S/E/D (S/K/D) behemoth fic (needs beta, dying slow death)

[verushka70]

Too windy and wild outside to sleep; rattling windows, outdoor security light keeps turning on due to moving branches in the line of sight of the motion detector. Can't sleep.

Got to resolve my behemoth S/E/D fic (with S/K/D) flashbacks. It's too big (472K text file). Too unwieldy (needs a beta, or two, or five). Starts too far in the past (Stefan & Damon's pre-Katherine childhoods). I intended a happy-ish ending, S/E/D riding off into the proverbial sunset together; it it isn't turning out that way; don't want to go in the direction it's headed. Just hoping to salvage something, even if only some short TVD fics. Very raw, unbeta-ed form with section divisions/notes.

Despite some very G-rated gen flashbacks to Stefan and Damon as children, this has to be NC-17 for all the other stuff: S/K/D, S/D, S/E, WARNINGS for incest slash, flashback child abuse/whipping (Guiseppe disciplining Damon), historical aspects of slavery, deaths, BDSM, orgasm denial, m/f/m threesome sex and sex on the rag.

Parts of this are little more than first drafts; others have been worked and reworked, so as a whole, it's rather uneven. :-\



“Mother! Mother!”

The frightened calls of his little brother rouse young Damon. He sits up in bed, listening.

“Mother, please come!”

It's Stefan. Damon slides carefully out of bed. The floor is cold under his bare feet. It is dark, but every few moments, flashing blue-white light splits the darkness, followed by rumbles of thunder. Damon jumps each time the lightning surprises him. But he gets out of bed anyway.

Earlier at twilight, heat lightning flickered off in the distance. There was no thunder, no tell-tale patter of rain. Damon watched from the widow's walk and wondered whether it would remain off in the distance, or if it would turn into a summer storm.

A short time ago, Damon was too young to light a lantern on his own. Much has changed since Mother died. She can't go to Stefan ever again. Damon has a lantern lit and in his hand in less time than it takes to tie his shoes.

In the dark hallway he runs into the nanny carrying a guttering candle.

“Master Stefan is having a bad dream,” she says.

“I heard.” Damon's precociousness borders on insolence since his mother died.

“Best to let him cry it out alone,” she says firmly.

“No.” Damon responds adamantly. “He will not.”

“Your father said–”

“I don't care what Father said. I will not let him cry it out alone. Mother wouldn't have, and I won't either.”

“Master Damon–”

“Get out of my way,” he says, openly defiant. “You don't care about Stefan. You only care what Father says. He is my brother. I will go to him. And he will not 'cry it out alone'.”

“Damon, now–” she says, exasperated.

“Do you want Father to know about your pilfering from the pantry?”

“I have done no such–” she begins, outraged.

“I will tell him you have,” he says evenly, and sets his jaw. “Now get out of my way.”

She says no more, but steps aside. Damon proceeds past her down the hall. He opens Stefan's door, and finds him sitting up in the middle of the bed, shaking. Damon sets his lantern on the bedside table and climbs into bed with Stefan.

Stefan's soft, slightly sweaty hair brushes Damon's cheek as he climbs into Damon's lap and hugs him fiercely.

“Where is Mother? Why won't she come? She always comes when it storms,” he whispers.

“She can't come,” Damon says dully, holding his little brother, patting his back. “You must stop asking, Stefan. She can't come anymore.”

“But everyone tells me I will see her again. When will I see her again?” Stefan trembles as lightning flashes and thunder rumbles again.

Damon sighs heavily. He wants to see Mother again, too. He wants to put his arms around her soft waist, wants to stir the batter for biscuits with her, wants to feel her soft hand on his shoulder after Father is unnecessarily harsh with him. Father is harsher than ever, now. He wants to weep when he thinks Mother's soft hand will never rest on his shoulder again.

But he is the eldest brother. He has to set an example; he's been told. Example or not, he knows he has to protect Stefan. He has to do what Mother can't do anymore, what Father won't and never did.

He can not weep or show fear; Giuseppe will not stand for it. When Damon does weep, it is entirely by himself, up on the widow's walk or down in the root cellar. Desolate and alone, he chokes back bitter sobs. He stops himself before he goes on too long, afraid his tears will never stop if he gives them full rein. They rise up to fill the enormous emptiness Mother's death has left in him, fill it to overflowing until it seems he is nothing but sorrow inside.

He can not weep, or Stefan will weep, too – more than he already has.

“We shall not see her again,” Damon says quietly, despite the hot spark of tears behind his eyes. “Do not believe them, Stefan. They speak pleasant lies. We shall not see her again in this life.”

Stefan gulps, his face hot and moist against Damon's neck. He does not speak.

“I'm sorry, little brother. Mother can't come anymore,” Damon murmurs sadly. “I'll come when you call.”

“All right, Damon,” Stefan sighs heavily against Damon's neck.

Another flash of lightning and a swift, loud clap of thunder start Stefan trembling all over again. He tucks his face harder into Damon's neck.

“It's only lightning and thunder. It will pass,” Damon says soothingly. He holds Stefan in his lap and strokes his back through his night shirt.

The sound of the rain comes, then.

“Listen: it's only a summer storm. It will pass, Stefan. And we need the rain.”

Stefan sits up, arms loosening.

They both listen to the rain for a while. Stefan climbs out of Damon's lap. He yawns. When Damon moves to slide out of the bed, Stefan grabs his arm.

“Don't go yet,” he begs.

“All right,” Damon sighs, secretly relieved.

They stretch out beside each other, listening to the rain. The occasional flash of lightning and clap of thunder drive Stefan closer to Damon until they are entwined. Stefan curls up against him and Damon strokes Stefan's back.

The rain goes on a long time. Stefan, exhausted, finally falls asleep. Damon lies awake, listening to the rain, the warmth of his little brother beside him.

--------

“Last one to the end is a rotten egg!”

They tear down the path between rows of trees in the orchard. Stefan falls behind little by little, until he can't catch up. Damon reaches the last tree first. He leans against it, hands propped on his knees, panting. Stefan slows to a stop a short ways off.

“It's not fair,” the younger boy pants. “You'll always be bigger and stronger than me; you're older. You'll always win,” he says, discouraged.

“Don't be a sore loser, Stefan,” Damon says between breaths. “It's poor sportsmanship.”

“I'm not racing you anymore,” Stefan replies. “It's not a fair race anyway.”

“Oh, come now,” the older boy says. “It's all in good fun.”

“For you! You always win. I never do.”

“Stefan...”

“No. Today is the last race.”

Stefan turns away, walking back the way they came. His movement is slow and sad.

“Wait, Stefan!” Damon says, pushing off the tree and following. “I'm sorry.”

“You're not,” Stefan replies without looking back.

“I am,” Damon says urgently. “I'll let you win next time,” he calls, catching up.

Stefan whirls on him. “I don't want you to let me win! I want to win on my own.”

“But you can't,” Damon replies, not unkindly. “I mean, not unless I let you. You just said yourself, I'm older and bigger.”

“Then we just won't race anymore.” Stefan turns away, marching back to the house.

“There has to be some way to make it fair,” Damon muses, throwing an arm around Stefan's shoulders. “Maybe handicapping, like with horse racing.”

“You can't handicap me.” Stefan shrugs his brother's arm off.

“Not you. Me. To make it fairer.” Damon throws his arms around Stefan from behind, letting Stefan drag him along.

“Handicap you? How?” Stefan walks determinedly on, towing his brother, who hangs comfortably on him.

“I could carry something heavy. Like with race horses: heavier jockeys ride the bigger horses, to make it fair for the smaller horses.” Damon releases Stefan and shrugs, walking alongside him now.

Stefan considers this. “That would make it fair?”

“It would make it fairer,” his brother replies kindly. “I don't know if it would make it completely fair.”

“Next time, we'll take your knapsack and load it with both our school books,” Stefan suggests.

Damon nods. “That's what we'll do, little brother.”

“You'll be 'handicapped' and I might have a chance.”

“You might,” Damon agrees, smiling.

“Prepare to lose,” Stefan smiles back at him, unfairness forgotten.

“I wouldn't count on that!” Damon retorts, and elbows him in the ribs.

Stefan's gasp is followed by gleeful laughter as he tackles Damon. They roll in the cool grass beneath the trees.

“I'll have my day!” Stefan vows, breaking free of Damon and running headlong down the row.

“Wait, brother! I'm coming with you!” Damon jumps up from the grass and tears off after his younger brother.

They laugh and scream, dappled sunlight splashing across their young faces as they run.

--------

They are shooting at canning jars perched on the low stone wall by the orchard. From a distance of twenty paces, Stefan gets every single one of his five jars. Damon misses two.

“You're an excellent shot, Stefan,” Giuseppe says approvingly. “Your aim, Damon, is atrocious. You will work harder and Stefan and I will go to town.”

“



--------

Pre-transition-Damon-Stefan as humans, w-Katherine

She was intoxicating. Her caresses fogged his mind; the pleasure blind-sided him. Damon's few experiences with whores near the battle front had never prepared him for this. The soldiers, mostly very young, were interested in quick, no-muss-no-fuss fornication. They wanted to be men before they went to die for “the cause.” Their needs were basic and were met in a very basic way.

Damon was beyond smitten. He was utterly obsessed. Katherine, or thoughts of her, ruled nearly his every waking hour. Kisses stolen in the shade of Father's orchards led to caresses in the darkness of the stables. Those led to liberties taken in a carriage with the curtains drawn.

Hidden in the carriage, he kissed her neck, her shoulders, the tops of her exposed breasts. She stroked him through his trousers, hard and fast until he was twitching, but not hard or fast enough to bring him to fulfillment.

Then the carriage would stop. Katherine would adjust her neckline, pat her hair, gather her skirts, and descend the steps holding the coachman's hand as if they had been doing nothing more than talking. It was excruciating and wildly exciting: she thumbed her nose at propriety and the hypocrisy of the world in which they found themselves. Katherine delighted in exciting Damon just before a public appearance. She often got him hard and then left him hanging and having to make an entrance, that secret, knowing smile at the corners of her lips.

Eventually she took him to bed. He kissed and caressed her perfect flesh, feverishly yanked the front of her dress down only to be kept at bay by her corset. It was easier and faster to pull the corset down than to try to unlace it. He sucked her exposed nipples until she groaned and threw him down in the bed. When she straddled him and leaned down, her breasts fell out of the corset over his face. He took one nipple into his mouth as he rubbed the other between thumb and forefinger.

Through crinoline and pantaloons, Katherine pressed and rubbed herself feverishly against him. He was already hard and aching. When he desperately undid his trouser buttons, she slid down and performed the sacrilege of taking him into her mouth. The pleasure was excruciating. Damon was embarrassed at how quickly he shot off in her mouth (in her mouth!). Katherine seemed delighted and amused.

He was ready again almost immediately – so young, so inexperienced, so enthralled by her regal beauty and lack of inhibition, which were utterly unlike the proper young women of Mystic Falls. Now she took her time. Strong, supple strokes of her hands pulled pleasure out of him inch by inch. She brought him to the edge a few times, until he could hold back no longer: he arched and cried out, spurting into her hands. Katherine wiped them on his trousers, then removed her undergarments. She stroked Damon to hardness again and then slowly lowered herself on him.

Her incredible heat and wetness enveloped him to the hilt, and he understood why she had brought him off, twice, right before: he would otherwise never have lasted long enough for her pleasure. She rocked and ground on him, holding him down by the wrists, a deliriously happy prisoner.

When her breath came in gasps and pants, she grew tighter and tighter. Her pleasure crested, pulling his along with it like a riptide. Under her, shuddering with release for a third time, Damon finally knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He would have followed Katherine like a lamb to slaughter. It was overwhelming. He could not recall ever being so happy.

Each time they were alone together, Katherine changed things only in small increments, so nothing was shocking. It wasn't until Damon looked back at the progression (stolen kisses, to tied to the bedposts, to teeth and bites and blood) that he was shocked, and then only at how quickly it occurred, over so short a time. It felt as if he'd loved her forever.

The first night he found Stefan waiting in her bed was the first time she had to compel him. It was as if Stefan had been there all day. Maybe he had. Thus began Damon's nightly compulsion by Katherine – his and Stefan's. He would have gladly have thrown Stefan out of the room into the hall, except Katherine insisted on Stefan staying and Damon watching. Damon had to admit, watching Stefan caress and kiss her was almost as arousing as doing it himself. They looked simply beautiful together in the lamp light.

Damon sat on the chair and watched Stefan's tawny, muscular body respond to Katherine's touch. He watched Stefan's gleaming cock slide in and out of Katherine as she rocked up and down on his brother. He watched Stefan's hands grip her hips, pulling her down hard onto him, impaling her. He hoped he and Katherine looked as beautiful and enticing together as she and Stefan did.

After he transitioned, he wondered why Katherine had bothered to hold him down or tie him to the bed or chair when they had sex. She only needed to compel him to stay, as she compelled him to sit in the chair and watch she and Stefan. And he would have – no bondage would have been necessary.

He concluded that she just liked him bound and enslaved.

--------

S1-post tomb opening

He could have muscled his way in.

Could have tricked her, compelled her, convinced her, coerced her.

No, he couldn't. He could never have. He didn't. Wouldn't. Ever.

One of the reasons why Damon tacitly agreed to be second best the second time around and plays the least-liked Salvatore with gusto is because he knows he's not really over Katherine. Elena is a good fixation. Protecting her and loving her helplessly while Stefan makes loves to her gives Damon somewhere to put all the energy and drive that kept him going for the better part of two centuries. Finding that Katherine had never been in the tomb – hearing from her that she never loved him – knocked the wind out of him, unsettled him to the core. Not that he'd ever let anyone see.

But if it happened right now, if Elena shockingly rethought her choice of Stefan, and chose him instead, Damon knows she'd be his rebound from Katherine.

Those always turn out so well.

So he bides his time. Longs from afar. Besides, even if Elena is Stefan's rebound girl, if anyone deserves something good after all this time, it's Stefan. He'd never tell him that, but he can see it. Despite what Stefan thinks, Damon knows Stefan deserves a good woman.

It's unfortunate that he wants the same good woman.

He loves his brother. He loves Elena, too. He wants he and Stefan to be close again, but that seems destined to fail time and again. He figures it's better to give up on that. He's not pinning his hopes on Elena, either. It's safer for all three of them if he just longs from afar. He can still do everything she needs him to do without turning it into a “him or me” situation.

Whatever Stefan says, Damon's got his back. He's not sure Stefan has his. Never is anymore. But he's got Stefan's back, if only because it usually means indirectly having Elena's back.

It's unthinkable that she would want them both, the way Katherine did. Elena's not like that. Could never be like that.

Could she?

--------

Pre-S1-early after the brothers transitioned

Intermingled brotherly and sensual love engendered the most murderous rage.

All that blood, all those dead and dying women he drank and discarded – they kept that at bay, too. For a while. While he drowned his sorrow and guilt and the close-creeping desire for his own brother that a deep part of him assumed was the apotheosis of his depravity.

--------
Pre-S1-after transition-memories of human life

Damon took the brunt of Giuseppe's disapproval time and again. On the one hand, they both knew it was simple timing: he had the misfortune of being born first, the oldest, the prodigal son. And what a towering disappointment to Giuseppe he had proved to be.

After
--------
Pre-S1-Before 1912-After Crane's Red Badge of Courage-Late 1890s?

“Greetings, brother,” Damon says, stepping out of the shadows as Stefan exits a tavern.

Taken aback, Stefan hesitates, and then throws his arms happily around Damon. His older brother clasps him to his chest with a suffocating strength and then just as quickly pushes him away.

Stefan tugs Damon back into the tavern with genuine affection, and they awkwardly catch up on each other's lives over the many years they have been apart. Eventually, of course, Damon lowers his voice.

“How goes it, brother? Still leaving bodies behind?”

Stefan pauses at the words, but the edge of contempt he expected is not there. Damon seems sincere.

“No, I... Alexia is teaching me to control... the blood lust,” he replies, low and quiet in Damon's ear. “I think I wrote about that in my letters.” He sips meditatively at his bourbon.

“Yes, that's good, good,” Damon nods, looking away, guilty. “I couldn't – Stefan, I could not –”

“I understand,” Stefan interrupts, feeling as guilty as Damon looks. He grasps Damon's shoulders. “I made it difficult – impossible – for you to stay, I risked exposing us. It's all right, brother.”

Damon heaves a sigh. As the silence expands between them, surrounded by the nattering of the tavern patrons, Stefan thinks they must both be thinking of her. Their eyes meet; they silently toast and down their drinks.

But then Damon shrugs off the melancholy that has settled on both of them. “I have something for you,” he says, with a mischievous smile and lift of those expressive eyebrows.

“What?”

“A present. A peace-offering. Come with me, back to my hotel.” He throws coins on the bar. Then, his arm about Stefan's shoulders, he steers him to the door before Stefan can protest.

“I figured something else out, thanks to Alexia. Drinking helps,” Stefan chuckles as they both emerge onto the cobblestones, a bit wobbly with drink.

A hansom cab trots briskly past. Damon chases after it and flags it down. They settle in, and Stefan's heart swells to be at Damon's side again. It is as if they never quarreled, never fought. Never loved the same woman. Almost.

“Impressive,” he murmurs, once inside Damon's sumptuous rooms. “So what is this surprise?” he asks, curious and relieved that they have avoided disagreement so far. They have not been cross with each other, not once. Yet.

“In the bedroom,” Damon says mysteriously, pushing the door aside and gesturing Stefan ahead of him.

At the word 'bedroom,' Stefan's slow pulse quickens against his will. He goes slowly, reluctantly, ahead of Damon into the dim chamber. The thick dark curtains are drawn.

“Violeta,” Damon calls softly, lighting a lantern on the bedside table and turning it down low.

The luxurious bed linens, curved around a figure, move as the young woman rolls over. She is olive-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired, sleepy. She sighs voluptuously, smiles at Damon and speaks softly in Italian as she sits up.

“This is Violeta.”

As she sits up, her shoulders and breasts are bared; the lamp light reveals numerous bite marks marring her skin. They make Stefan's mouth water even as he feels his heart sink.

Violeta's pert nose, full lips, and heart shaped face are not Katherine's. There is only a passing resemblance, this close. But with disheveled curls around her face and dark hair tumbling down her back and breasts, the similarities are greater than the differences. Stefan imagines her, fashionable hat on her head, feather and dress bobbing as she hurries through the streets. From behind, from across the street, yes: she could easily be mistaken for Katherine. He wonders if that's why Damon chose her. He dares not ask.

“Damon...”

“It's all right,” Damon soothes. “She's not even compelled.”

Stefan eyes his brother doubtfully. Violeta rises from the bed, nude, and comes to Damon. Their kiss is loud, wet and utterly unashamed. Stefan looks away from her breasts, from the triangle of dark hair where her legs meet.

“Violeta,” Damon murmurs as their lips part. “This... is my brother Stefan.” His voice is proud, with an odd tremor to it.

She turns to look at Stefan, dark eyes gleaming.

Damon and Violeta move towards Stefan as one. He can't help it; he backs away until the wall stops him.

“Damon, I –”

“Stefan... it's all right. She wanted to meet you. I've told her all about you,” Damon smiles. With his face half shadowed, it seems half-sinister.

Damon takes one of Violeta's wrists as she twines her other arm around Stefan's neck. The soft sound of her flesh breaking under Damon's fangs comes to Stefan as if through deep water. The touch of her hand on his neck, the press of her young breasts to his waistcoat –

“I can't, Damon–”

She pulls his face down and her lips press against his. Stefan smells the wine she drank earlier, tastes Damon's lips on hers. His trousers grow snug. As Damon feeds at her wrist, the scent of her blood starts Stefan's senses buzzing. He opens his mouth to Violeta's insistent tongue, steps forward into her embrace.

“That's right,” Damon murmurs, releasing her wrist. Droplets of her blood fall slowly to the floor, each a tiny explosion in Stefan's now exquisitely sensitive hearing.

Damon steps behind him and tugs Stefan's jacket and waistcoat slowly off his shoulders as Violeta unbuttons his shirt. All the while, Violeta's tongue scrapes lightly against Stefan's fangs, and her blood seeps onto his tongue.

How did he live on the blood of animals these last few years, when this elixir has been all around him, free for the taking?

Stefan feels the fullness and engorgement of his cock. The haze of blood lust slows his thinking, clouding everything and narrowing thought down to nothing but the delicious heat and coppery taste of her blood on his tongue. He makes one final, valiant effort. His limbs rise heavily, as if through cold molasses, thrusting Violeta away.

“Damon, I don't drink – Alexia, Alexia has me drinking–”

“What, animals? They're fine, in a pinch.” The pressure of Damon's strong hands, squeezing his upper arms from behind, is soothing. “But this is so much better, Stefan. How can you live on that, when this is all around you?”

Damon's words are a frightening mirror of his own thoughts. His erection pulses and his knees weaken as he takes faltering steps towards the bed, pulled by Violeta in front of him and pushed by Damon behind him.

“I can't – I can't control myself if I feed on human –”

“Human blood?” Damon murmurs, lips pressed against the side of Stefan's neck.

The vibration of his voice and his breath raise gooseflesh all over Stefan. Damon pushes him down onto the bed and into Violeta's arms.

“Damon, you have to stop me–”

“Never you mind,” Damon soothes. Violeta's tongue enters Stefan's mouth once again. Her long hair is soft and ticklish on his bare chest. Damon stands over them both, pulling Stefan's boots and then trousers off. “You're here now,” Damon adds thickly.

Veins around Damon's eyes and his fangs are visible, even in the low lamp light. He quickly strips off his own waistcoat, suspenders, shirt and breeches. The bed dips as he kneels on it, and Stefan's mouth waters involuntarily at the sight of Damon's erection.

“You're mine. Again. For now,” Damon murmurs, settling behind Stefan, who thinks (too late): Violeta is no peace offering or present. She is but a pretex.

Stefan feels Violeta's mouth pull away from his own, the warmth of Damon's arm around him from behind. Her lips trail down Stefan's neck to his chest, his nipples. The strong fingers grasping his chin, turning his face over his shoulder, are Damon's.

The golden lamplight turns Damon's eyes green as bottle glass. An ache flares in them just before he devours Stefan's mouth.

Stefan is lost, tasting Violeta's blood on Damon's tongue. The fever pitch of need, the blood lust, rises in him. He tears his mouth away from Damon's, turning to sink his fangs into Violeta's flesh.

He gulps at the font of hot, metallic blood, swallowing convulsively, over and over. Violeta cries out beneath him, and Damon leans over to whisper.

“I'll stop you,” Damon says, then pauses. “If that's what you really want...”

His hard cock presses insistently against Stefan's hip. The mean edge to his tone comes to Stefan in a delayed reaction, and doubt floods him even as the blood fogs his mind. No, no, he thinks despairingly. He should have known this would not – could not – merely be a reunion of brothers. He feels Damon grab him and turn him so they face each other on the bed.

“Hold me down,” Damon breathlessly urges him. He speaks rapidly to Violeta in Italian, then whispers to Stefan, “Hold me down, don't let me touch her while she–”

He gasps as Violeta takes his cock in her mouth.

Stefan remembers this, remembers Katherine compelling him to hold Damon down while she tormented him with her mouth. Remembers Katherine bringing Damon to the edge over and over, then tightly squeezing the head of his cock to postpone his ultimate pleasure, to prevent him spilling his seed.

He remembers Katherine compelling him to tie Damon to the bedpost, and compelling Damon to try to get loose as he watched Stefan and Katherine make love only a few feet away. He remembers Damon lunging against his bonds until, realizing he couldn't get free, he worked one wrist free far enough to touch himself.

When Damon spurted all the way across the bed onto he and Katherine, her musical laugh was both delighted and chilling. Damon's forearm was bloody and shredded. He practically sobbed with frustration. And yet he was hard again in an instant. Stefan remembers begging Katherine to let him free Damon, remembers begging her to heal Damon's wrist when it was all over.

He recalls all of this in a split second, sorrow and sickness rising like bile in the far part of his mind even as he devours Damon's mouth, tasting Violeta's heady blood. He pities Damon and himself, even as he does what his elder brother asked him to do: he holds Damon down, imprisons his wrists with one hand, presses one shoulder into the bed with the other; he doesn't let Damon touch Violeta as she fellates him.

Damon bucks and cries in his grip, writhing as Violeta brings him repeatedly to the brink. Stefan crushes their mouths together to silence him. Damon bites his tongue, thrusting mindlessly into Violeta's mouth. He bites Damon's tongue – turnabout is fair play – and they suck on each other's tongues and blood as Damon convulses beneath him. Guttural moans rack his body as he climaxes.

He is, of course, ready again in an instant, panting into Stefan's mouth. He surges against Stefan, thrusts Stefan up and over, face down onto Violeta.

It has been – since Katherine – since Stefan did this. He can not reconcile the tight, wet heat he plunges into with the sear and stretch of Damon penetrating him. With a brutal thrust and a piercing shock of pain and pleasure, Damon is in him to the hilt, gasping over his shoulder.

Stefan rocks back and forth between Violeta and Damon, mournful and monstrous, succumbing to the overwhelming sensations. He sinks his fangs into Violeta's jugular, sucking down great draughts of her hot blood as he releases inside her. Every spurt tightens him painfully but agonizingly pleasurably around Damon's thrusts, as he shudders through his own pleasure behind Stefan. Damon's soft grunts, in time with his spurts, are the last thing Stefan hears before everything goes silent as snow.

Stefan awakens to Violeta's cold body on one side of him, Damon's warmth pressed against him on the other.

He sits up. Damon stirs but does not wake, even when Stefan shakes Violeta violently, repeatedly. Her open eyes, their glassy, glazed stare, reveal the truth. She can't have been dead – he can't have slept – that long; her limbs flop like a doll's. Stefan shoves her off the bed, nauseated.

Damon's eyes open wide when he feels Stefan's hands around his throat.

“You were supposed to stop me!” Stefan shakes Damon as violently as he shook the young woman a moment ago.

“You didn't want me to!” Strong hands close around his own throat; the angelic expression on Damon's drowsy face curdles into malevolence.

“You aren't supposed to give me what I want, you're supposed to do what I asked, what I needed! You know I can't control it!”

Damon breaks Stefan's grip on his neck and shoves Stefan away so hard that he falls off the bed onto the dead Violeta.

“That's just something Alexia made you believe,” he sneers. “She doesn't know you like I do. She doesn't know that your abstinence gives you less control, not more.”

Stefan scrambles up off the dead woman, onto the bed, refusing to look at the floor, at the dead body. He presses his hands over his eyes.

“What you know of me is from long ago when we were human. We haven't been for years.” He uncovers his eyes and glares up at Damon, whose uncertain expression reveals his doubt. “And you haven't been with me; Alexia has. You know nothing about how I am now.”

For once, Damon is speechless. Stefan takes the opportunity to get out of bed, finding his clothes on the floor. He dresses rapidly.

“Stefan... Stefan, I–”

“Don't speak to me. I haven't killed in–” Stefan chokes off the rest of his sentence, not wanting to reveal that he's been counting the days, weeks, months as some sort of triumph.

“I thought you could control – your letters –” Damon's voice is almost plaintive.

“You read far too much between the lines. Just as you always did.”

A glint in Damon's eye enrages him all over again. He leaps on Damon and they roll together on the floor, fighting, landing blows. He punches Damon's eye; Damon splits his lip.

They tear apart, cheeks flushed and breathing hard across the room from each other. Damon arches an eyebrow, his eye already healing, the corner of his lip turned meanly down.

“You're sick,” Stefan spits. “We didn't need to repeat the past. Violeta didn't deserve to die.”

Damon shrugs as if he could care less, but Stefan sees the tic in his cheek as Damon sets his jaw.

“You know how I am. You must have known where this was going,” Damon smiles, defiantly decadent. “You went along with it any way.”

“You tricked me,” Stefan begins, and then thinks: there is no point in answer or protest. The damage and death is done. His shirt is torn. He finishes buttoning it quickly. “Leave me alone. Don't follow me. Don't look for me,” he hisses at Damon.

“What makes you think I would?” Damon retorts.

Stefan refuses to grace that with an answer. (Damon will always find him.) Silence falls between them. He shrugs into his waistcoat, refusing to meet Damon's eyes. When he touches the door latch, Damon is on him.

“Stop,” he says, and his tone is more imploring now. “Don't go. I didn't – honestly, Stefan, you wrote that you were learning control – what did you expect me to think?”

This is how it always is, when it's bad between them: everything turns on the slightest detail; oceans of misunderstanding and misinterpretation crash around them, washing everything good away.

He shrugs Damon off violently, and his brother steps back. He does not look at Damon; he speaks over his shoulder, looking down.

“I wrote that Alexia was helping me. Yes, I wrote that I was learning control – not that I had it. But I should know by now that I can't have anything good that you won't destroy.”

“I did promise,” Damon growls, both derisive and defensive.

“Yes,” Stefan agrees heavily. “You did.” He tosses a nod in the direction of the body. “Take care of that. It wouldn't have happened if you–”

“Of course,” Damon interrupts meanly, “because your lack of self control is always my fault–”

Stefan yanks the door open and steps out into the quiet hallway. He slams the door shut behind him and strides away as fast as possible without using vampire speed.

“Be seeing you soon, Stefan!” comes Damon's mocking sing-song through the closed door.

Five years later, Lexi tells him she thinks she saw Damon at the train station. It was quite brief, so she isn't sure. But the angelic face, the icy eyes – it looked like Damon, dressed impeccably.

He raised his top hat to her, with a twist of eyebrow, a sardonic smile, and a shrug beneath his cape. His clothes, his expression – he could have been Jack the Ripper. She wondered aloud to Stefan if that's who Damon was trying to look like. A cloud of steam from the train engine engulfed him. The whistle blew, the train began moving, and when she looked again, he was gone.

Stefan has dodged Damon's letters, let them pile up at his last address. At news of Lexi's possible sighting, he retrieves them. In the unopened letters he finds that Damon writes “abstinence” rather than “control” on the rare occasion when he inquires about Stefan's progress at all.

This is as close to an apology as Damon will come.

Stefan would hate Damon if he could. He can't, knowing only too well how Damon became who he is. If he hates Damon, he should loathe himself – even more than he already does. From there it would be a short trip to removing his daylight ring and walking far out into the deserts or treeless prairies out west, too far to find cover before dawn.

In his single, solitary reply to the sixteen letters that accumulated, Stefan uses the word “abstinence” rather than “control.”

This is as close to acknowledging Damon's attempt to apologize as Stefan will come.

--------
Pre-S1-1960s-reunion

From his letters, Damon knew Stefan had been in Chicago in the 20s. But the city had changed tremendously since then. Damon went for the '68 Democratic convention, anticipating all the beautiful flower children and hippie chicks, the police crackdown, and all the delicious blood it would spill. Stefan was about the last person he expected to see there.

“Hello, brother,” he shouts in Stefan's ear. They were standing in the crowd near a loud speaker in Grant Park. Some band he's never heard of is butchering Hendrix's Purple Haze.

Stefan flinches and turns. “Hello, Damon,” he says.

“Let's get out of here,” Damon says, grasping Stefan's elbow.

“I came to hear the speakers,” Stefan protests weakly.

“You can compel your way back to this spot when the band is done, but I can't abide this music,” Damon yells over the noisy crowd and the music. “Jimi Hendrix's songs are, like, sacrosanct. No one else should cover them.” He grasps Stefan's elbow harder. Stefan stiffens, and Damon rolls his eyes. It would be so much easier if Stefan just did as he were told.

But then, hadn't they both done what they were told, all their lives, up to and including Katherine? And what did that get them?

He drops Stefan's elbow. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Forget it. See ya 'round.”

He turns to leave, and then Stefan's hand is on his shoulder. He spins Damon into a quick, heartfelt embrace, and then edges sideways through the crowd, pulling Damon after him.

They walk down to the lakefront without speaking. The air is thick with pot smoke. They sit on the steps leading down to the water, while people stream slowly up and down around them.

“Everyone's eyes are so red, we could totally vamp out, and no one would notice,” Damon remarks.

“I thought about that, too,” Stefan smiles. For a moment, the tension and uncertainty between them eases as brotherly similarities surface.

“Great minds, Stef,” Damon grins. “So what brings you to the convention?”

“I would have thought, with your experiences, you'd be a war protester, too,” Stefan nods questioningly at Damon.

“You know, I would... but if I've learned anything in the last hundred years, Stefan, it's that humans never really learn from their mistakes. Otherwise The War To End All Wars wouldn't have been followed by World War II, now, would it?”

Stefan nods ruefully. “Point taken.”

“So, you know: fuck 'em. They can learn the hard way, like I did. None of this” – he waves at the people with anti-war posters and signs – “is going to stop Viet Nam, anyway.”

“I think humanity makes progress in a ' two steps up, one step back' kind of way. It's slow, but they do ultimately make progress that way.”

“Think you mean 'one step up and two steps back,' brother. Individual progress is always faster and farther than collective progress.” Damon shakes his head.

“Ever the ray of sunshine, aren't you?” Stefan smiles at him. Damon shrugs.

“There's going to be a riot here. The cops will club and arrest all these rugged individualists; they serve Mayor Daley and the CPD.”

“Well, Daley can't be all bad; he helped get JFK elected.”

“Which reminds me, Stefan – were you in Dallas that day? On the grassy knoll? Could have sworn I saw you in the Zapruder footage.”

Stefan smiles. “Funny. No, Damon, I was not in Dallas that day. I think,” he says hesitantly, “you know where I was.”

Damon does know. Stefan was in New York City with Lexi.

“How is dear old Lexi?” Damon asks flatly. “Still helping you stay on the wagon?”

“She is, actually. Though I don't need her help as much as I used to.”

“She around?”

Stefan hesitates and Damon sees him consider lying. But he's pretty bad at it. So when Stefan says,

“No, actually, she's not,”

Damon thinks it might be the truth.

“I'm staying at the Ambassador East,” Damon says, standing up. “You know, where the rock stars stay.”

“Have you seen any lately?” Stefan stands up too.

“Just their groupies. Say you're 'with the band' and...” He twirls a finger, one that women can be easily wrapped around. “No compulsion necessary. 'It's the beginning of a new age'.” He wonders if Stefan will catch the Velvet Underground reference, but doubts it.

“I'll stop by later,” Stefan says. He almost sounds sincere.

“It'll be a blood bath,” Damon replies, and then looks Stefan in the eye. “Why else would I be here?”

Stefan shrugs, smile gone now. “Couldn't be to protest,” he says.

“To quote a favorite movie, 'I stick my neck out for nobody'.” Damon gazes out over the sparkling blue water of Lake Michigan.

“But Rick eventually did stick his neck out for Ilsa and Laszlo.”

“If she were smart,” Damon says, eyes snapping back to Stefan's, “Ilsa would have taken them both to bed. Together,” he adds, leaning forward to say it directly in Stefan's ear.

His hand ghosts over Stefan's fly.

The hippies around them are too stoned to notice. Stefan catches Damon's wrist and squeezes just hard enough to warn him. Damon pulls his arm away.

“I'm pretty sure Laszlo wouldn't have been up for that,” Stefan says, playing it Damon's way.

“Rick totally would have been. He had the beginnings of a beautiful friendship with Captain Renault by the end of the movie,” Damon says, stepping back, sardonic smile at the corner of his mouth.

“So who would you be? Rick or Laszlo?”

Damon can feel Stefan's irritation with him and it makes him smile with malicious pleasure. Deep inside, he wonders with despair why he can't resist trying to get under Stefan's skin.

“Neither. I'd be Captain Renault,” he smirks, turning to walk away.

Stefan smiles. “Of course,” he nods. “Of course you would.”

“I am but a reed in the water, I bend, I do not break...” Damon says mockingly over his shoulder, gesturing at all the peaceful protesters.

He hopes it is not the last time he sees Stefan for the next several years. Hopes Stefan will come to the Ambassador East, even if only to have a drink with him in the bar.

“See you later, Damon,” Stefan calls after him.

It is much, much later when the front desk rings Damon's room and rouses him from his appointment with the ten o'clock news bloodbath and a bottle of fourteen year old whiskey. A disheveled and dirty Stefan has arrived downstairs. They won't let him up because of his dirty and bloody appearance.

Damon, irritated, drags himself out of bed and down to the front desk. There he vouches for Stefan, and drags Stefan up to his suite via the back service elevator.

“What the hell, Stefan? Why didn't you just compel them to let you come up?”

Stefan shrugs.

“Here,” Damon says, digging into his valise. He pulls out a T-shirt and jeans, still popular after James Dean wore them more than a decade ago. “Put these on for now.”

“Thanks.”

“If we go down for breakfast tomorrow, you'll have to wear a jacket and tie,” Damon points out. He hopes Stefan can not hear the plea in his voice. “Did they club you, or just everyone around you?” he asks, to quickly change the subject.

“Nice thing about Chicago,” Stefan says, walking towards the bathroom. “They forgot about the vampires in the 20s, so the police aren't on vervain.”

Damon lies in bed, listening to Stefan shower. He had a little nibble in the bar earlier – the bartender, actually. It's still open; it's only ten thirty now. They could go down to the bar, kill a bottle or two, close the bar, and bring the bartender up with them.

“Do you want to go downstairs for a drink?” he asks as Stefan enters the room, toweling his still-wet hair, dressed in Damon's clean T-shirt and jeans.

Stefan looks at him oddly. “Don't these fancy hotels have bars in the rooms?”

“It's not very social,” Damon shrugs.

“But you just were drinking alone here.” Stefan points out, his somber gaze direct and open. “I don't need anything social tonight. Do you?”

Damon turns away, toward the night stand beside the bed. Everyone smokes now: everyone, everywhere – banks, post offices, restaurants, concert halls. The Victorian era's vices have become everyday rituals. He takes a cigarette from his pack on the night stand.

If he were not a vampire, he'd be unable to control the tremor of his hand.

Stefan comes around to that side of the bed and sits down beside Damon as he lights up. He takes the cigarette from Damon's lips and takes a drag. He hands it back to Damon and exhales slowly. Damon freezes as Stefan leans over him.

“Why,” Stefan whispers, “would we go to the bar?”

“The bartender,” Damon replies.

“What about her?” Stefan narrows his eyes.

“Him. He's cute.” Damon shrugs, looking away.

Stefan puts his hand on his chest. It burns, and Damon utterly forgets his next intended quip.

“We don't always have to involve a third person,” Stefan says somberly.

Damon takes a drag on his cigarette, trying to ignore Stefan's hand on his chest.

“I like it,” he finally says with a shrug. “One is good; two is better.” Meanly, he adds, “Besides, it's pretty much all we know, isn't it?” But he avoids Stefan's gaze.

Stefan won't look away. “Can't you just admit that you need your brother?” he whispers.

He takes the lit cigarette from Damon and crushes it out in the bedside ashtray. Then he turns off the bedside lamp. He slides down beside Damon, cupping his face.

Damon doesn't answer, just tips his mouth up to meet Stefan's lips. The kiss is slow, sad, simmering. When their mouths part, he finally replies.

“I can't,” he whispers, trying to sound fierce, afraid he sounds terrified. “I won't.”

He feels Stefan nod in the dark. Then Stefan strips off his own shirt. He peels Damon's shirt up, slides down against him, and presses his face against Damon's bare chest. His arms slip around Damon.

With his younger brother wrapped tight around him, Damon relaxes a little. He clasps Stefan to him, arms tight around Stefan's shoulders, holding on far longer than necessary.

They're both erect, each straddling the other's leg. Neither moves from this fragile embrace for a long moment.

“I can say it for both of us,” Stefan finally murmurs against Damon's chest. “I need my brother,” he says.

He roughly pulls Damon's shirt the rest of the way off, mussing Damon's hair. Their kiss is feverish. But when Damon starts undoing Stefan's pants, Stefan grabs him and pins him down by the wrists. He kisses Damon, rough and sweet, for a very long time. He kisses Damon for so long that Damon feels tears start in his eyes. When Stefan pulls back, Damon's lips feel numb.

“There's no rush,” Stefan whispers.

Damon chokes off one horrifying sob. He shoves Stefan onto his back, hurriedly unzips Stefan's pants, pulls down his underwear, takes hold of Stefan's cock. He puts Stefan's hands on the back of his head.

But Stefan doesn't force Damon's face down on him. He strokes Damon's hair, running his fingers through it.

This has become intolerable. Damon turns abruptly away, scrambling across the king-size bed.

Despite the animal diet, Stefan is still a vampire. He closes the short distance between them before Damon can jump out of bed on the other side. He grabs Damon by the wrist before he can stand up, and hauls him back onto the bed.

He speaks quietly. “You wanted me here, Damon. I came. Don't leave now. Come back to bed. We'll do whatever you want.”

“I don't want to do anything, anymore,” Damon growls, trying to wrench his wrist back.

“Fine. Then we'll lay here. We'll sleep together, just sleep. Like we used to.”

He doesn't say before Katherine. Damon hears it anyway.

Stefan's grip is iron hard. He flops down on the bed and tugs Damon down beside him.

Hazy memories of long-ago days surface. After Mother's death, before Father's utter disdain, when he and Stefan were everything to each other. The constant need to hide his need for love and affection, his vulnerability, from Giuseppe.

Tears start in Damon's eyes again, but he refuses to let them fall. He swallows, again and again, wanting to crawl out of his own skin. He lies beside Stefan while they do nothing more than hold hands. Rather, while Stefan has a death grip on his wrist.

Finally, exhausted, he can't take it anymore. He curls against Stefan, who opens his arms and pulls Damon in close, burying his lips in Damon's hair.

Damon feels suddenly young, and helpless, and hates it. But he feels relieved, too, safe, and – oh god – loved. He's not sure he has ever felt this calm and protected in bed with Stefan. He wonders if he will ever feel like this again.

Wonders what he will do to ruin it. He has only two choices: jealous rival, or responsible older brother. This is neither. He doesn't know what to do, or how to be.

And it's killing him.

--------
S2-pre-Elijah's arrival

Elena's dark eyes dart back and forth between Damon and Stefan as they pace, argue, discuss, plot. She doesn't listen only to the words. She listens to the tone of their voices. She observes their body language.

She's not sure when she first realized that it wasn't a question of who dated Katherine first, but a question of how long before they started dating her simultaneously. She can't recall when exactly it occurred to her that they had both been sleeping with Katherine at the same time.

But, ever since she realized it, she hasn't been able to get it out of her mind. She can't blame this on Damon getting in her head; she's had the vervain necklace from Stefan for quite some time now. It's a disturbing and erotic recurring thought. She doesn't want to think about it. But she can't help it. As much as she would act (and feel) disgusted if the subject ever came up in conversation, as much as she figures Katherine was a manipulative, unrepentant slut, Elena secretly finds it a compelling thought. Given what little she knows about it, she wonders if that means that Stefan and Damon were... (her mind doesn't want to go there) (oh, yes, it does) much more than brothers. Which would explain the raging family issues.

Doesn't explain her own sick fascination with it. She finds herself thinking about it when she shouldn't be, speculating about it. She would never ask Stefan. Ever. But it doesn't stop her ...imagining. And wondering if she, by herself, all alone, could ever be enough for Stefan.

He certainly behaves like she is enough for him. And he clearly wants Damon nowhere near her, although he has acknowledged that she and Damon have an understanding. She has become, in a weird way, and totally different from (she hopes) the way Katherine was, a bridge between them, something (someone?) they can bond over. She is, she knows, the reason for their rickety, uneasy truce.

Stefan has become her reason for getting up in the morning. And Damon has become her safety net, though she would never admit it. Damon's diet of human blood certainly seems to keep him... stronger than Stefan. She respects Stefan, but she worries about his strength sometimes. At those times, she secretly depends on Damon.

It's kind of upsetting when she thinks about that, so she does so as little as possible. Trying not to think about the two of them together with Katherine, sexually, is... a great distraction from thinking about how weak Stefan is compared to Damon.

Stefan is a devoted, protective, and a sweetly skilled lover. He says he and Lexi never... so, it kills her to wonder, but: did he learn everything he knows from Katherine?

Elena watches Damon look at Stefan, when he thinks no one is paying attention. Even if Stefan still had feelings for Katherine – which she knows he doesn't, except for distrust, and hate, and fear – Elena would guess that Katherine is not the romantic rival she needs to worry about.

There is brief tenderness on Damon's face before he hides it. This confuses Elena. It's like longing, but it isn't, quite. It's something else – something sad and protective, a little hopeful, and a little like all hope is lost. When he notices her watching him look at Stefan, Damon's expression changes to wary, crafty, possessive.

Sometimes she catches Damon looking at her. He is bold as brass when caught, and doesn't look away. His expression often immediately changes to something fake-innocent, or fake-bored – some mask to hide what is really there: an expression not unlike his expression when he watches Stefan and thinks no one is watching.

How can he look at her – and at Stefan – that way and be such a monumental ass? It makes her black-white, good-bad labeling of the brothers difficult to maintain.

Difficult, but not impossible. Damon's pretty good at going off and doing something totally counter-productive in any given scenario. Or something totally unethical. Or simply doing something because either Stefan or Elena (or both of them) don't want him to do it, or asked him not to do it, or both.

If deeper issues and history with Stefan and Katherine didn't drive a lot of his behavior, Elena thinks Damon might still do the opposite of what she or Stefan want, on purpose. Just to put distance between him, and them. Her and Stefan. Like Damon doesn't want any Civil War re-enactments, either.

--------

S2

“You can't just use her to clean your slate,” Damon says offhandedly one morning, eyes icy in the sun streaming through the leaded glass windows.

Stefan instantly knows what he means. “It's not like that,” he replies.

He shakes his head and turns away. Elena only left about fifteen minutes ago. He is inordinately glad she's not around for this.

“Really?” Damon's voice is silky and suddenly close behind him. “It sure sounds like it is.”

He pulls Stefan backward against him, one hand on Stefan's stomach. Lets Stefan feel his hardness, presses it ever so slowly against Stefan's buttock.

Stefan sighs, doesn't answer, doesn't resist. He doesn't reach back for Damon, either.

“Did you think I couldn't hear you two?” Damon's voice and the hot mound he presses against Stefan have a Pavlovian effect Stefan can't help. He hardens too.

“Figured you might,” Stefan admits. “Hence the music.”

Since 1864 Stefan has perfected the art of telling Damon the bare minimum, and nothing more.

“You deflowered her, didn't you? That must have been... fun.”

The emphasis Damon places on the last word is dark, hedonistic.

“No, actually,” Stefan says, relieved that he doesn't even have to lie to Damon. “She lost her virginity to Matt Donovan before she ever met me.”

“Oh,” Damon says, taken aback literally and figuratively.

Stefan takes the rare opportunity of Damon's surprise to pull away. He moves quickly to the other side of the room, facing Damon.

“That's too bad,” Damon smirks. A tremor at the corner of his lips keeps it from being completely successful.

“Actually, it's kind of a good thing,” Stefan replies.

“Well, if she can't clean your slate, maybe you can clean hers,” Damon replies, waving a hand dismissively.

It's when he speaks lightly and offhandedly that he's most dangerous, Stefan thinks.

“I'm not using her to clean my slate, and I'm not cleaning hers. It's not like that,” Stefan repeats, hoping to end the subject here.

“So it's true love, is it?” Damon sounds genuinely curious... and envious.

Stefan shrugs. “As long as she'll have me, I'll be in her life.”

“Funny how you didn't choose an adult woman. I wouldn't expect a woman your age – I mean, there aren't many. But one so young? Tsk, tsk. Do grown women frighten you, Stef?”

Stefan shrugs. “I just like Elena.”

“Yeah, and I'm supposed to believe that her being a nearly pure, unspoiled girl has nothing to do with that?” his brother scoffs.

“It doesn't. It's who she is inside. Which is nothing like...” Stefan trails off.

The silence between them lengthens. Neither says her name.

“...the bitch who betrayed us both,” Damon softly finishes Stefan's sentence, his tone as bitter as his expression.

Stefan waits. He is used to Damon's mercurial changes, worries the detour down memory lane may sway him in a new, more dangerous direction.

“Guess I can see why you'd choose a young girl over an experienced woman,” Damon scowls. “We had an experienced woman. Look where that got us.

“I really wanted to stake her, you know,” he adds. His expression changes again, falling into a mask of indifference as he meets Stefan's eyes. “When we were trapped in that room at the Lockwoods'. It seemed... justified.”

Stefan nods, understanding the murderous impulse. If anyone has more right to want to kill Katherine than he does, it can only be Damon.

“But I'm glad she and Elena were linked, so we couldn't kill her,” Damon continues, coming closer to Stefan. He puts his hands on Stefan's shoulders and leans close, meeting his eyes. “Death would be too kind for her.”

Stefan hates not knowing what Damon is thinking, or what he'll say or do next.

Damon's squeeze of his shoulders is not seductive. It is solid and strong and Damon's expression is serious. “She belongs in the ground for what she did...”

He trails off and pauses, eyes unfocused over Stefan's shoulder. He is thinking about the distant past, Stefan knows, a past they seem unable to forget or move beyond, even now.

Damon's eyes snap back to his, and his grip on Stefan's shoulders tightens.

“Trapped in a tomb is more poetic, don't you think?” he says with conviction. “Starving and wasting and desiccating...”

He releases Stefan's shoulders and turns away. On his way out, he mutters under his breath. Stefan isn't sure if he says it for effect, or if he is even aware he's said it aloud.

“...like our love.”

Stefan wonders if Damon means his own love for Katherine, their mutual love of Katherine, or their love for each other.

It probably doesn't matter. The outcome of each was as unfortunate as it was inevitable.

--------
S1

Damon denied all. Said he was never compelled. But Stefan knows this much: nothing else explains the memories that came back after they transitioned. He can't believe Damon did all that – stood all of it – willingly. But he could never bring himself to ask, guilty as he was for his role in it.

They never discuss it. It is the elephant in the room. They walk and talk and fight around it, but never address it. Never have, in all these years. The closest they came was with the unfortunate Violeta over a century ago.

During his transition and the weeks after, as her compulsion dissolved, Stefan had bigger problems than his new memories. Overwhelmed with blood lust, he lured innumerable women to their deaths. He drank himself into a nightly bliss as driven and hopeless as the dragon-chasers in opium dens.

Swooning, drunk on blood, everything was all right. Guilt was walled off – guilt about killing Giuseppe and every subsequent death. Stefan drank endless amounts of fresh, hot blood. It made every waking moment not merely tolerable, but nearly ecstatic – even as it further damned him. Everything else receded in the face of it.

But the more blood he drank, the more he remembered. Remembered being in bed with both of them, with Damon and Katherine. The cool, smooth silk of her skin. The sweet press of her lips in places he'd been too innocent, then, to even dream they would go. The firm muscle and heat of his older brother's body against his. He remembered Damon's hands on him, his on Damon, their mouths crushed together under Katherine's knowing gaze. He remembered their mouths turning from each others to hers, her neck, her breasts, her belly, her sex.

He remembered Katherine's whispered mantra – “No rules” – as Damon's lips hovered just above his skin, ticklish and tantalizing, moving slowly down his flank to his hip... to his, his –

It seems incredible now that he and Damon were unaware of what they were doing together with Katherine most nights before they turned. Stefan has no idea, to this day, what Katherine's motivations were in taking both of them to bed (apart from the obvious).

What burns most shamefully is: he suspects that, even if she hadn't compelled them to forget nightly what they did with her and with each other, he and Damon might well have done it willingly, with no compulsion necessary. They were but youths, easily persuaded by her teasing and tantalizing. Katherine had a sensual command of Stefan's body that bordered on sorcery, well before she revealed her secret to him.

Of course, Katherine rarely missed an opportunity to heighten the emotion, the anger and jealousy, between them. The ache Stefan sometimes saw in Damon's eyes, as he watched Katherine caress Stefan, was heartbreaking. Other times Stefan saw the confused lust and rage, the hurt longing in Damon's gaze as he writhed, tied tightly to the bedpost, leather thongs cutting into his red, raw wrists. He helplessly watched as Stefan and Katherine languorously made love, a muscle jumping rhythmically in his cheek.

Stefan knew that tic, knew that it came from Damon clenching his jaw repeatedly. He had seen it many times before when Giuseppe expressed his contempt for and disappointment in Damon.

In those moments Stefan's most tender feelings for Damon surfaced. But even as he felt guilty and awful for Damon, he could not – would not – deny himself Katherine's affections.

Katherine had not opened the rift between them. Giuseppe had done that. But she expertly navigated and widened it, alternating favors between he and Damon until Stefan fairly cringed with guilt even as he stole kisses from her and succumbed to her caresses.

In a weird way it seemed, in those days of gut-wrenching jealousy, that they could only repair the rift when they shared her bed and her love. They saved their brotherhood over and over in her bed, in her arms, in each others. The next night, they destroyed it all over again.

All this came back after his transition.

--------
S1
The initiation of a virgin is a delicate matter, Damon thinks. Wrong circumstances, wrong person, handled badly or merely sub-optimally, it can cast a tenacious spell over the rest of one's sexual life. This is as true for young men as it is for young women. Was as true in the 1860s as it is now. He has heard and seen enough over the last century and a half to know that some things never change; has always made an effort to ensure that he wasn't dealing with anyone virginal.

His first lover was a northern transplant, an Atlanta factory girl whom he recalls quite fondly. He barely thought of her over the last century. But in the short time since he discovered Katherine wasn't in the tomb, Damon has thought more about Carrie than he probably has in his entire life up until now.

Katherine looms larger than all other women – nearly obliterated Carrie – despite the fact that she was not the first. For a hundred and forty five years, his experiences with Katherine burned inside, a glowing ember covered in ash, waiting only for her release from the tomb to blaze back to full, roaring life. Now he can't believe he ever regretted that Carrie was his first, that Katherine was not.

Carrie was a near perfect introduction to the erotic arts: warm and giving; the right combination of forthright and shy, knowing and innocent, serious and light-hearted; memorable in all the important ways, forgettable in all the necessary ones. A few warm, wistful memories of his and Carrie's comparatively innocent coupling, of sneaking into her boarding house room, preceded Katherine.

He would never tell anyone, but lately Damon clings to those. They ensure that Katherine does not fill all available erotic space in his head. Most; not all.

If he is ashamed of anything at all – and for the most part, he is not – it is that certain memories of Katherine are most efficient when he is feeling low, alone, unable to freely feed or fuck. He has had more of these dark days than he would care to admit, over the last century and a half.

It isn't the masturbation he's ashamed of. He would shamelessly masturbate on a balcony overlooking the main street of any town, if he felt like it. (Has, actually. Mardi gras, New Orleans, 1981... a beautiful, hedonistic time, with beautiful, hedonistic people.) It isn't even the twisted memories themselves, memories of he and Katherine, of he and Katherine and Stefan, of the acts they engaged in.

The shame is that, out of a hundred and forty five years of sexual experiences with both genders and numerous couples (including re-enactments of nights spent with Katherine and Stefan), it is that memories of what he did with Katherine and Stefan at Katherine's urging (exhortation, command) excite him immediately.

It is that when ennui, boredom, or malaise take hold and affect his fangs and cock, he need only call to mind vivid memories of Katherine and Stefan and the things he did with them (the things they did to him), and he's rock hard, ready to go. Though Katherine wasn't the first – though he had previous “experience” – somehow those specific memories of those specific acts, with those two specific people, arouse body and mind instantly. They accelerate the frenzy of orgasm faster and more intensely than any other memories of any other acts with any other people.

He would never reveal this to a soul. He would kill anyone who figured it out.

All hundred and forty five years before he could open the tomb, he spent wishing Katherine had taken his virginity, regretting that she was not his first. Not until he found that she wasn't in the tomb – and Anna told him Katherine knew where he was all along, but didn't care – did Damon consider that perhaps it was a blessing that Katherine had not initiated him.

He had someone before her, a tiny anchor of sweet experience all his own, before Katherine rewrote his future and rewired his body. He would always have that little piece of a sensual past that was not hers.

It was perhaps why he did not completely hate her, even after all she had done to him, to Stefan, to their brotherhood.

--------
S1


That Katherine was Stefan's first, Damon deeply regrets. This is not for the obvious reason one would assume.

He regrets that he left his little brother alone with Katherine while he went off to war. Regrets that he let Stefan fall into Katherine's hands, and she took Stefan to her bed. Left alone with her, Stefan had no choice. Once Katherine set her sights on him, he had no chance. Damon's damnation was his own choice, he thinks. But Stefan's was not.

Strangely, in those extremely rare conversations when they discussed it directly, Stefan seems to think the exact opposite.

Damon knows better. Despite his obsessive jealousy at the time, he realized after they transitioned that he had utterly failed to protect his brother from the most predatory woman either of them would ever know. For that, Damon cannot forgive himself.

Despite – or perhaps because of – his own passion for Katherine, he somehow knew deep down that she was as much Medusa as she was Aphrodite. He accepted her on those terms. He knowingly embraced the glittering, decadent future she dangled before him.

Far worse than that, however, and not foreseen by Damon, Katherine was the Minotaur to whom Stefan was sacrificed. The only way for Stefan to survive was to become worse than she was.

He should have taken Stefan alone to his bed, and banished Katherine. Regret may be an inevitable consequence of life, but it is inescapable as a vampire. The past, writ in stone, can not be undone.

It torments or you turn it off. There is no middle ground.

--------
S2-before Elijah comes

On her porch, Damon tells her she has a lot more in common with Katherine than just her looks. The sting of that comment is visible in Elena's hurt expression. It's gratifying, but not gratifying enough.

Truth be told, though she did manipulate him, she's very little like Katherine. Elena is to Katherine what a house cat is to a Bengal tiger. And thank god. She is so little like Katherine, in fact, that he is falling farther in love with her with every passing day.

As usual, he has acted rashly and already ruined any chance of that. The consolation prize – her friendship – seems out of reach as well.

The memory of her arms around him when he discovered that Katherine was never in the tomb is all that he has, now. She truly felt for him, in that moment. If she could feel for him then, she might do so again one day. He clings to the idea that Elena's empathy will give him another chance. He can't abide the possibility that he has, in fact, lost her forever.

He has heard her with Stefan. Her impossibly soft sighs, her excited gasps, the panting breaths she takes when she is close, her moans through clenched teeth. It amuses the hell out of him that his presence in the boarding house muzzles Stefan and Elena's passion. It amuses the hell out of him because if it didn't, it would drive him batshit crazy.

Damon is not unacquainted with sublimating urges. Half the time when he hears them start, he slinks off to the Mystic Grill. A few bottles of bourbon, spectating at the human zoo, he finds someone dark-haired and dark-eyed, easily separated from the pack and easily compelled to offer up her jugular.

Strangely, though he would have expected the opposite, spending time with Elena has made him less inclined to kill Katherine. It would really suck if that were gone forever, the aimless time spent with her, the time-spent-accomplishing-tasks, the watching over her.

He should hate Stefan. Should stomp into his room, slap Stefan aside, shout, “I saw you first!” Sweep her up into his arms and into his bed, damn all her fighting and protests.

Damon would love to do all of these things, although his mind balks at actually forcing himself on her. Having to force himself on her would be too humiliating. If he can't have her willing and desirous, he doesn't want her that way at all. Maybe backrubs and footrubs would help.

He's delusional. As if. Saint Stefan has captured Elena's heart, and all Damon can do is stand by and watch. He, unlike Stefan, is an unrepentant beast. He will never stop eating people because that's what vampires do.

He will never have Elena, he thinks, unless something happens to Stefan. But he feels curiously possessive about that possibility. If anything should happen to Stefan, it should be at his hands. No one else has the right.

In his most jealous moments Damon has conceived and then abandoned many plans to get rid of Stefan so that he can have Elena to himself. But then he thinks of how Katherine twisted he and Stefan, how she corrupted his kind, naïve younger brother and turned him into a feast or famine beast, unable to find a happy medium. Among a tangle of other reasons, this is one reason why he has not completed a single plan to get rid of Stefan.

Besides, it's not Stefan's fault Damon didn't make his move, foolishly believing that Katherine was waiting for him in the tomb beneath the church. While he thought Katherine was in there, he barely had a thought for Elena, except to use her as a bargaining chip, as leverage, or (best of all) to drive Stefan crazy. Now he can't stop thinking about her, and it's far too late for any appeal to work.

This is where Damon feasts or starves: he has no happy medium when it comes to thinking and then acting. Either he thinks too much or not at all. Even when he was human.

Damon wonders if maybe Elena could wipe his slate clean. Not the way she could wipe Stefan's, not in a sexual way. It's so much more – and less – than that. It's corny and cheesy and he would never, ever tell anyone, but he wonders if, in some way, she could cleanse his soul.

He has told Stefan – and will remind him again, as many times as it takes – that he's only with Elena because Damon allows him to be. But he allows Stefan to be with Elena because... because...

Because maybe she actually can give Stefan a clean slate. Maybe Elena can erase all that Katherine did to Stefan, replace it with her warm humanity and her numerous tragic losses, her hope in the face of danger and her love of family.

It's far too late for him, but maybe not for Stefan.

It's a horrible idea to define what you want by what you don't want, but that's all he's got right now. Damon does not want the past to repeat itself. Does not want another horrible menage a trois like he and Stefan had with Katherine. Because that ended so well.

Sometimes, in Elena's company, their fragile truce gives him a vague sense of hope. Maybe, in her eyes, he's not as irredeemable as he has always thought he was.

'Course, killing Jeremy – way to blow that possibility for, like, ever.

--------

--------
S1-S2?
Damon is lying on the leather couch drinking bourbon when Elena comes over.

She knocks, which he thinks is a silly pretense she ought to stop.

“It's open,” he calls.

From her vantage point as she walks in, Damon knows he will not be visible. But there is a fire crackling in the fire place which should alert her to his presence.

She enters and shuts the door behind her.

“Stefan? Damon?” she calls, before she is completely in the room and sees the fire. She comes hesitantly around the far end of the sofa and sees him lying there. He says nothing, just lazily tips the bottle up to his mouth.

“Damon,” she says by way of greeting, with that subtly disappointed expression that says, Wrong Salvatore.

“Elena,” he replies, special emphasis on the second syllable, like he does when he's trying to piss her off. But it's only half-hearted, and, by her eye-roll, she can obviously tell.

“Where's Stefan?”

“You know, if I had a dollar for every time you came over and asked me–”

“Look, you either know or you don't.”

“I don't,” he agreeably responds. “I got home, he wasn't here; I started drinking, he still wasn't here; I'm almost done with this bottle, and he still isn't here. There's this thing,” he says sarcastically. “It's called a cell phone. Perhaps you've heard of it?”

“I already tried calling. And texting. He hasn't responded to either,” she says, as vexed by him as the situation.

Damon sits part of the way up. “Saint Stefan not responding? He usually responds to your calls and texts, right? Like, instantly, right?”

“Right,” she sighs, concerned.

“He didn't tell you where he was going?” Damon asks.

She shakes her head, long straight curtains of hair swaying with her movements. “You?”

“You know perfectly well he doesn't tell me anything,” Damon replies with a grim smile. “Everything is on a 'need to know basis' with him, and, in Stefan's mind, I don't need to know.”

“Well, I'm getting worried.”

Damon doesn't reply, but fishes his phone out of his pocket. Where R U?, he texts to Stefan. Ur gf is looking 4 U. He likes text-speak, loves how English is endlessly modifiable, how people turn nouns into verbs through new usage. It's very American.

“There. I text messaged him. 'Course, I'm usually the last person whose calls he takes. But maybe he'll respond. You never know.” He sits the rest of the way up. “Have a seat? I won't bite,” he half-leers.

She rolls her eyes and sits down, fiddling with her phone.

He decides to take a different tack.

“How much do you know about Stefan? Me? Our family?”

She looks guilty. “Enough,” she replies defensively.

“I'm not prying,” he says, raising his hands in mock innocence. “This is for your own information. Think of it as a public service,” Damon tells her.

She stares at him, wary.

“You know we're damaged goods, right?”

Her startled expression and body language tell Damon that of all the things he could have said, this was not one she was expecting. He presses on.

“Your life is not without its recent losses and sorrows, Elena. It's true. But... Stefan and I have been damaged for a century and a half. There's something to be said for such ...longevity.”

She just stares at him.

Let's start at the very beginning. “Our mother died very young. Did you know that?”

She fidgets and shakes her head. “No. I – I never knew that.” The doubt in her face makes Damon wonder how much of their past Stefan keeps hidden from her.

“Stefan was barely a toddler,” Damon continues staring back at the fire once again. “He was terrified of thunder storms after she died. Probably before she died, too, but I didn't know it until after she died because I always had to bring him to my bed during storms, or go to his.”

He trails off, thinking back to the nights when he and Stefan sweated and stuck to the sheets during summer storms. They would have been much cooler in separate beds, but Stefan always begged Damon to stay.

“We were motherless children. I was the older brother, prodigal son, rebel, and trouble maker. Stefan was the obedient younger brother, naïve and trusting, and Father's favorite. I protected Stefan when we were younger. He defended me to our Father when we were older.” He waves a hand at all this water under the bridge. “All before Katherine arrived.”

“Oh,” Elena says, clearly floored at the glimpses of Salvatore brotherhood dynamics.

“Then Katherine happened. To both of us.” He pauses for effect. His smile is thin and unhappy. “She compelled us to forget a lot of what was going on. But when you transition, you remember everything you were compelled to forget before you became a vampire.”

“Oh,” Elena repeats, even more uncertainly than before.

“It is what it is,” he sighs.

He likes this phrase, always has, since he first heard it. It identifies the implacable nature of the things you can't change, things not under your control, things that are out of your power. Like the past.

“Look,” Damon adds – and he doesn't know why he's doing this, but he is. “I'm not saying Stefan's a bad guy. He's not – he's a good guy; I'm the bad guy.” He hesitates. “I'm just giving you the lay of the land on two damaged vampire brothers.”

“Thank you,” she says sincerely. This has clearly given her much to think about. “But I wouldn't exactly call myself un-damaged, at this point.”

Damon nods. “Then you should understand... and go easy on him when he's... less than forthcoming,” Damon says quietly, thinking this applies as much to himself as Stefan. “He has... good reason.”

They both hear the door at the same time. “Stefan!” Elena calls and jumps up from the sofa.

Stefan comes in and she crosses the room to him; they meet in the middle and hug tight.

“Heard you were looking for me, so I came.” He kisses her mouth with that sidelong glance at Damon that Damon is starting to resent.

“Isn't that sweet,” Damon whispers under his breath. When he realizes both of them are staring at him, annoyed, he shrugs.

“What? She was trying to call and text, and you were ignoring her,” he tells Stefan. “Then you finally show up, with no explanation, but kisses and hugs pre-empt any questions.” He smirks at Elena. “See? Sometimes the person on a 'need to know basis' isn't me.”

It is pure glee to watch them avoid each other's gazes. Maybe this is why he told Elena all that personal history stuff.

Maybe not.

--------

S2-S3

He is standing by the fire place, staring moodily into it when Damon comes in from his bedroom.

“Elena's gone? God, I thought she'd never leave!” he mocks Stefan, who smiles wryly.

“Sorry. We didn't mean to make so much noise.”

“Because that is so believable, on so many levels, Stefan, I'm gonna go with it and say 'Thank You',” Damon replies sarcastically, pouring himself a drink.

“You could leave while we're... here,” Stefan suggests. “If it makes you uncomfortable.”

“You know...” Damon says, moving closer until his face is inches away.

Stefan knows this move, knows it is designed to be too close, too intimate, and thereby to intimidate, throw him off guard, make him uncomfortable. Smells the whiskey on Damon's breath, the reek of alcohol that even the best, most expensive liquor in the world produces when too much is taken in. So that's what Damon's been doing while Elena was over and she and Stefan were off in Stefan's room.

“We're not 'roomies,' Stefan. Even if we were, I'm not the type who's bothered by hearing his 'roomie' fuck his girlfriend, I'm not the kind of 'roomie' who willingly leaves so he doesn't have to hear it.”

Stefan does not back away or withdraw from Damon's closeness. The warmth radiating from Damon is edgy and alcohol-fueled, and Stefan is now within it's circle. This is how Damon copes. He sighs.

“It can't be easy,” Stefan replies, sympathetic and serious.

He holds Damon's gaze, and Damon is finally the one who steps back, the barest hint of pain in the corners of his lips and eyes.

“I'm not leaving,” Damon hisses. “This is my house as much as it is yours. More, actually. I'm not leaving just because you two lovebirds want to be raucous and loud in bed.” He tosses back his drink like a shot, then pours another. Drink in hand, he turns to face Stefan again, with that fake bravado that no one but Stefan sees through. “Knock yourselves out. Maybe I enjoy it,” he adds suggestively, half-smirking.

Stefan is instantly pissed. “Do you block out the sound, Damon? Play a little music over it? Or do you listen carefully and 'play along' with us?” he says meanly. “She trained you so well, you're still willingly torturing yourself a century and a half later.”

The minute he sees the expression on Damon's face change, he regrets saying it. The fist he sees before it connects with his face or body. He dodges it and grabs Damon's forearm, gripping it tightly. Damon's other fist comes up, too, but Stefan blocks and holds it and they struggle briefly.

“I'm sorry,” Stefan says, guilty, as they tussle. He means it. “I'm sorry, Damon, I shouldn't have said it. You provoked me and it worked. But still, I'm sorry.”

They're facing each other, each holding the other at bay in a tableau that could be friendly rough-housing or fisticuffs. They're both breathing hard, frozen like boxers blocking body shots.

The front door opens and Elena strolls in. “Stefan? I left my history textb...” She trails off when she sees them.

They both look at her and then Damon shoves Stefan away, hard.

“What's going on, guys?” she asks, perplexed and worried.

“Nothing,” both brothers say simultaneously.

“Obviously,” she says dryly, looking at both of them suspiciously.

There is a long awkward pause where both brothers look pointedly at her and not at each other.

“Just... rough-housing,” Stefan explains lamely.

“Yeah, that's believable,” Damon mutters, and finally turns away.

“I'm just gonna... go get my text book and leave you two to... whatever you're doing,” Elena says carefully.

She disappears and is back in a few moments, heavy textbook under her arm. “See you in school, Stefan,” she says, dark eyes sympathetic. Her curious, worried gaze slides over Damon quickly before she looks away and leaves.

“Well, she couldn't get out of here fast enough,” Damon murmurs, pouring himself another bourbon.

“Because it's only normal to want to be around fighting family members,” Stefan says quietly.

As Damon turns to go, Stefan grabs his forearm and holds it firmly, but gently. Damon tries to yank it away, but Stefan won't let go.

“I am sorry, Damon,” he whispers. “We'll go to her house more, if that makes it... easier on you.”

Damon meets his eyes defiantly. “What, and miss the opportunity to torture myself?”

“No,” Stefan says gently, shaking his head. “No. I'm sorry I said that. I know it's not like that.”

He watches Damon bring the mask down: his face goes from angry to indifferent, his eyes from icy to dead.

“You don't know anything, Stefan,” Damon says in an utterly normal, bored tone. “You know nothing.” He wrenches his forearm from Stefan's grip and stalks from the room, drink in hand.

Stefan watches him go, heart sinking. Yet another missed opportunity to really get it out in the open, for both of them to come to terms with this new reality. He could kick himself. But then, he could kick Damon for pushing his buttons in the first place. Damn it.





Huh. Now it is raining.