Bloodstream (1/4)
Title: Bloodstream (1/4)
Author: persephone_20
Summary: An AU in which Elena is romantically involved with both brothers, following the sequence of events in the last 3 episodes of season 1. Follows on a couple of weeks after Haunted (4/4)
Pairing: Damon/Elena, Stefan/Elena
Spoilers: None
Notes: I'd like to thank this week's lovely episode Rose, the wonderful coquilleon, and the letter 'B' for this particular fic.
Life in Mystic Falls was... pleasant for a while. As pleasant as could be expected in a town filled with vampires, and witches, and the gods only knew what else. Especially when two of those vampires were the Salvatore brothers. She still had no idea how she was meant to act while the three of them were around each other in front of other people. While it was only the three of them, Elena was more than comfortable. How not? In that situation, she knew exactly where both Damon and Stefan stood. She was Stefan’s girlfriend, and she and Damon were… still working out how they should be defined. She didn’t take Damon as the type to enter lightly into emotional commitments. And she really didn’t want to enter lightly into anything with him either. If the two of them ended up - was ‘going out’ the right term? Whenever she looked at Damon, she just couldn’t quite seem to make the term fit - then she wanted it to be real. She wanted it to be something that lasted.
When other people were around, she felt like they were looking at all three of them, judging her with their eyes, before Elena herself had even come up to a decision either way. In a couple of weeks, the best thing Elena had found to distract herself from her own love dramas was an introduction to the new girl Jeremy had recently been seeing. She was coming that night to a dinner that Jenna had organised so that she could invite Alaric.
“I think it’s good that he’s seeing someone else.” Jenna nodded to the lettuce, leaving the next sentence off. There were sentences that Jenna didn’t like saying, like those that included the names of unfortunate, young, dead girls.
Elena smiled ruefully. It was moments like this which reassured her that they were doing the right thing by keeping Jenna from knowing about vampires. She wondered how Alaric was doing it sometimes, but it was another of those sentences that went unsaid.
“Yeah, she sounds like she’s going to be really nice. I can’t wait to meet her.”
That sentiment lasted until just after Anna walked into the Gilbert residence. Out of the corner of her eye, Elena saw Jeremy bound up from the couch to meet her. Anna gave him a rather awkward smile, probably more in response to the odd look Elena was giving her than anything else.
“Elena, get out of the way so that she can come in,” Jeremy asked, with all the manner of a brother embarrassed by his older sister.
Elena gave another glance in Anna’s direction, tried to make it a smile, and stepped slowly out of the way. Anna walked past her, and Elena frowned. There were only handful of people who had that age above their years serenity, and only two of them, to Elena's knowledge, had invitations to this house. Jeremy hadn't exactly invited her in this time, but she walked in as though she had been here before. Was Elena just so used to drama that now she was seeing it everywhere? Or was it possible that Jeremy’s new girlfriend was a vampire? Did he even know?
Surely Stefan or Damon would have told her if there was another vampire in town?
“Elena, are you alright?” Jenna seemed concerned but, underneath that, there was an expression on Jenna’s face that told Elena to stop freaking out Jeremy’s nice, new girlfriend.
“Uh. Yeah. Sorry, Jer. Nice to meet you…?” Elena paused in her well-meant apology, realising that she couldn’t even remember the name of Jeremy’s girlfriend. Had Jenna given it?
“It’s Anna,” the shorter girl answered. Her smile was a little bit more stable now that Jeremy was by her side. “Good to see you again, Jenna,” Anna said.
She had been in this house before. Jeremy shot Elena a none too pleased look while Anna’s attention was on Jenna. Elena sighed. Great. Only three minutes in, and she’d already given Jeremy a new reason to be mad at her.
She thought the night could only get better once Stefan and Damon arrived. Their arrival meant that she had something else to focus on other than Anna’s new appearance into their life. Surprisingly enough, the brothers arrived with Alaric in tow. Alaric was all smiles. It was like his job as a teacher had imbued him with an ability to defuse all situations.
“Look who I found loitering outside,” Alaric said, even as he wandered up to Jenna and gave her a warm kiss of greeting.
Stefan did the same when he crossed to Elena’s side. “We bought wine,” he said.
Damon stood by the front door, hands in his pockets. He was the only one who didn’t have anything to add. Strangely, he didn’t seem surprised to see Anna there. Though they didn’t talk directly, Elena caught Anna glancing at Damon, at Stefan and Damon both, glancing at them and knowing they were vampires like she was. But she didn’t seem surprised either.
“You might have told me,” Elena hissed to Stefan, in a moment when Anna was helping Jenna finish setting the table, and Jeremy was talking to Damon.
“Told you… what?” Stefan asked, honestly confused.
“That there was another vampire in town?” Elena replied, only just managing to make her gesture in Anna’s direction subtle. “Before she showed up in my house?”
Stefan looked at Anna for a moment. Then he murmured, “She’s… harmless. Or at least, she won’t hurt your brother.”
That defused some of her anger, but not all of it. Elena settled her arms over her stomach. “Oh? And how do you know that?”
“She loves him.” Stefan was looking her in the eye as he spoke, letting that same love shine out of his eyes when he spoke to her.
“Oh,” she said again. This time, he had managed to defuse all her anger. The next time she looked at Jeremy and Anna, she saw it a bit differently. Without her Protective Sister goggles, she could see what Stefan had seen. It was obvious in her deference towards him, the way that she kept on trying to keep up her good impression on Jenna-without the use of compulsion-in a way that looked very similar to the way Stefan behaved. “Oh,” she said again.
“Well this looks like a very interesting conversation I’ve stumbled in upon.” Damon’s voice suddenly entered the conversation. He was all smiles when Elena and Stefan looked up to him. “Come on. Share it, then. What’s the juicy gossip?”
Once, Elena remembered, this would have annoyed her; the way Damon would come into a conversation and immediately expect to be given all the attention. Now, it had become something endearing, something that made her think of him. How things had changed. She gave him an indulgent smirk, still completely without inclination to share what they’d been talking about.
“Not everything’s about you, Damon,” she said, a cheeky smile on her face as she made sure her hip ran into him when she walked past.
“But so much of it is,” Damon replied, completely unrepentant. When he looked to Stefan, either for support or for the secrets they’d been speaking of, he got only an amused shake of the head and as little information as Elena had given him. “Oh, come on.”
Dinner was an enjoyable affair, after the surprise of Anna had passed. Actually, she got along very well with both Damon and Stefan, and conversation flowed across the table quite easily.
“So,” Elena asked, while there was a lull in conversation not long after the main meal had been served. She’d noticed Anna ate the food that was offered no differently to Stefan and Damon, regardless of the fact it gave her no sustenance. “How long have you been in town, Anna?”
“I was born here,” Anna replied promptly. “But then, you know how it is. Mom thought the schools were better elsewhere so we moved away for a bit. We decided home schooling was best after all, and you can’t stay away from home forever.” There was a smile that appeared on Anna’s lips about halfway through the telling, but it turned to a more private smile shared between her and Jeremy towards the end, when she reached out to take his hand.
“Finding schools of as high a standard as they used to be is a tough thing,” Damon said, matter of factly.
Elena looked towards Damon, then Stefan, but neither one of their faces gave anything away. So much for her thoughts on investigating.
“Tell me about it,” Jenna piped in, oblivious to all possible undertones. “Thankfully, Mystic Falls has managed to employ one of the good ones.” She leaned close to Alaric as she said it, and he grinned a little bashfully as he reached out for a potato that was rolling away from him on his plate. “So you and your mom are thinking of staying in town now, then?” Jenna continued. At Anna’s nod, Jenna said, “That’s good. Jeremy could use a… I mean…” Jenna blanched. “Stability is good for all teenagers,” she finished lamely.
“Of course,” Anna replied, barely suppressing her mirth.
Alaric brought dessert in from the kitchen after that, as Jenna had made all of this wonderful food for them and shouldn’t be expected to get up.
“I hope I’ll have helpers in the kitchen after dessert,” Alaric called back jovially as he was heading into the kitchen.
Jenna smiled at the handful of teenagers assembled around the dining room table. “This is nice,” she said. To Jeremy and Elena in particular, she added, “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do this after your parents died, but I think I’m doing alright.”
“You’re doing fine, Jenna,” Elena was quick to reassure.
“More than fine,” Jeremy added.
As it turned out, Stefan and Jeremy ended up being Alaric’s helpers in the kitchen for cleanup. The kitchen really couldn’t fit more than that comfortably with everyone expecting to be useful all at once. Jenna hovered around the edges of the kitchen, only kept that far out by Alaric’s repetitive threads of a wound up tee towel whip.
**
Damon, Elena and Anna settled in on the couches in the living room. As Elena leaned back, Damon lifted his arm around to the couch behind her. At the gesture, and how obvious it was to anyone watching, Elena stiffened for a moment. Of course, it didn’t help that Anna was sitting across from them, probably watching their every move like a vulture. She tried to relax, to not make the gesture of lying against Damon’s arm in her aunt’s living room look so… well, awkward, but she had a good idea that she’d failed even before Anna spoke.
“It’s okay, Elena. You don’t have to put on an act for me.” Anna smirked as though the very idea was ludicrous.
It didn’t seem so ludicrous to Elena. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
Anna shrugged. “It’s not like it’s uncommon for women to lean against both Salvatore brothers. Usually, if they have a taste for Stefan, they’ll have a taste for Damon too.”
Behind her head, Elena could feel the movement in Damon’s shoulder. Whether in agreement, or in a gesture to shut Anna up, Elena didn’t look to see. She could imagine all too easily the expression that would be on his face. Something like a, “I can’t help it if it’s true,” kind of expression. Suddenly, and not for the first time, Elena hated that expectation. She was not Katherine.
And that thought led onto another. “How would you know?” she demanded.
Suddenly, that cat with cream look vanished from Anna’s face. “What?”
“I said.” Elena sat forward so that Damon’s arm was no longer touching her. “How. Would you. Know?”
“Elena...” Damon tried his hand at defusing the situation, but he didn't have Alaric’s knack for it. The intent stare between Elena and Anna continued.
Anna laughed uneasily. “Well, you know, all the rumours in this town… Not to mention what’s written in Jonathan Gilbert’s journal.”
“Hey, what’s going on?” Jeremy asked lightly, innocent of the tension of the conversation he’d walked in on, at the same time as Elena said,
“Liar.”
The accusation was stark in the room, and could not be taken back. Stefan had come to join them in the living room and Alaric and Jenna were in earshot. There was hardly a friendly eye upon her. Well, Stefan’s was hardly unfriendly, it was just shocked. Shocked that his precious Elena could act so unreasonably, no doubt.
And, of course, Elena couldn’t say what had led up to her proclamation of Anna as a liar in Jenna’s hearing.
“Elena!” Jenna was slow to discipline, but to overlook the obvious faux pas would have looked like bad parenting. “Apologise to Anna.”
Elena set her jaw. She stared at Anna until she realised she was the only one staring. Anna was looking to Jeremy, seeming to be asking for an escape. From her!
That last stopped her and infuriated her all at once. Instead of apologising, instead of even looking Jenna or anyone else in the eye, Elena stood up from the couch and strode up the stairs to her bedroom. Jenna’s voice from the bottom of the stairs made not a speck of difference. Eventually, she stopped calling. The dinner party didn’t last much longer than that. Elena deliberately closed her ears to anything that was being said downstairs in her absence, already feeling severely mortified by her own behaviour.
It was to distract herself more than anything else that she moved across the room to open her window for some fresh air. She didn’t assume (though maybe she’d hoped) that one of the brothers would be on the other side of it. But neither of them were. They were probably as mortified by her behaviour as she was.
And the thing was, apart from her feelings of fear for Jeremy while he was dating a vampire, and the assumption that she was anything at all like Katherine, Anna really hadn’t given her a reason to go so out of line. She had, in fact, backed off the instant that Elena had started to sound offended, something that Damon himself had noticed, and the day when Damon was more conscious of social niceties than her was a worrying day indeed.
The point was, she didn’t know how to do this without becoming like Katherine. She didn’t know how to be involved with both of them without that happening. There was only so much a person could take of hearing they were similar to something else before they started to see it themselves. And Elena was definitely starting to see it herself.
There was a feeling of power attached in having both Salvatore brothers on her arm. She’d be lying if she said otherwise, and the words to prove it were written in the latest pages of her diary. The feelings she had when she walked into a room and knew both of their eyes were on her were intoxicating. And when she was across the room, or talking to Bonnie, or doing anything else, while that attention was on her, she was okay. It was only when she had to take responsibility for that attachment that the wheels fell off the emotional and metaphoric automobile.
She thought she’d demonstrated that this evening with aplomb.
“Heavy thoughts?”
Damon was resting comfortably against the outside of her window frame with his head in his palm. He looked positively Cheshire; Elena might almost have looked behind him for a tail.
“I would have come sooner,” Damon continued. “But Stefan and I had to draw straws first.”
The image of Damon and Stefan literally drawing straws to see which one of them came back to comfort her was just absurd enough to crack a smile. That one of them still wanted to see her was amazing enough. That both of them still wanted her filled her with relief.
Still. “I acted like an idiot tonight.”
“Yeah.” Damon shifted on the window sill. “You did a bit. Do you think that I can come in? It’s a bit uncomfortable out here. I was trying to be polite, but…”
“Come in,” Elena said, waving a hand absently, and was then astonished by how comfortable she’d become to having Damon be a part of her bedroom. He slid over the window sill with all the grace of a large feline; Cheshire once again. He stopped shy of being within arm’s reach from her, judging correctly that she still needed the space, and so lingered a couple of steps from the window. Elena remained standing by the end of her bed.
He gave her a lop-sided smile then, almost as if he knew what she’d been thinking so hard about. “It’s our fault, really. Anna was one of the vampires who avoided the tomb. Like us.” She watched as he waited a moment to allow that to sink in. Anna was as old as them. At least. Which meant she had known them when Katherine… “We didn’t know she was seeing Jeremy. One of us would have told you if we did.” His eyes implored her to believe him, and she did. Of course she did.
“That wasn’t what was bothering me,” she said gently.
“Ah.” Damon grimaced, but his eyes narrowed, as if he struggled to guess. “It’s our arrangement again, isn’t it? It’s too hard.”
He said it as though he was expecting her to back out of it and, in some ways, that was harder than all the thoughts she’d been having to that effect. Though he managed to cloak it well, she could see the pain and doubt under the light inevitability in his tone.
“It’s not…” Elena started to lie, but the half shake of Damon’s head stopped her. He would know it if she lied, and it would drive a wedge between them. She started again. “It is… but not in the way you’re thinking.”
She sat down, allowing the mattress of her bed to take her weight. Damon remained where he was, watchful and cautious.
“Okay, it’s like this. Katherine went after you and Stefan. She pretty much ruined the comfortable relationship you two shared, and then disappeared without trace leaving you and Stefan reeling for more than a hundred years.” Elena’s eyes told him to tell her to stop if she got anything wrong in her summation. He didn’t tell her to stop. She lowered her eyes. “Trouble is, I want you both, but I don’t want to be like Katherine. It’s bad enough that I look like her. It’s bad enough that every vampire we seem to meet makes a reference about her. I couldn’t bear it if… if you and Stefan started to think… if you…”
Damon did stop her there, where the flow of her announcement seemed to cease. He didn’t offer words immediately, instead choosing to hold onto her arms, near her shoulders, and keep her steady. He waited until the somewhat desperate glaze in her eyes became reassured by the look in his.
“You’re not Katherine.” He kept his face straight then, lest Elena attempt to break physical or eye contact, added, “I wouldn’t love you like this if you were.”
Elena’s tongue darted out to wet her lips. “Like what?” She barely managed to make the words sound out loud.
“Like…” Exasperation entered his eyes and left just as suddenly. “The world stops for me while you’re in it, Elena. I haven’t felt that in- I haven't felt that, not even with Katherine.” His lips flattened. “You calm me.”
Elena gave a tremulous grin around tears that were suddenly threatening to fall. “Well, you certainly seem calmer than when you first arrived.”
“That’s all you.” Damon murmured. He lifted a hand from her shoulder to brush dark hair out of Elena’s face. Her eyelids fluttered shut as she leaned into his palm. Damon kept his hand there, and Elena breathed in the scent that was uniquely him, drawing it in until, eventually, her lips found and pressed softly against the calloused skin of the middle of his palm.
She heard Damon’s sudden rush of indrawn breath, but still he didn’t move. Elena too stayed still, the side of her face remaining against the coolness of his hand. She didn’t think she had the power of will to stand up against the naked want that would likely be in his eyes if she looked up right then. For a couple of moments, she concentrated on just remembering how to breathe.
“Elena.” Damon’s voice was raspy, informing her that she had run out of time.
Elena sat up slowly, trying to create a little bit of distance between their faces without making it look obvious. “I love you,” she whispered. It wasn’t the first time she’d told him, but it was the first time in these circumstances.
Damon’s lips twisted wryly. “I love you.” Perhaps he was remembering the first time she’d told him she loved him, of the argument they’d been having. This time was nothing like that. It was perfect in its simplicity. Damon’s eyes drifted to her lips before he murmured, “I should go.”
“No… Stay.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d had a chance to process them, but she realised, upon the saying, that she wanted him to. It would be the first time they had spent the night together. Always before, he had left her at the front step like a gentleman or, in the times they’d been at the boarding house spending time with Stefan, he’d left her out the front of Stefan’s room.
“I should… text Stefan I won’t be home tonight,” Damon said, eyeing her carefully as he started to pull his phone out of his back pocket.
“Do,” Elena said, before surreptitiously changing into the pyjama shorts and tank top she would be wearing into bed. Damon’s eyes noted that, but he didn’t say a word. Instead, he too stripped only to his boxer shorts and black t-shirt before settling in beside her. They took a while to get comfortable next to each other, in the way that people sharing a bed for the first time do. Once he lay one arm across her pillow, and the other around her, keeping her close, they fit.
He was gone before she woke up, before Jenna had a chance to come upstairs and find him there. But the note he’d left on her pillow stayed on her person the rest of the entire day.
Part 2
Author: persephone_20
Summary: An AU in which Elena is romantically involved with both brothers, following the sequence of events in the last 3 episodes of season 1. Follows on a couple of weeks after Haunted (4/4)
Pairing: Damon/Elena, Stefan/Elena
Spoilers: None
Notes: I'd like to thank this week's lovely episode Rose, the wonderful coquilleon, and the letter 'B' for this particular fic.
Life in Mystic Falls was... pleasant for a while. As pleasant as could be expected in a town filled with vampires, and witches, and the gods only knew what else. Especially when two of those vampires were the Salvatore brothers. She still had no idea how she was meant to act while the three of them were around each other in front of other people. While it was only the three of them, Elena was more than comfortable. How not? In that situation, she knew exactly where both Damon and Stefan stood. She was Stefan’s girlfriend, and she and Damon were… still working out how they should be defined. She didn’t take Damon as the type to enter lightly into emotional commitments. And she really didn’t want to enter lightly into anything with him either. If the two of them ended up - was ‘going out’ the right term? Whenever she looked at Damon, she just couldn’t quite seem to make the term fit - then she wanted it to be real. She wanted it to be something that lasted.
When other people were around, she felt like they were looking at all three of them, judging her with their eyes, before Elena herself had even come up to a decision either way. In a couple of weeks, the best thing Elena had found to distract herself from her own love dramas was an introduction to the new girl Jeremy had recently been seeing. She was coming that night to a dinner that Jenna had organised so that she could invite Alaric.
“I think it’s good that he’s seeing someone else.” Jenna nodded to the lettuce, leaving the next sentence off. There were sentences that Jenna didn’t like saying, like those that included the names of unfortunate, young, dead girls.
Elena smiled ruefully. It was moments like this which reassured her that they were doing the right thing by keeping Jenna from knowing about vampires. She wondered how Alaric was doing it sometimes, but it was another of those sentences that went unsaid.
“Yeah, she sounds like she’s going to be really nice. I can’t wait to meet her.”
That sentiment lasted until just after Anna walked into the Gilbert residence. Out of the corner of her eye, Elena saw Jeremy bound up from the couch to meet her. Anna gave him a rather awkward smile, probably more in response to the odd look Elena was giving her than anything else.
“Elena, get out of the way so that she can come in,” Jeremy asked, with all the manner of a brother embarrassed by his older sister.
Elena gave another glance in Anna’s direction, tried to make it a smile, and stepped slowly out of the way. Anna walked past her, and Elena frowned. There were only handful of people who had that age above their years serenity, and only two of them, to Elena's knowledge, had invitations to this house. Jeremy hadn't exactly invited her in this time, but she walked in as though she had been here before. Was Elena just so used to drama that now she was seeing it everywhere? Or was it possible that Jeremy’s new girlfriend was a vampire? Did he even know?
Surely Stefan or Damon would have told her if there was another vampire in town?
“Elena, are you alright?” Jenna seemed concerned but, underneath that, there was an expression on Jenna’s face that told Elena to stop freaking out Jeremy’s nice, new girlfriend.
“Uh. Yeah. Sorry, Jer. Nice to meet you…?” Elena paused in her well-meant apology, realising that she couldn’t even remember the name of Jeremy’s girlfriend. Had Jenna given it?
“It’s Anna,” the shorter girl answered. Her smile was a little bit more stable now that Jeremy was by her side. “Good to see you again, Jenna,” Anna said.
She had been in this house before. Jeremy shot Elena a none too pleased look while Anna’s attention was on Jenna. Elena sighed. Great. Only three minutes in, and she’d already given Jeremy a new reason to be mad at her.
She thought the night could only get better once Stefan and Damon arrived. Their arrival meant that she had something else to focus on other than Anna’s new appearance into their life. Surprisingly enough, the brothers arrived with Alaric in tow. Alaric was all smiles. It was like his job as a teacher had imbued him with an ability to defuse all situations.
“Look who I found loitering outside,” Alaric said, even as he wandered up to Jenna and gave her a warm kiss of greeting.
Stefan did the same when he crossed to Elena’s side. “We bought wine,” he said.
Damon stood by the front door, hands in his pockets. He was the only one who didn’t have anything to add. Strangely, he didn’t seem surprised to see Anna there. Though they didn’t talk directly, Elena caught Anna glancing at Damon, at Stefan and Damon both, glancing at them and knowing they were vampires like she was. But she didn’t seem surprised either.
“You might have told me,” Elena hissed to Stefan, in a moment when Anna was helping Jenna finish setting the table, and Jeremy was talking to Damon.
“Told you… what?” Stefan asked, honestly confused.
“That there was another vampire in town?” Elena replied, only just managing to make her gesture in Anna’s direction subtle. “Before she showed up in my house?”
Stefan looked at Anna for a moment. Then he murmured, “She’s… harmless. Or at least, she won’t hurt your brother.”
That defused some of her anger, but not all of it. Elena settled her arms over her stomach. “Oh? And how do you know that?”
“She loves him.” Stefan was looking her in the eye as he spoke, letting that same love shine out of his eyes when he spoke to her.
“Oh,” she said again. This time, he had managed to defuse all her anger. The next time she looked at Jeremy and Anna, she saw it a bit differently. Without her Protective Sister goggles, she could see what Stefan had seen. It was obvious in her deference towards him, the way that she kept on trying to keep up her good impression on Jenna-without the use of compulsion-in a way that looked very similar to the way Stefan behaved. “Oh,” she said again.
“Well this looks like a very interesting conversation I’ve stumbled in upon.” Damon’s voice suddenly entered the conversation. He was all smiles when Elena and Stefan looked up to him. “Come on. Share it, then. What’s the juicy gossip?”
Once, Elena remembered, this would have annoyed her; the way Damon would come into a conversation and immediately expect to be given all the attention. Now, it had become something endearing, something that made her think of him. How things had changed. She gave him an indulgent smirk, still completely without inclination to share what they’d been talking about.
“Not everything’s about you, Damon,” she said, a cheeky smile on her face as she made sure her hip ran into him when she walked past.
“But so much of it is,” Damon replied, completely unrepentant. When he looked to Stefan, either for support or for the secrets they’d been speaking of, he got only an amused shake of the head and as little information as Elena had given him. “Oh, come on.”
Dinner was an enjoyable affair, after the surprise of Anna had passed. Actually, she got along very well with both Damon and Stefan, and conversation flowed across the table quite easily.
“So,” Elena asked, while there was a lull in conversation not long after the main meal had been served. She’d noticed Anna ate the food that was offered no differently to Stefan and Damon, regardless of the fact it gave her no sustenance. “How long have you been in town, Anna?”
“I was born here,” Anna replied promptly. “But then, you know how it is. Mom thought the schools were better elsewhere so we moved away for a bit. We decided home schooling was best after all, and you can’t stay away from home forever.” There was a smile that appeared on Anna’s lips about halfway through the telling, but it turned to a more private smile shared between her and Jeremy towards the end, when she reached out to take his hand.
“Finding schools of as high a standard as they used to be is a tough thing,” Damon said, matter of factly.
Elena looked towards Damon, then Stefan, but neither one of their faces gave anything away. So much for her thoughts on investigating.
“Tell me about it,” Jenna piped in, oblivious to all possible undertones. “Thankfully, Mystic Falls has managed to employ one of the good ones.” She leaned close to Alaric as she said it, and he grinned a little bashfully as he reached out for a potato that was rolling away from him on his plate. “So you and your mom are thinking of staying in town now, then?” Jenna continued. At Anna’s nod, Jenna said, “That’s good. Jeremy could use a… I mean…” Jenna blanched. “Stability is good for all teenagers,” she finished lamely.
“Of course,” Anna replied, barely suppressing her mirth.
Alaric brought dessert in from the kitchen after that, as Jenna had made all of this wonderful food for them and shouldn’t be expected to get up.
“I hope I’ll have helpers in the kitchen after dessert,” Alaric called back jovially as he was heading into the kitchen.
Jenna smiled at the handful of teenagers assembled around the dining room table. “This is nice,” she said. To Jeremy and Elena in particular, she added, “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do this after your parents died, but I think I’m doing alright.”
“You’re doing fine, Jenna,” Elena was quick to reassure.
“More than fine,” Jeremy added.
As it turned out, Stefan and Jeremy ended up being Alaric’s helpers in the kitchen for cleanup. The kitchen really couldn’t fit more than that comfortably with everyone expecting to be useful all at once. Jenna hovered around the edges of the kitchen, only kept that far out by Alaric’s repetitive threads of a wound up tee towel whip.
**
Damon, Elena and Anna settled in on the couches in the living room. As Elena leaned back, Damon lifted his arm around to the couch behind her. At the gesture, and how obvious it was to anyone watching, Elena stiffened for a moment. Of course, it didn’t help that Anna was sitting across from them, probably watching their every move like a vulture. She tried to relax, to not make the gesture of lying against Damon’s arm in her aunt’s living room look so… well, awkward, but she had a good idea that she’d failed even before Anna spoke.
“It’s okay, Elena. You don’t have to put on an act for me.” Anna smirked as though the very idea was ludicrous.
It didn’t seem so ludicrous to Elena. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
Anna shrugged. “It’s not like it’s uncommon for women to lean against both Salvatore brothers. Usually, if they have a taste for Stefan, they’ll have a taste for Damon too.”
Behind her head, Elena could feel the movement in Damon’s shoulder. Whether in agreement, or in a gesture to shut Anna up, Elena didn’t look to see. She could imagine all too easily the expression that would be on his face. Something like a, “I can’t help it if it’s true,” kind of expression. Suddenly, and not for the first time, Elena hated that expectation. She was not Katherine.
And that thought led onto another. “How would you know?” she demanded.
Suddenly, that cat with cream look vanished from Anna’s face. “What?”
“I said.” Elena sat forward so that Damon’s arm was no longer touching her. “How. Would you. Know?”
“Elena...” Damon tried his hand at defusing the situation, but he didn't have Alaric’s knack for it. The intent stare between Elena and Anna continued.
Anna laughed uneasily. “Well, you know, all the rumours in this town… Not to mention what’s written in Jonathan Gilbert’s journal.”
“Hey, what’s going on?” Jeremy asked lightly, innocent of the tension of the conversation he’d walked in on, at the same time as Elena said,
“Liar.”
The accusation was stark in the room, and could not be taken back. Stefan had come to join them in the living room and Alaric and Jenna were in earshot. There was hardly a friendly eye upon her. Well, Stefan’s was hardly unfriendly, it was just shocked. Shocked that his precious Elena could act so unreasonably, no doubt.
And, of course, Elena couldn’t say what had led up to her proclamation of Anna as a liar in Jenna’s hearing.
“Elena!” Jenna was slow to discipline, but to overlook the obvious faux pas would have looked like bad parenting. “Apologise to Anna.”
Elena set her jaw. She stared at Anna until she realised she was the only one staring. Anna was looking to Jeremy, seeming to be asking for an escape. From her!
That last stopped her and infuriated her all at once. Instead of apologising, instead of even looking Jenna or anyone else in the eye, Elena stood up from the couch and strode up the stairs to her bedroom. Jenna’s voice from the bottom of the stairs made not a speck of difference. Eventually, she stopped calling. The dinner party didn’t last much longer than that. Elena deliberately closed her ears to anything that was being said downstairs in her absence, already feeling severely mortified by her own behaviour.
It was to distract herself more than anything else that she moved across the room to open her window for some fresh air. She didn’t assume (though maybe she’d hoped) that one of the brothers would be on the other side of it. But neither of them were. They were probably as mortified by her behaviour as she was.
And the thing was, apart from her feelings of fear for Jeremy while he was dating a vampire, and the assumption that she was anything at all like Katherine, Anna really hadn’t given her a reason to go so out of line. She had, in fact, backed off the instant that Elena had started to sound offended, something that Damon himself had noticed, and the day when Damon was more conscious of social niceties than her was a worrying day indeed.
The point was, she didn’t know how to do this without becoming like Katherine. She didn’t know how to be involved with both of them without that happening. There was only so much a person could take of hearing they were similar to something else before they started to see it themselves. And Elena was definitely starting to see it herself.
There was a feeling of power attached in having both Salvatore brothers on her arm. She’d be lying if she said otherwise, and the words to prove it were written in the latest pages of her diary. The feelings she had when she walked into a room and knew both of their eyes were on her were intoxicating. And when she was across the room, or talking to Bonnie, or doing anything else, while that attention was on her, she was okay. It was only when she had to take responsibility for that attachment that the wheels fell off the emotional and metaphoric automobile.
She thought she’d demonstrated that this evening with aplomb.
“Heavy thoughts?”
Damon was resting comfortably against the outside of her window frame with his head in his palm. He looked positively Cheshire; Elena might almost have looked behind him for a tail.
“I would have come sooner,” Damon continued. “But Stefan and I had to draw straws first.”
The image of Damon and Stefan literally drawing straws to see which one of them came back to comfort her was just absurd enough to crack a smile. That one of them still wanted to see her was amazing enough. That both of them still wanted her filled her with relief.
Still. “I acted like an idiot tonight.”
“Yeah.” Damon shifted on the window sill. “You did a bit. Do you think that I can come in? It’s a bit uncomfortable out here. I was trying to be polite, but…”
“Come in,” Elena said, waving a hand absently, and was then astonished by how comfortable she’d become to having Damon be a part of her bedroom. He slid over the window sill with all the grace of a large feline; Cheshire once again. He stopped shy of being within arm’s reach from her, judging correctly that she still needed the space, and so lingered a couple of steps from the window. Elena remained standing by the end of her bed.
He gave her a lop-sided smile then, almost as if he knew what she’d been thinking so hard about. “It’s our fault, really. Anna was one of the vampires who avoided the tomb. Like us.” She watched as he waited a moment to allow that to sink in. Anna was as old as them. At least. Which meant she had known them when Katherine… “We didn’t know she was seeing Jeremy. One of us would have told you if we did.” His eyes implored her to believe him, and she did. Of course she did.
“That wasn’t what was bothering me,” she said gently.
“Ah.” Damon grimaced, but his eyes narrowed, as if he struggled to guess. “It’s our arrangement again, isn’t it? It’s too hard.”
He said it as though he was expecting her to back out of it and, in some ways, that was harder than all the thoughts she’d been having to that effect. Though he managed to cloak it well, she could see the pain and doubt under the light inevitability in his tone.
“It’s not…” Elena started to lie, but the half shake of Damon’s head stopped her. He would know it if she lied, and it would drive a wedge between them. She started again. “It is… but not in the way you’re thinking.”
She sat down, allowing the mattress of her bed to take her weight. Damon remained where he was, watchful and cautious.
“Okay, it’s like this. Katherine went after you and Stefan. She pretty much ruined the comfortable relationship you two shared, and then disappeared without trace leaving you and Stefan reeling for more than a hundred years.” Elena’s eyes told him to tell her to stop if she got anything wrong in her summation. He didn’t tell her to stop. She lowered her eyes. “Trouble is, I want you both, but I don’t want to be like Katherine. It’s bad enough that I look like her. It’s bad enough that every vampire we seem to meet makes a reference about her. I couldn’t bear it if… if you and Stefan started to think… if you…”
Damon did stop her there, where the flow of her announcement seemed to cease. He didn’t offer words immediately, instead choosing to hold onto her arms, near her shoulders, and keep her steady. He waited until the somewhat desperate glaze in her eyes became reassured by the look in his.
“You’re not Katherine.” He kept his face straight then, lest Elena attempt to break physical or eye contact, added, “I wouldn’t love you like this if you were.”
Elena’s tongue darted out to wet her lips. “Like what?” She barely managed to make the words sound out loud.
“Like…” Exasperation entered his eyes and left just as suddenly. “The world stops for me while you’re in it, Elena. I haven’t felt that in- I haven't felt that, not even with Katherine.” His lips flattened. “You calm me.”
Elena gave a tremulous grin around tears that were suddenly threatening to fall. “Well, you certainly seem calmer than when you first arrived.”
“That’s all you.” Damon murmured. He lifted a hand from her shoulder to brush dark hair out of Elena’s face. Her eyelids fluttered shut as she leaned into his palm. Damon kept his hand there, and Elena breathed in the scent that was uniquely him, drawing it in until, eventually, her lips found and pressed softly against the calloused skin of the middle of his palm.
She heard Damon’s sudden rush of indrawn breath, but still he didn’t move. Elena too stayed still, the side of her face remaining against the coolness of his hand. She didn’t think she had the power of will to stand up against the naked want that would likely be in his eyes if she looked up right then. For a couple of moments, she concentrated on just remembering how to breathe.
“Elena.” Damon’s voice was raspy, informing her that she had run out of time.
Elena sat up slowly, trying to create a little bit of distance between their faces without making it look obvious. “I love you,” she whispered. It wasn’t the first time she’d told him, but it was the first time in these circumstances.
Damon’s lips twisted wryly. “I love you.” Perhaps he was remembering the first time she’d told him she loved him, of the argument they’d been having. This time was nothing like that. It was perfect in its simplicity. Damon’s eyes drifted to her lips before he murmured, “I should go.”
“No… Stay.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d had a chance to process them, but she realised, upon the saying, that she wanted him to. It would be the first time they had spent the night together. Always before, he had left her at the front step like a gentleman or, in the times they’d been at the boarding house spending time with Stefan, he’d left her out the front of Stefan’s room.
“I should… text Stefan I won’t be home tonight,” Damon said, eyeing her carefully as he started to pull his phone out of his back pocket.
“Do,” Elena said, before surreptitiously changing into the pyjama shorts and tank top she would be wearing into bed. Damon’s eyes noted that, but he didn’t say a word. Instead, he too stripped only to his boxer shorts and black t-shirt before settling in beside her. They took a while to get comfortable next to each other, in the way that people sharing a bed for the first time do. Once he lay one arm across her pillow, and the other around her, keeping her close, they fit.
He was gone before she woke up, before Jenna had a chance to come upstairs and find him there. But the note he’d left on her pillow stayed on her person the rest of the entire day.
Part 2