A/N- This was requested in the first (and only so far) Klaroline Gift Exchange I did
TW- Mental Illness
For some families, receiving a text message informing them that their eldest brother was in hospital with a fractured pelvis after a skiing incident and as such, the Easter getaway was cancelled, would be at best a tragedy and at worst a reason for concern.
For the Mikaelson Family, it meant the three of the siblings immediately switched to a private chat so they could exchange variations on the acronym LOL.
Group Chat: Middle Mikaelsons'
Kol: It's an Easter miracle!
Rebekah: Oh no, I found out when I was in New York and there aren't any flights back to New Orleans until Tuesday!
Rebekah: Guess I'll have to stay here and shop.
Nik: I would bet half my collection of paintbrushes that there are at least three flights back to New Orleans today.
Rebekah: None with business class or even premium economy though.
Kol: She's not wrong, I'm on the H335 flight right now and sober af.
Rebekah: The H335 is to Hawaii Kol.
Kol: Whoops 😉
Nik: You're both terrible.
Nik: I hadn't even got on the plane yet.
Klaus Mikaelson had been at Richmond airport for the better part of an hour, setting up camp at a Starbucks and trying to calculate how much sugar and caffeine he would need to consume to make his family bearable for the first hour before he could feasibly start drinking.
He'd been planning to arrive at one pm and even with their family drinking before three pm was cause for concern.
He'd been halfway through a Venti Cinnamon Shortbread Latte when he'd received the happy news and the second thing he'd done had been to send a message to his girlfriend, alerting her that he'd be home for the Easter break.
He hadn't received a response yet but considering how touchy she'd been this morning about him deliberately running late to the airport, he suspected he was somewhere in her bad books.
Maybe on the first page or so.
Caroline had been the one to introduce him to Starbucks and he considers bringing her one home but figures that by midday, she would have already gone for her morning run, met one of her friends at a café afterwards and consumed the necessary caffeine to fuel her plans for world domination.
So, when he walks through the front door of their apartment to find her running shoes still on the rack and no music playing, he's concerned.
"Sweetheart?" he calls, making his way through their living area to the bedroom, "Are you home?"
Caroline had designed every inch of their bedroom, down to the fluffiest, most comfortable duvet he'd ever known, she was now curled up underneath it and Klaus' first thought was- period.
Except that Caroline was on the pill and only had her period every three months, and he remembered this because when she was in pain, she drank tea like she was gunning for British citizenship, which gave him an excuse to buy ridiculously fancy loose-leaf teas he couldn't really justify buying for himself.
Ergo, this wasn't her time of the month, or…her time of the quarter? Which meant something else was wrong?
He bends down and finds a corner of the duvet, pulling it back until he finds blonde hair and traces it to a body facing away from him and curled up into a ball.
He can tell from the way she was breathing that she was awake but doesn't respond until he puts a hand on her arm, "Are you ill, love?"
She gives a delicate snort, "Always."
Her voice is thick and choked, revealing that she's been crying, and he toes off his shoes, sliding in beside her and draping an arm over her.
Caroline turns to give him a weak smile before turning back to her pillow, so Klaus prepares to settle in.
Klaus and Caroline had met when she'd wandered into the gallery where he frequently showed his work, and, as he was not one to ignore an amazing opportunity when it came in wearing tight jeans and a smile that made him forget words, he'd flirted up a storm with her.
Fortunately, despite her career as an interior designer giving her taste and a good eye, she'd decided to give him a shot.
And somehow, despite his career as an artist having developed his eye for detail, they'd been together for six months before he'd finally noticed the cracks in her perfect façade.
To this day, he's still not sure how he'd missed it; his own family has more issues than the bloody Times, they even carried a strain of Porphyria so rare that doctors from around the world had struggled to diagnose it, but which explained why so many of his ancestors had been executed for vampirism, witchcraft and one interesting period where an entire offshoot of the family tree had been beheaded because they'd been accused of being werewolves.
His father had been diagnosed with psychopathy and institutionalised in Switzerland.
His brother Finn had post-traumatic-stress-disorder from their childhood, Elijah had obsessive compulsive disorder which manifested in body dysmorphia that made him want to be perfectly groomed at all times. Rebekah had social anxiety, Kol had attention deficit disorder and Klaus?
Somehow, he was the lone wolf in the Mikaelson family who hadn't been formally diagnosed, despite the revolving door of doctors and therapists that had poked and prodded him physically and mentally for years after his father had tried to kill him enough times that Child Protective Services finally decided he wasn't a fit parent.
He had more experience than the average person at recognising symptoms of mental illness but hadn't recognised them in Caroline. He hadn't known anything was wrong until the flirty blonde who'd taken to hanging out at his gallery had revealed herself to be Caroline's therapist and given him an in-depth account of his girlfriend's general anxiety disorder and depression.
The therapist had been fired, stripped of her qualifications and barred from operating in the state for five years, but the damage had been done. Klaus had watched as Caroline had panic attacks wondering who else the therapist had approached, and depressive spirals over the violation of her trust. He hadn't known what to do, so he'd fallen back on his Britishness and made her cups of tea, held her hand and let her talk herself up and then down until the exhaustion had set in at which point, she'd climbed into her bed and slept for twelve hours straight.
This had been the beginning of dark month for Caroline, one where she only left her apartment for work and only left her bed to eat or use the bathroom. She'd cancelled on her friends, let her carefully maintained appearance go and left her apartment to grow dusty and grimy.
After she'd cancelled on him twice, Klaus had turned up at her apartment with a sketchpad and his various streaming services, ready to be added to her devices. They'd camped out on her bed until she could face the idea of moving to her couch, shoving off the piles of unfolded laundry.
Once she was able to stomach having a person around for more than two hours, he'd gone on Youtube, watched videos on how to clean and scrubbed a shower for the first time in his life. He'd done such a poor job that he'd given himself a chemical burn and Caroline had had to do it properly, but she'd turned down his offer to hire a cleaning service.
That night, she had drawn up a to-do list using his Derwent graphite, but he had let it go because he'd caught a glimpse of her old spark. Playing to his talents, Klaus had been entrusted with handling her laundry, putting it away according to a colour scheme and then researching therapists for Caroline. He'd also taken the initiative of booking her into a day spa and buying a dozen design magazines to help her get her creative juices flowing again.
The hot oil treatment hadn't cured her depression and the French manicure hadn't chased away her anxiety, but the grooming had helped her get to a better place to get her life back on track.
His lack of judgement had also led to her being more open about her issues, trusting him not to panic when her saw her prescription medications and to accept that this would always be a part of her life.
She told him she loved him the day she realised that she could casually talk about her depression to him, or that she could have a meltdown and that he wouldn't try to fix her but would offer to help or to just let her spiral for a little while before asking her whether she wanted to cook or get takeout.
He told her he loved her the day he realised that she made him a better person, that in order to deserve an amazing woman, he'd had to grow up, to stop relying on money to shield him from life and actually learn how to take care of himself without the comfort of a shiny machine and priority shipping from Amazon.
Neither of them were perfect by any means, but they were perfect for each other.
That's why Klaus kisses her gently and is happy to hold her tight until she could bring herself to get up. Stretching at her stomach rumbles and he suggests she pick a restaurant for them to grab a late lunch and she's rolling her eyes fondly as she reaches into her closet, grabbing an outfit and tossing it onto the bed as she heads into the shower.
He guesses that she'd be exhausted tonight, this late lunch would have to double as an early dinner and if she had any alcohol, it would probably hit her harder than it usually did.
He'd have to remember to pick up the slack tonight.
It was still miles better than spending time with his family.