Author's Note: I admit that after seeing that hot Delena scene in 5x16 after all those adorable phone calls, I knew the writers were going to paint their hook up as a mistake and make them break up another 5 times without getting back together. So I had to fix it. And fixing it, well…it involved a lot of nudity and sexiness. Alas, we must suffer for our art. Rated M for explicit sexual content, over 18 only please.

What Words Can't Say

ELENA

I can feel the lines of muscle above his hips resting against the sensitive skin of my inner thighs. Damon's face is buried in my neck, his breath still ragged and his temple nestled against my cheek so I can feel every squeeze of his heart. My fingers are lost in his hair and he's thick and solid inside of me and even that isn't enough to hold back the tears that beg at the edges of my eyelids.

I can't move. If I move, it will be like admitting that our moment of insanity is over and we have to give all of this up. But I'm not ready.

Breathing is okay. It's not movement, not really, because it's a rhythm, a cycle where I can hover, locked into the last minute where we're okay.

And when I breathe, I feel like I can touch the rest of the room, not just him. I can inhale the touch of leather from the closet and the clean, cold tiles of our shower, the warm, dark scent of the exotic sheets. When I woke up in my dorm this morning I could feel the smooth slide of that same fabric, and I thought I was here. When I opened my eyes to an empty room instead, I got déjà vu, because it was a nightmare I'd had plenty of times before.

Damon bought me those sheets: sex and languorous slumber woven into a thread count even higher than their price tag. They were a smaller version of the ones on our bed here, but I hid them in my dorm closet after the first week because I kept waking up with a smile, thinking I was home, and every day it was like I had to leave him behind all over again.

Katherine must have found them in the closet and put them back on the bed while she was living in my body. Fear jolts through my body as I wonder if any men laid with her on the sheets Damon bought for me. If, God, Damon laid on them. Katherine has always claimed she loved Stefan, but it never kept her from trying to enjoy Damon too.

I still feel the quaking of panic deep in my stomach when I think of how she kissed Stefan with my body. I don't care that I trust him, that he's my friend, or that I've kissed him thousands of times before; I still feel violated every time I think about it. And it would be infinitely worse if she kissed Damon, feeding on the desperation of his lips when he thought I was forgiving him for pushing me away. Stealing another moment with him that should have been mine, that I can never get back.

But no, she broke up with Damon right after I found him at the party, so there wouldn't have been time to… But still.

I can't stand it. I move, giving up all the safety of our post-orgasm lull because I have to claim his lips so that there's no room for anyone else, so that he knows it's me and that no one else is allowed to touch him that way.

When I kiss him he moans, low and rough, and my nipples peak at the sound, shivers wracking through my hands where they're cupped around the hard lines of his jaw.

But does he know? Does he really know it's me this time, can he tell? I yank him closer, biting his bottom lip in frustration but he doesn't mind, his hips leaping eagerly as he tips his head toward me, asking for more.

Would Katherine kiss him this way? Did her body call to him the way mine does, when they were only identical? Or was it different when she took my actual body?

When he saw her for the first time after the breakup, did he want her?

His hands come up to my cheeks and his lips gentle mine, soothing my urgency as he steals one more soft kiss before he touches his forehead to mine and asks breathlessly, "What's wrong?"

I squeeze my eyes shut and roll away from him with a little gasp. He's still hard when he slips from my body and it leaves me feeling empty everywhere.

"Right," he says. "Stupid question."

I'm being irrational. Damon barely saw Katherine after she broke up with him, and of course he didn't realize that wasn't me. The whole time we've been together I could tell that part of him was just waiting for me to change my mind. But it hurts so much that she could fool him, that we don't know each other better than that. Even now, what proof does he really have that I'm not Katherine?

I clutch the bedsheets tightly in my fists to combat the lightheadedness that whirls through me. I could just slip out of my life, and as long as my body kept walking around, it wouldn't make a difference to anyone.

"Better question," Damon says brightly. "Shower sex, or bathtub sex?"

"We can't keep doing this," I whisper.

"Trust me," he drawls, "I can keep doing this all night long and then some."

I know he's trying to make me smile, but I can't remember how.

I roll back over, and the humor in his voice is nowhere in his eyes, the hazy, after-sex glow already shadowing back into resignation.

"I killed someone to push you away, too," I say baldly.

"Your switch was off," he says without hesitation, so I know he already thought about that. Which just makes me more right when I don't want to be.

"It doesn't matter. Damon, I hardly recognize myself since my transition, and apparently no one else does either. It's been just this…whirl of emergencies and I need to take control of my life, of myself," I say firmly. "I mean, when we get mad at each other, we don't Instagram passive aggressive pictures of wild nights at the bar. We kill people to make a point. Who does that, Damon?"

Hurt flinches through his blue eyes, as bare as the moment he begged me to say something, anything.

When Damon told me I didn't murder Aaron, I should have been relieved, but instead all I felt was horror. Because I could hate myself for doing it, but I can't manage to hate Damon, even though I know I ought to. And that twists all the love I have for him into something love should never be.

"What will we turn each other into, if we keep doing this?" I whisper. I make myself sit up, and I don't look at anything but my hands. I don't look at the room or the bed or the bathtub, or oh God, at him because then I won't be able to stand it. "This was a mistake," I tell both of us. "And I should go."

Damon was wrong. He thought he was dragging me down, but we're dragging each other down. He hasn't killed anyone except in self-defense for so long I can't even remember the last time, and when he snapped, he snapped because of me. I can't do that to him. I need to go somewhere, far away, where I can figure myself out and I can't hurt anyone while I do.

I get off the bed, and it feels like the earth is falling away beneath me as I do.

His hand curls around my wrist and I flinch at the warmth of it, at the way I know exactly where each finger will settle before it even gets there.

"Fuck that."

I close my eyes and take a breath, but he cuts me off.

"Nope. Sorry, gorgeous. I let you have two totally incoherent freak out fits already today and we're done talking," he says firmly.

"But we agreed…" I say weakly, already letting him pull me back onto the bed. The mattress takes my weight so easily.

"Elena."

I love the way he says my name. The way it sounds like his tongue invented the syllables.

It's smooth, sweet like a word in a beautiful language but stark underneath with no room for bullshit because he knows me, knows that I hate doing my homework and I abhor getting up early and that if I moved to another town tomorrow I would probably never plan a single other community event as long as I lived because no one would expect it of me.

How could he have ever called Katherine by my name?

Damon looks at me sternly, and I see the creases at the edges of his eyes deepen as he nearly smiles. "I can almost hear you talking yourself out of this at a mile a minute," he says dryly. "And maybe if you hadn't just given me the best orgasm of my life I might let you, but I'm not in the mood to break up right now."

My face falls. "Too late."

"Nope," he says, and picks me up and places me into the pile of our pillows, as if I weigh no more than a word. I can feel his fluffy feather pillows under the small of my back and my curvy memory foam one squishing under my elbow and I want to cry all over again with how much I want to stay.

"Elena," he says, as if he's tired of explaining something to me. "We've broken up every way two people can, and I'm starting to think it only ever makes things worse."

I cross my arms with a frustrated huff of air and look at him, at the wild tumble of his sin-dark hair and those eyes, those damned eyes. "So what else are we supposed to do?"

"Listen," he says simply, his voice a velvet roughness that trickles goosebumps all across my body and I flush because I know he can see them.

I want to hug him.

Just hold onto him like that could make everything better, the way I did before Katherine took over my mind.

I wonder, for a fraction of a second, if it wouldn't have been better if I had died then. If that had been my last memory so I didn't have to come back to this mess that I'm utterly failing to handle.

Instead of touching him, I hold very still and I pray to every God I can name that he has a good argument.

He sprawls across the bed, propped up on his left elbow with his abs flexing to hold him steady and it's only then that I realize he still has a torn scrap of his jeans still dangling from his ankle. I want to reach to smooth it away, but I don't dare. The room is quiet again, a perfect bubble like it was when the last waves of my orgasms released me into a bargain that I made with time. A bargain I gave up for the privilege of kissing Damon, just one more time.

He unwinds my arms from each other, my muscles relaxing to his touch as his hand trails up the inside of my arm and his fingers settle in between mine. My skin prickles excitedly all the way to my scalp and there's a strange waiting feeling in my chest.

It doesn't matter what he says now: if he's touching me I'll give in, I know I will. The breath that carried the agreement to leave each other wasn't even all the way out of my lungs yet when he kissed me, and I never even thought of pushing him away.

Not once.

Our hands rise to his mouth, and I honestly don't know if he's guiding the movement or if I am.

I need him to say something now, something to make it okay.

The tip of my index finger rests on the swell of his bottom lip, which feels a little swollen. I was rough, before, and I shiver with a territorial kind of satisfaction to feel the evidence.

Damon bites me, his blunt teeth scraping sensually along the pad of my finger and I feel it everywhere.

It sends memory crashing over me of one erotic night this summer when Damon teased me that I probably didn't even have enough sexual fantasies to count them on both hands. I called his bluff, growling my desires into his palm and counting them off by biting my way up each of his fingers as I finished each story.

He made love to me on seven, and ten and twelve. I always thought if I played the lottery, that those would be my lucky numbers.

"You're not..." I gasp, trying to think, "talking."

"Listen," he says again.

He surges up toward me, muscles rippling in a movement so predatory and sexual that my legs part automatically because I know he's going to enter me and I want that, want him like I've missed him as long as I've lived. But instead he breathes a single kiss along my jaw, crouched over me so I can feel the heat from his taut thighs as he fists a hand in my hair.

Damon's head drops, and he kisses my hair where it is tangled through his fingers. He is everywhere around me, every familiar inch of him whipcord lean and ready, but he doesn't touch me anywhere.

I reach for him, one arm around his waist and one diving around his neck, my face hiding in his shoulder and something about the way we fit together says that he knows it's me.

His fingers relax, massaging my scalp until I exhale, and then he nuzzles his lips in under my ear, tickling me with the start of his five o'clock shadow and growling kisses against my pulse until I erupt into helpless giggles and we fall back into the pillows together in a tangle of arms and legs and something scratchy and lacey underneath my bottom that I think is the remnants of what used to be my panties.

He rolls underneath me and I flip my hair back and sit up so I'm straddling him, my legs feeling strong and swift.

Damon flattens a hand across my stomach, as if he's covering a wound I can't see.

"What?" I whisper, though I know that speaking is dangerous.

He clears his throat, just a little like something's catching in it, but I can tell he's trying to keep his voice light when he says, "I'm glad Stefan was feeling vindictive. I wasn't really up to stabbing you with the traveler's knife, and that was the only way to get Katherine out of your body."

"Stefan did it?" I ask, surprised. It's always Damon who steps up to do the dirty work, and when Katherine was dying, it was Stefan who defended her.

Damon nods, his thumb resting against my belly button while his fingers trace the line where the knife must have gone in. "I understood that it was Katherine. It even looked like Katherine, but I knew it was your body and I–" one shoulder twitches up in a fractional shrug. "I would have done it, if I had to."

I catch my lip between my teeth and I wish I would have thanked Stefan, when I saw him in the dorm. It was a kind thing for him to do, and I suspect he did it more for his brother than for any revenge he might have wanted against Katherine for tricking him into that kiss.

Damon props his knees up so I fall against his chest and his arms close around me before I can decide if I should protest. He nuzzles into my hair, his nose tracing the edge of my ear.

"We should just stay here," he murmurs with that deep, almost soundless vibration that only men can pull off. It reminds me of the purr of a cat, or maybe an engine, everything soothing and safe. But right now, it must be the voice of the devil because I've never heard anything more tempting. "This is where we make sense together."

What he says is exactly what I'm feeling but somehow out loud, it sounds wrong. I pull back.

"So what, all we have together that works is sex? Is that what you're saying?"

With a rush of shame, I realize he's technically my ex-boyfriend and we're in bed together. What does that make us, friends with benefits? But that's what Caroline said, isn't it? That I should just sleep with him already and get it out of my system. As if that was all I needed from him.

"No," he says. "But that's where we are when we're close enough that everything is okay. This summer? Was perfect. It wasn't until you left for college that there was enough room for all this other bullshit to come between us," he says bitterly.

I open my mouth to argue about college again, but a pang of nostalgia stops me. This summer was perfect, the best time since I transitioned. Maybe the best time since my parents died. Damon and I spent every day laughing and messing around together, Jeremy was safe, and other than missing Bonnie and Stefan, there was zero drama.

His palm settles at the very base of my spine, just above the swell of my bottom. "When I'm actually with you," he says, his voice quieting, "nothing is ever wrong."

Tears sting my eyes and I duck down and hide my smile against his chest but he feels it anyway and shifts under me in a silent question.

"That's just the kind of ridiculously sweet thing that no one would ever believe you would say," I tell him, squeezing him a little tighter because I like the fact that he's only that way with me. But it's a little sad too. If someone took Damon's body, we'd all notice because he's so unabashedly Damon that no one else could imitate it. But there are parts of him that no one would ever know to miss but me.

If we leave each other, will that softness in him just disappear? Or will it come out again someday, for another girl?

I don't know which idea makes me sadder but Damon doesn't give me a chance to decide. With a silent flex of muscle he rolls, capturing me beneath him, our fingers laced together as he draws my hands up, the hard base of his palms pinning them against the mattress.

His thick lashes droop lazily over eyes the color of the sky. "And what would they expect?" he challenges. "For me to seduce you into compliance?"

I catch my breath. "Probably," I admit, and he gives me a crooked smile.

"Far be it from me not to live up to the hype," he says, his tongue curling knowingly around the words with a tone that promises dirty, kinky sex.

He widens his knees, forcing my thighs further apart to accommodate him, and drops his head. The spiky disarray of his wild dark hair against my pale breasts makes me catch my breath and then he's tracing one nipple with a hint of tongue and then a kiss of pain, the scrape of a single fang. A moan strangles in my throat and my eyes fall closed.

He rocks his hips and the swollen head of his cock nudges against my entrance. My fingers clench eagerly but he just pins them harder so that all I can move is my knees and I draw them all the way up so I'm completely open for him.

He rests his forehead between my breasts, his hips curling with the barest hint of movement as he slides against me, teasing me with a hint of pressure before he withdraws again and shifts, rubbing slickly over my clit and making me groan against my teeth.

"Hype," I gasp. "Uncle. You win. Whatever it is, you win it."

He chuckles, but it sounds strained and when he lifts his head I catch a flash of the anguish that was in his eyes when he told me about Aaron, and I know this is not just any seduction to him. This is everything.

"Damon…" I start but he shushes me, his fingers tickling mine as he frees me and strokes me onto my stomach, brushing my hair away from my face and settling me on the pillows. He handles my body with such care, such respect, and I realize all in a rush that he never would have let Katherine keep it. He protects all the pieces of me so much better than I ever would on my own.

I push my knees apart, letting myself be totally vulnerable to him in an invitation I'm not sure he'll take.

The mattress dips as he kneels between my legs and it makes something throb in my chest with the incredible relief of familiarity.

I suck in a breath and tense with anticipation because when Damon takes me from behind he always does it deep and hard. But this time, he doesn't push inside.

Instead, I feel his smooth cheekbone and the subtle scratch of stubble as he lays his cheek against my back, a little left of center where he can feel the beat of my heart.

I almost flip over so I can hold him, because I know the look that's on his face, even if I can't see it. It's the one he gets sometimes when he wakes suddenly in the middle of the night and it absolutely breaks my heart. I don't know what he dreams and he never speaks when he wakes that way. He just rests his head on my belly, his arms wrapped tight around my hips, and he'll stay like that for the rest of the night.

His weight settles a little more onto my back and I exhale. I want to be good for him, want to make his life better, not worse. And I'm terrified that I will keep screwing it up.

But it's Damon and even if it's utterly selfish, I know I can tell him the truth. I reach back and catch his hand, tugging him up until his chest mirrors the curve of my back, our hips nestled together.

I settle my lips against his ear and say the words so quietly that not even my wretchedly confused conscience can hear.

"I love you. And I don't want to go."

I feel the smile break across his face just before he whispers back, "I won't tell if you won't."

My grin takes me by surprise and I almost laugh, but it gets tangled up behind my tongue when his erection flexes against my backside and I arch my back restlessly, pleadingly.

It's such a relief, such an incredible relief that I don't have to leave, that he doesn't want me to. That he'll let me stay.

I feel his abs flex and with a low growl like something breaking free, he pushes inside with one dominant movement, hitting that spot deep inside that only he ever finds and it makes my brain explode into soundless white heat.

I whimper and he smoothes a hand up the back of my thigh, pulling my knee a little higher until it's almost tucked into my chest and giving me long, smooth stroke that melts me into the pillows. My eyelashes flutter but I can't see a thing as he does it again, his hand sneaking around my leg and flattening over my belly to support me against the force of his thrusts as they get harder, heavier, in the powerful rhythm that he knows breaks me into pieces.

He nuzzles my hair aside with the light scrape of his stubbled cheek and presses a kiss to the nape of my neck so he can drink the shudders that wrack through me every time he rasps against that one perfect place inside.

"Damon…" It's not a question, it's more like a talisman, like I need to hear his name in my mouth because my vision is a blur of soft pillows and sharp pleasure and I can't see him and even though we're as close as two people can ever be, I need that last connection, that nameless other something that has only ever existed with him.

His right arm sweeps around me, my knuckles hidden inside his palm as he brings our clasped hands around and anchors them in the very center of my chest. His bicep bulges protectively against the soft curve of my breast and his low voice is strained when he asks, "Okay?"

His hips slow into something more gentle, more tentative, but I arch back against him in a stubborn demand because I don't want mild, I want Damon. I want a passion that tastes of fury and obsession and hands that are soft in my hair and hard on my body. I want the uncensored version of the love of my life and the only thing I ask is that I can be enough to deserve him.

It's all I want.

His breath breaks and he crashes into me, the pleasure so much that a cry begs from my lips and he bites my shoulder with blunt teeth, fighting just as I am to contain everything we make each other feel in only our two bodies, in this one fleeting moment that feels like a snapshot of everything we've always been.

His arms clench around me like a benediction, his hands protecting my heart and the soft skin beneath my naval and all at once, my skin feels exactly like my own again, like something familiar not foreign that could never be stolen or belong to anyone but me. My inner muscles clamp fiercely around him and I feel him swell immediately in response and his gasp jags in protest against the curve of my ear.

"Not yet, Elena, God," he groans but I just smile, my lips curving secretly against the pillows because I know it's not the last time for us. I've been so afraid of all the mistakes we've made, but there's nothing we wouldn't do for each other. I think what he was trying to tell me before is that we screwed up by trying to be apart, in any capacity. It's when we're together that we're best, when we're together that we're strong enough to be the people we want to be.

The only thing toxic is what I am without him.

I pull our entwined hands higher and switch so my hand is supporting his, my lips searing the cupped hollow of his palm as I whisper three words into his skin.

My name hisses out from between his teeth as his rhythm begins to falter and I roll my hips back against his, pushing for the last little bit I need until I shudder and relax, squeezing him with every wave of my release.

He growls and surges closer, all his muscles snapping taut as heat expands inside of me, liquid and soothing.

"Okay," I murmur to him, my lips laid softly against his driving pulse. "I'm okay, now."

Damon lays his cheek at the base of my neck with a rough exhalation of air, settling me possessively into the curve of his body and I smile, because for the second time tonight we're in agreement, and this time? I like our answer a whole lot better.

Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed that new ending for Delena! I'd love to hear what you thought, so exercise that little review box below!

If Season 5 is leaving you cold, angry, or disappointed, go check out my full-length Season 5 rewrite, "In Time We Trust." It is the Season 5 you wish was playing out on your screen, with loads of Delena hotness, less doppelganger hijinks, and enough suspense to keep your heart racing far into the night.

And if you need any more snarky, bad-boy Damon (and really, who doesn't need more of that?) check out the hot new AH fic, "Auto In" by my brilliant beta Goldnox. Here's the setup: "Life is wonderfully uncomplicated for Damon Salvatore. Take accident claims as a call center rep by day, charm his way into a new bed each night. Go to work, drink with friends, sex. Simple and straightforward and fun. Until a coworker, Elena Gilbert, makes him question whether some things are worth changing for. But is he the only one who needs to let go of a previous life?"