[tvd] fic | We Walk Around In Circles, Starry Eyed (ensemble au)
Title | We Walk Around In Circles, Starry Eyed
Fandom | The Vampire Diaries
Characters | Caroline, Bonnie, Elena, Stefan, Damon, Jeremy, Matt, Tyler, mentions of Katherine and Klaus
Word Count | 2000
Rating | MA
Prompt | for a_white_rain, Stefan produces a girl band with Elena, Bonnie and Caroline, Jeremy and Matt make sure they are on ontd all the time, and Damon is the worst PR manager ever, making their jobs easy. This is nowhere near as cracky as I’d planned. Girl!band AU. Emphasis on the AU part.
He comes across Caroline first. A leggy blonde with chipped pink polish and a Van Halen t-shirt that is completely at odds with the mellow tune she’s tapping out on an acoustic Gibson that looks like it’s seen better days.
And lots of them.
He takes up a position across the sparsely dotted pedestrian mall and loses himself in her soulful offerings for almost forty minutes. Drops his card into a battered, sticker covered guitar case set up at her feet in lieu of a genuine tip and takes a moment to hope she sees past the lack of a cash dump and accepts the offer for what it is, a job opportunity.
She calls him three days later. He’s cock deep in the throat of a country music wannabe, drifts his gaze across the screen languidly and lets voicemail take up the slack.
“Leave a message after the beep…”
So she does. All breathless apprehension and inconceivable innocence. He rolls his eyes and reconsiders his offer.
When he only half-jokingly suggests Wanda-Lee might want to consider a stage-name, she raises dark eyebrows into twin arcs of ire and stalks off without another word. The slash of red across her lips parts with a soft puff and it’s the only concession to audible sound she bothers to grant him.
He watches the sway of her hips shamelessly as she strides through the crowded club. Shrugs his shoulders and reluctantly concedes defeat as the disco lights overhead dance their flickered rhythm against her shoulder blades.
But she’s perched on the hood of his car when the clock hits midnight and he takes his cue to leave. Legs forever, crossed delicately at the knees. The point of one stiletto heel grinding against the admittedly worse for wear paintwork.
She looks up at him through lashes dusted silver, twists those red lips into her version of a snarl.
“Bonnie is my final offer… Take it or leave it.”
“Bonnie?” One word as a question, because seriously? Bonnie?
She shrugs as though it’s obvious. “My grandmother’s cat was Bonnie. Fucking awesome cat.”
And then there were two.
Elena is the conquest he enjoys the most. A long, slow build-up. Her initial ambivalence towards the whole affair. His aloof refusal to let her get to him, even though she totally does.
In every single way.
She looks past him and the slow curves of her profile scream along his synapses. The duplicate image of a girl he once knew. When she meets him eye to eye, the illusion shatters and he can finally breathe again.
She plays drums like a god. He loses her flailing limbs behind a wall of chocolate hair. The music shop windows reverberate, threaten to shatter. And when she slams to something of a stop eight minutes later she’s barely out of breath. Lifts the sticks towards her brow in mock salute to the smattered applause offered up by several loitering customers.
“I’ve got to get back to work…”
He shrugs. Purses his lips. Refuses to beg.
At least, not yet.
He brainstorms potential band names with his brother. Three quarters lost into his second bottle of Jack, Damon’s suggestions come looped to him around the unlit cigarette that dangles perpetually from the side of his mouth. He’s learned better than to trust the musicians with this task. Even at his most ineffectual, Damon always manages to be something of a wordsmith.
“You know this’ll never work, right?”
Damon is also an eternal optimist. Obviously. And probably not the best choice for manager of all things PR.
He shrugs, determined not to be shut down before he’s given the girls a proper shot.
“Fine then. Apparently we’re really doing this.” Damon’s enthusiasm is almost overwhelming. “So, how about ‘Mystic Falls’?”
He rolls the syllables around on his tongue for several beats. Mystic Falls.
“Yeah.” A slow, wide grin. “’Mystic Falls’. I like it.”
Their first official meeting is in a run-down Starbucks on the outskirts of town. Elena arrives with two interlopers in tow, and it’s a trait he’ll come to learn she’s managed to perfect.
“My brother, Jeremy. My boyfriend, Matt.” Twin nods of acknowledgement.
He wonders what the real arrangement is but doesn’t bother to question the obvious lie. The guys take seats several tables away and link their ankles like no-one’s looking. He makes a mental note to file that piece of information safely away for later.
Caroline’s wearing the same Van Halen t-shirt she’d been clothed in the day he stumbled across her in the mall. The polish on her nails is bright green this time, but just as chipped. She fiddles at her thumb nail and struggles to lift her gaze above her bare knees. But they’re good knees, he concedes. He’d look at them too, if they were his.
Hell, he looks at them anyway. A lot.
Wanda-Lee saunters in twenty minutes late. He counts it as something of a win that she bothers to turn up at all.
“Bonnie, hi.” Pointed in his use of her new name. A thinly veiled reminder just in case she was having second thoughts.
“Whatever you say, Stefan.”
He doesn’t quite understand the inflection she uses. Figures he might as well get used to it now though.
It’s five and a half months before he manages to land them their first real gig and the band breaks up and makes up on three separate occasions over that time.
Matt and Jeremy keep the mostly disinterested public updated on the comings and goings of ‘Mystic Falls’ via a website that he’s half convinced no-one actually visits. Caroline manages to collect a fan who sends her semi-regular emails signed; yours forever, Klaus. No last name.
It’s suitably freaky in an exciting kind of way.
Rehearsals in the lead up are sporadic at best, but when they get it right, they really fucking get it right.
Even Damon manages to rest the bottle of whatever he’s drinking down on the counter long enough to really listen.
He chalks it up as something of a victory. Will take what he can get.
The country music wannabe is replaced by a jazz pianist wannabe is replaced by a principal ballerina wannabe.
If he sees the face of a girl he once knew, once loved, once lost in their eyes as they fuck him, then he simply shuts his own. Forgets to remember for a beat or several.
And it’s easier that you might think. Until it’s not.
He watches Damon watch Elena watching Matt and Jeremy watching each other. The convoluted pattern of attraction is as entertaining as the music half the time. And he knows his brother has made the connection to their past just as completely as he has.
He’s just better at hiding it.
Or so he thinks.
Wanda-Lee-as-Bonnie has a voice that melts anyone within a half-mile radius. The attitude dissolves as soon as Caroline strums the opening chords and Damon’s lyrics roll effortlessly off her tongue in smoky waves.
He gets goose-bumps every single time but he’ll never tell her that.
Opening night isn’t an unmitigated disaster, but only just. They’re opening for guy who’s been making something of a name for himself up and down the east coast over the last couple of years.
Tyler Lockwood. Made it to the top ten of an Idol-like reality show as a sixteen year old kid. All wide-eyed innocence and smooth vocals. Had let the years rough him up just enough. Mellowed with age and experience into the kind of muso that collected a following without even trying.
Most of it female.
He shrugs. Gives the dude the kudos he deserves for not selling out. At least, not completely.
Seven minutes before they’re scheduled to be on-stage, Damon’s got his tongue down Elena’s throat at the bar. He thinks that eventuality has been painfully obvious from the start.
Damon never gets the girl.
Until he inevitably does.
Matt and Jeremy aren’t as disappointed as their cover story indicates they probably should be. He smiles and shrugs and lets his mind drift to soft curls that trap his wrists, tight. A smile like the promise of sin.
His favourite memory.
He loved her. Once.
Katherine.
Another furtive glance at Damon. They both did.
Do.
The lies he tells himself can only survive so much scrutiny after all.
They’re head-lining eight months after that. Medium-sized clubs as far north as Boston. A one-off uni bar gig at Brown that sells out in three days after Tyler Lockwood, boy wonder, and Caroline are photographed mostly naked in the backseat of her car and the images find their way onto the internet.
Somehow.
Matt and Jeremy deny culpability but it’s routine at best because no one believes them.
He probably looks at the pictures more often than he should.
Whatever.
Caroline’s wearing a Van Halen t-shirt and effortlessly manages not to look completely ridiculous in it. As per usual.
Damon lands a priceless PR interview with a cable music channel but has a fight with Elena and then gets completely off his face before it starts. The resultant publicity is even more effective than the sordid sex shots had been and they confirm a summer tour that will have them break into the west coast scene for the first time.
He doesn’t know whether to be pissed or pleased. Decides on a somewhat tempered combination of both.
It is Damon after all.
He finds out later that the fight had been over photos Elena had found of Katherine. Which also explains his brother’s resultant drinking spree. He opens his mouth, draws breath to start a fight of his own. Deflates before the words he wants to say can form into anything more than haphazard consonants and vowels.
They’ve been down this road before.
And they’ll no doubt traverse it again before their days as brothers draw to a close.
Bonnie asks him to teach her keyboards to add an extra dimension to their sound. He has visions of partners that attempt to teach each other to drive, flashes to an image of himself with a stiletto heel plunged between his ribs and politely declines.
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
Offers to source a qualified instructor for her instead.
Tyler Lockwood lands a European tour and Caroline cries for three days straight. Mascara stains to her chin and big, bright eyes perpetually red-rimmed. He contemplates their own rapidly filling schedule and manages to drag out six consecutive days off in May. Buys her a return ticket to London and can’t help reciprocating the grin she gives him as she rips open the envelope.
He does what he can after all.
Summer passes in a blur of sound checks and no sleep. Champagne drenched after parties that leave them all spinning with disbelief.
He corners Damon by the bar. Watching Elena gyrate along the length of her brother’s side. The motion made just the right side of sibling-like by the laughter and incessant teasing.
“Still think this’ll never work?”
Damon quirks one eye-brow, high, matches the motion with a raised tumbler of something acrid. His brother’s version of a reluctant acknowledgement.
And the closest thing he’s ever received to an apology.
He risks the question neither of them is supposed to ask. An unspoken agreement of sorts.
“Do you miss her?”
A sharp intake of breath his only response.
And all the answer he could ever need.
“Yeah, me too.” He lifts the drink from between Damon’s lax finger tips. Lets the liquid fire set his insides ablaze. “Me too…”
Fandom | The Vampire Diaries
Characters | Caroline, Bonnie, Elena, Stefan, Damon, Jeremy, Matt, Tyler, mentions of Katherine and Klaus
Word Count | 2000
Rating | MA
Prompt | for a_white_rain, Stefan produces a girl band with Elena, Bonnie and Caroline, Jeremy and Matt make sure they are on ontd all the time, and Damon is the worst PR manager ever, making their jobs easy. This is nowhere near as cracky as I’d planned. Girl!band AU. Emphasis on the AU part.
He comes across Caroline first. A leggy blonde with chipped pink polish and a Van Halen t-shirt that is completely at odds with the mellow tune she’s tapping out on an acoustic Gibson that looks like it’s seen better days.
And lots of them.
He takes up a position across the sparsely dotted pedestrian mall and loses himself in her soulful offerings for almost forty minutes. Drops his card into a battered, sticker covered guitar case set up at her feet in lieu of a genuine tip and takes a moment to hope she sees past the lack of a cash dump and accepts the offer for what it is, a job opportunity.
She calls him three days later. He’s cock deep in the throat of a country music wannabe, drifts his gaze across the screen languidly and lets voicemail take up the slack.
“Leave a message after the beep…”
So she does. All breathless apprehension and inconceivable innocence. He rolls his eyes and reconsiders his offer.
When he only half-jokingly suggests Wanda-Lee might want to consider a stage-name, she raises dark eyebrows into twin arcs of ire and stalks off without another word. The slash of red across her lips parts with a soft puff and it’s the only concession to audible sound she bothers to grant him.
He watches the sway of her hips shamelessly as she strides through the crowded club. Shrugs his shoulders and reluctantly concedes defeat as the disco lights overhead dance their flickered rhythm against her shoulder blades.
But she’s perched on the hood of his car when the clock hits midnight and he takes his cue to leave. Legs forever, crossed delicately at the knees. The point of one stiletto heel grinding against the admittedly worse for wear paintwork.
She looks up at him through lashes dusted silver, twists those red lips into her version of a snarl.
“Bonnie is my final offer… Take it or leave it.”
“Bonnie?” One word as a question, because seriously? Bonnie?
She shrugs as though it’s obvious. “My grandmother’s cat was Bonnie. Fucking awesome cat.”
And then there were two.
Elena is the conquest he enjoys the most. A long, slow build-up. Her initial ambivalence towards the whole affair. His aloof refusal to let her get to him, even though she totally does.
In every single way.
She looks past him and the slow curves of her profile scream along his synapses. The duplicate image of a girl he once knew. When she meets him eye to eye, the illusion shatters and he can finally breathe again.
She plays drums like a god. He loses her flailing limbs behind a wall of chocolate hair. The music shop windows reverberate, threaten to shatter. And when she slams to something of a stop eight minutes later she’s barely out of breath. Lifts the sticks towards her brow in mock salute to the smattered applause offered up by several loitering customers.
“I’ve got to get back to work…”
He shrugs. Purses his lips. Refuses to beg.
At least, not yet.
He brainstorms potential band names with his brother. Three quarters lost into his second bottle of Jack, Damon’s suggestions come looped to him around the unlit cigarette that dangles perpetually from the side of his mouth. He’s learned better than to trust the musicians with this task. Even at his most ineffectual, Damon always manages to be something of a wordsmith.
“You know this’ll never work, right?”
Damon is also an eternal optimist. Obviously. And probably not the best choice for manager of all things PR.
He shrugs, determined not to be shut down before he’s given the girls a proper shot.
“Fine then. Apparently we’re really doing this.” Damon’s enthusiasm is almost overwhelming. “So, how about ‘Mystic Falls’?”
He rolls the syllables around on his tongue for several beats. Mystic Falls.
“Yeah.” A slow, wide grin. “’Mystic Falls’. I like it.”
Their first official meeting is in a run-down Starbucks on the outskirts of town. Elena arrives with two interlopers in tow, and it’s a trait he’ll come to learn she’s managed to perfect.
“My brother, Jeremy. My boyfriend, Matt.” Twin nods of acknowledgement.
He wonders what the real arrangement is but doesn’t bother to question the obvious lie. The guys take seats several tables away and link their ankles like no-one’s looking. He makes a mental note to file that piece of information safely away for later.
Caroline’s wearing the same Van Halen t-shirt she’d been clothed in the day he stumbled across her in the mall. The polish on her nails is bright green this time, but just as chipped. She fiddles at her thumb nail and struggles to lift her gaze above her bare knees. But they’re good knees, he concedes. He’d look at them too, if they were his.
Hell, he looks at them anyway. A lot.
Wanda-Lee saunters in twenty minutes late. He counts it as something of a win that she bothers to turn up at all.
“Bonnie, hi.” Pointed in his use of her new name. A thinly veiled reminder just in case she was having second thoughts.
“Whatever you say, Stefan.”
He doesn’t quite understand the inflection she uses. Figures he might as well get used to it now though.
It’s five and a half months before he manages to land them their first real gig and the band breaks up and makes up on three separate occasions over that time.
Matt and Jeremy keep the mostly disinterested public updated on the comings and goings of ‘Mystic Falls’ via a website that he’s half convinced no-one actually visits. Caroline manages to collect a fan who sends her semi-regular emails signed; yours forever, Klaus. No last name.
It’s suitably freaky in an exciting kind of way.
Rehearsals in the lead up are sporadic at best, but when they get it right, they really fucking get it right.
Even Damon manages to rest the bottle of whatever he’s drinking down on the counter long enough to really listen.
He chalks it up as something of a victory. Will take what he can get.
The country music wannabe is replaced by a jazz pianist wannabe is replaced by a principal ballerina wannabe.
If he sees the face of a girl he once knew, once loved, once lost in their eyes as they fuck him, then he simply shuts his own. Forgets to remember for a beat or several.
And it’s easier that you might think. Until it’s not.
He watches Damon watch Elena watching Matt and Jeremy watching each other. The convoluted pattern of attraction is as entertaining as the music half the time. And he knows his brother has made the connection to their past just as completely as he has.
He’s just better at hiding it.
Or so he thinks.
Wanda-Lee-as-Bonnie has a voice that melts anyone within a half-mile radius. The attitude dissolves as soon as Caroline strums the opening chords and Damon’s lyrics roll effortlessly off her tongue in smoky waves.
He gets goose-bumps every single time but he’ll never tell her that.
Opening night isn’t an unmitigated disaster, but only just. They’re opening for guy who’s been making something of a name for himself up and down the east coast over the last couple of years.
Tyler Lockwood. Made it to the top ten of an Idol-like reality show as a sixteen year old kid. All wide-eyed innocence and smooth vocals. Had let the years rough him up just enough. Mellowed with age and experience into the kind of muso that collected a following without even trying.
Most of it female.
He shrugs. Gives the dude the kudos he deserves for not selling out. At least, not completely.
Seven minutes before they’re scheduled to be on-stage, Damon’s got his tongue down Elena’s throat at the bar. He thinks that eventuality has been painfully obvious from the start.
Damon never gets the girl.
Until he inevitably does.
Matt and Jeremy aren’t as disappointed as their cover story indicates they probably should be. He smiles and shrugs and lets his mind drift to soft curls that trap his wrists, tight. A smile like the promise of sin.
His favourite memory.
He loved her. Once.
Katherine.
Another furtive glance at Damon. They both did.
Do.
The lies he tells himself can only survive so much scrutiny after all.
They’re head-lining eight months after that. Medium-sized clubs as far north as Boston. A one-off uni bar gig at Brown that sells out in three days after Tyler Lockwood, boy wonder, and Caroline are photographed mostly naked in the backseat of her car and the images find their way onto the internet.
Somehow.
Matt and Jeremy deny culpability but it’s routine at best because no one believes them.
He probably looks at the pictures more often than he should.
Whatever.
Caroline’s wearing a Van Halen t-shirt and effortlessly manages not to look completely ridiculous in it. As per usual.
Damon lands a priceless PR interview with a cable music channel but has a fight with Elena and then gets completely off his face before it starts. The resultant publicity is even more effective than the sordid sex shots had been and they confirm a summer tour that will have them break into the west coast scene for the first time.
He doesn’t know whether to be pissed or pleased. Decides on a somewhat tempered combination of both.
It is Damon after all.
He finds out later that the fight had been over photos Elena had found of Katherine. Which also explains his brother’s resultant drinking spree. He opens his mouth, draws breath to start a fight of his own. Deflates before the words he wants to say can form into anything more than haphazard consonants and vowels.
They’ve been down this road before.
And they’ll no doubt traverse it again before their days as brothers draw to a close.
Bonnie asks him to teach her keyboards to add an extra dimension to their sound. He has visions of partners that attempt to teach each other to drive, flashes to an image of himself with a stiletto heel plunged between his ribs and politely declines.
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
Offers to source a qualified instructor for her instead.
Tyler Lockwood lands a European tour and Caroline cries for three days straight. Mascara stains to her chin and big, bright eyes perpetually red-rimmed. He contemplates their own rapidly filling schedule and manages to drag out six consecutive days off in May. Buys her a return ticket to London and can’t help reciprocating the grin she gives him as she rips open the envelope.
He does what he can after all.
Summer passes in a blur of sound checks and no sleep. Champagne drenched after parties that leave them all spinning with disbelief.
He corners Damon by the bar. Watching Elena gyrate along the length of her brother’s side. The motion made just the right side of sibling-like by the laughter and incessant teasing.
“Still think this’ll never work?”
Damon quirks one eye-brow, high, matches the motion with a raised tumbler of something acrid. His brother’s version of a reluctant acknowledgement.
And the closest thing he’s ever received to an apology.
He risks the question neither of them is supposed to ask. An unspoken agreement of sorts.
“Do you miss her?”
A sharp intake of breath his only response.
And all the answer he could ever need.
“Yeah, me too.” He lifts the drink from between Damon’s lax finger tips. Lets the liquid fire set his insides ablaze. “Me too…”