[fic] The Taylor Swift Anthology (3/4)
Title: The Taylor Swift Anthology (3/4)
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: T/PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Damon & Elena POV, Damon/Elena (with an appearance by Caroline)
Category: Angst, Romance
Word Count: ~3700
Summary: Damon Salvatore fucking hates Taylor Swift. (But Elena loves her.)
Spoilers: Up through 2x08 "Rose."
Warnings: Speculation about what happens post-episode 8, but it's not based on any spoilers.
Show/Bookverse: Show
Author's Notes: Lyrics taken from the Taylor Swift songs "Sparks Fly" and "Enchanted." Part One / Part Two.
Additional A/N: So this was supposed to be the last part. But, um, yeah, it's not.
"Elena said that?"
He nods jerkily, and if it were anyone else, he'd be embarrassed by his inability to do anything but gush like a girl. Part of him doesn't even believe it--she can't possibly have meant what it sounded like she said.
He needed a second opinion, and a female one at that.
So he came to the only place he could think of.
"That's...an interesting turn of events," Caroline says. She hands him a glass of whiskey and sits next to him on her bed. "I mean, I really didn't see that ever happening."
He sips slowly from the glass. "It's not happening. It's not."
"Wait," Caroline says, holding her hand up. "You're not going to turn her, or you're not going to do something about her and Stefan being broken up?"
He snorts into his glass as he drains the rest of it. Choking a little, he slides his gaze over and looks at her from the corner of his eye. "Neither," he croaks out.
Caroline stands up and paces back and forth in front of him. She begins thinking out loud with, "Well, she does have a point about her being more helpful if she were a vampire," but when he glares at her forcefully, she just pivots on her heel and puts her hands on her hips. "Fine, be all noble--or whatever--about Elena's mortality, but let's talk about this whole she-wants-you-now business. Because, let's face it, that's way more interesting."
"She doesn't want me," he says, shaking his head. "She just..."
"That's sure what it sounded like to me. And, you know, she was asking me the other day about Compulsion. I got the feeling she and Bonnie were trying to figure out if there was a way to undo it."
"What?" he asks loudly, standing up. Suddenly he's got more energy in his body than he knows what to do with.
Caroline narrows her eyes at him shrewdly. "Did you compel Elena to do something?"
"No!" he shouts, which makes Caroline look all the more suspicious. "I didn't. I've never--the one time I ever tried to compel her, Stefan had already given her vervain, so she was uncompellable. And that was a long time ago, before I--" God, how sloppy is he getting if Elena knows she was compelled? Love fucking sucks.
"Before you loved her."
He curses under his breath and sets his empty glass down hard on the bedside table. "I don't fucking love her. Why does everybody always say that!?"
Caroline just laughs. "Oh, Damon." He looks at her over his shoulder and wants to choke the life out of her, that old murderous instinct alive and well within him, though not motivated solely by the fact that he's a blood-sucking vampire. There's a tinge of pity in her eyes, and it throbs through him like an off-beat drum. "You know you are very scary when you want to be, but you're also very transparent most of the time."
It's all so very humiliating, every aspect of it.
"You mean like how you're transparent?" he retaliates. "Like I don't know you're banging Tyler Lockwood."
Caroline is unabashed, and it's this facet of the vampire within her now that has chased away the insecure girl he first used and abused. Now she is his equal (and perhaps far better than him, but then again, who isn't?) and some sort of strange friendship has emerged from all the craziness. He'll never tell her how much he relies on her, but if he's so transparent, he probably doesn't need to, anyway. She just smiles and wags her finger at him. "You can't distract me from the fact that we're talking about you for once. Damon, come on!" She comes closer to him and pats his chest like she's encouraging him. "Elena likes you. She wants you to kiss her or something. That's exciting, isn't it? I mean, don't you want her to like you, and want to kiss you? That's what normal people want when they love someone. But God knows, you're not normal, so maybe this is all so weird for you, and so you don't know what to do." She claps her hands together. "I'll help you! I'll help you figure out how to woo her. And then--"
"Caroline, shut up," he says harshly. She clams up immediately, but he can still see the wheels turning in her head. "You know she's just--like rebounding from Stefan. And besides, everyone knows she belongs with him, and eventually she'll get back together with him, and there's no room for me in that equation."
Caroline examines his face, and nods, and he feels an odd sort of relief, like if she agrees that Stefan and Elena will one day get back together, then nothing else matters. (Which is completely true--on both counts.) But she says, "You don't know Elena as well as you think you do. She's...she has this inner fire, something that has sort of been subdued since her parents died. And to be perfectly honest, Damon, the only time I ever see a glimpse of that girl, the one from before--it's when she's with you. All Stefan is, really, is an older version of Matt. Maybe Elena is drawn to safety in some way, but what she really craves is danger." She blinks at him. "And that's you."
You're the kind of reckless that you send me running, but I kinda know that I won't get far.
Fucking Taylor Swift. (And fucking Elena, always in his head...now with a soundtrack.)
Damon tries to clear his mind as he moves to the door of Caroline's bedroom. She resumes her spot on the bed, still watching him with a bit of a musing smile on her face. They've all agreed to do whatever they need to, to preserve Elena's life, but he's needed to say something particular to Caroline for a long time, and now is as good a time as any, considering she's already certain she knows everything important about him anyway. "You know I'm sorry about--how I treated you back when..." He has a hard time saying these things aloud even if he can acknowledge them privately now. (His sins, his regrets, everything.)
Caroline nods and smiles as she pulls a throw pillow across her lap. "Yes, I know. I've known ever since you found out about me and Tyler."
He lifts his eyebrows in question.
"You didn't try to kill either of us," she says offhandedly. "Seemed like you'd grown, or whatever."
Damon can't stop the smile from erupting on his face. Sometimes, when she's not annoying the hell out of him, he kind of loves Caroline, too. He raps his knuckles on the door frame. "Good call, Care. I'll see you later."
"Damon, you should go talk to Elena. Get it all out between you two. If..." she hesitates, and the serious light in her eyes makes him really listen. "If we do this, let Katherine out of the tomb, and fight Elijah, and everything goes bad--well. You just don't want things left unsaid, do you? It's better to take the risk, than regret never having tried."
(Right now, though, he totally hates her, for being right.)
*
Elena is unsurprised to see Damon on the window seat when she comes out of the bathroom, even though it's been months since he's turned up in her bedroom unannounced. She knows he's often outside, keeping watch, because he, Stefan, Caroline, and Rose had started doing shifts of surveillance at her house to make sure nobody was invited in who shouldn't be. Whenever it was Damon's turn, he always waited outside.
Not tonight, however; Elena feels her nerves come to the surface as soon as she sees him sitting there. Again, it's like she's been here before, like maybe she's dreamed this moment, except she doesn't know what happens. She knows now what she wants to happen, but that doesn't mean it will.
"Hello, Damon," she says, speaking first.
He stays across the room, just sitting, staring at her. She doesn't move from her position outside the bathroom door, but waits to see what he'll do.
He takes a breath, and begins with, "First of all, I don't hate Stefan. And second of all, I don't love being a vampire. There are things I hate about him, and things I love about it, but those generalizations really bug me." He leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees, earnestly watching her. "I wanted to punish Katherine, yes, for everything she did, and so the tomb seemed like a good idea, but Stefan and I discussed the fact that we might need her alive because we knew she was running from something. I wanted to kill her more than I wanted to punish her, but I let the voice of reason sound in my ear on that one. And you and I both know that you and Stefan will eventually work all this shit out, and then you'll be so grateful that I didn't do any of my Damon-stuff.
"So, there. There's everything you need to know."
He stands up, and Elena knows he'll disappear before she can even see him move, so she says, "Wait," before he can vanish in a blink of an eye. "Don't leave," she says, and she puts enough inflection in her voice to show it's a request. A plea, even. Don't leave me, Damon.
He's just revealed more about himself, willingly, in less than one minute than he has in all the time she's known him combined. She feels a lightness in her chest that gives her the ability to be as equally candid. "What if Stefan and I don't ever get back together?" she asks. There are so many things to talk about, but this is the one thing that needs to be cleared up first.
One side of his mouth goes up in a smile that doesn't touch his eyes. "Not possible."
"What if we don't, Damon? What if you knew we'd never get back together. What would you do if you knew it would never happen?"
"I don't consider improbabilities," he announces, a formality in his speech that makes Elena feel he's playing another role--not snarky instigator this time, but the guy who steps aside, the one who isn't careless and impulsive. (Not himself, in other words.)
"I haven't slept with Stefan since before Katherine compelled Jenna to hurt herself." She blurts it out, and then feels her face flush. She knows it's significant, but she didn't mean to tell him like that.
He actually says nothing in return, but stares at her quizzically.
She shifts from one foot to another and steps towards him, feeling utterly naked. When he steps forward as well, she thinks it's encouragement, but still, she wants him to say something.
When he just asks, "Why?" she finds herself shrugging in indecision.
"I don't know why," she answers, which is the truth. "It just didn't feel right--after we got back together, I just couldn't." He compresses his lips into a thin line and looks away from her, but not before she sees some sort of elation in his expression. It amps up her courage just that much more. "But I think you know why." Her tone is loaded, and it's the closest she's ever come to trying to confront him about it.
He laughs mirthlessly. "I didn't compel you to not want Stefan," he says.
Surprised by that response, she tilts her head and watches him as he sinks back into a sitting position on the window seat. "No, I didn't think you had. But you said something that made something inside me change. Didn't you?"
He shakes his head, and remains silent, so she presses on. "I talked to Jeremy, and he said that even when he couldn't remember what happened to Vicki, the feeling of it was still there. He didn't know what caused the feeling, but he knew it was there. I don't know what caused it, for me, Damon, but you do. Because as soon as you did it, you started acting differently."
He finally looks her in the eye again. "I just left you alone, like you wanted."
"Wanted," she repeats. She can feel his fear now, and the fact that she can even scare him at all surprises her. It helps her hope that Rose has just been a distraction. "Past tense," she clarifies.
He stands up again, and she guesses he's still trying to leave, so she closes the distance between them as quickly as she can. Wrapping her hands lightly around his wrists, she knows that she doesn't posses the physical strength to hold him in anyway. What will keep him here with her now is only the correct combination of words.
(She doesn't know if she has them. It always comes down to this with Damon--careful steps that cultivate something deeper between them.)
He looks into her eyes, and for the first time she feels like she's so close to whatever the empty space in her memory is that she leans towards him, her bare feet lifting her up on toes that try to bring their faces together. Maybe he kissed her, and that's what she can't remember.
"I've been sleeping with Rose since the day after we rescued you from her."
Elena has felt sorry for Damon on many occasions; from the tomb to that moment in this very room when he tried to make her accept him when she just wasn't ready, but it's this one, when she knows he wants it so bad he can almost taste it, and yet he still resists, that makes something snap into place within her. It's to his credit that he attempts one more time to keep anything from happening between them.
So she repeats his query. "Why?"
He sighs, and closes his eyes for a brief moment. Then he says, "Because I wasn't ever going to sleep with you."
Elena smiles; she just can't help it. He laughs a little, though it's still quite humorless, and then drops her gaze, his eyes trailing to her neck, and the vervain necklace she still wears. She slides her fingers from his wrists to his palms and when his hands envelope hers, she starts to hope in a way she can't quantify.
"Damon..." she whispers. She's still holding herself up on her toes, but her legs are trembling now with the effort.
His hands squeeze hers, but then he lets go, moving them up to cup her face between his palms. "I'll never let you go," he says, and she shivers, because she already knows that; it's what she's been counting on. By doing this, she's effectively ending all possibilities between her and Stefan, not because it couldn't ever be again, but because choosing Damon instead is an irreversible act.
She's terrified but certain when his lips finally touch hers.
*
The hunger in Damon is ages old; in part it has nothing to do with Elena--it's just something he's searched for since before he was a vampire.
A human boy in deprivation of love became a vampire amplified by need and loss and decades of emptiness.
But with the brush of her tongue across his bottom lip and the slight strength of her arms as they encircle his neck, he learns that the hunger could only ever have been satisfied here, with her.
(He's been fucking starving, after all, and he could make a gourmet meal of her.)
To have Elena return even the smallest portion of that is far more than he has ever allowed himself to hope for (except for in his most desperate, drunken moments).
Her fingers clench in the hair at the nape of his neck and her teeth nip at his bottom lip, and her body--God, her long, beautiful body--pressing fully against his is so overwhelming that he feels like a nineteenth century virgin bridegroom. (Something he was once upon a time, or at least could have been if not for Katherine Pierce.)
His dick strains against the zipper of his jeans, but it's his chest that feels like it might explode, and when Elena leads him toward her bed without even breaking their kiss, he knows this is unlike any other encounter he's ever had. (And he's had so many, the distinction is too painful to ignore.) Their lips separate when her legs hit the bed and she attempts to fall back on to it, pulling him with her, but he throws his hands out and stops his body's forward motion. His hands land on either side of her head, and he doesn't allow himself to cover her, though every cell in his body feels the weight of gravity in a completely magnetic way.
"Elena," he gasps, and her eyes fly open. Her hands now grip the lapels of his shirt, tugging him ever closer, but he resists. "Elena, no."
Her eyes widen and she searches his face. Gently, one of her hands comes up, her fingers skimming his jaw, caressing his cheek, and he moves his head into her touch, craving it far more than blood at the moment. "Damon," she whispers. "I want you to, please," and he remembers her please back at the Boarding House.
"You can't seduce me into turning you," he says, and he's pretty sure it's just a deflective tactic, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
Her eyes are soft when she answers, "You think once will be enough?" and he hears the underlying question there too. If he can claim her forever (I'll never let you go), how can he realistically think beyond the inevitable (You should turn me)? Maybe Stefan never thought about it, but Damon had, long before Elena brought it up.
Loving someone forever really sucks if they aren't around. He knows, he cut his baby vampire teeth on that slogan.
"If I won't turn you, you'll only fuck me once?" he asks, but even though the words are right, he can't put the unfeeling harshness to them that should get him successfully tossed out on his metaphoric ass.
Her fingers move to the buttons on his shirt. His stomach muscles quiver as her nails scrape gently at the trail of hair below his navel. His unneeded breath shudders through his lungs when one of her hands slides beneath the waistband of his pants. "Tell me what I can't remember," she says, catching him completely by surprise.
It's so easy to say, he can't believe he ever made her forget it. "I love you, Elena."
*
Elena lays in her bed, next to him, and she can't. Quit. Touching. Him. For months, she's denied herself the admission that she wanted him; that he was so beautiful that she sometimes found it hard to look at him, that everything inside her only wanted this sort of intimacy with him, that it frightens her so much because it's Damon and she's watched him kill people, including her own brother.
What surprises her now, in the sweet aftermath of making love with him, is that she feels even more tenderly for him because of how positively wonderful he has been. It doesn't surprise her that he knows his way around a woman, or that as a vampire he possesses brutal strength that can injure her. But the fluid way he moved with her, and the care he put into each caress of his hands or brush of his lips over her body--well, even if he hadn't said the words, she would know he loved her anyway.
She feels cherished and ravished at the same moment, and now, he lies on his back next to her, not talking, and her fingers dance over his stomach and chest, tracing his arms and flanks.
And he just lets her. His eyes are closed and he says nothing, but she knows he's not asleep. One of his arms surrounds her, holding her next to him, and his hand plays with her hair in a completely innocent and thoroughly relaxing way, stroking the strands gently.
"What will Aunt Jenna say about this, I wonder?" he murmurs. His lips curl upward, but his eyes stay closed.
Elena giggles softly. "Oh, god," she breathes, because she didn't think this through at all. She'd thought about so many other things, but she hadn't really considered the consequences of what being with Damon would mean for other people.
Well, except for one.
She could reply, I wonder what your brother will say, but she hates to mention Stefan, not now, not when everything feels perfect for one small moment. She knows it can't last, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want to stretch it out as long as possible.
Damon's voice is contemplative when he adds, "Maybe we shouldn't tell anyone for now."
She lays her head on his shoulder. "For now?" she questions.
"No reason to piss everyone off if we're just gonna die, right?"
Elena's palm comes to rest flat against his abdomen, and his hand covers hers, holding her still. "We can't die now, Damon. Not when we've finally..."
"It's good incentive, trust me. I've never wanted to live more. But until it's over, one way or another? For Stefan."
Elena's eyes burn with tears. She's had her doubts through the last year, but as sure as she is now that Damon loves her, she also knows he loves his brother. She doesn't want to ruin any tentative relationship between them. "You're right," she whispers.
He pulls her tightly to his side, and she climbs on top of him to bury her face in the cove of his neck and shoulder. Pressing her lips to his throat, she settles against him like they've slept naked together many times, like this isn't the first time for so many things that feel natural. His hands are wide and comforting as they move up and down on her back.
"Sleep," he whispers in return.
Tomorrow it will all be there to deal with. Tonight, she sleeps without unanswered dreams.
This is me praying that this was the very first page/Not where the storyline ends.
Part Four
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: T/PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Damon & Elena POV, Damon/Elena (with an appearance by Caroline)
Category: Angst, Romance
Word Count: ~3700
Summary: Damon Salvatore fucking hates Taylor Swift. (But Elena loves her.)
Spoilers: Up through 2x08 "Rose."
Warnings: Speculation about what happens post-episode 8, but it's not based on any spoilers.
Show/Bookverse: Show
Author's Notes: Lyrics taken from the Taylor Swift songs "Sparks Fly" and "Enchanted." Part One / Part Two.
Additional A/N: So this was supposed to be the last part. But, um, yeah, it's not.
"Elena said that?"
He nods jerkily, and if it were anyone else, he'd be embarrassed by his inability to do anything but gush like a girl. Part of him doesn't even believe it--she can't possibly have meant what it sounded like she said.
He needed a second opinion, and a female one at that.
So he came to the only place he could think of.
"That's...an interesting turn of events," Caroline says. She hands him a glass of whiskey and sits next to him on her bed. "I mean, I really didn't see that ever happening."
He sips slowly from the glass. "It's not happening. It's not."
"Wait," Caroline says, holding her hand up. "You're not going to turn her, or you're not going to do something about her and Stefan being broken up?"
He snorts into his glass as he drains the rest of it. Choking a little, he slides his gaze over and looks at her from the corner of his eye. "Neither," he croaks out.
Caroline stands up and paces back and forth in front of him. She begins thinking out loud with, "Well, she does have a point about her being more helpful if she were a vampire," but when he glares at her forcefully, she just pivots on her heel and puts her hands on her hips. "Fine, be all noble--or whatever--about Elena's mortality, but let's talk about this whole she-wants-you-now business. Because, let's face it, that's way more interesting."
"She doesn't want me," he says, shaking his head. "She just..."
"That's sure what it sounded like to me. And, you know, she was asking me the other day about Compulsion. I got the feeling she and Bonnie were trying to figure out if there was a way to undo it."
"What?" he asks loudly, standing up. Suddenly he's got more energy in his body than he knows what to do with.
Caroline narrows her eyes at him shrewdly. "Did you compel Elena to do something?"
"No!" he shouts, which makes Caroline look all the more suspicious. "I didn't. I've never--the one time I ever tried to compel her, Stefan had already given her vervain, so she was uncompellable. And that was a long time ago, before I--" God, how sloppy is he getting if Elena knows she was compelled? Love fucking sucks.
"Before you loved her."
He curses under his breath and sets his empty glass down hard on the bedside table. "I don't fucking love her. Why does everybody always say that!?"
Caroline just laughs. "Oh, Damon." He looks at her over his shoulder and wants to choke the life out of her, that old murderous instinct alive and well within him, though not motivated solely by the fact that he's a blood-sucking vampire. There's a tinge of pity in her eyes, and it throbs through him like an off-beat drum. "You know you are very scary when you want to be, but you're also very transparent most of the time."
It's all so very humiliating, every aspect of it.
"You mean like how you're transparent?" he retaliates. "Like I don't know you're banging Tyler Lockwood."
Caroline is unabashed, and it's this facet of the vampire within her now that has chased away the insecure girl he first used and abused. Now she is his equal (and perhaps far better than him, but then again, who isn't?) and some sort of strange friendship has emerged from all the craziness. He'll never tell her how much he relies on her, but if he's so transparent, he probably doesn't need to, anyway. She just smiles and wags her finger at him. "You can't distract me from the fact that we're talking about you for once. Damon, come on!" She comes closer to him and pats his chest like she's encouraging him. "Elena likes you. She wants you to kiss her or something. That's exciting, isn't it? I mean, don't you want her to like you, and want to kiss you? That's what normal people want when they love someone. But God knows, you're not normal, so maybe this is all so weird for you, and so you don't know what to do." She claps her hands together. "I'll help you! I'll help you figure out how to woo her. And then--"
"Caroline, shut up," he says harshly. She clams up immediately, but he can still see the wheels turning in her head. "You know she's just--like rebounding from Stefan. And besides, everyone knows she belongs with him, and eventually she'll get back together with him, and there's no room for me in that equation."
Caroline examines his face, and nods, and he feels an odd sort of relief, like if she agrees that Stefan and Elena will one day get back together, then nothing else matters. (Which is completely true--on both counts.) But she says, "You don't know Elena as well as you think you do. She's...she has this inner fire, something that has sort of been subdued since her parents died. And to be perfectly honest, Damon, the only time I ever see a glimpse of that girl, the one from before--it's when she's with you. All Stefan is, really, is an older version of Matt. Maybe Elena is drawn to safety in some way, but what she really craves is danger." She blinks at him. "And that's you."
You're the kind of reckless that you send me running, but I kinda know that I won't get far.
Fucking Taylor Swift. (And fucking Elena, always in his head...now with a soundtrack.)
Damon tries to clear his mind as he moves to the door of Caroline's bedroom. She resumes her spot on the bed, still watching him with a bit of a musing smile on her face. They've all agreed to do whatever they need to, to preserve Elena's life, but he's needed to say something particular to Caroline for a long time, and now is as good a time as any, considering she's already certain she knows everything important about him anyway. "You know I'm sorry about--how I treated you back when..." He has a hard time saying these things aloud even if he can acknowledge them privately now. (His sins, his regrets, everything.)
Caroline nods and smiles as she pulls a throw pillow across her lap. "Yes, I know. I've known ever since you found out about me and Tyler."
He lifts his eyebrows in question.
"You didn't try to kill either of us," she says offhandedly. "Seemed like you'd grown, or whatever."
Damon can't stop the smile from erupting on his face. Sometimes, when she's not annoying the hell out of him, he kind of loves Caroline, too. He raps his knuckles on the door frame. "Good call, Care. I'll see you later."
"Damon, you should go talk to Elena. Get it all out between you two. If..." she hesitates, and the serious light in her eyes makes him really listen. "If we do this, let Katherine out of the tomb, and fight Elijah, and everything goes bad--well. You just don't want things left unsaid, do you? It's better to take the risk, than regret never having tried."
(Right now, though, he totally hates her, for being right.)
*
Elena is unsurprised to see Damon on the window seat when she comes out of the bathroom, even though it's been months since he's turned up in her bedroom unannounced. She knows he's often outside, keeping watch, because he, Stefan, Caroline, and Rose had started doing shifts of surveillance at her house to make sure nobody was invited in who shouldn't be. Whenever it was Damon's turn, he always waited outside.
Not tonight, however; Elena feels her nerves come to the surface as soon as she sees him sitting there. Again, it's like she's been here before, like maybe she's dreamed this moment, except she doesn't know what happens. She knows now what she wants to happen, but that doesn't mean it will.
"Hello, Damon," she says, speaking first.
He stays across the room, just sitting, staring at her. She doesn't move from her position outside the bathroom door, but waits to see what he'll do.
He takes a breath, and begins with, "First of all, I don't hate Stefan. And second of all, I don't love being a vampire. There are things I hate about him, and things I love about it, but those generalizations really bug me." He leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees, earnestly watching her. "I wanted to punish Katherine, yes, for everything she did, and so the tomb seemed like a good idea, but Stefan and I discussed the fact that we might need her alive because we knew she was running from something. I wanted to kill her more than I wanted to punish her, but I let the voice of reason sound in my ear on that one. And you and I both know that you and Stefan will eventually work all this shit out, and then you'll be so grateful that I didn't do any of my Damon-stuff.
"So, there. There's everything you need to know."
He stands up, and Elena knows he'll disappear before she can even see him move, so she says, "Wait," before he can vanish in a blink of an eye. "Don't leave," she says, and she puts enough inflection in her voice to show it's a request. A plea, even. Don't leave me, Damon.
He's just revealed more about himself, willingly, in less than one minute than he has in all the time she's known him combined. She feels a lightness in her chest that gives her the ability to be as equally candid. "What if Stefan and I don't ever get back together?" she asks. There are so many things to talk about, but this is the one thing that needs to be cleared up first.
One side of his mouth goes up in a smile that doesn't touch his eyes. "Not possible."
"What if we don't, Damon? What if you knew we'd never get back together. What would you do if you knew it would never happen?"
"I don't consider improbabilities," he announces, a formality in his speech that makes Elena feel he's playing another role--not snarky instigator this time, but the guy who steps aside, the one who isn't careless and impulsive. (Not himself, in other words.)
"I haven't slept with Stefan since before Katherine compelled Jenna to hurt herself." She blurts it out, and then feels her face flush. She knows it's significant, but she didn't mean to tell him like that.
He actually says nothing in return, but stares at her quizzically.
She shifts from one foot to another and steps towards him, feeling utterly naked. When he steps forward as well, she thinks it's encouragement, but still, she wants him to say something.
When he just asks, "Why?" she finds herself shrugging in indecision.
"I don't know why," she answers, which is the truth. "It just didn't feel right--after we got back together, I just couldn't." He compresses his lips into a thin line and looks away from her, but not before she sees some sort of elation in his expression. It amps up her courage just that much more. "But I think you know why." Her tone is loaded, and it's the closest she's ever come to trying to confront him about it.
He laughs mirthlessly. "I didn't compel you to not want Stefan," he says.
Surprised by that response, she tilts her head and watches him as he sinks back into a sitting position on the window seat. "No, I didn't think you had. But you said something that made something inside me change. Didn't you?"
He shakes his head, and remains silent, so she presses on. "I talked to Jeremy, and he said that even when he couldn't remember what happened to Vicki, the feeling of it was still there. He didn't know what caused the feeling, but he knew it was there. I don't know what caused it, for me, Damon, but you do. Because as soon as you did it, you started acting differently."
He finally looks her in the eye again. "I just left you alone, like you wanted."
"Wanted," she repeats. She can feel his fear now, and the fact that she can even scare him at all surprises her. It helps her hope that Rose has just been a distraction. "Past tense," she clarifies.
He stands up again, and she guesses he's still trying to leave, so she closes the distance between them as quickly as she can. Wrapping her hands lightly around his wrists, she knows that she doesn't posses the physical strength to hold him in anyway. What will keep him here with her now is only the correct combination of words.
(She doesn't know if she has them. It always comes down to this with Damon--careful steps that cultivate something deeper between them.)
He looks into her eyes, and for the first time she feels like she's so close to whatever the empty space in her memory is that she leans towards him, her bare feet lifting her up on toes that try to bring their faces together. Maybe he kissed her, and that's what she can't remember.
"I've been sleeping with Rose since the day after we rescued you from her."
Elena has felt sorry for Damon on many occasions; from the tomb to that moment in this very room when he tried to make her accept him when she just wasn't ready, but it's this one, when she knows he wants it so bad he can almost taste it, and yet he still resists, that makes something snap into place within her. It's to his credit that he attempts one more time to keep anything from happening between them.
So she repeats his query. "Why?"
He sighs, and closes his eyes for a brief moment. Then he says, "Because I wasn't ever going to sleep with you."
Elena smiles; she just can't help it. He laughs a little, though it's still quite humorless, and then drops her gaze, his eyes trailing to her neck, and the vervain necklace she still wears. She slides her fingers from his wrists to his palms and when his hands envelope hers, she starts to hope in a way she can't quantify.
"Damon..." she whispers. She's still holding herself up on her toes, but her legs are trembling now with the effort.
His hands squeeze hers, but then he lets go, moving them up to cup her face between his palms. "I'll never let you go," he says, and she shivers, because she already knows that; it's what she's been counting on. By doing this, she's effectively ending all possibilities between her and Stefan, not because it couldn't ever be again, but because choosing Damon instead is an irreversible act.
She's terrified but certain when his lips finally touch hers.
*
The hunger in Damon is ages old; in part it has nothing to do with Elena--it's just something he's searched for since before he was a vampire.
A human boy in deprivation of love became a vampire amplified by need and loss and decades of emptiness.
But with the brush of her tongue across his bottom lip and the slight strength of her arms as they encircle his neck, he learns that the hunger could only ever have been satisfied here, with her.
(He's been fucking starving, after all, and he could make a gourmet meal of her.)
To have Elena return even the smallest portion of that is far more than he has ever allowed himself to hope for (except for in his most desperate, drunken moments).
Her fingers clench in the hair at the nape of his neck and her teeth nip at his bottom lip, and her body--God, her long, beautiful body--pressing fully against his is so overwhelming that he feels like a nineteenth century virgin bridegroom. (Something he was once upon a time, or at least could have been if not for Katherine Pierce.)
His dick strains against the zipper of his jeans, but it's his chest that feels like it might explode, and when Elena leads him toward her bed without even breaking their kiss, he knows this is unlike any other encounter he's ever had. (And he's had so many, the distinction is too painful to ignore.) Their lips separate when her legs hit the bed and she attempts to fall back on to it, pulling him with her, but he throws his hands out and stops his body's forward motion. His hands land on either side of her head, and he doesn't allow himself to cover her, though every cell in his body feels the weight of gravity in a completely magnetic way.
"Elena," he gasps, and her eyes fly open. Her hands now grip the lapels of his shirt, tugging him ever closer, but he resists. "Elena, no."
Her eyes widen and she searches his face. Gently, one of her hands comes up, her fingers skimming his jaw, caressing his cheek, and he moves his head into her touch, craving it far more than blood at the moment. "Damon," she whispers. "I want you to, please," and he remembers her please back at the Boarding House.
"You can't seduce me into turning you," he says, and he's pretty sure it's just a deflective tactic, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
Her eyes are soft when she answers, "You think once will be enough?" and he hears the underlying question there too. If he can claim her forever (I'll never let you go), how can he realistically think beyond the inevitable (You should turn me)? Maybe Stefan never thought about it, but Damon had, long before Elena brought it up.
Loving someone forever really sucks if they aren't around. He knows, he cut his baby vampire teeth on that slogan.
"If I won't turn you, you'll only fuck me once?" he asks, but even though the words are right, he can't put the unfeeling harshness to them that should get him successfully tossed out on his metaphoric ass.
Her fingers move to the buttons on his shirt. His stomach muscles quiver as her nails scrape gently at the trail of hair below his navel. His unneeded breath shudders through his lungs when one of her hands slides beneath the waistband of his pants. "Tell me what I can't remember," she says, catching him completely by surprise.
It's so easy to say, he can't believe he ever made her forget it. "I love you, Elena."
*
Elena lays in her bed, next to him, and she can't. Quit. Touching. Him. For months, she's denied herself the admission that she wanted him; that he was so beautiful that she sometimes found it hard to look at him, that everything inside her only wanted this sort of intimacy with him, that it frightens her so much because it's Damon and she's watched him kill people, including her own brother.
What surprises her now, in the sweet aftermath of making love with him, is that she feels even more tenderly for him because of how positively wonderful he has been. It doesn't surprise her that he knows his way around a woman, or that as a vampire he possesses brutal strength that can injure her. But the fluid way he moved with her, and the care he put into each caress of his hands or brush of his lips over her body--well, even if he hadn't said the words, she would know he loved her anyway.
She feels cherished and ravished at the same moment, and now, he lies on his back next to her, not talking, and her fingers dance over his stomach and chest, tracing his arms and flanks.
And he just lets her. His eyes are closed and he says nothing, but she knows he's not asleep. One of his arms surrounds her, holding her next to him, and his hand plays with her hair in a completely innocent and thoroughly relaxing way, stroking the strands gently.
"What will Aunt Jenna say about this, I wonder?" he murmurs. His lips curl upward, but his eyes stay closed.
Elena giggles softly. "Oh, god," she breathes, because she didn't think this through at all. She'd thought about so many other things, but she hadn't really considered the consequences of what being with Damon would mean for other people.
Well, except for one.
She could reply, I wonder what your brother will say, but she hates to mention Stefan, not now, not when everything feels perfect for one small moment. She knows it can't last, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want to stretch it out as long as possible.
Damon's voice is contemplative when he adds, "Maybe we shouldn't tell anyone for now."
She lays her head on his shoulder. "For now?" she questions.
"No reason to piss everyone off if we're just gonna die, right?"
Elena's palm comes to rest flat against his abdomen, and his hand covers hers, holding her still. "We can't die now, Damon. Not when we've finally..."
"It's good incentive, trust me. I've never wanted to live more. But until it's over, one way or another? For Stefan."
Elena's eyes burn with tears. She's had her doubts through the last year, but as sure as she is now that Damon loves her, she also knows he loves his brother. She doesn't want to ruin any tentative relationship between them. "You're right," she whispers.
He pulls her tightly to his side, and she climbs on top of him to bury her face in the cove of his neck and shoulder. Pressing her lips to his throat, she settles against him like they've slept naked together many times, like this isn't the first time for so many things that feel natural. His hands are wide and comforting as they move up and down on her back.
"Sleep," he whispers in return.
Tomorrow it will all be there to deal with. Tonight, she sleeps without unanswered dreams.
This is me praying that this was the very first page/Not where the storyline ends.
Part Four