Tiny curtains part like the sea, as she slips into his bunk without a word, the rumble of the bus the only sound as his hand reaches for her. It's not unexpected, but certainly surprising, that she would make such and obvious move where the rest of the band could see. Not that it would be entirely news to them. Anyone with half a brain and a pair of eyes could see how she lit up the day he came to audition. How she said him so resolutely, everyone knew not to argue.
The lit snob in him second guessed joining a group with a VC Andrews book title for a name, and the first thing he'd ever said to her was a polite way of putting it. The first thing she'd ever said to him was that "Caroline and the Flowers in the Attic" was too much of a mouthful, and he'll learn to love it.
He did. Learned to love her too. Watching as she took command of an audience from his perch behind the kit, how her voice could hit the rafters even without the assistance of a microphone. He kept it to himself at first, as tortured souls are wont to do, emotions hidden like so many secrets from an unnatural number of years on this Earth.
She found that out eventually, but had already fallen, knowing what he was only strengthening the connection. They don't advertise. The media, shockingly enough, has no idea. Endless rumors of her and a slew of pop rock superstars, always intrigue, but never proof. Her star shines bright, so bright that no one thinks to look at the drummer, when it comes to her heart.
"Hey," he says, kissing her forehead before she settles onto his chest.
"We have a problem," she says.
"Oh?"
"Yeah," she continues, fingers dancing on his hip. "It's getting harder to sleep without you. That might become an issue in the future."
"I'm not complaining," he replies, giving a gentle squeeze.
"Stefan Salvatore, you old softie," she teases with a pinch. He squirms away, and the wrestle playful and awkwardly in the limited space.
"Okay, okay," he says after a minute. "We're gonna wake up Jeff and Missy."
"Mmm," she mumbles into his shirt. "Missy knows."
"What? Did you tell her?"
"Girls know these things," she replies.
"What about Jeff?"
"Jeff's too busy worrying about the shine of his guitar to notice the rare occasion I give you the goo goo eyes."
"Rare meaning every time you look at me?"
"Shut up."
He smiles and she settles against him once again.
"It's going to come out eventually," she says softly.
"Let it."
"But what about-"
"Vampires don't exist," he assures.
"And if someone digs?"
"They'll find a few photos of someone who looks remarkably like me from the big band days I can easily say is my grandfather."
"You've seriously been playing that long?"
His fingers play with her hair.
"One of Gene Krupa's finest students."
"I have no idea who that is."
"And yet I love you anyway."
She smiles against him.
"You better."
Stefan is sprawled out on the couch, feet perched on the makeshift ottoman of a folding chair, idly twirling a drumstick in his hand. Missy sits on the opposite end of the room, restringing her bass, with an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. Caroline and Jeff are somewhere giving interviews, while the two of them kill time in the green room, their designated preshow ritual because no one cares about the rhythm section.
"How come you don't have a tech?" Stefan asks, drumstick pointed at his band mate.
"Don't need one," she replies, twisting the tuners.
"But Jeff has one."
"Jeff is just about the laziest guitar player you're ever gonna meet," Missy shoots back with a grin. "Don't get me wrong, my brother can play the hell out of the thing, but he's a savant. Stringing and tuning? Not a chance. He'd rather keep showing the world how pretty he is with those stoic one word answer interviews he gives."
Stefan chuckles lightly, tossing one of his sticks in the air, and catching it easily.
"Interviews that are running long," he says. "We go on in twenty minutes."
Missy's turn to laugh, looking at him with a knowing grin.
"Your girl has never been late a day in her life, kind of odd in a rock star really, but do you actually think she'll let some nosy reporter jeopardize that?"
"My girl?" he replies nonchalant.
"Coy doesn't suit you, Salvatore. You know I know. And I know you know I know. Hell, I knew before she did."
Stefan sits up then, intrigued. "How's that?"
Missy fiddles with the tuner perched on her knee, plucks the strings and adjusts the tuners once more, eyes jumping to his then back to the task.
"Your audition," she fills in. "I've known Caroline a long time, and seen her with a few other guys, but you walking into that room made her heart fucking stop."
He doesn't know how to respond to that, but his mouth opens anyway, and hangs there slightly stunned. The moment he saw her, he was intrigued. The moment he heard her sing, he could feel something stirring. When he walked out the door from the session, using those vampire senses to his advantage, and hearing him from her lips was sweeter than the song she just sang.
But it always felt as if he'd been the one wooing her. The one pushing ever so closer. It's a funny thing to realize, after all this time, she wanted him from day one just the same as he.
Missy runs a quick line on the strings, seems satisfied, and perches the Thunderbird on its stand.
"You knew it that quick, huh?"
Missy rolls her eyes.
"Dude, she wrote June Wedding two minutes after you left," she says, as if it's an answer.
He looks at her curiously.
"You have got to be kidding me," she sighs. "Our biggest hit to date and you really had no idea it's about you?"
He places the teacup in her hand, leaning down the extra inch to press his lips briefly against her forehead, an act rewarded with the smallest pout she can muster. Folding his arms with a laugh, the pout grows bigger, but no words come out as she's resting her voice after back to back shows.
"Not enough?" He inquires.
She shakes her head.
"Am I going to have to do better?"
She nods.
Leaning down again, he kisses her good and proper, causing a low sigh to escape.
"No talking," he says with a wag of his finger. "Or sounds of any kind."
She scrunches up her nose at him, before blowing cautiously on the tea heavily laced with honey, and takes a sip. Propped against the ornate iron headboard of the ridiculously gigantic hotel bed, Caroline pats the space next to her, Stefan immediately obeying and occupying the spot.
Quickly downing the rest of the cup in two big gulps, she sets it on the nightstand, then shifts to snuggle against Stefan's side.
"Tell me a story," she says, voice quiet and horse.
"No talking," he replies firmly.
"What made you want to play the drums?" she asks.
He looks down to her against him, unable to help from placing a kiss atop her head.
"If I tell you, you'll stop talking?"
She nods.
"Promise?"
She nods again.
"I guess, it was after the war," he starts, chuckling softly to himself. "Wow, I don't think I've ever started a story with those words."
Caroline pokes him.
"Okay, okay. After I got discharged, I was bumming around New York, not doing much of anything. So one night, a buddy of mine brings me to some club, dancing and dames I think he said. We're there drinking, he's dancing with anyone willing and I'm uh, not."
He can feel her shake with silent laughter, his aversion to dancing not exactly news.
"You never would have thought it, looking at me then, but I was in a bad place coming back to the states. After spending the better part of the previous decade in chains, then shipped off to war where blood and bodies did nothing but tempt and taunt every single day, I was burnt."
Her arm stretches across his midsection, giving a gentle squeeze.
"I'm watching the band, and they're killing it, I mean just nonstop belting it out. I knew Gene Krupa by name at that point, but I'd never seen him in person, and he's up there pounding those drums having the time of his life."
Caroline's hand recedes a little, before slipping under his shirt, fingers lightly tracing his bare skin.
"I think, boy, that looks like fun. So I compel my way to an introduction, a lesson, and the moment I sat on that little stool I thought: I can do this. Of course I couldn't at first. I mean, I got some of the basics pretty quick, but even with a natural inclination I had to practice. So I did. It was cathartic, to say the least. I mean, the more I beat those drums, the less I beat myself up. I played and played, until my hands were bleeding and that kit was tinder, but I loved every second of it."
She's smiling when he looks down to catch her eye, her hands still warm on his skin, and lifts her head just enough to place a kiss on the underside of his jaw.
"I love you," she whispers.
His cheek falls against the top of her head.
"No talking."
He steps away from the drum platform, shoving the sticks into his back pocket, and puffs his cheeks letting out a slow breath having just completed setting all the levels for the show tonight. The auditorium is empty, save for Don the sound guy, his eyes scanning row after row of empty seats. Honestly, he forgets where they are, the towns and stages all blurring together this late into a tour.
Ohio sticks out in his mind for some reason. Cleveland, maybe? Dayton? Columbus?
The sound of slow clapping comes from his right, head turning toward it with brows furrowed. Don isn't the type to congratulate a run of the mill sound check, and the rest of the band is on the bus as far as he knows.
Fans sneak in to places sometimes, but somewhere deep down, he knows this isn't that. A man steps out of the shadows of the side stage, his movements slow, and Stefan guesses him to be somewhere in his late eighties.
"Can I help you?" Stefan asks.
The man smiles, recognition in his eyes, still moving closer.
"My granddaughter," he starts. "Has a picture of your group on her wall."
For a moment Stefan's heart warms, thinking this wily old man slipped in here for an autograph.
"I think nothing of it at first, kids and their music you know? But I ask who her favorite is, and she points at you."
His hair suddenly stands on end, like an animal backed into a corner, and Stefan scrambles to find a place for the man somewhere in his memory.
"He looks familiar, I think to myself," the man goes on. "But it must be impossible. Where I saw this kid before was way back in '47."
Lips press into a thin line, as he crosses his arms, knowing this might happen some day.
"Jeb Jenkins and the Ragtime Rompers," he continues. "Had this crazy cat behind the kit. Thought he was Krupa and Rich combined. Boy, did I love to watch him play."
The man stops just in front of Stefan.
"Must be his grandson, I reason. Trick of genetics, you know? But my granddaughter, her name is Josie by the way, she shows me your group on the YouTube. Watching you play I knew, like a snap of my fingers, I knew it was the same drummer I loved in the old days."
"What do you want?" Stefan asks, voice edged with suspicion.
"Want?" the old man replies with a laugh. "I wanted to be right. Looking at you now, it's easy to see I was."
"No," Stefan interjects. "What do you want from me?"
The man looks genuinely confused.
"Well, to be completely honest I didn't think I would get this close. You might want to talk to your people about the lack of security here, but if want to indulge an old man, I wouldn't mind hearing you beat out one of the old tunes."
"That's it?"
The old man laughs. "What else would there be?"
Just like that, Stefan's defense drop, all the fear that he would somehow be exposed fluttering away on the wings of an old timer's enthusiasm.
"I think I might remember a song or two."
"Dig it," says the old man.
He's halfway through Barnyard Bananas, when Don's voice on the intercom asks what the hell he's doing, but Stefan ignores him in a flurry of snap quick beats. Caroline makes an appearance on the side of the stage, head tilted curiously at his performance, and comes to a stop by the old man's side.
"Brilliant, isn't he?" the old man asks when he notices her.
Caroline doesn't ask what's going on, or how he got in, just nods her head in agreement.
"Amazing," she replies.
It's really not that bad of a picture.
Three in the morning, standing next to the bus, Caroline giving him a quick kiss before climbing aboard. Such a careless moment, in a growing amount of careless moments, since they decided not to hide their relationship with any sort of purpose. The fact that they, somehow, continued to live on in it with any sort of secrecy was improbable but not unwelcome.
It's also surprisingly clear, the photo, for being as dark as it was and shot from nearly fifty feet away on a camera phone. You can see the way Caroline's hand clutches onto his jacket, as she pulls him close, how her knee bends just so. How his face is one of utter content, eyes closed, basking in the affection she gives.
Every news source imaginable, the ones that care to report the comings and goings of famous music acts that is, has the same picture on the front page of websites and print media combined. Missy loves to share the amusing headlines generated from the exposure.
Flowers in the Attic, love on the road?
Band mates make beautiful music?
Rock princess caught in inter-band lip lock.
Jeff just looks at the two of them with casual indifference, wondering how he missed it all, but with his attention span no one is truly surprised he never caught on.
Caroline gauges Stefan's reaction to all the new found attention carefully. She, as the front woman to a moderately successful band before he joined, already well practiced at being the one of which a spotlight constantly shined upon. Though he's already stated his secret is not one easily exposed, she worries those of the gossip slinging elite, are exactly the type to dig up such dirt on someone who's been alive over a hundred and sixty years.
She loves that he isn't suddenly shy in his affection for her. That a camera shoved in his face with three times the aggression that it had been before, does nothing to deter him for reaching for her hand whenever he feels the need. To kiss her hello, goodbye, or just because. Or that said affection is exposed for the entire world to see, commented upon, and questioned a hundred times over.
He doesn't complain about going from no interviews, to suddenly all of them, most of which have nothing to do with the music they make over the relationship they share. Though he lets her answer the bulk of the questions, taking a page from Jeff's book, and giving clipped and concise one word answers.
Rumors spread. Plucked out of imagination with nary a fact to back them up, but neither pay heed nor mind, feeling absolute trust in a business where such a thing is easily broken or laughed upon.
Everything is changed, but nothing changes between them. He still looks at her as if she's the sun. His golden goddess with the voice of an angel. She still looks at him as if there's no one else in this world, who could ever make her feel like lightning struck the day she laid eyes on him.
The music blossoms, grows as they do, with happiness an inspiration rather than a hindrance.
Each show is closed with June Wedding, the final verse always sung upon his drum platform, her last words punctuated with kiss while twenty thousand people cheer.