November Girl (Damon/Elena) (original) (raw)

Title: November Girl
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Wordcount: 2500
Warnings: Fluff. I MEAN IT THIS TIME!
Summary: It's time to leave Mystic Falls, and everyone else already did, but Elena and Damon decide to stay for one last winter. Future-fic.
A/N: Happy birthday, shipperjunkie! You've seen bits and pieces of this, but then I opened the file and started editing, and, well... You know how my editing tends to end.

November Girl

Elena doesn't leave him, and it's nothing like Damon ever imagined.

(Which, now that he thinks of his disastrous life choices, is probably a good thing.)

They know they can only stay in Mystic Falls till spring, they should've left last spring, just like Caroline, Stefan and Tyler, but neither of them felt like going, so they stayed for another year. They plan to leave in March, and they'll probably go separate ways at least for some time, because they're not together, not like that.

Elena has a separate room and a separate life, this is just how she is. Elena Gilbert might be immortal, but she still works a shitty job at the local newspaper, does grocery shopping and puts picture frames on every available surface. She has certain rituals that go throughout the year: she attempts to make pudding every Christmas and always gets drunk in the second half of May. Damon can only understand some of those rituals, but he knows exactly what happens when, even if he isn't really sure why.

(He knows that in November, things always get a little bit odd.)

Elena isn't a great fan of Halloween, but she prepares pumpkins and treats all the same. Halloween makes her loud and wired, and Damon doesn't mind; it's not like he'd ever say no to a night of heavy drinking and general debauchery.

This year, they don't go out together. The last Halloween belongs to Bonnie, and Damon suspects it's one of the many goodbyes Elena's been saying lately. They're not getting any older, and she knows as well as he does that after they leave, they won't be able to show their faces in Mystic Falls for decades, not in public anyway. So Elena puts on a vampire costume and a smile, downs a glass of blood and goes out holding her head high.

She comes back right after midnight, only slightly drunk. Damon doesn't wake up until she sneaks into his bedroom, pajamas and slippers instead of a tacky cloak and fake teeth. She winces and covers her eyes when he turns on his bedside lamp, and he's wide awake and alarmed in an instant, because she looks hesitant; hesitant, unsure and sad.

“What's wrong?” he asks immediately, but Elena shakes her head.

“Nothing,” she answers as she sits on his bed and turns off the light. “Nothing, everything is fine, I just wanted to check up on you.”

She sits there for a while, as if she couldn't decide whether she wants to walk away or stay with him. Damon watches her with his eyes wide open, not sure what will happen next. He never really understood Elena's Halloween.

Whe she finally lies down next to him, her face looks like she's done something very brave. Damon fully expects her to start kissing him the way she sometimes does, with her hands all over him and her eyes just a little bloodshot, but she just rests her head on his chest.

“Can I stay?” she asks quietly, and Damon laughs. She didn't ask his permission when she moved in a few months ago (“Makes no sense to keep two houses when it's just the two of us, right?”), but, apparently, now she thinks she needs it to stay in his bed.

“I suppose,” he says lightly.

Elena settles in his arms as if she's done it a hundred times already (she hasn't really, at least not with her clothes on), her cheek on his chest, her hand on his shoulder and her knee high up his hip. There's some stirring and fumbling, and Damon half-expects her to change her mind and leave any second, because they don't sleep together, not like this. Except, apparently, tonight they do.

Before Elena falls asleep, she finds his hand with her free hand and she doesn't let go until dawn.

***

Next few days are full of apples.

Damon can smell them everywhere in the house, fresh apples and baked apples, even apple-scented candles. It's like he's living an apple pie nightmare full of cider, cinnamon buns and ginger tea. Elena's house was the same last year, and the year before that. It's like she always gets hungry in November.

“Play for me,” she tells him when he joins her downstairs to witness her epic failure at actually making an apple pie.

“Excuse me?”

“It's too quiet here. Play for me.”

“Who says I can play?”

Elena gives him an all-knowing smile, and when he holds her gaze, she bursts out laughing.

“Sure you can. You're the type. Go on, make yourself useful and play something.”

He can still see her in the corner of his eye when he's playing. She's dancing around the kitchen, peeling apples and getting flour all over the floor, typical, really. Just one song, Damon tells himself, just one song, no more, but then he gets caught up in Elena, caught up in her carefree steps and quick glances. Once he starts, it's very hard to stop looking at her, because she seems hungry, hungry for sounds and for smells, and there is no part of Elena that he understands better than hunger.

He plays until he can't look any more, and then he's behind her in a blink, his hands on her hips and his lips on her neck. Elena turns around immediately and wraps her arms around him. She kisses him quickly and messily, laughs into his mouth, and then all of a sudden she's gone, leaving him confused, breathless and inexplicably afraid, covered in flour like a complete idiot.

(She comes back later that night, sneaks into his bedroom and puts her finger on her lips before he can speak. She undresses in complete silence, takes her time and smiles at him, completely comfortable in her own skin. It's okay she didn't let him talk, because he's too awestruck to make a sound anyway.

Elena slides into his bed and onto him in almost in one motion, takes his hand and places it on her hip before she starts moving. She's slow, torturously, lazily slow, but when he tries to speed up, she shakes her head and smiles.

“It feels good,” she tells him quietly. “Please, why can't we just enjoy the ride?”

Soon he can feel every inch of her sliding up and down him, anticipates every swing of her hips and every moan coming out of her mouth. She smells of apples, of this ridiculous, disastrous apple pie, and Damon can't resist, he sits up and buries his face in Elena's hair, pulls her as close to him as he only can.

Right before she falls apart around him, Damon thinks he never wants her to stop moving.)

***

This is a picture that will probably stay with him for years: Elena Gilbert sprawled leisurely on the library floor, her upper body resting on a huge cushion taken from the couch. She's propping her head up on her hand and reading a book, surrounded by snacks (Elena devours walnuts like some walnut Ripper, thankfully minus the putting them back together afterwards) and sipping coffee. Everything smells like coffee and cinnamon, notices Damon as he comes closer. He steals a piece of apple from one of Elena's plates and tries to see what she's reading, but she slaps his hand and throws some almonds at him, so he retreats between the shelves.

He comes back with a book of his own, Wuthering Heights of all things. Elena lives under the impression that this is one of The Books in his life, something he reads at least once a year and secretely weeps every second page. Damon plans to wait at least a decade or two until he tells her he actually hates Heathcliff and was only reading to keep her company. November is always Elena Gilbert's Obligatory Sentimental Journey, nuts, and apples and old novels, and Damon usually has nothing better to do than to join her. She tends to choose the realists or adventure stories when Damon sticks to poetry and gothic novels, but by the end of the month they both move towards common ground, Shakespeare or Wilde, or like that one time two years ago when Elena made Damon read Mrs Dalloway out loud to her. He spent days pretending he hated it, but Elena didn't buy it for even a second, not when she could hear how the rain outside gave his voice pace and mood.

Sometimes Damon thinks this is as close to happiness as they get, two cushions on the floor, a pile of books and a small bowl of walnuts, Elena throwing almonds at him without taking her eyes of a novel.

“You drink too much coffee,” he says as he lies down next to her.

“You drink too much bourbon,” she shoots back, and Damon laughs.

“Are you reading Jane Austen again?” he asks.

“I am, and you can go be judgemental in the kitchen.”

“Come on. Whichever you're reading: yes, she marries the guy in the end. See? You can move on to something more interesting now.”

“Oh, bite me. I already told you, I'm not gonna read a poem about a talking raven.”

“It's Edgar Allan Poe, you know.”

“I'm still not reading poetry about guys talking to birds.”

“You should have more appreciation for classics,” says Damon in his best Ancient Southern Wisdom voice. Elena turns a page.

“Bite me,” she repeats and reaches out to him to make a point, ostensibly waves her wrist in front of his mouth.

Damon does the first stupid thing that comes to his mind, bites down hard enough to draw a little blood, and before he knows it, they're a tangle of limbs rolling on the floor. Half a mug of coffee is spilled right on the cushion and almonds are flying in every possible direction, Elena is laughing and Damon has pieces of apple sticking to the back of his shirt.

Neither of them is in the mood for him to kiss her right now, but as they wrestle for control, Damon imagines Elena's mouth must taste like walnuts.

***

Elena gets quiet sometimes.

She likes to spend those days in the woods, disappears for long hours and only comes back after dark. Damon is often tempted to make a dumb joke about eating bunnies, but there's something in Elena's face that makes him keep his mouth shut. He can't really mock her for what she does, because despite the food, the books and general domesticity she never pretends to be human, doesn't hide her fangs or wallow in guilt.

So he doesn't say a word when she takes off her coat and unwraps her long scarf like a ribbon. After Elena comes back from the woods, Damon doesn't follow her into the library, doesn't ask questions about her melancholy or expect her to sneak into his bed at night. Instead he just spends the evening in his room, surrounded by the sounds of Elena in the house, water boiling in the kitchen or a pen scratching a piece of paper.

Elena likes to write in front of the fireplace, a glass of bourbon and a mug of tea always at hand. He's usually so tempted to join her, but the one time he does feels akward, wrong time and wrong place, Elena The Writer so far away from him he doesn't even know how to watch her. He leaves her alone after ten most uncomfortable minutes he ever shared with her, and he never dares to ask what she's writing. He can almost imagine the smile she'd give him. She'd laugh and shake her head, give him a quick glance and disappear inside of her head, leaving him slightly embarrassed and strangely grateful.

(He might want to be with her forever, but he doesn't really want to be with her all the time, something he learned from her, because, apparently, he's now this person who takes life lessons from a 23 year old vampire.)

He'll read her book when it's done.

***

Elena Gilbert is an autumn girl, Damon really should've figured it out sooner. Sometimes he wishes he'd known this when she was human, it would've made many things so much easier. Some people you can only understand when you get them drunk, and some let you see the truth about themselves when they're hurting, but Elena Gilbert is a complete mystery unless you live with her in November. She stocks up the kitchen with gingerbread cookies and wears fingerless gloves in the house, goes out for walks when it's raining and watches red leaves with her eyes wide open. Elena likes details and Elena likes moods, white noise of wind and storm that separates her from the world and lets her focus on her own head.

So this time when they kiss on the front porch, Damon knows exactly what to do: he closes his eyes and lets himself drown in the mood, focuses on Elena's hands grasping the collar of his jacket and on the sounds she's tuned in to. It's about the wind, he figures out after a minute or two, all about the wind that pushes him forward and makes him press his body against Elena's. She lazily strokes his cheek when the wind howls slowly and starts pulling him even closer when it gets stronger and more erratic, swings her hips and smiles like they're the only people in the world.

Suddenly the wind changes and blows right in Damon's face, sending Elena's hair up and forward in a tangled mess. She laughes into his mouth, laughs and bites his lower lip just a bit, keeps laughing until he laughs as well, his fists full of Elena's hair, trying to hold all the loose strands behind her head as she keeps kissing him, never missing a beat, stroke and pull and swing.

When Damon opens his eyes, the view is breathtaking: Elena Gilbert, the windy girl, sad, curious and playful, her face enveloped in his hands, her hair up in the air, the girl who will laugh with him and the girl who will leave him, what a beautiful combination.

(He had to live with her in November to understand why she will always come back to him.)