I don't know the reason (I stayed here all season)

by et.in.arkadia

Welcome to Damon Salvatore's life without Alaric Saltzman. This is it.

He awakens with a jolt, ripped from dreams. The sheets are twisted up, twisting him in, and he's sticky with sweat.

Damon wakes up from a world of fire and blood, and Alaric's still dead.

The nightmare's preferable. Rolling over, he goes back to sleep.

Someone says to him, "Damon, you should drink less," but he doesn't remember who.

He remembers almost killing Matt Donovan in a flash of not-so-blind rage. Outrageous to stare at Donovan's useless apple cheeks and goofy, toothy smile.

Had it not been for this one life, this one stupid, plodding life, destined to serve fried foods at the Grill until he falls over from a double coronary, none of this would have happened.

Elena wouldn't be a vampire, to her and Stefan's eternal delight. And Alaric - Alaric wouldn't be dead. No telling what he would be. Only not dead.

Even Alaric under the Original Witch's evil influence and being more than a bit of a dick would be okay. Would be so much better than dead. Damon had it all planned out: ways to restrain him and restrict his power; enchanted chains that would bind; a room all set aside and mocked up in the basement.

The plan was to keep Alaric, keep hold of him as long as was needed to find a cure for his particular demons. Damon thought if given enough time he'd be able to persuade him, cure or no.

Damon had endless time on his hands and nothing else to do really, and he was very persuasive. Alaric chained up in the cellar would have soon become a quaint family tradition.

And he wouldn't be dead.

He doesn't kill Matt Donovan.

Matt Donovan lives to serve another day of chicken nuggets, and the basement is empty, and his bed is. His head is much too full.

Sometimes - okay, a lot of the time - he drinks from guys who resemble Ric. It's pathetic and transparent and frankly, my dear, Damon doesn't give a damn.

His seeks out well-built men with close-cropped hair lighter than his own, looks for a triangled jaw and broad shoulders. Once, one of them looks Damon up and down and asks if he wouldn't like to go somewhere else. He has an easy smile and capable arms, and the offer is genuine, pre-compulsion.

Drawing blood from his neck in an alleyway, Damon closes his eyes and lets himself consider it: screwing someone else in a strange bed, clash of unfamiliar bodies, the hollow knowledge that he'll have to make the guy forget if he doesn't kill him in a fit of pique.

Instead Damon lets him go after a long drink, tells him he's had the best night of his life, and to get out of his sight. From the back, it could almost be Alaric going away, but Damon doesn't follow.

Elena has too much blood one night and Stefan's queasy from the sight of it, poor dear, retires to fight off homicidal instincts. Damon's had too much to drink too, only of a variety of other liquids, and none of them are fit to drive.

Jeremy comes to collect his sister. Damon meets him at the door.

"It isn't pretty," Damon warns. "But I've been babysitting for hours, it's your turn-"

Jeremy breezes right on in, shaking off his coat. "What's for dinner? Whatever it is, it smells delicious." He drops a kiss onto Damon's mouth, lazy and affectionate. "Parent-teacher conferences were killer, I hope you cooked enough food."

Then he and Damon are staring at each other and Jeremy has his coat in his hands, like he doesn't know how it got there.

Damon says, "The fuck," much too quietly. He knows his eyes are big, because Jeremy's voice - the way he'd -

"What the hell," Jeremy says, unhelpfully, then shakes his head to clear it. "I don't-"

His eyes snap sideways, to a point over Damon's shoulder, and after a moment he nods. Then he looks back. He's only blushing a little.

"Sorry," he says. "Alaric says sorry too. He thinks coming back here triggered something - like a spiritual hotspot? Or something? He was with me when I came in, and we walked into a memory." He shakes his head again, because it sounds this side of preposterous, but he'd also just kissed Damon on the mouth, and if the ghost is explaining it thus -

Damon isn't breathing, but he whips his head around, stares wildly at nothing. There are goosebumps all over his body. But that's better than nothing. That's so much better.

"Ric's here?" he demands. "You can see him?"

Jeremy sets his stubborn little Gilbert mouth, but Damon persists. "Ric? Are you haunting at current? Go on, rattle me a chain or two."

Jeremy snorts, a touch too Alaric-like, as though he's echoing the sound, and from the library beyond the hall, there's the distinctive sound of a bottle smashing against the ground. Damon can guess the brand.

Then he has Jeremy up and pressed against the wall, crushing an oil painting, trying not to choke him, because Ric wouldn't - won't - like that, but Damon's breathing down his neck. "How long have you been able to see him? Why didn't you tell me? What's he saying?"

And he could go on and on, he has a hundred thousand questions and he'll name every one, hold Jeremy there against the plaster while he recites -

Another bottle explodes, this time into the fireplace, and Damon flinches, and lets the kid go. Jeremy doesn't bolt, just blinks up at him with nostrils flaring, eyes wide.

"He says he's gonna kick your ass," Jeremy says, and Damon turns grappling with him into hugging him. Actually full-on embraces Jeremy Gilbert before letting go again.

Jeremy shrugs it off. Doesn't spook easily these days, has seen enough. "I can't - I don't see him all the time, Damon. I'm sorry." He straightens the line of his sweater. "Ric told me not to tell you. Said you'd get...animated."

Damon hums and rolls his eyes and doesn't rise to that. He bites his lip instead, keeps to his best behavior with extreme effort. "Do you think you could do that thing again? Channel Ric like you did?"

He says it like he's...curious. Desperately, voraciously curious. Not like he wants him to try it. Jeremy's too young, too Elena's. Too Alaric's. Ric would totally kick his ass. But someone else -

Jeremy's smart enough to sense the desperation and to know he's not in immediate danger. He tips his head to the side, considering, and Damon doesn't want to consider that Jeremy's expression verges on pitying, of all things.

He feels sorry for Damon. The kid who lost five parental figures and is losing his sister besides looks sorry for Damon Salvatore. Welcome to his life.

"Maybe. I dunno." Jeremy says it after a while."I think it's more advanced...medium-ship than I'm used to, though. I can talk to him sometimes, but actually channeling - that'd be tricky. I'm still new at all this."

His expression is apologetic, then distant. "Alaric says don't," he adds, hesitant. "Says we've screwed around with nature enough already. Damon."

Just the slightest hint of Ric's warning affectation, and Damon really needs Jeremy to get going, because a part of him wants to pin Jeremy back against the wall for it, this time with his mouth.

"Okay," Damon lies. Elena comes stumbling down the hall on Stefan's arm, and Jeremy goes to retrieve her. Before they're out the door, Damon says Jeremy, "Tell him when you can that I miss him," which is the truth.

That night, cool, considerate pressure seems to weigh on Damon's fingers when he jerks off, and he comes harder than he has in months. Maybe he's drunk (he is), or maybe he's crazy (quite possibly), or maybe he's haunted (it's happened). Either way, he doesn't care. He sleeps through without dreams.

Jeremy starts trying to hang around him, like he owes him something, like he wants to help out.

Damon lets him help out with Conner, then gives him the boot, tells him he can't be a badass. Tries to warn him off of it. Look where all their badassery had brought him and Ric.

You have to admit, we were badass. The first night they were together, in every way that would come to matter. Hunting side-by-side in perfect concert, finishing it by falling into bed together in perfect concert, battling and glorifying in each other to make both all the more brilliant.

"See, I told you I could be badass," Jeremy says.

"Badasses don't say that," Damon says. Says too coldly, but. Stay away from it, kid.

Jeremy gives him a soulfully wounded look, and doesn't say anything about Alaric, and he goes away.

Jeremy comes back later that night, very late. Damon slouches against the doorjamb and gives his best scowl.

"I've been thinking," young Gilbert starts, twiddling thumbs. "What you and Alaric had was really special. I see the way you've been acting, and how even his ghost can't stop looking at you. It's kinda pitiful, man. So I was thinking-"

"No," says Damon.

No. No. No. It's far too dangerous. It's a car-crash of an idea. Gilberts have had enough car crashes.

"I'd try," Jeremy goes on, as if he hasn't spoken. "I'd try for you and Ric. You could - you could talk to him a while, maybe."

Damon laughs without mirth, because seriously, what has his life become, his pathetic excuse for a life. Elena's teenage brother offering to act as a conduit for his dead boyfriend, and if it doesn't kill him or tear a hole in time and space, is Damon really supposed to just talk to Alaric?

If he can get Alaric's spirit into a body there's going to be a lot more than discussion happening. If they make a psychic connection, they're connecting.

It's only a matter of finding the right person. An impossible sort of person.

A magical person who can see ghosts and channel them and could be persuaded to act as a mystical channel between the dead and the undead, and medium for a lot of ghostly sex if it works. There isn't a Craigslist for this sort of thing. There should be.

He bundles Jeremy back towards his car, but before he gets in, Jeremy swings on him abruptly.

"Damon," he says, low, and all the short hairs go up on Damon's neck, "be careful."

He tugs Damon close for half a second, breathes in at his neck, then lets him go and steps back and is himself, and looks at Damon with sad eyes that are never not sad and gets into his car and drives away again.

Damon dreams of Alaric alive above him. Ric opens him up without preamble and fucks him hard, past the brink, the way they both like; and Alaric is saying many things, telling him not to take this too far, telling him it's enough he can be around at all. Alaric crowds into him, is surrounding him, pins him down and says "Damon? Are you listening?" but he isn't, not at all.

He meets the magic person. He's sitting in Alaric's seat at the Grill.

Damon tells him to move. He slides onto his own barstool and isn't polite about it. "Seat's taken."

The man eyes him over. Damon returns the favor.

He's gorgeous, there's no beating around that, high cheekbones and doe eyes framed by brown hair worn curly. His chin is triangular, his beard and errant locks suggesting a lost scholar or philosopher, wandered too far from the university flock. His tweed jacket even has elbow-patches.

He moves without protest, transferring to the seat at Damon's other arm. "My apologies," he says. "I didn't know."

Damon wants to glare, but the open, appealing face won't let him. "Easy enough mistake," he allows.

"Buy you a drink while you're waiting for your friend?" the guy says, airy, holding up a hand before Damon can nod, before he nods.

Donovan brings the bourbon, two glasses of the same, and for once Damon doesn't wish him dead. He toasts with a sideways flick of his wrist. Is met steadily. Their glasses clink.

"What're we toasting?" the man with the face wants to know. His stunning visage is familiar all at once, Damon knows he's seen it before: up in front of an auditorium full of undergrads, lecturing about vampires and doppelgangers and witches like he was a Mystic Falls townie. Does he know about hybrids too? Are the Originals in his Powerpoint?

Damon eyeballs his glass, more cautious and more relaxed now that he's placed his drinking buddy. As for discovering what he's really made of besides spells and Old Spice and everything nice, well, that's what whiskey is for.

"To new friendships," Damon says. "Cheers."

Both of them swallow down their half-full glasses of bourbon as though they're shots and come up grinning. Donovan, bless his little human heart, refills. He's learning.

"And to the old," says Professor Strange, attractively. They drink again. Amen.

"It's a sad story," Shane muses, later, carding fingers through Damon's hair.

They're still mostly drunk. They're at Ric's, which is so, so wrong, but Damon still pays the rent, and he can't take the good professor back to the Salvatore boarding house of horrors, and Shane said his own spot was far. So Alaric's apartment it is, scrubbed clean and sterile and screaming at Damon from every surface, so he turns off all the lights.

Damon blows Shane's spectacular cock quite spectacularly, makes him arch into his mouth; takes all of him in and down and swallows with a smirk. Afterward they lie sprawled while Damon tells him more about Alaric on the mattress Alaric bought.

The doctor of mysteries had fast made it clear that he was well aware of the supernatural score in Mystic Falls, that he knew at first sight what Damon was and didn't seem much concerned; so Damon, too drunk, doesn't hesitate to fill him in on a few of the Days of Our Obscenely Fucked-Up Lives plot points.

"It's a tragedy, Damon. A classic one, even. First to have gone from such antagonists, then to find such affection, and to lose it so wrenchingly."

"Yeah," says Damon. "Me and Ric, we were real storybook."

Shake shakes his curls. "For a vampire hunter to abandon his calling and sleep with the enemy? That's Buffy territory, my friend."

Damon bats at his shoulder. Shane uses a clever, paper-grading hand to jerk him off, fast and thoroughly; and what is his thing about teachers?

He comes, and it feels good, and he's feeling pretty good, when Shane says, soft but steely, in his ear: "Just so you know, I'm immune to compulsion. My studies revealed the path to that. So don't even try it. You won't enjoy the results."

Damon tries to mask his astonishment, but his armor's rusty. He only looks half like a shark. "How will I know unless I try?"

Elijah slips under the covers one indeterminate night.

"Hey," offers Damon, instantly awake, knuckles white on the sheet, trying for casual. "What's up?"

As though one said what's up to Elijah Mikaelson. As though Elijah Mikaelson might say, Not much, dude, just chilling.

"Damon," says Elijah, cocking his head, showing some surprise, "you look worn thin. Should I be concerned?"

"Your eyes deceive you," says Damon, "prime meat as ever," and that's when it registers that Elijah's only looking at him with worry now, that Elijah has come for other reasons that didn't involve his general health and well-being. Elijah isn't looking to play his nursemaid, only been surprised to see the shadows that hollow out his cheekbones.

"Trouble on the homefront?" Damon suggests instead, and reaches to pull Elijah on top of him, Elijah allowing himself to be pulled. "Family got you down? Let's dish."

He puts his tongue into Elijah's mouth, and his body and brain short-circuit, and it's a glorious transport of a night, the furthest he's gotten away from himself in longer than he can remember.

"Don't you want to fuck me, Damon?" Professor Shane asks in Alaric's bed. His long eyelashes line big doe eyes that are begging for it.

Damon does. He doesn't.

"The bourbon act's getting a little old," says Stefan. "You should take up pot smoking. Or maybe heroin. That would be chic."

Damon swirls amber liquid in a crystal glass, staring at the indent on the couch where he and Alaric used to sit from the far corner. He curls into the library window seat, embraces a needlepoint pillow.

"Are you going to be like this forever, Damon?" Stefan wants to know. When he doesn't get a response his voice gets sharper. "Would Alaric like you like this?"

Damon's leveling glare is icy. "You don't know what you're talking about, little brother. So stop talking." He fills his mouth with alcohol, tosses it back. "Run along and screw Elena, or whatever it is you do, and try not to screw it up this time. Poor dear's looking peaky."

Stefan throws a steel tumbler at his head that he ducks, yawning. He doesn't dodge the liter of vodka that follows along as gracefully.

"You're a son of a bitch," Stefan declares, really in a froth now, hands on hips and everything.

"Runs in the family," says Damon, and toasts his family, and drinks.

He lets the professor do him to keep him in it. It's strange now, being with someone who isn't Alaric.

Elijah is different because there's no one like Elijah, Elijah can't be quantified, and Elijah isn't ever very often, and they'd had an agreement about him. Damon hadn't looked for anyone else.

He's good at sex, though. Sex he can do, he thinks. He had decades of meaningless couplings before Alaric fought his way into his life and into his bed. Sex can be like drinking, a mindless escape, dissociative as knocking back a glass.

Shane is different than Alaric. Everyone is. But he's more than competent, performs at a high level, does all the right things. Damon does too. Damon turns over and closes his eyes and gets fucked.

Doesn't do much but provide a body, but he knows he's pretty. It's rougher than he thought it would be, deeper, thorough. Guy's stronger than he looks and even more confident; he takes his time once he's there.

Spent, he rolls off Damon, collapses his clever limbs, well-turned as a dissertation. "Well," the professor says. "Aren't you something else."

"Aren't I just," says Damon.

Alaric isn't in his dreams very much these days, like he's keeping away on purpose.

He drives Elena to the mall to buy Christmas presents. She doesn't want Stefan to see what she gets him.

Damon doesn't understand how he gets roped into it, is possibly drunk when he agrees and drives them there; but then they're standing under garish colored lights amidst godawful music picking out overpriced seasonal tchotchkes for Elena's pals. This is his life now.

He lurks grumbling in festively lit corners, telling himself Ric would approve this act of beneficence, telling himself that Ric should be standing grumbling beside him, hands shoved into his pockets.

It wouldn't be so bad to be in a fucking mall at Christmastime if Ric were here.

They'd go drink ridiculous frozen fruity concoctions at the Applebee's bar while Elena got her shopping on, and when they walked through the bright halls of storefronts, Damon would watch where Alaric's gaze lingered, what he looked at; and then he'd go back the next day and buy all of it and maybe even put it under the goddamned tree. Caroline could be prevailed upon for fancy gift-wrapping, and -

Elena's taking too long.

Damon's standing outside a Victoria's Secret, having staunchly refused the chance to help Elena in her Christmas panties selection, though Stefan owes him one; but even for a teenage girl loosed amongst lingerie on holiday sale, she's taking too long.

Damon's been more than patient, has passed annoyed, and now there's a prevailing flare of worry. He heads into the shop, dodging appreciative looks from the assorted ladies and gentlemen grasping lacy confections, and he's not halfway through the displays before he smells the blood.

He speeds to the dressing room in a blur of motion and wrenches open the locked far stall. Inside Elena, in a lovely lavender bra-and-panties ensemble, is cradling the dressing room attendant close, fangs sunk deep into her neck.

There's a lot of blood. The girl's got less than a minute to live, if that, and her foot kicks feebly.

Damon makes his voice sound a lot calmer than he feels. Elena's done well enough, a few accidents notwithstanding; she hasn't killed since the first time, and she was wretched about that for long enough. They can't lose her now, not at fucking Christmas. Not on his watch. Ric would so kick his ass.

"That's enough," Damon says.

It's a better approach than Stefan or Bonnie would have taken, which would be to squeal, No, Elena! Bad Elena! like she was a truant dog who could be tamed, instead of what she was now, which was a natural predator, a fierce and wild and wily one.

Elena's eyes snap up, and there are dark, angry veins at the thought of losing her prey; but she doesn't last out, which is a start.

"It gets bitter towards the end," Damon tells her. "Sour. Not so tasty as the heart slows down. Why don't you drop this one, and we'll swing by the Gap on our way out for something perkier."

Elena cants her head, considers; then she pulls back her fangs and tosses the girl aside, onto the small dressing room bench. She doesn't wipe the blood from her mouth.

Elena has doe's eyes too, seems everyone does; and they're big, and bright, and bold, and hungry. "Maybe I want something else," she says.

This is his fucking life. Damon stares her down unblinking. Doesn't shoot her down. Rides it out. "Heal her first and send her on her way. Let's see if you can," he adds, making it a challenge, so that Elena huffs and tosses her hair and spins to do it. It's important that she does.

She bites into her wrist and holds the blood up to dribble into the girl's slack mouth. Damon's afraid it might be too late, that Elena's taken it too far after all, but after a moment the girl's eyes open, and she grasps the proffered wrist like a lifeline, swallows and swallows.

Elena shakes her off once she gets color back in her cheeks, then bends low. She's gotten much better at compulsion, is going to be dangerous with it someday.

"Forget that this happened," she says, eyes flaring. "Hide your neck and clean yourself off. Tell your supervisor you aren't feeling well and need to go home."

"Home," the girl agrees, nodding. She pulls her shirt back into place, not that it's much help as she's copiously covered in bloodsplatter. Elena wraps a jacket around her shoulders.

"Ask the cute guy behind the register to drive you," Elena's adding. "I saw you looking at him, and he was totally checking you out while you were helping me." Then she steps back and her eyes have their normal pupils again.

Damon shakes his head, stifling a long-suffering sigh because even at the peak of bloodlust Elena is still irrepressibly Elena. The girl beams at them, then stumbles out and down the hall.

Elena leans on the stall door until it closes. Her exquisite body is only held back by soft, skimpy purple lines. Her body, so fresh and unknown, and Katherine's body also on display, once so known and beloved.

Her expression is electric and starving, like she hasn't had her fill even after nearly draining the shop-clerk dry. She isn't frightening in this the way that Stefan is, a menace to society; no, not that.

Damon thinks of Katherine again because that's what's lurking under Elena's surface, what threatens to break free: Katherine's brand of insatiable, entirely different than Stefan's. Katherine was almost always in control, Katherine ruled with an iron fist, but Katherine could never, ever have enough. And the instinct, it seemed, ran in doppelganger blood.

For the first time it occurs to Damon that Katherine would have had the same experience as Elena after she was turned, the same affliction where blood was concerned. No way to live as a vampire save to drink straight from the vein.

No animal or served-up blood would do. Katherine had never had a choice, she'd had to go from the jugular from the beginning; but Damon can't help thinking that she must have liked it.

"Damon," Elena says, all slinky-voiced, riled up on Type O, tripping the plasma fantastic.

Then she's all over him, moves faster than he'd been expecting, because he'd been expecting to hold her off until she had time to think about it and her regular frowny face returned.

Instead Elena has him shoved up against the dressing-room mirror, and she's kissing him, and they're cracking the mirror, which is bad luck, very bad luck, but that's Damon Salvatore's entire existence in a nutshell.

When he doesn't respond she pulls back, drawing hard on his lower lip with her teeth. "Come on," she says, all rounded curves and silky-soft skin and shiny hair. "Just once, Damon. Just between us. We won't tell Stefan. He doesn't have to ever know. It doesn't have anything to do with him."

The slender jut of Elena's hipbone presses tight and she quirks a little half-smile. "I know you want to," she says. "I can feel how much you want to. Let's have some fun. Aren't you always telling me to have more fun?" The smile slides towards poutingly persuasive. "You're fun."

Damon isn't fun. Doesn't think he's been anything like fun for a good long while, but with his little brother the bloody wet blanket and Donovan the walking toothpaste commercial as her only other points of male erotic reference, he supposes he's motherfucking Disneyworld.

He holds himself still and back because there's nothing about this that's right, even if Elena looks better than she has any right to, practically naked and absolutely effervescent.

A year or two ago, he would have ravished her, let her ravish him, not given it a second thought except to do it twice.

Elena's eyes narrow when he doesn't. "Is this about Alaric?" she says, and there's just the edge of cruelty in her tone from too much blood, and the name in full makes Damon flinch all over. Yes. Somewhat yes. Somehow everything is always about Alaric.

Her luscious mouth forms a line. "I miss him too, Damon. All the time. But he's dead and he isn't coming back."

That's where you're wrong, thinks Damon, but what he says is the truth, too forthcoming: "He wouldn't want me to." He can't believe he says it. This is what he's become.

"Oh, I don't know about that." Elena looks far too much like Katherine with her eyebrow up. She leans in to breathe against his neck. "Sometimes I used to think about what it would be like to join you guys, just for a night. What would have happened if I tried. Ric wasn't, like, my childhood guardian, you know. It was never even legal. He was the hot teacher and then my aunt's hot boyfriend and then yours, and girls have fantasies too, Damon."

Her tongue flickers at the column of his throat. "Do you think Ric would have done it? Would he have fucked me?"

Damon wants to throw her off, wants to seize her, needs to leave, might set the store on fire; but the suggestion is impossible to escape, and it's not as though he never let himself entertain it before.

Now it crowds his vision: Elena crawling with her sleek, sweet grace into their bed, Elena allowing herself to be caught between them.

Alaric would have taken a lot of persuading. A lot. Like, months, and maybe rounds of intensive group therapy. But if he could have been brought around to the idea at last, if Elena was really, truly willing and wanting, and Damon was game as game could be -

Alaric would be gentle with her at first, so gentle. He'd ask over every touch before applying it, would be careful and respectful and gentlemanly enough to make their collective teeth ache. Elena would need to be assertive, and Damon thought she'd be wonderfully unbridled sexually if given the opportunity; she was driven by passion and would take well to all its forms.

At first he'd be content enough to watch them, would want nothing more in the universe perhaps than to watch them.

Elena would be open and wet and ready, worshiped by Alaric, so that when he finally slid into her she would be begging him to do it. Damon would watch, watch how they locked and fit and moved together, how beautiful they were. Alaric would kiss Elena while he thrust deep and slow, and then he would have reached out for Damon, and drawn him down.

Damon blinks himself free of it. Looks down at Elena waiting in his arms. "He'd want you," Damon says, since they're way past the usual barriers between them. "Only not like this."

He presses a kiss to her forehead. He takes off his sweater and the t-shirt underneath, putting it into Elena's listless grip while he slips the sweater back over his head. Like a reflex, looking up at him dazedly, she puts it on. She's starting to come back to herself, and all of her clothes are covered in blood.

Not like this.

Damon starts seeing a therapist. It takes a while to find someone he actually wants to talk to but it's good to have someone to talk to.

He doesn't feel guilty about it at all. It's not like kidnapping some vapid coed for a few hours and forcing them to listen to his problems in between blood-drinking. He pays well and arrives on time every week, and it's a professional arrangement.

If he's going to stay in town to mind the children and the maniacs he's going to talk about the ridiculous roller-coaster from hell that is his world before he goes entirely off the rails.

He tries out a few people and types of practice before settling on one. Meredith Fell recommends her, thinks this is a fantastic idea. Generally she works with adolescents but Fell says she'll make an exception in Damon's case.

She's a bright, nonjudgmental sort, mid-thirties, divorced, no kids, is a little punk rock, with tattoos showing at the collar of her sensible sweater, and on her forearms when she pushes up her sleeves. Dark hair and quick eyes that see a bit too much, a heart-shaped, compelling face. Not over-quick to smile, which Damon appreciates. It will be a shame if he has to kill her.

She's a Jungian by practice, has all the big books lining the walls to prove it, and Damon knows Jung, knew Jung, don't get him started, but he likes the cozy, book-bound office, the worn-in leather furniture, framed prints on the walls. She's just a touch out there enough to balance out all the fancy qualifying certificates that are hung up; there are a few crystals, exotic statues and candles, too.

Her name is Katherine, which is unfortunate; but the first time they meet she takes his hand in a good, solid handshake, smiles crookedly, and says, "Call me Kate," with Shakespearean verve, and Damon laughs and intends to do just that.

Damon compels her to treat everything he tells her as viable truths without question (because it's exhausting explaining vampires, let alone hybrids), and to forget that anything had been amiss after each session.

She's to remember only what he told her when he made the appointment: he feels like his life is one constant crisis after another, and he can't get over his dead boyfriend. Who died tragically. In a fire.

"Tell me about Alaric," Kate says during their second session. "You've spoken a lot about your activities together, but you haven't told me about him very much. What kind of man was he?"

Damon looks away, at the royal purple shag carpet, at the picture of a pirate ship on the wall. Who framed a picture of a pirate ship? "The best kind," he hears himself saying. "A fucking literal grade-A boyscout. Better than me, though that's not too hard. Better than most people could ever hope to be."

He's talking now and he can't stop; all of Ric is emerging. "Selfless. So stupidly selfless. The shirt-off-your-back, lay-down-your-life-at-the-drop-of-a-fucking-hat type. And smart, too. He could read anything in a night and knew how to write about it. He would've been a professor if he'd stuck to it. If I hadn't - if I hadn't turned his wife into a vampire."

Kate nods. "That must've been quite a point of conflict."

Damon shrugs. "At first, yeah, of course. He tried to kill me, I killed him, we got over it." He waves a hand. "His wife came back and was a real bitch about it, so in the end, it didn't matter much. It kind of helped. After Isobel, I was practically a model boyfriend."

"You sound surprised," Kate says.

He scuffs the toe of his boot into the deep carpet. "I guess maybe I was. Wasn't...wasn't used to relationships going well, you know? Ric and me, we had our ups and downs, more than most, even, but we were going pretty well."

"From what you've described," Kate says, "This was your first real adult relationship, Damon, and the two of you sound like you were a good match. It appears as though Alaric had the restraint that you say you lack."

"He was disciplined, and I always needed that," Damon says, thinking about it, trying not to veer too far away into other thoughts of Alaric disciplining him. "But he wasn't buttoned up about stuff. That was one of my favorite things about him. He was messed up, too, he made mistakes. He tried to make me yield to the better angels of my nature or whatever, but he never held it against me long when I screwed up." He brushes at nothing on his shirt-cuff. "He saw something human in me after I'd stopped looking."

"Was he right?" she wants to know. She props her chin in her hand, cross-legged in the opposite chair, watching Damon calmly. One upturned eyebrow prods him on.

Human? It'd been an odd choice of description for a vampire, but he'd known what he meant, and he can hear Alaric's words as though he's close nearby.

Hell, you're a dick and you kill people but I still see something human in you, he'd said, meaning with the statement that Damon despite his protests to the contrary was deeply mired in emotion and deeply capable of it.

Damon had showed how much he could hate and wreak havoc; Alaric suspected, then found and drew out, the part of him that loved just as deeply, or deeplier still; the part of him that could create and build a life anew, because he was in love, because he was loved in return.

"I loved him," Damon tells the leather arm of the chair. "He loved me. We had a dysfunctional family. That's about as human as you can get, sister."

Kate agrees, looking sympathetic; but after a moment is back to business. She glances down at the notes Damon makes her burn at the end of the hour. "Let's talk about this professor you've started up with."

"Let's not and say we did," says Damon compellingly.

Turns out the professor's into some pretty kinky shit. Damon doesn't care. It takes a lot to make him care and he doesn't.

Getting fucked hardcore on an altar when there's gem-encrusted knives involved and dude's wearing a proper Harry Potter wizard robe: whatever, man, if it gets Shane off and keeps him interested.

Tyler cheats on Caroline. Caroline breaks up with Tyler. Caroline and Stefan are caught necking in the woods by Bonnie. Bonnie, because she's no fun at all, tells Elena. Elena almost ruins the Spring Fling dance when she tries to take Caroline down. Caroline doesn't go down.

They have a hot lady vampire fight that is maybe the most awesome spectacle Damon's ever witnessed except that it's over Stefan, God; this is the way his life goes.

Stefan steps valiantly betwixt his lady-loves, and Elena and Caroline stop clawing and turn on him together. Actually, that part is Damon's favorite. He could watch this movie forever.

But then everyone is crying and squabbling, and he has a headache, and not enough to drink, and no Alaric at his side.

Alaric would know what to do. Alaric dealt with shit like this daily in his classes. Alaric could break out the papa bear attitude when he needed to.

Alaric would separate the girls with reassuring words, speak to them both, then send them off with Bonnie to regain their friendship somewhere quiet. He would clap Stefan a little too hard on the shoulder and tell him to go and drink off the edge. He'd tell Jeremy to get Tyler high and keep him from causing any trouble. He'd share a sympathetic look with Matt, hovering by his messed up friends, like, Vampires, I know, dude, right? Being human's hard work in this town.

Then he'd catch Damon's eye and shake his head and sigh, and they'd go back home and screw each other's brains out. Funny how all things considered, his and Alaric's relationship had proven the most durable.

Hilarious, that.

But there's no Alaric now, none that he can see. Maybe he's here, though, drawn by the frenzy of his friends.

Damon hitches a sigh. There's no Alaric to do the fixing things, so he does them himself, and everyone lets him.

The girls, sobbing and hugging, are bundled off; Matt offers to drive Stefan home; Jeremy and Tyler are rolling a joint in the parking lot, and then Damon's alone again. It's worth it when the wind whips in to stir his hair like fingertips.

Someone slips into bed with him very late and before he opens his eyes he hopes that it's Elijah. Wouldn't mind that sort of visitation at all after a day like today.

But the pressure's too slight, and Elijah doesn't smell like flowers and cinnamon and confliction (he smells like time, and sex, and wisdom, and woodsmoke from burnt white oak).

"Go away, Elena." He doesn't open his eyes.

She doesn't go. She pulls the covers up. "Please. I'd like to stay."

Damon cracks one eye, singular. She's still in her pastel Spring Fling dress, once-coiffed hair in disarray, and she looks sad, and scared. His life. This is it.

He rolls to face her with a sigh. "What's the word from Dawson's Creek?"

She worries the blanket in her hands. "Caroline says it wasn't anything with Stefan. They've been spending a lot of time together - she was helping him with his self-control, and then he was there for her about Tyler, and it just kind of happened. Just...just one of those tries, you know? Just to check. They felt awful, she said, and weren't ever going to do it again; but Bonnie saw them before they decided that. So."

"So," says Damon. It sounds about right to explain the origins of the fiasco.

Frankly, he likes the effect Caroline's cool confidence has on his manic brother; Alaric, who'd disliked the idea of Elena tying herself to a vampire too young, had openly supported the match. Stefan and Elena had dug themselves in so deep, so fast, and feeling star-crossed isn't always sustaining.

"I love him, Damon. I want to be with him." Elena lifts her chin.

She looks stubborn as expected. Then not. "But we can't be everything we want to be for each other. Not all the time. That's isn't fair, is it." It's not a question. Her gaze drops. "Sometimes I don't know who I am without him or what I'd do. I don't like it."

"That's love," says Damon, tightly.

She looks so wrecked then, so vulnerable, that he shakes himself and tries again. "Look, you're right about the first part. I'm no expert, Elena, but let's say I have some experience. Things fall apart when you start hiding what you need, when you expect the person you love to be someone they're not."

That's why he and Ric had worked so well. They'd started off so poorly there was little enough to hide but lots to learn. All their dirty roughened edges and worst impulses were established from the beginning, so they'd actually experienced the reverse: getting to know what they liked about each other, exploring the things they shared, uncovering new depths every day they hadn't known they had.

They'd never not been themselves, only had to navigate how to be together being themselves. They'd gone full circle, broken it, changed from enemies to friends to lovers to better friends to better lovers; it had only ever gotten better. Until Alaric got evil and then dead.

"Why couldn't he come to me to work on his self-control?" Elena asks, clearly stuck on the point.

Damon shakes his head. "Because you're not there yet. If you lost control too, we'd lose you both. But if I know Stefan, and I know Stefan, he was doing it for you, hoorah. So you should cut him some slack."

Much as it pains him to vouch for Stefan's heroic ego, he knows how long Stefan's been weeping into his whiskey sours in the library downstairs and probably beating his breast and rending his hair despite hours of work to sculpt it just so.

Elena's easing closer across the bed, nearly settled into the crook of his arm. "I will. I am. I'm not angry with Stefan any longer. Or Caroline. Only Tyler, but that's none of my business." The smile is minute, bitter.

Damon lifts an eyebrow as she lifts his arm and slides under. Both of their bodies are cold, but feel warmer together. "Then why are you here, Elena?"

"I want to feel the way you make me feel," Elena says. "Not like myself."

He can't decide if it's more of a profound compliment or an insult. Can't. In the end, all he does is nod.

After so much build up about it, they come together with surprising ease. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising. They've long had a curious sort of chemistry, and it sparks well and smolders.

It's only serious for the first few minutes, and then it strikes them both at once as being patently ridiculous, and they laugh into each other's mouths. They share laughing, gasping breaths.

They make love three times, just to check.

It's good. It's very good, it's wonderful, it's sunshine and rainbow kittens, and he envies Stefan a great deal, but it's a game that he and Elena are playing, a play they're playacting. This isn't them; this is curious bodies and sympathetic minds seeking escape.

Damon enjoys her vibrant body, feels enjoyed. He's extremely good with his mouth - really, really, really good - and he puts it to use everywhere, never missing a chance to show off, knowing he won't have another opportunity for this. Telling himself that.

He buries his head between her legs and makes her come twice, once with lips, once with tongue, both times with Elena biting her lip until it bleeds to mask her moans; he makes her come twice before he's even in her and once he's in her he makes her come again.

She's wet and tight all around him, and Damon lets his head fall against her shoulder as he sets up rhythm, and she holds onto him, curls all around him. She looks like Katherine had, once, moving underneath his body, and nothing like Katherine at all.

Elena takes him confidently, just as she's always taken him in hand, and he lets himself move with her towards a sense of release he hasn't felt or sought in a long time. Afterward, but before the second time, he lets himself stroke her hair.

"Thank you," she whispers, and she looks grateful, and Damon knows his expression echoes Elena's, as it often does. They lie in sympathy, as they sometimes are.

"Anytime," says Damon, and bends to kiss the spot on her lower lip where he will draw blood before the second time, though they know after the night is done they won't speak of it again, except with their eyes.

Kate shifts in her armchair. She hums, looking from notes to Damon. "This ongoing...situation with your brother's girlfriend. I'm quite sure it isn't quite-"

"Elena's complicated," Damon says, flicking his wrist. "I already said it probably wasn't the best idea to go to bed with her, didn't I? But I'll stick with instinct on this one. It was good, she had a good time. I did. Both of us needed it." He shrugs, tries to be blustery. "Look, she and my little brother are probably going to work someday. They have all of eternity to figure it out. She needed comfort in a trying time, and I was there."

"It sounds as though you almost always are," Kate says. "You don't give yourself enough credit for your civic dedication, Damon."

He snorts. "Yeah, I'm a real Boy Scout. Ric would like that."

She tilts him a look. "Are you concerned about what Alaric would say to this development?"

Damon worries his lip. Not like he's worried. "I..." He lifts his shoulders. "I don't know. Maybe a little. He knew that Elena and I had a thing. Everything's complicated. Especially about Elena."

Ric had probably expected that it would happen one day, but Damon would have angled for the scenario where he joined in.

"I think it's healthy for them to explore," he tells Kate. "If Stefan went a round with Caroline Forbes, it'd be just peachy for him. They're not destined to be, but she'd teach him to calm the fuck down. Meanwhile, Elena can explore her humanity with Donovan, her walking bloodbag, or some human who catches her eye. She has to experience her first go at having a pet that will eventually expire."

"Sometimes you speak of humans so callously," Kate says, "but you never sound as though you quite believe it. Did you think of Alaric as a pet?"

Damon shakes his head. Shakes out his hand as though to be free of it. "No. Of course not. On the other hand, Ric isn't quite human."

Alaric's ring. Alaric's wonderful, terrible, wretched ring. Damon had twice abused it, and many times watched Alaric snatched back from death by it; watched Ric's cheeks turn from pale to rose, watched the first breath he gasped in as he came back, and Damon's heart came with him.

If it hadn't been for Alaric's ring he never would have had Alaric in the first place, but the ring took him away in the end.

"Sometimes," says Kate, scribbling down a note, "you speak of him as though he is still present."

Damon levels a stare. "Would you believe me if I told you that sometimes he is? Only I never know when."

"Rationally," says Kate, "I'd have to diagnose you as suffering from both visual and auditory hallucinations. But since I feel somewhat compelled to believe you, do enlighten me."

"Well," says Damon, and now they've reached the meat of it, "I intend to get him back for a while no matter the cost. I know that sounds dramatic. But I'm sort of past melodrama at this point, doc. We're into Melrose Place territory."

She nods, slowly. "It does sound dramatic. Also dangerous."

"Those are my middle names." Damon settles back into the leather embrace of the chair and picks at the armrest. "I don't care. It's worth it."

"And what," Kate has to ask, damn her, "would Alaric say to that? Putting yourself in danger, potentially others too, so that you can be with him again?"

Don't be such a fucking dick about this, Damon. Get yourself together. I love you, but I'm gone, and it would be better not to be such a nutbag. That's what Ric would say. Damn him. Damn her.

The Damon of a few years gone would have snapped her neck and liked it for throwing the reality of what Alaric would actually prefer back in his face. The Damon of today digs his heel in hard against the shag carpeting.

"He wouldn't want anyone to get hurt," Damon allows. But he shakes his head, says, stubbornly, what he's been telling himself: "Alaric wasn't a goddamned saint. He had wants and needs and a frankly voracious appetite for sex and drugs and rock and roll, okay? He's hanging around here, hovering, watching over us, he won't go - how am I not supposed to try?"

Kate just lets him talk, coolly collected, unaware that she'd come close to meeting Alaric face-to-face mere minutes before. After some silence Damon shifts to meet her gaze. There's some more silence.

"I miss him," he says. "I miss him so fucking much. It's like I can't function."

"You're allowed to wallow in it, you know," Kate says. "It's Shitsville, isn't it? And you didn't get the proper time to grieve. Damon, what did you expect? You lost your partner under the most tragic circumstances imaginable. Some would be sub-catatonic for months or years. But instead you immediately stepped into a position of responsibility, and you assumed Alaric's as well. It is a very great testament to your loyalty that you chose to stay in Mystic Falls to watch over those he loved when your instinct was to hit the road."

Damon pulls a face, doesn't say anything.

"And you didn't even hesitate, did you?" Kate writes this down. "You thought about what he would want and you did it."

Reluctantly, Damon nods, then shrugs it off. "Maybe me and Ric should have founded a monastery, we're so saintlike."

"By our next session," Kate says, "you have to try to give yourself more credit for the good you do, Damon. Stop begrudging your real instincts and it'll feel better. You're a big softie at heart."

"Is that a clinical term?" His eyebrow scales up, deflects.

"I mean it. You're a good dude. Lose the brood." She takes in the time with a sigh. "Okay, out with you, I have teenagers to save from themselves. Same as you do."

He gets to his feet, slipping into his coat. Kate has her eyebrows knit together, watching the clock. In two minutes she will get up, burn her notes in the wastebasket, and forget that anything strange was discussed at all.

"I'm about to forget," says Kate. "Aren't I."

Damon turns, surprised, but she doesn't look overly concerned. More like frustrated. "I always tell myself I won't forget the fantastic things you tell me," she says, "and I always do. I suppose you've got to cover your vampire ass, but it's unfortunate."

Damon agrees. "Maybe one day we could hang out," he hedges. "You like bourbon?"

"Straight up. One day." She shakes her head, already starting to look confused. "Damon, before I forget - be careful. You're not telling me everything, and if you can't tell a trained professional who's going to forget anyway, that sounds pretty fucked to me."

"Pretty fucked," Damon agrees, tipping an imaginary hat on his way out. That just about summarizes everything.

That night he dreams of Alaric. Ric is in his dreams, alive and whole, and Damon holds on to him. It's the best feeling he remembers feeling in a long time.

Once granted access, he could never get enough of Alaric's body. He was impossibly, incurably human, every inch of him smelled of it; but while he wore his ring he could never die, Damon had thought, and that made him even better.

It added a delicious layer to Alaric's considerable delicious layers. He'd break but would never be broken, so Damon had forestalled turning him, as much as he'd wanted to, as much as he'd wheedled and angled for it.

Ric was just so good at being human. Exemplar at it. And so good at being with Damon. Alaric, human, knew just where to touch him, just where to tease him, knew all his favorite spots and least-favorites; reveled in bed with him. They had been so good in bed. So, so good. That's been one the hardest things to let go of. So he doesn't.

Alaric's well-built body, fit with training, eminently desirable, yet too human; Damon knew every faint crease and line that appeared where it hadn't been before, envied all the changes in Alaric, mapped them with his tongue. Better even than Alaric's excellent body was his face, beatific; no wonder some thought him a saint. A handsome face, lit-up and welcoming, even when it was only pretending. "Alaric Saltzman, I'm the new history teacher," his hand firm and warm in Damon's, when it had wanted to be wrapped around his neck.

A strong jaw and stubborn chin edged by high cheekbones, the sweep of his forehead and his dumb, perfect hero hair, straw spun into gold; the watchful eyes of indeterminable color, sometimes hazel, bright when they looked at Damon. His expressive red mouth, the lips that Damon loved to kiss when they weren't arguing or in between arguments.

They had sex a lot, made love, fucked, rutted, screwed each other open. A lot of that. But they liked to kiss too sometimes, spend dedicated hours necking, Damon sometimes sipping Alaric's blood at the neck. Every now and then Alaric would have a swallow from Damon's pricked finger. They'd agreed on both actions a long time ago. So they kissed and kissed and drank each other up.

He holds on to Alaric, in the dream. He wants to say I miss you and you feel so good and and and but what he says is nothing at all. He just holds on.

"Damon." Alaric is wonderfully solid with dreamlike edges. His fingers comb through Damon's hair, a soothing motion. Then he says, "You have no idea what you're doing, man."

It's better than the flat-out reprimand expected, that even his subconscious demands, so Damon says, "Of course not. Also, I know exactly what I'm doing."

Ric rolls his eyes. "Don't be a dick, all right? You're on dangerous ground, and it isn't worth it."

Damon begs to differ. "You are," he says.

Alaric has his arms around Damon, and then they're naked on a bed together, because this is the best dream of his vastly extended life, even if they're arguing. Just made it par for the course, really.

He shifts, dreamy, and Alaric is beneath him, spread out for him. Damon's cradled in strong thighs, pressed against the body he knows better than his own, who knows him back. They realign as though haven't been apart.

"Look," Alaric says, moving against him but talking at a speedy clip, like they don't have the time, because they never did, "I miss you too. You know how much. You alone know." They both swallow against it. "You're the biggest part of why I can be here at all. It has to be enough."

"Nothing is anymore," says Damon. He knows that he's sounding very Melrose Place indeed but there's nothing for it. And Kate is always telling him to explore his feelings. And it's his dream. So.

"I'm sorry," Alaric murmurs. "For everything. But especially for this." His arms tighten around Damon, indicate him. He's sorry about Damon.

"Don't apologize," Damon says, flinching all over. "None of it was your fault. If I hadn't killed you-"

"Someone else would have, and I would have kept dying, and the same thing would have happened," Alaric says, insistent about it. "You've made enough actual bad decisions to account for. Don't blame yourself for the shit you had no control over."

"I already have a shrink, thanks." Damon leans in, presses his face to the curve of Alaric's neck. Wishes that dreams had smells, but it's good enough, it's more than good, to feel him. It's good to hear that Ric doesn't blame him even though everything's his fault.

Stefan and Elena sort of break up. That's the only way to describe it.

They give each other a lot of mooncalf eyes and go on soul-searching walks. They decide to take an extended break, and if Damon had the cheerleader outfit he'd taken from a Beta Thea years back he would have worn it in celebration but he couldn't find it.

Elena starts to "secretly" see Matt Donovan, not such a secret since Damon's seen it coming for months and both of them have the subtlety of adorable anvils. They come out together at homecoming, where the student body approvingly crowns them high school royalty.

Donovan wears bandages on the arm and wrist and neck and leg and no doubt other places with blushing pride. He'd never gotten over Elena, had waited a long time in uncertain times to try and win her back. He looks blissful, and under his stolid, supporting influence, Elena blooms again.

Matt's concerns over paying bills and studying for SATs and attending dances and playing children's sporting games remind Elena of humanity, ground the end of her senior year in mundane activities. The ties of bloodsharing bind them even closer, and as he's drawn further into their orbit Damon begrudgingly accords the kid some respect.

He's resourceful and steady, never flinches from the danger and disappointments that invariably come. He reminds a little of Alaric at the best times, idiotically, stubbornly human, too brave with it. Insufferably loyal. The corn-fed all-American quarterback look is probably another factor.

After Donovan fends off a rogue werewolf attack on Elena, Damon gives him one of Ric's best-loved head-chopping-axes. Alaric would like that; would have done it himself.

Damon stumbles into the bathroom one morning to find Caroline Forbes applying intricate layers of make-up in front of his full mirror. She's in a man's dress shirt, partially buttoned, and slim-cut yellow panties. Her blonde hair is a tousled glory over her shoulder.

"Sorry," she says, not looking up. "The light is about a million times better in here. Nice mirror, by the way, Narcissus. Can you give me a sec?"

"I'm not sorry," says Damon, with an appreciative hitch of eyebrow for her half-clothed form, but they both know his lascivious tone is affected.

He isn't sorry at all, though, that much is true. He's the opposite of sorry. He fights the urge to embrace her and say Sister, it took you long enough to get here. He envies Stefan, as per usual, but he can't remember when he last felt so glad for him.

"Take all the time you need," Damon tells Caroline. He winks as he backsteps. Caroline shades her eyelid a perfect blue, undaunted, but she's grinning.

He has his phone out and he texts Stefan immediately. Good work.

Who is this? is Stefan's reply.

Then five minutes later: Sometimes you're not wrong, big brother. Rarely. But sometimes.

He wakes up because Elijah is sitting next to him on the bed, brushing locks of Damon's hair back from where it has fallen over his eyes.

"Hi," he says sleepily, sad to leave a dream where he'd seen Alaric standing at the edge of a crowd, waiting for him. On the other hand, it's hard to dispute the benefits of awakening to such a visitor.

"Hi." Elijah's lips manage just the slightest quirk around the word. It's too small for his grand mouth.

Last he'd seen Elijah, the Original vampire was departing for one of his extended trips, this time on "crucial business in the tropics." Damon doesn't ask. Doesn't really want to know. Elijah has a glowing tan, touching his skin with gold and rose, bringing out the highlights in his hair. He looks at ease, relaxed, as deadly a look on him as any; he always appears half ready to destroy and create.

Damon is entirely aware now and ready for exactly anything, but he keeps his voice sleepy-sounding. "Got sick of Margaritaville?"

Elijah can make a snort sound eloquent. "I wasn't exactly wasting away there, as your American folk song puts it, but yes, the novelty wore off after my affairs were concluded, and I felt drawn back here." He works his magnificent jaw. Hesitates just a touch "My brother?"

Damon's expressive groan is enough for both of them. "Well, he's not in a box, if that's what you're wondering." He kicks the white sheet down over his body, exposing a lot of sleek muscle, trying for a little distraction as he talks. It might be working because Elijah's eyes track his movement.

Damon says, "Klaus has been...Klaus. And he's currently AWOL, which has been pretty awesome." He doesn't pull punches about it, Elijah doesn't need that from him, but stretching like a cat and kicking the sheet off never hurt the delivery of crappy news.

Elijah and his brother were at odds for the trillionth time in centuries, this time over the old standard of daggering a family member. Klaus was unrepentant over what he'd done to Rebekah, and obstinate in his refusal to reveal where he'd hidden her body, despite Elijah's demands.

Damon almost had to give the hybrid bastard credit when the brothers squared off. He wouldn't want Elijah's demands leveled at him like that, the infinite stare that Elijah had given Klaus, which would have turned lesser men into stone or maybe salt or snakes.

But he doesn't give Klaus credit. Klaus doesn't have a leg left to stand on, no one left save enslaved hybrids. He'd feel sorry for him if they weren't all very far past that. Klaus's fucked-up existence nearly makes Damon's look charmed, but Klaus brought every bit of it on himself.

"Tell me," Elijah urges. "I make no more excuses for my brother. His chances were exhausted."

"Yeah," Damon agrees. "That." He stretches again, extending the long line of his arm, settles a hand nonchalantly across the hard-worked cut of his abdomen, drawing Elijah's attention, pretending not to notice. "He...it's kind of a long story and the details aren't boring per se but I won't bore you with all of them. Let's just say Klaus didn't react very well to my little brother's romancing of a certain vampireress."

Elijah blinks once, but he's lived more centuries than could be counted on fingertips, has seen every range and scope of emotional melodrama that could be performed on the world's stage. The wheels of his brain, greased with mercury, spin terrifically fast. "Not Elena. Caroline," he says in the same breath.

He shakes his head fractionally, as though he hadn't considered the idea until he deduced it, then frowns. It takes hundreds of muscles for a human face to frown, and watching Elijah do it is a spectacular thing, like watching a mountain resettle and look disapproving.

"Part of you wants to say 'poor Klaus,' yeah, I know," says Damon. "Trust me, Elijah, I get it, I got it then, it hurt, it sucked. Love does crazy shit to people, and I wouldn't wish the situation Klaus received on my worst enemy, and he was one of my worst enemies. But look - a lot of us - most of us in this town - have had to swallow rejection and loss and maybe we go a little mad but we get over it. Klaus, on the other hand-"

"He wouldn't get over it." Elijah sighs, and bites his lip, exquisite visage sad and a touch worried for the carnage he can already taste.

"No," agrees Damon, staring at Elijah's mouth. It's a strange reaction to have in the midst of a mostly-awful story but it's physically impossible for any blooded creature not to react to the sight of Elijah Mikaelson lip-biting. When Damon's mostly over it, he makes himself tell the rest. He hooks toes into the sheet and keeps it creeping lower as he talks.

"Yeah, so, Klaus lost both obsessive objects of his affection, Caroline and Stefan, at the same time, to each other, which is, shit, man, I know. It's a bitter fucking pill, and your brother's a big baby who won't ever take his medicine."

Elijah doesn't disagree, only lifts an elegant eyebrow like fucking really? You think? so Damon says, "First he ordered the usual bloodbath. When we foiled those dastardly plans, he got more creative. But then he made a mistake. He made the Mystic Falls version of starting a land war in Russia."

Elijah cocks his head. "He took Jeremy Gilbert."

"Ding ding ding. You win all the door prizes. You'd think he'd have known better. We've included him in clubhouse meetings and everything. But Klaus got it into his thick skull that Jeremy was of Elena's blood and still human, so he could be made into a sort of proto-doppelganger with the help of conscripted witches. It was...not the way to go.

Up first you have Elena, who is not having any shit whatsoever concerning her only living relation. Really, I'm proud of her. I totally screwed the pooch with my poor uncle Zach on that. Secondly you have Stefan and myself, who have a proven record of following the fair damsel into distress. Thirdly, you have one Miss Bonnie Bennett, witchy witch, who still harbors a serious lady-boner for Gilbert -"

Damon breaks off, rolls his eyes Elijah-wards at the look on his face. "-Come on, you're a million years old, and 'lady-boner' makes you blush?-"

and he keeps the sheet inching down, "and you have Lockwood, who hates your bro with the fire of a million burning sires and has a regular boner for Gilbert, too; anyway, put all of us together and you have a formidable opposition. What Klaus didn't see coming was the new A-team: Caroline, who is not to be messed with and likes her tea with skim milk, lemon and three sugars, and Donovan, who almost took his head off with Alaric's ax." Damon smiles, replaying the showdown scene in his mind. "The look on Klaus's face was priceless."

"No doubt," allows Elijah, neutral as Switzerland. "And then? All your efforts, noble though they might be, would not subdue him long."

"We got the message across," says Damon. "We made it clear."

All of them had said their piece before the night was out, to drive Klaus out. Elena: I'll stay a vampire forever to make sure you can't make anyone new like you ever again. Donovan at her side, Ric's blooded ax over his shoulder, the kindest of them all: Can't you see there's nothing here for you now, man? Bonnie: I may not be strong enough to kill you, but I can contain you and I will. Tyler: I broke myself a hundred times to be rid of you, and I will never rest until this town is. Caroline: Your creepy fairy tale ploys notwithstanding, we will never be together. Ever. Ew. Stefan: The man I admired with your face is long dead, and you do him a grave dishonor by using his name. Stefan's flare for the dramatic had been in fine form that night. Jeremy had been unconscious on an altar (Damon knew the feeling). Damon himself: We will always be here to fight you.

"Ah," says Elijah, when Damon tells him some of it. "In the end Klaus is still the willful boy who seeks acceptance. It seems your words did what force could not."

"It was pretty zen, in the end," Damon mutters, not sure if he wants to recall the looks on people's faces or not. Elijah's right, though, their words that had done Klaus in where all the muscle in the world had come up lacking. Damon gets it. The power of rejection. He got it then. "He skipped town with proverbial and possibly physical tail tucked, and we haven't seen him since." He hikes a shoulder, his smile crooked. The sheet is all the way off now. "So, sorry. Couldn't tell you where he is."

Elijah looks at him, drinks him in. His face like a Renaissance painting that probably inspired the Renaissance is appreciative, placid as a still lake, all composite lines. "I do not seek my brother," he says.

"No?" Damon tilts his head. Opens his mouth and closes it. Flexes his long body to the tips of pointed toes with admiring eyes watching him do it. "Then why are you here?" In reply Elijah reaches out, palms a hand down Damon's hipbone, fitting his fingers to the crevices. "Don't tell me you missed me."

"Is that so far-fetched?" Elijah asks. His hand is hot and cold on Damon's hot and cold skin. Damon can't do anything but watch. This time Damon's the one watching, as Elijah lets go to stand up, stripping off his jacket in a silk-smooth motion. The opalescent buttons of his dress shirt are dealt with next, and they both watch his fingers linger on the leather tongue of his belt.

Then, with a whirl, like a dance, shoes, socks, pants, boxers, belt, all off, and Elijah, a naked force of nature, settling naked over Damon in the bed. He smells of blue-green ocean, and of coconut rum, and of wind and time as ever. Then he blows Damon like a storm.

"Do you still doubt your appeal?" asks Elijah, wiping pristine, smile-bent lips, held up on one arm over Damon. Damon's panting as though he were tossed on the high seas and just recently rescued from drowning by Elijah's mouth.

Damon nods. Lowers his eyelids to half-mast. "Self-confidence is the worst these days. My therapist says so. I need constant reassurance."

"As it happens," says Elijah, "I am known for nothing so much as my constancy."

Damon's surprised, at first, by the hot, hungry, heavy press of Elijah's mouth, everything Elijah does comes with unexpected weight, impossible to anticipate; but he opens up for Elijah's tongue, meeting him at once, more surprised by his own need.

He slides his hand up the fine joints of Elijah's spine and into his hair. He has let the golden brown strands grow long, resplendent. Damon takes a handful. Then he pulls him up and in.

Elijah stays in him until sunrise, while they move with the rhythm of waves.

"We're nearly there, Damon," Shane tells him, taking his time. "I've told you how dangerous-"

"Yeah, yeah. Bad stuff, dark magics, crazy juju, risky business, we've been over it." Damon on his hands and knees isn't in the mood to have this conversation again. "How soon?"

A pause while the naughty professor considers, his hands on Damon's hips. "The next full moon's a viable possibility, but I'd need to-"

"Whatever you need," says Damon. He tosses his head, showing off his profile, makes his body into an impressive, receptive shape. He's gorgeous, he knows how he looks, how he must feel.

He's good at sex, he's always been good at it. Katherine had said so, said he was better than Stefan at the first try, but that next time he didn't have to be such a silly polite gentleman. A lady could get bored in bed with a gentleman, Damon. "Next moon it is."

In bed with something undetermined, Damon is excellent, as always. Nothing about it is silly or polite. Somewhere Katherine's smiling, the bitch.

"Ooh," says Kate, raising dark eyebrows. "Talk more about Elijah. I like the sound of him."

Damon's mouth purses sideways. "I told you enough sordid details already. Should I just bring a tape of next time?"

"Tempting." Kate laughs with rich timbre, but she isn't laughing at him. She resets to keenly curious too fast, and nods, too encouraging. "So you're looking forward to the next time?"

"I-" Damon blinks. "I—you don't - you can't anticipate Elijah. He comes and goes, he's like a change of season. He just happens." Kate is nodding and scribbling, but she doesn't say anything, so Damon heaves a sigh and keeps giving her more to write down. "Sure, it's nice to be on the...receiving end, as it were, when he...happens."

"Damon," says Kate, "I wish I could write a book about you. Trying to get into your head would make me a millionaire."

"That tragic?" Damon's kicked off his shoes, has his socked feet in the purple shag carpet.

She shakes her head. "The twists and turns you take. You feel things so acutely, and you deny yourself so much. The multiple book deals I could get. Alas." She chews on the end of her pen. "So, it's...'nice' to be with Elijah. Your word."

Damon shrugs. "Sure."

Kate says, "You said that one already, too."

"Let's talk about if you'd depict me as more of a Dracula or a Bill Compton type," says Damon.

Elena narrows her eyes, has a cutting pout in place. "You have most of his stuff. Like, almost all of it. I don't see why you think you have any right to the weapons Ric gave to me and Jeremy. You can't just-"

"I did," says Damon, holding up the bag, black strap swaying. Next to Elena on the couch, Donovan sniffles with exaggeration, an attempted warning.

Elena's beyond the usual tetchy because Donovan's stomach flu is keeping her from fresh blood. It's been a day or two, and both of them look miserable. Damon hadn't wanted to fight about it but Elena had to go and catch him sneaking out of the house with Alaric's Gilbertian weapon stash under his arm.

"Look, Elena, I'll bring it all back. Every last splintery inch. I'm just borrowing, like I told you." He really doesn't have time for this. Can't do this with Elena, not now.

"He belonged to all of us," Elena persists. "Ric may have loved you, but he loved me too. And Jeremy. And Jenna. And my - Isobel. He wasn't just yours." Her voice scales. She really needs a pint. "I want my stake back. Now, Damon. Not everything gets to be about you."

He presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose and begs someone - his inner self, a holy spirit, Alaric, maybe - for patience, for the patience not to burst out laughing or snap Elena's neck and seriously piss off both her and Donovan, who is proving a fine day-drinking buddy. So he just digs fingers in at the pressure-points and says, "No."

"Fine, I'll take it myself—" She starts up, unsteady on her feet, but Matt's hand is gentle on her wrist, and firm, and keeps her sitting.

"Elena, let's leave it alone," says Matt. Smart kid. Getting smarter, growing more and more on Damon. Elena pouts mightily, but stays down. Matt flicks over an all-American blue-eyed look full of innocence. Cow's eyes. "Damon deserves our trust by now, don't you think?" Smart kid, damn him, smarter every day.

"It's just that -"

"-we're worried about you, and thought -"

"-maybe you wanted to talk -"

"-if there was anything on your mind," finishes Caroline off smoothly. "Anything at all."

Next to her at the dining room table, Stefan tries to grin like nothing's wrong, which twists his face up in a way Damon can spot a mile off.

Stefan shares out more bourbon into three crystal glasses. "This isn't, like, an intervention, Damon," he says, phrasing it even more like Caroline than when they were finishing each others' sentences. His grin sours a little. "I hate those." Yet he sounds so earnest: "But we've missed you."

Damon puts fingers to the bridge of his nose and drinks, and drinks.

"You've been gone a lot," Caroline prompts. "We hardly ever see you anymore."

He sets down his glass with an empty clunk. Stefan refills. He points his pointiest finger at the two of them. "High school," Damon reminds. "You're in high school, need I remind you. I'm not. Don't you have a dance to be planning that will go horribly wrong?"

Caroline narrows her eyes like she's been taking lessons from Elena. "Since you brought it up, way to bail on the Summer Solstice Salsa Spectacular," she says. "I had you slotted to chaperone ages ago and sent you like five texts at least." Stefan starts shaking his head, minutely, but she rolls ever on: "Don't you remember, you signed last year with Mr. Salt-" She tries to bite it back on her pretty tongue, but still gets out half the name. "Oh. Oh. I - eek -"

"Mr. Salt," says Damon, giving them a brilliant smile, helping himself to ever more bourbon, "Don't know him. Sounds tasty." He takes pity and half the glass down. "But you're right, Ric and I had a thing for the school dances. Call it a certain nostalgia." Now they're looking too guilty; the intervention isn't working at all. Damon doesn't have time for this, either.

He takes a page from Kate's book. "Tell me about you crazy kids," he says. "It has been a while."

"We're good," they say as one, then share shy, secret smiles about it. They way it should be. Damon almost smiles again too. Only he doesn't have time for this.

Still, he listens to the happy tales of how Stefan's bloodlust has abated under Caroline's sure hand, how Caroline is rejoicing in her vampiric depths with Stefan as her soulful guide. They go hiking under the stars together, and sit front-row at fashion shows in Paris.

It's all very delightful. He keeps toasting them and they keep talking about the things they've done until they forget why they asked him there at all.

Bonnie and Jeremy come at him, but are too busy arguing and eye-fucking each other to make much of their mission.

"I don't think you should-" Jeremy's saying, while Bonnie waves hands in a possibly dangerous configuration and says, "I don't know what you think you're up to, Damon-"

"I still don't trust that professor guy," Jeremy says, as though taking up an earlier conversation thread. They're talking at him, over him. Bonnie, at his back, for once has Damon's back: "You're wrong about him, Jer. Professor Shane wouldn't do anything wrong. He helped me with my magic. He's an old friend of the family-"

"Yeah, but we don't know-" and they battle on around him, trading magical theories and meaningful glances, until Damon finds a way out through the haze of sexual frustration and doesn't excuse himself, makes a break for it.

"I haven't seen Alaric in a while," says Jeremy, another day. "Do you think he's had to go?"

People have nearly stopped hesitating around him when they say the word 'Alaric.' He can't decide if that's good or bad. They don't stop looking at him when they say it, though.

Damon gives no reaction. "No," he says. "I think he's trying to send a pissy message."

Jeremy thinks about this. "Are you gonna tell me what you're planning? Maybe I could help."

"Maybe there could be a zombie apocalypse tonight and none of this will matter tomorrow," Damon suggests.

"You can be a real dick, you know," Jeremy says hotly. "Sometimes I wonder what Ric even saw in you."

Damon freezes, and Jeremy looks like he feels terrible about the words as soon as they're made; his expression goes all kicked puppy, and he opens his mouth to take it back.

Damon moves, slings an arm around his shoulder, gets them walking toward the Grill, so he doesn't have to see the sad eyes.

"You and me both, kid," he tells Jeremy. "You and me both. I never stop wondering."

Elijah's touch is cool on the back of his neck.

"You were moaning in your sleep," he says, wearing half a sheet and nothing else quite gloriously. His hair is tousled from the pillow and their earlier activities. "Not in a good way, by its sound."

Damon shifts to look at him. "Sorry." Elijah just stares back on a level, so he keeps talking. "I have bad dreams."

It sounds stupid, so young. But Elijah nods, reaching up to touch his cheek, smoothing a thumb over his mouth. The pad of his thumb is soft and firm as the rest of him.

"So do I," says Elijah.

And Damon nods back at him, and they understand, and then Elijah is flowing across the bed and over him, Elijah bending to kiss at the hinge of his jaw. "Often I prefer not to sleep at all," he tells Damon, sounding almost fond about it. "Once I earned the nickname the night-bird of Dresden."

That shouldn't necessarily evoke the image of Elijah bound up in colorful latex like a superhero, but Damon can't help it. His mind goes there, takes a while meandering back. Then he has to picture Elijah in ancient dress wandering cobbled streets with a lantern in hand, billowing cloak and high black boots and a riding crop and -

"Do you know any tricks?" Damon asks, and Elijah turns his head to show him his arched eyebrow. "For staying awake. I could use them."

Elijah is easing between his thighs. "I know a great many tricks, Damon," says Elijah, "and other things," with the modesty of the statement of fact that it is. He draws Damon's wrists up over his head and pins them lightly together - lightly, and with the weight of centuries. His lips are at Damon's throat, his fanged teeth are. "What would you like to learn first?"

Damon dreams of the first time with Alaric.

They had moved past hooking up being a shock thing that came with hunting, were pretty well and past that. It was one of the golden times, when neither of them had nearly died in a week or two, Stefan and Elena were lovey-dovey, and they'd hit their stride of drinking, friending, tracking and screwing.

It was still the beginning, before he and Ric would've said they were really together, even though they sorta were; but anyway it was getting amicable and regular, and it was always good, and Damon knew he liked it. It was long before whispered confessions and holding onto each other every night and knowing that Alaric's arms were home and then so much more blood and death and loss, it was before all of that.

It was just a regular night, in Damon's bedroom because Stefan and Elena were in the library, and they were getting naked fast, riled up from a good day with a satisfyingly nonfatal fight at the end of it.

There was some hot, messy kissing, and then Damon pushed Alaric down on the big bed, putting Ric's hand around his cock and telling him to stroke, while Damon watched and knelt and opened himself up.

He got ready to ride him, staring lust-fogged at Alaric getting hard under his own grip, and he was talking throughout, recapping the day.

"That was an awesome move, did I mention, with the surprise crossbow majig? They never even saw that you had it. Hell, I didn't see that you had it. And also that right hook, you know which one, the look on the bastard's face when you connected was-"

"Damon," said Alaric, "I think you should fuck me."

Damon slid him a glance, coy. "I'm pretty sure that's what we're doing. I'm getting to that in a moment."

"No," said Alaric, kicking out a leg. Then he said, "Come on."

They'd done quite a lot of fucking by then, Alaric doing him every which way from Sunday, and it'd all been pretty fucking spectacular, but they hadn't done that. An easy call after Alaric said shortly once that he never had, and nothing about it again, which was just fine.

Some guys didn't swing that way, and he was just glad that Alaric was swinging in his direction at all. Ric was open enough about using his mouth and everything else: he never shied from exploring Damon's body, or letting Damon explore his. It hadn't seemed to be a wrongful thing to Alaric, Damon thought, he was just disinterested. Damon liked being fucked enough for the both of them, he thought, and it was just fine. It was great, really.

But looking at Alaric then, reading between the lines he'd come to memorize, Damon knew it hadn't been disinterest, only uncertainty. In himself, and Damon, in the both of them, maybe, Alaric at the start still had a kind of incredulous expression that they were happening at all; but that night it wasn't there anymore. Alaric looked certain, sure, and even better, he looked like he wanted it.

So Damon had smiled crookedly to hide that he was abruptly, incongruously nervous - Damon Salvatore, nervous - and said, "Yeah?"

"Yeah," said Ric. His hand kept moving, and they couldn't stop staring at each other. "You want me like that?"

"Very much." Damon was honest about it. Ric preferred when he was honest, he'd found.

"Cool," said Ric. "Let's do this."

Like he'd said three hours ago when they were trekking through grim woods after bad vampires. They started laughing about it immediately. Then Damon kissed him.

"What changed your mind?" Damon asked, tugging Alaric's excellent body closer across the sheets, grabbing, touching, stroking, scratching, just going to town because he could, he had a signed permission slip.

"Didn't change it," said Alaric, spreading strongly muscled thighs and pulling knees up to his chest like that was no big deal. "I made up my mind."

"Ah," said Damon. "Do share with the class."

He was so careful sliding the first slick finger into Alaric, he's never been more careful. Never in his long life about anything. He started sweating with the effort to make the slow, cautious motion of his hand opening up Alaric into the singular most well-maneuvered and delicate operation on Earth. It was weird, considering how they usually went quick and dirty about most things, tore into each other, everything so fast. They never had enough time.

But this was different, and he wanted it to be good, he wanted Alaric to keep wanting this more than he could remember wanting anything for a great while, and that was strange, and he was scared, and buoyant.

Alaric opened up so beautifully, for him, to him, reveling in the unknown, as always. As always, he was frank, even with Damon's fingers in deep and his head shoved into the closest pillow. His mouth was open, jaw slack, but after a while he swallowed and said, "I trust you, Damon. God help me, but I do. You've more than earned it. I trust you with my life, my deaths; after that this seems like a little thing."

Damon had kissed him kind of helplessly, for once not in possession of a ready response.

He wanted to say I trust you too but that was evident enough. Alaric was practically his only friend, his best friend, and he knew how hesitant Damon was to engage with others but how fast he was to care when he did. Alaric knew that Damon did nothing by half-measures, unlike most vampires and humans. He either trusted or he didn't. He killed, or he saved. He hated or he loved.

Damon wanted to say I've wanted to do this with you since the first time I saw you sitting at the bar, and every time I've seen you afterward. He had a lot to say.

But he hadn't known what to say, so he smirked. He let his eyes do the real talking, and he said, "It's not so little."

And Alaric, bless him, only grinned at his bravado, and reached up to yank him down; it was serious business but they hadn't been so serious, then. Damon lined himself up when they were ready, pushed into Alaric, who was warm and wet and waiting by then. More than wanting.

Still, he went slow. Took them so slow. Slid in by barest increments. The restraint was worth the change of Alaric's face. When he was all the way in, when they fit -

Damon had been with a lot of people, and people who could be classified as other things, been screwed and screwed, but he hadn't - it hadn't ever been like that. He bottomed out just when Alaric started to strain and groan against him, cradled in taut thighs, Alaric's legs wrapping tightly around him.

Damon was held, Damon just fit, and it was nothing like he had ever felt before or expected to feel. He blinked down at Ric spread beneath him, Ric showing equal astonishment, couldn't move as of yet, could only keep himself there feeling how their bodies seemed to slot together exactly.

"Whoa," allowed Ric, breathing through bared teeth, looking a little starry-eyed about it too. Still Damon wouldn't move. "You gotta go for it," said Ric.

After that he did. He thrust deep, cock harder than it had ever been. Could have stayed like that forever. At first he was slow and careful, like he'd planned, rocking into and against Alaric, like for once they had all the time in the world; kissing him with plenty of lazy tongue to get the point across. But Alaric had taken him so well, adjusted fast enough to what Damon would give him, that his control hard started to slip towards the end.

Really, you try maintaining self-control when Alaric Saltzman is wrapped naked around you and begging you for it. Try it, really.

So it had gotten rougher and harder, the way they both liked, until Damon was driving himself relentlessly, happy to die that way, and Alaric was riding back on him, making it a challenge; and it was already probably the best sex of his existence when Alaric had tilted his head, shown a lot of neck. His pulse was fluttering through too many veins.

"Do it," said Ric, and when Damon didn't, "Please, I want you to-"

And it was the "please," rare, though they were friendly enough those days, that pushed him over. So maybe Ric had some bizarro vampire fetish, that would make sense for a hunter actually, or maybe it was just a thing that seemed right to do, or maybe it was meant for Damon, but it pushed him over the edge.

He let his fangs come out, let them sink into Alaric, low on the shoulder, while he came in him; did both things at the same time, and the earth moved to celebrate. His hand, fisting on Alaric's cock, felt him jerk with the tripled sensation, felt him spurt hot and wet across their bellies while Damon drank. Alaric's blood was a fine vintage, with a taste of wood and smoke, like their best bourbon, and he let Damon have his fill until every inch of him, inside and out, was thrumming with Alaric.

Best sex, best drink of his life, in a night. Alaric would be the death of him, he thought.

When he pulled back, when he pulled out, he had tried to offer a drop of his blood. The impression of his teeth was red below Alaric's collarbone.

But it would hide under a t-shirt. "Nevermind," said Ric, turning with a yawn from the blood, levering himself up to fluff the pillow with hearty thwacks and then settle in comfortably, solidly. He looked drained and thrilled, and Damon was not shaking.

"Want the scar," he said. "It's like a badge, you know? Earned it."

More cautiously than he'd started to fuck him, Damon slipped in between the sheets beside him while Alaric waxed lyrical, sleepily, about the badges, codes and ethics of the Boy Scouts of America. This was new, too. Alaric had always left. Or if Damon was at the Gilberts', Damon was supposed to drop conveniently out the window.

He tried to arrange his limbs without disturbing the mattress, afraid that Ric might scare and remember he was supposed to be sleeping somewhere else.

"The Scout's rule of law," Ric was saying, more like reciting, "which every Scout must know by heart, is to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent, in precisely that order."

"Well," said Damon, thinking about it, "That explains you."

He's still talking while Damon let himself move across the bed, lay himself down next to Alaric, alongside the living furnace of his body.

"I believe in all of those virtues, true," said Ric, circumspect. "They get you young. But I always found the order of the oath fascinating. Later, I found it smart. It's more important, say, to be loyal, than obedient. It's better to be friendly first than to be brave. Being kind comes far before being reverent."

"I can't believe I get to say this and it's true," Damon said. "You are such a fucking boy scout."

"In the morning," said Alaric, "I'll show you why I was the youngest in my troop to earn the knot and rope-tying badge."

"Promises, promises," said Damon, and then he'd...snuggled up. He was past caring, he told himself, he didn't care, it was the thing to do. He brought himself in flush against Alaric's back, and put up a hand to rest on his hip, and let his head tilt so that his lips brushed the juncture of Alaric's spine. Best, Ric relaxed into it like it wasn't new, like it was only one more adventurous unknown. He liked that kind of thing.

Before they fell asleep together - and after that they never stopped sleeping together - Ric had said, "Thanks for being such a gentleman, Damon." Maybe he felt how Damon's muscles tensed up or maybe he didn't, because he was finishing his sentence: "Appreciate it."

"Anytime," said Damon, meaning it. Breathing out.

He dreams all of it, hazy at the seams. He wakes up sweating, not groaning. There's no Elijah there. There isn't even a Shane. He's all alone with the memory of what they were, and he's decided.

Damon gets a text from Kate: You missed your appointment. Loser.

He manages a smile but doesn't respond right away. Later in the day, she sends, I feel like I should be concerned, but I don't know why. I can't find my notes. Why did I spell out 'Elijah' in gold nail-polish on the bathroom wall

That's an interesting mystery, he texts around 10pm. You should write a book about it. I'll write the forward.

I hate you, his therapist promptly replies. Same time, next week?

I'll be early, Damon promises. And I'll bring whiskey.

They lie amidst an altar of Alaric's things. All of his stuff is here.

They're in his old apartment, surrounded by Alaric: his clothes and accessories and shoes and weaponry. His cooking-pots and his watches and his laptop. His HTC smartphone, outdated now. Piles of his soft t-shirts, his casual button-downs and jeans and khakis and sportcoats for parent-teacher conferences. A heap of boxers that Damon did not roll around in, because that would be weird.

His amassed arsenal, considerable: most of it bequeathed to Damon by default, with the borrowed pieces from Elena and Jeremy.

Keen edges of well-kept axes and daggers and too-sharp stakes. Bows and crossbows, maces that look medieval. When he dug into Ric's stashes, he emerged with a few instruments that even astonished Damon. Nevertheless, all of it is here, arrayed. His ring is here, the beautiful, awful thing.

They're positioned by the pillars of furniture Alaric picked out. Alaric's artwork watches from the walls. His combs, his lotions, his dumb scented bodyspray that Damon used to hide because he preferred the earthy smell of him. Bottles and bottles of bourbon. All of him is everywhere.

Candles are, too, and various altars set up in succession, each increasingly complicated. On the bed, which is considerably bloody, Damon is smiling.

It's worth it, it's worth all of it, because the mouth underneath his curves just so, Alaric's mouth against his, at last.

"Hey," says Damon.

He holds on tight. He doesn't let go.

Alaric hasn't had a body in a long while and even though it's a strange body for a little while he relents: lets himself be touched, and worshiped, and loved, by Damon above him; and Damon can't stop laughing, and kissing him again and again, and saying, "Tell me more."

"I said, you shouldn't be doing this, Damon. I've been trying to tell you. It's too dangerous-"

"More. Keep chastising."

"I'm serious. For every minute I'm over here with you, he's loose on the Other Side. You know you don't trust him. You can't trust his intentions, what he's doing there, whatever it is he's planning-"

"I don't care," says Damon. "When are people going to understand that I. Don't. Care. Ric, I love you, and I don't give a goddamned. I'm not playing Clue tonight."

"You should," says Alaric, with Shane's face and not. "You're the one who has to live with any bodies he leaves in the conservatory. But I get to worry about it, too."

"Tell me about not being a ghost," says Damon, mouthing at his neck, too excited. "Tell me more, Alaric."

It feels so good to say the name. His eyes and throat hurt in conjunction.

"You're a fool for letting that guy piggy-back onto the Other Side." The lovely face he loves, Alaric's, draws itself up in consternation. "You know I can't stay. It's a ritual, short-lived."

"I know what I signed up for," Damon says, hand to heart, as though Alaric would doubt him. "You've neglected to mention that you're here, talking to me, with a body and everything, and how mind-blowingly awesome that is. And the body's not bad. Give me some credit."

The face below him does his favorite thing, Alaric's concerned brow-knit. Damon wants to scream and shout and dance and dash about, and hide, and also never leave this place, ever, because of the way the face he watches knits its brow and says, "But I shouldn't be here."

"I don't go by hocus-pocus laws of nature," Damon says. "Odds are always stacked with those anyway." He draws a line down the round of cheek, of strong jaw; Shane's never looked more gorgeous, because his full lips are pursed like Alaric's, when Ric is thinking too hard. "Here is the only place that you should be."

"Damon," says Alaric, and he takes a deep breath to keep berating him about responsibilities and realities; then he closes his eyes and opens them, and he lets out all the air. "I missed you, too."

Alaric is one of the most selfless people he's ever known, but he's also, incurably, achingly human. That's the problem and the reward.

There are soft dented spots in his shiny armor; he has unhealthy vices and petty moments, makes terribly bad decisions, mostly concerning drinking and romantic life partners; he has a trigger temper and a mean, sneaky left hook and his favorite book is still My Side of the Mountain. He's human, and he's been dead, and now for a little while he isn't, after a fashion. Ric isn't a saint. It gets to him.

"You shouldn't have done all of this for me," he says gravely. "You know I would have told you not to. Would have tried to stop you."

"All the more reason," says Damon. His heart hasn't stopped beating furiously against his ribcage since Ric came back. It's strange and silent and dreamlike around them, and though it had been raining he can't feel the wind from the open window anymore, and the candles seem suspended, not giving off smoke or heat.

He knows he isn't dreaming because he would have made Shane's face into Alaric's face if he could. But the mind in the body is more than enough.

"Ric, I know I'm fucking with the universe here, I know there will be prices to pay and pounds of flesh, but I don't care. All I've wanted since you left was to be back here like this, and I don't care. I don't, I can't. I've spent so long thinking about everyone else, and I can't do it anymore. Not right now. This is all I've wanted, this is all I want. Just. Please." Damon gathers the warm, lithe body in his arms. "Just please stay with me a while."

"Damon." Ric's hand strokes assuringly down his shoulder, his arm. Smooths down the panic. "I'll stay for a little, since you got me here. I'll stay all that I can."

Alaric isn't a saint. Alaric wants him, Alaric adores him, in maybe equal measure, maybe more. Damon doesn't think it can be very fun hanging around as a ghost, watching him sloppily drink all their bourbon, but Ric had stayed.

Tears had leaked from the sides of Alaric's eyes at the thought of leaving. Of leaving Damon.

But Alaric can't agree to the unquantifiable voodoos, can't let himself, so Damon does it for both of them. "You're here," he agrees, he murmurs, into the curve of Alaric's neck. "I earned you, like a badge."

"Like a badge," says Alaric. "What is my merit?"

"Your everything," says Damon. They're back in the rhythm of words easily enough, like Ric hadn't ever gone, though they're considerably more sappy and honest about it. They never had enough time but now there's no time. They're out of time.

"I'm sorry," says Damon, since he never knows if they're at the end, if he'll get another minute, or twenty, or none. "I'm so sorry."

Shane's doe eyes - now Alaric's - go much too big, and are too challenging. "For what now?"

"It was my fault," says Damon. Everything he's been wanting to say, everything he says aloud sometimes to an imagined invisible Alaric or to Alaric's headstone, hoping he might hear. Maybe he's heard it all before.

"I should have found a way to save you, and I didn't. I couldn't save you, I couldn't even save Elena the way you would have wanted. I failed you both." His throat is too thick and he swallows hard. "Sometimes I wish you'd never met me."

"Well, that makes one of us," says Alaric. He works Shane's jaw, like he's trying to get a feel for it, for how to make it look his own special brand of stubborn. He takes a moment, and then he says, "Damon, we never really talked all that much about what a fuck-up I was before we got together. Before we met. You knew a lot about me, sure, but it's human nature to hide our worst inclinations. I was obsessed with Isobel and revenge and violence, sick with betrayal and self-pity, and most of my nights ended in black-outs. It was easier to fall down with a bottle than to fall asleep as myself."

Damon starts to say something, but Alaric shakes his head. "Worse than being obsessed, I was aimless. I had nothing that was mine. I was a listless teacher - not hard in a town where no cares for school much. Jenna was a great friend, but we knew pretty fast we weren't gonna go Brady Bunch. Then I was a drunk guy crashing on my mystical students' couch.

Only by then something else had been happening. You'd been happening. And after that you started to happen more and more. We stopped pretending we weren't together. We went for it, and it was fantastic. I mean, yeah we fought and had our issues, but we always got through it, didn't we. My god, we were good. And I became the opposite of aimless. We were a team, we had missions and purpose. We drank ourselves silly, but usually we deserved it. Anyway we tempered each other.

We worked hard, and a family built up around us, on our foundations. We're the ones who put them down. Things changed. We acknowledged we were in love. I let you drink my blood and you modeled your "great-great-uncle's" Confederate Army uniform for my U.S. History class. Stuff like that. We had sex most days and almost every night. And every day when I was with you, even if we were facing a psychotic rampaging menace, I was excited to wake up."

Damon's throat is definitely too tight, he can't even swallow now, or make words.

Alaric's still speaking, still watching him closely with big, foreign eyes while he talks. "So you don't get it, even after all this time. The way it ended was unfortunate, yeah: I became the psychotic rampaging menace, it was my turn in town, and it wasn't your fault. You did what you could - you were the only one not to question my wishes - and you stayed with me when I should have died." He pauses, thinking about it. "When I did die. It wasn't much of me, thereafter."

He shivers, and Damon above him shivers, and they try to shake the tomb off. "Still you don't get it. You were the one who saved me in the first place, Damon. Rescued me from myself, gave me back my life, offered me a life I never dreamed of having but loved to live." He tilts to kiss a cool line up the column of Damon's throat. "I guess that's why I suck so much at being dead."

Alaric kisses until he finds Damon's mouth and then he kisses him, sweet and slow. "I love you," Damon says, when they draw back minutely, because it's all that he knows how to say.

"Feeling's mutual." Alaric smiles against his lips like he's tasted something wonderful. Then he says it, because there's never enough time. "I love you, too."

That's how they'd done it the first time. It was the Fourth of July, a boisterous, ranging night out with the kids with everyone in rare high spirits. Mystic Falls did Independence Day like nobody's business, like they needed to prove their Americana hardcore after the divisions of Damon's day. The town also really, really liked festivals. And carnivals.

It'd been a big, noisy, lit-up one that summer. Elena won a floppy Uncle Sam's top hat at the ring-toss and set it determinedly on Alaric's head at an angle. Ric wore the hat around for the rest of the night like it was no big deal, posing for cell-phone pictures with students.

"You're never gonna live this down," Damon warned him, drinking bourbon from a flask with an eagle on it. He did patriotism, too. "You're going to be immortalized on Facebook forever."

Ric just raised his eyebrows under the wide red, white and blue-striped brim. "I love my country, Damon," he said very seriously, while his lips fought off a grin.

But the word had caught between them. Snagged. It had started doing that. They'd reached the very serious plateau of relationship where it either meant saying three little words or most decidedly not saying them.

They'd reached the point where it felt awkward to even use the phrase at all, when saying "I love this hamburger" or "I love this song" made them flinch and hide their flinches. Hyperbole was practically off-limits, and if Americans love anything more than hamburgers it's hyperbole.

Then the fireworks had gone off over the lake, and Damon had turned away. He didn't like them. Never did. Knew enough about rockets' red glare and real bombs bursting in air. What they did to men when they fell.

He closed his eyes and he could still see the colors flashing against his eyelids. Alaric's warm, strong arm came up and settled around his shoulders, holding onto him while the world exploded. Damon leaned into him, letting Alaric be his shield, and the noise faded with his ear to Alaric's neck, listening to his steady pulse instead, and the colors receded when he pressed his forehead against Alaric's skin.

"I love you," Alaric told him then, and Damon had opened his eyes.

"Feeling's mutual," he said without a hint of hesitation, only swagger and fear and relief and victory, and after so long thinking about it turned out he never really had to think about it at all

They kiss again, in the bloodied bed that had once been Alaric's, that they had often shared. And even though it's not Alaric's mouth, quite, not exactly quite right, it's a kiss Damon's wanted and worked towards for many months now, thought about through sleepless nights and restless dreams. Alaric alive and kissing him, still in love with Damon loving him back.

When they pull away, Alaric's expression resets to troubled. "I don't have long. I can't keep staying here, letting him be over there. You know I can't. And this kind of magic is unstable at best." He thumbs the frown-lines gathering around Damon's mouth. Arches a playful brow, nearly waggles it. "So don't you think you should hurry up and fuck me already?"

Damon's been waiting to hear Alaric say that as long as he has pined for kisses and soulful declarations. "Yes," he says. "But we aren't going to hurry." So they don't.

It's good, it's better even than he's imagined it could be again, and he's imagined a lot. He buries himself in Alaric-as-Shane, and says many low murmured things, like "I missed you" and "you feel so good" and "God, Alaric," and "Ric, Ric, and "fuck" a lot and "so fucking good" and "I love you, I love you, I love you," words following the motion of his body. Alaric holds on, and takes all of him, and goes with him, back to what they were, for a little while.

They lie tangled up together, breathing each other's air, sharing sweat.

Damon traces out the planes of the face below him, wishing it were another face, knowing it is. He's never felt more happy, or sad, or glad, or bad, and the twisted-up emotions are a complicated knot in his chest, taking away the capacity for speech. Luckily, Ric could - can - be counted on for commentary when Damon's overwhelmed.

On the end of a long speech about things Damon should really think about getting up to, approaches to Elena and Jeremy, good advice about Stefan and Caroline, tips for buttering up Liz and the Mayor, warnings for Bonnie, suggestions for Donovan's further training, all the practical stuff - after that, Alaric looks at him from under long lashes.

"Promise me you'll take what he's offering, Damon," he says.

Damon raises an eyebrow. "Who? Shane?"

"No," says Alaric.

"Please don't." Damon isn't sobbing. Ruggedly broody centuries-old vampires don't sob. But his throat catches and his stomach turns and his eyes are burning.

"It's time now." Alaric presses a kiss to his temple. "I have to go."

"Please," Damon starts again, but he can tell by the expression on Alaric's face that the time is really now. No more minutes. Maybe not ever again.

So he doesn't spend them arguing. "Tell me, Ric," he says instead. "When I die - for good - will I get a chance to be with you again?"

The question seems to catch him half off-guard. Alaric blinks, gets the look of thinking to hard. Thinks about it too hard. Then says, with a sigh, "I don't know. They don't give us a manual over here." He lets his hand palm Damon's cheek. "Honestly, being dead's as confusing as being alive. I hope it'll be a long while for you, anyway."

"But what do you think?" Damon isn't wheedling. He has to know what Alaric's considered.

All the stubborn, headstrong, resilient Saltzman lines come out, even on Shane's features.

"I know that I'll be waiting," says Alaric.

Damon is holding onto Alaric when he goes away again, like he has so many times before.

In the ruined bed, Shane is gasping, writhing. Soon enough he's smirking, looking like a cat with a canary stuck between white teeth. He stretches, catlike.

"Guess you could bring yourself to fuck me after all," he says, smug. Other than the tone, his face is blank and pretty and dangerous, signifying nothing, and all of Alaric is gone from it.

"No," says Damon.

The professor sees himself out, because Damon turns over and sleeps the deepest sleep he's ever slept.

He brings the bourbon like he said he would. Kate has two proper whiskey glasses waiting.

They drink while he tells her about it. She sips slightly, mindful of being on the job, though she sighs at that.

"Well," says Kate, when he's done, "That's about the most fucked-up fucking thing I've ever heard."

"That's why I pay you the big bucks," Damon says, toasting her with his glass, unconcerned. "You aren't cheap. Never to me."

She gives him the eye. "Don't change the subject, Romeo. It's totally fucked up, but it's also fucking romantic. We're talking epic. You summoned your dead boyfriend across the veil so that you could have sex with him and work out your issues and hopefully let him go. Really, I should be proud, if it weren't so fucked-up. Also a touch creepy."

He shrugs. "I've been called worse. I can live with it."

Kate sets her glass aside, swaps for pen and paper. Soon she's scrawling. "That's certainly good to hear. You, talking about living, for once. Not talking about the dead."

Damon drinks for them both. When he doesn't volunteer new information, Kate says, "Well, can you, Damon? Do you think you can start to let him go?"

"I never will, exactly," Damon says, ignoring her quickly hitched eyebrow. "I don't want to. But, yeah, I guess I got some closure that I needed, said some things I wanted to say. Heard some stuff I needed to hear. I don't - I don't need to get over Alaric, I don't think I can, or should. He kept me good and I think I'll keep that."

He's surprised to discover that he's holding his breath, and lets it go. "But I got to have a thing most people who've loved and lost could only dream about. I can't ask more than that. And I know what he wants for me now, know the things he thinks I should do. It isn't just conjecture anymore."

Kate waits. Damon smooths the softly worn leather of the chair under his fingertips, looks up at her while he says it. "Alaric wants me to live."

"He always was my favorite," says Kate. They lean across the space of the room toward each other, and they clink glasses, toasting Alaric.

"So," says Damon, once that's done, and he flings out arms and legs dramatically in a sprawl, puts his head back, imperious, "Fix me. You've done a good enough job so far, but we haven't even cracked a good number of my primary issues yet. Have I ever told you about my father?"

Kate narrows her eyes, speculative, looking a bit too much like Elena, or Katherine. But she's smiling at him, rare and real.

"I think we're going to need a bigger bottle," she says.

When Damon is tying on his scarf, his belly warm with liquid, Kate says, "I sold a short story. I made you upright but roguish, devilishly handsome but painfully considerate. You wear a fedora."

Damon is startled into a laugh. "Hey, congratulations. Why didn't you tell me? We would have had a cheers, and drank more."

"While I was researching my inexplicable obsession with vampires," Kate goes on, "I learned a lot of useful information. Tricks to have up one's sleeve." She holds up a wrist, and her long-sleeved shirt slips down to show the links of an antique silver bracelet. Even at a distance, when the fabric peels back, Damon can smell the vervain.

"I'm full of it, too," says Kate, mildly, at Damon's nod. "In more ways than one. Which means that today, and from this day forward, I'm not going to forget our sessions. It means I finally know what we're up against, you and me, and if you're serious about working through the problems that have caught you up in the past, that we can really get to work."

Damon doesn't say anything. He doesn't snap her neck, either. He nods once more, holding her gaze, and on his way out he tips an imaginary fedora.

He doesn't know what Shane did on the Other Side, or what he plans to do. Even after all this time, the guy is unreadable, a slammed book.

The difference is that Damon cares. He's watching, and waiting, and he'll be ready.

"I'm sorry," says Elena in the kitchen, when Damon brings back Alaric's stuff, no huge harm or foul. "I was a real bitch."

"No harm done," says Damon, truthful enough. They smile at each other. Past the kitchen door, their friends are gathered.

Matt is sharing out Elena's famous spinach dip, working the room with a server's grace to ensure everyone gets a bite. They watch Matt stop by Tyler and Jeremy and Bonnie, crammed too tight into a love-seat. All make a grab for bread and gooey cheese dip. On the couch, Stefan and Caroline decline, too busy being gooey with each other.

Elena is smiling, watching. She puts a hand on the open bag of Ric's deadly contraband, gripping a stake fondly, if such a thing could be fondly gripped, then putting it back. "What do you think he'd say about us now?"

"I think he'd be happy that we're happy," Damon says. "He was always happier, then."

Elena gives him a searching look. "You know, Ric used to say how lucky he was to have you around, and I'd tell him he was crazy."

Damon gives her a one-armed hug as Matt approaches with the spinach dip. "It was probably a little bit of both," he tells Elena.

She shakes her head. "He was right. But now it's the rest of us who are lucky."

"Don't go getting emotional on me, Gilbert, you vicious creature of the night," says Damon, but he makes the hug two-armed nonetheless.

There's a knock on the door. It's soft, but Damon hears it.

If he's honest, he's been waiting for it.

When it sounds he takes a while moving to the door. It's early, and the sun is out and burning up high, the sky too blue and free of clouds. When he opens the door, Damon's instinct is to shade his eyes against the brightness, but he doesn't.

Elijah is in an impeccably cut suit, every thread in place as though he has just absconded from the tailor's.

"Hi," he says, when Damon opens the door. He stands golden in a patch of sunlight.

"Hi," says Damon. He looks at Elijah, illuminated. It feels as though suddenly Ric is close, is with him while he says and does these things, that Alaric is nodding, would have nodded.

Elijah indicates the space between them. "May I?" he asks.

And Damon nods.

He steps back, to let Elijah in.