Two Lost Souls

Sway

Tyler's car is already parked in front of her house when she gets there and Caroline can't help but make a face. She had hoped for a bit more time to prepare herself for the confrontation that is about to take place, but it seems the break she so desperately needs is not in the cards for her today. Oh well. Better get this over with.

As soon as she opens the door, she finds herself crushed against a solid chest and she huffs in surprise before returning the gesture.

"It's so good to have you back."

"Yeah, it's good to be back," she whispers in return, but anything else she might have said never makes it past her lips, because a mouth is suddenly on hers, catching the words before they have a chance to form.

Wait, what?

She leans back, trying to escape the unexpected and unwanted kiss, but he just follows her motion, chasing her lips with his.

Okay... She tried the nice way, time for something a bit more drastic.

Placing her hands on his shoulders, she pushes hard until he gets the message and breaks the kiss. Then, because his arms are still around her and are suddenly making her uncomfortable since this embrace clearly doesn't mean the same thing to him as it does to her, she gives another push, making him release his hold on her and take a step back.

There.

Much better.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asks, irritated, as she runs the back of her hand over her mouth.

"I just... God, it's so good to see you, Care."

"Yeah, well, I don't think that's how you greet a friend, no matter how much you've missed them."

"I know. I know. Sorry. But..."

He trails off, and the realization hits her like a ton of bricks.

He's not over her.

The excessively affectionate greeting as well as the hopeful glint in his eyes tells her that he thinks they can patch things up, even though they broke up – quite messily too, thank you very much – long before her mother's death and were barely working towards being civil with one another before she turned off her humanity.

It seems it took a three months absence for her ex-boyfriend to realize that he misses her.

Well. This is going to make this conversation that much more awkward.

Where does she even start?

"I'm with Klaus."

Err... Okay. Not quite what she meant to say, at least not right away and certainly not like that. But damn him, he took her by surprise, and she needs to make things clear right from the start, to crush that hope before it gets too big and messes up an already pretty difficult situation. She can excuse that kiss because she gets the whole glad-to-see-you-after-months-of-not-knowing-whether-you-were-alive thing, but anything else needs to be stopped right now, before it can even fully take form in his mind.

"You're what?" he asks, his demeanor changing completely, from sheepish and open to closed-off and disbelieving in the blink of an eye. And then his expression changes again, to one of realization and understanding, but any hope this might have sparked in her quickly gets snuffed out when he says, "Oh yeah, Elena told us about your emotionless thing. That's okay, Care, you weren't..."

She holds up a hand to cut him off. And here she thought she'd been too blunt. Seems she needs to make things even clearer for him.

"No, you don't get it. I am with Klaus," she repeats, hoping the final tone in her voice will get her point across.