Fic: A Home at the End of the World
Title: A Home at the End of the World
Author: lit_chick08
Pairing: Damon/Elena, Damon/Alaric, Elena/Alaric, Damon/Elena/Alaric, references Elena/Stefan, Alaric/Jenna
Rating: R
Warning: non-explicit sex, threesome, slash
Word Count: 8,243
Spoilers: through 2x22 “As I Lay Dying”
Disclaimer: These characters belong to LJ Smith, Kevin Williamson, and Julie Plec
Summary: This wasn’t exactly how Elena pictured her future
A/N: Title and cut-text comes from the book and movie of the same name
Stefan has been gone for three months before she and Damon sleep together.
It isn’t planned. One minute they are fighting over something stupid and the next Damon has her pinned against the living room wall, dragging her pants down her hips even as she struggles to unfasten his jeans.
It’s fast and hard and nothing like it was with Stefan, which makes the entire thing that much easier for her. If Damon had been sweet and gentle, Elena is fairly certain she would have completely lost it.
When they have finished, Damon begins to draw back, clearly waiting for her condemnation, and Elena wishes she had it in her to offer it, but she doesn’t. She wanted this as much as he did, and she hates herself so much for it.
She pulls him back against her, burying her face in his shoulder, and Damon shivers as he does the same. They stand in the hallway, pants around their ankles, hands clutching the other desperately, and Elena knows in that moment Damon misses Stefan just as much as she does.
* * *
Jenna has been dead for four months before he and Damon sleep together.
It was never intended. One minute they are drinking their sorrows away and the next Damon is kneeling between his legs, his mouth coaxing Alaric to his first non-self-induced orgasm in months.
He has never imagined being with a man before, but it is different enough from Jenna or Isobel to ensure he will not completely lose it.
When he has come with a shout, Damon pulls back, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, clearly waiting for condemnation, and Alaric wishes he had it in him to offer it, but he doesn’t. Once it had begun, he wanted this as much as Damon did, and he hates himself so much for it.
Alaric pulls him up on the couch and stares at him for a moment, at the tension in his body, at the conflict in his blue eyes. And, in that moment, Alaric knows Damon is just as lonely as he is.
* * *
Elena finds out about Damon and Alaric’s relationship by accident.
It is a Saturday afternoon, and she is sitting home alone when the quiet begins to get to her. Ever since the sacrifice, since losing Jenna, John, and Stefan, Elena becomes anxious when she is alone. Usually it is not an issue; she suspects her friends have a pact to make sure she is never alone, but sometimes she falls through the cracks.
Alaric’s car is in the driveway, and Elena expects to find her lover and her guardian drinking in the living room; when she finds the room empty, she checks the library before heading upstairs. There is a low murmur of voices coming from Damon’s room, and Elena pushes open the door, not sure what she was expecting to find.
She definitely wasn’t expecting to find Alaric on his hands and knees, Damon thrusting into him in a rhythm Elena knows intimately.
“Oh, god!” she exclaims involuntarily, stumbling backwards into the door.
Both men froze, stunned expression on their faces, before pulling apart, Alaric scrambling beneath the sheets while Damon gets to his feet.
“Elena, wait - “
But she is already rushing down the stairs, nearly tumbling in her haste, and she doesn’t stop moving until she has driven to the opposite side of Mystic Falls. Her heart is beating wildly in her chest, her breathing fast and short, and Elena isn’t sure what she saw, what it means, or how she’ll ever look either of them in the face again.
When she finally returns home, Alaric is in his room and Damon, in hers.
“Let me explain,” Damon begins before she can even open her mouth.
“I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.”
Damon pauses for a moment, folding his arms over his chest, before softly declaring, “He needs someone right now, Elena.”
“Who doesn’t?” she counters.
* * *
After Elena interrupts them, Alaric demands to know why she was there at all, why she strolled into Damon’s bedroom without hesitation. His question is equal parts jealousy and protectiveness, and before Damon says a word, Alaric knows.
“You’re sleeping with her.”
Damon finishes dressing with a shrug. “Yes.”
“Jesus, Damon!”
“Ric - “
“She’s barely holding it together! You really think she’s in the right state of mind for you two to start a relationship?”
Damon pauses, raising one eyebrow. “I don’t know, pot. Should we consult the kettle?”
Alaric rakes his fingers through his hair. “This isn’t a joke!”
After a beat, Damon’s voice softens as he states, “She needs to feel safe right now, to feel loved.”
“Who doesn’t?” he counters.
* * *
She and Alaric avoid each other for almost a week before the tension gets the best of them. They wait until Jeremy has left for his date with Bonnie, and then they sit on opposite sides of the kitchen table, prepared to have a rational conversation about the vampire they were sharing.
Elena really never thought that would be a conversation she would ever need to have.
Neither of them says anything for the few first minutes, awkwardly avoiding the other’s gaze, before Elena finally blurts out, “Do you love him?”
Alaric looks up from the table, surprise on his face, before chuckling mirthlessly. “It’s complicated.”
“It always is with Damon.”
They don’t discuss anything else; neither has the words.
* * *
When Damon brings up the idea to him, Alaric instantly balks. For all intents and purposes, he is the closest thing to a parent Elena has left, and what Damon is describing would be the worst betrayal Alaric could ever perpetrate against Jenna’s memory.
“You’re fucking disgusting,” Alaric snaps, pushing Damon towards the other side of the bed.
“Oh, spare me the morality lecture. I see the way you look at her.”
Alaric glares at his lover, pushing himself into a sitting position. “Noticing she’s a beautiful girl and wanting to double-team her with you are two completely different things! And the fact that you don’t realize that - “
“Jesus! Forget it! It was just an idea, a way for all of us to get what we want.”
“Elena doesn’t want this.”
Damon shrugs. “Seemed pretty into it when I brought it up to her.”
Alaric froze, genuinely stunned. “Are you serious?”
Damon smiles.
* * *
When Damon brings up the idea to her, Elena instantly balks. For all intents and purposes, Alaric is the closest thing to a parent Elena has left, and what Damon is describing would be the worst betrayal Elena could ever perpetrate against Jeremy.
“You’re a pervert,” Elena declares, pushing Damon off of her with a grunt.
“Oh, stop acting like you’re going to run away, virtue fluttering. I see the way you look at him.”
Elena glares at her lover, rolling out of bed and wrapping herself up in the sheet. “Noticing that he’s cute and wanting you to do…what you said are two very different things! God, how do you not see that?”
Rolling his eyes, Damon flopped onto his back. “Whatever. I just thought this was a way we could all get what we want.”
“Alaric doesn’t want this.”
Damon shrugs. “He seemed pretty interested when I brought it up.”
Elena freezes. “Really?”
Damon smiles.
* * *
Unlike most men, Alaric has never really had a threesome fantasy. And the few times he has indulged in imagining what it would be like, it had always been two women. A few drunken nights, he had dreamed to being attended to by both Isobel and Jenna, but otherwise Ric was a fairly monogamous kind of guy.
He sits on Damon’s bed in his boxers, watching as Damon undresses Elena, and Alaric suddenly feels woefully out of his depth. Ric barely understands what he is doing with Damon most of the time, but he knows Damon feels something for him. And the one thing Alaric has always known is how deeply Damon loves Elena. If Klaus had never come to Mystic Falls, Alaric is certain the three of them would not currently be in the positions they are in right now, but he has started to force himself to recognize he cannot keep playing at Alternate History when it comes to their lives.
They are beautiful together. It strikes Alaric suddenly as he watches the way they hold each other, Damon’s mouth ghosting down the side of Elena’s neck, and Alaric finds himself moving forward before he is even aware of his intent to do so. When he realizes it, he stops, suddenly embarrassed, and he begins to shuffle backwards on his knees when Damon suddenly grasps his wrist in an iron grip.
“It’s okay,” Damon assures him, and there is such tenderness in Damon’s face, Alaric suddenly recognizes it is not he or Elena who need this.
Tentatively Alaric rests his hand on Elena’s hip, and he feels her tremble beneath his palm. As Damon began to kiss her breasts, Alaric presses himself firmly against Elena’s back; Elena tilts her head back to rest against his shoulder. Alaric glances down at her, his mouth moving to cover her own, when he notices the look in her big, brown eyes.
In that moment, Alaric discerns he and Elena are both doing this for Damon, trying to give Damon what he needs at the expense of what they are comfortable with doing.
Alaric kisses her forehead and vows this will be the only time this happens.
* * *
Three days after she slept with both Damon and Alaric, Elena is curled up on the couch in her living room when Alaric comes home from school. It is the first time they have been alone since that night, and Elena finds herself blushing, a reaction he shares.
Alaric pulls a bottle of wine from the cupboard before removing two glasses. Elena is surprised when he sits beside her, handing her one of the glasses, and declaring, “Well, this is awkward.”
She giggles, taking a sip of the sweet dessert wine. “You think?”
It is the first time they have really talked since she walked on him and Damon weeks earlier. She offers her explanation of how she and Damon ended up involved, and he replies in turn. They do not directly address what transpired in Damon’s bedroom three nights earlier, but Elena feels it throbbing in her brain, pushing its way to the forefront.
The wine has just started to make her feel warm when Alaric casually brushes a lock of hair away from her face. It is not intended to be sexual, but it reminds Elena so strongly of Stefan, she feels a sharp flare of arousal.
She works very hard when she is with Damon to make sure nothing reminds her of Stefan. Despite Damon’s efforts, Elena never lets him treat her the way Stefan did; when Damon tries to slow down or create any sort of intimacy, she always rebuffs him. It is not that she does not love Damon or that she doesn’t want to have something more with him; it is simply that she knows she is betraying Stefan and needs to pretend she is not sharing something deeper with Damon.
But Elena misses it: the soft touches, the light kisses, the lazy mornings spent in bed. She knows she could have it with Damon, but it seems like less of a sin to lean forward and brush her lips against Alaric’s.
He sighs her name, his voice tinged with reluctance, and Elena shifts easily into his lap, straddling him as she kisses him again, trying to coax a response from him.
“Elena, we can’t,” he whispers as she slips her arms around his neck.
“Why not? You do this with Damon, I do this with Damon.”
“But Damon isn’t here,” he points out.
“Ric…”
She doesn’t say anything else, but Elena can hear the pain in her voice, the longing. And then Alaric kisses her, long, slow, and sweet.
* * *
Alaric confesses to sleeping with Elena a week after the first time. He expects Damon to be angry or jealous, to punch him in the face or snap his neck, but instead Damon shrugs and takes another sip of his bourbon.
“You’re not angry?”
“Why would I be angry?” Damon asks.
Alaric sputters for a moment before admitting, “Because we did it without you.”
“And you’ll do it with me, so it doesn’t really matter who does what when.” With a chuckle, Damon declares, “Sometimes you’re so young.”
Alaric isn’t sure he means it as an insult but it certainly feels like one.
* * *
Elena tells them she is going to college in Pittsburgh a few weeks after graduation.
She is standing in the Damon’s bathroom getting ready for Bonnie’s graduation party, artfully applying gloss to her lips, while Damon and Alaric are still lounging in bed. Elena is not paying attention to their conversation until she hears Ric call, “Hey, ‘Lena? Why did Carol Lockwood leave me a message asking if you’ve made a choice yet?”
Elena feels her heart sink, wincing at the Mayor’s indelicacy. She had asked Tyler’s mother to write her a letter of recommendation, having overseen many of the civic activities Elena had been a part of, and she had promised to let her know the outcome of her applications. However, Elena also knew she would tell everyone, so she had spent the past month dodging her at every turn.
“She means college, I think.”
“You applied to college?” Damon asks, surprise in his voice. “You never mentioned that.”
Exiting the bathroom, Elena nods. “What did you think I was going to do after graduation, wait tables at the Grill?”
“Just until you mastered hanging upside down on a pole,” Damon teases with a smirk.
“Did you make a choice?” Alaric inquires. “Where did you even apply?”
Resisting the urge to make a joke about his lack of guardian skills, Elena sighs, tugging at the hem of her sundress. “I’m going to Pitt. I have to be there in two months.”
She watches the way both of their faces fall, and Elena suddenly hates herself for making them feel this way.
They don’t say anything else to her as she finishes getting ready.
She cries the entire way to the party.
* * *
It is a 6-hour drive from Mystic Falls to Pittsburgh, and Elena sleeps most of the way. Alaric alternates driving with Damon, who has been telling him for the past three weeks all the reasons they should stop Elena from going so far away. Some of them are mundanely human - crime rates, too far away from home, no one nearby - but others keep Alaric awake at night.
“Klaus is still out there somewhere with Stefan. What happens if he decides it’ll be fun to make Stefan find her, turn her, kill her?”
Elena doesn’t know it, but Alaric has slipped several vials of liquid vervain into one of her bags as well as vervain darts.
He introduces himself to her roommate’s parents as Elena’s uncle, which is the title they decided on before leaving Virginia; Elena does not want to have to explain her complicated history with guardians and Alaric does not blame her. Damon introduces himself as her boyfriend, and it takes everything Alaric has not to laugh outright at the not-so-subtle once over both Elena’s roommate and her roommate’s mother give him.
As he and the roommate’s father are wrestling boxes into the elevator, the strange man divulges, “I got to be honest: I’m glad Chrissy is living with Elena.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because that boyfriend of hers is scaring the shit out of every guy on the floor. No way are any of them going to try to go into their room any time soon.”
Alaric suddenly notices the way the teenage boys are all cowering beneath Damon’s possessive glare, and he laughs outright.
On the drive home, he reaches into Damon’s lap, taking him out of his pants and sealing his mouth around his cock.
It isn’t the most conventional way to say, “Thank you for ensuring no horny college student will try to have sex with our girlfriend,” but Alaric knows it is the way Damon most appreciates his thanks.
* * *
She misses them constantly.
It isn’t that she doesn’t give college an honest try. She is an active participant in her classes, she makes friends with the girls on her floor, she goes to parties and joins clubs; once, she even goes on a date with a junior in her creative writing class, but nothing feels the same without them there.
Elena limits herself to calling them only once a day; she usually calls Ric in the afternoons and Damon late at night, and both times she always struggles to impress upon them how much she is enjoying it. She knows how deeply she wounded them by choosing a school so far away, and she does not want to admit it was a terrible mistake.
She thought she needed to get away from Mystic Falls and everything it represented; it was too hard to be in her parents’ house, to see the places which constantly reminded her of Jenna and Stefan. All she wants is to have a life untouched by all of that darkness.
She knows she is not the only one. There is a reason Caroline and Tyler packed up Mason’s truck and moved out to California; it is the same reason Bonnie is in Massachusetts, why Jeremy retook the SATs two times so his score would qualify him for a school close to his girlfriend. All any of them want is to be free of Mystic Falls and the tragedy which plagued them there.
When she is home for Easter, Jeremy tells her he has been accepted into Boston University, that he and Bonnie have already found a place together off-campus.
“I kind of don’t ever want to come back here,” her brother confesses as they walk along the banks of the Willow Creek.
It is then Elena suggests selling the house.
* * *
When Elena tells him and Damon how she and Jeremy have decided to sell the house, splitting the profits and cutting ties with Mystic Falls forever, Alaric heaves a giant sigh of relief. He hates living in Jenna’s house, sleeping in Jenna’s bed; he is beyond grateful when Elena and Jeremy essentially render him homeless.
“We should move to Pittsburgh,” Damon proclaims later that night as the three of them lie entangled in his bed.
“I don’t know how to fill out that request on my housing form,” Elena teases as Alaric runs his fingers through her hair.
“Well, maybe if we get bunk beds,” Alaric suggests, smirking at the look of irritation on Damon’s face.
“I’m serious. I’m sick of this place anyway. We could get an apartment or a house or something.”
Alaric feels the way Elena seems to melt against him, and he suddenly suspects this has been Elena’s goal the entire time.
“We could,” Alaric allows.
They close on a townhouse before the start of the fall semester. There are three bedrooms, but they don’t even pretend as if they will not be sharing the master bedroom. As the movers carry in all of their belongings, Alaric watches Elena wrap Damon up in a hug, and he knows unequivocally this is not the temporary balm he once thought it was.
* * *
Elena likes sex.
She has never been ashamed to admit that. From the moment she lost her virginity to Matt when they were fifteen, Elena knew she wanted to touch and be touched, to enjoy what her body was capable of and take pleasure in what her lover’s body could do to hers. She never felt the need to apologize for how sexual she was, and anyone she had ever been with had enjoyed it.
But Elena is slightly ashamed of just how much she enjoys being with Damon and Alaric.
After the awkwardness of the first time, the three of them have established a rhythm. They all know what makes the others sigh, moan, or gasp; they know when to tease and when to satisfy, when it is appropriate to take your time and when it is tortuous to do so. Elena loves it, how well they know her, how well they know each other, but she also knows no one will ever understand it. If Jeremy or her friends ever found out, they would be horrified to know she was in love with the two men who should have been absolutely off-limits to her. And Elena knows they cannot go on like this forever, but she also doesn’t know how to stop.
She comes home from class one day to find Alaric standing in front of the refrigerator in nothing but his pajama pants, clearly enjoying his snow day. As she sheds her coat and boats in the entryway, Alaric turns to face her, a lazy smile on his face, and she feels such an overwhelming rush of love for him, it brings tears to her eyes.
“You okay?” he asks as she buries her face in his chest, pressing her lips over his heart.
“I love you.”
None of them say it often; it is implied in everything they do or say, but it has always felt taboo to all of them to say it aloud. The words coupled with their actions were the compounding of the betrayals they fear they are constantly committing, and so they use it sparingly.
Alaric tips her face up, his brow folded in concern, as he replies, “I love you too.”
Damon finds them on the kitchen table, Elena’s legs clutching tightly around Alaric’s waist, Alaric whispering against her ear. He takes a seat, silently observing, and, when Elena throws her arms over her head, she feels Damon take her hands in his, squeezing them lightly.
Sometimes she wonders what she has done to deserve being loved so fully.
* * *
They don’t keep secrets.
There are very few rules to their situation, but all of them agreed long ago no secrets would be kept. Sometimes this led to hurt feelings; more often than not, it led to explosive blow-outs Alaric ended up refereeing, but a relationship was hard enough to manage with only two people. With three, keeping secrets could destroy everything.
Alaric is coming out of his office one evening when Elena suddenly pulls him into the upstairs bathroom, pressing a finger against his lips to signal he is to be quiet. Damon is downstairs making dinner, the scent of spices filling the house, and Alaric is genuinely confused when Elena closes the door and immediately turns on the faucets.
“What - “ he begins only to have her press a hand over his mouth before pointing to her ear.
Alaric is convinced she has lost her mind until she holds up the pregnancy test, a bright pink positive sign letting him know what is requiring such secrecy.
Shortly after they first started their relationship, Elena had gone on the Pill. It was only practical, and they all agreed the last thing they needed was a baby, especially when they were still living in Mystic Falls. After the move to Pittsburgh, the topic never came up again, but Alaric knew the packet of birth control pills was still in the medicine cabinet; most mornings, as he and Elena got ready to leave together, he saw her take it.
This is the last thing Alaric expected tonight.
Elena will graduate in a month; she already has a job awaiting her at the Post-Gazette, a job she has been so excited about she spoke of little else. It is the worst possible time for her to be pregnant, and Alaric understands this.
“How far - “
“Six weeks,” she whispers, barely audible above the water.
“You don’t want to tell Damon?”
Elena looks pained as she shrugs. “I don’t…I don’t know…It’s our choice, isn’t it? Does he get a vote?”
She sounds so young in that moment, Alaric worries he and Damon have ruined her forever.
* * *
She goes to Planned Parenthood just to hear her options. It has been two days since she told Alaric, and they have not had a chance to discuss anything without Damon around. He tells her he thinks they should tell Damon no matter what they decide, and Elena wishes she knew what her decision would be.
They never really discussed what their relationship would be long-term. Elena gave up on normal years ago, but in the back of her mind, she still wants to be married someday, still wants to be a mother.
But she cannot have that with Damon and having that with Ric will break his heart.
So she listens to the nurse practitioner with the kind smile explain the procedure to her, and Elena accepts the literature the nurse gives her. The nurse tells her to come back no matter what she decides, and, as she catches the bus back to campus, Elena reads over both the abortion pamphlet and the prenatal care pamphlet.
She starts crying on the walk back to her car in the commuter lot, and Elena fumbles her cell phone out of her purse. As she sits behind the wheel, she calls Caroline, who answers on the third ring in the bubbly voice Elena misses so much.
“Oh, sweetie, what’s wrong?”
And it all comes tumbling out, five years of secrets ending with her pregnancy. Caroline is silent throughout Elena’s diatribe, and, when Elena has exhausted herself with confessions, Caroline exhales heavily.
“Holy shit, ‘Lena,” she finally says with a chuckle. “You don’t do anything half-assed, huh?”
She chuckles wetly, wiping at her face.
After a beat, Caroline declares, “No matter what, I love you and I support you. You know that, right?’
“Right.”
“Do you want to have it?”
“It’s just…It’s not a good time, you know? I’m supposed to start my job in three weeks, and I’d have to explain to everyone who the father is and I’d have to explain to the baby eventually why the three of us all live together and - “
“Yeah but do you want to have the baby? Take away all the bullshit, all the things you’re worried about; do you want to have the baby?”
Elena is quiet for almost a full minute, tears welling up in her eyes again, as she grits out, “You don’t get it, Care.”
“Stefan won’t hate you for this.”
Maybe Caroline gets it after all.
* * *
When Elena tells him she wants to have the baby, Alaric volunteers to be the one to tell Damon. He sees the way she instantly relaxes, and Alaric sincerely hopes Damon will not kill him in a fit of rage.
Elena has gone out to dinner with some friends from school to celebrate graduation, and Alaric takes a deep breath, bracing himself, before blurting out, “Elena’s pregnant.”
Damon barely hesitates as he opens the refrigerator, pulling a bag of blood from the crisper. “I know.”
“How - “
“Babies have heartbeats,” he cuts in, pouring the blood into a glass. “I’ve known for a month.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because obviously I wasn’t going to be included in the decision-making process, so why bother asking any pesky questions?”
Alaric feels the anger rolling off of Damon in waves, but he can also read the pain in Damon’s face at being excluded. “Damon, she didn’t know - “
“She didn’t know if she wanted to have a baby with me,” Damon interrupts, grabbing a bottle of whiskey and spiking his blood. “See, when push came to shove, she wanted you.”
“That’s not true,” Alaric immediately protests. “She just thought - “
“No, I get it. You’re the dad. I’m the vampire you both fuck. My place has become perfectly clear.”
“Jesus-fucking-Christ, Damon, stop the goddamn pity party!” Alaric explodes, wrenching the whiskey out of his hand. “This isn’t about you! And maybe this is exactly why she didn’t tell you because you’d find a way to make this all about you and your fucking insecurities!”
Damon freezes, stunned by his outburst, and Alaric waits for the backlash. Instead Damon walks out the door without a word.
When he returns hours later, obviously drunk, Alaric is half-asleep. Damon slips into bed beside him, and Alaric comes fully awake as he feels Damon’s hand settle on his stomach.
“You can give her all these things I can’t,” Damon murmurs against his shoulder blade. “I couldn’t take it if you both left.”
“We’re not going anywhere, Damon. We’re family.”
It isn’t until he says it out loud that Alaric realizes just how true it is.
* * *
She wakes up after giving birth to find Damon curled up in the recliner beside her bed, their daughter asleep in his arms. As she blinks her way to consciousness, Elena watches as Damon smiles beatifically at the baby, his voice soft and remarkably un-Damon-like. It takes her a moment to realize he is speaking Italian, and Elena feels her heart swell immeasurably.
“Hey,” she whispers hoarsely.
Damon looks up from the baby, his smile permanently affixed to his face. “Hey.”
“How’s she doing?”
He rises from the chair, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. Elena peels the blanket back to get a better look at her daughter’s face, and she can’t help but chuckle softly. She had been in labor for twenty-nine hours; by the time the baby finally made her appearance, Elena had barely been able to focus her eyes enough to really get a good look at her.
“She’s been sleeping. The nurse said she’ll be in later to show you how to nurse.”
Elena nods, one finger stroking the perfect skin of the baby’s cheek. “She looks like Ric.”
“Hopefully she’ll grow out of that.”
She struggles to slide up in the bed, wincing at the pain in her pelvis, before settling back into the pillows. “Where is Ric?”
“He went to pick up Jer and Bonnie from the airport.”
Carefully Damon transfers the baby into Elena’s arms, and she feels tears sting her eyes at the gentleness of Damon’s movements. She has seen Damon in every conceivable way, but watching him with the baby, with the baby they had all agreed they would raise as equals, makes her wonder if she has ever really known Damon at all.
“She needs a name.”
Damon nods in agreement. “What do you think about Sophia?”
Her name ends up being Sophia Grace Gilbert; she knows both Ric and Damon are disappointed she uses her last name for the baby, but if they both can’t win, then Elena would prefer they both lose.
* * *
Elena is on the back porch when Alaric comes downstairs, her laptop open as she finishes up an article. He sinks onto the glider beside her, and she barely glances up from the screen as she asks, “I thought you were reading Sophie a bedtime story.”
“Apparently when she said she wanted Daddy to read her a story, she meant Damon.”
He pretends it doesn’t sting, the preference his daughter has for Damon, but it has started to wound him acutely. In the beginning, Damon had been the only one who could placate her, the only one she wanted when she was colicky, fussy, or otherwise unhappy; he hadn’t minded then because the sound of Sophie’s screams broke his heart. But now that she was nearly three, Alaric was starting to resent the way she reached for Damon before him, the way she’d crawl up into his lap and call him Daddy. They had agreed long ago that Damon would be just as much as a parent to Sophie as they were, but the jealousy persisted.
“Don’t feel bad,” Elena advises as she saves the document and sets the laptop on the patio table. “She never wants me either.”
“Do you think it means…Well, I mean, she’s never…”
“You’re a good dad,” Elena assures him, sensing where his thoughts were going. “Damon’s home with her all day. It’s just natural.”
“You think?”
“It’s what I tell myself, so yeah.”
Alaric laughs as he pulls her against his side, kissing the top of her head. “I just worry sometimes.”
“Well…we could always have another one. Maybe it’ll like you.”
“You’re evil, you know that?”
Later that night, after Sophie is finally asleep, the three of them are in bed. Damon is leaning against the headboard, Elena lying on her back between his legs, his hands teasing her breasts as Alaric goes down on her. When she is wild with want, begging both of them to make love to her, Alaric stretches across her to reach the nightstand for a condom. He is stunned when she grabs his hand bringing it back to her body and shakes her head.
“’Lena - “
“Let’s just see what happens.”
She announces she’s pregnant again on his fortieth birthday.
* * *
Sophie is five, Jack is two, and she is pregnant again when Caroline calls her one Saturday morning. Elena is in the middle of wrangling Jack into his high chair, ordering Sophie and Damon to stop wrestling on the living room floor, and trying to figure out where she put her car keys when Alaric hands her the phone.
“Isn’t it, like, five in the morning in California?” Elena asks as she hands Alaric Jack’s oatmeal.
“Elena…Stefan’s here.”
The world starts to spin off its axis, and Elena barely manages to sink into a chair before she starts to cry. Instantly Damon and Alaric are at her side, Sophie watching in confusion from the living room, and Elena listens as Caroline recounts the events of the last past few days.
Stefan showed up on her door three days earlier, his decade of service to Klaus finally up. He had spent the past few months weaning himself off human blood, but, when he returned to Mystic Falls, he found none of his friends left. Caroline’s mother mentioned Caroline living in Los Angeles, and so Stefan went west.
“He keeps asking about you and Damon,” Caroline says, “and I don’t know what you want me to tell him.”
“Tell him where we are,” Elena answers instantly. “Tell him to come to us.”
After she relays the details to Damon and Alaric, she locks herself in the upstairs bathroom and cries, a mixture of relief, shame, and heartbreak.
* * *
Later that night, Alaric finds Damon in the backyard, drinking himself into a stupor.
“She’s going to leave us,” Damon declares. “She’s going to leave and she’s going to take the kids.”
“No, she isn’t,” Alaric immediately argues, sinking down beside him on the grass. “Elena would never take the kids away from us.”
“But you think she’ll leave.”
Alaric sighs, taking the bottle of whiskey from Damon’s hand and chugging several swallows. “We always knew she would.”
“And that’s it? You’re just going to let Stefan waltz in and take our girl, take our family?”
“Isn’t Stefan our family too?”
Damon steals the bottle back. “Not the way we are.”
For the first time since Sophie was born, Alaric wonders if this hasn’t been a mistake from the beginning.
* * *
When Stefan shows up the next day, Elena has a sudden irrational worry he will think she looks old. He remembers her as a seventeen-year-old girl, stricken with loss, always in peril; she is twenty-seven now, a grown woman, a mother, the partner to two men she loves dearly. She is not the girl he left behind, and she is even more afraid he is not the man she remembers.
Alaric answers the door, bringing him inside, and Elena starts to cry at the sight of him. Damon rises, and they embrace, which only makes her cry harder. By the time they pull apart, Elena is trying desperately to wipe away her running eye makeup and Stefan laughs at the effort. They hesitate for only one awkward beat before they are hugging as best as her swollen middle allows.
“Look at you,” Stefan says with a sad smile, his hands ghosting over her stomach. “When are you due?”
“Next month.”
Stefan gestures to the house as they sit, all of them tense with discomfort. “Caroline said you lived in the suburbs, but…I guess I just didn’t imagine this. Or, you know, Damon in the suburbs.”
“Hey, the desperate housewives here love me,” Damon swears, and there is just enough of the old Damon in his voice to make Elena start to relax, remembering the cadence of their old lives.
“Caroline said you have two kids.”
Alaric hands him one of the framed professional shots they got done a few months earlier. “That’s Sophia and that’s Jack.”
Elena sees the pain dance across his face as he looks at her children. They both bear such a strong resemblance to Ric, there is no denying who their father is, and Elena wonders just how much Caroline has explained.
She and Stefan go out to dinner, and Elena realizes that, to the other restaurant patrons, she probably looks like his big sister. When she repeats this observation, Stefan laughs for the first time since he arrived, and conversation at dinner flows much easier than it did earlier.
It isn’t until they are parking outside of her house when she blurts out her greatest fear.
“Do you hate me?”
“No,” Stefan instantly replies, “of course not. It’s been ten years, Elena. I never wanted for your life to just stop.”
“Yeah but…You didn’t want this either, right?”
“To be honest, I never really imagined this was an option,” he admits, “but you’re happy, right? I mean, Damon and Alaric, they make you happy?”
She nods, her hands settling on her stomach, before admitting, “Sometimes I wonder if the only reason we’re together is because we were all too damaged to move on.”
“Maybe originally,” Stefan allows, “but people don’t stay together for ten years, buy houses, and have kids together if it’s just a rebound.”
“Some people do.”
“Not you,” Stefan states authoritatively. “I saw the way they were with you today, the way you were with them. You guys love each other in a way that most people can only dream about. And I see the love they have your kids when they talk about them.” Smiling sadly, he adds, “I don’t hate you but I’m definitely jealous.”
Blotting at the tears on her face, she says, “You know you’re our family too, right? Damon and I, we wanted you back so bad, and we were so afraid that we’d never - “
“I know,” he assures her. “And honestly? I’m glad you took care of each other after…”
“You’re going to leave again, aren’t you?”
He nods, his own eyes filling with tears. “Not forever but…What you have with them, that’s what I wanted for us. And it just hurts right now to see it.”
“But you’ll come back?”
“Of course I will. I’m Uncle Stefan, right?”
“Right.”
As he helps her out of the car, he carefully cups her face, his thumbs brushing away her tears. Their lips meet once, softly and chastely.
“I love you so much,” he declares.
“I love you too,” she returns, truly meaning the words even if the definition of that love had changed in the past decade.
When she gives birth to Leah three weeks later, he sends her the largest bouquet of sunflowers she has ever seen, and Elena knows they will be alright.
* * *
Sophie is thirteen, Jack is ten, Leah is eight, and Max is five when he has the heart attack. It strikes him in the middle of the school day, causing him to collapse in the middle of his fifth period World History class. As he drifts into unconsciousness, all he can think about are his children, Elena, and Damon.
When he makes up in the cardiac care unit, Elena is at his bedside, her hands wrapped tightly around the hand which does not have an IV in it. She starts to cry when he squeezes it and grits out a greeting, and Alaric wants to comfort her but finds himself falling back to sleep again.
He remains in the hospital for a week, sent home with strict dietary changes; Elena hovers for the first few weeks of his convalescence, and he begs Damon to keep her off of his back for the health of their relationship.
For the first time in her life, Sophie starts paying attention to him. While Jack is grateful he is home to play video games and Leah and Max are happy to make him endless amounts of Get Well Soon pictures, Sophie is old enough to fully grasp what is going on. One afternoon, he wakes up from a nap to find his eldest standing in the doorway to the bedroom, her slender arms crossed over her chest, her long, dark hair falling down her back.
Sophie has always been Damon’s daughter. While the boys’ attentions fluctuated and Leah was connected to Elena’s hip, Sophie had only ever wanted Damon. Even now, as a surly teenager, while she disdained every overture Alaric made towards her and fought with Elena constantly, she still seeks out Damon to talk, Damon to laugh and cry with.
“Hey, kid,” he greets as he sits up. “You want to come in?”
She tentatively enters the room, sliding across the comically wide mattress to reach him. Though Elena swears she sees much of Alaric in her, Alaric has only ever seen Elena and Isobel in her features, especially now that she is older.
“What’s up?”
Sophie shrugs, quiet as she usually is, before suddenly stating, “You’re going to die someday.”
Alaric chuckles mirthlessly in surprise. “Yeah.”
“And Mom’s going to die someday.”
“Right.”
“But Daddy isn’t.”
Damon has always been Daddy; Alaric has always been Dad. A few years earlier they had sat Sophie down and explained their unique situation, including why Daddy Damon was so not like everyone else, and Sophie had never brought it up again until this moment.
“No, he’ll always be the way he is now.”
“And Uncle Stefan and Aunt Caroline, they’ll always be around too?”
“Right.”
Sophie finally looks up from the quilt, her large, doe eyes swollen with tears. “I don’t want you and Mom to die. Why can’t Daddy make you like him?”
Heart aching, Alaric explains, “Because your mom and I, we don’t want that.”
Sophie nods as if she understands before suddenly leaning forward, embracing him tightly around the middle. It is the first voluntary hug Alaric can remember her giving him since she was ten.
“I love you, Dad.”
When he repeats the story to Elena and Damon later that night, he looks at Damon, who shrugs and, half in jest, states, “I don’t want you two to die either.”
“No one’s dying tonight, so stop talking about it,” Elena orders, yanking the blankets up above her shoulders.
He is fifty-years-old; Elena is thirty-four.
* * *
Elena crosses paths with Katherine entirely on accident.
She is in Philadelphia for work, crossing Broad Street, when she and Katherine literally pass by each other, do a double take, and turn back around. Elena is never entirely sure how they end up in the Irish pub having a drink, but they do.
She is more than twice Katherine’s physical age now, and Katherine takes more than once jab at the little lines starting to bracket her mouth, at the strands of silver in her dark hair.
When she mentions she has children, Katherine requests to see a photo. Elena dutifully removes the plastic inserts from her wallet, displaying Sophie’s senior portrait and three school pictures. Katherine studies them with surprising scrutiny before declaring, “They’re beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she says in shock.
“The younger girl looks like us.”
Elena chuckles. “Yeah, Damon says he’s going to send her to a convent when she hits puberty.”
“Damon Salvatore as a daddy…I always thought he’d be a good father. Never thought he’d get the chance though.” Sliding the pictures back across the table, Katherine shrugs. “Nothing turns out the way you plan it, I suppose.”
“I guess not.”
It is not until they are leaving the pub that Katherine asks, “How’s Stefan?”
Despite her better judgment, she gives Katherine Stefan’s phone number.
When Caroline calls her a few weeks later to describe how she walked in on Stefan and Katherine in the middle of a very graphic sex act, Elena laughs herself breathless.
Nothing turns out the way you plan it indeed.
* * *
When Sophie declares she wants to go to college at the University of Richmond, Alaric is the only one who finds it funny.
After several fights and one overly dramatic declaration she was going to do whatever she wanted with or without their permission, they all finally agree that, if Sophie really wants to go to Richmond, they’ll support her.
Damon is practically in convulsions at the idea of their daughter being six hours away, and Alaric spends far too much time mocking him for it.
The day she is to move in, they all pile into the family mini-van, the travel trailer hitched to the back; Bonnie and Jeremy have come down for the weekend with their children to stay with the kids, and Bonnie teases Damon so mercilessly about his obvious anxiety that he threatens to murder her for the first time in years.
By the time they have moved all of Sophie’s boxes into her dorm room and withstood the awkward introductions to her roommate’s family - ”This is my mom Elena, my dad Damon, and my other dad Alaric” - Elena has joined Damon in the nervous wreck category and Sophie is silently imploring him to get them out of there.
“Well, we should get going,” he declares, and Elena promptly bursts into tears.
As Sophie dutifully hugs them, assuring them she will call once a week, always wear her necklace with the vervain in it, and not drink too much, Alaric is suddenly assailed with the memory of leaving Elena at college. She had struggled desperately not to cry as he and Damon hugged her, and, for the first few weeks, Alaric had lost sleep over his worry for her.
Sophie is smiling, already eager to go out and make friends, and, for the first time, Alaric is certain they have done an excellent job with their daughter.
When he voices this belief as they drive away from campus, Damon quips, “Well, we still have three more we can fuck up.”
* * *
Elena does not consciously decide to take the exit into Mystic Falls so much as she sees the sign and finds herself turning despite herself. Both Damon and Alaric say nothing as she navigates through the town she has not stepped foot in since she was nineteen, and Elena is grateful for that.
Her house no longer likes her house. The paint is different, the porch has been enclosed, and there are rose bushes lining the pathway. She feels her eyes tear up as she remembers how much her parents had loved that house, how her father used to call it his “castle.” Elena had never fully understood her father’s love of it until they had bought the house they lived in now, the house which Elena would always think of as “theirs.”
The boardinghouse has not changed, and Damon admits that is because he and Stefan cannot bear to part with the last vestige of their family. Stefan maintains it, Damon divulges, and Elena suggests they should bring the kids to see it sometime, to see where he comes from. Damon scoffs at the idea but she can see the way his lips turn upward; even after eighteen years, he is always highly sensitive to the fact that Alaric is their biological father, as if that makes him less than Ric in the eyes of their children.
She stops at the cemetery last, bearing four roses. Her parents’ headstone has been weathered by the elements and Elena is startled to realize it has been twenty-four years since her parents have died. She is now older than Jenna ever got to be, than John ever was; in a few years, she will be older than her parents.
After carefully placing the roses above her loved ones, she removes the last family picture they had taken from her purse, setting it on the headstone. She hates it, the way her children have no grandparents, the fact that her parents never got to see the four beautiful people she created.
Damon and Alaric stand beside her, Damon slipping an arm around her waist, Alaric wrapping an arm around her shoulders. They all stand in silence for several minutes before Elena announces, “Let’s go home.”
They stop a hotel in West Virginia to sleep, and, just as she has for the past twenty-three years, she falls asleep between the two men she loves.
Author: lit_chick08
Pairing: Damon/Elena, Damon/Alaric, Elena/Alaric, Damon/Elena/Alaric, references Elena/Stefan, Alaric/Jenna
Rating: R
Warning: non-explicit sex, threesome, slash
Word Count: 8,243
Spoilers: through 2x22 “As I Lay Dying”
Disclaimer: These characters belong to LJ Smith, Kevin Williamson, and Julie Plec
Summary: This wasn’t exactly how Elena pictured her future
A/N: Title and cut-text comes from the book and movie of the same name
Stefan has been gone for three months before she and Damon sleep together.
It isn’t planned. One minute they are fighting over something stupid and the next Damon has her pinned against the living room wall, dragging her pants down her hips even as she struggles to unfasten his jeans.
It’s fast and hard and nothing like it was with Stefan, which makes the entire thing that much easier for her. If Damon had been sweet and gentle, Elena is fairly certain she would have completely lost it.
When they have finished, Damon begins to draw back, clearly waiting for her condemnation, and Elena wishes she had it in her to offer it, but she doesn’t. She wanted this as much as he did, and she hates herself so much for it.
She pulls him back against her, burying her face in his shoulder, and Damon shivers as he does the same. They stand in the hallway, pants around their ankles, hands clutching the other desperately, and Elena knows in that moment Damon misses Stefan just as much as she does.
* * *
Jenna has been dead for four months before he and Damon sleep together.
It was never intended. One minute they are drinking their sorrows away and the next Damon is kneeling between his legs, his mouth coaxing Alaric to his first non-self-induced orgasm in months.
He has never imagined being with a man before, but it is different enough from Jenna or Isobel to ensure he will not completely lose it.
When he has come with a shout, Damon pulls back, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, clearly waiting for condemnation, and Alaric wishes he had it in him to offer it, but he doesn’t. Once it had begun, he wanted this as much as Damon did, and he hates himself so much for it.
Alaric pulls him up on the couch and stares at him for a moment, at the tension in his body, at the conflict in his blue eyes. And, in that moment, Alaric knows Damon is just as lonely as he is.
* * *
Elena finds out about Damon and Alaric’s relationship by accident.
It is a Saturday afternoon, and she is sitting home alone when the quiet begins to get to her. Ever since the sacrifice, since losing Jenna, John, and Stefan, Elena becomes anxious when she is alone. Usually it is not an issue; she suspects her friends have a pact to make sure she is never alone, but sometimes she falls through the cracks.
Alaric’s car is in the driveway, and Elena expects to find her lover and her guardian drinking in the living room; when she finds the room empty, she checks the library before heading upstairs. There is a low murmur of voices coming from Damon’s room, and Elena pushes open the door, not sure what she was expecting to find.
She definitely wasn’t expecting to find Alaric on his hands and knees, Damon thrusting into him in a rhythm Elena knows intimately.
“Oh, god!” she exclaims involuntarily, stumbling backwards into the door.
Both men froze, stunned expression on their faces, before pulling apart, Alaric scrambling beneath the sheets while Damon gets to his feet.
“Elena, wait - “
But she is already rushing down the stairs, nearly tumbling in her haste, and she doesn’t stop moving until she has driven to the opposite side of Mystic Falls. Her heart is beating wildly in her chest, her breathing fast and short, and Elena isn’t sure what she saw, what it means, or how she’ll ever look either of them in the face again.
When she finally returns home, Alaric is in his room and Damon, in hers.
“Let me explain,” Damon begins before she can even open her mouth.
“I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.”
Damon pauses for a moment, folding his arms over his chest, before softly declaring, “He needs someone right now, Elena.”
“Who doesn’t?” she counters.
* * *
After Elena interrupts them, Alaric demands to know why she was there at all, why she strolled into Damon’s bedroom without hesitation. His question is equal parts jealousy and protectiveness, and before Damon says a word, Alaric knows.
“You’re sleeping with her.”
Damon finishes dressing with a shrug. “Yes.”
“Jesus, Damon!”
“Ric - “
“She’s barely holding it together! You really think she’s in the right state of mind for you two to start a relationship?”
Damon pauses, raising one eyebrow. “I don’t know, pot. Should we consult the kettle?”
Alaric rakes his fingers through his hair. “This isn’t a joke!”
After a beat, Damon’s voice softens as he states, “She needs to feel safe right now, to feel loved.”
“Who doesn’t?” he counters.
* * *
She and Alaric avoid each other for almost a week before the tension gets the best of them. They wait until Jeremy has left for his date with Bonnie, and then they sit on opposite sides of the kitchen table, prepared to have a rational conversation about the vampire they were sharing.
Elena really never thought that would be a conversation she would ever need to have.
Neither of them says anything for the few first minutes, awkwardly avoiding the other’s gaze, before Elena finally blurts out, “Do you love him?”
Alaric looks up from the table, surprise on his face, before chuckling mirthlessly. “It’s complicated.”
“It always is with Damon.”
They don’t discuss anything else; neither has the words.
* * *
When Damon brings up the idea to him, Alaric instantly balks. For all intents and purposes, he is the closest thing to a parent Elena has left, and what Damon is describing would be the worst betrayal Alaric could ever perpetrate against Jenna’s memory.
“You’re fucking disgusting,” Alaric snaps, pushing Damon towards the other side of the bed.
“Oh, spare me the morality lecture. I see the way you look at her.”
Alaric glares at his lover, pushing himself into a sitting position. “Noticing she’s a beautiful girl and wanting to double-team her with you are two completely different things! And the fact that you don’t realize that - “
“Jesus! Forget it! It was just an idea, a way for all of us to get what we want.”
“Elena doesn’t want this.”
Damon shrugs. “Seemed pretty into it when I brought it up to her.”
Alaric froze, genuinely stunned. “Are you serious?”
Damon smiles.
* * *
When Damon brings up the idea to her, Elena instantly balks. For all intents and purposes, Alaric is the closest thing to a parent Elena has left, and what Damon is describing would be the worst betrayal Elena could ever perpetrate against Jeremy.
“You’re a pervert,” Elena declares, pushing Damon off of her with a grunt.
“Oh, stop acting like you’re going to run away, virtue fluttering. I see the way you look at him.”
Elena glares at her lover, rolling out of bed and wrapping herself up in the sheet. “Noticing that he’s cute and wanting you to do…what you said are two very different things! God, how do you not see that?”
Rolling his eyes, Damon flopped onto his back. “Whatever. I just thought this was a way we could all get what we want.”
“Alaric doesn’t want this.”
Damon shrugs. “He seemed pretty interested when I brought it up.”
Elena freezes. “Really?”
Damon smiles.
* * *
Unlike most men, Alaric has never really had a threesome fantasy. And the few times he has indulged in imagining what it would be like, it had always been two women. A few drunken nights, he had dreamed to being attended to by both Isobel and Jenna, but otherwise Ric was a fairly monogamous kind of guy.
He sits on Damon’s bed in his boxers, watching as Damon undresses Elena, and Alaric suddenly feels woefully out of his depth. Ric barely understands what he is doing with Damon most of the time, but he knows Damon feels something for him. And the one thing Alaric has always known is how deeply Damon loves Elena. If Klaus had never come to Mystic Falls, Alaric is certain the three of them would not currently be in the positions they are in right now, but he has started to force himself to recognize he cannot keep playing at Alternate History when it comes to their lives.
They are beautiful together. It strikes Alaric suddenly as he watches the way they hold each other, Damon’s mouth ghosting down the side of Elena’s neck, and Alaric finds himself moving forward before he is even aware of his intent to do so. When he realizes it, he stops, suddenly embarrassed, and he begins to shuffle backwards on his knees when Damon suddenly grasps his wrist in an iron grip.
“It’s okay,” Damon assures him, and there is such tenderness in Damon’s face, Alaric suddenly recognizes it is not he or Elena who need this.
Tentatively Alaric rests his hand on Elena’s hip, and he feels her tremble beneath his palm. As Damon began to kiss her breasts, Alaric presses himself firmly against Elena’s back; Elena tilts her head back to rest against his shoulder. Alaric glances down at her, his mouth moving to cover her own, when he notices the look in her big, brown eyes.
In that moment, Alaric discerns he and Elena are both doing this for Damon, trying to give Damon what he needs at the expense of what they are comfortable with doing.
Alaric kisses her forehead and vows this will be the only time this happens.
* * *
Three days after she slept with both Damon and Alaric, Elena is curled up on the couch in her living room when Alaric comes home from school. It is the first time they have been alone since that night, and Elena finds herself blushing, a reaction he shares.
Alaric pulls a bottle of wine from the cupboard before removing two glasses. Elena is surprised when he sits beside her, handing her one of the glasses, and declaring, “Well, this is awkward.”
She giggles, taking a sip of the sweet dessert wine. “You think?”
It is the first time they have really talked since she walked on him and Damon weeks earlier. She offers her explanation of how she and Damon ended up involved, and he replies in turn. They do not directly address what transpired in Damon’s bedroom three nights earlier, but Elena feels it throbbing in her brain, pushing its way to the forefront.
The wine has just started to make her feel warm when Alaric casually brushes a lock of hair away from her face. It is not intended to be sexual, but it reminds Elena so strongly of Stefan, she feels a sharp flare of arousal.
She works very hard when she is with Damon to make sure nothing reminds her of Stefan. Despite Damon’s efforts, Elena never lets him treat her the way Stefan did; when Damon tries to slow down or create any sort of intimacy, she always rebuffs him. It is not that she does not love Damon or that she doesn’t want to have something more with him; it is simply that she knows she is betraying Stefan and needs to pretend she is not sharing something deeper with Damon.
But Elena misses it: the soft touches, the light kisses, the lazy mornings spent in bed. She knows she could have it with Damon, but it seems like less of a sin to lean forward and brush her lips against Alaric’s.
He sighs her name, his voice tinged with reluctance, and Elena shifts easily into his lap, straddling him as she kisses him again, trying to coax a response from him.
“Elena, we can’t,” he whispers as she slips her arms around his neck.
“Why not? You do this with Damon, I do this with Damon.”
“But Damon isn’t here,” he points out.
“Ric…”
She doesn’t say anything else, but Elena can hear the pain in her voice, the longing. And then Alaric kisses her, long, slow, and sweet.
* * *
Alaric confesses to sleeping with Elena a week after the first time. He expects Damon to be angry or jealous, to punch him in the face or snap his neck, but instead Damon shrugs and takes another sip of his bourbon.
“You’re not angry?”
“Why would I be angry?” Damon asks.
Alaric sputters for a moment before admitting, “Because we did it without you.”
“And you’ll do it with me, so it doesn’t really matter who does what when.” With a chuckle, Damon declares, “Sometimes you’re so young.”
Alaric isn’t sure he means it as an insult but it certainly feels like one.
* * *
Elena tells them she is going to college in Pittsburgh a few weeks after graduation.
She is standing in the Damon’s bathroom getting ready for Bonnie’s graduation party, artfully applying gloss to her lips, while Damon and Alaric are still lounging in bed. Elena is not paying attention to their conversation until she hears Ric call, “Hey, ‘Lena? Why did Carol Lockwood leave me a message asking if you’ve made a choice yet?”
Elena feels her heart sink, wincing at the Mayor’s indelicacy. She had asked Tyler’s mother to write her a letter of recommendation, having overseen many of the civic activities Elena had been a part of, and she had promised to let her know the outcome of her applications. However, Elena also knew she would tell everyone, so she had spent the past month dodging her at every turn.
“She means college, I think.”
“You applied to college?” Damon asks, surprise in his voice. “You never mentioned that.”
Exiting the bathroom, Elena nods. “What did you think I was going to do after graduation, wait tables at the Grill?”
“Just until you mastered hanging upside down on a pole,” Damon teases with a smirk.
“Did you make a choice?” Alaric inquires. “Where did you even apply?”
Resisting the urge to make a joke about his lack of guardian skills, Elena sighs, tugging at the hem of her sundress. “I’m going to Pitt. I have to be there in two months.”
She watches the way both of their faces fall, and Elena suddenly hates herself for making them feel this way.
They don’t say anything else to her as she finishes getting ready.
She cries the entire way to the party.
* * *
It is a 6-hour drive from Mystic Falls to Pittsburgh, and Elena sleeps most of the way. Alaric alternates driving with Damon, who has been telling him for the past three weeks all the reasons they should stop Elena from going so far away. Some of them are mundanely human - crime rates, too far away from home, no one nearby - but others keep Alaric awake at night.
“Klaus is still out there somewhere with Stefan. What happens if he decides it’ll be fun to make Stefan find her, turn her, kill her?”
Elena doesn’t know it, but Alaric has slipped several vials of liquid vervain into one of her bags as well as vervain darts.
He introduces himself to her roommate’s parents as Elena’s uncle, which is the title they decided on before leaving Virginia; Elena does not want to have to explain her complicated history with guardians and Alaric does not blame her. Damon introduces himself as her boyfriend, and it takes everything Alaric has not to laugh outright at the not-so-subtle once over both Elena’s roommate and her roommate’s mother give him.
As he and the roommate’s father are wrestling boxes into the elevator, the strange man divulges, “I got to be honest: I’m glad Chrissy is living with Elena.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because that boyfriend of hers is scaring the shit out of every guy on the floor. No way are any of them going to try to go into their room any time soon.”
Alaric suddenly notices the way the teenage boys are all cowering beneath Damon’s possessive glare, and he laughs outright.
On the drive home, he reaches into Damon’s lap, taking him out of his pants and sealing his mouth around his cock.
It isn’t the most conventional way to say, “Thank you for ensuring no horny college student will try to have sex with our girlfriend,” but Alaric knows it is the way Damon most appreciates his thanks.
* * *
She misses them constantly.
It isn’t that she doesn’t give college an honest try. She is an active participant in her classes, she makes friends with the girls on her floor, she goes to parties and joins clubs; once, she even goes on a date with a junior in her creative writing class, but nothing feels the same without them there.
Elena limits herself to calling them only once a day; she usually calls Ric in the afternoons and Damon late at night, and both times she always struggles to impress upon them how much she is enjoying it. She knows how deeply she wounded them by choosing a school so far away, and she does not want to admit it was a terrible mistake.
She thought she needed to get away from Mystic Falls and everything it represented; it was too hard to be in her parents’ house, to see the places which constantly reminded her of Jenna and Stefan. All she wants is to have a life untouched by all of that darkness.
She knows she is not the only one. There is a reason Caroline and Tyler packed up Mason’s truck and moved out to California; it is the same reason Bonnie is in Massachusetts, why Jeremy retook the SATs two times so his score would qualify him for a school close to his girlfriend. All any of them want is to be free of Mystic Falls and the tragedy which plagued them there.
When she is home for Easter, Jeremy tells her he has been accepted into Boston University, that he and Bonnie have already found a place together off-campus.
“I kind of don’t ever want to come back here,” her brother confesses as they walk along the banks of the Willow Creek.
It is then Elena suggests selling the house.
* * *
When Elena tells him and Damon how she and Jeremy have decided to sell the house, splitting the profits and cutting ties with Mystic Falls forever, Alaric heaves a giant sigh of relief. He hates living in Jenna’s house, sleeping in Jenna’s bed; he is beyond grateful when Elena and Jeremy essentially render him homeless.
“We should move to Pittsburgh,” Damon proclaims later that night as the three of them lie entangled in his bed.
“I don’t know how to fill out that request on my housing form,” Elena teases as Alaric runs his fingers through her hair.
“Well, maybe if we get bunk beds,” Alaric suggests, smirking at the look of irritation on Damon’s face.
“I’m serious. I’m sick of this place anyway. We could get an apartment or a house or something.”
Alaric feels the way Elena seems to melt against him, and he suddenly suspects this has been Elena’s goal the entire time.
“We could,” Alaric allows.
They close on a townhouse before the start of the fall semester. There are three bedrooms, but they don’t even pretend as if they will not be sharing the master bedroom. As the movers carry in all of their belongings, Alaric watches Elena wrap Damon up in a hug, and he knows unequivocally this is not the temporary balm he once thought it was.
* * *
Elena likes sex.
She has never been ashamed to admit that. From the moment she lost her virginity to Matt when they were fifteen, Elena knew she wanted to touch and be touched, to enjoy what her body was capable of and take pleasure in what her lover’s body could do to hers. She never felt the need to apologize for how sexual she was, and anyone she had ever been with had enjoyed it.
But Elena is slightly ashamed of just how much she enjoys being with Damon and Alaric.
After the awkwardness of the first time, the three of them have established a rhythm. They all know what makes the others sigh, moan, or gasp; they know when to tease and when to satisfy, when it is appropriate to take your time and when it is tortuous to do so. Elena loves it, how well they know her, how well they know each other, but she also knows no one will ever understand it. If Jeremy or her friends ever found out, they would be horrified to know she was in love with the two men who should have been absolutely off-limits to her. And Elena knows they cannot go on like this forever, but she also doesn’t know how to stop.
She comes home from class one day to find Alaric standing in front of the refrigerator in nothing but his pajama pants, clearly enjoying his snow day. As she sheds her coat and boats in the entryway, Alaric turns to face her, a lazy smile on his face, and she feels such an overwhelming rush of love for him, it brings tears to her eyes.
“You okay?” he asks as she buries her face in his chest, pressing her lips over his heart.
“I love you.”
None of them say it often; it is implied in everything they do or say, but it has always felt taboo to all of them to say it aloud. The words coupled with their actions were the compounding of the betrayals they fear they are constantly committing, and so they use it sparingly.
Alaric tips her face up, his brow folded in concern, as he replies, “I love you too.”
Damon finds them on the kitchen table, Elena’s legs clutching tightly around Alaric’s waist, Alaric whispering against her ear. He takes a seat, silently observing, and, when Elena throws her arms over her head, she feels Damon take her hands in his, squeezing them lightly.
Sometimes she wonders what she has done to deserve being loved so fully.
* * *
They don’t keep secrets.
There are very few rules to their situation, but all of them agreed long ago no secrets would be kept. Sometimes this led to hurt feelings; more often than not, it led to explosive blow-outs Alaric ended up refereeing, but a relationship was hard enough to manage with only two people. With three, keeping secrets could destroy everything.
Alaric is coming out of his office one evening when Elena suddenly pulls him into the upstairs bathroom, pressing a finger against his lips to signal he is to be quiet. Damon is downstairs making dinner, the scent of spices filling the house, and Alaric is genuinely confused when Elena closes the door and immediately turns on the faucets.
“What - “ he begins only to have her press a hand over his mouth before pointing to her ear.
Alaric is convinced she has lost her mind until she holds up the pregnancy test, a bright pink positive sign letting him know what is requiring such secrecy.
Shortly after they first started their relationship, Elena had gone on the Pill. It was only practical, and they all agreed the last thing they needed was a baby, especially when they were still living in Mystic Falls. After the move to Pittsburgh, the topic never came up again, but Alaric knew the packet of birth control pills was still in the medicine cabinet; most mornings, as he and Elena got ready to leave together, he saw her take it.
This is the last thing Alaric expected tonight.
Elena will graduate in a month; she already has a job awaiting her at the Post-Gazette, a job she has been so excited about she spoke of little else. It is the worst possible time for her to be pregnant, and Alaric understands this.
“How far - “
“Six weeks,” she whispers, barely audible above the water.
“You don’t want to tell Damon?”
Elena looks pained as she shrugs. “I don’t…I don’t know…It’s our choice, isn’t it? Does he get a vote?”
She sounds so young in that moment, Alaric worries he and Damon have ruined her forever.
* * *
She goes to Planned Parenthood just to hear her options. It has been two days since she told Alaric, and they have not had a chance to discuss anything without Damon around. He tells her he thinks they should tell Damon no matter what they decide, and Elena wishes she knew what her decision would be.
They never really discussed what their relationship would be long-term. Elena gave up on normal years ago, but in the back of her mind, she still wants to be married someday, still wants to be a mother.
But she cannot have that with Damon and having that with Ric will break his heart.
So she listens to the nurse practitioner with the kind smile explain the procedure to her, and Elena accepts the literature the nurse gives her. The nurse tells her to come back no matter what she decides, and, as she catches the bus back to campus, Elena reads over both the abortion pamphlet and the prenatal care pamphlet.
She starts crying on the walk back to her car in the commuter lot, and Elena fumbles her cell phone out of her purse. As she sits behind the wheel, she calls Caroline, who answers on the third ring in the bubbly voice Elena misses so much.
“Oh, sweetie, what’s wrong?”
And it all comes tumbling out, five years of secrets ending with her pregnancy. Caroline is silent throughout Elena’s diatribe, and, when Elena has exhausted herself with confessions, Caroline exhales heavily.
“Holy shit, ‘Lena,” she finally says with a chuckle. “You don’t do anything half-assed, huh?”
She chuckles wetly, wiping at her face.
After a beat, Caroline declares, “No matter what, I love you and I support you. You know that, right?’
“Right.”
“Do you want to have it?”
“It’s just…It’s not a good time, you know? I’m supposed to start my job in three weeks, and I’d have to explain to everyone who the father is and I’d have to explain to the baby eventually why the three of us all live together and - “
“Yeah but do you want to have the baby? Take away all the bullshit, all the things you’re worried about; do you want to have the baby?”
Elena is quiet for almost a full minute, tears welling up in her eyes again, as she grits out, “You don’t get it, Care.”
“Stefan won’t hate you for this.”
Maybe Caroline gets it after all.
* * *
When Elena tells him she wants to have the baby, Alaric volunteers to be the one to tell Damon. He sees the way she instantly relaxes, and Alaric sincerely hopes Damon will not kill him in a fit of rage.
Elena has gone out to dinner with some friends from school to celebrate graduation, and Alaric takes a deep breath, bracing himself, before blurting out, “Elena’s pregnant.”
Damon barely hesitates as he opens the refrigerator, pulling a bag of blood from the crisper. “I know.”
“How - “
“Babies have heartbeats,” he cuts in, pouring the blood into a glass. “I’ve known for a month.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because obviously I wasn’t going to be included in the decision-making process, so why bother asking any pesky questions?”
Alaric feels the anger rolling off of Damon in waves, but he can also read the pain in Damon’s face at being excluded. “Damon, she didn’t know - “
“She didn’t know if she wanted to have a baby with me,” Damon interrupts, grabbing a bottle of whiskey and spiking his blood. “See, when push came to shove, she wanted you.”
“That’s not true,” Alaric immediately protests. “She just thought - “
“No, I get it. You’re the dad. I’m the vampire you both fuck. My place has become perfectly clear.”
“Jesus-fucking-Christ, Damon, stop the goddamn pity party!” Alaric explodes, wrenching the whiskey out of his hand. “This isn’t about you! And maybe this is exactly why she didn’t tell you because you’d find a way to make this all about you and your fucking insecurities!”
Damon freezes, stunned by his outburst, and Alaric waits for the backlash. Instead Damon walks out the door without a word.
When he returns hours later, obviously drunk, Alaric is half-asleep. Damon slips into bed beside him, and Alaric comes fully awake as he feels Damon’s hand settle on his stomach.
“You can give her all these things I can’t,” Damon murmurs against his shoulder blade. “I couldn’t take it if you both left.”
“We’re not going anywhere, Damon. We’re family.”
It isn’t until he says it out loud that Alaric realizes just how true it is.
* * *
She wakes up after giving birth to find Damon curled up in the recliner beside her bed, their daughter asleep in his arms. As she blinks her way to consciousness, Elena watches as Damon smiles beatifically at the baby, his voice soft and remarkably un-Damon-like. It takes her a moment to realize he is speaking Italian, and Elena feels her heart swell immeasurably.
“Hey,” she whispers hoarsely.
Damon looks up from the baby, his smile permanently affixed to his face. “Hey.”
“How’s she doing?”
He rises from the chair, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. Elena peels the blanket back to get a better look at her daughter’s face, and she can’t help but chuckle softly. She had been in labor for twenty-nine hours; by the time the baby finally made her appearance, Elena had barely been able to focus her eyes enough to really get a good look at her.
“She’s been sleeping. The nurse said she’ll be in later to show you how to nurse.”
Elena nods, one finger stroking the perfect skin of the baby’s cheek. “She looks like Ric.”
“Hopefully she’ll grow out of that.”
She struggles to slide up in the bed, wincing at the pain in her pelvis, before settling back into the pillows. “Where is Ric?”
“He went to pick up Jer and Bonnie from the airport.”
Carefully Damon transfers the baby into Elena’s arms, and she feels tears sting her eyes at the gentleness of Damon’s movements. She has seen Damon in every conceivable way, but watching him with the baby, with the baby they had all agreed they would raise as equals, makes her wonder if she has ever really known Damon at all.
“She needs a name.”
Damon nods in agreement. “What do you think about Sophia?”
Her name ends up being Sophia Grace Gilbert; she knows both Ric and Damon are disappointed she uses her last name for the baby, but if they both can’t win, then Elena would prefer they both lose.
* * *
Elena is on the back porch when Alaric comes downstairs, her laptop open as she finishes up an article. He sinks onto the glider beside her, and she barely glances up from the screen as she asks, “I thought you were reading Sophie a bedtime story.”
“Apparently when she said she wanted Daddy to read her a story, she meant Damon.”
He pretends it doesn’t sting, the preference his daughter has for Damon, but it has started to wound him acutely. In the beginning, Damon had been the only one who could placate her, the only one she wanted when she was colicky, fussy, or otherwise unhappy; he hadn’t minded then because the sound of Sophie’s screams broke his heart. But now that she was nearly three, Alaric was starting to resent the way she reached for Damon before him, the way she’d crawl up into his lap and call him Daddy. They had agreed long ago that Damon would be just as much as a parent to Sophie as they were, but the jealousy persisted.
“Don’t feel bad,” Elena advises as she saves the document and sets the laptop on the patio table. “She never wants me either.”
“Do you think it means…Well, I mean, she’s never…”
“You’re a good dad,” Elena assures him, sensing where his thoughts were going. “Damon’s home with her all day. It’s just natural.”
“You think?”
“It’s what I tell myself, so yeah.”
Alaric laughs as he pulls her against his side, kissing the top of her head. “I just worry sometimes.”
“Well…we could always have another one. Maybe it’ll like you.”
“You’re evil, you know that?”
Later that night, after Sophie is finally asleep, the three of them are in bed. Damon is leaning against the headboard, Elena lying on her back between his legs, his hands teasing her breasts as Alaric goes down on her. When she is wild with want, begging both of them to make love to her, Alaric stretches across her to reach the nightstand for a condom. He is stunned when she grabs his hand bringing it back to her body and shakes her head.
“’Lena - “
“Let’s just see what happens.”
She announces she’s pregnant again on his fortieth birthday.
* * *
Sophie is five, Jack is two, and she is pregnant again when Caroline calls her one Saturday morning. Elena is in the middle of wrangling Jack into his high chair, ordering Sophie and Damon to stop wrestling on the living room floor, and trying to figure out where she put her car keys when Alaric hands her the phone.
“Isn’t it, like, five in the morning in California?” Elena asks as she hands Alaric Jack’s oatmeal.
“Elena…Stefan’s here.”
The world starts to spin off its axis, and Elena barely manages to sink into a chair before she starts to cry. Instantly Damon and Alaric are at her side, Sophie watching in confusion from the living room, and Elena listens as Caroline recounts the events of the last past few days.
Stefan showed up on her door three days earlier, his decade of service to Klaus finally up. He had spent the past few months weaning himself off human blood, but, when he returned to Mystic Falls, he found none of his friends left. Caroline’s mother mentioned Caroline living in Los Angeles, and so Stefan went west.
“He keeps asking about you and Damon,” Caroline says, “and I don’t know what you want me to tell him.”
“Tell him where we are,” Elena answers instantly. “Tell him to come to us.”
After she relays the details to Damon and Alaric, she locks herself in the upstairs bathroom and cries, a mixture of relief, shame, and heartbreak.
* * *
Later that night, Alaric finds Damon in the backyard, drinking himself into a stupor.
“She’s going to leave us,” Damon declares. “She’s going to leave and she’s going to take the kids.”
“No, she isn’t,” Alaric immediately argues, sinking down beside him on the grass. “Elena would never take the kids away from us.”
“But you think she’ll leave.”
Alaric sighs, taking the bottle of whiskey from Damon’s hand and chugging several swallows. “We always knew she would.”
“And that’s it? You’re just going to let Stefan waltz in and take our girl, take our family?”
“Isn’t Stefan our family too?”
Damon steals the bottle back. “Not the way we are.”
For the first time since Sophie was born, Alaric wonders if this hasn’t been a mistake from the beginning.
* * *
When Stefan shows up the next day, Elena has a sudden irrational worry he will think she looks old. He remembers her as a seventeen-year-old girl, stricken with loss, always in peril; she is twenty-seven now, a grown woman, a mother, the partner to two men she loves dearly. She is not the girl he left behind, and she is even more afraid he is not the man she remembers.
Alaric answers the door, bringing him inside, and Elena starts to cry at the sight of him. Damon rises, and they embrace, which only makes her cry harder. By the time they pull apart, Elena is trying desperately to wipe away her running eye makeup and Stefan laughs at the effort. They hesitate for only one awkward beat before they are hugging as best as her swollen middle allows.
“Look at you,” Stefan says with a sad smile, his hands ghosting over her stomach. “When are you due?”
“Next month.”
Stefan gestures to the house as they sit, all of them tense with discomfort. “Caroline said you lived in the suburbs, but…I guess I just didn’t imagine this. Or, you know, Damon in the suburbs.”
“Hey, the desperate housewives here love me,” Damon swears, and there is just enough of the old Damon in his voice to make Elena start to relax, remembering the cadence of their old lives.
“Caroline said you have two kids.”
Alaric hands him one of the framed professional shots they got done a few months earlier. “That’s Sophia and that’s Jack.”
Elena sees the pain dance across his face as he looks at her children. They both bear such a strong resemblance to Ric, there is no denying who their father is, and Elena wonders just how much Caroline has explained.
She and Stefan go out to dinner, and Elena realizes that, to the other restaurant patrons, she probably looks like his big sister. When she repeats this observation, Stefan laughs for the first time since he arrived, and conversation at dinner flows much easier than it did earlier.
It isn’t until they are parking outside of her house when she blurts out her greatest fear.
“Do you hate me?”
“No,” Stefan instantly replies, “of course not. It’s been ten years, Elena. I never wanted for your life to just stop.”
“Yeah but…You didn’t want this either, right?”
“To be honest, I never really imagined this was an option,” he admits, “but you’re happy, right? I mean, Damon and Alaric, they make you happy?”
She nods, her hands settling on her stomach, before admitting, “Sometimes I wonder if the only reason we’re together is because we were all too damaged to move on.”
“Maybe originally,” Stefan allows, “but people don’t stay together for ten years, buy houses, and have kids together if it’s just a rebound.”
“Some people do.”
“Not you,” Stefan states authoritatively. “I saw the way they were with you today, the way you were with them. You guys love each other in a way that most people can only dream about. And I see the love they have your kids when they talk about them.” Smiling sadly, he adds, “I don’t hate you but I’m definitely jealous.”
Blotting at the tears on her face, she says, “You know you’re our family too, right? Damon and I, we wanted you back so bad, and we were so afraid that we’d never - “
“I know,” he assures her. “And honestly? I’m glad you took care of each other after…”
“You’re going to leave again, aren’t you?”
He nods, his own eyes filling with tears. “Not forever but…What you have with them, that’s what I wanted for us. And it just hurts right now to see it.”
“But you’ll come back?”
“Of course I will. I’m Uncle Stefan, right?”
“Right.”
As he helps her out of the car, he carefully cups her face, his thumbs brushing away her tears. Their lips meet once, softly and chastely.
“I love you so much,” he declares.
“I love you too,” she returns, truly meaning the words even if the definition of that love had changed in the past decade.
When she gives birth to Leah three weeks later, he sends her the largest bouquet of sunflowers she has ever seen, and Elena knows they will be alright.
* * *
Sophie is thirteen, Jack is ten, Leah is eight, and Max is five when he has the heart attack. It strikes him in the middle of the school day, causing him to collapse in the middle of his fifth period World History class. As he drifts into unconsciousness, all he can think about are his children, Elena, and Damon.
When he makes up in the cardiac care unit, Elena is at his bedside, her hands wrapped tightly around the hand which does not have an IV in it. She starts to cry when he squeezes it and grits out a greeting, and Alaric wants to comfort her but finds himself falling back to sleep again.
He remains in the hospital for a week, sent home with strict dietary changes; Elena hovers for the first few weeks of his convalescence, and he begs Damon to keep her off of his back for the health of their relationship.
For the first time in her life, Sophie starts paying attention to him. While Jack is grateful he is home to play video games and Leah and Max are happy to make him endless amounts of Get Well Soon pictures, Sophie is old enough to fully grasp what is going on. One afternoon, he wakes up from a nap to find his eldest standing in the doorway to the bedroom, her slender arms crossed over her chest, her long, dark hair falling down her back.
Sophie has always been Damon’s daughter. While the boys’ attentions fluctuated and Leah was connected to Elena’s hip, Sophie had only ever wanted Damon. Even now, as a surly teenager, while she disdained every overture Alaric made towards her and fought with Elena constantly, she still seeks out Damon to talk, Damon to laugh and cry with.
“Hey, kid,” he greets as he sits up. “You want to come in?”
She tentatively enters the room, sliding across the comically wide mattress to reach him. Though Elena swears she sees much of Alaric in her, Alaric has only ever seen Elena and Isobel in her features, especially now that she is older.
“What’s up?”
Sophie shrugs, quiet as she usually is, before suddenly stating, “You’re going to die someday.”
Alaric chuckles mirthlessly in surprise. “Yeah.”
“And Mom’s going to die someday.”
“Right.”
“But Daddy isn’t.”
Damon has always been Daddy; Alaric has always been Dad. A few years earlier they had sat Sophie down and explained their unique situation, including why Daddy Damon was so not like everyone else, and Sophie had never brought it up again until this moment.
“No, he’ll always be the way he is now.”
“And Uncle Stefan and Aunt Caroline, they’ll always be around too?”
“Right.”
Sophie finally looks up from the quilt, her large, doe eyes swollen with tears. “I don’t want you and Mom to die. Why can’t Daddy make you like him?”
Heart aching, Alaric explains, “Because your mom and I, we don’t want that.”
Sophie nods as if she understands before suddenly leaning forward, embracing him tightly around the middle. It is the first voluntary hug Alaric can remember her giving him since she was ten.
“I love you, Dad.”
When he repeats the story to Elena and Damon later that night, he looks at Damon, who shrugs and, half in jest, states, “I don’t want you two to die either.”
“No one’s dying tonight, so stop talking about it,” Elena orders, yanking the blankets up above her shoulders.
He is fifty-years-old; Elena is thirty-four.
* * *
Elena crosses paths with Katherine entirely on accident.
She is in Philadelphia for work, crossing Broad Street, when she and Katherine literally pass by each other, do a double take, and turn back around. Elena is never entirely sure how they end up in the Irish pub having a drink, but they do.
She is more than twice Katherine’s physical age now, and Katherine takes more than once jab at the little lines starting to bracket her mouth, at the strands of silver in her dark hair.
When she mentions she has children, Katherine requests to see a photo. Elena dutifully removes the plastic inserts from her wallet, displaying Sophie’s senior portrait and three school pictures. Katherine studies them with surprising scrutiny before declaring, “They’re beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she says in shock.
“The younger girl looks like us.”
Elena chuckles. “Yeah, Damon says he’s going to send her to a convent when she hits puberty.”
“Damon Salvatore as a daddy…I always thought he’d be a good father. Never thought he’d get the chance though.” Sliding the pictures back across the table, Katherine shrugs. “Nothing turns out the way you plan it, I suppose.”
“I guess not.”
It is not until they are leaving the pub that Katherine asks, “How’s Stefan?”
Despite her better judgment, she gives Katherine Stefan’s phone number.
When Caroline calls her a few weeks later to describe how she walked in on Stefan and Katherine in the middle of a very graphic sex act, Elena laughs herself breathless.
Nothing turns out the way you plan it indeed.
* * *
When Sophie declares she wants to go to college at the University of Richmond, Alaric is the only one who finds it funny.
After several fights and one overly dramatic declaration she was going to do whatever she wanted with or without their permission, they all finally agree that, if Sophie really wants to go to Richmond, they’ll support her.
Damon is practically in convulsions at the idea of their daughter being six hours away, and Alaric spends far too much time mocking him for it.
The day she is to move in, they all pile into the family mini-van, the travel trailer hitched to the back; Bonnie and Jeremy have come down for the weekend with their children to stay with the kids, and Bonnie teases Damon so mercilessly about his obvious anxiety that he threatens to murder her for the first time in years.
By the time they have moved all of Sophie’s boxes into her dorm room and withstood the awkward introductions to her roommate’s family - ”This is my mom Elena, my dad Damon, and my other dad Alaric” - Elena has joined Damon in the nervous wreck category and Sophie is silently imploring him to get them out of there.
“Well, we should get going,” he declares, and Elena promptly bursts into tears.
As Sophie dutifully hugs them, assuring them she will call once a week, always wear her necklace with the vervain in it, and not drink too much, Alaric is suddenly assailed with the memory of leaving Elena at college. She had struggled desperately not to cry as he and Damon hugged her, and, for the first few weeks, Alaric had lost sleep over his worry for her.
Sophie is smiling, already eager to go out and make friends, and, for the first time, Alaric is certain they have done an excellent job with their daughter.
When he voices this belief as they drive away from campus, Damon quips, “Well, we still have three more we can fuck up.”
* * *
Elena does not consciously decide to take the exit into Mystic Falls so much as she sees the sign and finds herself turning despite herself. Both Damon and Alaric say nothing as she navigates through the town she has not stepped foot in since she was nineteen, and Elena is grateful for that.
Her house no longer likes her house. The paint is different, the porch has been enclosed, and there are rose bushes lining the pathway. She feels her eyes tear up as she remembers how much her parents had loved that house, how her father used to call it his “castle.” Elena had never fully understood her father’s love of it until they had bought the house they lived in now, the house which Elena would always think of as “theirs.”
The boardinghouse has not changed, and Damon admits that is because he and Stefan cannot bear to part with the last vestige of their family. Stefan maintains it, Damon divulges, and Elena suggests they should bring the kids to see it sometime, to see where he comes from. Damon scoffs at the idea but she can see the way his lips turn upward; even after eighteen years, he is always highly sensitive to the fact that Alaric is their biological father, as if that makes him less than Ric in the eyes of their children.
She stops at the cemetery last, bearing four roses. Her parents’ headstone has been weathered by the elements and Elena is startled to realize it has been twenty-four years since her parents have died. She is now older than Jenna ever got to be, than John ever was; in a few years, she will be older than her parents.
After carefully placing the roses above her loved ones, she removes the last family picture they had taken from her purse, setting it on the headstone. She hates it, the way her children have no grandparents, the fact that her parents never got to see the four beautiful people she created.
Damon and Alaric stand beside her, Damon slipping an arm around her waist, Alaric wrapping an arm around her shoulders. They all stand in silence for several minutes before Elena announces, “Let’s go home.”
They stop a hotel in West Virginia to sleep, and, just as she has for the past twenty-three years, she falls asleep between the two men she loves.