AN: Thank you very much for your patience and for your nice reviews and support! Love you all! So I decided to post this instead of an intermediate chapter that didn't really work: thanks Shadowfaxangel, for your advice and for reading all those versions. You rock!
So, it's Friday night and the games are on! Enjoy!
The front door shut behind Elena with a bang caused by a sudden gust of wind and a draft from an open window somewhere in the house. The wind was clearly picking up and thunderheads were starting to roll across the sky, darkening the evening at an unusually early hour for mid-June. The air was humid and loaded with static electricity, hinting at a summer storm brewing.
Elena dropped her school bag in the corner with a sigh. She'd been at the Grill for drinks after school because it was, after all, Friday evening, but she'd left early. She rolled her shoulders and frowned; she was unsettled and restless, just like the weather.
Jeremy and Damon were sitting side by side on the couch in the living room, playing a noisy video game that involved lots of shooting and things exploding with squishy sounds.
As soon as she walked in, Damon looked up at her and their gazes locked. His eyes captivated Elena for a few moments, and she lost herself in observing how their color seemed to change from blue to more bluish green with the artificial lighting.
The spell was broken when Jeremy suddenly gave a victorious yell. Elena started at the ear-splitting sound. She felt strange, as if Damon had just used compulsion on her, but she knew for sure that he hadn't. And he wouldn't. She knew that as well. Apparently Damon didn't have to resort to compulsion anymore to enthrall her. She leaned against the doorjamb to steady herself, thinking she was going to have to do something about that before long.
Jeremy was shouting in a jubilant voice, "Yes! Yes! You're so dead!"
"Tell me something I don't know," Damon said laconically as he turned back to Jeremy. Then he looked at the TV screen and said, "Oh, you mean the game. Well, that sucks."
"Yup," Jeremy snickered, "Ha! Serves you right for ogling my sister!"
"You saw that, did you?" Damon gave Jeremy a considering look. "You have a problem with it?"
Jeremy shrugged and shook his head, "No, man. Whatever flicks your bic."
Damon raised an eyebrow at Jeremy's expression and replied, "Yeah, it flicks my bic alright. It flicks a whole lot of other things too but I guess I'm not allowed to go into that." He said the last with a sly sideways glance at Elena, and Jeremy guffawed.
Elena flushed and exclaimed, "Damon! Stop it!"
When both Damon and Jeremy rolled their eyes simultaneously in a gesture of male solidarity, Elena stomped off to the kitchen, grumbling to herself and feeling distinctly at a disadvantage. She opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of cold water. As she was closing the fridge, Damon cornered her, trapping her neatly between the door and his body. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place, Elena thought to herself, secretly amused.
Damon leaned over and said in a low voice, "What's the matter, Elena? Why are you so quick to take offense when you should be flattered? It was meant as a compliment, you know."
Elena turned around to face him, but Damon didn't budge so she found herself right up against him. She leaned back against the fridge to look up to him and said ruefully, "You had to say something like that in front of Jeremy?"
"Oh, so it's not so much my remark as it is the fact that I said it in front of Jeremy? We're making progress," Damon smirked. "Give the boy some credit, Elena. I'm sure he can handle much racier stuff."
"He's still a kid, Damon!" Elena replied, raising her voice in irritation.
"I heard that, Methuselah!" Jeremy shouted from the living room, "I'll have you know I'm 16!"
This time it was Elena who rolled her eyes while Damon just shrugged. Elena scowled at him and tried to escape by squeezing past him, but he just blocked her path and purred, "Mmm, Elena. Do that again?" Elena felt heat rising to her face and stopped wriggling.
Neither of them had noticed Jeremy walking into the kitchen. As soon as his eyes fell on Damon and Elena standing very close together, he ostentatiously held his hand up to cover his eyes and remarked drily, "I'm sure you shouldn't be doing that in front of a kid. It might set a bad example."
He grabbed his half-empty can of coke off the counter and turned around to make himself scarce, slouching back into the living room.
Damon's eyes were laughing as he tried to say seriously, "Yes, Elena. First you tell me off for corrupting the boy, and now you do it yourself. Can't wait to touch me, can you?"
Elena hissed, "You're going to give him the wrong idea, Damon."
Damon lowered his voice suggestively, "Or maybe the right idea, a little early?"
Elena blushed, but didn't deny it. Wordlessly she pushed at his chest again, and this time he took a step back so she could make good her escape. Damon followed her with a knowing smile as he watched her flounce back into the living room. Elena picked up the videogame, just to give herself something to do.
"Oh, you want to try it, Elena?" Jeremy inquired, pretending not to notice his sister's high color.
Elena looked at the game in her hands and said, "Killing zombies? I don't think so. Butt-ugly, vicious things! It's enough to give me nightmares!"
"All the more reason to kill them, I'd say!" Jeremy chuckled, "Besides, you do know that the same thing can be said about a lot of …um… inhabitants of this town? Most of whom you even call your friends? Werewolves, witches, vampires?"
"Huh. I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all, but you can hardly call them butt-ugly!" Elena replied with a smile.
Damon bowed courteously in Elena's direction and said, "Thank you, Elena, for taking up my defense!" As he dropped down on the couch again, he mock-slammed Jeremy over the head and said, "I definitely take exception to being called butt-ugly, twerp!"
Elena said blithely, "Oh, I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about Bonnie."
Damon gave Elena a look that promised dire retribution in the near future, making her squirm, when Jeremy asked Damon, "So, do you want to play?"
"I always want to play. Just not with you," Damon drawled, and waggled his eyebrows at Elena.
"I meant, do you want revenge for me killing you just now?" Jeremy clarified with a longsuffering sigh, although he was grinning from ear to ear. If he was surprised at all by Damon's flirting with his sister, he didn't much show it.
"Oh, definitely! Give me that and be prepared to lose," Damon replied, and reached for the controller.
Elena watched incredulously as Damon and Jeremy began another game. She huffed, "You're seriously going to shoot more zombies?"
Without taking his eyes off the TV-screen, Damon replied, "Practice makes perfect, Elena! It can't hurt to get ready for the next supernatural thing to hit Mystic Falls! After all, I'm heading the council now, so I have a responsibility to this town!" Jeremy snickered.
Soon they were engrossed in the game, playfully elbowing each other in the ribs to break the other's concentration. After a few minutes of watching them, Elena pursed her lips, "Boys with toys! What a way to spend an evening! The living dead on TV, the living dead on the couch… No wonder I'm bored to death!"
Damon spared her a look to tell her, "Oh, I almost forgot. I got you a little present. It's up in your room."
"What? When were you in my room?" Elena was thinking frantically whether she'd hidden away her diary when she'd last written in it. It was just like Damon to go snooping around when she wasn't there. Hell, he even snooped around when she was!
"I brought it just now. Jeremy told me to put it in your room," Damon replied, his eyes again glued to the game, fingers nimbly dancing over the buttons.
"You let him into my room?" Elena demanded of Jeremy.
Jeremy shrugged without taking his eyes off the screen, "So what? They're always in your room. Makes me think I don't want to know what's going on in there most of the time!"
Elena watched as both Jeremy and Damon smirked. No, it was not a good idea to have them spend too much time together (though they were actually cute like that). Since neither of them even so much as glanced at her, she left the room and stomped up the stairs.
As soon as she pushed open the door to her bedroom, she saw it, sitting on the bed. An expensive looking, creamy white cardboard box with a ruby red ribbon tied about it. Another rose, similar to the one Damon had left with the salsa invitation, was tucked into the bow.
This was like Christmas… or her birthday! She pulled out the rose, automatically lifting it to her nose, inhaling its sweet fragrance before putting it on the bed so she could untie the ribbon and open the box.
Nestled in a wealth of crackling white tissue paper was a dress. Or part of a dress at least, Elena saw, as she reverently took it out of the box. It was black, the blackest of blacks, absorbing every particle of light. There was just enough opaque material to cover up some essential parts, but not a lot of them. Most of the dress was made of a nearly transparent gauzy material that would undoubtedly reveal more than it concealed.
Heat rose up to her face at the thought of wearing it. Damon couldn't truly intend for her to wear this dress for the salsa contest! Though it was lovely, it wasn't the kind of dress she would ever be comfortable wearing in public, let alone for a contest where all the people she knew were going to be present and watching her! How dare he think she'd wear something like this?
She was already on her way to the door to give him a piece of her mind for buying her such a ridiculous thing to wear when she reconsidered…
Would Damon really do that? Why would he give her a dress that was more fit to be worn for a lover than to be seen by the general public? Or could it be that he was just playing a joke on her? He knew her very well. Maybe he'd counted on her flying off the handle upon seeing that dress.
Hmm… She smiled slowly when an idea popped into her head. If he was trying to ruffle her feathers, maybe she could get even by ruffling his?
She shook out the dress (what there was of it) and turned to the mirror, holding it in front of her body. Admittedly it was a beautiful dress, and she itched to put it on and see how it would look on her.
She quickly stripped to her underwear and reached for the dress before thinking better of it. Her underwear wasn't fit for this dress. She rummaged through the drawer containing her underthings until she found a minuscule black thong and some sheer stockings. She left the matching bra in the drawer: the dress was obviously not meant to be worn with much underneath.
She shimmied into the dress, enjoying the luxurious feeling of the buttery soft material against her skin. It settled over her curves as if it was made just for her. She smoothed the fabric over her hips with a tiny sigh of contentment and then slipped her feet into her dancing shoes to complete the picture.
A rosy blush rose to her cheeks when she looked in the mirror again. It was truly a beautiful dress and it fit her to perfection. What really made color bloom in her cheeks though, was the way the dress clung to her body, ingeniously revealing what it pretended to conceal, just as she'd thought it would. She swallowed when she imagined Damon's eyes on her while she was wearing this. It even felt strange to know that he'd picked it out for her. Would she really be bold enough to go through with this? She couldn't take too much time to think this over, or she just knew she'd be back in her normal clothes and downstairs before long.
She opened the door and called down, "Damon! About that present of yours. Could you come upstairs for a minute?" She wasn't too surprised to hear that her voice wasn't all that steady...
AN: Jeremy, Damon and Elena... You like? You know it's your reviews that keep me writing, so push that button, please?