Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries. Obviously.
Author's Note: Geez, here I am writing Delena again. I am so messed up. Glutton for punishment, as they say. But that motel scene got me. Dammit!
He's beautiful, of course.
I watch the light playing off the defined muscles of his back and chest, savouring this chance to observe him while he's completely unaware.
There's no showing off now. Damon isn't putting on an act, ruining the moment with innuendo or insults.
He's just himself. Absentmindedly pulling on his shirt as he looks out the window, always on alert for any danger. Putting his feet up and lounging back with his ever-present glass of whisky.
There's a sadness to way he stares into it that captures me. Is he thinking about Rose? His eyes fall on me, and I shut mine quickly. I shouldn't be caught staring.
Or should I? Stefan wants me to work out how I feel about him. I open my eyes again and it draws him to me like a siren's call. He lays down beside me carefully, and turns to me, waiting.
"You never told me about that. What you did for Rose," I say.
I'm curious. I know he cared about her, despite all his protestations to the contrary. But for him to do something so selfless, so caring…it is against all my notions of who Damon is.
"It wasn't about you," he says shortly. He never wants anyone to see this side of him.
When I challenge him, he won't look at me when he replies.
"I don't want have to live up to anyone's expectations," he says softly.
My expectations.
My expectations of him. My expectations of myself.
It's like they're crushing me, and my breathing gets ragged, I turn away from him, wrestling with my mind and my heart.
My hand finds his accidentally, and he takes it, stroking his long fingers over the back of it gently, sending electricity through me with each stroke. I can't take it anymore, and I get up and run, leaving the room and leaning against a vending machine for support.
I can't do this. It's wrong. It's against everything I believe in.
He comes after me, and I beg him to not do this, not to be there, not to make me feel like this.
"Why not?" he asks. And then my name, so soft, so plaintive.
"Elena."
A dam breaks inside me and I run to him, kissing him like the world's going to end. It is ending, right here and right now in his arms.
It's everything I've been denying myself for so long. Passionate, intense, overwhelming. I'm drowning, and I let myself be taken under.
I kiss him the way I've been wanting to kiss him for so damn long.
"Elena?"
Jeremy's voice breaks the spell, and I surface again, hastily pulling away from Damon and covering myself. I barely register what he says, it's the look in his eyes that bores right through me.
Disappointment. I've disappointed Jeremy.
Shame burns through me, cold flames killing the desire that was there moments ago.
This is not me, Elena Gilbert. I don't do this. I don't make out with the man who killed my brother on the porch of a cheap motel.
How could I?
No one in my life approves of me being with Damon. Alaric, Caroline, Bonnie, Jeremy, Matt. Jenna didn't. My parents would be horrified. I'm horrified.
Stefan wants me to figure out how I feel, but I can't. I can't reconcile the man who snapped my brother's neck with the man who's been my rock these past months.
Later, when he looks at me with hurt and accusation in his eyes, I realise how reliant I am on him always screwing up.
His question "what if I didn't?" is terrifying.
But he's Damon and he will. He doesn't want to change, not even for me. That's what he told me back in the motel.
He's drawn a line in the sand. If I love him, I have to love him just the way he is.
I can't.
The End