Beta: T.J. Wise

ELENA


Dear Diary,

Waking up once again soaked in sweat is about as much fun as window shopping and finding the most amazing outfit you can never afford.

I come awake, I feel like the walking dead… My body still feels terrible, and even though Damon gave me a heavenly bath last night, I need one again and badly.

As I move Damon's eyes snap open from his resting place of my bedside chair, he frows as he accesses my condition.

"Damon, if it's not too much to ask I'd like to shower or something again." I hope my voice didn't sound as pathetic to him as it did to me.

Damon nods, his expression is serious, and his mouth is set in a thin line as he scoops me up and carries me to the bathroom.

"Is this going to become a thing?" I ask as he sets me down on the counter top.

"I have no idea what you are talking about Elena" He answers as he rolls his sleeves up and bends over to turn the tub on. "I always offer to help ladies that are unwell into the tub. I even have my own rubber ducky I bring for the lady to play with. It's my new thing, when feeding and fucking gets boring I pick up the ducky."

I roll my eyes at his half-truth, half-jest statement. In then that I notice that there is a bag in the corner of the room. It's not mine. Hmm, Damon must have brought it over… you'd think, I would have noticed that before.

When he saw me eying the bag Damon offered nonchalantly "Well, that's for after the bath, I brought movies and snacks. Nothing like being sick as an excuse to paint our nails and talk about boys. If you'd like we can have a pillow fight in out underwear later too." I just kept rolling my eyes at him, really mature I know, but a hell of a lot better than admitting to being interested.

His back to me as I get in, and when I glance back he's sitting against a wall looking up. I moan quietly as I sink into the bubbles, Diary, you have NO idea just how good this feels!

Feeling both more relaxed and daring than I have in a long while, I ask him to wash my hair, once again moaning when I feel his hands in my hair Damon is a god when it comes to massages …and probably everything else. Focus Elena, focus…

If being a supposedly evil vampire doesn't work out he could make a killing in giving women massages, that thought makes me move a bit too sharply making the water in the tub spill out, soaking his shirt and pants. Damon raises his eyebrow at me as I just gape at him mortified.

"Damon, I'm SO sorry!" I say, although he looks pretty good wet, and I can't help but think that this should really happen more often.

"If you wanted me to take my clothes off, all you had to do was ask." His ever present smirk, causes me to blush hotly as more images come to mind of exactly what I'd like him to be wearing, or more accurately not wearing.

"Maybe next time I'll ask." I say coyly and I realize how much I miss flirting; I've been way too serious lately.

"Time to rinse" he says with a surprised yet bemused look on his face. I sit up as he turns around. I don't quite have the courage to ask him to help rinse me. This level of boldness is a big part of the old me, and it's not returning too that quickly. However, even if it is coming back slowly, being me again feels good; very, very good.

As Damon puts conditioner in my hair, I ask him about his human life, determined to get to the bottom of my whole good husband/father theory. He begins to talk in his usual way, the sound of it turning me into the inevitable puddle of jelly that he reduces all women to. After all, he is the infamous Damon Salvatore, and he makes his life story seem like one of the old time movies I used to watch on lifetime. Then again, how can you talk about horse drawn carriages and not sound antiquated. He seems to not even mind the water that by now must be cold and is all over his clothes; I think I have an idea….

"If you want to change, I have a pair of boxers and sleep pants that are big on me. Or you could go home and come back." My words wandered off, I really don't want to be alone, but I don't want to sound like a wimp either.

Damon chuckles reading me easily, but in the end, he changed in my bathroom, while I changed in my Bedroom. It feels good to be clean, indescribably good. He disappears for a few minutes as I wonder what he's up to now, my question answered when he comes in with a tray of food and … is that a rose?

Turns out it is a rose, and my heart melts just a little as I see it. Sometimes the things he does are completely opposite to who he pretends to be.

I finish up eating and I convince him to lay back into the bed, still on top of my covers as we watch a movie on the laptop he brought over with him. A few minutes into the movie, I begin to drift off in the way that only sick people and the elderly manage to. I'm startled awake by his voice.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asks his voice low and relaxed.

"No, unless you want to, that is." I don't know why, but lying beside him feels more right than anything I have done with Stefan in weeks.

"I can't leave now, my clothes are still wet. What would the neighbors say!" His mock affronted tone causing me to laugh.

We both know he couldn't care less about the neighbors, and that he could easily stick said clothes in the dryer and they'd he be good to leave in minutes. After all, it's not like he isn't ridiculously fast when he wants to be. Which makes me wonder why he doesn't want to be.

Maybe he does want to stay the night, or he is being the overprotective Damon, and feels he can't leave me. Not that I want him to leave me, Jenna being gone and Jeremy going once again to a friend's place for the weekend, I'd be truly all alone. Somehow, before I knew about vampires being home alone was awesome, now… not so much. Big surprise!

"I'll stay" I hear him say that, and a flood of warmth hits my chest, that's just another thing I love about him; he's so good at being there for me when I want him, and in all fairness sometimes when I don't want him to.

I lift the covers gesturing him to get under with me. By now its 4 am and I'm fading fast, sleep is my friend. He ignores the offered bed space and continues to stay over the covers and I can't figure out why.

"Because I don't think you'll think it's a good idea when you're not sporting a fever." He says like I asked it aloud, he knows me exactly that well.

Two days pass in roughly the same pattern until I'm finally over this lame ass cold.

Unfortunately, Damon left me to sleep alone tonight, as I'm no longer sick or unable to stand. Funny thing is that I really miss him lying next to me, just holding me. I woke up a few times those nights feeling his arms locked around me tightly and him placing a gentle kiss on my forehead or murmuring words of care that I'm not supposed to have heard. But Diary, that's the problem, I did hear what he said or some of it at least.

He said he was grateful for all of the chances I gave him after he screwed up so badly, and how happy it made him that I trusted him enough to let him take care of me, and not to ask for someone else to come over. I know Caroline offered, but really, he was the only one I thought of when he asked me who to call.

Is it bad that I want to count on him for some things?

Don't get me wrong Diary, I'm so far from one of those girls who can't make a decision without asking her boyfriend, lover, spouses, or whatever's opinion first. I never have been that way and I don't imagine myself changing anytime soon; but I loved having him here, loved talking with him uninterrupted by family or friends or the next big crisis. It's nice.

It's funny the things your mind gets stuck on, in the moments between Nyquil and sleep.

So in a way, being sick was wonderful. I was able to justify my weakness of wanting to hold him and being held by him as he took care of me like a true boyfriend should.

It makes me wonder what he would have been like if I had met him as a human? Would he have been a wonderful husband, a great dad? I think so. He's good with Jeremy at least, there are times that I can't get through to my brother and because he's in one of his impossibly moody teenage funks and Damon says the crassest things to him and calls him a dick and for some strange reason it helps, I don't get it, but there you have it. That's something I miss about the old me, my cursing, I used to swear like a sailor and it was fun, but I get the feeling if I did that around Stefan he'd look at me disapprovingly, That's something that I really can't stand about him, he's almost as judgmental as Bonnie, only she's just more upfront about it. I can't remember what I was going to say…oh well enough ranting.

The fact is that he is good to me good for me. Damon brings out the old me, the one that was buried under grief and the constant supernatural drama that my life became. He takes care of me without suffocating or patronizing, without brooding or making me feel like I have to behave or else… Damon lets me be myself, the better version of me… That is the person I want to be.