Bless the Ignorant; (Damon/Elena, T)
Yet another TVD Comment Fication prompt filled ^_^ I am having waaay too much fun with this thing, but hey, no complaints!! If you haven't checked it out yet (and, of course, are a TVD fan), highly, highly reccomend that you do, I'm amazed by the quality of the writing there and I'm sure you will be too!!
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Title: Bless the Ignorant
Pairing: Damon/Elena
Written for the TVD Comment Ficathon Prompt: Nothing imprints a thing so firmly upon the memory as the desire to forget it by metamorphagi
Rating: T
Spoliers: 2x11 ("By the Light of the Moon")
Disclaimer: TVD is the property of its respective owners.
Summary: "what he wouldn't give to walk away..."
He loses count of the number of nights he has spent watching her, protecting her as he promised his brother (himself) he would.
He knows she’s privy to his presence--she must be. But she refuses to acknowledge it--him-- all the same, does anything and everything to stress just how unwelcome and inconsequential a presence he is.
He sees past her smokescreen, has always prided himself in his ability to see what other let slip through the cracks of fingers and floorboards. Her movements are calculated, sometimes jarred and disjointed even. It’s there in the imperious way her head shakes as she runs a brush through the silky wisps of chestnut, in the way her lips purse as she examines herself--displeased with the knowledge that he is doing the same, in the way she angrily tugs at the curtains as she moves to change into her night cloths--leaving him with a dark expanse on which his lurid imagination runs wild.
There are nights when almost expects her to abandon the curtains, to tease and torment him, lash out against him in the cruelest of ways for robbing her of her privacy, her agency.
But then he remembers that she is not Katherine.
*
He hasn’t seen the inside of her room since that night; makes do with the kitchen, the living room, heck even Jeremy’s room when he feels the need to collaborate with the kid (which isn’t often, mind you). But never, ever her room. It taunts him, every nook and cranny an insufferable witness to a lamentable memory-the sound of her pleading rejection, the snap of Jeremy’s neck, the sight of her standing stoic in the face of his admission.
Rather unceremoniously, he props himself beside her on the living-room couch--neutral territory--drapes his arm around the back of it, a move that is both deliberate and indeterminate. It garners nothing but a narrow-eyed glare from her before she turns away, returns to paying him no heed.
“This teen angst act, is it gonna let up anytime soon?” he sighs, tilts his head back in an effort to ease his frustration. It’s getting to him--she’s getting to him.
“Elena--“
“Jenna thinks I’m cheating on Stefan- with you,” she bites out the last two words with such vehemence, they pierce his skin in a way that would put the most formidable of wooden splinters to shame.
He spares her nothing but a glance before he turns away--catches himself before the tips of his fingers move to smooth the frowns and furrows marring the surface of her face.
“She thinks she saw us kissing on Founder’s Day and now you’re here everyday while Stefan is nowhere to be seen… what else could she think?”
“Well, you could tell her the truth- although that isn’t without it’s fair share of…complications,” he smirks, forces some levity on the air that hangs so heavily between them.
“Or I could just compel her--“
“No you can’t!”
She’s up in an instant, her slender frame towering over him, hair hanging long enough to nearly brush against his cheek. The appearance of it all belies the balance of physical power between the two of them--and only that.
“You can’t control anything and everything about my life Damon,” she spits it out with a ferocity that disconcerts him, has his lips slightly parting before he has the sense to press them into a firm line.
She turns away, but not before he grabs her wrist for reasons unknown even to him. He feels the current he’s come to associate with any brush of his skin over her own--wonders idly if she feels it too.
“Damon let go,” she whispers, face turned away from him as if it (he) is more than she can bear at the moment.
He lets go, watches her arm limply fall back at her side before she vanishes.
*
He’s outside her window, watching her--again; can’t bring himself to cross the threshold of the house that is quickly becoming his undoing.
There’s a part of him--so small and subdued he sometimes questions its existence--that hates her as much as he hates his brother, that envies her ignorance as fiercely as he curses his knowledge. That condemns her for doing this--whatever the fuck this is--to him.
Except, he knows exactly what this is, has spent one hundred and forty-five years living for this, trying to recover this only to find it where he least expects it.
”I can step out of helping as easily as I stepped in.”
"Nope, see, that’s the beauty of it: you can’t."
The walls, the words, her ignorant bliss; they all torment him, glare back at him like the blaring headlights of an obnoxious vehicle.
What he wouldn’t give to walk away from it all. What he wouldn’t give to stay.