Disclaimer: Word has it I don't own the Vampire Diaries. It is true. However, if Damon showed up on my doorstep and flashed that psycho grin at me, I would not only invite him in, but I'd probably also hand over the ownership of my home and everything in it, including my humble self. Until then, though - nope, sadly, not mine.

A/N: This happens quite early during season one. Apparently, my S1 Damon is having serious enough denial issues to warrant a fic, because this idea has been causing quite the itch in my mind. :) I'm new, and have been out of the fic-writing loop for quite a few years, so please be gentle - but I would appreciate it so much if you let me know what you think. Thanks, and please enjoy.

Second Thoughts

Rain pounds harsh and reckless against the windowpanes. His black leather jacket glistens in the ribbon of lukewarm light that seeps from the hallway into Elena's bedroom. The steady background noise helps keep his presence undetected. Good news, for a change. He doesn't need to be so careful; that's good, too, because all the bourbon Damon has drunk on his way to the Gilbert house ensures he couldn't be. Not really. Not quite.

Or maybe he doesn't care, after all. Let her wake up. Let her see him. Let her scream before he rips into her for blood and release.

On second thought...

Elena stirs in uneasy sleep and a mad, ill-fitting desire turns Damon's stomach against him. A small moan escapes her lips, her features raw and twisted—if she's dreaming of him, it's likely the mother of her nightmares: fanged and bloodied and fun, just as it should be. The vervain-packed necklace resting against her breast takes away the choice he doesn't want to make, although... Part of him would reach out into her dream to alter it. Perhaps, just maybe, he wouldn't try to make it worse. Something hot and writhing and very much alive stirs in his chest and, right about now, Damon hates that part with a passion that rivals his sentiments towards Stefan. No, scratch that. He hates himself just for knowing that part is there.

There's something scandalously provocative in Elena's fierceness, so much that his cheek still burns with phantom fire where she had slapped him earlier for being his usual, world-class jerk self. She knows him for the monster he is, and she's not afraid of him. He can't help but draw an odd, shaky line between his unflinching fascination with Katherine way back when, and Elena's surprisingly quick acceptance of all things vampire. There's commonality here neither of them can, or should, deny, yet so far, both of them have been doing just that.

How did this even happen? It was supposed to be Katherine. Always Katherine, only Katherine, forever. And then this girl with Katherine's face and that rare brand of soul Katherine never had made him go where Damon never, ever wanted to go again. Not unless he managed to help Katherine waltz back into his life somehow. Not unless—

Well, damn.

He has killed and maimed and flung himself into the freefall of rage to remember the risk of letting himself feel and avoid it, all in vain. Damon huffs a shuddering breath through grinding teeth, focuses on the slow rise-and-fall of Elena's chest, the pale skin there shadowed by the necklace, and he tells himself it means nothing. She has no power over him, and he's here to prove it. He'll be indifferent and heartless and cruel (charming, slick, irresistible), because that's what he is and nothing, no one, can change that—not even she.

Yeah. As if.

The cold, cold part of him that has sustained him for a century and a half knows what he should do. Elena is dead weight, a nuisance; as good a tool as any (fine—the best there is) to use against Stefan, to play him, torment him, but no more. All...this... needs to stop before it slips out of Damon's control. He feels the predatory shift in his body manifest in his face, the rush of blood to his eyes as his fangs descend, and he hates himself again for the hesitation that renders him motionless.

This.

This is the moment he goes for the kill but instead, it strikes him with terrible clarity: he's so far out of his depth here, so far from the instincts that guarantee his survival, that it almost hurts. He should know better than to go anywhere near anything that makes him want to feel, but, here he is.

It was a perfect plan. (It still is—just stick to it.) Get under Elena's skin, make her question, think, dream... of him, just to get even, just to prove Stefan wouldn't always somehow end up ahead of Damon's game, that tiny step ahead that changes everything. It was just that, a game, a cute little trap, and even now when Damon is caught smack in its midst he wonders: how the hell does one fall prey to a scheme of their own design?

How stupid is that?

For a split second he lets his blood lust off the leash—the rush inside blinds and deafens him, and then everything snaps into focus: Elena's bedroom washed in the ink of shadows, her frame outlined in the bed, fragile beneath the cover, every line of her face Damon has memorized through Katherine and wouldn't forget if he tried. He remembers that, and something else: the one rule that has kept him just shy of the final death all these years. When something gets so deep under your skin, don't question, don't think, don't even poke it with a stick. Just kill it. Make it stop. Make it disappear.

He sees red, but a spasm of confusion throws him out of focus, fingers digging into his thigh when they should be closing around Elena's neck, fangs tearing into his lip instead of her jugular. She will never love you. She will use you, betray you, just like Katherine did. His head is pounding, and it's not just the blood powering his urges. Make it stop. Kill her and be done with it.

But it has no intention to stop, this feeling inside that strangles his instincts. Rage makes sweet, sweet promises to take command and get him out of this mess, but he's not quite there, despite knowing that by now, he really should be. He can't afford to let this happen (and the sinking feeling is quite adamant about the fact that it is happening, right now, whether he hates it just a little or a whole fucking lot). Not again. It hurts too much to even go near the part inside him capable of love, into that hole of an empty heart. And yet, here he is, hanging from it by shredded fingertips, beside an unsuspecting, sleep-warm Elena threatening to send him off the deep end with every breath she takes—and Damon is not so sure the bitterness that damn near chokes him isn't hatred, after all, underneath all else he can't help feeling towards her.

Breathe in. Out. Again.

Emotion is overrated. There's one lesson he learned early and learned it well. Hatred's fine and good; at least it has merit. It's a driving force; raw, powerful fuel. All else is so useless. Damon knows; Damon spent years buried in it, up to the ears. And it sucked. It ripped his heart out and put it through a grinder, then threw all he knew into rampaging chaos, out of his control. As if the world spun the wrong way and left him to wade through confusion, always a little breathless, lost, a step behind. He was too large for the skin he wore, all sharp edges and wrong contours, and the pain of it was unending, unyielding, unbearable.

No more.

Mind trips to the past have one good thing about them. You see exactly how stupid you were. Damon tries for contempt as he lets his heavy-lidded eyes rake over Elena's face—her mouth parting, brow creasing, fist clenching around crumpled sheets—and, try as he might, he doesn't find any, not even a scrap. The present mocks him with a vicious whisper over the hissing rain: you're just as stupid now as you were back in 1864.

He's approaching hysteria inside, while the outside betrays nothing despite the lack of a conscious witness. A small voice tears through the blood-induced noise between his ears and he hears it oh so clearly. It's so easy not to feel. Except that is not true at all, and knowing you live a lie is a whole 'nother bitch to tame.

###

Puddles shiver with fading rainfall, the night's descending silence screaming obscenities. A bottle of bourbon awaits him on the front porch, just where Damon had left it—half-empty, inviting, a promise of normalcy. He lifts his head and lets a nasty smirk turn his face ugly even as he stares into Elena's bedroom window, as if he could shatter the glass with that glare.

So he didn't kill her. Yet. No biggie; it doesn't mean anything. Caring implies having a heart, and Damon's heart is cold and dead and has been for years. He's not one to ask for more idiotic, pointless pain than he can handle, not when he can slam the door shut on it and disregard the notion that he was ever human. He had restraints once, and then, he was no longer the pathetic fool who died for Katherine's sake by his father's hand.

And that something in him that casually entertains (craves, in a pitiful way he'd find distasteful if he cared to admit it to himself) the idea of going back upstairs just to look at Elena? To stroke her face and bury his own in her hair spilled across the pillow? That's not him. It can't be. He can do that all he wants, but it can't be real. There can't be anything else inside this undead shell for Damon to argue with and hate.

Just a game.

It a no-brainer, really. Just hold on to that thought. Flip the switch, down a shot, bite a neck and be (not feel) just fine. Lather, rinse, repeat.

###

The current foreclosure is far from the best in town, but it's right by a neat little street favored by joggers, and the first light of dawn is not far. There's less than a third of the bourbon left, but it should do before a richer treat falls into Damon's hands. He flops down on the hardwood floor, all offhanded grace and careless abandon, and lets his mouth cling to the upturned bottle's neck like his life depends on it. Well, his life (afterlife) doesn't, but his unique version of sanity for the moment might.

The booze burns its way to his stomach—something snaps inside him, like a missing piece falling into place—and he's free, bone and muscle tingling with elation. Damon laughs, once, twice—a chestful of air bursts out of him and he's rolling on the floor, laughing harder as his head hits the floorboards and something catches his hair. He can almost taste hot blood on his tongue, shivers with the promise of a good old kill-to-feed self-prescribed panacea. This. This is the only way to survive the shit that is his eternal life, this... complication that won't clear from his mind.

By the time the sun crests the treetops across the street, it's all neat and sorted, packed and stuffed so deep inside he wouldn't find it if he tried, not without Elena poking and tugging at what she foolishly thinks is his soul. Now, all that's left to deal with is the kind of hunger Damon knows and doesn't mind. His head snaps upward and he blurs to the window even as he hears the solution to this unexpected drama approaching, small feet pounding against the sidewalk. The girl rocks her hips to some awful tune blaring in her earphones. Damon licks his lips, taking a second to appreciate the curve of her waist flanked by a fall of chestnut hair. He slips outside into the chilly morning air before the girl vanishes around the corner, not bothering to close the door behind him.

Death creeps, inevitable as the sunrise itself, in the receding shadows of this new dawn; teasing, calling. Heedless of all else, Damon follows.

###

It's early afternoon when sandpaper on his tongue and in his eyes rips Damon unceremoniously from the arms of sleep. He cracks one eye open a sliver, stretching against the sheets as his mind struggles to roll back to the present. It takes him a moment to realize the source of his current discomfort: he's aroused, tight-skinned and bathed in his own unspent heat. It coils inside him, too, and he growls low in his parched throat, his mouth twisting into a sneer.

He doesn't care to remember how he got back to the boarding house. Between the booze and fresh human blood both working their magic, Damon was as content as he was going to get, considering the circumstances. He might have barked something delightfully offensive to Stefan (High school? Really?); might have knocked back another tumbler or two before heading up to his bedroom where he threw himself onto the bed, discarded clothes and shoes marking his way there. He might have even tried to not imagine a lean, intimately familiar silhouette snuggling up to him as he fell asleep—but that might not have gone down so well.

There were dreams to emphasize his failure, dark haired and feisty and too fuzzy for him to guess if it was Elena or Katherine. Disturbing, delicious nightmares. Wisps of them cling to his memory like a wet shirt, and now, half-awake, Damon Salvatore is fire personified in a vampire's hide.

He bolts out of bed like the sheets are vervain-laced and blurs into the shower. Ice-cold water is all pins and needles on his back and arms, but it feels good—good enough. There's a need gnawing at him even more feral than blood lust; a hunger for a patch of steady ground beneath him. One damn square foot of it, something, anything.

Much like emotion, sanity is not all it's cracked up to be, but Damon is not one to sniff at handy tools to blend into the boring small town atmosphere, when it suits his purpose or his whim. Right about now, sanity ranks high on his list of necessities. There are decision to make. Plans to execute. People to kill.

The shower is not enough to quench the fire in him; Katherine's (Elena's? Oh, hell no) face derails every train of thought that leads away from her. He's not even surprised when he fails in the most spectacular fashion at shoving her into the waiting line at the back of his mind. Katherine doesn't wait; she never has and never will, not even when Damon is trying—and still failing—to focus on the steps he needs to take to bring her back. Not even then. She fills him up inside until there's no room left.

You'd think a hundred and forty five years into his vampire existence, patience would have become a strong trait among everything that makes up his personality, and it has. But suddenly it's gone and he's anything but patient about this. He will free Katherine and sic vengeful vampires on this god forsaken town. They will do his dirty work just fine, and Damon will leave, and move on, and never think of Elena again. Once he has Katherine beside him, he'll never look back.

Such is the plan. And it will be the most perfectly executed awesome plan Damon has ever conjured up.

This mantra has worked so far. Then moments like this sneak up on him, when he knows he is alone and Katherine's love for him is the least certain of all his certainties, when he's aching in ways no human knows or ever will—in moments like this, the inner web of lies he has stitched his heart with threatens to collapse. He steps out of the shower, feeling marginally cooler and infinitely heavier than ten minutes ago.

He's overthinking things. Again. A good distraction is in order, now.

This sentimental fling feels wrong, like a pair of shoes a size too small. Still. Damon reels back as something inside yields and comprehension slams into him at the speed of sound. He could never kill Elena. He'd kill—slowly, deliberately—anyone who so much as threatened to harm her, and it has nothing to do with his brother or even with Damon's own plans.

It has everything to do with his stupid, stupid heart.

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