fanfiction: The Secret Faces of Damon Salvatore
They reach the small town,(some name with P, or was it B? she already forgot.) around three o’clock on the next day, after driving for hours in awkward, uncomfortable silence and with averted eyes. Elena has resolutely watched the roadside through the open window, letting herself be dulled by the endless repetition of farmhouses, signboards and fences while she thought about Stefan. She tried to picture him as clearly as possible, his gentle voice, always present sympathy and comforting hugs and let the feeling of his loss fill her completely. By the time they park in front of the sheriff’s office she hasn’t thought about dancing with Damon in over an hour and her determination to get Stefan back is again the only driving force on her mind.
The middle-aged, chubby man who greets them looks exhausted and still a little stunned by the fact that he, the sheriff for drunken bar fights and car accidents, suddenly has to investigate the slaughtering of a whole family.
“It’s not pretty”, is the first thing he says after he led them to his small office and they delivered their back-up story: Damon the investigator, Elena the young but driven trainee, complete with fake names. It’s only thanks to his level of distraction that the sheriff doesn’t question their lame explanations.
“A whole family, father, mother, two grown up sons and a thirteen year old daughter. They were camping up near Hiawasee, on summer vacation by the looks of it. They probably never knew what hit them...” he trails off, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
“The whole thing confuses me, to be honest. There definitely was a wolf involved, at least we could identify some of the hair and the biting marks as one, but some of the other wounds are strange. It looks like they’ve been inflicted by only two long barbs or teeth, must be some kind of cruel weapon. Of course, my daughter thinks it’s this Edward Sullen guy or what’s his name so we refer to them now as the “vampire bites”, his short barking laugh is devoid of any humor as Damon and Elena carefully don’t look at each other.
“I have some pictures to show you but they’re pretty gruesome, I have to warn you. They’ve been robbing me of sleep for over three days now.” He shoots a glance at Elena who’s face is unusual blank and tight.
Damon’s response is immediate. “Wait outside, Elena, or grab yourself a coffee. I’ll get you again when the worst is over.” He tries to not let his voice sound pleading, partly to keep up the charade and when she, predictably, opens her mouth to protest he harshly adds: “We’ve talked about this, Elena. You’re still too young for certain things, I don’t want any trouble with over ambitious childcare workers.”
She barely refrains from stomping her foot and slamming the door when she leaves the room but Damon doesn’t feel bad for a second. Though he usually admires her determination not to back down from whatever evil happens to be thrown at her there are boundaries for everything and he’s definitely setting them at her looking at pictures of her boyfriend’s victims. Five minutes into the big pictured presentation he’s positively relieved that he did , too.
It’s a close-up of the dead girl, although he couldn’t be sure about that if it weren’t for the face. It has the typical awkwardness, not quite fitting symmetry of a girl who just entered her teenage years and the dark brown hair at her temples bears still more semblance to fluffy childish hair. Her grey eyes are frozen open and, like the rest of her face, almost expressionless. Damon’s not sure if that makes it better or worse than if it would have been showing fear and panic. The rest of her body is ripped apart, bloody and maybe it’s just his vampires’ sense for aesthetic murder but something deep inside of him recoils violently. Almost unconsciously he notices that the girl’s earlobes are a little swollen and reddened as if the tiny golden studs were the first ones she ever got.
“That’s the worst”, the sheriff rasps beside him. “We couldn’t find one wolf hair on her body, which means that she was killed solely by that strange torture device, whatever the fucking hell it is. Normally we would check her for sexual abuse but with a- ….I mean, like that, it would be completely pointless.”
“I understand”, Damon responds, his voice strangely clipped.
When the screen finally turns black, the sheriff hands him the envelope that contains the note which was found beside the bodies. On a single slip of expensive looking paper it says in bold, elegant handwriting:
Your brother is coming along nicely. Give my regards to the lovely Elena, be sure to tell her how much Stefan’s missing her.
“I don’t quite know what to make of it”, the sheriff admits. “Seems harmless enough if you ask me, like part of a letter. We only noticed it anyway because there was no blood on it although it was lying quite close to the bodies. So we figured it could be from the murderer but I personally think it’s just a coincidence.”
“Yes”, Damon agrees while his fist is brutally squeezing the note. “I’m sure you’re right.”
Another couple of minutes pass with discussing what kind of warning should be issued to other campers and whether or not Damon has any information that will help solve the case. Seeing that he has none, Damon quickly compels him to forget their appearances and the whereabouts of the paper slip before they depart with a brisk handshake.
It’s not until he’s standing in the hallway, empty, with a clear view of his parked car outside, equally as empty, that he realizes something’s off. He does a slow spin, trying to find a trace of Elena when he notices the open door to the small kitchen of the sheriff. Which is adjacent to the office he just left, where he distinctively remembers another door leading to said kitchen. And it was open.
“Shit. Merde. Cazzo. Kuso. Scheiße. Mierda. ROBHO. Skit. Ha siktir. Merda. SHIT!“
He would probably go on like this forever, exhausting every vocabulary knowledge that still remains of his past journeys, if it weren’t for the fact that he needs to be silent to listen for her. When he does, he almost wishes he could just go back to swearing, shut out this horrible whimpering sound that seems to come from the bathroom of the sheriff’s office.
She’s lying on the floor now, her cheek pressed to the cool, grey tiles while her hands are clenching in involuntary spasms, pinching her palms, scratching the knuckles with her nails. She has tried to throw up, but she could only dry heave, her breath accelerating until her throat seemed to close up so that nothing could come out but no air was coming in either. She must have passed out then, because she can’t remember toppling over but now the toilet is looming over her and her body is covered in cold sweat. The picture of the dead girl is burning painfully behind her eyes, intersected with a memory of Stefan while they made love so very tenderly. Although she hasn’t done so in a long time she suddenly yearns desperately for her mother, for someone who’s embrace and scent was the ultimate and never failing solution to all troubles.
“Mom”, she whines. “Mommy.” Her voice is getting higher without her intention, “Mom”, resembles the fearful whimpering of a puppy now. “Mommy, Mommy.”
When she finally hears the clapping of the bathroom door there’s not a hint of a doubt on her mind about who this will be. Sure enough, a fraction of a second later his hands are clasping hers, stilling their frantic movements. She let’s herself be pulled into a sitting position and all but slumps into his ready embrace.
“Damn it, Elena, why can’t you ever do what I tell you!?” he whispers hoarsely in her hair.
It’s rhetorical, of course, so she just keeps on pressing her face hard into his chest, barely holding back from reaching inside his button-up and slipping her arms inside his sleeves in the attempt to crawl into him, hide under his skin. Instead she thinks that his smell might not be as calming and familiar as her mother’s but that it’s as close as it could possibly get. There are deep, unfamiliar humming sounds coming out of his throat, together with an unceasing stream of “I got you, Elena. I’m here now. I got you”, delivered in a foreign, soothing voice, and she shuts her eyes very tightly, trying to blank her mind from anything but this: “I’m here now, Elena.”
On the way to their next hotel, she’s cowering on her front-seat, pulling her body as close together as she can manage while she tries to concentrate on the words of the radio host. Damon turned it on after she asked him to and now he’s giving her quick, observing side glances which she doesn’t mind, really, because he just seems to make sure that she’s still lucid, not urging her to talk or purge or anything. Her breathing is slowly returning to her normal pace when the guy from the radio suddenly interrupts the ad about some stupid local car repair.
“As we just got informed, the police is officially issuing a warning to campers in Chattahoochee National Forest after the murder of a fa-“
He is quick to turn the radio off but Elena’s already filling in the blanks and her body starts to shake again, that strange whimpering voice building up in the back of her throat.
“Elena”, he calls to her from the driver’s seat, but she doesn’t seem to hear him so he reaches over and slips his hand under her hair, pressing it in the nape of her neck as his thumb slides slowly up and down in a soothing movement. Feeling his hand there, at the place where he’s proven to be so lethal to humans, including her own brother, and knowing that she is the one person who will never have a reason to be afraid of him touching that part of her is quite possibly the most reassuring feeling she ever had. The shivers subside, her breathing slows, air moving deeply in and out, calmed by the warm pressure of his palm and his thumb that is steadily tracing her throat, caressing the spot where he’d kill anyone but her.
His hand stays there for the rest of the drive.
Later in yet another hotel room, she feels so tired all of a sudden that she merely slumps on one of the single beds, not even bothering to change her clammy clothes before she curls herself together in fetal position, shuts her eyes and begins to list American states in order to keep her mind busy.
When she awakes it must be hours later because it’s dark in the room except for the light of a street lamp that is shining through a gap in the curtains. Her body is simultaneously cold and hot under the bedspread, the skin feels too tight for her body and her legs are moving restlessly as goose bumps erupt all over her in irregular intervals while the back of her throat feels dry and raspy. When she tries to get up to drink some water, her head starts throbbing, confused by the room which is swaying in front of her eyes and something menacing is moving in the darkness of the corners. She hasn’t felt like this in years, but there is no mistaking that crappy state of her body: Elena has high fever. Knowing that doesn’t make it any less awful though, and the obscure creatures in the dark don’t go away despite the fact that she’s telling herself that they’re not real. Barely suppressing jumbled noises of distress, for the umpteenth time this day, her body shuddering with every tiny movement, Elena slowly feels her way towards the other bed where she’s just able to make out his form.
“Damon ?”, she whispers when she feels the bedspread under her fingertips, but it’s almost inaudible, the fever robbing her of any strength of voice.
Feeling increasingly weak, she sinks on the edge of the bed and gropes for the switch of the small nightstand lamp in the hope that the light will do the job that her voice is no longer able to. Finally she locates the small button and the warm glow spreads over the bed, revealing Damon who is facing away from her. Only for a moment though, because he rolls on his back now, apparently disturbed, though unfortunately not woken, by the light. Elena has a sudden déjà-vu of a fairytale, the title long forgotten, where the princess is not allowed to look at her bewitched bear husband at night and when she inevitable does so anyway she discovers a beautiful prince instead of the beast. There used to be an illustration, showing the girl, her eyes wide with wonder, holding a dripping wax candle over the man in her bed. Elena had to look at it very carefully each time. It must be the fever talking, letting seem everything surreal, filling her with a sense of mystery as she looks at him. She’s not even sure if this moment is real, has never been able to tell during a fever fantasy but she’s spellbound by the sight all the same: his fingers are curled loosely beside his face, the cheeks flushed and beneath long lashes which are rimming delicate eyelids his eyes seem to move rapidly. His mouth is parted a bit, the shadow of beard stubble is darkening his jaw and at his temple, on the side where he slept on, the black hair is slightly damp and curly. He’s still sleeping, breathing in and out in a deep, slow rhythm.
He looks like a little boy she marvels, and he looks nothing like a boy at all.
Shivers and goose bumps are still racing across her skin with fever, her ears filled with some kind of ringing noise when the urge to touch him becomes all at once unbearable.
You can’t touch him, her mind protests, he’ll wake up! I’ll be careful, she argues back, I’ll just touch his cheek, just his cheek.
Still not completely sure if she is even awake or just has a vivid and disturbing fever dream, she ever so slowly reaches out and carefully presses two fingers to the flushed skin where his cheekbone makes a sharp line in the dim light. He feels almost as heated as her own fever burning body. I just want to touch his jaw for a second, the voice in her mind speaks up again whereas the part that did protest is increasingly getting muted. As if compelled, her fingers slowly slide down and graze the dark stubble which scrapes pleasantly over her sensitive, feverish skin, reminding her of a kitten’s tongue. I just have to see if the skin behind his ear is as soft as I imagine, and she simply obeys that voice now, sliding upwards and behind his ear shell where he feels as smooth as the insides of her own thighs. His hair now, there, where it’s all curly and disheveled and when she feels the silky soft curls pressed between her fingers it’s all she can do to not grab as much of it as possible with both of her hands. She’s shaking uncontrollably now, her head burning up to a scorching degree, the room seems to cave in around her and there’s that voice in her mind, urging her Touch him! Touch him! until she’s unable to stop herself. With open palms she strokes over his forehead, his nose, traces his soft neck and presses, curls her fingers around the strong muscles and sinews of his shoulders and collarbones, her labored breath comes out with slight hissing noises.
“Elena, what are you doing?” there is a sudden, confused sounding whisper in her ear and that’s when she notices that she must’ve leaned down while touching him because her face is mere inches from his and the blue of his eyes is overwhelming when she looks up dazedly. There is a part of her that is acutely aware that now, at the very least, she has to get up and probably ask for some kind of medicine but the fever is still controlling her, filling her with a sense of unreality and telling her that she doesn’t have to hold onto her morals if this a dream. So her eyes drop back to his mouth which is so tantalizingly close that she feels his breath on her skin, gets a glimpse of white teeth and the movement of his tongue.
“No, no” he moans agonized when he realizes what the direction of her gaze means. “Don’t do that, Elena”, he grasps her waist with both hands and gasps when he notices her increased body temperature. “You have fever, you’re not thinking clearly.” He sets about pushing her back, but Elena starts to whimper again in that tone of hers that he just discovered today.
“Just wanna taste, please, just one, want to, just one…” she rambles incoherently and presses her overheated, trembling body even closer, her eyes never leaving his lips. And God help him, but he has wanted to hear something like this from her for such a painfully long time now and he honestly can’t stop his hands from slowly beginning to pull her the other way.
Damon seems to be afraid to continue breathing, when she slowly opens her mouth, lets the tip of her tongue slip out and his own reaches out involuntarily to meet her halfway. The feeling of his soft, wet tongue circling hers is so all consuming that every other muscle collapses, causing her to sink down on his chest, closing the last shred of distance and melting their lips together. Nothing has prepared her for this, not his enforced, furious kiss on that cursed night and not the short, gentle one she pressed on his unmoving lips mere weeks ago. This is the first real kiss they share and the taste of him is causing her head to spin. Her tremors take hold of his body too, making them shudder in each other’s arms as their tiny whimpering noises sound loud in the otherwise quiet room. Elena is almost utterly convinced by now that this is a fantasy, the agonizingly slow, tender slide of his tongue around hers couldn’t possibly feel this right and dizzying, making every single cell of her body glow with pleasure. Clawing her hands in his body and having Damon’s gripping her trembling hips so very tightly, she wishes desperately that this fever dream would never end.
It takes a sudden cold pressure against her stomach to jolt her out of this frenzy. Apparently she has covered him completely with her body at some point and her shirt must have ridden up, exposing her to the cool metal of his belt buckle. She scrambles to stand up, swaying when she does, her lower lip trembling when she finally realizes that it was real, that all of it really just happened.
“Damon? I didn’t-, I thought I was sleeping, I mean-, is this real? So sorry..” she falls silent, trying to avoid his eyes, to avoid the hurt and desperation that will surely be there.
“It’s okay,” he tells her, even if it takes him a little while to respond. “I understand,” he’s using that soothing voice again, though it sounds a little more detached now. “You have really high fever, Elena, I should have never-,” he exhales forcefully. “ It’s my fault. Just go back to bed and let’s forget about it”
She’s sure that she never hated herself more in all of her life, she’s positively disgusted with herself for doing this to him, for letting him take all the blame, but she says nothing because the relief that he really believes she was out of it is equally as strong. While she crawls cautiously back under the cover he mutters something about being downstairs to ask for some medicine and then the door closes softly behind him. Elena tries to hold back the dry sobs that threaten to spill out of her throat when that small, awful voice begins to nag her again.
You knew this was real and not your imagination, no use pretending otherwise. You wanted this to happen, hell, deep down you’ve been wanting this for a longer time than you care to admit.
“No, no” she whispers croakily, “I didn’t, I swear, I didn’t, it was the fever!”
That’s a lie and you know it.
And she feels tempted to literally wail, because she knows it’s true. There is no more hiding the truth in her own mind and no ignoring of tonight’s truth either. Because if everything about it was real, then the feel of his tongue on hers was also true. Suppressing the sobs is damn near impossible now for how can she go back to the way things were when she knows now that kissing him feels so devastatingly right, equally arousing and calming while overshadowing in a few short minutes whatever she had believed to be bliss until now?
She pulls the covers over her head, draws her legs up and burrows her face in the pillow, her hands balled into tight fists. She is the most thorough orphan on the planet, Bonnie and Caroline would have a hard time understanding her, there is no one with whom she could talk about it, not even really with herself.
“Mom,” she whispers silently in the dark. “Mommy”.