A/N: It's about time for another chapter, don't you think? This is where I originally planned to wrap this story up neatly, but the characters aren't cooperating with that plan. They want more story, and who can say no to Damon, after all? So we have at least a few more chapters to go. Sorry I haven't had a chance to respond to your reviews from the last chapter - thank you all for your kind words!
Disclaimer: I don't own The Vampire Diaries or Damon. This is all just for fun, although I do own Aedan and the plot.
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Chapter 8
With all of their bodies utterly exhausted by the effort of healing from werewolf bites, Damon largely got his wish about doing nothing but sleeping for the next few days. Whatever cure lingered in Damon's and Stefan's blood was apparently far less potent than that in Klaus's, but it was enough, just barely, to pull everyone through. Caroline had the toughest recovery, but after Damon appeared in the basement to tell Elena and Stefan that Aedan was healing, there was no way that Elena was going to give up on Caroline. Damon tried to pretend that he didn't care, but he was secretly glad that Vampire Barbie was going to make it. Katherine disappeared again, presumably (in Damon's opinion) because there was no one awake for her to torture. Elena and Alaric resorted to repeated coffin jokes about the house full of vampires sleeping all day. Damon kept expecting to find a coffin in his living room, but coffins were both heavy and expensive – and neither of his human friends was exactly the type to steal one for amusement. Damon would have done it in a second, but there was no point in playing a practical joke on himself, after all.
Damon suspected that Stefan had turned his emotions back on – or his switch had finally malfunctioned – because he had dodged a couple of apparent attempts by his brother to engage him in Serious Conversation. Stefan had a particular look when he was planning to lecture Damon about something, and Damon had spotted that look a couple of times and disappeared before Stefan could corner him. He was still kind of annoyed at Stefan, anyway, and he could wait until his brother got over his need to lecture before engaging in any renewed brotherly bonding. Stefan and Elena were safe, and Klaus was dead, and those were the things that mattered to Damon. He and Stefan had plenty of time now, and they could resume their bizarre relationship.
The other thing that mattered was that Aedan had stayed, and Damon was perfectly happy to spend many hours in bed with him even if he had to take some teasing about coffins – and even if they actually spent most of the time asleep. But one day around noon Elena walked in on them.
Damon was awakened from a light sleep by the sound of a cup hitting the floor and breaking, and he opened his eyes to see Elena staring at him with a look of shock and betrayal in her big brown eyes. She turned and fled from the room.
A second later Damon had extricated himself from Aedan's arms and was pulling on his jeans and t-shirt at vampire speed. Under other circumstances he might have just skipped the clothes, but being dressed seemed like a good idea given the situation. He spared a quick glance for yet another stained rug – his nose told him it was coffee this time, which at least might be easier to get out than blood – as he sped out of the room. He was in front of Elena by the time she made it down the stairs. "Elena," he began, with absolutely no idea what he was going to say.
Of course, Elena didn't let him finish. "Get out of my way, Damon," she snarled. Damon could see the tears in her eyes, however.
A litany of excuses was running through Damon's head, but none of them fit the situation. It was, after all, exactly what it looked like. Finally he settled on, "What did you think was going on, Elena?" It was true that Elena didn't have vampire hearing and she had seemed almost entirely focused on Stefan since the moment Stefan had shown up in the house. After the fight, that focus had expanded to include Caroline, but Damon had hardly seen her – largely, of course, because he had been focused on Aedan. And sleep. But despite all that, Damon didn't see how she could have missed seeing the relationship between him and Aedan. Elena had once seen through every one of Damon's fronts, and he wondered suddenly when she had become so absorbed in her own problems that she had ceased to pay any attention to what was going on with her friends.
