set in 2x03, oviously
I'm in an awfully good mood, just finished a 393 pages story that took me 3 years to write, so I came up with... this.
This... thing.
It looks like a chapter of some story.
I believe we can sum it up as a hint of how fucked up my head is.
That's not exactly violence, I guess, but well. Yuck. And yet hurray.
Understand me if you can. And if you can, you're warned. I'm strange, I know it. Do you know if you are?
So now, I will shut up.
Adjusting to our reality, part 3: Nothing more, nothing less
Alaric took a look at Isobel's stuff in her office / room-filled-with-any-supernatural-bullshit-the-world-could-imagine / whatever while waiting for the young woman – Vanessa Monroe she had said she was called – to come back.
Now that he knew that vampires and witches and doppelgangers and who-know-what-else were real, he couldn't help but wonder how many of the tales which were told to children had a kernel of truth in them.
Ric glanced at Damon and Elena. At this exact moment, he was with – at least – two living evidences of a supernatural reality. In fact, he might actually be one of those, too. Couldn't forget he died once, could he? If he could still do the math right, there was one living evidence of double occurrences – even if the show would have been better if he could have gotten Katherine on stage too – and two not-so-dead proofs of supernatural occurences, one as a guy who should be dead and wasn't thanks to a magic ring, and one as another guy who was actually dead yet had a beating heart, could move, speak, think – although in strange ways sometimes – and casually drank blood for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, in the room.
Hurray for realism.
Then he realized he was in his bitch-of-an-undead wife's office and he couldn't care less in the world. He had made progress, as he thought. Great.
Right when he had this positive thought – and that was some achievement to have a positive thought about Isobel – Miss Monroe came back with a crossbow and shot at Elena.
What? How? Why?
No time for answers, but clearly, something was odd there.
Thankfully, Damon took the crossbow bolt instead, blocking the way for another shot.
Not that he was happy that Damon was physically hurt. Well, maybe a little, to be honest. But it was way better than taking back to his girlfriend a dead daughter-in-law who happened to be the niece of said girlfriend. Alaric loved his life. Really. Yet, sometimes, he had to remind himself how farcical this life was. He had to try not to get too used to it, or one day, he might not be able to discern what was really wrong from what was simply kind of strange.
So, no time to think, right? Ric was just beginning to become friend with his wife's kind-of-murderer-but-not-exactly, and well, he cared about Elena and about humans in general, so maybe he should do something before the woman could get a better shot and ended up killing someone. Or got herself killed, which was more likely.
So he pinned her against the wall, took the weapon away.
Damon snorted. For now, the pain was distracting him from his next objective, which was clearly beheading Vanessa Monroe as a compensation, but he was seriously considering the idea.
A glare from Ric wiped the idea out of his mind. Killing the girl apparently meant being staked in the guts, if the hunter didn't go for the heart. Which was not sure at all. And Alaric was way more efficient than a tiny bookworm who had gotten herself a crossbow.
That would have been a pity. Just when their friendship started to make some sense.
Elena took the bolt out of Damon's back with little efficiency, but it was better than nothing. The vampire felt the wood break into pieces, leaving splinters here and there in his internal organs, and winced thinking of how he would need to have his own hand wandering off in his stomach to get them out. Truly wonderful. The dream of his live.
After some nice explanations, with a lot of "it's not possible" and other variations of incredulity, everyone was mostly calmed down. So they did exactly what they were supposed to do: Alaric was being serious, Elena was being upset at Damon, Damon was being a jackass, and Vanessa Monroe was being very enthousiastic about all of it.
On top of being themselves, the four of them managed to get some data about werewolves and doppelgangers, so everything was great and all, but before going back, Damon really needed to get those splinters out of his body.
The vampire discreetly left while Elena was still talking with Miss Monroe.
He was looking for the bathrooms when a hand came down on his shouldermaking him flinch. Had his senses become that dull, or what? It was just Alaric, and yet he hadn't noticed him until the last moment.
Ric frowned at the reaction, but said nothing.
"I'll help you with that."
"With what?"
"You think I didn't see how Elena pulled the bolt out of you? There's no way you don't have some more wood left in here."
Damon made a face – which one Ric couldn't say exactly, because the vampire's facial expressions chart was so wide. What the hunter could say, was that there was some surprise in it.
"You get that it's a bit narrow in this?"
Ric gave the toilet booth a knowing look – and the hell if Damon had any idea of what it meant, but the hunter was definitely judging the booth with the eye of an expert, and grinning.
"No worries, it'll be big enough."
The vampire frowned. He went in nonetheless, curious about what would happen after that, and very eager to get rid of the splinters that were tickling his internal organs. The space in the booth was narrow, he had had that right. But Alaric hadn't been wrong either: both of them had enough space to turn around.
Damon sighed, took off his shirt and leaned over the toilet bowl. No need to paint the room scarlet.
"Maybe you should take yours off too."
The vampire couldn't not see the abs when Ric got rid of his jacket and shirt. Not so long ago, the teacher had still been kind of flabby. Not so much, but still. When the hell did he have time to train, with every supernatural shit that happened lately, and his job to balance with his personal life?
If Damon wasn't already inchangingly perfect, he would have been jealous.
Well, perfection was relative. As for him, the outside was perfect, no question, but the inside was a mess, both physically and psychologically. He was working very hard on the last part, though, and planning to do something about the first part right now.
Nothing could be seen of the pain he was enduring at the moment, but he knew pretty well facade and reality were not always the same thing. For now, the only thing he could feel was that his viscera were tearing apart and healing at the same time. Maybe that was the reason why he hadn't heard the hunter coming: too preoccupied by his guts aching like hell to notice his friend's arrival.
"And what do you think you could do for me?"
The vampire was a little skeptical.
It wouldn't be a problem. It was normal to be skeptical. Ric just had to do so that the vampire wouldn't have any time to react. So he took a blade he kept in his left pant leg and stabbed Damon.
The vampire reacted a little late, and not well. Instinct took over, from what the hunter could see, and Damon went all vampire-mode. But he restrained himself, whatever the reason was, and kept his struggle to a minimum.
"Help, remember? And it's not like you'll die because of such a wound. So keep your fangs out of my sight."
Damon was bewildered. First of all, he didn't understand how bleeding out would help him to remove splinters. Moreover, Ric was way too calm about this, as if stabbing people was a hobby he practiced twice a week. And, ultimately, the hunter was freaking awesome while doing it.
Maybe natural born torturers were real.
But no, that wasn't Alaric's case.
The vampire could see it in his eyes. The teacher was nothing like a psychopath, it was simply that he didn't fear blood. Ric was doing what had to be done, and felt okay about it. Nothing more, nothing less. He didn't seem to enjoy inflicting pain or death, but didn't hate it either.
"So? What comes next?"
"I suppose you know exactly where the splinters are?"
"I could give you a GPS location if you need me to."
"You will."
Damon looked at him, incredulous. What exactly was Ric planning to do with his body?
The teacher's right hand went to the wound.
Alaric gave one last glance to Damon, making sure he wouldn't back off suddenly. Given the little space, they would most likely fall upon each other and redecorate the whole booth with bloody prints. It being a public space, it would be hell to explain if anybody came and saw them cleaning.
The vampire felt Ric's fingers separate the wound's edges, crawl inside his flesh and touch solfty his internal organs. That was gross. Freaking gross. Freaking awesomely gross.
"I... think I get what you're trying to do. Left, near the stomach."
It was definitely one of the crudest thing he had done and ever planned to do in his whole life. It also hurt like hell. But the hunter's touch was gentle, even though he favored efficiency over comfort. And when Damon looked into those eyes, he could only trust him.
Damon chuckled despite the situation. The man he trusted the most in the world in this precise moment was the one who had tried to kill him not so long ago. One of the those who had tried to kill him not so long ago would have been more accurate. Lots of people had tried to kill him during the last months.
Ric looked up, a bit baffled.
"May I know what's making you laugh?"
"Nothing."
A sharp pain startled the vampire.
"You got one."
Slowly, Alaric pulled the splinter out of the wound, left open thanks to the knife.
A tiny, riduculous wood splinter that had almost made Damon cry. Really.
"How many left?"
"Three, I think. Not sure, though. The pain is terrible, you know."
"Well then, better get back to work."
It took some time, and Damon found himself thinking that Elena might worry about them not coming back, but it had to be done. When Ric got the last splinter, just before he took it out of the vampire's body, Damon pointed out that they hadn't talked in some time already.
"With none of us wasted, I mean."
"Is that my fault if you're never serious, unless you have half a bottle of bourbon messing with your head?"
"No, but you're one to talk."
Alaric ripped the splinter out.
Damon growled. That had been absolutely unnecessary.
The hunter ignored him and took back the blade that he more or less washed in the toilet bowl. Blood had been spilled all over the seat, and Damon looked paler than ever. But he felt better.
The vampire watched Ric as the man looked at his bloody hand with annoyance.
The silence was unbearable.
"You know, I'm trying very hard."
Ric raised an eyebrow, but didn't stop to contemplate the length of his arm that was soaked in blood. There was a sink outside of the toilet booth, but he feared to go out in such a state. He couldn't even put his shirt on without getting blood all over it. Neither could Damon, to say the truth.
"I mean, all those things you said about forgetting Elena and Katherine and finding someone completely different. But it's not so simple, and I don't want her to hate me so I try to be funny even though I'm a jerk and I just find everyone else boring or already taken and..."
Alaric got him to shut up by covering the vampire's mouth with his own hand. Damon was going to complain with an explicit groan when he heard it too. Someone had just entered the room. Which was to be expected, since they were in a public toilet booth. So he shut up.
If anybody saw them, blood all over the teacher's hand and red water in the toilet bowl, shirtless in the same booth, silent, there would be some misunderstanding, for sure. What kind of misunderstanding, Damon wasn't certain. But misunderstanding, anyway. No danger. Why would anyone come in?
And while these thoughts were making their way to his brain for no particular reason, Damon stiffened. With all the blood loss, he was craving for blood. Shit.
