I Thought I Was Fine (Parts 1 & 2)
Title: I Thought I Was Fine
Rating: M (Overall NC-17)
Pairing: Kol/Caroline
Word Count: 2, 506
Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, sex for later on
Notes: I'll be uploading 2 parts at a time, as I finish writing them. There should be 6 or 7 in total. For prompt #062: Rug Burn, with lots of accident/injury-prone Caroline.
Summary: She doesn't know how she's lived for seventeen years as a human being and not died at least once in between.
This one I wrote for myself - trying to see how ridiculous it can get.
I. Just A Scratch
"What happened to your arm?"
The real story is hard to stomach, but Caroline can't tell anyone that someone ripped through her forearm with a two-by-four without raising alarms. It was really meant for her head, but she caught the shadowed reflection off the framed photos perched on her fireplace mantel just in time to turn around and shield herself. She remembers the crack of hard lumber splitting over the point of her elbow, the searing pain of sharp wood digging into her skin as it dragged all the way to the bone of her wrist.
It hurt like a bitch. She spent the next hour picking splinters out of her wounds, but not before remarking to her assailant about what a huge jerk he was; her cousin Mike, the ridiculously boneheaded highschool slacktivist, had been invited to stay for a few days by her mother. And no, the dweeb said he couldn't recognize her.
She had far ruder words for him sitting on the tip of her tongue, but she wanted to keep it classy.
Caroline looks at the scabs sheepishly. Her healing isn’t kicking in fast enough for this, and there isn’t nearly enough blood she could drink to make it go any faster. At least without overdosing on the stuff anyway. Even vampires need time, she supposes.
The yellow cardigan she donned should have covered it up, but she didn’t realize that it wasn’t opaque enough to hide the dark claw-like cuts until she met Elena by the quad. Always with the sharp eye, that girl.
“I fell down,” Caroline tries to sound convincing about it. She swats Elena’s hand away and hurriedly rolls her sleeve back down so as to not draw any more attention - the girls from Campus Security Femme can get a little aggressive with their activism. “Just an accident.” She frowns for effect. “Seriously.”
Elena clearly doesn’t believe her, but what matters is that she stops asking about it.
"Look," she shows off the lightened scar. "All healed up." Another couple of hours and the marks will fade into nonexistence, thanks to the extra helping of platelets she sipped in the morning. Caroline doesn't know how she's lived for seventeen years as a human being and not died at least once in between.
"That's not the point," Bonnie says, with that reprimanding look she gives whenever Caroline graces trouble. "What if it was me waiting around in your house?"
"Well, it wasn't you, and trust me, I want him out of here more than anyone else." Caroline rolls her eyes. "I have to share a bathroom with him."
Her best friend shoots her a disapproving frown. "You know that it's the least of your problems, right?"
Caroline answers defensively. "You've never shared a bathroom with him."
And it's true, because he's the worst possible slob to live with. Doesn't put the seat back down. Uses her hand soap as body wash. Applies her ultra-hydrating moisturizer to the calluses of his feet. There's nothing more that she wants than to pull out his spine from the front but everyone will be jumping at her with their moral codes. Oh, Caroline, you can't, he's only an innocent human being! They all grow up! The police department does not condone murder, young lady!
Bonnie shakes her head, attributing Caroline's cousin woes to a case of minor territorialism, but still seeks confirmation that she's not in imminent danger. "Look, he may not be trying to kill you, but you have to tell your mom about what he did. You can always stay with me." This isn't comforting, but it's better than a recommendation to lock herself up in the old cellar hidden deep in the woods.
"Thanks for the offer," she says, "but I'm not about to leave my house full of luxury skincare alone with that monster."
"Don't hurt yourself," Bonnie replies, with just a little bit of sass. Caroline laughs and looks away.
Something odd falls into her line of sight. A figure, standing next to the lamppost a great distance away, somehow too still to be just a passing figment of her imagination and too out of place in the background scenery to ignore.
The hairs on the back of her neck rise at the possibility of being watched, but she isn't sure if it's just the psychology of being recently injured that's turning her slightly paranoid.
Whatever it is, the form disappears when she blinks, leaving nothing but an empty space where she thought she saw it staring.
"What?" Bonnie notices her sudden shift in mood.
Caroline chalks it up to a wild imagination paired with too much frustration over her cousin. "It's nothing," she half-assures, even though if it feels like something.
It comes out of nowhere.
First, she hears the air slicing with a swoosh. Then she looks down.
There's a bolt lodged in her gut.
The pain strikes her seconds later, and still astonished at the abruptness of it, she grits her teeth and extracts it from her body with both hands.
Caroline does a quick scan of her surroundings, but sees no one - she's alone in the gym, and it should be easy to catch the person doing this to her, given the lack of places a person can hide. But she can't detect any movement, even with the adrenaline kicking her senses into overdrive.
As sudden as the first, Caroline lets out a sharp cry that rings throughout the gym when the second quarrel pierces her shoulder from behind. She spins on her heel and spots him, leaping away with cat-like reflexes - Mike displays a great amount of fear and freezes in place after being seen.
Well this is awkward.
Nobody moves an inch or says anything, but there are definitely thoughts. For him, regretting being caught, and how he can save himself; for her, trying to come to grips with the fact that a member of the family has tried to murder her twice now. It doesn't look like he's going to stop anytime soon, either.
It's until she hears the nocking of a bow that she listens to her gut to flee. Not sparing another moment, Caroline speeds back home as quickly as she can to lock all the windows and doors in the house.
"Great," she mumbles to herself. With heavy feet, she clumsily makes her way to the refrigerator in the garage where rows of blood bags are piled on top of each other on every shelf. Taking in a lungful of icy air, she pulls the projectile from her body swiftly.
Ouch.
The bolt hits the ground with a clatter and Caroline slumps herself against the heavy frame, letting the wisps of cold air wrap around her body and soothe the open wounds.
Damn it. She’s living under the same roof as a hunter. A slayer? Oh god, Mike is male Buffy. The first incident had not been an innocent a mistake as he'd made it seem.
That loser. Hunting her on her home turf.
She scoffs at the absurdity of the situation, snatching a bag of B+ from behind her head and taking a comforting bite. It may be cold, purified and clinical, but it still tastes of the life it once had been. The only thing that could top this would be if she sought it raw from the source.
Caroline tilts her head back and enjoys it to the last drop, letting it distract her from how pissed off she is over Mike's nosy antics. Then she reaches for a second helping.
II. Unwanted Diagnosis
Vampirism isn't always about self-control for Caroline. It's about making people believe you have it. When you feel hungry, you need to glance at, not ogle, the jugulars of the people next to you. Never stare, unless they're not paying any particular attention.
It can get distracting when you're ravenous and the pattering of heartbeats begin to sound like a violent roar in your ears, but the trick is to breathe and count backwards from ten. Or if that doesn't work, then take a hike. Stefan used to get her out of the house to take her mind off the bloodlust.
Bloodlust, she huffs in disbelief. The struggle is nearly as terrible as her torrential relationship with carbs. Worse that she needs the blood to accelerate healing.
The walks are effective, though. This time she's taking a short stroll some streets down from Bonnie’s home, where she's crashing in the meantime. Having gone through a shameful bout of stress eating - drinking?- when she guzzled six blood bags like a frat boy chugging beer at a kegger, the only way she can cool down is to stay away.
In the wee hours of the morning, the streets are cold and empty. The air vibrates with the chirp of crickets, and what's supposed to give Caroline tranquility has instead caused her to look over her shoulder more than once.
Thanks to Mike's ambush, her mind has set itself to high alert, paying attention to every detail possible that could hint at it happening again; the scrape of dry leaves blown by the breeze along the sidewalk; hearing an irregular beat of feet that doesn't quite match her own footsteps; a crawl up her back that feels like fingers but is only the wind tickling her-
She yelps when she collides with someone. Her first instinct is to reach for the person's arm, but she finds her wrists being seized before she can even twitch a muscle.
Caroline shouts her discontent at being bested and looks up to see Kol Mikaelson, who is absolutely bemused that she tried to accost him.
"Hey, pretty," he grins, not keeping his once over of her discreet at all. "What's a girl like you doing all alone here at this hour?"
She tries to wrestle away from him, but he's sickeningly strong. When she finally realises the futility of trying to escape, she narrows her eyes at him. "Have you been following me?"
Kol recoils, incredulous. "You flatter yourself," he says, loosening his grip. "I have my own business here."
Wrenching herself away, she nurses the newly formed welts at the heels of her palm. "The business of being a mental patient on the loose," she retorts, annoyance simmering. Bad enough that she can't physically overpower him. She's not going to spare him from the blade of her words.
Naturally, he does not appreciate the opinion. "It's none of your business," he corrects, at first delivered with a simple sneer, but then it dissolves into something more curious as his hand rises to cup the side of Caroline’s cheek. It startles her, but she’s so frozen in half-fear half-caution that the only thing that she can manage is a, "Do I have something on my face?"
Kol studies her weary eyes. Please don't compel me, please don't compel me, she screams through them. The last thing she wants is to have her freedom stripped from her again; this guy seems way more unrestrained with his Original abilities than the rest of his family.
"Why are you drinking so much blood?" he questions, thumb pulling down just under her eye to note the colour. She finds his sudden tender manner most unsettling, and the longer she remains in his grasp, the better she's able to discern what makes him undeniably attractive - deep set eyes framed by laugh lines, a strong, masculine jawline, and that unabashedly cheeky smile.
That’s not good. With all of her willpower Caroline folds her arms and steps backward, reeling in the feelings while putting distance between the both of them. Just as she does with the blood.
Stop being shallow, Care. This guy is as dangerous as he is batshit crazy. Chiseled features aren't going to change that.
"Why do you care?" she asks.
"You're hungry. Your body's on a borderline frenzy." Then comes a wide grin. "Vampires are up for anything when they’re..." His words trail away and his finger points to head, circling a point on his temple.
Crazy, he's saying.
She is not crazy. It’s not like she’s gone on a bender and sunk her teeth into anyone. She’s appalled that he’d even suggest that she has so little control over herself.
“It’s all in your eyes,” says Kol, “All those tiny capillaries making ridges inside - you’d better stop, or you’ll go on a rampage. Wouldn’t want to mess up my plans now, do we?”
Mystery plans which she doesn’t care about. “Well, I’m pretty sure that if I wasn't being hunted, I wouldn’t need a supersized blood bag to keep my limbs attached.”
"And who would want to hurt a little bird like you?"
Trouble is the last thing she wants, and talking about it is somehow more upsetting than being alone and shutting it out. "Nobody. I'm fine."
He's unconvinced. "There are ways for me to find out, you know. Besides," he smirks, "I like freeing little birds from their predicaments."
She pauses. "What are you expecting out of it? Your hand up my skirt? My heart?" It's meant to be acerbic, but when she actually hears it and envisions it, she starts to wish that she didn't open her mouth at all. It's the blood talking.
Kol chuckles. "You wouldn't want to give me those things. I wouldn't let go of a woman like you." Just the glint in his eye is enough to force a skip of life in her heart. "I'm as terrible as they come."
The worst thing about what he's saying is how paradoxical it is, warning her of the danger while oozing the magnetic charm she's supposed to stay away from. There's a small part of her that wonders what it would be like to be close to him. Her fingers itch with curiosity as her gaze sweeps downward from his hair line to his lips, neck to coat. Before she knows it, she's taken a quick glance of his crotch and mentally slaps herself for lingering.
You are not going to go there.
"It's my cousin. But don't hurt him, Kol." She tries to steer the topic somewhere else to ignore how self-conscious she feels about checking him out.
"He won't die. I'll just have a little fun." He leans closer. "Then we can have our own sort of fun."
"You're insane and sleazy." And despite knowing this, Caroline speculates every kind of fun there is to be had with a guy like him. Oh god, she closes her eyes and the mild shame rises from her chest, you're just as sleazy as he is.
"I meant with owing me a favour." A non-sexual one, he insinuates with his tone. He stops for a beat, beaming at her apparent gutter-brained notions. "Actually, I may have something for you to do. You can thank me after I've settled your problem."
She never asked for any help, but Kol doesn't seem to be the kind of guy who takes no for an answer.
Next Parts
Rating: M (Overall NC-17)
Pairing: Kol/Caroline
Word Count: 2, 506
Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, sex for later on
Notes: I'll be uploading 2 parts at a time, as I finish writing them. There should be 6 or 7 in total. For prompt #062: Rug Burn, with lots of accident/injury-prone Caroline.
Summary: She doesn't know how she's lived for seventeen years as a human being and not died at least once in between.
This one I wrote for myself - trying to see how ridiculous it can get.
I. Just A Scratch
"What happened to your arm?"
The real story is hard to stomach, but Caroline can't tell anyone that someone ripped through her forearm with a two-by-four without raising alarms. It was really meant for her head, but she caught the shadowed reflection off the framed photos perched on her fireplace mantel just in time to turn around and shield herself. She remembers the crack of hard lumber splitting over the point of her elbow, the searing pain of sharp wood digging into her skin as it dragged all the way to the bone of her wrist.
It hurt like a bitch. She spent the next hour picking splinters out of her wounds, but not before remarking to her assailant about what a huge jerk he was; her cousin Mike, the ridiculously boneheaded highschool slacktivist, had been invited to stay for a few days by her mother. And no, the dweeb said he couldn't recognize her.
She had far ruder words for him sitting on the tip of her tongue, but she wanted to keep it classy.
Caroline looks at the scabs sheepishly. Her healing isn’t kicking in fast enough for this, and there isn’t nearly enough blood she could drink to make it go any faster. At least without overdosing on the stuff anyway. Even vampires need time, she supposes.
The yellow cardigan she donned should have covered it up, but she didn’t realize that it wasn’t opaque enough to hide the dark claw-like cuts until she met Elena by the quad. Always with the sharp eye, that girl.
“I fell down,” Caroline tries to sound convincing about it. She swats Elena’s hand away and hurriedly rolls her sleeve back down so as to not draw any more attention - the girls from Campus Security Femme can get a little aggressive with their activism. “Just an accident.” She frowns for effect. “Seriously.”
Elena clearly doesn’t believe her, but what matters is that she stops asking about it.
"Look," she shows off the lightened scar. "All healed up." Another couple of hours and the marks will fade into nonexistence, thanks to the extra helping of platelets she sipped in the morning. Caroline doesn't know how she's lived for seventeen years as a human being and not died at least once in between.
"That's not the point," Bonnie says, with that reprimanding look she gives whenever Caroline graces trouble. "What if it was me waiting around in your house?"
"Well, it wasn't you, and trust me, I want him out of here more than anyone else." Caroline rolls her eyes. "I have to share a bathroom with him."
Her best friend shoots her a disapproving frown. "You know that it's the least of your problems, right?"
Caroline answers defensively. "You've never shared a bathroom with him."
And it's true, because he's the worst possible slob to live with. Doesn't put the seat back down. Uses her hand soap as body wash. Applies her ultra-hydrating moisturizer to the calluses of his feet. There's nothing more that she wants than to pull out his spine from the front but everyone will be jumping at her with their moral codes. Oh, Caroline, you can't, he's only an innocent human being! They all grow up! The police department does not condone murder, young lady!
Bonnie shakes her head, attributing Caroline's cousin woes to a case of minor territorialism, but still seeks confirmation that she's not in imminent danger. "Look, he may not be trying to kill you, but you have to tell your mom about what he did. You can always stay with me." This isn't comforting, but it's better than a recommendation to lock herself up in the old cellar hidden deep in the woods.
"Thanks for the offer," she says, "but I'm not about to leave my house full of luxury skincare alone with that monster."
"Don't hurt yourself," Bonnie replies, with just a little bit of sass. Caroline laughs and looks away.
Something odd falls into her line of sight. A figure, standing next to the lamppost a great distance away, somehow too still to be just a passing figment of her imagination and too out of place in the background scenery to ignore.
The hairs on the back of her neck rise at the possibility of being watched, but she isn't sure if it's just the psychology of being recently injured that's turning her slightly paranoid.
Whatever it is, the form disappears when she blinks, leaving nothing but an empty space where she thought she saw it staring.
"What?" Bonnie notices her sudden shift in mood.
Caroline chalks it up to a wild imagination paired with too much frustration over her cousin. "It's nothing," she half-assures, even though if it feels like something.
It comes out of nowhere.
First, she hears the air slicing with a swoosh. Then she looks down.
There's a bolt lodged in her gut.
The pain strikes her seconds later, and still astonished at the abruptness of it, she grits her teeth and extracts it from her body with both hands.
Caroline does a quick scan of her surroundings, but sees no one - she's alone in the gym, and it should be easy to catch the person doing this to her, given the lack of places a person can hide. But she can't detect any movement, even with the adrenaline kicking her senses into overdrive.
As sudden as the first, Caroline lets out a sharp cry that rings throughout the gym when the second quarrel pierces her shoulder from behind. She spins on her heel and spots him, leaping away with cat-like reflexes - Mike displays a great amount of fear and freezes in place after being seen.
Well this is awkward.
Nobody moves an inch or says anything, but there are definitely thoughts. For him, regretting being caught, and how he can save himself; for her, trying to come to grips with the fact that a member of the family has tried to murder her twice now. It doesn't look like he's going to stop anytime soon, either.
It's until she hears the nocking of a bow that she listens to her gut to flee. Not sparing another moment, Caroline speeds back home as quickly as she can to lock all the windows and doors in the house.
"Great," she mumbles to herself. With heavy feet, she clumsily makes her way to the refrigerator in the garage where rows of blood bags are piled on top of each other on every shelf. Taking in a lungful of icy air, she pulls the projectile from her body swiftly.
Ouch.
The bolt hits the ground with a clatter and Caroline slumps herself against the heavy frame, letting the wisps of cold air wrap around her body and soothe the open wounds.
Damn it. She’s living under the same roof as a hunter. A slayer? Oh god, Mike is male Buffy. The first incident had not been an innocent a mistake as he'd made it seem.
That loser. Hunting her on her home turf.
She scoffs at the absurdity of the situation, snatching a bag of B+ from behind her head and taking a comforting bite. It may be cold, purified and clinical, but it still tastes of the life it once had been. The only thing that could top this would be if she sought it raw from the source.
Caroline tilts her head back and enjoys it to the last drop, letting it distract her from how pissed off she is over Mike's nosy antics. Then she reaches for a second helping.
II. Unwanted Diagnosis
Vampirism isn't always about self-control for Caroline. It's about making people believe you have it. When you feel hungry, you need to glance at, not ogle, the jugulars of the people next to you. Never stare, unless they're not paying any particular attention.
It can get distracting when you're ravenous and the pattering of heartbeats begin to sound like a violent roar in your ears, but the trick is to breathe and count backwards from ten. Or if that doesn't work, then take a hike. Stefan used to get her out of the house to take her mind off the bloodlust.
Bloodlust, she huffs in disbelief. The struggle is nearly as terrible as her torrential relationship with carbs. Worse that she needs the blood to accelerate healing.
The walks are effective, though. This time she's taking a short stroll some streets down from Bonnie’s home, where she's crashing in the meantime. Having gone through a shameful bout of stress eating - drinking?- when she guzzled six blood bags like a frat boy chugging beer at a kegger, the only way she can cool down is to stay away.
In the wee hours of the morning, the streets are cold and empty. The air vibrates with the chirp of crickets, and what's supposed to give Caroline tranquility has instead caused her to look over her shoulder more than once.
Thanks to Mike's ambush, her mind has set itself to high alert, paying attention to every detail possible that could hint at it happening again; the scrape of dry leaves blown by the breeze along the sidewalk; hearing an irregular beat of feet that doesn't quite match her own footsteps; a crawl up her back that feels like fingers but is only the wind tickling her-
She yelps when she collides with someone. Her first instinct is to reach for the person's arm, but she finds her wrists being seized before she can even twitch a muscle.
Caroline shouts her discontent at being bested and looks up to see Kol Mikaelson, who is absolutely bemused that she tried to accost him.
"Hey, pretty," he grins, not keeping his once over of her discreet at all. "What's a girl like you doing all alone here at this hour?"
She tries to wrestle away from him, but he's sickeningly strong. When she finally realises the futility of trying to escape, she narrows her eyes at him. "Have you been following me?"
Kol recoils, incredulous. "You flatter yourself," he says, loosening his grip. "I have my own business here."
Wrenching herself away, she nurses the newly formed welts at the heels of her palm. "The business of being a mental patient on the loose," she retorts, annoyance simmering. Bad enough that she can't physically overpower him. She's not going to spare him from the blade of her words.
Naturally, he does not appreciate the opinion. "It's none of your business," he corrects, at first delivered with a simple sneer, but then it dissolves into something more curious as his hand rises to cup the side of Caroline’s cheek. It startles her, but she’s so frozen in half-fear half-caution that the only thing that she can manage is a, "Do I have something on my face?"
Kol studies her weary eyes. Please don't compel me, please don't compel me, she screams through them. The last thing she wants is to have her freedom stripped from her again; this guy seems way more unrestrained with his Original abilities than the rest of his family.
"Why are you drinking so much blood?" he questions, thumb pulling down just under her eye to note the colour. She finds his sudden tender manner most unsettling, and the longer she remains in his grasp, the better she's able to discern what makes him undeniably attractive - deep set eyes framed by laugh lines, a strong, masculine jawline, and that unabashedly cheeky smile.
That’s not good. With all of her willpower Caroline folds her arms and steps backward, reeling in the feelings while putting distance between the both of them. Just as she does with the blood.
Stop being shallow, Care. This guy is as dangerous as he is batshit crazy. Chiseled features aren't going to change that.
"Why do you care?" she asks.
"You're hungry. Your body's on a borderline frenzy." Then comes a wide grin. "Vampires are up for anything when they’re..." His words trail away and his finger points to head, circling a point on his temple.
Crazy, he's saying.
She is not crazy. It’s not like she’s gone on a bender and sunk her teeth into anyone. She’s appalled that he’d even suggest that she has so little control over herself.
“It’s all in your eyes,” says Kol, “All those tiny capillaries making ridges inside - you’d better stop, or you’ll go on a rampage. Wouldn’t want to mess up my plans now, do we?”
Mystery plans which she doesn’t care about. “Well, I’m pretty sure that if I wasn't being hunted, I wouldn’t need a supersized blood bag to keep my limbs attached.”
"And who would want to hurt a little bird like you?"
Trouble is the last thing she wants, and talking about it is somehow more upsetting than being alone and shutting it out. "Nobody. I'm fine."
He's unconvinced. "There are ways for me to find out, you know. Besides," he smirks, "I like freeing little birds from their predicaments."
She pauses. "What are you expecting out of it? Your hand up my skirt? My heart?" It's meant to be acerbic, but when she actually hears it and envisions it, she starts to wish that she didn't open her mouth at all. It's the blood talking.
Kol chuckles. "You wouldn't want to give me those things. I wouldn't let go of a woman like you." Just the glint in his eye is enough to force a skip of life in her heart. "I'm as terrible as they come."
The worst thing about what he's saying is how paradoxical it is, warning her of the danger while oozing the magnetic charm she's supposed to stay away from. There's a small part of her that wonders what it would be like to be close to him. Her fingers itch with curiosity as her gaze sweeps downward from his hair line to his lips, neck to coat. Before she knows it, she's taken a quick glance of his crotch and mentally slaps herself for lingering.
You are not going to go there.
"It's my cousin. But don't hurt him, Kol." She tries to steer the topic somewhere else to ignore how self-conscious she feels about checking him out.
"He won't die. I'll just have a little fun." He leans closer. "Then we can have our own sort of fun."
"You're insane and sleazy." And despite knowing this, Caroline speculates every kind of fun there is to be had with a guy like him. Oh god, she closes her eyes and the mild shame rises from her chest, you're just as sleazy as he is.
"I meant with owing me a favour." A non-sexual one, he insinuates with his tone. He stops for a beat, beaming at her apparent gutter-brained notions. "Actually, I may have something for you to do. You can thank me after I've settled your problem."
She never asked for any help, but Kol doesn't seem to be the kind of guy who takes no for an answer.
Next Parts