Hello!
I'm not gonna have a big long "this is my every thought while I was writing this fic" author's note this time! Instead, I'll leave you with a disclaimer and my usual wish. :)
Disclaimer: All you big legal guys definitely have more important things to do than sue little ole me ESPECIALLY when I claim to own nothing.
Happy (hopefully) reading!
Every time he pauses to think about it, he realizes their familial unit is a condensed, wonderful bit of strangeness.
He and Elena are the center, together forever. Damon and Caroline hang around in the peripheries (at least, that's how it would seem to anyone bothering to look), on again, off again, foils of each other. Damon is Elena's best friend, as Caroline is Stefan's. Caroline is Elena's sister-at-heart, Damon is, well, Damon is Damon but the point is that he and Stefan share parentage.
It's obvious that it was meant to be this way.
Everything fits, everyone is equal and paired to their comfort (and nobody shares), and they all balance each other. There are no love triangles (though there were those kinks to work out at first) and they are stable, interdependent, loyal to the point of stupidity.
And happy. Very, very happy.
They've lost those destined to be outside their core: Bonnie and Jeremy and Jenna and Alaric and Liz and Tyler. But it's been decades since Elijah turned Elena (nobody saw that one coming) and they've grieved as much as their hearts can stand.
The four of them stick together as they travel, bound by fear that distance inevitably means the end of their world and the irrational belief that when they can't see each other, the others don't exist. Elena's favorite city is Rome, Caroline's is Paris, Stefan's undead heart will always beat for Mystic Falls, and Damon couldn't care less, though he always pulls for Paris in an argument.
And argue they do. In every pairing one can think of, for every reason one can think of. Stefan and Elena gang up on Damon for his occasional relapse into murderous bloodshed while Caroline watches as she paints her nails; Damon and Caroline go at it over Damon's definition of slut and Caroline's definition of man-whore; Elena fights Stefan just to amuse Damon (she's gotten cantankerous in her old age); Caroline and Elena catfight over the last of the mascara; and Stefan, Elena, and Damon all bitch about Caroline's habit of waking up happy. The majority of the arguments end up loading the room in sexual tension (because, no matter who it starts with, all eventually become involved) and the couples veer off to resolve it respectively.
(In the early years of their life, Stefan, Caroline, and Elena got Damon too drunk to be himself and pulled off a fabulous—according to Caroline—double wedding. Whenever Caroline really wants to piss Damon off, she wears her wedding ring, and is always afterwards awarded with hot hate-ish sex.)
Right now, with Damon leering at Caroline in the corner of the living room in their latest foreclosed house, and Elena sitting beside him with an easy, knowing smile on her gracious lips, Stefan defines family as those who stick.
