Summary:
Damon's reality
Life... was a bitch.
Well, if you called what he had been doing living.
Damon Salvatore sighed, taking a sip of his bourbon. These days, he found solace in the most unusual places.
One of them was bourbon. He was never one for heavy drinking... at least not alcohol. Especially not when he would much rather get drunk and high on blood.
The other was Bonnie. Bonnie Bennett.
Theirs was an unusual friendship. The kind that crawled up on you and didn't let off until you just embraced it. He was absolutely certain that the witch had not set out to be fond of him as much as she evidently was now—he knew he hadn't.
There was a time —in the shamefully recent past,— when he would have killed Bonnie without hesitation and now, now she was the only thing keeping him sane about his life.
Well, her and the numerous bottles of bourbon he wallowed in.
When he had come back to Mystic Hills two years ago, he had come to free the love of his life, believing her to be in the tomb like Emily had promised him she would do.
Except that she hadn't been. Katherine hadn't been in the tomb under Fell's church and neither were the other vampires. The tomb was empty which meant two things.
Either Katherine had died regardless of Emily's efforts, or the cunning little vixen had somehow managed to escape and left him without looking back.
He chose to believe the first option. The second possibility was just too depressing for him to accept and yet, that had been just the beginning of his listlessness.
Elena.
Was it love at first sight? He wondered. Was it projection of his affection for Katherine onto her doppelgänger that convinced him that he was in love with her —enough to turn his humanity, which he had kept off since he left Enzo to burn, back on— or was he just genuinely smitten with her?
What was it about her? He wondered every day he encountered her. What was it about Elena Gilbert that made him want to make her his?
But, she was with Stefan and that was all the stopper he needed.
Damon owed Stefan a lot. His baby brother had been a casualty of his toxic love affair with Katherine. He had been the one sleeping with Katherine, the one who had been excited about being a vampire and living an eternity with the woman he loved.
Stefan had been the brother he needed by his side. His best friend and confidant. The one person who cheered him on unconditionally so getting vampire blood into Stefan every day was his fault.
His brother dying to protect the woman he loved... that was also on him. Forcing Stefan to feed was also his sin and he had sworn that night, by all that was in heaven and on earth, that he was going to make sure Stefan lived an eternity of beauty and purpose.
Every thing he had done in the last century and half, he had done with his brother in mind. When they had separated a century ago, it was to keep Stefan safe and away from his toxic nature.
And when they had come back together seven decades ago, it was because he missed Stefan and he was ready to get his act together... and yet, he had realized after a year with his brother that the younger was doing well on his own.
He was the one who was still hooked on the memory of a girl. He was the one who went crazy at rapid intervals and indulged in some old fashioned gore just to appease his uneasy heart.
And he was the one who was bad for Stefan.
So the decision to leave again and only keep a long distance relationship with his brother, had been an easy one.
Letters, and phone calls.
For decades.
Until the year of the comet... when he believed Katherine would finally be let out of the tomb and he would have someone with him for eternity... someone as depraved as he was and not someone as pure as Stefan.
But Katherine hadn't been in the tomb.
In her place was Elena... his brother's girlfriend.
And he had settled for that.
He told himself this was the universe's way of making it up to him for killing Katherine. That perhaps, Elena was the redemption he was going to get...
Falling in love with her had never been a part of the plan —but he should have known just how dangerous it was to hang around her and her merry group of friends.
For years his only purpose was saving Elena, making sure she remained alive and human and jeopardizing everyone in the process.
Including Bonnie.
For years he told himself he was doing it to protect Stefan's happiness... that there was nothing more to his obsessive desire to save the girl, than Stefan's happiness.
How wrong had he been?
And the fact that it had taken his brother to draw his attention to his unnecessary attentiveness to Elena, just killed him.
He had been ready to leave once again, crippled once again with the usual phobia of coming between Stefan and another sense of normalcy after he had callously taken away his brother's choice to die a human death.
"Packing up again?" Stefan asked from the doorway of Damon's room, eyes scanning the duffel on the bed and the clothes and books laying next to it.
"Yeah... I figured I may have overstayed my welcome." Damon admitted. There was no point in denying what was true. Especially not when the evidence was glaring this much.
"Which one?" Stefan asked calmly and yet, something in his voice and tone pulled Damon's eyes to her brother's.
The older Salvatore shrugged, "You know..."
"Because I said something about your feelings for Elena?" Stefan fidgeted.
"It's only part of the reason." Damon sighed, running his fingers through his short hair as he took a sit at the foot of his bed, looking at his brother. "Look, I promised I would make sure you live a happy, comfortable life full of happiness so you wouldn't hate me for making you into a vampire—"
"And so far, you haven't done much to that regard, Damon." Stefan cut through Damon's speech with a frown on his face.
"Stefan—"
"Leaving me for decades, with some warped mentality of protecting my happiness, is not the same as showing me a beautiful eternity, Damon. You're just running away. You've been running away since we turned." Stefan retorted.
"That's not—" This wasn't exactly how Damon had imagine this farewell would be. This hasn't been how all the other farewells have been so he didn't think this would be any different.
"That's not what?" Stefan sounded a bit angry. "Are you still guilty? Is that it? Do you still feel like I'm so impressionable that I would do whatever you do without having a mind of my own?"
"That's not—" Damon has lost all his eloquence with the onslaught of questions that Stefan was throwing at him.
"Then what is it?!" The younger of the two snapped.
"Stefan."
"Make me understand because I'm happy now." He confessed. Going to school with Elena, making friends, living a "normal" life with his great nephew/uncle Jack and his wife and sons, while playing the loving cousin Stefan to them, was enough for him. "Damon, I'm happy. You understand what I mean? I'm happy. With you. And Elena. And Jack and his family of misfits... and you leaving is not going to make me happy especially if you think you're doing it for me."
"How can you want me to stay? You said it yourself and I think you're right. I have developed feelings for your girlfriend. While dealing with the original family, somewhere along the line, I did. And I don't want to come between—"
"You won't." Stefan cut in Damon's monologue, arms folded across his chest as he looked down at his older brother, dating him to say otherwise.
Damon relaxed on the bed, raising a brow at Stefan. "A bit confident, are we?"
"I know you, Damon. You're selfish, self gratifying and irresponsible at times and you love very few people. Very few." Stefan says confidently. "I also know that you love me the most."
"That's a reach." Damon stood from where he sat, walking around the bed. It may not be set in stone but it was clear to him that he wasn't leaving Mystic Hills any time soon.
"Shut up." Stefan says. "This conversation never happened. Do with it what you will..." he turned to leave, then stopped in the doorway to add: "I just want you to know that I trust you won't do anything to jeopardize my happiness and having you here with me is more important than anything in the world to me. That was the deal."
——————
Leaving Mystic Hills after that, had been impossible. How did one walk away from all that? Stefan was happy to have him around. Regardless of his impulsiveness and the many arguments they had because of that... his brother wanted him around and Damon, for the first time in more than a century, felt like he had come home.
If only his heart could make up its mind to just be happy for his brother and not agonize over a love that was never going to happen.
It was his indecorous love for his brother's girlfriend that led him to the life of a hermit.
He scoffed at his own thoughts, his thoughts swaying back to the witch.
She called frequently, forced him to eat actual food and gave him the occasional headache when he was swaying into his danger areas of bloodsucking.
She kept him on a straight path. Somewhere along the line, Bonnie had bought into the propaganda that Damon Salvatore was worth saving, and she had pursued that course relentlessly until Damon caught himself at random times, believing that too.
He threw his head back, downing the rest of the contents of the bottle of bourbon in one final gulp and hurling the empty bottle at the next tree.
He stood, brushing the back of his pants of any possible traces of dirt from where he had been sitting on the log.
He was going to head into town and call Bonnie over for dinner if the witch wasn't busy with her good for nothing colt of a boyfriend, Jeremy.
The thought was enough to make him roll his eyes as he started the slow journey back into town.
