Stefan | Open
The music swirled, competing with the rising and falling chatter from the crowd who had come to celebrate Josie. With a generous pour of something amber in one hand, Stefan Salvatore sat apart from the crowd. Legs crossed, he leaned back and let life flow around him. He had been a boy, a vampire, a man ... and now a vampire again. It seemed in such a short time that his senses, still intensely delicate, warred with his sensibilities. He wanted to take a place next to his wife and (for all his intention) adoptive daughter.
But there was a gulf of circumstances that caused him to wait. With the hard work of re-connecting with his humanity, the dearth of people he all too likely offended or injured, the strange magic that invalidated the Cure, and his own strangely familiar senses in his own body, he could not help but find it better to stay quiet. It was Josie's day, after all. And he wanted it to go well. After all, his seventeenth year had ended with his father's bullet lodged in his ribs.
He took a drink and smiled away the memory; as soon as he caught a glimpse of Caroline's smiling face and Josie beaming at her friends, he could put that memory far enough behind him to remain untroubled. It was close enough (always) though, to prove instrumental in keeping him watchful.