Jess made a suggestion that I do something like this and I thought it was a good idea.
I do not own the vampire diaries, it belongs to L.J Smith and the CW.
Stefan was sitting by himself in the living room of the Salvatore boarding house, reading an ancient book he had found in a box of his old stuff in the attic. He was having a pleasant relaxing afternoon, no Damon getting drunk and harassing him with questions and unnecessary observations about his life, no Klaus drama, no love triangle drama- just him, alone. Of course that was when the door opened and Rebekah strutted into the room.
"What are you doing here?" He asked with confusion, was the universe so against his having some peace and quiet?
"Looking for Kol, who appears to have vanished off the face of the earth." She replied casually.
"Well, he's not here."
She wasn't leaving. "Have you seen him?"
"No." When he realised that it would probably take more than that to have the house to himself again, he promised to tell her if he saw the original vampire at any point today.
Rebekah was torn between her desire to stay and bother Stefan since he was so keen for her to go, and her desire to find her brother and go home. After much debate she turned and walked back out again.
Stefan sighed to himself, we really need to get a lock for that door.
Why? So your insane friends, enemies and neighbours can break the door down to get in here?
Good point.
He grimaced as he realised he was talking to himself, he had to stop that or he'd end up as crazy as Damon or worse, as crazy as ¾ of the remaining originals.
As the afternoon wore on, the younger Salvatore started getting hungry and headed down to the basement to get himself a blood bag. He approached the large cooler where they stored the blood and stopped, the lock was broken, the padlock had been snapped. No human could have done that.
He opened the cooler quickly and let out a strangled cry of surprise as he saw a body in there, a man, lying face down and definitely not moving. There was no heartbeat. Stefan calmed himself down and managed not to panic, there would be a logical explanation. Although he wasn't coming up with any.
Gingerly, he reached down into the cooler and went to lift the man out, when he moved. Turning quickly and grabbing Stefan by the throat the man soon had him pinned against the wall.
The young vampire growled angrily when he saw that the man was Kol. The original simply laughed and released his grip on his throat.
"What the hell are you doing here?" He demanded irritably.
"Oh, don't be like that! Come on, that was funny."
"You and I have different ideas about funny."
"Yes, I understand the word and you don't. Nik and Bekah said that you used to be fun, what happened?" He grinned, as thought the two of them were the best of friends.
"I decided to stop torturing and killing innocent people." Stefan said pointedly.
Kol's face suddenly took on a thoughtful expression, "you decided to seek redemption after all the monstrous things you'd done? You tried to rediscover your humanity and-" Kol broke of into a noisy burst of laughter, "sorry. I couldn't get through that with a straight face."
Stefan rolled his eyes and headed back to the cooler to get his blood. He looked at Kol in shock and annoyance, "you drank it all? Damon only got new bags three days ago."
Kol shrugged, "I was hungry, it's nothing compared to what it's like fresh from the vein." Seeing the scowl on Stefan's face, he smiled. "Okay, since we can't drink anymore blood, how about the alcohol? Whatever else can be said about your brother, he has good taste."
Three hours later, Damon arrived home from the council meeting in need of a drink. Council meetings were often dull and uneventful, but this one had surely been a new low.
He entered the house and froze, stunned. The whole place was a mess. One of the couches had been turned on it's side, and both curtains had been torn from the rails to make some kind of covering between the two sofas.
"What the hell?" He wondered aloud. "Stefan!" He called and felt his jaw clench in anger as he saw what had been done to his favourite Persian rug. It appeared to have been use as some kind of torch as it had been rolled up and one end had clearly been lit on fire by someone who was going to die on the near future.
Now he really needed a drink, he headed towards his, thankfully unharmed, cabinet and paused as a wave of rage hit him- it was all gone.
"Stefan!" He hollered, no reply.
He used his vampire speed to search the house quickly, Stefan's room seemed to have been turned inside out. Clothes were strewn everywhere, several of the candles had been smashed resulting in chunks of wax littering every surface and someone had tried to make a Molotov cocktail out of a bottle of his best bourbon, stuffed with what appeared to be a pair of singed men's underwear.
"Ew." He settled on. He was not so desperate fro a drink that he would touch that.
After much looking, he discovered that Stefan was nowhere in the house or grounds and that all of the blood from the freezer was gone. This was bad, very bad.
Damon did not allow himself to grow too concerned, he knew that there was probably no reason to panic.
Yeah, no reason to panic. I mean, so what? Stefan may or may not have drunk a whole cooler of blood, destroyed the house and disappeared.
Alright, so maybe there was some cause for alarm, but Damon Salvatore was not going to overreact.
"Where is he?" He snapped as he pushed past a startled Rebekah into the Mikaelson mansion.
"I don't know, idiot, or else I wouldn't be looking for him." She responded bitingly.
He walked into the living room of the massive house and found Elijah and Klaus sitting in there.
"Look who invited himself in." Rebekah spoke scathingly from behind him. She came further into the room and faced him. "Why do you care where he is anyway?"
"I don't know, Beks," he replied sarcastically. "I guess after all this time I might have grown attached."
"Since when?" Nik questioned sceptically.
Damon glanced from one to the other as though they were all idiots. "We used to take baths together, after that a bond forms." He told them all mockingly.
"Excuse me?" Klaus glared at him. "When have you taken a bath with my brother?" He stood, and appeared ready to throw Damon through a wall.
"Wait, who are you talking about?"
It was Elijah who answered, "Kol. Who are you talking about?"
"Stefan."
"There seems to have been some kind of misunderstanding."
"Really, Sherlock?" There was an uncertain silence until Damon spoke again, "just for the record, I have never taken a bath with your brother."
"I think we're all equally relieved about that." Klaus grinned.
Kol stumbled along, laughing at Stefan, who had fallen over in the gutter and seemed content to lie there, muttering about a government conspiracy involving alligators.
He paused and turned back to the other man. "Stefan! Get up, you lazy bastard." He laughed fondly.
Stefan mumbled something incoherent and pushed himself up and clumsily rose to his feet.
"Where to next, buddy?" He slurred.
Kol threw him a lob-sided beam and staggered onwards. "Lets… we sh…I'm sorry about all your blood lets…lets get some more!"
"Fr..from where?" Stefan spread his arms out and turned in a circle, looking bewildered.
"Blood bank!" Kol shouted happily.
Stefan nodded in agreement of his new friend's excellent idea and threw an arm around his shoulder as they walked.
Meredith Fell stopped them as soon as they tottered though the automatic doors of the hospital, stinking strongly of whiskey.
"What are you doing here?" She hissed, not quite able to mask her fear.
"Don't worry, Mer'dith. We.. We just came for blood." Stefan attempted to assure her.
"Shh!" She flickered her eyes around the sparsely populated waiting area but nobody seemed to have heard.
"Can we have some blood, pretty doctor, lady?" Kol inquired in a loud whisper.
The woman rolled her eyes, "you two need to go home, you can't stay here in this state."
Kol gazed around the room in confusion, "no, it's fine. A little shoddy perhaps, but fine non the less." He grinned at her, in what he hoped was a trustworthy way.
"Get out."
"Where do we go from here?" Kol asked once they were back outside, he pulled his jacket on tighter against the cool night air. "I'm cold." He pouted childishly.
"Lets… lets go to the grill. Matt will feed us, Matt's… Matt's a nice boy."
"That's what Bekah says." The original grimaced, he did not like the blonde human who wanted to sleep with his sister… or who his sister wanted to sleep with, he wasn't quite sure which way around it was.
The two vampires entered the grill, slamming the door open dramatically and standing in the doorway humming the teenage mutant ninja turtles theme tune.
"And…and they're like these little green guys…who're brothers, and they live in the sewers with this rat, called Master Splinter. They… they like, fight crime and stuff." Stefan explained to Kol, who had never seen any of the comics, shows or movies.
"But… if they're the only ones of their kind, and they're all related, what do they do when they want to…? You know?"
"No." The younger Salvatore shook his head.
"Have sex." Kol said, in what he thought to be a quiet tone, it was not and a few people glowered at him in disgust upon hearing a grown man talking about turtles having sex.
Stefan did not notice any of this, "I don't know. I guess they just.. You know."
Both began to laugh uproariously.
Matt sighed as his boss told him to go and ask Kol and Stefan to shut up. His job was not worth the pay.
"Guys, can you keep it down please? Other people are trying to eat."
"So…?" Stefan whined.
Matt ran a hand through his hair, he could not wait for this day to be over. "So, no more talk of, possibly incestuous, ninja turtle sex."
Both men accepted these terms as fair.
"We can rule out kidnapping." Nik stated. They had all been gathered in the living room for the past hour, theorising what could have happened to their brothers. They were all smart enough to know that the two disappearances were not coincidental.
"Says who?" Damon disagreed.
"Says anyone with a functioning brain."
"And you count yourself as functioning?" Damon questioned.
After shooting the younger vampire a lengthy glare, he continued. "Nobody would kidnap either of them, there's no purpose behind it, and besides who'd want to put up with them?"
"Nobody would have to worry about putting up with them if they're already dead." Rebekah contributed, her eyes wide with concern.
"No, I don't believe anyone who was stupid enough to murder our brother, knowing what we would do to them when we found them, would be intelligent enough to have captured either of them." Elijah reassured her.
She nodded in agreement and relaxed a little.
"I still don't think we should rule anything out." Damon said.
"So, you're suggesting that somebody came into your house, ruined your curtains, messed with your sofas, drank your alcohol, trashed your brother's room and kidnapped him?" Klaus asked disbelievingly.
Damon frowned at the blonde, "well it sounds dumb when you say it like that." He was suddenly struck by a thought, "how do we know that Kol is in any danger?"
"We don't." Rebekah answered, watching him warily.
"What I mean is: how do I know that Kol hasn't taken Stefan?"
"Why would Kol have any interest in Stefan?" Elijah inquired logically.
"Who knows, he's a psychopath!"
Klaus stood quickly, ready to break Damon's neck. "Sit down, Niklaus." Elijah ordered, without raising his voice. The hybrid did so grudgingly.
As they were bickering, Rebekah's phone vibrated. She answered it after checking to see who was calling, "hello, Matt."
Kol was having a great night, he had drank more alcohol than he had previously thought physically possible, he and Stefan had each fed from a couple of women outside, Stefan had even managed to control himself, and now he was dancing.
"Guys, get down!" Matt hissed, up at them. Stefan was standing on one small round table, he on another.
"We're fine up here thanks, Mattie." Kol slurred and continued with his dance, which consisted of him gyrating and waving his arms in the air. "I've had the time of my life! And I owe it all to yooooouuuu!" He shouted drunkenly, pointing at Stefan who then joined in with him and they cheerily butchered the song.
"Oh my god!" Matt heard a laugh behind him and spun to see Rebekah standing there, with her hand clasped over her mouth as she tried to stifle her giggles. Kol never had been able to dance, but Stefan, what the hell had happened to him? She asked herself. He was dancing the way she imagined someone wearing body armour of solid lead might dance, he was also humming a strange tune with his eyes closed.
Klaus appeared beside her, "Rebekah, do you have your phone?"
She nodded, obviously.
"Please film this so we have some kind of permanent evidence that this actually happened."
"Kol!" Elijah thundered, causing his brother to turn to face him rapidly, falling unceremoniously off the table and onto the floor with a thump and a small moan of pain.
Elijah and Klaus stepped forward simultaneously, Elijah grabbed one arm, Klaus the other and pulled him to his feet.
"Hello, brothers," he chuckled. "What are you doing here, this fine night?"
"It's 17:00, you alcoholic." Klaus mocked with amusement.
Kol just chuckled like this was the funniest thing he'd heard all day. "N..you should have joined us, Nik! Stef..Stefan was just telling me about these giant turtles, they live with a rat in the sewers. They eat pizza and they… fight crime."
"What is he talking about?" Rebekah was staring at her drunk brother with both amusement and disgust.
Kol then began to loudly hum the theme tune again and Elijah smiled despite himself. "Come on, Kol, you can tell us all about it once we get home."
"B…Niiik?" He dragged the name out.
"What?" He smirked.
"Will you buy me all the comics, and DVDs?" He gazed at his blonde brother and pulled a face that was suppose to be persuasive.
His siblings watched him in confusion, "is he going to be sick or soil himself?" Rebekah asked rhetorically.
"Come on, Stef." Damon encouraged Stefan to get down from the table, while the Grill's manager was yelling angrily and slowly turning from red to purple. Damon wondered if he was going to have a heart attack, at least if he did, he would shut up.
"No, Damon, I'm happy up here. I like it! I feel like I'm Standing on a mountain top!" He yelled, copying the irritating advert on the television and startling a group of nearby teenagers.
"Come down, or I'm going to grab one of your legs, drag you down, knock you unconscious and leave you on a mountain top somewhere." He threatened, a part of him seriously considering making good on this threat.
Stefan pouted in a way that made his usual serious face seem joyous. However he obeyed and jumped from the table suddenly, Damon's quick reflexes were the only thing that prevented him from crashing head first to the hard, wooden floor of the grill.
Ignoring the manager who was shouting about how none of them were ever allowed into the grill again and that he was going to call the police, Damon followed the Mikaelsons out of the door.
"Bye, Stefan!" Kol slurred cheerfully and pulled the other man into a bone crushing hug, "love you, you… Nik and Bekah were right… you are fun. We should do this tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the-"
"Alright, we get the idea." Damon interrupted the rambling original and broke up the hug, much to the disappointment of both parties.
Damon's frustration grew as he remembered that he had run all the way to the Mikaelson's house and then they had driven him here. He was going to have to run home with a very drunk Stefan.
When he sobers up, I'm going to murder him… I could bury him in the forest…
He grabbed Stefan by the arm, "can you run?" He spoke as though speaking to a young child, or somebody of extreme unintelligence.
"Of course."
"Great."
They had run for a while, but then Stefan's drunken brain had managed to crash him into a tree and knock him out, leading to Damon having to haul his large, awkwardly shaped brother over his shoulders and carry him home, before dumping him on his bed, pulling his shoes off and throwing a blanket over him.
Nik practically leapt into the front seat of the car, leaving Rebekah to sit in the backseat next to Kol. He insisted on sitting in the middle seat so that they could be right next to each other and rested his head on her shoulder.
"Were you at the grill all day?" Elijah questioned gently as he began driving. He gave Nik an accusing glance, he was supposed to check the grill.
"No…I was at Stefan's house."
"I checked, he said you weren't there." Rebekah argued.
"He didn't know I was there."
"Ah, so you snuck into somebody's house without their knowledge, then trashed it and got them roaring drunk. Suspicious and creepy as that sounds, you do have an entertaining style, brother." Klaus beamed at him.
"I wasn't being creepy!" He moaned, " you don't get to be mean to me, because you made me miss things, because you killed me. I missed Harry Potter because of you." He mumbled sadly.
The hybrid felt a reluctant sympathy for his little brother, he looked so pathetic and helpless. With only a small amount of irritation he replied. "I'm not being mean to you Kol."
Kol smiled and wrapped one arm around Rebekah, "love you, Bekah."
She softened slightly at his words, "love you too, Kol."
The next morning Stefan lay still and prayed for death. He felt like his skull was about to explode, shooting razor sharp shards of bone through his head, and that lovely image made him positive that if he moved at all, everything in his stomach would make a reappearance.
"Morning, little brother." Damon greeted, Stefan was sure that he could hear evil in Damon's voice, if such a thing were even possible.
"Please, don't talk." He begged in a whisper.
"Hmm…no, I'm going to. What the hell did you do to my house?" Damon was definitely mad, very mad, possibly murderous.
"Ugh…" It took a few seconds before he could form words, "me and Kol overturned the sofa, and ripped down the curtains to make a fort." He was in too much pain to be embarrassed about how ridiculous that sounded.
"You were building a fort? You're 163 years old and he's older than dirt, but the two of you thought it would be fun to build a fort?"
"Umhm."
"I'm going to choose to take that as a yes. What about all my blood and all my alcohol?" Damon was still suppressing the urge to grab Stefan by the neck and throttle him.
"Kol drank all the blood, then we both drank all the alcohol… can we please stop talking about alcohol?"
Damon didn't take pity on his brother, "so after the two of you drank all the whiskey and all the wine and all the beer, then what? What about in here?"
Stefan risked lifting his head slightly- a mistake he regretted almost instantly as the pounding in his skull became even more furious.
From what he had seen there were smashed candles everywhere, clothes all over the floor and a pair of underwear that were definitely not his were stuffed into a bottle of bourbon.
"I really don't remember… I think we were listening to heavy metal, there was head banging involved and then we just… trashed the room. The mere thought of jumping up and down and head banging, let alone listening to metal was enough to make him feel sicker.
"Okay. I can accept that you wrecked your room, and even that you re-arranged the living room, I can prevent myself from day dreaming about staking you over drinking my alcohol… but the rug, really the rug? You had to burn my rug?" He sounded one wrong word away from snapping, Stefan knew he had to be very careful about his answer.
"I'm so sorry, Damon. I'll pay for you to get a new one."
"Damn right you will, you're also going to be paying for all the gas I'm going to have to use driving around trying to fid a replacement."
"Okay. Thanks."
"For what?" Damon observed him suspiciously.
"For coming to get me before I humiliated myself further, and for not killing me. I'm also glad you didn't leave me on a mountain top."
Damon smirked, "by the way, I haven't cleaned up. You're going to be doing that, and the rest of the cleaning around this house for the rest of the month… except laundry, I don't trust you not to ruin all my stuff."
"Alright." Stefan tried not to be annoyed by this, he supposed he deserved it.
"I considered confining you to the house forever, but then realised it would just give you more opportunities to destroy it." Damon teased evilly.
He ruffled Stefan's hair mockingly, sniggering to himself as Stefan groaned and grabbed his aching head, "I'll leave you to your no doubt, horrific hangover. Oh and I'll try not to play my music too loudly." He ducked out of the doorway laughing, as Stefan gathered the energy to launch a pillow at him.
Kol woke up, lay completely motionless for a few minutes and then was hit by a horrible stab of nausea, he sat up quickly, ignoring his splitting headache and vomited noisily into the bucket that had been carefully placed by his bed, probably by Elijah. He noted that somebody had left a glass of water and some aspirin on his beside table. He was about to lie back down when he saw a large bag on the floor by his bed, as far from the sick bucket as possible.
"Urgh." He uttered and crawled forwards slowly until he was in reaching distance of the bag. He leaned down slowly and picked it up with ease. He crawled back under the covers and emptied the bag onto the bed. His brows furrowed in confusion for a second. The bag was full of books, all about somebody called Harry Potter, and then there were some comic books about a group of weird green men. He smiled brightly as he remembered his words to Nik the night before. He picked up a small-ish piece of paper that came with the presents and turned it over.
It was a picture of him, standing on a table, waving his arms around, dancing. Underneath he saw Nik's neat writing, if you are in any doubt that this happened, Rebekah has evidence. Thanks for wrecking Damon's house instead of ours, Nik.
He laughed once, took the aspirin, and picked up the first Harry Potter book.
The end.
A reviewer called Jess suggested something like this, I don't know if this is what she had in mind, but I hope she liked it. I also wanted to thank her, and any other reviewers who haven't joined this site, who've given nice reviews to any of my other stories.
I don't actually know if a blood bank would be at a hospital or not, but I'm just going to go with it being in the hospital. I also don't know if you'd take aspirin if you had a hangover.
I don't know if I like how I wrote Damon in this, he seemed a little out of character.
Please review.