In which Caroline's pretty sure that Klaus and her got their wires crossed on this whole 'marriage-of-convenience' thing.
Okay, fun fact #1 you should probably know about me is that I'm crazily addicted to Tamil soap operas. They're misogynistic as hell and they use the same plots over and over again (with the same few actors and actresses, believe me) but I can't seem to stop watching them and this (and probably the next few) are just inspired by some of the scenes that I've been watching.
Oh, and yes, I am giving the whole present tense thing again another whirl because I had so much fun with it in the last drabble.
And FYI, this is actually the shortest drabble I think I've written and I still managed to get to 2K which makes me feel very happy and I may have a problem.
Caroline sighs as she looks up at the stars. She fans herself once, twice and then three times, inwardly cursing Klaus. The heat is clinging to her skin and she's stuck on this stupid porch and she hates life even more than usual.
Finally, he pulls his motorbike up to the curb and parks it, swinging off one leg at a time, slinging his bag over one shoulder. His eyes widen just the slightest when he sees her, but beyond that, he doesn't display any curiosity as to why she is lounging on the porch like it's that teal sofa she was admiring in IKEA the other weekend.
"Where the hell have you been?" She growls, patience officially depleted. "How long do you expect me to wait for you?"
Klaus scowls (because while her bossy attitude was interesting and adorable at first, it got old seriously quick). "Who asked you to wait for me? I gave you a set of keys for this precise reason."
The way he looks at her, like she's stupid – it's so insulting, is it any wonder that she simply has to talk back?
Caroline scoffs. "If I had the keys on me, do you really think I'd be waiting out here for you?" She grimaces. "Forgot them when I left in the morning."
She hates to admit when she's made a mistake.
But seriously, why else would she be loitering on the damned porch at ten at night?
Klaus softens. "You forgot your keys? You should've called, love."
Caroline rolls her eyes. "Oh, please, like you would've rushed home if I had." She says, tartly.
Klaus snorts. "Rushed home? I was thinking more along the lines of coming back tomorrow." He mocks.
Prick.
Caroline pushes down a sound of outrage. She grits her teeth instead. "Just… open the door." She orders, blue-green eyes flashing with a frustration that informs him that she's in no mood for his brand of sarcasm.
"Don't think I'm one of those boys you can just order around, sweetheart," He warns, but stalks past her anyway.
He holds his key fob to the intercom system outside the double doors. There is a shrill beep and a sharp hiss and the doors swing open. Caroline grimaces and shoves past him, entering the apartment complex.
It isn't a giant apartment, just a studio, with a door opening into a hallway, a kitchen and bathroom on either side, which opened into a large bedroom, but it is more than big enough for one person or happily-married two people (as they were pretending to be – because apparently Caroline did something incredibly awful to someone in a past life and she's paying for her sins right the fuck now).
It is an unfortunate consequence of their agreement that they are forced to share Klaus' small-but-voguish apartment – at least for the near future. But, honestly, the one million she would get at the end of the year would be enough to start her event-planning business and for that, she could and would stomach Klaus' miserable attitude – no matter how much he made her want to claw her eyes out. And it wasn't like he was getting nothing out of the deal – his crazy mother (whom Caroline thought was a total Norma Bates type) added a clause in her will that Klaus couldn't get a share of his family's wealth without getting married (and for some reason, he was the only sibling with that stipulation, even though Kol was a way bigger manwhore than him any day) and that was where Caroline had unfortunately gotten involved in things.
She waits impatiently (can't he tell by the bouncing of her feet?) as he unlocks the door and storms inside, dropping her handbag in a heap on the hall table beside the front door. She is looking at something on her phone as she walks further into the apartment, so she can be excused for not seeing Klaus' back as she rams straight into him.
"What the hell?" She mutters in anger, opening her mouth to say something along the lines of what moron just randomly stops in the middle of the hallway like that?
But, unfortunately, she doesn't get to, because at that moment, he turns on her, his jaw twitching in anger (and it is a nice jaw, actually, strong with rough, golden stubble – not that she was looking or anything, because he's just her benefactor, nothing more).
"Who did you give your keys to?" He asks, his voice clipped.
Caroline frowns – what an odd question. "No one. Why?"
Klaus' smile is grim. "See for yourself." He says, dramatically, sweeping to the side.
Caroline wants to tell him that just because he looks like some cheesy 80s movie villain, doesn't mean he has to actually act like one, but all of her witty comebacks (which were totally awesome, by the way) suddenly die in her throat when she finally sees the bedroom.
"Holy crap." She breathes.
Because what else is she supposed to say when the bedroom is covered (head to toe, God's honest truth) in rose petals. They are literally strewn everywhere. Across the carpet, over the bedspread, everywhere. There are candles burning along the four walls. There's a champagne bucket, water already condensing on the rim, accompanied by two glasses.
Are those chocolate-covered strawberries?
Righteous anger curdles inside her and she rounds on him, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, blue-green eyes disbelieving.
"You-you… you pervert!" She shrieks.
"What?" Klaus snaps.
"You think just because I agreed to pretend to be your wife for a year, I'll just… what? Put out?" She seethes. "Look, yes, I may have agreed to this dumb Harlequin idea of a marriage so I can get a million dollars for my business, but I draw the line at having sex with you for money, you pig."
"What?"
This time, his voice is almost embarrassingly high-pitched.
"How long, huh?" She demands. "How long have you been planning this cheap wedding night fantasy plan, you creep?"
The way he recoils, it would be amusing if she weren't ready to haemorrhage.
"Look," Her hands her on her hips. "Touch me, and I will-I will literally rip it off with my bare hands." She threatens.
There is no question about what it is.
"Oh, please," He scowls. "You touch me and I may have to go find one of those chemical showers."
Oh, hell no.
His eyes dawn with some confusing realisation. "Now, everything makes sense."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Now I understand why you were so keen to move out of the mansion and back into my apartment. Don't try that innocent babe in the woods act on me. I see right through it." He wags his finger like he's figured everything out. "You're the one that demanded that we come and live in my apartment because you were afraid that my family would realise that this whole marriage was for show if we stayed too long with them. Like a fool, I believed you. But now I realise, you were only trying to get me alone so you could get me under your thumb. Well, I'm not the kind of guy whose head turns by a pretty face, love."
"Oh, shut up!" Caroline snaps, practically jumping on her feet. She shoves past him, knocking into his shoulder, and throws open the drawer of the hall table. She snatches her keys up and storms back over, jingling her keys in his face pointedly. "See, my keys have been here the entire fucking day. So, how the hell would I have locked the door from the outside? But yours have been with you. Ergo, you planned this."
"Who, me?"
"What, you think by putting the blame on me, I'll just get scared. Please."
"You think I did this?"
"Of course, who else?"
"Listen, love, don't just pass the back to cover up your own tracks."
"Oh, my God, do you even hear yourself? Look, you don't know me very well, but as angry as I am right now, I could kill you right now."
Her phone rings shrilly and she curses, walking back over to her handbag and reaching for her phone. She frowns at the display. Katherine always did know the best time to call. She answers it and greets her friend abruptly, glaring at Klaus as she does so.
"Did you have to call right now? We're kind of fighting, you know." She growls. "Do we really have to talk at this moment? Can't it wait for tomorrow?"
"Come on, Care. Tonight's not the night for fighting," Caroline can practically hear Katherine's eyebrows waggling.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Tonight's your do-over wedding night." Katherine beams like she's just announced she bought Caroline a BMW and totally not just ruined her life.
"What?"
The shriek makes Katherine wince into the phone.
"Wait," Caroline's eyes dawn with horror. "Did you set this up?"
"Who else?" Katherine scoffs.
Caroline closes her eyes. Shit.
"I was going to tell you beforehand, but I thought just leaving it for you to find be more romantic and all that jazz."
She will kill Katherine tomorrow.
"Enzo and I did it together. Seeing as you and Klaus just eloped like a bunch of high-schoolers, we wanted to do something nice for our bestie,"
Scratch that, she will kill Katherine and Enzo tomorrow.
"Okay, look, we went to a lot of trouble to set all of that up, so like don't screw it all up by having sex on the floor or anything, okay? Cause we both know champagne turns you on."
"Oh, my God, Kat," Caroline hisses, shooting Klaus a nervous look, hoping like hell he hadn't heard what Katherine had just said.
Katherine laughs that kitten-purr laugh of hers. "Come on, Care, he's your husband; he should know by now what gets you going."
Caroline rolls her eyes.
"Who the hell asked you to do any of this?" She growls.
Katherine sighs. "Care, you had your wedding night under a roof where your husband's numerous siblings were staying, I'm doing you a solid."
"How did you even get in here?" Caroline demands.
"We got the keys from your next-door neighbour," Katherine says, lightly, and honestly she should've seen this coming because it is right up Katherine's alley. "She was very accommodating." She pauses. "I think she was into Enzo. Of course, she was like forty-four and in Juicy sweatpants."
"Fuck, Kat, now I have to hear all kinds of crap from Klaus about this," She snaps. "Next time, can you please just ask me? Or tell me, so I can do damage control." A frustrated noise leaves her throat. "I'm putting the phone down now."
She ends the call and throws the phone back into her handbag unceremoniously. She looks down at the floor, but there is no way in hell that Klaus is simply going to leave it just like that. He struts over to her, smugly.
"So, did we get confirmation that it was your friend who set this up?"
No one that handsome has any right to be that much of an arse.
Caroline grimaces. "Sorry," She says, incredibly reluctantly.
"Just sorry?"
"It was Kat and Enzo's fault!" Caroline argues. "They're insane and stupid. What can I do about that?"
"And all your threats about castration and murder?" Klaus asks, mockingly.
"Yeah, I'll murder her and castrate Enzo." Caroline mutters. "Just wait until I get my hands on them." She stomps her foot. "Look, I said I'm sorry! Can you just drop it?"
She storms past him into the bedroom and immediately starts swiping at the rose petals with her feet.
"Oh, so you say sorry and I'm just supposed to let it go?" Klaus shakes his head. "Of all the women I could've made this agreement with, I had to pick a mental asylum escapee."
She lunges for the champagne bottle, ready to chuck it at his head, before thinking better of it and puts it back in the ice bottle. Why waste a perfectly good bottle on his thick skull anyway?
Somewhere in between cleaning up the rose petals, they start throwing them at each other, irritation beginning anew. In her defence, he started it first when he shook out the bedspread in her face.
One particularly aggressive sweep of the broom and he growls in her face, his blonde curls streaked with red.
"Do that again and I'll-"
"Well, don't just leave all the rubbish on my side then!"
She chucks a strawberry at him.
"Caroline!"
"I have to sleep!" She defends.
Although maybe, just maybe, that was her venting some of her frustration.
"Not even two billion dollars is worth this kind of torture," Klaus groans. "I should've just let my mother give it all to charity. At least, it would've counted as a good deed."
She lunges for the champagne bottle again.