Trial + Error = Love
DG32173
Sarah: here's one of my rare attempts at a romantic fanfic meant to make my readers laugh like maniacs over the antics I have the cast pull off. I hope I earn plenty of laughs, and hopefully plenty of reviews, for my efforts. Enjoy.
DISCLAIMER
I hate doing this thing. But it's required. Thankfully, I'm only required to do it once per story. This will be the only one you see in this fanfic. If I own it, I will claim it before the chapter it appears in. If there is credit due to someone for suggesting a scene that I use, I will also give it before the chapter the scene appears in. If I don't claim something nor give credit for it to someone beforehand, it is safe to assume neither I nor anyone else owns it and it is free for the taking without need of asking permission. And that goes doubly true for TVD, the cast, Mystic Falls, and the settings. There is the damn disclaimer I am required to write at least once per story. Don't expect another one because there won't be any more.
WARNINGS
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE! Alters from show's storyline in the episode "Masquerade" in Season 2. There will be no appearance of Rose, Trevor, Andie, or the Originals. This story is rated T because I don't expect to include any of the sexual scenes that play out frequently in most of my other stories. But if such a scene should appear, the rating will be upped to correspond with it. Just be prepared for a lot of laughs to come. I clearly marked this story as Humor/Romance and with good reason.
SUMMARY
After the latest trials have been dealt with, the gang, seeing both Elena and Damon are miserable, take it upon themselves to play matchmaker... but things rarely go as planned. Damon/Elena
Chapter 1
Plotting
Elena
Elena cringes as she closes her journal and sets it on her nightstand. After the events of tonight had played out, Jeremy had confessed just how damn close he had come to arriving too late to tell Damon and Stefan that in injuring Katherine, they were also inadvertently hurting Elena. She shudders. He had said that if he had been even a few seconds slower, Damon would have rammed a stake through Katherine's heart, not realizing until too late that in doing so, he had not only killed Katherine but had killed Elena as well. She turns off her lamp and curls up under her covers. Had she not realized that her friends were planning to take down Katherine tonight and snuck away from Alaric's supervision, she'd be dead right now and the others would have no idea why.
Elena viciously shoves her morbid thoughts away. She had snuck away from the house to go confront her friends. Bonnie had realized what was going on. Jeremy had made it in time to stop the brothers from killing Katherine and subsequently killing her as well. That Katherine had proceeded to use that hitch in her plans to cause further injuries to herself and thus to Elena is besides the point because Bonnie had managed to track down Katherine's witch and somehow convince her to help stop Katherine.
Even as she reminds herself of all this, Elena can feel the tears start slipping down her cheeks. At least she had managed to avoid Jenna when she had gotten home. There was no way she could possibly have come up with an explanation for her injuries that would not have caused her aunt to panic. But now those injuries are hidden under gauze and ace bandages under her shirt. There are smaller bandages over the scratches Katherine had inflicted on her through the spell binding the two of them. Elena can easily tell her aunt the truth about those more visible bandages: she had gotten scratched when she went out tonight.
Elena forces herself to shove those thoughts away as well and even refuses to contemplate asking any of her vampire friends for some blood to make her wounds heal faster. Even so, her tears continue to fall though she firmly keeps her sobs in check. So much has happened in the past several months, particularly so since Katherine returned to the brothers' lives. Even now, she still gets nightmares about the night Damon snapped Jeremy's neck out of a combination of pain and anger. But now that she has an idea of why he had done so, though not having all the details, she can't find it in herself to hate him for what he did. If her hunch is right and Katherine had screwed with his mind at some point prior to Elena's desperate attempt to avoid talking about her feelings for the blue-eyed Salvatore, well, then, the blame for that traumatizing event lays more so on that bitch than on Damon.
But, as she has done every night since then, she cries herself to sleep as her tumultuous thoughts swirl in never-ending circles in her head.
Damon and Stefan
Damon lets out a snarl of fury as he hurls his half-empty glass of bourbon into the fireplace in the foyer of the boarding house. The flames roar up as the alcohol splatters on the burning logs. If Jeremy had been just a few seconds slower in arriving to tell him and Stefan about Katherine's contingency plan, Elena would be dead! And it would have been his own hands that, by way of the spell linking the two doppelgangers together, would have dealt the deathblow!
Stefan wisely keeps his thoughts to himself in the background. He had spent an hour trying to calm his older brother down by reminding Damon that Jeremy had arrived in time to save the girl they all loved. But each time, Damon had chewed him out. Damon is in no mood to be reasoned with right now, so Stefan had finally given up and got lost in his own thoughts. He went into tonight thinking that getting Katherine out of the picture would allow him to get back together with Elena. But the human had made it perfectly clear that won't be happening anytime soon, if ever.
He had been so sure that Elena had officially broken up with him simply because Katherine had made it too dangerous for her family for them to be together. But even with Katherine safely sealed away in the tomb she should have been in since 1864; Elena still refuses to get back together with him. And he knows that while the reasons she had given him had surely been valid and true, he also knows that there have to be other reasons she was holding back. And, unfortunately, he is certain that her powerful bond with Damon – which he had never understood and doubts he ever will – plays a major part in why she will not allow him to return to the status of her boyfriend.
There is no denying that bond between Damon and Elena is very real. Stefan had sensed it even on that day he had found her talking to his brother after she had come to the boarding house the first time in order to return the book he had loaned her. And, despite his many futile attempts to nip it in the bud, that bond has grown stronger with every passing day and he is sure that whatever it is heading for will soon come to pass as it reaches full bloom. And, unfortunately, he now knows that Damon truly loves Elena more than anything or anyone in the world, including his own brother. Damon would not have been so full of grief and fear upon finding out that the times he had been ramming a stake into Katherine, he had inadvertently been ramming that same stake into Elena by way of magic if he did not love the human so much that Stefan now realizes, not only eclipses, but in fact makes Stefan's own love for Elena be comparable to sheer hatred. Nor would he be so full of self-loathing and rage if he weren't running over the many ways tonight could have taken a tragic turn no one had expected were he not utterly devoted to Elena.
And, while Stefan wishes with all his heart he could deny it, Elena's own feelings for Damon, while still unknown to anyone but herself, appear to be just as strong. And he knows that that road trip to Georgia the two had shared had been the true turning point in their feelings for each other. He has never seen Elena as happy as she is just by the fact that Damon walks into the room she's in. And only a blind man would fail to notice that she only relaxes completely when she subconsciously senses Damon nearby. Even with Stefan, who had until recently been her boyfriend, she remains as tense as a rabbit that has spotted a hawk circling overhead.
Stefan can no longer deny that his brother and the human they both love share a powerful bond that he had never seen the likes of. A bond that is completely absent in his own relationship with Elena. And he also can't deny that Elena's reply to his "I love you" has become more and more automatic in recent weeks rather than having any real sentiment behind it.
And, while it hurts as much as if someone had staked him repeatedly, Stefan has to finally admit that he had been wrong in assuming that Damon had become irredeemable. Elena has busted her ass pulling the older Salvatore brother out of the dark shadows he had wrapped around himself, not once, but twice! She had nearly succeeded when the opening of the tomb revealed that Katherine had never been in it and that Damon had wasted all those decades chasing a lie. Damon, in his pain over finding out just how much of a fool he had been, had tried to fall back into the shadows he had spent recent decades dwelling in. But Elena wouldn't have it. She not only dragged him back out, but Stefan has a hunch that she had somehow broken Damon's humanity switch in the process, leaving it permanently in the "on" position. Stefan is certain that even now, Damon is unsure whether to be grateful for that or pissed that she would do so only to attempt to turn a blind eye to his love for her. And unlike Damon, who is most likely sure that she is succeeding in such an attempt, Stefan can see that Elena is affected by the fact that Damon has become utterly devoted to her, even if she only knows that he is on an instinctive level.
Stefan frowns. As much as he hates to admit it even to himself, he has to admit that perhaps Damon and Elena might actually make a better couple than he and Elena had. After all, Stefan had tried repeatedly, and futilely, to lie to Elena because he had thought he would be protecting her in doing so. Not only did it result in more fights than he cares to think about upon her discovery of his deception, but tonight now makes him realize just how dangerous lying to her could be. They had all tried to trick her into staying home to take care of Jenna so that she wouldn't have gotten caught up in tonight's events. But, had she actually done so, she'd be dead right now and none of them would have ever known why she had died looking as if she had been staked repeatedly. Damon had protested keeping her in the dark. He has never before outright lied to Elena's face. But Damon had been overruled by the rest of them because they had assumed the "small" lie would have protected her. But now they all know the error of that assumption.
Stefan sighs. Having admitted that Damon and Elena could very well be a better match than he and Elena had been, he now realizes he has to do something to get them to at least try dating each other and seeing how it works out. But both his brother and his ex are as hard-headed and stubborn as mules. And he could never be able to pull this off alone. Even he knows that his attempts would be much too obvious. So he's going to need backup and help in plotting to get the two together. Not to mention he's going to have to convince the others that this is the right course of action, as much as even he doesn't like the thought of Damon and Elena getting together. Finally, Stefan tells himself that in the case the two don't work out as a couple, everyone will know that they were never meant to be more than the closest of friends.
He glances at Damon, studying his brother minutely. Upon satisfying himself that Damon wouldn't try something stupid over this, he rises to his feet and slips out of the boarding house. Even if Damon does notice that his little brother had left him, the blue-eyed vampire would be grateful for being left alone to vent his tumultuous emotions over tonight in private. Not that he would ever admit to it. Not to Stefan, at least.
Stefan takes off through the woods on foot. By the time he reaches his destination, he has a vague plan on how he'll convince the others to cooperate with his attempts to get Damon and Elena together. He slows down as he approaches The Grill. He whips out his cell phone and starts calling his friends one at a time, telling them to meet him there and that he has something he needs to discuss with them.
It takes nearly an hour for all of them to slip out of their homes undetected and make it to The Grill. By that time, there are very few patrons in the bar to overhear their discussion. As they all gather around one of the very few tables large enough for a group their size, Stefan notes that all of them are showing signs, with various degrees of obviousness, that tonight's near-miss has wreaked just as much havoc on them as it has on he and his brother.
It takes nearly half an hour to explain his plan and convince even the most reluctant of them that it's worth at least trying, if only by arguing that if Damon and Elena don't work out as a couple, everyone will finally be certain that those two were never intended to be more than very good friends. Once they are all finally on the same page, they set about concocting plan after plan of how they will attempt to make the two realize their feelings for each other without getting caught, dissecting all the ways the plans could go wrong, and discarding the ones that are too risky. By the time they are all kicked out at closing time, they have agreed on five different ways they will attempt, one at a time, to get Damon and Elena together.