Okay, I know I write Damon a lot, but that's because I love him and he rocks so much. This one is to include the other parties, as well as Sam and Damon.

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural, that belongs to Eric Kripke. And I don't own the Vampire Diaries either, that belongs to L.J. Smith.

Enjoy!

Just Another Day in Mystic Falls

Chapter 10

It couldn't be said that Dean wasn't at least making an effort to be patient.

Stefan was informing Bobby of what was happening lately with the vampires in Mystic Falls, and they were both making an effort to explain some of the history about the place. Dean caught a few things here and there, not exactly paying attention (he wasn't exactly a history type of guy, unless it was the mythology on how to kill something evil). The story sounded interesting, but he just couldn't make himself full-on listen. Sometimes he would glance at Elena, who sat next to Stefan. She was very, very attractive, and kind of reserved. She wasn't listening raptly to Stefan's every word either, but it seemed as though she'd heard the story before. She was an interesting girl…

…and Dean supposed that he could let her comparing him to Damon Salvatore go.

"—the vampires from the tomb have been wreaking havoc in Mystic Falls. Damon, Elena and I have been trying to keep things under control around here."

"Hey." Dean sat up suddenly. "Those vampires in the farmhouse, the ones that we killed—were they from the tomb?"

Stefan nodded. "Yes."

Dean vaguely acknowledged that Stefan was a very stoic guy, but he wasn't too bad…more like a hunter, actually: reserved, smart, cautious. He liked the vampire.

His brother…not so much.

"So, what, they're not all hanging around together?"

Stefan frowned. "Um…some of them are. The majority stick together, but some of them are rebels and don't want to go with Pearl's plan. They want revenge, the only thing Pearl doesn't want."

Dean bit his lip, trying to recount was Stefan had said earlier. "Pearl's the oldest, right?"

"Yes."

"And…she was trapped in the tomb too?"

The slightly impatient but calm look on Stefan's face told Dean that he'd already mentioned that during one of the times that he'd zoned out.

"Yes." His voice was surprisingly very patient.

Yeah, Dean definitely liked Stefan better than Damon.

Speaking of…

"Hey, Stefan." Dean sat forward. "What's Damon's deal, anyway?"

Stefan snorted quietly. "I wish I knew."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Meaning?"

"Damon's kinda hard to figure out," Bobby said from where he sat in his wheelchair beside the chair that Dean was in.

Elena half-grinned, but she looked slightly bitter. "Yeah, you can say that again."

"Where Damon's loyalties lie is…confusing. He helps us…quite a bit, actually. And yet, he would kill the first human that got in his way. He used to kill humans frequently, for their blood. Now he doesn't do that. Mostly he gets his blood from blood banks. Sometimes, he compels girls into knowing that he's a vampire and being perfectly okay with it. Then he would occasionally drink their blood, never taking enough to hurt them. I don't like that method…" Stefan chewed his lip. "But at least he's not really hurting anyone."

"…I don't suppose I really need to ask what he did with those girls when he wasn't using them as human snack bars," Dean assumed.

Elena glanced at him. "I wouldn't think so."

"Damon goes over the top with his methods of taking care of things," Stefan added.

Dean nodded. "Yeah, he seemed like that kind of guy. By the way…is he always so much of an asshole?"

"Yes," three voices all said in unison, from all around him.

"You'll get used to it," Elena sighed. "He bugs the hell out of you, but that's just Damon. Just don't let him get to you."

"I don't plan on it."

"Dean, honestly, not letting him get to you isn't as easy as it sounds," Elena said seriously. "He tends to know more than you expect…and more than you want him to know. He's a son of a bitch. He knows exactly what subject to touch on and comment about to make you want to stake him…in the most painful way possible."

"Oh, don't worry about that…I already want to," Dean assured her with a smile.

She shrugged. "Well, yeah, but that's beside the point. He's annoying, we all know that. But he can really get to you if he wants to. And actually…that seems to mean that he likes you. If he doesn't like you, he just kills you."

"Oh. Good to know that I can now distinguish the difference." Dean didn't let his surprise show in his voice, not missing a beat.

"Yeah, Damon's pretty quick to let you know his opinion of you. And if snaps your neck…that pretty much means he doesn't give a damn about you and just wants you gone. Means you're expendable to him."

"And if he hates you…?" Dean waited.

"Then he kills you painfully and with passion."

"Ah." Dean stood up. "Well, I don't trust the guy either way. So Stefan, I know he's your brother and all, but if he does something that crosses the line, or if he threatens my brother, I'll stake him then and there."

Stefan nodded. "Understood."

"Just…" Elena hesitated. Dean, Stefan and Bobby looked at her.

"…make your line a little farther away with Damon," she finished. "He does some really out-there things…some things that aren't forgivable…but he really isn't evil."

"Mm," Dean grunted vaguely.

Elena shook her head. "You'll get it once you hang around Damon a little more."

"But boy, if I were you…" Dean turned towards Bobby, waiting to see what his old and trusted friend had to say. "I'd try not to hang around Damon and not understand him as well as possible. He's more trouble than anyone needs."

"But I'm worth it." They turned just in time to see Damon sticking his head in the doorway, grinning, before he disappeared. Elena rolled her eyes.

Dean was left staring in the doorway where the eldest vampire had just been moments ago. "Do random things like that happen often with that guy around?"

"Yes," Elena, Stefan and Bobby replied in unison.

"And he's the strongest out of all your little gang, so you want to keep him around."

"Right," Stefan said, nodding.

Dean nodded at that and then started shaking his head disbelievingly. "This town's whacked."

"Tell us about it," Elena agreed grimly.

The four—one a hundred and sixty-two year old vampire, one a young, beautiful human girl that knows more than she should, one a grizzled, experienced, smart demon hunter, and one a stupid, douchebag demon hunter that is supposed to be the vessel for an archangel and/or save the world—exited the room, three of them standing up to do so and the other rolling his wheelchair out.

They found Sam in the front room, standing in front of a large bookshelf packed with books that were probably covered in dust. He went through them for a few moments before taking once and pulling it out, opening it and looking inside with interest.

"Having fun, geekboy?" Dean asked as they made their way towards him.

Sam didn't even look up at the jibe—he was too immersed in the book in his hand. He didn't even reply. Dean rolled his eyes, turning towards the others.

"For him, this is like a kid finding the presents under the tree on Christmas morning," he explained. Both seventeen-year-olds—one of them only under pretenses of such—nodded understandingly.

"Stefan gets that way," Elena told Dean. Stefan turned and looked at her, confused and slightly surprised. She moved closer to him and patted his shoulder. "I just say that because you're smart, Stefan."

Stefan raised his eyebrows slightly, but didn't say anything more.

Throughout this time, Sam's been paying rapt attention to this book.

Stefan walked up to him and looked over his shoulder…and how he managed to get a look over his brother's massive shoulder, Dean had no idea.

"That's my father's journal," Stefan said after a few moments of reading silently. "Giuseppe Salvatore."

"He describes through the days as the townspeople hunt the vampires, discover that vervain hurts them, and finds more bodies drained of blood. They staked the bodies to be sure that they didn't come back as a vampire. Sounds like something out of Dracula."

"It wasn't," Stefan assured him. "It was much different. Things in the town were different. It was tense, no one was sure who to trust."

"He writes about finding them finally…and discovering the Pearl was one of them. He trusted Pearl," Sam said, reading from the book.

Dean leaned towards Elena and murmured, "I've never been good with geek-to-geek bonding."

"Me neither," she whispered back.

Somehow, eventually, Dean and Elena wandered from the group. They walked aimlessly throughout the Salvatore house…and Dean wondered when he would ever find a dead end.

"This place is frigging huge."

"I know," Elena agreed. "The Salvatores have a lot of money. Built up from over the years, I'm guessing."

They walked silently for a while, comfortable with each other. Dean didn't know Elena very well—hell, even less than he knew Stefan and Damon—but somehow, she was an easier person to be around. There was less tension, he guessed, than a hunter hanging around with a human than with a vampire. Less chance of trying to kill each other, he supposed.

"How'd you get into all this?" Dean asked as they made their way up yet another staircase.

She laughed a little. "By living in this town."

Dean smirked, nodded and shrugged. Yeah, it seemed easy enough to get into the supernatural loop in Mystic Falls, Virginia.

"No, uh…Stefan's a student at the high school, like me," Elena told him. "The first day this year, I saw him, and…I don't know what it was about him, but I could tell there was just something about him that was…different. And by being close enough, I ended up with a vampire boyfriend and his older, jackass-like, vampire brother, as well as some vampires that are intent on killing the townspeople and are dangerous to have around."

Dean nodded. That sounded like it pretty much summed it up. He had to know something, though. "So, uh…do you regret it?"

Elena looked at him.

Dean continued, "You know, having the vampire boyfriend, all the problems, nearly getting killed on more than one occasion?"

Elena looked down and laughed a little. "Actually…it might sound weird, but I don't."

Dean raised his eyebrows and nodded. "That does sound weird."

Elena nodded. "Yeah. I really can't explain it. I love Stefan, and…I guess that the nearly getting killed and the jackass-like older brother are worth it."

Dean nodded again at that, not really able to do much else.

"So, uh, what's you and your brother's deals?" Elena asked him as they walked.

Dean shrugged. "It's the Apocalypse. You know…Lucifer's out and about."

"Lucifer," Elena repeated. "As in, the devil?"

"As in the devil."

Elena frowned thoughtfully. "Well, he was somewhere else, before, right? In Hell?"

Dean looked at her.

"I honestly don't know much about this," she said quickly. "I'm just taking a stab at it."

Dean nodded and shrugged. They seemed to be in the same place. "Yeah, he was in Hell."

Elena nodded as they walked. "How'd he get out?" she asked, looking up at Dean.

Dean paused and chewed his lip as he thought about the way to answer. "There was a misunderstanding."

She frowned up at him.

"It was…it was my brother. He killed this demon, Lilith, who wanted to get the Apocalypse going. He was trying to stop her, but…it didn't work out that way. Apparently, the last thing that needed to happen for the Apocalypse to happen—we called them seals—was Lilith's death. She knew it, and let my brother kill her."

"So…Sam accidentally let the devil out," Elena surmised.

Dean nodded, not looking at her.

"Huh," she said quietly as they continued to walk. "That must be hard to live with."

Dean nodded. Truthfully, he had no idea, but he had no doubt that she was right. "And not only that, but a couple of archangels want to use Sam and I as meat suits, so they can use their powers and end the world."

Elena looked up at him. "And they can't just…take you?"

"Nope. They need permission, I guess. They need Sam and me to say 'yes'."

Elena nodded thoughtfully. "Good thing."

"Yeah."

They walked in silence for a little while.

"You took the whole 'archangels' thing pretty well," Dean commented.

Elena shrugged. "Hey, there's that guy Castiel, he's an angel. There might as well be archangels too. Basically, I'm just preparing to take in all kinds of weird."

Dean nodded. He understood what she meant.

"By the way, where did Castiel go, anyway?" she asked.

Dean shrugged. "I dunno. Angels seem to just pop in and pop out. God knows where they go when they pop out."

Elena nodded, biting her lip. "Yeah."

They walked again, down another staircase and up another right at the bottom. Dean was seriously starting to think that this place was a maze with no end.

"So, the whole demon-hunting thing…when did you and Sam get into that?" Elena asked, getting into a whole new topic of the life of the Winchesters.

"Uh, when we were little, our mom died…I was four, Sam was a baby. Our dad found out that there are things like demons and vampires and werewolves and, well, all kinds of things out there that attack innocent people, including the demon that killed our mom. So we started hunting them."

"Wow," Elena said quietly. "You guys were young."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "But I guess the earlier you start out, the more prepared you are."

Elena nodded. "Guess so."

They were at the end of the hall when Elena asked the question that Dean had been waiting for her to ask.

"What happened to your dad?"

"He died…a couple of years ago."

"…oh." Elena nodded, brown eyes on the floor. "My parents died a while ago. Car crash."

"I'm sorry," Dean said gruffly, glancing at her when he said it.

Elena nodded. "Thanks."

"…were you in the car?"

"Yeah. But I was all right…a little roughed-up, but all right."

Dean nodded slowly. He'd only figured it out now, after talking to her, and it surprised him, but it seemed like he and Elena connected on quite a few different levels. And that was even before he found out that she had a little brother.

I'm so sorry I haven't updated in so long. But I am now, and I hope you liked this chapter; I worked hard on it. Tell me what you think!

Next chapter will star Damon Salvatore…and someone you may not expect.