She's Only Happy in the Sun
Title: She's Only Happy in the Sun (title borrowed from song of same name by Ben Harper)
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries (television show, not books)
Characters: Damon Salvatore, Rose, Bonnie Bennett, Stefan Salvatore, Elena Gilbert, and the rest of the gang
Pairings: Damon/Rose, Stefan/Elena, hints of Bonnie/Jeremy and Caroline/Tyler
Rating: CHANGE! This one is pushin' the PG-13 (or what is it in the US? TV-14?) barrier a bit, but in the most innocent way possible.
Spoilers: Potentially all aired episodes *AND* for the extended promo of "The Descent"
Summary: See "The Descent" extended promo. The focus, however, is on Damon and Rose, so don't expect to see everything from the promo in this story.
Disclaimer: Yep...I don't even own a share of CW stock.
A/N: I added two entire scenes to this chapter, cuz this is a Damon/Rose fic and there wasn't enough Damon/Rose. Geez, what was I thinking? :P
Also, chapter 1, Expect the Unexpected, is here, chapter 2, Is She Gonna Die, Stefan? is chillin' here, chapter 3, Friends Indeed, has made a home for itself here, chapter 4, Walking the Plank, is making a nuisance of itself over here, and chapter 5, Downward Slope and a Hint of Hope lies over yonder.
Chapter 6: Costs
The front door of the boardinghouse bangs open and Elena’s and Bonnie’s heads snap up in unison.
“Stefan!” Elena screams. She runs to her boyfriend, terrified of the blood drenching his clothes. He flinches and holds up his hands as she comes up the stairs, stopping her from touching him. “Blood?” she asks.
“Not yours,” he says when his nod sends her frantically searching for the nearest sharp object. “Now would be a really bad time for that.” Elena nods gravely in understanding and hesitantly moves toward him again. He allows her to hook her shoulder in his armpit and ease him down the stairs.
Caroline limps in and is greeted by Bonnie who came behind Elena with a spell on her lips. Shaking her head empathically, Caroline insists, “Save it for him.”
They all turn to the door again as Damon walks through, torn and bloodied with wounds still oozing and Rose drenched in his blood and hers hanging across his arms like a zombie bride. He makes it five steps inside before hitting his knees, holding onto the woman in his arms as he falls.
His face is down, hidden by blood-matted hair and he makes no plea to Bonnie or anyone. Elena is frozen, horrified, Stefan is losing consciousness at rate with blood, and Caroline sways. Rose’s legs slip slowly from his grasp as Bonnie hesitates, but at the sight of his mangled chest she hesitates no more.
~V~
The spell knocked all three vampires unconscious to heal them; Damon remained where he was with Rose (who Bonnie and Elena promptly injected with vervain) slanted across his waist because he weighs too much for the girls to move, but Caroline was hefted onto the couch opposite the one Stefan fell on.
Elena washes the blood from her boyfriend’s neck with a damp towel and finally voices the question she hasn’t known how to ask, “Why won’t the spell you just used work on Rose? It was a healing spell, right, so shouldn’t it just heal her too?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Bonnie replies from the other couch with Caroline’s head in her lap. “A werewolf’s bite is poisonous. I just stopped their bleeding and prompted their cells to regenerate. They’ll wake up soon and need blood. A spell to heal Rose would require me to eliminate the poison from her body when it’s already so pervasive. And it’s a supernatural poison.”
Elena waits for a moment, hesitant to ask her next question. “Did we look through the entire potion section?”
Bonnie shakes her head. “There’s a tonic section in the back, but Emily’s written a warning never to use them. They’re not exactly dark magic, but they’re dangerous.” She pauses, looking over the arm of the couch at the dying vampire in the doorway. “I’m scared of them, Elena. I’m not sure I even want to know what they are. And I’m scared of what Rose could do to this town if we don’t just kill her now. Look what she did to Damon and Stefan and Caroline. We need the ally, but not at the cost of our army.”
Dropping her head, Elena caresses Stefan’s face before looking up again. “Can’t we just look, Bonnie? Please?”
Bonnie looks into the eyes of her best friend, brown and pleading and scared, and acquiesces, shifting Caroline to reach for the grimoire.
~V~
Damon wakes first, the strongest of the vampire quartet (wearily, Elena thinks vampirism is slowly going to consume all her life-it’s just barely missing the mark now-in one way or another: her boyfriend, her best friend, her other best friend, her brother all have fallen to it and it’s only a matter of time before the rest is eaten up or burned down), and surges towards the first human blood he smells.
“Damon!” Elena shrieks, the vampire’s bloodlust eyes on full display inches from her face, his body no bigger than it was a moment ago but so close, so ferally occupying her personal space, he feels huge, and she would be an idiot not to be threatened. His hands are breaking the back of the couch on either side of her as he briefly appraises this treat without recognition. Bonnie leaps to her feet, tossing off Caroline, and hurls her power through the air at him. The aneurysms take effect in a moment, a moment that’s almost too long, and he stumbles away with a snarl and hands to his head.
Finally, he knows both teens and grinds his words between his clenched teeth, “Dammit, witch, turn it off.” Relieved, she complies and watches, slightly horrified, as he fights his vampire telltales back.
He stands straight with a hunched spirit Elena can see clearer than a ghost hanging on his shoulders. “I need blood.” Bonnie winces. He spies Rose, discarded on the floor. “And she needs a bath.”
~V~
He’d left the girls to deal with his brother and Barbie (who’d proven herself tonight, to his surprise) after he’d indigested four or five blood bags, and carried Rose gently upstairs, to the only bathroom with a tub. Now, closing the door behind him, he bends to prop Rose carefully against the corner where the tub meets the wall. He braces himself next to her, legs wide apart with his thighs against her to keep her from falling over, and reaches past her to start the water running. He adjusts the temperature and plugs the drain before turning his attention back to the woman lying in false death below his eyes. With an inaudible sigh, he sinks back onto his heels. Beneath the blood and gore, Rose’s coloring is wrong, taking on the gray quality of a vampire corpse. Her clothes are ruined, torn and stained and probably infected with werewolf venom, although Damon’s not sure it works that way. Her usually soft and-he never thought this-gleaming hair is matted and stringy. Really, she’s a wreck and he wouldn’t hesitate to tell her so if she were awake.
His too-long lustful hands are placed chastely and separately between her shoulder blades and under her ass as he shifts her position in order to secure her so he can take off her shoes. After her shoes are off, he slides her socks down her feet and discards them, following with her jeans. Still chaste, his hands graze her hips but leave her panties alone.
Her shirt is the tricky part; he knows, he’s undressed his fair share of incapable women. He bends her knees to keep her long legs from getting tangled around the base of the toilet across from her and then slides in behind her, holding her weight on his forearms as he does. Settling her back against him, snarling without knowing it at the wolf bite on her shoulder, he proceeds to pull her shirt up, holding one arm in the air at a time to slide it down over the slender hand at the end. The blood in her hair is smearing onto his chin and scraps of her skin are flaking onto the bathroom floor. Her lack of a bra is unsurprising (her back’s too torn up to stand one), and at other times would be gratifying.
A small hesitation breaks his pace. Reaching across Rose again, he pulls the tab to send the flowing water to the showerhead and unplugs the drain. He kicks off his shoes and carefully slips off his shirt. Rose whimpers as he picks her up and steps inside the tub. When Damon realizes the water pressure is too hard to be soothing, he props one foot on the side of the tub and drapes her legs across his thigh so he can twist the showerhead’s dial to soften the flow. The floor is drenched and will be ruined, but he never did care about things like that.
He grabs the shampoo and cradles her head in the crook of his elbow. With a tenderness he refuses to recognize, he sops her head and massages her scalp, kneading the blood gently away. He runs his hand down the lines of her body, helping the water do its job and feeling for broken bones she might have sustained that need setting, not trusting the semi-witch to have performed a proper spell (ignoring the fact that he had earlier). She shifts and he puts his foot on the bottom of the tub, taking her weight again on his arms.
Her face turns into his chest before her eyes gape open and fall closed repeatedly, like a blinking alarm clock. Then they stay open almost accidentally, half-mast. She lifts her hand towards his face. “I think this is mine, and this is yours,” she says, touching different blood spatters on his cheekbones. He turns the water off and she shivers. “I’m sorry, Damon” and she’s gone again.
He presses his lips to her forehead as the water drains away.
~V~
“You did what?” Damon demands, blood glass frozen en route to his mouth. Elena pushes slightly into Stefan and Caroline shuffles backwards as Bonnie squares her shoulders and repeats herself, “We injected Rose with vervain.”
“You’re killing her faster,” he informs her, making his displeasure known by his sudden appearance in her personal space. Elena flinches for her friend. Damon is livid, angered almost (Elena hopes) past the reach of reason.
“I know,” Bonnie growls right back at him, standing taller to say it into his face.
“Damon,” Stefan warns and Elena jumps in to aide him. “We’re looking for a cure for her, Damon, really, but she can’t hurt anybody else in the meantime.” She waits for his attention to turn to her. “Especially not you guys.” Damon paces away from Bonnie with a predator’s grace, reminding Elena of Simba from The Lion King.
Stefan moves from Elena to his brother. “We’re not giving up on her, Damon.” Damon braces himself against the back of a chair and nods over his shoulder at Stefan.
Caroline goes to the kitchen for more blood and Bonnie walks over to Elena, taking the other girl by the arm and pulling her out of the room. “I found something that may cure Rose.”
“That’s great Bonnie! Why..?” Elena indicates the semi-privacy Bonnie insisted on.
Bonnie cringes hesitantly. “It requires the witch who makes the tonic to let some blood to be used as an ingredient.” At Elena’s quizzical look, she continues, “A witch willingly bloodletting has consequences, Elena. It could affect my magic. I may not be strong enough to do anything when Klaus comes if I do this now.”
Before Elena can speak, Damon is standing between them. “It doesn’t have to be willingly,” he growls menacingly down at the witch.
“Yes, it does,” Bonnie asserts, giving him three quick, successive aneurysms that have him clutching his head and stumbling before relieving him. “It’s part of the tonic’s power. A vital part.” He glares at her, strides purposefully out of the room to scoop Rose up off the couch he’d laid her on when he’d carried her back from upstairs, turns again, and mounts the stairs. Bonnie, Elena, Caroline, and Stefan watch after him as he goes.
~V~
At midnight, the witching hour, Damon wakes Bonnie up with his sudden appearance in the guest bedroom Stefan showed her to. She’s on her sixth aneurysm when he chokes out “Witch,” from the floor beside the bed, “just talk.”
Suspiciously, she raises her chin, but desists. The look he gives her holds back a dozen smartass remarks, his restraint surprising Bonnie. His shoulders fall and he sits back against the bed, still on the floor. His head hangs slightly and Bonnie wonders how well her healing spell earlier really worked. Before she can speak, he starts making promises.
He promises to protect her in the coming battle with Klaus above everybody except Elena and Stefan. He promises to never kill another human being, for as long as his eternity lasts. He promises to find a witch, witches, to mentor her, to be her family. He promises to protect her line as he has for the past century and a half. He promises to look after Caroline (if she survives), he promises to protect Matt and Tyler and Sheriff Forbes and her absentee dad and her more absentee mom and this bad luck town.
He comes just short of pledging his eternal loyalty to her-and she knows it-
So she agrees.
His fangs are gentle as they glide into the veins of her wrist.
Chapter 7: What Goes Around Comes Around