fic: you feel like home to me
title: you feel like home to me
fandom: tvd
ship: stefan/caroline
rating: pg-13 (inclusion of canon death)
word count: 1642
summary: Caroline looks up at the stars and suddenly all their names are Stefan.
They’ll disappear someday, doomed because she cared, because she wanted them to stay. That’s what always happened. (canon-ish up until 5x21, spoilers throughout)
a/n: written for the prompt ’by night when others soundly sleep’.
It starts off innocently.
Or innocently enough.
(Is it really innocent when she feels guilty meeting Elena’s eyes?
When it feels wrong in all the right ways. That some part of her lights up at the idea of having a part of Stefan that doesn’t belong to Elena, that she doesn’t know about.)
They don’t tell you in the vampire brochure about all the things that will happen. They don’t tell you about the restlessness and the need to hunt, to run, to fight. They don’t warn you about the nightmares, of the hallucinations that happen when you least expect them (remembering, not hallucinating, but she won’t say that part out loud).
So they walk. Stefan guides her through the town full of empty streets, through the forest, down the road.
His hand is always supportive on her back and they look at the stars and she thinks about naming them. But when she tries she always names the ones closest together Stefan and Caroline and it makes things more complicated.
They walk and they talk and Stefan reminds her she is not alone.
--
Sometimes they don’t walk.
Sometimes she shows up on his doorstep, polite enough to knock and ask if she can come in, even if it’s two in the morning.
(Damon is there watching her sometimes, and she remembers, she remembers everything, but Stefan’s hand is warm on her back as he leads her upstairs and it makes it easier.)
Stefan’s room is nothing like she pictured on her first day of meeting him, but everything she expects it to be then.
“No TV?” She asks.
“No TV.” He shakes his head.
She peruses his books and he writes in his journal and there’s a comfortable silence.
She likes it that way.
--
Klaus comes to town and he ruins everything (and everyone in some way).
The walks stop and so do the quiet evenings.
He steals Stefan from them and Caroline hates him for it.
But she can’t say it out loud, can’t scream it like she wants to. Because Stefan doesn’t belong to her. Elena’s tears are more important, less selfish than her own, and she can’t explain what others don’t know.
Klaus comes and ruins everything (and everyone, even her.)
--
Stefan comes back, but he’s not the same.
Not for a long, long time.
The walks don’t start again and he doesn’t search her out. She passes him in the hallways of school and he does not look at her.
His flip is switched and he only has one job, protect Elena.
(She laughs bitterly through the tears in the bathroom stall, because really, did he need compelled for that?)
--
Slowly, he comes back to them. (Comes back to her.)
The emotions come back and he smiles at her like he used to, like she means something, like she is someone.
And she hates him a little for the way it makes her stomach flop. But she loves him more for coming back to her.
Caroline shows up at his door, knocks and waits patiently on the doorstep, and asks him if he wants to go for a walk.
He smiles like the answer is obvious, like they had never stopped. Grabs his coat and follows her outside.
--
Things change. Klaus ruins more things (ruins the both of them too) and things split apart.
But he can’t ruin what they have. They won’t let them
Caroline’s sheer stubbornness won’t let him.
They continue their walks, start to take breaks in the park and look up at the stars together.
“They won’t last forever.” Caroline speaks.
Stefan turns to look at her confused. His head tilting and his pale skin prominent in the moonlight. A creature of the darkness, but when she looks at him, that isn’t what she sees.
“The stars,” she continues, “They’ll all burn out eventually. They might have burnt out already and we just don’t know yet.”
“It’s sad.” Stefan nods and she knows he says it because he thinks it’s what she expects him to say.
“It’s strange to think I could outlive a star,” She tells him, “That something so bright, something so powerful could disappear before I do.”
“I think your selling yourself short.” Stefan says.
Caroline laughs. She doesn’t know why.
--
They spend this walk drinking. Whiskey they’ve stolen from Damon and there’s a thrill in that alone, a buzz.
They walk down the side of the street and Caroline giggles at the thought of one of her mother’s deputies finding them. She wonders what they would do.
“It’s supposed to get easier, right?” Stefan asks.
“Life?” Caroline asks. She’s drank a lot and she’s not sure if she’s missed something.
“Love. Love lost, whatever you want to call it.” He shakes his head, “It gets easier, right?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the all-knowing one?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the optimistic one?” He counters.
He looks over at her, a light in his eyes and she wants to capture it. She wants that look to only ever be for her.
(Caroline has always been selfish and needy. This is not a surprise.)
“We’ll figure it out,” She says linking her arm with his, “That’s who we are.”
“That’s who you are.” He says, his voice whispering into her hair. His lips grazing the side of her face.
(Caroline wants to capture it all for herself. She wants him for herself.
But she’ll never say that out loud.)
--
The walks stop again.
He leaves.
Stefan leaves.
And she hates him again. She hates the memoires he left her with and the way that even the good ones are tainted with his absence.
He calls once, when she leaves too many messages on his answering machine, and promises that he is okay. But his voice is wrong and there isn’t any warmth and she can’t see his eyes or the stars and it feels wrong.
Stefan is gone and it all feels wrong.
(Tyler, Matt, Bonnie, god, even Klaus. Stefan was never supposed to leave too.)
Still, sometimes she calls his voicemail just to hear his voice as she walk around Mystic Falls alone.
Caroline looks up at the stars and suddenly all their names are Stefan.
(They’ll disappear someday, doomed because she cared, because she wanted them to stay. That’s what always happened.)
--
Stefan doesn’t remember her, but he says her name like she is the most important thing in the world.
He chooses her over Elena and Damon and Caroline selfishly latches onto it, like a child with their favorite stuffed animal, because he’s there beside her and he promises he won’t leave. (“I think my only hope of figuring this out is you,” he told her.) She latches on and vows to never let go again.
Only bad things happen when she lets go.
He crashes in a hotel room close to campus and some nights she sneaks out, finds him, lies in the bed beside him and pretends that their back at the park looking at the stars.
She’s taking an astronomy class now, knows she the name of constellations and individual stars, but she still thinks of naming them herself.
“What would you name them?” Stefan asks.
“I don’t know, something…musical.” She says.
He laughs and takes a drink (never without his trusty alcohol these days). “Why musical?”
“Because just when I thought they were all going to burn out, they started to shine brighter. Like a song that was supposed to be over, but had another verse.” Caroline says.
He nods, but he doesn’t understand.
He doesn’t remember their nights beneath the stars.
(Not yet.)
--
She stares at Tom Avery too long, for all the wrong reasons.
She thinks of Elena and Katherine and she thinks of course the Salvatores fell in love with them both. Of course.
(It finally starts to make sense.)
Caroline thinks about turning him, running away and hiding him forever, an almost perfect scenario, but not the real thing.
She thinks of killing him and how the nightmares will haunt her. How Stefan’s lifeless face will be the last thing she sees every time she closes her eyes at night.
She compels him to leave town, to run away and live his life, to be happy.
(It doesn’t work.)
Enzo finds them, snaps Tom’s neck underneath the night sky and Caroline cries over the body of a man she doesn’t know.
(When she closes her eyes at night, this will be what she sees.
A girl incapable of saving Stefan.
A dead boy with the face of the most beautiful boy she has ever seen.
The stars shining on above them.)
--
She climbs into the car with Stefan and he tells her what she has always known; she cannot kill a man with his face.
He knew that when he sent her away and he knows it now.
Stefan has seen her kill, seen her murder, seen her maim, and seen her hunger for the satisfaction that only blood can give her.
He knows what she is capable of.
He knows what she isn’t.
They fall asleep underneath the stars, her head in the crook of his neck and his arm around her.
(Someday the stars will burn out, but they will still be there, side by side.)
--
Julian wearing Tyler’s face, tears out Stefan’s heart and Caroline’s with it.
She cries and cries for help, from anyone, from God, from someone (“anyone, please help!”)
The stars shine above them, the night sky as Caroline cries holding Stefan’s lifeless body.
One of them dims in the distance, but Caroline doesn’t notice.
(They could all go out and Caroline wouldn’t know.)
fandom: tvd
ship: stefan/caroline
rating: pg-13 (inclusion of canon death)
word count: 1642
summary: Caroline looks up at the stars and suddenly all their names are Stefan.
They’ll disappear someday, doomed because she cared, because she wanted them to stay. That’s what always happened. (canon-ish up until 5x21, spoilers throughout)
a/n: written for the prompt ’by night when others soundly sleep’.
It starts off innocently.
Or innocently enough.
(Is it really innocent when she feels guilty meeting Elena’s eyes?
When it feels wrong in all the right ways. That some part of her lights up at the idea of having a part of Stefan that doesn’t belong to Elena, that she doesn’t know about.)
They don’t tell you in the vampire brochure about all the things that will happen. They don’t tell you about the restlessness and the need to hunt, to run, to fight. They don’t warn you about the nightmares, of the hallucinations that happen when you least expect them (remembering, not hallucinating, but she won’t say that part out loud).
So they walk. Stefan guides her through the town full of empty streets, through the forest, down the road.
His hand is always supportive on her back and they look at the stars and she thinks about naming them. But when she tries she always names the ones closest together Stefan and Caroline and it makes things more complicated.
They walk and they talk and Stefan reminds her she is not alone.
--
Sometimes they don’t walk.
Sometimes she shows up on his doorstep, polite enough to knock and ask if she can come in, even if it’s two in the morning.
(Damon is there watching her sometimes, and she remembers, she remembers everything, but Stefan’s hand is warm on her back as he leads her upstairs and it makes it easier.)
Stefan’s room is nothing like she pictured on her first day of meeting him, but everything she expects it to be then.
“No TV?” She asks.
“No TV.” He shakes his head.
She peruses his books and he writes in his journal and there’s a comfortable silence.
She likes it that way.
--
Klaus comes to town and he ruins everything (and everyone in some way).
The walks stop and so do the quiet evenings.
He steals Stefan from them and Caroline hates him for it.
But she can’t say it out loud, can’t scream it like she wants to. Because Stefan doesn’t belong to her. Elena’s tears are more important, less selfish than her own, and she can’t explain what others don’t know.
Klaus comes and ruins everything (and everyone, even her.)
--
Stefan comes back, but he’s not the same.
Not for a long, long time.
The walks don’t start again and he doesn’t search her out. She passes him in the hallways of school and he does not look at her.
His flip is switched and he only has one job, protect Elena.
(She laughs bitterly through the tears in the bathroom stall, because really, did he need compelled for that?)
--
Slowly, he comes back to them. (Comes back to her.)
The emotions come back and he smiles at her like he used to, like she means something, like she is someone.
And she hates him a little for the way it makes her stomach flop. But she loves him more for coming back to her.
Caroline shows up at his door, knocks and waits patiently on the doorstep, and asks him if he wants to go for a walk.
He smiles like the answer is obvious, like they had never stopped. Grabs his coat and follows her outside.
--
Things change. Klaus ruins more things (ruins the both of them too) and things split apart.
But he can’t ruin what they have. They won’t let them
Caroline’s sheer stubbornness won’t let him.
They continue their walks, start to take breaks in the park and look up at the stars together.
“They won’t last forever.” Caroline speaks.
Stefan turns to look at her confused. His head tilting and his pale skin prominent in the moonlight. A creature of the darkness, but when she looks at him, that isn’t what she sees.
“The stars,” she continues, “They’ll all burn out eventually. They might have burnt out already and we just don’t know yet.”
“It’s sad.” Stefan nods and she knows he says it because he thinks it’s what she expects him to say.
“It’s strange to think I could outlive a star,” She tells him, “That something so bright, something so powerful could disappear before I do.”
“I think your selling yourself short.” Stefan says.
Caroline laughs. She doesn’t know why.
--
They spend this walk drinking. Whiskey they’ve stolen from Damon and there’s a thrill in that alone, a buzz.
They walk down the side of the street and Caroline giggles at the thought of one of her mother’s deputies finding them. She wonders what they would do.
“It’s supposed to get easier, right?” Stefan asks.
“Life?” Caroline asks. She’s drank a lot and she’s not sure if she’s missed something.
“Love. Love lost, whatever you want to call it.” He shakes his head, “It gets easier, right?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the all-knowing one?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the optimistic one?” He counters.
He looks over at her, a light in his eyes and she wants to capture it. She wants that look to only ever be for her.
(Caroline has always been selfish and needy. This is not a surprise.)
“We’ll figure it out,” She says linking her arm with his, “That’s who we are.”
“That’s who you are.” He says, his voice whispering into her hair. His lips grazing the side of her face.
(Caroline wants to capture it all for herself. She wants him for herself.
But she’ll never say that out loud.)
--
The walks stop again.
He leaves.
Stefan leaves.
And she hates him again. She hates the memoires he left her with and the way that even the good ones are tainted with his absence.
He calls once, when she leaves too many messages on his answering machine, and promises that he is okay. But his voice is wrong and there isn’t any warmth and she can’t see his eyes or the stars and it feels wrong.
Stefan is gone and it all feels wrong.
(Tyler, Matt, Bonnie, god, even Klaus. Stefan was never supposed to leave too.)
Still, sometimes she calls his voicemail just to hear his voice as she walk around Mystic Falls alone.
Caroline looks up at the stars and suddenly all their names are Stefan.
(They’ll disappear someday, doomed because she cared, because she wanted them to stay. That’s what always happened.)
--
Stefan doesn’t remember her, but he says her name like she is the most important thing in the world.
He chooses her over Elena and Damon and Caroline selfishly latches onto it, like a child with their favorite stuffed animal, because he’s there beside her and he promises he won’t leave. (“I think my only hope of figuring this out is you,” he told her.) She latches on and vows to never let go again.
Only bad things happen when she lets go.
He crashes in a hotel room close to campus and some nights she sneaks out, finds him, lies in the bed beside him and pretends that their back at the park looking at the stars.
She’s taking an astronomy class now, knows she the name of constellations and individual stars, but she still thinks of naming them herself.
“What would you name them?” Stefan asks.
“I don’t know, something…musical.” She says.
He laughs and takes a drink (never without his trusty alcohol these days). “Why musical?”
“Because just when I thought they were all going to burn out, they started to shine brighter. Like a song that was supposed to be over, but had another verse.” Caroline says.
He nods, but he doesn’t understand.
He doesn’t remember their nights beneath the stars.
(Not yet.)
--
She stares at Tom Avery too long, for all the wrong reasons.
She thinks of Elena and Katherine and she thinks of course the Salvatores fell in love with them both. Of course.
(It finally starts to make sense.)
Caroline thinks about turning him, running away and hiding him forever, an almost perfect scenario, but not the real thing.
She thinks of killing him and how the nightmares will haunt her. How Stefan’s lifeless face will be the last thing she sees every time she closes her eyes at night.
She compels him to leave town, to run away and live his life, to be happy.
(It doesn’t work.)
Enzo finds them, snaps Tom’s neck underneath the night sky and Caroline cries over the body of a man she doesn’t know.
(When she closes her eyes at night, this will be what she sees.
A girl incapable of saving Stefan.
A dead boy with the face of the most beautiful boy she has ever seen.
The stars shining on above them.)
--
She climbs into the car with Stefan and he tells her what she has always known; she cannot kill a man with his face.
He knew that when he sent her away and he knows it now.
Stefan has seen her kill, seen her murder, seen her maim, and seen her hunger for the satisfaction that only blood can give her.
He knows what she is capable of.
He knows what she isn’t.
They fall asleep underneath the stars, her head in the crook of his neck and his arm around her.
(Someday the stars will burn out, but they will still be there, side by side.)
--
Julian wearing Tyler’s face, tears out Stefan’s heart and Caroline’s with it.
She cries and cries for help, from anyone, from God, from someone (“anyone, please help!”)
The stars shine above them, the night sky as Caroline cries holding Stefan’s lifeless body.
One of them dims in the distance, but Caroline doesn’t notice.
(They could all go out and Caroline wouldn’t know.)