Disclaimer: I do not own Castle and The Vampire Diaries

Chapter 4

"What's your story, tough guy?" she asked.

He took a sip of his own drink then and smiled. "Ladies first"

Kate looked back down at the glass between her hands. If she had a dollar for every time she found herself replaying scenes of that day while staring down into her liquor, she'd be nearly as rich as the man in question. Nearly.

"My fiancé went missing." she paused and looked at Damon, expecting a kind of shocked expression, mingled with sympathy. She'd gotten so used to that look, it had even begun to make appearances in her dreams. Or nightmares, rather.

But this man surprised her. He just looked at her levelly, with those intense blue eyes and passed her a shot of tequila. "Doozy." He commented.

She stared at him, downed the contents and dropped the next bomb. "On our wedding day"

Another shot glass came her way. "Double doozy."

This man was not giving her the reaction she expected, and for some reason that completely turned her on.

"I AM sorry to hear about that" Damon acknowledged after she downed the shot he gave her. Despite his cockiness, this stranger understood her pain.

"How are you holding up?" he asked

Kate chuckled and gestured to the empty shot glasses on the table between them. "I'm not."

Damon smiled, and nodded in understanding. He waited. He knew she had more to say.

"They tell me he's dead. But I know he's not. He's being kept away from me. He wouldn't leave me without a fight this way, I'm sure of it" she said.

Damon placed his hand over Kate's then and said "I think I understand." She smiled. His hand felt warm and friendly. And exactly what she needed to calm the sobs that were threatening to break out.

"Thank you" she whispered softly.

There was a comfortable silence between them, until Damon spoke up on his own. "I had a girlfriend who suffice to say, was the best thing that had happened to me..."

"So SHE broke up with YOU? Just like that?" The gorgeous woman, sitting beside him-Kate-was asking.

And indeed he'd told her all about Elena and Stefan. (Of course leaving out the part where he came back from the Other Side, the infamous Supernatural Purgatory. He didn't really want her running off just yet.)

He added the usual humor to disguise the pain, and with every joke he cracked she seemed to lighten up a little more. God, she was so stunning. He couldn't help noticing the little thing she did with her tongue when she smiled, and man did it turn him on! This woman was making him feel things he hadn't felt in a long time.

"Yep, claimed to love me, and then hooked up with my brother in my absence."

He made a fake crying face and she laughed, a pure free spirited laugh. "That must've been awful, I'm so sorry." She consoled.

"Oh no. Don't be. I wouldn't be sitting here with you then, would I?" He smiled. It wasn't that full smile that he had approached her with. No, this one seemed empty. This one held a kind of hurt behind it caused by a wounded heart that was tired of the pain. And he knew that she understood it.

Probably better than anyone he'd ever met. He wondered if she knew what it was like to get rid of a pain that severe. He wondered what she did to ease the pain. Surely not the same thing he did. If there was anything supernatural about her, he would've sensed it by now. Except her beauty that was completely out of this world.

He wondered whether she was a regular at a bar wherever she came from, like he was here at the Mystic Grill, and whether alcohol really helped at all.

"How do you do it?" she said out of the blue.

He looked at her questioningly. And she voiced the very question he had about HER that was playing on his mind

"The pain, how do you handle it?"

"That's my dirty little secret" He implored. He wanted her so bad, by now it was almost as painful as the grief they both felt.

"I think we've shared enough with each other for you to let me in on that secret" she said teasingly, the alcohol finally having hit her in all the right places, she reached out to place her hand on his thigh.

He looked down at it for a second, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. With the looks of it, she wanted him just as much. He leaned in close to her ear.

"How about you come on over to my place and I'll show you exactly how I intend on dealing with the pain tonight" and before pulling away, he let his lips brush lightly against the shell of her ear, leaving her with a hitch in her breath from the sudden intimacy. She nodded.

Before they knew it, she was sitting in the passenger seat of his car, and he was driving them off through the streets of Mystic Falls, towards the place he called home.

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