Damon drinks himself blind and past. He's unseeing, staring at nothing. That's when he sees Alaric. With his eyes crossed because that's easier than focusing them.
First it's a shadow where one shouldn't be. Then he looks harder and the shadow is attached to Alaric's foot. Alaric's foot is on Alaric's leg, and Alaric's leg is on Alaric, who appears to be settled into his usual spot on the boarding house couch.
Damon blinks and there's nothing there.
Then he blinks and Alaric's on the couch, across from Damon in his armchair, arms crossed, watching him. It's surreal not because Ric's dead but because he'd rarely ever sat like that without a drink in his hand. It seems unnatural.
Damon's the one with drink. Drinks. He works the cork free from the fourth bottle of bourbon with his teeth. Spits it aside inelegantly and takes a long swallow.
"If you're going to tell me drinking will kill me," he says to Alaric on the couch, "don't bother. Remember? Tried that already. Didn't work." He lifts the bottle in a wavering cheers. Opens up his throat and downs a quarter of it.
His subconscious doesn't tell him to put down the bourbon and go for the good stuff in the basement freezer. His subconscious slowly tips his head, hair the color of burnt flax swept back neatly from his brow. His brow furrows deep. Damon used to use his tongue to trace the little lines that spread across Ric's forehead when he did that.
"You can see me?" his subconscious says.
His eyes are saucer-wide, and he looks more surprised than any figment of his imagination has a right to be. But Damon snorts, and fills his mouth with the bite of whiskey, fainter than blood but still blessedly present. He doesn't need blood now. Doesn't want it. He's many years removed from Elena's experience and free of Stefan's qualms.
"Uh, duh," he says instead to his Alaric-shaped subconscious. "If you're gonna lecture me like last week, let's get it over and done with. We put a crate of Parker's Heritage into storage for special occasions, and this seems like a special night, what with the lanterns of emotional significance. I want to reach the halfway bottle mark before sunrise." He hefts the whiskey again and it's almost all gone already.
On the couch Alaric is watching. "You've seen me before."
Damon salutes him smartly. "Sometimes. When I'm lucky. And drunk. You're always yelling at me about something or another, and I do listen, okay? Call me new-fashioned," he says, toasting Ric on another swallow, "but I'd rather get shit from my tortured psyche in your form than writing it out in a fucking diary." He swipes his mouth clean with the back of his hand. "Granted you're not usually so responsively chatty. But we knew our liquor. This stuff's fantastic. You would have noted the oaky aftertaste."
The bottle falls and spills amber across the thick carpet. Damon drops the bottle because Alaric is in his lap.
He is and he isn't. Damon watches him move from the couch in a burst of motion and then Alaric is on top of him, over him, settling down, folding into him. Only there's nothing there. Nothing is on Damon, and Alaric has his arms thrown around him, and Damon drops the bottle.
He cries out, eyes flaring. The jerk of his body doesn't dislodge Alaric because Alaric isn't there.
Only Alaric is there, the well-made features Damon sees whenever he closes his eyes mere inches away. The shrewd, knowing face that knows him better than anyone ever did or should or will. The lips he has spent more hours kissing than can be calculated are red and pursed. Ric's strong body is weightless, but Damon knows its weight exactly. The next noise Damon makes sounds strangled.
"Damon." Ric's hand comes up to cup his cheek. There's nothing on his cheek, but he can see Ric's hand, how Ric's thumb crooks to stroke along his jaw even though there's nothing on his jaw. "Damon, I've been trying, I have-"
"Shut up," Damon says. He closes his eyes. "Shut up shut up. I'm not - I can't yet. Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly fine with going insane, especially in this manner, which is preferable, but I need a few more months. Get Elena all set up with her vampire training wheels like you would have wanted, and then they can lock me up somewhere, and then I'll get to see more of this, and then I'll be with you." The sides of his mouth quirk. "Okay?" He tries not to see Alaric on top of him, even though it physically hurts to will the sight away. "Not ready for the full-blown insanity yet."
Alaric doesn't go. Damon shuts his eyes again and tells himself there's nothing in his lap, he can't feel anything, it's not real.
Alaric belting his hips was a delicious pressure that always got him squirming, straining, rock-hard and ready. Once, on a lazy, rainy Sunday burned into Damon's memory, Alaric had been in his lap in this same chair, had let Damon feed on him in minute bites for hours, had kissed Damon's mouth for hours and swallowed Damon's blood so that the cycle of biting and healing stretched on. Ric trippy and lucid in his arms, electrified with vampire blood. Ric moving at last to ride him, Damon's hand tight in his hair, Ric tight everywhere around him and-
Damon opens his eyes because that isn't helping at all and Alaric is still there and not, and he's leaned in, forehead against Damon's, nose an inch away, lips close. Alaric holds his gaze and doesn't go.
"Damon," he says again. "I'm really here." His fingertips ghost - ghost - Damon's cheek. "I never left."
Damon's heart stops. It doesn't really need to beat, mostly does that for effect, and it kickstarts sluggishly. He opens his mouth and closes it. His hands fist over the arms of the chair so that they don't shake. He has precisely seven million things to say, some of them eloquent, some of them angry, some so wretched and others quite beautiful, but his eyes narrow and what he actually says is "Well fuck me sideways."
And Alaric laughs. It's the best sound Damon's ever heard. He's missed it more than he can say. At the end of Alaric's life he hadn't laughed much, not like he used to. This is the good kind of laugh, Ric's laugh in bed at the close of a fine day of killing monsters, after they'd had sex a couple of times and lay together talking about everything and nothing.
"Selfish," Ric grins. "Thinking about your favorite position at a time like this."
Damon splutters. It isn't elegant. "Ric. Oh my god. Tell me I'm not going crazy."
"You have bats for brains, but you aren't going crazy," Alaric assures. "Then again I'm a friendly ghost who's been following you around and shouting myself hoarse for days, pretty much making a pariah of myself in spirit-town. None of the other ghosts want to hang out with me, man." He shakes his head, still smiling. "So I might not be an authority on sanity."
"It was you," Damon says. His pale eyes have gone from narrowed to wide. He says it more fiercely than he'd intended. There were a few times - usually when he was too drunk, like tonight, or if he'd gone too long without blood, or when he was just on the very edge of sleep - when he thought he had heard Alaric, could really hear him, even glimpse him nearby.
Chastising Damon to get up and go out and help Elena with her transition, telling him to check on Jeremy, who had no one he could rely on now, urging him to track down the mystery of what had taken out the Council.
Alaric was always yapping at him about his responsibilities, like always. He'd told himself it was a weird side effect of grieving and running from the grief and wallowing in it like mud and then he'd listened and done what Alaric said to do.
Alaric looks triumphant. It's an excellent look on him. "Thought I'd gotten through to you once or twice," he says. "You really think I wouldn't haunt your ass, given the opportunity?"
Damon tries to touch him. His fingers are on nothing, feel nothing, but he sees them on Alaric's chest. "Why can't I touch you?" he demands. "Mason Lockwood tortured me as a ghost, trust me, they can be tactile-"
Ric presses his lips together, which isn't fair at all because Damon can't lick and taste them. "That was different. The veil between the living and the Other Side was down. It's not, now; but sometimes it's... thinner? I'll get the sense that someone can see me. Usually witches." He hesitates. "Jeremy can see me. Most of the time."
"Son of a bitch," Damon swears, thinking about how precisely to take a young Gilbert in hand, but Ric is already talking over him:
"I told him not to tell anyone. You especially. Kid's got enough to deal with without you dogging him to play medium. I try to stay away from him." Ric's big hand is on his arm and isn't. "I try to stay with you."
Damon's the one to drop their shared stare. For all that he's dreamt of this - that Ric wasn't gone, that someone filled the barstool beside him - it's different with a ghost in his lap.
"You shouldn't," he makes himself say, though his teeth are clenched. "Cross over. Peace and rest and chubby winged babies with harps." So he's heard.
"The Other Side is...complicated." Alaric looks like he can't talk about it. His expression becomes stony, and he works his jaw. Instead he says, "Damon, I love you, but I'll never trust you far as I can throw you, buddy, for both our sakes. I'm going to stay here with you, and make sure you stay the man I love, that you help the people I love, as long as I'm able. I love you, but you're a dick, and you need me."
Damon's tongue wets dry lips. "I love you, too," he says, acknowledging the rest, the truth, with a dip of his head. His dark hair is messy, tousled just the way Ric likes. "Thanks," he says, in a smaller voice.
Alaric drops his Serious Face and settles into mischievous. "Now hurry up and strip. I don't know how much time we have. Could go transparent on you at any moment."
Damon makes a sound of protest at the second idea followed by an exaggerated arch of eyebrow at the first. "Really? You're going for the ghost sex?"
"You're goddamned right I am," says Alaric. "I can't touch you, but I can watch you touch yourself, and it might be the only action I'll get for an eternity. You better fucking believe I'm going for the ghost sex."
Damon blinks. "Ric, I-"
"You haven't so much as jerked off since I died," Alaric says, and although his tone is serious, even worried, he tries to keep his face lightly composed. "You won't make a very good monk, you know."
He wags a finger. "You get to live forever, Damon, and I'm dead. Someday, you're gonna meet someone else, and you'll-"
"Don't," says Damon, quietly, starting to undo the buttons on his shirt. "I'll do anything you ask, Casper. Just don't do that." If Alaric has been with him all this time it means he's seen what Damon's been like when he's not around other people.
He's seen the blistering heights of his reckless drunkenness, the fury and unbridled rage that destroyed whole rooms upstairs. Seen how Damon stumbles most nights into bed fully clothed, curls up, denies himself the comfort of their quilt. A heap of pillows is piled up in the space that was Alaric's.
Means he saw the time he lost it in the shower, shoulders hunched, bent and leaking tears over the green plastic bottle of Alaric's stupid organic shampoo. Damon had reached for it accidentally, and when he cracked it open the smell of Alaric's hair hit like a ton of herbal bricks. He was forced to recognize that he'd never get the scent again except artificially, and for a while had let himself feel the whole of the loss.
He'd turned the water up hot as it could go until it scalded and then he'd wept and raged and plead at Ric, stayed in there so long with the steam gushing out that Stefan eventually pounded on the door to make sure, "Are you still alive?" and Damon had made a sound but wasn't sure.
Means he saw the performance in the cemetery tonight, how he'd drunk half the bourbon and loosed his frustration at being left behind to watch the kids when all he got was a gravestone in return. Means he's seen the other days and nights Damon was there, how he lit candles that dripped wax to obscure the brass plaque and talked at no one, brought flowers that faded and died and were replaced by more flowers.
The buttons are done, and Damon draws his shirt off, pulls the fabric down to glide across the marble of his skin. Ric is watching, and Ric had always liked a show, if they had the time and weren't just tearing at seams. They'd ruined so much clothing Damon had started to buy shirts in triplicate. Alaric was particularly skilled with his mouth. Could draw down a zipper with his teeth. Thinking about that, Damon pauses at his belt.
"Tell me why," Alaric says, insistent. Never did know when to let something drop. Never could let anything drop. "Why have you been denying yourself? I hope you know I don't want that for you. I know you know that."
Damon shakes his head. "I know. I hear you whispering pick-up lines when I'm at the Grille, you pervert. Thought I was going nuts." He threads the belt through the loop, unzips his zipper smoothly, starts to shimmy out of his pants. "You know why."
Alaric sets his mouth. "And you know I'm not coming back. Not in any way that can be enou-"
"I said, don't." Damon toes out of his shoes and then he's kicking his pants away, draped long-limbed and naked in the chair. He knows how he looks, and he stretches a little to draw it out. If he's half hard he'll be forgiven because the ghost of his boyfriend has told him to take his clothes off. "Talk about other things."
"You're gorgeous," Ric says. "I wish I'd told you that more. I'm thinking about taking up drawing. You, namely. I have a lot of time on my hands." He sweeps a palm down Damon's smooth chest to his hipbone, lingering at the lines made of muscle, and Damon doesn't pretend it isn't real, he pretends he can feel Alaric's hand on him. Alaric's hand is there and isn't, but there wins out.
"Yeah, I wish I'd told you. Because seriously, man, you're-" and Alaric bends, and presses his lips to Damon's neck, and though there's nothing there Damon arcs like a bow underneath him. Sometimes Alaric would feather gentle kisses at his throat, teasing nips, and other times, rare times, he'd bite hard there like Damon wanted, draw out a sip of his blood from the skin and make them both mad with it. Usually he settled for making a blue-purple bruise rise up on Damon's shoulder, a mark that soon faded and no one else saw but both felt.
They only indulge in the memory of it for a moment. Then Ric leans back and says, "Take your cock in your hand. You want to, now." There's no denying that his body's responding to Alaric in his lap as it ever had. Ric's eyes are intense and encouraging. "Pretend it's my hand."
Damon makes an inarticulate noise, because that isn't fair, not fair at all, but he's already moving to obey, fingers curling around the base.
"Good," says Ric. "You look so good like that, Damon. Move for me." Obliging, his fist slides up, down. It's been days without this, and he's over-sensitive, leaking precome. All of his body is flush under Alaric's approving scrutiny.
As instructed, Damon pretends the hand on him is Alaric's. Easier to do when Alaric reaches, rests intangible fingers over his own. Ric had a firm, knowing grip that had fast learned how Damon liked to be handled: smooth upward jerks, circle of Ric's thumb around the head of his cock, then straight back down to repeat, keeping up a fast momentum. Ric could give him an expert handjob while reading a book in the front seat of the car, didn't even need to look.
Now, he's looking. His eyes are devouring Damon, the motion of his hand, his hardening cock. Looking like a hungry man who has found a feast. "Like that," Alaric murmurs. "Oh, like that."
It's too much. It's the simplest of sexual acts, third base for teenagers, but Damon feels like he's burning up, is getting painfully hard while Alaric watches and whispers and rests weightlessly in his lap. They'd had sex a lot - a lot - and had tried everything once, for the hell of it, and it'd been a while since jerking off had even been a diversion. Now it feels strange, and glorious, because Alaric's hand is on his and isn't as it moves.
"Remember?" Ric's eyes have a naughty glint. Damon's missed that nearly as much as his laugh. "The first time?"
And it plays like a movie in his head. They'd drunk too much, of course, been drunk at the Grille, and their bickering had turned into a heated argument. Donovan told them to take it outside, they were running a family establishment here, guys, and they'd argued their way out the back door and into the alleyway.
Alaric had said, "I could punch you in the face for that, you know," and Damon doesn't remember about what, it couldn't have been important after all, only he remembers saying, with a smirk and a taunt, "Like to see you try, Buffy," and then Alaric had swung on him faster than could be accounted.
Hadn't hit him, though. Had shoved him against the red brick of the wall, Damon's head colliding with a dull ache that didn't matter because then Alaric was kissing him, kissing hard enough to draw blood, and Damon was kissing him back. The tension strung between them unraveled into biting and licking and scrabbling hands, the first of their torn seams.
They got each other's cocks out and jerked each other off pressed together breathing hard in the alleyway behind the Grille dumpster. After that they'd gotten into Damon's car and driven to Alaric's apartment and fucked and fucked and it'd been so fucking good so they hadn't stopped fucking until Alaric was taken away from him.
"Yeah." Damon swallows. His cock twitches in his hand at the memory of how Alaric had felt that first time: shockingly warm on Damon's cooler skin, shockingly assured, his palm sweaty and calloused from weaponry and perfect. "I remember."
"And the first time we fucked?"
Alaric on top of him, heavy between his thighs. Damon already trying to push back with his hips because he'd never wanted it more. The incredulous look on Alaric's face above him, like he couldn't believe what he was doing and like he'd never wanted it more.
How he'd pushed into Damon slowly at first but the restraint hadn't lasted long. Lasted as long as it took to get all the way in and Damon's eyes had been wide and unblinking and he's said "Ric-" and Alaric had said, "Damon," and then he'd taken him, just absolutely taken him, screwed and fucked and opened him up and cracked him apart and made him whole.
"Can't forget," Damon says. Beads of precome catch his thumb on the next upswipe, and Alaric stops staring at his mouth and stares at how his cock reacts.
Damon's getting closer, a flood of images of them together racing through his head, released after being purposefully shoved away. It had hurt too much to think about what they'd had, what he'd lost, it was still too raw, he'd tried to stay away; but Alaric is on him, Alaric's expression starved for him like a vampire for blood, and all he can do is remember now.
Favorite scenes: Alaric bent over his teacher's desk while Damon fucked him from behind and Alaric violated his sacred rule of never in school, student essays crinkling under their bodies; the cabin by a little lake they'd allowed themselves to escape to one weekend, where Damon had mentioned casually while barbecuing dinner that he was in love with Alaric, and the lightning-strike in his chest when Alaric said it back; the night of the ghosts when Ric came back to him after a long time apart. Damon had been terribly sorry for killing him, had tried apologies, and then begging, and then gifts, and then also further begging, and had finally resigned himself to quasi-stalking while Ric worked out his anger.
He really had to thank Mason Lockwood in the end for helping to sort them out, because Ric came back after that, had let Damon take him to bed, where Damon made love to him with a reverence he'd discovered when Ric was gone. He worshiped Alaric with his mouth. Told him mad declarative things with his lips. Treated every inch of him with sharp teeth and a wicked tongue. Told Alaric, when he moved in him at last, when he went to kiss him, that he wouldn't ever do anything to make him go again, that he'd never let him go again.
"Tell me," says Alaric, curious.
"The cabin," Damon says, and Ric smiles, beams. Damon looks down at their hands moving together on his cock. He rocks a little, pretending he can make friction against nothing, against Alaric in his arms.
"Wanted to take you back there someday," he hears himself saying before he can stop himself from saying it. Because it doesn't matter now, maybe, but maybe it does. And maybe he'll never get to say so again. So. "Wanted to make it official."
Ric is looking at him. Ric tilts his head, then brings his free hand up, puts his hand to Damon's cheek; can't exert pressure, so Damon raises his eyes for him, meets the dazzling brightness of Ric's smile. His own lips curve in sympathy; he can't help it, he could never resist when Ric pulled out the winning grin.
"Wanted to turn me into a vampire, you mean."
"That too." It's all out now and it doesn't matter and it matters more than anything. And suddenly he has to know. Because he'd spent days and nights obsessing for months over Ric's answer to that question, and the days since his death avoiding thinking about it. He was...he'd been confident about his answer to the first question.
Marry me. I know, right? Us, it's ridiculous. Only it isn't. You're the marrying kind, and I was once, and maybe I could be again. I think I am again. I don't want anyone but you, not really, so it seems like a good idea. We'll get to scandalize half the town and get tax breaks in one blow. You're going to say yes, aren't you? And he thought Alaric might have said it. Yes.
"Would you have?" Damon has to know. His hand is speeding up, too fast, he makes himself groan; it's too much to imagine for long, now.
Alaric is looking at him with a face full of regret. He bites his lip. "Damon-"
"If you think you'll hurt my feelings by telling me," Damon says, wheedling, "I don't have feelings anymore." It's a lie, and they both know it. Alaric's seen the way he's been.
Ric hesitates. Not over the answers, Damon thinks. Over whether he should say so or not, whether it will help or hurt. Finally he sighs, the little sigh that indicated Damon-born frustration that Damon knows all to well, that he's missed along with Ric's filthiest look and his laugh.
"Yes," Alaric says. He says it slowly, but without hesitation. "We would've had to work a lot and think a lot about the vampire thing. It would've been a while. I wasn't ready. But the answer to both questions would have been yes."
And though it feels like someone with Elijah's skill has torn his heart from his chest and put it back in again, it also feels good, like getting your heart put back in after it has been ripped out.
Damon puts his head back and thrusts into his hand and comes because he can't not, then: Alaric is watching him and saying that he would have stayed with him always, is still staying with him, is on him, is with him; and he's full-up with what they would have been.
Alaric at his side, a beautiful vampire, always there, meeting endless futures with him. Alaric his, bound in name and blood, never to be parted. Alaric undead, undying, his to have forever. Damon comes, his mouth spelling out Alaric into a shoulder he can't feel and feels more real than any other flesh will again.
Ric is drinking up the sight of him. Damon collapses boneless into the chair, and Alaric's fingers slip around to the nape of his neck. Damon shivers in reaction; it might be the orgasm but he'll swear to the day he dies himself he can feel their dance of pressure along his spine.
"You're welcome, by the way," Ric says.
Damon's still breathing hard, and his nostrils flare, but he laughs. "Yeah, you're right. That was pretty spectacular. Stefan will never believe me."
Ric's eyebrows are up. "I meant about what you said earlier. In the graveyard." Damon flinches, but Alaric's expression is open, at ease. "You said 'thanks, friend' for leaving you with the family we built together. So: you're welcome. They need you, and you need them. I'm proud of them, and proud of you. I love you. I think my time is-"
"No," Damon says. "Ric, no. You have to stay. I'm fine with the ghost-thing, it's cool. It's a little kinky, I'll admit, but I adjust fast. Up for anything, remember? Remember how I much I liked the vervain ropes once I thought about it? Please don't-"
"I'll be here whenever I can, even if you can't see me," Alaric says. "Believe that I'll be with you and I will. Damon," he says, leaning in close, "how I love your stupid vampire face-" and then he isn't there, and Damon breaks the armchair underneath him with the force of his fist slamming down.
"Well fuck me sideways," Damon says.
He moves from the ruins of the chair to the couch to think about it. He drinks the rest of the bourbon, staring down at the drying come on his belly that testified that Ric had been there. Was here. Wouldn't go until he had to.
"I love you, Alaric," he tells the air. "I never won't."
No one will convince him that there isn't a hand sliding up his neck as he says it, long fingers on a strong hand that tousles his inky hair and makes it messy.