I have no self-control and wanted to post this. Please don't judge meeee. Thank you to garglyswoof and chica-cherry-lola for beta work. Hope you enjoy!

It's been a long time since I came around
been a long time but I'm back in town
and this time I'm not leaving without you

~ "You and I" (Lady GaGa)

FIVE YEARS LATER...

KLAUS MIKAELSON: SECRET SOCIOPATH?

by Josh Rosza

...According to O'Connell, the actor was chronically unavailable, never returning texts unless he wanted something. She takes a deep shaking breath every few sentences while she talks about it, clearly devastated but luckily for me (and you) still willing to spill all the juicy tidbits about their breakup.

"He had so many walls and made me feel like I could be the one to open him up," O'Connell tells me tearfully. "It was just so manipulative. I should have known it was just a trap."

She takes a tissue and dabs at her eyes, her mascara streaking, and I ask her whether she regrets the relationship.

"Of course!" she says before calling him a few colorful names unsuitable for print (though she does add 'and feel free to put those in the article' at the end of the list). "He's a jerk, and I hope that every woman who truly supports women understands why I'm going public with how heartless he was."...

Klaus winced as he flipped through the article, acutely aware that his manager was watching him with sharp disapproving eyes. He didn't particularly care how Meredith felt, but she was at least competent at getting him jobs and discreetly cleaning up any messes he happened to be involved in. It was best to stay on her good side, and he knew it would be a challenge to get her in a better mood now that his texts to Camille ending their relationship had been leaked to the world.

"Care to explain?" Meredith asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Sociopath is a little extreme," he said dryly, closing the magazine and letting it drop to the desk with a smack. "I suppose that's what I get for seeing someone who believes she's the next Freud because she played a psychologist once."

Meredith snorted, her manicured nails drumming against the desktop. "No, it's what you get for shutting down personal questions in every interview and being notoriously demanding with your staff."

"I like to think I'm demanding but fair. They're paid better than 90% of the assistants in the industry and I've never fired anyone without a good reason."

To be fair, that had a lot to do with Caroline learning how much his first assistant made and being horrified by it, but Meredith didn't know that.

"Yes, we both know that, but the public doesn't," Meredith said patiently. "I'll call Greta to see if she can slip a comment about what a good boss you were into an interview for her pilot, but we do need to do a little more than that to repair this."

"And what exactly do you propose?"

"A new relationship. One that lasts more than a few months and can at least look meaningful."

He shook his head. "No. Absolutely not."

"Look, the fact that you point-blank told Camille that she was only good for sex—"

"That's not what I said. I told her that I had intended for our relationship to be casual and thought I had made that clear."

"To all the horrified middle-aged women in bad marriages it's the same thing," Meredith said bluntly, and Klaus barely stopped himself from groaning. "It needs to be someone more wholesome than your usual type, too. One who could believably either reform you or bring out your good side."

Though Klaus didn't plan on informing Meredith, his type did lean more towards 'wholesome', mostly because his type was one person in particular.

"I have no interest in being reformed."

"Part of being a celebrity is being a fantasy," Meredith said, sounding genuinely sympathetic but still firm. "You knew that your brand was 'saveable bad boy', and it's biting you in the ass. You have to roll with the punches if you want to survive this. I just want what's best for your career."

"And your bottom line," Klaus said, and Meredith's lips twitched.

"Yes, which depends heavily on my clients' careers, including yours."

Fair enough, he supposed.

"I have a few choices for you," Meredith continued. "All of their managers owe me favors. Just keep in mind that you'll be stuck with them for six months at least—"

"This can't be the only way to do this."

"Can you think of a better one?" she asked, pausing for a few seconds to see if he had anything. He didn't. "No? Okay, then. How about April Young?"

"Too boring."

"Valerie Tulle?"

"Too clingy."

"Jane-Anne Deveraux?"

"Too irritating."

"Liv—"

"How about Caroline?" Klaus interrupted.

"Caroline? Caroline who?"

"Caroline Forbes. We've known each other since primary school."

Meredith frowned for a few seconds, and Klaus was about to pull out his phone to show her a picture when she seemed to remember. "Blonde girl, right? Came with you to the first premiere of Our Town?"

"Yes."

Meredith pulled out a pen and a notepad, scribbling down her name. "What does she do?"

"She's a marketing director for Saltzman & Sommers."

"The department store?"

"Obviously."

Meredith shot him a chastising look. "How old is she?"

"Twenty-five."

"Height?"

"Does it matter?"

"She needs to photograph well with you."

"That won't be a problem."

Meredith pressed her lips together in a thin line. "Does she have any skeletons in the closet? Scandals?"

Klaus snorted. "None that I know of. She's, as you requested, wholesome."

"Okay," Meredith said after a second. "Ask her, and if she agrees we'll have to make an appointment to sign an NDA."

"There's no need—"

"You say that now, but you never know. Better to be safe than sorry."

"No. Caroline's not like that."

Meredith stared at him for a second, studying his expression, and he shifted uncomfortably. "There won't be any complications, will there?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You don't have feelings for her do you? I don't want things to get any messier than they already are."

"No," he lied. "Not at all."

XXX

Caroline frowned at her phone when it went off, picking it up and raising her eyebrows at the caller ID. She glanced around the office and signaled to Bonnie that she'd be right back before walking into one of the small conference rooms for some privacy.

"Shouldn't you be asleep? You're in Greece. Like, what time is it there, two in the morning?" she asked in lieu of a greeting, and she heard the familiar chuckle on the other side that still made her heart skip.

"Yes and yes," Klaus said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "I was attempting to wait until you'd left the office."

She sighed, sinking down in one of the leather chairs that sat around the conference table, resting her cheek in her palm. "Sadly, no. We have to have the entire ad campaign for the Memorial Day Sale out in a few days and Stefan has the flu, so he can't come in."

"Ah, Stefan. Always ruining everything," Klaus drawled, and she winced, knowing that Klaus only heard about her coworkers when she was mad at them and needed to complain.

"He's really not that bad," she said, pressing on despite Klaus's scoff of disbelief. "But how are you? I saw the article."

"As well as can be expected, I suppose," Klaus said loftily, and Caroline bit her lip, glancing out of the highrise window.

"You get back Tuesday, right? I can come over with fettuccini alfredo and convince you to break your actor ab diet and we can watch a movie?"

Her mouth was honestly already watering at the prospect of dinner from Salvatore's, the hole in the wall they went to whenever he was in town. Stefan had his faults, but she figured it was rude to hate him when his cousin's restaurant was so good.

"Sounds wonderful, sweetheart."

"Great! I'll even try not to point out that what you said when you broke up with her over text was really not great."

"You sound like Meredith," Klaus said grumpily. "And it wasn't a breakup. We were friends with benefits."

"That's supposed to make it better?" Caroline teased, and Klaus huffed, a soft creak indicating he'd sat down on the couch in his trailer.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay, what do you want to talk about then?"

"How are you?" Klaus asked after a beat of silence. "Not too busy to give me the latest office gossip as a distraction, I hope?"

"Since when have you been interested in my office drama?"

"I'm interested in your life," he said, and the note of earnestness honestly kind of made her want to strangle him.

"How about you go to bed, and I'll tell you all about it Tuesday night. Sixish?"

"It's a date," he said, and she hated that her heart skipped a beat. "Good luck at work, sweetheart."

"Thanks. Bye!"

XXX

"I don't think there's any universe where that text could be classified as 'fine'," Caroline said, raising her eyebrows, and Klaus grimaced, stabbing a deliciously parmesan-covered piece of chicken with his fork.

"It would have been fine if it hadn't leaked."

"Well, that's why you don't put stuff like that in writing. There is no way to break up with someone by text without sounding like an asshole."

Part of her felt bad for being so hard on him. After all, if texts from the messy breakup between her and Matt had ended up in Star Magazine for the entire world to see she'd probably be sacrificing her sacred celebrity diet to scarf down cheap pasta too.

"If it's any consolation, she sounded super vindictive and bitter in the article. Her big argument was women supporting women? Seriously?"

She leaned forward on Klaus's disgustingly comfortable leather couch to reach the coffee table and refilled his glass with whiskey, pouring herself a second glass of wine before biting into a piece of garlic bread, trying her best not to get crumbs all over the place.

She fell back against the cushions with a sigh and propped her feet up on the ottoman next to his, curling her bare toes against the leather. He'd offered her free use of his New York apartment when she'd moved to work at Saltzman & Sommers since he barely used it, but she'd felt too much like a freeloader and had found her own place. Admittedly, she really regretted it now. He had amazing furniture and a well-equipped kitchen that he never used. He also had a bathtub, something that her tiny studio in the Upper West Side most certainly did not.

"What was I supposed to do, exactly? Book a six hour flight to where she's filming to tell her that my sexual desire for her has subsided and then immediately fly back so that I could be on set by nine? Talk about a waste of an afternoon."

She grinned over her glass of wine as he attempted to defend himself. She didn't get to tease him for bad decisions often, and it was nice to see him floundering.

"You couldn't have waited a few weeks until you were both free?"

He rolled his eyes, glancing at her. She'd had the sense for the whole evening that he was nervous about something. At first she'd attributed it to the whole 'text history with his ex-bootycall being leaked to the entire planet' thing, but she was getting the growing feeling that it was something else. "Again, you sound like Meredith."

"Well, clearly Meredith's a smart lady," she said, taking a sip of wine, and Klaus sighed.

"Well, I'm not sure you'll still have that opinion by the end of the night."

"Why?"

Klaus was silent for a few seconds, twisting his bourbon glass in his hands until a few drops sloshed over the side, and then he downed it in one go, setting the glass down and looking at her.

"She wants to change the narrative."

Caroline nodded. "I mean, that makes sense. How's she planning on doing it?"

"Well," Klaus began, drawing out the word in a way that made an eerie feeling of foreboding swell in Caroline's gut. "She thinks I, or my image, rather, would benefit from a serious relationship."

Caroline's stomach twisted despite her best efforts. Though she'd accepted a long time ago that Klaus's crush on her was clearly gone while hers had irritatingly grown, it didn't make the idea of him in a serious relationship with someone else any easier. It was silly, she knew, but a small part of her still nursed the dream that they might get their happy ending.

"So you're going to rope in some poor groupie and use her to fix your image?" Caroline asked, trying not to sound too bitter and probably failing.

"Not exactly," Klaus said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "Ideally she'd be someone I could trust, someone I knew well, since we'd need her to keep the secret."

"Makes sense," she said slowly, the feeling of something being horribly wrong only growing stronger.

"And we're looking for someone on the more wholesome side of things without a history of scandals, preferably who isn't in the industry and therefore wouldn't have as much to risk," he began, glancing at her again.

In that single horrible moment she realized exactly where this was going. Her eyes narrowed and she shook her head. "No. Absolutely not."

"And," Klaus continued, a bit more loudly. "It would be preferable if it was someone who I had a history with so that the abrupt shift from Camille could be explained as me finally seeing my chance after all this time rather than me being a total git..."

"Considering what you're asking you are a 'total git'," Caroline said with aggressively emphasized air-quotes.

"Meeting in primary school would give it the perfect angle—" Klaus continued, his tone coaxing and hitting just the right note to tug on her heartstrings.

"Klaus," she groaned, looking up at the ceiling and trying her best not to cave. "No."

Her resistance now sounded weak even to herself, and she knew Klaus could tell, his voice low as he went in for the kill.

"I can't trust anyone else with this, sweetheart."

She huffed, draining her wine glass and glaring in the general direction of Klaus's sketchbook. She'd never been able to say no to him. If she was honest with herself, there was a part of her that didn't even want to. "I hate you," she muttered, setting down her empty glass. "A lot."

"Thank you, sweetheart," he said, clearly knowing that was code for yes. "You're brilliant."

"I know," she grumbled. "And you owe me."

"Anything you want," he said immediately, and her heart dropped just a bit at his words. She wanted it to be real so badly, but Klaus was clearly over her, undoubtedly he had been for years, and she was more than sure that this wasn't going to end well.

Whatever, they'd just keep it platonic, and she wanted to help him. How hard could it be to do a few photo ops and give him hugs in public? It's not like she was going to have to make out with him against the wall of a Starbucks. She was just helping a friend.

I hope you liked this! Do you have thoughts about the time jump? Characterization? How do you feel about their friendship? Any predictions? I can't wait to hear what you think! Feedback is how I get inspired to write more, and it makes me a better writer! Thank you for reading.