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verushka70So this is the second part of the behemoth.
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S2-S3
Back in his room, Damon seethes and paces until he can't take it anymore. The glass of bourbon shatters as it hits the exposed brick in the bathroom.
He throws himself on his bed, staring moodily up at the ceiling.
He does 'play along' with Stefan and Elena, sometimes. He can hear them perfectly, despite all their efforts to be quiet. In fact, he was 'playing along' with them earlier tonight before Elena left and he and Stefan got into it.
Before, he used to sublimate it all. Go get shitfaced at the Grill. Go out and find a neck, wrist, thigh to suck on and compel to forget. Sorority girls. For sucking (blood) or fucking, either way, they were legal and nubile and he could pretend, for a little while, that he didn't want to be back at the boarding house, listening to Stefan please Elena in bed.
Now, he's addicted.
Damon feels the slow beat of his heart in his hardening cock as he thinks about it. He timed it just right, too; held out until he heard Elena coming. Then Stefan came and Damon came with him, alone in his bed, imagining in excruciating detail all that he heard.
But – no. Stefan's right. Stefan, that fucking bastard, is right, not that he would ever admit that.
He is just torturing himself. It isn't just voyeuristic sexy eavesdropping, like he's been trying to tell (fool) himself. If Stefan were with any other woman, Damon would be able to stop. But he can't.
Lately, he actually secretly welcomes the evenings when he's got no plans and nothing but time to kill and he hears Elena come over. She's young and vibrant and a hormonally driven young woman with a gorgeous young man who's actually very old and very experienced. He loves to listen to Stefan please her, and he has seen Stefan in action enough to know exactly what he's doing to Elena.
For her part, Elena's pleasure sounds nothing like Katherine's. Katherine ran the show; she was always in control, even in the midst of grinding herself to orgasm on he or Stefan or sandwiched between both of them. Whereas Elena is spontaneous and lets herself go with abandon. Stefan's pleasure – Damon admits it to himself – is also fiercely arousing. He can hear how genuine and heartfelt it is when Stefan goes all hoarse near the end. At the same time as he envies his brother, Damon is strangely happy for him. It seems like it's about time for Stefan to maybe have something – someone – really decent.
Damon often listens to all those little murmurs and sighs between them afterward. He hears the love between them. He listens and feels keenly where he stands: outside, looking in. It's a love he wants to be part of, yet wants to destroy. It's a love he aches to have for himself, yet knows is doomed, for Stefan and Elena, let alone himself, if it were possible for him to be part of it, which it's not.
Damon rolls on his side and curls up around his cock as he grips it. He buries his face in his pillow, throat tight, holding his cock, feeling it soften, feeling his excitement drain away.
Leave it to Stefan to ruin one of his only real pleasures in life, at the moment.
He can't go on like this. Something's got to give.
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end of S2
He finds distractions. He finds Andie, his own personal sexy reporter girl, useful for her access to info and research tools. She's hot and she wants him and she'll do, though she won't make him forget an iota of his ache for Elena.
In the bathtub the night he first calls Andie, he tells her everything about the situation with Elena, how nothing is in his control and he can't stand it. He feeds on her while they bathe, blood dripping down her back into the bubbles around them in the water. He fucks her in the tub after he feeds on her, pumping her from behind, shuddering as he spurts quickly and mindlessly, orgasm overtaking him.
She doesn't come, though. So Damon lets her fuck him in his bed, both of them soapy and dripping wet. She gets on top and grinds on him hard, like she can't get him deep enough inside. Sunk to the hilt in her enveloping wet heat, it seems right that she holds his wrists down over his head while she grinds. He didn't even compel this (though he's willing and able to compel sex so specifically; he certainly has in the past).
But no: it's all her, this need to hold him down and satisfy a seemingly insatiable hunger. This unanticipated dovetailing of their sexual preferences only intensifies his arousal and need. Andie rocks on him faster and harder, her sweet grip and squeeze on his cock a deliciously hot velvet fist. When it tightens rhythmically and almost painfully around him, Andie gasps and groans above him, nails cutting into his wrists where she holds them. Damon comes hard, orgasm ripped from deep inside him. Much-needed sexual oblivion wipes Elena from his thoughts.
When Andie collapses down on his chest to catch her breath, her neck is right by his mouth. He feeds on her again. The bliss of her blood keeps Elena away a little longer. He doesn't take too much because he doesn't want to kill her. He really needed this. He could really use this in large, regular doses. She'll be quite the sex toy, Damon can tell, no compulsion necessary – for the sex, anyway.
He compels her to forget everything he revealed about his feelings for Elena. He compels a lot of trivial, superficial things out of her: topics of conversation, what she can and can't tell other people. She's useful the night of the dinner party so they can stake Elijah; he compels her to manipulate her into being useful.
He doesn't compel the sex. He doesn't need to. Hey, she came on to him in the Grill when Jenna introduced him. Before he ever compelled her, she said he could booty call her any time.
He talks about Andie as his “fake compelled girlfriend” so no one will know just how un-compelled she actually is. Can't have that getting out.
This works better for him, anyway. He has often found that some women, given free rein to do whatever they really want, are as needful, bestial and controlling as men. Maybe more. Most men fear this, which Damon finds laughable.
For him, it's mother's milk: a Pavlovian bell Katherine rang in 1864, echoing inside him a century and a half later.
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near end of S3
There it was. What if there was no bump?
He feels himself trembling on a threshold, teetering minutely. Unable to fall on one side or the other, Damon feels a liminal rush of blood to the head, an inexpressible longing to be unafraid. He has never thought of himself as such. With a horrible clarity, he now realizes fear is the core driving him. And that's the crux of it, the choice: fear or love.
There always needs to be a bump. He can't live without the bumps in the road. They let him define himself as the negative space, the reaction to the bumps. Now, with Elena, he wants there to be no bumps, never any bumps, never again. Just as suddenly and shockingly Damon realizes no bumps ever again would mean her love would never be tested by his imperfections and flaws. This will make her love weak, however heartfelt. It will make Elena's love no more than a lovely surface, as shallow as Katherine's love, though quite different, when what he desperately needs is a depth to sink all of himself into, unapologetic and flawed. He realizes -- and what is eternity for, besides pleasure, more pleasure, and the occasional earth-shattering epiphany -- that what he thought of as himself is something he defined against other people, as in: they are this, so I will be that; that which they don't want, I will want and name and make them see. Stefan is this; so I will be that.
All this, in split seconds, he realizes: that he can disassemble the person he always thought he was, it could be that simple, though simple does not mean easy. But can he reassemble a Damon that is some semblance of the self he knows, and someone he can respect? And will that reassembled self be one Elena can love? His reaction self, the rebel, the one that names things and shows what people don't want to see, that's all he's got right now. If Elena can't love that version of him, she surely would not love any other.
So, no, he will not fall on either side, will not lash out like she thinks he might, will not sink into the 200-thread count fleabag motel sheets with her, no matter how much he aches to. He will do neither. To do either is to give her guardrails, berms to guide the untidy river of emotion flowing between them. He will not provide the berms with his behavior. Her emotion must rush like a river to it's ocean. If it's his ocean, fine. And if it's Stefan's ocean, that's fine too. Because as much as he aches for her, Damon aches for something more.
For the first time Damon thinks maybe it just isn't in Elena to love unconditionally. This hurts, indescribably, because it seems like it is in her to love unconditionally -- one of them, anyway: maybe she can only love Stefan unconditionally. Not him.
Either way, he will not settle for conditional love when he deserves more. He's had a gutful of conditional love, only to find it was all based on lies, anyway. He would rather go without than settle for conditional love yet again.
"I'm sorry, Elena. You'll just have to figure this out on your own," he finally says as all of these thoughts rush through him, split-second.
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S2-S3?
"He was never good at being alone. Always needed to have someone."
"And you were always good at being alone. On your own."
He shrugged, though it was true. "'Least I knew who I could depend on."
"You couldn't depend on your brother?"
"He wanted to convert me to his cause."
"Maybe he just wanted you to accept him the way he was."
"No, Elena, he was as insistent and relentless as any convert to a new religion. His way was THE way, my way was the wrong way."
"You don't think maybe he just needed his older brother to accept that that's who he is? A vampire who can't control himself on human blood and has to feed only on animal blood instead?"
"No, I think he needed me to be just like him in order to continue to justify his lifestyle choice. But I can control it, Elena. I can revel in it, I can make it fun and that's why I can feed on humans and not kill them. I don't need to be like him and I don't have to choose that lifestyle, because I don't have his problem with blood."
"But he does have that problem with blood, Damon."
"Yeah, because of his all or nothing, feast or famine, way of dealing with it. In human terms, he's either anorexic or bingeing, instead of just eating like a normal person. Vampires, like humans with eating disorders, don't have the option of not eating."
"They have the option of not eating human blood."
"Human blood is a vampire's natural food," he glares.
She leveled her gaze at Damon. "So you insisted your way was better and derailed him. Again and again."
He was suddenly speechless.
"I get it. In your world, there's only room for one 'way' -- and it's your way or no way, not a 'live and let live' way. So it sure as hell couldn't be his way in your world. But you expected things to go your way in his world. Or nothing."
He finds his mouth open, mind blank, trying to think of a come back, and coming up blank. Was that really all it was? Him acting like Stefan had, but the opposite way? Christ.
"Well, you've clearly given this a lot of thought," he says finally, no closer to a snappy comeback.
"Yes," she says simply. "I have."
"Why?"
"Because you're brothers and you have to learn to take each other as is, not as you want each other to be."
"And that's how you do things with Jeremy?" He can not defend himself, so he accuses.
She sighs. "Not perfectly, and not as often as I'd like. But, yeah, that's how I try to do things with Jer."
"Well, aren't you the better person than I am."
"No, I'm just another one who's not cut out to be alone all the time. I need my ...family. Although my definition of family has changed. Expanded. Since... everything."
He has no answer to that. She has been through so much loss, he wonders that her heart can open again. The thought that rises in his mind, and which he does not say aloud, is: Alone, on my own, is safer. Followed closely on its heels by the thought: but it's still alone.
"I guess I just don't suffer from the need to pair off and become 'we'," he says meanly.
"I guess you're just... distrustful," she rephrases, dark eyes sympathetic.
He opens his mouth to deny and deflect, but finds he can't.
"I can see why," and Elena lifts one shoulder and lets it drop. "Katherine."
Her eyes follow his as he tries to look elsewhere in the room, anywhere but her face. Finally she sighs and stands up.
"I get it, Damon. You had a hundred and fifty years thinking you know where you stand, believing certain things about Katherine. Then, suddenly, nothing is what you thought it was, and you can't touch bottom." Her long fingers press delicately, sweetly on his forearm. "I guess I wouldn't trust too easily after that, either."
He has no response to that, either. She is chipping away at him, bringing down his walls, brick by brick. He is letting her. But he hopes she'll stop before he is completely undone.
Her eyes are somber and sympathetic. Her empathy softens him, as always. But the softening makes him want to harden with anger – something safer, stronger, not vulnerable. It makes him want to hurl his glass of bourbon into the brick above the fireplace.
He doesn't, though, and she pulls her hand back, tucks a long lock of hair behind one ear, and leaves the room.
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S3
Damon is much better at being alone. Standing alone. Not caving in to pressure. He always was the rebel; always had sarcastic and pointed remarks about the other Founding Families, the daughters they pushed on Damon and Stefan, their hypocrisies. Damon was willing to stand alone at parties, saying what people didn't want to hear. Most impressive of all, he was willing and able to stand up to Father, to disagree and to do so vocally, not secretly, like Stefan.
Stefan has always admired and envied that about Damon. He was never good at that himself. He couldn't say no to Father, couldn't lie to Father, couldn't dissemble like Damon. Damon could have been standing before a broken window, retrieved ball in his hand, and spun some explanation as for how he didn't do it and this was just a coincidence. The funny thing was, he seemed to believe it himself.
"You have to believe your own lies," he once told Stefan. "Otherwise, people can tell you're lying."
Stefan has never mastered this art of self-deception or self-dissembling. Though he envies Damon's ease with it and knows it has served him well in terms of survival, in the long run, between the two of them, he is not sure who is worse off.
He thinks it might be Damon.
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S4-post-Elena's transition-pre-discovery of Elena's sire bond to Damon
She is a vampire now. He treads cautiously, wondering how much she remembers of things he said and compelled her to forget.
He remembers remembering all that he was compelled to forget by Katherine. He didn't exactly lie to Stefan when he told Stefan that Katherine hadn't compelled his love. She hadn't compelled his love... she had compelled much of the sex the three of them had, compelled him to take all the twisted shit she did that still got him hard when he thought about it.
He actually hadn't been upset about that for most of his vampire life. Had pursued similar activities freely of his own choice. It wasn't until Katherine wasn't in the tomb and Anna told him that Katherine knew where he'd been the whole time, that he felt sick. Doing the things he'd done with Katherine and Stefan was all right – he could justify it – when it was all for her love. But finding she had no love for him at all, made it indefensible; having sought it out for most of his vampire life just made him seem like the sick fuck he'd always suspected he was.
He had meant it when he told Elena that he didn't deserve her, but Stefan did. Now, in the absence of Katherine's love, which had given meaning to nearly every shitty, insane thing he'd done for his entire vampire life, that statement meant something different now. Damon figures he deserves her unspoiled eternal youth and beauty even less than he did when she was human; it's his blood that Dr. Fell used to heal her and that caused her to become a vampire. Well, that and Stefan's stupid respect of Elena's choice to save Matt first.
Elena could be a magnificent vampire if she wanted. But she never wanted that. Damon didn't need to be told. It was obvious. Human Elena wasn't really cut out for that, not with the inherent predatory and callous nature of feeding.
It will be a long, hard road the way Stefan's trying to do it, Damon thinks. Just yank the band-aid off; don't prolong the misery by letting her think she can live as a vampire without killing someone eventually. But no one listens to him.
Brooding by the fire with bourbon again, he is slouched on the sofa when Elena comes to him. He looks up at her, sees her strangely worried anticipation. His heart sinks. Here it comes. He better stand up for this.
“I remember everything,” she tells him.
He says nothing, hoping to feign being okay with that.
“One of the highlights of my transition... Remembering everything that you compelled me to forget. Like how you and I met first. We were strangers. And you told me you wanted me to get everything I wanted from life. Damon, why didn't you tell me?”
“Would it have made a difference?” he asks bitterly. She gives him a look but doesn't respond. He mutters, “I didn't think so.”
“You asked me to make a choice, Damon. So I did. If you're going to be mad, then take it out on me, not on Stefan or Matt or anyone else. Me.”
“Are we done here?” he asks, unable to listen to this any longer.
“No.”
“Well, I am,” he says to make a swift retreat. He turns to go, but she's there, vampire swift.
“This conversation isn't over,” she says seriously. “We have to talk.”
This conversation isn't over? he thinks. “Not here. Not... now.”
He always imagined he'd want to have this conversation. Could not have foreseen that he desperately doesn't want to, now. And with her vampire senses, he will not be able to fool her. She'll know if he's lying.
“When?” she asks. Vampire Elena is as tenacious as human Elena... in a much steelier way.
“I don't know. Whenever, just ...not now. Besides, shouldn't you be off in the forest eating Thumper?”
Her expression softens into hurt and he instantly regrets his words. “I'm sorry, Elena. I'm... really sorry. It's just... this is going to be so much harder for you than it needs to be, if you go Stefan's route.”
She tilts her head and looks at him sadly. “I have to try.”
He knows she does; knows that about her. He sighs. “Fine. I know. Give it your best shot.” He hesitates, knowing how sensitive she is now. To Stefan, he can speak harsh truths. But she'll have so much of that soon enough, he can't bring himself to speed up the process. “I'll be here for you when... whatever you need,” he finishes. “Blood bag, bourbon, brother wrangling,” he adds lamely.
The look she gives him says she knows exactly what he was going to say: I'll be here for you when it all falls apart. When you're craving so badly you can smell it on everyone who walks past you. When you inevitably kill someone because you need hot. Blood. From the vein.
“I have to try,” she repeats, and it sounds as if she's trying to convince herself as much as she's trying to convince him.
“I know,” he says gently because he can see it all coming a mile away, and knows he can't stop it.
He can work on Stefan, that's all he can do. And he will. But... he'll let Elena hang onto her illusions a little longer. Who knows. If neurotic control freak Caroline could do it, maybe Elena can too. Lord knows she has enough vampires-in-denial around her to help.
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S4
Dear Diary,
I can't talk about this with Bonnie. And I know I can't with Caroline. I know what they think of Damon, and they'll never understand what I could possibly see in him. And a lot of times I think they're right, even though I haven't told them anything. I think, What am I thinking? Look at everything he's done.
But then I think, look at everything he's done. Kept me safe. Protected me from Klaus. Even when he was
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S4
“Of course, if she has feelings for you, she couldn't possibly have feelings for me,” Damon says sarcastically. “There's never been a woman on this planet who could have feelings for more than one man at a time, right?”
“No, it's impossible for her to be so blind that she doesn't see how wrong you are for her,” Stefan spits.
Damon's face curdles into anger and something else, and Stefan is instantly sorry for what he said.
“Wait. Damon. I'm sorry.” But Damon has already turned away, turned his back to Stefan. He shoves his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched.
“I apologize, all right? As much as I hate this sire bond thing, I shouldn't take it out on you. It's not really your fault.” Stefan sighs. Somehow, where Elena is concerned, Damon manages to provoke him into saying what he really thinks, really feels, when it would be much better if he didn't.
Damon swings back around to look at Stefan and the combination of hurt and fury on his face makes Stefan take a step back. Damon advances on him, and it is all Stefan can do not to step back again, and again. Finally they are nearly chest to chest.
“I know what you meant by that crack, Stefan,” Damon says, in a low and dangerous timbre only for vampire ears. “My love for her is wrong, because it's corrupt, twisted. Right? That's what you meant, isn't it?”
“I – no, I wasn't thinking about that–” and he does step back.
But Damon steps forward, arm curving around Stefan's waist, pressing his chest to Stefan's, his face looming too close. Like he's about to kiss Stefan full on the mouth, here on the street.
But then his lips graze Stefan's ear. The low vibration of his voice and the tickle of his breath makes Stefan suppress a shiver of fear and – something else he can't face, doesn't want to look at –
“Let's get one thing straight: you were right there every step of the way while Katherine twisted me into knots for her pleasure,” Damon growls low in his ear. “You participated, even if you didn't do the things I did, and didn't go through what I did.”
He yanks Stefan closer, presses their chests together, their stomachs together, slides a thigh between Stefan's. Stefan feels that Pavlovian shift, is helpless to prevent the excitement, physical only, so detached from his mind.
“You participated,” Damon repeats in his ear, his breath tickling. His hand on the arm he slid around Stefan strokes low on Stefan's back, too low, just above the crease in his buttocks. “And you weren't compelled for all of it – any more than I was.”
Stefan is preternaturally still because if he weren't, he'd be trembling with fear and desire. He'd be shoving Damon violently away from him. He'd be dragging Damon into the nearest alley to ravish his mouth.
“You're every bit as culpable as I am. Every bit as twisted. You're just more of a coward,” Damon hisses in Stefan's ear.
Then he slides his thigh back out from Stefan's, slides his arm back up Stefan's back, loosens his grip, steps away from Stefan.
Stefan remains very still, sensing the slowing of passers-by, their stares and surreptitious glances at the two of them. Damon appears heedless of this. Even if he noticed their stares, he'd shamelessly seek to shock them further. Maybe a full on kiss-and-grope on the street.
His brother's icy blue eyes, punctuated by the fine dark brows scowling at him, pierce Stefan's self-righteousness yet again.
“Yeah,” Stefan whispers. “Every bit as twisted.”
Damon sneers. “I knew you were just using Elena to clean your slate. To erase Katherine.”
“With one major difference, Damon,” Stefan continues softly, as if Damon hasn't spoken. “I didn't go on to seek out the twisting over and over again.”
Damon's sneer vanishes, and for a swift, stark moment, the naked vulnerability on his face almost makes Stefan regret what he's saying, yet again. But then his expression coalesces into one of absolute hate, milliseconds before his fist connects with Stefan's jaw. Stefan crashes to his knees, reeling from Damon's punch.
“You wanted to. Don't tell me you didn't. You never turned me away when I showed up with ...someone.” Damon breathes hard with anger above him. “That's what makes you a coward. You wanted it, you just couldn't bring yourself to look for it, find it, seek it out.”
“Because it was wrong,” Stefan says heavily, hauling himself to his feet.
People really are staring, now, full bore stares, stopping in their tracks to watch the brothers' meltdown.
“It was wrong when we did it with Katherine,” Stefan says. “Picking someone different to do it with doesn't make it right.”
Damon's feral grin is a shock. “As if you know so much about it. You know nothing. As usual.”
He steps forward, and Stefan steps back, expecting another punch. Damon hesitates, frowning briefly, then continues.
“Yeah, I did seek it out. From lots of people over the last century and a half, including professionals. Know what I learned, Stefan? The only reason it was wrong was because it was with Katherine. With anyone else – someone unselfish, someone ethical – it could have been right as rain; it could have been amazing. The wrongest thing about it was not what we did, not what she made us do; it was Katherine.”
He turns away, tossing over his shoulder, “I'm gonna go get a drink. Hunt me down when you stop being a clueless know-it-all dick.”
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Present-day
He finds Damon in a dark dive. He sits at the bar, clearly brooding, with his own bottle of bourbon in front of him. Though the bar is crowded, the bar stools are empty on either side of him.
Stefan bellies up to the bar right next to Damon. His brother glances morosely at him, and then goes back to gazing into the golden liquid in the bottle.
“If you say it could have been right, I'll take your word for it,” Stefan admits heavily, as if their conversation was not just separated by a couple of hours of searching for Damon in every bar in an eight block radius. “It's not something I was ever proud of. Mainly because after I transitioned, I felt horribly guilty about how you were treated.”
Damon looks at him, really looks at him, surprised and suspicious and maybe just the slightest bit scared. “What?” he asks, and his voice is uncharacteristically quiet and hesitant.
“I felt guilty. And I remembered feeling guilty in the moments when we were …doing it. But I didn't stop. You're right. I didn't stop her from doing what she did to you, and I didn't stop participating myself. I... couldn't.” Stefan sighs heavily and drops his eyes. “I wanted her any way I could have her. If that meant only with you, and only with your... subjugation, I was selfish enough to go along with it, so I could lose myself in her.” He shakes his head.
There. It is out in the open, now.
“You... you...” Damon stutters, and the raw uncertainty and vulnerability in his face and voice are somehow much more upsetting than him pressing himself full length against Stefan on a street in public, than him punching Stefan in the head in the same street.
“Don't,” Stefan interrupts, laying a hand on Damon's shoulder and squeezing. “I should have admitted it long before now. Even if you are – twisted – I played a role in that, though I knew it was wrong, because she was hurting you, much more than physically, over and over. It was wrong. Just plain cruel, Damon. I'm sorry.”
He takes a deep breath, digging deep to find the words. “I don't know if you can ever forgive me. I wish you would. But I understand if you can't.”
Damon's mouth opens, shuts, opens again. He looks at once surprised, outraged, and utterly stricken. Then he drags Stefan into a fierce embrace, breathing hard into Stefan's shoulder. He says nothing and Stefan hugs him back tightly.
“I can't forgive you, Stefan,” Damon whispers. “If I forgive you, I should forgive myself, and I. Just. Can't.”
He gulps quietly, arms tightening around Stefan. “I missed you so much over the years apart. Missed you. Cursed you. Loved you. Wanted to kill you. You can't imagine how glad I was when I came back to get Katherine. How glad I was you had Elena. It meant I wouldn't have to fight you for Katherine all over again.”
“I know,” Stefan murmurs into Damon's shoulder, though he didn't. They have never spoken like this; they still communicate terribly; still far too much water under the bridge.
It's Elena, he thinks. She makes this possible. She doesn't turn us against each other. That's what we do to each other out of habit, like it's all we know. It is all we've known since Father set us against each other, since Katherine.
“I'm sorry,” Stefan murmurs again. “And you should forgive yourself. The sire bond isn't your fault. Katherine wasn't your fault. She compelled us both. Not just me. I don't care what you say.”
Damon doesn't answer, but his weight sinks more heavily into Stefan's arms and Stefan feels him nod on his shoulder. Stefan holds him, pats his back, feeling strangely like the older brother, the responsible one, the one who should be able to make it all better.
Damon slides slowly out of his grasp, and pours himself another shot. He sets his jaw and resolutely refuses to look at Stefan, but he flags down the barkeep for another glass. When the bartender sets it in front of them, he pours bourbon into Stefan's glass without looking at Stefan.
When Stefan picks up his glass, Damon picks up his, too, and clinks it against Stefan's.
“To unspoken truths,” he says, quiet and resolute.
This peace feels fragile, as all peace does with Damon. They're always short-lived. It doesn't take long for one or both of them to fall back into old patterns, miscommunicate, set their jaws, dig in their heels.
But this peace feels possible, much more possible, because of Elena. Stefan can't help wondering if she has any clue how present she is with he and Damon, even when they are hundreds of miles away from her. Probably not.
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S4-Post-Elena's transition to vampire
“Why do you insist on calling yourself 'the bad brother'?” she asks one day. “I don't see how, in the big scheme of things, you're that much worse than Stefan. 'Cept for your whole 'I eat what I want to eat because that's what vampires eat' manifesto.”
“Manifesto?” he repeats, amused, as he looks up at her standing before him.
“You pressured me to eat people.” She half glares at him.
“I didn't know you were sired and obligated to obey,” he says defensively. “Besides, it's what vampires eat,” he sighs, not wanting to argue with her.
He stands up and invades her space like he does with Stefan. She, unlike Stefan, has not worked out that this is what he does to get people to move away from him. She stands there and they both find him rubbing a lock of her long, straight hair between his thumb and finger.
“It doesn't have to be,” she insists quietly.
“Must we go there again? Fine, it doesn't have to be. But to be an effective vampire, with all vampire abilities intact, it's basically required.”
“You didn't answer the question,” she challenges him, watching him finger the lock of her hair. She meets his gaze and purses her lips, tilting her head to the side.
“Look at you, all 'come hither-ish' with your head tilt. You're so not as badass as you'd like to think,” he smirks.
“Look at you, all deflection and distraction, not nearly as successfully as you think,” she retorts.
“Fine, oh humorless one,” he sighs. “I don't suppose Stefan ever gave you any... details on exactly how he and I 'dated' Katherine at the same time,” Damon begins slowly.
“No, he didn't – and I didn't ask.”
“Well,” Damon says enigmatically, “you'd better clear these questions with Stefan before you expect to get answers out of me.”
“Why's that?”
“I'm not ashamed of any of it. But Stefan might be.”
He leaves it at that, lets the lock of her hair drop, and retreats to his bedroom. She stares after him, her mouth open a moment before she consciously shuts it.
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S4
“What is it you're not telling me about you and Damon and Katherine?”
Stefan sighs. “There are things that you don't know, Elena. Things that I want to tell you but I can't, and I may never be able to. I just need you to trust me.”
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She is sitting in the parlor by the fireplace. She didn't build a fire. For now, for this conversation, she wants the fireplace black, empty, cold.
She stretches and yawns, impatient, tired of waiting. When she opens her eyes, he's standing in front of her, and she blinks, startled. Way to make an entrance, as usual.
“You rang. What.” Damon's face is impassive, but there's a hint of irritation in his voice, a trace of it on his brow.
Elena looks closer at him, unsure if he's doing a good job of pretending he doesn't care about everything the three of them are not talking about, or if he really doesn't care.
“I want to talk about things with Katherine.”
“That's not my job. You're not my girlfriend.”
“You're my friend. It affects my relationship with you and my relationship with your brother. It makes a difference going forward. In case you hadn't noticed, I have a lot in common with Katherine,” she adds sarcastically, gesturing with a sweeping hand at her whole body, reminding them both of her doppelganger looks. “I think I deserve the whole story.”
“The whole story is ancient, and sordid, and doesn't concern you, Elena,” he replies.
“Stop pretending,” she says, uncharacteristically blunt. “It does concern me, it concerns me every bit as much as it concerns the two of you. I'm in the middle whether you want to face that or not.” She glares at him.
He leans down, until his face is inches from hers. His expression still cool and betraying nothing, he says carefully, “You're only in the middle if we put you there. And we're not. I'm not.”
“Bullshit.”
He stands up, pulling away, and regards her coolly. “Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself, miss fancy-pants? Maybe you think you're much more important, than you actually are.”
“To Stefan or to you?” she asks, and there is just a hint of smugness in her voice that she can't disguise.
“Let's get one thing straight, Elena,” Damon begins, walking away from her to the sideboard and pouring his usual bourbon from the crystal decanter. He lifts it to his lips, sipping before he replies.
“It's bros before hos,” he says, and his old smirk is there, and it makes her want to slap him, hard.
But she won't let him get to her, because this is how he deflects, this is how he distracts, and there is no distracting her today.
“Really,” she replies, coolly, deciding to use his own tactics against him. She rises from the sofa and walks slowly towards him. The momentary look of uncertainty on his face as she approaches is perfect and priceless and she's meanly glad that he can't mask everything as well as he used to – at least, not with her. Not anymore.
“Bros before hos, huh?” she says quietly, in front of him and pressing closer, doing what he does – getting too close, invading his personal space. She takes his bourbon from him and sips it herself. “That's how you both got turned, is it? Katherine meant nothing to both of you? You both meant more to each other than she did?”
Damon looks frankly unnerved now. “Give me back my drink,” he growls, reaching for it to distract them both.
He brushes her fingers as he grasps his glass, and she holds on tightly, fighting for a moment before releasing it. She is darkly pleased to see that shadow of uncertainty pass over his face again.
“Yeah,” she says, turning away and stalking back to the couch, adding a little drama to her step on purpose. She sits facing him again, and says dryly, “That's what I thought.”
“What is it you think you know? About Katherine? About Stefan? About me?” he quietly demands, openly angry now. “We have a century on you – Katherine's got hundreds of years on you and the two of us. A vampire century for us. Half a millennium, for Katherine.”
He smiles grimly and tosses back the rest of his bourbon. He deliberately puts the glass down hard on the sideboard, the audible thunk almost a threat.
“That's the point, Damon,” Elena says stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don't know much of anything. I need to know more. I need the truth.”
He rushes to her, vampire speed, intentionally scaring her so that she startles and shrinks back. He leans down, almost menacing now.
“Which truth is that, Elena?” he hisses in her face. “Katherine's truth? Stefan's truth? My truth? The truth of 1864? Or the truth of now? Or the truth of any year in between?”
“The truth,” she shouts, exasperated.
“There is no one truth! If you'd asked me – or him – what the truth was fifty years ago, you would have gotten a different answer than you would have gotten in 1864 – and a different one than you would have gotten only forty years after that.” He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes, and this is the smile she'd like to wipe off his face with a slap.
“Okay,” she begins, digging in.
“No, there's no 'okay' about it, Elena. Maybe you're aware of the metaphysical implications of quantum mechanics; maybe you're not. Post-modernism is a bitch, isn't it? But I'll tell you this: I can't give you the truth. I can't give you Stefan's truth. I can't even give you my own truth of 1864, because I look back, knowing what I know now, and I wonder what in hell I was thinking. Do you want to hear that a nearly ancient female vampire took advantage of two young human men, barely out of adolescence and in many ways still children in comparison with today's young men of the same age?”
He grabs her by the upper arms and yanks her up from the couch. Now he's truly angry, and she remembers why she's still scared of him. She wound him up, though that wasn't her intent, and now she has to deal with it. She gulps and swallows as Damon shakes her once, twice.
“Do you want to hear that we liked it, that we loved it and thrived on it? That we fought over her, that we fucked her together, a Salvatore sandwich with Katherine filling? Do you want to hear,” and his voice cracks now, “how incredibly stupid we were – how stupid I was – and how submissive and obedient and obsessed, even when I wasn't compelled? Do you want to hear how I lied to Stefan only months ago and told him Katherine never compelled me, though actually she did?
“But I was sure then,” he smiles, that cold, mean smile that doesn't reach his eyes. “I was so sure then. That was my truth then. And it isn't now. These are all truths! They aren't the same truths they once were, but,” he shakes her for effect, now, one bone-deep shake to punctuate each word. “They're. All. True.”
He shakes her one last time, and her teeth clack together in her mouth. Yet she knows he's restraining himself; has seen him be so much more violent, so much stronger and meaner over less important things. This is a good sign, some part of her knows. Some insane part of her.
“I loved every minute of it,” he says harshly, looking down on her. “And it's the bitterest pill. And it's none. Of. Your. Business,” he finishes in a dulcet whisper, leaning down, face inches from hers, eyes mad and glaring, clenched jaw, bottom lip trembling.
He shoves her back down on the couch, hard, but not hard enough to hurt her.
“Hey!” Stefan's voice cuts sharply into their horrible pas de deux. “Leave her alone.”
Damon straightens up and looks at Stefan, then looks down his nose at Elena with something more than anger, a flush to his cheeks. He looks back at Stefan, who crosses the room vampire swift, fists clenched at his side.
“With pleasure, little brother – with pleasure,” he barks at Stefan.
Elena is dumbfounded at Damon's raw voice and the way it shakes. A moment ago she would have sworn it shook with anger, but now...
They glare at each other, Damon almost panting, breathing hard, the color up in his cheeks. Both clench and unclench their fists, chests puffed out at each other. They gaze at one another, eyes locked.
She looks up at them, astonished, and slowly rises to her feet, prepared to physically get between them.
“Get her away from me,” Damon snarls. But it is too breathy to be threatening. His voice wavers and his jaw clenches and Stefan's posture softens instantly.
“Elena, sit down,” Stefan orders quietly, not looking at her, never breaking Damon's gaze. “I'll handle this,” he says.
He's not talking to her at all anymore. The last three words were addressed only to Damon. Maybe the first three were, too.
She has never felt so shut out as she does at this moment. Never before has she felt how much they mean to each other or felt herself so outside of their dyad.
The air around them is heavy and electric, and Elena is rooted to the spot.
“I said, sit down,” Stefan mutters to her, still looking at Damon. As Elena sinks down to the couch again, Stefan's fists unclench for the last time and he raises his hands slowly in an appeasing gesture towards Damon.
“I said,” Damon repeats, but his voice wavers oddly. Wetness makes the fine lashes of his eyes spike together. “Get. Her. Away.” He has not taken his eyes off Stefan's.
She has to look away from Damon, away from the anguish at the edges of his mask of control. This is so much worse than his thunderous anger, than his cold contempt, than his derision. This is awful. And it's because of her.
“Elena,” Stefan says, suddenly in a very reasonable and calm voice, “Why don't you go fix Damon another bourbon.”
Ordinarily she would scoff, disbelieving, that Stefan would even think she'd obey such an archaic, ridiculously chauvinistic suggestion. Now, however, she stands and slinks away to the sideboard. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Stefan's raised hands reach out for Damon's upper arms. By the time her shaking hands slosh bourbon into a glass, Stefan grips Damon's upper arms.
Damon pushes, not hard, against Stefan's grasp. Stefan puts one foot behind him to brace his stance, but doesn't give way. His voice is quiet and low, so low she almost doesn't understand what he's saying to Damon.
“Damon. She didn't mean it. She doesn't know what she's asking, you know that.”
“I don't care,” Damon whispers. One tear tracks down his cheek and Elena looks elsewhere, not sure what to do with her hands. She holds the glass of bourbon.
“I don't care,” Damon grinds out, louder now, like he's trying to convince himself, convince them all, fists still clenched.
Not once has he looked away from Stefan. Not once has Stefan looked away from him. Their eyes have locked in an impenetrable mutual stare, a hundred years and yards between them though close enough to feel each others breath.
“I know,” Stefan murmurs, gazing sadly at his brother. “Of course not. Of course you don't.” His hands slide up to Damon's shoulders.
Damon's push against Stefan's grasp wavers minutely; Stefan's grasp loosens; and Damon finally drops his gaze as Stefan opens his arms.
Damon falls heavily into Stefan's arms as if drunk or shot through the heart. Stefan's arms go around him. Damon's cheek rests on Stefan's shoulder, eyes closed. His exhausted, careworn expression is more terribly naked and vulnerable than Elena has ever seen before, except maybe the night they opened the tomb and found Katherine wasn't in it.
His arms steal slowly around Stefan as Stefan holds him close, tight. Stefan murmurs things Elena can't make out into the collar of Damon's jacket, both of them with their eyes closed. Damon nods wearily, Stefan nods decisively, and he slides out of Damon's grasp, one arm supporting Damon around the shoulders, walking him out of the parlor.
Elena feels hot tears behind her own eyes. What is she doing? What the hell did she think she was doing? She sips the bourbon just to have something to do, the burn feeling necessary and like something she deserves.
When she looks up again, Stefan is standing before her, face cool and aloof.
“Well,” he says to her. “That went well. Good job.”
“Stefan, I...” Elena trails off. She has no words. She has never seen this intimacy between them before. It is clearly very old, very much before her time, maybe even before Katherine's time. She's not sorry she saw it, though she feels very much on the outside and considerably less secure about her place in their world.
“I'm sorry,” she chokes out. “I didn't think–”
“Yeah, that's kind of the problem,” Stefan interrupts her, and his tone is acid.
“Stefan,” she begins to argue.
“No, Elena, listen – listen to me very carefully,” Stefan begins, holding up a hand to silence her. “Damon has done horrible things. Half the time I think he's faking having gotten some humanity back,” he adds harshly. “He's violent and reckless and impulsive – and insanely loyal when he's on your side. He hasn't felt anything in decades, possibly much longer. But now he feels. He feels for you. It took him I don't know how long to come to this point. And you want to, what – force him open? Force him to tell you everything? To what end?
“You want to know everything about me? Or you want to know everything about him? Or about Katherine and our sick, half-compelled threesome? To what end?” and by the last three words, he's almost shouting. “My god, he's been there for you, he's saved you I don't know how many times. Look at his deeds, his actions – not his words. You know he's full of it, he's full of it all the time, it's how he is, Elena!”
She is openly crying now. “I have a right,” she insists tearfully. “I did it the wrong way, but I have a right to know!”
“To know what!”
“To know what's going to happen! With us! With him! With all three of us!”
She turns away, guilty and angry and wretched. And how can she be feeling all this because Damon cracked open under pressure from her? Mr. Iceman, Mr. Cool all the time – how on earth was she to know this would happen?
Stefan sighs and grasps her shoulders from behind. “I don't know what's going to happen, I just know... you can't do that to him. It's not his way. You don't know him the way I do,” he says.
And there it is, that feeling of being on the outside, something she's never felt from Stefan before, and she supposes he or Damon could observe her and Jer and feel the same way, but this is awful.
“I'm sorry.”
“It's not me you need to say that to.”
“I'll say it to him,” she says urgently, and turns in Stefan's arms to bury her face in his chest. “Let me go apologize.”
There is just the slightest resistance on his part, and this causes an unbearable ache in Elena.
“I don't think that's a good idea right now. Maybe later. Tomorrow,” Stefan suggests. “Why don't you just go home for now. I'll talk to him, in a while. I'll call you later.”
She is disbelieving. She is being dismissed. Stefan – of all people – is sending her away.
She looks up at him, and the shock must be visible on her face.
“Don't look at me like that,” he says, his guilty expression all too familiar, yet somehow strangely new, directed not at her but at... “Come on. Elena, he's my brother.”
She'd like to remind him of all the terrible things Damon has done, but she knows that's just to justify her position, not because that's all Damon has done, not because that's all he's capable of. She'd only like to remind Stefan of how bad Damon has been in the recent past so she can seem right by comparison.
“All right, Stefan,” she says shakily. “All right.”
He pulls her close again, kisses the top of her head, and rocks her a little, holding her tight.
“It'll be all right,” he murmurs into her hair. “You just – this isn't the way with Damon. Trust me on this.”
Who else, she thinks, is she going to trust?
She slides out of his arms eventually, gathers her things. He pecks her cheek dutifully, and stands on the porch to watch her drive away. She looks in the rear view mirror and watches him go back inside the house before her car has left the Salvatore's driveway.
A first.
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S2-S3
Back in his room, Damon seethes and paces until he can't take it anymore. The glass of bourbon shatters as it hits the exposed brick in the bathroom.
He throws himself on his bed, staring moodily up at the ceiling.
He does 'play along' with Stefan and Elena, sometimes. He can hear them perfectly, despite all their efforts to be quiet. In fact, he was 'playing along' with them earlier tonight before Elena left and he and Stefan got into it.
Before, he used to sublimate it all. Go get shitfaced at the Grill. Go out and find a neck, wrist, thigh to suck on and compel to forget. Sorority girls. For sucking (blood) or fucking, either way, they were legal and nubile and he could pretend, for a little while, that he didn't want to be back at the boarding house, listening to Stefan please Elena in bed.
Now, he's addicted.
Damon feels the slow beat of his heart in his hardening cock as he thinks about it. He timed it just right, too; held out until he heard Elena coming. Then Stefan came and Damon came with him, alone in his bed, imagining in excruciating detail all that he heard.
But – no. Stefan's right. Stefan, that fucking bastard, is right, not that he would ever admit that.
He is just torturing himself. It isn't just voyeuristic sexy eavesdropping, like he's been trying to tell (fool) himself. If Stefan were with any other woman, Damon would be able to stop. But he can't.
Lately, he actually secretly welcomes the evenings when he's got no plans and nothing but time to kill and he hears Elena come over. She's young and vibrant and a hormonally driven young woman with a gorgeous young man who's actually very old and very experienced. He loves to listen to Stefan please her, and he has seen Stefan in action enough to know exactly what he's doing to Elena.
For her part, Elena's pleasure sounds nothing like Katherine's. Katherine ran the show; she was always in control, even in the midst of grinding herself to orgasm on he or Stefan or sandwiched between both of them. Whereas Elena is spontaneous and lets herself go with abandon. Stefan's pleasure – Damon admits it to himself – is also fiercely arousing. He can hear how genuine and heartfelt it is when Stefan goes all hoarse near the end. At the same time as he envies his brother, Damon is strangely happy for him. It seems like it's about time for Stefan to maybe have something – someone – really decent.
Damon often listens to all those little murmurs and sighs between them afterward. He hears the love between them. He listens and feels keenly where he stands: outside, looking in. It's a love he wants to be part of, yet wants to destroy. It's a love he aches to have for himself, yet knows is doomed, for Stefan and Elena, let alone himself, if it were possible for him to be part of it, which it's not.
Damon rolls on his side and curls up around his cock as he grips it. He buries his face in his pillow, throat tight, holding his cock, feeling it soften, feeling his excitement drain away.
Leave it to Stefan to ruin one of his only real pleasures in life, at the moment.
He can't go on like this. Something's got to give.
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end of S2
He finds distractions. He finds Andie, his own personal sexy reporter girl, useful for her access to info and research tools. She's hot and she wants him and she'll do, though she won't make him forget an iota of his ache for Elena.
In the bathtub the night he first calls Andie, he tells her everything about the situation with Elena, how nothing is in his control and he can't stand it. He feeds on her while they bathe, blood dripping down her back into the bubbles around them in the water. He fucks her in the tub after he feeds on her, pumping her from behind, shuddering as he spurts quickly and mindlessly, orgasm overtaking him.
She doesn't come, though. So Damon lets her fuck him in his bed, both of them soapy and dripping wet. She gets on top and grinds on him hard, like she can't get him deep enough inside. Sunk to the hilt in her enveloping wet heat, it seems right that she holds his wrists down over his head while she grinds. He didn't even compel this (though he's willing and able to compel sex so specifically; he certainly has in the past).
But no: it's all her, this need to hold him down and satisfy a seemingly insatiable hunger. This unanticipated dovetailing of their sexual preferences only intensifies his arousal and need. Andie rocks on him faster and harder, her sweet grip and squeeze on his cock a deliciously hot velvet fist. When it tightens rhythmically and almost painfully around him, Andie gasps and groans above him, nails cutting into his wrists where she holds them. Damon comes hard, orgasm ripped from deep inside him. Much-needed sexual oblivion wipes Elena from his thoughts.
When Andie collapses down on his chest to catch her breath, her neck is right by his mouth. He feeds on her again. The bliss of her blood keeps Elena away a little longer. He doesn't take too much because he doesn't want to kill her. He really needed this. He could really use this in large, regular doses. She'll be quite the sex toy, Damon can tell, no compulsion necessary – for the sex, anyway.
He compels her to forget everything he revealed about his feelings for Elena. He compels a lot of trivial, superficial things out of her: topics of conversation, what she can and can't tell other people. She's useful the night of the dinner party so they can stake Elijah; he compels her to manipulate her into being useful.
He doesn't compel the sex. He doesn't need to. Hey, she came on to him in the Grill when Jenna introduced him. Before he ever compelled her, she said he could booty call her any time.
He talks about Andie as his “fake compelled girlfriend” so no one will know just how un-compelled she actually is. Can't have that getting out.
This works better for him, anyway. He has often found that some women, given free rein to do whatever they really want, are as needful, bestial and controlling as men. Maybe more. Most men fear this, which Damon finds laughable.
For him, it's mother's milk: a Pavlovian bell Katherine rang in 1864, echoing inside him a century and a half later.
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near end of S3
There it was. What if there was no bump?
He feels himself trembling on a threshold, teetering minutely. Unable to fall on one side or the other, Damon feels a liminal rush of blood to the head, an inexpressible longing to be unafraid. He has never thought of himself as such. With a horrible clarity, he now realizes fear is the core driving him. And that's the crux of it, the choice: fear or love.
There always needs to be a bump. He can't live without the bumps in the road. They let him define himself as the negative space, the reaction to the bumps. Now, with Elena, he wants there to be no bumps, never any bumps, never again. Just as suddenly and shockingly Damon realizes no bumps ever again would mean her love would never be tested by his imperfections and flaws. This will make her love weak, however heartfelt. It will make Elena's love no more than a lovely surface, as shallow as Katherine's love, though quite different, when what he desperately needs is a depth to sink all of himself into, unapologetic and flawed. He realizes -- and what is eternity for, besides pleasure, more pleasure, and the occasional earth-shattering epiphany -- that what he thought of as himself is something he defined against other people, as in: they are this, so I will be that; that which they don't want, I will want and name and make them see. Stefan is this; so I will be that.
All this, in split seconds, he realizes: that he can disassemble the person he always thought he was, it could be that simple, though simple does not mean easy. But can he reassemble a Damon that is some semblance of the self he knows, and someone he can respect? And will that reassembled self be one Elena can love? His reaction self, the rebel, the one that names things and shows what people don't want to see, that's all he's got right now. If Elena can't love that version of him, she surely would not love any other.
So, no, he will not fall on either side, will not lash out like she thinks he might, will not sink into the 200-thread count fleabag motel sheets with her, no matter how much he aches to. He will do neither. To do either is to give her guardrails, berms to guide the untidy river of emotion flowing between them. He will not provide the berms with his behavior. Her emotion must rush like a river to it's ocean. If it's his ocean, fine. And if it's Stefan's ocean, that's fine too. Because as much as he aches for her, Damon aches for something more.
For the first time Damon thinks maybe it just isn't in Elena to love unconditionally. This hurts, indescribably, because it seems like it is in her to love unconditionally -- one of them, anyway: maybe she can only love Stefan unconditionally. Not him.
Either way, he will not settle for conditional love when he deserves more. He's had a gutful of conditional love, only to find it was all based on lies, anyway. He would rather go without than settle for conditional love yet again.
"I'm sorry, Elena. You'll just have to figure this out on your own," he finally says as all of these thoughts rush through him, split-second.
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S2-S3?
"He was never good at being alone. Always needed to have someone."
"And you were always good at being alone. On your own."
He shrugged, though it was true. "'Least I knew who I could depend on."
"You couldn't depend on your brother?"
"He wanted to convert me to his cause."
"Maybe he just wanted you to accept him the way he was."
"No, Elena, he was as insistent and relentless as any convert to a new religion. His way was THE way, my way was the wrong way."
"You don't think maybe he just needed his older brother to accept that that's who he is? A vampire who can't control himself on human blood and has to feed only on animal blood instead?"
"No, I think he needed me to be just like him in order to continue to justify his lifestyle choice. But I can control it, Elena. I can revel in it, I can make it fun and that's why I can feed on humans and not kill them. I don't need to be like him and I don't have to choose that lifestyle, because I don't have his problem with blood."
"But he does have that problem with blood, Damon."
"Yeah, because of his all or nothing, feast or famine, way of dealing with it. In human terms, he's either anorexic or bingeing, instead of just eating like a normal person. Vampires, like humans with eating disorders, don't have the option of not eating."
"They have the option of not eating human blood."
"Human blood is a vampire's natural food," he glares.
She leveled her gaze at Damon. "So you insisted your way was better and derailed him. Again and again."
He was suddenly speechless.
"I get it. In your world, there's only room for one 'way' -- and it's your way or no way, not a 'live and let live' way. So it sure as hell couldn't be his way in your world. But you expected things to go your way in his world. Or nothing."
He finds his mouth open, mind blank, trying to think of a come back, and coming up blank. Was that really all it was? Him acting like Stefan had, but the opposite way? Christ.
"Well, you've clearly given this a lot of thought," he says finally, no closer to a snappy comeback.
"Yes," she says simply. "I have."
"Why?"
"Because you're brothers and you have to learn to take each other as is, not as you want each other to be."
"And that's how you do things with Jeremy?" He can not defend himself, so he accuses.
She sighs. "Not perfectly, and not as often as I'd like. But, yeah, that's how I try to do things with Jer."
"Well, aren't you the better person than I am."
"No, I'm just another one who's not cut out to be alone all the time. I need my ...family. Although my definition of family has changed. Expanded. Since... everything."
He has no answer to that. She has been through so much loss, he wonders that her heart can open again. The thought that rises in his mind, and which he does not say aloud, is: Alone, on my own, is safer. Followed closely on its heels by the thought: but it's still alone.
"I guess I just don't suffer from the need to pair off and become 'we'," he says meanly.
"I guess you're just... distrustful," she rephrases, dark eyes sympathetic.
He opens his mouth to deny and deflect, but finds he can't.
"I can see why," and Elena lifts one shoulder and lets it drop. "Katherine."
Her eyes follow his as he tries to look elsewhere in the room, anywhere but her face. Finally she sighs and stands up.
"I get it, Damon. You had a hundred and fifty years thinking you know where you stand, believing certain things about Katherine. Then, suddenly, nothing is what you thought it was, and you can't touch bottom." Her long fingers press delicately, sweetly on his forearm. "I guess I wouldn't trust too easily after that, either."
He has no response to that, either. She is chipping away at him, bringing down his walls, brick by brick. He is letting her. But he hopes she'll stop before he is completely undone.
Her eyes are somber and sympathetic. Her empathy softens him, as always. But the softening makes him want to harden with anger – something safer, stronger, not vulnerable. It makes him want to hurl his glass of bourbon into the brick above the fireplace.
He doesn't, though, and she pulls her hand back, tucks a long lock of hair behind one ear, and leaves the room.
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S3
Damon is much better at being alone. Standing alone. Not caving in to pressure. He always was the rebel; always had sarcastic and pointed remarks about the other Founding Families, the daughters they pushed on Damon and Stefan, their hypocrisies. Damon was willing to stand alone at parties, saying what people didn't want to hear. Most impressive of all, he was willing and able to stand up to Father, to disagree and to do so vocally, not secretly, like Stefan.
Stefan has always admired and envied that about Damon. He was never good at that himself. He couldn't say no to Father, couldn't lie to Father, couldn't dissemble like Damon. Damon could have been standing before a broken window, retrieved ball in his hand, and spun some explanation as for how he didn't do it and this was just a coincidence. The funny thing was, he seemed to believe it himself.
"You have to believe your own lies," he once told Stefan. "Otherwise, people can tell you're lying."
Stefan has never mastered this art of self-deception or self-dissembling. Though he envies Damon's ease with it and knows it has served him well in terms of survival, in the long run, between the two of them, he is not sure who is worse off.
He thinks it might be Damon.
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S4-post-Elena's transition-pre-discovery of Elena's sire bond to Damon
She is a vampire now. He treads cautiously, wondering how much she remembers of things he said and compelled her to forget.
He remembers remembering all that he was compelled to forget by Katherine. He didn't exactly lie to Stefan when he told Stefan that Katherine hadn't compelled his love. She hadn't compelled his love... she had compelled much of the sex the three of them had, compelled him to take all the twisted shit she did that still got him hard when he thought about it.
He actually hadn't been upset about that for most of his vampire life. Had pursued similar activities freely of his own choice. It wasn't until Katherine wasn't in the tomb and Anna told him that Katherine knew where he'd been the whole time, that he felt sick. Doing the things he'd done with Katherine and Stefan was all right – he could justify it – when it was all for her love. But finding she had no love for him at all, made it indefensible; having sought it out for most of his vampire life just made him seem like the sick fuck he'd always suspected he was.
He had meant it when he told Elena that he didn't deserve her, but Stefan did. Now, in the absence of Katherine's love, which had given meaning to nearly every shitty, insane thing he'd done for his entire vampire life, that statement meant something different now. Damon figures he deserves her unspoiled eternal youth and beauty even less than he did when she was human; it's his blood that Dr. Fell used to heal her and that caused her to become a vampire. Well, that and Stefan's stupid respect of Elena's choice to save Matt first.
Elena could be a magnificent vampire if she wanted. But she never wanted that. Damon didn't need to be told. It was obvious. Human Elena wasn't really cut out for that, not with the inherent predatory and callous nature of feeding.
It will be a long, hard road the way Stefan's trying to do it, Damon thinks. Just yank the band-aid off; don't prolong the misery by letting her think she can live as a vampire without killing someone eventually. But no one listens to him.
Brooding by the fire with bourbon again, he is slouched on the sofa when Elena comes to him. He looks up at her, sees her strangely worried anticipation. His heart sinks. Here it comes. He better stand up for this.
“I remember everything,” she tells him.
He says nothing, hoping to feign being okay with that.
“One of the highlights of my transition... Remembering everything that you compelled me to forget. Like how you and I met first. We were strangers. And you told me you wanted me to get everything I wanted from life. Damon, why didn't you tell me?”
“Would it have made a difference?” he asks bitterly. She gives him a look but doesn't respond. He mutters, “I didn't think so.”
“You asked me to make a choice, Damon. So I did. If you're going to be mad, then take it out on me, not on Stefan or Matt or anyone else. Me.”
“Are we done here?” he asks, unable to listen to this any longer.
“No.”
“Well, I am,” he says to make a swift retreat. He turns to go, but she's there, vampire swift.
“This conversation isn't over,” she says seriously. “We have to talk.”
This conversation isn't over? he thinks. “Not here. Not... now.”
He always imagined he'd want to have this conversation. Could not have foreseen that he desperately doesn't want to, now. And with her vampire senses, he will not be able to fool her. She'll know if he's lying.
“When?” she asks. Vampire Elena is as tenacious as human Elena... in a much steelier way.
“I don't know. Whenever, just ...not now. Besides, shouldn't you be off in the forest eating Thumper?”
Her expression softens into hurt and he instantly regrets his words. “I'm sorry, Elena. I'm... really sorry. It's just... this is going to be so much harder for you than it needs to be, if you go Stefan's route.”
She tilts her head and looks at him sadly. “I have to try.”
He knows she does; knows that about her. He sighs. “Fine. I know. Give it your best shot.” He hesitates, knowing how sensitive she is now. To Stefan, he can speak harsh truths. But she'll have so much of that soon enough, he can't bring himself to speed up the process. “I'll be here for you when... whatever you need,” he finishes. “Blood bag, bourbon, brother wrangling,” he adds lamely.
The look she gives him says she knows exactly what he was going to say: I'll be here for you when it all falls apart. When you're craving so badly you can smell it on everyone who walks past you. When you inevitably kill someone because you need hot. Blood. From the vein.
“I have to try,” she repeats, and it sounds as if she's trying to convince herself as much as she's trying to convince him.
“I know,” he says gently because he can see it all coming a mile away, and knows he can't stop it.
He can work on Stefan, that's all he can do. And he will. But... he'll let Elena hang onto her illusions a little longer. Who knows. If neurotic control freak Caroline could do it, maybe Elena can too. Lord knows she has enough vampires-in-denial around her to help.
--------
S4
Dear Diary,
I can't talk about this with Bonnie. And I know I can't with Caroline. I know what they think of Damon, and they'll never understand what I could possibly see in him. And a lot of times I think they're right, even though I haven't told them anything. I think, What am I thinking? Look at everything he's done.
But then I think, look at everything he's done. Kept me safe. Protected me from Klaus. Even when he was
--------
S4
“Of course, if she has feelings for you, she couldn't possibly have feelings for me,” Damon says sarcastically. “There's never been a woman on this planet who could have feelings for more than one man at a time, right?”
“No, it's impossible for her to be so blind that she doesn't see how wrong you are for her,” Stefan spits.
Damon's face curdles into anger and something else, and Stefan is instantly sorry for what he said.
“Wait. Damon. I'm sorry.” But Damon has already turned away, turned his back to Stefan. He shoves his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched.
“I apologize, all right? As much as I hate this sire bond thing, I shouldn't take it out on you. It's not really your fault.” Stefan sighs. Somehow, where Elena is concerned, Damon manages to provoke him into saying what he really thinks, really feels, when it would be much better if he didn't.
Damon swings back around to look at Stefan and the combination of hurt and fury on his face makes Stefan take a step back. Damon advances on him, and it is all Stefan can do not to step back again, and again. Finally they are nearly chest to chest.
“I know what you meant by that crack, Stefan,” Damon says, in a low and dangerous timbre only for vampire ears. “My love for her is wrong, because it's corrupt, twisted. Right? That's what you meant, isn't it?”
“I – no, I wasn't thinking about that–” and he does step back.
But Damon steps forward, arm curving around Stefan's waist, pressing his chest to Stefan's, his face looming too close. Like he's about to kiss Stefan full on the mouth, here on the street.
But then his lips graze Stefan's ear. The low vibration of his voice and the tickle of his breath makes Stefan suppress a shiver of fear and – something else he can't face, doesn't want to look at –
“Let's get one thing straight: you were right there every step of the way while Katherine twisted me into knots for her pleasure,” Damon growls low in his ear. “You participated, even if you didn't do the things I did, and didn't go through what I did.”
He yanks Stefan closer, presses their chests together, their stomachs together, slides a thigh between Stefan's. Stefan feels that Pavlovian shift, is helpless to prevent the excitement, physical only, so detached from his mind.
“You participated,” Damon repeats in his ear, his breath tickling. His hand on the arm he slid around Stefan strokes low on Stefan's back, too low, just above the crease in his buttocks. “And you weren't compelled for all of it – any more than I was.”
Stefan is preternaturally still because if he weren't, he'd be trembling with fear and desire. He'd be shoving Damon violently away from him. He'd be dragging Damon into the nearest alley to ravish his mouth.
“You're every bit as culpable as I am. Every bit as twisted. You're just more of a coward,” Damon hisses in Stefan's ear.
Then he slides his thigh back out from Stefan's, slides his arm back up Stefan's back, loosens his grip, steps away from Stefan.
Stefan remains very still, sensing the slowing of passers-by, their stares and surreptitious glances at the two of them. Damon appears heedless of this. Even if he noticed their stares, he'd shamelessly seek to shock them further. Maybe a full on kiss-and-grope on the street.
His brother's icy blue eyes, punctuated by the fine dark brows scowling at him, pierce Stefan's self-righteousness yet again.
“Yeah,” Stefan whispers. “Every bit as twisted.”
Damon sneers. “I knew you were just using Elena to clean your slate. To erase Katherine.”
“With one major difference, Damon,” Stefan continues softly, as if Damon hasn't spoken. “I didn't go on to seek out the twisting over and over again.”
Damon's sneer vanishes, and for a swift, stark moment, the naked vulnerability on his face almost makes Stefan regret what he's saying, yet again. But then his expression coalesces into one of absolute hate, milliseconds before his fist connects with Stefan's jaw. Stefan crashes to his knees, reeling from Damon's punch.
“You wanted to. Don't tell me you didn't. You never turned me away when I showed up with ...someone.” Damon breathes hard with anger above him. “That's what makes you a coward. You wanted it, you just couldn't bring yourself to look for it, find it, seek it out.”
“Because it was wrong,” Stefan says heavily, hauling himself to his feet.
People really are staring, now, full bore stares, stopping in their tracks to watch the brothers' meltdown.
“It was wrong when we did it with Katherine,” Stefan says. “Picking someone different to do it with doesn't make it right.”
Damon's feral grin is a shock. “As if you know so much about it. You know nothing. As usual.”
He steps forward, and Stefan steps back, expecting another punch. Damon hesitates, frowning briefly, then continues.
“Yeah, I did seek it out. From lots of people over the last century and a half, including professionals. Know what I learned, Stefan? The only reason it was wrong was because it was with Katherine. With anyone else – someone unselfish, someone ethical – it could have been right as rain; it could have been amazing. The wrongest thing about it was not what we did, not what she made us do; it was Katherine.”
He turns away, tossing over his shoulder, “I'm gonna go get a drink. Hunt me down when you stop being a clueless know-it-all dick.”
--------
Present-day
He finds Damon in a dark dive. He sits at the bar, clearly brooding, with his own bottle of bourbon in front of him. Though the bar is crowded, the bar stools are empty on either side of him.
Stefan bellies up to the bar right next to Damon. His brother glances morosely at him, and then goes back to gazing into the golden liquid in the bottle.
“If you say it could have been right, I'll take your word for it,” Stefan admits heavily, as if their conversation was not just separated by a couple of hours of searching for Damon in every bar in an eight block radius. “It's not something I was ever proud of. Mainly because after I transitioned, I felt horribly guilty about how you were treated.”
Damon looks at him, really looks at him, surprised and suspicious and maybe just the slightest bit scared. “What?” he asks, and his voice is uncharacteristically quiet and hesitant.
“I felt guilty. And I remembered feeling guilty in the moments when we were …doing it. But I didn't stop. You're right. I didn't stop her from doing what she did to you, and I didn't stop participating myself. I... couldn't.” Stefan sighs heavily and drops his eyes. “I wanted her any way I could have her. If that meant only with you, and only with your... subjugation, I was selfish enough to go along with it, so I could lose myself in her.” He shakes his head.
There. It is out in the open, now.
“You... you...” Damon stutters, and the raw uncertainty and vulnerability in his face and voice are somehow much more upsetting than him pressing himself full length against Stefan on a street in public, than him punching Stefan in the head in the same street.
“Don't,” Stefan interrupts, laying a hand on Damon's shoulder and squeezing. “I should have admitted it long before now. Even if you are – twisted – I played a role in that, though I knew it was wrong, because she was hurting you, much more than physically, over and over. It was wrong. Just plain cruel, Damon. I'm sorry.”
He takes a deep breath, digging deep to find the words. “I don't know if you can ever forgive me. I wish you would. But I understand if you can't.”
Damon's mouth opens, shuts, opens again. He looks at once surprised, outraged, and utterly stricken. Then he drags Stefan into a fierce embrace, breathing hard into Stefan's shoulder. He says nothing and Stefan hugs him back tightly.
“I can't forgive you, Stefan,” Damon whispers. “If I forgive you, I should forgive myself, and I. Just. Can't.”
He gulps quietly, arms tightening around Stefan. “I missed you so much over the years apart. Missed you. Cursed you. Loved you. Wanted to kill you. You can't imagine how glad I was when I came back to get Katherine. How glad I was you had Elena. It meant I wouldn't have to fight you for Katherine all over again.”
“I know,” Stefan murmurs into Damon's shoulder, though he didn't. They have never spoken like this; they still communicate terribly; still far too much water under the bridge.
It's Elena, he thinks. She makes this possible. She doesn't turn us against each other. That's what we do to each other out of habit, like it's all we know. It is all we've known since Father set us against each other, since Katherine.
“I'm sorry,” Stefan murmurs again. “And you should forgive yourself. The sire bond isn't your fault. Katherine wasn't your fault. She compelled us both. Not just me. I don't care what you say.”
Damon doesn't answer, but his weight sinks more heavily into Stefan's arms and Stefan feels him nod on his shoulder. Stefan holds him, pats his back, feeling strangely like the older brother, the responsible one, the one who should be able to make it all better.
Damon slides slowly out of his grasp, and pours himself another shot. He sets his jaw and resolutely refuses to look at Stefan, but he flags down the barkeep for another glass. When the bartender sets it in front of them, he pours bourbon into Stefan's glass without looking at Stefan.
When Stefan picks up his glass, Damon picks up his, too, and clinks it against Stefan's.
“To unspoken truths,” he says, quiet and resolute.
This peace feels fragile, as all peace does with Damon. They're always short-lived. It doesn't take long for one or both of them to fall back into old patterns, miscommunicate, set their jaws, dig in their heels.
But this peace feels possible, much more possible, because of Elena. Stefan can't help wondering if she has any clue how present she is with he and Damon, even when they are hundreds of miles away from her. Probably not.
--------
S4-Post-Elena's transition to vampire
“Why do you insist on calling yourself 'the bad brother'?” she asks one day. “I don't see how, in the big scheme of things, you're that much worse than Stefan. 'Cept for your whole 'I eat what I want to eat because that's what vampires eat' manifesto.”
“Manifesto?” he repeats, amused, as he looks up at her standing before him.
“You pressured me to eat people.” She half glares at him.
“I didn't know you were sired and obligated to obey,” he says defensively. “Besides, it's what vampires eat,” he sighs, not wanting to argue with her.
He stands up and invades her space like he does with Stefan. She, unlike Stefan, has not worked out that this is what he does to get people to move away from him. She stands there and they both find him rubbing a lock of her long, straight hair between his thumb and finger.
“It doesn't have to be,” she insists quietly.
“Must we go there again? Fine, it doesn't have to be. But to be an effective vampire, with all vampire abilities intact, it's basically required.”
“You didn't answer the question,” she challenges him, watching him finger the lock of her hair. She meets his gaze and purses her lips, tilting her head to the side.
“Look at you, all 'come hither-ish' with your head tilt. You're so not as badass as you'd like to think,” he smirks.
“Look at you, all deflection and distraction, not nearly as successfully as you think,” she retorts.
“Fine, oh humorless one,” he sighs. “I don't suppose Stefan ever gave you any... details on exactly how he and I 'dated' Katherine at the same time,” Damon begins slowly.
“No, he didn't – and I didn't ask.”
“Well,” Damon says enigmatically, “you'd better clear these questions with Stefan before you expect to get answers out of me.”
“Why's that?”
“I'm not ashamed of any of it. But Stefan might be.”
He leaves it at that, lets the lock of her hair drop, and retreats to his bedroom. She stares after him, her mouth open a moment before she consciously shuts it.
--------
S4
“What is it you're not telling me about you and Damon and Katherine?”
Stefan sighs. “There are things that you don't know, Elena. Things that I want to tell you but I can't, and I may never be able to. I just need you to trust me.”
--------
She is sitting in the parlor by the fireplace. She didn't build a fire. For now, for this conversation, she wants the fireplace black, empty, cold.
She stretches and yawns, impatient, tired of waiting. When she opens her eyes, he's standing in front of her, and she blinks, startled. Way to make an entrance, as usual.
“You rang. What.” Damon's face is impassive, but there's a hint of irritation in his voice, a trace of it on his brow.
Elena looks closer at him, unsure if he's doing a good job of pretending he doesn't care about everything the three of them are not talking about, or if he really doesn't care.
“I want to talk about things with Katherine.”
“That's not my job. You're not my girlfriend.”
“You're my friend. It affects my relationship with you and my relationship with your brother. It makes a difference going forward. In case you hadn't noticed, I have a lot in common with Katherine,” she adds sarcastically, gesturing with a sweeping hand at her whole body, reminding them both of her doppelganger looks. “I think I deserve the whole story.”
“The whole story is ancient, and sordid, and doesn't concern you, Elena,” he replies.
“Stop pretending,” she says, uncharacteristically blunt. “It does concern me, it concerns me every bit as much as it concerns the two of you. I'm in the middle whether you want to face that or not.” She glares at him.
He leans down, until his face is inches from hers. His expression still cool and betraying nothing, he says carefully, “You're only in the middle if we put you there. And we're not. I'm not.”
“Bullshit.”
He stands up, pulling away, and regards her coolly. “Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself, miss fancy-pants? Maybe you think you're much more important, than you actually are.”
“To Stefan or to you?” she asks, and there is just a hint of smugness in her voice that she can't disguise.
“Let's get one thing straight, Elena,” Damon begins, walking away from her to the sideboard and pouring his usual bourbon from the crystal decanter. He lifts it to his lips, sipping before he replies.
“It's bros before hos,” he says, and his old smirk is there, and it makes her want to slap him, hard.
But she won't let him get to her, because this is how he deflects, this is how he distracts, and there is no distracting her today.
“Really,” she replies, coolly, deciding to use his own tactics against him. She rises from the sofa and walks slowly towards him. The momentary look of uncertainty on his face as she approaches is perfect and priceless and she's meanly glad that he can't mask everything as well as he used to – at least, not with her. Not anymore.
“Bros before hos, huh?” she says quietly, in front of him and pressing closer, doing what he does – getting too close, invading his personal space. She takes his bourbon from him and sips it herself. “That's how you both got turned, is it? Katherine meant nothing to both of you? You both meant more to each other than she did?”
Damon looks frankly unnerved now. “Give me back my drink,” he growls, reaching for it to distract them both.
He brushes her fingers as he grasps his glass, and she holds on tightly, fighting for a moment before releasing it. She is darkly pleased to see that shadow of uncertainty pass over his face again.
“Yeah,” she says, turning away and stalking back to the couch, adding a little drama to her step on purpose. She sits facing him again, and says dryly, “That's what I thought.”
“What is it you think you know? About Katherine? About Stefan? About me?” he quietly demands, openly angry now. “We have a century on you – Katherine's got hundreds of years on you and the two of us. A vampire century for us. Half a millennium, for Katherine.”
He smiles grimly and tosses back the rest of his bourbon. He deliberately puts the glass down hard on the sideboard, the audible thunk almost a threat.
“That's the point, Damon,” Elena says stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don't know much of anything. I need to know more. I need the truth.”
He rushes to her, vampire speed, intentionally scaring her so that she startles and shrinks back. He leans down, almost menacing now.
“Which truth is that, Elena?” he hisses in her face. “Katherine's truth? Stefan's truth? My truth? The truth of 1864? Or the truth of now? Or the truth of any year in between?”
“The truth,” she shouts, exasperated.
“There is no one truth! If you'd asked me – or him – what the truth was fifty years ago, you would have gotten a different answer than you would have gotten in 1864 – and a different one than you would have gotten only forty years after that.” He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes, and this is the smile she'd like to wipe off his face with a slap.
“Okay,” she begins, digging in.
“No, there's no 'okay' about it, Elena. Maybe you're aware of the metaphysical implications of quantum mechanics; maybe you're not. Post-modernism is a bitch, isn't it? But I'll tell you this: I can't give you the truth. I can't give you Stefan's truth. I can't even give you my own truth of 1864, because I look back, knowing what I know now, and I wonder what in hell I was thinking. Do you want to hear that a nearly ancient female vampire took advantage of two young human men, barely out of adolescence and in many ways still children in comparison with today's young men of the same age?”
He grabs her by the upper arms and yanks her up from the couch. Now he's truly angry, and she remembers why she's still scared of him. She wound him up, though that wasn't her intent, and now she has to deal with it. She gulps and swallows as Damon shakes her once, twice.
“Do you want to hear that we liked it, that we loved it and thrived on it? That we fought over her, that we fucked her together, a Salvatore sandwich with Katherine filling? Do you want to hear,” and his voice cracks now, “how incredibly stupid we were – how stupid I was – and how submissive and obedient and obsessed, even when I wasn't compelled? Do you want to hear how I lied to Stefan only months ago and told him Katherine never compelled me, though actually she did?
“But I was sure then,” he smiles, that cold, mean smile that doesn't reach his eyes. “I was so sure then. That was my truth then. And it isn't now. These are all truths! They aren't the same truths they once were, but,” he shakes her for effect, now, one bone-deep shake to punctuate each word. “They're. All. True.”
He shakes her one last time, and her teeth clack together in her mouth. Yet she knows he's restraining himself; has seen him be so much more violent, so much stronger and meaner over less important things. This is a good sign, some part of her knows. Some insane part of her.
“I loved every minute of it,” he says harshly, looking down on her. “And it's the bitterest pill. And it's none. Of. Your. Business,” he finishes in a dulcet whisper, leaning down, face inches from hers, eyes mad and glaring, clenched jaw, bottom lip trembling.
He shoves her back down on the couch, hard, but not hard enough to hurt her.
“Hey!” Stefan's voice cuts sharply into their horrible pas de deux. “Leave her alone.”
Damon straightens up and looks at Stefan, then looks down his nose at Elena with something more than anger, a flush to his cheeks. He looks back at Stefan, who crosses the room vampire swift, fists clenched at his side.
“With pleasure, little brother – with pleasure,” he barks at Stefan.
Elena is dumbfounded at Damon's raw voice and the way it shakes. A moment ago she would have sworn it shook with anger, but now...
They glare at each other, Damon almost panting, breathing hard, the color up in his cheeks. Both clench and unclench their fists, chests puffed out at each other. They gaze at one another, eyes locked.
She looks up at them, astonished, and slowly rises to her feet, prepared to physically get between them.
“Get her away from me,” Damon snarls. But it is too breathy to be threatening. His voice wavers and his jaw clenches and Stefan's posture softens instantly.
“Elena, sit down,” Stefan orders quietly, not looking at her, never breaking Damon's gaze. “I'll handle this,” he says.
He's not talking to her at all anymore. The last three words were addressed only to Damon. Maybe the first three were, too.
She has never felt so shut out as she does at this moment. Never before has she felt how much they mean to each other or felt herself so outside of their dyad.
The air around them is heavy and electric, and Elena is rooted to the spot.
“I said, sit down,” Stefan mutters to her, still looking at Damon. As Elena sinks down to the couch again, Stefan's fists unclench for the last time and he raises his hands slowly in an appeasing gesture towards Damon.
“I said,” Damon repeats, but his voice wavers oddly. Wetness makes the fine lashes of his eyes spike together. “Get. Her. Away.” He has not taken his eyes off Stefan's.
She has to look away from Damon, away from the anguish at the edges of his mask of control. This is so much worse than his thunderous anger, than his cold contempt, than his derision. This is awful. And it's because of her.
“Elena,” Stefan says, suddenly in a very reasonable and calm voice, “Why don't you go fix Damon another bourbon.”
Ordinarily she would scoff, disbelieving, that Stefan would even think she'd obey such an archaic, ridiculously chauvinistic suggestion. Now, however, she stands and slinks away to the sideboard. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Stefan's raised hands reach out for Damon's upper arms. By the time her shaking hands slosh bourbon into a glass, Stefan grips Damon's upper arms.
Damon pushes, not hard, against Stefan's grasp. Stefan puts one foot behind him to brace his stance, but doesn't give way. His voice is quiet and low, so low she almost doesn't understand what he's saying to Damon.
“Damon. She didn't mean it. She doesn't know what she's asking, you know that.”
“I don't care,” Damon whispers. One tear tracks down his cheek and Elena looks elsewhere, not sure what to do with her hands. She holds the glass of bourbon.
“I don't care,” Damon grinds out, louder now, like he's trying to convince himself, convince them all, fists still clenched.
Not once has he looked away from Stefan. Not once has Stefan looked away from him. Their eyes have locked in an impenetrable mutual stare, a hundred years and yards between them though close enough to feel each others breath.
“I know,” Stefan murmurs, gazing sadly at his brother. “Of course not. Of course you don't.” His hands slide up to Damon's shoulders.
Damon's push against Stefan's grasp wavers minutely; Stefan's grasp loosens; and Damon finally drops his gaze as Stefan opens his arms.
Damon falls heavily into Stefan's arms as if drunk or shot through the heart. Stefan's arms go around him. Damon's cheek rests on Stefan's shoulder, eyes closed. His exhausted, careworn expression is more terribly naked and vulnerable than Elena has ever seen before, except maybe the night they opened the tomb and found Katherine wasn't in it.
His arms steal slowly around Stefan as Stefan holds him close, tight. Stefan murmurs things Elena can't make out into the collar of Damon's jacket, both of them with their eyes closed. Damon nods wearily, Stefan nods decisively, and he slides out of Damon's grasp, one arm supporting Damon around the shoulders, walking him out of the parlor.
Elena feels hot tears behind her own eyes. What is she doing? What the hell did she think she was doing? She sips the bourbon just to have something to do, the burn feeling necessary and like something she deserves.
When she looks up again, Stefan is standing before her, face cool and aloof.
“Well,” he says to her. “That went well. Good job.”
“Stefan, I...” Elena trails off. She has no words. She has never seen this intimacy between them before. It is clearly very old, very much before her time, maybe even before Katherine's time. She's not sorry she saw it, though she feels very much on the outside and considerably less secure about her place in their world.
“I'm sorry,” she chokes out. “I didn't think–”
“Yeah, that's kind of the problem,” Stefan interrupts her, and his tone is acid.
“Stefan,” she begins to argue.
“No, Elena, listen – listen to me very carefully,” Stefan begins, holding up a hand to silence her. “Damon has done horrible things. Half the time I think he's faking having gotten some humanity back,” he adds harshly. “He's violent and reckless and impulsive – and insanely loyal when he's on your side. He hasn't felt anything in decades, possibly much longer. But now he feels. He feels for you. It took him I don't know how long to come to this point. And you want to, what – force him open? Force him to tell you everything? To what end?
“You want to know everything about me? Or you want to know everything about him? Or about Katherine and our sick, half-compelled threesome? To what end?” and by the last three words, he's almost shouting. “My god, he's been there for you, he's saved you I don't know how many times. Look at his deeds, his actions – not his words. You know he's full of it, he's full of it all the time, it's how he is, Elena!”
She is openly crying now. “I have a right,” she insists tearfully. “I did it the wrong way, but I have a right to know!”
“To know what!”
“To know what's going to happen! With us! With him! With all three of us!”
She turns away, guilty and angry and wretched. And how can she be feeling all this because Damon cracked open under pressure from her? Mr. Iceman, Mr. Cool all the time – how on earth was she to know this would happen?
Stefan sighs and grasps her shoulders from behind. “I don't know what's going to happen, I just know... you can't do that to him. It's not his way. You don't know him the way I do,” he says.
And there it is, that feeling of being on the outside, something she's never felt from Stefan before, and she supposes he or Damon could observe her and Jer and feel the same way, but this is awful.
“I'm sorry.”
“It's not me you need to say that to.”
“I'll say it to him,” she says urgently, and turns in Stefan's arms to bury her face in his chest. “Let me go apologize.”
There is just the slightest resistance on his part, and this causes an unbearable ache in Elena.
“I don't think that's a good idea right now. Maybe later. Tomorrow,” Stefan suggests. “Why don't you just go home for now. I'll talk to him, in a while. I'll call you later.”
She is disbelieving. She is being dismissed. Stefan – of all people – is sending her away.
She looks up at him, and the shock must be visible on her face.
“Don't look at me like that,” he says, his guilty expression all too familiar, yet somehow strangely new, directed not at her but at... “Come on. Elena, he's my brother.”
She'd like to remind him of all the terrible things Damon has done, but she knows that's just to justify her position, not because that's all Damon has done, not because that's all he's capable of. She'd only like to remind Stefan of how bad Damon has been in the recent past so she can seem right by comparison.
“All right, Stefan,” she says shakily. “All right.”
He pulls her close again, kisses the top of her head, and rocks her a little, holding her tight.
“It'll be all right,” he murmurs into her hair. “You just – this isn't the way with Damon. Trust me on this.”
Who else, she thinks, is she going to trust?
She slides out of his arms eventually, gathers her things. He pecks her cheek dutifully, and stands on the porch to watch her drive away. She looks in the rear view mirror and watches him go back inside the house before her car has left the Salvatore's driveway.
A first.
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