Leesha groaned and buried her face in the pillow. "It's too early," she whined. "Go 'way."
There was a laugh as Damon bounced on the end of her bed. "Time to get up."
"I'm going to kill you," she muttered. "Slowly and painfully. It's too fucking early to be awake."
"But Leesha..." She threw the pillow at him before flopping back down. She heard it hit the wall and closed her eyes, already feeling the headache forming as he chuckled.
"I'll be down in a few minutes," she groaned. "Now get out."
Headache medicine first, she decided, then a hot shower, then coffee. And Damon could live without coffee unless he apologized. Nicely.
"Good morning Leesha," Damon said from his position by the stove.
"Cosa c'è di buono?" she muttered, sitting down. "E 'troppo presto per essere sveglio, anche per un vampiro." (What's good about it? It's too early to be awake, even for a vampire.)
"English please," he said as he handed her a mug.
"Quando ho voglia di parlare in inglese, parlerò inglese. Fino ad allora, io parlo italiano," she said, glaring at him. (I'll speak English when I want to speak English. Until then, I'm speaking Italian.)
"Alright, alright. Speak Italian if you want to," he said, raising his hands in mock-surrender. "I forgot you weren't a morning person."
She snorted. "Certo che no. Le persone non dovrebbero essere cippatrice al mattino. E 'solo sbagliata." She took a sip of the coffee and sighed at the warmth. God, caffeine... (Of course not. People aren't supposed to be chipper in the morning. It's just wrong.)
"Was that aimed at me?"
"Tu sei quello che mi ha svegliato." She stood to get another cup of coffee. "Cosa ne pensi?" (You're the one that woke me up. What do you think?)
"Hello?" a voice called from the front door. "Stefan?" Damon smirked at Leesha before disappearing.
"Odio quando fa così," she muttered as Elena shrieked. She waved at the girl as she entered with Damon behind her, slightly more human than when Damon had woken her. (I hate it when he does that.)
"Sei sveglio ancora?" Damon asked. (Are you awake yet?)
She stretched, smiling as the move made her spine feel so much better. "Mi hai svegliato prima delle 07:30 il Sabato. No," she told him. "I'm not." (You woke me up before 07:30 on Saturday.)
"Se sei abbastanza sveglio da gioco piacevole?" he asked, moving to massage her shoulders. (Are you awake enough to play nice?)
"That I can do," she said, shifting so he could reach a sore spot. Her eyes half-closed in pleasure. Oh god, that felt good. "Stop speaking Italian. It's rude."
"Pensate davvero mi preoccupo?" he whispered in her ear, making her shiver, but she would swear that it was just the fact that her legs were cold. A t-shirt and cotton shorts under a knee-length silk bathrobe were not warm enough for Virginia during the winter. (Do you really think I care?)
"Stop that," she hissed and saw him grin out of the corner of her eye.
"Now why would I do that?" he asked, pressing a kiss to her neck before moving away. "I can tell where I'm not wanted. Leesha. Elena."
"Tu non stai ricevendo caffè," she told him as he began to walk away, twitching the black silk folds of her bathrobe closer around her. (You're not getting coffee.)
He waved back at her but didn't turn around. Leesha waited until the door closed behind him before she dropped her head to the table with a thump. "Why am I friends with him?" she groaned.
She heard Elena shrug. "I don't know," the girl said, voice disapproving.
Leesha sighed. Why did Damon always have to make people think they were having sex? "Elena, do yourself a favor and stop the jealousy," she said, standing to get another cup of coffee. "It's not pretty, and it makes you look stupid when I have no interest whatsoever in your boyfriend, or whatever Damon is to you."
"You two have never..." Elena trailed off at Leesha's horrified look.
"Oh, god no!" she said, shuddering at the thought. "He can flirt with me all he wants, it would still be like having sex with my brother." She quirked an eyebrow at Elena curiously. "Why? Have you?"
Elena shook her head. "Not for lack of trying on his part," she said.
"Compulsion?"
"Mm-hmm."
Leesha grinned at the look on her face. "You slapped him, didn't you?"
"Yep," Elena said.
Leesha sat back with a satisfied smile. "Good. The idiot needs to be once in a while. Especially when he tries to be with someone who has no interest in him."
"Has Damon ever compelled you?" Elena asked slowly.
"Once," Leesha said. "I was freaking out and he made me calm down a little. Hasn't tried since." She laughed quietly. "Of course, he showed up at my house a few days later and accidentally told me about vervain."
"'Accidentally'?" Elena repeated.
"He was drunk, I was curious," Leesha said, a mischievous grin on her lips as she shrugged.
Elena smiled. "So-" she prompted.
"Is it my fault that I found some vervain growing wild and picked some?" Leesha asked innocently.
Elena laughed. "I'm...surprised," she admitted. "This feels like talking to my friends. It's so..." She trailed off, searching for the word.
"Normal?" Leesha said quietly, an odd smile flickering over her lips. "How long have you known about vampires?"
"Two months," Elena said, and Leesha nodded.
"Ten years," she said quietly.
"How did you find out?" Elena asked. Leesha pulled the black silk of her bathrobe to one side to show Elena the scar, small and shockingly white against her olive skin.
"What happened?" Elena breathed, fingers hovering over the white crescent mark.
God. How to answer that? "Damon saved my life," she said simply, covering the scar again. "And that's all I'm going to say about that right now. If you don't mind."
Elena nodded, searching for a subject. "You were speaking Italian to Damon," she said. "And you kept switching languages last night."
"He's supposed to tell me when I do that," Leesha said, eyes closed and one hand rubbing at her forehead. "Sorry. That happens when I'm tired sometimes. I can't keep track of whether I'm speaking English or Italian, and I'll switch from one to the other unless someone reminds me to keep an eye on it." She grinned. "Of course, sometimes I just use it to piss Damon off. When he deserves it."
"Which is a lot," Elena muttered.
"Oh yeah," Leesha said, taking another sip of her coffee before she set down her mug and leaned forward. "So. What has he been up to?"
Elena took one look at Leesha's face and grinned. Hello, leverage.
"- my grandmother takes one look at Damon before she turns to me and says, 'Pensavo che ti ho detto di portare a casa un bel ragazzo,' which basically translates into, 'I thought I told you to bring home a good boy,' and everyone in the kitchen, including me, is trying not to laugh, because Damon's just standing there looking at Nonna like he'd been slapped with a wet fish."
Elena gasped in breath as she laughed. "And then?"
"Damon tried to steal some of Nonna's pasta not five minutes later." Leesha bit her lip, trying to restrain her own laughter. "She smacked him with her wooden spoon. The pout he gave her, god, I wish you could've seen it! Nonna is maybe 5'1" and 120 pounds soaking wet. She's absolutely tiny, but you do not mess with her in her own kitchen because she is vicious with that spoon of hers. As Damon found out."
"Telling stories about me?" Damon asked, appearing in the doorway with Stefan behind him.
Leesha put a finger to her lips as Elena giggled. "Of course," she said. "Elena likes the one where my Nonna hit you with her wooden spoon."
"That woman is evil," he said as he sat down.
"Which woman is this?" Stefan asked.
"Damon's scared of my Nonna," she sing-songed, shooting a teasing smile his way.
"She hit me with a spoon," Damon said.
"She hits everybody with that spoon," Leesha said.
"She hit me. With a spoon."
"You got in her way while she was cooking."
"I don't think you're getting this. She hit me with a spoon," Damon said.
Leesha looked at him. "And?"
"Don't you have somewhere to be?" he asked, changing the subject.
She shrugged. "I have a few hours before I have to go," she said.
"If you're staying, we're telling how we met," he threatened. Leesha snuck a peek at Elena and suppressed a groan. The girl was visibly curious. There went keeping that secret. Bastard.
"Let me get dressed," she said, resigned.
Leesha found everyone in the sitting room when she came back down the stairs a few minutes later. She looked at Damon when his feet landed in her lap. "Move your feet Damon," she said.
"But I'm comfortable," he protested, not moving an inch.
She shook her head slightly, full lips twitching with humor. "Ass."
"You love me anyway," he said.
"I must," she said, fingers gently rubbing at his arches. "I would've killed you years ago, otherwise."
"You were going to tell us how you met," Elena interrupted, nearly vibrating with impatience.
"Give us a second," Leesha said, hands not stopping as she settled back against the couch. Where to start...
"I was in Atlanta," Damon said. "Visiting Bree." He smirked, eyes far off.
"Oh, of course you think of that," Leesha muttered. "October 1999, and you think of the girl you had sex with."
"Of course," he agreed.
"Anyway, freshman year of college," she said. "My friends decided to drag me out to a club because I was working too hard."
"The same club I was in," Damon added.
"Of course. I was getting to that bit. So I'm getting another round when this girl comes up to me. Small, blond, green eyes, very pretty. And we start talking because the line's slower than a snail."
"Talking's not all you did," Damon muttered. Leesha blushed, but didn't deny it.
"Wait," Elena said. "Are you-"
"I'm not into labels," Leesha said quietly. "But it doesn't really matter to me which way my partners are wired, if that's what you're asking." She glanced over at Stefan, who was blushing and refusing to meet her eyes. "Uncomfortable, Stefan?" she asked wickedly.
"Stefan's a bit of a stick-in-the-mud," Damon said, cutting off any reply his brother might have made. "Very old-fashioned."
"Hmmm," she said, winking at Elena. "Shame."
"Why is that?" the girl asked with a wink back, making Leesha mentally cheer. Elena willing to play along made the joke on Stefan even better.
"Well, he's cute - a bit old for me, but that normally means more experience. But with this one?" She sighed theatrically and leaned back. "I feel for you, honey." Leesha ignored Stefan's shocked face except to laugh silently. God, it'd been too long since she'd played a joke like that on someone besides Damon or her family.
"Anyway, we eventually ended up in the alley outside the bar." She frowned and rubbed at the scar on her neck.
"Damon saved your life," Elena said, remembering what Leesha had told her.
"Yeah," she whispered, feeling Damon's eyes on her as he shifted to touch one of her hands. "He pulled the bitch off me before I lost too much blood and drove me home."
"Non pensavo che su quella parte," he said quietly with a squeeze of the hand that she was holding like a lifeline. (I didn't think about that part.)
"Tu pensi di tutto ciò Damon. E la tua memoria non è così male," she whispered. (You think of everything Damon. And your memory's not that bad.)
"Penso solo a tutto quando ho un piano. Questa è la prima volta in oltre un centinaio di anni che non ho," he said. (I only think of everything when I have a plan. This is the first time in over a hundred years that I haven't.)
"You and your plans," she muttered. "What did I tell you about speaking Italian in front of other people?"
"That it's rude?" he offered cheekily.
She swatted his foot. "Ass," she told him.
"You know it," he said. Leesha made a noncommittal noise and stood, dropping his feet back on the couch. "Where are you going?" he asked.
"To get another cup of coffee," she told him. "There's still too much blood in my caffeine stream."
"Feeding on you would be like drinking one of your sober-up coffees when I was already sober, wouldn't it?" Damon said, ignoring how the comment made both Stefan and Elena tense.
"Most definitely," Leesha said with a grin at the old joke. "Elena, do you want a cup?"
"I'll come with you," the girl said after having a silent conversation with Stefan.