Goodbye Kiss
There are things they don't talk about – not even now, after thirty years. Things like fire, like blood, love, right, wrong, and all the other big words they were so keen on using when she was young and he was stupid. He likes to think of this as progress: all the grand stuff closed and left behind in a very melodramatic box. It's gone, or as good as gone; sealed off, off limits, none of your business.
What Damon gets instead is Elena Gilbert showing up at his door unannounced, and waiting for him to let her in as if she actually thought he would refuse.
(He toyed with the idea once or twice, and then promptly laughed himself off the stage.)
"I keep expecting you to kick me out," she said that one time. "But somehow you never do."
She clearly thought he would reply, but Damon just shrugged and let her comment slide. There was something very familiar in her words, like he'd heard them before, but the challenge in her voice was so jarring he couldn't place them at first. He only figured it out after a few days, and by that time, she was already gone without as much as a goodbye kiss.
Now she waltzes back into his life with an overnight bag, and takes off her shoes like it's not a big deal.
They will end up in bed eventually, the way they do every time. It's not love sex or hate sex, but something wedged weirdly in between; "I miss you" sex mixed with "I wish we were better at this", some fantasy and mockery, and more than a touch of exhaustion.
Funny, how those things turn out.
Elena quickly finds her bearings in an apartment she's never visited before, takes a book off a shelf, and picks an armchair for herself. Damon wants to laugh at her ease, congratulations, good show, how very Katherine of you, but words get stuck in his throat, and he's left staring at Elena Gilbert making herself comfortable in his living room like she owned it.
(Staring at Elena Gilbert making herself comfortable in his head.)
He brings her a glass of bourbon without asking.
She dresses older than last time he saw her (eight years ago, another college phase, American pie sorority girl life with a minor in creative writing), all serious make-up and responsible shoes, her hair in a fashionable shade of red. He's seen her like this before, right before she left Mystic Falls with a suitcase full of pencil skirts and a BA in whatever. Ladies and gentlemen, Elena Gilbert stuck in vampirism and its arrested development, doomed to relive her life until she realizes she doesn't care if she gets it right.
Though, who is he to talk.
By nightfall he feels like she's never left; he trips over her shoes in the hall, and finds a tall mug, exactly the kind she likes, taken out of his cupboard. The idiot in him wants to say that even his apartment smells like Elena, even though he knows it can't be true. There's no such smell as "Elena", because, being a copy, she only ever finds smells already belonging to other people. She can smell like Damon's fabric softener or Caroline's perfume, like Bonnie's herbs or that horrible takeout she devours with Jeremy for old times' sake, but she changes everything so often that there's nothing distinctive that he could pinpoint as universally "Elena". For now, she brings with her a sharp scent of blood and cheap apple soap, and for once, Damon is smarter than to ask questions.
No questions about blood, and no questions about empty eyes, or about laughter that sounds just a touch too happy.
"Elena?" is all he manages to utter as they finish their second round of drinks.
"I'm tired," she answers, meeting his eyes bravely, and it tells him all he needs to know.
He gets up and starts walking, not even bothering to check if Elena is following him to bed.
("I need a do-over," she doesn't say as she starts unbuttoning his shirt, but it doesn't matter. He inhales loudly to cover her silence.)
Damon lets his clothes fall down together with his thoughts, and steps out of them blank like a page. Elena, he remembers as he cups her face in both hands, wrote a book five years ago, and some phrases from it start ringing in his head as he kisses her deeply, I wish we didn't, I wish we could...
("Never mind.")
Suddenly her hands are in his hair, and she takes the lead.
Elena kisses his shoulder just to get a gasp from him, so Damon obliges. It's so easy to give into her fingers again, just once more. This is the last time, he tells himself as per usual, so he might as well let it go.
He slides down to his knees as Elena sits on the bed, and he would laugh at his own shaking fingers if he wasn't so out of breath.
Elena's thighs never change, all soft lines and sensitive spots her hands guide Damon through without missing a beat. She used to like it slower, he remembers idly as his head follows her up and up, but he tries not to think about it too much. This is a goodbye kiss, and he isn't going to spoil it with something as silly as memories.
It's not like they actually have that much good stuff to remember.
It takes Damon a while to catch the rhythm. There is no pattern in the muscles twitching erratically as Elena moves her legs, nothing regular to the way her fingers grasp his hair in silence and terror. She might not be able to quit him, but she's sure done talking to him, and for a good reason.
("You should've listened," he reads in the way her back arches accusingly, and, because it's all in silence, he takes the blame.)
Elena lets out a single gasp that sounds like she was closing a chapter; strong, and final, and so sharp it makes Damon jump. He watches, mesmerized, as (in his eyes) her head hits the bed in slow motion, and she lets out a laugh that means "goodbye", or maybe "until next time", how would he know, really?
Her hair on his pillow looks like fire.