.” 

“What? No soy milk? No hazelnut? No extra whipped cream on the top? Surely you’ll take an artisanal donut?”

“Nope, just the coffee.” 

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

They stood comfortable silence, while Caroline made the coffee. She was concentrating on her task; he was concentrating on her.

As she handed his coffee to him, he grinned.

“I’ll definitely be back tomorrow.”

“It’s Valentine’s day tomorrow,” she replied, dryly.

“It’s a terrible tradition. I stand by that.”

He turned to go, and was just about to step through the door, when he turned and said, “but red roses are nice, even if it is just a normal day.”

With that, and a wink, he was gone.

Review here.

[queencarolinemikaelson]

“Do you want my opinion?”

Klaus looked over towards the voice. It had come seemingly out of nowhere, and he was surprised to see a blonde haired woman who was leaning against the wall of the alley way.

She wasn’t looking at him, in fact, she was staring – almost longingly – at her fingers, where she was rolling a cigarette up and down.

“Have at it, love,” he responded, the slight hitch in his voice the only give away that he, perhaps, wasn’t as cool as he seemed.

“Don’t let them tell you what you’re going to do with your life. It’ll only end in regrets you’ll carry around with you everywhere you go.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience, love.”

A bitter sound, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, escaped her lips and she tossed the unlit smoke unceremoniously on the ground.

“Hope it works out for you,” she said, finally meeting his gaze.

It was a gaze that was an intoxicating mix of troubled, optimistic and brilliant blue, and Klaus knew he needed to turn every emotional stone he saw swimming within them. But then…

“See you round.”

And she was gone.

She left him unable to see anything but her figure disappearing around the corner, or hear anything but her heels clicking down the damp stones of the path. He could only smell the lingering scent of her perfume, and feel the tightness in his chest. He could only touch the memory of her.  

She left him senseless.

Here, have an open ended, why-is-Caroline-smoking? mini drabble. Happy weekends, my loves.

[queencarolinemikaelson]

Hello my fellow klaro-nerds, 

I’ve not written much lately, but this has been batting around in my head for a long time and I thought perhaps I should write it, even if it’s not really all that coherent an idea. It’s inspired by THIS song, and I do quote the song verbatim in some places... Hope you enjoy. Un-betaed, and written in the last hour with only one read through, so I apologise for any mistakes... Be warned though, this does strongly allude to KLaroline cheating on their partners with each other. 

Her moans were holy.

Sacred.

As she lay beneath him, head tossed back in sheer bliss, hair splayed across his pillow.

His sheets may have been a bright white, made from fine cotton, but they weren’t nearly as pure, as delicate, as the look upon her face in the stolen moment when they were alone.

But no matter how pure the moments were, they were always stained, marred by dishonesty. By the soft, untrue, whispered ‘I love you’ she breathed into the ear of another man. By the bed he shared with another woman. By the loud declaration of love for him in every sigh and groan that escaped her mouth.

Despite the wickedness of the deed, Klaus couldn’t quite find it in himself to stop, to let her go. Because, somewhere between his 18th birthday – the day he met her – their first stolen kiss barely a year later, the seven contactless years, his marriage, her partner and their reconnection over the last six months, he had fallen madly in love with her.

Again.

xxx

The shimmering room, with its twinkling lights and sparkling wines, were not as stunning as vision that was she.

His hands, usually steady and strong, began to tremble in his wife’s clasp, his breath and heart beat, quicken by her side.

It had only been three days since he had lain with her, Caroline, beneath his sheets, wrapped within one another, letting their hands and minds wander to places of beauty, and silent perfection, but even that small separation had cost him much sleep and yield.

She haunted him.

Though, judging by the way her eyes sought his immediately, and the way her head tilted slightly, a tiny smile glinting at her lips, Klaus thought maybe – just maybe – he haunted her too.

xxx

Her moans were holy.

Music to his ears.

They drove him to heights he had only imagined.

Brightly coloured cushions beneath her back, in stark contrast to the paleness of her skin. But somehow, she still managed to outshine them. Her rosy, flushed cheeks, her plump, strawberry lips, her yellow, gossamer hair.

Earlier that evening, when she had slipped away from her boyfriend, and he his wife. They had escaped the party, and the faces for whom they had to be perfect for. She held his hand tightly, fingers locked with his. This time, his hand remained steady, so right it felt within her grasp. She had giggled gently at his easy words, and smiled in a way that caused his mind to reel.

His love for her still tainted, though, as he lay down next to his wife many hours later, kissing her cheek, apologising that their fancy night out had been spoiled with ‘work’.

xxx

Their whispered argument, hadn’t stayed whispered for long. Their voices had raised to the point where they couldn’t look at each other for the unkind, spiteful words they tossed at each other.

Perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps, if she hated him – if he hated her – they could stop. They could go back to feeling the passion for the partners. They could go back to not missing each others’ smell. They could go back to driving their partner’s wild, not each other.

But as Klaus sank into a restless, haunted sleep, he knew that it didn’t work that way.

xxx

“I’m leaving, Klaus.”

As those three little words dropped seamlessly from her mouth, Klaus couldn’t quite comprehend them.

He dazedly heard her reasons, the words ‘tomorrow night’, and he vaguely remembered asking questions of his own. But he could hardly process any of it. She was supposed to say three other little words to rock his world on its axis.

xxx

He left his house, and his wife the next night, the dull of twilight pressing around him, damming the consequences. He had to know, once and for all. He would rather be unhappy and alone, than miserable in a marriage to a woman that wasn’t Caroline.

He’s never considered himself a romantic man, or a man of grand gestures. But, as he raced through the crowded airport, desperate to capture a glimpse of her, to make sure he wasn’t too late, he thought perhaps his time had come. To say all the things to her, he’d never been able to say. Do all the things he’d never been able to do.

“Caroline,” he called out, finally catching sight of her, her fingers interlocked with another man.

She turned to face him, her expression morphing from neutral to pleading.

“Caroline, I –”

But he stopped himself, very aware of both Caroline and her boyfriend’s eyes on him. Very aware that by pursuing this line could break them, beyond repair.

But he had to try.

“I know I make you cry,” he began, his voice lowly and strained, his eyes searching, scanning, for answers in every line of her face. “I know sometimes you’d rather die, but… Do you really feel alive without me?”   

“Klaus… please.”

Her voice was brittle, ready to break.

“If so, be free,” he breathed, taking a step closer to her, their surroundings falling away, the murmurs of the weary travellers around them fading into melody by the intensity of their shared gaze. “If not, leave him for me. Before one of us has accidental babies.”

Caroline’s eyes were wide, her holy voice caught in her throat.

xxx

Her moans were holy.

That night, beyond his wildest dreams.

And they were pure, tainted only by the memories of former lovers. Tainted by the distant hurt of other lives.

But pure, in their unconditional love.

Let me know what you think HERE. 

[queencarolinemikaelson]

“My little siblings LOVE going to this trashy pizzeria so I pass the time by beating all the high scores on every single arcade game they have but then one day someone beat all of my high scores by exactly 100 points and I KNOW it’s the same person because they used the same fucking name on the scoreboards each time my pride is on the line who the hell did this I will fight them” klaroline au from prompt list. Please??

Loved this prompt. THANKS FOR LETTIN ME WRITE IT FOR YOU!! Tiniest bit of clumsy smut at the end, so may not be totally safe for work? 

Definitely Worth It

Klaus’ shoulders slumped as he stared at the nasty little digits flashing in front of his eyes, and he had a fleeting moment of existential crisis when he pondered how the hell he had ended up caring so much about 100 points on an arcade game.

Honestly, when his mother had asked – demanded – that he play responsible adult over the summer, he had hit the roof. He lived on the other side of the country from them for a reason. It had been bad enough when they had moved over from the UK, and he had to live on the same continent again. But to live with his three younger siblings, in a tiny town he’d never been to, and be a guardian for three months? When they weren’t even at school??

Too much.

But it had only taken him a week back in their presence to realise how much he’d missed Kol, Rebekah and Henrik. And without the tyranny of their wicked father breathing down his neck, Klaus was actually having a pleasant time.

He wasn’t sure why his parents had moved to rural Virginia, when their deep pockets could have afforded a large property anywhere. But the country air was different somehow, fresher, and the soft peace of the place did wonders for Klaus’ muse. Plus, he enjoyed being able to trust that his siblings wouldn’t be mugged if they were walking on the streets after dark. All in all, Mystic Falls was nice. Even if he was a little starved for, ahem, entertainment…

The worst part about the whole place was, however, the complete lack of fast food outlets. Klaus had never been much of a chef, but now he was supposed to make sure his siblings were fed at least three meals a day? And he was supposed to do this without the help of take out?

Luckily for him, his siblings didn’t much care for variety, and the one take away store in the town was enough to keep them fed a couple of times a week.

Unfortunately for Klaus, it was super greasy pizza parlour. And super greasy was a food Klaus categorically refused to put in his body – because hello? He was a babe for a reason?

So, while his siblings ate their wait in terrible deep-fried saturated fats, Klaus took himself across the road for a few a little alone time.  

The Arcade.

When Klaus first started playing the games, he was pretty rubbish. But soon enough his nimble fingers and sharp mind had overridden every single high score on every game in the store, bar one.

Which was what he went into do that day, vanquish the very last game in the place, and becoming the reigning champ.

“Yes!” he said, triumphantly, as ‘NEW HIGH SCORE’ message flashed on the screen.

“Excuse me, Sir,” Henrik asked Bill, the owner. “Does Nik get an award or something for holding all the high scores?”

Bill smiled at the boy, then looked over at Klaus.

“Had you beaten it yesterday, the answer would have been yes,” the man replied. “But someone has actually beaten your scores on those four machines since you were here on Tuesday.”

Now, Klaus wasn’t one for being petty and competitive – okay, maybe he totally was – but he stalked over to the machines Bill had gestured to. They were four of the toughest games, and someone – who called themselves ‘QueenBarbie’, how juvenile – had beaten his scores??

“Jesus-bloody-H-Christ!”

“Come on, Nik. It’s not that bad.”

“It is that bad, Rebekah. 100 bloody points.”  

Bill gave Klaus a knowing, and slightly sympathetic, smile, as Klaus silently fumed. He knew he shouldn’t be so invested in his winning streak. But he was, so sue him for having first world problems.

He grumpily slouched from the building, his siblings following like a flock of encouraging sheep behind him.

He had had his game face on now, he would beat QueenBarbie if it was the last thing he did.

xxx

It was a few days later when Klaus skulked his way into the Arcade again. His siblings were eating their flat-bread-based-fatty-death-food across the road, so Klaus guessed he’d have about an hour until they were done. Bill was behind the counter, and a few other patrons milled around playing some games.

“Hello there, Klaus,” Bill said. “You may not be happy with your leaderboard stats.”

Klaus frowned, and peered at the nearest screen. A game that Klaus had been the champion of since his third visit to the arcade was now topped by QueenBarbie.

By 100 points.

Klaus angrily tramped over to other machines, and much to his chagrin, Klaus found that she was top of nearly half the games in the store.

By 100 bloody points.

“How? When?” Klaus spluttered.

“I’m not sure, but –”

But Bill was cut off when Kol burst through the doors.

“Nik! Henrik has just thrown up all over Rebekah who is now crying. I think we better go.”

“Bloody pizza, bloody scores, bloody siblings,” Klaus muttered. He was half way out the door when he turned back to Bill and asked quickly, “What are your opening hours?”

“Open at 10am every morning, and close at 10pm every night.”  

“Thanks.”

And with that Klaus was gone to sort out his sick brother and sulking sister.

xxx

Klaus had been in Mystic Falls eight weeks, when something completely unprecedented happened.

He had the entire weekend, from Friday evening to Monday morning, completely to himself.

Kol and his friend Jeremy were going out to Jeremy’s family’s lake house for a few nights. Rebekah was on a cheerleading camp. And Henrik was in Richmond staying with their oldest brother Finn.

It was his first free Friday night in a long time and he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. If he was back at college, Klaus would have spent Friday night at a bar, charming and bedding someone gorgeous. For a moment, entertained the idea of going to the Mystic Grill and trying him luck with his charms there. But most of the gorgeous people in Mystic Falls were either in high school – jailbait (or worse, Rebekah’s friends) – or parents – taken (or worse, single and looking to ‘settle down’).

Klaus thought about doing other things, stay at home, go to the gym, go to the grill and have a drink by himself. But he knew, even before he started mentally listing when he could do, that he would end up at the Arcade.

QueenBarbie had steadily taken over all his high scores over the past few weeks, no matter how valiantly Klaus tried to protect his crown. But he didn’t know how. He had never seen a female in there, apart from Rebekah, and Klaus assumed QueenBarbie wasn’t a man.

Anyway, Klaus decided he’d use his first free night in two months putting in some serious time at the arcade.

The walk over there was pleasant enough, the summer air warm, but not too warm, the streets full of people, but not too full. His mind was on the prize, completely focused on his mission at hand and then he opened the door of the arcade… And he was pretty sure his mind short circuited.

Behind the counter was not the middle aged man that usually was there, dressed in his ‘The Arcade’ polo shirt and dorky boardshorts.

Nope.

Today there was a girl.

An insanely beautiful girl.

An insanely beautiful girl dressed in a ‘The Arcade’ polo shirt that was very similar to Bill’s, but somehow looked absolutely outstanding on her, the way it stretched over her ample breasts, and her blonde bouncy hair curled over her shoulders at a fantastic contrast to the navy blue of the shirt. The outfit was coupled with a pair of teeny tiny denim shorts, that were surely far too short to be considered ‘pants’. Not that he was complaining, as they showed of long, creamy, perfectly toned legs.

Klaus was reasonably confident he’d had a very heated argument with his sister about wearing shorts that short. But somehow they looked enticing and sexy on Bill’s replacement, where on Rebekah, they had looked disturbingly inappropriate.

“Well, you’re not Bill,” Klaus said, stupidly, much to the amusement of the other patrons, causing the girl to look over at him, unimpressed.

“And you’re observant,” she shot back, dryly, as she turned away from him to continue working.

Klaus moved over to one of the machines, trying not to let his eyes be drawn to her perfect ass as she bent over to wipe over the surfaces of one of the recently vacated games.

He tried to play, he really did, but all the focus he had carefully cultivated on his walk over had evaporated when he had seen her. All he wanted to do was touch her, feel her skin, have those long legs wrapped around him, see the perky breasts without the shirt to cover them.

Klaus sat there, in front of different games for literally hours, trying to focus enough on the stupid games.

The 100-point lead was teasing him. How had QueenBarbie managed 100 points exactly? That would definitely have taken skill.

But the blonde beauty and her tiny shorts were teasing him more, sapping him of every ounce of concentration he possessed for gaming, and had him concentrating… hard… on other… things.

“Hey,” a feminine voice said, at about 9:00pm.

Klaus looked up to see the blonde peering at him. He’d relegated himself to the corner game, furthest away from where she was working behind the desk, in the hopes he could refocus his mind on beating the high score.

“Hello, love,” he replied, and was very pleased to note the light blush that crept into her cheeks.

“I know this is a real crappy thing to ask, but you’re the only one in here, and would you mind leaving, so I can close up early. It’s been the actual worst day ever, and I don’t know if I can make it another hour actually functioning. So…?”

“Wouldn’t Bill be unhappy with that?” Klaus asked, smugly, but already resolved to agree – she could probably ask him to eat pizza and he would if it got him into her good books.

“Probably,” she shrugged. “But he’s my dad, it’s not like he can fire me from being his daughter.”

“Very true.”

They chuckled lightly together and Caroline looked at the screen of his game.

“Oh my god, you’re TheHybrid?”

“Yes…” Klaus asked, slowly.

She let out loud, elated laughter, and Klaus felt as though he were the butt of some joke, even if her smile was making him a little weak at the knees.

“I’m sorry!” she said, as her giggle subsided. “You were leading like all the machines. Those 100 points must really be annoying you. I know it amused me.”

“Oh, if it amused you so much, maybe I should stay the extra hour and reclaim my crown,” Klaus challenged.

“No, no! Don’t do that,” she laughed. “I just want to die in my pjs on the couch.”

“I’ll leave if you let me take you out for a drink,” Klaus blurted out.

“What?” she asked, disbelievingly.

“You heard me, love.”

She looked at a loss for what to say, and Klaus was pleased to note her not so subtle checking him out.  She frowned, opened her mouth to say something, closed it when she thought better of it, and opened it saying finally, “I don’t even know your name!”

“Klaus. Yours?”

“Caroline Forbes.”

“Now we know, so drink?”

She narrowed her eyes, but there was a small, quite flattered smile playing on her lips.

“I still have to cash up and clean up. If you hang around, and I don’t hate you by the time I’m finished, you can walk me home. And then – maybe – I’ll give you my number. Deal?”

“Sounds perfect.”

Caroline cleaned up, and Klaus sat by, feeling a little useless as she whizzed around him, but made up for it by making her laugh, smile and blush.

When she had finished, she let him walk her home, where they Klaus felt daring enough to grab her hand, and they walked fingers laced the 30 minutes back to hers.

She gave him her number, and said to call if he wanted to hang out. And, as he left, he resolved to do just that.

He was completely entranced.

xxx

“You’re looking mighty pleased with yourself,” Kol smirked, as the four of them walked to the pizza parlour. “Did you finally find someone in Mystic Falls to scratch your manly itches, Nik?”

“Don’t be gross, Kol,” Rebekah spat.

“I can scratch Nik’s itches!” Henrik chimed in.

“Not that kind of itch, brother,” Kol grinned.

Klaus just smiled, knowingly.

He and Caroline had been texting, almost non-stop since he left her on Friday night. They had dinner on Saturday, and the breakfast on Sunday, but once his brothers and sister had returned on Monday, Klaus hadn’t been able to catch her.

But that night, there was a movie being played in the town square, and while his siblings ran off with their friends, Klaus could sit with Caroline.

The only trouble was, he also had to sit through death by inhaling pizza fumes before they went, as the arcade was closed that day due to the movie night.

While his siblings squabbled over which pizza they wanted, Klaus gazed, a little wistfully out the window, thinking of a time when he didn’t have to deal with the horrendous smells of overly greased pizza.

His eyes wandered to the arcade, when he caught the eye of Caroline, who was striding towards the door. She smiled widely, and waved at him. Klaus felt a smile the size of a goofy banana overtake his face as she waved back, before she slipped into the store and was gone from his vision.

Klaus barely had a split second reprieve before Rebekah shrieked, “How the bloody hell do you know Caroline Forbes!”

His head snapped around to his sister, who looked almost star struck.

“Umm, her father owns the arcade. We met the other day when I went in there.”

Rebekah’s head made an unhealthy sounding noise as it connected to the table.

“Please tell me you didn’t do your usual trick of a quick rough-and-tumble then out-of-bed-and-lost-her-number before the sun has risen, Nik. Please tell me that,” Rebekah groaned.

“Umm… I didn’t do that,” Klaus said, although it sounded more like a question.

“That is a relief,” she said, as sighed with relief, a smile was visible as she raised her head from the wood. “Caroline Forbes was a senior two years ago, homecoming and prom queen, head of all the dance committees,  cheer captain, total barbie. But she’s now captain of a college cheer squad, and so she’s coming back to do cheer boot camp with us for a few days before school goes back, and rumour is she’ll be picking the new captain. Which means you cannot sleep with her and break her heart, or all my hard work will be ruined!”

Klaus had zoned out as rabbited on about all the incredible qualities of Caroline Forbes, but his mind had fixated on only two words. Queen and Barbie.

The two words rattled around his mind, and many things began to make sense. The hundred points, the fact that she was the only female who seemed to frequent the arcade, the laugh she let out when she found out he was TheHybrid, the knowing smirk she’d given him every time he’d bring up the fact he wanted to be king of all the games.

“Queen, barbie,” Klaus gritted out, standing up from the table, menacingly.

“Our of everything I said, Nik, you take queen and barbie? Are you serious?”

“You guys go on ahead to the movie. I’ll meet you there.”

With that, Klaus got up from the table and stalked his way over to the arcade. Once there, he began rapping his knuckles on the door, a furious expression on his face.

Caroline came to the door, looking slightly bewildered.

“Klaus, hey, I thought –” but she was cut off as he pushed through the door, dominantly.

With the door closed behind them, Klaus pushed Caroline up against it. He leaned in and traced his nose along the skin of her cheek, and he was pleased to note the blush that crept up her cheeks, and her breathing grew a shallower.

“QueenBarbie,” he breathed into her ear, and she stiffened. “You’re QueenBarbie?”

Caroline’s eyes were wide, and a tiny smile was replacing the shocked look that he’d elicited with his rough behaviour.

“What can I say,” she murmured, her smirk widening with ever passing word. “Some shifts get boring, and breaking your winning streak was too good a challenge to pass up.”

Klaus’ eye narrowed.

“Well, I might need to get my revenge,” he muttered, his breath brushing over her ear. He brought the hands that were on the door either side of her head to her waist, and pulled her toward him.

“What did you have in mind,” she sighed, running her hands up his sides, settling them at the nape of his neck.  

Instead of answering, Klaus caught her lips with his and kissed her, passionately, tongue quickly slipping past the seam of her mouth, battling with her own.

When he bent her over the nearest machine and slipped his cock past her soaking folds some twenty minutes later, it wasn’t exactly what he’d envisaged when he’d stalked over there.

But listening to her name on his lips, as he pounded into her, while she came spectacularly, Klaus couldn’t bring himself to care.

It was worth it.

Definitely worth it.  

P.S. Sorry about the hate on pizza… Pizza and I have had some bad experiences of late, and that sort of came out now…. there’s one more for today, but it won’t be up until the very stumps of adversaries day because it needs a read through, and I have class really early, and timezones are a bitch sometimes. 

[queencarolinemikaelson]

KC: You’re my neighbour and you are stealing my wifi to watch porn and can you not?

HEY! Adversaries day, people, excitement! Here is numero uno for today! 

318

She’d never really been that tech savvy. She struggled with installing software, working out the remote on her air conditioner, even with things as rudimentary as hooking up her DVD player to her TV.

Which was why, on her second day in 317, she hired a man to connect her internet rather than battle through trying to do it herself.

Although, now she sort of wished he had. The man doing the internet connecting leered at her at every chance she got and when he spoke to her, his eyes never left her breasts.

“That’s all done there for you, Miss,” he said, slimily. “Do you need help changing the password.”

“Nope, not at all!” Caroline said, too fast, and without thinking. “Thanks for your help, bye now!”

She had rushed him from her house and was sitting enjoying using her internet before she realised she didn’t actually know how to change the password… which had been left on its default.

Caroline shrugged it off.

No one would guess that her password was, in fact, ‘password’.

xxx

“Seriously!” she shrieked, as she noted that, once again, there was a a long list of porn sites visited on her internet history.

How could one person watch so much porn? She’d only been living there four weeks, and yet every morning Caroline woke up to at least ten different porn sites in her internet history.

She’d subtly been surveying the four other people who lived on her floor, trying to workout which one it was so she could confront them without making herself look like an idiot.

She was pretty sure it wasn’t Mrs Chidgzey, the lady at number 314. She was a kind old thing, but completely off her rocker, and could hardly work out her key to her door, let alone internet porn.

Caroline would also didn’t think it could be Sam, in 315, because while Caroline had daydreamed about swimming with him without her bathing suit on more than once, he seemed to have a girlfriend – Ruby? Or maybe Remi? – who he frequently enjoyed very loud sex with.

She also didn’t think it would be the family in 316. Alaric, Jo and their twin daughters were the picture of a perfect, happy, nuclear family, and Caroline assumed internet porn wasn’t part of that idyllic scene.

Caroline knew it was 317, as that was her.

Which left 318.

It made sense if it was next door, as that would be the the best place for primo connection. But the trouble was, Caroline had never met her neighbour. Nor had she even caught a glimpse of whomever it was next door.

The person must either be a super hermit, or have a really erratic schedule – or both – for Caroline to completely miss him or her. Caroline was A+ at sneakily stalking people and she’d been throwing her top game into trying to sneak a peak at her elusive neighbour.

But that morning, she decided enough porn was enough. She was had just baked an incredibly delectable batch of pumpkin scones, and damn waiting, she was going to kick fate up the ass and find her porny internet stealer once and for all.

Caroline dressed nicely, gathered up the scones and tucked them neatly into a wicker basket, complete with a little doily underneath them, put on her best pageant girl smile and marched over to 318.

She knocked, ready to put into action the plan she had carefully cultivated over the last ten minutes. And then he opened the door.

And her plan went out the window.

“YOU!” she screeched.

“Well, well, well, Little Caroline Forbes,” he smirked, that delicious accent of his doing the same thing to the apex of her thighs as it had done back in college. “Long time no see.”

“There’s a good reason for that!” Caroline bit out, the good reason being that, while they both ‘hated’ each other’s guts, they also couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

“I do recall you yelling that I was a selfish, no good pig the last time we spoke,” he grinned, impishly.

“You deserved that,” she said, indignantly.

“I most likely did. Now, to what do I owe the pleasure, sweetheart.”

“You know I hate those stupid petnames, Niklaus,” she drawled, and was pleased to see he still flinched when she used his full name.

“Fine, to what do I owe the pleasure, Caroline?” he reprased, that look in his eye again. The one Caroline could never quite find it in herself to resist. The one that always preceded the greatest sex stories of her life. The one that pretty much ruined her for all other men.

She gulped.

“Porn,” she said, stupidly, as she was pulling her mind from the delicious memories.  

“Porn, love?” he asked, an infuriatingly smug smirk playing on his lips. “Would you like to re-enact our preferred activities from our college days?”  

“Shut up! That’s not what I was… I would never want… You? No! Not at all! You’ve been using my internet to watch porn, can you not?” she rambled, as she turned a lovely shade of pink.

“Had I known it was you who now occupied 317, I wouldn’t have needed the porn,” he said, leaning on his doorjamb, looking like he was enjoying himself far too much, the annoyingly superior and and attractive look he perfected in college gracing his handsome face.

“That’s awfully presumptuous of you, Klaus,” she shot back.

“I never had trouble convincing you before. Have dinner with me.”

“What?”

“Dinner. You, me, probably Thai food, if I remember your take out preferences correctly.”

“I am never having dinner with you ever again, not after last time.”

“Come now, sweetheart, it wasn’t that bad. Despite our differences, we certainly had good times,” he said, grinning.

“No we did not,” she replied, though the smile that was spreading across her face as she thought fondly on their times together said otherwise.

“Let me buy you dinner to make up for it then.”

“Fine,” she agreed, in a rare yolo moment – as Katherine liked to call them. “But you better be willing to pay for the good Thai from that real authentic place downtown.”

“As the lady wishes.”

“Good,” she said, hiding the thrilled smile under layers of bravado.

“Good.”  

Hope you liked! Fun fact: Mrs Chidgzey was one of my favourite teachers at high school, but she definitely was completely off her nut - in the best way possible - and she was pretty technologically challenged. Happy AU Week!!

[queencarolinemikaelson]

Could you maybe do a drabble where Caroline and Klaus argue about what goes in the bowl first, milk or cereal?:)

Here’s the second one for all human day of AU Week. 

Klaus woke early that morning, feeling extremely content. He let his head fall the the left, so as better to see the beautiful blonde peacefully sleeping on his soft sheets.

She had been the first woman in many years he pursued, and, boy, she hadn’t made it easy. She hadn’t played hard to get, she just seemed genuinely immune to his charms. In the beginning, at least.

But he had worn her down, and now she was sleeping in his bed for the fourth time that week, for the third week in a row.

She was spectacular.

Klaus let himself gaze upon her angelic face for a few more moments, before he slowly extracted himself from the comfort of his bed.

After their first night together, Klaus had made her scrambled eggs, and brought them to her in bed, which had, seemingly set a precedent, and he had brought her breakfast every time they woke up together in his bed. And she would offer him the same treatment when they were at hers.

But that morning, however, as Klaus stumbled dreamily into his kitchen, he realised the combination of his busy week and preoccupation with a certain blonde, meant his food stocks were severely depleted.

He scratched his head, before dragging a hand down over his face. He didn’t want to let this be the first morning she wasn’t treated like royalty.

Sighing, he reached into his pantry and pulled out all the half full boxes of cereal her kept on hand – cereal was his painting inspiration food, so there were many of them. He then retrieved the milk, two bowls, two spoons, and made coffees for them both, arranging it all pretty on a tray, before he made his way back to his room.

Stepping back through the door, he was delighted to see her bright eyes twinkling back at him, a beautiful smile gracing her lips.

“Morning, sweetheart,” he said, softly.

“Hey you,” she replied, as he sat himself beside her on the bed. “That’s quite the array of cereals.”

“I like cereal.”

“I see that.”

“Which would you like?”

“That one!” she said, tapping the box of Corn Flakes happily, pecking her lips to Klaus’ as she did so.

He smiled, and complied with her wishes, unstacking a bowl, and preceding to pour the delicious golden flakes in.

“Uhh… what are you doing?” Caroline frowned.

“Making you cereal?” Klaus said, questioningly.

“Is this like a British thing?” she asked.

“Is what a British thing?” he responded, confused.

“The whole putting the cereal into the bowl first thing?”

“I don’t think so… It’s just how you do it?” Klaus said, looking at her like she was crazy.

“That’s so not how you do it!” Caroline cried. “Everyone with half a brain knows the milk goes in first, not the cereal.”

“Caroline, I assure you I have my whole brain. And I think I know how cereal works, I make enough of it.”

Caroline frowned some more, not buying it.

“I have never, in my life, seen anyone put the cereal in the bowl before the milk!”

“Well, I have never seen anyone do it your way!”

“You’re actually insane, Klaus! Everyone does!”

Klaus could see she was becoming more and more frustrated with every passing second. And he couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled through his lips.

“You find this funny?”

“No, sorry, love.”

But his words were at odds with the amount of mirth in his voice.

“It’s wrong, Klaus, just wrong! Milk goes in first then cereal! How do you not know this!”

Her face was contorting, and Klaus could swear he saw tears in her eyes as her frustration at him grew.

“Sweetheart, why are you getting so worked up over this? It’s just a difference in habit.”

“Because you can’t put the cereal in first!”

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t!”

“And why can’t I?”

“Because what if one day you get mad at me for making your cereal wrong and then leave me! I couldn’t handle it because I lo–“  

Caroline’s eyes went wide, her cheeks flushed and she clamped her hand over her mouth.

They both stared at each other for long intense moments.

Klaus knew what she was about to say, but all his words were becoming stuck in his throat as he contemplated that Caroline Forbes loved him, and was so terrified of losing him, that she would get worked up about how to correctly prepare cereal.

“Klaus… I didn’t… I mean…”

But she was cut off as Klaus’ mouth clamped on hers, as he seemed to unstick from his stupor.

His mouth moved desperately on hers, trying to convey all the things he felt for her in one single kiss.

He was moving closer to her, dying to be as physically close to her as possible when suddenly there was a loud crunch, followed closely by the unmistakeable sound of cereal slipping from its box, as crushed cornflakes flooded the bed.

The young couple laughed heartily at the ridiculousness of their current situation.

“Oh, I love you, Caroline Forbes,” he said, with so much meaning in his voice, it was Caroline’s turn to be rendered speechless. “You bring so much joy to my life.”

“I love you too,” she said through the widest grin she’d ever done.

He leaned over to kiss her passionately, the breakfast and argument totally forgotten – well, almost forgotten, except for when they were interrupted by the crunch of the cornflakes that still blanketed the bed.

HOPE YOU LIIKKKEEDDD!!

[queencarolinemikaelson]

You have a crush on me and I’m a coquet asshole and tease you and let you piggyback me through your house at a party and when I moan into your ear to tease you we nearly die cause it made you slip at the stairs klaroline au please

Hi nonnie, sorry it took a million years! Hope you like it!!

When asked why she was in the emergency department with a concussion, and needing ten stitches, that busy Friday night, Caroline swore, as black and blue as the bruises on the back of her head, it wasn’t her fault.

It wasn’t her fault that it was a full moon, and she tended to get in a bit of a tizzy around that time of the month. That was science’s fault.

Nor was it her fault she inherited her father’s lovely trait of getting handsy while drinking. The margaritas went straight to her head, the terrible ideas which she wouldn’t entertain whilst sober somehow become great ones, and the feeling of other people’s skin underneath hers become a lure so strong that she can’t find it in herself to resist.

And it really wasn’t her fault that he happened to show up at her best friend’s birthday party after she had already started with the cocktails.

She knew he had a crush on her, any woman with half a brain and some semblance of a grasp on flirting knew he was coming onto her 95% of the time. She wasn’t sure if he knew she knew… but it made her feel special that notorious asshole Klaus Mikaelson had a thing for her, Caroline Forbes, neurotic control freak extraordinaire.

And, because it made her tummy tingle and smile widen, she played along. She flirted back, twirled her hair, chewed her lip, and teased him mercilessly, but she would never let it go any further. He wasn’t her type, and that was final, thank you very much.

Welll… she wouldn’t let it go any further until that day… when the alcohol was already clouding her brain and impairing her judgement.  

“Caroline, I asked you what happened not whose fault it was?” Katherine asked her through the phone, on Saturday night as Caroline settled in her own bed her head still throbbing, and her stitches still stinging.

“Fine, Kat, I’ll tell you the story. But it wasn’t my fault!”

xxx

“Klaus!!!!” Caroline shrieked, as she noticed him enter. Jumping to her feet and threw her arms around his neck, breaking her no-touchy-the-hot-brit rule, knowing it would drive him – and her – a little crazy. “I didn’t know you know my bestest pal, Enzo!”

A shocked expression on his face as Caroline pulled away, he cleared his throat uncomfortably and said, “I don’t.”

“Why are you here then?” she asked, confused, her buzzing brain not putting two and two together as an extremely attractive woman wrapped an arm around his waist.

“He’s here because he’s with me,” the newcomer snapped, apparently not enjoying the attention Klaus was giving to the blonde distraction.

“Yes, sweetheart,” Klaus replied, sheepishly. “This is Halle, she is in Enzo’s, history class.”

Caroline smirked at the other girl’s flinch.

“Oh yes, Halle,” Caroline drawled, knowing full well it was Hayley. “I think I met you after a walk of shame from here a couple of weeks back. Tell me, is it the accent that does it for you? Or the piles of cash attached to them?”

The other girl began to snarl, but was cut off by more people arriving with a keg, a feat that managed to distract Caroline enough, because she had promised the birthday boy she would do a keg stand for him.

xxx

“You injured yourself in a keg stand, Caroline? You’re like a wizard with keg stands?”

“Oh please, Kat, I’m the best at keg stands, that’s not why I ended up at the hospital.”

“Oh, good. Continue, but cut to the chase, I haven’t got all day.”

xxx

“Come on, Klaus!” Caroline cajoled. “You know I’m just dying to see your biceps. Give me a look!”

Another point on Caroline’s growing list of less than stellar ideas that night was trying to get Klaus to take his shirt off. This idea was preceded by another terrible idea, which was making a bet with Enzo that her ‘biggest fan’ – as Enzo had dubbed Klaus – would do anything to impress her, even if it meant taking his shirt off in the chilly November weather, just because Caroline asked him to. Caroline took those odds, smugly.

“Sweetheart, you’ve never made any attempts at getting me naked before. Although I wouldn’t –

xxx

“Caroline! Stop right there, I do not need to hear about your stupid battle of wills with Klaus. Get to the point already! I have places to be!”  

“Fine.”

xxx

“Give me a piggyback,” Caroline demanded.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I want some fresh air, it’s stuffy up here. But I also don’t want to walk there, because my legs feel like jelly. And I just want a piggyback. Give me one. Now.”

“That’s not very polite, love.”

“Fine! Give me a piggyback, Klaus.”

Klaus relented. Of course he did. Anything to have Caroline’s perfect body pressed against his. He squatted down in front of her, and she clambered on, but not before she ran her soft hands over the skin of his back. It really was just too good an opportunity to pass up. And she was glad she didn’t, beer-goggles or not, the man was H.O.T.

But that wasn’t the point.

A little distracted by the feeling of Caroline’s hands caressing his skin, Klaus got to his feet, an unsteady wobble quaking through them both, which Klaus was delighted to discover made his precious cargo cling to him tighter than before.

He began moving towards the great outdoors, but not quick enough for Caroline’s liking apparently because she let out a pouty “Faster”.

Klaus shuddered. Then gulped. His imagination didn’t need that kind of fodder right now. He needed to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. She wouldn’t notice anyway. Surely. She was hammered.

“Klaus, faster,” she moaned into his ear.

She had noticed.

“Caroline, come on,” he said, sounding somewhat strangled.

“Klaus please,” she said, her mouth ghosting over his ear. “I need you to go faster.”

He picked up his pace a little, but was unable to stop his mind from turning her words into his favourite fantasy of her.

“Klaus, yes, that’s right. Faster.”

The combination of her extremely breathy voice, and the fact she was running her hands along his bare skin was a little too much for him and he lost his balance.

Unfortunately for him, this happened at the top of the stairs, and both piggybacker and passenger toppled down the unforgiving steps until they both landed sprawled at the bottom.

While a little disorientated and ego-bruised, Klaus was fine.

Caroline, however, was not.

There was blood.

xxx

“Jesus, Caroline, this happened because you were a coquet asshole to a guy who has a crush on you? Are you serious?”

“Well how was I to know there was a stairwell right there! And I was just teasing at the time! And I told you it wasn’t my fault it was…”

“The moon, the booze and the man, yeah I got it.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay? I know you’ve been discharged but aren’t concussed people supposed to stay awake.”

“Yeah, but I’ll be fine.”

“I can come over and…”

“I said I’ll be fine, Kat. I’ve got it covered.”

“Urgh, whatever. But if you die, that will be your fault. No dodging the blame on that one. Bye.”

“Bye!”

Caroline placed the phone on her bedside table, before rolling back to kiss her version of ‘got it covered’ lying in bed next to her.

“Such a charming picture you paint of me, sweetheart.”

“Whatever, Klaus. It totally was your fault.”

“Hardly.”

“Shut up. Now can we get back to you making it up to me?”  

I was kind of experimenting with a slightly different writing style, if you could notice…. hope I didn’t sound like a nugget or anything. No beta, as per, so pleasey please forgive any errors. HERE on FF.net. 

[queencarolinemikaelson]

Could you make an angst Drabble on the song Time is running out by Muse pls

Hey anon! Sorry it took forever, and I hope I did it justice. 

(P.S. SEVERE ANGST WARNING - no happy endings or anything). 

There were beauties that forever swirled around Klaus’ mind. Beautiful cities, beautiful art, beautiful scenes created by beautiful details. But none of them compared to the beautiful woman he’d once known.

They’d not ended on good terms at all.

But, oh, how they had loved each other.

They had loved long and hard, deeply and irrevocably. They had loved in the wee hours of the morning, when the city around them slept and they should have been, too. They had loved under the blanket of stars, gazing at them like there was no one else in the entire world. They had loved each other in the middle of crowded concerts as they screamed themselves hoarse to their favourite songs.

He loved her for everything she had shown him about himself and the world, he loved her for all the joy she managed to exude, and he loved her for every moment he spent with her.

They had loved each other in the depths of screeched insults and words of hate. They had loved each other as the final door slammed between them. And he, at least, had loved her throughout the 16 years of other women, failed relationships, and hope that one day he would find her again, even if he would deny any and all accusations that he did have a heart.

And he loved her that day, too.

The day she did come back to him.

He loved her more than he could possibly imagine as he stared into her eyes, touched her skin, felt her hair between his fingertips.

He’d dreamed about their reunion many times, and in many ways. He’d imagined every scenario – from running at each other in a crowded airport and gripping each other like a liferaft, publicly declaring their undying love for one another, to sitting quietly next to her on a bench in a zoo, taking her hand, and telling her he missed her.

In the 1001 ways he thought this would go, this never made the list.

Especially since the day started just like any other...

He woke up at the same time, and watched another nameless, faceless woman dress quickly and leave. He smirked to himself because this one had been a dancer, and damn she could contort her body into all sorts of shapes.

He dressed himself, ate a bit of toast, cursed when he put a little too much milk in his coffee. He caught the train to his work, donned his uniform, did paperwork, chatted with his colleagues. The day was completely normal, completely mundane, completely ordinary.

He thought the day he saw her again would be extraordinary.

But it wasn’t.

It was just another day.

Until it wasn’t.

The buzzer rang, signalling visitors to his lonely space. The same voice that barked particulars to him the previous day barked them at him over the intercom again today.

As he always did, he trudged from his office, pulling his gloves on as he went and pulled back the zipper of the large black bag on the gurney, asking perfunctory questions as he went. He merely glanced at the pallid face, not caring about what happened to it, not registering the familiarity of the delicate features.

“Stabbing, apparently,” the officer said. “Sad, too. Apparently her father died in a similar way.”

Klaus felt the tiniest twinge then, thinking back to her for the briefest of moments and how distraught she had been when she lost her father.

It was that twinge of humanity that spurred him to re-examine the woman’s face. Not because he thought it would be her, but merely out of empathy’s sake.

That was when he noticed it. That something which hadn’t registered when he’d first perceived that flash of blonde. Something he now wished he’d never seen. Something he’d always hoped never, ever to see.

It couldn’t be.

It couldn’t be.

The eyes, once so blue and full of light, now stared blankly at the ceiling. The skin, always so warm and soft, now felt clammy and almost coarse. The hair that once bounced joyously of its own accord, today hung limp and unkempt around her shoulders.

Not her.

Never her.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He was supposed to see her again. They were supposed to cross paths at some college reunion, or at the wedding of a mutual friend. He was supposed to apologise for the way things ended, then grovel because it took him nearly two decades to do it. He was supposed to find a way back to her; they were supposed to find a way back to each other. They were supposed to make up for all the lost time.

“No,” he choked. His breath became harried, unmanageable, and he felt like a vice compressed on his chest.

He shut his eyes tight, willing the images to be nothing more than a terrible, horrible dream. But as the blackness descended upon him, her unseeing, empty eyes opened behind his. The shock and sting of this inescapable memory caused hot tears to bite the corners of his eyes and force their way out, streaming down his face.

In a daze, unable to decipher the calls of ‘what’s the matter’ and the concerned voices from his colleagues, he staggered to the nearest bathroom. He gripped the edge of the sink until his knuckles became whiter than the porcelain he held, and tried to look at himself in the mirror. When he finally managed it, his reflection became another wasted prayer full of empty eyes from which he never again wanted to see.

It looked like his face, sure. He perceived the high cheek bones, the artfully dishevelled hair,  the plump raspberry lips, but a distraught ghost peered back at him now. A shadow. With his face mirroring that of family members’ who came to identify the bodies of their loved ones, he looked like a man whose entire world had been ripped away. And hadn’t it?

For the first time since he’d finished medical school nearly 20 years ago, he felt bile rise in his throat. His stomach contracted until he doubled over painfully. His heart pumped faster – faster and faster than he’d ever remembered it pumping.

The vomit, the emotions – they forced their way through his body, tearing across every part of his insides until illness overtook him with violence. The acidic taste burned against his tongue and across the back of his throat, but oh, how he wished it would burn more. He welcomed the tiny reprieve it offered. He encouraged it, hoping it would, perhaps, obliterate this agony in his chest.

He sunk down against the bathroom wall, ignoring the pool of sick beside him, and crumpled as precious memories began to claw through his very soul.

He was 20 and a beautiful, bubbly freshman bounced into his dorm and plonked down on his couch.

“What?” she asked, as though there was nothing at all impolite about her behaviour. “This is my cousin’s room. If you have a problem with me, either deal with it or leave.”

He was teasing her, like a fool, trying to cover his feelings with sarcasm and mockery.

He was taking her on their first date. Swing dancing. A music festival. Remembering how her hips swayed.

He felt so nervous before he grabbed her hand, but he did it anyway. His spirits lifted as she smiled shyly at him, contented, and squeezed it lightly.

He laid in his bed, basking in her beauty, wrapped up in her skin.

He laughed, louder than ever, as the two of them attempted to get dry and warm after the rain drenched them in a sudden downpour.

He received the letter saying he’d been accepted into medical school. She was there by his side, jumping in excitement, kissing him senseless as she drowned him with pride.

She looked at him with eyes full of hurt, asking him why he kept pushing her away. And he repeated again and again that she wouldn’t understand, that she couldn’t, until one day he blurted it out.

‘Because I love you, Caroline,’ he said.

She fell silent and he waited with bated breath. Waiting. Hoping. Never believing until she whispered the three little words back to him.

He watched her board a plane, his heart crying that she had to go, but singing because it was only for five days.

He held her hand as she tried to come to terms with her father’s death.

She screamed that he didn’t control her.

He yelled that he didn’t know her any more.

He listened to her angry ultimatum.

She waited for their time to run out.

He watched the door slam shut.

He waited for her to come back, to burst back through his door.

He fast-forwarded through the many years he’d spent waiting, never once believing they had a ticking clock working against their time together on this earth. Never once considering the possibility that he may be here without her.

And suddenly, the warm memories disappeared. He found himself back on the cold, dank floor of the morgue’s bathroom, contemplating a life completely void of hope.

That’s where he stayed for the next hour, trying to sift through what he felt. To categorise the thoughts that threatened to consume him entirely, to compartmentalise the bone-crushing grief before it swallowed him whole.

A light knock sounded on the door of his refuge and a person stepped through the frame. To his unseeing eyes, Klaus only registered that it was just another not-Caroline, in a world full of not-Carolines.

“Niklaus,” the voice said, tentatively. “One of your colleagues called. Are you okay?”

The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t the sweet tinkling one he needed to hear.

“She’s dead,” he whispered, his voice barely audible above the sounds of life moving on around him. “She’s dead.”

The elder Mikaelson knelt beside his brother, and tried to decipher the words.

“Who is?”

Unable to speak the name, for fear of making it real, Klaus fished into his pocket for his wallet. Opening it, he withdrew a picture.

The picture was from long ago, from a happier time. The glistening, crystal clear water, and pristine white sand painted a perfect background for the smiling, carefree couple in the picture. This happy couple still did not know that in less than a year their engagement would be called off, that their constant companionship would dissolve into estrangement separated by states.

Elijah looked at the photo, and realised the meaning of many things. He realised why his brother never seemed to be able to settle on any woman longer than a month. He realised why his brother’s house remained devoid of any personal touches. He realised why his brother had been reduced to this broken shell.

“I love her, Elijah,” Klaus croaked, the uncharacteristic vulnerability in his voice breaking Elijah’s heart. “And now I’ll never get to tell her again.”

The brown-haired Mikaelson put his arm around his brother, and the blonde buried his face into the embrace, for once letting himself be comforted by someone else, knowing that living with his grief meant never living at all.

xxx

A good hour passed before he could stand again, and a few more before he found the courage to face her again. But he knew he had to do it.

He couldn’t live with himself without seeing her face one last time. And it would be better this time. He would be prepared. He would be ready.

Numb and morose, he entered the room housed with body-sized refrigerators and shivered. But not from cold. Rather from the terror of what he needed to do.

With the heaviest of hearts, he pulled back the unforgiving steel door, and yanked out the cold tray she rested on. He nearly lost it again. His only saving grace was that he no longer had to see her lifeless eyes, for someone had closed them.

Even in this state, even in death, she was beautiful.

He breathed in sharply as he took her hand, and almost screamed that her frigid fingers didn’t curl around his.

“There were so many things we left unsaid, Caroline,” he said, his words echoing through the merciless room. “Why do I never get to tell you I love you more than I let on?”

“It’s too late, Nik.” The words from their last meeting rang through his mind, pounding at his insides. He knew it was too late.

Unable to say anything else, he dropped her hand roughly and slid the tray back into the freezing tomb. Willing the tears burning at his eyes to not fall. He stormed away.

Why did it have to be her. Why? What cruel trick of fate led her back to his side too late? Why couldn’t it have been him on that slab instead of her? That place wasn’t meant for people like her. It was cold and dark. It was full of sadness and tears. It wasn’t warm or light or full of her joyous laughter.

He stumbled blindly into the hallway as the endless what ifs crushed him. His unseeing eye crashed him headlong into a small body.

“Ouch! God, watch where you’re going!” the light feminine voice snapped.

The voice crashed through his ears, and his eyes refocused on the girl in front of him.

She looked no older than 16 and had blonde curls that fell around her face with bright eyes, an all-too-familiar shade of blue. The only feature that differed from her mother’s was the dimples that lined her cheeks as she stubbornly jutted-out her chin. Yet, even through the harsh words and pigheadedness, he still saw fear written all over her young face.

She looked woefully out of place amongst the cold steel and glass. For some reason, she looked like a frolic in the green pastures under the light of the warm sun kind of girl.

Without thinking, Klaus grabbed the girl’s shoulders, his eyes flicking over every part of her face, trying to discern a difference. Trying to find some indicator that the girl who now stood before him wasn’t now motherless. He didn’t know whether he could stomach watching such an innocent child gaze upon the lifeless body of her perfect mother.

“What are you doing?” she asked indignantly, trying to wriggle free from his grasp.

He couldn’t let go, but he also couldn’t breathe. Or speak.

“Elizabeth Esther Forbes, where the hell have you gone?”

Klaus jumped back from the child as though he was burned. That voice that called down the hallway sounded familiar.

“I told you to stay with me while I signed us in!”

The man looked harried, worn, and Klaus knew he must have been wearing a similar expression. The years had been kind to his old roommate, for he still managed to retain his boyish look and a well-built physique.

They had been friends – good friends – once upon a time, but when he’d parted ways with Caroline, he couldn’t bring himself to keep in touch with her cousin.

The brunette’s eyes hadn’t found Klaus yet, too fixed as they were on the young blonde between them.

“Who’s this idiot and why is he looking at me like he’s seen a ghost?” she spat brashly.

He nearly laughed. Just like her mother, using hostility and sarcasm to cover her true emotions.

Enzo frowned as his eyes finally found Klaus. He tried to form some semblance of a civil face, but he grimaced instead.

“I’m so sorry, Enzo.”

He choked on the words because he wanted people to pity him. But he knew Enzo would be just as distraught.

“Mikaelson,” the other man gritted out. “I see you got everything you wanted from life.”

He looked around condescendingly, letting out a derisive laugh. He couldn’t help but recall the pieces of Caroline he had to pick up and glue back together once Klaus waltzed out of her life.

“I suppose you would think that,” Klaus replied. There was no fight or malice in his voice; he couldn’t muster it. “I’ll leave you both to it.”

Klaus placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder and squeezed it, before turning to go.

“You don’t have to do this, Lizzie,” he heard Enzo say to the girl, who still looked stubbornly okay with the situation.

Klaus couldn’t blame her; the longer you pretended everything was okay, the longer you staved off the pain.

“Who was that man?” she asked as Klaus disappeared through the door.

“That,” Enzo said, with a heavy sigh, “was the epic love of your mother’s life.”

The girl’s composure cracked for a moment, and she replaced her cool mask with a look of distraught.

“He’s my dad, isn’t he?” she asked, her voice catching.

Enzo’s heart broke for the child in this moment.

It broke for all the moments Caroline would never have with her child. It broke for all the nights Caroline cried herself to sleep missing Klaus. It broke for the terrible look on Klaus’ face knowing he’d done the same thing in nights without her. It broke for Lizzie who’d finally met her father just like she’d always dreamed, only for it to happen on the day she lost her mother. It broke with the realization that he could no longer call on his best friend. But most of all, it broke because Caroline was dead...and there was nothing anyone could do.

“He is, gorgeous,” he answered, knowing the lie would hurt her more.

“I see.”

He found himself exempt from further questions as someone informed them that it was time for the formal identification

“You really don’t have to do this,” Enzo reiterated, desperately trying to save her from being haunted by that vision for the rest of her life.

“Yes, I do,” she stated. “I couldn’t live with if I didn’t know for sure.”

xxx

The funeral took place two weeks later in Caroline’s hometown. She’d be buried next to her mother.

The small church was packed, so full that there was no way of counting everyone in the crowd. Enzo spoke. Elizabeth sang. People cried. Stories were shared. Klaus slipped out the back before he needed to answer any questions.

He didn’t speak to anyone until after midnight, when the bottle of bourbon between his fingers was half empty and the cold winter night raged around him, the stone with the her name on it almost unreadable.

“Move over,” a voice said.

He jumped, and in his half-drunken stupor, Klaus thought she had somehow come back to him. But as he focussed his eyes on the figure, he realised it was Caroline’s daughter. He thought he’d be disappointed, but found that Elizabeth seemed to be a pretty good replacement.

He shuffled over, and she sat next to him. Neither of them said anything for what seemed like hours, both slowly freezing as they tried to come to terms with the obvious. Being the mess that he was, he offered her the bottle and she took from it gratefully, loving the way it burned down her throat.

“I guess I shouldn’t have done that,” Klaus said absently. “You being a teenager and everything.”

She said nothing, just laughed bitterly and took another sip.

Silence lapsed between them again, and Klaus wondered whether he should mention the elephant poised so blatantly between them.

“So, your middle name is Esther?” he asked after a few more moments.

“Yep,” she said, popping the ‘p’ in the same her mother used to do. “After my other grandmother apparently.”

“Well, shit,” Klaus said, not very eloquently. “I guess that makes me your dad then…”

“Yep,” she repeated.

He’d known since the day he met her, or he’d assumed. If the dimples hadn’t given it away, her middle name had. But having it confirmed was something else.

He gulped down three large mouthfuls of the drink before asking, shakily, “What now?”

“More bourbon.”

Klaus wordlessly passed the bottle back to her. They both shared a small smile at the kinship of the moment, and at the fact that Caroline would fly off the handle if she were there.

“I didn’t know, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Mom told me the story last year.”

“I see.”

“Did you love her?”

“I did.”

“Do you still?”

As he gave the smallest of nods, the girl shifted closer to him. A tear trailed down her face.

The night swirled around them, beautiful in its rugged simplicity as the newly found father and daughter sat in the middle of it, trying to wrap their heads around the twist and turn of their lives.

Their hearts wouldn’t stop screaming, but there were no words that could be spoken to change the past.

He took her hand, and squeezed it.

“How did it come to this, hey?”

There you have it. Inspired by the Muse song of the prompt, and a recent episode of Silent Witness I watched. Thanks to @austennerdita2533 for editing out the terrible grammar. And to @themikaelsoncupcake for hassling me to finish it ;) 

[queencarolinemikaelson]

We’ve been friends/dating for a few months now but I forgot your name the first time we met and I keep hoping that one of your friends will say it while you’re around but they all just call you weird nicknames seriously who are you + Klaroline

Hey, sorry it took so long anon! I hope you like it!

Elena’s Not So Dull Friend.

The thing about Klaus’ best friend, Stefan, was that he was purely, completely, and mind-bogglingly whipped. Stefan’s girlfriend, Elena, had the poor man wrapped around her precious little finger, which made just-Klaus-and-Stefan time a very rare occurrence.

It wasn’t to say Klaus never saw his friend, they went out often, regularly, in fact, but Elena seemed to always want to tag along, making it difficult for Klaus to have man-to-man conversations about manly things. Oh they’d have fun, but the minute Elena dubbed the evening ‘boring’ she was out. Which mean so was Stefan.

So Klaus had the bright idea of telling Stefan to have Elena invited her friends out to join them for Friday night drinks, as it would keep Elena interested and distracted, while Stefan and Klaus got bro-time.

What was the worst that could happen?

They were seven words Klaus wished he’d never thought.

The first week, Elena had been annoyed Stefan was trying to distract her, so the friend she’d brought was the older Salvatore brother, Damon, who spent the whole night flirting with Elena and every other thing with a pulse and breasts in the bar, and thinking his wisecracks were, indeed, wise.

The second week, she’d invited her aunt and it was fine, for the most part, until her aunt began complaining the bar wasn’t ‘young and hip’ enough, and forced them to go to a club.

The third week, Elena had refused to go out at all, and had made Stefan promise to only be out for a maximum of two hours.

And then it was the fourth week, and Elena had exceeded in being more annoying than any of the other weeks combined, because the two friends she brought along were giggly and, apparently, easily tipsy. One of them was Brony, or Bonnie or something similar, and he hadn’t caught the other’s name, but he heard Bonnie and Elena refer to her as ‘Barbie’, ‘Care’, ‘Carebear’ and ‘Queen’ – of all things – names he was positive weren’t her real names. Maybe she was a Barbara? Or a Carol? Not that he really cared. He just smiled snidely at her, and went back to talking to Stefan.

To his utmost surprise, however, the night didn’t become a complete disaster. Bonnie had been disposed of quickly, as she became distracted by her professor who just happened to be there –

“Bonnie! So good to see you. I wanted to talk with you privately about a few things, can I get you a drink?”

– and Stefan and Elena had been revoltingly lovey-dovey after the blonde had been distracted by a parental phone call, and they had bailed soon after because Stefan had ‘had a long day’ and Elena ‘had a headache’ – a badly covered excuse for sex, if you asked him.

Which had left Klaus, alone, to wait for the blonde to return from taking her call and inform her it was either just them or they go home. Klaus fervently hoped she went for the ‘go home’ option, but, it seemed his luck was just as bad as usual, and she had gone for the just them option, citing that she came out for a good night, and by god she was going to have one. Klaus internally groaned, but humoured her, he was a man, after all, and he did have eyes; she was a stunning specimen of womanhood.

To his utmost surprise, however, the night didn’t become a complete disaster. Elena’s friend she may have been, but the blonde was nothing like the dull brunette in personality, and Klaus found himself becoming more and more entranced by her everything idiosyncrasy.

As the night wore on they’d both drunk a little too much, laughed a little too often, and let their touches linger a little too long, and before they knew it, it was midnight, and her back was pressed into the hard wall in the alley by the bar, moaning out his name as he kissed every part of his body her could.

It had been glorious.

And he had been more than keen to do it again. But they’d separated without trading phone numbers, and he still didn’t really have a name for her.

A few days later, Klaus had casually asked Stefan whether Elena was planning on bringing her friends to drinks this coming Friday, and when his friend had informed her that, yes, she was, had inquired whether the blonde was coming.

“What’s her name again?” Klaus attempted, over-casualness dripping from his tone.

“As if you didn’t scream it while she made you come with her mouth, Mikaelson,” Stefan had replied, shrewdly.

After that, the memories of the orgasm he’d had at the mercy of her pretty lips, and the bashfulness he felt at being caught out had him too preoccupied to inquire further.

As Friday night rolled around, Klaus was delighted to see the blonde there, chatting to her friends, and, perhaps, dressed a little racier than she had the previous week. And, like the previous Friday, Bonnie had bailed early, Stefan and Elena merely an hour after, leaving Klaus alone with the mysterious fair-haired creature, and before long he was having the climax of his life by her skilful clutches.

And so began their weekly routine.

It was this routine that found Klaus coming incredibly hard in a bathroom stall for the eighth Friday night in a row. The blonde on her knees in front of him giving his a blow job that would certainly ruin him for any other blow job, ever. Her tongue, by god, was complete magic. She knew every place to lick, suck and swirl and she was extremely intuitive about what he liked and what he didn’t like.

“Yes, love, just like that, yes!” Klaus panted out, as his release built within him. “Sweetheart, I’m going to…”

Before he could finish his sentence, his orgasm rocked through him, and he spilt his warm seed into her mouth, the experience being made even better by the small smirk that was playing on her lips and the sultry look in her eyes as she swallowed every last drop.

“That was fun,” she murmured, clambering to her feet, while smoothing down her hair and dress in a rather vain attempt to make it look like she hadn’t been well-fucked.

“That it was,” he replied, a little shakily, still not quite recovered. “Will I see you next week?

“We’ll see,” she winked.

With that, she was gone from the loos, and Klaus knew he’d spend another week desperately wanting her, with no way of contacting her at all – without alerting Elena to the porkies that was going on between him and her best friend.

xxx

Just as Klaus expected, the week dragged on.

And on.

And he rued the day he was impolite enough to not listen to introductions properly. Surely this was some weird Karma for being a jerk.

On Monday, he came into his hand loudly as thoughts of her twirled around him mind, but he had been unable to grunt her name, much to his own displeasure. He’d tasted her most intimate parts before, but he’d yet to taste her name on his tongue.

On Tuesday, he’d met a woman named Camille, who looked so similar to Elena’s friend he wondered whether they were cousins. And then he spent the rest of Tuesday imagining what it would be like to have both blondes in his bed at the same time…

On Wednesday, he’d met up with Stefan for a much-needed midweek piss-up, as he tried to drink away the thoughts of her pretty, perfect lips on his skin. Blessedly Elena hadn’t tagged along this time.

On Thursday, he fluked the majority of his work, and hardly listened in any of his staff meetings, too focussed was he on the prospect of tomorrow being Friday.

On Friday, Klaus did about three thousand times more work than he usually did thinking that maybe he’d be able to go home early. Then he was crabby when his plan didn’t come into fruition.

All in all, by the time he was sitting in the bar, waiting impatiently for Stefan, Elena, Bonnie and the blonde to arrive, he was well and truly flustered, but determined to actually get her to come home with him that weekend – then maybe she could come in his home.

“Hey you,” the blonde temptress smirked, as she sat next to him at the bar, running her hand up his thigh sneakily.

“Hello, love,” he responded, trying to keep the desperation from his voice.

“Hey guys!”

They both heard Elena’s cheerful voice call from behind them, and the blonde snatched her hand away, smirking some more at Klaus’ pout.

“Hi, Elena,” she beamed.

“Hey girl! How’s your week been?”

With that, Elena and alcohol consumed the blonde’s attention.

A few hours later, Klaus’ frustration had calmed a little, after having a good chat with his lifelong friend. The good chat was interrupted, however, when Elena positively begged Stefan to dance.

“Come on,” she demanded, tugging at the Salvatore’s hand intently. “I wanna dance until my feet hurt! Then I want you to take me home.”

Obviously Stefan, the weak bastard, caved after about a second leaving Klaus alone with his sweetest torture.

“You wanna dance too?” she asked, biting her lip seductively, as if she needed another reason to look like the sexiest woman alive.

Without saying a word, Klaus grabbed hold of her hand, and pulled her into the mass of bodies. Immediately she pressed herself against him, and lopped her arms around his neck.

Their bodies moved with the music, and Klaus’ libido was soaring as she rubbed against him.

“Let me take you home, love,” he breathed into her ear, after nipping at it a few times. “Where I can ravish you like the queen you are. No more of this salacious bathroom nonsense.”

Much to his chagrin, she giggled, stopped dancing, and fixed her shrewd eyes to his.

“Have you learnt my name yet?” she asked, sardonically.

Klaus paled.

“How did… Stefan that bastard… did he… what?” Klaus stammered, helplessly. God, if his mother could see him now, she’d turn in her grave.

“Manners, Niklaus, are the only thing one needs to get ahead in this life. You could kill the queen and get away with, as long as you’re polite about it,” she used to say.

And here he was, blowing his chance with the one girl in years he’d actually liked because he was inattentive and rude.

“Stefan didn’t say anything,” she reprimanded, giving him a disapproving look. “Look, Klaus,” – and he winced that she knew his name – “I may be blonde and pretty, but I’m not an idiot. We’ve had sex like, upwards of 15 times now, and not once have you moaned my name. It’s always ‘sweetheart’ or ‘love’ or just a plain ‘yes, keep going’. Which is fine for a few random shags in the bathroom. But not for the take home package.”

And before Klaus could register what was happening, she was stalking away from him.

xxx

Caroline had sincerely tried to do the whole no strings attached, casual sex thing. She had tried so hard and it had worked a treat for nearly two months. Until Stefan asked how Klaus was.

She’d been taken aback, how would she know, she’d responded, they had hot sex in a myriad of public places, but he’d never once tried to ask for her number, or taken her home, and it was painfully obvious he didn’t even know her name.

And she had seriously been okay with it.

Until Stefan had asked her that question, and responded with, “Well, he’s crazy about you, Care. You’re driving him mad. I just thought you guys were spending more time together, my mistake.”

And then she’d made her fatal error.

She’d let her imagination roam free.

She had thought about all the things she’d learned about Klaus when they were chatting, before their marathons. She thought about all the ways she could please him if they only had the privacy. She thought about snuggling next to him and smelling his scent on her sheets.

She thought about what they could be together.

And something that should have been so simple became so much more complex.

She thought she could have done it too. Kept it simple. Kept it sex.

But he just had to ask her to come home with him, just had to take it away from something that was both familiar and easy, into territory she didn’t want to enter, when he didn’t even know what name to say when he was buried deep within her.  

So, as she walked away from him on the dance floor, her confident and too-cool-to-care persona cracked, all the insecurities she fought with on a daily basis spilling forward.

“Sweetheart, wait,” she heard from behind her.

She sped towards the door, desperate not to let him see the woman behind the mask, but he was too fast, too intuitive, and he caught her arm just as she was going through it.

“Let me take you to dinner,” he said, and intense look in his eyes.

“Seriously?”

“Yes! I fancy you, is that so hard to believe?”

“Umm, yes, seeing as you don’t know my name?”

“Well, it is hard when you get called ‘Care’, ‘Carebear’, ‘captain’, ‘girl’, ‘sister’, ‘baby sheriff’, ‘blondie’, ‘barbie’, ‘rock star’, ‘queen’, ‘mary’ and I’m confident I’ve heard Damon refer to you as ‘the love child of barbie and Neil Diamond’. Honestly, how is one meant to decipher a name from all that?”

“You’re one to talk!” she said, incredulously, though she had a little smirk on her face as she said it. “Mr Nik-Klaus-Niklaus.”  

“Fair enough,” he conceded, feeling it would be mulish to point out that it wasn’t exactly the same thing.

He took a step closer to her and, feeling daring, grabbed her hand before she could shy away.

“Let me take you to dinner?”

“When you learn my name,” she said, firmly.  

Klaus was about to open his mouth to protest further, when –

“GOORRRGGGEOUSSSSS!!!!!”

Caroline’s hand was ripped from his, as two large male figures squashed her into their arms, all three of them falling ass-over-tit.

Klaus was about to see red, and rip the accosters from her, when he heard laughing muddling in with a few slurred words. He could just make out her brightly shining face, and a stab of jealousy shot threw him.

“Would you two animals get the hell off me!” she exclaimed, while still laughing heartily.

“Now, my sweet, that’s not a very polite to talk to your roommates!” one of the voices said – a very familiar voice.

“What can I say, Kol, I’m not polite.”

As the three of them scrambled their feet Klaus stood gaping, completely hating the coincidence. In front of him was Kol, Kol’s best friend Enzo, and who he only assumed could be the third in his brother’s little trio….

“You are Caroline?” Klaus gaped.

Caroline’s eyes snapped to him, then at Kol and Enzo, going slack-jawed as she made the connection.

“Oh my god, you’re Nik!”

“What’s this?” Kol asked, looking between Caroline and Klaus, putting the pieces together and then grimacing. “NO, no no no no no no NO! You described me dirty sexual act you two committed,” the brunette whined, scrunching up his face. “I NEED A DRINK OR A THOUSAND AND I NEED THEM YESTERDAY!”

With that, Kol was staggering into the bar, followed closely by a bemused Enzo, leaving an abashed Caroline, and an intrigued Klaus in their wake.

So, Caroline,” Klaus murmured, after a few beats of complete awkward. “Can I take you to dinner now? I know a very good 24 hour Italian restaurant.”

Caroline narrowed her eyes, but smiled nonetheless.

“A deal’s a deal,” she replied, linking her arm through his. “And my dad taught me to never go back on one.”

“Well, best be off then. On one condition.”

“What is that?”

“Don’t describe our times together to Kol anymore.”

Caroline laughed, mainly at his confidence that there would be another time, but partly because she knew there would be too.

“Deal.”

My first drabble with my new URL, I’m really happy with it! Eeee!!!

[queencarolinemikaelson]

Klaroline + "We just had a moment and we were going in for the kiss and I panicked at the last second and blew air in your face" please ❤️‍

Hey! Thank you for this prompt! It’s short and (hopefully) sweet! Was meant to be for KCVDAY feels day, but what can you do? 

A Bee, Indeed

Their laughter was a sound to behold as their limbs tangled into knots on the floors beneath them. Caroline’s head was thrown back, her shoulders shaking, and her curls framing her face, features alight with joy. She was beautiful.

“I told you roller-skating in the house would be a bad idea,” she panted, as the laughter subsided a little. “I think we broke my tailbone!”

Caroline melodramatically rubbed her butt, and looked over at her best friend.

Klaus was still laughing as he pushed himself into a sitting position, “It’s not all we broke, love, look.”

He pointed over his shoulder to the smashed vase, and laughed a little more as her face paled.

“Oh my god, Nik!” she screeched. “Your mom’s gonna kill me!”

Caroline tried to scramble to her feet, apparently forgetting her feet were encased in wheels, not shoes, and she promptly fell on her ass again.

Klaus howled with laughter, and Caroline fixed him with her most withering stare.

“It’s not funny,” she pouted.

“I know, I know,” he said, attempting to school his face back to nonchalance, but failed.

“Then stop laughing!”

“How can I love?” he asked, grabbing her wrist before she could try and get to her feet again. “It’s a little bit funny, and mother won’t mind.”

She gave him a small ‘harrumph’, but a small smile had crawled back onto her face.  

Still intertwined in one and other, the two best friends lay back the giggles overtaking them once more.

After a few moments, they collapsed into a heavy silence. It had happened once or twice over the years. They would be just laughing then the silence would come, and it would be comfortable, until they both tried to understand why silences between them always felt so… right.

“What are you thinking about, bestie?” Caroline asked, linking her arms with his, before turning her head to look at him.

She’d looked at him many a time in the same position, but she’d never seen the intense look that was currently etched into his face.

He didn’t answer, but his eyes suddenly flicked to her lips, and she became aware of exactly how close they were. Their faces were mere centimetres apart and she could feel every bit of his exposed skin on her, she rued the parts covered in material. She could feel where one of his arms was resting on her stomach, and where the other was linking with hers. She could feel her hands clearly, one sitting on one of his hands, and one sitting close to his abdomen.

She hated that she could feel her heart pumping, and she hated that, even though the intensity of his gaze was rendering her temporarily immobile, she wanted to move forward and capture his lips with hers, taste his tongue and feel all he had to offer her.

She’d never consciously taken note of how she felt until now, and the unplanned feeling terrified her control-freak mind.

So she panicked.

She puckered her lips up and began funnelling air through them, blowing a breeze onto his nose, because, for some reason she thought she could cool the heated moment with her breath...

“What on earth are you doing?” he asked, his gaze questioning rather than intense.

Then she realised what the hell she was doing, went the colour of a fire truck, and began yammering.

“There was a bee, you see, this bee that was black and yellow, just like all the cartoons. It was on your face, so I was blowing on you to get it to go away. Wouldn’t want that handsome face of yours to be swollen like a balloon at your mom’s party tonight! She may not hate me for the vase, but she’d certainly hate me if you looked like the elephant man for the photos and…”

But her rambling was cut off as Klaus closed the distance between their faces, and pressed his lips to hers.

Caroline had fantasised this many times in her dreams, but nothing her imagination could have thought up was as blissful as the reality. His lips were softer than she would have thought possible, and, when she opened her mouth to let his tongue explore, she moaned at its dominance.

Still lying horizontal on the floor, she raised one of her hands to bury in curls at the nape of his neck, as his arms snaked around her waist, pulling her impossibly close to him.

They stayed that way for many stolen minutes, until he pulled away.

“You sure know how to ramble, love,” he smirked, his face red, and his lips extra plump. “A bee, indeed,” he added, incredulously.

She giggled, a little abashed, a little exhilarated, not quite processing what was happening, but knowing that even after she did, she wouldn’t regret it.

“Why can’t you stop all my ramblings like that?” she laughed.

“Well, we’ll see what we can do in the future but for now…”

It was Caroline who cut off his words this time, instigating another mind-bogglingly overdue kiss.

xxx

Esther had heard the crash, but hadn’t investigated straight away, not really wanting to deal with which ever child had caused it. When she walked into the hall around ten minutes later, she’d found a broken vase, and her middle son tangled up, on the floor, with his best friend – or as Esther liked to refer to Caroline ‘Klaus Future Wife’.

She gazed upon them disapprovingly for a moment or two – did they have to work out they were perfect for each other in the middle of her hallway? – before turning on her heel and muttering, “Well, it’s about time.”