Work Text:
2009
Things aren’t quite what they were in the seventies (fucking golden age, man), but Damon’s still got his shtick down for hitchhikers. How could he not? Come on, it’s like pizza delivery. Pick 'em up, tap a vein, compel them, then drop them off near a bus stop in the closest town.
It’s a perfect system, really. (And if he gets carried away, well, no witnesses and it’s pretty damn hard to trace a runaway).
So it’s not like he thinks twice when he’s laying on the road ten feet from his car somewhere outside of Mystic Falls and someone walks up to him. (Humans are always so worried . Come on, live a little.)
“Are you okay?” And Damon sighs, open his eyes, and then stops.
“ Katherine ,” he whispers, and the woman is in front of him .
She looks confused. Katherine has never looked confused, but she’s scanning his face, one hand holding the strap of her backpack.
“Um. My name’s Elena. Are you okay? Do you need help?” And he’s looking at her - again, and then he sees it; her face is the same, unnaturally similar down to the fucking turn of her nose, but this girl has straight hair, mussed up clothes (undignified, he notes, and Katherine would never be such a thing unless it was dire or she was in bed), and then he closes his eyes, breathes, smells salt and sweat and the oh-so-tempting lure of her heart beating in her chest.
Whoever this girl is, she's human. Which means not Katherine.
A century and a half on, he can still feel it pull at his heart. But he's been to the fucking tomb, and he knows Katherine is well and truly lost to him.
This girl, though, is alive. (If the rush in her veins wasn't enough to tip him off, there's his own bloodlust to contend with). He's had a good look, had his moment of hope, now it's time to send her on her merry way.
But he looks again; the fly away strands of hair, stuffed backpack, sensible and worn shoes. He looks and thinks well, I'm not busy. He looks and thinks maybe just one night, to pretend all is right with the world.
"Sorry, you just. You look like an old friend," and he gives that charming little smile that's always made girls trip over themselves. "You need a ride? I'm heading up to New York, I just wanted to stop and look at the stars."
"Um," the girl says, looks around, maybe realizes they're pretty much in the woods. "Okay, yeah. Not far, though. Just the next town over?"
"Only if you let me pick the music," he says, and she smiles.
-
Elena Gilbert is sixteen years old when she and Matt get in a fight and she turns heel on him.
She’s tucked on the couch the same night with Aunt Jenna, sneaky glass of wine in hand, when she realizes her life is boring , and she doesn’t want to wait two years to have some fun. Mystic Falls is boring , Matt is boring , high school is boring . She realizes she’s sick and tired of miniskirts and pom poms, and organizing high school dances, and being polite about Bonnie’s grandma’s weird magic lectures.
She’s sixteen when she shoves as much of her wardrobe as fits into a backpack, puts on her favorite sneakers, and walks out of her childhood home while her parents are asleep upstairs, and she’s sixteen when she figures stranger danger isn’t quite so much of an issue as long as she has her phone in hand, even if the guy driving was laying in the street five minutes ago.
“So,” he says, starting up the car. “What brings you to Virginia, Elena?”
“I,” she pauses. realizing she hadn’t quite thought that far.
The guy looks at her, smiles again. She looks at the crow’s feet at the edge of his eyes, feels her heart skip a beat as they pull away from the shoulder.
“You don’t have to tell me, it’s okay. I hear they started teaching stranger danger in schools. Name’s Damon, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Damon,” and she grabs the handle of her backpack just to give her hands something to do.
He turns the radio on, tunes it to some rock station or another and starts singing along, and before Elena knows they’re belting out the lyrics to Thunderstruck with the wind whipping her hair around her face.
And it’s easy , talking to Damon, who has clear blue eyes and high cheekbones and he smiles with half his face which makes something in her chest flutter and she likes him, and it’s fun, more fun than she’s had in years.
They talk, not about much in particular (she learns he has a brother, estranged, and she talks about cheerleading and her aunt and he laughs, tells her an anecdote about him stopping in at a mechanic a couple years back and getting kicked out of their niece’s bedroom the next morning, which leads around to a long tangent on classic cars), and then she wakes up to a shake of her shoulder outside a motel.
“I got you your own room, you wanna sleep in a bed?”
He presses a key into her hand, carries her backpack to the room, and then gives her a smile.
“I’ll buy you breakfast in the morning, if you’re hungry,” and about ten am she is, and over hash browns and coffee he smirks and charms her and she crosses her ankles, blushes, and covers her mouth when he makes her laugh.
“So, Elena Gilbert,” he pronounces, tugging at the cuff of his leather jacket and leaning against his Camaro. “I can drop you off anywhere in the great town of Fredericksburg, or, and now hear me out here, you could occupy my passenger seat for one more night. Maybe I can show you the great state of New Jersey.”
“Damon Salvatore,” she says, “I would be delighted to take up your passenger seat.”
She tosses her phone in a trash can in a diner in Newark, and doesn’t look back for a second.
-
They’re in Maine, six days later, laying on the road. Elena points out constellations and Damon’s eyes crinkle at every one, like they’re all new to him.
And, as rehearsed, Damon asks her to get in his car for one more night, but this time, she doesn’t say yes; she just leans over and presses her lips to his.
He grins up from the asphalt and makes a fucking quip about buying her a toothbrush, and all she does is roll her eyes and lean down again.
-
They get kicked out of a bar somewhere outside Pittsburgh, the bartender yelling at them that she’ll call the fucking cops, and Elena’s laughing so hard that she has to stop running for catch her breath. Damon watches her blood pulse over her clavicle, feels his fangs push at his lip.
Then she’s looking up at him with dark eyes and laughing again, throws her arms around his neck and gets on her tiptoes to kiss him.
“Come on, Damon,” she says, pulling him to the car.
(Good thing he left the roof on; the last thing they need is a public indecency charge.)
Elena remarks on the unexpected comfort of the backseat, and Damon laughs, piles her hair into a messy bun on the top of her head, lets it fall down again and brush against her shoulders; she has freckles there, light, just a dusting; the kind of thing you’d never notice without spending some serious time looking, and from the way she giggles when he so much as brushes over her shoulder blades he doubts anyone has.
She almost settles down to cuddle but jerks up like there’s a fucking fire, and yells out that they didn’t use a condom, and Damon just pulls her back down and assures her he can’t have kids, but they can stop by a corner store for a pack and a pregnancy test, which seems to settle her.
(It’s cute how - short sighted she is. One track mind. She lives like there’s no fucking tomorrow, the kind of high Damon’s been chasing for years.)
In a parking lot in fuck-all Pennsylvania, Damon whispers the words into her hair; I love you . It makes his heart race, but it doesn’t matter. For the first time since he was turned, he has something he’s afraid to lose.
It feels, in some perverse way, human.
-
He’s watching her sleep, which he thinks might be a little creepy but he wakes up before her anyway and it’s not like he wants to stare at the ceiling the whole morning. No, he much prefers this; looking at how the rising sun turns her hair golden, the curl of her lashes, the bend of her clavicle; she may look like Katherine, practically a doppelganger if something like that existed, but over the past month he’s found so many ways she doesn’t .
Elena is slender, cautious; she’s never held herself as confidently as Katherine. She expresses herself in ways he’s endlessly bemused by, can’t raise one eyebrow to save her life. She has a curve to her ring fingers that makes him smile and a lightness to her body that feels particularly kind. (He’s also spent a hell of a lot of time noticing the other differences; the curve of her calves, the way her right boob turns just a bit to the side, the scar on her left forearm from falling off a horse as a kid, the stretch marks on her hips and her chest, the freckle on her spine; really, who could ignore everything Elena was?)
When she wakes up, quiet, the sun turns her brown eyes a bright honey, and she smiles at him, tucks a bit of his hair behind his ear.
“Did you know,” Damon says, voice still rough, “that you got in my car a month ago today?”
“Oh?” She looks up for a second, like she’s thinking back. “Then I think it’s my birthday.”
“Elena Gilbert ,” he gasps. “Were you even going to tell me about your birthday? How old are you? Are you -” and he stage whispers this part “- jailbait? ”
“We,” she says, putting her hand on his chest and throwing a leg over his hips to straddle him, “are well past that. But it seems like I’m seventeen.” She laughs, leans down and kisses him, and, well, Damon won’t pretend having her be on top isn’t a turn on.
“Seventeen! Good god, take me away, officer!” He reaches up, traces the smile lines on her cheeks with his thumbs, then grabs her waist and rolls her to be on her back; she just gasps.
“Well, Miss Gilbert, even though I have already so thoroughly deconstructed your innocence, would you care to come on a date with me for your birthday? We’re just an hour from Chicago,” and she smiles, shakes her head at him and his dumb little smirk.
“Mister Salvatore, I’d be honored.”
They put the roof down and let the wind blow back their hair; Elena wears a pair of Damon’s sunglasses and an oversized Metallica shirt that smells like his aftershave, and they sing along to Dancing Queen on the highway.
(A bit of her thinks about what she would be doing in Mystic Falls; dinner, probably, with her parents and Jeremy and Aunt Jenna, who she missed like hell. The other part of her takes great delight in swishing the skirt of the lacy black dress Damon buys her in an overpriced tailor in downtown Chicago, his sunglasses still sitting pretty on her nose.)
They waltz into a theater and end up with tickets to Oedipus, eat at a glittering, glamorous, golden restaurant where the waiters are in black tie and Elena shoots back oysters and makes a face at them, nose all scrunched up, and Damon laughs, convinces someone to stick a sparkler in her lava cake, and they end the evening in a grimy little club where a band’s playing loud, raucous music, and they walk out sweaty with bruised lips. Elena complains about her heels, and Damon lifts her up, making her squeal until she loops her arms around his neck and goes, princess style, to the car; after, she squeezes his biceps, asks how a guy who she’s never seen in the gym became a weightlifter.
(Genetics, he says, but my strongest muscle is my tongue, and she laughs again, tells him to prove it.)
(He does. Several times.)
By the end, they’re relaxing in a bubble bath together, and Elena rests her head on his chest, letting him rub little circles into her shoulder.
He’s spent the last month falling head over heels and being deeply aware of how easy it would be to hurt her, even accidentally. The trust, the carelessness with which she turns her back on him, would be death for most people.
For her, it’s as casual as breathing.
“Damon Salvatore,” she says, tilting her head back to look at him. “I love you.”
“It’s only been a month, Elena Gilbert.” But he pauses, looks into her eyes, lets his shoulders relax. “I love you too.”
She smiles, pats his cheek, and goes back to leaning against him, eyes slipping closed.
Damon is still bracing himself for impact.
-
His life catches up to them in Omaha.
He’s never actually been to Omaha before, considering it’s a nowhere city in a flyover state. Still, Elena didn’t bring a passport (and he suspects any security check would flag her), and asking her to come on a drive with him has become their thing, so driving it is. They’re on their way to Seattle, a sightseeing tour of the States, and the route involves a lot of highway.
Still, Elena must sleep and he certainly doesn’t mind being in bed with her, so they stop at motels and little towns. Damon’s been managing pretty well with blood bags, but the hunger is building (it’s been a couple months, okay?) and blood bags aren’t the same as the live sample. (He has no fucking clue how Stefan’s managing the bunny diet.)
He figures, tap someone, chug a bit, and then compel them away. Of course, that requires a bit of time without Elena, whose company he’s quite entranced with. Still, one afternoon she says she’s going out for a walk, so once he gives her enough time in case she forgot something he finds the nearest motel employee and ends up bringing the poor housekeeper to the room.
Of fucking course, he’s just about done with her when Elena’s key turns in the lock. She takes one look at him - latched onto the woman’s neck, eyes wide like a deer in fucking headlights - and stops.
“Um,” she says.
He pulls back and the woman practically jogs away, leaving Elena standing in the doorway and Damon with two trickles of blood down his chin.
“Elena,” and then she’s walking forward, taking his jaw in her hands and looking at the blood smeared across his lips. He stays still, like he’s at the vet, as she looks from different angles, pushes at his top lip with a thumb so she can see the fangs.
“Well, you’re certainly not boring, Damon.” She drops her hands, grabs one of his, and pulls him into the tiny bathroom, bundling toilet paper into her hand and giving it a pass under the sink before dabbing at his face.
He stands there, quiet, as she cleans him off; his fangs retract, and when she’s done, she washes her hands to surgical scrub standards.
“So, Mister Salvatore. I assume there’s something a little odd about you?”
So; she sits on the counter, and Damon leans against the wall, stares at a missing chip of paint, and gives her the whole story, 1864 to present. His brother. Katherine. Vampire powers, and mysticism, and he lets her poke at his fangs (my dad’s a doctor, she says, which he hadn’t even known), and then she squeezes his hand.
And she responds in kind, her life story, but Elena is looking into his eyes, and she’s not afraid (even though he can hear her heart racing, the whole time). She tells him about her parents; her brother; her aunt. Birth to fucking present, it takes a lot less time than his did, but she tells him about how she left because her life was so dull, and he snorts at that.
“Well,” he says, with a smile that only lasts a second. “You stumbled into the car of one of the least dull people on earth.”
“And one of the most egotistical,” she replies, and it breaks the tension in the room; Damon really does laugh at that one, and she hugs him.
“So you’re not freaked? It’s okay to be freaked, it’s weird. If you want, I can compel you and send you back to your family.”
“Well, I have questions, of course, but. Damon Salvatore, you might be a little older than me, but that’s obviously not a problem. Plus, you have to take me around Seattle.”
Damon lets that one roll through him, and it’s not until later, when they’re in bed together, that he finally lets go of that last bit of fear.
(Nearly an hour after they pull the covers up, Elena lifts her head off Damon’s chest.
“I think I should call home,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” and there’s a sigh. “Yeah. I miss them, and I think they need to know I’m okay.”
“Okay,” he says, lets it settle. “We’ll find a payphone tomorrow.”
“Okay,” and she lays on him again, adjusts her leg. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses her.)
-
They stop at a payphone in Lincoln. Damon gets change from the laundromat, and Elena passes quarters into it and calls Jenna. (Her parents would be too worried, Jeremy doesn’t need to be saddled with passing messages, and her uncle has always been a bit weird.)
It takes less than a second for Jenna to realize it’s Elena on the line.
“Oh my god, Elena? We thought you were dead! Where are you, I’ll come pick you up, oh my god -”
“Aunt Jenna, please, okay, calm down. I’m fine. I’ve been having a great time.”
“Elena, I don’t - I don’t care! You can’t just up and leave - do you have any idea how worried we’ve been? They dragged the lake for your body, Elena! You’re seventeen, you can’t just leave !”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Jenna,” and then Damon is waving his hand frantically. “What, Damon?” She holds the phone away from her ear, but she can hear Jenna asking questions again - probably who Damon is - but then he’s whispering.
“We gotta go, that cop is staring,” and sure enough, there’s a sheriff, glaring at them, hand on her radio.
“Shit - Jenna, I love you, I’m sorry, tell everyone I love them and I’m okay, okay? Goodbye, I love you, goodbye -” and then she’s putting the phone back without letting Jenna get another word in, and Damon practically burns rubber with how fast he drives away.
By the time they’re out of the county, Elena’s not crying anymore, and Damon looks at her and pulls over.
“I’m sorry,” he says, holding her hand.
“It’s not your fault,” she waves him off. “But thank you. Yeah. Anyway -” she sniffles, wipes at her nose - “Anyway. You think we can make it to Wyoming today?”
He squeezes her hand, watches her put his sunglasses on. He says yeah, and pulls off the shoulder, and they drive with nothing but quiet eighties music until the sun has gone down and they’re hitting exit signs for Salt Lake City.
-
Elena breaks her silence on the vampire issue two days later, in a cafe in Spokane.
“Does it feel good?”
“A lot of things feel good, Elena, you’re going to have to specify.”
“Drinking blood,” she says, and that gets him to focus.
“It does,” and she smiles. “It depends on what you’re drinking, but yes, it all feels good. Both drinking and, uh, donating.”
“Lay it all out for me, Damon Salvatore,” and he knows there’s a smirk behind that cup of coffee.
“We’re hungry all the time, you know? So drinking blood bags, it’s like - a smoothie after suntanning, it feels good but it’s not all that warm or filling. With fresh blood, it’s, uh, different. Even with just strangers it’s very - well, mine are normally compelled, so it’s not quite as - yes, I like it. And when Katherine was drinking from me, it was a very specific kind of - vulnerability.”
She nods, mulls it over.
“And if two vampires drink from each other?”
“Well, that’s -” he flushes, really. “It’s very intimate.”
“Do go on,” she says, and the creases at her eyes tell Damon she knows exactly where she’s going.
“Well, it’s - you have to understand, for most vampires, blood is everything. And we don’t really have rituals, or covens, or anything like that. It’s mostly nomads. But blood really is, it’s everything. So sharing your blood with someone else - drinking from another vampire - it’s - a little beyond sex, really, and it’s not necessarily sexual but it is, you know? We’re already more or less feral when we drink, and tapping into another person - it’s the closest you can come to becoming one person with someone.”
She raises her eyebrows (both, still, because she hasn’t quite figured out how to do one), and so vaguely asks if he’s ever, well.
“Yes,” he says. “Just once. It was very - yes, I have.”
“Interesting,” and she picks up her sandwich, takes a bite. “So what was Mystic Falls like when you were a kid?”
He’s so glad to be off the topic that he doesn’t even hesitate to answer.
-
“Damon,” she says that night.
“Elena.”
“I have a follow up question.”
“Ooh, do tell.”
“Does the blood have to be directly from the veins?”
“No,” he pauses, eyes her up, that coy face that means she’s planning something.
“My period started yesterday,” and he could fucking laugh, walks over and kneels in front of her at the side of the bed.
“Elena Gilbert, are you asking me to go down on you?”
“Damon Salvatore, I’m even offering up my thigh for a bite.”
“Well, I could never refuse a lady,” he says, then leaps forward, pins her down to the bed and hooks his fingers under her waistband.
Nearly an hour later, she pulls her hair into a ponytail, dabs the blood off Damon’s face.
“You’re gonna have to drink from me more often, Mister Salvatore.”
-
Seattle is beautiful, and they spend nearly a month just driving around Washington visiting state parks. Elena is mystified by it being both humid and cold , and Damon’s a fan of hiking (well, he’s a fan of getting to carry Elena when she’s tired, but it’s part of the experience).
They talk about it on a trail in the North Cascades.
“So,” she starts. “If you drink my blood, you stop being hungry. If I drink yours, I heal. But would it feel good for you?”
“To have you drink my blood?”
“Yeah. Like, in general. Does it feel as good for you as it does for me?”
“Everything you do to me feels good , Elena. It’s better, actually. Everything for vampires is intensified - your emotions, your personality, your senses. One of the perks to a life of blood-sucking.”
“Then can I?” She jumps forward, crunches a leaf under her feet.
“Drink my blood? No, absolutely not.”
“No?”
“Elena, if you die with my blood in your system, you’ll become a vampire.”
“Not a problem for me.”
He raises an eyebrow (just one, thank you), and looks at her. She’s very pointedly not making eye contact with him, and he sighs.
“We can talk about it later.”
“Sounds good,” she chirps, and he knows he’s going to get talked around somehow.
-
Elena likes the Pacific Northwest, as it turns out. She likes it so much that when they make it to the bottom of Oregon, Damon turns around and asks her if she wants to stay in the area for a while. It’s the end of September, and Damon figures it wouldn’t hurt to stick around a little. He signs a three month lease on a second floor walkup, beachfront, in a tiny town by the border of the two states, and when Elena walks in she sneezes from the dust and then gasps at the view of the water and the fog.
Damon hires a professional cleaning company, but Elena insists on painting the place herself, picks a pale lilac for the main room and a sunny yellow for the bedroom.
Damon’s never actually painted a house before, but it turns out to be incredibly fun. (And Elena is bossy , which gets him going in one hell of a way.)
She tells him what to do, makes him put painter’s tape around everything and cut the lines of the ceiling because he’s taller, and they spend a couple afternoons putting coats of paint down. He gets bored of the actual painting pretty fucking quick and spends most of the time laying on the tarp Elena put over the wood floor, just watching her do it. She makes fun of him, calls him lazy, but after a couple hours she comes and rests next to him, dabs paint on his face and laughs when his wrinkles make it crease.
She’s in the middle of painting the bedroom when he decides to pull out his secret skill. He’s just done frying the garlic in the pan when she emerges.
“Damon, you can cook ?”
“I’m a hundred and seventy, Elena, you don’t have to sound so incredulous.”
There’s yellow smeared across her arm, but she doesn’t seem to notice, just leans against the counter and watches Damon grate cheese into a pan while making quiet conversation. He dishes the food into two bowls, grabs forks, and tells her to follow him.
They end up on the beach, just a few feet from the water, Elena leaning into his side and making little mm noises every once in a while.
It’s good to know he’s still got that skill.
When they’re finished, Elena pulls him down to lay with her. She points at the stars, names the constellations again.
This time, Damon isn’t looking at the sky. He’s just looking at her, tracing the lines of her face into his memory.
This, he thinks, might just be forever. If he lets it be.
-
She’s got him pinned to the bed when he gives in. She’s straddling his hips and he tears his wrist open with one fang and holds it up to her face.
She stops, looks at him, like she’s asking a question. He nods, and she licks the wound, and he just about comes on the spot.
He feels safe being rough that night. The next morning, there’s not even a scar where he bit her lip open.
-
He extends the lease. Starts keeping a grocery list on the fridge door. She gets a job at the bookstore in town, just part time, to keep her busy. He learns to sew , of all things.
-
An unmarked box arrives at their doorstep a week before Thanksgiving. He walks in on her buckling the harness around her hips in front of the mirror and stops in his tracks.
-
They’re in bed again, just cuddling, under a couple covers.
“How long does it take for your blood to clear out of me?”
“A couple days, a week maybe? Why?”
“Damon Salvatore,” she says, crawling over to be face to face with him. “I want you to bite me.”
“Elena Gilbert, we do that on a regular basis.”
“I want you to leave a bite mark on my hip, Damon, and I want it to scar.”
His pupils blow, and she laughs, drops down onto his chest.
“That’s what I thought, yes.”
-
On December first, she’s sporting gauze and tape on her right hip.
-
On December second, Elena falls at work and breaks her arm. By the time Damon gets the call, she’s already at the hospital thirty minutes away in the nearest city.
The minute he finds the room, she grabs his arm and drags him down to her mouth.
“You need to get me out of here,” she says, with such gravity that Damond doesn’t even ask. He just nods, grabs a nurse, and signs her out against medical advice, wheelchair and all. Someone snaps a photo of him as he walks out, but he doesn’t even acknowledge them, just buckles Elena into the car and drives.
As soon as they’re a street away from the hospital, she starts talking.
“There was a cop and a couple nurses, they wanted to know my name and how I got hurt. Shit, Damon.”
“Did you tell them anything?”
“Fake name, fake information, but I’m worried. I didn’t exactly get emancipated.”
“It’ll be okay,” he says, reaching for her hand. “If anyone does track us down, I’ll just compel them. And I’m getting you a vervain necklace.”
“Okay,” she squeezes his hand with her good one and breathes out of her mouth. “Okay. All good, okay.”
-
When a week goes by without anyone kicking down their door, Elena seems to relax.
She even lets him sign her cast, which is a delight.
He brings home a Christmas tree, even cuts out snowflakes by hand to hang from the ceiling. When she gets home, she’s delighted, jumps into his arms and, after a lovely dinner of Indian takeout, drags him into the bedroom. They don’t leave for nearly twelve hours.
-
Christmas Eve is quiet, and lovely, and Damon even roasts a chicken. (Don’t expect this every day, he warns.) They’ve become accustomed - Elena tosses the vegetables while he bastes it, grabs the plates while he’s carving, and they move around each other with so little bubble that she has to angle her hips so as not to bump him. It’s delightfully, comfortably domestic.
If you ignore Elena filling a wine glass from a blood bag, it could even pass as normal.
They have dinner, and Damon says he’s been thinking of getting a cat, which Elena laughs at but says the bathroom could just squeeze a litter box. They clean the same way they cooked, practically intertwined, and the dish towel over Damon’s shoulder makes her heart squeeze.
They sit on the couch, Elena’s legs folded under her, and they talk and cuddle until Elena shouts, rushes to the window, and points out the snow on the beach. It really is beautiful, so they go outside and play in it, delightfully childish in a way that they’ve both been lacking, and when they come in, Damon serves her a cup of hot chocolate, complete with whipped cream on top.
When it’s time to open a present (Elena had insisted that you’re supposed to open just one on Christmas Eve, which Damon was opposed to but relented), Damon pushes a small, velvet box across the table, no wrapping except a bow.
“Damon Salvatore, what is this?”
“Elena Gilbert,” he says. “Come on, open it.” And he’s clearly nervous, in a way she hasn’t seen since Omaha, so she tugs the bow undone and opens the box to find a simple silver ring.
“ Damon .”
“Elena.”
“Is this an engagement ring?”
He avoids her eyes again.
“It is.”
She squeals, gets up and hugs him as well as she can with him sitting down.
“Is that a yes?”
“Well,” she says. “I’m not exactly legal, but I assume you’re okay with a long engagement.”
He puts it on her hand, and she can’t help but feel gleeful. (She can’t help but feel like she should be telling her friends, but she shakes that one off as well as she can.)
They drink from each other that night.
-
Christmas day, there’s a knock on the door, and Elena stiffens where she’s got her head in Damon’s lap on the couch, playing with her hair while she indulges in a Hallmark movie. He looks at her, smiles, and says it’s probably Santa.
He’s not nearly so casual when it’s Stefan’s face he sees.
Before she can react, Damon’s got him by the neck, pushed against the outside wall.
“Nice to see you too, brother,” Stefan gets out, and Elena looks between the two of them, sees Stefan’s eyes catch on her face and linger just a little too long.
“What a cute reunion. How did you find us?” Damon all but growls, and Stefan raises his hands in some form of surrender.
“You made national news. I mean, it took about three weeks, but I finally found someone who had seen one of you. Elena’s boss, actually. A little compulsion and she gave up your address pretty quick.”
Elena tugs at Damon’s arm, gets him to step back.
“Come in, Stefan,” she says, and she pulls Damon by the arm to the table.
As soon as Stefan sits down, Damon practically launches into questioning; why was he here? What did he want? What did he mean by national news?
The explanations are pretty short by comparison. He had been looking for Damon for years; he wanted to reunite with his brother, again.
And Elena was being tracked by the FBI. That one had taken some explaining; apparently Sheriff Forbes had her hands tied when Elena ran away, since there was no proof of foul play, but with a call from a Nebraska area code and a random guy telling her to get off the phone Jenna had given them the information they needed for a federal case. Stefan had been following it since August; with photos of Elena plastered across every TV in the country, he had thought it was Katherine again, but then there was a photo of her in a wheelchair, Damon pushing her, and he realized that both something was up with his brother and it wasn’t Katherine.
“That,” Damon says, “still doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
“I’ve been floating around Mystic Falls.” He turns to Elena. “Your brother’s in the hospital. I figured you should know, and you should probably go back to your family anyway so they know that you’re not dead.”
Damon grabs her hand, and Stefan looks down at her ring, then back up at Damon.
“I do assume you’re not trying to kill her.”
“Always so virtuous, Stefan. If I wanted her dead, she would be.”
“Damon,” Elena says. “If Jeremy’s in the hospital, we have to go back.”
He takes in a breath, just for a second, then lets it out.
“Stefan, you should fly back tonight. We have to drive, if the FBI’s involved, there’s no way she can fly. We’ll be there in three days, two if we do it straight through.”
“Okay,” Stefan says.
“Well, messenger boy, that’s your yearly act of good done. Get out, we have to pack.”
Stefan doesn’t even laugh at that. (Elena would’ve. Damon definitely would’ve. She can see why he’s the fun brother.) He just nods at them, tells Elena it’s nice to meet her, and heads out the door.
She’s up just as fast, throwing clothes into a bag for herself and Damon. She’s practically shaking, has to try a couple times to pick the damn thing up, and then Damon’s there, arms wrapped around her, and she’s crying, of all things.
“It’s my fault,” and Damon’s stroking her hair, holding her tight.
“It’s not, Elena.”
“It is . I’m his sister, I’m supposed to be watching over him, and I’m on the other side of the country and he’s hurt, Damon!”
He grabs her shoulders, gets her to look at him.
“You’re a person , Elena. You made a choice for you, and that’s not a crime. You can’t live for other people.”
She’s still crying, ugly tears, and he lets her lean back into his chest, doesn’t even notice his shirt getting wet, just rubs circles into her back until she’s calmer, ready to go, and he asks her to grab their wallets while he changes his shirt and before long they’re in the car, and it doesn’t even take an hour for Elena to fall asleep against the window.
When she wakes up, they’ve just crossed into Utah. Damon pulls over at a grocery store, and they get enough snacks to keep her going for the drive. They only stop one more time that day, in Topeka, for a bathroom break, then they go again. Elena pees on the side of the road in West Indiana, and by around midnight, they’re in Mystic Falls.
Stefan opens the door of the boarding house before Damon can even knock, a sleeping Elena in his arms, and after he lays her down in the bed Stefan offers him a bourbon.
It’s a strange sort of feeling to be at ease with the brother you’ve been in conflict with for the last century and a half, but Damon’s had a lot of change lately. A lot of peace.
Stefan, of course, has a lot he’s been doing (dating Caroline Forbes, apparently, who Damon’s heard quite a bit about). As they talk, he realizes how serendipitous it is; despite several decades and thousands of miles apart, they’ve still ended up with two girls who are practically sisters, still back in Mystic Falls.
There’s always been some sort of magnetism about the place.
-
Elena stumbles out of bed at six forty three am, still not quite oriented, and Damon’s at her side as soon as she’s out of the room.
“Come on, let’s feed you,” he says, walking her to the living room.
“Visiting hours start at eight,” Stefan calls from the couch. “I’ll go tell Zach you’re up, he normally starts cooking around now.”
“Hey, you feeling okay, Elena?”
“Yeah,” she says, pulling her hair behind her ear. “Yeah, just. I’m worried about Jeremy.”
“Hey, worst comes to worst I give him a sip of me,” and Elena almost laughs, enough to ease her mind just a bit, to let Damon start talking about what they’re gonna do today.
They should see her parents. Jenna’s probably in town, considering everything. It’s a lot to think of, and Elena’s grateful when a man sets a tray of food on the coffee table, even though she doesn’t manage to eat most of it.
“Alright, come on,” Damon says, and Elena looks up. “You look miserable, it’s half an hour until they let people through, and we have to find parking anyway.”
It strikes her, as Damon pulls her to her feet, that she’s incredibly grateful to have met Damon when she did.
When they walk into the waiting room at eight on the dot, the entire place falls silent, and she hadn’t quite anticipated the impact that her supposed disappearance would have on Mystic Falls. She freezes with everyone’s eyes on her, even the nurses, and it’s only Damon’s hand on her back that gets her to take a step.
He does the talking to the woman at the desk; Elena just stands there, trying to avoid everyone’s eyes, staring down the counter until Damon walks her into the elevator, down a couple hallways; he stops in front of a door.
“Jeremy!”
“ Elena? ” She only has one arm to hug him, and it goes quickly after that; he’s shocked, she’s guilty, and eventually Miranda Gilbert strides into the room with all the grace developed over twenty years of supporting non-controversial causes and attending med school reunions.
The first thing she says is Elena. The second thing is vampire , and then she pulls a stake out of her purse.
Damon’s got Elena by the arm before she can blink and they’re in the parking lot within thirty seconds. Undoubtedly someone saw them, but Damon’s too tired and too pumped with adrenaline to care, and even as Elena starts to have a (small) crisis in the car, he holds down on the gas.
“
Why
,” she says, “does my mother know about vampires?”
“Founder’s council.” Damon sighs, looks at her, lets his attention slide. “It was formed to hunt vampires. Katherine.”
She opens her mouth to reply, but a scream comes out instead, and the car hits the wall of the bridge with a thunk, throwing Damon into the steering wheel, and they plunge into the water.
When he regains consciousness, she’s already cold.
By the time he drags her to the bank, she’s awake again, and squinting at the sun.
-
He brings her dinner. One college freshman, slightly buzzed, bereaved of her phone, and Elena just about drains her.
-
He catches her standing in the mirror, running her thumb over her fang, pressing down, piercing the skin. It heals before the blood even wells up.
-
Caroline comes to visit. She waltzes into the Salvatore house, yells out Elena’s full, legal name, hits on Damon, and proceeds to pronounce every outfit Elena brought an utter travesty .
It’s so terrifyingly normal that Elena actually feels normal. Even though she nearly bites Care. Stefan pulls her back and then asks Caroline to dinner, and Damon takes Elena back to Whitmore for theirs.
-
Bonnie, oddly, knows exactly what’s going on the moment she sees Elena.
“I did some research,” she says. “Asked my grams. I guess I was right about something not quite adding up about you leaving.”
She has an odd calm about her, and Damon averts her eyes. She makes Elena a daylight ring in the kitchen, Zach watching, and makes her promise not to go on a killing spree.
-
Her parents tell Damon to go fuck himself, and shake their heads at Elena. Jeremy, though, is utterly thrilled to have her back.
He's the best man at the wedding.
She wears an actual white tea dress from 1956, and Damon has his leather jacket on, makes some remark about the cast of Grease between holding her hand and leading her in a dance.
He slides the ring onto her finger before he’s technically supposed to, which Caroline giggles at, but the ceremony otherwise goes off without a hitch. They eat, drink, and dance the night away, and at the end, Damon drives them away in a (refurbished, new-to-him, red) Camaro. He oh so traditionally picks her up to walk across the threshold of their townhouse (not half an hour from Mystic Falls), and when they collapse into the bed, she straddles him, pins his wrists above his head.
“Damon Salvatore,” she says. “This is quite indecent.”
“We,” he all but flutters his lashes, “are quite meant to be indecent, Elena Salvatore.”
He draws her name out, she bites his bottom lip; the night doesn’t quite end, but at some point the sun comes up.
He watches it cast rays of sunlight across her hair like it had in that motel room, and he’s already thinking of new things to show her.