A/N: Had fun writing this chapter, hope you guys enjoy it, and thanks so much for the comments! Each one is very much appreciated. Hope you like Vanessa, and forgive her for stealing a bit of screen time from the brothers. Please leave a review! :)

Rating: Once again M for sexual content, incest and mature themes, so please read only if you're alright with these.

x x x

I'm in the Camaro. We've had some good times, this car and me. Sun's out. Warm on my face. The wheel spins against my palms as I take a right. I turn to check the road ahead and I already know what I'm going to see next to me.

Elena.

She's there like she always is in this dream. I smile and start to relax. But something's different. Something's wrong. This time her eyes are closed - and when she opens them she starts to cry.

Her tears are blood.

I want to make her stop but I'm caught in this never-ending turn. The car's spinning, she's sitting there with tears bleeding down her face, and when she opens her mouth to speak to me her voice sends chills down my spine.

I don't recognise her voice.

Damon, she says, they're coming.

They're coming.

That voice is pounding in my head like the witch's aneurysms, and it won't stop. That's when I notice I haven't got my ring on, and her face dissolves in hot blood as my skin goes up in smoke.

I open my eyes shouting, in a cold sweat, wondering where the hell I am. Then my senses calm down and I make out the bedside clock, the bedsprings at my back. I remember we're in the piss poor excuse for a motel somewhere on the outskirts of nowhere. Alright, we're in New York. But I'm still craning my neck looking for Elena, trying to get that fucking voice out of my head.

"Damon, what the hell?"

Can't shake the dream off. My hands are shaking and I'm finding it hard to breathe as I roll to the edge of the bed and sit up trying to settle down. Stefan follows me.

"Hey," he says, his voice rough and rumbly sounding from sleep. It sounds good. "What is it?"

Bad dream, I want to say, but my lips curl at how pathetic it sounds. He's frowning at me and he's got a hand on my shoulder and his body is warm. He's half-asleep and looks fucked-up from yesterday and he smells like sweat and stale blood. But I don't really give a damn how he smells as I push him onto his back and hold him down. He's awake now and he's looking at me like I'm crazy. I want to tell him to get off his high horse. He hasn't seen crazy.

"What it is," I say, and my face is right up against his so I'm practically whispering it against his mouth, "is I'm fucking horny."

Oh, he's awake alright. He gives me his moral outrage face. The one he's been giving me since I blew him in Altoona. I can feel his dick against my thigh and I rub him a little to let him know it.

He doesn't say yes, but he doesn't say no. I saw him when we were talking to Alaric yesterday, saw his bloodlust – my brother will never admit it but he needs this as much as I do. Probably needs it more.

Clinging to some code of human morality becomes a pretty hypocritical after a century of maiming and killing, but I guess it keeps him happy. Or so he chooses to believe. So sure, I'll take the fall for whatever the hell is happening between us. Doesn't bother me. Sex is sex. And sex helps.

The dream is still fogging my brain. Elena, the blood, all that bourbon I drank last night, Stefan warm and stiff underneath me...put it all together and I'm hard as hell and I know he feels it. Fuck I need this. But he's just looking at me like he's waiting for me to tell him what to do.

Oh yeah, I can do that.

"Here's what you're gonna do, little brother," I say, leaning in close so I'm talking in his ear. "You're gonna get your dick out. And you're gonna play with yourself till I say otherwise."

He looks like he's going to say no. Or he looks like he's going to say, "Or what?" which I don't have an answer to. Or nothing, really. Except we'll both be really fucking frustrated and pissed off, and I won't be able to shake off the dream and he won't be able to shake off the hunger.

So instead of saying no, he turns so his back is to me, and he unbuttons and shoves his pants down and puts his hand on himself.

It's not what I want. Damn loopholes.

"Sit up so I can see you."

He stops for a minute, then he settles back against the headboard, sitting one hand behind his head and one hand moving slowly up and down, still with that something he moves with – it was Katherine that pointed it out to me once, the irony. Languid grace, she called it, all the way back when, whatever the fuck that means. Makes you wanna do all kinds of sinful things with that body.

"Yeah," I say, sitting back to watch. "Much better."

He's looking right at me, like it's a challenge, and I'll be damned if I'm supposed to be cowed by that, like I'm supposed to look away or something. So I stare back at him, watch him as he gets himself off. He's a good looking guy. Jesus. Not hard to look at, and keep looking. Got that Italian look that sort of passed me by in the gene pool, got that olive skin, got those crazy green eyes. And a mouth made for sin. Made for doing sinful things. Just like it did last night.

x x x

My hand is working up and down and Damon is looking at me like he's daring me to look away. Looking like he's maybe a little angry. With himself, with me, with something else, I don't know. He woke up yelling Elena's name, over and over, and I woke up in a panic, thinking she was in danger – and then I remembered.

And he woke up horny. Dreaming of my girlfriend. My dead girlfriend. And now he's expending his lust on me. His equally dead brother of a hundred and forty-five years. If this isn't fucked up, I don't know what is.

But I'm not really thinking about any of that right now. I'm not really thinking at all. My mind is still only half awake, full of physical sensations and not much else, full of what we're doing – actually, I have no idea what we're doing, so I'm just going on his instructions again, just like last night. Part of the rush – a huge part – comes from not having any idea where this is going, not having a plan, not having to be in control anymore – from being able to relinquish control to him.

And it feels so damn good. It's such a relief.

For the first time in a long, long while there's no bloodlust, and I'm not thinking, I'm not tense, not on edge, not fending off the storm. My body is relaxed, muscles still half asleep and heavy but coming awake with a gentle, unhurried pleasure with every stroke of my thumb and fingers. His blue eyes fix me to the sheets and my mind is blank except for what he's told me to do, waiting for wherever's he leading me next.

I trust him, I realise, with a jolt of surprise. I trust him where I wouldn't trust anyone else. My big brother. We're staring at each other deep into this long, long night in this dirty, dark motel room at the end of a longer, dirtier, darker existence, and we're all each other's got.

And all of a sudden the strange spell is broken by a voice we hear, through the doors and the loose floorboards down in reception one floor below us, feminine, throaty, tired but happy. It's been a long time since we've heard happy.

"It's good to see you, Alaric."

We both freeze and I see his gaze sharpen, and I know my own is unfogging, too, from the haze of – desire or whatever this crazy messed up thing is. I cock my head in the direction of the door and am up out of bed, restoring my jeans to order, yanking and buttoning before he moves.

And then with a low growl he's suddenly standing in front of me, hands almost painfully fisted on mine as though he means to stop me from clothing myself, a split second before sanity returns to his eyes. His fingers fall away from mine and he's left looking much like how I feel, angry and exhausted and frustrated.

"Later," he snarls, before turning and slipping out the door. And I wonder why it sounds like a threat.

x x x

Vanessa had been driving for just over ten hours by the time she pulled up at the Value Best Motel, off state highway 31 outside of Albion, just like Alaric had said.

She'd hit the email reply button in the afternoon with shaking hands, thrown some stuff together in a duffel bag which could last her maybe a week, at a stretch – she had no idea how long she was going to be away – got in her car and stared blankly at her white-knuckled hands clutching the steering wheel, wondering if she'd gone a little bit insane.

The latest article she'd been working on for weeks on end, through sleepless nights poring through ancient dusty volumes written in a terrible hand – thank God for the invention of the printed word, she thought – had been rejected by five journals for being...unsubstantiated.

Lycanthropy in the modern world had been overtaken by pop culture, and there was no shortage of anthropological research on the hows and whys of the way the werewolf and the vampire had come to obsess the world's imagination – from Anne Rice to Stephenie Meyer, from Buffy to True Blood, from An American Werewolf in London to Paris, pop culture had fed these mythologies till they were virtually unrecognizable from just over a century ago, at the birth of Dracula, and even more estranged from the early 18th century, where the folklore behind the vampire as we knew it was widely accepted to have originated, in Southeastern Europe. Folk stories handed down verbally through the generations, of demons and malevolent spirits that would morph into the fictional incarnations we were presently familiar with, had been recorded then for the first time.

Vanessa knew all these things, and yet now she knew something more: she knew it was no mere folklore. And what she had initially thought to be a blessing had become a curse: fiction and superstition were no longer enough; she now found them empty, meaningless compared to the reality that she had glimpsed and lost. The newfound tedium she was discovering in academia came through in her work and her writing. She was falling behind in her research, she was failing to meet her publication quota - and she didn't much care.

Folklore provided an amusing anthropological and psychological perspective, sure – but it was all a lie. She was a researcher, and what she wanted was the truth – and that she couldn't have it ate away at her, consumed her mind, and she found herself reading and rereading all the information she had on the Salvatores, on Katherine Pierce, on other individuals of little or no academic interest but whom she knew to be real from her hours of conversation with Alaric Saltzman, Damon Salvatore and Elena Gilbert that one fateful day in Isobel's office.

What had Alaric said to her? You don't want to get caught up in this. It'll take over and keep you from being able to live your life. Too late. Meeting them alone had opened her eyes and mind and changed her life, threw everything she knew about the world out the window, and there was no going back.

So she'd taken a sabbatical. Ostensibly to travel, to pursue some private research. She'd planned to go down to Mystic Falls. She'd never been much of a doer – she had a researcher's brain: observing, collecting data, and it had never occurred to her, until now, that she could be part of the action, be involved in field work. So she'd holed up at home for a couple of days, working up the courage to throw herself into the thick of it.

And then Alaric's email had come.

It had been like the universe giving her a great big GO! sign, flashing a neon lit arrow on the road to Rochester, and she'd been so keyed up she'd had to read his email a few times before she'd absorbed enough of it to type out a reply with trembling fingers on her Blackberry.

And as she sat in her car in the parking lot of the shitty student accommodation block she was living in, questioning her sanity which had probably been suffering a slow erosion over the past few weeks, she'd thought, screw it, and put her foot on the pedal.

With each passing hour that brought her away from Durham, unease had bloomed in her chest, and at nightfall she'd almost panicked and turned back around. She'd considered stopping at a motel for the night, but she'd known if she didn't keep driving she might change her mind and end up regretting it for the rest of her life.

Opportunity seldom knocks twice. Isobel had told her that. The last time she'd seen her. She'd seemed so sad, and now Vanessa knew why. She couldn't imagine leaving the life Isobel had had – her students, her faculty, her career, her marriage, her husband. Leaving a man like Alaric? Vanessa recalled his face with an absent smile. It was a face a woman could depend on. Strong and trustworthy. And handsome, with that floppy sandy hair, grey-blue eyes, so friendly – except when he'd been manhandling her into a chair after she'd, um, tried to kill Elena. God, she'd felt stupid. Remembering it sent a flush to her cheeks.

But he'd been so sweet afterwards, so sad as he'd told her, it's okay, it's really okay. About Isobel; about coming back to Duke. It feels good to have her in my past. It's time to move beyond this. It had given her the strength to move on, too. Move on from losing her mentor, the only person she'd ever met who'd seen merit in and encouraged her passion for comparative folklore.

His next email had come in sometime in the wee hours, when she'd been driving down the interstate in a sleepy haze, further and further into the night, partly convinced he was never going to email her again and that she was going to end up driving all the way back to NC for nothing, but stubbornly determined to get to Rochester anyway, just to be able to say that she had. She's got a stubborn streak a mile wide, her mom had always said, she's gotta watch out for that or it's gonna lead her into bad places.

So she was really, really glad when her Blackberry signalled the arrival of a new email, and when she opened her inbox to find a new message from Alaric Saltzman she didn't think she'd felt happier in weeks. She clicked it.

From: A. Saltzman

Date: Oct 7, 2010 01:25:34 AM

To: V. Monroe

Subject: Re: re: need your help

Hi Vanessa,

It's good to hear from you too. I wish it was under better circumstances. I'm so, so sorry that you've gotten involved in this – I said I didn't want you to get caught up in it, and I still don't. I told you it'll take over your life, Vanessa, and it will, but aside from that it's also incredibly risky right now.

If you haven't left Duke yet, or if you're still nearby, please, stay home. Stay safe. It doesn't offend me, what you said about Isobel, but it worries me. The thought of you getting involved, getting hurt, when there's no need for you to be – the thought of anyone else getting involved in this that doesn't need to be... if anything happened to you I wouldn't be able to forgive myself.

Turn around and go home. Don't come to Rochester. Please. It's for your own good.

Regards,

Alaric

Her mood had taken a distinct turn for the worse as she read these words, crushing her hopes, filling her equally with foreboding and angry disbelief. Above all she'd felt suddenly so, so foolish, coming all the way out here on an email from a man she'd met once in her life. Her face had burned with embarrassment. Maybe her mother had been right.

No. No, she wasn't going to sit back and take this bullshit, she'd thought. She wanted this. She'd pulled over on an off-road and angrily punched out a reply, trying (and somewhat failing) to keep her tone measured.

From: V. Monroe

Date: Oct 7, 2010 01:28:45 AM

To: A. Saltzman

Subject: Re: re: need your help

Alaric,

I'm sorry, I don't understand your change of heart. But I'm on the I-390, just passed Geneseo Airport, and I'm just outside of Rochester.

I've been driving since 4pm, and I've been waiting for your reply since then, too. Is this some kind of joke?

Vanessa

She'd hit send and waited a few seconds, and had been just about to send another email with her phone number asking him to call her immediately, when his reply had come in.

From: A. Saltzman

Date: Oct 7, 2010 01:32:09 AM

To: V. Monroe

Subject: Re: re: need your help

Attachment: VBMAlbionmap

Hi Vanessa,

It's no joke, and I'm sorry, I must sound crazy. Come to the Value Best Motel in Albion, a little outside Rochester – continue on the I-390 till you're in Rochester, then get on NY 31 to Albion – I've attached a map – and I'll explain everything when you're here.

Regards,

Alaric

From: V. Monroe

Date: Oct 7, 2010 01:33:12 AM

To: A. Saltzman

Subject: Re: re: need your help

On my way.

Vanessa

In just over an hour she'd arrived, after getting a little turned around in Rochester, and now she locked her car and stepped lightly up the steps and through the entrance of the run down old motel which, unless it was essentially free to stay there, didn't look like value, and certainly didn't look the best. But she didn't really notice as she came through the door and almost ran into Alaric Saltzman.

He'd been standing near the door, keeping an eye out for cars and visitors, and he'd spotted her as soon as she'd arrived. Despite the confusion of the past hour she beamed at the sight of him – here he was, the key to all the mysteries she wished to unlock, in the flesh. Haggard and tired-looking and unkempt and thinner than she remembered, with a swollen lip and a bruise around one eye, and somehow sadder, but in the flesh nonetheless.

"It's good to see you, Alaric," she said, and she sounded a little croaky in that way that her voice got when she was really tired, but she was so pleased to be here, to see him, to have made it, that there was no disguising her pleasure.

But he was frowning at her, and didn't stop frowning. He stared at her for a moment, making her raise her hand self-consciously to her hair to pat it into place, and then seemed to recollect his thoughts and come to himself. "Damn it, Vanessa," he said, harshly, "you shouldn't be here."

It wasn't the welcome she would have liked, nor the best of beginnings, but she defied her instinct to run and took a step closer to him. "You told me to come," she reminded him, patiently.

To her surprise he fell into a chair with a groan and put his head in his hands. "God, this is all messed up." He looked back up at her. "Listen to me, I'm sorry, I'm so damn sorry you got involved in this."

"You said that already," she said, a little less patiently. "And before that, you told me to come. So what am I missing here?"

"I didn't tell you to come." He held up a hand to halt her protest. "I know, you received an email from me. But I didn't send it."

"I did," said a voice somewhere above and to the right of her, and she didn't have to turn to know whom it belonged to. A thrill that was part fear and part exhilaration ran through her at the sound – the imaginary world that she had lived and breathed her entire adult existence had bloomed suddenly to life, and here was the evidence that she had not lost her mind these past few weeks – and she turned to find Damon Salvatore at the top of the stairs.

She stared at him, and couldn't stop staring. "You're real," she found herself saying, and her voice came out so dreamy she blushed. Another figure appeared next to him, another man, tall and dark and absurdly handsome, with the most beautiful green eyes she'd ever seen, and with a shock of recognition she knew instantly who he was.

"Stefan, Vanessa; Vanessa, Stefan," said Damon, eyeing her warily, "I wouldn't get too close if I were you, brother. She stabbed me in the back the last time we met. Literally."

She couldn't help it, she clapped her hand to her mouth to hide her laughter. "I'm sorry! I'm really sorry. I did apologise. And I'm sorry for laughing, it's just that – I still can't believe you're real." Tears of – she didn't know what, relief, joy – sprang to her eyes. Good grief, she was a mess. "These past few weeks...all kinds of thoughts were running around in here." She tapped her temple, shaking her head. "Was I dreaming, was I imagining the whole thing, was I crazy; briefly considered going to see the campus counsellor–"

"Did you?" said Damon, sharply.

"No, no, you warned me not to tell anyone. I didn't. I've kept it out of my research, too, which has been harder than you can imagine–"

"Good," he said, cutting her off. "Keep it that way."

She couldn't stop staring at them. Stefan Salvatore was looking at her in a measuring, scrutinising sort of way, then he nodded and gave her a quick smile – she thought she saw a glimpse of kindness there, but it was gone in an instant – before turning to his brother. "She'll do. Let's get her upstairs and fill her in." He turned and disappeared up the stairs again before she could ask what it was she'd "do" for.

"You heard him," said Damon, and followed.

She turned to Alaric then, belatedly registering the fact that Damon had emailed her, and not him.

"You never wanted me to come," she said, wonderingly, seeing his behaviour tonight with new eyes.

"I didn't," he replied gruffly, getting up out of the chair and taking her arm, leading her up the stairs after the Salvatore brothers. "But here you are. So let's find out exactly what we're getting into so we can keep you alive."

x x x

What the hell is wrong with this woman?

Alaric sat in a corner of Stefan and Damon's motel room in the foulest mood he could ever remember being in. He watched Vanessa grumpily as she listened with all the excitement and fascination of a child with a new toy – and all the fear of a potted plant – as Stefan gave her all the background about Klaus, about our running, about the safe house, and as Damon laid out her kamikaze mission for her.

She looked like a damned Enid Blyton character setting off on a grand adventure. What the hell was wrong with her? Did she have a death wish? Alaric hoped to God not. Surely there was enough of that going around.

"So you're going to work with Jeremy. Once we fill the rest in, too. Learn all you can about Elena so you can play her."

"Play Elena?" Vanessa frowned. "I'm not a very good actress."

"Then what the hell have you been smiling and nodding about for the past forty-five minutes?"

"Well...I figured I was going to play myself. Vanessa Monroe. And in our little charade Vanessa Monroe is the doppelganger."

Damon looked aghast. "Why the hell would we do that?"

"Because," said Vanessa, with the tone of patience she'd used with Alaric earlier downstairs, "I'm a really bad actress. I'll almost definitely trip up. I can't pretend to be an entirely different person with different memories."

"You know, she has a point," said Stefan. "Even if she was comfortable playing someone else, I doubt the others would be happy pretending she was Elena. Jeremy's sister, Bonnie's best friend...the whole thing is precarious enough as it is, we don't need to add any unnecessary complications."

"And changing the identity of the doppelganger isn't an unnecessary complication?" Damon shook his head and started to turn away, but Stefan stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"It's one lie compared to a collective charade, Damon, think about it. The witches aren't going to know any better."

Damon looked at Vanessa. "How bad of an actress are you?"

She grimaced. "I've been kicked out of six school plays."

"God help us," said Damon, rolling his eyes heavenward. "Doesn't look like we have much of a choice."

"We can choose," Alaric said, "to let her go back home. Leave her out of this."

Vanessa came over to him, putting her hands over his. "Alaric," she said, "I want to do this. I know you're worried, but please, let me do this. It's my choice; this is what I want. I know what I'm doing."

'That's just it, Vanessa. You don't. You've got your head in books and myth and fantasy, and it's all novel and new for you. But this is real life. People have died," he said, unable to gentle his voice, his voice breaking on that last word, his mind shying away from thoughts of Jenna, of Elena. He shook his head. "I'm not on board with this."

"Duly noted, dad," said Damon. "But you're not her keeper, and she's not a child. She's on board with it, and that's all that matters." He yawned. "Look, why don't the two of you go have a heart to heart or whatever – somewhere else."

"That's my brother's charming way of saying it's been a long day," said Stefan, "for all of us. Get some sleep and we'll talk more with the rest in the morning. They're out of rooms, but I guess...you can stay here, if you like. It's just us two."

Alaric saw the appalled expression Damon shot at Stefan, but Damon's horror was eclipsed by his own at the idea. "No," he said, firmly, unconsciously moving closer to Vanessa, "no, she'll stay with us tonight. Tomorrow she can bunk with the girls, or we can get another room."

"Thanks," said Vanessa, smiling at him, the strange, vivid light blue of her eyes catching the cheap fluorescent lighting and shining at him with a brightness that had been absent from his life for what had felt like a long time now. It did something funny to his heart. And as he took the extra pillows Stefan threw at him and followed her out of the room, he knew he was walking into a whole new world of trouble.

x x x

"Some girl, huh?"

"Some girl. Don't know if she's crazy or stupid, or both."

I smiled a little. "She remind you of Isobel?"

"It's fucking creepy."

"Birds of a feather, I guess." I sat on the spot on the bed that Alaric had vacated. "She didn't seem afraid. Maybe she was a little shocky. Think she'll run for the hills when it all sinks in?"

Damon shrugged. "Beats me. But she's had weeks to have it sink in, the fact that this is all real, and if anything it sent her running to us." He smirked at me. "She wasn't afraid of eye-fucking you, I'll tell you that."

"Eye-f...? What?" I laughed. "Come on, Damon, we're like exhibits to her. Research. Museum pieces. She'd sooner stuff me and put me in a display case than eye-fuck me."

"Wouldn't put it past her to do both," he muttered. He rose and came over with a light in his eyes that I was beginning to recognise. "Anyway," he said, "where were we?"

"We were about to go to bed, because we're wiped out."

"I don't disagree about going to bed."

"I didn't think you would," I said, grimacing, feeling like I'd been put through a wringer – physically and emotionally. "I'm too tired, Damon. I'm too tired to play whatever game this is. Talking to Vanessa, talking about Elena...it just brought back too much. I just want to go to sleep, forget about it all for a while."

"I can help you forget."

"So can sleep." I pulled the sheets back and lay down with a huge sigh of relief.

"For you, maybe," he muttered, uneasily, and I wondered again what he'd been dreaming of earlier. He looked down at me, lying comfy on my side of the bed. "Fine, go to sleep, you damn cocktease."

"Now, that," I murmured, stretching and settling in, already drifting off, "is something I never thought I would be called. Especially not by you."

His harsh laughter echoed in my mind as I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

What felt like mere seconds later - but must have been hours, judging by the lightening sky - I jumped awake, roused by the sounds of Damon struggling next to me. He was asleep and dreaming, mumbling something, the veins under his eyes swelling and darkening as he tossed and turned underneath the tangled sheets.

"Elena," he was saying. "Stop. please, Elena, please, stop..." His voice was desperate, pained; it almost frightened me, it was so eerie to watch. What the hell was he seeing?

"Damon," I said, taking him by the shoulders and shaking him, "Damon, wake up. You're just dreaming. You're having a bad dream."

His eyes flew open, and there was no reason in their blue depths – still in the grip of the dream he grabbed at my arms and shoved me off him, rolling me onto my back and holding me down painfully, with a forearm thrown across my throat and another on my chest. "Where is she?" he shouted in my face, a demon with crazed reddened eyes. "Where the fuck is she?"

"Damon!" I shouted back, working my arms free and gripping the sides of his face, shaking him a little. "Damon, it was a dream!" His face was ravaged with grief, with anger, and he looked around him as if completely disoriented, completely lost. My own heart wrenched and tears burned behind my eyes – for him, for Elena, for myself.

"Elena – she's – Jesus Christ, Damon, Elena's dead. She's dead." It was the first time I'd said it aloud. "She's not here. She's gone. Elena's dead." I was babbling now, tears escaping from my eyes, and now that I'd said it I couldn't stop saying it. Elena was dead. She was gone. She was never coming back.

It was real. We'd never hear her voice again, see her smile, smell that flowery shampoo scent of her hair that used to drive me to distraction. I'd never hold her in my arms, never feel her lips on mine again, never hear her heartbeat, the pulse at her neck, never hear her tell me, in that determined, desperate way of hers, that things were going to be okay, I was going to be okay.

Before I knew what was happening, his lips were pressed to mine, and they were soft - surprisingly soft, surprisingly warm. I was too stunned to react for a moment, and when I did it was to instinctively pull away. With a little growl he pulled my head back to his, taking my lips again, bruisingly, punishingly – it could hardly be called a kiss, but I supposed...Christ, I supposed that was what it was.

"Damon," I said, trying to push him off, and when he didn't budge I grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked it backwards. It was the pain more than my strength that finally got through to him, and he sat up, straddling my lap, elbows on my chest with his head in his hands.

"Damon?"

I reached up and pulled his hands from his face, cradling his cheek in my palm and pushing his face up to meet my gaze. His eyes, crystal blue again, already normally so expressive, were swimming with anger and fear, with a turmoil that he didn't, couldn't put into words, and it sent an ache through my chest to see my brother like this, my invulnerable brother, for whom the world was all playthings. Or so he pretended. It hurt to see him like this.

Control, I was beginning to understand, was as important for him as it was for me. Only for him it was a blessing; for me, a curse. I wanted to give him some of it back. And relieve myself of some of it in the process.

"Hey," I said, bringing my other hand to cup the other side of his face, thumb moving softly over his cheeks. "Hey. I'm here. Tell me what you want me to do. I'm here."

He stared at me for a moment more.

"Tell me, Damon."

His gaze sharpened, and then, slowly, he leaned down and murmured in my ear. "I want you to move against me. Now."

Heart pounding, I lifted my hips slightly, rubbed against him where I knew he could feel it most. "Yeah," he murmured. "Real slow."

It felt good, real good. He was hard against me and the fabric of our jeans added a delicious friction. But it wasn't enough, and he knew it, too. After a few long moments he climbed off me, off the bed. "Take off your clothes," he said, and did the same for himself before going over to the chair by the desk and sitting down on it, naked and completely unself-conscious. Hell, what did he have to be self-conscious about? He was fucking beautiful.

"Come over here. Sit. Facing me," he said, and spread his legs to support my weight when I did.

"Jesus, this is–"

"Here's what you're gonna do," he interrupted. "You're gonna put one hand on yourself. Then you're gonna put your other hand on me. And you're gonna stroke us real slow." He leaned his head back on the wall behind him. "Oh, yeah, just like that." When I couldn't help myself and started stroking us faster, he closed his eyes and groaned. "Now you're gonna rub us together, Stef. Hard."

He was moving his hips a little, up and down, in time with my hands rubbing us both together, rubbing him against me. "Yeah," he breathed, "make it good," his voice hoarse with pleasure as the friction made my hands slick and wet. "Make us both come like this."

I watched his face as I quickened our rhythm, fascinated again by that look of pain-pleasure, those noises that he made, deep in his throat, watched the muscles of his throat tighten as he swallowed; as, in the palms of my hands, different muscles altogether tightened along with them. Christ I was ready. More than ready.

"Make us come, Stef. Now."

With a groan of relief I pumped hard, closing my hands tight around the both of us as every muscle in my body tightened and I froze, spilling myself across his abdomen as I felt his belly clench against my fist as he came hard against me, his hands coming to rest on my thighs, fingers digging into my skin in the throes of his climax.

I leaned my head onto his shoulder, breathing hard, feeling I would never catch my breath. From the rise and fall of his chest like bellows underneath me he seemed to be in the same condition. God knows why, but I had the inane urge to laugh. So I did. A little, just a little. I raised my head, feeling the slick wetness between us as my skin shifted over his. "Better?"

His head was against the wall at his back, and he didn't open his eyes, but his voice was gruff and full of satisfaction when he replied. "Oh, yeah."

"Works every time," I murmured, amusement in my voice. "Or so I've been told."

His lips curled in a small, exhausted smile. "Yeah? Who told you that?"

"Some guy. Blue-eyed madman."

"Sounds like a great guy."

"Not at all. Obnoxious asshole. A real dick, actually."

"Well, hey. Nobody's perfect."

"Gives pretty good head, though."

His smile broadened, and grew into a laugh. A great big belly laugh that died as quickly as it had begun. He took a deep breath, shook his head, looking at the floor, all trace of humour abruptly gone from his face. His voice was quiet. "You want to know why I took that grenade, Stefan?"

"Yeah, Damon. I do."

"It wasn't for you," he said, softly. "I took it for me." He looked up at me. "Because I thought it might kill me."

I said nothing for a long moment, just looked at him, sitting there in the murky grey light of pre-dawn, looking so damn tired and sad.

"You weren't the only one," I said, finally. I remembered how crazy I'd been at the thought that I'd lost him. I wanted to put my hand to his face, wanted to comfort him, push his hair back from his eyes, but somehow the gesture seemed too intimate – which of course was ridiculous given what we'd just done – so I didn't. Instead I said, "I think it was the werewolf blood that brought you back."

He frowned. "Werewolf blood?"

I got up out of the chair and picked up my shirt, pulled it back on, feeling the chill in the air all of a sudden. "Yeah. You were pretty far gone by the time I got back to you, after I'd...finished off the pack. I checked myself for wounds, couldn't find any, and I wondered if it was because of the blood I'd drank from the werewolves. I think it accelerates our healing even more than usual." I sat on the side of the bed. "So I fed you some. And you healed up. And you came back."

He was silent a long time. Then he stood, and spoke as he came slowly back over to the bed. "So it's your fault, huh?"

"My fault." I leaned back on my elbows and watched him moving through the darkness, watched as he came and stood between my legs.

"Your fault I'm still clinging on to my worthless life."

"Guilty."

I was going to say he was my only brother, he was all I had, and I'd keep him clinging on if it killed me, but he leaned over me, arms on either side of mine, trapping me between them and between his chest in front of me and the bed behind me, and I lost my train of thought. He lowered his head till his mouth was inches from mine.

"Damn you, Stefan," he said, and pressed his lips to mine, softly this time.

And as he lay back and gave me fresh instructions in a voice that was suspiciously shaky, oddly gentle - as my mouth moved over his jaw, his throat, down his chest, over his belly and then lower, much lower - and as he held my head like he wasn't ever letting go, I didn't think it was necessary to say anything more.

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