I know you'll loke it.
If not, prove me otherwise.


One world apart, part 26: Unusual propensity to die and get resurrected

There was a moment of silence.

Both had to process what it meant exactly, for Ric to be "thirsty". So far he hadn't been, because... Well, because he had been a ghost. And, Damon would bet the hunter was still a ghost, only more attuned to the livings, which made no sense at all. So, if Alaric needed to feed...

Oh hell, had Damon's actions condamned Ric to have needs despite being dead?!

If that was the case, his lover was going to suffer for all eternity. As soon as the Veil would be back into place, he wouldn't be able to interact with the world. He wouldn't be able to feed, nor to die, and... He would probably desiccate until the end of time!

The vampire was about to speak up about that, and possibly to apologize for a few hundreds things he knew he shouldn't have done. Apologizing wasn't something he did very often, he wasn't even sure he had done it once in the last decade, but well. He was feeling like crap, right now.

"Ric, you..."

But before he could say more, Damon felt two sharp somethings break the skin of his neck.

It stopped him.

Reminded of the only time a vampiric Alaric had fed on him, he gasped a bit, but did not try to stop his boyfriend from quenching the thirst. Surely this wasn't Evilaric, just... a slightly disoriented Ric? Considering, you know, being-almost-alive-but-not-quite and all that.

Then the older vampire started to feel dizzy.

He pushed Ric back, just a bit. He knew that, had the Original wanted, he wouldn't have been able to do anything, so he took it to be a good thing that he could. It meant Alaric wasn't completely lost in bloodlust or whatever, that he wasn't going to be fed from until no blood remained in his body, or worse, until his head fell off. It was rare, but that happened, from time to time. Especially to Stefan's victims, when his little brother was in one of his cr...

Right. No thinking about beheading by way-too-enthusiastic biting.

Damon was almost convinced he heard Ric whine when he pushed him away.

"I don't mean to interrupt your date with my jugular, Sweetheart, but I think we have some things to do. You know, you go to take Liz's place at the clearing, I go to make sure no one tries to behead Pouty, Barbie, Stefykins or Judgy during the ceremony, all that?"

Ric's eyes seemed a bit glazed, but soon it was gone. The hunter blinked, as if in surprise at his own actions. Then he shrugged. He wiped the blood off his chin, embarrassed, and took a step back.

The hunter tried to speak, but he found his throat suspiciously dry. He'd have thought that drinking blood would make that better, but apparently not. Hell, he wasn't even sure why he had been so transfixed with Damon's blood, just a moment ago. He might not remember the other time he had been alive and a vampire, but still. He hoped all blood did not smell like that, because if it did...

He wasn't sure he could resist. There really had been something, like a pull he hadn't been able to throw off, even by being his usual inhuman self who didn't care at all for the needs of the body as long as he didn't get weakened for it.

His eyes wandered back against his will to Damon's throat, to the closed bite mark, still visible if only because of the blood smeared where he had bitten...

And oddly, he didn't feel the pull again.

Sure, the blood smelled nice, and he was certain he wouldn't mind getting more, but it was nothing unreasonable. It wasn't...

It was just blood, like before, when he was human, only he found he kind of liked it now. Just like when suddenly you find yourself wishing for a kind of food you had never really paid attention to before. He could tell it would do him good, to drink it, but... That was all, really.

What had it been about, then?

Alaric coughed once or twice, still blinking, and eventually cleared his throat loudly.

"I..."

He paused, dumbfounded. He brought a hand to his neck, just to make sure there wasn't anything strange with it. But no, no gash, no sore skin, no delicate throat. Not that he'd expected to find anything, because really? His voice sounded clearer than it had for months. More real.

Damon arched both eyebrows, a teasing smile on.

"What, the cat got your tongue? Or didn't you expect to be blood-craved like the others of us lowly vampires?"

Ric gave him the evil eye for no apparent reason, already heading for the door.

"Just go on and take care of the kids, will you?"

And he all but slamed the door.

Damon stared at said door for a good minute, bemused, before his cellphone rang. It sent him back into action. It was Stefan's number. So either his little brother was wondering why the hell he wasn't there for his... – you know what, nevermind the number of this particular graduation ceremony – or something was wrong. Knowing his luck, it would be the former, but knowing Stefan, it could be the first. The kid sure knew how to bitch about things.

Not that Damon couldn't bitch about things either.

He did it often enough to certify he could do it just as well as his brother did.

Ric probably was grumpy about something he had said or done in the last days. The guy had been dead for quite some time, and perhaps he deserved to be cut some slack. Damon sure would be grumpy if he had had to watch things happen, people be killed, idiots be idiots without being able to do a thing about it. Actually, he guessed he'd be on a killing spree right now, if he had been in Ric's shoes. The hunter had changed him, but Damon suspected he would need a few more years with his lover before he became an upstanding blood-sucking citizen.

Good thing that Alaric would get to vent his anger some more this day. Damon had a feeling quite a number of heads would fall off before the end of the day, before Bonnie could put the Veil back.

Damon left the boarding house as he answered his phone, and so he missed the fact that Alaric hadn't left yet. The hunter was simply leaning against a wall, close to the front door. He seemed to try and control his breath, eyes closed, but listening.

Ric breathed out one last time as he finally heard Damon leave. He had calmed down, for now, but he had also discovered a few things, now that he wasn't overwhelmed by whatever had just happened.

Whatever being, most likely, his definitive coming back to life. Or, last-heard-of coming back to life, considering his unusual propensity to die and get resurrected.

He snorted a bit, and heard once again the sound of his voice.

He didn't feel, he didn't sound like he belonged to the Veil anymore. He was...

Alive.

For someone who died and got revived as often as he did, the hunter thought he shouldn't be that astonished anymore. It didn't stop him from feeling that way.

It made sense, though. What had happened with Ariane, almost pulling him back to life by using her life energy, had also been done with Damon as his anchor to the living side of the world. If anything could make him live once again, it made sense that it'd be drinking his anchor's blood. And as Ric hadn't really been anywhere after that, not in the Veil, not with the living, nowhere at all, he surmised his body itself, or maybe his subconscious, had pulled him to the only exit possible. Hence the urge to feed from his idiotic vampire boyfriend.

Right.

He'd have to tell the guy, before Bonnie finished her spell, or Damon'd probably go crazy thinking of them being separated again. Damon and crazy didn't do well together. Most of the time, it caused a few deaths and a lot of tears.

Still, Alaric wasn't going to distract his lover now, because if he did tell Damon right away that Hey, surprise, he wasn't going to disappear – perhaps – he had a feeling the idiot would manage to get himself killed by being recklessly happy.

And, maybe, there was also the fact that despite his almost certitude, Ric wasn't absolutely sure to be alive again. Magic and whatnot's effects were not often that easy to guess, especially when the ones doing the guessing – here, himself – weren't witches.

The hunter knew many things about many subjects, but he couldn't say that witchcraft was something he had much knowledge on. He knew more than the average person who had no idea the supernatural even existed, but that was all.

If he was wrong, and he hadn't been resurrected at all, if the thirst for blood and his aching shoulder weren't about that...

He didn't want to say it out loud, and give himself hope. And he certainly didn't want to say it out loud, and give Damon a possibly false hope.

Because that would suck.

Finally Alaric decided it was really time to go. Since they had first said they'd go their separate way to ensure nothing too dramatic happened because of the ghostly invasion, some time had passed, and yet he was still here. How much time had it been? Forty minutes? One hour?

Elizabeth Forbes would have liked to be present to her daughter's graduation ceremony. It would be selfish of him to leave her to behead a bunch of ghosts in a clearing any longer.

No, really.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact he might have wanted to behead a few ghosts himself. He was pretty sure it'd be a therapeutic experience, though.

Ric blurred out of here, to be at the clearing as quickly as possible.

But he had only made it a dozen of meters away from the boarding house, when he felt the pain.

He wouldn't tell anyone this had happened, afterwards, because it surely had been ridiculous, even if he couldn't tell himself because he had... Well, because it had happened to him, and it wasn't really possibly to witness your own misery, not in that way.

The fact was, he tripped as the burning pain tore his skin apart. And then he rolled over to the nearest tree. Finally he landed against the very tree.

Ric could swear he saw stars partying around his head, that day. That is, he would if he ever told anyone about what had happened. Which would not happen. He didn't want to speak of that. Ever.

It hurt. The hunter-turned-vampire / possibly-previously-a-ghost refrained from wincing, knowing it wouldn't do with the wounds on his face. It would only make it worse.

He was growing tired of major and / or painful wounds, that day. As if getting himself exploded because of a kamikaze hunter wasn't enough in one single day.

Alaric got back on his feet, and considered what he suspected to be the cause of his sudden pain. If that wasn't a proof he was alive again, he'd have to press charges. Against who, he wasn't sure, but he sure as hell wasn't okay with it if there weren't any positive effects. It hadn't happened when he was just a ghost, just like he hadn't needed to feed! If he had gotten all the bad sides of being alive, without actually being alive, he swore...!

Hum, apparently Damon would have to do as the accused. If his boyfriend had gotten him to live again, he was going to thank the vampire so much he would beg for him to stop, but if it wasn't the case... There would be hell to pay.

Anyway.

Ric walked until he reached the end of the tree's shadow, and reached out slowly.

An instant later, he hissed in pain, pulling his hand back to himself. Yep. No mistaking it.

He was burning with the sunlight. 100% vampire, 0% ghost. And no daylight ring.

Damnit.

Still, he wasn't going to give up on taking the sheriff's place chopping off heads. He was going to run through the pain and places without shadows, and he'd just be cranky enough, and fuming enough - like, literally – to really enjoy getting rid of the ghostly parasites... Repeatedly.

Oh, this was going to be one glorious afternoon!

Alaric took a moment to collect himself, already eyeing what he could see of the path that awaited him if he wished to get to the clearing. He noted the places where he'd be forced to run through the sunlight, the route he could take to avoid being fried to a crisp too often.

He wasn't stuck in the shadows because of the sun, like a normal vampire would be. It didn't mean he enjoyed feeling his own flesh burn up and burn out as soon as he got away from the shadows.

One moment he was here, and the next he had blurred through half the distance he had been able to see from the boarding house. He ran, and did his best, even if he wasn't used to it yet, to watch for shadowed parts as he ran. Then, finally, he walked into the clearing.