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“You’re scared, aren’t you?” He’s grinning at her, genuinely grinning instead of his usual smirk, but the undertone of smugness still lingers. Elena glares at him, stomping her skates a little on the ramp, the blades sliding in the translucent, grayish sludge left from skates getting off the rink.
“I am NOT scared, Damon.” He laughs at her glare, his blue eyes twinkling and his cheeks just the slightest bit pink from the cold. He holds out a hand to her, looking perfectly steady on the ice, suave and cool as ever. Elena doesn’t take his hand, jamming her own into her sweater pockets. He rolls his eyes, still smiling, and skates back towards the entrance. He reaches out for her, his fingers closing around her bright blue scarf and using it to tug her out onto the ice.
The blades of her skates slipped on the smooth surface, and she gasps, throwing her arms around Damon’s neck. His arms instinctively wrap around her waist, catching her before she can go down onto the ice. Even after he’s successfully stalled the downward motion of her body, she doesn’t move, her forehead pressing against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him. Her heart is racing embarrassingly fast, and she feels her boyfriend’s arms tighten around her.
“Jeez, Elena, if I’d known you were actually afraid, I wouldn’t have-“
“I’m not afraid,” she cuts him off, a sharp mumble into the warm fabric of his coat. He huffs a laugh, helping her upright, but maintaining a grip on her forearms as she clutches his shoulders.
She wobbles a little, pursing her lips into a thin white line so she can’t gasp again. “Who’s idea was this again?” Damon smiles at her, playing with a strand of her wavy brown hair. “Hmm, I think it was Enzo’s.”
Elena steals a glance over at Damon’s best friend, skating hand-in-hand with Bonnie and looking like he’s having the time of his life. She wrinkles her nose unhappily. “I take back anything good I ever said about him.”
Damon only laughs again, like she’s trying to be funny. “Come on, Elena, it’s not that bad. You just have to find your rhythm.”
And he looks so hopeful; so happy. It’s a reminder to why she even agreed on this group date in the first place. Because Damon is gruff and sometimes shut off, not so much to her than to everyone else, but still. Seeing him so carefree, backlit by the swirling rainbow lights of the open skate, disco-tech hell show, she wants to be good at this. She wants to be able to hold his hand and skate with him like Bonnie and Enzo do, or laugh and dance like they’re on solid ground like Caroline and Stefan.
In this moment, she wishes she were anyone else. The kind of person that Damon could have fun with. It hurts to think it, but she knows it’s true: she holds Damon back. She isn’t who she used to be. Things would be different if they’d gotten together-or even been friends-before her parents died. Before she found out she was adopted and became all too serious because Jeremy needed a rock.
But they weren’t dating then. They’re dating now. And Elena’s happy. But sometimes she wonders if Damon is.
So she smiles and nods, and lets him pull her across the ice. He holds her hands and laughs like the world isn’t watching, isn’t in danger of slipping through their fingers like sand. As if they aren’t running the risk of a serious head injury the longer they stay out on the rink.
And she’s all smiles, the kind that even HE can’t tell are forced, laughs at all the right times, and even a few times she shouldn’t, just to have the effect of having fun. Elena does get the hang of this whole thing after a little while, and she can loosen her grip on Damon’s fingers now, no longer holding on like she wants to cut off his circulation.
“See? I told you this would be fun,” he says, and she has to admit he’s a little right. Sure, ice skating isn’t her thing, and it still feels irrationally, insurmountably scary, but being with him is the part that makes it enjoyable.
“Fine,” she smiles, rolling her eyes. “You were right.” He beams, and she can’t help herself. “For once.” His smile turns into an expression of mock-hurt, though his lips are still upturned slightly.
“Why, oh why, are you so mean to me?” She shoves him playfully, but not too much that he would lose his grip on her. She’s still very much relying on him. “Maybe I just don’t like admitting that I’m wrong.” It’s her way of apologizing. She’ll do it for real later, when they’re alone. When she can take his hands and say she’s sorry and kiss him when nobody’s around to watch and tell him that she’ll try harder from now on to listen.
She’s mapping it out in her mind a little, the perfect apology. But he skates ahead of her a little, tugging her behind as he laughs. “Oh believe me, I know. Sometimes getting you to go ANYWHERE is like dragging dead weight.”
It’s a joke. He’s joking. He’s laughing too. It’s funny. But no. No, it’s really not. She stops, the fabricated smile that was starting to melt into a real one disappearing all together. He feels that she’s stopped moving, that he can no longer move forward.
“Elena?” He looks back at her, the smile gone from his face for the first time since they’d gotten to the rink and unloaded from Kol and Rebekah’s massive van that Klaus has them sharing.
“Is that what you think?” She asks him, not angry, just….
She’s right. All this time she’s been worrying over not being enough, and now it feels like she isn’t. She really, really isn’t. She loves Damon more than anyone else she’s ever loved, and she thinks that maybe he loves her too, even though he’s never said it back, but they don’t compare to any of their friends. They aren’t Tyler and Liv or Jeremy and Anna or Rebekah and Marcel or Kol and Davina. They aren’t Bonnie and Enzo or God forbid Stefan and Caroline.
They’re Damon and sometimes Elena, because she’s dragging her heels while he tries and tugs her ahead. It sucks. God, it sucks. To not be enough. To be so deeply and irreversibly in love with someone, only to realize that she isn’t doing enough to keep him feeling the same way.
“Hey, no. That isn’t what I meant, I was just kidding.” He closes the gap between them, his fingers yet again reaching out to play with her scarf, this time nervously, and his eyes are wide. Like someone who’s struggling to explain a particularly complex topic that they don’t quite understand.
“It felt like you meant it,” she whispers, trying to convey what this feels like through her words. “It sounded like you did. I’d get it…if you did. I’d know why.” She doesn’t make much sense, her sentences rambling and jumbling over one another as she tries to form a single, damn thought coherently.
“But I didn’t mean it, Elena. It was a stupid joke.”
“I know that.” Does she? It still doesn’t feel like a joke. “I’m serious, Elena,” he tugs on her scarf as he says this, forcing her to look at him right in the eyes.
“You ARE my life. I love you.” She freezes. She stops moving or thinking or even breathing and becomes as cold and frozen as the ice below her skates. “You do?” Does he even know how long she’s waited to hear him say that? Does he have any idea what that means to her, to hear it in words, not just in heavy-hanging implications, that he loves her back? That she isn’t just some ditzy teenage girl in way too deep for a guy who isn’t looking for anything serious.
She’s still partially waiting for someone to skate by and yell “psych!” Because this can’t be real. But it is. He’s nodding and smiling because yes, yes he loves her and he obviously thought she knew, but OBVIOUSLY….she didn’t. And that’s okay now because the ice feels steady under her skates and her whole body feels warm now, not borderline hypothermic like before, and she tugs him closer and kisses him.
It feels good. It feels like the first time she’s ever kissed anybody, the first time anyone’s ever wrapped their arms around her or made her feel this safe and warm and absolutely Home.
When they pull apart, it’s only for lack of oxygen. The rainbow spotlight beams are still swirling across the ice of the dark rink as the open skaters fly by them. One of whom is Stefan.
“Get a room, losers!” Damon rolls his eyes at his brother before leaning in to kiss her again.