Disclaimer: Don't own; don't sue. Picture credit unknown.
Spoilers: None.
Author's Notes: Fluff. Crack. Established relationship. I have no idea what this is. Theoretically could take place in "ever after" series, but I can't be bothered with figuring out continuity, so I'm not officially adding it to the collection.
Thank you as always to my beta, Fenmir, without whom I would be lost.
thick as thieves
It takes a while for Caroline to notice. She has always been the girl who loved shopping, so even she tends to forget the amount of clothes she's accumulated over the years.
Between her job, her boyfriend, her friends, and organizing this person's baby shower and that person's surprise birthday party, she can barely be expected to keep her calendar up to date, much less her closet. She's still very well put together, of course, never letting a bra strap show and ensuring that her work ensembles are never too short or too loud. But if she happens to forget where that pair of skinny jeans went, or where the scarf that went perfectly with that top disappeared off to, she doesn't worry about it too much.
It becomes hard to ignore when she can't find a single bra.
Not just clean ones. Not just her lacy ones she wore for special occasions. All of them. The sports bras, the really supportive ones that look like a grandma's, all of them. She's pacing her room in one of Damon's band shirts (they're the softest), when she realizes that she's going to be late to dinner at his place. Grumbling the entire time, she pulls on three layers of shirts and a ratty pair of jeans, texting him along the way. She feels positively gross through the whole meal, and claims exhaustion when she trudges upstairs. She just wants to strip off all her clothes and lie in Damon's huge silken bed and deal with replenishing her closet later (she doesn't even want to contemplate the idea of where her bras had gone).
She's just burrowed herself under the covers when she hears Damon come in. She can imagine his grin when he sees her trail of clothes.
"Yes, I'm naked. No, I'm not in the mood."
"What's wrong?" he asks, sitting on the bed next to her and running a hand over her hair.
"Someone stole all my bras," she mutters.
"What?"
"Someone. Took. My. Bras," she spits out grumpily.
Damon snorts and stands up off the bed. She can hear him rummaging around his closet. After a few minutes, she realizes he's not just changing his clothes. Warily, she pulls down the covers and glances over at him. Her mouth drops open in shock.
"You, you, you – "
"I thought you knew, I mean, you were the one that was constantly – "
" – thief!" Caroline shrieks, jumping out of bed and stalking over to him.
"Thief?" Damon says incredulously. "You're kidding right?"
"You stole all my bras!"
"What? I didn't steal anything! Damn, you're extra crazy today!"
"Me?! I'm crazy?! I woke up with all my bras stolen!" Caroline stomps over to the closet and begins pulling her bras back out of the drawer and throwing them on the ground. There are so many of them that they take up two whole drawers. They've been folded and nicely organized by color and type, but all Caroline can see is red.
"What? What?"
"How did you even do it? You're never at my place – "
"Because your apartment is tiny," interrupts Damon.
" – I'm always here, but more importantly, why the hell did you do it? Why'd you take them?" Finally done pulling the clothes out, Caroline whirls on Damon.
Damon's mouth opens and closes rapidly.
"I didn't do it," he enunciates slowly.
"What?" Caroline is so not in the mood for games.
"I didn't take your bras."
"Then how did they get here?" she demands, hands on her hips and scowl on her face, looking very regal despite the fact that she's naked.
"You left them here."
"What?"
"You. Left. Them. Here," he says slowly, mimicking her own speech pattern from earlier.
"How…? I think I would remember leaving all of my bras here, Damon."
"Well you didn't leave them all here at once," he scoffs, sitting back down on the bed. "You remember when you were complaining about your washing machine three weeks ago? And I offered to ask Matilda to wash your… delicates?"
Begrudgingly, Caroline nods. Matilda is Damon's ridiculously amazing housekeeper, who can take a stain out of anything and never measures when she cooks.
"Then the week after that, you said I couldn't rip any more of your clothes unless I planned on replacing them? So we very carefully practiced taking off the most… complicated pieces?"
Caroline blushes and nods again.
"And a few days after that, you brought your gym bag home because you said it no longer fit in the locker?"
Her eyes and her mouth are both wide open, but Caroline simply nods a final time.
"You brought all your bras here, Blondie. As well as a great deal of your other clothes, I might add." He gestures behind him. "That whole dresser is full of your stuff."
"Really?" she asks softly. Damon gives her a look that clearly says 'why would I lie?'.
She walks over her mound of bras on the floor and goes to the dresser. Sure enough, as soon as she pulls open the next two drawers, she sees her clothes. Her blouses, her jeans, her skirts.
"Why are they here?"
Damon groans. "I thought we just had that conversation."
"No," Caroline says softly, walking over to sit next to Damon on the bed. "I mean, why didn't you just give them back? Why did you keep them? And put them away?"
Damon sighs and rolls over to open the bedside drawer. "Because it was easier than trying to give you this," he says, pushing a small piece of a metal into her hand.
Caroline closes her hand around the object instinctually. "A key?" she pauses. "A house key? Your house key? You're asking me to move in with you?!" Her voice rises a few octaves and decibels with every question, and at this point she's hovering over Damon, hair fanning around them both.
"Duh," he answers, before pulling her down to kiss her deeply.
She smiles against his mouth. She isn't going to lie, she's thought of living with Damon more than once. She's pretty sure they would kill each other within a week, but she sleeps there four or five nights a week anyway, Matilda knows all her favorite foods, and Damon has been surprisingly considerate about the amount of time she spends in the bathroom. It certainly isn't the craziest thing they've done (that was getting together in the first place. Or back together. It was difficult to label).
"You do realize I'm going to need another dresser, right?" she says after they separated.
Damon groans again. "You know I much prefer you out of your clothes than in them."