When two pints of Elena's blood flows through Damon's system, he flops back down on the bed, satiated and feeling very fuzzy and warm, despite all the damage to his body, to his bones. He smiles lazily up at Elena, reaches out with his unbroken arm, gently locking onto her hand.
"Thanks," he murmurs, squeezes her fingers.
"Any time."
Damon closes his eyes, letting the darkness have him for just a moment. He feels Elena's fingers brush over his cheek, his forehead, his jaw, and when he looks at her, her gaze is tender, wide-eyed like a child.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Damon asks with a weak smile, blinking slowly up at her.
"Your cuts…" Elena says, tracing her fingers over his face. "They look a week old."
"Thanks to you." Groaning, Damon manages to sit up just slightly, letting Elena wrap her arm around his back in support. "Human blood…fixes vampires from the inside out. Like medicine, sort of."
"That's some weird-ass medicine," Elena comments, looking from the fresh cut on her palm to the mostly healed ones on Damon.
He nods, then winces at the motion, and Elena pull him gently to her shoulder, his head falling soft in the hallow of her neck. Deep breaths, Damon, he thinks, inhaling the smell of Elena's skin, her blood, that honeysuckle perfume she wears. He nuzzles his nose into her throat, clutches the leg of her jeans with the fingers of one limp hand. Vaguely, he realizes how pathetic this is. He is vulnerable, weak, a little boy looking for comfort, for protection. Him, the vampire, holding on to this small, fragile human girl for dear life.
For once, the weakness doesn't bother him. He lets Elena hold him, lets her stroke his hair, lets himself relax further against her.
"We should get you into a bath," Elena mutters against the shell of his ear, reluctantly breaking this moment of his dependence on her. "You're freezing."
"I feel alright," he protests, curling further into her, holding his injured arm between her chest and his. The warm, dark space between them feels like a cave, like hiding out under his blankets when he was young, pretending he was an explorer of some foreign land. This is comfort, this is love, here, what it means to be human.
"I'm worried for you," Elena whispers, lips against his hair, now, breath filtering down the back of his neck. "Don't fall asleep, please."
"I'm fine."
"You're broken," Elena counters, cradling her arm around his injured one. "And covered in blood. Damon, come on. Let me fix you." Coercive, gentle, she grips him around the waist, helps him up, carefully assists him in swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. She steadies him, looks down with those concerned, lapis lazuli eyes.
"You've already fixed me, 'Lena," he whispers. Honest, raw. He feels like he's touching the edge of something important, here in Elena's arms, sitting here on a plush hotel bed. He never thought he'd be here. Never thought he'd love.
Oh, Elena.
She flushes just so slightly, the apples of her cheeks blushing pink.
"You give me too much credit," she says, looking away, attempting to distract him by helping him to his feet, her arm around his waist, his around her shoulders. They limp towards the bathroom, slowly and laboriously, Damon struggling to keep his weight both off her and off his foot.
"You - deserve - credit," he huffs out between clenched teeth, trying hard to ignore the needle-point pain in his broken ankle.
"Put your weight on me," Elena sighs.
Damon gives in. Leans on her, his weight spread across her shoulders gratefully. And then they are in the bathroom, Elena depositing him on the chair in the corner. She runs the bath, glances at him, categorizing his physical status.
"I'll be right back," she says nervously, backing towards the door, eyes glued to him. "Don't…you know…faint or anything."
"I'll try not to," Damon smiles.
Before he counts to three, Elena is gone and back again, clutching a plastic shopping bag in one hand, kneeling in front of him, a warm hand on his knee, the other rooting around in the bag. "What're you…?"
Elena silences him when she pulls out her supplies: six rolled-tight ace bandages, gauze, waterproof tape, Neosporin. "Remember at the gas station the other day?" She asks, unrolling one of the bandages, prying off the metal tab holding the edges together. "I told you I was getting 'feminine products'." A smile lifts the corners of her mouth, and she looks up at him. "I lied."
"Why?" His question is straight, plain, no subterfuge or any of his signature attitude. Not with Elena.
"I anticipated something like this," she says softly, looking down again, fingers delicately running along his bruised ankle, feeling the bones through his thin skin, searching for the break. He holds his foot absolutely still, not breathing.
Then, finally, "What do you mean?"
"Stefan. You. It's like a time bomb, Damon. I wanted to be ready to patch you up." Pressure, pull, her fingers stretching the ace bandage tight around his foot. Her eyes are cast down, concentrating on her work, but he sees the sheen to them, the welling up of tears, can smell the saltwater, heavy in the air like the tension between the two of them.
"How'd you figure I'd be the loser?"
"Not the loser, Damon. I asked you not to fight him, and you didn't. I can't imagine how hard it was for you to just let him do it, not to fight back…" She trails off, then raises up slightly before him, reaching for the injured hand that lies in his lap.
"I just kept thinking," he says as her fingertips inspect his wrist, "that if I fought back, I'd kill him. I'd kill him and you'd never look at me again, never forgive me. Elena, I don't know why but just thinking about you sad breaks my heart. I -" Damon cuts himself off. He's said too much. Confessed to having a heart. A breakable heart at that.
Telling Elena he loves her is one thing. But letting her know she has the power to break him? That is an entirely different situation.
Elena's warm hand reaches out to him, fingers brush his cheek delicately. "It's okay," she whispers. Pressure of fingertips on his cheek, running down to his jaw, forward, lingering just below his bottom lip. And then, like she can read his mind - "Just because I could break your heart doesn't mean I will. I'm here for you, Damon, and I promise I'll never hurt you."
He looks into those big sparkly lapis lazuli eyes of hers, gold-flecked and so very honest, clear-cut and limpid as the stone they so resemble. Of course Elena is telling the truth. Of course if Elena says she won't hurt him, then she means it. Of course, like usual, she is far too good for him.
And of course, a little voice speaks up in the back of his head, that distrustful, teenage Damon that still feels the ache of Katherine's betrayal, that understands what it means to be human, what it means to hurt. A little voice that wonders how Elena-the-angel could possibly mean what she says in regards to him.
"Never?" He asks. He can feel the pleading in his eyes, can hear it in his own voice. In another setting, he would have found himself pathetic. Now, though… Now he's learning to put up with his own out-of-control, love-sick emotions.
"Never," Elena says solemnly, eyes deathly serious, piercing right through him like nails on his own personal cross.
"And you promise you'll love me?"
"Yes."
"Forever?"
She pauses, and the half-second of silence says more than every word she's ever said to him. Finally, her voice cracking - "As long as I'm alive."
"That's not the same thing," Damon murmurs, trying to hide the pain in his voice.
"I know."
They are quiet, now. Elena's ace bandage secures his broken wrist, lining his bones up right with a tenderness that makes something inside him clench, pressure around his chest like a vice. She is so gentle, so careful with him, as though he is the human one, so easily broken… A brush of her lips across the back of his hand, and then she stands, turns away, pulls the handle of the bath. Running water roars through the silence, breaking the quiet, but not the tension.
While the tub fills, she stands angled away from him, busying herself with bubble bath pulled magically from her plastic first-aide bag. The room smells like lavender and vanilla, at once soothing and heady, relaxing his muscles…but simultaneously making him want Elena closer. Much closer.
He closes his eyes, leans back in the flimsy, hotel-suite-bathroom-chair, head falling softly against the wall. Breathe, Damon, breathe. He inhales deeply, exhales through his nose. Inhale, exhale. Elena, Elena. Inhale - She's watching me.
Lightening-quick, his eyes snap open.
Sure enough, Elena is in front of him, leaning down to his level, dewy blue eyes and all, silent, breathing so quietly that he barely hears it.
"Damon?" She whispers.
"Yes?" His tone is low, reverent, like the tone that one would use in a church.
"I - I don't know how to ask this…"
"Yes?" He leans forward just so slightly, can smell the honeysuckle perfume clinging to her skin.
"Um…" She glances down, away, nervous. "In case you didn't know, it's usually a prerequisite to a bath that you take off your clothes…"
The sentence trails off into silence, and he understands. Understands that she is not planning on giving him privacy, not planning on letting him out of her sight for even a moment. Plus, with a broken ankle and wrist, he is not exactly able to help himself.
"Right," he says, then clears his throat, attempting bravado, "nothing you haven't seen before anyway."
"Yeah."
For a moment, awkwardness pervades, her hands twitching uncertainly at her sides.
But then…
Fingers find the bottom edge of his wife beater, torn and bloody, the one he threw on seconds before he walked out into the night with Stefan. Before everything changed. Before Elena turned definitively from Stefan to Damon. Once, the decision was between darkness and light, heaven and hell.
Tonight, Damon thinks as Elena's pure white fingers creep under his shirt, proves that there's dark and light in all of us. Even me.
Even Stefan.
Even…
Elena.
She's always been his angel. But now, with her hands steadily warming the skin of his stomach, there is nothing angelic in those deep blue eyes. In a few moments, she has shifted from his gentle protector to…this… Elena, with fire in her expression and in her hands, looking like…looking like -
Katherine -
No. Not like Katherine… Just - Katherine is the only other person who ever looked at him like this. Lust, animal attraction, that burning in her eyes that is driving him crazy, filling his stomach with butterflies and god knows what else.
His shirt is off, and his head falls softly back again, eyes closing -
- And the moment shatters.
Elena gasps, and when he opens his eyes, she is staring at his bare chest, one hand over her mouth.
"Oh, Damon," she whispers, reaching out to touch his ribs softly. He glances down, sees the deep purple bruises covering his chest like thunderclouds on a pale sky, sees the tears welling in Elena's eyes.
"I'm fine -"
"He broke your ribs, Damon, this is not fine!"
"Elena, listen -"
But she is beyond listening. Her fingertips skim higher, ghosting over bruises and up his chest, to his neck, softly laying her fingers over the banded bruises marring his throat, fitting her hands to the space that Stefan had occupied earlier. Instinctively, Damon flinches back just slightly, but Elena doesn't let him go anywhere.
"He really would have killed you," she says after several long moments.
Damon nods. "We're vampires, Elena. It's what we do."
"Not Stefan," she says softly. "He -"
"Yes, Stefan," Damon cuts her off, voice firm, catching her hand in his uninjured one, squeezing fingers tight. "You're his territory. I infringed. Honestly, I was asking for it."
Elena is quiet, shaking her head. Looking down, she reaches for the zipper of his jeans, ignoring his slight jump as her hand brushes the hard ridges of his stomach. There is a moment, a slight suspending where her fingers touch the button fly of his jeans and he stares down at her, eyes meeting, and he could say no… Could revert to that cold, ice-shelled Damon and deny this effect she has on him…
But he doesn't.
His black jeans are flayed open in what seems to be a well-practiced move from Elena, and he sits up slightly to help her push them down his legs.
Black silk boxers hit the floor.
And Elena…
She's trying to hide it.
But Damon knows she's staring.
Damon always knows.
Author Note: Hey, thanks everybody for the spectacular reviews. They seriously make my day brighter and encourage me to keep writing this little piece of fluff. Hope ya'll liked the chapter! Oh, and I'd love feedback on what you think should happen next…… *winks* :] Thanks for reading!
Love, Sam