Chapter Text
“Tell me something,” Enzo says, ensconced snugly in the bed. There’s a bottle held loosely in his hand, but it’s empty, so he lets it drop to the floor with a muffled thump.
The world is buzzing, warm and blurred, everything made softly out of focus from the alcohol. Not only is the world soft, so is the bed, the pillows, the thick blanket. Soft and nicely smelling and oh-so comfortable. He wants to melt into it, wants to burrow like an animal, build a den and never leave.
“Something,” Damon says, stripping off first his shirt, then his pants. American pants. Not pants pants.
Actually—
Bemused, Enzo realizes the man’s not wearing any pants, American or otherwise.
Damon clambers onto the bed, yanks a pillow out from the pile Enzo’s claimed. Fair. It is his bed. They are his pillows.
“Why’re you naked?” he asks, not really caring. It’s not as though the sight is new, or particularly displeasing.
The explanation is short. “Hate sleeping in clothes.”
“Mm, why?” Enzo’s slept in clothes since—forever. He doesn’t think he’s ever slept naked. On purpose. By choice. Pants at the very least.
“It’s uncomfortable,” Damon says, lying on his side, stolen pillow apparently adequately arranged. He’s atop the covers, which means Enzo has a very good view of—everything. The moonlight shining in from the open balcony doors is making the man look closer to marble than someone who was dancing around not even an hour ago, laughing like a loon when he’d spilled his drink on himself. If marble was dusted with soft, dark hair. “And inconvenient.”
Enzo laughs, he thinks. Makes some kind of amused sound. Intoxication is rather nice, when one can choose it. Even nicer safe, warm, with a friend.
“What do you want to know?” Damon asks. He’s got one arm over his head, the other lying on the bed between them.
“Anything,” Enzo says, thinking of that hand, outstretched. He wants to take it, but can’t quite move to extract himself from the covers. “So long as it’s true.”
There’s such a long moment of silence, he’s sure Damon has fallen asleep. But—
“I think I’m—wrong.”
Frequently, Enzo almost jokes, but does not. Not with the way Damon is watching him, carefully, like he is waiting for Enzo to turn from him, to declare him and this and everything as wrong as he proclaims himself to be.
“Or,” Damon continues, voice gone brittle, good mood worn off, energy to keep the never ending doubts at bay fled, and tongue loosened by drink, by quiet, by the shelter of night, “I’m just—not worth it. Unworthy. Unlovable.”
“Something true, Damon.” He manages to untangle an arm, then. Takes his hand. Squeezes carefully, lest anything crack. “You are lovable.”
Like seeing the ocean for the first time. Standing on a cliff’s edge with nothing between you and the drop. Like velvet squirreled away, too soft to be out in the open, too soft to remain untouched; a line of a song you can’t help but sing when you hear it.
“It’s easy,” he says, mind on things like friendship and forgiveness and hope. On the first time he’d heard the man laugh so hard he snorted. “Harder not too. Now tell me something true.”
There is an even longer stretch of silence, until:
Damon squeezes back. And says, “I, uh. Had a pet crow for a while.”
“Yeah?”
He falls asleep halfway through a story about a bird a little too smart for her own good, and who would fight squirrels for bird feeder privileges.
It starts out innocently enough:
All he wanted was a coffee.
But now Enzo is eavesdropping, ducked into the pantry and trying very hard to be as silent as the can of peas he’s eye level with.
It’s just—well, he didn’t think he’d have company and, generally speaking, for a very large portion of his life, being half or even a little naked in front of women was indecent beyond measure. Criminal, in some cases. Most cases.
And he is more than just half or a little naked. The only thing he’s got on is pants—not American—and skimpy ones too, considering he’d spilled some kind of liquor on his clothes by virtue of one of the bed bottles being not empty and just borrowed a pair of Damon’s. Who, when he deigns to wear anything, prefers a closer fit, on top of being a touch more slender.
He’s gotten over the old fashioned manners now, is better about not sticking out in this new, giant modern world.
But that doesn’t mean he’s prepared to admit his folly and jump out of the pantry.
So. Here he is. Listening to Bonnie and Elena talk about the record Bonnie said she’s here to borrow from Damon, and has, in fact already picked it up and is now raiding the kitchen for the teas he’d bought her from that little shop five or six towns over that she likes.
Enzo’d gone with, on that trip. The shop had been a tiny establishment, smack between a laundromat and a pizza place, crowded with shelves and displays and homemade posters. Cute, if a little dusty. Damon had been in and out, knowing exactly what he was looking for and exactly where to find it. He’d explained it away as them having the exact same setup since the nineties, which, obviously, Enzo’d had to have taken his word for. He and Bonnie had driven out there a few times, he’d told him, when staying in a desolate ghost town grew a bit too much.
“You could have just gotten your own,” Elena is saying. It is a minor miracle that she hasn’t picked up on his presence, though he had put on music before he’d come downstairs. Maybe that’s disguising his heartbeat. It had disguised their approach, right up until the front door opened. “Or—I could have! Christmas present, right there.”
“It’s not anywhere near Christmas,” Bonnie points out. The fridge door opens, then closes. If he pays close enough attention, he can hear the twist of a bottle cap. “And I don’t think they even make these anymore. I couldn’t even find this band on YouTube.”
“Since when are you and Damon close enough to borrow albums, anyway?” Elena asks. She sounds annoyed by the very notion.
Enzo makes intense eye contact with the peas. Perhaps, he does not suggest, because he is hiding in a closet, less shamed by the lack of clothing than by shutting himself in a closet in the first place, they had grown close during the prolonged stretch of forced proximity, during which it was them against an empty, uncaring world.
“Prison world,” Bonnie says, vindicatingly. There’s a sigh. “Elena, you didn’t have to come.”
“I wasn’t going to let you go alone,” Elena retorts. “I know you think you’re friends now or something, but, Bon. It’s not going to be the same now that he doesn’t need you to escape anymore.”
The worst part, Enzo thinks, is that she sounds a little pitying. Poor witch. Left alone with the evil vampire, driven mad by the isolation until up was down and Damon didn’t seem so bad. Because being fed befanged pancakes and given lessons on driving stick—not an euphemism, he’d asked—and generally running around trying to find something to fill the hours with when not searching for an escape is torture on par with a few hundred volts.
Honestly, it sounds rather nice, prison world. He’d get bored eventually, a world without people, but it would take a while. Especially if a friend was there with him. Not that he has many friends to choose from. Guess it’d have to be Damon.
“He’s not even here,” Bonnie very rightfully reminds her.
He’s not sure where Damon is, actually, or what he’s doing. He imagines it involves staring down at a little picture depicting some once sweet now bitter moment whilst standing next a moonlit pond or some such, a single tear rolling down his cheek.
Never mind that it’s high noon.
Or that Damon had mumbled something about more booze while rolling off the bed, then again when he’d hauled himself off the floor.
Enzo’d been a bit preoccupied trying to pull the blanket back on top of the bed to pay much attention. He’d waved as Damon left, before sinking back into the frankly indecently comfortable mattress. Yes, he had been sharing it with more than one bottle, and the alcohol smell was beginning to overpower the shampoo-cologne-Damon, but all the same.
Anyway, he’s sure there was some amount of lovelorn sulking involved in the trip. Hanging around Damon sober has been depressing, recently, what with his girlfriend willingly lobotomizing herself rather than mourn him and all, just to have Damon (and Bonnie, brillant witch she is) return victoriously from the dead. Too late to stop Elena from remembering him as anything but a monster.
The story is a depressing one. No Colleen Bawn or anything, but. Depressing. Man’s got a real case of the morbs.
“Still,” Elena is saying, sounding—well, a little like she’s the only sane person left on the planet, everyone else descending into Damon Salvatore tolerating (or worse, liking) madness.
Enzo hasn’t spoken to her much—especially after the compulsion where she erased every good aspect of his best and only friend because mourning him was too much for her, despite her not being alone in missing—
He realizes that he’s glaring at the can of peas. Blinks.
Point is, he doesn’t understand her. Doesn’t particularly want to. Maybe before, when what he knew of her was through all of Damon’s rose-tint, but sorting through the lovesick still left the impression of a woman he’d be interested in knowing, a survivor, protective of family and friends, with an interesting habit of hanging around graveyards because she thinks them peaceful.
But. Not now.
Every time he looks at her now, he sees yet another person who decided Damon was too much.
If the man hadn’t already had a complex, this would have given him one.
Breaking him from his thoughts—he’s scowling at the peas again—Bonnie sighs.
He nearly echoes her. He tried to judge not and all that rot—and wouldn’t the parish be so pleased that some of their rhetoric stuck; right alongside the way he loathes wasting food even after it stopped doing anything for him—and he understands bad decisions born of a grief too strong to think straight. Has made more than a few himself.
He just—doesn’t understand that.
Having someone rewrite your life for you. Give you a happy ending about as real as what you can find on a television screen.
If someone handed him a blade, or a bloody magic button that—at no cost, no pain to himself—would erase every horror in his long, miserable life, he would not use it. But he has spent a long, long time with only his self to his name, only his personality and memories, both kept under the constant, jealous guard of a mind fraying around the edges. Violating that seems… anathema.
But he is not a young woman who has lost loved one after loved one, thrown into a supernatural world less by her own actions and more by twist of fate, only to keep losing people; ending up forever trapped in the world she’d been dragged into.
Differing perspectives and all that.
Or so he keeps reminding himself, every time Damon goes a little too quiet for a little too long.
A cabinet opens. Closes. Another door creaks. “I’m not going to tell you what to do, Elena,” Bonnie says, not delicately, but not without thought. “But—you had something once. And, right now, you only have half the story.”
“I have enough of the story,” Elena rebukes, firm. He doesn’t understand that either. She knows she’s compelled. Knows she’s missing pieces. But seems perfectly content living her life without them.
“Look—“
“What did we even have, Bonnie? How did I get past—? No. That’s not even—look, even if Damon wasn’t a literal monster—he’s still a horrible person.”
“He can be,” Bonnie says neutrally. But that’s not all he is, Enzo finishes for her.
“He is,” says Elena, eliminating room for anything else. “He’s selfish and rude and spiteful. Even if he was human—he’s a lonely alcoholic whose hobbies are booze and sex. It’s creepy, that he thinks he loves me. Maybe he does, in his own way, but Bonnie. It’s more like obsession than love.“
She’s not wrong, is the thing—except for all the things she’s missing. Damon’s selfish, except when he’s not. Rude and spiteful and disrespectful and hilarious. Stubborn and clever and a romantic at heart. Surprisingly gentle, when he thinks he can get away with it. He likes his drink because it makes his world go quiet and he loves touch in a way that makes Enzo think he craves it as much as he does blood. Sex is a part of that but not the sum. And obsession? Call Enzo strange, but he’d always fancied the storybook kind of love. The kind that ends worlds and changes lives and slays dragons.
“He’s not even that hot,” Elena finishes and—
Enzo… hadn’t thought the compulsion affected her vision. Memories, yes. Possibly her personality, given how closely the two are entwined. But she’s seen Damon since his and Bonnie’s return.
Unless the compulsion is warping her perception?
He’s so stuck on the idea of Elena going through life with the compulsion twisting even what she sees—and feeling vaguely pitying about it—that he’s almost surprised when Bonnie says, “The prison world reset. Every day.”
“Yeah,” Elena says, much softer. “You told me that.”
Bonnie soldiers on. “It was driving me—it was hell, Elena. It felt like nothing I did mattered, nothing I’ve ever done mattered, that I didn’t matter. I wasn’t even sure any of you were alive. That the spell worked. It started to get to me. Never having to do dishes because they’d be clean the next morning, nothing growing, nothing changing. The only thing that made it bearable was—”
“Damon,” Elena finishes. “But that’s just—”
“He’s an ass—you know me, I’ve never denied it. But. He grows on you.” Bonnie sighs. “Like a fungus. A really, really annoying fungus.”
“Oh. Did you two…?” Elena asks, sounding like she’s trying not to show disgust.
“No,” Bonnie denies, immediately. If Enzo had to put money on it, he’d say she’s trying not to show hurt. “You’re my best friend, Elena. And you might not remember it, but that guy is gone for you. All I’m saying is that you don’t have to give him another chance. No one is going to make you. But you don’t have the whole story. You made a decision out of pain and grief and no one blames you for it” —Enzo resists the urge to cough; hate to interrupt their moment— “but Elena. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re under a compulsion no one can remove.”
“I’m fine, Bon.” A pause. “I’m going to go wait in the car.” Footsteps sound, then stop. “But, Bonnie. People keep telling me how much I loved him. So much that I couldn’t live without him. Except—losing you hurt, too. A lot.”
“I’m sorry,” Bonnie starts to say, but Elena interrupts.
“I didn’t erase you. I wouldn’t do that to someone I loved. I think you all have it wrong. I think I just… wanted a reset. A fresh start. So, I’m going to take it. I did this for a reason." Elena hesitates. He doesn't think she believes her own words, when she says, "Maybe Damon isn’t as bad as I think, but... you see something there. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Christ, he’s suddenly glad Damon isn’t here to hear this. It’d reinforce everything he believes about himself.
With that, Elena leaves.
Bonnie doesn’t make a sound for another minute. Then she sighs. A cabinet opens, then shuts. “Where did he put that stupid box?”
Actually. Wasn’t Enzo the one that put that away? He stuck it in the—?
Enzo looks behind him, spots Bonnie’s tea sitting on a shelf.
Ah.
Just as he realizes this piece of information, the pantry door swings open.
He meets Bonnie’s eyes.
Her supremely unimpressed expression does nothing to disguise the way her eyes dip down, down, then lower again, only to flick back up just in time to catch the beginnings of his best aren’t-I-darling? smile.
She frowns.
He grins.
She sighs—she’s been doing that a lot recently—and holds out a hand.
He gropes behind him, then drops the box of tea into it.
The door shuts in his face.
“How do you feel about tequila?” Damon asks, walking into the den with brown paper bags in his arms.
Enzo doesn’t reply. Just stares. Damon’s hair is a mess, at least by his own standards. He’s wearing Enzo’s shirt, actually, and the trousers he’d had on yesterday. It’s not the bottles in those bags that is making the alcohol smell intensify. They’ve been drinking for—what’s today? Saturday?—three days straight.
“Poker,” Enzo decides. He’d dressed earlier, into clean clothing and his favorite jacket. The one he may or may not have pulled off a corpse, but it’s very warm and has just the right amount of pockets.
Damon blinks at him. Squints. “Did you get started without me?”
“Go shower and get changed,” Enzo tells him, resisting the urge to tug at a stray strand of hair. He busies his hands taking the bags away instead.
“What?”
“Shower. Clean clothes. We’re going out.”
“Why?”
Enzo inspects a few of the bottles before setting them onto a table. “Mind your own business.”
Damon makes an offended sound.
Elena won’t believe Damon has more depth than a cartoonishly villainous puddle before she sees it? Alright. In the interest of making Damon happy, he'll help her see it.
Step one: Getting Damon out of the house in a context that doesn’t involve copious amounts of alcohol. Well. Maybe a little alcohol.