[fic] let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany
Title: let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Elena, Damon POV; Damon/Elena; with appearances by Matt, Meredith, Carol, Jeremy, Stefan, and Caroline.
Word Count: ~4000
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything through S3.
Summary: Third time's a charm.
Author's notes: It's all upupa_epops's fault. /disclaimed. Title and quote from the poem "Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out" by Richard Siken, which was brought to my attention by the aforementioned upupa_epops. This is the conclusion to my weird Car Pranking Trilogy, i talk to you as if you’re really there and and here is the tabernacle reconstructed. WARNING: this is DECIDELY FLUFFY. I won't apologize for it.
Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time
and we were all forgiven,
even though we didn’t deserve it.
She moves out of the Boarding House after she has sex with Damon on Stefan's car.
Stefan doesn't know that's why, he thinks she just wants to work on her relationship with Jeremy, and it's not that that's untrue, it's just...well. Does it matter if she's not completely forthcoming with Stefan? Probably not. She owes him one or two or twenty lies.
So, she goes home and she and Jeremy work out a plan to make sure he's never in danger of her losing her mind around him. She watches him drink vervain every morning, and when she knows he's safe, she starts to think about going back to school.
She's not ready for that, though, so they make up a lie about her having mono, and all her teachers send her work home with her brother. She's supposed to graduate in a few months, and she actually wants to, so Calculus, Chemistry, and AP American Government become the cure for what ails her.
(Sort of.)
See, it's not so much bloodlust that will be her downfall. The longer she's a vampire, the more certain of that she becomes. But her lust for Damon? Yeah, that. That could destroy her.
The biggest reason it will destroy her is because it's not just lust. It would be easy if it was. He would make it easier if that's all it was. Even with devotion pouring out of him, he's most deferential with her a lot of the time.
He's also in her face, and loud, and honest, too. But she needs that. She craves that. If she didn't have that, the world would simply be misshapen and unbelievable.
The day she starts back at Mystic Falls High, she notices something that keen vampire senses or not would make her do a double take. She sees Caroline and Stefan walking in the hall after the final bell, and they don't know she's there. (They had found a witch-friend of Bonnie's mom that got Klaus back into his own body, but that didn't mean things were peachy with Caroline and Tyler.) There is this sort-of light between them, a softness in each of their faces that reminds Elena...of the way Damon looks at her. Of the way Stefan used to look at her. Of the fact that he doesn't look like that anymore and he'd seemed somewhat relieved as she packed up her things to go back home.
She's not sure what to make of that, so she leaves school and heads to the Grill for a plate of cheese fries. (Believe it or not, vampires still need comfort food.) She notices Damon's car parked out front, and isn't at all surprised to see him plucking darts from the dartboard as she enters the building. What surprises her is Meredith Fell, laughing at the nearby table and challenging him, "Okay, fine! Best three out of five?"
"You can't beat me," he says, the smile stretching his lips too genuine and beautiful. In a dramatic stage whisper, he puts his hand to the side of his mouth and his lips form the words, "Vampire, remember?"
"I can get you drunk enough to beat you, I'm sure," she declares, and Elena has to shake herself loose from the spot she's standing rooted upon when Matt comes in behind her.
"Whoa," he says. "Sorry, Elena, I didn't see you there."
She sidesteps him and turns to face him, forcing a smile to her lips. Will it always be like this? Never showing her true feelings, never fully understanding what her true feelings are? Is she really standing there, feeling jealous because Damon's playing darts with some girl?
(Of course not. She's jealous because he'll undoubtedly take Meredith home and fuck her brains out. Not necessarily on Stefan's car.)
When Matt's hand wraps around her elbow and he asks quietly, "You okay?" Elena knows that the situation has escalated to out of her control.
The minute she gave into it, she lost all hope of controlling it.
Not that Damon's been demanding, or even snarky. In the weeks since their failed attempt to toilet-paper Stefan's car, they had seen each other occasionally. He had called or come by to check on her, made sure she was dealing, and during all of that they'd only had sex three times.
(Every time he came over. It was only because one couldn't actually have sex through a phone, and they had not progressed to talking about it yet, so obviously phone sex would not have been an option.)
Every time it happened, though, Elena felt better. Not worse. Not guilty. Not ashamed. Each time she pressed her mouth to his, or drew her tongue over his collarbone, or opened her legs to his fingers, his mouth, or his cock, she felt anchored. She felt secure. She felt...alive.
"I'm fine," she says to Matt, but the worry creasing his forehead doesn't disappear right away. His eyes dart over her shoulder and then Damon's standing beside them.
"Everything okay?" he asks casually, but Elena knows he's reacting to Matt's expression. She amps up the smile on her face, nods her head emphatically, and when Damon wraps his arm around her neck and hauls her over towards Meredith, she's sort of helpless to prevent it.
"Dr. Fell thinks she can beat me at darts. Perhaps you can explain to her the folly of her ways," he says, doing an impressive eyebrow-waggling smirk while picking up his glass and throwing back the last swallow of his drink.
Elena rolls her eyes and shoves him off of her. He's a little drunk, certainly not as bad as she's seen him, even at 3:30 in the afternoon before, but it still annoys her. Because Meredith smiles this big, sweet smile and pushes out the stool next to her so Elena knows she wants her to sit down, and she ends up sharing her cheese fries with Damon's new ladyfriend.
It's not that she doesn't like Meredith, even if she had been angry about the vampire blood thing. Meredith had come to the Boarding House multiple times to apologize and talk at length with Elena. Above all things, she knew Meredith's compassion, had seen the way she tried to help Ric, remembered the soft-toned conversations they'd had, and she couldn't really say she wouldn't have done what Meredith had done if she were in her position. So, yeah, she can't even pretend there is residual animosity there regarding her vampire status. The only thing that bothers her about Meredith is that she's probably going home with Damon. Or has already been home with him.
"Well, thanks for the fries," Meredith says, getting to her feet. She grabs her purse and gives Elena a friendly smile. "And I'll remember to always invite you when I want to beat Damon at darts. His game got decidedly worse once you were here to distract him."
"I'm just drunk," he says, but when Elena looks at him, he doesn't seem any drunker than when she first arrived two hours earlier, if anything he seems more sober.
"Right," Meredith says sarcastically.
"Don't forget to call me about that couch," he says as she walks away.
"I won't. I'll talk to my mom tonight!" She waves and disappears through the door.
"What couch?" Elena asks.
"Oh, one of our old antiques needs to be reupholstered. She said her mom does that sort of thing for fun. She's going to see if she's interested."
Elena pushes the empty plate in front of her away and snorts. "Right. So you two, you hang out and drink, and talk about upholstery?"
Damon's neck stiffens and a puzzled look comes over his face. "Yeah. So?"
"So, nothing. That's great. I'm glad. I hope her mom wants to fix your couch. I need to go." She grabs her backpack from the floor and swings it up on to her shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye she sees his hand reaching for her arm, so she uses her vampire speed to get away from him, and she zips over to the door without regard for who might see her. The Grill isn't overly crowded for a late Monday afternoon.
The problem is, of course, you can't really run from a vampire, even when you are one. By the time she gets to her car, he's already there, leaned up against the door. "What is your problem?" he asks.
"I don't have a problem."
"That's totally obvious," he snarks.
She shakes her head. "Damon, don't. You don't want to talk about this, remember?"
"I don't want to talk about it?" he asks, the incredulity in his voice so convincing that for two or three seconds Elena thinks maybe she got it wrong somehow. "What I don't want to talk about is how you don't know, or you're not sure, or how you love my brother. You don't want to talk about it." He lifts his hands indifferently and slides out from between her and the car. "And by it, I mean the amazing sex we have every time you manage to get me alone."
"What about Meredith?" Elena asks before she can stop herself. Deflection, as a tool, is not something she's very handy with.
Damon turns around to look at her again, this time his expression completely dumbfounded. "What about her?" he asks.
Elena drops his gaze, glances away, and sees Mayor Lockwood walking over from the courthouse. "I don't know," she says. She forces her eyes to meet his. "I guess she just looks like someone you might pick up, you know, for a fuck buddy."
"Damon!" Mayor Lockwood calls as she gets closer. His head turns towards the sound of his name. He lifts a hand in acknowledgment as Carol crosses the street. "Just the person I wanted to see!" she says.
Things had settled back down after Alaric died, and between Tyler-Klaus, Caroline, Stefan, and Damon, they had managed to compel the members of the Council back to the time before they knew anything. Elena knows there's some Founder's meeting coming up, so that's probably what the Mayor wants with Damon. He turns back to Elena, leans in so he can whisper, "I already have a fuck buddy," and then just before he pivots on his heel away from her, she feels one of his hands slide over her ass and he pinches her, hard, on just the underside of her right butt cheek. "Carol!" he says, his enthusiasm slightly over the top, but the Mayor doesn't seem to notice.
"Hello, Elena," she says as Damon guides her away and Elena finds herself throwing a half-hearted wave at Tyler's mother.
She also grins the whole way home even though she knows she should be furious.
Three days later, she calls him.
"Do you know," he asks in greeting, "that Caroline is here right now teaching Stefan how to wallpaper?" He blows out a little laugh and Elena presses the phone tighter against her ear. "So, he's redecorating. After eighty years, he's finally updating that hellhole."
What's funny is that Elena didn't know, and she really doesn't care. "I know whose car we should prank," she says, which is its own answer if Damon's paying attention.
(And she knows he is.)
"Whose?" he asks, not missing a beat.
"Meredith's."
"What? No! She's my only friend, Elena. I don't want to cause a ruckus."
Elena can't tell if he's kidding, because the slow whine in his voice makes it seem like a sincere concern. But it bothers her for reasons beyond the previous rush of jealousy. "That's not true. You have other friends. You have me. And besides, we won't get caught. She won't know it's us."
"Of course she'll know it's us. I told her about our-" he cuts himself off abruptly, and Elena sits up straighter on her bed. "-car pranking escapades," he finishes, but Elena feels fury like she's never known before.
"You told her!?" she shouts. "You told her! About Stefan's car? About what we did on Stefan's car??"
He's quiet for a moment, and then his voice comes back, very firmly. "Ric is dead. I don't have anyone to talk to. She's my drinking buddy. When you get drunk, stuff just comes out. But, relax, Elena. It's not like she'd tell anyone. Your dirty little secret is safe."
She pulls the phone away from her ear and just stares at it. She's not stupid; well, not entirely stupid, anyway. She knew it would come to a head at some point, she knew they wouldn't just go on this way. Technically, this is better than the horror-filled fantasies she's had of Stefan somehow walking in on them, even though that would be so much simpler. If he saw it with his own eyes, there wouldn't be much need for conversation, would there?
So, what does Elena do, right now? It's right there, in her face, different interpretations of her actions all around her. She can clear the air, or she can let them all go on thinking whatever terrible things they think about her. (She knows Stefan knows something is up. He's asked her to tell him, whenever she's ready.)
She hangs up her phone, even though she can hear Damon backtracking, trying to get her to see that it's not really that bad. She stands up from her bed, walks out into the hallway and knocks on Jeremy's door. Her brother opens it, dragging his headphones off his head as he smiles at her. "What's up?" he asks.
"I'm sleeping with Damon," she announces.
Jeremy's head jerks back while an odd smile teases his lips. "I know," he says. Then it's Elena's turn to be taken aback, and her expression must convey her surprise. "I was home last week, when he came over and you guys were fighting downstairs about how you needed to go back to school." (Damon hadn't been pro-school in the idea that she needed to finish, but he did think she needed to start exposing herself to humans so she could learn self-control. Of course, he'd been right, but Elena had thought Jeremy was at baseball practice. When Damon had bent her over the couch, she hadn't protested at all. Now, her humiliation is complete.)
"Oh, God," she says, covering her face with her hands.
Jeremy's smile grows into a grin. "I got the impression it wasn't the first time, based on some of..." Elena puts a hand out towards her brother to keep Jeremy from possibly repeating what Damon said in the heat of the moment. (I think you like to fight because you know it can only end one way.) "I put my headphones on and waited until the house stopped shaking," he says, laughing at her embarrassment. Placing said headphones on the dresser, he reaches for Elena's hands. "If I'm going to live with a bunch of vampires, which I am, because you're my sister and I love you, I'd pick Damon over Stefan. I mean, Stefan let you die. I can't really say I'll ever get over that."
Elena can feel the tears in her eyes, and she wishes her brother hadn't had to become a man before he really got to enjoy being a boy. "But, Damon...killed you," she says.
"And Stefan let you die. If I had my vote, I'd probably say none of the above, but it's not my call. You're a vampire, now. I kinda think that's all that matters. I used to worry, if you went with Damon, he would hurt you. But now you're pretty evenly matched."
Elena throws herself against her brother's chest, hugging him tightly. She whispers, "I don't know," and presses her face hard into his shoulder.
His voice is low and calm, and channeling their mother when he says, "Yes, you do. You know. You're just afraid to say it."
She arrives at the Boarding House as the sun is setting. She marches in with possibly the most resolve she's ever had in her existence, but definitely the most she's had since becoming a vampire. She finds Damon drinking in the great room, and she shouts for Stefan and Caroline to come downstairs.
Damon looks more than a little worried and he asks, "What the hell is going on?"
"You should probably go wait in the car. I have toilet paper and saran wrap. And we are pranking Meredith's car, whether you like it or not."
His wide eyes go even wider when Stefan and Caroline come into the room. "Excuse me?" he asks. "You want me to wait in the car?"
She turns to Stefan, and instead of trying to find a nice way of doing it, or offer any kind of explanation, she just says, "I'm with Damon."
They had their moments, in the weeks right after she transitioned. They had made love and stayed up all night talking, he held her while she mourned her mortal life. But all of it had been like the kiss he gave the night he left her at her house with Matt, just another form of goodbye.
Caroline gasps slightly and her hand automatically reaches over to wrap around Stefan's wrist. Stefan, for his part, just nods and looks past Elena's shoulder to his brother. She can't see Damon, but she can feel his stillness, knows that he can't believe she's doing this, feels sucker punched and hopeful, scared shitless and overjoyed all at once.
"I had kind of guessed," Stefan finally offers, and she hears Damon scoff behind her.
"I'm not sorry, either," she says, and that's it. That's the thing that's been holding her down, the whole time. The idea that if she does this, she owes everyone a great big apology.
She doesn't owe them anything. She owes it to herself, to finally be honest, to take what she wants, to see if this is the way it's meant to be.
She swings back to Damon then, including him in the final thing she says as she turns her eyes back towards Stefan and Caroline. "We've got an errand to run. You two can hash this out later, okay?"
Stefan nods again. "It's alright, Damon."
Nobody knows if that's really true, but for now, nobody's finding out otherwise.
In the car, riding shot gun, Damon is silent. In all the time she's known him, it's the longest he's gone without speaking, ever, and it's unnerving. Elena thinks of a thousand different starting lines, but she finally settles on, "I guess I should have told you first."
Because really? What was she thinking? Zero regard for anyone else involved, that's what she was thinking. And that's sort of, completely, unlike her. Right?
"A heads-up would have been appreciated," he says, but there's a smile in his voice, so even though she doesn't trust her vampire reflexes quite enough to drive and keep her eyes riveted on her passenger, she does glance over at him. His gaze meets hers. He reaches over and chucks her under the chin. "I'm not complaining," he says.
Elena looks away because she needs to watch the road, but also because there are tears in her eyes again. She cries a lot as a vampire, she's noticed. "You said figure it out, or don't. I figured it out."
"Yes, you did."
She brushes tears away with the back of her hand and then clears her throat. "Meredith doesn't get off work until ten. So we're going to do her car in the hospital parking lot. And we'll have to be fast, because, you know, people."
"Elena, we don't need to prank her car to prove that I'm not sleeping with her. I'm not sleeping with her. I'm only sleeping with you. Minus the actual sleeping part."
Elena tightens her grip on the steering wheel. "That's not why we're tee-peeing her car."
"It's not?" he asks. The gentleness in his voice takes her back to that first night, to his quiet request that she not ruin what had happened between them with words.
She just shakes her head. His hand appears on her leg and she glances down to see his fingers squeeze her thigh reassuringly. "Elena," he says.
"Third time's a charm!" she says, and even she can hear the try in her voice. She doesn't have to do this with Damon; she's never had to do it with him. That's why they're here, now.
"Let's just go home," he says.
It's odd how easy it is to do whatever Damon asks when he does it like that.
"This bed is ridiculous. I've always wanted to say that."
He feels her start to laugh, only because he's wrapped around her, his chest pressed to her back, his knees bent into hers. He doesn't say anything, just buries his nose further into the hair covering her neck.
"I mean, look at it. Everyone you know could fit in here." She laughs again, softly. "It's ridiculous."
"And you haven't mentioned that prior to sleeping in it yourself, because...."
She shrugs her shoulder slightly, pressing it back into him. "Because you would have made some inappropriate comment about it that I didn't want to deal with."
He finds her ear through the mass of her hair, tugs on her earlobe with his teeth. "Something about how much I wanted to see you here?"
Another shrug. "Something about how much I wanted to be here."
"Ah. Self-projection. I like it." He squeezes her tightly and then sighs. "I need to get dressed. Council meeting."
He gets up and heads for the closet, but she just lounges on the bed, looking way too good in the midst of his pillows and blankets. It's still too early to tell if this is going to stick, but he's pretty much walking on sunshine for now. She had come home with him last night, waited while he talked with Stefan for a while (who had apparently worked himself through all of this without anyone telling him anything, and Damon can't figure that out yet, but give him some time), and then she went to bed with him. In his house. In his bed. And they totally didn't even have sex. They just, like, slept. And it was really wonderful.
But now that it's a new day, and he has responsibilities, he has to let her out of his sight and his arms and hope that when they come back together it will still be the same.
"What time is the meeting?" Elena asks as she props herself up on her elbows to look at the alarm clock.
"It starts at ten, but Carol, Liz and I usually have our pre-meeting meeting about nine." He strolls back towards the bed with one of his dress shirts and a pair of trousers. He lays them over the footboard as Elena pushes the covers back and scoots over to his side of the bed. She's naked, and he can't stop the grin that spreads over his face, or the way he gets hard as she gets up on her knees and reaches a hand out to him. She draws him close until their bare skin touches and then she gives this little shudder that makes him crazy. "I can totally be late," he says, covering her mouth with his.
(He ends up not getting there until a little after ten, not because their sexcapades go on too long, but because when he goes out to the Camaro, it's covered in toilet paper and plastic wrap.)
(He cleans it up, by himself.)
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Elena, Damon POV; Damon/Elena; with appearances by Matt, Meredith, Carol, Jeremy, Stefan, and Caroline.
Word Count: ~4000
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything through S3.
Summary: Third time's a charm.
Author's notes: It's all upupa_epops's fault. /disclaimed. Title and quote from the poem "Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out" by Richard Siken, which was brought to my attention by the aforementioned upupa_epops. This is the conclusion to my weird Car Pranking Trilogy, i talk to you as if you’re really there and and here is the tabernacle reconstructed. WARNING: this is DECIDELY FLUFFY. I won't apologize for it.
Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time
and we were all forgiven,
even though we didn’t deserve it.
She moves out of the Boarding House after she has sex with Damon on Stefan's car.
Stefan doesn't know that's why, he thinks she just wants to work on her relationship with Jeremy, and it's not that that's untrue, it's just...well. Does it matter if she's not completely forthcoming with Stefan? Probably not. She owes him one or two or twenty lies.
So, she goes home and she and Jeremy work out a plan to make sure he's never in danger of her losing her mind around him. She watches him drink vervain every morning, and when she knows he's safe, she starts to think about going back to school.
She's not ready for that, though, so they make up a lie about her having mono, and all her teachers send her work home with her brother. She's supposed to graduate in a few months, and she actually wants to, so Calculus, Chemistry, and AP American Government become the cure for what ails her.
(Sort of.)
See, it's not so much bloodlust that will be her downfall. The longer she's a vampire, the more certain of that she becomes. But her lust for Damon? Yeah, that. That could destroy her.
The biggest reason it will destroy her is because it's not just lust. It would be easy if it was. He would make it easier if that's all it was. Even with devotion pouring out of him, he's most deferential with her a lot of the time.
He's also in her face, and loud, and honest, too. But she needs that. She craves that. If she didn't have that, the world would simply be misshapen and unbelievable.
The day she starts back at Mystic Falls High, she notices something that keen vampire senses or not would make her do a double take. She sees Caroline and Stefan walking in the hall after the final bell, and they don't know she's there. (They had found a witch-friend of Bonnie's mom that got Klaus back into his own body, but that didn't mean things were peachy with Caroline and Tyler.) There is this sort-of light between them, a softness in each of their faces that reminds Elena...of the way Damon looks at her. Of the way Stefan used to look at her. Of the fact that he doesn't look like that anymore and he'd seemed somewhat relieved as she packed up her things to go back home.
She's not sure what to make of that, so she leaves school and heads to the Grill for a plate of cheese fries. (Believe it or not, vampires still need comfort food.) She notices Damon's car parked out front, and isn't at all surprised to see him plucking darts from the dartboard as she enters the building. What surprises her is Meredith Fell, laughing at the nearby table and challenging him, "Okay, fine! Best three out of five?"
"You can't beat me," he says, the smile stretching his lips too genuine and beautiful. In a dramatic stage whisper, he puts his hand to the side of his mouth and his lips form the words, "Vampire, remember?"
"I can get you drunk enough to beat you, I'm sure," she declares, and Elena has to shake herself loose from the spot she's standing rooted upon when Matt comes in behind her.
"Whoa," he says. "Sorry, Elena, I didn't see you there."
She sidesteps him and turns to face him, forcing a smile to her lips. Will it always be like this? Never showing her true feelings, never fully understanding what her true feelings are? Is she really standing there, feeling jealous because Damon's playing darts with some girl?
(Of course not. She's jealous because he'll undoubtedly take Meredith home and fuck her brains out. Not necessarily on Stefan's car.)
When Matt's hand wraps around her elbow and he asks quietly, "You okay?" Elena knows that the situation has escalated to out of her control.
The minute she gave into it, she lost all hope of controlling it.
Not that Damon's been demanding, or even snarky. In the weeks since their failed attempt to toilet-paper Stefan's car, they had seen each other occasionally. He had called or come by to check on her, made sure she was dealing, and during all of that they'd only had sex three times.
(Every time he came over. It was only because one couldn't actually have sex through a phone, and they had not progressed to talking about it yet, so obviously phone sex would not have been an option.)
Every time it happened, though, Elena felt better. Not worse. Not guilty. Not ashamed. Each time she pressed her mouth to his, or drew her tongue over his collarbone, or opened her legs to his fingers, his mouth, or his cock, she felt anchored. She felt secure. She felt...alive.
"I'm fine," she says to Matt, but the worry creasing his forehead doesn't disappear right away. His eyes dart over her shoulder and then Damon's standing beside them.
"Everything okay?" he asks casually, but Elena knows he's reacting to Matt's expression. She amps up the smile on her face, nods her head emphatically, and when Damon wraps his arm around her neck and hauls her over towards Meredith, she's sort of helpless to prevent it.
"Dr. Fell thinks she can beat me at darts. Perhaps you can explain to her the folly of her ways," he says, doing an impressive eyebrow-waggling smirk while picking up his glass and throwing back the last swallow of his drink.
Elena rolls her eyes and shoves him off of her. He's a little drunk, certainly not as bad as she's seen him, even at 3:30 in the afternoon before, but it still annoys her. Because Meredith smiles this big, sweet smile and pushes out the stool next to her so Elena knows she wants her to sit down, and she ends up sharing her cheese fries with Damon's new ladyfriend.
It's not that she doesn't like Meredith, even if she had been angry about the vampire blood thing. Meredith had come to the Boarding House multiple times to apologize and talk at length with Elena. Above all things, she knew Meredith's compassion, had seen the way she tried to help Ric, remembered the soft-toned conversations they'd had, and she couldn't really say she wouldn't have done what Meredith had done if she were in her position. So, yeah, she can't even pretend there is residual animosity there regarding her vampire status. The only thing that bothers her about Meredith is that she's probably going home with Damon. Or has already been home with him.
"Well, thanks for the fries," Meredith says, getting to her feet. She grabs her purse and gives Elena a friendly smile. "And I'll remember to always invite you when I want to beat Damon at darts. His game got decidedly worse once you were here to distract him."
"I'm just drunk," he says, but when Elena looks at him, he doesn't seem any drunker than when she first arrived two hours earlier, if anything he seems more sober.
"Right," Meredith says sarcastically.
"Don't forget to call me about that couch," he says as she walks away.
"I won't. I'll talk to my mom tonight!" She waves and disappears through the door.
"What couch?" Elena asks.
"Oh, one of our old antiques needs to be reupholstered. She said her mom does that sort of thing for fun. She's going to see if she's interested."
Elena pushes the empty plate in front of her away and snorts. "Right. So you two, you hang out and drink, and talk about upholstery?"
Damon's neck stiffens and a puzzled look comes over his face. "Yeah. So?"
"So, nothing. That's great. I'm glad. I hope her mom wants to fix your couch. I need to go." She grabs her backpack from the floor and swings it up on to her shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye she sees his hand reaching for her arm, so she uses her vampire speed to get away from him, and she zips over to the door without regard for who might see her. The Grill isn't overly crowded for a late Monday afternoon.
The problem is, of course, you can't really run from a vampire, even when you are one. By the time she gets to her car, he's already there, leaned up against the door. "What is your problem?" he asks.
"I don't have a problem."
"That's totally obvious," he snarks.
She shakes her head. "Damon, don't. You don't want to talk about this, remember?"
"I don't want to talk about it?" he asks, the incredulity in his voice so convincing that for two or three seconds Elena thinks maybe she got it wrong somehow. "What I don't want to talk about is how you don't know, or you're not sure, or how you love my brother. You don't want to talk about it." He lifts his hands indifferently and slides out from between her and the car. "And by it, I mean the amazing sex we have every time you manage to get me alone."
"What about Meredith?" Elena asks before she can stop herself. Deflection, as a tool, is not something she's very handy with.
Damon turns around to look at her again, this time his expression completely dumbfounded. "What about her?" he asks.
Elena drops his gaze, glances away, and sees Mayor Lockwood walking over from the courthouse. "I don't know," she says. She forces her eyes to meet his. "I guess she just looks like someone you might pick up, you know, for a fuck buddy."
"Damon!" Mayor Lockwood calls as she gets closer. His head turns towards the sound of his name. He lifts a hand in acknowledgment as Carol crosses the street. "Just the person I wanted to see!" she says.
Things had settled back down after Alaric died, and between Tyler-Klaus, Caroline, Stefan, and Damon, they had managed to compel the members of the Council back to the time before they knew anything. Elena knows there's some Founder's meeting coming up, so that's probably what the Mayor wants with Damon. He turns back to Elena, leans in so he can whisper, "I already have a fuck buddy," and then just before he pivots on his heel away from her, she feels one of his hands slide over her ass and he pinches her, hard, on just the underside of her right butt cheek. "Carol!" he says, his enthusiasm slightly over the top, but the Mayor doesn't seem to notice.
"Hello, Elena," she says as Damon guides her away and Elena finds herself throwing a half-hearted wave at Tyler's mother.
She also grins the whole way home even though she knows she should be furious.
Three days later, she calls him.
"Do you know," he asks in greeting, "that Caroline is here right now teaching Stefan how to wallpaper?" He blows out a little laugh and Elena presses the phone tighter against her ear. "So, he's redecorating. After eighty years, he's finally updating that hellhole."
What's funny is that Elena didn't know, and she really doesn't care. "I know whose car we should prank," she says, which is its own answer if Damon's paying attention.
(And she knows he is.)
"Whose?" he asks, not missing a beat.
"Meredith's."
"What? No! She's my only friend, Elena. I don't want to cause a ruckus."
Elena can't tell if he's kidding, because the slow whine in his voice makes it seem like a sincere concern. But it bothers her for reasons beyond the previous rush of jealousy. "That's not true. You have other friends. You have me. And besides, we won't get caught. She won't know it's us."
"Of course she'll know it's us. I told her about our-" he cuts himself off abruptly, and Elena sits up straighter on her bed. "-car pranking escapades," he finishes, but Elena feels fury like she's never known before.
"You told her!?" she shouts. "You told her! About Stefan's car? About what we did on Stefan's car??"
He's quiet for a moment, and then his voice comes back, very firmly. "Ric is dead. I don't have anyone to talk to. She's my drinking buddy. When you get drunk, stuff just comes out. But, relax, Elena. It's not like she'd tell anyone. Your dirty little secret is safe."
She pulls the phone away from her ear and just stares at it. She's not stupid; well, not entirely stupid, anyway. She knew it would come to a head at some point, she knew they wouldn't just go on this way. Technically, this is better than the horror-filled fantasies she's had of Stefan somehow walking in on them, even though that would be so much simpler. If he saw it with his own eyes, there wouldn't be much need for conversation, would there?
So, what does Elena do, right now? It's right there, in her face, different interpretations of her actions all around her. She can clear the air, or she can let them all go on thinking whatever terrible things they think about her. (She knows Stefan knows something is up. He's asked her to tell him, whenever she's ready.)
She hangs up her phone, even though she can hear Damon backtracking, trying to get her to see that it's not really that bad. She stands up from her bed, walks out into the hallway and knocks on Jeremy's door. Her brother opens it, dragging his headphones off his head as he smiles at her. "What's up?" he asks.
"I'm sleeping with Damon," she announces.
Jeremy's head jerks back while an odd smile teases his lips. "I know," he says. Then it's Elena's turn to be taken aback, and her expression must convey her surprise. "I was home last week, when he came over and you guys were fighting downstairs about how you needed to go back to school." (Damon hadn't been pro-school in the idea that she needed to finish, but he did think she needed to start exposing herself to humans so she could learn self-control. Of course, he'd been right, but Elena had thought Jeremy was at baseball practice. When Damon had bent her over the couch, she hadn't protested at all. Now, her humiliation is complete.)
"Oh, God," she says, covering her face with her hands.
Jeremy's smile grows into a grin. "I got the impression it wasn't the first time, based on some of..." Elena puts a hand out towards her brother to keep Jeremy from possibly repeating what Damon said in the heat of the moment. (I think you like to fight because you know it can only end one way.) "I put my headphones on and waited until the house stopped shaking," he says, laughing at her embarrassment. Placing said headphones on the dresser, he reaches for Elena's hands. "If I'm going to live with a bunch of vampires, which I am, because you're my sister and I love you, I'd pick Damon over Stefan. I mean, Stefan let you die. I can't really say I'll ever get over that."
Elena can feel the tears in her eyes, and she wishes her brother hadn't had to become a man before he really got to enjoy being a boy. "But, Damon...killed you," she says.
"And Stefan let you die. If I had my vote, I'd probably say none of the above, but it's not my call. You're a vampire, now. I kinda think that's all that matters. I used to worry, if you went with Damon, he would hurt you. But now you're pretty evenly matched."
Elena throws herself against her brother's chest, hugging him tightly. She whispers, "I don't know," and presses her face hard into his shoulder.
His voice is low and calm, and channeling their mother when he says, "Yes, you do. You know. You're just afraid to say it."
She arrives at the Boarding House as the sun is setting. She marches in with possibly the most resolve she's ever had in her existence, but definitely the most she's had since becoming a vampire. She finds Damon drinking in the great room, and she shouts for Stefan and Caroline to come downstairs.
Damon looks more than a little worried and he asks, "What the hell is going on?"
"You should probably go wait in the car. I have toilet paper and saran wrap. And we are pranking Meredith's car, whether you like it or not."
His wide eyes go even wider when Stefan and Caroline come into the room. "Excuse me?" he asks. "You want me to wait in the car?"
She turns to Stefan, and instead of trying to find a nice way of doing it, or offer any kind of explanation, she just says, "I'm with Damon."
They had their moments, in the weeks right after she transitioned. They had made love and stayed up all night talking, he held her while she mourned her mortal life. But all of it had been like the kiss he gave the night he left her at her house with Matt, just another form of goodbye.
Caroline gasps slightly and her hand automatically reaches over to wrap around Stefan's wrist. Stefan, for his part, just nods and looks past Elena's shoulder to his brother. She can't see Damon, but she can feel his stillness, knows that he can't believe she's doing this, feels sucker punched and hopeful, scared shitless and overjoyed all at once.
"I had kind of guessed," Stefan finally offers, and she hears Damon scoff behind her.
"I'm not sorry, either," she says, and that's it. That's the thing that's been holding her down, the whole time. The idea that if she does this, she owes everyone a great big apology.
She doesn't owe them anything. She owes it to herself, to finally be honest, to take what she wants, to see if this is the way it's meant to be.
She swings back to Damon then, including him in the final thing she says as she turns her eyes back towards Stefan and Caroline. "We've got an errand to run. You two can hash this out later, okay?"
Stefan nods again. "It's alright, Damon."
Nobody knows if that's really true, but for now, nobody's finding out otherwise.
In the car, riding shot gun, Damon is silent. In all the time she's known him, it's the longest he's gone without speaking, ever, and it's unnerving. Elena thinks of a thousand different starting lines, but she finally settles on, "I guess I should have told you first."
Because really? What was she thinking? Zero regard for anyone else involved, that's what she was thinking. And that's sort of, completely, unlike her. Right?
"A heads-up would have been appreciated," he says, but there's a smile in his voice, so even though she doesn't trust her vampire reflexes quite enough to drive and keep her eyes riveted on her passenger, she does glance over at him. His gaze meets hers. He reaches over and chucks her under the chin. "I'm not complaining," he says.
Elena looks away because she needs to watch the road, but also because there are tears in her eyes again. She cries a lot as a vampire, she's noticed. "You said figure it out, or don't. I figured it out."
"Yes, you did."
She brushes tears away with the back of her hand and then clears her throat. "Meredith doesn't get off work until ten. So we're going to do her car in the hospital parking lot. And we'll have to be fast, because, you know, people."
"Elena, we don't need to prank her car to prove that I'm not sleeping with her. I'm not sleeping with her. I'm only sleeping with you. Minus the actual sleeping part."
Elena tightens her grip on the steering wheel. "That's not why we're tee-peeing her car."
"It's not?" he asks. The gentleness in his voice takes her back to that first night, to his quiet request that she not ruin what had happened between them with words.
She just shakes her head. His hand appears on her leg and she glances down to see his fingers squeeze her thigh reassuringly. "Elena," he says.
"Third time's a charm!" she says, and even she can hear the try in her voice. She doesn't have to do this with Damon; she's never had to do it with him. That's why they're here, now.
"Let's just go home," he says.
It's odd how easy it is to do whatever Damon asks when he does it like that.
"This bed is ridiculous. I've always wanted to say that."
He feels her start to laugh, only because he's wrapped around her, his chest pressed to her back, his knees bent into hers. He doesn't say anything, just buries his nose further into the hair covering her neck.
"I mean, look at it. Everyone you know could fit in here." She laughs again, softly. "It's ridiculous."
"And you haven't mentioned that prior to sleeping in it yourself, because...."
She shrugs her shoulder slightly, pressing it back into him. "Because you would have made some inappropriate comment about it that I didn't want to deal with."
He finds her ear through the mass of her hair, tugs on her earlobe with his teeth. "Something about how much I wanted to see you here?"
Another shrug. "Something about how much I wanted to be here."
"Ah. Self-projection. I like it." He squeezes her tightly and then sighs. "I need to get dressed. Council meeting."
He gets up and heads for the closet, but she just lounges on the bed, looking way too good in the midst of his pillows and blankets. It's still too early to tell if this is going to stick, but he's pretty much walking on sunshine for now. She had come home with him last night, waited while he talked with Stefan for a while (who had apparently worked himself through all of this without anyone telling him anything, and Damon can't figure that out yet, but give him some time), and then she went to bed with him. In his house. In his bed. And they totally didn't even have sex. They just, like, slept. And it was really wonderful.
But now that it's a new day, and he has responsibilities, he has to let her out of his sight and his arms and hope that when they come back together it will still be the same.
"What time is the meeting?" Elena asks as she props herself up on her elbows to look at the alarm clock.
"It starts at ten, but Carol, Liz and I usually have our pre-meeting meeting about nine." He strolls back towards the bed with one of his dress shirts and a pair of trousers. He lays them over the footboard as Elena pushes the covers back and scoots over to his side of the bed. She's naked, and he can't stop the grin that spreads over his face, or the way he gets hard as she gets up on her knees and reaches a hand out to him. She draws him close until their bare skin touches and then she gives this little shudder that makes him crazy. "I can totally be late," he says, covering her mouth with his.
(He ends up not getting there until a little after ten, not because their sexcapades go on too long, but because when he goes out to the Camaro, it's covered in toilet paper and plastic wrap.)
(He cleans it up, by himself.)