AN: OK, so it seems like I was a little confused when I wrote the AN for the last chapter – this story is, of course, Anything, the sequel to Everything and Something – thank you, whoome and QueQuowle, for pointing that out! I hope I didn't confuse anyone else in the process, and if I did, I apologize. I'm not going to go back and change it, since that would require deleting and re-posting the entire chapter, and I don't want to lose all your amazing reviews, so I hope this is OK with you guys. While I'm on the subject, thanks to those of you who did review, you know it always makes my day when I get feedback from you guys! And lots of hugs for my amazing beta, sunshine2006578, for her continued help with this story!

Disclaimer: The characters of The Vampire Diaries are the property of L.J. Smith and the people at The CW. I'm just borrowing.

Chapter two

Elena had trouble concentrating in class. Her eyes kept drifting from the professor at the front of the room to her left hand and the ring occupying her third finger, her mind escaping the slightly stuffy classroom to her bedroom at home, fifteen years ago.

She and Bonnie had been seven and, during a sleepover, they had planned their wedding. Because they were going to have a double-wedding, there was no question about that. She remembered that Bonnie had wanted a carriage drawn by four white horses, hundreds of golden, heart shaped balloons that would be released as they left the church with their new husbands – who didn't have any faces in their fantasies, they were simply a means to an end; to get married you needed someone to get married to – a wedding cake fifteen stories high and intricately decorated with little roses and hearts, a champagne fountain and two hundred guests. Elena had let her best friend decide, even if her dreams had been less grand; she just wanted her family and friends there, maybe be outside, in the sunlight, and get to wear a white dress. That part had, for some reason she couldn't quite remember, been very important to her.

She had absolutely no idea what Damon would want. Guys didn't think about weddings, did they? Maybe he had just thought that they could take a weekend trip to Vegas and go to one of those drive-in chapels. She tried to imagine that for a moment; getting married with a bunch of other couples waiting for their turn, wearing normal clothes and with Elvis officiating. She just couldn't see it. She didn't want a huge wedding, but she didn't want that either.

She was lucky that the professor didn't call on her to answer a single question during class, because she wouldn't have been able to. When the bell rang to signal that the class was over, Alison had to remind her to hand her paper in.

"For a moment there, I thought you were going to start humming the wedding march or something," Alison said in an amused voice as they left the building and were welcomed by the sun and warmth outside.

Elena rolled her eyes. "Maybe I was a little distracted, so what?"

Alison laughed. "So nothing, you have every right to be."

"Exactly. Well, I have to run, Mystic Falls and a family birthday celebration are waiting," Elena told her friend.

"OK, you have a good weekend with tons of presents," Alison replied. "Though how they're going to top the one you already got, I don't know."

"I don't think that's possible," Elena agreed with a smile. "Study date on Monday?" They had agreed to try to get together at least a couple of times in the next two weeks, to avoid ending up completely isolated with their books. They had a couple of classes together and knew, from experience, that studying together usually resulted in both of them doing well on an exam.

"You know it!"

Elena hurried home, excited to be going back to Mystic Falls and seeing her aunt and cousin. She had just reached their building when her cell rang. Looking at the display, she saw that it was Jeremy and, with a smile, she answered the phone. "Hey Jere." She leaned against the wall next to the entrance, turning her face up to the sun as she spoke.

"Happy birthday sis!"

"Thank you."

Jeremy and Anna lived in New York at the moment; Anna had gotten a job involving computers or something, Elena didn't understand half of what she did or how she had managed to get the job in the first place – she was pretty sure it had involved some sort of compulsion, but didn't want to know, so she hadn't asked – and Jeremy was working on a degree in journalism at NYU after having realized that he needed something more than just his art. After he had gotten the daylight ring that Bonnie had spelled for him, he and Anna had spent a year and a half travelling the world before settling down in the Big Apple the previous summer.

"Get any good presents yet?" Jeremy asked, and Elena smiled.

"Well, I did get one pretty good right after midnight," she replied.

"OK, don't want to hear it. There should be some sort of law against talking about your sex life with your siblings."

She rolled her eyes. "Get your mind out of the gutter, that's not what I was talking about!"

"Oh. OK, then tell me."

"Damon asked me to marry him." The smile on her face widened as she said the words.

The line was completely silent for a moment. "What?" Jeremy then asked, sounding flabbergasted. "I mean … wow."

"That's pretty much the way I reacted too. I had no idea he was even thinking about it."

"Yeah, 'Damon' and 'marriage' aren't two words I usually put together," he joked. "But if this is what you want, then I'm happy for you."

"It is," she told him. "I mean, I hadn't really thought about it before he actually asked me, but … it really is."

"Then I guess I should add 'congratulations' to the birthday wishes," he concluded, his voice taking on a sad tone. "And I'm sorry I can't be there today, I wish I could."

"I know you would be if you could," she assured him.

"Yeah, there's been a lot of that going around," he mumbled, and she wondered what he was thinking about. There had, of course, been a lot of events that he had missed since his 'disappearance' and transformation: Jenna and Alaric's wedding, Maddy being born, birthdays and Christmases … Elena hadn't realized that he actually missed it before now, he had never said anything about it. A thought occurred to her and she almost blurted it out right away. But she wanted to talk to Damon about it first, perfect the idea. So it would have to wait a couple of weeks.

"Well, I have to go," she reluctantly told Jeremy. "We're driving up to Mystic Falls, and Jenna's probably expecting us already even though I told her that we wouldn't be there until two at the earliest."

"Yeah, yeah, go off and have a great birthday," he grumbled, though she knew he was just kidding. "You'll get your birthday present when you come here the weekend after graduation."

"OK. Talk to you soon."

"Yeah. Love you, sis."

"Aw, are you getting all emotional because it's my birthday?" she teased him.

"Shut up!"

She laughed. "I love you too, Jere."

"Whatever."

Still laughing, she hung up the phone and entered the building.

"I'm home," she called into the apartment when she had closed the door.

"And I'm sure you had a great time in class," Damon said, coming out of the kitchen. "If only I could be so lucky to have school on a Saturday."

"Honestly, I can't even remember what the professor was talking about", she admitted, ignoring his sarcasm. "But, since it was the last class, it doesn't matter."

"I'm astounded by the way you look at your classes," he noted, voice mock-shocked. "School is about learning. Now come on, I made lunch."

"Ooh, what'd you make me?" she asked curiously, following him into the kitchen.

Damon was a great cook – when he wanted to be. Over the past couple of years they had developed a routine where Elena usually cooked – she was the one who actually had to eat, as he had pointed out – but every now and then, Damon would surprise her by having dinner or lunch waiting when she got home. And, when she asked him to, he would always make her one of his specialties, which ranged from simple home cooked meals to more exotic dishes.

"Your favorite," he now told her, gesturing to the table where there was a plate of steaming pasta with his own special tomato cream sauce with onions, garlic and mushrooms. "I thought you deserved it today."

"Mmm, thank you." She gave him a quick kiss before sitting down at the table.

He kept her company while she ate, something she had gotten used to by now. Even if he didn't eat himself, he always sat with her at the table until she had finished. She thought it might have something to do with his nineteenth-century upbringing: never leave a lady alone at a dinner table.

"So, while I was not paying attention in class, I was thinking …" she started when she had swallowed the last bite of food. "Guys don't really think a lot about weddings, right?"

He shrugged. "I can't speak for my entire gender, of course, but personally I haven't really given it much thought. I'm more interested in what comes after." He winked at her.

"Does that mean you're not opposed to having an actual wedding?"

He frowned at her question. "What do you mean an actual wedding? What other kind is there? A fake wedding? A make-believe wedding?"

"I just wanted to make sure that you're not set on taking off to Vegas or something," she explained.

"Ah. No. Blame my father – I do, for so many things – but I still have a traditional view on some things, weddings included." Damon shook his head, thinking about what his father would probably say if he could see his son now. Living in sin. Well, he was trying to fix that. "Besides, as long as we're doing it, might as well do it properly, right? But please don't think that's an invitation to take it the whole nine yards with hundreds of guests, a ten-layered cake and live pigeons or swans or something like that. I don't do birds. Oh, and no ice sculptures. Those things are just plain creepy."

Elena raised her eyebrows at him. "Don't you know me better than to think that I would want a wedding like that?"

"Maybe. Why are you asking?" he asked, his eyes narrowing. "Have you gone into planning mode already? It's barely been twelve hours. I didn't know I'd set loose Bridezilla last night."

"No, no," she hurried to assure him. "I just drifted off a little during class, remembering how Bonnie and I used to plan our wedding when we were kids."

"Your wedding, singular? As in you were going to marry each other?" An appreciative smile appeared on his face and, not for the first time, Elena wondered what it was about guys and the idea of two girls together.

She rolled her eyes at him. "No, we were going to have a double wedding."

"Aha. And who were you going to get married to? Some pop star or famous actor? Please don't say Leonardo DiCaprio or one of those annoying Dawson's Creek kids or I might have to call the whole thing off. There is a twenty-four hour cooling off period to these things, right?"

She gave him a look. "We didn't really think much about that part," she admitted. "We were seven, boys were still yucky."

He laughed at the way she said it. "Any ideas you want to stick with?"

She shook her head. "Not really. Bonnie was the one who did most of the planning, and she wanted one of those fairytale weddings you just described. I just … I want my family there, which means not Mystic Falls."

"Right. Locals might start to wonder if your long lost brother suddenly turns up."

"Exactly. And maybe … I don't know, outside?" she continued, speaking as the ideas formed in her mind. "In the summer, of course. Not the beach, though. It might be romantic, but you get sand everywhere. Maybe some sort of botanical garden, with lots of flowers."

As she spoke, her eyes got lost somewhere in the distance and Damon sat watching her, a smile spreading on his face. He hadn't really thought much about this part, what came after the actual proposal and before the honey moon, but he was starting to like it.

"But we don't have to plan anything right now," she said, snapping out of the daze. "What we do have to do is get going. Jenna's probably already wondering where we are, you know how she gets." After Jeremy's disappearance, Jenna always got nervous whenever Elena or someone else she cared about was on the road for longer than ten minutes. Elena thought it was only logical: her aunt did still believe that Jeremy had disappeared while driving back to Mystic Falls from California.

"Not so fast!" Damon exclaimed as she made to get up from the table. "You can't have a birthday lunch without a birthday … OK, it's not a big cake, but still."

"You didn't make me a cake, did you?" she asked when he opened the fridge door.

"Nope, baking is not my thing," he replied, extracting a plate and closing the door again. He didn't come straight back to the table, though, but put the plate down on the counter, hiding it from view.

"What are you doing?"

"Hang on … there." He turned around, holding out a plate with a personal-sized Death by Chocolate cake, her favorite. In the middle of it there was a single, lit birthday candle. "You have to blow out the candle before you get to eat it. Birthday cake rules."

Obligingly, she did as he said. Only when the candle was blown out did he put the plate down in front of her and handed her a fork. She dug into the cake, closing her eyes as the taste of chocolate practically exploded in her mouth. "There is nothing better than chocolate," she announced when she had swallowed, before taking another bite.

Damon gave her a questioning look. "Oh, I can think of a few things."

She stuck her tongue out at him and, faster than she could even see, he swooped in on her, kissing her. The taste of chocolate mingled with the oh so wonderful and familiar taste of him, and she had to agree: there were a few things that were better than chocolate …

"OK, you win," she told him when she pulled away, putting some more of the cake on her fork before offering it to him. "But you have to agree, this is heavenly."

His lips closed around the fork and he slowly pulled back, then licked his lips in a sensuous way. Suddenly, chocolate was the farthest thing from Elena's mind. She was sure he could tell – she could feel her heart rate picking up a little herself and he could probably hear it – but instead of doing anything about it, he sat back in his chair and watched her finish the last of the cake. When every crumb was gone, she picked up the candle he had taken out of the cake after she had blown it out and licked every trace of chocolate from it, pulling it into her mouth and then slowly releasing it. She saw his eyes widen infinitesimally but – maybe it had become a point of pride, she didn't know – he remained in his seat.

"Ready to go?" he asked when she was done, in a voice that was much more composed than she thought it should be.

"Yeah," she replied, knowing that she sounded a little disappointed.

Getting up from the table, she brought the dirty dishes to the counter and opened the dishwasher, bending over to put the plates, glass and cutlery into the machine. When she straightened back up, she suddenly felt Damon right behind her, his body pressed against hers.

"You really think you can get away with a show like that?" he mumbled in her ear before pulling her hair out of the way and kissing her neck, his tongue coming out to graze her skin.

"Um … no?" she replied, turning the word into a question.

"You should know by now that teasing me like that is a very bad idea unless you're prepared to face the consequences." He pulled her earlobe into his mouth, and she let out a gasp, her fingers closing around the counter top.

"Maybe … I am," she managed to get out, pushing her body back against his and eliciting a groan from him.

"You better be."

She knew that she should be going into the bedroom to pack the last of the things she would need for the weekend. She had told Jenna that they would leave as soon as she got out of class and knew that her aunt would be expecting them no later than two o'clock. It was now a quarter to one. But twenty minutes wouldn't make much of a difference … Damon's hands wandered up under her top, his fingertips grazing the skin on her stomach, and all rational thought went out the window. She never could think straight when he was touching her like that.

His body was pressed tightly against hers, pushing her into the counter, but she still somehow managed to turn in his embrace. As soon as she was facing him, he kissed her, roughly, demandingly. She wound her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, and he used his knee to push her legs apart a little, taking one small step forward to be even closer. Their bodies were skin on skin – or would have been, had they not been wearing any clothes – from lips to thighs, and she knew there would be no time for foreplay. Not that there was any need for it; she could feel him, hard, against her stomach. She was suddenly very glad that she had picked a skirt and not jeans when she got dressed that morning …

He must have been thinking something along the same lines, because his left hand, which had been making its way up her back, was suddenly on her thigh, caressing her leg through the fabric of the skirt before he found the hem and could pull it up. Swiftly, he ripped her underwear out of the way.

"Hey …" she started to protest, but her objection died away, becoming a sigh of pleasure, when she felt him slide one finger inside her.

"I'll buy you a new pair," he whispered hoarsely in her ear.

"Mmm," she replied incoherently, her hips moving in time with his hand.

He must have reached the same conclusion as she had about foreplay not being strictly necessary, though, because only a moment later, his finger disappeared and she found herself being lifted onto the kitchen counter. Gratitude that she hadn't been standing in front of the sink – she doubted he would have much cared if he'd dumped her into it – flickered through her mind. Then she heard the sound of a zipper being unzipped and he pushed into her.

She drew in a ragged breath, hearing him do the same. But there was no time for slow, leisurely lovemaking – nor was that what either of them wanted at the moment – and when he started thrusting into her, fast, she didn't try to slow his pace, instead urging him on, wrapping her legs around his waist and pulling him even deeper.

It wasn't the first time they'd had sex on the kitchen counter – though if this particular spot had been christened before, Elena wasn't sure – since they had explored every room in the apartment thoroughly over the past three and a half years. And they knew each other's bodies so well by now that they could push the other to a quick release if that was what they wanted. And, right now, it was. This was just a quick fix, something to get them through the drive to Mystic Falls and then the dinner with Elena's family. The prospect of spending the night at the boarding house lay before them, promising more privacy than even this apartment with its sometimes nosy neighbors. Within a few minutes, Elena could feel that familiar fire starting to consume her inside and, a split second later, Damon found that sensitive spot, sending her over the edge, before he followed himself.

Somewhere in the dim haze of sexual satisfaction, she thought she heard her phone ring, but wasn't in any state to answer it or even care.

Too soon – she loved these moments, the afterglow, just enjoying still being close, joined together – she felt Damon step away, pulling out of her. She meant to object, but the only thing that came out was a displeased grumble. He seemed to understand, though, because he laughed quietly before kissing her forehead.

"Think you can stand, or do I need to support you?" he asked in a smug voice, and she gave him a – probably ineffective due to the fact that she couldn't muster up much annoyance – glare through narrowed eyes.

"I think I got it, thanks." But when she jumped off the counter onto the floor, she stumbled a little. He instantly reached out a hand to steady her.

"You can't help it, I'm like your kryptonite."

"A Superman reference?" she asked, eyebrows raised. "Really?"

"Sorry, don't know where that came from."

She just rolled her eyes, passing him to leave the kitchen. She quickly found a new pair of underwear, briefly wondering where the ones she had been wearing had ended up and if they were still wearable, and packed the last few things she would need in the bag that was open on the bed.

"OK, ready to go," she said when she reemerged from the bedroom five minutes later, finding Damon sprawled on the couch.

"Then let's get going," he concluded, getting up and following her into the hallway. "Oh, and I think your phone rang … before."

Elena pulled her cell from her purse and saw that there was indeed a missed call. But before she had a chance to see who the caller had been, the phone rang again.

"Hello?"

"Hi, there you are," Jenna's voice came over the line. "I called a couple of minutes ago, but there was no answer?"

"Sorry, I was in the bathroom and Damon didn't hear the phone," Elena quickly apologized, ignoring Damon shaking his head. He opened the front door and she followed him out onto the landing.

"Oh, OK. So you're not on your way yet?"

"No, we're just heading out the door, actually," Elena replied, glancing at her watch. Fifteen minutes after one. "My class ran late, and then I was starving when I got home. But we'll be there soon."

"Yeah, yeah, that's fine, I just thought that maybe you would have been able to leave a little early."

"Nope, sorry. See you soon, though."

"See you soon, sweetie."

Elena hung up the phone and was about to put it back in her purse when it rang again. Frowning, she answered.

"Yeah?"

"Happy birthday! I can't believe I forgot to say happy birthday!" Jenna exclaimed, sounding absolutely horrified, and Elena laughed.

"It's OK, Aunt Jenna," she assured her aunt.

"OK, that's it. See you soon."

Again, Elena hung up the phone, still laughing a little. They had gotten outside by now, and Damon was just opening the trunk of his car. "Lying to Jenna, not very nice," he pointed out in an amused voice.

"Right, you think it would have been better if I had said 'sorry, we're running a little late because I just had sex with my boyfriend on the kitchen counter'?"

He considered that for a moment. "Maybe not," he then allowed. "And it's not boyfriend anymore, remember?" He took her left hand, kissing the finger her engagement ring occupied.

"Right. Fiancée. I think I can get used to that."

AN: OK, there we go, second chapter. And the story is, obviously, M-rated for a reason. What did you think? Let me know …