Fairytale Ending

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: Klaus takes his girl and his hybrid and gets out of that one pony town.

Spoilers: Through 3x05, The Reckoning

Rating: R

Warnings: Extremely dubious consent verging on non-con/ Miscarraiage / Hostage situation/explicit violence and torture/gratuitous angst/ potential character death

It's shockingly easy to fall into a new pattern of life in New York.

Mornings lazing on the terrace overlooking the park or at the dining room table, drinking coffee from a silver service set as the sun dribbles in in that cool, yellow-white of early autumn. Often nursing a hangover from the night before, though Rebekah of course never feels the least little bit sluggish, instead always bright and chirpy as the dawn, no matter how late they stayed out the night before. She feeds her up on soft-boiled eggs served in darling porcelain egg cups and fresh squeezed orange juice, on buttery scones slathered in honey and strawberry jam.

By noon they descend into the city, visiting the shops and cafés by day, and exploring the city's dizzying entertainments by night. There is no door that is ever closed to her companions, and by extension, herself.

And yet, for all of the diversions, those first couple of weeks in New York slide over Elena in a fog of utter unreality.

It seems like no matter how much time she spends out, threading her way through busy city streets or watching the nightly revelry unfolding each night in a different club, she cannot shake the feeling that this is all a dream. Cannot let go her perpetual expectation each morning that she will find herself back in her soft bed in her silvery bedroom awash in morning light.

And as much as she loves New York—loves the hectic, thriving bustle of life spinning out around her—she misses her home. Misses the quiet refuge of her library, the sheltering arms of her Japanese Maple. Misses the happiness and belonging she had found in that place. The victory of making it into her own.

(Not surprising, maybe, that she had burned it all down in the end. She always burns her own heart out in the end.)

(There are moments, when she's out with Rebekah, the two of them searching out new ways to amuse themselves, when she can almost trick herself into thinking that they really are home again, where they are safe, and no one can intrude on the world they'd built together.)

"How long do you think we'll stay here?" she asks Rebekah as they meander through the Frick. There's something familiar about the scent of the rooms here, about the way the light seems to swim through the tall windows in murky streams, that puts her in mind of the manor at just this time of year. The thought opens a trap door into nostalgia so intense she feels ill, for a moment. Dislocated from time, thrown into memory.

"Until either Nick grows tired of it or Elijah finally grows aggravated enough to follow us into the city."

"Or Mikael tracks us down."

"Yes, there's always that possibility. Though it is unpleasant to think on, so we best avoid the topic." They pause before a Dutch still life—a vanitas, replete with a yellowing skull beneath a spray of pale roses. "The good news is that my father can be mystifyingly slow, at times," Rebekah adds thoughtfully after a minute. "So even when we are fleeing him, it's easy to forget."

(Almost.)

For all of that, her heart still leaps in her chest at odd times—waiting at the crosswalk, surrounded by impatient strangers all shuffling in place as they wait for the white walk light; overhearing snippets of conversation from the mother and her daughters seated at the next table over at the bistro; peering from the top of the Empire State Building down into the city, the wind whipping at her hair as Rebekah waves at the passersby below, a queen waving to her subjects—because there is such joy in these little moments. Such joy in living in the world. In being a part of it again.

There's only one hard part to the new routine in New York: every night, without fail, Klaus summons them, and she has to see him.

Tonight, Klaus has brought them all to a rooftop bar, where the four of them lounge against a deep crescent sofa, set before a roaring brazier.

This high up, the wind slices through her clinging evening-wear like a blade. Each gust snaps the flames like a whip. Elena sits so close to the brazier that she practically dares the fire to burn her. Even though she's cozied between Rebekah on one side and Stefan on the other, she's not sure either of them would react fast enough to pull her away if she were to reach into the fire. Both of them are far too preoccupied with the meals they're seducing.

Beyond his cursory greeting, Klaus hasn't looked her way once this entire evening. If her nightly presence in any way upsets or discomforts him, he has yet to show the littlest sign of it. He has been at perfect ease with her tonight and every other night.

She wishes he would look at her. He always used to.

The night grows long, and a little tedious for her, the way it sometimes does once the others turn their attention to sating their inhuman appetites.

Her thoughts wander.

The fire blazes.

She's sorely tempted to touch it. To burn herself for true. She's tried drowning herself and it's never taken, but she wonders now if that had been because she had gotten it wrong. Whether she had been destined for the pyre all along. The pull to stick her hand in the fire and test this theory out drums under her skin.

(When she burns, it will be a sign: that she and Klaus had been destined for each other all along.)

The wind sweeps over the terrace, coaxing the flames to burn brighter and higher than before.

Elena edges closer.

Stefan's misfortunate date laughs and tries to climb into his lap, knocking Elena into the brazier. Only quick reflexes save her from pitching face-first into the fire. A blistering sting on her thighs alerts her that her dress has not been so lucky—glowing red embers eat away at the fabric and hiss against her skin. Hastily, she brushes them away and presses herself deeper against the back of the sofa.

"Alright there?" Rebekah murmurs, shooting a glare at Stefan's date. "If that girl's bothering you, I'd be happy to snap her neck this instant."

"No, that's not necessary." There's always the possibility, however small, that the girl in question might actually survive Stefan's attention. No need to ensure otherwise.

"Well, do say the word. I for one would love a reason to silence her braying."

Elena nods absently and takes a sip from her martini. Looks through the flames, at Klaus, whose attention is fixed on the couple at the next table over.

The flames leap and flicker, illuminating his face in shades of scarlet and gold. Her chest aches to see him in this light, in their light, a specter from her past, oblivious to the way he haunts her.

"Are you going to keep pining after my brother forever, then?" Rebekah asks her when they get home.

Elena doesn't answer her.

Unlike the friends Elena had had in the past, Rebekah doesn't hold her feelings against her.

In fact, her cool, unflappable acceptance of Elena's troubled emotions comes as a profound relief. Recriminations for matters of the heart aren't in Rebekah's nature, and, for the most part, neither is guilt.

It's Rebekah's very lack of judgement that allows Elena to put aside her angst, to make her heartache small enough that she can mostly forget about it, so that they can enjoy their time together.

Sometimes, when she looks at Rebekah, when the sun is low and its brilliance catches in her golden hair and sets her skin aglow, she really does forget about everything else. Rebekah's smile has the power to strip the universe bare, until she is the only star left glittering in the sky. Those smiles used to be so rare, but now that Elena has grown used to seeing them so often, she does not think she could survive it if she lost them.

She dreams about those smiles. Of Rebekah's perfect, deadly white teeth. Wakes up, shivering, because she remembers what those teeth had felt like tearing into her throat, but that's not how she dreams of her bite at all.

They do end up catching Les Mis, twice, because Rebekah positively adores it, humming the melodies under her breath as she waltzes through their suite, as she peruses the menu at the Russian Tea Room or plucks through limited edition prints at an art gallery where she had compelled them a private appointment.

"Why this musical?" Elena asks her as they settle into their seats for their encore viewing.

Rebekah shrugs. "I just like it. Isn't that enough?"

"But you must rememberwhat really happened, right?" Elena asks, casting her mind back to the AP European History class she'd taken in the tenth grade. There had been an awful lot of French revolutions in the 1800s. "You'd think the musical would be full of frustrating inaccuracies."

Rebekah flips through her program. "I was in New Orleans, which by then was American. I didn't particularly pay Europe any mind that century."

That century. As though she hadn't read the paper for a week. Such a typical response.

Every now and then, Rebekah reminds Elena in no uncertain terms how very incomprehensibly alien her perspective on time and place really is.

"So, it's really just a story for you."

"Everything's just a story. Even you, one day."

Elena blinks, caught off guard, somehow, by the offhand factuality of Rebekah's response. The sky is blue. Today is Tuesday. You'll be just a memory before I know it.

She searches for a response, but then the lights dim, the play begins, and she loses Rebekah's attention.

Rebekah's words stay with her, muddling through her thoughts, making it impossible to focus on the show.

For Rebekah—for Klaus—her life will be no more than the blink of an eye.

The old, familiar feeling of unfairness, that they could take up the whole space and dimension of her life and she can hope for no more than to be a speck on the timeline that they occasionally reminisce over, swamps her as always. Yet she is so very used to it by now. Used to the way that loving them means living with that pain of foreknowledge.

Rebekah's words are still on her mind later, when they meet Klaus and Stefan in the Bowery for the night's round of inevitable depravity.

That night, as the others laugh and drink and dance and debauch their way through the evening, Elena takes it all in from the perspective of just how very temporary her place in their lives really is. They'd invited her in, called her family, but what does that mean? Marcel had been family once, apparently. When do they ever bring him up now? For that matter, their own flesh and blood would still be languishing in their dusty boxes if she hadn't taken matters into her own hands, and neither Klaus nor Rebekah had ever shown the faintest inclination to awaken them. Who's to say they won't do the same to her, one day?

She'll never be one of them. Not really. Doesn't want to beone of them, in the most literal sense—because her horror of vampirism has never entirely faded, only changed from the old visceral terror to a quieter, steadier rejection of it for herself. Yet she wants, very much, to feel as though she really does belong with them.

To feel that her devotion is returned.

These conclusions linger formlessly in her thoughts over the following days, a festering wound, as she follows Rebekah through the city, feeling increasingly like an orphan trailing desperately behind her.

"I'm thinking of getting a tattoo," Rebekah announces one morning as they meander through Midtown.

"I wouldn't have expected that."

"Nick and Stefan both have them. Why shouldn't I?"

"I've always wondered what could be important enough for an immortal to want to carry it with them forever. I mean, really forever."

Rebekah mulls this over as they pause outside of an antique iron store to peer through the windows at the delicately wrought furniture and accoutrements within. "Nothing," she decides.

Elena doesn't realize she'd been hoping for a different answer until Rebekah's already spoken. What answer, exactly, she cannot say.

As per usual, Klaus and Stefan are both already waiting for them when they arrive at the bar—Elena has no idea what they actually do with their days, and, so far, she hasn't asked.

She has yet to run into either of them outside of these nightly family get-togethers, as Rebekah refers to them, although she knows Klaus and Rebekah often trade texts and phone calls throughout the day. She's seen the messages on Rebekah's phone, has overheard a few stray comments whenever Rebekah murmurs to her that she'll only be gone a minute and slips off to speak to her brother.

She should be jealous that Klaus holds so much sway over Rebekah even now, when she and Rebekah have become so close. She can wish all she wants that she would be enough, except that she understands what it's like to answer when he calls all too well.

(She is learning, more and more, that she had been a fool to ever think he would come when she called for him. It will always have to be the other way around, with him.)

There seem to be an infinite number of private clubs, sumptuous hotels, and carefully curated bars at which to while away their time here in the city. They haven't returned to the same place twice, so far.

The bar tonight feels themed out of another time and place, an era she's only ever glimpsed through old black and white movies. The vaulted ceiling cuts into ancient gray stone, as though the whole space has been tunneled out of a rock face. The huge oak bar against the far wall is manned by four bartenders in pristine high-collared white coats, matches for the waiters who swerve through the crowd with little lacquered black trays. Yellow ambient light casts a dim glow over everything. The air feels hazy and heavy, like something she has to wade through as Rebekah propels her forward, deeper into the crowd. It's a Friday night, so the bar is packed with people pouring in from the myriad art openings that they passed on their way here. The warmth of their bodies presses into Elena as Rebekah pulls her over to the table in the far corner where Klaus and Stefan have ensconced themselves for the evening.

Stefan grins and pulls her in to sit close to him, slinging his arm over her shoulders and kissing her cheek.

"How's my best girl tonight?" he asks her, showing all of his sharp-tipped teeth as he smiles at her. There's something keyed up about him, almost jittery. His eyes gleam, and the heat from his body bleeds into her side like an open furnace.

Elena recognizes the signs. He's already fed. Probably taken a few bumps too, maybe alongside his victims before he'd drained them. Stefan enjoys carousing with his prey before he eats them. Enjoys sampling them, their bodies and their appetites, along with anything good they might be able to share with him. Having a good time is the only thing he really has to live for, right now, and he lives with every corpuscle of his being. From the blazing heat of his body, Elena thinks he had a really good time with at least several people earlier tonight. One drained body is only enough to keep a vampire at a normal, human temperature. This excess of heat Stefan and the others often emanate is a result of satisfying truly rapacious appetites.

None of that stops her from accepting his embrace. From soaking up his regard, fixated, for a moment, solely on her.

"Thirsty," she informs him.

"Pick your poison then," Stefan replies, gesturing to the room at large. "Your wish is their command."

Across the table, Rebekah whispers something in Klaus's ear. He nods, and leans back to grasp onto the sleeve of a passing waitress.

She cannot help but watch him as he smiles at that waitress, as he turns back to Rebekah and Stefan and asks them if the waitress reminds them of that college student they'd traveled with for a week while passing through the Alps.

"She's wearing the same perfume," Rebekah muses. "Though, not between her thighs like the other girl did. What was her name again?"

"Leila," Stefan supplies.

He never did forget a name.

"Do you think this one will be so keen to model for me?" Klaus asks, his eyes tracking the waitress through the crowd.

The three of them laugh, as though at some private joke—it's obvious there's a euphemism at play.

The waitress returns, and they order a round of drinks, Elena allowing Stefan to choose for her something that changes from green to lavender when the waitress combines two separate phials of liquid into her glass. The drink smokes on her tongue, makes her eyes water. She sips on it slowly, letting the flavors curl into her mouth.

Beside her, Stefan leans across the table to whisper something in Klaus's ear that makes Klaus's mouth tip up into that hot, familiar smirk she remembers so well.

He had smiled at her just so, and kissed her like death, like longing and despair, until nothing but the taste of his mouth on hers would ever satisfy her again.

Rebekah's fingers brush over her wrist. "You've been quiet tonight," she notes.

"Not a lot to say when you're all reminiscing."

Rebekah opens her mouth to reply, but Klaus distracts her again, pulling all of her attention away.

Elena leans back and watches the three of them as they all watch that waitress who had piqued their interest, who had reminded them of that college student whose name they can hardly recall.

She's staring into her own future. One day, it will be just the three of them again—they'll grow tired of her, or she'll grow too old to fit into their fold, or Klaus will decide it's time for her to have that baby after all, and they'll abandon her again at some convenient safe house, and forget all about her—that is, if she doesn't meet with a gruesome early death first. And years will pass, and one day, they'll see some dark-haired girl, and Rebekah will muse, Doesn't she remind you of that human girl who used to tag along with us? She was such a dear. What was her name again?

Rebekah asks her to hold the table, hardly glancing her way as the three of them rise and slither into the crowd. She's seen them do this half a dozen times by now—working in tandem to stalk and seduce their chosen prey. Beautiful, sleek predators with the world between their teeth.

She could leave right now. Could slip out the back through the fire exit, and out into the city. It could be thirty, forty minutes before they notice. Hours maybe even. She could be free right now.

Elena thumbs at the cloaking bracelet she's never taken off of her wrist, calculating her chances.

It's just possible that Klaus wouldn't even care. Wouldn't even bother with any sort of retribution at all. He might even be glad to have her off his hands.

As for Rebekah… She'll move on. She's sure of it. She always does. After all, Elena's read her diaries.

The only thing stopping her from really leaving is that she doesn't want to.

The certainty of this hits her like a stone. Sinks within her.

She doesn't want to leave them.

She could, but she won't.

What a fool she is.

The bar is so packed that the air has grown humid with breath, with laughter, with conversation, muggy with the heat of all of those bodies pressing shoulder to hip, yet Elena shivers despite it all. Flashes hot and cold as she contemplates her many, many failures. The depth of the failures inevitably to come.

Somewhere, her three monstrous companions are off cornering that waitress so they can have their wicked way with her.

If not her, then certainly someone else.

Every night they do this, and every night, she waits patiently for them to finish. For the next round of drinks to arrive, for the next clever quip to amuse her, for the band to start playing so Rebekah can pull her onto the dance floor and she can laugh and bask in the silver-gold of her attention. And when they go home, Elena will shower and curl up in her soft bed and she won't even remember the next morning what the victims had looked like because she hadn't bothered to pay attention. It will be easy to forget when there is tea and coffee and soft-boiled eggs and Rebekah's easy smile to focus on instead.

Once upon a time, she would have stood up to them. Would have at least told them they were wrong.

(She'd been so naïve back then.)

Her parents would never forgive her for this.

But then, her parents had never had to endure as she had.

In the end, she supposes the only question is whether or not she can forgive herself.

(She already has.)

Her stomach turns.

She ducks into the bathroom and shakily splashes cold water onto her face. Stares hard at herself in the mirror.

The woman she sees reflected back at her is someone she's only just now coming to grips with.

Composing herself, she slips back out into the bar, and knocks directly into Klaus.

He grips her by the shoulders to steady her, his palms hot against her bare skin. She feels his touch like a physical jolt. Her blood leaps up under her skin where he touches her. It takes all of her strength not to lean into him.

He is so close. The scent of him, familiar and dear, floods her senses, makes her dizzy with want and regret.

"Alright there?" he asks.

"No," she tells him, helplessly, because she cannot tell him anything else. She stares up into his face, searching for some sign from him—some flicker that he cares.

Klaus appraises her from head to toe. And yet, even with his hands on her body, even with his attention honed in on her, she cannot read in him any of the passion she so vividly remembers. In the past, Klaus's gaze had been so intense she had felt it like a brand against her skin. Now, she feels nothing from him at all beyond a sort of mild concern.

It suddenly occurs to her that as achingly familiar as Klaus is, he is at once also so removed from her in sympathy and emotion that he may as well be a stranger to her. Time cannot touch him, and yet there is something indefinably altered in him since their reunion. Something she has noted, in these past few weeks spent in his company, but never before been able to place her finger upon. It's as though there is some vast distance that has opened up inside of him over the intervening years between them, and she cannot hope to bridge it.

"You seem all in one piece," he notes, oblivious to her inner turmoil. "Is someone here discomfiting you?"

"Yes." Him. Always him.

"Shall I remove the problem?"

She studies him for a long time. It strikes her that Klaus has achieved what she has failed to do—found enough distance within himself to get over her.

It's what he had been trying to tell her that night on the balcony. What she has been struggling to understand ever since.

"I don't think you can," she tells him.

"You look wan," Klaus says, frowning. He guides her back to the table and urges her to sit. "I'll alert my sister that you're ready to go home."

"She's not my keeper."

Klaus's brows rise. "Isn't she?"

At that moment, Stefan sidles up to the table, looking distinctly ruffled. His tie's gone missing, and his shirt collar refuses to lie flat. There's something red on the fabric—either lipstick or blood, Elena cannot tell. "I'll take her home," he volunteers.

"Ending the night so soon, Ripper? That's unlike you."

Stefan waves him away. "Night, day, it's all the same."

Klaus shrugs. "Very well then. See her safely to her door." He nods at her, casually, before slipping back into the crowd.

"So what's gotten under your skin?" Stefan asks as they shuffle back toward the Plaza. Elena had refused the town car, preferring the walk to clear her head.

"Nothing."

"You'll have to lie a lot better than that if you're trying to get something past me, Elena."

"Who says I'm lying?"

"You've been brooding for days. Spill."

"Am I not allowed to have emotions now? I thought that perk came with being officially admitted into 'the family.'" She throws air quotes up around the phrase, the way Stefan so often does.

He snorts. "Finding it's not quite what it's cracked up to be?"

Elena shoves him, but Stefan catches her hands, spinning her into his tight embrace.

He doesn't hold her the way that he used to hold her. Not like he loves her. Not like her pain is his pain, a burden they can share together.

But Stefan's embrace is still Stefan's embrace.

He is still home to her, when she had thought she had destroyed the last home she would ever have.

Elena burrows her face into his shoulder and clings to him with all of her strength.

"I'm so afraid that you're all going to forget about me again," she tells him through a scald of tears.

Stefan pulls her in closer. "Haven't I already told you? A century from now, two centuries from now, three—when I look back, I'll remember you, Elena Gilbert. There is no universe in which I could ever forget you."

He's lying and he doesn't even know it—doesn't even realize how much Rebekah had stripped from him at her behest— except—except that, somehow, Stefan hadn't forgotten her. He'd forgotten their love, forgotten the details of their history, forgotten that there had ever been a time when he had been her sun, her universe, her dearest one—but he had not forgotten who she is. Had not forgotten his inexplicable faith in her, or how to read her moods, or how to break through the masks she wears. She can fool everyone, even herself, but she can never fool him. Even now.

That knowledge burns through her fear, her loneliness. Touches her in a place that had laid barren and dry for years.

"Swear it to me," she demands, pulling away from him. "Swear you'll never forget me."

Stefan smiles, that strange, cool smile he never used to wear before Klaus ripped his hard-won humanity from him.

She realizes with a pang that she can no longer picture what his old smile had even looked like.

"Careful, Gilbert. You're acting nearly as dramatic as me."

Just like that, the urgency of the moment dissipates like smoke in the wind. "Please," she scoffs as they resume their slow walk back to the Plaza. "As though you can even come close to matching me. I'd leave you in the dust."

"Fighting words."

"Maybe I'd like to fight. Or… at least live a little."

"Bored carrying Rebekah's shopping bags?"

"As if. We have those couriered back to the hotel."

"With following her around like a tame kitten then?"

"Is that how you see me?"

"You know that I don't."

The thing is, Stefan isn't exactly wrong. She's been wallowing in anxiety for days, fearing the moment Rebekah will inevitably grow bored with her and cast her out again.

For years she had lived her life for Klaus. Caught in a web of eternally waiting for him to come back to her—frozen in time, while he had moved on. Now that she's free from that holding pattern, all she's done is replace Klaus with Rebekah.

That's no way to live her life.

If she's ever going to find the space within herself to really move on, to figure out how to build a meaningful life for her own sake, then she can't do it by following along in someone else's wake. By letting Rebekah lead her, all the while merely praying she won't leave her behind.

She has to figure out how to set her own terms.

As if reading her mind, Stefan says, "Come out with me."

Elena hesitates. "Klaus told you he wanted you to walk me to my door. I thought you had to follow his orders."

"He never said when. We have time." He cups his hands around her face and looks deeply into her eyes. "Drop your inhibitions, just for one night," he pleads. "Come out with me."

She thinks about Klaus, who had really, really moved on. Thinks about Rebekah, her one and only friend—her one mercurial, distractible friend, who is so ancient and so young that she will inevitably move on one day.

The only one who has never seemed to be able to really put her behind him is Stefan.

Her Stefan.

It's this thought that makes her mind up.

"You know what," she says, the words falling wonderingly from her lips, "Yes. Let's break some rules. I want to have fun."

Stefan's eye's light, his mouth twisting into a feral sort of glee as he grabs hold of her hand. "Oh, Elena. I thought you'd never ask."

He takes her to a warehouse by the water, where a grunge band is midway through a set. The music is so loud that she feels it reverberating through her chest, vibrating in her bones, more than she actually hears it. The light is low and the crowd is wild, their energy contagious.

This setting is as far removed from the locales Klaus has picked each night as it's possible to get, impossibly far away from the well-heeled crowds Rebekah prefers to mingle amongst during their days out. Elena takes a deep breath of the muggy, close air, and feels freer than she's felt literally in years.

Stefan procures her a rum and coke and leads her over to a spot by one of the columns and mouths Stay here at her before slipping back into the crowd.

All at once, she's alone, in a crowd of fellow human beings, for the first time in years. Exhilaration spills through her. She throws herself into the crowd, her body falling into the rhythm of the dance without conscious thought. And it feels good, swimming through this sea of strangers, twining her hands with other girls as she spins from one cluster to the next, letting men reel her in close for a few minutes at a time before she cuts herself loose with a laugh and lets the crowd carry her in deeper.

She's up near the stage when she's pulled flush against a feverish, familiar body. Elena leans back for Stefan to mutter in her ear, "I thought I told you to stay put."

She tilts her face so she can beam up at him. "We're breaking the rules tonight, Stefan. Who said I'd follow yours?"

He freezes for a moment, lips parted, like he had been about to say something and the words had died in his throat. She can feel his heart, ricocheting in his chest. When she swallows, his eyes follow the movement of her throat. His hand on her waist tightens, and he leans in, until his mouth is only inches from her skin, before he seems to remember himself. He grabs hold of her hand and deftly twirls her around, so that they are facing each other. He looks like there is something he wants to say, but he has no idea how to say it.

She saves him from himself.

"Dance with me," she shouts over the music. Commands.

She must still retain a trace of her old magic, because Stefan swoops in and gathers her into his arms to swing her around the room the way he had done in the earliest, happiest days of their acquaintance. His dance moves are absurd, over the top, and exactly what she needs. She laughs more freely than she's laughed since she was a girl, throwing her head back and grinning until her face aches. One band replaces the next, one drink traded for another, and they keep dancing. Every song feels like the climb at the top of a rollercoaster, like they are going up up up, higher and higher.

The plunge comes out of the blue, when Stefan pulls her tight against him, a hand cupping her jaw, the other at her hip, and captures her mouth in a fierce, consuming kiss.

This is when Elena learns, too, that Stefan's kiss is still Stefan's kiss.

Her body melds into his in an instant. She goes completely pliant in his arms, letting him walk her backward, until she is pressed against one of the steel columns. Letting him hitch her legs around his waist so he can grind into her as he laves at her mouth, utterly uncaring of the way her fine dress pools indecently around her hips.

A deep growl emanates from his chest, rumbling through her body. She feels it like a thumb to her clit, tightening everything inside of her and ratcheting her need up tenfold. His teeth, razor sharp, slide against her soft lips, her tongue, turning their kiss coppery and wild. The last time his mouth had been on her, he had left her with a permanent scar. She should be afraid of him, afraid of the way he responds to her blood-slick kisses with increasing frenzy, but she doesn't care. All she can think about is the heat of Stefan's mouth on hers, the strength of him pressing into her, his hands mapping her body, crawling under her dress to caress her bare skin.

Desire lashes and spikes between them. He opens her mouth wider and sucks on her tongue, his fingers searching out the damp scrap of fabric over her core. The throb between her legs is an hypnotic second pulse beat between them. It's been years since she's had a lover. Years since anyone has thought to connect with her in this essential way, and she needs this, needs him, even if he would never be able to understand exactly why.

"You have got to be bloody kidding me."

A pair of beautifully manicured hands pluck Stefan off of her as easily as though he were a flea clinging to a blade of grass.

Rebekah catches her before she can stumble without Stefan to hold her weight, and glares at Stefan while Elena adjusts her dress.

"What's the evil eye for, Bex?" Stefan asks, smoothing a hand through his rumpled hair.

"Nick told me you were taking Elena home. Imagine my surprise when I returned to our suite to discover she had never made it back."

"We were just having some fun."

"You're high as a kite in March," she snaps.

"Like I said," Stefan says, crisply enunciating each word, "fun."

"Elena's not a toy. You can't use her for those sorts of amusements."

Elena rips herself out of Rebekah's grasp. "You're right, I'm not a toy. I'm a grown woman, and I'm capable of making my own decisions."

Rebekah flares on her. "Why are you defending him? Are you really suggesting Stefan didn't drag you out to this horrid little blight on society?"

"I'm here because I wanted to be."

"Why?"

"Because I compelled her," Stefan says.

Elena's stomach sinks into her toes. "What? That's not what happened." It had been real between them tonight. She knows it was.

Stefan doesn't look her way, though, too busy squaring off against Rebekah, who visibly teeters on the edge of scratching Stefan's eyes out. Elena knows that look. There was a time when Rebekah reserved it solely for her.

"Why her?" Rebekah grinds out.

Stefan licks his teeth. "I wanted to see what the fuss was about."

Part of her wants to strike out, to howl at him, I'm not just the bloodbank!

But the greater part of her is frozen, because she knows Stefan, knows him as she knows herself, and he's lying. He has to be.

Rebekah's face twists into a complicated expression Elena doesn't recognize. She's not a girl prone to complicated expressions.

"She's off limits to you," Rebekah warns him. "I ever catch you playing games like this with her again, and I'll tear you to pieces."

Stefan's mouth curls into a rictus of a smile. "I miss you too, Bex. My door'll be open when you're ready to come back."

Rebekah grabs Elena by the arm and drags her out of the warehouse after her.

When Elena glances back over her shoulder, Stefan is still there, by the steel column where he had kissed her, staring after her.

A/N: Please leave me a comment if you're enjoying this! There's a chance I will have chapter 52 out very soon, so any extra encouragement is appreciated.

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