Writing Is Hard

She traces the planes of his chest. At first it is a method to calm her racing heart, but when peace and calm settle as surely as his palm on her waist it becomes more of a habit to gently draw to the sound of lulling waves beyond the window.

When his fingers begin to echo her soft motions she twists her head up enough to see the steady gaze he keeps locked on her ceiling. She can no longer count how many times she has fallen asleep watching him watch the tiny crack above her bed while he traces soothing patterns across her hip or spine.

She props her chin on his chest and slides her arm across his chest.

"Do you ever sleep at all?" she finally wonders aloud, incredulously, when she's had enough of watching him stare at the damn ceiling.

He turns his head, registering the annoyance in her tone and in the way she's looking at him.

"Do I bother you, darling?"

"I just wanted to ask. I've been wondering," she responds, arching an eyebrow mid-sentence.

He smirks, slowly, and she is definitely not thinking of how the corners of his mouth look so kissable when he does.

"For the last three centuries at least, I've discovered that sleep evades me more often than not."

"So essentially you're a vampire with insomnia?"

"You wound me! I'm not just any vampire, love, you know it," he exclaims in mock horror.

"An Original vampire with insomnia, then," she is quick to amend, though not without amusement.

"Is it insomnia when you live in constant fear of a dagger being plunged into your heart without reason, by your tyrannical wanker of a brother with active aid from the other?" he asks.

The question could have been rhetorical, at least to him, but he truly wants to know what she thinks of Nik's only safe way to terrorize him and Elijah's noble hypocrisy.

"Now, I wouldn't presume there wasn't any reason at all," she quips.

He can't bring himself to be angry, but he can argue against her implication that's only been a reality in the paranoid mind of Klaus.

"Tell me something, darling: do you really believe that searching for ways to protect and preserve myself is a good enough reason for Nik to store me in a box for decades on end each time?"

"No. Nobody deserves what you've been through. Not you, not Rebekah, not Elijah…"

"Elijah only got a taste of the medicine he'd been helping Nik feed us," he cuts her off, seething, "It's nothing compared to what Rebekah and I had to endure every now and then."

Elena doesn't respond to that. She gives him time to drown his anger. When he speaks again, he only says a name.

"Finn."

She searches his eyes, a bit anxiously.

"What about Finn?"

"Out of his thousand years on this earth, he spent nine hundred of them rotting in a bloody coffin, simply because he dared to love."

His voice is cold and distant, but she could scratch the surface of it if she wanted to and find herself holding all of his pain and rage in the palm of her hands.

He notices how she stiffens next to him, he senses her unease; he knows she's thinking of how she had consented to and aided Finn's murder at the hand of Matt Donovan. He banishes from his mind the details he had gathered from Sage shortly before her own death, when she came to the manor in a state of hysteria, only to obtain permission from Klaus to kill Stefan Salvatore, Matt Donovan, and the rest of them. Klaus had agreed, but he didn't consent to her killing his precious doppelganger. Kol was certain Sage would kill her anyway, but she perished before she could avenge her beloved Finn.

He hated that he was thankful for that.

"Don't worry, Elena. I do not blame you for ending Finn's miserable life. He was only a means to an end. The experiment didn't work, and now we're here," he sighs, "I truly cannot blame you for wanting to get rid of Klaus. I want that too, most of the time."

He exhales, lost in thought for just a moment.

"I know Sage followed my brother to the grave shortly after he went up in flames. What saddens me most is that I know they couldn't reunite on the Other Side. To the best of my knowledge, it simply doesn't work that way."

"I pray you'll never have to find out if you're right."

He scoffs.

"Do not pray, darling. You better swear that your bunch of friends won't set their minds on killing me and turning me to ash when they discover what's been going on between you and I for a while now. You may only pray for me when Nik inevitably finds out."

There is a silence that stretches between them for a minute. Her spine is still tingling from the intense release he triggered with his ardent lovemaking a short while ago. Her fingers start to lazily trace patterns on his abs; the muscles there ripple under her touch.

"You should sleep, Kol."

"I doubt I can even begin to try if you keep doing that," he groans.

"Oh, sorry." She fights back a laugh, and her hand slides upwards to his rest on his torso. "I'm really only trying to get you to relax."

"Hate to break it to you, darling," he tests the modern phrase he's heard her use with her two girlfriends on his tongue, "but it's definitely not working the way you had in mind," he drawls.

She props herself up on her elbow, a twinkle in her eyes.

"Sleep without any worry," she leans down and kisses him sweetly, quickly and teasingly withdrawing when his lips move to respond to hers, "I've got you."

She settles back down next to him. He doesn't seem to want to listen to her.

"Oh, really. Pray tell, darling, what will you do if there's a knock on the door and when you open it, it's good ol' Nik with a dagger up his sleeve?"

"I haven't really thought about it before…"

"Mhmm."

"But now I think I'll just stick it up his ass."

Kol laughs then, truly laughs while moving to prop himself on his elbow as if he's afraid he'll choke on his laughter, and the sound startles her because she's not used to hearing him laugh. In the relatively short time she's known him - been with him? - she's gathered that true, joyous laughter does not come easily to this particular Original vampire. Or any of the others, for that matter. She's heard him chuckle, she's seen him smirk, even smile, but she hadn't known his laughter.

"I've never heard you laugh like this before," she observes out loud, and he turns to look at her, his eyes shining a bit more brightly as he gazes at her with something that suspiciously resembles adoration.

"That's only because I didn't have any good reason to until now," he amends, then his voice turns into a drawl, "You'll find I can be very serious when met with dire circumstances."

"Have I at least given you a good enough reason with that terrible joke?" she asks him, deciding to ignore the obvious dig at the problem of 'we're sleeping together and it's Mystic Falls' best kept secret but all hell will break loose if Klaus discovers it'.

"Honestly, I didn't think you were joking. You sounded very confident."

"Then why did you laugh?" she tilts her head.

"Oh, I simply imagined you doing that."

He is very clearly amused, to say the least, by simply entertaining the thought of shoving a dagger, possibly the one with his name on a tag, up the big bad hybrid's behind.

"Did you struggle?"

She loves to tease him, and she's only realizing it now.

"Not at all, darling," he chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest.

"You know, I kind of want to take my chances and do it. What do you think?" she lays back down next to him, her hand remaining splayed on his chest, pressed against the faint scar from his father's sword that still marks the spot over his heart, which might have stopped beating since the autumn of 1001 AD but he secretly swears he can feel it jolt whenever she kisses him.

His eyes glint mischievously in the half-light, a delightful smirk full of mirth on his lips. He leans in, until their noses are an inch away from touching, and his breath is warm on her cheek as he speaks in a voice low enough to be meant only for her, his wording chosen as if he's letting her in on a secret.

"I'm not thinking. I'm telling you: I'll hold him down for you."

There's a certain darkness to his tone, but also something deeper, something that resembles pride way too closely. Pride as in being proud of her for having such a terrific idea.

"It's a date!" she promises.

"We'll see, darling," is his only reply as his smirk softens around the corners of his mouth and he lays back down again.

"But really," she goes back to trying to get him to sleep because playful banter can only do so much, "close your eyes. You should rest."

"I assure you, Elena," he speaks softly, "I could spend this night wide awake next to you, with your warmth seeping into my old bones, and it would most definitely be a night of the sweetest unrest."

She's rendered speechless for a long moment, marveling at the rare calmness, the emotion that colors his voice a passionate red. When she recovers, she has to comb through the haze of the previous sexual euphoria that still clouds her mind to come up with a smart retort, but she finds she can't counter his rather odd confession with something eloquent enough.

"I would be flattered if that were the case tonight," she amends, "Too bad I'm already dead set on getting you a good night's rest. How much do you need, anyway? Six hours? Seven?"

"Certainly no more than a human who isn't suffering from insomnia," he snickers.

"With this attitude you have, I'm honestly tempted to do anything in my power to convince you."

"Perhaps if you'd let me go down on you once more," he cocks an eyebrow, tempting her as much as he is challenging her.

"You can't do that," she licks her lips, savoring the taste of his own from earlier, "because if you do I won't be able to go to school tomorrow, since my legs would be unlikely to function."

"Too much is never enough with me, darling," he teases her, cockily.

"You may say so, but at least pity this poor human girl you've been sleeping with for," she pauses to remember, "one month and four days now."

"You've been counting."

It is not a question; it's an observation. She wonders if he's been counting as well, since he seems to recognize the length of time she's given him as a fact.

"Sue me for wanting to make the most of it while it lasts," she whispers.

"What are you getting out of it?" he asks her, a bit more solemnly now.

"You," she responds without thinking, because she doesn't need to think to answer him; his mischievous smile coupled with his eyes that darken with desire and something deeper whenever he looks at her is the only thing that springs instantly to mind when she registers his question.

A beat. It seems it had been his turn to be stunned into silence. His eyes are searching her own, and they are not quite dark now, nor have they lightened up at hearing her admission. She can't label his look with one name, because it's made of many conflicting emotions.

"And is it worth it?" he murmurs, trying to fight the need to ask for clarification before he does it anyway, his tone now rougher than a whisper but still low and raw and aching, "Am I worth it?"

She lifts her hand to caress his face, to touch his cheek and trace the sharp line of his jaw; he inhales slowly, giving in to her soothing touch but resisting the urge telling him to just close his eyes and try to dream of her in a peaceful sleep. He's stubborn like that; stubbornness runs in the family he's been cursed to be a member of, though his 'membership' feels honorary most of the time.

"Yes. I really do think you're worth the trouble."

He makes a sound in his throat; half a scoff, half a chuckle. He has relaxed visibly enough that she can see it. She can see how he wants to let go but is afraid of doing so, should a calamity going by the names of 'Nik', 'dagger' and 'coffin' befall him while he sleeps next to her, happier than he's ever been in a millennium.

Her fingers move up to trace the shape of his eyebrows; she pushes some stray locks of hair back into place, smooths out the furrow in his brow with all the care in the world. All the while, he watches her, committing the tenderness in her expression to memory.

Never has any of his lovers - vampire, witch, or human - looked at him like this. Never has anyone in his family ever looked at him like this; not his mother, not Rebekah, certainly none of his brothers, including Finn, who is dead and gone now and it's partially her fault - is it? - but he can't bring himself to care. He's better off on the Other Side, and Kol knows it, despite longing for his austere, equally wronged eldest brother sometimes.

Nobody he's ever met in his thousand years has ever looked at him like this. Nobody has ever tried hard enough to understand him, to appreciate him, to love him. The fact almost pains him.

It doesn't matter. He's laying down on a bed that's not his own, in a house he's only known for a little more than a month, next to the latest Petrova doppelganger, a girl he's gotten to know beyond Elijah's words and Rebekah's rage and vengeance, a girl who has endured every unthinkable sacrifice and all kinds of pain, a girl he oh-so-secretly admires for more reasons than he'd cared to count, and what's more, he's comforting himself in her embrace.

Right now, he can probably afford not to think about the consequences of their tryst should Klaus find out, which he is certain he will at some point, because he finally feels something - whether his humanity is on or still off, he doesn't know and he doesn't want to find out and he doesn't care one bit about any of it - and nothing else matters.

Her caresses are feather-light, pleasant when he knows for a fact that if he had found himself in a similar position two months or a century ago, he would have been appalled by the intimacy of such physical contact and gone on a killing spree in the middle of the night, starting with the violator, the offender of his comfortable illusion that he was damaged beyond repair, with absolutely no need for sympathy.

You don't sympathize with the devil. Do you?

Again, it doesn't matter, because he's currently lost to a very different kind of illusion; one that makes him certain he's a demon lying next to an angel.

She never takes her eyes off his face, and bloody hell, it hurts, but he has known pain for a millennium, carried it with him for so long, and yet there's only a dull ache that all he can think it resembles is longing. Honestly, it terrifies him a little, but he'll wash it down with some fresh blood first thing in the morning and the fear of weakness will go away.

If there's one thing he cannot refuse himself, it is her. He'll gladly let himself be weak, but only in her presence - only when they are alone together, when nobody is watching him, when no kind of fear is creeping like a shadow over his soul, when he can pretend to ignore the same old danger looming over his head like the damn Reaper.

He could go away, but he couldn't leave her. So if he ever left this god-forsaken town where it all began a thousand years ago, it would have to be with her by his side. That might never happen, but he likes to entertain the thought that she would care enough about him that she would want to get away from everything and everyone with him, just for a little while.

He hasn't slept well, not once, since awakening from his ninety-six year slumber two months ago. Not that he would ever admit it. But now that he's laying next to her, he can damn well try.

Elena flattens her palm over his eyelids, lowering them gently, willing them to close and him to sleep peacefully by her side, right here, in her arms.

"Close your eyes, Kol," she coaxes him gently, so gently, "Close your eyes."

She removes her hand slowly, and discovers she's been successful.

And oh - he looks so young, so calm, so innocent like this. Like this, his facade of trouble and terror incarnate slips away, and all that remains is a boy of nineteen who had been stripped of his own choices; first by his parents, then by his tyrant of a brother with a very twisted sense of familial love and loyalty.

She can't resist; her fingers thread through his hair, and he responds with a contented hum that almost sounds like a blissful sigh.

"Sleep," she presses a short kiss to his shoulder, "and dream of me."

It is her wish as much as it is his own, because as he falls asleep, he wills himself to dream of her, and he does.

He dreams first of the night of the ball, when he saw her from afar for the first time, intrigued by her mere presence, that in a hall filled with several dozens of people, seemed to lure him in, and that hadn't been the so-called Petrova allure. He hadn't managed to introduce himself properly that night, preoccupied as he was with trying to kill Matt Donovan, but his gaze had followed her with curiosity for the rest of the night, up until the eldest Salvatore threw him from the balcony and broke his neck. He wished he had chosen to ask her to dance instead of attempting murder, just so he could have known the feeling of her body being pressed against him sooner. He has long lost that chance, so his first dream that night is dedicated to a waltz and the light that shines in her eyes as he kisses the back of her hand and tells her he was enchanted to meet her.

He dreams secondly of the look of terror on her face as he attacks Damon in Denver. Somewhere within this dream, he feels the familiar itch of wanting to kill the audacious vampire who clearly fancies himself in love with Elena. But what does the bastard know of love? What does he know of her desire, her satisfaction? The pathetic little cockroach can't even begin to imagine how she writhes in pleasure every single time she's pinned beneath a particular psychotic Original, how she meets his ravishing kisses and responds to them with a hunger equal to his own. She insists on calling him a friend, but Kol knows she can do better. In his second dream, he relives their encounter but this time, he continues to beat Damon to a bloody pulp with a baseball bat and she smiles gloriously at him.

He dreams thirdly of a late night at the Grill, when he finds her drinking her many sorrows alone and joins her without caring to ask for permission. He once again smirks at her initial annoyance, as she asks him if he doesn't have anywhere else to be, obviously not knowing where she got the guts to be challenge this particular Original, and he obnoxiously responds that he much prefers current company than spending yet another dreadful evening with his siblings. She still scoffs at his impossibility, but this time she lets her guard down a bit faster, more easily than in reality, exactly one month and twelve days prior to tonight. His third dream is a replay of all the days and nights that followed, filled with many unexpected casual meetings that ignited a flame in them both and kept stoking it, until she apparently said, "To hell with it! Why not?"

And just like that, he sleeps soundly, lulled to sleep by the warmth and steady rhythm of her breath on his neck, where she's snuggled close to him and he has wrapped a single arm around her waist pulling her even closer.

When Elena wakes up in the early hours of the morning, a little before sunrise, she's only half surprised to see that Kol is still asleep. She untangles herself from his arms, careful not to wake him, cringing when she stands from the bed and the wooden floor creaks under her feet. Kol finally stirs and is roused from his sleep as she slips into the bathroom.

She takes a warm shower, oblivious to the content smile on her lover's lips as he lies in her bed, enjoying one last moment of peace and calm before standing to prepare for another day spent mostly in his family's dreadful company. She emerges from the bathroom, fully dressed and ready for school, and finds him standing in front of the mirror, buttoning his black shirt. He catches her staring through her reflection.

"You'll need a ride to town, love?" he asks, turning to face her. His hair is still a bit tousled from last night, but he looks as devilishly handsome as he did before, when they snuck off to this house by the lake, which has remained her only safe haven and transformed into a place that guards and keeps the secret of their relationship.

"You know Caroline will come and get me," she watches him step closer, none of them daring to take their eyes off of each other.

"She always does," he smirks and wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her against him, "for over a month now, and she still knows nothing about me." He tilts his head playfully. "I can't believe she's never asked what you've been doing here alone all this time."

She considers his choice of words, and then she gasps.

"Kol, did you compel my friend?"

"No, darling, I promise you," he chuckles in amusement, "for all her cleverness, she's simply clueless."

Tipping her chin up, he kisses her and they both get a little carried away before she puts a hand on his chest and gently pushes him off.

She looks into his eyes and finds herself unable to look away. There's a new quality of light in them, reflecting into his gaze that's full of wonder.

"Did you sleep well?" she asks him, hand moving to cup his cheek but he catches it before it can reach him.

"Perfectly well," he answers sincerely, kissing her knuckles, "thanks to your valiant efforts."

"Glad I could be of service, sir," she snorts, mocking a salute.

"I believe I owe you now. Name anything you'd like, love," he says, "and you'll have it."

Her eyes instantly twinkle with mischief, and he loves it.

"What if I just want you?" she challenges him.

"Then you'll have me," he vows, and lowers his head to the crook of her neck.

Pressing a kiss on her pulse point, he asks in a tone sinful enough to make her blush, "Tonight?"

"Yes," she breathes. Then his lips touch that sweet spot behind her left ear, and she is melting.

"Here?" he asks both for clarification and confirmation, and his accent does in fact make her weak in the knees.

"Yes," she whines, and she hates the pathetic sound as much as she loves him for being the cause of it.

"I'll see you then," he promises.

He draws back and their eyes lock for just one second. One last kiss that's all too brief to be to her liking, and when she opens her eyes, he has vanished from her room.

When they meet again that night as promised, she realizes she must obtain just one more promise from him.

"Promise me you'll try to sleep tonight as well," she urges him.

"Do not fret, darling," he grins as he's hovering over her on the mattress, "as long as I'm laying next to you, sleep will not evade me anymore."