Thicker Than Water
by Sandrine Shaw
1.
There's blood in his mouth.
Damon's hand is around his throat in an unyielding, choking grip he can't fight, and his lungs are burning like fire with every breath that's denied to him. It's not that different from drowning, and isn't that ironic? If he'd drowned in the river, Elena would still be alive. He'd be dead instead, and Damon wouldn't be choking him, wouldn't be snarling in his face how it's not fair that Matt's the one who gets to live.
If Matt could speak, he'd tell Damon that he agrees. That if it had been up to him, Stefan would have saved Elena instead of him. Not that it matters, because his opinion would have been as irrelevant to Stefan then as it is to Damon now.
Somewhere around them, he can hear Liz and Meredith yelling, but their voices seem to come from far away and the edges of Matt's vision are starting to turn dark and blurry.
Then Damon's iron chokehold is gone, too fast, making Matt stumble and almost drop to the floor in a heap. He takes in glorious gulps of air that are as painful as they are amazing. Meredith is at his side, offering a steadying hand, but Matt can't look away from Damon and the fury written all over his face, in the angry line of his jaw and the crimson-eyed glare that promises violence.
Matt swallows, tasting bile and copper and the bitter tang of self-loathing. Whatever he'll do, he can't make up for Elena's sacrifice. He'll never be worthy of that, and even if he wasn't perfectly aware of that already, Damon's not going to let him forget it for however short a time he allows him to enjoy this stolen life.
2.
He awakes at once. There's no in-between, none of the slow drowsiness, the gradual awareness of waking up in the morning after a good night's sleep. One moment he was dead, the next he's alive again, coughing so hard that it feels like his lungs are being pulled out of his chest. He raises his palm to his mouth and it comes away speckled red. He wipes it off on the forest ground.
Behind him, Elena is sobbing.
It takes a moment for Matt to understand the full scope of that observation. If Elena is crying, that means that Elena is feeling something, grief and pain and devastation, and when the alternative is a complete lack of emotion, those are good things.
"Look at that, sleeping beauty is awake," Damon quips, clapping him on the shoulder with just a little too much force to be friendly.
Matt turns to look at where Stefan seems to be nursing Elena through a breakdown. "Did it work?" He's almost sure it did, but he needs to hear Damon say the words, tell him that their little ruse wasn't for nothing. More than a ruse, really, because he agreed to actually let Damon kill him, with only the promise of the ring on his finger to bring him back. He isn't sure what that says about his sanity, the fact that he willingly let a man who's previously tried to murder him snap his neck.
"Yep," Damon says, popping the 'p' with fake cheer. "Watching her childhood sweetheart crumple to the ground woke up Elena's dead little heart and made her feel again. Congratulations."
Taking the hand Damon offers him and letting himself be pulled to his feet, Matt breathes a quiet sigh of relief.
He rubs his neck, which makes a cracking little noise when he turns his head. Matt winces. He knows it's not possible, but he could swear that he can remember the sound the bones made when they snapped.
Damon's smile is sharp and a little too predatory to be mischievous. "That was fun, by the way. We should totally do that again."
He winks and saunters off to join Elena and his brother before Matt can come up with a witty retort.
3.
Damon's fist connects with his jaw.
The force of the blow rocks him backwards, but it's nothing compared to what it would be like if Damon were himself, and for a moment Matt is grateful for Davina's curse because he quite likes his head attached to his body.
"Chill, man, this isn't getting us anywhere." It's not that he doesn't understand Damon's anger at the world at large, but picking fights with everyone who crosses his path isn't helping, and at some point, he might pick a fight with someone who doesn't care that Damon is mortal for the time being. "I get it, being human sucks, but we're trying to find a way to fix you guys and until Klaus finds a solution, you'll just have to suck it up and deal with it like the rest of us, one day at a time."
Unsurprisingly, his advice falls on deaf ears and only serves to make Damon more volatile. He throws another punch that hits Matt in the cheek. There's an ugly scrunching sound. Matt feels one of his teeth come loose, sharp pain in his gums and blood welling up against his tongue, and he's had enough of Damon's pointless abuse.
What Damon forgets is that without his vampire powers, Matt is stronger and has years of playing high school football on him that Damon, who's been relying on razor sharp teeth and superhuman strength for almost two centuries, can't match. Matt grabs Damon's wrist and twists his arm behind his back, pushing Damon against the counter with the force of his weight. Damon grunts and, after a long moment when Matt just presses close and holds him down, gives up struggling.
"What the fuck? We're trying to help you." He spits out blood onto the hardwood floor, disgusted with the taste and the entire mess of a situation.
Damon drops his forehead against the wood of the counter. It makes a hollow, harsh noise that sounds painful, and Matt winces. Sure enough, it draws a soft "ow" from Damon's lips. Matt eases the grip on his arm a little, just enough that it won't hurt but he'll be able to restrain Damon again if he has to.
Damon's words are muffled because he's speaking them into the counter top. "I know. It just sucks. I don't know how you live like that." He sounds more like a whiney teenager than a 180-year-old badass vampire, so much like the kids Matt sometimes coaches on Sundays when there's no supernatural crisis to attend to that he has to grin.
He lets Damon up and pats him on the back. "Like I said, man, one day at a time. You get used to it after twenty-some years." The glare Damon shoots him lets him know that Damon has no intention of getting used to humanity.
"It has its advantages, though," Matt adds. At Damon's doubtful look, he reaches for a bottle of vodka and grins. "We can get drunk much faster."
That, at last, makes Damon's face light up. Matt decides that this isn't the time to mention hangovers.
4.
Matt is tending the bar the day Damon tells Elena that she's holding him back and he feels trapped in their on-again-off-again relationship that's been spanning throughout Elena's entire time at college and the two years since her graduation. It feels longer than six years to Matt, with all the shit going on – ghosts and witches and travelers and vampire experiments and doppelgangers and bodysnatching and a lone ghoul wreaking havoc on Mystic Falls – but he imagines that six years must be nothing to an immortal being.
It's a spectacular public break-up, right in the middle of the Grill with everybody's heads turned towards the fighting couple, and Damon's speech is passionate and grand and utterly ridiculous.
Matt wishes he were somewhere else, anywhere else at all, but there's no one else on shift so he has to stick around and listen. He bites his lower lip so hard that the skin breaks because calling Damon out on the immense stupidity of his arguments is probably not a good idea unless he wants to have his heart ripped out of his chest in the most literal way.
Elena leaves, crestfallen, and Matt aches for her, knowing in his heart that this is it, the point when Damon finally succeeded in pushing her away for good.
He doesn't say anything when Damon sits down at the bar, but maybe his silence speaks for itself because Damon takes a swig straight from the glass Matt has set down in front of him and glares. "If you have something to say, why don't you come out and say it, boy wonder?"
"Look, it's none of my business," Matt begins. "I'm not going to get involved." He bites down harder on his lip because not getting involved has never been his strongest suit, even when it's the right thing to do.
Damon rolls his eyes. "And yet here you are giving me the sort of judgy look your blonde little ex-girlfriend would be proud of. I get it. I'm a horrible person for breaking Elena's heart. So what? I've always been a horrible person, and what's one broken heart more or less on my conscience?"
Matt keeps cleaning glasses and saying nothing until he can't stand the silence and the glowering looks Damon is sending his way anymore. Setting a glass down with such force that it breaks into dozens of shards and shallowly cuts his palm through the towel, he turns to Damon. "You're a stupid, self-sacrificing idiot, that's what you are. You really think she's gonna be happier without you? She needs someone, especially right now, and it doesn't matter how bad you think you are for each other, you're the one she's in love with. And vice versa."
Damon doesn't say anything for the longest time, staring down at his glass without taking a hit. Finally, he says, "We buried Jeremy last week. That hunter came after me because of some shit I had done half a century ago, and Jer just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Collateral fucking damage."
It's nothing Matt doesn't know, but it's the first time anyone has mentioned Jeremy since the funeral, as if speaking his name would make the fragile construct of normalcy crash down on all of them, so he doesn't interrupt Damon. Doesn't say a word when Damon takes his glass and throws it against the wall behind him where it smashes to pieces. "Do you really think that's something Elena can get past? You think it's something she should be getting past? You want her to stick around and wait until she has to bury whoever's left she loves?"
Damon's anger doesn't faze Matt, has stopped scaring him long ago. He kneels down with a broom and a shovel and cleans up the broken glass, because if he doesn't keep busy, he has to talk to Damon, and it's obvious that Damon isn't in the frame of mind to hear what Matt has to say.
When he comes back up, Damon frowns at him. "You're bleeding," he says, reaching out and swiping a finger over Matt's lip too fast for Matt to flinch away. The touch stings and Damon's finger comes away coated crimson.
Matt stares stupidly as Damon licks the blood off.
5.
Perhaps he should have listened when Damon told him not to seek out the pack of werewolves that had killed two stupid kids mucking around in the back alley behind the Grill the other week. Perhaps he shouldn't have taken a shotgun and driven out to the preserve where they were camping. Perhaps he should have brought back-up, been smarter, or more alert. Perhaps he shouldn't have let them take off his ring when he was down.
Hindsight, and all. Hindsight comes cheap when you have an iron bar stuck in your gut.
He's made it to thirty-two, which is longer than he expected to last in a town where he was surrounded by warring supernatural beings who could rip him to shreds with their bare hands. He's only a fragile human, flesh and bone and skin and a beating heart under his ribs, and he's been lucky that he managed to keep it beating for so long.
Death is something he made his peace with long ago, the night Rebekah crashed his car into the river, if not before that. Every single time he died between then and now, when the ring made him gasp back to life again and again and he knew in his heart that one day it wouldn't. Death is... it's going to be okay, even if he's human and not headed for the Other Side and he won't be seeing Vicky again or Tyler or Bonnie or Jer. Everyone they lost, the list getting longer every year. He's thirty-two, and he's attended more funerals than weddings.
He loses some time there. The next time he looks up, Damon's kneeling beside him, looking pissed off, like Matt has decided to get stabbed through the stomach with the sole intention of ruining Damon's day.
It's almost comical and, really, kind of touching because it means Damon cares.
Matt wants to make a sarcastic little quip about it, but when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is gurgling blood.
"You're a fucking idiot, Donovan," Damon tells him, hoisting Matt up by his shoulders and shifting him until his head is in Damon's lap. It hurts. Everything hurts, but moving hurts more than lying still. Matt wishes he could communicate that to Damon, not that he thinks it would make Damon stop manhandling him. Matt just doesn't particularly see the point.
When the sharp flare of agony fades a little, the rest of Damon's angry rant pushes through the pain clouding his senses. "Can't stay out of a fight even when you're told. Can't keep that stupid ring on your finger. Can't keep yourself from getting run through with a rusty iron bar. You're completely useless, you know that, right?"
Damon pulls a face, and Matt thinks he manages a weak smile in return. "Sorry," he says, or at least tries to say. Even though the word is not distinguishable, the emotion behind it probably is because Damon's scowl darkens.
"I have no fucking clue why I put up with you," he says. His features shift, eyes turning red and cheeks lined with a spidery web of dark veins. He bites down on his wrist and, before Matt can protest, forces it between his half-open lips.
He swallows, despite himself. He never wanted to be a vampire, but he's not strong enough to turn away or to spit, and his mouth is overflowing with blood, bittersweet and metallic.
His last human thought is that Damon's blood doesn't really taste any different from his own.
+ 1
Damon slinks into the Grill even though they're still closed.
It's too early in the day to drink, at least for the regular patrons, but Damon's probably not been to bed yet after they had a throwdown with a couple of vampires looking to stir up trouble last night. And even if it had been, Damon would argue that the rules don't apply to him because he knows the owner and what good is being friends with the guy who runs a bar when you can't get a drink before opening hours.
Sometimes, it still makes Matt stop dead and startle when he realizes that he's friends with Damon, that Damon is in fact one of the oldest friends he has – and by 'oldest', he doesn't mean that Damon has been alive for centuries (Bekah kind of beats him when it comes to that, Damon's two-hundred-something nothing compared to her millennium), but that Damon is actually one of the people who's been in Matt's life the longest. Everyone else he's known before is either dead or skipped town long ago, and he can't blame those who got out. Can't blame Elena for wanting to get away from a place that took everyone she loved from her, can't blame Caroline for taking Klaus up on his offer to see the world, can't blame April for being smarter than any of them and getting the hell out while her heart was still beating, can't blame Stefan for chasing after Elena.
Matt stayed, even after he could have left, even after he died and came back with a set of fangs and a new dietary regime and Damon telling him with a grin to "suck it up and deal with it like the rest of us, one decade at a time", gleefully throwing Matt's own words back at his face.
Mystic Falls is his home. It's his town, and someone has to stick around and clean up all the mess. It didn't have to be him, but it's not like he had anything better to do and no one else signed up for the task. Well, no one but Damon, who keeps leaving town and acts like he'll stay away this time. But he always comes back, even when all that's left for him in Mystic Falls are memories, most of them bad, and fights that wouldn't be his to fight if he didn't make them his. If Matt were a more sentimental guy, he'd say Damon keeps coming home to him, but he's not and he's long since stopped trying to figure out Damon's motives.
"Who does a guy have to kill to get a drink in this shithole?" Damon calls out.
Busying himself with cleaning the tables on the other side of the restaurant, Matt rolls his eyes. "You're closer to the bar than I am. Get your own fucking drink."
"With that kind of attitude, it's no wonder this place is deserted." It doesn't stop Damon from reaching across the counter to snatch a three-quarters-full bottle of single malt and taking a swig from it.
Matt abandons his task and is at Damon's side in a flash, moving with vampire speed, unable to hold back a little smirk when he manages to startle Damon. That will never get old. "The place is deserted because we're closed."
Damon grins. "No place has ever been closed for me." He's so full of himself that it almost makes Matt splutter, and the worst thing – the absolute worst – is that it's probably true. Matt can perfectly envision it: Damon's unique combination of flirtation, intimidation and all-out violence making the perfect all-access pass in venues all over the globe through the decades.
As much as Matt wishes that he could claim he was immune, he never has been, not when Damon was nothing to him but the bad boy brother of Elena's boyfriend and certainly not now that they're actually friends. He's not going to kick Damon out, but the least he can do is make him feel unsettled.
"You're lucky you're pretty," he says, and then he leans in and presses their lips together.
He's not quite sure what he expects. A punch to the stomach, at worst, but mostly he thinks Damon will shove him away and laugh it off, and he knows that if that's what happens, he'll go with it, claim it was a joke and let it go.
Instead, it barely takes a split second for Damon to kiss him back, to turn what started as a close-mouthed little peck into something wet and languid and dirty with tongue and teeth and lips that move against his like they own him. It's like Matt threw a gauntlet and now Damon is meeting his challenge, trying to best him in whatever game this is.
He doesn't exactly mind. His fingers clench around the edges of Damon's jacket, bringing him closer, and Damon's hand is curved around the back of his neck in a gesture that's somehow both possessive and steadying. He hasn't been kissed with this kind of passion and hunger in years, decades really, and even when he was a teenager, he can't remember ever feeling so overwhelmed.
When they break apart, he's catching breath he theoretically doesn't need anymore, and he can't quite wipe the grin off his face. Damon eyes him with a new sort of gleam in his eyes.
"Didn't know you had it in you, Matthew," he says, sarcastically impressed.
The Matthew part is a new thing that Damon's been doing lately. It's like he's run out of annoying nicknames and he figures being addressed by his full name will piss Matt off for some silly reason, like that his mother always called him that when she was angry with him. Joke's on Damon, though, because Matt's mom wasn't really around enough to get angry with him and when she was, she was mostly too drunk to remember his name. No one ever really called him Matthew before, and privately, Matt kind of likes it.
He's careful not to let on, though, because if Damon knew Matt didn't hate it, he'd stop. Damon logic, Elena's fond voice says in his mind, a memory from a half-forgotten discussion long ago. In the quarter-century since then, Matt has become something of an expert on the matter.
"Shut up," Matt tells him, more gruffly than he feels.
Because Damon is Damon, he manages to sneak in a snarky "Why don't you make me?" before Matt's mouth seals over his again, effectively doing just that.
Damon's teeth, blunt and human for now, nip at his lower lip, sharply enough to make it bleed.
The sweetness of the blood mixes with the lingering flavor of whiskey from Damon's mouth, and Matt chases the taste until he feels lightheaded, closing his eyes and thinking, I could get used to this.
End.