𝐒𝐦𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐲

- - -
❝So take a step back will you
Be alright feel alright?❞

Houses
~Northern lights
- - -

Girl's nights were something very sacred to Kat Gilbert. It was a license for everything go right, friends to make up and all boy drama to be resolved over pizza and ice cream. Lately, no one had brought up their monthly girl's night with everything that changed.

Elena was no more settling for high school gossip when she had seen far more supernatural elements. Bonnie was pulling away more and more as days went by. Kat was hiding a lot of secrets: the dark reality of her friendship with Stefan, Damon's cruel deeds, what she herself was becoming.

Yet, Caroline and Kat were the only ones excited to get old traditions back into running. Until...

"You gotta be kidding me" Kat groaned.

She was minding her own business, balancing three bags of snacks and ice cream in her arms when she saw Damon slip into the Mystic Grill. Usually, she would have thanked her stars that the elder Salvatore wasn't going to be anywhere near her group of friends for the night. And that would've been the case too, if only Jenna and Jeremy hadn't just gone into the Grill before Damon.

Two of the people that she cared about and they were in the same room with the least caring vampire.

Kat's fingers slipped at supernatural speed, dialing Stefan. The line rang and rang, but no one picked up.

Cursing, the next call she made was to her sister. Elena picked up at the first ring, immediately launching into a harried explanation. "Hey Kat... I called Stefan here to the house to talk about what happened to Bonnie this afternoon."

"Well," Kat took a deep breath at the mention of Stefan, "Did he answer you? 'Cause my calls went straight to voicemail for the—"

"Yeah he's here."

Kat almost dropped the ice cream cartons on the pavement when her sister spoke. Stefan was at her house? Willingly? And that too when Kat wasn't there...

She felt a myriad of feelings burn in her. Sadness, anger, jealousy, pride. Kat had been running her throat dry begging him to return to the normal, leaving voicemails till Jenna had to recharge her minutes twice in three days. But one call from Elena and pretty boy came a-runnin'.

"Well glad to see you respond to my sister Stefan..." Kat snapped.

After one entire week, Kat had heard a semblance of sound from Stefan. His voice crackled to her over the line, "Viv, now's not the—"

"Oh I can't agree more. That's why I called. Damon's at the Grill now..."

"But that's where Jenna and Jeremy are!" Elena said.

"Ding dong took you long," Kat drawled. She felt bad the moment she said it, the guilt deepening when Elena greeted her snark with silence.

"...Anyway, so what do I do?"

"I'll come over and watch them," Stefan suggested, "Keep Damon occupied. You should be here with Bonnie and Caroline."

"As much I love my girls Broody, I think I have some unfinished business with your brother..."

"Well what do I tell Bonnie? And Caroline?"

"I'll probably send a message in the group about pending work. Caroline knows I've been lagging a bit so she won't say anything."

"I'll be there in a few minutes, see you." Stefan answered, cutting the call promptly.

Kat licked her lip with simmering anger.

She still had all the food for girl's night by her side on the bench when Elena pulled up in the family SUV. Stefan stepped out, sleek as ever in his tight jeans hanging low on his hips and his leather jacket billowing in the breeze of the Town Square.

At least that's what anyone with normal vision saw.

Kat saw all his beauty and chiseled features, but she saw more: his eyes were sunken, his hair in an unnatural disarray, even for Stefan, there was a lethargy in his gait. Kat surmised he hadn't fed in a while.

The moment she saw him, all her anger vanished, replaced by a heavy feeling she didn't like. Maybe her anger had been in vain, she was supposed to give him space. And Stefan deserved some time to himself.

Elena promptly picked up the food to haphazardly throw it in the backseat of the car while it was in ignition. Kat frowned, "Easy, it's Caroline's favorite tacos in there..."

"You should really go," Stefan didn't meet her eyes, "You need some time off..."

The memories of the meltdown she had in her bathroom that day flashed by her eyes, but Kat shook her head. She refused to leave Stefan alone with his brother, and that too when he was on edge and starved.

Kat bent farther into the backseat, carefully hiking up the containers and bags before slithering out. She pasted a smile on her face, barely pulling up the edges of her lips as she inched a hand towards her ear. "What was that? I couldn't quite hear over you soccer mom-ing me!"

At last, he smiled.

She had seen those straight chiseled lips smoothen into a signal of jest, his dimples deepening into the grooves of his lips. There was a twinkle in his green eyes, ones that flitted to his shoes and back to her from under his lashes.

There was a moment, just a moment when things were back to their own screwed up normal.

Until Elena closed the car door with a bang. Kat jumped away from the vehicle, pocketing her shaky hands into the dainty pockets of her shorts. Elena pecked Stefan, rubbing along his arm in reassurance. "Call me if things go south alright?"

Stefan just nodded, wiping his lips onto hers for a fraction of a second, a fraction of a second which Kat pretended she was blind. Before Elena could initiate something more intimate, like a dying love confession, Kat announced herself (a bit too loudly).

"Well gee look at the time! The girls await m'lady,"

Kat tapped her mother's dainty watch on her wrist, reflecting the dusk sky right into Elena's eyes. Grumbling, the younger twin darted behind the wheel, blowing one last kiss to Stefan and waving to Kat.

When the crunch of gravel grew far, Stefan and Kat walked slowly back towards the Grill. She had to peel her eyes off his face every few seconds, because he was just that beautiful to look at. He seemed so serenely troubled, as if every inch of his body was fighting for peace and sometimes, his monsters just lost against it. The trees blew raspberries at their cheeks, Kat's more so flushed than usual in the cold of the evening.

"You could have cut her some slack," Stefan shrugged, "Your sister's going through a lot..."

Kat pulled back her cap over her curls, refusing to scoff at his statement. Yeah, she was sure Elena was having the worst time on Earth with a hot boyfriend like Stefan and a crush on a guy like Damon and Matt still wrapped around her finger.

The thought made Kat shake her head. Rude. That was rude. She shouldn't be thinking that way of her sister.

"...Viv?" Stefan dragged out her name, and she realized she had stopped in the middle of the parking lot.

"Um, what? Cut some slack for a sibling?" she stuttered out a laugh, catching up to him. She slapped his shoulder just for good measure. "Where're you from, Mars?"

Chuckling, he opened the door of the Grill for her. "Well it's not too bad to believe in aliens don't you think?" He twisted the cap around on her head, wrapping his long arm over her shoulder.

Kat felt a million things in that one second.

For a person who spent half her free time in the Mystic Grill, Kat felt very odd to be there under the given circumstances. The room stunk of sweat, enjoyment and burgers in booze, with a decent song to go with the buzz once in a while.

With Polaroid by Jonas Blue filling in the silence at her pool table, Kat kept an eye out for her aunt and brother. They were talking now talking with Alaric Saltzman. There was something about him that irked her. A new teacher that the Sheriff herself hired from out of town, barely experienced in the teaching profession. The way he warily asked her about the night Tanner was bitten– it was like he wanted her to say it was not a mountain lion, confirm his suspicions.

And then there was the ring on his finger.

Though Stefan had taught her better than to use her powers to snoop, Kat couldn't help but zero in on the tacky stone ring on Alaric's finger. Maybe it was a case of once bitten twice shy for her, but Kat refused to let the history teacher go unexamined, mainly because of the exclusive piece of inheritable jewelry. He never once took it off, yet fiddling with it as if it was uncomfortable or memorable.

A few feet across from her, she was annoyed by another 'boop' sound made when a drunk figure missed another dart target.

Damon Salvatore, cocky, arrogant and evilishly blue eyed ever since she first saw him. He took her captive, tortured, even killed her (he had had said "Big asterisk there, you came back!"). Above all that, he existed to be a pain in Stefan's behind, willing to go as far as killing the best friend to be a bane.

Either Kat was reading too much into his actions, or maybe there was something that made Damon the man he was now.

Just when she was ready to kill him, which came close every time he breathed, there was a thoughtful part of her cynical mind that reminded her of the things Damon could have done, but didn't do. Damon could but did not kill Vicki or Elena; he could have compelled her brother to mass murder the Council but he helped Jeremy instead; Damon could have left her to die that night in the forest when Logan shot her but he saved her even when he didn't have to.

There was something stopping him. Though Damon acted too mighty for human feelings, there was something holding him back– something to hold onto that made him desperate enough to not lose feelings. He wanted to feel it all. The struggle, the experience...

But for what? a voice in her asked, What does it lead to?

"So, Stefan,"

Instead of Damon saying that, it was Stefan himself. From what she gathered, the brothers were living old memories by imitating each other and shitting each other. Kat had done that before with both, her therapist months ago as well as Stefan after her powers showed up. But it was still amusing to see Stefan pout like he thought Damon did. And Damon practically shed his eyebrows into his eyeballs with frowning like Stefan.

"You know, I've been thinking..." Stefan-as-Damon continued, "I think we should start over, give this brother thing another chance. We used to do it, oh-so well, once upon time,"

Damon leaned against the pool cue, his darts long forgotten as did the frown thing. His voice deepened, graver and devoid of any hint of amusement, Damon-as-Stefan spoke, "I don't, Damon. I can't trust you to be a nice guy. You kill everybody, and you're so mean! ...You're so mean, and..."

Kat watched him silently, pool cue in one hand and her seventh glass of lemonade in the other as Damon fumbled for something Stefan-like to say. He eventually ran out of patience, giving up with a drunken shrug, "You're really hard to imitate, and then I have to go to that lesser place and..."

She snorted, catching some of her dribbling drink with a tissue.

Damon gave her a sharp look, soon blending back into Damon-as-Stefan, "What is she doing here Damon—"

"—Anything more for the group?"

The three of them swiveled to face a busboy; Kat smiled, "Uh, yes... This guy is in need of another bottle of Jack, Stefan wants a basket of curly fries - crispy and with the mexican salsa thingy and I need a grilled sandwich. Thanks Chad."

As Chad walked away with his notepad in hand, the brothers each gave her matching confused looks.

"I never said I wanted another bottle," Damon said.

"And yet you didn't oppose the last five glasses of bourbon I bought you,"

His nostrils flared, a symptom of his newly adopted 'Stefan-diet' and mainly a side-effect of Kat's smart-assery. "Well," he grit his teeth, "Stefan didn't want fries either."

She laughed, "Don't fight it Damon. It's house rules: cashier orders the food, eater shuts his cakehole,"

Before a fight could break out and cause bloodshed, Stefan intervened with a strained smile directed at his brother, "I figured, if you really want to bond with me, I'd have to make it worthwhile. And for that I really need my brother and my best friend to tolerate each other and try not to snap each other's necks while they're at it."

Damon looked her up and down, his jaw taut with bitten back snark, "You promise to behave?"

"Do you?" she retorted.

He rolled his eyes, "What do you want Katherine?"

"I want my people safe for the night,"

"Seriously?"

Stefan snatched up a pool cue, throwing Damon another one, "I'm not here to keep an eye on you Damon,"

"So, why are you really here?" he asked. Kat could read the undertones of the wariness that Damon was trying so hard to hide.

She gave him an innocent smile, slurping on her lemonade with extra noise, "Why not?"

Two whole hours later, the brothers had moved back to playing darts. As Stefan managed to hit the target on the dart board for Kat-lost-count-after-the-hundredth time, Damon hummed into the bottom of his bottle.

"You're beating me," he remarked.

His observation was bleak, devoid of any anger or interest. If there was one flaw to Damon that she had found out (apart from the clear sociopathic aptitude

"It's because he's better than you" Kat singsonged.

Instead of reacting to her immediately, Damon smirked a drunken smile, patting his brother. He walked lopsidedly to the nearest booth where Kat was inhaling her second club sandwich.

He leaned close to her, his long legs behind him looking like they ran miles till they reached the ground. Kat could smell the drinks of that evening on his cold breath, unwalled suspicion brimming in his glossy ice-blue eyes. "I'm onto you, y'know? Reverse psychology..." he whispered, "It's a little transparent, but I admire the effort."

He was being too greedy with her personal space, drinking it in like it would sober him up to the best version of reality in which she hated him and he hated her guts.

Kat rolled her eyes, "I wonder how you tolerate yourself. You're too much of a Smoldy,"

"Smoldy?"

"You know... Smoldy." Kat stated, as if it was pretty obvious.

Stefan's face bobbed in confusion over his brother's, his look mirroring Damon's just a little bit.

"Well, it's Mystic slang for pricks who pout and smirk and smolder a lot. Y'know... so Smoldy,"

The elder Salvatore's face muscles twitched into said smolder, withdrawing from her in style, "Then I am a Smoldy,"

"Did I also mention that they can't get it up?" Kat was messing around, but her gamble paid off when Damon's smirk morphed into disgust and soon, anger.

"Seriously," his form went rigid, he was no longer messing around, "What game do you think you're playing? What are you up to?"

Stefan clapped his back, a bright smile on his face proof enough that he was enjoying this a but too much.

"That's a funny question brother, considering the fact that I've been asking you that for months..."

"It's frustrating isn't it?" Kat said.

Damon settled for a glare this time, "Touché"

Kat threw the gate to the football field open with a proud flourish. The community football park was empty in the darkness of the night, some tall yellow streetlights bled light onto patches of the forlorn land.

Just like empty school hallways, empty game fields unnerved Kat. There was something so eerie about them that made Kat wish she had Harry Potter magic to fill it with people.

Damon sashayed onto the grass, giving a weak sigh as his designer shoes were splattered with some mud.

"What are we doing here?"

Stefan threw her a football. Kat held it against her hip, the cold night breeze nipping at her exposed thighs. Damon took a long look at every cell of skin that Kat hadn't covered.

Stefan hadn't missed those looks, but something that soothed his building anger was that Kat had neither responded to nor encouraged Damon's wordless visual advances.

"Bonding. Throw!"

Kat took her cue, using all her muscle and launching the ball. Combined with her practice with Tyler and her new supernatural strength, the ball was propelled farther off than her human muscle memory aimed it.

But Damon caught it at the last moment with his vampire speed. He kept the ball with him, walking away with it.

"Go on." Stefan shouted to him, "Give it a try Damon!"

"Don't forget who taught you how to play this game little brother,"

"Damon taught you how to play football?" Kat's eyes widened, taking in the smug look on Damon who had turned around by then. She gazed at Stefan. Maybe she had expected the brothers to have been immortal enemies from the birth of time, but it was moments like these that always caught Kat off-guard.

Before Damon could open his mouth, Stefan sped off, ramming his body right into Damon's figure. The boys ended up a bundle of limbs in the far corner of the ground. Kat thanked her heavens for the lack of public surveillance cameras as she ran towards them.

"That hurt,"

Stefan held him down, a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, "Downside of my diet? Getting hit actually hurts a little bit..."

Maybe he tried to mean it as a friendly joke, but the tension in the air between them made it clear to any moron with a set of eyes. Stefan wasn't just here to dilly dally around, maybe sometimes he could mean his threats too.

Kat slowly plopped down on the grass in front of them, her ankles crossed as she brought her knees close to her chest. Her heart was pacing in her chest, the looming conflict and what she would have to do to stop it making her anxious.

Damon lied back down with a bored grunt, crossing his leathered legs over one another, "I'm impressed guys. Fun with booze and darts, sentimental with football, and now, starry night. What's next? Romantic getaway to the Bahamas?" he looked at Kat with a wink, "I'm game by the way,"

No one found it funny. Kat slowly looked to Stefan, trying to wordlessly plead with him to say something and bring their evening to a miraculous stop. 

"It wasn't real, Damon" he said, "Our love for Katherine. She compelled us. We didn't have a choice. Took me years to sort that out, to truly understand what she did to us—"

Damon pushed up and in a moment, he was on top of Stefan, his hands digging deep into the weaker vampire's throat with a growl, "Oh no no no brother. We are not taking that on tonight,"

Kat pulled him off Stefan quickly, watching in relief as he took in a labored breath.

"Okay I've tiptoed around the point till now but my question is, what do you want with Katherine's crystal and why aren't you able to take it from Bonnie?"

Damon stopped in his tracks, turning to give Kat an undecipherable look. "How do you know it was Katherine's? Emily gave it to her on her last night. I was with her, and you weren't..."

"I was the last one to see her, Damon," Stefan shot back. There was an indignance to his stance, his legs rooted to the ground as he all but pressed the air out of the football in his hands, "Now tell me, what do you want with Katherine's crystal?"

"Oh she didn't tell you?" a smirk was forming on Damon's face, but it was cut off when Stefan shrugged.

"We had other things on our mind..."

Kat felt a thousand volts of embarrassment shock her nerves. Her cheeks flared up, her gaze lowered to her feet pressing into the grassy field as she tried to fight the images in her head. Was it possible for vampires to get drunk on salt and spice? Stefan was speaking at a bandwidth that he only did when he was drunk. He was exposing very private details, ones that Kat did not want to hear at all.

Damon, a few feet away from her, was battling an emotional onslaught by himself. His blue looks transfixed at his brother, the simmering rage in him was palpable to both Stefan and Kat. Maybe Stefan thought Damon would take off towards the Grill, or kill him perhaps, but surprising him, Damon went for Kat.

Before she could defend herself, Damon held her strongly from behind. The top buttons of his T-Shirt dug into the back of her head as his breath colored foggy fumes near her ear. Her heart froze for one fraction of a second, paralyzed with the fear of a killer now plastered to her back with a smile that poked into her cheeks. His jaw was cold along hers as it left goosebumps in its wake.

"You know Katherine?" He swung them slowly from one feet to another, like he was cradling a fragile vase he was ready to hurl, Kat felt bile in her throat, "You're only alive because I want you breathing. I could rip your heart out and not think twice about it,"

Stefan watched by from a few feet away, his eyes widened at the threat. Damon's hand was too close to her heart, too close to her neck. He had killed Kat once and she had come back, but no one knew if that luck extended for a second death. With Kat's heart speeding up in fear, he felt like his brother was holding his life in a death grip, not hers.

Stefan prayed for Kat to act. One move from Stefan would send Damon into a frenzy, Kat was the only one who could save herself.

"Hands like Houdini," Kat's mumble trembled, a flurry of movements following her words. She yanked against Damon's grip, twisting them over her head until his bones almost broke. In a moment's notice, she was the one with the upper hand, straddling a subdued Damon on the grass.

Stefan ran forward, pulling Kat to safety in his arms. For just a moment, she hung onto his grip before breaking loose from him. "That was scary," he scolded. Stefan didn't know who it was aimed at, but the knots in his gut stopped tightening at a hint of an exhilarated smile from his best friend.

"That was awesome!"

Damon grunted onto his feet. His eyes were bordering on defeat, egoistical retreat, just a hint of something unreadable in his glare, "Jump all you want Katherine, in the meantime I'll finish what I came here for,"

"Which is what?"

He waited for dramatic effect, "I'm going to bring her back..."

This was what it all boiled down to - why was Damon here. The Salvatore brothers had a habit of prioritizing the women in their life. Stefan could never say no to Elena. It was futile to have ever imagined that Damon was here for something other than a woman that had scorned his love.

She raised her brows, her cap in her hands as she compressed it for catharsis.

"I'm guessing you don't mean Taylor Swift's pet huh?"

Damon scoffed. Stefan inched closer to Kat in protection.

"I think I'll call home. I know I won't be home for strip bingo..."

irene's corner

Divi burns my heart while Stivi just melts it