Chapter 15: The Flags We Fly

DAMON

I pad out into the living room on silent feet, intent on my new favorite bedtime ritual.

I don't really need sleep that much, and I've done plenty of it. So on any night when no one is trying to kill us, I start by pouring a glass of my most expensive bourbon. The kind that slides over my tongue as easily as oxygen, but with deep hints of caramel and flame-hardened oak: the kind of liquor that tastes as old as I feel.

On those nights, I take my drink back to bed with me, sipping it slow while I watch Elena sleep, her body a languorous creamy comma punctuating my dark sheets. I could set it to music, drink it in like a multi-sensory buffet of all the best parts of my long life, but I doubt I could find music worthy of the moment. And it's easier in the graceful silence to slowly let the buzz of quality liquor and the scent of Elena's hair ease me into sleep.

Tonight I left her sleeping all in a tumble, the sheets clinging to only one corner of the mattress, her feet on my pillow and her hair in a state that will take me half an hour to brush out for her in the morning. I smile as I pour my drink in the quiet of the dark living room, eager to get back to her.

The sound of the liquor splashing into the glass isn't quite right.

I pause, looking suspiciously at the decanter, and then I hear it again. The slide of liquid coming from the kitchen. When I look over there's no one standing there, but I'm sure I heard it. And then there's a little scrap of a breath.

Well, fuck.

I pick up a different decanter to take with me, because I'm not going to waste my good booze erasing my memory of Caroline's latest wedding-invitation-font fuckwittism freakout. At least I had the sense to pull on pajama pants.

She's sitting on the floor with her back against the sink, a clear bottle of vodka sitting next to her that wasn't part of my last re-stocking of the liquor cabinet. Stefan and I prefer variants on the whiskey/brandy continuum, in general. Not that I don't like to go rough and Russian on occasion, but you've got to be in a sort of pugilistic mood for that kind of shit. Which I suppose Caroline nearly always is.

She doesn't look up when I come in.

"What are we drinking to?" I ask carelessly, dropping down onto the floor across from her and leaning back against the kitchen island.

Caroline glances up at me and her eyes linger on my face for a long moment before she looks back to the floor. She shakes her head.

"I didn't ask you to the prom, I asked you what we were drinking to. Don't write me a damn thesis over there."

"Is Elena asleep?" she asks in a whisper that could carry into neighboring states. Her words are a little fuzzy around the edges and I'm thinking that's not her first bottle.

"Uh-huh."

"For sure?"

"Beauty Queen, you better believe we lost the hell out of that bet. She'll wake up by Easter. Maybe."

She takes a sharp breath and a pull from her bottle, which is nearly empty.

I join her in a slow sip, enjoying the flavor and the silence enforced by the weighty log walls between me and the outside world.

"I'm a slut," Caroline announces, the quaver in her throat ruining her attempt at an objective announcement.

I swallow, consider the possibility that she's cheated on my brother, and discard it.

"Fuuuuuck," I groan, and swivel to drop flat onto the floor. "Me, too."

"I wasn't like this, you know, back when I was human." She's got that high-pitched edge that she gets when she's way too wound up. "I was normal, I swear. Now two days without sex and I'm out of my freaking mind," she complains, her voice starting to crack.

It feels good to lie on the floor. My abs are still tight with that good kind of burn, my back is tired and I may as well get comfortable because I recognize a girl who shouldn't be drinking alone when I see one.

"Hear, hear," I agree. "It's fucking unfair."

"It's not unfair, it's sick. I need an intervention or something." She hiccups and glares accusingly at me. "Do you know how many times we had to do it before I could calm down?"

"Why do you think I can't sit up?" I ask, rhetorically.

The smallest snort of a giggle escapes her. "Seriously though, Damon," she persists. "I'm like, weird. I know transitioning makes you horny but it doesn't make you…you know…does it?"

"Blondie, I turned when I was just the other side of puberty. I'd drill a knothole in a tree before I realized it hadn't even bought me flowers first. What the fuck do I know?" I open one eye and give her a sideways look. "And in 1864? Everything counted as kinky."

She rolls her eyes, but I can see her lips fighting against a smile. "You're right. You're a sexual deviant, anyway."

I tip my glass to her. "Whatever, slut."

She huffs indignantly and kicks me with her bare foot. I tuck a hand behind my head and take a drink to seal the toast.

"You better get another bottle if we're gonna talk about the birds and the bees, Barbie."

She snorts. "I'd better get another bottle if I'm gonna talk to you, period."

"Touche." I drink to that, downing the rest of my good bourbon and refilling with something with a little less flavor and more knock-me-down punch.

Caroline downs the rest of her vodka and drops it into the trash with a clink of glass against glass. She sniffles quickly as she opens the freezer, but she's not fooling me. She's playing it tough now, but I didn't come far behind the waterworks.

I wince and try not to think too carefully about how she might have gone from losing a sex bet to crying on the floor of the kitchen because she thinks she's too kinky. It's entirely possible my brother and my boot need to get re-acquainted.

Caroline breaks the seal on her new bottle of vodka and I hold up my glass.

"To being relentlessly horny, deviantly perverted vampires."

She laughs once, bitterly, and taps her drink to mine with a little too much enthusiasm.

"God it sucks," I deadpan.

I take a sip and then change my mind, opening my throat and downing the whole glass because obviously I have some catching up to do.

"I mean, at least you don't have a dick. It's like Pinocchio's nose, in your pants. Encased behind steel teeth with a taste for your blood, which was obviously somebody's sick idea of a joke," I opine, shifting up onto one elbow long enough to pour myself a fresh drink.

Caroline cradles her bottle against her chest and snickers, obviously distracted, so I roll with it.

"I might as well be dowsing for Elena," I gripe. "Thank God the fucking thing doesn't have an alarm function or I'd have to entirely sign over my dignity to the public domain."

She chokes on her next sip of vodka and when she comes up for air she's laughing in earnest, the dried tear streaks on her cheeks shining in the dim moonlight from the patio doors.

"I mean, at my age I'm supposed to have to take a pill on Saturdays at noon so it kicks in by cocktail hour but before Matlock. And instead I'm buying bed sheets by their shear-strength rating."

Caroline has to set down her bottle because she's laughing so hard the liquid is starting to splash out the top. "I know," she gasps. "Four sets of sheets this month. This month. Who does that?" she giggles.

"Fucking vampirism. Ruins your fucking life." I take a swig, and she reaches for her bottle. "Well, at least we're hot."

The last line gets her and she abandons her drink to clutch her stomach instead, the spasms of giggling finally tipping her off balance so she lands on the floor next to me.

I chuckle at the ceiling and finish my drink, thinking that it's a good thing Stefan sleeps like the freshly vervained because how the hell would we explain the joke to him?

When she finally calms down, gasping for air, we're both sprawled across the floor like teenagers after our first kegger.

I tip my head toward her and whisper conspiratorially, "Stef likes it, you know. Gives him permission to get his freak on."

Her breathing catches, she flips over, and suddenly I have blonde hair in my mouth and pressure like an industrial-strength vise around my rib cage.

I frown. "I'm going to stop being nice to you if you don't stop fucking hugging me all the time."

She snorts and doesn't respond, but she does let me go long enough to grab her chilled bottle before flopping down on the floor again.

"Stay up and get drunk with me?" she asks in a voice that's still two sizes too small for the spunky, iron-willed cheerleader that I'm used to.

"Abso-fucking-lutely," I agree.

# # #

"They're obviously soul mates," Elena says sagely.

"I suppose it was only a matter of time," Stefan agrees.

There's a mechanical click and whir.

"Are you two jokers done yet?" I ask without opening my eyes. My voice sounds like I put it through a garbage disposal.

"Don't move, I need one more picture for Facebook," Elena says.

I lift my head and pry an eye open to assess the damage. My head is roughly two and a half times heavier than yesterday, a weight it doesn't reach very often now that my best drinking buddy is both invisible and sober.

Still, I put my considerable strength to work and manage to ratchet it up high enough to see that Caroline is still asleep, sprawled on her belly with her head on my abs and one foot poked inside an open kitchen cabinet. Her hair covers her face, but I can see it concave and then billow as she breathes.

I drop my head back onto the floor and close my eyes. "For the love of Christ, somebody break my neck so I won't wake up until this is over."

Elena clicks her tongue. "That's what you get for drinking a kiddie pool worth of whiskey in one night."

I wince. "Even the round decanter, the smallish one?"

"Oh yeah," she says smugly.

"Damn," I mutter. "Blood? Pretty please?"

"Sure," she says. "As soon as you explain one thing."

I manage to shove a grunt of assent through my sourly desiccated throat and Elena taps my chest with one finger. When I open my eyes she points.

To Caroline's blaringly pink Macbook, open on the kitchen floor next to us. Its screen brightly displays a page thanking us for our $2,340.66 order from . Charged to my black AmEx.

I have a vague memory of Caroline's grin as she hit the final button and raised her hand for a high five. "Let the freak flag fly!" she'd exclaimed proudly, and at the time, twenty-three hundred bucks seemed like a small price to pay to keep her out of the Kleenex box. Especially since at least a grand of that was going straight into my personal stash of future sexy times.

I glance quickly up at Elena, but there's no trace of anger in her amusement, so I decide I can afford to keep Caroline's secret for a little longer.

I close my eyes again. "Trust me, that's a story best told over drinks. In about thirty years."

Stefan clears his throat. "Try forty."