[fic] and here is the tabernacle reconstructed
Title: and here is the tabernacle reconstructed
Author: badboy_fangirl
Pairings: Damon POV; Damon/Elena
Word Count: ~3200
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 (sex and violence)
Spoilers: Everything through S3.
Summary: Damon and Elena prank Stefan's car...with disastrous results?
Author's notes: This is because of upupa_epops, and the fact that writing D/E without UST inevitably leads to sex anyway. Title and quote from the poem "Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out" by Richard Siken, which was brought to my attention by the aforementioned upupa_epops. This is a weird sequel to i talk to you as if you’re really there. It started as PWP in my head, but it didn't come out that way because I'm fairly incapable of writing PWP.
Actually you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love.
It's like a religion. It's terrifying.
Stefan's furrowed brow in no way led to this.
Except, it totally had.
He and Caroline leave town to seek out a witch that will undo Bonnie's work on Tyler-Klaus, who Damon has to say, he likes better than either Tyler or Klaus. Tyler he found annoying, Klaus he always wanted to kill, but the Tyler-Klaus hybrid is sort of funny to him. Like, he never noticed how hard Klaus was trying until it was Tyler's voice saying the words.
But maybe that's just funny to him because Elena-the-vampire is not funny, so he has to find humor where he can.
Which is why this idea occurs to him after Stefan stops by his room to ask him to keep an eye on Elena while they're gone. Elena, who has moved in at the Boarding House again because she's afraid she's going to eat Jeremy. Elena, who as a vampire has been particular docile, and Damon knows it's just a matter of time. Nobody with that kind fire and passion, even tempered with great empathy, transforms into a lesser version as a vampire.
Her death grip on control worries him every minute of every day, but he hasn't offered any help. Just his opinions loudly and repeatedly that this was not a good idea. Cutting herself off from Jeremy wouldn't solve anything; choosing exile during what she thinks are the "hard weeks" just after she's transitioned; and of course, the ever-present denial of I have to do this my way, Damon while Stefan looks on with no comment.
If Damon's honest, he's had this in his back pocket for a while, even before she accidentally became a vampire. So he goes down to the Salvatore basement and grabs the 24-pack of toilet paper and the big roll of plastic wrap. Then he knocks on Stefan's bedroom door.
She opens it in her pajamas (though it's four o'clock in the afternoon), which consist of a red camisole and some matching silky shorts that are not exactly underwear, but are neither something she'd wear in public. She's beautiful and a mess, her hair piled on top of her head in a haphazard ponytail, and he wonders how becoming a vampire made the inhibition of not wandering around indecently in front of him vanish.
He gestures to the items he brought with him and says, "Remember how we were always going to do this to Stefan's car?"
Her face lights up marginally, and her eyes go wide as she looks back and forth between him and the package of toilet paper. "Oh, yeah," she murmurs, like it was a half-forgotten dream.
Which, he supposes, it is.
"They took Caroline's car to go look for Abby and any assorted witches she might know. Stefan's car is in the garage. Perfect target."
Elena nods her head. "Let me get dressed," she says, shutting the door in his face.
Yes, get dressed. Get very dressed.
Stefan's Porsche is smaller than Caroline's car, and the chore of tossing the toilet paper rolls to each other over and under the car is much easier now that Elena has vampire reflexes. So it basically takes no time at all to do it.
(Elena is wearing a white button-down over her red camisole and a pair of board shorts that can't be Stefan's because Damon's never known him to ever wear shorts. The point is, he knows what's underneath and it's slowly driving him crazy.)
And of course, it's no fun, because she's not giggling like a maniac, and Damon can't seem to conjure up any witty banter of his own.
They are perfectly silent and miserable and work very well together. As she holds the plastic wrap in place and he jets around the car, he resorts to the only thing he can think to be provoking. He purposely knocks into her as he comes back around and she loses her balance slightly, falling back against the hood.
"Damon," she says, but even the admonishment holds no ire.
"Could you at least pretend to enjoy yourself?" he demands. "I mean, wasn't the point of this to do something fun?"
Her expression changes, managing to convey even more unhappiness. "I thought it would be. I thought..." she falters and then moves away from him, away from the car. She shakes her head and mutters, "I should have died. I should have died the night Stefan saved me, and I should have died the night he didn't save me. I feel dead, anyway. I shouldn't be here."
Damon stares at her as this confession rushes forth and he thinks of the beating he gave his brother when he learned from the Quarterback that Elena had died because Stefan saved him instead. It hadn't mattered that that's what Elena directed Stefan to do (and no, his brother hadn't had to tell Damon that. Damon knows her better than he knows anyone, except possibly Stefan, who will always do stupid shit he deserves to have his ass beat for, which is the older brother's job, and he did his job, thank you very much). All that mattered was she had died, they had lost her, and Damon understands that more now than ever.
She stands before him, still breathing, but not living.
"I had to transition, right?" she continues. "I mean, there was Jeremy, and he would have been all alone, and there was Matt who would always feel guilty, no matter what, and there was Stefan..." She seems to be talking to hear herself, because she's not even looking at him and he can't stand it so he ends up tearing off the plastic and drops the unused portion to the garage floor. Her head jerks towards the sound, her eyes find his and there are tears, suddenly and surprisingly, as she looks at him. "And you, there was you. Standing there, looking lost, looking completely devastated, and I couldn't decide if it was because I died or because I lived, because I had said goodbye to you when I couldn't think of what else to do. Part of me thought maybe I'd never see you again, and then it was all I wanted, and all I could do was take the bloodbag from Caroline and..." She gestures weakly at her own body. "...become this."
Damon's not sure what she's saying, or what he's hearing, or if they're even the same thing, but he reaches out and grabs her arm, pulling her back towards himself. "If you don't get anything else from being a vampire, I would strongly urge you to finally learn to take what you want. Because eternity is a long fucking time to always be doing for everyone else."
It happens then; the fire flares in the depths of her eyes and her face animates with something other than utter devastation. She seizes up in anger, and violence pours forth.
And for the first time since Elena died, Damon thinks there's hope for her.
(Thinks there's hope for him.)
She tries to hit him, but he sees it coming, even if she's much quicker than she used to be. He grabs her fist and shoves her arm back and when she shifts, he moves into her, trapping her against the car's fender.
She grunts and pushes back; he has to put some real muscle into it to stay level with her. He can't help the grin the rushes over his face when she narrows her eyes and draws her arm back only to bring her other one up and slam them both, elbows to wrists, against his chest. They go down in a heap because she's truly angry, and let's face it, Damon gets off on this. The fact that she can't really hurt him is only tempered by the fact that now he can't really hurt her either.
He rolls, pinning her beneath him on the garage floor. She knees him in the groin and then he flips himself off of her, dragging her with him so they're both upright again. He twists her right arm up behind her back and plants her facedown on the hood of the car like they're on an episode of COPS. He leans over her and breathes in her ear, "Not quite, princess," and she bucks back against him, purposely causing her arm to twist more awkwardly. He hears the bone snap and she groans in pain, but as he instantly steps back, she swings around and clocks him with her other fist and he flies backward, crashing into the work table behind him.
As she straightens out her arm and it pops back into place, Damon can't take his eyes from her face. The tracery of veins beneath her eyes is something he's never been allowed to see before, and then she hisses at him, her fangs prominently on display.
(He's never been more aroused in his entire life.)
With vampire speed, he moves back to the car, artfully trapping her between his hard-on and the hood of Stefan's Porsche. He wants to quip something about a rock and a hard place, but he can't seem to make his mouth work, especially when Elena lifts her hips up against his. She gazes at him as her face returns to normal, her eyes sweeping back and forth from his eyes to his mouth. Then she says, "What I want will ruin everything," and Damon is lost. There might have been a choice when this all started, but he surrenders any semblance of agency by just standing there, not moving away from her.
He wanted to help, he wanted to bring her out of her doldrums, and though tee-peeing Stefan's car is so squeaky clean innocent that it about sickens Damon, at the base of all that has always been this. She chose his brother, she let him go, but then he stayed, and she stayed, and here they are. And every day her choice seemed less and less significant. Not because Elena doesn't always manage to make decisions he disagrees with, but because her mouth says one thing while her eyes scream another.
(She became a vampire, and that changed everything.)
She reaches her hand up, slides her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, and his mouth is on hers faster than she can tug him close. Her shirt and camisole end up somewhere across the room, and the board shorts pool at their feet, but what sincerely blows his mind is the way she kisses him.
It's like Denver all over again, overwhelming and perfect and so familiar when it shouldn't be, when it's the sixth in a short line of very questionable encounters, when it has been all kinds of not real kisses mixed with things that should never have happened-Katherine, drunk and stupid, dying and unable to truly enjoy it, stealing it because it would never happen, completely unexpected yet somehow the only way it could end-but this one, this one. It's not going to end, not until...
And then her hands are there, at the fly of his jeans and she's jerking hard and tearing fabric and he finds himself whispering, "Easy, easy..." because he wants her to know, she doesn't have to fight for it. She doesn't have to be desperate. Everything he is has been hers all along, in whatever way she needs it.
And if she needs this, he's going to accommodate her.
She says his name, a plaintive cry, "Da-mon," and that all but destroys him. She has owned him, body and soul, for so long he doesn't remember it being any other way, but that note of need is all it takes for him to be as generous as he can be, to make it as simple as possible.
He strips her of her silky shorts as she shoves his jeans down just enough. As he reaches down to grab her legs, her hands move under his shirt, pulling it over his head. Her fingers spread across his chest, and she looks at him, looks at his body hungrily, her eyes taking too much time to admire when he can feel her want, knows that the time for a slow, leisurely exploration is not now. He scoops her up, dropping her ass down on a hood covered by toilet paper and plastic wrap, her knees caught at his elbows. He hesitates just long enough for their eyes to meet and she doesn't break the connection, doesn't tense up, she just looks relieved as he guides himself there and pushes inside her.
Her head falls back and she lets out a shout of deliverance that makes him see stars, or maybe that's just the tight, slick feel of her encompassing him. Her arms swirl around his neck and her breasts press against his chest, the softness punctuated by their hard little centers. She gasps as their bodies move together, caresses that seem to cover every inch of skin until Damon wonders how he managed to wait until this moment. If he had known...oh, he always knew...but now, now he will never not know it. Never again. Having Elena Gilbert-being inside her-it's like finally being in the place he has always known he belonged.
She thrusts her hips up to his, though, and he forgets his lamentation; he just gets lost in the rhythm with her, just feels the height of freedom-something he stopped believing could ever happen to him, and when she calls his name again, clenching around him in heavenly accord, he loses it. Sense of time and place fade, and there is only Elena, there has only ever been Elena, there will only ever be Elena.
And he just took her on the hood of his brother's car.
They are sprawled across the front of the car, and he thinks at any moment they might precariously roll one direction or the other, and he really doesn't want his bare ass (jeans huddled around his thighs) hitting the floor of the garage. He withdraws carefully, eases himself back, and Elena moans, her eyes opening slowly. "Don't..." she says, but then their eyes meet. He gets his feet under him and he smiles at her.
Like, from the bottom of his soul, he smiles, even though this is probably the worst thing they could have done.
No, the worst part is the slow, shaky smile that cracks her face in return. There hasn't been any of that, not since her transition, and it's more of a victory than the orgasms they both just experienced.
She slides down the hood of the car, and when her toes touch the floor, she stands up gingerly. She's gloriously naked, every bit of her perfect and beautiful, and he takes the time now to appreciate her full breasts and the curves of her hips and the indentation at her navel. He could spend years canvassing her and never tire of it, he's sure, but at this juncture, he won't allow himself to think about that.
Instead when she opens her mouth to speak, he presses a finger to her lips. "No, don't ruin it," he whispers, and she blinks. Understanding leaks across her face and she gives one short nod. Reaching up she encircles his neck with her arms again, just hugging him tightly. She presses her face into his throat, and like those other times when she's hugged him, he doesn't quite know what to do with his hands. He wants to cup her ass and pull her right up to him, but this hug isn't sexual, it's one of gratitude, and he forces himself to let it be just that. He finally settles his hands at her lower back, pressing warmly without urgency.
When she lets him go, she turns away and starts gathering her clothes. They dress slowly, without talking, and Damon finally leans down to grab the plastic wrap. "Should we repair this?" he asks, and she looks back at him, and then at the car, where he's pointing. She stares at it for a long time, her gaze fixated on the front end where a wet spot has formed in the garbled mess of shredded toilet paper. When her eyes come back to his, she starts giggling, and it transforms the whole room to a place of light.
"Never mind," he says around his own laughter, and tacitly they start gathering up all the toilet paper, wadding it in their hands to carry back to the house.
They get all the way into the kitchen to dispose of the litter before she tries again. "Damon, I-"
"Don't," he says shaking his head. Her mouth tightens and he can see confusion warring with annoyance. "There will be time for all that later, Elena. For now, just let it be. Just be. Figure it out, or don't."
Now, she just looks flummoxed as he holds a garbage bag open and she stuffs her debris into it. "You can't possibly be okay with..." She waves her hand in the direction of the garage. "You wanted me to explain what I was doing in Denver. Don't you want me to explain this?"
He drops the bag and steps closer to her. Slowly, he takes her face in his hands. "I want you to embrace who you are. If this is part of who you are, great! If it's just part of you figuring out who you are, as a vampire, then I'll just be a different kind of bump. For now."
There are tears in her eyes when he leans forward to press a kiss to her forehead. It's not like he's different, it's not like this isn't still everything he wants and everything he's terrified of all at once. But the one thing that has changed for him since Elena became a vampire? How much time he has to work it out.
Knowing him, he would never have stopped hoping, not for the length of her mortal life, and now that she can theoretically live forever? Well, a tiger doesn't change his stripes, does he?
Letting all his own expectations go had been as traumatic as feeling the life drain out of Ric and knowing Elena was also dead somewhere. And then, then there had been the awful, hopeful moment when Meredith told him what she'd done.
And now, only weeks later, he just had Elena (or Elena just had him), and she's the one who wants to talk about it, not him.
Go figure.
He releases her, busying his hands with the trash. As he starts for the door to get rid of the bagged evidence, he throws over his shoulder, "Obviously, we need to abandon this whole car pranking business. It's no fun if we always have to do the clean up, too."
Elena's still standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking dazed and confused, but in a good way. He watches as she gathers herself, straightening her shoulders a little, tugging her unbuttoned blouse together over her breasts. "Nah," she says, a glimmer of that girl who once showed him how it was done flickering on her face. "Third time's a charm."
Damon smiles the whole way to the car.
...the epic fluffy conclusion...
Author: badboy_fangirl
Pairings: Damon POV; Damon/Elena
Word Count: ~3200
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 (sex and violence)
Spoilers: Everything through S3.
Summary: Damon and Elena prank Stefan's car...with disastrous results?
Author's notes: This is because of upupa_epops, and the fact that writing D/E without UST inevitably leads to sex anyway. Title and quote from the poem "Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out" by Richard Siken, which was brought to my attention by the aforementioned upupa_epops. This is a weird sequel to i talk to you as if you’re really there. It started as PWP in my head, but it didn't come out that way because I'm fairly incapable of writing PWP.
Actually you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love.
It's like a religion. It's terrifying.
Stefan's furrowed brow in no way led to this.
Except, it totally had.
He and Caroline leave town to seek out a witch that will undo Bonnie's work on Tyler-Klaus, who Damon has to say, he likes better than either Tyler or Klaus. Tyler he found annoying, Klaus he always wanted to kill, but the Tyler-Klaus hybrid is sort of funny to him. Like, he never noticed how hard Klaus was trying until it was Tyler's voice saying the words.
But maybe that's just funny to him because Elena-the-vampire is not funny, so he has to find humor where he can.
Which is why this idea occurs to him after Stefan stops by his room to ask him to keep an eye on Elena while they're gone. Elena, who has moved in at the Boarding House again because she's afraid she's going to eat Jeremy. Elena, who as a vampire has been particular docile, and Damon knows it's just a matter of time. Nobody with that kind fire and passion, even tempered with great empathy, transforms into a lesser version as a vampire.
Her death grip on control worries him every minute of every day, but he hasn't offered any help. Just his opinions loudly and repeatedly that this was not a good idea. Cutting herself off from Jeremy wouldn't solve anything; choosing exile during what she thinks are the "hard weeks" just after she's transitioned; and of course, the ever-present denial of I have to do this my way, Damon while Stefan looks on with no comment.
If Damon's honest, he's had this in his back pocket for a while, even before she accidentally became a vampire. So he goes down to the Salvatore basement and grabs the 24-pack of toilet paper and the big roll of plastic wrap. Then he knocks on Stefan's bedroom door.
She opens it in her pajamas (though it's four o'clock in the afternoon), which consist of a red camisole and some matching silky shorts that are not exactly underwear, but are neither something she'd wear in public. She's beautiful and a mess, her hair piled on top of her head in a haphazard ponytail, and he wonders how becoming a vampire made the inhibition of not wandering around indecently in front of him vanish.
He gestures to the items he brought with him and says, "Remember how we were always going to do this to Stefan's car?"
Her face lights up marginally, and her eyes go wide as she looks back and forth between him and the package of toilet paper. "Oh, yeah," she murmurs, like it was a half-forgotten dream.
Which, he supposes, it is.
"They took Caroline's car to go look for Abby and any assorted witches she might know. Stefan's car is in the garage. Perfect target."
Elena nods her head. "Let me get dressed," she says, shutting the door in his face.
Yes, get dressed. Get very dressed.
Stefan's Porsche is smaller than Caroline's car, and the chore of tossing the toilet paper rolls to each other over and under the car is much easier now that Elena has vampire reflexes. So it basically takes no time at all to do it.
(Elena is wearing a white button-down over her red camisole and a pair of board shorts that can't be Stefan's because Damon's never known him to ever wear shorts. The point is, he knows what's underneath and it's slowly driving him crazy.)
And of course, it's no fun, because she's not giggling like a maniac, and Damon can't seem to conjure up any witty banter of his own.
They are perfectly silent and miserable and work very well together. As she holds the plastic wrap in place and he jets around the car, he resorts to the only thing he can think to be provoking. He purposely knocks into her as he comes back around and she loses her balance slightly, falling back against the hood.
"Damon," she says, but even the admonishment holds no ire.
"Could you at least pretend to enjoy yourself?" he demands. "I mean, wasn't the point of this to do something fun?"
Her expression changes, managing to convey even more unhappiness. "I thought it would be. I thought..." she falters and then moves away from him, away from the car. She shakes her head and mutters, "I should have died. I should have died the night Stefan saved me, and I should have died the night he didn't save me. I feel dead, anyway. I shouldn't be here."
Damon stares at her as this confession rushes forth and he thinks of the beating he gave his brother when he learned from the Quarterback that Elena had died because Stefan saved him instead. It hadn't mattered that that's what Elena directed Stefan to do (and no, his brother hadn't had to tell Damon that. Damon knows her better than he knows anyone, except possibly Stefan, who will always do stupid shit he deserves to have his ass beat for, which is the older brother's job, and he did his job, thank you very much). All that mattered was she had died, they had lost her, and Damon understands that more now than ever.
She stands before him, still breathing, but not living.
"I had to transition, right?" she continues. "I mean, there was Jeremy, and he would have been all alone, and there was Matt who would always feel guilty, no matter what, and there was Stefan..." She seems to be talking to hear herself, because she's not even looking at him and he can't stand it so he ends up tearing off the plastic and drops the unused portion to the garage floor. Her head jerks towards the sound, her eyes find his and there are tears, suddenly and surprisingly, as she looks at him. "And you, there was you. Standing there, looking lost, looking completely devastated, and I couldn't decide if it was because I died or because I lived, because I had said goodbye to you when I couldn't think of what else to do. Part of me thought maybe I'd never see you again, and then it was all I wanted, and all I could do was take the bloodbag from Caroline and..." She gestures weakly at her own body. "...become this."
Damon's not sure what she's saying, or what he's hearing, or if they're even the same thing, but he reaches out and grabs her arm, pulling her back towards himself. "If you don't get anything else from being a vampire, I would strongly urge you to finally learn to take what you want. Because eternity is a long fucking time to always be doing for everyone else."
It happens then; the fire flares in the depths of her eyes and her face animates with something other than utter devastation. She seizes up in anger, and violence pours forth.
And for the first time since Elena died, Damon thinks there's hope for her.
(Thinks there's hope for him.)
She tries to hit him, but he sees it coming, even if she's much quicker than she used to be. He grabs her fist and shoves her arm back and when she shifts, he moves into her, trapping her against the car's fender.
She grunts and pushes back; he has to put some real muscle into it to stay level with her. He can't help the grin the rushes over his face when she narrows her eyes and draws her arm back only to bring her other one up and slam them both, elbows to wrists, against his chest. They go down in a heap because she's truly angry, and let's face it, Damon gets off on this. The fact that she can't really hurt him is only tempered by the fact that now he can't really hurt her either.
He rolls, pinning her beneath him on the garage floor. She knees him in the groin and then he flips himself off of her, dragging her with him so they're both upright again. He twists her right arm up behind her back and plants her facedown on the hood of the car like they're on an episode of COPS. He leans over her and breathes in her ear, "Not quite, princess," and she bucks back against him, purposely causing her arm to twist more awkwardly. He hears the bone snap and she groans in pain, but as he instantly steps back, she swings around and clocks him with her other fist and he flies backward, crashing into the work table behind him.
As she straightens out her arm and it pops back into place, Damon can't take his eyes from her face. The tracery of veins beneath her eyes is something he's never been allowed to see before, and then she hisses at him, her fangs prominently on display.
(He's never been more aroused in his entire life.)
With vampire speed, he moves back to the car, artfully trapping her between his hard-on and the hood of Stefan's Porsche. He wants to quip something about a rock and a hard place, but he can't seem to make his mouth work, especially when Elena lifts her hips up against his. She gazes at him as her face returns to normal, her eyes sweeping back and forth from his eyes to his mouth. Then she says, "What I want will ruin everything," and Damon is lost. There might have been a choice when this all started, but he surrenders any semblance of agency by just standing there, not moving away from her.
He wanted to help, he wanted to bring her out of her doldrums, and though tee-peeing Stefan's car is so squeaky clean innocent that it about sickens Damon, at the base of all that has always been this. She chose his brother, she let him go, but then he stayed, and she stayed, and here they are. And every day her choice seemed less and less significant. Not because Elena doesn't always manage to make decisions he disagrees with, but because her mouth says one thing while her eyes scream another.
(She became a vampire, and that changed everything.)
She reaches her hand up, slides her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, and his mouth is on hers faster than she can tug him close. Her shirt and camisole end up somewhere across the room, and the board shorts pool at their feet, but what sincerely blows his mind is the way she kisses him.
It's like Denver all over again, overwhelming and perfect and so familiar when it shouldn't be, when it's the sixth in a short line of very questionable encounters, when it has been all kinds of not real kisses mixed with things that should never have happened-Katherine, drunk and stupid, dying and unable to truly enjoy it, stealing it because it would never happen, completely unexpected yet somehow the only way it could end-but this one, this one. It's not going to end, not until...
And then her hands are there, at the fly of his jeans and she's jerking hard and tearing fabric and he finds himself whispering, "Easy, easy..." because he wants her to know, she doesn't have to fight for it. She doesn't have to be desperate. Everything he is has been hers all along, in whatever way she needs it.
And if she needs this, he's going to accommodate her.
She says his name, a plaintive cry, "Da-mon," and that all but destroys him. She has owned him, body and soul, for so long he doesn't remember it being any other way, but that note of need is all it takes for him to be as generous as he can be, to make it as simple as possible.
He strips her of her silky shorts as she shoves his jeans down just enough. As he reaches down to grab her legs, her hands move under his shirt, pulling it over his head. Her fingers spread across his chest, and she looks at him, looks at his body hungrily, her eyes taking too much time to admire when he can feel her want, knows that the time for a slow, leisurely exploration is not now. He scoops her up, dropping her ass down on a hood covered by toilet paper and plastic wrap, her knees caught at his elbows. He hesitates just long enough for their eyes to meet and she doesn't break the connection, doesn't tense up, she just looks relieved as he guides himself there and pushes inside her.
Her head falls back and she lets out a shout of deliverance that makes him see stars, or maybe that's just the tight, slick feel of her encompassing him. Her arms swirl around his neck and her breasts press against his chest, the softness punctuated by their hard little centers. She gasps as their bodies move together, caresses that seem to cover every inch of skin until Damon wonders how he managed to wait until this moment. If he had known...oh, he always knew...but now, now he will never not know it. Never again. Having Elena Gilbert-being inside her-it's like finally being in the place he has always known he belonged.
She thrusts her hips up to his, though, and he forgets his lamentation; he just gets lost in the rhythm with her, just feels the height of freedom-something he stopped believing could ever happen to him, and when she calls his name again, clenching around him in heavenly accord, he loses it. Sense of time and place fade, and there is only Elena, there has only ever been Elena, there will only ever be Elena.
And he just took her on the hood of his brother's car.
They are sprawled across the front of the car, and he thinks at any moment they might precariously roll one direction or the other, and he really doesn't want his bare ass (jeans huddled around his thighs) hitting the floor of the garage. He withdraws carefully, eases himself back, and Elena moans, her eyes opening slowly. "Don't..." she says, but then their eyes meet. He gets his feet under him and he smiles at her.
Like, from the bottom of his soul, he smiles, even though this is probably the worst thing they could have done.
No, the worst part is the slow, shaky smile that cracks her face in return. There hasn't been any of that, not since her transition, and it's more of a victory than the orgasms they both just experienced.
She slides down the hood of the car, and when her toes touch the floor, she stands up gingerly. She's gloriously naked, every bit of her perfect and beautiful, and he takes the time now to appreciate her full breasts and the curves of her hips and the indentation at her navel. He could spend years canvassing her and never tire of it, he's sure, but at this juncture, he won't allow himself to think about that.
Instead when she opens her mouth to speak, he presses a finger to her lips. "No, don't ruin it," he whispers, and she blinks. Understanding leaks across her face and she gives one short nod. Reaching up she encircles his neck with her arms again, just hugging him tightly. She presses her face into his throat, and like those other times when she's hugged him, he doesn't quite know what to do with his hands. He wants to cup her ass and pull her right up to him, but this hug isn't sexual, it's one of gratitude, and he forces himself to let it be just that. He finally settles his hands at her lower back, pressing warmly without urgency.
When she lets him go, she turns away and starts gathering her clothes. They dress slowly, without talking, and Damon finally leans down to grab the plastic wrap. "Should we repair this?" he asks, and she looks back at him, and then at the car, where he's pointing. She stares at it for a long time, her gaze fixated on the front end where a wet spot has formed in the garbled mess of shredded toilet paper. When her eyes come back to his, she starts giggling, and it transforms the whole room to a place of light.
"Never mind," he says around his own laughter, and tacitly they start gathering up all the toilet paper, wadding it in their hands to carry back to the house.
They get all the way into the kitchen to dispose of the litter before she tries again. "Damon, I-"
"Don't," he says shaking his head. Her mouth tightens and he can see confusion warring with annoyance. "There will be time for all that later, Elena. For now, just let it be. Just be. Figure it out, or don't."
Now, she just looks flummoxed as he holds a garbage bag open and she stuffs her debris into it. "You can't possibly be okay with..." She waves her hand in the direction of the garage. "You wanted me to explain what I was doing in Denver. Don't you want me to explain this?"
He drops the bag and steps closer to her. Slowly, he takes her face in his hands. "I want you to embrace who you are. If this is part of who you are, great! If it's just part of you figuring out who you are, as a vampire, then I'll just be a different kind of bump. For now."
There are tears in her eyes when he leans forward to press a kiss to her forehead. It's not like he's different, it's not like this isn't still everything he wants and everything he's terrified of all at once. But the one thing that has changed for him since Elena became a vampire? How much time he has to work it out.
Knowing him, he would never have stopped hoping, not for the length of her mortal life, and now that she can theoretically live forever? Well, a tiger doesn't change his stripes, does he?
Letting all his own expectations go had been as traumatic as feeling the life drain out of Ric and knowing Elena was also dead somewhere. And then, then there had been the awful, hopeful moment when Meredith told him what she'd done.
And now, only weeks later, he just had Elena (or Elena just had him), and she's the one who wants to talk about it, not him.
Go figure.
He releases her, busying his hands with the trash. As he starts for the door to get rid of the bagged evidence, he throws over his shoulder, "Obviously, we need to abandon this whole car pranking business. It's no fun if we always have to do the clean up, too."
Elena's still standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking dazed and confused, but in a good way. He watches as she gathers herself, straightening her shoulders a little, tugging her unbuttoned blouse together over her breasts. "Nah," she says, a glimmer of that girl who once showed him how it was done flickering on her face. "Third time's a charm."
Damon smiles the whole way to the car.
...the epic fluffy conclusion...