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Con: this year’s dress is just as ridiculously tight up top and puffy down below as last year’s.
Pro: Elena’s a vampire, breathing through it is a lot easier.
Given everything they’ve dealt with the last few days - hell, the last year - finding a pro to vampirism is a damn near miraculous thing. The cure is gone, Jeremy is on the other side and unreachable until they let Silas drop the veil or find a way to bring him back themselves, and nothing on this earth makes Elena want to do this.
Almost. Funnily enough, it’s not the sire bond. It’s Caroline who insisted on having a semi-normal day in a semi-functioning town and accept the fact that it’s Founder’s Day. Since Miss Mystic Duty has been passed onto April Young and her Court, she said yes to a couple of hours of mild help in an old dress and a drink or two.
It wasn’t completely unavoidable, the Council want the town involved in dressing up this year, staying simple and only reenacting the Founder’s Ball, but it’s not compulsory, and Elena decided it might be a good thing to pretend she’s someone else in another time for a while. And with Tyler hiding from Klaus, it’s good to be there for a friend for once rather than her friends always trying to help her.
She arrives at the high school exactly on time, ready to help Caroline help April set up for the start of the parade. Mostly her job is to wrangle the Court and their escorts for their photos. They’ll meet the others in the square as they follow the parade. It’s probably for the best, an easy plan to follow.
So Elena stops short when she spots Damon walking towards her, dressed in a simple, informal outfit he must have rummaged from his closet, hair floppy with curls instead of its usual straight. He runs a hand through them when he catches her staring, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his trousers once he’s beside her.
“You curled your hair, I like it.” Elena wraps a finger around his open collar. “Very sweet, small-town boy.”
“Actually I didn’t straighten my hair. Don’t get any ideas,” he adds with a wag of his finger, threat playful. “It’s just for today. I hated it then and I hate it now.”
“How excited were you when straighteners were invented?” She holds a finger to his lips before he can actually answer, unable to close the distance. “Well, I love it. But why are you here?”
“Why do you think?”
The implication warms Elena, she feels the blush on her cheeks. She’s desperate to take his hand, to actually touch him properly, to feels his arms tight around her, to kiss him until she forgets her own name and everything she’s lost. It’s been three weeks since he last hugged her and it’s been hell. She doesn’t even really understand why; Damon has a weird sense of loyalty and wanting their love for each other to be fair and real. She still can’t get him to believe that it is, that the sire bond may affect some actions but she knows how she feels and who she wants and it’s only him keeping them apart. There are days Elena’s wondered if fighting for him would even be worth it, especially after their fight on the island, then he does something like this, being here when she needs him simply to be here for her because he loves her, and she remembers why it’s important. Even Damon Salvatore deserves to know he’s loved.
One day he’ll believe it himself.
“Why?” he asks, frowning. “Do you want me to go?”
“No,” she says, grabbing his hand without properly thinking about it and squeezing when she realises. Now she has hold, nothing but divine intervention will make her let go. But she owes him an explanation, or he owes her a chance to be proven wrong. “It’s just felt like, with the cure gone and the bond still there, you wanted to go back to staying away from each other. And I don’t want that.”
Damon looks down at their joined hands, too, fingers flexing like he’s thinking of pulling away. He doesn’t and Elena stops holding her breath. “You thought I’d leave you alone in this?”
“No. But I understand why you’d consider it.”
“I want this sire bond gone,” Damon admits. Whatever he wants to say next, he snaps his mouth shut and keeps to himself instead.
“I want it gone, too,” she says, working to keep her voice positive. “Mostly so when I tell you I love you, you’ll actually believe me.”
It must work, he cracks a smile. “I love your dress by the way.”
Elena manages a twirl under the joined hands. “Really? Last year you said it didn’t suit me.”
“I also said it was a compliment,” he counters. “And I mean it, I love modern you more. But you’re still beautiful. I bet you’re hot in just the corset.”
“Maybe one day you’ll find out.” They both hear Caroline yelling her name and Elena pulls him with her. “But today is not that day. Come on, I have photos to wrangle and I need you to do your scary voice so they listen and it all gets done before Caroline reaches us and kills me.”
He doesn’t dare argue with her. “Deal.”