[party post] come sail away with me

[varymydays]

You've come through a door, and you are on a boat. Specifically, you're on a cruise ship in the middle of some giant body of water. You've come through the door behind you which is attached to nothing and may now be locked. It's relatively empty as giant as it appears to be. The only other passengers that are here appear to also have come through the door for the most part and it is not nearly enough to fill up this entire cruise ship.

Also, who knows who the hell is driving this thing since all of the employees appear to be either ghosts or holograms...

Is this your first time here or your hundredth time here? Do you want a drink or a dip in the pool? Is it day or night? Do you stumble on your room or some other situation either fun or painful within its many rooms, shops, and facilities? Do you run into someone you know or a complete stranger?

The possibilities are unlimited!

Comments

[believable]

Elena wouldn't believe a single sarcastic thing he could say.

Time may have passed, but this is still Damon, and she knows how he works. She knows that he cares, and he isn't good at letting himself. If this had happened a year ago, fresh off of the rifts, her reaction would've been much different. Elena was bordering on something frenzied and wounded, too raw to be reasoned with. She'd wanted to hate him, she'd wanted to lash out at him the way he always lashes out when he is hurt. She'd wanted him to know how deeply he had hurt her, and how strongly she wished she would never be able to forgive him for it. She never learns, because despite her own wants she'd missed him. She misses the Damon that was her friend, before he ever knew he was.

Her eyes keep filling, and the sound of her name from his lips only makes that ache in her chest grow stronger.

It doesn't take long for him to take steps toward him in return, to bridge that distance until her arms are lifting. They circle around his neck, bringing him to her, an almost lost expression on her face. He was the only one that never left her side. The one that chose her in spite of everything. Despite his decisions and the way they forsook hers, she knows why he did what he did - that despite her unwillingness to believe it, it had been the right decision. She'd been angry at him because she couldn't be angry at anyone else, and being angry at Damon has always been easy.

She doesn't care if he won't hug back.

Elena hasn't seen him in a year, and she's felt that absence, for better or for worse. So he will be hugged and there's not a damn thing he can do about it.

[consumes]

Damon swallows as he stands there, and he doesn't know what to do with his arms, with the stance of his body, with the words coming out of his mouth. I'ts real or it's not, and he doesn't think he even cares anymore if this isn't real, because she's here and he thought he would never see her again. They rebuilt their friendship from the rubble that it had been from the times they'd been torn from in Mystic Falls (friendship and more at times, there was that night at New Years Eve before the bombs on his desk). For so much, it was only the two of them, and they were best friends, and it was we. They were a team in that crazy city.

He never would have left her if he'd had a choice. They were in the car together. He was making a decision, and she was screaming at him for it and then it was gone. Over. Not a whisper, not a goodbye, nothing after years and all they've gone through there. It didn't matter what terrible thing he'd done or if she could ever forgive him for it, because it was just cut off. Damon didn't even get to know if she was okay, and now she's here on a ship? And he doesn't--

Damon doesn't hug people at all except-- except that once with her after the explosions of the bombs when he thought she'd died, when he felt so much guilt for putting her in that position. He reached out, hugging her then after she'd wrapped her arms around him in the quiet without saying a word, because they both knew all of the things that they didn't say out loud, that he couldn't say (I can't lose you

and he still did).

Elena's arms slide around him, and he hasn't really processed it all yet, but he feels that, feels her. The feel of her hugging him like only Elena can, and his eyes burn before he wraps his arms tightly around her too, bringing her in close to his chest, hugging her like he has never hugged her before (maybe like he's never hugged anyone before definitely since becoming a vampire, his expression fighting that emotion that threatens to overwhelm him with the intensity of it).

He would be so bitter (and grateful because she's human after all and that had been part of the fear) to know it's only been a year for her.

[believable]

"God, Damon," she breathes out.

Even if he hadn't returned the gesture, Elena would still be hugging the crap out of him.

It isn't as though she didn't wonder plenty of times where he'd gone, if he was okay, if he was alone. Regardless of what her feelings for Damon had been when that car drove past that rift, she never would've wanted him to be alone. She never would've wanted to be separated from him or Jeremy. They made their decision, and it was supposed to be them starting their lives together wherever they were going to end up after Chicago was swallowed whole by the darkness. She remembers hugging him after Rose died.

Remembers how still he'd been in her arms, how much tighter she'd held him despite the lack of response.

Remembers the night of the explosion as well as he does. How many close calls they experienced together. How many natural disasters and rift complications and timeline discrepancies they weathered together. How she'd hated him when he first fell through and how hard they'd had to built their friendship back from their lowest moment after what happened with Jeremy.

These aren't things she has forgotten, but it was all so long ago, and the Elena standing before him now is a changed one. Her arms tighten around him, eyes burning with that regret, with those conflicting emotions that swim effortlessly to the surface. One would think it would be less easy, after how long it's been. She only pulls back to look at him, the many emotions she gathers in her chest flickering across her expression.

"When did you get here? Where - where have you been?"

[consumes]

Damon swallows at the sound of her voice (that sound that he has thought about so many times throughout the years like that would somehow make up for the aching there instead, and it never did), but he doesn't say anything else. Maybe because he doesn't trust himself too at the moment, because he can't manage any of those sarcastic responses (so what is left but more truth than he has ever been comfortable with admitting? Weaknesses, vulnerabilities, hurts, the I love you that is caged in his chest and has been true for longer than he knows

but so much time has passed, and beyond all of his feelings for her, which could never be acted on and could never become anything, he's just missed her, Elena, in a way that is impossible to put to words even if the words are impossibly at the edge of it all). Instead he just tightens his hold on her, hugging her tightly to him as emotion locks up his throat like it's a cage.

And this hour holds more meaning than it ever could.

Damon looks down when she looks up at him. "Just now." And then he shakes his head, Damon Salvatore: avoiding questions since... always. His hand slides up against her arm, and his mind had gone to a hundred million terrible places (trying to find a way to get to her, to do the impossible, the rifts are not controlled by anyone and they know that lesson so well). "Where were you?"

[believable]

The fact he is hugging her back tells her more than he thinks it does, whether he gives her straight answers or not.

Worry starts to gnat at the pit of her stomach, though she doesn't pull away immediately. Whether it's wrong or not, Elena has missed him too, has missed what they had despite every possible reason she has to not do so. They both changed in Chicago, their friendship changed, and she isn't sorry for it. She isn't sorry for anything they shared in that city, but - she also knows his own question is going to come with answers that he isn't going to like. Answers that she will own and she claims for her own, but will change the tone of their reunion regardless.

It's why she holds him that much tighter, closing her eyes against the skin of his neck; she lets out a soft breath, before she pulls back. "I was... " her voice trails off. God, there is so much that happened in the span of a year. How is she going to explain it all? "I was in New York. I ended up alone there at first, but - "

Elena licks her lips. "Ethan fell through after I did."

[consumes]

Damon swallows as he hugs her tightly (and every moment is fleeting, who knows why they're here or how long they'll get to stay?). He feels her close her eyes against his neck, that soft breath there (the warm air of it and the way her fingers grip hold of him at the back). There's an aching that takes over his chest whole with it, tries to claw out of his rib cage, but he somehow contains it. He looks down briefly when she pulls back, just hit hard with the emotion of it before he looks back up at her slowly.

It's not what he expects (and somehow it makes him suddenly angry before he even knows all the details, because why should--

It was supposed to be him there with her). He can't even process the fact that Jeremy and Sarah were in that car too, and how the hell did all four of them get separated?

"Wolfboy?" The name happens automatically. It's the way he thinks of him, and it's the way he's always going to refer to him. He's angry-- Damon should be happy that she wasn't alone (and a part of him deep, deep down is), but he's angry because it was supposed to be him there. Ethan was going back to his family. Damon was going with her. Choices were made-- "Jeremy and Sarah weren't there either?"

[believable]

"His name is Ethan, Damon."

This is starting to sound familiar to her, in all the ways she is hoping to prevent. It's why she knows she needed to tell him instead of letting it go unannounced. The ship is only so big, and he and Ethan would've crossed paths eventually. Elena rather he hear it from her than from anyone else.

The next question gives her pause. It's a complicated answer, that comes with a history of its own, and considering the way Damon is already handling the first revelation, Elena isn't keen on expanding on it all at once.

"Not at first," she says quietly. "I didn't see Jeremy until after he fell through, too. He was with Sarah, and he'd been in another world. One without technology; there was only magic."