"How's Damon? Is he going to be okay"
"I don't know. Can I call you later?"
"Yes. Of course."
Stefan listened to the silence of the cell phone in his hand. Elena's calm reassurance, her edgy concern dissipating into the strange soundlessness of the finished phone call. He dropped his arm with the dead weight of the phone in his hand and placed the cell quietly on the table. His fingertips ghosted the keypad, tapping a nervous, thoughtful contemplation.
He stood watching the firelight flicker up into the distant corners of the room, the light running like flames up the walls, heating the air, but not him.
Not Damon.
Damon was perched on the edge of the sofa seat, hunched as though in pain. And Stefan knew; he was. He was in pain. He was bending forward over the source of it, the heart that hung suspended, still but so full, behind his ribs. Stefan felt his breath leave his lungs in an exhalation of frustration and a kind of despair. He thought of Damon's heart. Felt his own rise up in sympathy. Heard the red walls of it echo his brother's name inside its chambers.
He walked around the furniture, sat uncomfortably in a chair and looked, hard, across the space between them.
A sibling relationship out of time. A century and a half of shared blood. Tied to one another. But with a ligature that left them each one fist free.
Suddenly Damon was on his feet. Stefan could feel the rage from where he sat and then he, too, was on his feet. The room was filling with emotion. The fire reared back, away from it, then roared afresh.
"Damon," Stefan whispered, his voice catching, his brother's name burning through his throat.
Damon held up a hand - no, stop - holding him back and he looked down, realizing then he was moving towards this other man, this other self. He willed himself in place. "Please..."
"Did you know?"
"You know I didn't."
"Do you care?"
"Damon."
Now Damon turned on him. Eyes blazing fiercely, stilling a trembling lip with a rough brush of his knuckles. "Go on, Stefan. This must be," he threw his arms wide dramatically, fingers spread, head tilted, "the fucking greatest night of your pathetic existence. Must be like your birthday, Christmas, and meeting Elena all rolled up in one. Go on, celebrate, bro." He sneered, "Don't mind me."
"I do mind you, Damon."
Damon turned back to the fire; the dangerous hands twitching at his sides, shoulders slumped. "That right? I thought you hated me. Wait, how did it go exactly?. All you can remember is...hating me?"
Stefan heard his words quoted back at him and a blade of regret snicked between his ribs. He wanted to bleed for his brother, feed Damon on great gouts of his own pain. "Never."
Damon nodded; a slow, long, languorous movement of his beautiful head. He breathed in once, then again, deeper, then he was on his knees, face in his hands.
An electric current of shock arced up Stefan's spine, exploding out the top of his head and he felt as though he were thrown forward. Into an embrace that would scorch them both. He crouched low, his arms closing around his brother, pulling him between his thighs, folding the other man against him, rocking him back. Holding him. Damon turned his head, his breath hot and damp on his collarbone, through the silk shirt. Great gulping breaths were racking his body and Stefan held him tighter, harder.
"I can't even fucking cry for that bitch."
"Not for her, not for her," Stefan whispered, mouth pressed against the side of Damon's head.
"Then who? God. Damn. It. Stefan. Who?"
"For us. Damon, cry for us. For a hundred and forty five wasted years."
He felt Damon nod into his chest. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Stefan moaned as his brother pressed his hot and hungry mouth against his throat, fang and tongue driving home, into the vein that fed his heart.