Disclaimer: L.J. Smith claims ownership to the Vampire Diaries.
A/N: This came to me out of no where. I didn't even expect to be this long, and as you can tell it's not terribly long. Either way, a little one shot with minor spoilers for the season and such. Still looking for a beta, if someone has enough patience to put up with my infrequent stories.
Her pillows were in a different spot in her room. That was the first thing Elena noticed when she got home from school. It wasn't that she made a habit of remembering every little detail of her room, she just liked things a certain way. She liked her room to be neat and organized.
Ever since she was young, when things went badly in her life, Elena organized her room. It was like a catharsis. Everything had its own specific place, everything was right where it was supposed to go. Nothing was out of order. Except for her pillows, apparently. It wasn't terribly noticeable, but they weren't quite where they were supposed to be. A voice that sounded suspiciously like Caroline's floated through her head, chiding her for her OCD-like tendencies.
Quickly and without really thinking, she checked to make sure her diary was in the same place that she'd left it that morning. She almost sighed in relief when she saw it was. Her mouth furrowed slightly and she put her diary back. She stalked out of her room and knocked on Jeremy's door.
She heard shuffling and drawers being opened and closed, and then he opened his door almost a minute later, his bloodshot eyes giving away the nonchalance he was trying so desperately to pull off."Yeah?"
"Have you been in my room?" she blurted out, then winced at how childish it sounded, even to her own ears. She hadn't really thought about what she was going to say.
"Are you kidding me right now?" he replied.
"So you haven't?"
He rolled his eyes and muttered, "Of course not," before shutting the door in her face.
She sighed. She really should have known better. Her brother was a lot of things – things that had gotten a lot worse since their parents had died – but he wouldn't go through her room. He didn't have a reason to.
Once back in her room she rearranged her pillows to her liking and pulled out her cell phone to text Stefan, but ended up calling Bonnie instead to meet up at the Grill. She pushed out thoughts of the Mystery of the Pillows and focused on more important things. It was probably just her forgetfulness that morning.
That was September.
Over the upcoming months, things in her life went from bad to weird to worse. And yet her room stayed impeccable. In fact, even more so. Not a thing was out of place. When she found out her boyfriend was a vampire, she cleaned out all her drawers and threw away the things she was hoarding for no reason. When Stefan staked Vicki and Damon compelled Jeremy to forget, she dusted every single nook and cranny.
It got to the point that her room was so clean that she had to start cleaning the rest of the house. Jenna was pleased, but concerned for her. Sometimes Elena would stay up all night and scrub the grime out of the bathtubs or rearrange everything in the kitchen.
And yet there would be days when she would get home from school and something would be out of place. It would be small things, like the pillows. Or it would be dramatic, such as all the clothes in her closet rearranged. That one had annoyed her more than anything. She had spent a lot of time on her closet, getting it just as she liked it. It happened at random intervals, but the one common factor was that something else would happen in her life and not give her much time to think about who it could be until one day it hit her like a ton of bricks and she couldn't believe she hadn't figured it out before.
Who else in her life had caused so much chaos? Who kept her on her toes? Who annoyed her like no one else in this life? Who else would take so much pleasure in her frustration than Damon Salvatore?
She suddenly looked up to her windowsill and of course there he was. Of course. He probably waited for her to get home. She crossed her arms and spared one more glance at her clearly unmade bed, pillows and blankets strewn all across her floor, before meeting his eyes and answering his smirk with a withering glare.
"Is this some sort of new zen thing you're trying out?" he asked.
She couldn't even form words. It wasn't enough for him to cause problems with her and Stefan. No, he wasn't satisfied until he threw her whole world out of balance. And he just entered her room with smug just radiating off him and she wanted nothing but to hurt him.
"Cause I gotta say, I love what you've done with your room," he continued. "I already feel more at home." As if to prove his point, he flopped down on her bed and tucked his arms under his head to get a better look at her.
Elena was seething. Her eyes flashed and her glare intensified as Damon's apparently permanent smirk grew. "Damon, are you serious? I let you into my house, which was obviously my mistake, and you abuse the privilege – coming and going as you see fit – and ruin my room. Just because I gave you an invite does not mean you are allowed to traipse through my room, through my house."
"Your room was very organized. It was all very matchy-matchy," he commented as he lifted one hand up to run it along the wall behind him.
"You keep saying 'was,' as in the past tense." Elena narrowed her eyes at him. "Aside from the bed, what else did you do?"
In the blink of an eye he was in front of her, invading her personal bubble like he was perpetually doing. Her breath hitched as he leaned in to talk to her. "Are we still talking about your room?" And then he was gone, the only reminder that he had been there being the bedding on the ground and the fluttering of the curtains.
That night Elena painted her walls.