Three days had gone by and Tyler still hadn't said a word to Caroline. She understood that maybe he needed his space, but she still couldn't help but worrying about him.

When they passed in the hallways or when lunch time came, Tyler would barely even glance her way and it was starting to drive her more than a little insane. She decided that if it lasted for much longer that she was going to have to confront him about it.

When Kol arrived at Jeremy's house, the other man was still wearing his work clothes since he had barely made it home from working at the Mystic Grill.

"I'm going to go take a quick shower before we go," Jeremy told him as the pair stood in his room. "Do you think that you can handle staying in here without breaking anything?"

"No guarantees," Kol responded with an innocent shrug and smile.

Jeremy seemed to take that answer as being good enough, since he left Kol there unattended anyways.

When Jeremy returned to his room a few minutes later with just a towel wrapped around his waist, Kol was lying comfortably on his new friend's bed.

Kol glanced over at where the other man was grabbing himself some clothes and instantly regretted it… Regret might not be the right word, since he couldn't quite make himself regret getting to see the few drops of water that had dripped from Jeremy's hair sliding along the bare muscles of his chest.

Kol quickly turned his gaze away and mentally scolded himself for thinking like that, especially about the only friend that he had in this town.

He hadn't had thoughts like that about another guy in a long time; his father had made sure of that after he had found Kol making out with another guy back in early high school.

But still, there was something about Jeremy that had brought those kinds of thoughts back to the surface. It probably had something to do with the way that Kol had been drawn to him like a magnet since the first time that the other man had said a single word to him.

"So where are we going?" Jeremy asked, causing Kol to sit up and look at him once again.

At least the younger man had pants on now, but his chest was still completely exposed and this time Kol was having a much more difficult time trying to convince himself to look away.

He knew that Jeremy was expecting him to answer, but he was having trouble forming a cohesive thought while the other man looked at him expectantly with his shirt sitting in his hand.

"I don't know," Kol responded dumbly as he tried to telepathically force Jeremy into putting his shirt on before the Mikaelson would end up doing something that he was going to regret later.

Several very long seconds went by before Jeremy finally began to move to pull his arms through the sleeves of his shirt. Unfortunately, it was already too late for that to do any good.

Kol had already lost control of himself and gotten up from the bed, not quite remembering when. He hadn't even realized that he was standing up until he was already standing in front of the other man, stopping him from pulling his shirt over his head with one arm as his lips brought themselves to Jeremy's.

As soon as he realized what he was doing, Kol instantly ripped himself off of the younger man and mumbled, "Shit, sorry."

He quickly turned to head for the bedroom door as he thought to himself just how goddamn stupid that had been.

Jeremy had no idea what to do or say as he stood completely still as his mind made a feeble attempt at catching up with what was going on.

Kol was halfway to Jeremy's bedroom when he froze in his tracks and told himself, "Fuck it."

He'd already screwed things up and if things were going to be awkward and ruined either way, then he wanted to at least get a real kiss out of it.

Before Jeremy even had the chance to react, although his brain didn't seem to be trying to do a whole lot of that anyways, Kol had crossed back across the room and brought one hand to grip the side of Jeremy's face.

As he kissed Jeremy this time, it wasn't a quick little peck like it had been the last time. Instead, Kol was going all out, pouring every ounce of emotion and lust that he had into it.

He was just about to pull away when Jeremy's hand suddenly came up to hold Kol's in place as he began to eagerly kiss back.

By the time that Jeremy's mind managed to whirr back into action, it was already too late to even try to deny to himself that he was more than enjoying this.

Caroline was sitting in the Mystic Grill, next to Klaus at a table with Elena and Bonnie. She was surprised by how well they were getting along, but didn't get to think about it for long before someone came and interrupted it.

Klaus could tell that there was something wrong the instant that he saw his youngest brother heading their way. Kol's whole demeanor was uncharacteristically serious.

"Have you seen this?" Kol asked as he shoved an open magazine in front of his half-brother. Kol had been able to clearly tell that Klaus hadn't seen it when he'd walked in, but he still had to ask.

Klaus looked down at the magazine article in front of him and froze, feeling the colour draining from his face and his breathing become laboured. The article was titled 'Does Klaus Morgan Think He Killed His Brother?'.

"It's everywhere," Kol said as he nervously watched his brother.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Klaus noticed that Caroline had grabbed hold of his hand, but he was too pre-occupied with staring at the article in front of him to really react to it.

As he skimmed through it, he saw that it claimed that it had gotten all of its information from one of Klaus Morgan's brothers. As he continued to skim he saw that there was everything about Henrik's death and the fact that the driver was his biological father.

Caroline saw Klaus tensing even further and gently squeezed his hand wishing that there was something, anything, more that she could do to help him. Instead, she just gripped his hand and watched him as he read.

As Klaus's eyes reached the bottom of the page, he was shocked to find a picture of himself and Henrik. He knew that he should be even more furious at Finn for giving the press any pictures of Henrik, but as he stared down at the picture, he actually felt a little bit of his anger dissipating. He hadn't looked at any pictures or any of Henrik's old stuff in so long because he had thought that it would only make things that much more difficult.

But instead of feeling worse, Klaus actually found himself developing the tiniest of smiles as he remembered the day that the picture had been taken, a few months before Henrik's death.

It had been Kol's birthday and he had gotten a new camera, which he was effectively driving the majority of the family completely insane with.

Rebekah had already run off and locked herself in her room in order to get away from Kol and his constant following her around taking pictures of her just to annoy her. Elijah and Finn had both humoured their younger brother, Elijah until Kol got bored and Finn until he got annoyed enough to threaten breaking the camera if Kol didn't leave him alone.

Henrik seemed to be just as excited as Kol had been, following him around even after having already gotten his picture taken a few dozen times.

When Kol began to ambush Klaus outside, the older Mikaelson had decided to go for the approach of completely ignoring Kol in the hopes that he would go away.

It didn't appear to be working as Kol complained, "Come on, Nik. You could at least smile."

"I don't smile," Klaus responded, mostly just to get on his brother's nerves a little in return.

"Come on, Nik," Henrik had said eagerly as he had run over to his favourite brother. "Take a picture with me."

"Fine," Klaus grumbled, making a show of sounding a lot more upset about it than he really was. "I guess I could take one with you."

Klaus continued his show of being angry about it right up until the last second when Kol was about to take the picture.

After the picture was taken, Henrik immediately ran over to Kol, wanting to get a look at the picture that he and his brother had just taken. When he saw the picture and the face that his brother had been making behind him, Henrik instantly turned back to look at Klaus.

"That's not fair, you didn't tell me that you were going to make a stupid face," Henrik accused him. "I bet that I can make a funnier face than you can."

"Is that a challenge?" Klaus had asked him with a tilted smirk.

The next five minutes were spent taking countless photographs of Klaus and Henrik making the worst faces that they could think of.

When they finally stopped, too busy laughing to even try and think of another face, Kol went back through the pictures to show them just how absolutely hideous and ridiculous they had made themselves look.

"My faces were funnier," Henrik had decided, seeming to think that he was the authority on the situation. "I win."

"Well that's just because you're funny looking," Klaus said, grabbing his youngest brother from behind and lifting him up into the air.

Henrik had begun to giggle and shriek happily the instant that his feet had left the ground.

"Put me down, Nik!" He shouted as he flailed about, laughing all the while.

Klaus began to laugh along with him as he said, "I think we need a new contest, one that you don't get to judge… I'll race you to the park."

When he had put Henrik down, Klaus let him have a several second head-start before he had begun to chase after him, ultimately letting his little brother win the race whether he was faster or not.

"Finn's an ass, but at least he chose a good picture," Kol commented, hoping to ease at least a little of the tension. "He easily could have chosen one of those god-awful ones of you two trying to make the stupidest faces possible."

"I didn't even know that you took that," Klaus told his brother as he stared down at the image of himself holding Henrik, each of them with a big grin plastered on their faces.

"Well that's probably because you were a little distracted by the very loud, flailing six-year old in your arms," Kol commented in a slightly amused tone.

"True," Klaus agreed. He was glad to have Caroline's hand in his as he absent-mindedly stroked it.

Caroline was surprised by how well he was handling things as Klaus himself was surprised by the amount of relief that he felt at having people know. He had expected so much worse whenever he had considered the possibility of other people finding out about Henrik.

Klaus's feeling of relief at having people know was quickly destroyed before the day had even ended. He had grown far too used to being stared at and having a few brave people come up to attempt to ask him about it.

Less than a week had gone by before it became unbearable for Klaus, who very much regretted going to the school parking lot and ensuring that people felt comfortable approaching him whenever they felt like it. Sure, he was glad that he had helped his sister out, but having all of these teenage girls approaching him with questions and attempts at comforting him about what had happened with Henrik was beyond overwhelming. Besides, he hated being seen as some kind of weak, vulnerable creature. It was one thing to let him appear that way around Caroline and his family on occasion, but it was a completely different thing to have the whole town, and probably world, convinced that he was broken.

Caroline hadn't spoken to or seen Klaus since he had left the Mystic Grill after Kol had shown him the article. She was more than a little worried about him, even if his first reaction had seemed to be taking it surprisingly well.

She wanted to give him his space, since he hadn't seemed to have been seeking her out. Plus she didn't want to smother him or assume that it was her job to take care of him when, for all that she knew, he just wanted to remain with his family right now.

At the same time, giving him his space was hard and it was starting to wear away at her a little. She had been forced to stop herself from calling him or going over to his place several times and she found herself spending far too much time absorbed in her concerned thoughts about him.

She desperately wanted to make sure that he was okay, but at the same time didn't necessarily want to admit that she was checking up on him because she was afraid that he would get upset about her seeing his more vulnerable side once again.

But then again, maybe Klaus was just too proud to ask for help and was waiting in the hopes that she would go check on him.

Round and round Caroline's head went and yet she still couldn't make a decision on what to do.

Something had to be wrong, didn't it? After all, she hadn't seen Klaus for several days, which was more than a little rare.

A/N: Please read and review! I don't know how I feel about this chapter, especially the ending. I had to end it there even though I had more written because I'd started the next chunk and it was already getting quite long. I didn't want to cut the next part in half, so I ended this chapter off here. Sorry about how long the update took. I actually had this written for about a month, but just couldn't quite convince myself to edit or post it. Anyways, I hope that you guys liked the chapters and thanks for reading! :) Oh, and I'm not sure if there'll be a sequel or not. I might just add the second part into this story or I might not have it at all, but I'm pretty sure that there's going to be at least a few more chapters to this story than I was expecting.

Another super big extra special thanks goes out to all of the incredible reviewers of the last chapter who helped me to reach over 300 reviews on this chapter and helped motivated me to finally post this chapter: Onceuponatimeships, MyloveforKlaroline, VampireDiariesLuver, arielmermaid, gooddame, Mystery Girl3, redbudrose, Iansarmy, Klaroline-lovegames, edwardsoneandonlylove, klaroline4everlove, EmmaRedVelvet, ferrylis, Draco-Harry-Lover-1, jessnicole, Daw lee, WeasleysGroupie, NikMik, MurphMurph98, yourloved, LitLover 101, Mila, TEHNOvjeverica, meganallenby, and the anonymous guest reviewer

REVIEW ANSWERS:

WeasleysGroupie: I can't really tell you what the plot would be without ruining a bunch of things.

NikMik: You're right. Tyler and Caroline aren't together now, although Tyler would like it if they were.