I had no idea that Damon as as NASCAR driver was such a popular wish for people! I feel a bit like a genie, granting wishes. :) Thank you all so much for the warm reception to the first update. I'm thrilled you all are excited about it! So thrilled that I'm going to go ahead and update again, since I have a bit of free time on my hands this evening and all!

Lots of back story in this one - Damon's got a pretty busy mind. Pretty complicated one too...

A couple more notes:

In NASCAR, the 'Nationwide Series' (which will be the Xfinity Series next year!) is basically Sprint Cup's junior varsity team, a farm team of sorts. Drivers who prove themselves there typically move into the Sprint Cup series.

Each series has a point system that rewards drivers points each race based on wins, finishes, etc. Sprint Cup has the Chase, but we'll get to that later. ;)

Also, NASCAR team headquarters? They are fancy schmancy. And Giuseppe built his from the ground up, slowly but surely.

Enough babbling. Let's get to know Damon a bit.

Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Diaries.

Damon whistled as he walked through the halls of Salvatore Racing's headquarters, no real care in the world at the moment. He had slept until lunchtime, downed a sub from his favorite sandwich shop, and planned to put in an hour or two in the team weight room before he engaged in his favorite pastime of driving to the university one town over, drinking too much, and finding a co-ed to take home.

"Damon."

He stopped in his tracks and rolled his eyes before turning towards the voice.

"Daddy." His father's piercing blue eyes, mirrors of his own, warned him to tread lightly. He sighed, doing a mental rundown of what he could have done this time. For once, he came up empty. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"Come in and shut the door," Giuseppe answered from the doorway of his office, his voice stern.

"Getting called to the principal's office," Damon muttered under his breath. Still, he entered the office and shut the door behind him. "What did I do this time?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he stood before his father's intimidating oak desk. Trophies, plaques and memorabilia lined the walls around them. Damon tried, as he did every time he was in the office, to ignore the fact that his name was engraved on very few of them.

"Sit down," Giuseppe ordered.

"Sorry, got to meet Enzo for a workout," Damon countered. "One of your many stipulations is for me to be in tip top shape, remember? So, you're going to have to talk fast."

"Enzo is on my payroll and will wait," Giuseppe informed him. "And, we both know I'm not talking about your body fat percentage when I say I expect you to be in good shape." Damon blew out a breath instead of firing off a sarcastic response. This wasn't anything he hadn't heard before and he wasn't in the mood for an argument. "Sit down, Damon."

Begrudgingly, Damon did what he was told.

"I really don't think I did anything this time," he said, going on the defensive from the start. "I've been on my best behavior for two straight weeks now."

"Your behavior hasn't been caught on film for two straight weeks," Giuseppe corrected. "But your behavior is still why I called you in. I hired a publicist."

"A publicist?" Damon repeated. "Don't we already have a marketing team? Hell, don't you pay Caroline to do that crap?"

"Language," Giuseppe corrected. "Our marketing team's primary role is to work with our sponsors. Caroline's role is planning events for those same sponsors who give us money to put you in a car. Given, shall we say, recent events, we made the decision to bring in someone to manage press and driver relations."

"So, I get my own publicist?" Damon asked, reading between the lines. He was working through whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.

"Technically, she's here for all of our drivers. Let's just call it a hunch that you will be the one that gives her a run for her money."

"So, she's a she?" Damon responded curiously. Giuseppe sighed and rubbed his temples, wondering not for the first time where he and his wife had gone wrong with Damon.

"I needed the best so I hired the best," he told his son. "She has been working with Marcos Racing out of Fontana for the last few years."

"The IndyCar team?" Damon asked, recalling the owner's name. Giuseppe nodded. "Didn't they get caught cheating a few years back? Had a driver given a lifetime ban?"

"For drug use," Giuseppe confirmed, giving Damon a pointed look. Damon rolled his eyes again. "She walked into a nuclear warzone when she joined that team, but managed to turn them from dirty cheats to philanthropic do gooders in the public's eye. I wanted her, so I went out and got her."

"Who is this Wonder Woman and when does she start?" Damon asked with a hint of sarcasm. Giuseppe didn't reply right away. Instead, he fixed Damon with a gaze Damon had long ago identified as meaning something important was about to be said and that he was expected to listen to each and every word. He waited, sure it had something to do with his less than stellar rap sheet.

"She starts on Monday," Giuseppe said. "And her name is Elena Gilbert."

Giuseppe watched as the color drained from Damon's face.

"What?" he asked, his voice suddenly scratchy as he tried to make sure he heard his father correctly.

"Elena Gilbert is the newest member of Salvatore Racing," Giuseppe repeated. "And you, Damon, will treat her with nothing shy of the utmost respect. Consider it another one of my conditions." Still shocked, it took Damon some time to compose a response.

"Elena?" he asked. "She's – here?"

"If by here, you mean in Mystic Falls, yes. She's here." Damon shook his head in disbelief.

"I haven't seen her in…"

"Three years," Giuseppe supplied. "It's been three years since that girl left town. I assume you remember why she left in the first place?" Damon didn't reply, his mind racing so fast he couldn't make sense of his thoughts.

"Why her?" he finally asked, torn between curiosity and, however unwarranted, anger. "Why Elena? You could have hired anyone…"

"I wanted the best," Giuseppe repeated. "Elena is the best. Racing is in her blood. She took on an impossible situation right out of college and came into her own. She will have her work cut out for her here as well, but I have no doubts she will succeed." Damon studied his father.

"Why do I get the impression her job is more secure than mine?" he finally asked. Giuseppe leaned forward, his elbows on his desk, and tented his fingers together. He looked squarely at Damon.

"I think we both know your job security is the most volatile of them all."

Damon sat on the hood of his slick black luxury SUV, a cigarette burning in one hand, the fingers of his free hand tapping out a made up rhythm on the hood. He didn't smoke often, choosing to light up only when his stress level was skyrocketing or his nerves were rattled. Tonight, looking out over the river from a spot hidden away from most of the world, he didn't raise the stick to his lips. He was too far down the rabbit hole of his own thoughts to remember he had even lit it.

He had sat in his father's office for another several minutes after he was told of Elena's hiring, half listening to Giuseppe give him a list of demands for how he would react to Elena, how he would treat her. The only thing he had actually comprehended was the fact that Elena Gilbert was back in Mystic Falls. Reeling from the news, he skipped out on his workout, giving Enzo an excuse he didn't remember, and went for a long run instead, his veins pumping with adrenaline.

The disbelief that Elena was not only back in Mystic Falls but also employed by his father had taken a while to wear off. He had assumed she would come back at some point, given that Mystic Falls was her home and her family had kept their residence there, even after moving to the west coast. He could have never predicted she would end up working at Salvatore Racing, however. He had also assumed he would still be a resident of the Sunshine State when she did turn up in the Mystic Falls zip code.

Racing was indeed her blood. Her grandfather was a NASCAR legend, her mother a former driver herself and still an advocate for women in racing. He knew enough about Marcos Racing to know they had a rocky few years. He had no idea Elena was behind the impressive turnaround of their public image. If she had wanted to move back to Mystic Falls, there were a dozen race teams in the area. She could have ended up at any one of them with just a phone call. He wasn't sure of the circumstances, but Giuseppe had gone out and ensured she was on his payroll and not the competition's. Either she was that good at her job or Giuseppe had a motive. Damon had the feeling the truth fell somewhere in the middle.

It had been a tumultuous few years in the Salvatore family. He grew up behind the wheel, racing karts and Junior Dragsters as soon as he was old enough. Giuseppe had been a full-time NASCAR driver and for Damon and his brother Stefan, their normal was weekends at race tracks across the country, doing schoolwork on private jets as they headed back to their home base in Mystic Falls on Sunday nights. That was how he got to know Elena, seeing her at races, playing together as children in the infield.

While Stefan had veered away from the driver's seat and was one of the best crew chiefs in the business, Damon had set his sites on NASCAR's Sprint Cup from an early age. He worked his way up through the ranks, chomping at the bit for a chance to get behind the wheel of a Sprint car. When his father retired and started his own team, he gave Damon, barely 20 years old, his first full-time ride in the Nationwide Series, the equivalent of NASCAR's Junior Varsity, letting him leave behind the days of jumping behind the wheel of whatever car someone would let him drive for the weekend.

That had been great, for a while. His first full season in the series, he won Rookie of the Year, finished fifth in the points standings at year's end. His second season, he won a few races, finished third in points. He started dating Elena in the off season, fell head over heels for her. The next season, he had shined. He had been near unstoppable, winning time and time again and bringing home the series championship, the first championship for Salvatore Racing.

He and Elena's relationship was strong during his championship season. She was busy at college, but still made a number of his races. She was his biggest fan and his only true confidant. His championship brought with it new opportunities that he embraced. The offseason was spent signing sponsorship deals, making public appearances. Giuseppe expanded his Sprint Cup team to two cars, one full-time, one half-time. He already had a solid full-time driver, but had agreed to let Damon take the half-time ride.

Without a real reason to believe it as fact, Damon had gone into the next Nationwide season with the expectation that it would be his last. He was sure his father would give him a full-time ride in the Sprint Cup. Maybe he had been too cocky, or maybe it was the target on back as the one to beat, but his season had gone downhill from the beginning, starting off with a crash at Daytona in the season opener that left him with broken ribs and took him out of the driver's seat for a couple of weeks.

His Sprint Cup debut a few weeks into the season hadn't gone much smoother. He had qualified poorly and as ready as he thought he was, everything had been bigger, faster. He crashed early in the race and spent his debut limping around the track, several laps down. He managed to salvage his Nationwide season with a pair of late season wins, but Giuseppe told him he wasn't ready to move full-time to the Sprint Cup series. He didn't speak to his father for two weeks, learning his father had, in fact, added a second full-time car and wooed a top driver away from his longtime team to drive it.

In the middle of his rocky season, things with Elena had gotten complicated. She was a senior in college, focused on making plans for her future, their future. She wasn't pushing marriage, by any means, but she was weighing her career options, wanted Damon's opinion on things like whether she should work in marketing with a race team or try her hand in another industry. He couldn't have cared less what she decided to do, too concerned with his own future to worry about hers too.

When Daytona rolled around again, it wasn't just his relationship with Elena that was on the rocks. He was still upset with his father for not giving him a full-time ride Sprint Cup ride and it was affecting his performance on the track. He crashed during the first three races, failed to qualify the first chance he got at a Sprint Cup race with the spare Salvatore Racing car as he had taken to calling the half-time ride.

His attitude started to get the better of him. Fights with not only Elena, but his father too, became more frequent. He stopped hanging out with the group of friends he grew up with and started spending time with a new crowd, drivers and crew members from other teams who liked to cut loose after races, drink too much and flirt with the girls that hung around the track. Elena told him exactly what she thought of his new friends, as did his father, which encouraged him to spend even more time with them.

The tipping point had come in the form of a mid-season offer from another team to take the place of a driver who had suffered season-ending injuries in a practice crash. He had accepted without hesitation and all hell had broken loose.

He closed his eyes, thinking back to how he had blown into his father's office and unceremoniously quit Salvatore Racing. He left the metaphorical path of destruction in his wake. A line had been drawn, him on one side, the rest of his family on the other. Elena had been beside herself, demanding to know if he had lost his mind. She had already been upset with him for missing her college graduation, not because he was at a race, but because he had gone off with his new friends for a long weekend, using the excuse of a bye week to party. The worst fight they had ever had followed.

Ultimately, he had been told to choose – his family or his career. He chose his career. His new team was located in Daytona and he had been thrilled to move away, start over. He was given quality equipment, raced hard week in and week out, ignoring his family at the track, screening phone calls from Elena. Outside of the track, he partied hard, let his newfound freedom go to his head.

Then Talladega happened.

"Ouch!" he breathed out, dropping the cigarette which had burned to nothing more than a stump between his fingers. He snuffed it out with his boot and gave his head a little shake. He had done enough reminiscing for the day, he decided. He took out his phone, found the contact he was looking for, and pushed send.

"Damon, my friend," greeted a British accent. "How goes it at Daddy Daycare?"

"Kiss my ass, Klaus," Damon responded. "What's the plan for tonight?"

"A bunch of us are headed to Tempo to start," Klaus replied. "We'll meander over to The Corner after that. The students are coming back from winter break. The co-eds with daddy issues will be ripe for the picking."

"I'll meet you at Temp," Damon replied.

"Aren't you supposed to be on your best behavior?" Klaus taunted. "One of Daddy's stipulations?" Damon swallowed back his irritation.

"My best behavior is not letting the public find out about my worst behavior," he said. He slid off the hood of his car and made his way to the driver's side. "Besides, I've got myself a fancy new publicist to handle any messes I make."

I know that was a lot of back story, but it will all be important to know over the course of the story, especially once the season starts.

I promise Damon and Elena will interact in the next chapter - and it will be very Damon-like. :)

Please let me know what you think!