A/N Written for Klaroline Valentine's Day Bingo, 2020. Prompt: Weekend in bed. Dedicated to Uppity Bitch. She's been pushing me to start this for ages. Thanks, Uppity!
Palm Beach was a Sticky, Humid, Godless Place
Caroline Forbes was the Director of Operations at White Oak Retreat and she was pissed. The fiery blonde 28-year-old stomped down the hallway of the luxury addiction treatment facility on a lovely barrier island off the coast of Florida, where dignity went to die. When she got to the Clinical Director's office, she slammed the door open, seething. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?!" she shrieked at her boss, Dr. Klaus Mikaelson.
"Somebody's got your ponytail in a twist, gorgeous," the British massage therapist commented as he wisely headed for the hallway.
"Don't start with me, Enzo. You have a patient waiting," she barked authoritatively, ignoring his flirty wink as she slammed the door on him before rounding on her boss. "Please tell me I misread that email about a certain patient returning from the psych unit!"
The 35-year-old psychologist smiled at her with his unfairly attractive dimples. The source of her constant ire had no right to look like he'd just walked off a photo shoot when she'd come to scream at his obviously poor business decisions. "Something bothering you, love?" he asked, sarcasm bleeding from his infuriating tongue.
Caroline narrowed her crystal blue eyes at him, barely containing her frustration at the older man. "You readmitted Bulgarian Tide Pod lady? Seriously?!"
He rolled his eyes at her dramatism. "I'm aware she isn't an ideal patient, but Katerina is sick, love, and there aren't many places for people like her." He looked at her with his best puppy-dog eyes, but she would not be deterred. "I thought you enjoyed helping."
"Oh, do spare me the sanctimonious garbage," she spat, rolling her eyes right back at him. "I'm all for helping who I can, but we're an addictions treatment center, Klaus. We sent her to the psych hospital because she wasn't appropriate for residential level of care."
"Yes, and from what I understand-"
"Which is very, very little."
"- her medications have been adjusted accordingly," he finished, letting her little barb go because he actually agreed with her. Katerina Petrova was out of her mind. She'd covered her entire bedroom in overpriced organic laundry pods, disassembled a blow dryer, wrapped all the draw strings from her sweatpants and hoodies around her ankles, made a collage of orange peels, magazine clippings, random items and still more laundry pods, broken her wall sconce, ripped the handle off her bathroom door and then barricaded herself in her bedroom when Caroline's staff had tried to coax her to her therapist's office.
"There's no medicating an Axis II condition and you damn well know that." The Director paced around his office as she ranted. This happened all the time. Half of Klaus' day was spent listening to his staff bitch and moan about things beyond his control. Caroline was the only one he didn't regularly send off in tears. He had a soft spot for his second in command. "She needs to go somewhere like McLean, or Timberline Knolls, or Bridges. She does not need to be somewhere where she's allowed to skip group therapy by jumping fully clothed in the Atlantic! Oh, and let's not forget the time my night staff found her laying on top of the dryer while laughing hysterically as Hulu blasted on her Kindle at 3:00 in the morning!"
"Well, her boots weren't going to dry themselves after the swimming incident," he countered, biting back a smile. "Besides, my personal favorite was the time she graffitied her bathroom mirror and duvet cover, then screamed at the cleaning staff for trying to clean up her 'art,'" he added with mirth dancing behind his cerulean eyes while she glared daggers at him. Why she continually came to him to vent her frustration was a mystery. Goading her was the best part of his day, especially when her smart navy-blue pencil skirt hugged her ass just the right way. When she narrowed her eyes at him, he knew he'd been caught checking her out. He snapped his eyes to her pretty face and gave her his most charming smile, complete with adorable dimples beneath his ever-present stubble.
"Save your dimples for the runners, Mikaelson. Your charm doesn't work on me." She continued angrily pacing around his office overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The program owned several townhomes directly on the beach. She and Klaus had the offices on the third, and top, floor of the women's house. "I've been doing this for a decade now. Never have I ever seen an entire company fall apart so completely at the hands of one borderline."
Klaus rolled his eyes again and got up from his luxurious leather office chair and walked over to her, hands clasped behind his back. "The entire company didn't fall apart. I agree that it wasn't pleasant, but I think everyone handled themselves quite well, considering."
"Rebekah sent my scheduling girl seven emails about appointments between 2:30 and 6:30 in the morning."
"Well, she didn't like that your girl changed things around."
"It's her literal job to create and maintain the schedule," she huffed, irritated as she defended her best employee. "We're talking about computer work, Klaus. It takes her three seconds to click and drag an appointment. She was right to move things around. The way it was made literally no sense and had ancillary practitioners coming in an hour early and then waiting an hour for their next patient. It was massively inconsiderate. Rebekah freaked out on her for no reason."
"Projective identification is... a reason," he said lamely, biting the inside of his cheek. "She took a vacation while Katerina was in the psych ward on my advice, didn't she?"
"My entire staff still calls her BB," the blonde retorted, face still blank and unamused.
Klaus tried, and failed, to stifle a smile at that one. "Barbie Bitch' is actually quite flattering given my little sister's temper. It could be much worse. Although, I thought that older woman you fired last month for incompetence was Barbie." It was hard to keep up with her wily staff's nicknames. He still had no idea why they called him 'The Hybrid,' and Caroline wasn't sharing.
"Kelly Donovan was Skipper," she corrected him. "Skipper is Barbie's dumber and less attractive younger sister, not that there was anything young about that old hag. Ugh, she was awful. It wasn't just the bird brain either. I fired her for showing up with marijuana in her purse!"
"Right," he replied thoughtfully. "She showed up high and the best lie she could come up with was that it belonged to her daughter's latest drop-out boyfriend. Bloody idiot. Who thinks smoking pot constitutes sobriety? We're lucky she was the only one with the ethics of a snail or we'd have been in real trouble."
"You talk to me about ethics when you just readmitted Katerina Petrova," she snapped venomously. "Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass that woman is going to be for literally everybody?"
"Alright, love, that's enough of the theatrics," he concluded as he opened the door to his beachside balcony. "Come outside with me." He held out his hand before she could object, but she just stared at his palm like it had personally offended her. Stepping behind her, he smirked at her sharp intake of breath when he steered her outside with a warm hand against the small of her back. "Look where we are," he said soothingly, his palm still burning a hole in the back of her dark purple silk button-down as he lightly rubbed his thumb in tiny circles.
It was late afternoon and the Florida sun was burning bright in the sky as it warmed her inside and out. She drank in the sight of the expanse of ocean stretched out as far as the eye could see. She'd grown up in a one-horse town in Virgina far away from the shore. She loved her life... in spite of the Florida Men lurking around every corner to embarrass the entire Sunshine State with their admittedly hilarious shenanigans. She and Klaus had met at a convention on Dialectical Behavior Therapy shortly before she'd completed her registered internship after she earned a Masters in Mental Health Counseling. They'd spent a week together studying before spending the weekend in bed doing anything but. Six months later, he'd opened his own treatment center and had offered to double her salary. Since her arrival three years ago, he'd made it clear he wanted more than a memory of their time off the clock. It was tempting, but she kept him at arm's length. Times like this, when he touched her, made it hard to ignore the way her belly clenched when his body heat bled into hers.
"You love it here," he reminded her as he slid his palm up her back, making her shiver in spite of the heat engulfing them. Palm Beach was a sticky, humid, Godless place. She could already feel moisture pooling on the back of her neck where tendrils escaped from her carefully coiffed bun. He knew that bun... and how easily she could let her hair down by pulling a single well-placed bobby pin. He massaged both of her shoulders and frowned at how much tension he felt beneath his sensual caress. "You put too much pressure on yourself. The world will turn without you there telling it how fast to spin," he advised sagely, smiling to himself when she subconsciously leaned into his touch. He pulled her closer so that her back was resting against his lean and sculpted chest as he chased the anxiety from her muscles. He cautiously placed one strong hand on her hip and leaned in to whisper in her ear, his breath hot as his stubble prickled her soft skin, "You need to relax. Take care of yourself." With a sly smirk, he added, "Perhaps you need a better massage than I can provide here on my balcony."
Caroline forced herself out of her reverie when she felt his lips graze her cheek. "Maybe you're right." She slowly turned around in his arms and took a step back. She indulged him for a moment as he mentally undressed her with his bedroom eyes, a predatory gleam behind the cerulean she spent so much time fantasizing about. Before he could get too carried away, and take her down with him, she stepped back inside his office.
"You never think I'm right," Klaus replied as he eyed her suspiciously.
"Oh, I don't know," the bright young blonde said with a flirty eye roll and feminine shrug. "A proper massage sounds nice."
His dimples came out to play as he stepped closer to her, nearly pinning her to the wall with his fiery gaze. "Does it?" he asked with a husky edge to his sinfully seductive tone.
Caroline's upper lip curled up in a coy smirk. "I'll see if Enzo can squeeze me in," she teased with a wink on her way out the door.
That woman was going to be the death of him.
A/N Do we like this little universe or no? I have another one planned with some equally dramatic characters. Please let me know what you think!