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Take me to the rooftop
I want to see the world when I stop breathing
Turning blue
Tell me, love is endless, don’t be so pretentious
Leave me, like you do.
-
The way down looks endless.
Aurora closes her eyes and lifts her head to feel the breeze on the roof in her face, her red hair tangling behind her.
Klaus’ smirk lingers behind her eyes, his laugh ringing in the wind in silent mockery. Waves of sadness swallow her whole, the remains of his beautiful smile burning in her mind. She wishes she could forget him. Forget it all. And she will, once she lands. Flying, impact. Peace.
It’s so close. It would kill her. She hopes it will, imagines how it’d feel like, flying and landing. Would it be like the cherry tree when she was a child? Tris wouldn’t be there, would he? Would it finally end, the pain? Will mother be there?
“Are you gonna jump?” someone behind her asks, more bored than concerned.
She startles, not having heard the metal door opening. Deciding to ignore the stranger, her eyes stay closed, imagining the fall, but Niklaus creeps his way back in. He always does.
Now’s the time, she tells herself. She won’t have the courage tomorrow or maybe ever again.
“Smoke?” the male voice behind her asks. Footsteps, and suddenly there’s a presence next to her. “Ugh, would suck if you didn’t die. The broken bones and internal bleeding or maybe paralysis, uhhh,” he shudders.
The smoke of his cigarette enters her nostrils, his slow exhale coming in her direction.
“Can I kill myself in silence?” Aurora snaps, opening her eyes and turning to the guy who is standing on the ledge next to her, his focus on her face.
He’s hot.
Hair dark, eyes hidden in the darkness of night; he’s wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, severely underdressed for the event. The only indication of his presence at the party below is the almost empty drink in his hand.
“Go on, then, jump,” he challenges, a study in curiosity as he’s weighing back and forth, leaning towards her with his brows risen in expectation.
Aurora blinks. “I will!” she declares hotly, focusing on the ground way, way below. His eyes bore in the side of her face, impatiently waiting. “What?”
“Nothing. You’re still alive, that's all.”
“I know!” She briefly turns to him to see his bored expression. Tris could show up any second. She’s gotta do it now or leave it.
“Should I tell anyone about your last words? It’s gonna be in the papers, isn’t it? ‘Pretty red-head jumps off renowned club.’ Bad publicity,” he muses. “Well, all publicity is good publicity, right? And I guess it’s their fault for having a roof this high. Surprising that no one jumped off it yet considering how many drunk people are here every day, isn’t it? Oh well, maybe someone did. I wouldn’t know.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?” she asks, hands on her hips, turned to him, one side to the roof, the other facing nothing, the wind, the ground down below.
“Oh,” he places the cigarette between his lips to free his right hand, holding it out for her to shake. “I’m Kai. Nice to meet you.”
Irritated but strangely drawn to him, she shakes his surprisingly warm hand. It’s soft and strong at the same time. A surge of what she can only describe as mania blitzes over his face as their hands touch, gone as quickly as it came. She’s not sure it happened.
They must look odd, standing on the roof of some elite club in L.A. that Tris got her into.
“And you are?”
Way too important to be talking to someone like you. “I’m...I’m Aurora.”
“Au-ro-ra,” he says slowly, scrunching his nose. She raises an eyebrow in response.
“Smoke?” he repeats his earlier question.
“Sure.”
Grinning, he pulls a pack out of pocket and lets her pull out a cigarette. His eyes glance over her red nails and linger on her wrists. She pulls her hand away to the comfort of the darkness. The lighter is in his other pocket which he struggles to get out with both hands occupied. It takes a while but eventually nicotine enters her system. It’s good.
After a last gulp, he holds his glass over the ledge and lets it fall with a careless shrug. The glass breaks on the ground, but Aurora has her attention only on him. Kai. Interesting name. She’s never met a Kai before.
“That could have hit someone’s head,” he muses with a hint of disappointment in his voice. Disappointment that it didn’t hit anyone. He leans down to see the shards, eyes squinted, but it’s too far and too dark to see anything. “You could have fallen on someone. I wonder how that would end for you and that person.” One hand strokes his non-existent facial hair in mock contemplation, then he turns to her, smiling.
“Would you have caught me?”
“Would you have wanted me to?”
“No.”
He shrugs.
“Why are you up here?” she wonders, taking in his appearance. He doesn’t belong, out of place both in attire and attitude, especially compared to the seductive red dress that Katherine insisted she’d wear tonight. Tris hates it. He said it with everything but words.
“The party’s a snooze fest and my sister who dragged me here hooked up with some professor.” His cigarette follows the same fate as his glass, falling into the abyss. “Why didn’t you jump?”
The abruptness of his change in topic brings a smile to her face, reminding her of herself. “I don’t know,” she says, taking a step closer to him, still on the ledge. One misstep and she’s gone for good. “You distracted me.”
“Oh you didn’t jump for me?” He laughs, dark and happy. “I’m touched.”
Something about him makes something in her rise. He’s all in black but she’s seeing red. Katherine’s in her head, whispering for her to let loose. Have fun. You’re beautiful.
You’re wild.
She looks down again, and this time she doesn’t want to jump to end it. She looks down and feels strong and tall. Majestic. Wonders how it’d be like to slip now, how falling this far will feel like in the few seconds before everything goes black, thinks back to Tris and all the time’s he caught her ... to father, what he did to her. Punishment for foolish behaviour. The therapists and their unhelpful condescension. Everything could end just like this. One motion. It’s exciting. It’s always been exciting.
Her attention snaps up to him, eyes wide and greedy.
She looks at him and sees notes, a piece slowly forming before her eyes, in his, this moment. It comes together, a beautiful composition.
The restlessness inside quietens as she looks at Kai. Whispered demands tell her to take his hands and jump. The voices, they tell her to end it. They tell her he wants it too.
Her eyes widen further, her mouth opening in the beginning of a smile when he tilts his head, watching her without the boredom of before, replaced by curiosity. He looks fascinated.
Her hand moves up to his cheek. His face is warm and relaxed but she sees his eyes staring at her hand, a feeling she can’t decipher on display.
“This night keeps getting more and more interesting,” Kai says, voice low, gaze back on her eyes.
She smiles. Destiny has brought them together.
And then his eyes move to her arms, to the scars and cuts, and he doesn’t look repulsed, he doesn’t withdraw or call her crazy. His eyes come alive.
“How old were you?”
“12.” He devours her with his rapid stare. There’s only been one time she’s even been looked at like this and that was when she and Tristan– “Day of my first period.” She would die happy if she never saw anything else ever again. “Have you?”
“Not cut.”
Other ways, then. “Why didn’t you jump?”
His smile is devilish. She leans closer to not miss a single syllable. “You distracted me, Red.”
“Creative nickname,” she mocks. “No one ever called me that before.”
“Red hair, red dress, red nails, red heels,” his voice dips to a whisper and she leans even closer, “red lips. What nickname do you want, Rora?”
“Say my name,” she demands, her voice so low it’s barely decipherable.
He smirks. His hand reaches out for her necklace, and she lets him. He lets it rest on his open palm, watching it like a rat trapped in a cage, a beautiful gleam in his eyes – similar to that of some of her therapists when they got her to open up but somehow more intense, more intimate. Like he only sees her and not her issues.
It was Klaus’, the necklace. She brings her hands behind her neck and takes it off, leaving it in Kai’s fate. “Pretty.”
“Gift from my ex.”
“Oh? What should we do with it now, hm?”
They’re thinking the same. She knows it. “May I?”
“Of course.”
He hands the pathetic reminder of the love her life over. For a moment she looks at it, studies the green stone in the middle. It should hurt. Maybe she should regret it. She doesn’t. Holding her hand over the ledge and letting it go, both looking only at each other as the piece of jewellery disappears into darkness as well, it fills her with glee. She’s alive. She’s feeling red.
“Kai,” she breathes. “Say my name.”
“Rora.”
“My full name.”
The intensity in his gaze could melt her former self, the one that fell for Niklaus, the one that needed her brother’s comfort. She’s not that girl anymore.
The voices make her stronger. Katherine made her strong.
Her hands land on his chest, climbing up to his shoulders, his neck. She lingers there, feeling his pulse. His life hangs in her hands, one move and he would be gone. One push and so would she. They’re balancing. One mistake and both will be free.
She climbs higher, reaching his face, and ohh, the night has deceived her. There is hair there, some stubbles scratching her fingers.
His eyes flick to her hands, back to her eyes.
Jump. His eyes demand it. She’s seen those eyes before, in a mirror. “Do you feel it?”
He nods. “I do.”
She needs to know it’s true. She needs confirmation. “What do you feel?”
His lips turn into a smirk as if he expected her to ask. The moon above them shrinks into insignificance. The sounds of the cars, the music, the chattering, all is there. She feels intensely but it burns away in the heat of his eyes.
“Everything.”
Her eyes widen, mouth caught between open and a smile.
“Who are you?”
Words are stuck in her mouth. She takes another step forward, pulling his face closer so that she can absorb every detail in his eyes, his widened pupils. “I’m the Queen of the world.”
His eyes burn. Her stomach twists. Warmth spreads through her. All or nothing. Every feeling in the world or dead inside. Red or black. Aurora is a girl of two extremes - there is no middle ground. Tonight, Aurora’s a flame and Kai’s her wood.
Tonight, it’s everything. Tonight, she is feeling red.
“And you’re the king,” she whispers.
Their lips clash together, a fight for dominance. Normally she would give in, but not tonight. He pushes forward, and she almost loses her balance. Her heart is a fragile little thing, pumping desperately to get her off the ledge. She doesn’t understand why when it’s so much better there.
She pushes him back. “Say my name.”
For one night (every day, never, every day, never), Aurora lets loose. In Kai’s greedy arms, embracing his dominant lips, she doesn’t care if anyone gets hurts. If something happens to him or her. She’s the Queen. She needs no one.
There is no middle ground.
She kisses him into submission. The thrill is almost better than falling.
One hand catches her wrist, pulls it up between them.
“Kai…”
His eyes, dark and brooding, speak louder than any word could. The scar closest to her wrist ends up under his thumb, his eyes overseeing the action though she suspects he can’t see much.
“Do you still?”
“I try not to.”
He nods like he understands. He probably does. “I’ve wanted to kill my father since I was ten.”
“Have you?”
“Not yet.”
“I hate mine too.”
“Is he the reason why?”
“One of the many, I suppose.” He lets her wrist go and she brings it back around his neck to connect with her other hand, his own hands on her hips, fingers warm and big. There’s nothing in the world except their bubble.
“Mm. I have to admit,” he says and back is the mirth in his eyes, this gleeful excitement, “I didn’t expect this when I came up here.”
“You haven’t been on rooftops enough,” she counters and ears a small chuckle.
They kiss again and this time it’s not a battle, this time it’s piece of music; their gasps, the wet sounds of their tongues and lips mingling, their restless breaths, they spread out on the sheet of music in her mind, note after note coming together. She bites and he hisses, he presses and sucks on her neck, back and forth until the need for air forces separation.
Her knees buckle when their foreheads rest again each other, like she did countless times with Nik. His image is up in flames, her manic laugh ringing in her head, but outside there’s a stranger who is just like her.
Niklaus never got her. He would have never left if he did. He couldn’t have.
She looks at Kai’s swollen lips, and knows she needs him. She wants him.
“What are the odds of someone coming up right now?” he asks, his voice low and hot.
“Pretty good.”
“Hm.”
That, she realises, makes her want him even more.
His hands wander from her hips to her ass. Finally. She relishes in her contact, blissfully closing her eyes, and his lips touch her again.
“Wait,” she whispers, and for the first time this night she sees disappointment in his eyes. If it’s disappointment because she stopped him or if it’s because he expected more from her, she can’t tell. “Kai,” she demands, the voices do, “say my name.”
His eyes stay on hers for a long while. No out this time. She needs him to say it.
“Aurora.”
Her insides burn. Her heart flutters. “Kai.”
“Malachai.”
She smirks. “Malachai. Have me.”
The dam is broken, and left is fiery passion; her hands rushing down his chest and stomach to his pants; his hands grabbing her ass ferociously. Her knees go weak. One mistake. One misstep. Their lips clash in war, biting to see who gives in first. It’s a fast dance, the notes fill her sheet quicker than she can keep up with. Her brain works in overdrive until it shuts off and left is passion and desire.
They kiss, and his hands fiddle with her dress. She undoes his belt and opens his jeans when –
“Aurora!”
She looks up to see the door of the staircase to the roof open, Tristan and Katherine rushing in, Tris urgent, Katherine bored.
“See, I told you she just found some dick for the night,” Katherine growls, clearly annoyed by what must have been a very, very angry Tristan.
“Get down there!” Tris yells, and he does look angry, and scared. Terrified. But why, she wonders.
She jumps off the little elevation of the ledge and walks towards him. His hug is crushing.
“Oh, more interesting with each second,” Kai says behind them, voice gleeful in his quiet chuckle. Pushing Tristan off her, she turns to him and holds her hand out for him to come. He considers and declines, staying on the ledge.
“This is enough, Aurora.” Uuh, full name, he is furious. “We are going.”
“Let her have some fun,” Katherine drawls eyeing her nails.
Tristan rounds on her, unusually livid. Normally he’s the calm to her storm. “You have done enough harm here, Katherine. I suggest you leave now before you regret it.”
Katherine’s eyebrows rise in bored challenge. “You’re a control freak and your sister needs time away from men who are trying to control her life.”
Before Tristan can make his scathing reply, Kai cuts in with humour in his voice as he asks, “Sister?
“We’re going.”
-
“Can’t believe you fell for that Parker guy. I heard he’s trouble.”
Aurora is excited. There’s another party – or get together, as Katherine called it with her usual deadpan style – tonight and Kai will be there. Or so Katherine told her. Her best friend has only been here for a week and Aurora’s life is already ten times better.
“Oh yeah?” Aurora asks out of courtesy, not interest.
“I asked Elena. She said he’s the brother of one of her med-school friends and apparently he’s got major anger issues.”
Only half listening as she finishes her makeup and hair, Aurora looks at herself in the mirror. Straight red hair, bright red lips and a beautiful but casual dress smile back at her. One day he might see her hair curly and her leather jacket. Those days are going to be so much fun, she knows it already.
“Wow,” Katherine murmurs. “He doesn’t know what’s gonna hit him.”
Aurora turns to her friend with a happy smile. “You think so?” she asks with the hopeful tone of a child.
Standing behind her, Katherine plays with her locks, eyeing her up and down in the mirror. “Babe, you have no idea,” she purrs, resting her eyes on Aurora’s lips. “Somehow you became even more attractive.”
Aurora’s face splits in a blinding smile. She’s been through this enough to know that it’s the mania creeping up, from zero to one million in less than a day. But she welcomes it this time. She wants it. Her meds are flushed away in the toilet and she’s ready to lose herself. Lose control. It doesn’t matter who’s going down with her as long as it’s gonna be a good time. It will be good, she thinks. It will be bloody fantastic. Kai waits. He’s like her. She knows it.
Aurora is the Queen of the world. It’s time she gets herself a King.
The red wine Katherine’s brought with her hits her. It is gonna be a good time. But, she notices when she pays attention to her friend, there’s something unexpected and unprecedented on Katherine’s face – worry.
“What?” Aurora asks, still smiling the same wide and carefree smile.
Katherine simply shakes her head as if to say nothing. Her mouth replies, “Just be careful around him.”
Careful? That’s about the last thing on Aurora’s mind, but she’s not gonna tell her that. She nods, faking solemnity. “Of course.”
Aurora’s feeling red. The way down seems endless.