A/N- Enjoy!
If being high maintenance with a flair for the dramatic had taught Caroline anything, it was how to handle a potential disaster before it blew out into a complete catastrophe.
Rebekah couldn't be more than ninety-pounds soaking wet, which is why Caroline was able to almost lift the girl off her feet as she dragged her into her office, slamming the door so quickly that she nearly broke her partner's face. Only a quick manoeuvre on his part stopped him from getting an intimate acquaintance with the glass and it bounces off his shoulder instead, leaving him to rub it wincing as Caroline pulls down the blinds, switches off her phone and, hands on hips, turns on the two siblings,
"What the hell?!"
And she sees it now.
Not the similarity in their features, because honestly, she and Rebekah look more like siblings than those two, but the similarity in their movements, and she's seen the same expressions on Nik's face that she sees in Rebekah's now.
Shock and awe.
Meanwhile, Nik just seems to be in a state of shock.
He turns to his sister, "How did you find me?"
Rebekah is all smiles when she's looking at him, "Elijah's been looking for you for years, but nothing turned up but then my friend Aurora was talking about your site and she mentioned your name and how it was spelled so I googled you and then I took the day off school to come find you."
"You took the day off school?" he demands, societal outrage colouring his tones, the instinctive fury of a child wasting their potential.
And was Nik's accent going slightly British or was Caroline going slightly mad?
"Seriously?!" she snaps, "How is that the part of this you're focusing on?"
She runs her hands through her hair and exhales, "Okay…it's fine, she hasn't been exposed to anything and she's not here to act so this isn't a crime, she's your family so we're not in any legal trouble and…I assume you had a plan?"
"Are you on drugs?" Rebekah asks with the bright naivete of the innocent youth.
"No, she's just type-A," Nik answers, "My plan, sweetheart?"
"Your plan for when your family found out you were a porn star!" Caroline elaborated, rolling her eyes,
"Seriously, keep up! Your younger sister is here right now, apparently there's someone named Elijah, is this going to interfere with Mystic or what?"
He clearly hadn't thought that far ahead, and the strength seems to leave his body as he plops down onto her desk, eyes wide but his face shutting down and after a minute, Caroline realises that this isn't just regular shock or surprise, this is a survival tactic.
An almost complete disassociation.
She doesn't know what to do and she doesn't know whether to search for the answers on her phone or on her computer, or whether the noise would startle him and…should she get him water?
She exchanges a panicked glance with Rebekah but sees only calm and compassion in her eyes.
This is something this girl has experience with.
"It's okay, Nik," she murmurs, sitting down next to him and putting her hand on his wrist, gently, a reminder of her presence that could easily be shaken off.
"Mikael's dead. He…there was a car accident, he wad drunk and drove right into a lake if you can believe it. Finn moved to Denmark and we never heard from him again, Elijah's the head of the family now and he misses you so much…for the longest time we thought maybe you were dead, he'll be so happy you aren't."
Nik's scoff of disbelief is almost heartbreaking, understandable, but heartbreaking.
"You do know what I do here, don't you Bekah?" he asks, "We make porn. It's healthy, consensual films but still porn."
She makes a face, instinctive societal disgust, but visibly swallows and soldiers on,
"At least you're not a prostitute…you aren't, are you? Because I suppose that'd be okay but as long as you aren't in it for the money…"
He smirks, "Not a prostitute…or a stripper," he reassures her, "I don't have the legs for it."
Even if they technically weren't breaking any laws, Caroline still didn't want an underage girl on their property, so she grabbed the first employee of theirs she came across, told them she and Nik were taking a personal day and then bundled the two of them into her car.
Nik follows on her heels but he's clearly still not firing on all cylinders and Caroline's slightly worried about how easily he's disassociating. Meanwhile, Rebekah is pouting, her expectations for this family reunion not being met in the slightest.
Her first thought was to head back to her or Nik's place, but she nixed those options quickly, not entirely sure it was safe for Rebekah to get their addresses. A café was her next idea but if the situation deteriorated, if someone called the police, the adult film stars weren't going to fare well.
She knew a couple of hotels that charged by the hour, where interviews were held, script readings, or where some stars just crashed or screwed when they didn't want to go home, but again, these weren't the places you checked in with an underage girl because the staff had been trained to be on the lookout for exploitation and human trafficking.
So, she's driving and running various locations through her mind, listing pros and cons for each until she sees a sign for a park and pulls a risky u-turn to get to the entrance.
It's early enough in the day that there are minimal young kids around and the only other occupant of the park was manning a coffee truck. Caroline deposits Rebekah at a table, nearly points and tells her to stay and frogmarches Nik to the barista.
She orders a triple espresso for herself, a Starbucks-esque flavoured decaf latte for Rebekah and a chai latte for Nik in the hopes that the warm milk would help.
"Anything I need to know?" she asks out of the corner of her mouth as their orders are being made.
"My mother died when I was twelve," he begins, in a toneless voice, as if reciting a password or phone number,
"When I was thirteen, my father drove me out to the woods like I was a dog he wanted to abandon, gave me ten dollars because that was all I was worth and told me that if he ever saw my face again, or if I ever tried to contact anyone back home, he would break my spine so I'd spend the rest of my life as a quadriplegic."
Caroline chokes on her spit and covers her mouth, forcing herself to get her breathing under control.
"Okay, well, he's dead so there's that," she answers, her voice a little too perky and just loud enough that the barista gives her a concerned look, "And your sister doesn't seem overly concerned about our…careers."
He glances over his shoulder to where Rebekah was holding her phone above her head in the easily recognizable pose for the selfie.
"You don't have to stay," he tells her, as if forgetting that she drove them here, "This isn't your mess to clean up."
She scoffs, "Seriously?! We're a team, and friends, we rely on each other and that includes when younger sisters turn up out of the blue."
"You're an only child though, sweetheart." He points out, sipping on his drink and she shrugs,
"Fine, if one of my parents comes to town, you'll be first person I freak out on."
He grins, "Deal."
Rebekah takes her drink with a pleasant smile and offers to reimburse her but Caroline waves her off, they have a moment where they expect Nik to start the conversation but he's still pulling himself back from the brink of his meltdown, so she instead turns to Caroline and point-blank starts asking about life as a porn star.
Thankfully, she's asking the same standard questions that the majority of people outside the industry ask, with no clear intention of delving deeper or becoming more involved than the occasional glance at a free video so Caroline gives her the basic answers.
She can feel Nik vibrating with nervous energy beside her, so she's not surprised when he interrupts mid-conversation,
"How is everyone?" he blurts out and Rebekah jumps, startled.
"Oh…" she stammers, "Uh…well, Elijah is a contract lawyer whose office moved from New York once the GFC hit and they had to rebrand. Kol is a useless sod who will probably have to buy his way into university. Henrik is super into Dungeons and Dragons, like he actually makes money off selling videos of how he…I don't know…passes levels. It's all above our heads but it involves socialising and we see him eat food, drink water and go to school, so we really have no reason to complain."
Her words display a maturity beyond her years, the voice of a girl who'd had to grow up fast when her parents had died, whose family hierarchy had rearranged itself to counter the gaps caused by their absence.
Caroline feels both impressed and a sense of pity for this girl who would never get to be as care-free as her peers.
As Caroline herself had once been.
Nik is asking questions about their family home, questions that were above Caroline's personal knowledge of his family history, which admittedly, went only as far back as two hours but she catches the nervousness in Rebekah's eyes, the way she weighs her words before speaking them, as if the wrong answer could drive away the brother she had been searching for all these years.
Perhaps he even realises that, picking up on her nervousness and adding anxiety to the mix, or the adrenaline as his shock wore off.
Either way, Caroline found herself reaching for her phone and pressing the sound button to make it vibrate,
"Oh crap," she gasps, "I forgot we had that meeting."
She begins standing and Rebekah and Nik half-rise from their seats, glancing across at each other with a shared mixture of relief and guilt in their eyes.
Neither of them wanted to be the first to leave, but they couldn't stay, they needed to deal with the emotions and ramifications that this encounter would have on their lives.
She makes the decision for them.
"Nik, you can uber from here," she informs him, "Rebekah, I'll drive you home."
The young girl starts, a small frown marring her pretty features as she recalls the same warnings Caroline herself was given all those years ago. Never to be in a car alone with a stranger, never to let them know where you lived.
"I'll drive you to a public place that you can get home from." She offers and Rebekah blushes but accepts.
They leave Nik hanging around the parking lot of the park and Rebekah chews her lip nervously as he recedes in the rear-view mirror.
"Will he be okay to get home?" she asks and Caroline smirks before forcing her lips into a reassuring smile,
"He'll be fine." She promises.
Nik had all the streets smarts of someone who'd frequently toed the line of the law combined with the bank account of a successful adult film star, even if his uber failed, he'd make it home in one piece.
That piece might not be sober, but Caroline would worry about that later.
Rebekah is chewing on a finger nail now, fidgeting nervously and Caroline keeps an eye on the traffic around them but braces herself for the next round of conversation,
"I'm sorry," she gushes, "I didn't mean…I've ruined everything haven't I?"
She sounded so heartbroken that Caroline considered pulling over the car and giving her a hug, but they were in a slightly dodgy area of town and she didn't want to freak the poor girl out.
"Not even close," she swears, "Don't worry, we'll be fine."
"It's just…he's always been my favourite," Rebekah continues, "Elijah was too old, Kol is too much of a prick and Henrik feels like babysitting, but Nik loved playing with me and always had time for me and when I found him…I wasn't going to wait for Elijah to make the first move."
"Seriously, it'll be fine," Caroline promises, trying to keep her voice light to calm the girl down,
"In our industry, family encounters are like Halloween horror stories, this'll barely even rate a mention."
Rebekah settles down slightly and by the time Caroline drops her off at a mall, seems to be more interested in retail therapy than emotional retrospection.
She invites Caroline to get a coffee with her, but she turns her down, she's got one sibling back to a decent mental state, now she had to focus on the other one.
All the lights are off at Nik's apartment and when she lets herself in, she's not even sure he's home until she enters the living room, traces the shape of the couch and realises that it's bigger and lumpier than usual.
He was sprawled across it with his eyes closed and a tumbler of some liquid balanced on his chest, still full, so he must have poured himself the drink, got comfortable and decided moving was too much effort.
Caroline perched on the coffee table and took his hand,
"Are you okay?" she asked gently, and he shifted his feet slightly but kept his eyes closed.
"Haven't the slightest clue," he admits with a sigh, "I can't even think straight right now."
She nods, "Okay, I'm going to turn on the lights and get us some dinner, we can either watch some tv, or just go to bed and we'll deal with everything tomorrow."
She gets a small grin and a hand squeeze in response.
A/N- Thanks for reading!