Over the period of the past few months, Damon and Alaric had established many little routines that Damon enjoyed immensely: spending Friday nights at the Grille, drinking and bickering over who had better hair and whose turn it was to buy the next round; standing back to back as they fended off the evil forces constantly plaguing Mystic Falls; throwing each other against the thin, plaster walls of Alaric's apartment the second they returned from a fight, usually so hopped up on adrenaline they couldn't make it to the bed before tearing each other's clothes off; clinging to one another, naked and filled with need, as they commenced the post-battle sex, which Damon truly believed beat out angry, break-up, and make-up as the best sex he'd ever had.
Yes, indeed, Damon would never deny that all of these times - the last especially - brought him undeniable pleasure. But the routine he loved best did not number among this list; it was a stolen, secret indulgence he would not have admitted to even at his most intoxicated. Indeed, as far as he knew, Alaric was not even aware of its existence.
It always started in the early hours of the morning, by which point the two of them would be lying together in Alaric's creaky double bed, tangled up in the duvet. Whatever moonlight there was would filter in through the broken blinds in the window Alaric never got around to fixing, somehow illuminating Alaric's side of the bed, but leaving Damon shrouded in darkness. Unable to sleep, Damon would prop himself up on one elbow, turn to Alaric, and indulge in his covert nightly pastime: watching Alaric breathe.
Damon wasn't entirely sure why merely watching the rise and fall of Alaric's muscular chest fascinated him so, but he would lay there for minutes on end just staring, mesmerized. At first he believed it was simply the purely human essence of the movement that transfixed him; indeed, it had been many years since he himself had taken a breath, had relied on something as fickle as air for his survival. The vulnerability that Alaric's breathing conveyed - for a creature who breathed was one whose breath could be stopped - truly captivated him.
Later, however, it occurred to him to wonder why only Alaric's breathing had this hypnotic effect. True, Alaric was the subject with the easiest chance for covert observation, but it wasn't just that; after all, Damon had received plenty of previous opportunities of this nature - quite a few more than most, in fact - and had never been similarly tempted. So why was it that, night after night, he woke himself up simply for the chance to observe the rhythmic up and down of Alaric's breath?
It was only on that night they fought the werewolves that the reason came to him in a flash. Although preoccupied with his own not insignificant problems of being chained to a chair by angry, vengeance-seeking werewolves, Damon nevertheless found his eyes continually drawn to Alaric's form slumped lifelessly on the floor - specifically his chest, which remained as motionless as Damon's own. He had known that, even though Alaric was technically dead, the permanence usually associated with the condition would soon be mitigated by Alaric's magic ring, but somehow this had not quelled the panic rising in his own chest. If he had been capable of breath, Damon was quite sure he would have held his for as long as it took for Alaric to return to the world with a shuddering intake of air.
Ever since that night, Damon's desire to observe Alaric's breathing had only increased, for he knew firsthand what the absence of it meant. Indeed, sometimes just watching Alaric breathe was not enough to convince him that all was well, and on those occasions, he would lay his head on Alaric's chest and let the twin comforts of Alaric's breath and heartbeat lull him back to sleep, all the while brushing away the little voice in the back of his head that kept asking why the continued existence of Alaric seemed to affect him so deeply.
The only acknowledgment Alaric ever gave to Damon's nightly habits was to slide his arms around him drowsily before also returning to sleep. And if a slight smile would sometimes happen to appear on his face, well, Damon wasn't in a position to see it.