Warnings: Pretty graphic violence. You may find one or two things disturbing.
Notes: Prompt #108: Birthday - Very Klaus-centric for the most part.

On his birthday, Klaus has a drink in honour of his solitary self. The fragrance of his mulled wine lifts upward from his cup and he appreciates its comforting warmth as the icy winds batter the window shutters.

"Happy bloody birthday to me!" he exclaims in a drunken stupor, lifting the drink to his lips and downing it at once.

No one replies, because everyone is dead. The barkeep is hunched over the counter with a rag in his hand, and his wife remains inconspicuous in the corner as the blood continues to drip from her limp fingers. The rest of them, aged regulars and young men alike, lay their heads on the tables, staring off into the distance. Not a blink of life in any of them.

That's what he loves about hollow little taverns off the beaten road. Drinks aplenty from the barrels, easy feeding and no one to hear the screaming.

Best of all, no family to find him and wreck his one-man party. No reprimanding from Finn, no lectures from Elijah, no threats from Rebekah, no upstaging from Kol. Just him and his murder, all warmed up with wine like old friends clacking mugs and catching up on life during a freezing winter's night.

Klaus jumps over the bar top and helps himself to some of the coin. They won't be needing that anymore.

Somewhere in the city square, Klaus strolls along stretches of lanes with a bounce in his step. Two men, flush to their ears and barely helping each other walk in a reckless meander, bump shoulders with him.

But he won't let it spoil his mood tonight. Even if they were to have cursed him and stepped on his toes, he wouldn't have laid a finger on them. He still has hours to go before his special day ends and won't squander it on such petty misgivings.

Kol has never been that close to him but Klaus knows a good gesture when he sees one. Standing under an unmarked sign is his little brother, who upon seeing him opens his arms wide to receive Klaus in a solid - albeit apprehensive - embrace. "Eat enough for your second centennial, Nicklaus?"

"Not nearly," says Klaus, eyeing him suspiciously, but still letting his birthday happiness cloud the ill feelings, "But that's why we're here, aren't we?"

Kol's answer lies in his grin, and he bows deeply as if to say, "After you."

Inside, the musk and floral is overwhelmingly cloying. Klaus makes a face at the wisps of smoke rising from the offending sources, tiny tetrahedrons of incense slowly wasting into cinders within metal bowls. The madame, voluptuous and adequately beautiful, greets them coyly, but regards Kol with a certain familiarity.

Must be a regular. Somehow that doesn't surprise him.

"We picked the perfect girl for you," she says to Klaus, openly proud of her ability to make a decision for someone else. "She'll be sweet as nectar and obedient as a mouse."

Kol grins. "Best of all, she's a lovely little maiden." He waggles his brows. "You don't even have to be gentle if you want to pull her petals."

It's not the celebration he intended, but Klaus has resolved to keep an open mind. He lets the madame lead him to closed doors while Kol saunters off to tend to his own business. With a dramatic push, the doors swing open to reveal a smallish girl sitting on the bed, in little but simple linens and a lost look.

How pitiful. He can even see the contour of her bones under her skin.

He observes for awhile, and tells the smiling madame to get out. The tone of voice scares the girl.

"How old are you?"

"I've already flowered, sir, if that's what you're asking."

Well, that wasn't what he asked. "You're too young." Klaus rolls his eyes and buries his forehead in his hand. His brother either doesn't know him at all or knows him too well to orchestrate something like this. It's like a veiled insult to his personal tastes.

The girl panics and rushes to offer her wrist up to him. "Please," she pleads, "If I don't go through with this they'll never let me go. I have to go back to Greece." This doesn't tug at his heartstrings in any particular fashion, but he does have feelings for the Grecian culture. He might have had a better birthday there.

Klaus sighs and obliges a bite, not appreciating her watching squeamishly through the fingers of her other hand. And let's not even mention the blood itself. It only takes five seconds for him to have enough and decide that the blood of virgins are amazingly overrated if not for its witchcraft facilitating properties.

He kicks the doors open and hears the chuckle of the madame. "Why that was swift!"

"It was," Klaus returns her smile, and grasps her by the neck tightly. "And so is this."

A pinch more pressure and a loud pop interrupts the ambient chatter. It's attention-arresting enough to make a nearby whore scream at the top of her lungs; music to his ears after such an embarrassing mockery. Klaus grips even harder and feels cartilage and bone crumpling in his fist, and the screams soar into the ceiling, drawing half-naked men and vampires alike from their respective rooms.

Now this is more like it.

Kol bolts down the stony steps and has the most appalled expression on his face. "What the bloody hell are you doing?!" he shouts, hands flailing.

Klaus shrugs nonchalantly and finally releases the body, his palm coated with the hot red blood of the madame. "Having the birthday I want."

A burly vampire approaches with a blade as long as his arm. He raises it over his head, but Kol manages to kick him forward so he stumbles. Klaus then seizes the attacker's scimitar and effortlessly slices his head clean off, the blood spattering everyone within spitting distance. More screaming occurs, and the citadel has most likely risen from the noise.

"I actually liked this place," Kol grumbles. "If I knew you were just going to murder everyone, I would've just brought you to the street near the cattery for wet chalk and canvas."

"You thought some skinny thirteen year old was part of my wishlist?" Klaus huffs, disappointed that Kol would even think he'd be remotely interested in a transaction like this. "You know so little of me."

Kol starts to smell the fires of torches and urges them to leave before a mob descends on them. It's not that they can't handle the numbers, but a town needs to populate, and you can't get a proper bite if you fished from the pond too often. "Let's just clean this up and go," he says, fully resigned, then grabs the nearest whore and proceeds to drink her. Klaus shrugs and twirls his new weapon, eyeing the fattest men in the room.

Kol's going to hate him for many years to come because of this, but it's probably the closest they'll ever get to being brothers. It's a sentimental moment for him.

In the late 19th century, the owner of a hotel has hung himself from the balcony of his property. While tending to his steed, Klaus had seen the man running out of his room and leaping from the second floor to his death with a noose knotted around his neck. The sheer force of the fall was so great that his corpse swung straight into the hotel entrance like a pendulum, shocking a great deal of patrons nursing drinks at the bar.

It wasn't the man's way of dying that bothered him; men with nothing more to live for took to the gallows in their own creative way often enough. It was how everyone immediately jumped up to help or collapsed to the ground in grief that made the jealousy seethe.

No one will care for him this way, not because he has ever revealed himself to be a monster but he's just been on the run so much that there's simply not enough time to sit down and play town favourite (or rule with an iron fist, depending on the audience). At the cusp of settling in, some kind of vampire massacre on the skirts of a nearby settlement will be the red flag that sends him fleeing to another camp - Daddy's here, the piles of smoking cadavers signal. Run.

It's what keeps he and Rebekah split, though not too far off. They'll be reuniting tomorrow where they'll travel east and leave behind the simple, rural life.

The owner is given a large funeral service where the townsfolk trickle into his home in a single file to see him in the casket. So many people, crying, wailing. Klaus peers into the modest box, knowing that he'll never have the same effect on people if he ever suffered permanent death.

He doesn't utter a prayer but instead tells the man how lucky he is, because his soul is probably still listening. Even if Klaus is the one who drove this man to his fate - no loving family man will choose his life over his children, especially if he's the one with loose lips feeding information to Mikael.

Back outside, it's not until the Reverend announces the date on the porch that Klaus realises that he has forgotten his own birthday, and for many years now.

That's what happens when you're too busy trying to stay alive and build legacies. Foundations of loyalty are hard to lay down - oftentimes he experiences a pinch of homesickness for the city he left way back in Louisiana where he had sown the seeds and glimpsed the first bearings of a rich culture forming.

Too bad survival outweighs the desire to live out the better part of his days in New Orleans. It's a rather lonely life.

Klaus saddles his horse after the procession and rides off to meet Rebekah, leaving behind yet another nameless hole on a day that might have mattered if he had someone to matter it with.

Negative, negative, negative. Negative. Klaus stares at a sheet of paper blankly, then smiles to himself at how he even thought getting tested for disease was necessary. He'd seen a couple of Romero movies about the dead and did a bit of research about reanimation from a scientific standpoint, only to read in theory books that the dead still have the ability to pass on certain life-threatening ailments to the living.

As a dead man with the occasional sexual partner, Klaus thought it to be alarming that he may have been the cause of several infectious outbreaks occurring after his appearance. Little as he cares for humanity, he doesn't want to be the walking plague that dwindles the population. There are still many favours to be sought, vampires to be made, meals to be had, and it would be a waste if all that went away because he was a carrier of infestation. And all it takes to get a test done is a little compelling.

Note to self: movies are just movies. Unless it's magic, the dead don't get sick, silly.

Klaus glances at the date of delivery of the results without feeling so much as a pinprick of memory; he shrugs on his coat and heads out to enjoy the night.

His cup is full but his heart is not.

It's not empty, but nobody ever thinks about how their quarter-full selves are sloshing about inside, waiting for an epiphany to colour in the void. They just whine and expect life to turn around for them.

But Klaus is a doer. He draws up plans and tries to fill himself with goals that will last him many lifetimes over, including gleaning werewolves from the camps peppering the borders of Mystic Falls and making himself a brood of hybrids to do his every bidding. If only that slithering, slippery Petrova woman would hurry the hell up and deliver him what needs to kill his curse. He has all the time to spare, but it'd be such a waste of 500 years if he didn't the jump on the little doppleganger now.

A notification pops up in his phone and he checks it immediately.

This one is for the vampire sacrifice. Little Miss Mystic Falls, the message reads, and he scrolls downwards to see the picture of a girl so blonde and fair that Klaus might as well be squinting directly at the sun. Quite lovely.

All for a good cause, he thinks to himself, saving the image to his gallery. He will remember the people who helped him reach the pinnacle of his ultimate form – the most powerful creature in the world. It's only manners.

Rebekah sets a dubious looking box in front of Klaus, and nudges it over the mail he's going through at his desk.

"Go on, open it," she says, folding her arms and nodding at it expectantly.

He isn't one for surprises, but sisters hardly ever recognize or respect personal preferences when it gets in the way of doing what they want. Since that leaves him with little choice, Klaus cocks a brow and spins the white cardboard so he can lift the front and peer at what's inside.

Happy Birthday *Niklaus*!

The corner of his mouth twitches at the juvenile emphasis on his name.

"It's a lemon-rainbow cake," she casually takes apart the box, wedges a candle into its little plastic bottom, and sticks it into the cake's dead centre. "Buttercream frosting, a little blueberry icing. Caroline helped me pick the flavour. I thought your attitude these days could use some colour. Plus these things are supposed to be all the rage."

Klaus already has the plastic knife in hand. The mention of his favourite blonde cheerleader picking out cakes with his sister tickles him somewhat – it's rather difficult to imagine either of them getting along at all, but here his cake sits, pristine and unscathed. "How thoughtful of you to remember, Rebekah."

As sarcastic as he'd made it sound, he hadn't even remembered himself. That alone is enough to let the appreciation swell inside of him. Has it been that long since he last celebrated?

"Actually," his younger sibling searches her purse for a lighter, "I didn't even realise it until she asked me when you were born. And she told me about what you did for her birthday." Chik. The tiny flint births a spark and Rebekah holds the naked flame to the lone wick until it blackens and starts to wilt away with heat. Klaus gazes at the melting wax with unusual interest, and then looks back up at her.

"I'm not going to sing."

"Worth a try," he shrugs. "It's my birthday after all."

"Just make a wish a blow out your bloody candle already," she snaps, impatient. Klaus, of course, doesn't believe in closing his eyes and saying prayers to whatever divine force or law of the universe that supposedly exists for this sole purpose, but he does it out of courtesy anyway. It makes her smile when he pops an eye open midway to check if she's still watching him like a hawk – she's definitely going to stand there until it's all done – and then he murmurs a few random requests in his mind before leaning forward to extinguish the flame with one sharp breath.

Splendid. He grips the knife hard and plunges its flimsy edge between the 'h' and 'd' like he would slide a blade between a man's ribs; Rebekah gasps at his apparent barbarism and transports the cake away to the kitchen as quickly as possible.

Klaus follows her, curious. "You said Caroline picked it out?"

She huffs and hands him a plate with a piece of seven very vibrant layers of chiffon. Granted, if by some miracle she were ever to become a mother, her poor portion control would most definitely result in heinously fat offspring. It does, however, also speak volumes about her generosity, and he's grateful for it in small moments like these. Except when it gets overshadowed by her pining over the next guy and jeopardising Klaus' safety.

The cake itself looks quite the apt representation of the people who got it for him - well, half the people anyway. Klaus takes a modest bite and thinks, fresh. It's been awhile since he's had something that homely.

"You know, she might give you a chance if you stopped trying to hurt her friends. Our friends, if we even qualify." Cutting a small square for herself, Rebekah's brows rise at the flavour. "Just get a full time job or something. Forget about the hybrids."

"Spending all day rejecting my sister's idiot ideas sounds like a full time job to me." He receives a deadly glare in return. "I need my army if I'm going to have any sort of clout here."

"Clout? Is that what you're doing to impress her? Your game is so pathetic, Nik. At this rate you wouldn't catch her attention if you had the president crawling on all fours and barking at her doorstep."

He rolls his eyes. "I wouldn't put in that much effort just for one girl."

"I don't know what the fuss about her is either," she says, and cuts another piece, this time setting it aside. "But if you want people to think of you as more than a mass murderer, you could share all this leftover cake with someone. It'll go straight to your hips if you have to eat it by yourself." He gives her a puzzled look. "Say thank you? Personally?" No improvement. "God, has your head always been this thick? No wonder you've been single for so long."

That's ridiculous. He's single by choice, and the comment bothers him more than he thought it would. "I don't see anyone hanging off your arm either," he retorts, but finds his hand reaching for a spare box in a bid to take her advice and deliver his birthday cake to Caroline's doorstep.

It's not really his style, but he doesn't have anything to lose anyway.

What's this?

Klaus circles his desk curiously, focused squarely on the box sitting on top of it. A small envelope with his name on it is set next to his pen, the alphabets in carefully composed script.

He's more accustomed to giving things - to a certain honey-haired girl in particular - rather than receiving them, so this is decidedly interesting for him, especially after a long hike from New Orleans. Could be a finger. Maybe a bloodstone? Vervain bomb?

Approaching the envelope first, he pulls a simple card from it.

Something for your birthday, so you can keep track. Thanks for graduation.

~C.

Straightforward, nothing to read into. He goes over it again just to be sure, then reaches for the gift; it opens with slight magnetized resistance to reveal a large-faced watch, black and silver and ruggedly handsome with its threaded metal fibres and red second hand. With a click on one button the hands spin and cycle and unite, pointing at the number twelve, another click and the red hand loosens to aim north. The third click brings it back to telling the time.

It's so ordinary. And fascinating.

He loves it.

A watch. Upon slipping it over his wrist, he sees the etching of roman numerals on the plate of the lower band - his birth date, an ancient thing, meaning so little for more than half his lifetime until... This.

Klaus smiles. Some things are worth coming back for.

Caroline looks at the time on her phone, in the middle of a bizarre conversation they're having that's a blend between a fight and flirting, because there's chemistry in the air (as always) like Klaus has never felt before with anyone else. Being angry and being in love at the same time can generate such a potent cloud of irrational behaviour.

And she's been extra mad with him because of the whole child out of wedlock thing. Even when his son is practically a grown man.

"Do you have elsewhere to be?" he asks, cross that she would allow herself to be so easily distracted.

"No, but I should've made plans so I can just walk away from this... Whatever this is."

"My door's always open." His eyes dart towards the exit of his study and he can see her jaw clenching in response. He's about to step out for a jolly bloodbath anyway.

"Oh, I know," she remarks. "You can't resist an open door. Or legs, for that matter."

He's taken aback by her frankness and how quickly this has escalated. "Is that what this is about? Still on about that one time?" From more than two decades ago?

Klaus spies her glancing at a petite bag she's left on the coffee table. "No." When she realises that he's seen her look at it, she strides over to pick it up. "It's for you."

She nudges it into his chest and Klaus looks down - a cupcake. Frosting and dark and something extra in it. He removes it from its container and observes it like he would a freshly unearthed relic, studying every waxed paper crease and uneven dollop of icing frozen in its place.

"It's lovely," he says. Caroline folds her arms, watching him have a nibble. "You've just postponed the deaths of six vampires." He knows she'd like hearing that, that he's doing noble things for her sake, whether she thinks he's joking or not (he isn't).

"I do this every year," her irritation subsides into a sigh.

"And I'm grateful." He pauses and offers to share it with her, to which she gnaws gently on its side. "Very grateful." Klaus then reaches up to wipe a stray crumb from her lip.

He is glad. No one knows good birthdays like Caroline, who understands that not everyone needs a shindig full of people only in attendance for free booze and food. This has always been the right scale, just the both of them, if not clinking glasses then feasting on tiny dessert portions not unlike now.

And yes, he's completely aware of how weak it would make him look to anticipate whatever she's got lined up for him - a phone call, an elaborate text that she may as well email him for, baked goods, vintage wine or a personal appearance, among other things. Bonus if he gets four or more at once.

Caroline stills Klaus's hand a second and she looks at him, like touching her is a giant mistake. Her frown is deep, like what in the blue hell are you doing deep, and she looks like she's about to tell him off for it.

Maybe he's read the moment differently than she has.

But then she does this brazen thing where she stares at him - still frowning, which confuses him terribly - and sucks the tip of his thumb into her mouth, causing all sensibility and composure to shatter into a million pieces.

His blood surges; his jaw slackens in total disbelief; his mind floods with euphoria at what this means for him and her and them.

She licks the length of it and he no longer has the capacity to think - Klaus chucks the rest of the cupcake into the bag it came from and draws her in for a kiss, with the kind of slow, experimental ease that makes bodies ache and inhibitions die.

His own senses try to cope with seeing and smelling and tasting and feeling and remembering every second as he places a curious hand on Caroline's hip and shifts it lower, pressing her closer to him.

He doesn't get shoved or hit, nor does he hear any protesting, so Klaus continues letting his hands wander their own way in increasingly daring exploration.

There's only her panting between kisses, which turns into moaning when he's laid her down on the couch as his fingers and lips and tongue tell her, without words, that this should have happened sooner, how it's just revenge for making him wait so long, that he's sorry for letting this drag for such a despicable length of time. It's only right that she should know it, with every inch of him and through every chamber of his heart.

It's possibly the best birthday he's had in awhile.

For some time, Klaus has experienced a niggling sense of discomfort over how quickly his community is growing and how little he cares for it after a certain point. His son now rules with the casual finesse of a well-known teenage star where Klaus himself once ruled with fear… Whatever works, he supposes.

Klaus is only interested in one person when it comes to exuding any real charm, and it bothers him that being the hybrid king no longer holds the same appeal as it once did many moons ago. She's been busy pushing her beloved hometown from the depths of obscurity into the kind of relevance that isn't all about the supernatural - wine.

"It's supernaturally good," Klaus says of it.

"I cannot believe you just made that joke." Caroline makes a disgusted face. "Twenty years in this business and I've never heard anyone make that joke." Her arm reaches out, looking poised to take the bottle from him. "Give that back."

He swiftly maneuvers it away from her, swinging left, right, over his head until she steps on the toe of his shoe. Somehow this pins him in place, rendering him completely still. It's not fun to have your foot pressed under two inches of platform footwear, but it's worth bearing when Caroline is breathing into your skin.

Klaus raises his brows. "You can't take back what you've already given."

The back of her hand meets the centre of his chest at whatever insinuations she's picked up on. "I've already given you plenty."

"Not nearly enough," he argues, and leans in to almost kiss her, but leaves a breadth of space just to observe the light in her eyes. There's a swell of pride growing in the centre of his chest as he ponders the extent of truth in her claim. They've come a long way, haven't they?

She smiles, he smiles, and he lowers his arm. She's an extraordinary thing. And so smart, with her business sense and her ideas. He would've never thought anyone would be brave enough to commercialise blood for the palates of the underworld.

"You can take your foot off of mine now."

"Is that what the birthday boy wants?" she questions, being coy about closing the distance. "You only get one wish." All the possible options are blazing through his mind like wildfire, but he's not going to waste it. He considers the opportunity to ask for something far less obvious.

"I want you to come home to me." It doesn't sound as unnatural as he thought it might, but it's clearly startling for Caroline, from the way she's looking at him.

"And where would that be?"

"Wherever you want me to be. I can teach you a thing or two about wineries." This is true.

"I'm out of the house sixteen hours a day."

"That leaves us eight to do anything we want." Fingers slope down her neck onto her shoulder to hint at what he has in mind, but she gently shrugs them away, refusing to be distracted. It's one of the things he admires about her.

"Aren't you the governor of this place or something?"

"Governors don't run their terms forever," he replies. Her pensive look tells him that she's thinking of it, but isn't about to jump in with both feet. She just needs that little nudge away from caution. "We'll do it this way - tell your people that you've got an emergency, and you need to settle it immediately. Then spend the weekend at the mansion with me. Just us. That's all I need. If you want to see my body burnt and crucified by the end of it, you're welcome to try."

"A trial run," she deduces, and nods very slowly, first to absorb and digest, and then to accept. "Imagine that. You and me, being all domestic."

Klaus moves to his table to reach for a corkscrew. "I like to make things happen."

I'm ready.

Klaus reclines in his chair and stares at his phone, trying to match the name and number to the message, just to be sure of the sender. He peers at his watch, checking the time and sees the date below, slightly weathered but still clear as day. It's definitely not today.

But then he realises that it's not anyone's day at all, and this strikes him as peculiar that Caroline would suddenly engage him at the cusp of midnight like she was on the verge of celebration.

Then he thinks about it. Ready. The thousand possibilities start to cloud his mind like a swarm of angry bees. Is she ready to be the big bad vampire he knows she can be? Hair and heart of gold? Or is she ready for one of those nights where she grabs him by the collar and drags him into her house? Maybe it's another go at home life.

And then he remembers that he made a promise a very long time ago, that the world in all its vast glory would be in their hands and they would make it small together.

Klaus removes from his drawer a little box, a quaint, sturdy thing rich with history. He's waited a long time for this. When you've got time, you make preparations. Plans, big, ambitious plans, that involve finding the perfect opportunity to present them to her.

He does love birthdays. The next one is going to change things.