So I know that this is meant to center around the Damon/Elena pairing, and it does for the most part. I just felt like throuwing this little
tid bit in here, because I always felt like there was more to say between the brothers. Takes place in "The Killer" episode, the cave scene.
Well and Truly His
"Tell me," he growled, becoming desperate, fangs tingling in his teeth snapped dangerously close to Stefan's neck. A tinge of hysteria swept through Damon's eyes, and he tightened his grip, hearing Stefan's glottal choke.
He pushed past the colored blue shirt, desperately seeking leeway. Stefan's skin gave easily enough beneath his fist. He always knew the Bambi diet would be his brother's undoing.
Damon felt the arteries clench around his hand, pulsing angrily, attempting to reject the foreign invader. Blood seeped from the gaping wound he had created. He watched Stefan suck in a gasp between clenched teeth. Good. He'd focus on that. The shuddering body pinned beneath his grip brought him familiarity and a strange sense of comfort. Damon knew death. He knew how its victims ultimately clung pitifully to the finally threads of life before giving in to the hand that drew them into the abyss.
They often welcomed it. The darkness nudged and prodded them, leading them into a velvet wrapped haze where there was no pain or sorrow. Life's trivialities fell away under death's soft caress.
Damon had often felt it, the last whisperings of life flutter away under his hands. The beautiful, frantic pulsing would stutter, and then stop. The warm, steady flow would cease and he would pull away, already lonely.
Stefan was different, of course. For one thing, he would never go willingly into death. Not even with Damon dragging him in. He would never go, not without his brother. He had brought Damon to the hellish world they now inhabited. An unwilling participant, Stefan had forced Damon, unable and unwilling to face it alone
Damon felt it then. Beneath the solid plate of bone that was his brother's sternum. It was there, beating frantically, a delicious fast paced tempo that sang a sweet melody to his ears. He clawed in desperation, needing to put an end to his brother's childish front, eager to hear the heart beat falter, terrified should it stop.
Stefan gasped, clenching frantically at the hand that threatened to tear his heart from his chest. The hand that had that had once fed him, helped him toddle his first steps, and ultimately picked up his broken existence and brought him back from the edge that he had lived on for centuries.
"Klaus will kill anyone who knows," Stefan gasped, panting heavily, sweat beading down his forehead in rivets.
Damon's hand clenched over his heart. "It has to be good, he rasped. "Now spill it!"
Stefan said nothing, and Damon was left with the violent shuttering of his brother's body.
"Spill it!" Damon's eyes flashed, fear and desperation bubbling hot in his throat. His fangs slipped from his gums in a brief flash of pain. Blue eyes seeped red as veins danced across his cheeks. He pressed the needle points to the fluttering pulse on Stefan's neck.
He felt his brother stiffen under his hand, and then Damon was palming Stefan's neck, smoothing over the pale white column of his throat. He turned him, exposing the vulnerable swell of the jugular vein.
He would not let Stefan play the martyr for Klaus or anyone else. His brother would remain his until hell came to claim Damon.
"Submit." He hissed, his fangs pricking the skin slightly.
Immediately Stefan went limp, sagging heavily against Damon's shoulder.
Finally!
"There's a cure," Stefan whispered, breathing raggedly into his brother's leather jacket. He no longer fought, but instead let Damon hold him upright. The older brother withdrew his hand from Stefan's chest with an inward sigh of relief. Of course there was a cure. Never mind that they'd been living with each other for over a century now.
Looking back on it now, Stefan had appeared downright defensive when Damon had come melting from the darkness, all heat and spite, tensed, crouched, and ready to pounce, to take what was his.
He had gripped Connor like he was a life line, looking like a guilty child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Only Stefan didn't feel guilty. Not this time.
And his fingers were shining crimson.
Damon couldn't sneak him cookies anymore. Instead he would be forced to rectify his baby brother's mistakes, however noble they might have been.
The elder Salvatore brother snorted. Noble. Stefan may as well have been the poster child for nobility. He was always trying to do the right thing. Then the right thing became something of a hindrance, a gimp. It was Stefan's pitiful crutch that he insisted on dragging throughout his endless existence.
Eventually Stefan's crutch would be what crippled him, Damon realized. Not he, not Elena. It would be his failure to leave things as they were. Mistakes always made in good intentions, however frantic and misguided they were. Frozen at seventeen, he was an eternal child.
What he would never understand was that he was Damon's child.
It didn't matter how much Stefan still loved Elena, how desperately he clung to that notion that he could mold her into the girl he had met on the bridge. Hell, it didn't even matter that Damon loved Elena with an all consuming passion that left him dizzy and drugged by his own inability to just walk away from her.
All that mattered in this fleeting moment was that Stefan was Damon's in a way that he was no one else's. Everything else was ash scattering in the wind. He would be left holding the smoldering match, wondering how he managed to burn everything to hell once again.