[fic] Healed By the Same (1/3)
Title: Healed By the Same (1/3)
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Damon & Elena POV; Damon/Elena
Warnings: Everything up through 2x16; also: spoilers for the show The West Wing.
Word count: ~5100
Summary: Damon takes Elena away from Mystic Falls for her safety (but without her consent).
Author’s Notes: I wrote this for linsell_farm, for fandomaid, but also because Ian Somerhalder? He gives me the feelings and now apparently, he's giving me the plot bunnies. This all came from him saying he wants Damon to kidnap Elena, and linsell_farm saying she wanted Damon and Elena to ride horses. IDEK. Beta'd by the charmingly brilliant whenjenn and the always insightful becca_radcgg. Title lifted from the song "Timing is Everything," on the Country Strong Soundtrack.
You can be hurt by love,
Or healed by the same,
Timing is everything.
He kidnaps her on a Thursday, picking her up from school on a day when Stefan never turned up because of other pressing issues (read: Klaus finally came to town). She doesn't realize he's taking her somewhere other than his house until about twenty minutes into the drive because as fortune would have it the Boarding House is off the same route they need to take to leave town. When she starts to question-and then to shout that she is not going anywhere for her own good, thank you very much!-he looks at her from across the bench seat of the Camaro and says bluntly:
"Either shut up and be good, or I'll rip that necklace off of you and make you."
She folds her arms over her chest and turns her head away from him, staring out into the rapidly passing scenery.
She doesn't speak again for two hours, even when they stop to get gas. She gets out to pee and he threatens her with snapped limbs if she tries to shimmy out the high window of the public restroom.
It's as the sun is going down, and Damon has popped in his Mumford and Sons CD, that she asks dully, "Where are we going anyway?"
He glances over at her, but she's still not looking at him, as though to do so would suddenly make this all okay. Instead, she stares straight ahead, and the beauty of her profile grabs at something in his chest so that he has to shake himself to look back at the road. He can't go all soft and feel sorry for her. He knows what Elena's like; they all do. That's why he'd been chosen for this job, because everyone agreed he'd be mean enough to handle her the way she needs to be handled. (Since they weren’t traveling with a witch who could cast an entrapment spell at any given location, he even had Stefan's permission to use compulsion if he had to.)
"Ric's family has a cabin, just like the Gilbert Clan, but his is in upstate New York, and nobody knows about it. Everyone thinks you'll be safer there."
"Everyone?" she snaps.
"I know you think I did this without Stefan's approval-it would be far easier to hate me, and me alone, I'm sure-but he is just as onboard about it."
"Then why can't I call him?" (He'd taken her cell phone from her with a sneaky ploy about fifteen minutes into the drive.)
"Because cell phones are traceable."
Elena snorts. "What? Is Klaus with the FBI?"
He slides her a look of menace mixed with annoyance, but she's still not looking at him, so it serves no purpose.
"We're not taking any chances," he says when her eyes don't even skitter towards him in the least.
"How will you get in, if it's Alaric's place? Me inviting you in won't work. (Like I would anyway)," she mutters under her breath.
"Ric and I came up here last month together. We already worked that out."
Now her head snaps around and she demands, "You've been planning this for that long?!"
He meets her gaze and gives her a trademark smirk. "Longer," he quips.
"I hate you," she spits, and her head whips back so that she's staring out the window into the gathering darkness.
"I know," he says, trying to keep the devil-may-care tone in his voice.
After that she stops talking to him again, and really, it's for the best.
It's almost midnight when they arrive at their destination. Despite her anger, by then Elena is tired. He can see it in the droop of her shoulders as she climbs from the car. He pops the trunk and walks around to get their luggage.
She comes around too and looks inside. "Who packed my suitcase?" she asks.
Her voice sounds rusty, unused, and above all, defeated. He hates that, he really does, but he steels himself against any tenderness. This is for her own good, and he really doesn't give a flying fuck if she hates him forever if it keeps her alive.
(Okay, he cares, but not enough to let it interfere with the job at hand.) "Bonnie," he replies.
He lifts the suitcase out, and swings his own duffle bag up onto his shoulder. "But I was the one who grabbed this guy," he says, reaching into the depths of the trunk to pull out her stuffed teddy bear.
He holds the toy in front of her face, and there is a split second where she can't disguise that it pleases her. She looks at him, and even in the darkness, he can tell she's not as mad now. "Thank you," she says, taking the bear from his grasp.
Her fingers brush over his and Damon, who isn't into Harlequin romances, doesn't feel anything. Slight contact between fingertips is not enough to give him a hard-on.
(But the idea of being alone with Elena for an indefinite period of time totally is.)
They spend the first week watching television on DVD (who knew Ric was a fan of The West Wing?), and reading all the books in the house (there is no library like at the Boarding House, but there are a few shelves full of interesting reads, not all of them non-fiction historical crap).
The house isn't overly large, but it has two bedrooms and a living room that opens into the kitchen. A dining table separates the two areas into distinct sections, but it's small enough that if you're in the kitchen you can still hear and see the TV pretty easily. Elena cooks for herself, and Damon eats occasionally when the mood strikes, because he and Ric had stocked the cupboards and freezer when they’d come up to scout the location. He brought a cooler full of blood bags, which he stashes in one of the vegetable crispers, and he keeps himself down to a cup or so a day, since he's not sure how long this supply is going to have to last him.
They don't talk much, because despite the Olive Branch Teddy Bear offering, Elena has principles about her anger. But on the morning of the seventh day (which is a Wednesday anyway), they don't rest as prescribed in the Bible. Instead Elena comes to stand in front of him as he's reclining on one of the sofas. She kicks the bottom of his foot and says, "Play Monopoly with me."
This is neither a question nor a demand, so Damon is inclined. (Besides, if it means she's talking to him again, he's gotta go for it. He's sick of the silence and being alone with his thoughts.)
They agree on the outset not to play the way most people do (buying property as they land on it), but instead, Elena shuffles the properties like a deck of cards and then passes them out between the two of them. From there they barter and bicker, and three and half hours later, Damon wins most ungallantly. He stands up from the dining room table and sings We Are the Champions while Elena pouts and puts the game away.
He punches her lightly in the arm and says, "Come on! Don't be such a spoil sport. It was your idea to pass out the properties. Is it my fault I got Boardwalk and Park Place?"
"You're an ass," she gripes, but he sees her lips quirking against her will, and he just wants her to smile, to be happy, if even for a split second. (Come to think of it, he should have let her win, but he's a little too competitive for that sort of bullshit.)
He punches her arm again and she spins in her seat towards him, retaliating faster than he gives her credit for, socking him in the stomach as she leaps to her feet. Of course it doesn't hurt him, but he grunts like any good Fake TV Wrestler, bending over in mock pain. She moves to the left and he grabs her around the waist without thinking. He tickles her like they're in the seventh grade, and when she screams and twists away from him, he follows her and they end up falling over the back of the couch.
The momentum carries Damon until he's on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table, while Elena laughs madly from the relative safety of the couch cushions. He reaches up, jerks her forward until she falls on top of him and her hair is in his mouth; she almost knees him in the groin accidentally.
Then he flips them both so that he's on top of her and when he pins her arms above her head, her laughter switches off like a light.
(He's sure Stefan didn't give him permission for this, but whatever.)
She's breathing heavily from the scuffle and the laughing, but as he stares down at her, he feels it change. She's not afraid of him, and she's not trying to get away, and that? That's why he gets off of her without doing anything.
"I'm gonna go for a walk," he says, and he opens the door and steps outside. (Practically runs.)
He hears her say his name, but he just trots down the steps without looking back. He's gone maybe ten steps before he remembers he can't really leave her alone. She could very easily steal his car and go back to Mystic Falls.
"Damon!" she shouts, and he turns to see her running down the steps towards him. She skids to a halt in front of him and he clenches his hands into fists to keep himself from grabbing at her.
This had been a terrible idea. He'd known it when Stefan first said it, but the masochist in him had agreed without any hesitation.
It's Elena, his brain had said. They needed to protect her no matter what, even if self-preservation became a casualty of war.
"You can't leave me here alone," she says, and he wonders if she knows she's got Stockholm Syndrome.
He wants to say, I'm having a hard time not leaving you alone, or haven't you noticed? but he doesn't, he just nods his head jerkily and turns away from her to look out over the farmland all around them.
She reaches for his hand and says, "Let's go down there and see if Ric's neighbors will let us ride their horses."
He's stupefied by both her suggestion and her fingers lacing through his, but he allows her to pull him down the lane. "Why would they let us ride their horses?" he asks.
She looks at him from the corner of her eye. "I don't know. Maybe you could...encourage them?"
He thinks the tide has changed suddenly, and he doesn't know why.
Their new hobby for the next week is to horseback ride every day. The neighbors are actually a really nice older couple who don't even have to be compelled once they know that Damon and Elena are friends of the Saltzman family. (Damon compels them not to ask why they're hiding out up there and to never tell anyone about them, but that's for safety reasons, not trickery.)
They race each other quite a bit, and depending on the day, and the horse, either one of them is declared the winner. This always ensues a chorus of We are the Champions which Damon starts to fondly think of as their song (and Elena sings against her will) until he realizes he's thinking anything of the sort and then he wants to slap himself.
He's been tempted a hundred different times in a hundred different ways to just haul Elena into his arms and show her how she makes him feel. (There is something ridiculously arousing about her complaining about her thighs and ass being sore from the horseback riding.) By contrast, he almost calls Stefan about half as many times to tell him that they need to rethink this plan. Then he reminds himself it's been eight, nine, ten, then eleven days, and asks himself if he's really such a pussy that he can't handle one little girl for a couple weeks? Undoubtedly it won't take the Scooby-Doo gang any longer than that to either kill Klaus, or come to the conclusion that they need Damon and Elena back more than they need them gone.
"Damon!" she shouts, bringing his attention back to her. She's riding a beautiful black gelding today, and his coat shimmers in the sunlight just like her hair does. He wheels his horse around to get closer to her and the smile that spreads over her face convinces him that no, he cannot handle one little girl. Not when it's Elena. "There's a whole herd of sheep over here! How have we not seen them before?" She points, and as he comes past a small copse of trees, he sees what she sees.
There are a bunch of sheep, but what draws his eye most is all the lambs. There are at least ten of them and they're all running and jumping joyfully, bleating their little hearts out. He brings his horse to a halt next to Elena's and watches with her in silence for a few minutes.
"It's fun being in the country," she says and her leg hits his as her horse shifts restlessly.
"And to think, you didn't want to come," he says drolly.
She looks over at him, but her smile never wavers. "You didn't tell me the selling points."
"I guess I forgot the brochure, babe. Sorry." He holds a phantom paper in his hand and pretends to read, "Scenic landscapes, horseback riding, and shepherdless sheep, all at your disposal."
She laughs, and adds, "The perfect escape from real life!"
Their eyes catch and hold, and Damon wonders if that's what she thinks. That this isn't real, that what's been going on since the first moment he ever met her is somehow less than the reality of her life.
It stings more than he would ever admit because he feels like nothing was real at all, not until Elena. Life before her had that nightmarish quality that is so widely associated with vampires. Life since has been harder to bear, but sweeter too.
It's been real, every part of it, for Damon.
"I know I was a pain at first, Damon," she says softly. "But I'm actually having a great time."
Her eyes linger on his, like she's trying to convey something more than what's coming out of her mouth. He forces his lips to form a smile and then he turns away from the sheep. "We should probably get back," he calls over his shoulder.
He digs his heels in hard to his horse, and it takes off quickly across the field. Distance is only a metaphor at this point, but he needs some of it between him and her very badly.
"This season isn't as good as the other ones," she says. Picking up the DVD case, she looks at the back of it, as though The West Wing, the Complete Fifth Season will explain to her why it sucks in comparison with the previous seasons.
"I think they got new writers," Damon says from his position to the right of her on the sofa. "That Sorkin guy's name isn't on the credits anymore."
She continues to scan the DVD holder and Damon says, “If you don't like it, we don't have to keep watching it."
"No!" Elena exclaims, feeling panicked suddenly. She lifts her head to look at him and Damon's eyes widen in surprise. "We have to find out what happens with Josh and Donna!"
He chuckles and then his eyes shift back to the TV. He's snacking on a bowl of popcorn that rests on his stomach. "Such a girl," he murmurs, his smile softer and sweeter than usual. Elena stares at him a little too long, her mind cataloguing a whole lot of details she didn't used to pay attention to. The crinkles around his eyes, the fact that he needs a haircut, the way the neck of his Henley gapes open just right and she can see a triangle of skin that makes her curious about the rest of his chest.
"So, you don't care to find out what happens? You could just turn it off, never see how it ends?" she asks, goading him intentionally. She doesn't like the feelings he evokes in her, especially now that she spends all of her time with him.
She really hates how at night, when she goes in to her room alone, how she sort of misses him, even though he's just on the other side of the wall. Her teddy bear stares at her, silently accusing her of cheating on Stefan in her heart.
Just because she's more furious than she can ever remember being at Stefan, it doesn't mean she wants Damon.
(Sometimes the errant thought that what she feels for Damon doesn't actually have anything at all to do with Stefan comes through her mind. She really doesn't like that, so she pushes it away, no matter how many times it pops up.)
"When you've lived as long as I have, you can figure out the ending way before you see it." He doesn't look at her as he makes this declaration, but there is something sad in his face, and she can see it even without eye contact.
"So, how does this end, then?" she asks, pressing her foot against his leg and jostling him until he finally looks at her.
"They end up together," he says with certainty. "Good people always do."
Elena feels a breath stick in her throat, and something like guilt assaults her. She wants to argue the point, because she's seen shows where that wasn't the case, but her tongue is suddenly thick, and she's not sure what her point would be anyway.
"Wanna bet on it?" he asks, and it seems he's taking her expression for a challenge, even though she hasn't uttered a word.
"No," she says emphatically, regaining her voice. "Because if I lose, you'll sing that stupid song, and I can't take it again."
"Queen is never stupid," he says darkly.
"No, you singing Queen is what's stupid."
"Shut up."
"You shut up."
He flings a throw pillow at her head and dumps his bowl of popcorn. They end up missing the whole middle section of the episode they're watching when she gets off the couch to help him clean up and they start throwing dirty popcorn at each other.
It's only later, after a fit of hysterics, a round with the vacuum cleaner, and Damon restarting the DVD player, that Elena realizes she's perfectly content. They are in the middle of nowhere without anything but each other and small forms of entertainment, and she really is having the best time ever. Without Stefan. Because of Damon.
(Now is the time to panic.)
Stefan or Ric have sent weekly letters with relatively straightforward messages; the funny part is, of course, Elena's daily walk to the mailbox to see if anything new has arrived. (In the era of cell phones, texting, email and the like, her anxiousness to check the mailbox every day is ironic.) On the fourth Friday that they've been in New York, a thin letter addressed to Stacia Saltzman, which is Alaric's grandmother's name, sits in the mailbox.
She rips it open and reads:
D,
Nothing's solved yet. Stay put for now.
~R
This is much less information than they'd gotten the week before, and Elena's outraged that it's addressed solely to Damon, and that there's nothing from Stefan for her either.
She stomps back to the house, anger filling her up. She's been mad at Stefan all along, for his shameless shirking of his responsibility onto Damon-the fact that he hadn't even tried to talk to her about it, but just let Damon do all the dirty work-no, even worse he'd let Damon take the brunt of her disappointment, fear, and animosity.
She’s had nothing but time to think, even with all the mindless TV watching she and Damon have engaged in. Hours in the saddle across the Philipsens' property, and nights in her room unable to sleep have taken her through denial, anger, and sadness.
Things are (have been) changing for her for a while now. Her evaluations of her relationships with both Salvatore brothers have always been distinctly different. She's always felt the relationship with Stefan fell under favorable-more favorable anyway. If she’s going to be in a relationship with a vampire, with someone whose natural instinct is to kill, she can only reasonably be in one with Stefan, since he chooses to live his life differently. So even in those moments when she felt attraction prickle between her and Damon, she would never have considered that it meant anything.
She loved Stefan, period. It’s always gonna be Stefan.
Damon could be as infuriating, and flirty, and "ridiculously hot" (to quote Jenna) as he wanted to be, but it wouldn't change anything.
But some fundamental part of her had changed, and that part is here, in the now, with Damon, and every day that they spend together makes that part keep shifting. Irrevocably closer to him, to the one she has not looked upon favorably. (To the one she hadn’t admitted that she looked upon favorably.)
Here, in this place, after the initial indignation passed, and she started letting herself have a good time, she began to realize that it's always been like this between her and Damon.
Easy. Comfortable. Fiery. Exciting.
She came to accept the truth, even if she has no idea what to do with it. (Doesn't think she wants to do anything with it, probably about 70% of the time.)
But when he looks at her with those eyes, she very nearly forgets everyone else in the world, including Stefan. Especially Stefan.
She thinks now, she loved Stefan, comma, and she might be falling in love with Damon, semi-colon. She might be falling in love with him, but she knows he already loves her, and she doesn't want to do anything to hurt him, and he's so obviously holding back from her that she knows he isn't willing to risk it either.
Which might be what she finds most appealing about him anyway-the vulnerability. The fact that Damon-who is always so over-the-top confident, and annoyingly in-your-face about so many things-gets that deer-in-the-headlights expression makes her heart clench in her chest. It has for a long time, but here, she watches the war of emotions on his face on a daily basis, and she knows the right push from her could change everything.
She finds herself wanting to reach out to him, to pull him against her, to promise him that she won't ever do anything to make that fear justified.
She pushes open the door and finds him sitting at the table, reading. He's finally given in and picked up one of the historical non-fiction books he's been complaining about because they've been here more than three weeks, and he's read everything else in the place.
She knows, despite the fun they're having, boredom is creeping up on them. Boredom and tension that can only be satisfied one way. One can only read so much, watch so much TV, go outdoors, play board games, like they're on some summer camp retreat schedule before one snaps. (And when one is Damon Salvatore, you really don't want that happening.)
The worst part is that he seems to be keeping it all together, and Elena is the one full of silent screams.
(Which is probably why she feels so much irrational anger from reading Alaric's cryptic note.)
She tosses the letter so that it lands on his book and captures Damon's attention.
He picks it up and looks at her briefly before pulling the paper out of the already-opened envelope. His mouth tightens as he reads it, and then he glances at her again, quipping, "You know opening other people's mail is a felony, right?"
And instantly, he's trying to make her laugh, because he knows she's upset. God. Sometimes, she just...feels so much--too much when he does stuff like that. There is no other word, no other concept to convey the emotion that wells up within her in moments like these, but to go there, with Damon? It's crazy.
She can't do it. She won't. Even if things are over with her and Stefan after this, nothing can ever happen between her and Damon.
She tries to quell her angst and return his level of levity by saying, "I didn't know you changed your name to Stacia." The smile that she can't quite force her lips into sags so she takes a deep breath instead.
He moves out of the chair, stands in front of her, and puts his hands on her shoulders. "It won't be like this forever."
"You don't know that," she says, and embarrassment overtakes her as tears come from nowhere. Suddenly, she's got her head against his chest, and it's not because he's moved any closer. She can tell he doesn't know what to do, because it takes him a long moment to finally wrap one arm around her.
"We'll get to go home soon. Or Stefan will come here to see you. You know he won't be able to hold out much longer."
That makes her madder for some absurd reason, and her tears dry in an instant. She pushes away from him and says, "We should just go home now! Nothing has happened. They haven't killed Klaus! We need to go home. Isn't it obvious? You're the only one who can do it."
"If that were true, Ric would have told us to come home," he says patiently and Elena spins away from him, scrubbing at her face in agitation.
"Since when do you do what they tell you?" she shouts.
"Since it became obvious that the only way to keep you alive was to listen to them!" he shouts back.
"This is a joke, Damon! A joke! What are we doing here? Playing house? Hoping that they're just going to solve it for us? Both of us-we're the ones who make things happen, haven't you ever noticed that?"
"You're just upset. That's not true." He smirks a little, and she can tell he wants to say something like, well, it is true of me..., but he doesn't go there. He visibly restrains himself and his lips flatten out and the light in his eyes fades slightly.
His bizarre calmness makes her crazy, and she does something that she hasn't done in anger since that night in Richmond. She strikes him, not in playfulness, but in a total loss of control.
Her life has somehow become a play dictated by mysterious figures and the whims of people who claim to love her, but never tell her the whole story.
And Damon's the one in front of her, so he’s the only one she can take it out on. When she starts punching him, she knows it doesn't physically hurt him, but at this point, she'll take whatever she can get. She knows it hurts him in other ways because he's Damon, and she's Elena.
It all happens in a blur-first her fists are landing wherever she can get them, but then her arms are twisted painfully behind her back and he moves both of them so that he's got her pinned between his body and the wall. His strength is far more than she can even dream of overcoming, but she never stops thrashing against him. He holds her until she grows tired, and then in a last ditch effort at what, she won't be able to explain even to herself later, she leans forward and bites him.
She gets him at the hard, solid part of his chest, just below his collar bone, and she sinks her teeth into him, through his thin t-shirt. He stiffens against her, a sudden stillness coming over him that has nothing to do with subduing her, and when she lifts her head from the infliction site, his face has transformed in a way she has never seen before, at least not close-up on him.
The blood around his eyes and his extended fangs scare her a little, but also excite her more than she knows is healthy, and she doesn't feel angry anymore at all; she just wants him, and her whole body quivers with it, with the idea, with the need.
So naturally, Damon pushes himself away from her so violently that he crashes into the kitchen table behind him, and when he gets himself upright again, he disappears through the front door she'd left hanging open minutes before.
She knows he'll be back, he would never abandon her, but she doesn't chase after him. Not this time. When he comes back, they'll both have to face things that they don't want to.
She sinks to the floor, her tears resuming their pace now that she doesn't have another outlet. She abuses Damon because he lets her; this realization is both disgusting to her, and totally rational.
She wipes her face, and says to the empty room, "No more."
At least an hour goes by before he returns, but she's waiting for him when he comes through the door. His eyes frantically scan the room until he finds her sitting on the floor, right on the spot where he'd left her.
"Damon, I'm so, so, so sorry," she says, scrambling to her feet, putting her hands out in supplication. "I'm not even mad at you but I took it out on you like always, and-"
"It doesn't matter," he interrupts, and she can tell something is different about him, but she can't let him dismiss her apology, or pretend that his feelings don't matter.
"It does matter," she says, putting her hands on his chest, hoping that she can replace her previous behavior with something that's more pleasing.
His hands instantly capture hers, his grip firm and warm. "No, Elena, it doesn't, because-look. I called Ric, and-"
"You called Ric? I thought-"
"Yes, dammit, listen-"
"-we weren't supposed to let anyone be able to trace-"
"Elena!" he says, the sudden urgency finally breaking through her determination to set things right. "Bonnie's...dead. She's gone, Elena."
...part two...
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Damon & Elena POV; Damon/Elena
Warnings: Everything up through 2x16; also: spoilers for the show The West Wing.
Word count: ~5100
Summary: Damon takes Elena away from Mystic Falls for her safety (but without her consent).
Author’s Notes: I wrote this for linsell_farm, for fandomaid, but also because Ian Somerhalder? He gives me the feelings and now apparently, he's giving me the plot bunnies. This all came from him saying he wants Damon to kidnap Elena, and linsell_farm saying she wanted Damon and Elena to ride horses. IDEK. Beta'd by the charmingly brilliant whenjenn and the always insightful becca_radcgg. Title lifted from the song "Timing is Everything," on the Country Strong Soundtrack.
You can be hurt by love,
Or healed by the same,
Timing is everything.
He kidnaps her on a Thursday, picking her up from school on a day when Stefan never turned up because of other pressing issues (read: Klaus finally came to town). She doesn't realize he's taking her somewhere other than his house until about twenty minutes into the drive because as fortune would have it the Boarding House is off the same route they need to take to leave town. When she starts to question-and then to shout that she is not going anywhere for her own good, thank you very much!-he looks at her from across the bench seat of the Camaro and says bluntly:
"Either shut up and be good, or I'll rip that necklace off of you and make you."
She folds her arms over her chest and turns her head away from him, staring out into the rapidly passing scenery.
She doesn't speak again for two hours, even when they stop to get gas. She gets out to pee and he threatens her with snapped limbs if she tries to shimmy out the high window of the public restroom.
It's as the sun is going down, and Damon has popped in his Mumford and Sons CD, that she asks dully, "Where are we going anyway?"
He glances over at her, but she's still not looking at him, as though to do so would suddenly make this all okay. Instead, she stares straight ahead, and the beauty of her profile grabs at something in his chest so that he has to shake himself to look back at the road. He can't go all soft and feel sorry for her. He knows what Elena's like; they all do. That's why he'd been chosen for this job, because everyone agreed he'd be mean enough to handle her the way she needs to be handled. (Since they weren’t traveling with a witch who could cast an entrapment spell at any given location, he even had Stefan's permission to use compulsion if he had to.)
"Ric's family has a cabin, just like the Gilbert Clan, but his is in upstate New York, and nobody knows about it. Everyone thinks you'll be safer there."
"Everyone?" she snaps.
"I know you think I did this without Stefan's approval-it would be far easier to hate me, and me alone, I'm sure-but he is just as onboard about it."
"Then why can't I call him?" (He'd taken her cell phone from her with a sneaky ploy about fifteen minutes into the drive.)
"Because cell phones are traceable."
Elena snorts. "What? Is Klaus with the FBI?"
He slides her a look of menace mixed with annoyance, but she's still not looking at him, so it serves no purpose.
"We're not taking any chances," he says when her eyes don't even skitter towards him in the least.
"How will you get in, if it's Alaric's place? Me inviting you in won't work. (Like I would anyway)," she mutters under her breath.
"Ric and I came up here last month together. We already worked that out."
Now her head snaps around and she demands, "You've been planning this for that long?!"
He meets her gaze and gives her a trademark smirk. "Longer," he quips.
"I hate you," she spits, and her head whips back so that she's staring out the window into the gathering darkness.
"I know," he says, trying to keep the devil-may-care tone in his voice.
After that she stops talking to him again, and really, it's for the best.
It's almost midnight when they arrive at their destination. Despite her anger, by then Elena is tired. He can see it in the droop of her shoulders as she climbs from the car. He pops the trunk and walks around to get their luggage.
She comes around too and looks inside. "Who packed my suitcase?" she asks.
Her voice sounds rusty, unused, and above all, defeated. He hates that, he really does, but he steels himself against any tenderness. This is for her own good, and he really doesn't give a flying fuck if she hates him forever if it keeps her alive.
(Okay, he cares, but not enough to let it interfere with the job at hand.) "Bonnie," he replies.
He lifts the suitcase out, and swings his own duffle bag up onto his shoulder. "But I was the one who grabbed this guy," he says, reaching into the depths of the trunk to pull out her stuffed teddy bear.
He holds the toy in front of her face, and there is a split second where she can't disguise that it pleases her. She looks at him, and even in the darkness, he can tell she's not as mad now. "Thank you," she says, taking the bear from his grasp.
Her fingers brush over his and Damon, who isn't into Harlequin romances, doesn't feel anything. Slight contact between fingertips is not enough to give him a hard-on.
(But the idea of being alone with Elena for an indefinite period of time totally is.)
They spend the first week watching television on DVD (who knew Ric was a fan of The West Wing?), and reading all the books in the house (there is no library like at the Boarding House, but there are a few shelves full of interesting reads, not all of them non-fiction historical crap).
The house isn't overly large, but it has two bedrooms and a living room that opens into the kitchen. A dining table separates the two areas into distinct sections, but it's small enough that if you're in the kitchen you can still hear and see the TV pretty easily. Elena cooks for herself, and Damon eats occasionally when the mood strikes, because he and Ric had stocked the cupboards and freezer when they’d come up to scout the location. He brought a cooler full of blood bags, which he stashes in one of the vegetable crispers, and he keeps himself down to a cup or so a day, since he's not sure how long this supply is going to have to last him.
They don't talk much, because despite the Olive Branch Teddy Bear offering, Elena has principles about her anger. But on the morning of the seventh day (which is a Wednesday anyway), they don't rest as prescribed in the Bible. Instead Elena comes to stand in front of him as he's reclining on one of the sofas. She kicks the bottom of his foot and says, "Play Monopoly with me."
This is neither a question nor a demand, so Damon is inclined. (Besides, if it means she's talking to him again, he's gotta go for it. He's sick of the silence and being alone with his thoughts.)
They agree on the outset not to play the way most people do (buying property as they land on it), but instead, Elena shuffles the properties like a deck of cards and then passes them out between the two of them. From there they barter and bicker, and three and half hours later, Damon wins most ungallantly. He stands up from the dining room table and sings We Are the Champions while Elena pouts and puts the game away.
He punches her lightly in the arm and says, "Come on! Don't be such a spoil sport. It was your idea to pass out the properties. Is it my fault I got Boardwalk and Park Place?"
"You're an ass," she gripes, but he sees her lips quirking against her will, and he just wants her to smile, to be happy, if even for a split second. (Come to think of it, he should have let her win, but he's a little too competitive for that sort of bullshit.)
He punches her arm again and she spins in her seat towards him, retaliating faster than he gives her credit for, socking him in the stomach as she leaps to her feet. Of course it doesn't hurt him, but he grunts like any good Fake TV Wrestler, bending over in mock pain. She moves to the left and he grabs her around the waist without thinking. He tickles her like they're in the seventh grade, and when she screams and twists away from him, he follows her and they end up falling over the back of the couch.
The momentum carries Damon until he's on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table, while Elena laughs madly from the relative safety of the couch cushions. He reaches up, jerks her forward until she falls on top of him and her hair is in his mouth; she almost knees him in the groin accidentally.
Then he flips them both so that he's on top of her and when he pins her arms above her head, her laughter switches off like a light.
(He's sure Stefan didn't give him permission for this, but whatever.)
She's breathing heavily from the scuffle and the laughing, but as he stares down at her, he feels it change. She's not afraid of him, and she's not trying to get away, and that? That's why he gets off of her without doing anything.
"I'm gonna go for a walk," he says, and he opens the door and steps outside. (Practically runs.)
He hears her say his name, but he just trots down the steps without looking back. He's gone maybe ten steps before he remembers he can't really leave her alone. She could very easily steal his car and go back to Mystic Falls.
"Damon!" she shouts, and he turns to see her running down the steps towards him. She skids to a halt in front of him and he clenches his hands into fists to keep himself from grabbing at her.
This had been a terrible idea. He'd known it when Stefan first said it, but the masochist in him had agreed without any hesitation.
It's Elena, his brain had said. They needed to protect her no matter what, even if self-preservation became a casualty of war.
"You can't leave me here alone," she says, and he wonders if she knows she's got Stockholm Syndrome.
He wants to say, I'm having a hard time not leaving you alone, or haven't you noticed? but he doesn't, he just nods his head jerkily and turns away from her to look out over the farmland all around them.
She reaches for his hand and says, "Let's go down there and see if Ric's neighbors will let us ride their horses."
He's stupefied by both her suggestion and her fingers lacing through his, but he allows her to pull him down the lane. "Why would they let us ride their horses?" he asks.
She looks at him from the corner of her eye. "I don't know. Maybe you could...encourage them?"
He thinks the tide has changed suddenly, and he doesn't know why.
Their new hobby for the next week is to horseback ride every day. The neighbors are actually a really nice older couple who don't even have to be compelled once they know that Damon and Elena are friends of the Saltzman family. (Damon compels them not to ask why they're hiding out up there and to never tell anyone about them, but that's for safety reasons, not trickery.)
They race each other quite a bit, and depending on the day, and the horse, either one of them is declared the winner. This always ensues a chorus of We are the Champions which Damon starts to fondly think of as their song (and Elena sings against her will) until he realizes he's thinking anything of the sort and then he wants to slap himself.
He's been tempted a hundred different times in a hundred different ways to just haul Elena into his arms and show her how she makes him feel. (There is something ridiculously arousing about her complaining about her thighs and ass being sore from the horseback riding.) By contrast, he almost calls Stefan about half as many times to tell him that they need to rethink this plan. Then he reminds himself it's been eight, nine, ten, then eleven days, and asks himself if he's really such a pussy that he can't handle one little girl for a couple weeks? Undoubtedly it won't take the Scooby-Doo gang any longer than that to either kill Klaus, or come to the conclusion that they need Damon and Elena back more than they need them gone.
"Damon!" she shouts, bringing his attention back to her. She's riding a beautiful black gelding today, and his coat shimmers in the sunlight just like her hair does. He wheels his horse around to get closer to her and the smile that spreads over her face convinces him that no, he cannot handle one little girl. Not when it's Elena. "There's a whole herd of sheep over here! How have we not seen them before?" She points, and as he comes past a small copse of trees, he sees what she sees.
There are a bunch of sheep, but what draws his eye most is all the lambs. There are at least ten of them and they're all running and jumping joyfully, bleating their little hearts out. He brings his horse to a halt next to Elena's and watches with her in silence for a few minutes.
"It's fun being in the country," she says and her leg hits his as her horse shifts restlessly.
"And to think, you didn't want to come," he says drolly.
She looks over at him, but her smile never wavers. "You didn't tell me the selling points."
"I guess I forgot the brochure, babe. Sorry." He holds a phantom paper in his hand and pretends to read, "Scenic landscapes, horseback riding, and shepherdless sheep, all at your disposal."
She laughs, and adds, "The perfect escape from real life!"
Their eyes catch and hold, and Damon wonders if that's what she thinks. That this isn't real, that what's been going on since the first moment he ever met her is somehow less than the reality of her life.
It stings more than he would ever admit because he feels like nothing was real at all, not until Elena. Life before her had that nightmarish quality that is so widely associated with vampires. Life since has been harder to bear, but sweeter too.
It's been real, every part of it, for Damon.
"I know I was a pain at first, Damon," she says softly. "But I'm actually having a great time."
Her eyes linger on his, like she's trying to convey something more than what's coming out of her mouth. He forces his lips to form a smile and then he turns away from the sheep. "We should probably get back," he calls over his shoulder.
He digs his heels in hard to his horse, and it takes off quickly across the field. Distance is only a metaphor at this point, but he needs some of it between him and her very badly.
"This season isn't as good as the other ones," she says. Picking up the DVD case, she looks at the back of it, as though The West Wing, the Complete Fifth Season will explain to her why it sucks in comparison with the previous seasons.
"I think they got new writers," Damon says from his position to the right of her on the sofa. "That Sorkin guy's name isn't on the credits anymore."
She continues to scan the DVD holder and Damon says, “If you don't like it, we don't have to keep watching it."
"No!" Elena exclaims, feeling panicked suddenly. She lifts her head to look at him and Damon's eyes widen in surprise. "We have to find out what happens with Josh and Donna!"
He chuckles and then his eyes shift back to the TV. He's snacking on a bowl of popcorn that rests on his stomach. "Such a girl," he murmurs, his smile softer and sweeter than usual. Elena stares at him a little too long, her mind cataloguing a whole lot of details she didn't used to pay attention to. The crinkles around his eyes, the fact that he needs a haircut, the way the neck of his Henley gapes open just right and she can see a triangle of skin that makes her curious about the rest of his chest.
"So, you don't care to find out what happens? You could just turn it off, never see how it ends?" she asks, goading him intentionally. She doesn't like the feelings he evokes in her, especially now that she spends all of her time with him.
She really hates how at night, when she goes in to her room alone, how she sort of misses him, even though he's just on the other side of the wall. Her teddy bear stares at her, silently accusing her of cheating on Stefan in her heart.
Just because she's more furious than she can ever remember being at Stefan, it doesn't mean she wants Damon.
(Sometimes the errant thought that what she feels for Damon doesn't actually have anything at all to do with Stefan comes through her mind. She really doesn't like that, so she pushes it away, no matter how many times it pops up.)
"When you've lived as long as I have, you can figure out the ending way before you see it." He doesn't look at her as he makes this declaration, but there is something sad in his face, and she can see it even without eye contact.
"So, how does this end, then?" she asks, pressing her foot against his leg and jostling him until he finally looks at her.
"They end up together," he says with certainty. "Good people always do."
Elena feels a breath stick in her throat, and something like guilt assaults her. She wants to argue the point, because she's seen shows where that wasn't the case, but her tongue is suddenly thick, and she's not sure what her point would be anyway.
"Wanna bet on it?" he asks, and it seems he's taking her expression for a challenge, even though she hasn't uttered a word.
"No," she says emphatically, regaining her voice. "Because if I lose, you'll sing that stupid song, and I can't take it again."
"Queen is never stupid," he says darkly.
"No, you singing Queen is what's stupid."
"Shut up."
"You shut up."
He flings a throw pillow at her head and dumps his bowl of popcorn. They end up missing the whole middle section of the episode they're watching when she gets off the couch to help him clean up and they start throwing dirty popcorn at each other.
It's only later, after a fit of hysterics, a round with the vacuum cleaner, and Damon restarting the DVD player, that Elena realizes she's perfectly content. They are in the middle of nowhere without anything but each other and small forms of entertainment, and she really is having the best time ever. Without Stefan. Because of Damon.
(Now is the time to panic.)
Stefan or Ric have sent weekly letters with relatively straightforward messages; the funny part is, of course, Elena's daily walk to the mailbox to see if anything new has arrived. (In the era of cell phones, texting, email and the like, her anxiousness to check the mailbox every day is ironic.) On the fourth Friday that they've been in New York, a thin letter addressed to Stacia Saltzman, which is Alaric's grandmother's name, sits in the mailbox.
She rips it open and reads:
D,
Nothing's solved yet. Stay put for now.
~R
This is much less information than they'd gotten the week before, and Elena's outraged that it's addressed solely to Damon, and that there's nothing from Stefan for her either.
She stomps back to the house, anger filling her up. She's been mad at Stefan all along, for his shameless shirking of his responsibility onto Damon-the fact that he hadn't even tried to talk to her about it, but just let Damon do all the dirty work-no, even worse he'd let Damon take the brunt of her disappointment, fear, and animosity.
She’s had nothing but time to think, even with all the mindless TV watching she and Damon have engaged in. Hours in the saddle across the Philipsens' property, and nights in her room unable to sleep have taken her through denial, anger, and sadness.
Things are (have been) changing for her for a while now. Her evaluations of her relationships with both Salvatore brothers have always been distinctly different. She's always felt the relationship with Stefan fell under favorable-more favorable anyway. If she’s going to be in a relationship with a vampire, with someone whose natural instinct is to kill, she can only reasonably be in one with Stefan, since he chooses to live his life differently. So even in those moments when she felt attraction prickle between her and Damon, she would never have considered that it meant anything.
She loved Stefan, period. It’s always gonna be Stefan.
Damon could be as infuriating, and flirty, and "ridiculously hot" (to quote Jenna) as he wanted to be, but it wouldn't change anything.
But some fundamental part of her had changed, and that part is here, in the now, with Damon, and every day that they spend together makes that part keep shifting. Irrevocably closer to him, to the one she has not looked upon favorably. (To the one she hadn’t admitted that she looked upon favorably.)
Here, in this place, after the initial indignation passed, and she started letting herself have a good time, she began to realize that it's always been like this between her and Damon.
Easy. Comfortable. Fiery. Exciting.
She came to accept the truth, even if she has no idea what to do with it. (Doesn't think she wants to do anything with it, probably about 70% of the time.)
But when he looks at her with those eyes, she very nearly forgets everyone else in the world, including Stefan. Especially Stefan.
She thinks now, she loved Stefan, comma, and she might be falling in love with Damon, semi-colon. She might be falling in love with him, but she knows he already loves her, and she doesn't want to do anything to hurt him, and he's so obviously holding back from her that she knows he isn't willing to risk it either.
Which might be what she finds most appealing about him anyway-the vulnerability. The fact that Damon-who is always so over-the-top confident, and annoyingly in-your-face about so many things-gets that deer-in-the-headlights expression makes her heart clench in her chest. It has for a long time, but here, she watches the war of emotions on his face on a daily basis, and she knows the right push from her could change everything.
She finds herself wanting to reach out to him, to pull him against her, to promise him that she won't ever do anything to make that fear justified.
She pushes open the door and finds him sitting at the table, reading. He's finally given in and picked up one of the historical non-fiction books he's been complaining about because they've been here more than three weeks, and he's read everything else in the place.
She knows, despite the fun they're having, boredom is creeping up on them. Boredom and tension that can only be satisfied one way. One can only read so much, watch so much TV, go outdoors, play board games, like they're on some summer camp retreat schedule before one snaps. (And when one is Damon Salvatore, you really don't want that happening.)
The worst part is that he seems to be keeping it all together, and Elena is the one full of silent screams.
(Which is probably why she feels so much irrational anger from reading Alaric's cryptic note.)
She tosses the letter so that it lands on his book and captures Damon's attention.
He picks it up and looks at her briefly before pulling the paper out of the already-opened envelope. His mouth tightens as he reads it, and then he glances at her again, quipping, "You know opening other people's mail is a felony, right?"
And instantly, he's trying to make her laugh, because he knows she's upset. God. Sometimes, she just...feels so much--too much when he does stuff like that. There is no other word, no other concept to convey the emotion that wells up within her in moments like these, but to go there, with Damon? It's crazy.
She can't do it. She won't. Even if things are over with her and Stefan after this, nothing can ever happen between her and Damon.
She tries to quell her angst and return his level of levity by saying, "I didn't know you changed your name to Stacia." The smile that she can't quite force her lips into sags so she takes a deep breath instead.
He moves out of the chair, stands in front of her, and puts his hands on her shoulders. "It won't be like this forever."
"You don't know that," she says, and embarrassment overtakes her as tears come from nowhere. Suddenly, she's got her head against his chest, and it's not because he's moved any closer. She can tell he doesn't know what to do, because it takes him a long moment to finally wrap one arm around her.
"We'll get to go home soon. Or Stefan will come here to see you. You know he won't be able to hold out much longer."
That makes her madder for some absurd reason, and her tears dry in an instant. She pushes away from him and says, "We should just go home now! Nothing has happened. They haven't killed Klaus! We need to go home. Isn't it obvious? You're the only one who can do it."
"If that were true, Ric would have told us to come home," he says patiently and Elena spins away from him, scrubbing at her face in agitation.
"Since when do you do what they tell you?" she shouts.
"Since it became obvious that the only way to keep you alive was to listen to them!" he shouts back.
"This is a joke, Damon! A joke! What are we doing here? Playing house? Hoping that they're just going to solve it for us? Both of us-we're the ones who make things happen, haven't you ever noticed that?"
"You're just upset. That's not true." He smirks a little, and she can tell he wants to say something like, well, it is true of me..., but he doesn't go there. He visibly restrains himself and his lips flatten out and the light in his eyes fades slightly.
His bizarre calmness makes her crazy, and she does something that she hasn't done in anger since that night in Richmond. She strikes him, not in playfulness, but in a total loss of control.
Her life has somehow become a play dictated by mysterious figures and the whims of people who claim to love her, but never tell her the whole story.
And Damon's the one in front of her, so he’s the only one she can take it out on. When she starts punching him, she knows it doesn't physically hurt him, but at this point, she'll take whatever she can get. She knows it hurts him in other ways because he's Damon, and she's Elena.
It all happens in a blur-first her fists are landing wherever she can get them, but then her arms are twisted painfully behind her back and he moves both of them so that he's got her pinned between his body and the wall. His strength is far more than she can even dream of overcoming, but she never stops thrashing against him. He holds her until she grows tired, and then in a last ditch effort at what, she won't be able to explain even to herself later, she leans forward and bites him.
She gets him at the hard, solid part of his chest, just below his collar bone, and she sinks her teeth into him, through his thin t-shirt. He stiffens against her, a sudden stillness coming over him that has nothing to do with subduing her, and when she lifts her head from the infliction site, his face has transformed in a way she has never seen before, at least not close-up on him.
The blood around his eyes and his extended fangs scare her a little, but also excite her more than she knows is healthy, and she doesn't feel angry anymore at all; she just wants him, and her whole body quivers with it, with the idea, with the need.
So naturally, Damon pushes himself away from her so violently that he crashes into the kitchen table behind him, and when he gets himself upright again, he disappears through the front door she'd left hanging open minutes before.
She knows he'll be back, he would never abandon her, but she doesn't chase after him. Not this time. When he comes back, they'll both have to face things that they don't want to.
She sinks to the floor, her tears resuming their pace now that she doesn't have another outlet. She abuses Damon because he lets her; this realization is both disgusting to her, and totally rational.
She wipes her face, and says to the empty room, "No more."
At least an hour goes by before he returns, but she's waiting for him when he comes through the door. His eyes frantically scan the room until he finds her sitting on the floor, right on the spot where he'd left her.
"Damon, I'm so, so, so sorry," she says, scrambling to her feet, putting her hands out in supplication. "I'm not even mad at you but I took it out on you like always, and-"
"It doesn't matter," he interrupts, and she can tell something is different about him, but she can't let him dismiss her apology, or pretend that his feelings don't matter.
"It does matter," she says, putting her hands on his chest, hoping that she can replace her previous behavior with something that's more pleasing.
His hands instantly capture hers, his grip firm and warm. "No, Elena, it doesn't, because-look. I called Ric, and-"
"You called Ric? I thought-"
"Yes, dammit, listen-"
"-we weren't supposed to let anyone be able to trace-"
"Elena!" he says, the sudden urgency finally breaking through her determination to set things right. "Bonnie's...dead. She's gone, Elena."
...part two...