Archive of Our Own ^beta

Klaus

“We should bury them,” she says.

Bury them deep in the ground so we’ll never see them again, so their blood will not fill the air, so I won’t see them every time I close my eyes. The trees shiver around her like a premonition and she’s got blood on her hands and she’s looking like she’s not planning on washing it off anytime soon.

He takes her hand in his, guides them to her lips, but no, she’s not like that – she hates licking blood off her fingers but she hates that she wants to. Still Klaus pushes her fingers against the trembling cry of her mouth, downturned, fangs out, eyes black. He used to think her a spectacle like this – he used to imagine what she’d look like with blood sopping down her chin.

He never thought the sight of her would come with a twinge and a pang.

“Love, stop crying. Breathe a bit, hm?” he soothes. Her tongue, licking hungrily at her fingers, wets the tip of his as well.

She doesn’t seem to remember how to breathe. She is transfixed on her hands, shaking and red, the imprint of the ancient dagger she’d used to slice into the witch leaving indents in her usually rosy palms.

“My hands are dirty,” she mumbles. “Klaus, I can’t—”

“Let me,” he says heatedly. He kisses a bloody knuckle and with a sweep of his tongue has her palms spotless again. Iron mixed with something bittersweet coats the insides of his mouth.

“We should bury them,” she says. She cries.

“Don’t you worry about that, sweetheart. I’ll do it.” He thumbs away hot, fat tears before they even make it past her eyelashes.

Moonlight trickles down her cheeks and she heaves hopelessly into the night, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from gathering her scent and her hair and her tears and her pants and her lips and hold her.

But she would not forgive him if he did, not with all these bodies lying around.

She cries and she shakes and she whispers, “I just killed twelve people.”

—

Perhaps he should have taken her into his arms that night, counted the green flecks in her eyes, smoothed the forest from her hair, scratch the blood out of her skin until she comes up pink and gleaming.

Perhaps he should have bent his knees and lain down in the leaves with her, plunge his hand deep into her guilt and her grief, snatch it out of her system like he would so easily the hearts of his enemies. Make a bed across his chest for her to lay her head down, to rest her weary limbs.

Perhaps he should have rested his forehead against hers,

Perhaps he should have lain down with her.

(Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.)

—

It is a universal truth, one he chooses not to acknowledge, that if you love something you must set it free.

Rebekah reads to him at times, though she reads at him more than she does to. A library filled with books that he does not read. Bits and excerpts from dusty old books thrown into the silent room, left to smoulder in the furnace for all the good it did him.

Love, his sister sighs, and it tastes bitter on her tongue, it must.

“Love, Nik.” She sighs, as if the word itself tastes of suffocation. You’re doing it all wrong, she says. When diamonds don’t work you steal them away. You keep love trapped in a steel cage, force it to sing; feed it scraps and watch it wither and die. Everything you love, you destroy.

He looks up then, spine aching from bending over his sketchbook for so long. “Now that’s a quote I can get behind.”

—

But then again, who said anything about love? What a word, the simplicity of it, for such a thing he understands too much, and yet not enough of. Love, his tongue trips, and she looks at him with something akin to hatred in her eyes.

That’s the spirit.

“Don’t take it personally, love,” he says, knuckle brushing the delicate bonework of her face. His other hand forms a cradle underneath her neck. “It’s just the balance of things, you know?”

She coughs defiantly in his face, flinches her pale, sweat-sheened body when he lifts her onto the couch. Tyler has long left, and he’s sure that the boy had pulled down the strap of Caroline’s top to better present that poisonous, festering bite on her neck.

He watches her for hours. Talks to her when she talks to him, shushes her with quiet songs when she starts crying again. Kisses her temple when she tells him she’s never, ever, ever in her whole life hated anyone as much as she hated him right now.

Something sparks inside his chest. Intrigue, he surmises. “Just right now?”

“Just right now,” she agrees raggedly. “We both know hatred only lasts so long.”

“And what, pray tell, comes after that?” he asks.

“Well, it’s only a hair’s width away from love, isn’t it?”

His eyes flash with interest. “You could love someone who just signed your death warrant so easily?”

“I…” She wheezes, as if gathering air into her lungs is becoming increasingly difficult. “I am strong. You’ve told me before. I’m strong enough to be kind even to my enemy.”

“But sweetheart,” he says, crouching down by the sofa so they are eye to eye. “When will you realise that I don’t want to be your enemy?”

“Then why are you letting me die?”

He grins something wicked. “Because, as you say, I’m your enemy right now.”

Her eyes intent on his face, his eyes. Anger seeping from her wound, rich and sticky. Her voice scratches at him like coarse sand. “I’m going to come back and haunt you, Klaus. I’m going to haunt your every hour, your every dream. I’m going to breathe down your neck and make you go crazy. I’m going to show you what it looks like to be loved so completely by a woman. I’m going to be the light you stumble after in the dark. I’m going to make you resent the living. I’m going to make you wish you were dead. And then you’re going to die for me.”

He feels as if someone’s dropped something very heavy over his head. There’s a crack in his ears and a thundering of his heart. Her chest rises and falls very slowly as she stares at him, daring him to speak.

She licks her lips.

Beautiful, he muses, his own lips parting.

“And then?” he asks breathlessly.

“And then I’m going to watch your face as you realise that where I’ll be, you can never even hope to be. You’re going to be all alone.” She coughs, and it speckles his neck with her blood. “And I’ll laugh.”

He’s faced her wrath before, her pity, her compassion, her hatred. But he’s never faced her cruelty before, and he feels unexpectedly and irredeemably bound to her.

“You don’t have to be a ghost to even haunt me,” he confesses to this dying woman. “I see visions of you every time I close my eyes. Your radiance is my undoing.”

Caroline gains volume. The way she looks at him makes him feel utterly naked. “Such romantic flirtations from a murderer. I don’t believe you.”

Klaus leans in close, so close that his every breath fills up her panting mouth. “Oh, but what if I let you live, my love? Would you still linger?”

She pulls her lips up into a smile and shows him her teeth.

He envisions their teeth clashing together in an open-mouthed kiss and shivers.

“I’d harangue you.”

He pulls on her bottom lip with his thumb, presses his lashes to hers. “Do you promise?”

“You’ll never know now, will you?” Her last smile might be weak, but it is triumphant; she manages a tiny laugh and he snarls; she starts to turn her head away and he grabs her chin to keep her eyes on his; she scratches her nails down his bottom lip and he tries to catch her fingers with a soft kiss, and even as her lashes are drooping there’s that gleam in her blue-green eyes that taunt him, telling him he will never be able to follow her—

That does him in. He snatches her up with a snarl, relishes in her little cry when he licks the side of her neck that isn’t bloodied. His lips travel up, up and up to her ear. She trembles as he whispers, “We’ll see about that, love.”

And with that he rips open the veins in his wrist with his teeth and tips her head up. She bites into him and slurps him up. She pulls on his blood until he feels it in his eyeballs. She gulps him down like she’s starving, and he fights the call of her faint moans.

He only just manages not to go mad.

—

Decadent, he decides.

She has him on his knees, pain coursing through his body every time her fingers plunder his flesh, looking for a shrapnel of white oak that’s not there.

Of course, they don’t know it yet, do they?

Every time her elbows come up red and sodden, he thinks This is the eternity of misery I was promised.

Her knees push against the small of his back, and he grunts – decadent. Even something as piffling as her knees, the way she moves against him, the way she doesn’t try to hold him down but just follows the motion on his back, hands gentle even as she claws into him.

“Klaus,” she says into his ear. Don’t stand so near, he is in agony, he cannot stop the thrashing of his arms even as she blows the back of his neck. “I’m trying, but you need to stop moving so much.”

“I’ll remember that,” he spits through wet lips, “the next time your finger pushes it in deeper.”

Caroline huffs at his behaviour and promptly digs deeper. He all but howls.

“Can it, wolf boy, I think I’ve got something—” In the overhead mirror he sees her crouching down, feels the shriek of his exposed flesh and mangled skin as she hooks her finger past his spine.

Her breasts brush against the back of his head.

He screams a curse in a language so ancient he’s momentarily struck by the sudden memory of it. He’d thought he’d lost his gift of that particular tongue. His head falls to the floor and he writhes under her touch. She turns him around, and her stricken face is all he sees.

“Shh, I’m sorry,” she whispers desperately. “Klaus, please—come back to me.”

“I can’t—” He bites down on his tongue until he tastes blood. “I can’t feel my legs.”

Helpless and distressed she holds his head to her chest, sobbing quietly. “I can’t do it, Klaus. I can’t get it out. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He’s never seen her look so distraught, even when dying from his bite. He shivers violently, clutches at her hands and tries to tell her with his eyes that she shouldn’t apologise. He doesn’t think she understands, because quickly, so quickly he never could have anticipated it, she presses a sweet, sweet kiss to his lips.

Sensations all but exploded in his skin, and suddenly—

Suddenly…

The simplest silence he’s ever heard.

Caroline lets go of him and his head falls gasping against her lap. “Where’s the pain gone?” he mumbles. “Where’s the pain gone, I can’t feel it anymore, where’s the pain gone?”

Caroline turns boneless with relief, and they stay that way: His back staining the hardwood floor, his head pressed to her stomach, her forehead buried in the crook of his neck.

—

Caroline follows his ascent closely.

Her breath is hitched, she’s excited – he smells it in the air around them as he offers his hand for assistance into his attic. It’s easy to pull her up – oh, her weight is very comfortable when he swings her to her feet.

“Thanks,” she mutters, eyes to her boots. When she looks up at him again the sunny disposition is back on her face, and it makes his heart flutter. “So where do you keep your spare dresses?”

He walks backwards deeper into the stack and clutter of the dusty attic, her eyes never leaving his as he pulls on her hand. Her soft, soft hand.

The darkness envelopes her but she never dims out. She looks like a swooning golden candle. His back hits the clatter of an old cupboard door and he blinks. He hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings, something that doesn’t often happen at all.

“Here we are,” he murmurs, slowly pulling the door open. There’s a loud whine as the hinges creak, and out tumbles the scent of centuries-old perfume. It drenches the air around them and makes his eyelids droop, probably a side-effect of the preservation spell that had been put on the attic.

“Wow,” Caroline breathes. For a moment she is not the girl stuck right in the middle of a supernatural war, but a girl delicately touching her fingers to beauty she’s likely never seen before.

She turns to him, her cheeks blooming like poppies. Her eyes are wide, framed by her lashes, and why does she always have to look so surprised whenever he does something nice for her? He peers closer. No, he’s mistaken. It’s not surprise—

—it’s wonder.

He’s made her look like that.

She looks so lovely.

He suddenly has to ask – he has to know. “Am I,” he clears his throat, he sounds too brusque suddenly. “Am I forgiven for my all my wickedness?”

She laughs, and this time does look surprised, that she’s laughing at something she says. Like it’s so easy. He feels his own chest fill with air too. “Maybe not all,” she chides, before leaning into the cupboard to feel out more of the foreign fabrics. Only the back of her tumbling head of curls is visible. “Although I’m not sure someone owning this many beautiful things could ever be so wicked now.”

“Things aren’t always as they seem,” he says lowly. He realises like an afterthought that her scent is mixing into the dresses. He’s never going to get it to air out, he thinks. “Are you saying anyone capable of seeing beauty could never be wicked?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Caroline says after she emerges. She has three dresses slung over her arm. “You’ve got a museum full of artifacts that you could’ve just let waste away through millennia – but you didn’t. You safeguarded it. You don’t want ugliness in this world.”

“Then why do I do the things that I do?” he fights. He will not let her conceive this – idea of him. This farce; he will not let her fool herself as his siblings have through the centuries.

He clenches his hands so as to not grab her shoulders and say, Look at me. This is who I am, this is who I’ll ever be.

She meets his gaze evenly, as if to say, I’ve known who you were from the start.

“I think…” she says, tilting her chin upwards so she can better study the challenge in his eyes, “I think that you just want to be found, Klaus.”

Klaus has been staring at her, hardly breathing. His throat seizes up. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Caroline’s smirk is so visible even in the dimness of the room, “that you’ve got pretty good taste for a guy, Klaus.”

She shoots him a playful smile, a smile that tugs him forward until he is nose to nose to her, and her eyes are no longer filled with laughter but the tell-tale sign of want. He should know what it looks like, he’s fancied the knickers off her for a year now.

“Caroline,” he sighs.

“Yes, Klaus.”

“I think this would look nice on you.” He pulls out a dress that’s right behind her head; the inner crook of his elbow brushes the side of her face. She closes her eyes, and he swears he’s not imagining her leaning into the soft scratch of his sleeve ever so slightly.

When she opens her eyes he’s not standing so close anymore, and is holding out the dress to her.

“That’s a gorgeous dress,” she says breathlessly. A flush is high on her cheeks and her mouth hangs open ever so slightly, her dark pink wet mouth that looks so lush and inviting at the moment. “I want it.”

“It’s yours, then.”

Caroline looks dumbfounded. “Just like that?”

He shrugs, smiling. “Just like that.”

She smiles back, a faraway look in her eyes suddenly. “I’m going to look hot as fuck.”

He envisions her on a cliff, thin layers of the dress wrapping around her figure so sensually, her skirts fighting against the winds. He envisions it so fiercely that he’s almost angry at her for thinking she needed a dress to make her feel beautiful.

He swallows the feelings down, with difficulty.

“I’m very tempted to agree, but unfortunately I won’t be there to appraise you.” He carefully looks away from her, focusing intently in storing the discarded dresses away, and shuts the cupboard with a final click. “You’ll have to tell me all about it later.”

“You know what, Klaus?” she taps her chin. “I just might. What’s your Snapchat?”

“What’s a Snapchat?”

She rolls her eyes, but her grin gives her away. “Okay, don’t have time for this. I’ve really got to go.”

Klaus is about to lead the way when she turns and rests her hand on his forearm, a move that is unexpectedly tender.

His eyes widen. So do hers.

“Thank you,” she says in a rush, before flashing out of his attic.

—

—

—

Caroline

It isn’t Caroline’s business what Klaus decides to do in his spare time, but she is curious when she bumps into Klaus in the woods one morning, leaning against a tree and unravelling what looked like long strips of white wraps from his knuckles.

They’re not clean at all. In fact, far from it. The bits that aren’t smeared with grime and dust are stained with blood.

So is Klaus, now that she’s close enough to smell him. He usually smelled clean, a little sharp, maybe, and – oh, sometimes at night she can taste something metallic on her tongue whenever she breathes his scent.

This time she can detect a hint of something that makes her press her lips together. His body cooling off the sweat that seems to be slicked onto his chest, which is very bare, and very muscled.

She immediately raises her eyes to his.

Klaus doesn’t say anything as she stops to appraise him, a white box cradled in her arms. He doesn’t look at her even as she steps nearer to him.

“Hey, just the person I was on the way to see!” she greets, sunny grin on a sunny morning stamped onto her face to mask the sudden tug of her nerves. She watches him flex his hands and wiggles her eyebrows. “Rough night?”

“Not rough enough,” he replies.

“That looks pretty bad if it’s healing that slowly – especially for you. So what happened?”

“Punched someone.”

Caroline tilts her head. Usually Klaus was far more inclined to making conversation. He seems closed off today, which isn’t anything new. He’s seen the way he talks to Damon. Bite and charm that simply oozed, an unphased nonchalance.

When she thinks about the way Klaus looks at her however –

Just hypothetically speaking, that is —

Let’s just say usually there’s a lot more heat.

Her legs seem to move of their own accord when she finds herself stepping into his space, gingerly putting the box down on the grown. And then, she straightens – she doesn’t miss the way his chest rises sharply, like he’s just taken a quick, deep breath – and she definitely doesn’t know why she very gently takes one of his hands to assess the damage. “Is this permanent?” she asks of the little bone protruding from his middle knuckle.

“Only if I don’t push it back into place.”

The cool quality of his tone makes Caroline want to demand what his problem is, but before she can, Klaus lifts an eyebrow at her. “Should you be touching me right now?”

His gaze flicks between her fingers pressed into his palm and slowly makes its way to her face. She felt every inch of it like a physical touch.

“Should you really be so cocky to a friend who’s just trying to help?” she asks, eyes narrowed. “Look, I was on my way to see you— ”

“Really, sweetheart? That’s a surpri…oh, yes. We’re friends now.” He makes a show of remembering, and his eyes darken, trapped by dark lashes that really shouldn’t have been given to such a bad, bad man. “Especially now that Tyler’s back, I presume? Safe behind your little boyfriend’s big, broad shoulders.”

“You’re giving me whiplash,” Caroline says through gritted teeth. She drops his hand immediately, and there’s a flash of regret as she does, and another intake of breath from Klaus. “What is your deal? I wanted to come by to – to thank you for the dress, for actually doing something nice for me without expecting something in return, for once.”

“Tyler’s back, love, you don’t need to pretend any longer,” he says with an eyeroll. “You’ve got what you wanted, now scurry back home.”

There is so much green in her eyes, Klaus thinks, when incensed. Her voice comes out barely above a whisper, but there is still fire in her words. “I thought you were the one who wanted to be friends.”

“Decided to give up on that whole charade.” Klaus shrugs. “I don’t see why you’re so bothered, really. Don’t you tire of being - what was it Damon calls you? – the blonde distraction?”

Caroline scoffs in disbelief. “Who knew what a thousand years of paranoia can do to someone’s judgment.”

“Keep the dress, sweetheart. It was worn by Grace Kelly herself, I’m sure you’d want a token of the best night of your life.” His lips curl.

“Friends always return things they’ve borrowed.”

“Well, this friend,” Klaus points to himself, “has no need for such a dress.”

“Klaus. I don’t know why you’re being really weird—”

“I especially don’t want it back,” he raises his voice over hers, “now that Tyler’s had his hungry little hands all over it. Did you really allow someone who doesn’t know proper hand placements to dance with the once and former Miss Mystic Falls?”

Caroline’s breath catches as realisation dawns on her. “You were there last night.”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“Smelled a hybrid in town.”

“Why.”

“I did tell him never to come back.”

Caroline clenches her teeth. “Why were you at my house.”

“I wanted to ask how your night had been, seeing as how you left the dance so soon—” He raises his eyebrows, daring her to challenge him. “What, friends can’t rehash the best night of their lives over a cuppa?”

“Okay, so you saw Tyler and me dancing, which – really creepy by the way, staring.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “And, yeah, so what if we were dancing? It’s my prom night. He wanted to make it perfect. What’s it to you?”

“Well, sweetheart, seeing as how you are in dire need of enlightenment,” he says, still so very cool, “at first I was incredibly jealous. Don’t look at me like that, I’m man enough to admit that. I’d wanted to be your last dance partner of the evening, you see. . I wanted to see how resplendent you’d look in the dress I’ve given you, and whether you’d look better than the picture I immediately painted of you as soon as you left. Imagine how I felt when I laid my eyes on you. You weren’t just full of light anymore—I’ll leave that to your interpretation. And you can laugh, but I’d even entertained the thought of coming to you in a suit.” Klaus shoots her a dark smile. “Seems it was good that I didn’t waste my time.”

“Yes,” she breathes, disappointment trembling in her chest. “Really good. Let me know when Dr. Jekyll’s back.”

She turns and walks away at human speed.

“You forgot your little box, love,” he calls out.

She refuses to answer.

—

The dress is back in her room by the time she gets home.

She grabs her pillow, shoves her face into it, and screams.

—

Ever since prom, everyone’s been acting really weird. Not even in a Silas kind of way, but in a really… Caroline narrows her eyes at the pack of frozen peas pressed to Stefan’s jaw, and Damon groaning off a hangover looking dirt-stained and bloody and really gross…

Everyone’s been acting really.

Twitchy.

That’s the word.

“How long has he been out?” she asks Elena, who just sighs and checks her manicure.

“Do I really have to make conversation with you right now?” Elena finally says when Caroline stands her ground and stares at her inspecting every single one of her fingernails.

Oh, right.

This Elena is a bitch, how could she have almost forgotten?

Before she can retort, Tyler shuffles into the house without a loud, “Yo Salvabros! How come I’m the only one who didn’t get an invite to this th…”

He stops short when he sees Caroline.

Who also stops short when she sees him.

“You’re still here,” she says, her mouth a perfect O of shock. “How are you still here and not dead? Or have you actually figured out how astral projection works?”

Tyler rubs the back of his head. “Klaus and I had kind of a chat last week.”

“Yeah,” Caroline says, tossing her hair. She can’t help her arms crossing, it’s a reflex, okay? “I heard.”

“You’ve talked to Klaus,” Tyler surmises in a flat tone. “So you know about his deal with us, then.”

Caroline’s eyes flash. “What deal?”

Behind her back, she doesn’t notice Stefan frantically shaking his head, and Damon opening one eye and mimicking slicing off his neck with one finger.

Tyler pales. Caroline’s scary when she’s not in the loop about things. She’s especially scary when she knows you know something she doesn’t, and knows the exact way to make you reveal that knowledge to her.

So he does the smartest thing he can think to do.

“Care, remember how much you love me,” he begs, before he wooshes out of there.

He wooshes out of there.

He wooshes.

Caroline stands there, gaping at the spot where her boyfriend was just half a second ago. Elena looks a little impressed judging by the quirk of her eyebrows.

She snickers and turns to the Salvatore brothers, muttering, “Yelling starts in three… two…”

Caroline sucks in a lungful of air. “I am going to kill—”

—

“—Klaus!” she throws his door open and stomps into his foyer. “Klaus!”

Klaus’ irritated face appears above her, hands wrapped around the polished wooden balustrade of the railing. “Giving Mystic Falls hearing damage again, sweetheart? What is it you need? Another dress?”

She stares at his face.

Within moments she stands before him, thumb and forefinger pinching his jaw, turning his face this way and that. “Are you hurt?”

Klaus glares, but he doesn’t step away from her touch. He simply allows her to examine his face, which is in various degrees of healing, cuts and bruises and all, and then exhales in exasperation. “No.”

“Then why are there bruises all over your face?” she demands.

“It’ll heal—”

“And why did Matt have a swollen eye and a bloody lip when he was making me my pre-jog smoothie?”

“Perhaps you should go and ask your other friends—”

“And why did I walk into Jeremy and Kol deep in conversation about knuckle rings?”

“Sweetheart,” Klaus begins, but snarls when once again Caroline interrupts him with, “And why do Damon and Stefan look like they just crawled their way out of a car wreck?”

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explana—”

“And why,” Caroline steams, “didn’t you mention you’d made some sort of deal with Tyler? What do you want with us still?”

“Oh, Caroline,” Klaus snorts, “this really doesn’t concern you.”

“My friends are looking like punching bags. You seem to be the cause of it. Of course it concerns me,” she says in her best HBIC voice.

“Perhaps they ought to learn how to punch back then, hm?”

“What are you up to?” Caroline pokes a finger into his chest, where a very ugly bruise blooms.

He hisses. “I meant it. It’s really none of your business, but if you insist.”

“Oh, I do insist.”

“Very well,” he snaps as he attempts to push her hand down, but she shoots him a glare so fierce he relents with a tick in his jaw. “Meet me here at midnight.”

“I thought you were classier than booty calls, Klaus.”

Klaus looks very much like he wants to tell her what he thinks of booty calls, but instead shows her his teeth. Clenched with restraint. Her fingernail is starting to pierce through his skin.

“Midnight. Sharp. Don’t be late, or I’ll leave you behind,” he says. And with that, he’s gone.

That makes two men who’ve wooshed away from her in just one morning.

“Seriously!” she yells at his stupidly expensive furniture.

—

She’s there at 11:59pm.

Raps her knuckles against his door just as the clock ticks midnight.

He opens his door before she can even knock.

“You’re on time, lovely, not that you’re ever tardy.” Klaus isn’t smiling. He’s dressed not in his usual Henley but a thin white shirt. He’s got a gym bag slung over his shoulders. “Shall we?”

Caroline thinks he’s leading her to his SUV but instead he quickens his pace down the circular driveway, and soon they find themselves in the woods. He’s not moving at full speed so she’s left behind, which she appreciates, even if he’s in jerk mode.

They walk for a while. She doesn’t know why he doesn’t just carry her and abuse his Original vamp speed so they can just get this night over with. But then he stops.

He points to a hole in the ground. She recognises it – the caves Elijah had trapped Elena in once. She remembers the one time she’d been here, she’d heard a haunting kind of tune, centuries worth of trapped air, maybe?

Today, she hears voices.

“Go ahead, Nancy Drew,” Klaus says and bows mockingly. “Shall I roll out a red carpet?”

“You’re being a real jerk,” she informs him primly, before jumping down. She lands lightly on her toes, fingertips touching the coarse ground.

“Just follow the lights, love,” Klaus’ voice trickles down to her.

“Lights…?” Caroline repeats dazedly, before she sees it: the leap and batter of deep orange dancing against the dirt walls. The glow of torches.

“Walk,” Klaus says, his voice so close to her ear she has to fight the urge to shake all over.

She walks faster as the voices get louder, and rounds a corner to find a room bathed in torch light, and…

All of her male friends.

Shirtless.

She stares at them, shell-shocked from curl to toes, and they stare back.

She quickly counts heads. “Tyler’s not here.”

“Tyler’s not invited,” Klaus tells her, and promptly pulls his shirt off.

Oh sweet fucking Lord. “What the fuck,” she hisses, “is going on?”

“I’m afraid we can’t talk about it, sweetheart.”

Caroline wants to slap that smirk right off Klaus’ face. “You said you were going to explain.”

“I figured you’d appreciate a good show instead,” Klaus says, plucking a bell from his gym bag and lifting it into the air. It rings, high and clear.

As if on cue all the men shuffle about, leaving a large clearing in the middle.

“I’m up!” Damon hollers. “Don’t cry for me, Barbie.”

“Up for what?”

Kol saunters up into the clearing as well, meeting Damon head on.

There’s a jungle beat of hearts pounding in the room. The air is thick with anticipation, fear, excitement, and Caroline finds herself lulled into it. Her breath rattles in her chest and she forgets how to blink.

Klaus raises his hand.

Everyone falls silent.

She sees Matt grin in a way she’s never seen it before, but at the same time looks all too familiar, and then it hits her.

Matt looks bloodthirsty.

Klaus drops his arm in a smooth arc.

The room erupts.

Kol lunges forward and swings his right fist right into Damon’s face, who only just misses it had he not bent backwards. He swoops down and tries to kick Kol’s legs out from under him, but the Original jumps with a fluidity that she doesn’t expect. They prowl around each other, shoulders hunched, breathing in tandem, eyes never leaving one another’s.

Their blows fray and scatter across each other’s skin. Damon’s hair is soon matted to his forehead, and Kol has blood smeared under his nose. Damon lands a punch, and Kol returns with a resounding knee to his stomach. The smell of blood pierces the air as they retreat from one another, hissing the language of those stuck between the dead and the living. Damon wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and spits out a tooth.

They seem to be waiting, bodies vibrating with untamed energy.

Klaus’ grin turns sinister.

Caroline’s pupils dilate. “What—"

Klaus gives a shout of command that almost makes her jump out of her skin, and Damon all but screams as he charges for Kol.

“—the—" she hisses out.

“Come on, brother!” Stefan urges, a vein visible in his temple

“—fuck!” Damon yells as Kol crushes his knees into Damon’s windpipe.

—

“You’ve got them joining a cult?!” she shrieks at Klaus, her breath coming up in great white plumes in the chilly night air.

“The cult of Palahniuk, perhaps. I simply offered a solution to their pent-up aggression.” Klaus shrugs, an errant curl flopping down onto his forehead. She finds herself staring at it, fascinated.

She tears her eyes away. “Trust you to be all Drama Queen about it!”

“Not my fault they don’t object to having a chance to swing one at me,” he jeers.

“Comes with the territory of being the big bad wolf, genius,” she responds in kind. “So your deal was – what, punch your lights out for the lols so they don’t punch your lights out for reals?”

There’s a momentary pause, and Klaus blinks – the anger seeps from his face and suddenly he laughs, his chest heaving.

She keeps her eyes resolutely on his face. “Funny, huh?”

“You’ve a way with words that makes me feel positively ancient sometimes, sweetheart,” Klaus coos, using a finger to tap her jaw. “Can’t you make space for man and man’s vices?”

“This was your solution to keep the peace? Super secret, super exclusive Fight Club?”

“Ah, ah, love! You’re forgetting the first rule of Fight Club.”

“You’re forgetting the first rule of my fist.”

“It’s infectious, isn’t it?” Klaus insists eagerly, a crazed look in his eyes. “I saw the way you watched the fight, my darling you looked hungry.”

“Do not make it about me right now, Klaus.”

Klaus looks dangerous all of a sudden. “Everything’s about you, Caroline.”

“Oh, really? Midnight rendezvous in an underground, literally, fight club, and make it about me? You mow them down for my honour or something? Box their ears and feel better about yourself?”

“Anything,” Klaus says quietly, carefully, “that allows me to forget your existence for even just a second, makes me feel better.”

“This is a fucking riot, Klaus! Five days ago you were letting me raid your closet, and today you hate me again?”

“I’ve never hated you,” Klaus snarls. “I’ve saved your life, twice.”

“Because you put it in danger.” She shoves his chest. “Twice.”

“What do you suggest I do to forget you then?” he bellows in her face. “You wouldn’t understand, prefect little Caroline with her clipboards and spreadsheets, never a curl out of place?” He hooks his fingers around her collar and tugs her close; presses his nose to a spot beneath her ear that makes her skin crawl with heat. “What do you know about restraint, hm?”

She can taste his breath on her tongue, and she bites down on her lower lip to stop from grunting when Klaus aligns his hips with hers. “Have you ever felt the thrill of a jaw cracking against your knuckles?”

His hand moves from her neck to her lower back. “When have you ever lost control, Caroline?”

He cups her ass. “Ever wanted to?”

She bites down on his collarbone, and he hisses, hardening immediately against her. “That’s it, love.”

“There’s something wrong with you.” She grabs his hair and grabs. A look crosses his face – a primitive kind of ecstasy that calls to the animal in her.

“Give in to the fight,” he places a wet kiss on her neck, and then starts licking his way down her sternum. His tongue traces lazy patterns over the tops of her breasts and she clutches his hair this time, crying out. “Give in.”

With a desperate groan she pulls his head down. Ridiculously enough he tries to rear back then, but no, she won’t let him. She digs her nails into his neck and clings on to him – he pushes her down to the ground and thrusts his hips against hers.

They wrestle, they kick, they take turns pushing each other into the ground, they pant into each other’s mouths, until –

Her eyes meet his.

Electricity.

She wraps her thighs around his hips at the same time he lifts her into the air and slams her against a tree.

They kiss.

His mouth opens immediately against hers and she laves her tongue against his in a hypnotising rhythm. Klaus is vocal in his pleasure – he moans into her mouth and she chokes on it, spreading wetness around his chin as she grows sloppy and greedy. She wants to kiss him everywhere, touch him everywhere, she wants to tear her sweater off and press her breasts against his chest, she wants to sink onto his length and clench around him and—

Woah there.

She gasps and pushes him away. Klaus’s lips are swollen and redder than they’ve ever been. He’s breathless and winded, looks like he’s just been through the ringer.

Without thinking, she pulls her fist back and swings.

Her fist meets his nose with a sickening crunch.

Klaus staggers back, hand clamped around his nose, eyes almost screwing shut but somehow still commanding her gaze.

He pulls his hand away. Blood colours the bottom half of his face.

She stares.

He stares back.

They understand each other.

Very, very slowly, her limbs arrange themselves in a fighting stance.

Klaus watches her like a mad, mad wolf, and she doesn’t know how a man can look so turned on with blood in the cracks of his teeth when he grins.

—

—

—

Klaus

A fight is a violent struggle involving the exchange of physical blows. To fight is to overcome, to eliminate.

A fight is a dance of two warriors made of bones, blood and flesh.

Caroline fights like she dances. Her toes swing in a perfect arc, providing momentum as she side-steps him like he is made of wind. She raises her arms high in the air, a distraction of there ever was any when he feels his eyes betray his instincts to follow her fingers up, up, and up into the air — he lands on his back, his throat kicked in.

“Nicely done, sweetheart,” he rasps, voice mangled.

He turns on his side and spits red.

His hair is damp with sweat and he has to allow a moment for his crushed throat to mend before he can quite stand, but he notes with satisfaction that her shirt is torn across the torso. Probably when he had grabbed her mid-lunge to swing her into a tree thirty feet away.

“Keep up, old man,” she growls, and his ears perk. She speaks to him in a way she never has, hooded eyes, swollen mouth, a wilderness that grows and infests a perfect, trim garden. “Fight me.”

“Fuck, Caroline,” he murmurs. He delights in undressing her with his eyes, and delights even more in the fact that she only stands straighter from it. “I never knew you to be such a tease.”

With every sweep of her blue eyes he feels himself sinking deeper into her. Her eyes trick time into slowing down, dragging its ticks along his spine. He reaches for her and she evades him yet again. She tries to put him in a chokehold and he closes his eyes and caresses her hair. She changes her mind and uses her forehead to strike his nose, but he catches her by her temples and presses a kiss to her hair.

“Let me go!” She shoves him away, kicking at him for good measure. Her breath comes out in whimpers now and she clutches at herself, staring at him with wide, frightful eyes.

“Love, don’t be scared—”

“Don’t come any nearer,” she warns. He raises his arms in a show of surrender, but she doesn’t lose the set in her shoulders. She backs away, into the woods, and runs.

He lets her.

—

Two nights later, in the midst of an all-out-brawl between Matt and Jeremy, the girls of Mystic Falls storm their fighting cave.

Damon all but claws his way up the walls, shielding himself and yelling, “Katherine, weapons aren’t allowed!”

“My, my,” Kol declares, eyeing Bonnie delectably as she uses her magic to add force to her punches.

“Elena, I’m your brother!” Jeremy yelps as Elena gives him a wedgie.

“You’re breaking all the rules!” Atticus wails as Caroline hurls him into the dirt.

“I’m sorry!” April pleads before she slaps Matt across the face.

“Bekah, give it back!” Klaus rages as she steals his bell.

“I call a new order!” Rebekah announces victoriously when the men had been subdued. Caroline keeps her thighs around Klaus’ neck, and he breathes heavily into the ground, where he is pinned. He can smell her, the fruit of her skin and the salt of her sweat. He turns his face to the apex of her thighs and breathes in, humming deeply.

Caroline simply tightens the clench of her thighs around his neck.

“I never bothered to learn the rules of this so-called fight club,” Rebekah wrinkles her nose distastefully.

“I bet she doesn’t even say it capitalised,” Damon huffs to Kol.

“Silence, idiot,” Bonnie snaps.

“Thank you darling,” Rebekah coos to Bonnie. “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the rules. Jibber jabber. I declare that this is lame, and this is the absolute last night we will ever have this stupid fight club around. So that means—” she grins down. She looks terrifying. “Anything. Goes.”

With that, Klaus grabs Caroline around her hips and rolls them over until she is underneath him. He holds her down by her throat, and her breath is trapped beneath his palm, and – she licks her lips?

“Interesting kink, love,” he murmurs, feeling a shadow pass over them when Kol is hurled over his head.

He loosens his grip so he won’t miss her response.

“Who knew Fight Club could be so cathartic, huh?” she says, before breaking his hip with a well-struck knee.

Rebekah, from her perch far above the chaos, rings the bell and delights when everyone snaps to attention.

“Elena, Caroline.” Rebekah lifts her nose. “You’re up next.”

—

Klaus feels something stir low in his gut as Caroline faces Elena in the ring.

“Bet you’re relieved you finally have an excuse to hit me, huh Care?” Elena taunts, circling her.

Caroline’s blue eyes narrow. “You have no idea.”

Elena tosses her hair and turns.

Caroline and Elena seem to be moving on the tips of their toes. Savage ballerinas with bruised gums, dancing a dangerous dance. His breath catches in his throat when Caroline lowers her lashes to the ground, demure as a perfect, perfect flower, when he knows full well she is calculating Elena’s steps.

Come on, love, he encourages, feeling a dirty sort of pride harden his guts. Show me what you’re capable of.

Rebekah laughs, coming into her new role with the finesse of a Caesar. “Hurry up then, I’m bored.”

“Don’t rush them,” he breathes. “They’re only just coming alive.”

Elena elongates her neck and throws the captive audience a smirk. Caroline keeps her eyes down until the very last minute – the sudden strike of Elena’s foot hits nothing but air when Caroline cartwheels away, landing neatly on her feat.

“What’s up, Care? No fight in you?” Elena makes an exaggerated swing. “Watching those feathers, huh?”

For some reason, Caroline’s face turns red at that, and nobody sees her kick until Elena is doubled over, spitting out blood.

“Shut up,” Caroline commands, and kicks her again.

“Ooh, I love to see those feathers ruffled,” Elena grins.

“I said,” Caroline advances on Elena, pulling her up by her neck, “shut the fuck up.”

If striking him had given her catharsis, she looks jubilant as she absolutely bitchsmacks  the doppelganger into the ground. Elena lays there, eyes struggling to open.

“I turned her!” Katherine whoops.

—

A week after the dust settles, or as Caroline calls it, a week after “the best rager since the Ludgate Bonfire in ‘14”, Caroline invites him into her house.

“Where’s Tyler?” he asks mildly.

“He kept sulking because nobody bothered to invite him to our fight club, so he went to start one of his own.”

Out of all the absurdity of her response, one thing intrigues him. “Our fight club? What happened to cult?”

 He sits in a corner of her bed, watching her expectantly.

She has the manners to look sheepish, at least. “I can be honest. It was one of your better ideas.” She tips her head in a gesture that seems shy almost. “It was fun.”

“I’m…” Klaus searches for a word. “Glad.”

Caroline sends him a small smile. “Great.”

Probably to ignore the awkwardness hanging in the air, she quickly extends an arm with pride to show him her bruise, shaped curiously like the sole of Katherine’s high-heeled boots. “I wasn’t ready for the soreness to still be there even a week later, though.”

“You need to relax.” He shifts a little where he sits until he’s in the middle of her bed and pats the space between his legs. “How about a massage?”

She flicks her eyes to his and it feels like a stab to the heart—he actually wishes she were cruel enough. However suspiciously she’s looking at him, his smile does not falter. “It’s just a massage, love. It won’t hurt.”

“Fine. Only because I’m still feeling lousy that I let Stefan break my ankle.” She glares at him. “No funny business, Klaus, or so help me…”

“So help you, then,” he murmurs, eyes never leaving her lips.

Caroline licks her lips. She sits gingerly on the edge of her bed, casting his knees a reproachful glance when they threaten to pin her hips down. He stifles a laugh—he can’t help that she is so very small when he is wrapped around her.

He was never more aware of that fact when he had her pinned to that tree.

Shaking out of his thoughts, he flexes his hands and places them on her shoulders, letting her know his touch, letting her get familiarised with it. She sits stiffly between his legs, a tired droop in the hunch of her back, and he gently straightens her. He doesn’t want to scare her off, not when she’s actually allowing him to touch her so freely. Not even with violent blows, but with gentle, searching hands.

It’s such a rare sight, his hands on her, that he has to fight the urge to run his hands down, down, down right into her skin, trace the xylophone of her spine, count her ribcage with shaking fingers. For now, he moves his thumbs in soothing circles into the knots of her shoulders.

“Oh,” she says faintly, wriggling a little. She sounds surprised, and he considers feeling offended—wants to lecture her, a thousand years on earth has taught me a thing or two, how do you manage to forget that—but then she sighs and all thought flees his mind.

Bloody hell.

He grits his teeth and continues to massage her, his hands keeping up their steady rhythm on the top of her shoulders as he gets right down to smoothing the hard knots of nerves there. She’s still a little stiff, so he whispers encouragingly into her ear, “Breathe, sweetheart. Long and deep.”

Caroline softens.

“Just like that, love. Let it wash over you.”

“You said that right before we fought,” Caroline says distractedly. He doesn’t blame her. His thumbs had once put Catherine the Great to sleep.

“Speaking of the fight,” he murmurs, “what was Elena saying, that night?”

His hands start their slow descent down her back and suddenly she leans against him and lets out a soft moan.

“Something about feathers, love?”

Her shoulders rise and fall as she breathes in deep and he coaxes her on, gently increasing the pressure of his hands. She bites her lips, giving herself to his hands, and laughs weakly. “Nothing, just something stupid.”

He nuzzles his forehead to the back of her head as he starts moving his thumbs down and inwards, framing her spine. “Nothing’s ever stupid when it comes to you.”

“She – she thinks I spend too much time trying to be perfect.”

“That bother her?”

“She…” And suddenly her fingers are digging into his thigh as her back arches. “That feels—good. Keep going.”

“I will,” he breathes into her neck, “if you tell me what she really meant by it. I’ve only ever seen you that upset by me, sweetheart. I have to say I was quite jealous.”

She lets out another moan, throatier this time, and he feels a stirring low in his belly and a pressure building in places they definitely shouldn’t—not with her sitting so close, her back pressed against him.

He curls his hand into a fist and kneads his way down her spine and she lets out a small cry, her fingers inching up his thigh, and he nearly groans at how bloody breathless she sounds when she says, “Don’t… Don’t stop. Klaus, it’s so good.”

He grits his teeth at her name being thrown so carelessly from her mouth, a dreamy sigh. “You remember my condition?”

“Yes,” she says with the smallest of sobs. “Fine. She thinks you and I have some deep dark, I don’t know, temptation or something between us.”

His thumbs still in their ministrations. “Why would she think that?”

“Klaus, don’t stop, damn you,” she sighs wretchedly. “I’ll do whatever you want, just – ”

With his nose, he sweeps her hair away from her neck so he can blow softly onto her skin as he uses the heel of his palm to massage her shoulder blades.

“Confess,” he threatens, “or I’ll stop.”

“She says I’m afraid of what I feel for you, I’m afraid you’ll ruin me.”

“Is she right?”

“No,” Caroline denies. Her back arches. “She’s full of shit.”

His fingers fumbling for a moment over the straps of her dress. The thin cotton isn’t as constricting as he’d thought they would be, but they get in the way of a smooth glide of his fingers against the creamy expanse of her upper back. “And why do you think I’ll ruin you, Caroline?”

She gasps. “I don’t think you’ll ruin me.”

Klaus groans and bites down into the muscle of her shoulders. Caroline cries out, fingernails digging into his thighs through his jeans. “Lie.”

“Klaus—"

He needs to touch her, he wants more of her skin, but her straps. He considers pushing them down—is about to ask for permission, in fact, when Caroline lets out a little huff and shoves them down herself. There is nothing separating him from her smooth, smooth skin, flushed under his capable hands. He presses his thumbs into her shoulders and she lets out a sigh, scooting back, nestling further into him. “She sounds livid when she says in a breathless rush, “Look at me, Klaus. I’m letting you touch me just because you’re good at it. My self-control is all but gone.”

“It’s a good look on you,” he grins, and licks her neck.

She hums. “Harder.”

She sounds so domineering, the hard inflections of her voice contradicting the soft stroking of her hand on his thigh; his head falls against her shoulder and he groans low in the back of his throat. Oh, but he’s always known this, hasn’t he? She’s a little vixen, his Caroline—even as she loses grasp of her control she manages to pluck his heart right out of his chest and dangle it in front of him, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She sits there, her playful fingers a taunting that sends shocks right through the thick material of his jeans, searing into his skin.

“Caroline,” he grits through his teeth, his voice wrought with tension as she pushes against him. He finds himself inching slowly up her bed as she uses her heels to push both of them back until he hits her pillows.

“Harder,” she commands again, but it breaks off into a whine and he feels his blood rushing straight to his cock. Her skin feels hot under his hands and she’s not the only one—the air around him feels stuffy too, filled with sawdust suddenly.

“Do you want me to ruin you, love?” he purrs into her ear. “The way you’re wrecking me?”

She barks a laugh. “I’d like to see you try.”

Klaus pushes her onto her neck, places his knees on either side of her hip, and uses a marginal amount of his strength to push out the stiffness in her upper back. Caroline cries out his name again.

“Again,” he rasps, kneading her neck as she moves her hips sensually against his crotch. He matches his movements to her hips and she moans.

“Klaus,” she says, “Don’t stop.”

“Don’t intend to.” He unzips her top with his teeth, feels her shiver as his breath warms up her skin. “Will you lie there like a good girl and take it?”

The way she looks at him, she might as well have blood in the cracks of her teeth.

“Bring it.”

He grins, fully intending to.