"I want to feel your wreckage, it's a firestorm
I'm falling like a loaded weapon in your arms
Paranoid it might be reckless, no matter what I say
It's only going to steal your breath and slip away

I don't want to dive in first
You don't want to hear these words
It's only going to make it worse
You don't want to live that curse
You're telling me to keep my hope
Cause you've got a heart of gold . . .

. . . You wear your heart so fearless, it's like it doesn't beat
You push away my demons when they torture me
Don't think that I can fight this pressure pulling me underneath
It's like I've got the whole world tied around my feet."

The next few weeks were paradise. It was as if the supernatural world around us didn't even exist. I felt normal—going to the movies with my boyfriend, laying around on the couch with my siblings and boyfriend while binge watching shows on Netflix . . . sometimes, it was easy to forget that he was a vampire.

Jeremy and Bonnie were starting over. According to Bonnie, they weren't ignoring what had happened, but starting fresh, with the memories of the past put to rest. It had been a long time since I had seen him this happy, and the supernatural world around us being put on hold helped even more.

No one knew how to open the locked coffin, and though it was bothering Bonnie, she was happy, too. Stefan was still hiding out from Klaus, who had actually paid a visit to the empty house where over a hundred witches had been slaughtered, and things between Damon and Elena were getting intense.

She confided in me that she almost kissed him, so of course, when I told her to go for it, it didn't make things any easier for her to deal with. She insisted that it was wrong, but when I asked her why she was letting Stefan, who only cared about revenge at this point, dictate her life, when Damon had been there with her through it all, she had nothing to say.

All I could do was hope for the best. Really, I liked Stefan. He was good for Elena when she needed him, but his love was safe. There was no adventure, no learning and growing. He would always let her make her own choices, but sometimes, Elena didn't know best.

I wanted someone who challenged me, who wasn't afraid to tell me that I was wrong. If all I got was compliancy, where was the growth in that?

That was exactly what I had, too—the man currently underneath me with his fingers so tight around my hip that I was certain it would bruise.

My body clung to him, tightly enough that I could feel each twitch, and my head fell back, the lubricated friction bringing us both closer to the edge.

The only way to keep myself up at this point was to hold onto his shoulder with my one free hand, the other holding one of his hands above his head with our fingers perfectly woven together. My head was falling limp as the weariness of this current relation was quickly catching up to me, the strands of the braid my hair had once been in hanging down as well.

How had we gotten here? This was not what he had come over for.

Oh yeah; yoga. There wasn't as much time to do yoga now that my free time was usually spent with Kol, but it was still necessary to try and keep the curse at bay. If Klaus was around me any period of time without keeping the anger inside, he was sure to figure it out.

He had gotten there faster than I thought he would, and I told him to let me finish what I was doing. Of course he didn't mind, and when I was stretching out in the final position, which just so happened to put my ass straight up in the air . . . one of his hands touched just underneath my ass, and I found myself backing up into his pelvis.

And now we were here, completely naked and in the middle of a half hour long romp. The middle was probably not the right word. It was definitely coming to an end, as the inside of my thighs was almost completely numb. He had dominated for the first big part of it, but I wanted to try to take over, to see how much yoga actually did for me.

It worked wonders, but that didn't mean I could just fuck all day long.

Despite the weariness, my gaze didn't move away from his, which had been locked on my eyes for a good bit now. Staring right into one another's eyes the entire time was impossible, at least without just being down right uncomfortable, but locking gazes close to the end, allowing one another to see us at our most vulnerable, was the most intimate thing I could imagine.

His fingers were like magic as they slid underneath my body, touching just the right place on my sex to push me off the cliff in the best of ways. He would never push if there wasn't water at the bottom, or a parachute on my back, but he loved to push me over, sometimes more than once.

As I freefell off the edge, a mixture of Kol's name and curses spewed out of my lips, igniting a vulnerable fire inside of him.

Maybe it was a thousand years of practice, or maybe it was the Original vampirism, but Kol had the stamina of a professional boxer. He could go and hold out for as long as he needed to, to make sure that I got the most out of every experience.

This time, after pushing me over the edge, he jumped almost right after me, those soft lips parting as his nails dug into the skin of my leg. Had he been a normal human, it would've just stung, but he was an Original vampire. His nails ripped through the flesh with ease, brining blood that didn't just pool to the top. It was running down my leg, gathering at the crease of my knee.

He hadn't even realized yet, as he was just now reaching the end of the journey, but his grip softened, those eyes fluttering closed while an equally euphoric smile presented itself.

"You never get dull, Darcy Gilbert."

With that thought in mind, my fingers moved down to the crease of my knee, wiping a lot of the pooled blood onto my finger. It wasn't a lot, but my finger looked as if I had dunked it into a cup of blood.

His eyes opened just in time to see me touch his lips with my bloodied finger, and the animalistic fervor that began shining in them was hot enough to knock all semblance of air from my body.

Do you know how hard it is to be sexy when you can't breathe? I found out in that moment.

His lips wrapped around my finger, the warmth of his tongue swirling around my finger. I expected the monster to start showing in his eyes, but Kol remained, savoring the taste of me that he was tasting for the second time.

It was hard to forget that he had drank my blood and kept me alive once already, which he declared to be an anomaly in his life. This was a second time, without even the hint of the darkness that might mean death.

"How do I taste?"

A growl began building in his throat, and he was sitting up with his lips against mine, moving with a passion that had become familiar but still just as delightful as the first time.

There was no end in sight to the pleasure. We hadn't exactly fucked non-stop, but we took advantage of any chance we got—just like this moment, when Alaric was staying late at school to grade some papers, when Jeremy was working at the Grill, and Elena was at the Salvatore's, talking to Damon about something Klaus related.

"You taste like heaven and obsession, in a dangerously powerful way."

The pale blue sheets beneath us were in danger, so I had to take the chance I had to get up off the bed, to attempt to clean up the blood before it made a mess all over my room.

He had his own idea to clean it up, grabbing onto my hips before I could make it into the bathroom. All I did was glance back at him before I felt it, the wet warmth of his tongue touching the place on my calf that the blood had gotten down to, sliding sensually up my leg, removing any trace of blood that had been there. All that remained now was the blood currently falling out of the still open wound, but it had slowed down quite a bit, even if the wound was pretty deep.

There was more than just a wet trail where his tongue had touched. What was wet and growing cold on the outside was a burning fire underneath, trailing past where his tongue was currently stopped—the open wound—and towards my dripping center, dripping with both previous encounters and possibilities of a new one.

His tongue suddenly left my skin, his body disappearing from in front of me. My eyes searched the room, and I finally found him, dressed up to his jeans and grabbing his shirt out of the floor at the foot of the bed.

From the way his eyes locked in mine while he attempted to smolder the flame, I realized without anything having to be said that someone was downstairs. If it was just Elena, he wouldn't have reacted that way, maybe told me to get dressed. If he was being silent, that meant it was someone we didn't want to know about him at all.

Klaus couldn't get inside, so was Stefan here?

After pulling his shirt on, Kol bit down on his wrist and put it against my mouth. Taking just what I needed, I started scrambling into some pajama pants, thankful that most of the blood was gone at least. If it was, in fact, Stefan, he would probably be able to smell the blood and sex, but I didn't care, as long as he didn't know.

By the time I was dressed and opening my bedroom door, Kol was gone from my room entirely, most likely somewhere outside. It gave me the freedom to open my door wide and walk downstairs casually, as if I was going to get a drink or something.

I hadn't heard anyone knock, so there was no reason for me to know anyone was down there.

Sure enough, Stefan stood at the bottom of the steps looking uncomfortable, but there was anger in his eyes, the kind of anger I expected if he ever found out about the coffins being empty.

Uh oh.

"Sorry to just barge in, but I know Klaus is keeping a close eye on the two of you. Couldn't risk him seeing me on the porch while I waited for you to open the door."

I folded my arms over my chest and took a deep breath. "No, that's fine. What are you doing here? Isn't being here risk enough on its own?"

"Did you open the coffins?"

"Of course I did." My lying skills were still pretty bleak, as Kol and I spent more time being together than we did actually working on anything productive—we should really do something about that—but there was a way to twist the truth in my favor. "You know I'm far too curious for my own good. Does that matter, though?"

"Well, it matters because the three Originals are no longer in their coffins," he said, and his eyes tightened. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

My eyes widened. "What? They're not in there?"

He took a deep breath, and the anger started to fade from his eyes, enough that I felt relief. "No, they're not. I don't know where they are or how they got out. One of them was in there for a really long time, so maybe the daggers won't put them down forever. Maybe he was able to take it out after nine centuries. I don't know. It isn't supposed to be possible, but what do we really know about all of this stuff?"

"What do we do now?" I asked. "Klaus won't want empty coffins."

"We can either weigh them down enough that it feels like someone is in there or spell them shut," he admitted. "Spelling them shut seems like the best option, but it's suspicious."

"Actually, we could use that to our advantage, at least until they show their faces," I disagreed. "Think about it. If Klaus thinks he's winning by getting the coffins back, only for us to have power over them by having them spelled shut, we could hold this out a little bit longer."

"If it comes to it, we'll do that," he agreed. "I think you and Bonnie should both spell them shut, just to ensure he can't open them. There are plenty of Bennett witches still alive, but no one has any idea you're even a witch."

My eyebrows furrowed. "I don't know that kind of magic. Remember? No one lets me practice."

"I think it's time you started," he said. "We could use you as an element of surprise against Klaus when the time is right."

At one point in our lives, Stefan had been the most insistent that I never learn how to use my magic, especially once Klaus came to town. He insisted that knowing any magic was dangerous, and even if he somehow found out, not knowing how to use my magic could make me useless to them.

Now he was telling me to use it, which just further showed how far he had fallen—past the point of giving any shits about any of us.

As an avid fighter of that concept, the "ignorance is bliss" concept they had all insisted upon me for so long, of course I welcomed this change.

"I think you're right."

What better way to be able to defend myself than with magic that no one knew I was capable of?

The front door opened behind Stefan, almost hitting him, but it wasn't because Elena knew he was there. He was just so close to the door that it barely missed him.

When Elena stepped through, her eyes dropped to the floor, while Stefan turned back away from her almost immediately. There was an emptiness in his eyes that I hadn't quite gotten used to, especially with Elena in the room.

"Keep that in mind," he said, before anyone had a chance to say anything. Elena, though sad, had a fire in her eyes that hinted at a fight, one I don't think either of them were comfortable fighting.

Stefan stepped past Elena, going out of his way to make sure he didn't accidentally brush shoulders with her, and the front door closed behind him, leaving Elena and I alone to deal with the awkwardness of that encounter.

Things had been weird for us all since Stefan had been freed from the compulsion. At least while he was compelled and without humanity, there was an explanation for how he was acting, but that explanation was gone, at least in our human eyes. He had done a lot of horrible things, things Klaus forced on him, and he was angry with Klaus. That part I got.

Treating everyone like garbage, not caring about anyone that he had once cared about for the sake of revenge? I couldn't wrap my head around that at all.

"Did he seem suspicious to you?" Elena finally asked, after the silence was becoming eerie. It hadn't taken as long as it felt like to get there, as it felt like minutes ticking by.

"What? No, not really."

She shook her head slightly, her straightened hair falling from behind her ears to cover the sides of her face. "I don't know. I don't trust him."

"I don't either, but what can we do about it?"

It was a horrible thought for all of us, Elena and Damon especially, but it was something we were coming to terms with. This was a side of Stefan that no one had ever seen before, not even Damon. No one knew who he was or how far he was willing to go, so all we could do was sit back and try to stay out of his way.

Except I had done the exact opposite of that when I took the dagger out of Kol's chest.

What was he gonna do to me, though? Kill me? All I had to do was tell Kol I was worried Stefan might kill me, and he'd either kill him or compel him to leave me alone. If he was going to be raging, it wouldn't be directed towards me, even if he knew the truth.

We had to make sure that no one got caught in the crossfires of this war for revenge, though. This town had lost too many people already. Any more in the name of revenge wasn't right.

Klaus needed to get his coffins back. We needed to get that sealed coffin open so we could figure out what he had hidden inside, what we might use to destroy him.

That would be the end of all of this.

A/N: Last one for the day! I don't know if I'll be able to post any chapters tomorrow, with it being Thanksgiving and all. It isn't my son's first Thanksgiving, but we're trying to do a lot for it, as it's the first one he'll actually be moving around for and enjoying.

Thank you guys so much for reading! I will try and post two chapters tomorrow, but we'll see how it goes. :)

Also, for a bit of clarity, these chapters are no longer on the episode timeline. This story started after homecoming, and bits of things that happen in some of the episodes will continue to happen throughout the story, but in order to make it my own kinda thing, it's gone away from the episode timeline and become its own story.

The lyrics are from the beautiful song Periscope by Papa Roach.

Read, review, and enjoy.