Three Months Later

It wasn't easy. There was no denying that. It had taken nearly a week to convince the Bennett witch to make Suze a daylight ring, and in that time Stefan and Damon had been doing their best to help Suze get under control.

She was a Ripper. When they'd first taken her around humans they'd both had to restrain her before quickly escorting her away. Now she'd adjusted to being around very small crowds.

She wouldn't ever be able to feed from people without someone there to pull her back. But Suze had adjusted fairly well to blood bags.

Damon was actually the problem the last couple of weeks.

It wasn't his hunting that was causing his recent issues - it was that he didn't know how to act around Suze anymore. They were together almost constantly now instead of seeing each other a couple times a week. They fought all the fucking time now that they were cohabitating. Suze's pettiness and sarcasm had been heightened, to everyone's dread.

But the thing was, they were forced to make up pretty soon after their fights since they lived together. And it wasn't only bad qualities that had been enhanced – Suze's unwavering care for those she liked and her protectiveness had as well.

Damon had thought that he and Suze knew everything about each other, or at least almost everything. But now most nights ended with the two of them laying down on opposite sides of his bed while facing each other. They stayed up whispering about their sincere thoughts in between the rambling and fun conversations they'd always had that had made him first joke about being 'platonic soulmates'. That joke was now something he regretted immensely.

And – fuck, fuck, fuck. Damon wanted to hate Suze.

Suze was his best friend. His only real friend in the century and a half he'd been alive. And he knew it was the same for her, especially now that she was isolated from her parents and older brother. Suze was depending on him, and trusting him to help her. And Damon had gone and fucked everything up.

He hadn't even realized what happened at first. When he'd met Katherine he was immediately drawn to her and besotted. But one day as Suze was tossing blackberries in the air and trying to see if she could catch them between the points of her fangs he wanted to wrap his arms around her and just hold her. Suze didn't need protecting, but he still wanted to be the one to keep her safe – he wanted to be the reason she was happy.

Damon wanted to reach inside of himself and claw his feelings out. Because he had loved Suze for almost a year, but for the last two weeks Damon had been trying to deal with the fact that he was in love with Suzanne Elizabeth Sinclair.


Suzanne stared at the microwave and struggled not to pull it open. There was twenty seconds left on the timer. She could keep her shit together for twenty seconds.

Ten seconds later, she yanked the mug of blood out, spilling a bit over the side, and started chugging it. It was a touch too cold and would have been perfect after another ten seconds of being warmed, but fuck it, she was hungry.

She revised her internal monologue to "fuck Damon" when he snorted from where he sat at the kitchen table and mockingly said, "Behold the paradigm of patience, ladies and gentlemen."

Without bothering to open her eyes, which Suzanne had closed in satisfaction, she gave him the finger. Damon laughed in response and when she finished her drink she turned to him to ask, "Have you ever accidentally gone in public with the blood-equivalent of a milk mustache?"

He raised an eyebrow and gave her a look in response that clearly conveyed his opinion on the idiocy of her question. Damon and his stupid fucking eyes had been causing problems.

Suzanne was in love with Damon, she'd known that for about a month. Which really fucking sucked. It had taken a while to assign a name to what she'd been feeling, and it was only the idiotic thought – I want to kiss his face – that made her realize what was going on. Of course she'd immediately fled the house, which ended up being a bad idea when she came across two teenagers in the woods making out. Suzanne had hidden the bodies, and she was fairly sure that Damon and Stefan never knew what had happened.

Christ, she barely knew what had happened. The loss of control was infuriating. Sure, Suzanne had never really had her shit together, but that was because of her own stupid decisions. Suddenly losing her senses – similar to a night of blacking out from booze, actually – only to wake up with dead bodies in front of her was terrifying.

Again, she knew she was a horrible person for only being terrified about what was happening to herself instead of the people she had fucking killed. When she was human Suzanne had always joked that she was a sociopath, but now the description hit a little too close to home. Some of her good qualities seeped into her actions, but extremely possessive care for her friends and amusement at the world probably didn't make up for the sudden influx of cruelty and disregard for everyone she didn't like or know.

Suzanne was honestly happy just spending time with Damon and joking around the way they always had. But there had been a few times – usually when they were both really drunk – that his eyes had looked soft and she'd nearly blurted it out.

The bigger issue was that she knew Damon. He'd freak out and panic and convince himself that he had to shut her out. Suzanne was actually completely okay with him not loving her in the same way. After all, he was still one of the most important people in her life and she treasured that. Now she had forever to get over it, and she was no Bella Swan. Suzanne hadn't ever been in love, but she was sure that she could fall out of it in the next few months. Maybe her love for Damon had been one of the things that had become exaggerated after she had turned.

But his stupid. Fucking. Eyes.

Damon's ridiculously pretty face sometimes made her think that there was a chance that he might like her as more than a friend, too. Of course he'd always been attractive, but it didn't phase her. Suzanne had always found that when you became close to someone you sort of forgot what they looked like, whether they were hot or not. That risk-reward ratio of vomiting her feelings, however, was fucking awful. Suzanne wasn't going to jeopardize their friendship unless she was more than 87% sure that Damon might feel the same.

If she told him it might suck for her, and it would taint the only real friendship Damon had in his life. It wouldn't be fair to either of them.

Yeah, there were… moments. But then again, the two of them had always been weirdly in sync, even when her feelings had been really, truly platonic up until a month ago. So Suzanne was more than happy to continue loving him and being the best friend he deserved.