AN: As requested this is the TVD version of "Second Choices" and "Pretending". Hope you enjoy! It's an au/ah based off of season 4, season 5.
The day Elena sees Katherine home from the hospital holding a baby, something inside her twists. She calls in sick at work and sits on the kitchen floor, eating her weight in sadness and carbohydrates but she doesn't shed a single tear until Damon comes home, and sits next to her, holds her hand. His legs stretch out all over the place and he used to have a way of making her feel safe, a long time ago, but now, now she can't feel anything with him. She cries and he just holds her, but he doesn't ask what's wrong. They both know, they know that just because they're together now doesn't mean they're supposed to be. It's all about second choices.
It began differently in high school. Katherine never would have been Stefan's first choice. He knows she loved Damon sometime in high school. She spent her days with Damon and her nights with Stefan. He didn't care she was using him, he was too drunk on Elena for it to matter, she was his first choice. But then Elena made it clear she was in love with Damon, and Damon made it clear he was in love with Elena, and Katherine and Stefan fell into a second pattern of sleepless days and nights, trying to forget.
Junior year, Katherine woke up next to him and never left, giggling non-stop with tousled brown colored hair, and he's never wanted somebody else since. He brushes her hair back from her eyes every night and sees her, really sees her, and she grins and steals all the covers. They finish each other's sentences and they know each other better than they know themselves and they dance together in the living room; their children peek out from by the staircase and swoon at the romance of it all.
Katherine's never doubted she's spending her happily ever after with the right boy, even years years later. She may have wanted Damon originally but she hit every milestone with Stefan. The first kiss was while they were tipsy on champagne after one of Tyler Lockwood's famous blow out parties,the first fight when he threw cake in her face on her birthday, the first time she saw Damon holding Elena's hand, she feigned sick for the first time and came home. Minutes later, Stefan came with ice cream, and her favorite movies, and they spent the day in bed for the first time. The first best kiss was when they realized there is no one else. It's his hand she wants to hold everywhere, everywhere since she first learned what home really is, the hand she never wants to let go of. And Katherine had come along with her deep brown eyes and her gorgeous smile and changed everything for Stefan. everything
Damon isn't as oblivious as everyone believes. He notices the changes between everyone then, how Elena darkens in a room when Stefan walks in holding Katherine's hand, his thumb circling her palm, tracing hearts. He sees the looks his brothersneaks her when she isn't looking, the way his arm circles her waist, the way he kisses the side of her forehead just because he can. He assumes its' a phase they're going through, they can't be serious. They're the worst couple, they argue and fight; they never agree on anything and between the two of them, there's always some kind of temper tantrum. But the days pass, he serenades her , the weeks, they kiss everywhere, the weeks turn into months, she's wearing his shirts, jerseys and sweaters, and the relationship doesn't end.
That spring day Katherine ran down from the bleachers, her hair flying everywhere behind her, she was running and running, she was flying, and Damon was sure she was finally running to him, she woke up to her senses, she was the one, when he blinked and she was hugging the wrong boy, all over again. He's never been jealous of his brother, not until the day the girl picked the other boy.
High school comes and goes, the four graduate and the happy photographs hide everything underneath. They keep in touch for college, ignoring the lingering awkwardness. Two years after graduation, the four of them take a weekend away together in the summer house, and everyone is happy; it almost feels like old times. Until Stefan surprises her one morning and proposes on the sand and she didn't let him get in a single word, and just jumped and kept saying She toppled him on the sand, and Damon and Elena clap and smile, and once back at the house, they claim work engagements and personal problems, and other excuses and catch the first train away, away from the fairy tale they're never going to live. They can't bear to watch the happiness they're never going to be a part of.
The day Katherine and Stefan have their engagement party, the foursome reunite again; all four have smiles but only two are genuine. Elena tries to kiss Stefan during the party, when she corners him in the kitchen, and whispers if he ever thinks of her, if he'd go back and change anything, and he looks at her, like he doesn't even know her, and he walks back to his fiancée, he walks home to Katherine because he's marrying her. he loves her. Damon and Elena plaster their fake smiles long enough until the last guest leaves and the night ends, and proceed to drink enough alcohol, separately, to stay hungover for a week. It's enough to dull them emotionally but its' never enough to dull the reality of the situation. Alcohol covers the lies for only so long.
Later that year, Damon is Stefan's best man, of course, and the day she walks down the aisle to someone else, he pretends it's him she's walking to. She's barefoot on the beach sand, the same sand where someone else proposed, and she's smiling, she has the grin that makes him breathless every time he sees it. He imagines the white picket fence and the ballet rehearsals, the twins with her mom's eyes and the little boy with icy blue eyes and their dad's smirk, the lazy dog, the home they could build. He wants to say something to stop this but he can't, and he doesn't, and when Stefan kisses her 'I do', actually marries Katherine, Damon wakes up long enough for something inside him to die.
The wedding is beautiful, and the toasts make everyone cry. Stefan sweeps Katherine for their first dance, and his hand is in hers, like it's been there all along, and there's something about them that no one can describe. Damon dances with Elena at the reception for old times sake, he doesn't feel anything with her hand in his but come the end of the night, he asks her out anyway. They date and date but he doesn't propose marriage until he's sure there's no alternative, that Katherine and Stefan are not getting a divorce anytime soon, not when they love each other as much as they do.
When Elena walks down that aisle, she imagines it's to the best man, not to the groom. She glances at Stefan out of the corner of her eye, and he doesn't make eye contact, he wasn't even looking at her walk. She focuses back on Damon and wonders how to spend forever with the wrong one. She makes it to the front of the church and Damon is looking at her, and she sees Stefan behind him making eye contact with her maid of honor, and she pretends that smile was for her, not for his wife behind her, and she makes it through the ceremony with flying colors. Damon kisses her at the appropriate time and Elena forces herself to kiss back, convincing herself, this is what she's always wanted, this is who she's always wanted.
Damon watched Elena come down the aisle that day, she was beautiful, and Brunette and she has an edge Katherine doesn't replicate. She's supposed to have been the one since high school, since when they were attending games and he was winning and she was cheering, when they walked through the school like leaders, when he threw paper airplanes at her in Algebra but sometimes, she doesn't feel like the one. The next day, the next morning he wakes up next to a head of brown hair, and he's disappointed its' not hers. He rolls over to the other side and he wonders where Katherine is, and if she's happy as she looks, as everyone says she is.
Months later, the day of Salvatore housewarming party; four kids later, they had to move, Elena catches Katherine and Stefan trying to christen their kitchen counter, she stammers an apology and locks herself in the nearest bathroom and vomits for an hour. The moment she thinks there's nothing more to come, she's blindsided when it rises to the top and the cycle starts again. She can't stop the projector playing in her head, the way Katherine's legs are wrapped around Stefan, the way his hand touched her face, he's still so in love with her after all these years, and she wonders where it all went wrong, why she let him go when she had him.
The next day, she learns she's pregnant and Damon says all the right things and makes all the right midnight runs, but she catches looks from him sometimes, but she shakes her head and pretends its' not real. She's perfected the art of pretending, just like in high school when she stayed with Damon because it was safer.
The four grow, and they build families and homes, and two learn sometimes its' best to pretend. They spend a lifetime together, the four of them, as friends, brothers and they were so lucky to find each other, but not lucky enough to end up with the right one.
fin.