Seattle | November 2022
Damon glanced at his watch for the third time in as many minutes. Elena was running late. Five and a half months into parenthood, and with Elena firmly engrossed in her residency program, they had worked out a schedule that accommodated both Elena's and Damon's jobs as well as Stefanie's sleeping and feeding patterns. There were still never enough hours in the day, but they made it work.
Damon checked his phone again – no messages, no missed calls. He wondered if he should call Elena, but didn't want to worry her by calling just because she should have been home over half an hour ago. Maybe she had to stay behind to talk to her attending, or a patient had taken up more of her time. Or maybe she was simply stuck in traffic, though taking into account the traffic this time of day, Damon considered this to be the least likely scenario. He checked his watch again.
Damon's job was admittedly the least of his worries. Being his own boss, he could come and go as he pleased as long as he had reliable staff that would make sure the bar was open and stocked at all times. Which he had and it was.
The issue was that baby Stefanie had woken up almost half an hour ago and, while she remained quiet and relaxed for the moment, Damon knew she would demand to be fed soon. Damon debated whether to make a bottle of formula, but then Elena wouldn't know what to do with the milk when she returned home and would have to use the pump and Damon cringed in sympathy just thinking about it.
Damon decided to give it another 30 minutes. He could entertain a hungry Stevie for that long at least.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Elena burst through the door 15 minutes later. She threw her light raincoat onto the clothes hanger and hurried into the main room.
Damon and the baby were both on the floor on a plushy blanket next to the sofa with Stevie happily chewing her own toes. At hearing her voice, they both looked up in Elena's direction and smiled, Stevie happily kicking her feet, excited to see her mommy. Elena sank onto her knees and kissed Stefanie on the head while the baby immediately grabbed fistfuls of Elena's hair that fell in soft locks around her.
"Ow," Elena gasped and remained still until Damon helped untangle the strands from the tiny fists.
Finally, Elena was free to place a brief hello kiss on Damon's mouth.
"What happened?" Damon asked.
"Got held up at the hospital. Sorry. You fed her yet?"
"Nope," Damon replied. "We were waiting for you."
Elena released a relieved breath. "Oh, thank god. I feel like I'm going to burst any second."
"You can go and change first, if you want," Damon offered, noticing she was still wearing her scrubs.
"You wouldn't mind?"
"I think we can hold on for five more minutes, right, honey?" he asked his daughter.
She gurgled and smiled a gummy smile at him, immediately going back to chewing her own toes.
"You're the best. Thank you," Elena said. "I'll be right back."
With that, she disappeared upstairs, leaving Damon and Stevie in a cloud scented by the rainy air outside and the flowery-fresh perfume Elena favored.
Stevie watched her go, her smile slipping, as she held out her arms in Elena's direction. Before she could release a wail of displeasure, Damon picked her up and blew a raspberry on her belly, making Stevie gulp with laughter. As usual, when she was happy or excited, she windmilled her arms and kicked her legs and Damon caught one of her feet. He nibbled on it, earning himself another peal of laughter.
Damon looked down at the baby in his arms, grinning at her with a besotted smile while Stevie managed to stick half her fist in her mouth, sucking on it. She definitely wanted to be fed now.
"I know, honey," Damon mumbled, lips brushing her forehead. "Just let Mommy get comfortable first, okay?"
As if on cue, Elena called from upstairs. "Almost there." She made it downstairs in record time, dressed in sweatpants and a top with a front zipper for easier access. "Okay, I'm ready," Elena announced, almost skidding to a halt before the sofa.
Damon kissed Stevie once more and placed her in Elena's waiting arms before dropping a kiss on Elena's forehead, too. "Breathe," he reminded her.
Elena smiled gratefully up at him and did just that. "I'm sorry I didn't call. I sort of completely forgot the time and didn't realize it had gotten this late already. Anything interesting happen here?"
She would always ask a variation of the question; ever since Stevie had laughed for the first time, which happened while Elena had been at work. But Damon managed to catch in on his phone and sent it to her. Elena might or might not have spent her entire break replaying the short video.
"No, the usual. Like, I was trying to sell Stevie to some devil-worshipping bikers I met outside during our walk, but we were still negotiating the right price. So you came back just in time, because I need your opinion," Damon quipped. "I don't have the slightest idea what cute babies go for these days."
"Hmm. It depends. Were they nice devil-worshippers?" Elena played the game.
"Don't know about nice. But the skull sticker on the sidecar was pretty awesome. Looked safe enough."
"Well, in that case," Elena replied and drifted off. She smiled tiredly and leaned her head back against the headrest.
"You look ready to drop," Damon commented and reached out with one hand to knead her neck. She sighed gratefully.
"I am ready to drop."
"I could stay," Damon offered.
The bar was running smoothly enough with Dot in charge and Enzo at her beck and call. But they both knew he had to check in on the restaurant. He made sure to check in almost daily while making his morning rounds to all his businesses, but with Stevie in tow, he could only accomplish this much. He usually had to go in in the evenings for some actual work, even if only for a couple of hours in the kitchen which he had neglected for too long.
He had hired a new head chef for Pinnacle and if everything worked out like he hoped, Damon expected to be able to cut down on his kitchen hours. But that was still at least several weeks away. Until then, he couldn't really afford not to go, but Elena appreciated that he offered nonetheless.
"Nah," she waved him off, "I'll be fine."
"Take a nap when Stevie falls asleep," he told her. She looked dead on her feet. Gorgeous and glowing, as always, but deeply exhausted. To be fair, they both were. Damon had accepted that it came with the territory of having a newborn while juggling two careers and three establishments, but he wasn't the one breastfeeding a baby on top of it all.
"I'll try."
Damon raised both eyebrows and looked meaningfully at her.
"Okay, I will, I promise," Elena relented.
Damon got up to go change into a somewhat more respectable outfit than his sweatpants and baby-spit soaked t-shirt, but Elena held him back. Pulling him in with one hand, she strained upwards until their mouths met. It was a short but surprisingly heated kiss that left Damon with a sparkle in his eyes.
"Maybe you could make it an early evening tonight?" Elena suggested huskily and Damon had to really force himself to pull away from her.
"Well, now I will definitely try."
It was just after 10 pm when Damon got back home. He listened, but everything was quiet upstairs. Making a detour through the kitchen for a glass of water he climbed the stairs to the master bedroom. The light was on which probably meant that Elena wasn't asleep, still Damon entered quietly.
She looked up with a smile as he came in. "Hey," she quietly said, "how was work?"
"Lacking excitement," Damon replied. He checked on Stevie, sleeping peacefully in her crib in the corner of the room and sucking on her thumb. As always, he found it hard to tear himself away from the sight, but Elena was waiting for him in bed and that was more than enough of an encouragement. "The new guy seems to have everything under control and I decided to get some paperwork done. Everybody behaved themselves and nobody even raised their voice. So I didn't even have that luxury of an excuse to take a break from doing the books. Why did nobody tell me that owning a business basically turns you into a glorified bookkeeper?" He quickly shed jeans and shirt and made sure to climb over Elena as he got into bed.
She used the opportunity to nose down the area from his neck to his shoulder, inhaling his scent. "Maybe if every bookkeeper looked as hot as you, the profession wouldn't suffer from such a bad reputation," she teased.
Damon grinned at her. Before climbing under the blankets, he removed his watch and froze when he went to put it down on his nightstand. He picked up the book that hadn't been there when he left the house and stared at it dumbly. "What's that?"
Elena just shrugged and smiled. She waited for his reaction, so Damon's eyes returned to the book in his hands.
'Over 50,000 unique and inspired baby names' boasted the colorful title. "I think it's too late to change Stevie's name," he said.
"To change hers, yes," Elena replied. "But I thought, we could go in better prepared this time."
"This time—" Damon began and stopped. His mind churned and his eyes slid back to Elena. Then back to the book before settling on his wife again.
She bit the corner of her mouth and said, "I circled the ones that I like." It came out sounding almost like a question.
"You mean… But… Are you…?"
Elena nodded, eyes frozen on Damon's face.
"Again?" A frown line creased Damon's brow as Elena nodded, now looking less happy and more concerned.
"You did want another child, right?" she asked.
Damon, seeing the uncertainty and nervousness in her expression, dropped the book and scooted closer to Elena, kneeling in front of her. "Yes," he hurried to reassure her, "yes, absolutely. Of course. But—"
"But what?"
"Isn't it too soon? I mean, Stevie only just turned five months a few weeks ago. Is it safe? For you? Will you be okay?"
Elena placed a palm on his cheek. "I know we haven't talked about it and it wasn't planned. At least, not so soon. I'm not saying it'll be a walk in the park. But I'm young, I'm healthy, and I have the best husband any woman could ask for."
Damon nodded absentmindedly, still processing. He blinked, trying to do the math. "How is that even possible?" he asked. "I mean, we've used protection, haven't we?"
They had, mostly. Except… once or twice in… "The shower?"
"Oh," Damon grimaced. Right. He had always meant to stash a few condoms in the shower, but he usually only remembered when it was too late, namely when Elena stood naked and wet and wanton before him, making the ten steps to the cabinet seem too far away. He thought he was being careful, but apparently not careful enough.
He blinked himself into the present and noticed Elena's studying gaze on him. He looked back at her and things suddenly made a whole lot more sense. Her healthy glow on one hand and exhaustion on the other. Her jumping him whenever they had a minute to spare. Though if asked, he would have chalked it up to making up for lost time still, even though they had more than made up for the weeks immediately after Stevie's birth where Elena was healing up.
Damon's mind whirled. Elena was pregnant. His wife was pregnant again. They were going to have another baby. A baby sister for Stevie. Or maybe a baby brother. Damon didn't care which, as long as it and Elena were okay. It. Oh my god, there was another it inside Elena.
Damon stared at her for a long moment before surging in and kissing her with all that he had. He let up for the briefest second to mumble, "I love you," into her mouth but before Elena could even take a breath to say it back, his lips were already on hers again. Kissing down a line along Elena's neck, Damon glanced towards the baby crib in the corner.
"She just fell asleep," Elena whispered, reading his thoughts. "She won't wake up for another three or four hours."
Not wasting another minute, Damon's fingers went to work on the buttons of Elena's sleep shirt, his mouth tasting every bit of skin he uncovered. He pushed her shirt over her shoulders and down her arms. His tongue grazed her breasts gently and Elena held her breath. But Damon knew that they were sensitive and made sure to be extra careful as he caressed them.
He blew across the wet stripe his tongue left behind and Elena shivered deliciously with the sensations it created. She slipped a hand inside his boxers, finding him half-hard already and helped along the last bit. Damon gasped and bit softly at the skin along her ribcage in response. When he reached her belly, he placed a kiss right under her belly button and looked up. Elena smiled down at him.
Head pillowed on Elena's flat stomach, Damon stretched out an arm and reached for the book that he had dropped earlier. Opening it, he said, "Let's see what you've come up with."
Elena snapped the book out of his hands and lightly wacked it over his head. "Not right now," she pointedly said.
"Why?" Damon asked with too innocent eyes as he crawled up again and hovered above her while sliding his hips between her legs. "Did you have other plans for right now?"
"Not if you continue to ask stupid questio—ahh." She broke off when Damon pushed inside her in one solid thrust.
He moved shallowly in and out a few times, watching the pleasure on her face. "You were saying?" he teased.
"I really, really hate you sometimes," Elena whimpered, rolling her eyes at his smug grin.
"Right now?" Damon asked after a slow deep thrust that made Elena's eyes roll back.
"A little," she gasped out, not wanting to cater to his ego.
He changed the angle of his hips. "How about now?"
"Maybe a little less now," Elena admitted between two moans.
"And now?" Damon slid a hand between their bodies added pressure with his thumb, feeling her shudder. Instead of a reply, her mouth opened to release a scream and Damon clamped a palm across her mouth to stifle it, not wanting her to wake the baby.
Elena's hand covered his and she bit into the fleshy part of his palm to shush herself as Damon's hips picked up the pace and forced her closer to the inevitable precipice.
"How long have you known?" Damon asked an hour later, resting next to Elena and drawing ever widening circles around her belly button.
She squirmed when it tickled and jerked away, but Damon pulled her back in, kissing her flat stomach.
"I found out today," Elena replied. "It was the reason I was late, actually."
"Yeah?" Damon prompted her to continue.
"The last patient I was seeing was this twelve-year-old boy who'd just tumbled down a half-pipe. While I was stitching up his forehead, his mom blew in. She was just-about-ready-to-give-birth pregnant. I glanced up at her and it just clicked in my head. The lightheadedness and nausea I've been feeling these past few weeks. I haven't had my period since giving birth, but I chalked it up to breastfeeding. But anyway, a look at my patient's mom and I just knew. So I stayed behind after work to do a test and voilà."
"And the book?" Damon asked with a nod at the 'Unique Names Collection' on his bedside table.
"Picked it up when I took Stefanie for a walk this afternoon." Elena pulled Damon up to share a pillow. "Some of the circled suggestions are hers, by the way."
"Are they now?"
"Yep," Elena replied. "We spent all evening reading the book. Sometimes she'd spit. That was a no, needless to say. Sometimes she smiled. That meant yes, obviously."
"Obviously," Damon echoed.
Elena smiled at Damon, smile slowly slipping and making way for a soft expression as she gazed at him. "Can I tell you a secret?" Elena whispered.
"You have to ask?"
Elena smiled briefly and said, "Sometimes, I think I'm still asleep and that this is all a dream. And I have to pinch myself to know that this is real."
"I know the feeling, minus the magical coma part," Damon replied. "I sometimes think I must be dreaming, too. But then Stevie pees all over my favorite shirt and I know, yep, this is definitely real."
Elena chuckled. She snuggled into Damon's chest and he held her close, feeling all her curves mold against his perfectly. With his nose buried in her chocolate locks, he inhaled her scent. Damon listened to Stevie's soft snuffles from the other side of the room and felt Elena's chest move with every breath she took. She was warm and pliant in his arms and he imagined the baby that was growing inside her.
Who needed dreams if this was his reality?
"All the names you circled are boy names," Damon confronted Elena the next day while he prepared dinner. "I thought it was too early to tell what it was."
"It is," Elena confirmed. "But I have a feeling."
"Enough to wager a bet?"
Elena squinted her eyes at him. "Yes."
"Are you sure?" Damon tried to rattle her confidence. "I wonder if any doppelgänger ever had a boy before?" Damon mused, mostly to himself.
"Has any doppelgänger ever had more than one child?" Elena returned.
"I doubt there's records on that topic."
"I wonder how many doppelgängers lived their normal, original vampire-free life because Klaus never learned of their existence," Elena mused. "I don't think Katherine and I were the only ones in two thousand years, do you?"
"No. Though there was that other girl Elijah once told Stefan and me about. And as far as I know they didn't know about Stefan being or having a doppelgänger either. Also, I remember Qetsiyah saying something about how she watched the doppelgängers find each other and fall in love again and again. She made it sound like there were many of them. So, yeah, I guess it's likely that some of them lived normal lives, had babies. As in plural."
"Oh god," Elena suddenly exclaimed. "Do you think we're continuing the doppelgänger tradition by having a family?"
"No," Damon immediately replied, scoffing. "The spell was broken, wasn't it? Besides, Stefan never had any children, so that line has dried out."
"But what about that other guy, the one in Atlanta – Tom? He could have. And even if not, he clearly wasn't a Salvatore, so his branch must have split off the family tree a very long time ago, so there's no telling how many people run around with the doppelgänger gene in their DNA. Is there even definite proof that it's a blood relation thing? Silas never mentioned having been a father. Oh, god, should we have thought about it before starting a family? We probably should have, right?"
"Stop," Damon gently told her. "You're going to hyperventilate and that's probably not good for the baby."
Elena breathed deeply a few times, calming down. She smiled apologetically. "Our lives are weird," she said, "and complicated."
"And about to get more so."
There was a long pause where both of them pictured how their lives would change in a short little while
"Damon?" Elena asked in a tremulous voice.
He smiled at her, but frowned when he saw her concerned face. "Hey," he immediately switched lanes. "What's wrong?"
"I think I'll have to take a break from the program when this one is born."
"What? Why?"
"Not forever. Just a year or two."
"That's a terrible idea," Damon pressed on. "You said it yourself, taking a break will make it this much harder to get back in the game. You have to finish your residency."
"I don't want to hand over another baby to you and leave you alone to manage everything."
"Wasn't that always the plan? You being the breadwinner, me the stay-at-home dad?" Damon said, referring to several conversations they had over the years.
Elena blinked a few times at him. "You were being serious?"
"Has anything in the past five months made you believe I wasn't?"
"Of course not! You're so great at being Dad," Elena hurried to answer. "It's actually a little bit scary how easy you make it seem. I just didn't want to assume that things won't be different with two babies to take care of."
"Of course, things will be different. But unless you're doubting how fully invested in this I am, the general setup won't have to change."
"No doubts," Elena assured him. "Not even a little."
"Then, please, assume away," Damon told her with a sideways grin.
In the resulting silence, Damon and Elena stared at each other for a long while. Feeling eyes on them, they both turned to their daughter who was watching them attentively from her baby carrier.
Having both her parents' attention, she smiled wide and flapped her arms happily. Elena thanked the fates that sent them the most relaxed, happy-go-lucky child possible.
"Can you imagine," Elena said. "This time next year there'll be two of them."
The corners of Damon's mouth twitched. "We'll have to put up warning signs: Attention. Cuteness overload!"
Elena laughed and nodded.
"Stevie," Damon addressed his daughter, "would you prefer a brother or a sister?"
Stevie, recognizing her name, focused her attention on Damon and blinked.
"It's okay if you don't want to say it out loud," Damon said, "you can whisper it in my ear." He leaned in, pretending to listen. "I see. Well, thank you for telling me, and I agree."
"So?" Elena asked, trying to keep her face straight. She barely managed. Watching Damon and Stevie interact usually turned her into a puddle of goo. Even without the added benefit of pregnancy hormones.
"That's confident information! I'm not gonna tell," Damon replied indignantly. "But she also agrees that her mommy shouldn't quit her work."
Elena nodded. "Okay, I won't."
"Good. So, now that that's settled, you're not going to worry anymore, okay? Because all you need to do is focus on this little human growing inside of you. Which, bee-tee-dub, we're not naming Damon. I don't know why you circled the name. I never understood this tradition of naming your child after yourself. I mean, megalomaniac much?"
"I think it's romantic," Elena countered. "A little Damon jr. DJ," she cooed.
"You're pregnant and nursing. Which means you're double-hormonal and therefore your judgment cannot be trusted."
Elena swatted a kitchen towel at him which he dodged. "Take that back," Elena demanded, trying again to get him with the towel.
"Or what?" Damon laughed as he ducked around the kitchen island.
"Or…" Elena thought for a moment. "No sex for you for at least…" She scrunched up her face. "…A week." She had to be realistic, here. No sex for Damon meant no sex for her as well. But a week sounded… doable? Elena wasn't going to admit that even inside her own head she sounded doubtful.
"Withholding sex?" Damon exclaimed. "I'm shocked. I thought we wouldn't enter this phase of our marriage for at least another couple of years."
Elena shrugged around a grin but Damon just scoffed.
"I'm not worried," he said.
"Why not?" she challenged.
"Because you, my dear Mrs. Salvatore, could never withstand my charms in the past. Much less while you're pregnant. I only need to do this," he put on a sexy smirk, a wink, and his eyes smoldered, "and you're putty in my hands."
Elena gasped, partly in affront, partly to hide her reaction to him, because as usual Damon was right. She had no powers against him. She tried to wipe his knowing grin from his face by whipping the towel at him again. This time she scored and Damon yelped out in pain as it connected with his side.
"Oh my god, Damon, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—" She dropped the cloth and was at his side in an instant, pulling up his shirt to inspect the damage she had done.
He used her distraction to wrap an arm around her middle and lift her up onto the kitchen counter, pushing himself between her legs.
Realizing that she had been played, Elena groaned. "You're not hurt," she needlessly concluded.
"Nope," he replied, popping the P. He nosed along the column of her graceful neck and into her hair, blowing gently as he reached the nape of her neck. Goosebumps broke out across her skin and she fisted his shirt that she was still holding. His hands slid down her sides, under the hem of her shirt and up the naked skin until they cupped her breasts. He stroked them gently through her bra, being extra careful because he knew how delicate they felt since Elena was still nursing baby Stefanie.
Even though Damon had only been trying to prove a point, he couldn't help but get aroused – Elena always had that effect on him. Continuing to nibble on her neck's most sensitive spots, he pushed his hardness against her pelvis.
"Damon," Elena moaned in response, letting go of his shirt and pushing her palms into the back pockets of his jeans, pulling him even closer.
"Dinner's burning," Damon mumbled as he broke away from her.
It took a minute for his words to register, caught as Elena was in the rumble of his voice against her skin. "Leave it," she said and reached for him again.
Damon chuckled. "You're nursing one baby while your body is growing another. You need to take care of yourself and food is an important part of it."
"So is this," Elena said, motioning between the two of them. "Sexual frustration is unhealthy, especially for expecting mothers. I'm pretty sure I read that in a book somewhere."
"Yeah?" Damon breathed against Elena's lips.
"Yeah," she breathed back, claiming his mouth.
"What about Stevie?"
Elena glanced at her daughter. She was still watching them, but her eyes were drooping. "I think she approves," Elena muttered against Damon's lips.
He reached for the stove and switched it off, pushing the finished risotto to the backburner. It would keep until later. He had a pregnant and very turned-on wife to take care of, which was infinitely more important.
"Ooh, here's a nice one," Elena said a few weeks later as they ate dinner while Stevie gurgled to herself in the carrier next to them.
Damon turned the book around and read. "Hmm," he said non-committedly, not really loving nor hating it. "How about Florence for a girl? And there's also Margaret. And Agnes. And…" he leafed through the pages, "…William for a boy. Though I did have a friend once who was named William and I kind of killed him, so…" Damon's mouth pulled into a grimace of guilt and regret.
Elena narrowed her eyes at him. She didn't want to sound callous, but if they were going to exclude every name of every person Damon had ever killed or known, they would never settle on a name at all. "I guess William is okay, but the rest is a bit old-timey, don't you think?"
"Need I remind you that you married a guy who was born in the first half of the nineteenth century?"
"I didn't know you were still stuck there," Elena muttered back and smiled at him, overly sweetly. "I always liked the name Olive," she returned to their previous topic. "I guess, Oliver would work too. Yeah, I think I like it. Unless you're willing to revisit the Damon idea?"
"A strong veto on the 'naming the baby Damon' thing," Damon said resolutely. "If, in fact, it is a boy." He leisurely paged through the names book some more.
"I'm open to other suggestions," Elena replied.
"Oh, here's a good one. Althea."
Elena grimaced. "Not a boy's name. And also, if we're having a girl, I'm thinking about not letting you be part of the naming process. Your suggestions are genuinely terrible."
"Like yours are so much better," Damon continued to bicker.
But Elena fell quiet. "Let's make a deal," she proposed. "We each pick a name for our own gender."
"Boy – I choose the name. Girl – you do?" Damon suggested, not willing to risk ending up with Damon jr.
"What if I absolutely hate what you pick?"
"We'll implement a veto option. Each of us gets exactly one veto right," Damon suggested.
Elena thought about it, then held out her hand and they shook on it.
"Anyway, isn't it too early to be picking names?" Damon wondered.
"Maybe," she allowed. "But it's fun."
Finishing their meal, Damon got up and collected the dishes.
"Hey, that's my job," Elena protested. She always insisted on doing the dishes since Damon was the one to prepare the meals. That way she felt she contributed at least a little in the kitchen that was otherwise completely Damon's domain.
"Not for the next seven months it isn't." He set a small bowl down in front of Elena. "Here, see if she likes it."
"What is it?" Elena asked, stirring the contents with a small spoon.
"Baked sweet potato purée."
Elena tried it and hummed. "Wow, it's actually yummy." She ate another spoonful.
Damon smirked. "This was meant for our daughter. But I can get you another bowl if you're unwilling to share?"
Elena pulled out her tongue at him but did try to feed Stevie some from the spoon. Most of it landed on her bib, as they had only started complementing the breastfeeding a couple weeks ago. But whatever did land in her mouth, wasn't spit out instantly and Elena counted that as a win. "Well, this is already a bigger hit than the peas two days ago." They were still finding pea purée stains on clothes and furniture after that particular fiasco.
Damon, having finished loading the dishwasher, sat down at the table again, watching his girls. The idea that in less than a year there would be four of them in this kitchen still felt surreal and every reminder of it gave him a swooping kind of feeling in his stomach, not unlike the one you got riding a roller coaster. Exhilaration – made up of equal parts fear and excitement.
"What are you thinking about?" Elena tore him from his contemplations, reaching across the table and squeezing his forearm gently.
"Roller coasters."
Elena squinted at him, studying his face. She gave up after a few seconds. "Twelve years together and there are still times where I have no idea whether you're joking or not."
"I think I like that," Damon replied and grinned happily, leaning back in his chair.