ꜱᴡᴇᴇᴛ ʜᴏᴍᴇ ⇴ ᴛᴠᴅ ² ✓

one

"If you're here to kill me, just know that it would be totally okay with me."

Alabama, as much as it was hot and sweaty with backwater hillbillies and blood sucking mosquitoes, was stunningly beautiful at night. The stars shined bright and proud against the black, competing for the spotlight of the sky.

The woman swiped at the flying menace hovering over her, interrupting her vigilant stargazing. The wooden planks of the streetside bench dug ever so slightly into her back, but she was comfortable nonetheless. Granted, it was hard for her to be particularly uncomfortable when Billie Harper was as drunk as she was.

She'd heard the footsteps echoing around the empty street for a little while now, but hadn't felt too threatened. It was a small town after all, Troy, she believed it was called. Nothing ever happened in dainty small towns like these. Although that's what she'd first thought of Mystic Falls.

Oh, how wrong she'd been.

"What are you doing out so late love?"

Billie scoffed loudly. Of course it was him. She refused to sit up, immaturity flaring high with insobriety. A month now they'd been travelling together and she still held onto her grudge with a deathly grip.

The footsteps came closer and Billie continued to fixate on a singular twinkling star, painfully aware of the hybrid in her peripheral vision. He came to a stop at the back of her personal bench, pausing for a moment before he sighed and took a light seat on the edge, head tilted up to see what she saw.

He was silent for a moment, the softest smile over his lips. "Still angry I see." There was a pause, Klaus sitting very still as Billie vied to know what he was thinking. "One day, that will change. Believe me, love... hatred gets old." She didn't outwardly react, hardly conscious in the first place with how much she'd had to drink. But some small part of her head was paying vivid attention to his words, allowing them to stick with her, ringing around her skull as though it was a promise.

The hybrid left her to her thoughts for a few minutes, admiring the world above them with the clairvoyant. "It's time we made it back love." He spoke quietly, feeling it fitting for the three am, late night atmosphere. He dusted off his trousers, stepping up to his feet.

Billie never moved, too tired now to actively despise him and instead finding peace in where she was. "You can go. I'll be fine on my own." Her tongue felt heavy as it struggled to speak, her words slurring and jumbling together.

Klaus smirked lightly, leaning over the back of the bench with his elbows bent on the carved wood, looking down at the woman just below her line of vision, lest she kill him for being in the way of her view. "Unfortunately love, I can't do that." He flicked his cerulean eyes warily up to the shadowed figure across the street that had been watching Billie for a while now.

As he stood fully, he offered her an outstretched hand. Billie moved her eyes slowly to him, a moment of delayed reaction passing before she finally took the help, allowing him to easily haul her to unstable feet

The second she stood upright Billie's world spun, her feet begging to collapse from under her, but despite her heavy intoxication, she refused to lean on the hybrid that had ripped her away from everything she knew.

Harper ignored the way his hands reached out to steady her and instead began to determinedly walk away from him with as much dignity as she could muster, braving the long silence of their walk back to the motel.

Klaus shook his head softly, never voicing his thoughts aloud. The way she was going, Billie will have died of liver cancer before he ever turned another hybrid. He would never say it, but she worried him. She was a very easy woman to worry about, what with all the spontaneous and dangerous escapades she liked to embark on, regardless of morbid consequences. Though he could never say she wasn't entertaining.