AU/AH starts angsty but with happy ending.
"I can't do this anymore." Caroline says, interrupting the silence.
She sits tightly wound on the couch next to him. Everything in her tense. Her arms crossed over her chest. Her crossed legs. Her eyes fixated on the television set ahead of her. Refusing to blink. Afraid of the tears that might escape. The tears that might give her away. She sits so tightly wound and imagines the glue holding her together. If she were to move she would crumble.
"Caroline…" he whispers.
He sits next to her but cannot bring himself to look at her. His head bent. Elbows resting on knees. Hands pressed against exhausted forehead. And in spite of the apparent relaxed form he takes, his shoulders are rigid. His jaw clenched.
"We've talked about this, Klaus."
He flinches at her icy tone.
"I know we've hurt each other." He says, rolling their past year in his mind over and over again. Now, arriving here. Sitting there. Tired shoulders burdened and eyes stinging. The bad seems so insignificant and all he can see is the good. "But we love each other. We can move past this."
"Please don't let this turn into another screaming match." Her voice cracks ever so slightly.
He swallows. "I love you." But he even as he says this, he cannot turn to look at her. "But if you really want to, I'll let you go, Caroline. If you… if you don't love me anymore, I will let you go."
A pause.
"I thought I loved you. Don't know if I ever truly did."
But before she can finish her second sentence, he rises to his feet, grabs his suitcase, opens the door and slams it behind him. He doesn't look back. Not once.
She turns to look at the vibrating door frame he left behind him. Watches the patterns in the wood, the dents and punctures left. Its worn out edges. His smiles and clear blue eyes. The look on his face when she smeared ice cream across his left cheek. The sight of him dripping wet in a swimming pool when she pushed him in, laughing. Grabbing at her until she fell, too. His face as they burned each other in between the sheets, the moment of quiet as he looked at her before falling apart.
She crumbles.
The first year without him is the hardest. Everything in the apartment reminds her of him. The silence seems endless without him. Her nights are cold without his body next to hers. And she spends more time crying than she's willing to admit. She only finds a semblance of relief when she moves out.
The second year is easier. At least the first six months are. She feels lighter. She doesn't think of him every day. And her solitude seems pleasurable. Then she finds out that he's moved back to London. She bursts into tears, not understanding until a month after the news has elapsed that New York doesn't feel the same without him. She realizes that she did love him. That she never truly stopped.
The third year is when she finally feels like herself again. Like the best version of herself. She goes out on dates and laughs genuinely. Brings her dates home and indulges herself and them, always trying not to compare her lovers to him. And she feels happy, truly and genuinely happy.
On the fourth year she runs across an ad for his new art show. A one-man show. A show that he's always dreamed of. She doesn't sleep for two nights after. Then decides to attend.
He looks better than she ever remembers him looking. Time has only served to sharpen his features. His boyish charm replaced with something akin to subtle seduction while maintaining something distinctly mischievous. His eyes go wide and he stammers when he sees her.
"I didn't think you'd show up." He says, soft and disbelieving.
She smiles. "I couldn't stay away."
They spend the rest of the night shyly dancing around each other. Something strangles her voice, a flare of nerves she has not experienced since she's met him all those years ago. But her choked voice is not the only hindrance between them. She feels a distance. A kind of formality in the way that he speaks to her. As if they are old acquaintances merely catching up. The only thing that threatens to give him away is his eyes.
"Listen," she says, readying herself to leave. "I'd like to see you again before you leave town."
"Leave town?" He frowns. "Oh, right. London. No, I moved back here. Something about New York pulled me back in."
She swallows, smiles nervously, gives him her new number and leaves.
They meet for drinks to catch-up. A first not-date. Even though Caroline spends an hour picking her outfit and thirty minutes obsessing over every choice of accessories she makes. And she laughs more with him than she remembers ever laughing. They fall back into a familiar pace. Comfortable. Easy. The same teasing. The same mirth. But something about it is different. Quieter temperament perhaps. More openness maybe. When they part, they set up a time to meet each other again, merely two nights away.
On their second not-date, he takes her to the new, well now-old, Sushi restaurant they never got around to trying before their split. She tries not to overthink the choice. But finds it impossible when his eyes regard her with the same intensity that takes her breath away. When that gaze has the same effect it had on her so many years ago. The food turns out to be terrible. They spend the night trying to stomach it while hiding their laughter from the waiting staff. And when they leave, Caroline is hungrier than she were when they got there. Something that her stomach does not shy away from announcing. So to their favorite Shwarma place they go. The owner, the kind elderly 'Abu Ahmad, exclaims with delight at seeing them. Neither of them has had the heart to go there without the other. Standing there with him, Caroline feels as if no time at all has passed.
"Why are you doing this?" Klaus asks as he drops her off after their third not-date, a trip to the movies where she slowly found herself leaning closer towards him, just as she's about to walk through the door of her apartment's building.
"Doing what?" Caroline turns around to look at him, finding his entire frame tense and his eyes stony.
"Don't play coy, Caroline, you know damn well what I'm referring to. Leading me on. Tormenting me." He pauses, tilts his head to the side. His tone comes out cold, "Does it give you some kind of pleasure to know that I still love you?"
Caroline startles, blinks. "Klaus…. you still love me?"
He clenches his jaw. "Clearly. But you've made your feelings in regards to this matter quite obvious four years ago."
She smiles, drops her gaze to the ground. "I lied."
She leaves behind a stunned and hopeful Klaus as she walks into the building.
On their second-first official date, he sweeps her into a startling kiss the moment she opens the door. Their mouths find each other in familiar strokes, exploring one another like they've never been apart. And Caroline cannot squash the flood of relief she feels at the touch of his lips. And she's trembling from head to toe when he lets her go.
"This is a date." he says against her lips when they pull apart.
"Y-yes." she says, clears her throat, smiles. "I-I just need to reapply my lipstick."
On their second-second and third official dates, they tease each other mercilessly. Hands lingering and eyes appraising. Feathery touches and tantalizing kisses. And his smirks tell her that he's enjoying teasing her far too much.
They never make it to their second-fourth official date, Caroline pulling him into her apartment with a bruising kissing the moment she opens the door, and into each other they fall. In each other's arms, she finally feels like she's come home.
The next morning, he wakes up to her eyes trained on him, fingers softly tracing the lines of his cheekbones, his chin, scratching against his stubble, his shoulder, his arm.
"Good morning, my love," he whispers.
She takes his hand, kisses the inside of his palm and whispers back "I never stopped loving you either."