"Drown Me Between the Lines"
He's really missed seeing her, hearing her voice, holding her—he's really missed her.
She looks like an angel; she always had, and maybe she really might be this time. He did die and then come back to life. He doesn't know what the hell is going on but he's not going to question it.
"Jeremy," she says softly. His eyelids feel heavy but he really, really doesn't want to close them. What if he closes his eyes and she won't be there again? Or, if he is dreaming this, what if he closes his eyes in his dream and wakes up in his cold bed, alone? This is the most comfortable he's been in a long, long time. "Jeremy," she says, eyes twinkling. No, he's definitely not closing his eyes.
"Where'd Vicki go?" he mumbles, words slurring sleepily together. They're lying on his bed, facing each other, and he refuses to put his head against his pillow.
Her eyebrows pull together. "Who?"
"Vicki," he mumbles again, "She was here earlier, with you."
"I didn't see anyone else here," Anna laughs, shaking her head. "You're being delirious, Jer. Go to sleep."
"No." He yawns, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand, "I could've sworn I saw Vicki here earlier, right after I saw you. Are you even here?"
"I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me," she admits, rolling off of her side and onto her back. She's closer to him, but the bed didn't shift because her weight wasn't actually there. He can't really feel her, either. He only feels subtle warmth, only smells a hint of her favorite cinnamon lip gloss. "I saw you get shot, and now you can see me."
"You saw me get shot?"
"Well, yeah, for a second." She looks up at him. "The next thing I knew, I was standing in your kitchen."
"What do you think is happening? Are you a," but his own yawn cuts him off.
She laughs. "Jeremy," she insists, "you need to go to sleep. Seriously, I'll probably still be here when you wake up." He feels himself yawn again, eyelids getting heavier. "Where else would I want to be?"
... ...
"I missed you," Bonnie says, hugging him before he's barely got the door open.
He hugs her back, squeezing lightly, and catches Anna standing beside him at the bottom of the staircase in his peripheral vision. She looks kind of distant, unreadable; not exactly jealous, not exactly happy, but not exactly sad either. So he just meets her eyes, squeezes Bonnie a little tighter, and doesn't break contact as he murmurs, "I've missed you, too."
Anna smiles a little bit more.
"Come on, everyone's waiting for us at the Boarding House," Bonnie informs, pulling out of the hug.
"Right." She beams and turns back around, heading for her car.
As he is taking his time closing the door so he can lock up, Anna waves to him. "I'll see you when you get home," she assures.
"Definitely."
... ...
"Are you sure you should be spending so much time in such an empty house, Jer?" Elena asks, pulling out a pitcher of lemonade from the fridge. "Is everything okay?"
"I should really be asking you that, Elena," he chuckles. Anna waltzes into the kitchen, heels clicking. Elena doesn't seem to hear anything, or notice anything, even as Anna hops onto the countertop of the island right beside where he's sitting. He looks at her looking at Elena and laughs a little, causing his sister to look at him with raised eyebrows. "What?"
"Ah, nothing," he shakes his head. "But, um, how are you doing, Elena? You haven't really said anything about – about Stefan."
"What happened to Stefan?" Anna asks, and he refrains himself for providing the answer to the technically unasked question. He just mouths later when Elena goes back to pouring.
"I'm dealing," she exhales. "Everything's definitely calmer, so that helps."
"Yeah, I guess."
She looks up a little and furrows her eyebrows, reaching over to grab his hand and flipping it. "You're drawing again, aren't you?"
He stares at the pencil rubbings on the side of his hand and yanks it back, not knowing whether to be annoyed or amused by her discovery. "A little," he admits.
"Can I see?" she asks. He shakes his head, and she scoffs. "Jer!" She smacks him semi-softly and he laughs, throwing his hands up as a shield. "Come on, you always used to show me your drawings. Especially when you were little," she whines playfully. "Come on!"
"Later, maybe later!"
"Fine," she huffs, feigning a glare. "This isn't over."
... ...
He comes home from school with Alaric (the guy pretty much moved himself in after Jenna's… after Jenna, and it's pretty cool, having him there since Elena's pretty much moved into the Boarding House) and goes straight up to his room to see Anna sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching the TV he left on. He wonders if she ever gets bored or frustrated that she can't touch anything.
"Not really," she admits when he asks this. "It's kind of nice just getting to be whatever this is instead of, you know, dead."
He chuckles and sits down with his back against his bed beside her, switching off the TV before realizing it. "Oh, sorry, did you want me to—"
"It's fine," she laughs. "I live for you being home."
He wonders if that sentence rings truer than either of them realize.
"So how's the outside world?"
"School's school." He pulls out his sketchbook, pencil, and eraser, and meets her eyes. "What?"
"It's flattering, Jer, really," she says softly, obviously trying to put it delicately, "But won't your girlfriend find it weird you keep drawing me? Or, your sister, maybe?"
He exhales and shakes his head, getting his bangs in his eyes a little. "Neither of them are going to see it, and Rick won't—he's Rick. If he found out, he wouldn't say anything if I told him it's nothing."
"Alright," she says after too long a pause and leaves it at that. He switches the TV back on but they don't really pay attention to it since she lies down on the floor and rolls onto her back and starts telling him more stories of her travels and whatnot like she's been doing the past few days. He sketches her just like that, her curls splayed out underneath her head, and her voice is quiet when she says she loves it.
... ...
He's over at Tyler's one day because Bonnie and Caroline have plans and, other than the girls, they're pretty much each other's only real friends at the moment.
"Mom's been crazy these past few days," Tyler tells him as they're shooting hoops in the backyard. "More than usual," he adds. He misses his shot and runs a hand through his hair. "She gets all hyper and jumpy around Caroline and it makes me wonder… you know…"
"Well, she does work with Liz, right?"
"Yeah. Damn." Jeremy looks at him. "You think I should talk to her?"
"Not if she doesn't bring it up first," he advises. "Isn't that kind of the rule of thumb with this stuff? Don't ask, don't tell."
Tyler shrugs and blows out a sigh, stealing the ball but missing the shot again. "You'd know more than me about that, wouldn't you?"
"You'd think," he chuckles. "There's not exactly some manual I can pass onto you or something."
Tyler laughs humorlessly and shakes his head. "How screwed is all of this?"
He passes Jeremy the ball and he tosses, swishing it. Tyler lets out an impresses whistle. "Imagine being my sister, though," he reminds. "Stefan's gone."
Tyler nods solemnly. "Yeah. At least I have Caroline, and you have Bonnie," he agrees, and Jeremy hesitates a few seconds too long passing him back the ball.
"Yeah, at least."
... ...
He's gone through two sketchbooks already.
Anna holds her tongue about it. He's actually seen her look a little pained trying to keep herself from saying anything, and he's torn between loving that she won't stop him and hating that she's letting him get like this. In the end, though, he can't be mad at her. He'll just get to work on another picture and all of the bad thoughts just disappear.
"Don't you have homework or something?" Her tone is light, attempting to ease him into her conversation, but there's definitely worry in there.
"It's the beginning of the school year," he reminds.
"Then you should get some sleep in you so you can focus tomorrow," she advises. He keeps drawing and she lets out a sigh, plopping onto the bed beside him. "Jeremy, please."
"I'm almost done," he assures, and she curls and uncurls her fingers, watching. She reaches out, plucks the pencil out of his hand and tosses it across the room. It takes a few seconds to realize what just happened. "How did you—"
"I don't know," she admits, dazed.
"Maybe… Maybe I should get some sleep…"
... ...
"Is that really what happened?"
"That's what he said to me. Did he say anything to you?"
Jeremy turns his head and sees Elena, Caroline, and Bonnie huddled off to the side at a vending machine. He'd go over there and ask what's going on—those frowns on their faces definitely mean something, and it's never anything good in this town—but a second later Tyler is there, clapping the back of his shoulder with his eyes on the three girls as well, looking as equally troubled as them.
"What's going on?" Jeremy asks.
Tyler exhales, adjusts the strap of his backpack. "Matt called Caroline while we were out the other day, left a voicemail saying that… saying that he's been seeing Vicki."
His heart stops for a few seconds. "Vicki?" he asks, and it comes out all breathless. "What?"
"I don't know, man," Tyler shrugs. "It could be stress because he found out the real reason why she died but…"
"It seems too suspicious to be that," Jeremy guesses. Tyler nods. "So, what are we planning to do about it?"
"Leave it alone, probably. See where it goes," Tyler says. "What else is there that we can do? If it's something, which it always is in this damn town, we're not going to know until it shows itself, right?"
"Yeah… Right."
... ...
Anna is watching TV in his room when he gets home, flipping through channels.
"We know where Vicki's been," he announces as soon as the door is shut, and Anna is just staring at him. He tells her everything that they others know, which isn't much, but basically Matt has been talking with Vicki and she comes and goes and Matt is sure as hell that she's too real to be made up in his own head like everyone's praying this is.
"So she didn't disappear," Anna concludes. "She just… left."
"I guess." Jeremy runs a hand through his hair, pulls his sketchbook from his desk and onto his lap. "Have you… have you ever tried leaving the house?"
"I—no," she admits. "I didn't really think to… well there was nothing for me out there anyway."
He nods and starts drawing. He only goes to sleep a little after midnight because Anna yanks his sketchbook away once he's reached the end and is about to start a new one.
... ...
"How many pages do each one of these have, anyway?" She lifts up a sketchbook by the binding, examining it. "A hundred?"
"More or less," he replies.
"And you've filled almost six of them already," she points out. "You need a new hobby, Jer."
"It's not that big of a deal," he says, even though they both know it is and that it's about to become a problem, as if he didn't already have enough of those.
She sniffs the air. "Do you smell that?" He looks at her. "It smells, I don't know… cheesy. Is Rick making dinner?"
"Yeah, Elena and Damon are coming over. Why? Are you hungry?" he teases and she rolls her eyes and laughs. He doesn't think she's eaten anything since he could see her again. It's probably because she doesn't need to, but whatever. "Come on, let's go downstairs."
... ...
"I don't know, but this thing with Matt worries me," Elena tells him as they are washing dishes. Anna is sitting on the counter beside the sink, watching them. "You have to admit, though, he does look—"
"A lot less like a puppy that just got kicked over?" Jeremy interrupts. Elena splashes him with water and soap and he laughs. "Well, maybe whatever this is isn't necessarily a bad thing, you know?" He sees Anna shoot him a look in his peripheral vision. "Like, maybe Matt needed the closure or something."
"I guess," Elena sighs. "We're still looking into it. Bonnie has a few theories." She looks at him. "Have you seen her recently?"
"Not really," he shrugs. "But she's always with you guys so it's not that big a deal." Elena stops scrubbing a plate, about to say something. "Elena, seriously. You guys are researching."
"I don't like leaving you here alone."
"I have Rick," he chuckles and then is more serious. "It's okay. I actually kind of like the alone time."
"Jeremy…"
"Look, if it bothers you that much, I'll hang out with Tyler more or something," he shrugs. "But I'm telling you, I'm fine."
"Alright," she says, unconvinced. "You know, now that you mentioned the thing with Matt, you seem a lot happier these days, too." Her words hang in the air for a few moments and he ignores the fact that both girls are waiting for him to respond.
... ...
He's at Tyler's when they get the call from Caroline.
"My mom just got a report," she announces, voice full of stress. "Someone got attacked by the lake."
He and Tyler kind of just look at each other for a minute after she hangs up and Tyler runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head. They get into his truck and drive to the Boarding House where Caroline told them they were all meeting and Bonnie nearly runs into him before he's barely through the door. He gives a quick, "I'm fine," and joins the others in the living room.
They're tossing around theories and the thought that it's Katherine (it's agreed that she'd want them to know she was there), Stefan (Damon claims it would be worse if Stefan was back in town), or any other vampire they already know of is shot down.
"So someone new is in town," Elena exhales, and Damon rubs her arm.
"But this is a small town," Caroline reminds, "and word goes around fast. She… if someone new came along at least one of us would have heard of something."
And they'd like to believe her theory is wrong, but it's not and that's the most stressing part.
... ...
"Anna, have you noticed anything—"
His words fall short as he doesn't see her in his room. But the bathroom light is on and he walks over and sees her there, sitting on the edge of the tub with her head in her hands. There are traces of blood and water in the sink and on her clothes and she looks up at him and there's some on the corner of her lips and along her jaw.
He stares at her, eyes wild for a moment, and runs a hand through his hair. "It was you."
"I'm sorry," she breathes, shaking her head and dotting her eyelashes with tears. "I just… I don't know what came over me."
"You got hungry," he guesses.
She looks down at her hands and waits for her breathing to calm down. "What's happening?"
He shakes his head and sits down beside her, reaching out, slowly, to comb his fingers through her hair. She closes her eyes as soon as their skins touch.
"Rick heard me today," she whispers. "He was back when I got home. He heard me go up the stairs but he… he couldn't see me."
He nods, pulls her to his chest.
"What is this all supposed to mean, Jer?"
"I'm just glad that I have you again," he mumbles, kissing the top of her head. "Little by little."
... ...
"I went to the park today," she tells him. "There was a dog… it was looking right at me, interacting with me like I was really there. Of course the owner thought it was crazy."
"I heard somewhere that animals and babies are most likely to see spirits," he supplies, looking up from his drawing, "Except there's no real proof because animals can't really talk and babies wouldn't be able to remember anything once they get old enough."
She chuckles. "You always were full of weird facts," she says.
"Nah, I distinctly remember that you were the weird one in this relationship."
They laugh.
She reaches out, fingers the corner of the cover. "This would make it number, what? Your tenth one?" He doesn't reply. "Where are all these coming from, anyway?"
"They were gifts over the years," he explains, "mainly when I was younger and people knew I drew all the time. They've just been sitting in my closet."
She hums contemplatively, creasing the black paper in her hands. "At least they're finally getting used, even if it's for an insane artist with only one muse."
"Well, that one muse is the only muse I want to have."
... ...
He isn't sure how he went this whole time seeing her and never trying to kiss her, but maybe it had to do with the fact that he was always afraid pushing it too far, too fast would make him lose her.
But he had reached the end of his sketchbook again and Anna pulled it away from him, placed a hand on his cheek, and brought their lips together. She tasted like cinnamon and he almost forgot how much he loved kissing her. He pulls her onto the bed, kisses her harder, and she sighs against him and tangles her fingers through his hair. She feels as soft as he remembered, warmer, just as amazing.
Everything about her feels like a dream and so real at the same time. But he's beyond questioning things now.
"Let's get out of here," he mutters when he's inside her, kissing along her jaw.
"You already know I'm yours."
And really, that's all he's ever wanted to hear, and that's all he needs to hear confirm the decision that was made the first time he saw her again.
... ...
"Jeremy?" Elena calls out, voice echoing through the empty house.
She looks over her shoulder at Damon, whose forehead is creased in worrying confusion. "Rick," he tries, even though they both know Rick left for Duke University last night.
He finally meets her eyes and nudges her all the way in and towards the staircase. "Jeremy," she calls out again, walking up the steps. The doors are all open and everything's empty. She pushes into his room and it's a mess, his blankets and pillows on the floor and papers scattered everywhere. The room smells strongly of cinnamon and it rings a dim bell in her mind.
"Elena," Damon's voice, gruff and right next to her ear, breathes. His hand is on her shoulder, his thumb stroking circles, and she looks ahead.
A single origami crane is sitting on the desk.
A/n: There is a popular legend in Japan that if you fold a thousand paper cranes, your wish will come true. All I'll say about this story is that it was inspired by this belief. That, and this is a new style I've liked tackling so be honest about how you felt this story came across to you guys. Critiques are much appreciated!
So you read it. Love it? Hate it? Please review it!