We Die Daily, Chapter 3
Title: We Die Daily
Author: Andacus
Fandom: Vampire Diaries
Rating: M in later chapters.
Pairing: Damon/Elena, mentions of Stefan/Elena
Summary: Sometimes, all she can do is falter and pick herself back up, only to falter again. And the world spins on.
Note: AU (because there is no way it can't be, what with the crazy pace of this show) after 3x3. Thanks for reading!
“I don’t understand why we need a hotel room?” She says, dropping her bag on the floor and raising her eyebrows.
He smirks (of course he smirks) and steps a few steps too close. She can feel his breath and holds hers (it’s habit; a defense mechanism, okay?).
“Because it’s not a road trip without clichéd hotel room hijinks,” he says.
“Damon,” she scolds in that tone that she thinks sounds reprimanding, but never really stops him from doing anything.
“Seriously, Elena,” he says, stepping back and turning to switch on another lamp. “You smell like the welcome mat at a biker bar. You need a shower before it sinks into my upholstery.”
She should scold him, tell him he’s being horrible, but she doesn’t really have it in her, so she rolls her eyes and goes into the bathroom, her bag slung over her shoulder.
The mirror is covered in fog by the time she drags herself from the hot water, not so hot it scalds, but hot enough to burn away her sorrow. Elena isn’t really the type to wallow and her little indiscretion earlier was more than embarrassing enough. She wipes the moisture from the mirror in a wide arc and stares at the girl looking back at her.
It’s something like staring at a stranger and she laughs, low and humorless, at how trite that thought is. Without another thought about it, Elena grabs the hair dryer and busies herself with the mundane steps of getting ready for the rest of her night.
Damon is lounging, in that way that he has, on the bed, his arms crossed behind his head. She greets him with half a smile and notices that he’s watching the news. Some story about a series of murders in Florida flashes across the screen, the reporter tonelessly rattling off details of the crime. He changes the channel immediately and she pretends not to care.
It would be better if he didn’t try to hide these things. She knows Stefan is doing that, knows he’s slicing people apart and pouncing from town to town. She can handle it. She doesn’t say so, though, because she has other things to worry about and it’s an old argument anyway. And if she’s honest, it’s hard to be angry when she knows he’s just trying to protect her and Stefan, even if it is from one another.
She wonders if he took this kind of care of his little brother when they were human, wonders if the eternity of torment he had promised was just as much about his failure to save his brother as it was betrayal and heartbreak.
She has a good idea he would never admit as much.
She flops down next to him, suddenly tired. Looking over, letting her head fall on the pillow, Elena meets his eyes and offers him a bewildered look. It isn’t that she’s looking for direction, least of all from Damon, it’s just that she doesn’t know how to proceed from here.
***
It takes twenty minutes of pacing, fidgeting and general pep-talking before Elena steels her resolve and dials the number.
Something like sadness tugs at her insides and she doesn’t really want to examine that. Isobel had been the furthest thing from maternal and Elena had hardly known her, anyway. But still, something like grief flitters there in her core.
Damon is watching, being oddly patient, which serves to make her even more nervous, because…obviously.
Before she even realizes it, she’s neck deep in a conversation she doesn’t know how to navigate.
Patrick and Susan Flemming are the kind of couple who talk on separate cordless phones, conversations overlapping and colliding into one another, leaving Elena lost.
“Umm,” Elena says as the woman on the other end waits for an answer. Damon’s two feet away, shaking his head, scrunching his eyebrows, mouthing the word no.
“Well,” she says. “I don’t want to intrude. Umm, maybe a restaurant or something?”
“Let the girl alone,” Patrick says at the same time Susan says, “Oh, nonsense.”
Elena’s eyes are wide when she looks to Damon, clearly exasperated. Susan is trying, despite Elena’s attempts to politely refuse, to insist that she come to their home, have dinner, visit. From his spot mere feet away, Damon is practically radiating the phrase Over my dead body.
“Look,” Elena finally says loud enough to cut through their bickering. “I would really rather meet on neutral ground.”
They consent, finally, but immediately start discussing where to go. They decide on some place called The Station Café, which she knows nothing about, and when she looks to Damon to gauge his reaction, he shrugs and tilts his head and she interprets that as, “Eh, whatever.”
Finally, everyone hangs up and Elena sits heavily on the bed, her phone clutched in her hands.
“This is the right thing, right?”
Damon, who has opened the minibar, is pouring out and simultaneously scowling at several fingers of whiskey. “As opposed to…?” He lets the question drift there a minute. “God, you would think for the price of the room, they’d at least stock good hooch.”
Elena makes a face that she hopes displays her complete lack of sympathy for his plight, but he ignores her and digs the half empty bottle of scotch from his bag.
“You brought that?”
He looks at her like she’s just asked him a stupid question and she’s suddenly irritated. “Like I was going to leave it at your house for Alaric to drink,” he says derisively.
Squaring her shoulders (she does that a lot lately, she realizes), Elena pulls her coat on and says, “Share the wealth. I’m going to need it.”
***
The Station Café is a small, rustic place with mismatched tables and comfortable chairs. The art on the walls is all local and for sale and the music is something light and pleasant. One of the waitresses practically eye-fucks Damon the second they sit down and Elena looks pointedly away, pretending not to care.
They are twenty minutes early, which was Damon’s idea. He’s not suspicious, he says, but it’s a lie. He has that forced calm thing going on, but she doesn’t really want to ask about it. If he wants to be wary, the better for everyone.
“So,” he says, once they’ve ordered coffee and sandwiches, “why did you raid my liquor cabinet?”
“What?” She asks, genuinely confused.
“The long overdue sob fest,” he explains. “Was Ric’s industrial sized Johnny Walker bottle not good enough for you?”
Deflecting, because she does not want to have this conversation at all, Elena says, “I really should be less of a snob.”
“Elena,” he says, drawing out the A in that long, taunting tone of his.
“Damon,” she mimics.
He doesn’t answer, but the expression on his face is nearly unbearably smug, like he’s giving her the opportunity to confess something that he already knows. She tells herself she doesn’t care, matches his expression with her own, unimpressed one, but can’t hold it for long. Soon, much sooner than she would prefer, she’s shifting away and breaking eye contact. He leans across the table and fixes her with a look and she breaks.
“Okay,” she says, aggravated. “I snagged it at my birthday party. I didn’t want gross keg beer.” She doesn’t mention that this is not true, doesn’t mention that she took it to drown out the memory of one brother with the closest she could get to the other, doesn’t mention that this was long before her birthday. There was something poetic in this idea of self-destruction when she stumbled into his room, half drunk on grief and the rest on something fruity that she couldn’t name. She can no longer recall just how that poem went.
He smirks. “But that bottle was in the cabinet in my bedroom, Elena,” he says, twisting the word bedroom in that lecherous way he’s so good at, not that she would ever admit to thinking this.
“So?”
“You were snooping.”
“I was not snooping,” Elena insists even though she totally was.
“Uh huh,” he says, sounding entirely unconvinced and she doesn’t blame him, she is lying after all.
“Elena?” Someone says from behind her. Turning abruptly, instantly defensive, Elena sees a pair of eager looking people, watching her curiously. They’re holding hands and looking like the cheesy photos that come stuffed into picture frames.
Immediately, Elena can see that Isobel resembled her mother. They have (or had, rather) the same wide dark eyes and dimpled chins, but Susan appears to still be in possession of her humanity… at least Elena hopes so. Patrick, who looks very little like his daughter, has short white hair, blue eyes and a grandfatherly look about him. In short, they’re adorable.
Susan takes a tentative step forward and Elena smiles as she stands, doing her best to be non-threatening and welcoming. She wants so badly, suddenly, to like these people.
“Hi,” Elena says, but as she’s saying it, something flashes across her vision and someone is barreling into her.
The entire room erupts into chaos and she can see Damon in front of her, his back blocking most of her view, but then he’s yanked away and she can hear him growl something and then the sickening sound she’s horrified to know is the sound of a heart being pulled from someone’s chest.
Someone screams and then Damon is back, gathering her up, making her stand.
“We have to get out of here,” he says, making her meet his eyes.
“What about them?” She asks, meaning the Flemmings, looking around the ruined café and not finding them.
“They’re not here,” he says evenly, but she doesn’t know what he means and she doesn’t like the steadiness of his tone.
Elena opens her mouth to say something back, something defiant, but there’s a crash and she falls to the ground, feeling his hand rip out of hers, realizing for the first time that she had been holding his hand.
It’s the pain that she notices first, spiraling up her leg and across her back. Something or someone is holding her down, even as she struggles to get free, struggles to see what’s happening. Someone is screaming and someone is cursing and her vision is starting to fade in at the edges. Hot breath hits her ear and a voice says, “Shh.”
She wants to scream, to run, to strike him, but there is this buzzing in her head and a tingling numbness sweeping over her body. She holds her eyes open, fighting to keep hold of her consciousness. She locks eyes with him and gasps in recognition. Stefan stares back.
“Ste -.“ It’s all she can get out, her voice breaks but she doesn’t know if it’s from emotion or pain.
The world slips away from her for a moment, the blackness falling over her. But just as quickly, she’s pulled back to the present. Someone’s calling to her.
“Elena!” Stefan is saying, his face still close to hers, his voice urgent. “Elena!”
They’re moving too fast and it makes her head spin, makes her body hurt.
“Put me down,” she manages to choke out.
“Listen to me,” he says. “You need to drink.”
She doesn’t protest, she doesn’t have the strength and the practical part of her knows he’s right.
“What the fuck?” Damon says suddenly and Elena says his name, desperate, scared. She squirms, instinctively trying to reach him. She doesn’t understand what’s happening and she doesn’t trust Stefan and she feels like maybe she’s dreaming all of this.
“Elena,” Stefan says. “Stop squirming.”
“God damn it, Stefan.” Damon’s voice is much closer now, his arms sliding under her, taking her from his brother, cursing. “What the hell was that?”
“You should be thanking me, brother,” Stefan says, cocky, irreverent.
“Really?” Damon asks, his arms closing tight around her, his lips against her hair.
“I saved our girlfriend,” Stefan snarks back.
Damon snorts. “And why did you need to do that in the first place?”
Whatever Stefan’s answer is, Elena doesn’t know because it is then that someone’s bloody wrist is pressed against her lips and all she knows is the throbbing in her veins and the warmth that floods her body.
Author: Andacus
Fandom: Vampire Diaries
Rating: M in later chapters.
Pairing: Damon/Elena, mentions of Stefan/Elena
Summary: Sometimes, all she can do is falter and pick herself back up, only to falter again. And the world spins on.
Note: AU (because there is no way it can't be, what with the crazy pace of this show) after 3x3. Thanks for reading!
“I don’t understand why we need a hotel room?” She says, dropping her bag on the floor and raising her eyebrows.
He smirks (of course he smirks) and steps a few steps too close. She can feel his breath and holds hers (it’s habit; a defense mechanism, okay?).
“Because it’s not a road trip without clichéd hotel room hijinks,” he says.
“Damon,” she scolds in that tone that she thinks sounds reprimanding, but never really stops him from doing anything.
“Seriously, Elena,” he says, stepping back and turning to switch on another lamp. “You smell like the welcome mat at a biker bar. You need a shower before it sinks into my upholstery.”
She should scold him, tell him he’s being horrible, but she doesn’t really have it in her, so she rolls her eyes and goes into the bathroom, her bag slung over her shoulder.
The mirror is covered in fog by the time she drags herself from the hot water, not so hot it scalds, but hot enough to burn away her sorrow. Elena isn’t really the type to wallow and her little indiscretion earlier was more than embarrassing enough. She wipes the moisture from the mirror in a wide arc and stares at the girl looking back at her.
It’s something like staring at a stranger and she laughs, low and humorless, at how trite that thought is. Without another thought about it, Elena grabs the hair dryer and busies herself with the mundane steps of getting ready for the rest of her night.
Damon is lounging, in that way that he has, on the bed, his arms crossed behind his head. She greets him with half a smile and notices that he’s watching the news. Some story about a series of murders in Florida flashes across the screen, the reporter tonelessly rattling off details of the crime. He changes the channel immediately and she pretends not to care.
It would be better if he didn’t try to hide these things. She knows Stefan is doing that, knows he’s slicing people apart and pouncing from town to town. She can handle it. She doesn’t say so, though, because she has other things to worry about and it’s an old argument anyway. And if she’s honest, it’s hard to be angry when she knows he’s just trying to protect her and Stefan, even if it is from one another.
She wonders if he took this kind of care of his little brother when they were human, wonders if the eternity of torment he had promised was just as much about his failure to save his brother as it was betrayal and heartbreak.
She has a good idea he would never admit as much.
She flops down next to him, suddenly tired. Looking over, letting her head fall on the pillow, Elena meets his eyes and offers him a bewildered look. It isn’t that she’s looking for direction, least of all from Damon, it’s just that she doesn’t know how to proceed from here.
***
It takes twenty minutes of pacing, fidgeting and general pep-talking before Elena steels her resolve and dials the number.
Something like sadness tugs at her insides and she doesn’t really want to examine that. Isobel had been the furthest thing from maternal and Elena had hardly known her, anyway. But still, something like grief flitters there in her core.
Damon is watching, being oddly patient, which serves to make her even more nervous, because…obviously.
Before she even realizes it, she’s neck deep in a conversation she doesn’t know how to navigate.
Patrick and Susan Flemming are the kind of couple who talk on separate cordless phones, conversations overlapping and colliding into one another, leaving Elena lost.
“Umm,” Elena says as the woman on the other end waits for an answer. Damon’s two feet away, shaking his head, scrunching his eyebrows, mouthing the word no.
“Well,” she says. “I don’t want to intrude. Umm, maybe a restaurant or something?”
“Let the girl alone,” Patrick says at the same time Susan says, “Oh, nonsense.”
Elena’s eyes are wide when she looks to Damon, clearly exasperated. Susan is trying, despite Elena’s attempts to politely refuse, to insist that she come to their home, have dinner, visit. From his spot mere feet away, Damon is practically radiating the phrase Over my dead body.
“Look,” Elena finally says loud enough to cut through their bickering. “I would really rather meet on neutral ground.”
They consent, finally, but immediately start discussing where to go. They decide on some place called The Station Café, which she knows nothing about, and when she looks to Damon to gauge his reaction, he shrugs and tilts his head and she interprets that as, “Eh, whatever.”
Finally, everyone hangs up and Elena sits heavily on the bed, her phone clutched in her hands.
“This is the right thing, right?”
Damon, who has opened the minibar, is pouring out and simultaneously scowling at several fingers of whiskey. “As opposed to…?” He lets the question drift there a minute. “God, you would think for the price of the room, they’d at least stock good hooch.”
Elena makes a face that she hopes displays her complete lack of sympathy for his plight, but he ignores her and digs the half empty bottle of scotch from his bag.
“You brought that?”
He looks at her like she’s just asked him a stupid question and she’s suddenly irritated. “Like I was going to leave it at your house for Alaric to drink,” he says derisively.
Squaring her shoulders (she does that a lot lately, she realizes), Elena pulls her coat on and says, “Share the wealth. I’m going to need it.”
***
The Station Café is a small, rustic place with mismatched tables and comfortable chairs. The art on the walls is all local and for sale and the music is something light and pleasant. One of the waitresses practically eye-fucks Damon the second they sit down and Elena looks pointedly away, pretending not to care.
They are twenty minutes early, which was Damon’s idea. He’s not suspicious, he says, but it’s a lie. He has that forced calm thing going on, but she doesn’t really want to ask about it. If he wants to be wary, the better for everyone.
“So,” he says, once they’ve ordered coffee and sandwiches, “why did you raid my liquor cabinet?”
“What?” She asks, genuinely confused.
“The long overdue sob fest,” he explains. “Was Ric’s industrial sized Johnny Walker bottle not good enough for you?”
Deflecting, because she does not want to have this conversation at all, Elena says, “I really should be less of a snob.”
“Elena,” he says, drawing out the A in that long, taunting tone of his.
“Damon,” she mimics.
He doesn’t answer, but the expression on his face is nearly unbearably smug, like he’s giving her the opportunity to confess something that he already knows. She tells herself she doesn’t care, matches his expression with her own, unimpressed one, but can’t hold it for long. Soon, much sooner than she would prefer, she’s shifting away and breaking eye contact. He leans across the table and fixes her with a look and she breaks.
“Okay,” she says, aggravated. “I snagged it at my birthday party. I didn’t want gross keg beer.” She doesn’t mention that this is not true, doesn’t mention that she took it to drown out the memory of one brother with the closest she could get to the other, doesn’t mention that this was long before her birthday. There was something poetic in this idea of self-destruction when she stumbled into his room, half drunk on grief and the rest on something fruity that she couldn’t name. She can no longer recall just how that poem went.
He smirks. “But that bottle was in the cabinet in my bedroom, Elena,” he says, twisting the word bedroom in that lecherous way he’s so good at, not that she would ever admit to thinking this.
“So?”
“You were snooping.”
“I was not snooping,” Elena insists even though she totally was.
“Uh huh,” he says, sounding entirely unconvinced and she doesn’t blame him, she is lying after all.
“Elena?” Someone says from behind her. Turning abruptly, instantly defensive, Elena sees a pair of eager looking people, watching her curiously. They’re holding hands and looking like the cheesy photos that come stuffed into picture frames.
Immediately, Elena can see that Isobel resembled her mother. They have (or had, rather) the same wide dark eyes and dimpled chins, but Susan appears to still be in possession of her humanity… at least Elena hopes so. Patrick, who looks very little like his daughter, has short white hair, blue eyes and a grandfatherly look about him. In short, they’re adorable.
Susan takes a tentative step forward and Elena smiles as she stands, doing her best to be non-threatening and welcoming. She wants so badly, suddenly, to like these people.
“Hi,” Elena says, but as she’s saying it, something flashes across her vision and someone is barreling into her.
The entire room erupts into chaos and she can see Damon in front of her, his back blocking most of her view, but then he’s yanked away and she can hear him growl something and then the sickening sound she’s horrified to know is the sound of a heart being pulled from someone’s chest.
Someone screams and then Damon is back, gathering her up, making her stand.
“We have to get out of here,” he says, making her meet his eyes.
“What about them?” She asks, meaning the Flemmings, looking around the ruined café and not finding them.
“They’re not here,” he says evenly, but she doesn’t know what he means and she doesn’t like the steadiness of his tone.
Elena opens her mouth to say something back, something defiant, but there’s a crash and she falls to the ground, feeling his hand rip out of hers, realizing for the first time that she had been holding his hand.
It’s the pain that she notices first, spiraling up her leg and across her back. Something or someone is holding her down, even as she struggles to get free, struggles to see what’s happening. Someone is screaming and someone is cursing and her vision is starting to fade in at the edges. Hot breath hits her ear and a voice says, “Shh.”
She wants to scream, to run, to strike him, but there is this buzzing in her head and a tingling numbness sweeping over her body. She holds her eyes open, fighting to keep hold of her consciousness. She locks eyes with him and gasps in recognition. Stefan stares back.
“Ste -.“ It’s all she can get out, her voice breaks but she doesn’t know if it’s from emotion or pain.
The world slips away from her for a moment, the blackness falling over her. But just as quickly, she’s pulled back to the present. Someone’s calling to her.
“Elena!” Stefan is saying, his face still close to hers, his voice urgent. “Elena!”
They’re moving too fast and it makes her head spin, makes her body hurt.
“Put me down,” she manages to choke out.
“Listen to me,” he says. “You need to drink.”
She doesn’t protest, she doesn’t have the strength and the practical part of her knows he’s right.
“What the fuck?” Damon says suddenly and Elena says his name, desperate, scared. She squirms, instinctively trying to reach him. She doesn’t understand what’s happening and she doesn’t trust Stefan and she feels like maybe she’s dreaming all of this.
“Elena,” Stefan says. “Stop squirming.”
“God damn it, Stefan.” Damon’s voice is much closer now, his arms sliding under her, taking her from his brother, cursing. “What the hell was that?”
“You should be thanking me, brother,” Stefan says, cocky, irreverent.
“Really?” Damon asks, his arms closing tight around her, his lips against her hair.
“I saved our girlfriend,” Stefan snarks back.
Damon snorts. “And why did you need to do that in the first place?”
Whatever Stefan’s answer is, Elena doesn’t know because it is then that someone’s bloody wrist is pressed against her lips and all she knows is the throbbing in her veins and the warmth that floods her body.