
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/300880.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Vampire_Diaries_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Elena_Gilbert/Damon_Salvatore
  Character:
      Elena_Gilbert, Damon_Salvatore
  Stats:
      Published: 2011-12-23 Words: 11708
****** Literary License ******
by badboy_fangirl
Summary
     Elena realizes that Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights has a few
     similarities to Damon Salvatore.
Notes
     Set in the undetermined future, but includes references to anything
     up through 2x16, and speculation as to what might happen beyond that.

   Literary License: to change the details of a story for purpose of theme,
                       clarity, or better storytelling.
"See, it was just about preserving you long enough to serve you up on a silver
platter," Katherine smirks as she stands over Elena's prone body.
Elena is tempted to just let the fear run through her, but she has contemplated
this too many times during the last six months to feel anything but
resignation. Klaus's demise has been traded for Elijah's if need be, and one
way or another, someone is bound to kill her.
She is prepared to die. What she's not prepared for is Katherine, who had
worked hard to convince her, Stefan, and Damon that her intentions were
honorable, to turn so suddenly. She knows Damon never believed it, but Stefan
had become convinced, and if Elena's honest, so had she. (She realizes now that
had been her futile alignment with Stefan over Damon, a concentrated effort to
prove her allegiance to the brother she'd promised her heart to, and not the
one who she seemed to agree with more and more often, even when his solutions
included the words kill them.)
She's also not prepared for her last regretful thought process to be so clearly
about Damon. She wishes she could apologize for not deferring to him, for
making him angry with her Pollyanna ways, for breaking his heart all over again
by not being there anymore—
It's that item that forces her eyes closed. She doesn't want to watch Katherine
put a stake to her chest, or whatever way she'll choose to end Elena's life;
instead she focuses her final thoughts on Damon's eyes—full of pain, anguish,
and yes, love for her—and she hopes if nothing else, her death will bring him
fully back to his humanity.
Maybe losing her will save him. Maybe the sacrifice that she has always been
destined to make will not just break the Sun and the Moon Curse, but so many of
the other impediments of being a vampire.
It would be the moral of the story, wouldn't it? She dies, and Damon finally
lives. It's so poetic, like something out of a novel—a theme that could be
discussed endlessly in English class, something to argue out and theorize and
write term papers about.
Her eyes fly open when Katherine screams and then her vampire doppelganger
falls to the ground beside her and Elena sees him, standing over her like the
hero he never wanted to be.
Damon Salvatore just staked Katherine Pierce for Elena Gilbert.
===============================================================================
His hands wrap around her shoulders and haul her to her feet, crushing her
against his chest in what one might consider a hug, but it's not. There's some
element to it that borders on caring, but there is also too much agitated
breathing and a fevered whisper, "We've got to get the hell out of here," and
his lips are against her forehead and then her cheek and briefly, even her
mouth, but Elena doesn't have time to consider any of it.
He moves at the speed of light, and she goes with him because she has no
choice.
Then she's suddenly in Stefan's arms, and the three of them climb in Damon's
car, along with Caroline, and drive away. Elena doesn't know where they're
going, and she wants to ask, but finds out Bonnie is fine, that the Witch
Energy-Channeling Project had worked, and that Klaus is dead. It all spills
quickly from Caroline's lips, and the relief of it swamps Elena in a maniacal
wave, forcing sobs up her throat and tears from her eyes.
She hears Damon ask, "Is she hurt, and I didn't even fucking notice?"
Caroline answers. "She's just crashing, that's all. It's hard being the savior
of Mystic Falls, you know."
Stefan croons in her ear and rocks her back and forth, and Elena accepts his
comfort, but she wants something else. (Maybe someone else?)
She thinks maybe that's part of what causes her tears.
===============================================================================
Days later, Bonnie and Caroline show up for a girls' night and Bonnie holds a
DVD in front of Elena's face. "Look what I found! It's a new remake of
Wuthering Heights with that guy from Inception! Your favorite! This is bound to
cheer you up!"
Elena just gives her a look. "Have you never read Wuthering_Heights?" she asks
her best friend.
Bonnie and Caroline exchange looks. "No, why?"
"Isn't it like Pride_and_Prejudice?" Caroline asks. "They don't get together
until the end of the story?"
"It's a tragedy, you guys! I mean, yeah it has a happy ending, but the main
characters both die, and it's their children who find a better way!"
"Not a cheer-you-up kind of movie, then?" Caroline asks, taking the DVD from
Bonnie's hand to read the back.
"I'm sorry, Elena," Bonnie says. "I didn't realize..."
"We can always watch The Notebook!" Caroline pipes up. "We'll just turn it off
before the old people die!"
Elena groans and jerks the DVD from Caroline's fingers. "Absolutely not!"
She's not sure why she's sad. She knows she should be happy. She knows everyone
expects her to be ecstatic. She's free. Nobody's hunting for her. She and
Stefan can finally have a normal, happy, event-free relationship.
It's not that she craves danger, exactly, but the realization that she sort of
misses the excitement of all of it is something she keeps to herself. She's
glad everyone is safe, that nobody needs to die for any reason.
But deep inside herself, she knows.
It's been two weeks since Katherine died. Since Katherine was killed. Since
Damon murdered Katherine.
Stefan comes by to see if she wants to go out with him and Caroline; they're
going to shoot pool at The Grill. (He'd also told her that his brother had
hinted that he would leave Mystic Falls soon. "He said there's no reason to
stay," Stefan repeated like a parrot, his melancholy impersonation of Damon
sort of haunting.)
She said no, she didn't feel like it. The weather is awful, it's been storming
for a couple days, and she really didn't want to go out in it.
Not for Stefan, anyway.
Before she even thinks it through entirely, she's shrugging into her jacket and
running down the stairs. She encounters Jeremy and Bonnie at the front door,
they come in laughing and kissing, and she stops to watch them for a second.
They are totally carefree, unashamed, enraptured with each other, and she
remembers when she felt that way, or when she at least thought that's how it
would be with her and Stefan if they could ever find a peaceful moment.
And yet, here she was, peaceful moments pelting her like rain, without the
results she expected.
"Hey," her brother says, noticing her. "Where you off to?"
"I'm going to the Boarding House," she answers truthfully. They don't know that
Caroline and Stefan are at The Grill.
"Drive safe," Bonnie says. "It's really coming down out there."
"I will, thanks," Elena says, going out into the deluge.
It's the perfect setting, really. The gloomy weather just adds to the mood. She
drives to the Boarding House, thinking of Heathcliff and Cathy, comparing Damon
and Katherine to them unapologetically.
She'd watched that movie, the one based on her favorite novel, and she'd felt
as though someone were thumping her upside the head with literary allusions.
For goodness' sake, her name was Katherine. Spelled differently, but so what?
They had destroyed each other, Heathcliff and Cathy, and Elena had had to turn
the movie off in the middle much to Caroline's protests and Bonnie's
bewilderment.
"You guys," she said, looking at her two best friends. "Don't you see it?
Heathcliff is the original Damon Salvatore. It's so obvious!"
They'd looked at her like they didn't recognize her, Caroline confused, and
Bonnie suspicious. She'd ended up saying, "Nevermind," and shooing them into
the kitchen for ice cream. (Then they'd watched The Notebook. You could take
the vampire out of the girl, but you would never be able to take the girl out
of the vampire.)
When she gets to the Boarding House, it's all lit up. She has no idea what to
expect, and she wonders if Damon's girlfriend Andie will be there. She hadn't
even considered that possibility in her mad dash, and now she feels very
foolish.
She supposes she can always pretend she and Stefan got their wires crossed.
When she goes inside, she finds him alone, reading in the library. He glances
up when she comes in the doorway. "Hello, Elena," he says.
She raises a hand and grips the doorjamb until her fingers turn white. What is
she going to say? Don't leave town, Damon. Don't let Katherine destroy you. I'm
sorry you had to kill the love of your life to save me, even if she was a
heinous bitch who deserved to die.
Yeah, none of those really work.
So she settles for, "Hello, Damon."
She walks into the room and peruses some of the books on the shelf nearest her,
but she notices he keeps his eyes on her. "Stefan's not here, but you know that
already, don't you?" he asks, shutting the book he'd been reading and setting
it on the table next to him.
He picks up a glass of something amber-colored, and Elena wishes she had a
drink to amp up her courage, or her stupidity. At this point, either one would
be welcome.
"Yes, I know," she answers, turning to face him. She leans against the book
shelf, and suddenly the words flow. "Have you ever read Wuthering_Heights?"
He thinks for moment, then nods. "Yes, years ago--probably when it first came
out. I think we've got a first edition around here somewhere. Why? Do you want
to borrow it?"
"Actually, I have your first edition. Stefan gave it to me, right after we
first met, because I told him it's my favorite."
His lips twist slightly. "Oh, well, of course he did. Good, I'm glad someone
who appreciates it so much has it."
"Call_of_the_Wild isn't your favorite book is it?"
His eyebrows go up. "What?"
"Remember? You told Bonnie that was your favorite book. But it's not. Gone_With
the_Wind is."
He finishes his drink and then sets the tumbler down on the table next to his
book. "What makes you think that?" he asks.
"It was in your room, by your bed. I saw it when Rose...I saw it in there."
"What are you doing here, Elena? Do you want to start a book club with me?
Classics for Dummies? Something of that sort?"
She takes a step forward, forgetting the railing that separates the rest of the
room from the bookshelves. It stops her progress and she looks down at it. The
dark wood is finely polished, just like everything in this house. It's old, but
well kept, and she can't help but think so many things in life are just
metaphors for everything that's important.
"I've been thinking, a lot. About Katherine. About everything that happened.
And I just thought it would be appropriate for me to say thank you, properly.
Thank you for killing her to protect me. And please, don't be sorry. Be glad
that you rid the world of her horribleness. And don't let it drag you down.
Don't let her choices control your fate."
By the time she finishes her monologue, Damon's on his feet, but he hasn't
moved any closer to her. He looks at her for a long moment before turning away,
picking up his empty glass, and just staring down into it. "I think maybe your
critical thinking skills are causing you to confuse fact with fiction."
She finally gets brave enough to move around the railing and walks over to him,
but she doesn't get too close. "No, Damon, I--"
He turns then, back towards her, and she can tell by the surprised expression
on his face that he didn't know she'd moved closer. But he interrupts her
anyway with, "I don't regret it. Not for a second."
Her breath catches because his face isn't hard, the way it normally is when
he's protecting himself. He's almost...open. Almost. There's this sense of
hesitation between them, and Elena wants to step closer to him yet again, but
she's afraid. She doesn't want to be rejected; she knows if he does thwart her
advances it will hurt in a way it never has before. It will be more personal to
her, because of the way she feels about him. (Because she's acknowledged how
she feels.)
Her lips tremble into a smile that never fully forms, and she says softly, "I'm
glad."
"What, you're worried I'm going to off myself? I enjoy my scotch too much.
Plus, I'd rather go out fighting, not just take my ring off and poof."
Elena shakes her head. Though that's how Heathcliff had severed his pain, it
had never occurred to her that Damon would end his life. She only worries that
he'll retreat back into the emotionless monster she first knew. She doesn't
know how to say that to him, though, so she says, "Stefan said you were
thinking of leaving Mystic Falls."
He shrugs and squints one eye at her. "What do you care?"
Offended, Elena stands up straighter. "I care, Damon. You know I care!"
He smirks a little, but she can tell his heart's not in it. "Face it, Elena.
Your life will be complicated enough with one vampire boyfriend. You don't need
two."
"You're my friend, Damon. I would miss you."
He flinches, and turns away from her, dropping his empty glass back on the
table top. "Yes, because Cathy married Edgar Linton, not Heathcliff. It's
important to get the details right."
"What?" she asks. She takes another step towards him, but when his eyes come
back around to her, they freeze her progression completely.
"You were comparing me and Katherine to Heathcliff and Cathy, right? But don't
you see, Elena, that it's really you, me, and Stefan? And Stefan is Edgar, the
much better and obvious choice."
Her throat grows tight and she clutches at it with her fingers, as though she
can keep the truth from lodging there. "Cathy makes Edgar miserable, too," she
says, and then she lifts her chin. "Is that really how you see me? Intent on
making you and Stefan unhappy?"
"Do you really see me as someone who would leave you, and then wait until you
married my rival and show up just in time to torment you with it until you
died?"
"It's not—no, Damon. It's not like all the details are exact. There are just
some similarities there—the way you loved Katherine, the devotion. Her
betrayal. The pain you must feel from killing her, even if it was the right
thing."
"Cathy and Heathcliff's love for each other is what destroys them—but don't
worry, Katherine never loved me, and by the time I killed her, I didn't love
her anymore. And you know that. You know it, even though I didn't let you
remember it."
"Remember what?"
"Exactly."
"Damon," she says agitatedly. "Don't speak to me in riddles. What are you
talking about?"
He laughs, circling around her like he's going to walk out of the room in the
middle of their discussion. "You're the one with your literary license, Elena.
Trying to make me fit into some archetype so you can feel better about the way
things have gone."
"I'm not trying to make myself feel better!" she shouts. "I'm trying to make
you feel better. I'm trying to make you admit that you feel anything at all!"
She grabs his arm because he is trying to walk away from something she wants to
finish.
Once and for all.
"Don't," is all he says, and he tugs against her hold. He could easily break
the contact, but he doesn't, and she wraps her hand more tightly around his
wrist.
"What would have happened if Cathy had waited for Heathcliff? Do you think they
would have been happy?"
He doesn't say anything for a long moment, but his eyes soften, and something
comes over his face that she's never seen before. "They would have been with
the person they should have been with. If that didn't make them happy, I
suppose it's their own fault."
Elena drops his arm then, and takes a step back. The predator she met that
first day she ever saw Damon Salvatore flashes before her eyes, but then
something else, like a forgotten memory tickles at the back of her mind, and
she realizes what it is. It's passion, it's devotion, it's all the things she
knows are on the pages of her favorite book, and it was in the movie too,
between the actors.
And it's right here, between her and Damon, on both sides, in equal parts.
His hands surround her face. He puts his mouth to hers, not kissing her anymore
than he had the night he killed Katherine on her behalf. It's more of a
touchstone, a slight bit of contact that conveys more than a night of wild
lovemaking.
"Be happy, Elena. That's what Heathcliff should have wanted for Cathy; above
his own pleasure and satisfaction, hers should have been what mattered most to
him."
He presses his lips to her forehead then and walks away.
===============================================================================
At some point, Damon had grown to like manipulating people. It made him feel
powerful, it drove out the helpless sensation caused by death, and then a
vampire's life thrust upon him, and of course, his impotency at getting
Katherine out of the tomb that she wasn't really even in anyway.
But when he told Stefan he was thinking of leaving Mystic Falls, he really
hadn't had any ulterior motives. He assumed it would make his brother happy,
though if Stefan's creased forehead was any indication, it really hadn't.
He did not expect Stefan to tell Elena, and he did not expect Elena to care.
Really. He didn't.
What he does find interesting, though, is that she doesn't just care. She has a
whole thesis in her head for why he might go, why he should stay, and she quite
obviously doesn't want him to.
He's never been so conflicted in his whole 168 years.
So he knocks on Alaric's door, and tells his friend the whole long thing. Ric
is pensive, and he needs to shave. He's still working things out with Jenna
(who isn't as forgiving as Damon supposed her to be), and so he has that
whipped, depressed thing going on. (It's what human men go through because they
can't pick up a bunch of sorority girls to feed off like a vampire would to
drown his sorrows.)
"I don't know, Damon. Maybe leaving town is running away. Maybe you should stay
and fight?"
Damon scoffs. "Fight for what? Fight a losing battle? Stand beside my saint of
a brother and be found lacking? Why the fuck would I do that?"
"Because you love her."
Oh, yeah. That.
"She just feels guilty about Katherine, and what she thinks I feel about it."
"What do you feel about it?" Ric asks, sitting up from his slouched position on
his sofa. "I mean, really? You did kill a woman you spent a century and a half
pining for. It's got to do something to you. If I killed Isobel, I'd have, you
know, feelings about it."
Damon gets up and walks over to Ric's fridge, which isn't far from the living
room since his apartment is the size of a postage stamp. He pulls out a beer
for himself and tosses one to Ric as well. "What do I feel?" He shrugs.
"Relief. Vindication. Yippee, ki-yi-ay, mother fucker."
"Damon," Ric says, and he actually reminds Damon of Elena a little because of
the disapproving expression on his face.
"I'm not sorry, Ric. That's the truth. Do I feel regret? Nope, not even a
little bit. Elena's the one who deserves to live, not Katherine."
"You don't have to regret an action to be sad about it," Ric says. "I mean, I'm
sorry I lied to Jenna, but I don't regret trying to protect her. They are two
different things. Maybe Elena is just worried that you're hurting, and because
she cares about you, she wants to stop your hurting. That's what it's like when
you care for someone. Their pain is your pain, even if what caused the pain
means nothing to them. Get it?"
Damon takes a long drink from his beer bottle, and contemplates a little. Of
course he knows what Ric is talking about, because it seems like every little
thing that caused Elena pain reverberates inside him. That had started when he
found out Isobel was her birth mother, and essentially it hasn't stopped since
then.
He just never expected her to reciprocate it. (Or admit that she reciprocated
it, anyway.)
He finishes his beer without realizing how quickly he'd sucked it down, and
then he stands up. "Thanks for the chat, Ric."
He gets to the door before Ric's voice stops him. "For what it's worth, I don't
want you to leave town either."
Damon hesitates with his hand on the doorknob. "I think it's time to move on,"
he says, and that's the truth, too. He's got to get all these crazy thoughts
out of his head, because he knows it can only end one way.
He's read the book, after all.
===============================================================================
Two days later, Stefan invites him to go on a road trip to New York. "We're
gonna go catch a concert in the city, and—"
"Who's 'we'?" Damon interrupts.
"Me, Caroline, Bonnie, Jeremy, Elena, Jenna, Alaric."
Damon contemplates the couples ratio, and immediately knows he's not
interested. "What concert?" he asks, trying to look like he's actually
considering the trip.
"Justin Bieber."
Stefan tries to deadpan it, but he cracks before Damon can fully process that
he can't be serious. "Just kidding. We're going to see Bon Jovi. They're
touring with Daughtry again, so I thought everyone would enjoy the show."
Damon appreciates his brother's attempts at being completely normal. Really, he
does. But he's never liked Bon Jovi (maybe their music was just a bit too
optimistic for him, okay?) and he doesn't care for Daughtry either.
"Eh," he says, shrugging. "Maybe if it was someone from like now, I'd go. Bon
Jovi's, you know, so 1987."
"You sure?" Stefan asks. "Everyone wants you to come."
"Everyone?" Damon smirks.
"Even Bonnie," Stefan says with a nod.
"Thanks, but no. I'm still wrapping a few things up here so I can decide where
I'm going to jetset to. So, not this time."
Stefan slaps his shoulder. "Okay, but next time, we'll go see someone you'd
want to see. Who would you want to see?"
"Nobody you've ever heard of," Damon says with slight condescension.
"Oh, come on," Stefan says. "Elena's gotten me to listen to a lot of 'current'
people."
"Does Elena listen to Sleeperstar, or Mat Kearney? How about Mumford and Sons?"
Stefan's face lights up. "Yes, she totally has Mumford and Sons in her car! She
made me listen to this song about a lionboy or something."
"Little Lion Man," Damon corrects automatically.
"Yeah, right, whatever. So yes, we'll go see them sometime, okay? Wherever you
end up, we'll meet somewhere and do it, okay?"
Damon only nods because he knows it will make Stefan happy, and strangely,
these days he wants to do that, at least in theory.
He doesn't expect to really ever see any of them ever again. When he leaves, it
will be for good. It's better that way.
Better for everyone.
===============================================================================
Stefan and his gang leave the next morning and Damon putters around the
Boarding House, thinks about calling Andie, then decides against it. (They've
pretty much cooled off, and really it's just one more loose end that's already
tied up.)
He realizes he really hasn't been in the library since he was there with Elena,
and it bugs him that he's avoiding the room. It's always been his favorite
place in the house, but now he can't go in there without wondering what would
have happened if he hadn't walked out three days before.
Somehow he became pretty good at making sure she doesn't have any choices to
make, and he's sort of pissed at himself about it. So he just keeps to his
room, because there aren't many memories of her here, except with Rose.
He hates how much time he's spent thinking about it. For her bringing it up to
him, for him finding that they had more than one copy of Wuthering_Heights in
the house. (Apparently the one Stefan gave Elena was under the alias Emily
Bronte used back in the day, but they'd also acquired one from some years later
published with her real name.)
So, he re-read it. (He's got loads of time, you know.)
He's not an idiot, so he can see the parallels she drew from fairly easily, as
well as the ones that occurred to him while they fought about it, but there is
that little bit there that she wouldn't get, that she couldn't possibly
understand.
Heathcliff's fear.
Damon's pretty sure he gets why the guy left, and why he came back too late. He
did it all on purpose because he never felt worthy of Catherine. He'd always
been told he wasn't good enough, and her preference for Edgar only reinforced
that, and fuck Damon for being a literary genius, but hello. It's all painfully
similar, even more so than Elena thinks.
As if thinking about her conjures her up, he does a double take when something
catches in his peripheral vision. There she is, standing in the doorway of his
bedroom, and he's positive he's fallen asleep standing up.
"Hi," she says.
"Um...hi?" he responds. He was about to sit down in the chaise-lounge with a
new book, but he hesitates as he looks at her, waiting for Stefan to come in
behind her. "You guys have a breakdown in the driveway, or something?"
Elena shakes her head and walks all the way into the room. "No. I didn't go
with them. I don't really like Bon Jovi."
Damon snorts. "Me, either."
"So," she says, pulling her sweater off as she moves closer to him. "You still
planning on leaving town?"
She throws the piece of clothing over the arm of the chair he's standing
beside, and he's faced with her in a simple white t-shirt and a pair of old
jeans that hugs her ass a little too sweetly. He jerks his eyes up to hers and
she's smiling at him just a bit, the corners of her lips slightly raised. "Um,
yeah. Yup, just, you know, mapping a course for the horizon." He lifts his arm
up, indicating said horizon, pointing somewhere to the left of their bodies.
(He feels like a total idiot.)
"Any particular place?" she asks and she moves so she's standing right in front
of him. She pulls the book he's holding out of his hands and he literally
thinks, Praise Jesus it's not Wuthering Heights.
"No, not really," he says, swallowing nervously. She's too close, and the look
on her face is completely disconcerting. "Maybe the West Coast, or Alaska. I
hear it's really beautiful, and believe it or not, I've never been there.
Alaska, I mean. Of course I've been to the Wes—"
She tosses the book on the chair with one hand and puts a finger to his lips
with the other. "Shhhh," she says, and for the first time in two weeks and
three days, he wonders if maybe Katherine isn't dead.
Because this can't possibly be Elena.
She holds his gaze steadily, however, and he notices the faintest trace of pink
highlighting her cheeks; he can hear her heart thump-thumping against her
ribcage. She steps closer until there is no space between their bodies and puts
her hands on his shoulders. She draws in a shaky breath, licks her lips, and
lifts herself up on her toes so that her mouth is against his.
He's frozen under her touch, torn between the need for survival and the want,
the intensity of every emotion she stirs inside him swelling up until it blocks
all other thoughts, instincts, or possible escape routes.
It's just him and Elena, and his bed is fifteen feet behind them, and Stefan is
gone, and she's here with him.
He doesn't even remember putting his hands on her ass, but she's suddenly
plastered against the front of him, and he's kissing her so hard that they're
both gasping for air, but they never separate entirely to get sufficient
oxygen.
He feels like their clothes melt away in a beam of light, and then he has her
naked, on his bed, under him, and around him. Her legs tangle with his so that
the slide of her smooth flesh against his hair-roughened thighs and calves
might be the most erotic thing he's ever experienced—that is, until she pushes
him over on to his back and works her way down his chest. Her mouth visits
various destinations across his torso, but when her tongue dips into his navel,
he says her name, half-groaning, half-growling. He wants to tell her that she
better not tease him, but he can't get the words out and then her hand wraps
around his cock and her lips slide over the head and he knows he's going to
lose his fucking mind.
Because this? This should not be happening.
One of his hands reaches for and grasps a good amount of her hair, but he
doesn't allow the other one to touch her. (He wants her to set the pace,
because he knows he'd have no class and would probably just shove himself down
her throat.) Instead, he finds a place on the headboard and digs his fingers
into the wood until it splinters under his grip.
She stays with him through the whole thing, though, her lips and tongue vastly
talented, and her teeth make an appearance at just the right moment. He
probably shouts something really offensive when he comes, but he can't remember
anything except the heat streaking through his thighs and spine and she
swallows everything, smiling up at him with an expression he knows he never saw
on Katherine's face. Her pure joy at pleasing him isn't calculated and it makes
his heart figuratively explode inside his chest in tandem with his orgasm.
He's still gasping for air as she climbs back up his body and their lips meet.
He can taste himself on her tongue, and it makes him fairly certain he will
never get over her. He thought he would love Katherine forever, but that was
only because he hadn't met Elena yet.
She keeps smiling, he can feel it every time their lips come together or pull
apart, and he's caressing every part of her he can reach, sinking his fingers
into the wet warmth between her legs until she's squirming against him
restlessly.
He gently turns her on to her back and then gets his hips between her legs. His
recovery time as a vampire is pretty much instantaneous, but he can't help but
think even if he were human, Elena would have this effect on him.
Her arms wrap around his neck and her legs curl around his waist, directing him
inside her, as though that hadn't been his own intention. He's never been held
so tightly, or at least not by someone he's wanted to hold on to in return. He
kisses her now and again, but mostly he keeps his eyes open because he wants to
see her face when she loses it. He slings an arm down to hook her knee over the
crook of his elbow, and pulls her leg up so that their position changes just
slightly.
Elena groans his name and her hips start to rise more quickly against his. Her
eyes look black with passion, and Damon times his thrusts so that as they
approach the peak of her pleasure, she gets the right amount of pressure in
just the right spot. She flushes a deep pink and her panting breath goes into
this high-pitched keening that shows how desperate she is—how desperate he's
making her—so when he finally gives it to her good, her fingernails dig into
the skin of his neck so deeply that it almost hurts.
He can feel every little ripple of her orgasm around him, and his own release
hits him unexpectedly, hurling him with her into the abyss. Their mouths come
together and they ride it out, kissing madly, and the sweaty mess of it is
somehow the purest thing Damon's ever participated in.
He collapses next to her, carefully removing his weight from her, but she turns
up on her side, and her leg slides over his to keep them close together. He
loses time somewhere in there, and when he becomes aware again, she's just
lying against him, her fingers tracing his shoulder and biceps lovingly.
She whispers, "Stay with me," and he thinks she means more than just here, in
this bed, for tonight, but he doesn't say anything. He just pulls her closer,
his palm settling over one perfect buttcheek.
He closes his eyes, not in sleep this time, but in pure terror. This was never
supposed to happen; not ever, and he has a million questions as to why she,
Elena, who would not even admit that she wanted to kiss him six months ago,
would come here and literally seduce him right out of all his good intentions.
(The only good intentions he's probably ever had.)
More time passes, and just when he's certain she's fallen to sleep, her voice
penetrates the quiet of the room. "Tell me why Gone_With_the_Wind is your
favorite book." It's not a request, he can tell from her tone. She thinks she's
entitled to something now, and that's as scary as it is true.
He rebuffs her, anyway. (That's what he does best, right?) "Who says it's my
favorite?"
She pinches the skin over his belly, and though it doesn't hurt, he allows it
to serve its purpose. This will be the gift he gives her, the one thing that
she'll get to understand about everything that's happened in her life since she
met him and his brother. "Alright, fine," he says, pressing his lips to the top
of her head, which is tucked under his chin. "Three reasons," he says. "One,
it's set during the time I lived—my human years. Think what you will of that,
I'm not going to explain it. Two, Scarlett's scrappy. Spunky. A real bitch." He
hesitates just a moment, and then he finishes, "And three. He leaves at the
end. He grows a set and he walks out."
Elena's quiet for a moment, and then she says in a soft, unassuming voice, "And
he doesn't give a damn."
It freaks him out how well she knows him, how he can really never hide anything
from her.
Which is why, of course, he'd made her forget in the first place.
He can do it now, if he wants. He can pull the necklace from her throat, roll
her on to her back again and fuck her until she can't walk, and then he can
make her forget any of it ever happened.
The problem is, he doesn't want her to forget. He wants her to remember,
because it's all she's going to have of him.
He runs his hand up her side, brushing her hair out of the way as he goes, and
then he cups her cheek in his palm. She falls back slightly, and he follows
her, letting his body be cradled by the natural fit of hers beneath him. He
kisses her chastely, until her tongue initiates something deeper, and then her
hands are clutching at his lower back, guiding him back inside her so that
they're connected again.
She says once more, "Stay with me."
And so he lies. "I'll be with you forever."
Her hands move up his body and find his, bringing their arms together on either
side of her head, linking their fingers tightly as he moves inside her. There
are tears in her eyes, so Damon closes his and puts his face against her
throat.
Who is he kidding? He knows she knows he's lying. She wouldn't be Elena if she
didn't.
===============================================================================
He leaves Mystic Falls early the next morning, while she's still sleeping in
his bed. He throws away his cell phone, and makes sure no one, not Ric, not
Stefan, not Elena, has any way of contacting him.
He's no Rhett Butler though. He leaves because he cares too much, not because
he doesn't care at all.
He hopes that's the one truth Elena knows without him saying it.
===============================================================================
"I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but..." Bonnie pauses and looks over
at Elena as they're laying on her bed. "I could do a locater spell, you know.
It would probably work with Stefan's blood even more accurately to find his
brother than when I used Jer's blood to find you."
Elena shakes her head. "I'm not going to stalk him, Bonnie, though I appreciate
your willingness to help. He left for a bunch of reasons; he has to come back
on his own, not because I go and find him and make him do it."
Bonnie frowns. "Then why are you lying here all depressed?"
Elena curls her arms around the pillow under head. "Because I miss him. I miss
him so much. And every day that he's gone..." She huffs out a sigh. "I have to
believe he'll come back, but some days are harder than others to have that much
faith."
Graduation has come and gone, and the summer has passed in a flurry of humidity
and parties at the cemetery, and the same ol' same ol' of the Mystic Falls teen
set.
Elena has gone through the motions of all of it, worried she'll regret it later
if she doesn't enjoy it now, but the truth is, she's so over it. She's ready to
go to college and move on to the next phase of life. And she really doesn't
like seeing Caroline and Stefan mooning over each other. She's glad he's
rebounded so quickly, and she's glad that her best friend is so happy, but it
just rubs salt in the wound of her own making.
(She never realized how alone she could feel.)
She had ended things with Stefan first, and jumped right into something with
Damon second (which had been the right order of doing things), hoping that the
action would be enough, but it hadn't. He'd still had to leave, to go do
whatever it is that he needs to do, and while most of the time she's completely
confident that he'll come back, four months have passed without a single
solitary word from him to any of them.
(She really thought he'd at least contact his brother; and Stefan had promised
to tell her if he did.)
But they haven't heard anything.
"Look," Bonnie says, drawing Elena's attention back to her. "We'll just do the
locater spell so you know he's alive. For peace of mind, not so you can go
hunting for him." Her hand wraps around Elena's arm. "What about that?"
"No," Elena says firmly. "He'll be back. I know he will."
Bonnie looks skeptical, but that mixes with some form of pity, and it stings
Elena to see it. "How do you know he'll come back?" she asks.
In all the months, weeks, days of lamentation that her friends have suffered
good-naturedly through with her, this question has never come up before. Maybe
up until now, they thought she was right, that something in her parting moments
with Damon had assured her of his return. But this voicing of the question
actually buoys Elena up instead of making her feel hopeless.
Because she knows the answer. "Because he's Heathcliff," she says.
Bonnie scoots over closer to Elena on the bed, pressing their cheeks together.
"But you're not Cathy," she says. "You're going to wait, aren't you?"
Elena squeezes her eyes shut when tears prick at the corners. "As long as it
takes," she whispers.
===============================================================================
She gets accepted to Georgia State University in Atlanta, and Jenna, Alaric,
and Jeremy help her move down there the last week of August. She shares a dorm
with a girl named Laura, who is from Florida. They aren't best friends, but
they get along well enough.
Elena throws herself into her studies, and because she's got no boyfriend, and
nobody trying to kill her, she gets straight A's. College is harder than high
school, but it's not impossible. She's always been smart, and capable, and she
does enjoy school, even if sometimes she gets distracted by the empty space in
her life.
It's not that she isn't involved. She goes to football games, and parties, she
studies with study groups and gets involved with an Animal Rights Activist
Club. She's on the go all the time, but she manages to keep in touch with all
her friends from Virginia (Bonnie's going to Virginia Tech so she's not too far
from Jeremy as he finishes high school, and Caroline and Stefan have moved to
New York so she can go to NYU, while Matt's in California on a football
scholarship).
But still. There is a very Damon-shaped hole in her heart and her life. It's
ironic that just when she embraced everything she felt for him and made a place
for him, he left. She'd barely had any time to understand just what she felt,
but the more time that passes, the deeper she feels it.
Watching Caroline and Stefan had stirred jealousy like nothing before in her
life ever had, and it had nothing to do with wanting Stefan back. She could
just see how easy it was between them, how they finished each other's
sentences, how they were so in sync.
She watched them have what she'd only discovered and enjoyed for about a
twelve-hour period with Damon.
It's not like she hadn't known he would leave. In those precious moments they'd
shared, there had been tenderness and wildness, and everything wonderful she
could ever imagine, but there had also been fear and hesitancy on his part.
He just couldn't let go like she had, and she supposes that that is just about
right. He had a lot more baggage than she did (something like 150 years more).
That's why she hadn't been angry when she woke alone in his giant bed. She
hadn't been surprised either, but she had rolled over, buried her face in the
pillow that still held his head-print and cried. Cried for his pain, for the
things that had happened to him to make him so unable to fully connect, cried
for all that he'd lost, and for all that he seemed willing to give up even
though he wanted it so desperately.
Because she knows he wants her; she could feel it in every touch of his lips
and hands across her body, but more than that, she'd seen it in his eyes and
heard it in his voice when he said her name, breathing his passion out across
her skin.
For all the worry she felt over his love for Katherine being swallowed up in
his need to preserve her life, she learned in those hours locked away with him
in a vortex of sex and hunger unlike anything she'd ever experienced before
that whatever he'd felt for Katherine paled in comparison to what he felt for
her. It gave meaning to the camouflaged statements he'd made about how she knew
he didn't love Katherine anymore, because she finally admitted to herself that
she had known for sometime that he loved her, Elena. Not just because Isobel
said so, or any number of other people, but because Damon had told her.
He'd told her and then he'd compelled her to forget.
The reason she knows she was compelled is because it only happened to her
twice--on the same day. Once when Elijah took her necklace away, and once when
Damon gave it back to her.
All she remembers of that moment is the aching emptiness left behind. The
deduction had come because that's how she felt the morning she woke up to find
him gone, and it's how she's felt fundamentally without him every day since.
She hasn't given up, and she hasn't stopped living, but she knows without him,
it will never be quite right.
Because in some ways, she is Cathy. Now that she has crossed over into loving
Damon Salvatore, she cannot go back. Even if she wanted to.
That morning, after he'd gone, she climbed from the bed, wrapping the sheet
about her sore and naked body to keep his scent all around her. She'd found,
next to Gone_With_the_Wind on the nightstand, a newer copy of Wuthering_Heights
than the one she had. Her breath had caught, and she felt more tears rush to
the edges of her eyelids. Slowly she reached for the book, flipping through it
until she found her favorite passage. In the complete silence of the Boarding
House, she read it with different eyes, with the eyes of a woman who had given
everything to the man she loved, only to realize it had not been enough to hold
him.
     ...but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should
     be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my
     creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in
     this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt
     each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If
     all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be;
     and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would
     turn to a mighty stranger...
Elena doesn't think of herself as particularly dramatic. That's Caroline's
niche, but in that moment, wrapped in Damon Salvatore's bedclothes, she learned
that the events in novels don't just take the readers away to magical places,
or on romantic adventures. They actually happen; that's why people write about
them.
So she sat and cried some more, and then she got up, showered in Damon's giant
bathroom, did the laundry, remade his bed and cleaned everything up. She
stacked the two books on the bedside table in a haphazardly artistic fashion,
and then she went home.
She'd gone home and prepared to wait.
===============================================================================
Christmas break comes, and she goes home to Mystic Falls for the holidays.
Things are normal and wonderful at home, Jenna and Ric are engaged now, and
Jeremy and Bonnie are still going strong.
Elena sits amongst their coupledom and tries not to gag.
She calls Caroline on Christmas Eve. She and Stefan hadn't left New York
because of a snow storm, and Elena thinks it's funny. They are supernatural
beings, undoubtedly they could hazard the weather, but they don't; instead they
sound as if they couldn't be cozier in their tiny apartment in the city.
She chats with her friend for a good thirty minutes before she asks. "So, has
Stefan heard from anyone in particular?"
She knows the answer before Caroline's sad retort carries through the line.
Hanging up a while later, she knows that the holidays themselves have no
particular meaning to Damon, but it eats at her that nothing seems to drive him
to make contact.
She barely sleeps that night, and it's not in anticipation of Santa Claus.
She wakes Bonnie early, sneaking into her brother's room to drag her from his
grasp.
"I want you to do the locater spell," she whispers.
Bonnie's sleepy eyes fight to open entirely. "How can we do that? Stefan's in
New York."
Elena realizes just how desperate she's become, because that hadn't even
occurred to her. Tears assault her and she covers her face with her hands.
Bonnie wraps her hand around Elena's wrist and tugs her into the bed with
Jeremy and her. Jeremy grunts and then slides over to make room as Bonnie
whispers, "Scoot." She wraps her arms around Elena and holds her while she
cries.
"Waz'th'matter?" Jeremy mutters.
"She misses Damon," Bonnie says softly.
Elena feels her brother's arms surround the both of them, and while she's
cocooned in the love of her best friend and her sibling, the support only makes
the tears come harder and faster.
"The next time Stefan comes home, I'll do the spell," Bonnie promises.
===============================================================================
Elena meets Tate on the first day of the new semester in Janauary. She's
sitting in her new Creative Writing class and he turns around to ask to borrow
a pen.
She wouldn't normally even think anything of it as she digs in her bag for an
extra writing utensil, but when she looks up and makes eye contact, she almost
gasps out loud. He has the bluest, most crystalline eyes she's ever seen on
someone who wasn't Damon Salvatore.
"I'm Tate," he says, taking the pen from her hand and then shaking it
enthusiastically in greeting.
"I'm Elena," she replies. It's only after he turns back around that she notices
she's smiling.
A few days later, she runs into him in the Student Union, and he asks her if
can buy her a cup of coffee. She agrees, and they start talking about writing.
Before she knows it, she's late for her Calculus class and she dashes off,
calling behind her, "See you in class!"
They start exchanging papers when their professor asks them to give each other
concrit, and suddenly Tate becomes the person she talks to every day, even the
days that they don't have class together.
He kisses her one night toward the end of February in her dorm room while
they're studying and she doesn't stop him. In fact, he's got his hand under her
shirt before she's overwhelmed by a sense of horror; she pushes him away and
sits up on her bed, scrambling for the edge, which isn't hard to find since
it's just a dinky, little twin.
"I'm sorry," she gasps, tugging her shirt back down. "I can't do this."
Tate stacks his hands under his head and stays laying on her bed. She looks
over her shoulder at him regretfully. "I'm sorry," she says again.
"There's some dude, somewhere, isn't there? Some dude who you just can't get
over."
Elena chews her bottom lip and nods at him.
"Where is he, Elena? Why isn't he here with you?"
"It's a long story," she says evasively, getting to her feet.
"You should write about it. Then at least I might get to know why the coolest
girl I've ever met is only ever going to be my study buddy."
"I'm really sorry, Tate," she says and he waves her off as he sits up.
"Stop saying that," he says, and she can tell he's not mad. Disappointed, but
not angry.
"This probably doesn't help, but if there wasn't the other guy? I'd really like
you."
Tate narrows his eyes at her just as her cell phone goes off, and Elena checks
it automatically because it's Bonnie's ring tone. "Just a sec, okay?" she asks,
switching her phone on. "Hey, Bonnie," she says.
"Damon's in Canada."
"What?" Elena shakes her head in confusion.
"Stefan came to visit me in Blacksburg, and we just did the locater spell.
Damon's in Canada."
Elena starts laughing because it's so ludicrous. "Why Canada?" she asks, though
she knows Bonnie won't have a clue.
"I don't know, except that the locater spell told us pretty specifically that
he's on Prince Edward Island somewhere."
Elena thanks Bonnie, and tells her to tell Stefan that as well. She hangs up
the phone and remembers Tate is still standing beside her bed. "Someone you
know is visiting Prince Edward Island?" he asks.
Elena laughs again. "Yeah," she says, clutching the phone tightly in her hand,
like a lifeline. "The guy. The one. He's in Canada."
She can't help herself, she's thinking of Anne and Gilbert and Lucy Maud
Montgomery, and she suddenly feels hope surge through her. "It's a sign," she
says. "I'm s--"
"I know, I know," Tate mutters. "You're sorry."
===============================================================================
She's walking back to her dorm after her first final during the middle of May.
School is almost out and she's going home to Mystic Falls for the summer. She'd
thought about getting a job in Atlanta, but really she just wanted to go home
for a while. She has fantasies about going up to the Boarding House and reading
in the library, or maybe sleeping in Damon's bed. (What? It's not like he's
using it.) She knows Stefan won't mind, assuming he and Caroline are even
coming home themselves.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she pulls it out. "I was just thinking
about you," she says when she answers Caroline's call.
"Where are you?" Caroline asks urgently.
"I'm at school," Elena says warily. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I just wasn't sure when your finals were over and when you were going
home." She has that breezy, happy Caroline sound back now, but Elena's
suspicions are raised anyway.
"I'm going home at the end of the week. Seriously, Caroline, what's going on?"
"I've gotta go, I think Stefan heard me!" The line goes dead and Elena stops in
the middle of the sidewalk to stare at her phone screen. She's trying to decide
if she should call her friend back when something makes her skin prickle. She
looks up, and there he is, standing on the path between her and her dorm
building.
She loses her breath at first, because even though in her heart she always knew
he'd come back, she had stopped telling herself it would be any time soon. And
seeing him here, now, in this place, the one place she has with no memories of
him--she feels a little wrecked already, because if he breaks her heart again,
she's going to kill him for ruining her one Damon-free spot.
Then she realizes: he's real, he's here, and there are only twenty yards
between them. She throws her notebook down and runs to him, not even slowing to
see if he'll open his arms to her. He has quick reflexes, and she depends on
that she jumps up, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his
hips.
He catches her easily enough, the only sign he gives that this is any effort at
all is the way his eyes flinch when they look fully into one another's faces.
"You're here," she says, and she can't control the smile on her lips. It's
huge, and her face threatens to crack under it.
"I'm here," he says, his voice thick with emotion.
Elena wraps her hands around his neck and smacks her lips over his. "Yay!" she
says, and he finally smiles, the flash of white teeth reminding her that she
should be scared of him.
But she never has been, not really, not even when she should have been. And
now, fear is the last thing that she can feel. Happiness, joy, satisfaction,
certainty. All of those things chase away the rest. "Yay," he repeats softly as
one of his hands cups her cheek.
"I knew you would come back," she says as he pulls her mouth to his for a real
kiss.
"I didn't know," he says when they disengage a moment later.
She wraps her arms tightly around his neck and hugs him, her face burrowing
into his neck. "Yes, you did," she whispers.
Elena knows that if Laura hadn't already left for the summer, she would have
allowed Damon to compel her dormmate to leave so they could be alone together.
As it is, Laura took all of her finals early so she could go on a trip to
Mexico with her family, so she's gone, and they have the tiny room all to
themselves.
So naturally, Elena assumes that the first thing they will do is have sex,
because that's all that is on her mind, but Damon wants to talk.
(Really? She can't even believe it. How did she get to be the guy in this
relationship?)
First he apologizes, and then he kisses her again. Then he tells her, "I saw
Stefan and Caroline yesterday. They're married, did you know that?"
Elena giggles, because she did know that. Stefan had found someone at the
Social Security Office and compelled them to let him have a Social Security
number because he wanted to be able to marry Caroline for real, in the eyes of
the law. "Crazy, huh?" she asks, and Damon kisses her again.
"They're like, insanely happy," Damon says, shaking his head. "And that
apartment they live in, in New York? It makes Ric's place in Mystic Falls look
like the Ritz."
When he kisses her for the third time in as many minutes, Elena decides she's
not the only one with sex on the brain, so she pushes him back on her bed and
tries to take command the way she did before.
"Wait, wait," he says, and his hands grip her shoulders to hold her away from
his body. "Elena--"
"Damon--" she repeats back to him in the same tone, and he smiles again, like
he can't help it.
"Aren't you, like, mad at me, or something? Don't you want me to make some kind
of declaration before we just get to it? Don't you need me to make a promise?"
She straddles his lap, and he stops fighting her so hard when she takes his
face in her hands. "I'm furious with you. I've been missing you for one year,
three weeks, and five days. But you already made your declaration, when you
showed up here, and no, I don't need you to make me a promise. I know you'll
never be able to leave me again, even if you really want to."
He purses his lips and rolls his eyes. "You do know that this, right here, is
why I left in the first place, right? A man likes to have some secrets. With
you, I don't have any."
Elena rubs her lips over his and bumps her zipper against his until she can
feel him reacting to her movements. "You have plenty of secrets, Damon. And all
the time in the world to tell them to me. What you don't have is a way to hide
from me."
His hands slide over her hips and pull her down into him. He's hard beneath
her, and her skin grows tight, her need for him clouding her mind and heart
until she just can't stop herself from shushing him when he tries to talk
again. "Later," she murmurs, placing her lips over his.
When they're naked, and he's inside her, he holds her face in one hand and
looks right into her eyes as he says, "I love you."
She arches under him, clutching at him with every part of her body that can
hold him to her. "I love you," she whispers in return and she feels it when he
finally lets go, in every way.
===============================================================================
"I just have to drop off this paper, check in with the professor, and then I'll
be done. You should come with me," Elena says as she brushes her hair.
Damon's been holed up in her dorm room for two days, distracting her completely
from her last ditch efforts at studying for these ridiculous things called
finals. (If Damon had his way, she'd probably drop out of school immediately,
but he's fortunate enough to know that she's never going to do what he says.
It's important that he knows that going in.) Now she's about to finish up the
last one, and they can pack up the Camaro and head up the road.
Back to Mystic Falls, and all that that means.
(Which, Damon's not really sure what it means, other than he and Elena are
together, and according to her, they are never separating ever, ever again.)
"You want me to come with you? Why?"
She smiles at him over her shoulder. "I don't know. It's just romantic, us
holding hands, walking across campus. I like the idea of it."
So does he, but he doesn't say anything. He just watches her as she turns back
to the little mirror that hangs just inside her closet door. She's wearing a
form-fitting burgundy tank top with lace edging, and the same pair of jeans he
peeled off of her that day in the Boarding House. He knows because of the way
they cling to the curve of her ass, and he wonders if in all those things she
knows about him, if she has any idea how much he wants her, like, all the time.
It's an insatiable hunger, one that he denied himself for so long that now, he
almost can't understand how he did it.
"What time do you have to be there?" he asks.
"Uh-uh," she says, looking at him as she shuts the closet door. "I can't be
late. This professor grades on punctuality. So no funny business."
"Is funny business a euphemism, Miss English Lit Major?"
She flips him off, and he bursts into laughter. He follows her out the door,
wrapping his arm around her neck as he presses his lips to her cheek. "I love
you, 'Lena."
"I know," she says cockily.
===============================================================================
He waits outside the door of the classroom, because this professor is actually
taking roll, on the last day of class, so it's about fifteen minutes before she
emerges from the room.
She comes walking out with this boy, and he's smiling at her in a way that
Damon knows all too well. He has a moment, one where he calls himself every
filthy name he can think of, because what the hell was in his head? Leaving her
like that, and just expecting that she'd be there if or when he ever got his
shit together?
She could totally be shacked up with this guy, because Damon can tell he'd be
all for it.
"So," the kid says. "You're the one, huh?" He gives Damon a once over and Damon
looks at Elena, whose grin could not get any bigger.
"Who is this guy?" he asks, jerking a thumb at him.
"This is my friend, Tate," Elena says, turning so she's standing between them
like a mediator. "Tate, this is Damon."
Tate extends his hand, and Damon shakes it only because he'd look like a
complete dick if he didn't. "Don't blow it, buddy," Tate says, his grip pretty
hard for a human who doesn't know he's dealing with a vampire.
Damon wishes he had some snappy comeback, but since this guy is obviously
thinking something along the same lines as he is, just from the other side, he
nods and says, "I won't."
Just before he walks away, Tate says, more to Elena, but definitely loudly
enough that Damon can hear him, "You ought to let him read some of what you
wrote."
Elena's grin lessens into a soft smile. "Maybe someday."
===============================================================================
They've been back in Mystic Falls for a week when she finally gets around to
being upset with him.
(He knew it was crazy to think they were just fine.)
It happens after they've made love in his bed at the Boarding House. She rolls
away from him and suddenly she's crying, and when he leans over her to ask
what's wrong, she starts pummeling his chest with her fists, and he just lets
her, because duh.
He deserves it. What he doesn't deserve is her unconditional love and
forgiveness, but soon she's apologizing in some sort of crazy, sob-fest way
that ends with him grabbing her arms and pinning them to the mattress above her
head.
"Baby, baby, baby," he says until she finally stops shaking her head in
agitation and looks into his eyes. "I promise you, you will never wake up here
alone, ever again. Not unless you know I'm going to be downstairs cooking you
breakfast, and probably not even then, because I'd rather be here with you than
down there anyway."
"I love you, Damon, so much," she says, tears on her cheeks, her voice choked.
It does something extremely painful to his heart to see and hear her in this
way, and so he presses his lips to hers, kissing her soothingly.
"I love you, more than you'll ever know, Elena."
"Then tell me about Katherine," she says, and he can no longer deny her
anything.
So they sit up in the middle of his bed and he tells her. He talks about how
he'd been at war when Katherine first came to Mystic Falls, but how he'd fallen
for her from practically the first minute he saw her. It hadn't been until
later that Stefan's affections for her seemed to appeal to her more, and then
of course, the Council had rounded her and everyone else up.
Damon and Stefan died, and then lived again, and parted ways.
Then he tells her about Katherine's return, their kiss on the front porch when
he'd thought she was Elena, and then the next day when she'd told him that
she'd never loved him.
"That was why you were so upset that night, in my bedroom," Elena says, her
hand touching his face gently, like at any moment, he might go off again.
"It was a lot of things. But yes, a lot of it was her. But even that, even the
worst possible thing I could do didn't keep you out of my head, or my heart.
And you forgave me. Like you always do. Like you probably shouldn't."
He shakes his head, and continues without her prompting him. "When I killed
her, the only thought in my head was for you. But after I left here--after I
left you--I realized that when I killed Katherine, I killed that part of
myself, too. The part that could just exist, but not live. I finally got what
Stefan was talking about."
"Rose, too," Elena says softly. She climbs into his lap and puts her head
against his shoulder.
"It was you, though, Elena. You're who made me want to live again. You make me
want to be alive. But it's never going to be easy."
"I know," she says, snuggling into him.
"So. We're really going to do this, then?" he asks.
"Yes," she murmurs.
"And what will we do about this eternity thing?"
"We'll figure that out when I get to be about 24." He feels her lips on his
throat. "And until then, I'm going to be a college student, and you're going to
be my boyfriend."
He presses his lips to her forehead. "Will you let me read what you wrote?" he
asks.
"Maybe someday," she sing-songs, and she starts laughing because his fingers
attack her sides. They fumble around on the bed until he's got her pinned down
again, and they're both panting, but it's more from arousal than it is from
wrestling.
Damon makes love to her slowly, agonizingly, making her beg him for it, holding
out until his own desire is so paper thin that he can barely control himself.
She cries his name, and arches her throat, whether consciously or not, until he
can practically taste her blood singing in her veins for him. He rakes his
teeth over her neck and she says, "Please," and he bites her without strictly
meaning to.
She seizes up around him, so he thinks she likes it, and he stops drinking from
her before he can cause any damage to her. He throws his head back and then his
orgasm roars through him, and he wonders, if maybe one day, this is what she'll
choose.
(Maybe she does love him enough to want to live forever.)
She curls herself around him sleepily and he puts his hand to the wound in her
neck. "I'm sorry," he says.
"I'm not," she murmurs. Then she slumbers in his arms, as trusting and
beautiful as only Elena can be.
===============================================================================
That autumn, they move to Atlanta and find an apartment to share. (They have
more breakdowns in bed, like, "Where were you for that whole year?" But the
answers become less important as they both settle into what they are together.
Elena stops worrying--and denying that she's worried--that he might leave
again, and truth be told, so does Damon.)
At Christmastime, Elena gives him a book filled with the essays she wrote in
her Creative Writing class the previous spring. (He reads them voraciously,
then exclaims, "You knew I compelled you?!" She just smiles and asks, "How did
you get that out of what I wrote when I never state it explicitly?" But he
knows, even though it's beautifully hidden in prose that is, in his opinion, as
good as any of those classic novels that they both love. Only he can fully
decipher what she's saying, because she said it about him.
Later, it occurs to him and he says, incredulous, "You let that Tate kid read
all this?")
Three years after that she graduates with a Bachelor of Arts in English
Literature, and they travel for a year, spending time in England, a long
stretch of it in the Moors.
When she comes to him, certain that she wants to become a vampire, he no longer
worries she doesn't know what she's getting into.
He got over that a long time ago.
And besides, they're writing their own story; it can end any way they like.
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