Elena liked watching them, the little flecks of gold in the darkening sky. The fireflies. They were hovering Christmas lights in the trees. They were smoldering embers between the green leaves. They had all the beauty of flames, but they never burned anything down. They looked like they could cause pain, cause hurt, but it was an illusion. The tiny insect that landed on her arm didn't harm her. It just tickled ever so slightly as it scurried down from her shoulder to her elbow and flew off.
"Any luck?" Stefan approached her, three fireflies encircling each other within the confines of the glass jar in his hands.
"Not so much." Elena held out her empty jar, the lid suspended in her other hand. "I'm not trying very hard to catch any, though."
The set of his mouth stiffened, and he eyed her warily. "Too much on your mind?"
There could be, should be maybe, too much on Elena's mind. Ever since she found out Stefan was a vampire, that vampires were real and terrorizing Mystic Falls, she had been completely swamped by super serious problems. Life and death, death and life. She'd seen Vicki turn into a vampire and almost been killed by her and been saved by Stefan. She'd met a 350-year-old who was apparently Stefan's oldest and best friend, and she'd died too. And humans were dropping dead left and right. Animal attacks, the newscasters were saying.
Elena would never be able to listen the news without a huge dose of skepticism ever again. She would always be questioning what was real, what wasn't real. What parts of her world were being silently rearranged by supernatural forces.
But—no. She wasn't thinking about any of that at the moment. At least, she hadn't been before Stefan asked.
"I was thinking about how beautiful the fireflies look in the trees. They're a lot prettier out in the open than they would be in this jar. And I was thinking about you."
He glanced at the tree beside her. "What about me?"
"The fireflies. They look like they could burn this tree down, but they don't. They just hover around, glowing and flying. Like you, Stefan. After everything you told me, after everything I've seen, I think I've got a pretty good idea of how destructive you could be—if you wanted to be. But that's the thing. You don't. Through all the horrible things that have happened, you only ever try to help."
Stefan shook his head. He looked so handsome in the dim dusk. The darkening sky accentuated the lines of his face, the hollows of his cheeks and full lips. A firefly lit close to his head as it whizzed across the field, dousing the ends of his disheveled hair in a momentary gold glow.
Elena stepped closer to him. She put her lid on her jar and took his hand in hers.
He took a breath. Released her hand and stepped back. "Yeah, well. My attempts to help haven't been very successful."
"But you tried, Stefan. That's what matters to me."
"Elena—"
She moved closer to him again. This time, she put her hand on the side of his face. His skin felt… almost like human's. It was just barely chilly, like her face might feel if she'd been standing outside on a windy fall day. She skimmed her knuckles down the length of his cheek.
His lips parted, and he sighed, eyes squeezing shut for an instant as if to savor the sensation.
"Did you have some of the coffee Caroline's handing out?"
Stefan refocused on her, eyes opening and then going wide. "I did, actually. Why? Is my breath…?"
He tried to shuffle back again.
Elena followed. "No, it's fine. Just… your skin. It feels warm. I… remembered you saying something about caffeine helping vampires to mimic human temperatures."
"At least someone was paying attention." He frowned, probably thinking about Vicki and what he could have done differently.
"Are your lips as warm as your face right now?"
Stefan looked at Elena, and only at Elena, his gaze clearing at once. It was nice to see him emerge from the life and death concerns for a moment as well. It was nice to pull him out of the haunted shadows and into the silly autumn evening with her.
"They should be."
Elena tilted her face up. "Can I feel?"
He leaned down. His mouth descended on hers, lips hesitant and gentle. His kiss was warm. So warm.
Elena kissed him back. She caressed his face, her heart zinging in her chest. She felt like she was glowing. He made her feel like she was flying. And she knew then and there that it didn't matter that he was vampire—that he was something unknown and apparently powerful and that he craved blood and had been alive for well over a hundred years.
Whatever he was, he was here, and he was good, and he made her feel more alive than she'd ever thought she'd be capable of feeling again after the car accident. After she lost her parents and somehow survived alone.
Stefan broke away when the kiss started to grow more passionate. He pivoted, putting his back to her in one abrupt movement. He sounded a little breathless. "Well?"
"Definitely warm."
Elena thought of the reflection she'd seen in the kitchen window the night he'd come over to make dinner. She wondered if there were veins bulging around his eyes right now—if the eyes themselves had gone red and if his fangs were as pointed and bright as Vicki's had been. The idea didn't frighten her, though. Instead she felt curious. She wanted Stefan to turn back around so she could inspect his appearance for herself, take in the lethal look of him in the same way she had the fireflies in the tree.
He unscrewed the lid on his jar, and the three fireflies he'd managed to catch immediately rose out of the opening, dissipating into the dark.
"You were right." Stefan looked back at her, eyes normal and thankful and brimming with hope. "They are prettier out in the open."
Elena smiled and met his stare, determined not to shy away.
