"Nothing is with me now but a sound,
A heart's rhythm, a sense of stars"
- W. H. Auden, Compline
In which Charlotte Salvatore wakes after a 145 year slumber and is thrust into a supernatural world before she can cope with the modern one.
(THE VAM...
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Klaus liked the feeling of Charlotte as she slept in his arms.
Her face lay so peaceful, her body curled up so close and her hair pulled back so he could see her pink cheeks even as she burrowed in tighter.
Her skin which was once porcelain, thanks to a life preparing for marriage, was now spotted with freckles from their summer hunting wolves. They made her look younger, they covered her nose and her cheeks and her forehead. There was even one on her lips, just a little baby one near the corner. She had a permanent blush covering her nose and cheeks as a result of it too, a sunburn that never seemed to fade.
Klaus liked to look at the tiny freckle on her lips, it seemed the perfect place to kiss. He wanted to kiss each and every freckle covering her body.
When she was sleeping, her face was serene. Her eyebrows, often furrowed with disapproval of his actions or with concern for her brother, lay relaxed. Klaus felt a twinge of guilt each time her eyebrows knitted together, especially when it was him who was causing it.
Her mouth lay open as she slept, breathing softly through her lips rather than her nose, she would occasionally let out small snores that Klaus could listen to until the day he died. He liked listening to her as she slept, her heart slow and steady, each tiny breath or snore a reminder she was there in his arms.
Charlotte slept with her arms tucked to her chest, she liked her head tucked beneath his chin and his arms around her. He knew she liked hard touches more than soft, tight hugs made her feel safe. He would circle her so tightly that some mornings she couldn't move without him waking.
Klaus was pretty sure that any action that allowed her to feel tighter and smaller she would love. That was why she would curl into a ball anytime she sat, or why she wanted him to hold her so close that he worried he was hurting her. She liked the solidity of it, he presumed. Klaus didn't question her on why she needed it he just understood that she did.
She couldn't sleep with her hair out, she would get frustrated and bothered so she braided it every evening and each morning when she took it out it would sit in waves. He liked to run his fingers through it as the drifted off to sleep. At first he would often hit bumps, the braid would start high up on her head but after a while he noticed his fingers running smoothly, the braid beginning lower. Once or twice he had tugged her braid to get her attention in the mornings, he liked the grin and then frown that would follow it.
When Charlotte was nervous, her fingers would fidget, getting out all of her anxiety. First she'd begin to fiddle her fingers together, then as she began to feel worse they'd tap. She'd wrap her arms around her stomach, holding herself up and tight, and then her fingers would tap along her sides.
At first he thought it was just nervous energy she was getting out. He'd asked her about it one day, the blush covered her face from ear to nose to ear and she confessed she was playing a song. She played the piano back in her old life and so when she was anxious she'd play a song, using the music she could remember to distract her.
