No rest for the wicked.
His own body is a stranger to him. It moves in slow motion while all his emotions are on the verge, ready to crash down to hell, while he watches a world he doesn't recognize anymore.
Damon saw it with his own eyes and still can't process it; and Elena wants to talk, wants for him to explain in details why they are both alone, and he can't. She looks at him with her sweet, brown eyes, hanging there waiting for him to tell her that it will be alright. Elena doesn't want the truth, she's acting like a stubborn child with a spoiled fantasy and he can't do this, can't give in to her again because this is fucking killing him. Because he'd love nothing more than be in the dark, and don't recognize his brother's hand leaving a long line of dead bodies, and yet she doesn't stop and pushes and pushes and his emotions tremble in the pit of his stomach and he won't bury them this time. This time they won't let him, and Elena's begging won't change a thing.
"Damon stop"
"No, you stop, Elena! Stop looking for him, stop looking for him to come home. Just stop!" he says like he wants to snap her out of her stupid, unfaltering hope "Stefan is gone and he's not coming back." She should get it through her head (and he should too, because he was so stupid to think otherwise. Because he was looking for him, and waiting for him to come home, too).
"Not in your lifetime" he adds, because she looks broken. And he did it to her (like Stefan did it to him).
He should says something more, make it better, but he's disoriented inside a house he knows so well. It's like a electricity discharge that overloadedthe system and he can't process her needs any more than he can process his own.
He is so angry that he wants to tear down the whole house, but he settles for his little brother's room. It's not like he will need it anymore, after all. Because Stefan is not coming back.
Stefan is out of their life. Out of his freaking mind. And he needs to be out of that room, right now, because he feels like he's suffocating, which is funny considering that he stopped breathing so long ago that he barely remembers how the whole thing worked.
He plans on getting drunk. Very.
When the bartender brings the bottle he tells him to leave it. It seems like the whole town is out to party because someone is toasting and he raises his glass, too. The golden liquid inside it moves while a blonde brat makes a bad speech about being proud of his big brother winning a scholarship to Brown.
He was there for me all my life, he says, "You mean the whole five minutes?" Damon mutters taking a gulp of his whisky "Like you even know what the hell you're talking about"
It's not that it bothers him the whole happy-family-scene, really. It doesn't even irritate him that they don't know how it is to provoke your drunk father's ire so that he'll take it out on you instead of your little brother, or how it is to come back home worried that he will hate you for leaving him alone and having him look up at you like you're his hero; how it is to be in love with the same woman and not being able to hate each other; how it is to stab your brother in the chest and fight for his life right after; how it is to spend a few lifetimes declaring to hate him and then trying to get drunk to forget that you actually never did; no, it's not that, really, it's just the noisenoisenoise and the fact that he can't get unconscious no matter the amount of alcohol he consumes.
So he takes a new bottle and goes back to his empty home.
He presses the buttons on his cell phone and every number is pressed faster than the one before; he only says "I need you to come here" before hanging up.
He sits on his sofa and waits until she comes in with a very bothered expression and a dress that he would appreciate more being in a different mood.
He grins at her with his blue eyes and sinister proposal.
"You are crazy" Bonnie says, turning on her heals "I don't have time for your stupid games".
"We both know you want it." Damons says making her stop half way to the door.
"More than anything" she admits with an innocent smile, turning again.
"Then, com'on, give me your best shot. You'll like it."
"I think you had too much to drink" she just says.
"Yeah, but you know, all that morals reach my brain better when you are not dressed to kill." he grins. He sees mocha skin, a flimsy yellow dress and a vibrant power behind deep green eyes.
"I won't do it."
"You're boring," he accuses her "And I'm tired to be the gentleman."
He bents just two foot from her, holding his temples in hands while she looks at him with sad eyes. Damon rises his gaze to meet hers and he dares "Can't you do any better?" he asks smiling with his canines and red, angry eyes. Her pity turns his stomach. He swears he hates her. Like he swore he hated his pansy brother (and look at him now).
The pain in his brain increases and he feels that he is about to pass out (oh, God, yes).
Damon laughs looking at her through his blurred vision "See?" he asks "Aren't we having fun?". And he crashes to the ground.
When he wakes up he's laying on the sofa, under a blanket.
Bonnie is sitting on a chair with her legs crossed, looking at him, and he closes his eyes so he won't see pity in hers "The party's over".
She's probably thinking that he's pathetic; asking a witch to burn his brain with a massive aneurism so he will stop seeing Stefan's empty eyes, or feeling so broken that even his own thought come out scattered.
"Elena told me" three words that settle on his chest and he opens his eyes and looks at her like he wants to crush her in his hands.
"And I suppose you told her about our little rendezvous " he enquires her, because probably she thinks him pathetic, but he surely does, and he doesn't want Elena to think that too.
"This is our dirty little secret," she assures him, looking embarrassed, like a teen-ager caught doing the dirty rather than a judgy witch giving a piece of great justice"It's bad enough that I humored your stupid, masochistic plan, without the whole world to know about it"
"Glad to know we're on the same page"
"Your brother-"
"Saint Stefan is gone." He can't call him that anymore, he supposes, but it sounds almost comforting "There's no chance for him"
"I guess so" she concedes, and she stands ready to leave him "I seem to remember he thought that of you too".
Somehow that sounds comforting.