Quick flashfic written for a friend on tumblr who was having a bad day. Enjoy!

All the cities are shells now, but Chicago is her favorite shell of them all. It's descended back into its speakeasy charm and debauchery, so it's the best place to find good booze. It's precious, expensive stuff now, but it's clearer than the shit they make in New Orleans and smoother than that gasoline they call moonshine in Appalachia. Caroline has high standards, after all. Unlike this generation of humans scraping and struggling along in life, she'd split a carafe of Johnnie Walker's Black Label with Damon in the dark-paneled living room of the Salvatore Boardinghouse. She'd gone on a bender with Katherine Pierce in a penthouse in LA at the turn of the twenty-second century, chugging their way through a crate of Maker's Mark in a single week. And when Bonnie's last descendant passed on, Caroline had donned her nicest black gown under a full moon, curled her bare toes into the fragrant grass covering her best friend's grave, and drunk Dom Perignon straight from its chilled bottle.

So, she waltzes through the door, red dress swishing 'round her knees, and heads straight for the bar. Men call to her from their booths, dropping their cigarettes to the ashtrays to pat the torn and worn leather of the booth seats. Caroline's already had her dinner, though, and she doesn't have any more use for men tonight.

"Rae's on the rocks," she tells the bartender.

He raises his brow at her while she crosses her legs and balances the balls of her heels on the bottom rail of her stool. "Ice is 30 units on its own, you know."

Caroline plucks a 50-unit bill from her wallet with a roll of her eyes and slides it across the pockmarked bar with two perfectly manicured nails. "Don't short me," she says, slicing a hard edge into her voice. Living at the end of the civilized world has its benefits (lots and lots of guys all-too-willing to follow a pretty girl into a dark alley on naught but a flutter of eyelashes and a coy smile), but damn, people sure love to try to rip each other off, too.

The locally distilled whiskey is heavenly, the bite of it swirling into the lingering iron on her tongue and lips. Caroline sighs at the taste of it and leans into the back of her stool. The ice clinks against her teeth as she drags on the amber liquid swirling around the cubes. Most humans and younger vampires find the sensation bizarre, even uncomfortable, but Caroline grew up with ice in her glass. It was going to take more than some human apocalypse to make her give it up. She drains her glass to the rise and fall of the notes that the old man in the corner coaxes out of his piano. Ancient as it is, the piano is probably the best-maintained piece of furniture in the bar. Caroline watches his arthritic hands strum the chipped black and white keys while the bartender refills her glass for a second time.

"Mind if I sit?"

Caroline shrugs, lifting a single shoulder so as to not jostle her drink too much—she sure as hell was not paying for extra ice if she didn't need to—hoping this guy didn't talk too much over the piano player in the corner, but then she realizes she knows those short vowels, that crisp 't'—

It's like seeing a ghost, looking Klaus Mikaelson in the face after all these centuries. And his mouth is warm and wet under hers when she fists his jacket sleeve and leans over the breach between their chairs. He steadies her with a strong palm on her knee, keeping her stool from rocking under her shifting weight and smoothing his thumb along her calf. Her name rises from his throat and ghosts across her lips in a whisper.

"One for my friend," she calls out to the bartender, not caring about the quiver in her voice or the way Klaus grins at it. Even when she sits back in her own chair, Klaus' hand doesn't leave her knee, and Caroline doesn't teasingly brush it away like she does to her other (targets) paramours.

Klaus' eyes drop to her glass and he catches the bartender's eye over his shoulder. "No ice." He winks a blue eye at her, cheeky as ever, even as the pad of his thumb continues to glide ever so lightly across the delicate skin of her inner knee. "I'm a Brit, love."

In the dim light of the bar, they clink the rims of their glasses together. "Cheers," Caroline murmurs, and lifts her drink to her lips along with him. "How did you find me?"

Klaus chuckles and sets his drink on the bar. "I didn't. Pure coincidence. I heard the piano out on the street, but I'd know your face anywhere." He nods at the mirror behind the bar—an aged and cracked thing, but Caroline sees herself in it all the same, and the door to the street outside behind her shoulder.

"You know," he starts, dipping his finger in a ring of condensation Caroline's glass has left and swirling it into an infinity pattern, "London still has a symphony."

fin.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!