A/N: Although this episode doesn't actually end after the phone call between Damon and Elena that's where I decided to end this chapter because it felt wrong to ruin that moment with the bits that came after, so those bits will just be filled in on the next one, if that makes any sense!
After School Special
"I'll never give you up if I ever give you up my heart will surely fail
And after all God can keep my soul
But don't ever give me up I could never get back"
It's been an indeterminate amount of time since I sent Elena away, it could be minutes, it could be days, weeks, but it may as well be fucking years because that's how long it feels. It's becoming insufferable and I'm pretty sure I'm becoming insufferable too but at least only Little Gilbert and the quarterback have to suffer me.
It's agonising to be away from her like this, to not even be able to talk to her, to bask in our known, our back and forth banter and flirtatious commentary, the battle of wills and the lingering stares, oh what the hell, I miss the eye-fucking okay!
I miss fucking everything is the problem, I miss her eyes and her lips, I miss her tongue and her breathy little sighs, I miss her legs wrapped around my waist, I miss being inside of her, I miss it all and all I have to keep myself company are the countless voicemails she leaves every day.
She's desperately trying to find a way around the sire-bond and she's desperately trying to test my self-control because every time my phone rings I nearly crush it to pieces with a desperate will to hold my shit together, to keep her away, to protect her, to protect myself.
I listen to every message, every word, every breathy little sigh, I catch all the little nuances in her tone and decipher every syllable to try and get to the depths of what she's really feeling. To what this really means. To what is real.
I haven't heard a peep from my brother, which is, concerning, but every time I call he doesn't answer so I'm just left, baby-sittin' the hunter and listenin' to my voicemail, repeatedly.
"Hey it's me" she starts every message the same way, as if I don't know that it's her, as if I haven't been impatiently waiting for every new message, as if I haven't been racking my brains trying to figure out how I screwed up this time.
"Look I know why you sent me away, you think that what I'm feeling for you is because of the sire bond but...I hate not being near you and..." I hang up the phone and decide to save the rest for later. I got hunter trainin' to attend to.
Jeremy and Matt are working out and I observe as Little Gilbert macho-mans the quarterback to the ground. "You see that?" he shouts at me, "couldn't miss it. It was in slow-motion" I know I'm being a dick but honestly this is fucking torture.
"Then teach me something useful. We've been here for days and so far all you've done is bark orders" ah good, we've narrowed the torture down to 'days'. It's been 'days' since I've seen Elena, talked to Elena, held Elena, kissed Elena. Not years then. See, there's a silver lining to every cloud.
"Okay" I suppose I should attempt to do something productive with my time "take a seat at the bench quarterback, karate kid wants a shot at the title" I throw Jeremy a stake and he runs at me slow-mo style again so I duck and then I've got him by the neck.
"Now all I have to do is apply a little pressure on your jaw" I'm still squeezing the air from his lungs when the pizza deliver girl shows up "really? Again?" these guys are gonna get fat way before they get laid.
I take the pizza off the girl and tell her not to come back for a few days, "what you're gonna starve us now?" well yeah, "if that's what it takes to make you a hunter. Now run around the lake, twice" burn off that fat, maybe I can get a minutes peace around this place.
As soon as they're gone I take my phone out to listen to the end of Elena's message, honestly, girls voice is the only thing keeping me together right now, and I figure she knows that judging by the amount of them that she's left me.
"...I miss you Damon. I wish you'd just let me come to you" yeah, feelings mutual sweetheart. I listen to another couple messages and by the time Little Gilbert and the quarterback return I'm in a marginally better mood, enough to let them eat at least.
After the pizza break I get Little Gilbert to practice his handgun skills, honestly the boy is damn slow for a supposedly fast hunter. "Good, now do it like your life depends on it, 'cause it does" I say and put the newly dismantled gun back in front of him.
"Don't act like you care about my life. You care about the hunters mark and curing Elena so she's not sired to your ass" well that's just not true. I don't care about the damn cure. I just care about Elena full stop.
"Both require you to be alive, which is why I've updated our relationship status to 'it's complicated'" I care about the kid too. Damn Little Gilbert weaselled his way in at some point during the summer-of-sin and hasn't fucked off since.
"You talked to her at all, Elena?" as if I needed to clarify which 'her' I'm referring to. "Yeah maybe, why? Running out of voicemails to listen to?" well there's no need to be a dick Little Gilbert.
"I'm sorry, did I interrupt playtime?" oh fucking great, Klaus, just what we all need. The hell does he want? Jeremy asks the question for me and Klaus wants to know how many vamps Jeremy's killed but I tell him he's not ready yet.
"Yeah see, that's not a number. Twelve, that's a number. That's how many of my hybrids I slaughtered with my sword. Three, that's a number. That's how many days it took to quell the urge to kill your brother after he knowingly watched as I walked into a death-trap. One, that's the number of purposes you serve. You are here to grow Jeremy's mark so I'll ask again; how many vampires has he killed since he's been here?"
Well that would be a big, fat, "zero".
He says that he needs the cure, sooner rather than later, due to his distinct lack of hybrids and asks how he can help, but reminding me of the fact that you wanna turn my, kinda, girlfriend back into a human blood-bag is never the way to get on my good side.
"You know now that you mention it, Jeremy watch and learn" two. That's the number of times I just shot you. Dick.
"That was for Carol Lockwood" yeah, in one of the many messages Elena informed me that Carol was found dead, drowned in the fountain and that Klaus is suspect number one. First shot was for Carol, second was for Elena.
I head back inside and waste the day away in a place where Klaus can't come and murder me for shooting him and after using Elena's messages to bring my anger back in check and pull myself together again I head outside to whittle some hunter stakes for Jeremy.
"If you're here for payback go for it, 'cause you'll be stuck babysitting the little hunter that could" I say when Klaus approaches me, not taking my eyes off the stake. He goes on to give me some pointless advice about my whittling skills and then says that he's confused as to why Little Gilbert's hunter tally remains on empty.
"He needs to be able to protect himself before we hunt down our first vampire nest" honestly, nothing good can come of Klaus being here. He makes the suggestion that we could just go turn a buncha people in the town down the road but that already occurred to me before I discarded it as a very bad idea.
"Tragedy is Damon, it did occur to you and yet you chose to ignore it and my guess is you did it to impress Elena. Somehow to honour her you'll find a way to spare innocent lives and walk Jeremy down the moral high-road" yep, sounds about exactly right.
"That's why I've already made the necessary corrections" he did what now? Man, Elena's gonna kill me. Then again, I didn't actually kill anybody so maybe this won't turn out too badly.
Klaus turned the pizza girl so the boys definitely won't be gettin' any from her. I walk into the room right after Little Gilbert adds a vamp to his list, from the way he looks at his arm I'm guessing the invisible tattoo started growing but fuck if I can see the damn thing.
I'm out in the woods digging a grave for pizza girl when my phone rings; it's Elena, of course.
It would be easy to let it go to voice mail, to let her leave me another message and listen as her voice promises me again that we'll figure this out, that she needs me, misses me, can't stand not being around me, every time I listen to those words, to her voice, I feel the remaining pieces of my self-control crumble, until eventually all that will be left of me are the burning ashes of who I used to be.
This is why I don't answer the phone.
I'm not ready to give that part of myself away; it is all I really have left of myself. The only part of me left untouched by Elena Gilbert is my ability to control myself when it comes to her. If I relinquish that to her as well then I'm afraid that when all of this is over, and we break the sire-bond it will break me as I have never been broken before. If I don't maintain my facade of control then I'm afraid that she will break me so completely that no one will ever be able to put the pieces back together.
And that is why I consider answering the phone.
Because that's what love is, love is giving someone your heart, love is giving someone everything that you are, everything that you have ever been, love is handing someone your life, your body, your very soul and trusting them not to destroy you. Trusting them not to break you, or at the very least trusting them to put you back together again.
And that is why I decide to answer the phone.
Because I trust Elena, I don't want to hide from her. I don't want any part of me to go untouched by Elena Gilbert, I am giving her permission to destroy me and trusting that she won't, implicitly.
So self-control can get fucked.
I pick up the damn phone.
"Hope your day's goin' better than mine, gotta say I'm likin' the odds" 'cause honey my days are shit.
"Stefan knows about us" huh, well I guess that explains his radio silence then, "how'd he take it?" – "How do you think?" that bad huh?
"Well I'm thinkin' for the first time all week I'm happy to be at Camp Nowhere" where my brother hopefully isn't about to appear and kick my ass 'cause that would be a bad end to a bad day.
"How's Jeremy?" alive good enough for ya'? "That depends on how much you trust me" – "You know that I trust you" that I do 'Lena. I tell her he's gonna be fine, because he is, one way or another, I'll make sure of that, for her.
"Thanks for looking out for him" anytime, god I miss her so much. "Yeah well I told 'em if they were good I'd buy 'em both ice cream so...look I gotta go" 'cause I miss you so much and I'm not even meant to be talking to you and it kinda hurts and there's only so much I can take.
She sucks in a breath on the other end of the phone, "not yet" she rushes out the words before continuing.
"Something happened today...I realised something about you, about us" there's an 'us' now? God I really messed up didn't I?
"And you can say that it's the sire-bond and you know what, maybe, maybe it is but I'm telling you that it's the most real thing that I've ever felt in my entire life" what? I swear she does this on purpose. What is she trying to tell me?
"I love you, Damon"
She does what now? She loves me? When did...how did...what the...fuuuuck.
I'm really fucking happy she can't see my face right now. I'm really fucking happy I can't see my face right now. She fucking loves me?
"I love you"
She loves me.
I, wait, oh god, I'm so, I'm so many things right now I can't think straight.
"Look, I'm gonna get this cure for you, and I'm gonna have to do things you're not gonna like, no, listen carefully. Get in your car, right now, come to me" right fucking now.
"I'll be there soon" maybe there is a fucking god after all.
I feel like that kid on Christmas morning, you know, the one who just woke up to find that Santa exists and delivered him the one thing he always wanted, the thing his heart most desired, he found it just sitting there waiting for him.
I feel like all my fucking dreams came true with the delivery of three simple little words and god how I wish I could fully believe it. I really fucking do. Because that feeling, that hope of believing that you can actually have what you want, what you've longed for, what you fucking need more than anything in the world?
Let me tell you, there's no better feeling than that. And I feel it, I do, I know that in this moment she believes it, hell in this moment I believe it, in parts of myself but, in the morning it'll be different.
Only, I don't want to think about that right now, I know it's selfish, but for one fucking night in my life, just for one night, I want to be loved by Elena Gilbert.
Dear Diary,
There was a memorial at the school for Tyler's mom today and then Rebekah showed up, April Young un-daggered her and Rebekah compelled Stefan, me and Caroline to play some twisted version of truth or, well, truth, and even though it was awful I learnt some really important things today. Things I need Damon to know.
But first I want to write down what happened. Stefan knows about me and Damon, he knows everything actually, because Caroline told him. How could she do that? To me, to Stefan? I let the Klaus thing go, when she brought him as her date to Miss Mystic this year and then bitched to me about Damon, I let it go because she's my friend and I know she has a bad history with Damon.
I let it go when she accused Damon of taking advantage of me, because she's my friend and I know she was, in her own way, trying to protect me from things that she doesn't understand. But this? This I don't know if I can let go of. I don't understand why she would ever do that.
So of course Rebekah decided to use her new-found information to play her twisted games with us. Stefan told her that I slept with Damon because I'm sired to him but then she compelled me to tell the truth and I did.
I said that I didn't sleep with Damon because of the sire bond; I slept with Damon because I'm in love with him. And I am. I love Damon. I mean, really, truly, honestly am in love with Damon.
You know, I feel kinda stupid because really I should have tried having someone compel the truth out of me when I was still human then maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. I do wish it hadn't come out like that, in front of Stefan because I don't think I'll ever forget the look on his face, he looked so confused and heart-broken and I really never meant to hurt him.
I do love Stefan, it's just different, I'm not in love with him anymore, I love him like you love a very dear friend, but he was nearly crying and I felt like a horrible person.
Of course, Rebekah had to twist the knife in further when she asked me how I really felt about Damon, I told her that Damon makes me happy, when I'm with him, it feels, unpredictable, like I'm free and when she asked about Stefan I had to tell the truth too.
I said all the things that I've been keeping inside, that when Stefan looks at me he sees a problem that needs to be fixed, that I think I make him sad, that he sees me like a broken toy. And it feels like a relief in some ways to finally say these things out loud. To acknowledge the honesty, the truth.
When Rebekah let us leave, I tried to talk to Stefan and apologise, I told him that I was sorry for everything, that I never meant to hurt him, because I really didn't, I never wanted that. Rebekah said that she could take it all away, erase every memory he has of me, take away all the pain and every bit of love he feels for me, and Stefan wanted her to do it!
He must really hate me; I just have to hope he doesn't hate me forever. He walked away from me and I followed him, I followed him until I realised that I didn't want to follow him anymore. And then I let him go.
And now I'm going to call Damon and tell him, he deserves to know the truth, I don't want to hide from him anymore. I wish I could tell him in person but he sent me away so I can't go to him, I hope he picks up the phone because I really don't want to tell his voicemail that I love him, with any luck he'll let me come to him once I tell him the truth.
Elena