11. hello again, friend of a friend (2/3)
title: hello again, friend of a friend (2/3)
fandom: the vampire diaries
characters/pairing: kol/caroline, klaus/caroline, kol/klaus, elijah, rebekah
rating: t
genre: romance, family, humour(ish), crack(ish)
word count: ~5200
spoilers: none.
summary: In which Klaus is unrelenting, Kol is exasperated, and Caroline is stuck in the middle of all of it.
previous chapters: how | very | untimely
notes: I basically rewrote the whole of part two on account of the fact that it was utter shit when I reread it - when I wrote the first time it was hitting 3am, so maybe that was why. Oh well. Hope this version doesn't suck, at least?
AND I KNOW I SAID THIS WAS A TWOSHOT, but as I was rewriting it got too long-again-and I had to break it up-again-but I promise you (again), the next (AND LAST!) chapter will be up very very soon, as soon as I get some sleep and get a chance to reread/reedit because my mind is fried rn.
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hello again, friend of a friend
deux
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Kol used to think that people were born with certain quotas: that their bodies were already programmed with the number of people they'd sleep with, how many shots of tequila it would take to get them completely inebriated, the number of countries they travel to. Since his vampiring however, he's decided that this epiphany is, simply put, a load of shit-until he wakes up one Sunday morning and realizes he's completely reached his quota of humouring Klaus.
"No," he snaps into his pillow, covers wrapped firmly around him. "Not a chance in hell."
"But Kol-" Klaus looks close to tearing his own hair out, "-I'm going to be stuck here. Forever-"
"It cripples me to hear that," Kol replies, eyes still screwed shut, "now go away."
"-an eternity with you."
Grumbling the whole way, Kol drags himself out of bed and shrugs on the first sweater he sees, throwing a curse or two at his already-cursed-enough-thank-you-very-much brother. "When you cross over," Kol declares as he sucks his breakfast from the throat of an unsuspecting commoner in the shadows of an alleyway, "I hope an eternity of damnation awaits you."
Klaus picks an imaginary lint off his sleeve. "Couldn't be worse than watching you guzzle this human."
Kol folds back his upper lip to reveal a fang and kicks the overweight human aside, too frustrated by Klaus to think about killing him. The grass crunches with every step (stamp) he takes and the sky's a doomed shade of grey that he wants to shake his head (fist) at, because Klaus is always particularly worked up about Caroline on days like these.
Useless dead-but-just-won't-die vampires and their equally as useless infatuations.
And when he swoops into the baby vampire's bedroom she has the galls to not be in there-it's eight on a Sunday morning, where in the world could she (or anyone for that matter) be if not still in bed?
He should still be in bed, he fumes, swiping at her lace curtains as it flits delicately across his face.
"She's not here," he says stonily to Klaus, "I'm going home."
Klaus holds out a menacing arm to stop him. "I don't think so. I suggest you go look for her."
"Don't you have some ghostly power for that?" Kol touches down from the roof with a grunt, "Call upon the spirits beyond to help you locate a blonde who doesn't want to be found by you?"
"Ghost GPS doesn't work on the damned," Klaus explains wearily, looking eerily like Mary Poppins as he floats down from the roof.
Kol's eyebrows fuse together in confusion. "GPS?"
"Never you mind," Klaus growls. "Just go find her."
And so Kol does, but not without swinging a sapling futilely into his brother for good measure.
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When Kol finally does find her-behind her house, the last place he'd thought to look despite his superior vampire sleuthing skills-she's in a paint-splattered work shirt, her hair done up in plaits.
"What are you doing?" he asks, hands thrown heavenwards as though she owed it in the weight of the world to explain it to him.
"Painting," Caroline snaps back, equally as exasperated by his presence. "Or did you completely miss this turn of the century creation in your gig being daggered?"
Crossing his arms over his chest, he bites out, "I thought you'd be in bed."
"And I thought you'd actually have the courtesy to ask for permission before barging into my bedroom," she says back, spreading buttercup-yellow paint across the panels of her house. "Guess not."
Kol mutters wordlessly (murderously) at her turned back, and contemplates hurling her off a cliff into a pit of werewolves to save him the trouble-also doing Klaus a favour at the same time, if he thinks about it in a tragic, star-crossed lovers kind of way-but is too dumbfounded by his brother's reaction to Caroline painting to let his fantasies play out.
"Isn't she stunning?" Klaus asks again, that same smile on his face from that fateful night at the bar. "The colour complements her skin so well."
"Oh, shut up," he snaps at (to what Caroline presumes to be) the air, and flashes to where Caroline is to grab a stray paintbrush. "Give me that," he says irritably. "Not courteous of me to let a pretty little thing like you do commoner work." He adds under his breath, "no matter how sharp your tongue might be."
Caroline rolls her eyes. "I don't need your help."
"Clearly," he says pointedly, gesturing at the uneven strokes. "Nik told me you were meticulous-"
"And she is!" Klaus insists from his spot a few feet away from them.
"-doesn't seem that way to me."
"I've got a lot on my mind, alright?" She brandishes her paintbrush at him, unwittingly splattering paint on both of them. "And if you've got a problem with the way I do things, that's your damn problem. I didn't ask you to stay."
"Defuse the situation, Kol," Klaus drawls, stepping closer. "I'm not wasting another day listening to you two bicker instead of finding a way to free me."
Kol glares back, No.
Klaus raises a threatening eyebrow.
Kol brandishes the air with the paintbrush violently.
Caroline tilts her head to the side.
Klaus' lips quirk in the slightest as he says smoothly, "I could compel Damon Salvatore to come over more often."
"Sorry," Kol practically spits out, stabbing the paintbrush into the paint can. "I'd like to stay. And help."
Klaus steps closer menacingly.
"With the most amiable of manners," Kol adds unnecessarily, and Klaus backs away and laens into the tree to admire Caroline better.
Aforementioned Caroline sighs resignedly and brushes her hair out of her eyes, smearing paint across her cheeks in the process. "Not that I could compel you to leave, or anything."
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"Why must you insist," Kol begins as he gives Caroline a leg up, "on subjecting yourself to physical labour when you can just compel lesser beings to do it for you?"
"Sounds like someone's never had a hard day in his life," Caroline sings out as she dabs the finishing touches around the roof shingles.
"I've had several hard days," Kol counters. "Try being daggered for a few centuries and being stuffed in a coffin. My joints were stiffer than Nik's pe-"
"Kol!" Klaus thunders.
"-personality," Kol finishes somewhat lamely.
"Mm," Caroline says, indifferent. "Another few inches, Young Werther."
Kol hoists her up higher and mutters into the back of her calves, "Let me assure you my pains weigh greater than his."
"How so?" she asks with hesitant curiosity. "You've obviously never struggled for something a day in your life-"
"Pushing Rebekah to hurry up with her showers in the morning is a great feat," Kol interjects, and Klaus snorts.
"-and all I ever see you do is shoot pool and get drunk at the Grille," she continues, biting her lower lip as she strains to reach the crevices of her house with her paintbrush.
"You've been watching me?" Kol asks, wary.
"Don't flatter yourself," she says sardonically. "I was just wondering why someone so high and mighty like yourself would choose to mingle with the commoners."
"I get bored," is all he says. "I'm sure you know the feeling."
"And I'm bored right now," Klaus announces. "Hurry it up, why don't you?"
The look Kol shoots at his brother reeks of Shut the hell up, why don't you?
"Stop lumping us together." Caroline grasps the edge of her roof to steady herself. "I think we're done here."
Kol frowns at the unfinished paintjob. "But we're not even halfway done-"
"Trust me, we are." She rounds up her paints and straightens up to look him in the eye. "Wouldn't want you to get bored of little old me."
She's back in her house before Klaus is even done smacking his forehead against the freshly-painted house.
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"I haven't seen much of you lately," Rebekah says one night as they're watching yet another movie (she'd recently discovered a pile of Audrey Hepburn movies in Stefan's DVD collection and was skeptical of how he could idolize her so much, hence the marathons). She looks at him from the corner of her eye and says stiffly, "I miss you."
"Oh Bekah," he sighs, turning off the television just as Holly Golightly says on screen, We don't belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to us. "Who is it now?"
"What makes you think I only seek you out when something goes wrong in my life?" she bites out, nudging an inch or two away from him like a wounded puppy. Tail between her legs.
"Is it Damon?" he asks without skipping a beat. "Or that other Salvatore boy?"
("The one who killed our brother?" he doesn't mention.)
Rebekah looks like she's about to put up a front, but then crumples. "Both."
Slowly, reluctantly, he opens up his arms and his baby sister curls into them, sniffing: "I thought I'd be used to it the second time around, being kicked to the curb for that doppelganger wench. But it still hurts."
Kol says nothing, just strokes her hair like he's seen Klaus do before. He was always the better one when it came to these things.
Very quietly, she says, "I wish Nik were here."
Kol looks up at Klaus, a statue across the room. Their eyes meet, and he says (a little regretfully), "Me too, Bekah."
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"I can't do this anymore," Kol moans, pillow over his face. "I don't know how to bring you up in conversation. I don't know how to make her tell me how she feels for you."
Klaus responds by walking through Kol's bed, which causes the younger Original to slam the pillow at him. Of course it goes right through his head and ends up knocking over his lamp instead. "I'm not doing it," Kol insists when all Klaus does is send chills throughout the room. "You can't make me."
It appears Klaus has mastered the art of fading in and out. He disappears for a second-Kol feels immense relief-but looms up right in front of him. "Fine. Stay tethered to me forever. I will haunt your every dream and make it my duty to ensure that you always look over your shoulder in fear and anxiety everywhere you go."
Kol groans, sounding depressed. "I hate you."
"Thin lines and all that, Kol."
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"You're here again," Caroline comments as she enters her bedroom. Kol's sitting on her windowsill, a pensive look on his face. He runs his eyes over her sleep-ready face-so pure for an existence so tainted-and asks, "Are my visits bothering you?"
Caroline pulls back her bedcovers and tucks her feet in. "Yes. It's a school night, and…" she squints at her alarm clock, "three minutes past my bedtime."
"I don't have a curfew," Kol says smugly, folding himself into her armchair. "And I don't see why you should too. We're immortal, after all."
Caroline rolls over in her bed, her back to him. "You forgot the crucial part of living forever-living."
"I still don't see why you insist on playing by the rules so much, though."
She pokes her head out of her pillows, mouth parting in disbelief. "It's because I care, and that's where we draw the line at our similarities."
"What make you th-"
"You're angry all the time because you have nothing to look forward to, nothing to give a shit about. That's because you don't have much of anything going on," she snaps. "I'm still head cheerleader, still Student Body President, and there's still Prom to organize and bake sales to run. I still have my humanity. What do you have, Kol? What is there to look forward to for you?"
Kol blinks, stung. He contemplates snapping her neck-Klaus would probably find a way to snap his later, though. So he grits his teeth, shoves his whitened knuckles in his pockets, and unfolds himself from the armchair.
Caroline's glare never falters.
Despite Klaus' warning shake of his head, Kol slips out the window.
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"Fix this," Klaus says through his teeth, floating through the bathroom wall without as much as a warning-rude, Kol thinks as he brushes his teeth-and leans against the glass door of the shower.
"There's nothing to fix." Kol leans down and spits out his toothpaste. "The girl you fancy has issues, and there's nothing I can do about that." He picks up his razor, muttering murderously, "Such issues."
"Just because you're not accustomed to people calling you out on yours-"
"And you are?" Kol bursts out savagely. "Where's the Klaus I remember? The one who tears out throats at the slightest discrepancy? The Klaus who didn't even hesitate to plunge a dagger into my heart? Your own brother!" He whips the razor against the wall, where it shatters to pieces. "You're going through such trouble for a mere vampire who doesn't even hold a candle to what we are. Sounds a lot of the Nik I once knew."
Klaus just looks at his brother, his head tilted in a way that reminds him of Caroline. "When did you grow up, Kol?"
Kol doesn't answer, just wipes off some toothpaste from his chin and slings his towel over his shoulder.
"You still have so much to learn, though," Klaus says, following him (of course).
"That's what school is for," Kol says, tearing through his wardrobe. Something to look forward to, he thinks darkly. Stupid naïve baby vampire. He'll show her-
"School?" Klaus repeats blankly.
Kol jams his head through a sweater, exasperated. "Yes, school. So many important things to learn. Bake sales and all that."
"Oh." Klaus blinks, and then looks pleased. "So you're actually going to follow through with something for once?"
"Like you said, Nik." Kol grabs his car keys and heads for the door. "We're all growing up."
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"Sweet baby Jesus," he hears her groan. "What are you doing here?"
Kol raises his Calculus textbook pointedly. "Studying for our end of year exams."
"No, I meant-" Her eyes trail to his open bag-crammed with new textbooks-and his school-approved sweater (a far cry from all his leather jackets) down to his 2B pencil. "No way."
"Looks like we have all the same classes, Caroline." He grins up at her, brandishing his schedule. "Except gym. What a shame. I would have liked to see you in those school-appointed gym shorts."
Caroline snatches him by his collar and holds his face close to hers. "What the hell do you want, Kol?"
Kol doesn't shy away; in fact, he leans closer, so close he can actually count her individual eyelashes.
Caroline gulps.
Not so tough now.
"I thought it was time I educate myself," he says in a whisper, his cold breath ghosting her cheeks. "Since I'm apparently missing out on so much life has to offer." He snakes his hands up to untangle her fingers from his shirt, but doesn't let go immediately. "Such soft hands."
Caroline wrenches her hands out of his and crams them to her sides. "Well then," she says through stiff lips. "Prom Committee meeting at the Grille later at 6:30. Don't be late."
He chuckles, turning back to his homework. "Wouldn't dream of it, love."
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Kol opens his bedroom door to find Klaus reading another one of Rebekah's Vogue issues. Setting down his bag, he asks, "You can touch things now?"
His brother shrugs. "Only if I concentrate hard."
Kol makes his way towards him, hand outstretched uncertainly. Again, it goes right through Klaus. "Not people, though?"
"No, not people." Klaus sighs and casts the magazine aside. "Did you see Caroline today?"
"No such luck, brother."
Klaus nods, only looking slightly disappointed.
Kol lets out an unnecessary breath.
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"My point is, life moves on!" Caroline waves her mug around, slopping beer all over the counter, but no one seems to care. "No use crying over milled spilk and all that."
"Hear, hear," he smirks, raising his own bottle.
"Kol?" She turns away from the bar, where some boys he vaguely remembers from his day at school are in rapt attention of her. "You came. And you're actually early," she laughed, a silver tinkle.
"I like to make a good impression." He walks towards her, and casts a hard glance at the boys falling all over themselves to buy her drinks. They scatter under his scrutiny.
Caroline claps a hand to her mouth. "Where'd my friends go?"
"Tending to spilled milk, no doubt." He flashes a grin. "I thought we were discussing prom?"
"Wha-? Oh. Yeah. Prom." Caroline leans heavily against the counter, finger tapping against her coral lips. "Well," she leans in conspiratorially, and Kol leans in as well, trying to hold in his laughter. "Matt broke his foot at football practice. Or arm. I'm not too sure. Just glad it's not his neck. So they're all checking up on him at the hospital. Someone had to wait for you to tell you today's meeting is so, so, dunzo."
This catches Kol's interest. "You were waiting for me?"
"Again with the self-flattery!" She slaps her palm against his chest and he feels a twinge of a smile coming on. "Nobody likes to be the one left behind."
He briefly thinks of Klaus, but pushes him out of his mind. He deserves a break after three incessant weeks of his brother pestering him, after all. "What else don't you like?"
"Hm." She closes her eyes, and stays silent for so long Kol wonders if she's fallen asleep. This girl really can't handle her liquor. He looks at the bartender, no doubt compelled.
She opens her eyes again, and they're surprisingly clear. Azure blue, he realizes. Like the sky at first light.
But then she had to open her mouth. "I don't like you."
Scowling, he reclines slightly. "And why not?"
"You keep bringing up Klaus." She grabs some passer by's tequila and he watches as she throws it back. "I don't like to be reminded of him."
"And why not?" he asks again, his jaw clenching. Anticipating.
She sighs sorrowfully and tries to sit down on her stool, but ends up stumbling against him instead. "He makes me drink way too much."
"He's not here, Caroline."
She looks up at him, and he realizes he has his arms around the small of her back. And she's warm for a vampire. Delightfully so. "What?"
"He's gone, dead and gone," he says.
"But I still feel him." She looks away, biting her lips. "Like he's still around, or something-" She traces a light finger down his chest. "Right here."
He looks down to where she's pointing-his heart-trails his eyes back to hers.
And promptly lets go of her.
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"Urgh, how many times do I have to say-she said, and I quote, for the absolute last time: Like he's still around, or something, right here," he mimics her voice, three octaves too high, and pokes his brother through the chest. "There you have it. Now you know. You fancy her, she fancies you. Rejoice." Kol turns away from him and stares out of the window at the setting sun. "Now leave me alone."
"She said that?" His brother looks dazed. He trails his own hand down his chest, gazing at the ceiling with that faraway look on his face. But then-"You complete arse, Kol."
"What is it now?" he groans, wishing the bed would just swallow him whole. "I did what you told me to do. Why are you still here?"
Klaus appears before him, murder in his eyes. "Why didn't you tell me you were going?"
"Forgive me for wanting a minute to myself," Kol snarks, shoving himself away from his bed and out the door, slamming the door shut behind him. Klaus zaps up to where he is, arms crossed petulantly over his chest.
"Planning on seeing Caroline without me?" He stops directly in Kol's path. "Again?"
"No, I'm getting a snack. Or do I need supervision for that?" He flips on the light in the kitchen and rummages through the fridge-mostly for decoration purposes-before remembering they didn't have any blood bags. But he hadn't thought about human blood in ages it seems, how stra-
"Kol?"
He looks up to see Elijah leaning against the doorframe. "Is Rebekah here?"
"No," he sighs, closing the refrigerator door. "Why?"
Elijah stares at Kol. "I thought I heard noises. Who were you talking to?"
Glaring at Klaus-who scowls back, but fades away anyway-he says, "Nobody."
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Caroline doesn't leave her window closed anymore, Kol notices, as he scrapes the edge of his shoe on her rooftop. Klaus is beside him, blowing out his breaths like halos-"Fascinating, isn't it?" Klaus smirks when he sees how entranced Kol is-and asking, yet again, "Do you know what you're su-"
"Yes," he whispers straight through his teeth. "Must you still be here?"
"Like I said, just in case."
"I'm not going to screw this up, Nik" Kol says for the three hundred and twelfth time. "When have I messed this up?"
Klaus gives his brother a pointed look. "Do you want it in a list, or do you prefer columns?"
"Look," Kol says, letting his hand hover where Klaus' shoulder more-or-less is. "Why don't you scurry your ghostly self home, and if you find yourself fading into oblivion, it means I've done something right."
Klaus plunges an icy hand into Kol's chest. "Why don't I dagger you into oblivion?"
"Nik," he commands, "shut up. In case you haven't realized, Caroline seems to be in more of a telling mood when you aren't around."
Klaus seems to mull this over. "Alright." He steps closer so they're chest to chest. "But I expect full disclosure when you get back."
"Of course," Kol says, pleased to have won a round. "Off with you."
Throwing him a dirty look, Klaus turns on his heel and disappears.
"Evening," he greets as he ducked into her window.
Caroline whips around, a tiny shriek escaping her pink lips as her hand automatically assaults him with the book she'd been holding. He'd expected her to be at her table, studying for their impending finals-neurotic as she is-and so wasn't ready for the attack.
The book hits him squarely in the face.
"Jeez," her hands are clapped to her chest. "You scared the crap out of me!"
"A sorry I whacked you in the face with this-" he squints at the book title, "-what is this… absurd - anyway, as I was saying. An apology is in order."
"Fine, whatever," Caroline says with a roll of her eyes. "Sorry. Now gimme that."
"Gladly," he says, tossing the book to her. "Goblet of Fire," he pffts. "Ominous."
She holds the book to her chest, looking scandalized. "There is nothing absurd about Harry Potter!"
"Come again?" he asks blankly.
"Harry Potter?" Caroline repeats. "Daniel Radcliffe? Emma Watson?"
Kol stares at her.
"Rupert Grint?"
"Is that a disease?"
Caroline's hands find a way to her hips. "You've got to be kidding me. You're English and you've never heard of Harry Potter?"
"Now you're just stereotyping, sweetheart," he grumbles, falling across her bed, taking the book with her. He flips through the book with thinly veiled disinterest. "Witches and warlocks. Doesn't surprise me in the least."
"Nuh uh," she snatches her book back. "You don't get a say in this until you've read the whole thing."
"And what do you suggest?" he glares. "Read the whole thing?"
"Yep!" she corrects cheerfully, turning to her closet where the books are stacked on a shelf. "We'll start with the Sorcerer's Stone-"
Kol throws his hands up. "Joy."
"-and then the Chamber of Secrets-"
"Are you sure these books aren't child pornography?"
"-until you realize what exactly you're missing out on in life," Caroline says with an air of finality, hands filled with the gradually thickening books.
Kol sighs, holding out a hand. "Just these, then?"
She nudges him aside with her knee, and settles down next to him. "And the movies, too."
"This should be fun. Seven movies in one night."
"Eight, actually." She licks the tip of her finger and flips to the first page. "They cut the last one in two parts."
"Not like I have anything to look forward to," Kol mutters, rubbing his temples. "Alright, let's get on it. But if these books veer towards pedophilia like those horrendous Twilight in the slightest-"
He finds his mouth covered by Caroline's soft palm, an annoyed look on her head. "How can you not have heard about Harry Potter but know about Twilight? I thought guys dig Emma Watson-she's like, way hotter than Bella." She leans closer, licking her lips in the brevity of the situation, "And if you're planning on staying, I suggest you shut the hell up and listen. Am I being clear?"
Unable to say a word, Kol just nods.
The air around them is filled with the smell of the yellowed pages and her lilac shampoo as she begins, in a surprisingly un-Caroline-like voice, "Chapter One: The Boy Who Lived."
Kol snorts, "Sounds like it should be tagged onto the Cullen boy."
At Caroline's murderous look, he falls silent. She continues, "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."
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"Give me that, you're far too slow," Kol gripes, snatching away the book. He scans the page with urgency and his eyebrows disappear into his hairline. "Why the bloody hell would Lord No Nose kill Snape?"
"Because he thought that the Elder wand like, belonged to him or something," explains a delighted, but steadily sleepy Caroline. She rests her head against her pillow, her hair brushing against Kol's shoulder. "Keep reading. You're so going to cry."
"Yes," Kol says, skimming over the parts where Snape clutches at Harry's robes, "tears of joy when this is over."
"Mm, sure." Caroline's eyes close, but when no sound comes from Kol, they open again. "Well? Aren't you going to read?"
Kol sighs and backtracks, reading hastily, "'From the tip of his wand burst a silver doe: She landed on the office floor, bounded across the offi-"
"Properly," Caroline whines, thumping him with her fist. She frowns and leans further into him, trying to catch a glimpse of the page. "You're making this feel like homework, there's no inflection in your voice at all."
Rolling his eyes, he says nothing, just hitches the book away from her (she practically plants herself on his lap to claw it back under her nose). "Fine, I'll read properly, just-just get off of me."
"With feeling," she warns, settling comfortably by his side, chin on his shoulder. His shoulder hums.
"As you wish," he says wearily instead. Clearing his throat, he reads (with feeling), "'She landed on the office floor, across the office, and soared out the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears." He pauses, glancing at Caroline - she's hanging on to his every word, heavy on his side, biting her lower lip in anticipation. He clears his suddenly-dry throat. "'"After all this time?"'"
"Always," Caroline whispers, and promptly falls asleep.
Kol's finger lingers on the page, unsure of what to do.
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