Partners

Chapter Four

A/N – Hello my lovely friends! I am so so sorry about the time between updates but sometimes life just gets in the way, oh why must we live in reality? Anyway, have you seen the new episode?! That reunion! I actually got up out of my seat and did a little dance! It has renewed a fire in me about these two, it never went away but now that he is back (and he better be back for a while) it is like I have a thousand ideas for them! Anyway the story, this is the second to last chapter for this story but no worries, I will be writing lots more Dalaric for you lovelies in the future, so please enjoy this!

"Where's Damon?" he asked Stefan who was stood in front out the board. The panic that set in on his handsome face turned Alaric's stomach to lead.

"We have all tried calling him, he hasn't answered, we were hoping he was with you." Alaric dropped his bag.

"He has him."

Alaric didn't know what to do with himself, he was currently in the office that he and Damon shared, he could hardly bring himself to look at the vacant desk that sat opposite his own so he had taken to standing by the window and gazing out of it, not really looking at anything but praying there was an answer there.

He closed his eyes as he leaned his forehead against the glass and let out a sigh. How could this be happening? This time yesterday he had been stood in the kitchen of his own home thinking about the possibilities for his and Damons future and now here he stood, a mere twenty four hours later, though it felt like a lot more and his whole world was crumbling around him. He had fought with Damon, a real fight, it hardly ever happened between them, they were so similar that most of the time they seemed to be able to read each others minds but no this time they actually fought and now some psycho had kidnapped the love of his life, his reason for breathing.

Behind his eyes visions and memories of Damon were swimming in front of him, trying to focus on one of them to stop the overwhelming need to tear apart the entire office he thought about the day they met.

***Flashback***

Alaric sighed as he took his seat beside a blond woman who was nervously tapping her pen against her teeth, yeah because that wasn't going to be annoying. Alaric looked around that the rest of the assemble of people in the room, they all seemed to be a various degrees of nervous too and most of them looked to be the bear minimum age of twenty three that you had to be to be here, he himself was twenty nine, slightly older than most of these people but he doubted they has half the reason to be there that he did. He looked around again as the room neared its capacity and one person caught his eye, sat in the row in front of him was possibly the most beautiful man he has ever laid eyes on, pale skin that was only a few shades away from pure white, coal black hair that fell short of electric blue eyes that Alaric saw when this man turned in his seat, he too was surveying the room and then they locked with Alaric's own green eyes and suddenly he was blinded by the most amazing smile that he had ever seen, it lasted just a second before this vision turned back to the front of the room as someone began speaking to them.

"Welcome to the FBI Academy"

***Flashback Ends***

Alaric was brought out of his memories by a knock on the door; he turned around as Stefan walked in without waiting for an answer. Alaric could tell from the look on his face that something had happened.

"Stefan?" Alaric asked, his voice cracking with emotion.

"Ric, I don't know how but the media have got hold of the fact that Damon's been kidnapped." Alaric sighed before running a hand over his face.

"Great! 'Lead FBI agent kidnapped in own investigation!' I can see the headlines now." He exclaimed as he threw himself into his chair. He looked over to Stefan who looked as though he was going to puke and like he wanted to punch someone at the same time.

"Look Stef, we will get him back." Alaric told him, believing his own words as the alternative, well it didn't bear thinking about. Alaric glanced over to Stefan again and made a decision, there was no way he was going to be able to keep his and Damons relationship hidden without help and he knew that Stefan wouldn't throw them under the bus.

"Stefan, sit down." He said, motioning to the chair on the other side of his desk. The younger Salvatore did so and then sat waiting for Alaric to start talking.

"Stefan, there's something I need to tell you, about Damon and me…." He started before Stefan cut him off.

"You mean the fact that you and he have been together for years and you both love each other more than anyone else in existence?" Stefan asked, an amused look on his face. For the first time in living memory Alaric was lost for words he just stared at the man opposite him until he spoke again,

"Ric did you guys really expect your own team not to notice? Sure you drive different cars most of the time and arrive at different times but you always leave together, you both smell like Damons stupidly expensive aftershave, he lets you drive when you do drive together, you are the only one that can control his temper and make him see sense, you are so in sync with each other, frankly it is scary and don't get me started on the looks you give each other when you don't think anyone is looking, they make Caroline smile so much I worry her face is gonna split in half."

Alaric stared some more and then cleared his throat,

"Well, I guess that takes care of that. They whole team knows?" he asked, Stefan shrugged his shoulders,

"You guys are really obvious." There was a few moments silence between them before Alaric dragged himself out of his seat,

"Come on, lets get your brother and my boyfriend back."

***DS&AS***

Alaric and Stefan stood in front of Caroline, Tyler and Jeremy in the conference room; the three large plasma screens behind them were blazing with pictures of the victims and evidence, copies of autopsy reports and witness statements. One of the screens was dedicated to Damon alone; a large photo of him was smiling down at them. Beside it were the only details that they knew about his disappearance, that he had last been seen at nine pm the previous night by surveillance tape propping up the bar at Whiskey, his and Alarics favourite bar.

Alaric turned from the screen with great difficulty and spoke to his team.

"Right, it looks as if we might have caught a break in this case at last. I have just received this surveillance from our lab tecs." He began to play the tape on the centre screen. In the grainy footage you could just make out a dark haired figure slumped over a drink, the leather jacket was the give away.

"Just before nine pm last night Damon was seen at this bar, drinking alone." He glanced back to the screen and saw grainy Damon dig into his pocket and pull out a cell phone, Alaric checked the time stamp and felt his insides turn to lead, that was him calling, if Damon had picked up they could have talked this out and Damon would have come over and he would still be with them. Shaking his head slightly he turned his attention back to the screen and saw a small figure sit beside Damon and though he never said a word Alaric just knew this was the bastard that had his baby.

Not a quarter of an hour later the figure got up to leave but before he disappeared he turned his head to look back at Damon and that is when Alaric froze the tape. Trying to keep the bile down, which was a mixture of not eating anything since yesterday afternoon and having to look at the grainy face of the person he hated more than anything in the world.

"We have got this screen shot of our suspects face. He is the only person that even came into contact with Damon that night, we know Damon didn't leave that bar of his own accord because none of the cab companies picked him up. Our tecs are working on improving this image so we know who this guy is, at the moment he is our number one suspect but even if he didn't have anything to do with it he must have seen something" he told them but he highly suspected it was the former that would prove to be the truth. He looked at each of his team mates in turn before continuing.

"Also I have been reliably informed by Stefan that you are all aware of the true nature of the relationship between me and Damon." Tyler and Jeremy nodded and Caroline said,

"Yeah we are, we didn't say anything because we figured that the less said about it the less chance there was of anyone outside the team finding out about it."

"I appreciate that guys, I really do. Also it might go a long way to explaining that I will stop at nothing to get Damon back and I mean if I have to go beyond the FBI I will, I understand if you guys don't feel that you can." He was talking more towards the people in front of him as he knew Stefan would do whatever it took to get his brother back.

"Ric, we are there all the way." Tyler told him, the others agreed with him.

At that moment Alaric's cell phone rang, answering it he spoke with a tone of urgency before hanging up.

"Okay we have a name to the face." He told them as he opened the email the tec department had just send over on the big screen, blowing up the image of the suspect.

"This is Aaron Littleman. We need to find him." Immediately Jeremy began searching all the databases he had access too but Alaric's attention had been grabbed by Stefan's face which had turned a horrible shade of green.

"Stefan? Do you know him?" Alaric questioned, everyone in the room was now looking at Stefan who walked towards one of the big screens and opened a new tab and typed in an address which brought up the home page for Mystic Falls High.

"Stefan?" Alaric tried to question again but it fell on deaf ears as Stefan began navigating his way around the pages until he got to his year book, scrolling down the pictures until he reached the L's. Stepping back so that they could all see him said,

"This was always about Damon. He has been his target from the start." Alaric looked at the screen. Staring back at him was the acne ridden face of Aaron Littleman.

"We went to school with him, he was in my year, we were a few years behind Damon but he was obsessed with him." Stefan told him as he sat down which Alaric thought was a good idea as he didn't seem to be able to hold himself up anymore.

"Damon was the first guy in our school to come out, he was cool, popular, smart and good looking, everything Littleman wasn't. I don't understand why now though, I mean we live in a different state, what are the chances of him ending up here and bumping into Damon?" Alaric was staring at the picture, feeling as if he too had seen Littleman somewhere and then it dawned on him,

"Jeremy, Littlemans work history!" Jeremy dived back onto his laptop, is fingers little more than blurs across the keys,

"Okay I have it here, it seems like he moved here a few months ago and stared working as a porter at the hospital soon after." Jeremy told them before looking up at Alaric who turned around and punched a hole into the drywall. Caroline screamed, Tyler's eyes widened and Stefan grabbed his arm to stop him doing it again.

"Ric! Talk to us!"

"This is my fault!" he shouted, not caring who heard him now, he was the reason this monster had Damon and he was the trigger that meant the other victims had died.

"He was there! All those months ago when I screwed up my knee after I went after Damon into that mob club because the idiot couldn't wait for back up.

***Flashback***

Alaric moaned as the nurse who was tightening his knee brace finished with the last strap.

"The doctor should be in soon Agent Saltzman" he said with a toothy grin as he headed towards the door, not two seconds after he left Damon walked in,

"What was he looking so happy about?" he asked as he settled two coffee cups on the bedside table.

"I think he had a thing for you. Did you tell him you had a boyfriend?" Damon questioned as he glared daggers at the door as if he was daring the nurse to walk back through them." Alaric chuckled slightly, taking a sip of one of the coffees before putting it back down, that one was Damons, had too much sugar in it.

"Way to be stereotypical Damon, just because he is a male nurse it means he is gay? And no, I didn't tell him I had a boyfriend, it's not exactly something that comes up in conversation when someone is tightening the knee brace you have on because you rescued your partners useless ass."

"Excuse me, I didn't need rescuing, I had everything under control." Damon told him, not even believing his own words; Alaric raised an eyebrow at him,

"So there weren't three mob guys with their guns pointed at your chest when I got there?"

"I'm not denying that, I am just saying, two more seconds and I would have had them and you need not have gotten your ass handed to you." Damon said, taking a sip of his overly sweet coffee, his eyes gleaming with mischief. Alaric knew better than to argue with Damon because he would never win so instead he linked the fingers of their free hands together, knowing that despite Damons confident outer shell, inside he was still shook up about the situation that they had just been in.

Half an hour later and Alaric had been seen by the doctor, he suspected that it was just some twisted and strained ligaments nothing torn or broken but he wanted an x ray to be sure so they waited for someone to come and take them along to the x ray department.

"I'm sorry." Damon whispered from beside Alaric, where he had his head resting on his boyfriends shoulder.

"What?" Alaric asked as he had been close to dozing off as his adrenaline levels were finally falling. Damon lifted his head and then placed his chin on Alaric shoulder so that he could look at him.

"I'm sorry, I should have waited for back up, it's my fault this happened to you." Alaric smiled slightly and leaned his head down so that he could kiss the end of Damon's nose.

"Damon, you don't have to apologise, you run into situations head first because you would rather save someone else than yourself and though it drives me nuts I wouldn't have you any other way and besides, I will always be there to back you up." Alaric smiled again and kissed Damon hard on the lips, not breaking the kiss until they heard someone come in the room and at the time he paid no attention to who the porter actually was but now it was clear as day."

***Flashback Ends***

"It was him, Littleman, he was the porter than took me to x ray that day, he saw me and Damon kissing, that was his trigger and he been building up to this since that day." Alaric told them.

"I've got an address, he had a small apartment just off main but he was also left a small plot of land by his uncle in the country." Jeremy told him, looking up from his screen.

"Lets go!" Alaric said, they all ran out of the office, checking that they were all carrying their guns as they went.

***DS&AS***

Damon groaned as he came around, there was a dull ache at the base of his skull and it felt as if half the skin had been taken off the side of his face. He opened his eyes but everything was still black, he was blindfolded. He tried his hands which he found were bound behind his back, his feet were tied to the chair he was sat in. he couldn't move anywhere so he breathed in, trying to get a bearing on where he was from the smells around him, he picked up on hay, decaying wood and something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, the stale metallic smell of dried blood. He heard footsteps coming towards him, next thing he knew the blindfold was being ripped from his head. He blinked into the light a few times to clear his vision of the brightly coloured spots that had formed there, then a face came into view, sallow skin stretched over a skull, a thin mop of greasy black hair and acne scares.

"Nice of you to join me, Dea. Dea, that is what he calls you isn't it?"

"You"

A/N – well there we are dears, what do we make of this? Hope you all like it! Next chapter, the last one should be up soon!

xxx