Caroline surprised everyone by calmly walking back into living room. What was even more shocking was when she walked over to the couch to grab her drink before she walked back to sit down next to Klaus once again.
"Okay, what could he have possibly said to make you this calm and sitting with him again?" Bonnie questioned, clearly not impressed with her friend's decision.
The reason that Caroline had taken Klaus into the kitchen in the first place was because she had wanted to have a private conversation instead of continuing to argue in front of everyone, so she really was not eager to explain everything that had just happened.
"Maybe he compelled me," She joked in an attempt to lighten the mood as well as deflect the question.
As soon as the joke had escaped her lips, she began to regret it as she saw the looks on the faces of the other's.
"Great, now everyone thinks that he compelled me," Caroline muttered sarcastically under her breath.
"I don't," Damon piped up. "You were much friendlier when you were compelled."
She didn't know whether to be more relieved or annoyed by Damon's words as she retorted with, "Yeah and you were a lot more attractive when I was compelled."
"Really? It's possible to be even more attractive than I already am?" The oldest Salvatore questioned in a tone of sheer arrogance with a smirk to match.
Alaric put his hand on Damon's knee in an attempt to stop him, but then quickly ripped his hand away when he remembered that there were a lot of people in the room who were strangely interested in what was going on between them.
Unfortunately for Ric, the suddenness of his movement away from Damon only attracted more attention towards them and he really missed when the spotlight had been off of them for a few minutes.
Alaric loudly cleared his throat before he said, "It's still your turn, isn't it Jeremy?"
"Never have I ever snuggled with Alaric," The youngest Gilbert said, clearly still hung up on the fact that apparently Damon and Alaric were having a lot of sex.
The history teacher was less than pleased with Jeremy's choice as Damon took a large chug of his drink.
There were many smirks as Damon glared over at Alaric. He seemed to be, for the first time that night, embarrassed by people finding something out about what was happening between him and his best friend.
"Don't do that," Alaric said, only causing Damon to glare at him more intensely. "Don't try to blame this on me when we both know how handsy and clingy you get when you're drunk."
Surprisingly, Damon didn't argue and instead just took a second, unnecessary, swig of his drink.
It was Bonnie's turn next, so she spoke up with, "Never have I ever pushed Matt off of a play structure and broken his leg."
Elena winced a little as she drank. They had been eight at the time, but she still couldn't stand to think about it.
"And then she spent the rest of the night crying about it," Jeremy added.
"And the worst part is that she ignored me for a month after it," Matt pointed out. "Because she was too afraid to even go anywhere near me."
Stefan smirked a little at that, so Elena hit him playfully in the chest.
"Hey, you might break something," Stefan teased in an amused tone.
Elena could feel her cheeks beginning to flush and wanted the attention off of her, so she turned and asked, "Isn't it your turn, Damon?"
"Yes it is," Damon responded. "And while we're on the subject of embarrassing childhood memories and crying, never have I ever been emotionally traumatized by watching a bird get shot."
"I was five, Damon," Stefan pointed out before taking a swig of his drink.
"Yeah, and you made me stay up all night trying to calm your ass down," Damon responded. "But look at you now, worst nightmare to birds everywhere."
Although his brother was taunting him for it now, Stefan could tell that Damon knew very well that he had volunteered to stay up comforting Stefan and hadn't been forced into the job at all. Although Damon's lips were smirking, his eyes said it all.
Stefan had thought that he was being secretive about sneaking little bits of bread from his meal to a small bird in the backyard, but Damon had known all along. Apparently he hadn't been the only one since one night, after dinner, Stefan had been feeding his bird when Guiseppe walked outside carrying his gun. Damon walked out shortly behind him, wondering what his father was doing.
Stefan didn't even get the chance to react to his father's presence before there was a loud shot that blew a large hole into his, now dead, bird.
Damon watched grimly as his little brother's lip began to tremble while their father stated, "I told you not to feed the birds. If you feed them once, they're going to come back expecting food every night."
With that, Guiseppe walked back into the house, figuring that his son had learned his lesson.
The instant that his father was gone, Stefan broke into tears and began to step towards the bloodied corpse of the bird.
"Stefan, don't," Damon said, speaking up for the first time since he had walked outside. "There's nothing that you can do, it's already dead."
Stefan ignored him and knelt down next to the bird, reaching to go pick it up.
"Don't touch it, Stef," Damon tried again, grabbing his sobbing brother's hand and pulling him away in order to stop him.
"It didn't do anything wrong," The younger sibling whimpered as he continued to stare at the motionless body. "He was just hungry."
"I know," Damon said, turning his brother's tear-stained face so that their eyes met. "But you have to stop crying, okay?"
Stefan shook his head no.
"If he sees you crying, he's going to do worse than just killing a bird," Damon told him.
The youngest Salvatore wiped frantically at his face as he quietly corrected, "He wasn't just a bird, he was my bird."
"I know," Damon said quietly, not knowing what else he could say.
Damon's heart was breaking at the sight of how torn up his little brother was. Why couldn't their father just let Stefan have his stupid bird instead of always having to prove a point?
A few minutes later, Stefan had managed to calm down enough to have temporarily stopped crying.
Damon decided that this was probably the best opportunity that he was going to get and grabbed onto one of his brother's hand and said, "Come on, Stef. We have to go back inside."
Stefan didn't want to go back inside, he didn't want to have to see his father ever again, but he let his older brother lead him in anyways.
Damon took Stefan up to his room and the younger brother instantly crawled into bed.
Although Stefan didn't want Damon to leave, he also didn't want to ask him to stay or cry any more in front of his brother.
It turned out that he didn't have to ask though, since Damon just sat down on the bed without saying anything. And when Stefan began to sob again and talk about how he never should have fed the bird in the first place, his older brother told him that it wasn't his fault and that the bird was somewhere better now with all of its bird friends.
Damon began to half-regret bringing that night up when his attempt at humiliating his little brother had quickly turned into some kind of mutual, twisted version of reminiscing about their past.
His gaze dropped from Stefan's as he turned to his friend and said, "Your turn, Ric."
Please read and review! So I don't know if you guys liked the flashback or not, but I'm thinking that I'm going to start including some different flashbacks on some of the stuff in the future chapters. So let me know whether you think that flashbacks or no flashbacks would be better. I'm going to try to have the update up sooner next time. I hope that you guys liked the chapter and thanks for reading. And another ginormous thanks goes out to all of the lovely reviewers of the last chapter :)
Also if you're ever waiting for an update on one of my stories and you want me to get it up faster, please send me a PM because I promise that it will help motivate me. I promise that for every PM that I get telling me to write or work on any of the stories that I'm currently updating, I will go work on the next chapter and make sure that I at least get some more written. In fact one of these PMs is what got a large portion of this chapter written.
REVIEW ANSWERS:
addicted to klaroline: I'll probably have some flashbacks of what happened with Dalaric at some point in the future. How they first got together (as much as you can really say that they are) is in Truth or Dare and I think that I'm going to maybe put that in a flashback, but add on some stuff that happens afterwards to it... I hope that makes sense.
priiincesa: Klaus did find out about what Damon did to Caroline in Truth or Dare, so Damon isn't exactly Klaus's favourite person.
Capricorn: Don't worry, there's going to be no shortage of Dalaric in this story ;)
sandy salvator: This story is set during season 3 after Tyler broke the sire bond (but with Rebekah and April becoming friends early), so for this story Elena never slept with Damon.
Caitlin U: Elena didn't have to drink because in this story she never slept with Damon, since it's set during season 3 with April just showing up a little early.