AN: And it continues. More Carenzo BroTP antics – or, as it's been coined on Tumblr, more Frienzoline antics. Please enjoy:

Making a Mark

The first time she enters Enzo apartment is a revelation, and not the good kind of revelation, either.

"Wow," she says, looking around. "It's…" – good manners dictate she should say nice or it's a big space, anything that's somewhat polite. But this is Enzo, and good manners always seem to fly out the window around him – "This place is depressing. Is that a towel hanging in your window? Really."

"Please, Caroline, tell me how you really feel. Holding nothing back," Enzo drawls in reply, reaching into his fridge and pulling out a blood bag, tossing it to her. B+, her favorite. "I believe we're here to discuss The Great Gatsby, not my furniture preferences."

"What furniture?" she replies, motioning at what she is pretty sure is supposed to be the den. At least in any normal apartment it would be. "You have a Lay-z-boy that smells kind of like cat and a folding lawn chair. What kind of furniture is that?"

Enzo frowns, looking at the chairs in question, and gives a careless shrug, as though to say what can you do?

"No!" Caroline declares emphatically. "No. There is no what can you do about this. This is easily fixed. This requires an Amex and a shopping cart-"

"I don't have an Amex. I've been dead and locked up for decades, Gorgeous. Credit cards weren't even a thing when I was last free. Now, The Great Gatsby?"

He walks over to sprawl in the lay-z-boy, and Caroline just stares him down until he looks up and sees her there, arms crossed and expression completely unimpressed. For a moment, confusion covers his face until realization dawns when she gives a pointed glare to the folding chair and he hops to his feet.

"Would you like a seat?" he asks in a tone that is so carefully polite it comes across as rude and Caroline scoffs but gracefully takes the seat.

"Thank-you," she replies in the same tone before tearing into the blood bag. Enzo rolls his eyes in response and sits in the folding chair.

It promptly snaps beneath his weight, sending him sprawling in a tangle of limbs and chair and curses falling from his lips. Caroline feels a brief moment of surprise, because she hadn't expected that, but then the edges of her lips curl up, and soon she's trying, and failing, to muffle her giggles with her hand.

"Laugh it up, Blondie," Enzo mutters, kicking at the chair until it disentangles from his legs. He gets to his feet and stares down at the wreck. "Well, hell. What do I do now? That was my spare chair!"

Caroline sighs and finishes her blood bag and gets to her feet. She grabs her purse from the counter, where it sits next to her copy of The Great Gatsby and swings in over her shoulder.

"Come on, then. If I'm going to have to spend any length of time here studying with you, then all of this" – she motions around his too-bare apartment – "has to change. You need furniture. And some color. Maybe a nice print or two for your walls" – she opens a cupboard and looks at his glasses, it's a mixture of cheap plastic and mismatched glass and it makes her mutter – "and matching china. Definitely matching china."

"You know, no one is making you spend time here," Enzo points out, frowning as she opens the door and waves for him to pass through. "I'm really only going to those classes of yours because you obtained a promise under duress and wouldn't let me back down. If you're going to be so picky, I'm certain I can find better uses for my time."

"No, you won't. Because you can whine all you want, but you know my textbooks better than I do, you nerd, and you like those courses. You were totally sucking up to Prof Wincowski the other day, and you aren't even actually registered in the class. You're in too deep to back out now."

"I can always back out," Enzo grumbles as he grabs his keys and wallet and stomps past her. "Or I can just back out on you. Let's see you make it through Fitzgerald without me."

It would have been a challenge Caroline would have accepted from anyone else, but from Enzo it's just grumpy mutters that she easily ignores. He would no more abandon her to the wilds of The Great Gatsby than he would fall on a stake to save Stefan Salvatore, and that had about as much a chance of happening as a snowball did surviving in hell.

"I guess we'll have to use my Amex," Caroline says instead as she walks next to him down the hall. "That means we'll have a budget – I have a limit – but I'm a champion budget shopper. You should have seen how low the final price was when I was furnishing the dorm room. It's like a fine art."

"Shopping a fine art. I'm sure," Enzo deadpans, and Caroline has to bit back a chuckle, because she's pretty sure this is the first time she's ever managed to truly irritate him. She thinks it's nice for a chance, to be the one doing the annoying, rather than being annoyed.

"You mock, but it takes talent, Enzo-"

"A talent we won't need," he says with a sigh, and she is pretty sure she can pinpoint the exact minute he gives into her whims and realizes there is no getting out of her grasp now. Not in this matter. It's in the way his shoulders fall ever so slightly, a sure sign of defeat, and the way he closes his eyes for a brief second, as though stealing himself for the truth – that this is his reality, and it means she'll be dragging him to IKEA. "Damon knew a fellow that knows a thing or two about technology. After Wes' death, he had no living relatives. Except for me. According to the will he made shortly before his death, at least."

Caroline raises a brow, and Enzo shrugs carelessly and completely unrepentant.

"He owed me," is all he says, and Caroline finds that she doesn't really have an argument for that.

NEW-ROMANTICS

IKEA is busy and Caroline feels her adrenaline rise as she found a parking spot and turned off the car. As her excitement rises, Enzo begins to all but wilt in the seat next to her.

"Not a shopper?" she asks him with a raised brow.

"Not a fan of that unholy light in your eyes," he replies, eying her somewhat uneasily. "You seem rather… enthusiastic, Gorgeous. I think it may frighten me a little."

"Don't worry," she pats his arm with mock sympathy. "It will only hurt a little. Now… what color scheme do you want?"

"Hell," he mutters banging his head against the headrest before exiting the car to follow her, because Caroline isn't waiting around for slow pokes, and she's already speed walking towards the entrance. He has to jog to catch up to her, and even then she's nearly to the entrance of the store. "Can't we do this sort of thing online? I'm certain I've heard of online shopping."

"Please. Online is nice and all, but here you can actually test stuff out. You can sit in the chairs and on the couches. You can actually feel textures. No online store can fully replace good old fashioned sensory shopping. Now stop being such a baby."

This time, she grabs his hand and pulls him behind her through the automatic doors. They draw a few stares, the perky little blonde manhandling the pouting man as though he's a piece of furniture sitting in her way. Enzo lets her, but even if he hadn't, he thinks she might have out-muscled him anyway, so powerful is her single-minded determination to furnish his home.

As far as he is concerned, IKEA is hell. There are too many people, and while such a thing might normally be considered prime hunting grounds, these people all move with the same determined stride as Caroline. All that stress, he thinks, can't leave the blood tasting good. Then his attention is drawn away from blood as Caroline shoves him onto a white sofa that is more about style than comfort and he scowls up at her.

"No," he declares, getting to his feet immediately. "Absolutely not."

"It's fashionable!" she argues.

"And I don't care," he shoots back. "First off, it's bloody uncomfortable. And second? It's white. I don't want white. White requires cleaning. And that is far too… girly."

"Girly?" – her voice is incredulous and she rolls her eyes – "Whatever. And we both know how you feel about cleaning. I still can't believe you kept that stinking chair. Literally stinking."

"It was comfortable," Enzo replies, taking a seat in a large, overstuffed recliner. This, he thinks as he reclines, is more like it. It's comfortable, made out of dark brown, almost black, leather, and molds perfectly to him. "Now this is what I'm talking about."

"That?" Caroline wrinkles her nose. "It's a beast… but whatever. That couch over there matches the color…"

Enzo glances in the direction she points and shakes his head.

"Nope!" he replies cheerfully, far more happy now that he sees opportunity to annoy her with this trip. "Not at all what I'm looking for… over there! The black one. Now that is a couch."

And then he takes off, grabbing Caroline's hand to drag her behind him. He feels her stumble and quickly catches her and straightens her, because while annoying her is amusing he would never want to actually hurt her. Once he's sure she's steady, he begins to pull her behind him once more until they reach the couch he had been looking at. He plops down gracelessly and pulls her down next to him.

"Don't sit there looking so prim and disapproving, Gorgeous. Give a little wiggle" – as though to demonstrate what he wants her to do, he gives his own little wiggle, feeling the couch mold to him as he does so – "come on, Caroline. You were the one that brought me here. Get into the spirit a bit."

Caroline just stares at him, and he looks back at her, forcing his expression into a mock of her look of displeasure. Finally, a reluctant smile curves her lips and she shakes her head before giving a little wiggle.

"There we go!" he says cheerfully. "Comfortable, isn't it?"

"It doesn't match that monstrosity of a chair you want. Like, at all. Brown and black clash horribly."

"Because I care so very much about clashing colors. It's of grave importance to me."

"Oh, shut up. I get to pick out a love seat. And it will match the couch."

"Whatever you say."

Caroline takes far longer than he does to pick out furniture. She has to dash between pieces she likes and the couch several times, each time shaking her head when the colors don't match just perfectly. Enzo finally returns to the overstuffed chair he picked earlier, waiting patiently for her to find something that meets her high standards. When it becomes clear he will be there for a while, he even gets up to look at the lamps.

Caroline finally finds a loveseat that matches the couch, and that she even thinks will meet his strict standards and gives one of those wiggles before clapping her hands happily, reclining it back.

"What do you think about this one? It has that man cave vibe, so you can't argue that I'm making it all too girly anymore. And it's comfy" – there's no reply, and Caroline sighs and takes the loveseat out of reclining position – "The silent treatment? Really Enzo?"

She looks around, but he's nowhere to be seen. He had been there just seconds ago, sitting in that ridiculous chair. She gets to her feet and spins around with a frown. God, shopping with him is like trying to herd a headstrong, temperamental kitten!

"Enzo?" she says, raising her voice slightly and hoping he's listening. "Where did you get to?"

"Back here, Gorgeous!" he replies before she can really work up her anger. His voice comes from between two shelves, and she wanders down, pillows lining the aisles on either side. He's standing in the middle, holding a ridiculously overstuffed pink pillow and grinning at her. "I found a pillow just for you to use whenever you come over."

She wants to be irritated, because isn't he the one that wanted to make this quick? And now here he is, picking up frivolous things… but the pillow is pink and fluffy and written on it in white cursive are the words Hello, Gorgeous. She feels her lips curve in a smile as she reaches out to take the pillow. It fills her arms, and she can't help but chuckle, because it will completely clash with all of the other "man cave" purchases they've made and will stick out like a sore thumb, but doesn't that kind of fit them perfectly?

"I've found a love seat that will work," she tells him, hugging the pillow. "Come and take a look at it and tell me what you think."

He grins at her, and she grins back over the top of the silly pink pillow.

The next time she visits his place, all of the purchases have been delivered, and the placement gets a nod of approval, because it finally looks like someone is living there. The couch and the loveseat and the overstuffed chair that doesn't quite fit in, but that he insisted on. It's angled perfectly to face the wide screen TV that's been mounted on the wall. She had nothing to do with it, can all but see Damon's fingerprints all over that purchase, and the new stock in the bar.

And there, sitting neatly on the couch and clashing with all the black leathers and wood finishes is the pillow, welcoming her brightly – hello Gorgeous – and marking her place in his life for all to see.

AN: Thank-you to all who have read/reviewed, and I hope you'll stay tuned for more Frienzoline in the future!