Author's Note:

To readers, if I have any - this is my first Vampire Diaries fanfiction. I read the original book series when I was about 9 years old and I've loved Damon ever since, so I hope I can do him justice - this Damon is based on the Damon in the television show, basically because I love Damon and Elena's chemistry in the show and I think Damon is a lot more human in the show. This fanfiction will be multi-chapter but probably not terribly long, because it's based on a dream I had that I thought would make a very dark and interesting Delena smut fic. It's turned a lot fluffier than I imagined so far, but the angst is coming, no worries. Also, more smut! Thanks for reading if you are.

Most of the time, Damon feels like he is living in a dream. The only way he knows it is real because never in his wildest fantasies would he have been able to imagine this.

It strikes him most in the morning, when he's drinking his scotch by the fire and Elena comes in, wearing one of his shirts, her legs long and tan, her hair mussed and curly. She's given up straightening her hair in the two months that she's become a vampire, and Damon of three years ago would have surely been struck by how much like Katherine she looked. Present Damon can only stare at her, shocked by her natural, graceful beauty, his heart swelling so much with love he thought it might burst.

The very idea that Elena is with him, actually living in his house, sleeping in his arms every night, baffles him sometimes. In fact, the past two months have been something similar to a drug induced blur, but his drug of choice hadn't been cocaine or heroin, but pure Elena.

She had woken up in his arms at the hospital and said six words that had changed his entire life.

"I'm thirsty. Can we go home?"

It was as simple as that. She hadn't mentioned Stefan's name, hadn't asked about Alaric or Klaus, had just looked up at him with big brown eyes and asked if he would take her home.

Damon hadn't even thought about taking her back to her house. He'd taken her to the Salvatore mansion right away, and Elena hadn't spoken on the ride there, hadn't argued, hadn't asked him where the hell he was going or what the hell he was doing. Damon wasn't sure if it was because she had drowned less than twelve hours ago or because she was so weak and thirsty for blood she couldn't complain, but he wasn't going to ask. He was ashamed of his thoughts but he wanted her to need him, wanted to take care of her. The old Elena would say that it was masochistic, but he couldn't bring himself to care. This was still Elena, even if she was changed, because he could tell by her soft smile, the warmth still in her brown eyes, even after death, and he still loved her almost more than he could bear.

He'd given her warmed human blood from the freezer, covered her with a blanket by the fire, and sat with her. She hadn't talked much, but she had smiled at him while drinking her scotch glass full of blood, and those quiet moments with her were some of the best in his long, long life.

She fell asleep there by the fire while he was heating up another mug of blood for her, and he carried her to the guest bedroom, feeling lightheaded, giddy, drunk although he hadn't had a drop of scotch in days.

He'd been lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering if the last few hours had actually happened or if it had been some kind of hallucination, some kind of grief-induced fever dream, and instead of lying a few hundred feet away Elena was lying on a cold metal table in the morgue, when Elena slipped in between the sheets. He hadn't heard her or sensed her until she was lying warm and naked against his arm, and his heartbeat went from normal to galloping in a split second.

"Elena," he said, and she silenced him with her mouth, and it was soft and sweet and completely different from what he imagined. He'd had hundreds, thousands of fantasies where Elena was naked in his bed, but none of them had begun like this, with her mouth so soft, her hands resting so gently on his chest.

His conscience told him to stop her, that she wasn't herself, that she needed to think about things, but everything in him was crying out for her, had been crying out for her for what seemed like forever, and he couldn't stop his hands from sliding down her back to her hips, her skin like fire under his hands.

When her hand slid down to his cock it was exactly like in his fantasies, sure and confident, and when he took in a sharp breath she smiled at him, and her sweet and sexy smile made him stop her hand.

"Elena," he said, almost gasping with the effort it took not to have his hands all over her, "maybe we should-"

Elena put her finger on his lips. "I love you, Damon," she said, and they were simple words, really, but tears pricked at Damon's eyes because he had always thought that happiness like this wasn't possible for monsters like him. In spite of what he'd told Stefan, he'd always thought he was damned, but if this wasn't heaven he didn't think he'd want to be saved. He'd prefer to be damned.

Then she straddled him, took him into her, and she was tight and wet and still so warm, and for the first time in a century Damon was making love instead of fucking, looking into her eyes and smiling, touching her face, kissing her soft mouth, and when she comes she arches her back and moans his name and that part, at least, is exactly how every fantasy had ended, how every time he'd been fucking some vapid blonde and the only way he'd been able to come is to think of Elena moaning his name. Even then he'd thought of owning her, of overcoming her, but it was she that was overcoming him, and when he came inside her he wondered if anything in the rest of eternity would top this moment

Only when she's sleeping again, curled up against him like a cat, can he look down at her face, brush the hair from her face. Only then can he say it. "I love you, Elena," and she murmurs and snuggles closer into him, and instead of thinking that he'll kill her if she ever left he's thinking he hopes she kills him if she goes, because she'll leave nothing behind if she leaves him now. Everything he has ever been, everything he is, is hers.

Two months of making love (and a good bit of fucking, he won't mince words) later, and he is still hers, still helpless to her, because she's everything, and at the end of the day all Damon can be is lovesick.

So when she asks him a favor, when she shyly but wantonly strides in wearing his shirt and nothing else, when the very sight and smell of her makes him hard and she straddles his lap, looking down into his eyes and teasing him by moving her hips over his, he would have rather cut his own throat than say no.

He would regret that decision, maybe for the rest of his life.