Returning to my roots: wish fulfillment, angsty desire, Damon and Elena. A quick one-shot for CreepingMuse, who knows a thing or two about dreams, on her birthday.
"Don't speak."
Damon wrenches his aching head toward Elena's voice, but his eyelids refuse to open.
"Here are the rules: if you talk, I'm gone, this dream is over. Neither of us can risk what you might say, what might happen because of this sire bond, if it's even real. But I can't stand the thought of you alone, torturing yourself, and I just can't stand to be away from you any longer. So I'm here, in your dream, and as long as you don't say a word, I will stay."
He feels her fingers, smooth and cool, press against his forehead, her thumb trailing along his eyebrow and around, over his cheekbone. Her lips open over his, just a touch, a reassurance. He needs it, needs her desperately, but it's too risky, he has to protest. He gathers strength, furrows his brow, wheezes in a breath -
"Shut up," Elena warns, one long finger rushing to cross his lips. "Please, for me. I want to stay."
Damon exhales, raspy and light, something like assent. His eyes flutter open.
"Drink this," she insists, pressing the straw of a blood bag against his lips.
No, he can't be trusted, it's too dangerous. He shakes his head, though every molecule screams for blood.
"Relax, it's dream blood. All in your mind. Might as well psyche yourself into being healthy and energetic, right?" She flashes him a sly, flirty grin.
He wants to send Elena away, resume pummeling his poor heart with blame, but her presence, even imaginary, and that sly smile, are more than he can resist. He relents, closes his eyes, and drinks, a flush of satisfaction raging through his skin. There will be time to return her grin as soon as he stops dying. For now it is enough, more than enough, to know Elena wants to take care of him. It's enough just to marvel at her tenacity, her creativity. He sucks hard, emptying the bag too quickly, drawing against the vacuum at the final droplets of life before dropping the straw from his lips.
"Now, where do you want to go?" She slides her hand along the buttons of his shirt. "We can go anywhere, Damon. Literally anywhere you can imagine."
But first, right now, it's not about where, it's about who. Relishing the power of the dream blood, Damon sits up fast, grasping at Elena's shoulders, crushing her body to his, her mouth to his. She is pliant, glad to be pulled. They move against and into each other, shifting for more, shifting for tongue and suction. The urgency has its own flavor, a tang of need and fear.
Elena releases him before he's ready; she misses him but has the luxury of saying what she wants to say to him out loud. If he's going to play by the rules – and dammit he is, he would be insane to ruin the best gift anyone has ever thought to offer him – he has to show her that he is sorry he let her down, that he would rather die than kill Jeremy, that he loves her and that just the thought of her loving him back makes him want to reach into his chest and hand her his ancient heart, bloody and entirely hers. There are no words for this kind of love anyway so he clutches her body against him, pulls her down onto him, opens himself to her and invites her in.
Soon, the gritty dust under his back vanishes. Noon sun fills a much larger room, the kind of light that sneaks into every corner, dissipates every shadow. A clear, warm breeze blows a few strands of her hair across his face.
She rears back an inch, enough to see him finally return her flirty smile. "Where are we?" she asks, brimming with wonder.
He glares at her playfully.
Her eyes sparkle back at him. "Oh, right. Sorry." She sits up on a large bed, a fresh version of his shirt now off of him and on her, half buttoned, skimming over her curves, hinting as she moves that there is nothing beneath it but skin. He leans back on his elbows, soft white sheets winding around his waist, and watches her as she takes in the surprise of this place.
He dreamed of bringing her here, back when his love was a secret he kept from her, from Stefan, at times even from himself. The villa was his mother's dream first, to regain the Salvatore family land in Tuscany, to rebuild it, restore it to an assumed former glory, for the benefit of her husband and sons. But before she had the opportunity to do more than confide in her older son about her grand plans, she ruthlessly left him, her body too weak to recover from a second birth.
It wasn't until Damon had been a vampire for a while already that he sought out the fabled Salvatore estate. It took decades and perhaps a foolish amount of money but find it he eventually did, and has spent a good portion of his undead life restoring it, uncovering the beauty of its architecture, lovingly burnishing marble and stone with the strength of his own hands. He has filled the villa with velvet curtains, a piano Toscanini once played, thousands of books, a cellar of old, promising wine. It is his haven, a place that guards, or maybe simply is, what some might call his soul.
And now, even if he never does return here, he can show it to Elena. He can't expect her to realize what it means that he's showing her this place, but she doesn't have to. The pure fact of her gaze on these walls fills him more profoundly than blood or words ever could.
She stands in the open doorway of the bedroom's balcony, gazing out over a valley filled with vineyards and lavender. "It's beautiful," she whispers. "Is it real?"
All he can do is sigh, but it comes thicker and harsher than he expected. Elena rushes to his side.
"Are you okay? Do you need more blood?"
He does, but not here. His drained, punctured body in the boarding house basement has almost nothing left. Nothing but her, and this, and he is not going to give these last moments up because he's too weak to hold on. If she knew how close he was to having to let it all go, she'd rush into the basement and the disaster would begin. So instead he refocuses on the villa, on this bed, on the armoire where his clothes still hang waiting for him.
The next second, they're walking in the vineyard below. A creamy linen dress billows in the breeze around Elena's light frame. She twirls around, realizing they've shifted. When she catches Damon's eye, she pauses and drinks in the sight of him.
He glows in a crisp white linen shirt and faded, old blue Levis, a photographic negative of what he wears in Mystic Falls. Her lips fall open. "You never wear white."
He raises an eyebrow at her.
"I like it," she assures him, leaning in for a lingering kiss.
He winds his fingers in hers and walks with her down aisles of Sangiovese vines. Although he has so much he would say if he could, the quiet between them is surprisingly easy. He plucks a grape hanging heavy under a leaf, pressing it to her lips before she realizes what he's done.
Of course, she opens them for him. One luscious bite and her eyes flare wide. "It's sweet!"
And then he tastes it too, licking her lips and tongue. She's sweeter, by far. He breathes it in, all of it, Elena here with him, tasting like his wine, her skin warmed by a sun that has only ever been his.
His lips migrate slowly to her jaw, nipping the delicate skin along her neck, and when he hooks a finger under the strap on her dress, she shrugs out of it with a deep sigh.
It falls at her feet on a woven blanket that has risen to meet them on a grassy hill below the villa. She gasps but quickly grins; venue is Damon's decision, she is his guest here, that is their agreement. The sun glints in her hair as he combs his fingers through it at her temples, drawing her into another kiss and gently down to kneeling, then further, laying her out beneath him, ignoring the hardening clench in his actual chest on a gritty dirt floor a million miles away. Here, Elena is radiant, full of desire but patient, unbuttoning his shirt like a ritual. He watches her, her eyes intent on button after infuriating button, a pout playing at her lips.
"You could just lose the clothes, you know. Dream magic."
He shakes his head. Her ministrations are too delicious to rush.
"Fine," she concedes, pushing his now unfastened shirt over his shoulders, kissing and tasting toward his neck. It's too good, too much, and an unintended groan comes from deep in his throat. "Careful," she warns.
He laughs.
She rolls them both on their sides, eases the buttons open on his jeans, drags them over the length of his legs and then stands, giggling as she tugs on the red lacy panties he's conjured. It was a nod, an inside joke, but now the thought of the two of them before all of this began is heartbreaking in a way he didn't foresee. He closes his eyes against the pang of guilt and she is instantly above him, her warm skin sliding over him, her lips hovering above his.
Behind his eyes, his subconscious is diligently practicing killing Jeremy, as it has been on and off since the cell door first locked. Here he goes again, twisting the boy's head fast and sharp, the bones splintering against each other, blood and spinal fluid smearing Damon's hands.
He gasps at the image, the satisfaction and horror of it, the sheer ease of accomplishment, but Elena takes it as desire and offers him her lips. Her clutches at her, his balm, hiding from Kol with wide open eyes. The strange shadows of her eyelashes against her cheeks slowly suffocate the swirling images of obligatory, inevitable murder. She is here, she is with him, she is his.
And as if she read his mind, she hums, "I'm yours."
They make love slowly. There is no rush: this is not the first time their bodies have joined but it may be the last. The dream has felt real enough up to now but dream ecstasy is qualitatively different from real physical ecstasy, less immediate, and they both feel the loss so they grasp each other tighter. He reaches and she presses and they strain into each other, honestly desperate to swallow each other up, so that when she offers her neck there is no question that he will drink. This cycle, flowing into one another, drives a crescendo, an accelerando. There is deliciously more and then the explosion begins with her, languid, heavy waves that drag him under like a rip tide. As the waves ebb, she twists his face toward hers and kisses the blood stain off his lips.
Quiet settles over them, the breeze warm on their naked skin. Elena swirls lazy spirals over Damon's ribs while he feathers long figure eights over her hip.
"We have to go soon," she laments. Damon knows she's right; he can feel real muscles turning almost to stone. He sucks the imaginary Tuscan air deep into his lungs, willing it to stay. "But we can come back, whenever you want, for as long as we're apart."