"What the hell is this, Damon?" she yelled across the room at him, tears pooling in her eyes. Everything was so messed up. The one normal thing in her life, the one constant presence was slipping away and fading as fast as a broken memory.

"You know as well as I do what this is!" he shouted back at her eyes blazing in anger. "It was your fucking idea!"

"You went along with it! You could have said no!" she screamed, her heart beating in her chest.

"To you?" he laughed humourlessly. His blue eyes had lost some of the heat of anger and now held pain. A deep heart wrenching pain and an unfathomable sadness. "You know how I felt about you!"

"How could I have known that, Damon? Could I have picked it up from the constant dates you went on? From the advice you were constantly asking me for?" she said bitterly, tears finally spilling over and rolling resolutely down her cheeks.

"When, in all those time I asked you for advice, in all the times I came over after a date, did I ever mention feeling anything remotely serious for one of those girls?"

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she screamed, anger building up inside her. "That you used all those girls and never felt a thing for them?"

"You're supposed to accept it! And accept the fact that if it wasn't them then maybe, just maybe it could have been you?" he hissed, his voice cold and his eyes unforgiving.

"How can I accept it?" she shouted wildly. "The whole time this was going on you never mentioned a thing about that!"

"How could I?" he said softly, the anger fading from his eyes. "That would have been a brilliant conversation!" he said sarcastically.

"It wouldn't have been brilliant but it would have been real!"she said, feeling everything they had ever had between them shattering into a million tiny pieces. "You let me sit there for years thinking you felt nothing for me. Nothing!"

"It wouldn't have changed a thing, Elena and you know it." he spat out, his voice dripping with venom as he turned away from her and headed for the door.

She laughed shortly, everything about her completely devoid of humour. "It would have changed everything Damon."

Something in her voice made him stop in his tracks and turn to face her. His face completely frozen. Even his eyes – the only part of him which gave up any truth – when a sheet of ice showing no signs of melting.

"Yeah. It would have." he said coldly, completely emotionlessly. "But it's over. We were stupid and naïve to even think this could work."

"We weren't stupid or naïve, Damon, and you know it. You forget it worked fine until afterwards. Until we stopped. Until we carried on like nothing happened and we were normal again, completely normal and completely ourselves. When you made me see a different side to you and you made me feel more than just friendship for you and then it was gone as if it never existed – as if it meant nothing. That was how this" she gestured between the two of them. "should have happened." she whispered in a hushed voice that seemed to bounce off of every surface in the room. "It should have been like that last time was our first. When it was about both of us and something more than just sex." she spat out bitterly.

"You're the one who said no emotions!" he exclaimed incredulously.

She threw her hands up in her air in exasperation. "There were no emotions to begin with!"

"Then why are you so upset?" he screamed at her.

"Because it ended! That stupid agreement ended after a while and then it was normal. Then you started being sweet and how can you blame me for feeling something more?"

"You know I never thought of you just as a friend." he said sadly.

"How could I have known that? Not once, in the whole time we've known each other was there even a hint. When it comes down to it you made me feel like any of those other girls, like I was just another girl in your bed that gave you what you wanted. That I was 'nothing to you'!" she made air quotes with her shaking hands.

"You know I didn't mean what I said." he whispered brokenly, his ice blue eyes melting with emotion.

"But you still said it." she said steadily, the tears still rolling down her cheeks but her voice was even. "Do you even know how that felt for me to hear that?"

He stared at the floor and she could see the agony in her eyes reflected in his. "Don't." he said in a silent whisper.

She let out a long, shaky breath with her eyes closed, determined to block out his face from her memory.

He let out a short laugh suddenly causing her to snap her eyes open in shock. He shrugged ruefully staring at her in utter sadness. "In all the ways this could have happened and in all the ways I could have told you how I felt it had to be like this. Like it is a goodbye."

"Isn't it?" she dared ask.

"Does it have to be?" he countered sadly. Those eyes, the only eyes that could make her stomach flip flop and her heart beat faster, bored into hers letting all his sadness and regret seep out into her.

She had to break the eye contact first. He was right. It didn't have to be goodbye. They could survive this. It would never been exactly the same.

It could be better.

She closed her eyes again, the ugly memories flashing through her mind making a lump grow in her throat.

When her eyes opened again he was met with those same eyes. Her stomach flip flopped and her heart started beating faster – just like they always had.

"Yes." she said so quietly he maybe didn't hear. He showed no sign of understanding or hearing that one word that tore her apart.

"It doesn't have to end like this." he said in a low voice. So he had heard her – of course he had. That one word probably hurt him as much as it hurt her. Two words – yes and no – that would both change everything in two drastically different ways.

"I know." she whispered into the quiet night as she stepped towards the doorway. "It won't."


Author's Note: To those who have read my stories for a while - yes, i have a terrible habit of starting a few stories at once then not finishing them and i think this is my fourth unfinished I'm putting up? Why am I doing this? Because I'm an idiot.

I've tried to write new chapters for my other fics for a while and it hasn't been working so this is my apology.

Ek, sorry. If you guys are dying to see a particular story updated message me so I know what to work and and so I at least have some inspiration. (: