Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Elena can't imagine she has anything to say to Damon. Not after fifty years. Post-S3 future fic.
Author's Note: It's been a long time since I've written a fic, but this idea took hold of me and wouldn't let me go. Title from "Shake It Out" by Florence + The Machine. Please read and tell me what you think (especially since this is my absolute first M-rated fic)? Thanks.
And Then Restart
Elena senses his presence before he even sits down, but she refuses to look up from her glass of whiskey. She lets her hair fall over her shoulder, shielding him from her sight. She can't imagine she has anything to say to Damon. Not after fifty years.
She drains her glass of whiskey (bourbon reminds her too much of him, so she hasn't had it since she left), listens to the clink of the bourbon glass as the bartender sets it in front of him.
"Elena."
"Damon."
"You haven't managed to get yourself staked by a vampire yet, I see," says Damon. "Should we consider that an accomplishment?"
Elena sighs. Where is the bartender when she needs her?
"What are you doing here?" asks Elena. Her voice is more tired than she expected it to be. She straightens up on her stool, keeps her eyes set firmly in front of her.
"I'm not here because of you," replies Damon. "I was just in the neighborhood, decided I'd stop by. Maybe pick up a little midnight snack."
The news of Damon's diet no longer phases Elena. The black and white morality of her human years has long since deteriorated, leaving nothing but varying shades of grey in its wake. She survives the same way Damon does. She has no right to pass judgment, and she won't.
Elena shrugs. "What a coincidence, then."
The bartender finally returns, and Elena asks for more whiskey. Her glass is quickly refilled, the bartender goes over to attend another customer, and Elena immediately takes a long draught. The burn of the alcohol is pleasant as it spreads across her throat, but the relief doesn't last long.
"Where's Stefan?" asks Damon. "Shouldn't he be around here somewhere?"
Elena can't help it. Without meaning to, without even the conscious awareness of what she was doing, she turns to look at Damon, and all of her retorts die on her lips. He hasn't changed at all, not that she expected him to. He's still wearing his leather jacket that fits him like a second skin. His long fingers curl around his glass of bourbon and flex slightly as he lifts it to his lips. And his eyes, just as blue, just as cool, as she ever imagined them to be.
If she was still human, he would've taken the breath right away from her lungs. As it was, Elena merely inhales more whiskey, letting it anesthetize her as best as possible.
"No," she says, slowly lowering her glass back to the table. She tries to keep her voice calm. "I said goodbye to you and Stefan fifty years ago. You know that."
"Can't exactly blame a guy for thinking it would always be Stefan," says Damon. "I figured it was only a matter of time before you went back to him. It's what you do, isn't it?"
Elena tries to be offended, but she can't really find fault with the truth. Or at least, what she made him believe was the truth.
Still:
"Don't you dare bring my words back to haunt me," says Elena, swallowing down more of her whiskey. "I was young then. I needed time to myself."
Damon doesn't seem phased at all by her answer. If anything, he's even more emotionless than he was a moment ago, although how that's possible Elena has no idea. He drains the rest of his bourbon and places his glass on the counter.
"That's always been your excuse," he says. "It's nice to know some things never change."
Her excuse. Excuse.
Elena feels the frustration rise up inside, thick and acrid. How dare Damon just walk back into her life like this, accusing her, acting like nothing more than a complete dick, even after fifty years. It wasn't right to bring back memories of the past, especially not her naive human words: It's always going to be Stefan. Those words bring back nothing but the crush of metal, the scream rising in her throat. The burning of her lungs as they filled with water. Two faces, blurred. And Damon's own hands in hers, his voice ringing in her ears. A sickening crunch of flesh and bone.
He should know that.
"I'm not the same girl you knew fifty years ago," says Elena, "and you're a fucking idiot if you believe that. You, of all people, should know how being a vampire changes you, and not for the better."
How naive she was, to think that Damon might understand her, if she ever came across him again. It's no wonder that he is driven by bitterness. So is she, after all these years alone.
Add 150 years to her lifespan, and she'd be like him.
She already is, actually. It's a shame he can't see that. She saw it the minute she left Mystic Falls.
"Why not just flip the switch, then?" asks Damon, and Elena can tell by his tone that he's not serious, that he didn't think she would actually do what he suggests.
"I did," says Elena.
There it is: that slight widening of his eyes. Elena looks back on those years with a hint of disbelief as well: all those months, years even, of trying to get Damon and Stefan to feel, saying you can do it, fight, fight for me, please, feel for me, and then she turns around and shuts her emotions off. It's hypocrisy at its finest.
"Five years," she says. "The last kill changed me." She swings back the last of her whiskey, sets the glass down on the counter with such a loud thump that the bartender and a few patrons turn their heads to see the source of the commotion. "He was so young. So innocent. His blood, pumping so freely in his veins, and I just... I took his life away from him. He had family, friends, goals."
She loses herself in the memory, remembers the sweet taste of his blood as it slid down her throat, and then the icy lash of the regret. His glassy eyes, staring at nothing.
"He reminded me of Jeremy," she says, "and then I realized what I was doing. I was horrified. He was only a kid."
"It's not so easy on this side," says Damon. "A lot harder to pass judgment on me lashing out now, isn't it?"
Even those words have come back to haunt her. She wonders why Damon's throwing these words in her face now, after so much time has passed and he should have gotten over it, but she knows why. It's precisely the passage of time that has pressed those wounds so deeply into his mind that he can't get over them, that he can't help being bitter.
She knows. She understands.
"Listen," says Elena, trying to find something, anything, to say that will fix this. "Back then... everything was just..." She stops, tries to find the words in her mind. They don't come out the way she wants them to. "It was too complicated. I couldn't handle it. And I know I was a coward, running away like I did, but Stefan and Caroline and Jeremy and Bonnie and you -"
You want a love that consumes you. You want passion, adventure, and even a little danger.
You want what everyone wants.
The words rise in her mind and cut out her voice.
"I'm sorry" is all that manages to come out, and it's low, barely perceptible. If Damon wasn't a vampire, he might not have even been able to hear it.
But he does hear it, and it doesn't make any difference at all.
"It doesn't matter," he says. "You made your choice years ago and now we just have to deal with it."
There's any number of retorts on Elena's mind, but she doesn't speak any of them. His coldness is not a surprise to her. She's not Katherine; she never expected that she would reenter Damon's life and he would immediately take her back, even if Elena wanted him. She won't ask him to. The minute she left Mystic Falls so many years ago, she forfeited any right she had to demand things of him.
She wants to say so many things - I shouldn't have left, I should have tried to find you, I made a mistake, I love you - but she doesn't. She's silent, and she knows, in this moment, that she's a coward. She hasn't changed at all; she's just as reluctant to give herself over to him as she was a human. Trying to convince herself otherwise has backfired utterly.
"You're right," she says. "I made the wrong choice, but - it's inconsequential now."
Her words are an echo of Damon's - I made the wrong choice. No one forced me to love her - and Elena sees herself in his words for the first time. Sees herself in too much of Damon. How is it that time has created more similarities than differences, even with the distance? It's strange and funny how immortality can do that.
She stares down at her bottle of whiskey. Being here with Damon, seeing him, brings everything to the surface. And it's too much. Way too much.
"I should go," she says.
Damon shows no signs of caring, and that's her answer: that there are some things even time cannot fix.
"Goodbye, Damon," she says.
She places a few bills on the table for the bartender and stands up. The selfish part of Elena hesitates, waiting for Damon to say something, anything, to make her stay, but the logical part of her insists that he's not going to say anything. There's no part of her that should expect him to, even though her body - treacherous as it is - screams at her not to leave, to stay, to keep fighting.
She begins to walk away. Damon says her name, and Elena hardly allows herself to hope.
"I'm not going to come looking for you," he says, and all Elena hears is: If you're not ready now, you won't ever be ready. I'm not waiting.
Her dead heart plummets down to her stomach. She closes her eyes against the force of his words, both said and unsaid, and tries to keep away the pinprick of tears at the back of her eyes. She tries to be strong.
"I know," she says, and it feels like the official end to something.
"Goodbye, Elena."
Elena doesn't stick around a minute longer. The next thing she knows, she's standing outside of the bar. The night air is frigid, but Elena feels none of it. She only hears her gasps, loud, unnecessary, frantic, in the silence. Damon's goodbye still rings in her ears.
She's such a damn coward.
Elena's halfway back to her apartment on the other side of town when she stops.
Her entire existence stretches out before her. Her 'right now' has passed, and she's about to start her 'always.' It's not like her life has any definitive end. How long will she survive like this? Going from town to town, subsisting on blood bags, snatching an occasional fuck in the corner of a darkened pub when the loneliness just gets too much? Her existence has been like that - lonely, long, dark - for the past fifty years. Can she really go on like this? Does she want to?
Elena feels ridiculous even asking herself the question, because the answer is so obvious. She can't keep living like this.
God, how she wishes she was human, how she wishes she could have the husband and the 2.5 children and the picket fence and even the dog. She misses it more than anything in the world, and if she could go back, if she could relive the last day of her life -
But she can't.
She can't go back and she can't keep living like this either. The answer is obvious to her now.
Within five minutes, almost without even realizing precisely what she was doing but knowing, with everything she has, that it's the right thing to do, she finds herself back at the bar. Damon hasn't left yet, but he's not alone either: a blonde girl has taken Elena's vacated seat, and she's twirling her hair around her fingers, batting her eyelashes, exchanging flirty little comments, touching Damon's arm. Elena is by their side in a second.
"Excuse me," she says. The woman's eyes snap to hers. "You can leave now."
The woman's eyes unfocus, then snap back into clarity. "Sorry," she murmurs. She grabs her purse and walks out of the bar without even a backwards glance.
"What the fuck, Elena?" asks Damon.
Elena doesn't bother with an answer. She simply grabs Damon by the arm and drags him to the spare room adjacent to the main bar. Damon tries to wrench his arm out of her grip, his eyes clouded with confusion and irritation, but Elena doesn't let him go, finally thankful for her increased strength. He's going to listen to what she has to say; she won't back down. Not anymore. She pushes him into the room and then shuts and locks the door behind her.
"What's going on?" he asks.
Words are very unnecessary. She grabs his face in her hands and presses her lips to his, trying to express everything - the want, the need, the urgency, the love - in the way that she tries to bring him closer to her, always closer. He's too far away even when every inch of her body is aligned with his. His mouth is warm, but unyielding, beneath her own. She doesn't move. She wants him to open up to her, to let him in (feel for me, she thinks with the slightest hint of irony), but he doesn't.
His hands go up to her wrists and drag them away from his face. He takes a step back from the kiss. His eyes are strangely expressionless.
"Elena," he says. "Don't."
"I've been so blind," she responds. "I'm such a fool."
"You're acting like a fool right now," says Damon, his voice harsh. He lets go of Elena's wrists, and she feels bereft, alone. "Now can you let me go?"
He makes a move for the door, but Elena blocks the exit.
"No," she says. "No. Not until you listen to me."
"I don't see the point," he says. "Nothing you say can change what happened, Elena."
"I know," she replies. "God, I know that, but that doesn't mean we can't change what will happen. I finally know what I want."
"And what's that?"
"You," she says. "I want you." She doesn't wait for Damon to respond - she can already see the objections in his mind - and instead barrels right on, heedless of the heady array of words spilling out of her mouth. "I suppose I always knew that I wanted you, even when I was human - even when I was with Stefan, really - but I just... I couldn't acknowledge it. I don't even know why. Maybe because I didn't know what love was, not really, and you just complicated everything, but - I was a coward, not admitting anything to you."
"It's ancient history," says Damon before Elena can say anything. "You can move on."
"What do you think I've been trying to do for the past fifty years?" she asks. "That's all I've been doing, trying to move on, and it's not working. I can't move on from you."
She hesitates for a brief moment, and then:
"I love you."
I think I've loved you for the past fifty years, she thinks but doesn't say.
"It's you, Damon. It's always going to be you."
She barely sees the brightness in Damon's eyes before his lips are on hers, drowning out any additional words that could have been shared between them. Every part of her body responds to his. Her hands don't still their movements along his face, through his hair, down his chest, over and under his shirt. A fire starts to burn, low in her belly, and never before has she wanted someone so much. Never before has she needed with this sort of intensity.
"Damon," she moans into his mouth. His skin is soft against the palm of her hand as she snakes it under his shirt, seeking to be closer, always closer.
Damon breaks away from the kiss for a brief moment, barely giving Elena enough time to see the look in his eyes - intense, almost wild. It's beautiful.
"There's no going back, Elena," he warns.
"I don't want to go back."
And she meets Damon in the middle this time, parts her lips to let him inside. She winds her hands through his hair, smooth and silky against her fingers, and scratches lightly at his scalp with her nails. Damon groans, moving into her. The hard surface of the door behind her keeps her steady as Damon presses his lips to every inch of her: her mouth, the long column of her neck, all the way down to her collarbone and then the soft skin between her breasts. Elena lets her head fall against the door, moans escaping her lips with every additional press of Damon's lips.
She's never felt like this. Never so alive. Her nails dig into his back, seeking to find some purchase, some sense of reality amidst the intoxicating warmth spreading through her bloodstream. All she can hear is his name, falling repeatedly from her lips.
Damon. She brings her hands under his shirt, feels the smooth expanse of his back, all taut muscles and strong bone. Damon. Her hands slide around to his chest and suddenly - Damon. His skin needs to be against hers. Now. Her body is crying out for it. No more waiting, no more teases.
"Damon," she breathes against his lips as she removes his leather jacket, dropping it to the floor by their feet. She begins deftly undoing every button of his shirt, but it's taking too long. Much too long. Elena grabs his shirt, rips forcibly. His buttons ping along the walls, the floor, scattering across the room.
Damon laughs and the deepness of it nearly causes Elena to whimper. She needs him. Now.
"Impatient, are we?" he asks.
"Damn right I am," she says, letting his shirt drop to the floor. She nips at his neck, presses kisses all the way back up to his lips. She bites at his lip, her hands busily exploring every inch of his chest she can reach, and she watches as his eyes darken with pure want, pure need. She knows that her own eyes mirror his. "I've waited long enough. I'm done."
Her knees nearly buckle with the way he kisses her. It's everything all in one: want and desperation and need and longing and love. It's urgent, unceasing, consuming. She grips his shoulders as his hands go down to the hem of her shirt, inch by inch revealing more of her skin. Finally, her shirt comes off, joining Damon's ruined one on the floor.
Damon cups her breasts through the fabric of her bra, fingers teasing the edges of her skin. His hands, strong and sure, slide around to her back and unclasp her bra. It falls to the floor like the rest of their discarded clothing. Damon ducks his head to take one nipple into his mouth, lavishing it with attention, and Elena involuntarily grips his hair, lets her head fall back against the door once again. She knows, if Damon wasn't holding her up, she would have slid down to the floor. Instead, she moans, sliding her hands along the smooth expanse of his back, letting all her emotions rush over her. He overwhelms her.
She wants. She needs. She needs him to stop teasing her, and she needs him inside her right this minute.
"Damon," she breathes. She tries to redirect his lips back to her own. "Damon, please."
He doesn't immediately respond. He tastes every inch of her skin, letting his tongue slide languidly over her nipple, breast, collarbone. He brushes a thumb across her nipple and she arches her back into him, craving more, more, more.
"Stop teasing," she tries to command, but her voice comes out breathy and soft. She curls her hand in his hair and tries to bring his face to hers.
"Not so fast," Damon warns, the vibrations of his words against her skin causing warmth to pool deep inside her stomach. "If we're doing this, it's going to be done right." He kisses up her neck, lets his lips hover pleasurably - torturously - over the corner of her own. He kisses her lightly, just once. "I'm going to take my time." To prove his point, he lets his fingers hover lightly over her sides, just barely brushing the surface of her skin. "I want to feel every inch of you. And I want to hear every moan." Elena gasps as he suddenly ducks his head, nips lightly at her nipple. His eyes are wild and dark with desire when he looks back up at her. "And you're going to scream my name."
He licks over one nipple, then the other. Elena's thoughts are cloudy, hazy, nothing but an indistinct blur of pleasure. She craves more friction, more of his touch on her body. She can't remember the last time she felt like this, like every nerve ending was on fire at once and she just wants him to be closer, she wants him to fill her up, make her whole, send her spiralling down into pleasure. She simply craves him - all of him - and she can't imagine why it took her so long to figure it out.
But she's here, and he's here, and it's now, and they're ready.
She scrapes her nails along his back, delighting in the smooth curve of his spine against her fingertips. But it's not enough.
"Kiss me," she says. The words come out as nothing more than an exhale of breath. "Please, Damon."
He takes his sweet time coming back up to her lips. He lets his tongue trail across the line of her sternum - she remembers that time so long ago, with her human heart beating so loudly in her ears she felt for sure he could hear it, and his fingers spreading across her side with the words that's your way to a vampire's heart ringing in her ears - and he sucks and nips at her neck, leaving no inch of skin untouched. Finally, he settles his lips over hers, and Elena immediately deepens the kiss, brings his body closer to hers. She feels the delicious friction of their bodies together, the way her nipples harden as they brush across his chest.
And it's still not enough. Not nearly enough.
She reaches for his belt buckle, but Damon captures her hands in his. "What did I say, Elena?" he says, trying to be severe, but she can see the amusement lurking in his eyes.
"I don't want to take it slow," Elena says, trying to get her hands out of Damon's grip. "I want you inside me. Now."
"Be patient," he murmurs against her lips before letting go of her hands. She feels that coil of desire tighten in her stomach as his hands trail along her sides and he finally undoes the zip of her jeans. He pushes them down her legs, and Elena steps out of them, kicking them to the side somewhere just out of reach. And then -
Oh God. Finally.
She bucks against his hand as his fingers slide across the underside of her panties. She drops her head against the door, losing herself in the sensation: his fingers along her clit, separated only by a thin strip of cotton fabric, and then nothing at all, as his fingers curl under the sides and press along the sensitive bundle of nerves. She cries out, his name a supplication against his lips. More.
He answers her unspoken plea and continues to stroke her sensitive nerves. Heat spirals through her body. The pressure builds. She's unashamed of the sounds coming out of her mouth, an array of moans and pleas for more and his name, and she's almost to the brink of release, the pressure turning her bones to jelly, when he stops, removes his hand. The loss is almost unbearable, the need for release the only prominent thought in her mind.
Elena tries to catch her breath, but she only manages a weak protest. "Don't stop," she breathes.
Damon smiles, a slow, languid smile that makes her more frustrated than ever.
"Fuck, Damon," she says. "Stop teasing."
Elena, with all the reason left in her mind, decides it's time to take charge. She once again grabs for Damon's belt buckle; this time, Damon doesn't protest. It's time to see how he likes the teasing. She loosens the belt buckle, drags his pants down his legs and lets Damon discard them where he wants. She sees his eyes, heavy, lidded, darkened with desire.
"I don't appreciate the teasing," says Elena. She sucks at his neck and then bites at the jugular, just hard enough to leave a mark. His groan is almost enough to undo her right where she stands. She smiles innocently enough at him, then lets her hand slowly inch its way along every plane of his chest, brushing along the narrow jutting bones of his hip, and then, down every inch of his cock. She delights in the curse that falls from his lips the minute her fingers wrap around his length.
She begins stroking him, slowly at first, but increasing in intensity as she hears his deep moans. She kisses him, giving him everything, taking everything, muffling both of their moans with her mouth. She feels his hands on her breasts, pinching, teasing, and Elena feels herself starting to come undone.
"I need you," she says, "now."
And it seems the teasing is done. Elena removes her hand from his cock and he enters her, filling her, and God, is it better than she ever expected. She gasps as he begins to move, and wave after wave of pleasure rushes over her, overwhelming her, until all she can see, all she can hear, all she knows, is Damon, and he's in front of her, eyes locked on hers. She digs her nails into his back, seeking to find some stability in the shifting world around her, and she knows it's going to leave a mark on his back later, but she can't bring herself to care.
It's everything - not some random fuck in the middle of a bar, not some chaste love-making session in a darkened bedroom. It's Damon and Elena, together, after all this time, and it feels like there's nowhere else to be other than here. It's passionate and it's consuming and it's real.
"Damon," she says, kissing him with a passion that nearly takes her own nonexistent breath away, lets her hand curl into his hair and pull, bringing his face closer to hers. She feels the pressure building, lets it carry her away.
"Elena," he moans against her mouth.
And she's there. She shudders against him, hardly able to keep herself upright, and it's like an explosion in the back of her eyelids, across her entire body, and she feels alive in a way she hasn't in decades, and she yells his name, muffled as it is in the warmth of Damon's mouth, and he comes too, a second after, and it's too consuming for words.
They stay like that, wrapped up in each other's arms, riding the high, for an indeterminable amount of time. They share languid kisses, the vestiges of passion refusing to leave. Elena doesn't think the passion will ever burn out.
"I - "
But Elena knows what Damon's going to say. She stops his words with a deeper kiss.
"No. I don't regret it. I won't ever regret it."
And Damon smiles, a genuine smile that reaches his eyes, a smile that causes an ache in her chest. He strokes her hair, and it's a gesture so tender that it nearly causes tears to form in her eyes.
"I love you," he says.
Elena laughs because they just did this in the spare room of a bar and anyone could have heard them but a large part of her doesn't care because they're together, and it's always. Her joy is uncontainable. "I know."
And then:
"Come home with me."
Damon kisses her and that's all the answer she needs.