A/N This was a really hard chapter to write. A lot of this is going to be hard to write, actually, because this story is (loosely) based on events that happened to me in my late teens and early twenties. There might be lags between updates, here and there, when I'm struggling with working through some of the nastier stuff. I want to sincerely thank everyone who takes the time to read my little story. An extra special thanks to those who review/fave/follow. I can't thank you enough!
*edit* I changed the summary. If you noticed the difference, let me know if the new one sucks even more than the old one.
CHAPTER 4
Damon and I both froze. The sound of Stefan's voice sobered me up immediately and I took a step away from Damon's supportive arms, still swaying slightly, but able to stand on my own. Gods, this must look really bad. How am I going to explain this? "Stefan, I-"
"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO HER?!" Stefan's savage shout was aimed at Damon, completely ignoring me. Damon, who had been staring at Stefan with a blank expression, just rolled his eyes. "What? Nothing to say?" asked Stefan, rhetorically.
"Oh, I have plenty to say, Stefan. I just don't think you would actually hear any of it." Damon replied in his typically snarky tone. Stefan stood up from his spot on the stairs and stalked over to Damon, stopping with his face only inches from his brother's.
"History will NOT. Be repeating itself. Got it?" Stefan yelled, punctuating the sentence with his finger, stabbing Damon in the shoulder. Damon just stood there and took it, a look on his face that seemed to say, 'are you done?', while he practically yawned in Stefan's face.
"You're right, brother, it won't," he replied, when Stefan was finished with his little display. "Because I actually like Elena," my heart swelled a little, "and she's not in love with me, unlike your precious Katherine," he all but spat the name. My heart sunk a little, for some strange reason.
"MOTHERFUCKER!" Stefan launched himself at Damon, grabbed him by the throat and spun them around so that Damon's back was to the brick of my building, looking like he was about to slam him into it. That was enough for me.
"STEFAN!" I roared. Both boys stopped and stared at me. Damon looked impressed that I achieved so much volume, whereas Stefan looked murderous.
"Oh, that's just fucking perfect, isn't it?" Stefan asked, cooly, shaking his head and releasing his brother from his clutches. "You're defending him? Has he already fucked you?"
"Jesus, Stef, listen to yourself."
"No, Stefan, it wasn't like that," came our simultaneous replies.
"I just... I can't do this again," was the last thing I heard before Stefan stormed away, leaving Damon and I standing still, stunned on the sidewalk.
"Are you ok?" I asked, weakly, once I had processed what just happened.
"Fine. You?"
"Yeah. I just don't know what came over him."
"He thinks the worst of people, sometimes. You did nothing wrong, Elena. Don't let it get to you." I couldn't help the niggling in the back of my mind, telling me that I had, in fact, done something wrong, albeit small. When I said nothing he continued, "He'll get over it and come around. And, if he doesn't, you still have the bigger, better Salvatore to count as an ally." There was that winning smirk again. I managed a tiny, thin-lipped smile. "I'll see ya 'round, Gilbert." He gave me a one-armed hug that was way too short and a torturously brief kiss on the forehead before he started to walk away. "Call or text me whenever!" He shouted behind him, as an afterthought.
4:45 am. Four fucking forty fucking five in the fucking morning. Who DARES to knock on my door at four fucking forty five in the fucking morning? I'll kill them. I mean, I was night owl, but this was pushing it. Especially because of the night I had had with Damon and the Stefan repercussions, I wasn't in the mood, and that's putting it lightly. Imagine my surprise when I saw one of the reasons for my shitty night through my peephole. I opened the door, annoyed. "What are you doing here, Stefan?" He brushed past me, like he fucking owned the place. I was on my last nerve. It's way too early for this shit.
"I needed to apologize and clear some things up," he replied, with a wave of his left hand. He was drunk. I could smell it, all peat and malt, as much as I could see it, in his bloodshot eyes, and hear it, in his slightly increased volume. He wasn't over the edge yet, though. He was present, but not entirely himself.
"Now? Do we have to do this-"
"What happened tonight?" He interrupted. With a deep sigh, realizing there was nothing I could do to forestall the inevitable, I answered his question with one of my own.
"Whad'ya wanna know?"
"What were you doing with Damon? I thought you hated him?"
"I did," I asserted. "But, well... He came into the bar tonight, didn't realize I worked there." Stefan gave an incredulous huff. "We talked and got to drinking after my shift. He's really not as bad as I thought, or you make him out to be. We got along. Had fun. I like him, Stef. I know, I'm surprised, too. But I do. He's kinda good shit," I said, with a breathy little laugh. He said nothing, so I continued. "He told me a little about Katherine." He stiffened. "He said nothing happened between the two of them. I don't think he was lying."
"He's playing you, Elena. It's just a nice act. It's not real. He has this burning desire to destroy any piece of happiness I find, so he's trying to use you against me. Look at how I found you two. Looked pretty cozy. You really think he wouldn't've tried to sleep with you if I wasn't there? I know my brother. That was his whole plan."
I knew Stefan was wrong. I knew it down to my core. I wanted so badly for him to see the truth of the situation but I had no idea how to illuminate it for him. I certainly wasn't going to divulge everything that happened; especially not the almost-kiss. The idea that Stefan truly believed that Damon's befriending of me was part of some sort of nefarious plot to destroy Stefan's life was offensive, on so many levels. I had no idea what to say, I was at a complete loss (probably due to that late hour- thanks a lot Stef) so I just settled on, "I think you're wrong, love."
"I don't want you to see Damon anymore," he blurted, in a tone I did not appreciate.
"Stefan, you can't expect me to accept that. I don't take orders from you, or anyone, for that matter. You can't tell me who I can and cannot see. I love you and you know that, so even if what you're saying was true, which it isn't, you should trust that I wouldn't let that happen, because I love YOU. I'm with YOU."
A feral growl escaped Stefan's lips and before I knew it I was pinned against the wall, being attacked with a brutal, bruising kiss. It was almost painful. What the fuck has gotten into him? I wondered. I was kissing him back, a little, but trying to slow him down at the same time. Eventually I put my hands on his chest and pushed away just enough that I could look at him.
"Stefan, I'm not exactly in the mood right now."
"Shut up," he barked. That shocked me into silence. I had never seen Stefan like this before. Suddenly, he grabbed my shoulders in a punishing grip and started pushing me backwards towards my bed (which was just a mattress on the floor in the corner) with an evil, mischievous, menacing expression on his face. That face, alone, scared the fucking shit out of me. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why I let what happened next happen. Maybe I just thought that he needed it, that I had hurt him and this would make him feel better, that I was helping him. Maybe I was just so shocked that my brain shut down.
He shoved me down onto the bed and collapsed on top of me, violently ripping open the robe I was wearing (the ONLY thing I was wearing) and hastily shoving his jeans down to his knees. He grabbed my right breast with his left hand, squeezing painfully, using his right to position himself at my entrance. He looked into my eyes reproachfully and asserted, with a sneer, "You're MINE." It wasn't a question, but still I found myself answering him.
"I'm yours," I muttered, sheepishly. I had never heard my voice so weak, so demure, so damaged. At my words, Stefan smirked cruelly and slammed into me. No foreplay, no lubrication, it fucking hurt. I screamed, "FUCK! Stefan, that fucking HURT!"
"You fucking love it," he replied. He started thrusting, hard and fast and unapologetic. His right hand moved to my shoulder where he pinned me down at the same time as he pulled me to meet his vicious thrusts. His left hand greedily grasped and groped everywhere he could reach. The sounds of his animalistic grunts and the slapping of flesh on flesh filled the apartment.
I couldn't believe he was acting this way. I felt completely powerless; something that I was NOT fond of, so I just laid there limply and took it, staring at the ceiling, hoping it would be over soon. The word 'rape' kept popping into my mind, but that couldn't possibly be what was happening, right? I mean Stefan was my boyfriend. We had consensual sex all the time, so this couldn't be rape. Right?
The burning and chaffing of my dry sex was starting to get worse and I was fighting back tears of pain (there was NO WAY I was letting him see me cry) when Stefan, all of a sudden, clamped both his hands down on my hips and started jackhammering into me impossibly fast and hard, before loudly shouting out his climax and collapsing on top of me. His sticky, sweat drenched skin on mine made me feel sick, and his rapid heart beat on my ribcage made me feel like my own was about to beat out of my chest.
"I love you, 'Lena. You know that, right?" Stefan asked as he clumsily rolled off me and settled to my side. I hesitated for a long few moments, unsure how to answer that, unsure how I was feeling. He's just drunk, I reasoned.
"I know. I love you too," came my eventual reply, but Stefan was already lightly snoring beside me. I knew there was no way in hell I was getting to sleep any time soon so I made my way to the kitchen, grabbed my bottle of Basil Hayden from the cabinet above the sink and downed two thirds of it before finally crawling back into bed and passing out for the night. I had dreams of a musical laugh and ice-blue eyes.
When I woke up Stefan was gone, thankfully. I didn't have to work until seven that night so I decided I was in dire need of some time with my girls. They could help me sort through this situation. I texted them both,
-4 pm, the Grill-
I made myself busy with laundry while I waited for them to get off school.
School. Being a teenager. There was a part of me that missed those days. I missed the version of me that was blissfully unaware of the lies and omissions of truth and betrayal. My 'parents' had no idea how to deal with emotions. I was pretty sure that, being so scientifically minded, they'd never even had one, between the two of them. I had always been frustrated with the lack of emotional support that I received from them, but after finding out about my true lineage, and their complete lack of sympathy, I had just had enough. I had to cut ties with them and do my own thing. Do I regret dropping out of school? Not really. I wasn't suited for contemporary education anyway. Don't get me wrong, my grades were outstanding, I'm no dummy, but I never really fit into the system. I found that the things they deemed important enough to teach us were uninteresting, at best. My interests were more subversive, and a career in the fields that held my interest was basically non-existent. So, I was a 17 year old drop-out bartender, living in a piece of shit apartment with hardly any furniture and plans to travel the world exhaustively, on as little coin as possible, and worry about later, well... later. Was that smart? Depends who you ask.
When the girls arrived I was still lost in thought, thinking about what might've been, what could've been, how my life turned out like this, how I was going to explain last night... In short, I was having a mini existential crisis. When I saw their faces, though, I knew one thing was for sure. They would have my back and help me sort through the shit storm that was raging inside my skull. I recounted the entire night to them. Damon's surprise appearance, our drunken shenanigans, Stefan finding us and going bat-shit and his subsequent drunken visit that morning, only leaving out some of the more graphic details of Stefan's... Physical reaction.
"What an asshole," Caroline muttered, finally breaking the long, stunned silence that followed the end of my story. Bonnie nodded in agreement.
"I know. But he was just upset. He's really got it in his head that Damon is out to destroy his life."
"What? Elena, I'm talking about Damon. You said it yourself. The man is a chauvinistic, womanizing man-whore and Stefan's right. He's trying to play you. It's obvious."
For the first time, I felt the icy fingers of doubt wrap around my heart and I wondered if it could be true. Was it all a lie? Was he using me to get back at his little brother? I shook my head to dismiss the thought because there was no way. It couldn't be true. What transpired between us was too real, too organic, to be fabricated. You just can't make that shit up.
"Well," Caroline said with a sigh. "Did you at least have hot make-up sex? That counts for something."
"Yeah, about that..." I hesitated. I wanted to tell them what Stefan was really like that night but something was stopping me. I was actually embarrassed. I was ashamed of the fact that I had let him use my body to assert his dominance. It was just so unlike me that I couldn't bring myself to tell them. Gods, what the fuck happened to my back bone? I thought. "It was pretty intense." It wasn't a lie, but neither was it the whole truth. I was painting a black scene with bright colors to dress up the dark truth and I had no idea why I was doing it. Bonnie and Caroline both giggled (as I inwardly cringed). Bonnie reached her hand over the table to grasp mine and said,
"It'll blow over, 'Len. Just stay away from that douchebag brother and I'm sure everything will work out just fine."
That's just the problem, I thought. How do I stay away from him?
A/N I really hope that I conveyed the complicated emotions warring in Elena's head. It's a hard thing to describe. The helplessness, the confusion, the denial. Let me know what you think with a review. I would be forever grateful! As always, thanks for reading.
