Chapter 9: Break Me
DAMON
I empty my flask and shove it back into my pocket, stepping over Jeremy to get to the overhead bins.
"You can't get in there while the plane's taking off," Jeremy points out.
I push my butt tauntingly at his face as I slide past, and he punches me in the leg. "Jerk."
Either he's been working out or that hunter's mark comes with something other than a death curse, because it actually hurts a little when he hits me. I pull a bottle out of my carry-on bag and slam the overhead bin.
"Well, you're not supposed to bring your own booze, either," Matt points out equitably. "You in a sharing mood, Salvatore?"
"Hardly. If you would have taken a different goddamn plane like I wanted you to, I'd have sent you with a case of the best to speed you on your way. But since you are inexplicably bonding with me, I need all the liquor I can get."
"There is no way I'm letting you out of my sight before Elena gets a chance to talk to you," Jeremy says firmly. "I owe her."
"For what? Stabbing you in the neck?"
Jeremy looks annoyed and before I have any idea what he's planning, he snaps my neck.
# # #
I wake up snarling curses and look around. Jeremy's got his seat reclined next to me. His eyes are closed but his muscles are taut, so I know he heard me.
"Shut up," he says without opening his eyes.
I'm startled into silence. He's playing it cool. I've been gone so long that Baby Gilbert grew a sense of humor, learned both how to properly break a neck and how to more convincingly act badass.
I start to laugh. "Fuck me."
Jeremy's eyes open. He manages to keep his face smooth and un-interested but his eyes are all giddy pride, like a kid showing his dad a backflip on the trampoline. Goddamn Gilberts.
"Where did you learn that? Stefan may have let you play Paul Bunyan with a hybrid neck, but there is no way he's actually teaching you to fight. Shit, I'm not even sure he knows how to fight." This isn't precisely true, but I'm not in a generous mood.
"Ric's been showing me some things," Jeremy says casually.
I look closely at him. "What else?"
"What?" Jeremy says, glancing away.
"He hasn't been showing you how to lie properly. You've got more tells than your sister. Who else has been training you?"
Jeremy looks nervous. It only takes me a second to run through the equation.
"Connor? Is that hunter asshole haunting you?" I glance around the airplane, as if I could see him. I've been out for a while and nearly everyone is asleep. There's no sign of a ghostly guilt trip, but I wouldn't be able to tell if there was.
I give Jeremy a hard look. "Is he pulling any of that suicidal hallucination shit with you? Is that what this is all about? Does Elena know you can see him?"
Jeremy's shaking his head. "He's cool with me. He really wants me to hate vampires, but he can't make me do anything I don't want to do. And he's teaching me stuff."
"He tried to snap your neck. Don't get too cozy."
"You did snap my neck," Jeremy points out. "Don't worry. I've got this." He lowers his voice. "Besides, I'm learning how to deal with the ghost stuff better. He can't show up unless I want him to."
I slump back in my seat. "Jesus."
I take a swig of scotch and offer the bottle to Donovan. If this is the kind of shit going on in Mystic Falls, we might as well all stay drunk as long as possible.
"I'm keeping an eye on Jeremy, too," Matt offers, taking the bottle. "Making sure he's not acting weird about vampires. I mean, weirder." He shrugs uncomfortably.
I give him a reluctant nod of acknowledgment. That's smart. Again. Dammit, I can't have been gone long enough that the quarterback has grown a brain. What next, Bonnie waiting at the airport with Welcome Home balloons and potted plant?
"So you've got angel hunter and devil hunter now, huh?" I muse. "One for each shoulder."
Jeremy chuckles humorlessly and Matt passes him the bottle. "It beats Vicki and Anna. No offense, Matt."
When the Scotch comes around to me again I guzzle like I'm doing a kegstand.
"I think you'd better catch me up on what I've been missing," I tell them when I come up for air. "I want to know exactly how many heads need to roll before I can get back to working on my tan."
# # #
DAMON
We pull up in front of the boarding house way before I'm ready. It's amazing how fast thirty hours of travelling can go when you don't want to get to your destination. Not to mention if you consume over half a case of scotch on the way.
The last couple hours of driving have been bizarrely fun. Jeremy got drunk on the first plane and then sobered up again. Matt, who I'm starting to warm to, has been getting drunk with me and then sleeping it off again in a near continual cycle since we left Bangkok. He must have been having a hard time lately, too. But then, of course he has. He's no more immune to the Mystic Falls curse than I am.
Ric's been bullshitting with us too, courtesy of Jeremy, which has been weird but funny. It's a real mind-fuck for his empty chair to have a voice.
It's kept me so distracted that when I see the boarding house with Elena's SUV in the driveway, I'm somehow totally unprepared. I don't have a plan. I don't have an idea in my head about how to do this.
My body flashes cold as I realize that I have to go in there and see her and not touch her. Stefan's there, but they haven't gotten back together or somebody would have told me. So they are presumably either fighting like cats and dogs or doing the awkward, lets-try-to-be-friends-right-after-an-angsty-breakup thing. Either way, she's single, she wants me and I shouldn't fucking be here if I'm going to have a chance in hell of not breaking my brother's heart.
The car is stopped. How long has it been stopped?
"Matt, is there anything left in that bottle, man?" I say, and the relaxed slur that had crept into my voice is gone like it never existed. My buzz has fled, taking my bravado with it.
Jeremy slants me a knowing look and gets out of the car before I can punch him for it. Reaching into the backseat, he slings Matt's arm over his shoulder and hauls his semi-conscious friend to his feet.
"Come in whenever," Jeremy tells me. "Ric's gonna hang here with you, he says."
"Ric?" I ask when Jeremy's gone.
I need my buddy now. More than I ever have, and it's a kindness I hardly deserve that he's actually here. The trouble is, my feelings have never translated into words. Corpses and one night stands and truckloads of broken glass, but not sounds organized into sentences. Ric got that about me, so when it had to be done, he did the talking.
Unfortunately, he may be here now, but he can't do the talking anymore.
I sit, frozen from my fingertips to my vocal chords, staring at the front door of the boarding house.
I'm not as good of a person as I need to be to do this. I managed it once because I didn't have to see her before I left. Once. I can't possibly pull that shit off twice.
"Ric." I close my eyes. "Save my ass, buddy. Save my sorry ass."
Nothing happens, which makes me smile through the shitstorm in my head. Because yeah, he's a dead history teacher, not the fucking tooth fairy.
I hear the car door open and my eyes fly open, terrified that they will see long hair the color of bittersweet chocolate and those lethal Gilbert eyes.
Instead, my brother gets into the driver's seat and takes a long, silent look at me.
"You haven't gotten anything I've sent you, have you?"
"Not unless you sent Scary Spice to slap me into next week," I tell him. "Or Larry, Curly and ghostly Moe."
Stefan sighs. "You're a good brother."
Well, that just goes to show he's not a mind reader.
I clamp my mouth shut. If I could spend this whole visit sitting in this car with my mouth and eyes firmly closed, it might work. If I budge, all bets are off and my short stay on the moral high ground will have reached its inevitable end.
"I appreciate what you tried to do, Damon," he says gently. "But you need to stop, now. It isn't helping. Not Elena, and definitely not me."
I turn my head to look at him, though the muscles in my neck are so stiff that it feels like they should creak with the movement.
"I'm okay, Damon," he reassures me. "I love her. I'm always going to love her. I was really pissed at first, but I kind of get that we didn't just break up because of you." He looks out the window, apparently not enjoying this conversation any more than I am. "I'm not going to go off on a Ripper binge if you two get together, okay? I just needed some time."
"You couldn't have texted?" I ask casually because there is something crawling up my throat and when it reaches the top, I think I might kill him.
"You ditched your phone, Damon. I've sent dozens of emails, but something tells me you stopped checking."
My eyes see Jeremy come out the front door of the house with a concerned expression on his face, but the rest of me doesn't register his presence.
It was for nothing. The best thing I've ever tried to do, all those weeks of hell, and she's inside right now. In my house. Where I could have been. With her. For weeks. Doing whatever I wanted.
All the love and loyalty that's been holding me together blows out in an instant, leaving betrayal and frustration and a desperate hurt that I've been trying to release on child pimps for months as I tear them apart like voodoo dolls of myself. Every emotion I can name and about a dozen that I can't are running rampant and the only scraps of me left inside this body are hurting like I lit them on fire.
I don't even touch the door handle. I rip the whole door straight off the rental car when I exit. Stefan's already coming around the hood, his hands held up as if he could stop me.
"Damon, calm down-"
I pick up the door and swing it like a baseball bat, catching him broadside. Stefan goes flying and I throw the door through the windshield and look for something else to break, veins crackling like enraged lightning across my face.
Jeremy grabs me from behind in a surprisingly strong bear hug. I throw my head backwards to break his nose but the cagey little fucker has his head tucked low behind my shoulder.
People are pouring out the front door like this is a kegger and the cops just showed up.
I crouch and use the considerable power in my legs to throw both of us into a front flip. Maybe it would be more impressive if I landed it back on our feet, but that's not what I'm going for. Instead, Jeremy crashes onto his back with me on top of him and I hear one of his bones crack as his arms lose their grip on me.
I leap back onto my feet and look for a victim.
Arms wrap around me from behind again. Thin arms that smell like hints of vanilla from a baking cake and fresh Georgia peaches.
"Break me," Elena begs. "If you're going to break anything, break me."
I bellow once in rage, like she skewered me on a glowing fire poker. Then her touch starts to bleed the tension out of me and I still in her arms, caught as if I've been compelled.
There's a long moment while my brain turns over the simple, enormous thought that I'm here. With her. And I can stay.
I can stay.
My fangs blunt and my face smoothes. I take her hand off my chest and press it to my lips, inhaling her scent in the longest breath of my life.
When I can't take in any more, I step out of her embrace but keep hold of her hand. My eyes open and focus on Jeremy who's up on one knee, coughing painfully but looking like he's absolutely going to jump me if I lay a finger on his sister. Spunky little kid.
I give him a half-smile. "I hope you got the insurance."
