Over the next few weeks, Klaus and Caroline began taking stock of everything in the house that needed fixing. First and foremost was the matter of the plumbing. Every shower in the house fluctuated between too hot and too cold until it finally got stuck on cold, except, strangely enough, between ten to ten-thirty in the morning when it was warm.
"You shower between ten and ten-thirty," Klaus said to Caroline when they finally realized this. "You should have the warm water."
"And I think we should take turns," Caroline said. "One day you have the hot water and the next day, I do!"
They stood in silence for a moment, before Klaus finally said, "Would it be too much for me to suggest that we could resolve this easily by showering at the same time?"
Caroline nodded. "We could, but darn it," She heaved an exaggerated sigh. "That might ruin our relationship," she said. "Once I see you naked, it could make me just overcome with desire and then the fate of our hotel would be hung in the balance. So let's not mix business with pleasure yet, shall we?"
"Are you mocking me?" Klaus asked. "Because I will have you know that I have turned quite a few heads in my time and if you did see me naked, then you would be overwhelmed. There is no question."
"Right," Caroline nodded. "So you agree that for the sake of business, we should just keep our clothes on for the time being?"
Klaus nodded. "I will if you will."
"Try and stop me," Caroline said.
"Are you challenging me?" He asked. "Because if you want me to, I really will try."
"That's it," Caroline said. "It doesn't matter to me that I don't know how to fix a shower. This is an emergency, so I'll try anyway!"
"I wouldn't!" Klaus called after her. "You'll probably just make things worse."
"No, I won't!" Caroline called after him. But about twenty minutes later, he heard a shriek and a rush of water. Grinning, he went into the bathroom, and found Caroline ankle deep in water, her white dress completely soaked and sticking to her body. He grinned, boldly looking her over. "See?" He said. "I told you something would go wrong. But hey, at least you tried, right?"
Caroline glared. "Oh, shut up and go call a plumber!" She stepped forward. then slipped and fell face first into the water, which was getting deeper by the second, thanks to a stream of water falling from an open pipe sticking out of the wall. "I am not happy!"
Klaus just looked at her and laughed, and when he held out his hand to help her up, she took it and pulled him into the water beside her. "There," she said, smiling with satisfaction. "Now, you're as wet as I am!"
Klaus stared at her with narrowed eyes for a moment, then splashed her.
"What did you do that for?" She asked, wiping water out of her eyes.
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe I felt like it!"
"Well, fine!" Caroline replied. And she splashed him. This when back and forth for awhile before Caroline finally put a stop to it. "All right!" She yelled. "Truce! Truce! For the love of god, look at us! We're sitting in a flooded bathroom, soaked to the skin and splashing each other!"
"So?" Klaus asked, flicking water at her again. "What's the problem?"
"Well, we need to fix this problem," Caroline said. "Instead of sitting here, acting stupid and making it worse. Now, since you don't seem inclined to call the plumber, I think I'll have to go and do it."
"Oh, that's not necessary," Klaus said. "I'm quite handy. I could take care of all this myself and we wouldn't have to call anyone."
"You're not just saying that to try and impress me, are you?" Caroline asked. "You really know how to fix plumbing and stuff?"
"Come on," Klaus said. "What good would lying to you do? How would that help us out of our current predicament?"
Caroline shrugged. "I don't know. But you can't blame me for asking."
"Well, I do know how to fix plumbing and stuff," Klaus said. "For real."
"How?" Caroline asked. "Why? You seem too...upper class to bother to know how to fix things."
"Well," Klaus shrugged. "A man lives for a thousand years, he's gotta have a hobby, doesn't he?"
Caroline nodded. "Yeah, I guess. So what do we do first?"
"Well, we should get the water out, shouldn't we? And then I have to go and buy some pipe and..." Klaus began wading around the bathroom, muttering and making mental lists about what he needed to do.
"I'll go get something to plug up that pipe!" Caroline said and left the bathroom. As she headed out and Klaus got a good glimpse of her underwear under her wet dress, he called after her, "You might want to put on some dry clothes, too!"
"Right!" Caroline called. "I might want to do that!"
Klaus looked at the water that surrounded him, thankful he'd decided to dress casually today. Any water on one of his suits and they would have been ruined for good. He got up out of the water and left the bathroom to find a bucket, dripping water all over the carpet. Eventually, he found a bucket, filled it, and blindly dumped it out the window, elicting screams from people walking on the sidewalk below. Chuckling to himself, he said, "I just had to do that once." He filled the bucket more times, but emptied them out onto the grass in the yard instead. When he came back after dumping the fifth bucketful, he found Caroline tucking a rag into the broken pipe. "There we go," she said. "Now, no more extra water." She looked around. "You seem to have made a lot of progress in here, but I have to say that dumping water on people isn't going to make them like you."
"I only did it once," Klaus said. "It's not like a did it a lot of times. Come on, love. Is it my fault if they can't handle one harmless little prank?"
"Yeah, well it better only be this once," Caroline said. "We don't want people with pitchforks showing up at the door to throw us out. That woud definitely not be good for business."
Klaus smirked.
"What?" Caroline asked.
"Well, it's just that it's been years since angry mobs showed up with pitchforks anywhere," he said. "I highly doubt we'd have to worry about that now," he said.
"Even so," Caroline said. "Don't do anything else to aggrevate the neighbors!"
"Fine," Klaus said. "I won't. Would you go down and turn the water off?" He asked her. "I won't be able to fix anything until that's done."
"All right," Caroline said. She went and turned off the water. "By the way," she said, "The sink in the kitchen is screwed up too."
"Great," Klaus said. "I'll add that to the list."
"Actually," Caroline said hesitantly, "I was wondering if maybe I could fix the kitchen sink? Or at least help you do it? That way I won't feel entirely useless while you're doing all the work."
Klaus turned. "Well, I don't see why we can't start there, then," he said. "Do you know where the tools are kept?"
"I think in the kitchen," Caroline said. "On the bottom shelf of the pantry closet. Do you remember where the kitchen is?"
"I might," Klaus said. "But it wouldn't hurt for you to show me again."
She led him to the kitchen and opened the pantry closet door, bending over to grab the tool chest from the floor. Dust kicked up and made both Klaus and Caroline sneeze.
"Jack never used this," Caroline explained. "Someone got it for him for Christmas one year, for a reason I'll never know, and he put it away in here, saying that if God had intended for him to fix things, then there wouldn't be repairmen or plumbers or other people like that."
Klaus grinned. "Well, Jack clearly never lived in a time where people had no choice but to do everything themselves, did he?"
Caroline shook her head. "Was it hard?" She asked. "Living way back when?"
Klaus nodded. "It was hard, but it was also just...life, you know? We couldn't do anything about it. I was very pleased when supermarkets appeared and I no longer had to kill my own food and save it for the winter."
"By the time supermarkets appeared, it had been years since you'd needed food for actual nourishment," Caroline reminded him."
Klaus shrugged. "So? That doesn't mean I can't enjoy food every once in awhile, and it's a lot easier to get when you don't have to kill it yourself."
"Yeah," Caroline nodded. "That's a good point." She handed him the toolbox. "There you go," she said. They walked over and put it next to the sink and Klaus got down on his knees to open the doors that exposed the plumbing. "Now come here," he said to Caroline. "And lay down so that you're looking up at the pipes."
Caroline nodded. "All right," she said. She got down on her knees next to him and then turned over so that she was lying on her back with her head under the sink. "Now what?" She asked.
Klaus handed her a wrench. "Take this," he said. "And attach it to the..." He kept talking to her, but focusing on the job at hand was very difficult. His eyes kept wandering down to her stomach, where her shirt had hiked up, exposing a patch of it. He wanted to touch it, kiss it, see how soft her skin was, just for a little bit.
"Did I turn it over enough?" Caroline asked.
"No," he said, snapping out of his reverie. "A little more, a little more..." he leaned over her body, his fingers touching the warm skin of her collarbone. "There!" She yelled. "I think I got it!"
"Well, let's see," Klaus said. "Turn the water back on and we'll see." Caroline turned the water on and the sink seemed to work just fine.
"Excellent work," he said. "Now we can move on to bigger problems."
Caroline let out her breath. "All right," she said. "You tackle the shower and I'll do some dusting."
He nodded and as he made his way out of the kitchen, she began humming "Whistle While You Work" from Snow White. She grabbed a dust cloth and began dusting off the counters, occasionally doing a little pirouette. He decided to forgo fixing the shower for a few minutes just to watch her. At one point, she gave him a wink and he took her hand and twirled her around as she hit the dust cloth against the trashcan. the dusting was done, Klaus strode off to fix the shower and Caroline grabbed a broom and danced with it instead. "And as you sweep the room, imagine that the broom, is someone that you love and soon you'll find you're dancing to a tune..." She stopped and giggled. She was having way too much fun.
She put the broom down and went back to the bathroom to see how Klaus was coming along. "Hey," she said, opening the door. "I've done all I can in the kitchen for now. How are things going in he-" She stopped midsentence when he turned. He wasn't wearing a shirt. "Oh, my god," she said. "You should warn people when you're dressed like that."
Klaus grinned. "Why?" He asked. "Then I'd miss seeing that priceless look on your face." He paused, taking in her shocked expression. "So, you said you finished in the kitchen?"
Caroline looked up at him. "Excuse me," she said. "Did you say something?"
"I asked if you'd finished in the kitchen," Klaus repeated.
"Yep," Caroline nodded, trying to appear more nonchalant. "That's what I came to tell you. That I've finished in the kitchen. I think you'll be impressed."
"I think I will be," he said to her. "I know you are."
"If I say that I am, will you put your shirt back on?" Caroline asked. "I think we've done enough work for today, anyway. We can keep going tomorrow."
"Hmmm..." Klaus thought a moment. "No."
"Why not?!" Caroline asked.
"Because you don't really want me to," he said, walking toward her and backing her up against the wall. "Do you?"
She looked up at him for a moment and said, "Fine, if that's the game you want to play, I can play too!" She unbuttoned her shirt, revealing a red bra, and threw it on the floor. "And yes, the panties do match," she said, and snuck under his arm, then picked up her shirt and strode away.
Klaus laughed. "Well played, Caroline," he said after she'd gone. "Well played."
