#awkwardly dragging in a dead rat as a gift for being awesome

[averseunhinged]

💌 send this to the twelve nicest people you know or who seem to have a good heart and if you get five back you must be pretty awesome. 💌 :)

thanks, gabby! you're lovely! idk if you like rockstar aus, but i received this as a divine transmission in my bed last night.

Her teen years spent playing the shrewish, older sister on some Disney Channel nightmare and later a starring turn in, hand to god, Vampires of Venice Beach, an inexplicable mega-hit at the box office, that included an original ballad by Caroline herself on the soundtrack. Critics weren't particularly kind to it, but it was everywhere you turned for over a year. The critics were both correct and incorrect. The melody was banal and the instrumentation derivative, but there was something to the lyrics and more than something to Caroline's voice. The song netted her first Grammy nomination.

It was by no means her last.

Which is to say, he's not sure why he's being escorted by security into an old mansion in the Hills. He does just fine these days with scores and commercial background music and thirty second hooks for social media, but he's not famous for it. He'd barely been famous before The Originals had flamed out spectacularly. He and Elijah are far better off without differing opinions on creative directions (prog rock, Elijah, honestly?) and an unfortunate predilection for falling for the same woman at the same time. The fallout from the Petrova twins had been explosive and there hadn't been any option but to break up the band at that point. His fifteen minutes certainly aren't anything to recommend him to one of the most successful recording artists of the 21st century.

He's shown into a beautifully restored and tastefully appointed room that is mostly end to end glass, looking out over both an outdoor space and a lot of the city in the valley below, blurring in the golden sodium light of late afternoon. The man who'd taken charge of Klaus at the entrance to the the house hasn't bothered introducing himself with the sort of smarmy assuredness Rebekah laps up, always to her detriment, gestures disinterestedly to a bank of comfortable seating where someone has obviously been working all day. There are notebooks, binders, an assortment of pens and highlighters, a MacBook, and two tablets on the coffee table. Two guitars sit in stands: a newer Martin with an intricate floral inlay and a vintage Gretsch he desperately wants to put his hands all over. Propped up in one corner of a sprawling couch is the same brilliant cobalt Jumbo she's famously played since she was eighteen. The woman in question is pacing by the pool, phone in hand, having an animated conversation.

The other man doesn't bother going all the way to the open sliding door before bellowing, "Wrap it up, gorgeous! Your five o'clock's on time."

Without turning around, the queen of Spotify lifts one hand and flicks two raised fingers at them.

"She'll be with you in a moment," he says on his way out of the room. "Don't worry. You're probably already in her good books. Loves punctuality, that one. Bit of a freak that way."

Even though Klaus knows how all of this works, the photoshoots and the costumes, the makeup and wigs, he's still a little surprised by how different she is in person. She looks well enough when she trots inside, but she's still barefoot in leggings and an old, worn soft shirt, proclaiming King William County Sheriff's Department Softball Team in faded, cracking letters. Her blonde curls are piled artlessly on top of her head and there's red irritation around her eyes, nose and mouth from wearing and removing stage makeup everyday for months on end.

"Hey, I'm Caroline," she says, as though her name hasn't been synonymous with breathy, acoustic pop for the past decade, and waves a little awkwardly.

"Klaus Mikaelson," he replies automatically, as though she doesn't know who's been delivered to her very nice home with its very expensive view. And then she smiles at him and the only thought he has is oh no. He digs his own grave when he, without any higher cognitive input whatsoever, says, "You must never meet my brother."

[averseunhinged]

💌 send this to the twelve nicest people you know or who seem to have a good heart and if you get five back you must be pretty awesome. 💌 :)

ilu, ella! you're cool and nice and you should probs know that i've prev screenshotted your translated class notes for my own further investigation. you're like a history stuff influencer.

here is a thing from further on in i never said i had the answer i thought you might enjoy! it's v rough and idk what the final form of it will be b/c there's a giant chunk of s4, plus boring new orleans supernatural politics, left to go before this, but it involves my favorite pet theories about the elena + caroline + bonnie friendship.

“You got into Yale?” Elena questioned with a little laugh, dripping in disbelief.

“I had the highest GPA in our graduating class,” Caroline scoffed and crossed her arms, leaning her weight back on one hip. “I got a 2130 on my SATs in one try. Yeah. I got into Yale.”

“Because you’re organized and you obsess over stuff. Not because—”

“Whoa, Elena,” Bonnie protested off to the side.

“Not because I’m intelligent or hardworking? Or because I dedicated myself to cheerleading and student council and spent most of my spare time doing civic activities and community service, because I wanted to be the most attractive candidate to every school I applied to?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Elena insisted, squeezing her hands into fists and pressing them into her stomach, like she always had when she argued with Caroline before turning sucked out her personality and replaced it with Damon’s.

“Of course, that’s what you meant. Because I’m just bitchy, bimbo Caroline, right? Nothing else to see here, right?”

A petite, delicate hand inserted itself between their faces. “Absolutely not,” Bonnie demanded. “You are not doing this to me. I refuse to relive the freshman year fights.”

“Freshman year fights?” Stefan asked, heroically latching onto the attempt to defuse the two women.

“Caroline makes varsity cheer squad freshman year, so Elena goes on a date with Caroline’s crush. Caroline embarrasses Elena in front of said crush and he doesn’t ask her out again. Elena tells the sheriff about the college guy hitting on Caroline, so she gets grounded.” Bonnie flopped onto the sofa next to Stefan. “Why does Elena look better in low rise jeans than I do? Why is Caroline’s hair always shinier than mine? I love you both very much, but I swear I’ll figure out a way to dagger you like Mikaelsons if the alternative is living with that for the rest of my life.”

The room was quiet for a moment, until Damon loudly slurped Liz’s Maker’s Mark. Caroline rattled a disgusted noise deep in her throat when he responded to her disapproving glare with a toasting glass and a show of settling more comfortably into his chair, like he was ready to be entertained.

“I thought we were all going to Whitmore together,” Elena finally said.

Caroline took a steadying breath and tried to shake off her defensiveness. Forced herself to uncross her arms and roll the tension out of her shoulders. She explained, “We were! Yale was just a last minute whim, because they have this specific interdisciplinary Classics program, and I didn’t know when I applied, but the head of the department is a vampire, so when I said I wanted to minor in finance, too, it raised some flags,” she paused and then burst out in a quick rush of justification, “and I might have used a passage I translated out of an old journal in Grams’ collection as an example of the work I was interested in doing. I didn’t think it had anything obviously witchy, but it rang more bells.”

“Jesus, Barbie,” Damon groaned.

“Well, I know it was dangerous, now,” Caroline stopped and thought, frowning. “Mostly because they recognized my last name and universities have problems with hunters infiltrating the student population with their kids. They waitlisted me while they investigated, but I really am a vampire. So, they didn’t have to kill me and everyone I know. Crisis averted. Everything’s fine.”