klaus had known stefan was there long before he spoke. of course he did. there was a time he couldโve picked him out from the other side of a city. chicago had turned it into somewhat a game between them. stefan would disappear into crowds, bars straight into the aftermath of another massacre and klaus would find him. always, like a morbid game of tag, youโre it. itโs strange the things that memory decides to keep.
klaus had spent the better part of a century pretending that decade had meant very little to him. it was just one particularly entertaining period in an absurdly long life. immorality helped with that. after awhile centuries pile on top of each other until entire lifetimes become little more than stories you tell yourself that happened to someone else. heโd gotten good at it, too. heโd filed stefan away somewhere distant, safe. that was until the memories returned.
of course they should talk, this had become inevitable. stefan salvatore had always possessed an almost supernatural inability to leave old wounds alone. he poked at them, obsessed, worried them and insisted upon understanding them. klaus, on the other hand, prefered to bury things beneath centuries. it always had worked remarkably well. โshould we? from what i recall, our conversations generally end with one of us threatening to leave and the other ensuring they canโt.โ which one had usually depended on the decade.
stefanโs little jab isnโt surprising. if anything, its reassuring. sarcasm has always been his preferred language when something mattered too much, klaus understood that. he practically invented it. โevil schemes? i sadly must confess iโm between projects at the moment. youโll be devastated to learn i've spent most of my afternoon painting.โ he sat his brush aside, as there was little point in pretending to be busy anymore.
he studied him for a moment. it was an old, irritating habit. sadly some things become instincts after enough years that even the most self aware man in the world couldnโt stop it. there had been a time stefan wouldโve walked into the room and kissed him before saying a word, but there had also been a time klaus thought forever meant something coming from his lips. โi have to admit, iโm impressed. most people who recover several decades worth of extremely compromising memories tend to avoid me for longer.โ
