It takes her time. He doesn't mind.

All he has, really, is time. Time to spend or time to save, like coins for Charon– but that isn't quite true, is it?

They're for Caroline.

.

.

.

It's a party. Everyone is laughing. (He is not laughing.)

It's been some time, two handfuls of coins since he last saw her, and here she is. Her steps are soundless, but her dress is red and laced. She looks like a flower, or a flame. Like something he would like to touch, from far away, but fearful that she would break apart in his fingers– or perhaps burn right through them.

There is something glowing about her face, the low light catching in her hair just so and nesting there, making the room bend around her, making the shadows gather at the corners of her bones so that the rest of her may shine. It's a scene for the Dutch masters, for the Renaissance painters– but that isn't quite true, is it?

It's for him.

In her shoulders, in her hips and her hands and the hint of her smile, he can see the changes. There was always an ocean inside her, and it is as it always was, deep and powerful. Tumultuous and dangerous both. But now there's a mountain range in her gaze, vast and beautiful and dizzy with the stretching horizon. There is a marvelous kind of gravity sleeping in her hands and her mouth, pulling his gaze up, down, up again.

She crosses the room in a minute. A year. A century. There are no more coins weighing down his pockets. His fingers move restlessly. Empty.

"Klaus," she says in greeting. "Waxing poetic again? You have that look."

"Hello, Caroline," he says. He smiles despite himself. "I wasn't aware I had a look when I was– what was it? Waxing poetic."

Her eyebrow raises in a way that says she is right, that she is always right, and trying to deny it is futile. He concedes with a half-shrug, barely noticeable. (She notices.)

"You sure know how to throw a party," she says, but she doesn't look around the room like she might have done, would have done, those handfuls of years ago. She keeps her eyes on him. It's steady and sure, and his blood feels overwarm and overquick in his body. Ridiculous.

"I didn't think you'd come," he says lightly. "You never do respond to any of my invitations." He clicks his tongue behind his teeth. "Thought you'd have better manners than that, love."

"Oh, I do," she says. There's a crimson gem at the base of her throat and it gleams even in the shadow he casts across her neck and shoulders. It looks like the seed of some earthy red fruit. "I just thought that it might be my turn to have a sudden, unplanned appearance."

He doesn't try to cover his smile this time. He thinks it might show: her eyes dip to his mouth for a fraction of a second. Too quick. (Too slow.)

"Touché. So, what brings you-"

"Mom's dead," she says, still smiling. It doesn't seem sad, which surprises him. "It's alright," she says. "It was time."

"Was it really?" he says softly, as if he hasn't been hoarding the years, hasn't been counting them like weights in his chest. Waiting, which he despises. Hoping, which he denies himself.

In the years since he left her there, since she burned herself into his head and his hands, into his very cells, he has not built an empire. For all his life's horror, for his millennia of war and praise and betrayal and patience, he had not learned to give. To truly give, without demands, without a string tying him to someone, a debt to be paid. Not until then, until that moment between the trees and the leaves, when he lived in her, under her, with her, finally. When he gave by letting go.

No, he does not have an empire. But he does have a kingdom, of sorts. And he is a patient man.

(Besides, Rome was not built in a day, he knows. He was there.)

"This is the part where you ask me," Caroline says in a low voice. She is leaning close to him, as if sharing a secret. Her hair is white gold, spun in delicate curls. Her lips are red, to match her dress. He can't look away. Klaus wonders, idly, if he could ever leave the small infinity of this moment, of her gravity pulling him in.

"Ask you why you're here, you mean?" he says. He has leaned closer. He can smell her perfume: orange blossom and crisp pine.

"No," she says, and she smiles. "This is where you ask me if I'm going to stay."

.

.

.

Okay. Wait. She should explain:

The world has changed. There are new leaders and new technologies. There are new books and movies. There are whole new countries, born of conflict and settling into themselves. There are things she has added to her list. You know, her bucket list. But without the whole 'before you're dead' thing. She's already dead.

(Wrong. She is finally alive.)

No, she wants to do things before she can't do them anymore, before the world shifts again and monuments fall, leaders rise, and countries redraw their maps.

And yeah. Maybe Klaus was on her list. There's a pull to Klaus– a black hole pull, a bone-deep pull that has always hummed under her skin. And as much as the world has changed, there's a dark comfort in knowing that some things remain untouched, unmoved by the universe and her whims. So yes, she has learned that the world changes.

The underworld doesn't.

Caroline has been places, okay? She's done things, seen things. She left Mystic Falls, she went back. She watched people die, she watched people live; she visited countries and she learned new things and she crossed items off her list.

Through it all, she let Klaus live as an ember in the back of her head. Dark, glowing, and in a state of near-constant flame. With just a little push, a tiny thought, he would-

Well. So the story goes. She let the fire of him rise in her mind until she was burning with him, until she remembered truly what she is: a night creature searching for the light. And what did that make him? Something dark and unknowable? Yes, and no. Dark, but with a heart that could be known- a heart she has caught glimpses of.

Maybe she always knew what he was: a place so dark she could be her own light. A contrast of such depth she could drown in him and never truly sink.

She could know him, truly.

Caroline thinks back on all those days, when the world seemed so much smaller, so much easier to break. When she thought she was one of the people charged with saving it.

She smiles to herself in a mirror, adjusts the ruby sitting quietly at the base of her throat. The invitation is in her travel bag but she doesn't bring it.

She won't need it.

.

.

.

His kingdom was slow-built. He can be cruel, needlessly so, but he can be fair too. Should it suit him.

Certainly he is more suited to his monarchy than to any empire- no one will stamp his profile into coin, but they will hear his name and know what it brings.

And lest you think he is being coy- there are still snares in his life. Hidden roots that pull at his feet to trip him: his family, his pride. Most of all his agreements of varied complexity with the witches, the werewolves, the rival packs, the countless new vampires, and, well– his siblings.

He finds that there is something so bright inside Caroline that she seems to blot all these complexities out, makes things simple again. She lights a sun atop his tongue, where it shines through his teeth, blinds him from the inside-out, and sets all his soft insides aflame. The white-blindness is reflected in her hair and her gaze and in the small jewel at her wrist, simple and elegant. It suits her. (Everything suits her.)

Or, maybe– and this is a dangerous thought –maybe he is just suited to her.

He lets that thought sink into his bones.

Caroline is still close to him, still has her red lips and her delicate neck and that knowing look in her eyes, a look that says she is the predator here and he has lost. He is lost.

"Well," he manages to say. His voice is steady but his heart is not– it's grown too quickly in too short a time and it flutters there in his chest like a newborn bird. He feels it swoop and swing inside of him.

"Are you going to stay, then, Caroline?" he asks. He tries not to make it sound like his whole being is behind the question, that the second it leaves his mouth he feels vulnerable and powerful at the same strange moment. There's a lazy tension flowing and stopping and stretching time between them. He has the wild hysterical thought that this may well be a dream– he's had a few of her, of course of her –but there's a quality to this moment that doesn't feel dreamlike. It feels too present, too much like anything could break him apart.

(Not anything. Just her.)

Caroline smiles cat-like and she is so close now, so close that he can count her eyelashes, can feel her breath against his cheek and she leans closer still, and her lips are at his ear and she whispers, she whispers in his ear and it's so quiet, it's so loud, it's the crash of the ocean and the thunder of night and the rapid rush of his blood, and it is everything.

What she says, what she whispers, is this:

"I think I just might."

There is a still moment where sound becomes words becomes meaning, becomes everything, and then his mouth is on hers, his hands are framing her face and this miraculous thing happens where her whole body just sinks into his, and he's suddenly unsure how to stand, how to get closer, how to make her lips part again and sigh with that little sound. He kisses her with everything he is and has, and it's frenzied at first, wild, and she makes that sound, Jesus bloody Christ, and she burns him up, burns him up right there until he's nothing. Her arms are looped around him, her hands are scrunching his jacket something terrible, and there is all around the sound of clinking glasses and quiet music and distant laughter, but mostly there is just the silence of her body pressed against his, the warmth of her mouth and the way his hips stutter of their own volition when she does that with her tongue. It's bloody ridiculous, the sound he makes, and it's magnificently ungentlemanly what he wants to continue to do to her, but on top of everything it's something he never imagined it would be: a homecoming.

He's home.

She pulls away, roughly, and Klaus loses time, or space- loses touch with reality, if that makes any kind of sense at all. It does to look at her: Caroline's lips are still red and perfect but her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are bedroom eyes if he ever saw, dark and glittering. "Klaus," she says, and her voice is something more than words, it's fire and promise, and he can only respond with, "Yes."

"Room," she says, but it takes him a moment to understand because her dark eyes are staring at his open mouth, still warm from her own. "Yes," he says again, and also, "This way."

He pushes her towards the back of the ballroom, towards the large open french doors. He closes them once they're through and continues forward, leads her through hallways and upstairs and Christ, he realizes suddenly, her hand is in his. He's leading her by the hand. Caroline, in his house, following him to his room, and yes, alright, no need to be so bloody juvenile about it. But her grip is tight and it feels so comfortable, almost intimate, and it makes his bird-heart sing and crash against its cage.

The sounds of the party are far away now, not even the distant strains of music reaching them. They're at his door, his room. One of them opens it and then closes it, but that's not the important part. What happens after is: Caroline's back is against the closed door and her hands grip tight to the lapels of his suit and she pulls him close with inhuman strength. His lips find hers again, her hands raking through his hair and making his whole body tingle with it. His hands are everywhere and not strictly under his control. He concentrates. They find her waist but they don't stay there: they trail slowly, leisurely up her sides and she shudders. His fingers find a tiny, tiny zipper and he pulls it carefully down, and she is so, so aware. Terrifyingly aware, because she has stopped kissing him, is breathing heavy with her cheeks still flushed, her eyes still dark and telling him come here without saying anything at all, and then fuck whatever gods there might be up there, because she licks at her lips like she's chasing the taste of him. The dress zipper does not survive the sudden jerk of his hands. Then there is no dress at all, there's just Caroline with a ruby at her neck and lace at her breasts and her smile, cat-like still, predatory still. He doesn't stand a chance.

Caroline steps out of her high shoes, kicks them away without thought, and pulls the jacket from Klaus' shoulders. He feels vulnerable still, powerful still, to see her do easy work of his vest and small shirt buttons. "There," she says with a low voice. Her hands drag themselves down his naked chest. "That's better," she says, and pulls his hips against her. There's a low sound that gets caught in this throat when one of her legs slides up and over his hip to snap him closer. He trails his lips down her neck, pulls her hair aside to kiss the sweet curve of her shoulder. Caroline pulls his face back to hers, kisses him open-mouthed and slow-burning while one of his hands steadies itself on the door and the other slides across her breasts, her ribs, her soft stomach, and further downward.

His fingers slip under the small laced garment or panty or whatever underthing she has on, and it doesn't matter what the bloody thing is called because she is hot as any of the seven hells, and slick, and she bucks against his hand, claws at his shoulders and breathes Klaus against his neck, and fuck. Fuck. His fingers move slowly first, back and forth with a kind of sweet precision and she gasps against his neck. Her breath is warm and damp on his skin and he can barely stand anymore, because of the sound of her, the feel of her. His knees quake and his heart shakes and heat burns in his belly, burns like the slow slide of his fingers. Caroline's hips try to chase them, try to find more, more, more, and so that's what he gives her. His finger curls up. Her gasp is small and quiet, and there, still against the door, still pinned there by his arm, by the press of his hips, her fingers dig deep into the back of his neck while her own head tilts back, her delicate throat exposed, and the sight of it calls to something deep and primal inside of him. He is furious with the need to have her.

He grazes his teeth against the skin of her throat and she shudders at the feel of it, and at the feel of his fingers still pressing and curling and moving inside her. Her hips follow their own rhythm, their own song, while heat snakes its way through her veins, setting her on fire. It starts in her stomach but goes low, pulls at whatever godforsaken strings are attached to her where Klaus' fingers are making her see stars. Her breathing is rapid and it hitches when he makes this little twist and the heat spirals up, becomes a tidal wave that gathers force, that rises up, up, up, and oh my God she thinks, her breath quick and shallow, oh my God, and then there's one last deft rub of his finger against her, slick and oversensitive, and she comes apart. The tidal wave inside her crashes, makes her shudder and shake, makes her toes curl and bright stars cascade behind her eyes. Her body sags against his, boneless. She hears the unmistakeable sound of his tongue on skin– but not her skin. Her eyes open to catch Klaus as he slides two fingers from his mouth, slow and purposeful. She licks her own lips at the sight and she can see in his eyes that something within him has come undone. She smiles lazy and timeless and says, "Bed?"

He lifts her up in his arms, her legs wrapping around him, and he lets his mouth answer hers, slow and unhurried. Klaus sets her down smooth and easy on the bed, kisses her soundly before moving his mouth further down, lips skimming her delicate breastbone, and the thin dark lace cupping her softly; lets his breath warm the skin under her ribs, down her stomach, below her navel; drags his hands down where his mouth has already touched, fingers finding their goal, pulling the damp lace of her undergarment down her legs and off. On his way he presses kisses to the inside of her thighs, the tops of her knees, the beautiful bones of her ankle.

Klaus hears her shift against the sheets, and when he looks up she's only skin and the hypnotizing move of her muscles beneath it, the soft rise of her chest, the easy fall of her white curls around her head; not like a halo but like a sun, or a moon, light against his dark sheets. She raises herself on her elbows, and her neck is long and bare but for the drop of red nestled there in the dip of her throat. She has the full-body flush of sex and her eyes look like stars. She is an altar to some forgotten god and it makes his lungs ache to look at her. "Klaus," she whispers, amused. "You're taking too long."

Before he realizes quite what's happening his trousers are gone, his shoes stepped out of, and his body is pressed full against hers, just skin and skin and him hard and cradled between her thighs. Her hands pull his hair and his hips rock against hers and he can't think, can't do anything but thrust into her and listen to her heart stutter. Sound catches in her throat, and she tugs his hair at the temples, lets her hands find purchase in his shoulders, wraps her legs around him, makes his own head buzz with white noise: an orchestra punctuated with the sound of her hitched breaths and sighs and the small, exquisite whimper that escapes when he pulls out slowly then snaps his hips into her again, quick and merciless. He lives and dies and lives and dies in this moment, of his body connecting to hers, of the flush rising in her skin, of the whirring of his own heart, the ocean of his blood being pulled by her tide, by her marvelous gravity.

Their mouths are so close, almost touching, but letting no words escape save for the occasional prayer of each others names. He can feel Caroline in every bone of his body, can feel the moment when her muscles start to clench, the beautiful hitch– there, just then– of her breath and then she's falling again, crying something wordless against his lips. He feels a frenzy start to build in his chest, feels it filter into his heart and to his hips and he can't– he can't slow down, he can't do anything but thrust faster, harder, hears her gasp at the sudden ferocity and the pace, faster, again, again, feels himself on the precipice and then–

He goes over the edge, falls into her, feels his hips stutter into her once more before he pulls out and falls to his side, pulling her to him. A strand of hair tickles the side of his face, just below his jaw, but Caroline's head nests perfectly in his shoulder so he just lays there for a moment, mind still spinning, heart still pounding, her body warm and pliant against his. She licks his neck, and he groans. She gives him a nip, and his hands clench hard around her. She laughs softly but settles against him.

The night outside is still dark and moonless, but there's no need for it. Klaus can see her, can feel her, can still taste her on his tongue.

Caroline makes a sleepy sound, and her hand trails down his chest, then up. It stops just over his heart, where it still flutters and beats its immortal wings. In that moment, in that space where the quiet is round and full of future and past, where there is no dark and no light, where there is no need for them at all, what Caroline realizes is this: he is the fruit. And she has swallowed him whole.

"So," she says, quiet and amused into his skin. His eyes have closed but he can still feel her gaze. "What was the party for, anyway?"

He opens his eyes at this, looks down at her. "Surely you remember, love. It was for you."

Before she can ask, he presses his finger to her lips, lets them rest there a moment before sliding them down and along her shoulder.

"For me," she says. Not a question. The start of an acceptance, perhaps.

"Yes," Klaus sighs, as if it were obvious, too obvious for words, and lets sleep start to drag him under. "Happy Birthday, Caroline," he says, and she warms all over, smiles into his neck.

He is asleep. She stays.

.

.

.

In the morning, the sun seeps through the dark curtains, and catches against her.

She is kaleidoscopic.

Klaus feels something gather at his fingers. Time, that earthy feel of it, like coins. And he has them to spend. He has them to spend with her.

Because, in a way, she's come home too.

.