#klaroline vaycay

[austennerdita2533]

A/N: This is my contribution to the final Klaroline Vaycay Exchange for the lovely @3tinkgemini. Thanks for a fantastic exchange everyone!

Summary: Klaus and Caroline were young, impetuous, and deeply in love when they married. But now, six years later, they're estranged for reasons that've caused her to flee from the first home they built together and him to retreat into his art and his grumpy, reclusive ways. What happens when she turns up back in Virginia on a whim? Can he convince her to stay? 

(All Human + Sweet Home Alabama AU + Humor + Light Angst)

(FF.net)(A03)

Enjoy!

xx Ashlee Bree

Klausabama Peaches

The crunch of car tires filled the air.

Blue eyes widened in uncertainty then narrowed in anticipation from where a man stood, rigid, behind the screen door of a large enclosed porch. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, expression teetering somewhere between fraught and restless as he watched a fancy car jostle down the bumpy lane toward his home slower than a snail. Jagger bushes and low-drooping branches scuffing its sides all the way.

The weedy drive was tricky to maneuver by vehicle. Divots and overgrown foliage cluttered all sides, all angles, making steering both slow and laborious. Worse, it was a purposeful landscape he’d pruned in a buck wild fashion a few years back so that the locals gave him privacy. Or better yet, stayed away.

Most people had interpreted this want of seclusion as artistic in nature, or as a part of his “creative process” for the renown commissions he earned in cultural hubs all over the world, so they let him fester there, crankily, on his own much of the time. Refraining from bothering him for anything besides town improvement donations or Halloween. The latter inconvenience, in particular, was a consequence of the town kids glorifying him into a snarling spectre-like legend who only the “daring” or “brave” visited for candy to see if they could survive his wrath before he sliced their ding-dong-ditch feet at the tendon. A Disturb Me and Die sign flapping from his gate in warning all 365 days. 

It’s how the property had acquired the name Klausabama in the first place: for both its southern outskirt location and its sequestered, testy owner who disliked company, concern, or cute and curious new faces.

But a select few - his siblings, mostly - knew that this place was so much more to him than a private island of artistic virtuoso. It was where his mind replayed every memory, every moment. It was where his heart lived and ached…

Still toiling over the lovely life he’d nearly had, then lost all the same.

His happiness had tipped over an edge just out of reach for reasons that’d seemed ludicrous and unjust to him then; and, now, felt like a punishment that would never end. That is, until Rebekah called him yesterday.

“You what?” Klaus had growled into the phone, smeared in an array of colors from fingers to bicep. “When? Why now?”

“How the bloody hell should I know!? It’s not like there’s a low-jack stamped to her ass, Nik. But soon. Probably within the next day or so,” she said.

“Never low-jack a gal’s bum without permission or else she’ll grow sore with you,” Kol piped in from somewhere in the background.“I’m afraid I learned that one the hard way myself.”

“You don’t say,” Klaus replied drily. He rubbed at his pounding temples. Then blinked to appease the burning in his eyes, which were bloodshot from lack of sleep and too much bourbon.“Please tell me our brother’s infantile charms weren’t wasted on her today at least, Rebekah? May God grant me that one reprieve.”

“Thankfully, no,” his sister replied.

“Oi! That’s judgmental, you prats!”

“Not if it’s true, idiot,” Rebekah hissed.

“Careful,” Kol said in a mischievous lilt, the crinkling laughter around his mouth almost audible from half a world away. “Those are fighting words.”

“Oh, don’t you dare! Stay away from me with that! Do something, Enzo,“ she begged, “stop him, stop him!”

There was some banging commotion on the other end of the line then—a slap or two followed by some whispering, a shriek, dropped silverware, scudding chairs, and a threat of castration if he “pinched her there again.” All of which was punctuated by Kol and Enzo’s uproarious chuckling.

After a few more moments of this, the three of them now more than a little short of breath, Rebekah shushed them so she could resume her conversation with Klaus, who was growing more and more impatient the longer he waited for an explanation.

“Continue, please,” he said at last. “I haven’t got idle time to waste.”

“Too busy thinking the day away, are you, mate?” Enzo said tauntingly.

“Talk, sister,” he demanded.

“The gist of it is this: I bumped into her at Fashion Week in Paris. We chatted about her new I Fancy You clothing label then went to a late lunch at that café off the Seine you love so much…where I may or may not have mentioned that you’d turned into the most peevish, miserable, hopeless recluse alive since The Event. Which you have,” she added honestly, also a little guiltily.

“Then, before I knew it, something seemed to click in her head because she was throwing plastic at the bill, intent as a bloody hawk on catching the next flight there. Straight away.”

“So, essentially that means—”

“It means I’d buckle up if I were you, Klausy,” Enzo had warned seconds before the call went dead, “because the ball and chain is on her way…”

The red convertible rolled to a stop in the gravel drive at the same moment Klaus stepped out onto the back porch landing and into the pale sunshine of a late September morning. Scratching at his day five stubble with a paint-splotched hand, he leaned his left hip against the stair post, rested an elbow against the white railing, then watched as a pair of long bare legs footed in Monolo Blahninks climbed out of the driver’s seat.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my long lost Mystic peach herself back from the City of Lights! Howdy there,” Klaus said in squinted greeting, a hand over his brow like a visor. “And to what do I owe this overdue pleasure, peaches?”

Scowling up at him, Caroline threw her purse over her shoulder. The car door slammed behind her. “You know I hate it when you call me that.”

“Oh? Since when?” he said.

“Since always. I’m not from Georgia.”

“My apologies then,” Klaus said with a bow of his head, lingering over the last word in the provoking drawl she once knew like a second language, “peaches.”

“God, and to think I haven’t had to deal with infuriating nicknames for years now.”

“Is that so?” A smirk slid across Klaus’s lips, and although it was meant to appear complacent and unbothered, it came out feeling rather stiff. “How many, I wonder? Shall we count them out loud together?”

“Let’s not.”

They were no longer talking about nicknames, and Caroline knew it. Still, he raised a hand and rattled them off his fingers, anyway.

“One year…two years…three, four, five…six.”

“Look—”

“What? Do you want the days, months, and hours, too?” he asked.

Frustrated, Caroline’s hand curled harder around her purse straps.

“Listen—” She ran her tongue across her bottom row of teeth, grunting out a tight smile as she tramped through the backyard grass toward a cobblestone sidewalk. “How about we cut the rustic charm and cluelessness, okay? It’ll make this whole process a lot easier on the both of us,” she said.

“Sorry, darlin’, but I reckon I don’t know what ‘this process’ is supposed to mean. Care to elaborate?”

“No. Not when we both know it’s pointless and unnecessary.”

“Well, shucks, you got me there, dumplin’,” he said with a rap of his knuckles against the railing as she approached.

“Oh my God, would you knock it off with the lame southern endearments and dropped consonants already!?” Caroline asked with a barely repressed huff.

“Naw. What for, sweetheart?”

“I mean, seriously, Klaus. Stop pretending like you don’t know why I’m here. Katherine and Bonnie already told me Rebekah phoned ahead.”

“You quite liked those endearments once upon a time, if I’m not mistaken, love,” Klaus said, redirecting the conversation to avoid the brunt of this reunion a little while longer. His bravado mask slipped a little with the clench of his jaw, however; and with the slight downturn of his mouth. Voice rawing slightly, “What’s changed?”

Caroline paused on the sidewalk. Her brow arched, but her head was heavy with some emotion hidden behind her designer sunglasses as she tilted it up to look at him.

“Nothing,” she said. Sighing, her arms rose then fell back against her sides with a hollow laugh. “Everything.”

“How contradictory.”

Klaus peered down with crossed arms as she approached the stairs, his gaze roving over the little Parisian dress she wore and how it clung to her hips in all the right places. The fabric was made out of a sheer icy blue, sharp seams, and was as daring as a glacier in v-neck plunge. Sleeveless and tapered just above the knee, it was striking and bright yet elegant in a way that almost seemed to refract the light as she moved toward him. Prickly beams of watery gold cascaded down her legs, dancing across her tiny waist to shine the ground near her feet. Shimmering in aura around her.

The fitted skirt rippled slightly higher and higher up her thighs with each step forward, making him nostalgic for those old college days when their love was young and still untested enough for his fingers to graze her skin through the holes of her worn-out patchwork jeans in stolen moments in the art studio, during Black and White night at the dilapidated drive-in theater down the road, after particularly violent arguments about the future with his stepfather, Mikael; then later, in quiet moments before dawn when she was bent over their kitchen table covered in yards and yards of vibrant fabric because she was too inspired to sleep. It made him hungry for the opportunity to lift these new ritzy designs off her body with his thumbs, then shred the brands into no-name buttons with the gentle nipping of his teeth. He wanted to zip his way down and across Caroline’s body so she’d remember it all. Everything.

But especially…he especially wanted her to remember how well they’d always fit together. And how they still would.

Klaus would feel more at ease right now if he knew he could keep her stilettos from puncturing his gut if she decided to resist what lay between them again. If he only knew she wouldn’t kick him and run off with his heart today.

“First off, you’re British,” Caroline continued, her heels clicking up step after step until she reached the landing where he waited, “so your fake accent is disorienting. Second, you and I both know southern slang isn’t part of your pretentious Cambridge vocabulary. And third, you know damn well why I’m here so cut. the. freaking. crap.”

“I beg your pardon, love, but this is how simple, settled, country boys talk,” Klaus countered as he ushered her through the screen door. It swung shut like an old chapter behind them: with a well-worn creak. “Or perhaps you’ve been gone too long to remember, hm?”

“Last I checked, so-called simple country boys didn’t live on sprawling multimillion dollar plantations in Virginia, either. But, hey, what do I know?” she said with a trite laugh, gesturing at the main house across the way.

“You’re the one who wanted a spacious vacation home in your hometown, if I recall.”

“Point being?”

“No point. Just relaying a fact.”

“Smart ass,” she muttered under her breath.

With his mouth bent near her golden head Klaus pressed a hand against the small of her back and drank in her familiarly strange scent as they crossed through the kitchen. Then into a sunroom which sat facing a quaint dock and a silvery green lake.

“I’m afraid six years away would smog even the most fashionable of brains, truth be told. It’s simply surprising to me you remembered our old address is all,” Klaus remarked pointedly.

“Yes, well, you look no hungrier than when I last saw you,” Caroline said glazing over his last comment. “Though you’re in desperate need of a good shave.”

“You mean before you left that ‘gone grocery shopping’ post-it, hopped on a plane to New York, then phoned to say you were never coming home?”

“Maybe.” She appraised him cooly from head-to-foot, running her hand through his scraggly beard before she thought better of it and realized touching him was no good. Not when she couldn’t disguise the hitch of her breath, anyway. “By the way, when is the last time you took a razor to your face?” she asked.

“Not all artists must starve or shave, Caroline, but I assure you most of us suffer all the same,” Klaus replied as he leaned into her touch. He’d quite missed the warmth of her palm, the softness of her skin, so he wasn’t eager for it to melt away so soon.  

“Meaning you?”

“Me more than most, I’d wager.”

She scoffed, but it didn’t match the flicker of woe on her face.

“So you say, Mikaelson.”

“Look around if you don’t believe me,” he said with a wave.

Clonking against his shoulder then, rolling her eyes (albeit a little distractedly), she veered away to circle a coffee table that was cluttered with canvases, paint brushes, and sculpture clay. She ran her fingers across his half-finished creations, sifted through a few balled-up sketches of her face and dark-themed paintings pocked in loneliness with a creased forehead and a contrite smile, clearing her throat before he could dissect the plaintiveness of her movements. Then she plopped down into an old rocker, her purse on her lap.

“You always were dramatic, weren’t you?”

A manila folder appeared in her hand. Clearing a space, Caroline set it on the surface between them. Sliding it toward him with her index finger.

“Stubborn, too,” she added as she flipped to the signature page.

“Ah, yes. Says the woman - my darling estranged wife—” Klaus said while he dragged a chair across the floor, slamming it, and himself, down into it in a backward straddle with a growl, “who’s decided to blow through my door like a tumbleweed after over half a decade away. But go on. Continue to call me stubborn and dramatic, by all means.”

“You knew where I was, Klaus. Why I had to—”

“Why you had to go, yes,” he finished for her gruffly, compressing his lips.

Nodding, refusing to look up, Caroline tucked a curl roughly behind her ear while she tore through the pockets of her handbag in search of a pen. “Good. I’m glad you understand.”

“Perhaps I do, perhaps I don’t. It doesn’t matter since I cannot sign these today. I just—” Sighing, his two front teeth scraped over his bottom lip. He lifted his shoulders in a weary shrug as he stood to grab and tuck the divorce papers under his armpit. “I won’t do it. I’m sorry.”

Caroline’s hands ceased their jittery rummaging for a moment when he uttered these words. Her eyes flicked to his face like a dart in exacting scrutiny and curiosity, her handbag slipping from her lap to the floor with a resounding thud.

“You have no choice. It’s…it’s why I came back here,” she said.

“Is it?” Quizzical, Klaus tilted his head to fix her with a look. “Is it truly?”

“Of course it is! It’s not like I wanted to do this in person or anything, okay? I mailed and re-mailed those documents to you a good two dozen times,” Caroline exclaimed a little too forcefully, her voice cracking. Emotion climbing so high between them she sprang to her feet in front of him. “But as usual, like the selfish stubborn bastard you know you are sometimes, you gave me no choice but to come back here to face you, didn’t you? No choice at all.”

“No need to lie, sweetheart.”

“Excuse me!?”

“You wanted to see me again. I see it in your eyes,” he said, “I hear it in the way your pulse thumps when you think I’m about to touch you.”

“Don’t,” Caroline responded hoarsely. Shaking her head, pain stinging the corners of her eyes now, she raised a hand between them almost in barrier. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what, peaches? Be honest?” Stepping forward, Klaus reached out a hand to brush a fallen curl off her cheek to which she reacted with a sniff. With a leaning-in sigh. “I can feel how much you miss me.”

“I said don’t,” she pleaded.

There was so much hollow frustration and anger tied up in tenderness when Caroline looked at him here that it was difficult to tell what she wanted more: to kiss him or to kill him? Which, oddly enough, made Klaus breathe a little easier (it made him want to chuckle, frankly) because this felt familiar somehow. It was much closer to the-tempestuous-girl-in-denial meets the-persistent-yet-emotionally-damaged boy they’d both been when they first met as teenagers at George Mason University. He, a sophomore exchange student from Cambridge studying art and business; she, a small-town freshman on scholarship for business and marketing with minors in communications and design.

This, right now, was how their relationship had always functioned in the past. Teetering on the edge somewhere between passion, pain, and promises yet to be made. In a weird way, it was comforting to know that hadn’t changed. Except, today, they’d finally reached an impasse she wouldn’t be able to navigate around.

(Not for much longer, at any rate.)

“Mikael might have poisoned your mind with lies about me, about us and our impetuous marriage at ages 20 and 21 respectively,” Klaus continued, “but I never wanted anything he offered. Not my trust fund…not a job at his corrupt company…nothing. Don’t you understand I would’ve slain the whole bloody world to make you happy, to bolster the fashion dreams you were determined to pursue regardless of what that damned man plotted against me? Don't you know I’d follow you anywhere? That I’d fight forever to give you everything you want?”

Standing and retreating toward the window, Caroline’s tears pooled against her lashes as she lifted her wobbling chin to say, “I don’t—I don’t understand what you…”

Without hesitation, Klaus slid the divorce papers out from under his arm and ripped them in halves, then in quarters, then in eighths last to show her how much he meant this. It wasn’t a crime to need her then, and it sure as hell wasn’t a crime to need her now, so he let the vulnerability he hated so much sprinkle onto the hardwood with those unsigned documents like snow. Crunching them beneath the tread of his shoes while he lifted her chin with his thumb and forefinger.

“I’m saying I meant my vows. All I wanted was you back then, peaches,” he explained, heart in his throat, “I’m saying I still do. Isn’t it obvious by now that this is the kind of truth that won’t change no matter what? Can’t you see, can’t you feel how much I still adore you?”

Caroline couldn’t bring herself to answer him; she couldn’t speak. But when she next moved, her tears mixed with the crushing rush of her arms around his middle made the words ‘I do’ superfluous, anyway.

[childoftimeandmagic]

So I owe @laufire so much kudos, love, and thanks for writing a story for my gift that knocked my socks off. I am not great at like in depth analysis of my feelings so some backstory. My prompt was not a simple prompt it was kind of loaded and I was hurting a little by the fact that this was the last gift giving for our lovely fandom ever. So I requested something to signify an end of an era.

Boy did they deliver. It was historical fiction, it had curses, vain Klaus, meddling Rebekah, and most of all truly incorporated what I love about their relationship. It was tailored so absolutely well to me. I can't thank them enough or gush enough about my gift.

So from the bottom of my heart I beg you to go read my gift 'In the wild city, you had to fight' by @laufire because it broke my heart in the best possible way.

[forbesaken]

It's your KC vaycay gifter again. I'll be sure to steer clear of Carlijah-Klaroline love triangles for you. ;) Do you have any particular Original/Caroline brotps? And do you have a preference for supernatural AUs over human ones or vice versa? Or what about Harry Potter ships you don't like? Sorry to bombard you with so many questions! I already have a few ideas, but it's always fun hearing what people enjoy because it often gives me more inspiration haha.

i will probably enjoy anything you write but i have always love a good kololine dynamic, but honestly, not really when it comes to me being anti w/ hp ships. however, when it comes to hp aus i probably should've said hogwarts au, idc if the trio is involved or anything. seriously tho, i'm just excited for whatever it is, you don't have to worry if you are :)

[austennerdita2533]

A/N: Thanks for another fantastic fandom event ya’ll! I can’t wait to finish reading all the goodness over on A03. Anyway, here’s my contribution to the KC Vaycay Exchange for the lovely @honorableotp. (Post-canon AU. Angst. Hurt/Comfort. No Hayley or magical spawn.) I played this song on repeat for a while as I wrote in case anyone’s interested or wants to listen to it while/after reading. I hope you like it. :)

Links here if you prefer:

(A03) (FF.net)

Comments are always lovely

xx Ashlee Bree

Emptied of You

“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”—Letters to Milena, Franz Kafka

“Go on and think of me as a she-wolf with a heart made of teeth if it makes you feel better,” she said, “I don’t care. But I’d do it again.”

Jaw taut, Klaus stood at the far end of his en suite balcony with his left hand tucked into his pocket and his right hand holding a drink made of something smooth and strong. He glared out at the rising moon, almost wishing his siblings weren't out of town so he could use them as bait. Or shields. Anything to save him from this bleeding hell!

Caroline approached from behind, her boots clicking against stone, conviction resounding louder with every step she took forward.

“Did you hear me? I said I’d do it again.”

“Yes,” he replied as he emptied his liquor in one swig. He let the glass slip from his fingers to crash down onto the street below. Ah, such sweet music destruction made. “Yes, love, I’m sure you would.”

“Don’t you understand why? Can’t you—” Her voice dropped to a whisper, almost trembling, and Klaus tensed as her touch ghosted hesitantly over his shoulders but never made contact. “Won’t you at least turn to look at me?” she asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It would be foolish. Reckless as hell.”

“Oh.” He heard the uncertain shuffle of her feet as he exhaled, the quiet sniff of her nose, and he swore the light she wore around her in aura dimmed for a moment before it shined something warmer but more clutching against his back. He felt that invisible tether between them, tugging, tormenting him like the lash of a whip.

Although it was difficult, he knew he needed to resist falling back toward her again. Klaus swallowed hard, then dropped his head with his fists clenching at his sides, “I’m always soft for you, Caroline, that���s the problem,” he sighed.

“You’re the sun beneath my bloody skin that I can’t stop chasing. You’re the light zipping through my veins that I can’t keep myself from reaching out to try and hold no matter how many times I’m left burning or singed through with holes…and yet you still have the audacity to ask me why. Truly?” His laugh was wounded, caustic. “We both know you’re smarter than that.”

“Tell me, love, why would I be daft enough to turn around,” he added, grumbling, “when I know one look at you would melt me directly where I stand?”

“Right,” she deflated. “Okay.”

He nodded, “I’m glad we understand one another.”

She took a step back.

“Of course.”

Frustrated, weary, conflicted, and more than tempted to drink away this surprise confrontation with alcohol, he massaged his forehead.Then, after he dragged a hand down his face and closed his eyes in anticipation of her imminent retreat, dreading and desiring it simultaneously, something strange happened: Caroline moved closer. Lunged, truth be told. Her arms snaking around his middle without warning.

A noise somewhere between a whimper and a sigh escaped her when she pressed her cheek against the fabric of his shirt and breathed him in. Pulling him close—too close. Reeling him in on that god-awful tether like prey. She melded into him like a solid into a liquid, her heartbeat a frenetic song against the muscles of his back, her tears a tap dance along the exposed skin of his neck, the darkness of separation vanishing beneath the fire of her desperation since she seemed determined to hang from the ladder of his spine. To never let go of it again.

This new proximity to her created a vortex in his chest which cracked like icebones then stitched him up like needleheat. One of his hands slipped near hers of its own volition: hovering but not touching, wanting but not taking.

Klaus couldn’t bring himself to fight against her warmth. He couldn’t fucking breathe.

How did this happen, he wondered? To armor himself in iron only to be disassembled by a single touch. Why was her embrace a nirvana no mountain of pain could snuff out?

Anger and grief lingered, of course. It proliferated in the air around him, piercing his heart like a storm made of daggers every time he attempted to speak, but not enough of it remained to shrug her off. To break free. In the end, she stuck to him like a lost shadow while he choked on the pleasure of suffering.

“I need to tell you something even if you refuse to look at me,” Caroline said in a tone which was equal parts cautious, pleading, and wishful. “Will you let me?”

“I’m listening,” he replied.

Six months ago, Caroline had thrown his name at the dark like a spear and fled. She’d let the bold, broken letters of him bleed from red to black to gone against the fabric of her retreating back, her doubts muffled by the sound of her scurrying feet as she’d taken off with nothing— except a mouthful of forevers.

(Those, as consequence would have it, she’d left unsaid.)

With a lump of cowardice in her throat, plus a mixture of guilt and woe rawing her stomach, Caroline had freaking run. Run away from it all.

She’d hastened away from a southern city pulsing with magnetism; its streets crowded, forever bustling, as shouting friends reveled in culture or debauchery. It was a place she knew she’d thrived for the past five years. A place she’d grown to love for its sultry sunset moods, its whispered twilight lovers, and its jazzy saxophone blues which soothed lost or lonely souls beneath the moonlight. It was where cobblestone histories wrote tomes against stones and buildings and people who were too wrapped up in cuisine or celebration to lend an ear, the wind full of forgotten moments. It was where agelessness chimed from chapels, where flowered herbs grew atop graves but never disturbed the consecrated bones.

She’d first tasted the power of possibility there. Yes, Caroline had folded herself into New Orleans’ arms with her eyes wide open, her heart neither open nor closed but eclipsing as she’d strolled beneath the eye of her first hurricane to (finally) dance to the tune of dangerous beauty.

Throughout her stay, she’d helped witches set fire to the clouds, the sky purpling with magic that deserved to be returned to their capable hands. She’d schooled vampires on how to fight with control, patience, and fortitude by using their minds as well as their enhanced senses. She’d chewed through the bonds which had chained werewolves to the phases of the moon and had set them free to follow their own feet, all the while encouraging them to stay with smiles which promised mercy. Loyalty. Friendship. Family.

She’d also killed with kindness almost as often as she’d seethed with rage to become a weapon of her own making: gracious, grisly, and great. The city had taught her that true magic sometimes dwelled in shadows beyond the reach of the sun, its black sparks sleeping perhaps, but never dying. And although New Orleans had enchanted her with its ambiguity, Caroline had panicked when she’d realized how exquisitely darkness suited her and had decided to escape before it could claim her completely.

But there was also more to this getaway. Something worse, and, arguably more…problematic. (Borderline reproachful, honestly.) You see, it wasn’t just a what she’d fled from, but a whom. Plural.

The Mikaelsons.

Rebekah, Kol, Freya, Elijah, and Marcel, who, with their offerings of blood, censure, teasing, bickering, and protectiveness, had come to regard her as kin (with a ‘double-cross-me-and-I-will-stab-you’ kind of attachment, of course, but whatever), indulging her with things like a a room of her own, beignets, excellent booze, bitching, arguing, broken furniture, and headaches for days. They’d welcomed her as one of them with fangs and fists, with trust and reliance. Not only had they fought with her side-by-side to bring peace back to New Orleans, but they’d also managed to find time to initiate her into their (ridiculously) dysfunctional family tribe. That meant Caroline had participated in everything from Thursday night sing-offs with Kol and Marcel to screaming matches with Rebekah over ‘borrowed’ shoes, and from French Quarter ‘suit’ business with Elijah, to discreet matchmaking for Freya, to swanky parties with costumes, and to refereeing over presumed family betrayals.

It had been absolutely freaking exhausting at the time, and, yet, weirdly… enjoyable, too.

All that said, Caroline had left them all behind. Deserted them all without warning. She’d left no crumbs for them to follow, no allusions as to where or when she could be reached again. No explanations as to why. She’d done nothing but tuck this short, half-assed note between the pages of Elijah’s favorite Mozart symphony before strolling out the front door:

I’ll already be gone by the time you read this. Off somewhere on my own. I promise I’m safe so it’s no use coming after me, especially considering I learned how to disappear from Katherine. Stay put, do your thing. Know I don’t want to be found.

Don’t kill each other, okay? I’ll miss you.

—Caroline

P.S. Tell him I’m sorry, but my heart’s a wandering thing.

Yes, she’d run from, him, too. (Run from him most, probably.)

Klaus.

She’d abandoned the tortured, tender man who unapologetically bulldozed every damn wall she’d tried to erect between them since their worlds first collided back in Mystic Falls. A man who, when he wasn’t shoving her out of her comfort zone (and on her ass), or driving her mental with his arrogance, cynicism, jealousy, paranoia, temper tantrums, etc. would scrape the pits of heaven or hell to give her anything she desired. Everything. Oh, how he would kill to kiss his dynasty of night beneath her skin! How he would die to feel her soul finally sink into his with a wolf’s bite, clutching almost possessively! How brutally bad he wanted this “thing” between them to last!

Despite his patience and how he’d never prodded for more than she gave him, however, Caroline could feel that one unfulfilled hope of his growing hungrier and hungrier with need the longer she’d stayed. Intensity had rippled from Klaus like a soft, shimmering shadow. It’d stretched out like it wanted nothing more than to caress the monsters free from her head, and she’d watched as it clouded over his face with worry and disappointment each time she’d retracted, pulling away from him and into herself. Tucking her monsters into coffins he couldn’t penetrate.

“Please, why won’t you let me?” he’d seemed to ask without speaking, his eyes searching, his touch digging gingerly for skeletons he couldn’t find. “Why won’t you let me in to comfort you? We’re the same, you and I, we’re the same.”

His wishes thumped. They’d sparked beneath his chest with a fire that melted into honey each time their eyes met or their limbs had tangled beneath the sheets until morning. Like a hummingbird, he’d hovered. He’d waited, and waited endlessly, for her to invite him all the way in so he could entomb his lovelines somewhere precious and warm around her heart where they would keep. Wanting only to know he belonged to her in a way that tackled levity and uncertainty for good.

But all Caroline had for him at the time were little half-smiles. And lips that half-kissed. And forever dreams that half-existed. And fears which had compounded into restlessness so strong and so irresistible, they’d ushered her away from him with no farewell spoken between them.

It had been unbelievably cruel to do that, not say goodbye, selfish even, but that word always tasted like rubber in her mouth any time she’d tried to say it to him in the past—wrong somehow. So she’d kept silent. She’d let it crash and burn in the blackness behind her while she’d chased the sunrise alone.

In the end, the colors of dawn had streamed in through that still-misty window to grip Caroline by the soul. They’d stirred her to her feet as a message had ribboned through her bones, pleading for her to heed it:

Seek.

Find.

Learn.

Know.

Go on now. Go, go…

And she had. She did.

“I left to hunt the light,” Caroline announced after clearing her throat.

“The light?”

She nodded against his shoulder. “I followed it in order to see where it led…to explore places I never knew I needed to see.”

“Without me.” Klaus meant it as a question but it came out blunt and flat. Like the period at the end of a lazy sentence.

“Yes,” Caroline said, exhaling slowly, “without you.”

“With no forewarning, no parting line?”

“Yes.”

Klaus frowned. Repressed the urge to mutter something about her ‘tiresome bloody explanations’ by scraping his knuckles across his lips. “Why? Why couldn’t you have at least tried talking to me about it first?”

“Because I…because I couldn’t.”

“Why?” he repeated.

“There was so much blood between us, Klaus! It was everywhere, it was in everything,” Caroline said, each syllable fraying his confusion into disillusionment, “rushing so hard and clumping so deep that most of the time I couldn’t tell where the hell you ended and where I began. We were bound by blood in too many ways, you and me, and I didn’t want to see it, okay? I didn’t want to know it. I was so—”

“Ah, I see,” he interjected. He stiffened when he perceived her intended meaning: so soft but puncturing, so honest but injurious. It caused him to razor his reply with more sharpness than wryness, “And I suppose you’re saying it’s too messy for your liking, right? That my past atrocities have stained too much of your life for you to have been able to stay or truly care for me?”

“What?”

“Really, sweetheart,” he continued in that brusque, callous way of his that made a laugh sound diseased, “I thought you’d shoulder guilt better than this by now. You should’ve saved yourself the expense of a trip back here because—”

“Stop.”

“It’s fine. Go.” He waved her away. “I understand.”

Using her fingernails like a vise, Caroline clamped down hard on his elbows before he could break free to sulk. Or worse, to tear into an innocent throat. Tension plucked between them like pliant tendons refusing to snap. It stretched his thoughts in so many different directions he couldn’t weave them together in a manner which made sense or didn’t ache from the strain.

“My God, why are you so freaking infuriating!?” she asked, probably rolling her eyes. “You can’t survive without hearing the sound of your own voice for five seconds so you jump to conclusions before you give me a chance to finish speaking! I can’t take it!!!”

“Perhaps you should’ve stayed away then.” He hated how bitter and waxy the retort tasted on his tongue, how hollow it sounded as it left his mouth, but he said it anyway.

“I have tried, Klaus! Believe me,” Caroline snorted weakly, her voice resigned to some emotion he couldn’t decipher, “I have tried long and hard to stay away from you. Do you have any damn idea how much time and energy I’ve wasted trying to keep myself from crashing into the truth?”

A jolt of something old and familiar fired across his chest at this. He inclined his head to the side ever so slightly, ears burning. What was it? What was she saying?

“I mean, not only did I baulk at princess bracelets and shred horse drawings, but I spent months in Mystic Falls being bitchy and hostile and mean. I hurled insult after insult at your face! I told myself one romp in the woods would be enough to get you out of my system. I helped my friends devise ways to kill you, remained with Stefan despite knowing he’d always put his brother and Elena before me, swallowed all of my cares for your family, for New Orleans, and cursed when the universe saw straight through my charade.”

“Writing off our connection as ‘no biggie’ for years,” she paced behind him, “I tried to deny. Ignore. Forget. And push it all away. I’ve wanted to believe that we, us, were casual and not meant to be more so I snipped the dark from my heart. I sprinted after the light because I thought it’s where I belonged.”

Klaus gulped, his throat dry and rough all of a sudden. “And is it?”

“I know I’ve been awful, hurtful beyond words,” Caroline continued, “and I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry, Klaus…” She paused for a moment. Collected another breath before reaching out to touch him again with tender trailing fingertips, “But I can’t do it anymore, okay? I can’t.”

“Do what?” he said.

She sighed heavily. “Pretend.”

“Pretend…what?” Confusion, so many conflicting thoughts, galloped in his head.

“That I can endure a life emptied of you,” Caroline offered simply, “because I can’t. I won’t.” In an effort to somehow illustrate this point further, she shook her head, letting her forehead roll back-and-forth along his shoulder. “Am I making myself clear yet?”

“And your wandering heart?” Klaus asked as he scratched his teeth along his bottom lip and remembered the pain that line from her letter had wrought. Recalling the overwhelming sense of loss that’d slammed into his chest like a skyscraper full of bricks, his knees nearly shuddered as the memory hit him afresh.

He’d sensed her hesitancy toward commitment throughout their five years together, of course, but he thought it’d give way with a little more time as a couple. Months, years, decades, centuries—who cared precisely when? He’d been in no rush. He’d believed her nomadic feelings were bound to settle eventually. Or perhaps it would’ve been more accurate to say he’d ‘naively hoped’ they would. That is, until she took off with her fucking wanderlust and had left his heart to rot without her. “What of that? Hm?”

“It wandered away so it could drift back. Back to where it’s belonged all along,” Caroline answered.

“I suppose you mean here?”

“I do. Only I was too stubborn to see it. Terrified, really.”

“How illuminating. So after all this, after everything,” Klaus started, his tone harsh, “you expect me to forget the torment of losing you? Forget how you left me feeling both drowned and deprived at the same time?”

“No,” she replied, “I don’t. All I’m asking is for you all to try and forgive me enough so I can care for you like I couldn’t before.”

“Oh?” he clenched, his back still turned to her, his heart pumping loud and red with a yearning just at the edge of a bruise.“And how’s that exactly?”

“Recklessly. Completely.”

Klaus bit back a scornful sound. All of his undead fears pricking, poking, prodding at the  shreds of hope which still survived in a small area behind his ribs. “Why should I believe you?”

“Maybe because I’ve never lied to you before, so why would I start now? Or maybe because I needed to leave,” she sucked in a breath, “for my heart to know home was more than a place for me, and that I’d want to find my way back to it for good someday soon.”

Stepping closer, Caroline folded her hand into his then twined their fingers together with a squeeze so ripe with feeling, that it was as if she’d crossed the world just to hold it again.

“I’m done making wrong turns, Klaus. No more running, no more careless mistakes. Home is forever now, okay?”

“Home for me is…” She paused, but there was no shame in what came next, no irony. “Well, you,” she said frankly.  

One. Two. Three seconds of hybrid defibrillation. Then—

A growl which disintegrated into a moan almost immediately. His head spinning, spiraling, his stomach lurching up into his throat only to plummet down through the ground past his toes to feast on disbelief. Fists of fury unraveled like rope, his posture softening the moment he pulled her in front of him and caged her between his arms against the railing with no way out. She would listen now.

“Damn you,” he blurted out.

Silence.

“How in hell do you always manage to say things that have me dying to kiss you when I should want nothing more than to tear you apart with fangs?”

Caroline shrugged then. Reached up a hand to cup his face.

“Sorry, but it’s not like I can help that I’m in love with you, you know? Besides,” she added with a twitch of her lips, thumb scratching along stubble, “it all comes out in moron supposedly, anyway. Or so they say.”

Trounced, conquered, and not to mention a tad stunned, Klaus raked over her face with a combination of anger and attention in his gaze at this. He drank her in like the starved beast he was while the knife of her words—which she’d never spoken before but were ones he’d longed to hear for many years past—twisted and turned inside of him, slicing deeper this time, making him pant because he still hungered for the blade of her mouth. Still coveted the spikes of her heart. He always had. And in that moment when he pulled her against him to let their mouths and bodies collide, shutting her up hard and fast, her love’s blood seeping in to fill up all the places she’d emptied inside of him six months ago, magicking the two of them back together like a dawn-kissed midnight which could bloody well last forever, the poor bastard knew he always would.

[austennerdita2533]

Just read your drabble for 5x06 TO and it was so good!! I love fics with bed sharing, its so intimate! Caroline fell asleep with her hand on klaus arm!! How perfect is that! It was exactly how I imagine their relationship to be, with them showing their feelings more with gestures than words, even in Carolines case. Do you have more kc bed sharing fics or know some from other authors? Thx

YAYYYY! Hearing that someone liked something I wrote makes me so ridiculously happy, I cannot tell you. It’s always such a wonderfully expected gift. Hence why I go from calm to crazed to exuberant in the breadth of a second because I have no chill whatsoever haha.

Thank you for your kind words, btw! That 5x06 AU was a joy to write. I’m all about the cuddles. ;)

Unfortunately, I believe that’s the only bed sharing AU I’ve written for Klaroline so far. (I should rectify this at some point, right?) Buuut since it is one of my favorite tropes (for all the intimacy reasons that you mentioned) that means I’m bound to have some other bed sharing AUs reblogged from some other fab writers in this fandom. 

Let me take a look here...

- Another 5x06 AU by the lovely Luiza (itsnotacrimetoloveyou)

- It’s Called Love, Idiot by my darling Sadie Sadie, Maf (kickassfu)

- I Mean That by @klarolineagainnaturally

- Time’s Sweet Kiss by @ashleigh-jewitt-xx Ashleigh wrote this for me for KC Vaycay and she packed in so. so. many of my favorite things! Time travel and bed sharing being among them.

- This Mini Drabble by @delightfullysunny

Here are some I pulled off of Klaroline Fanfic Directory:

- Holding Out For a Hero by @3tinkgemini

- Drabble by @that-wandering-belle

- Drabble by @thetourguidebarbie  

- On The Open Ocean by @hummingbirds-and-champagne

- Drabble by @cupcakemolotov

[austennerdita2533]

Could you rec me some good KC fake dating fics/drabbles? And just some good fluff oneshots? Thanks!

Sure, nonnie! I’ll do my best. :)

(I’m gonna mostly refrain from tagging writers in this simply to avoid spamming them so much in one night haha. But I’ll link you to some of their fics/drabbles.)

I mentioned Green Card by a little-blonde-distraction in (this) post, and I think it’ll be right up your alley because it’s a fake marriage AU with a side of roommates. It’s unfinished, but it’s so damn good that you’ve gotta read it if you haven’t yet. ;)

Also, I know that In The Land of a Billion Lights by xxredwineandambiencexx is another popular fake dating multichapter AU. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (it’s on my ridiculously long to-read-fic list *woe is me*) but I’ve heard lots of good things about it. Oh! And Collison Course by Sophia Chase and Drive me Crazy by soapmaniac22.

If you’re into Harry Potter AUs, Angie wrote a fake marriage oneshot for a Klaroline Vaycay Exchange a while back that I wrote a squealing review for because I have no chill. It’s called Rule Number Four.

As for fluffy oneshots...

You can never go wrong with anything Cristy (misssophiachase) writes. She has a drabble collection called Crossroads, with each story inspired by a movie, and another collection called The Beginning of Another Story with how/when KC arrive at their endgame. 

Kennen (childoftimeandmagic) recently wrote me a roomie AU called Thought You’d Never Ask.

Kaitlyn (she-walked-away) also writes a lot of adorable stuff. Check out Lumiére Over Me and Talk Drunk To Me (

Morgan (honestgrins) astounds me with how fast and often she puts out mini-drabbles. Totes scroll through her writing section on her blog because she writes so many cutesy and romantic KC moments. Oh! And read Delivered, which is her You’ve Got Mail AU.

Luce enjoys slaying me with her poetic prose as well as her fluffy goodness. I really loved her blind date AU tea and coffee, eggs and bacon. I can’t find her FFnet URL rn, though, and it’s driving me b o n k e r s because she has some really awesome stuff on there. (@lclrgsl you didn’t delete it, right? Or are my eyes too tired, thereby playing tricks on me lol?)

I *sigh dreamily* over Jenn’s (gooddame) writing all the time. She’s one of the sweetest humans alive and sends me snippets of writing to brighten my day with Klaroline “just because.” She wrote A Rosy Thorn In My Side, a royalty/hidden identity AU, for AU Week this year. 

Maf’s (kickassfu) drabble collection Klaroline Ficlets has tons of precious Klaroline as well. And she often includes some Koroline brotp, which I can never have enough of so there’s that.

Luiza (itsnotacrimetoloveyou) recently wrote a TO 5x06 AU that left me in a puddle of emotion, and that’s (here). You should just read all of her stuff in general, btw. She wrote me a Doctor Who AU for my birthday this year and I almost died from OTP feels, I kid you not. If you’re interested it’s: You’re the Universe I’m Helpless In. *obsessed with it forever*

Kate (accidental-rambler) has written Klaroline fic for a while now, but she’ll always be one of my favorite writers because she’s so versatile and creative. She’s over on FF.net at MrsAgentCooper. Her drabble collections 52 Weeks of Klaroline, Eternity Tastes Like Blood On Your Tongue, and All Roads Lead To You are fantastic. Also, I’m gonna kick my own ass if I don’t read her multichapter, “You Want Me To Be Yours” sometime soon. 

The same goes for Miranda’s (livingdeadblondequeen’s) The Only Hope For Me Is You.

...I know I’m forgetting lots of fic and people, but this will keep you busy for a while. (@ my followers and mutuals: please feel free to add other suggestions!)

Hope this helps, lovely! 

xx Ashlee Bree

[austennerdita2533]

delightfullysunny replied to your post “A/N: This is my contribution to the final Klaroline Vaycay Exchange...”

Love grumpy recluse Klaus waiting for Caroline so much!!

Thank you, lovely. *cries* I’m quite partial to him myself, especially with him terrifying the town kids by hanging threatening signs and all haha. 😘

[austennerdita2533]

Me trying to settle on writing ONE of my fic ideas for the Klaroline Vaycay Exchange:

[austennerdita2533]

ashleigh-jewitt-xx replied to your post “ashleigh-jewitt-xx replied to your post “ashleigh-jewitt-xx replied...”

I do try... but it's Luke freaking Cage! I do have a new story written where I'm writing in the past in (tries to think of the era...but it's gone ) so that's something different for me, so I may be adventurous for au week... if I had a plot idea ;) Any klaroline regency fics you can rec? Always looking to read more

I’ve heard it’s difficult to say no to Luke Cage haha. And I think it’s great you’re writing something that’s set in a past era! I love trying out new tones/genres/tropes etc. Experimenting in writing is half the fun! I’ve been wanting to try writing from a more removed/objective third person POV. One of my WIP’s is a little more like that but not quite? (It’s harder than you’d think.) 

As far as Klaroline regency recs go, I know that Lenna @lynyrdwrites wrote one I really enjoyed for the A03 Vaycay Exchange. If you haven’t checked that Scandal of the Season yet, you totally should. ;)

Kiss Me Back to Life by @accidental-rambler. Kate also has a GoT AU 3-shot called When the Sun Has Set. It’s not technically a regency AU but 1) It’s freaking AMAZEBALLS and everyone should read it. 2) It gives me period drama feels so I figured I’d include it? haha.

Your Hand and A Taste of Danger by @honestgrins. I LITERALLY COULD SQUEAL ABOUT THESE FOR YEARS.

This Pride and Prejudice snippet by @willowaus is lovely as well.

The Devil in Me by @immortalpen 

The Heart Gambles on a Kiss by @anastasiadreams

The last two are multichapters I read before I joined Tumblr/made a FF.net account and they’re so well-written I still fangirl over them. :)

I know there are others, but I think these are excellent fics/drrabbles in which to start! xx

[austennerdita2533]

*Is absolutely signing up for the KC Vaycay Gift Exchange*

IT’S BEEN TOO LONG SINCE I’VE WRITTEN KLAROLINE FIC. 😩

[austennerdita2533]

Your vacay gift giver here! I've looked through your preferences/wishes and I hope to give you the best drabble possible although I'm nervous it won't be as good as yours!

Aww, please don’t be nervous! I will be your ultimate fangirl, no joke haha. *busted out the pom poms in preparation already*

I am sure to love anything you write for me because it’s a gift and I love Klaroline. Plus, as a reader/writer, I LOVE seeing what other people’s imaginations conjure because no two are alike. I am nothing short of ecstatic to see what you produce, lovely. :)

❤️❤️