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Apr 19, 2020

And Dream, I Do

Pairing: Damon/Elena, it’s not like I write any other pairings.

Rating: definitely M.

Timeline: seasons 1-3

Word count: 6722 words.

Summary: Elena is sure Damon compelled her to have that first dream when he was suddenly in Stefan's place in her bed. But she has no one to blame for all the other dreams after that, her subconscious telling her something she may not be telling herself yet.

Title from Taking Over Me by Evanescence.

Read on FF net | Download pdf

The first dream about Damon isn’t even about him in the first place.

She has a crush on Stefan (maybe she’s even in love), so in her mind, she wants Stefan. She acknowledges Damon is handsome, attractive, maybe even hot, but he’s not the one she wants. For Elena, it’s all about the emotional connection, and she’s sure of her connection with Stefan that established so quickly and effortlessly. In her dream, she’s bold and excited. She grabs Stefan’s T-shirt, straddling him, and pulls it over his head. When Damon’s smirking face appears instead, she recoils, terrified, and wakes up.

She’s confused, almost scared and — if she absolutely has to admit it — just the tiniest bit curious.

Later, when she finds out about vampires and compulsion, she’s sure he compelled her to dream about him. Clutching her vervain necklace, she convinces herself it will never happen again.

=====================

She dreams about him for the second time right after they come back from Georgia.

She closes her eyes and before she knows it, he’s there, in her room, his smirk and swag gone, those captivating eyes studying her with intensity she can’t deal with.

“Can I trust you?” she asks. He doesn’t flinch.

“Do you?” he counters, and she doesn’t know what to tell him. He’s saved her life; she’s saved his life. She doesn’t know if it means that she trusts him. She wants to trust him, though.

Damon takes her hand and brings it to his lips. His light kisses trail up her arm, scorching her skin, while his hands caress it, making her breathing erratic. She shivers — in fear or anticipation, she doesn’t know — but the moment he (finally) reaches her neck, he’s gone, and she gasps, awake.

=====================

The third dream happens only because she’s sorry for him.

She goes to bed with Damon’s broken, devastated face behind her closed eyelids. Her heart clenches in pain at the thought that Katherine tricked him like that, and she can’t even imagine how much he must be hurting. Always the do-gooder, Elena wants to soothe him somehow. Anyhow.

Soon after she falls asleep, she finds him on her windowsill, staring at the floor. She approaches him, her movements guarded, like he’s a wild, possibly dangerous animal. She strokes his cheek, forcing him to look at her.

“Katherine?” he asks, his eyes full of hope, and it hurts.

For a moment she actually considers saying yes.

“No, it’s Elena.” She expects his face to fall, but it doesn’t. Something shifts in his eyes, but she’s not sure what it is.

“Come here,” he begs, and she lets him take her in his arms, his hold too tight, and doesn’t even mind it when he starts planting kisses on her neck, then lets them trail lower, as far as her cleavage allows. She closes her eyes, stroking his hair, and gasps when he traces the tops of her breasts with his tongue.

“I am not Katherine,” she reminds him.

The last thing she remembers from the dream is his face. He looks like her assumption hurt him.

=====================

The fourth dream isn’t exactly unexpected. Not after the way he looked at her earlier, when his palms felt better on her bare skin than the silk dress she wore and his eyes had something brand new to them, something she couldn’t quite decipher yet — or maybe didn’t want to try to — but it made her heart skip a beat and her breath hitch.

This time, when he shows up in her bedroom, he’s strangely vulnerable. She isn’t sure she’s ever seen him like that. So when he reaches out for her, she tells herself it’s just a dream and doesn’t mean anything. “It’s not wrong,” she says — to him or to herself, she doesn’t know. She repeats it between the kisses, because this time she lets him kiss her. His hands slip over her top, caressing her breasts, and she arches into him. She bites her lip so as not to whisper his name as his hands slide down her belly, making her skin tingle. It feels wonderful, and she doesn’t think such a simple touch has ever turned her on like this. That’s what stops her in the first place.

“No, it’s wrong!” she whimpers and wakes up in her bed in the boarding house. Alone.

Part of her wishes he were there.

=====================

The fifth dream follows soon, and she kind of expects it. It’s normal, she tells herself. According to Cosmo, people in healthy relationships have erotic dreams about other people all the time, there’s nothing wrong with it.

She loses her train of thought when Damon takes off her top, his palms flattening against her breasts for a moment before he traces the contours with his fingers and moves closer to pull one achingly hard nipple into his mouth. She bites her lip to be quiet, but she’s not sure she can, because his lips feel so wonderful on her skin that she feels like she’ll pass out there and then.

She doesn’t have enough presence of mind when his thumbs hook in her underwear, and she rolls her hips impatiently, encouraging him to take it off, but he seems to change his mind at the last moment. He strokes her through the lace, making her shudder, before he kisses his way from her breasts up to her neck and smirks as she pulls him into a kiss — first.

“Why don’t we leave you wondering?”

She wants to slap that smirk off his face (to kiss it off), but he’s already gone, and she’s alone in her bed, desperately wanting more.

=====================

The sixth, seventh and eighth dreams aren’t a surprise. She finds herself looking forward to them, in a way, almost anxious to see how he will surprise her. Deep down, she’s vaguely aware that it’s nothing but her own imagination, her fantasy about something new (exciting, passionate, she adds when she’s being completely honest with herself), but she likes to think of dream!Damon as of somebody who acts entirely on his own will. That way, when she lets him torture her with slow, reverent touches and fierce kisses, she can pretend he’s the only one to blame.

He kisses her inner thighs with tenderness that she would never expect from him. He doesn’t push her to do anything else — yet. Elena knows one day he’ll want to go further, just as well as she knows she’ll let him do whatever he wants.

Stefan has never gone down on her. When she suggested trying something different for the first time, he sighed heavily and gave her a lecture in his eternally apologetic voice, explaining that he wouldn’t be able to control himself anywhere near her femoral artery, nor if she wanted to return the favor. Somewhat humbled, Elena never asked again.

She googles what erotic dreams about a friend are supposed to mean, and it says she probably wants a deeper emotional connection with him. She scoffs, because their understanding seems stronger than ever, and yet with each dream the urge to give in gets more and more unbearable. In reality, it’s getting complicated, too. His looks, her dreams, the way he always lingers a moment too long when he touches her, Isobel’s words still ringing in her ears — they all push her to start the embarrassing don’t-forget-we-are-just-friends talk, and when he uses his trademark eye thing against her, she’s already sure she’s going to have the ninth dream tonight.

=====================

The dreams stop after he does the unforgivable.

She can’t stand to see him right now. He can lash out all he wants, but not like this, she thinks, the awful scene with her brother’s lifeless body playing on repeat in her mind. She wants to hate him, tries to, but hates herself instead, because even after what he’s done, she feels sorry for him and can’t let him die.

She starts taking pills before she goes to bed — anything that would ensure he won’t be waiting for her the moment she closes her eyes.

=====================

The dreams come back when she least expects them.

She’s just been kidnapped, she’s tired and confused, and the only thing she wants is sleep. She doesn’t take her sleep med, certain that she doesn’t need it anymore, and it turns out a big mistake.

Because Damon’s there, in her dream, like he never left and was just waiting for a moment when she would be ready to let him back in.

His eyes render her speechless with the sheer emotion she can see in them. It’s nothing but a dream, and she can indulge in studying them, registering everything they reflect — vulnerability, trust, care, hope, lust, love.

She expects him to greet her with a kiss, but his lips touch her forehead instead, and for some reason it makes her want to cry. She winds her arms around his neck, giving him the hug he was denied earlier today.

She doesn’t remember anything else from her tenth dream.

=====================

The next few nights, the dreams are so many that she’s losing count.

They’re not all erotic. Sure, in some of them, his lips and fingers burn her entire body except for where she wants them most (Elena wonders if it’s her subconscious guarding her from giving in too much). In others, though, he just holds her, or cups her face, or caresses her cheek. Those she finds especially strange, but she doesn’t let herself dwell. She has a life, and what Damon does in her dreams is none of her concern.

What he does in real life is none of her concern, either, she thinks after running into a bathrobe-clad Rose in the boarding house. She feels her stomach churn, probably because Rose just kidnapped her, and she’s still hostile. That must be it.

Worse, Rose refused to keep her secret and called Damon when she tried to turn herself over, like they were a couple of babysitters looking after a disobedient child. Elena is mad at both of them — for thwarting her plan, for getting Stefan trapped in the tomb — but mostly, she’s mad at herself. Because she didn’t think it through. And, more importantly, because when Damon caught her hand mid-punch and looked at her, his gaze heavy and dangerous, part of her desperately wanted him to kiss her.

Stupid dreams.

At night, the Damon from her dream is wearing an annoying just-got-laid smirk. It makes her think of Rose, and she slaps him, hoping he’ll get mad. Her palm burns, but she raises her hand to strike again — of course, he catches it and yanks her to him, his eyes blazing.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he says in that low, dangerous voice that makes her melt with desire. She struggles just to annoy him, just like she struggled in the tomb today, and he covers her mouth with his the minute she opens it to say something. There’s nothing gentle about this kiss, not a trace of tenderness or care — he possesses, demands and takes. She wraps one leg around his waist, and he pulls her impossibly closer, making her whimper. She feels them move, and then his weight is pressing her into the mattress.

His hand slips between them to trace teasing circles on her belly where it’s revealed between her cami and shorts. His fingers inch lower, into her shorts, stroking the sensitive skin there, and she breaks the kiss, gasping. “Damon, you-”

When his finger dips inside her, she forgets how to speak. She looks into his eyes as he strokes her, teases her, makes her hips buck, meeting him. He adds another finger, and she bites her lip to keep from screaming. This feels so wonderfully, amazingly, incredibly g-

And he stops.

“Damon,” she says, panting, and he lifts his head from her neckline. “Don’t be a tease.”

He smiles and curls his fingers inside her, flicking her clit with his thumb. She arches her back as her whole body trembles. He does it again, and again, and again, and kisses her just in time to muffle her scream.

When Elena wakes up, her body buzzes happily, and she has no energy to be mad at herself. She can feel guilty and uncomfortable tomorrow. Now, she just wants to sleep.

=====================

Sure enough, the guilt does come, exacerbated by the lack of said guilt the night before.

She tries the sleep meds again because only a despicable person could have such dreams about her boyfriend’s brother while said boyfriend is trapped with his psychotic ex. Or keep having them even after the boyfriend is free and back with her.

Sometimes, the meds help. Other times, she still wakes up remembering the dreams with perfect clarity, every tiny little detail burnt into her mind. The look in his eyes when he undresses her. The way his lips feel against hers. The way her body seems to relax under his weight.

Which makes it all the stranger how strong their friendship seems to be in reality. How she knows without any doubt that if she falls, Damon will be there to catch her.

She loves Stefan. Of course, she does. He’s always on her side. Always ready to do things her way. That’s the kind of love she understands, the kind that doesn’t scare her like Damon’s. The elder Salvatore is like a tidal wave, all-encompassing, powerful and potentially destructive. She’s scared of what lengths she might be ready to go to when it comes to forgiving that destruction.

When he makes her believe Bonnie’s dead, for a moment Elena believes she won’t forgive that, only to do it minutes later. His eyes burn her, and his bed is two feet away, and she runs away, not trusting herself so close to him.

She desperately needs some boundaries, now, and Damon gives her a chance all too soon. She understands why he fed her his blood so well she may as well actually read his mind, but she tells him she needs time. He can’t think that she’ll be there no matter what he does.

Of course, her new resolution falls apart when she finds out Damon is dying.

She kisses him because she wants to grant him what he surely wishes for, but also because she owes it to them and to what could have been. When Katherine shows up with the cure, she almost cries with relief.

Damon is gentlemanly enough to act like nothing happened once he feels better. He vows to save Stefan, no matter how hard it is. He doesn’t mention the kiss even though she can see it in his eyes that he wants to.

Elena doesn’t mention it, either. She can’t, not when his brother, her boyfriend is out there sacrificing himself.

But at night, when she sees Damon in her dream again, she runs to him across the room — his room, she notices belatedly — and kisses him so fiercely he stumbles backwards. He kisses her back with just as much passion, and this time she’s the one who pushes him to the mattress, she’s the one who undresses him and plants kisses all over his body, she’s the one who pulls off all of her clothes and covers his body with hers, capturing his lips again.

It’s just a dream, she reminds herself. It’s harmless. For a moment, she’s allowed to indulge in this fantasy where Damon feels perfect inside her, and his lips and fingers all but make her lose her mind.

She wakes up tired and satisfied, unconvincingly telling herself she doesn’t have to feel guilty.

=====================

Not all her dreams are about Damon, of course. She does have some — sometimes good, sometimes nightmares — about finding Stefan. Some are memories from her childhood. Some are so random and vague that she hardly remembers them in the morning. But it’s dreams about Damon that keep her up at night at least once a week, causing her to guzzle coffee in vampire amounts the following day.

While she can definitely explain the occasional sex dreams (she does have eyes), she still can’t explain the ones where she just sits next to him on the couch, her head on his shoulder, his arm holding her close, and doesn’t want to go anywhere.

“We’ll find him,” says Damon, shaking her out of her reverie. She realizes she spaced out in the middle of lunch. Over the month that’s passed since Damon almost died, lunch together has become a sort of tradition for them.

Elena flushes because it wasn’t Stefan she was thinking about, and it should’ve been. Trying to recover, she manages a quiet “I know,” hoping he won’t say anything.

“You haven’t been sleeping well, have you?”

Elena is immediately mortified.

“What? Why?”

“No offense, but have you seen the circles under your eyes?” He does this eye thing, but then his voice becomes concerned. “Seriously, though. Are you okay?”

His voice is devoid of the eternal mocking, and it encourages Elena. She can tell him only about the less racy dreams. Or about none at all. She’ll find a way to avoid the uncomfortable parts of the conversation.

“Vampires can compel people to have certain dreams, right?”

Damon raises his eyebrows.

“Yes, vampires can do that, if the person isn’t wearing vervain and hasn’t ingested any. Actually, vampires can give dreams to other vampires, too, depending on some circumstances. It’s kiddie stuff, a lot easier than actual compulsion.”

Elena sighs, and Damon narrows his eyes, looking at her inquisitively. “I figure that’s not morbid curiosity?”

She shakes her head and takes a deep breath. “Have you ever done that to me?”

His eyebrows go even higher than before. “Me? To you?” He looks away thoughtfully for a moment. “Yeah. Once. Back when you started dating Stefan, you were having some kind of hot dream about him, and I put myself in your dream instead. You freaked out and woke up.”

She looks away, shaking her head, and Damon takes her hand, running his thumb over her knuckles. “Hey, I’m sorry. I was an idiot. I just wanted to mess with the two of you. Are you mad?”

Elena scoffs. “I’m not. It was almost a year ago. Everything was different.”

Maybe not that different, given she is still dating Stefan, technically, and has no business fantasizing about her boyfriend’s brother. But it felt important to say that.

“What’s bothering you then?” he asks, doing that thing where he narrows eyes, compelling her — not literally, though — to be honest with him.

She deflects. “What else can you guys do?”

Damon looks at her intently, clearly curious why the twenty questions.

“With dreams? Well, if somebody isn’t on vervain, or this somebody is a fellow vampire, we can sometimes put ourselves into their dreams that are already happening. Say, if you were off vervain and were having a dream about me — or about somebody else, actually, me already being there would just make it easier — I could sort of… inhabit the character, so to speak.”

Elena is pretty sure that her face is burning up, and Damon notices, of course.

“Have you done that to me?” she asks quickly before he says anything else.

“Just that one time that I told you about, although I’m starting to think I should’ve done it more,” he says with a head tilt, studying her expression. Elena can’t blame him. So much for her plan to avoid uncomfortable parts of the conversation. “Elena, I wouldn’t do that. It would be a massive violation of privacy, and I know I haven’t exactly been known to care about things like that, but I wouldn’t do that to you — not without permission. And, if it helps, you’re on vervain almost all the time, as far as I remember.”

“I didn’t mean to sound like I’m accusing you of something. I’m just curious.” She tries to feign lightheartedness now, half-smiling, silently begging Damon to play along. He does.

“Happy to be your walking compulsion encyclopedia,” he smirks seductively, and Elena feels warm and tense inside.

“Okay, I’ll go home and read.” She gets up and puts her plate in the sink. “Thanks for the lunch, Damon.”

“You’re welcome.”

She’s almost out of the boarding house when he flashes in front of her. It’s a testimony to how much time she’s been spending with him that it doesn’t even faze her.

“If you ever do want me to dream walk, all you have to do is ask.”

She tries very hard to look away from his lips.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says, her throat dry. She gets past him to the doorway (has this hallway always been so narrow?) and rushes to her car.

She has basically just admitted to Damon that she’s had dreams that involve him enough that she suspects him of being responsible. Wonderful.

=====================

Shockingly enough, Damon doesn’t use her not-quite-confession against her. He’s the imperfect gentleman throughout the rest of their mission-driven summer. They still have lunch together every day, unless he’s following up on a lead, and he lends her books, and she calls him first thing in the morning. She doesn’t know if it’s the shared pain of Stefan’s absence or the sincere moments they had when he was facing an almost certain death that brought them closer, but Damon is the biggest part of her new normal.

The flirty smirks and inappropriate comments are still there, of course, but then again, she wouldn’t expect him to be tame.

Dream!Damon is anything but tame. With how close they are in reality, Elena feels a new kind of guilt over dreaming about him. She loves Stefan. It’s bad enough that she hangs out with his brother all the time, and sometimes even flirts back, which Stefan definitely wouldn’t be happy about. She shouldn’t indulge in her nighttime indiscretions, even if they are only happening in her mind.

When Damon appears in her dream a few days after their conversation, she musters the will power to push him away.

“Don’t,” she begs, even as her hands are already trailing up and down his chest. “We can’t. It’s not right.”

“It’s your call, Elena,” he says with breathtaking kindness in his eyes. “It’s always been your call.”

She kisses him lightly, barely a touch.

“I know.” She sits down on the couch in the parlor, where she finds them this time, and holds out her hand. “Will you just hold me?”

He silently joins her on the couch and pulls her into his arms. For now, it’s enough.

=====================

She gets very good at resisting him. She cultivates guilt with something akin to twisted enjoyment, knowing that the guiltier she feels, the easier it will be to remember it at the right moment in her dream, before Damon kisses her. Or before she kisses him back. Or, on rare occasions, after both those things but before they manage to lose all clothes.

=====================

A week before her birthday, Damon disappears.

He has been following another lead, and he was supposed to check in but didn’t. She can’t fall asleep all night, desperately trying to reach him every hour. The call goes straight to voicemail. Ric hasn’t heard from him, either.

She passes out at dawn on the couch in the boarding house, from sheer exhaustion, hoping she will wake up to find him, but he hasn’t magically reappeared, and she is even more scared than before.

By nighttime, two hundred unsuccessful calls later, she has almost made up her mind to take Ric and try to retrace Damon’s steps and find him. And then he suddenly stumbles into the house. His jacket is riddled with holes, and dried blood is caked along his temple, but he’s alive.

He looks like something out of a horror movie. Elena still rushes to him, practically tackling him with a hug.

“Babe, as much as I would normally love this, it hurts,” he rasps, and she jumps away, her skin tingling at his casual endearment.

Elena apologizes and runs to the basement for a blood bag, then watches him drink it as she checks for more injuries. She is so numb with relief at seeing him alive, if a little worse for the wear, that she completely forgets he was supposed to be looking for Stefan until he brings it up first.

That’s when she realizes that, if asked to choose between the way things are now and getting Stefan back at the expense of losing Damon, she wouldn’t necessarily choose the latter.

When Damon is completely fine — she checks — Elena is almost eager to fall asleep, hoping to see him again. Sure enough, she does. It’s become almost too easy to dream about him intentionally.

“God, I was so worried about you. Don’t do that again,” she asks before pulling him into a kiss.

“I’m okay, babe,” he whispers against her lips, and it amuses her that dream!Damon seems to be borrowing new vocabulary from his real-life counterpart.

“You’re okay,” she repeats happily, kissing him ferociously. He matches her stroke for stroke, and suddenly they are naked in bed, Elena on top, which gives her another opportunity to study his perfectly healed chest. She bends down to kiss it.

“You’re okay,” she repeats between kisses, gradually trailing lower. “You’re okay.”

She needs to feel that he is okay, and it’s been entirely too long since she’s indulged in a dream like that, so for one night, she lets go of the guilt and just lets herself be with him as much as she wants.

=====================

Her birthday is a rollercoaster of emotions, and by the time she goes to bed, she hopes she’s exhausted enough to fall into a deep, exhausted slumber immediately. Instead, her thoughts keep going over this insane day.

The call from Stefan, the closet, the fight with Damon, Ric’s abrupt decision to move out, Damon’s stupid naked stunt (which she isn’t forgetting anytime soon).

And that brief monumental moment when Damon gave her the necklace, and she was overwhelmed by love for him so strong it almost took her breath away.

She knows very well why she didn’t tell him. Because she still loves Stefan, she does. It wouldn’t be fair to open that door with Damon when she hasn’t closed the other one.

Would it?

“I do love you, you know,” she tells him in her dream that night. The dream is as weird as messy as her world has become, and Damon seems unbearably close one moment, naked and smirking, and then the next moment he’s far away, and she doesn’t know how to reach him, and it’s all a blur. She says it anyway, because she has to say it, and finds them in Stefan’s room at the boarding house, looking in the mirror, her skin tingling where he’s just touched the clasp of her necklace.

“I know,” he says, his eyes never leaving hers in the mirror. “Do you?”

=====================

She needs to pull herself together again after this, because she feels like she’s treading dangerously close to some lines in reality, so she doesn’t need the dreams further complicating things. She resumes the sleeping pills, and more often than not, they help her forget her fleeting dreams the moment she opens her eyes.

“You know you were dreaming about me. Explains the drool,” he quips in a few days, waking her up at six in the morning to go track down Stefan in Chicago. It’s entirely possible — she can’t be sure because of the pills — but he doesn’t need to know that. So, she huffs and acts indignant about his unorthodox method of waking her up and is very, very grateful when he doesn’t bring it up anymore.

She skips the pill the night after he presses her to his body, whispering something completely irrelevant about vampire anatomy and bringing up Stefan just in time to stop her from kissing him.

She needs at least that dream, or she’ll explode.

=====================

She doesn’t dream about Damon the night she lets him stay in her bed. It’s good because, if she had one of those dreams, she would never hear the end of it. But she suspects that it’s because she’s completely content with their closeness as she drifts off, because she doesn’t need to add anything to this moment.

Waking up, she finds herself practically lying on top of him and fights the urge to kiss the triangle of skin revealed by his shirt.

“Morning,” he rumbles, his hand lightly tracing circles on her back. Elena knows she should probably pull away, but she can’t bring herself to ruin the moment. It feels too good, like it did in one of her dreams, and just like with the dreams, she tells herself that it’s okay. They are in for a very long, hard day when a lot of things can go wrong. She deserves this little indulgence.

“Hi,” she breathes. “Sorry, I’m squishing you.”

“Mmhm, all ninety pounds of you are just unbearable,” he chuckles. Elena smiles in response, and neither of them further comments on this admittedly uncharted territory.

They are quiet for a long, long while (ten minutes? Twenty? An hour?) before Damon sighs.

“I’m going to hate myself forever for saying this, but I think we should get up. We have a lot of work today.”

“No, you’re right,” Elena reluctantly pulls away from him and summons the courage to look into his eyes. They are just as open and hopeful as she expected. “Thanks for staying with me,” she adds, putting her hand on his arm for a moment before getting up. He holds her gaze.

“Thanks for letting me.”

When her heart almost breaks at the thought of going to the bathroom and probably coming back to find Damon already gone, she finally knows what she needs to do.

=====================

She doesn’t dream about Damon the next night, either, because she spends the night in his bed.

Not that way, even though there’s a growing part of her that wouldn’t mind. She doesn’t want to be alone, and more importantly, doesn’t want him to be alone after their plan to kill Klaus ends in a spectacular failure. So, she shows up in his room with a blanket. He asks the question with just his eyebrows, and she replies, “Do you mind?” He says “sure,” with the same kind half-smile as yesterday. She lies down and looks at him for a long moment before finally closing her eyes.

=====================

When he kisses her, part of her is surprised that he has crossed this line, but mostly she realizes it was inevitable. This something (that she could easily name if she let herself) couldn’t just dissipate. It had to explode into something sooner or later.

He’s shared his guilt with her, so it’s only fair that she should share some of hers with him.

Before she goes to bed, she takes her phone and sends him a message.

If you want to dream walk, you can. You have my permission.

=====================

The dream doesn’t feel any different from the previous ones. She finds herself in Damon’s room, on the bed, alone, but just a minute later, he emerges from the shower, wearing nothing but a towel, and sits down next to her.

“Is this… you?” she asks, and he frowns in confusion.

“What?”

So Damon hasn’t received her message, or maybe he decided he’d rather not do that. Elena is disappointed and relieved at once, so when dream!Damon reaches out to her, she responds to his kiss, pulling him closer, reveling in the feeling of his lips against hers that she doesn’t have to imagine anymore. Her hands slide up his chest, over his shoulders, down his back, eager to touch him as much as she can.

The change is immediate and palpable.

Suddenly, she somehow knows she’s now kissing Damon, the real one, but she cannot stop. He doesn’t seem to be interested in stopping, either, hauling her closer in a swift possessive move, not typical of the usually careful Damon from her dreams. In a moment, Elena finds herself pressed against the wall, his mouth ravaging hers with so much passion that she couldn’t imagine it if she tried.

A few long, heady moments later he pulls back, panting as he eyes her. Elena feels naked under his gaze, double-checking that she isn’t actually magically naked by now.

“Well, this is an interesting development,” he says breathlessly. “Is this why you texted me? For a pretend booty call?”

“Why are you being like this?” she asks, taken aback. She didn’t expect him to be difficult or angry. She actually wanted to talk to him, to try to put her feelings into words in the safe space of her subconscious.

“Because if you wanted to do this,” he gestures at the space between them, “you could’ve come to me. Actually come to me. It doesn’t work the way you think. What happens here counts. You don’t get to magically walk away and pretend this didn’t happen when you wake up.”

Except she’s been telling herself it doesn’t count for over a year.

“This is not what I was doing,” she says, still a little breathless herself. “I just wanted to talk to you, and I thought it might be easier this way. In a dream.”

Some of his anger subsides, and that encourages her to go on. “Can we start this conversation over? Please?”

“Fine,” says Damon curtly, and suddenly, Elena finds herself on a couch in the parlor, with Damon standing next to his collection of alcohol, dressed in his favorite all black, pouring himself a generous glass of bourbon.

“I’m listening,” he says, sitting down next to her. She takes his tumbler and takes a sip, couching as the strong liquor burns her throat. Damon chuckles. “Easy there.”

All words that she meant to say have pretty much escaped her, but bourbon gives her a little extra courage that she needs.

“Thank you,” she says, putting her hand on his arm. “I said it today, but I need to say it again. I wouldn’t be here without you. None of us would be.”

“You’re welcome,” he says with a small smile. She takes his hand in both of hers, cradling it between her palms.

“I know you love me. I feel it every day that I am with you, even if it’s easier to act like I don’t.” She feels tears burning her eyes but refuses to give in to them. She has to say it. “And I don’t want you to think that I don’t notice… or that I don’t feel something, too.”

Damon is inhumanly still, his face devoid of any expression. She takes a deep breath and goes on. “I do remember the things I felt while he was gone,” she quotes him with a weak smile. “I do, because I still feel them, and I don’t think I can shake them.”

He shifts closer to her, his eyes desperately searching something in hers. “What are you saying?”

“It’s not about what I’m saying, Damon. It’s about what I’m not saying, because how can I? If I say it now, after Stefan has sacrificed his humanity to save you, what does that make me? How can I do that to him?”

Damon sighs and pulls her into a hug.

“That makes two of us,” he whispers against her hair.

“I don’t want to hurt Stefan. I don’t know what to do,” she says, and some tears escape anyway.

“Neither do I.” He pulls back to look her in the eye. “Do you want me to make you forget this conversation? I can do that, Elena. I can make you forget this dream. I can make you forget the kiss if you want. The real one. I can make this easier for you.”

Elena feels like her entire chest is about to explode, because she knows how much it costs him to say these words. This is bigger than giving her the necklace. This is a greater sacrifice than she has ever thought possible. But she could never forgive herself if she agreed. The thought of forgetting a single moment with Damon fills her with dread, and it’s at this moment that her mind is made up.

She shakes her head vigorously.

“Please, don’t,” she says with a sob. “You can’t make me forget everything. Not this whole past year. Not our summer together.” She notices how he’s stopped breathing again, listening to her every word. “Not all the other dreams I had about you.”

His lips part in amazement, but he quickly composes himself, going back to his signature smirk.

“Were they hot?” he quips, and she chuckles through tears, appreciating his attempt at humor to make her feel better.

“Very.” She leans forward to plant a gentle kiss on his lips. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Damon.”

He looks dejected as he disappears, and it breaks her heart a little. But he was right. As beautiful as these moments have been, her dreams aren’t cutting it. It has to be real.

=====================

She goes to the boarding house first thing in the morning.

All her reservations didn’t magically vanish just because of that dream. She’s still terrified of hurting Stefan. She’s still feeling like a horrible person.

The thing is, she’d much rather be a horrible person with Damon than a somewhat less horrible one without him.

She goes straight to his room once she gets there and, funnily enough, finds him fresh out of the shower.

“Elena?” His eyes are wide in disbelief, as if it’s really all that surprising that she cannot stay away. “What are you doing here?”

“Actually coming to you,” she says and closes the distance between them. It’s just like in her dream, and he responds with just as much passion, but it’s also different, because this time, she is really sliding her hands down his chest, and he is really backing her into the nearest wall to press her against it with his body, and it feels so good and so right that her brain cannot process anything anymore.

He pulls back with what looks like tremendous effort, gently setting her down. His eyes are open and vulnerable the way she has only ever seen on him; the eyes of somebody who has been abandoned and rejected by everyone lifetime after lifetime.

“Elena, what about-” he starts, but she interrupts.

“We’ll figure it out. Together. I want us to figure it out together.”

His lips tremble, and she reaches out, tracing his cheek with a feather-light touch.

“We may not have the answers, but I finally know the answer to the question that you have been asking forever. And the answer is yes. I love you, Damon. I love you so much.”

His lips are back on hers right that instant, and she smiles as he whispers “I love you. I love you. I love you” between the kisses. She doesn’t have to dream about it again, Elena realizes, mesmerized by how intoxicating this feels. She doesn’t have to imagine anything now, because they are here, together, and her heart is bursting with more happiness than she can remember feeling in a long time.

He stops abruptly, leaning his forehead against hers with a sigh.

“This feels completely unimportant right now, but I have to meet Bonnie in the witch house in like ten minutes.”

“It’s okay,” she smiles. “I have to be in school anyway. It’s Caroline’s birthday.”

“I’ll see you later?” He makes it sound like a question, like he still can’t believe that she will actually be here later.

“Absolutely,” she leans in, giving him a quick kiss, and then another one. She can kiss him whenever she wants now, and the thought is exhilarating.

She’s almost out of the door when he calls for her. “Elena?”

“Yeah?” she looks at him over her shoulder.

“Will you tell me about your dreams?”

She looks away, pretending to consider it for a moment, then looks back at him with a coy smile.

“How about I show you?”

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