wholeworldoutthere | (no subject)

Caroline isn't letting herself think, because if she thinks about where she's going, she's going to start thinking about other people, and she doesn't want to think about other people. Because if she thinks about other people, she's going to stop, and she honestly feels like this is good.

Because what has he done, or said, or anything that they haven't done? That's the problem. It's all sides and politics, and she's done it all before, she's done it in high school and with her parents and with Matt and Tyler and with Bonnie and Elena, and even with Stefan and Damon, and she sort of wants to be done, and there's this guy that for some reason thinks she hung the moon in the sky, and maybe she wants to talk to him and kiss him and let him fancy her, whatever that means. Maybe it's her story, instead of Elena's cyclical do I or don't I about the two guys who love her more than anything in the world.

So she holds his hand, and they walk slow, not talking, her leaning against him, her eyes not closed but it's close, and it's sort of like the things you see in movies, but when he turns she just smiles, and it's real and not fake. Because she's not letting herself be nervous yet, even though she would be later. She bites her lips together when he asks her about a drink, and she thinks for a second. "Yeah. Yeah, I think that would be nice." And when he goes to get it, she sits on the edge of his bed with a sort of flump that makes her skirt rustle, and she's slipping out of her shoes and tucking her feet under her, forcing herself not to just look around his room even though she's curious.

"Anything in particular you'd like me to endeavour to get out of the replicator?" Klaus inquires as she pulls back to sit, and he's headed for the machine and he can still feel the way her hair tickled his face, and the warmth of her hand in his.

His room is simple enough, the only personal touches drawings of his siblings he's pinned above the desk, except Finn is in none of them. Finn is the drawings scattered all over the desk, however, because that's part of his mourning process, apparently, but he can't have him up on the wall, staring at him and asking why he wasn't there, and where was he, and how he could let it happen. It's bloody stupid, because Finn was ready to sacrifice himself, and would not be mad at Klaus for that, but it's really the guilt he feels he puts in his brother's mouth.

She sees the drawings, and she's staring at them when he asks her, and she blinks, because in her head, that was done. Ask, get whatever it gives out, because she's amazed that he sees so many little things in people, that he gets those details always so correct when even they don't recognize them. "Uh- Whatever? I was drinking gin at the party."

She leans her chin on her shoulder as she looks at him, her voice low. "You should draw more," she says quietly, because they're beautiful, all of them, and all she can think is that she and Rebekah actually seemed like they were getting along, and she doesn't know why she says it, but-- "She got away. Just so you know. When everything happened with Mr. Saltzman, she got away and is okay."

There isn't enough paper, he's about to tell her, and he hasn't found any canvases or paints and he needs to look for some next time the station docks, but then she speaks up again, and he has a glass in his hand which he is pretty sure is nothing like gin, even if it is blue and makes him think of Bombay Sapphire, and when he smells it it's far too tart for gin, and she's telling him about Rebekkah, or Elena, he isn't even sure.

"Who did?" he asks, aiming for carefree and, by his standards, remarkably failing, before he tries the replicator again. This time he gets a glass of something smelling far too much like scotch to be anything else, and he shifts it to his other hand, holding both glasses in it, to make room for a third attempt. This time it's a whitish, yellowish drink, a lot like pastis or white absinth once they're fixed, but it smells more like gin and tonic than anything else he's had so far.

He brings back the glasses, holds them out to her. "Your pick."

She takes the blue one, and even though she makes a face when she drinks it, it's a good face, just that it's a little sour. "Your sister," she says then, and she licks her lips. "We did the Decade Dance together, she helped plan it, and we were cleaning up, and she got away."

She doesn't continue, doesn't tell him that's when Alaric snapped her neck, but she shrugs a shoulder. "Just so you know, I guess." She smiles, and it's small but real, and she's sort of curling up into herself but it's not because she's self conscious, it's actually because she's comfortable - because when she's not, she's on and big and moving, but right now - when you get down to it, she wants to be a homebody and not have to be on eighteen committees and maybe just wear some sweats and sit on the couch with some ice cream.

"You danced with me. I was mad," she said, frowning. "Big surprise."

Klaus abandons the pastis-looking gin and tonic and keeps the scotch for himself as he sits down beside her, listening to her tale, looking at her fingers around her glass rather than into her face, until she says that last bit, and he has to smile a little, looking up at her. "Sounds familiar."

He's very good at making her mad, it turns out, but now it's not what he's after (it rarely is, as a matter of fact), and he reaches out to push a strand of hair back from her face, fingers brushing her cheek again. "Thank you. For telling me."

If Alaric ever sets foot on this station, he is a dead man.

"I figured it matters," she said quietly. "It's his ring. It made him crazy." She's gripping the glass a little too tightly, because Alaric scares her, because she doesn't know if she'll ever forget it and what he did, and she doesn't want to talk about it. "And the stake thing, he's got this huge metal- I don't know." She shrugs, and maybe she turned her face toward his hand when he moves her hair. "But- but it's okay now, so-" So they could talk about other things, because she need way more to drink before she talks about any of it, about anything bad, because she doesn't want to spoil this.

"Tell me something about you. Anything, it doesn't matter what." Her eyes find his, and she's okay with talking instead of him kissing her again. Maybe this was what friends did, even if he didn't admit it.

"I met Da Vinci once," he tells her, because he doesn't want to ruin the night either, and maybe in a little while, but for now it's enough to know that Rebekkah is safe, Kol and Elijah probably as well, or she would have said, since she told him about Finn.

"He was still very young, an apprentice to Verrocchio. He was helping him paint the Baptism of Christ, and his talent was already obvious," he goes on, a small smile on his lips as he thinks back on that time in Florence. Oh, how he had enjoyed the Renaissance.

She laughs a weird sort of laugh, looking down at her glass. "I stopped understanding what you said at Da Vinci," she says, and it's said with a sort of shrug, because she's not like him. She doesn't know art, and who Verrocchio is, and she wonders if it's because he lived it, or because she's stupid or because or something else. She doesn't just stop, though, she steps out on a limb, and she swallows hard. "Who was-" and she butchers the pronunciation, Vero-chio but she wants to know, and she's shifting so she can pull up her knees in front of her, her toes tucked under his leg because they're cold and it's weirdly intimate but she doesn't really think about it.

"Andrea del Verrochio," he tells her with a smile, and he doesn't mind explaining in the least. She's eighteen, and she's had so little time and seen so little of the world. It's a pleasure explaining, and he puts his glass down and pulls his communicator out of his jacket's inside pocket. "He was a Florentin artist, and his workshop was famous in all of Italy, and beyond its borders. Da Vinci was his apprentice for a while, as well other future masters."

He is glad to find that the Cortex is cooperating, this time, and he pulls up a picture of The Baptism of Christ. "Here, that's the one they were working on."

She moves without thinking, shifting so she's sort of pressed against his side, sort of would have her legs across his lap if he'd let her, but she's pulling in a breath, leaning close to look at it. "He looks so... sad," she says, and she shakes her head slightly. She doesn't know if she likes it, but she knows it's something, and she doesn't know what she thinks about it. "You saw them painting this?" She takes another swallow of her drink, and sighs, and she's-

Okay, so she's cuddling against his arm, and maybe she's just... maybe she just is doing that. "So you just- you love art, huh? I don't really- I mean, I guess it's pretty, and there's a lot of stuff to know, I guess? I don't... know, that stuff.' It's a quiet confession, and she's shrugging again, and the swallow of blue-something is a little too big for her to just be totally okay, but it's maybe alright to let herself slip a little. Because even if he thinks she's not smart, it's not like she's ever made herself sound like a brain trust, and she's letting him teach her. "Do you believe in God?" It's a sort of random question, but she's looking at the picture, not at him as she asks it.

It's the most natural thing to raise his arms so she can move her legs in across his lap, and the hand that's not holding the communicator comes to rest on one of her ankles, idly, and lightly, and he barely even realises he's done it before he has, and then he's not going to move it away unless she has a problem with it.

"I don't know," he answers her question, turning his head to look at her, at her profile as she looks at the picture, letting her have her fill of it. "Which I suppose makes it a no. I wasn't raised to believe in God, but in many gods, and..." He shrugs, and his thumb brushes the soft skin of her ankle for a second as his gaze draws back to the picture of the painting. "I'd rather believe in life, and beauty."

"I stopped," she said quietly, still looking at the picture instead of him. "I used to, I used to go to church and everything, but, I mean, there's no way that God could be as good as people believe he is. Like. there's these people, right? And they say the bad stuff is God testing you, it's some crap about you never getting more than you can handle and it's shit. All of it." She drains her glass with a wince, and nods like That's done, and she shifts away from his hand only after his thumb moves, not before- not because she doesn't like him touching her, but because it tickles.

"I don't think my mom knows. That I think it's a bunch of crap, or anything, which is weird. Because she's the sheriff, right? So she's seen it all, and like, people - what horrible people do, and, you know-" She looks at him, and she just says it like it's an undisputable fact. "I have had a lot of shit happen to me in the last year. Like, way more than a normal person." She nods, and then huffs out a breath, like she's gotten something off her chest, and she nods at the gin.... thing. "Pass it. And tell me something else."

Edited (spelling) 2012-06-05 17:29 (UTC)