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They had been nothing short of volatile.
They crashed together like lightning might hit a tree, a violent collision of nature that sent sparks flying in all directions. They were like wildfire; passionate and hopelessly out of control. Destructive.
In a more literal sense, they had collided in a clash of teeth and searching hands, a mess of tangled limbs and heat. He’d left bruises on her arms and around her wrists, left the indentation of his teeth across the gentle curve of her throat and her shoulder. She’d given as good as she got, leaving his back a bloodied mess of red claw marks and ruined skin.
They hadn’t intended for it to last more than one night. They’d met whilst each was drowning their sorrows in liquor, over glasses of fiery whiskey and stinging vodka in the dim lighting of a bar. She hadn’t backed down when he’d spat his venom, lashing out like a wounded animal licking its wounds. Instead, she’d bared her teeth at him and hurled her words like bullets meant to tear through his flesh. He’d smirked at her in a dangerous sort of way, and she’d taken it as a challenge. It was as if they were destined to ruin each other. Destined to fall together over and over again until they broke.
They were each a force of nature in their own right, an uncontrolled mix of anger and hurt and years of bitterness. She craved love like her lungs craved oxygen, and he couldn’t even begin to give it to her.
“Lie to me,” she’d breathed, a whisper of breath against his lips, a thoughtless, desperate thing made up of the shattered pieces of her heart.
“I love you,” he’d growled, over and over again into her neck, lips sucking bruises on to her skin with every word, teeth scraping flesh with every declaration.
By the time he realized his words had become true, she’d been long gone.
Moving on from Hayley Marshall was no small task.
They had ended as quickly as they’d started, Klaus awakening one morning expecting to find Hayley warming the other side of his bed, only to find the sheets cold. He hadn’t mourned, not really. There hadn’t been much to mourn. Their relationship had consisted of falling into bed together night after night, trying to cure their loneliness by mapping one another's bodies and committing them to memory. Still, her absence left him feeling hollowed out and empty, gutted like an animal with its insides spilled across the ground. As for moving on, his attempts had been unsuccessful.
When she came back, he was woefully unprepared. She returned exactly the way she’d come and gone before, unexpectedly and with the promise of pain to come. Klaus answered his door to find her standing there, and he felt his hackles raise. He felt the hole in his chest ache.
“Hello Little Wolf,” he greeted. Spite was building in his throat, stinging at his tongue like bile. Thus far, he had refused to acknowledge that she was the cause of his pain, but the heady, aching want to make her feel the same was tempting enough for him to drop all pretenses. It left him feeling raw and exposed, a feeling that only fanned the flames of his anger.
“I’d say it’s nice to see you, but that would be a lie,” Hayley said, eyes flashing with something like a challenge, an all too familiar look that had been his undoing on more than one occasion.
“Lovely,” Klaus retorted, “you haven’t lost a bit of your incessant bitterness.” He turned up his lips in some semblance of a smile, a mean thing that was all sharp teeth and cold eyes. Hayley didn’t flinch. “I see you’ve come crawling back for more. What’s the matter, haven’t found someone who can make you scream quite as I can?” He hoped his words were cutting, hoped that they snapped at her heels like the teeth of angry wolves. He would gladly send her running back the way she came. He was nothing if not vengeful.
Instead, Hayley tore back into him with only two words. “I’m pregnant,” she said, and his heart dropped along with his smile. His eyes flashed down to her stomach before returning to her face, searching for proof that she was lying.
“Well then whose is it,” he snapped, “who else have you been with?” If he’d had the foresight to know that every stinging word he threw her way brought them closer to the point of no return, he might’ve reacted differently.
Hayley, as expected, went up in flames, fuming and smoking. “Fuck you,” she snarled, “I haven’t been with anyone else since I left, it’s yours.” She held his gaze unfailingly, squared her shoulders and stood against him like she was going to war. Klaus was prepared to fight her tooth and nail before he saw the look in her eyes. She’d been covering it up skillfully with a well-crafted mask of sharp words and fury, but he just caught the look of hurt. He wanted so badly to feel victorious, to puff out his chest and poison her further, but instead, he only felt his stomach drop sickeningly. It’s yours.
Images of the life he could have, a life with Hayley, flashed before his eyes. Hayley, sitting with a baby in her arms that had her eyes and his hair, her hair and his eyes, a perfect combination of both of them. Hayley smiling at him as if he’d hung the moon, a little girl who looked at him the same way. Seeing as he had a tendency to ruin anything good in his life before it had the chance to begin, it made sense that he lit a match and set the vision aflame.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, his voice bitter and uncaring.
“Do you mean am I going to get rid of it?” her words were edged with something that was almost vicious. He fixed his jaw and stared her down.
He wished more than anything that he could go back and change it.
It truly started like this:
They met, they fucked, and that was meant to be the end of it. He wasn’t supposed to fall for her, he wasn’t supposed to call, and she certainly wasn’t supposed to end up pregnant. All of this had been said and done. It was a dance Klaus had memorized the steps to, a story that he knew the plot of, but he couldn’t begin to fathom how this chapter would end.
So really, he supposed it started when he called Elijah. He’d gone to a bar even though he should’ve known better-that was how all this mess had started after all- and he’d drowned his spiraling thoughts with a strong dose of alcohol. If there was one thing that Klaus hated above all else, it was not knowing. The trouble was that he didn’t know how to find this particular thing out. He was far too prideful to call Hayley, let alone show up at her door. That limited his options spectacularly.
And so yes, it made sense that it truly started when he called Elijah. It was as good a place as any to start a story, to pick up where he’d previously left off.
He’d gotten drunk, enough so that his words had begun to slur and his feet had grown unsteady, and he’d called his older brother with spite roiling in his gut.
“What would you do?” he said, and it felt like groveling, like a cry for help. He bit his tongue against the feral growl threatening to spill past his lips.
“This could be good for you,” Elijah said. Klaus wanted to hurt him, to see blood trickling from his nose as his eye blackened horribly. Elijah knew of course, and of course his opinion didn’t sway.
“I know what’s good for me,” Klaus replied. His voice was harsh, something animalistic and angry lying just beneath his skin.
“Then call her, brother.” Elijah’s voice was pleading and infuriatingly soothing, the same tone one might use to calm a cornered animal.
He hung up.
It ends like this:
He stands by his brother at the altar, watching him watch her, the love of his god-forsaken life. He bites his tongue until he tastes blood, warding off the what-ifs that rattle around his brain. What if he’d called? What if he’d stepped up? What if he’d done something rather than sit back and watch as his brother took care of her, of their unborn child?
“Do you, Hayley Marshall, take Elijah Mikaelson as your lawfully wedded husband?” He closes his eyes for a moment. She is achingly beautiful, her eyes bright and her skin aglow. He sucks in a short breath through his nose and holds it, letting it sit in his lungs and fester. He never should’ve come.
“I do,” she replies, and it is as if a dagger has been thrust into his heart. Elijah slips a ring onto her finger reverently, adoringly, in every way she deserves, and the knife twists viciously. He opens his eyes. He prays that she can’t see the agony in them, that she can’t see into his soul with those all-seeing eyes of hers, and her gaze never graces his being. Elijah leans down to kiss her and the smile on her face when they part is blinding.
Perhaps, in another life, she could’ve loved him. A life where he was better and she wasn’t so lost. A life where he wasn’t damaged beyond repair, made impossibly cruel. The thought alone makes his chest ache. Maybe if he’d just tried a little harder, or told her how he felt, or treated her better, things could be different. There were a million maybes, a million different endings to their story.
He finds the bar as they dance. Her laughter rings through the room. And it ends like this; he closes his eyes, his grip tightening on his glass for a fleeting moment, and then he walks away.
Klaus Mikaelson is nothing if not the architect of his own destruction.