#and to any of my kc babes seeing this just shhh just scroll past this we'll get through this together xoxo

[highgaarden]

fic: i come alive in the fall time

Caroline sighs. It rattles through her chest, the heaviness of it. “What do you want, Stefan?”

“My fiancé,” he says simply.

Stefan; Stefan/Caroline, Explicit, wc. 4489 (ao3) (ff.net)

written, as ever, for @ishenwulf​ because she’s relentless. 

hello, pervs. i wrote this for ishi, because i am weak and she is scary. nah jokes, i love her loads, and she wanted fic where stefan ropes caroline into his soul-ferrying shenanigans, and it became an exploration of a bunch of things i wish the show would've given me with humanity-less stefan. i mean dude, you can't even give me one scene of them angst-barbing while DANCING? low blow.

so here, have some porn to tide you over til the next episode, where they've got some serious explaining to do.

UNBETA'd, i stuck the whole thing here without proofreading because i am horrified/impressed at myself for actually writing something in one sitting for once. will go back and rectify any/all mistakes later.

I come alive in the fall time,

 It’s not so much that Caroline is bothering him, it’s the fact that he is bothered at all. He realizes this on the way home, and even as he’s divulging two drunk teenagers of their souls. He feels the thrill of their blood trickling down his wrists, but it is a lukewarm thrill, just a faint tugging on his gums. He presses his thumbs down – the boy’s eyeballs bulge, red drool spills down over his chin. Stefan listens for his own heart: no, it doesn’t pound.

He’s not enjoying this as he usually would.

He’s bothered. He shouldn’t be bothered.

So he makes a decision.

 —

—

 Being stripped off his humanity, he is blissfully unaware of many emotional qualms that might drag him down usually – looking at her standing there, damp hair curling down her shoulders, might have once stirred something within him. He recognizes, on some distant, removed plane, how remarkably beautiful she is.

“You weren’t at the boarding house,” he says.

Caroline shoots him a look. His tone had come off as schooling. She might have let it slide, but he’d spent the last few days trying to push as many buttons of hers as he possibly could. If he can’t love her, he could have at least had some fun—

But she’s not looking for fun, is she?

Happiness, she said. Not fun.

Strange creature.

She looks at him through the mirror. Her lips are set in a straight line. She’s freshly changed into a night shirt – the fold lines are still visible around the shoulders. He is reminded of an afternoon they spent on the floor of the laundry room, her chastising him for the way he folded his sleeves.

He arranges himself straighter against her door frame, hoping the urge to clear his throat was temporary. She hasn’t answered, but he is skilled in the art of waiting.

“Didn’t feel like being there,” is what she offers finally, and she goes back to brushing her damp hair.

“Moving out already?”

Stefan watches her face closely. Caroline, on her part, reveals nothing. Her hand remains steady as she drags the comb through her hair in slow, methodical strokes. He hears the bristles move through her hair, but he can’t hear her thinking as he is usually able to.

“You aren’t over me already, are you?” he asks, his lip quirking.

Again, she doesn’t answer him. He could weigh in on this, or… he could take away her distraction.

He’s behind her in an instant; her hair’s blown away from her shoulders with the speed of it. He takes the brush from her hand and starts working through the tangles at her crown. Caroline’s stiffened up visibly to have him so close, and he smiles – he cannot feel, but he can smile, and he tries not to hum so triumphantly as he combs her hair.

“You in your childhood bedroom. It was one pageant, Caroline. You can’t be regressing that badly.”

Caroline sighs. It rattles through her chest, the heaviness of it. “What do you want, Stefan?”

“My fiancé,” he says simply.

She isn’t yet angry, it doesn’t show on her face, but her shoulders stiffen once more. He can practically feel the room grow colder. Of course it’s only a figure of speech, seeing as vampires don’t exactly feel the cold. And flipped-switch vampires don’t feel – but he’s rambling, he gets this way after a kill, even unsatisfying ones.

Damon needs to get out of his rut. Gloating isn’t half as fun without an audience.

Caroline digests this. She regards him through the reflection of her vanity, pictures of a younger Matt, Elena, Bonnie, Tyler still scattered in corners. He wishes her eyes weren’t so blue. She’d chosen pink today, it made her look soft, otherworldly, not so difficult to look at. It muted all other colours of her, made her look like a rose. Definitely easy to touch, to enjoy having in his arms as he spun her through the throng of warm bodies.

Here, in the dim lighting of her bedroom, her eyelashes absent from mascara, her eyes seem to glow. It is strange, unnecessary poetry.

“Something bothering you? You’re frowning.” Caroline is smiling at him through the mirror. Too saccharine. He narrows his eyes, drags the brush down. It tickles against her neck, whisper light.

“I was remembering,” he says softly, letting his thumbnail graze the side of her neck even as his other hand continues combing, “how pretty your neck is.”

The smile is gone now. “Don’t you have souls to feed Cade or something?”

“Thought I’d take the night off, come home to my beautiful fiancé,” he replies, “but when I got to our bedroom – she sleeps early these days, bless her – imagine my surprise when she wasn’t there.”

“You with any sort of emotion would be hard to imagine, actually,” Caroline snips. “I told you to stay away from me.”

“You didn’t tell me hard enough.” He brushes hair off her neck and trails his forefinger down the smooth skin there. “Even now.”

Keeping his eyes on hers, he bends down until his mouth is level with her ear, his thumb tracing patterns on the back of her neck. Caroline fights, but her eyes close all the same. He huffs a laugh at that over her neck and hears her sharp intake of breath. “Love,” he murmurs. “What a conundrum.”

“So you do still love me then,” she says, quietly. And it sounds so sad he has to resist the urge to roll his eyes, because he’s emotionless, not desensitized. She should know this. She’s been there before.

God, he misses those days.

And then he snickers, because – God. Old habits. With Cade around he doesn’t need to be talking to that guy, does he?

He twirls a curl around his finger, puts his nose to her neck, breathes her in. When she was living at the boarding house, she walked around smelling of him, skin hot from the shower. Here in her old bedroom she smells of something flowery, and if it doesn’t irk that possessive streak of his he doesn’t know what would—which probably explains the lingering kiss he leaves on her neck, and that kick he gets out of her gasp.

Until he’s flat on his ass on her floor, her elbow slammed into his throat. “What the fuck, Stefan. You do not just waltz into my bedroom—“

He shifts his weight, pins her to the floor, “I did not waltz—“

She bares her teeth and in an instant he’s against the wall, the vanity shaking. “Yeah, like your dancing today? Way to be a terrible partner, Stefan.”

“I never said I was a good dancer,” he says, and he places a firm hand on the small of her back and wraps his fingers around her beating wrist. “You should stop trying to convince yourself.”

She sidesteps him, they end up in a jerky loop where she is pressed close to his chest, her cheeks flushed. His breathing is labored as well – the spot between his ribs where she’d hurled that broken chair leg at him thuds in reminder, you’re good at this killing thing—

“Are you seriously dancing with me right now?”

—he should stop losing his train of thought. It was starting to get very close to irritating now.

He gives a noncommittal hum, twirls her around a little. She has her eyes narrowed in suspicion, her heart is beating slower despite her heavy breathing. She’s being careful. That’s his Caroline, always so in control. He has a vision of her in red and smiles.

“I actually came because I had a proposal.”

“Let’s hope it’s better than your last one.”

“Oh, Caroline,” he says, leaning close. Her eyes dart to his, “The night I asked you to marry me, you damn near broke the bed. Are you really going to start with the—?”

He shouldn’t be so pleased when she buries her fingers into his chest and growls at him. “Lonely without your humanity, Stefan?”

“I wouldn’t call it lonely with all the souls I’ve been mongering,” he muses, “but I do miss your thighs wrapped around my neck…”

He takes a step forward, she moves swiftly to his pace. She knows how to lead – she always just lets him dance. “As much fun as this passive aggressive dancing is—”

“And we all know how much you value your fun.”

“—back to my proposal.” He dips her low, hums against her throat. “How do you feel about coming on a road trip with me?”

 —

—

 The decision he’d made was this:

“Damon’s out. You’re in.”

She doesn’t actually have much say in the matter, seeing as how she’s got her ankles on the dashboard, sucking down on a Capri Sun. She sends him a look of pure loathing and it sends a thrill down his spine.

That’s more like it.

“He’s more trouble than he’s worth when he’s in this state.” He signals before changing lanes: Caroline looks like she’s about to comment on this but changes her mind.

Instead, she snorts. “And I’m not?”

“You’re efficient,” he says. “We can get this done much faster with you helping me – and isn’t that what you wanted? Me snuggled at your side?”

Caroline stares at him. “I’m not going to help you send innocent souls to Cade.”

Stefan pulls a face. “What about dirty, corrupt souls then?” The rest will come later. He’ll find a way. He’s sure.

“But you said three, ten years. What if this is you trying to trick me—“

“It is me trying to trick you, Caroline,” he sighs exasperatedly, “so if you’re going to blink, blink now.”

She flicks her straw at him. “Did Sybril screw around in your head too? You expect me to bend the knee because of how charming you’re being right now?”

“Hey, worked when you agreed to marry me.” He grins, then slips his sunglasses on. “So what do you say? You and I, partners in crime, ‘til death do us part?”

“You’re awfully confident a fiancé,” she says witheringly, “for someone whose fiancé is sans ring.”

“Want it back? I kept it safe for you.”

“No.” She tells him. And then she looks out the window.

He grits his teeth and blasts the radio.

 —

—

 Some fifteen miles out of Mystic Falls Stefan pulls into a diner and picks off a face from the crowd. He’s good at that, laying the trap and emptying them out. Caroline, despite herself – or maybe because of it, asks: “How can you tell?”

He lets the body crumple at his feet and looks at her, eyebrow quirked.

“The ones who can, you know… Go rogue. Follow the path of evil, whatever you call ‘em.” She shrugs. The body goes still. Woman, mid-20s. Pretty purple dress, floral print, cut out in the back. He wouldn’t mind seeing Caroline in it.

“You get good at listening after a while,” he says, but then pauses. How does he do it? With Damon it had been a case of choosing the worst case scenarios for the older Salvatore, but lately he’d been approaching it with more… finesse, he could say. Something almost akin to a system. No wonder Caroline wanted to know. There must be a formula to everything.

He can’t help but give a rueful smile at that, but then it’s gone the next instant. “You look for the tells. A pure heart, if there even is one, supposedly abhors sins. They don’t just forsake it.”

“Yeah, but how do you know,” Caroline clicks her tongue. “Unless you spend a lot of time talking to these people before you drain them of blood…” She watches her face, and then claps a hand to her mouth to hide her smirk. “Oh my God, you do. What, do you stalk their Facebooks and have meaningful heart-to-hearts to try gauge the dark side of their hearts? Operation Therapy Road Kill? This is what Cade has you doing?”

Stefan doesn’t answer.

Caroline doesn’t stop smirking.

“Yeah, so not efficient.”

 —

—

 “Stop being so smug,” he finally says after the twelfth kill of the day. Caroline has been ever the petulant passenger, ankles on the dashboard, snickering up a storm over his methods when she isn’t looking appalled at his choices. He’d veered towards the truly criminal and corrupt just to get her to stop nagging at some point.

“I could’ve gotten him to admit his sins twice as fast,” she says, examining her nails.

“So why don’t you?” he challenges, stepping down on the accelerator. “That’s why I roped you in in the first place.”

“Exactly. You revealed your cards too early, Stefan. I’ve got leverage now.” She yawns, then leans her seat back. She looks like she’s settling in for an afternoon nap. “By the way, no motels. If you want me to teach you my system, I’m going to need to put my neck on a proper goose down pillow.”

Stefan’s lips twist downward. The only un­-efficient part about Caroline is her need for comfort-slash-luxury at all times—but then, if it meant she’d be cooperative…

He switches lanes at the last minute and heads for the city.

 —

—

 Somehow, amidst all her rushed packing, Caroline had it in her to pack herself a little black dress that she is now pressing up to the bar, beaming her thanks when the bartender slides her a drink “from the fella in the back”.

The absence of his ring on her finger has never been more prominent as it is now, and he makes his way towards her, the posture of a man with an endgame to meet.

“Nice of you to join me, Mr. Salvatore,” she giggles around her olive. “What is that, your eighteenth victim now? Do you have a daily quota to meet or do you stop when you feel the cramps settling in?”

“Ha,” he says shortly. “Bourbon,” is what he directs to the bartender.

“So serious,” she scolds, before surveying the crowd. She sees faces, he sees flesh encasing blood, temporary heartbeats. “So which one of these lucky souls are you going to be chatting up tonight?”

He sidles up to her, relishing the way she eyes his shoulder, how close it is to bumping hers. “I was sort of hoping you’d do the honors.”

“You can’t be serious.”

He meets her eyes evenly. “I upheld my part of the bargain. Swanky hotel, swanky bar. I’ll even stick to your bad guys only rule, as annoying as that is.”

Caroline pretends to consider this as she runs a finger along the rim of her glass. “So what’s my motivation?”

“You are being incredibly overbearing right now,” Stefan tells her, but doesn’t tell her that he’s kind of enjoying it. Let’s just say talks of Damon’s burgeoning morality had been an utter snooze fest the past few days. This – this is refreshing.

“Like this.”

And suddenly he’s stepping closer, voice lowered, hands on her shoulders. He guides her away from the bar, inexplicitly bumping right into the small of her, her soft lines, her curled hair with the ruby pins nestled in their furls. “You pick a face that you like. It can be any face at all – any one that pleases you.”

“And then?” Caroline’s breathing is carefully even now. His jaw is just off the side of her cheek, he imagines her eyes to be intent on the crowd, focused on anything but the slow slide of his hands down her arms as he finds her elbows.

“You ask them for the simple pleasure of their company,” he says into her ear, “and you listen to that jump in their heartbeat as they look at you. Beautiful woman, standing so close… You’ll be able to hear all the impure thoughts they’ll be having.”

Caroline scoffs softly. He keeps his hands where they are, feels something akin to nostalgia as he asks, “You don’t believe in your own beauty?”

“Maybe I believe in people more,” she fires back. She downs the rest of her drink in one go and steps subtly out of his grip, pressing her empty glass into his hands. “Be right back.”

Stefan watches her golden head bob through the crowd, watches her settle by a middle-aged man with a too-wide mouth and a gleaming Rolex. He watches her laugh and tilt her head, traces the slender line of her neck as she accepts the man’s hand.

Blood roars all around him, and all he can see is Caroline.

“Selmy,” he hears the man introduce himself. “And you must be mine for the evening?”

“Nope, you’re mine,” Caroline says in response, and Stefan’s never felt himself smile so wide.

 —

—

 It goes without saying that he kisses her in their hotel room later.

You know, after he convinces her to break the maid’s neck with her teeth.

She’s surprised, but she melts into it easily, fingers finding the nape of his neck and yanking at the hair there. She always kisses him like that, hungry – it reminds him of all the ruthless people he’s ever met in his life, and everything they’ve ever had to lose.

“You were fantastic,” he tells her feverishly between kisses, forgoing the hidden zipper of her dress completely and ripping right through the fabric. Caroline lets out a whine and shoves him slightly—“This was bespoke!”—doesn’t matter, he’s got her pressed down onto the bed.

“Very efficient,” he hums against the wild drum of her heart, and despite the scowl she has on her face he knows she’s pleased, he knows how she likes to be complimented. “I was very impressed.”

“And evidently, shocked about it,” she says and rolls her hips upwards into his. He groans, his forehead falling against her sternum. Caroline takes advantage of the moment to flip them over, her thighs settling very nicely around his hips. And when she starts moving, his fingers sink into her hips, and – fuck, there is entirely too much fabric on her right now.

“Should I apologize?” he grins, but it wavers when she shakes her head.

“I’ve missed you,” she says slowly. Watching him.

He looks at her, takes in her ruined hair, the flush in her cheeks that only a fresh, hot feed can put there, that single trail of blood down the side of her mouth she hadn’t managed to clean before he whisked her away. He catalogues this look on her, is suddenly bombarded by a version of her on that damned laundry room floor, hair pulled away from her face, and he’d told her so earnestly then that he loved her, and she only laughed, the smell of fabric softener was everywhere—

“I’ve missed you too,” he tells her decidedly. That one, he will allow. Cade won’t have to know.

“Good,” she breathes, and all at once it is too much, his fingers twitch and she’s divested of her dress, and there’s all that skin to marvel at, to run his hands over. He can fit his entire palm on the flat of her stomach, and he takes her in like this, smelling of blood and gin and the unfamiliar trace of rich, peppery cologne that he’ll lick off her soon enough.

He zeroes in on the pulse in her neck, presses two fingers just above the vein, feels the capillaries around his eyes appear. Caroline notes this with pupil-blowned fascination, squeals when he seizes her in his arms and has her under him before she can finish that breath. Her wrists in his hands feel breakable, brittle like twigs, but against his palms he feels the rush of her heart. His breath dampens the heave of her chest, and he licks a wet stripe up her sternum, between her collarbones, up the collumn of her neck. It is easy to lose himself in the taste of her skin – if he sucks hard enough he can taste her already, all ready to fall apart.

“Your shirt—take – off,” she gasps brokenly. He happily acqueisces, and there must have been something truly animal in the smile he gives her because he sees her pause, a hesitance even in the haze of lust clouding her gaze.

Well, this won’t do.

He doesn’t promise sweet nothings like he knows that Stefan would – and he doubts his Caroline would be stupid enough to believe him. He wonders if Caroline with her humanity off would have an undead heart beating this hard at the sight of him right now, if she would be scared.

She wouldn’t, he decides – but he doesn’t remember much of the time both of them had Bonnie and Clyded their way through campus green. He remembers flashes of red, he remembers the blood, and by God he remembers the sex, but he doesn’t remember much the pound and thrash of her heart, no, not like the way it rattles between her ribs now, and it drives him mad.

Her fingers are on his face, tracing the black veins flashing under his eyes. Her finger pricks against the point of his fang and her blood stains his tongue – he blinks away stars, watches her face with intent. She’s looking back at him with the same fervor, and – fuck, she’s sliding her finger into his mouth. His eyes close as his tongue works against the little nick he’d made, tastes the slide of her blood down his throat.

Caroline pulls her finger out and presents him his wrist, this maddening woman with wide blue eyes, heart pounding in her chest, giving him, the Ripper, an open invitation to dive right into her and settle into her skin. He has the strange urge to bite clean through flesh and bone, to drain her dry, to let her drink from him, to have her choke on his blood, he blinks away red—

Her bra tears away easily under his hands and he doesn’t realise he’s bitten her breast until the taste of her completely engulfs him – she lets out a cry but holds him closer, hips bucking beneath his, and when he resurfaces and sees how black her eyes have gone he knows her blood must be smeared all over his mouth.

“Come here,” she rasps, and his wrist is between her teeth and she takes a long, indulgent pull. He feels something in himself tugged forward to meet her, he feels the world dim around them as she drinks from him, feels his breath come up hard and fast – he falls forward, their foreheads bang together, but still she keeps her eyes on his and never looks away.

When she tells her she loves him, it’s with a mouthful of his blood.

He doesn’t answer. Maybe she hadn’t expected him to, because she wrestles him onto his back and divests him of his pants, until the only thing seperating them truly being skin to skin are her panties and his boxers. She settles on the hard ridge of his cock and he’s never felt so close to going crazy as he is now, thrusting up into her.

“Not yet,” she says, one hand braced on the headboard and the other pulling the hair away from his forehead. She looks – truly – beautiful. Kissed red, ends of her hair heavy with blood. They’ll probably have to burn the sheets later with the amount that’s streaming down her chest.

“What are you waiting for?” he asks through his teeth, and he’s so hard it’s all he can do to hold in a long wrought-out groan. She rocks her hips and his head falls back against the pillow, pleasure jolting up his spine. “You know how good I’d feel inside you.”

“I know. But I’m about to fuck my humanity-less fiancé in a bed covered in our blood. Excuse me if I need a chance to evaluate my life.”

“Seriously? Compartmentalizing even now?” His fingers find the lacy band of her panties – why is he smiling? “Let go.”

She grinds down against him and he hisses. He swears the red he’s seeing isn’t the blood. “I am going to rip right through these, don’t think I won’t.”

Caroline smiles sweetly at him. “Go right ahead.”

It’s oddly satisfying, the sound of her underwear tearing, but what’s even more satisfying is the sound she makes when rolls her onto her back and presses his chest down onto her breasts, puts his whole weight on her, watches her struggle to breathe. Her fingers tear at his back and her thighs wrap around his hips with crushing force, but he knows her moan is more pleasure than pain when he finally, finally slips into her.

Caroline turns her head, presses her cheek into the pillow, but he grips her chin and forces her to face him. “Don’t you dare muffle that dirty mouth of yours.”

He’s pleased when all she manages in reply is a stream of breathless expletives. He thrusts deeper into her, lets out a shuddering breath against her ear when he feels her tighten around his cock. The pressure that’s rolling low in his stomach builds when she arches into him, and this, he’s missed this, their hips snapping together, her sweat slick against his skin, the overwhelming feeling of her clenched around him, the room reduced to nothing but the insistent pound of her heart, the heady perfume of her hair. His fingers fumble between them, down to her clit, and she curses against his lips as he presses his thumb down in rough circles.

“Stefan,” she gasps, and her lips graze his lashes, her breath wets his forehead—

“Yes,” is all he can say.

She cries his name out another time, and another, and another, and he follows with a whisper of her name in between other nonsense he has no control of, and the sight of her with her fingers grasping the sheets, hair a wildness draped over the pillow, eyes closed to the relentless surge of his hips, is what does him in, but—

“You need to come right now,” he rasps, and miraculously her eyes snap open, her chest heaves, and with a slick press of his thumb she indeed does come, a cut-off cry interspersed with half-sighs of his name.

You, is what he has time to think before he’s not thinking anything at all.

 —

—

 Caroline talks him out of burning down the entire hotel later.

“Think of how inconvenient that would be,” she stresses, slipping on her cat-eye sunglasses. “Isn’t it enough that we torched the room?”

“Pity,” he says agreeably, “We made some nice memories there.”

Caroline doesn’t blush, to her credit. “Back on the road. We’re still sticking to bad guys, right?”

“Sure we are.”

They step out onto the busy street, arms linked. The sun is high in the sky. It doesn’t burn him, but it’s a near damn thing.

—

—

fin

let me know what you think! i was a bit apprehensive about writing this entirely from stefan's pov - hell, i shy away from this elusive fucker on his humanity days, this is him in ripper mode. i mean tq paul wesley for being weird levels of hot, but why must stefan be so complex, man? hope i did good.