A Catalog of Non-Definitive Acts
Spoilers: Part 1 of this story is set after episode 4x09 "O Come, All Ye Faithful". Parts 2 and 3 will include pure speculation based on casting releases and pictures tweeted by the cast for episodes 4x13/4x14.
Summary: Elena hates the sire bond. Damon can't stay away from Elena. First, Elena makes a confession. Then, Damon makes a sacrifice. It all ends in truth and chaos.
Author's note: This started as a one-shot Christmas fluff piece. Somehow, it became a 10,000 word beast. I've never needed two characters to be okay more than Damon and Elena. This is my attempt at dealing with the sire bond, coming to you in three parts.
PS: I borrowed the title and chapter headings of this fic from Richard Siken's incredible poem "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out."
PART 1
Elena
"You want a better story. Who wouldn't?"
Elena Gilbert hated the sire bond.
She kicked the punching bag in front of her with all the hatred she felt for the universe's latest attempt at stripping away her agency.
Elena Gilbert was a doppelganger. Elena Gilbert's death activated a sacrifice. Elena Gilbert's blood turned werewolves into hybrids. Elena Gilbert's life was tied to a vampire hunter.
Well, Elena Gilbert was her own person, thank you very much.
The punching bag flew off its chain and landed all the way across Ric's apartment, sending a lamp crashing on the floor.
She almost felt guilty for destroying Alaric's furniture (that was one of her new vampire habits), and then she remembered how absurd her guilt was. It wasn't like Alaric was around to miss any of it.
She grabbed her things and headed out the door. She didn't need to be thinking about her dead history teacher/legal guardian/parental figure any more today.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she crossed the town square. She hoped for Jeremy or Damon's name to appear on the screen, but since when did she get what she wanted?
"Hey Bonnie."
"Merry Christmas Elena!"
She tried to muster some holiday cheer. "Merry Christmas to you too."
"So how's it going? Is Caroline playing nice?"
"She's… fine." Elena winced.
She couldn't remember needing her friends more than she did now, when she was forced to doubt her own thoughts her feelings. The problem was, Caroline disapproved of everything Elena thought or did, and she hadn't been shy about letting Elena know.
So when Caroline had admitted to inviting Stefan over for Christmas, Elena had made up a lie about going with Bonnie. The last thing she needed was Stefan watching her every move like it could bring the girl he fell in love with back to life. (He couldn't, and no cure or broken sire bond ever would.)
So Elena was spending Christmas alone. Which was just as well. She was in no mood to celebrate.
"Good," Bonnie answered. "You deserve a nice Christmas after everything that's happened."
"You too, Bonnie."
"I'm sorry I can't help with the sire bond. If there was anything I could do to break it, you know I would."
Elena's throat tightened at Bonnie's words. She didn't deserve her kindness after everything she had put her through. "Thank you. Hey Bonnie, I gotta go - Caroline needs help in the kitchen."
"No problem. I should probably get back to the family too. Tell Care I said Merry Christmas okay?"
"Will do." Elena paused. "I miss you."
"Miss you too!"
The line went dead just as Elena reached her house.
She dragged her feet. She was dying to hear her brother's voice, but she wanted to respect the distance Jeremy had established between them. They had texted earlier, and apparently this was all the family sibling interaction she would get today.
She used to love Christmas. She would bake gingerbread houses with her mom, craft handmade decorations, and stuff her family's stockings with carefully picked out presents. But that was before everyone she cared about had died.
Everything had gone to hell since.
Elena slid the key in her front door and entered her house. She leaned against the door and squeezed her eyes shut. She dreaded the deafening lack of living family members.
The scent of cinnamon filled her nostrils, and she froze. (For a second, she was human again and her mom was still alive and she wasn't an undead monster who drank blood to stay alive.) Her eyes flew open.
She stepped away from the door and took a few steps towards the living room.
Across from her stood a giant Christmas tree crouching under the weight of decorations and string lights. The fireplace was lit. There were stocking on the mantle.
Elena slowly turned towards the kitchen.
Her eyes locked with Damon's, and he smiled at her. She crashed in his arms the next second.
"Hey," he whispered into her hair.
Her lips curved into a smile. "Hey back."
She reveled in this moment for a minute. And then she remembered what the last two weeks had been like without so much as a phone call from him.
She pulled back, and shoved him as hard as she could with her hands. He stumbled all the way back to the fridge.
"What is that for?"
"That's for not picking up my calls for two weeks and then showing up at my house on Christmas day and turning my living room into winter wonderland."
Damon glanced at the tree. "I don't know, I think Martha Stewart would be pretty proud."
"Damon."
"Elena."
Elena crossed her arms, glaring at him with what she hoped was blazing fury. "I'm serious."
Damon dropped the goofy smile. (She wanted it back.) "I'm sorry, okay?" he began. "I didn't exactly plan this. I thought about you being alone at Christmas and I just got in my car and drove."
"I told Jeremy I would be at Caroline's."
"You didn't want your brother to worry, I get it. But it didn't take a genius to figure out you weren't going to be hanging out with Little Miss Perfect Vampire."
She wanted to stay mad at Damon for a hell of a lot longer than a minute. She really did. The last two weeks had been miserable without so much as one conversation with him. But her anger faded at the guilt she saw etched on every line of his face.
"You didn't give me a choice when you sent me away," she started. She felt so tired all of a sudden. "You could have picked up your phone at least once. And your cryptic texts don't count."
"I thought it would be easier if we just didn't talk."
"You were wrong."
"Newsflash: everyone else in town already thinks I'm always wrong."
Elena moved closer to Damon again. He looked… tired, too. "Just because you sent me away doesn't mean I don't miss you."
"I think your brother's doing well," he said, redirecting their conversation into safe territory. (Nothing was ever safe with them.)
She played along. For now. "Thank you for taking care of him."
"Well, it's not like we've been bonding or anything," Damon quipped. "But," he continued, "it turns out, Matt's not so useless after all."
"Are you sure you don't want to be spending Christmas with them instead?" she asked him playfully. "Pass around the bourbon, share girl stories by the fireplace?"
Damon rolled his eyes. Elena laughed. She saw his eyes cloud with what she suspected to be halfway between love and lust, and her stomach clenched.
Damon walked over to the kitchen island. "I made eggnog."
She eyed the mugs. "I haven't had anything but blood and alcohol since I…" she paused. She never knew which word to choose. "… turned."
"I figured. I slipped a little whiskey in. Your body's adjusted by now. This might be a good—" He stopped halfway through his sentence. Blood drained from his face.
"What?"
"Forget it."
She tried to reach for him. He stepped away. "Damon."
Everything about him reeked with anger. "I can't even ask you if you want to have some fucking eggnog without worrying about forcing you to agree to whatever I want."
She sped over to him and placed her hands on either side of his face. She felt him flinch under her touch. "Damon, look at me. We can get through this, okay?"
"No, we can't." His eyes shone with pain. "Every second I'm around you is just one more moment you'll regret when we find a way to break the bond."
"Is that really what you think?"
"It's the only thing that makes sense."
"Damon," she whispered. She meant it not just as a plea, but as a declaration, a certainty, a truth she had fought for so long.
She reached for his hand. He let her. She led them to the couch.
"You need to know… that night I went off the bridge, and you asked me to choose—"
"Elena—"
"No, let me finish, please. This isn't about the sire bond. This is about me. Human me." It was almost too difficult to look at him while saying this. But she didn't think she'd ever needed to say anything as much as she needed to say this. "You asked me to choose, and I picked Stefan. And I don't regret it. He was—being in love with him helped me live again after my parents died. I didn't want to lose that love. I wanted to know that some things didn't have to end. I wanted to be the girl who fell in love and stayed in love and didn't fall for her boyfriend's brother."
Damon's eyes shot up. She went on. "Damon, I was already in love with you when Matt's truck went off the bridge. I didn't want to be, but I was. And I thought I could fight my feelings for you and do the right thing with Stefan. And maybe if I hadn't died and become a vampire, maybe I would have been able to stick to that."
"And that's what you should have done. That's what you really want."
She shook her head. Damon was always so willing to send her straight back into his brother's arms that it terrified her. He didn't seem to believe anyone could genuinely love him, let alone her. And maybe she'd played a part in that. But she wanted it to change. She needed it to change.
"Do you know what I thought of when the water filled my lungs that night? I watched Stefan take Matt away, and then it was just me in the water… and I was ready to die. I wanted to be with my parents again. I wanted to see Jenna again. I felt like it was okay. Like I'd lived enough. I'd loved and been with my friends and I was dying to save someone's life. I was ready to go. But then I thought of you. I thought of you dying from the werewolf bite and how I would have given anything to save you. I thought of the way I felt when we kissed in Denver and how I never got to tell you how alive you made me feel. And I thought that I was going to die without getting to be with you because I was too scared to give this a chance. It made me want to live. And then your blood kept me alive. And until yousent us both into the water to save me from burning up at Wickery bridge, every moment of being a vampire was just me trying to forget those seconds where you were the only thing I wanted. And I know you think that I only want to be with you because of the sire bond, but the way I feel about wanting to be with you now – it's just those few seconds all over again. It's me being brave instead of trying to do what's right by Stefan and by everyone else."
His eyes roamed all over her face. "You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now."
She bit her lower lip. He clearly underestimated how much she wanted him back. "So do it."
He ignored her command. "You saved my life that night, you know. Ric – Alaric – he was about to kill me. And when you died, he died… and I lived." He dropped his hand from her face. "And my blood turned you into the one thing you didn't want to be."
"But I still got to live. And I'm glad." It had taken her so long to get to that point. If she was honest with herself, she liked herself more now than she had ever since her parents died. "So what if one day we do find this cure and it works? I want to be here now. I'm not going to feel sorry about it."
"You're not going to make this easy, are you?"
She shook her head. "I've been thinking a lot about everything I've done since I turned. And the things I did that didn't feel like me. When you told me to leave the lake house – that was the first time I could feel my body fight with my brain because you were making me do something I didn't want to do. But all the other times, even when you told me to kill Connor – deep down, I wanted those things. It didn't feel like you were forcing me into them."
"That's the point, Elena. You can't tell the difference."
"Yes, I can. When Bonnie drove me home two weeks ago, I was going crazy because I wanted to stay with you but I couldn't. That's not how it felt any of the other times. And it's not like I haven't been able to fight you on any of your decisions before. Whenever you changed your mind and let me do what I wanted – then it was what I wanted."
"That doesn't make it right."
"I know. And believe me, there's nothing I want more than to be free of this. I'm tired of everyone treating me like I can't think for myself. And I'm terrified of this power you have over me. The idea that the bond really could be making me things I don't actually feel…" She trailed off.
She'd struggled with herself a lot over the last two weeks. She'd picked apart every thought she'd had about Damon since turned, and compared it to everything she felt for him before turning. But nothing felt foreign to her. He was still Damon and she was still Elena. And she refused to believe any of her romantic feelings were a result of the sire bond. Otherwise it was like saying all the things she'd felt as a human were not real. And they were.
"I hate this sire bond. I really do. I'm not just sitting here thinking it's the best thing that happened to me. But I know how I felt before I turned. And I trust you, Damon. I know you would never take advantage of it."
"I'm doing just that by being here with you."
"No, you're not." She paused. There were more truths he needed to hear. "So maybe the sire bond is taking away some of my guilt about Stefan. And maybe I wouldn't have let myself be with you this soon without feeling bad about it. But I'm not going to sit here and regret anything that's happened between us. Because it would have all happened eventually."
He titled his head. "Do you really believe that?"
She nodded. She could see Damon's mind reeling, looking for more reasons to push her away. She jumped in before he could find them. "I have an idea," she told him.
He raised an eyebrow. "Why do I feel like I'm not going to like this?"
"We've both been going crazy trying to figure out how to act around each other. So I want to try something. You tell me specifically not to do something I know I want, and I'll see how I feel about it. And then you can tell me to ignore what you said. So I can see how it feels. And if I can fight it."
"No, Elena—"
"I need to try this, okay? I need to feel like I have some control over what's happening to me. Please."
He sighed. "You know, if it weren't for the hell I put you through when you could only drink blood from the vein and then when I sent you to kill Connor, I would seriously doubt you're sired to me at all."
She laughed. He kept his eyes focused on her. "Just once," he conceded eventually. "And it better be something really stupid."
She grimaced. He really wasn't going to like this. "Tell me not to kiss you."
"What? Elena, no—"
"You promised."
"This is ridiculous. You're ridiculous."
"Damon."
"You want me to tell you what to do with your body and—"
"How is it any different from sending me away from the lake house?"
He knew she was right. She gave him her best smile, knowing full well it would work in her favor.
"You're pretty devious, you know that?"
She shrugged. (She loved that he knew every part of her, light or dark.) "So you'll do it?"
He spat the words like they were poison. "Elena, I want you not to kiss me."
It took a few seconds for the words to take effect, but she could feel her body separate from her mind.
She wasn't supposed to kiss him. He had asked not to, so she wouldn't. She wanted to do what he wanted.
She tried to remember how she felt before he had given his order. She wanted to, uh … (press her li-) oh, she wasn't sure. What she wanted didn't matter anyway. (Didn't it?)
"Elena?"
She watched Damon. He looked so pained. So… human. Like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. She wanted to see him smile like he had on the morning they had woken up together.
She remembered the way his lips had felt when she had pulled him to her then. She remembered thinking that all the chaos and destruction was worth living through just so she could have this moment with Damon, with him smiling into their kiss and the sounds he made when she kissed his chest and the way her skin caught on fire wherever he touched her.
Elena paused. She wasn't supposed to kiss him. (But she wanted to.) She closed her eyes and thought of all the times her eyes had stared at his lips of their volition when she wasn't supposed to (when he was heartless and when she was in love with his brother and every single time she pretended nothing was going on between them.) She opened her eyes again.
Did she want to kiss him now? No. (Yes.)
He had told her not to. Why would she even think about it? Her heart picked up in her chest. She felt like she was on the verge of something big but she couldn't figure out what.
She tried to focus on a memory. A shabby motel on the outskirts of Denver. She'd learned about what Damon had done for Rose and it had felt like she was coming apart at the seams. The world wasn't black and white like she wanted it to be. She loved Stefan, but she couldn't even begin to put words to her feelings for Damon. (She was in love with him. There.)
She had lied in bed next to him and it had felt like her heart was going to burst in her chest. The problem wasn't that she wanted Damon (God, she did), but that she wanted every part of him. She wanted everything with him.
She had kissed him then because she was so damn tired of fighting what she wanted.
Damon came into focus again, sitting across from her on the couch.
She loved him.
(The good and the bad too.)
She was in love with him.
(Yes, yes, yes.)
She wanted to touch him.
(Everywhere.)
She wanted to kiss him.
(So what if he had told her not to? Since when did she do what Damon wanted?)
She wanted to kiss him, so she was going to kiss him.
(It was that simple.)
Her lips curved into a smile and she leaned over. She saw his eyes widen, and then she pressed her lips to his. (Finally.)
Damon kissed her back. His blue eyes were alive with shock and amazement. "How did you…" he trailed.
"I'm not sure," she answered. "I thought about you'd told me to do, and how I felt about it, and then I could just do it –"
He jumped in. "This doesn't mean the bond is broken—"
"I know."
"What you feel could still be—"
It was her turn to roll her eyes. "Damon. Shut up."
"This isn't right—" he started. She brought her thumb to his lips, parting them slightly. He stopped talking.
Then he pulled her to him, right or wrong be damned, and she came alive with his lips pressed to hers, his body flush with hers, and the glorious knowledge that she would never, ever get enough of him, of this, of them.
Elena was having this moment, and the sire bond could go to hell.