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a/n: So, a gift for you all for the holidays, hope you enjoy!

~The Vampire Diaries ~

One Thing

— [CHAPTER 11: interlude 3] —

~ T V D ~

Damon stared down at him for a moment, thrown back in time when Stefan would get ill and only ever be able to get the rest his body needed if Damon was there to cuddle and comfort. Damon carded his fingers through his brother's sweaty locks, worry engulfing him at the heat, the laboured breaths, all of it. Was the cause nefarious, or innocent?

"Should we... give him blood?" Alaric sat on the edge of the bed, laying his hand on Stefan's blanket covered hip.

"We don't know how the fuck he'll react to that," Damon answered. "Barring the fact that he was dead and brought back to life as a human, I've never actually healed a person who was ill just physically injured."

"So we treat it like any normal person would, with medicine." The teacher reasoned. He quickly went into the bathroom and returned with a cool, damp cloth. He leaned over and managed to tuck it against Stefan's burning forehead; who sighed.

"Medicine hasn't changed that much then," Damon scoffed.

"Advil will help," Alaric said. "But, the state he's in, he'd never be able to swallow them. Hang on," he went back into the en suite.

"We don't have-" Damon started, but stopped as Alaric came out holding up the bottle. "Why the hell would he have that? It would have no effect on a vampire."

That wasn't the only thing the bampi was surprised to discover going through the medicine cabinet and drawers. It was cluttered with a bunch of products that would be of no use to a vampire, like the Advil and box of Band-Aids, all brand new and un-opened. When Stefan started to stock up more food in the kitchen when they started to date, he must have stocked up on all the other generic things human-Ric might have needed while staying over. It made butterflies flutter in the teacher's chest at such care and thoughtfulness shown toward him that he hadn't felt in a such a long time, if ever. "I'll be back." He blurred to the kitchen and when he came back, it was with a tablespoon.

Damon made his face as he eyed it. "What the hell is that?"

"Crushed Advil, some sugar to cut the bitterness, and water to help it go down." Alaric sat on the bed. "Turn him so he won't choke."

Stefan moaned in discomfort as he was moved, eyes fluttering blurrily.

"Come on, Stef." Damon murmured when his brother tried to bury his face in his stomach again. "You gotta swallow some medicine to get better." Damon titled his head up in his lap, pulling down on his chin to open his mouth.

Alaric carefully spooned the crushed Advil into his mouth. Stefan coughed, swallowing convulsively, his flushed face screwed up, a gag choking him. Alaric massaged his neck and chest soothingly until the teen calmed down. Damon glared at him.

"If you ever tasted Advil without the coating, you'd understand." Alaric took the cloth and quickly re-wet it with cold water.

Damon took it from him and mopped at Stefan's sweaty flushed face and throat. "God damn it, Stefan. There can't just be a moment of peace with you, can it? It's always something with you." He laid the cloth across his forehead again. "He used to get sick all the time when he was a kid; these terrible fevers. They seemed to go away when he hit puberty though." He looked up at Alaric, "Get your phone, call the witch and tell her to get her ass down here. I want to make sure this isn't some bullshit consequence of him being brought back from the dead."

Alaric blurred down the hall to Zach's old room where his cell was. All this vamp-running was starting to wear him, even if they were in small spurts, and his new hunger was starting to rear its ugly head, despite having a bag when he woke (which really meant came out of the room) sometime before noon. So while he called Bonnie, he quickly got and drained a pint; the last thing they needed right now was for him to lose control due to the stress.

Damon tried to shift Stefan into a more comfortable reclining position on the bed under the covers from where the teen was curled up in his lap like Stefan was still a little kid instead of a grown one, but his now human brother clung to him with that same desperation as he had when a child.

Their mother grew ill after Stefan's birth and it was a short and long eight years before she succumbed to what they now called TB. She tried to be there for her children as much as she was able, and when Stefan went through frequent bouts of sickness through his childhood, father kept her away from Stefan and kept Stefan confined to his room with a treatment of nurse maids. Of course, no appointed restriction, especially set by their father, could bar Damon from his baby brother. So, in those weeks of sickness, when Stefan cried out, wracked with fever and sickness, it was Damon that answered to that call.

Stefan made pitiful sounds of protest until Damon gave up and settled again. Damon moved the warm cloth, the fever instantly burned through any cooling factor of the cloth as soon as it touched his brother. Damon started to stroke his hot skin, the teen making a soft sound at the cool touch of the undead.

"Bonnie's coming right now," Alaric returned and picked up the cloth to renew it again when Damon stopped him.

"That cloth is doing shit. It only helps for a second before the fever burns right through it. He's hovering at 101."

Alaric looked at him in surprise. "You can tell that just by touching him?"

"I'm 169 years old, Ric." Damon replied. "You ever drink from an actual human you'll feel and taste the difference from au natural and the electromagnetic radiation of a microwave, trust me."

"I haven't really the patience right now to take the time and microwave my blood." He turned. "Can't really care to, not when it feels like I'm ravished and hadn't fed in days."

"Come on," Damon jerked his head, shifting Stefan who writhed in protest as Alaric climbed and settle into the space on his other side; it was eerily similar to back at the quarry with Stefan lain dead between them. "Easy, brother."

"You're okay, Stef." Alaric murmured, and Stefan's head shifted toward the sound of his voice, exhaling through his nose and settling as the dirty-blond's cold fingers joined his brother's strokes on his sweaty, flushed skin. "It's your scent," he said a few minutes later.

Damon raised a brow. "What?"

Alaric nodded at Stefan. "Your scent... you. You're the constant thing in his life when he's vulnerable and needing comfort and safety. From what Stefan's said, all through-out his childhood, all those defining moments that made him who he was—his big brother was there. Like an instinctual imprint."

Damon stared at him, his expression stoic. "Stick to your subject of teaching, huh?" Alaric couldn't help the small smirk.

That was how Bonnie found them, crowded on the bed like that after parking haphazardly in the drive, bolting up the stairs 2 at a time and bursting breathlessly into Stefan's bedroom. She stood at the foot of the bed for a moment as she caught her breath, observing. Her stress and worry went down several notches at simply observing the fact that water wasn't bubbling out of his mouth again or a wound wasn't preternaturally opening on his chest like the magic she and Emily had cast was somehow unravelling.

"Are you just going to stare or are you actually going to do something useful, Bennett?" Damon demanded in a crispy tone, making Stefan give a discordant moan at his brother's raised voice, who quickly hushed the teen.

Bonnie couldn't even dine to roll her eyes at the accusation, not when faced with such brotherly affection coming from the usually caustic vampire that would still catch her off guard over the last few weeks. She climbed onto the bed with the three men, sitting on her knees by Stefan's waist on Damon's side with more room with the brunette's head and upper torso in his lap.

Inhaling and exhaling slow, relaxing breaths to calm herself, she pulled the blanket wrapped around Stefan just low enough to lay her left palm on his chest. Continuing the breathing, matching the rise of her chest with Stefan's, she felt the calm, steady beat of her heart, collide with Stefan's slightly raised one through the palm of her hand. She reached her magic out, down through the connection. Both vampires felt their little hairs raise, tingling slightly with the close connection of magic. Doing as Grams had taught her; every living thing, like the elements held their power, their own source, in layman: aura. Bonnie carefully felt around Stefan's, the teen not even stirring at the gentle intrusion, her brow stitched in concentration.

After several long moments, she opened her eyes and pulled her hand away, pulling the blanket back up Stefan's chest. "This isn't magic," Bonnie declared, sitting back on the edge of the bed. Her hand laying on blanket covering Stefan's shin. "This is not any effect because of the spell—He's human now, Damon. That means his body is going to react like any normal person's. He was laying on the cold damp ground for the entire night, walking around in socks. He's never had an immunization or flu shots; his immune system will be set in the same state as it was." The older Salvatore pinned her with a squinted look. "Health Class," she retorted. "Did you mother breast feed Stefan?"

Damon shook his head. "Our mother grew ill after Stefan's birth and couldn't. Usually, in the times, you'd find a maid who'd recently given birth and she would have taken over the feeding, but there wasn't one, so Stefan was fed goat's milk."

"Typically in newborns, they get those resistant antibodies from a mother's breast milk, protects them until they develop their own. But the both of you were born in the 19th century where there weren't things like car exhaust or nuclear plants, or when simple booster shots. He'll never have developed any of those immunities to 21st century strains of illness."

"So he's basically a new born baby with an immunity deficiency," Alaric concluded worriedly. He looked over at Damon, "Maybe we should-"

"We are." Damon's mouth was set in a grim line, his palm laid on Stefan's forehead. "His temperature hasn't gone down; it's been inching up. There's no other option. Move," he ordered Bonnie, who quickly scrambled off the bed.

Alaric helped sit Stefan up, who only stirred, mouth gaped and breathing heavily, so Damon could get out from under him. Damon knelt on the edge of the bed, an arm going under his brother's knees, the other behind his shoulders. "You got him?" as much as he wanted it himself, the older vampire had the rights and control.

"Yeah." Damon stood, shifted Stefan more securely in his arms. The brunette's head lulled on his shoulder, forehead coming to rest against his neck. The heat coming off him was unnatural and almost felt like a hot iron pressed against his flesh, each breath like a billow of steam from the holes. "Pick up your ass, Ric, if you're coming. You can practice your compulsion and blood control, it'll be great." He smirked blankly. Damon exited at half-vamp speed to the driveway, his brother precious cargo.

Alaric shared a quick look with the witch, grabbed Damon's leather jacket that had fallen to the floor at the foot of the bed when the vampire had picked up Stefan, blanket and all, and blurred down to the driveway. Alaric got into the backseat of the Camaro and Damon carefully passed his tall brother back, who started to kick up a fuss before the dirty-blond quickly tucked his big brother's jacket under the blanket against his chest and cheek. Damon hopped in, never bothering with the seatbelt and started his engine, somehow driving like a graceful bat out of hell toward Mystic Falls General Hospital.

...

Damon stared blankly at the admission sheet in his hand. It wasn't like he could write: 05/11/1847 for birth date. He couldn't exactly fill out the Illness 'Other' line with: vampire killed and brought back as human came down suddenly with illness. So he simply put: fever, for that and did a quick calculation in his head and put: 05/11/1992, and wrote his own name in for 'parents/guardian'.

He handed it over to the on-duty nurse behind the station; this was where a lot of compulsion and a little creativity came in.

She surveyed the clipboard. "You barely filled this out, sir. We're going to need the name of your health insurance agency, also the patient's social insurance number..." he caught her eye when she looked up and she trailed off as his pupils dilated.

"Our parents were progressive." He said smoothly in compulsion. "The modern health care system wasn't really their thing, record keeping and the like. They died and I've recently taken guardianship over my brother."

"I'm sorry for your loss," she replied. "It must be hard to take all that responsibility."

"He's my brother." Damon told her simply. "Now, about all those blank spaces on the page..." and he told exactly what he needed and if she couldn't provide him with those things, then she should direct him to the people who could. "You're going to give my brother the best care and his own room, you make sure that ring on his left hand stays right where it is, no onewill take it off. If they do, you come find me. Visiting hours don't apply to me or him," he jerked his head back to Alaric, "Don't you worry about us. Stefan has never had a flu shot in his life, nor an immunization shot."

"We can take care of that, sir."

"Good. I also need you to do a full work up on him like he's the Bubble Boy gotten out of confinement. The results will be private, got that?" she gave a small nod. "Now, about what we talked about before... who exactly do I need to see about that again?"

"What are you up to?" Alaric questioned him when he returned from the nurses station, having listened in with his new vamp-hearing to focus on anything other than the smell of appetizing blood and the harsh burn of sterilization chemicals.

"Just your basic WitSec package," Damon told him. "Can you handle this?" he waved a vague hand over his shoulder.

Alaric narrowed his eyes. "I'll be fine."

"'Cause the last thing we need right now is the town's history teacher tearing into necks and those long ago animal attacks suddenly making a little more sense,"

"You mean your animal attacks,"

"My fangs, your fangs, we're all just the same, Ric."

"If I recall correctly..." Alaric said. "Our fangs are very different."

"Hm," Damon eyed him. "Not many people would be that observant while I was puncturing their lung with their own weapon. Good on you, Teacher!" he clapped the vampire on the shoulder. "Anyway, the Council won't much care whose fangs are better just the fact that we have them at all. So, keep 'em in your mouth, huh? And if you do mess up, it'll give you a chance to practice your compulsion. I should be back before we get any news, but if-"

"I'll call you," Alaric assured him, "He's going to be alright, Damon. It's a fever, people get them all the time."

Damon narrowed his eyes. "I already know that. You don't have to tell me that. I was there, every time; telling him stories, mopping his forehead with a cool cloth, holding him as he was wracked with fever dreams, rubbing his back as he threw-up, feeding him when he couldn't even hold the spoon he was shivering and shaking so bad, singing him to sleep. I was the one there when he cried out for comfort." He stepped into Alaric's space. "So I can promise you, that is the only bonding moment we are ever going to have over Stefan's death."

"Damn right it is."

"Good. Because you're not a useless human now, Teacher," Damon jabbed his chest with enough force to bruise the vampire, "You're a top class predatory species now; all senses magically enhanced, practically invulnerable. So you protect Stefan's now fragile human life with your practically immortal one, sacrificing your undead one if need be or it will be your heart I'll be ripping out while Bonnie pins you to the wall with magic." He growled lowly.

"If that ever happened," Alaric told him sincerely, "I would let you."

"Good." Damon stepped back, dusting his hands and his expression turning back it usual, smirky, unaffected one, even if Alaric was able to detect the shadow of worry in his blue eyes and the tautness to his lines that would be unnoticeable except for a select few that encompassed not even a handful of people on the planet.

Alaric held out the leather jacket to the vampire, who shrugged it on; by the time they'd made it to the hospital, not even the comfort of his big brother's scent or Alaric cool strokes across his blazing skin could prevent Stefan from the tossing and incoherent mumbles and moans.

"I expect my brother's friend-zone harem to arrive shortly, so good luck with that." Damon told him in parting, grabbing Stefan's blanket tucked under the bampi's arm.

Alaric watched his back as he exited through the double, automatic glass doors. As they closed, he sighed and sat back down in his chair in the waiting room. It was in its own little pocket of loneliness for the moment, away from the inhabitants of the others that lined the waiting room with their various ailments, waiting impatiently for their name to be called.

Now that he wasn't concentrating all his attention and effort on tuning his new high-def vamp-hearing on Damon's conversation at the nurse's desk and filtering out all the other unwanted audio—the still not even a day old vampire was left to acutely realize just how many of the waiting peoples' injuries and ailments included bleeding.

That hole in Alaric's stomach suddenly felt like it was starting to widen, the lining of his stomach stripped away with a pressurized air stream and the sweet fragrance of blood tickled the back of his throat with such a desperate thirst. He swallowed and it felt like he was swallowing desert, the walls of his throat scraping against each other like sandpaper.

He tried to calm, focus. He could do this, just supplement the urge with something else. Control. It was like resisting the urge to scratch chicken pox when he was a kid with next to zero self-control, but this time, scratching meant tearing into people's necks with glorious satisfaction and drinking from blood bags was like bathing in calamine lotion.

For Stefan, being a former Ripper, he must have had this craving a million fold. Not being a Ripper, Alaric should be able to do this. He was an adult, that's what being an adult was. Control. Resistance-

The automatic doors rushed open and suddenly there was a flurry of movement and commotion as two guys came in, shouting for help, hauling another barely conscious body between them. There was blood on them, a sharp freshness, saliva inducing aroma—the source, the senseless man's leg, pant leg torn, a sweater haphazardly tied around his thigh, saturated in blood. What seemed like a gaggle of nurses and doctors in pink scrubs and blue scrubs and white coats rushed in with a wheelchair and quickly, efficiently transferred the new emergency patient into it. A nurse stayed to have the man's friend give all the much needed details and the rest all rushed passed the unknown supernatural being and through the restricted ER doors.

The only thing that stopped Alaric from lunging at the entire group as they rushed by, was the slivers the he dug up painfully under his fingernails from the inhuman grip on the wooden armrests of his waiting chair. His eyes glued instead to the scuffed white large tile squares, the inconsistent trail of blood in a bold, chopped line before him. It was like a bait line, a row of sweet candy trying to lure him in. He felt the tingle around his sockets as his eyes tried to flush in mirrored colour. The bampi hardly even realized that he was sinking lower in his chair, inching forward, mouth agape with hungry fangs.

Alaric bit through his tongue with his unaccustomed fangs in surprise, his own tepid blood filling his parched mouth as the wet, thick threads of a mop swiped through the blood by an efficient orderly, who swiftly carried on away, removing the rest of the traces of blood.

Ric had a moment of pure panic and fled (hardly able to stop his body from reacting in vamp-speed at his horror), bursting in the single unit, unisex, handicap restroom and locked himself inside. He paced, not even realizing it was pitch black in the room, trying to calm his breathing because it was doing nothing but giving him bigger gulps of the delicious scent. He stopped short as he caught his passing reflection in the mirror from the corner of his piercing gaze and stared.

He shivered at his own reflection. He'd never actually seen what he looked like like this, his true-face on complete display before; he'd only felt it. The sharp relief as his fangs escaped his gums; it almost felt like worms crawling under his skin as the veins engorged with blood and rose to the surface, it was like a spike of adrenaline as his eyes flooded with blood, but it didn't hinder his sight, it enhanced it even more than was now the norm. Everything seemed to. It all became crystal clear, like a camera focus snapped into clear sharpness—the true predator of want and the achievement of that one want. Blood. Feed. It was scary and defining to see himself this way, like the last piece clicking into place and clarity showing him reality.

Alaric gripped the edge of the sink, pressing his fingertips harshly against the porcelain, igniting the already sharp pain of the slivers in his fingers, his nostrils flaring and teeth gritted. He never knew splinters could be so painful, but he was a vampire now, and anything wood was going to be a 100,000 fold of painful in comparison to before. Somehow, the pain helped him focus, and with a deep inhale, he straightened and concentrated on the task of picking the slivers out.

As he picked the last one out, he glanced back into the mirror and his face was returned back to normal. He exhaled. He could do this. He needed to be able to do this. And not just for himself, but for Stefan too. He calmly washed his hands, and before he finally exited the bathroom, he squirted some of the hand sanitizer from the dispenser by the door and rubbed it on his upper lip. The scent burned the back of his nose and throat as he breathed, made his blue eyes tear up, but it helped him keep a straight head with all the blood as he returned to the waiting room for news on Stefan's condition—and all the while, started to truly realize that his and Stefan's relationship was once again going to be broadsided by the role reversal of beings.

[...tbc...]

~ The Vampire Diaries ~

Gotta love that brotherly!Damon, but what could he be up to? And uh-oh, what has Alaric gotten into his head now with all these pesky enhanced emotions?

Everyone have a Merry Christmas this weekend!