Can you do a Kaibekah first kiss scene pls
The Runaway and the Void
Story Summary
In the rain-slicked streets of 1980s Portland, a runaway Rebekah Mikaelson crosses paths with a young Kai Parker—two outcasts fleeing the suffocating shadows of their own families.
The rain in Portland didn't feel like the rain in the South. In Virginia, storms were theatrical; they arrived with a heavy, humid announcement and broke over the trees in a roar of thunder. But here, on the edge of a world that felt like it was dissolving into the Pacific, the rain was a silent, persistent thief. It didn't wash things clean; it just made everything heavier, turning the vibrant colors of the city into a smudge of charcoal and bruised violet.
Rebekah Mikaelson sat in the driver’s seat of a stolen 1984 Chevy Blazer, the engine idling with a rough, rhythmic shudder that she felt in the base of her spine. She had been driving for three days. The heater was kicked up to full blast, smelling of scorched dust and old cigarettes, but it did nothing to touch the chill that had settled into her bones—a chill that had nothing to do with the Oregon weather and everything to do with the silver-induced sleep she had just escaped.
She stared through the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers at the silhouette of the Burnside Bridge. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt the phantom pressure of the dagger sliding between her ribs, the terrifyingly familiar sensation of her blood turning to lead. Klaus had done it again. He had pulled her out of the world because she dared to look at a man with something resembling hope, and then he had dragged her back into the light when he grew bored of his own solitude.
But this time, the moment the metal left her chest and the gray haze of the transition lifted, she hadn't stayed to scream at him. She hadn't thrown the crystal decanters or cursed his name. She had waited until he left the room to fetch a fresh shirt, and she had simply walked out the back door.
Now, she was three thousand miles away, and the silence was the only thing keeping her sane.
She shifted the truck into gear and crawled toward the waterfront. She needed a place where the air moved. The city felt too tight, the buildings leaning over the narrow streets like her brothers leaning over her life. She found a turn-off near a cluster of abandoned warehouses, a jagged finger of a pier jutting out into the Willamette River. It looked like a place where things went to be forgotten, and for Rebekah, there was no higher luxury.
She killed the engine. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the tinny tink-tink-tink of the cooling metal and the relentless drumming of water on the roof.
Rebekah stepped out of the car. The cold hit her instantly, sharp and biting, but she welcomed it. She didn't have a coat—only a thin silk blouse and a pair of trousers that were now stained with road salt and grease. She didn't care. The physical discomfort was a grounding wire. She walked toward the edge of the pier, her heels clicking with a lonely, hollow echo on the sodden wood.
The pier was a ruin. The wood was slick with green algae, and the air smelled of wet cedar and the metallic tang of industrial runoff. She walked until there was nothing left but the drop into the black, churning water below. She gripped the railing, her knuckles turning white.
She wasn't here to meet anyone. She wasn't here to find a story. She was here to exist in a space where no one knew her name, where "Always and Forever" was just a string of words that didn't mean anything to the rain. She looked out at the city skyline—flickering neon signs for beer and motels, the glowing red "Portland Oregon" sign in the distance—and felt a hollow sort of peace.
She had spent a thousand years being a centerpiece. A queen. A sister. A victim. Here, under the sulfur-yellow glow of a flickering streetlamp, she was just a woman standing in the rain.
She didn't hear him at first. The wind was whipping off the river, whistling through the gaps in the warehouse siding. But then, there was a shift in the air. A change in the atmospheric pressure that had nothing to do with the weather. It was a faint, buzzing sensation in the back of her head
Rebekah didn't turn. She didn't move a muscle. She simply tightened her grip on the railing and waited. She wasn't afraid she was an Original, and there was nothing in this city that could truly hurt her but she was annoyed. Someone was intruding on her void.
Behind her, the sound of a footstep. It wasn't the heavy, purposeful stride of a man looking for trouble. It was a light, wandering step, almost aimless.
"You're going to fall in," a voice said.
It was a young voice. Masculine, dry, and laced with a bored sort of arrogance that made Rebekah’s eyes narrow. It wasn't the voice of a hunter. It didn't have the practiced steel of a soldier. It sounded like someone who had spent too much time talking to himself.
Rebekah slowly turned her head, just enough to catch him in her peripheral vision.
He was leaning against a piling about ten feet back. He looked to be in his early twenties, dressed in a flannel shirt that was soaked to a dark charcoal gray and a pair of boots that had seen better decades. He wasn't looking at her face; he was looking at her hands on the railing.
He didn't look like a threat. He looked like a mess. But the buzzing in her head was getting louder, a frantic, electric pulse that told her this wasn't just some local runaway.
"The water is forty degrees," the boy continued, his eyes finally flicking up to hers. He didn't flinch when he saw the cold, predatory stillness in her expression. In fact, his smirk widened just a fraction. "In case you were wondering. If you jump, you won't drown immediately. Your heart will just stop from the shock. It's a very dramatic way to go, but a bit messy for the dry cleaning."
Rebekah turned fully now, her back to the river. She appraised him with the clinical detachment of an ancient predator. He had dark hair, eyes that seemed to catch the yellow light of the lamp with a strange, manic intensity, and a posture that suggested he was perpetually ready to either bolt or pick a fight.
"I wasn't planning on jumping," Rebekah said, her voice a low, dangerous silk that usually made men's heart rates spike.
The boy didn't blink. He just tilted his head, his gaze traveling from her shoes up to her face, lingering on the way the rain-slicked silk of her shirt clung to her skin. There was no lust in the look. It was more like he was looking at a scientific anomaly.
"Good," he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Because I’m having a really bad night, and I really don't want to have to explain a floating body to the cops. Too much paperwork. My dad hates paperwork."
He took a step closer, and the buzzing in Rebekah’s mind turned into a sharp, localized itch.
"You're far from home, boy," Rebekah remarked, her eyes tracking his every move. "And you smell like trouble."
The boy laughed a short, jagged sound that had no humor in it. "Trouble is a bit of an understatement. I'm more like a natural disaster."
He stopped five feet away, the perfect distance for a conversation, but far enough that she could tear his throat out before he could scream. He looked at the sky, then back at her, his smirk turning into something more cynical.
"I’m Kai," he said, as if the name explained everything. "And you... you are the most interesting thing to happen to this pier in about fifty years."
Rebekah watched him, her eyes tracking the way his boots crunched over the debris on the pier. She was centuries old, and she had been approached by every kind of man—kings, conquerors, poets, and killers. Usually, she could categorize them within seconds. But Kai Parker was a glitch in her peripheral vision. He looked like a college student who had lost his way, yet he moved like something that had been kicked one too many times and was finally looking for a reason to bite back.
As he took another step, the air between them seemed to warp. To Kai, the world had always been a flat, dull thing, a colorless landscape where he had to scrounge for every scrap of feeling. But as he drew closer to the woman in the silk shirt, the atmosphere began to glow. To his siphoner senses, Rebekah Mikaelson wasn't just a woman; she was a supernova draped in human skin. The magic rolling off her wasn't the flighty, nervous energy of the witches in his coven. It was heavy. It was ancient. It tasted like cold iron, blood, and the very beginning of time.
He stopped just three feet away. The rain was drumming a frantic rhythm on the brim of his hood, but his eyes were locked on hers, wide and bright with an almost frantic hunger.
"God," he whispered, the word barely audible over the wind. He tilted his head, his nostrils flaring. "What are you? You’re vibrating. I can feel it from here. It’s like standing next to a goddamn power plant."
Rebekah’s expression didn't soften. If anything, it turned to ice. She felt the pull of him now—a literal tug on the magic that bound her soul to her body. It was an invasive, oily sensation, like a hand reaching inside her chest and brushing against her heart. It was the first time in a century she had felt truly exposed, and her pride reacted before her logic could.
She took a deliberate step back, her chin tilting upward in that sharp, aristocratic line that had cowed generals in the Middle Ages.
"I suggest you don't do that," she said, her voice dropping into a lethal, velvet warning. The British lilt in her accent sharpened, turning the words into a blade. "Step back, boy. You are standing on the edge of a grave you aren't prepared to fill."
Kai didn't look intimidated. If anything, the threat seemed to exhilarate him. He let out a breathless, jagged laugh, his eyes scanning the lines of her face as if he were trying to memorize the geography of a new continent.
"A grave? High stakes for a Tuesday night on a pier," Kai drawled, his smirk returning, though it was stretched thin by the sheer pressure of the energy coming off her. He rubbed his palms against his damp jeans, his fingers twitching. "And hey, don't call me 'boy.' I’m twenty-two. I’m a grown-up abomination. And you... you’re making my teeth ache just by standing there. Do you have any idea how loud you are? It’s like you’re screaming in a language I didn’t know existed."
He took another half-step, his personal space evaporating. He was close enough now that Rebekah could see the dark circles under his eyes and the frantic pulse in his neck.
"Seriously," he muttered, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial, crude whisper. "If I had known Portland was hiding something that looked like a supermodel and smelled like a cosmic explosion, I would have stopped hanging out at the record store months ago. Is it just the rain, or are you actually glowing? Because I’m about five seconds away from checking to see if you have a plug-in somewhere."
The comment was foul, beneath her, and exactly the kind of disrespect that usually ended in a decapitation. Rebekah’s eyes flashed with a dark, amber light—a flicker of the monster beneath the silk.
"You are a crude, hollow little thing," she hissed. "And you are remarkably overconfident for someone whose life hangs by a thread of my patience."
Kai grinned, a flash of white teeth in the dark. "Patience is overrated. I prefer immediate gratification."
Without warning, he reached for her. It wasn't a grab for her throat or a strike; his hand shot out toward her shoulder, his fingers splayed, desperate to finally make contact with the raw, thrumming power he could feel radiating from her skin. He wanted to touch the sun.
He never made it.
To Kai, the world suddenly flipped upside down. One second he was reaching out, feeling the static electricity of her presence, and the next, the gray sky was replaced by the rotting wood of the pier rushing up to meet his skull.
Rebekah moved with a speed that defied human physics. She didn't just parry his hand; she caught his wrist, used his own momentum against him, and slammed him into the sodden planks with a sickening thud. The air left Kai’s lungs in a violent wheeze. Before he could even process the pain, he felt a crushing weight on his chest.
Rebekah stood over him, her heel planted firmly in the center of his sternum, pinning him to the wood. The rain poured over her, soaking her hair and clinging to her face, but she looked like a statue of a vengeful goddess. Her eyes were cold, vacant of any human warmth, as she looked down at him.
"I warned you," she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper, yet it carried over the roar of the river. "Do not mistake my solitude for weakness. I have killed men for far less than a touch I am a original, Malachai."
Kai lay there, pinned like an insect to a board. His chest burned, his head was ringing from the impact, and he was staring up at a woman who could clearly snap him in half without breaking a sweat. Most people would have been begging for their lives. Most people would have been paralyzed by the sheer, overwhelming aura of death she was projecting.
But Kai Parker wasn't most people. He looked up at her, the water pooling in his eyes, and a slow, genuine laugh bubbled up from his throat. It was a dark, manic sound.
"God," he wheezed, his grin widening even as his ribs groaned under her weight. "You are... you are so hot when you’re trying to murder me. Is this a vampire thing? Because if it is, I’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd."
Rebekah stared down at him, her brows knitting together in genuine confusion. She had expected terror. she had expected a plea for mercy. She hadn't expected... this. The boy was insane. He was looking at her with a twisted sort of admiration, as if being stepped on by an Original was the highlight of his year.
She felt a strange flicker of something she couldn't name. It wasn't pity—she didn't pity things that tried to siphon her—but it was a recognition. He was a black sheep. He was the thing his family hated. He was the monster in the basement who had finally climbed out and found someone who spoke his language.
Slowly, she eased the pressure on his chest, though she didn't move her foot. She leaned down, her face inches from his, the rain dripping from her nose onto his cheek.
"You have a death wish," she remarked, her voice losing some of its edge and replacing it with a grim curiosity.
"I have a boredom wish," Kai countered, his voice steadying as he caught his breath. He didn't try to push her off. He just lay there in the rain, looking at her. "And you’re the first thing in twenty-two years that hasn't bored me to tears. So, are you going to kill me, or are you going to tell me who you are? I feel like I should at least know the name of the girl who broke my ribs."
Rebekah stayed silent for a long moment, the wind howling around them. She looked at the boy.
She stepped back, finally releasing him. She stood tall.
"Rebekah," she said, the word ringing out with a finality that silenced the night. "My name is Rebekah Mikaelson. And if you ever touch me without permission again, I will ensure that name is the last thing you ever hear."
Kai sat up slowly, rubbing his chest and wincing, but the smirk never left his face. He looked at her, really looked at her, and whispered the name like a secret.
"Rebekah. Well, Rebekah... I think this is the start of something very, very messy."
"Alright, Rebekah," Kai said, his voice regaining its rhythmic, annoying bounce. "Since you didn't actually crush my windpipe, I feel like I owe you. Or you owe me for the dry cleaning. Either way, you look like you haven't eaten since the Carter administration, and there’s a place three blocks up that has the best grease in the Pacific Northwest. My treat. Mostly because I’m pretty sure you don't have any '80s currency on you."
Rebekah didn't look at him, but her shoulders moved in a subtle, weary shrug. She was sober, she was tired, and the thought of sitting in her stolen truck alone for another hour felt like a different kind of death. "I am not interested in your charity, Malachai."
"It's not charity, it's an investment," Kai countered, stepping into pace beside her as she finally began to walk back toward the street.
He didn't stay at a respectful distance. As they moved off the pier and onto the cracked sidewalk, he drifted closer, his shoulder nearly brushing hers. Rebekah stiffened, her hand curling into a fist, but she didn't strike. She was curious—a dangerous thing for an Original to be.
Kai looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on the damp silk of her blouse and the cut of her trousers. "You know, for someone so... intense... you look like you stepped right off the set of a Medicaid commercial. Or maybe a very depressed librarian convention. The 'immortal queen' vibe is a bit dampened by the 'stolen from a suburban closet' look. You need more leather. Or maybe just something that doesn't scream 'I’m hiding from my feelings in Oregon.'"
Rebekah stopped dead in her tracks, turning a look on him that had made kings stutter. "I’ll have you know this ensemble was chosen for its anonymity, not its aesthetic. And I suggest you stop commenting on my attire before I decide your tongue would look better pinned to that telephone pole."
Kai just gave her a lopsided grin, completely unfazed. "See? There she is. The fire. I knew it was under there somewhere."
The diner was called Louie’s, a 24-hour hole-in-the-wall that smelled of burnt coffee, onions, and decades of stale cigarette smoke. It was lit by humming fluorescent tubes that made everyone look slightly sickly, which suited the both of them perfectly.
Rebekah took a seat in a vinyl booth in the far corner, her back to the wall, her eyes scanning the exits. It was instinct. Kai, however, didn't sit across from her. He slid into the same side of the booth, crowding her space, his hip pressing against hers.
Rebekah’s hand shot out, her fingers catching him by the throat before he could fully settle. It wasn't a killing grip, but it was enough to make his breath hitch. "I believe I mentioned something about permission, Kai."
"I like your hair," he choked out, his eyes bright with that same manic mischief. "The light hits it and it’s like... I don't know, it’s distracting. I wanted a better look. Relax. I’m not going to bite. That’s your job, right?"
Rebekah stared at him for a long beat, her thumb pressing into his pulse point. She saw the lack of fear in him—not the brave lack of fear a hero has, but the hollow lack of fear someone has when they don't think their life is worth much to begin with. She slowly let go, smoothing her silk sleeve.
"Sit across from me," she commanded. "Now."
Kai sighed dramatically but slid out and took the opposite bench. A bored waitress dropped two menus and two glasses of water that looked mostly like melted ice. Kai didn't even look at the menu. He leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands, staring at her across the laminate table.
"Alright, Rebekah Mikaelson," he said, the playfulness dropping for a second, replaced by a sharp, clinical focus. "Explain the 'Original' thing. You said it on the pier like I was supposed to bow. I’ve heard of vampires. I’ve met a couple boring, blood-chugging addicts who can’t handle a simple daylight spell. But you? You’re different. You’re like a walking mountain of magic. What makes you so special?"
Rebekah took a slow, deliberate sip of the water, her eyes never leaving his. "I am the beginning of the story, Kai. A thousand years ago, my mother—a woman far more powerful and far more foolish than you could imagine—turned to dark magic to protect her children. She turned us into the first of our kind. I cannot be killed by a wooden stake or a common blade. I am the blueprint from which every other vampire is a pale, flickering shadow."
She leaned in, her voice dropping. "I am an Original. To your kind, I am a myth. To the world, I am a predator that time forgot."
Kai listened, his eyes widening. He wasn't scared; he was enthralled. He looked like a kid hearing a fairy tale about a dragon, except he was the kind of kid who wanted to steal the dragon’s scales.
"A thousand years," he whispered, the weight of the number sinking in. "That’s... that’s a lot of magic. No wonder you’re so loud."
"And you?" Rebekah countered, her voice sharp. "You keep reaching for me like a starving dog. You call yourself an 'abomination.' I’ve known many witches, but none who felt like a void in the air."
Kai’s face darkened, a flick of genuine resentment crossing his features. He picked up a sugar packet and started tearing it into tiny, precise pieces. "The Gemini Coven. My family. They’re all about balance and nature and being 'chosen.' And then there’s me. I was born without a spark of my own. I’m a broken battery, Rebekah. I can’t cast a spell to save my life unless I take the magic from somewhere else first."
He looked up at her, his gaze intense. "I have to touch it. I have to pull it out of the air, or out of an object, or... out of someone like you. My dad looks at me like I’m a parasite. My siblings think I’m a freak because I can’t produce, I can only consume. To them, I’m not a witch. I’m just a hole that needs to be filled."
Rebekah watched him, her hand resting on the table. For the first time, she understood the hunger she had felt on the pier. It wasn't just magic he wanted; it was the feeling of being whole. He was a void, and she was an endless well.
"So that’s why you’re so hell-bent on touching me," she murmured.
Kai smirked, though it didn't reach his eyes this time. "At first? Yeah. You’re the biggest hit I’ve ever seen. But now? I think I just like watching you get annoyed. It’s a hobby."
He reached across the table, his hand stopping just an inch from hers, his fingers hovering over her skin. "One thousand years of magic. Do you have any idea what that would feel like? To someone like me?"
Rebekah didn't pull away this time. She looked at his hand, then up at his face. The diner around them faded away the smell of grease, the hum of the lights, the rain on the windows. There was only the vacuum and the well.
"It would feel like everything," she said softly. "And it would likely kill you."
Kai’s grin returned, sharp and dangerous. "What a way to go."
The burgers arrived, glistening with grease on paper plates that were already turning translucent. Kai didn’t eat so much as he attacked his food, a frantic, messy display that made Rebekah watch him with a mixture of horror and fascination. She picked at a single fry, her movements elegant and precise—a stark contrast to the boy across from her who was currently using a napkin to wipe a smear of mustard off his thumb while simultaneously trying to explain the hierarchy of Portland’s punk scene.
"And then there’s the Gits," Kai said, his mouth half-full. "They’re loud, they’re angry, and they look like they haven’t showered since the bicentennial. You’d hate them. You look like you require at least four hundred thread-count sheets and a dedicated servant just to brush your hair."
Rebekah gave him a thin, dangerous smile. "I’ve had servants who were executed for less than the tone you’re using, Malachai."
"See? That’s what I’m talking about!" Kai laughed, nearly choking on a fry. He leaned back, his eyes dancing with a manic sort of glee. "You’re so dramatic. It’s like talking to a Shakespearean villain who accidentally wandered into a John Hughes movie. You’re all 'thou shalt perish' while sitting in a booth that smells like floor wax and regret."
He reached for his soda, but his hand slipped on a patch of condensation, knocking the plastic cup over. The brown liquid surged across the table toward Rebekah’s silk sleeve. Without thinking, she didn't just move—she caught the cup mid-air before a single drop hit her, her hand moving with a blurred, supernatural snap that sent a small splash of soda directly into Kai’s face.
He blinked, droplets of cola dripping off his nose and his eyelashes. He looked stunned for a heartbeat, his mouth hanging open.
Rebekah stared at him, her hand still frozen in the air holding the empty cup. She looked at his dripping face, then at the sheer absurdity of the moment—the Original Vampire and the Siphoner Outcast, fighting over a spilled soda in a diner that hadn't been cleaned since 1974.
A sound escaped her. It was small at first, a tiny huff of air, but then it broke. She laughed. It wasn't the polite, tinkling laugh she used at balls to charm suitors; it was a genuine, chest-deep sound of amusement that took her by surprise.
Kai’s face lit up. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, grinning like a fool. "Oh, she has a soul! I knew it! I thought maybe you were just a very pretty, very angry statue, but there’s a human in there somewhere."
"Don't get used to it," Rebekah warned, though she was still smiling, her eyes brighter than they had been in decades. "It was an accident. The sight of you dripping in sugar is simply... cathartic."
"I’ll take what I can get," Kai said, his voice softening just a fraction. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table, ignoring the sticky mess between them. He watched her for a moment, his expression turning uncharacteristically serious. "So, Rebekah. Why are you really here? You said you’re running from your brothers, but Portland is a long way to drive just to avoid a family dinner. What did you do? Or better yet, what did they do to you?"
The laughter faded from Rebekah’s face, replaced by a quiet, heavy shadows. She looked at the neon 'Open' sign reflected in the dark window.
"They take," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "They take everything. My brothers Niklaus especially believe that my life is an extension of his own. Every time I find a sliver of happiness, every time I look at a man or a city or a life and think 'this could be mine', he decides I’m being 'distracted.' So he puts me to sleep. He pushes a silver blade into my heart and leaves me in a dark box for decades, sometimes centuries, until he feels lonely enough to want his sister back."
She looked at Kai, her gaze piercing. "I am the oldest woman in the world, and I have spent more time dead than I have alive because of the people who claim to love me most."
he nodded, a slow, dark understanding in his eyes. "The Gemini Coven is like that. Except they don't use boxes. They use 'expectations.' I’m the eldest son. I was supposed to lead. I was supposed to be the one to merge with my twin and take over the coven. But since I’m a siphon, I’m just a 'defect.' They treat me like a ticking time bomb. My dad looks at me and he doesn't see a son; he sees a mistake that he has to keep contained."
He reached out, his hand sliding across the table, stopping just short of her fingers. "I think that's why I keep trying to touch you. It's not just the magic. It's that you’re the only thing I’ve found that’s more of a 'mistake' than I am. You’re not supposed to exist. I’m not supposed to exist. It’s kind of poetic, don't you think?"
Rebekah looked at his hand, then at his face. The "weirdness" of him the void she had felt on the pier didn't feel like a vacuum anymore. It felt like a space she could finally fit into.
"We are a pair of broken things, Malachai," she murmured.
"Yeah," Kai whispered, his smirk returning, though it was softer now, almost vulnerable. "But at least we're interesting."
The interior of the diner had begun to feel like a cage of flickering fluorescent light and the smell of old oil. Kai, sensing the shift in the air, didn’t wait for the bill—he simply dropped a crumpled wad of bills onto the sticky laminate and stood up, his eyes bright with a sudden, restless energy.
"Come on," he said, nodding toward the door. "The walls in here are starting to talk, and they’re saying we’re too cool for this place."
Rebekah followed him out, her heels clicking on the linoleum until they hit the pavement. The Portland night had turned from a drizzle into a full, cinematic downpour. The rain lashed against the asphalt, turning the streetlights into blurred halos of amber and white. The air was cold, sharp enough to sting, but as the first heavy drops hit Rebekah’s face, she didn't recoil.
Kai, however, did something she hadn't seen a man do in centuries. He didn't run for cover. He didn't hunch his shoulders against the chill. He walked right into the center of the sidewalk, threw his arms wide, and tilted his head back, letting the rain wash over him. He let out a loud, jagged laugh that echoed off the brick buildings.
"What are you doing?" Rebekah asked, stopping just under the diner’s narrow awning. She looked at him with a mixture of bewilderment and disdain, her nose wrinkling. "You look like a drowned rat. It’s undignified."
"It’s rain, Rebekah! It’s free water falling from the sky!" Kai shouted back over the roar of the storm. He started spinning in a slow, clumsy circle, his boots splashing into a deep puddle. He looked ridiculous—a twenty-two-year-old man playing like a toddler in a gutter. "Stop being so ancient for five minutes. It’s just weather. It doesn't care about your silk shirt or your reputation."
He splashed a wave of water toward her with his foot, a playful, daring smirk on his face. "Come here. Or are you afraid you’ll melt? Is that an Original thing? Do you turn into a puddle of glitter?"
Rebekah made a face—the specific, haughty expression of a woman who had spent a thousand years being the most important person in every room. "I do not 'play,' Malachai. And I certainly do not play in the mud."
"Lie," Kai countered, stepping closer, his eyes locked on hers. The rain was streaming down his face, soaking his hair until it was a dark, messy crown. "I saw you laugh in there. You’ve got a pulse, even if it’s a dead one. Come on. Just for a minute. Be a person. Not a myth. Not a Mikaelson. Just... a girl in the rain."
Rebekah looked at him, and for a heartbeat, the centuries seemed to peel away. She saw the way the rain made him look young—not the dangerous, siphoning outcast, but just a boy who loved the chaos of a storm because it was the only thing as loud as the noise in his head.
With a huff of exasperation that was more for show than anything else, she stepped out from under the awning.
The cold water hit her skin, soaking through her blouse in seconds, but as it did, she felt a strange, soaring lightness in her chest. She began to move, her movements far more graceful than Kai’s, her feet finding a rhythm in the splashing puddles. She spun, her damp hair whipping around her face, and as she did, she let out a sound—a high, bright laugh that felt like it had been trapped in her throat since she was a mortal girl in a village that no longer existed.
For a moment, she wasn't a runaway. She wasn't a monster. She was just twenty-one again, under a sky that didn't know how to judge her.
Kai stopped his splashing and watched her, his expression shifting from manic to mesmerized. He walked toward her, the playfulness dying down into a heavy, charged silence. They stood in the middle of the empty, rain-slicked street, the world around them reduced to the sound of water hitting pavement.
He reached for her hand, his fingers slipping into hers with a surprisingly gentle firmess. He raised her arm, and with a flick of his wrist, he sent her into a slow, elegant twirl.
The world around them blurred the gray brick of the warehouses, the flickering neon of the diner, the black river all of it reduced to a streak of color as Rebekah spun. For that one second, she wasn't a thousand years old. She wasn't a runaway. She was just a girl in the rain, and Kai was the only thing keeping her from flying off into the dark.
When she slowed, she didn't pull away. She landed against his chest, her breath hitching as she looked up at him. The air between them was thick, charged with more than just the storm.
"Stay with me," Kai whispered. stripped of his usual sarcasm.
Rebekah’s expression faltered, her brow knitting together. "Malachai, we have known each other for two hours. You don't know the weight of what you’re asking. My life is a cycle of blood and boxes. I cannot stay."
"Then don't stay," Kai countered, his voice rising with a sudden, desperate intensity. He stepped even closer, his hands coming up to cup her face, his thumbs grazing her cheekbones. "Run away. I don't care where we go. Look at me, Rebekah. I hate it here. I hate the coven, I hate the noise, I hate the way my father looks at me like I'm a broken toy. I can't stay here another day without losing my mind."
He searched her eyes, his breath hot against the cold rain on her skin. "You’re the first thing that’s made sense in twenty-two years. You’re a disaster, and I’m an abomination. We’re a matched set. We could leave Portland tonight. We could go to a city that’s never heard of a Mikaelson or a Parker and just... exist."
Rebekah felt the walls she’d built over a millennium begin to crumble. She looked at him at the boy who was willing to throw away his entire life for a woman he’d met on a rotting pier and for a heartbeat, she believed him. She saw a future where she wasn't a sister or a pawn, but a partner.
"You would leave everything?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Your family? Your home?"
"In a heartbeat," Kai said, and the terrifying thing was that he meant it. He leaned his forehead against hers, closing his eyes. "I’ve been waiting for a reason to burn it all down. Be my reason."
The tragedy of it hit her then the sheer, impossible beauty of his offer. If she stayed, her brothers would find them. They would kill him just for touching her, or worse, they would use him to get to her.
She looked at him, her heart breaking under the weight of the rain, and she knew what she had to do. She couldn't give him a life, so she would give him the mercy of forgetting.
"I wish I could," she whispered, her hands moving up to cover his.
She leaned in, capturing his lips in a kiss that was meant to be a goodbye, even if he didn't know it yet. It was deep, agonizingly slow, and filled with all the words she couldn't say. She felt him melt into her, felt his hope flare like a dying star. And as the kiss deepened, she opened her eyes, her pupils expanding as the ancient, cold power of her compulsion flooded his mind.
"Forget the pier," she commanded softly against his lips, her voice a velvet shackle. "Forget the diner. Forget the girl in the rain. You spent the night alone, Kai. You went home angry, and you never met a woman named Rebekah."
She felt the tension leave his body as the memory was erased, his eyes going dull and vacant. She pulled back, her chest aching with a physical pain as she watched the light of their shared night vanish from his gaze.
"Always and forever," she whispered to the boy who no longer knew her name.
She turned and walked away into the Portland mist, her heels clicking a lonely rhythm on the pavement, leaving him standing in the rain with a hole in his heart he would never be able to explain.
