They don't acknowledge any of what happened when they thought he was dying. At the moment, it's easier to ignore what happened and focus on Stefan.
Damon knows Elena feels guilty for being with him when Stefan was giving up his humanity to save his brother. Damon feels guilty as well, but there is a part of him that can't regret what happened when all that she said meant that he means something to her.
He holds to that in the coming months as everyone scrambles first to find Stefan, then to save him; and once he's home, they realize he needs to detox from human blood.
-x-
Elena stays at the boarding house more often than she stays at her own house because she feels she owes it to Stefan to be there for him—even if he is refusing to see her. She cries herself to sleep each night, and Damon regrets giving her the room next to his.
Despite himself, Damon finds that she and his brother are remarkably similar in behavior, even if they have no idea. They both hardly speak, both blame themselves for everything under the sun, and they both refuse to eat.
Damon makes Elena breakfast each morning, but she hardly touches a thing; then he goes to the basement and gives Stefan a bottle of animal blood that Stefan refuses to look at.
He loves them both, and he hates that he doesn't know how to help them.
-x-
The day Damon tells Elena that Stefan has started feeding on animal blood again, he sees her smile for the first time since before the sacrifice. Her eyes light up and her face becomes animated. "When will he be better?" she asks. "Can I see him?"
He hands her a sandwich and tries to explain just how long this process takes. When he has told her all he can, she is looking at her hands as if she cannot believe she ate a whole sandwich.
He grins proudly to himself and decides things must be getting better.
-x-
One week later, he arrives at the boarding house and knows immediately that Elena has made her way to the cellar where Stefan is being kept.
He rushes downstairs, expecting to hear shouting—either Stefan screaming at her to leave, or Elena screaming for Stefan to stop feeding from her—but what he hears as he gets closer is slight sniffling.
He wants to rush in and break up whatever is going on, but pauses.
"I'm not good for you anymore, Elena," Stefan is saying, "and I think we both know it."
"I love you so much, Stefan," Elena whispers.
Damon hears Stefan sigh. "I know," his brother says, "but I think you love Damon too…and I know he loves you as well."
"And you think he's better for me than you are?" Elena asks, and Damon isn't alone in not believing the words coming out of Stefan's mouth.
"Right now, yes." Stefan says, and that is the end of Stefan and Elena.
-x-
Contrary to what Damon long ago considered the plan, he does not automatically move in to pursue Elena—not openly anyway. He holds to his hazy memory of her kiss and her voice in his head and focuses on his brother above even her.
He is there for her, though. He makes sure she eats, he carries her off to bed when she falls asleep reading on the couch, he fields her arguments with Alaric about where her home is actually located. She never says thank you, but he sees the look in her eye and the unspoken promise to talk about everything they have been masking for months.
-x-
Only when Stefan is better does Elena come to the realization that things have changed irrevocably. Stefan smiles at her and she smiles back, but Damon sees the shame in Stefan's eyes, and when Elena's move to him, Damon sees the guilt in hers.
He wants to tell her that she has nothing to feel guilty about, that what they did was not all that wrong because he shouldn't have lived, and he knows it was simply a kiss goodbye, but he'd be lying. By no means was her kiss the best he's ever had. It was chaste and brief and so full of sadness; but there were so many emotions wrapped up in that brief moment they shared, that it isn't surprising there was too much confusion to really make the kiss more.
He can't tell her it means nothing more than goodbye when it is his whole reason for living, so he only nods silently in understanding, and places a hand briefly on her shoulder in support.
-x-
Stefan asks Damon what happened when the day he sacrificed himself to Klaus a month after he is better.
Damon looks up at him in surprise, and it is only because they are brothers that Stefan is able to guess the truth.
"It's okay to love her, you know," Stefan says. "You can make her happy."
Damon cringes even as he says it, but the words come out regardless, "You could too."
Stefan's hand lingers over the bottle of whiskey on the coffee table before shaking his head. "I don't deserve her anymore," he whispers.
Damon sighs. "I never deserved her."
He doesn't say that he'll never stop trying to become deserving, but Damon gets the feeling Stefan knows anyway.
-x-
Eventually, Stefan lets down a few of his barriers and allows himself to be friends with Elena again. "Just friends," he says to Caroline when she asks.
Damon frowns at the hope in the blonde's voice.
He wonders why she roots for Stefan, why everyone always thinks it should be Stefan.
On her way home later that evening, Caroline gives an answer to his unasked question. "Stefan was always nice to me."
Damon spends that night wondering how many good deeds he'll have to do for his vampire child before she sees him as anything other than a complete monster.
-x-
Three months after Stefan's recovery, Elena finally comes to him. Or, rather, she calls him and summons him to her bedroom.
"I don't want to hurt Stefan," she says when he arrives.
"I don't either," he answers. He is surprised by just how true those words are.
"He says he is okay with this…that he wants us to be…."
Damon nods—Stefan has talked to him more than once about the subject. Apparently, Damon has been getting more obvious in his angst over loving Elena and not being able to do a thing about it. He supposes it was subconscious, for he wanted to let Elena make the next move, and the frustration has been killing him.
"We'll take things slowly," Elena declares.
Damon nods, and when they kiss this time—both willing and both fully aware of all that is happening—it is everything he has dreamed of and more.