Hey guys. I had chapters 1-12 posted here, but then the story got deleted. If you still want to read the whole story/get updates on new chapters, please follow it here instead: archiveofourown(.org)/users/Saralena/

Thanks for your support. Love you guys. :)

Though I reached to use the knocker, the door was already open an inch, and swung in as soon as I put pressure on it. There was a moment of hesitation mixed with a sliver of confusion. Usually there was something wrong when people just left their front doors not only unlocked, but open, right?

I leaned in, craning my neck around the partially open door to catch a glimpse of the dim room beyond.

"Stefan?" My voice echoed, and I took a cautious step inside. I waited, held my breath, and still got no reply. I felt my feet moving forward, as if they were acting on their own, deeper into the house.

Dark. That's how I would describe it. Dark, wood walls, and dark, wood floors. Enormous shadows and little, flickering reflections of light from the candles littered around the hall.

I saw his school bag slouched on a chair. Some of its contents had fallen out, and were scattered on the nearby floorboard, as if the bag had been tossed carelessly, or thrown. I felt a bullet of ice shoot down my spine, and little rows of goose bumps pump their way up my arms. Something felt off.

"Stefan?" I tried his name again, because although I hadn't received an answer the first time, the house didn't feel completely empty.

I rounded the corner, and my subconscious fear dissolved as my mouth dropped open. I sucked in a small breath at the sight in front of me; an enormous stone fireplace, its mantle stretching to the high ceiling, flooded by the light of the cathedral windows around it. The ground was an organized mess of beautifully detailed carpets, and plush red furniture filled the remaining spaces. I wondered if maybe I'd come to the wrong house. Did Stefan really live in such a lavish place?

I let the quiet of the home settle around me until the silence built up a stinging pressure in my ears. If Stefan wasn't here, I should leave.

I turned abruptly, but before I could make a move to leave through the open exit, a sound caught my ears. I froze, and locked my eyes with the sunny porch beyond the door. I felt my chest tighten, and for a moment I felt an absurd fear.

Suddenly, a black storm of movement and sound fired towards me from outside, and my scream caught in my throat. I spun around, attempting to stumble out of the crazed crow's path, and lost sight of it when I found myself nose to nose with a stone cold glare.

I felt my heart trip over itself in my chest, and I jumped back a little. In a flash of terror, the mix between a scream and a sharp gasp scrambling together in my throat came out as nothing more than a silent choke.

The emotionless face of the man softened into a smirk. His head cocked to the side and his eyes narrowed, the sneer on his lips stretching into something more sinister and much more arrogant.

"I-I'm sorry for barging in," My voice shook, and my phrase sounded less like solid words and more like a breathy whisper. The heart in my chest still beat ferociously, despite the rickety breaths I'd already managed to inhale in an attempt to calm it. "The door w-was open..." My voice trailed off as I cast a quick glance over my shoulder. The heavy door was shut tight.

"You must be Elena." The man's voice grounded me back to the moment, and I turned around to meet his eyes. They looked less sinister than the second before, just a delicate, faded blue catching in the candlelight that danced around us. He kept my gaze as the muscles in his face relaxed into a softer, more inviting smile, and made no move to distance himself from me.

"I'm Damon—Stefan's brother." The man's stare made an almost unnoticeable sweep of my body before returning to my face, and his smile widened.

"He… didn't tell me he had a brother."

"Well, Stefan's not one to brag. Please—come." He finally moved from his grounded spot in the entranceway, and reached an arm around my shoulders, ushering me into the fireplace room. "I'm sure Stefan will be along any second."

I felt my uneasiness start to die down as we padded into the room, and our footsteps fell in time with one another. I was once again taken aback by the room, and I tipped my chin up to look at the arched ceiling.

"Wow. This is your living room?"

"Living room. Parlor. Sotheby's auction. It's a little kitschy for my taste." I moved my curtain of hair behind one ear as he spoke, and felt my own lips melting into a slight, yet astonished smile. The room, no, the whole house, was a work of art.

"I see why my brother's so smitten." His next set of words bumped me out of my trance, and I raised an eyebrow in reply.

"It's about time. For a while there, I never thought he'd get over the last one." A sigh graced his lips, and a faint crease appeared between his brows. "Nearly destroyed him."

"The last one?" My voice hooked on a note of uncertainty, confusion.

"Yeah, Katherine. His girlfriend?" I bit my lip, gave the slightest shake of my head. "Oh, you two haven't had the awkward exes conversation yet…"

"Nope."

"Oops… Well, I'm sure it'll come up now. Or maybe he didn't want to tell you because he didn't want you to think he was on the rebound."

I shifted uncomfortably at his words, and focused my glance over his shoulder. I felt my cheeks burn, but with what? Embarrassment? Or anger at the fact that I might actually be nothing more than a rebound girl?

"We all know how those relationships end, Elena."

"You say it like every relationship is doomed to end." I turned back to him, rolled back my shoulders as I spoke and tried to make my voice sound more confident than I felt.

"I'm a fatalist." He smiled again, warmly, letting me know it was a joke. Then, without turning around or so much as breaking our stare, he murmured, "Hello, Stefan."

I whipped around, and there he stood. Though I immediately brightened, and felt the last trace of uncertainty or fear vanish from my head, the atmosphere in the room felt a hundred times heavier.

"Elena. I didn't know you were coming over." Stefan didn't so much as glance over at me. His eyes were dark, glued viciously to the back of Damon's head, and his broad shoulders were hunched over. Angry, tense, ready to snap, and pounce, and fight. I tried to brush his stance off, quickly consoling myself that I'd just caught him off guard at the wrong time. So I kept my smile, and the bubbly step in my walk, and continued towards him.

"I know, I should've called. I just—"

"Oh, don't be silly." Damon cut me off, and quickly fell in step with me again. "You're welcome any time. Isn't she, Stefan?"

When he didn't answer, Damon shot me a sideways glance, and I noticed that his smile had dissolved back into that cocky smirk from before.

"You know, I should break out the family photo albums," He turned to face me full-on, and reached out to put a gentle hand on my arm. "or some home movies. But, I have to warn you, he wasn't always such a looker." He laughed at his own joke, and I joined him, trying to lift the tension that was rapidly settling over the room like a suffocating smoke.

"Thank you for stopping by, Elena. Nice to see you." In unison, our heads shot back up to Stefan. He spoke to me, but his voice was ice cold, and his burning glare never left Damon. I wondered whether he was joking, or just in a really crappy mood. There was an awkward pause, and I bit the inside of my cheek.

"Yeah, I should probably go..." I took in a deep breath, stretched out the syllables of my sentence as I tried to catch Stefan's eyes. With no success, I turned to the other boy at my side. "It was nice to meet you, Damon."

Damon's face became all serious for a moment, and he stooped down so we were at eye level, those sky eyes piercing my own.

"Great meeting you too, Elena." Without breaking eye contact, he took a firm hold of my hand and brought it up to his lips, smiled as he kissed me. His mouth was warm, and soft against my skin. I felt an excited flutter stir in the pit of my stomach and, flustered, ripped my hand away all too quickly.

I went to leave, yet Stefan stood blocking the doorway. Still as a statue, his expression definitely harder than one. It was as if I didn't even exist. All of his attention was focused on Damon.

"Stefan?" A muscle twitched in his jaw, and his eyebrows knit more closely together.

"Stefan?" My voice finally seemed to register and he shifted to the side to let me pass without so much as a goodbye. A spark of instant frustration flickered in me, and it took quite a bit of my strength not to roll my eyes. Having a bad day or not, he had no reason to be rude. I brushed past him and strode out the door in a couple clean steps, letting the heavy slab of wood slam with just a slight bit of spunk behind me.

By the next day, I still hadn't heard anything from Stefan. It wasn't like we had each other's cell numbers anyways. That's what I was planning on getting when I went to his house the previous day. I thought maybe we could chat, and exchange numbers, and then send flirty texts until we spoke in person. I shouldn't have been surprised that things didn't exactly go as planned. After all, I wasn't exactly a relationship expert. All I'd ever had before was Matt, and he and Stefan were as different as day and night. Open and cheerful, where Stefan was mysterious and brooding… clean-cut and way too nice of a person, while Stefan seemed to have a darker side.

Nonetheless, I arrived at school with a chip on my shoulder, which continued to stay there through all my classes, especially when I saw Stefan's empty seat in history. I'd never been one to hold a grudge though, so by the time evening hit, my determination to keep up my annoyance act had rendered me exhausted. Maybe I just wasn't ready for a new relationship. If I could barely handle getting the cold shoulder from a boy who I talked to, what, like three times, how was I supposed to actually deal with all the baggage that came with a real relationship? I tried voicing those exact thoughts to my best friends, but all they kept telling me to do was to just relax, let loose, and go for it.

Later that night I was gathered in central Mystic Falls with the rest of the town. There was supposed to be a comet, a giant flaming rock that streaks across the sky only once every few hundred years. I swear this town would find an excuse to make some cheesy celebration out of anything. My resolutions and top priorities were to get back to my old self, but I just wasn't in the mood to be out in a field making a big deal about some shooting star.

"Hi." Stefan's voice caught me off guard— that was for sure. And while Caroline was all smiles, dragging Bonnie away from her place at my side to give us the privacy to speak, I was more than a little reluctant.

"Hi."

Stefan sighed, and brought one of his hands around to rub the back of his neck.

"I'm sorry about yesterday. I wasn't being myself."

"You seem to spend a lot of time apologizing." My interest was piqued, I wasn't exactly planning on him approaching me on what had happened, as he had seemed to have make it pretty clear that he wasn't interested.

"Yesterday wasn't about you, okay?"

I nodded, finally connecting my gaze with his.

"You didn't tell me that you had a brother."

"We're not close. He came to town unexpectedly."

I felt myself relax a little bit. So he had some deep-rooted family issues that turned up at a bad time, which I guessed explained his tense composure the previous day. I'd been overreacting, again, like I always do. I was getting as bad as Caroline. I shouldn't let my insecurities get the best of me. I chose my next words carefully, and spoke them even slower.

"Damon… he also mentioned your ex girlfriend… Katherine?" Stefan stiffened, and I felt the space between us become icy and tension-filled.

"The past is the past, Elena. You should stay away from my brother."

Much later, when the sky was just a sheet of black silk, I found myself winding back up the porch to the boarding house. I rang the bell this time, instead of just barging in like before, and felt a rush of relief when the door swung open. Stefan looked surprised, but he smiled down at me all the same. Behind him, the hallway was bathed in soft yellow light, and all the creeping shadows had been washed away by the warm glow.

My confidence was back, or at least I had convinced myself it was. My pulse was racing, and I even think my words quavered a little as I spoke, but something told me I was doing the right thing. The only way to move on with my life was to keep pressing forward.

Stefan followed me out onto the porch. Watched me with his big, gentle eyes, and listened as I poured my heart out to him. After that he'd presented me with a gift—a beautiful locket filled with nice smelling herbs. He was saying how if I would always wear the necklace, my safety could be guaranteed, but as he spoke, I found myself not even really truly listening to what he was saying. In his presence, I just felt warm, and safe, and happy. Stefan was like a fresh new beginning. He had his problems, and his ups and downs, like any normal human being did, but being around him just made me feel like I had nothing to fear. So, as he started to lean towards me, his head tilted ever so slightly to the side, I was the one to perch up and close the rest of the distance between us.

It was the sweetest of kisses. So delicate I could barely even tell it happened. Stefan's hand cupping my cheek felt as slight as a butterfly kiss, and before I knew it he had pulled away. His touch had left me dizzy and lightheaded and desperately craving something closer and deeper and longer.

"Night, Elena." His words were soft as a lullaby, and I replayed them over and over in my head as I tossed around in my sleep.