Damon had to stop suddenly when he realized after a few steps that Suze wasn't walking next to him anymore. With an exasperated, not-even-the-littlest-bit-fond sigh he turned around to see why she would suddenly decide making their way to their house wasn't the best course of action.
She was standing on the sidewalk, staring at an antique chair that had been put near the trash at the end of a driveway, and looking weirdly emotional. Taking in a deep breath, Damon could smell that she wasn't on her period.
And holy shit, what a discussion that had been when he told her he was able to tell. He'd taken a lamp to the head. She had insisted that it was necessary collateral for his honest statement.
Walking back towards Suze, Damon tried his best to seem genuine when he said "Alright, what the fuck?"
Suze immediately punched his arm before replying in an annoyed voice, "Shut up, dickhead."
Another beat of silence followed before she finally turned away from the goddamn chair and said, "I was just thinking - when I was a kid I thought shit like this was awesome, and I could fill my apartment or house in a big city with old cool things I found. But… bedbugs. Oh Christ, bedbugs. My roommate in college had them and I had to throw out half of what I owned. But look at this chair. It's perfect."
Damon did not know how to respond.
"…I'm sorry?"
Once again, Suze smacked his shoulder before snorting and continuing to walk down the sidewalk next to him.
"I've been weirdly nostalgic lately about what I thought I'd do with my life versus what I'm actually doing. I think it's because of Nik? Obviously vampires invading my personal life wasn't foreseen, but I kind of thought I'd be more professionally successful."
"Life's a bitch."
"So is death, apparently."
Damon laughed at that, finally turning to face her as Suze ungracefully jammed her key into their front door.
"Speaking of death and your boy toy - have you talked to Nik after the dramatic reveal that prompted you to drink half a bottle of vodka and cry about the existence of toxoplasmosis in a fourth of Americans?"
Suze scrunched her nose, not answering until she had plopped herself on the floor and was playing with the dogs.
"Kind of? I mean, I pretended I didn't say it and we talked about his sister and me possibly meeting her, but then when we were hanging up and he said the three despicable words and I automatically responded. An instinct, if you will."
Damon looked up from where he'd been looking in the fridge for the leftover stir fry he was hoping he'd saved and responded in a bland tone, "So not because you love him or anything?"
Suze very clearly didn't want to elaborate, but finally she buried her face in Louie's fur - to his absolute delight - and groaned out, "Oh my god fuck off I love him. At least he isn't a repeat person. Asshole."
Klaus knew he was being awkward. Even when he had daggered his siblings in the past there had been an unspoken rule of sorts that they would resume their normal behavior around one another. Sure, Kol had attempted to kill him a time or two, but it was to be expected from the baby brother of the family.
Seeing as he was currently in a coffin, Kol was unable to contribute to Klaus's assessment.
But Bekah having overheard his conversation with Suzanne was the opposite of ideal. His overly romantic little sister had not stopped badgering him about her - when they'd met, what she was like, if she knew about the supernatural, if she knew about his own complicated situation about what he was, and so on.
It was irritating to say the least. Especially because the first few days after Suzanne had said she loved him she had been incredibly evasive. The woman was a bit like a spooked animal at times; if he had confronted her immediately after Klaus knew without a doubt that she would bolt. So he gave her time in order for them to relax into their usual cadence before he'd decided to respond to her statement.
After she had responded to his confession of love, she had easily repeated back to him that she loved him. Of course he had heard her mortified squeak before she hung up, but he considered it a success having just made his own feelings clear. Suzanne would need time - he wouldn't have thought otherwise after being with her so often and hearing in her hushed, vulnerable whispers in bed that she didn't understand love.
Just as Klaus was thinking over their relationship - and bloody hell, calling her a girlfriend when he had already resigned himself to the fact she was so much more than that was bizarre - his phone went off.
Bekah was in the room and her head immediately focused in on the device that she still saw as novel, so Klaus picked it up before she could grab it for herself.
A single text message had come through from Damon with a picture attached.
Your babe is looking unrecognizable
In the photograph Suzanne was standing at the island in their kitchen, eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes and glaring at the camera with her right middle finger in the air while the other loosely gripped a spoon. Of course, the black lace and silk evening gown she was wearing matched with an elaborate hairstyle made the image far more interesting.
To his dismay, a moment later Bekah was peering over his shoulder at the picture of Suzanne.
"She's cute. Well done."
Alright. Suzanne knew about the whole 'wow, our ancestors founded a great colony, oh wow, who cares about the original inhabitants' thing. But Damon joining the Founders' council? Admittedly a very weird thing she tried to reconcile with the image of her best friend laying on the couch last weekend with Cheetoh-dusted fingers and blood surging up through a Mickey Mouse themed curly straw.
Regardless though, Suzanne had agreed to act as his date for a bizarre gathering that was literally labelled as "Miss Mystic Falls". As if a fucking beauty pageant was exactly what all self conscious teenagers needed to drive themselves to win. Suzanne had been on the phone with Caroline ten times in the last two weeks to reassure her that she obviously was going to win.
Honestly? Suzanne hoped she did. After hearing all about Caroline's qualifications and Elena's lack thereof, she knew she would be fucking pissed if the Katherine clone won. Yeah, pity got you so far. Suzanne could have written about Scotty's cancer in her college essays if she wanted to - but she didn't, because that shit was devastating and not fair to harp on about to strangers.
Either way, she'd finished off her leftover Pinot Grigio the night before, so the whole free-food-and-booze thing was pretty much the safety pin holding her together.
Because - god, there were so, so many rich people. Suzanne had always been good at blending in when she had to - years of being a waitress meant that her charismatic skills were phenomenal - but dealing with hoards of people who didn't know her and therefor knew she wasn't in their household income bracket? That was a little bit embarrassing.
She was banging ONE vampire millionaire, who she had been texting all night. As if she could or would ever actually attempt a relationship with Damon. Repulsive.
However, the night soon became very, very interesting a few hours later -
Okay. Interesting might be a callous term, since the excitement was around Stefan apparently going crazy and binging on human blood. Suzanne got it - realistically, on nights that she wasn't drinking sometimes she craved alcohol. She didn't drink whenever she wanted to and was doing pretty well so she wouldn't call herself an addict, but Suzanne had a friend in college who had to take a year off after going to rehab for cocaine.
Maybe a blood addiction was similar?
Either way, Suzanne obviously became far more invested in the evening when danger, intrigue, and bloodshed entered the equation.
When she actually focused back on the 'main event' and saw Caroline striding down the stairs like a goddamn bombshell Suzanne might have cheered loudly enough to be embarrassing. However, even as the rich people around her looked at her with thinly veiled judgement, Caroline turned her head until she focused on Suzanne and beamed back at her.
Suzanne had come to really like the girl. She was hilarious and had a similar sense of humor. So of course Suzanne would cheer for her, in case there was a clap-o-meter somewhere.
When Copy-Kat walked down the stairs, it got very awkward.
Stefan wasn't at the bottom of the stairs, probably due to his whole eating humans tonight thing, and Damon started to step forward. In a low tone of voice Suzanne spoke to him sweetly.
"If you fucking abandon me to dance with your brother's girlfriend I will rip your dick off like wet paper."
The human quarterback swooped in, and Damon shuddered in what Suzanne could only hope was a reaction to her intimidation.
Hi, my loves! I'm very, very sorry for the delay in updates - I have the storyline for this fic outlined through the end of season three - but I've moved to NYC and have a full time job and party with my friends on weekends (shocking, I know)
I will do my best to update at a more regulated pace, I'm sorry for the massive gap between updates! Please let me know what you think of the latest chapter! Reviews are always lovely, and honestly the questions about updates prompted me to finally bang this chapter out 3