There's a reason he doesn't open up the floodgates of humanity, every damn day. Hell, this town is running itself into the ground, same as always, and now there's a bunch of hapless teenagers looking to get chomped on by the big bad of the week. Damon's a control freak, alright? There's a reason he organizes his blood A through O and his scotch pricy through pricier.
There's a reason for everything.
.
The rest of the vamp-bait can rot into the forgiving earth, for all he cares, but Elena—
Stefan seems to think him cold for even weighing the wisdom of a Katherine consultation in the first place. This is remarkably ironic, coming from Stefan, who always twists the knife clinically and rationally: Do you understand how much you deserve this, brother?
Shit. There's nothing rational about that at all. Nothing rational, really, about Stefan.
But where Stefan goes, Damon follows. Willing or not.
.
In the end, Damon's glad enough that they drop the Katherine plan for something witchier, and he even graciously offers to drive, as though his dead heart isn't pounding with panic, with the relentless fear that they'll find Elena too late, or that they'll never find her at all.
She would laugh, if she heard his worries. If his worries were something he could ever bring his treacherous mouth to speak aloud. To speak to her.
She would laugh—not with humor, exactly. Nothing so carefree as that. She would huff a little surprised giggle at him and say, Damon, we're going to get through this, there's a solution, and he would want so much to believe her.
He always wants to believe her.
(He wants much more than that.)
.
"I've been drinking from her," Stefan says, and Damon should have been expecting it. There is no world where Stefan doesn't ask for everything, no world where he doesn't get it. Damon can't even let his fingers clench tighter around the wheel, because then Stefan will know. Stefan will twist the knife.
(He already has.)
So Damon shifts to taunts, to reminders of a past that they never quite shake. And he doesn't think—no, he doesn't let himself think—of the way Elena must gasp a little in pain, of the way her veins slip open for his brother, along with her heart.
.
They save her. (There's a solution.)
She's still stained by her own blood, thanks to Katherine's tricks of the night before. She is standing in the light, all gratitude and a soft, escaping breath.
She isn't smiling at Damon.
.
That's three oh, shit moments so far today.
Three and counting.
.
She whispers thank you, and he answers in the same way, it isn't the little laugh he'd imagined, it's something sweeter and he is not as ready for it as he wants to be. He is shaking, somewhere unreachable. He is in love with Elena, which he's known for a long time.
Only—he didn't know how deep it ran, how much she could overtake him, pushing Katherine from his mind with such finality, Katherine from his heart with such gentleness.
.
He drinks.
Not blood, just scotch. Pricy, then pricier. Stefan comes to chide him first and apologize to him second. The words skitter over Damon's skin like ants. Forgiveness is a fickle thing; he usually saves it for Elena, whose apologies he does not deserve.
He loves his brother. He hates his brother. He's probably going to kill his brother, someday, unless his brother kills him first.
(He's always rather hoped that it would end that way; in the family.)
.
Damon wasn't going to open up the floodgates, but the river flowed all the same. Elena let slip a few kindnesses; a few glances, unexpectedly keen. Elena told him that he mattered. Elena let him back in, when all was lost and he really had ruined past, present, and future.
Damon breathes. (A soft, escaping breath.) The necklace is cold against his palm. His heart is cold in his chest, but that is old news.
.
He is old, but love is always new.
.
Damon leaves the necklace, Damon leaves her. He takes the memories with him.
The floodgates, not so much.