Mystic Grill.
"They don't serve what I want." Caroline flips the menu. "Or maybe," she scans the full list of assorted drinks to test her liver with. "What would you recommend?"
Stefan leans forward and anchors a finger to the laminated surface without looking. "This one."
"Bacardi. Vodka. Gin. Tequila. Whiskey. Beer. Stout." Her brows rise. "Okay. I like variety."
Three minutes later, an aptly named Graveyard arrives in a frosted mug, black as the blazer she's wearing. Stefan has water, much to her disdain.
"All about the straightedge, I see," she quips, but it seems like he isn't interested in the small talk. "We're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk about why you called me down here." Then he waits for her answer.
She can't give it. She takes the thin red straw into her mouth and drinks, inhaling deep and long like she would with the bar's stale air to centre herself. The dark concoction scurries straight into her belly, both hot and nearly spicy despite the column of fracturing ice in the centre of the sweating glass. It's none as tasty as her regular fruit-garnished tipples of choice, but if it helps loosen her tongue and the iron cage of her heart, she'll have it by the jug.
Locking his fingers together in front of him, Stefan attempts another emotional breach. "Are you okay?" he asks.
Just say what you feel. No, not really, but yes, I'm still standing. On the flat of my shoulders sit a burden, something - no, someone - that has spent the years digging claws into my temples, so severe that even the ghost of his shadow still ripples through bone and blood. Yet here I am. Carrying it with my head barely above the water.
"I don't know," Caroline says. She knows very well that he can't help her if she doesn't tell him where it hurts. (Everywhere, probably.)
Stefan leans back into his seat, quiet. He eyes her as he allows her reply to steep and take hold. Then the waitress crosses their table, and he stops her with a lift of his wrist.
"Get me a Graveyard," he says, keeping his gaze on Caroline. "And a bottle of vodka for my friend."
The blonde lowers her head and sips. Sips again, so that maybe each time she fuels up on liquid courage the truth will come by more easily. But it never comes, and the two vampires continue to sit, littering their booth with bottles until dawn cracks the sky, talking about everything except what she asked him to be here for.
Salvatore Residence.
This is hardly her favourite place to be.
"What do you want?"
A Salvatore brother she'd prefer to see less of, clutches his usual glass of whiskey. No Elena, no niceties. The true visage of Damon, the one that Caroline is most comfortable with. She has all the freedom to deck his smug face in whenever she deems it appropriate.
"Your girlfriend says that I have to iron out my issues with you," she replies, with some resignation in her voice. Because I care about what she feels.
The icy blue irises light up at her disdain. He's probably going to ask her why she isn't already laying prone on the floor and crawling toward him.
"I'm surprised you even came."
Caroline folds her arms, her entire body instinctively wanting to keel over and shield itself away from anything remotely Damon-related.
"I'm not apologizing, and I'm not going to forgive you." Those two things will never happen and it's important that she gets it out of the way first. "Elena wants me to be civil, so I'm being civil. I won't put your crappy personality under a microscope if you stop pretending that I don't have a right to hate you."
She realises how cold she sounds when her voice clips the end of her sentence, but she reminds herself that he doesn't deserve anything softer.
Unaffected by the poison in her tone, he lifts his head, casting a downward glance where the shade of his lashes hides the hypnotising glimmer of his eyes. He says nothing - a cue that they've reached a mutual understanding and she can go back to her life where he holds no value except for being a person that Elena loves.
Caroline spins on her heel, but her exit is interrupted by the sound of his late response.
"You know how there's always that one part of you that just never changes? The part you try to bury so deep that you trick yourself into thinking it's gone until you're at the end of your rope, and suddenly it comes back to bite everyone in the ass?" I know, she frowns, but remains quiet, not quite getting the relevance of his ramble.
"And there's this one person who knows exactly how your ugly little demon self looks like, whether or not you think you've found the path to," Damon tips the glass up and sips, "betterment." Then he smirks at his own dubious use of the word, with slight laziness on the enunciation. "The one person who knows what you really are."
She turns around, but he already has his back facing her. Not brave enough to let her see what his face might reveal.
"My one person isn't Elena."
She shakes her head and keeps the bitter laugh holed up in her chest. He's just drunk, she tells herself, drunk on all his regrets and the bloody memories he has little time and place to revisit with a fond sharp-toothed grin because everyone has some sort of stock in his rehabilitation. (Everyone but her.)
He knows well that he's not going to receive a shred of sympathy, so Caroline isn't sure why he chose to divulge what he did. But long after she's left, the last sliver of his natter has found its way into her heart like a splinter.
My one person. The thought travels through her like a shudder, tremulous and quick. He isn't here.
Whitmore College: Omega Delta Phi.
She picks someone to spend a night with.
He's standing about in a smattering of cliques belonging to the frat house. The black wayfarer shape of his glasses is interesting, but it's not what catches her eye - it's his mouth.
His lips are full, so naturally colored that he looks like he could give the perfect kiss. They look all too familiar for her to resist.
They are a marvel, she thinks, as she nips his bottom lip and tightens her hold on his dark blonde hair. He moans into her, hot and needy with fumbling hands. The only thing missing,she notes while removing the frames from his face, almost discontent, is that stupid accent.
Caroline stops him from moving straight into intercourse, offering a playful lick against his pout. "Not yet."
She pulls her shoulders back and he cranes his neck to eagerly take her nipple into his mouth, tongue gently circling - just as she'd imagine he might. Just as, she imagines, he did.
There's no better time to feed her fantasy.
Her hand guides his to the crease of her thigh. "Yes," her hiss cuts through the air of his room, as his thumb follows a path to her soft folds. He relishes attention on her other breast and she sighs when he rubs down, fingers using her wetness to create the much-needed glide over her clit - keep going, she encourages, squeezing her eyes shut so her mind starts to see, same shade of mouth and colour of hair, as the tip of his nose nuzzles the apex of her thigh.
Klaus. She sees Klaus.
And she still sees him when her eyes are opened again, tongue laving, his middle finger working a fresh flood of desire from her until she feels her walls tighten.
The way his pupils flash a ring of yellow is what adds fire to her blood - oh god, she sits up now, legs responding on their own while he's still dragging his tongue about her in mad patterns - Klaus, her chest heaves the silent prayer, imploding.
"Don't. Stop," she bucks, even though her body begs for pause. Because he wouldn't. He wouldn't let her stop him from sating his lust with so little time between her legs.
The groan rumbles against her thigh in submission, rattling the very centre of her. He plunges his tongue into her cunt, pinning her hips down with both hands, her knees hooked over the domes of his shoulders. She throws her head back to savour his enthusiasm.
That's more like it.
She sobs her pleasure out loud for the second time, her feet becoming tense arches as he slides a calming hand over her and plants a casual kiss on her stomach. Caroline, shaking, asks him again to resume, because no, he will not be done so easily. Klaus will keep going - because he did keep going - until she can only sound out brusque vowels with the delicate O of her petal lips and he's had his fill of her.
His brow furrows, perplexed about the request, but she baits him with dirty promises, that it'll be worth his while. He has to just keep pressing his bruised plum of a mouth to her wet centre and please please her, just one more time, so that she can watch him make her come. (Watch… him, with his lips glistening and dark, and his gold-black eyes staring straight back at her when she surrenders to him.)
Her partner blinks once, twice, tempted, looking downward to think as his hand starts its own path to her hip, then looks back up where he suddenly finds his gaze locked on to hers, unable to tear away.
"Tell me what you think," Caroline purrs, a knife of guilt twisting in her gut at the unsteady pins of his pupils. "Do you want to?"
He will say yes, because he's not dark enough; too innocent, much too stable for her tastes. His touch isn't a malevolent force that will rip her to shreds. He won't be able to pull the darkness from her soul and weave it into his own. He does not infect her the way the vile emotional spores of Klaus and his mangled intentions both suffocate and send her careening off the precipice of monsterhood.
But Klaus is not here, so this boy will have to do. All she needs is to look at his mouth, and her heart will do the rest of the thinking for her.