Barely A Memory

Chapter 17

"Shhh," she silenced him with a finger to his lips, giggling. Stefan couldn't help but laugh as well; he liked this side of Elena, he really did. "There's a comet outside," she told him matter-of-factly, pointing somewhere empty in the sky. There was no comet, of course, so he used his imagination.

After taking a few deep breaths, she looked down to the ground then back to his eyes. "The thing is, I got home tonight planning on doing what I always do: write in my diary." She went on like this for a few seconds, trying to say everything word-for-word. Stefan was a bit confused by whatever this memory was supposed to mean, but he didn't really care. He still smiled when she told him about the hideous ceramic mermaid. "And then I realized that I'd just be writing things that I should probably be telling you."

There was a long pause as Elena looked at him expectantly, and he froze, feeling his heart freeze over. Had she expected him to remember what he'd said here? Panicked, Stefan looked around, trying to think of the one thing Stefan 1.0 would have said. Would he have given her some witty, poetic response about how he journaled too? Did he hold her hand at this moment and tell her that she looked beautiful? Did he say nothing?

A little smile appearing on her face, Elena reached into her pocket and pulled out a little, crumpled up piece of paper and a pen. Hurriedly, she scribbled a few words onto the paper and handed it to him. Stefan read them over quickly, and the simplicity of them made him want to crawl into a hole. How on earth had he not thought of that. "Oh." She laughed at him when he stumbled over the words. "What would you write?"

Elena smiled and gave him a little wink to signal that he was doing fine. And then, she got extremely serious again, which in itself, Stefan found very adorable. But he took her seriously too. "I would write... Dear Diary, today I convinced myself it was okay to give up. Don't take risks. Stick with the status quo. No drama. Now is just not the time. But my reasons aren't reasons, they're excuses. All I'm doing is hiding from the truth, and the truth is, I'm scared, Stefan." And right there, that was when he fell in love with her even more. These words, these new, foreign words revealed a completely new, beautiful layer to his beautiful, layered Elena. She was flawed, she really was, and he loved the way these words portrayed that. She was a beautiful speaker, his Elena. "I'm scared that if I let myself be happy for even one moment that the world is just gonna come crashing down, and I don't know if I can survive that."

He had no idea how she had remembered every word; Elena never would tell him that those were words she'd never forget. Before she had gone to his house that night, she'd rehearsed them over and over again.

Then, Elena took the piece of paper from him and scribbled a new sentence on there. Stefan grabbed it and with trembling fingers, read it aloud, "Do you want to know... what I would write?"

Elena smiled again and took the paper to write the next part of his speech, but Stefan told her not to. The words were on the tip of his tongue. He knew those words, knew them like he knew the back of his hand, or even better, like he knew the back of her hand. He furrowed his brows and thought for a few seconds until the words escaped his lips, "I met a girl, we talked, it was epic. But then the sun came up and reality set in." He sounded unsure and positive at the same time, and he could tell by the elated look in Elena's eyes that he was right. Oh, how he wanted to preserve that look forever. It did wild things to him. "All this is reality. Right here."

With that elated look still present in her eyes, Elena pulled Stefan closer to her and rested her forehead against his. He could feel her breath against his lips as she released a shaky exhale; maybe she was crying, he couldn't quite tell. "God, I love you," she muttered. Maybe she didn't even say them, but he felt the words against his lips, somehow. Then, a little louder, she looked into his eyes and whispered, "Guess what comes next."

For the first time all night, he knew what to do, one hundred percent. With his lips parted and his eyes closed, he leaned his head in until their lips met. And when they did, it was magic. Electricity. A slow, sweet burn that was boiling in his veins. Somehow, it seemed even better than it did when they had kissed before everything nearly fell apart last week. It was just... better. He loved her even more than he had then, and she loved him even more too. Who knew that was possible? The passion was so strong, but they both tried so desperately not to deepen the kiss and preserve the sweetness of the moment, but as the moments swept by and his hands fell on her hips, the sensuality and desperation washed over both of them like a tidal wave, and before he knew what hit him, her body was pressed against his and his skin was flushing hot. She ran her tongue along his bottom lip and when he opened his mouth, he nearly blacked out right then. He didn't know that anything could feel this incredible. There was just something about Elena Gilbert's body... something he couldn't describe. It held a power over him greater than anything he could remember. Maybe it was the way it seemed to fit against his in all the right ways. The way his hands seemed to perfectly fit the curves of her waist. Or maybe it was her vanilla shampoo. It was everything and anything about her that made him both love her and want her all the more.

Suddenly, in the midst of their secret, stolen kisses, a light came on above their heads, snapping them both out of the moment. They both jumped immediately and looked at the door, noticing the way the knob was turning. Frantic and laughing like an idiot, Elena grabbed a dazed Stefan by the hand and pulled him across the lawn, running faster than she ever had in her life. The entire time, they couldn't stop laughing, and she wished to god this would be something neither of them would soon forget. They ran for what felt like miles until their legs were aching and their lungs could no longer hold enough air.

Panting, Elena laughed even louder and said, "That wasn't supposed to happen."

Laughing just as hard, looking so incredibly human and in love, Stefan simply pulled her close and kissed her again, right in the middle of the empty street.

This girl, right here, was the exact reason why Stefan Salvatore had been brought back from the dead. That much he knew.

XXXX