Title: Damon: Eight or Nine Drinks In
Rating: T
Catergory: Angst like woah, but with a side of hopeful romance.
Summary: Damon's getting drunk at the Grill, because of Katherine. Elena is mad at him, also because of Katherine.
Spoilers: Set post-finale, but no spoilers released since apply
Warnings: Some swearing. Some drinking, leading to emotional vulnerability. Some emotional abuse of our darling Damon by Katherine. Damon and Elena not being as blissfully happy and together as I wish them to be.
Showverse

Okay, I know Ian "Smoulderharder" Somerhalder said he doesn't like doing emotionally vulnerable Damon, but after the finale, I just can't help thinking that (if Damon and Elena are ever going to get together for real and not just in our minds-PLEASE WRITERS!) things are going to get worse before they get better. Sorry about the emo.

I started this before the ComicCon spoilers, so this fic runs with the assumption that Jeremy is now a vampire. And other traumatizing things (that I've completely made up) have happened.

Also, I'm going to confess that this fic was inspired by a quote from Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer; "I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it." I thought of what might take Damon to that point, and this is what happened. Have I made any mistakes, in anything from spelling to gross mischaracterization? Please let me know, and let's discuss!

And with that, here is "Damon: Eight or Nine Drinks In":

The drunker Damon gets, the more honest he lets himself be. To be fair, he also gets meaner. So often, Damon finds delightfully, these two things go hand in hand. Now, however, already eight or nine drinks in, it is himself that he is being more honest with, and also meaner to.

Katherine loves the way he does that, using the truth to be cruel. Ah, Katherine.

At first, Damon was excited that she'd come back, like a little boy at Christmas. Katherine could always do that to him—turn him from a grown man with balls into a fucking six-year-old who just wants to bask in his hot older baby-sitter's approval. It pissed him off now, after everything that he'd found out about her, but at the same time he kind of loved that feeling. He didn't even think it was some masochistic vampire thing, either. Damon was pretty sure that was all him.

Yeah, obviously he was hurt by what she'd done over the course of, you know, two frickin' centuries. Why had she turned Stefan, too? Why wasn't he enough? Why had she never told him she'd escaped from the tomb? Why hadn't she ached for him every day for a hundred and fifty years?

He knew some of those answers, and they could all be summed up like this: Katherine liked to play games. She liked to play without telling you the rules and cheat if she thought you caught on, and she liked to play like people were her little dolls and she could make them hate or love or kiss or die for her amusement. Damon didn't even think that was some sadistic vampire thing, either, but he wasn't entirely sure. You could never, ever, be entirely sure with Katherine.

So for a little while, Damon had chased that feeling he got whenever Katherine had looked at him and smiled, following her around like he was some dopey freckly faced kid and she had jam or something else dopey freckly faced kids liked in her perfectly arranged curls. He killed people, because she wanted him to. He tormented Elena, screwed with the emotions of his only friend, because she wanted him to. Damon got the feeling that he was just a doll to her, too, that she was just playing with him to see if he would break, that he wasn't special to her like he thought, and he hated it and didn't care at the same time as long as she smiled for him afterwards. His dad had never said he loved him, was this some kind of sick psychological disorder? Fuck. Then Katherine would smile her special smile, perfectly calculated (the kind of smile that Elena never gave; Elena threw herself into her smiles; they meant she was happy), and Damon would trail along after her like his damn mind had just been wiped.

But there was this one thing. One fucking thing in the whole world Damon couldn't stand, and Katherine would not give it a rest. That thing was Stefan. God, Damon hated that. He just wanted Katherine, only her. Why wouldn't she leave Stefan alone? Katherine had him, her pet monster, perfectly trained to eat out of her hand, so why couldn't she stop obsessing over having Stefan as well?

Stefan was with Elena, and he wasn't bowing to Katherine's whims any more. That's probably what it was, Damon thought. Katherine couldn't stand not getting her own way with a doll that had once been hers. And the more frustrated with Stefan she got, the more tantrums she took out on Damon. It was mean of her, Damon knew, but she was a vampire after all, and sometimes he could still kiss her into silence, into complying, and he took those victories and saved them up, those precious little moments that she let him have because it pleased her to give them.

"I don't get it," Elena told him bluntly.

Fuck. Why was she here? Couldn't a vampire get drunk in this town without any judgment?

He'd been having a pity party for himself at the Grill because he didn't know where Katherine was (hadn't known for three days, why didn't she just call him?), and Elena was meeting Caroline for dinner. Damon was drunker by far than Elena had ever seen him, including that time before the bachelor auction.

"Elllena," he slurred, his heart squeezing painfully, just for a moment. "Elenalena. Mlena. Lennna," he repeated, like a mantra that could sober him up.

Why she was even talking to him, Damon couldn't fathom. He'd been awful to her these past few weeks. One of the first tings he'd done was tell her about the kiss on her porch, but he'd told the story differently than it had really happened. Katherine had said to him, "That poor little girl, I think she has feelings for you. How cute and hopeless. You're mine; you've always been mine."

"Like you're mine," Damon had murmured into her neck, kissing his way along her collarbone.

"Yes, of course. But I'll never try to change you, Damon. She wanted to tame you into her idea of what you should be. But you're mine because I know how to show you what you are. I think it's cruel of her, really."

Damon hadn't said, "You left me for a century, you said it was just me and then my brother turned into a vampire, too," because he didn't care about those things when she was sitting beside him like this.

"I think she needs to be taught a lesson. Do you know what you should tell her?"

So Damon had told Elena that he'd kissed Katherine on her porch, thinking it was her, that the kiss had been slow and soft and sweet, and then that "Elena" had hummed a soft moan into his lips, and that that had made him happy because he'd stolen his brother's girl, but that he'd felt empty inside and that it had been Katherine's name he'd been thinking, Katherine's image he was holding on to in her face. "I told you once, Elena, none of this matters to me," he'd reminded her as he saw the hurt in her eyes.

Elena had slapped him then. "That's what I'd have done if you'd kissed me," she spat, "and you deserve it now for breaking the trust I gave you by trying to, even if it wasn't me." She fled to Stefan after that, and the two of them had been tighter and more perfect than ever, but it hadn't bothered Damon, not with Katherine's touches to make him forget everything else in the world.

But right at this moment, with Katherine gone somewhere (again) and Elena standing there looking like she could cry for him in the grimy light of the Grill's bar, Damon just wanted one of Elena's touches. He wanted a soft touch of reassurance and goodness and innocence and the comfort that comes from love without conditions or games.

"Elena," he said again, and this time her name had tasted right on his tongue. "Elena, she doesn't love me, and I love her so much I don't even care."

"I know," Elena said, and she reached up to touch his hair. The next thing he knew he'd melted into her, clinging like she was his god-damned gravity.

Elena sighed. "I'm going to say this to you one time, Damon, because you are very, very drunk right now and I'm not sure if you'll even live to see tomorrow at the rate this is going.

"Damon, right now it's like you're dirty. There is good in you somewhere; I know it. I've seen it. I've trusted it. But Katherine, she is like pollution, she is making you evil because she can. She likes making people hurt and she likes making people love her and she has both in you. She can control you and nothing else right now and it's making her vicious. If you do know in your cold, dead, vampire heart what you just told me is true, then everything you've done at her command is your fault, too. But that doesn't mean you deserve this, Damon. You do have a choice."

"Can I choose you?" he asked, the scotch making his head spin so much that with his forehead pressed to her shoulder it felt like they were dancing.

"You can choose to make things right if you can. To fix the things you've broken than can still be saved."

"But not everything. Not you, not your life."

"You can't fix everything you've done, it's true, but you can fix yourself. Please. We were friends, once. There is a part of me that still cares for you and wants you back despite everything." Her hands were healing him, stroking his back, his hair, his cheeks, his hands, like she knew she was drawing the poison out.

"Don"t," he said, "don't let go."

Elena drew his face up level with his, forcing him to look her in the eyes.

"Please, Damon," she said. "Please be strong."

"I don't know how."

"Figure it out. I can't help you; I can barely stand to look at you after what you've done this month. Killing Alaric hurt my whole family, especially Jenna, and you've ruined Jeremy. With Stefan's help he could have retained his humanity, but you twisted him and now he's a monster. You've made me fear my own brother and I hate you for that. I understand why she made you do those things, but you did them knowing they'd hurt me and that makes me sick. I told you once I understood that you'd do anything for her, but I didn't really, not then. And now that I do I wish I still didn't."

Damon recoiled.

"You with Katherine is like Stefan on blood, Damon. But I can't just shoot you up with vervain and starve her out of your system. You have to do this yourself."

"You didn't stop fighting for Stefan." Damon looked at her hard. The background might be spinning, but her eyes were perfectly clear to him.

"And there's a small piece of me that won't stop waiting for you, either," Elena said, very softly. Then she leaned in and pressed a kiss on his lips, warm and welcoming and, best of all, sincere. Damon's breath hitched against her mouth.

"There. Now the next time you kiss her, it will be my face you see."

the end

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