Underground with Him

-oOo-

I often fantasize about being buried alive but it's always with Stefan. It's always with him because he is my doom and he is my savoir and what better way to spend forever than smothered in hungry soil to fornicate for eternity.

"What are you thinking?" Stefan asks as I gently peel off the cellophane from the pack of cigarettes. I slip one in my hankering mouth, cup my hand around it as I light it. There's no wind because we're in his apartment again but it's a force of habit. I am nothing if not a creature of habit.

All addicts are creatures of habit and they should never admit otherwise.

"Tombs and Elena" I reply as I inch closer to him, the white sheet slipping of my chest to expose me to him. This sheet smells like us, cigarette and damp afternoon sex. Our sessions have begun to slip into daylight without us noticing and our post coitus moments have grown longer, more comforting as we share cigarettes habitually.

"Elena?" his voice croaks, deep with unease and I know that the idea of her is already filtering through his mind like the grey smoke filtering around the bedroom.

"She's coming back tomorrow" I say as I take a hearty drag. Smoking always reminds me of that Catholic school girl I used to be, that sneaky little thing that used to sneak away and smoke behind bathroom stalls while everyone else was in class. I never made valedictorian because I was never that quiet girl down the hall. I was the one who hiked up her pleated skirts, pulled up her socks and always left the window of my dorm room half opened for the boys at our brother school.

His silence taunts me as my eyes sweep over his bedroom again, the colder he grows the less intimate his bedroom becomes. It's as though the two are interlinked, Stefan's light lives and breathes in the light of his bedroom because perhaps that's his only hold on me.

Sex.

Maybe it's not sex; maybe it's what he cloaks with his sex, the boundless spell of his blazing beauty, his orchid air and my obvious addiction to this fortuitous circumstance. When suddenly he pulls me closer to him, oiled flesh against oiled flesh, smoke mingled with smoke, I know that I am undone.

I want to live in the dreamy slowness of our touch, the anguish of our lovemaking but I know that the meteor is fast approaching.

Elena.

-oOo-

I'm an eclipse when my sister arrives back in New York.

Beautiful and chaste Elena.

I stare in the mirror, gathering my hair into a sloppy ponytail and I begin to hear the hiss of voices downstairs. The very air seems to sizzle and I know Elena is home. Slowly, I make my way down the stairs, hand trailing the banister as the voices grow louder. I can hear Aunt Jenna and Jeremy carrying on and cheering about something, I know Elena's tinkling voice as it grates away at me but there's also an unfamiliar voice.

"Katherine!" she cries as her chocolate eyes catch me on the last step. I grin and try to think happy thoughts but my eyes are already fleeting to the man at her side. He's tall, brunette and so stiff you could stir bootleg liquor with his spine.

"This is Elijah!" Elena announces, pressing a palm against his chest as he wraps an arm around her waist. Elijah, I repeat I my head, foggy from the glint in their eyes as I formulate what this all means.

"Aunt Jenna and Jeremy are already squealing over the ring" Elena adds thrusting out her left hand so that I can examine the diamond.

"The ring" I whisper, my voice sounding like it's been borrowed from someone else. Elena is engaged, Elena is engaged to this stranger, this Elijah. It's oh so cunning of her, ruthless of the little witch because she has just sliced me open with a double blade and broken my wrists to swing like a pendulum for her murderous pleasure. She is engaged and now Stefan will never cut her loose. He will fixate on her like the damaged fixate on things they can never fix, things they can never own and things they can never understand.

"Congratulations" I say stiff lipped as I drag a ragged breath back to my lungs.

-oOo-

A/N: I keep these chapters short because I don't know if you guys want them longer, if you want an actual plot for these two etc. but I have to say they are my shameful obsession (besides my other fav couple). The plot bunnies are already at work though, regardless ;)