"I should go," Caroline said a little reluctantly. "I was supposed to be meeting Elena and Bonnie here and they're waiting for me."
"And not-your-boyfriend over there looks like he's about two seconds from coming over here and killing me for talking to you," Klaus commented.
"Could you stop calling him that?" She asked in an annoyed tone.
Of course he'd just had to go piss her off right when she was starting to think that she might be able to let herself have feelings for him.
"Why?" He questioned with that smirk that she hated so much. "I mean he isn't your boyfriend, as much as he hates to admit that."
"Yeah, and neither are you," Caroline pointed out defensively. "And I think you hate admitting it a hell of a lot more than he does…" She paused for a moment before adding, "This is why I can't let myself have feelings for you. It's like there are two completely versions of you. It's like Nik Mikaelson is this sweet, decent guy that- okay, maybe I could see myself with. But then as soon as I think that, the walls go up and the Klaus Morgan side always shows up again. Too bad he's an arrogant jerk that I could never let myself be with."
"I can't always have my walls down and be open with everyone," He told her.
"That doesn't mean that you have to be a jerk to everyone all the time," She pointed out. "You could at least pretend to even remotely like my friends or try to get along with them."
"There are two versions of you too," Klaus told her. "There's the strong and guarded, defensive Caroline that doesn't let anyone walk over her or get in her way. And then there's the Caroline that cares so much about other people and is so easy to talk to… I like both versions of you, too bad you can't say the same thing."
Caroline didn't know what to say, so she sat there for a few seconds longer in a stunned silence before she muttered, "I should really go."
"So should I," He agreed as she moved to get up.
The pair walked over to the table where Bonnie, Elena, and Kol were all sitting. Kol almost instantly got up when he saw the look on his older brother's face.
As he stood, he leaned to whisper in Caroline's ear, "He's been drawing you."
The blonde shot him a questioning look, but didn't ask for any further information since Klaus and her friends were standing right there.
As she sat down, Kol shot her a departing smirk on his way as he followed Klaus to another table a safe distance away.
Once he was out of earshot, Bonnie asked, "So what was with that hug?"
Caroline shut her eyes and inhaled deeply before opening them again. Now that she knew that her friends had seen it, she was a little embarrassed about how eagerly she had hugged Klaus.
"It was just a hug," She defended, although she knew that her friends weren't going to give up that easily. "I hadn't seen him since-" She quickly cut herself off. "I just hadn't seen him in a while."
"You mean since he was all mopey and drunk?" Elena asked, although the question was clearly rhetorical.
"Or was it when he explained the reason that he was getting wasted to you and nobody else, even though there are pictures of it all over the internet with people trying to figure out what's going on," Bonnie added.
"And whatever it is you don't even trust us with it," Elena pointed out. "Besides the fact that it was definitely not 'just a hug'."
"We're just friends, okay?" Caroline questioned. "Now I vote for a subject change."
That night Caroline had a strangely difficult time falling asleep, since she was too busy thinking about what Klaus had said about liking both sides of her and what Kol had said about Klaus apparently drawing her.
She felt bad for getting mad at Klaus at the Grill, but at the same time he needed to stop treating her friends like that.
The next day, Klaus was sitting at the Mystic Grill in the hopes of running into Caroline. When she walked inside, he began to speak to her as soon as she was within earshot.
"I have a proposition for you."
"And what would that be?" Caroline asked as she turned to look at him with a slight smile.
"You want me to get along with your friends?" He asked. "Fine, then how about you tell me a time and place. I'll show you just how friendly I can be, even to Tyler."
He called the lapdog by his name, since he knew that it would make Caroline happier and more likely to agree.
She debated for a second before a grin broke out on her lips and she told him, "Monday, I'll text you when."
Later that day, Kol was wandering around town looking for something entertaining to do and eventually just ended up in the Mystic Grill, where he noticed Jeremy playing a game of pool by himself. He headed over to the pool table to go talk to him.
When Jeremy noticed the Mikaelson lingering nearby, he coldly asked, "What do you want?"
Kol hesitated for a moment before telling him, "I'm sorry about yesterday… I didn't know that you used to do drugs... I also didn't know that Elena was your sister, or that she would react that way."
"Well that's me, ex-junkie loser with a sister who tries to be my parent," Jeremy commented as he took another shot. "But, hey, at least I don't hit on whole tables of people at once."
The youngest Gilbert had been trying to get Kol to go away, but instead the Mikaelson cracked a grin at his comment.
"It could have been worse. At least I didn't just use one line on everyone," Kol said in an amused tone.
Jeremy laughed a little despite himself before he asked, "Do you want to play?"
"Sure," Kol responded. "I don't have anything better to do."
"Thanks," Jeremy said in a sarcastic tone as his smile widened a little.
When Monday came around, Rebekah couldn't stand the girls at school for any longer. So at lunch time, when an especially annoying girl sat down next to her and started trying to suck up to her while insisting that she introduce her to Klaus, the blonde snapped.
"Why don't you just introduce yourself to him and get out of my face?" Rebekah demanded angrily, her voice loud enough to gather the attention of everyone else in the cafeteria. When she noticed everyone else staring, she decided to address the rest of the room as well. "In case you people haven't figured it out yet, I'm not planning on ever introducing any of you to my brother, especially when all you do is pester me about it. Personally, I think that you should all just leave him the hell alone. But if you want to meet him so badly, why don't you just go talk to him for yourself? It's not like he's hiding. And I certainly won't be putting in a good word for any of you annoying little pests. So why don't you retreat back to your group of bottom-feeding friends and leave me alone?"
The girl, Rebekah thought that her name was Tiki, rolled her eyes and walked away as groups of people began to whisper to each other.
"I'm so sick of all of these bitches that won't leave me alone," Rebekah muttered under her breath.
"Actually, I'm pretty sure that the only bitch here is you," Stefan commented before getting up and walking over to Caroline's table to go sit down next to Matt.
Rebekah gritted her teeth as she heard the girls at the next table laughing loudly as they whispered about her. She stood up to storm out of the lunchroom, leaving her food behind.
On her way out, she heard one of the girls saying, "She thinks that she's so special just because her brother's famous."
Rebekah kept walking, unable to get out of the cafeteria fast enough.
When school was finally over, Rebekah rushed home after a long and painful afternoon. She closed the door and leaned back against it, shutting her eyes and sighing heavily as she tried to keep the tears from forming.
"What's your problem?"
She looked up to see Kol standing a few feet away from her with a smirk on his lips.
"Did some other girl at school where the same shirt as you?" He asked in an amused tone. "Or, I know, someone must have told you that they don't like your shoes."
"Go to Hell, Kol," Rebekah told him angrily.
The last thing that she needed at that point was her youngest brother mocking her.
"That's not very nice," He commented in an amused tone. "I think that someone owes me an apology… Just because you're having your little female meltdown over a broken nail or whatever it is, that doesn't mean that I should get in trouble for it."
"Everything's always a joke with you, isn't it, Kol?" She questioned. "Even when you're the only one laughing."
With that, she turned around and opened up the door to walk right back out.
Once she was gone, Kol frowned to himself. He'd just been teasing his sister; he hadn't been expecting her to get that upset over it.
"What's he doing here?" Tyler asked as Klaus approached the table.
"I invited him," Caroline answered before her tone turned more warning. "So play nice."
She hadn't told her friends beforehand, since she thought that it would impair her ability to actually convince them to show up… Or at least her ability to make one of them show up…
Klaus smiled at Caroline as he sat down at the table where she, Elena, Bonnie, and Tyler were already seated.
Rebekah knew that she couldn't stay at home and listen to Kol's constant taunting and she ended up wandering on foot until she found herself at the Mystic Grill, hoping that the bartender was willing to serve girls who were underage.
She got about two steps inside before a couple of guys from school that had been on their way out stopped to smirk at her and ask, "What are you doing here, princess? Everybody knows that you don't have friends, not even Stefan Salvatore anymore, because you're just sooo much better than all of the rest of us."
Her friend snickered and added, "How long do you think it'll be before your brother becomes completely irrelevant and you're just another peasant like us?"
When the pair exited the Grill, Rebekah remained frozen in place as she tried desperately to hold back the tears.
Klaus was laughing at a story that Elena was telling about how Caroline had bossed everyone around while they were organizing a school dance, when his gaze flickered past the door of the restaurant.
Even in that tiny glimpse, he'd been able to recognize the look on his sister's face from across the large room. A frown quickly covered his grin as he, without a word, got up and headed over to her.
"What happened?" He asked her quietly.
Rebekah blinked, trying to stop the tears in her eyes from falling as she responded, "Everyone hates me… Even Stefan now."
"Don't you think that you're being a tad dramatic?" He asked in a gentle tone. "You know that's not true."
"Yes, it is," She said more urgently. "Ever since you came back to town, people at school have been driving me insane. And now they're acting like I'm such a horrible monster just because I don't want to give them your number, or introduce them to you, or tell them your secrets. And now they all hate me and Stefan hates me for yelling at them and I don't have a single friend or even a single person who can stand me at that school."
Her words were like a blow to the gut to Klaus as he realized that this was his fault.
"I'm sorry," He said as he pulled his sister in for an embrace.
"Why does everyone have to be so horrible?" She asked as she let her head rest on her brother's chest.
"I don't know," Klaus told her honestly. "Do you want to go home?"
"No," Rebekah said sternly. "Kol's being even more of a jerk than usual. If I go home then I'm just letting people scare me off so that I can get mocked by my own brother instead."
"So then do you want us to get a new table or come back with me to Caroline's?" He asked her as he released her from his grip.
"Great, my options are to either sit with my brother and prove that I have no friends or sit with a bunch of people who hate me and wouldn't want me there anyways," Rebekah muttered sarcastically.
Klaus chuckled a little, only to receive a glare from his younger sister.
He remained smirking a little as he said, "Sorry… But you do have to choose an option at some point, instead of just complaining about every one that I give you."
"Fine, we'll go sit with Caroline and her stupid friends," Rebekah grumbled unenthusiastically.
When Klaus returned to the table and Rebekah sat down next to him, no one made any comment about it. Instead, they tried to quickly eliminate the awkward silence as Bonnie asked Tyler about their last football game.
Klaus didn't hear any of the other man's response, possibly because he was too distracted by his upset sister or maybe because he just really didn't care.
He, however, had no problem hearing it when the girl who had been bothering Rebekah at lunch walked past their table and loudly said, "I'm surprised that Rebekah's even gracing them with her presence, considering she thinks that she's so much better than everyone just because of who her brother is. Like that should just make us all worship her."
"She's probably just trying to guard her brother from all of us 'bottom-feeding pests'," The girl that was walking with her agreed with a laugh.
Rebekah sensed what was coming from how rigid her brother's body language went before he even turned around.
"Nik, don't," She told him.
Klaus, who had already turned halfway around, ignored his sister's plead.
"Actually," He said in an angry growl that Caroline hadn't ever heard anything even remotely close to out of him. "My sister doesn't think that she's better than all of you." He stood up out of his chair and was standing with his face so close to one of the girls' faces that she was flinching back from his words. "And the fact that she didn't even want you to know that she was related to me probably means that she isn't trying to use that to make you treat her any differently. And do you want to hear the really ironic thing? Rebekah is better than you people, but she's too busy worrying about what you think of her to even realize that."
"Nik, stop!" Rebekah hissed at him angrily. Although she had missed her brother's protectiveness, she also despised it in that moment.
Klaus glanced down at her for an instant before his eyes flickered back up and he told the girls, "But why don't you go back to trying to deflect your superiority complex onto my sister if that's what you find interesting in your pathetic little lives."
With that he turned and sat back down as the girls walked away, whispering to each other.
Rebekah frowned as she thought to herself that all that Klaus had done was made things worse for her. She figured that now they were just going to claim that she needed to hide behind her brother and have him fight her battles for her because she was too weak to even do so herself.
A few seconds of thick silence passed before Bonnie commented, "Tiki's always been a bitch. Remember when she used to torture Elena?"
"Yeah, until you confronted her about it. Then she just started calling you the Wicked Bitch of the West," Elena responded with a slight laugh.
"Good thing someone gave her the nickname of Pukezilla and got the whole school talking about that instead," Tyler commented with a smirk, causing Caroline to burst into laughter.
Klaus smirked over at her since she was clearly the culprit.
"People just needed something else to talk about, so I thought that reminding everyone of the story of Pukezilla would be a nice change of discussion," Caroline responded with an innocent shrug. "And that's still the freaking grossest field trip that I've ever been on." She turned to face Rebekah and Klaus before adding, "When we were in elementary school, our class went on this field trip to the museum where Tiki projectile vomited all over the teacher about ten minutes after we got there. It was so disgusting."
Rebekah smirked a little and was surprised to find that she was actually enjoying listening to the conversation that Caroline and her friends were having.
A/N: Please read and review! Sorry again for the long wait, but look a longer chapter! And the next chapter should be up way sooner because I have a new goal of finishing off all of my current fanfictions during the month of October so that I can write a novel for NaNoWriMo without having to worry about leaving my fanfictions abandoned. And when December rolls around I'll be back again to write a new fanfiction. I hope that you guys enjoyed the chapter and thanks so much for reading! :)
Another really big extra special thanks goes out to all of the amazing reviewers of the last chapter: Draco-Harry-Lover-1, Mystery Girl3, Iansarmy, EmmaRedVelvet, ferrylis, LitLover 101, klaroline4everlove, MyloveforKlaroline, mi ff29, NikMik, gooddame, jessnicole, and Pagan-Angel13
REVIEW ANSWERS:
Mystery Girl3, klaroline4everlove and IansArmy: There is way more Klaroline on the way. :)
NikMik: This one is longer and I think that the next one should be too :)
gooddame: Aww thanks. And I'm really glad that you like it :)