Chapter Text
“It’s okay to love them both. I did.”
“Damon,” Elena murmurs under her breath. “Where are you?”
“Right here.” He's smiling ironically at her as she starts and turns around to where he is suddenly filling the space behind her. Her eyes gaze up and down his body. No sign of a werewolf bite, no sign of any lingering illness. Katherine's cure worked.
She tries a smile, but it's shaky. “I’m going to get used to that eventually.”
“No doubt,” Damon replies. His face is straight, no hint of mirth. “Any word from Stefan?”
Elena shakes her head. “Damon, I...”
“Well, we’d best get on it. God only knows what trouble he’s managed to get into in our absence.” He rolls his eyes, and Elena knows it to be a show to hide the concern he's feeling underneath even as he starts walking away from her, at normal pace this time.
“Damon.” He half turns, and looks at her quizzically. She continues, “It’s not like we can go out haring after him. We don’t even know the first place to look.”
“Ah,” Damon says, before pointing to his nose. “You don’t. I do.” He opens the front door. “Ladies first.”
Elena walks toward him, aware of his eyes on her with each step she takes. It's getting harder to take and keep an even breath. She pauses, noticing suddenly a strange look in Damon’s eyes, behind the facade she knows he keeps there in order to keep himself safe. Most of the time, there isn't such an obvious chink. That she can see it there now snaps her out of her own disorientation. She's not the only one who stands to lose Stefan if they can't do this right.
“I need to call Stefan.”
Damon pauses, evidently about to argue against it, but something he sees in her expression widens that chink. He's not just looking out for himself, Elena realises. He's looking out for her, too. That expression is very clear in his eyes, in the way that he holds her, just the way that his body is turned towards her as he guys her back through the hall, into the living room, directs her to one of the couches and then sits there with her, his hand settling over hers.
Well. That just means she has to look out for him too. Elena shifts, trying to find her phone in her pocket. It's an attempt filled with clumsiness, born out of nervousness, and she fumbles it.
"Take a breath." This from Damon. "It's going to be alright."
Elena pins her eyes to the hand on hers. It's the safest of all other options. Then, she dials.
The first call rings out. Elena frowns, and calls Stefan again. When he doesn't answer that time, she pulls up the message display on her phone and texts him. After waiting the longest 10 minutes of her life, Elena leans against Damon, very gingerly.
"What if he doesn't call back?" Her voice is fragile, and she hates that the sound of it is coming from her. However, that just makes Damon's arms tighten around her. She tries to take strength from that but, after the events of the past few days, she's just too tightly wound for it.
She almost jumps out of her skin when the familiar ring tone of her phone accompanied the sudden vibration in her hand.
“Hello?” she says. "Hello?!"
“Elena.” The voice on the other end is a rasp of the voice she recognises, but recognise it she does.
“Stefan!” She gasps, half turning from Damon, cradling the phone to her ear as though that would bring him closer. “Where are you?”
“Katherine delivered the cure then? Everything’s fine?”
“Yes, that’s what I texted you. Are you okay? You sound... different.” Damon's frowning and Elena's just trying hard not to think of the worst. Telling herself that the worst is over now. It has to be. Even so, her heartbeat's speeding up, and she knows Damon is able to hear it, even before his hand tightens around hers and he moves himself closer to her in support.
"I'm leaving Mystic Falls, Elena."
"Leaving? What do you mean leaving?"
“Pretty what it sounds like. Look, Elena...” There's a rustling sound through the phone, as though Stefan's shuffling around. “I knew you’d leap to a worst conclusion if I sent you a text message. Wouldn’t be very boyfriendly of me either, would it?”
“Stefan, what are you talking about?” Elena says the words very slowly, very carefully, almost as if the answer to this question isn't about to break her heart. She's not even aware Damon's protective presence anymore, nor the thought that she's not the only one who stands to lose Stefan.
“I can't do this right now, Elena. I'll explain when I can but... right now... it's goodbye.” The phone clicks before Elena can make any reply, but that doesn't stop her.
“Stefan? Stefan, no!” She looks to Damon in horror, her eyes wide in grief that hasn't properly registered yet, as though Damon can still do something to stop this. “Stefan?” Her voice trembles, closer to tears this time. Only Damon's observative enough to note the way Stefan's voice broke the instant before he hung up the phone, but it's not the most important fact of the moment.
With utmost gentleness, Damon plucks the phone out of Elena's hands.
“No!” she wails, not about the phone, but about the conversation, and Damon has to swallow at watching her in this much pain, the second time in less than three days. Elena is shaking her head, moaning, “No,” with just the slightest incline at the end to make it sound like a question. Damon doesn't need anymore encouragement than that. Reaching out, he takes her into his arms. She didn’t fight, doesn't have the strength of it. Instead, she crumples into herself, like she's unable to hold herself upright anymore, and that's so much worse than if she had fought.
“Come,” he says quietly, almost embarrassed to have overheard the entire conversation, and wondering what the fuck Stefan thinks he is doing right now. But that's not his concern right now. “Let’s go back up to bed.”
She cries against him that night. He doesn't think either one of them gets much sleep, even in the brief periods of time when she goes from crying to silence. In those times, he holds her more tightly, more worried about what she might be holding inside when she's not giving out any obvious signs to direct him.
**
It's like Jenna all over again, except it's worse. It's so much worse.
Jenna is dead. She supposes they're going to have to work out some sort of funeral for her. Elena doesn't even know where she's supposed to get the money for that, or how she's even expected to function well enough to organise something like that.
Stefan's really gone. Their break-up is real this time. He hadn't even given her a reason. He hadn't even given her a reason...
And as soon as Elena wakes up again, she can't hide from any of it anymore.
“Morning.”
Elena’s hand immediately reaches for her face. She can't even begin to imagine what her eyes look like after crying steadily for hours the day before. Almost crying again now, before Damon let her know that he, too, was awake. Bashfully she manages to make her eyes travel up from the white sheets of his bed to the familiar face attached to the arm that is rested underneath her.
“Hey.” In order to have an excuse to avert her eyes, she looks down to his hand on the other side of her, near the edge of the bed. “You probably want your hand back...”
“That’s okay. Not like I need the blood flow anyway.”
He is peering at her. Not moving his arm at all. While a part of her wants desperately to cuddle back into that safe form of the man who loves her and is still here, the smarter part of Elena—a part that Elena had wilfully wishes on occasion would just run off and die—reminds her of her responsibilities. Jeremy. Alaric. Bonnie and Caroline. They still had to be on the lookout for Klaus. Without Stefan, that fight suddenly became that much harder. Things kept on piling up.
“Hey...” That's Damon’s voice, breaking into the introspective that her mind is just too inclined towards this morning. He's now watchful of her in a completely different way. "Come back to me."
Elena swallows, blinks her eyes a couple of times, and nods firmly just once. “Yeah,” she says. “Can’t really afford to fall apart today.” Her lips thin.
“That's not what I meant. Anyway,” Damon adds, and his voice goes from gentle to heavy with irony. “This is Mystic Falls. There’s not going to be a day this century when you can afford to fall apart. Certainly hasn’t been since I first lived here.” Still, despite his words, he draws her closer to him, letting her know that he is still there.
The instinct to set aside her responsibility wars with awareness that she must face up to those obligations once more. Very regretfully, she suggests, “I should probably get back home to Jeremy.”
“Yeah. I should probably let you,” he replies, eying her without moving.
Elena looks at the floor for shoes, but there don't appear to be any on Damon’s bedroom floor. She must have left them downstairs. Hopefully she’ll find them there. Otherwise, she supposes it was just as easy to drive home bare foot.
Running a distracted hand through her hair, Elena turns just once to look at Damon, notices both that his naked and his eyes are red-rimmed. She's about to say something about it when he flashes out of bed to take her into his arms again. Before she can think, his lips are on hers, and he's kissing her passionately, and Elena can't think, can't move, can't do anything but kiss him back just as intently because that is what absolutely everything in her body is absolutely screaming at her to do. When it is over, Elena feels like she needs Damon’s steady support again, with completely different reason behind this swoon.
“Anything you need today...” he says, his eyes boring into hers, even as he leaves the sentence open-ended. He's giving her that soft smile that is only for her and, as short for breath as Elena already feels, this takes away the last of it. She bites her lip to keep from smiling, then releases it. It occurs to her that, just maybe, she deserves this little bit of happiness for the rest of the shit that the universe has put her through.
“I'll call you,” she says and, after she walks away from him, her on the doorframe, her eyes linger on him.
**
Alaric looks up from where he sits on the couch when Elena walks in. It's clear that she's been crying, but he doesn't say anything about that. It's clear that he's been crying too. Elena just walks up to where he's sitting on the couch and hugs him. He doesn't hesitate in returning the hug.
“So, where did you stay last night? Over with Stefan?”
Only the fact that Alaric does not know about the minefield of emotions his unwitting question unwittingly provokes manages to keep Elena from bursting into new tears.
Her voice is very low as she answers, "He's left town, Ric. I don't know if he'll be coming back."
"Left town?" Alaric pulls away from the hug they've fallen into in order to gaze into her eyes. He reads there, this time, that this grieving is not just for her dead aunt but for her lost lover. He holds her tighter and Elena tucks her head in under Alaric's chin. His voice is a rumble from there, but she can understand his words clearly.
"Tell me, what happened?"
No longer a teacher, not so much as a father or uncle figure, Elena tells him everything that had happened: Damon biting her at the ‘Gone with the Wind’ screening, Katherine coming to the boarding house with a cure, Stefan’s phone call, Damon holding her while she cried herself to sleep. She leaves out her own emotions towards Damon. Things are already too complicated as they stand without going into the relationship that she has with the two brothers.
“He called, to say he was leaving Mystic Falls and to break up. Just like that?” Alaric raises an eyebrow, for that doesn't sound like the Stefan he knows at all.
“Well... yeah.” Elena sniffs, then looks away, embarrassed. There was sometimes a box of tissues on the table next to the couch, but she can't see it there now. Alaric taps her shoulder, passing the box from the table on the other side of the couch. Elena blows her nose, then sniffs once more. “I’m sorry, Alaric. You don’t need this right now. Me and Jer both appreciate so much—”
“Please,” Alaric cuts her off. “It’s the least I can do. Plus, it’s what Jenna would have wanted. It’s what I want.”
Elena nods her head miserably. “I suppose I should call Bonnie and Caroline.”
Alaric picks himself off the couch. “Yeah,” he replies, giving her space. “I suppose you should.”
**
Leaving the Gilbert house, Alaric picks out his mobile and calls one of the only numbers in his phone left that still has an alive person attached to the other end who was likely to pick up.
“Damon. Where are you?”
“Boarding house, Ric. After that mess-up with Liz yesterday, I’m not likely to be leaving any time soon.”
“Alright. Stay there. I’ll be over in a minute.”
True to his word, Alaric walks to the boarding house in just a little over the time it takes for Damon to pour two glasses of scotch on the rocks, drink one, pour another and leave an almost empty bottle next to an unopened bottle on top of the coffee table.
“Pour you a drink?” Damon asks as Alaric arrives, before handing the first scotch poured to Ric.
“No. Thanks. I’ve done enough of that.” Jenna was dead, yes, but drinking himself into oblivion wasn’t going to bring her back.
Damon shrugs, tossing back the scotch in the first glass, before picking up the second one he’d intended for himself. “It’s always after midday somewhere,” he decides, eyes flashing before taking another swig. “So what can I do for you?” he asks, punctuating the question with the heavy setting down of the glass tumbler back onto the coffee table.
“Well, you can be straight with me. I don’t have a whole lot of other people left now.”
“Unfortunate, but true,” Damon replies, with a nod.
“I understand Stefan’s gone too?”
Damon’s eyes flash again, and Alaric understands that he's walking on potentially dangerous ground. “And I understand that you’ve seen Elena this morning,” Damon says, leaning close to Alaric, before propelling himself back towards the open curtains at the front of the house. “Yes, he’s decided to leave Mystic Falls. Thought it would be an incredibly good idea to pass on that information by manner of phone call,” he finishes, effectively taking the spotlight off whatever he might think of the situation.
“And you think that’s the whole story?” Alaric leans forward, his elbows on his knees, genuinely interested to know what Damon thinks of his brother’s sudden disappearance.
“I think this town makes everyone crazy,” Damon mutters, staring out into the front yard absently. He then spins around. “But he’s probably safer out there than back here.”
“Uh. Huh.” Alaric considers this, then discounts it. “And that wouldn’t have anything to do with Elena spending the night here with you last night?”
“Come now, Ric, if you’re going to accuse me of something, you’d be best to use a lot less words.”
But Damon doesn't look anywhere near so jovial as his words are suggesting, and Alaric well knows that look well. In fact, Damon looks a lot as though he thinks this is none of Alaric's business. Not one to step on toes, Alaric might have stepped back at that point, except he was pretty sure that this did constitute as his business. Lifting his hands, Alaric sits back on his chair. “I’m just saying. If Stefan’s decided to leave town on his own, so be it.” He pauses. “But we still don’t know anything about where Klaus is. Or Elijah.” Alaric pauses again. “It’d be stupid not to assume the worst given the last couple of days.”
“Stefan called Elena so that she wouldn’t think anything untoward had happened. I heard the phone conversation myself.” But, belying his words, Damon’s eyebrows start to come down in a frown over his nose.
Nothing that, Alaric interprets its meaning correctly, and leaves it at that. “Well great. Think I might have one of those drinks now. I’ll pour for myself,” he adds, since Damon still had the appearance of one in his thoughts, where he stands over by the window.
Damon narrows his eyes. “Pour me another one too,” holding out his glass.
The drink Alaric hands to him is drunk more slowly than the last two. For a while, there's comfortable silence between the two men. Alaric, having passed on his concerns to someone more equipped to deal with them, more likely spends these minutes more comfortably than Damon. Perhaps not. Those minutes just give him time for his thoughts to dwell back to Jenna. Even though he’s had a couple of days of personal leave, he’s managed to have very little time to himself, or sober, at all.
“I’m gonna move in there.” Damon’s head shoots up at Alaric's unexpected admission; he looks at Alaric sharply. “If Elena and Jeremy want me to. I’m basically living there right now anyway.”
Damon looks back down to his drink. “That makes sense,” he grumbles. “Now Jenna’s not around.” He looks up sharply at Alaric as he says this, maybe expecting Alaric to burst into tears or something, but Alaric waves it off. It's the truth, after all. Wasn’t like he could hide from it forever.
“Last thing we need is social services getting involved,” Alaric adds. He pauses but, in the end, he decides to get on with it. “If I’m going to be acting as Elena’s carer, she’s not to become another Andrea Star.”
Damon just stares at Alaric for a while. “Another...?” He shakes his head. “The things you don't know... She’s not going to be another Andrea, Ric. I love her.”
“The things I don't know?” Alaric asks, watching Damon's facial reactions over the top of his cup. Like Elena, he notes that Damon's facade is littered with cracks; an almost unprecedented sight.
"Yes, Ric. Contrary to what you might think, you don't know everything that goes on in this town." Skipping the rest of the bravado act, Damon rolls his eyes and says, more quietly, "Elena and I have been dating for months."
"But you and Elena..." Alaric clears his throat. "I mean... what about Elena and Stefan...?"
"Yes. They have too."
The look Alaric gives Damon is queer. "You have been dating them... both?"
Damon's eyes grow wide. "Of course I haven't! What kind of a pervert do you think I am? Dating my own brother?!" The rest of his drink goes down his throat with that suggestion, and Damon glares at Alaric as if that's his fault.
"What?" Alaric's face expresses the unfairness of this judgement just passed on him. "You said you were dating Elena. And 'them too'..."
"I meant," Damon says, trying very hard to be patient, "Stefan was dating Elena at the same time."
Now that he has the right information, Alaric sinks into thought over this. "Oh."
"Yes. Oh."
"No... not Andrea Star."
"No." Another glare. Then, "Imagine Elena's upset when she realised what I was doing there. Meanwhile, I was only trying to keep myself strong in case of trouble. There weren't a lot of other options. Look at what we were facing!"
Alaric rather believes 'upset' to be a mild word for what Elena likely to have expressed at the time. His glance at Damon from the corner of his eye indicates his surprise that he and Elena got through that particular problem. But then, maybe Alaric doesn't know Elena as well as he thinks he does. For her to have kept this a secret... from all of them... for months..?
As Damon studies his empty drink with a frown, Alaric supposes it's good to know the lengths to which this man will go to to keep them safe, especially since he is the only Salvatore brother in town now. He doesn't believe that the danger is past yet, not at all.