What was the point in sleeping now? It wasn't as if either of them would have been able to get any rest if they tried. There were some rare moments -moments like these—where, sure, finally closing your eyes sounded great, but falling asleep wasn't even an option. The seconds that ticked by felt like their own eternity, but passed all too quickly. They stretched and twisted around each other until a second seemed like an hour and an hour seemed like a second. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they were so exhausted, but that was half of the magic. In this sated, ethereal state of being and not being, nothing really mattered all too much, nothing except for the feel of his arms around her waist and her head on his chest. Yes, in times like these, the hours passed too quickly and the seconds were a second too long.
After what felt like a pleasant forever, Elena shifted a bit in Stefan's embrace, emitting a small, quiet sigh. "Stefan," she said contently.
He let out a quiet groan that made her wonder if he actually had been sleeping, but when his fingers travelled through her hair and he placed a slow, tender kiss on her shoulder, her fear of waking him up was put at ease. "Were you sleeping?"
"Nah," he chuckled. "You weren't, were you?" She could feel the smile on his lips against the exposed skin of her shoulder, which made her grin as well. Stefan really did not smile enough, and when he did, it was contagious. Surely, if Stefan Salvatore was happy about something, the rest of America should have been happy too.
"No," she promised, blindly reaching around in the darkness for his hand. When she found it, she entwined her fingers between his and swore to herself that she'd never let go. "Hey, Stefan?"
"Hm?"
"Do you think you'll ever get your memories back? The ones you want, I mean. The ones of us. When we met, our first kiss..."
He exhaled heavily and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Who said I wanted those?"
She chuckled and nuzzled more deeply into his chest. "I'm being serious."
"I know you are," he breathed out, his eyes falling on the ceiling. "I don't know, Elena," he replied truthfully. "It scares me sometimes."
That confused her. Puzzled, Elena flipped over, one arm on his chest, the other resting on the mattress, so that she could look into his eyes as best she could despite the darkness; maybe he'd be able to feel her gaze on him. "It scares you?"
She could feel his head fall back onto the pillows. "I don't know," he huffed. "It's just so unknown. What if I meet the old Stefan and I don't like him very much?"
Elena laughed, shaking her head. "I think you two will get along just fine."
"Elena," he warned. "Now I'm the one being serious."
She laughed. "Look, I can promise you that the person you are now and the Stefan I know—knew… you're not that different."
"Do you miss him?"
"What?"
"The old Stefan. Do you miss him?" To anyone else, this would have seemed like a strange attempt to start a fight, but not to Stefan and Elena. While his hand was in her hair and the other was clasped between her fingertips, no question seemed to be too difficult to answer. Stefan's voice was so soft, and his breath was steady, and Elena knew exactly what he was thinking.
"Stefan," she sighed, "You are the same person, memories or not. I don't love you any less when I compare you to the person you were. We'll create new memories."
"I know that, I know," he swore. "But do you miss him-me?"
Elena closed her eyes. "Yes," she finally got out. "If there's one thing… I wish you had an idea of how much I love you because really, it's beyond words. God, it just kills me to think that you'll always remember falling in love with me again, but there's a chance that you'll never know what it felt like when I was falling with you."
He swallowed, his heart feeling heavy as she spoke, her pain apparent through every cracking word. "I know how much you love me," he assured her. "And I know what it feels like to have you falling beside me. Remember when we jumped off that cliff in Mystic Falls?"
God, how she loved him.
"And," Stefan started, a little more playful this time. "We can always re-create those memories."
"Starting…?" Elena grinned against his chest at the thought of that. Yes, that sounded wonderful. Wonderful. He made her feel giddy and childish, and she loved him for that. She loved the way he brought her to life.
Stefan brought her fingers to his lips. "Now."
Her eyes went wide. "Now?"
"Now."
"Being on this couch sucks."
"Just so you know, Katherine," Damon started, both amused and tense, "I do not support your attendance on this little field trip."
She chuckled. "I knew you were awake. It's five a.m. What are you doing awake?"
"Your complaining has kept me up." Damon rolled his eyes. "If you think for even a second that I'm going to share this bed with you, think again."
With a devilish smirk, Katherine rolled off of the couch and sauntered her way over to the edge of the bed, her hips swaying back and forth as she did so. Damon did not miss a moment of it.
Thank you, vampire vision, he thought to himself, though he hardly even took note of the passing thought. He was a guy, after all. It wasn't as if he actually cared about Katherine. Been there, done that.
"If I remember correctly," she teased slyly, gently tracing her fingertips against the edge of the comforter, well aware of his eyes on her, "We've shared a bed plenty of times. Or have you pulled a Stefan and completely forgotten?" With that, she innocently raised her eyes to meet his, a sure indication that she knew he'd been watching her. But she was far from innocent; they both knew that.
"And if I remember correctly, it wasn't anything too worth remembering." He smirked. Unlike his baby brother, he knew how to give it right back to Katherine. And he could tell by the amused glint in her eyes that she liked that about him.
"Liar."
He simply shrugged.
Although she lacked an invitation, Katherine crawled into bed until she was beside Damon. She was over the covers, he was beneath the covers. There were only about four layers between them, including clothing.
He counted.
The dark street was completely deserted, aside from Stefan and Elena, who were aimlessly meandering through the old New Jersey neighborhood. "What exactly are we looking for?"
"A place with a front porch." She ran ahead of him, standing in the middle of the street, her hand up as she gestured for him to halt. She reminded him of a director trying to find a set location, which made him smile. There Elena stood, in the same wrinkled shirt and sweatpants she'd worn on the road, her hair thoughtlessly pulled back into a messy ponytail, and she looked beautiful to him. Maybe he was a little crazy, but she'd never been so beautiful. After a long moment of pondering, Elena pointed to a house a little ways down the road. "There."
Stefan shook his head, smiled, and followed her as she ran down the road like a child looking for the ice cream truck. He almost lost her a few times, but soon, he found her on the front porch of a house, all the lights out. "We can't just stand on someone's front porch—"
"Shhh," she silenced him with a finger to his lips, giggling. Stefan couldn't help but laugh as well; he liked this side of Elena, he really did. "There's a comet outside," she told him matter-of-factly, pointing somewhere empty in the sky. There was no comet, of course, so he used his imagination.
After taking a few deep breaths, she looked down to the ground then back to his eyes. "The thing is, I got home tonight planning on doing what I always do: write in my diary." She went on like this for a few seconds, trying to say everything word-for-word. Stefan was a bit confused by whatever this memory was supposed to mean, but he didn't really care. He still smiled when she told him about the hideous ceramic mermaid. "And then I realized that I'd just be writing things that I should probably be telling you."
There was a long pause as Elena looked at him expectantly, and he froze, feeling his heart freeze over. Had she expected him to remember what he'd said here? Panicked, Stefan looked around, trying to think of the one thing Stefan 1.0 would have said. Would he have given her some witty, poetic response about how he journaled too? Did he hold her hand at this moment and tell her that she looked beautiful? Did he say nothing?
A little smile appearing on her face, Elena reached into her pocket and pulled out a little, crumpled up piece of paper and a pen. Hurriedly, she scribbled a few words onto the paper and handed it to him. Stefan read them over quickly, and the simplicity of them made him want to crawl into a hole. How on earth had he not thought of that. "Oh." She laughed at him when he stumbled over the words. "What would you write?"
Elena smiled and gave him a little wink to signal that he was doing fine. And then, she got extremely serious again, which in itself, Stefan found very adorable. But he took her seriously too. "I would write… Dear Diary, today I convinced myself it was okay to give up. Don't take risks. Stick with the status quo. No drama. Now is just not the time. But my reasons aren't reasons, they're excuses. All I'm doing is hiding from the truth, and the truth is, I'm scared, Stefan." And right there, that was when he fell in love with her even more. These words, these new, foreign words revealed a completely new, beautiful layer to his beautiful, layered Elena. She was flawed, she really was, and he loved the way these words portrayed that. She was a beautiful speaker, his Elena. "I'm scared that if I let myself be happy for even one moment that the world is just gonna come crashing down, and I don't know if I can survive that."
He had no idea how she had remembered every word; Elena never would tell him that those were words she'd never forget. Before she had gone to his house that night, she'd rehearsed them over and over again.
Then, Elena took the piece of paper from him and scribbled a new sentence on there. Stefan grabbed it and with trembling fingers, read it aloud, "Do you want to know… what I would write?"
Elena smiled again and took the paper to write the next part of his speech, but Stefan told her not to. The words were on the tip of his tongue. He knew those words, knew them like he knew the back of his hand, or even better, like he knew the back of her hand. He furrowed his brows and thought for a few seconds until the words escaped his lips, "I met a girl, we talked, it was epic. But then the sun came up and reality set in." He sounded unsure and positive at the same time, and he could tell by the elated look in Elena's eyes that he was right. Oh, how he wanted to preserve that look forever. It did wild things to him. "All this is reality. Right here."
With that elated look still present in her eyes, Elena pulled Stefan closer to her and rested her forehead against his. He could feel her breath against his lips as she released a shaky exhale; maybe she was crying, he couldn't quite tell. "God, I love you," she muttered. Maybe she didn't even say them, but he felt the words against his lips, somehow. Then, a little louder, she looked into his eyes and whispered, "Guess what comes next."
For the first time all night, he knew what to do, one hundred percent. With his lips parted and his eyes closed, he leaned his head in until their lips met. And when they did, it was magic. Electricity. A slow, sweet burn that was boiling in his veins. Somehow, it seemed even better than it did when they had kissed before everything nearly fell apart last week. It was just… better. He loved her even more than he had then, and she loved him even more too. Who knew that was possible? The passion was so strong, but they both tried so desperately not to deepen the kiss and preserve the sweetness of the moment, but as the moments swept by and his hands fell on her hips, the sensuality and desperation washed over both of them like a tidal wave, and before he knew what hit him, her body was pressed against his and his skin was flushing hot. She ran her tongue along his bottom lip and when he opened his mouth, he nearly blacked out right then. He didn't know that anything could feel this incredible. There was just something about Elena Gilbert's body… something he couldn't describe. It held a power over him greater than anything he could remember. Maybe it was the way it seemed to fit against his in all the right ways. The way his hands seemed to perfectly fit the curves of her waist. Or maybe it was her vanilla shampoo. It was everything and anything about her that made him both love her and want her all the more.
Suddenly, in the midst of their secret, stolen kisses, a light came on above their heads, snapping them both out of the moment. They both jumped immediately and looked at the door, noticing the way the knob was turning. Frantic and laughing like an idiot, Elena grabbed a dazed Stefan by the hand and pulled him across the lawn, running faster than she ever had in her life. The entire time, they couldn't stop laughing, and she wished to god this would be something neither of them would soon forget. They ran for what felt like miles until their legs were aching and their lungs could no longer hold enough air.
Panting, Elena laughed even louder and said, "That wasn't supposed to happen."
Laughing just as hard, looking so incredibly human and in love, Stefan simply pulled her close and kissed her again, right in the middle of the empty street.
This girl, right here, was the exact reason why Stefan Salvatore had been brought back from the dead. That much he knew.
AN: Ah, two weeks later, and I update. Sorry! Ugh, life. haha
Okay, so that was a lot of fluff, but I think it was well deserved. Stefan and Elena needed a good moment of fluff. I hope I wrote it alright and did this incredible couple some justice. Do you think he'll be able to remember everything eventually? Please leave a review letting me know what you thought of the chapter and with your thoughts in general! Please let me know what you loved, what you hated, and what you want to see! Y'all know what your reviews do for both me and this story- without you, it would not be what it is, and as long as you want me to keep writing, I will keep writing.
What will happen now? How long can Stefan and Elena be happy? What's going on with Katherine and Damon?
Please review! Thanks!
Xoxo
Sara
