Title| Ink Through Water
Genre| hurt/comfort/angst
Rating| t
Fandom| the Vampire Diaries
Couple| jeremy/kol, caroline/klaus, damon/elena
Chapter Ten: falling for your symphony
"This love asylum, like an island, just me and you—
spent the night, you got me high, oh what you do?
I'm hooked on all these feelings."
—"Feelings" by Hayley Kiyoko
Jeremy's silent on the way to the Amistad house and so is Kol. The silence that fills the car, not even dented by the radio, is as comforting as talking. They sit, holding hands across the console and watching the lights as town become highway and highway turns off into a quiet. Kol drives fast and Jeremy leans against the seat, feeling the engine under him.
Jeremy is buzzing with energy, fingers still shaking from the hasty note he left on the boarding house porch.
This feels weirdly familiar.
Like they had done this hundreds of time before.
When they get to the house, they walk inside, expecting the house to be dark what with the morning hours away. Instead, the house is full of pale blue light that stretches across the walls between blackened shadows like a cool iceberg. The cold night air filling up the house and the dusty taste in the air. Jeremy stands in the middle of the hallway, staring down into the living room and kitchen as if remembering what it was like being there last.
Kol presses his nose onto the nape of Jeremy's neck where his skin stretched over the vertebra lining his back. The bones there are sturdy, concrete. No bruising, no blood, just a clean slate of skin and bone. Kol presses his mouth against them and whispers an old spell under his breath. It's useless, but as reassuring as a prayer. Strength, he murmurs against the bones. Endurance, into his skin.
He wraps his arms around Jeremy from behind, pressing them into his diaphragm to feel him breathing. The in and out of his breath is a comfort. The hot blood under his skin is enough to lull him into sleep.
"Do you want to go upstairs?" Jeremy asks. His voice is heady with want, and he reaches behind him to hold Kol's body.
Kol is sure Jeremy can feel his answer to his suggestion. He can nose from Jeremy too that he's not the only one burning for touch, right now. However.
"No," Kol mutters back against Jeremy's skin. "I kinda want to hold you for a bit."
"Mm'kay," And they stand there in the blue light.
It feels like hours, swaying to the beat of Jeremy's heart and the sounds of the city outside.
"I'm happy you're alive." He whispers after a spell. Jeremy turns in his arms, hands caressing his face and presses his lips to Kol's.
"When did you become so sappy?" Jeremy murmurs against his mouth. Desire curls at his stomach.
Kissing for them is easy, never finical, never boring, hands dragging through short hair, teeth clinking against each other's. It never fails. But sleeping together—at this point, after everything—was strange. Kol couldn't put his finger on it but something was different. It was like being naked in front of someone for the first time.
Jeremy pushes off his jacket and Kol can barely suppress the shiver that rolls through him.
They walk up the stairs together, fingers locked and Kol kisses him outside the bedroom door. The jitter of Jeremy's hummingbird heartbeat pounds through Kol's body from his lips to his ears to his ankles.
It feels so good and they haven't even started yet.
He peels back clothes like layers of skin and looks at what's beneath. Kol traces his tongue over the places where scars used to litter Jeremy's body from the hatch-job scores down the length of his wrist (he lavished those with kisses and bites) to the rippled flesh on his neck (licks) to the stab wounds on the torso to the gashes on his legs (hands).
Jeremy is now unmarred, pristine, fresh-out the box and Kol just wants to taste every inch of him.
"You're all new." Kol muses into the flawless skin of Jeremy's abdomen. He kisses the bottom of Jeremy's left rib and watched his muscles flex in response. The hitch of Jeremy's breath is music to his ears. "What goes on in the Veil anyway?"
Jeremy's body stiffens for a moment still as death and a shiver rushes through him. "Fuck," he says indigently and presses his lips together into a tight white line. Kol stares at him before Jeremy's dragging Kol against him and pressing his cold mouth against his, tears salting his lips and his body shaking like the last leaf in fall. Kol nearly crushes his ribs in the effort to comfort him.
"Shhh, forget it." He kisses down Jeremy's neck, then elbow and laces their fingers together. He skims his lips across the smooth underside of his arm, feeling the blood rush beneath his tongue. With Jeremy efficiently pinned, and breathing normal, Kol continues to speak softly. "You're fine now." He places a kiss at his wrist and then his fingers. "I've got you." Jeremy makes a noise, kind of a laugh, kind of a groan. Kol likes it and kisses him again, deep and slow. "You're safe with me."
They're lost in their own world for a moment, anticipation snapping at Kol like breaking bones.
Jeremy's fingers curl into his shirt. "You're wearing too many clothes."
"Am I now?" Kol raises a brow and kisses Jeremy's neck. Jeremy moans, momentarily distracted from wrinkling Kol's last good shirt. He presses his face against his neck and breathes. "You good?"
"Yeah," Jeremy's hands yank at his shirt. "I want you."
.
.
Death stands on the doorstep the next morning.
Or, in this case, Elena.
For a moment, Kol thinks that maybe she flipped the switch again, but when she speaks—voice thick and nasal—he knows she hadn't. She looks lonely, like a queen abandoned by her subjects. Kol is just wondering how the hell she found them.
He spies Damon's car behind her, but no Damon.
Kol wears a silk robe and prepares his best poker face when he answers the door. "What are you doing here?"
She composes herself, nose crinkling at the scent of Kol's skin and the obvious messy hair. She says simply, primly, "I want to see my brother."
"He's not here."
Elena gives him a look that would have made a war-hardened gunman sob, which Kol is not. Her eyes flicker to the back hallway where Jeremy is looking around the corner into the hall. "I want to see my brother," she repeats softer than before and Kol is about to turn her away before Jeremy's hand touches his shoulder.
"Give me a minute." The please is lingering in his eyes and Kol turns with a little sashay of his body before he retreats to Jeremy's former not-hiding place, between the kitchen and living room to watch.
"Hi Jeremy," Elena says breathily.
"Hey Elena," Jeremy says, and pauses for a moment. He rubs under his eyes, hard.
The corners of Elena's mouth turn down again and the sobs seem to catch in her throat. "Bonnie's dead."
There's a moment of sickening silence broken after Jeremy's intake of breath. His head turns and presses against the doorframe, eyes closed, teeth biting into his lip. His shoulders tremble and from around them, Elena is framed in the door—her own black eyes floating in a sea of red. "I was . . . I was with her when it happened. I'm so sorry, Elena. I—she asked me not to tell anyone."
Kol draws himself up. Jeremy had not told him the witch was dead, only that she and him shared a kiss. He feels a sudden pang of angerbetrayalhate spinning off in all directions at both Bonnie and Jeremy. Then, just as suddenly, a quiet resolve like sugar in coffee; it means nothing. Bonnie being dead means nothing to him.
Elena continues in a quiet whisper, "Jeremy, come home." Elena whispers and she steps closer, hand outstretching towards him beyond the invisible barrier. "We—I—" Jeremy's head tilts and twists towards her, his voice is hollow and impassionate.
"Elena, I'm done."
"What?"
"I'm done—with this, with you, with funerals."
"Jeremy," she says softly like he was a child she was dealing with. "Jeremy." She steps closer. "You can't leave, Jeremy you can't. I—I was driving myself crazy trying to get you back—you can't leave me now. I just lost Bonnie, I—."
"I lost Bonnie too."
"You can't leave."
"I can. I will."
"Jeremy, why would you—"
"Elena, if you really care about me, you'll let me live the life I want."
"No—no, Jeremy no, please! I need you!"
"Elena, do you love me?"
She sounds aghast, but she answers. "Yes, of course I do. How could you ask me that—?"
"Elena." Jeremy's voice is clear as ice water, as unyielding as steel finally turned solid. "Are you my mother?"
"Jeremy."
"You don't have to." His grip loosens on the door until his hand is slipping down to the doorknob. "You never had to. And I understand that everything with Jenna and Alaric, but Elena I don't need you to act like my parent. I can take care of myself, have I not proven that?" He doesn't give her time to answer. "You don't get to tell me how to live any more than I do to you."
"But Jeremy, I'm your sister—we're family."
"I know," Jeremy's voice breaks like hers until they are in mirror of perfect likeness. "I know, but I can't be around you right now, Lena. I'm mad at you and I—"
"You can't do this!"
Jeremy's fist thuds against the door, hard. The echo falling from the wood makes Elena jump. "You're not the only one who hurts, you know! If you're allowed to banish everyone from your life on a will, so can I! I don't want to see you anymore! I want to be left alone."
Elena's expression is pained.
"I . . . I'm sorry you feel that way." She says.
"I'm sorry too . . ."
"Can I do something for you?"
"Don't tell anyone where I am, I don't want to see them."
"Okay . . . goodbye Jeremy."
"'Bye . . ."
Jeremy finally closes the door and staggers away from it like a zombie, he heads for the stairs.
"Un-uh," Kol tsks and grabs Jeremy's elbow. "You are not bringing that drama to our bed—the couch is much better suited."
Of course, after all that, Jeremy doesn't really want to talk, so he sleeps and mumbles. Kol fights the need to go outside and dispatch of the doppelganger himself.
.
.
"I think I understand quite clearly, you don't have to tell me." Kol says as he buttons up his shirt, adjacent from him Jeremy is sitting on the bed surrounded by half a dozen shopping bags full of clothes Caroline had brought over for him. His old cadet boots had miraculously crossed over from the Veil with him twice and kept in their pristine state of wear, one shoelace hangs limply across the floor.
"But I want to . . ." says Jeremy who's ripping off price tags, trying to find a plain tee shirt. Kol nudges that particular bag behind the bed and hopes he had not noticed. "I don't hate my sister."
"Noted," Kol says dully.
"But I do hate her."
Kol smiles. "Ditto."
"What do you think?"
"I think—" he cuts himself off from saying that we should storm Mystic Falls and create a secret operative coup of vampires to scare her before she goes off to college and sighs. "I think that you should do what you think you should." He only says that because he knows Jeremy wants to get the hell out of here and Kol would do nothing to jeopardize that plan.
Had he not, Kol most definitely would have that operative coup thing already a go.
"I don't want to see her again."
Coup?
"Darling, I have no troubles arranging that."
"But I do want to see her."
"Ah," Kol says amused.
No coup then.
"But not—ugh, when am I ever going to wear this?" Jeremy tosses aside a sweater vest Caroline must have bought as a gag-gift. Kol's just happy Klaus slashed her tires this morning long enough to give her the news of Jeremy being alive and with Kol in their not-so-secret apartment. Clever girl thought ahead to seasonal wear. "No seriously, but I want to yell at her and hit her and just get rid of all this anger."
"Do you want to make her pay?" Kol asks, eyes shining brightly and Jeremy groans, flopping back on the bed in dark washed jeans and shirtless torso—given up. Kol frowns.
"No—I just, I want her to understand why I said the things I did."
"She will." He says because he's a good boyfriend—goddamnit—and pulls out a simple black tee shirt and waits for Jeremy to sit up, he does so. He pushes Jeremy's head through, then his arms, then the rest of him. An annoying tag rests against the base of Jeremy's neck.
Jeremy winces. "Gee, thanks mom."
"Pull yourself together, there's a bar somewhere calling my name."
.
.
"I feel very broken sometimes." Jeremy says over take-out breakfast two mornings later. Kol's chewing on a pancake and Jeremy's plastic silverware was on the verge of snapping. "Just, weird. Echoes and all other ghost shit."
Kol raises an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't want to talk about it."
"Does it bother you?"
"No."
"No?"
"It doesn't bother me in the slightest." Kol says honestly. "Darling, I killed people. Lots of people. I have rare forms of restraint and I hate most of your friends and family on a hit-list level, and you have it in your head that I can put up with them. So, no. Your issues don't bother me."
Jeremy frowns. "But what if they bother me?"
"Then we'll figure them out, stupid. After our very loud declarations for each other, I feel as though you are the only one willing to put up with me."
.
.
Jeremy lies on Kol's chest, half-over him and half-hanging off the bed and staring sleepily at him through blurry eyes. "What do we do now?"
"We stay alive."
.
.
He gets a call from Caroline later.
"Hey Caroline, how are things in Mystic-anything-that-can-possibly-go-wrong-will-go-wrong-Falls?"
"Working on it." She snorts and he hears something slam from the other line, along with several other men shouting. "Good as they can be. I'm actually at the college now, you know, just setting up my new townhouse—what? That is not the shade of gold I chose! It'll throw off the entire décor! You should come down here. I could use the help. The campus is awesome."
"Hmm," Kol hums and glances back at the bedroom where Jeremy lay across the mattress, asleep. The room there was still half finished, one wall knocked down to open up the space and the walls finished but the floors and furnishing had been put to a standstill. He frowns at the thought of having to leave this place, but he and Jeremy would just have to find a new town to hide in. He has this stinging feeling that Denver, or Amsterdam, would be great for them. "I'm working on a few renovations myself."
"No rest for the wicked?" Caroline chimes and her heels click musically. "Well, I hope you and Jeremy are at least having a good time on your honeymoon."
"Believe me, if it were any more fun the police would be here."
"Your brother has been calling me." She remarks and adds, "Put that back in the truck" to an assuming renovation man. "He wants to know what I think of Brown."
"Ah yes, how is my brother dear?" Kol drawls.
"Don't act smart."
"Caroline, be a darling and tell me how my brother is while I'm still compelled to care."
Caroline sighs. "Well and desperate, he offered to pay for an on-campus house for me. Little does he know I have connections of my own." There's a faint beep on the other end of the line. "Now he wants to go to dinner. He thinks I'll like New Orleans for some reason."
New Orleans? Interesting. Kol scratches that off his list of places to visit with Jeremy.
"Any ideas why?" Caroline asks.
"I hear the gumbo's good and alligator is also great if you can stomach the thought."
"I hate Mardi Gras." He can imagine Caroline's wrinkle-nosed distaste.
"You do realize that it's not an everyday occurrence, right?"
"I'm not going so it doesn't matter."
"Do not test him Caroline; puppies only have so much patience." He downs the rest of his tea and sets the mug on the counter beside the ones Jeremy had already cleaned. "Throw him a bone every now and then. Wear that one dress, the black lacy one."
"Ugh, you're disgusting." But she laughs, carefree and happy, for the first time in a long time sounding and gives a small rant on how Stefan has yet to call her back and a brief dialogue on Bonnie's funeral and where her headstone lay, should Jeremy like to visit.
"I'll ask him later. He's sleeping."
"I see, I'll leave you to that, but—something else you should know." Caroline's tone becomes pinched and Kol can feel the telltale of weariness rise up inside of him. "God, I should have said this sooner but I just wanted one normal conversation for a few seconds."
"I know the feeling," Kol rolls his eyes. "Proceed."
"Elena drank Silas's blood."
At this Kol perks, "Tell, tell: she's human?"
"Yup, and now—I don't even know where she is. Damon is having the biggest hissy fit." She sighs and there's more noise of Caroline's neighbors running about and commenting on the drilling noises brought upon by Caroline's inexcusable living conditions. "Just keep an eye pealed, okay?"
"She's a human, not harmless." Kol mumbles and thinks about a new security investment. He's not taking any chances on this let's stay alive kick.
.
.
They're on a train the next day and Jeremy's sketching something in one of his new books and Kol has the rest of their joint belongings packed and ready for a trip to wherever. Caroline's texting him from her biology class, happily reciting strings of information that would have been fascinating if he cared. Elena is still missing, but Damon assures he's hot on her trail.
When he relays this to Jeremy, of course, Jeremy bought two tickets to Denver and left no room for argument. They'll stay there until they can find a less obvious accommodation.
Kol leans across the table between them and grins. "I love it when you take control."
"No, you don't." Jeremy mutters and scratches his charcoal stained fingers along his temple, leaving smudges. "You hate being out done and you know it."
"Easy darling, I can't be out done in anything."
Jeremy hums, sunlight hitting his eyes he stands and stretches, reaching his hands towards the ceiling and his shirt riding up on his waist. Kol watches the sliver of white skin disappear when Jeremy finishes his stretch and pulls the shades down between them and the wandering eyes. His hand lies on the gold handle of their cart door, "This locks right?"
"Why ever do you ask?" Kol muses, turning his body towards him. Jeremy smiles and kneels on one knee between Kol's legs on the cushioned bench.
"Hmm, you never know. Things might happen. People might walk in."
"Oh?" Kol asks, still coy and grinning because goddamn he loves seeing Jeremy like this. Jeremy drops into his lap, fingers curling behind his neck. "Someone walking in could make it more fun . . . whatever it may be. It will certainly add a thrill."
Jeremy laughs and presses his mouth to Kol's ear. "Certainly could."
.
.
A letter lost in arson:
Dear Kol,
You left me at the Grille, the sheriff walked in—if you hear some spiel about a deranged Original compelling a minor into a drinking contest, that was me. And I still can't believe she bought it. Anyway, that was a dick move. Seriously, dude. You left me with the bill and I thought you lived in the times of counts and lords or whatever, you're still a Viking.
Anyway, I'm about to do something I know you won't like.
I'm leaving for the island to find the Cure. I don't want to call you because if I do, I probably won't leave. But Elena needs me right now and I have to go. And I know you hate her and you think she has too much influence over me, and sometimes she does, but I want to help her. She wants to be human. I want her human.
You probably won't say it, but you know I will. I want to be with you. When all of this is over maybe we can. You helped me from becoming a soulless killing machine, thank you. I wouldn't have been able to get through any of this without you.
I'll see you soon,
—Jeremy
That letter is safe and hidden well between Jeremy Gilbert's special edition Dracula and Interview with a Vampire because he thinks it's ironic. And no one will ever see it again because just after Jeremy Gilbert tucks away the letter that shall-never-be-sent, he grabs his backpack and crossbow and loads into the car with his sister and friends. Staring out the window up at the house, he counts the windows to his bedroom and at three he smiles as they drive out of town.
This is the last time Jeremy sees Mystic Falls alive.
good god it took me six years to finish this story. . . persistence, but not the iron-will to watch those episodes again for accuracy and for that I am sorry. I rework this ending so many times, but this is the best i can offer you, my dearest, my most esteemed readers. To you i give all my love and devotion for continuing to read after the years since i begun this hell-beast.
i enjoyed writing these two, i enjoyed this style, and i will be happy to give it a conclusion that i think these two deserve-away from the drama.
thank you for everything, two tattoos, a new hair color, and another account name-change later,
- cafeanna