A/N I couldn't keep it a one-shot, what with all the reviews. They've put a ridiculous, pansy-ass smile on my face. I adore you guys, and thank God I prepped some chapters, huh? I bring you the second chapter! Oh, and I forgot to put a disclaimer last time. Standard disclaimers apply, I don't own the characters or The Vampire Diaries as a whole. Only the plot of this story is mine.
Elena knows she didn't sleep alone last night.
The bed has a small depression from where Damon's body rested, and his scent is too strong for her nose ignore.
With each inflow of breath, her lungs fill with his unforgettable smell, that unique combination of ice and sea-spray which she's never been able to verbalize before now. With her switch off though, she doesn't care much. It's just his smell, the one that has invaded her nose countless times before.
For a moment, Elena wonders why she can put a name to his scent now. It's as if being mostly emotionless has kicked her mind into overdrive, her intellect trying to make up for her lack of human sentiment.
Rubbing her eyes, she stares up at the ceiling for nearly half a minute. She has no trouble picking out the scratch patterns on the wood, thanks to her keen vampire eyesight. She stays completely still for all of fifteen seconds, strangely dazed.
Then, just as quickly as she went still, Elena's body moves in a blur of speed.
Her feet lead her straight to Damon's bathroom, where she strips completely bare.
Elena may not feel much of anything, but her mind still remembers how she loved his tub.
By the time Elena ambles down the stairs at a leisurely pace, the boarding house is already alive with the chatter of conversation. She can hear Stefan talking to Caroline, with the occasional interjection from Damon. She focuses on shutting out their words, and then heads straight towards the kitchen without even saying hello.
As she walks, Elena's fingers tap on the buckle of her belt, worn as if her dark-wash jeans weren't tight enough already. Like last time, she's wearing another of Damon's shirts. Her tapping fingers play some tune, of which she doesn't even remember the title.
Once she reaches the kitchen counter near the stove, she reaches upwards, opening the cupboard.
Elena strains slightly then, standing on her toes to grab the box of coffee packets near the back. Ever since she started spending lots of time at the Salvatore boarding house, the brothers had taken to storing food for her sake.
The food was now unnecessary, but Elena wanted to use coffee to clear her head.
For some strange reason, she felt as if her mind was equal parts sharp and foggy this morning. She intended to use caffeine to reconcile the uncomfortable contradiction.
"Something you need, sweetheart?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," she says, turning to face the source of the voice. "Reach for the coffee, would you?"
There's a second or two of hesitation on Damon's part, before he complies with her request. She rolls her eyes at the way he's observing her while she makes the beverage.
She says his words right back to him. "Something you need, sweetheart?"
"Nothing at all, baby. And by the way, nice shirt there."
"Knew you'd say that. Hope you don't mind?"
His voice is all confidence and verbal silk. "Oh no, not at all."
Elena knows he's hiding something behind the velvet of his words. She can't bring herself to pay any mind to it, so she just stares right at him as she stirs her coffee. Damon's eyes go right back to being wary, and her heart races at the focused way he's looking at her.
Humanity off or not, she can't deny how attractive he is right now.
To her enormous annoyance, the attraction is reminding her of other things, inserting unbidden thoughts into her head. After all, turning off the switch never tampered with her capacity for recall.
She can still remember everything between them, in clear detail. She can remember the first time they met on a dark town road, up to the sinful way his hips moved as he drove himself inside her.
From the heat building in Damon's eyes, he's remembering everything just as well.
She places the coffee cup on the counter. It's the beginning of their wordless standoff.
Elena takes a step forward. She notices his hands twitch.
Four breaths pass without them doing anything. The heat in his eyes blazes into an inferno, and her fangs itch to come down at the sight. There's no longer anything conscious or rational about what's happening to them. In this moment, only their shared connection rules, not his desire for restraint, nor her glaring lack of humanity. Switches are the farthest thing from both their minds.
Another breath passes, and the air goes heavy with tension. It's as if a steel cable is pulled taut between them, holding the two apart.
Damon counts to four in his head, the man inside him warring with the vampire.
Before he can reach five, the cable breaks completely. Maybe it's the sight of his clothing on her, he thinks.
"Fuck all of this," he says, rushing to meet Elena in a violent kiss.
From then on, it's all hands tangling in hair, tongues desperate for contact, and lips clashing like swords in a fight. Damon and Elena act like two people frighteningly starved, each other the only source of repast. All around them, the world is breaking down into nothing at all, disintegrating into pieces until only the two of them exist.
With each movement of his lips, he's shattering the ice around Elena's heart, breaking it into thousands of shards. Just then, her mind comes up with a more appropriate metaphor for what's happening.
In her head, Elena imagines that her heart has a suit of armor, and now it has a chink from Damon's kisses.
The longer their lips are fused, the larger the chink grows, until it becomes a gaping hole. Elena's heart clenches, and she grabs on to the collar of Damon's shirt. Her fingers easily cause the collar to rip under her strength, and the sound shocks him into stopping.
Just as quickly as their frenzy started, it ends.
The gaping hole in Elena's armor disappears, and tendrils of ice wrap themselves around her heart again. She rushes back to her coffee at vampire speed and picks up the cup.
"What's happening to me?" Elena asks herself, in a voice too soft for even Damon to hear.
She spares one last glance at the vampire in question, takes a breath to compose herself, then walks through the archway leading to the living room.
As soon as Elena plops down onto the couch, Stefan stops his conversation with Caroline. If either of them heard what happened in the kitchen, both vampires are smart enough not to make any comment.
Rolling her eyes at the sudden silence, Elena sips on her caffeine, and makes a dismissive wave with her free hand.
"Oh, don't stop on my account," she says. "Caroline, you were asking Stefan about me, right? Stefan, answer her."
Elena watches as her friend's eyes go wide, shock written across Caroline's features. For his part, Stefan's face is just as wary as his elder brother's was. It fills Elena with annoyance all over again. She thinks about how their obsessive concern is only making her feel restricted. It seems thinking has become her favorite activity now. It's as if the lack of her humanity opened up an intellectual fount she never much accessed before.
"God, what I wouldn't give to go back to kissing Damon," she thinks, shaking her head.
Stefan and Caroline still aren't speaking.
"Think of the devil and the devil shall come," Elena soon says, noticing Damon come through the archway too.
Like her, he's also got a drink in hand, though his isn't strictly a one-serving beverage. No, he's holding a full bottle of bourbon, ostensibly from some kitchen cabinet she's never opened before. Looking passively at Caroline, and then a little more meaningfully at his brother, Damon chugs the bourbon down with his collar ripped and all.
"What happened to your shirt?" Caroline asks.
"Sorry. He and I got a little heated," Elena says, smirking. She pats the space beside her on the couch. "Sit by me, Damon. I'm all lonely, and the two of them are boring me right now."
The elder Salvatore complies without a quip, glancing at her for only the briefest of moments. There's a world of things unsaid between the two of them. Damon doesn't say much once he sits, exchanging a quick look with his younger brother.
Then, he takes another swig of his liquor, and this time Caroline rolls her eyes. She's never been much of a day-drinker.
Stefan chooses to just stare at Elena, clearly evaluating her behavior.
"What is it now, Stefan?"
"Nothing."
"Oh come on," she says. "You're surprised at what I said, aren't you? That Damon and I got a little heated?"
The green-eyed Salvatore doesn't speak, and Elena continues.
"In our defense, we are together. And this stupid sire bond thing has put both of us on eggshells, trying to stop ourselves. Guess stopping just got too hard, and so the dam of restraint broke in a gush. Besides, rationally, I shouldn't even have stopped myself in the first place. Your brother's an excellent kisser. Much better than you, really."
"Elena, enough," Damon says, his voice acquiring a hard edge to it.
Elena faces him, her eyes shining with determination. "Or what, you'll send me to my room like a child?"
"I said enough! I want you to stop talking right now."
His words successfully quell her newfound defiance, and Elena goes silent, as does everyone else. She says nothing as she looks straight at Damon, communicating without the need for a single sound. Her eyes are accusing as she looks at him, shouting a recrimination that rings only in her head.
Do you see what you've done, Damon? You've used the sire bond to put a muzzle on me.
She sees him cringe under her gaze. Then, she grabs her cup of coffee, and heads up to a spare bedroom.
Elena has no idea how long she's been staring at the ceiling of her chosen room, but she doesn't give a shit either way. She can't even talk to herself because of Damon's command, and her cup of coffee has been long since finished.
With the empty cup now resting on a nightstand, her thoughts are her only company.
To her extreme displeasure, her overactive mind begins telling her unwelcome things.
Various episodes of her life flit into her head, appearing in no particular order. Sometimes, she remembers a set of chronological memories from a particular time range. The recollections pass through her mind like a autobiographical movie. Other times, her mind feeds her random memory slices, each slice coming from a different time in her life.
She remembers the first time she got a C in school.
Then, she recalls her mom couldn't cook, even if her life depended on it.
She remembers seeing Stefan at the cemetery, her leg bleeding as she looked at him.
Worst of all, she remembers Jeremy, diving off the dock at the lake house.
Best of all, she remembers the tenderness Damon displayed the first time they made love.
It's that memory which causes her armor to get a chink again.
Elena grabs the nearest pillow and puts it over her head, groaning.
Her groan pierces the veil of quiet in the room, and it's enough to snap her mind back to recent events. Namely, she remembers the way he shut her up with a single order via the sire bond. It fills her with anger and helplessness. If she's honest, thinking of Damon also fills her with some other feeling she can't put her finger on.
The unknown feeling is mellowing her down. Just like Damon's kiss, it's shattering the ice around her heart again.
Thankfully, before it can make too much progress, the anger she feels comes back in full force. The vampire in her is queen of the castle again, and Elena represses the mellowing feeling. She imprisons it with dozens of chains, ones made of the darkest things that exists inside her.
Before long, she's back to her enraged state, her fangs threatening to escape her gums. She glances up at the ceiling again, and the focus bids a thought into her head. It delights the vampire part of her, the only part that's in effect at this moment.
Her fangs come out, and she laughs.
It's no longer the laugh of a carefree human girl, nor the laugh of a woman in love.
In all truth, the laugh sounded like Katherine's, and it only increases Elena's resolve to execute her new plan.
She looks once at the open door, remembering that she isn't alone in the boarding house. As she gets out of the room and heads to one with a window, she thinks of the one crucial caveat in Damon's command as her sire.
Just before Elena opens the window and jumps out to the ground below, a fanged smile forms on her face.
Yes, Damon had forbidden her from speaking, but that didn't mean she couldn't feed.
A/N Seems Elena has plans, eh? Off I go to edit the third chapter, and hope for more of your reviews to help shape this story. Tell me your thoughts!