In my veins
Part 1 of 2
a/n: the song is 'in my veins' by andrew belle.
yeah, i know. did CHEATERINPINK fall off the face of the globe? die in a freak accident? die in a non-freak accident? die in a non-accident, period? haha, no.
i am, however, moving around the face of the globe. in little more than twenty-four hours, i shall be invading vancouver with a truckload of luggages and a single hairnet. goodbye asia, hello north america. so, forgive me for taking oh so long to update?
"It's okay, you know, to love them both."
She was there in the boarding house when Rose had said that.
It was the same day Rose died. Maybe, in another universe, she would have thought it poetic – such a remarkable truth on such an eventful day. But it was a day of maudlinness and self-hatred, a day to do something she would forever regret.
Ergo, it pricked at her skin like annoying little leeches. Every syllable, an ear-piercing scream.
Why was she at the boarding house? If you asked her that, she'd shrug, refuse to look at you.
Still, every time she's there, she stares at his door.
It's okay, you know, to love them both. The words ring in her ears.
Yeah, well, what if this is the only time I won't be selfish? What if I only want one? And, what if, he doesn't want me back? What then, huh?
(And those were the lyrics to a song she knew too well, a song she hadn't heard in the longest time.)
Nothing goes as planned
Everything will break
She wants to tell him that she could have loved him, if he'd given her a chance.
"Hey Vampire Barbie," he drawls, sauntering past with a glass of bourbon in his hand. Classic Damon. "Where's Ken?"
She rolls her eyes and doesn't reply, moving (forcing) herself in the opposite direction.
And just like that – another chance lost.
People say goodbye
In their own special way
She remembers a night ages ago, probably when she was seventeen (but, wait… she still is; seventeen forever, goddamnit), probably when she was drunk, maybe when she was dreaming, that is like this night.
"Why are you being like this? I'm so good to you and I'd do anything for you," the girl with the sun-burnt hair says.
The guy with the hypnotizing ocean blue eyes clenches his jaw and looks away.
She's at the boarding house the third night this week and she can't remember ever being in this house so many times, even when she was with Damon. She can't sense anyone in the building but Stefan and Elena had told her to meet them there and so wait for them it appears she shall.
He shrugs her off and walks away; she runs after him, high heels slapping the ground. Her hand reaches for his arm – he turns roughly, glaring at her.
"You're stupid."
She twiddles her fingers and looks surreptitiously left and right before swiftly getting up from the sofa and blurring to the liquor table. She thinks Damon is so going to kill me and then a second later ah, who cares, I'm too parched.
Her eyes roam over the many bottle tags until they land on the one she can't help smelling on him every time he's within a mile's radius.
Bourbon.
"You're useless."
Without hesitation, she snatches it up and peels the cork off
– pop! –
and the rim's at her lips – she can smell the heady, all-powering scent of musk and vampire, almost taste his lips like they're really on hers –, she's tilting her head back, and gawd, it tastes so awful and so wonderful at the same time, it's leaving a burn down her throat, sparking a heat in her belly and suddenly –
"You're shallow."
– it's out of her hands. Eyes widening comically, she spins around and, standing in his dark (heartrendingly beautiful; if only her heart could still beat) glory, blue eyes penetrating hers, Damon has the bottle.
Surprised, scared and excited all at the same time, Caroline goes blank and stammers, "You have my bourbon."
"I believe you mean mine." He tosses it back, drinking liberally. She watches his mouth as he does so, silly high school girl giddy at the fact that his lips are now where hers were just seconds ago.
That's probably the closest they'll ever get to kissing anymore.
His venomous glare forces her to shrink back and she flinches. He spins around, disappearing into the crowd. Hours later, she'd lie in bed, curled up next to Matt (who is not nearly bad enough, not even close), and think that's the best goodbye I'll ever get from him.
Damon smirks sarcastically at her, raising his bottle as if to toast, before ambling off, up the stairs.
Her eyes trail him to his room.
He could have thrown a punch at her, or stabbed her with a knife, and she'd be totally powerless, her new youth (in every sense of the word) nothing, absolutely nothing, in comparison to his many years on her. He could have –
But he didn't.
That's the best welcome back she'll ever get. She twiddles her fingers, smile creeping on.
All that you can rely on
And all that you could fake
Will leave you in the morning
She used to think she was completely self-sufficient. Her mom would be gone the entire day ("I have a duty to this town," she remembers her mom saying, her voice drifting on a backward wind, foot already on the gas pedal, door flapping closed behind her, little girl in pink dress left standing in the empty hallway) and she'd have to make her own lunch (Chinese take-out most of the time, other times Vietnamese or pizza) and do her own laundry (she doesn't seem like the type, does she?) and clean up the house ("Where's the vacuum-cleaner?" she remembers her mom asking, police files still clutched in her hands, blood scenes and crimes still haunting the irises of her eyes; she thinks that shouldn't be a question a mom asks her daughter) and, and, and.
Then Damon came and started a fire she immediately became addicted to stoking, then Damon went and the fire burnt out, the dying embers reminding her of the what could have beens and the why nots and the unsaid I love yous.
In another lifetime, she'd be labeled an arsonist. In this, she's just a lovestruck, lovesick, fucking idiot.
She remembers the days after, her memories a jumble and missing, when she thought there was something seriously wrong with her; that was the first day in her entire life – and this, she can say with absolute confidence – that she actually seriously considered hiring a therapist. She couldn't even function. All the things she'd been so sure of – his love for her, despite his coldness and hardness, a marriage sometime down the road, kids and the white picket fence dream –, gone. Just like that. And, after a week of moping and drowning in thick, sticky sorrow, she realized I should have seen it from the start.
He stripped away her self-sufficiency, one of the few things she'd prided herself on. If she can't even rely on herself, if a guy she barely knew could erase parts of her she'd been so certain of, how can she rely on anyone else? What could she possibly have left?
It's getting to be too much.
Come find you in the day
(And she becomes haunted by dreams that will never come true.)
He's raining kisses on her skin, his hands traveling over every curve like the breath of a ghost.
I want my prince charming.
She squirms where she lies, she squirms when she lies.
She's faltering under his gaze, hands roaming over his naked torso urgently, mind a hundred small towns and gentle fields away.
I see you in my dreams, in my dreams even when I'm awake, awake, awwakkkkeeee –
This is too good to be true, he thinks. Free meal on sexy legs. He's always liked the blonde, innocent-my-ass types.
This is too good to be true, he whispers into her ear, his cool breath raising the tiny hairs on her skin. So, enjoy it while it lasts.
You're just a dream, just a dream, just a dream… She reaches for him but he's moving away without even trying and there's that darned, infamous smirk reigning over his lips, oh my gawd, just smile for real for once!, and then she's falling and everything goes black and bright like a rainbow all at once.
She jolts up from her bed, heavy breaths wracking confident girl everyone forgets is only seventeen until she's sobbing child in bed, shaking, trying to hide, hide, hide.
Oh my gawd, it was just a nightmare. He's not real. He's not going to kill me…
Kill me?
Kill me.
That is too good to be true, darlin'.
She jolts up from her bed, heavy breaths wracking small child in white flowing nightgown until she's stronger harder meaner caroline.
"So early?" she inquires, barely a trace of the pretty madness once scarring her face, her body, her everything lingering.
"Never going to be this good again," Damon says, laughing like it's a joke only he finds funny. He shrugs off his jacket as he saunters across the room towards her. She tries not to scramble back against the bed frame but fails.
Oh, Damon, she moans, toes curling uncontrollably as he bites down on her neck. You're the one.
She squirms.
Oh, you're in my veins
And I cannot get you out
She hates that the first time she wakes up in the hospital, she sees her ex.
"Damon," she growls, voice all raspy and hoarse.
"Oh, how I love it when you say my name," Damon murmurs from his place against the wall, chuckling a bit, "especially like that."
And, just like that, he's gotten under her skin. She curses. She thought she'd be stronger than that, harder than the girl she was two months ago.
"I come bearing gifts," Damon starts, walking forward. Caroline violently shakes her head, leaning back an inch for every step he takes.
"Don't flatter yourself," she croaks, wincing at him and clutching her stitches as she reaches for a glass of water.
Damon actually smiles. Like, a true, goddamned real smile. Not one of his stupid-assed half-smirks.
Figures that he'd only show that beautiful (uh, no, um, ugly, menacing, tortured) smile when she was in pain.
"You really took a hard bump to the head, didn't you?"
She rolls her eyes, scoffing and looking away.
Sometime that night, he gives her his blood and she sucks at his wrist with more enthusiasm than she would like. At the end though, when she should be feeling at the top of the world, broken bones mended and all that, it's him that walks away, smirking.
She hates that it wasn't even good enough for him to take her blood, to take her body; he had to go and force himself into her veins too.
She hates that she didn't have a choice, that she would have died without him (him, his blood; it's the same thing), but that he had a choice and could have taken her life away as easily as he restored it.
She hates that she feels even just a little grateful, even just a little desperate for his own branded elixir of life.
She hates it, hates it, hates it.
Oh, you're all I taste
At night, inside of my mouth
The entire night is spent running her tongue along the crevices of her mouth, over the lips that his wrist rested at for minutes.
He's all she tastes, all she thinks about.
Oh, you run away
'Cause I am not what you found
"Why'd you leave me?"
"… I was looking for this girl I loved a long time ago. Still do." – stab – "You were just a distraction… just something I could use and let bleed."
They talk in the darkness, so they can't see the other's face.
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Why'd you leave?" Me, he doesn't say. Me, she hears anyway.
She can't remember leaving him but she answers anyway. "You made me forget, remember?"
"So, you would have stayed. If I hadn't made you forget."
"No. I would have hitch-hiked to the next country."
They speak in the darkness, so they can hide their lies. She turns her frame towards him, reaching. He looks away.
"I wanted my Prince Charming. A place I didn't have to hide, where I could be safe."
In the darkness, nothing's real.
a/n: i don't know when part 2 will be up. but, it will be up.
darn fanfiction. editing out words and not letting me keep them in.
