𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐁𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You had left him lying on the living room floor, curled under a heap of blankets he’d long since stopped shivering in.

Her brother’s skin had gone gray sometime after midnight, the veins around the bite turning black and angry like a bruise blooming from the inside out. He was barely conscious when she whispered she’d be right back. You didn’t tell him where you were going. She couldn’t.

Because this—what you was about to do—was something he would never understand.

You didn’t knock when you got to Klaus’s apartment. Just opened the door and stepped into the familiar cold.

It looked exactly the same.

Too clean. Too still. The kind of place that felt staged rather than lived in—expensive furniture that never wore down, books that hadn’t moved in years. Everything perfectly placed. Just like him.

There he is. Sitting on the bar stool at the Island table. A blade inside his enclosed fist, his blood cascading down the shining silver and into the jar beneath it.

He heard her but didn’t look up. Didn’t greet her. He was calm. Precise. Like he’d been doing this for hours.

Like he’d known you were coming.

Of course he had.

He had made the offer days ago: his blood, the only known cure for a werewolf bite, for a price.

At the time, you refused.

You could think of a thousand things you’d rather do than be in Niklaus Mikaelson’s debt.

But that was before the fever. Before the cold sweats. Shallow, erratic breathing. Before her brother began hallucinating things that weren’t there—begging her to make it stop. Before he started slipping away right in front of her.

Now, all that certainty had unraveled.

And Klaus was here, waiting, like he always did—with patience, and blood, and time.

She didn’t speak. There was no point. He already knew why she was here.

The jar was nearly full when he stopped. Pulling the blade out from his fist, the last bit of blood being pulled by gravity into the jar. The wound once deep on his palm, slowly fusing shut with the magic running through his body.

“There it is,” His voice deep, quiet. But it demanded your attention. “You want to save your brother,” He lifted the jar, swirling the thick, red liquid around the jar. “How about a decade long bender?” His sharp eyes finally met your as you stood a few feet into the small apartment, that devilish smirk taking form on his lips. “You know, i have big plans for you, when we leave this town.”

“I’m not like that anymore,”

“Well that’s too bad, you would’ve made one hell of a consort,” Klaus stretched his arm, tipped the jar over. His blood slowly pouring out of the jar, hitting the stainless steal sink.

Watching your brother’s only chance at survival go down the drain like wasted water made your heart leap.

“Wait-“

His ears perked, smirk growing as he slowly pulling the jar away from the sink, waiting for you to continue.