A/N: The bathroom scene, arguably the sexiest TVD scene EVER, treads on some morally ambiguous grounds. What on earth was Damon thinking? How could he do that when Elena didn't understand the significance of the act? Was he, as usual, doing the wrong thing for the right reason? I couldn't decide, so I watched it again (and maybe again and again), and decided I needed more of an explanation. Hopefully the show will give us one, but in the meantime (because I'm impatient), I made up reasons of my own. Again, the M rating is for language, not lemons, because while I'm sure I'm not the only one who would've liked something more to happen, it didn't. At least not yet. Sorry to disappoint, if that's the sort of story you're looking for. Buckets of thanks to CreepingMuse who is an incredible beta and loads of fun to talk to and bounce ideas off of. She's a total enabler, for which I am grateful.
Justified
Stefan's fucking diet is not the answer, and it never will be the answer because it's the problem. He drinks his bunnies and his Bambis because it's disgusting and he can punish himself and feel righteously superior because if he stopped being a sanctimonious control freak for two seconds, his entire illusion would come crashing down and he'd be crushed under the weight of all the guilt that's rightfully his. We all need our delusions and deflections so we get out of bed in the morning and don't turn ourselves into funeral pyres. But I know Stefan as well as anyone, and even I don't know if he really believes his own version of the story, or if he just needs to pretend like he does because the alternative is too damn much to bear.
That's what's called a recipe for disaster, when you have a predator magically created to be a killing machine who may or may not believe his own lies, and now he's the go-to guru for baby vampires. How the fuck does that happen? But off they skipped into the woods, children as lost as Hansel and Gretel. They will both be just fine, dammit, so long as they say it out loud often enough. They can be vampire vegetarians and live off the land and weave flower chains into each other's hair and weep for the poor squirrels and be one with nature that they're no longer a part of. Sure. Uh-huh. No way that plan's destined for misery and epic failure.
Elena's strong, goddammit, and why am I the only one who sees this? Why am I the only one who knows that she's better than either one of us, that she's not alone and broken like we were when we transitioned. She's not destined to repeat our many mistakes. She can do this. She won't crumble or be crushed or fall apart or rip other people to pieces because she is still Elena. She can be Elena and be a vampire. Why am I the only one who sees these are not mutually exclusive concepts?
So when she comes to me at the Grille, accusing me of blowing up the Council (that was doing its best to fucking kill us all, I might add) and reeking of blood-barf and my brother, it's all I can do to not shatter the bourbon glass in my hand because I'm so pissed off. Where's Ric when I need him? Oh right, he's dead. Only dead-dead and not just dead-ish like the rest of us. Because for all their nauseatingly "No, I love you more" rooftop confessions that I couldn't not overhear and Stefan's camping trip that was going to fix everything, she looks like shit and smells even worse.
Fucking moron.
"Something's wrong," she mumbles, and I have to turn my head and cringe because that's the understatement of the century, and I don't even know which "wrong" she's talking about. Pick one, Elena. The list is long and distinguished.
"I can't keep any of the animal blood down," she whispers, as if it isn't entirely obvious from the stench that didn't wash away, no matter how hot the shower or the fact that she brushed her teeth at least five times.
"Well, there's a shock," I snap back because she made her choice, and I can't interfere. And not being able to do anything to help her is fucking killing me. Death by a thousand cuts, that's what this girl is.
"I think I need your help."
Fuck.
The only thing worse than usually being right is the fact that no one ever listens to me. Nope. They wait until it's all fucked up, and then they came and ask for my help cleaning up the mess that could've been avoided if they'd only just listened to me in the first place because I'm always right.
Goddammit.
She sounds so lost, so defeated. She's miserable, just like I said she would be. And dammit, she is infuriating because she should be bearing her soul to Stefan. He is her choice, and this should be his problem. But how I can refuse her? How can I turn away from her when she's so obviously desperate? For now, in this moment, she's chosen me, and I'm so pathetic that that's enough.
Fuck.
She needs to feed. Her hands are shaking and her eyes are darting all over the Grille, coming to rest on the jugulars of all the warm and delicious people around us. She's not even really listening to me because all she can hear is the wet thumping of hearts and the swooshing of blood moving through bodies. She is about to fucking lose it. Doesn't she see how much harder it is if she's hungry? It's already hard enough those first early weeks when everything is just too fucking much and you feel like you will burst out of your skin.
Blood is not the problem. Blood is the answer.
She is not a caged animal in a zoo or someone's exotic pet. She's a vampire. She's made to hunt, to feed, to drink blood, and she wouldn't be in this current mess if she'd just do that already. Elena is not a damsel, but Stefan seems determined to turn her into one. He wants to make her into him so he can swoop in and be the hero and save her but really save himself. Grow the fuck up, Stefan.
Her hands are shaking and there are dark circles under her eyes and she looks so hungry she just might eat her own arm or lunge across the bar if the girl pouring drinks moves just a little bit closer, and that's how rippers are made. They push themselves to that point, and they snap, and so do all the necks in the vicinity. Elena is better than that.
Dammit, Stefan.
So I do what I have to do, the only thing I can do in that moment because she won't pick a human and walk out back with me so I can show her how it's properly done, no shovels required. And she's most likely not even aware that she's shifted her weight to the balls of her feet. She's a weapon poised and ready to strike, and the next person who moves is going to end up a drained body on the floor, and so I swallow my bourbon and pull her away from the temptation. I couldn't care less if she ate the entire population of Mystic Falls, but she would care very much, and I have to do something other than ask her how she is so she can lie and tell me fine.
When I pull her into the bathroom and bite into my hand so the smell can overcome her stubbornness, I can tell immediately she doesn't realize drinking from other vampires is an option. What on earth was Stefan doing with her out in the woods for two days and nights? Toasting marshmallows?
Fucking Christ.
"What are you doing?" She's still looking through the door to all the warm bodies in the Grille, but my scent has distracted her, and even as I see it working, I know this is quite possibly my worst idea ever, and I'm known for doing stupid things.
"Giving you what you need. Drink." I cup my palm to catch the blood because the wound is already healing. I hold my hand at just the right angle so the smell overpowers everything else. "You're a new vampire, Elena," I say. "You need warm blood, from the vein. Maybe this will do the trick. Or not." God, please. I am not a praying man but just this once please let it do the trick so she doesn't have to suffer and be miserable and alone and scared. Please God, I don't deserve your help, but she does. Please let me be enough for her. "But just don't tell Stefan."
"Why not?" She is hanging on by her fingernails, distracting herself with a question she doesn't really care about. Not now, anyway.
"Because blood sharing is... kind-of... personal." New understatement of the century.
"What do you mean, it's personal?" She's panting and sweating and about to lose her shit, and she's still arguing with me, and she's afraid she's not strong enough to do this right? She's a fucking warrior.
"Just drink." Because so help me, if she rejects me now, again and still and always because it's never going to be me, I will... Well, I don't know what I will do, but I don't think any of us wants to find out.
I know I should stop this. I should tell her the whole truth instead of the very-glossed over and sanitized nutshell that is "personal." I want it to be real, and she doesn't understand what she's getting herself into. She doesn't know this is the most intimate of acts between vampires. It's the blood. It's the ultimate submission, the ultimate act of trust. It's not my metaphorical neck on the alter of love, but my literal neck. This is me transformed into a sacrifice, offering what keeps me alive to the person I love. This is our own sacred communion.
I justify my action my telling myself it's my hand. Just my hand. I did it there on purpose. Not a vein, which would gush and overwhelm her. Not the neck, which would require her to be pressed against me. I didn't drop my pants and go with my personal favorite, the femoral artery. Just my hand, where it will fucking hurt because she'll have to really work to get the blood to flow, and she'll be able to stop easily if (no, when) she wants to, and she can stand over there and not touch any other part of me. Just my hand. That's all this is. Because she's hungry.
Just my hand.
She stops warring with herself and lets the blood lust take her, and her red eyes with their delicate lace of veins is so beautiful and ferocious, and she is a goddess when she bites down because the tiny wound I'd made to tempt her has already healed, and this is a terrible terrible mistake.
She is not standing over there, where I need her to be. She wraps herself around my hand, sucking and licking like her life depends on it, and I've underestimated how fucking hungry she is because now I understand that her life does depend on it. She is starving, and I'm what's keeping her from falling over the edge. Me. I'm her anchor as she rests her head against my shoulder and pushes me against the flimsy wall between the stalls.
She is better than this, the most intimate of sacraments taking place where random people come to piss. But she's making these little noises in the back of her throat, so I stroke her hair, encouraging her to drink her fill.
I close my eyes and commit every tiny detail to memory because if Stefan doesn't stake me when I tell him (because it is so incredibly wrong and I will have to tell him), I know I'll probably never get this lucky again. Her weight against me feels just right, like without her pressed into me I'm too light. Insignificant. Without her, I will drift away into nothingness. Her hair is silk beneath my fingers and the sting of her biting me over and over as the wound heals is perfect because without it I just might not be able to focus, and I want to remember this for always.
She rubs against me, and I am going to come in my pants like a teenager because that's exactly what she makes me again, but when I shift my hips away from her, so she's not pressing against me, so she doesn't have to feel me, she moves too, once again right where she fits like she's made to be right there, and for all the layers of clothes between us, I've never felt so close to anyone.
She moans against my hand, the vibrations setting my skin on fire with sensation, and I may moan too, and she bites a final time as she comes.
It's not the frantic frenzy that's so common among vampires, speed and strength powering overwhelming sensations. We're forever tearing off clothes and yanking hair and pushing against walls and scratching and biting not to drink but to wound and thrusting with a force that would crush a human pelvis. It's a battle for dominance and it's always more and more and more and never enough and anything to try and feel alive because we aren't.
With Elena, it's gentle and quiet and intense and powerful and absolutely perfect and there really aren't enough words to describe an act this holy.
It's only my arm around her waist that's kept her from collapsing, and she's suddenly aware of that, of everything. And I don't want to come because I am not a teenage boy and when I come, if I'm ever that lucky, I want to be inside her and not in a bathroom and I can't afford these stolen moments with her because she is my brother's girl. This has been for her, and only for her, and I don't want to be the dick who took advantage of the girl in the bathroom. But then she licks one final time against my palm, one broad, wet, warm sweep of her tongue, and I can't help but gasp and shudder and clutch her against me and cry out into her hair.
Before I'm ready, she's stumbling away, and without her pressed against me I am empty and exposed.
"Damon?" she whispers, and she already looks better, the color back to her cheeks and her eyes bright. She's disoriented not from the hunger, but from the flood of sensations. She is not going to starve. Not today.
I quickly arrange myself more comfortably, but she's intentionally not looking there because she's staring into my eyes, as if I'm compelling her or maybe she's compelling me. Is that what she wants? Does she want to forget this?
"Better?" I ask instead of all the questions that matter, as if nothing has happened, as if this wasn't a big fucking deal. I want to crush her to me and kiss her and whisper all sorts of promises, but this isn't about me. I can't be selfish with her. She needs to understand that this is who she is. She is a vampire. We drink blood because it is life itself, and it is delicious and beautiful, and it is why we are walking this earth when we should be dead, and drinking warm blood from a vein is just what we do.
Nope. Nothing to see here. Business as usual.
She nods. "Yes." She finally looks away from me. The spell is broken, and she looks around the restroom as if she doesn't remember how she got here. She blinks like a child waking up from a long and satisfying nap filled with visions of sugarplums.
"Elena?"
"Wait," she begins."I... What was..." She starts frantically rearranging her clothes, more out of habit than necessity. If she could still blush, she would. She combs her hair with her fingers, smoothing out where my hands mussed it. I half expect her to slap me at any second.
She clears her throat and takes a deep breath I know she doesn't need.
"What?" I finally snap.
"That was kind-of personal?" she accuses. So help me, she even uses air-quotes.
"Good to see you're feeling better."
This is that disgusting motel in Denver all over again because even though she keeps choosing Stefan, she keeps coming back to me. She could've asked Caroline for help if she wasn't comfortably with Stefan, and God forbid we look too closely at why she's not being honest with him. And yet she can only be with me when we're on a mission together or playing super-sleuths or in secret because I'm so embarrassing and disgusting and beneath her.
"I can still hear their hearts," she quietly says, almost like she's not even talking to me. Because this is what we do: we share these life-altering and earth-shattering and fucking-epic moments, and then we pretend like they didn't happen or don't matter. We're all so fine. "And I can still smell them." She tilts her head towards the door, as if I don't know she means the people out in the bar. "But it's different than before. I don't think I'm going to hurt them. I wasn't sure... before... I just wasn't... it was all too..."
"We're vampires. We're supposed to be able to sense our prey."
"They're people, Damon."
"They're food, Elena."
She's feeling well enough to glare at me. "And what was this?" She moves her hand between us.
"It's no big deal," I answer in what I hope is a bored voice. "I was just a donor. A warmed blood bag, if you will. A crash-test dummy."
"Right," she nods. She almost smiles, a ghost of one starting before it vanishes, but it's sad and distant and full of something I don't understand. "It was nothing." And then she's unlocking the door, and I lean against it and listen until I hear her leave the Grille and start her car across the street and drive home towards Stefan.
I should be hurt, and maybe a little pissed off too. I probably will be when it sinks in, but right now, this moment, I can't care about what her walking away does to me because all I'm allowed is her scent on my hand. And I desperately need to order another drink.
Author's Post Script: If you like this, consider checking out Bourbon Before Breakfast. This really should've been the first chapter, but I posted it before I was fully committed to the idea of writing more.