[fic] Looking for a Happy Ending
Title: Looking for a Happy Ending
Author: badboy_fangirl
Pairings: Damon/Elena
Word Count: ~5300
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 (for sexy times & biting)
Spoilers: Everything through 3x02 "The Hybrid" with pure speculation beyond that.
Summary: A road trip leads to a revelation or two.
Author's notes: This was written for brokenbell who purchased me at fandomaid. Her prompts were: Damon/Elena - And I'm so tired of being wrong. Angst, UST, biting, and sexy time. And somehow Damon and Elena actually did what I told them this time! (It's a Christmas miracle!) Beta'd by the enormously gifted lit_chick08, who helped make it better, by far. Also, to all those who have written road trip fic before me, you were probably the inspiration for this fic; please view it as a homage and not plagiarism! :D
The first and last breath don't matter
It's all the ones that are in-between
It's the reason for living
from "Happy Ending" by Sugarland
She's trying really hard not to cry, but it's a futile effort. Another dead end after months of looking and repeated road trips that have left her behind in her school work but no closer to finding Stefan-or to bringing him home like Damon said they could. She stands, looking at the abandoned, run-down house that, fortunately, doesn't hold any dead bodies, and blinks rapidly to combat the tears threatening to fall.
"Hey, hey, hey," Damon's voice spirals quietly into her ear as his hand palms the back of her head, pulling her against his chest. "None of that," he whispers, his fingers threading through her hair.
She feels his lips against the top of her head and admits to herself that she doesn't even know anymore who she cries for: the brother who is lost or the brother she's with that she shouldn't want to be with, that she shouldn't want to hold her, that she shouldn't want.
But she melts into his arms because she's so tired. Tired of fighting herself, tired of fighting the inevitability of the truth, tired of looking but never finding.
He's been there too many times, seen her in this state again and again, and held her while she succumbed to weakness, immeasurable sadness, painstaking weariness.
And he's never asked for anything except that she remember how she feels in these moments.
(Like she could ever forget.)
"Let's find a hotel," he murmurs against her forehead. "A nice one, with a jacuzzi tub and a flatscreen."
His fingers massage at the base of her skull and she tips her head back automatically, both to allow the wonderful feeling of him pressing out the stress in her body and to look into his eyes. She starts to protest, but he just grins. "I'm buying, and you know I'm not staying in a Motel 6. Not tonight. We need a good night's rest before we go back to Mystic Falls."
Arguing is something they do almost as well as pretending they aren't moments away from an act they can never return from, but Elena doesn't have the heart for it, not now. They've stayed in many a shitty motel over the last several months, mostly because she "bitched so much" that Damon would give in and let her pay for it even though he obviously had much more money than the small allowance she got from her parents' trust.
She lets him lead her back to the Camaro and shut her in on the passenger side. Then they leave the rural county outside one of Detroit's suburbs and Damon hands her his phone. "Punch The Four Seasons into the GPS."
During one of their earlier trips, Elena had teased Damon about his fondness for baths. He just smirked at her and reminded her that he came from a time when people bathed once a week, in a large tub. He had been witness to the progression of indoor plumbing, claw-foot bathtubs, and he thought jacuzzi tubs were the best invention ever.
It had been an endearing revelation about him, a reminder that he had seen so much having lived as long as he had. It was also a moment of wonder for her to realize how little she knew about their lives-from before. Before Katherine, before vampirism, before, when they were young men with dreams and angst, just like her.
That conversation had been even more interesting, right up until Damon realized he was talking about things that normally he didn't. "I'm sure Stefan told you all this stuff," he said by way of ending his own walk down memory lane, which stopped abruptly with his joining of the Confederate Army. (He'd only done it to please his father, not because he had any real passion for their way of life; surprisingly, Damon had found slavery to be offensive, especially after he came to know Emily Bennett. "She was smarter than I ever dreamt of being, so obviously, if anyone belonged to a superior race, it was not me.")
Elena shook her head. "No, he rarely spoke of that time. I don't know why, but I never asked him about it either," she said wistfully. Now that Stefan was gone, there were a lot of things she could see more clearly. Not only did Damon carry a large part of her heart that she had no memory of giving to him, but she could see the gaping holes in her relationship with his brother. There were so many things they just hadn't talked about; she liked to think it was because those were the topics they would cover when he came home, but with each passing day, that dream began to fade.
As they pull into The Four Seasons parking garage of Oak Park, Michigan, Elena snaps herself back to this road trip, the fifth such one in seven months. Christmas had come and gone, and it was a cold and snowy February, but Damon had snow tires, good reflexes, and no concern about how far they had to drive to find (or not find, as the case may be) his brother. He wasn't giving up, because he loved Stefan, and because he loved her. Elena had long since given up trying to ignore the obvious; Damon's actions were pure, and she couldn't help the tender feelings that welled up in her chest every time she thought of his selfless devotion.
Because, really, they both knew, if Stefan came home, she might remember what she felt for Damon, but she wasn't going to do anything about it. Just like now, days and nights on the road, separate beds in hotels and motels, and never an inappropriate line crossed between them. Other than Damon's oft-tossed innuendo, his remarks about that death-bed kissy thing, or the general way he had of looking at her so that she felt like he was devouring her with his eyes, they were nothing more than good friends.
(Good friends who had definite sexual tension between them. Good friends whose eyes lingered too long on each other's faces for anyone to believe that they were just friends. Good friends, who after having a discussion about the bathtub, left one of the friends (Elena) imagining the other friend (Damon) in the tub. And out of the tub. And naked, with bubbles all over his lithe frame, because, well, she'd had that peep show once without asking for it, and it was hard to get perfection out of your mind's eye, even if you didn't look for very long.)
But what Damon didn't know kept Elena in the safe zone, and that's exactly where she intended to be when they found Stefan and saved him.
A valet leads them up to their room, showing them the amenities (jacuzzi tub, flatscreen TV, two queen-sized beds). He asks them if they need anything special-Damon asks for a bottle of a particular kind of Scotch if the guy can find it-and then he scurries away with a large tip fisted in his palm from Damon's wallet.
Damon shrugs off his jacket, drops his phone on the desk, and gives Elena a raised brow. "I'm going to take a bath, unless you need the bathroom?"
She shakes her head and sees it in his eyes a moment before the words leave his lips, "Of course, you're always welcome to join me." He smirks, does that eye-thing, and then smiles at her in a way that makes her warm all over.
She grimaces at him, grabs the television remote, and jumps on one of the beds, determinedly looking away from him as he saunters into the bathroom. She can hear him chuckling softly as he shuts the door behind him.
She finds a rerun of Gilmore Girls and loses herself in it for a short while before she remembers she's supposed to text Jeremy to let him know where they ended up tonight. She digs her phone out of her purse and discovers that it's dead. After a thorough search of her overnight bag, she realizes she left her charger at home. She tosses her phone back in her purse and picks up the bedside hotel phone to dial out just as her eyes fall upon the desk, and Damon's cell phone.
Deciding that the unlimited texting feature is a better use of his money, she hangs up the landline phone and heads for the desk. She pulls up his in-box and finds that Jeremy's number is already in the phone, which probably shouldn't surprise her. Damon is as deeply involved with all the people in her life as she is, and the idea that her brother probably texts Stefan's brother for who knows what is really the least of her worries.
She types, in for the night in Oak Park, MI. No Stefan, but all is well. Elena's phone's dead. Be home tomorrow.
She hits send, and as she watches the message disappear into cyberspace, Damon's phone vibrates in her hand because he's receiving a message as well.
In all the months they've been following tips, chasing after whispers of danger and always seeming to be one (or ten) steps behind, Elena has never doubted that eventually they would find Stefan. She believes, truly, that between the two of them, they have the capability of bringing him home, assuming that when they get to him, he's still alive. Certainly her frustration has grown and her faith has waned at times, but in her heart of hearts, she knows that Stefan wants to be who he once was.
Her boyfriend. Damon's brother. A vampire who doesn't live like a vampire.
So when a text message from him appears on Damon's phone right before her eyes, she's filled to the brim with exuberance, with the knowledge that all their travels haven't been in vain, that somehow, even though they missed him, Stefan knows they are looking for him and he wants them to find him. She hesitates for a moment, wanting to run into the bathroom and make Damon read whatever the message says, to tell her what they've been waiting to hear: that Stefan's somewhere, waiting for them to come and get him.
She can still hear the water flowing into the tub, and she almost rushes across the room to pound on the door; but she knows Damon too well, knows he'd take the opportunity to cheekily expose himself. And it's too happy a moment to let it be ruined by that.
So she just hits the button to open the message herself.
New Mexico's a bust. Heard there's a witch further south that might help with the hybrid problem. Keep safe.
She reads the message multiple times because it makes no sense; then she notices that this is one of twenty-two messages from Stefan, so she scrolls up. Over the last several months, according to the dates, every time Stefan arrived at a new destination, he let his brother know exactly where he was.
And none of those places are the same ones that Damon has dragged her off to in search of Stefan. Just from the dates, she remembers where they were-where they'd gone on various Stefan-hunting trips. When Stefan was in Georgia, they went to North Carolina. When Stefan was in Mississippi, they were in Florida. When Stefan was in Louisiana, they were in Kentucky. When Stefan made another trip through Tennessee, Damon took Elena to New York.
And now they're in Michigan while Stefan's in New Mexico.
She's not sure how long she stands there reading all the messages, but she can feel an emotion she has never known building inside of her to the point that it seems really likely that her head could blow off.
She finds herself looking around the room, wanting something to fashion into a stake, because she is literally, murderously angry with Damon in a way that she has never been before. She feels capable of action that minutes ago would never have crossed her mind.
Damon has been lying, but not just lying. He's taken her on wild goose chases over and over and over, creating an elaborate hoax of searching for someone that he's known the exact location of the whole time.
She's shaking, trembling from head to toe in vehement outrage when she hears the tub draining. Minutes later Damon emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in one of the hotel-supplied terrycloth robes. He's rubbing a towel over his head as he comes out, and he asks, "Did that guy ever come back with the scotch I asked for?"
He looks around the room, as though it will just appear because he wants it, and then his eyes come up to Elena's in question, but his expression changes instantly when he sees her face. "What?" he asks urgently, moving forward towards her. "What happened?"
She slaps him as hard as she can, harder than when she thought he let Bonnie die, and drops the phone back on the desk. He looks stunned, and then angry in equal measure immediately; she can't help but start pummeling his chest with all the impotent rage she feels spurting from her like poison. "You lying son of a bitch!"
At some point she loses all sense of time and space; all she can do is strike outward, inflict pain that isn't really pain at all to him until her hands ache with it, and she's breathing hard, like she ran up to the eleventh floor instead of using the elevator. The room spins but comes to a stop when Damon has her pinned against his body, her back pressed to his chest and his arms crossed over her torso, holding her arms captive so she can't hit him anymore.
She can feel his minor labored breathing in her ear as he demands, "What the hell, Elena?" but more than that, she can feel him pressed against her buttocks. He's hard, and with nothing on but a robe, the only other things separating them are her jeans and underwear.
She jerks against him, trying to free herself, but there's no way she can escape his arms, and he hisses against her cheek, "Knock that the fuck off. What is your problem, exactly?"
A sudden realization comes over her and she sags against him. It's a thought that might have occurred sooner if she hadn't been so angry and she chokes out, "Stefan. You've been in contact with him the whole time. And you purposely led me far away from him."
His hold doesn't loosen, but it does soften just slightly, his arms cradling more than confining. He presses his face against her neck. "Yes," he breathes, and she thinks maybe, just maybe, there is a hint of relief in his tone at the admission.
"Because he told you to do it, right?" she asks, closing her eyes. It all makes sense in a terrible insufferable martyr sort of way. New Mexico's a bust. Heard there's a witch further south that might help with the hybrid problem. Keep safe.
"He's leading Klaus as far away from you as possible," Damon whispers against her skin. "Apparently, you not dying permanently has made a hybrid army impossible to create, so Klaus is looking for alternative methods. And Stefan's looking for alternative methods for how to kill a hybrid."
Elena shivers involuntarily; even though Damon's words aren't particularly shocking, his delivery, with his lips right against her throat, is doing something very strange to her resolve to keep things a certain way between them. Undoubtedly it's the adrenaline rush of her physical assault on him, but she feels like she's never been more aware in her own body before.
She takes a deep breath, trying to control something that suddenly feels uncontrollable, and Damon mutters, "Fucking Stefan."
The collision of thought in her head is so severe, Elena can feel herself slipping away from it all-going to a place where only sensation of the most pleasurable kind exists. Where knowing that Damon always keeps things from her in this way makes her sorry she slapped him, and where Stefan never tells the truth in its entirety, and it forces her to face things she doesn't want know.
She doesn't want to want Damon, but she does. She's wanted him for a long, long time, and for some reason, this moment, right now feels like the one she can't turn away from.
But still, her mouth says, "Damon...no," while the thought reverberates though her mind, oh, god, Damon...yes.
His arms, clamped so tightly around her, begin to move. One hand slides down over her stomach, past the button and zipper of her jeans. He just rests his open palm over her lower abdomen without any more movement. His other hand glides upward and she holds her breath until he cups one breast; she would protest again, but her body betrays her completely, her nipple hardening through bra and t-shirt to thrust into his palm. A little groan bleeds out against her neck from his mouth and he whispers, "Just let me..." and the plea is stronger than any of her thoughts about Stefan just now.
She says nothing, makes no effort to push away from him, doesn't pull his hands from her body even though her own arms are no longer pinned to her sides. She tries, with one last surge to push through, to find the place where her anger for Damon overpowers every other emotion he makes her feel, but she can't.
(She's still angry, but it's mixed with a force more powerful, more potent, and definitely more dangerous.)
At the bottom of all it is what she feels for Damon, and it's as separate and individual as it can be when you love two sides of the same coin.
(It's okay to love them both. I did.)
Finally, she raises an arm and puts her hand on the back of his neck. Her fingers filter through the soft hair at his nape and his lips open against her skin and they both sigh out small sounds of pleasure.
But still, Elena won't say yes, not with words.
When he holds her as she cries, it doesn't make him feel all protective and manly, not the way literature or film would lead you to believe it should. He doesn't wrap his arms around her and keep her safe in his embrace from a known evil, or from the harsh reality of the world-well, okay, maybe he is doing that, but she doesn't know it, so it doesn't count.
What he feels like is a giant asshole, because they're in nowhere fucking Michigan and they're looking at an abandoned house that he, Damon, left victims in during the '80s. He remembers the house because he used it for a while when he was hanging out in Detroit. It was before he stumbled on the foreclosures that were way nicer, though in 1986 this dilapidated house still had furniture and was relatively livable, even though its residents had taken off sometime before he got there.
That aside, this is just one more disappointment for Elena, one more thing that isn't what it seems, and while he'd walk to the ends of the earth to keep her safe, he's starting to have a crisis of conscience over the whole Road Trip Diversion thing.
It's fucking stupid, and how long does he really think he can keep it up? He just keeps hoping that he and Ric, or Stefan and whatever he comes across out there, are going to figure out some way to kill Klaus for real before he discovers that Elena isn't dead.
Desperate men? They do desperate things.
So when he's standing in front of Elena (in a bathrobe, dripping wet beneath the soft material), and sees that look on her face, the same one (only amped up by about a thousand degrees) that she wore the night Bonnie 'died,' he can't stop the fear that races through him, nor the abatement of it when he traps her arms so she can't hit him anymore. Then he realizes that she knows.
He would be mad that she obviously snooped through his phone, but he just can't care, when, you know, she squirming against him and he's ready to fuck her through the wall.
This has been the problem all along, of course, but he doesn't normally make her aware of the fact that she makes him utterly miserable at the same time she fascinates him. Baths have multiple uses, you see. And he obviously should have rubbed one out while in there tonight, but he's honestly just so tired; he didn't know she was going to attack him when he came out, so he hadn't felt the need for once. He hadn't known she would turn him on and most likely turn him out the minute he was back in her presence.
So when she doesn't push him away, or even push herself out of his arms, when she stays, he thinks his brain has stopped functioning. Her hand curls around his neck, and he can't help it, the blood rushes into his face and his fangs erupt, and she's in his hands. Her warmth is all along the front of him, her breast straining against his palm, and he slips his hand between her legs, cupping her through her pants; she whimpers, her fingers digging into his skin.
It all happens pretty fast, and with a lot less finesse, than say, your average teenager, because he just moves his hand over her through her clothes, glances his sharp teeth along her throat-not really anticipating her arching back into him or the increased pressure of her hand pulling him in tighter to her-and then his teeth pierce her skin and she lets loose this moan that makes everything short-circuit; he totally blows his load, all over the inside of his robe. He doesn't drink from her for long, because the rush of her blood over his tongue in a small quantity feels like enough to keep him going forever. He withdraws his teeth and her head rolls against his shoulder, her ecstasy akin to his own, even though he knows she hasn't come yet.
He says Jesus's name with prayer-like reverence and if he had the ability to blush, he'd probably do that too. Because Elena makes him feel like a kid with the dew still on.
He just stands there, holding her against him, wondering if she can tell what just happened, and he moves his fingers over her, feeling her heat through a layer of denim. It hits him then that he wants to see her panties-he wants to remove her panties, and he doesn't hesitate at all. He simply cannot, because who knows what the window of time is on this? She might change her mind at any moment.
He whirls her around so she's facing him again and when their eyes meet and lock, he walks her backward towards one of the beds. He never even blinks as he unfastens her pants and shoves them and her underwear down her legs. She helps by kicking off her shoes and then he pushes her down on the bed, and whether she understands or not, she doesn't protest in the slightest; there is no hesitancy even in her eyes, and Damon isn't sure what that means, but he doesn't wait to find out. Instead, he runs his fingers up the insides of her thighs, yanking her wide, opening her up to his mouth. One of her hands fists in the hair at the top of his head before his lips even touch her and then she arches into him, gasping his name with a breath of wonderment that nearly undoes him (again).
He has wanted this for so long, has needed to give to her in this way for what feels like forever, and for whatever reason she's letting him, so he just kisses her, running his tongue teasingly around the outer edge before pushing it inside her. The sound she makes is reward enough; it could all end tonight, this minute, and he would be fine with all of it.
Because he's finally making love to Elena Gilbert.
If he'd hated watching his brother and Elena together in those months leading up to his almost-death, competing with a ghost has been nearly as torturous. Knowing that Stefan is working on his end of things just as hard as Damon is here to keep Elena safe only made him more, only made it clear to Damon that when he finally comes home, Elena's choice will be obvious.
Damon had had a few noble moments there in the beginning where he wasn't going to push it, he wasn't going to do anything overt to steal his brother's girl, but right now, as he presses his tongue to her clitoris and she keens his name? Yeah, he doesn't give a flying fuck if it's fair, or right, or anything. He just wants her, and he wants to know she wants him, and he will take the crumbs from her table.
(This is probably all he's going to get.)
She chokes his name out again, and then she's gushing over his tongue in a different but equally delicious way. She's panting, her fingers twisted in his hair and the lapel of his robe and he moves up her body, intent on finding the relief of pushing his cock inside her, but when their eyes connect again, she bursts into tears. She grabs his robe in both hands and buries her face against his chest, crying so hard there's no way he can complete the act.
So, he holds her, rolling to his side and bringing her with him. Willing his body to calm down as she hiccups into his sternum, he knows he loves her more than any other person in his life ever because he can be whatever she needs him to be, at whatever personal cost. In fact, it doesn't even feel like it takes anything from him; being whatever she needs is exactly what he wants to be.
It's his only shot at competing, if he's honest with himself. Whoever he is, that has to be enough, and if it's not...he can't contemplate the end of that thought.
She quiets some time later and he just keeps petting her hair gently. She shudders out a breath and burrows more tightly against him, her arm wrapping around his back to hold him close. "You okay?" he finally inquires, because that's the only logical thing to ask.
She sniffs and whispers, "I'm sorry."
He braces himself for whatever that means, but she just rubs her face against his chest until her nose moves the terrycloth aside and her lips touch his skin. "I'm sorry...I was just overloaded, and...I don't..."
She stops talking, and the silence bears down on Damon in a way that makes him blurt, "You don't want to do this, yeah, I got that."
She leans her head back and her hand comes up to cup his cheek. "No, Damon, I do want to do it-I don't know how you couldn't tell that I wanted it-that I want you, it's just...it's too much. All of this, Stefan, out there doing what he's doing, you here, with me, playing this silly game to keep me safe, and of course I understand why you did it. I'm sure you thought I'd just run off and not listen and get myself killed, and maybe that's what I would have done, months ago. Now...now, I just, I don't know. I need to think. I need...to figure it out. This, figure this out." She keeps caressing his face and her expression is so full of something that he has only a vague recollection of seeing on her face before-back when it was going to be the last thing he ever saw at all before he went wherever murderous vampires go when they die for the last time.
She presses her mouth to his and it jolts Damon to his core to realize that this is the first time their lips have touched since she kissed him goodbye. His breath catches as her tongue swipes over his bottom lip and then she ends the kiss with a gentle little nip. "You make me so angry," she confesses quietly. "And then crazy, because I always get why you do what you do and just...you make me feel everything, Damon. It's overwhelming."
A chuckle escapes him. "Tell me about it," he grouses, cupping her head in his hand to pull her mouth firmly to his. He kisses her hard, possessively, and she responds so enthusiastically, he has a difficult time reminding himself that she said she's not ready for the rest of it.
(He's so ready. He is 146 years past ready to be with and love the woman of his dreams. He's just so glad he knows who the right one is now.)
"Can I be a part of the problem-solving now, instead of the focus of these ridiculous trips to nowhere?" she asks when the kiss ends.
He nods, closing his eyes and drawing her forehead against his. They lay together quietly for a time before he says, "I'm sorry, too. Sorry I didn't tell you the truth. But you do go off half-cocked most of the time, and I...was afraid."
It's easier to be honest if he's not looking at her, though he can feel her fingers ghosting over his cheek and jaw. "I know," she says softly.
They fall asleep like that, and Damon loves the literal sleeping together almost as much as he would have the figurative.
The drive home the next day is a little tense, but Damon just ignores the awkwardness by falling back into his usual teasing, poking at Elena about everything from martyr complexes to doppelganger hijinx.
She does her normal thing of rolling her eyes and glaring at him when he's particularly assy. It starts to feel like it always does between them about the time they hit the Ohio stateline, and he hopes that he can maintain that.
Because he doesn't know what will happen, only that the effort to kill Klaus is in direct parallel with bringing Stefan home; to do one is to do the other, and he has to want them both for it to happen.
He glances over to find Elena watching him rather intently. "Yes?" he asks, lifting an eyebrow her direction.
"I was just wondering, will we ever have a time when my life's not in danger?" Her voice is not wistful, or even worried sounding as she asks the question, but she looks at him earnestly, as though he'll know the answer.
He shrugs. "We can always trade it in for the times when my life was in danger, and you saved me. Actually, now that I think about it, I prefer it that way. At least if I die, nobody will lament it."
She narrows her eyes at him and pronounces, "Now you're just fishing for compliments. Seriously, Damon?"
He smirks and reaches over to cuff her under the chin. "Seriously, Elena? I just want there to be happy ending, that's all. Bad guys die, good guys live, someone gets the girl, yadda yadda."
The humor fades from her expression. "I don't know if it can be happy for everyone."
"Well, duh." He smiles at her, trying not to play every last card all at once. "But it's worth a shot, right?"
She nods, straightens her shoulders like she always does when the load feels a little heavy, and returns his grin. "Definitely worth it."
Damon drags his eyes back to the road. He's pretty sure what he's hurtling towards is the only way it can go. It's the only possibility.
He's not looking for anything less.
Author: badboy_fangirl
Pairings: Damon/Elena
Word Count: ~5300
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 (for sexy times & biting)
Spoilers: Everything through 3x02 "The Hybrid" with pure speculation beyond that.
Summary: A road trip leads to a revelation or two.
Author's notes: This was written for brokenbell who purchased me at fandomaid. Her prompts were: Damon/Elena - And I'm so tired of being wrong. Angst, UST, biting, and sexy time. And somehow Damon and Elena actually did what I told them this time! (It's a Christmas miracle!) Beta'd by the enormously gifted lit_chick08, who helped make it better, by far. Also, to all those who have written road trip fic before me, you were probably the inspiration for this fic; please view it as a homage and not plagiarism! :D
The first and last breath don't matter
It's all the ones that are in-between
It's the reason for living
from "Happy Ending" by Sugarland
She's trying really hard not to cry, but it's a futile effort. Another dead end after months of looking and repeated road trips that have left her behind in her school work but no closer to finding Stefan-or to bringing him home like Damon said they could. She stands, looking at the abandoned, run-down house that, fortunately, doesn't hold any dead bodies, and blinks rapidly to combat the tears threatening to fall.
"Hey, hey, hey," Damon's voice spirals quietly into her ear as his hand palms the back of her head, pulling her against his chest. "None of that," he whispers, his fingers threading through her hair.
She feels his lips against the top of her head and admits to herself that she doesn't even know anymore who she cries for: the brother who is lost or the brother she's with that she shouldn't want to be with, that she shouldn't want to hold her, that she shouldn't want.
But she melts into his arms because she's so tired. Tired of fighting herself, tired of fighting the inevitability of the truth, tired of looking but never finding.
He's been there too many times, seen her in this state again and again, and held her while she succumbed to weakness, immeasurable sadness, painstaking weariness.
And he's never asked for anything except that she remember how she feels in these moments.
(Like she could ever forget.)
"Let's find a hotel," he murmurs against her forehead. "A nice one, with a jacuzzi tub and a flatscreen."
His fingers massage at the base of her skull and she tips her head back automatically, both to allow the wonderful feeling of him pressing out the stress in her body and to look into his eyes. She starts to protest, but he just grins. "I'm buying, and you know I'm not staying in a Motel 6. Not tonight. We need a good night's rest before we go back to Mystic Falls."
Arguing is something they do almost as well as pretending they aren't moments away from an act they can never return from, but Elena doesn't have the heart for it, not now. They've stayed in many a shitty motel over the last several months, mostly because she "bitched so much" that Damon would give in and let her pay for it even though he obviously had much more money than the small allowance she got from her parents' trust.
She lets him lead her back to the Camaro and shut her in on the passenger side. Then they leave the rural county outside one of Detroit's suburbs and Damon hands her his phone. "Punch The Four Seasons into the GPS."
During one of their earlier trips, Elena had teased Damon about his fondness for baths. He just smirked at her and reminded her that he came from a time when people bathed once a week, in a large tub. He had been witness to the progression of indoor plumbing, claw-foot bathtubs, and he thought jacuzzi tubs were the best invention ever.
It had been an endearing revelation about him, a reminder that he had seen so much having lived as long as he had. It was also a moment of wonder for her to realize how little she knew about their lives-from before. Before Katherine, before vampirism, before, when they were young men with dreams and angst, just like her.
That conversation had been even more interesting, right up until Damon realized he was talking about things that normally he didn't. "I'm sure Stefan told you all this stuff," he said by way of ending his own walk down memory lane, which stopped abruptly with his joining of the Confederate Army. (He'd only done it to please his father, not because he had any real passion for their way of life; surprisingly, Damon had found slavery to be offensive, especially after he came to know Emily Bennett. "She was smarter than I ever dreamt of being, so obviously, if anyone belonged to a superior race, it was not me.")
Elena shook her head. "No, he rarely spoke of that time. I don't know why, but I never asked him about it either," she said wistfully. Now that Stefan was gone, there were a lot of things she could see more clearly. Not only did Damon carry a large part of her heart that she had no memory of giving to him, but she could see the gaping holes in her relationship with his brother. There were so many things they just hadn't talked about; she liked to think it was because those were the topics they would cover when he came home, but with each passing day, that dream began to fade.
As they pull into The Four Seasons parking garage of Oak Park, Michigan, Elena snaps herself back to this road trip, the fifth such one in seven months. Christmas had come and gone, and it was a cold and snowy February, but Damon had snow tires, good reflexes, and no concern about how far they had to drive to find (or not find, as the case may be) his brother. He wasn't giving up, because he loved Stefan, and because he loved her. Elena had long since given up trying to ignore the obvious; Damon's actions were pure, and she couldn't help the tender feelings that welled up in her chest every time she thought of his selfless devotion.
Because, really, they both knew, if Stefan came home, she might remember what she felt for Damon, but she wasn't going to do anything about it. Just like now, days and nights on the road, separate beds in hotels and motels, and never an inappropriate line crossed between them. Other than Damon's oft-tossed innuendo, his remarks about that death-bed kissy thing, or the general way he had of looking at her so that she felt like he was devouring her with his eyes, they were nothing more than good friends.
(Good friends who had definite sexual tension between them. Good friends whose eyes lingered too long on each other's faces for anyone to believe that they were just friends. Good friends, who after having a discussion about the bathtub, left one of the friends (Elena) imagining the other friend (Damon) in the tub. And out of the tub. And naked, with bubbles all over his lithe frame, because, well, she'd had that peep show once without asking for it, and it was hard to get perfection out of your mind's eye, even if you didn't look for very long.)
But what Damon didn't know kept Elena in the safe zone, and that's exactly where she intended to be when they found Stefan and saved him.
A valet leads them up to their room, showing them the amenities (jacuzzi tub, flatscreen TV, two queen-sized beds). He asks them if they need anything special-Damon asks for a bottle of a particular kind of Scotch if the guy can find it-and then he scurries away with a large tip fisted in his palm from Damon's wallet.
Damon shrugs off his jacket, drops his phone on the desk, and gives Elena a raised brow. "I'm going to take a bath, unless you need the bathroom?"
She shakes her head and sees it in his eyes a moment before the words leave his lips, "Of course, you're always welcome to join me." He smirks, does that eye-thing, and then smiles at her in a way that makes her warm all over.
She grimaces at him, grabs the television remote, and jumps on one of the beds, determinedly looking away from him as he saunters into the bathroom. She can hear him chuckling softly as he shuts the door behind him.
She finds a rerun of Gilmore Girls and loses herself in it for a short while before she remembers she's supposed to text Jeremy to let him know where they ended up tonight. She digs her phone out of her purse and discovers that it's dead. After a thorough search of her overnight bag, she realizes she left her charger at home. She tosses her phone back in her purse and picks up the bedside hotel phone to dial out just as her eyes fall upon the desk, and Damon's cell phone.
Deciding that the unlimited texting feature is a better use of his money, she hangs up the landline phone and heads for the desk. She pulls up his in-box and finds that Jeremy's number is already in the phone, which probably shouldn't surprise her. Damon is as deeply involved with all the people in her life as she is, and the idea that her brother probably texts Stefan's brother for who knows what is really the least of her worries.
She types, in for the night in Oak Park, MI. No Stefan, but all is well. Elena's phone's dead. Be home tomorrow.
She hits send, and as she watches the message disappear into cyberspace, Damon's phone vibrates in her hand because he's receiving a message as well.
In all the months they've been following tips, chasing after whispers of danger and always seeming to be one (or ten) steps behind, Elena has never doubted that eventually they would find Stefan. She believes, truly, that between the two of them, they have the capability of bringing him home, assuming that when they get to him, he's still alive. Certainly her frustration has grown and her faith has waned at times, but in her heart of hearts, she knows that Stefan wants to be who he once was.
Her boyfriend. Damon's brother. A vampire who doesn't live like a vampire.
So when a text message from him appears on Damon's phone right before her eyes, she's filled to the brim with exuberance, with the knowledge that all their travels haven't been in vain, that somehow, even though they missed him, Stefan knows they are looking for him and he wants them to find him. She hesitates for a moment, wanting to run into the bathroom and make Damon read whatever the message says, to tell her what they've been waiting to hear: that Stefan's somewhere, waiting for them to come and get him.
She can still hear the water flowing into the tub, and she almost rushes across the room to pound on the door; but she knows Damon too well, knows he'd take the opportunity to cheekily expose himself. And it's too happy a moment to let it be ruined by that.
So she just hits the button to open the message herself.
New Mexico's a bust. Heard there's a witch further south that might help with the hybrid problem. Keep safe.
She reads the message multiple times because it makes no sense; then she notices that this is one of twenty-two messages from Stefan, so she scrolls up. Over the last several months, according to the dates, every time Stefan arrived at a new destination, he let his brother know exactly where he was.
And none of those places are the same ones that Damon has dragged her off to in search of Stefan. Just from the dates, she remembers where they were-where they'd gone on various Stefan-hunting trips. When Stefan was in Georgia, they went to North Carolina. When Stefan was in Mississippi, they were in Florida. When Stefan was in Louisiana, they were in Kentucky. When Stefan made another trip through Tennessee, Damon took Elena to New York.
And now they're in Michigan while Stefan's in New Mexico.
She's not sure how long she stands there reading all the messages, but she can feel an emotion she has never known building inside of her to the point that it seems really likely that her head could blow off.
She finds herself looking around the room, wanting something to fashion into a stake, because she is literally, murderously angry with Damon in a way that she has never been before. She feels capable of action that minutes ago would never have crossed her mind.
Damon has been lying, but not just lying. He's taken her on wild goose chases over and over and over, creating an elaborate hoax of searching for someone that he's known the exact location of the whole time.
She's shaking, trembling from head to toe in vehement outrage when she hears the tub draining. Minutes later Damon emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in one of the hotel-supplied terrycloth robes. He's rubbing a towel over his head as he comes out, and he asks, "Did that guy ever come back with the scotch I asked for?"
He looks around the room, as though it will just appear because he wants it, and then his eyes come up to Elena's in question, but his expression changes instantly when he sees her face. "What?" he asks urgently, moving forward towards her. "What happened?"
She slaps him as hard as she can, harder than when she thought he let Bonnie die, and drops the phone back on the desk. He looks stunned, and then angry in equal measure immediately; she can't help but start pummeling his chest with all the impotent rage she feels spurting from her like poison. "You lying son of a bitch!"
At some point she loses all sense of time and space; all she can do is strike outward, inflict pain that isn't really pain at all to him until her hands ache with it, and she's breathing hard, like she ran up to the eleventh floor instead of using the elevator. The room spins but comes to a stop when Damon has her pinned against his body, her back pressed to his chest and his arms crossed over her torso, holding her arms captive so she can't hit him anymore.
She can feel his minor labored breathing in her ear as he demands, "What the hell, Elena?" but more than that, she can feel him pressed against her buttocks. He's hard, and with nothing on but a robe, the only other things separating them are her jeans and underwear.
She jerks against him, trying to free herself, but there's no way she can escape his arms, and he hisses against her cheek, "Knock that the fuck off. What is your problem, exactly?"
A sudden realization comes over her and she sags against him. It's a thought that might have occurred sooner if she hadn't been so angry and she chokes out, "Stefan. You've been in contact with him the whole time. And you purposely led me far away from him."
His hold doesn't loosen, but it does soften just slightly, his arms cradling more than confining. He presses his face against her neck. "Yes," he breathes, and she thinks maybe, just maybe, there is a hint of relief in his tone at the admission.
"Because he told you to do it, right?" she asks, closing her eyes. It all makes sense in a terrible insufferable martyr sort of way. New Mexico's a bust. Heard there's a witch further south that might help with the hybrid problem. Keep safe.
"He's leading Klaus as far away from you as possible," Damon whispers against her skin. "Apparently, you not dying permanently has made a hybrid army impossible to create, so Klaus is looking for alternative methods. And Stefan's looking for alternative methods for how to kill a hybrid."
Elena shivers involuntarily; even though Damon's words aren't particularly shocking, his delivery, with his lips right against her throat, is doing something very strange to her resolve to keep things a certain way between them. Undoubtedly it's the adrenaline rush of her physical assault on him, but she feels like she's never been more aware in her own body before.
She takes a deep breath, trying to control something that suddenly feels uncontrollable, and Damon mutters, "Fucking Stefan."
The collision of thought in her head is so severe, Elena can feel herself slipping away from it all-going to a place where only sensation of the most pleasurable kind exists. Where knowing that Damon always keeps things from her in this way makes her sorry she slapped him, and where Stefan never tells the truth in its entirety, and it forces her to face things she doesn't want know.
She doesn't want to want Damon, but she does. She's wanted him for a long, long time, and for some reason, this moment, right now feels like the one she can't turn away from.
But still, her mouth says, "Damon...no," while the thought reverberates though her mind, oh, god, Damon...yes.
His arms, clamped so tightly around her, begin to move. One hand slides down over her stomach, past the button and zipper of her jeans. He just rests his open palm over her lower abdomen without any more movement. His other hand glides upward and she holds her breath until he cups one breast; she would protest again, but her body betrays her completely, her nipple hardening through bra and t-shirt to thrust into his palm. A little groan bleeds out against her neck from his mouth and he whispers, "Just let me..." and the plea is stronger than any of her thoughts about Stefan just now.
She says nothing, makes no effort to push away from him, doesn't pull his hands from her body even though her own arms are no longer pinned to her sides. She tries, with one last surge to push through, to find the place where her anger for Damon overpowers every other emotion he makes her feel, but she can't.
(She's still angry, but it's mixed with a force more powerful, more potent, and definitely more dangerous.)
At the bottom of all it is what she feels for Damon, and it's as separate and individual as it can be when you love two sides of the same coin.
(It's okay to love them both. I did.)
Finally, she raises an arm and puts her hand on the back of his neck. Her fingers filter through the soft hair at his nape and his lips open against her skin and they both sigh out small sounds of pleasure.
But still, Elena won't say yes, not with words.
When he holds her as she cries, it doesn't make him feel all protective and manly, not the way literature or film would lead you to believe it should. He doesn't wrap his arms around her and keep her safe in his embrace from a known evil, or from the harsh reality of the world-well, okay, maybe he is doing that, but she doesn't know it, so it doesn't count.
What he feels like is a giant asshole, because they're in nowhere fucking Michigan and they're looking at an abandoned house that he, Damon, left victims in during the '80s. He remembers the house because he used it for a while when he was hanging out in Detroit. It was before he stumbled on the foreclosures that were way nicer, though in 1986 this dilapidated house still had furniture and was relatively livable, even though its residents had taken off sometime before he got there.
That aside, this is just one more disappointment for Elena, one more thing that isn't what it seems, and while he'd walk to the ends of the earth to keep her safe, he's starting to have a crisis of conscience over the whole Road Trip Diversion thing.
It's fucking stupid, and how long does he really think he can keep it up? He just keeps hoping that he and Ric, or Stefan and whatever he comes across out there, are going to figure out some way to kill Klaus for real before he discovers that Elena isn't dead.
Desperate men? They do desperate things.
So when he's standing in front of Elena (in a bathrobe, dripping wet beneath the soft material), and sees that look on her face, the same one (only amped up by about a thousand degrees) that she wore the night Bonnie 'died,' he can't stop the fear that races through him, nor the abatement of it when he traps her arms so she can't hit him anymore. Then he realizes that she knows.
He would be mad that she obviously snooped through his phone, but he just can't care, when, you know, she squirming against him and he's ready to fuck her through the wall.
This has been the problem all along, of course, but he doesn't normally make her aware of the fact that she makes him utterly miserable at the same time she fascinates him. Baths have multiple uses, you see. And he obviously should have rubbed one out while in there tonight, but he's honestly just so tired; he didn't know she was going to attack him when he came out, so he hadn't felt the need for once. He hadn't known she would turn him on and most likely turn him out the minute he was back in her presence.
So when she doesn't push him away, or even push herself out of his arms, when she stays, he thinks his brain has stopped functioning. Her hand curls around his neck, and he can't help it, the blood rushes into his face and his fangs erupt, and she's in his hands. Her warmth is all along the front of him, her breast straining against his palm, and he slips his hand between her legs, cupping her through her pants; she whimpers, her fingers digging into his skin.
It all happens pretty fast, and with a lot less finesse, than say, your average teenager, because he just moves his hand over her through her clothes, glances his sharp teeth along her throat-not really anticipating her arching back into him or the increased pressure of her hand pulling him in tighter to her-and then his teeth pierce her skin and she lets loose this moan that makes everything short-circuit; he totally blows his load, all over the inside of his robe. He doesn't drink from her for long, because the rush of her blood over his tongue in a small quantity feels like enough to keep him going forever. He withdraws his teeth and her head rolls against his shoulder, her ecstasy akin to his own, even though he knows she hasn't come yet.
He says Jesus's name with prayer-like reverence and if he had the ability to blush, he'd probably do that too. Because Elena makes him feel like a kid with the dew still on.
He just stands there, holding her against him, wondering if she can tell what just happened, and he moves his fingers over her, feeling her heat through a layer of denim. It hits him then that he wants to see her panties-he wants to remove her panties, and he doesn't hesitate at all. He simply cannot, because who knows what the window of time is on this? She might change her mind at any moment.
He whirls her around so she's facing him again and when their eyes meet and lock, he walks her backward towards one of the beds. He never even blinks as he unfastens her pants and shoves them and her underwear down her legs. She helps by kicking off her shoes and then he pushes her down on the bed, and whether she understands or not, she doesn't protest in the slightest; there is no hesitancy even in her eyes, and Damon isn't sure what that means, but he doesn't wait to find out. Instead, he runs his fingers up the insides of her thighs, yanking her wide, opening her up to his mouth. One of her hands fists in the hair at the top of his head before his lips even touch her and then she arches into him, gasping his name with a breath of wonderment that nearly undoes him (again).
He has wanted this for so long, has needed to give to her in this way for what feels like forever, and for whatever reason she's letting him, so he just kisses her, running his tongue teasingly around the outer edge before pushing it inside her. The sound she makes is reward enough; it could all end tonight, this minute, and he would be fine with all of it.
Because he's finally making love to Elena Gilbert.
If he'd hated watching his brother and Elena together in those months leading up to his almost-death, competing with a ghost has been nearly as torturous. Knowing that Stefan is working on his end of things just as hard as Damon is here to keep Elena safe only made him more, only made it clear to Damon that when he finally comes home, Elena's choice will be obvious.
Damon had had a few noble moments there in the beginning where he wasn't going to push it, he wasn't going to do anything overt to steal his brother's girl, but right now, as he presses his tongue to her clitoris and she keens his name? Yeah, he doesn't give a flying fuck if it's fair, or right, or anything. He just wants her, and he wants to know she wants him, and he will take the crumbs from her table.
(This is probably all he's going to get.)
She chokes his name out again, and then she's gushing over his tongue in a different but equally delicious way. She's panting, her fingers twisted in his hair and the lapel of his robe and he moves up her body, intent on finding the relief of pushing his cock inside her, but when their eyes connect again, she bursts into tears. She grabs his robe in both hands and buries her face against his chest, crying so hard there's no way he can complete the act.
So, he holds her, rolling to his side and bringing her with him. Willing his body to calm down as she hiccups into his sternum, he knows he loves her more than any other person in his life ever because he can be whatever she needs him to be, at whatever personal cost. In fact, it doesn't even feel like it takes anything from him; being whatever she needs is exactly what he wants to be.
It's his only shot at competing, if he's honest with himself. Whoever he is, that has to be enough, and if it's not...he can't contemplate the end of that thought.
She quiets some time later and he just keeps petting her hair gently. She shudders out a breath and burrows more tightly against him, her arm wrapping around his back to hold him close. "You okay?" he finally inquires, because that's the only logical thing to ask.
She sniffs and whispers, "I'm sorry."
He braces himself for whatever that means, but she just rubs her face against his chest until her nose moves the terrycloth aside and her lips touch his skin. "I'm sorry...I was just overloaded, and...I don't..."
She stops talking, and the silence bears down on Damon in a way that makes him blurt, "You don't want to do this, yeah, I got that."
She leans her head back and her hand comes up to cup his cheek. "No, Damon, I do want to do it-I don't know how you couldn't tell that I wanted it-that I want you, it's just...it's too much. All of this, Stefan, out there doing what he's doing, you here, with me, playing this silly game to keep me safe, and of course I understand why you did it. I'm sure you thought I'd just run off and not listen and get myself killed, and maybe that's what I would have done, months ago. Now...now, I just, I don't know. I need to think. I need...to figure it out. This, figure this out." She keeps caressing his face and her expression is so full of something that he has only a vague recollection of seeing on her face before-back when it was going to be the last thing he ever saw at all before he went wherever murderous vampires go when they die for the last time.
She presses her mouth to his and it jolts Damon to his core to realize that this is the first time their lips have touched since she kissed him goodbye. His breath catches as her tongue swipes over his bottom lip and then she ends the kiss with a gentle little nip. "You make me so angry," she confesses quietly. "And then crazy, because I always get why you do what you do and just...you make me feel everything, Damon. It's overwhelming."
A chuckle escapes him. "Tell me about it," he grouses, cupping her head in his hand to pull her mouth firmly to his. He kisses her hard, possessively, and she responds so enthusiastically, he has a difficult time reminding himself that she said she's not ready for the rest of it.
(He's so ready. He is 146 years past ready to be with and love the woman of his dreams. He's just so glad he knows who the right one is now.)
"Can I be a part of the problem-solving now, instead of the focus of these ridiculous trips to nowhere?" she asks when the kiss ends.
He nods, closing his eyes and drawing her forehead against his. They lay together quietly for a time before he says, "I'm sorry, too. Sorry I didn't tell you the truth. But you do go off half-cocked most of the time, and I...was afraid."
It's easier to be honest if he's not looking at her, though he can feel her fingers ghosting over his cheek and jaw. "I know," she says softly.
They fall asleep like that, and Damon loves the literal sleeping together almost as much as he would have the figurative.
The drive home the next day is a little tense, but Damon just ignores the awkwardness by falling back into his usual teasing, poking at Elena about everything from martyr complexes to doppelganger hijinx.
She does her normal thing of rolling her eyes and glaring at him when he's particularly assy. It starts to feel like it always does between them about the time they hit the Ohio stateline, and he hopes that he can maintain that.
Because he doesn't know what will happen, only that the effort to kill Klaus is in direct parallel with bringing Stefan home; to do one is to do the other, and he has to want them both for it to happen.
He glances over to find Elena watching him rather intently. "Yes?" he asks, lifting an eyebrow her direction.
"I was just wondering, will we ever have a time when my life's not in danger?" Her voice is not wistful, or even worried sounding as she asks the question, but she looks at him earnestly, as though he'll know the answer.
He shrugs. "We can always trade it in for the times when my life was in danger, and you saved me. Actually, now that I think about it, I prefer it that way. At least if I die, nobody will lament it."
She narrows her eyes at him and pronounces, "Now you're just fishing for compliments. Seriously, Damon?"
He smirks and reaches over to cuff her under the chin. "Seriously, Elena? I just want there to be happy ending, that's all. Bad guys die, good guys live, someone gets the girl, yadda yadda."
The humor fades from her expression. "I don't know if it can be happy for everyone."
"Well, duh." He smiles at her, trying not to play every last card all at once. "But it's worth a shot, right?"
She nods, straightens her shoulders like she always does when the load feels a little heavy, and returns his grin. "Definitely worth it."
Damon drags his eyes back to the road. He's pretty sure what he's hurtling towards is the only way it can go. It's the only possibility.
He's not looking for anything less.