A/N: Ah, yes. This thing literally took weeks to write, so I hope you like. Um. Yeah.

Disclaimer: If I owned VD...Daroline would rule the world. :)

Title taken from Taylor Swift's Breathe.

Summary: Damon Salvatore is never gentle. / "Why did you stay?" "Don't you know?" / Their first, last, and best kiss.

Their first kiss goes something like this: her (tipsy) and him (not), in the parking lot at the Grille, pushed up against her car, her side mirror digging into her (fleshy, fragile, sensitive, all-too-human but she doesn't know how good it can be to be indestructible yet) back (but she won't—can't—complain) as he gently presses his lips to hers.

All in all, considering him and his wildness, it's a really mild, tender kiss. Almost gentle, but Damon Salvatore is never gentle, as she later figures out.

(The fact is that Caroline Forbes is just an idiot, and for second she really thinks he's a nice person that just might grow to care about—and for—her. Reinforcing the whole "idiot" thing.)

Then he breaks the kiss off, forces her away from the car for a brief second—long enough to open the car door she was previously against—and he shoves her into the passenger seat, rougher than their kiss with his fingers (his fingers are tougher than his lips, probably because he's worked with his hands a lot but his pretty looks must stay the same. He's a creature of beauty, just like her, very vain and appearance-fixated and sensitive, but she doesn't understand that until a long time after that first kiss.), and hops into the car, slamming the door shut as soon as he's in it. The key turns and he's driving. Then they somehow get to her house (it takes her several months and a pillow on her face until she remembers that he compelled her to give him directions as she stroked his thigh—and no, he did not shiver or gasp because that's not a Damon thing to do in general, and definitely not a vampire thing) and they're stumbling up the stairs (well, she is, he isn't, Damon Salvatore never stumbles because it's such a goddamn mortal thing to do) and his hands are raking themselves up and down her hips, stroking her waist as they continue to make out.

They make their way up the stairs, and she's going backwards so she trips a lot, but his hands on her waist catch her time and time again. Then they're on her bed, and her mother is asleep downstairs (or maybe Liz went in for the late shift, it's hard to tell most nights unless she listens for noise from her mother downstairs), and he is doing nice-nasty-new things to her.

Their first kiss was nearly gentle.

His first bite isn't.

Their last kiss is kind of similar to their first.

So much has happened to them now. Elena is a vampire. Bonnie is still…well…annoying, in his opinion, and judgmental but still lovable in hers. Stefan is still hypocritical, as always, but he's gotten used to it (one hundred and fifty years have taught him to deal with it), and she's learned to ignore it and maybe occasionally accept Stefan's rants as half-truths. She's no longer with Tyler—thanks to yet another mistake the dumbass werewolf has made—and doesn't seem to be forgiving him any time soon.

The drama, for a short time, is over, and he can't help but feel as though an era is ending. It was the age of Elena, and now that it's done with, there's a strange brief finality that lingers in his thoughts, like a vaguely-throbbing hangover that you somehow forget about until you move or say something or, hell, even just think about something.

She sits next to him on the couch, sipping a glass of bourbon with him—and yes, she stole it from him, she's gotten a lot braver lately, especially around him—and he decides right then and there to ask her. (Some part of him is begging him not to, begging him not to be vulnerable and ask a stupid question that would crush a normal person, but he ignores it for a reason even he cannot explain.)

"Why did you stay?"

She doesn't seem surprised by the question, but then, they've all changed. Stefan is no longer quite so broody now that Elena has chosen him forever; Bonnie is not quite so cruel toward vampires, especially now that both of her best friends belong to that supernatural category; Elena is much happier than he would have initially expected, being a vampire, and besides, she has Stefan to brighten her day; and Vampire Barbie. Her questions aren't quite so ditzy, her hair has been dyed with beautiful dark punk rock pink dye at the bottom half of her locks and the upper half is black, she dresses just a little differently, more sexy but confident than sexy and desperate (as he initially found her), and emotionally…she is completely different from the human girl he seduced over a question of cockiness and a drink of bourbon. She's more mature, somehow, and incredibly more knowledgeable than he would ever have suspected her to be. She comes up with good ideas, and is much more independent and smart than he knew her to be. She's resourceful and kind, and still sees the good in people whilst knowing all the evil that they've faced together in this little ragtag group.

No, she doesn't seem surprised at all, as though she anticipated the question coming.

"You could have gone anywhere," he elaborates when she doesn't seem to be speaking soon, though her forehead is creased with thoughts rather than confusion, and her expression is still the same as it was before. "You could have left. I've seen people—vampires—leave their loved ones for less danger after having spent more time with them. You knew me and Stefan for—what, months?—a short time, and you decided to stay and fight Originals with us? Why?"

A small smile turns her lips upward. It's a knowing smile, a cunning, clever smirk, and he knows why he annoys them all so much with them now. It's irritating, quite frankly.

"Don't you know?" she asks softly. "Damon, I grew up with Bonnie and Elena. My two best friends in the whole wide world, and I would have done anything for them. I did do everything for them. Mostly Elena, but still," she acknowledges. "My best friends, Damon. I wouldn't have—couldn't have—abandoned them, no matter what. Unfortunately, my sense of self-preservation is severely lacking. In that department, I am at a loss."

He fights back a smile, but it wins anyway and he gazes at her, trying to figure her out. She's this enigma, a mystery that he cannot hope to solve, though he has tried and tried when she wasn't looking. Somehow, he thinks that if he stares long enough, he'll understand her. (Stupid, stupid man, he thinks, but he cannot stop.)

"Yeah," he says lightly, uplifting the moment with a bit of sarcasm, "you kind of always have been. Shall we review all the stupid things you've done in your life, all to help other people with no concern for yourself? I mean, should we even go into what you did for wolf-boy?"

Her mouth tightens, and he remembers too late that Lockwood is a pretty sensitive subject for her.

"Eh," she answers back casually, shrugging. "I'm dumb. I'm Blondie, Vampire Barbie, Princess, whatever, I get it. I mean…I'm me. No preservation instinct. Got it." She flashed him a cheesy grin and a thumbs-up, and he couldn't help but laugh. "No recaps, please. Can't you just get to the point of this useless conversation, anyway? Why'd you ask?"

His smile disappears, vanishing like the snow underneath the sun (like her under Elena's shadow) as he remembers the point of his question. "Thank you," he says, quite honestly for him. (It's like fifty-seven percent genuine. All-time record.)

"Don't thank me just yet," she says, stretching lazily on the couch, and her hand accidentally brushes his shoulder. She pulls back quickly, but her touch stays on him, like a burning inferno. It festers, quickly, but the burn is so sweet, so bitter, so enlarging that it engulfs him and he likes it that way.

He's disappointed when the pleasant sting of her touch fades away eventually.

"It's not over," she continues, almost as though she hasn't noticed, and he'd believe it if her eyes weren't suddenly downcast and refusing to meet his.

He reaches for her, fingers finding her shoulder and meeting her neck, scaling their way up her throat as his other hand dances its way up her thigh. She hides a giggle, trying to stay serious, trying to end the moment, trying to push him away, but he won't be pushed. He sticks to her, his right hand meeting her left cheek as his left hand skitters its way up her right thigh. And his eyes meet hers—midnight blue on crystal ice blue, and he can't tell whose are whose but he knows hers are beautiful and irresistible—and then their lips touch.

If he were gentle, he'd say this kiss was too.

(He wonders how a kiss can be both almost-gentle and yet still somehow soul-searing.)

His left hand leaves her leg and cups the back of her head, pulling her closer, while his other hand holds her cheek as though she is delicate—not as if she is a vampire, a mostly-invulnerable creature of the night—and his entire body, like a magnet, pulls her closer.

His tongue flicks its way into her mouth, tapping its way along her teeth in some kind of senseless but driven melody, and she shivers.

His chest meets hers, and her shudder, racking its way along her spine, meets him and he can't help but tremble too, mostly in reaction (not due to emotion, no, not at all).

(Goddamnit, Damon Salvatore does not tremble. What the fuck is wrong with him?)

In some way, for some reason, he does not want this to end. Though another part of him is begging her to stop, to end this. Because he really can't deal with all of this emotion.

She moans into his mouth, and he finds it to be incentive enough for him to stop kissing her, to pull away, to remember who she is and what he is and why they can't, won't, shouldn't do this.

"No," he says, though it's a whisper and he can barely hear it himself and he doesn't want to say it, he wants to beg her no and stay and please and I and love and you and it's and always and been and you. "This can't be right. You—you belong…with wolf-boy, and I don't—"

"No, I don't," she murmurs back, her eyes locked on his oh-so-delectable mouth, and her tongue sneaks its way out to lick her lips hungrily. (He shudders in response, but refuses to admit that he's that weak, to be brought down by Barbie, of all people.) "I'm not with him. He doesn't own me. He messed up. That's his fault. And I don't—I don't love him. I lo—"

"Stop," he interrupts, because he can't handle those words coming from her mouth, and she's chasing his lips with hers and he's pulling back, trying desperately to stop, but then her hands are on his face and forcing him to meet her mouth, and then maybe he's doing it of his own free will because he forgot that she tasted so good (vanilla and cinnamon, maybe a little cherry lip gloss on top) and because his soul (he forgot that he had one) hurts—but in a good way—when she touches him.

They don't stop.

Later, they're lying on his bed (neither knows how they got there, or why her bra is hanging off the doorknob, or where the rest of the buttons from his ripped black v-neck shirt are), panting, trying to desperately remember every sensation. She's curled up into him, and neither mind the sweating. They cool off quickly anyway—another advantage of being a vampire, yay—and then they're just there. The bedcovers are silky and have the scent of laundry detergent and sex coated on them, and he just knows Stefan will be disgusted and disappointed when he comes in downstairs and smells it.

But right now, Damon simply doesn't care what his brother does.

The only thing that matters is her.

(Blondie has somehow made him a sap, and he didn't even realize it until it was too late. Now he can't even summon up the energy to care.)

She twists her face out of his chest to look up at him, and his arms are curved protectively, intensely, intimately, around her, and then she is out of his warmth and he is colder without her, as always. She is sitting at the edge of the bed, right next to his horizontal body, the sheet around her, and he can't even bother to care that he's lying naked on his bed for her to see. (She's seen worse. Blood and death and gore. She can handle him without any clothes, probably a little too well, as seen by their previous actions ten minutes ago.) "We can't," she murmurs to him, repeating, in essence, the same things he said to her earlier.

A moment of silence, weighing the options, planning the future.

(He learned chess once. It's a lot of planning ahead. Always being ten steps in front of the other person, sometimes twelve, hell, sometimes even fifteen. And that's never escaped him, he's never left that mindset completely behind. Sure, he's reckless and impulsive, but he plans and he plans well when he wants to do so. And he knows the future as well as she does. They both know what has to happen.)

"I know," he says quietly.

Leaning in, she massages his lips with her own. This last kiss, this one is truly and undeniably gentle, unlike their first and unlike the one that started this whole thing. Her lips are feather-soft, sunlight-warm on his, and he savors the last taste of cherry-vanilla-cinnamon he'll probably ever have (this he knows) for as long as he can.

A small breeze, and he opens his eyes, and she's gone. So is the bra on the doorknob.

She leaves a button on his nightstand, from his shirt. (He keeps it, refuses to admit that he searches his pillow for her scent every night until it's gone, refuses to admit that he goes to Liz's and steals her leftover perfume bottle just so he can remember the sensation of her.)

After a week of silence from her, he hears from Stefan that she's run off to Florida with Lockwood and his wolf buddies.

He can't help but think that it was probably the best thing for them to do. He's only ever ended up hurting her, anyway, and she loves wolf-boy like you wouldn't (he can't) believe. (It hurts him to think that she might have loved him like that, and probably did once despite the compulsion and the pain and the blood and the compelled painful bloody sex, so he just doesn't think about it.) On and off, yes, but regardless, she accepts Lockwood for his mistakes and his temper and everything that's wrong with him.

Damon gets a letter from Caroline one day, a small postcard from Miami.

Four little words, and a picture of the beautiful Floridian ocean.

It wasn't a mistake. –C.

There's no name, and no return address, but he'd know that cramped, messy handwriting anywhere, no matter what.

It reassures him just a little that, wherever she is, she thinks about him sometimes. And that she doesn't think that it was a mistake.

And so the era of Elena ends, and with it, any hope of them.

Maybe it's for the best, but he can't help but wish.

But their best kiss by far goes like this: her (nearly asleep) and him (halfway awake) in the middle of the night. They're in her bed, and Liz Forbes is most definitely at the station (otherwise she'd be yelling at her daughter for some of the sounds coming from her bedroom, definitively loud, unmistakable sex sounds) and it is quite nearly almost dawn.

His finger lazily traces its way down her perfect little nose, and she smiles without opening her eyes. He pulls away to survey her, and she yawns prettily, like she was born to stay in bed and have him watch her for life.

(It wouldn't be so bad, he thinks.)

He kisses his way up from her thighs (the bleeding's stopped, which is good, because he'd hate to think that he'd nicked an artery or a vein or something, because her blood tastes really good and she is damn great in bed for a human and not easily replaceable in that aspect and no other) to her stomach, to her chest (pausing at a bite mark on one of her breasts and licking it to stop the lingering blood from pooling), up her pale white throat, along her face from jaw to cheek to forehead to hairline, and then goes back down and settles his mouth on her lips.

She sighs somewhere halfway into the kiss, and he pulls away and lets himself bury his face into her vanilla-scented blonde curly hair.

"You're not easy, Damon," she mumbles directly in his ear. "You hurt me. You do bad things." She pulls him away from her, and blue locks on blue, perfect and beautiful and easy. (He makes his eyes think of brown, chocolate, Elena-doe-innocent-eyes, makes himself stop thinking blue and beautiful and exquisite and uniquely Caroline because that's not what he's supposed to be thinking but somehow he is anyway.)

He braces himself for one of her rants, this time on how horrible he is.

But she smiles tenderly instead, soothing some of his tension by reaching around to his back and rubbing a hand between his shoulder blades. He relaxes a fraction, though that's more than anyone else has ever gotten him to calm down and he counts that as a success.

"But you're worth it," she whispers, just so he can hear (like there's someone else in the house, but there isn't so maybe this is her trying to be sweet to him or something? And no, it isn't working, really.) and no one, nothing, else can. "Sometimes, I swear you're worth more than anything."

She catches his lips in a secret, sly kiss that he wasn't expecting, and there's something more beyond the passion and chemistry (something he'd swear were feelings if he didn't have such a great sense of self-trickery and denial) but he ignores it and so does she.

They fall back asleep together after he nips at her bottom lip and she licks away the remaining blood (which is really super hot to him, I mean, damn, maybe this girl was born to be a vampire) and he tries not to think about her, forcing his thoughts to go back to Elena.

But the girl in his arms is decidedly Caroline. She's her own person, after all, even if the people of Mystic Falls don't seem to recognize that.

He holds her closer, just a little bit tighter, and she responds in kind by sleepily curling a little bit more into him, their legs wrapped around each other and fingers interlaced and eyes locked whenever she opens hers (he can't close his, for some reason, just keeps his gaze steady on her gorgeous sleeping form). Blue on blue. Beautiful, even if he can't tell her that.

He never wants to pull away. (But he knows he has to sometime.)

She curls further into his arms, seeking the warmth from his chest that he doesn't have (though he'd give anything, everything, to her, but he won't say so), and waits it out. But he doesn't say anything. Neither of them can say those three words. They never do. And they both know that they never should, not by the laws that define this age of Elena.

He waits until she falls asleep, and then he's gone.

They meet again in Italy, and it's very cliché and just exactly what he would expect of them, because together they are just one giant, huge cliché. They hug and it's been—what, how many?—thirty years, maybe, and she tells him that Tyler's off with a wolf pack in Minnesota but she doesn't like cold weather so she came here to get away from everything, and wow, look, his hair's longer and it's a really good look for him, isn't it. She tells him it's been way too long and they should meet up like this again, and in the small Italian café he can't help but look at the sunlight shining in her (once again, she dyed it back) golden blonde hair. She looks like an Italian sexy angel. (But he knows he doesn't deserve an angel. So he just plays the part of old friend.)

In the end, they promise to meet up again in Barcelona in six months to catch up, and he reaches for her hand and takes it as his farewell. She looks up at him, her breath catching in her throat, and he thinks that maybe they could have lasted forever. But the age of Elena both confirmed and denied that. They met and she loved and he hurt and they broke apart and things changed and then he loved (and maybe she did, too) and she left to save them both. It's odd, but all those years ago was the only time they were given a chance, back when she had a pulse and color in her cheeks and she tripped a lot in her big heels. And then that chance was stolen away from them both. (What the hell, they both know he practically gave it away for a chance at those doe eyes that he didn't really want.)

He rubs his fingers across the back of her hand, and all of a sudden, he can't breathe, but he doesn't really have to, so he'll get by. (He always gets by, whether he wants to or not.)

He brings their hands, fingers still twisted and interlocked together, up to his lips, and presses a gentle kiss to her hand, remember the age of big fancy dresses and courting and plantations. She would have done well in that age. Who knows, maybe—had she been born nearly two hundred years ago—they would have met and fallen in love and died as humans, lovers, companions, as a couple. As two people who simply fell in love and just never let go, never let doe-brown-eyes and hybrids and fate come between them. Just two people, meant for another life, for another time, for another person and life than what they ended up with.

She shivers, almost imperceptibly so, as he brings his mouth away from her hand and looks up at her. She ducks her head and gazes at him through her eyelashes, and if she could blush then he knows she would be doing so right now. "Goodbye for now," he mouths, and she blinks, almost surprised.

Then he is gone, and there is only a button left in her hand (she doesn't know how he slipped it in there), one that she remembers from so long ago. It is black and shiny and old and smells like him and reminds her of what could have been.

Constantly, they must wait. Constantly, thoughts linger uselessly, longing for something that they don't understand why they can't have. Constantly, they always have to deny, and just as constantly, they crave.

A/N: This was not meant to fulfill my friend pariswindspeed's request for a happy Daroline fic. Nope, still working on that one, though it too will probably have its fair share of depression and possibly death. It's tentatively supposed to be named never let your fear decide your fate, which is from an Awolnation song. Anywho. You'll just have to wait a little while for that one. I hoped you like this, it took forever to complete. I'm working on other stuff now, however, so expect more Daroline goodness soon.

Also, I consider this to be much happier than my latest Daroline fic. Man, that one about killed me to write, considering my mother had a miscarriage when I was a kid. It's called let me be empty and weightless. Whoa, I just did some shameless self-advertising. Sigh. I'm becoming my mom.

So. Again, I hope you liked it. Please review, they keep me going when I'm stuck at work all day!