*disclaimer: don't even pretend like you don't already know that I own -0.000% of The Vampire Diaries.

As sad as she felt for him, it was almost nice. It brought out her motherly side, or something. Her Nana had always said that all girls are born with maternal instincts and an inherent ability to nurture and what-not. If it was true, then it was nice to see that said instincts had translated over into her vampire self as well, although she had a suspicious feeling that Nana wouldn't have approved of her vampire self, A+ nurturing skills or not. Regardless, it made her feel...good...which inadvertently made her feel disgustingly horrible because one of the most beautiful people she'd ever known was falling apart right before her eyes.

It was nice to feel needed, she guessed. At least that was what she assured herself of when Stefan asked her to stay home from school to just sit with him, or when she woke up to see him asleep on the floor of her bedroom, or when he called her in the middle of the day just "wondering what she was up to." Her presence mattered to him and she didn't know why that mattered so much to her. Maternal desires, perhaps. Maybe her biological clock had begun to tick after all or maybe it was just because it meant that she mattered. For once, someone needed her... and it was Stefan Salvatore, of all people. Ironic, it seemed, because she had needed him so desperately when she'd first turned. Her darkest, most freakishly horrifying hours were survived by Stefan's lead and now she was attempting to return the favor. Each and every time he called, busy or not, she answered the phone.

Because he was calling her. He could have gone anywhere, seen anyone. They had money, she knew that, the Mystic Falls history lessons Nana had given her weekly clued her into that. He was a Salvatore, and a vampire, and ridiculously good looking, and he could have gone anywhere. Instead, he was crashing on her couch, and her bedroom window seat, and sometimes just her bedroom floor, and calling her during math class just to see when she was coming home. No one had ever really been concerned with her punctuality before.

Okay, so maybe she wasn't doing him any favors by coddling him, and hugging him, and not opting to slap him across the face and tell him to move on with his life...but maybe she was. Maybe mourning periods are really important or something. You can't move on from something without mourning the loss, accepting that it's gone...at least that's what her mom had told her when her father had more than a few binge-drinking escapades after Nana died.

"Caroline!" Stefan's whisper, if you could even call it that, was loud, and hoarse, and sloppy, and he reeked like a distillery. "Caroline, I neeeeeeeeeed you." She was stupefied, but nor surprised at his current state: she'd given up and gone to bed a few hours into his attempt to cleanse his mind of "The E Word", hoping against hope that he would manage to maintain some semblance of dignity without her present...or at least that he wouldn't leave the house.

She rolled over to face his drunken form, his trouble with standing upright evident even through her sleepy, blurred vision. She blinked a couple dozen times until he finally came into focus, then spat out the best response she could muster at 3:40 in the morning: "What the hell?" She wasn't quite sure which of the 2 feelings causing friction in her chest was stronger: her guilt at leaving him to get to this point or her desire to shove him away and go back to sleep.

"You're awake!" He seemed to find this fact, or his voice, or her face, or something else that Caroline was clearly unaware of, completely hilarious and dissolved into a bent-over-eyes-closed giggle fit.

"Stefannnn..." the latter feeling had won out and she was halfway through rolling over away from him when his giggles suddenly ceased. In one swift motion, before she could react, he had swung his knee up onto the bed and half crawled, half fallen on top of her. "Oh, good GOD. Stefan, please, you're squishing me under here...ugh, your breath, is there even any vodka left in this house?"

"Caroline," his voice was even harder to understand now thanks to the mixture of alcohol-induced slurriness and the muffling that his face on her shoulder was producing, "I need your help, I think you have no more wine."

She rolled her eyes and laughed, as much as she could whilst her stomach was being crushed by 180 lbs. of the eternal un-dead. "I don't think you cleaned me out of wine, Stefan, but I do think it's possible you're so drunk that you forgot the word 'vodka.'" He snorted in laughter once, maybe in agreement, before he went limp and there was her window of opportunity: she threw him off of her with such force that he rolled over the edge of the bed and hit the ground with a resounding THUD. She endured a split second of panic that her mother would wake up before remembering that Liz was enjoying yet another round of night shifts; a comforting fact because in another split second, the hysterical laughter began again and this round involved Caroline as well.

She peered over the far edge of the bed to see him crumpled on the floor, staring into what she knew to be the black hole that is the space under her bed. "Stefan. You're so trashed...I'm really sorry that I went to bed, okay?"

He squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as she'd ever seen anyone squeeze their eyes shut and she stared down at him, marveling at just how incredibly quickly the mood in the room had done a complete 180. "Caroline, you're my only friend." His voice was almost inaudible and it took her a few seconds to process what he had said.

"That's not true."

He rolled onto his back and looked up at her, suddenly smiling. "Yes it is." His mouth was smiling but his eyes were the same, untouched by the sudden burst of seeming optimism.

She forced the corners of her mouth to turn upward while guilt, and sadness, and some strange maternal instinct raged through her. "Need a bed?"

The alcohol fog seemed to be clearing quickly, but he hicupped once before responding: "I don't ever want to leave your floor."

Everything was much less funny than it had been about a minute and a half earlier, but she found herself giggling anyway as she tossed one of her pillows over the edge at him. "Well, make yourself at home, then!" Caroline propped herself up on her elbow and watched as he settled into the carpet, pushing the pillow around until it was apparently exactly how he wanted it because his eyes instantly slipped closed.

"You're so nice, Caroline."

Stefan looked...like her. Well, a 9 year old version of her, in tears because Nana's funeral was tomorrow, and Daddy had come home drunk off his ass again, and the babysitter had called 911 while Caroline hid in the closet when he started yelling, which ironically brought her sheriff mother home from work early. Instead of being furious, she'd simply soothed him and allowed it, to her daughter's complete dismay. He's sad, Caroline. We have to let him be sad for awhile, okay? She could still feel her mother's hand smoothing Caroline's hair on the closet floor as she bawled like a baby.

Without thinking her hand fell over the side of the bed to find her broken friend and smooth his hair, over and over, because in her memory it was the greatest feeling in the world. She wasn't sure how accurate her memory was, it had certainly failed her in the past, but a smiled tugged at his mouth. Maybe she was enabling him, or emotionally crippling him for life or something...but he needed her to do it, so she would do it with bells on.

a/n: I have NO idea whether or not I like this...like at all. Thoughts? Continue? Leave it? Delete this because it's total crap? REVIEW, por favor. :)
[PS, If I continue, it's totally going to end up all romantic & whatnot because Steroline would be the cutest couple in the history of cute couples.]