It is well after midnight when Caroline is taking in the sight of Klaus in his doorway. She was late because her train had been late, and before that her Bonnie had been late because she overslept nursing a hangover from a night of both of them drinking spectacularly, and she only narrowly escaped the panic of approximately twenty-two what if? scenarios.

What if he wouldn't be there?

He beckons her with a single look – there is a yearning there, to be sure, but also what seemed to be a curiosity. It shows in the way he steps back to allow her inside, fingers firm around the glass knob, head bowed with a briskness it was as if he didn't want to look away for long.

What if he really wasn't—?

She steps through the door.

He turns on his heels.

She is inside his room.

The door shuts behind them.

And the first thing Klaus does is breathe.

The full moon throbs its blinding brightness in strange leaps and pulses through the curtains. It scatters moonshot across the walls, bouncing against the polished burnishing of his room. With every step the room shudders quietly, as if sensing her hesitance, but meeting her with a peculiar interest.

Klaus had decorated with distaste for the modern it seemed. She'd never seen a room like it, of an entire shift of an era, Klaus in his jacket, digital watch and braided rope necklaces, and yet still looking like he completely belonged.

She heads for the fireplace. The fire sparks and crackles, leaping merrily on the groaning wood. He likes things warm, she notes for later. He likes the smell and burn of wood incense, she notices as well.

"Drink?"

She glances at him and smiles her agreement. He's holding up two shiny decanters of something deep red, eyebrows raised. "B Positive, please."

"But of course," Klaus breathes a laugh, and fills her glass to the brim.

Caroline settles onto a cushioned stool, tucking her feet underneath her. She's content to just sit here, she realizes, with how heady this room is. Everything is awash in saltwater, Klaus moves with a fluidity that only knowing a room intimately allows. Caroline moves as if underwater, her fingers brushing against his as she accepts the blood.

Having chosen the armchair directly across from hers, Klaus swigs from his cup, still watching her. He swallows hastily, gives his lips a quick lick, and leans forward with a clearing of his throat. He holds his glass with two hands, elbows resting on his knees.

"Caroline Elizabeth Forbes," he says. He smiles hesitantly, like he's only now discovering how. "So what – what do I call you?

"I had dreams sometimes," Caroline offers softly. "Of you calling me love."

"Interesting." He regards her with a tilt of his head, a hint of a smile. "Maybe that's why I never heard your name in mine."

—

—

How they found each other was this:

Caroline awoke one night with a searing pain in her chest, the horrible thunderclap of sound banging between her ribs. It did not cease until she had thrown up the contents of her stomach into her toilet bowl, until she called Bonnie shaking and crying, until Bonnie stared down in horror at the tips of her fingers only just beginning to dessicate.

It felt like her soul was leaving her, and she screamed as much, thrashing against her sheets.

"Oh fuck, I didn't – shit, I wasn't expecting it to happen so soon," Bonnie fumbles, running straight to Caroline's bottom dresser drawer, where they kept the salt, sage and candles just for this.

With trained, steady hands Bonnie performs the locator spell, and they both watch wide-eyed as Caroline's blood trails across the map and nestles itself right in the heart of Mystic Falls, Virginia.

"Seriously? All along?" Caroline blurts, before promptly passing out.

—

—

In his defence, the first time she shows up at his estate she'd thought her soulmate was Kol.

Kol stands in the foyer, humouring the stammering blonde who had shown up in a dress so yellow she was a madness against the dark marble floors.

The only reason Klaus lingers from the second floor landing is because of Kol's quiet 'huh' as she walked to the center of room. And then he feels it, a singing in his blood. A throbbing in his gums. A cold hunger.

"You really are a treat," Kol remarks, and promptly claps: once and final. "Come, we must make love. I insist."

"Well, I—" she blinks, stunned, perplexed, confused. "I don't suppose you have coconut oil?"

It's then that Klaus absolutely throws himself into the room below, and shoves the laughing Kol up against the wall. The woodwork creaks.

"What the hell!" she exclaims.

"Those – are very familiar words indeed, and absolutely inappropriate at that."

She turns to him, her mouth an O of shock now. Her gaze skitters to Kol, to him, then back to Kol, and she retches. "Thank God it's the hot one."

Klaus thinks that might have been the loudest he'd laughed in a while.

—

—

Later, by the fire, Klaus shows her his stomach, where she snorts when she reads the first words he is ever supposed to hear from her.

"I spent two years trying to come up with an apology for whatever inappropriate thing I might have said," Caroline reveals. "In my defence, I wasn't expecting another vampire to open the door."

"I'm still waiting."

Caroline rolls her eyes. "I'm sorry I almost slept with your brother."

"And the coconut oil?"

The smile that widens in the space between them is one of many great potentials. Klaus feels that hunger well up again.

—

—

The first time she lays in bed with him he feels a relief breaking inside him, and he can do nothing but take in deep panting breaths. Caroline presses her fingers to his forehead in concern, and he wraps his fingers around her wrist.

"I've heard stories of you, you know," she says softly. She's lying on her side, her face pressed into his pillow. "But I've never felt this completely at peace before."

"Love," he says, because he remembers a moment in a too-brief dream of golden hair and a hint of firelight and a yellow, yellow dress. The moment clicks into place, and his chest shudders. This was supposed to happen.

Caroline watches with an intensity that assures him she's seen this before, too.

"If it matters," he continues when he's able, "I've moved on from hybrids."

"Retiring already? What are you, already a bajillion or something?"

"Just about," Klaus says, and leans in because he knows this is when he's supposed to kiss her.

—

—

That they have sex was not a given, but it was definitely on the agenda the minute Klaus had glanced at his bed and Caroline met his gaze daringly.

Once the conversation was dropped in lieu of more blood, and Caroline wanting to test of a theory—

"The theory," she says, "is that blood sharing can – rid us of all the aches we've been experiencing lately. The nausea, the splitting headaches, the…" she takes a deep breath, and for a moment looks terrified, before it's gone, "—desiccation that comes and goes."

She doesn't have to ask twice. Klaus already has his wrist out, and the second Caroline sinks her teeth into his skin he pushes her down onto the bed. Caroline knows how to take her fill, eyes meeting his furiously as she drinks. She laps at him like he's a plentiful stream, and he grits his teeth, can hardly wait for his turn.

Caroline's pupils blow out until he sees nothing but inky blackness, and she presents her own wrist to him, her tongue wasting not a single drop.

He is not as controlled. He tastes her skin first, then her flesh, and finally her blood, a sharp blend of blood and summer fruit, dusty plums and searing sunshine. He's in a field, watching birds soar, she comes to him with her palms laden with a promise of everything, everything—

They are on a beach, angry waves licking their ankles cold, storm clouds brewing thick on the soar of the skyline, the world a blue grey of touch meeting gloom meeting midnight flowers furled and blooming.

The wind shrieks in their ears, she meets his eyes, the sheer material of her dress slipping off her shoulders—

They are in the woods. There's blood in his mouth and he is chasing her, he is snarling, his claws tear through the earth the way they wished to tear through her, his tongue is pushed slick against his gleaming teeth, he throws his head back and lets loose a howl—

Caroline is stalking him. She is in his house, she is huddled in the darkness, and he can smell the predator in her. He steps directly in her line of sight, and she bares her fangs and hisses and spits, her eyes red and black weeping down her cheeks—

A strange feast, an empty hall, and Caroline sweeping cutlery and fine china off the table, tramples through the riches to trip into his lap, thighs strong around his hips, she kisses him and pours blood into his mouth, coaxes it with her tongue, and he swallows it down. It is not her blood.

"Found you," he whispers, and his voice is a monstrosity.

In the bed, Caroline's vision slides back into focus, and with a mouth full of blood she laughs.

—

—

The way they have sex is this:

Klaus initiates it, but only because Caroline had decided to take off his shirt. So perhaps it was a tie in the competition who was more hungry for the other, both eager to accommodate, and be accommodated. Caroline is painted red from the breast down; there is a smudged imprint of his hand in his blood. On his cheeks her the press of her teethmarks are still there, red and drying.

He settles above her with ease. Caroline arches her back, sighing so wantonly that he can do nothing but rut against her. He indulges in how soft she feels in the grip of his hands, how wet she is between her legs when he licks at her.

He's on his back when she slides down onto him. He has been waiting for this for years, centuries almost, the feeling that pierces through him at the meet of their hips, the longing that fills him when she breaks his name in a whimper into bits and pieces for him to remember.

She beds a murderer, he takes this slip of a woman and tries to cover as much of her light with his body.

—

—

Whitmore is still there when she cruises up the campus in Klaus' car, which proves that the world hadn't ended.

Klaus gives her a kiss that lingered in the space between them when he finally pulls away. "I'll see you again."

Caroline would have laughed, but the look he gives her is so loaded she suddenly doesn't have the heart. "As soon as I can," she promises in turn.

"Well, I'm only a drive away," he grins up at her, and she rolls her eyes as she slides out of her seat.

Bonnie's bouncing on the balls of her feet when Caroline meets her in the open doorway of their dorm room.

"Fancy car. So who—?"

"It's Klaus Mikaelson," Caroline interrupts. She has a determined look on her face as she's traipsing past Bonnie, daring her to say something.

"I should be more bothered that I'm not in the least surprised," Bonnie grumbles, and closes the door.