Fic: 5 Things Matt Donovan Knows About Elena Gilbert (That Stefan Salvatore Doesn't)
Title: 5 Things Matt Donovan Knows About Elena Gilbert (That Stefan Salvatore Doesn't)
Author: lit_chick08
Pairings: Matt/Elena, minor Stefan/Elena
Rating: PG-13
Warning: underage sex
Spoilers: up to 1x03 “Friday Night Bites”
Disclaimer: These characters belong to LJ Smith, Kevin Williamson, and Julie Plec
Summary: There is nobody Matt knows better in the world than Elena
1. She's Afraid to Die Alone
The winter they were eight, Elena's Grandma Beth died.
To be honest, Matt never really liked his own grandmother; she was mean and impatient and more than once had smacked him or Vicki across the face for tiny infractions. When she eventually died, Matt couldn't imagine being sad for a woman who had once told him to his face that he should never have been born.
But he had loved Grandma Beth, loved her just as much as Elena and Jeremy did. Miranda always babysat him and Vicki after school, and Grandma Beth almost always came over, usually with some sort of baked good, to ask how school was going or to gossip about people with her daughter. The day she died, the four of them got off the school bus to see Grayson's car in the driveway and immediately Vicki declared, “Something's wrong.”
Miranda and Jenna were crying on the couch, arms wrapped around each other, and Grayson was in the kitchen making tea. Jeremy immediately went to his mother, climbing into her lap and asking what was wrong, but Elena made a bee line for her father, Matt on her heels, Vicki lingering behind them. When Elena asked what happened, Grayson sat the three of them down at the dining room table and patiently explained how Grandma Beth had gone to Heaven.
Elena started crying immediately, and Matt was surprised to see Vicki tear up as well. His sister was notorious for hating crying, and Matt wasn't sure if he was supposed to comfort Vicki or comfort Elena.
The snow had made the roads impassable that night, and his mother wasn't able to come pick them up. It was hardly the first time he and Vicki had spent the night with the Gilberts; both he and Vicki had drawers full of clothing in the guest room, and that night Vicki got the guest bed while he slept on the pull-out couch in the den.
Matt was almost asleep when he felt someone lift up the heavy quilt atop him and slide beneath it; for a moment he thought it might be Vicki, who sometimes still had nightmares about Kelly's last boyfriend, but the moment he felt a warm hand in his own, he knew it was Elena. Blinking his eyes open, Matt saw her eyes were still red from crying, but there was an expression of determination on her face Matt recognized from the few times Elena got very serious.
“What's wrong?” he asked in a whisper so he wouldn't wake up Jenna in the next room.
“I've been thinking,” she began before tugging the blankets up over their heads, creating a darkened tent in which to speak. Matt could barely see her, but he could still feel her hand in his, squeezing almost compulsively.
“About what?”
“I don't ever want to die.”
“But everybody dies.”
“But maybe by the time we're old, the doctors will have found a way for us to live forever.”
Matt shrugged. “Yeah, but if we lived forever and we couldn't do it until we were old, then our parents would be dead too. And wouldn't it get really lonely if we lived forever?”
Elena sighed, her hot breath misting across his face. After a beat, she whispered, “Matty?”
“Yeah?”
“You won't let me die alone, right?” Voice thickening with tears, Elena confessed, “I don't want to die all alone. It's so scary.”
“Then we'll go together,” Matt promised, squeezing her hand back. “When we're 105.”
Elena giggled. “And it won't hurt, right?”
“Nope. We'll just go to sleep and never wake up.”
“And you'll be there the whole time? You won't let me die alone?”
“I'll be with you the whole time,” he swore.
Snuggling against him, Elena buried her face in his throat, wrapping her arms tightly around him. Matt immediately returned the embrace, breathing in the comforting scent of her shampoo. He couldn't remember ever being without Elena, and it bothered him more than he'd like, all this talk of dying and potentially being without her.
Matt didn't have a lot of people in the world he loved, and he didn't like to think about losing them, even hypothetically.
2. She Used to Really Love her Uncle John
The summer Elena turned thirteen, John Gilbert moved back to Mystic Falls, and Matt started to get kind of jealous.
Due to the amount of time he spent with the Gilbert family, Matt had spent as much time around most of Elena's family members as she had, and as a result, he had formed opinions on most of them years earlier. And while he loved Aunt Jenna to death, he was not a fan of Uncle John. He wasn't sure why, but every time John came to visit, Grayson and Miranda always started to fight in that quiet, trying-to-pretend-like-they-weren't-fighting-but-totally-were way. John was always nice enough to him, but every time he came to visit, he spent almost all of his time with Elena.
John lived in Baltimore, and every time he came to visit, he always had a present for Elena, which she kept on the book shelf by her closet, a small menagerie of ceramic figurines; he always called once a week and Elena would drop everything to talk to him, and Matt wondered why it was that John was so much nicer to Elena than he was to Jeremy.
“Because I'm his favorite,” Elena stated matter-of-factly when he asked her. “He says we have a special bond.”
“What kind of bond?”
Elena shrugged. “I don't know.” Lifting her eyes from her algebra homework, she smiled and winked. “Don't worry. I still love you best, Matty.”
When John called to say he would be moving back to Virginia, Elena had practically vibrated with excitement at the dinner table; Matt hadn't missed the look Miranda and Grayson exchanged, brows furrowed in concern, nor did he miss the way Jenna rolled her eyes, and Matt wondered why it was no one else seemed to like John as much as Elena did.
He barely saw Elena that summer. Whenever John wasn't at work, he was taking Elena all over the place, every weekend having some excursion planned for just the two of them. They went into Washington DC, they went to the Baltimore aquarium, they went horseback riding and to the beach; Elena did more that summer with John than Matt had done in his entire life, and, unlike Grayson and Miranda, John never invited him to come along.
Elena's thirteenth birthday was on a Wednesday, and Grayson and Miranda rented out the Grill for her to have a birthday party with all of their friends. Matt bought her a necklace with money he had saved up from his own birthday and Christmas, a thin, silver chain suspending her birthstone. When he gave it to her, she gave him that smile which made his insides melt before wrapping an arm around his neck, pulling him into a hug, and pressing a kiss against his cheek.
That Friday, John was supposed to take Elena to a fancy dinner in Richmond. Matt sat on the couch with Jeremy playing video games while Elena primped and preened upstairs, putting on the new, polka-dotted dress Caroline had bought her for her birthday and begging Miranda to help her curl her hair. John said he would pick her up around six, and so, when he and Jeremy sat down for dinner with Grayson and Miranda, Elena parked herself by the front door so she could see when John's car would pull up to the curb.
Matt watched out of the corner of his eye as the clock crept closer and closer to seven, and he saw how agitated Elena was starting to become. The curl was starting to droop from her hair, and, with every minute John didn't show up, Elena began to gnaw more aggressively on her lower lip, a surefire sign she was nervous. At one point, she picked up the phone and dialed John's cell phone, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she said, “Hey, Uncle John, it's me. I was just calling to make sure you're okay because you're late. Call me, okay?”
When Miranda asked Elena if she wanted something to eat, Elena immediately shook her head and insisted John would be there any minute.
At eight o'clock, when John was still nowhere to be seen and Elena began to cry, Matt vowed he was going to murder John Gilbert.
Grayson and Miranda were whispering to each other, both of them sounding supremely pissed off, and Matt slipped away from the living room, making his way up to Elena's bedroom. He could hear the pitiful sounds of tears through the door, and it made his heart clench painfully to know she was in such pain. As he pushed open the door, he saw Elena lying face down on her bed, still wearing the dress she had chosen with such care, her whole body trembling from crying. He took a step towards the bed, the floor creaking with the motion, and Elena whirled around, shouting, “I told you I didn't want to talk!”
Matt immediately froze, prepared to apologize, and then Elena's face crumbled as she wiped at her cheeks and murmured, “I'm sorry, Matty. I thought you were my mom.”
“I can leave if - “
“No,” Elena protested instantly, pushing herself into a sitting position, “please stay with me.”
He crossed to the bed, sitting beside her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Elena twisted her head to bury her face in the soft cotton of his shirt, and Matt could feel the tears soaking through the material. Matt stroked her limp curls carefully and whispered, “I'm really sorry.”
“Why did he do this?” she whimpered against him. “Why did he just not show up after he promised? He's never done this before. He always comes.”
“Maybe his car broke down and his phone died and - “
“Aunt Jenna always says he's a jerk,” Elena interrupted, “and she was right. What kind of uncle doesn't show up for your birthday dinner that he planned?”
“I'm sure he has an explanation,” Matt lied.
Lifting her head, tears still tracking down her cheeks, she smiled sadly. “How do you always see the best in everybody, Matty?”
Matt awkwardly lifted his hand and brushed away the tears on her face. Her eyes darkened at the movement, and he felt his cheeks flare with warmth, embarrassed. “I don't. I just...You'd have to be stupid to disappoint you on purpose.”
He was genuinely shocked when Elena leaned forward and pressed her lips against his. For the past year Matt had known he liked Elena as more than just his best friend, but he also was far too scared to ever say anything to her. But at the feel of her lips on his own, Matt immediately responded, hoping he was doing this correctly.
Elena broke the kiss, her hand rising to play with the necklace he gave her. She lowered her eyes for a moment, catching her bottom lip in her teeth, before meeting his gaze. “I really love you, Matty.”
“I love you too.”
When John finally showed up the next day, Elena told him she forgave him, but she kept him at a distance after that. Matt didn't blame her for it, but he also knew how much it hurt her now to see John, to have a constant reminder of how much she had loved him and how much he had disappointed her.
Matt swore to himself that he would never do anything to hurt Elena that badly.
3. She Had a Pregnancy Scare
The spring of their freshman year, Elena came over to his house on a Monday night in the middle of a rainstorm.
Since officially becoming a couple almost two years earlier, he and Elena were spending more time together than ever, but they seldom hung out at his house. His house was tiny compared to hers, and, between his mother's string of loser boyfriends and Vicki's music blasting, it wasn't the nicest place to just be together. However, his house did have something that her house did not: a total lack of supervision.
They had never had an in-depth conversation about having sex. While all of their friends were talking about it, no one they knew was actually doing it. Tyler always said he was getting close to convincing his girlfriend to do it, but Matt had learned long ago that about 90% of what Tyler said about his girlfriends was complete and total bullshit. And Matt hadn't been in a hurry; most of the time he was so happy to just be able to make out with Elena, he couldn't imagine anything being better.
When it finally happened, it was completely spontaneous. Vicki had given them a ride home after school before going to work at the Grill, and they had been alone in the house. Their make-out session had gotten heated, clothes had come off, and before either of them had even made the conscious decision that this was what they were doing, neither of them were virgins anymore. Afterward they had decided maybe they should wait before they did it again since they were only fourteen but...Well, hormones were stronger than logic, and Matt was certain there was nothing wrong with what they were doing because they were in love.
Elena's sudden appearance in his doorway, dripping wet and looking more than a little scared, confused him, especially since both his mother and Vicki were home that night.
“Did we have plans?” he asked as he moved his biology homework off of his lap and went to his dresser, digging out dry clothes for her to wear.
“No, but I - “ Casting a glance at his open door, she quickly crossed to close it, shutting it tightly. Since they had started dating, her parents never let them go into her bedroom with the door closed, but his mother had no such compunctions.
“I need to talk to you about something,” she whispered, barely paying attention to the sweats he pressed into her hands.
“What? Is something wrong?”
Tears filling her eyes, Elena divulged, “My period's late.”
Matt felt his stomach drop. “How late?”
“Three weeks.”
It took him a moment for Matt to remember how to speak. Finally, when the power of speech returned, he blurted out the first question that came to his mind. “You didn't tell your parents, did you?”
“Are you kidding? If I had told my parents, my dad would be over here to castrate you!” Sitting down on the bed, running her fingers through her soaked, tangled hair, she said, “I'm not going to tell anyone anything until we know for sure, so I have to take a test.”
“So let's go get one.”
Elena looked at him as if he was crazy. “If one of us goes into the pharmacy and buys a pregnancy test, the whole town's going to know in, like, two seconds.”
“Yeah, well, if I get caught shoplifting one, the whole town's going to know too.”
Elena sighed, wrapping her arms tightly around herself, and Matt tugged her to him, letting her shake against his chest. He knew she was scared; hell, he had only known for 2 minutes and he was fucking terrified. Finally he pulled back and said decisively, “I'll ask Vicki to get one.”
“She won't tell your mom, will she?”
Matt could not help but laugh. “Vicki doesn't tell Mom anything. I'll give her the money for it and it's not like...”
He trailed off, not wanting to finish his unkind thought aloud.
Digging a crumpled twenty out of his wallet, Matt told Elena to get changed into the dry clothing before he went across the hall to Vicki's room. When he made his request, Vicki raised her eyebrows in surprise before shaking her head in disappointment.
“Jesus, Matty...Weren't you guys using anything?”
He felt his cheeks flushing a brilliant shade of crimson, wanting to be anywhere but discussing his sex life with his big sister. However, given that he was asking her for a humungous favor, he also knew he wasn't going to be able to avoid it. “We...Condoms,” he sputtered out.
Rolling her eyes, Vicki plucked her car keys from her dresser and declared, “You better pray that things comes back negative or Grayson is going to murder you.”
The thought had occurred to him.
When a sopping wet Vicki returned twenty minutes later, a pharmacy bad in her hand, Elena immediately went into the bathroom while Matt waited anxiously outside. He could hear his mother in the living room, talking loudly on the phone with Miranda, and Matt felt a wave of nausea come over him at the idea of having to tell both of their mothers what they had done.
Elena appeared after a moment, the stick in her hand. “We have to wait three minutes.”
Matt entered the bathroom, and they both sat on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the piece of plastic on the sink which could determine their futures.
“If you are...” he began, fumbling over his words, “I would...I mean, I'd be there, you know? I wouldn't just take off.”
Elena chuckled, a small smile playing at her lips. “I know, Matt. You're not...You're one of the good guys. It's the only thing that's keeping me from having a total fucking meltdown.”
Matt couldn't help but smile before asking, “When do you think it happened?”
She was quiet for a moment before stating decisively, “St. Patrick's Day after Caroline's party.”
He couldn't help but blush at the memory of that night. It had easily been the wildest, most passionate sex they had ever had, and both of them had been so loud that Vicki had started banging on the wall halfway through it.
When the alarm on Elena's phone went off, signaling it was time to check, Matt got to his feet, holding tightly to Elena's hand as he read the screen.
“Negative,” he read, and Elena immediately squealed with joy, flinging her arms tightly around his body before starting to cry in relief.
Matt buried the test in the trash, deep enough that his mother would never see it; later that week, Elena asked her mother if she could go on the pill.
As horrible as that night was, it still made Matt feel happy to know Elena trusted that he would never leave her when things got hard.
4. She Tried to Kill Herself
It was like the whole world had changed after Grayson and Miranda died.
When he had gotten the call from Caroline telling him that the Gilberts had been in a car accident, the first thing he had done was wake up his mother and Vicki so someone could take him to the hospital. He hadn't known what to expect at the emergency room because Caroline didn't have any details, but he sure as hell hadn't expected to hear that his surrogate parents were both dead and Elena having her broken arm reset.
Jenna, John, and Jeremy were all in the waiting room with him, and he hadn't known what to say to Jeremy. It surprised him when Vicki was the one who started talking through her tears; she hadn't spoken to Jeremy directly since she had stopped going to the Gilberts' house after school years earlier, but it was as if no time had elapsed as she offered to walk with him down to the vending machines.
When Elena was finally able to have visitors, Matt had been stunned by the sight of beautiful, vivacious Elena lying in a hospital bed, stitches holding her forehead together, a cast encasing her left arm. He bent down to brush his lips against her forehead and he could just barely make out her words, so soft it was almost as if they hadn't been said at all.
“It was all my fault, Matty.”
Three weeks after the funeral, Elena was still a shadow of herself. He went to her house every day after football practice, sitting with her in her room, trying to help her do anything she needed, anything to catch some glimmer of the girl he had loved since they were children.
It had been exactly four weeks after the car accident when everything hit the fan.
Football practice had let out early and he headed to the Gilberts' as usual; the house was still in disarray, Jenna dragging her feet about putting away her things, and Jeremy was hardly ever home anymore. Rumors were already going around town about Jeremy getting into drugs; he had tried to talk about it with him one evening and Jeremy quickly interrupted, snapping, “You're not my father or my brother, so back the fuck off, Matt.”
Today the house was silent, and, as Matt ascended the stairs, he could hear water running in the bathroom Jeremy and Elena shared. Entering Elena's room, he dropped his bag by the door and caught a glimpse of Elena on the bathroom floor. Thinking she was hurt, he rushed over only to see that her bottle of painkillers was spilled around her and Elena was heaving desperately into the toilet.
Instantly he dropped beside her, rubbing her back and asking what was wrong, and Elena attempted to push him away with her good arm.
“Leave me alone! Just leave!”
“No! Elena, what - “ He caught a glimpse of what was in the bowl and easily made out a half-dozen pills, all of which Matt knew were the heavy duty narcotics the orthopedist had given her for pain. “Did you take all those? Elena, how many did you take?!”
Elena heaved again, emptying her stomach of the last of its contents, before reaching for the handle to flush. “Just - Just - Just those. I couldn't...They made me so sick...” The rest of her words disappeared into hysterical tears, and Matt immediately wrapped his arms around her as she sobbed.
He leaned back against the tub, pulling Elena into his lap, and he felt his heart beating wildly at what he had just walked in on. Pushing aside the spilled pills beside him, he murmured, “Why would you - “
“I called them,” she whimpered against his throat. “I didn't want to leave with Care when she left, so I called them for a ride. They never would've been out there - They would still be alive - Everything would be better - I should've died too!”
“Shut up!” Matt ordered fiercely, so angry and scared he could barely stand it. “Don't you ever say that again!”
Elena pulled back, obviously startled by his words.
“Do you know what it was like finding out about the accident? What it was like not knowing what happened to you? You really think your parents want you to kill yourself? That's such bullshit, Elena, and it's not fucking fair to the rest of us who love you.”
Elena started to cry again, entire body shaking as she admitted, “I don't know how I'm going to live with myself every day knowing that it was my fault that they were out there. I just...I just want it to be over.”
Matt cupped her face, pushing her hair away from her eyes and making sure she was meeting his gaze steadily. “Yeah, well, it can't be over yet. Because we promised a long time ago that we were going to die together, and I'm not ready to die today.”
“Matt - “
“No, I'm serious. You promised me that I'd never have to die alone, that we'd be 105 and die in our beds, and that's what's going to happen. So if you do this today, if you really want to do this, then I have to do it too.”
Elena laughed through her tears before burying her face against his neck again. “You're so stupid.”
He gathered the pills off of the floor, putting them in his pocket until Jenna got home. When he told her what happened, Jenna immediately teared up and thanked him for being there.
Elena spent the rest of the summer going to therapy twice a week.
5. She Never Really Broke Up With Him
Two weeks before junior year started, Matt came home from hanging out with Tyler to find Elena sitting on the couch watching an old rerun of some MTV reality show. Before the accident, this was not a surprising occurrence, but Elena had not set foot in his house since the accident, had not set foot in anyone's house since the accident.
Since starting therapy, Elena was starting to resemble the girl she had been, but there was an inherent sadness to her now, a darkness in her beautiful eyes which made Matt wish he could do anything to make it better.
“Hey, what's up?” he greeted, bending down to brush a kiss against her mouth.
“Just needed to talk to you.”
Dropping down beside her, he grinned. “All yours.”
He froze for a moment when Elena flung a leg over his lap, straddling his body and pulling him into a deep kiss. They have not made love since the night before the accident, and Matt felt his body screaming for her, desperate for her touch.
It occurred to him that they were in the living room, that Vicki could walk in at any time, but he didn't stop her from wrenching open his jeans or slipping out of her shorts, didn't protest as she took him inside her, her head tilted back in bliss. They moved against each other impatiently, Matt's hands grasping at her hips while her fingers tangled in his hair, bringing his mouth roughly to hers.
It was over in a matter of minutes, three months worth of longing, frustration, and grief coming to fruition on the Donovan family couch. As they both struggled to catch their breaths, Matt lazily drew his fingers through her hair and declared, “God, I love you so much.”
Elena nodded against his chest, pressing a kiss to the patch of skin before her. “I'll never love anyone the way I love you, Matty.”
At the time, he had taken it as a vow, a proclamation of how deep their love was; it wasn't until she told him three days later that she needed a little time to be by herself and figure out how life was going to work without her parents that Matt realized it was actually good-bye.
When she showed up to the Grill with Stefan Salvatore, it was like someone had ripped his heart out of his chest, stomped on it, and then lit him on fire. There was no pain comparable to it, and he couldn't help but cry in the privacy of his bedroom. When it became common knowledge that Elena and Stefan were an actual couple and their relationship extended beyond Elena just being nice to the new guy, Matt couldn't help but call her.
The moment she answered her cell, he said, “So Stefan Salvatore, huh?”
Elena was quiet for a moment before admitting, “I don't know what to say.”
“I thought you needed time. Or was it just time away from me, from us?”
“I can't - It's really complicated.”
“Doesn't seem like it is. Either you want to be with me or you don't.”
Elena was quiet for so long, he thought she had hung up. And then she said, “I'll always want you, Matt. But I need...I need my life to be different right now.”
“So what, after you get tired of Salvatore, then you'll want me again? That's pretty fucked up, Elena.”
“That's not it!” Exhaling sharply, she finally said, “I need to be with someone who didn't know them, who wasn't here when it happened. I need someone who isn't...You're my best friend and you know everything about me. I need some secrets again.”
He and Elena had never had secrets; it was what he loved best about their relationship.
“If that's what you need...”
Matt didn't know how to finish the sentence so he didn't; instead he told her he'd see her at the bonfire later that night.
As he stood before the student body, Coach Tanner singing the praises of Stefan's football ability, Matt wondered if he knew he was dating someone else's girlfriend.
Author: lit_chick08
Pairings: Matt/Elena, minor Stefan/Elena
Rating: PG-13
Warning: underage sex
Spoilers: up to 1x03 “Friday Night Bites”
Disclaimer: These characters belong to LJ Smith, Kevin Williamson, and Julie Plec
Summary: There is nobody Matt knows better in the world than Elena
1. She's Afraid to Die Alone
The winter they were eight, Elena's Grandma Beth died.
To be honest, Matt never really liked his own grandmother; she was mean and impatient and more than once had smacked him or Vicki across the face for tiny infractions. When she eventually died, Matt couldn't imagine being sad for a woman who had once told him to his face that he should never have been born.
But he had loved Grandma Beth, loved her just as much as Elena and Jeremy did. Miranda always babysat him and Vicki after school, and Grandma Beth almost always came over, usually with some sort of baked good, to ask how school was going or to gossip about people with her daughter. The day she died, the four of them got off the school bus to see Grayson's car in the driveway and immediately Vicki declared, “Something's wrong.”
Miranda and Jenna were crying on the couch, arms wrapped around each other, and Grayson was in the kitchen making tea. Jeremy immediately went to his mother, climbing into her lap and asking what was wrong, but Elena made a bee line for her father, Matt on her heels, Vicki lingering behind them. When Elena asked what happened, Grayson sat the three of them down at the dining room table and patiently explained how Grandma Beth had gone to Heaven.
Elena started crying immediately, and Matt was surprised to see Vicki tear up as well. His sister was notorious for hating crying, and Matt wasn't sure if he was supposed to comfort Vicki or comfort Elena.
The snow had made the roads impassable that night, and his mother wasn't able to come pick them up. It was hardly the first time he and Vicki had spent the night with the Gilberts; both he and Vicki had drawers full of clothing in the guest room, and that night Vicki got the guest bed while he slept on the pull-out couch in the den.
Matt was almost asleep when he felt someone lift up the heavy quilt atop him and slide beneath it; for a moment he thought it might be Vicki, who sometimes still had nightmares about Kelly's last boyfriend, but the moment he felt a warm hand in his own, he knew it was Elena. Blinking his eyes open, Matt saw her eyes were still red from crying, but there was an expression of determination on her face Matt recognized from the few times Elena got very serious.
“What's wrong?” he asked in a whisper so he wouldn't wake up Jenna in the next room.
“I've been thinking,” she began before tugging the blankets up over their heads, creating a darkened tent in which to speak. Matt could barely see her, but he could still feel her hand in his, squeezing almost compulsively.
“About what?”
“I don't ever want to die.”
“But everybody dies.”
“But maybe by the time we're old, the doctors will have found a way for us to live forever.”
Matt shrugged. “Yeah, but if we lived forever and we couldn't do it until we were old, then our parents would be dead too. And wouldn't it get really lonely if we lived forever?”
Elena sighed, her hot breath misting across his face. After a beat, she whispered, “Matty?”
“Yeah?”
“You won't let me die alone, right?” Voice thickening with tears, Elena confessed, “I don't want to die all alone. It's so scary.”
“Then we'll go together,” Matt promised, squeezing her hand back. “When we're 105.”
Elena giggled. “And it won't hurt, right?”
“Nope. We'll just go to sleep and never wake up.”
“And you'll be there the whole time? You won't let me die alone?”
“I'll be with you the whole time,” he swore.
Snuggling against him, Elena buried her face in his throat, wrapping her arms tightly around him. Matt immediately returned the embrace, breathing in the comforting scent of her shampoo. He couldn't remember ever being without Elena, and it bothered him more than he'd like, all this talk of dying and potentially being without her.
Matt didn't have a lot of people in the world he loved, and he didn't like to think about losing them, even hypothetically.
2. She Used to Really Love her Uncle John
The summer Elena turned thirteen, John Gilbert moved back to Mystic Falls, and Matt started to get kind of jealous.
Due to the amount of time he spent with the Gilbert family, Matt had spent as much time around most of Elena's family members as she had, and as a result, he had formed opinions on most of them years earlier. And while he loved Aunt Jenna to death, he was not a fan of Uncle John. He wasn't sure why, but every time John came to visit, Grayson and Miranda always started to fight in that quiet, trying-to-pretend-like-they-weren't-fighting-but-totally-were way. John was always nice enough to him, but every time he came to visit, he spent almost all of his time with Elena.
John lived in Baltimore, and every time he came to visit, he always had a present for Elena, which she kept on the book shelf by her closet, a small menagerie of ceramic figurines; he always called once a week and Elena would drop everything to talk to him, and Matt wondered why it was that John was so much nicer to Elena than he was to Jeremy.
“Because I'm his favorite,” Elena stated matter-of-factly when he asked her. “He says we have a special bond.”
“What kind of bond?”
Elena shrugged. “I don't know.” Lifting her eyes from her algebra homework, she smiled and winked. “Don't worry. I still love you best, Matty.”
When John called to say he would be moving back to Virginia, Elena had practically vibrated with excitement at the dinner table; Matt hadn't missed the look Miranda and Grayson exchanged, brows furrowed in concern, nor did he miss the way Jenna rolled her eyes, and Matt wondered why it was no one else seemed to like John as much as Elena did.
He barely saw Elena that summer. Whenever John wasn't at work, he was taking Elena all over the place, every weekend having some excursion planned for just the two of them. They went into Washington DC, they went to the Baltimore aquarium, they went horseback riding and to the beach; Elena did more that summer with John than Matt had done in his entire life, and, unlike Grayson and Miranda, John never invited him to come along.
Elena's thirteenth birthday was on a Wednesday, and Grayson and Miranda rented out the Grill for her to have a birthday party with all of their friends. Matt bought her a necklace with money he had saved up from his own birthday and Christmas, a thin, silver chain suspending her birthstone. When he gave it to her, she gave him that smile which made his insides melt before wrapping an arm around his neck, pulling him into a hug, and pressing a kiss against his cheek.
That Friday, John was supposed to take Elena to a fancy dinner in Richmond. Matt sat on the couch with Jeremy playing video games while Elena primped and preened upstairs, putting on the new, polka-dotted dress Caroline had bought her for her birthday and begging Miranda to help her curl her hair. John said he would pick her up around six, and so, when he and Jeremy sat down for dinner with Grayson and Miranda, Elena parked herself by the front door so she could see when John's car would pull up to the curb.
Matt watched out of the corner of his eye as the clock crept closer and closer to seven, and he saw how agitated Elena was starting to become. The curl was starting to droop from her hair, and, with every minute John didn't show up, Elena began to gnaw more aggressively on her lower lip, a surefire sign she was nervous. At one point, she picked up the phone and dialed John's cell phone, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she said, “Hey, Uncle John, it's me. I was just calling to make sure you're okay because you're late. Call me, okay?”
When Miranda asked Elena if she wanted something to eat, Elena immediately shook her head and insisted John would be there any minute.
At eight o'clock, when John was still nowhere to be seen and Elena began to cry, Matt vowed he was going to murder John Gilbert.
Grayson and Miranda were whispering to each other, both of them sounding supremely pissed off, and Matt slipped away from the living room, making his way up to Elena's bedroom. He could hear the pitiful sounds of tears through the door, and it made his heart clench painfully to know she was in such pain. As he pushed open the door, he saw Elena lying face down on her bed, still wearing the dress she had chosen with such care, her whole body trembling from crying. He took a step towards the bed, the floor creaking with the motion, and Elena whirled around, shouting, “I told you I didn't want to talk!”
Matt immediately froze, prepared to apologize, and then Elena's face crumbled as she wiped at her cheeks and murmured, “I'm sorry, Matty. I thought you were my mom.”
“I can leave if - “
“No,” Elena protested instantly, pushing herself into a sitting position, “please stay with me.”
He crossed to the bed, sitting beside her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Elena twisted her head to bury her face in the soft cotton of his shirt, and Matt could feel the tears soaking through the material. Matt stroked her limp curls carefully and whispered, “I'm really sorry.”
“Why did he do this?” she whimpered against him. “Why did he just not show up after he promised? He's never done this before. He always comes.”
“Maybe his car broke down and his phone died and - “
“Aunt Jenna always says he's a jerk,” Elena interrupted, “and she was right. What kind of uncle doesn't show up for your birthday dinner that he planned?”
“I'm sure he has an explanation,” Matt lied.
Lifting her head, tears still tracking down her cheeks, she smiled sadly. “How do you always see the best in everybody, Matty?”
Matt awkwardly lifted his hand and brushed away the tears on her face. Her eyes darkened at the movement, and he felt his cheeks flare with warmth, embarrassed. “I don't. I just...You'd have to be stupid to disappoint you on purpose.”
He was genuinely shocked when Elena leaned forward and pressed her lips against his. For the past year Matt had known he liked Elena as more than just his best friend, but he also was far too scared to ever say anything to her. But at the feel of her lips on his own, Matt immediately responded, hoping he was doing this correctly.
Elena broke the kiss, her hand rising to play with the necklace he gave her. She lowered her eyes for a moment, catching her bottom lip in her teeth, before meeting his gaze. “I really love you, Matty.”
“I love you too.”
When John finally showed up the next day, Elena told him she forgave him, but she kept him at a distance after that. Matt didn't blame her for it, but he also knew how much it hurt her now to see John, to have a constant reminder of how much she had loved him and how much he had disappointed her.
Matt swore to himself that he would never do anything to hurt Elena that badly.
3. She Had a Pregnancy Scare
The spring of their freshman year, Elena came over to his house on a Monday night in the middle of a rainstorm.
Since officially becoming a couple almost two years earlier, he and Elena were spending more time together than ever, but they seldom hung out at his house. His house was tiny compared to hers, and, between his mother's string of loser boyfriends and Vicki's music blasting, it wasn't the nicest place to just be together. However, his house did have something that her house did not: a total lack of supervision.
They had never had an in-depth conversation about having sex. While all of their friends were talking about it, no one they knew was actually doing it. Tyler always said he was getting close to convincing his girlfriend to do it, but Matt had learned long ago that about 90% of what Tyler said about his girlfriends was complete and total bullshit. And Matt hadn't been in a hurry; most of the time he was so happy to just be able to make out with Elena, he couldn't imagine anything being better.
When it finally happened, it was completely spontaneous. Vicki had given them a ride home after school before going to work at the Grill, and they had been alone in the house. Their make-out session had gotten heated, clothes had come off, and before either of them had even made the conscious decision that this was what they were doing, neither of them were virgins anymore. Afterward they had decided maybe they should wait before they did it again since they were only fourteen but...Well, hormones were stronger than logic, and Matt was certain there was nothing wrong with what they were doing because they were in love.
Elena's sudden appearance in his doorway, dripping wet and looking more than a little scared, confused him, especially since both his mother and Vicki were home that night.
“Did we have plans?” he asked as he moved his biology homework off of his lap and went to his dresser, digging out dry clothes for her to wear.
“No, but I - “ Casting a glance at his open door, she quickly crossed to close it, shutting it tightly. Since they had started dating, her parents never let them go into her bedroom with the door closed, but his mother had no such compunctions.
“I need to talk to you about something,” she whispered, barely paying attention to the sweats he pressed into her hands.
“What? Is something wrong?”
Tears filling her eyes, Elena divulged, “My period's late.”
Matt felt his stomach drop. “How late?”
“Three weeks.”
It took him a moment for Matt to remember how to speak. Finally, when the power of speech returned, he blurted out the first question that came to his mind. “You didn't tell your parents, did you?”
“Are you kidding? If I had told my parents, my dad would be over here to castrate you!” Sitting down on the bed, running her fingers through her soaked, tangled hair, she said, “I'm not going to tell anyone anything until we know for sure, so I have to take a test.”
“So let's go get one.”
Elena looked at him as if he was crazy. “If one of us goes into the pharmacy and buys a pregnancy test, the whole town's going to know in, like, two seconds.”
“Yeah, well, if I get caught shoplifting one, the whole town's going to know too.”
Elena sighed, wrapping her arms tightly around herself, and Matt tugged her to him, letting her shake against his chest. He knew she was scared; hell, he had only known for 2 minutes and he was fucking terrified. Finally he pulled back and said decisively, “I'll ask Vicki to get one.”
“She won't tell your mom, will she?”
Matt could not help but laugh. “Vicki doesn't tell Mom anything. I'll give her the money for it and it's not like...”
He trailed off, not wanting to finish his unkind thought aloud.
Digging a crumpled twenty out of his wallet, Matt told Elena to get changed into the dry clothing before he went across the hall to Vicki's room. When he made his request, Vicki raised her eyebrows in surprise before shaking her head in disappointment.
“Jesus, Matty...Weren't you guys using anything?”
He felt his cheeks flushing a brilliant shade of crimson, wanting to be anywhere but discussing his sex life with his big sister. However, given that he was asking her for a humungous favor, he also knew he wasn't going to be able to avoid it. “We...Condoms,” he sputtered out.
Rolling her eyes, Vicki plucked her car keys from her dresser and declared, “You better pray that things comes back negative or Grayson is going to murder you.”
The thought had occurred to him.
When a sopping wet Vicki returned twenty minutes later, a pharmacy bad in her hand, Elena immediately went into the bathroom while Matt waited anxiously outside. He could hear his mother in the living room, talking loudly on the phone with Miranda, and Matt felt a wave of nausea come over him at the idea of having to tell both of their mothers what they had done.
Elena appeared after a moment, the stick in her hand. “We have to wait three minutes.”
Matt entered the bathroom, and they both sat on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the piece of plastic on the sink which could determine their futures.
“If you are...” he began, fumbling over his words, “I would...I mean, I'd be there, you know? I wouldn't just take off.”
Elena chuckled, a small smile playing at her lips. “I know, Matt. You're not...You're one of the good guys. It's the only thing that's keeping me from having a total fucking meltdown.”
Matt couldn't help but smile before asking, “When do you think it happened?”
She was quiet for a moment before stating decisively, “St. Patrick's Day after Caroline's party.”
He couldn't help but blush at the memory of that night. It had easily been the wildest, most passionate sex they had ever had, and both of them had been so loud that Vicki had started banging on the wall halfway through it.
When the alarm on Elena's phone went off, signaling it was time to check, Matt got to his feet, holding tightly to Elena's hand as he read the screen.
“Negative,” he read, and Elena immediately squealed with joy, flinging her arms tightly around his body before starting to cry in relief.
Matt buried the test in the trash, deep enough that his mother would never see it; later that week, Elena asked her mother if she could go on the pill.
As horrible as that night was, it still made Matt feel happy to know Elena trusted that he would never leave her when things got hard.
4. She Tried to Kill Herself
It was like the whole world had changed after Grayson and Miranda died.
When he had gotten the call from Caroline telling him that the Gilberts had been in a car accident, the first thing he had done was wake up his mother and Vicki so someone could take him to the hospital. He hadn't known what to expect at the emergency room because Caroline didn't have any details, but he sure as hell hadn't expected to hear that his surrogate parents were both dead and Elena having her broken arm reset.
Jenna, John, and Jeremy were all in the waiting room with him, and he hadn't known what to say to Jeremy. It surprised him when Vicki was the one who started talking through her tears; she hadn't spoken to Jeremy directly since she had stopped going to the Gilberts' house after school years earlier, but it was as if no time had elapsed as she offered to walk with him down to the vending machines.
When Elena was finally able to have visitors, Matt had been stunned by the sight of beautiful, vivacious Elena lying in a hospital bed, stitches holding her forehead together, a cast encasing her left arm. He bent down to brush his lips against her forehead and he could just barely make out her words, so soft it was almost as if they hadn't been said at all.
“It was all my fault, Matty.”
Three weeks after the funeral, Elena was still a shadow of herself. He went to her house every day after football practice, sitting with her in her room, trying to help her do anything she needed, anything to catch some glimmer of the girl he had loved since they were children.
It had been exactly four weeks after the car accident when everything hit the fan.
Football practice had let out early and he headed to the Gilberts' as usual; the house was still in disarray, Jenna dragging her feet about putting away her things, and Jeremy was hardly ever home anymore. Rumors were already going around town about Jeremy getting into drugs; he had tried to talk about it with him one evening and Jeremy quickly interrupted, snapping, “You're not my father or my brother, so back the fuck off, Matt.”
Today the house was silent, and, as Matt ascended the stairs, he could hear water running in the bathroom Jeremy and Elena shared. Entering Elena's room, he dropped his bag by the door and caught a glimpse of Elena on the bathroom floor. Thinking she was hurt, he rushed over only to see that her bottle of painkillers was spilled around her and Elena was heaving desperately into the toilet.
Instantly he dropped beside her, rubbing her back and asking what was wrong, and Elena attempted to push him away with her good arm.
“Leave me alone! Just leave!”
“No! Elena, what - “ He caught a glimpse of what was in the bowl and easily made out a half-dozen pills, all of which Matt knew were the heavy duty narcotics the orthopedist had given her for pain. “Did you take all those? Elena, how many did you take?!”
Elena heaved again, emptying her stomach of the last of its contents, before reaching for the handle to flush. “Just - Just - Just those. I couldn't...They made me so sick...” The rest of her words disappeared into hysterical tears, and Matt immediately wrapped his arms around her as she sobbed.
He leaned back against the tub, pulling Elena into his lap, and he felt his heart beating wildly at what he had just walked in on. Pushing aside the spilled pills beside him, he murmured, “Why would you - “
“I called them,” she whimpered against his throat. “I didn't want to leave with Care when she left, so I called them for a ride. They never would've been out there - They would still be alive - Everything would be better - I should've died too!”
“Shut up!” Matt ordered fiercely, so angry and scared he could barely stand it. “Don't you ever say that again!”
Elena pulled back, obviously startled by his words.
“Do you know what it was like finding out about the accident? What it was like not knowing what happened to you? You really think your parents want you to kill yourself? That's such bullshit, Elena, and it's not fucking fair to the rest of us who love you.”
Elena started to cry again, entire body shaking as she admitted, “I don't know how I'm going to live with myself every day knowing that it was my fault that they were out there. I just...I just want it to be over.”
Matt cupped her face, pushing her hair away from her eyes and making sure she was meeting his gaze steadily. “Yeah, well, it can't be over yet. Because we promised a long time ago that we were going to die together, and I'm not ready to die today.”
“Matt - “
“No, I'm serious. You promised me that I'd never have to die alone, that we'd be 105 and die in our beds, and that's what's going to happen. So if you do this today, if you really want to do this, then I have to do it too.”
Elena laughed through her tears before burying her face against his neck again. “You're so stupid.”
He gathered the pills off of the floor, putting them in his pocket until Jenna got home. When he told her what happened, Jenna immediately teared up and thanked him for being there.
Elena spent the rest of the summer going to therapy twice a week.
5. She Never Really Broke Up With Him
Two weeks before junior year started, Matt came home from hanging out with Tyler to find Elena sitting on the couch watching an old rerun of some MTV reality show. Before the accident, this was not a surprising occurrence, but Elena had not set foot in his house since the accident, had not set foot in anyone's house since the accident.
Since starting therapy, Elena was starting to resemble the girl she had been, but there was an inherent sadness to her now, a darkness in her beautiful eyes which made Matt wish he could do anything to make it better.
“Hey, what's up?” he greeted, bending down to brush a kiss against her mouth.
“Just needed to talk to you.”
Dropping down beside her, he grinned. “All yours.”
He froze for a moment when Elena flung a leg over his lap, straddling his body and pulling him into a deep kiss. They have not made love since the night before the accident, and Matt felt his body screaming for her, desperate for her touch.
It occurred to him that they were in the living room, that Vicki could walk in at any time, but he didn't stop her from wrenching open his jeans or slipping out of her shorts, didn't protest as she took him inside her, her head tilted back in bliss. They moved against each other impatiently, Matt's hands grasping at her hips while her fingers tangled in his hair, bringing his mouth roughly to hers.
It was over in a matter of minutes, three months worth of longing, frustration, and grief coming to fruition on the Donovan family couch. As they both struggled to catch their breaths, Matt lazily drew his fingers through her hair and declared, “God, I love you so much.”
Elena nodded against his chest, pressing a kiss to the patch of skin before her. “I'll never love anyone the way I love you, Matty.”
At the time, he had taken it as a vow, a proclamation of how deep their love was; it wasn't until she told him three days later that she needed a little time to be by herself and figure out how life was going to work without her parents that Matt realized it was actually good-bye.
When she showed up to the Grill with Stefan Salvatore, it was like someone had ripped his heart out of his chest, stomped on it, and then lit him on fire. There was no pain comparable to it, and he couldn't help but cry in the privacy of his bedroom. When it became common knowledge that Elena and Stefan were an actual couple and their relationship extended beyond Elena just being nice to the new guy, Matt couldn't help but call her.
The moment she answered her cell, he said, “So Stefan Salvatore, huh?”
Elena was quiet for a moment before admitting, “I don't know what to say.”
“I thought you needed time. Or was it just time away from me, from us?”
“I can't - It's really complicated.”
“Doesn't seem like it is. Either you want to be with me or you don't.”
Elena was quiet for so long, he thought she had hung up. And then she said, “I'll always want you, Matt. But I need...I need my life to be different right now.”
“So what, after you get tired of Salvatore, then you'll want me again? That's pretty fucked up, Elena.”
“That's not it!” Exhaling sharply, she finally said, “I need to be with someone who didn't know them, who wasn't here when it happened. I need someone who isn't...You're my best friend and you know everything about me. I need some secrets again.”
He and Elena had never had secrets; it was what he loved best about their relationship.
“If that's what you need...”
Matt didn't know how to finish the sentence so he didn't; instead he told her he'd see her at the bonfire later that night.
As he stood before the student body, Coach Tanner singing the praises of Stefan's football ability, Matt wondered if he knew he was dating someone else's girlfriend.