Awesome prince, get your sleep
Lose your heart in history
Make us laugh or nothing will
I set a fire just to see what it kills
Little Faith – The National
Watching Damon hunt, swooping up rabbits and tossing them back to Stefan as quickly as he caught them was, well, kind of hilarious. Damon was all grace, lithe and fast, but as quickly as he caught up to one creature, he bent over like he was picking up loose coins every time he had to stop and grab another one.
"This is stupid!" Damon finally announced, holding the last rabbit by its leg, already dead. Stefan's usual technique was the same. Don't let the animal suffer, end it before drinking it. Stefan slowed down, coming to a stop still ten feet behind Damon.
"Well, I didn't expect you to do all the work for me," Stefan offered, wiping his mouth on the hem of his sleeve.
"Not that," Damon growled, looking behind him and turning around so quickly Stefan almost missed catching the dead rabbit flying at him. "Rabbits." Damon said slowly, as if his meaning was obvious.
"Uh, yeah. Rabbits." Stefan repeated, swallowing the last few drops and looking around for a good place to casually discard the carcass.
"This is what crazy people do!" Damon exclaimed. He glared through narrow eyes. "It's like filling up on candy when dinner is in the next room."
Stefan sighed. Well, Damon had held out a lot longer than he expected.
"You know what happens when I…"
"No, no, no." Damon interrupted. "Don't give me that shit. You don't have to go Ripper if you drink intentionally instead of being shoved off the wagon. You're learning to control it. You've been sipping on Elena." Stefan caught Damon roll his eyes as he continued. "—you could be drinking the bags downstairs at the very least. Microwaved dinners are still better than random things you find on the ground. Dead animals are everywhere. You could drain a hundred of these things and clearly they won't sate you."
They'd had this argument somewhere around a hundred million times. Stefan wasn't even fazed by Damon's ranting at this point. "Remember? You don't have any say in this." Stefan responded calmly once Damon seemed to run out of breath.
Damon bristled. "Fine. But there's a reason you slip, and I know you could be doing better—we should be doing better by now…" He was clearly disgusted by the whole thing but Stefan wasn't backing down either. Damon's eyes carried a fierce intensity before he took another breath, softening. "Come on. I could actually help you switch over. Teach you to feed in ways that don't make you hate yourself. We can do it right."
It wasn't the first time Damon made this kind of offer, but Stefan couldn't think of a time he'd actually believed his big brother was looking out for him. His brain got stuck on the whole "we" part. Mutual accountability was… different.
Unintentionally letting the new words root into his brain while trying to ignore how comfortable they felt there, Stefan suddenly felt on edge. He took a step back, letting the rabbit finally drop where he stood.
"Tell me what you're plotting." He wasn't sure of what he was accusing Damon, but his brother was rarely this sincere while sober or when neither of their lives were at major risk of ending.
There was a near-imperceptible sag in Damon shoulders. They'd rehearsed this fight so many times; Stefan didn't think there could be any more unexplored variables.
His brother looked incredulous for a split second before his face dropped to the annoyance Stefan was more familiar with. "You know what," Damon finally responded, all the attitude wrung out of him, "Screw this. I'm out." He started walking past Stefan back the way they came.
Panic rose up. "Where are you going?" Stefan demanded. He didn't know if this was the version of the fight where they spent the day in their own rooms, or the one where Damon was gone for a year and a half without a trace. He turned and followed.
"I'm going to bed." Damon's eyes fell. He closed the space between them, absentmindedly pulling at the hem of Stefan's sleeve. "The dead animal smell is smothering the scent of everything else that is good and right in the world." He flicked his eyes over Stefan and huffed. "We'll put a pin in this fight, pick at each other's feeding habits another time. Do whatever you got to do." He hesitated as he passed, briefly leaning in closer and stroking a fingertip along Stefan's wrist. "Happy hunting."
The breath against his neck tickled and made Stefan flush. His stomach rolled as he watched Damon disappear.
Stefan needed to clear his head. He rushed the rest of his hunt, not really feeling the hunger anymore, but needing to do something with his hands. He had fed excessively the day before anyway but he was burning through the energy worrying and trying to keep tabs on Damon. He didn't know what it meant that he was content going back home to his brother who would be sleeping in another room while Stefan stayed up waiting for something to happen.
And something would definitely happen. Damon and Elena hadn't been in the same room that long in weeks. There was no way Damon would sleep as easily as he tried to pretend. The way Damon pretended to fit somewhere on both sides of Stefan's brand of normal. He brought his fingertips to his lips. The tingling sensation hadn't quite dissipated since the night before. Maybe Stefan was being played, but what the game was, he still couldn't figure out. He wasn't stupid enough to think Damon was actually being genuine.
In their entire sordid history, Damon rarely reciprocated Stefan's wish for them to find some kind of amity. Even in those rare times, Damon thought they got along better when they were apart. But an idea had been there before. Damon had once been everything to him. The one person he thought he could keep in the After. His childish optimism of convincing his big brother to turn with him, so they could experience eternity together getting smashed to pieces once Damon promised him it wouldn't be that easy.
That barrier seemed different since this last time Damon came back to him. Stefan saw the cracks like he was coming at them from the wrong side. Like light shining through, not escaping. If Damon hating him didn't build it, then Stefan was the one putting a wall up to separate the normal life he worked so hard to manufacture from the one he always had with his brother.
