[fic] you can't choose what stays and what fades away
Title: you can't choose what stays and what fades away
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Damon POV; Damon/Elena
Word Count: ~1700
Rating/Warnings: R
Spoilers: Pretty much goes AU around 4x09.
Summary: Damon likes actually sleeping with Elena. As in being unconscious. As in not being naked.
Author's notes: This is a rewrite of upupa_epops's story You Are The Space In My Bed. Title for both fics lifted from Florence + the Machine's "No Light, No Light."
Damon likes actually sleeping with Elena. As in being unconscious. As in not being naked. Which is probably weird, and that's why he'd never tell anyone, especially her.
His problem with Elena has always been that he likes her too much. Sure, he'd like to bone her, but really? After a long day of trying to reel in Ripper!Stefan and having his heart literally hanging from its ventricles as Mikael tried to find a loophole in Klaus's compulsion of Damon's brother, lying in her bed with her just feels nice.
It's been a while since he had something nice.
So he watches her face as she drifts into a deep sleep, and even though he intends to get up and leave, somehow the next thing he's aware of, he's on his side staring at the opposite wall and her arm's around him. Her head rests against his back and she's, like, cuddling him.
Weirdest fucking thing ever. Except not really, because, well, Elena. And Damon.
(And Damon and Elena. They are so strange.)
He lays himself down carefully next to her. The invitation in her eyes may not be as hard to read as usual, but still. Her brother is sleeping in the bed next to them, so it's not like anything's going to happen.
(He'd be content just to hold her hand, come to think of it.)
But then she has to get all deep on him, and ask him questions she probably doesn't want to know the answers to. He tries to be honest, tries to show her that some things only lead to disappointment, so it's just better to set yourself up so you can't get disappointed.
He thinks she's getting it just when she bails from the room, just when their fingers are sliding together gently.
She runs like the wind, and he's a moth to the flame. They are the cliches they hate, no doubt.
When she turns around and runs back to him, though? That's kind of the best moment of Damon's life. Because she wants him, and she's not pretending otherwise for once.
(And he took his own advice: he had no expectations. This was never going to happen, ever.)
He kisses her and kisses her and kisses her and her hands are everywhere, and there is this moment of total freedom that he never could have anticipated. Elena's mouth is the wide, wide world, and her body is all the places he's ever wanted to go, and the way her hips move against his is music and magic and language that hasn't been invented yet.
He will do this with her forever; or until Jeremy interrupts them and ruins it.
(This is what he did expect: absolutely nothing.)
When they finally get to it (the sleeping euphemism that means nobody slept at all), he'd like to be able to say that he blew her mind and was in control the whole time.
(But who would believe that? No Fucking Body.)
So he just tries to give as good as he gets; he grits his teeth when her mouth opens over his cock, and the sound that emerges is much quieter than he would have guessed, and that's only tempered by the fact that when he goes down on her in return she says, OH MY GOD, as if she never even knew people did this sort of thing.
He's wiping her come off his chin when she's tackling him and flipping him on to his back again so she can mount him, and then when she comes again in a matter of moments, he feels pretty damn smug.
(It might be him, or it might just be that it's been a while.)
He teases her about that and she accuses him of being a man whore, laughing quietly as she falls asleep against his chest. Someday he'll tell her about his celibate stretch and she won't believe him and he'll have to explain that the Sex God before her hasn't always existed.
(She will roll her eyes and find him ridiculous, and he won't care, because he's sleeping with Elena Gilbert.)
They lay in the same bed after, and there is none of the lightheartedness surrounding him. There is doubt, confusion, anger. He can't help but think of all the girls, from Andie to Caroline to nameless and endless faces through the years, who he made do whatever he wanted with barely a flick of his eyelashes.
Elena lies beside him, willing to do anything to prove it's real, but he can't ask her so much as to touch him because the idea that she doesn't really want to is too awful to even let fully form in his brain.
So, he says nothing, and she says nothing. When her hand wraps around his wrist, his bones grind together, and he knows he deserves all of it, every last wincing pain.
At the lakehouse, he's very good about not inviting her in anyway. He hardly looks at her, just in case it gets interpreted as a signal. By the time they go back to Mystic Falls, they will have this down. They are done with being comfortable with each other.
He likes it better; it makes more sense, really. They should never have been able to sleep in the same bed anyway. Just sleep? Like a couple of morons. Like two people who just need each other, in whatever form? That's just bullshit.
(The truth is, he would always have just slept with Elena, as long as it meant she wanted him there.
God. What a pussy.)
He can hear her as she hovers outside the door, so he sets his book aside (the one he hadn't really been reading anyway as he's still on page five). He wants to curse her, wants to see the fear back in her eyes the way it once was, back when all she knew was what Stefan told her about him, or when all she could remember was him snapping her brother's neck right in front of her.
Those were good times. Nobody would ever have let him near the bed back then.
Only now, it doesn't matter, his bed, her bed, any bed; she comes in the room even though he tries to revoke the standing invitation. He says things like You shouldn't be here, and You need to leave, while standing between her legs and practically shoving his groin into her chest as she sits on the bed.
She looks at him indulgently, and the ruse is up. “Can we please skip the part where you pretend you don't trust yourself around me and you can't keep your hands off me?” she says, with just enough inflection it's like she's actually asking him a question that she doesn't know the answer to.
(But she knows the answer.
This was written long ago.)
He just stands there when she moves to the closet and drags out some old sweats. She strips her jeans and shirt off, unhooks her bra and turns to him like they've been doing this for-fucking-ever. But she says, “Look, I get it. No need to explain it all again. I understand. I'll be gone by morning. But please, don't kick me out now.”
So he does the only thing he can: he agrees to it, as dumb as it is. And that's when he actually gets uncomfortable. Oh, the irony. He plumps the pillows like Martha-fucking-Stewart and thinks he should have sent her back to Mystic Falls two days ago.
Even though, now, apparently, she'll go on her own.
But not before she tortures him one last time, right? Because this is Elena Gilbert after all. In her ratty old sweats, and her hair thrown up in a ponytail, it's like she can't even get on the bed without sliding herself all over him.
His entire body is stiff, and it's not because of arousal, unfortunately. It's just...this used to be the easy part. This was the easy part he didn't even know was easy until it suddenly couldn't be easy anymore.
And maybe Elena can read minds, at least minds she's sired to, because she says in a soft voice, "We did this once before I turned, remember?”
He slides his arms around her because getting to the truth of this is more painful than someone reaching into his chest cavity and tugging his heart loose. It was never like this before; that's the problem really. When they'd just been friends with so much frisson between them, ribbing her had been the highlight of his day.
Lying on her bed while she acted like she wanted him to leave was literally the best. fucking. part. of his day.
Now all he wants to do is promise her the world and that he'll never make her do anything she doesn't want to, but it's not that simple because the sire bond is so fucking complicated. Because to even promise something like that might accidentally imply impulses he doesn't want her to have, unless she has them naturally.
So he just falls back on old habits, infusing his voice with as much levity as he can. “You were all over me when I woke up.”
She huffs, “Yeah, well, I had to restrain you somehow. You kicked me!”
It catches him by surprise, and the laughter comes easily. He used to hate loving Elena, but now, now, he loves loving her, even if she doesn't really love him back.
She snuggles against him, nosing her cheek down onto the bare skin at the V of his shirt. She starts in on how she wonders if Bonnie and Jeremy will get back together now that Jer has admitted he still has a thing for the witch, and Damon adds his two cents about how it would be really handy to have her around to keep them alive.
Elena laughs, her fingers pressing into his side, and he loses track of time. They keep talking, they keep snuggling, and when he wakes up in the middle of the night this time, he's not surprised at all that she's right where she was when he drifted off.
It would be so much easier if he was.
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Damon POV; Damon/Elena
Word Count: ~1700
Rating/Warnings: R
Spoilers: Pretty much goes AU around 4x09.
Summary: Damon likes actually sleeping with Elena. As in being unconscious. As in not being naked.
Author's notes: This is a rewrite of upupa_epops's story You Are The Space In My Bed. Title for both fics lifted from Florence + the Machine's "No Light, No Light."
Damon likes actually sleeping with Elena. As in being unconscious. As in not being naked. Which is probably weird, and that's why he'd never tell anyone, especially her.
His problem with Elena has always been that he likes her too much. Sure, he'd like to bone her, but really? After a long day of trying to reel in Ripper!Stefan and having his heart literally hanging from its ventricles as Mikael tried to find a loophole in Klaus's compulsion of Damon's brother, lying in her bed with her just feels nice.
It's been a while since he had something nice.
So he watches her face as she drifts into a deep sleep, and even though he intends to get up and leave, somehow the next thing he's aware of, he's on his side staring at the opposite wall and her arm's around him. Her head rests against his back and she's, like, cuddling him.
Weirdest fucking thing ever. Except not really, because, well, Elena. And Damon.
(And Damon and Elena. They are so strange.)
He lays himself down carefully next to her. The invitation in her eyes may not be as hard to read as usual, but still. Her brother is sleeping in the bed next to them, so it's not like anything's going to happen.
(He'd be content just to hold her hand, come to think of it.)
But then she has to get all deep on him, and ask him questions she probably doesn't want to know the answers to. He tries to be honest, tries to show her that some things only lead to disappointment, so it's just better to set yourself up so you can't get disappointed.
He thinks she's getting it just when she bails from the room, just when their fingers are sliding together gently.
She runs like the wind, and he's a moth to the flame. They are the cliches they hate, no doubt.
When she turns around and runs back to him, though? That's kind of the best moment of Damon's life. Because she wants him, and she's not pretending otherwise for once.
(And he took his own advice: he had no expectations. This was never going to happen, ever.)
He kisses her and kisses her and kisses her and her hands are everywhere, and there is this moment of total freedom that he never could have anticipated. Elena's mouth is the wide, wide world, and her body is all the places he's ever wanted to go, and the way her hips move against his is music and magic and language that hasn't been invented yet.
He will do this with her forever; or until Jeremy interrupts them and ruins it.
(This is what he did expect: absolutely nothing.)
When they finally get to it (the sleeping euphemism that means nobody slept at all), he'd like to be able to say that he blew her mind and was in control the whole time.
(But who would believe that? No Fucking Body.)
So he just tries to give as good as he gets; he grits his teeth when her mouth opens over his cock, and the sound that emerges is much quieter than he would have guessed, and that's only tempered by the fact that when he goes down on her in return she says, OH MY GOD, as if she never even knew people did this sort of thing.
He's wiping her come off his chin when she's tackling him and flipping him on to his back again so she can mount him, and then when she comes again in a matter of moments, he feels pretty damn smug.
(It might be him, or it might just be that it's been a while.)
He teases her about that and she accuses him of being a man whore, laughing quietly as she falls asleep against his chest. Someday he'll tell her about his celibate stretch and she won't believe him and he'll have to explain that the Sex God before her hasn't always existed.
(She will roll her eyes and find him ridiculous, and he won't care, because he's sleeping with Elena Gilbert.)
They lay in the same bed after, and there is none of the lightheartedness surrounding him. There is doubt, confusion, anger. He can't help but think of all the girls, from Andie to Caroline to nameless and endless faces through the years, who he made do whatever he wanted with barely a flick of his eyelashes.
Elena lies beside him, willing to do anything to prove it's real, but he can't ask her so much as to touch him because the idea that she doesn't really want to is too awful to even let fully form in his brain.
So, he says nothing, and she says nothing. When her hand wraps around his wrist, his bones grind together, and he knows he deserves all of it, every last wincing pain.
At the lakehouse, he's very good about not inviting her in anyway. He hardly looks at her, just in case it gets interpreted as a signal. By the time they go back to Mystic Falls, they will have this down. They are done with being comfortable with each other.
He likes it better; it makes more sense, really. They should never have been able to sleep in the same bed anyway. Just sleep? Like a couple of morons. Like two people who just need each other, in whatever form? That's just bullshit.
(The truth is, he would always have just slept with Elena, as long as it meant she wanted him there.
God. What a pussy.)
He can hear her as she hovers outside the door, so he sets his book aside (the one he hadn't really been reading anyway as he's still on page five). He wants to curse her, wants to see the fear back in her eyes the way it once was, back when all she knew was what Stefan told her about him, or when all she could remember was him snapping her brother's neck right in front of her.
Those were good times. Nobody would ever have let him near the bed back then.
Only now, it doesn't matter, his bed, her bed, any bed; she comes in the room even though he tries to revoke the standing invitation. He says things like You shouldn't be here, and You need to leave, while standing between her legs and practically shoving his groin into her chest as she sits on the bed.
She looks at him indulgently, and the ruse is up. “Can we please skip the part where you pretend you don't trust yourself around me and you can't keep your hands off me?” she says, with just enough inflection it's like she's actually asking him a question that she doesn't know the answer to.
(But she knows the answer.
This was written long ago.)
He just stands there when she moves to the closet and drags out some old sweats. She strips her jeans and shirt off, unhooks her bra and turns to him like they've been doing this for-fucking-ever. But she says, “Look, I get it. No need to explain it all again. I understand. I'll be gone by morning. But please, don't kick me out now.”
So he does the only thing he can: he agrees to it, as dumb as it is. And that's when he actually gets uncomfortable. Oh, the irony. He plumps the pillows like Martha-fucking-Stewart and thinks he should have sent her back to Mystic Falls two days ago.
Even though, now, apparently, she'll go on her own.
But not before she tortures him one last time, right? Because this is Elena Gilbert after all. In her ratty old sweats, and her hair thrown up in a ponytail, it's like she can't even get on the bed without sliding herself all over him.
His entire body is stiff, and it's not because of arousal, unfortunately. It's just...this used to be the easy part. This was the easy part he didn't even know was easy until it suddenly couldn't be easy anymore.
And maybe Elena can read minds, at least minds she's sired to, because she says in a soft voice, "We did this once before I turned, remember?”
He slides his arms around her because getting to the truth of this is more painful than someone reaching into his chest cavity and tugging his heart loose. It was never like this before; that's the problem really. When they'd just been friends with so much frisson between them, ribbing her had been the highlight of his day.
Lying on her bed while she acted like she wanted him to leave was literally the best. fucking. part. of his day.
Now all he wants to do is promise her the world and that he'll never make her do anything she doesn't want to, but it's not that simple because the sire bond is so fucking complicated. Because to even promise something like that might accidentally imply impulses he doesn't want her to have, unless she has them naturally.
So he just falls back on old habits, infusing his voice with as much levity as he can. “You were all over me when I woke up.”
She huffs, “Yeah, well, I had to restrain you somehow. You kicked me!”
It catches him by surprise, and the laughter comes easily. He used to hate loving Elena, but now, now, he loves loving her, even if she doesn't really love him back.
She snuggles against him, nosing her cheek down onto the bare skin at the V of his shirt. She starts in on how she wonders if Bonnie and Jeremy will get back together now that Jer has admitted he still has a thing for the witch, and Damon adds his two cents about how it would be really handy to have her around to keep them alive.
Elena laughs, her fingers pressing into his side, and he loses track of time. They keep talking, they keep snuggling, and when he wakes up in the middle of the night this time, he's not surprised at all that she's right where she was when he drifted off.
It would be so much easier if he was.