Title: PJC's Season 5 -- Caroline and the Unexpected Wedding
Author: PepperjackCandy
Archive: sincereamore.com, my writing at fanfiction.net
Rating: PG
Pairing: Caroline/Richard
Spoilers for: Just about everything.
Disclaimer: Caroline in the City belongs to Barron/Pennette, CBS, NBC and Three Sisters Entertainment. All of whom are most emphatically not me.
Feedback: Always welcome, either by e-mail or using the review system at fanfiction.net.
A/N: I know that "Midtown Manhattan" is kind of a cliché, but in 1988, I stayed at the Howard Johnson's in Midtown with my parents. It's the only part of New York I really *know*. Also, the baby food/cereal mixture that Richard feeds Stefano is what I did with my son once he was six months old. The rice cereal is iron-fortified, and the vitamin C added to the peaches releases the iron in the cereal. The pediatrician wanted me to mix the cereal with apple juice for the same reason, but ds wasn't having any of *that.*
All events of Seasons 1-4 happened exactly as they did on the show. I think. Well, any changes will be pointed out as I get to them. 8-)
========
Fade in on Caroline's bedroom, where we hear the nicely well-modulated voice of the narrator, who in my ideal universe would probably be Kathleen Turner.
How many of you would have the courage to walk out on your wedding, not just once, or twice, but three times? Caroline Duffy has done just that. Yes. Twenty hours after her wedding to Randy, she was still Caroline Duffy. She had just missed, in order, becoming Caroline Cassidy (which would have been a disaster from a monogramming standpoint), Caroline Karinsky, and Caroline Thorsen.
Meanwhile, Richard Karinsky, he of the second failed wedding, was sleeping in his room in a hotel in Midtown. He wasn't alone in his hotel room, but his roommate wasn't the sort of person one usually woke up in strange hotel rooms with. It was, in fact, his infant son, Stefano.
Caroline's best friend Annie was sleeping in another hotel room, this one in Atlantic City. She also was not alone. However, unlike Richard, her roommate *was* the sort of person one usually woke up in strange hotel rooms with, but that was all right, because the other person was her boyfriend of six months, Del Cassidy, who also happened to have been the groom in Caroline's first failed wedding. Wait! Annie's waking up. Let's watch.
Annie stirred. She cracked open one eye and looked around. She saw another form in the bed with her.
Furrowing her brow, she peeked over the shoulder of her bedmate and heaved a sigh of relief. It's Del. Thank God. I wonder where I am?
She sat up. A hotel room. All right.
She lifted the covers and looked beneath them. Naked. Not unusual. Some odd impulse of modesty caused her to wrap the sheet around herself as she leaned out of bed to pick up her underpants. While she was leaning out of the bed, a sheet of paper caught her eye.
She picked it up and read the heading aloud. "Certificate of . . Marriage?"
***
In his hotel room, Richard was awakened by his son's cry. He squinted at the clock. "10:00. Adjusted to New York time already?" He asked Stefano rhetorically. "And here I thought you were still on Italian time when you woke me up at 4:00 this morning."
Richard got out of bed and rescued his son from his crib. He dug into the night table and pulled out a jar of peaches and a box of rice cereal. He mixed a little of the cereal into the peaches and took out a spoon. As he fed his son, he continued talking.
"You'll get to really meet Caroline today. I called her last night and she agreed to meet us for lunch. We're going to go to a nice, quiet restaurant and I'm sure that you'll be on your best behavior. Right?" Stefano had a smudge of peach on his cheek, so Richard stopped to wipe it off. "And this stuff smells nasty. I think I'm going to have to give you a bath before you meet her."
Richard smiled. "She doesn't always wear that big white dress, either. Though I wonder if she doesn't think she should start to." He added as an aside.
"She usually wears these little dresses, and sometimes jeans, and . . . ." His voice faded as he remembered how cute Caroline usually looked. He wondered if she'd bother to look cute for him at lunch. He wondered if he had the right to wonder.
Richard spooned the final bit of peach-and-rice mixture into his son's mouth. "She came really close to being your stepmother, too. But she's also my best friend, and I'd pass up any chance for romance with her again to be able to keep her friendship."
He picked Stefano up, sighing. "I'd better get my shower. You'll be all right while I'm in there?" He placed Stefano in his crib, propping up a book so Stefano could see the pictures and then took some clean underwear from the dresser drawer and headed for the shower.
***
When Caroline woke up, her first thought was Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride. I wonder what they'd say about a woman who's been a bride three times but never a wife? Sounds like something Shakespeare would say about a hooker.
She rolled over and looked at the clock. 10:30. Seems as good a time as any to start my first day of still being Caroline Duffy. As she stood up, she remembered that she had agreed to have lunch with Richard and Stefano, and sat back down on the bed -- hard.
She immediately started listing things she needed to do -- shower, fix her hair, apply her makeup, get dressed, travel to the restaurant. Fifteen minutes. She glanced out the window at the traffic below. No, better make it half an hour. And I'll take a cab, rather than the bus. So I have an hour to do the rest of it.
She set to work, and forty-five minutes later, she stood in front of her mirror, her hair and makeup perfect, wearing a particularly cute dress -- brown, with a scoop neck and a flared skirt that ended just short of her knees. Boy. I must really want to impress Stefano. She thought, intentionally ignoring the fact that it was *Richard* that she'd dressed for.
She was going to wait the fifteen minutes until she absolutely *had* to leave, but after about five minutes of pacing, she decided to just go ahead and leave.
She exited her apartment, turning to lock the door behind her, as Annie and Del came up in the elevator. "Hey, Caroline." Annie greeted her friend. "You got a minute?"
"Sorry. I'm just leaving to go to lunch with Richard. And Stefano. He wants me to meet Stefano." Her comment skidded to a stop as she realized she was babbling.
"Well, have fun." Annie said with an odd smile. "We'll see you when you get back then?"
"Yeah." Caroline smiled at Annie then headed for the elevator.
After Caroline was gone, Annie fixed Del with a broad grin.
"What're you grinning about?"
"That dress that Caroline's wearing. She's never worn it before. She bought it for her honeymoon."
"Her honeymoon?" Del asked.
Annie nodded. "From the look of things, Caroline's considering getting back together with Richard. And maybe then she won't take our news as hard as we were afraid she would."
Author: PepperjackCandy
Archive: sincereamore.com, my writing at fanfiction.net
Rating: PG
Pairing: Caroline/Richard
Spoilers for: Just about everything.
Disclaimer: Caroline in the City belongs to Barron/Pennette, CBS, NBC and Three Sisters Entertainment. All of whom are most emphatically not me.
Feedback: Always welcome, either by e-mail or using the review system at fanfiction.net.
A/N: I know that "Midtown Manhattan" is kind of a cliché, but in 1988, I stayed at the Howard Johnson's in Midtown with my parents. It's the only part of New York I really *know*. Also, the baby food/cereal mixture that Richard feeds Stefano is what I did with my son once he was six months old. The rice cereal is iron-fortified, and the vitamin C added to the peaches releases the iron in the cereal. The pediatrician wanted me to mix the cereal with apple juice for the same reason, but ds wasn't having any of *that.*
All events of Seasons 1-4 happened exactly as they did on the show. I think. Well, any changes will be pointed out as I get to them. 8-)
========
Fade in on Caroline's bedroom, where we hear the nicely well-modulated voice of the narrator, who in my ideal universe would probably be Kathleen Turner.
How many of you would have the courage to walk out on your wedding, not just once, or twice, but three times? Caroline Duffy has done just that. Yes. Twenty hours after her wedding to Randy, she was still Caroline Duffy. She had just missed, in order, becoming Caroline Cassidy (which would have been a disaster from a monogramming standpoint), Caroline Karinsky, and Caroline Thorsen.
Meanwhile, Richard Karinsky, he of the second failed wedding, was sleeping in his room in a hotel in Midtown. He wasn't alone in his hotel room, but his roommate wasn't the sort of person one usually woke up in strange hotel rooms with. It was, in fact, his infant son, Stefano.
Caroline's best friend Annie was sleeping in another hotel room, this one in Atlantic City. She also was not alone. However, unlike Richard, her roommate *was* the sort of person one usually woke up in strange hotel rooms with, but that was all right, because the other person was her boyfriend of six months, Del Cassidy, who also happened to have been the groom in Caroline's first failed wedding. Wait! Annie's waking up. Let's watch.
Annie stirred. She cracked open one eye and looked around. She saw another form in the bed with her.
Furrowing her brow, she peeked over the shoulder of her bedmate and heaved a sigh of relief. It's Del. Thank God. I wonder where I am?
She sat up. A hotel room. All right.
She lifted the covers and looked beneath them. Naked. Not unusual. Some odd impulse of modesty caused her to wrap the sheet around herself as she leaned out of bed to pick up her underpants. While she was leaning out of the bed, a sheet of paper caught her eye.
She picked it up and read the heading aloud. "Certificate of . . Marriage?"
***
In his hotel room, Richard was awakened by his son's cry. He squinted at the clock. "10:00. Adjusted to New York time already?" He asked Stefano rhetorically. "And here I thought you were still on Italian time when you woke me up at 4:00 this morning."
Richard got out of bed and rescued his son from his crib. He dug into the night table and pulled out a jar of peaches and a box of rice cereal. He mixed a little of the cereal into the peaches and took out a spoon. As he fed his son, he continued talking.
"You'll get to really meet Caroline today. I called her last night and she agreed to meet us for lunch. We're going to go to a nice, quiet restaurant and I'm sure that you'll be on your best behavior. Right?" Stefano had a smudge of peach on his cheek, so Richard stopped to wipe it off. "And this stuff smells nasty. I think I'm going to have to give you a bath before you meet her."
Richard smiled. "She doesn't always wear that big white dress, either. Though I wonder if she doesn't think she should start to." He added as an aside.
"She usually wears these little dresses, and sometimes jeans, and . . . ." His voice faded as he remembered how cute Caroline usually looked. He wondered if she'd bother to look cute for him at lunch. He wondered if he had the right to wonder.
Richard spooned the final bit of peach-and-rice mixture into his son's mouth. "She came really close to being your stepmother, too. But she's also my best friend, and I'd pass up any chance for romance with her again to be able to keep her friendship."
He picked Stefano up, sighing. "I'd better get my shower. You'll be all right while I'm in there?" He placed Stefano in his crib, propping up a book so Stefano could see the pictures and then took some clean underwear from the dresser drawer and headed for the shower.
***
When Caroline woke up, her first thought was Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride. I wonder what they'd say about a woman who's been a bride three times but never a wife? Sounds like something Shakespeare would say about a hooker.
She rolled over and looked at the clock. 10:30. Seems as good a time as any to start my first day of still being Caroline Duffy. As she stood up, she remembered that she had agreed to have lunch with Richard and Stefano, and sat back down on the bed -- hard.
She immediately started listing things she needed to do -- shower, fix her hair, apply her makeup, get dressed, travel to the restaurant. Fifteen minutes. She glanced out the window at the traffic below. No, better make it half an hour. And I'll take a cab, rather than the bus. So I have an hour to do the rest of it.
She set to work, and forty-five minutes later, she stood in front of her mirror, her hair and makeup perfect, wearing a particularly cute dress -- brown, with a scoop neck and a flared skirt that ended just short of her knees. Boy. I must really want to impress Stefano. She thought, intentionally ignoring the fact that it was *Richard* that she'd dressed for.
She was going to wait the fifteen minutes until she absolutely *had* to leave, but after about five minutes of pacing, she decided to just go ahead and leave.
She exited her apartment, turning to lock the door behind her, as Annie and Del came up in the elevator. "Hey, Caroline." Annie greeted her friend. "You got a minute?"
"Sorry. I'm just leaving to go to lunch with Richard. And Stefano. He wants me to meet Stefano." Her comment skidded to a stop as she realized she was babbling.
"Well, have fun." Annie said with an odd smile. "We'll see you when you get back then?"
"Yeah." Caroline smiled at Annie then headed for the elevator.
After Caroline was gone, Annie fixed Del with a broad grin.
"What're you grinning about?"
"That dress that Caroline's wearing. She's never worn it before. She bought it for her honeymoon."
"Her honeymoon?" Del asked.
Annie nodded. "From the look of things, Caroline's considering getting back together with Richard. And maybe then she won't take our news as hard as we were afraid she would."