A/N: What do we have here? My first KC multi-chapter story? I think so.

Eight chapters, each one [aside from this, which we can call the prologue (and I guess chapter 7, as that will cover the combined weekend)] taking place over each day in a week.

We have Caroline, the overachiever carrying a dark secret; and we have Klaus, the artistic loner who has secrets of his own.

The premise is a little silly, I agree, but do not be fooled. There is corruption walking the halls of Mystic Falls High. [EDIT Aug. 7, 2018]: There is no non-con or dub-con in this story. I understand it is easy to jump to those sorts of conclusions, but rest assured there is nothing of that nature to be found here. However, there are still mature themes, so be wary. I will do my best to warn people ahead of time if I fear anything could be potentially triggering.

Prologue | Be My Little Baby

Mr. Tanner was not going to be happy that she was late, but he was going to have to accept her excuse and drop the subject. She was in no mood to explain the complicated, disgusting reason she was running down the empty halls towards the health room ten long minutes following the bell's loud clang. Breathing heavily through her nose, she came to a halt right outside the door and wiped her hands on her dress, straightening out the long skirt while also ridding her palms of sweat. She lifted her dry hands to her face and gathered the tears beneath her eyes. Hopefully her eye makeup wasn't smudged.

She could do this. Pretending everything was okay was easy for her. She did it all the time.

Through the crack in the door she heard Mr. Tanner finishing up his welcome. It was now or never—so, it was now. Never was not an option.

Caroline Forbes pushed open the door and stepped inside the packed classroom. All eyes turned towards her as the rusted hinges squeaked, but she refused to look at any of them. Her focus was on Mr. Tanner. She stepped towards where he stood by the ancient blackboard, a piece of chalk in his hand. He still wore his gym teacher getup. Maybe someone forgot to tell him they were starting health that day. He was also wearing a pretty deep frown.

"Miss Forbes," he said, "you're late."

Yes. Thank you. She knew that already.

Caroline tossed her blond locks over her shoulder and smiled as bright as she could, showing Mr. Tanner her pearly whites. Most teachers couldn't resist her guilty-as-charged smile, but Mr. Tanner was not most teachers. He was the hardened football coach with no time for any kid's bullshit.

"Please, Mr. Tanner," began Caroline, knowing her story was foolproof, "I would have made it on time, but I couldn't for the life of me get my locker to open. I needed Mr. Porter's help to get into it."

"Who's Mr. Porter?"

Even though she was lying through her perfect teeth, Mr. Tanner's question shocked Caroline. "The head janitor," she said accusatorially. "He's worked here for thirteen years. He's got two kids, one of whom goes to this school. He's a really nice man"—

Mr. Tanner cut her off by putting his hand up. "That's enough, Miss Forbes. I didn't ask for Mr. Porter's life story." He closed his hand and pointed at the blackboard with his thumb. Caroline looked at the drawing. An oval. An egg? "Since you missed my introduction, these next two months of health class will cover everything from the dangers of drinking and using drugs"—the stoners in the sea of students booed—"to the dangers of premarital sex, which oftentimes leads to unwanted pregnancy in teens. Our first week's assignment will be the Egg Project." Mr. Tanner's drawing suddenly made sense to Caroline. "Most of your classmates have already been partnered up, but luckily for you, there is one student still in need of a co-parent."

"I thought we agreed I would be doing this assignment on my own," came a tired, bored, wretched English accent from the back corner of the room. "You know, to represent the single parents in the nation."

Caroline had to suppress her groan. She looked over the sniggering faces of her classmates at the boy dressed in head-to-toe black, his head lifting from his crossed arms. His scruffy cheeks and dark circles told the story of a kid who didn't care much about what other people thought of him, and his watery blue eyes told Caroline he had literally just been asleep.

Literally.

She could not work with him. No, no, no, no.

No.

Turning back to Mr. Tanner, Caroline put on her sweetest smile again. "Um, Mr. Tanner. I can't work with him."

"Hm?" he asked, not looking up from the booklet he was holding about the egg experiment.

"I can't work with him," Caroline repeated, slightly more volume this time. Mr. Tanner didn't lift his head, but he stared unamused at Caroline through his thick eyelashes, waiting for more information. "Klaus," Caroline finally sighed. The whole room was staring at her, enraptured by her confession, but she didn't pay any attention. "I can't work with him."

Closing the booklet, Mr. Tanner tilted his head. Very unamused. "And why can't you work with him?"

"Why?" she practically laughed. Her cheeks reddened as she thought through the laundry list of reasons. "He is notorious for failing practically all of his classes; he never does any work, and you can bet damn well that includes group assignments; his attendance record is horrendous. . .Mr. Tanner, I could go on, and on, and on."

Though he let her go off on her small tangent, Mr. Tanner still wore that unchanging look of weariness. It was almost as if he didn't want to be there at all. "Don't you think that's a bit harsh, Miss Forbes?"

"Yeah!" piped the devil himself. Caroline shot him a dirty look. He was fully smirking at her—his trademark. "Don't you think that's a bit harsh?"

"It's the truth," she told him. "Deal with it."

"I'm sorry, Miss Forbes," said Mr. Tanner, and Caroline's hopes of either working by herself or magically finding a new partner for this stupid assignment were dashed, "my decision is final. Go take a seat next to Mr. Mikaelson. I'll be handing out the booklet for the Egg Project shortly."

Dejected and too exhausted from her morning to argue any longer, Caroline sagged her shoulders and walked to the empty seat next to Mr. Mikaelson.

Would he change his mind if she spilled the secret? Would that grant her any partner of her choosing?

Probably not. He was Mr. Tanner, and the secret she held would more likely get her detention than a gold star. It would get her other things too, worse things, but she refused to think about the repercussions right now. Not with a whole day to get through.

Klaus Mikaelson winked at Caroline as she sat down. She responded in the only way she knew how—by rolling her eyes at him, which only seemed to stretch his smirk all the way to his ear.

"Now, I have here a dozen eggs," Mr. Tanner said, and Caroline quickly put Klaus out of her mind. Their teacher held up a pack of eggs. "Each pair will get one egg. When I have handed you the egg, which becomes your child from the second it touches your desk, you will have the opportunity to name it and decorate it how you choose." He stared daggers at the stoner kids. "If anybody decides they are brave enough to put anything other than eyes, a nose, a mouth and some hair on their egg, they will instantly get a failing grade." The stoners laughed, but everybody knew they wouldn't dare break Mr. Tanner's rules. "After decorating, you will need to pierce a hole in the egg and drain its insides"—

—"Ew! Why would we do that?" piped Hayley Marshall, the most poisonous girl Caroline had ever met. Caroline stared daggers at the back of her head. Her partner, Elena Gilbert, nodded enthusiastically.

"Please don't interrupt," Mr. Tanner said. "I was just about to explain. There are two reasons you must get rid of the egg white and the yoke. One: the egg would rot, and I'm sure none of you want a rotten egg stinking up your bedrooms. Two: it makes the egg more susceptible to cracks if it doesn't have anything inside it."

Elena raised her hand, but spoke before being called on. "So you're setting us up to fail? That doesn't seem very fair."

It was at this point Mr. Tanner made it clear just how much he hated teaching. Coaching was the dream. He loved it. Standing in front of twenty-four juniors who were all pretty much sexually active already and being forced to give them this assignment was his nightmare.

Sliding his hands over his tired, old face, Mr. Tanner shook his head. "God forbid any of you ever has a child, but if that day arrives I can assure you that you will find out just how much more breakable an actual baby is than this egg."

The class went silent. Mr. Tanner was known for his outbursts, but such harsh words were, Caroline felt, uncalled for. But she had tried and lost with Tanner once already, and she was not about to fail again, so she remained silent with the rest of her classmates.

After a few moments, Mr. Tanner got back to business. He picked up a handful of booklets and the eggs and stepped out from behind his desk.

"You'll have until next Monday with the eggs," he announced, handing out a booklet and egg to each group. "You will have to meet with your partner for at least—at least," he emphasised, eyeing Caroline, "an hour every day. You will be required to write down what you do with your egg. The egg must alternate houses, meaning your partner will have it for one night, and you will have it the next. Somebody must be watching the egg at all times and there has to be a set bedtime. On Monday, everybody is required to fill out a sheet explaining how the week went. Does everyone understand?" He had reached Caroline and Klaus. He carefully plopped the egg into Caroline's hand and tossed Klaus the booklet.

"Yes," the class, minus Klaus, affirmed in unison.

Mr. Tanner went back to the front of the room. "Great. Art supplies are up here. Blow out the yoke and whites in the sink by Mr. Mikaelson. Get to work, everyone."

Klaus was the first to scrape his chair back. "Where do you think you're going?" Caroline asked, tugging on his t-shirt to stop him from moving.

He twisted, his eyes lingering on where her hand was clamped on his shirt. "The art stuff. I want our baby to have a face, don't you? You can come up with names while I'm up there, sweetheart."

Caroline released the fabric of his shirt in disgust. She pointed a finger at him. "You dare call me that again and I will throttle you. Do you hear me? Throttle."

"Loud and clear, love!" he called as he walked towards the table covered in cheap paints and brushes.

"That one is worse," Caroline muttered under her breath.

Picking up the egg, she twisted it around. There were sprinklings of freckles all over the shell. For an egg, it was kind of pretty. Unfortunately, she had no artistic talent, and she had absolutely zero faith in the boy examining the bottles of paint up front with an unsettling amount of scrutiny.

Why did she have to pick today to be late to class? And why couldn't someone else have been free? This was setting up to be the longest week of her life. First Tyler—

—No, no. She wasn't going to think about him. If she started crying in class, people would start asking why she was crying in class, and that was a question to which she was not willing to supply an answer.

Push Tyler out, she warned herself. Let Klaus in. Yeah, just. . .get mad about Klaus.

Listen, she didn't like not liking people. Her nature was to find something good in everything. Obviously, there were exceptions. The Nazis, for example. No good there; and there was no point in trying to find any. Death, as well. She stayed away from pointing out positives when someone passed away. But most people and things deserved chances. They deserved to not be defined by single choices and acts made or performed in their lives.

And it wasn't like Klaus Mikaelson had done one horrific thing to make her dislike him. Or even multiple horrific things. Sure, he was a bit weird. Sure, he kept mostly to himself. None of that was cause for concern. It was simply his aura—the energy he poured into the world. Caroline would walk by him in the halls and a shiver would run down her spine. She would randomly bump into him in town and freeze in her tracks until he disappeared from view, that telltale smirk that really didn't tell her anything at all pinning up the right side of his face.

She wasn't alone in her opposition to Klaus, which made her feel a little better. Lots of her classmates and teachers, lots of parents didn't much care for him. Caroline bet the majority of them would not be able to put a finger on why.

Maybe that smirk was all it boiled down to.

That smirk which he was still donning as he returned to his desk with an armful of paints.

"Do you really need that many colours? The egg is tiny." She held up their egg-baby, which fit neatly in the crook of her palm.

"Trust me," he said flippantly—everything with him was flippant. "I know what I'm doing."

"If you say so."

"Have you come up with a name?" he asked, squeezing dollops of paint onto a round palette.

Caroline stared at the egg. "Ginger," she settled. Klaus raised an eyebrow. "The freckles," she explained.

"Gotcha. Hand her over." Holding out his hand, Klaus wiggled his fingers in anticipation. Begrudgingly, hoping he would refrain from smashing Ginger right then and there, Caroline delicately dropped the egg into his hand. The tips of her fingers brushed the base of his, and she snatched her hand away promptly, a sharp jolt running through her. "Thanks, love."

"Don't call me that," she said. She had the strangest feeling she was going to be saying that a lot over the next seven days.

Klaus just widened his stupid half-smile and picked up a paintbrush. Ignoring him as best as she could, Caroline started working on their booklet. She filled out the egg's name, the time they received her, the planned bedtime, and what she and Klaus would use as the egg's carrier/bed. When that was finished, she looked over the rubric. The project was worth a whopping fifty points.

Damn this southern Virginian town and its abstinence-only approach to sex education.

Caroline enjoyed being from a small town. Her mother was the sheriff, a couple of her friends were descendants of the town's founders, and she was the most recent bearer of the Miss Mystic Falls crown. Small town life was fun, until it came to stuff like this that really showed off the ignorance of its officials.

"Done," Klaus announced fifteen minutes later.

Putting the math assignment she had been working on while she waited away, Caroline looked curiously over at the egg drying on a paper towel on Klaus's desk. She was taken aback. "Wow," she said. "That's. . .really good."

In twenty minutes, Klaus had managed to make their egg look like a piece that belonged in a museum. The swirling reds and oranges of the finely painted strands of hair didn't clash with the brown shell, the freckles had been finely exaggerated, the face looked like an actual face. And he had done it all with the shitty brushes and cheap paints.

Caroline looked between the egg and Klaus, her eyes then wandering to the frayed notebook hanging over the edge of his desk. There was no doubt in her mind it was filled with glorious drawings.

What else was this guy hiding?

"I've come up with a schedule," she said after a prolonged silence. She gave the booklet to Klaus. "I'll have her today. You need to sign here," Caroline pointed at the line requiring his signature, "and then we need to decide where we'll meet this afternoon."

Klaus finished scribbling his name, and for a moment Caroline was confused before she remembered his full name was Niklaus. "Mystic Grill," he said. "I've been craving one of their burgers all day."

The Mystic Grill housed just about every high school student every single day after the final bell rang. Caroline had never seen Klaus there. She was too tired to come up with anywhere else, though, and there were still three classes she had to get through before school let out, plus a gruelling hour of cheer practice, so she agreed to his choice.

His smirk turned triumphant.

Ginger's paint job dried with five minutes of health class to spare. Caroline carried her to the sink and pierced two holes in the egg's shell, stirring up the yoke. Placing a tiny plastic straw inside, she blew out the contents.

"4:30 at the Grill, then?" she said, sitting back down with Ginger. "I have cheer practice until 4:00."

Klaus had his notebook open, but Caroline couldn't see what he was doing. He covered the pages with his arm. "4:30 it is," he said without breaking his concentration.

The bell rang several seconds later. Caroline gathered her things, mindful of just how light the egg-baby now felt, and departed the classroom, Klaus on her heels.

She was about to tell him to stop breathing down her dress—all of the hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up—when she spotted Tyler down the hall heading in their direction. Her heart plummeted, rattling around in her stomach. Eyes wide and tongue heavy, she twirled and hid behind Klaus.

"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" he asked, and even though she couldn't see him, she could hear that fucking smirk.

"Just keep moving," she hissed.

Klaus started whistling as they moved down the hall. She rolled her eyes, but was not brave enough to come out of hiding until safety was guaranteed.

"Thanks," she muttered, her body flaming with embarrassment and guilt and anger directed both at herself and at the dark-haired asshole that was Tyler Lockwood.

There was another person she disliked. Another person with no redeeming qualities. But it was worse than Klaus because she had spent the last two years thinking he walked among the clouds like a god.

It was only this morning that she found out he actually swam with Hades in the Styx.

"No problem," Klaus said. He seemed to take no notice of her protective body language—not that she wanted him to. "Take care of Ginger now, love. She's very delicate." Klaus turned and started walking back the way they came.

"Stop calling me love," Caroline demanded, though she was more focused on the fact that it seemed Klaus had allowed her to steer him in the opposite direction of his next class without protesting.

Weird, she thought.

Brushing it off—Klaus was always doing weird things—Caroline strode through the swarm of teenagers buzzing around the hallway, her mind doing everything it could to keep Tyler's malicious face from that morning out of her head.