Saved By Grace: Chapter Three - Exodus (The Journey) - (3/7)
Alaric's two main points of advice for college? Don't live in the dorms, and don't study so much you don't have any fun.
Elena thinks for his first real parenting advice, he's doing alright. It turns out she has to live on-campus as a freshman (as per Duke's campus rules), but she finds an apartment with a girl from Florida named Lydia Oliver. They talk on the phone a few times before they actually meet at school, and she's a cross between giddy, exuberant Caroline and strong, steady Bonnie, so Elena thinks she'll be the perfect match for her-at least for her first year.
The day she, Alaric, and Jeremy drive to Durham, Elena tells herself it's perfectly natural to have an ache in her chest that makes her wonder if she's having a heart attack at age eighteen. It's hard to leave home, move away from friends and family, start a new life. (Be an orphan two and half times before she attempts to be a grown-up-she knows she hadn't valued Jenna enough, and now she's gone forever.)
It doesn't really have anything to do with the vampire who kissed her the night before and is probably setting out for destinations unknown to look for his AWOL brother.
She hugs her own brother (maybe extra tight) and pseudo stepfather (she'd introduced him to Lydia as her stepfather because she didn't know how else to explain it) goodbye after they've unloaded all her boxes and set up her bed frame. The apartment is partially furnished, so she and Lydia don't have to worry about living room furniture or a kitchen table. They do find a Dollar Store and buy some dishes for their kitchen though, and that night Elena falls into an exhausted sleep in her unmade bed. She drags a blanket over her body and doesn't wake up until Lydia comes and jumps on her the next morning.
"Let's go check out the Sororities," Lydia says excitedly. "If we're going to have any kind of social life, we have to rush a sorority."
Elena goes along, because if she's anything now, it's a follower.
As she gets into the routine of school, goes to her classes, gets immersed in her studies, and in general, continues on with her life the way she always has, she realizes she's okay. She really is. Life has served her more lemons that she's known what to do with periodically, but she has learned to make lemonade quite nicely (for lack of a more clever analogy-sometimes she hears Damon so clearly in her head, it's like he's standing next right to her).
She wrote furiously in her diary for weeks after Stefan left. She lamented every moment of their relationship, every twist and turn, every lie or half-truth he delivered to her that she mostly just accepted and moved on from until the next one. She found her own truth in expunging her feelings. Though she sometimes has nightmares about the things Damon told her when he and Caroline went to find Stefan (things she made Caroline tell her later in full detail when she realized Damon had probably watered it down to spare her feelings), the interesting turn in those dreams? Damon is always there to comfort her.
She never startles herself awake because of fear.
What wakes her up, every time, is the way his arms feel around her. They seem to evoke anew the emotion that spiraled through her when she thought he would die; not to mention how the expression in his eyes makes her chest ache, and the lingering feeling of something needing to happen that never does that leaves her not-quite-satisfied.
It isn't that Damon has replaced Stefan in her affections; Damon always had his own place there, and she finally admitted that at least to herself the night he lay dying in her arms. What had developed since Stefan left? Well, that was for another diary; the one she hasn't started writing yet because she is too terrified to contemplate it.
It was funny that the truth about Damon came to her at the same time the truth about Stefan came to all of them. She doesn't doubt that her former boyfriend did not intend to abandon them all when he went in search of Klaus. She knows him well enough to be certain that his focused determination rested only on saving his brother. But the aftermath-whatever it was-had included some sort of decision that cut her out of his life, that cut Damon out, that cut everyone he claimed to love at all, out. Permanently, or not, she doesn't know. All she does know is that he broke her heart, but not in the way she would have once expected if she contemplated Stefan leaving her.
Then again, she had faced death and possible vampire life, and stood with Stefan on a grassy knoll and told him she didn't want to be with him forever, so maybe the reason it hadn't crippled her was more because of what she didn't feel for Stefan than what she did feel for him.
That was the harder part, for her, really. Not that Stefan left her, but that she was more concerned by the deep and intense feelings she had for his brother. So she'd done the only things she could at the time-she'd moved out of the Boarding House and put as much space between her and Damon as she could. Then she missed him like crazy every day after that, and ended up inventing reasons to put herself back in his orbit.
Then he'd discovered he was part werewolf, and she found out from Caroline that had happened because of the blood he had taken from her.
She had that feeling again, the one where she knew, irrevocably that her existence was tied to the Salvatores-to Damon, specifically this time, (or every time?)-and she couldn't change how interwoven they were.
(And she really doesn't want to.)
In early November she's been at Duke for almost three months. She's at the kitchen table, textbooks strewn across it though she's foregone studying for a moment to tell Lydia a funny story from the summer when she and all her friends had been swimming at the water hole on the Lockwood property.
"Wait," Lydia says, holding up her hand. She's in the kitchen mixing cookie dough because she's declared she can't study one more minute and needs a snack. (Lydia's snacks always ended up being projects.) "Who is this Damon guy, again?"
"Stefan's brother," Elena clarifies.
"Your ex-boyfriend who left town for no apparent reason?"
(Elena had previously told Lydia the jist of the story minus the vampire, werewolf, doppelganger, and witch aspects.)
"Right! Anyway, so we're all taking turns on the rope swing-and Caroline, who has this crazy obsession with the movie The Notebook starts re-enacting the scene-you know the one where Rachel McAdams is screaming and won't let go of the rope? And Damon, who just can't stand it, waits for her to swing back towards the shore, runs, jumps on the rope with her, and, of course the combined weight is just too much, so it ends up snapping the limb off the tree, ruining any and all future jumping from that tree. But of course none of us cared because we were all laughing too hard at how pissed Caroline was at Damon for ruining her re-enactment."
Lydia stops mixing her cookie ingredients and sets the mixing bowl down on the counter in front of her. Turning, she just stares at Elena. "What?" Elena asks, wondering why her roommate doesn't find it funny. She's laughing about it almost as hard as she did when it actually happened.
"You know you're in love with him, right? The brother? You talk about him all the time." Lydia puts her hands on her hips the way she always does when she's delivering important information. She reminds Elena of Jenna sometimes with her blunt attitude. "And you never go out with anyone here, even though there's a ton of guys who'd love to hang out with you."
Elena shrugs, tries to look nonchalant (she's not as good at that as Damon is), and shakes her head negatively. The problem is that she sort of suspects this about herself, but she's never written it down, said it aloud, or had anyone say it to her. The only acknowledgement of feelings had been that one time, and they were Damon's feelings, not Elena's. And that was horrific and painful, not just because he was dying. (But mostly because he was dying.)
"Elena! Seriously, is it like bad manners or something to hook up with the brother of the guy who took off on you? I mean, I've seen his picture, the one you keep on your mirror in your bedroom? He's delicious. Is he just not into you, or what?"
"It's complicated," she says.
"I call bullshit," Lydia sing-songs, which is one of Sister Codes they'd heard from Chi Omega, the sorority they both hoped accepted them in the Spring when the selection process was completed.
"No, really, it's complicated," Elena says, and not for the first time she wishes she could tell someone-especially Lydia-the whole story. Somebody who wasn't Bonnie or Caroline or Ric or Jeremy who had lived through the whole thing too and lost people they loved and endured other challenges that were hardly on par with Elena's pathetic I think I'm in love with my ex-boyfriend's brother who is a vampire who is a totally inappropriate choice who also loves me and if I do anything to start it up and it doesn't work out how will he ever deal with it especially now that Stefan's gone and never coming back apparently? She knows it's a significant problem, but Jeremy keeps having visits from the ghosts of his previous girlfriends, Caroline's a vampire trying to date a werewolf, Bonnie's a witch, and Jeremy's sometimes-girlfriend, and Ric? Well, he's Damon's best friend, so could she honestly confide in him? Probably not.
See? Complicated.
"Where is he? This Damon guy?" Lydia asks when Elena doesn't expound verbally.
"Back home, in Mystic Falls."
"And you never talk to each other?"
Elena thinks about the few texts she's gotten over the weeks she's been away. They've not been much, just little updates, hellos from various places, reports that he still hasn't found Stefan, things of that nature. She always responds with a thank you for telling me, but how are you? and his replies are always terse-sounding even if he doesn't mean them to be. Great. Fine. Cool as a cucumber.
"A little," she confesses.
"I've never heard you talk to him."
"We text a little."
"Girl, you need to call him. If you're not getting over him, then you need to be getting under him. So call him."
"I don't know..." Elena can feel her anxiety go up at the thought, which is ridiculous, because no doubt Damon would be fun to speak to on the phone, and they'd have tons to talk about. Her life is busy and she has a lot going on. But part of her doesn't want to hear about the search for Stefan and know how miserable Damon must be without his brother.
"If you don't call him, I'll post one of those Desperately Seeking...a Date flyers with your picture on it on one of the bulletins boards."
"Lydia!"
"I'm serious. You need to be off the market so that when we go places I can tell everyone she's got a boyfriend, but me, I'm totally available. For realz."
Elena laughs as her roommate slaps a scoop of dough down on the cookie sheet. "Okay, I will. I'll call him tomorrow."
"Promise?" Lydia says, pointing her spoon at Elena.
"I promise!"
When she does call him, she gets his voice mail. For some reason that turns her into the most awkward person ever and the message is something like, "Um, uh, hey, Damon, it's Elena, um, uh, I was just, um, uh, calling to, um, uh, say hi. Hi."
And then she just hangs up without saying what she intended to, which was, please call me back.
She's a straight up nutcase all of a sudden, and she can't help but hate herself just a little.
It's awkward because she shouldn't pursue it, that's what her gut is telling her. Elena before Stefan and Damon would have listened to her gut without question, but Elena since Stefan and Damon has had her gut let her down a few times too many to put much faith in it anymore.
But really, if she's being logical, the only thing dumber than embarking on a relationship with Stefan, who is a vampire, would be embarking upon one with Damon, who is his brother, is a vampire, is a werewolf, and of the two probably has more emotional baggage than any one man should carry for multiple lifetimes, much less just one. Even one that had been going on for nearly 170 years.
The funny thing is, Elena before Stefan and Damon had been more cautious. Elena, before her parents died? She'd been a reckless, carefree girl. She's the one who would go for it with Damon and never even think about the consequences.
The problem is, though, that the consequences that most concern her aren't the ones for herself. It's what it would be like and feel like for Damon that most plagues her mind.
Which is totally no way to go into a relationship either. (She can hear Jenna in her head: Men and their baggage.)
So, when he doesn't call her or text her within a few hours of her phone call, she turns her phone off and goes to bed. But in the morning, she gets up and checks it, expecting something. There's nothing except a sweet I miss you text from Caroline and two missed calls from her Biology lab partner.
By the end of the third day, she decides he's given her all the answer she needs. He too has considered the consequences and he's not willing to risk it.
When he'd kissed her the night before she left he hadn't been trying to start anything. He'd been finishing it.
Ending it before it could ever really begin.
Stopping the madness.
Breaking her heart.
On Saturday morning, Lydia comes in and wakes her up. This isn't strange, because as a general rule Lydia tended to think Elena slept too late. (She was one of those annoying early risers, who no matter what, even though it's college and they have their whole lives to get up early for whatever reason, rarely slept late.)
"Come on, Lyd," she moans rolling over. "It's Saturday."
"Hey, I'm not waking you up for me. Some guy named Damon's on my phone."
Elena sits up with a start and looks at the phone that Lydia has extended towards her. She knows Damon can hear everything that's said and she can't help but glance at her roommate questioningly. First of all, Lydia knows he's not some guy, but she's playing it up like she has no idea who he is while her eyes dance mischievously.
(How in the world did he get Lydia's number? And why in the world is he calling her that way?)
"Apparently your step-dad gave him my number because he couldn't get through on yours?" She shakes the phone in front of Elena's face and Elena finally reaches for it. Putting it to her ear, she's just about to say hello when Lydia makes a funny face and acts like she's swooning.
Elena starts laughing, and hears Damon say in a very annoyed voice, "Hello?"
"Hi, Damon," she says, waving Lydia off, and rolling over so she can't see whatever other crazy thing she might do.
"Why did you turn off your phone?" he asks, and she can tell he's mad, irritated, whatever.
(For no apparent reason.)
"What do you care? You took five days to call me back, it must have been weighing on your mind."
He clears his throat. "My phone got a stake through it earlier this week, so I had to get a new one and retrieve my messages. It took a few days. Sorry." (He doesn't really sound sorry, he still sounds angry.)
"Oh, my god. Damon! Are you alright? Who tried to stake you?" Whipping around right as the words leave her mouth, she sees Lydia pause just outside the door. She glances back at Elena with a very confused look on her face. "I mean, who tried to stab you?" She recovers quickly. "Did you get in another bar fight? I told you, you need to stop drinking." She rolls her eyes to show her annoyance, like it’s just typical Damon behavior. (Which isn’t much a stretch really, now that she thinks of it.) Covering the mouth piece she asks, "Will you shut the door?" and motions her friend out of the room.
"So, you haven't told your new roomie all the deets, huh?" There's a bit more levity in his voice now, so at least her faux pas seems to have entertained him.
"Are you alright?" she asks again, more urgently.
"I'm fine," he says, dragging the word out. "Vampire, remember?"
"Who did it? Who tried to kill you?"
"Just Klaus. He's tired of me following him, Stefan, and Katherine around."
"Katherine?" Elena asks, completely shocked. "Katherine's back to running with Klaus?"
"Did I forget to mention that? It's not so much that she runs with Klaus as it is that she hooks up with them periodically because she's worried about Stefan. It's...almost touching."
Elena's silent for a minute because she doesn't know what that means, or what to think about it. That Katherine would do anything that wasn't strictly for her own benefit seems completely impossible; she had at one point escaped Klaus, so if she'd willingly gone back, maybe she did have a heart after all.
(Not that Elena wants Katherine and Stefan...she shudders at the thought; mostly because the idea that Stefan could be with Katherine only confirms that the man she'd been involved with is completely gone.)
"So your phone got sacrificed, huh?" she says, trying to keep this as nonchalant as Damon seems to want it.
"Yeah, and it was the new iPhone, so I am pissed. Then I got your message. Are you alright?" His voice is softer now, and Elena falls back into her pillows, cradling Lydia's phone to her cheek.
"I'm fine," she says.
"Why did you call?" She can almost hear him smirk. "Just to say hi?"
"Shut up," she says and they both laugh. "I don't know. I just called. I just wanted to talk to you. I miss you." And then before she even knows she's going to say it, she blurts, "I want you to come visit me, like you promised."
She knows she just completely surprised him because there's no sound on the other end of the line, not even a breath. She thinks maybe it's a dropped call until the sound of him clearing his throat again wafts through the line. But still, he says nothing.
So, Elena forges on, because at this point, what has she got to lose? "Stop stalking Stefan. Stop trying to get yourself killed. You've more than repaid him for his sacrifice. It's not your responsibility. Come to North Carolina. It's beautiful here."
This time a deep breath prefaces his words. "Elena...it's not a good idea."
"It's better than whatever you're planning." He's silent again, and she knows she's got him there. She tries a different tactic. "Why didn't you ever ask me why I kissed you?"
"Because you didn't. I kissed you, remember?" His tone changes, that teasing, sing-song thing he sometimes uses to poke fun at serious things decorating his speech. "On the porch...dusky, summer night...you're leaving home...I'm the dark, handsome stranger who gives you one little thrill before you set out on the adventure of life..." he trails off.
"No, Damon, when you were dying; I kissed you then. And you're not a stranger. You're my best friend."
So, she doesn't know where that came from, but she doesn't mean to say it, and Damon, who obviously does not want to deal with the other thing she just laid on him, asks, "I thought Bonnie was your best friend?"
"Damon..."
"Because you only kissed me because I was dying. What's to talk about? I already thanked you, what more do you want?"
"I want you to know that's not true. I didn't kiss you just because you were dying. I probably wouldn't have kissed you unless I thought I was going to lose you, that's true, but that's just because I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Of how you make me feel."
He curses, and then there's silence again for a moment. When he comes back he says, his voice very determined, "This is not a conversation we're having, okay? I'm not going to be your other vampire boyfriend, and you don't really want me to be. You're just away from home, and homesick, and I'm this-"
"Boy, you've got it all figured out, don't you?" she interrupts.
"I do have about a hundred and fifty years on you, Elena, it's bound to come in handy now and again."
"You're a coward, Damon Salvatore. Don't call me again until you're ready to man up."
She jerks Lydia's phone from her ear and disconnects the call. Then she lays there, her hand pressed to her forehead and she wonders what the hell she's doing. Is she fighting for Damon? Is she really doing this?
She sits up and calls for her roommate, who enters the room instantly, having obviously stayed just outside the door listening. "He's being a pussy?" Lydia asks, looking somewhat concerned. When Elena just nods and then tears fill her eyes, she feels totally stupid. How could she do that? Just put herself out there like that and then make assumptions about his feelings? Maybe he was over her. Maybe he didn't want her anymore.
(Hello, Elena, this is Damon Salvatore. He waited for Katherine for 145 years. Don't you think he'd wait a few months for you, at the very least?)
(This time, the voice in her head sounds like Caroline.)
Lydia sits on the edge of her bed. "You know what it is, right? He doesn't want to be the rebound guy. Especially from his brother. Because what happens if his brother comes back?"
Elena wipes at her eyes, nodding. Sniffing, she thinks for a moment. Of course, she doesn't know how that would make her feel-theoretically, she can't imagine getting back together with Stefan, not after everything that's happened. But she can't know for sure unless she sees him again.
And if Damon has his way, he's going to make sure she does.
But that hasn't been going well, and she knows she needs to do more to put a stop to it. And, all that aside, she wants Damon now. She wants to be with him.
She wants to be with him.
Just thinking it loosens something in her chest. "I need to write in my diary," she says and Lydia's expression changes from all-knowing to confusion.
"Huh?"
"It's how I work stuff out. I write it down."
Minutes later she digs through a box of stuff in her closet and finds an empty leather-bound journal. One she'd bought months ago but had never written a single solitary word in.
She sits down at the desk in her room and finds a pen.
Time goes by-hours passing in a flurry of scribbled words and self-examination. She's nowhere near finished when Lydia comes back into her room and makes her stop to eat something.
In the late afternoon, she attempts to work on some of her school assignments, but really she doesn't want to lose her train of thought and eventually goes back to her journal.
By the time midnight rolls around, she's written more than twenty pages. About Damon, about how she feels about him, about how her relationship with Stefan really enabled everything with Damon to happen.
How through every scary, hard, unforgivable thing there had always been this softness there, this feeling that grew and grew and grew and now consumes her.
The part that most astounds her is the progression of her relationships and what she wants from them, what she wants from life. She started by detailing things about Matt-things she hadn't thought about in such a long time-how the reality of their relationship had been a non-choice. They just looked at each other one day and decided that what they already had was something different. She didn't choose her relationship with him-it had been in place for all of her life, her mother and his mother close friends, the inevitability of it written in the stars. (That's the way Matt described it once.)
With Stefan, it had been a definite choice. She had liked him, felt that pull of attraction, and pursued it. Doing so had made her feel alive again; and reassured her that despite her parents' deaths, life went on, and it was okay to live it.
But each of those relationships had been about something bigger, something going on with the course of her life, something that didn't speak to just the connection between her and Matt or her and Stefan.
If she were to choose a relationship with Damon, it would be solely because of Damon. Because of wanting what only he could bring to her life. It wouldn't be an escape, or some planned thing her mother had orchestrated since she lay in a cradle.
It would be her first adult relationship.
(It would be her only adult relationship.)
Damon would never end things with her, and she doesn't think she would ever end them with him. Because when she thinks about it-really, truly envisions a future with Damon, words like inevitable and choice seem to shrivel up into insignificance. Whatever she would have, cultivate, embark upon with Damon would overshadow anything that came before it, and in turn would obliterate any possibilities after it.
Because when Damon loved, he loved.
Stefan once told her that a person's normal human attributes were magnified when they turned into a vampire. She imagines being loved by human Damon Salvatore would have been sufficient for her needs, but being loved by the vampire version would easily put all others to shame.
She puts her pen down and massages her cramping hand. Figuring all this out would probably be much easier than actually making it happen, especially since she was 150 miles from him and she hung up on him earlier.
Climbing into bed, she gives up trying to work it all out in one day. She's mentally and emotionally exhausted, and she's afraid she's only broached the tip of the iceberg.
The following Friday, she comes home from her history lecture early. The professor had been droning on and on about Paul Revere, and she just couldn't handle it anymore. When the text is less dry than the teacher, she can't help but miss Ric. His classes were fun and interesting.
She plods up the steps to her second story apartment and it's just as she's hitting the top of the stairs that she sees a car in the parking lot she hadn't noticed before.
(It's a blue Chevy Camaro, circa 1967.)
All of a sudden, her heart is in her throat and she hesitates. She even has an insane moment where she thinks about running back down the stairs and away from whatever is about to happen.
(Of course, she doesn't. But still, she totally wants to.)
Lydia's already home; she and Damon are sitting on the sofa chatting as Elena walks in. They both glance over at her, but she can only look at one of them and the one who commands her attention smirks just slightly, his eyes flashing blue fire. "Lydia invited me in with no hesitation whatsoever."
He's mad that she's done nothing to protect herself against vampires; which is laughable, since, you know.
"Show Damon that necklace I made for you, Lydia," Elena says, dragging her eyes away from his.
"Oh, yeah, isn't it great?" Lydia says enthusiastically, leaning towards him and showing him the specially beaded chain around her throat. Each little cylinder had a sprig of vervain in it. "Nice," Damon says, smiling sweetly at her roommate.
Lydia can't seem to help herself; her eyes swing around to Elena's, goggling wildly, and Elena can all but hear her screaming, Oh my god, he's so hot! She manages not to say it aloud however.
(Not that Elena blames her. He is. So hot. So beautiful. So here.)
He stands up as Elena moves further into the room, and she tosses her backpack down onto the coffee table. They face each other with just a few feet between them and Elena forces herself not to throw her arms around him, even though that's all she wants to do.
Well, that's not all she wants to do, but she's not sure any of it is acceptable to him.
He stretches one arm out towards her. "What, no hug for your best friend?" Then he smiles, and Elena forgets to have any decorum.
He's here. She would like to think he wouldn't have come all the way there for no reason-in response to her challenge, perhaps? So she steps forward and reaches up to wrap her arms around his shoulders. He pulls her in tight and hard, but then lets her go far too quickly. She keeps her arms around his neck for just a moment longer, looking up into his face as he's pulling back. She caresses the curve of his jaw briefly, just a soft touch of her fingers against his face, and the angry fire in his eyes changes instantly to something just as hot, but potentially more lethal.
Elena feels her cheeks flush.
"It's good to see you," she manages to get out and his lips quirk in a grimace, almost as if her words pain him.
"I'll leave you two alone," Lydia says, and she starts to move towards her bedroom. "I told Damon about the party tonight at Chi-O House, and twisted his arm. He's totally coming with us, so don't let him weasel his way out of it."
"She promised me alcohol," Damon says sagely, his hand patting Elena's hip awkwardly until they let go of each other entirely.
"Did she now?" Elena asks, looking at her roommate over Damon's shoulder as Lydia fans herself and makes exaggerated oh. my. god. expressions as she backs out of the living room.
"Yes," he says, his eyes resting on her face a little too avidly. She can feel more blood rushing into her cheeks all over again the harder and longer he watches her. "She also said it's the Sorority you're hoping to get accepted to. She said it's the best and the coolest."
Elena nods at him, trying not to laugh as Lydia gives her a final thumbs up as she disappears from view. "We've been around to several of them, and we decided we liked that one best, but they can't show us if they like us best because there's all this anti-favoritism stuff." She lets her gaze connect fully with his. "You could have just called," she says.
"Eh," he shrugs. "I figured if I was going to burn my bridges, I ought to do it in person."
Elena smiles because she can't be fooled by his self-preservation tactics any longer. She won't be fooled by it. "We'll see what happens when you light the match."
So, instead of giving him any opportunity to burn bridges, she gives him a tour of her apartment. Saving Lydia's room for last, she gives her roommate her best look of desperation, and Lydia comes out of her room and begins explaining the rushing process to Damon. (To his credit, he seems fascinated by it, listening intently and asking questions as they cook dinner.) Before anyone has time to say so much as we're never going to happen, Elena, it's time to start getting ready for the party.
Elena escapes into the bathroom to take a shower. When Lydia comes in a few minutes later, she knows her roommate is about to say a bunch of stuff that Damon will be able to hear, so she flips on the radio that sits on the window ledge before also turning the water on.
"He has really good hearing," Elena explains when Lydia has to lean close to her to hear her whisper.
"Why don't you want to be alone with him?" she demands.
"Because, he said he came here to burn bridges, which means he came up here to give me the we're just gonna be friends forever speech. I don't want to give him a chance to say that."
"That's exactly why you should be alone with him!" Lydia all but shrieks. Quieting her voice at Elena's look of horror, she hisses, "Have you never seduced anyone? Oh, you're so pristine, Elena! Seriously. He wants you, I could see the thing between you as soon as you walked in. God! Capitalize on that chemistry. Some things just can't be manufactured, and seriously. Seri. Ous. Ly. Just go for it. He's a guy, who's into you, he's not going to say no! And once he gets a taste-he's not gonna walk away."
Elena knows Lydia isn't giving multiple meanings with her taste analogy, but she can feel a pulsing between her legs at the thought of him tasting her anywhere. She has a flash of him taking her blood in that way too, and thinks it wouldn't hurt the way it had that night in the town square.
After she makes Lydia leave the bathroom, for the first time in her whole life, Elena Gilbert takes a cold shower.
Once they get to Chi-O House, she has to introduce him to all the girls she's been working hard to impress and strike up friendships with at previous social events. Damon is typically Damon, kissing all their hands, and flirting to an annoyingly charming degree. The reaction from all of the girls is pretty much unanimous, and she's glad she somehow never noticed (or cared about) the effect he has on women before, because it would have driven her completely crazy. (It still might.)
Lydia brings them both a bottle of beer and Damon wrinkles his nose as he pops the cap off and takes a drink. "This is the alcohol you promised me?" he asks, giving her roommate an annoyed head tilt.
Lydia looks at Elena, flustered. "He likes Scotch, or Bourbon," Elena says and Lydia disappears to find something more appealing to him.
Damon slings his arm around her neck as he takes another swig of the offending beer. "How do you know what I like?" he asks.
Elena presses her own bottle to her lips and looks up at him from the corner of her eye. As she swallows, she smiles. "Like I haven't been watching you drink yourself silly for more than a year? I know everything about you, Damon Salvatore."
"Let's hope not," he mutters, just as Lydia reappears with a bottle of Old Crow. She hands it to him and he makes another dissatisfied face. "The cheap stuff. Ah, well, beggars can't be choosers, right?"
"Don't be such an ass," Elena says and he starts laughing.
"Should I just drink straight from the bottle, or what?" he demands of her as he turns back to Lydia. "Thanks, honey," he says and Lydia turns bright red.
Elena rolls her eyes and gives Lydia an arched brow look as she grabs the hand he's got hanging around her neck and pulls him towards the kitchen of the Sorority house. She's never seen her roommate so awestruck before, and it's slightly irritating since she knows there's no way she's been compelled to act that way. "There are glasses in here, I'm sure."
In the kitchen, they have to squeeze between people; some are just standing around talking, but two couples are making out without regard to their audience. Damon says, "Have some class, get a room," to one of the guys he elbows as they move towards the cupboard Elena thinks the glasses are in.
Elena looks over in time to see the pair leave the kitchen and she realizes Damon compelled either one or the both of them. She slaps a glass into his hand and hisses, "Knock it off!"
"What?" he says, finishing off his beer before pouring some whiskey into the glass. "It was crowded in here. I was just making more room for us." He sets the empty beer bottle and the whiskey container down on the counter and gives her another smirk. "You shouldn't have brought me here if you didn't want me to misbehave."
She just glares at him as he throws back the contents of the glass. Then he puts it on the counter next to her and steps forward so she's pinned between it and him. "That is why you invited me here, right?" he asks. The liquor has a sharp bitter tang to it and he's close enough that she gets a good whiff of it from his breath.
She stares up at him, the desire to run coursing through her veins again. That popular phrase biting off more than you can chew flashes through her brain like it's on a reader board, so she takes a long slow drink of her beer and keeps her eyes steady on his.
The only thing she can think to do is give it right back; if she shows any sign of weakness he'll use it against her, she's sure (meaning, he'll use it as an excuse to run away). The only thing that occurs to her is so bold, so unlike anything she's ever done, she knows if she thinks about it too long, she'll talk herself out of it; so she just goes for it, just like Lydia said.
He's wearing his standard dark button-down shirt and jeans, and she reaches for the button that's fastened at the top of his sternum and undoes it, sliding her fingers just inside the lapels, skimming his chest with her thumbs. "Right," she says, adding a little extra enunciation to the end of the word, the way he's fond of doing himself.
He visibly restrains a shudder; she can tell he's completely unsettled as he takes a step back.
(Which, one point for Elena, right?)
He grabs his glass again and pours himself another drink. Clearing his throat after a hasty swallow, he looks back at her. "Want to show me around this place?" he asks, and Elena suppresses a grin.
"Sure," she says and reaching for his hand she leads him out of the kitchen.
Three beers into it, Elena decides she's not drinking anymore. If anything does happen between them, she doesn't want it to be any fuzzier than it already is. She's not a big girl, but she's always had a relatively high tolerance especially if she's not downing hard liquor.
(She also knows she's not really a good judge of herself and how drunk she actually is, but she'd never tell anyone that.)
After the house tour, and standing around talking to people she doesn't really want to spend time with (or watch as they all but drool over her not-date), she coaxes him onto the dance floor-which isn't hard because Damon loves to dance, and Elena knows this about him. They're having a good time, the crowd is thick and lively, and when a slow song comes on, she just reaches up and wraps her arms around his neck, not even asking him if he wants to dance with her.
(She knows he does, even if he'd never admit it.)
So she presses against him, rests her head against his collarbone and waits until his arms slowly surround her. He doesn't hold her too tightly, but one of his hands spreads out over her lower back in a comforting gesture.
His lips just barely brush her ear as he says, "You're totally a shoo-in for this place. They all love you." She jerks her head back, and before she can even narrow her eyes to glare at him, he says, "I only compelled two of them, and that's because one was bitchy and the other wouldn't take no for an answer. The rest of them had already pretty much decided to let you in. Lydia, too."
She can't help but smile up at him. It's sort of ludicrous, but it's how she becomes certain that he still loves her. No guy she's ever met would listen to all the rules and wherefore of Greek life and then bother to campaign for her in his weird-Damon way if he didn't still care deeply. It makes her heart pound in her chest, and she wonders which of the girls propositioned him. (Probably Tess, who has a terrible reputation; Elena's heard lots of stuff about her without even trying.) She's about to ask him who as the song is winding down, but then she decides it doesn't matter. He said no. That's what matters. She tips her head back, unable to keep the smile from widening into a full-fledged grin of utter happiness. His lips twitch in return and he tilts his head like he's asking, What?
So she leans up, and touches her mouth to his.
His eyes flare and she feels the tension in his body instantly. He doesn't kiss her back, but gives her shoulder a gentle shove, smirking as he says, "I always thought you were a happy drunk, I didn't know you were a slutty one."
So she punches him, because, well, that's what Elena does when Damon pisses her off.
But because they're in a tight crowd of people and Damon's reflexes are vampiric, she actually ends up hitting, quite forcefully, the arm of the guy dancing next to them. "Ow! Man! Back off, bitch," the guy yells, and then Damon decks him and somehow all hell breaks loose.
(Drunk people throwing punches left and right, and nobody knows why, how, or what for.)
By the time he hauls her out of the melee, there's a free-for-all going on, and Elena worries someone will call the cops.
Once they're outside in the cold night air, Damon presses her roughly against the side of the house and says, "We need to talk."
For a moment she thinks the nippy blast of November weather is clearing her head, but then she mutters, "No, what we need to do is fuck," and she knows she's far drunker than she thinks she is, because she would never say that under normal circumstances.
"Holy shit," Damon breathes, turning away from her. (Apparently, he agrees, at least that normally, she wouldn't say something like that.)
Elena shivers as he paces away from her. It's got to be close to ten o'clock and she's outside without a jacket. Besides now, she thinks she might start crying because the whole stupid evening is dissolving into everything she doesn't want it to be. Before she can suggest he just take her home, Damon pivots on his heel and marches back to her.
One of his hands surrounds her face, tipping it back so that he can look into her eyes. The outside lights give her just enough clarity, but Elena knows she's never seen him quite this desperate, not even when he force-fed her his own blood. His mouth opens and shuts twice before he finally says, "This is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever done. Ever."
Then he jerks her close and kisses her.
Chapter Four...Song of Damon