ACT TWO; TARGET IN SIGHT
SCENE ONE; NOBODY GETS ME LIKE YOU
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"ALRIGHT, READY? 3, 2, 1–" Salem tilted her head back, throwing the shot into her mouth as the bar cheered around her, a few scattered faces joining her in her spectacle. She slammed the shot glass down on the bar and raised her hands up in the air, joining in the cheering surrounding her as the two girls she was with swallowed their shots down, too.

"How many is that?" The blonde beside her was slurring slightly, but Salem couldn't tell if she was just now getting a buzz or if she was well past drunk.

"That was five," Salem answered, lifting her blended drink up to her mouth and pushing the little umbrella out of the way of her straw. "You ready to tap out?"

The woman shook her head stubbornly, reaching for the next round of shots that had been set down in front of you. "Give me a minute and we'll go for six!"

Salem grinned, nodding agreeingly. She startled slightly when her phone started vibrating, and she pulled it out of the back pocket of her jean shorts, smiling at the name lighting up her screen. "Hold on, hold on!"

She lifted the phone to her ear, bobbing her head lightly to the music. "Hello?"

"Where are you?"

Salem turned slightly, looking around the crowded bar. "Um, a bar on the beach somewhere. Why?"

Klaus scoffs on the other line and she grins to herself at his exasperation. "Do you plan on partying all night, or do I need to send someone to come retrieve you?"

"I could be persuaded to come back to the room, but I'm not following some stranger. You can come get me yourself."

"What makes you think I'll do that?"

Salem hummed, lifting her fingers in a fluttering as a man walked past her with an obvious once over of her figure. "Because I asked you very nicely,"

"I don't recall you asking me anything,"

Rolling her eyes, Salem flicks her braids over her shoulder and turns, finding herself right beside the man that had just checked her out. Grin growing wickedly, Salem clears her throat and meets the man's interested gaze. "Hi,"

The man leans in to talk to her over the boom of the music and she dutifully ignores Klaus saying her name on the phone. "Are you here with anybody?"

She shrugs a shoulder, looking coyly up at him. "I could be, if I find someone worth my time. What's your name?"

"Eli!" The man grins, content with her response to him. "What's yours?"

"Salem," She speaks her name as Klaus does, and she startles as she turns around, seeing Klaus standing right behind her.

"We're leaving," He says, shooting a glare to the man standing behind her still.

"Fine," Salem huffs, stuffing her phone back in her pocket. She turns a little to face Eli again and she gives the man a smirk, returning his once over from earlier. "I'm not from around here, but maybe–"

Salem gets cut off by Klaus yanking her back by her waist and she lets out a startled noise as she's suddenly upheaved over his shoulder. Flicking her hair out of her face as she pushes her elbows into his shoulder to prop herself up, she sends a fleeting wave to the two girls she'd been drinking with that are watching Klaus take her away with thumbs up of approval.

"What if I wanted to talk to him?"

Klaus huffs, arm tightening around the backs of her thighs as he walks back towards their hotel. "You didn't."

"Fine, fine, put me down I'm gonna get dizzy," She slaps at his back and he stops, setting her back on her feet. When she regains her balance, she glares up at him, earning one right back in response. "Are we actually leaving Florida, or do you just not want me to have any fun?"

"This is not vacation, despite what you may think, Salem."

She scoffs, falling into step beside him as they walk towards the elevator bank in their hotel. "It is my summer vacation. School starts in a week, and then this little trip will be over on my part."

They don't have to wait long for an elevator, and they step onto it, shutting the doors before anyone else can join them. Klaus presses the button for their floor, and Salem leans back against the wall, reveling in the cold metal that chills against her sun-beaten skin.

Klaus heaves a sigh, watching her eyes flutter shut as they're carried up through the hotel. "I can't imagine what your students would think if they found their art teacher had a penchant for disappearing to get drunk with strangers."

"I'm not drunk," She shoots back immediately, crossing her arms across her chest. "And if you think it's a problem now, you should've seen me in college. Drinking was a sport to me."

The man rolls his eyes, mirroring her position on the opposite wall of the elevator. "It's hard for me to imagine you as some drunken sorority girl that passes out in someone's front lawn."

Salem laughs to herself, shaking her head. "I was not a sorority girl, and I'd like to state for the record that I never passed out on someone's lawn, I always made it to a bed by the end of the night."

"Your bed?"

"Now, I didn't say that," She raises a brow, smirking slightly. "I said a bed."

The elevator doors slide open as they come to a stop on their floor, and she steps out into the empty hall, Klaus following close behind her. "And now, just a year later, you're teaching the children art. How inspirational."

"I'm an amazing teacher," She throws him a look over her shoulder as he unlocks the room, pushing the door open for her. "And an amazing artist. I won a Virginia State art competition when I was eleven, and I had a scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design at seventeen!"

Klaus's brows furrow and he watches as she slides her feet out of her sandals, kicking them mindlessly somewhere in the room before she throws herself down into the middle of the bed, staring up at the ceiling. "And you didn't go?"

She shakes her head against the mattress, turning her head to look at him as he pulls a chair up to the bed. "My mom spent my entire childhood telling me that I could never leave Mystic Falls because it would be too dangerous for me, so she didn't let me go and I ended up just staying in Virginia even after she died."

"How did she die?"

Salem pauses, shifting onto her side and propping her head up on her hand as she looks at him. "The short answer is cancer."

He raises a brow. "And the long one?"

"The long answer is," Salem hums, dragging her fingers through the air mindlessly, leaving a trail of yellow wisps that disappear slowly. "I loved her."

Falling flat on her back again, she circles her fingers in the palm of her hand, watching the small sphere of magic give way to the tiny, wispy wolf that sits in its place, with a wagging tail. "I don't remember much from my childhood, but I'm not from Mystic Falls. I had a father and a big brother, but my mom left them when I was a baby. I used to ask her about them all the time, and she always said that the reason they weren't around was because she was still alive. Because she kept me hidden with her magic, with the excuse of keeping me safe."

She swipes a hand through the wolf and it gives way to a snarling beast. "I started to resent her for it, because there had never been any kind of problem with my powers. Nobody knew what I was, nobody even suspected, so there was no reason that my dad and brother couldn't be with us again. So, I got mad and we got into a fight, and I told her that I wished she would die, so I could be with them."

Dropping her hands back to the bed, the magic disappears completely and she turns to meet Klaus's gaze again. "A few months after that, she got diagnosed with cancer. And I felt bad for her, I did. She was my mom, you know? But as the days went on, I would just look at her as she got weaker, and wish that she would just die faster. And those days, those are the days she was at her worst."

"I just hated her so much, I didn't know what to do with it. I could scream at the top of my lungs and it still wouldn't be enough." She looks lost for a moment, like she's back in that time, reliving the rage that had suffocated her daily. "On my 18th birthday, I asked to know my dad's name so I could find him and my brother. She told me no, and we got into a fight again. That night, I went to bed and just wished that she would die already. And when I woke up the next morning, she was dead."

Salem lets out a small sigh, blinking out of her daze and looking into Klaus's icy eyes that seemed full of something she couldn't place. "All she left me was a note that said, 'When I am gone, go home. They will be waiting for you.' Like that was any help to me."

She huffs out a humorless laugh, any bit of remorse for her mother dissipating with the reminder of how much she'd grown to resent her.

The room falls into a silence that's oddly calm, despite the topic of conversation, and Klaus is the one to break it.

"My mother had an affair with a werewolf and got pregnant with me." He says, earning a brief look of shock from Salem that is quickly overtaken by her curiosity. "My father hated me because of my mother's mistake, and he took it out on me at every chance. When my little brother was killed by the pack that my real father was a part of, my mother turned all of us in an attempt to not lose any more of her children. After I turned, I was so angry that I killed her in a fit of rage."

Salem moves towards him, sliding her hand out to rest atop his knee where it presses up against the side of the bed. Her fingers drag along the fabric of his jeans and she traces a mindless shape, letting the warm buzz of her magic weave through it. "I hated my mom so much that I gave her cancer, and even now, almost four years since she died, I still don't regret it. I just wanted her to feel helpless and lonely like I did my entire life. I wanted her to understand that I wasn't going to be a victim of my fear like she was trying to make me."

Swallowing, she looks up at him. "I think... I think it would've been ten times worse had I had any family watching her do it to me. If they'd just stood by and watched while I was forced into hiding, for no reason. Or, at least, reasons that weren't my fault. We did what he had to do to survive, Klaus. There's nothing wrong with that. No one can fault us for that."

He swallows roughly, looking down at her fingers that are still trailing mindlessly along his thigh, occasionally twisting her nail just enough that he feels the scrape of it through his jeans in a way that makes a chill want to run down his spine.

"Your secret is safe with me, as long as mine is safe with you." She hums, giving him a sly smile that he can't help but chuckle at. They both know without speaking that neither of them will repeat what they've said. It would be pointless. Who else would understand their motives as well as they do?

"Salem,"

Her eyes drop to his lips as they form around her name and her smirk widens ever so slightly. "Klaus,"

"You are drunk,"

"I am not," She laughs, hand inching upward on his thigh as he moves closer to her despite his words.

"You're going to do something you'll regret."

"I have very few regrets in life, Klaus," She looks up at him, like he should know that. "You are not one of them."

He raises a brow, leaning forward to press his hands into the mattress beside her and lowering his face closer to hers. "I can't help but feel like I shouldn't believe you,"

"It would probably be smart not to," She laughs again, breathy and light, like she has no cares in the world. "But where's the fun in that?"

He looks at her with slight disbelief and she runs her tongue across her lips, wetting them momentarily. "I'm no angel, Klaus. I am just better at hiding the fact than you are," 

"Oh, really?"

She nodded, nearly closing the distance between them as she shifted closer, tilting her head up to brush her nose against his. "Want me to show you?"

His eyes heat with the desire he'd been staving off and he moves quickly, pinning her beneath him on the bed. He peers down into her eyes, her wrists trapped beneath his hands as she smirks up at him. "Show me."

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Salem stepped up to the door with a heavy sigh and quickly covered her irritation with a distraught frown and allowed her eyes to fill with tears as the door swung open and a brown-haired man came forward.

"Can I help you?"

"I– I am so sorry to bother you, sir," She shook her head, sniffing slightly. "My car has a flat and I don't know how to change it, I– I tried to call somebody but I don't have service. Would you be able to help me? Please, I'll– I'll do anything,"

The man eyed her smaller stature and noted that besides the tears, she was rather attractive. Smirking to himself, he feigned concern and stepped out of his house. "Of course. Where's your car?"

"It's down the street," She gestured, pointing vaguely behind her as he walked past her and off the steps of his porch. Stepping up behind him, she tapped his shoulder and he turned around, shocked to find all hints of panic off her face. "Jacob?"

Brows furrowing, the man felt a swirl of dread wash through him. "I didn't– I didn't tell you my name."

"Oh," Salem feigned pity. Her eyes flickered behind the man and she nodded once, making Jacob follow her gaze frightfully. "This is him, Klaus."

A figure came from seemingly nowhere, and Jacob backed away as the man stalked towards him with a smirk. "You worked with a man named Ray Sutton, correct?"

"No, man, I don't know who you're talking about. Just leave me alone!"

"Now, now, Jacob. It's not very nice to lie, especially when my lovely friend went through so much trouble to find you." Klaus gestured to Salem, who raised a brow when Jacob fixed his gaze on her again. "Where is Ray Sutton now?"

Jacob shook his head furiously, stumbling back onto his porch. "Get out of here!"

Salem followed him up the steps, her irritation back in full force. "I can hear your lies, Jacob. Where is Ray Sutton?"

"Listen, you crazy bitch–"

Salem grabbed the man by his shirt, slamming him against the side of his house. "Name calling isn't nice. Where is Ray Sutton?"

Her eyes flashed yellow and Jacob whimpered as her grip tightened on his shirt. "He– he moved, okay? He moved a while ago! I don't know where he's at, I swear!"

Klaus chuckled, shaking his head as he approached them. "The whole truth, please."

Jacob seemed to contemplate his options and quickly found that he had only two. Either comply with them, or ultimately die. "I– I think he went to Tennessee– Memphis. He lives with these chicks, they take care of him or something,"

Klaus hummed, finally content with his answer. Glancing at Salem, he nodded minutely, and she mirrored the action as he turned and walked off the porch. Turning back to the trembling man, Salem tilted her head, though no sign of remorse showed on her face. "Goodbye, Jacob."

The pads of her index and middle fingers tapped against his temple, and she stepped away as a yellow wave washed through his eyes before disappearing. As she made her way down the steps and back to Klaus's side, the man's screams echoed behind them.

Klaus glanced at the woman at his side and smirked, and she turned to meet his gaze with a smile of her own. They both knew that it went unspoken to say they understood each other, better than anyone ever had before. It was both dangerous, and delightful.

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author's note; klaus & salem 🤝 killing their moms

edited and published; 2.23.23.

- liz