A/N- Hi. I'm kind of back.
Within their group of friends, parents or any family at all were a rare commodity.
Caroline's mom was in Mystic Falls, which wasn't exactly the hardest trek in the world if she wanted to visit her daughter, she could have easily made the trip to New Orleans, but every Thanksgiving, Sheriff Forbes was working and apparently, there was enough crime in the small town of one thousand people that she couldn't hop on a plane and come see her daughter for the weekend.
Stefan's mother had run off with her lover and some bizarre polyamorous group when he was ten and he'd never heard from her again, meanwhile, his father was an asshole who tried using his money to control his sons and when that hadn't worked, kicked them both out of home.
Marcel wouldn't even speak of his father, except he'd dropped enough hints for Caroline to suspect that he was either dead or had a restraining order against him. Hayley and Jackson were orphans, Davina was already making plans to move in with Josh, whose own parents had kicked him out for being gay.
Caroline had to wonder if like attracted like.
This was why when Klaus' brother came to town, nobody thought it strange when he dropped off the map for a few days, they figured that he was either spending time with Elijah, or spending his free time dealing with having his brother in town.
They had no practical experience for family visits, but they hypothesised that they were emotionally and probably physically exhausting, so even though Caroline lived in the same building as him, and had a key to his apartment, she hadn't seen him in days now.
And was feeling every spare second of it.
He was her best friend and not being able to send him messages through the day, random thoughts, memes, links to events or articles that might interest him was hard. She literally had to stop herself from picking up the phone to contact him.
She could have just sent those same messages to another one of her friends, but it wasn't the same, she could predict Klaus' response and knew a rough approximation of his schedule and could guestimate when he would respond.
During the rare occasions when he hadn't lost his phone anyway.
But sitting in her apartment on a Saturday morning, on the rare weekend day when she didn't have something planned with her friends, made her realise how much time she had been setting aside for her best friend and how that must have isolated her.
Perhaps that was why, when she answered her door to find Katerina Petrova on the other side announcing that they were going shopping, she agreed.
Katerina hadn't really merged into the group as Hayley had, but like a few others who orbited their friendship circle, if they had a party or some other event planned, she was on the list of invitees. In fact, she had been steadily climbing up that list until she was the first person they called and had even started bringing her own hangers on.
She wasn't a close friend, but she was guaranteed to be a good time, and right now, Caroline was lonely enough to consider throwing away a Saturday on her.
She'd assumed that Katerina would want to hit up a mall, one of the fancier ones with paid parking and stores the average customer was too intimidated to enter, but instead, they hit up a street market on the fringes of the French Quarter, one that had handmade goods and random trinkets and eccentricities.
They're admiring a range of silver jewellery when Caroline lets her curiosity get the better of her.
"So," she drawls, "Are you and Klaus' brother…?"
Katerina shrugs, "I would like to be but he's currently getting divorced and seems to be focused on whatever toxic relationship he and his brother have, from what I gathered, their father was an asshole and their mother wasn't much better. We had drinks at his hotel bar and I haven't seen him since."
And again, she answers in near fluent if accented English.
Caroline's next question is lost as the stall holder has to ask Katerina where she's from and then make the same interested noise he would have made regardless of her answer.
"As if anyone here could find Bulgaria on a map," she hisses as she takes Caroline's arm and steers her away, "Hell, I can barely find it some days."
It's too early in the day and their friendship to start drinking, but they sit down at the first café with outdoor seating and order coffees.
"I've been sleeping with Stefan." Katerina announces without preamble and Caroline coughs a little in surprise,
"Wow…uh…seriously?!"
She shrugs, "He's cute, if a little…" she hesitates, obviously unable to find the right word this time, "Like a puppy?"
"Naïve?" Caroline suggests.
"That, but he was the one who suggested I invite you out today."
Caroline's not really sure how to respond to that but Katerina continues,
"I like hanging out with men, they flatter me and tell me I'm 'not like other girls'," she pauses to make a face and Caroline feels a stab of sympathy for her and understanding,
"But all the friends I had in Bulgaria and in Paris were men and I came to New Orleans because I wanted a fresh start and to have female friends who don't just want to go out partying with me to attract men, but also hang out with me during the day. I want friends who I know don't want to have sex with me and Stefan clearly thinks you need more female friends too."
She'd had Caroline right up to that point, but even with the idea lingering in the back of her mind that Stefan was so worried about her that he was sending his casual hook-ups out to befriend her, she found herself empathizing with Katerina.
Growing up, she'd had two best friends who she'd thought of as sisters, until they'd got to high school and somehow, between different interests and the stress of grades and college applications, she'd become a third wheel. In college, she'd joined a sorority and become a mother hen to nearly every girl in that house, but then graduation had come along and they'd all moved to different parts of the country.
Here, in New Orleans, she had female work friends that she could grab lunch with, or drinks after hours, there were a few women in their group that she could hang out with at parties or in the bathroom when they were at bars, but no-one she could bitch to when her period was killing her or trade dating disasters with or even just have over for a night of movie and ice-cream.
And until Katerina had pointed it out to her, she hadn't realised just how much she had wanted that.
So, she smiles, "I'm glad you did." she responds.
They don't have much in common, but Katerina knows more about shoes than anyone Caroline has ever encountered and hearing her talk about the process, from the design to the creation, how they built the shoes and how her wardrobe was filled with one off pairs that had been made before the design was scrapped, was fascinating. From there they move on to complaining about some of their co-workers, and Caroline is ranting about one who could never go a day without pointing out that she hadn't had ice-cream in a solid decade when she found out that Katerina had not had Ben & Jerry's yet.
So, from going from a Saturday with absolutely nothing planned, she ends up at Katerina's place, on an uber-trendy couch, with a pint of ice-cream and a movie playing on Netflix.
Neither of them is watching so much as they are making snide comments about it and when Caroline calls out the terrible British accent- one of the benefits of being friends with an actual Brit, she knows a fake accent when she hears one it- Katerina pounces on that.
"You and Klaus are sleeping together, right?"
Caroline swallows the ice-cream in her mouth and tries to answer casually, "We're friends-with-some-benefits."
"So…yes?" Katerina tries to clarify, and she searches for the right response before settling on,
"It's complicated…" and when she realises that's the lamest most overused answer in the history of relationships, she feels herself rambling
"I mean, we're best friends and occasionally we fool around but we only do foreplay, not actual sex and we sleep with other people, which you obviously know..."
She cuts herself off with a large scoop of ice-cream because she's not going to dig her own grave thank-you very much, but she's laid enough of the ground work for Katerina to pick up the shovel.
"You're two gorgeous best friends who do everything but have sex and you've never thought of actually dating one another?" she asks pointedly, and Caroline takes a moment to thank god that she was the daughter of a sheriff who had used the same interrogation tactics on her as she did criminals.
"We have a good thing going, we don't want to screw that up, and besides, we have everything we need from one another, we have fun sex with other people and emotional fulfillment with each other, as best friends do, because we totally don't think of each other in the romantic sense."
She probably should have led with that last part because Katerina has the same look in her eye as a shark sensing blood.
"You know," she begins, taking a victory lick of her spoon, "Klaus and I weren't even three days into our hook-up when he turned down a booty call to go to a museum with you."
"Because we're friends." Caroline tries arguing but it sounds weak, even to her ears.
"He turned down sex with me," Katerina reiterates, "And I am really good at sex by the way, to go and not have sex with you, at a museum."
Caroline doesn't have the right level of self-delusion to keep arguing and honestly, Katerina did say she wanted to be friends.
"Okay, yes, he turned down sex with you to hang out with me and I would have done the same thing even if the sex was guaranteed to be really, really good and if there was ever even the slightest chance that he wanted to be more than friends with me, I would jump on it but he doesn't want that and the longest I've ever seen him interested in a woman is three weeks, with you and I am not going to risk everything we have because I would rather just be friends than lose him completely."
She stops to inhale and closes her eyes, dropping her head back on the couch with a groan,
"This is my life," she declares, "It sounds like a freaking Nicholas Sparks novel, and not even one of the ones adapted into a movie either, one of the less popular ones."
Katerina pats her knee sympathetically, "Do you want to talk about something else? Let me tell you about my younger sister, who not only slept with my boyfriend, but then cheated on him with his brother, whom I also dated and was part of my motivation for leaving Bulgaria forever."
Caroline opens her eyes and raises her eyebrows, "Wow, okay, yes, please."
Stefan wasn't a fully-fledged alcoholic, but he was concerned enough about the number of times he'd blacked out in the past to try and find group activities that didn't revolve around going to bars.
Caroline had taught herself to handle booze well and never allowed herself to drink enough to risk a black out unless she was in super safe situations, but she was a supportive friend, so when he asked for her to help him convince the group to hang out at Marcel's instead of hitting Rousseau's for the third time in a week, she went one further and called for a board game night.
Admittedly, she wasn't the best at board games because she was slightly too competitive and focused on playing by the rules, however, she figured she could be chill for one night, concentrate on having fun instead of winning.
Okay, she was a type-A personality, sue her.
Davina was invested, because while she was allowed into Rousseau's, courtesy of their long patronage and the bartenders knowing that they wouldn't sneak her alcohol, it was boring for her to be the only sober person there as they steadily got drunker and less coherent, but the rest of her friends needed a little more convincing, wanting to know why they couldn't turn it into drinking games, which was concerning, but she put her foot down and went out to buy a copy of Monopoly: New Orleans Edition.
She even turned up at Marcel's early to help him prepare.
"You know," he said as he opened the door, "I've never actually set up for a party before."
"That's because you've never had people over when they were sober," she counters, hip checking him because her hands were full of grocery bags.
"But we're adults and we're going to be mature tonight."
"By playing board games." He counters, and she glares,
"No cupcakes for you." she warns, and he holds up his hands,
"I'm sorry," he offered, grinning widely, "Let's get ready for a super-fun evening!"
He connects her phone to his speakers and lets her choose the playlist, and yes, she might have a playlist specifically for pre-party apartment cleaning, but it works so it's totally not crazy.
When they gathered at Marcel's place, their friends were either pre-gaming, having a party or using it for an after-party, therefore, the concept of cleaning when everyone was going to be spilling food, drinks or making a general mess seemed redundant.
Now, however, he was vacuuming the floors, the couches, wiping down benches as she baked in the kitchen and she could see that even he was warming up to the idea of having friends over for something not alcohol related.
"Caroline Forbes," he says, coming up behind her as she rolled dough on the counter and putting his hands on her shoulders,
"Bringing us into adulthood, one sober event at a time."
"Next, I'll have us discussing our 401k's," she jokes, "Just you wait."
He chuckles and presses a kiss to the back of her head, muttering something she doesn't catch and when she's about to ask him to repeat it, he's already starting to sing along to the music, so she forgets as she joins in.
Davina turns up first with a new board game, still in the packaging which she had gone to a pop culture store to buy and which she had got with the employee discount because the assistant had been 'really, really friendly and helpful'.
Caroline isn't going to be the one to explain why exactly that male service worker had been so friendly, Davina was young, plenty of time enough to make that connection on her own, or she could discover it like Caroline had, that the further away she got from pre-legal age, the more the percentage of those discounts declined.
She'd invited Josh the bartender, who, though he'd come into the group in a less orthodox way, though probably healthier considering he hadn't had sex with any of them, was friendly and easy to get along with. Especially when he realised that the women in the group weren't looking for what he called the 'Gay Best Friend' stereotype. He and Caroline are trying to make game-themed mocktails they found online as the rest of their group filters in, carrying board games or snacks.
And while Klaus had been invited, he'd been growing more and more lackadaisical in his replies and communication until he'd gone radio silent for the better part of a month now. Caroline had only known he was alive because Stefan had gone and banged on his apartment door.
Which maybe Caroline should have done but he'd assured her that he was okay, he'd just lost another phone, was dealing with his brother- who Katerina was starting to meet for semi-regular drinks- and apparently, he just needed time to deal.
And, perhaps part of her was upset that Klaus had needed space not only from their friends, but from her and when working full time, it was easy for the days to blend together and to run out of time or energy to check in with friends, or at least, that was her excuse when she didn't want to admit to herself that she wanted him to miss her enough to seek her out.
They were best friends after all.
Which is why, when he walks in the door, she's so excited and happy that he's finally emerging from his self-imposed exile that she bounds over and throws her arms around him, drawing him in for a hug that has him picking her up and walking them a few paces as he rocks her back and forth,
"I've missed you too, sweetheart."
There's a pointed feminine throat clearing behind them and Caroline has a moment to wonder why Katerina was coming in the front door again when she looks over his shoulder and sees a complete stranger standing there.
Of course.
Klaus might have dropped off his friends' radars for a solid month but apparently, he'd made time for casual hook-ups.
Why would celibacy be part of Klaus' month-long radio silence?
Still, she fixes the smile on her face because that's what she does, "Hi," she greets in a cheerful tone,
"I'm Caroline."
The other woman is blonde haired, blue eyed and with a healthy tan and a perky smile,
"Cami O'Connell, it's so nice to meet you."
She ushers them in and throws back her shoulders, straightening her posture as she did every time she was faced with something that hurt her.
Breathe and move on.
Clapping her hands, she gestures around the room, "We have mocktails, plenty of junk food and board games, I'm sure Klaus can introduce you to everyone."
Everyone who would probably handle his flavour of the week better than she could at the moment.
Except Stefan who comes into the kitchen under the pretext of grabbing himself a glass of water,
"He's not sober." he mutters to her in a quiet aside and Caroline checks her phone for the time,
A little early but not unusual for them.
"He's not paralytic," she argues in his defence, "We said the event was alcohol free, not that our friends couldn't pre-drink."
Stefan lets it go yet Caroline can sense he's annoyed, but she's not going to let anything ruin game night, so she grabs the cupcakes, tells herself firmly that she can have a self-pity spiral when she goes to bed tonight and smiles even wider.
"Who wants to play Monopoly?"
A/N- Thanks for sticking with the story everyone.