Chapter Text
When Katherine floated the idea of having a housewarming party a few weeks after she and Elijah had officially moved in together, Caroline didn't attempt to take the reins on party planning. It was supposed to be a laid-back affair, so there wouldn't even be much party planning to stage a coup over.
However, when Katherine said she "hadn't thought about it." after Caroline asked what kind of hor d'oeuvres she was thinking — a week before the party, mind you — Caroline's hostess genes kicked in and she had to take over.
She just couldn't help herself.
The upside to Katherine's nonchalent attitude was it gave her a chance to bond with Elijah, who like the rest of the Mikaelsons didn't do any of the grunt work himself, but was more than willing to discuss what wine pairings and cocktails he thought would pair best with the baked brie Caroline was making.
She also quickly discovered that Elijah had patience in spades compared to his siblings. She guessed he'd dealt with Klaus, Rebekah, and Kol for their entire lives, so he must have had to developed it to survive. She hadn't met Finn and Freya yet, so she had no idea how they could push the boundaries of one's sanity. But Klaus’ constant complaining about them was an indication that they most definitely could. After the fifth call to consult over the charcuterie board, Elijah had yet to send her to voicemail and even offered constructive feedback as she listed the pros and cons of if she should buy pre-stuffed olives or stuff them herself. Klaus would have hit her with a "whatever you think is best, love," four calls ago. Hell, she was even ready to tell herself to 'stuff it.'
While she could feel herself being annoying and taking this party way too seriously, she was glad for her need to control everything, especially a social gathering, because when the party rolled around the prep kept her busy.
Busy and not thinking about how anxious the gathering of Katherine and Elijah's friends and family made her. Because, okay yes, this was about Katherine and Elijah, but Katherine's friends were all her friends and Elijah's family was Klaus’. And despite being friends with Klaus for what feels like forever now, she didn't really bring him around her other friends. She told herself it was because Klaus' dry humor and biting wit make him not everyone's cup of tea. But it was also a tiny bit because she's used him to vent when any of her friends, or their boyfriends, annoy her. She's afraid she's complained about Elena canceling plans to hang out with Damon — the boyfriend she lives with ! — one too many times for Klaus to not make snide comments under his breath.
Also, a more secret part of her wants to keep Klaus to herself. What if Klaus realizes he likes Elena more than Caroline? Or that he misses being friends with Stefan.
No. It's best to keep the two parts of her life compartmentalized.
But tonight everyone was coming together, with a few of Klaus' siblings thrown in the mix as well!
Before the party starts, she's too busy hovering over Klaus as he makes the salami roses for the charcuterie to overthink the melding of her social circles. Especially since Klaus' defensiveness — mostly cries of "I am a professional artist, love, I think I can make some cheese on a cutting board look decent" — was giving her additional distraction.
In fact, she doesn't get a moment to breathe until the party is in full swing. Between flitting around from group to group to make sure they didn't need a refill on their signature cocktail she was making and replenishing the charcuterie board — it took extra time to make sure her salami roses were just as good as Klaus'.
Midway through the party, she finally had a minute to make herself a drink, so she did just that.
Drink in hand, she searched the room and saw Klaus talking to a blonde woman she had never seen in her life.
She wasn't someone that Katherine knew. Caroline made sure to keep tabs on the important people in each of her friends' lives. She was on a first-name basis with Katherine's bikini waxer for Christ's sake. Sadly, Ana couldn't make it tonight because of a family thing.
So this mystery woman must be a friend of Elijah's. Katherine wasn't the type to be insecure or threatened by other women — Caroline, unfortunately, was not that evolved — so she apparently never thought to mention Elijah's smoking hot blonde friend.
At that moment, Caroline stuck out her arm grabbing Katherine as she walked by towards the entrance of her new kitchen.
"Who's that girl Klaus is talking to?" She asks in a whisper.
Katherine glances over to where Caroline had not diverted her eyes. Klaus was now laughing at something the mystery woman was saying.
"A friend of Rebekah's?" Katherine said, disinterested in this line of questioning. "Honestly, I wasn't really paying attention when she introduced herself."
She let Katherine continue on her mission to refill on red wine, before taking a deep breath and making her way over to Klaus.
"Hello, love." Klaus greeted her as she joined them.
"Hey," she replied. After a moment, she flicked her eyes over to the woman. If it was a question to him, or an instruction to introduce him she wasn't exactly sure. Whatever it was, he appeared to have gotten the hint.
"Caroline, this is Camille, she's a friend of the family. Camille, this is Caroline. She's good friends with Katherine." Klaus said, as a means of introduction.
Friends with Katherine. Friends with Katherine.
Well, it wasn't wrong. She was friends with Katherine. But the words still made her feel hot, with both ire and embarrassment. Who was this Camille who deserved the moniker "Friends of the Family" when all Caroline got was friends with Katherine? Why had Klaus sought to distance himself from Caroline? He could have easily said, a friend of mine. Why would he use Katherine, a woman who herself just admitted she was just introduced to Camille and didn't pay attention, rather than himself as the frame of reference? Unless he wanted to distance himself in front of Camille. Unless he didn't think of them as close of friends as Caroline did.
While she spiraled, she put her infamous mulitasking skills at work and also made polite conversation with Camille about what they did and how long they'd lived in the city. Camille was a psychologist who had just moved there from New Orleans, but the rest of the conversation Caroline hadn't absorbed. Bonnie and Elena drifted over to their group, and Caroline didn't even feel worried about the direct conversation between Klaus and her other two best friends. She just nodded along to whatever Camille and Bonnie were talking about.
While zoning out their conversation, Caroline caught Klaus staring at her with eyebrows drawn in concern. She quickly looked away and made an excuse to go and refill ice.
The party continued without a hitch and Elijah and Katherine's new home seemed sufficiently warmed. After attempting to do dishes but having been shooed away by Elijah, Caroline figured it was time to make her exit. Walking out of the kitchen, Klaus seemed to be the only other person left.
“Ready to go, love?” He asked.
“Yeah! Just let me grab my coat” She replied, turning to head to the guest room where her black wool trench should be lying on the bed, she tried to hide a smile at the fact that Klaus had stayed for her, instead of offering to walk Camille home or something. Hah. She won. What exactly she won she wasn’t entirely sure.
As they strolled home, Klaus took it upon himself to fill Caroline in on all the things Katherine and Elijah’s guests did that were particularly gauche to him as she had been distracted for most of the evening. Despite gossip being one of her favorite forms of communication, Caroline didn’t seem particularly interested in the conversation topics Damon Salvatore deemed interesting or important for polite company.
“Why did you tell Camille I was Katherine’s friend?” She asked, with a determined look on her face.
For a moment, he was taken aback by the nonsequitur.
“Are you not friends Katherine, love?”
“No. I mean yes. But I’m also friends with you.”
“Ah,” he said. “I didn’t mean any offense, sweetheart. I just thought it was a simpler explanation of how we knew each other than the decades-long saga.”
And that was the truth. More or less.
Camille had been a friend of Marcel’s first. He frequented the establishment she tended bar at all those years ago. It had been a favorite of his family’s as well and Camille had endeared herself to the Mikaelsons, which was not an easy feat.
Klaus had no ill will towards the woman, in fact, he was one of the few people he genuinely could tolerate. However, she did have a pesky habit of trying to psychoanalyze him. Occupational hazard, he supposed.
Now that Camille was relocating to Chicago he didn’t particularly want her and her judgemental eyes anywhere near him and his relationship, or reasons for the lack thereof, with Caroline.
Caroline narrowed her eyes at him as if trying to determine if he was hiding something from her. Eventually, she must have been satisfied he wasn’t and she said, “Okay.” And then, “Wait, so why did Damon say that?”
The tension seemed to dissipate for now.
The next morning, Caroline had a pre-scheduled Sacred Brunch. Which was perfect timing because there was nothing the four of them loved more than a good old-fashioned party debrief. In the beginning, when Caroline had first moved to Chicago, it had been over greasy diner food and usually contained a story of one or, on a good night, two drunken hookups. These days, since all three of them except Caroline — oh god she didn't want to think about that — were in a serious relationship, they weren't as juicy.
This morning, however, they had a built-in conversation topic: how annoying Camille was.
After her confrontation with Klaus, which was definitely fueled by signature cocktails, Caroline only felt slightly better about the whole ‘Katherine’s Friend’ thing. Klaus seemed truthful enough, and she got it. It was sometimes hard to explain how she and Klaus knew each other and the stops and starts of their contact.
But that didn’t mean that she liked Camille. Throughout her walk to the restaurant, she was remembering eye-roll-inducing things she had said all night.
As they ordered their drinks, Caroline placed internal bets on who would bring her up first. Would it be Elena who had to listen to Camille's long-winded story about being a psychologist when Elena mentioned she was also a doctor? Or would it be Bonnie who Camille went on and on to about New Orleans after Bonnie mentioned wanting to visit? Or Katherine who — okay she hadn't really been that annoying to her directly but Katherine just was mildly annoyed at everyone sight unseen.
However, they made it to the waitress setting down their food, and no one had brought it up yet. So she took matters into her own hands.
"So, Camille was super annoying, right?" She asked unwrapping her silverware from her napkin. She expected a chorus of agreement but was met with silence. When she looked up, the three of them were silently making eye contact with each other. "What?" Caroline asked.
"Nothing!" Elena said before digging the side of her fork into her french toast.
"It's just - " Bonnie said, then stopped as if looking for the right words. "She seemed perfectly nice to us. However, it makes sense why you didn't like her."
Caroline set her hands on the table, eggs benedict sitting forgotten in front of her. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It seemed like she and Klaus were close, and - ." Elena helped Bonnie out.
"Oh for Christ's sake," Katherine said. "It's not a surprise that you don't like the girl who clearly wanted to bang the guy you've been in love with for like a year."
"Oh my god, not this again," Caroline said. "I am not in love with Klaus. I found Camille annoying because she started making everyone cocktails mid-way through the party."
"What a monster," Bonnie said dryly.
"I don't care that she bartended her way through grad school, Bonnie, none of the drinks she made were in the flavor profile of the signature cocktail. I mean who does that?"
"Caroline," Elena said gently, "even for you, that seems like not that big of a deal."
She let out a sigh. Okay maybe Camille was inoffensive and part of the problem was that Caroline had never liked to share — the by-product of being an only child — and every time that Camille placed a hand on Klaus' bicep or talked about something she'd done with the Mikaelsons in New Orleans, Caroline could feel her eye twitch. It wasn't because she was in love with Klaus, it was just that Klaus was hers. Her friend, she means. Even though he didn't make that clear to Camille last night.
He might have had a reasonable explanation for that, but how long until Caroline is pushed out by this new blonde that's moved to town? One that already has a good relationship with his siblings. Caroline's relationship with them was fine. She knew Elijah the best, obviously, but she had only hung out with Rebekah a handful of times. She had met Kol once, but with how much alcohol they had consumed over his visit, she barely remembered it. Come to think of it, Klaus had compartmentalized her, just as much as she had him.
But Camille was integrated. She was friends with Rebekah. Until recently she lived in New Orleans with Kol and was friends with his girlfriend. Caroline didn't even know Kol had a girlfriend!
So, yes she was jealous. Caroline was just a jealous person. It had nothing to do with Klaus. It didn't.
Instead of admitting to that, since she knew they wouldn't get it, Caroline said, "Can't I just not like someone? Like I get that feminism says we need to support all women, but sometimes there's just a vibe."
The three of them eyed her, and then Katherine threw her a bone, "I mean of course. If you guys threw an intervention every time I hated someone for no reason, we'd never get anything done."
“Right,” Caroline said.
“So…” Elena said, changing the subject. “I found an engagement ring in Damon’s sock drawer this morning.”
This was the distraction Caroline needed. The rest of the brunch was filled with squeals of excitement and speculation of when he would pop the question. Bonnie had money on Christmas day, but Katherine said that was tacky, even for Damon. Caroline smiled and nodded along, she was happy for Elena but was also preoccupied with trying to squash the niggling feelings that there might be something more to her dislike of Camille.