If Only For A Night
I do not own Vampire Diaries, or the characters. This story is pretty much stand-alone, and you can assume that it takes place after the Mikaelson ball, but Matt never had his hand broken there.
From a totally objective view, Rebekah Mikaelson was simply a great catch. She was beautiful, statuesque, and bold. If you ignored what came from her mouth, she could even be pleasant company. But one thing that Matt could never forget was that Rebekah was a murderess vampire. That was why he was uncomfortable the moment that she stepped into The Grill, her silky blonde hair cascading down her shoulders and fanning her face as she read the menu. She was alone, from the looks of things, and dressed in a plain black slip dress.
He wiped down a total of thirteen plates, running on auto-pilot as he glanced at the blonde vampire ever few minutes. She was flipping back and forth through the two page menu, but seemed no closer to deciding what she wanted.
Matt finally sighed and put down the dish towel, steeling himself to ask for her order himself. His steps grew smaller the closer he got to her. He reminded himself that she wouldn't kill him in plain sight.
He cleared his throat, but she didn't look up.
"Can I get you something?" He asked.
"You ignored my invitation to my family's party. That was very rude of you." She said suddenly, turning her bronze face towards his.
"Sorry, I was busy." He said uncomfortably.
"That's a shame, I was saving you a dance," She said, "And no, I won't be ordering anything. I just came to collect."
He was taken aback. "Uh—collect?"
"Yes. You've offended me very badly, Mr. Donovan. You'll have to make it up to me, since I can't accept being insulted like that."
"And what do you want?"
"I want you. Or more specifically, your body."
The pen nearly slipped from his fingers, and his mouth fell open. Suddenly, he felt as if he couldn't breath. He must have heard wrong—there was no way that Rebekah was propositioning him in the middle of The Grill.
A smirk fell on her pouty lips. "Unfortunately, I had no one else to ask. I'm requesting your company for a few hours… and you'll be driving."
Matt's mind finally caught up with him, and he felt defensive. "Rebekah, you can't just come in here and order me to leave. I have work to do."
"I'm aware of that fact, but you are not allowed to refuse me. Fulfilling my request is the only way that I'll forgive you."
"But—"
"Don't argue with me. I'll just nicely ask your manager if you can take some time off."
She stood up then, and stalked towards the kitchen.
"Hey, wait!" He protested, but her long legs carried her too quickly. He just let out another suffering sigh, and waited awkwardly by the table.
She returned two minutes later, the grinning like a pleased cat.
"It's done. Now, let's go."
"I'm starting to think that you chose me because I'm the only one who you can bully." He didn't have the Salvatore brother protecting him, or supernatural powers, after all.
"You might be more intelligent that I gave you credit for." Rebekah said.
"Thanks, I guess." He said. She started to walk out the door, and he resisted for a moment before her glare pushed him to follow. She led him to his truck, which to her credit, she didn't grimace at it like he'd expected. He fished in the pocket of his black pants and took out his keys.
"Okay, first of all, why do you need me and my car?"
"Just trust me, it's nothing sinister."
"I don't trust you, but if you swear that you aren't going to use me to hurt any of my friends…"
"I swear on my life." Rebekah said solemnly. Matt scrutinized her, than unlocked the truck for them. Rebekah slid onto the seat gracefully, without a wrinkle or hair out of place. Matt thought that Rebekah didn't look nearly as glamorous that night, especially in his clunky car.
Her thin shoulders seemed smaller and her expression wasn't pinched or cunning. He could almost pretend that she was normal. He reached towards the back seat until he felt clothing fabric, and handed the blue jacket to Rebekah. She looked at him questioningly.
"You look cold." He said gruffly, and offered it again.
"Thank you for your concern, but vampires don't get cold." She said, a little wistfully. She hadn't been treated like a human being for a very long time, so she hadn't bothered acting like one.
His extended arm didn't move. "Just take it, for my own peace of mind. I can't sit next to a girl who's uncomfortable."
"You're such a gentleman… I can see why the girls love you." She said, taking the jacket delicately.
Matt ignored that comment. He was surprised that he wasn't nearly as nervous as he'd anticipated he would be, alone in an enclosed space with an Original Vampire.
"So, where are we going?"
Rebekah pointed into the distance, and Matt craned his head to see through the windshield. He didn't see anything, for she was pointing to a place beyond the boundaries of town.
"You see that mountain over there?" She asked.
He nodded.
"That's where we're going." She said. "I want to go to the very top."
He stared at her blankly. He was about to ask why she would make such a weird request, but then he just shook his head. He was used to being dragged around by supernatural beings and stuck in situations way beyond his control. He was just a high school quarterback, for god's sake. He was in way over his head, and by now, he stopped trying to keep sane. If an insane and hot blonde vampire wanted him to keep her company on a mountain top, then he wasn't going to fight it. Besides, he was still half sure that she was going to kill him.
He revved the engine to life and pulled out of the parking lot. He drove through town and took the second exit, which he knew would take him up a road to the Crescent Mountain, the one that Rebekah had pointed out. As he started to head up the incline, he insanely wished that Rebekah would pay for gas. But he supposed he could spare the money that this little trip cost him considering she was sparing his life.
Said-vampire was completely silent for the whole duration of forty minutes. Not a word left her lips until they were parked at the very top, with a view overlooking Mystic Falls a many miles away. The town was just a small group of twinkling lights.
He turned off the truck and an even heavier silence descended on the night. It wasn't a smothering silence, but one that surrounded them completely. He was jolted out of his daze when Rebekah got out of the car and hopped onto the hood. Her back was mostly bare and luminescent in the moonlight. His jacket was in her hand next to her.
"Rebekah-" he sighed as he opened his car door, too.
"Shh..." she said, "I want to enjoy this, and you're ruining it with your incessant chatter."
Matt shrugged but did as she ordered. After a few minutes, he gave up and joined her on the hood. He shoved his hands in his pant's pockets and turned his gaze to the stars. He had to admit, it was quite beautiful. He never felt so close to the sky, and the stars were like lights painted across the dark night.
"I remember when the sky never looked different than this. There were no towns or highways- nothing but open land and trees. You felt like the world went on forever."
Matt said nothing for a few minutes, unsure how to respond to Rebekah's strange confession. Finally, he said, "Who's the one chattering now?"
The blonde graced him with a smirk. "I apologize. Kol has told me that I am far too nostalgic at times."
Matt wanted to tell her that memories were good, and you weren't a whole person without them. Even if his memories of Vicki were painful, he wouldn't give them up for a second, because the good was well worth the loss he felt in his heart.
"Tell me more." He said. Rebekah raised an eyebrow in his direction.
"Tell me more about your old life. The good things." He continued. Rebekah looked up at the sky again.
"Where would I begin? I've lived long enough to tell you of hundreds of lifetimes, Matt."
He squirmed a little as his name fell across her lips for the first time than night. She whispered it smoothly.
"Tell me about a place. I've never been out of Mystic Falls before."
She laughed. "You're all such small-town people here. You're missing out on the while world. That is one thing I don't understand about humans- that their lives are so short, yet they don't live them to the fullest. I still don't feel like I've experienced even half of it. Paris, Venice, Milan... All those places are wonderful, but the wilderness is still home. The village where my family was born in covered by concrete, I'd imagine."
"Being a small town boy isn't so bad." Matt flushed slightly. "Mystic Falls is my home, and I love all the people in it. I don't want any more than that."
"I wish that I could feel the same way. But when you live forever, you find that things change, and you have to let them go."
Matt thought about Elena and Caroline. Then about Vicki, Stefan, and Tyler. And finally about the vampire sitting on the hood of the car beside him. They were only inches apart, yet he felt they were separated by worlds. But maybe that didn't matter as much as he'd thought, in the bigger scheme of things. Because he couldn't really imagine himself in any moment other than this one, watching the stars with Rebekah.
"I'll probably go back to hating you tomorrow." He said.
"But tonight, none of that means a thing."
"Thank you for bringing me here, Rebekah. Can I ask you a question?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
He didn't really understand why he'd brought him with her. She could have run up to the peak in under twenty minutes with her vampire powers (or at least, he figured she could), but the only answer he could come up with was that she was lonely. Why else would she have asked a boring human like him?
"Why did you invite me to your ball? I mean, I'm just a human. I don't understand why you're wasting your time with me."
"Don't you think that I wish that I could be normal for a while? I didn't choose to be turned into the thing that I am today. Life as a vampire was forced on me. If I could change what I am... Then I would. But my family is all I have left, and they're all cursed, too," She looked down. "Sometimes, I like to pretend that I'm human. That I was born and raised among you, and that I don't have to live off of blood to survive. That I really am a cheerleader with good grades that everyone wants, and that I don't have to compel people to have friends and followers. And for some reason, Matt, you're the first person to really make me feel normal in a long time."
His gaze met hers, and he felt more normal than he had since he'd learned about the existence of vampires. Which was ironic since he was smiling at one of the Originals. She returned his smile with her own carefree one, then they both trained their eyes to the expansive night sky.
He slipped the jacket out of her loose grip and over her shoulders. She made no move to acknowledge the gesture, but he could tell that she noticed.
They spent over an hour together, occasionally taking a break from the stars to talk about a special memory—he learned that Rebekah had a particular fondness for salmon from Norway, but held nothing but disdain for the canals in Venice because they'd declined in beauty over the years. She loved white chocolate, and she'd been to the Eiffel Tower forty-two times during her life. She in turn listened to Matt's pathetic stories in return—mostly about he and Elena many years ago, and about Vicki. Then at some point, they both knew that it was time to go home and return to reality. He dropped the girl off at the mansion and they parted ways. He could feel Rebekah's eyes on him as he left.
He thought about what she had said- about there being more out there than just Mystic Falls. But he still thought that she was wrong about humans not living their lives to the fullest. He'd been happy just driving in the moonlight with her. And hearing the sadness in her voice when she remembered her old village... she'd transported him into a new world for a single night... and than was enough for him. He was just a small-town boy, after all.