all those friendly people Chapter 2, a vampire diaries fanfic

a little late for an author's note, but a tip for all of you - when you get to part 23 make sure you're listening to "from gold" by novo amor :)

actually, there's an entire playlist on my tumblr under the tag "rival musicians au tbh" that is pretty much music that inspired this; my beta told me she was listening to it the entire time she was editing, and she told me that it was actually really good, in that it allowed her a deeper understanding of the characters, and also kind of a score for the whole fic.

only if you're ever so inclined, of course. :P

happy reading!

ALL THOSE FRIENDLY PEOPLE

—

II.

so why'd you fill my sorrow
with the words you've borrowed
from the only place you've known
and why'd you sing hallelujah
if it means nothing to you
why'd you sing with me at all?

—

13. take me to the docks, there's a ship without a name there

Elijah doesn't know why Klaus asks – he had wanted this, hadn't he? Crashing home from Eton in the summer he would spend all day locked up in his room strumming that bass guitar he'd pooled money with Finn to get for him; making call after call, demo after demo. Klaus had wanted this then, wanted so much that he'd gather all the breath in his lungs and chase away the clouds with one breath, leaving nothing but the sun.

"How do you do it?" Klaus asks, a boy.

"It all depends on what you want," Elijah says. Klaus wanted to make music. Klaus wanted Elijah to sing. Klaus wanted Kol. Klaus wanted Rebekah. Klaus wanted them all together. Klaus wanted for a lot of things, and Klaus never wanted to lose.

Sitting on the steps of their brownstone one rainy morning didn't seem like winning to him. Elijah leans against the railing, drops of rain falling down his shoulders, and stares his brother down. "What have you done."

It doesn't sound like a question, not with the way he's looking at him. At any rate, it's not meant to be a question as much as an answer, as much as it is him pinching his brother's jaw between his fingers and making him look, look, look at what you've done to us.

Klaus stares back. Angry. Insolent. "He left his drumsticks behind."

Elijah waves it off. "I expect he'll get new ones."

"Won't you have a seat, brother?"

"No, thank you. I might catch something. Your cynicism is a disease I could do without." Elijah sighs, lifts his hand out of his pocket. "It's not much of a family band with only two of us left, is it now?"

Klaus snorts. He's still twirling Kol's abandoned drumsticks in his fingers. "'This used to be fun', he said. That was all he ever cared about. He knows nothing, he tries so little."

"You know what, Klaus – remember when we were children and Finn told us about Einstein once saying that if quantum mechanics were correct then the world would be crazy? Einstein was right. The world is crazy. People come, they fit themselves into your lives like coins in a slot machine, bells ring and more coins fall out. They come, they go. They get lost in the shuffle. They forget." Elijah puts out his hand palm-up, feeling the raindrops. "I'm craving a smoke, are you?"

Klaus rolls his eyes at his intentional vagueness, blinks the rain out of his eyes. "What are you implying?"

"You want too much," Elijah says simply. Too goddamn much.

Look where it's gotten you, brother.

"I'll ask again." His brother's eyes are as grey as the dismal rainclouds today. "What. Are you implying?"

Elijah walks up the steps, wipes his feet on the doormat before pushing the door open. "There are things not even you can control, Niklaus."

But you're wrong, brother – you're wrong.

Klaus has him slammed against the wall, fingers digging into his throat. He has whiskey on his tongue and a fever dream in his eyes. "I don't want this. I never wanted this."

On TV, the crowds boo and hiss.

Even with Klaus crushing his windpipe he still manages to speak, "Well, you have it." He pries Klaus's hands off, coughs a little, wheezes. "Jesus, Klaus."

There will be no show tonight, he thinks absently while rubbing his throat, but it doesn't matter; there hasn't been one in a while anyway. Klaus wrings his hands, drunk and sorry—but never sorry enough to apologize, no. "I never knew you to be religious."

Underneath all that calm, Elijah's smile is terrifying. "You've made me a desperate man, brother."

14. here there is only air and just enough space to fit

Finn drags them – all of them – out for coffee. Rebekah, forever vocal about not wanting to be anywhere near Klaus, sits at the far end of the table, half her face obscured by ridiculously large sunglasses. Kol sits beside her, calloused fingers wrapped around china that looks like it could break in his grip. But his thumbs still move incessantly, tapping out some beat against the side of his cup, so that's something.

"Far too early to be drinking, Niklaus," Finn says with bored disapproval.

"It's Irish coffee, brother dear," Klaus grins.

A paparazzo pounces on them: Rebekah sticks out her tongue, Kol gives him the finger, Elijah rolls his eyes, and Klaus smirks into his coffee. Once, Finn might have been frustrated over all of this, even clicked his tongue at Kol, but catching them together is such a rare sight Elijah knows he's wishing for more paparazzi to come, ridiculous as they might look with Rebekah's droopy funeralesque hat and Kol's neon headband, Klaus's grey face and Finn's riled mother hen expression.

"Fix this," Finn commands, finger stabbing the latest headlines. Sibling against sibling, scowl after scowl. "Or blood will out, and it certainly won't be pretty."

"No," Rebekah says. Petulant.

"Petulant," Klaus points out, ever attuned to her.

"If bratty Siamese cats were joined at the brain the wiki page would have a picture of the two of you," Kol grumbles, not realizing that he is as well.

"Children," Elijah grunts before thanking Rebekah for cutting his waffle into bite-sized pieces for him.

Finn clasps his hands together as though he might be praying. After a few minutes of silence his back snaps straight in his chair, looking as if the solution's come to him; some kind of heavenly intervention. Elijah is almost afraid to find out.

The solution turns out to be this:

"Go on tour together!" Finn is already pointing at Klaus. "You – get that look off your face."

If Elijah hadn't been so surprised at Finn's gall he supposed he might have fallen out of his seat as Kol just had. Rebekah's attention shoots up from the legal pad she'd been scribbling her band's name all over, her mouth an O of abject horror. "No. No, Finn – you couldn't possibly make me go on tour with him."

She joins in on the finger pointing.

Klaus gets up to pour himself another drink. Elijah has half a mind to stop him, but with the way everyone's shooting metaphoric daggers at each other he feels like a whiskey himself. That, or the rare cigarette. His throat still aches and it would hardly help: if Klaus turns to drink then he is allowed to nurture his own demons as well. But of course they were all empty threats, shots fired in the dark. Triviality was for the common.

He sips his lime water instead.

"No," Rebekah says, adamant. "I refuse. Caroline would never—"

"I can feel you daggering me with your eyes, Rebek—"

"I happen to have the misfortune of being both your manager and your booking agent because you lot have the habit of scaring people off," Finn says irritably. He's in a state, agitation a suit he never dons, but last weekend's headlines must have called for it. He looks worked to the bone. "You will agree to this. Caroline will agree to this. If I have to drag all of you across Europe by the whites of your bones, I will."

Elijah raises his drink, Rebekah's mouth snaps shut; even Klaus looks a little impressed.

Kol sighs. "But I quit."

"Expect a call tonight." Finn slings his jacket over his arm. "And Kol? We're family, for God's sake. You don't get that luxury."

Klaus's gaze cuts to Rebekah then. Sister sister, see?

Rebekah looks back determinedly.

Elijah walks out with Finn, promising to wait by the phone if only to appease him. Their siblings continue their mindless bickering.

"You know," Finn sighs, "I should have become a pirate when I had the chance."

He sweeps out the door.

Elijah thinks he'll have that cigarette now.

—

15. i had to listen for it, it was hidden in the fall

She holds Caroline's hand on the plane. Caroline's never left the country before, and now she's seeing it disappear into a shroud of mist. With her hair knotted at the top of her head and her socked feet drawn up onto her seat, she says, "I feel like we've been living in a giant bowl of pea soup this entire time."

"Would you look at that," Rebekah murmurs, humouring her. "Stefan?"

Stefan hums a response across from her, taking up two seats as he flips through this month's Rolling Stone. He tears out any mention of them touring together, screws them into a ball that he crushes in his fist. Can't believe I left my basement for this, Rebekah remembers, but then again that was what Nik had said once too. Stefan looks like he's just swallowed a bitter, bitter pill, and for a split second she feels scared. For what exactly, she doesn't know. Him, probably.

She nudges him with her toe. He lets his fingers tickle across her heel, massage the arch of her foot. "I'm fine," he says, even if she hadn't asked.

She flips through the info pack Finn had pressed into her palm just last night. Stefan hadn't said much on the matter and neither had Caroline, but she sees the looks they exchanged in dark corners, all that trepidation on Caroline's face as they were about to board. Klaus and Elijah had gone on an earlier flight, which Rebekah was sure had nothing to do with cheaper flight rates – they were travelling business class for cripe's sake – and everything to do with Caroline being there. And Elijah was too good to leave Klaus alone.

She slides down further in her seat, info pack forgotten, flipping through last month's Nylon listlessly instead. They have a six-page spread in it and their flight attendant had trilled at that, but Rebekah, well, she had given a smile that was strained at best. The seat next to Stefan has been overtaken by his legs, her feet on his stomach. Caroline notices her wandering gaze and squeezes her hand.

"He'll come, Rebekah," she says softly.

"I must have called him thirty times," she whispers back.

She thinks of Finn waiting alone at the airport, not even knowing if Kol would show up. Hoping all the same.

It's just some publicity stunt, read the tweets. Kol couldn't possibly miss this! reads the feed.

No, Rebekah wants to agree, he couldn't. No, as much shade she's thrown Finn's way about this, as much as she'd talked about it in interviews and then raged quietly afterwards to Caroline, if there were ever a chance they would tour together again, she would have liked all of them to be together. Whole. Him holding her hand as they bound onstage, none of the leper grace Elijah possessed. Why couldn't it have been Klaus, she wonders: it should have been Klaus.

It's in Berlin that Elijah finally asks Stefan to drum for them after several nights of acoustic sets, the silence of the stadium a stark contrast to the screaming audience Louder than Bells had inspired. Stefan gives a flat no despite being on amicable terms with Elijah, and they go back to their sound checks. Before, they'd usually opened with one of their songs mashed with the duet Rebekah had sung with Elijah, but this time they opt for something more cheerful, and Rebekah finishes the song with her heart in her ears, the applause immense and explosive. She feels more alive than she ever has before.

Elijah always meets her backstage with a smile and a blooming bouquet. It's not the apology she wants, nor is it the one she's ready for, but it's a start. He wraps his arms around her and she breathes in his familiar, clean scent and he whispers, "I'm proud of you."

She almost wants to beg Stefan to play for them just for that, but steels herself at the last minute. If they needed a drummer so badly, Nik should be the one to ask. Or he can go find a new one himself, as she and Caroline had done. She pulls away from Elijah, avoiding Nik's eyes from across the room.

You would think, what with them being crammed into hotel after hotel, plane after plane, buses and trains and street side cafes and stadiums looming like giants, she'd have shared at least a hello with him, but she hadn't – couldn't – look him in the eye.

You should have tried harder, she wants to say. You want so much; you should have tried harder to keep us together.

"Rebekah." Stefan's hand is on her shoulder. His other hand is in Caroline's. "Let's go."

Rebekah nods and takes to the stage, the two of them right behind her.

"Why do you do that?" Rebekah's being fitted into a dress that moves like rippling water, silver pooled around her thighs. In the reflection of her mirror she can see Caroline looking into her own, admiring her crystal-tipped eyelashes. She looks down at her wrist, where a perfect imprint of a neon red kiss lay like a tattoo over a tattoo. Rebekah has seen it smudged, marking her sleeves, hidden behind fringes and stacks of fan bracelets. Today she sees it, still so perfect, so alive. Against the fluorescent light it seems to have its own pulse.

Unwittingly, she finds herself thinking of Nik with his ink-smudged fingers.

Caroline breaks through her well of thought with a hesitance creeping in her voice. "My, uh, mom. She used to kiss my dad right here – same place – before he went to work. He'd leave it on, and when he came back home it'd still be there." She pauses, a little embarrassed smile forming on her lips, "And he'd show it to me. I used to think it was the greatest thing ever. A secret kiss only he knew about, never fading. And he'd tell me those would always be good days. His lucky charm, if you will."

She laughs quietly, hair swinging into her eyes. "After a while they stopped. My dad came out. They got a divorce."

Rebekah doesn't really know what to say. She's surprised – and a bit touched, too. Everything Caroline does or say comes with a certain aplomb to them, like she practices in front of the mirror with a brush held up to her mouth. This Caroline seems green, a little nervous. "I never knew."

"Well it's not like I go around telling Hello! Magazine about it." Caroline looks back into the mirror. "It became some kind of ritual for me. Like you watching your old interviews at night—"

Rebekah startles. "How do you—"

"Oh, please." Caroline rolls her eyes. "Their luck becomes my luck. I made it my own. Except this time, it won't stop. Ever." She knocks on wood for effect.

"Quite the superstitious girl you are," Rebekah says, but she's smiling. "I'm going to teach you how to make your own luck."

They leave Berlin and head for London.

There is a hole in her heart in the shape of her brother's absence. Rebekah sings all his favourite songs, donning different costumes every time, flashier, cut-outs like stars, sequined numbers that track fireworks across the stage.

She doesn't speak to Klaus. Klaus continues looking miserable.

Klaus doesn't speak to Caroline, and Caroline, well. Caroline keeps singing his songs.

Rebekah doesn't quite know what to make of all of this. Children, she decides.

16. and darling, it was good never looking down

Rebekah brings London to Caroline through a pinwheel lens. Lip gloss kissed off of napkins on their trips to Ladurée. Boots pulled high over their knees clattering through puddled pavements. Streaming colours barely seen against the pallid grey sky. They have three weeks off before heading to Melbourne and they go running in the other direction, as far away from Finn and his packed schedule and his tight-knit press conferences as possible.

Stefan walks around mostly unnoticed: it's Caroline who gets mobbed, nothing but the back of her golden head glimpsed through a sea of scratched notebooks and shiny iPhones. The crowd looks like a kaleidoscope, all donning the glittery pinks and swan blues and sparked yellows that Caroline does so love. They swarm to her as though pulled by her magnetic smile; she flips her shades up and her wrist flutters, black tattoo bird taking flight.

And then, the unthinkable—

"Rebekah, Rebekah!"

She turns, a balloon rising in her chest, a smile frozen on her face, ice in her cheeks refusing to melt away. A flash of light, a stack of multicoloured bracelets falling down a skinny arm; she turns, because it's her name. More lights flash, voices chiming in, calling out to her, just look this way, please, I came here all the way to see you, yes good one more, just to see you—

Rebekah gets photographed from every angle that day. She is smiling in every one of them.

Nik sings one of their songs that night—more specifically, Caroline's—and the place nearly goes down with the way it howls. She'd seen him backstage looking half-dead, Elijah hissing, "Are you drunk?" yet here he is, grinning up and spitting bullets.

She would've just walked past and went home, but she finds herself watching form the wings. She's never seen her brother sing live before. She hasn't seen him sing in a long time. He sounds vindictive the way his voice scorches like a bruise, Caroline's words doomed in his mouth. But it pulls at her heartstrings. She's never heard him sound so wistful.

"Urgh, look at him preen," Caroline scoffs, refusing to stay for the show but lingering by anyway. She's angry, it comes off her hair in sparks. "It's like he knows we're watching."

"But we are," Stefan points out.

Stefan does that a lot. Caroline snarks, Stefan soothes.

Rebekah fights with Caroline, Stefan stands between them like the Great Bloody Wall of China.

Stefan was there with her when she'd dialed Kol's number one last time, bent over hissing, "Stay there for all I care, stay there for all fucking eternity. See if I care you, selfish prat. I don't want you here," and then holding her afterwards, letting her sob into his shirt.

Stefan's just there.

Most of the time it's Caroline and Rebekah and then Stefan, almost like an afterthought, his name pushed in at the last minute, hastily asked questions that seem made up on the spot. It's painful to watch sometimes, and Rebekah finds herself always holding out a steady hand. She knows, she wants to say. She knows, she wants to hiss at the interviewer. Oh, she knows what it's like. Stefan doesn't mind – he didn't come here for this, he says.

(This? Rebekah wants to ask. What is this? Why don't you care?)

"You're our glue," is what Rebekah says instead. They're walking along the river, the Eye lit up like sparking helicopters. "You keep us together. Or at least, from ripping each other apart."

Stefan laughs. "No, Rebekah. You keep you together. I'm just here, watching."

"But you're not an afterthought," Rebekah insists. "They don't know what they're talking about."

"They say I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or the shoddily-built wall between an epic lesbian romance. Or possibly some weird polyamory thing. I can't keep up with the headlines." He stops and stares out into the river. He's never been this far from home either, she realizes. "At any rate… epic romance or not, I'm happy where I am."

Rebekah rests her chin on his shoulder, says into his ear: "I'm happy you are where you are, too."

Pictures of them crop up the next day with captions that would put gaudy romance novels to shame. Caroline laughs until she cries.

17. your fields burn around me, around me

Something breaks between them. For one, Kol sends her flowers: no card but a whoopee cushion stuffed between the petals, and she dumps it in the trash.

For two, Nik shows up at her door the next morning.

"Did Finn put you up to this?" she asks suspicious through the peephole.

"Not exactly," he says, looking like a grouchy bobble-head through the magnifying glass. He's rocking on the balls of his feet, looking like he'd rather be anywhere but here.

She sighs and unlocks the door. "Surprised you're not at the bar," she says. She doesn't smile.

"Ha," Klaus says shortly. He slaps a book down on her bed. "I wrote you a song."

"Is this an apology?"

"The introduction's a four-bar pattern, some reverberant piano chords. It's a little esoteric, but it's clean and honest. Your voice gets shaky when you hold the end note too long so there's none of that here," Klaus continues, walking to the window and tugging the curtains open. "Caroline really should have known better than to let—"

"I don't want it," she interrupts flatly, arms crossed. This is so like him to just come barging in vomiting his words all over her as if knows her so well. It's way too early to be yelling, but if he doesn't leave soon she is going to send mirrors flying.

But Klaus doesn't see the dirty look she's giving him because he's looking out the window. "The song or the apology?"

"So it is an apology." She doesn't have to say Ha! for her brother to catch it in her voice.

"Rebekah," he says warningly, finally turning. Her brother is not a large man, not when compared to the all the ridiculousmen that that ridiculous Elena Gilbert brings to their shows back home, Katherine running a wicked finger up their thigh in the back of the room as soon as her sister's back is turned. He's not big like the bodyguards Finn has trail after her and Caroline, compensation for them dodging his ministrations. But with the look he's giving her, he could fill the room.

"You're so stupid," she finds herself saying. "You think going on tour together, giving me sad eyes from across the room and then writing me a song would make everything better. What soaps have you been watching? And don't think I don't know why the sudden turnaround."

She rummages in her bag and pulls out a rolled-up magazine, drops it on top of his book. It's a candid of him walking down the street looking sullen; a bubble with Elijah's head; a shot of Kol, still back home. IS THIS THE END OF THEM?

"It's your fault Kol isn't here," she continues, glaring at him. "We could have all been here together, none of the stupid tabloids dogging our every move if you hadn't been such a hypocritical wank. Who kicked you as a child, Nik? What made you so bloody mean?"

"I—" And for once, her brother seems to be at a loss for words. He finds himself a seat and scrapes his hand down his face, sighing. "I'm trying, Bekah."

Rebekah snorts, not even halfway done. "And the drinking. If there were ever a nine-step program for downward spiraling, you would be the main speaker."

"I know," Klaus explodes. "Do you think I don't? I'm dragging everything into the ground and here I am, sitting with you. I'm sorry. This is an apology. You were smart to leave, Bekah, you always had a good nose for these things. So now you're flaring up in the sky while I'm here barely smoking."

"Your metaphors," Rebekah finds herself groaning, but it's half-hearted, because she knows how tired he is. She's seen it in the bruises under his eyes, the way he carries himself in their press conferences. She lets out a sharp sigh and drags a stool in front of him. "If you'd just said this a year ago, things would have been much easier." She hesitates, thinks about the thousands of ways she could say no, but damn her, really, because she says: "And I'll take your apology."

Her brother should smile more often, Rebekah thinks – he looks younger, the purple under his eyes not as prominent. "I'm not going to hug you," she tells him.

"Do you still want the song then? Because it's a good one, if I do say so myself, and if you're not going to sing it—"

She rolls her eyes and shoves him out of her room.

There's a lull in their touring for the EMAs. Katherine appears behind them at the airport, hair curling down her shoulders and eyes bright behind her eye shadow like she hadn't just spent eight hours on a plane. Rebekah still has war flashbacks to those paparazzi shots of her arriving in Berlin. Caroline envelopes them into a threeway hug, Katherine retching and Rebekah wrinkling her nose the entire time.

Elena's tugging her luggage behind her sister, looking miserable about having to share a flight because their publicist still hadn't let up. Rebekah definitely doesn't hug her.

They go out for drinks with Bonnie—

(Except drinks with Bonnie is never just drinks with Bonnie; it turns into a riot, and Caroline nudges her side, whispering if there's such a thing as a before party.

Rebekah grins, yes.)

—her regaling them with stories of her trip to Italy – "The men were revolting, don't even believe what April said—" – Stefan chuckling into his beer, Elijah off at the bar somewhere. But it's alright, because it's Stefan, and everybody loves Stefan, a sentiment echoed by Damon, one day during rehearsals—

"Wait," Rebekah pauses, unscrewing her gin. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for Stefan," Damon says, strumming his guitar. He does his crazy eyes thing that was big in the 90's. "Keep up, Barbie Klaus."

"No, you brain hemorrhage—what are you doing here, in Glasgow."

Damon's strumming slowly stops. "No. You're shitting me, right? I mean—" He searches her eyes. She's not. "Stefan invited me along for the tour."

Rebekah stares.

"I was on the plane with you!"

Unfortunate mix ups with the invitations aside – Hey! calls an indignant Damon as he's escorted off the premises watched by a smirking Katherine, I have a reservation, you bag of dicks! – the night is proving to be a pretty good one. The music thrumming through her bones as she swings her hands into the air, actually dancing with Elena because she's not so bad when she's drunk. She catches Nik's eye from across the room—he raises his bottle and she gives a small smile back.

She's outside getting some air when she hears something, or rather someone familiar. Tinny, scratchy, a little muffled: "—for all fucking eternity, see if I care—"

Strange.

Familiar.

"I don't want you here."

She looks up with a start.

Kol's strolling towards her holding up his phone. "Really, Bekah? After I sat on a plane for eight hours next to a drooling, wailing baby just to get here?"

She doesn't quite know what to say. She just stands shivering in the November air, gaping. "How Nik of you to wait until I've stopped caring to finally show up."

He doesn't offer an apology, but he does give her a mischievous little smile. "I was partying with the Witches."

"A bunch of nasty bints. Your taste in women makes me gag."

"Hey, that Sophie Deveraux is hot. Just because you're not into electro," Kol says, but it's fond. He's pocketed his phone. They stand there staring awkwardly at each other.

Saltzman stumbles out of the club puking his guts out.

Kol's upper lip curls. "Let's go in."

"Let's."

Inside, Elijah claps Kol's back in greeting and they spend the rest of the time in one of the private booths screaming at each other about what's been happening on the tour the past few months—well, Kol and Rebekah scream; Elijah sits in between them with a patient smile checking his phone every so often, wondering when the hell the party would end.

(Spoiler alert: it doesn't.)

Kol goes to get them more drinks and Rebekah follows to make sure he doesn't mix up the orders again, and suddenly he's jostling her shoulder. "Is that Caroline I see slipping into the back with Nik?"

Rebekah peeks over his shoulder and gives an unladylike snort. "Don't be ridiculous. 'Course not."

—

18. i said said said it out loud over and over

She's lost track of how many times Stefan has to pull her away from windows, her palms open against the cold, her breath fogging up the glass, her eyes trained on the city that stretches miles and miles and miles before her. Her shoes hit the ground the same way and her voice still sounds too loud, too shrill in her own ears, but her hair frizzes and Stefan has to buy her more cups of coffee than is necessary to keep the jetlag at bay, and like a reminder that—

Yes.

This is real.

Stefan tugs on her arm and points downwards: she sees fans milling around the hotel. They're probably here to see Bonnie, who'd taken up half the floor above theirs, or maybe they were here for Damon, who'd only taken up half a room.

But then she sees a poster with her name on it.

She waves big, smiles big, winks big, everything larger than life with Caroline Forbes, ain't that right? She swats Stefan's arm away until Finn's calls about five times from five different phones probably from five different locations in the city and it's clear that they have to leave right the fuck now.

She's still beaming when the elevator doors slide closed, when the numbers go down with soft dings, when the doors slide open and she's staring at—

Klaus.

He's still running his brood-a-thon and there are still those pseudo-arthouse hemp strings he wears but at least it looks like he's combed his hair and had an actual breakfast, earphones in place and she can hear it, tinny and muffled, the unyielding kick drum thud.

And he can stare, this man who looks like he's been dipped in tar and left to dry, eyes rapt and furious, always, with a sister who's ignoring him and half his band missing. She narrows her eyes, wants to demand who the hell he thinks he is in the bitchy head cheerleader way that high school has never really left her, a shared stage and a coveted song and suddenly he thinks he can walk all over her.

Let me tell you something, Klaus—her heels grind sharper.

And like most things that are impossible to ignore – war, malaria, Rebekah's snoring at 3AM – Stefan clears his throat between the two of them, keeping the peace as is his reluctant duty. At any rate, keeping the nightly shows going, since you can't have one with two of their stars incapacitated, can you?

Which is just as well. She hasn't spoken to him, not once, not ever, and she'd like to keep it that way.

The elevator dings.

With a haughty raise of her chin she barges out before his song makes it to the end.

At some point during the tour she stops singing his songs.

Maybe it's because there was really no point to it. Maybe it's because he's stopped calling, not like she noticed or anything. In fact, the only reason she even noticed was because suddenly she had so much free time after her shows, just blissful zen atop her nightly yoghurt. Maybe it's because he's started to retaliate by singing hers, and God if that isn't the most juvenile thing she's ever had to bear witness to—

It's only okay when I do it, she stresses to a skeptical Rebekah, and she knots a cherry stem with her tongue and the night goes along with it, a neat row of cherry stems in a corner of a dark room where Klaus has the other half in a riot, laughing at his stories, hanging on to his every word.

And every time they roar and whoop he has the balls to look where she is, like he's hoping she's listening in; raises his glass and throws his dimples her way.

And then one morning Rebekah's coming into her room with a new song clutched in her hands written by Klaus of all people, and she's standing there in her bathrobe staring at her with such dismay in her eyes, and it's so totally petty of her to be holding this big of a grudge, since grudge master Rebekah, who once could have run her into the ground with her title, is now smiling tentatively, saying yes to lunch meetings when Finn calls.

"Family business," Rebekah tells her snootily. "You wouldn't understand."

Caroline understands the snootiness: Rebekah's always been poor at masking her guilt so she orders more gin, throws on her heels, acts like the biggest bitch in town so she doesn't have to deal with the repercussions of it, doesn't have to talk about what this all means—

"Are you back with them?" Caroline asks flatly, hands twisted into white terry cloth cotton, hair pulling at her scalp migraine-tight. She won't frown, she won't bite. Wrinkles, you know.

If Rebekah wants to leave, whatever.

"He wrote me a song, Caroline; he didn't kiss my newborn." Rebekah twirls around the room, hopping into her boots, curling up her hair. "Untwist your knickers and put some lipstick on, you're looking pale."

It's not that she's not happy for Rebekah, as much bravado she's regained by this happy family reunion or whatever the fuck you want to call it, but it just means—Klaus is there more. Klaus, the one who'd called her Vapid Barbie, the one who'd reduced you to a backup singer in the band you helped found; Klaus your asshole brother, remember him?

Just because he'd started drinking vodka soda with less of the vodka and more of the soda, just because he hasn't thrown any hissy fits over the past month, just because he's quote unquote better. Like, she understands family. Even after her dad left without as much as a notice and then some, even after all that she still visits him on Thanksgiving, Liz still sends him the family's pumpkin pie recipe because he manages to forget every single year.

She understands.

Doesn't mean she has to like it.

It's a late night after yet another sold-out stadium that her phone rings and her heart flips.

But she didn't sing his song tonight, she hasn't sang any of his in so long, so it couldn't be him (it couldn't be), but when she picks up her phone and sees that it's not his number she just stands there listening to her ring tone, not knowing what to do with all this built-up anger like a dam about to burst.

She clicks answer.

"Yes, Stefan."

"It's just me, Care—no need to sound all excited." Stefan sounds tired on the other hand, but she can imagine his lips twisting to accommodate his taunt. "Just making sure you're getting ready for bed and not, you know. Stewing."

"You're two doors away. Couldn't have knocked?"

"Why? When I can see you making angry faces from where I'm at."

Caroline turns her head to see Stefan waving, feet kicked up on the balcony, smoke swirling around his fingers. She sighs and draws her knees to her chest, balled up in all that terry cloth. "We were great tonight."

"We always are," he says, fingers loose around his phone. "Something bothering you?"

"Just missing home, I guess." She laughs; it sounds a little choked up to her. "I started with open mic night and now I'm booking the O2 Arena. It's just a little surreal."

"You've made it this far, Care," Stefan says gently. "You both have. She's not going to leave you, you know."

"Leave us, you mean."

Even with the distance and the dim lighting she can see him smile, his canines sharp but not biting. "You two started this together. I'm just lucky enough to be along for the ride."

"But—" And like a stupid little girl, she falters on his name. She balls herself up even tighter, buries her face into her knees, shoulder pushing her phone to her ear. "I—"

"Don't know what to do now that there's no battle to be won?" Stefan chuckles. It fills her with a strange warmth, her best friend on a balcony two rooms away in a city so far from home, the sky starlit synths twinkling. She loves him, but that doesn't mean he's right all the time.

Because that would be majorly unfair.

"We're not fighting," she answers quietly.

19. you told yourself you found a found a modern mona lisa

"Another one of these, Forbes?"

Delete.

"It's a lonely sort of night, isn't it, to be singing someone else's song. Have you nothing left in you? Perhaps that was a little too harsh. I actually called to thank you, that cover you did bumped us up on YouTube; funny how things work out, doesn't it?"

Delete.

"People have started to talk, love. Don't know if you follow the latest vagaries sweeping the newsstands, but it's maudlin stuff, cheap writing. You really do need to stop. Wouldn't want people getting the wrong idea, do we now."

Delete.

"I keep having people approach me on the streets asking about you. You know, if you did more singing and less posturing maybe they'd ask me something of more substance instead of the usual 'are you two fucking?'"

Delete.

"Sweetheart! Have a nice night? They have you on livestream here. Even in a world removed from yours I still can't escape you, isn't that the damnedest thing? I wrote that song in a difficult period in my life, it was not meant to sound that way. Not meant to – to be sung with that Stefan, whom you touch way too much for my—for anyone's liking, really; it's like you wanted to personally offend me. But that's the point of all of this, isn't it? Shots fired, strings pulled. Total cacophony. Now, if I'd been the one singing with you it wouldn't have sounded half as terrible—"

"What're you doing?"

"Rebekah!" she yelps, nearly dropping her phone right into the glittering black pool eighteen stories below. "Knock much?"

"I have been." She looks at her suspiciously, eyebrow cocked. "The car's here. Do you need me to hold your hand?"

"Before party, huh?" Caroline shrugs on her coat, stopping to admire their dresses already laid out for tomorrow night. And she totally knows Rebekah was being a bitch about it earlier, but she slips her hand into hers anyway.

It's all pulsing lights and gyrating hips and the slow burn of incense and perfume and sweat and everything that makes these parties so removed from anything she's ever known; like looking out the mouth of a cave and not being able to look away. Rebekah tugs on her hand just as they're about to enter the fray; tugs and doesn't let go.

"What?" she has to yell over the din.

Rebekah doesn't answer, just crushes her into a rare hug that makes Caroline want to either

a) burn her skin off, or

b) hug her back tighter

"I know you hate it, having him around." Rebekah whispers ragged over the loud bass around them. "Truth be told I hate it too, but he's my brother, and we're just going to have to tolerate his whining ass. Besides, the two of you don't talk anyway, should be easy enough."

Rebekah's dragged away by an already-drunk Katherine and an even drunker Elena. Bonnie's telling a table (and in retrospect that meant everyone, because when Bonnie speaks everyone shuts up) all about Italy, she sees Stefan in between Selena and Taylor (when had she and Stefan made up?), Elijah actually being led onto the dancefloor by that Hayley Marshall, Marcel and Davina talking quietly in a corner.

She realizes she's in the center of it all, not even a blip on their radar, everyone checking their inhibitions at the door. She thinks she sees Klaus by the bar and walks the other way, should be easy enough, Rebekah had said.

Bonnie's still talking and everyone's still laughing, and she watches her lips shape around words she can't read, because she's hyper aware of Klaus, all the way across the room, looking at her. It's unsettling—she excuses herself, tells them she wants to dance, but dodges Katherine's wild gesticulations, Rebekah stuck in between the twins, hands on hips on ass grinding to some rhythm that barely matches the music pounding. It's so bizarre that Caroline has to laugh. She tries to convince herself that it's relief she feels when she can't spot Klaus anywhere anymore.

Rebekah's right anyway—they still don't talk, and she doesn't think they ever will, until suddenly she finds herself in a storage room with him of all people, looking at her entirely too seriously and saying, like it's a burden he has to undertake, "I think we should be friends."

She blinks at him, because – seriously? Just ambushing her on the way to the ladies room and dropping the friend card after all that's happened, like he hasn't been slamming verbal abuse her way every time a mic happens to be near his stupid obnoxious lips, his stupid obnoxious lips that are still saying—

"…feud's gone on for far too long, don't you think? It's a little juvenile if you ask me."

"Juvenile?" It explodes off her tongue with a hiss and a bang, because—oh what the fuck, he's still talking.

"—quite a waste of good set lists, too. I mean, don't get me wrong, your songs have been easier to listen to lately; probably has something to do with the Mikaelson gene joining league with you—"

"Easier to listen to?"

"Are you just going to stand there repeating things I say?" Klaus is looking at her a little oddly, like he's not the one who'd just pushed her into a cleaning trolley.

This is literally her life right now.

She stares at him for a moment; pinches herself to make sure she isn't dreaming – but then again, why would she even dream about being stuck in a storage room with him anyway? Stuck in a storage room with him pitching her the worst friendship stake diatribe she's ever heard, and why would she even dream about him period.

"No, I am not going to stand here, in a freaking storage room—" She swats at a mop that's started to topple into her, "talking about braiding BFF bracelets with you of all people, because—god damnit—" Now there's a whole shelf of feather dusters falling on her: Klaus reaches forward to help but she just shoves his hands away, glaring. "I don't need your help. I don't want it. Just because you've stopped calling me and just because you're on good terms with Rebekah now doesn't mean I would even begin to consider it."

Also, she really doesn't have to add, but really fucking wants to: "You're a dick."

You would think that would be enough, that maybe he'd stop—that their first conversation ever constituted of her likening him to male genitalia, that maybe her storming out of the room into the drunken mess would be enough of a message for him.

(Clearly not, because he's the one leaving more.)

Stefan's hand on her bare back is the only thing she's aware of as they go through the red carpet motions, smiling, chatting, hints and vagaries about their upcoming albums. Rebekah's a little ways off with Elijah, some reporter asking, "Are you all back together?" and Rebekah laughing, "Oh no, I've just decided to tolerate them more."

She can already imagine all the migraines Finn is going to have over that, but she smiles a vicious one, because it's probably his fault Klaus keeps leaving new messages in her voicemail; Finn and his stupid publicity deals putting him up to this.

And it's because of Finn and his stupid publicity deals that she finds herself waiting beside him backstage, the envelope for Best Video gripped tight in her hands, Klaus's face coloured by bands of gold light.

"You look nice," he begins in that annoyingly offhand way of his. His hands are clean for once, and they're reaching for her wrist. "What's that?"

She snatches her hand away. "Please don't talk."

"Would you rather I left a message?" He smiles.

"If it means more words coming out of your mouth, you already know the answer to that."

On TV, the huge one projected all along the stadium, she can see Bonnie suspended in the air, sparkly silk charmeuse whipping every time she moved her arms.

"Just as well," he shrugs.

She glares at him from the corner of her eye—just as well what? But he's looking straight ahead, waiting on their cue, and she hates him. Hates his stupid purposely-vague answers, his smug smile, that stupid tie that matched his eyes a little too perfectly for it to be an accident.

The stagehand hurries up to them. "That's your cue, go!"

She starts to move up the stairs, but Klaus calls her name so sharply that she stops mid-stride and unwittingly looks back at him: suddenly he's grasping her wrist and guiding it to him, and she follows like she's hypnotized, breath strung and stung, watches him brush a kiss on top of her lipstick charm so light, it doesn't even stain his lips. She doesn't have time to react, to yell—the walls part and lights blaze across her skin and suddenly Klaus has his arm hooked around her back. "Time to go, sweetheart."

He doesn't look at her when they're clapping Marcel onstage, not once, nothing in the way he stands so casually rigid next to her that he'd just pressed her against a wall and put his lips on her. Nothing in the way he grins as Marcel lifts his trophy in the air giving away what a liar he is.

She'd fumbled with the envelope, cheeks pink not because of the blush her makeup artist had applied so perfectly but because of the flush creeping steadily up her neck.

She could practically hear everyone waiting with their breaths baited, their eyes saucered, sweet Caroline and big, bad Klaus on stage, together—my, isn't that a sight. And big, bad Klaus had leaned close, asked in a stage-whisper, mouth so mocking, "Need help, love?", and oh how everyone had screamed at that.

And she, flustered as she was, had just thrust the envelope to him.

He calls her name again when they're off stage, when she's hastening to get away. How his lips can form so gently around her name after a year of slinging verbal abuse is something that she can't fathom; something she doesn't even want to fathom.

She whips around, fists trembling. "Aren't you supposed to hate me?"

They stand there with stage crew jostling past and costume racks being wheeled between them and sidelong glances being thrown their way for what feels like a very long time.

Say it, she wills him so fiercely. Say the words.

"I do," he says finally. Quietly.

20. the voice of nirvana says come as you are

That's it, then. Order restored. A year of thinly-veiled insults hidden in songs, comments ranging from passive to all-out aggressive in interviews, paths avoided and voicemails deleted and no other word in the vernacular could even possibly begin to describe how exhausted she is.

But order is still order.

She feels relieved, you know?

"Remind me why you two broke up?" The place is too loud but the beer is good, and she's missed this, how it used to be: her and Katherine and Stefan sitting in the back of a room tossing shade at anyone and everyone. "Again?"

"Because," Stefan says, "you know how these things go."

"No she doesn't," Katherine says around her onion stick. She motions for another martini. "No one does. That's why you and Taylor were voted Couple Most Likely to Break Up Third Time in a Row." Apparently in this world, this is a thing that exists. "And what do you know, they were right."

Stefan shrugs. He doesn't look too upset about it.

Considering the damage of the before party, as everyone's taken to calling it, the after party's surprisingly mellow. "Looks like everyone's here."

Someone had set up some open mic thing by the DJ booth, where Saltzman is currently being reduced to tears by Bonnie, who'd snapped her fingers and Marcel had materialized out of nowhere, objecting loudly of his "ill-treatment of her song in that fucking tragic excuse of a cover". Rebekah's arguing about something or other with Kol, her legs in his lap and her head against Elijah's shoulder. In another corner, Elena's trying to convince Leo that an EMA is just as good as an Oscar, even though he still totally doesn't sing.

Nobody ends up drunk and under the table this time, and everyone goes home in time to catch their flights tomorrow morning. The lull over, awards season done with.

Order, she thinks again.

Relief.

"Last day of touring, kid." Stefan's rubbing her shoulders; he's absolutely vibrating behind her, a mass of undiluted energy. They're watching Rebekah sing with Elijah, center stage as they should be; Kol bounding on stage to whoops and whistles; Klaus with an actual smile on his face, not that you could see it.

Katherine slinks up to them, voluminous curls swept to one side. "That is so textbook happy family, my publicist would get off on this so much. Somebody shoot me."

Caroline gives a non-committal shrug. Elijah's introducing some song Klaus had just written or whatever, and she's just so over it, how they're all molded back together with matching dimpled smirks, the Mikaelsons all in one place.

But the worst part of it all is that she's happy for them, you know? At any rate she's happy for Rebekah, and watching them all together, all that cheesy Brady Bunch bullshit? She laps it up. It actually makes her want to sigh into Stefan's shoulder. If it didn't mean that she now has to share Rebekah in between recording sessions.

"Just one more song before the final bows, right?" she asks, but no one's listening to her because Stefan has a smirk on his face, something wry pouncing off his tongue. "I wonder who he's singing about."

Oh God, she groans, only half-listening.

And then—

"Didn't you say he hated you?" Katherine shoots almost accusingly, like she actually has a say in all of that.

"What? I mean, yeah—"

Stefan laughs. It sounds forced. The smirk is gone. "That… does not sound like he hates you."

On TV, Klaus leans in close to the mic and in between the layered arrangements, the treated sounds, the ringing applause, sings, "It's true, I crave you."

Katherine and Stefan are looking at her like she's some creature from a dream, a doll patched together like a passing whim – sewn on arms, twisted head, pasted on smile – even while they're pushing her on stage for the final bows.

The house goes down.

All the cameras, the phones, the flipcams train on her.

She pushes him into the door so hard there's a fear it might crack.

"Why did you do that?" Push. "You should not have done that." Shove. "I do not like you. I do not want to be your friend."

His room keycard on the ground, his bass against the wall, his heart hammering under her nails gripping into his shirt, he carefully pries her hands off of him and says, "Good. Because I've thought about it, and I don't particularly want to be your friend either."

She looks into his eyes and is dismayed at what she finds there. "Oh no. No, no, no. "

And Klaus, his hands still circling around her wrists and his breathing careful, trained, he asks, "Is the thought of us being civil to each other really that terrible? We're already singing each other's song. The whole world knows what you apparently don't."

"All I know," she says through clenched teeth, "is that you started this a long time ago. I don't owe you anything."

Klaus seems to think about this. He lets go.

He seems to be waiting.

So she waits too, not really sure what's going on.

After a while he says, "You're still here."

And he's right—she hasn't stormed off, hasn't given him the bitchy one-eighty; she'd just stood there staring back at him, and if that wasn't dismaying enough before, it's gone up tenfold now.

He studies her face. "Let's try something."

"I meant it, you know. I still don't like you."

"And yet here you are with me," he hums against her skin. One hand trailing up her thigh, the other cradling her ankle, his lips pressed to the little star she'd had tattooed there when she was sixteen, because even then she'd always known what she wanted.

"Well, it was either you or Finn," she says, watching with shallow breath the way he hooks her leg over his shoulder, the way he leans over her and places a kiss right in the hollow between her breasts. Her fingers find his hair and pull, and he makes an appreciative sound at that.

"Finn's engaged," he replies, but it sounds a little muffled because he's busy tugging at the ribbon on her bra with his teeth. The weight of his head on her stomach is a distraction – he's warm, his lips are hot, his fingers are good, as good as when he'd settled on top of her earlier, brushing her hair out of her eyes with a gentleness she didn't think he possessed, and her heart had beat something worrisome.

It's hard remembering who he is, who he's supposed to be with his hand between her thighs.

She gasps, "Rebekah, then."

He's started to trail kisses down her stomach – her eyes will not roll to the back of her head her eyes will not roll to the back of her head – but he stops as he regards this, head tilted, his eyes sweeping over her. "You're not her type."

And really, she's almost offended until his fingers find the waistband of her panties, skimming and skirting, and her blood rushes straight between her legs. She sucks in a breath so sharp her chest constricts.

"What is her type?" she manages to say a beat later than she's supposed to.

His hair brushes against her navel. She can feel him grinning, right there between her legs. "Elena Gilbert."

She sits up squealing out an "Oh!" because now everything makes so much sense, and her voice hardly catches on a gasp when she feels his mouth hot on the little bow on her underwear, but Klaus is determined to make her. His rough jaw scrubs against her thigh in his haste to get lower, his touch no longer slow and sensual but rougher now, feverish hands cupping her ass, running down her thighs.

"Oh," she says again, fainter this time when he bites the inside of her thigh, and then another Oh when he finally puts that sharp tongue of his to good use.

—

21. i'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck

He sees her, of course.

She's everywhere, her presence all-pervading, and he's all too conscious of her door opening and closing down the hall. He has to demand Finn change his room, uses a feeble excuse of seeing one of Saltzman's drummers running out with a groupie in hand.

Finn looks at him curiously; even he knows the idea of Saltzman having a girl on his arm is laughable at best, but he calls the receptionist anyway.

In his room one floor up he hears her sometimes when she sits on her balcony at night, laughter wafting up to his window the way Stefan's smoke wraps around his door handle as soon as he steps out. He'd change rooms again, but Bonnie Bennett's already taken up the rest, and he doesn't feel like another night of being stared down by her cool, dark eyes, finger snapping for Marcel to take him away.

Queen B, they say, she never speaks.

She only snaps.

Being back in London is strange after so long. He walks the streets with his collars turned up, rain in his hair and hat pulled low over his eyes. He used to go on walks like these with Bekah, Bekah pulling on his arm and gushing about how he sees poetry in everything, but he looks at the damp twigs and trodden leaves and sees nothing.

Rebekah sneaks out of a press conference with Caroline one day, leaving Finn furious, Elijah amused, Stefan bored, and him with all the questions. They hound, they squabble for their turn, they gnash at scraps, they turn their noses up at his weary, pre-approved answers.

They ask about Caroline.

Christ, he needs a drink.

"You need Kol?" Elijah straightens his tie, straightens his smile. "Good."

Do something about it.

Elijah's under siege from the reporters, trying to explain why only half their band remains, why Kol still remains MIA, why Klaus can't answer. "Piss off," he growls as he leaves the hotel. He's two months without drink and it leaves him biting at heels on the best of days, but at least that's one question taken care of.

"You miss Rebekah?" Elijah lights his cigarette, doesn't smoke it. "Good."

Do something about it.

Because he does. He sees her banging across London with Caroline, colouring up the kiosks and making streets throb. She speaks to Elijah, smiles at Elijah, sometimes goes out to dinner with Elijah, but she's careful not to look his way. Not once.

He goes back out, he toes the ground with its damp twigs, trodden leaves, the steaming gutters. He sits in the park she used to play swing in as a child, he carries his book with him everywhere he goes. Eventually, he writes a song and it's the most honest thing he's written in a while. When he gives it to Rebekah he can see her trying to look for an ulterior motive, but Bekah, don't you see, don't you see how lost—

She pulls him into a hesitant hug outside her door and it's slightly awkward, but her arms wrap around him before the words can quite make it out of his mouth.

He leans into it, his entire weight falling on her, but she's grown up so much she holds it all without as much as a stumble.

Sometimes he catches Caroline's eye.

A loud room, black lights, bodies crashing like violent waves.

She'll look away.

"You're miserable?" Elijah turns the handle, shuts the door. "Good."

Do something about it.

So he pushes her into a storage room.

It's not his proudest moment. He has his heart lodged somewhere in his throat just hacking to get out, he has her with her hair in her hands trying to stand as far away from him as the six by six room allows. She slaps his offer of friendship away, calls him a dick, but his hand catches hers on the way out and for a moment all time freezes.

"Caroline," he says. Her name sounds foreign, strange on his tongue. Strange, because the way her name is hanging in the space between them, pulled taut like a rope about to snap.

You should say my name, he thinks suddenly, desperately, stupidly.

This is not how things were supposed to be.

"Aren't you supposed to hate me?" She doesn't pull her hand away. She looks almost frightened by his hand bleeding ink all over her sleeves, all over her. "You wrote a song about me, you cry about me like a little bitch on every sound wave possible; you ruin my life. You ruin everything that breathes. And you're supposed to hate me."

"What if I don't want to?" His voice is hoarse. That rope still pulling, tugging.

She pushes him away. He's left a mark around her wrist. "That's not the answer I want."

22. love me like i'm not made of stone

There used to be certain satisfaction in singing her songs. There was something about the way she just seethed—but also in the way she stayed, seeing him through to the end.

It kind of took the fun out of it, his carefully-picked taunts, how she refuses to let him chase her from a room. She'll sit there, prim and proper, heel over ankle over heel, lips pursed tight around salted margarita rims.

Rebekah must have warned her, his sister so loved to divulge all their dirty family business. She should have known by now: big, bad Klaus; he's dirty and he plays dirty, and Caroline, don't you hate how the tables have turned? You're mine, he seems to say with every note of her compositions he plunders, stripping all that sweet sighing spirit of its sparkle, minimizing the access, turning it in on itself.

Elijah called bullshit – but then again his brother always calls bullshit. His brother fancied himself being able to see right through him, and Elijah says—

"Haven't you tormented that poor girl enough?"

"I am not letting up until she does," he says petulantly.

Tonight he sings another one of her songs, but one he looks to the side she's not there. Kol's there instead, back from mooching off with the Deverauxs and batting with that Gilbert boy or whatever it is he'd done while away; smirking up the swarming spaces of the stage, dogging him after she show telling him how obvious he's being, I feel quite sorry for you, brother—

"What?" he snarls. Don't get him wrong, having Kol back is a load off his shoulders, like finding pennies in the hoover, something shiny and unexpected—stop him before he's waxing poetry.

But Kol is an idiot, and he's always smiled like one.

"You should really consider a new approach," Kol says indulgently, as if he'd askedfor his opinion. "Maybe then she won't look at you like you're something to be squashed."

"I don't care." And he doesn't, alright? He'd told her he hated her, she'd turned on her heels, and everything went back to the way it was. It's not like he hadn't tried every trick to his arsenal (Kol had scoffed, Oh brother, that is pathetic). He and Caroline, they were past the point of no return, and you know what? He doesn't care. It was all just white noise in his head at the end of the day to be emptied, like flowerpots thrown into the streets.

Kol fucks with him a little longer, telling him about Stefan this, Stefan that, you sure you aren't jealous, brother? before trotting away.

The sooner this tour ends the better.

He ends up at Rebekah's door, Kol's words buzzing in his ears, slumping around in his mind like an annoying tenant that refuses to leave.

"What do you want, Nik?" she yawns. She rubs her eyes, peers at him owlishly. "Nik?"

"I—" He stops, chagrined. He doesn't know where to begin.

Rebekah's never been one for patience, she isn't Elijah, dutifully waiting by the door. She rolls her eyes and snags him by his collar, pushes him down into a chair and nags it out of him. He tells her how he's tired, how tomorrow will just be another day of spitting speculations and cameras flashing and how utterly consuming it all is, how utterly consuming Caroline is, how useless he feels against the whir of the Hollywood machine thrumming slowly underneath their feet, how nothing is in his hands and everything is in his head, how truly swallowed he feels—

—and at the end of it, he says a little miserably, "Help me write a song."

Rebekah doesn't stop cackling for hours, loud pealing hacks of laughter that has her clutching at her sides, tears rolling down her cheeks, dripping onto her paisley pyjamas.

He waits impatiently for her to finish.

Christ, he needs a drink.

Perhaps the worst part of this ordeal is that it's Kol's advice that has Caroline licking his mouth open, her tongue trailing, carefully tasting, her hands nowhere near where he wants them to be. But she's started to lean into him, deepening the kiss. Kissing her is like taking deep, desperate gulps of air after a breath held in too long, all the tightness in his chest dissipating, his tugging at the tulle of her dress pulling her closer, her crotch pressed against his and—and suddenly she's grabbed his keycard off the floor and pushing him into his room, him protesting about his bass just being left out there in the hall, but her teeth bite down on his lips and it's all but forgotten.

The door slams behind them and he's fever hot, he needs to touch her, needs to feel her against him, needs to know the taste of her, this woman who's all but left him in wreck for a year now, he needs to take his time, but Caroline isn't interested in slow.

His shirt is on the floor and her tongue is in his mouth before he even registers that they've made it to his bed.

"You're terrible." She's tearing at his belt, she's shoving him down. Her hair, all those intricate braids are falling all about her shoulders as he crawls in after him, and his throat goes dry at the thought of her climbing all over him, but she stops there between his legs, sneering at him. "A love song, Klaus? What are you, fifteen?"

"I'll have you know that—that song—" She's pressing into him, eyebrows raised expectantly. Something dangerous in the way her nails are raking down his jeans, in the way her dress rides up over her thighs as she kneels to push her face closer to his. She's domineering, pinning him down with her knees on either side of him, her nails digging into his abdomen when he tries to flips them over.

"That song?" she mocks. "Speak up, Klaus. I never knew you to stammer."

"That song—" His head falls back, his answer breaking off into a groan when she presses her hips down into his. Speak up, she'd said, but he can't speak, he can't think right now with the way she's started to rock against him, sinfully slow. "That song was—very good," he finishes, a hopeless rasp.

"I didn't think it was very good," she says, voice husky, so low he almost can't hear it over the sound of his blood rushing, roaring in his ears. He's hard, straining against his jeans, she has to have felt it now, she has to—

Fucking tease, he growls when he jerks helplessly against her and all she does is laugh, riding him harder. The laugh turns into a cry when he rolls them over, his hands holding her wrists high above her head, his hips resting snug against hers. She wriggles underneath him and huffs angrily.

"Now," he says, pleased to have the upper hand. "Are we going to talk about how you allegedly hate the song Rebekah and I spent all night slaving over for you, or are you going to let me take off your dress?"

She glares at him for only a second before relenting, "There's a zipper hidden in the side—careful, this is Dolce and Gabbana and if you so much as get a snag in it I will rip you—"

He presses a kiss on her lips before helping her pull the dress over her head, the dirty look she's sending him not letting up until he's laid her dress carefully across the armchair next to the bed. His hands come off red where he'd rubbed against her wrist, but that's alright, because she has an ink stain on the inside of her thigh.

"I meant it, you know," she says a little breathlessly as his finger traces that single black star on her ankle, "I still don't like you."

Caroline keeps her eyes on his as he settles over her, and if the sounds she makes when he licks up her neck is her not liking him, he'd love to hear how she'll scream when she actually does.

His heart is an interlude, her shuddering breaths and the arch of her back a reminder that it still beats. He'd licked her through her underwear until she was wet and writhing and begging, and when he finally pushes a finger into her she doesn't even mind that there's a lull in the thrust of his fingers when he gets distracted by her lips: she just kisses him back, hard, hungry, wanting.

"Klaus," she gasps against his lips when he pulls away, and how his heart clenches, how his body reacts, his hands pulling down her underwear, teeth finding the lobe of her ear, her legs parting to accommodate him and her heels rubbing against his back, and when he pushes all the way in he thinks that maybe a second stretches into two, into four, into god knows how long.

He can't stop staring at her.

Caroline looks back at him, hair spread all over the pillow.

And then she smiles at him.

This is something he doesn't deserve, the clench of his heart says, the faint freckles on her nose, her slick back arching sweetly into him. The curve of her lips when she asks, "Are you going to stare at me, or are you going to fuck me?"

You see, that's the thing, he tells her. He doesn't want to just fuck her, he wants—

His hips push deeper insider her, his hand shapes around her breast and he rolls her nipple between his fingers, and the whine she lets out, the way her thighs crush around him, the way she pulls him down.

Such crude words fall out of her pink mouth, and he loves it. It's so different from the kiss she throws from her fingers on stage, the little wink for the cameras. This part of her that she's allowing him to touch.

She bites his lip. "Klaus."

"You're impatient."

It's alright. He loves that too.

He brushes her hair out of her face and she opens her eyes as he starts to move. He watches her eyes flutter and shut and open again, determined to maintain eye contact as he screws her softly; a whimper escapes her lips he buries his nose in the dip of her neck, his teeth scraping across her collarbone, his tongue soothing the angry red lines left behind.

He pants into her neck, his arms braced on either side of her, his hips grinding down, her rising up from the bed as pleasure courses through her, her breasts pushed to his chest.

And her hands, they stop scratching at his back to come to rest in his hair, keeping him there, holding him close to her, her quiet cries urging him on. He breathes in time with her, sucks a bruise into her skin and he decides, yes, he quiet likes the sound of that, come on, sweetheart—

"Come on," he says, a quiet moan in her ear when her fingers pull at his hair. His thumb reaches down between them to find her swollen clit, starts rubbing circles until she starts grinding into his touch, ever so demanding.

It's something he's starting to crave, the sound of her in his ear. She sighs the way she sings, something dreamy, something beautiful about all that restraint just humming inside her. All that staggering vulnerability, and—

What a goddamn time for him to realize.

He presses his forehead to hers, his lips open against hers, too caught up in the sensation stirring low in his stomach and building, turning, seizing, to kiss her. "Caroline," he says with eyes shut tight, "this past year, everything that's happened, I'm just— I'm—"

"I know," she says, except she sounds agonized and breathless, and suddenly her hips are bucking up to meet his faster, more urgent. "I'll let you make it up to me."

His thumb presses down harder on her clit, rubbing relentlessly. His hips pound against hers until its almost painful, until the bed clatters into the wall, until she shudders and breaks against him, until he cries out her name, until he comes too, still buried deep inside her.

She kisses his sweaty forehead when he falls heavily on her, and he's worried that he's crushing her but he's too wired, still riding out the orgasm flickering inside him to move, but her hands are holding him right where he is. She can take him, she seems to say, she can take all of him. He lifts his head and she's wearing such a look of satisfaction.

He kisses it off of her, scoops her up so she's half on top of him, head resting against his chest. Through half-lidded eyes and lazy smiles he can feel her chest rising and falling, shallow against his own. Her heartbeat thrumming off his skin. Her fingers, soft and delicate, playing with the sweat-matted curls on his forehead. Her weight warm and delicious on him.

"Now that," she says, her soft laugh filling up his chest, "that was very good."

"Better than a song written about you?" He tries to act affronted, but it's a poor show, really.

His bass is gone when they finally make it out of his room the next afternoon, in its place a sloppy scrawled note tacked to the wall with a stick figure saying, "thanks man! big fan!"

Caroline laughs when he looks ready to murder someone, stands on the tips of her toes to press a kiss into his frowning mouth, "You were shit at it, anyway."

—

23. it looked alright in the pictures

New York yawns, the sun rising in the distance like champagne spinels scattered into the sky, breaking through the blue haze. The plane touches down, and Elijah turns to see who's awake.

Rebekah has her cheek pressed against the window, eyes wide and unseeing as the plane taxies. Kol bumps against her, still snoring with his head in her lap like he has the whole flight. Caroline is in the seat opposite her, her lids only half open. Stefan is as wide awake as he's ever been, his gaze threatening to swallow the sun.

Understandable, considering they haven't been home in six months.

Klaus is sitting in his lonesome in the back, even farther than Finn. Finn still has his eye mask on, and Elijah thinks this is the first time he's seen him sleep since they first started for Europe. Klaus catching his eye, and – wonder upon wonders, actually smiles.

It's as if they'd never left—they still have the press to contend with as soon as the plane stops taxiing, coloured post-it notes on their calendars marking all the interviews they have lined up. Another anxious sojourn for Finn, an entirely different life for all of them, but perhaps it's all the same in the end.

Perhaps it'll all be worth it in the end. The stilling of his brother's hand, the smile in his eyes.

Elijah nods back, turns his eyes back out the window.

Light check! someone howls into the studio, a count down, three, two—

On TV, Kol laughs off all the rumours of a break up mid-tour. "Oh, I just missed my flight."

Rebekah's still insisting she live with Caroline, but at least she comes home on the weekends. Sometimes they talk about Louder than Bells, all her excitement and all her fears, the TV running in the background. Sometimes they talk about how crazy the past year has been. Sometimes they don't talk, and he looks at her like he can't believe just how far she's flown.

"What?" she asks when she catches him staring.

He'll just smile softly and say, "Look, you're on TV."

On TV, Rebekah snickers into Stefan's shoulder when they ask Caroline what it's like, touring with the Mikaelsons.

Caroline comes over too, sometimes, and she walks in tentative steps, always smiling politely, but falling right into routine when Kol shows up and starts pestering her. She says nothing when Klaus passes by the room, and Klaus knows better than to stay, but at least they seem to have reached some sort of grudging, mutual respect – at any rate, no death threats are exchanged.

Maybe it's worked. Maybe all his well-worded vagaries (read: threats) finally got through to Niklaus, for him to start behaving more civil. A job well done, Elijah.

He brings this up to Rebekah, who just rolls her eyes and says something about all her brothers being oblivious idiots.

On TV, Stefan falls asleep in the middle of his interview.

It's all a whirlwind of interviews after that, Giuliana asking them how life back home feels; Jimmy cracking jokes that he never laughs at, Finn scraping his hand down his face backstage telling him he should have laughed; the Late Show asking if there's any possibility, any at all of them working together again.

"Does Henrik still need her?" Jay muses. "Your sister's all grown up now."

Of course their band needs her, he wants to say. They'll always need her, but for now, she doesn't need them, and it's the best thing they can grant her.

On TV, Elijah smiles easily, betraying nothing of the lump he feels in his throat. "She's always been far beyond her years, didn't you know?"

On TV, Klaus seems to agree. And when they ask him if he'd had anybody, just anybody in mind when he wrote his latest song, he's practiced enough to not look so smug, but there is a minute tugging on his lips.

"Well," he says, teeth sharp around his words selected with care, "every artist needs a muse."

Everything's coming all at once – the flashing billboards, the falling confetti, clusters of stars tossed by the handful into the deep velvet sky.

Rebekah's beaming on stage, waving at anyone and everyone, Louder than Bells doing a number with Bonnie Bennett to ring in the new year. If the ball were to drop right on them, they'd be right at home. They wave back from the stands, fists pumping furiously.

"What's that on your wrist?" Elijah calls to Klaus over the roar.

"Oh, nothing," his brother says, buttoning his sleeves against the cold. "Just a little luck."

"We don't need luck!" Kol hollers and catches them in a rough headlock, ridiculous hat on his head, his feet caught up in a maddening little dance. "It's New Year's Eve! Fuck you, New York—you're fucking fantastic!"

The camera pans to them then, after a sweep of the Square—and Elijah smiles wryly at the thought of Finn going silently mad over yet another on-air faux pas, but that's… normal. What isn't normal is how he hasn't heard Klaus grumble and snarl since they got back last month. Not that he minds, but it's strange, this turn of events. Almost like someone's swapped his siblings out in their sleep and replaced them with highly-detailed, highly-functioning versions of themselves.

Even Kol has stopped ordering whoopee cushions in bulk.

Odd.

He shakes his head laughing lightly; this time of year always did get him nostalgic. "If Henrik were here he'd be old enough to join us."

"A little too Hansen, don't you think?" Kol wrinkles his nose, the festivities a feast to him, all that sweat and confetti and glitter-torn throats. "Besides, he was more into wolves."

"And I think he'd be pleased enough with being our namesake," Klaus continues. His eyes are a low burn trained right on stage, never leaving. "What's all this talk about people joining us, anyway?"

Elijah shrugs, tilts his jaw to where Caroline's pulling Rebekah towards her, voices charged with the glitz of the night, a psychedelic confetti snow globe. "We're short one member."

"We'll be fine. Unless you want Saltzman," Klaus snorts.

Saltzman comes barreling over the pens headfirst, surfing the crowd. The three of them exchange a look, and nothing more is said of it.

On TV, the screen fades to black.

—

fin

you made it to the end, yay! thank you for reading, i love you muchlys, i hope alana and i managed to FINALLY reduce melissa to a state of catatonia, and i hope you all enjoyed this.

please leave me a review if you have the time! writing this has been such a nerve-wracking experience, and i'd love to know if it was all worth it in the end. :)

p/s: are you tired of my endless fic writing yet?