Elena is so beautiful that she makes him greedy for her.
The more near she is, the greedier he is. Maybe it's because whenever he is on one of her slender arms, Stefan is on the other. If he has part of her heart, Stefan has the other one.
A little voice inside of his head whispers that Stefan has the bigger one but he does not listen. He has no will or patience to think that his brother has found his way into her like bone marrow, and so having Elena means having the girl Stefan's love made out of her; because that's only the aftermath of the first love, he tells himself.
She can move on from there. She is moving on, into his willing arms. Even though she asked Stefan to take her to the dance when he was just so ready to buy her a corsage and do all that ridiculous things girls like so much.
She's the epitome of the innocence he's lost, and the 1920's look is great on her even if it doesn't suit her quite so. She doesn't have the bearing for it, the posture. She's not fatale, unlike the witch.
It must be the power underneath her skin, or simply her combative attitude that makes her look like she can actually hold both her liquor and her men, then bury her last victim and entice her next without so much as breaking a nail.
Bonnie moves like she owns the room, in fact, for a moment Damon thinks she does.
He has eyes only for Elena, yet he can feel Bonnie's presence like she's a magnetic pole – only, he can't always tell if she's opposite or the same as he is.
It's always been like this, but lately it's becoming harder to ignore it and he doesn't know why. He supposes her venting to him a few weeks ago forced him to see a part of her that he gladly ignored all this time because even if he's the vampire, she's always been the less human between the two of them. She's always so in control, so untouchable, so strong and cold, like an ivory tower despite her inner fire - but that night he opened the door to a teenage girl, made of skin and bones and hot blood; a girl, very young and very broken and he watched her with fascination, the same way you'd watch at a natural disaster - with excitement and fear for what's about to come and the consciousness of being unable to keep your eyes off it.
So she is... what? A hurricane? Or maybe a thunderstorm, or an earthquake. But no, not that. She's not as sudden, not so quickly over. Bonnie rises slow and inevitable, like high tide.
He can feel her moving around him, yet he looks at Elena. Elena whom is all smiles in the circle of his brother's arms. Elena whom is exploring her options like they are two cars she's trying out before deciding which one to buy. It's Elena, that shames him more than anything he's done in his years as a bloody vampire.
How Stefan can be so gracious about this is beyond him. He bragged to Stefan about their little randevouz at the motel to hit a nerve, to make him lose his temper, but he didn't. Despite the hurt so clear on his face, Stefan did not bat a lash, and to his words - You know it's only a matter of time before she is mine - he simply took a sip of his drink and answered that, "She's not a possession, Damon. She's not a thing. She is a woman with a will; a woman I love enough to let go of if I must, because her happiness is mine too."
God, how he hates the way Stefan has to love her. It's weak, or probably just right.
Right or wrong for Damon has always been a simple matter of convenience.
In regard to Elena, while he is the monster or the guardian angel - always one step behind or walking ahead without her even trying to catch up - Stefan is simply the one standing by her side; her equal; her other half. And Damon feels like he is always trying to glue the pieces of his soul back together, knowing that they won't fit. Not anymore.
"You're sickening."
Not really despite the molasses pouring from his words. Damon knows that.
And Damon knows that he, unlike Stefan, is not able to offer Elena such a pure love, because his feelings for her are forever tainted with obsession, a desire that makes him sick to the stomach, a hungry need for acknowledgment. Elena makes that need grow and grow, even more than Katherine's flirty ways that never gave rest to his suspects of her favor for his little brother; more then Giuseppe's perpetual discontent with his scandalously liberal thoughts that portano la vergogna sul buon nome della famiglia, as he so often accused him to, in his first language.
Elena is genuinely uncertain of what she wants, or really feels, and it makes him hope that the moment someone will make him worthy is just a grasp away, and makes him feel crazy with anticipation, need and frustration. And so he wants to tear her from Stefan's arms but he doesn't, because there would be no point in doing that. Because he could break every bone in her slender arms and she would still find a way to hold on to Stefan; that's the nature of their bond. It comes natural to her, like breathing. It's always there, under layers of obstacles and distance. Because Elena can have doubts about the way she really feels about Damon, but she never doubts her love for Stefan. That love is her safest place, her refuge, and her touchstone. And him digging a place into her heart won't change it, so he needs to be better, be stronger, until the moment he will surpass Stefan in her heart.
That moment will come; he needs to believe that much.
This time, he'll have to interrupt the idyllic moment, because there are more pressing matters at hand.
When he goes to alert Bonnie he finds himself a little surprise because she's not alone - she might as well be, considering whom she chose to be with.
"Sorry to ruin your seven minutes in heaven," he says, with the most incredulous face. She's always all duty so he is quite surprised she made time in her agenda for a make out session; at some point he forgot she was a human being, with physical needs, and it surprises him even more whom she chose to relieve those needs with.
She must be clearly out of her mind to lower herself so much.
"We have a problem."
She gives Jamie an apologetic look and follows him out, falling into step with him. Or maybe the other way around, he's not sure. As he's not sure if it bothers him more- her choice of partner or the fact that she actually has one for how pathetic the guy can be.
"Have you got a taste for losers?" he asks, not bothering to turn around to look at her outraged face.
He got her mad, he can feel the tension rising from her petite, soft body walking next to him.
"Why would you think that?" she asks, recovering soon, "you didn't see me kissing you."
What she is implying is pretty clear, but it doesn't make him back down.
"Your loss, witchy. I would have been more efficient than outsider-boy. It seemed to me that you were the one doing all the work."
"Your interest in my love life is touching," she replies, sarcastic.
"I'm not interested at all," he says, with emphasis, "if you're so desperate for someone that you need to settle for Jerry-"
"Jamie," she corrects him, angrily.
"Whatever," who gives enough of a fuck about him to take time to remember his name? "If you need to settle-"
But again she won't let him finish. He has insulted her enough, and she won't take it like a good girl.
"Says the vampire that holds on to the gown of his brother's girlfriends," she strikes back, stopping in the middle of the hallway and watching him turn around to face her. "First Katherine, then Elena. You know what they say, the third time's the charm." She smiles sarcastically tasting poison on her tongue when she adds, "Or maybe you could just accept the bitter truth, Damon. You are not Stefan, and you'll never be Stefan."
It's his weak spot, his Achilles' heel; she watches his face while his brain registers the blow. His eyes go wider for a single instant and a nerve under his jaw pulls and she knows his sore point hurts. That's good, because he's making her hurt too and it's only fair. And even if she feels a bit guilty about it, she won't show it.
"At least I can get laid," he says, adding a smile to his indifferent façade, "I don't have to buy a map for loser-boy-of-the-month so he'll know what he's doing, nor will I have to jump his bones because the thought hasn't even crossed his mind," He says, looking like he's dying to laugh in her face at her deepest insecurities, "flash news, Judgey, you should really make it hard for him."
He knows he's twisted the knife perfectly well when he sees glassy eyes looking at him and then feels her hand hit his cheek. It takes him by surprise, this reaction of hers. She could witchy-migraine him, or set him on fire, instead she reacted in the most human, spontaneous, womanly way possible. Bonnie slapped him, and now he is mesmerized by her pain and her beauty because her breath is heavy, her skin is hot, her chest rises and lowers fast, her lips are parted so that he catches the impossible white of her pearly teeth and she stands so proud and so close to him, looking every inch like an irate lady.
If they were really in the twenty's - if Elena wasn't in danger, if Stefan was not with Klaus right now, if Bonnie wasn't more inclined to choke herself with her own tongue rather then share her vital space with him, if it wasn't just nuts to think of something like that in general - well, he thinks, if it was that peculiar case in which nothing was the way it is- he would be trapping her against the wall right now and ravishing her.
The picture in his mind is really clear, like a movie in Technicolor: his left hand grips her hip tightly, leaving marks on the soft skin, his foot kicks at her leg so she will open them to accommodate his body, his right hand slips in between the curves of her sex while his mouth swallows her cry. He would make her beg, and beg and beg. She would know pleasure, and lust and carnal gratification in its purest form and never again would she settle for anything less.
It's a crazy thought - if fueled by revenge or lust, he can't really tell.
What he knows is that this conversation - this entire, indefinable, absolutely nerve-wracking thing with her - took a path it wasn't supposed to, because he hadn't meant to hurt her but he did, and she had hurt him back, and now they are cut open and bleeding and neither of them can stand the sight.
He pushed too much, he knows. He was angry and humiliated because of Elena, but he can never take it out on her because she's so fragile, so delicate. Bonnie on the other hand looks always so damn in control and he just wants her to lose it - he always wants her to lose it. He doesn't know the reason why, but when he sees her, he suddenly has this one-track mind- to snap her out of that apathy she chose for herself.
It's like she's the sleeping beauty, and there's no way to wake her up.
He keeps his eyes on her when she just turns her back and walks away from him, leaving him to trace his cheek with his cold fingertips.
But, she is not the princess of the story, he realizes. She's the witch, and the witch never gets to the last page.
Note: "portano la vergogna sul buon nome della famiglia" means "bring shame to the family's good name".