Title: Between here and forever
Summary: A series of drabbles about small moments between Vamp!Jenna/Alaric.
Characters: Vamp!Jenna, Alaric, mentions of the others
Spoilers: Throughout S1/S2, mainly 2x21
Timeline: Post 2x21, Vamp!Jenna
Disclaimer: No mine, never were, never will be – sadly.
Author's Note: I suck and I know it. Just getting back to prose writing, gradually. Hopefully, I'll be back on my writing feet soon enough :) Thanks for your patience, guys! This is just a series of drabbles I was playing with in my head.
It was comforting to fall into certain patterns again in the world that wasn't her own anymore. Familiar routines she could hold on to when everything else was falling apart.
Alaric insisted on meeting her after the evening classes, which Jenna found both endearing and ridiculous.
"I can take care of myself," she would say jokingly, omitting the part about being a lot more capable of that than Ric with his human strength and reactions that would never match hers no matter how armed he was.
"Doesn't mean you have to," Alaric would reply casually as if it wasn't a big deal at all. "Besides, it's not like I have much to do anyway."
Which she knew was probably a lie. But the fact that she was spotting his car outside the main campus building three times a week was comforting, and her heart filled with bittersweet sadness and something warm and fuzzy and endlessly amazing at the sight of Alaric leaning casually against the door as she hopped down the stairs, weathered from years of being exposed to the elements and millions of feet.
Jenna wore his oversized t-shirt with a hole hear the collar and washed off logo on the front whenever she was staying over, its sleeves almost reaching her wrists. Alaric would always joke about it being almost as old as her. She never cared. It smelled like him, a delicate scent that would linger on her skin ever after she'd change into her own clothes reminding her of his closeness for days on end.
He loved cocoa puffs with a 2% milk and black coffee for breakfast – a small something she picked up on without even realizing it until she caught herself stocking her own pantry with boxes of coca puffs.
They would eat, smiling at each other and not saying a word, or talking about nothing.
When she was a little girl, Jenna used to think that happiness must have tasted like cocoa puffs. She wasn't wrong after all.
xxx
It was the nightmares that haunted her the most. The taste of blood in her mouth, the feel of human flesh being torn by her razor sharp fangs. And hunger that would never go away. In her dreams, Jenna would be looking into the faces of all the people she loved, and feel nothing. Nothing but a cold emptiness, sucking her in, consuming her whole.
The nightmares would wake her up, screaming, and scared, and breathless. They would leave her fearing herself.
And he would always be there, reaching out for her and holding her until her heartbeat calmed down and her breathing evened once again. No questions asked.
xxx
He hated his freckles. Thought they were ridiculous and silly and, well, unnecessary at the very least. Jenna adored them – specks of golden dust on his nose and under his eyes, barely visible unless you knew what to look for. She could spend hours counting them, and never get tired of it.
"You're being creepy," Alaric told her one morning without even opening his eyes, his voice hoarse and groggy from sleep, as the sun streamed through the half open curtain.
"You know what they say about people with freckles?" Jenna asked, ignoring his comment.
Curious, he opened one eye. "What?"
She traced the bridge of his nose with her fingertips, a feather-light touch that left Alaric's skin tingling a little, her lips curved into a half moon of a smile.
"That they were kissed by the sun."
xxx
She knew the pattern of his heartbeat. It didn't take long to learn to pick it out even in a crowded room among dozens of other. She knew the exact number of his heartbeats per minute when he was asleep and when he was awake; the pattern of his heartbeat when he was mad or scared. She was clinging to it like a lifeline, something as solid as a touch of his hand, and Alaric – she was sure – couldn't even begin to understand how much it meant to her.
It felt better that way. Like a secret they shared, even if he had no idea he was a part of it.
She used to trace the lines of his tattoos with her fingers when he was asleep, the marks permanently etched into his skin, a whole new world and meaning behind them. He hated talking about them though, about how and why he got them. Jenna imaged it had something to do with Isobel, perhaps. With his other self he used to be when he was with her.
"Two restraining orders," John's voice in her head would remind her now and then, nagging and persistent.
She didn't care. He was a different man back then, a man she couldn't even imagine, frankly. A man with another heartbeat pattern she wasn't familiar with, and hence it didn't matter.
One, two, three, four…. Steady under her palm.
She knew the exact pattern of his heartbeat when they were together. A slight escalation at the first sight of her; a rapid thumping of a shared kiss, and a slow comfortable rhythm his heart settled into when his arms were wrapped around her, and his face burried in her hair.
She was his anchor the same way he was hers.
xxx
It was the small things that scared Jenna most. The smell of his aftershave lingering on her clothes. A forgotten book on the nightstand. Knowing the way he loved his coffee – two sugars, no cream. She drank hers the other way around.
It felt so delicate, so fragile.
Her own immortality made her fear forgetting all of those things. Knowing that one day the memories would go dull and lifeless, fading at the edges like old photographs, was the scariest thing she could imagine. Her fear of Klaus was nothing compared to this.
"A perfect fit," she whispered once, looking at their intertwined fingers.
Alaric drew their hands close and kissed the back of her hand, his five o'clock stubble scratching her gentle skin and sending shiver down the entire length of her spine.
"Couldn't be better," he replied quietly, making the corners of her lips tug and form a small smile.
Fragile.
"Would you be okay with all this if she gave you a choice?" She asked, unable to hold back the question that was hovering in the back of her mind like a dark cloud on a sunny day.
There was no need to mention Isobel's name – they both knew.
Alaric searched her face, his own features slightly troubled.
"I don't know," he answered honestly, making Jenna's heart sink and her breath catch in her throat for a moment. She did appreciate it though, even if it hurt – living in a lie for so long would do that to you.
She rested her head on his chest, snuggling close into his side, her thumb running lightly against his knuckles, his skin so much rougher that hers.
"But I don't want to lose you," Ric added under his breath, making her heart skip a beat once again. A good kind of skip. "Whatever happens, I don't want to lose you."
xxx
"Your place or mine?" He whispered against her mouth while they were hiding in the tight nook of a shop entrance from the pouring rain that looked like a wall of water in the dim light of streetlamps, his arms wrapped around her waist, holding Jenna close to his body.
He'd been missing every ounce of her ever since they parted their ways this morning, and he couldn't care less about the rest of the world at this point. Always missing her, even when she was close – like she never was enough. And he couldn't think of anything else, couldn't feel anything but that need to be with her. It was the fear, he knew that. The fear of not finding her one day, of waking up from this dream of life because who was he kidding, anyway? For better or for worse, it felt unreal.
His breath was catching again, making it impossible to think straight. To think, period.
The tip of his nose brushed against the bridge of hers, his eyes half closed. In the steady hum of rain, he couldn't hear or feel anything but her.
"I thought you were going to patrol with Damon today," she whispered, half serious, half teasing. He heard the smile in her voice,
"He's not going to die if he goes alone."
"You're horrible," she giggled breathily.
"Your place or mine?"
xxx
Carrot cupcakes.
Funny how of all the things in the world, Alaric loved them the most. Memories from his childhood, he told her once, making her giggle.
"What?"
"I can't imagine you being…" she trailed off, studying his face.
"Little?" Alaric prodded helpfully, chuckling.
Jenna reached out and brushed his hair off of his forehead, her fingers smoothing a slight crease between his brows as her lips curved slightly.
"Different."
And the thought saddened her to no end. It wasn't fair that he had to lose every trace of his innocence as if it wasn't there at all.
Something was bothering him. Bothering him enough to switch his phone to a permanent voice mail and avoid her at all costs. It took Jenna a day or two to figure out that it was a looming anniversary of his father's death – something he preferred to keep to himself.
She knocked on his door a few days later, a box of carrot cupcakes in hand.
His face was shaded with stubble and his breath smelled like bourbon, and he didn't look like he wanted any company. She thought he would come up with some excuse and ask her to go away. It wasn't her place or time, and she didn't know how to find her way into the part of his life which he preferred to keep hidden.
Instead, he pulled her close without a word and buried his face in her hair. She tucked her face into the hollow of his neck, feeling his pulse against her skin, and for the first time in months, it was the sound of comfort, not hunger and death.
His arms were tight around her, desperate. The warmth of his body felt like home.
She wondered if it was the cupcakes that did the job.
xxx
They had a mixed tape, an actual dinosaur of a cassette that the player in his car refused to recognize half the time. It didn't matter. There was no other way to make a real mixed tape, anyway. Bruce Spingsteen and Snow Patrol, of all things.
After they had a stupid fight over something utterly ridiculous – so ridiculous that Jenna didn't even remember what it was five minutes after stomping away – she spend hours and hours on end listening to this tape on repeat, lying curled on her bed.
He hadn't called for two days. She hadn't call either, choking on her pride.
It was the soft rumble of the engine that woke her up sometime around midnight – a sound she would have totally slept through had it not been for her super hearing. Then silence. And then another sound took over, making Jenna's heart leap up to her throat.
Wrapped up in the comforter, her hair a disheveled mass she only cared to smooth somewhat before reaching for the knob, she pulled the front door open, letting in chilly autumn breeze that smelled of leaves and rain and morning crispiness that was yet to come.
How it was even possible to miss someone so bad after only two days was beyond her.
Alaric's cheeks were stubbled and his expression was lost when he looked up from the porch swing he was sitting on and met her eyes, uncertain.
Jenna's lips curved into a smile of the will of their own.
"Were you even planning on knocking?" She asked, half jokingly, half fearing to hear his answer.
A smile back – a relieved one, their issues forgotten.
Someone told het once that it wasn't death but the unlived life one should fear. The words had never been more accurate.
A/N: Thanks for reading. Gosh, I missed those two!