AN: Ah, yes...this is in response to this week's episode, "Dangerous Liaisons." It is an 'expansion' of the scene that we see between Stefan and Elena at the end of the episode. I always love thinking of the what-ifs...enjoy. ;) :D
Fire
"I hurt you, I bit you. I hate myself for what I did to you."
"Stefan-" said Elena.
"If I let myself care, all I feel is pain."
He felt her hand stroke his face and he couldn't help but notice how great she smelled. Like flowers, like rain. Like the scent of freedom. And it wasn't just her blood that was calling to him—although, he smelled that too— it was everything that he remembered about her that he had lost.
Her brown eyes looked up at him, so fierce. But her hand trembled on his face. And he wanted to be gentle, but he was rough as he slammed her against the door. He pinned the long line of his body against hers and he could feel her heart beat against his chest.
She looked up at him and he saw it – the fear –
"Wh—what are you doing?"
"See how easily I can hurt you," he said, his voice rasping slightly. He put his hands on either side of her shoulders and entrapped her against the house. "See how easily I can hold you here, against your will. I'm a monster, Elena. I've been a monster. I've acted as a monster. I'll always be one."
"I don't care about that."
"The things I've done —"
Tears sprang into her eyes. She struggled in his hold and he let her step out of his embrace. "I don't care about that! God, I wish I cared! Do you think I like thinking about the people you've killed – no, the people you've slaughtered and then realizing that I don't care, because all I want is to be with you?"
Tears spilled down her face. She watched something in his cheek twitch. His eyes were dark, but something in his eyes, yes—pain, and something she couldn't quite read.
"God, Stefan! Say something!"
But there wasn't anything he could say. Because how do you undo murder, destruction, mayhem and ironically, the worst—heartbreak? So he did the only thing he could think of—
He kissed her.
He wasn't gentle. The door of her house rattled as he thumped her against it. She gasped into his mouth, but he knew she wasn't afraid. Not the way her hands were skimming their way across his chest, down his arms, across his face, pulling him closer, her heart beating a thousand beats per minute.
He didn't wait for her to speak; he yanked her door open, pulled her through and then pulled her into is arms and ran all the way up to her bedroom. They fell onto her white bedspread in a gasp and tangle of arms and legs, Elena struggling to keep up with his frantic pace. He tore at her clothes and growled when they wouldn't come off fast enough. He saw the vulnerability in her eyes for a moment and then— there was only heat.
If he was the old Stefan he would have slowed down, he would have let her collect herself. But he reminded himself that the new Stefan wasn't supposed to care about things like that.
And he loved the way her hands skimmed across his bare chest, the way she rolled him over onto his back and climbed onto him, no shame—only a gasp of flesh and the feel of her tongue in his mouth. The old Elena didn't have this fire, didn't consume him as she did now...
The memory of her staking him suddenly sprang into his mind.
He looked into her brown eyes with a fierceness that Elena had never seen. Devotion, yes, but here he was looking at her like he was seeing her for the first time. He stroked her hair away from her face. She stared down at him from her place on top of him. Her bare breasts, her face, were suddenly illuminated by the moonlight coming through the window.
"What is it?" she gasped.
His eyes searched hers, for what exactly, she didn't know. "Maybe the person I should have been protecting is me," he said quietly. "You don't need me at all, do you?"
She frowned and she might have questioned him if he gave her a chance, but his hand wondered up her bare thigh and he did something that about shut her brain off.
After, as he watched the corners of her mouth relax and the lazy smile that stretched across her face, and the way she stretched her body underneath him, warm, eager, flexible; he thought something that he had never thought of before.
Their love-making had been intense, yet when he saw the joy that had sprung in her face; he wondered suddenly how anyone could have made it disappear in the first place. She was so much stronger than him.
Her eyes searched his. "What are thinking about?" she whispered. He rolled over onto his back, suddenly lost.
No, she didn't need him at all, he thought desperately. It was him that needed her. It was the way that he had found himself drowning in her touch, in her lips, in the flush of her skin against his. He wanted it again and again.
He rolled over quickly and in a blur her face was close to his and he had captured her lips with his own. He didn't want questions. He crushed himself eagerly against her.
Her heart was pounding against his chest and she gasped into his mouth. No, she wasn't the one that need him, he thought. He tangled his fingers in her hair.
The old Stefan would think about irony. But irony was for people like Klaus, and Damon and not for him who wanted to remain cold like a stone. Forever cold.
He thought about the pain of a cold heart, how much it hurts when that heart starts breaking. How much it was starting to hurt him now.
Because it was only her who could make his blood flow like fire through his veins.