This is one of the weirdest things I have ever written. Let me know what you think? :)

/ pull me out from inside /

He hates feeling like Edward Cullen. (He hates knowing enough about Twilight to make that comparison, too, but that's an entirely different story.) He might be hotter, by like... a lot, and not socially inept – but they have something in common that he hasn't been able to shake.

Damon doesn't know one person that is unaffected by his compulsion, unless they are on vervain – which he can sniff out.

Then this girl shows up, all timid smiles and endless eyes and she stands there, looks him straight in the eye, and—nothing.

She isn't supposed to be able to say "no" when he asks her to go out for dinner with him-she isn't supposed to say "no" when he asks her anything. But she does, somehow she is able to resist his compulsion.

It is infuriating.

He discovers her name is Elena when he runs into her at Starbucks. When he tells her it means 'light' she promptly leaves; her cup of coffee is left untouched on the table.

Soon enough he figures out she has the habit to go to Starbucks every Friday evening. When he doesn't say anything that ticks her off enough to leave early she gets one of those tiny laptops out of her purse and lets her fingers dance across the keys. He's curious to see what she's writing, but he doesn't step into her personal space to look.

He does sit across from her though, a mug of coffee spiked with amaretto, and watches her go about the things she does.

She is surprisingly focused, not looking up once, not even when he stares at her and he knows, he just does, that she can feel it.

His eyes have never failed—never—but Elena seems immune to them.

It is enervating.

Wherever she goes, thick headphones loop around her neck and music pours from the ear pads. He only really notices them when he examines her closely, trying to figure out what is so different about this girl that he can't stay away.

He likes her taste though. The songs on her iPod are old, from decades ago – it was probably her parents' music. Bon Jovi, Nirvana, Metallica, U2 and the likes. The kind of music that never really grows old.

She doesn't know, but he listens to the songs she listens to.

(And tries to guess which track comes next. He isn't right once.)

Heading to Starbucks on Friday evening has become his habit as well. He catches himself looking forward to the night every week and spends most of his other days looking for his balls. He hasn't been obsessed with a girl since Katherine, and that makes him uncomfortable. She looks a little like her, but Elena—there's no one quite like Elena.

He goes on a killing spree to rid himself of her face floating through his head and feels horrible afterwards.

He doesn't show up at Starbucks that Friday though, and not the Friday after.

Stefan calls him a thunder cloud one day and ends up knocked into a wall of the boarding house that crumbles under the impact.

When he caves and goes to the coffee shop next they have their first real conversation. "I don't like change," she says when he sidles next to her in line. She's holding a twenty dollar bill and drags her fingertip across the rim—back and forth, back and forth. Then she continues with a smile that is less timid and more genuine, back and forth, and says, "I had grown accustomed to you being here on Friday."

"I'm sorry," he mutters, because he is—he doesn't know if he's sorry for himself or for her or for neither of them or for both of them. He just knows he's sorry, and that feels weird.

He's never sorry.

"I was busy. Missed me?"

She doesn't react to his cockiness and instead orders her coffee and pays, skipping down the line. He listens to her music over the chatter of people that have seeped into the shop and into the chairs. The Beatles. This chick, he swears.

After he gets his coffee he follows her to her usual table—"I don't like change."—and they sit quietly across one another, looking but not saying anything until—

"I didn't want you to sit with me all the time, and then you didn't anymore… You can't just not do that anymore. I don't like change." Her face shows no emotion and she lifts her cup to drink her coffee.

God, he has let things come too far already but he can't stop them now. "I'll be here."

One night it rains when they're about to leave and instead of offering her a ride-"I don't like change."-he walks with her. The water draws weird patterns into the fabric of his hoodie and he watches the locks of her hair stick to her face.

He has always really hated rain but it's not too bad, actually.

She smiles at him when they reach a crossroads near her house and says she won't let him take her any further, no "I don't want to be a bother", or "you've already done enough for me". She looks at him through her eyelashes, lets the smile fade and turns around.

This is not her being one of those damsel in distress kind of girls, those that make this out to be a big thing.

He realizes she doesn't want him to go any further because she doesn't want him to know where she lives.

And—well, fair enough.

The next time it rains when they leave, however, she asks if his car is near and he has no idea if this means she trusts him or if she figures Damon respects her enough to know that it's only because it's raining—pouring.

There is an iPod jack attached to his radio and he points at it. He knows how important her music is to her and it's only one more attempt to make her open up to him.

Because he wants to know, he wants to learn—he wants to read her like a book and find the answers he has wanted craved needed since meeting her.

Why can you resist my compulsion? his mind capitalizes in front of his eyes.

She smiles when she plugs in her iPod and everything around them is peaceful and Radiohead.

They settle in this… whatever it is. A dysfunctional dance, and she holds control in her tender hands, curls it in the fingers he has watched type words so many times now.

Words he still hasn't ever read.

He knows there might be more going on here when he starts opening up to her. When I was seven this, and One day my brother Stefan that, because they don't always talk when they meet up on Friday at Starbucks—meet up? When did it turn in meeting up?

They don't always talk when they meet up, but when they do, she listens. So Damon spills story after story and asks himself why she can look him straight in the eye and not gush like every other girl he has ever known.

Somewhere along the road, he has fallen for her. Hard.

/ i am ready /

She doesn't realize he has gotten under her skin until it's too late. She doesn't realize she's asking Jenna to help her pick out outfits again, or she's joining Caroline on her shopping trips. Only when it's too late. When he feels like a part of her body, like extra space between her ribs or more veins to her head—no, he feels like an extra beat of blissful silence between the thumps of her heart that resonate in her hollow chest.

She kisses him on a Friday.

It's soft and really sweet, actually. It reminds her of middle school romance, the way he stares at her like she's a miracle and she feels the warmth all the way to the tips of her toes in such an innocent, foreign way.

He takes her hand and guides her to his car so they can listen to her iPod and not drive. They sit in the parking lot for hours, seconds and minutes and hours, and Damon frowns when he hears the one song that doesn't seem to fit with the rest. There are almost two thousand songs on her iPod and finally they reach the one that is from this era, not one of the previous ones.

He notices it and he looks at her, so—expectantly? Like he needs an explanation.

So her lips curl up in a smile and she stays quiet.

She can't stop thinking about him after that and listens to Spider's Web on repeat until she doesn't think of how he knew from the first line that the song doesn't belong—and then she does think of him and starts all over again.

She realizes she has been hanging out with Damon for almost ten months and he hasn't left. She hasn't given him anything but he hasn't left.

The Friday that follows that revelation she tells him everything.

"You remember that one song we listened to in your car?" she asks, tapping her finger against the side of his knee. "There's something I need to tell you."

She looks straight in his eyes when she tells him she can't see colors, the result of the accident she had with her parents in their car—a few broken bones, permanent scars and her ability to perceive colors taken away. She should be happy no one died, but she can't bring herself to when ever since her parents have taken to hop town even more.

She knows they feel guilty and needed an out, but she needed her parents so much after the accident.

She tells him of how she has become afraid of people leaving, of how she doesn't like change that comes so suddenly she can't stop it, she tells him of the music on her iPod never changing even though the nineties are far behind them-because they make her feel safe.

She tells him she hasn't seen colors in five years and that she has forgotten what they look like.

And last of all she tells him that she has always wanted to be a writer but since losing color in her life she hasn't been able to put many words on paper anymore, and that every Friday she tries but it doesn't work.

He kisses her and tells her everything is going to be alright.

Somehow, she believes him.

After that, they see each other on other days as well. On Tuesdays he picks her up from college (she always feels like such a princess, and it feels nice to turn heads even though that's mostly Damon). On Saturdays they do something, anything. Damon knows so many things and he shows her a world so rich in smells and feelings and people that it makes up for color.

She gets to meet Stefan on a Wednesday.

He gets to meet Jeremy and Jenna on a Sunday.

Their first date is sharing a bottle of Bourbon and kisses against her collarbone that feel like thunder.

Damon becomes an inevitable part of her life on a Friday when they taint the sheets with invisible colors.

She knows this man, so wise and spontaneous and flawed and perfect, has more to him than he shows. When he accidentally almost bites her, he finally speaks up.

She brushes her fingertips along the veins beneath his eyes and tells him he's beautiful.

It feels intimate and he breathes I love you in her neck.

When her heart stops racing she whispers it back.

She has known him for over a year and a half.

Sometimes she asks questions like "Can you describe 'blue' for me?" or "Do you think mental issues would be resolved by turning into a vampire?" and he always looks at her with a lopsided smile and answers her with his way of words, and she's so glad he doesn't give her these sympathetic glances she has been getting so much since the accident.

She doesn't notice how free and spontaneous and smiling she has become until he tells her one day that seeing her blossom into this new Elena is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

(Little does he know it's not a new Elena, rather an old one—one she thought died in that car together with her dreams.)

She doesn't want to hope but she does.

Damon asks her if she wants to go away with him to another place, wherever she wants—she drops out of college and follows him. Not because she is one of those girls that can't live with her boyfriend—boyfriend, it fits him so well—but because she is Elena and she can't live without Damon. She doesn't want to, either.

They end up in San Francisco and spend their days on the beach, watching the bridge stretching along the horizon, and Damon paints the skyline of her life with so much vibrant colors Elena is afraid she will never be able to get enough of it.

She asks him to turn her because she really can't get enough of him, of all he chooses to be, and she needs forever to fill her cravings.

He needs a lot of convincing—a lot.

But he says yes.

Forever sounds so great.

She stirs slowly. There's an ache everywhere, in every pore, in every fiber. She hasn't even been this thirsty, her mouth dry and her throat ripping with desire.

She knows she is dead, but she doesn't feel something she hasn't felt before. (It really should hurt just realizing that. She has never been suicidal, but she has felt dead for a long time before Damon.)

Speaking of—

Damon's fingertips move across her face, along her cheekbones and her jaw, and she giggles.

When she opens her eyes—her heart, she… it doesn't beat, but she's sure it just did. Maybe it is a memory echoing within her. She's crying, her hands shaking when she cradles Damon's head in them-she looks in crystal blue and cries some more.

/ i am fine /

The title comes from Spider's Web by Katie Melua (it is also the one song on Elena's iPod that is from this era, the one she keeps listening to on repeat and the one Damon noticed straight away), the italicized lyrics are from Colorblind by Counting Crows.

Hope you enjoyed! :)