Thank you a million times to everyone who is reading, and especially those who are reviewing! Look out for another update soon, because, for once, I'm planning to publish two chapters fairly close together. This chapter was getting really long, and I realized that I could easily split in two and then keep writing, which I am doing frantically because there is momentum. We're not getting close to the end, but we are getting to a turning point that will bring us closer to the big bad mystery.
Thank you to the real Sajen for being a great beta once again!
I'm really appreciating the reviews from all of you - so thank you to the real Sajen, manzipop, Angel Starbeam, Lenka Fifty Shades Lover, corijomama, jairem, Karol Black, Aeliel, Mireesha huff, and everyone who is reviewing as a guest.
Angel Starbeam - We're not going to see it here, but I think at some point Caroline is going to go all Founding Family on Tommy Fell and demand to learn all the Fell dirt, which might make her realize that she's never grilled Damon. I'd like to give Damon and Caroline more reasons to bond. I don't think that everyone in town knew that Katherine was playing both Salvatores - this was 1864 and even Katherine wouldn't create that big of a scandal when she wanted to lay low. Tommy was Damon's best friend, so Damon would have confided in him, though not about Katherine being a vampire. Tommy did not like Katherine, or trust her. As far as baby Gilbert-Salvatore - I'm not giving away anything on her powers :)
Sajen - about the sudden aging thing affecting Elena's pregnancy. It's not. That happened at least six months before she got pregnant. Katherine aged 500 years in a couple months, before dying. I'm guessing that Elena's five years of aging happened fairly quickly, maybe even before she woke up from the coffin.
Mandzipop
I'm glad that people are liking the character of Sajen, because I'm having fun with him. In the later seasons of TVD, I missed having clueless humans, or humans that were new to the supernatural. I also like that he's a genuinely good guy who has no ties to the supernatural - nobody murdered his mother or turned his sister into a vampire. So he can be kind of like Matt if Matt had not been immediately prejudiced to vampires because of Vicki.
In response to mandzipop's comments about the possibility of Damon and Elena having latent magical abilities due to their lineage (Silas and Amara descendents), Angel Starbeam's question about the baby's powers, and Karol Black's desire to see Damon as a daddy (because don't we all!) - I'm conducting a poll. Share your answers in your review:
1. Do you want to see the baby born before or after the supernatural craziness comes to a head? Should we still have a pregnant Elena with visions, or should we have a baby already born?
2. Are you interested in Elena possessing any kind of magical powers? What kind? How powerful?
3. Are you interested in Damon possessing any kind of magical powers? What kind? How powerful
4. If you answered NO to #2 or #3, why not? Maybe there's a reason they shouldn't have magic.
5. What kind of powers do you imagine the baby having, and how powerful should she be? Can she do stuff as an infant?
(I have my own answers to these questions, but I haven't decided for sure, so am definitely interested in hearing youall's input.)
Happy reading! Oh, and if anybody is reading or writing a fanfic that I should be reading, let me know!
-Norah
May 2018
Mystic Falls, Virginia
Still the same day
Jeremy and a group of twelve-year-olds were huddled around the front entrance, and they all stepped back to let Tommy and Damon in. Jeremy and the oldest girl were holding crossbows. "What the hell, Gilbert?" Damon yelled at him under his breath. "What do you think you're doing?"
Jeremy bristled as he said, "Ric went upstairs with the little kids. We were standing guard."
"Well stand down!" Damon grabbed the crossbows from Jeremy and the girl, easily, their grips were ridiculous, and threw them in a corner. "Why don't you go back to teaching them how to decapitate a vampire and then maybe later you can give a lesson on how not to get your weapon torn out of your hands. That was pathetic."
Jeremy looked like he was about to say something.
Damon raised his hand, saying, "Not today, little Gilbert." Seeing Jeremy's distress, and knowing that the kid was probably worried about his sister, Damon relaxed his tone. "I promise you I've got this under control. Elena had a vision. We can trust him. I wouldn't have invited him in otherwise."
Jeremy sucked in a deep breath, not looking happy, but resigned. He stepped back, mumbling something about decapitating Damon if this whole thing went south. Then he and the kids scurried out, toward the back door.
Turning to Tommy, Damon laughed and said, "In-laws."
Tommy followed Damon into the library, whistling and whipping his head around to take in the ornate Sotheby's auction of it all. "Nice little pad you've got yourself, old man. How exactly were you able to hold onto your family's fortune?"
Damon laughed. "We scared them into keeping our secret over the years. And then I did a lot of the smarter investing. We would have lost this place during the Depression, if it was up to those idiots. You could have done the same with yours."
"And done that to Bess and little Charlie?" Tommy snapped. "Better to compel myself into fancy hotel rooms. I've even got an Italian villa."
Damon raised his brows, saying, "So do I."
"Finally got to the homeland?"
"Don't know what I thought I was going to find there," Damon said, feeling casual and cool and collected all of a sudden. Like nothing important was happening. "I mean, the Riviera is beautiful. Rome is fun. Italy is fun, period. But … I went to check on Stefan during the war, and on the way back I stopped into this village. My grandmother was from there. I'd learned Italian. I could more than get by. Introduced myself as a distant relative." Damon paused, remembering how surreal it had felt to stand in that town, to speak with those humans who knew nothing of the truth of the world. To play human.
"And?" Tommy asked, his voice growing more casual by the moment. As if they were just two old friends, reconnecting, trading stories.
Damon said, "They were nice. I didn't eat any of them. But it didn't mean anything either. They didn't know me. I didn't know them. For so many years, nothing mattered. You know?"
Someone cleared his throat behind them. Sajen. Caroline was chasing after Sajen, and through the doorway, he could see Elena struggle to "hurry" (or walk faster than a waddle). She had both hands on her back, and she seemed to be leaning backward to fight against gravity. She also looked out of breath. As she approached, he smiled a small smile and mouthed, "I'm sorry about this." This was not the sort of stress a pregnant woman needed.
But Sajen was continuing to be Sajen. "You mean the recession, right? And, seriously, what war has been anywhere close to Italy? And is eating people a joke between you people? Damon — gross. Seriously."
Tommy began to laugh, like a hyena. Caroline slapped him upside the head. Damon glared at both of them.
"I mean, seriously," Tommy said as his ridiculous laughter subsided. "How stupid does this guy have to be?"
"You didn't believe me at first either," Damon snapped.
"It didn't take me this long to catch up," Tommy snapped back.
Damon sighed.
"Also," Tommy said. "How could you invite me in? Like seriously, why didn't Elena have to do that? Or Alaric?"
"That's what you're concerned about?" Sajen said, increasingly obstinate. "Of course he could let you in. Now, Damon, tell me what's going on! Or, or, I'll just scream."
Caroline slapped Sajen upside the head. "You will not scream. There are children here. Including mine. You will keep yourself together," she snapped.
Sajen glanced around, as if looking for children, and his eyes landed on the corner had thrown the weapons. "Those are crossbows!" he shouted. "You guys actually teach the kids to shoot stuff here?"
"Everybody just simmer down for one damn minute," Damon said, very tired all of a sudden and no longer enjoying the simple pleasure of catching up with an old friend. He'd only gotten five hours of sleep last night.
Being human was exhausting.
He had had it up to here with the human body's dependence on sleep.
There was no easy way to break any of this news, to Sajen or to Tommy, and so he just began blurting out facts. "Sajen, I was talking about World War II. Stefan was in Egypt, but I stopped by Italy once the war in Europe was over. And I was talking about the Great Depression, the one that began with the stock market crash of 1929. And all of this is possible because I was born in 1839 and turned into a vampire in 1864 after my girlfriend fed me her blood and my asshole of a father shot me in the back. I turned Tommy in 1868, when he was dying of consumption."
Sajen just stared, seeming like he might laugh, collapse, or run away screaming at any moment. Maybe all three in quick succession. Instead he stood in place, mouth gaping open, looking terrified. Disbelieving, but terrified.
Great.
Damon turned towards Tommy. "Elena got turned into a vampire a few years ago. Against her will. She had a tough transition. Soon after, we found out about a cure for vampirism. We tracked it down. It's this ancient potion. 2000 years old. Witches today can't replicate it." Damon hesitated, not wanting to reveal that, technically, Tommy could take the Cure from him. Because then he'd start aging quickly and die, maybe before his child was born, certainly before she was a year old. Tommy wouldn't do that do him. Of course. But still. It seemed too big a chance to take. Or what if Tommy got drunk and mentioned it to some random vampire who had no love for Damon Salvatore. So, he settled on the closest version of the truth that didn't end up with some vampire sucking the youth and vitality out of him. "There were just a couple doses. I'm sorry if you were just thinking you'd want this. There's no more. Elena took it. I took it to be with her. She wanted a family. I'd had enough eternity. I just wanted Elena."
Elena walked up beside him and kissed his cheek. He put his arm around her and pulled her close.
"It's my baby, Tommy," he said.
Tommy's expression was inscrutable. "But … that's not possible."
"When has impossible ever stopped me?" Damon said with small smile.
"Why didn't you tell me when I first showed up?" Tommy asked, still incredulous.
"I don't know, man. I'm not used to this. I mean, I'm not used to being less than," he stumbled out the words.
Tommy frowned. "You thought I would attack you?"
"No."
His friend pressed on. "The thought crossed your mind?"
Damon shrugged. "Maybe. It's been a hundred years. How the hell am I supposed to know how you're going to react to completely bizarre news?"
"You people are vampires?" Sajen broke in, his voice rising on each word so that he was shrieking as he said, "Like blood-sucking, killing, only in bad movies vampires?"
"There are some good movies. And even some good TV," Tommy said, grinning.
Damon nodded. "I mean you have to love the classics. Bela Lugosi's Dracula. Before that, Nosferatu, of course."
"Yes. That was amazing. Worth living into the 20th century to see that," Tommy said in a rush. "I must have seen it six times in the theatre, and I kept thinking that I wished you could have been there to see it with me. You kids all grew up with movies and TV, right? You're like actual young adults?" he asked, looking at Elena, Caroline, Bonnie, and Sajen.
After a pause, Elena broke into a grin and said, "We are bonafide millennials."
"Well you have no idea how good you have it," Tommy said, his tone warm and playful. "Movies — when I first saw them it was like watching magic. Or God. Or the devil. Something so far outside of what I grew up with. I mean, we didn't even have a theatre anywhere close to Mystic Falls."
Damon grinned. There was a pleasant warmth descending over him, and he was trying to let himself be. Let himself stay in the moment. "I liked the 1994 film version of Interview. Wasn't that surprisingly good? The Lost Boys, of course. It's not all Twilight."
"And have you seen Being Human?" Tommy said. "The BBC one? It's got a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost as flat mates. Funny concept, right? Except their vampires can't look at crucifixes, which is totally weird."
"Let's not forget everything Anne Rice wrote until she found religion," Damon continued the silliness until he caught Elena shooting daggers from her eyes and saw Sajen's crestfallen face.
"Sajen," he said as kindly as he could.
Elena gave Sajen a real smile. "Damon and I are humans now. We can't bite or do anything bad, okay? But we were vampires. I was just one for a couple years. Damon was a vampire for a long, long time. No one's going to hurt you. Not even Tommy."
Damon nodded, adding, "Tommy was being a dick earlier, but he's a good friend of mine. Maybe he was showing off. Maybe his quota of stupid wasn't met for today."
Tommy slapped Damon.
"Can everyone please stop hitting each other?" Elena said, voice shrill and had-it-up-to-here.
Sajen started looking around, eyes lit up with some fresh idea. "Where are they?" he asked, laughing a little.
"Where are what?" Caroline asked.
"The cameras. Are we on some kind of reality show? Hidden camera? Do I get a car if I figure it out?"
"Oh, Sajen," Bonnie said. She looked like this whole situation pained her. "There are no cameras."
He turned towards her, saying in the most pathetic voice, "It's real? It's all real?"
Bonnie nodded, patting his arm.
Oh god, was Sajen going to cry?
Thankfully he pulled himself together enough to a. not cry, and b. make a reasonable demand. "Prove it," Sajen said to Damon, voice steady.
Damon raised his brows at Tommy. Tommy grinned maliciously, and then his face began to change.
Sajen let out a little shriek, backing up.
Tommy's eyes turned red. Veins popped out of his face. He bared his teeth, revealing fangs.
Sajen backed himself into Bonnie. He was shaking. She caught him, murmuring, "You're okay, Sajen. He's not going to hurt you. He's just offering proof. Hey, asshole, enough proof!"
Vamped out Tommy laughed and continued to snarl. Damon couldn't help but feel jealous, even wistful. (Though at least his favorite employee wasn't afraid of him.) Finally, Damon snapped, "Enough!"
Tommy's featured went back to human.
Sajen was leaning comfortably into Bonnie. Then he flinched and moved away. "Are you one of them?" he asked her in the saddest, smallest voice.
Bonnie smiled in sympathy. "No."
Sajen looked relieved for the first time since they'd come inside.
"I'm a witch," she said.
"Very funny."
"No, seriously, she is," Caroline said. She had scurried off into the kitchen and now returned with a tray of drinks. "I thought everybody could use a drink. Sajen, this is Damon's best bourbon. Damon, no complaining. You're at fault here. Somehow. You must be." She served bourbon to everyone except Elena, who got a cup of steaming hot tea.
Now Sajen was looking suspiciously at everyone. He held his glass but refused to drink from it. "We're going to revisit the witch thing later," he said. "At least you don't suck blood, right?" Bonnie nodded in agreement. "Okay, any other vampires in this house?"
Caroline put down the tray. Then she raised her hand, looking shy all of a sudden.
Sajen's eyes widened, but at least he wasn't shrieking or shaking. "That's why you look so young?"
"Score one for the moron," Tommy said, way too snippy. He sipped his drink. Damon smacked Tommy on the shoulder, almost knocking the glass out of Tommy's hand.
"Alaric? Jeremy?" Sajen asked.
"No," Elena said. "Everyone here is human. Except for Caroline. And today Tommy, who is clearly just visiting and should seriously start thinking about ways to get back in my good graces."
Sajen chewed on his lip, as if trying to figure out what to say next. Finally, he glanced from Tommy to Damon and said, "So you two are from the 1800s."
"Yup," Damon said.
"But when you turned human you didn't turn a hundred and whatever?"
"No," Damon.
Elena pulled Damon towards the sofa. She lowered herself onto the plush cushions, sighing in relief. He perched beside her on the arm of the sofa. Elena rubbed her lower back as she said, "Damon was 25 when he turned. He started aging from 25. So now he should be 26. In five years, he'll be 31. Just like anybody."
Sajen frowned.
"I know," Damon said. "It's weird."
"And what can vampires do?" Sajen wanted to know. "And how can you walk in the sun? And why aren't you sleeping in coffins all day?"
Tommy gave Damon a pointed look. Damon nodded. No need to give away all their secrets. "A lot of things you read in books, or see in movies, isn't true. We don't have to sleep in coffins. Some have to stay inside during the day. Vampires burn in the sun. But some have a friendly witch who can help them walk in sunlight. Needs to be a pretty powerful one, though."
"So, no sparkling?" Sajen said, smirking just a tiny bit now.
Everyone chuckled as Caroline said, "I was disappointed, when I first found out. But no sparkling. Probably for the best."
"Do you have to kill?" Sajen asked Damon.
Damon sighed. "No vampire has to kill. Everybody seems to slip up. Once. Twice. A thousand times. Maybe there's some perfect specimen of morals and perfection out there."
"Did you?" Sajen asked, clearly hoping that Damon was the exception.
Damon had never felt so guilty admitting it out loud. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Sorry buddy, but I had a few bad decades." Sorry, Sajen, but you've been working in close quarters with a retired serial killer.
Sajen swallowed hard, turning to Elena. "What about you?"
She looked as sad as Damon felt, though she'd done so little killing in comparison to his. "Twice."
Tommy whistled. "Only two? Even if it was just a couple years, that's impressive, darlin'."
"And I suppose you go around killing people willy nilly?" Sajen said.
"You know what I don't do?" Tommy said, zooming over to him so fast that Sajen dropped his drink. "I don't use the term 'willy nilly.' And I also don't kill nearly as many people as you might think. Besides, all of our crimes pale in comparison to Stefan's."
Sajen's eyes widened, as if he were only just realizing that Damon's brother must have been born in the 19th century too.
Caroline looked like she was about to cry. She clearly wanted to say something, but couldn't because her lips were trembling. She was too busy holding back tears, to upset to defend her husband.
Damon was about to punch his asshole of a best friend when Elena grabbed both his hands in hers. He glanced down at her. She'd slouched back into the couch and she looked utterly exhausted. Her belly bulged in front of her, a symbol of all they had to gain and to lose. If he felt vulnerable, he couldn't imagine how vulnerable she must feel. She didn't want him to get his neck snapped. Or even get on the bad side of any vampire.
He let Elena hold onto his hands, but he did start shouting at Tommy. "Can you just stop mouthing off about my brother?" Damon almost screamed. He could feel his heart begin to race, but he breathed in and out, in and out, as Elena had taught him, on a 4-6 count rhythm. As he inhaled, he let his abdomen and chest expand with air. I-2-3-4. As exhaled, he let all the air leave his chest.1-2-3-4-5-6.
"What?" Tommy asked, clearly confused.
Caroline was really crying now. Bonnie moved away from Sajen to comfort her friend. Elena cast a sympathetic glance at them.
Damon opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He couldn't bring himself to say the words. The truth.
Caroline sank to the floor, she was sobbing so hard.
Tommy sucked in a breath and cursed softly. "Is he dead?" he asked.
Damon nodded.
"Really dead? Dead dead?"
"Yes!" Caroline shrieked. "And it was heroic. And noble. He saved Damon's life. He saved Elena's life. He saved our whole town. We wouldn't have a home here anymore, without him. And there'd be hellfire on Earth. He was brave. And you keep saying these nasty things. For no reason."
Tommy stuck his hands in his pockets and avoided looking at anyone.
A long moment passed, and then Sajen broke in, his voice hyper now, too excited. "That's how Stefan died? Something crazy and magical? Like vampire related? Did I actually just say that? Whoa. Not a car crash?"
Damon snorted, saying, "Of course it wasn't a car crash. He could have walked away from that. He did. On multiple occasions."
"Damon, I'm sorry," Tommy said haltingly. "I had no idea. I thought he'd just gone off the deep end again."
"You're a fucking asshole, is what you are," Damon muttered. "I know you don't like him, but Jesus. He's my brother. I get to verbally abuse him. Me. Only me."
"I'm sorry, okay?" Tommy said.
"What did he ever do to you?" Caroline whimpered from the floor. Bonnie had her arms around the blond girl, and Damon wasn't sure when he had seen a more pathetic sight. Caroline just looked destroyed.
Tommy muttered something under his breath.
Damon cleared his throat, saying, "Don't have the vamp hearing any more, man. Spit it out. You have something to say, spit it out."
Tommy looked right at him, and his face went hard and his eyes went cold. They weren't red, no veins popped out, but in this moment, he looked more like a vampire than Damon had ever seen him. He looked quiet, deadly. He looked dead. Tommy's eyes looked so old all of a sudden. And before he spoke, Damon realized what he was going to say. He thought he'd kept the truth from his old friend. He'd thought he'd protected both of them.
"Stefan killed my parents," Tommy said with a sneer. Then he set his glass down on the nearest table so hard that the glass broke and walked slowly towards the door. Shards and whiskey were everywhere. The brown liquid soon spilled over the edge and onto the carpet. Damon sighed, because he knew he would have to be the person to clean that up. No one else would try to get the stain out of the Persian rug. And it was one he'd bought himself, in Persia, in the 1970s, and shipped home. He was staring at the drink because it was easier to think about how to fix that, what stain remover to use, than to think about Tommy.
But finally, he had to look up. Tommy was at the front door. "I didn't know you knew," he said.
"Clearly," Tommy snapped.
"He was my brother," Damon barked at him. "What was I supposed to do? Give him up?"
Tommy laughed humorlessly. "You could have put him down."
"Tommy!" Elena shouted from the couch. "There was a lot of good in Stefan. And I'm going to remind you, again, that he's dead and that his widow is collapsed on the floor. Crying. And she's one of my best friends. Damon might be putting on a brave face for you right now, but losing Stefan was like losing a limb. And… you've caused a lot of trouble already. You were invited in because I told Damon to invite you. I told him to trust you." Tommy's expression softened just a tiny bit. And when Elena spoke again, her voice was kinder. "I'm so sorry about your parents. My parents died when I was 16. It was devastating. We've all lost parents here. We've all lost a lot. I'm so sorry, Tommy."
Tommy nodded, though what he was nodding at Damon didn't know. After a moment's hesitation, he walked out the front door of the Salvatore boarding house. Tommy didn't slam the door, but it swung shut behind him nonetheless.
###
Still May 2018
Mystic Falls, VA
That same night
It was midnight. Elena lay awake next to Damon, fidgeting in bed. She couldn't sleep. Part of it was that she was as big as a whale now and it was just so hard to get comfortable. But she couldn't get Tommy's face out of her mind. She couldn't forget how lifeless he'd seemed as he told Damon that he'd known the big secret all along. She couldn't forget that behind the cold exterior was an expression filled with pain and longing and confusion. The expression of a much younger man. Even a child.
"You need to sleep," Damon murmured. "Hell, I need to sleep. Gone are the days when I could go a week at a time without closing my eyes. Those were the days."
"Good old vampire days?" Elena asked, turning over to lay her head on his shoulder. Her belly rubbed up against his torso. Damon reached his arm around her shoulders to pull her towards him, gently caressing her gigantic stomach at the same time.
"No more vampire days," he said, and his voice dripped with exhaustion. "I've lost my stamina. Hell, maybe I'm getting old."
"You're twenty-six!" Elena said laughing.
"Maybe that's old," Damon said. "I swear my eyesight is going."
"I gave you a vision test last week, you paranoid freak."
"Well, if I ever do need glasses, don't let me pick those hipster frames, you know the thick ones. I could see myself thinking that would be the fun, bold, young choice. And then I'd look like a hipster. And I'd have to murder the optometrist," Damon said, his humor so dry that Elena wasn't sure he was joking.
They lay there in silence for a long while. She wanted to bring up Tommy, but she didn't know how. Especially now that the drama involved Stefan killing Thomas and Cornelia Fell. Holy fuck, Stefan1 Was his past ever going to stop haunting them? Not that Damon was some angelic vampire with a heart of gold. She'd had a very, very uncomfortable conversation with Josie Lockwood the other day. Tyler's first cousin who had moved back to town after being gone for all of high school. Josie had stopped by the boarding house, sick with grief about her cousin's death, anxious to talk to his friends about who he'd been as an adult, and to find out if anyone had a lead on his mysterious death.
Elena had sat with her and Caroline in the parlor, eating more than her share of the chocolate chip cookies Caroline had made specifically for Josie's visit. Caroline had done most of the talking. Elena had a response going through her mind, which of course she couldn't voice out loud: "My husband killed him, but he didn't mean to so I've tried to forgive him and sometimes I feel like I have forgiven him and other times I want to claw his eyes out for the crime, and other times I feel so guilty for not being around to stop his spiral into serial-killer-ness, that it almost seems like I killed Tyler."
Damon's hand was still on her stomach when the baby began to kick. She kicked forcefully, rhythmically, but not too hard. It didn't hurt. It did feel deliberate.
"Is she playing the drums in there?" Damon asked with a little laugh.
"And you wonder why I can't sleep," she murmured.
"Seriously, maybe she'll be a musician. That's a perfect 1-2-3 rhythm. Feel it, babe. It's a waltz."
"So, she's going to be an old-timey musician?" Elena asked, placing her hand on top of Damon's so that they could feel the kicking together. He was right. The baby kept at this same steady beat. 1-2-3. 1-2-3. 1-2-3.
"Well I'm her father and I am old-timey. Didn't you once call me an antique?" he quipped back at her. "Besides, our first dance was a waltz. I saw the way you looked at me. And me, oh man Elena, seeing you in that dress, dancing without touching you at first. That freaking dance. Elena, good God."
"The simple intimacy of the near-touch," she breathed, feeling the familiar Damon butterflies fluttering inside her. Yes, they'd been together for years. Yes, they'd risked their lives for each other, and argued bitterly about things like her wanting to sacrifice herself to psychopaths like Klaus. Yes, she knew Damon better than she would have ever known a normal human husband. And yes, they were married and expecting a magical child. But even so, sometimes he just had to say her name and she was 17 again. On fire again. In love with her good-guy boyfriend's bad-boy brother. Right now, just his gentle, not particular sexual, hand rubbing her pregnant belly — it was enough to consume her with lust.
Elena tilted her head up and kissed him. He leaned into the kiss. It was sweet and slow and sexy. Oh, Damon was a good kisser. Sometimes it sucked to have to deal with his 179 years of baggage. The murders alone were enough to weigh a girl down. But other times, like right now, she opened her lips and he darted his tongue inside her mouth and his tongue managed to be urgent and gentle, impulsive and patient, all at the same time. No one had ever kissed her like Damon kissed her. Moments like this, she was glad she'd married a man who'd been honing his kissing and lovemaking techniques since the 1850s. Maybe once you go vampire you can't go back.
Speaking of lovemaking. It had been a while. And all of a sudden, Elena was horny. And not just regular horny. This was urgent. This was supremely important.
She managed to roll on top of him — it was easier than trying to sit up first — and then she was straddling her beautiful husband. He smiled up at her. She clumsily pulled her nightgown off. It wasn't a sexy one — she'd taken to sleeping in Mumu-type attire. Maybe that's why he hadn't made any advances in the last couple weeks, beyond kisses and gentle caresses. Elena managed to get the damned frumpy nightgown off.
Was he frowning at her. She longed for vamp sight. (She was honestly getting worried that she needed to visit an eye doctor. The last time she'd given Damon his I'm-paranoid eye exam, she'd found herself squinting at a couple of the trickier letters. She'd almost told him that he'd mixed up B's and P's when she realized that she had done the mixing up. And then there was the matter of her night vision, which just didn't seem all that great. The last time she'd driven at night — having snuck away from Damon's overprotectiveness to go on a Slurpee, ice cream, and olives run — she'd almost driven onto a median. But she was tired. The problem was that she couldn't remember what her vision had been like pre-vampire-hood. In any event, Elena's mother had gotten glasses when she was in her mid-twenties, and her father had worn them since he was a teenager. And she, like Damon, was aging. Soon she'd be in her late twenties.
Elena gazed down at Damon, trying to figure out why he was frowning at her. That was a definite frown. Was she getting too fat? Could he see the stretch marks even in the dark? Was her bulging belly no longer a turn-on? This morning when she'd looked at herself naked in the mirror, she'd had the distinct impression that an alien was protruding from her torso. Maybe Damon didn't find her pregnant body cute anymore.
"What's wrong?" she asked him, a nervous school girl all over again.
"Nothing. We should just get to sleep," he said. He sounded cagey.
"Damon!" she snapped. "We haven't had sex in two weeks. That's a record for us. Actually, we've been setting records for 10 days."
"It has not been two weeks," he protested.
"The last time we had sex was the night after Jeremy's birthday."
"Well, there's a turn-on. Let's definitely have sex while we talk about your brother."
"Do you not find me sexy anymore?" she said, tears coming to her eyes. Damn hormones.
Damon laughed and it was genuine. He sat up and kissed her hard. He was all urgency and as his crotch rubbed up against her pelvis, she could feel that familiar swelling. "You are so damned sexy you have no idea how hard it to resist you. Even in that goddamned ugly nightgown. Or is it a night shirt?"
"I found it in the attic. One of your relatives wore it I guess. Whenever Mumus were a thing," Elena said, her voice evening out. She was relieved, but still confused.
"Honey," Damon said as he ran his hands down her arms in a subtle but sensual manner. "I just don't want to hurt you."
Elena raised her eyebrows as she asked, "Hurt me?"
"Or the baby?"
"You think you can't have sex with a pregnant woman?"
Damon sighed and said, "It's not like I have experience in this arena. Or ever had buddies who had kids. Except for Alaric, and Jo was gone before she'd gotten, um, you know."
"Big?"
"Into the seventh month," Damon said judiciously. "Anyway, I don't want to cause premature labor, or poke the baby."
Elena broke out laughing. And then she maneuvered off him so that she could slide out of her granny panties. She began tugging at Damon's boxer briefs.
"Honey," he said again. Almost whining this time.
"Shut up," she ordered as she yanked off his underwear and straddled him again, rubbing against him deliberately, until her body was gently riding his. She felt his cock swell against her. Fast. Yes. She had him. As she eased him inside her, Elena said, "You need to read the books I gave you. And you need to trust me when I say that I'm a medical student, I've read those books and my real textbooks, and we've got a long way to go until we worry about sex triggering labor. If I was on bed rest, or had a high-risk pregnancy, then your concerns would be valid."
"Yes, doctor," Damon moaned as he began to thrust, still beneath her but matching her rhythm. "You're extra sexy when you get all smart on me."
"And seriously, are you that much of an idiot that you think your penis could poke the baby. Like touch her?"
"Oh my god, Lena. I don't fucking know. I just thought I didn't want that to be the first part of me she saw."
And now Damon gently lifted Elena up and turned her over so that she was flat on her back. He climbed on top of her and grinned down at her with his most devilish smirk. He did that eye thing, as if daring her to slide away from him.
"Wait!" she said. "What about the perfect waltz rhythm?"
Damon frowned at her.
"Do you think the baby is trying to communicate with us?"
"Through a waltz?" he asked, incredulous, and clearly way too turned on to think straight.
"Stranger things have happened," Elena said.
"Is she still kicking?" he asked, putting his hand on her belly. "I don't feel it."
"I think she's swimming now," Elena said, noticing that her insides seemed to be swishing.
"Then I'm going to say that we're fine. No visions. Maybe she's just going to be a kickass drummer when she grows up. Anyway, no visions, right?"
"Right," Elena agreed.
He leaned down to kiss her but, at this angle, couldn't quite reach her face over top of her belly. So he kissed her belly. And he kissed her breasts, suckling on one nipple with such a light, gentle touch, she could bear it. Her nipples were painfully sensitive, but Damon had learned how to tend to them. "Honey," he said now in a strained voice. "I'm sorry to act like a horny teenager. But if I don't get in you right now I'm just going to – "
She laughed, and whispered, "I want you too, honey." Her voice wasn't as horny as before. There was still the same tone, but she was being gentle.
When had she started calling him honey? It almost seemed to safe a term. Or too suburban. But at some point, in the last couple months, their relationship had morphed into something where they weren't just consumed by a deep, mystical passion, and they weren't just protecting each other from the forces of darkness, and they weren't just soul mates, or ex-vampire refugees in the normal world of Charlottesville. They were protecting each other from all the little things – Elena lecturing Caroline on how to clean the kitchen so that the strangely neat-freakish Damon wouldn't spend all evening trying to stop himself from re-cleaning the kitchen, only to end up doing it anyway. And Damon protected Elena from her pregnancy mood swings by distracting her, making her laugh when she thought she would go crazy over something.
And he was just so soft and kind with her – he'd always loved her, but she'd never realized that Damon could spend an hour at a time without snark.
"Honey," she said now, "if you don't start right now I'm going to explode." Soon he was thrusting with an almost desperate focus. Not since the first time they'd done it after she'd gotten out of the coma had he fucked her like this. Like he was a man who'd been starving for sex.
"Elena," Damon screamed out. She was about to tell him to be quiet, that they were far from alone in this house. But then he moved his hand to her spot, and she didn't care anymore. She screamed with pleasure. Damon thrust deeper and then, inside, he was hitting the other magic spot, and Elena cried out even louder. She was a woman drinking water from a stream, after a year of thirst. It was pleasure so intense, it was almost pain. But it wasn't. It was ecstasy. It tore apart her conscious mind. As she came, she felt him quiver, she heard him moan, and then it seemed like Damon's mind was exploding too, and they were merging.
After a moment that seemed to last two centuries, he rolled off her and collapsed on the bed beside her. Husband and wife lay sweaty, panting, spent.
"That was insane," her husband said.
"Yeah."
"Do you think we woke anybody up?" he asked.
"Bonnie is a light sleeper."
"Yup," Damon said, as if knowing this from experience. Sometimes Elena was still surprised that Damon and Bonnie were friends, since they'd spent so much time hating each other.
"And Caroline has vamp hearing," Elena said.
"Doesn't mean she'd wake up from a deep sleep," he told her.
She thought for a moment about multiple embarrassments and then grinned. "I don't care. That sex was worth it. It was … psychedelic."
"You wouldn't know what psychedelic felt like if it bit you in the ass."
"But you would?" she joked with him.
"Of course. I've done it all, Lena," he said. She could see him smirking in the dark. "And that was like LSD and heroin and ecstasy and cocaine all mixed together with a side of moonlight and a shot of witchy wu-wu. Now that I'm human I don't think I'd want to fuck with any of that stuff. I do not have time for rehab. But I guess I don't need to, as long as you let me have sex with you," he said, looking over at her and doing that eye thing that was Damon's patented sexy look.
She laughed and laughed as she settled her naked, sweaty, fat body into his. She closed her eyes not because she was trying to sleep but because she now felt like she had to. She was no longer fidgety. No longer uncomfortable. No longer worried. Tommy would be found. They'd solve the mystery. Their baby would be fine. As long as she had Damon to lean into. As long as she could depend on him. As long as he found her irresistible: everything would be fine.