A/N: I just want to say that this is only a one-shot...I think. I barely have time to stay focused on a long story, so I thought of this. It is loosely based on when Damon struts his naked self in front of Elena in the season 3 premiere. Thank God for the over confident male race…And vampires…Always the vampires.

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Summary: Damon just had to be the kind of guy who actually liked when he was caught in the act of being 'almost' naked. And pretty soon…it was going to be the death of her. Elena just didn't count on the little marking located on Damon's hip to have her thoughts become a jumbled up mess.

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Mistaken Observations: Flash Me, Darling

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Well, who did she think she was trying to kid, anyway? There wasn't anyone to convince anymore, wasn't anyone to blame but herself. The guilt and pain still lingered there, warping a painful seed into her mind, and maybe she thought that being alone with Damon, teaming up with Damon, wouldn't have any effect on her. Why would it? He wasn't the right male vampire for her, for anyone, really, but she would never tell him that. The one she really wanted was off on a real screwed up drinking binge, busy being corrupted by the lesser lowlife species she forced herself not to think of in her spare time.

And yet, it didn't take that long, maybe a month or so, before she got the real gist of what it felt like to betray the one you loved, or thought you loved, and felt the full frontal meaning behind the words, 'sin' and 'smolder.'

It started out fine. Well, as fine and dandy as they could both muster, anyway. They didn't talk about that night, the one where he almost…died, and she didn't see the need to. Let him read into it as he wanted. Maybe the old Elena would have wanted to talk it out, much to his obvious distaste, and try to tell him that it was an action that spontaneously burst out under the circumstances; a spur of the moments act, and a knee-jerk reaction to say the least. But if she was going to be fairly honest with herself this time around, she knew that she couldn't muster up the energy to hurt his ego anymore.

So, she was going to let him think about it himself. She almost shuddered at the thought of him reading into it a little too much. She didn't want him to jump her bones out of nowhere or really touch her anywhere for that matter. But if he came to her and said he wanted to talk about it, detoxing the pent up emotions, then she would be more than happy to oblige. Starting a conversation Damon didn't even want to have in the first place and having it almost always end up with one or the other feelings wounded was just too exhausting. If Damon started the talking then he hopefully wouldn't end up yelling in her face and causing a new bout of white hot fury to bubble up in the pit of her stomach.

They really were, in all senses of the word, too dangerous to be around each other. It was like throwing a gallon of gasoline on a fire to put it out and then calling it good, walking away even though the problem was still clearly there.

She really had to stop making analogies about her and Damon. They were starting to suffocate her, and she could have sworn she could have written a book about all the things she compared them to. But that was only if she was really bored. Well, she did live in Mystic Falls, so the time may never even come when there would be a day when there wasn't something life threatening to do. The way things were going, she would never be bored again.

In the first few days of being left alone with each other, they were both perfectly fine. They both got up in the morning, separate beds of course, ate breakfast, well, one of them did, and they both tried to do anything in their power to find a lead on where Stefan was. But they both agreed after a while that if Klause did not want to be found…then he would not be found. It was as frustratingly simple as that. Elena still refused to give up though. And it had surprised her when Damon agreed, continuing to talk and bargain with Bonnie to do anything she could to help the both of them. And since Elena wanted Bonnie's help, that is what she got.

It seemed that their easy feeling and willingness to work with each other was short lived, cut after about a week of living in the same huge house together. All Elena had wanted was to tell Damon that Alaric had called. And Elena knew that the only friends Damon had where she and Ric, so she agreed on the phone that Damon would call him back. She quickly decided that going into Damon's room in the first place was a very, very bad idea.

Elena curled deeper into the sheets of her bed, remembering just exactly what had happened that day to make it so awkward. The memoirs burned into her mind.

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"Yeah, Ric. I will definitely tell him that you called." Elena smiled into the receiver. She really did like Alaric and all that he had done for her and Jeremy. Even when he had lost Jenna. Even when all of them had lost Jenna. And in the presence of Jeremy, Alaric had made sure not to be too negative about anything. The kid really did not need any more doom and gloom in his life. Elena easily thought Ric as an uncle.

"Yup," she smiled, grimly this time, "I'll make sure to let you know when we hear any more news. Alright, Ric. Bye." She slammed the phone back on the receiver a little more forcefully than was necessary. Just when she was thinking all those nice things about Alaric, he had to go and mention Stefan. She almost considered not telling Damon that he had called, but what good would that do? She was the bigger person in this situation.

Damon had not come down from his room that morning, which was easily a rare occurrence. He was always the first one up. He didn't need that much sleep in the first place.

Weird.

Frowning, she turned the corner and slowly made her way up one of the many staircases of the boarding house. If you did not easily know this house the way she did, then you were guaranteed to get lost. It was like a labyrinth. And even now she had some trouble finding Damon's room, even though it was right across from Stefan's.

When she did enter his room, pushing his door open, she knew that was her first major mistake of the day.

Damon was there, alright. But he was not sleeping like she thought he would be. Nope. He was getting undressed. And clad only in his underwear, which he was in the act of pulling off, the waistband of the fabric dangerously low on his hips to the point where they weren't even really on his hips, he made quite a sight. Especially when his hair was sticking in all directions like that and his cheeks were flushed from the blood he probably had just recently consumed.

Before she could turn around and run out of the room like she had intended to, Damon had pulled his only scrap of clothing on him back on his waist. But not before she caught the black marking that was placed near his pelvic bone, under the hard indentation there. When he put the Boxers back on, it had covered it up. She then realized that were the design was located, was in a place that was indeed considered 'private.' She had not actually seen…that male…organ, but it was so dangerously close to the real thing that she couldn't resist the urge to flush.

She looked back up at Damon's face. His eyes were wide and painfully blue, a startling contrast to his dark tousled hair. His full lips were open in an astounded expression. She had obviously caught him off guard. Yeah, she knew how he felt.

"Wow, you really don't knock, do you?" Damon turned his back to her and put on a pair of blue jeans, sliding them over his slim legs. He put on no shirt, of course. He just had to jump at the opportunity to make her even more uncomfortable…If that was even possible.

"Sorry," she flushed, "I guess I'm just used to my house. I never really learned to knock on doors."

Raised dark eyebrows and a tantalizing smirk was her only response in return. But then after a while, he opened his mouth, the tips of his perfectly white and straight teeth visible. "Was there something you wanted? You intruded my striptease and I need to take a shower."

Elena squinted her eyes, glaring at him with brown eyes and a stubborn set in her mouth. "Alaric called. He wanted to talk to you. I thought you were sleeping."

"Nope," he popped the 'p.' "Just trying to be hygienic."

"Oh." Smartest response of the year.

Before she could stop it, her eyes wandered back down again. She wasn't trying to be sexual, she swore, but she would have liked to know what that mark on his skin was. A bruise? No, vampires couldn't get those. A birthmark, maybe? Nope. The only visible marks on Damon's indestructible body were the light scar through his left eyebrow from when he was human and then the other scar on the inside of his thigh.

Damon was six when he accidently ran into a man who held a carving knife in his hand. The skin under his brow had split open. And when Damon's neighbor's dog got loose when he was 15, it took a nasty chunk out of his upper thigh. Elena had asked about the scar on his face when she saw it one day, but the scar on his leg she had discovered only a couple weeks ago when Damon was, yet again, parading out in his underwear.

"It must have hurt," she remembered saying to Damon when she was told the story.

Damon had grimaced at her. "It did. He hit my Femoral Artery. I almost didn't live."

And then she remembered asking why there wasn't a scar from where he had gotten shot in 1864. Damon had said that because his wounds from when he was a kid had already scared over before he turned, the transformation from human to vampire had not affected them. Since the wound from the shot had not healed over before turning, the transformation just cleared it up. He never said anything about it afterward, but Elena thought that Damon was grateful he couldn't see the gunshot wound over his heart. Why would you want to be reminded of the moment your father killed you and ultimately turned you into a vampire?

So if it wasn't a scar, bruise, or a birthmark, then what exactly was it? And why did this bother her so much? She really should have just walked away to let him take his shower in peace. Actually, she really should have just knocked in the first place. No, Alaric should have just never called. Great, now she was blaming her personal predicaments on other people? So much for being the bigger person today.

Because her staring at his…lower region was probably becoming obvious, she ripped her eyes away and met Damon's cobalt ones. He was staring at her intently, looking a smidge to amused for her own personal liking.

"And just what do you think you're looking at down there?" His tone implied that he knew exactly what she was thinking about. Only she wasn't thinking about it in that way. She was curious. Not about anything inappropriate of his, but about the suspicious marking on his…Okay, so maybe it was inappropriate. She really had not seen that much of his body before and she was cursing herself for even walking up those stairs. Why did she have to be stuck with Damon of all people? Why couldn't he be ugly and fat and totally unappealing in every way possible? It would have been so much easier to work with this man if he was physically repulsive.

And even though the words he spoke had more of an effect on her than she would have liked, she still had the dignity to plop down on his bed, much like he used to do to her bed, and roll her eyes. Acting indifferent and like she owned this bedroom seemed like a good way to go.

"Don't flatter yourself, Damon. I was just thinking."

This only seemed to add fuel to his already raging fire. She could see it in his eyes. "Kinky. About what, may I ask?"

Elena narrowed her eyes and pointed an almost accusing finger in his direction. "About that mark near your…hip." Okay, so it really wasn't on his hip. But she wasn't going to say 'about that mark near your penis.' This whole thing was crude enough.

Damon looked down at himself, scrunching up his eyebrows and wrinkling his admirably cute nose. He looked at her after a second and shrugged, seemingly oblivious to what she was getting at. "Yeah, not really seeing any mark."

She looked at him. Honestly? He was going to play this game with her?

Damon moved to the window nonchalantly, wincing when the sun hit his sensitive eyes. The hard muscles of his back seemed to bunch and tense up, making him look rigid and uncomfortable.

"Well," Elena squirmed on the ginormous bed, "I guess it's not really on your hip…Just near it. You…can't really – You can't really see it with clothes on…I think." She had extreme difficulty getting those two sentences out.

Throwing his head over his shoulder, Damon grinned at her with a predatory look on his face. "So, you've been spying on my now? Hey, no complaints here. It's a free show."

Elena scoffed, picking at one of the loose threads on his sheets. "That was probably the most disgusting thing I've heard from you all year. And you do say a lot of disgusting things."

Damon shrugged once again, his collar bone protruding momentarily and the hollow in his throat deepening, with an amused expression gracing his features. He pulled his head back and looked down, his hand suddenly working on the leather of his belt.

"Whoa," Elena shot up in a sitting position on the bed, one hand extended as if it would stop whatever the hell he was doing. "What exactly do you think you're trying to-" Elena was cut off once again as he turned around to face her head on.

Damon had undone the belt and buttons of his pants so that they were sitting loosely on his waist. His thumb had lightly pulled the waistband of his underwear away from his side and tugged it downward some more. And if Elena thought that the first time she saw the marking was provocative, then this was a whole other ball park. This time, it was a lot less modest and more eye burning. She really didn't fancy being flashed this morning.

"You mean this?"

Elena forced her eyes back over to his lower body. The mark was there and so was a lot more skin than there was the first time. Thank the Lord that at least some of the fabric was still covering him. Actually, she was surprised he didn't just go commando everywhere.

"Have you no shame?" Elena tried to look stern, but in the end she couldn't help but laugh. He was just like a little boy, parading around naked like he was five and not a fully endorsed grown man. It reminded her of Jeremy and when she used to give him bathes when he was little. He was not ashamed because he was little and little minds…and little body parts had nothing to be ashamed about. It isn't like there's something to see when a little kid was naked. But, then she also recollected the time she accidently walked in on Jeremy taking a shower when he was 14. This time there was something to see and he was not amused at all. Please, it wasn't like hadn't grown up with him or anything.

"No. No really."

She managed to contain a blush when she looked over at Damon this time. Why was she being such a prude anyway? She had seen naked men before. Well, actually she had only seen two. Matt and Stefan. Okay, nasty. She did not want to think about Stefan naked when she was staring at his older brother. Maybe it was the fact that living with an attractive man and noticing him every day and then seeing him almost naked were two completely different stories.

Quieting her noisy thoughts seemed impossible, so she focused on his hip. It looked like a…tattoo? Yup, most definitely a tattoo. It was long, black and spindly, intricate, and seemingly masculine at the same time. It just looked like some ancient pattern that she couldn't quite put her finger on. The design trailed further into his underwear and she was immediately relieved that he still had some modesty and didn't want to show her the full thing. If she wanted to see anymore, then the underwear would have to come off. And who knew where a tattoo that big would expand to...

"Your brother has a tattoo on his arm." She deadpanned.

Damon snapped the boxers back into place and zipped up his jeans. "What's your point? Lots of people have tattoos, 'Lena. "

"But he has one on his arm…Not his crotch."

Damon looked at her for a second as she relaxed back into his bed, this was too much excitement for one morning, and then he did something she never expected. He laughed, deep and way too charming for his own good. It made her want to laugh, even if she didn't what they were laughing at. Oh God, was he laughing at her?

Elena's expression twisted up and then she glared at him.

Damon got one look at her expression and the laughing ceased. "Sorry," he coughed, " I just never thought I would hear those words leave your mouth."

"Yeah, well I never thought you would get a tattoo on your balls, so…" she shrugged at him. Between the way he was so completely unashamed of walking around almost naked, the way he attracted women to him like moths to a flame, and his willingness to get a tattoo where no sane, non-sex crazed person would, he was like an original male prostitute. Maybe he was…

"People do crazy things sometimes, Elena." His eyes steeled over and his mouth hardened, traces of amusement vacant from his expression. "You know that better than anyone."

Elena looked down at her feet and frowned. Maybe this was her cue to leave. "I'm just gonna let you take your shower now." She said this mostly to the ground than to him, and she climbed off the bed and walked over to the door.

Before she could even get her hand on the door knob, Damon had called out to her. She looked over her shoulder.

"If you ever want to see the rest of the tattoo…then you know where I am."

Grimacing, Elena left the room.

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Elena was ashamed to admit that she had that memory detailed down to every second. She remembered every part, every moment, and every glimpse of white, alabaster skin that was shown…Whether it was intentional or not. But she had already guessed that Damon wouldn't have minded in the first place if she wanted to see that racy tattoo. Damon was just one of those types of people.

Vicki Donovan had been like that towards Jeremy when they were younger. And even though Vicki was almost three years older than Jeremy, she still found it right in some part of her ever scheming mind to flash her body at him, when she swore no one was looking. It was weird and frankly a bit disturbing. Jeremy didn't seem to mind though. He was all for the attention. But coming from Damon, this really should have been expected. He was just…Damon. And to him that sounded like a valid enough reason to share his body with the willing…er, the unwilling. She was still a little bit cloudy on that part.

When the warmth started to seep slowly into Stefen's room- she now lived alone with Damon while Jeremy stayed with Bonnie- and the heated sheets started to tangle uncomfortably around her exposed legs, she made her way slowly out of the bed, plopping her feet sharply against the achingly cold floor.

When she made her way downstairs, shivering all the while, she found Damon to be sitting nonchalantly at the dining room table. He looked like the epitome of an average man, save for the cup of blood that was placed near his elbow, while he read the paper and absently tapped his fingers against his knee cap.

He seemed to be doing a lot of that nowadays, fidgeting until she herself had to tell him to calm down and take a couple deep breathes. Mostly, she just tried to ignore it.

"Any new leads?" she asked.

Damon saved her the humiliation of pretending to not understand what she was talking about.

"No. Nothing. It's like they have completely dropped off the face of this earth." The tapping on his knee increased to an agitated state. "It sure would be nice if they at least didn't clean something up for once."

But then what would be the fun in that, she thought bitterly. After all, Klause just seemed to be doing this because it was fun…to him.

She grabbed a white cup from the pantry up above and looked at it carefully, before setting it gently down again. She didn't feel like she could stomach anything at this moment.

"Do you ever think that-" she stopped short, afraid of what his reaction would be.

"Ever think what?" There was inquisitiveness in his voice, silently begging her to tell him what was going on in that pretty little mind of hers.

He wanted to know her, he wanted to understand.

She coughed lightly. "Do you ever think that maybe-" she had to stop again, catching her breath. "Maybe Stefan doesn't want to see us again. Maybe he likes going back to old habits. Maybe he likes Klause…"

Damon had thought of all this just a few nights ago. And he didn't doubt that any of this could be very much possible. But if he did know one thing, it was that Stefan was always having a silent battle between his head and his heart. Damon would have bet his whole liquor supply and his car on Stefan really wanting to come home, while his mind…and Klause…told him 'no.' Ever conflicted, just like Elena would be ever damned. Sad little story to tell after years, if you asked him.

But no one ever asked him, so…

Damon was silent for some more moments, just the sound of her raised breathing and his knee-tapping visible to the ear, until he broke the trance with a loud scoff.

"He's my brother, Elena. I can bet you anything in this world that he just wants to be home with you right now."

Those seemed to be the magic words because Elena broke into a wide smile, and Damon just outright cursed himself.

Why was he getting her hopes up? If Klause didn't want Stefan out from his clutches, then he would never be a free man again. The sooner Elena accepted that, the sooner they could move on from this sad little story of the girl who had two vamp brothers safely perched on her shoulders.

The sooner she moved on…the sooner she could accept that maybe Damon was the right one for her.

Elena must have seen the falter in Damon's happy façade because her smile slowly faded, too. She knew as well as he did, that Stefan did not have a say in this anymore. He was practically playing a video game, but he wasn't the one controlling it.

Jeremy would have liked that reference, Elena thought bitterly. Whenever she thought of her brother, and all that he had been through over his short 16 years, she got strangely misty eyed.

She looked away from Damon, trying to hide her red rims and the water threatening to leak from her tear-ducts. She was stronger than this. She was ballsy enough to stab herself just to kill some bad-ass Original vampire, and yet she couldn't think of her brother without going on a crying jib? What would Damon really think of her, when he realized she wasn't as brave as she pretended she was?

And more importantly, why did even matter what Damon thought of her? He was just an acquaintance. He was just her boyfriend's brother. He was just an insanely attractive male.

Come to think of it, she hadn't had sex in a really long time. She could always just blame it on the hormones. But what was Damon's excuse?

Oh, right. It was just Damon. He didn't need an excuse. He was the excuse.

"That tattoo," Damon cut into her thoughts like a sharp-edged knife, "It was the pattern of my mother's dress when she died."

Elena stopped fidgeting with her cup, and slowly turned to look at him. "How come you didn't tell me that before?"

"Why?" he lifted his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. "I didn't think it was useful information. Why would it matter what you thought?"

Elena tried to ignore that blow, and placed a small hand over her heart. "Why would it matter? Gee, I don't know. Maybe because this whole time I thought you just got it to show off your goods to some emo chick in fishnet stockings and no underwear.

"Really?" Damon gave her a quizzical look. "Do you really think that highly of me?"

The answer was clear on Elena's face. Yes. Yes, she did.

Damon sighed, a long suffering sound coming from years of experience and a lot of boredom. "Elena, the tattoo was done by a man. So get your mind out of the gutter."

"But why there? Why not get it where someone would be able to see it?"

He smiled suddenly. "Oh, don't worry. Plenty of people see it, Elena. All they have to do is ask."

Elena couldn't help but smile. It was such a typical Damon thing to say.

"Why the change of topic?" she asked. "I wasn't done brooding about Stefan."

"Yeah, but I was. I just thought a sexier conversation was in order. At least you know you will have something to remember me by." He looked at her from the corner of his very blue eyes. They glinted with laughter.

She looked down at the floor, nudging along an imaginary dust bunny with her slender floor. "I honestly don't think I would be able to forget someone like you, Damon. My memory might not be as good as yours, but it's not that bad."

Damon seemed to like this response. He got up from his chair with the grace of some wild, foreign animal, and grinned down at her.

"Good to know that you like me so much, 'Lena."

Elena smiled sweetly back over to him, pushing herself off the countertop, and make her way to face Damon.

His smirk wavered when she patted his denim covered hip right where the tattoo was located, looked up at him with big eyes, and whispered into his ear:

"And if you ever want to see my tattoo, then you know where I am."

This time, Elena left the room with a self-satisfied air around her.

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A/N: Reviews are love, people. All responses are greatly welcomed!