Author's Note: This fic goes AU from about ten minutes before the end of 3.20 Do Not Go Gentle. Which means 3.21 and the finale never happened. Suck it, Plec. (Just kidding, I love you bunches, don't be mad, call me and we can do lunch sometime. xoxo). This first chapter is just a shortish way to kick things off. I don't know how fast this will go up, or how long it will run, but I am hoping to post a new chapter every few days. Hope you enjoy!


Damon was drunk. He had just said a bourbon soaked goodbye to his best friend in the Salvatore crypt, so of course he was drunk. But he was not so drunk that he couldn't make a three point landing on Elena's windowsill. He didn't see her through the window, so he let himself inside, and sat on her window seat. Good old Elena. Good old Elena, his friend. His friend who was probably going to chuck him in favor of his brother any day now. His friend Elena who was the reason why he was going to have to leave Mystic Falls forever and ever. No, it was okay. He wouldn't go. He could hang around town and watch his good friend Elena, his friend who tasted so sweet and felt so right in his arms at a Denver motel, his sweet friend, his girl, light of his life, his only, his everything - making moony eyes at his brother. Again. For all time. Because it would always be Stefan. Because Damon doesn't get the girl. Damon doesn't get a best friend. Everyone either leaves or dies, or has sex with his brother. Or all of the above.

"Seriously, Damon? Tonight of all nights?" Elena sighed, as she appeared in the doorway. She had changed out of her white flapper dress, and into a tank top and shorts, but her hair was still bound up in waves. "You know what? It's fine. Tonight of all nights, it's completely fine."

"I know I'm a wee bit tipsy," Damon said, "but you look blurrier than I expected."

"It's the hair," Elena responded. She sat down on the chair in front of her dresser, still for a moment. Then she raised her hands to her hair and began removing the pins. Damon moved behind her, and helped her take the pins out. Then he lifted a brush from the dresser, and brushed out her long dark hair. Elena closed her eyes, resting her bandaged hand on the table.

"You want me to fix that for you?" he asked her, quietly.

"No, that's okay," Elena said. "I need to feel it. It's what makes me realize that he is gone. There are seconds in between seconds when I almost forget." She opened her eyes, and looked at him in the mirror. "I take it that he is actually gone."

"Meredith was with him when I left. She was going to give him something to make it peaceful. Or so she said." Damon laughed, harshly. "Peaceful. I wanted to just snap his neck and put us all out of his misery. You can't get more peaceful than that. One snap, done. But he chose Meredith's way."

"At least he's not alone. I suppose you couldn't stay with him?" She looked at his face again. "No, I guess not. Not until the very end, anyway."

"No," Damon said, shortly. He put the brush down. "You're done."

"Thanks." Elena stood, and turned to face him. "The house is empty. Every year it gets more and more empty."

"Where's my brother and yours?"

"My brother is with Matt. They are grieving their own way, I guess. And your brother went home. I sent him there." She sat down on the edge of her bed.

"And why was that?"

"I wanted to be alone. He took the stake with him, said he wanted to put it somewhere safe, anyway."

"Well, then-"

"No. You should stay. I can mourn Ric with you in a way that I can't with Stefan. You loved him."

"I guess I did." Damon sat down beside her.

"No guessing about it. You loved him." She reached over and brought Damon's hand into her lap, and held it with her undamaged hand. "You remember last summer when all four of us went up to the lakehouse for a cookout, and Ric and Jeremy pushed you in? So much for your vampire hearing skills. They came right up behind you on the dock, and they weren't exactly ninjas about it."

Damon pulled his hand away, and stood up. "If we are going to play 'remember when', then I am leaving."

"Damon," Elena said, reaching up and grabbing his hand again. "We won't. That's fine."

He sat down beside her. "That wasn't the happiest of memories, anyway. You were obsessed with finding Stefan, and the only reason why we were there, hell, the only reason why I let those two idiots throw me in the lake, was to try and make you smile. Just once that stupid summer, I needed to see you smile."

"I know. And it worked." Elena gave him a small smile, that slipped suddenly, as she looked down at her bandage again. "A little bit, anyway."

She looked back at the bed. "I'm suddenly really tired, actually. Will you . . . do you want to lay down with me? Just for awhile?"

Damon looked back at the bed, too. It looked wide and vast and dangerous. "Sure, Elena."

Damon kicked off his shoes and threw his jacket on the chair, while she crawled up the bed and got herself under the covers. He slipped in beside her. "This is a terrible idea, you know."

"Why?" Elena asked, her head turning towards him on the pillow.

"Just remembering the last time I climbed into bed with you. Practically sent you screaming into the night."

"Wasn't out of fear," she said, and then paused. "Well, maybe it was."

"Oh, it definitely was." Damon looked up at the ceiling as Elena turned and reached over to switch the light off. Darkness descended. "Why do I scare you that much? Obvious reasons, or something else?"

"Well, not the obvious reasons, if you mean vampire ones. Despite everything I've seen you do in that department," Elena responded, her voice low. "And I'm more scared of me than I am of you."

"Really. That makes sense."

"I love Stefan."

"No kidding. Kinda got that memo. For the past two years."

"I love Stefan," Elena said. She shifted on the pillow until her face was closer to his. "But I have a choice to make. I'm choosing you."

"Wait, what?" Damon asked, his stomach suddenly tense. "I know I'm drunk and sad, so I'm probably just passed out in the crypt and hallucinating this, but what?"

"I'm choosing you, Damon. I'm choosing to be with you. That is," she said, with some hesitation in her voice, "if that's what you want, too. If you still want me after all that I have done to string the both of you along. I'm ashamed of what happened in Kansas, you know. It was stupid of me to tell you that I didn't know how I feel. Of course, I know how I feel. I love you. I have loved you for awhile. I was going to let you know in the morning. But you are here now, so I am telling you now."

Damon raised himself up on his elbows. "You are going to have to give me more details than that, Elena. Because you know I am not buying this for a second."

Elena turned her head, and looked up at the ceiling in the dark. "Ric died tonight. He died as someone who had lost his loves again and again." She turned and faced him. "But at least he died as someone who did love. Who loved bravely. With all of the darkness and fear in his world, he still let himself love and be loved. I know what that means now, and I'm not afraid anymore. Not afraid of what loving you says about me. Not afraid of what you might do when things go wrong. Not afraid of what people are going to say. I love you, Damon. I choose to be with you."

Damon shook his head. "No, you don't. You just said it yourself, you love Stefan. You even went to the dance with him tonight."

"Oh, I'll always love him. That's not really the point, is it? And the dance . . . Stefan is wonderful. He's complicated, and he has more layers to him than I thought any person could. And he's there for me, really there. When he is truly himself, that is. He clawed his way back out of the darkness, and he did it for you and for me. Because of his love for us. He's so strong, and I admire him for that. I love him for it. But it's not the same for us anymore. I realized that tonight." Her voice went down to a whisper. "I love you both, but you have been stirring something in me for awhile now. I can't ignore that. I won't. It's not fair to any of us. When I'm with you, nothing else matters but how you make me feel. I can barely breathe, you know. When it's just us. Just like this. I can't catch my breath when we are close."

Damon went still. "So it's about sex, then? I get you hot."

Elena sighed. "You are such an idiot. This is a declaration of love, not a declaration of, 'please let me get into your pants', Damon."

Damon found himself grinning. "Am I spoiling the moment?"

"Yeah, you kinda are. I'm trying to tell you that I know now. I know what I want, and I want you."

Damon suddenly felt very weary and very old. He looked at her there in the darkness, and she was ridiculously young. He shook his head again. "You know what, Elena? I'm tired and you're tired, and I'm sad and you're sad, I'm drunk and you're . . batshit from the sound of it, to be honest. In the morning, you won't remember any of this, and we'll go forward with life with things as they should be. You're not making any choices tonight, okay? So really and truly, let's forget it all. Forget it, and go to sleep."

Elena sat up, put a hand on either side of Damon's face, and cradled his head. He could feel the roughness of her bandage against his cheek. He could smell the clotted blood on her hand. She smiled at him, the light from the window hitting her face and turning it silver.

"My poor, stupid Damon," she said, before kissing him. He couldn't help it. It was all so cruel, and he would regret it dearly, but he couldn't stop her. Couldn't stop it. He was helpless in the face of her need for him, and the way his need echoed hers.

Damon pushed Elena down to the bed, ghosting his lips over her neck, capturing her moans with his mouth. He tore her shirt from it's tiny straps, with a single flick of his wrist.

They were together, and it was all lovely, it was all beautiful, it was everything he had ever wanted, and Damon knew it was going to hurt like hell when the morning came.