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Klaus drops by the club just to relax. He’s bored, and his own boredom amuses him. He can do what he wants – travel to the ends of the earth, entertain himself with passionate beauties – but he doesn’t want anything. He doesn’t want to die either, so Klaus decides to simply get drunk – and then see where the circumstances take him.
An atmosphere of slicked-back glamour reigns in the club, and Klaus barely restrains a sigh. Over the course of his long life he has seen so many styles and such a number of fashions that it would be frightening to count. Not one lasted; it’s not as though he’s sorry about that, it’s just that time runs through his fingers and doesn’t want to stop for anything, while Klaus would like to stop and take a break from this mad world’s change of decorations.
Pretty girls in mini-skirts, mini-dresses, and mini-shorts are dancing on the staircase. Klaus takes in their figures with a glance and sighs – again, he’s uninterested. To hunt one, for the catch – now that, very likely, would be a yes. But who to hunt and how to catch her, when any one of them is vulnerable to compulsion? Klaus knows very well that he won’t allow his heart to break: it’s weak and needs support; thus he will never suffer any refusal – of one’s hand, heart, body or blood. Klaus will find something to grasp at and some way to convince himself that the beautiful girl only needs to be given a slight push, that she wants to expose her neck to him.
It’s fairly empty on the balcony: the security guard, a model in appearance, is watchful. Klaus thinks for a second that it’s Tyler, he’s a painfully similarly looking type, then realizes that he was mistaken. Besides he’s let through without too much pathos. Klaus smiles slightly and thrusts a hundred into the boy’s palm, taking far too long to remember the currency. Francs and pesetas are stuck in his head, and even gold doubloons are densely frozen alongside them, and Klaus tries to mentally picture the bleak gray future in some flying skyscraper. The skyscraper comes out so-so, the grey color – perfectly. Then the euro finally comes to mind, and Klaus heads straight for the bar.
The girls down below scream for some reason. Klaus raises his eyebrows and purses his lips, knocking back his first tequila. Some whore must have climbed onto the bar counter and must be dancing until she drops. The comparison seems funny, and Klaus approaches the low banisters to see if it would be worth helping her with said drop. He is charity itself; it wasn’t for nothing that the girl got undressed (judging by the commotion), that she’s moving at a good pace across the counter (judging by the energetic dancing of all the others). Some serious drama of the heart is certainly involved. Klaus searches for the cause of the uproar with a glance – and the tequila rises in his throat, a toxic poison, vervain mixed with aconite and seasoned with disgusting, clotted blood
– on the first floor, Elijah, his puritan brother, is dancing. Not on the countertop, not like a whore, fully clothed, but Elijah. Klaus swallows down the clotted blood, chokes on the vervain, and almost howls from the aconite, throws his hoody’s deep cowl over his eyes, and slightly hunches his shoulders; he mechanically translates to himself the lyrics of the idiotic Japanese hit to which, admittedly, he wants to move his hips a bit. He appears at the bar counter in the span of a second, takes a bottle and a shot glass, and realizes that from here the field of view is even better, while he won’t be noticed in the slightest, so he can take off his hood – and even his whole hoody, fuck it, it’s too hot.
Two shots flash by unnoticeably, and Klaus, finally, isn’t afraid to look at his older brother. He’s moving to the rhythm of the song, hips hitting some sensitive, exposed riff, and Klaus knocks back the latest tequila. Beautiful girls writhe around Elijah, each one prettier than the last, not cheap sluts, but for some reason Elijah is dancing with the music, and Klaus remembers that a few years ago his brother was sleeping with a Latin dance teacher. A good way to honor the memory of his former lover.
But then Elijah’s jacket flies onto the floor, either removed by someone’s naughty little fingers, or simply unnecessary. Elijah pulls at the knot of his dark-gray tie, straightens the tip, untying it in his idiot way that Klaus has known for a whole million years, and the only thing left for Klaus to do is to lean his barely obedient lips to the bottle neck and drink, drink, drink. Drink the tequila like water. Klaus no longer doubts that Elijah is somehow in synergy with the music, the material with the ephemeral; he spins among soaring notes and violin keys, while Klaus watches and can only manage to jerkily swallow his alcohol, his back collapsing more and more against the bar counter.
An emboldened brunette takes Elijah by the collar of his shirt and dances to the same rhythm as him. Elijah doesn’t touch her, leads his arms around her, but they move in harmony, without their legs entangling, and then two more girls appear from somewhere, and there’s Elijah, already in a circle; he’s sweating, his shirt has three buttons undone, his neck is slightly gleaming, with a small vein tensing along it, he moves a shoulder, one foot after the next, and Klaus thinks that he should have gone to hell a long time ago. At least the first five hundred years there would differ in color.
It’s strange, but Elijah isn’t grey, like everything else in Klaus’s imagination. He is colorful, he’s bright to the point of insanity, to the limit, he kills with the shade of his hair, with his skin, his eyes, his just-as-grey but just-as-colorful pants, his light shirt, his dark belt. Elijah is monochrome, but Klaus doesn’t need other colors, and he knows that if Elijah stays just for a few days without running off, he will become golden, like the wavering midday haze, a noble red, like someone’s meaninglessly fashionable standard, or any other color. Dark blue – indigo. Bright yellow, acidic, angry. Then ochre. Elijah is every color in the world that Klaus has, and it’s hard to do anything about that. Well, except for drink. More and more. Again and again, while Elijah licks his lips, while Elijah revels, while Elijah fucks the music and not those three girls, but that’s also inevitable.
* * *
“Sweetheart, I already said, I need this club. I want to buy it.”
Noon comes hot and scorching. And worse, Elise is dallying, just like last time. Can you imagine, a bad investment of resources. As though Klaus has invested them well even once.
Elijah dances in the club every Tuesday, and Klaus doesn’t really have a choice but to call his favorite family lawyer – rather, administrator – to find that she graduated Harvard ten years ago, though it would seem it was only yesterday she was applying, barely coping with her father’s death and having taken all the Mikaelson cases for herself, and ask her to buy the club.
Klaus doesn’t know how else to declare his rights to Elijah. There is nothing left between the two of them, not brotherly love, nor brotherly friendship, nothing brotherly or even human. Just ten centuries of betrayal, arguments, and then, of course, those nights when Klaus was afraid to approach the coffin because he thought that this time he had simply gone too far and killed his brother. That extracted, the dagger wouldn’t fix anything, and Elijah would stay that way – disgustingly gray – forever.
Buying the club seems like an excellent decision. Klaus doesn’t try to explain this impulse to himself. Maybe the point is his possession of the air, maybe his possession of the land. Maybe the point is his possession of something he can’t see, just like his own ears. Though, in one unfortunate incident Klaus did manage to take a look at his own ears. So the only thing he can’t see is Elijah.
“Klaus, you’re not listening to me,” the girl interrupts his thoughts gently. Or is she already a young woman? “A second buyer has appeared. He wants to meet with you.”
“What does he want?”
“I don’t know. Apparently, the club.”
Klaus wipes a palm across his forehead and looks into the depths of the light-grey pool, where the sun’s grey rays play gloomily.
“You yourself said that it’s a bad investment.”
“Well, you want the club. So does he.”
“Outbid his rate and let him go elsewhere.”
Klaus hangs up the receiver, pulls on his jeans, an undershirt (his favorite Zadig&Voltaire) and out of habit drags himself to the club. Elijah won’t be there today, but you never know. You never know what could happen.
* * *
Klaus flies out of the taxi, almost happy, but then almost freezes, almost comes apart. Yesterday was Tuesday. And yesterday Elijah wasn’t there. It’s a natural law, his brother always leaves, no matter how he holds him back. But this time Klaus didn’t even try. He even kept out of sight, counting the days, marking a tally in his mind, finally enjoying the colors of the world, without thinking of daggers, arguments, betrayals, women and love.
And then he was gone, once more. And Klaus can once more run across the world without looking back, without hanging onto anything, without stopping anywhere, without escaping the endless gray haze in window dressings. He can compel or order, except Elijah can’t be ordered. Elijah can be locked within a coffin, but since the last time, when Elijah was taken from him, Klaus is scared, scared so much it brings him to the point of trembling and of chattering teeth, that something will happen to Elijah. It’s clearly a completely banal neurosis, being afraid of the death of an immortal and invulnerable being, but Klaus is afraid anyway, and thinks that he would give anything to know that Elijah will live until the end of times.
Klaus half-closes his eyes for a second – and for some reason sees himself alone under the light of the dying sun. He doesn’t even have to imagine the color for it to appear, and for some reason Klaus hurls abuse at the heavens and hopes that the nine billion names of god will never be listed. Then he laughs at his own thoughts – the habit of a man who is always alone; and go figure, he remembered that funny story. It mixed together the death of the universe and the names of god, and what more could there be.
Elijah didn’t dance yesterday.
Klaus waited all night, like a complete idiot, and didn’t even kill anyone. And early in the morning he has the goddamn, completely useless deal.
He flies up the stairs, nods to the security guard who doesn’t ask him anything, heads to the silent elevator and goes to the top floor. The sun and sky are supposed to line the world in color, but they just make it worse.
Elise – hey there, Beethoven, old chap, long time no see – says that he shouldn’t be late, that the second contender for the club is very punctual and completely untrustworthy, that he wants the club, but Klaus just fucking lost Elijah, so what does it matter at all, he doesn’t care – and he’s already forty-three minutes late.
Klaus pushes the transparent door, bursts inside, irritated and angry, and escalating in both, – and suddenly sees Elijah, sitting at the table and glancing at his disgustingly expensive tourbillon watch, which measures the milliseconds more accurately than time itself. Some song plays gloomily in his head, and it’s embarrassing to even think about anything. It’s embarrassing to draw conclusions.
It’s just embarrassing what beautiful colors the goddamn world takes on in Elijah’s presence.
“Niklaus, what a surprise. Elise didn't tell me…”
Klaus raises his hands, either apologizing or capitulating. He smiles, feeling extreme bewilderment. He runs a hand across his lips, looks first at the floor (a dark parquet of dark rosewood), then at Elijah (a golden shade of calmness) – and can’t figure out at all if they tricked him or not. If Elijah knows or not. The man is inscrutable as always. He’s not even smiling. He should play poker.
“Niklaus, did you come to speak or…”
He raises his arms once again, shrugging his shoulders.
Because it’d be very convenient to measure out the last seconds of the world with such a tourbillon, given that you’re a solitary god and you have nine billion names.
And you can allow yourself to buy the club in which you like to dance.
Today Elijah is definitely gold. And Klaus finally bitterly admits to himself that he can’t lock him up, in a cell, coffin, or anywhere else at all.
“The club is yours,” Klaus says, feeling clotted blood, aconite and vervain rushing backwards up his tongue.
He stops smiling. Probably, for forever. He stops wanting. He stops longing. Finally, he stops seeing colors. He turns around and leaves. In the end, he can always get pissed. And kill Elise.
* * *
Klaus is sitting in his hotel room. He wipes his face with his hands. He’s tired of drinking and just tired. Someone knocks at the door and he trudges over to open it. He’s thought ten times about how to cut himself off from the world forever, how to write to his brother and sister… how to not write anything to anyone and admit that no one cares. He was struck with the slight desire to live.
“Niklaus,” Elijah pronounces from the doorway, “this is the most unbecoming behavior I have seen in all my thousand years.”
Klaus barely controls his intrusive desire to wipe at his eyes. A hallucination? But no, he’s standing at the entrance, alive, in the flesh, for some reason without his jacket, and undoing his tie. Klaus wipes his face with a hand and rocks slightly. With widening eyes he watches how keenly Elijah reacts to his motions, ready to catch him.
The world swims and becomes choppy before him, and Klaus thinks that his fast regeneration only works when it isn’t necessary.
“I understand that you have decided to give me the silent treatment. But imagine my surprise.” And yes, he did have his jacket after all, just it’s lying on the couch now, hey, and now the tie is flying right on top. “I’m passing my time in a proper locale, and then who bursts in, but… Niklaus Mikaelson, and he goes to the second floor, noticing neither me nor the fact that a hybrid is working security. Now I, for example, was surprised…
Klaus is losing it, he doesn’t understand what all this verbosity is leading towards.
“Get to the point.”
Elijah spreads his arms wide – and smiles with the edges of his lips. Sparingly.
“Then I go dance,” Elijah actually does take a step forward. “And what do I see. My beloved baby brother starts filling himself up with tequila, thinking that I haven’t noticed him, and is burning a hole in me with his eyes. I, of course, sincerely presumed that it was about the girls. I went there two more times.”
Klaus wants to scream. He doesn’t know what Elijah’s talking about, and he’s so tired, he’s become so exhausted over these ten centuries that he won’t survive the eleventh, even with a tourbillon on the Moon. And moreover –
– my beloved baby brother.
“The fuck I’m beloved by you.” Klaus goes away to the wall and leans his shoulder blades against the fluted, warm wallpaper.
“And then my beloved baby brother let me go. Completely. Forever. You asked for the point,” Elijah says, cold and strict. “No, now buying the club is in your style. Tightening your grip, making things yours is too. Even locking them in coffins. Not turning around and leaving.”
“I’m fucking sick of you running off.” Klaus looks at the floor.
Elijah makes some sort of noise similar to a smirk.
“Well then stab me with a dagger, stop me. Put me in a coffin. Take me with you. And I’ll be with you forever.”
Klaus remembers the deathly color of his face, the desiccated and swelled veins, and almost chokes, but this time on his heart. If he were a twenty-year old girl he would have lost the contents of his stomach. Oh, come on, as a twenty-year old boy he did that regularly… He was too squeamish, too impressionable, too sensitive. And only Elijah pitied him. Only Elijah saw. And imagining him deathly gray, imagining one more night by the coffin, when he sat, unsure what to do, unsure what to say, unsure how to look at his gray…
Oh, come on.
Klaus rushes to the bathroom and slams the door behind him. A ten-century vampire, it appears, can also do the same.
He slowly comes to his senses. The world takes on its focus, rays of light start to refract properly. He stands from his knees, washes his face in cold water, angrily wiping his reflexive tears from his cheeks, brushes his teeth for a long time, tediously, and gargles a specific liquid.
He leaves the room only in order to confirm to himself that even the faintest trace of color is gone.
Elijah is standing right next to the bathroom door.
“Bugger off already,” Klaus asks, almost begs.
Elijah shakes his head and looks at him warmly. Klaus rolls his eyes, thinking of how to chase him away, but then Elijah takes a phone out of his pocket, clicks on the touch screen, and hip-pumping music fills the room.
“You seemed to like it.”
Now Elijah’s just mocking him.
“This damn pop. You probably already managed to forget, but I speak Japanese, which in the fourteenth century…”
Elijah nods at the wrong moment and Klaus completely loses his point.
“Trite vulgarity, without lyrics or meaning or…
Elijah, it seems, is dancing.
Klaus considers how not to drop his jaw, and, it seems, fails in that endeavor.
“Come on,” Elijah shrugs his shoulders. “Do something already. Or is guzzling tequila the only thing you’re capable of?”
Klaus thinks it’s important to find out about the tequila, but Elijah is openly dancing, without any embarrassment or complexes. Shade after shade, the world takes on color, like a photo in development, and Klaus doesn’t know where to hide himself.
“You always were uptight,” Elijah tosses out, and it scalds Klaus, as though it drenching him from head to toe in sunny light.
He does, in fact, close himself up tight, bracing his left arm across his chest, his right arm resting on top of it, covering his mouth with its palm. Elijah shakes his head, clearly disapproving, and requests:
“Dance.”
“You’ve gone fucking crazy,” Klaus barely manages to mutter in response, not feeling anything except the sweat dripping across his spine.
Elijah dances a few more steps, calmly shrugs his shoulders, then takes a step towards Klaus and at the beginning of the chorus unfastens the belt across his jeans. Holding the buckle and the tail, Elijah pulls him close, and now his hips are certainly not fucking the rhythm and definitely not the music either, and Klaus thinks, maybe, that it wasn’t about the girls, and swallows with difficulty.
“Dead fish,” Elijah asserts.
The song approaches its end, finishing with some vulgar phrase. Klaus searches for the cell phone lying on the commode with a glance, takes in a deep breath, spreads his arms, and, lightly taking Elijah by the waist, flies across the room with him in a dance, just managing to put it on repeat.
Now Elijah is smiling – and they press against the commode, and Klaus really likes the inevitability of this whole night, this whole life, and this whole eternity-for-two.