46. In the corner of Maple and Vine (Ch 2.A)
title: In the corner of Maple and Vine
chapters: 2/3
fandom: the vampire diaries, the originals
characters/pairings: klaus/caroline, ensemble
word count: 15k~
summary: or, the one where Rebekah exploits mug tricks for extra tips, Klaus is a passive-mostly-aggressive piemaker, and Caroline just wants to know why Klaus refuses to touch her.
PART ONE | PART TWO A | PART TWO B | PART THREE |
In the corner of Maple and Vine
2. park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor (dream about me)
Professor Saltzman is a mess.
He's giving a lecture on the crisis of the third century and diocletianic reforms when suddenly his shoulders are heaving and his nose is wheezing and Melissa Harp from the first row has to pass him a Kleenex.
"It's clean," she assures him, despite it being crumpled and dug from the recesses of her pockets. To Caroline, she whispers, "It's practically a relic. I've had these jeans since freshman year."
Caroline glances down at her notebook and sighs. Her slanted script have hardly filled a page - Professor Saltzman had mumbled through ten minutes of barbarian invasions, and his diatribe on the ruin of the local elite had been forced at best with stammers and jerks in between, when finally, he'd collapsed on his table crying out some woman's name.
Like, right in the middle of his European History class.
It was all really sad.
But Professor Saltzman's breakdown, Melissa Harp tells her, has been a long time coming.
Caroline half-listens as she stows her notebook and pen back into her bag. Melissa Harp tells her that since she's new, she's probably going to think it's a little weird (it's a lot weird) but she's just going to have to get used to it. Melissa Harp tells her that he can't help it.
"He has a fragile soul," Melissa Harp insists. "He's sensitive."
"What a stud," Caroline replies agreeably as they step out of the lecture hall and head for the stairs. She's shivering - the vents in this place went on and on for miles, and the people who were supposed to come and repair the heaters probably got lost in there. Kind of like those poor whales that get disoriented and, like, beach themselves. That mouldy bologna smell wafting through the vents in the cafeteria is probably them.
She tells Melissa Harp this, but all Melissa does is wrinkle her nose, gross.
Whatever. She'd had a weird weekend, okay?
It's warmer in the main hall, where students mill around the notice board and huddle together for warmth. The stone flooring is so old they it's speckled and grooved in places, eroded by centuries' worth of footsteps from people coming and going.
The walls are smooth varnished wood that reflect the light streaming in from the windows: it's a pleasant winter day, snowflakes just beginning to settle on the trees. The whole college is just buzzing with post-holiday jitters, which Caroline finds uplifting and even a little charming, when a boy thrusts a cracker at her in passing and she tugs at it to produce a loud bang and a paper hat.
When she steps outside, her footsteps sink three inches and leave little holes on the ground, and she looks down at them with a quiet satisfaction, all thoughts of her manicure chipping away in the cold forgotten.
It never snowed in Virginia.
Here, there's plenty of it sticking to the soles of her boots and the folded cuffs of her jacket. She thinks she'll collect them; tiny little snowflakes in the lines of her jacket and in the curls of her hair, shake them off in her room and watch them melt in her shag carpet.
Melissa's still talking, and Caroline feels a twinge of guilt - stand taller, walk faster. Chin up, laugh a bit - Pay attention, Caroline, Professor Hawke always used to say.
"…still so heartbroken over Dr. Fell, oh she was so gorgeous, wish I had her hair…"
Hair. Pretty girls. She can do this, she was the queen of all the pretty girls, anyway, isn't that what Dad says? Caroline smiles at Melissa: encouraging, friendly.
Melissa Harp blows out a yearning sigh, a white trail. "It's so sad, like all he used to do was sit around in this diner and like, pine after her. And now she's dead. Just fell down in the middle of a party, like a heart attack or something. Sad, right? I mean, how tragic is th… hey, you gonna keep up or what?"
Caroline, without realizing, had stopped in her tracks. "Did you say diner?"
"Uh." Melissa cocks her head. "Yeah?"
Caroline rushes up to her, hands gripped tight on her new friend's shoulder. "The… same diner that did the catering for Mayor Lockwood's party last week?"
"Yeah, I guess, just - personal space much?" Melissa wriggles away. "You were there?"
"My dad was invited," Caroline says absently. "I came with him."
Melissa continues walking, kicking at the odd dried leaf, a pinecone. She drags lines into the cobblestones with the shuffling of her boots. "I would've gone I guess, if it weren't for the sick blowout at Vicki's. You know her, right? Vicki Donovan? Poor girl, she just lost her brother. He was around our age, apparently he, like, fell while cleaning or something. What a way to go, right? Vicki should so sue the Pie Hole, that's what I think, but we love them too much and besides, it's such a hassle-"
"The Pie Hole, was it called?" Caroline interrupts, scrabbling for a pen, God, she needs to write this down or something. "Which street?"
"Corner of Maple and Vine, but - hey! Where are you going?"
The words "pie binge!" are barely out of her mouth before she's running, the tassels of her snow hat flying behind her. She can hear Melissa Harp's voice getting fainter and fainter as she skips over frozen puddles and dodges dog walkers and cat walkers alike. She had just one thought on her mind, and that was to get to the diner, yes, get to the diner, push open the door and, and - well, she'll figure out the rest later.
This town becomes a blur of purple doors and flower pots and snow-dusted front steps as she runs. She bumps into fewer people the deeper into town she gets, and really, she should have slowed down, looked around, maybe ask for directions, but always determined to do things on her own, she is - until finally she's all alone in the street.
Her jog slows into a skip into a stroll and she groans, because of course she'd taken a wrong turning. Maple and Vine, she'd scrawled in the bit of paper she now clutches in her hand. Looking around the deserted streets and boarded-up windows, this was so not it.
She walks around anyway, something about the scraped-up walls and dusty pavements pulling her in. She stops short in front of an alleyway, pulls a hand down its red-bricked walls, and something clicks into place in her mind.
It was here, wasn't it? She'd been mugged here once.
As absent-minded then as she is now, she'd taken a wrong turning on the way home from - somewhere. The post office maybe, to send grandma a postcard. Dad had let her out on her own (just don't tell your mother) she'd felt so tall walking down the street in her yellow galoshes, her hand wrapped firmly around her stamp-money.
Caroline steps further into the alley. She'd been eight, maybe nine, and she'd lost her favourite necklace that day: the silver prancing horse she'd gotten for a birthday she hardly remembers. She counts the bricks on one wall, wondering what else these walls have seen, what other misfortune that cost other people a knock on the head as strong as the one she'd gotten.
Hit her right in the head, like - what an asshole.
She doesn't remember telling Dad about it. Maybe it was the fall, the shock of her head hitting gravel and then wham, nothing. If not she would have told him about the girl who'd held her hand out when she came to, of the elder brother, much much much older than the two of them, fidgeting from being in such a shady area of town.
"You hit your head and fell," she said.
"You scraped your knee, too," she said.
She reached for Caroline's hand. "Do you wanna walk home with me?"
And she'd peered down at Caroline with eyes as blue as her own and asked if she wanted to be friends. They walked ahead of the girl's brother, who kept his hands in his pockets as the rain started falling in sheets of blue and grey around them. Caroline went straight to bed after that, her head a little woozy. That winter was probably the last time she had visited Dad; Mom finds out about her necklace and is furious, even more so when Caroline had just shrugs when asked how she lost it.
Her sharp Sheriff eyes train over her pale cheeks, her trembling hands. "Let me see your head."
A phone call. An argument.
A terrible one too, judging by the shouting and brandishing of hands and the banging of doors even though Daddy was a million miles away, probably doing the same thing.
A bump on the head and suddenly Caroline doesn't see Daddy for ten years.
Ten long winters without his dry roast chicken and mushy carrots, his winsome smiles and toothpaste breath, without his big warm hand around hers when they walk around the labyrinth roads of this new town he'd decided to call home, this place with its winding turrets and peeling shutters and horse-voiced pageboy who still bellowed the day's news every morning and every night.
Gawd, it's the 21st century, she wants to tell them. Ever heard of free wifi? Online newsletters? Central heating?
Ten years away and nothing much has changed, not these empty alleyways with its crumbling corners and masonry that reached the sky. A knock on the head and suddenly Caroline sees everything - the girl with yellow pigtails who'd just wanted a friend; the boy whose hands he kept hidden away in his pockets like he had whole universes within his palms.
But somehow - somehow-
She closes her eyes, rubs at them with her cold fingers. It was that damn dinner party. Mayor Lockwood's dazzling Crest white strips smile, the strawberries floating in the champagne. There's more she's not remembering, and then there are things she tries to forget, but can't.
The facts were these: The man had been dead, she knows, she's sure, but one touch and suddenly he's whooping ass and kicking down doors. The boy who touched him was a man grown now, with blood sopping down his shirt and fury bared in his teeth.
The girl standing in the doorway was the girl lying in a puddle in the alleyway, and this girl sees this spectacle unfold before her (this girl sees a man come back to life), and this girl-
She runs.
The facts were these: Champagne is scandalously ignored, Tyler's head is still stuck between the bannisters and he calls out for help, but she totally disregards him; just grabs her coat from the coat check girl and all but flings herself out the front door, peace out.
The facts were these: With the wind biting at her knees and her breath blowing up great plumes of white about her face she runs, she runs and doesn't stop, not for the stitch screaming in her side, not for her breath that's starting to come up in pants and wheezes.
It's a little after midnight when her phone starts blowing up with concerned pseudo-angry texts from Dad that she finally slows to a stop, red to her ears, the hem of her coat damp with mud. She's fidgety, restless; her hands won't stop shaking, so she shoves them in her pockets, scrapes her nails into her palms.
It's ridiculous, she thinks, her first day back and this damn town's already started to make up for lost time.
It's ridiculous, she thinks, all this running.
"It's ridiculous!" she cries into the night.
The stars shiver and the naked trees scratch at the wind, but they give no sign of having heard her. It's ridiculous, it's insane, it's witchcraft, it's whatever the hell she wants to call it, because she's pretty sure there have been no recorded incident of the scene she'd just witnessed back there in that white kitchen - not in life, not ever.
She doesn't know how long she stands in that alleyway, fingers digging into red clay brick, snow falling around her cheeks in light touches, cold caresses. She's vaguely aware of how… dramatic it all is, like those gaudy K-dramas Davina makes her watch.
Her phone bleats out her dad's ringtone and she clicks the green button, glad for the distraction.
Dad's voice fills her ear, warm and gruff all at the same time. "You on your way home yet?"
"Pretty much," Caroline says, obediently turning her feet to the right direction.
"Great. I made lasagna-hey, what are you… get your fork out of there!" There's a shuffling, some muffled laughter in the background. "Steven wants me to tell you it's some delicious lasagna. I'll try holding him off, Carebear, but I can't promise it won't all be finished by the time you get home."
"I'll run," she promises.
She stuffs the bit of address on that bit of paper in the back pocket of her jeans. Tomorrow, then.
.
.
Steven Forbes (née Langdon) insists on setting the mood for every occasion in life, be it incense in the bathrooms, bringing an actual food truck to all his step-daughter's meets, and the ever timeless lighting of candles during dinnertime. Usually, his antics are met with exasperated sighs or the humiliated hiding-of-face behind pompoms, and sometimes Steven wonders idly if he's overstepped some line as he sneaks into Caroline's school gym in the middle of the night (after a secretly-booked flight ticket to Virginia to avoid Bill's judgmental gaze), fixing lighters and adjusting the Swarovski, not that he doesn't trust his step-daughter's taste in style, but oh honey, this stage could do with one more smoke machine.
The look on her face as she steps up in her beautiful white gown wipes any doubt in his mind, and he gives himself a little pat on the back from up in the rafters where's he's perched, hidden from sight, and adjusts his utility belt. Line? What line?
Steven surveys Caroline affectionately over his glass of red wine. At the head of the table, Bill frowns down at the day's newspaper, the screen of his phone shedding light on the small print. Every now and then he'd cast an annoyed but affectionate look at Steven, who had set the rules: lights switched off during dinner.
Bill casts the newspaper aside with a sigh. So much for reading about Dr. Fell's post-mortem. "How was school today, Caroline?"
"It was good," Caroline ventures, spearing a cherry tomato. "Professor Saltzman had a nervous breakdown, I found out Vicki Donovan had a brother who just died, there may or may not be a dead repairman in the vents of the cafeteria. And - oh! I learned about the diocletanic's reforms."
"Lovely," Steven claps.
Done with her meal, Caroline gets up to wash her plate. With her hand gripping her sponge she asks, oh so casually, "Dad?"
"Yeah?" both Steven and Bill pipe up - one airy and the other brusque.
Caroline smiles down at the soapy suds. "The dad who's stayed here longer."
"That would be me." Steven pushes his chair back and plunks the empty casserole dish next to the sink. "What's up?"
"How long has the Pie Hole been here?"
Steven frowns, thinking. "Not that long."
Huh. Caroline scrubs a little harder. "What about the person that owns it, then?"
"The Mikaelsons?" Bill says, twisting in his seat. "Why would you want to know about them? And be careful with that - you're scraping the Teflon off."
There's a gleeful grin on Steven's face as he leans in and jabs her side with his spoon. "Got a little crush, Carebear?"
A crush? As if. The notion's so absurd she grips her sponge tighter, spilling soap suds into her palm. "No," she says, bristling, "it's just, you know, people are so in love with their pies and stuff."
"They're some British family who moved here way back when," Steven says, waving it off. "Elijah's the one who really runs it; Klaus just bakes the pies."
"Klaus," Caroline echoes quietly, even as the word British resounds inside her. She feels her cheeks warm, and - urgh, Care, can you not be so shallow right now? So what if some hanky panky guy who happened to bring a dead person back to life had an accent? He was still some hanky panky guy who happened to bring a dead person back to life.
Bill shakes his head. "They're constantly at war with the donut shop across the street. These people with their family businesses' taking everything so personally - it's some deranged mafia diner, let me tell you."
"But they make good pie," Steven discounts through a mouthful of leftover cheese. "And they have nice faces. Especially the grumpy one."
While Bill just throws his hands up all oy vey, he's used to it, Caroline pushes away from the sink-nope, so not here for this. "I'm going to bed."
"It's 8:20," Steven says, raising an eyebrow.
"Just play along," Caroline calls as she runs up the stairs. Her head's swimming.
.
.
Tomorrow-
Caroline passes by Professor Saltzman in the hallway, and he's wearing green tweed and an orange tie, loose around his neck. He looks drawn, his lips are bloodless, and there's an air of something forlorn about him. He's probably going to end up in the college's Herald, Voted Most Likely to Have Nervous Breakdown Twice in a Row or something.
Poor thing.
Melissa Harp falls in step with Caroline as she's making her way across the courtyard. The air is rife with the smell of hot chocolate, floral perfume, library books, and stale cheese as students sneak alcohol into aforesaid hot chocolate on school premises to abate the neurosis side effects that came with having double sessions of Astrophysics with Professor Mahmood.
"Could've waited for me yesterday, you bitch," Melissa grumbles. She's fumbling with the tail of her braid - she has a shock of black hair that always seemed to get tangled up in cold weather. "I'm always down for pie. Especially the Mikaelsons'. Their Sweet Potato? Imagine an orgasm but like…" she trails off, fingers telling a story her lips haven't finished, grappling for the right word.
"On your tongue?" Caroline guesses.
"Yes!" Melissa looks at her appraisingly. "You get it. Anyway, I gotta jet. See you tomorrow."
Caroline waves a goodbye and makes her way down the street, slow paces this time, glaring at every street sign to make sure she's on the right one. Last night, she'd painstakingly tapped the address into Google Maps, even dragged the little orange man onto the screen. She's practically memorized every speckle bricked into the walls, every crack in the cobblestone, every tree that lined the corners.
She walks up Maple Grove, eyes raking over the display windows with bated breath, and when she spots Vine Street her breath catches in her throat so sharply she almost passes out. Right there, in the pile of crunchy brown leaves.
For a moment she's eight years old again, splashing into puddles in her yellow galoshes.
Her hands are shaking. She stuffs them into the warm pockets of her coat as she walks up to the circular diner with its large display windows and roof shaped like a pie crust. There's a snazzy neon sign that she swears she's seen in a movie somewhere, and she wonders how it'd look like lighting up the corners of this dark screen, all bright red and burning yellow.
This is it. This is what she's been crazy-obsessing over for a week now, and it's right there at the tips of her fingers, all tangy and delicious (and smothered with cream). She has to get this over with, one way or another.
Taking a deep breath, Caroline pushes open the door. A bell jingles and almond air flutters around her face, coaxing her to loosen the scarf wound tight around her neck. The place is so retro - she's talking checkered patterns, red lights mounted on the walls, black and white marble floors, a circular counter with an old-school mint-green-and-yellow till at the end of it. There's a girl with dark hair slouched behind the till, snapping on her gum.
"Welcome to the Pie Hole," she drawls. Caroline glances at her nametag: HI! I'M A TRAINEE AND MY NAME IS Hayley.
"I-" Caroline stops, flushing. She doesn't really know what to say, now that she's here. Which is weird, because she's Caroline Forbes, she single-handedly threw the best prom Mystic Falls High had had in years, all by referring to a worn book she'd sketched her ideas into since she was in seventh grade.
Hayley gives her a bored once over. "You?"
"Pie," Caroline manages to chirp out, and fights the urge to screw her eyes shut, because seriously? Hayley doesn't hold it against her; all she does is shuffle to the pie display, grabs one from the bottom and sloppily cuts Caroline a piece.
Cracking her gum the whole way, Hayley gestures to a stool and slides the plate down the counter.
"I… haven't ordered yet," Caroline says to the warm slice of Banana Cream.
Hayley rolls her eyes. "Were you ever going to?"
Caroline blinks at her, privately just appalled, but she's got a point. She picks up her fork and takes a bite - and it's so good her eyes like, legit close, and she may or may not have let out an appreciative moan.
"I think this is the only part I like about this job," she hears Hayley say. "That shitfaced 'I just orgasmed' look you're rocking."
A little embarrassed, Caroline tucks a curl behind her ear. "Um, is Klaus in today? He makes the pies, right?"
"Actually-" Hayley pauses and actually brings herself to her full height. "No. He went out to lunch."
Caroline's eyebrows furrow. "He went out to lunch, during lunch rush hour… at his own diner?" Seriously? "When will he be back?"
"Um." Hayley inspects a nail. "In a jiffy."
Caroline's not exactly sure how long a jiffy's meant to be (not too long, she hopes - Dad wants her back by dinner). A jiffy shouldn't be too long, right? Especially not for the girl who's had Steven set a timer every time she brushed her teeth, to ensure 'adequate and thorough brushing'. She flashes her pearly whites at Hayley, fully prepared to wait. "By the way, why is there duct tape holding up the door handle?"
"Don't question the man," Hayley says it with the straightest face Caroline's ever seen on a person. "If you ask me, the whole family's a little…" she whistles, points her finger at her temple in circles.
Caroline chews on this, and then forks more pie into her mouth so she can chew on that too. "But they make good pie."
.
.
"You'll never believe it!" Rebekah breezes into the kitchen through the back door, looking utterly pissed off. She has a glossy photograph in one hand and a thick brown envelope in the other. "Tyler Lockwood has turned coat! Tyler Lockwood is a traitor."
Before Klaus can even utter a befuddled What?, Rebekah slaps the photograph down on flour-dusted table. It's a picture of their sometimes-delivery boy and son of the town Mayor, exiting the donut shop across the street.
"So?" Klaus asks, but he feels the sting. "Whatever preferences he has with his dessert has nothing to do wi-"
Rebekah clicks her tongue impatiently, stupid brother. "Nik, look at his jacket."
Klaus studies the photo. Brown jacket with pink and green trimming and - wait a minute, he knows this jacket, knows how it scratches in the shoulders and how it's missing some buttons at the bottom. He knows this jacket so well he's surprised it wasn't the first thing he noticed.
"Filthy bastard," he declares vehemently. Tyler is wearing the crest of their arch nemesis. The sudden betrayal cuts so deep that Klaus savagely tears the circle of dough he's been trying to cover his Chocolate Cream pie filling with. He drops the dough and brushes his hands off on his trousers. There are more pictures in the envelope - Tyler walking down the street hauling several boxes, Tyler smiling at a customer as he delivers right to their doorstep, Tyler hunched into his jacket as he exits his snow-swathed delivery car.
The nerve of the boy - sure, he only works part-time, coming in about the amount of times Hayley does, but to their competitors across the street? After everything they've done for him? He snatches at the pictures. "How did you get these?"
"Elijah mailed them," Rebekah says simply. "You know how he always knows these things. So what are you going to do?"
Klaus scratches at his stubbly chin, marking it with flour and butter. "I'm going to send him a pie. Yep, Dutch Apple. That's his favourite, isn't it?"
Rebekah blinks owlishly at him. "Send him a pie? Really? He spits in the face of our family venture and you want to send him a gift on the way out?"
"Don't be silly, sister," Klaus mutters as he strides to the pantry. "It's going to be laced with Ipicac. The very thing those wanks tried to spike our pies with."
Rebekah smiles and follows him into the pantry, where he's rifling through the shelves for some cinnamon. "Won't he be suspicious, though?"
Klaus rolls his eyes. "He went to them as silent as a snake in the grass. Obviously he assumes we're still in the dark. You'll ask him over for dinner, serve him this pie - lay the guilt on thick."
The smile on his sister's face widens into something devilish, and they hear the front door jingling almost as if to accommodate it. "Wonderful. Or we could always feed the pie to Kol. Two birds, one stone and all that jazz."
Though tempting, Klaus has to banish the thought from his mind. As scheming and evil as their brother was, he had saved his life not one week ago, even helped kill General None of Your Beeswax, but look where that led them…
The hand that's roving for the jar of cinnamon powder stills.
That girl, he should have stopped her. Instead, he'd waited in that blood-splattered kitchen, counting down the seconds until a person died in the General's place, and what a shame that it had to be Meredith Fell. She'd been an intellectual witty thing, her favourite had been coconut cream pie, and she always left good tips.
"One at a time, sister." His hand closes around the cinnamon and he turns to leave. "And if we don't have any Ipicac, maybe grab the rat pois… oh, bloody hell-"
Klaus turns on his heels and almost collides into Rebekah in his haste to get back into the pantry. Rebekah, doubled over a barrel, hisses in pain. "What is your problem?"
Klaus, breathing hard, has pressed his back flat against the door of the pantry. He tugs on his sister's arm and makes her peek through the door's little window.
Her face clouds over. "Oh."
.
.
"She's eating pie," Rebekah says with bated breath. "Shouldn't be long now."
Thirty minutes pass and Klaus' legs are starting to cramp from his position on the floor. The pantry isn't even that big to begin with, and with Rebekah taking up more leg room than a normal teenaged-girl should, he has to lean against the door with his feet up on one of the shelves across from him. Rebekah's knees stab into his face whenever she stands on tip toe to peek out the window.
"What's she doing now?" Klaus asks wearily another twenty minutes later, arranging some spice tins into a pyramid.
"Still eating pie." Another knee jab.
Klaus swats her knee away. "Is she a slow eater?"
"Very."
Klaus sighs, and starts on a castle.
.
.
"Sniff it."
"No."
"Come on, Nik-sniff it."
Klaus groans and leans forward, eyes blindfolded by Tyler's old apron (which they'd taken great pleasure in tearing to pieces) and takes a cautious whiff. "Anise seed."
"Yay," Rebekah whisper-cheers, and Klaus can hear her move aside tins to grab another cannister. "Rebekah, we've been at this for more than-"
"Sniff," Rebekah commands.
Why does he even bother? "Cardamom."
"Wrong," Rebekah sings. "It's ginger powder. Not bad though, that's seventy-three out of eighty. One more?"
Klaus just groans.
.
.
"Do you think," Rebekah asks, "if you'd touched Kol, he would've come back a vampire anyway? Because you'd have to die to turn into one, don't you? And technically he was already dead…"
Rebekah frowns deeply, mulling this over, confusing herself even more.
Klaus doesn't answer because he's not even sure he knows the answer. "Does this mean you've forgiven him?"
"He's our brother," Rebekah says, and Klaus wonders if it sounds as hollow in her ears as it does in his.
.
.
"Rebekah," Klaus pushes at his sister, "get off of me. My foot's asleep."
"This is stupid," Rebekah complains loudly, getting to her feet. Klaus instantly tugs her down, all the while furiously hissing Shhh. "We've been here for more than two hours and I-" She pushes open the pantry door with a bang, "am going to say hi."
"Rebekah!" Klaus clambers to his feet as well, but his sister's already in the kitchen, and he shuts his eyes, cursing himself for listening to Elijah's suggestion of having an open kitchen.
"So people can see you work," Elijah had said while drawing a big X over the wide door in Klaus' designs. "So I don't have to keep dispelling those rumours that you slip razor blades in your pies."
"What do they take us for, some deranged mafia diner?" Klaus grumbled, but altered his blueprints anyway.
From her designated spot behind the till, Hayley just rolls her eyes and predictably cracks her gum. "You guys can come out now. She left like thirty minutes ago."
Klaus pokes his head out of the pantry, rubbing his sore calves. "Thanks for telling us sooner. So glad our misery seems to have amused you."
"Only his misery. I had a grand time." Rebekah is regarding Hayley with an impressed look on her face. "How did you know not to tell her where he was?"
"For one," Hayley says while procuring a nail file out of thin air, "I've never seen her before; definitely new around here."
Klaus frowns, not following, but allows her to continue.
"For two," Hayley stresses, "she was a pretty girl. A nice girl. A pretty, nice girl. A pretty, nice girl asking for Klaus. Doesn't that sound laughable to you?"
Apparently it does, to his sister, who's clutching her stomach from giggling. Klaus glowers at the both of them and goes to collect the dirty dishes from deserted tables that Hayley hadn't even bothered to clear. "You know, Hayley-"
The unruly look in his eyes stops Hayley's laughter, and she slouches a little behind the till.
"-if I weren't about to give you a bonus this month, I'd fire you," Klaus finishes. He sweeps into the kitchen and starts on the washing up. It's late in the evening and not a Tuesday, so the flow of people is slower.
"That's as much of a 'thank you' you'll ever get," he hears his sister say.
It's the slowest day of the week, and he catches Hayley dozing on the countertop, in plain view of their customers more than once; is about to flick her awake when he sees it, the stapled papers she's using as a padding for her head.
"Oi," he says, jostling her awake. "What's this?"
Hayley stretches, and gives a delicate yawn. She blinks a few times, pops a fresh piece of gum into her mouth before answering. "From pretty nice girl. She applied for a job."
Klaus feels his stomach drop to the floor, even hears a little splat-but it's just that clumsy Josh staring forlornly at the remains of his pie on the floor. Rebekah's already on the way to clean it.
"Well, Hayley," Klaus says through gritted teeth, "why didn't you talk her out of it?"
"There's a HELP WANTED sign right there."
Klaus shoots her a look that can only be described as scathing, marches out the door, grabs the sign from where it hangs and flings it across the street.
(It hits Damon Salvatore in the face, and that is the story of how he gets to have free pie for an entire week.)
.
.
While all traces of the Girl (he's started capitalizing it in his mind) have been removed from the diner-her plate is scrubbed twice; Rebekah carelessly tosses the fork into a pile and Klaus spends hours polishing every single fork in the kitchen just to be sure; her application thrown out by a disgruntled Hayley without even a look over-it isn't as easy to banish her from his mind.
She's looking for him, clearly-
"Yeah," Kol snorts, "it's very apparent in the way she ordered a piece of pie and left as soon as she was finished with it. She very much wants you, Nik."
Rebekah steps into the kitchen with a load of dirty dishes and throws her brother an even dirtier look, but says, "For once I'm inclined to agree with him."
Elijah rustles his newspaper in their direction, now now - play nice. Klaus looks around the kitchen in despair, how Kol's boots are resting on his freshly-scrubbed table and how Rebekah is totally disregarding the dishes and is now perched on the counter, doing her nails with the bottle of nail polish Hayley had left behind, smack dab in the middle of the pie display.
Probably on purpose, Klaus snarls inwardly, the brat.
Elijah finally sets down his newspaper. There are the beginnings of dark circles under his eyes; he'd came to the diner straight from the airport after Klaus had called to tell him that Rebekah and Kol were actually being amicable. And by amicable, he meant "not gouging each other's eyes out with forks" - but that was most likely because Klaus has been obsessively hoarding them.
It's been a while since all four of them were together like this. With the exception of Hayley packing up her things to go home for the day, it feels like those dinners they used to have together - before Elijah started taking the executive seat, before Rebekah started falling for boys with fragile hearts, before Kol realized he had a penchant for ripping out aforementioned boys' fragile hearts, and before Mikael kicked all of them out but - details.
"Still haven't fixed that door," Elijah murmurs, but it's so quiet that Klaus surmises he must be at it again, making lists in his head. Compartmentalizing everyone. Probably already drawn up graphs in his head complete with annotations on how Klaus, as head (and only) piemaker here could motivate Hayley to not take naps behind the till while people are queuing up to pay.
His whetstone grinds against his stainless steel knife with seasoned precision, the sharp gritty noise as soothing as the Enya Elijah sometimes puts on after closing time. He looks up from his sharpening to glance at Rebekah, who is now being accosted by Kol's brandishing of a wrinkled Valentine's day card. What is it about her, he wonders, that makes her so susceptible to his half-arsed apologies? That she would just welcome her brother into the diner with arms that were not quite open, but inviting either way, after Kol had killed her boyfriend - it grates on him. Grates on him, because he's quite sure he can never be that forgiving.
He does not feel, and he does not care, but every time he says this Rebekah insists that he must be lying. But doesn't she realize? Love and forgiveness, they go hand in hand, right into a dark pit that was weakness.
"So what is this business with the Girl?"
"What?" Klaus asks blearily.
"The Girl," Elijah enunciates slowly. "The one who saw you bring the… General back to life."
"Oh, yes. That." Klaus slides the knife back in its knife block, brushes the dust off his hands and straightens up. "Right. Listen up and listen well, brothers and sister. We are moving."
Rebekah stops shoving Kol's face. "Wait, what?"
"We. Are moving." Klaus reiterates. He grabs his favourite rolling pin and smacks it into the palm of his hand. "Rebekah, darling, you handle all our customers. Tell them not to worry, we're not disbanding - we're simply going underground. And Kol. You're fired."
Kol looks like he's just been force-fed a whole lemon. He sputters an "Excuse you?" while Rebekah mutters under her breath, "About bloody time."
"You're no longer our busboy. You have been demoted. You are now our delivery boy." Klaus stabs the map of the town hanging from their wall with the end of his rolling pin. "Delivering secret pies all over town to our loyal customers to let them know we are still at it. Inhabitants need not know where we're going. This will be fun. A venture. An adventure. A venture-adventure. Of Pie."
Elijah stops leaning on the table, gauging the scene with practiced silence. But Rebekah - oh, Rebekah slaps a palm to her forehead.
"You started not making sense about five sentences ago," Rebekah says. "Venture-adventure? Secret deliveries? Nik, untwist your unmentionables and tell us what's going on."
Klaus bangs down his rolling pin like a gavel. "We've been found out! The Girl could be running around town sticking notices under people's doors, alerting people of the secret happenings of our diner, sharpening their pitchforks to thrust straight through our skulls-"
"Macabre much?" The rolling pin had scuffed the precious worktable, but Klaus pays not an inch of a mind to it. Kol shuffles forward to inspect the damage and groans. "Nik, I had to bribe someone a right fortune to get this table for your gallingly fickle arse."
"We'll get a new one," Klaus fires back, incensed. "Not only will we metaphorically go underground, we'll actually move there. Imagine a hole - and people scale down to get to our diner. Literally a pie hole."
"And what are we, the filling?" Rebekah lowers her face into her hands and moans. "Oh Nik. You've gone insane."
Elijah rests his fingertips together, a deep frown forming on his face. "How sure are you that she saw you?"
"Sure enough that she came by and applied for a job," Klaus says. His hands won't stop clenching and unclenching. "This is it. All my - our - hard pie work, burnt to a crisp, pureed into mush."
(Nobody laughs. Klaus scowls; he'd thought they were clever.)
"Don't be so dramatic, Niklaus," Elijah says, even as his eyebrows draw together in worry. "There is always an alternative."
Kol smirks and touches the tip of his tongue to his fang. "Always."
"No, Kol," they reply in unison, Rebekah angered, Elijah exasperated and Klaus half-hearted. He's very nearly considering it, but seeing as how protective Rebekah is of the girl…
"I don't see why we can't just pull her aside and explain things to her," Rebekah says, rolling her eyes. "She doesn't have to know anything else. And I, for one, would like to see how she turned out after all these years." She pushes herself off the counter to pry the rolling pin from her brother's hand. "I'd like a friend."
Elijah looks amazed. "But don't you have friends?"
"No," Rebekah says sulkily. "Between the three of you you've scared off all the potentials."
Klaus rolls his eyes, You've got a point, but Elijah looks indignant, I assure you, sister-
"It's true," Kol confirms. "I may or may not have been the bane of most of them." His tone turns serious. "I'm sorry. Won't happen this time."
Rebekah looks at Klaus beseechingly. "Please, Nik."
.
.
Klaus says no.
We've other things to worry about, he tells Rebekah, even more so now that no one seems to have taken his suggestion of moving to heart.
He's constantly on edge, like a panther prowling in capture, just waiting to be met with its fate. He shoves everyone out come closing time instead of letting them nurse their hot chocolates or have one last slice as he usually would. He installs blinds. On Fridays when Rebekah is predictably always late for her shifts, he's always waiting by the window, peering out into the streets for her.
Kol clicks his pen over the Times' crossword puzzle. "What's a seven letter word for paranoid?"
Even normally passive Hayley expresses irritation at having to not only juggle the utterly tiresome job of balancing the till, but she also has to keep a sharp eye out for the door. "How the hell am I supposed to do my nails with all these things you keep piling up on me?" she asks with a huff.
Elijah, having finished with his bi-monthly check ups gets on the next plane to Italy to broker another deal. Maybe, he'd said, if we moved out of that absurdly lavish house mother left us, we wouldn't have to keep treading water. When Rebekah had heard, she'd looked so terrified at the prospect of having to leave home with the walls that still whispered Esther's name that the subject is dropped.
So Elijah flies off, Klaus talks Marcel into another year of free jam, Rebekah adds more flair to her mug tricks, and Kol scares competitors away. This would guarantee that they're the only dessert place people keep coming back to, if it weren't for the damned donut-shaped hellhole across the street…
A day goes by, two days, five days, a week, and there is no more sign of the Girl. He deduces that she might still be waiting for that call from them that is never going to come, and he knows he can't avoid it forever. Kol sometimes passes through the diner (he uses the kitchen's back door as a shortcut; the people he scares off have their own henchman he needs to remain scarce from) and looks at him knowingly, but Klaus glares back - no. But he still keeps the thought in mind, in case of dire emergencies.
And then the weekend passes, and Klaus finally allows himself to breathe, to stop looking over his shoulder every time the front bell sounds.
Maybe it was just a passing whim, like when Rebekah had wanted a miniature horse when she was younger, and Finn, who'd been away at sea had actually come home to talk her out of it because none of them had been able to. Rebekah had taken to shutting herself in her room in a fever of childish want.
"You wouldn't like a horse," Finn had said sombrely. "They don't eat pie."
And that promptly changed Rebekah's mind.
Mikael had been puzzled over this one-eighty, how easy it was for Rebekah to come around from this obsession; he'd never really understood his children's love of pie. In fact, Mikael hated it, always curled his lip in disgust when he comes home to find Rebekah covered in flour from helping Niklaus bake. Mikael preferred other delicacies: indulgent cream profiteroles, crème brûlée burned with great technique, light and airy donut holes dusted with icing sugar.
He even came home one day with a breeder's brochure for miniature horses, but the damage had been done. Finn packed his bags and left town again, along with Rebekah's equus ferus caballus fancies.
What if, like his sister, the Girl had changed her mind? Was it his pie? Was it too flaky? Was the cream too thin for her liking? It couldn't be that, because Marcel's People - his one friend always referred to them as People, capitalized - had reviewed the Pie Hole early last year and had given the cream special mention (which was unexpected), along with the mention of the Marcel (which was). But then again he couldn't fathom why he should even care, why she should be any different from the General, busboy Matt, or anyone else for that matter.
He hadn't even wanted to touch her, but Rebekah had begged.
Clung to him like a life rope, absolutely tugged him down that alleyway with brute strength surprising for an eight-year-old. It was that mean old geezer who'd rushed past them with a panicked flush to his face, but before Klaus could stop and ask what the matter was, he was already gone.
And then Rebekah had gasped, seeing the body.
"Rebekah-no darling, we should be on our way now-"
He had been sixteen and terrified, and you would think his baby sister would be too, but she'd knelt down by the girl and cradled her in her lap. "It was that mean old geezer who'd rushed past us with that panicked flush to his face, wasn't it?" she asks. She looks upset and angry.
Klaus stands there in the rain, weighing his options.
"She looks about my age," Rebekah whispers, brushing the poor, dead girl's hair away from her forehead. It's a matted fizz plastered to her face, damp from the drizzling rain. "How awfully sad. Don't you think so, Nik?"
She looks up at him, eyes so earnest and so blue. "If I can't have a miniature horse, can I have this, then? Please, Nik."
And Nik, ever the big brother, extends his finger.
.
.
Another Friday.
Kol takes a crack at auditing the day's accounts, but he ends up making a big chicken scratch mess out of it. Klaus bends over it, trying to figure out where Kol went wrong, lines and lines of numbers and calculations muddling up his head that he doesn't even look up when the front bell jingles.
"Read the sign," he says without turning around. "We're closed."
"Well, you pretty much violated the Outside Activities and Employment section under the Employee and Labour Relations Act, so guess what? I don't give a shit."
Klaus cranes his neck around so fast he hears his neck cracks. Wasn't Hayley supposed to-
Hayley glances up from painting her nails a bright fuchsia. "Oops."
In the corner, Rebekah, who'd been lounging in one of the booths, straightens up. Kol leans his elbows on the counter, an amused onlooker.
There are snowflakes clinging to her hair, to her eyelashes, but she seems unperturbed by them. She slaps her application down on the counter with Technicolor fury, her eyes bright and trained on his. "I'm Caroline Forbes, and I want to know why my job application was in the trashcan on Grand Street."
Klaus gapes, awash with something like horror and irritation pricking in his temple, but it might be a side-effect of the valium he'd taken earlier-
"I'm pretty sure this validates an answer," Kol yawns.
So entranced was Klaus on the fact that it's the girl - The Girl - standing in the middle of his diner, hair like spun gold under the light of his overhead lamps, that her words almost don't register. "You idiot, shut up Kol. Do-do you make a habit out of digging through people's trash?"
"Is throwing out resumes a habit of yours?" she bristles. She's pacing now, back and forth, wringing her hands. "So there I was on an innocent stroll, taking in the sights of this whimsical town I haven't seen in forever, and I'm about to dump my empty latte cup when, what do you know, I found my job application." She pushes it towards him; it suspends in air for about a second before floating down to his feet. "Right there. Crumpled for the world to see. I did my research, okay?"
Klaus doesn't doubt that she did. Her eyes are a little crazy and her ears look flushed. "This is like, so wrong. I wasn't even interviewed."
Klaus shoots Hayley a glare, and Hayley throws back an irritated one; like, a trashcan three blocks away isn't get-rid-of-it enough? She snorts and pockets her nail file (too annoyed to even think about upkeeping right now) while he scrubs a hand down his face. "The position has been filled."
"Actually," Hayley begins, scooting around the counter, "I kinda quit. My doctor says I have this like, you know…" she waits expectantly.
No, Klaus does not know.
"Anyway," she wraps up, "I'm not allowed any strenuous activities. Peace out."
"All you do is sit behind the till!" Klaus exclaims in disbelief, but Hayley just gives her gum one last crack, shrugs her coat on and peaces out.
The door swings closed, and the bell jingles with finality - and then there's silence in the diner. Rebekah shuffles her feet and Kol is darting his eyes back and forth between the three of them. He looks amused, his eyes crinkled at the corners. Klaus clears his throat and turns back to Caroline. "Well, this is certainly awkward."
There's another jingle of the bell. Maybe it's Hayley coming back for her nail polish. Klaus whirls around to tell her to just piss off, but the words die in his throat, because it's not Hayley standing there.
It's Mikael.
He leans his weight down on his crane and sends his children a leering grin. "Awkward does not even begin to cover it."
.
.