A/N1: Some of you guys really hate Elena right now, and with very good reason. I don't want to give too much away about where this story is headed, but all I will say is that Damon and Elena are definitely on a journey in this fic, for better or for worse. I hope you guys enjoy this chap...it continues from the last scene
He's at the bar as soon as walks in. He orders a scotch, and he promises to himself that he won't think about her, but it's futile.
She was confused that night. He expected that. But he never expected her to completely ignore him for almost the entire week after. Elena was a take-charge kind of girl, someone who faced the problem head-on. The fact that she went to his brother without even the inkling to talk to him was a blow to his face. Sure, he's terrible at talking about feelings and what not, but she isn't. She's the one always insisting that he turn on his human switch or whatnot.
He doesn't even care if she just says hello. At least it is something. He just doesn't understand how Elena Gilbert, someone usually so caring and altruistic, can be so insensitive.
He snaps out of his thoughts when his drink lands in front of him. He hears a high-pitched noise and looks over to the other end of the bar. He spots a group of tipsy twenty-something sorority girls pointing and giggling at him.
He mulls over it for about a millisecond. He wants Elena, but this will do.
He smirks and asks the bartender to send them all a drink, before getting up and sauntering his way over to them. His eyes never once leave their necks.
After all, Elena is having some fun with his brother. Why shouldn't he have some fun with a few sisters?
The next day, when he wakes up, he compels the sorority girls and kicks them out. When he stumbles down the stairs, he spots someone – Stefan he assumes – sitting at the kitchen counter.
"Morning," Damon mumbles somewhat incoherently
"Afternoon you mean," Stefan corrects, "It's three."
"Elena here?" Damon asks. He holds his head, trying to will away his splitting headache.
"Nope…she left last night. Said she wasn't feeling well or something. Why?"
Damon just shrugs, and tries to feel around for the refrigerator handle. His eyes are still half-shut, and Stefan shakes his head. He opens the door for him and grabs a blood bag. Damon takes the bag from his brother's hand and heads slowly back upstairs.
"You're welcome," Stefan calls out, before he disappears. Damon stays in bed for the rest of the afternoon, but he's out the door by nightfall.
Midnight munchies are always the worst. Especially when you're drunk.
He has two dead bodies on his hands. It shouldn't have happened, but he was too drunk and hungry to use compulsion at the time. He probably should have thought of that when the other girl started screaming her head off while he went to get a taste of her friend. Don't ask him why he didn't compel the two idiots beforehand; blame it on the alcohol.
But really. Who knew that the one girl was going to be so pathetically weak that she couldn't even handle one sip? That she couldn't hold down blood when he tried to shove it down her throats? As for the other girl - the loud one, she deserved to have her neck snapped; she was just so damn irritating.
He groans when he realizes that he has to drag both of the bodies around the woods, and all the lifting makes him sober up a little.
He sees a fairly soft spot near a willow tree and drags the bodies over, trying to make as little noise as possible. The girl with the snapped neck gets caught in a tree root, and he has to drop the other one to get her out. He makes a sound of disgust when a bunch of weevils start crawling up his hand. He's never going after underage girls again. He doesn't get laid and he has to deal with bodies.
When he finally makes it to the willow, he remembers that he needs a shovel.
Well, fuck.
Maybe he should have dumped them in the water instead.
Stefan's practically waiting for him the next day. He doesn't even manage to get down the stairs before Stefan lashes into him a little before noon.
"What's wrong with you, Damon?"
"What are you talking about, Steffy?" He's not hungover today. Thank goodness. He would've never had the mental or physical capacity to think about burying those girls if he had been completely wasted yesterday.
"The drinking, the girls, the attacks? I know you killed those girls last night. It's all over the news," he berates, "I thought that things would get better in this town after Klaus died, not worse. Why are you trying to destroy it again?"
"It's fun. You should really give it a try," Damon smirks, quickly moving down the staircase.
"Damon, seriously." Stefan gives him a look – the one with all the deep-seated wrinkles on his forehead. For a minute, Damon considers letting it all out and telling his brother that he slept with his little innocent angel of a girlfriend right before she went to warm up his bed.
Stefan tilts his head expectantly, and he thinks it would be pretty fun to see the damage he could create with just a few words, but he decides against it. It's partially because Damon doesn't want to stoop down to Elena's level, but it's also partially because he'd rather see Elena bear the brunt of the suffering. Stefan's been nothing but a saint, and Damon teases him endlessly about it, but he would never wish his brother pain and heartache. At least not right now.
"Seriously," Damon starts gravely, grabbing Stefan by the shoulders. Almost instantaneously, his frown turns into a full-blown, wicked smile and he continues, "I like alcohol and girls like me buying them alcohol and girls taste like fucking paradise compared to that stuff in hospitals." Stefan abruptly pulls away from a snickering Damon and throws his hands in the air.
"I don't know why I still even bother with you," he snarls, huffing as he retreats up the stairs.
Damon smiles a bit. He could now check off "Make Stefan angry" off his To-Do list for today.
Another thing that is on that list?
Get fucked up, get laid, and get fresh blood.
And yes, they were all considered one single item.
He puts on his leather jacket and black shades and grins.
He's asking for trouble tonight.
And he doesn't care.
Elena's waiting for Stefan at the boarding house when she sees Damon stagger in. Normally, she wouldn't think twice because he's been stirring her awake at four in the morning lately. He's always loudly crashing into his bed with what seems to be a whole entourage of girls or vomiting his liver out in his toilet. She knows that the sudden rise of "horrendous animal attacks" in the area isn't coincidental either.
Tonight, he smells like fruity vodka, cheap perfume and smoke. That raises her eyebrows in itself, considering Damon's aversion to skanky hookers who only order mixed drinks. But what worry her are the noticeable bloodstains on his collar. Damon was always risky and self-destructive, but he was never careless.
"How much did you drink?" she asks cautiously. It's the first time she actually has to face him; she has nowhere else to go. She was trying to rid Damon out of her life because she knew it would not end well. So she doesn't want to care about him because it would ruin everything she was trying to do – avoid Damon, stabilize her relationship with Stefan, not be Katherine…But seeing him like this, so fragile and tragic, she can't help it. Life seemed to have other plans for her.
"Teeny weeny bit," he says, waving his hands as if it were nothing.
"Damon…" He can barely stand up, his mouth is half open, and his clothes aren't even on straight.
"What are you doing here?" he slurs, as if it's the first time he's noticed her. He stumbles into the parlor, and she actually feels sick to her stomach at what she's done to him. She knows it's her fault he's been like this for the last week. Of course she knew Damon was in the room next to her and Stefan, but he had heard them when they were together a year ago. And she had heard him with several girls in the past. She hadn't thought Damon Salvatore, a man who prided himself in getting all the girls and paraded them in front of her face, would be so devastated when she did it to him. She wasn't trying to be mean; she was trying to be normal and honest. And she honestly loves Stefan.
"You're wasted," she states, moving to help him. He bats her hands away.
"That's not an answer." She ignores him, avoiding the topic of Stefan for now.
"Come on. You should sit down." She puts her arm underneath him and tries to steer him to a chair in front of the fireplace. She is thankful that the blood on his shirt is dry.
"I don't need your help," he tells her. But his body doesn't quite feel the same way and he ends up swinging his body into Elena's side, leaning into her. Her body shudders involuntarily at the contact, reminding her of the way her body's curves fit against him a little over a week ago.
But she repeats to herself that it's just the effects of the alcohol that is controlling his body; that he doesn't even know it's her half-carrying him to the chair. So when he tilts his head into her neck, she tells herself that she's not holding her breath at the sudden proximity of his lips but at the atrocious smell of alcohol and blood emanating from his entire body.
"Stop dragging your feet. We're almost there," she says, her face turned away from him. When they get close enough to the chair, she lets go of him and he collapses into it face-down, arms outstretched over the chair arms. She flips him over and when he's finally settled in, she straightens up.
"Hold still." She leaves him there and heads to the kitchen. She looks for some blood in the fridge but it seems they're out, so she grabs the water bottle on the adjacent shelf and heads back out to Damon. She kneels in front of the vampire, and shakes his knees lightly to make him alert again.
"Damon, drink this. It'll help." He shakes his head childishly and tries to avoid the bottle she's waving in front of his face.
"Stop being stubborn. Open your mouth," she demands, but he turns his head away. She lets out a noise of frustration and puts the bottle's opening to his mouth. He continues to keep his mouth shut. Irritated, she sets the bottle down and forcibly opens his mouth by squeezing his cheeks together before sticking the bottle between his parted lips. When she tilts the bottle slightly, he gurgles and begins to choke on it.
"You have to drink it down. I don't want you choking on your own vomit in an hour," she says seriously. While she tilts the bottle up at an even steeper angle, the water rushes into his mouth at a quicker rate and he's forced to swallow it down. Minutes pass and silence fills the room, as she watches him become more aware of his surroundings.
"You've been ignoring me," he murmurs suddenly. She pauses. She would rather have him drunk off his ass and have him slobbering all over himself than to have this conversation with him.
"You're the reason I'm like this and you know it," he goes on.
"Damon…" she begins, trying to find the right words to say. His eyes are still closed and even though he's still drunk, she knows that he's right and that he has every reason to be upset about that night and everything afterwards. She wants to tell him that she had run away from him that night because she had been scared. Of Klaus, of death, of them, of being Katherine, she still doesn't know.
"I wasn't thinking clearly…I thought I was going to die," she tries to explain instead. His eyes open abruptly, and even though his body seems lifeless, his eyes are still daggers in his drunken stupor.
"So the last thing you wanted to do before you died was to have your way with me and then throw me off a cliff. Well, mission accomplished. You can check off that box."
"You know it wasn't like that. We-we were caught up in that moment and we were angry and hurt and stubborn…God, you're always so stubborn-," she rambles, running a hand through her hair.
"Thanks for making me feel so much better," he rolls his eyes. She takes his hands tentatively and forces him to look at her. He stares back at her intently, and she can't help but shiver under his gaze.
"I didn't mean – I'm not trying to hurt you, Damon. You must know that."
"You have a really funny way of showing it," he snorts, pulling his hands away from her.
"We're friends. I care about you…But that's it," she reiterates. To herself or to Damon, she's not sure.
"Could've fooled me…Katherine," he spits out. She stays on the floor, motionless. The last time he had said it to her, she didn't believe him. This time, she can definitely understand where he's coming from, but she keeps telling herself over and over again that she's not Katherine. Katherine was cruel because she played with both of the brothers' hearts, not because she harshly shot one of them down. Elena thinks there is a big difference. At least, she hopes there is.
"Damon…just please. You're better than this," she motions at him vaguely, commenting on the tragic state he's in.
"Just because you keep saying it doesn't mean it's true."
"Just because you keep denying it doesn't make it any less true," she points out. She doesn't want to admit that he was only better because of her.
"Well it seems we're at odds again…Want to make everything okay by fucking me?"
"Don't be so crass," she reproaches. "And you know that's not why it happened exactly," she adds. She actually has no clue why it happened exactly, but she thinks her instinctual reply might've been a little too off-putting. Damon is already annoyed; she doesn't want a drunk and angry Damon on her hands.
"No, I don't. Please, enlighten me, Elena. Why did that little rendezvous of ours happen?"
"I'm not getting into this with you right now. You're drunk; you probably won't remember this conversation tomorrow morning," she refuses.
"You ought to love that, considering how you seem to have forgotten everything that happened here a few nights ago."
"I'm with Stefan now," she sighs, "You have to forget that night ever happened. It's easier this way…for everyone. Okay, Damon?"
He doesn't reply, and when he doesn't say anything for the next several minutes, she thinks he might have fallen asleep or gone unconscious again. She punches his arm.
"Ow," he whines, startled at the action. She knows it doesn't hurt, so she repeats herself, "Okay, Damon? Nothing happened that night."
"Whatever," he shrugs.
When he keeps his eyes shut and doesn't say anything else, she gives up on him and gets up to leave him to his thoughts. She lets out a tiny gasp in surprise when she notices Stefan's shadow in the corridor.
"What happened that night?"
A/N2: I might be MIA for the next 2-3 weeks because of spring break and my midterms (hence, the really quick update). Review to tide me over?
