AN: Continuation of my Carenzo mood. This could be considered a prequel to the Carenzo relationship in Do you like the person you've become. It's based off of Tumblr posts claiming Enzo is just a poor-man's Klaus… well, what if he was being used as a replacement? Only such things rarely ever remain so simple.
The Replacements
"Now, what's a pretty thing like you doing all alone in a place like this?"
Caroline looked up from her drink into Enzo's dark eyes. She wasn't in the mood for this; not now, not so soon after her explosion with Tyler. She was angry and tired and just wanted to get drunk, not play nice with the psycho best friend of Damon Salvatore.
"Not talking to you," Caroline replied, tossing back her shot of patron. "So, if you don't mind?"
"Harsh, love," Enzo drawled, sliding onto the stool next to her and motioning for the bartender to bring him a drink. Caroline tensed at the endearment, Enzo's accent reminding her far too much of the charming asshole that had gotten her into this mess with Tyler in the first place.
And God, why couldn't she forget about freaking Klaus for ten minutes and get on with her life?
"Don't call me love," she snarled, holding up her shot glass to the bartender who was pouring Enzo's scotch.
"Touchy, are we, Sweet?"
Caroline muttered a curse at the new nickname.
"Don't you have college co-eds to feed on or something, Enzo?" she demanded, tossing back the new shot and motioning for another before the bartender could walk away.
"Now, that's interesting. You know who I am, even though I don't recall introducing myself. My reputation must precede me… but then again, so does yours, Caroline Forbes." Enzo tapped his glass to Caroline's. She shot him a dirty look before tipping her head back. When the bartender came to refill it, Caroline's hand shot out, grasping his wrist and she looked into his eyes. "Just leave me the bottle."
The bartender's eyes went of focus and he gave a small nod, leaving the bottle of patron and wandering off to deal with more customers.
"Compelling the locals for alcohol?" Enzo asked with amusement, leaning against the bar and smirking at her. "Now, whose memory are we trying to drink away, Sweet?"
"We are trying to drink away no one's memory. I am trying to drink away a series of bad decisions and the memories that come with them." Caroline held up her shot glass in a mockery of a salute and tossed it back. "Bottom's up."
"Come now, certainly these decisions weren't that horrible-"
"I had sex with the guy that murdered my ex's mother. And my best friend's aunt. And my best friend, although she managed to come back, so no harm done, right?"
"And I stand corrected. That does call for patron. Was it at least good sex?"
Caroline wanted to roll her eyes and turn her back to him, or at the very least tell him to go to hell, but she had drunk the better part of a bottle of patron, and liquor had always done a number on her verbal filter. Tonight was no different, and Enzo was attractive, charming, and intent on her, even though she could see a small gaggle of cheerleaders by the pool tables checking him out. If she was aware of them, she had no doubt that Enzo was as well.
"Have you ever had sex that made you shiver and see stars at the same time?" Caroline leaned forward and almost had to smirk when Enzo's eyes darted down to the cleavage revealed by her tank top – eighteen, one hundred or one thousand, straight men could never resist that manoeuvre. "That's how good it was. It's also why I'm trying to drink away the memory. Because I like sex, and I don't want to be so ruined that my only option is catch a flight to freaking New Orleans and the monsters that hide there."
"Actually, I have had sex that good," Enzo replied, his eyes rising to meet hers again, and his lips quirking in a smirk. "It's been decades, but I do remember it. My Maggie." His hands drifted out to catch one of her curls, letting it wind around his finger. "She was a blonde as well, though she always wore her hair up. Seeing it like that, knowing that I would be the only one watching it fall down around her? It always made me want her."
"Klaus had an accent," Caroline replied, leaning back, her hair sliding through Enzo's fingers as she did so. "It made me want to jump his bones, when he called me Love in that accent."
"Ah, that explains your distaste for it. Tell me, Caroline" – Enzo's hand darted out, and he grabbed the shot of patron she had poured, tossing it back before she could do so. He set it back down and poured another, and Caroline tossed that one back with a quirked brow at the smirk of challenge he gave her – "if I were to call you it again, would you want to jump my bones."
"I don't know," Caroline replied, pulling her hair back and up, holding it in a loose bun at the back of her head. "If I were to wear my hair like this, would you want to jump mine?"
"Looking to make another mistake, Miss Forbes?" Enzo asked, leaning forward.
"You know, I don't recall introducing myself. Yet you apparently know who I am." Caroline let her hair drop and smiled at him, not answering his question. "How odd that is."
"I didn't introduce myself either, yet you know me. The perks of knowing Damon, I suppose… now, your answer?"
"Are you offering? To be my mistake, I mean?" Caroline held up another shot and considered it. She knew that if she drank it, it would silence the voice in her mind telling her that she was playing with fire, and that letting this go any further was a bad idea.
"I am," Enzo replied, not bothering to hid his intentions. The look in his eyes told Caroline he knew exactly what she was thinking, looking at her shot. Meeting Enzo's eyes dead on, Caroline tossed back the shot, setting the glass firmly back on the bar.
"Shall we?"
It was good sex. Caroline had enough experience to know the difference between good and bad, and Enzo was good. He knew where to touch, how to work her just to the edge, then drag her back down to prolong things. If he murmured Maggie's name against the skin of her neck in the middle of the act, well, Caroline couldn't be mad at him.
After all, it wasn't his name she screamed when he pushed her over the edge.
TR
"Enzo?" Elena asked, her expression clearly disapproving. "Really, Care? You don't see how that's a bad idea."
Caroline sighed and handed a clipboard to another student. She had volunteered herself and Elena to work the ballots for student elections, but she was kind of wishing she hadn't forced the brunette into it. She had been trying to get Caroline to talk about her… thing with Enzo since they'd started, and had been wearing that disapproving look the whole time. Caroline wanted to point out that Elena was with Damon again, never mind that the elder Salvatore had totally taken fifty steps back in his already questionable character growth during the Katherine debacle, but Elena had just been cured of the Augustine serum, and Caroline still felt a little guilty for not realizing there had been a supernatural squatter in her body, so instead the blonde was simply ignoring the question.
"Look, I know you and Tyler didn't work out… but do you really think this is the answer? Especially with the whole… Klaus thing."
Caroline sighed again and turned to Elena.
"Here are your options – you leave me alone to use Enzo as I please, or I go to New Orleans for a booty call with the Original Hybrid. And before you say anything, yes, I know he's a monster. He killed Carol, Jenna, and countless others. I'm not going to date him, but sex? It was good sex. So is sex with Enzo. Now, what's your choice?"
"You're not some horny frat boy, Caroline," Elena argued. "You can resist the urges!"
"I can, but I don't want to. But hey, if you're that against it, fine. You stop sleeping with Damon, and I'll stop with my own bad decisions. And don't even try to pretend Damon is better than Enzo. We both know that's a lie. He's actually not that bad, to be honest. A bit of a dick at times, but most guys are. "
"You know what? You can't be dealt with when you're like this. I have to go. We'll talk later. When you can think straight."
Elena left, and Caroline let her. She was tired of pretending to be the good one who was never tempted, and the three weeks she'd spent having sex with Enzo had done wonders to calm her down, especially after all the Klaus-sex induced stress.
So screw Elena and her high horse; when Caroline was done with the polls, she called Enzo, telling him to meet her at a nearby bar.
She and Elena never did have that talk.
TR
"This wasn't what I expected when you said you were going to a movie."
Six weeks into… whatever it was they were doing, and Caroline and Enzo were sitting in the middle of a theater as the opening previews before Frozen began.
"I didn't exactly invite you along," Caroline pointed out dryly, taking a sip of her sprite and holding her large bag of popcorn to Enzo; despite common misconceptions, she was capable of sharing, and she was in a good mood today. She'd wanted to see this movie for ages, and now that she was finally getting to, she was downright giddy.
"You said movie, I thought making out in the back row. Isn't that was teenagers do these days?" Enzo took a handful of popcorn and popped a kernel in his mouth. "Needs more butter."
"It's perfectly fine. I'll share, but it's still mine," Caroline shot back. "And seriously, Enzo? You do realize Frozen is an animated movie, right? Make outs are reserved for horror movies and Jennifer Anniston comedies. Works of art like this? They have to be savoured. Now hush, it's starting."
Enzo rolled his eyes, but he settled back in his seat. Caroline thought he would probably leave, uninterested in anything that didn't involve sex or drinking blood, but the man surprised her.
He actually really enjoyed it.
"That bastard!" He shouted, almost jumping out of his seat at Hans' big reveal, and his expression was so insulted that Caroline couldn't help but giggle a little bit.
"It's not funny," he said, letting her pull him back into his seat. "She thought they were true love, and he's all nope, too bad? That is bullshit!"
"It is," Caroline agreed. "But they were never true love. It was always Kristoff. Look, there he comes now."
"Well," Enzo muttered, settling back and grabbing some of the popcorn. "That's alright, then. Liked that ice boy better anyway."
When Anna froze solid saving Elsa, Caroline found herself getting teary eyed, and Enzo wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him and letting her wipe her eyes on his shirt. He made her laugh when he whooped as Anna hit Hans.
"Bastard deserved it," he was still saying, as they left the theater. Caroline laughed and let him pull her away from the theater. "I've never seen a movie like that before. Got anymore?"
"Most guys won't admit to liking cartoons. Hell, most girls my age won't admit to it," Caroline replied, smiling up at him.
"Well, most guys, or girls, don't appreciate how short life can truly be. You have to enjoy it, Caroline my dear," Enzo wrapped an arm around her and directed her down the street. "What do you say, want to enjoy it?"
"Sure… you know, Elena's with Damon tonight, and I have Finding Nemo back at my dorm. It's my favorite."
"Then let's go."
It wasn't until later, when Caroline was lying in his arms in the afterglow, that she realized she hadn't looked at him and seen Klaus once that day.
Even worse, it hadn't been Maggie's name he'd murmured against her skin, and she couldn't remember when that had changed.
TR
"You're avoiding me."
Caroline looked up from her book. It was a beautiful day, so she'd decided to study in the quad. She should have known better; she'd stopped calling Enzo after the day at the movies, and hadn't spoken to him in the week since. She kind of hoped he would take the hint, but when did things ever work out like that for her?
"Avoiding you? What makes you say that?"
"Perhaps the utter lack of contact since we watched your movies." Enzo sat next to her. "I thought we were having fun."
"We were," Caroline replied. "It was fun. You were fun. But we were supposed to be replacements, Enzo – just human-shaped fill-ins for the people we knew we couldn't have."
"And that changed," Enzo stated, and Caroline gave him a surprised look. "Do you think I didn't notice? When you stopped calling his name. The thing about relationships, Caroline? They rarely ever stay stagnate. They evolve with us… why won't you let ours?"
"Because I've done the bad boy before. Literally. I have a type, Enzo, and that type always ends up hurting me. As long as you were just my Klaus replacement, I didn't have to worry about that happening with you. But now? Now you make me laugh, and you yell at cartoon characters, and you hold my hand, and all of those are things that I did with Tyler before we screwed everything up. I didn't start this looking for a relationship."
"I know," Enzo replied. "I also know that you feel something for me, otherwise you wouldn't be avoiding me. But I'm not the Damon to your Elena, Caroline. I'm not going to follow you until you decide you can take a chance on me. I am damaged and I'm not a safe bet… but I am also not a monster."
"That's your selling point?" Caroline replied. "That you're not a monster?"
"Considering your type, I'd say it's a rather good selling point," Enzo responded, getting to his feet. "I want you. Because you can cry at cartoon characters, and you tell your best friend that I'm a dick but not horrible, and because you like to control the whole world. You won't control me, and you'll have to accept that. If you can, well, I'll be around."
TR
Another week passed without speaking to Enzo, and Caroline found herself in a pub with Elena and Bonnie and the fake ids Bonnie had procured for them. Elena and Bonnie were talking about the ginormous bomb shell they'd found out from Matt, who had it from Tyler, but Caroline wasn't listening.
Enzo was across the pub, flirting with a pretty red head, and Caroline wanted to rip that pretty head off.
"Care, did you hear us?" Elena asked. She had relaxed a lot, since Caroline had stopped sleeping with Enzo, and that made Caroline want to hate her a little, because she could be with Damon, but god forbid anyone else be with someone she didn't think was a "good guy."
"Repeat it? I was out of it."
"Mmhmmm," Bonnie hummed, obviously not believing her as she turned green eyes to Enzo, then back to Caroline and raised her brows. "Out of it. Sure. We were just saying that Klaus got Hayley pregnant."
"What?" Caroline asked shocked.
"Yeah," Elena agreed, and then, seeming to think about the bombshell that had just been dropped, she softened her tone. "Uh… are you okay?"
"I…" Caroline furrowed her brow and frowned. Was she okay? She'd spent over a month trying to replace Klaus with Enzo, and now she found out that the hybrid had slept with the Appalachian Wonder ages ago and knocked her up. Caroline felt a little angry, she could admit, that Klaus came back and didn't tell her; had even had sex with her and never told her… but was she okay?
Yes, she realized with surprise. She was fine. There wasn't any jealousy, just worry for a child that would have two parents who had no idea how to parent. But that wasn't her problem.
"I'm fine," she said, and she knew her surprise was in her voice. "I mean, it's weird. I didn't think it was possible. And we should probably try to find out more about it, because if it's a hybrid thing, Tyler had better start wrapping it up… but I'm fin – you have got to be kidding me!"
The redhead was running her hand down Enzo's chest, and that was too much! Caroline knew Enzo knew she was there. The man was freakishly aware of his surroundings, and if he thought he could make her jealous like this?
Then he was absolutely right.
Caroline charged away from her friends, ignoring Elena's incredulous call of her name and Bonnie's laughter, and stomped up to Enzo. She ignored the redhead, and pulled him down, sealing her lips firmly over his.
"Well… hello, Love," he said somewhat dazedly when Caroline broke away.
"I told you, don't call me Love," Caroline replied, still gripping his t-shirt. "I want to see the Lego Movie. I'm free tomorrow night. There's a showing at nine. You can take me out for dinner beforehand."
"Are you ordering me to take you on a date, Sweet?" Enzo asked, and Caroline almost smiled at the familiar name on his lips. "Isn't it a little late for that?"
"So we did things a little backwards" – Caroline shrugged – "that's fine, it happens. But now? I'm not Maggie, I'm Caroline. And you're not Klaus, you're Enzo. Now that we have that figured out, I'd really like to date you."
Enzo looked down at her with a small smirk hovering around his lips. He lifted his hands, burying them beneath her hair, before pulling her in for another kiss.
"Movie starts at nine? I'll pick you up at seven then. For dinner."
"Good," Caroline replied, smiling. She pulled back from him, headed back for the table where Elena was gaping at them and Bonnie was grinning almost as foolishly as Caroline. She paused and whirled around, pointing a finger at him. "Make it some place nice. I'm not going to shave my legs and put on a skirt for fast food."
"I'm sure I can handle that."
"I'm sure you can, too."
She ran back to him, for another quick kiss, before spinning once more and returning to her friends. It was amazing, how what should have been the replacement had so easily become the one.
AN: And that is that. I really enjoy writing these two. And yes, my head canon that Caroline loves cartoons has once again reared its head. I can't help myself.
Now that this is done, I am hoping to finish the third part of Bloody Kisses. It's a work in progress and tentatively titled City of the Damned. I guarantee no happy endings. Particularly after my last two stories, which were pretty much full of happy fluff. Too much happy fluff gives me hives. So, just be prepared.