open post } { pointless shippiness

[iluvroadrunner6]

I really wanted shippy things and didn't feel like combing through memes. So I made a post! Comment to this post with your characters, who you want and an option from the list below, and I will start a thread. Shenanigans will ensue.

OPTIONS:

1 - Fluff
2 - Angst
3 - Crack
4 - Surprise Me!

IF YOU CHOOSE SURPRISE ME, it will probably be crack. Because I'm in that sort of mood.

Muselist is HERE and it's not completely updated, but I'm going to try and do that tonight. You may select SURPRISE for what character you want, but if you do it will likely be a crossover ship of my choosing. I don't really do M/M slash, but M/F and F/F are both fair game. Annnnnnnd that's it.

... Go, fight, win!

Comments

[believable]

That's... not what she was expecting, but maybe that was in front of her the whole time, too. Alec, who had never celebrated a birthday in his life and never answered a question immediately when it came to what he liked.

She swallows, because the answer is harder to hear than what she had been expecting.

(She doesn't have to ask if Damon knows.)

"That's not all you are," she says, even as it's needless and unwanted, but then, what does Elena know?She doesn't know who the hell she is any more than he does. A copy of a copy of a copy. Pieces of Katherine and Tatia and Amara, things that already were before she even existed.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

[im_apimp]

Oh, clone issues. They should have a chat about that sometime, now that his whole non-humanness is all out in the open.

"I know. But it is what I am. As I said, who I'm still figuring out. I've only really had room to for a couple of years, and even then it's taken ... work."

Work breaking through the Manticore brainwashing and the way their training dictates his thinking. It's not an easy thing to do, they're the ones who taught him how to think.

"Because where I'm from they want us really, really dead. It's ... a self-preservation instinct. And after a while it just ... didn't seem to matter."

More to the point, he didn't want it to matter. He wanted to play at being normal, to see if he could figure out what Max saw in it, and although he didn't really play as normal as he could have, pretending to be a real boy might help him to figure out the big giant "who" question.

"I should have. Probably when I found out about the whole vampire thing. But ... I guess it just didn't come up."

That is the most bullshit excuse. Excellent job, McDowell. But he doesn't know how else to convey that it wasn't a matter of trust, it was a matter of comfort. He figured it would come out eventually. He just didn't think it would be like this.

[believable]

She doesn't see how it couldn't not matter when it's such a big part of who he is and he's just said as much. They sound lime the excuses they are, but her feelings on it don't matter, either.

This isn't about her, this is about Alec, and his initial reason for wanting to keep it concealed is a good one. Elena just thought -

It doesn't matter what she thought, either.

"I guess it didn't," she answers, perhaps more flatly than she meant for it to. She's just incapable of sounding casual and unaffected about it. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. You don't owe me anything, after all."

Whatever she'd assumed about their closeness is on Elena, not Alec.

[im_apimp]

"No, I do."

Which is why he feels like crap about this. He owes her so much because from day one she hasn't treated him like he was some kind of insane freak, talking about falling through a hole in time and space. He falters for a minute, before looking down at his hands again.

"There's just no real easy way to say that you're a genetically engineered assassin and you've been trained to kill people since you were old enough to walk."

She treats him like a person, but really how much of that would change once she really understood the things he's done. He's still figuring out this whole emotion thing and while he knows that Elena lives with vampires and Stefan and Damon's hands aren't exactly clean, there's a difference between killing for food, killing because it's a biological imperative, and the cool, clinical detachment of a trained killer.

"There's a lot about this - " Basic human interaction, figuring out how to connect with people, how much is too much. " - that I still don't really know how to do."

[believable]

Annnd just like that, what anger she had felt at his previous response whooshes out of her. He has no way of knowing the things she'll overlook when it comes to the people she cares about. No way of knowing there isn't much he could do that would make her want to walk out of his life.

Not the fact his hands aren't clean. Not the fact he was made to kill. It's stupid and she's easy but she can't change how she's built, either.

And that's not really a social norm thing so much as an Elena Gilbert thing.

"You don't have to," she says, after long, several stretches of silence. Her voice is thicker than she means for it to, and her own head has been ducked the whole time. "You don't have to know all the time, or always say the right thing. You're my friend, and that means I'm going to care about who you are and why, and you can trust me with that."

It still stings and she needs to figure things out, but she gets it. She does.

[im_apimp]

He nods. He gets that now. He's not sure why he didn't get it sooner but he's a little stupid sometimes. Certified genius and far too intelligent for his own good, but a little stupid.

"I'm sorry."

For what it's worth, he didn't mean for her to find out like this. He glances down at his hands again for a moment, before glancing back up at her again.

"You can ask me whatever you want. Now that you know - " It seems kind of pointless to keep the rest of it a secret.

[believable]

It does seem kind of pointless, doesn't it?

Except asking all of the questions she wants to know now that the hand has been caught in the metaphorical cookie jar doesn't feel right, either. And she does have questions. There are a million things she wants to know about what he's just told her. Just not like this. Not because there's no other reason not to, anymore.

So she shakes her head quietly. "It doesn't have to be now, or all at once. Whenever you want to tell me something, you should." Whatever it is, whenever it happens. But he shouldn't be put on the spot like this, either.

Elena looks up at the sky again and sighs quietly. "Let's just go home, Alec."

She's wanted Alec to have a home of his own, and she doesn't know if she's succeeded in that, but she can hope one day she will, if nothing else.

[im_apimp]

Alec nods for a moment, taking in the words as they are and then nodding his agreement about going home a little more vigorously. It'll take time to fix this, he knows that, but at least for now she doesn't seem angry anymore. That's the important thing.

"Sure." He turns to head back out the way he came in, impeccable sense of direction kickign in. "Let's go."