wholeworldoutthere | (no subject)

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)

"You're quite the bossy thing," he points out, with an amused smile that says he doesn't mind it - that says he likes it, in fact, and he leans over and grabs the third glass, hands it to her, and puts the communicator down on the bed behind them, leaning back on the one hand, resting his other on her ankle once again - without moving, no tickling, he got it.

"What do you want to know? Any particular interest?" He could keep on talking about art all night long, or the Pantheon he was raised to fear, or anything she likes, really. As long as she keeps talking, and if he doesn't actually answer what she's just told him, and if he makes no comment about how fast she's drinking the alcohol, it's because she is quite the bossy thing, and he won't push. They have time. They have so much time.

She asks him something she shouldn't, because she wants too, because she doesn't want to think about why she shouldn't ask him. "Tell me about a ball," she says, and then- 'Who did you go with?" She wants to ask if she's the only one he's fancied in the last couple of years, because it'll make her feel special - but she's scared to know the answer, because she hates it when she's wrong, and she doesn't want to know if she's in a line of blondes, or if it's because she looks like Rebekkah because that would be creepy, and she's thought about it. When he drew her the picture of the horse, since then, she's been trying to figure out why.

"Was she pretty? Did she have a nice dress?" She pauses, and then- "Or- I mean, you can tell me whatever you want. About Paris, maybe? And then you can ask me something, and I promise I'll answer. Whatever you want." Because it's not so much as she wants to tell, as it is that she wants to know what he'll ask.

He chuckles softly at her babble there, the way she keeps on talking because there's so much inside her, or that's what he thinks it is, anyway. "I can tell you about a ball in Paris," he offers, with a half smile, and leans over to grab his own drink, forsaking her ankle for it.

"1889, in celebration of the building of the Eiffel Tower - it was the tallest man-made structure in the world, at the time. Take the effect it still has on people now, and multiply it by ten. It was a feat." He took a sip of scotch, appreciating it even more than he had the whiskey at the party. "Rebekkah was sweet on a wealthy young man with a beautiful sister, and we all went together. She was called - Séverine. She was the quietest little thing, as proper as it got, but she could not stop staring out the window at the Eiffel Tower. We ended up ditching the ball and sneaking up the tower."

Caroline sighs, and it's a wistful sigh, but then her brows furrow. "Hold on, didn't the French people think it was like, super ugly or something, and get way mad at the guy who made it? Hypocrites." She's still curled against him, and she only takes a sip of her drink, because whatever she was drinking before, it's sort of hitting her a little harder than she'd planned. "Did you like her?" She said it quietly, and she doesn't mean not dislike, but if he Liked her, with a capital L. "She sounds like something out of a fairy tale. I guess the whole thing does, really." She pauses, and her brows furrow. 'It's your turn to ask. And yes, I am bossy."

Klaus laughs again, and looks at her. "Do you want your answers, or do you want my question?" He's not even sure what his question is going to be, but he'll think of something.

"Both. All of them." She laughs when he does, and it's the first time in a while, and she hides her face against his shoulder as she laughs, before she shakes her head. "Answers first, then question. I want to know what you want to know about me." She's thinking about kissing him again, and she's so not doing that right now, but she's thinking about it, and that's why she takes another swallow of her gin-something, but then she's leaning across him, half in front of him to put it back on the table before she moves back to where she was, because she's done. "The blue thing was really strong," she says in explanation, and she's looking at him expectantly now.

The purse of his lips in answer to that says it all - that she doesn't have to justify herself to him, really, that she drinks what she wants and he has no issues with it. It's not his place and, as far as he's concerned, it's not much of anyone's place, not in this kind of setting.

"Nothing's ever as clear-cut as all that, and while some of the French opposed the project, it would never have been sanctioned if all of them did," Klaus answers her first, easiest question. And then there is the harder question, because he isn't sure how she might take anything he says. When in doubt, tell the simple truth. "She was beautiful, and she had a love for metalworking that was rare in women of the time." It isn't a yes, and it isn't supposed to be a yes, not if Caroline is asking if he liked Séverine like he likes her.

She makes a face at him when he makes a face at her, and she wasn't explaining why she's drinking or not drinking, but why she's climbing over him like a little kid, and she just sighs, and she listens to him as he explains. It makes sense, and she knows it makes sense, and that's why she nods and listens and she feels warm, but she's just still curled up against him, even when he talks about how beautiful this girl looks, and it's weird but in her head, the girl she pictures looks like Elena, and she just lets her brain go. "Rare of women in general, I think. I mean, it's not like you say welder and think of a woman." She shrugs, and she's watching him expectantly, because she's not going to tell him to ask again, and if he doesn't want to do it, he's going to need to say so.

He doesn't mind doing it, not at all, but he has to think of a question worth asking. Except she's promised to answer, and he doesn't want to force her to answer something she isn't ready to, so he's not going to ask any of the loaded questions.

"What did you want to be when you were a kid?" he asks, with a half-smile, because that's the perfect sort of question for that kind of time.

It's clear from her fact that she thinks it's a cop out, but she sort of shrugs. "Well, it took me til I was seven to figure out that being a princess isn't a job. And then I wanted to be a teacher for a little while, and then-" She shrugged, because that's sort of where she stops thinking about herself as a kid, and her parent's divorce sort of catapulted her into being a teenager super early.

"And I wanted to be a horse trainer, even though I didn't want to be a jockey. Which is weird." She bites her lip, and she just asks not because she wants to talk about what she says but because she's got so many questions, and she asks him not really because she wants to know about him, but because she wants to know for her. "How many times have you been to college?"

Because if he can fake his way in because he's a billion years old that means she can get in even if she doesn't have the grades for it, and after Caroline Forbes is supposed to be ninety or something and she doesn't have a social security number anymore.

The look on her face when he asks his question makes him smile again, and almost laugh, ducking his head slightly in amusement.

"Do you mean how many times have I graduated, or how many times have I attended lectures?" Klaus asks. "I've never graduated." He never saw the point, really, not when what he was interested in was art and art history and he had lived a lot of the art history. Never mind the fact that he could have compelled his way into graduating anything. "But I've regularly sneaked into lectures. Do you want to go?"

"Of course I want to go," and the way she says it, it's clear that it's not of course I want a pony, it's that she wants to go, she's always wanted to go, and she didn't really think that she'd get to go. She's dead, she's never left Mystic Falls and what, she's going to leave Elena and Bonnie and her mom behind when she could get eaten tomorrow? And that's if she even lives until then, if she makes it to graduation and doesn't end up working at some dead-end job like the Grill or something and before she was a vampire she'd hoped that her million extra curriculars would make up for her grades and now she's dead.

"I want to be normal," she says, and it's a whisper, and she knows it's stupid, she knows it's all stupid, and she's pulling away from him, pulling away so she can get up. "I'm cold," she says abruptly, finally looking at him because she hasn't until now, and she knows there's not a thermostat, but she's just asking him o say something to him. "Do you have a sweatshirt or a coat or something?"

Normal. That's one thing Klaus has never dreamed of being, or wanted to be for that matter. Normal is for other people, and even before his mother did what she did, he wasn't normal. He never has been, and there's no reason he should ever start.

But then Caroline is pulling away from him and he's confused because for once he hasn't done anything, but the glass he'd been bringing to his lips he sets back down on the table instead, and he stands and takes off his jacket to wrap it around her. "What's wrong, love?" he asks quietly as he does just that, his eyes on hers.

"I wouldn't have gotten into college," she says with that sort of half-shrug that says ignore this, not that it doesn't matter. "And then I died, and what, I can't get in with my grades and my name and who knows if I'm even going to make it to graduation? I'm on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere and then- everybody tries to kill me, and I'm just-" And she says what she shouldn't, what he's said to her, and it hurt that he said it, and that she took it to heart. "I'm collateral damage. I'm not Elena, I'm not- I'm eighteen, and I'm not going to get to college, and I don't know if I should like, get a job- I mean, what job can I get? What can I do?"

She shrugs then, and she's trying not to be morose, she's trying not to be like this, but she's scared and she knows it's true because it's always been true, it seems like. "So maybe in eighty years, I'll what, scam myself into school? But I can't just- I can't go. Oops, sorry! Your roommate's a vampire with a creepy intense vampire boyfriend and she eats blood and ps, if she ever takes off her jewelry she'll fry into a crisp. And what's in the minifridge? Oh, right, blood.."

By the time she trails off he's smiling, and he can't help it, and he's not mocking her, not at all, he's smiling because, well - "You just called me your boyfriend."

He has to point it out, he does, even if she might be about to storm off. It's alright, because she said it and he hadn't even asked for it, he's not even sure of the word boyfriend. It's so very modern, and he's never had the occasion of applying it to himself before.