Gravity

Disclaimer: I don't own anything or anyone from The Vampire Diaries.

Another update without having to wait for months? Unlike me, I know! I hope you like this one...


September 7th 2013

Saturday 2:00pm

Long Beach, California

When your girlfriend says everything is 'fine' – you know immediately that it means everything is not fine.

It's not fine at all.

"You okay?" I look at Elena who is sat on a rented sun lounger beside me on the beach, her sunglasses covering her eyes as she flicks through the latest copy of one her chick magazines.

"Fine." Elena answers and just like every other time she answers, I accept it and don't say another word.

Everything is the same, but everything feels different.

I can't explain it, but ever since our argument the other week over the heroin, things have been different. To be honest, I was surprised that Elena forgave me quickly. I was expecting an explosion, for her to scream at me, hell, even hit me but it never came. I mean sure, she was pissed, of course she was, she was angry and upset but nowhere near to the scale that I thought she would be at.

I was relieved.

Now I wish things didn't go so smoothly because she's been different ever since.

I mean, don't get me wrong, nothing really has changed. Our love is just as strong, there's no arguing with that. The sex is still hot and passionate and our arguments are just as fanatical and ridiculous.

Nothing has changed, but things are different.

"God Enzo, I'm not your damsel in distress ok? Just back off!" I hear Megan and Enzo before I see them.

Elena sighs loudly beside me and puts her magazine down just as Enzo and Megan approach us. "Why do you have to be such a bitch?"

"Why do you have to be such a chauvinist pig?" Megan snipes back, lifting up Elena's legs and perching on the end of her lounger, my girls legs falling back to rest on Megan's thighs.

Enzo huffs in frustration and looks at me. "She's insane!"

"Oh I'm insane?!" Megan interrupts before I get the chance to say anything. I glance at Elena with an amused smirk and she sends me one back with a raised eyebrow as they continue to bicker in front of us. "How exactly am I insane?"

Something which has been occurring more and more lately.

Enzo surprisingly doesn't have an answer and instead turns the topic of conversation back to what I'm assuming started the original argument.

"All I said was the truth. You have nothing here so why should we stay?" Enzo tries to speak calmly but I can hear the strain in his voice. "You have a life back home."

"A life?" Megan scoffs. "I hardly call what I left behind in that backwards little town we escaped from a life. There's a reason that I left Enzo, you can't make me go back there." She sneers stubbornly.

"But it's our home!"

"No it's your home!"

"You can't stay here forever!"

"Watch me."

Enzo groans loudly in frustration and turns to face me. "Help a brother out."

I hold my hands up. "Not a chance buddy." I smirk and he mutters something under his breath.

Honestly, I'll be glad to get rid of Megan. She's been nothing but a rain cloud of doom on Enzo, who continues to worship the ground she walks on despite how much she treats him like crap.

Also, I'm still pissed at her for dropping me in it with Elena.

"Well, I'm going to head back to the motel. We need to pack." Elena motions at me to get up and I quickly nod my head in agreement.

Today is the day we finally get to leave Long Beach. Elena was right, as much as I hate to see him still struggling despite finding his girl; Enzo is not our problem anymore.

I did my part but now it's time to move on. We've been in this town for far too long; it's time to get the hell out of here.

"You guys decided where you're heading yet?" Megan asks curiously and Elena shrugs.

"I think we're going to head back up north," Elena looks at me for confirmation and I nod my head in agreement. "Maybe go to Portland, eventually Seattle once the weather starts to change."

Megan stares at her for a moment before looking at Enzo. "You see!" she motions between us. "Why can't we be like that? That's all I want, freedom!"

It's funny, that she wants to live like us because she thinks we have freedom when the only reason we are living this way is because we don't.

Elena must also notice the irony because she raises her eyebrow at me looking slightly amused and I shake my head silently and reach over to grab her hand, pulling her against me.

"Is that too much to ask?" Megan whines.

"No." Enzo frowns for a moment. "It's not." I watch as his lips start to grow into a smile as he turns to look at me and I immediately have a bad feeling about this. "What do you say brother, you got room for two more?"

Oh boy.


I watch as my Dad shakes hands with his lawyer before escorting him out of the house. I wait patiently for him to come back and I don't like the tense look on his face when he does.

"Was that about Damon?" I ask nervously, a pit in my stomach whenever I see someone official around here which has become a regular occurrence these days.

"Not every meeting I have with my attorney is to do with your brother." My Dad replies coolly and I frown.

"What does that mean?"

Giuseppe sighs loudly as he heads towards his drinks cabinet and pulls out a bottle of whiskey, a tumbler following as he pours a load in before chugging it down in one and refilling it again.

"It doesn't mean anything, son." He waves me off and sighs. "But to answer your question, no, that wasn't about Damon, at least not directly. It was more to do with the business."

"Is everything okay?"

He shakes his head. "Turns out most investors aren't great fans of CEO's who have murderer sons."

"Damon didn't kill anyone." I immediately go on the defensive.

"I know that. You know that, but the press don't know that. The board members don't know that. My investors apparently also don't know that." He downs the rest of his whiskey and pours another glass. Part of me wants to tell him to go slow but I know better than to comment on his drinking. That's my Mom's job.

"Your brother has been gone for nearly five months now. Do you want to know what's worse to stockholders than murderers?" He asks me but answers before I can respond. "Murderers who are also fugitives. The fact that he also made the highly respected Detective Gilbert's sweet innocent daughter an outlaw with him just makes the situation ten times worse."

I shake my head in annoyance. "They know nothing."

"They know how to write a cheque." He grunts in frustration and I frown confused.

It's unusual to see my Dad like this, he is usually so confident, cocky even. It takes a lot to knock him down.

I've never seen him look so defeated before.

"Well," he sighs again loudly. "Not to worry," he makes a move back towards his home office. "Things will work themselves out, Stefan. They always do."

"Yeah," I agree quietly but deep down inside I know this time it's not that simple and I don't think it's going to get any better.


Fifteen hours.

Fifteen hours I have had to spend stuck in a four wheeled metal tin can which is somehow called a car.

Fifteen hours with a girlfriend who is fine.

Fifteen hours with a couple whose relationship I have come to find out is actually quite toxic.

"Finally." I groan as I step out of the car. I glance at Elena who removes her sunglasses to view our surroundings. She looks as fed up as I feel.

"Think we can quickly go tip off the receptionist to make sure our room as at the opposite side of the motel to theirs?" she motions back to the car which Enzo and Megan are still inside of, currently arguing over something completely mundane and unimportant.

I smirk and open my arm out for her to join me, smiling when she snuggles into my chest, her arms wrapped around my waist.

"I think even if we dropped them off here and went and found another motel across town it still wouldn't be far enough." I tease. Elena chuckles against my chest before slowly lifting her head up to look at me, her eyes squinting from the bright sun which is just about to set. "You look beautiful." I can't help but comment.

Elena rolls her eyes. "Beautiful? I look like a girl who has been stuck in a hot stuffy car for fifteen hours straight and hasn't showered for twenty."

"And yet you're still sexy as hell." I smirk and she tuts and smacks my shoulder.

"Shut up!" she giggles and I smile at the blush creeping onto her cheeks. I look over her shoulder to see Enzo finally getting out of the car, looking less than impressed.

"We getting these rooms or what?" he grunts in annoyance before heading towards the reception.

I sigh and look at Elena who shrugs before letting her go and following him towards the motel, Elena turning back around towards the car to see Megan.


"Damon come on!"

"I said no, Enzo." I snap in annoyance, ignoring my friend as we walk back to the motel from the grocery store. The girls decided it was the perfect evening for a barbecue, so we rented a grill from the motel reception and walked to the nearest store to gather some supplies.

"Don't tell me you don't need the money."

"We more than enough to tide us over for the next weeks and after that we'll manage." I feel fed up from having the same argument. "I told you, I'll get rid of what I have left but after that I'm done with dealing."

Enzo shakes his head in annoyance. "You're making a mistake."

"No," I stop and turn to face him angrily. "The only mistake that I made was listening to you in the first place! I fucked up and now I have a girlfriend who probably won't completely trust me ever again."

"Is that what this is about? Elena? Damon, you got off easy! Elena is fine."

Fine.

I grit my teeth to stop myself from saying anything I will regret later. "Look Enzo, I'm not dealing anymore and that is the end of it!" I tell him with conviction as I start walking ahead back to the motel.

When I get back I find the girls already drinking as they lay on a picnic blanket on the grass outside of the motel room. I frown when I see the chilled bottles of beer because that was one of the reasons why we needed to go to the store.

"Where did you get those from?" I make my presence known as I approach them.

"Glen on the front desk," Megan replies casually.

I raise my eyebrow. "He just gave them to you, did he?" I send Elena a questioning glance but she just shrugs silently.

Megan flicks some of her hair behind her shoulder. "People are nice in Portland."

I press my eyebrows together. "Ahuh." I muse as Elena reaches up and grabs my hand, pulling me down to sit beside her just as Enzo catches up.

"Oh we got beer! Cheers!" he doesn't even question where it came from, instead he lifts up the cap and chugs half of it down. Megan reaches over and snatches it from his hands. "Hey!" he whines. "You can drink after." She motions to the portable grill to the side. "Now go cook us something, I'm hungry!"

"Yes princess." Enzo replies sarcastically but jumps to his feet anyway, grabbing the grocery bag and heading towards the grill.

"I need to use the bathroom." Elena mumbles quietly, pressing a quick kiss to my lips before standing up and heading inside our motel room. I watch her go before looking back over at Enzo who is currently concentrating on lighting up the grill.

"So," Megan shuffles closer towards me and I raise my eyebrow suspiciously. "Elena told me you are no longer dealing."

"Yep." I reply quickly, not really in the mood to have this conversation. Especially with her.

"What are you going to do with the rest of your stash?" she asks curiously.

I shrug and lean forward to pick up a beer while they are still cold. I open up the cap and take a sip before I reply. "Sell what I have left and be done with it."

"Does Elena know you still want to sell your dirty leftovers?"

"Yes she does." I look at her in annoyance and she holds up her hands in defense.

"Just checking…you don't exactly have a good track record of telling the truth." I let out a dry laugh and again hold my tongue. "So who exactly are you going to sell too? We don't know anybody here."

"We didn't know anyone in Long Beach either, but somehow your boyfriend found a way."

Megan smirks slightly and shakes her head. "Are you always this grumpy?"

"Only to people I don't like." I send her a sarcastic smile.

"Ouch." She presses her hand against her heart. "That hurt."

"Good."

Megan chuckles. "How does Elena put up with you, huh?"

I stay silent and take a big chug from my beer.

"What would you say if I told you I had a solution to your problem?" she shuffles even closer to me and I look at her suspiciously. "The quicker you get rid of the heroin, the quicker things with Elena will get back to normal, right?"

So unlike Enzo, Megan has obviously picked up on the strange tension between me and my girl. Well, it's either that or Elena has been telling her something I don't know. I hope it's the former.

"You are the reason things aren't normal with Elena right now, so why the hell would I trust you?"

"Actually Damon, you are the reason things aren't great between you and your girlfriend right now, not me." She tells me pointedly and I frown because I know she's right. "What is it with you boys, huh? You never take responsibility for your own actions. There's always something or someone else to blame. It's not my fault you chose not to be honest with her."

"Oh but you sure enjoyed telling her the truth and dropping me in it, huh?"

She shrugs. "Maybe. You haven't exactly been the nicest person to me since we met."

I shake my head in annoyance. "Are we done with this conversation?" I ask in aggravation.

She pouts. "But I was just getting to the good part."

"The good part of what?" I look up to see Elena approaching us, a curious look on her face as she catches the end of our conversation. I glance briefly over at Enzo who is just out of earshot to hear anything, his concentration fully on trying to get the old rusty grill to work to pay any attention to us.

Megan smirks and casually takes a sip of her beer as she looks up at my girlfriend with a perfectly innocent look on her face.

"The part where I ask your boyfriend to sell the rest of his heroin to me."


"I can't believe you said yes!" Elena practically screams at me the moment I close the grotty motel door behind me.

I take a moment to compose myself because apparently I keep on making one bad decision after the other.

"Megan is her own person, she wanted it, I wanted rid of it. Win, win, job done!"

"Job done?" she questions me in disbelief. "She's a recovering drug addict!"

"Recovering?!" my voice rises unintentionally. "No Elena, she's not a recovering anything and you know that! She's an addict!"

"And you are feeding that, just like you did with every tom dick and harry you sold too in Long Beach, and just like you did with Vicky Donovan back home!" she steps towards me, her nostrils flaring angrily. "When will you ever learn, Damon!" she slams her fists against my chest much to my shock. "When will you ever realize that your actions have consequences?! What else needs to happen for you to just stop!" she's crying now, tears streaming down her face and I'm frozen still in shock.

I feel like the biggest asshole on the planet.

"How far are you going to go before one day one of your reckless decisions really does do some permanent damage!" she swings away from me as I try to grab her wrists. "God Damon, we are on the run! You are wanted for murder because you made a bad decision! You should never have gone there that night! If you had just stayed away, none of this would be happening! We wouldn't be in this mess!"

"Don't you think I know that?" I ask her desperately. "God Elena, I know that, okay! I think about that every single day! I think about how different our lives would be! But I can't change what happened! I went there that night because I wanted to protect you! I wanted to protect us!"

She shakes her head. "You went there that night because you only know how to do the wrong thing! If you wanted to protect me, you could have gone to the police!"

I scoff and let out a dry laugh. "You mean your Dad? He hates me! He would never have helped me!"

She shakes her head furiously. "Don't turn this into being about our feuding families! If you went to my Dad and told him what was going on the moment Vaughn and Connor attacked you outside of The Grill that night then none of this would be even happening right now!"

"Do you really believe that?" I look at her incredulity. "Do you really believe that he would have helped me? Your Dad would rather see me dead than do anything to help a Salvatore!"

"I know that he hates you, trust me, I know." She emphasizes. "But that wouldn't have stopped him from doing his job."

I shake my head in frustration. "That doesn't even matter; you don't go to the cops about people like Vaughn! You don't want to know what would have happened to me if I had, Elena."

She sniffles, letting out a shaky breath as we both pause in our argument, another wave of guilt overtakes me as I let go of my anger for a moment to see how broken she looks in front of me.

I've done this to her.

This is all on me.

She looks up at me, her eyes filled with unshed tears that are waiting to fall like the rest of them, her cheeks stained with her mascara as her shoulders sink, her whole body deflating in defeat.

"But I do know what happens when you don't go to the cops about people like Vaughn and I don't like that either."

She turns around and walks into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.


"What were you and Elena arguing about? It sounded pretty intense."

"Shut up." I grunt in frustration as I barge past as nosy Enzo and pick up a bottle of beer, after downing it in one I throw the bottle watching as it smashes on the concrete ground before opening another and doing the same again.

"Whoa man, slow down." Enzo comes up behind me.

"Don't we have anything stronger?" I turn around to face him in annoyance. "I need something stronger."

"I think you need to calm down."

"Don't fucking tell me to calm down!" I snap furiously just as Megan comes up behind him. "And you," I point at her viciously. "You stay the fuck away from me!"

"Hey! Don't you talk to her like that!" Enzo takes a step closer, his whole body tensing.

"This is all your fault!" I snarl at her over Enzo's shoulder. "You really need to learn when to keep that fucking loose mouth of yours shut!"

"Hey!"

"Or maybe you need to learn to tell your girlfriend the truth for once! Are we really going to repeat this argument! Whatever is going on between you and Elena, is between you and Elena! Have you ever thought that maybe this isn't really even about what you think it is?!" Megan lectures me.

"What the hell does that mean?!"

"It means that maybe she's missing her family, maybe she's missing her friends! I bet you didn't even know that she's missed her Mom's, Dad's and Caroline's birthday!"

I blink shocked.

"No? You didn't huh? Didn't know that I knew about her parents and friends either did you? Didn't know that I know that her brother is called Jeremy and that she misses Bonnie and Caroline every single day. She misses teasing her Aunt Jenna about boys and hangovers, she even misses cheerleading. Elena told me everything, Damon. She misses her old life, the life that you took from her!"

I clench my jaw. "I didn't force Elena to leave! She chose to come with me!"

"I know." She nods. "Because for some insane reason she loves you, she is completely madly in love with you, so in love with you that she continues to put up with your shit! She is so blind to see who you really are!"

"Oh and what's that?!" I snarl at her, trying to ignore the huge pang of pain that is hitting me from her words because deep down I know that every single one of them is true.

"That you're a fuck up, Damon." She holds out her arms and motions to the area around us, the grotty motel with the flickering street lamp. The nameless area of town that we have found ourselves in. "You will always be a fuck up, just like me, just like Enzo." She motions to her boyfriend who surprisingly keeps his mouth shut. "This is all we will ever be for the rest of our lives. But that girl in there? That girl in there who has a heart of gold, who loves so blindly and compassionately...she's not like us and you know it. She doesn't belong in this world. She deserves better and I think you know that. I think you know that she shouldn't be here and that is why you keep doing these things to push her away. I mean sure, you can buy her a nice ring, you can promise her forever with a lifetime filled with unconditional love and happiness but somewhere deep inside of you, you know that it's all bullshit. You know that you don't stand a chance."

She takes a step forward; her eyes have long changed from anger to something different, something more like sadness.

Empathy. Pity. Understanding. Truth.

I feel sick.

"You know what you need to do, Damon."

I gulp, my throat choked and my heart pounding fast because I know that she is right.

She has pulled out my deepest fears, my deepest thoughts and she has shoved them in my face with no escape.

No excuses. No bullshit.

"The summer is over, Damon. It's time to let her go."


Sorry to leave it there folks! I purposely kept Elena's POV out of this chapter…saving it for the next one!

I hope you enjoyed the chapter...it's leading to a big one. Let me know what you thought!

Until next time!