A touch of Fate (Klaus)

[Alec L. Miller]

To be perfectly honest, Alec had never even set foot into a library without being forced. In fact he had avidly tried to avoid them by getting by on charm and good looks. But apparently his English teacher had other plans when she assigned a 6 page term paper to the entire class last Tuesday and made it due at the end of this week, and of course like the procrastinator he was, Alec waited until 2 days before his assignment was due to even begin. That was why he was now making his very first trip to the library in the center of town. He drove sullenly through the streets of town until he finally pulled into the parking lot out back of the library. Shutting off his big red jeep and jumping down from the cab, he headed up the big marble staircase and between the big white lions that ‘guarded’ the entrance to the library. Once inside the big building he made his way towards the receptionist’s desk. There was a stern elder looking woman behind it who glared at him as he approached as if she knew he would be a trouble maker and she didn’t want him in her library. He hiked his book bag higher up his shoulder and tried to look non-threatening and friendly. “Uh Hi.” She put the date stamper in her hand down on the desk a little harder than was necessary and just stared at him. ‘Oookay…’ he thought “Um, I was wondering If you could tell me where the books on Vikings would be?” For several minutes she just stared at him and he began to wonder if she was even going to answer. Finally after he had just about given up hope and had turned around to just go hunt down the books himself, he heard the stamper start up and a stern voice spoke. “Take the door to the left. All the way at the very end of the isle in the back right corner.” He gave her a quick smile and said thank you before heading off in the direction she had indicated.

He walked down the aisle checking titles as he went. “Ok Language section… Music section…. History.” He turned down the new section looking at the titles until he spotted a large leather bound book titled simply ‘Vikings!’ He shifted his bag and pulled the book down from the shelf. After a cursory scan of its table of contents he nodded and slipped it into the crook of his arm while he searched for a few more books on Vikings. The assignment required between 6 and 8 sources on the assigned topic, so after about another 20 min of searching he finally had an armful of books for the paper. He carried the stack over to an empty table with a humming computer screen sitting on it and sat down to start the assignment. The first book creaked as he opened it and a puff of dust blew up from the pages. Obviously this wasn’t one of the more used books on the shelves, but as he perused the pages, he found it packed with information about Vikings. He pulled out a notebook and started taking some quick notes and marking pages like he’d been taught in school. Several hours passed in silence as Alec went through each book in his stack only discarding 3 of the books for lack of new information. He stood up from his chair, stretching his arms high above his head and arching his back till his muscles trembled with the effort. But he felt much better after stretching since he’d been sitting so long and grabbed the discarded books into his arms. His sneakers scuffed quietly on the rug as he made his way back through the shelves to the Viking section to find another book. He rounded the last shelf and nearly toppled into a man who seemed to be browsing the books.

[/blockquote][/size]
___________________________________________________

tagged, Niklaus "Klaus" Freiherr / words, 666 (...o.O)
muse, Excitement about plot! / outfit, click! / credit, zie @ caution

[/center][/blockquote][/size][/font]

[Niklaus "Klaus" Freiherr]

Libraries were often overlooked as real sources of information nowadays. Especially small-town libraries. What with the World Wide Web at everyone’s fingertips, why did they need to hunt down old tomes that creaked and cracked, why did they need to search through yellowed pages and flaking ink? But there was so much information that was never passed over from physical to digital, like old legends and lore that Klaus himself needed – and besides, little could beat the musty, wonderful smell of old books.

Klaus didn’t have any big, burning question to answer with his library visit today, but he was hoping to stumble upon something that would help him. The small town of Mystic Falls had quite the long history for the Original, and he wanted to find out all of its little secrets. And he wasn’t planning on sticking around for very long after what he had planned in the next few days, so while he could still visit the building without setting off all of his “enemies” on high alert, the hybrid took advantage of that.

So he had been idly scanning the history section’s shelves when some young highschooler turned the corner beside him and walked almost full-force into him. What was with the youth of Mystic Falls? Were they just all slowly going blind?

Klaus grabbed hold of the shelving with one hand to keep himself upright, and his other hand hooked around the boy’s upper arm – somewhat for the same reason, and to keep him from falling forward into the hybrid and forcing them both to the ground. Klaus didn’t exactly trust his coordination at this point and he wouldn’t have been surprised if that ended up being the case somehow. At least the floor was carpeted?

Once the two of them had fully righted themselves and separated, and Klaus was brushing himself off, he raised an unamused eyebrow at the boy. “So focused on your research that you can’t look where you’re going?” he asked – even though a quick look told him that this boy was not at home in the library. He looked to be a “jock” of some type by his build, and certainly not studious. But then again, Klaus really only paid attention to the stereotypes of highschool life, since it had never and would never apply to him. So who knows, the boy may surprise him.

[Alec L. Miller]

Alec could think of at least 100 better things that he could be doing right now instead of working on this stupid paper. But there was no one to blame for his procrastination but himself and he knew that if he started to fail this class too, then Carter would have his keys in a heartbeat and Coach might not be able to save him from being kicked off the football team. He rubbed a hand across his eyes pressing down on his closed lids in an attempt to get rid of the burned in images of black words scrolling across a white page in an endless line. After several seconds and standing to stretch from his fingers to his toes he scooped up the books he wouldn’t be using and set off towards the Vikings section to find some new ones that might have some more useful information. So preoccupied with the facts he had read from the books, he hardly noticed that there was another person in the aisle until he toppled into him.

His head shot up in time to see who he had run into, as he dropped the 3 books in his arms and tried to steady himself at the same time that the man grabbed his upper arm to steady him. Surprisingly they managed to stay on their feet and after a few jumbled seconds where some books tottered on the shelf the man was grabbing, they managed to right themselves. “Fuck that hurt.” He grumbled as he rubbed the side of his head where a thick volume had clocked him on the way down from the shelf and looked up at his ‘victim’. “Jeeze, I’m sorry.” He squatted down and started picking up his books and a few that had fallen off the shelves and replaced those where they belonged. “So focused on your research that you can’t look where you’re going?”

[/s] He gave a sheepish grin as he pushed to his feet ignoring the slight throb of his head. “Yea, I guess. Ha Sorry about that. This damn report’s got my head pretty scrambled.”

Finally Alec looked up to get a better look at the guy. He was older than him, and judging by the accent, certainly not from around here. He shifted the books into one arm and held the other one out in a friendly gesture to shake his hand just like his mother had taught him when he was little. “I’m Alec, by the way. Sorry for running into you again.” He gave the other man an easy smile and moved past him a few feet to the section of books he’d been looking at and started to put the books back on the shelf. He glanced at the other man real quick and suddenly an idea struck him. “Say… you wouldn’t happen to know anything about Vikings would you?” It was a long shot, but Alec would do anything to avoid looking at anymore endless pages of text, and who knows maybe this guy was some kind of secret Viking lover who knew every detail of their lives. I mean come on, why else would he be perusing the history section, certainly not for fun, right?
[/blockquote][/size]
___________________________________________________

tagged, Niklaus "Klaus" Freiherr / words, 538
muse, Fun fun! Sorry about the rambling. lol / outfit, click! / credit, zie @ caution

[/center][/blockquote][/size][/font]