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It was a dark and stormy night.

Halloween.

In the back of a dimly lit laundry room of some high schooler's costume party while their parents were away, sucking on the face of his Stefan's recent ex, Damon had the thought that he might have reached an all-time low.

After a tug of war with buttons and zippers and of how far she was willing to go, the doe-eyed girl protested that what they were doing was wrong and that she was still in love with Stefan.

Contrary to the hardened appendage in his jeans, he was relieved.

He was blurry eyed from the jell-o shots and bong hits, and asked her to repeat everything twice.

"I said I wish things were the way they used to be, ya' know."

Damon reacted to the girl's words by snorting and offering her a small smirk. He couldn't relate. For him the future was always better than the past.

"Sweetheart, this place isn't shit compared to the whole world outside of this god-forsaken town. You are gonna look back and realize this, all of this was bullshit, even the break-up." he slurred and squinted.

Her hands settled on his shoulders to still his drunken wavering. "Your brother was right about you."

Leaning in to kiss her chastely on the lips before slipping out from under her grasp to find a more adult companion for the evening, she interrupted his exit by talking about his brother again.

"Watch over your brother, I know I might sound like the jealous ex right now but he's been acting strange ever since accident."

"Strange? Strange, how?" He asked, realizing that he didn't have much to work with in comparing his brother's behavior before the accident. He hadn't been around.

"He said he saw an angel," She scrunched her brows and reluctantly continued, expressing her disbelief, "He said after he lost control of the car, he pretty much blacked out right, but he said something put its hand on his forehead and for a moment when he opened his eyes he just knew that everything was gonna be okay. "

Before Damon could respond, Elena's condescending blonde friend, Caroline swung the door open, filling in the small space with light and a rush of house music being blasted from the living room. She yelled at the brunette how she had been looking for her everywhere and Elena awkwardly hugged him and scurried behind her friend who frowned at him as she slammed the door on his handsomely cut figure in the shadows of the laundry room.

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He left his car at the party not wanting to drive in the rain and called a cab home.

Quarter past one, and he was stumbling into the boardinghouse, too early to be home and too late to try to find another party.

Mystic Falls was boring him to death.

And he wondered how long he could stick around realistically.

Yeah, Stefan was there. Stefan his brother. The brother he doesn't know. The brother whose girlfriend he was just…

"First edition? Impressive."

Her voice broke through his attempt to feel remorse.

And just like that he could see in the pitch of darkness there was a firelight from the hearth in the living room and Red Riding Hood was standing there with a wide delicious grin. She had white frilly socks over toned calves and her feet were adorned in grade-school black Mary-Janes. The hood of her cape, more burgundy than red, hung low, exposing her smooth shoulders and dark brown curls. And in her hands was his copy of 'Call of the Wild', she held it up with the slight of her hand, and told him she saw it lying on the couch and wondered if he was the one reading it or Stefan.

"Me. It's my favorite." He said striding straight for the liquor cabinet, more out of habit because he was still reeling from the alcohol at the Halloween party.

"Where's Stefan?" He asked thrusting a tumbler of scotch into Red Riding Hood's hands.

She eyed him and then took the drink slowly from his hands, "He's getting ready."

"This late?" He slunk back into the chesterfield couch and noticed the wicker picnic basket and rolled up quilt on the coffee table.

"I planned a picnic but with this weather there has been a change of plans."

He took a long sip of his drink, forever eyeing her left hand, "Sounds romantical."

She laughed, "I assure it wasn't intended to be, more like a moonlight meal with a friend."

"Just friends, huh? You know there is a girl across town right now very miserable because of you and Stefan being just friends, "He stated, holding up his fingers into air quotations.

Red riding hood shrugged and lazily rolled her eyes back to the page her finger held in the book.

And he wished she would sit down, preferably next to him, and not stand like that commanding all the attention, taking up all the space, taking up all the air between them.

He continued to press her because that is what he would have done to anyone who he felt had him in a corner. Why he felt he was backed into a corner when all she was doing was standing there in the sexiest costume he had ever seen on a woman, who knows, but he did. He felt as if his jugular was exposed.

"Don't high school girls care about their reputation? I thought the goal was to not be labeled a boyfriend stealer or whatever you wanna call it."

Mossy green eyes leveled at him, "You and I both know that I'm not like most girls."

And every alarm went off inside of his body.

Damon loved an intrigue.

"Lemme ask you a question, Bonnie, the girl, or shall I say young woman who is not like the other girls of Mystic Falls," He said, putting his drink down on the coffee table and pointing to her left hand, " How does one come up on a rock of that size and be just a regular military brat?"

He watched her glance down at the ring, her face growing soft with that delicious smile again, "Family heirloom."

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"What are you gonna do?" Stefan questions over and over, quickly following his brother up the cellar stairs.

Damon hightails it through the living room and up the expansive staircase to the second floor, he wants to get some distance between him and what happened in the cell, he wants to get away from green eyes and green rings and the name Bonnie.

He yells back at his brother "What the fuck do you mean what am I gonna do? You brought her into our lives, you knew what she was and never told me. You betrayed me and Elena and you ask me what am I gonna do like you give a damn.

Stefan hovered in Damon's bedroom doorway, " I meant to tell you, I wanted to tell you everyday once I found out but it was complicated, you would hav..

"I would have killed her," He yells, picking up a vase and throwing it against the brick fireplace, shattering porcelain all over the hardwood floors.

The younger brother steps into the bedroom and calmly sits on the edge of the bed, "I'm sorry, Damon."

Damon's shoulders slump and he sits on the opposite side of the bed, "Brother, it was either me or her, and now it's come to this."

There is a silence. A thought of the vampire who is reluctantly sitting in the bolted cell because Stefan promised he would come back and get her once he talked to his brother alone.

"You know you have a choice.

"Don't" He almost whispers between tired the fingers he runs over his face, contemplating what he was actually going to do. "Don't act like you care."

The bed bounces under Damon as his brother rises abruptly from the bed, "All this time dude, all this damn time, from mom dying and you running away and then dad's murder, I waited for you. I waited for you to come back and be the brother I wanted you to be, and you come and do this," He says, his arms opening to show the emptiness between them, "Why come back at all dude? For what? You have the audacity to guilt trip me when for the past month you have been sleeping with someone I love and plotting behind my back."

"Are you referring to Elena or Bonnie?"

Stefan laughed, and curled his mouth up into a telling smile, it was a Salvatore smile. He flicked his hands as if he was washing himself from the situation. "Die, don't die, it doesn't matter to me. As far as I'm concerned you died for me the moment you left ten years ago." He stated walking calmly to the door to go and free Bonnie.

Damon ran to the door and yelled at his brother's back before he turned down the staircase, ""You think you're gonna ride off into the fucking sunset with a vampire, Stefan?"

Stefan sighed, and hesitated on the landing, "It's not me who she wants. It's not me, Damon. Get that through your thick skull. It was never me."

Author's Note

No idea where I'm going but I appreciate all those who have hitched themselves to this ride