BrookeWorm3: ahhahahaa Elena still have her part on some angst here. Thank you for your comment s2
Nicolle: Your review made me SO happy! Thank you! I'm really glad you liked the story so far. Feel very welcome to always comment.
Jingerr: Thank you s2
Guest: Slow burn and Angst feed my soul!
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Angie
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A cold wind blew across Damon's face and he opened his eyes. It was dark, the streetlights were burned out, and the highway was lit only by moonlight and the headlight of a car stopped in the middle of the road. The vampire frowned and turned toward the vehicle.
"You're back", Elena's voice sounded behind him, and Damon turned quickly toward the voice. It was Katherine, wearing one of her pompous dresses. "I was worried you'd die in the war".
"Katherine?", Damon asked, and the older vampire frowned, taking a step back. Something in her facial expression changed.
"No, I'm Elena" she replied, and suddenly the girl was no longer wearing an mid 1800's dress, she was wearing jeans and a dark pink blouse. "I remind you of someone you knew, right?"
"Right" Damon replied, feeling confused.
"But I'm not her" Elena pointed out, shrugging.
"You're not her", the vampire repeated in a low voice, completely mesmerized by the girl in front of him. He remembered that moment. He had met Elena right there, in that exact spot. For half a second Damon managed to get himself situated and understand that that was not real, that he was somehow reliving a moment in his head. However, something touched his shoulder and he found himself lost again.
Damon turned to the source of the touch and found Rose, smiling at him in a sign of comfort. The vampire was holding him affectionately by the shoulder.
"It would be nice, you know, to care about someone who isn't the copy of your ex" Rose commented, and Damon saw that the sleeve of her blouse, around her shoulder, was bloodied. He carefully brought his hand to it and gently pulled down the collar of her blouse, revealing the infected werewolf bite. He stroked the wound with his fingers.
"I cared about you" he replied, frowning. He felt confused, he felt drowning. Rose smiled at him.
"You know what I mean", she replied, sliding her fingers down his shirt sleeve, revealing a bite on the vampire's forearm, as infected as hers. Damon wandered his eyes from Rose to his own arm and stared delightedly at what would be the reason for his death.
Rose's fingers that held him by the arm began to tremble, and he turned his face upward, meeting, however, whiskey-colored eyes. Not the whiskey eyes he had grown accustomed to seeking. Not the whiskey eyes that brought him comfort, that made his stomach do somersaults, but whiskey eyes nonetheless.
"Please don't hurt me" the girl with the long strawberry blonde hair pleaded, and her whiskey eyes were watery. Damon felt a sharp pain in his chest. Guilt. "Did you hurt me because I have her eyes?" the girl asked tearfully.
It was cold in the middle of the highway, and the girl was shivering. Damon felt cold too, but found himself unable to move, either to hug his own arms or to try to warm the frightened girl in front of him. Something cold and wet touched the vampire's cheeks, and even though he couldn't bring his own fingers to the spot, Damon knew they were his own tears.
"I-I don't know" Damon managed to reply.
"I'm not her", the girl sadly said, and the vampire followed mesmerized by her eyes, feeling the guilt eating him up inside. Something about the girl changed, but he couldn't tell what it was, he couldn't stop looking into her eyes. "I know if it comes down between me and her, you will always choose her" she pointed out, and Damon realized it was Emma standing in front of him. A lump formed in his throat, and he finally managed to step forward, trying to reach her.
"That's not true", he whispered, more to himself than to her. Contrary to what he expected, Emma smiled. The girl took a step forward and he noticed that the golden ends of her hair shook from side to side, lighting up the room.
"I like you, frowning boy" Emma softly said, and positioned her index finger between Damon's eyebrows. The vampire closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw the arabesques of the ceiling in his own room. He felt dizzy.
The fever was too high, and Damon could no longer tell what was reality and what was his mind playing tricks on him. The vampire felt the pain in his body coming and going as he tried to hold on to reality. Long minutes went by before he could really get himself situated and understand that he had hallucinated. The direction of his hallucinations bothered him. It was as if his subconscious was trying to tell him something, something that was obvious, something he already knew, but something he didn't want to acknowledge.
This time, it was Damon who was drowning and desperately searching for a life jacket. And Emma was that life jacket, but she was not there. The girl felt unable to watch the vampire's death. It was too much. So she sat on the bathroom floor, crying with her face hidden in her palms, while Damon took his last breaths of air upstairs in the house. Elena stood beside him, feeling that she should be there. For Stefan, for Emma.
"It's more painful than I thought it would be", Damon finally whispered, and Elena pressed the vampire's cold hand against her own. She wanted to say that there was still hope, but she couldn't utter such a lie. There was no hope. Stefan was on his way to give his brother a dignified end, Emma was downstairs, crying against the bathroom door, and Elena was standing there watching her boyfriend's brother die, "I've lived 170 years and yet I feel like I've lost a lot of time".
"Don't say that", Elena replied.
"I'm sorry, Elena, I did so many things to hurt you", Damon whispered. "I know you love Stefan. He loves you too. But I..." he closed his eyes and coughed, and Elena grimaced. He was getting worse. Damon opened his eyes, he wanted to tell Elena how he felt, and this time not erase her memory. He wanted to say those three words. They were on the tip of his tongue. However, when he looked the girl in the eyes, they were not the eyes he wanted to see, and so the words refused to leave his lips. "I wanna be loved" he surprised himself by confessing in a whisper his innermost desire.
He wanted to be loved, he wanted to be the one. He wanted to be the chosen one. He wanted to have the right to love. He was tired of being the third wheel.
"You are loved" Elena replied, wiping her own tears with the back of her hands. "Stefan loves you more than anything. Ric loves you too, you're his best friend. I love you, you're my friend too... And Emma loves you".
Damon stared Elena in the eyes. They weren't the eyes he wanted. He felt confused and angry that he didn't know what to feel right in the last moments of his life. The vampire had always thought that when his moment came, he would have some sort of epiphany. That all the pieces would come together and he would solve a difficult puzzle. He thought that, in the end, everything would make sense. But he was at the end, and he was confused, and he didn't know if he wanted to go too deep only to die before he could solve the puzzle. And then Damon clung to the last sentence spoken by Elena, because the sentence felt like an anchor keeping him in reality, and he frowned.
"You didn't give her a reason" he said, almost babbling, and the girl opened her mouth to reply, but didn't have a chance. "You said Stefan loves me because I'm his big brother. You and Ric because I'm your friend. But you didn't give Emma a reason"
"She doesn't need one" Elena replied. "She just does, she..."
"I hurt her" Damon interrupted her. Elena shook her head in the negative. "I did. I bit her... Is she okay?"
"She's fine", Elena lied.
"I don't wanna die and leave her" Damon whispered, almost delirious, feeling his eyes heavy.
"You're going to be fine", Elena replied, feeling a little annoyed that Damon was so concerned about Emma in his probable last moments of life.
"I was always so sure of what I was going to choose", Damon muttered, and Elena frowned. "But I always make the wrong choices".
The vampire stared at Elena, who had her eyebrows drawn together in doubt. She knew he was raving about the bite, but she was finding it difficult to decipher what he was trying to say.
"Everyone is taking care of you, who's going to take care of her?", Damon asked Elena.
"I don't think I will ever get used to you being over the cheaper version of me" Katherine teased, walking inside the room. Elena jumped out of bed and the older vampire grinned.
"What are you doing here?", Elena asked.
"I came to bring a little gift", Katherine walked over to the bed, pushing Elena aside. The older vampire sat down next to Damon and pulled a small bottle from inside her pocket. She opened the glass and poured the contents into the Salvatore's mouth. "People do crazy things for you, don't they? The girl downstairs threatens an Original, your brother gives himself as a payment... You're quite a special man, Damon Salvatore".
"What do you mean by 'gives himself as a payment'? Where's Stefan?", Elena asked, but Katherine doesn't even bother to look at her.
"He's going to be Klaus' little puppet for some time" the vampire simply answered. While the two of them talked, Damon started to regain some color. His cheeks turned warm again, his vision cleared, he felt his heart starts to race at normal speed, and suddenly he wasn't in pain anymore. Katherine got out of bed and adjusted the jacket on her own body. Before she could leave, however, Damon grabbed her by the wrist.
There was something that had been puzzling him since the day of the ritual. Something in the back of his mind that he kept mentally going over and couldn't come to any conclusion.
"You didn't tell Klaus Jenna was the one on the phone. Why?" Damon asked. There was no way Katherine couldn't know that it wasn't Emma on the phone. For some reason, Katherine had purposely made Jenna take Emma's place in the ritual. He was sure of it. Elena, upon hearing Jenna's name, felt her shoulders stiffen.
"I'm not bad, Damon", the vampire replied. "You think all I do is mess things up to you, but that's not the truth. As long as I'm not the one on the hook, I have no reason to just deliver your girlfriend to Klaus. You're welcome about the cure".
Katherine then released her hand from Damon's grip and left the room, winking at Elena before walking through the door. The vampire walked down the stairs, twirling the - now empty - vial between her fingers. As soon as she reached the living room, she found Emma, her eyes swollen and red. Alaric held a bandage pressed against the girl's neck, and murmured words of comfort. The girl's eyes widened when she saw the vampire, recognizing her.
"I came to bring the cure for your boyfriend, if that's what you were going to ask" Katherine said, rolling her eyes.
Emma wasted no time and ran up the stairs. She tripped over a thick rug that covered the hallway floor and had to lean on an old trim. The girl ran to Damon's room, and as soon as she entered the room, she found the vampire standing there, his face flushed, and his hair still wet with sweat. Elena was standing next to him, and both of them turned to the door as they heard Emma approaching.
Damon's eyes immediately met Emma's, and she felt her heart skip a few beats. The vampire didn't even have time to open his mouth and say anything, because the young woman was already standing in front of him, rolling up his shirt sleeve in search of the already completely healed werewolf bite. There was only a redness on his fair skin, indicating that that was where he had been bitten. Emma ran her fingers along the length of his arm, examining it clumsily and anxiously. She had her breath locked inside her lung, as if she wanted to check that everything really was okay before breathing a relieved breath.
"Emma..." he tried to get her attention, but the girl shook her head negatively, never taking her eyes and fingers off the piece of skin he was examining, "Emma, look at me".
The girl finally looked at him, and he felt a tug at his navel as he saw her whiskey, reddened eyes.
"Are you really okay? You're not going to die?" she asked, nervously.
"I'm not going to die" Damon assured her, and she finally let out the air she had been holding. Emma threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around the vampire's waist and burying her face in his chest. Damon wasted no time and wrapped her in a hug, keeping her pinned there against him.
Elena, feeling a little uncomfortable, sneaked out of the room, taking care to close the door as quietly as possible, leaving her cousin and the vampire alone in the room. Damon stroked Emma's back and buried his nose in her hair, feeling her sweet scent invading his nostrils. She smelled of vanilla, and honey, and chamomile. She smelled like spring. There was, however, a metallic background smell, which made him frown. He pulled his body away from hers and took Emma's face between his hands, analyzing it. Damon saw the blood-stained bandage on the curve that connected the girl's neck to her shoulder. He brought his hands to it and gently slid his thumb over the bandage, keeping his other fingers firmly against the back of her head.
"It was nothing" Emma hastened to say. "It doesn't even hurt".
Damon didn't answer, he just kept stroking her neck, taking in every detail of her with his eyes, every detail that, until a few minutes ago, he thought he would never have the opportunity to observe again. His icy eyes wandered from her eyes to the bandage, and he involuntarily buried the fingers that were at the back of her neck between the golden strands of the girl's hair.
"Let me heal yo".
"It's okay, I'm fine, it doesn't even hurt, it doesn't…", she never finished the sentence, because Damon glued his lips on hers.
He held her tightly by the back of the neck with one hand, while the other squeezed her waist between his fingers. His lips were soft and warm, and she opened her mouth to allow him to slide his tongue into hers. When Emma brought her own tongue to his, she tasted the metallic taste of blood, but she didn't care. She didn't care because it was good, because he was devouring her slowly and deeply, as if he were eating a juicy strawberry and sipping all the juice from the fruit.
Emma felt a warmth rise from her belly to her neck as her nipples hardened against Damon's chest, covered by his shirt still damp with sweat. The girl sighed against his mouth, and the vampire guided her until her back was pressed against the closed door. Damon parted Emma's legs with his knee and slipped in, squeezing her waist between his fingers as he felt her thighs twitch. He broke the kiss and stared into her whiskey eyes, which were almost completely black. The girl's pupils had taken up all of her amber irises.
Emma wandered her gaze from his ice eyes to the vampire's mouth, where a trickle of blood ran in a line down to the tip of his chin. Damon's fangs were sticking out of his gums, but his eyes were blue. The girl brought her hands to his face and held it between her palms, catching the trickle of blood with the tip of her thumb. Damon tilted his face to the side and took the tip of her thumb between his teeth, very carefully so that he didn't end up cutting her with his fangs. The vampire slid the tip of his tongue across her thumb, sucking the blood she had wiped from his jaw. Emma sighed.
Damon gently peeled the bandage from her neck and pressed his lips to where his bite mark had once been, now healed. Emma locked in a sigh as she felt his soft lips against her neck.
"It's healed" he whispered in a husky voice, and the girl's thighs contracted even more as she felt his warm breath against her ear. Damon pressed her against him, and Emma let herself melt into him, completely held by the vampire's embrace. "I'm glad I didn't die".
"I'm glad too", she whispered back.
.
For a rather brief moment, Emma believed that things would go on quite differently than they had before. And, in a way, she was right. Taking care of Elena and Jeremy was quite difficult, even with Alaric's help. The man had moved into the Gilbert house for good and put his apartment up for sale. Emma had been left to handle all the legal paperwork for the guardianship, the house, and the rest of the Gilbert assets, since John had disappeared off the face of the earth. Elena was only a few days away from her eighteenth birthday, and Emma had to hire a lawyer to help them, since she had no idea how things would work from then on.
However, nothing had changed between her and Damon. If Emma said she hadn't been a little upset, she would be lying. But she was an adult, and Damon was alive and well, and she had convinced herself fairly quickly that that was enough. When things had calmed down and Emma had taken the time to sift through the events, she had come to the conclusion that there was no point in expecting anything to change just because they had kissed. After all, as she herself had said, a kiss given on the verge of death didn't really count as a kiss. Just as a kiss literally bloody to heal her from a wound didn't count either. And everything was fine, it really was.
Everything was fine, but there was, deep inside, a nagging inside Emma. A nagging that she purposely ignored, because she was afraid of what it might mean. She didn't want anything to change, everything was fine the way it was. If she analyzed this annoyance too closely, she would end up ruining everything.
"Coffee?", Alaric offered her a cup of coffee as soon as Emma entered the kitchen. The girl was still wearing her pajamas, which were nothing more than a pair of battered shorts and a white tank top with a large sauce stain. Emma smiled at the man and accepted the cup.
"Is Elena up?", Emma asked.
"She went out to run" Alaric replied, sighing. Emma pulled up a chair and sat down next to the man at the kitchen table.
"I'm worried about her" Emma confessed. "I'm worried she will put herself at risk by trying to find Stefan".
"Damon won't let anything happen to her", Alaric replied, trying to convey some kind of comfort, but only succeeded in making Emma uncomfortable. The girl frowned and tried to play the annoyance to the back of her mind.
"Let's be honest, Ric. Damon's not really good at elaborating plans. None of us are. We're just alive by luck", Emma replied bitterly and dropped her mug on the table, sighing. "I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I wish John was here".
"What?", Alaric asked, incredulous.
"Psychopaths are the best people to have around when it comes to strategy", she explained, and Alaric shook his head in the negative.
"You're crazy", the man pointed out. Emma took a last sip of her coffee and placed the cup in the dishwasher. "Do you need a ride to school?"
"I have my car, Ric" Emma replied. "And even if I didn't have it, I wouldn't make you drive me while you're having your day off".
"I wouldn't mind", Alaric shrugged, and Emma affectionately patted his shoulder twice before turning to leave the kitchen.
The girl went up the stairs and into the room she had not yet become accustomed to occupying. She grabbed the towel that was lying on a chair and went into the bathroom. She took a quick shower, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and came out of the bathroom wrapped in the towel, being surprised by Damon lying comfortably on her bed.
"I'm not sure if this bed is as good as the other, guess I'll have to sleep here tonight to decide", Damon commented with a smirk, and Emma laughed.
"You have a huge bed at your room", the girl replied, grabbing a change of clothes from her drawer. She would have to change in the bathroom. "I honestly don't know what you see in other beds when you own the most expensive and comfortable one".
Damon rose from the bed and stood in front of Emma, leaning on the dresser from which she was removing her clothes. He was very close, and she could smell the soap he had used to bathe.
"My bed doesn't have you", he replied, and Emma felt her heart leap. Damon had always flirted with her, but for some reason she had started to feel weird about it since she thought he was going to die. For some reason that she didn't want to elaborate too much on, his flirtations started to bother her, to make her anxious and even a little angry. Emma closed the drawer tightly.
"I'm surprised you're up so early", she commented, trying to break the tension that only she could feel in the air. Damon frowned and watched her walk back to the bathroom.
"Just making sure I won't find you and Ric living a married couple life with your two kids in this house", Damon replied, and Emma froze by the bathroom door. She turned to him in disbelief. The vampire smirked. "Just kidding, doll".
"Asshole", Emma muttered before locking herself in the bathroom. She put on a pair of dark jeans, a light bra, and a white button-down shirt. When she came out of the bathroom, Damon was still there, propped against the windowsill, lit by the morning sun. The vampire took in every bit of her with his ice eyes, making her feel naked again. Damon walked over to her and played with the hem of her shirt.
"I liked this shirt", he commented.
"I can lend it to you, if you want", Emma teased, and he laughed.
"I think it looks better on you", he replied, and looked her in the eye. Emma forgot how to breathe, "Wanna a ride to school?"
"I have a car" she replied, and Damon rolled his eyes.
"That thing is hardly a car", the vampire complained, and Emma held back her laughter. "Just grab your purse and let's go".
Emma obeyed and followed the vampire to the Camaro. Along the way, Damon complained about her car, flirted with her, picked on the fact that Ric was living in the same house as her - and Emma noticed that his knuckles turned whiter than normal holding the steering wheel while he grumbled about it - and finally, he commented that Caroline was throwing Elena a surprise party, and that he had offered Boarding House.
"But you hate teenagers" Emma commented, as soon as they parked in front of the school. Damon sighed.
"I hate teenagers, but I think your cousin could use some fun" Damon explained, shrugging.
Emma made a great effort not to let on that she was a little bothered by Damon's concern for Elena, and reminded herself that the girl was grieving for Stefan, who was God knows where following Klaus. Reminding herself of that made her feel ashamed.
"I think it's nice of you and Caroline", Emma commented. "Elena needs normal teenager stuff to worry about".
Damon nodded in agreement. Emma then took off her seat belt and picked up her purse, which was in the back seat. The girl was ready to open the car door, when the vampire sighed.
"I'm tracking Stefan", he said, and Emma stared at him with a frown. "He's killing people. He's on full ripper mode again".
"Ripper?", Emma asked.
"Stefan's a ripper. That's why he doesn't drink human blood. He loses control, he starts killing, and killing, and killing... He could kill an entire town if he wanted to".
"Does Elena know this?"
"No", Damon replied. "And I would prefer that it stay that way".
"Okay", Emma agreed. The girl had her hand on the door latch, but could no longer find the will to get out of the car. She stared at Damon, worried, and he stared at her. "How are you tracking him?"
"Andy's helping", Damon explained, and his voice faltered a few notes. He wasn't fucking Andy, he couldn't after all the craziness that was his near-death. But in any case, it was strange to mention the journalist's name to Emma. He feared that Emma would swarm him if she thought he had gotten back with the woman. "She's a journalist, always informed about things... She keeps me posted".
And Emma reacted better than he expected. She still twitched her nose, and still seemed annoyed, but something inside Damon felt victorious and intoxicated to see that Emma was, in fact, jealous. And seeing her jealous because of him caused the widest range of sensations in him. And they all involved, in the end, the urge to press her against a wall and taste her mouth again. Pulling herself together rather poorly, Emma opened the car door.
"Well, let me know if you need help", the girl finally replied, and got out of the car. Damon watched her walk to the school building carrying her purse. He smirked to himself.
.
During the three days between that morning that Damon had taken Emma to school and Elena's birthday, Andy had practically been living at the Boarding House. The fact annoyed the vampire more than he thought it would.
Andy was no longer so submissive to him, which he had initially thought was a good thing. He hoped that this way the journalist would finally leave him alone and understand that there was no relationship between the two of them, but he was wrong. Andy was no longer submissive, instead, she had assumed an unbearable posture of trying to provoke him, of trying to make him jealous, of trying to make him possessive of her. The only problem with the journalist's little plan was that he didn't feel anything of the sort for her. He felt no desire, no possessiveness, or protectiveness. He just wanted her to pay him some information about the killings and, above all, he wanted her to go far, far away.
Emma, on the other hand, spent three days quite irritable. Alaric and Jeremy attributed the young woman's bad mood to hormones. She must be in 'that time' of the month, they thought. But she wasn't. She was stressed by all the responsibility she was carrying on her shoulders, she was seething with jealousy of Damon, and most of all, she was feeling lonely. She felt that she couldn't talk to Alaric, after all, he was Damon's friend. She couldn't, much less, vent to Jeremy or Elena. The only person she used to talk to was the very person who was causing some of these feelings in her.
She was stressed and, by God, she needed sex. She was a grown woman and hadn't had a date night in months. She was tired of pleasuring herself in the shower, she needed the contact of another body. The only problem was that she couldn't have the one body that she actually wanted. The body she wanted was probably stuck with Andie Starr's body. And so Emma, annoyed, signed up for a dating site and arranged a date in a town two hours away from Mystic Falls on Friday.
She had chosen the most handsome man she had seen on the site, knowing that it was only one night fling. He didn't have to be charming, he didn't have to know how to talk about anything even remotely interesting. He just needed to be handsome enough, and live far away enough for her not to become the talk of Mystic Falls.
When Friday arrived, Emma took a long shower, shaved her legs, put on some lingerie under an elegant dress, and got into her car to drive two hours to her destination. She was driving, getting close to the restaurant she had arranged to meet, when her cell phone rang. She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. She rested it on her shoulder and laid her head to the side in order to hold the phone while keeping both hands on the steering wheel.
"Do you want me to pick you up to the party?", Damon asked, and Emma pressed her lips together tightly. There was the loud sound of music and conversation in the background of the call. Emma had completely forgotten that Friday was the day of Elena's birthday party.
"Fuck, I totally forgot about the party", she confessed, feeling a little sorry that she was so far away and about to have a date on Elena's birthday.
"That's fine, just get dressed. I'll pick you up".
"I'm sorry. I'm not going, Damon", Emma said.
"Why not?" the vampire questioned, and the girl knew, even through the phone, that he was frowning.
"I'm out of town", she explained.
"What? Why?" he asked, looking confused.
"I have this date, and I swear I just forgot about Elena's birthday party, so..."
"You have a date?", Damon practically spat out the words. "Why? Who's the guy? Where are you?"
"Look, I have to go, I'm still driving..."
"Oh, I see now..." Damon commented, laughing, "I can't believe you're making all this up just because of Andy, I told you she's just helping me, we're not together".
"Damon, I'm not making up. I do have a date", Emma replied, rolling her eyes.
"Right", the vampire replied debauchedly. "I'm coming to pick you up so you can tell me all about this date".
Emma felt her blood boil and her jaw lock.
"Damon, I'm out of town and I do have a date" she explained, irritated. "I know it must be shocking, but someone actually is going to meet me for a nice dinner and a nice night, because, strange as it may seem, I sometimes can be the chosen girl". And then she hung up, throwing the cell phone away. The phone fell to the floor of the passenger seat, and she could hear the vibration of an incoming call.
"That's not what I fucking meant!" Damon grumbled, and dialed Emma's number again. The call rang several times, but she didn't answer. The vampire, irritated, threw the cell phone away.
"Hey, what did it do to you?", Alaric asked in an amused tone, propping himself against the porch fence. Damon walked over in irritation and picked up the cell phone from the grass, turning to the man.
"Do you know something about Emma?", Damon asked, crossing his arms. Alaric smiled and took a sip of his whiskey. The man stared at the vampire as if he knew some secret that Damon didn't.
"You mean Emma's date at the new sushi place?", Ric questioned amused, and Damon looked livid, which only amused the professor even more. "Oh, c'mon, it's not like you didn't have your wild night with Andy. After everything that happened, we all need some".
Damon shot Alaric an wild look with his burning icy eyes, and the man almost fell over laughing as he mentally compared the vampire to a kettle about to boil the water and beep. The Salvatore snatched the glass from the man's hand and drank the entire contents at once. He dropped the empty glass on top of the balcony eaves and smoothed his leather jacket over his body.
"You said new sushi place. Charlottesville, right?", Damon asked, and Alaric's smile died. It was Damon's turn to smile. The vampire then reached for the car key inside his pocket and pushed the button to unlock the Camaro.
"Damon, don't do something stupid", Alaric warned him. Damon smirked.
"I'm just going to pick her up", Damon teased, "I promise I won't even enjoy killing the guy".
Alaric opened his mouth to reply but had no time. Before the man could do anything to stop Damon, the vampire was already starting the car. He drove so fast that he made the two-hour drive in fifty minutes. He was going to pick her up, that part was very much true. But he lied about not enjoying killing the guy.