A/N: I know it's been a while, but here's the next chapter. I also haven't had a chance to respond to all your wonderful reviews, but I read and appreciate every one.

In case you've forgotten, in the last couple of chapters, Sage snapped Elena's neck during a rescue attempt, but Elena had vampire blood in her system so when she wakes up, she'll be in transition. Damon is not very happy about this turn of events.

Hope you like it!

Chapter 25

Damon closed his bedroom door behind him and sank back against it, fighting back tears. He was buzzed, but that was the best he had been able to achieve with all the interruptions to his planned coping strategy. Aedan was sitting on the bed, and Damon noticed that the other vampire had showered and changed. He had slipped out at some point during the drama of Elena waking up, and Damon guessed Aedan felt like an intruder among the Mystic Falls band of idiots. He usually felt that way himself, truthfully. "Did you hear?" he asked softly.

Aedan nodded. "I'm glad," he said.

"She did it for Jeremy. So he won't be alone." Damon wanted to bang his head against the door behind him as images that he was certain would never leave him flashed through his mind. Elena waking up, disheveled and confused. The expression in her huge brown eyes going from denial to horror as Stefan explained what had happened in a low voice. The way she had shoved Stefan away at first before breaking down, sobbing, as she realized the truth. Damon had hung back as she had hugged Stefan and Jeremy and Alaric, then Bonnie and Caroline, her face streaked with tears and her eyes hollow.

Damon was a bit surprised that Elena had made the decision to complete the transition as quickly as she had. Decisiveness had never exactly been her forte, after all. He wondered which of her personality characteristics would be enhanced as a vampire. Her compassion? The selfishness that Damon had finally noticed in the past few months? Her tendency toward martyrdom? Or the inner toughness that had helped her last this long despite everything fate and Mystic Falls had thrown at her? Would she end up like Katherine?

One thing Damon knew was that Elena would never get the chance to grow old. Hell, she would never even get the chance to grow up. Like Stefan, she would be marked forever by a face too young for the way she would want to live. Damon wondered suddenly if that was why his brother went to school so many times, trying desperately to find a place that he fit in the world. Good luck with that, Damon thought bitterly. Vampires didn't fit, not anywhere. They were abominations. The witch had been right about that, at least.

And now that would be Elena's lot in death. She would never have kids, if she even still wanted them after the doppelganger fiasco. Damon realized he didn't know. She couldn't have a dog – Stefan would eat it. And Damon supposed his brother would probably start tomorrow to teach Elena to kill defenseless forest animals, too. No white picket fence, because she would have to move every few years before her neighbors realized that she wasn't getting any older. And she would have to watch her little brother grow old and die, which Damon imagined was even worse than watching your little brother as an out-of-control ripper who tore his victims apart and put them back together out of guilt. Damon felt another wave of despair. Even in his most selfish moments, when he thought he couldn't bear to lose her, he hadn't wanted this for Elena, not really. Not now, and not when she didn't want it for herself.

Damon didn't even realize that he hadn't moved from his door until Aedan's voice penetrated his thoughts. "Damon? Are you okay?"

Damon looked up into concerned gray eyes, and he wanted to just say no, he was anything but okay. But he couldn't get the words out, couldn't make himself that vulnerable even to Aedan. He was pretty sure the expression on his face gave him away anyway.

"Come to bed," Aedan said quietly.

At least those words spurred Damon to move. He pushed himself away from the door and shook his head, "I need a shower."

"Do you want company?"

Damon shook his head again. For once in his life, sex was the last thing on his mind. "I'll just be a minute," he said. "You're already clean anyway." It was a poor excuse, but Aedan seemed to accept it because he nodded his assent.

Damon stripped off his clothes onto the floor of his spacious bathroom, noting that someone – presumably Aedan since Damon himself hadn't done it – had cleaned up their ruined clothes from earlier. He felt a spark of gratitude. He hated messes, and sometimes he felt that so much of the past few years had been cleaning up one mess after another. All for nothing, he thought bitterly.

Despite his words about being quick, Damon spent more than a few minutes standing under his shower, letting the hot water wash away layers of dirt and blood and beat down on tired muscles. He felt wrung out, utterly exhausted, and he couldn't figure out why he was so very upset. Elena was just a vampire like the rest of them now, and she would be around forever to get on his case every time he slipped up. She would smile and laugh again, hang out with Caroline and make out with Stefan for eternity. Hell, maybe she would even be more fun as a vampire.

But Damon couldn't shake the feeling of failure, the belief that he had let both her and Stefan down. The certain knowledge that Elena hadn't wanted this. The water could cleanse his body, but unfortunately it couldn't wash away Damon's thoughts, and finally he turned it off.

Aedan was still sitting on the bed when Damon came back into the room. His smile was rueful. "For some reason I can only think of clichés," he said. "Would you believe 'it will all be better in the morning'?"

Damon cracked a smile in spite of himself. "Nope," he said. "Too easy for our lives."

"True," Aedan agreed. "By morning we'll probably have a pack of werewolves descending on the house."

Damon shuddered. "Don't even think that. You'll give the universe ideas."

Aedan laughed softly. "I'll keep quiet," he promised. After a moment, he added, "Come to bed. I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted."

"Me, too," Damon admitted. That was the only reason why he thought things might actually look better in the morning. Vampires didn't need a lot of sleep, but they needed some, and Damon had practically lost track of when he had last slept. Since then, he had had his brain fried by a witch and had been in three fights – four if you included the one with Stefan.

He also suspected that if he tried to be stubborn and stay awake until he could sort out all of his problems that Aedan would stay awake with him. And Aedan had to be almost as tired as Damon was. Even if Damon couldn't sleep – and he suspected he couldn't, no matter how exhausted his body was – Aedan deserved some rest. So Damon crawled into bed, watching as Aedan stripped off his clothes and folded them neatly before joining Damon. Damon still wasn't in the mood for any of their usual fun, and luckily Aedan seemed to understand that as he so often understood what Damon needed. He drew Damon against his body and kissed him lightly. "Let's get some sleep," he said softly, and Damon nodded.

Aedan relaxed into sleep almost immediately, and Damon lay there listening to his vampire boyfriend's deep breathing and slow heartbeat. Troubled mind or not, he couldn't help feeling a measure of the peace that he always found in Aedan's arms even as a small voice said that Aedan would leave him soon. Now that the novelty was wearing off, Aedan would realize that Damon wasn't worth it, that he was a screw up who had failed at everything that ever mattered. Today was just more proof of that.

Damon tried to pull away as that voice grew louder, but Aedan just murmured his name in his sleep and refused to let go. Damon couldn't exactly break Aedan's grip and he didn't really want to, after all, so he finally just gave in and relaxed back against Aedan's strong body. This time Aedan just purred slightly, a contented sound, and Damon felt a little more of the tension leave his body. He hadn't seen any accusation or blame in Aedan's eyes that day, just regret and acceptance and . . . love. Damon didn't really understand it. He was used to being blamed and punished for his mistakes, from when he was eight and let baby Stefan crawl too close to the fire to when he was eleven and left the gate on the corral open and three of the horses got out. There were too many more cases to count growing up where Damon had felt the lash in exchange for mistakes he had made – or that Stefan had made, because Damon had always tried to take the blame to prevent his little brother from feeling the sting of failure. Each time their father had repeated to Damon that he was a disappointment who would never amount to anything, and Damon had seen that disappointment and blame in his father's eyes as the whip sliced into his back. He was the bad brother, and his mistakes deserved punishment. Only Aedan didn't seem to think today was his fault, and he seemed determined to stick by Damon.

Vampires might not belong anywhere, Damon thought sleepily, but maybe he belonged with Aedan, even if it had taken him a long time to find his place in the world. Minutes later Damon was asleep, too, dragged down by his body's exhaustion and the measure of peace that Aedan's arms offered him.

•••••

Aedan woke early the next morning, pleased to find Damon nestled against him and still fast asleep. Damon had been dead on his feet the previous evening – figuratively as well as literally – but Aedan had been afraid, nonetheless, that the younger vampire might have been too stressed and upset to sleep. He had intended to stay awake long enough to make sure that Damon slept, but his own exhaustion had dragged him under too quickly.

Damon looked so peaceful as he slept, Aedan thought. And so beautiful, with his long dark lashes, high cheekbones, and full sensual lips. But this morning Aedan thought Damon looked sad, too, like sleep couldn't fully conceal the core of pain and self-recrimination that lay inside of him and that the previous day's events had brought to the surface. Aedan was very familiar with those emotions. Being a vampire, living for centuries and killing for centuries, brought far more pain than anyone realized who hadn't experienced it. It was almost funny, Aedan thought ruefully, to hear the witch talk about vampires as monsters like they didn't know what they were. Aedan had made as much peace as he could with it, but that didn't mean the guilt and loneliness weren't always there. He could never entirely block out the knowledge of the things he had done, sometimes to survive and sometimes simply because he could and the world was a cruel place.

But for the past few weeks, Damon drove those feelings and memories away, underground, with his smile, his laugh, his touch. Aedan liked to think that he did the same for Damon. He was certain that they had both been happy in the days before this latest crisis. But that happiness seemed only a memory now. The events of the previous day had swamped the fire that usually burned in Damon, and Aedan didn't know how to bring it back. Even watching Damon relaxed in sleep couldn't entirely shake the image of the devastated, vacant look on the younger vampire's face as he had collapsed against his door the previous night. Aedan wasn't convinced Damon would have moved yet if he hadn't been there to pull his boyfriend out of his thoughts.

He could only hope that a good night's sleep would restore Damon's equilibrium. He accepted – hell, he loved – that Damon was mercurial. Life with Damon would never be boring, and not just because Mystic Falls was apparently doomed to one supernatural crisis after another, but because Damon himself was anything but boring. And Aedan loved that. He could handle Damon's moods, his anger, passion, recklessness. But he had no idea how to handle the subdued, sad Damon that he had seen the night before, broken, all of the fight drained out of him. It broke Aedan's heart to see it.

He leaned over and kissed Damon's shoulder lightly, careful not to wake him. "You're okay," he whispered, as though saying it could make it true. He knew everyone else was worried about Elena and how she would handle being a vampire, but Aedan was mostly worried about Damon. There was only one thing that he could think of that might help fix things, so he drew Damon close and thought about ways to kill Sage.

•••••

The next morning everything seemed right in the world in Damon's first moments of waking. He was curled up in Aedan's arms, not alone, loved and wanted. His body was finally rested again, and his room was quiet and peaceful, a sanctuary for the two of them, even if Damon didn't deserve any such thing.

So for those first, half-awake moments, Damon was happy. Then he remembered the events of the previous day. He remembered that Elena was dead and a vampire. He had failed her completely, and there was no way to fix things. It was too late. Despair washed over him then with all the force of vampire emotions, and he rolled over onto his back, away from Aedan, as the wave of pain hit. Every muscle in his body tensed as Damon fought the urge to destroy something. Or cry.

He felt Aedan stroke a hand gently over the taut muscles of his stomach. "Hey," the older vampire said softly. "It's going to be okay."

Damon struggled to calm his emotions, closing his eyes and forcing himself to take deep breaths. He thought talking might help distract him, but he couldn't pull his mind away from Elena's fate. Finally, he tried voicing this thoughts anyway. "I wonder what Elena will be like as a vampire?" he whispered. "Hopefully nothing like Katherine." It was surprisingly hard for him to imagine Elena as a vampire. Her humanity had been such a big part of why Damon cared for her.

"The world definitely doesn't need two Katherines," Aedan agreed. His fingers slid over Damon's skin as though unwilling to break the physical contact between them.

"Or even one, really," Damon commented, trying to keep his tone light. But his thoughts suddenly went in a different, if no less depressing, direction. "What if she's a ripper, like Stefan?" he asked. He kept his voice as low as possible. Elena didn't have human ears anymore.

"She won't be."

"No one would have guessed Stefan would. I mean Stefan? Really? He lives for his journal, for god's sake." Damon forced a tremulous smile at his own joke. After a moment, he added, "Why wasn't it me? I'm the crazy, out-of-control one." He stared at Aedan, blue eyes wide and pleading for answers.

"No one knows what causes someone to become a ripper," Aedan reminded him. He was still touching Damon, and Damon was glad for it. The warmth of his hand on Damon's stomach provided an anchor against the despair that threatened to overwhelm the younger vampire.

"It could have been my fault," Damon said, voicing a fear that he had held inside for over a hundred years. "I left. I couldn't handle Stefan, and I left. And he never figured it out." Lexi had tried to help him, of course, but her cures had only been temporary. Stefan had always relapsed.

"It wasn't your fault," Aedan said firmly. "You were a new vampire, too. Elena will be fine. No one has ever had so many vampires around to help them." Aedan continued, "We'll take care of her."

That was true, Damon knew, but it was small consolation. Elena had never wanted to be a vampire, and Damon had dedicated himself to saving her for so long. But Aedan was right that there was nothing he could do now, except try to see things through. Despite what Aedan had said yesterday, Damon had seen the accusations in everyone else's eyes. Elena's death was most definitely his fault. Sage wouldn't have even been there if it wasn't for him. Damon frowned as another thought occurred to him, and he propped himself up on one elbow to meet Aedan's gray eyes. "Promise me you won't go after Sage alone."

Aedan's expression barely changed, but Damon saw enough to know that his guess was right. Aedan had been thinking about exactly that.

"Aedan, she's too strong," Damon said. He couldn't bear even the thought of possibly losing Aedan.

"I could catch her by surprise."

"How? She knows you're with me." And suddenly Damon understood something else. "That's why she staked you and tried to convince me you messed with my head – she was testing how solid we were."

Aedan nodded slowly. "Makes sense," he conceded.

"Promise me," Damon said stubbornly. "We'll kill her, but we'll do it together."

Aedan sighed, but he met Damon's eyes directly. "I promise."

Damon nodded. "Good," he said. "Now will you do something else for me?"

Aedan tilted his head, puzzled, but he nodded again.

"Distract me. Fuck me hard," Damon said. He needed to forget for a few minutes, and no one provided a distraction quite like Aedan.

A second later, Aedan was above him, pressing him down into the bed. Aedan kissed him then, and Damon returned the kiss, feeling both love and hunger in the way Aedan's mouth moved on his. It wasn't exactly what Damon had in mind, but he wasn't complaining as his body responded to the sensation of being pinned under Aedan's and the feeling of Aedan's lips and tongue, the heat of his mouth and touch of his hands as the other vampire took his time. It had been far too long since they had done this, taking their time and just kissing. He could feel Aedan's love in the way the other vampire explored his mouth deeply and thoroughly, leaving him gasping for air he didn't need.

Aedan found the most sensitive spot on Damon's neck next, and Damon arched into him with a moan. He wanted Aedan to hurt him, to mix pain and pleasure as a punishment for his failures, but instead Aedan was caressing his body, offering him nothing but intoxicating pleasure. Damon was helpless under his boyfriend's touch as Aedan's hand found his erection even as his mouth moved from one sensitive spot to another. He was trembling by the time Aedan's hot mouth was surrounding his cock, and it didn't take long for him to climax with a string of half-coherent sounds.

Aedan didn't let Damon rest, kissing him again long and hard as his own erection pressed into Damon's body. He took his time stretching Damon out, but finally he pulled Damon's legs up and began driving into him with slow, deep thrusts.

"I love you," Aedan said, voice serious. He shifted Damon slightly to find a new angle and a deeper penetration just as Damon opened his mouth to respond.

"Fuck, Aedan," was all Damon could gasp out as a surge of pleasure flooded his body, driving away any coherent thought. He knew it probably wasn't the best response, but Aedan's smirk of satisfaction told him that his lover was anything but offended. Driving each other crazy was, after all, a favorite pastime for both of them. "Harder," Damon moaned, and Aedan obliged, taking him to the brink as slaps of flesh and sounds of pleasure filled the room.

Just when Damon thought he would tumble over the edge, Aedan shifted them again, drawing Damon with him as he sat up. He was still impaled on Damon, who was now practically sitting in his lap. Aedan's mouth found Damon's, swallowing the younger vampire's squeak of surprise at the new position and kissing him deeply. The intimacy of it brought tears to Damon's eyes. He didn't deserve this, didn't deserve Aedan.

Aedan's hand found his hard cock then, offering a renewed distraction just when Damon needed it. He began to stroke Damon in rhythm with his thrusts, and moments later they came together, voices merging in a loud cry.

Damon felt Aedan pull out of him as they collapsed onto the bed in a messy tangle of limbs and cum. He lay there contentedly, sated, as his own breathing and Aedan's gradually slowed. "You give the best distractions," he murmured.

"Is that what we're calling it now?" Aedan asked, but the flash of humor in his gray eyes told Damon that he knew exactly what Damon meant. He moved to claim another kiss as his answer.

When they finally came up for air, it was Aedan who spoke first. "I suppose we should get up soon." He sounded reluctant.

Damon sighed. "Give me a sec." His muscles still felt like jello, after all, and getting up didn't sound all that appealing to him either. He wanted to hold onto the feeling of pure physical pleasure, keep his mind turned off. Damon wondered what Aedan would say if he suggested a bubble bath right now. Aedan would probably think that he had lost it, Damon thought with a small smile. Too bad he knew that he had lost it by any normal standard a very long time ago. Maybe it was the day Stefan had forced blood down his throat to complete the transition, or the night he had first helped Katherine hunt and kissed her bloody face rather than run screaming. Or before that, when he had puked his guts out after his first battle, so pathetically glad to be alive as he crouched among bloody corpses and the screams of the wounded rang in his ears. Of course, Damon thought ruefully, the smell of blood had still made him sick then, so he probably could have still been considered sane. That hadn't been the case for a century and a half, and now Elena was entering that life.

"I don't want to get up," Damon admitted quietly. "Can we just stay here?" He knew he probably sounded like a child, but he didn't want to deal with everything that the day promised. With vampire Elena and Stefan's accusing looks and ridiculous diet, not to mention coming up with a way to kill Sage. Here, alone with Aedan, was the only peace that Damon was going to find right now.

Damon felt Aedan's soft chuckle. "Sure. We can barricade the door," the older vampire suggested.

It was Damon's turn to laugh at that. "I'm hungry, though," he protested.

This time Aedan chuckled softly. "I can bring you breakfast in bed," he offered. "They probably won't bother me."

Damon smiled again. It was true that neither Stefan nor Elena seemed to really know what to make of Aedan or Damon's relationship with him. Most of the time that was just fine with Damon. "If only," he sighed, resting his body against Aedan's for another long moment. Too bad neither staying in bed nor moving things to the bathtub was really an option. Finally, he forced himself to move. "Shower and breakfast?" he said as he sat up.

Aedan nodded. He stood up and followed Damon toward the bathroom. "Just for the record, I prefer your first idea of staying in bed all day."

Damon laughed again.