[tvd] big bang fic: Watch You Bleed Me Dry
WATCH YOU BLEED ME DRY
twenty four
They're back in Mystic Falls for almost two days before Damon resolutely gathers the energy required to come face to face with a Bennett witch.
Bonnie slides only somewhat reluctantly into the booth at The Grill. Dragging her soda along the table top, it leaves a trail of condensation behind as proof it had existed there first. She'd only been outside anyway and the fact that he's beaten her to the spot only proves her theory that he'd been here all along.
When he notes her eyebrows raised in the direction of his tumbler of scotch he contemplates detailing the fifth of vodka he had for breakfast. Doesn't, but only just.
“You look like crap,” she offers in lieu of a greeting. Figures the truth is as good a place as any to start.
“Why, thanks! And you look as fashionably bitchy as ever.” But the retort lacks its usual bite. Falls somewhat flat as he raises his glass in her direction. A mock salute.
“No, seriously, Damon. You look like crap.” In fact, she's more than a little taken aback by exactly how crap he does look. Like maybe he hasn't slept since all this started.
She wonders if it's true as he offers her a shrug. A deliberate non-answer if ever there was one.
“Did you find anything?” he counters pointedly, and he may indeed look like crap, though, honestly? Doubtful. But his appearance is remarkably beside the point at the moment.
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe?”
“I mean, maybe.”
He swills the liquid around the base of his shallow glass. She expects him to tip it back and down the lot in one go, is more than a little put off when he doesn't. Appears to lose himself instead in the amber pool.
“Can you feel it right now?”
Her question shocks him with its degree of personal insight but he refuses to let her see that. Shrugs again, slow and deliberate, until he notices a scowl deepen into the lines across her forehead, like maybe she's about to abruptly withdraw all offers of assistance. He lifts his gaze an inch or several instead, “Maybe, a bit. I don't really know...” Drops his eyes back to his glass once the words are loose on the table top between them.
A tentative admission the best he can offer her right now.
She chooses her next sentence carefully. “It might mean that he's close by.”
He slams the tumbler into the hardwood then, and she can see the second the glass splits, spiders a crack up one side but doesn't quite shatter.
The metaphor is almost blinding.
She does a quick scan of The Grill, searching for any familiar faces beyond Matt who is more than occupied at the bar. Finds none. “I don't know for sure but the grimoire suggests that it could be some kind of barrier spell. Like a force-field has been put up around him and the closer you get the more... well... you know.”
She gestures vaguely in his direction, lowers her head so she can wrap her lips around the straw in her soda. Uses the time it takes to have a drink as an excuse to examine his reaction to the news.
He's staring at her blankly, like he hasn't understood a word that she's said. She stops sipping then. “Damon?”
“Huh?” He looks up at her, still as though confused.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. So... you mean, that's it? I can't... I can't even...” He's stumbling over his words to a degree and the effect is disconcerting to say the least. “I can't go near him?”
A thousand different conversations are running through his head. Have been since the agony ramped up to mind-blowing just north of the Canadian border.
None of them ended with this.
“Damon-” Because that's not necessarily what she meant but she can see where his thought processes have taken him.
“You have to remove it.”
“I can't.”
“What do you mean, you can't? Of course you can, you're a Bennett. You can-” He's going to finish with do anything, cuts off the words when she starts to shake her head with a little more vigour.
“No. Damon, I can't do this. I'm sorry-”
“No.” He moves to stand then, like putting some distance between himself and the news will take it all away. It's a child-like action that shifts Bonnie's insides a little to the left.
Which is only fair. It feels like his insides are suddenly missing altogether.
“Damon, sit down. Please, there's more... just, sit back down.”
He stops then, taps his fingertips against the wooden table top, weighs up her words, catalogues his options, realises he has only one before collapsing back to seated opposite her.
“I didn't say you can't get near him. Let me finish. I mean, it won't be pleasant. But I'm guessing you've already figured that much out, hey?” She huffs out a laugh that he doesn't reciprocate.
He raises his eyebrows instead. Feels them shift towards his hairline of their own accord.
“Okay, so, I think you probably can get near him, but it'll hurt. A lot. And the energy that it takes to withstand the pain, I think that's what the force-field is for, really. I mean, you'll be a sitting duck, Damon. You won't be able to protect yourself. You won't be able to protect Elena...”
“But I can get near him?”
And she thinks he's missed her point entirely. “Yeah, probably, but--”
“Okay, that's all I needed to know.” It's not. It's not even close. But he figures he can work the rest out as he goes.
Trial and error. If his chest doesn't explode then it's all good. Anything that isn't that, well... there's no point in being all Negative Nancy just yet.
“But Elena--”
Elena.
“Elena will be fine. Stefan won't hurt her. Not a chance.”
“And you?”
He shrugs again. And she believes him this time. The empty nonchalance in the gesture.
“What about Klaus?”
“What about Klaus?”
“You'll be dead, Damon.”
“Won't be the first time that's happened.”
“Damon.” A warning. For what, she's not entirely sure.
“There's only so many times you can have the promise of finality handed to you on a plate just to have it ripped away again at the last minute.”
“What?”
“I'm almost one hundred and seventy five years old. That's enough, don't you think?”
Forever has never felt so mind-numbingly far away.
She makes a move, her hands towards where his are curled loosely around his cracked glass. Is reaching for him before she can register her intention as a conscious thought.
“Damon...” Breathless as her hands meet nothing but musky air and silence. And she doesn't think she'll ever get used to that. To the speed at which they can be there and then not in the very same jagged exhale.
“Hey, there you are!”
A different face slides into view. Bright and blonde and perpetually bubbly. “I've been looking for you everywhere.”
Caroline eyes the cracked tumbler with a frown, uses the back of her wrist to push it aside.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I was just... You know what? Never mind. You want to get out of here?”
“But I just arrived.” The patented pout, cherry gloss bright, that only seems to have developed even more sting since her transformation.
“You can stay if you want, Matt's here,” Bonnie indicates with her chin in the direction of the bar, “I'm going to find Elena.”
Damon watches Caroline take his place opposite the witch from just under the neon green exit sign. Catalogues her easy laughter with an increasing sense of wonder.
Puts it down to the fact that she's yet to contemplate eternity. Yet to live the same story out again and again expecting a different result and failing to achieve it every single time.
Yet to fully comprehend the futility of existence. Immortal or otherwise.
twenty six
Neither of them question the presence of the other when they set off once more just two days later. Elena in the driver's seat this time. The season is starting to turn, the sun stretching elongated fingers a little more defiantly across the horizon. She's wearing a loose t-shirt with sleeves that hang to her elbows. Damon finds his gaze glued to the back of her hand. The one that's closest to him. She rests it lazily on the handbrake, bounces her thumb in time with the soft beat of the radio.
His recollection of the night he almost died - again - is hazy at best. He remembers the staggering confusion and the searing pain with an almost visceral clarity; it is the more subtle moments that he struggles with the most. He thinks he dreamed that she kissed him once. Pressed her lips to his, impossibly soft, and whispered words against his eyelids.
He thinks he dreamed that she kissed him once, because believing it to be the truth is more than he can bring himself to cling to.
He thinks he dreamed that she kissed him.
Once.
- - -
They talk about Caroline and Tyler and the ridiculous way in which they circle around each other when they think no one else is watching. Cheeks flushed and glances stolen from under heavy lashes. Elena giggles and feels only a little guilty as she divulges school-girl secrets from the times the three of them, Elena, Bonnie and Caroline, would get together for sleepovers and map out their naïve teenager versions of the future.
Dark-haired husbands and blue-eyed babies. Glittering careers involving endless red carpets to traverse in impossibly high heels. Crystal cut champagne glasses and handprints immortalised in setting cement.
“You must think we're so stupid.”
And she's serious suddenly. Takes her eyes off the road to seek out his as her voice thickens.
“What? Why would I think that?”
“I mean, it must seem so trivial to you. The three of us and our immature, stupid--” She cuts herself off. Doesn't finish. Eyes suddenly bright and back on the road ahead.
“I don't think you're stupid, Elena.”
“It was though. I mean, really. Look at us now.”
He opens his mouth, prepares to offer up platitudes that she'll never believe. Settles for catching her still bouncing thumb with his own instead. Locks them together for a beat or several before loosening his grip again, letting his fist settle on the seat beside his thigh.
Holds his breath until her hand follows his. Laces fingers with a squeeze.
“I'm sorry.” Said on a sigh.
She catches the sincerity in his apology. Blinks back defiantly against tears she's refusing to concede. Knows no amount of indulgent self-pity will change the landscape of the rabbit hole she's currently tumbling down.
Can only hope with bated breath that when she lands at the bottom she's not there all alone.
thirty nine
They're not quite so fortunate the second time around.
Damon is driving, windows rolled to half way down and the dull throb of the radio mixing with the prevailing headwind to fill the car with just enough white noise that conversation is unnecessary. They're heading west of Jacksonville in North Carolina, Elena humming tunelessly to the beat of a song he doesn't quite recognise. This time there is no warning, at least, not beyond the flash of blacked-out windows that fly past in the opposite direction, and the agony in his chest is like someone has lit him on fire in an instant. Is incinerating him from the inside out.
He registers Elena's scream, feels the steering wheel pull sharply to the right as horns blare and the ground beneath them morphs from undulating black top to bumpy, off-road terrain. He slams his foot on the brake without opening his eyes. Prays to a God he's not believed in since he was seven years old that it's the right decision as the wheels lock and the car careens out of control.
She's still screaming when they come to a stop. The crunch of metal on metal or light pole or tree that he's expecting doesn't eventuate but it still feels like his ribcage is about to collapse in on itself. He fumbles to wrench open the door handle as Elena's raging hysteria continues to drown out all other sound. He stumbles, feels his face collide with the road-side landscaping they'd just mown down.
He twists to his side, arches his back to an angle that has his spine cracking in ways that it really shouldn't.
“DAMON...”
Hears the sound of his own name morph with the blood-curdling screams she's still leaking. He can taste blood. His own. Can feel it under his fingernails and sliding, ropey thick across his teeth and tongue.
He gags then. Inhales air he doesn't need alongside traces of his own insides. Chokes on the combination as his world starts to white out more than a little at the edges. There are hands twisting in his clothing, pulling him to upright as the agony threatens to send him over the abyss and into the black.
Almost wishes that it would just hurry up and do so already.
“Elena--” Chokes again, pleading with her to stop but not able to get the words into any kind of order that she'd understand.
Her arms lodge themselves under his and haul upright. He's lucid enough to comprehend the potential problems that a vampire writhing about on the side of the road could bring their way and so he lets her. Braces himself against the driver’s door as she fumbles to get the backseat clear of their hastily re-packed possessions. Counts in eights to distract himself from the blinding agony while she shoves backpacks up against each other and flings discarded take-out containers into the front seat.
Dumps him unceremoniously on top of what she doesn't have time to rearrange and slams the door behind him. Skids the car back out of wherever it was that they came to a stop and doesn't make another sound until they're back on the road once more.
As the seconds tick by the pain lessens. And he knows by now it must mean that they're headed in the wrong direction.
“Elena, stop.”
She laughs. Wild, wired. It doesn't sound like her at all.
“Elena, we're going the wrong way. Stop.” He's struggling to sit upright. Pushing against the backseat with arms that tremble and threaten to send him back to horizontal, chin first. “Please, just stop for a second.”
She gets the message then. Loud and clear. Appears to check the rear-view mirror quickly before slamming the brakes on right where they are. Leaves a trail of rubber and black smoke behind them as she does so. Almost sends him through the windshield in the process.
“Jesus, Elena.”
Her head is pillowed on her arms, her whole body shaking in time with his pulsing heartbeat. He double-checks that the road is still clear, wonders how much negotiation will be required to get her to pull off to the side a little. Almost thinks it's not worth the inevitable fight.
The agony has receded to a dull throb that he thinks he can probably manage for now. Notes with some degree of horror that his fingers are coated in blood and his shirt is shredded. Realises then just how close he came to tearing out his own heart.
“Are you okay?” Needs to know that she is more than he thinks he's ever needed to know anything. Gets little more than a bark of harsh laughter in reply.
“Elena, seriously. Are you okay?”
“What, you mean, did you manage to stop the car just inches before we ploughed head first into a freaking tree? If that's what you mean, then yes. Yes, I'm okay. But if you mean am I really okay, am I okay-okay, then no. No, I am not okay. I am so far from okay I don't think I could even recognise okay if I fell over it right now--”
He opens his mouth, prepares to wing an apology that isn't filled with too many lies and half-truths, is cut off before he can get even one word out.
“I'm tired, I think we're lost, we've been searching for Stefan for... I can't even remember how many days, you've told me more lies than I can possibly keep up with and--”
“Elena.”
She raises a hand, palm out in his direction.
“And to top it all off, I really want Thai for supper. Where the hell do you think we're going to get Thai around here?”
She gesticulates wildly out the front window and he frowns then, somewhat confused by the incoherence of her outburst.
“Excuse me?”
“Thai, Damon. I really want--” Her face crumples then. Brown eyes bright with unshed tears that reflect his own dishevelled image right back at him. He climbs through the gap between the front seats, lifts her effortlessly onto his lap and shifts the car back into gear, nudges them off towards the gravel shoulder before easing the car gently to a stop once more and cutting the ignition. Leaves the muted radio to provide the haunting soundtrack to her cries as she buries her face in his ruined shirt.
“I am so scared, Damon. All the time, I'm scared. I can't even remember what it feels like to not be scared. And I used to think that as long as you were here, then I'd be fine. I'd be safe--”
“Elena--”
“But I don't know if it's true anymore.”
“Elena, you know I'd--”
“There was a massive freaking tree, Damon! Seriously, I am not exaggerating when I say it was inches away from killing us both,” she stops then; reconsiders, “Well, me anyway...”
“Elena,” And he thinks he's said her name so many times in the last few minutes that he's not even sure she's hearing him anymore. “I'm so sor--”
“Are you dying?”
“What? No. Of course I'm not dying.”
“Because I know that there's something going on with you and--”
“Elena, I'm not dying. I swear. At least, Bonnie doesn't seem to think I--” And he regrets the attempt to placate her as soon as the syllables pass his lips.
“Bonnie? What do you mean, Bonnie doesn't seem to think you-?”
He shuts his eyes, counts to nine before opening them again.
“I called her, just to, you know, ask her professional opinion--”
He sees the exact moment she inhales, fills her lungs with enough air to properly berate him. He concedes defeat then. Lets her have her anger, hot and heavy as it is. Figures she doesn't really have much else left after all...
“You mean you've told Bonnie, but you haven't bothered to fill me in yet? Who else knows? Alaric?” She pauses, waits for him to confirm or deny. He does neither but she assumes the truth nonetheless. “Of course Alaric knows. You two tell each other everything. And if Bonnie knows then Jeremy knows, and Caroline probably knows, which means Tyler and Matt--”
He shuts her up in the only way he knows how. Covers her lips, salt-water slick, with his own and folds his fingers into the knotted tangles of hair that fall across her collar bones. Vows not to stop until the racing pulse of her heartbeat stills at least somewhat against his own heaving chest.
- - -
They barely make it to the motel. A thrumming kind of tension that eats away at his resolve slowly but surely. The pressure in his chest builds again, but he's prepared for it this time. Relishes the notion that the end may be nigh and thinks he loses his mind a little bit in the process.
Dissolves down into some manic caricature of himself as Elena's panties catch on the crook of the knee she has driven up between his thighs.
He thinks he should slow her down. Already convinced that she's going to regret every sordid second when the sun makes its inevitable ascent into daytime. Goes so far to as to moan a warning into her left ear, whisper-soft but insistent nonetheless.
“Elena, think about this...”
She responds by unbuttoning his faded denim jeans and pushing them floor-ward with the hand that isn't fisted into his hair.
“Are you sure--”
“Stop talking.”
Takes that as as close to a yes as he's going to get and finally lets himself loose. Discovers the agony in his chest starts to beat in time with the grinding of her hips against his. Black and white and back to midnight black.
Figures if he's going to betray his brother in every way possible then he might as well do it properly.
- - -
It's hard and more than a little bit dirty. She screeches obscenities into the air behind his head and doesn't even care that the front door to their shitty apartment for the night has bounced back open again from where she'd attempted to kick it to closed.
She's still riding high on the raging adrenalin that has been pumping through her system since Damon came feet and inches close to wrapping them both around a tree. The degree of horror that lanced through her in that moment hasn't really faded in the aftermath and she feels like she's only one loud bang away from complete hysteria.
He's all sharp angles and mystery. Keeps his eyes shut to tight as she tilts her head back, encourages him to hoist her higher on his hips. Remembers the sheer agony that had twisted his facial features into a mask only moments earlier and dares him to tell her the truth.
Vows to drag it out of him in whichever way she can.
Figures lips and tongues and fingers that work their way up the knotted length of his spine are as good a place as any to start.
forty
He wakes to sunlight criss-crossing his chest. Relishes the pulsating push of pressure that reminds him Stefan is within reach. Notes the trail of bruises that paint his ribcage a bright patchwork purple and figures even sleep wasn't enough to quell the agony.
Resigns himself to filling Elena in on most of the story. Dreads the degree of her hurt and disappointment that he can already taste on the tip of his tongue. Isn't left wanting when the front door swings to open just split seconds later.
“Damon, we need to talk.”
And he hadn't even realised he was alone until then, wonders vaguely how long she's been gone as a blood bag lands on the pooled sheet beside his left knee.
“Drink. I've talked to Bonnie--” He rolls his eyes at that because, of course she has. “Apparently we're close to where we need to be. But then, you already knew that, didn't you?”
The tilt of her head, the sharp angle of her chin, the loose curls of hair that she's no longer bothering to tame. She reminds him in that moment, achingly, of Katherine. Fierce and self-assured. Too much for him.
Always too much for him.
The both of them, he thinks.
- - -
She thinks her skin might be on fire. Each individual cell that came into contact with him, sweat-slippery and shocking. She uses action, and the fierce sense of betrayal she's currently swimming against, as almost but not quite successful distractions. Keeps one foot pointed in the opposite direction at all times in case the hammering urge to run becomes more than she can bear.
She slides her gaze over where he's still tangled in familiar sheets. Steels her resolve with a vice-like grip of her fingers around the door frame. The conversation with Bonnie had been perfunctory at best. The other girl had offered no apologies, Elena had expected little else.
After all, secrets and lies are what they do best these days.
All of them.
“Why didn't you tell me?” She knows why. Just wants to hear him say the words.
Even as she knows that he never will.
One more puzzle piece in the game they're playing. Something like grown-ups and make-believe, only with consequences that are more than real.
His eyelids slide closed as he drags in air he doesn't need. And she wonders if up and leaving would be easier if he wasn't so life-like. Bruises across his ribcage to match the bruises under his eyes. That he can hurt, that he can be hurt, she's not sure she'll ever be able to reconcile that.
“Elena.”
And she knows then that her name, no more than a muted sigh, is all the explanation she's going to get. A revelation she is doggedly refusing to accept.
“No.” Catches her breath as it pushes dust motes into a dance in the bright sunlight crossing her face. “No, you don't get to do that. Not anymore.”
He's pushing himself to standing. Movements ginger. Stilted. She wants to scream in his face that she hates him with the power of a thousand suns. Knows he would believe her with everything that he has.
Knows she would never believe herself.
“Let me--” She cuts him off.
“You don't get to decide which parts of this plan I'm allowed to know and which parts I'm not. You don't--” He's moving towards her. One unsteady foot in front of the other.
“You don't get to treat me like a child anymore. You can't treat me like a child anymore. Not after...”
He stops then. Pauses to stone-still just outside of her reach. “Is that what that was all about?” Expression emptied out in the space of one split second.
And she figures she could lie.
Say yes.
Tell him she only slept with him to gain some kind of tactical advantage. That it meant nothing more to her than striking up a win of sorts against her name. That she hadn't lost herself completely for the slow-turning seconds he was inside her. That she hadn't raked her nails down the centre of his spine in a desperate bid to leave some impossible trace of herself behind. A tangible reminder of all the bits of her that he'd already claimed.
She figures she could lie to them both.
Doesn't.
But only just.
- - -
Back in Mystic Falls, where the air is clearer and the undercurrent of panic a little less simmering, Katherine inclines her head with false disinterest as Caroline outlines the latest police broadcast her mother has happily divulged and then forgotten.
Hates with every fibre of her being to admit that the baby vamp has come through with the goods.
Again.
Begins to compare and contrast her initial solo mission plans with the potential benefits of having a side-kick.
After all, she's always worked best when she's had slightly needy minions to carry out the ground work.
Nods her head as Caroline finishes up her monologue with a self-satisfied smile and a quick bounce of her blonde curls.
Thinks; you'll do.
For now.
- - -
PART THREE
twenty four
They're back in Mystic Falls for almost two days before Damon resolutely gathers the energy required to come face to face with a Bennett witch.
Bonnie slides only somewhat reluctantly into the booth at The Grill. Dragging her soda along the table top, it leaves a trail of condensation behind as proof it had existed there first. She'd only been outside anyway and the fact that he's beaten her to the spot only proves her theory that he'd been here all along.
When he notes her eyebrows raised in the direction of his tumbler of scotch he contemplates detailing the fifth of vodka he had for breakfast. Doesn't, but only just.
“You look like crap,” she offers in lieu of a greeting. Figures the truth is as good a place as any to start.
“Why, thanks! And you look as fashionably bitchy as ever.” But the retort lacks its usual bite. Falls somewhat flat as he raises his glass in her direction. A mock salute.
“No, seriously, Damon. You look like crap.” In fact, she's more than a little taken aback by exactly how crap he does look. Like maybe he hasn't slept since all this started.
She wonders if it's true as he offers her a shrug. A deliberate non-answer if ever there was one.
“Did you find anything?” he counters pointedly, and he may indeed look like crap, though, honestly? Doubtful. But his appearance is remarkably beside the point at the moment.
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe?”
“I mean, maybe.”
He swills the liquid around the base of his shallow glass. She expects him to tip it back and down the lot in one go, is more than a little put off when he doesn't. Appears to lose himself instead in the amber pool.
“Can you feel it right now?”
Her question shocks him with its degree of personal insight but he refuses to let her see that. Shrugs again, slow and deliberate, until he notices a scowl deepen into the lines across her forehead, like maybe she's about to abruptly withdraw all offers of assistance. He lifts his gaze an inch or several instead, “Maybe, a bit. I don't really know...” Drops his eyes back to his glass once the words are loose on the table top between them.
A tentative admission the best he can offer her right now.
She chooses her next sentence carefully. “It might mean that he's close by.”
He slams the tumbler into the hardwood then, and she can see the second the glass splits, spiders a crack up one side but doesn't quite shatter.
The metaphor is almost blinding.
She does a quick scan of The Grill, searching for any familiar faces beyond Matt who is more than occupied at the bar. Finds none. “I don't know for sure but the grimoire suggests that it could be some kind of barrier spell. Like a force-field has been put up around him and the closer you get the more... well... you know.”
She gestures vaguely in his direction, lowers her head so she can wrap her lips around the straw in her soda. Uses the time it takes to have a drink as an excuse to examine his reaction to the news.
He's staring at her blankly, like he hasn't understood a word that she's said. She stops sipping then. “Damon?”
“Huh?” He looks up at her, still as though confused.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. So... you mean, that's it? I can't... I can't even...” He's stumbling over his words to a degree and the effect is disconcerting to say the least. “I can't go near him?”
A thousand different conversations are running through his head. Have been since the agony ramped up to mind-blowing just north of the Canadian border.
None of them ended with this.
“Damon-” Because that's not necessarily what she meant but she can see where his thought processes have taken him.
“You have to remove it.”
“I can't.”
“What do you mean, you can't? Of course you can, you're a Bennett. You can-” He's going to finish with do anything, cuts off the words when she starts to shake her head with a little more vigour.
“No. Damon, I can't do this. I'm sorry-”
“No.” He moves to stand then, like putting some distance between himself and the news will take it all away. It's a child-like action that shifts Bonnie's insides a little to the left.
Which is only fair. It feels like his insides are suddenly missing altogether.
“Damon, sit down. Please, there's more... just, sit back down.”
He stops then, taps his fingertips against the wooden table top, weighs up her words, catalogues his options, realises he has only one before collapsing back to seated opposite her.
“I didn't say you can't get near him. Let me finish. I mean, it won't be pleasant. But I'm guessing you've already figured that much out, hey?” She huffs out a laugh that he doesn't reciprocate.
He raises his eyebrows instead. Feels them shift towards his hairline of their own accord.
“Okay, so, I think you probably can get near him, but it'll hurt. A lot. And the energy that it takes to withstand the pain, I think that's what the force-field is for, really. I mean, you'll be a sitting duck, Damon. You won't be able to protect yourself. You won't be able to protect Elena...”
“But I can get near him?”
And she thinks he's missed her point entirely. “Yeah, probably, but--”
“Okay, that's all I needed to know.” It's not. It's not even close. But he figures he can work the rest out as he goes.
Trial and error. If his chest doesn't explode then it's all good. Anything that isn't that, well... there's no point in being all Negative Nancy just yet.
“But Elena--”
Elena.
“Elena will be fine. Stefan won't hurt her. Not a chance.”
“And you?”
He shrugs again. And she believes him this time. The empty nonchalance in the gesture.
“What about Klaus?”
“What about Klaus?”
“You'll be dead, Damon.”
“Won't be the first time that's happened.”
“Damon.” A warning. For what, she's not entirely sure.
“There's only so many times you can have the promise of finality handed to you on a plate just to have it ripped away again at the last minute.”
“What?”
“I'm almost one hundred and seventy five years old. That's enough, don't you think?”
Forever has never felt so mind-numbingly far away.
She makes a move, her hands towards where his are curled loosely around his cracked glass. Is reaching for him before she can register her intention as a conscious thought.
“Damon...” Breathless as her hands meet nothing but musky air and silence. And she doesn't think she'll ever get used to that. To the speed at which they can be there and then not in the very same jagged exhale.
“Hey, there you are!”
A different face slides into view. Bright and blonde and perpetually bubbly. “I've been looking for you everywhere.”
Caroline eyes the cracked tumbler with a frown, uses the back of her wrist to push it aside.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I was just... You know what? Never mind. You want to get out of here?”
“But I just arrived.” The patented pout, cherry gloss bright, that only seems to have developed even more sting since her transformation.
“You can stay if you want, Matt's here,” Bonnie indicates with her chin in the direction of the bar, “I'm going to find Elena.”
Damon watches Caroline take his place opposite the witch from just under the neon green exit sign. Catalogues her easy laughter with an increasing sense of wonder.
Puts it down to the fact that she's yet to contemplate eternity. Yet to live the same story out again and again expecting a different result and failing to achieve it every single time.
Yet to fully comprehend the futility of existence. Immortal or otherwise.
twenty six
Neither of them question the presence of the other when they set off once more just two days later. Elena in the driver's seat this time. The season is starting to turn, the sun stretching elongated fingers a little more defiantly across the horizon. She's wearing a loose t-shirt with sleeves that hang to her elbows. Damon finds his gaze glued to the back of her hand. The one that's closest to him. She rests it lazily on the handbrake, bounces her thumb in time with the soft beat of the radio.
His recollection of the night he almost died - again - is hazy at best. He remembers the staggering confusion and the searing pain with an almost visceral clarity; it is the more subtle moments that he struggles with the most. He thinks he dreamed that she kissed him once. Pressed her lips to his, impossibly soft, and whispered words against his eyelids.
He thinks he dreamed that she kissed him once, because believing it to be the truth is more than he can bring himself to cling to.
He thinks he dreamed that she kissed him.
Once.
- - -
They talk about Caroline and Tyler and the ridiculous way in which they circle around each other when they think no one else is watching. Cheeks flushed and glances stolen from under heavy lashes. Elena giggles and feels only a little guilty as she divulges school-girl secrets from the times the three of them, Elena, Bonnie and Caroline, would get together for sleepovers and map out their naïve teenager versions of the future.
Dark-haired husbands and blue-eyed babies. Glittering careers involving endless red carpets to traverse in impossibly high heels. Crystal cut champagne glasses and handprints immortalised in setting cement.
“You must think we're so stupid.”
And she's serious suddenly. Takes her eyes off the road to seek out his as her voice thickens.
“What? Why would I think that?”
“I mean, it must seem so trivial to you. The three of us and our immature, stupid--” She cuts herself off. Doesn't finish. Eyes suddenly bright and back on the road ahead.
“I don't think you're stupid, Elena.”
“It was though. I mean, really. Look at us now.”
He opens his mouth, prepares to offer up platitudes that she'll never believe. Settles for catching her still bouncing thumb with his own instead. Locks them together for a beat or several before loosening his grip again, letting his fist settle on the seat beside his thigh.
Holds his breath until her hand follows his. Laces fingers with a squeeze.
“I'm sorry.” Said on a sigh.
She catches the sincerity in his apology. Blinks back defiantly against tears she's refusing to concede. Knows no amount of indulgent self-pity will change the landscape of the rabbit hole she's currently tumbling down.
Can only hope with bated breath that when she lands at the bottom she's not there all alone.
thirty nine
They're not quite so fortunate the second time around.
Damon is driving, windows rolled to half way down and the dull throb of the radio mixing with the prevailing headwind to fill the car with just enough white noise that conversation is unnecessary. They're heading west of Jacksonville in North Carolina, Elena humming tunelessly to the beat of a song he doesn't quite recognise. This time there is no warning, at least, not beyond the flash of blacked-out windows that fly past in the opposite direction, and the agony in his chest is like someone has lit him on fire in an instant. Is incinerating him from the inside out.
He registers Elena's scream, feels the steering wheel pull sharply to the right as horns blare and the ground beneath them morphs from undulating black top to bumpy, off-road terrain. He slams his foot on the brake without opening his eyes. Prays to a God he's not believed in since he was seven years old that it's the right decision as the wheels lock and the car careens out of control.
She's still screaming when they come to a stop. The crunch of metal on metal or light pole or tree that he's expecting doesn't eventuate but it still feels like his ribcage is about to collapse in on itself. He fumbles to wrench open the door handle as Elena's raging hysteria continues to drown out all other sound. He stumbles, feels his face collide with the road-side landscaping they'd just mown down.
He twists to his side, arches his back to an angle that has his spine cracking in ways that it really shouldn't.
“DAMON...”
Hears the sound of his own name morph with the blood-curdling screams she's still leaking. He can taste blood. His own. Can feel it under his fingernails and sliding, ropey thick across his teeth and tongue.
He gags then. Inhales air he doesn't need alongside traces of his own insides. Chokes on the combination as his world starts to white out more than a little at the edges. There are hands twisting in his clothing, pulling him to upright as the agony threatens to send him over the abyss and into the black.
Almost wishes that it would just hurry up and do so already.
“Elena--” Chokes again, pleading with her to stop but not able to get the words into any kind of order that she'd understand.
Her arms lodge themselves under his and haul upright. He's lucid enough to comprehend the potential problems that a vampire writhing about on the side of the road could bring their way and so he lets her. Braces himself against the driver’s door as she fumbles to get the backseat clear of their hastily re-packed possessions. Counts in eights to distract himself from the blinding agony while she shoves backpacks up against each other and flings discarded take-out containers into the front seat.
Dumps him unceremoniously on top of what she doesn't have time to rearrange and slams the door behind him. Skids the car back out of wherever it was that they came to a stop and doesn't make another sound until they're back on the road once more.
As the seconds tick by the pain lessens. And he knows by now it must mean that they're headed in the wrong direction.
“Elena, stop.”
She laughs. Wild, wired. It doesn't sound like her at all.
“Elena, we're going the wrong way. Stop.” He's struggling to sit upright. Pushing against the backseat with arms that tremble and threaten to send him back to horizontal, chin first. “Please, just stop for a second.”
She gets the message then. Loud and clear. Appears to check the rear-view mirror quickly before slamming the brakes on right where they are. Leaves a trail of rubber and black smoke behind them as she does so. Almost sends him through the windshield in the process.
“Jesus, Elena.”
Her head is pillowed on her arms, her whole body shaking in time with his pulsing heartbeat. He double-checks that the road is still clear, wonders how much negotiation will be required to get her to pull off to the side a little. Almost thinks it's not worth the inevitable fight.
The agony has receded to a dull throb that he thinks he can probably manage for now. Notes with some degree of horror that his fingers are coated in blood and his shirt is shredded. Realises then just how close he came to tearing out his own heart.
“Are you okay?” Needs to know that she is more than he thinks he's ever needed to know anything. Gets little more than a bark of harsh laughter in reply.
“Elena, seriously. Are you okay?”
“What, you mean, did you manage to stop the car just inches before we ploughed head first into a freaking tree? If that's what you mean, then yes. Yes, I'm okay. But if you mean am I really okay, am I okay-okay, then no. No, I am not okay. I am so far from okay I don't think I could even recognise okay if I fell over it right now--”
He opens his mouth, prepares to wing an apology that isn't filled with too many lies and half-truths, is cut off before he can get even one word out.
“I'm tired, I think we're lost, we've been searching for Stefan for... I can't even remember how many days, you've told me more lies than I can possibly keep up with and--”
“Elena.”
She raises a hand, palm out in his direction.
“And to top it all off, I really want Thai for supper. Where the hell do you think we're going to get Thai around here?”
She gesticulates wildly out the front window and he frowns then, somewhat confused by the incoherence of her outburst.
“Excuse me?”
“Thai, Damon. I really want--” Her face crumples then. Brown eyes bright with unshed tears that reflect his own dishevelled image right back at him. He climbs through the gap between the front seats, lifts her effortlessly onto his lap and shifts the car back into gear, nudges them off towards the gravel shoulder before easing the car gently to a stop once more and cutting the ignition. Leaves the muted radio to provide the haunting soundtrack to her cries as she buries her face in his ruined shirt.
“I am so scared, Damon. All the time, I'm scared. I can't even remember what it feels like to not be scared. And I used to think that as long as you were here, then I'd be fine. I'd be safe--”
“Elena--”
“But I don't know if it's true anymore.”
“Elena, you know I'd--”
“There was a massive freaking tree, Damon! Seriously, I am not exaggerating when I say it was inches away from killing us both,” she stops then; reconsiders, “Well, me anyway...”
“Elena,” And he thinks he's said her name so many times in the last few minutes that he's not even sure she's hearing him anymore. “I'm so sor--”
“Are you dying?”
“What? No. Of course I'm not dying.”
“Because I know that there's something going on with you and--”
“Elena, I'm not dying. I swear. At least, Bonnie doesn't seem to think I--” And he regrets the attempt to placate her as soon as the syllables pass his lips.
“Bonnie? What do you mean, Bonnie doesn't seem to think you-?”
He shuts his eyes, counts to nine before opening them again.
“I called her, just to, you know, ask her professional opinion--”
He sees the exact moment she inhales, fills her lungs with enough air to properly berate him. He concedes defeat then. Lets her have her anger, hot and heavy as it is. Figures she doesn't really have much else left after all...
“You mean you've told Bonnie, but you haven't bothered to fill me in yet? Who else knows? Alaric?” She pauses, waits for him to confirm or deny. He does neither but she assumes the truth nonetheless. “Of course Alaric knows. You two tell each other everything. And if Bonnie knows then Jeremy knows, and Caroline probably knows, which means Tyler and Matt--”
He shuts her up in the only way he knows how. Covers her lips, salt-water slick, with his own and folds his fingers into the knotted tangles of hair that fall across her collar bones. Vows not to stop until the racing pulse of her heartbeat stills at least somewhat against his own heaving chest.
- - -
They barely make it to the motel. A thrumming kind of tension that eats away at his resolve slowly but surely. The pressure in his chest builds again, but he's prepared for it this time. Relishes the notion that the end may be nigh and thinks he loses his mind a little bit in the process.
Dissolves down into some manic caricature of himself as Elena's panties catch on the crook of the knee she has driven up between his thighs.
He thinks he should slow her down. Already convinced that she's going to regret every sordid second when the sun makes its inevitable ascent into daytime. Goes so far to as to moan a warning into her left ear, whisper-soft but insistent nonetheless.
“Elena, think about this...”
She responds by unbuttoning his faded denim jeans and pushing them floor-ward with the hand that isn't fisted into his hair.
“Are you sure--”
“Stop talking.”
Takes that as as close to a yes as he's going to get and finally lets himself loose. Discovers the agony in his chest starts to beat in time with the grinding of her hips against his. Black and white and back to midnight black.
Figures if he's going to betray his brother in every way possible then he might as well do it properly.
- - -
It's hard and more than a little bit dirty. She screeches obscenities into the air behind his head and doesn't even care that the front door to their shitty apartment for the night has bounced back open again from where she'd attempted to kick it to closed.
She's still riding high on the raging adrenalin that has been pumping through her system since Damon came feet and inches close to wrapping them both around a tree. The degree of horror that lanced through her in that moment hasn't really faded in the aftermath and she feels like she's only one loud bang away from complete hysteria.
He's all sharp angles and mystery. Keeps his eyes shut to tight as she tilts her head back, encourages him to hoist her higher on his hips. Remembers the sheer agony that had twisted his facial features into a mask only moments earlier and dares him to tell her the truth.
Vows to drag it out of him in whichever way she can.
Figures lips and tongues and fingers that work their way up the knotted length of his spine are as good a place as any to start.
forty
He wakes to sunlight criss-crossing his chest. Relishes the pulsating push of pressure that reminds him Stefan is within reach. Notes the trail of bruises that paint his ribcage a bright patchwork purple and figures even sleep wasn't enough to quell the agony.
Resigns himself to filling Elena in on most of the story. Dreads the degree of her hurt and disappointment that he can already taste on the tip of his tongue. Isn't left wanting when the front door swings to open just split seconds later.
“Damon, we need to talk.”
And he hadn't even realised he was alone until then, wonders vaguely how long she's been gone as a blood bag lands on the pooled sheet beside his left knee.
“Drink. I've talked to Bonnie--” He rolls his eyes at that because, of course she has. “Apparently we're close to where we need to be. But then, you already knew that, didn't you?”
The tilt of her head, the sharp angle of her chin, the loose curls of hair that she's no longer bothering to tame. She reminds him in that moment, achingly, of Katherine. Fierce and self-assured. Too much for him.
Always too much for him.
The both of them, he thinks.
- - -
She thinks her skin might be on fire. Each individual cell that came into contact with him, sweat-slippery and shocking. She uses action, and the fierce sense of betrayal she's currently swimming against, as almost but not quite successful distractions. Keeps one foot pointed in the opposite direction at all times in case the hammering urge to run becomes more than she can bear.
She slides her gaze over where he's still tangled in familiar sheets. Steels her resolve with a vice-like grip of her fingers around the door frame. The conversation with Bonnie had been perfunctory at best. The other girl had offered no apologies, Elena had expected little else.
After all, secrets and lies are what they do best these days.
All of them.
“Why didn't you tell me?” She knows why. Just wants to hear him say the words.
Even as she knows that he never will.
One more puzzle piece in the game they're playing. Something like grown-ups and make-believe, only with consequences that are more than real.
His eyelids slide closed as he drags in air he doesn't need. And she wonders if up and leaving would be easier if he wasn't so life-like. Bruises across his ribcage to match the bruises under his eyes. That he can hurt, that he can be hurt, she's not sure she'll ever be able to reconcile that.
“Elena.”
And she knows then that her name, no more than a muted sigh, is all the explanation she's going to get. A revelation she is doggedly refusing to accept.
“No.” Catches her breath as it pushes dust motes into a dance in the bright sunlight crossing her face. “No, you don't get to do that. Not anymore.”
He's pushing himself to standing. Movements ginger. Stilted. She wants to scream in his face that she hates him with the power of a thousand suns. Knows he would believe her with everything that he has.
Knows she would never believe herself.
“Let me--” She cuts him off.
“You don't get to decide which parts of this plan I'm allowed to know and which parts I'm not. You don't--” He's moving towards her. One unsteady foot in front of the other.
“You don't get to treat me like a child anymore. You can't treat me like a child anymore. Not after...”
He stops then. Pauses to stone-still just outside of her reach. “Is that what that was all about?” Expression emptied out in the space of one split second.
And she figures she could lie.
Say yes.
Tell him she only slept with him to gain some kind of tactical advantage. That it meant nothing more to her than striking up a win of sorts against her name. That she hadn't lost herself completely for the slow-turning seconds he was inside her. That she hadn't raked her nails down the centre of his spine in a desperate bid to leave some impossible trace of herself behind. A tangible reminder of all the bits of her that he'd already claimed.
She figures she could lie to them both.
Doesn't.
But only just.
- - -
Back in Mystic Falls, where the air is clearer and the undercurrent of panic a little less simmering, Katherine inclines her head with false disinterest as Caroline outlines the latest police broadcast her mother has happily divulged and then forgotten.
Hates with every fibre of her being to admit that the baby vamp has come through with the goods.
Again.
Begins to compare and contrast her initial solo mission plans with the potential benefits of having a side-kick.
After all, she's always worked best when she's had slightly needy minions to carry out the ground work.
Nods her head as Caroline finishes up her monologue with a self-satisfied smile and a quick bounce of her blonde curls.
Thinks; you'll do.
For now.
- - -
PART THREE