Massive Ficathon Post-Vampire Diaries

[eenaangel]

Okay, so I've been indulging in the TVD Comment Ficathon over at softly_me's journal, and I've done a poor job of keeping up the posting here. So here they are, all the prompts I have filled so far:

General Disclaimer: All belongs to LJ Smith-she's probably filthy rich at this point and that makes me happy, because I love all her stuff.

Spoilers: Up to 2.11, they vary from fic to fic, but everything so far is fair game.

Caroline/Tyler,my heart is sick of being in chains

He feels so overwhelmed at first, feels like he needs an army of doctors and gods at his back to get him through all this. The pain is . . . pain. He has no words for it, won't bother wasting time to make up words for it. There's nothing out there that will suffice.

Things don't get better, all the old adages insanely wrong on that one. Things get worse, day by day, sometimes hour by hour. Mason is gone, then he's missing, and then he's dead. Caroline is like him, Caroline is a vampire, Caroline helps him, and then Caroline has lied to him. Bad luck compounds upon bad luck and nothing anyone says makes sense anymore.

Jules is here, she's always around these days. She says that she'll help him, be a mentor or a guide because that's what Mason would have wanted. Tyler thinks that if Mason had wanted anything of the sort, he would have heard about Jules long before she wound up on his doorstep, looking for his uncle. And then she says she can help him get revenge, to right the wrong of Mason's death. It's becoming clear that this world of vampires and werewolves is messier than he imagined. It's all very clearly us versus them. And he thinks that he should want what she's saying, but his heart just doesn't feel it.

He doesn't ever want to kill again-even if the bastard deserves it.

But there's a greater problem here, at the very heart of his town. There's Councils and vampires and moonstones and sacrifices-and a lot of talk about witches and curses. He understands very little of it, but gets the general gist of what everyone wants to happen. Jules is trying to come off nice and helpful, but she's a fool if she thinks Tyler is just going to happily help her kill Elena Gilbert because he's known that girl since they were in diapers and he will not entertain the thought of hurting her.

The Salvatores make it worse, because they're always around now too. Stefan comes to plead for Caroline, and for their case. Damon comes with threats, warning Tyler to stay far away from Damon's own. Caroline's name is tossed onto the list of Damon's own seemingly as an afterthought, and this sparks an argument between the brothers that has Tyler rolling his eyes before just walking away.

Even his history teacher is in on all this garbage, and Alaric fucking Saltzman wants him to talk about his feelings about the situation. Tyler damn well didn't talk about his feelings when his father died, he's not about to start now. And he doesn't care how many tools and toys Alaric has to kill them, the dude is so obviously on Damon's side that the two of them might as well swap BFFs bracelets or whatever.

It goes deeper and deeper-Jeremy knows everything, has known everything for months, and now the boy can't even look Tyler in the eyes anymore. Bonnie Bennett, little Bunny Bennett that can't hold her liquor right, even she's part of this mess-a goddamn witch. He swears, the only thing that surprises him now is that Matt hasn't suddenly been revealed to be a leprechaun and that his mother isn't the tooth fairy.

The whole thing is messing with his head, and he doesn't remember being this lost when he first found out. He looks back and thinks of that as a simpler time-because then it had only been him and Caroline, and her hand on his forehead could chase away almost any problem.

And so, when he's tired of pretending with Jules, when he's tired of listening to the Salvatores, when he's tired of avoiding Alaric and of Jeremy avoiding him, he makes up his mind. It's the middle of the damn night, but he makes up his mind, crawls out his bedroom window and fucking runs for her house.

He's climbing the tree outside her window, clad in only a pair of shorts and a wifebeater (his usual sleeping attire), when she's suddenly there at the window, frowning unhappily.

"Are you insane?" she all but hisses before jumping out onto the nearest branch. He drops to the ground and waits for her to join him, trying to find the words that will make her understand why he's here.

"My mother could have heard you," she continues, dropping her eyes and glaring hard at his shoulder. And he wants to laugh at this girl, this fiery girl who's full of passion and contrition to an ungraceful point. He tries to remember what she is, how she lied to him, and all the other things Jules had told him about her kind.

But all he can really remember is her body wrapped around his, the feel of her lips against his ear, and the soft sound of her voice, bringing him back to himself when all he felt was wrongness and pain. She stands there, clad in a rumpled pair of pajamas with tousled hair and wary eyes-and she's still the most beautiful sight he's ever seen.

"Tyler?"

He shakes his head, abandoning words because he's never been too good with them in the first place. He won't ever find the right words to explain how just the sight of her drives away every other worry clouding his mind. He can't describe why the scent of her around him settles the turmoil within, brings him to a clarity that he lacks when attacked by all the others during the days. He steps up to her, arms sliding around her waist and just the feel of her skin under his hands is enough to make him forget the loneliness, the doubt, and the anger that has been hanging about him.

"Tyler?" and her voice is softer and more vulnerable than before. But she doesn't stop him from pulling her closer. Her hands slide up his arms, even though she's still confused, and she settles her head just under his chin, and he thinks that she's even made the right size, the perfect fit, just for him. He turns his face, buries himself in her blonde hair, and then inhales long and deep. She fills him up, from the top-down, and he feels solid and strong for the first time in weeks.

"Tyler?" she asks again, and her voice is hopeful now. He pulls back, just a bit, and sees her gazing up at him with wide blue eyes. He trails a finger down the side of her face, tracing the curves of her lips before covering them with his own. She hesitates, unsure at first, but then melts into it, gives in and kisses him back with tenderness.

They pull back when he needs air and she waits anxiously for the next part, lip caught between her teeth as she looks between him and her open bedroom window.

"Stay?" she asks, fingers clenching in the white fabric of his top. He removes one from his chest, places a kiss on her open palm, and then nods towards her window.

"After you-but quietly. Wouldn't want to wake your mom."

And when she giggles, he can't keep the ridiculously wide grin from his face. This is where he should have been, all along.

This is where he will be from now on.

~0~

Damon/Caroline, make you feel this pretty burn

She is, perhaps, his first true child. He has made other vampires over the years, but he has never stuck around long enough to see if they lived out the week (and he highly doubts many of them did). She is the only one he can claim has any sort of regular spot in his life and he never would have given it to her of his own free will.

But Katherine is tricky beyond even his ability to imagine. It would have been better if it had been random, a way of playing with them to celebrate her reappearance in their town. But Katherine is always with purpose and he doesn’t think she could do random even if she tried. Everything is a very carefully calculated move. Even if she doesn’t really understand what the game is until much later, Katherine would never indulge in chaos for the fun of it.

Caroline is not someone he would have considered vampire material. He’s been pretty close to ending her life numerous times because sometimes, she just fucking annoyed him. But she has been spared because of Elena, because of Liz, and because why would he waste the time in the first place?

She comes into unlife as most usually do-confused, scared, and hungry. Yet, she deals with it in an amazingly calm fashion. Compulsion comes to her as instinctively as blinking, and though she doesn’t really understand it he knows she loves the idea of it. There are times when she’s hanging around Stefan and there’s still hint of guilt in her eyes. Saint Stefan doesn’t see it but damn if Damon doesn’t recognize it. The first time Damon sees it, it is accompanied by a new pair of boots that she’s desperate to show off and hide at the same time.

He waits for the other shoe to drop, for her to become this snivelling, bitchy control freak who unleashes all her little insecurities out on the town in a bloody rampage. He’s waiting for it to go wrong, waiting for the chance to laugh in Stefan’s face and give Elena that ‘I told you so’ look that would make her simmer. But the chance doesn’t come because Caroline adjusts irritatingly well, and almost astonishingly quick.

Stefan is downright smug on the issue of Caroline for a few weeks.

~0~

Things start changing; she’s suddenly less troublesome and more of an asset. She saves him, saves him, at the risk of losing her mother. It is something he never would have expected from her, something he still has difficulty accepting (and the image of her tossing around Mason Lockwood like Elena says she did is as amusing as it is unreal). She is suddenly there, suddenly Caroline Forbes, suddenly his child and he hasn’t the slightest idea about what to do with her.

She comes around the boarding house more and more often, almost always with her arm linked with Elena’s. He pours her blood, and never once second guesses it or bothers to bitch about his dwindling supply. She is still tentative around him, and he knows that a large part of her hates him as much as ever. But she always ends up within a couple feet of him, like she can’t help but gravitating towards, can’t quell the desire to be near whenever she sees him. He likes the idea of her being unable to resist, but that’s not surprising. He likes most things that stroke his ego so thoroughly. But it also makes him wonder about what’s going on between them, if this maker/child thing comes with any advantages. Katherine wasn’t around to ever try or teach him about it, but he’s a fast learner and first-hand experience is better than any vampire lore.

He takes to the next step, making sure to engage in physical contact when he can. Brushing his fingers against hers as he offers her a glass, taking seats closest to her and letting his leg touch hers ever so lightly. Stefan sees this happening and frowns, but doesn’t know what to do about because Damon technically isn’t really doing anything at all. Elena notices too, watches with narrowed eyes that grow more suspicious by the day. Caroline, he believes, remains completely oblivious or unconcerned, because it’s Damon and she seems to have made up her mind to not try to understand him.

He thinks it hilarious that after everything he’s put her through, she can still consider anything he does as remotely harmless.

~0~

Things do not change significantly until he starts spiking her blood with his own. The idea comes to him while Elena and Alaric comb through some of Isobel’s research in an attempt to find mention of Klaus. Elena starts reading a handful of notes on vampire relations and family trees, and Isobel has made a strange notation in the margin about ‘blood to rule over blood’. It makes him think, makes him wonder, and finally he donates a few drops the next time he fixes Caroline a drink.

It takes a long time for anything to happen, but it is there in the tiniest of things. Her eyes can’t seem to be off him for long and soon enough, she’s showing up at the boarding house with little to no reason. She says she wants to ‘hang out’ and Damon watches in amusement as she fights to control the impulse to be near him, to touch him. Her hands raise often when in his vicinity, fingers grasping at the air and then retreating when their owner realizes what is about to happen. She is confused, almost adorably so, and this game with her is his favourite distraction from having to worry about Klaus and older vampires who can easily end his eternity.

He begins to up the dosage, going from a few drops to pints at a time. It does get harder to hide from Stefan, but he gets it done. And she’s nearly mad with the results. She shakes constantly in his presence and then she starts skipping school, racing to the boarding house just so she can be close to him. At this point, she can’t deny that something has happened, but she still can’t trace it back to him.

“Do you think something’s wrong with me?” she whispers, blue eyes wide and threatening tears. “Do you ever feel this way with Katherine?”

He shrugs and shakes his head, inwardly dancing when she starts touching him. It starts slowly, a hand on his arm or a knee pressed against his leg. It quickly devolves into full embraces, because this scares her and she thinks he’s actually trying to help.

He also notices that she seems to listen to him more than before. When he suggests doing little things, like getting him something from the kitchen to snack on or changing the channel when her television selections annoy him, she’s always quick to respond. He doesn’t want to push too hard with this at first, but he’s downright gleeful at the possibilities it presents. He mentions offhand one day that he likes her red sweater because red is a good colour on her. From that day on, Caroline has something red in her wardrobe at all times. He says one night that her hair looks better when straightened, and the curls vanish overnight. He flat out orders her to do her homework, and then randomly demands that she stop. Not once, in his entire two weeks of experimentation, does Caroline ever disobey him.

It’s too delicious for words, and troubling on different levels. It prompts a late-night visit to the tomb with a bag full of blood and a lot of questions.

“If I had had the time, I would have done the same to you two,” Katherine laughs when he demands an answer. “It’s the oldest trick in the book-the perfect way for vampires to create loyal little minions. Of course, you have to start almost immediately after they’re first made, or they never listen. Just look at you two, chomping at the bit to do me in for eternity, locking me in this hole in the ground-you never would have considered it if I had fed the maker/child bond when you turned.”

“You were too busy trying to save your own ass,” he counters, bitterly and painfully as ever. She just laughs at him, a cruel laugh, and waves him away dismissively.

“I pick me over anyone, any day of the damn week-but you might want to watch it with your little baby vampire. The others are bound to notice, and how will you explain an attempt at subjugation to your beloved Elena?”

Her laughter haunts him all the way home.

~0~

She becomes desperate to please him, and this isn’t how he wants her to be. It’s entirely too reminiscent of the time when he was compelling her. She gets annoying when she’s needy, and so he indulges her while pulling back on the blood. At one point he stops it entirely, and things get a bit better. She no longer shakes with the impulse to touch him and she stops skipping school just to spend time with him.

But she still listens, almost as well as she did at first. He wants to test the strength of it, wants to order her not to help the wolf anymore. But he worries that it’s too much of a one-eighty and that it would put the others on his trail. And besides, he does want someone watching over the mutt, keeping him far away on the nights of the full moon. But he finds himself curiously concerned for her as well, not liking the idea of her being the first line of defence against a rampaging werewolf. He doesn’t like considering that she could get hurt, could die if Tyler Lockwood ever so much as nicks her with one of his wolf teeth. It makes him courteous around her, caring and gentler than he usually is with her. She doesn’t say a thing about the change, but he sees that it pleases her in the smile she struggles to keep at bay.

He is not so amused, and Katherine is once again less than helpful.

“Oh, did I forget to mention the backlash on your part? Oops.”

~0~

It takes too long for her to transition to his bed.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s been craving it until the day it happens. She’s come by after cheerleading practice and Stefan is gone, doing something somewhere that Damon can’t bother to care about. All he can see is Caroline’s legs, bared for all to see because of that skimpy scrap of clothing she calls ‘shorts’. They trade barbs about her attire over glasses of blood and when he finally pulls her into his lap, her face is full of relief.

He takes her first on the couch, spilling the remnants of his drink over her lace-covered breasts. The sight of blood against smooth pale skin does nothing to calm his hunger. His tongue laps up the spilt blood even as his hands tear away every shred of clothing on her body. She shrieks in unabashed delight when he thrusts into her the first time, so joyous at their union that he’s soon kissing away the tears from her cheeks.

He is unrestrained that first time, plunges in and out of her with every ounce of his strength. It hurts her a tad bit, he can tell from the way she bites down on her lip and tries to swallow ragged gasps. But he can’t stop, won’t stop, and the fact that she can take it now drives him into a frenzy of lust and want. He comes shouting her name and she squeezes herself around him while riding out her first climax.

He topples onto her afterwards, gazing up at her face with dazed eyes. His view is partially obscured by the sight of her heaving chest and the rise and fall of pert little breasts make him hard again. Once more he has her in the living room, this time bent over a side table while he pounded into her from behind. She makes delightful little grunting noises, arches her backside against him just so, and it’s such a perfect fit that his eyes cross when she comes, tightening her inner hold on him to the point where it’s almost painful-but it’s a good kind of pain.

They stay still after that, him slumped over her back while she laid face-down on the table top. He says something about Liz, about having to get Caroline home to her mother. Cheekily, she suggests calling in and asking for permission to stay over at Elena’s for the night.

Then she wiggles back against him and he dials the damn phone for her.

~0~

She tells him later that she can feel him inside her, even when they’re far apart. He knows what she means, has spent hours the last three days pulling himself in and out of her psyche. It happens the first few times by accident, and he’s treated to a rather boring history lecture from Alaric that never seems to be as important as how nice his rear end looked in his new jeans. It takes him a little too long to realize that these are Caroline’s thoughts (and how relieved does that make him feel?).

She worries about it, says she feels as if she’s losing grip on who she is because her mind is so full of him. And for a second he considers telling her what he has done, the experiment he conducted out of boredom that now seems to be ruining her life. He thinks of telling her, of watching her explosion, and then seeing if he can order her not to be angry about it.

But instead he flips her over, liking the image of a naked Caroline sprawled out on his sheets, and tells her not to worry about it at all. She frowns for a second, but he makes her smile seconds later by putting his mouth to work on the more sensitive parts of her body.

He probably should stop it, but when she’s got her legs wrapped around his hips and is meeting him thrust for thrust, he just doesn’t feel like it anymore.

Besides, he reasons while she kisses a path down his body, it’s not like he can’t handle the consequences. And when she draws him into her mouth, he hisses and arches his back and then completely forgets why he ever wanted this to end.

~0~

Damon/Caroline, death is your gift

Sobbing. She is sobbing as if her heart is broken, as if her world is shattered. There's a body at her feet and blood on her face and tears on cheeks.

"Stop crying," he orders, voice as cool and unimpressed as always. "Grab his wrists, I'll get the ankles. We're really going to have to find a new spot. That ravine is getting crowded."

She only cries harder.

"Stop it!" he snaps, calm demeanour fading fast under the noise of her remorse. "We can't waste time like this! Move it!"

She shakes her head and bends over the body to weep some more.

He rolls his eyes (these people give him a headache with all the eye-rolling they induce) and he grabs her roughly by the arm. She shrieks and flails, tries her best to get away. He lets her go and she falls on her butt before she starts scrambling backwards.

"Honestly, not a big deal," he shakes his head at her.

"I killed him!" she screams, angry starting to override the fear. "I killed him! It's a very big deal!"

"Well, if you pitch a fit each time you do it," he smirks at her. "What did you think would happen? You'd go through eternity and never spill another drop of blood?"

"Stefan-"

"Stefan's not here!" he roars, suddenly in her space again. He grabs her by both arms and propels her backwards until they collide with a tree. The air goes out of her lungs and the pain to the back of her head is momentarily blinding. He continues on, not noticing (and not caring) that he's done her harm. "You're a goddamn vampire-and sometimes, these things happen. Learn from your damn mistake, and get on with it! You spend all your timing mourning and freaking out over every little human-you'll go crazy!"

"I won't be like you," she gasps, futilely pushing at his shoulders. "I'm not like you! I won't get over it!"

He leans in close and she goes still, at that moment reminded of the monster he can be. His eyes are on her chin, fascinated by the smear of scarlet there. "You're a messy eater," he muses, his tongue soon sliding out and lapping at the 'mess'.

Another sob, tears trailing down over cheeks to add salt to his copper treat. He sighs, pulls back, and brushes her hair off her face with alarming tenderness. "You can't do this, every time," he tells her, in a voice much calmer and more resigned than before. "You can't do it-your mind can't take it. Caroline, it's what we are."

He steps back and she slides to her feet, sniffling, shivering, but controlled at last.

"Grab his wrists," he tells her again, but kinder than before. She glares, mutinously, and wipes away the last traces of blood and saliva from her chin.

And then she grabs the dead man by the wrists.

Stefan/Caroline, if I fall along the way, pick me up and dust me off

It all ends before Elena turns seventeen.

The dust clears, monsters reduced to ashes, and the three of them pick up and leave. They go in two separate directions, fracturing in ways that no one could have imagined.

She thinks, to this very day, that it was all her fault.

~0~

When she is eighteen, she goes off to college and all is well because she is away from that town. But she can’t leave it entirely behind her, can’t avoid its pull because her mother is still her mother and who else will check up on the Council? (John Gilbert is still the most annoying man on the planet-nothing will ever change that).

During her Christmas break at home, Carol Lockwood comments offhand that Caroline is just as beautiful as she was on the day she was crowned Miss Mystic Falls. Caroline beams with a smile that she doesn’t feel and does her best not to notice John’s eyes following her for a week.

At nineteen, just before heading home for Thanksgiving, she marches into a high-priced salon, drops Daddy’s credit card on their counter, and demands they make her look older. The hairstylist irons, smoothes, thins, and shortens her hair. A bob cut makes her face look far more angular than it is. It also adds on a year or two to her immortal sixteen, and makeup takes care of the rest.

This buys her only a year and half in the end.

~0~

Elena calls all the time, but Caroline never answers. She thinks that the whole mess might be her fault, but it was Elena who put her right in the middle without her consent.

Elena calls and calls, changes her numbers and tries from anonymous, private numbers. Caroline hangs up the second she hears Elena’s voice. Eventually, she sends everything to voicemail. Bonnie doesn’t like it, but it’s not Bonnie’s life. Jeremy tells her to get another phone if it bothers her that much.

But she can’t. He only has her current number, and for all her role in everything that happened, she wants to be there if he calls.

In three years, he never does. And it’s entirely more painful than it has any right being.

“You’re being stubborn about this,” is Damon’s take on things.

That is one of the nicer messages he leaves.

~0~

By twenty, it is unavoidable.

She doesn’t know what to do, spends three weeks crying and moping in her dorm room because Carol (Carol again!) takes the time during her last trip home to mention Caroline doesn’t look a day over seventeen. She laughs it off, as she always does, but she can’t discount the contemplative looks in the eyes of one too many Council members.

She can’t think of a way to handle it, but knows that it has to be handled. Bonnie offers magic, but isn’t sure it will work. Jeremy doesn’t have anything useful to say, but smiles sympathetically and pats her on the shoulder.

She knows who she has to ask, who she has to inform. But the last three years have been long and silent-stubbornness on both sides has left everything strained. She doesn’t even know if his number is still in service, has been too chicken-shit to ever dial it. The real horror is if she dials, it’s still connected, and he just never picks up.

And though she is still angry, a part of her whispers that Elena must feel the same way with every ignored call.

That she feels any guilt at all infuriates her.

~0~

Tyler-the arrogant, lovable bastard-still talks to her long after Matt stops.

“He will get over it, eventually.”

She laughs, and it’s loud and bitter. “He’ll never forgive me for any of it-Vicki, Elena, Aimee, and I don’t know how many others.”

Tyler laughs too, but it’s warmer than hers. “None of those were your fault, and I’m not talking about Donovan.”

Tyler’s entirely too optimistic for his own good.

~0~

The Call, the one she’s been praying for whilst simultaneously dreading, finally becomes inevitable. She spends a good hour, sitting in a dark corner of some seedy bar not too far from campus, just staring at his name in her Contacts list. And when she has no more excuses, when the pressure just becomes too much, she dials.

It rings five very long rings, and then a click signals that the call has been picked up. She can’t wait to hear his voice, and also can’t bear to hear what he might have to say. “I need to die,” she blurts out and then disconnects.

It is six very long hours before he finally calls her back.

~0~

She finally takes a call from Elena, hours before it is scheduled to happen. She’s standing in the shadows of her old backyard, watching her mother make her way upstairs for the night.

“What?”

There’s a long silence on the other end. “You’re going to talk to me?” Elena’s voice is trembling, unsure, and so vulnerable. Caroline hates that it can still tug at her heart, like it used to for so long. She can remember that voice, has heard it for most of her life. Elena is like Bonnie, such an integral part of Caroline’s life that she has her own private section of Caroline’s very being.

A part of her would do anything for Elena, even after everything that’s happened, and that’s the main reason she hasn’t taken Elena’s calls for so long. She knows she can forgive Elena for what happened, knows that, truly, there isn’t much that she would have done differently. She still loves Elena as strongly as she did before, and knows the feeling is reciprocated because the damned calls haven’t once stopped in three years.

“Damon said that you were going to do it tonight,” Elena explains after a lengthy, awkward silence. “I just wanted to say . . . I just want to-“

Elena stops and Caroline listens to the dead air coming through the phone while blinking back tears. “I just want you to know, that I’m still-“

“I know,” she interrupts, before Elena tries again to finish. “I know. Me too.”

A sigh, heavy and remorseful as only Elena can do it. “I really am sorry, Caroline.”

Another pause. Liz Forbes is turning off her bedroom light and soon her childhood house is as dark as the sky above it. Tears escape, because this really is it.

“Me too, Elena. Me too.”

~0~

They drive her car off a cliff and into an icy river just below. A thin film of ice cracks when the car hits it, shards of ice exploding into the night air as the tires churned in sub-zero waters. It frightens her, though she knows she’s in no real danger of drowning. It’s entirely too easy to get out of the car, crack a few windows, wrench open the driver’s side door, and then swim for the bank.

She collapses on snow-covered grass, taking in deep breaths that she doesn’t really need. Her eyes never leave her car, even long after it’s submerged and beyond even her sight. She sits there, freezing cold and shivering, but not in any danger of hypothermia or even a head cold. She’s long beyond those worries.

He takes a seat beside her, after a long while. Ten minutes or so he waits, and then tugs on her sleeve. “We have to go.”

She turns to look at him, really look at him, and she still can’t believe he’s actually here. “I never thought you would come,” she confesses, not acknowledging his other words. “I don’t know why I called-no, that’s a lie, I know why. I just can’t believe it ended like this.”

He looks at her, green eyes carefully blank and nonresponsive. “Why did you call?” he wants to know.

“Because,” she replies with a shake of her head, and thinks that should be enough. But he still looks at her, waits for something more, and she needs a moment before she can oblige. “Because, there’s no one else I would want with me, when I die.”

He looks away, and she thinks that she’s gone too far. “Stefan, I’m so-“

And then he kisses her, lightly. Just a brush of his lips across hers, but it’s enough to stop the words right in her throat, enough to stop the apologies that would never stop once started.

“It’s over now, Caroline,” he tells her. “It’s been over for a while.”

Then he gets to his feet. He holds out his hand to her and she just stares at him blankly for a minute, not sure if he means what he says or if she’s gone and wished for something more than he’s actually offering.

And then she takes his hand.

~0~

Stefan/Caroline, I watched her bleed into me and all I can think is Lexi

He shouldn't have said it. He had thought it several times since wiping the blood off her face in the school bathroom the night of the carnival, but he's never said it until that day at the Grill. But words, once they leave you, are the only damage in this world that cannot be undone.

Saying it makes it worse, makes him feel it more than he has ever before. He sees bits of Lexi in her from before, but it's overwhelming now. Every movement, every smile, every saucy little wink-it's Lexi. He knows people get upset when they think deceased loved ones are being replaced by living-breathing substitutes, but that's not the case here. The case here is much worse-he's replacing a living girl with a dead one.

And she doesn't even realize it.

On the rare occasion that she straightens her hair, he finds himself tugging on her the strands and making faces until she laughs. She rolls her eyes, just like Lexi used to, and swats at his hands, just like Lexi used to. And when he doesn't stop, when he starts doing it more forcefully than necessary, she pounces on him-just like Lexi used to. Damon comes home one afternoon to find them rolling around on the floor, engaged in a bizarre wrestling match that has her struggling to keep him in a headlock even while he's sweeping her off her feet and into his arms.

"Children," is all Damon says, and for the first time actually appears to be the put-upon older sibling. Caroline sticks out her tongue at him and when Damon takes a playful swipe at her, Stefan yanks her out of the way. He laughs it off, awkwardly, and Caroline accepts it with a shrug, kicking his ankle lightly with her pointed boot before retaking her seat in front of the television. Only Damon lingers, to give him a hard look that chases away any attempts at laughing it off.

And Stefan can do nothing to explain. It would involve bringing up too many bad memories, quite possibly ruin things with a brother he had finally started to get back. But Stefan can't forget everything, not with Caroline traipsing about in her new Lexi-skin. He can't forget watching his brother stake a girl that had been his friend for decades, had been his best friend for the majority of his life. And he can't bear the thought of it happening again, not when she's so close at hand (and yet, never farther away). Damon's come at Caroline with a stake, too.

"You're a good friend," she tells him constantly, beaming that blinding smile of hers. He watches her dance in the sunlight, imagines that this is what Lexi would have looked like, what Lexi should have looked like, if she had ever the chance to go out into the sunlight. He thinks her hair would have caught the light just like Caroline's does, that it would have given off a golden shine that is not unlike a halo. Lexi was meant to be in the sunlight, and he should have gotten her a ring (he had gotten Caroline one in a matter of days-he had decades with Lexi).

"Tell me about her," she demands often, whenever a calm moment allows her to remember that Stefan Salvatore had once mentioned having a friend. Her eyes are bright and playful when she asks, a teasing remark always waiting to come out. He doesn't have the heart to tell her that Lexi is dead, that his best friend of so long will never spend another birthday with him. And he doesn't do it for all the wrong reasons.

She has hang-ups about this, about being the fill-in for somebody else. He knows it's one of the hardest things she struggles with, the feeling that as she is, Caroline isn't good enough to be number one. And he wants to show her that it's not true, but he can't because he's doing it to her now. He's making her Lexi, with all his might, because missing Lexi is so much harder than feeling sorry for Caroline.

He's a hypocrite, because he's using her now more than Damon used her before-and he's not even being as honest about it as his brother was. And though he knows it wrong, he doesn't want to stop.

He just can't lose Lexi again.

Stefan/Caroline/Damon, hanging out and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer

It comes in the middle of the night, minutes before midnight, and shatters the silence of the boarding house. He checks the caller id, and waits a second before answering. A tired greeting is on his lips, poised to be dropped but never delivered.

“Do we still have souls?”

He honestly doesn’t know how these thoughts come to her, but they come at random times and in the most illogical order. She had once started texting him madly at four in the morning, demanding to know if they can be photographed like normal people. She never gives reasons for these questions, and maybe he’s indulged her too often because they seem to come with greater frequency now than ever before.

“Excuse me?” he delays, hoping to avoid the outrageously complicated topic of vampires and souls. He’s been around a hundred and sixty-two years-he’s seen this debate go in circles.

“Do we still have souls?” she is as impatient as always, and now speaks slowly as he’s some dull-witted child that constantly needs reminders to stay on topic. “Do we?”

“Caroline, I-“

“Because a lot of people don’t think we do,” she carries on, without giving him time to blink, let alone respond. “Vampires aren’t human; almost everyone thinks they’re demons. And demons don’t have souls. So, are we demons? Are we living dead people? Where are our souls, Stefan?”

“Caroline-“

“Stefan,” her tone goes from impatient to soft and needy in just one breath. “Do we have our souls?”

He should tell her yes. He should assure her that those tales are just myths and folktales. He should tell her that she’ll still be able to go to Heaven whenever it ends, because that’s what she’s really worried about.

But he’s not sure. And he can’t lie to her about these things. “I don’t know, Caroline. I really don’t.”

She hangs up without another word. He looks down at his suddenly dark phone and feels like he’s done something massively stupid.

“Can’t you just feed her some false hope?” Damon calls from the doorway, unashamed by his overt eavesdropping. “She might stop bugging you at all hours with dumbass questions if you do.”

Stefan glares at his brother, feeling worn out and short on patience for reasons they both understood too well. “Someone has to be real with her. Someone has to take responsibility for her.”

Damon’s eyes flash with a fleeting second of anger. “I didn’t make her into this,” he mutters grumpily. “She’s the last damn person I would have made into this.”

“And look at how many times she’s still saved your ass, in spite of that,” Stefan shakes his head at his brother and lies down on his bed. “I know Katherine killed her, but she’s yours, Damon. If you can’t be bothered to deal with her, who’s left to help her through this?”

“Always the martyr,” Damon rolls his eyes and departs, making sure to slam his bedroom door shut behind him. Stefan just stares up at his ceiling, trying hard not to think of Elena and failing.

~0~

“Do our reflections mean we have souls?”

The next day (night) and she’s still on the soul issue. Stefan tries in vain to rub the sleep from his eyes. “Caroline, it’s three in the morning.”

She snorts. “What? You were sleeping?”

“Yeah, I was,” Stefan retorts, trying to keep the irritation from presenting itself too clearly.

“But do you really need to?”

And he can’t help but laugh at that, because she is as relentless as ever. There’s something very reassuring about Caroline’s ability to remain bossy and neurotic even in the midst of all this Katherine crap.

“What was the question?” he asks, a small smile on his lips that he knows she can sense, because her voice returns perky and almost smugly-satisfied.

“Does the fact that we have reflections mean we have souls?”

Stefan pulls himself into a sitting position, leaning his back against his headboard. “I honestly don’t see the connection, Caroline.”

“Well, all the soulless vampires in myths and stuff have no reflections,” she explains hurriedly. “It’s because they have no reflection of humanity, just a mask. So does that mean we have souls because we have reflections? Does it work like that like, or was somebody hundreds of years ago bullshitting for the sake of drama?”

His phone is pulled from his ear a millisecond after he notices that Damon has entered his room. Damon puts the phone to his ear before throwing himself into Stefan’s desk chair. “Blondie this soul-kick of yours gets increasingly tedious as the days go by. Why the sudden fascination?”

Stefan gives his brother a look and listens for Caroline’s response. There is a lengthy pause before: “Damon?”

Damon covers the speaker and glares at his brother. “See why I don’t like talking to her?”

“And see how I hate talking to you just as much, as evident by my dialling Stefan?” Caroline snaps before Stefan can admonish his brother. “Give the phone back.”

Damon smirks. “No.”

“No?”

Stefan frowns. “No?”

“You’re my own child, as someone keeps reminding me,” Damon narrows his eyes at his brother before continuing. “So I’m going to be the best vampire-daddy in the world and help you with your problem. Tell daddy what’s troubling you.”

“Give Stefan the phone.”

Stefan waves a hand at his brother. “Give me the phone.”

Damon waves him off and then frowns. “What’s that in the background? Are you watching TV or something?”

“Damon, I want to talk to-“

“Hey, I know that voice!” Damon sits upright and looks slightly stumped. “That’s what brought on the deep, philosophical pondering on the status of your soul? Seriously, Blondie?”

Stefan hears the soft click and Damon just switches his incredulous look to the darkened phone before looking to his brother. “I’m father to the immortal Pamela Anderson, aren’t I?”

Stefan glares at his brother. “Damon-“

“Nah, you’re right,” Damon tosses Stefan his phone and walks to the door, shaking his head. “Blondie’s not plastic enough to be Pam Anderson, and she’s not quite as slutty as Paris Hilton-but still, this is seriously just . . .”

“What?” Stefan calls after him. Damon waves him off and heads downstairs, no doubt towards the alcohol. Stefan follows him and demands from the top of the staircase. “What?”

Damon just shakes his head again.

~0~

Two nights after that, Caroline is standing in their living room with her arms folded defensively over her chest. “Well, where else was I supposed to get my information from?” she asks, her tone surlier than probably necessary.

Stefan tries his best to hide a smile, knows that he probably fails, and raises his hand slightly in the air. She turns the full force of her glare on him and it’s still too funny for him to take seriously. His small smile becomes full-blown and it’s really hard not to laugh when Caroline gets like this.

“Stop laughing!” she pouts and actually stomps her foot much like a child. “I had questions-“

Damon waves a DVD cover at her and arches an eyebrow. “So you turned to Buffy?”

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out but a puff of air. She screws her face up into something that is perhaps supposed to be threatening, but is ridiculous in light of the situation. She looks to him, face pleading for assistance, but even he can’t help in this case. Sometimes, Caroline just does it to herself.

“You know, just because she’s blond doesn’t mean she’s a good role model,” Damon continues. “She kills vampires, which is not good if you’re a vampire. And Blondie, though I wonder sometimes, you totally are. But on the other hand, I’m sort of proud. At least it’s not Twilight.”

“Sure, laugh, but you know that has your life stories in it, right?” Caroline gives him a smug look. “The love triangle to end all love triangles-until Sookie, Eric, and Bill anyway.”

“Maybe we should just get Liz to cut the cable,” Damon muses to Stefan. Stefan just takes the DVD cover from him and looks to the back.

“How is this at all like us?” he can’t help but wonder.

“Oh, I don’t know, mysterious brooding vampire who has sworn off human blood because of the guilt it causes him,” Caroline rolls her eyes. “Do you really not see?”

“I have a feeling I’m not going to like this,” Damon says, but he’s still smirking for all he’s worth. He throws himself onto the couch and waves his hand, motioning for her to continue.

“Could you be any more Angel?” Caroline continues, eyeing Stefan critically. “I mean, sometimes you even look like his promo shots-furrowed brow and all.”

Damon laughs uproariously and Stefan is sure if he was human, his face would be red. Caroline arches a brow at him challengingly and then slides her eyes towards Damon.

“And you, what can I say about you?” she shakes her head. “The only real way you’re different from Spike is that he’s blond and British, and you’re dark-haired and American. Otherwise, you two are exactly the same. Both are into carefully orchestrated chaos that hide larger master plans, both infatuated with the vampire that made you-a crazy ass bitch in both cases. And when she dumps you, you focus on a girl who is her complete and utter opposite. You become obsessive, ignoring the fact that she’s in love with someone else. You try changing for her, hoping to please her but you can’t quite manage it because you’ve been self-destructive so long that it’s the only real thing you’re good at. And neither of you realizes that curbing your actions to gain the affections of a girl is not the real, substantial change you need to ever have a chance with her in the first place.”

Damon’s face drops with every word she says. It goes from amused and teasing to dark and threatening, but Caroline doesn’t care to stop. Stefan gets to his feet and steps in front of her before things can get too far. He gives his brother a warning look and shakes his head at Caroline’s smug expression.

“You got all that from a TV show?” he asks, slightly incredulous.

She gives him a blank look. “Don’t you see it?”

“Never really watched it,” he admits, and that’s enough for both Damon and Caroline to forget their previous showdown.

“What? You never watched Buffy?” Caroline looks at him in wide-eyed disbelief and then glances over at his brother. “Is that even allowed?”

“It’s a pretty big part of pop culture,” Damon shakes his head. “Of course, Stefan’s so busy pretending to be a teenager that he hardly ever pays attention to the things that teenagers actually enjoy.”

He feels absurdly betrayed as Caroline joins Damon in laughing at his expense. “It’s just a TV show,” he mutters defensively. Caroline squawks at his statement and Damon just snorts.

“Put that thing in the player,” he orders Caroline, and she listens without protesting for once. He allows himself to be pulled to couch while Damon disappears to get the appropriate snacks.

“I think I liked it better when you two were fighting each other,” Stefan huffs and she just laughs at him.

“Stefan, I adore you, but if you’re going to be my mentor, you need to know how to field all Buffy related inquiries,” she beams at him. “Think of how much of an easier time you would have had all these weeks if you had just watched a couple of episodes.”

He doesn’t reply, shoots her a suffering sort of look that she just laughs at. Damon arrives, arms loaded with food, drinks, and bags of blood. He tosses a particular bag at Caroline and she catches it before looking down in surprise.

“Tostitos?” she gives Damon a curious look and Damon ignores her as he grabs the remote. She looks to Stefan and raises the bag, a happy smile start to blossom on her face. He tries to remember that he’s annoyed with her, but fails and just smiles back.

Damon turns on the TV. “Let’s do this-bring it, Sunnydale!”

Caroline giggles and leans over to whisper in Stefan’s ear. “What a fanboy,” she murmurs and of course Damon hears her. A pillow comes flying their way just as the opening credits start blaring out from the speakers.

~0~

Elena/Alaric, vampire hunting training, bonus points for AU where she doesn't date Stefan

“Vervain darts,” he says, holding up the item. She nods and watches as he moves onto the tranquilizer gun and proceeds to show her how to load it. “Never hold it against your shoulder,” he warns, moving the gun so it nestled itself just underneath his collarbone, “you’ll shatter your bones.”

She nods again, the eager but silent student. Her eyes take in everything, from the gun to the stakes to the wood-tipped brass knuckles. Her lips move, repeating his instructions to herself, under her breath, hands hovering above each weapon as she does so.

They are Isobel’s lips, and sometimes watching this Elena move them so is like a knife to the heart.

“Vervain grenades,” he moves on, but he always has to move on. There’s nothing left for him that way.

~0~

”Alaric Saltzman?”

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Elena.” A pause and a nervous twitch of the fingers. “You were married to my mother.”

~0~

“This is pressure sensitive,” he tells her as he helps her slip the device onto her wrist. “You press this button, and whoosh!, you have a stake in your hands. You have to be careful that you hold your hand the right way, or you’ll be plucking out splinters for days.”

Another nod and a determined purse of the lips. She turns away from him, holds her armed hand outwards, and triggers the release. The stake flies out and she barely catches the tip of it. She winces and gives him an apologetic look. “It was faster than I thought.”

He waves it away. “These things take time.”

Time she barely has.

~0~

”It was on Founders’ Day; our town has a parade and a festival-it’s a whole thing. They came from nowhere, dozens of them, and we couldn’t figure it out until . . .”

He hands her a rootbeer and than settles on the chair across from her. She keeps her eyes on his kitchen table, but he can see the tears glistening from here. “My Uncle, father-I don’t . . . he was killed. My brother Jeremy overdosed in his bedroom, my friend Caroline died in a car accident, and my Aunt Jenna’s been missing for weeks. The only person I still have is Bonnie, but her grandmother yanked her out of town and to their family home in Massachusetts. I . . . I don’t have anyone.”

He sighs and can’t help but ask, “How did you find out about Isobel?”

She’s startled, looks up with wide brown eyes that have a tinge of guilt. “She told me, herself,” she finally admits.

This gives him pause, and then a rush of anger. “Isobel’s dead,” he grinds out through clenched teeth.

She nods, eyes teary once again. “She really is.”

~0~

“The stake-gun is easier, but it’s hard to be accurate,” he explains, handing it over to her. “You’ll need a lot of practice if you’re going to use this one. It’s powerful, but it takes longer to reload than the other stuff, so you have to be on target, or near as possible. You CAN’T rely on this alone; you need to have backups.”

She nods and then pauses, giving him an incredulous stare. “Are you sure you aren’t a woodshop teacher?”

He’s no longer any kind of teacher at all, unless you count this brainless exercise. He doesn’t respond to her quip, but moves on to the next in the line up.

“It’s okay, Alaric,” she says from across the table, her voice full of anxiety and concern. “It really is.”

It’s really not.

~0~

It’s not okay.

She tilts her head at him curiously. “You’re not just saying that because you were married to my mother, are you?”

He’s not, there’s more, but he can barely find the words for it on his own. She crawls across the bed and he watches her near with wide eyes and an inappropriate degree of eagerness. She comes to a stop, straddling his waist, fingers catching in her shirt before she pulls it off and tosses it aside. He can just make out the design of white bra in the darkness of the room, his traitorous hands moving immediately to run up and down her sides.

“This isn’t okay,” he tells her again.

She shrugs, unhooks her bra, and it soon follows her shirt across the room. “It’s not exactly wrong, either.”

~0~

“It wasn’t just to make you agree,” she continues to plead. “It was-It was . . .”

He hands over a can of mace, mixed with vervain, and tells her to hide it somewhere easily accessible.

“I’m not like her,” she mutters unhappily, taking the can from him and sliding it into her front jean pocket.

He stops, images of last night colliding with images of his wife and for one full moment, he feels dangerously ill.

“You’re exactly like her,” he finally says.

And then he takes her for target practice.

~0~

Bonnie/Elena/Caroline, sandbox love never dies

One is sunlight, one is night, and the other is sunrise/sunset-the eternal burnt auburn intermediary.

Once, she was a girl.

She had pretty clothes, daddy’s credit card, and American-pie dreams (power-suit career, Hollywood-esque husband, 2.3 kids, and that white picket fence).

She was captain of the cheerleading squad, she was popular, she was Miss Mystic Falls.

She was the flaky, shallow but lovable, part of a trio.

Once, she was a girl.

Now, she is a thing.

Three heads, three bodies, one bed. The blonde mixes with the brown and the black, a strange little spiral of colour. Fingers the colour of mocha, skimming through white-blonde hair. An arm, tan and smooth, stretched out across a waist covered by a peasant blouse. A pale leg, sliding out from underneath the covers so the toes can point up to the ceiling, to where a collection of faded stickers are jumbled together in a wobbly rainbow.

She asks them if they remember doing that. They nod; how could they forget?

Once, she was a girl.

She didn’t have a mom, because hers had gone looking for something more interesting than a husband and a daughter. She barely had a dad, because it hurt too much for him to watch her change into a creature resembling the wife that left him. She did have a grandmother, one that was usually drunk, but still a grandmother.

A grandmother that baked cookies, a grandmother that read bedtime stories. A grandmother that applied bandages and wiped away tears.

She was the quiet, loyal, and invisible part of a trio.

Once, she was a girl.

Now, she’s witch.

Green eyes count the number of stickers, blue eyes dance with amusement at the memories they evoke; brown eyes water slightly before emotions are pulled back and shoved down as far as they can go.

Brown eyes close and then open.

Things are so different, and yet entirely the same.

Once, she was a girl.

She had two loving parents, a bratty little brother, the best boyfriend ever, and friends that were there, always. She was a cheerleader; she was perky, smiley, and popular. Things were good, life was amazing-everything was going as planned.

But then she had no parents, a dangerously out-of-control brother, a vampire for a boyfriend, a vampire for an ancestor, and a horde of monsters out for her blood.

Once, she was a girl. Now, she is weary and old beyond her years.

And yet . . .

Lights go out, voices fall to hushed whispers. They talk of destiny, of fate, and of doom. They talk of fears, of nightmares, and of worries.

And then, with a mischievous grin that has not changed in all the years they have known each other, the blonde brings up being in the vicinity of a naked football player in the recent past. She smugly recounts the details (she has so many), and then dares the other two to recount something better.

Lights are still out, destiny and doom are still on the horizon, but now, giggles fill the air that was once heavy with the talk of doom and nightmares.

And yet, the friends are still there.

One is sunlight (though now the sun can kill her), one is night (though now the darkness frightens her), and the other is sunrise/sunset (because she is forever bridging the gap between them both).

They are three, and they are one-but mostly, they are forever.

Caroline, I get knocked down, but I get up again

She’s tired of being tragic.

She knows that’s what they see-Elena, Stefan, Bonnie. They look at her and she can practically hear them thinking, of reciting the same old platitudes time and time again.

Poor Caroline; she’s stuck in this now.

But it’s a joke, because she’s been stuck in this way before now. She’s a Forbes, she’s part of this vampire world of Councils, vervain, and stakes whether she ever knew it or not. She took the hard way in, she’ll admit, because Damon used her up and spat her out with bruising speed and shocking apathy. But she’s been in it before becoming a vampire and she likes to think she handled it better than they give her credit for.

She’s not dumb; Damon took away some of the memories, but the bite marks remained. She used to stay up at night, weeks after the whole debacle ended, and just traced the outline of his teeth over and over again.

Poor Caroline, do you think she remembers?

She knew what they were, but the mental block thrust upon her by Damon kept her from forming the actual word. But she knew enough to be afraid, to be wary, and to keep her distance. And even though they’re the same, she still knows enough to stay out of his way.

Poor Caroline; is she smart enough to survive?

She doesn’t know who they think she is, or if Elena and Bonnie have forgotten. She’s done bad before; she’s done cataclysmic. She’s done the public divorce, the father who comes out of the closet and tears half the house down when he does it. She’s done the overbearing mother who drags her daughter out of parties, kicking and screaming until fifteen when she learns to simply turn off her phone so her mother can’t track her. She’s done the cold-hearted senior boy who flaunts his conquest of a fifteen year old her for all the school to see.

She’s done all these things before, and she’s come out smiling every damn time.

Poor Caroline; she doesn’t understand what this means.

She knows this is different, she understands life and death. But what the others don’t understand that she’s done the life and death part of it. She wound up on the death side of it. Katherine’s killed her once, she could do it again.

Caroline lives with the knowledge that she’s past her expiration date and if she gets too Caroline about it, someone will toss her out with the other trash.

Poor Caroline-it’s just so sad.

They don’t see, they think it ends here. They don’t know that she’s still planning the junior prom; that she’s still in charge of the town’s clean-up committee. She’s still head cheerleader, she’s still involved in almost every charity in town. She still looks up universities in her spare time, imagining adventures far away from this town. She still dreams of a year in Europe; she dreams of drinking cappuccinos in Rome and nibbling on croissants in Paris, and every other stereotypical European thing she can get her hands on. She still wants to shop in New York, bounce up and down Broadway and let her silly small-town-girl-self have her fun. She still wants all the things she always wanted, and she’s still thinking of life beyond Mystic Falls.

And that’s their tragedy, as she sees it. They don’t think of the world beyond this town, and she can think of nothing but.

Poor Caroline, they say, because they have no other words to say. She’s not made out for this life.

And they’re right, because it’s not a life-it’s her death.

But she’s still going to live it.

~0~

Stefan/Caroline/Damon,Are you saying we should annoy other people?

It takes the fourth argument over the Tostitos to finally break him.

“Enough! You’re not children!”

Two pairs of blue eyes stare back at him, unblinking. One pair, ice blue and unrepentant to the core, simply roll upwards after his declaration and their owner scoffs loudly. The second pair, darker blue with flecks of white and gold, drop downwards as their owner suddenly finds her boots unbelievably interesting. Apathy on one hand and shame on the other-and he feels like taking both their heads and smashing them together until the arguing stops. He doesn’t even care if it stops through apologies or unconsciousness; he just wants it to stop.

Stefan shakes his head and takes in the ruins of the living room. There’s shattered glass and crushed tortilla chips all over the carpet, the coffee table is upended and missing a leg, some books have been toppled from the shelves, and there’s a fire poker jammed in the ceiling.

“It’s a stupid bag of chips!” he growls, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. “Just chips! You can go to the store and get some more.”

“It’s my house-“

“I bought those-“

“Or just share!” he cuts them off before they can get started once again. “Honestly? I don’t even think this is about the chips. Damon, stop trying to order Caroline around so much, and Caroline, stop trying to get on Damon’s last nerve all the time. If you can’t manage that, at least take this outside of the house! I can’t keep up with all the repairs!”

Damon frowns and exchanges a curious look with Caroline. “So, are you saying that we should start annoying other people, instead of just you?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying.”

Caroline pouts and folds her arms across her chest. “You don’t even want to have us get along? You don’t even want to try for peace?”

Stefan throws up his hands. “If I thought it would do any good, then maybe. But with the way you two have been acting-“

“Told you!” Damon suddenly turns on his heel, completely ignoring his brother to invade Caroline’s personal space with the smuggest expression he can muster. “He has a limit.”

Caroline doesn’t bother to acknowledge him, instead is content to glare unhappily at Stefan. “You couldn’t hold on for two more fights? Just two?”

He’s confused, but not entirely slow on the uptake. He watches Damon chortle and Caroline fume and comes to the right conclusion. “You two were faking?”

“Well, mostly,” Caroline wrinkles her nose and tries to push Damon away. When she fails to move his brother, she attempts stepping away, but Damon follows. She sighs and then shakes her head. “He’s a suffocating, overbearing, out-of-control bipolar maniac, and he does eat my chips without asking even though I have to ‘ask nicely’ if I want so much as a glass of scotch-“

“Glass?” Damon clucks his tongue disapprovingly. “Last time I checked, half the decanter is a tad more than just a glass.”

“Why?” Stefan demands, of the two of them, of the house, of the town, of the universe-of everyone and everything.

Caroline has the sense to look a bit contrite by this point. “Well, we were bored and Damon said he has more patience than me, and then I said at least you beat us both in that department, and then Damon said he could get you to snap fairly quickly, and then I said something about you putting on a better front than that-“

“And then, and then, and then,” Damon rolls his eyes and gives his brother a teasing smirk. “And then, I won the bet, so Blondie gives up remote control rights for the rest of forever.”

Caroline’s back to looking sour and her glare towards Stefan is matched with one of his own. “You’re both idiots,” is all he says before stomping for the door.

“What else do you want us to do?” he can hear Damon shouting after him. “It’s the mid-season! No new episodes of anything until January! January!”

Caroline takes the time to notice the destruction around her. “That was my last bag, you know.”

Stefan slams the door shut behind him.

Idiots. The both of them.

~0~