Set to Hozier's cover of Do I Wanna Know
Ever thought of calling when you've had a few? 'Cause I always do.
Stefan's hunched on his barstool staring at his phone on the counter. He picks it up and teeters it between his fingers before opening his most recent calls. There's one name highlighted in red and littered on the list. His thumb hovers over her name. Like many nights before he fails to press it. Instead he wraps his hand around the device to crush it completely. It crumbles and slips through his fingers. (An apt metaphor he thinks to himself). He'd have to go buy a new one in the morning. This would be the ninth.
Stefan takes a pull of bourbon from his glass and swishes it in his mouth, engulfing his taste buds in the bitter bite. Something that matches his mood. Tonight was hard for him. Caroline showed up on his front porch. With Enzo of all people.
A bloody fight ensued ending in the death of his girlfriend— or ex-girlfriend — Ivy. He wants to think that he tried to warn her of his lifestyle and she brushed it off. But really, he didn't try hard enough to convince her of the dangers that hid in his shadows. After all, he thought he was hiding them well and covering his tracks. Just not well enough.
Caroline showed up. She actually showed up on his doorstep of all the doorsteps in the world to show up on, she showed up on his. And all of a sudden he was back to Mystic Falls. Back in the goddamned triangle with Damon and Elena. Back to the sanctuary that was Caroline's home. Back in the safe. Back to the supernatural that plagued their lives. Back to the night where he lost most of the people that meant anything to him.
He takes another swig from his glass. He expected he'd see her again, he only thought it would be in some far away town or city or country somewhere across the world. Some years, if not decades, after he lost his brother. Some far off time when he forgot what it was like to have a true constant. Some time when she maybe forgot about him. The universe had different plans for him though.
It wasn't like he never thought of going back. Like he never thought of answering a call or text from her. Like he never thought of returning to the fight with her. He thought about it. But, losing Damon drowned him in a misery that Damon himself could never have wrought upon him.
What would he tell her anyway? Sorry I left without a word, a text or a note? Sorry I ran and you stayed? Sorry I wanted to grieve? All to risk sounding like the asshole he felt like anyways.
Sitting at his kitchen island, a single lamplight above him barely lighting the room, he remembered the look on her face. The hope that flickered in her eyes when she first walked in to see that he was alive. The disappointment dripping from her tongue when she found out he became a mechanic and stopped looking for a solution months ago. The hurt radiating from her very being when she called him a dick for lying.
His new "life" came crashing down at the glimpse of one Caroline Forbes.
This choreography he had with his phone wasn't new for him. Wanting to call her back, respond to her messages, run back to the outskirts of Mystic Falls just to see her. To comfort her, to have her comfort him. But he couldn't.
How could he knowing that Damon couldn't have the same with Elena? The brother he knew as a human was finally living again. The man he knew as a boy was peaking behind the skillfully crafted wall a perverted version of Damon had built. And then he was gone in a moment. In some dastardly attempt to be the hero of the day.
He couldn't stop asking himself what made him different and worthy of living. They had both done terrible things. They both relished in the misery of others at one point or another. Why was Stefan alive with a second chance and Damon dead with no body to be buried? It wasn't fair. Stefan didn't deserve to be happy when the option wasn't on the table for Damon. No. Instead he created a life of limbo.
He decided to live a life of numbness disguised as normalcy. A normal job with a normal house and a normal girlfriend. A normal life —save the blood bags hidden in his refrigerator. Happiness that he may or may not have found with his best friend was no longer an option.
So he ignored her calls. Ignored her texts. Deflected Alaric's questions about Caroline and why he hadn't spoken to her. He didn't deserve her friendship or whatever it was that they were developing. He deserved to be numb until natural selection called his number. And Caroline deserved more than a disaster magnet. At least that's what he told himself.
He used that as the foundation to why he couldn't speak to Caroline. It supported all his reasons for why he should never return.
But on nights like this, it felt futile.
Nights like this, when he was alone and the dark was all consuming and his cheap bourbon boiled in his veins, he let himself dive into the dusty recesses of his mind. A corner where a locked vault sat with its 5 handle wheel tempting his idle mind. These were the nights he'd take his time to twist and turn the wheel listening for the melodic click of each gear until the door gave way. Nights when he let the light in.
Light in the form of memories past. Days sat before the fireplace working out the most recent Mystic Falls disaster. The random out of town research trips that always lasted days longer than they'd expected. Nights in cabins or curled up in cars with danger mere feet away or strolling deep woods together. Moments of stolen looks, gifted laughs and ignored touching disguised as innocence but meaning so much more. To him at least. His favorites were the hugs. She's a hugger, he's definitively not. Except when they're hers. He remembers sinking into her embrace. Forgetting his rules of getting too close to people.
Then there were the memories to be made. Road-trips to be had. Graduations to attend. Dances to be dragged to that he'd never outwardly admit he loved because it was her that dragged him there.
Then he remembers watching her leave. His voice refused to give way to words as she walked out of his makeshift home. Stuck between being pained to see her go and hoping that she'd stay. He remembers the way she refused to let her posture slump on exit because she's too strong to let him know how much he really hurt her. But he knows it. He knows she held back a geyser ready to erupt. But he doesn't deserve her tears. He doesn't deserve her. Of all the things he's unsure of in life, that's one thing he knows. She's too good for him.
Still, he has this soul wrenching feeling that he should go crawling back to her. He tells himself he doesn't, but he knows why. On the short list of things he knows, that's one of them. He tried to move on like she said he would. Find someone to love or a list of someone's even. Ivy wasn't the first name on that list. It was a short list of not-her's.
Locked in that vault is the admission that he can't find someone new because he's too busy being hers. Whether she wanted him or not, she had him. At some point, his mindless hands broke off a piece of his heart and gave it to her long ago when he wasn't even looking. He hadn't even realized it was in her hands until after the Other Side, Damon and Bonnie went away. No, it wasn't until now that he noticed she was keeping it safe for him. Now that he's checked his heart for all its parts, that single piece the only part to come up missing, he'll never not feel it's loss. But he'd never ask for it back either.
He locks the vault and walks over to his record player placing the needle on the record he never puts away. The one that reminds him of her. He sits in his recliner, glass still in hand and leans back letting the melody wash over him.
Nights like this were made for saying things that could never be said tomorrow. Things like I don't want to do this without you but I can't do it with you. Or tell me you feel it too. But most importantly tell me that I'm not enough. Because maybe if he heard her say it, just maybe, he'd be able to leave her alone. Give her life some semblance of peace. Take his withered heart and burry himself in a long forgotten corner of the world where he can desiccate until it stops spinning.
Do I wanna know if this feeling goes both ways?