Fic: Summer is Gone
Title: Summer is Gone
Author: lit_chick08
Pairing: Elena/Damon, heavy references to Elena/Stefan, Damon/Andie
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything through 3x01 “As I Lay Dying”
Word Count: 4,193
Disclaimer: These characters belong to LJ Smith, Kevin Williamson, and Julie Plec
Summary: You can walk away and try to claim that none of this was real//Sometimes autumn is confusing and I know exactly how you feel
A/N: Title and summary lyrics come from “Summer is Gone” by Ron Pope
They do not address the kiss for the first three weeks after Stefan is gone.
In fact, they do not address anything because as soon as he’s on his feet, Damon is so focused on finding his brother he barely even glances in her direction. She isn’t sure if it is because he feels guilty that Stefan sacrificed himself or guilty because, while Stefan was sacrificing himself, he was confessing his love for her, but either way Elena sees him in only tiny increments.
Alaric assures her he is just trying to pick out Stefan’s pattern.
Elena is terrified to find out what Stefan’s “pattern” is.
Three weeks after Stefan has been gone, Elena enters her house to find Damon sprawled on the couch half-asleep. The two empty sifters on the coffee table let her know he must have been talking with Ric, but there is no sign of her newest guardian or her little brother. She creeps close to the back of the couch, a smile playing at her lips at how youthful he appears in sleep, and, when his eyes snap open, Elena can’t help but jump.
“Can I help you?” he asks, his voice rough with gravel.
“You’re sleeping on my couch.”
“I’m resting on your couch,” Damon counters, rubbing at his eyes.
“Where’s Ric?”
“Parent-Teacher Night. Apparently the school board is getting slightly suspicious about his disappearing act and the fact his only friends in town are his students, so he felt compelled to make an appearance.”
Elena drops her bag beside the couch before sinking down beside him; it is the closest they have been since she nursed him back to health.
“Any sign?”
Damon shakes his head, and Elena does not ask for any elaboration.
They sit in silence for a few minutes, Damon’s head drifting back towards the cushions; Elena stares straight ahead at nothing specific, screwing up her courage, taking a deep breath and then letting loose with the words which have been on the tip of her tongue for twenty-one days.
“I didn’t kiss you just because you were dying.”
His head snaps up, and Elena is startled by the tightness in his face. “Yes, you did.”
“Damon - “
“You kissed me because I was dying and because your Godzilla-sized empathy wouldn’t allow you to let me die feeling unloved,” he interrupts, voice as unyielding as it had been a year earlier. “That is what happened.”
“No, it isn’t,” she objects, “and we need to talk - “
“You hate me, Elena. I turned Isobel, I tried to kill Bonnie, I used Caroline, I killed your brother, and I tried to make you a vampire against your will. And as soon as Stefan is back, you’ll remember all of that.”
Damon starts to get to his feet, and she leans forward quickly, catching his wrist. He pulls away as if burned, his eyes flaring with an emotion Elena cannot identify.
“I’m not his stand-in.”
He is gone before she can even sigh, “I don’t want you to be.”
* * *
Stefan has been gone for a month when she gets rip-roaringly drunk.
Once upon a time, Elena Gilbert had been quite the party girl. There had been a time when half of her class at Mystic Falls High had a good Elena story, usually featuring a spectacular amount of alcohol and a crazy action. She had hopped the fence of Reverend Fell’s property to go skinny-dipping, she had organized a drunken game of Red Rover that led to a broken collarbone, she performed a spirited interpretation of a Pussycat Dolls routine using the bed of Matt’s pick-up truck as her stage; people had a lot of opinions about Elena, but the prevailing one was always that she was a good fucking time.
But that was before she became the Angel of Death to everyone she loved.
Now she was just sad and lost, and she hated it so goddamn much she decided to channel old Elena for a night.
Of all of her old friends, Tyler is the only one who wouldn’t moralize or psychoanalyze her desire to let loose, which is why she calls him. By the time he admits that Duke is throwing a party out by the falls, Elena has already dug out the jean skirt her father once threatened to burn and a halter top she bought two days before the car accident which still has the tags attached.
She does three kamikaze shots within ten minutes of arriving to the party, followed quickly by two cups of beer. Tyler has already flagged her when Duke and a few of his buddies are trying to lure her into a round of body shots, and, as drunk as she is, she knows this is a bad idea. She shakes her head and tries to stumble away but Duke steps into her path, his hands settling on her hips as he tries to steer her back towards his buddies. Her mouth has barely opened to tell him to stop before Tyler has intervened, threatening to kick Duke’s ass even as he leads her to his car.
“Drop me at the boardinghouse,” she requests, her head half-hanging out the window, the cool night air rushing over her.
“You sure?”
Elena begins to nod before quickly realizing it is not a good plan. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
The house is quieter than usual, the rooms dark; Elena finds her way through the house easily, grasping the walls and banister tightly in order to stay upright. When she reaches the top of the stairs, she finds herself stumbling towards Damon’s room. The door is open, and, as she crosses the threshold, she spots Damon lying facedown in his bed, naked to the waist, the sheets twisted around his hips.
She fell into the bed, burrowing her head into the soft, feather pillows; Damon instantly awakes at the movement, and Elena finds herself staring into his bright, blue eyes.
“Elena, what the hell - “
“I don't want to be alone tonight, okay?”
Elena knows in the morning she will be embarrassed she climbed into Damon’s bed drunk, allowing him to spoon her while he is nude, but right now, all she wants is the comforting rhythm of another person's breath beside her.
* * *
In the morning, her head is throbbing so badly, she wants to die. Her mouth is bone dry and tastes as if she licked the floor of a gas station bathroom; her skirt has risen up around her hips sometime during the night, and she is disgusted by the scent of sweat and booze emanating from her pores.
“Oh god,” she groans, squeezing her eyes closely shut to block out the sunlight.
The bed beside her is empty and cool to the touch; Elena is not sure how long Damon has been gone or if he is even still in the boardinghouse, but she is grateful he is not here to see her stumble into the bathroom. It takes her nearly ten minutes to fumble her way into the shower, fighting the urge to vomit with every step, and, as she lifts her face towards the cascade of water from the showerhead, she feels her chest starting to tighten.
Stefan is gone.
The words reverberate in her head as she goes through the motions, luxuriating in the feel of the water against her skin. She knows she will never stop looking for me but, even if they get him back, he might not be the Stefan she loves, and Elena isn’t sure which is worse: never finding him or finding a monster in his place.
“Are you alive in there?” she hears Damon call from the doorway.
Elena instinctively spins around at the sound of his voice only to flinch as she remembers the shower stall is completely glass, meaning every inch of her is on display. She opens her mouth to protest, to call him a peeping tom and send him away, but he has already seen her body innumerable times when he was with Katherine.
Her doppelganger once gleefully informed her that everything she had was secondhand: her voice, her body, her lovers. Elena had corrected her then, insisting she has only one lover, but Katherine scoffed and assured her that would change.
Sometimes Elena worries she is destined to be like Katherine no matter what she does to fight it.
“I’m sorry.”
Damon smirks as he leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest. “For sneaking into my bed like a date rapist in a Lifetime movie, stealing all the blankets, or vomiting on my carpet at four in the morning?”
Elena groans as she turns her back to him, leaning her forehead against the wall of the shower. “Kill me.”
Damon laughs before disappearing back into the bedroom. “Don’t drown!” he calls over his shoulder.
It isn’t until later, as she is tiptoeing towards Stefan’s room in her towel, that she realizes this is the first time in months she has felt completely at ease with Damon.
* * *
Their first kiss which is not the result of deathbed fear or drunken desperation happens on a Sunday morning.
Stefan has been gone for two months, but Elena no longer keeps a running count of the days. A few weeks earlier she had found a file in the pile of Ric's dirty clothing, the folder bursting with news clippings about unsolved murders. They clips were annotated with both Damon and Alaric’s handwriting, and Elena knew instantly this must be the pattern Damon once referenced.
It didn’t take long for Elena to deduce Stefan’s pattern involved pretty brunettes with curls in their hair.
She stopped counting the next day.
Elena wakes up to find Damon perched on her window seat, thumbing almost casually through an old issue of Cosmo. A quick glance at her alarm clock tells her it is just after eight, and she groans, pulling her pillow over her face.
“What are you doing here?” she half-groans.
“I came to see Ric, but he and Jeremy went out to breakfast. Kind of rude they went without even waking you, huh?”
“Damon…”
“I’m bored.” Nudging the bed with his foot, he urges, “Get up.”
Tossing away the pillow over her face, Elena sits up, irritation on her face. “You are worse than a child.”
“C’mon. I’ll make you breakfast.”
Twenty minutes later, still dressed in her pajama shorts and tank top, Elena sits on the counter as Damon makes French toast with surprising skill. It always fascinates her when she sees Damon doing something so mundanely human, like watching a dog walk on its hind legs.
“What?” he asks, breaking her concentration.
Elena shrugs, gesturing to the ingredients on the counter. “It’s just…Why couldn’t you have always been like this?”
This time he shrugs, cracking an egg one-handed as he reaches for cinnamon with the other. “What, a master in the kitchen?”
She rolls her eye and scoffs. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant.”
Damon turns to face her, his face inscrutable. Taking a step towards her, he challenges, “Well, why don’t you tell me what you meant? Because, let’s be honest, what you say and what you mean don’t always match up.”
Straightening her spine, preparing for a fight, she snips, “That is what I mean. Why can’t you just be nice all the time? Why do you always have to push?”
“Because whether I’m nice or not, I’m always going to be the villain; that’s my role in our twisted little soap opera. You’re the damsel, Stefan’s the white knight, and I’m the bad guy.”
“You’re only the bad guy because you act like the bad guy. And you haven’t acted like that since…” Shaking her head in frustration, hopping off the counter, she snaps, “You know what? Never mind. I don’t even know why - “
Elena moans as Damon covers her mouth with his own, backing her against the counter. She feels the bite of the edge of the counter in her lower back, but it does not stop her from wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him as closely to her as possible.
His mouth is surprisingly hot, his tongue tracing her lower lip before delving inside; he kisses her the way Elena always imagined he would (and she knows how wrong it is, to have even considered what his lips would feel like against her own), and it starts a fire deep inside of her, the ignition of an inferno she fears might consume her.
And then Damon pushes her away, something akin to panic flitting over his features, before he mumbles an apology and hurries out the door.
The French toast burns.
* * *
Damon avoids her for the next two weeks.
* * *
Elena invites Matt over on his birthday; they order pizza and Elena makes him the oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies he has loved since they were kids. He hasn't entirely forgiven all of them for lying, but Elena knows Matt has forgiven her faster than he has anyone else.
Matt always forgives her. Elena doesn't know why she inspires such absolutism when she has never been anything but selfish in regards to him.
They are watching some gross-out comedy, teasing each other over something that happened years earlier, and somehow they end up wrestling around on the living room floor. Both of them are laughing, Elena squealing as Matt finds the sensitive skin of her ribs, and it is the first time since Stefan left Elena remembers feeling light.
And then there is a whoosh of air and Matt is suddenly pinned to the wall, Damon snarling around his fangs.
Instantly Elena is on her feet, tugging at Damon's arm. “Damon, what the hell?!”
Matt, whose eyes are so swollen with fear they look as if they are going to burst from his head, exhales shakily as Damon steps back, keeping him in place with the weight of his glare. “I heard you screaming.”
“We were playing around!”
“You were saying 'no, stop.'”
“And you thought what, Matt was taking what he wanted on the living room floor?!”
“Sounds more like your style, not mine,” Matt drawls, anger starting to fill his face, and he jumps as Damon pushes him against the hall with enough force to dislodge the picture hanging there.
Elena forces her way between them, shoving ineffectually at Damon's chest. “Stop it!”
Damon growls as he begrudgingly steps away, Matt stepping cautiously away from the wall. Resting a hand on Elena's shoulder, Matt asks, “Are you going to be okay?”
Glancing quickly at Damon, she nods. “Yeah, Damon would never hurt me.”
It's a lie; Damon has hurt her innumerable times in ways Elena did not even know she could be hurt, but she still isn't afraid of him.
Katherine told her once the appropriate response to finding out someone is a vampire is to run screaming like Matt did. “But people like us, dear doppelganger, the people who know who the monsters are and fuck them anyway, we're the dangerous ones.”
Elena never feels quite so dangerous as she does when she's standing next to Damon Salvatore.
The second the front door closed behind Matt, Damon drawls, “So happy to see you're managing to overcome your sadness to romp with old boyfriends.”
Even though Elena knows she did not do anything wrong, she cannot help but flush bright red in a combination of embarrassment and anger. “You can go now.”
Damon leaves without a word, slamming the door so hard, the entire house seems to shake.
It isn't until she is in the shower that Elena wonders why Damon was hanging around her house and just how often he stands sentry without her knowledge.
* * *
Elena returns from saying goodbye to Bonnie before she leaves to visit her family to find Damon sitting on her bed, his head in his hands. Since that awful night he killed Jeremy, Elena always feels a fission of panic in her chest before it recedes, and she tosses her cell phone onto her dresser as if nothing is bothering her.
“Look, Damon, I'm not in the mood - “
“What am I to you?” Damon interrupts, his voice rough from what Elena assumes is whiskey.
“What?”
Lifting his head, his crystalline eyes locking with hers, he repeats, “What am I to you?”
Something clutches painfully at her throat, emotion rising in her body as she shakes her head, needing to be anywhere but in the middle of this conversation. “Damon...”
“Do you even care about me at all? Or is this all going to go away when he comes back?” When Elena says nothing, her voice gone, Damon gets to his feet, clasping her face between his palms. “Look, I just need to hear you say it once one way or the other. Either you care or you don't; either you feel what's between us or you don't. I just need the truth.”
“You're scaring me,” she lies, needing him to back away, to let this drop.
“You terrify me,” he counters, his grip unwavering, his gaze refusing to waver. “Just tell me, Elena. What am I - “
“You're my friend,” she interrupts, “and you're Stefan's - “
“This isn't about Stefan!” Damon shouts, the scent of alcohol so sharp, it makes Elena's eyes water.
When she hears the click of her door opening, Elena is suddenly back to that horrible night six months earlier. Her heart nearly stops as she sees Jeremy standing in the doorway, his face set in anger, and, even as she finds the Gilbert ring on his finger, Elena cannot help but remember the absolute devastation of seeing Jeremy crumple to the ground, his fragile neck snapped.
“What the hell is going on?” Jeremy demands, and it is only then Elena sees he is holding a vervain grenade in his hand, that Tyler is standing behind him with murder in his eyes.
Damon releases her, steps back immediately; she gasps as he walks to her window and drops down to the yard, stumbling drunkenly down the road. Jeremy is standing in front of her, trying to assess if she's okay, and it isn't until her brother wipes at her cheek that Elena realizes she is crying.
* * *
The next time she sees Damon, he is at the Grill with Andie Star, the two sharing a toe-curling kiss.
* * *
She goes to the boardinghouse one night to pick up the journal she left in Stefan's room. Elena is almost to Stefan's room when the sounds of Damon's television reach her. She isn't sure why she pads down the hallway to his bedroom.
Elena doesn't understand why she does any of the things she does when it comes to Damon.
He is fast asleep, naked save for a pair of boxer-briefs which immediately draw Elena's eyes to the sharply cut muscles of his hips; his body is splayed across his massive mattress, but he looks so unbearably young in slumber, it makes the part of her heart she has vowed to steel against Damon melt. She tiptoes across the room, picking up the remote to turn off the television, and Elena nearly leaps out of her skin when Damon shifts and murmurs, “Just leave it, babe.”
His eyes don't open and, from the slur of his words, Elena knows he is drunk; Damon has never called her babe, and she just knows Damon thinks she is Andie.
It bothers her more than she'd like.
When Elena finally makes it to Stefan's room, something snaps inside of her, and the tears come. She has vowed to herself over the past few months to not let herself cry, to not give into the feelings of anger and frustration which compound every day Stefan is missing, every day Damon looks at her with those fathomless blue eyes, every day she is forced to wake up and act like everything is okay.
When Elena wakes up, she is securely tucked into Stefan's bed, her face covered in the dry sting of her tears, and Elena is startled to see her teddy bear beside her.
She starts to cry all over again.
* * *
Elena has never been good at holding grudges; Damon never explicitly apologizes and she never explicitly forgives him, but, whether she likes it or not, the relationship she has with Damon doesn't really require words.
She supposes that's why it's so difficult when he actually needs her to define her feelings.
* * *
“So this party Caroline is throwing,” Damon begins one afternoon as Elena drops off the latest clue from Sheriff Forbes.
“Yes?”
“I'm going to assume presents are required?”
“I don't want you to buy me a present,” she quickly states, blushing at the way Damon raises his eyebrows at her rushed words. “I mean - “
“Well, your loss,” he declares. “I'm an excellent gift giver.”
“I just...It's not that big of a deal and Care is turning this into such a production and - “
“You're not thrilled to finally be legal?”
Elena shrugs. “In the grand scheme of things, being able to buy cigarettes is not that hugely important to my life.”
“Touche.” Damon crosses the room to pour himself a bourbon, and Elena cannot help but follow the movement with her eyes, enjoying the easy grace with which he moves.
“Are you bringing Andie?” she blurts out, starling herself.
Damon pauses before asking, “Why?”
“I don't know. I mean, she's your girlfriend, isn't she?”
“She's the woman I compel and fuck,” Damon corrects with a smirk. “That's about as close to girlfriends as I get.”
Elena rolls her eyes, getting to her feet. “You're disgusting, you know that? She's a person, Damon, not a toy.”
“Ooh, now you sound just like Stefan.” Stalking towards her, he adds, “Everyone's a toy if you're the one controlling the game.”
“Ooh, now you sound like Katherine.”
Damon flinches at the comparison, and Elena wonders if she should apologize but decides against it; if Damon is going to be cruel and invoke Stefan's name with such mocking, Elena is not going to continue to just take it. In the wake of all that has happened in the past year, if someone is going to hit her, Elena is going to hit back.
Later, when she is home and unable to sleep, Elena ponders if this is how Katerina became Katherine.
* * *
As her 18th birthday dawns, Elena lies in her bed, staring at the sun filtering in through her filmy pink curtains, the curtains her mother sewed when they redid her bedroom when she was twelve.
She climbs out of bed, stumbling towards the dresser to find something to wear. On her way to the bathroom, Elena notices she has an unread text message. Expecting it to be Caroline or Bonnie or even Matt, she cannot help but smile as she realizes the text was sent at one minute after midnight from Damon Salvatore.
Happy birthday to my favorite barely legal doppelganger. Let me be the first to volunteer to give you your birthday spankings.
It is crass and slightly insensitive and not remotely sweet, but somehow it is exactly what she needs on this morning. Elena laughs, tapping out a reply which politely calls him an ass and says thank-you at the same time.
Standing beneath the spray of the shower, Elena knows Damon will always be there to support her, to protect her, and she doesn't know how she feels about it, but this morning, on a birthday she had once anticipated, on a birthday she cannot celebrate with her parents, her aunt, or her boyfriend, all Elena feels is gratitude.
As she straightens her hair, erasing every trace of the curls which remind too strongly of someone else, Elena wonders if gratitude is how Katherine's fascination with two brothers began.
Author: lit_chick08
Pairing: Elena/Damon, heavy references to Elena/Stefan, Damon/Andie
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything through 3x01 “As I Lay Dying”
Word Count: 4,193
Disclaimer: These characters belong to LJ Smith, Kevin Williamson, and Julie Plec
Summary: You can walk away and try to claim that none of this was real//Sometimes autumn is confusing and I know exactly how you feel
A/N: Title and summary lyrics come from “Summer is Gone” by Ron Pope
They do not address the kiss for the first three weeks after Stefan is gone.
In fact, they do not address anything because as soon as he’s on his feet, Damon is so focused on finding his brother he barely even glances in her direction. She isn’t sure if it is because he feels guilty that Stefan sacrificed himself or guilty because, while Stefan was sacrificing himself, he was confessing his love for her, but either way Elena sees him in only tiny increments.
Alaric assures her he is just trying to pick out Stefan’s pattern.
Elena is terrified to find out what Stefan’s “pattern” is.
Three weeks after Stefan has been gone, Elena enters her house to find Damon sprawled on the couch half-asleep. The two empty sifters on the coffee table let her know he must have been talking with Ric, but there is no sign of her newest guardian or her little brother. She creeps close to the back of the couch, a smile playing at her lips at how youthful he appears in sleep, and, when his eyes snap open, Elena can’t help but jump.
“Can I help you?” he asks, his voice rough with gravel.
“You’re sleeping on my couch.”
“I’m resting on your couch,” Damon counters, rubbing at his eyes.
“Where’s Ric?”
“Parent-Teacher Night. Apparently the school board is getting slightly suspicious about his disappearing act and the fact his only friends in town are his students, so he felt compelled to make an appearance.”
Elena drops her bag beside the couch before sinking down beside him; it is the closest they have been since she nursed him back to health.
“Any sign?”
Damon shakes his head, and Elena does not ask for any elaboration.
They sit in silence for a few minutes, Damon’s head drifting back towards the cushions; Elena stares straight ahead at nothing specific, screwing up her courage, taking a deep breath and then letting loose with the words which have been on the tip of her tongue for twenty-one days.
“I didn’t kiss you just because you were dying.”
His head snaps up, and Elena is startled by the tightness in his face. “Yes, you did.”
“Damon - “
“You kissed me because I was dying and because your Godzilla-sized empathy wouldn’t allow you to let me die feeling unloved,” he interrupts, voice as unyielding as it had been a year earlier. “That is what happened.”
“No, it isn’t,” she objects, “and we need to talk - “
“You hate me, Elena. I turned Isobel, I tried to kill Bonnie, I used Caroline, I killed your brother, and I tried to make you a vampire against your will. And as soon as Stefan is back, you’ll remember all of that.”
Damon starts to get to his feet, and she leans forward quickly, catching his wrist. He pulls away as if burned, his eyes flaring with an emotion Elena cannot identify.
“I’m not his stand-in.”
He is gone before she can even sigh, “I don’t want you to be.”
* * *
Stefan has been gone for a month when she gets rip-roaringly drunk.
Once upon a time, Elena Gilbert had been quite the party girl. There had been a time when half of her class at Mystic Falls High had a good Elena story, usually featuring a spectacular amount of alcohol and a crazy action. She had hopped the fence of Reverend Fell’s property to go skinny-dipping, she had organized a drunken game of Red Rover that led to a broken collarbone, she performed a spirited interpretation of a Pussycat Dolls routine using the bed of Matt’s pick-up truck as her stage; people had a lot of opinions about Elena, but the prevailing one was always that she was a good fucking time.
But that was before she became the Angel of Death to everyone she loved.
Now she was just sad and lost, and she hated it so goddamn much she decided to channel old Elena for a night.
Of all of her old friends, Tyler is the only one who wouldn’t moralize or psychoanalyze her desire to let loose, which is why she calls him. By the time he admits that Duke is throwing a party out by the falls, Elena has already dug out the jean skirt her father once threatened to burn and a halter top she bought two days before the car accident which still has the tags attached.
She does three kamikaze shots within ten minutes of arriving to the party, followed quickly by two cups of beer. Tyler has already flagged her when Duke and a few of his buddies are trying to lure her into a round of body shots, and, as drunk as she is, she knows this is a bad idea. She shakes her head and tries to stumble away but Duke steps into her path, his hands settling on her hips as he tries to steer her back towards his buddies. Her mouth has barely opened to tell him to stop before Tyler has intervened, threatening to kick Duke’s ass even as he leads her to his car.
“Drop me at the boardinghouse,” she requests, her head half-hanging out the window, the cool night air rushing over her.
“You sure?”
Elena begins to nod before quickly realizing it is not a good plan. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
The house is quieter than usual, the rooms dark; Elena finds her way through the house easily, grasping the walls and banister tightly in order to stay upright. When she reaches the top of the stairs, she finds herself stumbling towards Damon’s room. The door is open, and, as she crosses the threshold, she spots Damon lying facedown in his bed, naked to the waist, the sheets twisted around his hips.
She fell into the bed, burrowing her head into the soft, feather pillows; Damon instantly awakes at the movement, and Elena finds herself staring into his bright, blue eyes.
“Elena, what the hell - “
“I don't want to be alone tonight, okay?”
Elena knows in the morning she will be embarrassed she climbed into Damon’s bed drunk, allowing him to spoon her while he is nude, but right now, all she wants is the comforting rhythm of another person's breath beside her.
* * *
In the morning, her head is throbbing so badly, she wants to die. Her mouth is bone dry and tastes as if she licked the floor of a gas station bathroom; her skirt has risen up around her hips sometime during the night, and she is disgusted by the scent of sweat and booze emanating from her pores.
“Oh god,” she groans, squeezing her eyes closely shut to block out the sunlight.
The bed beside her is empty and cool to the touch; Elena is not sure how long Damon has been gone or if he is even still in the boardinghouse, but she is grateful he is not here to see her stumble into the bathroom. It takes her nearly ten minutes to fumble her way into the shower, fighting the urge to vomit with every step, and, as she lifts her face towards the cascade of water from the showerhead, she feels her chest starting to tighten.
Stefan is gone.
The words reverberate in her head as she goes through the motions, luxuriating in the feel of the water against her skin. She knows she will never stop looking for me but, even if they get him back, he might not be the Stefan she loves, and Elena isn’t sure which is worse: never finding him or finding a monster in his place.
“Are you alive in there?” she hears Damon call from the doorway.
Elena instinctively spins around at the sound of his voice only to flinch as she remembers the shower stall is completely glass, meaning every inch of her is on display. She opens her mouth to protest, to call him a peeping tom and send him away, but he has already seen her body innumerable times when he was with Katherine.
Her doppelganger once gleefully informed her that everything she had was secondhand: her voice, her body, her lovers. Elena had corrected her then, insisting she has only one lover, but Katherine scoffed and assured her that would change.
Sometimes Elena worries she is destined to be like Katherine no matter what she does to fight it.
“I’m sorry.”
Damon smirks as he leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest. “For sneaking into my bed like a date rapist in a Lifetime movie, stealing all the blankets, or vomiting on my carpet at four in the morning?”
Elena groans as she turns her back to him, leaning her forehead against the wall of the shower. “Kill me.”
Damon laughs before disappearing back into the bedroom. “Don’t drown!” he calls over his shoulder.
It isn’t until later, as she is tiptoeing towards Stefan’s room in her towel, that she realizes this is the first time in months she has felt completely at ease with Damon.
* * *
Their first kiss which is not the result of deathbed fear or drunken desperation happens on a Sunday morning.
Stefan has been gone for two months, but Elena no longer keeps a running count of the days. A few weeks earlier she had found a file in the pile of Ric's dirty clothing, the folder bursting with news clippings about unsolved murders. They clips were annotated with both Damon and Alaric’s handwriting, and Elena knew instantly this must be the pattern Damon once referenced.
It didn’t take long for Elena to deduce Stefan’s pattern involved pretty brunettes with curls in their hair.
She stopped counting the next day.
Elena wakes up to find Damon perched on her window seat, thumbing almost casually through an old issue of Cosmo. A quick glance at her alarm clock tells her it is just after eight, and she groans, pulling her pillow over her face.
“What are you doing here?” she half-groans.
“I came to see Ric, but he and Jeremy went out to breakfast. Kind of rude they went without even waking you, huh?”
“Damon…”
“I’m bored.” Nudging the bed with his foot, he urges, “Get up.”
Tossing away the pillow over her face, Elena sits up, irritation on her face. “You are worse than a child.”
“C’mon. I’ll make you breakfast.”
Twenty minutes later, still dressed in her pajama shorts and tank top, Elena sits on the counter as Damon makes French toast with surprising skill. It always fascinates her when she sees Damon doing something so mundanely human, like watching a dog walk on its hind legs.
“What?” he asks, breaking her concentration.
Elena shrugs, gesturing to the ingredients on the counter. “It’s just…Why couldn’t you have always been like this?”
This time he shrugs, cracking an egg one-handed as he reaches for cinnamon with the other. “What, a master in the kitchen?”
She rolls her eye and scoffs. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant.”
Damon turns to face her, his face inscrutable. Taking a step towards her, he challenges, “Well, why don’t you tell me what you meant? Because, let’s be honest, what you say and what you mean don’t always match up.”
Straightening her spine, preparing for a fight, she snips, “That is what I mean. Why can’t you just be nice all the time? Why do you always have to push?”
“Because whether I’m nice or not, I’m always going to be the villain; that’s my role in our twisted little soap opera. You’re the damsel, Stefan’s the white knight, and I’m the bad guy.”
“You’re only the bad guy because you act like the bad guy. And you haven’t acted like that since…” Shaking her head in frustration, hopping off the counter, she snaps, “You know what? Never mind. I don’t even know why - “
Elena moans as Damon covers her mouth with his own, backing her against the counter. She feels the bite of the edge of the counter in her lower back, but it does not stop her from wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him as closely to her as possible.
His mouth is surprisingly hot, his tongue tracing her lower lip before delving inside; he kisses her the way Elena always imagined he would (and she knows how wrong it is, to have even considered what his lips would feel like against her own), and it starts a fire deep inside of her, the ignition of an inferno she fears might consume her.
And then Damon pushes her away, something akin to panic flitting over his features, before he mumbles an apology and hurries out the door.
The French toast burns.
* * *
Damon avoids her for the next two weeks.
* * *
Elena invites Matt over on his birthday; they order pizza and Elena makes him the oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies he has loved since they were kids. He hasn't entirely forgiven all of them for lying, but Elena knows Matt has forgiven her faster than he has anyone else.
Matt always forgives her. Elena doesn't know why she inspires such absolutism when she has never been anything but selfish in regards to him.
They are watching some gross-out comedy, teasing each other over something that happened years earlier, and somehow they end up wrestling around on the living room floor. Both of them are laughing, Elena squealing as Matt finds the sensitive skin of her ribs, and it is the first time since Stefan left Elena remembers feeling light.
And then there is a whoosh of air and Matt is suddenly pinned to the wall, Damon snarling around his fangs.
Instantly Elena is on her feet, tugging at Damon's arm. “Damon, what the hell?!”
Matt, whose eyes are so swollen with fear they look as if they are going to burst from his head, exhales shakily as Damon steps back, keeping him in place with the weight of his glare. “I heard you screaming.”
“We were playing around!”
“You were saying 'no, stop.'”
“And you thought what, Matt was taking what he wanted on the living room floor?!”
“Sounds more like your style, not mine,” Matt drawls, anger starting to fill his face, and he jumps as Damon pushes him against the hall with enough force to dislodge the picture hanging there.
Elena forces her way between them, shoving ineffectually at Damon's chest. “Stop it!”
Damon growls as he begrudgingly steps away, Matt stepping cautiously away from the wall. Resting a hand on Elena's shoulder, Matt asks, “Are you going to be okay?”
Glancing quickly at Damon, she nods. “Yeah, Damon would never hurt me.”
It's a lie; Damon has hurt her innumerable times in ways Elena did not even know she could be hurt, but she still isn't afraid of him.
Katherine told her once the appropriate response to finding out someone is a vampire is to run screaming like Matt did. “But people like us, dear doppelganger, the people who know who the monsters are and fuck them anyway, we're the dangerous ones.”
Elena never feels quite so dangerous as she does when she's standing next to Damon Salvatore.
The second the front door closed behind Matt, Damon drawls, “So happy to see you're managing to overcome your sadness to romp with old boyfriends.”
Even though Elena knows she did not do anything wrong, she cannot help but flush bright red in a combination of embarrassment and anger. “You can go now.”
Damon leaves without a word, slamming the door so hard, the entire house seems to shake.
It isn't until she is in the shower that Elena wonders why Damon was hanging around her house and just how often he stands sentry without her knowledge.
* * *
Elena returns from saying goodbye to Bonnie before she leaves to visit her family to find Damon sitting on her bed, his head in his hands. Since that awful night he killed Jeremy, Elena always feels a fission of panic in her chest before it recedes, and she tosses her cell phone onto her dresser as if nothing is bothering her.
“Look, Damon, I'm not in the mood - “
“What am I to you?” Damon interrupts, his voice rough from what Elena assumes is whiskey.
“What?”
Lifting his head, his crystalline eyes locking with hers, he repeats, “What am I to you?”
Something clutches painfully at her throat, emotion rising in her body as she shakes her head, needing to be anywhere but in the middle of this conversation. “Damon...”
“Do you even care about me at all? Or is this all going to go away when he comes back?” When Elena says nothing, her voice gone, Damon gets to his feet, clasping her face between his palms. “Look, I just need to hear you say it once one way or the other. Either you care or you don't; either you feel what's between us or you don't. I just need the truth.”
“You're scaring me,” she lies, needing him to back away, to let this drop.
“You terrify me,” he counters, his grip unwavering, his gaze refusing to waver. “Just tell me, Elena. What am I - “
“You're my friend,” she interrupts, “and you're Stefan's - “
“This isn't about Stefan!” Damon shouts, the scent of alcohol so sharp, it makes Elena's eyes water.
When she hears the click of her door opening, Elena is suddenly back to that horrible night six months earlier. Her heart nearly stops as she sees Jeremy standing in the doorway, his face set in anger, and, even as she finds the Gilbert ring on his finger, Elena cannot help but remember the absolute devastation of seeing Jeremy crumple to the ground, his fragile neck snapped.
“What the hell is going on?” Jeremy demands, and it is only then Elena sees he is holding a vervain grenade in his hand, that Tyler is standing behind him with murder in his eyes.
Damon releases her, steps back immediately; she gasps as he walks to her window and drops down to the yard, stumbling drunkenly down the road. Jeremy is standing in front of her, trying to assess if she's okay, and it isn't until her brother wipes at her cheek that Elena realizes she is crying.
* * *
The next time she sees Damon, he is at the Grill with Andie Star, the two sharing a toe-curling kiss.
* * *
She goes to the boardinghouse one night to pick up the journal she left in Stefan's room. Elena is almost to Stefan's room when the sounds of Damon's television reach her. She isn't sure why she pads down the hallway to his bedroom.
Elena doesn't understand why she does any of the things she does when it comes to Damon.
He is fast asleep, naked save for a pair of boxer-briefs which immediately draw Elena's eyes to the sharply cut muscles of his hips; his body is splayed across his massive mattress, but he looks so unbearably young in slumber, it makes the part of her heart she has vowed to steel against Damon melt. She tiptoes across the room, picking up the remote to turn off the television, and Elena nearly leaps out of her skin when Damon shifts and murmurs, “Just leave it, babe.”
His eyes don't open and, from the slur of his words, Elena knows he is drunk; Damon has never called her babe, and she just knows Damon thinks she is Andie.
It bothers her more than she'd like.
When Elena finally makes it to Stefan's room, something snaps inside of her, and the tears come. She has vowed to herself over the past few months to not let herself cry, to not give into the feelings of anger and frustration which compound every day Stefan is missing, every day Damon looks at her with those fathomless blue eyes, every day she is forced to wake up and act like everything is okay.
When Elena wakes up, she is securely tucked into Stefan's bed, her face covered in the dry sting of her tears, and Elena is startled to see her teddy bear beside her.
She starts to cry all over again.
* * *
Elena has never been good at holding grudges; Damon never explicitly apologizes and she never explicitly forgives him, but, whether she likes it or not, the relationship she has with Damon doesn't really require words.
She supposes that's why it's so difficult when he actually needs her to define her feelings.
* * *
“So this party Caroline is throwing,” Damon begins one afternoon as Elena drops off the latest clue from Sheriff Forbes.
“Yes?”
“I'm going to assume presents are required?”
“I don't want you to buy me a present,” she quickly states, blushing at the way Damon raises his eyebrows at her rushed words. “I mean - “
“Well, your loss,” he declares. “I'm an excellent gift giver.”
“I just...It's not that big of a deal and Care is turning this into such a production and - “
“You're not thrilled to finally be legal?”
Elena shrugs. “In the grand scheme of things, being able to buy cigarettes is not that hugely important to my life.”
“Touche.” Damon crosses the room to pour himself a bourbon, and Elena cannot help but follow the movement with her eyes, enjoying the easy grace with which he moves.
“Are you bringing Andie?” she blurts out, starling herself.
Damon pauses before asking, “Why?”
“I don't know. I mean, she's your girlfriend, isn't she?”
“She's the woman I compel and fuck,” Damon corrects with a smirk. “That's about as close to girlfriends as I get.”
Elena rolls her eyes, getting to her feet. “You're disgusting, you know that? She's a person, Damon, not a toy.”
“Ooh, now you sound just like Stefan.” Stalking towards her, he adds, “Everyone's a toy if you're the one controlling the game.”
“Ooh, now you sound like Katherine.”
Damon flinches at the comparison, and Elena wonders if she should apologize but decides against it; if Damon is going to be cruel and invoke Stefan's name with such mocking, Elena is not going to continue to just take it. In the wake of all that has happened in the past year, if someone is going to hit her, Elena is going to hit back.
Later, when she is home and unable to sleep, Elena ponders if this is how Katerina became Katherine.
* * *
As her 18th birthday dawns, Elena lies in her bed, staring at the sun filtering in through her filmy pink curtains, the curtains her mother sewed when they redid her bedroom when she was twelve.
She climbs out of bed, stumbling towards the dresser to find something to wear. On her way to the bathroom, Elena notices she has an unread text message. Expecting it to be Caroline or Bonnie or even Matt, she cannot help but smile as she realizes the text was sent at one minute after midnight from Damon Salvatore.
Happy birthday to my favorite barely legal doppelganger. Let me be the first to volunteer to give you your birthday spankings.
It is crass and slightly insensitive and not remotely sweet, but somehow it is exactly what she needs on this morning. Elena laughs, tapping out a reply which politely calls him an ass and says thank-you at the same time.
Standing beneath the spray of the shower, Elena knows Damon will always be there to support her, to protect her, and she doesn't know how she feels about it, but this morning, on a birthday she had once anticipated, on a birthday she cannot celebrate with her parents, her aunt, or her boyfriend, all Elena feels is gratitude.
As she straightens her hair, erasing every trace of the curls which remind too strongly of someone else, Elena wonders if gratitude is how Katherine's fascination with two brothers began.