Note: Decided to try this because of timeliness. Turns out I'm the least timely writer ever. Thought for a long time whether this should be a little smutty or not. Turns out that it's the most stupid question I've ever asked myself. So happy belated new year and happy belated Klaroline anniversary. (And now happy Klaropocalypse 2014!)

Prompt 107: New Year's

It starts with a lie.

"I came here for the party." Caroline can't help but say this with a tilt of the head and looks up at him through the dark gloss of her lashes. "Not to keep tabs on you."

Her hands dangle over the balcony's burnished grilles. The horizon is blasted with flickering night life, pulsing seasonal home lights and the steady amber of street lamps. She'd been awestruck with the view of the city, his city, from all the way up here, but had only let her breath hitch for a tenth of a second before she turned to ask about her room.

"But you're here." Here, now, in the same space, inhaling the same air. At arm's length, but so very careful to mind the physical contact and avoid grazing the fine wrinkles of his jacket. Klaus' eyes meet hers, and she feels an age old spark crackle in her bones. "By your own volition."

She shakes her head, letting out a soft laugh. Clasps her hands, because what he says is true, and she can barely face it. "Maybe I just wanted to see if I could take you for your word. That this place is as amazing as you make it out to be."

The dimple in his smile is arresting. "And your verdict?"

Real curiosity is glimmering in his blue irises, she realises. The wide-eyed innocence of it is so convincing that she almost gives an immediate reply, but she remembers it – the gaze that rifles through her soul and tries to pin the answer down, linked to an anticipation of what she might feed him. The gaze that thinly masks the innate fear of bruising rejection that only she can deliver with such scarring aplomb. His tell-all, tell-me gaze.

"I don't know." She indulges in one last glimpse of the French Quarter before she turns her back on it, fully aware that it'll unsettle him to not know either. "I'm only here for the party. Ask me again after."

That's when the lie generates a hope.

Two things that Caroline truly loves; champagne, and the fact that it comes for free. She fishes glass after glass from the black disc trays of waiters who pass her by, downing them like a bride at a bachelorette party. One, two, three, bubbly sailing on her tongue and radiating in her laugh.

Marcel, all teeth and joyful crescent eyes, strides over with a snifter in hand, caramel cognac swirling. "I heard you're the one to call to make a new year party legendary."

She grins. "You heard right."

"And where's your partner?"

By partner, she assumes he means Klaus, because he's the one who sent her the invitation. Caroline lightly tips her flute in response instead. "Right here," she indicates her drink, and puts forward a quiet toast of courtesy with a clink. "Keeps me happy."

"Well you'd better hold on to it tight," he takes a mild sip. Spotlights shut off, blue lights come on. The familiar snare of a song slithers into the room and everyone raises their glasses with a resounding cheer. "Get ready to dance."

Marcel slips away to resume mingling, but leaves Caroline thinking about the dancing. Not the usual palm-kissing, calculated waltzes of Mystic Falls with its demure curtsies and string symphonies. It's the wild and liberated gyrating of loose hips, the reckless stray of fingertips, and the unwavering heartbeat bass that's going to sweep her up and throw her into the next year.

She's ready for it.

Ready because she's wearing the hottest dress she could find this side of the Pacific; long-sleeved, watercoloured florals and all legs, because she isn't just here to tell people where she's from or what she's majoring in.

This is a good song. She wants to show what she can do with it.

Caroline sets her champagne down.

"Aren't we going to share a drink first? Before you tear up the floor." She turns around, and there he is, dark blazer, crisp white shirt and brow lifted. Klaus holds two glasses of what looks like whiskey in his hands, refracting the sudden eruption of rainbow lights above them.

"I've had plenty," she says, and looks at him, his eyes, watching to see if they drop down to the curve of her waist or regard the length of her hemline. But they never shift away from her face, and she's both sort of impressed and annoyed about it.

"Just one." Just one, Caroline, it echoes in her head, his voice a deep strain over the now thundering music.

The air always settles in thicker in her lungs and the alcohol steeps harder in her veins every time they inch closer to the peak of inebriation together. And it's never just one. This, she's known many times over.

Klaus offers up a glass to her innocently, hoping she'll accept. No harm done, love, the tacit coax slips from his parted lips. She's in New Orleans. He's giving her a reason to enjoy it. Just one drink. No harm done.

"Give," she says, reaching out with her fingers.

They brush against his hand briefly before wrapping around cold glass, pulling his line of sight downward. It's the touch that gets his attention, she notes, shortly before she feels his stare travel up her body in one long stroke - from her hand to her ankles, to her knees, her thighs, over her torso, up the line of her neck, and finally resting on her mouth. Static. All she feels is static, buzzing across her shoulders and descending into her abdomen.

It's hard for her not to like it.

Knocking the edge of her glass with his, Caroline throws her drink back like a champ.

Klaus, on the other hand, takes his time. He brings up his cup to take long, languid sips, keeping a placid smile on his face. Hinting of things to come, like a promise steadily unravelling itself until the countdown clock resets.

It piques her curiosity. What would a new year with Klaus be like? What would he ask of himself? Would he ask anything of her?

Very curious indeed.

Caroline turns away, feigning disinterest, to remind him that he's got to try much harder than a mere look of longing to lure her in. He can do better than that. He has to do better than that. A rub of the arm or the stolen graze on the knee isn't going to cut it, even if she may find it perfectly acceptable for him to use the moves as a prelude to his pursuit of her.

And just like that, the hope quietly morphs into a want.

The music starts to die down at ten minutes to midnight. Marcel climbs up the stage and with arms wide open, invites everyone to brace themselves, grab a girl, grab a guy, find a friend, watch the clock.

Staying away from the stage had been what both she and Klaus agreed on – they wanted to avoid being packed in by the hundred plus eager bodies that sought to crash into each other in celebratory embrace when the timer hits zero.

Or rather, she'd wanted to give him an opening and see if he'd take it.

So now they're on the second floor. Somewhere private, and cordoned off for Very Important Persons such as herself in this very moment. Caroline experiences a tiny sense of sovereignty observing the bustle from up high, peering downward at the mixed mass of vampires and people pressing closer and closer towards the direction of the host. She spots quickly disappearing little spaces of where they might have squeezed into had they remained downstairs, and feels every inch more grateful to be above it all, able to spread her arms and kick off her heels after the fancy footwork she'd been up to earlier.

Two minutes left. Having given up on glasses altogether, Klaus is clutching their bottle of bubbly by the neck, taking deep swigs from it.

"I take it that you're having a good time." There's a slight lilt to his accent, awkward as a voice crack, and it makes her want to erupt into peals of laughter. She stops herself from doing it, pressing her mouth against the back of her forearm because it'll be way too loud, too obvious that this sixth bottle is going to be the one to do her in. Vampires are supposed to be able to drink, damn it.

The reply rolls off her tongue in the laziest possible manner. "And what if I am?"

Klaus pauses, holding the champagne out to her. "It means that you like New Orleans."

Caroline accepts the bottle. Practically snatches it. "And so what if I do?"

Both of his brows raise at her. Not a confession, but not a denial either.

One minute.

"You could stay."

First, she stares, not even registering the full meaning of what he's saying. He's got great hair tonight, she thinks. Good for a tangle. The peep of collarbone that's hidden by his shirt collar looks like it could use a good rub.

Caroline drinks, gulping, trying not to seem like she's undressing him with her eyes - she really isn't, she swears - when she's just studying the bits of him that she's never paid much attention to. How he wears his belt. The lobes of his ears. The way his thumbs rest idly by his sides.

Ambient chatter down below begins to dissolve into unified chanting. They're counting, slow and steady, and oop - that's right, he was talking to her.

"I could stay," she mumbles, not agreeing, but just to get a sense of what it entails. It doesn't sound so bad.

A chorus of wild cheering breaks out and uncoordinated popping preempts the rain of confetti.

"Oh," she smiles, eyes gleaming at the toasting and hugging and laughing. Caroline looks expectantly to her right, uncertain about the moment. "You're just gonna stand there." She isn't sure if this is a question or a statement.

He takes a small step closer. "What else would you have me do?"

Caroline isn't about to open her mouth and list down the things she might want from him. Not that she has a list, but the spectre of possibilities loom over her head in a shapeless cloud, laced with ideas and scenarios she'd previously pondered. What would she have him do?

It's hunched at the very front of her mind like a caged monster rattling its confines. On one hand, a blaring optimist yells, Come on, Caroline, it's new year, new connections, new beginnings, a whole new slew of firsts that are supposed to set the tone for the rest of your ever-changing life.

But the other part of her tells her not to care. There are other days. New year doesn't change a thing.

Caroline waits patiently for him to do something. Anything. He doesn't have to, but the opportunity has presented itself and the window is narrowing.

Then his hand extends. Her blood runs hot for a quick second, until she realises that he's taking the bottle from her and nothing else.

Stunned, she presses her lips into a thin line. There's your answer. Just not meant to be.

"Happy new year, Caroline," says Klaus, tipping the bottle back, never tearing his eyes away from her.

She can't explain why his gentle wish unnerves her, but it does. It swallows the space they stand in like a great big vacuum, sucking all the noise of the world out and leaving them alone (leaving her alone with him), prying loose every wretched feeling she has about him lodged in her stubborn gut.

"...Happy new year," she responds softly, without stumbling over her words, or hinting at a welling sense of disappointment. Definitely no disappointment, Caroline repeats in her head, hoping it'll sink in and take root.

Now to leave the party before the booze makes her spit a charged phrase or two about Klaus and his apparent selective aversion to social convention. She's rejected everything he's thrown at her after all. It shouldn't come as a surprise that he hasn't… engaged.

The hybrid moves forward to accompany her out, but she waves him away.

"I think I want to be alone," she half-slurs, with every vessel in her body screaming the opposite for some peculiar reason.

A flash of confusion crosses his features, but he lets her go without argument. This somehow also increases her discontent - he's so goddamn passive, she complains inwardly - but that's where she stops.

Caroline doesn't want to make it seem like she cares about why Klaus never kissed her on New Year's day.

She fails. Miserably.

It's past noon and she hasn't left the bed. The sheer extent of how much nothing happened bothers her, and it's stupid, completely, unnecessarily stupid, how it shackles her. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter, because she's only here for the party, and now the party's over.

So when he knocks on her door wearing his greeting on his face and carrying the shoes she left behind last night, she closes her eyes and tells herself that it does not matter.

It doesn't work.

Caroline climbs out of the bed, in rumpled shorts and a loose tank. Sees his eyes, not looking at the bare cream of her legs but looking back into her own. She denies his invitation to take a walk outside, where people can see them together and mistake them for an actual couple. Which they aren't, obviously, because actual couples knock elbows and they sometimes hold hands, and indulge in the occasional public kiss. Even on new year's day.

Stop it.

She sends him away again, physically pushing him out of her room. Gives him another chance to go for it at the door, another test, fingers itching and itching and biting into her palms when he looks longingly at her and doesn't do anything.

Caroline slams the door in his face, not feeling bad, but not feeling better. She chooses to have a night out with Rebekah instead.

Every dash of emotional cruelty the female Mikaelson inflicts on hapless young men dancing their way to their section of the club is observed vigilantly. At first Caroline wrinkles her nose at how Rebekah ceremoniously ditches them as soon as drinks are delivered, but there's a little entertainment value in watching desperate idiots' hopes of getting lucky be crushed and blown away.

"You don't even blink," the young vamp tries not to sound too taken with the way the older girl handles them. Caroline's MO involves supplying a fake number and never calling back, but Rebekah's in-your-face rebuffs are fascinating to spectate.

"I don't need to. I just take what I want and be done with it. It's easy." Rebekah nudges a shot glass toward her and shrugs. "I thought you'd be familiar with the practice."

Caroline scoffs. "I don't hang out in bars to bait guys."

"No, you don't. You already have that at home." Caroline stiffens at the insinuation, but Rebekah adds, "With Nik," to be sure that no one's missed the message.

She doesn't bait Klaus. She could swim her way to one of the Galápagos Islands without telling anyone where she went and he'd still eventually find her.

Peering down into another drink, Caroline thumbs the edge of the glass. "I don't just take what I want." It sounds like a problem and denial rolled into one. "Things would be… different, if I did."

"I don't want to hear about it." Rebekah raises her hand like she's telekinetically stopping the words from leaving Caroline's mouth. "I don't want to hear about my brother, or you, or how you don't have the gall to tell him how you really feel about him - I don't care. I frankly couldn't give an arse about either of your feelings."

Caroline draws a breath to protest the opinion, but her wingwoman doesn't let her speak. "You're both morons who wait around for one person to do something about the other," she resumes, "And he can wait. He'll wait forever. I could build myself a castle from scratch with my bare hands on one stone a day and you wouldn't have sussed it out with him yet. Your story's never going to change and it's so boring. Both of you bore me."

A song that Rebekah adores comes on, and she offers Caroline a serpentine smile, completely ignoring the offended glare aimed at her. "I love this," she suddenly shouts, and strides over to the open space peppered with bopping people.

"I'm not a moron," trails Caroline with an ill-concealed sulk. And she isn't boring.

Nor is she going to do this forever, she supposes.

Discounting tonight, Caroline has a day left in New Orleans, and to Klaus' surprise, she tells him that she'd at least like to poke around the nooks and crannies of Bourbon Street before she goes home. The request launches him into a passionate monologue about the commotion of the night, of secret corners and hidden alcoves at the very edge of town where the patrons are as animated as they are dangerous; things and places offering adventures that he prays she'll fancy.

Wherever she wants. Whatever she wants to do. He'll take her. It's weird how bright-eyed he gets about it.

But it also makes it that much easier for her to decide that she wants to kiss him.

She'd thought a little bit about it last night. Just take what you want and be done with it. Kiss, and if it goes terribly, she can bury the awkwardness in another quart of tequila. She can go home the day after the next and cringe her memory of it into her pillow for a finite number of days. Kiss, and see what happens.

Klaus holds the door open for her, clad in the same leather jacket she refused to touch since she arrived. Refused, because touch is hazardous. It sets things off, burns down buildings and erodes resolve at the speed of sound. Refused, because it hadn't occurred to her yet that it was up to her to do the seizing, to push the button, to dip the initial toe.

You're a big girl. Nothing wrong with making the first move.

She pauses, feeling the draft of the outside blow past her cheeks, then spins to face him. "Before we go."

Revelling at how liberating it feels to claim instead of linger over the possibilities, she smiles as her thumbs slip under his jacket, journeying up towards his collarbone like soft seawater combing over resting feet in the sand. It makes him halt, pay attention, not quite asking, why are you putting your hands on me, love?

Caroline tugs him downward, slow and deliberate. The seconds are important here. Out of those seconds she will have time to inspect the full plum of his lips before she slants hers over them. It will give him time to push forward or recoil, give her time to be at peace with either result and tell herself that she will not regret this at all because she just wants to allow herself this one stupid thing, whether or not he likes it.

Silly girl. Of course he likes it. You're a glorious kisser, remember?

She closes her eyes, parts her mouth just a little, and tightens her hold on his jacket.

Take what you want.

Caroline sucks on his lower lip. Pulls back with it caught between her teeth, gentle but sharp, and she arches her body into him like she more-than-wants this.

And he has to know it, through every subsequent lave of her tongue on his mouth and each hot sigh she shocks him with. Otherwise he wouldn't be responding. He wouldn't have his hand on her back. He wouldn't be panting so hard when she finally stops kissing him, wouldn't go searching for more after she leans back to observe, and his eyes wouldn't flash amber at her in protest of it.

Klaus pulls her inside and slams the door.

Guess they'll go tomorrow, she thinks. Good, because she's aching all the way down into her womb.

She's pleased to have him press her against the door. That's something. He pulls the scarf from her neck, peels the coat from her shoulders, and licks up her neck, god, that's something good, she says into the air, much to his enjoyment. The heat of his breath on the naked spot of skin under her ear is what makes the desire grow heavy beneath his touch.

It burns so good.

Wasting no time, Klaus sneaks a hand under her dress and nudges her panties aside. He watches her mouth drop at the feel of a finger suddenly curving into her, and he's doing nothing to hide the fact that he's been starved for quite some time. I have wanted this for oh so very, very long, the carnal gaze reveals, and not just for the last three days.

Nothing else quite feeds the beast like seeing her need for him written on her face.

Caroline wants the second kiss, but he hums his refusal into her ear, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut and moan for him as he teases another finger. "Hot little vampire, all worked up for me," he nips along her jaw and shifts lower. He pulls the front of her dress and her bra cup down to roll his tongue over her nipple.

Her hand tries to reach for his jeans, but he drives his ring finger into her slick depths to stop her. (Effective.) Caroline bites her lip and bucks, twisting helplessly under him as the dark double doors rattle their disapproval. God, why won't you let me, she condenses in an anguished sound.

Klaus rests his cheek on her chest, like he's fighting to hear the steady drum of her heart. Because I want to have this moment for as long as you'll give it to me, he suggests without speaking. Then he marks her breast with his teeth, exploring the full expanse of new skin he's discovered, and scissors his digits in her until she clenches around them, nearly unbelieving about how wet she is.

He groans his satisfaction at her whimper to god, and relishes the way she heaves. More, she needs more.

Just take it.

Caroline threads her hands through his hair and tugs him up onto her mouth with a roughness that makes his brow furrow. Tells him exactly what to do - use your thumb, make me come - and slides a vibrant profanity from her tongue to his when he complies and lets her have everything she wants.

Taken, had, done, with a violent tremble. Absolutely worth it.

"We need to go," she says, the words almost pressed out in a whine as she pushes his hand away and feels his fingers withdraw.

Klaus looks on, slightly puzzled. "Go?" He questions, then pulls the slick tips into his mouth for a brief taste. It makes her flush hot, as coloured as his face.

"To your room," she grabs his wrist. For more taking. "I don't have a lot of time."

He grins and lets her haul him up the stairs.

Between the dark indigo of night and the warm white of the afternoon, Caroline has been bent, stretched, parted, swirled, and swept up in her own personal hurricane, all in the comfort of Klaus' bed. And chair. Maybe once on the dresser. And in the shower. Against the windows with the curtains drawn. Or open, she didn't even notice, really.

The important thing is that she's learnt the lines and planes of him; remembers that he likes the gentle rake of nails down the back of his neck, and the mad embraces that lets him be so close to her that she can't help but feel like he belongs caught in her arms.

But it isn't his deft hands (good, obedient hands) or the throaty whispers of filth (in the accent, no less, demanding her release) that sends her reeling.

It's the kiss. The one he steals from her mid-sentence when she tells him all about old and small Mystic Falls. The one that he plants on her shoulder before he threatens to kill everyone on her contact list if she doesn't put away her phone. He presses his lips to her knee in keen admiration, and Caroline shivers her appreciation, tucking the memory of it away for when she returns home.

Or maybe, she wonders, cheek on his pillow, she might already be home.

When it's time to go, Caroline reaches out and brushes her fingers against the stubbly grain of his face, memorizing. It feels good to have what you want.

So, what do you think of New Orleans, love?, inquires Klaus.

She gives him a nonchalant shrug. Didn't see much of it.

Didn't see much outside the walls of the mansion, she recalls with a controlled smirk.

Would you come back? He nuzzles her palm, then gives it the kiss that she so adores.

There's so much hope on his face that Caroline tries not to laugh. Maybe not for a party.

For me, then.

She ponders a moment. Only if you came to Mystic Falls and brought me back yourself. And I will need convincing.

Lots of convincing.

Klaus nods profusely. Absolutely. Sounds fair.

And Klaus?

Yes?

I wasn't in town for the party.

I know, he smiles. You were always a terrible liar.