Catharsis by LindaMarie 05/24/04: R Elena pulls herself onto the low garden bench. She is shuddering, the pain of still-healing internal injuries rippling through her--but she is alive.She takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. More than anything, she is hungry. At first she had thought that ache inside her was mere emotion. It was fear, or lust, or love, or sorrow. Or maybe it was just something the male body felt. Everything was strange to her; she had no point of reference. Today, with Damon, everything had moved into its proper place. He had only to look at her to read her like a newspaper headline--and she really knew only when he did. And then, the fall...both the minor one out in the streets, or this one here, now, a storey down, scratched by iron and smashed on pavement. She no longer has any choice but to know and wonder at her own body. It's something in the body, the blood. It stitches scrapes and fatal wounds and calls, calls to be bitten and drunk. It needs the feeding as if it were a release of pressure: too much feeling. It is hungering for that small exchange of fluids like a greedy infant crying for the teat. The question, only minutes before, was whether that cry should be answered. Now there is not even hesitation. She needs this. Elena, Damon's voice in her head, right on time, so immediate, so present. We're almost there. Please come, she thinks, hoping he can hear. I need... Yes, but not from me. You'll have to help him. She shivers, remembering clearly Stefan's arms enveloping her in his attic room, holding her as if she would break, as if she were made of fine crystal--his hot mouth pressed to her throat, icy teeth like needles about to break the skin... I will. ********* She can't remember being this good at seduction before--but perhaps she was, in her own halting, premature way. Now it comes as naturally as breathing. She will move her head like this, step just there, say exactly the right words. This is a dance for three, Damon the outside element, positioning her just so, just perfectly, so close behind her, as if he could meld with her the moment Stefan bites. When the blood flows, she moans with relief, holding Stefan's head to her with one hand, the other around his back. It is so, so good, sweet and tender and raw, like sex when you're already so sore you can barely move. It seems to go on, and on, over the horizon and off into eternity. Damon is holding her up, now, as she supports Stefan, Damon's right arm firmly around her chest, the left still cradling her head. They are moving to a primal rhythm in this dance, a subtle rocking back and forth, which she realizes is the beating of her heart. They are in another world, where a pulse can fill the room, where a triad of lovers can become three-in-one. In the midst of all this, of the earth seeming to sway beneath Elena's feet, Damon kisses her. And then again. Now there are dual heats: that at her throat, radiating down and dissolving through her chest and limbs, a great fiery thrumming through every fibre of her; and that less pervasive, that simply of a mouth moving artfully over her mouth, a tongue penetrating her lips. And then there is...separation. The pressure at her throat becomes a memory of sensation; Stefan lifts his head and Damon's mouth parts from hers. There is a moment when the three of them are simply gazing at each other--then Stefan gently pulls her in by the chin, taking Damon's place in a kiss that rapidly peaks from careful rediscovery to searing reunion. They are nudged apart by Damon's insistant hands, pulling off Stefan's shirt. Stefan impatiently lifts his arms, and it is gone into the dark shadows of the room. Elena sees that Damon, too, is barechested. There is a glittering knife in his hand. Elena watches, reverently drawn back, as Damon approaches his brother. His free hand pushes up Stefan's chin, and their eyes lock. She sees the reistance go out of Stefan's body, and then--Damon's teeth are in his throat. Stefan lets out a high, aching wail, as if he were dying, or as if he needed this release as badly as Elena had. Come here, Damon tells her, and she walks to him, entranced by the way the Salvatores' bodies look, cloven together. She hardly notices the instant when Damon's knife-wielding hand reaches up and blindly makes a small slash in his own chest. She does, however, notice the blood--is drawn to it immediately, as if it knows for whom it flows. There is a careful space made for her, between the brothers, and she slides into it, tongue already snaking out to meet the cut even before her mouth is near enough to close over it. Perhaps it lacks that all-consuming, filling sensation that it had when she needed such sustenance, but there is something deep and possessive and almost unbearably intimate about drinking a lover's blood. Damon's pulse is a thick, liquid, living thing under her tongue, guiding her mouth to follow, let the blood flow in its own time. It is oddly sweet, as she remembers it, now with human and animilian comparisons. She draws on it, keeping the wound open, the flow steady, as above her head Damon pulls Stefan just a little closer. Elena can feel the younger brother tremble. Damon, she thinks, and she knows with their blood-connection he can hear her this time, Will he be all right? She hears the metallic sound of what she thinks must be him dropping the knife; then his fingers are in her hair. He'll be more trouble then he's worth, I think. But he's been so sad, so alone, for so long... He was never alone. Elena thinks of Damon watching his brother for endless years, sole, unseen, and feels a pang deep in her chest. She holds his body tighter to her. But you were, weren't you? And he doesn't answer, but she feels a strong wave of that sense she's gotten from him before--that despite everything he's learned, the knowledge has been his alone, unshared. That he has missed so much. He loves you, Damon. And--so do I. I hope you know that. And now she lets herself simply be, here in this time, with these two solid bodies surrounding her, letting the blood under her lips dry up, but not moving. No, not just yet. End.