Just something that has been bugging me. Nothing serious at all. AH, AU nonsense. Enjoy!
Esther
The first spring celebration Esther had thrown, after marrying Mikael, had been an unmitigated disaster.
It had rained, and the grounds were too wet to be of any use, and so they had ended up in the ballroom of the old Mikaelson Manor.
The caterers had mixed up the food, and they hadn't sent enough servers.
Somehow their entire alcohol order had been lost, and hadn't sent a bartender.
Freshly married, and freshly pregnant, the day had started out with a rough bout of morning sickness, and had continued to get worse with every second.
She had ended the day spectacularly ruining her mother in laws rose bushes after smelling someone's foul cologne.
It was a dark, dark stain in her first year of marriage, and her husband had learnt if he knew what was good for him, a day they never spoke of.
Thankfully, every year since had been a resounding success, bar her children's yearly pranks, the day usually went off without a hitch.
When they were small, it was usually harmless pranks, things that could be laughed off as young children being bored.
A frog in a handbag of a guest they didn't like, a spilled drink down someone's leg, crying to escape over eager cheek pinchers, tantrums when they didn't like the food, crickets dropped into wine glasses, flicking bits of torn tissue into the fountain.
As teenagers, it had escalated.
One year, Kol had taken a spray bottle of water around and had pretended to sneeze on people.
Once Nik had 'pretended' to accidentally push a guest into a still wet painting when they followed him into the house.
Rebekah was fond of 'accidentally' spilling drinks on dresses she hated, or people, so they would have to leave early.
Henrik would throw canapes at people, claiming innocence with a devilish look in his eyes.
Elijah and Finn had taught the rest of them ancient Norse, and they had spent the day confusing guests conversing in another language. From what little Esther had been able to understand, they had spent the day insulting everyone they spoke to.
One year Kol and his best friend Caroline had learnt sign language just to spend the day signing to each other, prompting guests to ask Esther when her son had lost his ability to speak.
She had caught all her children sneaking off for alone time with their dates at one time or another. Just last year, she had stopped Nik and Caroline from sneaking into the house.
Elijah and Kol used to try and trip the guests up, as they looked so similar they could often pass as one another, and when people would ask Kol about his work, he would immediately descend into a spiel about how great it was to tear people apart in a courtroom, holding in laughter until one of his parents could drag him away from the confused guest.
Elijah would then use the distraction to take over and talk about how much he loved food, and whatever it is that they were eating today was probably peasant food.
One year, Nik did trip guests, spending the whole day being the cause of various guests falling over, much to the delight of his siblings.
Three years ago, her sons had arrived together, a highly unusual event, each in one of their mother's designer dresses, with their dress socks and shoes on, badly placed wigs on their heads.
Esther had been horrified at the ruination of some of her favourite dresses, and had sent the boys upstairs to change.
(Kol had a nasty habit of turning up in jeans, and their pranks sometimes got out of hand, so she had learnt to keep a change of clothes at the house for all of them.)
The previous year they had attempted to drink the bar dry. Only one lone bottle of scotch had survived the night.
Esther had come down at three in the morning to find them laughing and sprawled across the outdoor lounge suite next to the pool. Elijah and Finn were both dripping wet, sitting on the edge of the pool, toasting each other with tequila bottles in hand.
They had been scolded as much as one could scold grown children, and sent to bed with Esther's glare pushing the giggling group up the stairs.
Of course, she had tried in vain so many times to stop their escalating prank war. Glad that they only seemed to do this at the garden party, one of the more relaxed events she held.
She started digging at the breakfast that followed the year before. Usually, her children made it an overnight trip, staying for breakfast and then heading back to their homes.
Of course, they had attempted to drink the bar dry the previous night, and so each of them were obscenely hungover, and barely had enough functioning brain cells to make it down the stairs, let alone through an interrogation.
Finn had barely been able to open his eyes, before attempting to drinking his weight in coffee, his wife's smug grin making him groan whenever he caught site of it.
Freya had rested her head on the table, and couldn't look at any of the food without turning a delicate shade of green.
Elijah had, for the first time since he was eight, turned up to breakfast in his pyjamas.
Katherine had downed mimosa after mimosa, gradually going from grey to her usual complexion.
Niklaus and Kol had looked to still be drunk, and were half holding each other up as they crashed down the stairs.
Henrik had barely sat down, and reached for some toast, before bolting for the downstairs bathroom.
Only Caroline seemed to be fine, although, she did catch Kol calling her a filthy cheat, but Caroline had only laughed him off when he turned green as she ate some eggs.
And so, for the months leading up to the party, she kept a closer eye on her children, invited them over for dinner more.
Arranged one on one lunches, called Katherine weekly, on the guise of checking in on her pregnant daughter in law, hoping that she would let something slip with her pregnancy brain.
She cornered Henrik, who still lived at home, pestering him until she was sure he would give in in annoyance.
She called Caroline, Kol's best friend and Nik's girlfriend once a week on the guise of gossiping and catching up, fishing as casually as she could.
She met with Elijah at his office, and called Finn so much his secretary had become a tentative friend.
She surprised Nik at work, and turned up to his apartment without warning, interrupting more than a few date nights with Caroline.
Kol was the luckiest, his work schedule was erratic, and was hard to find. She had attempted to stake out his apartment that he shared with Caroline, but he was never there, (she usually used the time to interrogate Caroline) or she had just missed him.
Freya had taken to parking her car around the back of her house, just in case her mother tried to stop by when she was at home.
Elijah's security team wouldn't even let her in the elevators without his express say so and Rebekah's doorman was under strict instructions not to let her in the building.
She knew that they had been talking to each other when her calls started being screened, secretaires were warned into not answering calls, or letting her into offices.
With her children, who were usually willing to toss each other into the line of fire without so much as a second thought, this level of solidarity was suspicious and rather annoying.
...
Caroline
Caroline dressed carefully, picking out a nice dress that she prayed would not get ruined this year.
A couple of years ago, Kol had locked her in the library, and she had ruined her dress climbing out the window.
Caroline was looking forward to this year's Mikaelson Family Garden Party (yes, all capitals), although, she was perhaps looking forward to the after event more.
Every year, there was a poker game, held in the dead of the night at the Mikaelson Manor, the stakes were always high, the winner usually taking a nice stack of cash home, and a dare or favour of some kind owed to the winner by the loser.
Post-game, they had gone down to finish drinking the bar dry, and had ended up sprawled across the pool furniture, laughing and congratulating Caroline on her win.
There was one last bottle of scotch to be opened when Esther had found them, and sent them all to bed with a furious glare chasing them inside.
The next morning, at Esther's appointed breakfast hour, they had slowly ventured downstairs.
Caroline had managed to beat everyone downstairs, and was sitting next to Esther sipping a mimosa smugly when they had stumbled in, outrageously hungover, and grumpy at losing to her yet again.
Caroline sat freshly showered and as cheerful as ever, had cheerily greeted each of them, only to receive filthy looks and glowers (even Klaus had only managed to pat her shoulder in his grumpy hungover state).
...
Esther
This year, the weather was perfect, a lovely summers day, warm and dry, and everything was going according to plan.
The caterers had turned up on time, the champagne was chilled, she had hidden the scotch from her children, who had, for the first time ever, all turned up on time, and dressed appropriately.
She warily waited for the other shoe to drop.
...
Kol
"Your mother has been acting super weird all day" Caroline announced, handing Nik a glass of champagne, returning from where Esther had dragged her around to meet her society friends. He merely hummed in response and wrapped his free hand around her wrist, tugging her down to sit on his lap, his chin resting on her shoulder.
"That's hardly anything new, little bird" Kol said from the chair next to them, "she has always been a bit loopy, think it came from marrying Mikael" he and Klaus had been sitting, watching their parents with matching grimaces on their faces while they were farewelling of Mikael's business associates.
"Quite sure she would have been loopy to marry him in the first place" Nik said, draining half his flute, and then looking at it in mild distaste.
The day was thankfully winding down, and while there were a few stragglers, there was mostly just the family scattered around the lawn in the warm summer air.
Caroline had been dragged all over the lawn by his mother all day, and he was bored without his usual entertainment for the day.
"I don't know about you two, but I could do with something stronger" Caroline grinned at them, memories of last year darkening their scowls.
"You'd better not be getting us drunk again so you can cheat, little bird" Kol said, frowning at her,
"Of course not, would I do something like that?" she smiled at him mockingly, draining the last of her champagne, and wandered off to the bar, giving the bartender a winning smile.
"You'd better marry her Nik, because if you don't, I will friend wife the shit out of her" Kol told his older brother as she came back to their table with an unopened bottle of scotch and three heavy tumblers.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm working on it" his brother mumbled, watching his girlfriend with a smirk.
"Now how did you manage to get that little bird?" Kol took the bottle from her and poured out three glasses, sliding them over, clinking his glass against the other two.
"Promised everlasting love to the bartender" she teased, raising her glass to Enzo, who was a good friend of both Kol and Caroline.
"See, he was told not to let any of you take bottles, no mention of little ole me! It's honestly like your mother doesn't trust you lot at all," she joked, kicking her heels off and placing her feet on Kol's thigh, leaning back against Nik, draining her glass with a smug look.
...
Esther
Thankfully, the rest of the day had gone smoothly, and although there had been a minor prank between the girls, nothing had gone horribly awry.
She had confiscated the bottle of scotch that she had found Kol with, sent a tipsy Rebekah to bed early, had shut the bar down before any of the others thought they could get away with a repeat of last year before heading up to bed herself.
It was a couple of hours later, when she went to get a glass of water, when she noticed a door with a bar of light still shining under it. All her children's bedroom doors were opened, and when she checked they were all empty.
She realised that the door with a light still on was the room Nik and Caroline were sharing, and hoping against hope that she wasn't about to walk into something she really didn't want to see, she pushed the door open slowly.
There was a table set up in the middle of the floor, all of them seated around it, as well as the bartender from the party, holding cards, a pile of cash in the middle of the table as well as what looked like Kol's watch, and a pair of earrings she was sure she had seen Katherine wearing earlier.
They were all wearing matching expressions of guilt and surprise.
Kol had started choking on his drink, Caroline absently patting his back, while still managing to hide her cards from Nik's eyes as he attempted to use the distraction to look at her hand.
Freya subtly slid the small tumbler of scotch away from Henrik's hand, hoping that Esther wouldn't notice it.
Finn and Sage slowly turned around to face her, Elijah and Katherine holding in sniggers at her astonished face.
"What exactly is going on here?" Esther asked slowly, as the rooms occupants avoided eye contact, hiding guilty looks behind glasses and cards.
"Er- it's our annual poker tournament" Esther was baffled.
"Poker tournament? Annual?" she gave each of her children, and children in law a piercing stare, until Freya cleared her throat awkwardly.
"Well, every year, we get together after the garden party and play poker" Freya said, with a jerky wave of her hand to the cash in the middle.
"Winner gets a favour from the loser, or a dare" she explained, "and the cash of course"
Even Henrik had a small pile of cash in front of him, a mildly guilty look on his face, as he lowered the cards to stop Kol from peeking at them.
"Is this why Kol was calling Caroline a filthy cheater at breakfast last year?" Esther asked, a slow realisation on her face, and Caroline have a smug beaming smile, flipping her curls over one shoulder.
"It's really not my fault you can't hold your tequila, big bird" she shot at Kol with a sweet smile on her face.
Esther couldn't believe that this is what they had been hiding from her, and asked the room "How long has this been going on?"
Freya answered again, "Well, it wasn't always poker, we used to play go fish until we got older." She was wearing a placating smile, and kicked Finns shin under the table, knowing that he was their best bet at escaping with minimal damage from their mother's wrath.
"We're bonding," was all he managed to say, and everyone gave him an exasperated look, although, it made Esther smile.
Her children didn't always get along with each other, so anything they found to do together that didn't end in bloodshed was a good thing in her book.
"Don't stay up all night, your father's business partner and his wife are coming for breakfast, and I refuse to face that woman alone" was all she said before shutting the door again, hearing the disbelieving laughs as she moved away.