TVD/TO Oneshots

Competitive (Matt Donovan)

Summary: Matt's SO convinced him to leave Mystic Falls behind in favor of attending college far, far away. Now, they've gotten themselves into a different kind of trouble.

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"Careful!" hissed my boyfriend, Matt Donovan, from behind me. His voice was tight with stress, but I just rolled my eyes.

"I'm always careful!" I hissed back. He scoffed.

"That is the biggest lie I've ever heard."

"Yeah, yeah. You know, you're sounding a little hypocritical as someone who used to go toe to toe with vampires."

I shot a meaningful look back at him over my shoulder, and he tensed. He was leaned out over the balcony of our college apartment, watching as I shimmied along the edge to the next balcony. He kept glancing at the distance from me to the ground, white-knuckled on the balcony railing.

"Can you please focus on what you're doing?" he ground out, not even bothering to respond to my vampire comment. I sighed.

"Don't worry, Matt, I'm almost there."

I faced forward again, refocusing on the last stretch to my goal. To be totally fair to Matt, it definitely wouldn't be good if I fell. But it wasn't that far from one balcony to the other, and after making it out of Mystic Falls and living to tell the tale, there was no way a dumb stunt for victory in a college prank war was going to take me down.

Finally, I made it to the other balcony, carefully climbing over it and away from the edge. I took a quick second to carefully creep forward and glance in the window of the apartment to make sure no one was home, and Matt and I weren't gonna get caught. Once I knew the coast was clear, I returned to the railing and leaned over to grin at Matt.

"Mission accomplished."

"Thank god. Now are you ready to finish this prank war, once and for all?"

"Oh, you know I am. Just hurry up and toss me that cardboard cutout, I don't want to get caught out here."

Matt shook his head, but he was still smiling as he started passing over the first piece of our prank. We'd found a cardboard cutout of some actor and were going to tape it up in the window, so it looked like some shadowy figure was lurking on the apartment balcony. Matt passed over a few light strips, and I set up a nice, terrifying red light glow in the background for added effect.

A little much? Maybe. But this was supposed to be the final move in an all-out, knock-down drag-out prank war. We couldn't exactly go easy.

After I got the red lights set, I unscrewed the deck lightbulb just slightly, so it wouldn't come on when the light switch was flipped. With another assist from Matt, I dumped a bunch of whipped cream and shaving cream on the floor, so it would be gross and slippery whenever someone came out here.

"Be careful!" Matt called as I leaned on my tippy toes and set up the last part of our prank: a banner that would drop down when the door was opened, declaring us the forever winners of the prank war.

"I am!" I whispered back. I stepped back once I'd finished, taking just a second to admire my handiwork. Then I hustled back to the balcony railing and my boyfriend.

"You probably have whipped cream on your shoes, so make sure you don't slip."

"Come on Matt, I'm fine. Besides, I have you to catch me if things go wrong."

"Contrary to what you apparently believe, I don't have super speed."

"Don't need it," I said, holding out a hand for Matt to take as I reached him, swinging both legs over the railing and landing in front of him with a grin. He shook his head, but he was smiling as he wrapped his arms around me.

"You know, when you convinced me to leave for college, a lot of your pitch revolved around not fearing for each other's lives anymore."

"Which is why our stakes are now prank war-level, and not life and death! Come on, Matt, take the victory with me."

He shook his head, still grinning as I leaned up and kissed him. After a moment we pulled apart, the grin on Matt's face even wider than before.

"Man. Tyler would be so proud right now."

"Oh yeah. We've stepped up our game big time since high school."

We shared a smile, then Matt sighed.

"So. What should we do while we wait for our neighbors to get back?"

"Well, we don't want to get too distracted and miss their reactions... maybe a game night?"

"With two people?"

"Yeah, so there's no one else for you to blame the loss on when I smoke you at Mario Kart."

Matt's jaw dropped in fake outrage as he laughed.

"Alright, you did it now. You're going down."

"Do your worst, Donovan," I teased, even as I moved closer and Matt wrapped an arm around my shoulders. The trash talk continued as we headed inside together, leaving the balcony door open so we wouldn't miss a second of the reactions from our neighbors.

Matt and I snacked and laughed and played a few ruthless rounds of Mario Kart, until we ended up with a two-two tie. Then, just my luck, I was ahead in the tiebreaker when we heard noise from the hallway that almost always meant our neighbors were home.

"Ope, that sounds like them," said Matt, not missing the opportunity to pause the game. "Guess we'll have to pick this back up later, so we don't miss their reactions."

I sighed dramatically. "Fine. But don't even thing about turning off that console, Donovan. I want to pick this race back up exactly where we left it."

"Yeah, yeah."

Matt waved me off, but I still watched carefully to make sure he didn't sabotage anything as we headed for our balcony. He gave me a grin and shook his head, but I just shrugged. He knew me well enough by now to know my competitiveness was no joke, as evidenced by the lengths I'd just gone to for this prank war.

Silently, Matt and I snuck out onto the balcony, just waiting for the reactions from our neighbors. We heard shouting a moment later, probably when they caught sight of the cardboard cutout in the window, and I had to hide behind Matt as I wrestled down a laugh.

The next few moments were a blur of shouting and panic as our neighbors worked up their courage to come out on the balcony, only to start shouting again. When we heard the sound of our banner dropping down and the shouts of fear changed to shouts of outrage, Matt and I stuck our heads around the corner, both of us grinning.

"Surprise!" I yelled. Every single person on the other balcony flipped me off, but Matt and I just laughed. "Consider that our checkmate move, ratcheted up a little after you threw my underwear all over the lawn."

For a brief moment, it seemed like our prank war might continue to escalate despite Matt and I declaring ourselves the winners. But as we talked over the balconies and the adrenaline faded, we came to an official truce and ended all pranking activity for this round.

"So, now that we've officially made peace, do you guys want to come over and play Mario Kart?" asked Matt, leaning casually against the railing. I turned around and smacked him in the chest.

"Not before we finish our championship round, Donovan!"

"We're in!" called our neighbors, immediately heading inside so they could come over to our place. I glared at Matt.

"We're finishing that race before they get here."

"I don't think we're gonna have time-"

"Only if you're slow in and out of the video game! Come on!"

I tugged Matt after me, laughing as we went. I managed to get him on the couch with a controller in hand, but our neighbors knocked on our door before I could unpause, and Matt took the opportunity to ex out of the match with a shit eating grin as he went to get the door. I threw a pillow at him, but I found myself smiling all the same. We'd just been crowned the winners of our prank war, after all, and any time I got to laugh and enjoy myself with Matt, like a normal couple, was a victory as far as I was concerned.