013 ━ [ visual ] / [ location: elena's house ].

[virtued.livejournal.com]

The sheets were soft; much softer than those on his own bed or anything he had access to on Serenity. They weren't the fine silks that Katherine's bed was lined with, either. Yet, the feel of them against his skin was familiar to him somehow, and in the bleariness of morning, Stefan couldn't quite place it.

He stirred, rolling over instinctively towards the warm body on the other side of the bed. Still sleepy-eyed, he smiled at her. "Good morning."

Elena stirred at the familiar words and voice, putting her hand on her forehead to push the hair that had fallen in her face as she'd slept out of her face. Blinking as things came into focus, she turned to the other body occupying her bed and smiled, pleased to see him. "Morning."

Stefan held that smile for a moment longer until reality set in and who he was in bed with clicked. His eyes widened. "Elena."

Elena's eyebrows knit together in confusion for a moment, wondering why he was surprised, and then everything came back to her in a split second and she sat upright with a start, eyes going wide and a hand clapping over her mouth.

"Stefan," she said breathlessly once she removed her hand. "What are you -- what are we -- what happened? Do you remember?"

He sat up, too. "No." Last he could recall, he was crawling into his own bed at the boarding house. He couldn't remember how he even got to Elena's, let alone what they did or did not do. "Do you?"

"No," she replied with a shake of her head, absently feeling around to make sure her clothes were still on. Not that she didn't trust Stefan and not that they weren't sleeping together anyway, but she didn't like that she couldn't remember it if it had happened. "Just going to bed last night."

Similarly, Stefan was lifting up the covers with and peering under the sheets to make sure he still had pants on. Check. Thank God.

He slid out of the covers and stood-- Or he tried to, but the silver chain that had thus far gone unnoticed pulled taught between them, catching him off guard. Stefan stumbled and fell awkwardly over the side of the bed.

Elena was concentrating on not panicking when she suddenly found herself jerked violently to her side, landing face-down on her bed as Stefan fell over the side. "What the--" And then she saw it -- the chain glinting in the early morning light that connected them by the wrists.

The chain wasn't what Stefan's eyes were on. "Elena..." They were on the bright red recording light on the tablet.

It recorded a few more seconds of footage, then cut off the feed.

Comments

next time you find you wanna leave her bed for mine;

[adeadringer.livejournal.com]

The feed may have cut itself off, but Elena grabbed her pillow from behind her and threw it at her dresser in hopes of knocking it over, even though it had already turned itself off. It clattered to the ground, along with a couple of nondescript bottles, and she worried her fingertips at her mouth for a few moments before looking back at Stefan, her expression one of barely-contained panic.

"It's a glitch," she guessed, looking back at their chained wrists. "It has to be, right?"

[ visual ]

[whoneedsrules.livejournal.com]

Katherine sees the chain and the clothes both Stefan and Elena are wearing, but rational thinking is overridden by a purely emotional response at the visual. Her boyfriend. His ex-girlfriend. Together in bed.

"What the hell is this?"

i'm headed for the breakdown;

[secretshame]

Being a light sleeper, Jenna actually heard the first of the thuds that was Stefan falling over the side of the bed. But she was so tired it didn't really register for a while. The silence in the house since Caroline had disappeared was deafening and when she finally noticed that it was completely silent, something quite like panic shot through her body.

Jenna was out of bed in an instant, not even bothering to throw a robe on as she dashed out of her room and towards her niece's.

"Elena?!"

Please let her still be there. Please let her be okay.