Bloodstream (3/4)
Title: Bloodstream (3/4)
Author: persephone_20
Summary: An AU in which Elena is romantically involved with both brothers, following the sequence of events in the last 3 episodes of season 1. Follows on a couple of weeks after Haunted (4/4)
Pairing: Damon/Elena, Stefan/Elena
Spoilers: None
Notes: Just more thanks to the wonderful coquilleon for being my beta, and my memory for suddenly remembering I'd been slack about posting the rest of this fic up.
Elena’s attitude was significantly different from her ‘Don’t ask, don’t care’ attitude from the night before when she returned to the boarding house after school the next day. Stefan understood, having been within range to hear every word that had passed between Elena and her birth mom.
Damon and Anna could only guess. Damon hated to guess what had put those expressions onto Elena’s face.
She didn’t speak about what had passed at the Grill until the four of them were back at the boarding house. Anna called Jeremy on the way to apologetically cancel on the catch up they’d had planned. Elena used what she could hear of his voice through the phone as a focus back to normalcy. The little brother who was really her cousin was far more reassuring to the vampire mom she was related to. He sounded understanding. Anna sounded… gentler when she was on the phone to him.
Damon shut the door to the boarding house and took a moment to extend his senses around them. Only when he met Stefan’s eyes and Stefan gave a barely perceptible nod did some of the tension leave Damon. There were no vampires, no anybody, within hearing to them.
Anna was crouching in front of where Elena had slumped into the arm chair Damon had been lounging in the night before. “Are you… okay?” Anna looked as though she didn’t have the first idea of how to comfort Elena, but thought she should make the effort because she was Jeremy’s sister.
Elena nodded stiltedly. Stefan came back into her view, looking tall and assertive.
“Elena, you don’t have to talk about anything if you don’t want to. I heard everything. I can tell the others what happened.”
“No… it’s okay. I can do it.” She looked up to Stefan, to Damon, seeking to find strength in them both, but it was so hard to do with the threat Isobel had made hanging over her head. She just wanted it to go away, to never have to leave this house again. No outside vampires could come into the house if she were to become a permanent resident here. The only things she would have to think about would be how she was to manage her two boys , and she couldn’t imagine that would be something that would be too difficult to manage.
Except that whole idea sounded a whole lot like hiding, and Elena Gilbert didn’t hide from anyone.
She didn’t want to sit. She stood up again, and paced. Eventually, she had taken enough deep breaths that she felt able to take on a retelling of the events that had happened at the Mystic Grill. How Katherine would be fascinated by the resemblance between them. How coldly assessing her birth mom’s eyes had been when she’d said that. Elena found herself procrastinating as she neared the end of her tale, then bit her lip, and forced herself to look at Damon.
Damon already looked like he didn’t like the sound of what was coming.
“She talked about blood, Damon. She talked about blood being on my hands if I didn’t get you to give her the invention.”
Damon looked down to his hands. The invention wasn’t in them this time. He wasn’t stupid enough to take it out of the house, he’d barely trusted anyone to know it was in his possession, and this was exactly why. They were beaten, and he knew it. It wasn’t a nice feeling to have.
He’d already started changing the plan from Elena moving in with them to Elena coming with them as they drove far out of Mystic Falls after the invention was handed over. They’d tell no one where they were going. Damon was trying to put on a brave face and imagine it as 100 nights exactly like the first road trip Elena and Damon had shared together. He didn’t get a chance to voice this plan, before someone human came rushing through the door.
Damon pounced; years of reflexes had trained his muscles to do exactly what he wanted them to do, and when, with little or no preparation. Only when he heard a somewhat defenseless yelp did he register that this was not someone who was here to cause them trouble.
“Damon!” Anna admonished him, already stalking towards them. “Let Jeremy go.”
“Thanks.” Jeremy was wide-eyed and out of breath, and suddenly the very center of attention. He rubbed his arms even as he looked at Anna, and swallowed. “You said you were moving in here now. It sounded like something was wrong on the phone. What is it?”
Anna looked between Jeremy and Elena. “It’s pretty bad,” was all she said.
Jeremy’s eyes moved from Anna to Elena. The look on her face prompted him straight to her. “What is it, ‘Lena?” Even as he gathered her into his arms, his eyes darted to Damon and Stefan, as if one of them were directly responsible for his sister’s upset. Damon shrugged, and looked out towards the still open door. He had no idea that Jeremy knew about his arrangement with Elena, and wouldn’t have cared what Jeremy thought of it if he had. His only thought was that he would not be caught so off his guard again.
In the middle of the very tense situation, only Stefan had a possible ray of light to offer. “There is one another option.”
Anna seemed doubtful. “What’s that?”
“Bonnie.”
**
Bonnie consented to do the spell that would de-spell Jonathan Gilbert’s invention, but she was not without reservations over it.
“You know I don’t mind Stefan anymore. Stefan’s not a bad guy, but Damon isn’t a good one,” Bonnie told Elena, in urgent whispers.
Elena ducked her head and wished that she’d never been told about vampire super hearing. She refrained from turning her head, knowing she would meet Damon’s knowing smirk. She hated that her best friend hated her… Damon. It had been bad enough when Bonnie had been at loggerheads against Stefan, and Elena was thankful that the worst of that seemed to have passed. But the fact that neither Caroline nor Bonnie thought especially much of Damon was beginning to wear thin.
Elena closed her eyes and tried to sound calm. “If you’re willing to do it, you have to be willing to do it for all the vampires, Bonnie.” What had been an attempt at calm just came out tired. She opened her eyes and tried again. “Please, Bonnie.”
Bonnie’s lips tightened, but eventually-thankfully-she nodded.
“I’m doing this for you…” she said.
Elena knew. She didn’t have any further words to offer, feeling like she’d already offered them all. She had half turned away to check in on the others when Bonnie spoke again.
“Why, Elena?” Bonnie’s face was pleading with her, pleading that they could still understand each other like they had when they were young. “Give me one good reason, one reason why I should want to do this.”
Elena’s lips parted. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Bonnie.”
“Anything. Just make me understand.” Bonnie was shaking just slightly with her need for understanding.
Elena tried to sum up what she was feeling. When she had it, she looked at Bonnie, unflinching. “They’re family. To me, they’re family. I can’t lose any more family.”
She had spoken honestly, but she could see from the pinched way that Bonnie reacted that Bonnie was thinking of her own lost family. She gave a short nod then, and turned away.
“I’ll do it.”
**
After that, the idea of meeting with Elena’s birth mom seemed almost easy. It wasn’t, of course. Isobel was still there, looking cold and unfeeling, like it couldn’t matter less to her that Elena was her daughter. But it was still easier than facing Bonnie. Because Elena hadn’t lost Bonnie yet, and she didn’t want to.
“I have the invention.”
“I knew you would,” Isobel replied, and her calm voice seemed to make mockery of all of them. Only Stefan and Damon had accompanied her to this meeting with Elena’s birth mom, but they would only step in if Isobel threatened violence. From where she stood across the grass, it didn’t seem like she was remotely interested in violence this time. Her eyes barely left Damon’s hand, where the invention was nestled.
“Why, Isobel?” Elena couldn’t bring herself let go of this opportunity to have this last conversation with her birth mom before handing the invention to her but, even so, she couldn’t call the woman standing in front of her ‘Mom’. Desperately, she was hoping that there might be a chink in the armour somewhere, that Isobel might soften now that the stress of getting what she wanted was nearly abated. She was hoping that Isobel might, for one second, look at her like a mother looks at her daughter.
She was doomed to be disappointed.
“Why what?” Her red lips curved in a dispassionate smile even as her eyes only barely flickered away from Damon’s hand.
“Why… why is this the only contact you’ve bothered to have with me? You didn’t want to get to know me at all?”
“No.” Just that. No elaboration, no sound of regret. Elena was too wrapped up in her own pain to catch the movement of Stefan behind her holding Damon back as the older brother tried to surge forward in response to Elena’s pain, but Isobel noticed. “I think,” she told Elena, “that you have more than enough people in your life ‘wanting to get to know you’.”
The way Isobel said it, it almost sounded like a threat. Elena was deaf to that. “But you’re my mom.”
Isobel shrugged. “I’m bored of this. The invention?”
Stefan was looking at Damon, still holding onto him, as if not sure he could trust what Damon would do if he let him go. Truthfully, it was surprising that Isobel was still willing to have him come closer to her after his recent movement.
Isobel only looked impatient. If they’d not been standing on grass, she would likely have tapped her heeled foot. “The invention, or Elena suffers,” Isobel said, the words prompted from boredom rather than interest.
That took whatever wind was left out of Damon’s sails. He claimed his arm back, shrugging it violently in his jacket sleeve. His jaw was tight as he walked past Elena, pausing only long enough to mutter, “You alright?”
Elena made some sort of disembodied sound in response, that didn’t seem to do a lot to reassure him. But there wasn’t a lot more that they could do. Bonnie had de-spelled Jonathan Gilbert’s invention, Isobel could have it, for all the luck it would give her. Elena’s fractured heart was a small bi-product on the wayside. She tried to close her heart against it.
The exchange done, Elena couldn’t quite hold back one last smart ass quip. “You took a risk with Damon. How did you know he would give up the invention?”
Like all the others, it bit her squarely on the behind. “Because he's in love with you.”
Isobel was the first one outside of the three of them who had spoken aloud what had only been between the three of them-and, well, Jeremy-until now. Neither one of the boys jumped to deny it, but they wouldn’t have even if it hadn’t been true. Then, it would have been no more than the misguided ramblings of a nuisance. They would have shrugged their shoulders and disregarded it.
Elena did her best to try that act now, try to show that she was unfazed. It wasn’t fair that someone who had never shown any inclination towards mothering her should have any idea about what was going on in Elena’s life.
“Whatever,” she said, suddenly very tired and no longer wanting to play these word games with Isobel. She knew now they were likely to have another show down when the invention didn’t work, but then it would be different. It would be like the invention had never worked, and there would be nothing further Isobel would be able to do. Nothing, except to leave town.
It had been a long night, and Elena wanted nothing more than to go back home.
She considered going back to her house with Jenna but, by the time she and the boys returned to the boarding house, it seemed like so much trouble to go the rest of the way home. Jeremy and Anna were both sitting up in the living room, waiting for her, Elena thought.
“I’ve already called Jenna,” Jeremy said, holding his phone up with a vague wrist motion. “She knows we’re both planning to stay out tonight, so you don’t have to worry about going home if you don’t want to.” He paused, glancing between the vampire brothers, and his sister. “How did it go?”
“She took the invention.” That was about the best it could have gone. All three of them had come back alive and unmarked. Elena shouldn’t have expected more.
Except she had, and it was proving much harder to shut her heart up.
Jeremy wasn’t the only one looking at her in concern. It was all too much for her to deal with right now. She barely even looked Stefan in the eye as she directed her next question to him. “Do you mind if I crash up in your bed? I’m wrecked.”
“Of course,” Stefan said, and she didn’t wait on the pleasantries on goodnights. Tonight, she just made her own lonely way up the stairs to Stefan’s bedroom.
The bed was soft and the sheets smelt like him. Mostly, that smelled like clean soap and just the faintest hint of metal. Iron, perhaps. Elena rolled over. She didn’t want to be smelling him tonight. She didn’t want to be anything.
It would have been too much to ask that Stefan not join her in his own bed that night, but as soon as he walked in, hesitantly hovering by the door, Elena turned her head and wished she had have muscled up the energy to go home to her own bed. She moved over to one side of his bed, making room for him without talking.
Stefan took of his shoes and his shirt. He didn’t crawl into bed beside her, just lay on top of the covers on the space of the bed she had freed up for him.
“Please stop looking at me,” she asked him, coolly.
She felt Stefan shifting, but the claustrophobic feeling didn’t ease. Eventually, he said, “Elena, I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be.” She tried to say it gently, even spared him a glance before she returned her eyes to the top of his dresser. “I’m just tired.”
“Elena, I think we should talk about this.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s painfully obvious.” Stefan sighed. “Just… indulge me. What are you feeling right now?”
“Right now?” Elena shifted her legs, but didn’t move her body. She still wasn’t quite ready to look at him. “I’m feeling like if I don’t have any expectations of people, they won’t hurt me. I’m feeling like what’s to stop you or Damon changing the way you act to me one day, and me looking into cold, unfeeling eyes when you’re looking at me? You’ve both said you can shut it off. Well, maybe sometimes it’s a good thing for we small humans to try once and again.” She knew she was speaking out of hurt and that, very likely, she was only succeeding to worry Stefan further but, damn it, he’d asked, he’d pushed her to answer.
Stefan was silent for a very long time after she spoke. Elena closed her eyes, wishing for sleep to take her away from this. Just for a little while. She was sure it would be alright again in the morning. There certainly wouldn’t be some new drama that demanded her attention and all of her energy. And then she could apologise to Stefan for tonight. And she would hug him, and she would hug Damon…
Stefan rolled her body so that she opened her eyes and, just like that, she was suddenly facing him. Even without the sustenance of human blood, he was still much stronger than her. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it. Except with her words.
“Stefan, this isn’t a good time,” she said, but it wasn’t about that. Stefan wasn’t leaning close to her, wasn’t angling for a hug or close contact that would make everything better. In fact, now that she looked at him properly, she saw that his eyes were closed off to her, far quicker than she’d been able to shut herself away even as much as she’d managed. “Stefan…?”
“Your fear,” Stefan said, and his voice was raspier than it usually was. Not like Damon’s could be, but not quite like Stefan’s either. She had a faint memory trying to rise to the surface, but all thought and memory was taken from her as Stefan captured both of her wrists in one of his larger hands.
“Stefan, what are you doing?” It was impossible for Elena to keep herself distant from him now, impossible not to look him in the eye as he hovered over her, still a maintaining a respectable distance between their bodies.
Stefan blinked sloe eyes and ran his tongue over his teeth. Elena’s eyes widened as the veins began to lift ever so slightly on the skin under his eyes, and his teeth became a little sharper. “Even were I to shut myself off, I don’t think I could act coldly towards you,” Stefan said, as though pondering it. Elena was struck with where she remembered this tone from.
This same room, after the Miss Mystic pageant, before the vervain dart. But she had no vervain dart now, no Damon waiting silently on the other side of the door. Her wrists were bound by his hand, and Stefan’s teeth were sharper.
And, again, Elena felt that thrill of… something, mixed in with the healthy dose of fear he was inspiring.
“Stefan, I don’t understand. Why…?”
“I love you, Elena. With all sides of me.” Stefan’s blood darkened eyes shifted back and forth between hers. She tried to see the familiar Stefan she knew in there but, despite his words, she couldn’t see him. This was what he’d meant, then. Her fear that one day he would look at her from behind closed up eyes.
But he was right, too. This wasn’t cold, wasn’t unfeeling. Even when he closed away the side of him she knew-the side of him that was human, she thought-there was still an intensity to him that wasn’t only about hunger when he was looking down at her.
She raised herself up from the mattress, as much as she could manage around her bound wrists, and touched her lips against his.
He shrank back the instant she made contact. “Uh uh,” he said, eyelids half lowered over his eyes. “That’s not what this is about.”
Since she knew what this was about, it seemed a dumb thing to play the game of asking him to spell it out. Instead, she used the moments to study him, looking in his eyes which he left open for her to peruse. Open, at the same time as being closed. It was strange.
“I get it,” Elena said at length, feeling much more calm herself than before this had begun.
Stefan just smirked, and it was as different to his usual smirk as the rest of him was different to his usual. “Not yet, you don’t,” he answered, before trailing his free hand down her side.
It felt different to the way he usually touched her. Dispassionate, but not just that. It was as though there were a layer of plastic or paper between them, something that he had imposed when he shut himself off from her. But she still responded to his touches. Still responded to his lips against her stomach, the nips as he bit into her. He wasn’t drawing blood, but he’d never so much as bitten her before this. Elena gasped, then found she liked the sensation of it, then found herself arching towards his bites as well as his trailing kisses. She found herself moaning, the only sound in the room, for Stefan was completely silent in his detachment from her. Engaging, but not quite engaged. Elena would have wondered if he was only touching her in this way because he had shut himself off if she’d been able to spare the brain space for thinking.
In the end, he did not bring her to orgasm, didn't give her what she needed. Elena pouted and panted over that, but even she knew that she would appreciate it later on. At the time, though, she struggled to regain her breath, alternately burying her head into Stefan’s shoulder, and looking into his eyes to see that distant-intense gaze.
Eventually, she found enough brain space to be able to mumble, “Is this what you were like when you first became a vampire?”
“Perhaps.” He also spoke shorter sentences to her while he was like this. But he didn’t look away, didn’t try to evade. The veins on his face were now quite pronounced, but Elena realised she hadn’t really seen them for quite some time. She thought of lifting a hand to trace her fingers against them, but thought better of it. She had no idea how much restraint it was taking for him to hold back from… well, drinking from her, and she wouldn’t lightly hand that up to him again.
Nor would she ask him to revert back to the Stefan she knew and loved. Elena had enough trust in him to know that he would likely revert back once they woke up together the next morning. Her fingers tightened around her arm, and she took a final deep breath.
“Perhaps… we should sleep, now?” she asked him.
Stefan nodded his head twice, then shifted in the bed so that he was spooning her. Elena’s fingers stayed clasped around his arm, holding all of Stefan to her, and knowing she would never worry about him going cold on her again.
Part 4
Author: persephone_20
Summary: An AU in which Elena is romantically involved with both brothers, following the sequence of events in the last 3 episodes of season 1. Follows on a couple of weeks after Haunted (4/4)
Pairing: Damon/Elena, Stefan/Elena
Spoilers: None
Notes: Just more thanks to the wonderful coquilleon for being my beta, and my memory for suddenly remembering I'd been slack about posting the rest of this fic up.
Elena’s attitude was significantly different from her ‘Don’t ask, don’t care’ attitude from the night before when she returned to the boarding house after school the next day. Stefan understood, having been within range to hear every word that had passed between Elena and her birth mom.
Damon and Anna could only guess. Damon hated to guess what had put those expressions onto Elena’s face.
She didn’t speak about what had passed at the Grill until the four of them were back at the boarding house. Anna called Jeremy on the way to apologetically cancel on the catch up they’d had planned. Elena used what she could hear of his voice through the phone as a focus back to normalcy. The little brother who was really her cousin was far more reassuring to the vampire mom she was related to. He sounded understanding. Anna sounded… gentler when she was on the phone to him.
Damon shut the door to the boarding house and took a moment to extend his senses around them. Only when he met Stefan’s eyes and Stefan gave a barely perceptible nod did some of the tension leave Damon. There were no vampires, no anybody, within hearing to them.
Anna was crouching in front of where Elena had slumped into the arm chair Damon had been lounging in the night before. “Are you… okay?” Anna looked as though she didn’t have the first idea of how to comfort Elena, but thought she should make the effort because she was Jeremy’s sister.
Elena nodded stiltedly. Stefan came back into her view, looking tall and assertive.
“Elena, you don’t have to talk about anything if you don’t want to. I heard everything. I can tell the others what happened.”
“No… it’s okay. I can do it.” She looked up to Stefan, to Damon, seeking to find strength in them both, but it was so hard to do with the threat Isobel had made hanging over her head. She just wanted it to go away, to never have to leave this house again. No outside vampires could come into the house if she were to become a permanent resident here. The only things she would have to think about would be how she was to manage her two boys , and she couldn’t imagine that would be something that would be too difficult to manage.
Except that whole idea sounded a whole lot like hiding, and Elena Gilbert didn’t hide from anyone.
She didn’t want to sit. She stood up again, and paced. Eventually, she had taken enough deep breaths that she felt able to take on a retelling of the events that had happened at the Mystic Grill. How Katherine would be fascinated by the resemblance between them. How coldly assessing her birth mom’s eyes had been when she’d said that. Elena found herself procrastinating as she neared the end of her tale, then bit her lip, and forced herself to look at Damon.
Damon already looked like he didn’t like the sound of what was coming.
“She talked about blood, Damon. She talked about blood being on my hands if I didn’t get you to give her the invention.”
Damon looked down to his hands. The invention wasn’t in them this time. He wasn’t stupid enough to take it out of the house, he’d barely trusted anyone to know it was in his possession, and this was exactly why. They were beaten, and he knew it. It wasn’t a nice feeling to have.
He’d already started changing the plan from Elena moving in with them to Elena coming with them as they drove far out of Mystic Falls after the invention was handed over. They’d tell no one where they were going. Damon was trying to put on a brave face and imagine it as 100 nights exactly like the first road trip Elena and Damon had shared together. He didn’t get a chance to voice this plan, before someone human came rushing through the door.
Damon pounced; years of reflexes had trained his muscles to do exactly what he wanted them to do, and when, with little or no preparation. Only when he heard a somewhat defenseless yelp did he register that this was not someone who was here to cause them trouble.
“Damon!” Anna admonished him, already stalking towards them. “Let Jeremy go.”
“Thanks.” Jeremy was wide-eyed and out of breath, and suddenly the very center of attention. He rubbed his arms even as he looked at Anna, and swallowed. “You said you were moving in here now. It sounded like something was wrong on the phone. What is it?”
Anna looked between Jeremy and Elena. “It’s pretty bad,” was all she said.
Jeremy’s eyes moved from Anna to Elena. The look on her face prompted him straight to her. “What is it, ‘Lena?” Even as he gathered her into his arms, his eyes darted to Damon and Stefan, as if one of them were directly responsible for his sister’s upset. Damon shrugged, and looked out towards the still open door. He had no idea that Jeremy knew about his arrangement with Elena, and wouldn’t have cared what Jeremy thought of it if he had. His only thought was that he would not be caught so off his guard again.
In the middle of the very tense situation, only Stefan had a possible ray of light to offer. “There is one another option.”
Anna seemed doubtful. “What’s that?”
“Bonnie.”
**
Bonnie consented to do the spell that would de-spell Jonathan Gilbert’s invention, but she was not without reservations over it.
“You know I don’t mind Stefan anymore. Stefan’s not a bad guy, but Damon isn’t a good one,” Bonnie told Elena, in urgent whispers.
Elena ducked her head and wished that she’d never been told about vampire super hearing. She refrained from turning her head, knowing she would meet Damon’s knowing smirk. She hated that her best friend hated her… Damon. It had been bad enough when Bonnie had been at loggerheads against Stefan, and Elena was thankful that the worst of that seemed to have passed. But the fact that neither Caroline nor Bonnie thought especially much of Damon was beginning to wear thin.
Elena closed her eyes and tried to sound calm. “If you’re willing to do it, you have to be willing to do it for all the vampires, Bonnie.” What had been an attempt at calm just came out tired. She opened her eyes and tried again. “Please, Bonnie.”
Bonnie’s lips tightened, but eventually-thankfully-she nodded.
“I’m doing this for you…” she said.
Elena knew. She didn’t have any further words to offer, feeling like she’d already offered them all. She had half turned away to check in on the others when Bonnie spoke again.
“Why, Elena?” Bonnie’s face was pleading with her, pleading that they could still understand each other like they had when they were young. “Give me one good reason, one reason why I should want to do this.”
Elena’s lips parted. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Bonnie.”
“Anything. Just make me understand.” Bonnie was shaking just slightly with her need for understanding.
Elena tried to sum up what she was feeling. When she had it, she looked at Bonnie, unflinching. “They’re family. To me, they’re family. I can’t lose any more family.”
She had spoken honestly, but she could see from the pinched way that Bonnie reacted that Bonnie was thinking of her own lost family. She gave a short nod then, and turned away.
“I’ll do it.”
**
After that, the idea of meeting with Elena’s birth mom seemed almost easy. It wasn’t, of course. Isobel was still there, looking cold and unfeeling, like it couldn’t matter less to her that Elena was her daughter. But it was still easier than facing Bonnie. Because Elena hadn’t lost Bonnie yet, and she didn’t want to.
“I have the invention.”
“I knew you would,” Isobel replied, and her calm voice seemed to make mockery of all of them. Only Stefan and Damon had accompanied her to this meeting with Elena’s birth mom, but they would only step in if Isobel threatened violence. From where she stood across the grass, it didn’t seem like she was remotely interested in violence this time. Her eyes barely left Damon’s hand, where the invention was nestled.
“Why, Isobel?” Elena couldn’t bring herself let go of this opportunity to have this last conversation with her birth mom before handing the invention to her but, even so, she couldn’t call the woman standing in front of her ‘Mom’. Desperately, she was hoping that there might be a chink in the armour somewhere, that Isobel might soften now that the stress of getting what she wanted was nearly abated. She was hoping that Isobel might, for one second, look at her like a mother looks at her daughter.
She was doomed to be disappointed.
“Why what?” Her red lips curved in a dispassionate smile even as her eyes only barely flickered away from Damon’s hand.
“Why… why is this the only contact you’ve bothered to have with me? You didn’t want to get to know me at all?”
“No.” Just that. No elaboration, no sound of regret. Elena was too wrapped up in her own pain to catch the movement of Stefan behind her holding Damon back as the older brother tried to surge forward in response to Elena’s pain, but Isobel noticed. “I think,” she told Elena, “that you have more than enough people in your life ‘wanting to get to know you’.”
The way Isobel said it, it almost sounded like a threat. Elena was deaf to that. “But you’re my mom.”
Isobel shrugged. “I’m bored of this. The invention?”
Stefan was looking at Damon, still holding onto him, as if not sure he could trust what Damon would do if he let him go. Truthfully, it was surprising that Isobel was still willing to have him come closer to her after his recent movement.
Isobel only looked impatient. If they’d not been standing on grass, she would likely have tapped her heeled foot. “The invention, or Elena suffers,” Isobel said, the words prompted from boredom rather than interest.
That took whatever wind was left out of Damon’s sails. He claimed his arm back, shrugging it violently in his jacket sleeve. His jaw was tight as he walked past Elena, pausing only long enough to mutter, “You alright?”
Elena made some sort of disembodied sound in response, that didn’t seem to do a lot to reassure him. But there wasn’t a lot more that they could do. Bonnie had de-spelled Jonathan Gilbert’s invention, Isobel could have it, for all the luck it would give her. Elena’s fractured heart was a small bi-product on the wayside. She tried to close her heart against it.
The exchange done, Elena couldn’t quite hold back one last smart ass quip. “You took a risk with Damon. How did you know he would give up the invention?”
Like all the others, it bit her squarely on the behind. “Because he's in love with you.”
Isobel was the first one outside of the three of them who had spoken aloud what had only been between the three of them-and, well, Jeremy-until now. Neither one of the boys jumped to deny it, but they wouldn’t have even if it hadn’t been true. Then, it would have been no more than the misguided ramblings of a nuisance. They would have shrugged their shoulders and disregarded it.
Elena did her best to try that act now, try to show that she was unfazed. It wasn’t fair that someone who had never shown any inclination towards mothering her should have any idea about what was going on in Elena’s life.
“Whatever,” she said, suddenly very tired and no longer wanting to play these word games with Isobel. She knew now they were likely to have another show down when the invention didn’t work, but then it would be different. It would be like the invention had never worked, and there would be nothing further Isobel would be able to do. Nothing, except to leave town.
It had been a long night, and Elena wanted nothing more than to go back home.
She considered going back to her house with Jenna but, by the time she and the boys returned to the boarding house, it seemed like so much trouble to go the rest of the way home. Jeremy and Anna were both sitting up in the living room, waiting for her, Elena thought.
“I’ve already called Jenna,” Jeremy said, holding his phone up with a vague wrist motion. “She knows we’re both planning to stay out tonight, so you don’t have to worry about going home if you don’t want to.” He paused, glancing between the vampire brothers, and his sister. “How did it go?”
“She took the invention.” That was about the best it could have gone. All three of them had come back alive and unmarked. Elena shouldn’t have expected more.
Except she had, and it was proving much harder to shut her heart up.
Jeremy wasn’t the only one looking at her in concern. It was all too much for her to deal with right now. She barely even looked Stefan in the eye as she directed her next question to him. “Do you mind if I crash up in your bed? I’m wrecked.”
“Of course,” Stefan said, and she didn’t wait on the pleasantries on goodnights. Tonight, she just made her own lonely way up the stairs to Stefan’s bedroom.
The bed was soft and the sheets smelt like him. Mostly, that smelled like clean soap and just the faintest hint of metal. Iron, perhaps. Elena rolled over. She didn’t want to be smelling him tonight. She didn’t want to be anything.
It would have been too much to ask that Stefan not join her in his own bed that night, but as soon as he walked in, hesitantly hovering by the door, Elena turned her head and wished she had have muscled up the energy to go home to her own bed. She moved over to one side of his bed, making room for him without talking.
Stefan took of his shoes and his shirt. He didn’t crawl into bed beside her, just lay on top of the covers on the space of the bed she had freed up for him.
“Please stop looking at me,” she asked him, coolly.
She felt Stefan shifting, but the claustrophobic feeling didn’t ease. Eventually, he said, “Elena, I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be.” She tried to say it gently, even spared him a glance before she returned her eyes to the top of his dresser. “I’m just tired.”
“Elena, I think we should talk about this.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s painfully obvious.” Stefan sighed. “Just… indulge me. What are you feeling right now?”
“Right now?” Elena shifted her legs, but didn’t move her body. She still wasn’t quite ready to look at him. “I’m feeling like if I don’t have any expectations of people, they won’t hurt me. I’m feeling like what’s to stop you or Damon changing the way you act to me one day, and me looking into cold, unfeeling eyes when you’re looking at me? You’ve both said you can shut it off. Well, maybe sometimes it’s a good thing for we small humans to try once and again.” She knew she was speaking out of hurt and that, very likely, she was only succeeding to worry Stefan further but, damn it, he’d asked, he’d pushed her to answer.
Stefan was silent for a very long time after she spoke. Elena closed her eyes, wishing for sleep to take her away from this. Just for a little while. She was sure it would be alright again in the morning. There certainly wouldn’t be some new drama that demanded her attention and all of her energy. And then she could apologise to Stefan for tonight. And she would hug him, and she would hug Damon…
Stefan rolled her body so that she opened her eyes and, just like that, she was suddenly facing him. Even without the sustenance of human blood, he was still much stronger than her. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it. Except with her words.
“Stefan, this isn’t a good time,” she said, but it wasn’t about that. Stefan wasn’t leaning close to her, wasn’t angling for a hug or close contact that would make everything better. In fact, now that she looked at him properly, she saw that his eyes were closed off to her, far quicker than she’d been able to shut herself away even as much as she’d managed. “Stefan…?”
“Your fear,” Stefan said, and his voice was raspier than it usually was. Not like Damon’s could be, but not quite like Stefan’s either. She had a faint memory trying to rise to the surface, but all thought and memory was taken from her as Stefan captured both of her wrists in one of his larger hands.
“Stefan, what are you doing?” It was impossible for Elena to keep herself distant from him now, impossible not to look him in the eye as he hovered over her, still a maintaining a respectable distance between their bodies.
Stefan blinked sloe eyes and ran his tongue over his teeth. Elena’s eyes widened as the veins began to lift ever so slightly on the skin under his eyes, and his teeth became a little sharper. “Even were I to shut myself off, I don’t think I could act coldly towards you,” Stefan said, as though pondering it. Elena was struck with where she remembered this tone from.
This same room, after the Miss Mystic pageant, before the vervain dart. But she had no vervain dart now, no Damon waiting silently on the other side of the door. Her wrists were bound by his hand, and Stefan’s teeth were sharper.
And, again, Elena felt that thrill of… something, mixed in with the healthy dose of fear he was inspiring.
“Stefan, I don’t understand. Why…?”
“I love you, Elena. With all sides of me.” Stefan’s blood darkened eyes shifted back and forth between hers. She tried to see the familiar Stefan she knew in there but, despite his words, she couldn’t see him. This was what he’d meant, then. Her fear that one day he would look at her from behind closed up eyes.
But he was right, too. This wasn’t cold, wasn’t unfeeling. Even when he closed away the side of him she knew-the side of him that was human, she thought-there was still an intensity to him that wasn’t only about hunger when he was looking down at her.
She raised herself up from the mattress, as much as she could manage around her bound wrists, and touched her lips against his.
He shrank back the instant she made contact. “Uh uh,” he said, eyelids half lowered over his eyes. “That’s not what this is about.”
Since she knew what this was about, it seemed a dumb thing to play the game of asking him to spell it out. Instead, she used the moments to study him, looking in his eyes which he left open for her to peruse. Open, at the same time as being closed. It was strange.
“I get it,” Elena said at length, feeling much more calm herself than before this had begun.
Stefan just smirked, and it was as different to his usual smirk as the rest of him was different to his usual. “Not yet, you don’t,” he answered, before trailing his free hand down her side.
It felt different to the way he usually touched her. Dispassionate, but not just that. It was as though there were a layer of plastic or paper between them, something that he had imposed when he shut himself off from her. But she still responded to his touches. Still responded to his lips against her stomach, the nips as he bit into her. He wasn’t drawing blood, but he’d never so much as bitten her before this. Elena gasped, then found she liked the sensation of it, then found herself arching towards his bites as well as his trailing kisses. She found herself moaning, the only sound in the room, for Stefan was completely silent in his detachment from her. Engaging, but not quite engaged. Elena would have wondered if he was only touching her in this way because he had shut himself off if she’d been able to spare the brain space for thinking.
In the end, he did not bring her to orgasm, didn't give her what she needed. Elena pouted and panted over that, but even she knew that she would appreciate it later on. At the time, though, she struggled to regain her breath, alternately burying her head into Stefan’s shoulder, and looking into his eyes to see that distant-intense gaze.
Eventually, she found enough brain space to be able to mumble, “Is this what you were like when you first became a vampire?”
“Perhaps.” He also spoke shorter sentences to her while he was like this. But he didn’t look away, didn’t try to evade. The veins on his face were now quite pronounced, but Elena realised she hadn’t really seen them for quite some time. She thought of lifting a hand to trace her fingers against them, but thought better of it. She had no idea how much restraint it was taking for him to hold back from… well, drinking from her, and she wouldn’t lightly hand that up to him again.
Nor would she ask him to revert back to the Stefan she knew and loved. Elena had enough trust in him to know that he would likely revert back once they woke up together the next morning. Her fingers tightened around her arm, and she took a final deep breath.
“Perhaps… we should sleep, now?” she asked him.
Stefan nodded his head twice, then shifted in the bed so that he was spooning her. Elena’s fingers stayed clasped around his arm, holding all of Stefan to her, and knowing she would never worry about him going cold on her again.
Part 4