One week
"It's been one week since you looked at me, cocked your head to the side and said..."
"I'm angry."
Klaus stood there, the shreds of his dignity like the shreds of her clothes which were also strewn about the living room.
The living room which was also in, well, shreds.
Broken furniture littered the wood floor, four plants were uprooted and their dirt flung in clumps about the area and glass gleamed in crystalline shards in the bright afternoon sun.
"I can see that love, but why did the couch not escape unscathed from your mighty smiting rage?"
He's trying to be funny and she can't have that so she growls.
He sucks in a pained breath.
"That Ficus was seventy five years old Caroline..."
"Well, now it's in seventy five pieces, Klaus."
He opens his mouth to retort something insanely witty but she cuts him off.
"Get back together, then you can come see me. Maybe apologize for sleeping with that wolf slut." She turns up her nose, /her nose like she's the queen of goddamn everything/ and flounces out with nary another word leaving Klaus with the worst case of blue balls he's had in four hundred years.
It was shaping up to be a long fucking week already and it was only Sunday.
"How can I help it if I think you're funny when you're mad. I try not to smile though I feel bad."
"I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral, and really mate, if you can't understand what I mean, well, you soon will."
Stefan knocks back another shot and looks at the hybrid with a candid, if very drunk, eye.
"You're wearing your heart on your sleeve Klaus, did Caroline really brutalise your mansion?"
"Just the living room and a seventy five year old Ficus. Christ Stefan, I nurtured that poor creature from a barely rooted cutting." Klaus pouts and swigs deep from the bottle of Jack clutched in his fingers. "And this is really my funeral I'm laughing at, though there's nothing funny about this. Nothing. God I love her."
Stefan shakes his head and signals for another shot of vodka. He'd need it for this day if he were thinking about opening up that can of worms.
"She found out about Hayley didn't she?"
Klaus shoots Stefan a look.
"Yes, well, kind of hard to keep that a secret when the result was staring her in the face over breakfast this morning." Klaus releases a pained breath.
"Hayley was supposed to be at Elijah's, not the compound." He drinks again and wipes his lips with his sleeve, voice slightly slurred. "I was currently on the receiving end of her very talented mouth when Hayley came waddling in..." Klaus trails off as Stefan gags and he scowls.
"Look, I was planning on telling Caroline all about the baby, and sooner rather than like this, but, it appears two years with nothing but her memories of me left her rather keen on living out her fantasies as they were and..."
Stefan is making vomiting noises and covering his ears and Klaus just looks mournful.
"It'll still be two days till I say I'm sorry."
"Five days since you tackled me, I've still got the rug burn on both my knees..."
except there was no rug present because Caroline, darling beautiful full of light Caroline was lighting the wide tapestry weave on fire.
In the middle of Hayley's room, and piling all her clothes atop the smoking ruin of the 500 year old silk pile.
Elijah was shouting, Hayley was growling, Hope was laughing gleefully at "all pweety colours daddeeeee!"
And Klaus, Klaus was picking Caroline up and carting her like a cave-man from the room while Elijah got out the fire extinguisher.
And Caroline was crying, then laughing, then crying, then laughing again. And she smelled like soot and there were black fingerprints all over his clothes and his face and when he puts her down she's clutching at him like he's her anchor and he realizes then, even as he's whispering to her and holding her there.
"Yesterday you'd forgiven me, and I was waiting for you to say you were sorry."
She hiccoughs and looks up at him, whispering.
"It's been one week Klaus."
She drops her arms to the side and says softly; "I'm sorry."
He cups her face and lifts her chin and kisses her, gently, then less so. He breaks away and hears Elijah cursing him and Carline both.
"Just like him, all moody and reactive..."
Caroline giggles and then pulls him close.
"I couldn't bear this one week without you, the guest room doesn't smell like you, /I/ dont smell like you and I hate that. But Hope is cute as buttons on beetles and I think Bekah is amazing and, I still hate Hayley but I know you love me and that's good enough for me." She looks down. "Sorry about the rug, I'll pay for it..."
"It was Elijah's anyway love."
"Good."
A long silence ensues and then,
"I...love you, Klaus..."
"Three days since the living room, we realised we're both to blame, but what could we do?"
He was grinning while Stefan made more vomit noises from the kitchen.
End