A/N: Another update y'all scream! I KNOW. It's crazy. What's going on ...

Haha. I'm just feeling the love so trying to reciprocate :) I'll try to reply to your reviews, but I'm quite busy at work, but as I'm leaving work soon, I'll have more time on my hands.

This fic is growing... I feel I've got so much to write. Lots of you have asked when it will finish... Tbh, I don't know. Damon is being a good boy, letting me write him, so I'm just going with the flow.

To all of you reviewing, alerting and being awesome - thank you! You make me wanna do better. I have my trusted beta helping out of course, but you guys play such a huge part in this fic's progress. I'd also like to thank my 'silent readers' - the ones who reads but can't review. Your support means so much to me!

Since this is fiction, I'll send out a little warning, maybe I should've sooner. I'm trying to add cannon to this story, but there might be segments out of order or not in it at all. Imagine that in a world where Damon would have met Elena first, his actions would have changed the course of a lot of things that happened in the world where Stefan met Elena... The world of fiction - where imagination runs free. Haha.

OK! Enough blabber...

Elena was standing in front of her vanity table brushing her hair just as Damon appeared behind her, gingerly touching her waist. He pressed himself against her and rubbed his nose in her hair, breathing her in. She could smell the sweet trace of bourbon on him, and just as she was about to scold him for drinking during the day, he turned her around, grabbed her face between his hands and kissed her until she had to come back up for air.

'What was that for?' she whispered against his lips and he shrugged his shoulders, smiling one of those lazy smiles that made her head spin.

'Nothing special.'

He proceeded to walk them over to her bed where he laid her down gently, stroking some of her dark strands behind her ears. He caressed her cheek with one of his long, slender fingers and kissed her once again, this time with much more care and less urgency. He just needed to see her, needed to be close to her. Whatever he'd told Stefan, he knew he wasn't quite done with her yet. Lying to his brother came way to easily to him these days, especially when it came to Elena.

'Look', she said, trying to avoid his insisting mouth. 'There's a party on Saturday at Tyler's, and I want you to come.' She smacked him lightly on the shoulder as he groaned against her cheek. 'I'm serious, you've been dodging me for the last few days and now that I've got you here I'm gonna hold you to your promise.'

Damon leaned back and frowned at her, still stroking her hair lightly. 'What promise?'

Elena grinned at him. 'Not to act all tough with your bad boy attitude.'

Damon laughed. 'First of all, I never made such a promise and second, that's my trademark. I've got a rep to protect, you know.'

'Not around me, you don't. So Saturday it is.'

Damon groaned again and rolled off of her. 'Way to kill the mood, Elena. I don't wanna hang around a bunch of teenagers all night.'

Elena slid on top of him, not letting him get her down, now that she had him to herself. She'd missed him and he was playing hard to get. That was usually her game, but she found herself enjoying this push and pull thing that was going on. It was exciting. She rubbed herself against him and she could feel him harden underneath the rough fabric of his jeans.

'But I'm one of those teenagers, and you don't seem to have a problem with me.' She started moving her way down, lifting his shirt up, kissing her way further down the muscles, rippling under his silky smooth skin. He sighed deeply and closed his eyes.

She found the waistband of his jeans and traced a finger just under the lining, until she reached the zipper which she unceremoniously pulled down. She grabbed hold of his dick that was standing in full attention by now and started stroking him slowly but with a firm hand that made his toes curl.

Damon had tried to stay away from Elena for the mere fact that he hadn't wanted to touch her since the night he'd woke up in a cold sweat thinking that he'd raped her and that Katherine had killed her. A flashback of her vulnerable cry and pained eyes reached him and he opened his eyes with a deep intake of breath just as her hot mouth encircled him. He wasn't sure what excited him more, the memory of his dream or what she was doing to him right now, and he wasn't in a mood to find out.

'Elena, your parents…' he tried to stall, but she wasn't buying it. She slid her tongue along his perineum, which elicited another loud moan from him, before she answered.

'My Mom's gone shopping and my Dad's meeting up with your uncle.'

Her words didn't fully register at first since she'd resumed sucking him so hard he thought his balls would disintegrate. But when he did he sat up with a start, pushing her away from him and placing his aching shaft back inside his jeans before Elena had even realized what happened.

'What are you doing? I thought you'd like getting a blowjob.' She raised her brows flirtatiously.

He stared at her as if she was from another planet, then he shook his head.

'You might think that all I want from you is sex, but it's not. I'm a person too, you know.' This self-righteousness didn't sit right with him at all, and in the middle of trying to figure out what Grayson Gilbert wanted with Zach, he couldn't help but thinking that he was once again acting like a complete fucking loon for turning Elena Gilbert down. The thought nearly made him break into a hysterical fit of laughter. But first things first.

'What does your Dad want with my uncle?'

Elena frowned and sat up, straightening her clothes out. She looked faintly annoyed, and under normal circumstances Damon would find that a huge turn-on, but he had to focus. Grayson and Zach meeting could of course mean a million different things – they were both citizens of this town, and they had known each other for years. But Zach Salvatore was known as a recluse, why he would talk to Grayson about anything other than Damon and Stefan was totally beyond him.

'Look, I'll talk to you later, Elena. I need to go.'

The look on Elena's face was part confusion but also part frustration and sadness. Damon ignored the sinking feeling of failure in the pit of his stomach and concentrated on finding out what was going on. If there was a threat against him, he'd make sure to eliminate it before it got to him, that much was certain. He kissed Elena briefly before he left her standing alone in the middle of her room.

Damon went straight back to the boarding house but found it empty. He tried calling Stefan, but only got his voice mail. How much brooding could you do, not having the time to answer a goddamn call?, he thought heatedly as he got in his car and drove back into town. He ended up at The Grill to get a quick drink and a bit of time to sort his head out. There was something going on. He'd lived long enough to trust his instincts, and right now they were on high alert.

He took a sip of whiskey and turned around in the bar stool. He looked at the few customers scattered around the room, until he caught sight of two faces he recognized. Mayor Richard Lockwood and his wife, Carol.

He noticed Mayor Lockwood looking around before leaning in towards his wife. Damon cocked his head to listen in.

'What did Gilbert say? Does he have the compass?'

Carol Lockwood nervously shook a tiny bag of sweetener and poured it in her coffee before replying. 'Miranda told me it's safe for now, and that they'll bring it next time we have a council meeting.'

'Good', Mayor Lockwood said, relaxing a little. 'We still need to get hold of Zach Salvatore. He promised me he could get hold of vervain for us.'

Damon could feel that prickly feeling of unease grow into a full-blown adrenaline surge. He knew it. As soon as he heard Elena say her father's name in the same sentence as his uncle's, he'd just known that this was about vampires. He turned back around to the bar, but continued to listen in on the Lockwood's muted conversation.

'Do we even know how many there are?' Carol Lockwood said, exasperated.

'Well, according to the coroner from the last couple of deaths, we're dealing with one.' He shook his head. 'Something about the wound radius and the jaw pattern.'

Carol Lockwood started saying something else, but the Mayor stopped her by covering her hand with his. 'We need to keep it on the down-low. We can't have the whole town knowing about this. It doesn't know that we know, so we just need to find it before it finds us.'

Damon smirked to himself, sipping his drink. This was the third time he'd heard his uncle's name together with humans knowing about vampires. At least this meant that Gilbert had kept his word, and kept his mouth shut about who the vampire might be. He finished his drink and grabbed his jacket. It was time to have a little talk with good old Uncle Zach.

Stefan knew he had to work fast. He had to find the crystal Damon had been talking about and hand it over to the rightful owners – the Bennett's – before Damon noticed it was gone. He knew there was at least one of them still in town, Sheila Bennett, an old civil rights activist he remembered from the late 1960's. He wasn't sure she'd accept any help or advice from him, but he had to try. He couldn't risk Damon getting Katherine out of the tomb. If Stefan remembered correctly there would be at least twenty-seven vampires in that tomb, if they hadn't succeeded in killing one another. Twenty-seven starving vampires. And he wasn't about to risk this whole town for the sake of Damon's love life.

A shudder went down his spine as he opened the door to Damon's room. He was hardly ever in his brother's room – not that he couldn't enter whenever he wanted to – but he didn't like the room very much. It was sparse. Hardly any personal effects, just some furniture and a huge bathroom adjoining the room. To Stefan that bathroom was a bit too much, but Damon had always had an eye for the garish, and if showing off to him meant having a huge open space bathroom, so be it.

Stefan stood in the middle of the room trying to figure out where Damon would hide the crystal, and what it would look like. He started off with the most obvious hiding places; inside drawers, under the mattress and in the closet. He came up with nothing.

He then proceeded searching the less obvious places; the bathroom, the shower, inside the shower head. He realized he didn't even know the size of the damn thing. He went through the cabinets. Even that silly looking bowl filled with fruity smelling bars of soap (Yea, really. Damon had a girly bowl of colored bars of soap in his bathroom). Stefan shook his head and rolled his eyes while removing the soaps one by one to make sure there wasn't a crystal hidden among them.

Once again he came up empty handed.

He stalked over to the open fire place, but found nothing except soot and an old penny. He was still crouched down next to it when he laid his eyes on the stack of books next to Damon's ridiculously oversized bed. After washing up quickly he went back to have a look. Inside a carved out hole in the middle of an old rendition of 'Gone with the Wind' lay an amber colored crystal. Stefan smiled to himself while pocketing the crystal and made sure everything was back to the way it was when he'd started. He then hurried down the stairs and made a run for Sheila Bennett's house.

'Dad!' Elena exclaimed. 'You told me weeks ago I could go to Tyler's party; I don't understand what's changed all of a sudden.' Her fiery eyes were trained on her father who was sitting behind his desk in the study.

'When I said you could go, I wasn't aware that you'd be out almost every night until the party. So no, this Saturday you're staying in with your family. We've told Jeremy as well. We haven't had family time in god knows how long, so your mother and I decided this Saturday would be perfect. Mostly because we have no other obligations, so we are all free to spend time together.'

Elena let out a groan of frustration. 'What about my obligations to my friends? I promised Bonnie I would go to the party.'

Grayson Gilbert smiled at her. 'I'm sure Bonnie will understand, since she's one of the people that have been, what is the term these days… hogging your time? And Caroline will be there as well, won't she keeping Bonnie company?'

'Dad, come on. It's only a week left of school and these parties are part of the high school experience, you've told me I should enjoy them for as long as I can.' Elena tried another tactic to get her way. She'd been longing for this party for weeks, especially now that Damon was going to show, making her look like high school royalty.

'Elena', her father said, his voice stern. 'This discussion is finished. I've said no already. You're only sixteen, and you can't go to every party there is.' His tone softened when he took in her disappointed face. 'There is still one week left of school, and even if most grades are already set, there is still one last final to go. Spend this weekend studying for it and spend some time with your family. You'll have all summer to go to parties and hang out with friends.'

'You don't understand, I have a date this Saturday. It's important.'

Elena was too upset to notice her father stiffen in his seat. 'I thought you said you were going with Bonnie.'

'Yea, well, I'm going to the party with Damon, but I've promised Bonnie to keep her company, since she doesn't have a date.'

Grayson got out of his chair, walked up to Elena and put his hands on her shoulders. 'I think you and Damon are spending and awful lot of time together, and I'm thinking maybe you're getting serious too soon. I don't want you to get sucked into something that you're too young to handle right now. He's older than you…'

Elena interrupted him. 'I've already had this conversation with Mom. I'm not too young and he's not too old and we're seeing each other so you're just going to have to accept that.' She took a step back from her father and crossed her arms in front of her. 'I need to go to that party on Saturday, Dad.'

Grayson straightened his back and looked straight at his stubborn daughter. 'And I've told you that you can't. No 'but's' Elena, you're not going.'

'Fine', she hissed and stormed out of the room. Grayson sat back down in his chair. Being a father to a teenage daughter was hard enough on a regular basis. Being the father of Elena Gilbert could be even worse. She'd inherited her mother's stubborn streak. He smiled remembering what he and Miranda had gone through in their youth to be able to see each other. He was glad that Elena had more respect for her parents to try and do anything like they had done.

After knocking on Sheila Bennett's front door, Stefan took a step back and waited. He wasn't sure she would help him, but he had to try. As it was now, there was a chance that he could stay in this town for at least a few years, until people started noticing he wasn't getting any older and he had to move on, but if Damon managed to get Katherine out of that tomb, there wasn't a chance in hell that would happen. He knew Katherine. She plotted and schemed, and she hated the humans of Mystic Falls. He doubted that would have changed, especially after 145 years stuck in an underground prison.

Sheila Bennett opened the door carefully. She'd known even before she'd put her hand on the door knob that there was a vampire outside.

'Can I help you?' she said quietly to the young man standing on her porch. He gave her a small smile as he stretched his hand out to her.

'I'm Stefan Salvatore, Ms. Bennett.'

'I know who you are', she replied, taking his hand, but let it go just as quickly. 'What I'd like to know is what you're doing here.'

'If you know who I am, I'm pretty sure you know what I am as well. Am I correct about that assumption? Stefan said, his features serious, hands in his pockets.

Sheila Bennett nodded and gave him a grim smile. 'Yes, I do, and I hope that also means you understand why I'm not going to invite you in.'

Stefan looked down on his feet, before he smiled and nodded back. 'I understand.'

'So', Sheila prodded. 'I doubt you're here to just stand around shuffling your feet.'

'No, I'm here to bring back something that I think might belong to your family. Something that I think would be best to return to you so it won't end up in the wrong hands.'

'You mean, in the hands of your brother?' Sheila smiled widely at the stunned look on Stefan's face. 'Don't look so surprised. I'm a witch, of course I know when a vampire is back in town.'

'Right, of course', Stefan replied and reached into his jacket pocket. 'Here. This is a crystal that used to belong to…'

Sheila finished the sentence for him. '…Emily Bennett. I know, I've seen it before.' She looked up at Stefan. 'How did you come to find it?'

Stefan hesitated, but knew he had to tell her the truth, or else she wouldn't help him. 'From my brother, Damon. Somehow he got Emily to cast a spell by using this crystal and the comet that was passing at the time, to keep someone safe until he could get her back again. Someone that was very special to him. She is also a vampire and Emily used to be her hand maiden.'

'I'm guessing this someone used to be very special to you too.' Sheila said, her dark eyes scanning Stefan's face. 'And you want me to help bring her back?'

Stefan shook his head vehemently. 'No, quite the opposite. She's a powerful vampire and bringing her back would be fatal to this whole community.' Stefan took a step closer to the entrance and met Sheila's eyes squarely. 'I want you to make sure that Katherine will never be able to get out from where she's being kept. Ever. Not only is she dangerous. She was trapped inside a tomb under the old church ruins together with twenty six other vampires. Freeing her would probably mean that the others would be freed as well.'

Sheila casually looked around before she held her hand out so Stefan could place the crystal in her hand. 'I'll see what I can do.' She hesitated before she started closing the door. 'You made the right decision coming here.'

Stefan nodded once before he turned around and walked away.

It was getting dark outside as Zach stepped into the library. He wasn't used to leaving the large estate he was living in, and it took a lot out of him every time he decided to venture outside its boundaries.

He wished he could afford to indulge in a large whiskey on the rocks, one of his favorite guilty pleasures. But with Damon and Stefan around he was too afraid to let his guard down. Too afraid to relax.

Damon had always seemed to enjoy torturing him and making his life miserable. Ever since he was a teenager and he had found out what those two distant uncles had really been, there hadn't been a moment of peace whenever Uncle Damon decided to visit. This time was no exception. Except, this time, Damon had made the mistake of setting his eyes on the daughter of one of the members of the Founder's Council. The Founder's Council was to the town known as a group of people from the founding families of Mystic Falls who kept the memory of the town alive, kept it growing and evolving. But behind closed doors, the Founder's Council kept the town safe from evil, and had done so for a very long time. From a time where there were supernatural creatures living among them, feeding on them, killing them.

To the rest of the founding families it mostly had to do with myth and legends. But to some of them, it was real and terrifying. The only reason Zach was guarding the well-kept secret of his own family was the fact that he didn't know what would happen to him if anyone found out. But when Damon turned up this time, and seemed intent on staying, Zach had known he had to tell someone.

Zach had always suspected that there wasn't much he could do if Damon decided he wanted him dead, so in telling Grayson Gilbert about his 'nephew's' true nature, he'd wanted to make sure someone would be able to get his killer. Zach doubted Stefan would ever hurt him, but he'd heard about the younger brother's past. He knew that none of them could be fully trusted, not even Stefan.

So when Grayson had showed up, telling him that Damon had gotten his hands on his daughter, they were trying to conjure up a plan to get rid of him once and for all. Zach had wanted the rest of the council to know, but Grayson was afraid. He said that Damon was far too cunning. That Damon had found out truths about the Gilberts that Grayson had hidden and almost forgotten about himself. So no, Elena's life was at stake, they couldn't tell the council, not until Damon was caught and staked.

He was so caught up in his own thoughts he didn't hear the front door open and close behind him. He was too preoccupied trying to figure out how to render Damon Salvatore helpless that he never noticed the shadow move past him in lightning speed. Not until he was shoved against the far wall, choking from being lifted by his throat, staring straight into Damon's vividly blue eyes, did he understand how vulnerable he truly was.

'I've been ingesting vervain for sixteen years', he managed to choke out. Damon smirked at him, tightening his grip around Zach's neck.

'Yea, about that…' Damon said very slowly, which was also the last thing Zach Salvatore heard before his world turned black.

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