Death opens || Vampire Diaries [S1]

Chapter 9: Jilted

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star. 

⁂

ELENA

I wake to the too bright sun shooting sharp barbs of pain through my head. It feels like someone's closed my skull in a bear trap, but the claws are actually piercing needles and they're turning the hinges like the crank on a juicing press. I groan and squirm beneath the covers, hiding my head under my pillow in an attempt to insulate my poor brain against the medieval torture being inflicted by the open window. No such luck.

"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty!" I hear a masculine voice chime in a horribly cheerful tone. For a moment, I'm confused by it before I remember—

"Damon," I groan.

"In the flesh," he sings. I think if someone offered me a stake right now, I could literally kill him for sounding so happy.

I feel the weight of another body bounce onto my bed before the pillow is ripped from my hands. Lia's smiling face greets me. In tandem with the blue-glittered flecks in her black eyeshadow, amusement sparkles in her eyes at my venomous glare. "Oh, don't be like that," she teases. "We brought you breakfast."

Damon holds up a paper bag and a takeaway coffee cup in his hands. I roll my eyes, which is... oh ouch. Unwise. I try to hide again, but Lia's having none of it. She tears the blankets from me and yanks me to the end of the bed by my ankles, forcing me to stand or fall. I promptly sit back down.

"How are you two not dying right now?" I ask, clutching my head against the pain.

They both shrug. "We're already dead."

"I hate you," I grumble.

"Well, I'd offer to share my cure-all," Lia chuckles, "but I don't think you'd accept." She gestures to her wrist in explanation, an odd look in her eye. Ugh, gross. No, thank you.

She chuckles at the obvious disgust on my face, but there must be some benevolent mystical force hanging around today (or at least a malicious one with a shred of mercy) because she hands me a bottle of aspirin and the biggest jug of water I have ever seen even as Damon drops the bag of food in my lap. Hmm, muffins and pain-be-gones. I can live with that. He waits for me to accept the coffee cup before pulling me to my feet.

"Come on," Lia says, already halfway out the door. "Let's make like a baby—"

At my questioning stare, Damon grins. "—and head out," he finishes as she leaves in a flash of stark black ink and brazenly bared skin entirely inappropriate to the early hour. Damon smirks at the joke, but before he can follow, I stop him with a hand on his arm. The movement calls forth a memory—hazy but powerful—and I stumble a step forward as an unbidden wave of gratitude and something less definable nearly bowls me over.

"Damon," I start, only to abruptly find myself at a loss for words. I scramble quickly for a question that predates...whatever that was. "Why did you bring me with you?"

He smiles bemusedly at the question, cocking his head to the side. And I may be imagining it, but his eyes look nearly as soft as mine feel. "Well, you're not the worst company in the world, Elena," he teases.

I glare back playfully, recognizing the deflection for what it is.

"You should give yourself more credit."

"Seriously?" I challenge, arching an eyebrow.

"You were in the road all damsel in distress-like, and I knew it would piss off Stefan. And...you're not the worst company in the world, Elena."