A/N: Hi everyone! So, I've wanted to write something like this story for a while now, and then last night I finally liked what I was typing and this happened. I'm posting this on the note of felt cute might delete later haha. I would love to hear your thoughts on this first chapter, so hope you enjoy and thank you for reading.

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

by Augustus Filch

This past Saturday the Mikaelson brothers were spotted roaming around the streets of Mexico City. They were nonetheless not alone. Their companions for the, it seems, spontaneous trip to the capital of the country were none other than Hayley Marshall and Tara Castellanos, prominent author and mexican-american supermodel, respectively.

You might have heard of Marshall's latest work "The Broken Tones" which landed her on the top spot of The New York Times' Best Seller list last summer. Rumours about Hayley Marshall and Elijah Mikaelson being in a secret relationship have been plaguing the couple for years, ever since the Mikaelson family made their step into fame as a result of Esther Mikaelson, the matriarch of the family, having an uncontested success as a stylist to the stars, and later on due to the New York based hit show in which she's been a judge for the past three years: "Runway's Next". However, it appears these rumours about a hidden romance between Marshall and Mikaelson have been put to rest at last.

On Saturday, Klaus Mikaelson and Hayley Marshall were spotted kissing at one of the most popular night clubs in Mexico City. Then, later on Sunday afternoon, paparazzi captured a shot of the Mikaelson brothers and their dates dining in a local restaurant in the city's downtown. With this, putting out a non-spoken statement of "all is well" between the notoriously competitive brothers.

See photos on page 14.

/

Well.

Well, fuck.

Caroline turned the pages back and forth, looking for a mistake, maybe even an apology from the newspaper's editor. Obviously, she found none. But this had to be a fucking joke. She couldn't actually believe what she was reading, couldn't actually fathom how it was that the first time this freakish repoter chose to write one semi-nice thing about the Mikaelsons it was about Hayley fucking Marshall.

No, she wouldn't believe it until she saw it with her own eyes.

She turned to page fourteen with a rage in her fingers, the paper crumpled on the sides. She had half a mind not to break the entire thing into little pieces, then burn it, and be rid of the whole thing. Then she saw it, page fourteen. The spread of photos all through the tainty paper.

Klaus Mikaelson was, indeed, standing very close to Hayley Marshall. The black and white of the print made them look extremely pale, but the flash of the camera had done its job. They'd caught it perfectly, just at the right second. He was smiling and holding her cheek just so, Hayley was grinning back, her eyes already closed. This photo was the ultimate proof that the paparazzi hadn't just caught a stumble of steps and bad placed mouths. No, they'd caught the leaning in, and the clear intent in Klaus' fingers.

The next one was even worse: they were kissing. He was kissing her.

Caroline threw the paper in the garbage can beside the kitchen counter. Her breathing was ragged, and all she could do was, well, concentrate on not crying at the moment. She was being ridiculous, she thought, because, really, why should she care?

Klaus Mikaelson owed her nothing.

She wiped the stray tears from her cheeks, straightened her back, fixed her hair. She raised her uniform skirt, because fuck decorum.

And for fuck's sake, she had a party to host tonight.

Fuck him.

/

"I invited Tyler," said Bonnie, grinning devilishly at her as she made her way past the foyer. "He texted me, said he was going to be in town for the week. And I thought, hey, isn't this the best birthday present I could give Caroline?"

"Well, it wouldn't be the worst present you've ever given me." Caroline rolled her eyes, closing the door and breathing deep. "Remember? Those rather hideous pair of panties with dicks on the back? My mom opted to burn them."

Bonnie laughed. "We were thirteen, alright? Thought it would be funny."

"It was," Caroline assured her, walking up the stairwell to her bedroom, Bonnie followed behind. "What was not though, was you giving them to me in front of my entire family. In front of my very conservative grandmother, may I remind you. She nearly had a stroke, Bonnie."

She opened the double doors of her bedroom, striding inside and plopping on the bed with sudden exhaustion. She heard Bonnie huff a laugh.

"Your granny should get a sense of humor, Care," Bonnie said, walking around the room to where her closet was. "Still, If I may, I'm ever so sorry for disturbing Ella Forbes' fragile sensitivities."

"Yeah," Caroline mumbled to her pillow. "I'm sure she's still expecting an apology letter from you, Bon. And be quick about it too," she plopped up on her elbows to watch her friend as she scoured through her clothes, "there's a very real possibility you may not be invited to the funeral."

"Ah, well, that's a pity," Bonnie replied, taking off the hangers from the rack. "I've always thought Ella would outlive us somehow, you know. I think she might have cracked the code to immortality, Care, that woman doesn't have a single wrinkle on her carefully crafted face. It's creepy."

Caroline sighed, getting up from the bed. "It's called botox, Bon. But yeah, the miracles of the beauty industry and all, huh?"

Bonnie gave a non-committal nod, eyeing a very short, scarlet red dress. "I think this might be the one. Try it on." She thrusted the garment into Caroline's hand and shifted her attention back to the search.

"It's- it's very short, Bonnie," she scrunched her nose at the dress, imagining it on her body. Caroline thought maybe she didn't want to look so revealing at her birthday party. She knew what people would think, what they would say once she was no longer in their presence.

"It was in your closet, Care. Besides, I know it'll look killer on you," she paused, turning over her shoulder to look at Caroline with a smirk. "I bet Tyler will absolutely love it."

Caroline rolled her eyes dramatically. "Yes, well, I dress for myself only, thank you very much."

"As you should," Bonnie agreed, eyeing the dress intently, as if she could magically put it on Caroline with her mind. "Still, you're no less a feminist if you, say, get all made up for a certain someone you've liked since forever once."

Caroline looked down at the dress on her hands warily. It was risky, but, for one Bonnie made a good point. And anyway, this was her eighteenth birthday, she could allow herself to be scandalous for one day, couldn't she? Plus, she figured that once the party started and the lights dimmed, no one would really care about what she was wearing, or even notice it much, right?

It wasn't as if she was under some godforsaken spotlight with her peers at school.

Right.

She groaned exasperatedly at herself.

"Or," Bonnie offered, smiling warmly at her, "you could wear something else. It's no big deal, Care, really."

She bit her lip, pondering for a second on whether it was best to greet her guests with this rather provocative dress or in a knee-high skirt and a sweater. Bonnie raised a brow, expecting her answer.

Then Caroline remembered the article she'd read this morning and how it made her lose her appetite.

"Fuck it."

/

She had thought her friends were joking when they said she had to drink eighteen shots for her eighteen tumultuous years on this earth. But they hadn't been. It was drink after drink after drink of hard liquor. Tequila, more accurately. And when she was done, the room was positively spinning.

Caroline had been drinking from a young age, so she could most definitely hold her liquor. It had started at twelve, when her mother would give her small sips of her champagne at family parties, then allow her some wine at special dinners. That all evolved rather quickly into sneaking into her father's liquor cabinet and stealing small amounts from each bottle so he wouldn't notice and bringing it to sleepovers. Later, at fourteen, she realized her father's hard drinking age-old habit permitted her to steal bottles from his collection from time to time without him even noticing a single thing amiss. And so, of course, in high school it was even easier to get access to alcohol; the society she lived in made it very inevitable that she would develop borderline alcoholism just like her predecessors.

No matter, Caroline had long ago stopped drinking alone and in hiding, finding it the behavior of someone with a real problem. She thought she might as well keep the serious addictions for a later time in her life, or at least until she got accepted into the Ivy League institution of her choice. Perhaps, even later.

She was a smart girl, everyone said so. She wasn't about to throw it all away.

However, today was the exception to her hard-set rule of three drinks only when in company of her judgy schoolmates. Today, she had a red dress on. Today, she'd had her heart broken via a newspaper's gossip column.

She could allow for eighteen shots if she so wanted. And she did.

Her house was full with drunken teenagers who preferred to drink their cocktails in crystal glasses and danced with expensive shoes and diamonds dangling from their wrists, necks and ears. She'd invited all her friends, and friends a word being used here as more of a reference to people she'd known since they were babies and who'd gone to the same private schools she had all their lives. Acquaintances would definitely be a better term, but when she thought of these people as that it made her feel so desperately lonely she couldn't very well stand it.

"Heard it was your birthday," Tyler said when he found her in the drawing room. He offered her navy velvet box. "Thought I'd get you something."

She opened the box to find a pair of diamond earrings. She blinked at them from her haze and let out a breathy gasp. "Oh."

"Do you like them?"

"I do," she replied, still looking at the earrings. "Thank you."

Tyler held her white-gold hoop earrings while she attempted to put the diamonds on. She stabbed herself on her earlobe a few times before she got it right. He watched her through the process, clearly suppressing a laugh, but flashing her that gorgeous smile.

Caroline remembered very clearly the first time she'd seen Tyler walk past her in the halls at school. Wearing the boys' uniform and loosening his tie with a grimace. Still, what had gotten to her the most, apart from his undeniably good looks, was the confidence in his walk. He'd been the new kid at the time, and she remembered thinking how brave he was to infiltrate the snake-ridden waters in which she'd lived her whole life.

How very brave of the privileged, handsome boy to walk into a new place like he thought he owned it.

"They look beautiful on you, Caroline."

She smiled. Tyler took her hand.

"Show me around?"

Caroline took a second to compose herself before she nodded, trying to look as composed as she could with the amount of alcohol and the rush from holding hands with her freshman-year crush for the first time running through her veins. Tyler smirked, like he somehow could read her mind.

"Want to get a drink first?" She asked, thinking it better to numb herself further before she tried anything as compromising as a conversation with Chilton High's former golden boy.

They went to fix themselves something in the kitchen. Bonnie was there, talking to Matt Donovan in the corner. When she spotted Caroline, her eyes went wide for a second, then she threw a decidedly not cool thumbs up.

"Happy birthday," Bonnie mouthed from the distance, winking at her when Tyler grabbed her by the waist and led her out the room.

The music was so loud inside the house she could barely make herself focus, but then Tyler was steadily guiding her through the crowd towards the doors leading to the gardens on the back. Or maybe, maybe she was guiding him?

She sipped her drink, lowered the hem of her skirt and continued to try and concentrate on walking with these ridiculously high heels.

"So," Tyler started, eyeing around the extensive grounds of her home. "How's eighteen going so far?"

Caroline detached herself from him long enough to reach the railings of the stairs, leaning against them. She hummed, as if in deep thought, but truly all she was doing was trying to come up with an acceptable adjective to give him.

So far, she conceded, it hadn't been so bad. For one, her parents were out of the country, so that was nice. And she'd spent most of the day with Bonnie, which was one of her favorite things. But then also, she'd had to read that gruesome article and had had to actively try to erase that photo from her memory for what already seemed an eternity. So really-

"It's exhausting," she blurted out. A second later she realized what she'd said and straightened her back. Her mom always said that a poor posture signified weakness, and that was one thing Caroline Forbes was decidedly not. "But, you know, isn't everything?"

"Yeah," Tyler nodded, propping himself against the railing beside her. "I'd say exhausting is exactly the word for it."

"And you? How's California going?"

He shrugged dispassionately. "Oh, you know, same. My father's always working. Mom's been experimenting with psychiatric drugs. School's boring…" He trailed off, looking up to the sky.

"Right," she said, eyeing him through the corner of her eye. She knew not to say sorry or something equally unhelpful, but still she found his words not having a great impact on her. He was right, she knew, everyone inside her house at the moment knew because they dealt with almost the same situation everyday at home. Instead, she chose to steer them in another direction."Got a girlfriend?"

He chuckled. "I don't," Tyler said, turning his eyes to her. "You got a boyfriend?"

"No."

No, she did not. She didn't have a boyfriend. She didn't have anything resembling a person who truly cared for her or actually wanted to be with her.

Tyler reached for her hand, entwining their fingers. She watched as his eyes shifted on her face, stopping at her mouth momentarily. Then he stared down her neck and lower and lower. He squeezed her hand.

"That dress is-" he gulped, the words seemingly leaving him.

"Bonnie made me wear it," she told him, feeling her stomach coil in anticipation. "Do you like it?"

He gave out a breathy laugh, blinking up at her and locking eyes with hers. He pushed himself off the railing, moving slowly to stand in front of her. The hand holding hers swiftly let go and found its way to her waist. Caroline breathed in sharply.

"Yeah," he grinned at her, his teeth catching his lip momentarily. "Yeah, I like it."

When he put his other hand on her hip, Caroline thought about all the times she'd wished internally for this to happen four years ago, how she'd fantasized about the mythical Tyler Lockwood pinning her against the lockers and finally kissing her. He was leaning in now, his nose so close to hers. She thought of the earrings she was currently wearing and what she would've hoped they represented four years ago. Tyler pulled her body closer to his, he brought his lips to hers, leaving just a breath of a distance between them. Caroline closed her eyes, knowing that this had been her dream, that had she had this four years ago she would've been unquestionably happy, ecstatic even.

However, this was not four years ago. And not even the flashing of that photo through her mind could make her close the gap between them.

No, but Tyler did.

He kissed her very slowly at first, tentatively even, like he was walking through a mind field. Then he let out a strangled breath through his nose. And suddenly he was biting her lip, kissing her like he was hungry for it. His hips thrusting against hers and making her stumble. Caroline tried to meet his rhythm, make her lips compatible with his, but he was too fast, too impatient.

She was about to pull away, but someone clearing their throat a few feet away from them made Tyler snap back first. Caroline was very grateful to their interrupter until she saw who it was.

"Oh, I see," He said, his hands thrust inside his pockets, leaning on the outside frame of a window. "You read the paper then, love."

Caroline pushed Tyler farther away on instinct, then she remembered herself and tried to arrange her dress from the rumple of cloth that Tyler had made of it. She fixed her hair. She stood tall.

"What are you doing here?" She snapped, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

He shrugged. "Apparently, watching you teach this young lad how to give a proper kiss." He raised a brow at Tyler. "And failing at it, from the looks of it."

"Hey, and just who the fuck are you?" Tyler cut in, taking two bulky steps closer to his opponent, swinging his shoulders and puffing his chest out.

He blinked at Tyler, then, and rather rudely too, laughed. "Really, Caroline? Him?"

Caroline glared at him, choosing to ignore the way Tyler was ridiculing himself by implying that he could win a fight between the two by his standoffish posture, on the verge of attacking. Like a dog.

"Asshole," Tyler spat.

"Tyler," Caroline tried, sighing.

"No," he waved her away. "No. Who does this guy think he is?"

"Ouch. Have you not told him about me, love?" Klaus put his hand on his chest as if he was truly wounded. Caroline sneered at him. "Well, see, mate," he patted Tyler on the shoulder, "I happen to be her intended."

Caroline had taken eighteen shots tonight, and had also taken two separate trips to the washroom to relieve herself of the tears she'd failed to weather away. She had kissed Tyler fucking Lockwood because she thought it would help. And here he was, the perpetrator of it all, speaking like she was somehow his.

She'd had enough. Truly.

Tyler was looking back at her with understandable confusion. Klaus was smirking like he'd just won the battle and the trophy, like he was barely coming back to claim his prize.

Something snapped in Caroline.

She walked straight towards him, hearing her steps resound through the concrete, and slapped him hard across the face. Her palm was stinging by the time Klaus' shocked blue eyes were staring back at her, his mouth open and lost for words.

"Fuck you."