Damon found the changes in Bonnie’s expression heart-wrenching. At first she was angry and defensive. “I did not! I would—I would never say something like that!” Then, eyes wide, with tears glittering on her lashes, she was frightened. “Why would I say something so awful?” Finally, head down, she flung off Meredith and Matt to stand by Elena. “I’m sorry! I don’t remember saying anything at all, but I’m sorry!”
Elena, as usual, couldn’t help taking the side of the underdog, even if the underdog was predicting her untimely death. “Meredith,” she said, “maybe we should just forget all about this shock treatment thing. I mean, Damon usually knows what he’s talking about. She’s stressed and she’s sensitive and it’s all my fault in the first place.”
“It’s not your fault,” everyone else said, almost in synchrony. The tension broke as they laughed a little.
Meredith looked back and forth from Elena to Bonnie and at last nodded slowly, reaching out to put a firm hand on Damon’s shoulder. “Okay, so we forget it,” she said.
“Until the next time,” Matt said under his breath.
“I heard that, Matt!” Elena flared up again. “And do you really think I’m the jealous type? Or is it you who’re jealous—of Bonnie?”
“Now, now, kiddies,” Damon said, almost dizzy with relief. He felt he’d just dodged a wooden bullet. “We don’t want to keep arguing, right? And I think Elena needs a nurse to get this thing back in place.” Blood was seeping out of the sides of the bandage tape by now, and Elena’s three human friends winced.
“You’re right; we need to think of her first,” Matt said. “Sorry, Elena.”
Damon was feeling quite cheerful now, despite an uncontrollable urge to swallow. Everyone trusted him; they had no reason not to believe him. They’d known him for a year, and he was older than they were by . . . well, a couple of years, anyway.
“It’s okay, Matt,” Elena was saying. “I don’t even care if I’m a medical mystery anymore, you know? Whatever happened is over with and it’s damn well not going to happen again. It’s time to put it all behind us.”
By my fangs and God’s blood! Damon thought fervently. Little brother put a lot of work into you, didn’t he? And in any case you’re not one to follow the pack. If everyone else is enthralled by the utter weirdness going on here, you’re going to lock your mind and abjure it even if it means standing all alone. Especially if that’s what it means.
But you’re not alone, my sweetheart, my princess of the night. You’ve got your velociraptor sisters and the dormouse—door mat, Matt, sorry, sorry. And best of all, you’ve got wonderful, elegant, dangerous, fantastically clever me!
“I’ll call a nurse,” he said solemnly to the group. “You three go home. I know you’ve got—things to do.” With his back to Elena he winked at them.
“You’re right; we do,” Bonnie said hastily.
As they were saying goodbye to Elena, Damon put an invisible ward against evil on Bonnie and Meredith, and Elena, too, while he was at it. The ward consisted of an eldritch sign set around each girl’s neck that said in flashing red letters: “Private property of Damon Salvatore. Everyone else stay away or I’ll rip your head off. Don’t let this be you!” It was illustrated by a very detailed picture of a headless figure spouting crimson. There was also a sort of subtext that would reveal itself to all male intruders, in which the head was the second or third bit to be ripped off.
As they left, both Meredith and Matt said something on the order of “Thanks,” to him, and Bonnie went up on her little tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.
Twenty minutes later, when a nurse had reseated Elena’s IV line and scolded her for touching it, Elena looked rebelliously after her retreating figure.
“I said I’d stay here for one more day and I will,” she said. “But I can’t help hating it. I hate this thing most of all.”
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Da
mon said. He could feel the hurt; he was hooked into her mind at a constant low level. Wards and signs were all very well, but if anything alien even touched Elena he wanted to know it immediately. He was full of the blood of Mercy Havenwick’s finest and he was in the mood for ripping bits off something.
Even as he thought this, he took Elena’s free hand in his and kissed her palm. He began to slowly reduce the icy pain of the IV needle by absorbing it himself. In a few minutes, Elena’s eyelids fluttered and closed.
“That’s right,” he said quietly, “you get some rest, princess.”
“Well—maybe just a catnap. But I want something first.”
“Of course.” He bent down and kissed her lips as he had kissed Bonnie earlier. But Elena was expecting it and experienced enough to take the kiss to a more advanced level. In a few moments Damon was holding her close as best he could and the temperature in the room seemed to have skyrocketed.
Oh, gods, and I don’t even know which parts of her I’m allowed to touch and which I’m not, Damon mourned, staggered by what one kiss could do to him. His canines were dying to be allowed to sharpen, and being thwarted only fixated his attention on them.
Why didn’t I ask Stefan to tell me the really important stuff—
like how far they’d gone? he wondered, half frantic. I can’t get it out of her mind, either, since he’s wiped it all out along with who he was to her.
Finally, he settled for what he and Elena had done in the Dark Dimension and softly stroked the ends of her hair, crushing its silken fineness in his fist, winding its fragrant length with his fingers. He made sure she could feel it, too, although she ought not to be able to.
And then she scared him half out of undeath.
She broke off an impassioned kiss—to breathe, Damon thought—and shifted in his arms.