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Drunk is not how Elena Gilbert wanted to be, but drunk is the best option right now and she’s going to make the most of it. It’s after midnight, her birthday finally over, and Elena is curled up on the couch in her pyjamas with a bottle of white wine she’d taken from the party cupped in her hands. Jeremy is asleep upstairs, Damon’s sulking in his own house, and Ric has gone; after a month on her couch he’s decided they’re better off without him, packed up and left them. So there’s no one to see her wallow. It’s for the best, now there’s no reason to hastily wipe away tears. She lets them fall willingly, pooling below her eyes and staining her cheeks.
Some birthday.
Elena brings the bottle to her lips and gulps down two big mouthfuls. What’s the point in pouring, you know? It’s not gonna last past tonight, not after what she’s found out. The maps and sticky notes and articles on the back of Damon’s closet door will fuel her nightmares for a long time, his reason for keeping her in the dark so she wouldn’t know that all those dead and missing bodies are victims of Stefan. Not Klaus. She takes another mouthful of wine, might as well find help with sleep where she can. If she downs this bottle, there’s a chance she’ll be too far gone to dream. If that doesn’t work, there’s another in the fridge. There’s tequila and Ric’s leftover bourbon in one of the cupboards.
He lets the front door rattle for her benefit, though it still makes her jump. She’s made it a habit to lock every window and door now, a deterrent for witches and werewolves more than vampires, most of whom can’t get in anyway, but he has a key now. Like Ric has a key. Stefan doesn’t even have a key. Not that he needs one - if he ever comes back, he only needs to break the door down, already invited. It’s the thought that counts. And how sad is that? Her boyfriend’s brother got a key to her house before her boyfriend.
Damon takes the other end of the couch. He didn’t make a stop in the kitchen, which means he’s brought his own bottle of bourbon with him. It doesn’t take long for them to sync, drinking from their respective bottles in time with their misery and each other.
He hasn’t been crying, though. Or he’s very good at hiding it. Traitor.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” he says after a while.
He’s not sorry for what he yelled, that’s clear in the way he watches her. There’s very little sympathy in that hard stare, his eyes like ice, the lines around them as dark as the bags under them. Vampires are fascinating in how human they can still look, especially when they drink enough blood to survive but not enough to hide everything. He admitted once that if he really indulges nothing hurts, nothing looks completely right when people really look at him, he can run and jump so fast and so high it’s like flying, and he can do all kinds of tricks besides compulsion, when he’s more monster than human, more magic than living. He clammed up before she could hear what those tricks were, which means he probably used them when he first got here.
Stefan will be the same, right now.
“He’ll be doing it so Klaus doesn’t kill him or have a reason to come back,” she whispers, more for herself than for him to hear, though she knows he can.
“Probably,” he replies. Because it very likely is true, not because he wants to comfort her with platitudes. Damon Salvatore doesn’t believe in that. Weirdly, it’s a comfort in itself. She can always trust that he’ll tell her the truth. If he can’t bring himself to do that, he just won’t tell her at all. Despite her initial anger after seeing his closet, she likes the arrangement. It keeps her on solid ground. For the most part. Some nights it gets a little shaky.
She drinks. The bottle’s almost empty now. She might get that second one after all.
“You should get some sleep,” Damon says, but he doesn’t try to take the wine from her.
“I will. So should you.”
“I will.”
Damon dares to come closer and wipes away what’s left on her cheeks. Elena can’t help leaning into it. She can’t burden Jeremy with this, no matter how much he wants to help he’s her little brother, and Ric clearly doesn’t want to be burdened. Her friends have their own problems. Which leaves Damon, stuck in the same loop she is, and refusing to leave her alone in it. She moves into the middle of the couch with him, the lines blurring as she wraps herself around his waist, breathes in the lingering traces of bourbon and cold, and settles the moment he holds her tight. A safe little bubble.
“I’m sorry I can’t bring him back for you.”
Elena wants to believe that, most of her does. But she also remembers the confession he made when they thought he was dying, it’d only been a few weeks ago. Admitting out loud that he loves her. Not just hearing it from Isobel or Stefan, but from his own lips. There hadn’t been a lot she could do about it besides acknowledge it and now they’re in a strange limbo of knowing but not talking about it, while Damon tried to save his brother because he owed him but also, maybe, for her.
He’s given up now and told her to do the same, so maybe he is sorry. She can’t bring herself to tell him she won’t give up, not tonight. Stefan did everything he could to save her. What kind of person would she be if she didn’t do the same? Not someone she believes in, not someone she wants to always be.
Damon likely knows that, he just doesn’t need to hear it out loud yet.
So she curls into his side, doesn’t complain when he takes the bottle from her, and lets her eyes close without a fight. Damon shuffles a little under her, his head resting on top of hers. “I love you, Elena.”
“I love you, too.”
When she wakes, dawn is barely breaking, she’s alone in her bed, and her words whisper back to her in a vicious circle. A slip of the tongue, surely. A half-asleep response she’d give to all her friends.
“No, no, no, no.”
Elena hides her face under her duvet and contemplates the benefits of Klaus coming back to kill her.