Chapter 10: The Feast

ELENA

I wake and there's an empty pang in my chest even before I make it all the way to full awareness. I reach for his side of the bed but I already know it will be empty because I'm cold. He bought me an electric blanket for the infrequent nights when he's gone, but he was supposed to be back tonight so I didn't bother to turn it on.

It's not like I need it. I'm always the perfect temperature but sometimes that's more unnerving than comforting, especially when I'm trying to sleep. When Damon's here, our faint body heat combined is enough to make the bed feel as warm as it used to be when I was still human.

I sit up, chewing my lip, and check my phone.

Nothing new.

Damon, Kyle and Jeremy went to Asheville yesterday morning to look into some "animal attacks," and Damon texted hours ago to say they were all safe and headed home, but not to wait up.

I'll just peek downstairs and see if he's having a drink to wind down before he comes to bed. Or maybe showering in one of the guest bathrooms. It's weird now that the bedroom wings are soundproofed because I can't hear anyone coming or going downstairs.

I swing my feet to the floor and slip on my robe. It's getting a little threadbare and there's a coffee stain near the hem, but perversely the older it looks the more Damon seems to like it. He bought it for me when I was forced to move into the boarding house right after my transition. I'm convinced that the only reason he chose something so inelegantly, fuzzily pink was because he wanted me to relax here, to feel like it was really my home. So even though it's long overdue, I won't replace it as long as it makes Damon smile.

Honestly, I'd wear acid green, leopard-fur-trimmed lederhosen if it made Damon happy, so I suppose I should be happy it's just an old pink robe he likes best.

I pad silently down the stairs, skipping the second and seventh step because they creak and sneaking up on Damon without him catching me is my white whale. I've only managed it four times in the year since I became a vampire. I'm not sure what was better: getting to rib him about it afterward, or seeing the light of pride in his eyes when he realized what I'd done.

When the whisper of voices finally reaches my ears, I hug myself, my skin singing with relief. I know it's silly to freak out every time they go out hunting, but after everything that's happened to us I can't seem to help myself.

I pause in the hallway, listening. The only illumination is the flickering firelight from the hearth, and I struggle for a second before I decipher the dark lumps as men, relaxing on each of the two couches in front of the fire.

"Hey easy over there, Lumberjack. Just sip it," Damon says and I smile, pressing my knuckles against my lips.

I have to shake my head at the old nickname. Only Damon could make something as traumatic as ax murdering a hybrid sound commonplace and maybe a little bit funny.

Jeremy snorts. "Like you do? I think your 'sips' are like three shots apiece."

"I'm up against vampire metabolism here. You may be hunter immortal now, but you've still got the human plumbing to worry about."

Jeremy makes a noncommittal sound.

"Drinking is just like being a new vampire," Damon tells him. "You've gotta go slow, and pay attention. There's this moment when you feel great, and all you can think about is how you want to feel even better." I can hear the faint movement of liquid as he takes a drink. "But it's a trick. Because if you keep going you'll just feel worse."

"Cause you barf."

"Mmm-hmm." Damon chuckles. "I remember this dance, when I was about sixteen. I was wearing a brand-new waistcoat and I'd gone in for four fittings, because I wanted it to make my shoulders look bigger."

Jeremy laughs. "You fucking kidding me, man? Tell me you didn't wear shoulder pads."

"Everything but. I was all about the ladies back then."

"Yeah. Back then," Jeremy deadpans and Damon wings a throw pillow at him that Jeremy catches one-handed.

I retreat without breathing, pausing when I get halfway up the stairs. I don't want to disturb the moment because Jeremy so rarely gets Damon all to himself, but I haven't quite drunk my fill of their deep, familiar voices yet.

"Anyway, I managed to snag a dance with Dorothy Whittaker, who was seventeen. She had these huge, fucking beautiful knockers." Damon sighs happily.

I clap a hand over my mouth and try to swallow my giggles.

"And she'd always stuff them into too small of a corset because small waists were more fashionable than big racks. So she'd pass out about twice as often as the other girls. Anyway, this was right around the time my dad started letting me drink at balls and I was hammered. I missed like three steps of the Lancer's Quadrille, which was a giant fucking deal and I knew Dorothy was never going to dance with me again."

"Thank God we don't have to do that shit nowdays. Learning dance steps? Seriously? The grope and sway is about as much as I want to have to do."

I frown and nearly give myself away by yelling at him, because what the heck? My little brother thinks of slow dancing as the grope and sway? And I let Bonnie date him?

"Tell me about it. Mystic Falls has always had way too many dances. It's probably the supernatural vortex just finding a whole new way to fuck us all over." I hear Damon's footsteps crossing the living room and a single splash of liquid as he refills his drink but not Jeremy's. I nod approvingly into the darkness.

"Anyway, I was about to boot it all over Dorothy's gorgeous tits and my new waistcoat, but I was trying to hold out because I was absolutely certain that if I could wait long enough, she'd swoon and I'd get to catch her."

Jeremy bursts out laughing. "So did you barf first, or did she faint first?"

"Oh, there's no way I'm telling you the end to that story. Not unless you pay up with some blackmail material of your own. Stefan's the only one still alive who knows that story and we've got way too much dirt on each other to dare to spill any of it."

"Okay, let me think."

They relax in companionable silence for a minute and I sit down on the stairs, hugging my knees to my chest. I definitely don't want to miss this.

"Alright, I've got one," Jeremy says. "So, Jenna was coming to visit and it had been almost a year since we'd seen her, 'cause she was real busy. Her and my mom were close and my mom was really excited so she made this like, feast. To celebrate."

I can hear the smile in his voice and it warms something in the pit of my stomach to hear him sound happy when he's talking about the past.

"It wasn't Thanksgiving or anything, but she went all out," Jeremy continues. "A ham, stuffing, yams, pies, mashed potatoes, a whole tray of weird cheese. She'd been cooking all day, and then she put everything in the fridge to keep for later, because Jenna was flying in and they had to drive all the way to Charlottesville to pick her up."

"Your blackmail story is like Martha Stewart wholesome, Gilbert. I need some actual dirt or about three more bottles of booze if I'm going to spill my teenage antics to you."

"Just wait, man. So anyway, I bought a dime bag and I was just waiting for my parents to leave for the airport so I could smoke in the backyard. But Mom wasn't done cooking and they took for-damn-ever and by the time they finally left, I was all sick of waiting so I smoked two joints instead of one."

"Wait, how old were you?" Damon interrupts.

"Just barely fifteen."

Damon snorts. "Oh you were so fucked. I bet you were a total one-hit wonder, too."

"Yeah," Jeremy admits. "I got the munchies like you wouldn't believe. I ate everything in my room, and then I remembered. The feast."

Damon chuckles, a deep rumble that runs gooseflesh down my arms. God, I love the sound of his voice.

"I told myself I'd just have a little taste of a couple things and they wouldn't even notice when they got back, because there was so much. But oh man, Damon. It was so good. Like so fucking good. And I just wanted a couple more bites and a couple more, and pretty soon I had everything out, laid all around me on the floor so I could stuff it back into the fridge real quick if they got back early."

"Highly dignified, Baby Gilbert."

Jeremy laughs. "I tried to sort of lift up the top crust of the pie so I could taste the filling but the pie would still look okay. Except that I ended up eating out most of the filling so I had this deflated pie in front of me. Anyway, about that time I just gave up and microwaved some of the stuff. I mean, it was really good cold and all I could think about was how much better it would be if I heated it up. So I did."

I'm biting my knuckles to keep from laughing by now, because I remember the end to this story and looking back on it, it's painfully funny.

"My mom used to make the best mashed potatoes. Buttery with a hint of cream, and she'd get out the cake mixer and whip them until they were perfectly smooth and fluffy, you know. They felt just, like, perfect on my tongue. And then I thought, if they feel this good on my tongue, how would they feel…on my face?"

Damon chokes on his drink. "No."

"Oh yeah."

"No you fucking didn't," Damon protests. "You're making this shit up."

"Nope. And Damon? They felt fucking amazing."

Damon cracks up laughing, not even trying to be quiet and I grin into the darkness. I don't know if I've ever heard him laugh that hard. Ever.

"They were warm and soft, like a hot bath but better. It's a good thing Elena walked in, or I might have gotten the idea to strip down and go the whole nine yards, you know? Mom made a lot of potatoes."

"Elena caught you? Wish I had a recording of that lecture."

"Nah. That was before she got all mom-ish. She used to be cool. We snuck some vodka together one time, in her closet like that would keep our parents from catching us if they walked in. Anyway, we played Monopoly with all these made-up rules just drunk as hell until about four in the morning and then went to school hungover–" Jeremy laughs. "It was awful. And she beat me at the Franken-opoly too."

I frown. He makes it sound like I'm like sixty or something. I'm fun, dangit.

"Anyway she laughed her ass off at me, sitting on the floor in the middle of this destroyed feast, mashed potatoes all the way to my eyebrows, man. But then she was like, we've got to clean this up before mom and dad get home."

"Tell me there's a picture. Just one picture before you washed your face."

"No, sorry. Neither one of us thought of it at the time. Besides, I would have burned it a long time ago. Anyway, the problem was that I had eaten this totally incredible amount of food and there was barely anything left but part of a ham and the gutted pie."

"Busted…" Damon singsongs.

"I would have been, yeah, because I was stoned as shit and couldn't think of anything to do except run away. Literally, up the street. Elena talked me out of it, told me she'd think of something."

"Did she lie for you?"

"Nah. Dad always caught her when she lied. He could call it from three blocks away. And I couldn't do it because I had to fake sick and hide upstairs because my eyes were all bloodshot."

"So what did you do?"

"Stole the neighbor's dog."

"Nice," Damon says, as if this is the obvious solution.

"Oh yeah. Elena made me steal him and then we let him loose in the kitchen. When my parents got home we said he ran inside when we went out to get the mail and that the refrigerator door hadn't closed all the way because the fridge was stuffed and he pulled out all the food. We let him take his time on the leftovers so they were all gnawed and muddy and stuff."

Damon's laughing again, which makes it hard to hear Jeremy. I lean forward, not willing to miss a word.

"We ended up going to Sizzler and Jenna took all these pictures of the mess and put them on Facebook with captions about how mom's cooking was so bad we had to give it to the dog. She was a lot of fun before my parents died, too."

"She wasn't half bad when I met her," Damon says. "Except that she hated me. Said she'd dated 'many of me.'" He snorts. "As if there's anything like me running around loose in rural Virginia."

"Oh yeah, Casanova?" Jeremy challenges. "So what kind of smooth moves did you pull out for that girl at the dance?"

"Stroke of fucking brilliance, actually. The last time I stumbled, I looked up at Dorothy and I told her…" He raises his voice into a mocking southern accent, "'I'm so sorry, Miss Whittaker. Your beauty makes it nigh impossible to pay proper attention to my dancing.'"

"Good save," Jeremy says.

"Shit yeah it was. It was true enough, too, even without the alcohol. I was so tongue-tied that that was the first thing I'd managed to say to her since asking her to dance. Afterwards, she agreed to a walk on the terrace and I was leaning in to kiss her and lost it."

"No way! You yarfed on her boobs?" Jeremy demands. "That is so fucking nasty, man."

"No, worse. I swooned," Damon snorts. "She tried to catch me, we went down and I woke up to her mom smacking the crap out of me with her fan because she thought I was getting fresh and didn't realize I was unconscious at first." He whistles through his teeth. "Got a granddaddy of a hiding for that one when I got home, too."

Jeremy snickers. "I love the mental picture of passed-out-Damon taking a whupping from some old lady with a fan."

I hear a creak of the leather couch cushions. "I'm going to head for bed before I give you any more leverage on me. I'll drop you back home in the morning," Damon says, his voice distorted like he's yawning. "Your room should be good to go from last time."

There's some rustling, then I can hear him poking at the fire, probably spreading out the coals so it is safe to leave it for the night. "You know your sister's still after me to get you to move in."

"Yeah, you guys so want me over here cramping your style," Jeremy says with a hint of discomfort in his tone.

"Don't be an ass," Damon replies and there's a soft sound. Maybe they threw another pillow. "Besides," he says, and I can just hear his cocky smirk. "There's not much that can cramp this style."

Jeremy snorts.

There's a thunk as someone sets down a glass. "Room's here. Up to you."

"Yeah," Jeremy chuckles uncomfortably. "I'm good, man. Besides, Matt was staying all by himself in that rental after Vicki died. I don't want to bail on him and the bills are cheaper for him staying at my place."

"Sure. Just sayin'." There's a pause. "Kicked some serious ass today. You ought to get some sleep."

"I'm going to stay up for a bit," Jeremy says. "See you in the morning."

"Going to stay up and help yourself to all my good booze is more like it. A slow learner, is what you are."

"Yeah, well at least I didn't swoon on my date, Scarlett." There's a smack and the scrape of furniture sliding over the hardwood, then some laughter and grunts as they tussle.

I rise and creep back to our room, slipping out of my robe and crawling under the blankets with a smile still warming my face. I leave the door open and listen contentedly to the guest shower kick on down the hallway. When Damon finally scoots in under the covers with me, I don't bother pretending to be asleep.

I roll over and slide my hands down his body, feeling every familiar curve of muscle, hard and intact.

"I'm fine, sweetheart." He drops a kiss on my forehead. "Go back to sleep."

"How many were there?" Just because he's home safe doesn't mean that the vampires they went after went down easy.

"A lot," he admits. "But they didn't give us much trouble."

"Did Jeremy–" I ask, hesitating.

He strokes my hair, smoothing it over the bare skin of my back. "Nah. We've got a good system now. We knock them all down like bowling pins and when we're done, I perforate 'em."

"So Jeremy and Kyle's marks don't grow and make them want to kill more," I realize. "And so the kills aren't on Jeremy's conscience." I nuzzle my head further in under his chin and squeeze my arms around him. "Damon, you can't take the weight for everyone."

He shrugs. "A bunch of kid-killing vampires? I probably shouldn't tell you this, but it really doesn't bother me, Elena. I mean, maybe it should, but fuck that. They needed somebody to hit their off switches and I had two free hands. That's a win-win in my mind."

I turn my head enough to let me kiss his throat. "I just want you to be okay."

"Not a scratch on me," he promises, which of course means nothing because he would have healed already. "Or on Jeremy. Kid's getting fast. Kyle's not bad, either, for a hunter with a day job. Did I ever tell you about the time I had my hand up in his chest to rip his heart out and he managed to fight me off? Only time I've ever seen that move, believe me."

"I don't just mean physically." I ignore his attempts to sidetrack me, propping myself up on my elbow and searching his face.

"Maybe this time it's okay, but it isn't always. You say that you don't mind the dirty work but you don't have to do it alone anymore. If something has to be done, there's me and Stefan and Kyle and Caroline and Matt now." I trace his cheekbone. "I know about the nightmares, Damon."

He rolls onto his back, taking me with him so I'm perched on top of his chest. "The only thing I have nightmares about is losing you," he says quietly and then hesitates.

"And them," I finish for him, because I know he won't.

I don't know why he's fine admitting how he feels about me but he thinks it's some big secret that he loves our whole weird family of vampires and hunters. Even Matt's perched on the stool with him and Kyle at the Grill more often than not, though Damon has never and will never say the word friend aloud in conjunction with my ex-boyfriend.

"Yeah, it'd be a real hardship to have you to myself for once." He affects a pout and I nip at his full lower lip, listening to his breathing catch.

"I'm just saying we're here if you need us." I run my hand through his night-dark hair.

"Oh, I need you." He trails a hand up the back of my thigh. "Mostly I need you to start wearing pajamas if you want to get any sleep ever again."

"I sleep really well without pajamas." I shift closer. "After a while."

He traces the line between my thigh and my backside with gentle fingers and I squirm under his patient hands, hoping for more.

"Naughty girl," he rumbles. "Staying up late. Eavesdropping. What am I going to do with you?" He cups my bottom and squeezes threateningly.

So much for being quiet.

I look up at him with wide, innocent eyes. "I can be good," I promise.

"Oh yeah?" he challenges, his river-colored eyes gleaming in the low light.

"Mmm-hmm." I grin at him and pull the covers up over our heads. "I'll show you."