#im gonna die and ishi's going 2 be gleeful about it

[highgaarden]

fic: i come alive in the fall time (2/3)

“If you go today, Stefan,” Caroline starts. Her voice is perfectly even, perfectly practiced. Perfect is a look he’s grown to hate on her. “If you go, there’s no turning back.”

“What difference does it make if it’s in a church or a diner?” Stefan asks and pulls away. He straightens his tie – never say he doesn’t put effort in these jaunts – and nudges the door open with his shoulder, still looking at her. “They all make their choices in the end.”

He saunters down the aisle just as the priest says, As long as you both shall live.

“It doesn’t hurt to dream bigger, you know,” he calls out to them. The stained glass filtered light into the densely packed church, and everyone looks kaleidoscopic. It’s one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

He bares his fangs anyway.

Stefan; Stefan/Caroline | Explicit | wc. 7769 | ch. 2/3 | (ao3) (ff.net)

shoot me some LOVE because now this is apparently a third parter? blame @ishenwulf? do i even have a soul anymore?

.

.

I come alive in the fall time,

II

-

He will not feel but he will remember:

A snap of the spine, the vacancy of remorse, the churn and tide of sadness. Pain. Guilt. Grief.

He remembers the emotions. It is easier, now, to look upon them as abject words instead of the gaping maw of feeling, to be as obtuse as commenting on a painting, “That is where he went wrong. That is where I will not go.”

Caroline touches him and he does not feel, but he remembers: hardwood floors, scrubbed clean yet scuffed with age; golden hair spilling out of a bun, the smell of lavender in the warm soak of their clothes.

And she is laughing.

He closes his eyes. That, is where he will not go.

 *

 In the next few days he progresses through faces, towns, teeth, cities, blood. He’s dropped the habit of remembering their names, the tremble and scrape of lists and columns on a wall – it’s Caroline who starts picking it up. Hesitantly, at first, but then tucking their hair behind their ears and whispering, like a sweet reprieve before death, “Tell me your name.”

She writes them down in a book he has tried many times to burn, but she wrestles it out of his grip, tears and scratches her way back to humanity, and he stands with a twisted, split lip, wondering at the futility of it all.

He remembers the rock of her hips in the singed hotel room – “Let go, Caroline.”

“The harder you try, the stronger I’ll hold on,” she counters, and he knows she’s not talking about the book she’s hugging close to her breast,

He wonders, idly, if this is when he starts becoming possessed with the idea of getting her to turn it off.

 *

 It’s a long, long road, made longer by the rain slapping down in grey sheets against the windshields. Caroline has her ankles up – she always has her ankles up – and is humming along to the tinny music clanging out of her earphones.

She hasn’t paid attention to him for some hours.

It’s fine, because he’s planning.

“Sure is homey,” he comments without bothering to raise his voice. He knows she hears him through the music.

They pull up to a little bed and breakfast, a cottage creeping with vines, neat little bricks, and a lush and sprawling garden. It reminds him of the two days he’d spent locked up in a room with Caroline trying to undo her humanity-less spell, and it fills him up with something positively feral.

Caroline looks on in interest, but no verbal agreement.

“You don’t look impressed.”

“I’m having a hard time imagining any bad guys dwelling here.”

“In that case,” and he rises to the challenge, “how about a trip to New Orleans?”

It’s so fast and so loaded that he couldn’t possibly miss it: the look she gives him. A warning and a question all at once.

He cocks a smirk at her. “You did say bad guys only.”

“Stefan.”

“And I imagine Cade would have a field day with Klaus’ soul disintegrating in hellfire.”

 “You think this is funny.” And loathe as she looks to bring it up, he knew he would – he knew – because she’s Caroline: “You can’t. He saved your life.”

“For you,” Stefan shoots back. He observes the way her face is a mask now, carefully devoid of emotion. It’s only temporary – Caroline feels too much to be able to hold it all in. Pity, really. “He told me to let you go.”

“And –” Caroline busies herself with putting her earphones into her bag. “What did you think?”

“Thinking he’s right.”

Caroline very visibly bites her tongue, but she doesn’t share the same bed as him that night, which, not that he notices, busy as he is sublimating.

 *

 They’re standing in a vestibule. Through the oiled double doors they can hear the soar of a voice vibrating off of high, stone walls. A hundred years ago he’d thought setting foot in a church would result in him lighting up in fire.

Safe to say, he doesn’t think that anymore.

“Stefan – Stefan.” Caroline catches his arm. “I didn’t say anything earlier, but – okay, if there is literally a hellfire hotel that Cade apparently owns, don’t you think doing this will cross you off that,” she points upwards, sheepish, determined all at once, “—waiting list, permanently?”

“Heaven’s a lost cause, Caroline,” Stefan says, continuing on his path. “I’m surprised you’re still selfish enough to think it isn’t after all the people we maimed and murdered.”

It’s all too easy for her to bite. “You mean you maimed and murdered.”

Stefan whips around. “I’m not talking about our murder road trip, Caroline. I’m talking about the time you turned it all off and left everything to instinct. I’m talking about your fangs and how they tasted coated with blood. I’m talking,” Stefan continues, stepping closer and closer, “about the time you were bored one afternoon and we spread an entire soccer field red. I’m talking about you and me and the world between our teeth. Can’t you just taste it, Care?”

His hands cup her cheeks. He’s standing so close his voice had dropped to barely a murmur, but her beating heart skipping tremendously tells him she hadn’t missed a thing. Not with the way her breathing grows very shallow, or the way her eyes do not stray from his.

“I… can.” Her eyes slide shut, they shut very tight, remembering everything he presumes. When she opens her eyes again, she is heavy-lidded with remorse. “I still do. That’s the thing, Stefan. I remember each distinct taste of each nondescript human. I don’t remember their names, but I remember how they taste. I don’t even have a name to be remorseful about. I just have faces, and guilt.”

“So turn it off,” he urges quietly. His thumb traces the high point of her cheekbones and he feels in her skin the turmoil of want and need and despair as she tries her hardest not to press her face into his touch. “Turn it off and be free.”

Caroline stiffens. Stefan almost snorts.

“If you go today, Stefan,” Caroline starts. Her voice is perfectly even, perfectly practiced. Perfect is a look he’s grown to hate on her. “If you go, there’s no turning back.”

“What difference does it make if it’s in a church or a diner?” Stefan asks and pulls away. He straightens his tie – never say he doesn’t put effort in these jaunts – and nudges the door open with his shoulder, still looking at her. “They all make their choices in the end.”

He saunters down the aisle just as the priest says, As long as you both shall live.

“It doesn’t hurt to dream bigger, you know,” he calls out to them. The stained glass filtered light into the densely packed church, and everyone looks kaleidoscopic. It’s one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

He bares his fangs anyway.

 *

The ride back to the cottage is the most silent of rides. Caroline has blood splattered down her front. She has blood barely licked around her mouth, too.

He doesn’t feel sorry for the blood lust she’d fallen into, watching him press his fangs into all those pretty necks.

He’s not so sure how he feels about this silence.

He indulges, instead, in the way she had appeared behind him, teeth ready to tear, eyes a black abyss. Too easy to tempt, too beautiful for destruction, but she finds an in-between and works at it. He waits for her to produce some hand sanitizers and hot towels, like last time, but she sits stock-still, staring out the window.

Her ankles are down.

And he realizes – no shit, Sherlock – that her silence is anything but submission.

It’s not a silence of pleading regret – it’s a silence of white hot rage.

She slams the car door after her, tramples up the lane, and clangs the door open without as much as a hello to the front desk. With his ears pricked he can hear the thudding in her chest, harsh and murderous. His own chest stirs with interest.

He follows her in, pursuing the flirt-and-bounce of her skirt as she heads upstairs. She’d chosen that skirt this morning because she had woken up in still love with the bore that was Stefan “Horny for Humanity” Salvatore. She’d chosen soft lines and dreamy colours, things that sure would’ve lured out that Stefan, and she’d turned to him with an expectant smile, like she was sure this was the day he’d come back to her.

By noon it was a different story.

“I hate you,” she cries over the limp body of a girl he’d chosen specifically because she looked a little like Bonnie. Caroline lets out a long, bitter laugh. It hiccups out of her towards the end of it. “And the worst part is you got what you wanted all along. I hate you, Stefan Salvatore.”

He’s still thinking about her unnecessary use of his full name when they get to the second floor landing. And finds himself practically kicked through the door. He crashes into the leather of the sofa; his head spins.

“You’re on the couch tonight,” Caroline says, as calmly as a woman who’d decided to use quinoa instead of rice in tonight’s casserole. “I’m going to take a shower. See you in the morning.”

Caroline walks the length of the room, knowing his eyes are on hers, a furious creak in his bones. Stefan flashes to his feet and his an arm blocking the door to the bedroom before she can close it. “That’s a bit sexist. How come it’s always us men who end up on the couch? Is anyone tallying this?”

“Oh, now you want your feminist ally badge?” Caroline laughs derisively. “After you made those two girls fight over who they thought was the prettiest?”

“Vanity packs a punch in the darkness department,” Stefan gives an exaggerated fist pump, and slides into the room. Caroline presses her back to the door as she shuts it, tracking him like a cat in the wild, a pounce ready in the spring of its feet.

“Here’s the thing.” He finds a seat at the perch of the side-table. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I’ll let the whole thing sl—”

Caroline blazes her way towards him and suddenly he’s slammed onto his back, head hitting the damask tablecloth. She has her fangs out, hissing in his face, and he takes in a deep breath at the look on her face, like she wants to rip his throat out, he balls his fists into the satin of her dress and grins—

She kisses him. Her teeth bite down on his tongue, pricks the taste of red in his mouth. The table creaks as she crawls over him, digs her knees into the table, clamps her thighs around his hips, rests her forearm in the space above his head, and proceeds to make sure his mouth is thoroughly bruised by her tongue.

He’s breathing hard, embarrassingly panting, because fucked they had not since the hotel, touched they had not since she figured out he was intentionally avoiding hers, not a single goddamn intentional press of her back as they get dress in the cramped space of the walk-in closet.

Caroline had been civil and stern all week.

Now, she’s scraping her teeth across his collarbones.

He pulls her back to him, grabs the back of her head when they kiss, and by God she tasted like the sea, like cold water and weary salt. His other hand finds her cheeks, digs grooves into the delicate skin with his blunt fingernails, and she gasps, breaking the kiss.

“You’re crying,” he observes. He notes the disdain in his tone.

“Because I’m feeling too much,” Caroline says, crushing the tears against her mascara with a quick swipe of her palm, “and you’re a fucking idiot.”

“Figured it out!” he bellows and sits up. Caroline nearly tumbles off in the abruptness, but he grabs onto her hips and keeps her close. “You’re about to nag. I’ll take the couch before that happens. Men, always a back door.”

“I won’t keep you from your sleep, then. Need to recharge those murder batteries, huh?” she grins winningly before letting her scowl slide back into place.

Stefan, on the contrary, doesn’t let her go.

He pulls his head back just the slightest to study the state of her hair. It’s in disarray, had been a mess since the impromptu Jeopardy Stefan forced the church inhabitants to play. She holds her head high, haughty as she always gets when she knows she’s being scrutinized.

In a gesture truly of experimental motivation, he presses a kiss filled with intent, slow and hot against the dip between her breasts; nudges the cotton aside with his nose, breathes her in.

“Or.” He blows on her skin and feels her shiver against his fingertips on the base of her spine. “We could fuck all night and you’ll find a way for your pretty little heart to forgive me by dawn.

The sound coming from Caroline’s lips sounds like half a sigh, half a snarl. Her body betrays her the minute he tightens his hold on her waist: she arches into him, and in a tumble and sigh he falls back against the table again, her warm mouth insistent against his.

Stefan lets her ride him because she needs to, because she’s angry and vengeful, broken and sad, too. The heels of her palm rest heavily on his chest as she grinds her hips down, and only when he elicits a gasp does she take it easy on him. She’s moving tantalizingly slow, fingers levering her as she moves, the conflict of pleasure and pain building in the stutter of his hips, and there’s a sob breaking any time at the back of his throat.

When she breaks over him her cheeks are dry. She doesn’t speak to him when she disentangles herself from his arms, and when she changes into a nightgown it’s with back to him.

He goes to splash water on his face, steady his shaking hands on sides of the sink. By the time he makes it back into the room Caroline’s curled up in her side of the bed, taking all the pillows and more than her share of the blanket, but leaves a space for him.

He sleeps on the couch instead.

 *

 When he wakes, he’s sure his arm shooting out beside him, searching the blankets almost instinctually, was a thing he’d dreamt.

 *

 They’re driving back to Vermont when he gets the idea.

It’s a week before they finally make it to Long Island – New York City was a blur of depraved souls and corrupt yuppies – and head straight to the heart of Brentwood, which circled around a lake.

That’s where all the pretty houses are.

The pavements are pink and brown from the fallen flowers, but the tree makes for a certain charm, towering over the lawn, branches drooping low enough to scratch against the white-picket fence when the wind picks up. The front porch comes with the wholesome-looking swing in its corner, and there’s already a welcome mat at the front door. A push of the door reveals a house Stefan called ahead and had an interior designer piece together in a gusto of uniform, tasteful colours, snuck straight from Caroline’s binder of dream home colour schemes.

Caroline runs a finger against the texture of the walls, wide-eyed and mouth slightly parted.

There’s no sight of any carpeting, which Caroline hums approvingly at, which only makes his smirk grow wider.

“Is this a homestay?” she asks from the other room.

“Nope,” he calls back. “Just home.”

Caroline had been perusing the album collection in the study, and he hears the rove of her fingers stop. “What.”

“Surprise, I bought a house,” he grins at the wall, imagining her expression now.

“For what?”

“So we have a place to host our housewarming party. That starts in just a little after two hours, by the way. You’re really behind on your planning.”

Caroline appears behind him in a flash. “What are you saying?”

 +

 “I have a gift. For being my best friend, for being my fiancé, and for being my wife. For agreeing to share what we have as individuals and making something that’s ours. For as long as we both shall live.” Stefan pulls out a ring encrusted in diamonds and blue lagoons, and still he keeps smiling. He can’t help it, inside joke. The punchline involves him having stolen the ring from the dearly beloved, now dearly departed bride.

Amidst a backdrop of pastel-wearing neighbours all smiling sappily, Stefan slides the ring onto Caroline’s finger with great fanfare, swears his eternal love to her, swears her white picket fences and 2.5 children should they ever be in a position to Kill Enzo, Damon, and the rest of the vampire population for the cure.

Love, blood and violence – makes for some pretty good vows, if you ask him.

The smiles of their guests still do not slip.

In her lovely lace and gleaming pearls Caroline isn’t scowling indignance like he’d assumed she’d be. Her hand is still in his. There’s a thoughtful silence stewing in the air around her, and she looks at him with eyes that are too bright. “I don’t have a ring for you,” she says deliberately. “But. You should have something too.”

She flashes to her bag and rummages in it a second before she’s back in an instant: in her hands balances the book, her list of names cultivated with great care. There is a tenderness in her eyes he hasn’t seen in a while. And then something other than the usual dull murk of observation stabs him—hate, he thinks. He hates that look on her face right now.

“Rightfully, these names are yours anyway. It’s a tradition. Take away the shape of it: names, rings. It all pretty much means the same.” Caroline takes a deep breath. “I trust you not to violate these names. I trust you, Stefan. Even when you’re like this.”

She presses the book into his palms.

He thinks about her chaining him up in the Salvatore cellar, and she’d said Because I love you, Stefan.

There’s a bright burst of light in his eyes and suddenly he sees the floor, that floor, smells the faint float of flowery soap that he distantly remembers having offered some comfort, the slip of a wrinkled shirt over his chest, Caroline laughing breathlessly, hair spilled onto the floor.

Because I love you, he breathed then, into her neck, into her neck, into her neck.

The hotel room. His throat gurgling with blood from her neck, that look in her eyes searching as always.

Cade, smiling with his too-white teeth, a glint in his eye, fading in and out against the flicker of the fireplace.

“Love, oh love,” he sings. “How obtrusively virtuous of her—to love a dead thing inside a shell of a man.”

Stefan doesn’t answer. He is but a soldier, waiting on every beck and call. He will not budge.

“Remember,” Cade warns, voice slicing the air like the flick of a serpent tongue, like rich silk, “if she gets your humanity back on, she dies next.”

I trust you, Caroline says, still so naïve. Why does he love her—

He blinks. There’s the book balanced in his hands, there’s Caroline shooting him a smile before retreating to the bar, and he feels the urge to follow.

He feels –

Fuck.