[fic] Gravity Hurts (8/9)
Title: Gravity Hurts (8/9)
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Damon POV; Jeremy + Damon (+ Alaric); Damon/Elena, Stefan/Elena, Jeremy/Bonnie; Elena's around for this one.
Word Count: ~2900
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 (sex and bloodplay)
Spoilers: Everything through S3.
Summary: A bromance for the ages.
Author's notes: This fic is derived from this thread of discussion with shipperjunkie.
Previous Chapters: [1] | [2] | [3] | [4] | [5] | [6] | [7]
Add'l A/N: This may have veered into schmaltzy. I'm not sure what happened. :-/
When Damon finds her in the woods, he's not surprised by what he sees, exactly. Part of him, the part he would never expose to anyone, will never get used to Elena as a predator. He knows it's better, better than her being dead, better than her being gone forever. The biggest truth he'd grasped on her front porch when she asked for his help was not that he had some secret playbook to trump Stefan's teaching method; no, what he realized then is that he has all the time in the world to get it right. One way or another, if Elena will stick with him, it will work out.
(Of course, the idea of Elena sticking with him is pretty ludicrous.)
She's sitting on the ground, faint moonlight filtering through the leaves of the trees surrounding her. He could smell the blood before he got her, but it's not human. No, there are various animal carcasses surrounding her. Two bunnies, three squirrels, even a deer. She'd gone on a rampage, but even so, it's a mild one. She'll be beating herself up about it, but if those were human bodies around her, this would be a much more serious situation.
Still, she had to be pretty stealthy to get all of them, so Damon can't help but be impressed.
Her head snaps up when his footsteps reach her ears, and she springs to her feet. She only visibly relaxes when he comes into full view and she knows it's him. "Damon," she says with a weary sigh, as though it could have been someone else.
Maybe she wants it to be someone else, but he's it. He's the guy, both by default and by design.
He approaches her carefully because even though she knows it's him, she's still upset and, as they both know, she likes to hit. The thing is, now, she can actually hurt him. She's covered in blood; it's all over her face and her clothes, the t-shirt and jeans she put on that morning better for the burn pile now.
"You okay?" he asks.
She shakes her head miserably and tears begin to fall. He wants to do it again, just scoop her into his arms and rock away the pain, but it doesn't feel right this time. He sort of sees how this happened with her and Stefan. When you spend the majority of your time wanting to make her happy, it's really difficult to see her unhappy. Damon might be a romantic sap at heart, but he's not a stupid shit like his brother, so he doesn't let it overpower him.
One of them has to be sensible. And he's the only one capable at this point.
"Jeremy is fine," he says, his voice quiet but firm. "He's fine, and you didn't do anything to him that he can't recover from." He comes to a stop in front of her, but he doesn't touch her. "Look at me, Elena."
She forces her teary gaze up to his and nods her head. "I know. I know that in my head. But here," she says, her voice choking off as she presses her fist to the center of her chest. "Here it feels awful. I feel awful. I killed all these animals, Damon. Look at them." She glances around and then her eyes come back to his face. "I know what it is, now. To want to shut it all off. Just press the button, right? It will all go away."
"No," he says quickly, but still trying to keep his voice even. "No, it doesn't go away. It's more like you go away, Elena. You go to a dark, hard place that is really difficult to come back from. You've seen vampires like that, you've known us all at that place. You don't want to go there."
She wipes at the tears on her cheek, smearing more blood across her face. She looks off into the distance, and then her eyes swing back to his with ferocity. "You weren't like that," she says.
He frowns at her. "Yes, I was. Remember when I tried to compel you to kiss me? When I killed Vicki? Remember when I fed you my blood, in the cemetery?"
She shakes her head. "You wished me the best. You said, I want you to get everything you're looking for. You told me I should quit cheerleading if it didn't make me happy. You compelled Jeremy to forget when I asked you to."
She takes a step closer to him, the distance between them rapidly diminishing. "Don't rewrite history, Elena," he nearly whispers.
"You never flipped the switch. You were never like that. You just did assy things to make Stefan mad."
"Elena," he says loudly. "I killed Vicki. I killed Lexi. I killed Jeremy."
"You never flipped the switch?" she says again, but this time it's a question, and Damon realizes why it's so important to her.
If he didn't do it, and he's still here, all these years later, maybe there's hope for her.
So he tells the truth, albeit reluctantly. "I never flipped the switch. I couldn't; I had to always care if I was going to get Katherine out. And then I met you."
And I'll never be able to flip the switch now, ever. And neither will she; Elena, the compassionate one, the one who felt sorry for him because he'd "lost" Katherine, too. That girl can never shut it off, no matter how much she wants to.
She sags against him, collapsing forward until her head is on his chest. His hand comes up and cups the back of her head. "Let's go home," he says gently.
She shakes her head. "Not to my house." Her hand grabs a hold of the front of his shirt, her fingers fisting in the material. "I don't want to see Jeremy, not tonight."
"The Boarding House?" he asks, because he's sure she doesn't want to see Stefan either, not like this. That's their biggest problem: neither of them wants the other to see them how they really are, so Damon runs interference for them, knowing the truth about both of them and having to divide his affections.
(Not really; Stefan will always be his brother, nothing can change that. But Elena will always be the girl who changed everything, and he can no more forget that than he can his own name.)
She whimpers a little and then agrees quietly.
He wraps his arm around her shoulders and they disappear into the night.
As they enter the house, Damon calls out for his brother, but Stefan isn't there. He sends Jeremy a text message that they're going to stay at the Boarding House tonight, and when he looks at Elena and she looks at him, and they understand that they are all alone, something shifts.
Like, maybe the entire planet.
He leads her upstairs to his room, to his bathroom. He grabs a washcloth and after wetting it down, he wipes her face clean. She stands docilely, letting him do it. He pushes her hair back, tucking it behind her ears, and then he gestures at her dirty clothes. "We need to get you out of those. Do you have some spare clothes in Stefan's room?"
She nods. "Yes. He always let me use the top right drawer for my stuff."
"Stay here," Damon says. "I'll go get them."
He presses the washcloth into her hand and calmly walks out of the room, even though he doesn't feel calm at all. His heart is thumping like they just ran a marathon, and his blood is pooling in certain places. He had no intention of this (no, really). His desire to help Elena wasn't part of his grand plan to win her over. It was more because he had Jeremy (and Ric) breathing down his neck about it, and on the one hand he agrees with them.
On the other hand...
He finds pajama shorts and camis in Stefan's bureau-Elena clothes if ever there were some. He takes a deep breath and tells himself he can do this. He can take care of her emotionally without the other. After all, they really haven't ever had the other, minus that one time she mauled him. (Okay, yeah, he mauled her back, so what?)
But when he goes back to his bathroom, she's standing in front of the mirror without her shirt on, just down to her bra. Her jeans are still on, but she's staring at herself, the veins around her eyes filled up and her fangs on full display. He sets the clean clothes down on the counter and moves to stand behind her. She seems to be examining herself, so he leans forward, so their heads are even, and lets his face match hers.
Her eyes meet his in the mirror and she reaches up to sweep her hair aside. Her meaning is clear, but he's sure he must be misunderstanding. Then her hand comes up and presses against the side of his face, her fingers just brushing at the blood vessels on his cheekbone. "I never thought it was ugly," she says around her own fangs, her eyes still on his. "I just didn't want it to be my face."
He leans down, brushing his lips along the curve of her neck. He can feel her trembling, but it's not from fear, and he knows it. He lets his teeth graze the perfect skin on the side of her neck that bears no scars from the other times vampires bit her, back when she was human. She arches into him, and his teeth sink past creamy flesh, blood instantly filling his mouth. She moans her approval and Damon's cock throbs.
The difference between human blood and vampire blood is simply the potency. Human blood to a vampire is sustenance, vitality, and literal life, while vampire blood to humans is medicine, healing, and compensation. Vampire blood to a vampire? Damon's never said no, but it's never been a big thing for him either. Until now. Until Elena, because everything about her is more.
Everything about her is lifeblood to him.
A few moments later, he lifts his mouth from her throat, and her face is still vampiric. He kisses her cheek, the stain of her blood brightening his lips. "You're beautiful like this. You may not have wanted it, Elena, but it looks good on you."
She turns into him very quickly, biting him without asking, or even indicating exactly that she intended, too, though he knows she made up her mind downstairs. He tips his head back, slightly to the right, to give her the best access, and while she feeds, he keeps his hands busy by tugging at the front of her jeans, and his.
He would stop her, he would try to make it be something else entirely, but they've been on a collision course for too many days now. He knows what the reality should have been: she chose Stefan, she went home to him, and they lived happily ever after, until her mortality took her from him. That was the plan, that is exactly how it would have played out.
But, now, Elena is a vampire. Elena is everything she only ever let herself be with Damon, but all the time. So Elena chooses Stefan, and she goes home to him, but she dies. And now, now she is Damon's. Not because he'll be a better teacher, not because he loves her more. But because he sees her for everything she is, and he always has.
And she knows it, because she sees him. And she always has, even the things he thought he hid so well.
She feeds longer than he did (she needs it more) and when he's starting to feel a bit dizzy, she pulls away. Together they strip her of her pants and underwear. Her hands slide into his hair as he lifts her up, balancing her against the sink. Their eyes never part, and this is the other thing: Elena showing him she knows exactly what she's doing. This isn't like what happened in the kitchen with Jeremy; this is a decision more damning than that.
(More freeing than that.)
He fucks her on the marble counter top, his jeans barely undone, her bra still on. Just before she comes, she touches his face with her fingertips. They've both returned to normal, at least in appearance, and her eyes fall shut when she bucks up into him, clenching, bringing him with her.
She says his name like she never has before, and her fingers press desperately into the back of his neck.
Damon's mouth is against her shoulder when he says, "I love you."
She starts to cry, her arms wrapping around him, pressing their bodies more tightly together. "Never leave me," she replies, and that's good enough for him.
They're laying in his bed sometime later, quiet but not asleep. Damon turns his head to watch her, and she's curled up facing him, her hand resting against his chest.
"I'm sorry," he says, and it feels pulled from the depths of his soul. Words he rarely utters, and only to her, but he is sorry. The guilt has weighed on him since she brought it to his attention.
Her eyes widen a bit, and she smooths her hand over his abdomen. "It's okay. Stefan and I aren't really together. I mean, we tried to be, but it didn't work. So-"
"I'm not sorry about that," he interrupts, giving her a look. "Like I ever could be. Come on." He puts his hand over hers, pulling her fingers to his lips. He presses kisses against the pads of her fingers. "I'm sorry I put it on you. The burden. I wasn't thinking of that, of what it would do to you. But, in my heart, I think I wanted that. I wanted you to feel it. I told myself you just needed to hear it once and that was it, but...it was a lie. And I'm sorry."
She gives him a small smile. "I forgive you," she says.
"Of course you do. I mean, compassion amplified? If I got forgiveness for all that other shit, that wasn't going to be the dealbreaker, was it?"
She rubs her fingers against his bottom lip. "When I remembered? When it came back to me, it was like all the pieces of my life suddenly connected. It hurt so deeply. It all-I don't even know how to describe it, it funneled, here." She presses her other hand to the center of her chest, and his eyes are drawn to both the action and her bare breasts. "I wanted you more than I ever had before, but I was also mad at you, and I couldn't..." She shakes her head. "I had to let Jeremy orchestrate this whole thing, I guess."
Damon pushes himself up, propping his head up on his elbow. "Right now is probably not a great time to be making decisions, Elena. You're pretty messed up. So, don't think I'll be holding you to all this. Eternity's a long time."
"You're such a liar," she says, and the affection in her tone makes Damon's cock twitch.
He slides his arm under her, and pulls her close, tumbling her across his chest as he rolls back flat on the bed. "Jeremy is obviously my new best friend," he says instead of trying to explain it.
He means it. Tomorrow, she might go back to Stefan. And he'll probably let her, because eternity is a long time. What he's certain of now is that she'll always come back to him, too.
It's an exquisite kind of pain, the kind he has never been able to escape from, his entire existence. Why should it be any different now?
Elena lowers her mouth to his, nips at his bottom lip, and whispers, "I'm in love with you, Damon." She lifts her head then, eyes very serious. "I just wish I hadn't had to die to figure it out."
The gravity of the moment takes his breath and all he can do is make a joke to alleviate it. "Life's a bitch and then you die," he quips.
Her mouth quirks a little, like she doesn't know how to take it, so he reverses their positions so he's on top and cradled between her thighs. She gasps when she feels him against her and arches up in invitation. "But," he adds, pressing his mouth to hers. "Sometimes you get to live forever."
Her arms surround his neck, and he can see it, in her eyes: the resolve to make the best of it, like she always does. "We'll survive," she says.
"We'll live," he says.
"We'll live," she repeats.
When she draws his face back down to hers, he tries not to feel too happy.
...chapter nine...
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Damon POV; Jeremy + Damon (+ Alaric); Damon/Elena, Stefan/Elena, Jeremy/Bonnie; Elena's around for this one.
Word Count: ~2900
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 (sex and bloodplay)
Spoilers: Everything through S3.
Summary: A bromance for the ages.
Author's notes: This fic is derived from this thread of discussion with shipperjunkie.
Previous Chapters: [1] | [2] | [3] | [4] | [5] | [6] | [7]
Add'l A/N: This may have veered into schmaltzy. I'm not sure what happened. :-/
When Damon finds her in the woods, he's not surprised by what he sees, exactly. Part of him, the part he would never expose to anyone, will never get used to Elena as a predator. He knows it's better, better than her being dead, better than her being gone forever. The biggest truth he'd grasped on her front porch when she asked for his help was not that he had some secret playbook to trump Stefan's teaching method; no, what he realized then is that he has all the time in the world to get it right. One way or another, if Elena will stick with him, it will work out.
(Of course, the idea of Elena sticking with him is pretty ludicrous.)
She's sitting on the ground, faint moonlight filtering through the leaves of the trees surrounding her. He could smell the blood before he got her, but it's not human. No, there are various animal carcasses surrounding her. Two bunnies, three squirrels, even a deer. She'd gone on a rampage, but even so, it's a mild one. She'll be beating herself up about it, but if those were human bodies around her, this would be a much more serious situation.
Still, she had to be pretty stealthy to get all of them, so Damon can't help but be impressed.
Her head snaps up when his footsteps reach her ears, and she springs to her feet. She only visibly relaxes when he comes into full view and she knows it's him. "Damon," she says with a weary sigh, as though it could have been someone else.
Maybe she wants it to be someone else, but he's it. He's the guy, both by default and by design.
He approaches her carefully because even though she knows it's him, she's still upset and, as they both know, she likes to hit. The thing is, now, she can actually hurt him. She's covered in blood; it's all over her face and her clothes, the t-shirt and jeans she put on that morning better for the burn pile now.
"You okay?" he asks.
She shakes her head miserably and tears begin to fall. He wants to do it again, just scoop her into his arms and rock away the pain, but it doesn't feel right this time. He sort of sees how this happened with her and Stefan. When you spend the majority of your time wanting to make her happy, it's really difficult to see her unhappy. Damon might be a romantic sap at heart, but he's not a stupid shit like his brother, so he doesn't let it overpower him.
One of them has to be sensible. And he's the only one capable at this point.
"Jeremy is fine," he says, his voice quiet but firm. "He's fine, and you didn't do anything to him that he can't recover from." He comes to a stop in front of her, but he doesn't touch her. "Look at me, Elena."
She forces her teary gaze up to his and nods her head. "I know. I know that in my head. But here," she says, her voice choking off as she presses her fist to the center of her chest. "Here it feels awful. I feel awful. I killed all these animals, Damon. Look at them." She glances around and then her eyes come back to his face. "I know what it is, now. To want to shut it all off. Just press the button, right? It will all go away."
"No," he says quickly, but still trying to keep his voice even. "No, it doesn't go away. It's more like you go away, Elena. You go to a dark, hard place that is really difficult to come back from. You've seen vampires like that, you've known us all at that place. You don't want to go there."
She wipes at the tears on her cheek, smearing more blood across her face. She looks off into the distance, and then her eyes swing back to his with ferocity. "You weren't like that," she says.
He frowns at her. "Yes, I was. Remember when I tried to compel you to kiss me? When I killed Vicki? Remember when I fed you my blood, in the cemetery?"
She shakes her head. "You wished me the best. You said, I want you to get everything you're looking for. You told me I should quit cheerleading if it didn't make me happy. You compelled Jeremy to forget when I asked you to."
She takes a step closer to him, the distance between them rapidly diminishing. "Don't rewrite history, Elena," he nearly whispers.
"You never flipped the switch. You were never like that. You just did assy things to make Stefan mad."
"Elena," he says loudly. "I killed Vicki. I killed Lexi. I killed Jeremy."
"You never flipped the switch?" she says again, but this time it's a question, and Damon realizes why it's so important to her.
If he didn't do it, and he's still here, all these years later, maybe there's hope for her.
So he tells the truth, albeit reluctantly. "I never flipped the switch. I couldn't; I had to always care if I was going to get Katherine out. And then I met you."
And I'll never be able to flip the switch now, ever. And neither will she; Elena, the compassionate one, the one who felt sorry for him because he'd "lost" Katherine, too. That girl can never shut it off, no matter how much she wants to.
She sags against him, collapsing forward until her head is on his chest. His hand comes up and cups the back of her head. "Let's go home," he says gently.
She shakes her head. "Not to my house." Her hand grabs a hold of the front of his shirt, her fingers fisting in the material. "I don't want to see Jeremy, not tonight."
"The Boarding House?" he asks, because he's sure she doesn't want to see Stefan either, not like this. That's their biggest problem: neither of them wants the other to see them how they really are, so Damon runs interference for them, knowing the truth about both of them and having to divide his affections.
(Not really; Stefan will always be his brother, nothing can change that. But Elena will always be the girl who changed everything, and he can no more forget that than he can his own name.)
She whimpers a little and then agrees quietly.
He wraps his arm around her shoulders and they disappear into the night.
As they enter the house, Damon calls out for his brother, but Stefan isn't there. He sends Jeremy a text message that they're going to stay at the Boarding House tonight, and when he looks at Elena and she looks at him, and they understand that they are all alone, something shifts.
Like, maybe the entire planet.
He leads her upstairs to his room, to his bathroom. He grabs a washcloth and after wetting it down, he wipes her face clean. She stands docilely, letting him do it. He pushes her hair back, tucking it behind her ears, and then he gestures at her dirty clothes. "We need to get you out of those. Do you have some spare clothes in Stefan's room?"
She nods. "Yes. He always let me use the top right drawer for my stuff."
"Stay here," Damon says. "I'll go get them."
He presses the washcloth into her hand and calmly walks out of the room, even though he doesn't feel calm at all. His heart is thumping like they just ran a marathon, and his blood is pooling in certain places. He had no intention of this (no, really). His desire to help Elena wasn't part of his grand plan to win her over. It was more because he had Jeremy (and Ric) breathing down his neck about it, and on the one hand he agrees with them.
On the other hand...
He finds pajama shorts and camis in Stefan's bureau-Elena clothes if ever there were some. He takes a deep breath and tells himself he can do this. He can take care of her emotionally without the other. After all, they really haven't ever had the other, minus that one time she mauled him. (Okay, yeah, he mauled her back, so what?)
But when he goes back to his bathroom, she's standing in front of the mirror without her shirt on, just down to her bra. Her jeans are still on, but she's staring at herself, the veins around her eyes filled up and her fangs on full display. He sets the clean clothes down on the counter and moves to stand behind her. She seems to be examining herself, so he leans forward, so their heads are even, and lets his face match hers.
Her eyes meet his in the mirror and she reaches up to sweep her hair aside. Her meaning is clear, but he's sure he must be misunderstanding. Then her hand comes up and presses against the side of his face, her fingers just brushing at the blood vessels on his cheekbone. "I never thought it was ugly," she says around her own fangs, her eyes still on his. "I just didn't want it to be my face."
He leans down, brushing his lips along the curve of her neck. He can feel her trembling, but it's not from fear, and he knows it. He lets his teeth graze the perfect skin on the side of her neck that bears no scars from the other times vampires bit her, back when she was human. She arches into him, and his teeth sink past creamy flesh, blood instantly filling his mouth. She moans her approval and Damon's cock throbs.
The difference between human blood and vampire blood is simply the potency. Human blood to a vampire is sustenance, vitality, and literal life, while vampire blood to humans is medicine, healing, and compensation. Vampire blood to a vampire? Damon's never said no, but it's never been a big thing for him either. Until now. Until Elena, because everything about her is more.
Everything about her is lifeblood to him.
A few moments later, he lifts his mouth from her throat, and her face is still vampiric. He kisses her cheek, the stain of her blood brightening his lips. "You're beautiful like this. You may not have wanted it, Elena, but it looks good on you."
She turns into him very quickly, biting him without asking, or even indicating exactly that she intended, too, though he knows she made up her mind downstairs. He tips his head back, slightly to the right, to give her the best access, and while she feeds, he keeps his hands busy by tugging at the front of her jeans, and his.
He would stop her, he would try to make it be something else entirely, but they've been on a collision course for too many days now. He knows what the reality should have been: she chose Stefan, she went home to him, and they lived happily ever after, until her mortality took her from him. That was the plan, that is exactly how it would have played out.
But, now, Elena is a vampire. Elena is everything she only ever let herself be with Damon, but all the time. So Elena chooses Stefan, and she goes home to him, but she dies. And now, now she is Damon's. Not because he'll be a better teacher, not because he loves her more. But because he sees her for everything she is, and he always has.
And she knows it, because she sees him. And she always has, even the things he thought he hid so well.
She feeds longer than he did (she needs it more) and when he's starting to feel a bit dizzy, she pulls away. Together they strip her of her pants and underwear. Her hands slide into his hair as he lifts her up, balancing her against the sink. Their eyes never part, and this is the other thing: Elena showing him she knows exactly what she's doing. This isn't like what happened in the kitchen with Jeremy; this is a decision more damning than that.
(More freeing than that.)
He fucks her on the marble counter top, his jeans barely undone, her bra still on. Just before she comes, she touches his face with her fingertips. They've both returned to normal, at least in appearance, and her eyes fall shut when she bucks up into him, clenching, bringing him with her.
She says his name like she never has before, and her fingers press desperately into the back of his neck.
Damon's mouth is against her shoulder when he says, "I love you."
She starts to cry, her arms wrapping around him, pressing their bodies more tightly together. "Never leave me," she replies, and that's good enough for him.
They're laying in his bed sometime later, quiet but not asleep. Damon turns his head to watch her, and she's curled up facing him, her hand resting against his chest.
"I'm sorry," he says, and it feels pulled from the depths of his soul. Words he rarely utters, and only to her, but he is sorry. The guilt has weighed on him since she brought it to his attention.
Her eyes widen a bit, and she smooths her hand over his abdomen. "It's okay. Stefan and I aren't really together. I mean, we tried to be, but it didn't work. So-"
"I'm not sorry about that," he interrupts, giving her a look. "Like I ever could be. Come on." He puts his hand over hers, pulling her fingers to his lips. He presses kisses against the pads of her fingers. "I'm sorry I put it on you. The burden. I wasn't thinking of that, of what it would do to you. But, in my heart, I think I wanted that. I wanted you to feel it. I told myself you just needed to hear it once and that was it, but...it was a lie. And I'm sorry."
She gives him a small smile. "I forgive you," she says.
"Of course you do. I mean, compassion amplified? If I got forgiveness for all that other shit, that wasn't going to be the dealbreaker, was it?"
She rubs her fingers against his bottom lip. "When I remembered? When it came back to me, it was like all the pieces of my life suddenly connected. It hurt so deeply. It all-I don't even know how to describe it, it funneled, here." She presses her other hand to the center of her chest, and his eyes are drawn to both the action and her bare breasts. "I wanted you more than I ever had before, but I was also mad at you, and I couldn't..." She shakes her head. "I had to let Jeremy orchestrate this whole thing, I guess."
Damon pushes himself up, propping his head up on his elbow. "Right now is probably not a great time to be making decisions, Elena. You're pretty messed up. So, don't think I'll be holding you to all this. Eternity's a long time."
"You're such a liar," she says, and the affection in her tone makes Damon's cock twitch.
He slides his arm under her, and pulls her close, tumbling her across his chest as he rolls back flat on the bed. "Jeremy is obviously my new best friend," he says instead of trying to explain it.
He means it. Tomorrow, she might go back to Stefan. And he'll probably let her, because eternity is a long time. What he's certain of now is that she'll always come back to him, too.
It's an exquisite kind of pain, the kind he has never been able to escape from, his entire existence. Why should it be any different now?
Elena lowers her mouth to his, nips at his bottom lip, and whispers, "I'm in love with you, Damon." She lifts her head then, eyes very serious. "I just wish I hadn't had to die to figure it out."
The gravity of the moment takes his breath and all he can do is make a joke to alleviate it. "Life's a bitch and then you die," he quips.
Her mouth quirks a little, like she doesn't know how to take it, so he reverses their positions so he's on top and cradled between her thighs. She gasps when she feels him against her and arches up in invitation. "But," he adds, pressing his mouth to hers. "Sometimes you get to live forever."
Her arms surround his neck, and he can see it, in her eyes: the resolve to make the best of it, like she always does. "We'll survive," she says.
"We'll live," he says.
"We'll live," she repeats.
When she draws his face back down to hers, he tries not to feel too happy.
...chapter nine...