Chapter Text
It’s funny, isn’t it? The look of surprise on Caroline’s face when she realizes who her mother wanted the message delivered to. It’s funny to Damon, at least. When she has to give him her “condolences” on Elena’s death.
He’s more confused of course, on how the sheriff had known. She tells him rather impatiently that Jeremy Gilbert couldn’t possibly have gotten that jacket from a murder scene unless he explained who’s it was and why he needed it.
Caroline’s practically irate that Elena hadn’t told her, and more angry that Damon was the mystery boyfriend. But her reaction isn’t as explosive as he’s always expected. As if reading his mind, the blonde says, “it doesn’t have to be a secret, you know.”
“What?” He asks.
“The whole universe isn’t going to collapse in on itself if you admit to having feelings, Damon. Especially for Elena. She’s…she was the type that you couldn’t help loving.”
And he realizes something then.
It’s eating him alive to keep this whole thing a secret, and he doesn’t think Elena would want him to have to hide how he felt, especially now that she was gone. He needs to come clean about this, and he knows exactly who he needs to tell first.
“Hey, Enzo, wait,” he calls out, leaving Caroline behind him, missing the satisfied smile she wore. She may not like Damon, but it was obvious that she wanted to do right by Elena.
“What’s up?” His best friend asks, frowning at the frantic tone in Damon’s voice. “I have to tell you something,” he breathes, panting.
“It’s really, really important.“
“So let me get this straight,” Enzo says from the passenger seat of Damon’s car. “You were dating Elena Gilbert secretly before she died? And you never told anyone?”
“Sounds about right,” he responds, voice strained. A part of him had worried that Enzo would think it was a cruel joke, so he’d practically poured his heart out, trying to explain what she was like. He spent nearly five minutes on her smile alone.
He could spend a million on her Bambi eyes.
Enzo looks at him, really looks at him. And then he closes his eyes. “It’s true then.”
“Every word.”
“I never thought….” He looks at his friend again. “I never thought you were capable of loving a girl like that.”
Damon shrugs, eyes fixed on the dashboard. “Neither did I, I guess. But Elena is…was the exception.” He knows that Enzo didn’t miss that little slip up on his tenses. They’re all still getting used to the fact that she’s dead and that she isn’t just going to come through the doorway, laughing like nobody in the world was watching.
He can see Enzo processing it all and turning it over in his mind. “When did you start dating?” He asks finally, trying to grasp onto anything that might straighten out his messy thoughts.
“Last October.” A whole year ago. “I met her at that party…Stefan introduced us. Afterwards, I kept seeing her everywhere, and we ended up going on a date. I knew right then that she was different than all of the other girls.”
Enzo smiles a little wistfully, like he knows the feeling. Which maybe he does-he’s seen the way he looks at Bonnie Bennett. “How’d you know?”
Damon smirks. “She beat me at pool.” No one had ever done that except for Kol’s older brother Klaus. Until Elena waltzed into his life and upstaged him as easily as if she were counting to ten, without even chipping her nails.
Enzo laughs a little. “You’re right. No one would ever dare touch the title of the undefeated Damon Salvatore.”
It hurts a little, to know that maybe no one ever will again. That she won’t be at his graduation like she used to talk about. That they’d kiss, no matter who was watching.
That now she’ll never drive with him up to Duke to say goodbye, or that they only got one Christmas together, and he’ll never stand in the kitchen doorway again and watch her make gingerbread cookies.
Every time he thinks the pain will get easier to deal with, it hits him again like a pile of bricks dropped from a hundred-story building.
He misses going to the movies with her and listening to her insist that Twizzlers make the best straws for soda. He misses stealing gummy bears when she wasn’t looking, and teaching her to dance so they could go to the Mikaelson ball together, making plans for their future as if they had a clue what they wanted.
Damon knows what he wants now. He wants her. Even if she hates him for not saying that he loved her, or won’t speak with him again, he would do anything in the world to have her back.
Enzo puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not gonna say it’ll get easier….” He starts, and Damon wipes at his eyes. “But eventually you’ll be able to live again.” He looks right at him, his eyes shining as well.
“You’ll forget the pain, mostly. But you won’t forget what she meant to you, and that’s all that matters. That you loved her and she loved you. Right up till the end, she believed in you. She must’ve, or she wouldn’t have bothered.”
Damon hugs him then, squeezing his eyes shut. It hurts. But he knows that Enzo is right. He’ll be able to breathe normally soon, even if the memory of her and what they could’ve been still follows him like a ghost.
She taught him things, showed him the beauty of the world. He wouldn’t forget those lessons.
That was a promise on everything important to him. He swore it on his soul, his brother, his scholarship, that everything he did from them on would be the good choice, because it was for her.
He holds to that.