behind the hollow } { kicking, shouting, dancing on the tables all night long
[HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELLA! This is set in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
behindthehollow, which I don’t know if it still exists, but if it does, Elena is ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
badever and Damon is mordere, and if it doesn’t Damon isn’t binding on anyone but Elena is because I say so.]
Alec arrives in Mystic Falls when trying to escape prison with Max.
For the record, he wants it stated that this was not her getting him out of trouble. For once it was the other way around, but for some reason even though he was the rescuer, Max was the one calling the shots. For some reasons, her plans always end with him launching himself from a great height.
It’s not as fun as it sounds, even to his kitty instincts.
The only problem with this plan is that someway, somehow, Alec really, really screwed it up, and managed to fall ten years into the past. He also landed on a very cranky guy. Like, old-man-with-a-shotgun-get-those-kids-off-my-lawn kind of cranky.
(Not that Alec has ever met one, but he’s seen them on TV. Think Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace—highly underrated, by the way—and you’re pretty close to Damon when Alec happened to land on top of him.)
It’s weird, because the guy couldn’t have been much older than Alec, but again, not the point.
So, for the record, just so we have a list of the weird that Alec experienced that day:
Alec may be a transgenic, may be used to all kinds of weird, but even for him that’s a little extreme. Thankfully, there is a pretty girl distracting him from trying to dissect the laws of quantum physics.
“Are you guys okay?”
Her name is Elena, and she’s eighteen (he checks) and she’s the one who convinces Damon to take him in and give him a place to stay despite the terribly inconvenient way that they met. He’s not sure what dirt she has on the guy, but whatever it is, it must be good. Alec certainly wouldn’t have done it. He objects—violently—to being landed on.
Still is Elena is nice, and her apparent hold over Damon is convincing enough to get him to stick around at least until he figures out what it is. Even if she hadn’t, Elena alone might have been enough to get him to stick around. He’s never been to Mystic Falls before, and the fact that this far in the past means he’s probably not being hunted by the government yet. It feels like a pretty sweet deal.
It’ll have to be good enough. At least for now.
***
Two nights after Alec arrives in Mystic Falls, something Damon claims is a vampire tries to eat him. Literally, actually eat him. Alec might have been offended if he hadn’t been so surprised.
It’s that night that Damon witnesses his Alec’s super assassin ninja skills, and Alec notes Damon’s ability to rip people’s hearts out.
They agree to keep each other’s respective secrets, and Alec decides that maybe Damon isn’t all that bad. That’s really the beginning of the end for Damon—Alec was officially considering him a friend.
Nothing much really changes on Damon’s end, but he’s less visibly testy when Alec raids his library looking for something to read.
Small towns are boring.
***
Alec doesn’t really know much about Stefan, beyond the fact that he exists, and he means something to the two people who have officially become the closest thing Alec has to a home. People have always been home to Alec, more so than places, because places are transient, and can change just as easily as a new person coming in and disrupting the scenery, but people don’t change. Not really. They’re just given more choices.
Damon doesn’t talk about him, and Alec doesn’t ask because family is complicated—especially brothers. If he wants to talk about it, he figures he would. It’s a fair trade at the end of the day. Damon doesn’t ask about Manticore, Alec doesn’t ask his vampire brother and everything related. Not unless it’s relevant, and so far it hasn’t been.
Elena is a different story. She says things without actually saying them. It’s all in her word choice, and the way she holds herself when she’s asked about him. Alec doesn’t push—he can deal with need to know information—but it doesn’t exactly leave him with the best opinion of the guy.
Then he hears from someone else that Stefan did it to save his brother’s life, and Alec understands it a little easier. You do what you need to do for family. Period. It’s how Alec landed here in the first place.
He knows he could probably go to Caroline, or someone else in town and get the full story, but he doesn’t. He knows it’s not her story to tell, he wouldn’t put her in that position. What he does deal with is the look on Elena’s face whenever it comes up, so eventually he stops asking, or in some instances, starts changing the subject.
He wants to know. He does. But he doesn’t need to know at the expense of Elena.
***
Alec first meets Caroline when she swings by to talk to Damon about something, and they hit it off. When two people who both really like to talk get together, they usually wind up getting along. He introduces himself as a friend of Damon’s from out of town—it’s easier than saying time traveling cat boy—and is quick to correct her when she assumes vampire. Granted the first thing out of her mouth was:
“Damon actually has friends? Like, actual nice, Bonnie-approved friends?”
But apparently that’s the reputation that Damon has built for himself in this town. Alec also hasn’t met Bonnie yet, but Caroline doesn’t seem to dwell on that for long. She’s a bright, blond, bubbly ray of sunshine and Alec’s drawn to her, just as he assumes everyone else is.
As for the rest of Elena’s friends, Bonnie could take him or leave him, Matt and Tyler liked to talk football, and Jeremy reminds him a lot of Joshua, but not a seven foot tall dog boy, and better language skills. They are all pretty tight knit, but Alec starts to get an idea of what acceptance feels like.
It’s almost nice. He almost forgets that the ground could fall out from under him at any time. Twenty years of hard Manticore training doesn’t really let him do that, but there are moments where he pretends he almost can.
***
Caroline throws a party just before the start of school. Alec doesn’t know why he’s celebrating, considering the rest of them going back to school means he’s going to have even less do during the day, and refuses to take up day drinking (though he could understand why some would).
He’s shrugging on his jacket to make his way out the door, when he opens it to find Elena standing behind it, a stack of newspaper clippings in her hand. “Hey,” he says with a smile. “I thought you would have been at the party already?”
There’s a brief look of “what are you talking about?” that crosses her face before realization hits her. “Oh! No, I’m … I think I’m going to pass. I’ve been going through the news reports, and I think I might have found some more leads on Stef—”
She can’t even finish the other man’s name, before Alec reaches for the stack in her hand, places it on the table by the door, and shakes his head. “No.”
“—What?”
“You’re eighteen years-old. It’s one of your last days of summer vacation. I may not the most socially oriented guy in the world, but even I know that you should be at the party, not sitting here with Damon pouring over newspapers.”
“Alec.”
“No. I’m not taking no for an answer. You’re going to have a good time, and you’re going to like it.”
She gives him a look.
Alec gives her one right back.
There’s a minor staring contest until she sighs, and concedes. “Fine. Fine, I’ll go.”
He grins. “I knew you’d see it my way.”
***
Alec isn’t blind. He knows how Damon feels about Elena. There are days when he looks at her as though she’s his reason for everything. That maybe if he clings to her tight enough, she might make him better than he is.
It’s the way Alec used to look at Rachel, so he tends to know it when he sees it.
It’s why after the initial week of flirtation, he stopped. Alec may be a lot of things, but he’s not the guy who steals another man’s girl.
At the end of the day, however, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel.
***
Party night at the Grill is a success. Elena dances. Elena smiles. Elena laughs, and it doesn’t feel like a show just to make him happy. Especially considering that she does all of these things as she’s kicking his ass at pool several times over.
“Are you sure you’re a genetically engineered killing machine?” she asks as she reaches the top of her porch, before turning to face him with a grin. “Because I’m starting to think you made that up just to impress me.”
Alec just smirks as he moves up to join her, hands in his pockets. “Hey, I can do a lot of things, but even I can’t break the laws of physics.”
She waits until he’s closer, before pointing at him with a look. “You promise you didn’t just let me win?”
“Cross my heart,” he smirks. “You are the reigning pool champion, fair and square.”
“Good.” Then she pauses. This is the part where she would normally just go inside and that would be the end of the night, but she seems to have more to say, so he waits. “Thanks. For making me go out tonight. I really needed it.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiles a bit, before shrugging. “Least I could do.”
There’s another pause, and the opportunity’s there. She could go inside and close the door and that would be the end of it. She doesn’t. She just stands there, somewhere in limbo between him and the door, and one of them needed to break it.
“I should get back,” he says as he starts to take a step back. “Damon might think I ran out on him.” Not that he thinks Damon would really care, but it’s an exit all the same. He’s just about to take a step back onto the steps when she reaches out to grab his wrist.
“Don’t.”
He stops and watches her for a minute, trying to figure out what she’s getting at. It takes her another minute to find the words, but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look this lonely.
“Can you stay? For a little while. Just … until … ”
“Yeah.” She doesn’t really need an excuse, all she really has to do is ask. “Of course I can.”
Some of the tension ebbs out of her, and she gives him a small smile. “Thank you.”
***
He really doesn’t mean to spend the entire night, doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he does. When he bounds down the stairs the next morning, he gets a half-asleep “’sup?” from Jeremy and a judgmental look from the Gilberts’ guardian. (Alaric Saltzman. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was a name that Max made up.)
In retaliation, he just flashes the guy a smarmy smile as he pours himself a cup of coffee. He’s seen the guy’s drinking habits. He really has no room to judge.
When he finally makes it back to the boarding house, Damon is going through the clippings that Elena had brought over the night before. When he passes into the kitchen, the other man barely glances up, if at all, before he starts to speak.
“You were out late. I heard you crashed at Elena’s.”
Alec’s shoulders stiffen just slightly, but he rolls it out as he goes through the fridge. “Nothing happened. She just wanted somebody around.”
He can feel Damon’s eyes digging into his shoulder blades, and there’s a long moment of quiet before he speaks again.
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me. It’s not as though she’s mine.”
Alec isn’t sure if that’s forgiveness or permission, but it’s … something. He shrugs as he pulls the orange juice and the eggs out and heads to the stove.
“Nothing happened.”
That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.
***
Two days later, Stefan returns to town.
That’s when the ground falls out from under them.
2120 words
behindthehollow, which I don’t know if it still exists, but if it does, Elena is badever and Damon is mordere, and if it doesn’t Damon isn’t binding on anyone but Elena is because I say so.]Alec arrives in Mystic Falls when trying to escape prison with Max.
For the record, he wants it stated that this was not her getting him out of trouble. For once it was the other way around, but for some reason even though he was the rescuer, Max was the one calling the shots. For some reasons, her plans always end with him launching himself from a great height.
It’s not as fun as it sounds, even to his kitty instincts.
The only problem with this plan is that someway, somehow, Alec really, really screwed it up, and managed to fall ten years into the past. He also landed on a very cranky guy. Like, old-man-with-a-shotgun-get-those-kids-off-my-lawn kind of cranky.
(Not that Alec has ever met one, but he’s seen them on TV. Think Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace—highly underrated, by the way—and you’re pretty close to Damon when Alec happened to land on top of him.)
It’s weird, because the guy couldn’t have been much older than Alec, but again, not the point.
So, for the record, just so we have a list of the weird that Alec experienced that day:
1. Max rescuing herself. She’d probably take the credit to if Alec were still there.
2. Time travel.
3. Sudden change in location.
4. Night suddenly becoming blindingly obvious midday.
5. Cranky old man in a young man’s body.
Alec may be a transgenic, may be used to all kinds of weird, but even for him that’s a little extreme. Thankfully, there is a pretty girl distracting him from trying to dissect the laws of quantum physics.
“Are you guys okay?”
Her name is Elena, and she’s eighteen (he checks) and she’s the one who convinces Damon to take him in and give him a place to stay despite the terribly inconvenient way that they met. He’s not sure what dirt she has on the guy, but whatever it is, it must be good. Alec certainly wouldn’t have done it. He objects—violently—to being landed on.
Still is Elena is nice, and her apparent hold over Damon is convincing enough to get him to stick around at least until he figures out what it is. Even if she hadn’t, Elena alone might have been enough to get him to stick around. He’s never been to Mystic Falls before, and the fact that this far in the past means he’s probably not being hunted by the government yet. It feels like a pretty sweet deal.
It’ll have to be good enough. At least for now.
***
Two nights after Alec arrives in Mystic Falls, something Damon claims is a vampire tries to eat him. Literally, actually eat him. Alec might have been offended if he hadn’t been so surprised.
It’s that night that Damon witnesses his Alec’s super assassin ninja skills, and Alec notes Damon’s ability to rip people’s hearts out.
They agree to keep each other’s respective secrets, and Alec decides that maybe Damon isn’t all that bad. That’s really the beginning of the end for Damon—Alec was officially considering him a friend.
Nothing much really changes on Damon’s end, but he’s less visibly testy when Alec raids his library looking for something to read.
Small towns are boring.
***
Alec doesn’t really know much about Stefan, beyond the fact that he exists, and he means something to the two people who have officially become the closest thing Alec has to a home. People have always been home to Alec, more so than places, because places are transient, and can change just as easily as a new person coming in and disrupting the scenery, but people don’t change. Not really. They’re just given more choices.
Damon doesn’t talk about him, and Alec doesn’t ask because family is complicated—especially brothers. If he wants to talk about it, he figures he would. It’s a fair trade at the end of the day. Damon doesn’t ask about Manticore, Alec doesn’t ask his vampire brother and everything related. Not unless it’s relevant, and so far it hasn’t been.
Elena is a different story. She says things without actually saying them. It’s all in her word choice, and the way she holds herself when she’s asked about him. Alec doesn’t push—he can deal with need to know information—but it doesn’t exactly leave him with the best opinion of the guy.
Then he hears from someone else that Stefan did it to save his brother’s life, and Alec understands it a little easier. You do what you need to do for family. Period. It’s how Alec landed here in the first place.
He knows he could probably go to Caroline, or someone else in town and get the full story, but he doesn’t. He knows it’s not her story to tell, he wouldn’t put her in that position. What he does deal with is the look on Elena’s face whenever it comes up, so eventually he stops asking, or in some instances, starts changing the subject.
He wants to know. He does. But he doesn’t need to know at the expense of Elena.
***
Alec first meets Caroline when she swings by to talk to Damon about something, and they hit it off. When two people who both really like to talk get together, they usually wind up getting along. He introduces himself as a friend of Damon’s from out of town—it’s easier than saying time traveling cat boy—and is quick to correct her when she assumes vampire. Granted the first thing out of her mouth was:
“Damon actually has friends? Like, actual nice, Bonnie-approved friends?”
But apparently that’s the reputation that Damon has built for himself in this town. Alec also hasn’t met Bonnie yet, but Caroline doesn’t seem to dwell on that for long. She’s a bright, blond, bubbly ray of sunshine and Alec’s drawn to her, just as he assumes everyone else is.
As for the rest of Elena’s friends, Bonnie could take him or leave him, Matt and Tyler liked to talk football, and Jeremy reminds him a lot of Joshua, but not a seven foot tall dog boy, and better language skills. They are all pretty tight knit, but Alec starts to get an idea of what acceptance feels like.
It’s almost nice. He almost forgets that the ground could fall out from under him at any time. Twenty years of hard Manticore training doesn’t really let him do that, but there are moments where he pretends he almost can.
***
Caroline throws a party just before the start of school. Alec doesn’t know why he’s celebrating, considering the rest of them going back to school means he’s going to have even less do during the day, and refuses to take up day drinking (though he could understand why some would).
He’s shrugging on his jacket to make his way out the door, when he opens it to find Elena standing behind it, a stack of newspaper clippings in her hand. “Hey,” he says with a smile. “I thought you would have been at the party already?”
There’s a brief look of “what are you talking about?” that crosses her face before realization hits her. “Oh! No, I’m … I think I’m going to pass. I’ve been going through the news reports, and I think I might have found some more leads on Stef—”
She can’t even finish the other man’s name, before Alec reaches for the stack in her hand, places it on the table by the door, and shakes his head. “No.”
“—What?”
“You’re eighteen years-old. It’s one of your last days of summer vacation. I may not the most socially oriented guy in the world, but even I know that you should be at the party, not sitting here with Damon pouring over newspapers.”
“Alec.”
“No. I’m not taking no for an answer. You’re going to have a good time, and you’re going to like it.”
She gives him a look.
Alec gives her one right back.
There’s a minor staring contest until she sighs, and concedes. “Fine. Fine, I’ll go.”
He grins. “I knew you’d see it my way.”
***
Alec isn’t blind. He knows how Damon feels about Elena. There are days when he looks at her as though she’s his reason for everything. That maybe if he clings to her tight enough, she might make him better than he is.
It’s the way Alec used to look at Rachel, so he tends to know it when he sees it.
It’s why after the initial week of flirtation, he stopped. Alec may be a lot of things, but he’s not the guy who steals another man’s girl.
At the end of the day, however, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel.
***
Party night at the Grill is a success. Elena dances. Elena smiles. Elena laughs, and it doesn’t feel like a show just to make him happy. Especially considering that she does all of these things as she’s kicking his ass at pool several times over.
“Are you sure you’re a genetically engineered killing machine?” she asks as she reaches the top of her porch, before turning to face him with a grin. “Because I’m starting to think you made that up just to impress me.”
Alec just smirks as he moves up to join her, hands in his pockets. “Hey, I can do a lot of things, but even I can’t break the laws of physics.”
She waits until he’s closer, before pointing at him with a look. “You promise you didn’t just let me win?”
“Cross my heart,” he smirks. “You are the reigning pool champion, fair and square.”
“Good.” Then she pauses. This is the part where she would normally just go inside and that would be the end of the night, but she seems to have more to say, so he waits. “Thanks. For making me go out tonight. I really needed it.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiles a bit, before shrugging. “Least I could do.”
There’s another pause, and the opportunity’s there. She could go inside and close the door and that would be the end of it. She doesn’t. She just stands there, somewhere in limbo between him and the door, and one of them needed to break it.
“I should get back,” he says as he starts to take a step back. “Damon might think I ran out on him.” Not that he thinks Damon would really care, but it’s an exit all the same. He’s just about to take a step back onto the steps when she reaches out to grab his wrist.
“Don’t.”
He stops and watches her for a minute, trying to figure out what she’s getting at. It takes her another minute to find the words, but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look this lonely.
“Can you stay? For a little while. Just … until … ”
“Yeah.” She doesn’t really need an excuse, all she really has to do is ask. “Of course I can.”
Some of the tension ebbs out of her, and she gives him a small smile. “Thank you.”
***
He really doesn’t mean to spend the entire night, doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he does. When he bounds down the stairs the next morning, he gets a half-asleep “’sup?” from Jeremy and a judgmental look from the Gilberts’ guardian. (Alaric Saltzman. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was a name that Max made up.)
In retaliation, he just flashes the guy a smarmy smile as he pours himself a cup of coffee. He’s seen the guy’s drinking habits. He really has no room to judge.
When he finally makes it back to the boarding house, Damon is going through the clippings that Elena had brought over the night before. When he passes into the kitchen, the other man barely glances up, if at all, before he starts to speak.
“You were out late. I heard you crashed at Elena’s.”
Alec’s shoulders stiffen just slightly, but he rolls it out as he goes through the fridge. “Nothing happened. She just wanted somebody around.”
He can feel Damon’s eyes digging into his shoulder blades, and there’s a long moment of quiet before he speaks again.
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me. It’s not as though she’s mine.”
Alec isn’t sure if that’s forgiveness or permission, but it’s … something. He shrugs as he pulls the orange juice and the eggs out and heads to the stove.
“Nothing happened.”
That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.
***
Two days later, Stefan returns to town.
That’s when the ground falls out from under them.
2120 words
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AND YES I CONCUR. :3333333
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