Her Portrait in Black

Disclaimer: The characters on Vampire Diaries are not my own, I hold NO rights to them. Further more, credit for the title can be given to Atreyu and their production team.

Side note: I love Damon, love his character. Also I felt that the lyrics to the song Her Portrait in Black by Atreyu fit the idea for the story and the relationship between Shane and Damon.

The Intro

And Chapter One

In everyone's life there is always that one person who changes you. Whether they make you want to be a better person or get you to take a few steps out side you comfort zone. This person could be anyone; a stranger you pass on the street, a child helping a woman who dropped her bag of groceries, a friend being, a partner, someone in your family. Anyone.

My name is Shane Weston, I live in Roanoke, Virginia, and I met the person who changed my life when I was 16. He was 21. Some thought he was too old for me, I never thought that 5 years was too bad. I think if I was 18 everyone would have been fine with it. But if I was 18 he would have been 23. It didn't matter what age I was, he'd still be 5 years older then I was.

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I had been with my sister, who was 22 at the time, and she wanted to stop at the bar and get something. I can't even remember what it was that she wanted to get, but that part isn't what's important. We walked in and Maggie went over to her boyfriend who was working that night. I knew most of the people there that night through my sister or my father, but there was one guy who stood out. One who I was sure was new, both to the bar and to the town. He was also behind the bar, serving some college girls who were clearly swooning over him. I took a few steps closer, to get better look at him while trying to be discreet about it. His hair was a dark brown and was a little on the long side, but only just past his ears. It looked almost as if he woke up and pushed his hair away from his eyes and went in to work.

I was almost positive that it was this guys first day working at the bar since I had never seen him before, but the way he was working you'd never be able to tell. He spun bottles of vodka like he was a pro, easily pouring eight shots in a row. I always love to watch the spins and flips bartenders did with the bottle that was in their hand and since my cousin owned the bar and my sisters' boyfriend was a manager, I was aloud to go in when ever. When this new guy did those tricks I was so sure I could never do, he made everyone I had seen look like an amateur.

I stepped up over to the bar, keeping a good distance from the new bartender. After sitting on the stool for only about five minutes, my cousin Luke, came from the back and saw me sitting there. He walked over, nudging my arm and leaning on the surface in front of me.

"What are you doing here, cuz? Not like I'm going to let you drink, all my guys know who you are. I told you the deal, you can hang out but you can't drink. Aunt Kate would kill me." Luke smirk, raising his eyebrows waiting for me to respond.

"I'm not here to drink, Maggie's here somewhere. She wanted to get something but didn't know what. Then, she saw Mike and went over to say hi. I'm just waiting for her to be ready to leave, I wasn't waiting in the car." Luke reached under the bar and pulled out a glass, filling it with coke. "Thanks. Oh and, not all your guys know me." I pointed to his new hire. "I've never seen him before, therefore he would have never seen me before. So, he would in fact not know who I am."

Luke looked to who I had pointed to, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, maybe not. But he will. Hey Damon," He yelled down the bar, making his new bartender turn his head. "Could you come here for a second?"

"Josh, he's working leave him alone." Damon passed a girl her drink, smiled at the crowd around him and walked over to Josh and me.

"What's the matter Shane, gotta crush?" I glared at Luke and smack his arm. "What, it's not like you're the only on."

"Hey, I'm not doing anything wrong am I?" Damon asked Luke. He glanced over at me for a second, when he did I saw that his eyes looked to be blue. Then he did a double take, looking back at me. This time I noticed that his eyes weren't just any blue, they were a smoky gray, ice blue. He smiled at me, which was just as beautiful as his eyes. "I'm Damon."

I couldn't help but grin back at him, like some sort of love sick puppy. I could feel my stomach start to do flips, something that never happened before. "Um, I'm Shane."

"She's my cousin. She's 16. Don't serve her." Luke smiled at me than Damon, patted his shoulder and went back to the storage room.

I rolled my eyes and looked back at Damon, letting out a small nervous laugh. "So, you're his cousin?" Damon looked at me, popping up his right eyebrow.

"Yeah. And since I don't have a brother, he feels like he has to take that role. What he just said there was both to tell you not to try anything and to actually tell younot to serve me. Don't let him scare you, Luke is not as scary as he thinks he is."

Damon leaned forward, his face closer to mine, and spoke in a low voice. "It takes a lot to scare me and you cousin is defiantly not one of the things that can scare me." His mouth curled up in a smirk, which made me smile just a little.

"My cousin doesn't scare anyone, trust me." I looked over at the other end of the bar to see my sister saying good-bye to Mike. "Looks like my rides leaving."

Damon looked over, nodding. "I guess so. Hey, how often you come here?"

I was a little taken aback by this question. It sounded like he had wanted to see me again, but before I answered I thought that there was no way someone like him would care about someone like me.

"Um, I don't know. At least twice a week I guess, usually to help out when it gets busy on the weekends. Why?"

Damon pushed himself off the dark polished wood bar, crossing his arms across his chest, and shrugged. "No reason I guess. Just thought that if you came in tomorrow I have an excuse to get myself away from ditzy college girls with bigger breast then brains. Have an intelligent conversation with someone."

I tilted my head to the side slightly. "Have an intelligent conversation with someone like me? You know I can't be all that intelligent just yet, I am only 16."

"Shane, age doesn't mean anything when you know how to put your mind to good use and you're not sitting around all day sniffing nail polish, killing you brain cells slowly."

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Damon had this way of speaking to you, never talking down to you or acting as if he knew more about the topic then you did. When it was the two of us he usually did know more then I did, but he never once made me feel like an idiot for being uneducated about selected subjects. He was beautiful in more ways then one. His physical looks were obvious; the eye, the smile, the way he styled his hair, the way his shirts sometimes clung to his torso enabling you to see a shadowing of his muscles. Everyone noticed his looks and that was all they saw, to them there was nothing there but a pretty face.

I knew better. I knew just how wonderfully intelligent he was, how beautifully he spoke, how passionate he was about his almost everything, how kind and sweet he was, or how he was a great cook. Of course there really wouldn't be anyone who knew that, no one spent more time with him then I did. People watched him make their drinks and then they left. There were so many nights that I was sure there was something better that he could be doing then spending time with me. Some nights, when I'd have a test the following day, he'd stay up all night to help me study. He was always especially great with history, more specifically the Civil War. It amazed me, I had never know anyone some smart before.

He would tell me how his father was a very controlling man who wanted him and his brother to do exactly as he did. Damon would remind me to never let someone else try to live my life for me every time I brought up my own father and the fact that he wanted me to go to Law school. I had never known what it was I wanted to do but I knew I did not want to be a lawyer. I was very drawn to art of all kinds and even had some talents in both the visual and performing arts. Damon loved to hear me sing and to just watch me paint or take photographs, Damon was usually my favorite subject but only when he didn't know what I was doing.

He would to the most random, yet sweetest things. There was this one day were I had gotten a 'D' on a paper I thought I had done really well on. It wasn't really that big of a deal since I was aloud to rewrite it, but Damon was standing out side the school at 2 PM with a bouquets of purple orchids, may favorite flower which I had only mentioned once when we first started hanging out. Later in the day he brought me to see a movie, then we went back to his place where he cooked this fantastic chicken meal, again chicken being my favorite to have for dinner.

He would do things like that all the time. If the most minuscule thing went wrong in my day, like I broke a nail of stubbed my toe, Damon would bring me flowers or take me to lunch, bring me dancing or to a karaoke bar, which he hated. He said once, when I had asked him why he did these little things, that it was all just to see me happy and smiling.

We went roller skating once, another thing that Damon didn't like since he wasn't very good at it. We had been sitting on his couch, me nestled in his arms, and I had just said that I always had fun roller skating. Then he wanted to go, he said we would have fun. And we did, once we actually found a rink after two and a half hours of driving. When the night was done, he brought me home, gave me a kiss, and said good night and that he loved me. Even then I knew the way he said it was different, but I didn't want to believe it. I told myself that I was just being paranoid and over thinking his tone. I never saw him after that night.

Damon may have left with out a word, other then the ones he said to be every time we parted ways, but I was never angry with him. Yes I was hurt, but it was still alright. Because of Damon I never had to go to Law school, being with him was like someone turned on a light switch. Before him I never realized that I had a choice and that doing what I wanted rather then what my father wanted me to do was okay.

Damon Salvatore. He was my first love, my first real kiss, my first everything else. He was also that one person who changed my life. A life which brought me to live in another Virginia town, one closer to my art school.

A town named Mystic Falls.

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A/N: So, this is the first chapter of my first Vampire Diaries story. I hope it's liked. This first chapter is just to give some background info on the relationship between Shane and Damon, it didn't want to spend too much time on the past. It's going to be mostly in Shane's POV. Though I may due one in Damon's so as to get inside his head a bit.

Now as for the looks in mind for my characters, the "casting" up to this point is as followed:

SHANE WESTON as Shannon Woodward MAGGIE WESTON Mary Elizabeth Winstead as LUKE as Robert James Hoffman III

READ. ENJOY. PLEASE REVIEW.

JENNA