#it's been a full decade but homestuck is still part of my brain and will be forever most likely | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bladekindeyewear · 4 years

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Bloggin’ bout HS^2′s second upd8 continued. > (==>)

And it had felt so real, almost like he could have reached out and touched him--

--Yeah, the next page is gonna be BGDirk just standing there like I saw before I read the update, right?

> (==>)

Two pages. Close enough.

> (==>)

Hah! Get fucked, Dirk. (Even if you’re supposedly one of the better Dirks.)

> (==>)

Yep, all see-thru and everything.

DIRK: You passed out in a puddle of your own drool. And what the fuck is that on your face? JAKE: My face? What do you mean on my face? DIRK: The moustache, Jake. Who’s idea was that. JAKE: Oh! You dont like it? DIRK: I didn’t say that.

Oh come the fuck on. He looks good in a mustache, Jane-influence or no Jane-influence.

DIRK: We’ve had this conversation before, dingus. I’m you. And I’m me. But I only exist because of your powers. The fact that I’m manifesting here, in the new universe, outside of a dream, is evidence in itself for just how absolutely boned you are.

Now what exactly do you mean by that last part? How is this a sign of trouble?

--Is it because this Dirk thinks he’s needed? And therefore shit will be going down?

DIRK: You’ve been a useless sack of shit for two decades. I’m here to kick your ass back into active duty.

...Hm.

I mean, Jake MIGHT be able to help stop this stupid goddamn war, but this IS Dirk trying to help him, so...

JAKE: And what side am i supposed to be fighting on? for jane or against her? DIRK: Against her. Obviously. What the fuck, dude.

Pffff.

JAKE: But you were the one who wanted her to run in the first place! You wrote her bloody speeches! DIRK: Yeah, I did. And every single one of them kicked ass. I wanted Jane to be the democratically elected president. Not a cake-slinging Jeff Bezos with a great rack.

Pfff. I mean, you didn’t do a great job the first way, either. It’s heavily implied things in Canon-land were about to go to shit too.

Not as FAR to shit, nor as quickly, but still to shit. So, really, how DIFFERENT is this from the way you wanted it done, Dirk? How can you claim this isn’t half YOUR fuck-up too?

DIRK: Don’t worry about it. The point is, you have a chance to make a difference. You’re in the perfect position to infiltrate her operation.

Oh hell no. Don’t send him back in THERE you utter horse’s ass! How could THAT be good for his mental health!? What the fuck about Tavros?!?

DIRK: That’s horseshit and we both know it. Jane would take you back in a second. She loves you.

I think Jane’s definition of “taking him back” would be a bit broader than his body or soul could fucking afford.

> (==>)

Eugh. You really liked the Condesce’s way of doing things right down to her style, huh? To think you used to love the spoon. Is that a fucking spork? Is that zilly Battlespork your go-to weapon now?

Also, it took me a moment to realize those green and orange silhouettes were Jake and BGDirk. I was a little like “how did Rose get here?!?”.

> (==>)

Have I mentioned how good all this art is? So much attention being paid to the use of color, to making everything look so soft and streamlined?

Looks like she’s going in for at LEAST a hug. And the art style might be mercifully light on showing us indulgent details of just how asset-laden Jane is supposed to be. Shots of Jake’s manly bod aside, something in me doesn’t like the traditionally-sexualized stuff pushed like that in a canon that’s been light on it for so long...

> (==>)

Oh, that... THAT looks fake. Or like, she’s about to turn around and happily wail on his ass or something.

JANE: Boo hoo hoo! Oh, Jake! Something awful has happened! JAKE: It--it has? You mean more awful than usual? JANE: The opposition has taken Tavros, Jake. They’ve finally shown their true colors. I knew it was only a matter of time before they attacked our family directly!

.....Ah. Well, that explains it. She’d never cry like that about HIM returning AFTER STEPPING OUT ON HER.

It’s then that Jake realizes that Jane isn’t mad because she’d never realized he was gone.

Poor pages, huh? All their most dramatic gestures always undercut.

...It seems like we might see Candy kind of resolved in less of a fucked-up worldstate after all, at this rate?

She seems to have forgotten that she’d been cross with him the last time they met, because now that Gamzee is gone, there’s no one left to talk to.

It’s true. Gamzee’s absence always improves things.

> (==>)

All of it is made worse by the occasional wry glint in her eye, or moment of self-deprecation in the slant of her mouth. It reminds him of the Jane he used to know. Or the Jane he thought he used to know.

Ambition is a hell of a thing. Seems like she’s drunk of it almost as deeply as Prince Dirk. I’d imagine this could be a pretty consistent thing with really active Life players when they get actual power, huh? The way it just gathers to Life players in all its forms -- power over others, status, wealth -- it’s easy to start to leverage it in ways that constitute abuse of power over others from a Riddle perspective.

At first Dirk stands at Jake’s elbow, a one-ghost support staff, before he appears to lose interest in Jane’s rant and wanders off across the office, reading the spines of books and spending way too long staring at a startlingly phallic piece of installation art,

--PLEASE let us see it.

, the provenance of which Jake doesn’t know, but could hazard a guess it wore a codpiece.

Nope, never mind. Interest lost.

> (==>)

Then he settles on Jane’s desk, propping his ghost butt there and sort of just...well. Here’s a picture of what he does.

Um.

Where is this going?

> (==>)

Oh, so the BEST option, then. :D

Okay. That’s a bit of an exaggeration.

Boooooo.

> (==>)

--Alright, forgiven.

he’s thoroughly exhausted from attempting to pay attention to his supervillain wife while trying not to look at the crotch of a ghost man from his brain.

...Okay, hold up. BGDirk, are you trying to steer him into doing this for self-indulgent, non-comedic purposes? Or is this a bit of Prince Dirk in there? (I mean... I can’t definitively say Jake wouldn’t have wanted this.)

And I’m still wondering how all of this is going to be relevant. IF it’s going to be relevant. Despite promises to the contrary that are seemingly being ignored.

> (==>)

DIRK: All according to keikaku.

Fuck you.

JAKE: i really didnt think id fall off the wagon so quickly. I dont think being here is good for my emotions to be honest. DIRK: Yeah, probably not. But that’s okay. They don’t matter. JAKE: Oh.

Yeah, Dirk, you suck at this more than you know. This ain’t going to go as well as you “hope” I don’t think.

DIRK: Don’t know anything about stiff lips, dude. But that’s not what I mean. It’s not because you’re a man. You’re a god. JAKE: Oh right. That. DIRK: The world comes first, even at the expense of all your relationships and personal happiness. That’s what being a hero means. JAKE: I guess...i never really thought about it like that.

You’re also not guaranteed to be fucking right, you know.

There are definitely dichotomies where what was best for the world wasn’t best for the person, so far, and vice versa in Homestuck. But Dirk’s taking his anime-flavored principles as gospel as usual, and ignoring, oh I dunno, the impact of the heart in all of this. Some people, ESPECIALLY JAKE and other Pages so far, CAN’T operate at their best until they’re at least reasonably healthy and sure of themselves, and investments to that effect are essential to letting them slowly realize their full potential. Brain Ghost Dirk is likely making the same goddamn mistake he made with his overbearing Dirkbot back on Jake’s island.

> (==>)

DIRK: Think what you want about Jane, but at least she realizes that none of you can ever be normal, and she never bothered to try. Can it really be a god-complex if you’re actually a god? DIRK: People like us don’t get happy endings.

...Yup. This is the fucked-over part of Dirk’s worldview coming in full play, here. And he believes in it so strongly that he couldn’t even fucking leave NON-CANON alone anymore. Fuck.

JAKE: Thats bleak dirk i dont think i could possibly believe that!

Mmmhmm.

DIRK: Yeah. That’s probably more a Dirk thought than a Jake one. I told you, it’s hard to tell sometimes. JAKE: Is...is that really how dirk felt the whole gosh darned time?

Mmmhmm.

> (==>)

Last page of the upd8. Well... all I can say is, it’s a good thing he’s a fucking ghost here. And half Jake, at that. At least that can limit the damage. Hopefully giving Jake just enough of a kick in the doing-something direction without being so overbearing that he makes things worse, making for a balance of...

...Wait.

Wait, is that why we’re here?

Maybe that finally makes some sense of all this. Of this cut, of this small violation of that last sentence in Meat, of-- ah, yeah, I might be on to something here! Only maybe, but still--!

We’re quite possibly bearing witness to a realm of influence where, through measures outside of his control, Dirk has a balanced impact. Where this same ideology of his, tempered by Jake’s hopeful mindset and Dirk’s inability to take direct action, might just manage to make things better and actually make everyone happier by the end, while solving Earth C’s fucked-up Candyland state at the same time. It’s possibly to show the readers (through the lens of a Hope player specializing in positive possibility) that Dirk, had he been restrained, COULD have had a positive impact, even at the same time that we’re shown Prince Dirk at his soul’s most overblown and heinous.

And, if we want to be optimistic..... perhaps this’ll show Dirk, too?

Canon and Non-Canon may not “meet” again. But that doesn’t stop Dirk, via this fragment of his multiverse-spanning soul, from seeing Non-Canon. From seeing how well things COULD have worked out, had he held back. And if we keep cutting like this -- back and forth between the “real” story and these events in Candyverse -- perhaps the moment at which Brain Ghost Dirk realizes what he’s accomplished, realizes how much better things are because he could hold back, will coincide at the end with Prince Dirk finally, belatedly, realizing just how fucked his plan was, and understanding at the very, very end why he has to fucking die?

THAT would be interesting.

I guess we’ll see? Talk to y’all next upd8.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #bladekindeyewear #blastyoboots

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sometipsygnostalgic · 4 years

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It’s been a long decade

This time 10 years ago, I was 14, sneaking onto my brother’s computer, waiting for the new year with @alphahas and a bunch of others on the Roblox forums.

That doesn’t begin to express how much my life has changed this decade, but for some reason, it’s one of the most memorable parts.

In 2010 - I gained my first drop of internet fame making DBZ-themed Roblox clothing, dropped out of school for 3 months leading up to the summer holidays, bingeread all the Twilight books, decided that my education was more important than my feelings about getting bullied, went back into school, got my first Xbox and Laptop, and began playing on Xbox Live 6 hours a day.

In 2011 - I ditched Twilight for Discworld, made some new school friends for the first time in my life, played a LOT of Left 4 Dead 2 with my sister, got my heart broken by Modern Warfare 3, and at the end of the year, I moved in with my dad and his fiance for the first time - moving from a shitty, overcrowded, unclean house into a strict environment where yes I do have to shower every day, and yes I do eat proper food with actual utensils rather than used paper plates.

In 2012 - My dad and his fiance split up and kicked me back down to my mother’s house just before my GCSEs began, and I was obviously very unhappy about this, so I decided to bingewatch Adventure Time across the 3 weeks they took place. Fortunately my GCSEs survived the fallout. I became inspired to draw Adventure Time art, massively improved my digital art style within the space of a couple months, and opened my first tumblr blog dedicated to analysing Adventure Time.

In 2013 - My blog kicked off, I was making plenty of friends during my A-levels, and I was deeply enjoying school for the first time ever. On top of this, my dad finally got a place of his own and invited me to live with him. I’m still living with him now and the quality of life is much better, everything is much cleaner, we have actual heating, I’m actually clean, I had a stable food source, I cannot describe how much the change benefitted my life. Even if he is an unstable moody bastard. Oh, also, I read Homestuck.

In 2014 - I got really fit at the start of the year going to gym 3 times a week, then I studied AMERICAN POLITICS in A-level (which 2 years later I’d deeply regret). I did better in my A-levels this year than the previous year, so evened out to B’s all round. It might have been better if my good sociology teacher didn’t get sacked for accidentally sabotaging every health and social care student... Applied for university and got a placement in the best uni in Wales. Started Uni. Had tons of money for first time. Got fat very quickly, RIP my weight. Got depressed and lonely in Halls. Hated politics classmates. At the end of the year I deleted my Adventure Time blog, and.... started getting really into Homestuck.

In 2015 - Opened up this blog (hello it’s been 5 fucking years!!!), slouched off in university, became a massive Terezi stan, drew lots of Homestuck comics. I ate a tons of Quiche as well. It was okay. I’m going to be honest, other than this blog taking off not a lot of interesting things happened to me in 2015. However, Undertale came out this year, so that was cool.

In 2016 - Found Dad increasingly difficult to live with as he was getting frustrated with... everything about me, for some reason. It sucked. Brexit happened, the US election happened, Homestuck Act 7 happened, Hiveswap went off the map. I don’t remember much about this year and I’m glad for it because I was not happy. I think this is when I joined the Homestuck Reddit though/

In 2017 - Graduated University!!!! Volunteered in a charity shop for a few months whilst looking for a job, did 5 weeks of crappy work experience in a job centre. What else happened this year? I’m sure it was a lot of things but really I can’t remember. Got myself a Nintendo Switch. Became a permanent member of the Homestuck Discord.

In 2018 - I secured myself a job! Hooray!!!! This alleviated the tensions with my dad, because he was happy that I was finally working. We’ve been on good terms since. As irritating as working in customer service for 8 hours a day can be, I liked that I was doing something all the time and the year could be a memorable one for that reason, rather than fading away like the previous 3 years had. The year was capped off by Deltarune, and being given a fuckton of wine by work contractors.

In 2019 - A lot of terrible videogames came out earlier this year but it was mitigated by the release of DMC5, which must be cherished by all. I was put on short-time in January after the first Reckoning, then I got my full hours back in March when given a new role. Then our main client went into administration, and the OMEGA-Reckoning happened and everybody else in my tier lost their jobs with me as the sole survivor. We had no wine this year either, which is the saddest thing honestly. Later in the year I started taking up driving lessons, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to drive by spring, though my instructor thinks that is too optimistic. I’ve found driving tough because of how my brain works; I can only concentrate on one thing at a time, so when I’m doing something right I’m usually doing something else wrong.

What am I doing today - Sitting here playing Persona Q2 and humming the new Pokemon OP to myself because it is catchy. I will probably open the champaigne soon.

From 10 years ago I’ve grown significantly. It’s almost like I experienced my teen years later, because I was so stunted from how I lived. I feel like it’s only now I’m reaching the maturity level, and degree of self respect, to call myself an adult. I’ve always struggled with relating to people offline as well, but... I’m growing okay with that. Who needs other people anyway? They just bring in drama. If I’m comfortable being by myself, there’s nothing wrong with that.

#personal

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burningdarkfire · 2 years

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end of year book asks except i answer literally all of them because i want to

original ask meme found here! with extra thanks to @eskelent for sending to me 💖

How many books did you read this year?

121! about 90 of those were full-length novels/books and the other 30 or so were novellas, short stories, etc.

Did you reread anything? What?

homestuck book 3 act 4 (i read this on 413 because of the way homestuck still has a death grip on me after all this time)

sir gawain and the green knight, armitage translation (i read this before seeing the green knight which was a banger of a movie)

into the wild by erin hunter (i just reread this because i was talking to a friend about it again)

graceling by kristin cashore (i found out there’s a fourth graceling book and this was seriously one of my fave series as a preteen so i needed that reread)

What were your top five books of the year?

foundryside by robert jackson bennett (do u ever read a book that is simply just Written For You? this is the book for me)

the raven tower by ann leckie (i wish i had written this)

jonathan strange & mr. norrell by susanna clarke (sometimes things give me english degree vibes in the best way possible)

a desolation called peace by arkady martine (unsurprising that the sequel to AMCE that fixed everything wrong with AMCE is in my brain)

empress of salt and fortune by nghi vo (absolutely beautiful novella that strikes the perfect blend of poetry and prose)

Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

oddly not really? a lot of my fave books from this year aren’t enough for me to say i love the author (robert jackson bennett’s writing lacks artistry, arkady martine overwrites too much, nghi vo drags horribly at points, both the raven tower and jonathan strange & mr norrell feel too exceptional to the author’s usual output)

if i had to pick one i might say fonda lee. i’ve only read jade city but i have a lot of faith that the green bone saga might be a 5* series, and i really enjoy her writing style

What genre did you read the most of?

i read 33 fantasy books, which accounted for 31.1% of my reading! scifi was in second place at 21 books/19.8%

Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

i had a loose goal at the beginning of the year to read one epic high fantasy book each month and that did not pan out lmao. the greatest loss from this is that i still haven’t read the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon which has been on my tbr for so many years and i’m so sure i would like it!!

What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate?

i’m pretty happy with 3.4. it’s a good middling score. my scores do naturally lean high since obviously i pick books that i think i’ll enjoy

Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

my goodreads reading goal was 120, which i did fulfill. i also had a separate goal to randomize a book off of my TBR each month and read it, which i did and actually surprisingly really enjoyed so i’ll do that again in 2022

Did you get into any new genres?

both contempary lit and thrillers got a noticeable jump from last year, though they’ve kept their place in the genre list.

What was your favorite new release of the year?

a desolation called peace by arkady martine is the obvious winner here but since i already mentioned i’ll give a shout out to iron widow by xiran jay zhao, which was just an incredibly fun book that reads like an anime. i don’t usually prioritize new releases though so i think i read only one other book released in 2021 this year?

What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?

idk about favourite but i did finally read the man in the high castle by philip k dick as part of my monthly RNG challenge this year. i’d wanted to read it for about a decade and i’m glad i finally did. it was a challenging read for me (i don’t really do historical fiction so alternate historical fiction was just. hard) but ultimately i found it interesting and rewarding

Any books that disappointed you?

the most disappointing book for me this year was these violent delights by chloe gong. a romeo and juliet retelling in 1920s shanghai sounds like it was made for me but it was just so shallow and slow. it had no clear stakes but it sure did have incredibly annoying characters and way too many of the usual YA pitfalls

What were your least favorite books of the year?

i’ll do a top five, from the worst to the bad-but-less-bad:

the well of ascension by brandon sanderson (i literally have not forgiven him for this book like ten months later lmao)

the maidens by alex michaelides (has every problem that bad thrillers have but worse. just incomprehensible)

serpent & dove by shelby mahurin (enemies to lovers done extremely wrong)

maybe you should talk to someone by lori gottlieb (it reads as so condescending and self-centered and not at all helpful)

the silent patient by alex michaelides (honestly i hate it a little extra because it’s alex michaelides but it’s just standard bad thriller)

Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?

i have shelves on goodreads for booker, giller, and canada reads winners. i also have shelves for hugo and nebula nominees. from those, i read in 2021:

the city in the middle of the night by charlie jane anders (DNF, 2*)

a memory called empire by arkady martine (4*)

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone (2*)

the city we became by n.k. jemisin (3*)

network effect by martha wells (5*)

What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone (this felt so shallow and fluffy to me. books with this much purple prose are distinctly not for me)

mister impossible by maggie stiefvater (every day we are out here chasing the highs of the raven cycle)

the murderbot diaries by martha wells (don’t get me wrong, i loved network effect, but the rest of them were pretty average novellas. fun, but definitely over-hyped)

Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

probably network effect was the most surprising to me, considering how average i found the rest of the series. i truly did force my way through five novellas before discovering that i really enjoyed the novel!

How many books did you buy?

35 books! which actually feels really high to me but in my defense i thought i was going to get a new shelf this year (which i still don’t have 😭) and i didn’t want it to be nearly empty lmao

Did you use your library?

99 of the books i read were from the library!

What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

probably these violent delights by chloe gong which is why it hurt so bad when it sucked 😔

Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?

no thanks lmao the number of times i’ve considered starting a book .. something social media is too high to count but i literally just won’t do it

What’s the longest book you read?

jonathan strange & mr norrell by susanna clarke clocked in at 1006 pages

What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?

obviously i read a lot of short stories or novellas in one day, so i won’t count those. i also tend to read a look of books within 24 hours but with a sleep in between (ie i start in the afternoon and then finish the next morning). all of the below novels i truly read in one day:

these violent delights by chloe gong

dial a for aunties by jesse q. sutanto

they never learn by layne fargo

i’m thinking of ending things by iain reid

frying plantain by zalika reid-benta

Did you DNF anything? Why?

the city in the middle of the night by charlie jane anders (i truly just found this incomprehensible lmao)

calypso by david sedaris (tbh i don’t know who this guy is and i realized halfway through this collection of his essays/talks that i don’t care)

What reading goals do you have for next year?

i’m still undecided between keeping the overall count at 120 or dropping it to 100. 120 pushed me at a reasonable pace but i’m not sure i enjoyed it, and it’s obvious to me that i read so much more at the expense of other hobbies

i will keep up the monthly RNG challenge and i’ll also plan to read one book a month that i already physically have on my bookshelves!

#my posts #books #liveblogging books #reading wrap up

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highgaarden · 7 years

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fic | 12:51

12:51;

or: Bonnie, Caroline, and a superheroes origin story in five parts.

Bonnie+Caroline; Klaus/Caroline, Bonnie/Damon | wc. 7373 | ch. 2/5

read on: AO3 / ff.net

this fic is an ode of my love for @ishenwulf and @icebluecyanide, and solid proof that headcanons do not just remain screams between us. half of this fic belongs to them, simply because their existence amaze me so much i just had to stuff the evidence of it into this story.

i hope you all enjoy.

—

Part Two

Call It Fate, Call It Karma

—

Removed from the mayhem and massacre of New Orleans, there wasn’t much for Klaus to do in New York. He tried his hand in being protector of the night, but after Caroline realised he’d been tailing her for some time, she was quite angry with him.

She realised he’d been tailing her when she heard his admiring cheers after kicking a newly-turned vampire in the jaw.

“Couldn’t have done it better myself, sweetheart!” Klaus applauded, pocketing his binoculars.

“How long have you been following me?” she demanded. She craned her neck to look up at him.

From his perch on the rooftop, he said, “A few hours.”

Caroline stared at him, unimpressed.

“Four nights now,” he admitted.

Caroline waited, still.

“Two weeks,” he sighed, figuring it best to be truthful. He crossed his fingers behind his back.

Caroline, without a word, left.

He noticed she was more careful with the way she walked now because he hardly heard her at all. His apologies had been met with silence. He resolved to amend his mistake and reduced his stalking to just twice a week, until it became increasingly harder to track her down.

Klaus visited the apartment four times the following week and managed to miss Caroline every single time. Damon, elbow deep in a tub of Bonnie’s Phish Food, was disgusted to find Klaus in his sanctum sanctorum, poking a finger into the tall stack of books Bonnie had fake-borrowed from the library.

The books fell with a clatter, or would have, had Klaus not put his super speed to good use to pick them up before they hit the floor.

“Bored much?”

“I was locked up for nearly a decade. It doesn’t take much to amuse me.” Klaus had moved on to Caroline’s collection of small cacti lining the windowsill. They used to be grouped in the middle of the kitchen island, but Damon had moved them there to prove a point. When Bonnie easily stepped over them to venture out into the night, Damon figured he might have underestimated the peril of the prickly plants.

“If you like it here so much, why don’t you just move in?” Damon asked with a mouth full of ice-cream. He followed that mouthful with several hasty gulps of JD. “That was rhetorical. Get the hell off my couch.”

Klaus peered owlishly at him. “Are you worry-drinking?”

“No,” Damon said, dumping the now-empty bottle for a new one.

Klaus went ahead on his prowl around the room, studying things, touching things. He had a particular way of observing an object, meaning: if it wasn’t Caroline’s, it was discarded into a pile in a corner of the room.

All of the things in that pile belonged to Damon.

“What are you doing?” Damon screeched, scandalized.

“Making room for me, of course,” Klaus said.

“Of course?” Damon pitched his bottle at Klaus’s head, but forgot that Klaus was more than a thousand years old and knew how to duck. The bottle bounced – miraculously – against the mantelpiece and then landed squarely in the middle of the pile.

Klaus looked satisfied. “Good, that’s the living room sorted. Now which one’s your room?”

—

Word of Bonnie and Caroline’s plight for the seemingly-impossible had taken Dumbo by storm. Sometimes, in the middle of Bonnie levitating a drunk werewolf by the ankles, a fan would come and ask for a picture.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Kieran from the grocery store asked in awe.

“YouTube,” Bonnie answered. She turned her palms upwards and the werewolf crumpled against the alley wall.

“Dude, does he have fur—”

“Hi, Kieran,” Caroline appeared out of nowhere as she greeted him warmly. She made sure to deepen her voice. It sounded a bit like a growl now, and probably diminished the warmth. Kieran looked like he was going to piss his pants from excitement.

“How do you know my name?” he asked, mouth agape. “Should we exchange numbers now? I’m good at texting. Holy shit, your eyes – holy fuck, are you a va—?”

“You short-change me every week. Also? If you’re trying to clean up the environment, why even offer plastic bags at the counter?” Caroline narrowed her eyes, wondering if that counted as criminal activity.

Bonnie inclined her head. It was only a small shake, but Caroline sighed and understood.

“Anyway. You saw nothing. You were probably on the way home to go marathon Homestuck and jerk off to how many people you scam daily with the price of your so-called free range eggs. I checked your supplier, buddy. All caged! Caged by fiends—”

“Caroline,” Bonnie said in her let’s-get-a-move-on voice.

Caroline finished compelling him and sent him on his merry way. “How’s Fluffy doing?”

“He’ll live,” Bonnie said. She inspected a nick in her arm that Fluffy had managed to scrape with his one sharp canine. His other had fallen off when Bonnie punched his face with a wall. “What’s next on the list?”

After carefully pocketing Fluffy’s freshly inked contract, Caroline pulled out her phone. Her shadowed eyes appeared darker in the light the screen provided in the alleyway. “Gotta check out that warehouse in Midtown. Klaus said it’ll be hot tonight.”

“Klaus,” Bonnie repeated. Her tone implied she didn’t like the idea, but she didn’t despise it either, which Caroline chose to view with optimism. “Is this going to be a thing now?”

“No,” Caroline said too quickly. She straightened her spine and managed to look dignified even as she said, “I just agreed, very unenthusiastically might I add, that he could be our intel. Since he does know the seedy underbelly of this stinkhole city.”

“He probably gave birth to the seedy underbelly of this stinkhole city,” Bonnie muttered. “Anyway, that’s like, what – forty minute walk? Forget it, I’ll Uber there.”

“Jeez, Bonnie.” Caroline rolled her eyes. “Not like you haven’t done this before. Hop on.”

A breeze and thirty-five blocks later they arrive at their destination, Bonnie’s cape whipping behind her as she lopes gracefully to her feet. Caroline grudgingly admired it, despite hating how impractical it was.

But then again, it made Bonnie look incredibly cool, especially when she did that thing where she lifted herself into the air.

“I see you hating,” Bonnie notes, “and I raise you your mask and how it does almost nothing to hide your identity.”

“I like them to be able to hear me talk,” Caroline shot back. “When we start going after actual creatures of the night instead of undead jock types, maybe I’ll take more care—”

“Shh.” Bonnie pressed a finger to her lips. She stood stock-still, chanting something under her breath. A minute later a light wind blew strands of her hair away from her forehead. “I sense at least twelve.”

“Now there’s a party,” Caroline said and snapped out her extendable baton. She didn’t need it, but appreciated the aesthetics.

—

Damon returned from grocery duties laden with things they did not usually buy. He knows this because he would edit the grocery list heavily whenever Caroline left it on the counter for Bonnie to find. Today, Bonnie followed him to the corner market because he refused to show her where he’d hidden the list.

“Why do we need kale?” He pulled a face.

“It’s amazing how you still think you’re included in this pronoun,” Bonnie said. She walked right past the pork rinds and into the grains aisle, where she reached for the quinoa. “I spend my nights jumping up buildings. It’s called maintenance, Damon.”

“Qui-NO-a,” Damon tossed the pack back on the shelf. “Am I just going to starve, then?”

“There’s Mike’s Pizza right around the corner,” Bonnie replied, unfazed. She grabbed the quinoa again. “Why don’t you just go home?”

Uncharacteristic silence is all that comes from Damon’s mouth, which opens and closes and opens again. His eye twitches, his mouth pulls into something other than his token smirk, for once. “It’s getting… harder.”

Bonnie bites her lip. She’d been avoiding the conversation, clearly. “I see.”

“Seeing you is a nice reprieve,” he offered.

“Got it.” Bonnie sized up the contents of the trolley, then put the quinoa back on the shelf. Damon perks up. “Wanna get a pie to-go? It’s been a while since scrabble night.”

“Are- are you sure?”

“The crime can wait.” She shrugged. “I just got a manicure anyway – not really feeling like punching much tonight.”

“Don’t you usually just—?” Damon waved his arms around, fingers jerking. “Levitate ‘em? Make brain matter leak out of their ears?”

“You tell me,” Bonnie snickered. “Aren’t you supposed to be the first ever foremost best quality expert on my alter ego life?”

Damon gasped. “So you do read WatchOutVillainz.com!”

—

Caroline’s room was a hive of secrecy. The only person who was ever allowed in there was Bonnie, who usually came in through the adjoining bathroom. Whenever Bonnie did so, they let the shower run and talked in whispers, just because they knew it would grate at Damon.

There was something tugging at the corner of her mind as she swept down the street and climbed up her fire exit and into the window of her room.

The night before last, when she and Bonnie had ambushed those twelve vampires in the middle of their midnight snack, three of them had managed to skedaddle their way out of there. She had beat the others to an inch of their undead lives, Bonnie keeping them in place by simmering the blood in their necks, and only one name had come up.

Her bedroom did not really reflect her work ethic. When she decorated, she had placed comfort, coziness and warmth above efficiency, with quilted throw pillows and Moroccan rugs and a leather ottoman inherited from her late grandparents.

Her walk-in closet told a different story.

Pushing aside winter wear, she found what she’d been looking for: a safe. Inside the safe was a file cabinet, meticulously organized. It took a while to find the file, because she wasn’t sure whether it had been filed under R, E or V.

In the end, it was in the ‘MISC.’ section. She pinched the file firmly between her fingers and out slid all her surveilled information on Raul the Eurovision Vampire.

She had caught him in a shady bar, after he’d eaten the entire room because he’d lost in the Man! I Feel Like A Woman!: A Tribute to Shania Twain karaoke competition. He’d eaten them because in addition to not applauding him after he finished his rendition of You’re Still The One, they also didn’t believe he was the same Raul who had won the annual international TV song competition back in 1959, simply because if he truly had, he’d be dead by now.

Mostly it was the applause thing.

Raul the Eurovision Vampire had on a long cape that trailed across the blood-smeared floor. He liked wearing high-heeled stiletto boots that gave the appearance of him hovering in mid-air, and brought them up in conversation any chance he got. He ditched those boots when he discovered Caroline was not above clawing up a drainpipe to chase after him.

She skimmed through his contract and found his number; a few seconds later she had her phone out.

Raul answered on the fourth ring. “I’m not home,” he hissed, and hung up.

Caroline tried again.

“You are nothing but persistent!” Raul announced despairingly. “Is it not enough that you’ve banished me from the only home I’ve ever known; denied me the simple splendour of finally belonging?”

“Weren’t you born in Romania or something?”

There was a sound akin to a hurricane as Raul breathed into the phone. “Those are fighting words, square and true! I will vomit on your possessions, insolent mushrump!”

“Uh – yeah. I need you to do something for me.”

“A favour, she seeks!” He’s still exclaiming. It’s giving her a complex.

Caroline quickly explained the situation. “…and now I’m pretty sure you’re my one way in.”

“You want me to help you capture my friends?”

“Just draw them out. And are you sure they were your friends?” Her lips twitched. “They gave you up so easy.”

Raul scoffed, but that was all.

Caroline put her offer on the proverbial table. “I’ll let you come back to New York every third weekend.”

“What makes you think I’d ever return?” Raul sniffed. “That vile city was a coxcomb that never wanted me. Never was there a city that made me wish more for the eternal wiles of death.”

Honestly, she thought the same about this phone call. With an eyeroll she said, “I’ll give you back your boots.”

There was a long, ugly pause. It was so long and so ugly that Caroline thought he had put down the phone.

At long last he announced, with vigour, “Seduction certainly becomes you, Lady Distraction.”

“Actually, my name is—”

“Alas, I have a party to plan!”

“Wait, party?”

“Good bye!” Raul exclaimed. The line did not go dead immediately: there was the sound of a fumble and then the background chatter of Raul watching a tutorial on how to cook moussaka, before an incredulous Caroline ended the call for him.

—

As luck would have it, Caroline met Klaus at the party. Or rather: Klaus’s hand was conveniently in the way when she was reaching for a cheese stick.

When she looked up, he was looking at her with astonishment.

“Can it, Mikaelson,” she said immediately.

Klaus frowned. “But I haven’t said anything.”

“You’re going tell me how ravishing I look. I’m going to ignore the comment and focus, instead, on why you’re suddenly and miraculously standing by the cheese platter of the first party I’ve been to in three years. Sure, it’s actually a stage for my vamp round-up later, but—I mean, come on. You’ve got to cool it on the stalking.”

“For one, I was going to tell you how arresting you looked,” Klaus corrected. He actually sounded offended. “And despite the evidence of the contrary, I’m not stalking you. I was invited.”

He pulled out an invitation from his pocket, raising his eyebrows in challenge.

Caroline put her cheese stick back on the platter. “You know Raul the Eurovision Vampire. Seriously.”

“You mean Rah-OOL?” Elijah asked.

Caroline could have kicked herself for even being surprised at how suddenly he appeared. They probably spent the better half of a century perfecting the art of making an entrance.

“He’s changed over the years, his vowels not so pronounced.” Elijah had a slight kink between his eyebrows, as if it wasn’t even worth frowning over, but he was anyway. “If you listen closely, you can tell he used to have an Indo-European accent; it’s quite distinct. I detected clear derivations from the original Proto-Indo-European, but it’s unmistakable. A fool he has been making of the people in this room, but not us.”

Klaus nodded quite seriously, sipping his gin.

“It is difficult to find likeminded company these days; people these days hardly have time to consider the nuances of language shifts and devolving case systems,” Elijah was saying with a solemn shake of his head.

“That is so interesting.” Caroline strained to smile and ended up baring her teeth instead. She turned back to Klaus. “How do you know Raul?”

(“Rah-OOL,” Elijah interjected.)

At that moment, Raoul got up on a makeshift stage in the center of the room and started belting out a welcome song he’d penned just two hours before the party (as he’d reminded each one of them as they walked in earlier).

He was back in his cape, boots, and white face paint. Everyone was understandably distracted.

“He’s a mate of Kol’s.” Klaus said absently, and then returned his gaze to her. “Kol turned him some time around the 14th century. He used to sing for Marie Antoinette,” Klaus added, like it was supposed to impress her.

Raoul placed a hand to his chest and screeched.

“Man, what a bummer I wasn’t alive then,” Caroline said dryly.

—

Klaus insisted on walking her home after she had ‘created a scene’ by making three grown-ass vampires cry in the middle of Raoul’s fourteen-minute percussion solo.

Caroline’s only response was to rustle their freshly-signed contracts against his jaw.

When they swung open the front door, Bonnie and Damon tumbled, both quite shirtless, from the couch to the floor.

Caroline backed away until her head hit the door. “I didn’t know scrabble was euphemism for sex!”

Damon chose that moment to stand, all the better to deliver his comeback, but Caroline gave a shriek that rivalled Raoul’s, and Klaus quickly ushered her out.

—

The sun set in a brilliant burn of orange and red. Caroline and Klaus were sitting on a bench, his coat around her shoulders.

“Why doesn’t Damon have a room?” Klaus asked, once he’d placated her with ice-cream. Copious amounts of it.

Caroline shuddered at the memory of seeing his erect nipples. And then the shudder turned to rage, and she stabbed her spoon into her double chocolate. “Because he doesn’t live with us.”

“But he’s there all the time.”

“So are you,” she pointed out.

Klaus has the grace to look abashed. “Only because my situation at home isn’t… the most ideal.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “But I am leaving tomorrow. It’s time, I think.”

Caroline looked up. She hadn’t expected to hear that, not so soon. He’d been here for maybe a month, skulking around, loudly expressing admiration. He noticed her lack of enthusiasm for Damon’s pancakes whenever she got back from a fight and nudged mugs of blood from questionable origins, but it was always hot and pulled flavours deep and rich from her tongue. Sometimes he’d intentionally give her the wrong addresses to vampire cult gatherings just so he could be there ten minutes earlier to “observe her progress”. Once, after a werewolf had scraped her arm with his teeth, Klaus had readily shown her his wrist.

The look he’d given her that night had sent her to bed with uncertain, dark, thoughts—and a want, too, that made it difficult to sleep.

She stood up, took Klaus’s untouched ice-cream and dumped it in the trash along with hers.

He didn’t object then, nor did he object when she retook her seat next to him, turned her face upwards and closed the space between them with a kiss. Klaus made a sound of surprise, and deepened the kiss.

He didn’t object when she tugged him off the bench onto their feet, nor did he object when she all but dragged him out of the park with great difficulty, because he still insisted on kissing her while she do it. They could have hailed a cab, but it turned out making out in alleyways could be great fun, especially when Klaus put his mouth to her neck and palmed her breasts through her thin cotton shirt.

“Do you mind if we make a detour?” Klaus asked hoarsely when she’d slammed him to the crumbling alley wall and had looked deviously close to getting down on her knees.

“Detour?” she worried at his belt with playful fingers. “Where do you have in mind?”

“My place in the Upper East Side,” he said with a half-grin, because his eyes are closed to the ministrations of her hand through the front of his jeans, which soon stopped when she spluttered.

“You have a place—” she cursed and flashed to her feet, shoving his shoulders. “You sly asshole.”

“Honestly, love – if you can see yourself how you look in the comfort of your own home—” Klaus tried to beseech her, but she snorted and stalked off.

Klaus appeared in front of her and stopped her in her tracks. “You were slipping on your mask one night and I saw how fearless it made you look – how sharp and cunning and ready to strike fear into hearts. You exuded this understated sensuality. I was in love with it.”

Caroline looked at him curiously. “Was?”

“Am,” Klaus amended.

“Good. I’ll have sex with you with that in mind.” She cleared her throat and stared ahead. “Take me there.”

Klaus smiled. He smiled all through hailing a cab, and the smile only just faltered when she was standing in the foyer of his townhouse, looking around with her mouth agape.

“Wait until you see my bedroom,” Klaus tried for a joke, but it died when Caroline started undressing.

Sleeping with Caroline was not like the green call of the forest all those years ago. It was like slipping into sleep, a tumble of instinct and touch, a lull that kept on lulling. He pushed into her with a groan. Her neck was wet with her blood; it had spilled from his mouth when she’d wrapped her thighs around him and squeezed. She cursed and damned him when he thrusted deeper, and then she kissed him with the same mouth.

Ten years shackled behind a wall had left him starving for touch, and she met his need with an urgency – but also with a practiced care, a tenderness she didn’t realise she had kept in her breast all this while. Caroline could be soft when she wanted, and she wanted to be soft now, with him. When she came, she came with his name on her tongue in a long, keening sigh.

Before he left, Klaus woke her up. They shared a kiss in the shower—nothing more.

He was about to duck into his car when he paused, struggled with something internally, and then turned back to her. The kiss he left on her knuckles lingered, and he gave her a long look weighed down by layers of things she didn’t know how to interpret just yet. She just looked back. Whatever he found in her eyes, he seemed content.

And then he said good bye, and was gone.

Caroline didn’t know it yet, but it would be four years until she would see him again.

—

tbc

#baroline #klaroline #bamon #klaroline fanfiction #ishenwulf #hannah writes things #fic: 1251 #what to tag: the eternal struggle #otp: speak my name when you damn me #otp: yellow ledbetter

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