A/N: Firstly, thank you for the wonderful response to "Thud"! It was the fastest-reviewed story I've ever written!
This is inspired by that very first scene on the first episode of season seven, when Alaric, Damon, and Bonnie are drinking in Amsterdam. The color of their shirts was inspiring to me, I suppose! Please enjoy.
XOXO, Helix.
Disclaimer. I don't own Vampire Diaries. Or Party City.
Alaric's shirt isn't really pink so much as salmon, and it matches his eyes.
His eyes (the actual irises) are grey, but the whites are bloodshot, so it counts.
Damon bought him this shirt at the airport in Richmond. It's mostly soft, but it itches at the back of his neck-which makes him sure that he didn't rip out the tag this morning like he previously thought. He's probably been walking around with a white slip of paper on his collar all afternoon. Damon and Bonnie probably thought this was mildly funny, and he drinks any impending embarrassment away. Damon cannot tell if the salmon-color would considered as raw, simply undercooked, or smoked.
They are grieving different people, as they drink their way through all of the ancient principalities of Europe, and they tell each other that they are having fun. They are lying through their beautiful teeth.
They, they, they, they, they.
It's a sight. They're a sight. And they collectively cannot decide who is the parent among them-supervising, watching, or turning a blind eye.
Sometimes they just take turns.
And, sometimes, they take turns whipping out a glittery black credit card to take care of this next upcoming round: yes, you're welcome, you miserable freeloaders.
He had made sure they each had one. But who's telling how much there was on those handy slivers of not-quite-bendy plastic?
Not him, that was for sure.
Damon's shirt is the baby-blue shade right before it transitions into the heather of a Virginian thunderstorm: the kind of storm that doesn't quite worry you, but makes you just gun-shy enough to listen closer than usual for the radio. It could be argued by lots and lots of pretty girls who don't remember him, of course, that his eyes are baby-blue. But Elena would inform you primly that his eyes are not and never have been that color. She described it once as 'blue-lime,' like snow-cone syrup or sea-glass, and he has never been able to un-hear this particular perspective.
He doesn't want to. He drinks to this memory after every time he goes to the bathroom in a distastefully cramped taproom and sees is own face in the mirror with the universally-omnipresent hairline crack in the left corner.
(Man, mirrors! While they were in Transylvania, he was delighted to discover that mirrors were still backed with silver, and he suddenly couldn't see his own face. He laughed until he passed out and woke up in Greece.)
Bonnie looks pretty in her shirt today.
Damon doesn't complain that it's mostly see-through. His own girlfriend is inside a glossy pine coffin nestled in the Salvatore crypt (it needed to be filled eventually) but Bonnie is his best-friend and he thinks that she would appreciate his appreciation.
Anyhow, he always tells her so when she looks prettiest and he is a little bit wrong about her reaction but he knows she is secretly flattered, of course.
She confirms this later on a whim, when her shirt is even more see-through because some handsy imbecile (now sporting a snapped wrist-thank you, Alaric) spilled their drink on it. She is polite and stiff when she acknowledges his compliment, and Damon fondly promises to buy her a much fancier one.
(Damon seems to be purchasing all sorts of shirts lately, but Bonnie's ruined shirt is upsetting him probably more than it ought.)
A less-see-through one, though; because while modern-Damon is looser about the idea, eighteen-hundreds-Damon's skin crawls with discomfort and rage that she would be looked at like a meal by lesser, horrid creatures.
(Never, ever would they be comparable to real men. Like him.)
He memorizes the shade, but he won't listen to her when she insists that it's not even really orange.
More...acorn, but only the inside of one, when they are ripe and sharp-ended, with their little hats lying on the ground next to them, when she looks down after going on a walk and the hard toe-end of her shoe has broken the shell. The memory of the burnished sunset shade of the meat inside is intensely satisfying, so her shirt's ruination made that memory much more stark and painful.
Though Bonnie understands well that Damon will make good on his promise to her to buy her another one, she still liked it quite a lot.
Even after being soaked in hard liquor, however, it still didn't match her eyes: nice and olive green and brave. But there are loopholes to everything.
(She knows; she's really fond of them.)
So she reasons that acorns were at least green once. Not quite past budding; still a bit fuzzy and almost ready to turn firm.
Firm, like the hand they all take turns using to prod their alcohol-poisoned asses back to their expensive hotel room that always seems much too far away to be reasonable. Their feet ache, but even if they are drenched in colorless grief sometimes, they do it together.
Their respective shirts are folded neatly or wadded on the floor or thrown on a lampshade in exchange for pajamas that don't match their eyes.
A/N: You decide who did what to which shirt. I find it personally hilarious to picture Bonnie throwing her shirt on the lamp-shade while Damon's is folded and clean. As destructive as he is sometimes, he always pegged me as a perpetual neat-freak. If I've inspired you to do so, please review!