[fic] The Taylor Swift Anthology (1/4)
Title: The Taylor Swift Anthology (1/4)
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: T/PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Damon POV, minor Damon/OFC, Damon/Elena, minor Stefan/Elena
Category: Angst, Romance, Humor
Word Count: ~2100
Summary: Damon Salvatore fucking hates Taylor Swift.
Spoilers: Up through 2x08 "Rose."
Warnings: n/a
Show/Bookverse: Show
Author's Notes: Lyrics taken from the various Taylor Swift songs "Tim McGraw," "Cold As You," and "Picture To Burn."
Some girls just can't resist my good looks,
my style and my charm, and my unflinching
ability to listen to Taylor Swift.
~Damon Salvatore, from 1x04 "Family Ties."
Damon's pouring himself a drink when he sees it out of the corner of his eye. It's sitting on the bureau, the one that holds Stefan's old record player and his current CD player. There are stacks of CDs there, but the one that catches Damon's attention shows a girl in a purple dress thingy with lots of curly, blonde hair.
"Oh, gawd," he groans to the empty room. Damn Caroline Forbes. He'd bet his supply of blood bank goodies that she's the one who brought that particular CD into his house. Even Stefan, with all his need for the human experience, has better taste than that.
Damon Salvatore hates Taylor Swift, despite his ability to listen to her music.
He doesn't hate her because she can't sing (which, she totally can't), and he doesn't hate her because she's so overexposed it's ridiculous (which, she totally is). He doesn't hate her even though when he's driving his car on any given day and he does a scan of the available radio stations, he's bound to hear her on at least four of the stations he can pick up.
No, these aren't the reasons he loathes the blonde, guitar strumming waif from Nashville.
He'd been forced to listen to her music about four years previously, when he'd been dating a girl named Cassy at Brown University. (There for a while he'd been spending one year in each of the fifty states, and 2006 had been the year of Rhode Island.) Cassy was a Bio-Chem major, but was not as unattractive as that course of study might suggest. She was one of those insanely beautiful smart people who hadn't been fazed by the reveal that he was a vampire, and she'd let Damon feed on her without any compulsion whatsoever.
Cassy's flaw, if she'd had any, had been her taste in music. (Well, and she wasn't Katherine, which ultimately was why he ended all the dalliances he'd had over the years that had somehow escalated into some sense of permanence.)
The first time she'd insisted that he listen to the song "Teardrops On My Guitar," Damon had smiled his way through a chorus of yeah, it's great all the while being acutely aware of his 160-plus year existence in comparison with Cassy's short two decades-worth. He'd simply shaken his head and moved on, not thinking too much of it.
Cassy had become--obsessed--with the CD. She listened to it constantly, and after a while, just the repetition alone had made him learn the words. On the days he caught himself singing along (or worse, being away from Cassy and having different songs stuck in head without it playing anywhere near him), he would quickly stop, rolling his own eyes at himself.
He'd planned on leaving Rhode Island at the end of the year anyway, scenic Ohio being his destination, but he'd ended up lingering. He blames all of that on Taylor Swift. Cassy had been a fun girl, but she'd been nothing abnormally special. He'd obviously been brainwashed by lyrics like September saw a month of tears/Me thankin' God that you weren't here/To see me like that and You never did give a damn thing, honey/But I cried, cried for you/And I know you wouldn't have told nobody if I died, died for you.
For the space of nine additional months, he couldn't bring himself to do to Cassy what Katherine had done to him. At the time, all he'd had were his suspicions, things he was going to rectify in 2009 when he went back to Mystic Falls. Once the comet came back, and he found a way to get Katherine out of the tomb, he would find out why she had made Stefan a vampire too. He would find out the truth, and though he was sure he could forgive her for anything, and he would be her savior because it would be him who got her out, he still needed to know. He needed to assuage that feeling within that if she lied about it being only him, what else had she lied about?
Counted all the scars you made/Now that I'm sittin' here thinkin' it through/I've never been anywhere cold as you.
Taylor Swift might have been sixteen at the time, but there were moments when Damon found himself lingering over particular lines, and wondering. The term old soul got thrown around from time to time, and since he could easily find the record of Taylor's birth (December 13, 1989 -- the clerk at the hospital in Pennsylvania had easily given up the location of their files with a little compulsion), he knew she was, in fact, human.
A human girl who just happened to be so young and sang songs that, like, legitimately depressed Damon with their heart-wrenching accuracy.
So, yeah, by the time he extricated himself from Cassy and Rhode Island, he'd been there almost a year and a half. And he fucking hated Taylor Swift.
*
Ironically enough, 2009, the year of the comet, also became the year of Taylor Swift.
Damon managed to avoid listening to the record that she won so many awards for, but that was because he took a break from college girls and sorority houses. But by the fall of 2009, he was spending a little too much time with high school girls (yeah, it made him like a child molester, he supposes, but back where he came from people got married when they were fourteen) and his one rule while tolerating anyone (Caroline) who listened to Taylor Swift was just to not pay any attention to the lyrics. It worked fairly well, because the only song he'd accidentally listened to was one about a fifteen year old girl who gave her virginity away to some dick who treated her like dirt. (Damon had never had a thing for virgins, so it didn't apply to him. More experienced women tended to be less clingy, and he needed less clingy.)
Then, you know, Stefan showed up in Mystic Falls too, they met Elena (Stefan first, yeah, whatever), the Comet came, they opened the tomb, found out Katherine wasn't there, and everything seemed to crash down around him.
The worst part was definitely that he'd always known, deep down inside himself. She had lied about many things, called all the shots, and he and Stefan had gone along with it (why, Damon wasn't really sure other than they were young, and stupid, and thinking with their dicks), and she had compelled Stefan to drink her blood. The fact that she wasn't even in the tomb shouldn't have been as surprising as it was.
(Shouldn't have torn his heart out the way it did.)
Somehow he'd always believed something that was totally untrue. He'd been optimistic about one damn thing, and it had bitten him in the ass.
Now, it's the fall of 2010. He's over Katherine, though he's no doubt traded in one torch carrying-century for another with Elena, but here he stands in his own living room looking at Taylor Swift's newest CD. It's in his hand, and he's reading the names of the songs off the back, even though he doesn't consciously remember picking it up.
"Damon?"
When he hears his name, he jumps, startled, and the CD goes flying out of his grasp. He turns around, sees Elena standing at the entrance to the great room, and he knows if he had the ability to blush, his face would be bright red right now. "Hey," he says as nonchalantly as possible. He moves away from the stereo and watches her carefully.
"Do you know where Stefan is?" she asks. "I--we were supposed to meet here, but he's not in the house."
Damon nods as he takes a swallow of his whiskey. "He said he was going to go hunting for a bit, but he'll be back soon. He should be back any minute."
Elena's lips curve upward as she walks further into the room, and her eyes move along the floor at Damon's feet. "You dropped something," she says, pointing down.
He follows her finger as though he has no idea what's there, and then bends over to pick it up. Holding it up in a self-explanatory matter, he mutters, "Caroline's."
"Sure it is."
Then Elena giggles, and Damon sort of does a double take.
Is she teasing him?
He's so dumbfounded, he can't find words to argue, so he just sets the CD back on the bureau top and then moves away from the CD player. Elena fiddles with the scarf around her neck and watches him, her eyes dancing. "We can listen to it, if you want," she says.
He scoffs. "I don't listen to Taylor Swift."
"I don't know, you seemed pretty interested in it a minute ago."
He can tell she's actually trying not to laugh now, and he finds himself as charmed as he is irritated by it. (Okay, fine, he's much more charmed than he is irritated.)
"Shut up," he finally says in response, taking another sip of his drink. He makes his way across the room and sits down on the sofa. "What are you and Stefan up to, today?" he asks conversationally. He really doesn't want to know what big date they're going on, but what else are they going to talk about?
(Not Taylor Swift.)
"We're going to the library. We have reports due for Alaric's class."
Damon bites his tongue to not comment on the ludicrousness of the teacher grading Stefan on a report he'd write about a time period he actually lived through, but from the little grin still on Elena's face, it's like she's reading his mind anyway. He smiles with saccharine sweetness. "How very seventeen of both of you," he comments, raising his glass to her.
She does laugh now, out loud, and leans against the arm of the other sofa opposite him. "I've actually been thinking about that lately--how very trite it all must be to you."
He narrows his eyes at her. "Trite to me, or trite in general to all vampires?"
She nods at him. "I was thinking specifically of you. Of how it's trite to you, but not to Stefan."
"Just one of the many differences between us," he quips. Finishing off his drink, he leans forward and sets the empty glass on the coffee table.
"Yeah," she says, and her wistful tone draws his eyes back to her face. "But you probably hated school the first time around, right? Why would you go back and do it again on purpose."
She did that, every so often, just pegged him so completely that he felt more naked than the times he'd had his shirt off in front on her. He quirks an eyebrow at her instead of responding. He thinks of telling her the only reason Stefan's there is because of her, but she probably understands that as well.
Hell, maybe if it meant he'd get to be with Elena, he'd torture himself with it all over again too. It wasn't a bad idea when he thought of it in that vein. (No pun intended.)
He hears the door open and Stefan's arrival ends their time together. All for the better, really. No need to prolong the torture of loving someone he could never have, yet again.
When Stefan hugs her from behind, she says, "Oh, hi!"
Damon rolls his eyes, and grabs his glass. He gets up and walks back to the liquor cabinet. His back to them, he ignores their agreement to take Elena's car so that they can come back to the boarding house later. Then Elena's voice is directed at him. "Damon, don't think, just answer: What's your favorite Taylor Swift song?"
He replies before he can stop himself. "Picture To Burn," he says, and the lyrics hum in his head a little. So watch me strike a match/On all my wasted time/As far as I'm concerned/You're just another picture to burn.
He turns around, and Elena's smile is a little too wide, a little too beautiful. "Excellent choice," she says with a nod. Stefan's hand in is hers and he's pulling her towards the entry way. "Never Grow Up is mine," she says. "It's on her new CD. But you probably already know that."
She laughs again, and disappears through the doorway.
"I don't listen to Taylor Swift," Damon shouts as he hears the front door open. It's futile, he knows. But he can't help himself, he's got to preserve something here.
"Oh, I know!" she calls back.
He fucking hates Taylor Swift. (But he totally loves Elena, so he takes the CD upstairs with him.)
Part Two
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: T/PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Damon POV, minor Damon/OFC, Damon/Elena, minor Stefan/Elena
Category: Angst, Romance, Humor
Word Count: ~2100
Summary: Damon Salvatore fucking hates Taylor Swift.
Spoilers: Up through 2x08 "Rose."
Warnings: n/a
Show/Bookverse: Show
Author's Notes: Lyrics taken from the various Taylor Swift songs "Tim McGraw," "Cold As You," and "Picture To Burn."
Some girls just can't resist my good looks,
my style and my charm, and my unflinching
ability to listen to Taylor Swift.
~Damon Salvatore, from 1x04 "Family Ties."
Damon's pouring himself a drink when he sees it out of the corner of his eye. It's sitting on the bureau, the one that holds Stefan's old record player and his current CD player. There are stacks of CDs there, but the one that catches Damon's attention shows a girl in a purple dress thingy with lots of curly, blonde hair.
"Oh, gawd," he groans to the empty room. Damn Caroline Forbes. He'd bet his supply of blood bank goodies that she's the one who brought that particular CD into his house. Even Stefan, with all his need for the human experience, has better taste than that.
Damon Salvatore hates Taylor Swift, despite his ability to listen to her music.
He doesn't hate her because she can't sing (which, she totally can't), and he doesn't hate her because she's so overexposed it's ridiculous (which, she totally is). He doesn't hate her even though when he's driving his car on any given day and he does a scan of the available radio stations, he's bound to hear her on at least four of the stations he can pick up.
No, these aren't the reasons he loathes the blonde, guitar strumming waif from Nashville.
He'd been forced to listen to her music about four years previously, when he'd been dating a girl named Cassy at Brown University. (There for a while he'd been spending one year in each of the fifty states, and 2006 had been the year of Rhode Island.) Cassy was a Bio-Chem major, but was not as unattractive as that course of study might suggest. She was one of those insanely beautiful smart people who hadn't been fazed by the reveal that he was a vampire, and she'd let Damon feed on her without any compulsion whatsoever.
Cassy's flaw, if she'd had any, had been her taste in music. (Well, and she wasn't Katherine, which ultimately was why he ended all the dalliances he'd had over the years that had somehow escalated into some sense of permanence.)
The first time she'd insisted that he listen to the song "Teardrops On My Guitar," Damon had smiled his way through a chorus of yeah, it's great all the while being acutely aware of his 160-plus year existence in comparison with Cassy's short two decades-worth. He'd simply shaken his head and moved on, not thinking too much of it.
Cassy had become--obsessed--with the CD. She listened to it constantly, and after a while, just the repetition alone had made him learn the words. On the days he caught himself singing along (or worse, being away from Cassy and having different songs stuck in head without it playing anywhere near him), he would quickly stop, rolling his own eyes at himself.
He'd planned on leaving Rhode Island at the end of the year anyway, scenic Ohio being his destination, but he'd ended up lingering. He blames all of that on Taylor Swift. Cassy had been a fun girl, but she'd been nothing abnormally special. He'd obviously been brainwashed by lyrics like September saw a month of tears/Me thankin' God that you weren't here/To see me like that and You never did give a damn thing, honey/But I cried, cried for you/And I know you wouldn't have told nobody if I died, died for you.
For the space of nine additional months, he couldn't bring himself to do to Cassy what Katherine had done to him. At the time, all he'd had were his suspicions, things he was going to rectify in 2009 when he went back to Mystic Falls. Once the comet came back, and he found a way to get Katherine out of the tomb, he would find out why she had made Stefan a vampire too. He would find out the truth, and though he was sure he could forgive her for anything, and he would be her savior because it would be him who got her out, he still needed to know. He needed to assuage that feeling within that if she lied about it being only him, what else had she lied about?
Counted all the scars you made/Now that I'm sittin' here thinkin' it through/I've never been anywhere cold as you.
Taylor Swift might have been sixteen at the time, but there were moments when Damon found himself lingering over particular lines, and wondering. The term old soul got thrown around from time to time, and since he could easily find the record of Taylor's birth (December 13, 1989 -- the clerk at the hospital in Pennsylvania had easily given up the location of their files with a little compulsion), he knew she was, in fact, human.
A human girl who just happened to be so young and sang songs that, like, legitimately depressed Damon with their heart-wrenching accuracy.
So, yeah, by the time he extricated himself from Cassy and Rhode Island, he'd been there almost a year and a half. And he fucking hated Taylor Swift.
*
Ironically enough, 2009, the year of the comet, also became the year of Taylor Swift.
Damon managed to avoid listening to the record that she won so many awards for, but that was because he took a break from college girls and sorority houses. But by the fall of 2009, he was spending a little too much time with high school girls (yeah, it made him like a child molester, he supposes, but back where he came from people got married when they were fourteen) and his one rule while tolerating anyone (Caroline) who listened to Taylor Swift was just to not pay any attention to the lyrics. It worked fairly well, because the only song he'd accidentally listened to was one about a fifteen year old girl who gave her virginity away to some dick who treated her like dirt. (Damon had never had a thing for virgins, so it didn't apply to him. More experienced women tended to be less clingy, and he needed less clingy.)
Then, you know, Stefan showed up in Mystic Falls too, they met Elena (Stefan first, yeah, whatever), the Comet came, they opened the tomb, found out Katherine wasn't there, and everything seemed to crash down around him.
The worst part was definitely that he'd always known, deep down inside himself. She had lied about many things, called all the shots, and he and Stefan had gone along with it (why, Damon wasn't really sure other than they were young, and stupid, and thinking with their dicks), and she had compelled Stefan to drink her blood. The fact that she wasn't even in the tomb shouldn't have been as surprising as it was.
(Shouldn't have torn his heart out the way it did.)
Somehow he'd always believed something that was totally untrue. He'd been optimistic about one damn thing, and it had bitten him in the ass.
Now, it's the fall of 2010. He's over Katherine, though he's no doubt traded in one torch carrying-century for another with Elena, but here he stands in his own living room looking at Taylor Swift's newest CD. It's in his hand, and he's reading the names of the songs off the back, even though he doesn't consciously remember picking it up.
"Damon?"
When he hears his name, he jumps, startled, and the CD goes flying out of his grasp. He turns around, sees Elena standing at the entrance to the great room, and he knows if he had the ability to blush, his face would be bright red right now. "Hey," he says as nonchalantly as possible. He moves away from the stereo and watches her carefully.
"Do you know where Stefan is?" she asks. "I--we were supposed to meet here, but he's not in the house."
Damon nods as he takes a swallow of his whiskey. "He said he was going to go hunting for a bit, but he'll be back soon. He should be back any minute."
Elena's lips curve upward as she walks further into the room, and her eyes move along the floor at Damon's feet. "You dropped something," she says, pointing down.
He follows her finger as though he has no idea what's there, and then bends over to pick it up. Holding it up in a self-explanatory matter, he mutters, "Caroline's."
"Sure it is."
Then Elena giggles, and Damon sort of does a double take.
Is she teasing him?
He's so dumbfounded, he can't find words to argue, so he just sets the CD back on the bureau top and then moves away from the CD player. Elena fiddles with the scarf around her neck and watches him, her eyes dancing. "We can listen to it, if you want," she says.
He scoffs. "I don't listen to Taylor Swift."
"I don't know, you seemed pretty interested in it a minute ago."
He can tell she's actually trying not to laugh now, and he finds himself as charmed as he is irritated by it. (Okay, fine, he's much more charmed than he is irritated.)
"Shut up," he finally says in response, taking another sip of his drink. He makes his way across the room and sits down on the sofa. "What are you and Stefan up to, today?" he asks conversationally. He really doesn't want to know what big date they're going on, but what else are they going to talk about?
(Not Taylor Swift.)
"We're going to the library. We have reports due for Alaric's class."
Damon bites his tongue to not comment on the ludicrousness of the teacher grading Stefan on a report he'd write about a time period he actually lived through, but from the little grin still on Elena's face, it's like she's reading his mind anyway. He smiles with saccharine sweetness. "How very seventeen of both of you," he comments, raising his glass to her.
She does laugh now, out loud, and leans against the arm of the other sofa opposite him. "I've actually been thinking about that lately--how very trite it all must be to you."
He narrows his eyes at her. "Trite to me, or trite in general to all vampires?"
She nods at him. "I was thinking specifically of you. Of how it's trite to you, but not to Stefan."
"Just one of the many differences between us," he quips. Finishing off his drink, he leans forward and sets the empty glass on the coffee table.
"Yeah," she says, and her wistful tone draws his eyes back to her face. "But you probably hated school the first time around, right? Why would you go back and do it again on purpose."
She did that, every so often, just pegged him so completely that he felt more naked than the times he'd had his shirt off in front on her. He quirks an eyebrow at her instead of responding. He thinks of telling her the only reason Stefan's there is because of her, but she probably understands that as well.
Hell, maybe if it meant he'd get to be with Elena, he'd torture himself with it all over again too. It wasn't a bad idea when he thought of it in that vein. (No pun intended.)
He hears the door open and Stefan's arrival ends their time together. All for the better, really. No need to prolong the torture of loving someone he could never have, yet again.
When Stefan hugs her from behind, she says, "Oh, hi!"
Damon rolls his eyes, and grabs his glass. He gets up and walks back to the liquor cabinet. His back to them, he ignores their agreement to take Elena's car so that they can come back to the boarding house later. Then Elena's voice is directed at him. "Damon, don't think, just answer: What's your favorite Taylor Swift song?"
He replies before he can stop himself. "Picture To Burn," he says, and the lyrics hum in his head a little. So watch me strike a match/On all my wasted time/As far as I'm concerned/You're just another picture to burn.
He turns around, and Elena's smile is a little too wide, a little too beautiful. "Excellent choice," she says with a nod. Stefan's hand in is hers and he's pulling her towards the entry way. "Never Grow Up is mine," she says. "It's on her new CD. But you probably already know that."
She laughs again, and disappears through the doorway.
"I don't listen to Taylor Swift," Damon shouts as he hears the front door open. It's futile, he knows. But he can't help himself, he's got to preserve something here.
"Oh, I know!" she calls back.
He fucking hates Taylor Swift. (But he totally loves Elena, so he takes the CD upstairs with him.)
Part Two