A/N: I know, I'm a terrible updater and I hate myself for it. But I'm not an abandoner, so voilà!
Damon walked into the living room after hanging up his coat in the hallway. It had been a long day, not including the overtime, and all he wanted to do was sit down and – well, that was it. But when he came closer he saw that Elena was bundled with her face in the cushion. He wondered if she'd waited up for him and fallen asleep as he walked to her side.
Damon was about to carry her to his room when he saw that she was shaking and gently sobbing. He knelt on the couch. "Elena?" He put a hand on her shoulder and felt that her skin was feverish and slick with sweat. She flinched away from him and kept her face buried as she began to shake harder. She muttered something into the upholstery.
"What's wrong?" His hand went to her head and he stroked her hair, wishing he could see her face and ask what was wrong.
She wouldn't turn around and he was worried, so he tried to gently peel her from the couch so he could look at her. She yanked from his grip and screamed. Damon immediately eased up his force.
He could see part of her face now and it didn't reassure him. Her eyes were terrified and her breath was coming out in ragged gasps. "Damon is it really you?"
"Of course." He tried to soothe her, but nothing seemed like it would calm her down.
She cried out and shook like an invisible current ran through her body. She wrapped an arm around herself. "Help me please!"
"What happened?" He repeated his question, but she didn't seem to understand. He tried again.
"C-Caroline," Elena sobbed, her face falling.
"Caroline—?" Damon brushed his hands against her sweaty face as he tried to get Elena to look at him.
He couldn't understand everything she was saying because of her intense stuttering and slurring. "G-gave…water…something…I-I—Damon!" She clawed at her arms.
It didn't take him long to figure out what had happened. "What was it?" He tried to ask, but he knew she would never have taken anything on purpose. She'd probably had no idea. He'd kill Caroline.
He picked her up as gently as he could, but she still cried out in terror. "Hey, it's gonna be okay," he promised.
"No-no!" She flailed, but Damon held her tight.
"I'm taking you to the hospital. You're having a bad reaction or an overdose. Ssh, don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you. I swear I won't, I swear." He had no doubt she would've kept fighting him, but she seemed to run out of strength and just stayed shivering and still in his arms.
He took her to his car in the garage of the apartment he shared with Stefan. She protested quietly when he put her in the seat and fastened the seatbelt around her leaning body.
There were damp patches on his shirt from where he'd touched her bare skin and her sweat was staring to show through the white shirt and grey sweatpants she was wearing, but her skin was cold as ice. He looked over to her to see that even her eyes were fluttering with her trembling. "God, why are you shaking like this?" Damon asked fearfully as reversed his car out of the parking spot.
He'd never had such a long drive in his life, but he was careful. He wasn't even sure she knew she was in a car, but he wanted to be careful, for her.
When he carried her into the emergency room and told the nurses the problem, they came up to him with a stretcher almost immediately. No sooner than he set her down, they took her away from him. They wheeled her off, all the while conveying technical information and terms that he didn't understand.
They asked him what she took and he told them he didn't know, that she didn't take it on purpose, it was someone else's. He could tell they didn't believe him and they wanted to test him, too, but he refused. A nurse led him to a chair and gave him some paperwork to fill out. He told her the last thing he wanted to do was sit, but she wouldn't let him near Elena. No one was allowed, she said.
He filled out the information as best he could. Not even Elena would have known all of it, he was sure, given the history of her family.
It felt like forever, but at the same time he could hardly remember any of it. His brain was a storm cloud of angry, messy what-ifs and please-gods. When a somber woman came to stand before him, he was panicked. Was this the usual amount of time it took? Had something gone wrong? Was she okay?
"You're here for Elena Gilbert?" She looked up from the clipboard to address him.
"Yes."
"Are you of any relation to her?'
He looked at her with desperate eyes. "Yes. Please, I'm all she has. Just tell me, is she okay?"
The woman let out a breath that was almost a sigh. "We pumped her stomach, but a lot of whatever drug she took is still in her system so we're giving her intravenous fluids now. We're running tests to make sure there won't be any lasting problems." She paused to really look at him. He must have looked like a wreck. No sleep, no shower, and purely panicked, but something made her continue. "If you'll follow me you can see her now. She's been in and out of it because she's still fighting the effects."
Damon couldn't remember words sounding sweeter. Not that she was still out of it, but that he could see her again.
As he entered the small hospital room, he saw her and his stomach dropped with relief, and a little bit of horror. She was so pale and she looked so sick. But she was breathing and she wasn't shaking anymore. The woman left him after warning him again to be careful with her. As if she even needed to say.
He sank down on the seat next to her and took her hand. He kissed it and held it to his mouth for a while. "How could I have been such an idiot?" He finally asked her unconscious form. "I should have been there. This never should have happened."
Her eyes remained closed and her breathing steady. He noticed one side of her face looked like a giant bruise was forming. He wondered if she fell and hit it while under the influence of whatever Caroline had slipped her. He would've stroked it, but he was afraid of hurting her, even if she was asleep.
"I couldn't have been more of an idiot," he told her. "I let all of this happen." Maybe if Caroline hadn't thought that they—he couldn't even hold a thought of Caroline. Everything in his head just kept drifting back to Elena. Helping her with homework, driving, and the zoo. He felt closer to her than he ever had Caroline, or even Stefan.
And he knew it was wrong because she was so young and the little sister of his girlfriend, but… "I regret every chance I didn't take kissing you." He told her as she slept. Maybe this was the only time he'd ever be able to tell her. He kissed her hand as if to make up for lost time. "Who cares that you're only 17? I'd wait a lifetime for you. I know that our timing is kind of fucked up, but I don't know why I never told you that you're the most mature, sweat girl...You've lived through more bullshit in a few years than most people will deal with in their entire lives and you're still perfect."
Damon tugged the blanket up to make sure she was warm in the cold hospital room. "And you know what? The first chance we get, I am going to kiss you so—well, let me put it this way, scandalized mothers everywhere will gasp with horror." He chuckled darkly. "So you better wake up and be okay," he pleaded.
The doctor came in then and introduced himself. Damon blinked back his tears and listened as he told him they were giving her Naloxone to keep her heart beating and her body warm as well as monitoring her blood and oxygen to make sure the drugs were completely gone from her system. He also talked about it being normal for drug overdose patients to sleep a lot after their bodies experienced that amount of stress and that he expected Elena to make a full recovery.
Damon thanked him and expected the doctor to leave when he had informed him of her current condition, but he lingered. He noticed the doctor was looking at her face. "One of the hospital's social services staff will be down here shortly to take both of your statements."
Damon didn't understand at first, but then realized this was standard procedure when abuse was suspected. It had happened often enough when he was a little kid, but it had been so long, he'd almost forgotten. Anger filled his voice when the doctor thought Damon was capable of anything like what his father had done. "I don't know what happened to her face." His voice came up much angrier than he'd intended.
The doctor's eyebrows lifted and, if anything, Damon's outburst served to make him more skeptical. "Bruising like that is the result of a direct blow to the face. And if she decides to press charges, well, spousal abuse is taken very seriously, Mr. Gilbert."
Damon didn't correct his assumption that they were married and the man left. Did they even read her medical chart? It stated clearly that she was unmarried. Damon went back to gazing at Elena, but he didn't have much time to think about her bruises and their implications or the doctor's warning before Elena's breathing changed and her eyes flickered open. He gave her a small smile. "Hey there, baby. I was so scared of losing you." He caught a lock of her soft hair just to make sure she was really there. "We just found each other. How fucked up would that be?"
"I wasn't scared all that much," she said dreamily. He could see that she was struggling to stay awake.
He gave a strangled laugh. "You weren't?" Damon's eyes could hardly look away from hers, like that was where they belonged, locked onto hers.
"No," she sighed. "I knew you'd come for me."
Damon knew he was supposed to treat her delicately, but he pulled her into a tight hug and she leaned into it. His heavy heart had never felt so full.
He didn't know how long the embrace lasted, but the sound of a crashing medical cart followed by arguing made Damon look up. He set Elena down gently onto the hospital bed and saw that she was already sound asleep. Good. He didn't want her rest to be interrupted.
He walked out of her room to see Stefan arguing with the nurse and struggling in the grip of one of the orderlies. Damon could smell the alcohol on him right away.
"You have to let me see her!" Stefan tried to break free of the man who held him, but he was unsteady on his feet and ended up leaning on him instead.
Damon could never remember being so furious. It all came to him in a flash of realization. In his little brother he saw the drunken father he'd tried so hard to protect Stefan from. The same man who was so sick or broken he took to beating women. Damon strode forward and pinned his brother to the wall by his throat. "What are you doing here?" He growled out the words and let his fingers tighten.
It was obvious Stefan couldn't answer as he choked and clawed at the hands at his throat, but Damon didn't care much, until he realized how close he'd come to being just as wrong as his brother had been. He released Stefan before the orderly could pull him off his brother. "Don't ever come anywhere near her again." His voice was low and quiet, but his tone was menacing.
Stefan swallowed and massaged his throat. "But I'm her boyfriend!"
"Not anymore." Damon hadn't realized it until he said it out loud. Elena was his. Or he was hers. It didn't matter. He'd been a fool for long enough.
Stefan took a few seconds to process his words before surging violently at Damon. "You can't decide that! Only she—only she can!" He'd grabbed his brother's jacket, but the orderly pulled him off.
Damon looked into Stefan's glassy, bloodshot eyes and couldn't see his little brother at all. "And she will be pressing charges for assault if I have any say in the matter." He informed his brother coolly as he straightened the black leather.
"You!" Stefan spat. Damon had never seen such hatred in his brother's eyes. "This is your fault! You always wanted her and-and you poisoned her against me. You're sick. Caroline even said, but, no, I told her no, you were my brother. I never would ha-have had to-had to do what I did if it weren't for YOU!" His brother wobbled on his feet and tried his best to level his glare.
"Don't you dare act like you hitting her is my fault." The commotion had finally brought a police officer who grabbed Stefan and started informing him of his Miranda rights, probably to arrest him for drunken disorderly. "Father would be so proud of you." Damon summoned all his disgust and put it in his words before turning his back on Stefan and going back to Elena's room. When he closed the door the last thing he saw was his brother being led away in cuffs.
"Where did you go?" Elena was awake again when he sat down next to her.
"Doesn't matter. I'm here now and I'm never leaving." He took her hand and kissed her knuckles.
She smiled blearily at him. "Promises, promises."
"I love you," he said. It was simple and strong, like how they'd first begun to notice each other, all while realizing they'd always known, somehow.
Her eyes went wide and her breath seemed shaky. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." He confirmed.
There were tears in her eyes and she brought the large hand holding hers to her mouth to hide her smile, but of course he could feel it against the back of his hand.
He was perfectly content just to smile at her. It felt good, unbelievably good, just to look at her. He hadn't allowed himself even that for so long. He'd been so afraid any lingering stares would prove Caroline right and he hadn't known at the time, hadn't known that she was right. Something drew them to each other and they were powerless to fight it. Why had they even wanted to fight it in the first place? She was everything he ever wanted. More.
Elena had fallen asleep a while ago and Damon would have, too, if not for his attempt to make up for lost time by drinking her in. Already he was thinking about their future together. Maybe a family and a dog, with some white picket fence wrapped around that life like a ribbon. He noticed his phone vibrate. His right hand was under Elena's cheek and he didn't want to disturb her, so he used his left to fish it out of his jacket pocket and answer.
"Yes?" He said quietly, not recognizing the number.
"Mr. Salvatore? This call is to inform you that one Caroline Forbes is in the E.R. You're listed as her first emergency contact in the medical records we have on file."
Damon's heart started to race. "What happened?"
"There was an accident and Ms. Forbes is in stable condition, but we have reason to suspect substance abuse was involved. How soon can you get here?"
Damon sighed. "Pretty soon." But Damon realized he had no desire to see Caroline, or to help her. She'd just drugged Elena and had caused a life-threatening overdose. And he'd just promised he wouldn't leave Elena… "Actually, I don't think I can make it." He clicked off his phone. He felt a stab of guilt, because Caroline didn't have anyone else. But then he looked at the girl sleeping peacefully and he remembered that neither did Elena. And he made his choice.
P.S. Did anyone else squee when (***Tiny teeny spoiler alert, do not read on if you haven't seen the latest lalalalalalalaalala***) Damon called Elena 'baby' in the season finale?