brightestlight | (no subject)

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klaus mikaelson

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Caroline wasn't really sure exactly how her life had become one giant whirlwind of drama. She was still working on figuring it out - on hashing out the whys and whatfors and exactly what all had happened over the last week, and she didn't have words for a lot of it; they'd just moved, and there wasn't really anything else besides that. They'd moved spaces, they'd moved on, she'd changed sort of as a person.

She'd managed to avoid talking about most of the things that'd been bothering her, but she and Klaus had somehow found a good steady state that worked well between them - it was an excellent sort of balance, where neither of them discussed what'd come up when everything'd been settled, but they both moved on with their lives.

That was, until today. Until she'd actually talked to Logan, until he'd told her to break up with Klaus, and until he'd called him a freakshow. Until she'd talked to Erik.

But then there was that tiny bee-dle-beep from her communicator, and it was Klaus, telling her to meet him by the inventory room.

Two seconds. Deep breaths, in and out, because she didn't want to drag him into this, not until she'd figured out her own mind, but then she squared her shoulders and it was a short walk and a turbolift before she walked towards where he'd asked her to meet him. "I'm here," she said the open air - she didn't see him yet, but she knew he'd hear her.

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Caroline announced her presence before walking into view, so Klaus pushed off the wall he had been leaning against, hands in his pockets, and waited for her to arrive. "Hello, love," he told her with a half-smile. "I have a surprise."

A surprise which was not at all a late Valentine's day gift, because Klaus did not do those.

Her brows rise. "A surprise?" It's been long enough since she'd had one of those, she's sort of wary.

"What is it?" She tips her head to one side, listening just to see if it was something she could hear, and shakes her head when it's not. It's just the hum of the station that's always there. She can't stop the way her lips curve into a smile when his does, and she is so very resolutely Not Thinking About Anything Bad.

She takes a step forward so that she's closer, before she looks around. Whatever it was, she'd assume he'd be able to see it, but there wasn't really anything here that could be a surprise - there wasn't anything she really wanted that she couldn't get herself, unless it was the art stuff he did, but even that wasn't really in the 'surprise' category.

"If I told you..." Klaus doesn't finish the statement, because it's obvious enough - it wouldn't be a surprise anymore - and instead he steps towards the door to the Storage Room, that until that e-mail he received had stayed stubbornly shut for him. He flashes his communicator across the pad, and the door slides open.

He looks back at Caroline, still smiling, and holds a hand out to her.

"... Then it wouldn't be a surprise," she says with a laugh, and then her brows furrow as he moves closer to the room, before surprise takes over. "You can get your stuff?" Her fingers twine with his, and she's only pulled short when he stops. "That's great! Why? How? I mean, why and how are pretty much the big questions." She's heard a million times that everything's just in here, and it is, clear boxes with numbers on the front, with weird handles. "I heard you can't take out anybody else's stuff," she says, and it's distracted and sort of overwhelmed, and she's had a really weird day. "Do you just have access now?"

That's when she focuses on him, when she's still holding his hand but she's not looking at the room because it's sort of too much even though she knows that it's gotta be around here somewhere, AF256Δ - the communicator told her that the weird triangle thing was Delta, and she's got the number memorized before she realised that getting back her ring was a lost cause.

Instead of answering with words, Klaus draws her inside the first room. Actions speak a lot louder than words, and he has no problem being quiet, not even faced with Caroline's inability. He's simply smiling at her as the door slides shut behind them, and they're scanned, he assumes, before the other door opens, and he's still just watching her face, because he wants to read all the emotions there as she realises that she's in, that she can go and get her ring.

She doesn't get it - she thinks it's just his stuff, which is why she's glad but she's not like, over the moon. "Someday I'll get mine," she says, looking back at him. "And then, you and I? Need to find a beach." One that's preferably far away from people, if she has her way. She sort of wants to find her box and open it, to see her stuff, but she knows it'll be too hard to just not be able to take it with you.

"How'd you get it?" She asks it softly, and she's still holding his hand, but she's come around so that she's looking up at him.

"Caroline, love," Klaus tells her, as he pulls her with him into the storage room, and it's huge, and very much like the end of that film with the archaeologist, isn't it. Raiders of the Lost Ark, the famed Indiana Jones the geek so very much loves. "When your favourite boyscout and the geek got their in, Mystique tried to get in," he tells her, like one tells a story, as they walk towards the closest shelves. "The antechamber spat her right back out."

Now it's supposed to click for her, and he's back to looking at her, because he wants to see her figure it out.

Normally, maybe, she'd figure it out. Today, though, isn't a normal day, and while she's listening - of course she's listening, she's really listening, but still half her brain's thinking about freakshow, and she knows this is a surprise and she doesn't get what he must have had with him that it's a surprise for her, but that's all she thinks.

"I know," she says, and she's not about to let go of his hand, but she's looking at this whole place, her head tipped back. "How are you going to find your box? There's so many." Her brows furrowed. "And you got in. How did you get in?"

"The antechamber spat her right back out, and you're in here with me," Klaus spells it out a little further, and he's still watching her face with a half-smile that's just waiting for her reaction to bloom. He'll explain how it happened later. This, first. Her joy, first.

Caroline nods, and then just... stops. Her brows furrow. And then, her heart down into her stomach, she pulls in a breath. "I'm in here."

That's all she says at first.

Then, there it is. Her eyes go wide, and she finally lets go of his hand just to turn to face him. "You're kidding."

"You're standing right here, and we're not on Level 5," Klaus points out, the half-smile slightly wider for the look on her face. Level 5, where there is the only holodeck available to them, and he's certain there's a beach program in there somewhere. It won't require her wearing her ring, but it's the thought that counts, isn't that what they always say.

She doesn't explain, she just moves and the way she kisses him... it only lasts for a second but she actually pulled him closer by the beltloops of his jeans before she pulls away, and there it is, the bright, happy smile that's been missing for what seems like months.

"Help me find it?" She says it all in a rush, and she's already staring at boxes, pulling him along (she's caught his hand again) as she's searching. A1, A5, A8... AA. And then through the letters, to AF, and she's gripping his hand so tightly that it actually makes her fingers ache.

There it is, and his own smile finally stretches wider, one of the smiles so few people ever get from him, and they're going as fast as they can go, looking for her box, because his can wait. There ought to be nothing in it that matters all that much. He knows the number they're looking for from the slip of paper in the pocket of his jeans, that he found when he moved them to Level 5; he didn't know she'd learned it by heart.

"There," he spots it, and has it off the shelf and held out to her in a second. His fingers ache slightly from her grip, but he hardly cares.

She opens it while he holds it, and there's her clothes and she can only think of home for a split second. There's her clothes - neatly folded, bra, underpants, but there, sitting on top of the clothes, is a stack of things. Twenty bucks. Her cellphone, long dead, and she realises she can see pictures of the people she's missed if they can figure out how to wrangle a USB charger.

But way more important than that, way more important than anything, is the ring. It's the ring that Bonnie spelled for her, the ring that makes her be able to be normal - and she grabs it, and puts it on, and she looks up at him. There's so many emotions there - joy and thankfulness and happiness that she takes the box and sets it back on the shelf, and pulls him down for another kiss, unable to stop smiling against his lips. She hasn't been able to stop smiling since she realised what he meant by bringing her here, and she's not about to stop now.

Klaus moves willingly into that kiss, stepping straight into her space as their lips meet, and it's just one step until she's backed against the shelves, one of his hands on the side of her neck, the other on her hip, as he kisses the joy in her until they're both smiling too much to keep kissing very much at all.

"Like your surprise?"

Her forehead's touching his as he asks, and she kisses him one more time before she says anything. "Yeah. I like my surprise." She's still beaming, and then she teases, "I mean, I don't know what I'm going to do with twenty bucks, but..."

And then she laughs, and it's been such a long time since she's smiled like this, since she's actually laughed - everything's been pins and needles and changes and crisis after crisis and now she's just pulling him closer (by his belt-loops, again, it's a weird sort of habit that she's only doing now because... because, it's something with the happiness.)

"Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are, for the record, the best."

"I am, for the record, very lucky," Klaus points out, but his smile simply won't fade back to his usual style of smile, not when she's in this mood, and he's missed it. It washes some of the weariness out of him. It's life, that light inside her, and it's been dimmed for too long.

"But I'll take any undeserved credit," he adds, because better him than their jailers, and because her mood is infectious. He brushes back a lock of her hair, his eyes dancing over her face, he wants to remember the way she looks right now, forever. He'll draw it, later. For now, he leans in and kisses her again.

She's still smiling, and she shakes her head, because no matter what anyone says - no matter what anyone says, she isn't changing her mind. "You did this for me," she said, and her voice is quiet, and she leans up on her tiptoes. "You did this-" And then she kisses him, and it's with her arms around his neck, pulling him closer even though it just presses her more against the shelves.

There really isn't much he's actually done, but Klaus is very happy to be prevented from pointing it out quite so pleasantly. The kiss grows in heat fueled by joy, his body flush against hers as he traps her against the shelves, hand at her neck shifting her head up slightly so he can deepen the kiss, and he's missed the brilliant life in her so much that if she doesn't stop him, they're going to be shagging right here against the shelves in very little time. His kiss, at least, makes it quite clear that that's what he has in mind.

She does stop him, with another smile against his lips, and she pulls back just a little. "We should go somewhere." She smiles even wider. "You get your stuff, and I'll get my stuff, and we should go somewhere." Her eyes searched his. "Anywhere. The holodeck can take us anywhere, and we should go."

She's excited, and happy, and she's got her ring, and yes, they're likely to end up in bed sooner than later (or not a bed, as the case may be), but she's got so many thoughts and feelings that they're all bubbling up for her.

Klaus huffs out a laugh that's half a groan, making no effort to hide that he would have terribly liked not to go anywhere for the next short while. Because knowing Caroline, and the fact that they can't control the holodeck's lock, they're not likely to be indulging in this type of activity in there either.

"Alright," he says, after a bit, a smile still dangling at the corner of his lips, and he reluctantly pulls back. "Let me go get my things." He trails his hand down her arm as he moves away, reluctant to stop touching her, but eventually he does, and is gone to get his box of things.

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