Some explanations, finally...


Adjusting to our reality, part 19: Deal with it, or walk away

Early in the morning, Damon decided that hell, he was going to have this talk with Alaric despite any form of disturbance that would try to prevent him from doing so. Be it a blond woman with blue earrings, or a young doppelganger desperate to sacrifice herself to save everybody in the damn world, the vampire wouldn't listen.

And that was how he ended up on Alaric's doorstep at five a.m..

Maybe it wasn't his smartest move.

It was definitely not his smartest move, and the look the hunter gave him when he opened the door was filled with resentment.

"Maybe you forgot that, Damon, but human beings need to sleep if they want to stay alive."

"I'm not going to leave until we have that discussion. Besides, you're already awake, so why not take the opportunity?"

"Wrong, I'm still sleeping. Can't you see how I don't look at you right now? It's because you're only a part of my dream that has decided to harass me during my well-earned rest. So fuck off and let me get some deserved sleep."

The idea of being a part of Ric's dream almost overwhelmed the vampire's brain, but he would not let the man's not-exactly-trick-since-the-hunter-didn't-know-how-much-it-affected-him-but-yet deceives him. The two of them had played around for too long now.

"Alaric, we need to talk, and I'd rather do it before your lifetime adorable blondie friend takes you away once more."

Damon repressed the urge to just kiss the teacher in order to make him understand it wasn't a dream, because he was pretty sure that Alaric would deduce right away it was actually a nightmare if he did. Damn, he wanted those lips on his owns so much... that he wasn't thinking straight anymore.

Damon really needed to pull himself together, before he did do something stupid. Such as, blowing up the only real friendship he had had in decades by foolishly falling in love with his friend. Oops, that was already the case. Then, letting said friend know about his feelings for him on a whim. Because there was no way Ric would love him back.

"You really don't like her, do you?"

"She's dubious as hell, and if you can't see it, that only makes her even more of a suspect."

"Suspect of what?"

"See, I told you."

Alaric refrained himself from saying that Damon wasn't making sense.

"I put some clothes on and I'm all yours."

Damon gulped. That sounded so ambiguous in so many ways, he simply didn't want to think about it. Strange, how everything seemed full of allusions, when you were with the one you secretly loved before sunrise.

"Yeah, you do that."

He saw Alaric frown as his voice was shaking, but the man said nothing and pushed the door closed.

The vampire leaned against the corridor wall.

His heart was beating so fast, he hadn't experienced that for ages. Maybe he had never really felt this way before. Katherine had been compelling, ironic as it could seem, but she had given him what he wanted pretty quickly. In his heart, Elena had been all about jealousy and frustration. Ric...

Alaric was different.

Sure, there was jealousy, frustation about him being with Jenna. Sure, Damon could feel how much he yearned for his body, as he had for the doppelganger bitch's – or, well, not exactly in the same way, obviously, but entrancing still.

But it was mostly despair that was driving the vampire mad. Just being in the same room was enough to make him feel safe, and torn apart at the same time. With Ric, he wasn't playful as he had been with Elena, or even with any of the women he flirted with continuously. He couldn't. Because the teacher wasn't a woman. Because their thing, whatever it was for Alaric, had begun in a very particular way, one of them trying to kill the other, and being killed by the said other. Because the truth was that sometimes Damon was a coward. Because he wouldn't be able to endure another broken heart. Because making a move would shatter their fragile friendship forever.

Alaric's face.

Handsome, handsome face. Wonderful eyes. And that smile!

Breathing heavily, Damon felt that something down there was reacting to his thoughts with a little too much enthusiasm. It was definitely not the right time to be horny. Not the right place, either, and as he hadn't been invited in – and well, even if he had been, that would be very dubious, he couldn't use Ric's bathroom...

Bad strategy. Shouldn't be thinking about the very man that made him like this.

Breathe.

No thoughts about anything dirty, no thoughts about how lewd he wanted Alaric to be with him, no thoughts about any word linked in some way to fucking. Please. He couldn't destroy what they had because of his shitty vampiric libido.

Breathe.

Ric couldn't see him in this state.

The always-in-control Damon Salvatore, the obnoxious vampire who slept with whoever he wanted as long as he didn't have any feeling for them, the abhorrent jackass with no sentimental attachment, couldn't believe being sexually frustrated about anyone.

And certainly not in the hallway of the building where Alaric Saltzman lived.

Inhibiting his urge to fuck his best friend – unless he wanted to be the one that would be fucked, he really had no idea about that – wasn't going to make him feel confortable. What he was certain of, was that it was the only way.

Damon straightened. Trying to look as normal as possible.

Breathe.

Alaric opened his door, a cardboard box under his right arm, and saw a fidgeting vampire.

"You need to calm down, man. The world won't end because you have ten more minutes to wait before knowing the whole truth. Or, rather, what I know about it, which isn't much."

Damon forced a smile onto his face. He had to be patient, he knew that. Not about that, though. And what he was waiting for would never happen. He knew that too.

"So what, we're going somewhere?"

It hurt a little that Ric still wouldn't let him in. But the hunter surely hadn't even thought about the possibility. He wasn't doing it on purpose. He wasn't.

"Just outside. I don't want to think about what I'm going to discuss with you in my apartment. It'd feel like I'm staining it with my sins, and I'm not sure I could still sleep in my bed after that."

Ric said nothing about the fact that he kept the carton box of shame under the very same bed. That wasn't exactly something Damon needed to know.

When the hunter tried to lock his door without letting go of his cardboard box, he lost his balance.

Damon rushed to get a hold of the escaping box, but ended up catching Ric instead.

"Don't try to postpone this conversation by tripping over and breaking some of your bones."

"I'm not trying to destroy my body, if that's what you're insinuating."

The vampire smirked, or at least tried to. If only touching wasn't a very effective stimulant, he could have behaved as usual, a snarky comment here, some more teasing there. But no, feeling Alaric's musculature through the man's shirt, having his left hand in the teacher's back, under his jacket, so that Ric wouldn't fall on the ground, was too much.

Breathe.

"I'm okay now. Thanks, Damon, really, but don't you think you could let me stand up again?"

Yup, he should totally do that, because that was becoming awkward. And not only the situation. There was still this bad, mean thing down there, which was reacting in a way it definitely shouldn't.

Damon helped his best friend to get back on his feet and took a step back.

"Sorry, Ric. Better now?"

"Once again, thanks. I guess I'm more ill-at-ease than I thought I was..."

Damon snorted. The teacher wasn't the only one to be ill-at-ease, but he wasn't going to tell him about it, of course. Nothing could be more embarassing than having to explain to your secret love / best male friend that you were having a boner because of them, right?

The arrival of Vanessa Monroe, if quite surprising, was the perfect turn-off.

They had merely made it to the stairs when the young woman stormed in the building, and, a bundle of papers in hand, glared at them.

The hell she was doing at five and thirtyin the morning in Mystic Falls was enough of a mystery in and of itself, but the history teacher had gotten used to seeing people popping out into his life lately.

"Don't say a word. I'll talk to you too."

She seemed outraged, but stayed silent.

Alaric looked for a public bench. So early in the day, he didn't really have to worry about who might hear what he was going to say. No one was to be seen, the three of them put aside.

"Sit down, and talk. Damon, you begin."

If anyone could have seen them, they'd be amazed by the natural authority given off by the hunter. He was so cold, strict, indifferent, with his neutral face on, that even the vampire didn't think of protesting. And, well, Damon wanted to know everything about Ric so badly he didn't really care.

"The Falkenbach Curse is strangely similar to your family's. Care to explain?"

"Easy one. The Saltzmans are the Falkenbachs. When one of their girls disappeared back in the eighteenth century, her death was reported three month later, but it was a mistaken identity. Next."

"I've seen your scar. Is that ritual a real thing?"

Alaric frowned, wondering when exactly his friend might have spotted it. Then he remembered their trip to Duke, and the toilet booth. He had thought Damon was craving for blood way too much to notice anything, as the scar was on the back of his shoulder, but he had apparently been mistaken.

"No idea. But we all do it after our first kill, for various reasons. Most of us think it's only a symbolic act, but the last guy who decided it wasn't worth the pain, turned out to be a psychopath, no feelings at all, so we do it without asking questions. That was what had brought my cousin here: she needed someone's help to carve the symbol into her flesh. Any more questions?"

Damon thought about it for a short minute, then answered he didn't have anything else to say.

It wasn't the actual truth. He also wanted to ask why Ric's scar had tortured him for hours. But he didn't want anyone to know he was stalking the teacher, because that was gross.

Ric stared at him for some more time, almost scanning the vampire's behavior in search of a clue.

Then he turned around to face Vanessa, took her notes before she could prevent him from doing so.

Not only notes. Pics, too. Isobel, once again.

"I guess you found this amongst my wife's stuff?"

It was a picture of him, bare chested as he was fixing the sink in their old house, and you could clearly see the scar, the damn scar that designated him as a member of the Falkenbach Family.

Or Saltzman Family, but it was ultimately the same thing.

And that was why Vanessa had come in a rush from Duke.

"You let me waste my time searching for things you already knew!"

Alaric sighed.

The girl was way too impulsive.

He opened the cardboard box, took some papers out of it, searched for the shirt he knew was in there, spotted with blood. Found it.

"Take a look."

The young woman gave the newspaper articles a disdainful look, and went back to staring at the teacher fiercely. Damon, on the other hand, squinted his eyes at the picture on the front page.

"This boy... it's you, Ric?"

Damn right. It was a teenager, half covered in blood, hiding his face from the reporters' cameras.

"I cut a man's throat open with a hunting knife. His head was still on his shoulders for one reason: the knife wasn't enough to break his spine. You think I like to introduce myself this way? As a guy who can kill a human being with no hesitation? I told you to stay away from all this but no, you wouldn't listen to me. So don't be unfair, Vanessa. You didn't have to research this book, you knew it and I told you so. Yet you decided you wanted to know more. Now you do. Deal with it, or walk away."