Lexi is Stefan's Biffle!!! (bubbly_vamp) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-07-01 22:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, damon salvatore, lexi branson |
Who: Lexi Branson and Damon Salvatore
What: An Attempt at Talking
When: Backdated: Tuesday, June 24th. Afternoon
Where: A Pub
Rating/Warnings: Pretty Much Family Friendly
Status: Complete!
Damon had agreed to meet Lexi at the pub for a quick drink after picking up a few things for Elena. They needed to talk, and now he understood what was going on with them in the dreams. This wasn’t about the dreams, but about the wedding. He wanted a peaceful wedding. He and Elena needed the perfect day, no added stress of how many were opposed to this union. Simply, he was trying to make peace.
He watched a young man in the parking lot for a moment. He was alone, appearing to be waiting for someone. Damon felt his fangs elongate in his mouth. No, he wasn’t going to do that, even if it was so tempting. He turned and headed in the pub instead, ordering a straight bourbon, looking for the familiar blonde. He had no idea how this would go. At one point they were friends, which was certainly not the case now. He thanked the server and walked to a table to wait.
Lexi wasn’t exactly looking forward to meeting with Damon, but she was doing this for Elena. For Elena and for Stefan. Stefan was her best friend and Elena was one of her closest girl friends and she would agree to peace for the day with Damon just as there had been on Natalia’s birthday. Of course as far as Lexi was concerned, peace with Damon was simply ignoring him. She wasn’t going to stoop to his level and start something.
Reaching the pub they had agreed upon, Lexi went inside, spotted Damon and headed towards the table, sitting down across from him, “Hello, Damon.”
Before her arrival, Damon had found himself scanning the room again, looking for potential meals. He was thinking as a vampire again. He pulled out his phone instead and sent a quick text to Elena. When Lexi arrived, he put the phone down. “Lexi,” he said casually, motioning for the server so she could order.
He waited until she placed the order and walked away. “How have you been?” He was quite capable of civility, and had shown that more than once. He tried a small smile. It was for Elena, although he still wasn’t ready to trust her. She was the one who wanted to talk, so he was there.
“Fine,” This may have been Lexi’s idea, but now that she was sitting there across from him she didn’t see how this was going to end any better than any of the other times they’d talked in the last couple of months, “And how have you been?”
Damon sighed inwardly. Lexi really didn’t want to be there any more than he did, or so he thought. She wasn’t going to walk away and say she liked him. She was determined not to, even if he didn’t do a thing to her. The rest had been for he and Elena to work out, and they had. “I’m fine, getting married soon.” He was biting his tongue a lot, which was going to be necessary for this conversation. “You already know that Elena and I are very happy together. At least Stefan is very happy for us.”
Lexi still didn’t think that Damon and Elena’s relationship was a healthy one, but she had already voiced her opinion in the past, so she wasn’t going to get into it again, “Hard to believe it’s so close.” She leaned on her elbows a little on the table, watching Damon, “Look, I might not be thrilled with this, but I’ll sit on my hands when the priest asks if anyone objects.” She was sure that that was what Damon wanted to hear most, “And just like at Nat’s birthday party, I won’t start anything.” She preferred to be the bigger person when it came to arguments.
Damon swirled his drink and took a healthy gulp. He arched a brow. “What would you actually say anyway. I object because they are happy? We’ve gotten way over the past, and you know she is doing better than she ever has been. There is no relationship that doesn’t get tested, your own included. The difference is that she and I made it, even with everyone saying we wouldn’t. Do you really think she’d be better off without me? She would be miserable, and you know it.” He took another drink, measuring words. “We are not going to live our lives trying to find some right moment that makes everyone happy, or wait for everyone’s approval. If you can’t get over what happened, that is your problem, but it is over. Even your best friend is 100 percent behind it, so I guess that is something.”
He tapped the table with one finger. Lexi really didn’t understand where her attitude had gotten her. She and Elena weren’t as close, or even really close anymore because of it. While her opinion might have had some weight, her attitude made it worth less and less, until now it didn’t matter. “I’ve seen the dreams, at least what I think is most of our history.” He had seen them on the roof in the 70’s, but more importantly, he had seen them in the 40’s before Stefan left for the war. It was then that he understood why it ended the way that it had.
Lexi resisted the urge to roll her eyes and instead took a sip of her drink before continuing, “Look, I’m not going to try and break up anything or stop anything. I might not like you for various reasons, but obviously Elena is happy, so I have nothing to say. And just because Stefan is on board doesn’t mean I have to. We’re best friends, we don’t share a brain. Best friends don’t have to be on the same page about everything.” Damon liked to think that he knew everything about everything, but he had no idea what had gone on in her relationships so he had no place to talk about that, but she wasn’t going to start anything there in public. It was best to let Damon think he knew everything. “Good for you. I’m still a little behind, but then again, I’ve already been spoiled.” There was a bitter tone in her voice as she spoke. She was still mad, both about the fact that Damon killed her in the dreams, but also because of the way he’d told her; telling her that he was glad that he’d killed her.
“I know you aren’t going to start something. You would only be spinning wheels over something that would fail. Trying that is both stupid and pointless. However, you still manage to see fit to be judgmental over everything, and that shit needs to stop too.” Just as he didn’t really know about her, nor did he care to, her knowledge of him was only in a fairly negative light, even though there were now far more positives, thanks in great part to Elena’s influence.
He leaned on the table as well, hands clasped above his drink. “I have seen the bigger picture, or at least a lot more than you have. I was the bad brother you hated, and never once did you bother to think that no matter what, we were still brothers, until maybe the 70’s but by then it was too late. When Stefan left for WWII and you tried to keep us separated I let you. Lexi plays judge and jury again, and I took it. I didn’t even matter that we could have done great, and it might have been good for us. You -- ,” he backed off, but there was that defensiveness he had over his dream self. That was him, of course a version that had been hurt over and over again, and one that did occasionally need people. Damon had been trying to do the right thing, reaching out. For a few minutes, he had been happy before Lexi had made sure it wouldn’t happen. She had hurt him, and he had felt it coming out of the dreams. He knew that his dream self carried that for the next 70 years.
“We were friends once, weren’t we?” he said, trying to shove that hurt back into it’s proper compartment.
“Stefan had just gotten off the human stuff. He had wanted to make amends for the things he’d done. Tell me, that if dream you had gone with him, that you wouldn’t have tempted him to snack on the casualties.” She rose a perfectly sculpted brow at him, practically daring him to tell her that isn’t what would have happened, “I was doing what was in Stefan’s best interest. He wanted to make up with you, but you going with him wouldn’t have been a good idea.” The dreams felt so real that defending her actions in them felt no different than if she were defending her actions in real life, “I always thought of you more as just my best friend’s brother. I mean, it wasn’t like you really ever hung around with us. Except when we were kids.”
“Maybe, or maybe not,” Damon shrugged. Sure, there was a possibility, but at that time he had been ready to make amends himself. “I never got a chance to do otherwise or prove otherwise. Everyone assumed what I would do the minute you walked in. It didn’t have to turn out that way.” Damon connected with his dream self from the first day. There was something there that was so deep set in him that he had absolutely no argument against it. “What you missed was that, at that time, I did care. I didn’t want to hurt him, and I knew it was bullshit, but I didn’t go. That was also why I did what I did later.”
Damon’s dream life was full of those little judgements. People assumed he was bad, evil, a monster, so he played the role. Nobody gave him a chance to do anything better, at least not until Elena, and it was her belief in him that eventually turned things around, and made him let people in again. It was funny how those dreams were so similar to reality. “The point is that no matter what, it isn’t your right to judge me. You don’t know me, and I’m not about to go on and on about what I’ve done, right or wrong. Elena knows because she made the effort. You get to trust that she is making the right call, just like you should have done with Stefan.”
Lexi didn’t believe it then and she didn’t believe it now that Damon wouldn’t have been a bad influence on Stefan if they’d gone off together, but that didn’t really matter, “So, you held a grudge for all those years, because I didn’t let you go off with Stefan and you decided to take advantage of the fact that I wanted to help you. That Stefan wanted me to help you and you tried to kill me instead.” The rift between Stefan and Damon had been much bigger in the dreams than in real life, but there had still been one in the waking world as well, “Tell me, where were you when Stefan was going around as a Ripper? If you had found him would you have actually helped him get off the human stuff?” She doubted it. If she hadn’t found him in the twenties, chances were, Stefan would have been much worse off later on.
“Do you have a better theory?” Damon doubted it. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t lying awake at night plotting it. Dream me is an opportunist. I had an opportunity to cover my ass by using you, and that was the reason that I didn’t feel guilty.” He shrugged and motioned the waitress over for another drink. “I don’t know what would have happened earlier. The dreams tend to skip through chunks. I know at that time, I was ready, and that may have made a difference. It might have ended that feud sooner, since he was pretty pissed at me when I didn’t show up. Hey, I was the dick, so no surprise there, right? It’s just easier letting him believe that his brother didn’t give a shit. What was another sixty years anyway? It was always about what Stefan needed, but there were times that he needed his brother.”
The dreams might have skipped around, but they still left the dreamer with knowledge of what happened during those times that they didn’t dream about specifically. “Whatever. Look, the dreams aren’t what’s important. What’s important is that your wedding is going to go on without any disturbance from me. I’ve even got you both a really nice gift, as much as I was tempted to get something just for Elena.” She didn’t want to talk about the dreams anymore, because the more she thought about the things dream!Damon had done to her the angrier she felt towards him and she didn’t want to get into anything right there.
Damon smiled, tainted with sarcasm. “I’m sure you were tempted to get something just for Elena, and I’m sure Jeremy and Katherine will do the same. It’s pretty typical of all of you. Let’s show Elena how much you love her, and show the dick how much we hate him for no real reason other than his existence. Whatever happened happened. Elena and I are over it. The rest of you hold high school grudges. The thing is we are way past caring.”
“Fine though, even though the dreams don’t matter, there is one other thing.” Damon looked at Lexi for a minute with steel blue eyes. “When Elena and I were fighting, about a week later, we were talking again. You stepped in and told her not to talk to me. That was low.” They were together now, and obviously it didn’t have the effect Lexi had wanted. “She listened to you less and less after that. I don’t really want to hear the excuse that it was for the best, because it wasn’t.” Elena was the only one who knew how much that had bothered him.
“God, Damon, are you ever going to quit acting like the victim?” Lexi finished her drink and got to her feet, “I think we talked about what we needed to. You think you know everything and that’s not going to change, so I don’t think there’s anything left to talk about.” If she stayed any longer, Lexi was going to say something she’d regret and she her anger was quickly rising. She might not have been a vampire yet, but she had a feeling that she was getting there, “See you on Wednesday.” With that, she turned and walked out of the pub.