It was a warm Monday afternoon in the heart of summer and Damon Salvatore had been pacing around the house since early in the morning, being far from pleased. His nerves had been wrecked for the last fifty years of his existence but lately his mood had been a little snappier than usual, so when he burst into Jeremy's bedroom that day without first knocking, Stefan didn't bother stopping him.

He strolled past the boy lying on the bed and headed straight for the curtains which he pulled wide open with a sharp move.

"Get up" he spoke in his commanding officer voice that he so much enjoyed to use on the boy.

Jeremy turned irritably onto his stomach, and threw himself face down against the pillow, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight like a vampire who hadn't yet managed to score a daylight ring.

"Go away" he groaned.

Damon walked around the bed and seizing the pillow from under Jeremy's head, he threw it over to the other side of the room.

"Get up" he repeated, "I'm not Stefan, Jer, this won't be pleasant"

Knowing from previous experiences that this was far from an empty threat, Jeremy sat up on the bed, his arms crossed grumpily over his chest.

"What do you want from me?" he moaned in a whiny sort of voice.

"It's two o'clock" Damon informed him, thinking that this should mean something to the teenager who had spent most of his summer vacations under a blanket, weeping like a girl.

It didn't.

"So?"

"So," the vampire intoned, "you have two choices, either you get dressed and go outside or—"

"I'll take option number two" Jeremy cut him off with a loud yawn and fell back on his bed to resume doing nothing for the rest of the day as a part of his 'I'm-bored-and-alone-and-super-depressed' act.

Truth was he already knew what option number two was going to be. Damon was a man of his word as Jeremy came to discover in a particularly unpleasant way, especially when the promise given could be also described as a threat.

Since the day Jeremy had moved into the Salvatore boarding house with Damon as his legal guardian a little less than a year ago, Damon's favorite threat to use on his ward had become: "Military camp in Texas can't wait to meet you".

And sure enough the day after the beginning of summer vacations Jeremy found himself on an airplane to Texas, over to the Military base camp for troubled boys run by Sergeant Armstrong, an old vampire that Damon met during the war.

Sending Jeremy off to a Military academy for the summer was a decision backed by all the three people that for some reason felt like they had a saying in Jeremy's life: Damon, Stefan and of course Elena. All three of them waved Jeremy goodbye on his way to Texas, hoping that when the boy was returned he would have magically transformed into a functional teenager that could spent longer than a day without setting the house on fire.

It took Jeremy precisely seventy-two hours and twenty-three minutes to prove everybody wrong.

Less than three and a half days after Jeremy joined the BMP ('Behavior Modification Program'), the Salvatore residence received a very interesting phone call.

Apparently, to Stefan's terror, Jeremy's social skills had improved beyond recognition and according to a very angry Mayor of Houston, Texas and an equally pissed Sergeant Armstrong, Jeremy had somehow managed to convince every single one of his twenty-two roommates to join him in a protest.

The protest, as Jeremy later explained trying to suppress a grin, originally started because of three major unresolved issues with the first one being the food quality of the camp that after Stefan's home cooking appeared less than unsatisfactory. The second issue was the bathroom schedule, in addition to the five o'clock daily wake up call, but even if he ever managed to look past the two previous issues for the sake of everybody, the third one came as a shove in the back to push him for good over the edge.

The moment Jeremy heard that all new cadets would be forced to shave off all their hair; he instantly knew he couldn't sit tight like a good boy for much longer.

He immediately ran to his shared room and convinced every single one of the cadets that the rules of the camp were against basic human rights and remarkably fast he created a riot.

It was no surprise how unleashing seven dozens of teenagers with issues big enough to land them in Military camp in the first place, could only end in one way. One very bad way.

After the cadets finished vandalizing the base camp and terrorizing the staff with the guns Jeremy so thoughtfully unlocked for them from the weapon storage after vervaining Sergeant Armstrong, the riot went on the streets where they sure enough got arrested within an hour and got sent to townie jail.

Though nobody was injured, every finger in the room was pointed at young cadet Gilbert when asked who started this?

On the next day, Jeremy was sitting by himself in the airport, waiting for his flight back to Mystic Falls, in order to be saved from all the fellow Texan citizens who couldn't help but treat Jeremy as if he was the anti-Christ, while in the meantime, Damon was e-mailed a large list of property damage that was bound to be paid.

After the incident, Damon's new favorite threat became, "One more word and I'll compel you down to Texas" though now, a month later, it was just enough for him to simply say "Texas" for Jeremy to know exactly where he was getting with this. And normally Jeremy would be petrified of having to go back in that hell hole, but somehow even the Texans who waited to beat him up senseless seemed like fun, considering that his boredom level had reached infinity.

"You don't know what option number two is" an evil smirk came across Damon's face.

"Oh, but I do" Jeremy twisted uncomfortably in his bed, "tell Sergeant I can't wait to see him again"

The smile didn't falter on Damon's face, if anything it became wider.

"You have one hour to take a shower, get dressed and go outside or I'll bring Stefan right in here" he paused for a dramatic effect, "and he's been dying to discuss college applications with you"

Jeremy's eyes sprang open in pure horror. Stefan had been after him for weeks trying to get him to decide his future, which was by a long shot a lot more horrific than spending a couple hours outside of the house.

"I'm up…" he muttered, rolling out of the bed to the floor and dragged his feet forcefully toward the bathroom.

Coming out of the shower and after he got dressed, Jeremy wore a thick jacket though the weather was far from requiring one. The real reason behind the jacket was that Jeremy never in fact intended to go outside. While in the shower he had enough time to come up with a plan to sneak out in the garden with his laptop hidden underneath his clothes and hide for the next couple hours until he was caught.

Innocent and naïve Stefan was so glad to see him stepping out of the house, he didn't even question the jacket in the middle of July nor the bump sticking out of it and simply watched Jeremy as he strolled out of the house and off to the real world.

He was lucky enough to go out of sight without finding himself face to face with Damon for he assumed the vampire was probably in the garage. Lately he's been spending a lot of his time in that part of the house and though technically Jeremy was never denied access, he knew better than to interrupt Damon's evil super-mystical project that he and Stefan liked to refer to as: "Another attempt to make this world a far worse place" for there was absolutely no doubt that whatever Damon's new hobby was, it would end up blowing up to ashes an entire country.

During his stay in the Salvatore mansion and in order to survive while holding on to his sanity, Jeremy had discovered tons of little locations in the Salvatore property that could be used as the perfect hide out whenever he needed one.

One of his favorites, hence the code name 'batcave', was the hollow trunk of an old oak tree behind the tool shed that was far enough from the house to be out of the vampire earshot and yet close enough for him to not feel bored about walking the distance.

The 'batcave' was originally planted on 1914 when the Salvatore boarding house was first built. Now, a hundred years later, Damon and Stefan were hardly ever reminded of its existence and it was only when they debated whether or not to chop it off already.

The fact that the Salvatores disliked that oak was not the only reason why Jeremy loved it so much. Since the beginning of summer he had managed to transform it from a simple hole in the trunk of a tree to a real fort. He sneaked pillows, snacks, comic books and had spent days trying make it habitable. All, so every time the situation at home would reach the unbearable, he could hide somewhere fun.

He was there every other week.

The hole in the trunk was fairly big and certainly capable to fit easily at least three people of Jeremy's size so all he had to do was walk right in without having to bend in half or forcefully stuff himself inside like a thick coat in an overly full closet.

He sat down on the stack of fluffy pillows, revealed the laptop from under his jacket and hurriedly opened the screen, eager to check his latest e-mails.

Throughout the course of the previous school year, Jeremy had somehow succeeded luring two people into being his friends. One was his old buddy from Denver and the youngest member of the Original vampire family, Kol Mikaelson, who was now hiding from a lunatic, murderous sorcerer somewhere in Bahamas.

The second one was a girl he met in History class. Kylie Atkins was the proud protégé of a gay marriage who recently had lost one of her dads and was now travelling all around Europe as a part of her grieving process.

Though for the last four months both his friends had fled the country, Jeremy was still getting the occasional e-mail from Kylie where she ranted about all the places she visited and described in great detail every single one of the museums she went.

Kol on the other hand simply sent post cards, mostly as cruel mockery, since ninety-nine percent of them would come in a white file stained with what had to be human blood and inside it would always go something like this, "Just slaughtered the Russian ballet, wish you were here"

From the rest of his friends that had the ability to make those summer vacations a tad more tolerable were Matt and Tyler and that's if the two of them hadn't decided to spend their last summer before college by stalking Caroline.

Elena was rarely visiting him as well, but it was not entirely her fault. With college breathing down their neck, Caroline's organizing obsession went out of hand and managed to infect everybody who was brave to stay longer than two minutes in her company.

College was a big step for a young adult. A fresh start, a new adventure and a new romance, though for Caroline who was preparing for this day since the beginning of first grade, it meant a lot more than that. It meant an opportunity, a new chance at life.

Damon and Stefan though supportive and all, were discreetly trying to avoid them and were turned deaf remarkably fast every time somebody mentioned the word 'college' in front of them, for they were feared one might ask them to join.

Jeremy didn't know what their problem was. Stefan loved schools. He had two Masters, one from Harvard and one from Yale as well as a doctorate and three degrees in literature, science, and ironic as it was, psychology.

In Jeremy's mind Stefan was the one who should be begging to go back to school, unlike Damon who had only once compelled himself to Princeton in the 50's and after that he still couldn't shut up about how schools can't teach you nothing more than you can't teach yourself. After hearing those statements, both Stefan and Jeremy suspected he flanked out of Princeton but they never dared sharing those suspicions in Damon's presence.

It was two hours later when Jeremy's laptop battery died after what felt like five minutes of playing battlefield 4 and in no mood to face Damon or Stefan, he decided to finally go out of the house and have a walk. That should kill some time.

Time, he had so much free time on his hands and absolutely nothing to do with it.

He was done hoping to find new friends and should probably have dropped the quest years ago when during his first day of his freshman year in high school, a kid named Andrew Clearwater responded to his friendship request by calling him a schmuck.

Until this day Jeremy had no idea what Andrew meant by that, but he still should have taken the damn hint, because in all honesty, he was a schmuck and every relationship he had established ever since then, one way or the other always ended catastrophically for every person even mildly involved. Vicky, Anna, Kol and Kylie being only some of the names on that list. For all he knew, friends were overrated and he was better off alone.

"Friends suck" he muttered bitterly, kicking a small rock on the street and watched it as it flew up from the ground before landing with a thud a few meters away.

It took five more steps for him to completely regret those words and change his mind, when at the end of the 55th main-street between an old antique store and a hipster cafeteria going by the name, "The Riddle" was standing a rather tall, lean young man with light brown hair and the most obnoxious little grin Jeremy had ever spotted on a person.

"I hear you got kicked out of Military school" cheered Kol Mikaelson, his eyes twinkling with pride at his friend.

A/N

As probably few of you already realized, this is kind of a sequel to a previous story I wrote called "A Father For A Son". Though in order to read or understand this story having read the previous one is absolutely unnecessary as every minor detail featured from the original story will be addressed and explained.

Reviews are always welcomed but most importantly I would like to thank you all for reading :)