I apologize to you a million times for the long absence. But I promise: I will not abandon this fic! Sometimes chapters may take a while to come out, but the story will not be abandoned.
Thank you very much for all the comments, I love them! Please keep commenting and sharing with me what you think, what you like, what you don't like, and what you expect from this story. Theories are welcome, criticism is welcome, feel free.
And thank you, above all, for your patience.
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You got me rocking
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Damon could hear music echoing through the hallways, coming from the lower floor of the house, and he rolled his eyes. The last few days had been a living hell. Klaus was back, and most of all, Stefan was back. A Stefan with humanity his turned off, left behind by his master to keep Elena alive and use the doppelganger's blood to create new hybrids.
Incredibly, it wasn't Klaus' motivation, or the role played by Stefan, or even his own forced alliance with Katherine to wake Mikael that made Damon more pissed off, but rather the simple presence of his brother inside that house. Stefan constantly brought women, lots of them. Some he would kill by losing control and drinking blood, others he would simply compel and enjoy. And every time Damon had to juggle to keep Emma as oblivious as possible. He knew that Stefan would never do anything against Emma, but he didn't want to risk it. Plus, he wanted to avoid the seventy-hour lecture on compulsion if the girl knew what her brother was doing to pass the time.
On that particular morning, Damon could smell blood and knew that Stefan had gotten out of control again. He sneaked out of Emma's embrace and left the room, closing the door behind him. He carefully walked down the stairs and found two bodies at the foot of the steps. Rolling his eyes, he grabbed each body by one heel and dragged them down to the basement. He wiped his hands on his pajama pants and headed for the living room, following the sound of laughter and loud rock music.
"You can't keep letting bodies all over the house", Damon complained, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. Stefan, who was holding a glass of bourbon, turned to his brother and smiled.
"Oh, so you care about killing now?" the younger man sneered, and Damon snorted.
"I don't give two fucks about the killing, just stop letting the bodies all over my house."
"It's my house too", Stefan replied. Damon rolled his eyes as he listened to the girls playing like children on acid in the living room and took a deep breath.
"Emma's here", the older vampire finally said. Stefan cracked an even bigger smile.
"Won't she join us? There's plenty of room for her", Stefan teased, indicating the empty, bloodstained circles of the twister mat. Damon clenched his fists so hard that he dug his fingernails into his palms.
Luckily, the doorbell rang, and the older Salvatore walked briskly to the door. When he opened it, he was surprised to see a blond girl with big green eyes, carrying large bags of clothes and with a completely bored expression. Damon barely managed to open his mouth and the girl was already trotting into the house, asking for Stefan.
"He left me here! My brother actually left me here!" she shouted, in a european accent that pleased Damon's ears and made him aware that there was a certain girl with a similar accent sleeping peacefully in his bed upstairs. The thought made the vampire anxious to get out of there, but at the same time he was curious to know who the blonde girl was.
"Am I supposed to care or something?", Stefan asked, arching an eyebrow. Damon joined the dots and cracked a smile. It was obvious.
"You're Klaus' sister", he whispered, but it was enough for the girl to hear and turn to him.
"Rebekah. Pleasure, I'm sure" she replied and turned to Stefan again. "Show me my room".
"You're not staying here", Stefan said. The girl simply ignored the younger vampire and walked across the room towards the stairs. Stefan looked annoyed and stared at his brother, which made Damon puzzled. "I wouldn't let her around Emma if I were you. She's not controlled like Elijah and certainly not polite like Klaus".
Within two seconds, Damon was already back in his room, making sure that everything was exactly as he had left it. He looked at the bed and found the silhouette of Emma, naked from the waist up, lying on his bed like a Renaissance painting. The vampire approached her, sat down next to her on the bed and began to caress the entire length of her body.
It amazed him that this young woman had come into his life less than a year ago and had already taken such an important place. They had been through so much together and she had changed his life irreversibly. Sometimes he could hear Rose's voice in his ears, whispering to him that this was good. Emma turned to face him and stared at him with frowning eyebrows over sleepy eyes.
"Did I snore?" she joked, but he went on seriously.
"You might have to stop coming here for a while", he said, and she sat up in bed, pulling back the sheets to cover herself, and Damon almost laughed. He had seen everything in every possible angle. "Barbie-Klaus is staying in the house".
"Rebekah?", Emma questioned, and Damon confirmed with his head. "Why?"
"Apparently Klaus left her behind after I name-dropped Mikael". Oh yeah, Mikael, the only being Klaus feared. The reason? Damon didn't know. Yet.
"And she's staying here? With you?", Emma asked incredulously. Damon smirked.
"Don't be jelly, dolly. You know very well blondes are not my type", he replied, and captured her lips in a short kiss, moving on to trace a trail of kisses down her jaw.
"I meant 'you' as in plural", she grumbled.
"Yeah, sure", he replied with a smile, brushing his lips down the length of her neck.
"I'm not jealous!" she trailed off, and Damon laid her back on the bed, kissing her entire face and making it impossible for her to hold back her smile.
"Of course you're not" he teased. "You're the most beautiful jealous thing, you know that?"
"And you're an asshole" she replied, laughing. Damon kissed her and smiled against her lips.
"Lucky me assholes are just your type", the vampire whispered, taking her bottom lip between his teeth. He pulled away just enough to look her in the eye. "But seriously, you can't come here for a while. Dead-Barbie is volatile".
"Okay" Emma simply replied.
However, Emma only stayed three days without going to Boarding House. In the end, Rebekah was just an immortal teenage girl trying to enjoy the life she had been deprived of living by her older brother. Contrary to what Damon had expected, Rebekah, for some reason, sympathized with Emma. Maybe it was the fact that she was her teacher, an authority figure. Or maybe it was the fact that Emma seemed to be the only one not treating her like a bomb about to explode. Or maybe it was the fact the Emma was not Elena.
Either way, Rebekah promised Emma that she wouldn't hurt her, since she had no reason to. But she warned, in a threatening tone, that should Emma join the Salvatores in trying to lock her in a coffin again or kill her, she would not think twice before ripping the young woman's head from her shoulders.
Damon tried to treat the vampire well, tried to flirt with her to get some information out of her, but it had all been in vain. "I don't know what Emma sees in you, you're pathetic" was what Rebekah had said to him during the night of the bonfire. And that phrase stuck in his mind as strongly as Damon had stuck to Emma's body at that very same night.
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Emma was standing at the empty room. Despite the numerous chairs, which indicated that the event would hold a large number of people, there was no one there. The young woman positioned herself in front of the pulpit and reached into the pocket of the black dress she was wearing for the piece of paper with her speech. She unfolded the paper and read a few times a single incomplete sentence that barely took up two lines and took a deep breath.
The static of the microphone in front of her caught her attention, and when she raised her face, she found herself in a crowded room. Everyone was wearing black, with one or two exceptions. Emma felt two pats on her shoulder and looked at the person direction, meeting the expectant gaze of the woman who, for some years of her life, she considered her mother. Except that she wasn't. At least, she wasn't her mother, she was his mother.
"Are you ready?" the woman asked, and Emma nodded positively.
The girl's heart was beating violently against her chest, making her gasp for air over and over again. It was as if oxygen couldn't find its way freely to her lungs. It was as if it was trapped amidst the whirlwind of emotions that Emma had stuck in her throat. Then she took one last deep breath and brought her lips close to the microphone.
"Thank you so Much for coming, it's, uh... It's really important for us" she began, feeling her throat hurt and her shoulders heavy. Emma stared at the piece of paper. "Tom was a good son, a loyal friend and a...". She just couldn't say 'a good husband', because he wasn't. He was terrible, he was a terrible person. But she couldn't say it. So she read the lines. "He was..." she gasped. "He was... He was horrible" she finally spewed the words, leaving the entire hall in complete shock.
The woman next to her, Tom's mother, grabbed the end of the table mic, and the static almost deafened the girl. The woman scolded her, called her the most horrid things, accused her of being happy to finally be rid of her son. Tom's father stared at Emma angrily but was too busy containing his own wife to bother to finally verbalize all that he had always thought of her.
"It should have been you!" the woman shouted. "It should have been you and not my son!"
Emma couldn't answer. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck creep under the low bun she wore, and that horrible feeling of being watched came over her. A familiar perfume, mixed with the smell of slime, invaded her nostrils, and the girl turned around startled. Two steps away from her was Tom, completely wet with muddy pants. His face was pale and his eyes white, and he was smiling at her.
"It should have been you" he whispered before grabbing her by the neck. And then, finally, Emma awoke with a choked cry.
"Hey, hey" the sweet familiar voice entered her ears, as large warm hands held her by the arms. Emma closed her eyes tightly and struggled for a few moments, unsure of where she was. The hands held her more firmly, and the man brought his face closer to hers, using the tip of his own nose to lift her chin. "It's me, baby. It's Damon. You're safe".
Emma opened her eyes and met the vampire's two large sapphire orbs. They were so blue that she could see them despite the dimmed lights in the room. The girl sighed with relief and sank her face into Damon's chest. The vampire stroked her back.
"Sorry" she said with her voice muffled by his embrace.
"Don't ask sorry for something that isn't your fault" Damon replied, and she nodded positively, her forehead still against his bare chest. Turning away from the vampire, the girl got out of bed and walked to the bathroom.
The ability to get out of bed and use the bathroom without having to leave the room was one of the things Emma missed most about living in the old apartment, and consequently one of the things Emma enjoyed most about sleeping in the Boarding House. In the Gilbert house, the bathroom was in the hallway and she shared it with Elena.
The girl walked over to the sink, turned on the faucet, caught some running water between her palms, and splashed it on her face. She repeated the gesture twice more, turned off the faucet, picked up the towel beside the mirror, and dried her face. When she removed the towel from her face and opened her eyes, she found a half-naked Damon propped up by the wide sink counter, staring at her worriedly.
"Wanna talk about it?" he asked.
"No, it's fine" Emma replied, and the vampire arched an eyebrow. "I'm fine, really".
"Hmm" Damon muttered, unconvinced. Emma hung the towel back on the hook beside the mirror and turned to the vampire, who remained staring at her.
"What?" she questioned, huffing and crossing her arms. She didn't want to talk about it, how hard was it to understand? Why did he keep staring at her?
"It's just really hard to focus when you're standing in the middle of my bathroom wearing only this" he pointed at Emma's body, and the girl didn't even bother to take her eyes off the vampire. She knew perfectly well that she was wearing only black panties and bra.
"You saw me wearing those a thousand times before" she replied, and Damon smirked. He walked up to her like a tiger walks up to its prey. The vampire cornered her against the sink counter and placed his hands on her hips, causing her to gasp in surprise. He opened his smile even wider and slid his hands down to Emma's buttocks, pulled her up and sat her down on the counter. He positioned himself between her legs, just as he had done so many months ago in the kitchen of that very house the first time he had fed her his blood.
"I absolutely love those" he commented in a husky voice, playing with the lace of her panties.
"It cost the price of an espresso. I thought you hated cheap stuff", Emma replied. Damon deposited a moist kiss on her shoulder.
"I hate it when I can't tear it up. Which is not the case with these panties of yours" he whispered against her ear in return. Emma sighed and lowered her face, resting her forehead against Damon's chin.
"Damon, I want..." Emma started to say, but gave up halfway through the sentence, because she didn't even know how to put it into words. She wanted to feel safe, she wanted to glue her body to his, she wanted him to care for her, to kiss her tenderly, she wanted... She wanted Damon to make love to her. She didn't want sex. She didn't need sex. She wanted him to make love to her.
"What do you want, doll?", Damon questioned, stroking her thighs with his fingertips. Emma lifted her face and met his eyes. Eyes of burning ice, and it was at that moment that something inside Emma's chest flipped, her stomach did somersaults, and her blood rushed hard, being pumped from her heart to her fingertips. There was a word for what she felt when she stared into Damon's blue eyes, a word that got stuck in her throat. A word she knew he wouldn't return.
Damon frowned and brought one hand up to Emma's face, taking it in his palm and tracing soft lines down her cheek with his thumb. She was staring at him intensely, and something in her whiskey eyes left him in anticipation. The first time he had ever felt this way was when the neighbors' daughter had told him she had made him a present for his birthday and kept the mystery going for a whole week. Damon was 12 years old, and he spent those seven whole days with that feeling in the pit of his stomach, the feeling that he would receive something that was a surprise and that was just for him. It wa the same feeling. So he waited, but she said nothing.
"What do you want?" he repeated the question, this time in a whisper.
"I want to make l... slow" she replied, swallowing dryly. It was better to play safe. "That's it. I want it slow".
Damon smiled. Not his traditional smirk, nor his wide grin. He just smiled in the sincerest way. The vampire slowly slid the fingers that held Emma's face back from the nape of her neck and pulled her closer. He didn't take his eyes off her for a second.
"I like it slow", he said before gently gluing his lips to hers.
Emma responded to the vampire's kiss, feeling the soft texture of his lips, the temperature of his tongue, and the taste of his mouth that, though newly awake, was sweet. The girl buried her fingers in Damon's hair, which caused him to let out a low moan. He pressed himself closer against Emma and massaged her thighs, making her gasp against his mouth.
The kiss was intense, but not rushed, just as she desperately wanted. She felt safe wrapped in his arms, feeling his warm body glued to hers. The sweet smell of his skin, mixed with the smell of the whiskey he had probably drunk earlier invaded Emma's nostrils and shuffled her senses. Finally bringing both hands to her ass, Damon lifted her off the bathroom stool and carried her on his lap back to the bed, laying her carefully between the satin sheets. The thin panties made her smell very strong, and Damon had to concentrate not to dig his fangs into her neck. His gums itched and his body burned, but he kept up the gentle caresses and the slow kisses, which, ironically, made him even more aroused. It was the sweetest torture.
Emma touched him carefully, sliding her fingers down his chest with a tenderness she hadn't shown before, and he realized he liked it. Damon moved his kisses down her lap, her belly, circled her navel with his tongue, and heard her purr like a cat, which made the black veins beneath his eyes throb. The vampire then broke the kiss to take a breath and control the instincts that were screaming at him to drink her blood and fuck her hard like all the other times. His ice eyes met her whiskey orbs, the warm color hugging him completely. Emma's lips were red and ajar, her uncompressed breathing made those perfectly drawn breasts, still covered by the bra, rise and fall right before his eyes.
"You're beautiful," he found himself whispering, completely mesmerized by the woman in front of him.
Damon then gently got rid of her bra and lowered his mouth to one of Emma's breasts. He ran his tongue lightly over the soft flesh, licking, sucking, and sometimes nibbling at her nipples. Her moans were like music to his ears, and he just wanted to hear more. He ran his lips down the length of her body, tasting the sweet taste of her skin, smelling her arousal. He could feel his vision blurring and his eyes turning dark red, but he didn't lose control.
He was, amazingly, enjoying every bit of her that he could taste. The panties were already gone. When he reached her clit with his tongue, she moaned his name, and something awoke inside him. A triumphant roar formed inside his chest, and he began to kiss and suck her where she was warmest, feeling her taste in his mouth and her fingers buried in his hair. His hands, which were busy caressing her belly, could tell when she arched her torso with each moan.
Emma came, clamping her legs involuntarily around Damon's head, and he felt her wetter than ever against his mouth. The sound she made as she released herself into his mouth, moaning his name, nearly stripped him of the remaining self-control that held him firm to his claim of giving her slow sex. With red, hungry eyes, the vampire roamed her body with his lips until he reached her mouth again. Kissing her a little more voraciously than before and squeezing the flesh of her body between his fingers, he felt her spread her legs to accommodate him better between them. Her hand closed against his cock and he opened his eyes to see her, minimally separating his mouth from hers. She began to make delicate but precise movements, and he moaned against her mouth.
Damon moved one hand down to her entrance and inserted two fingers, feeling her wet. She moaned again, and he parted his lips from hers, and stared at her completely mesmerized as he moved his fingers inside her. When she came again, whispering his name, a new, uncomfortable strange feeling lodged itself inside his chest. The golden brown strands sticking to her face from sweat, the pink mouth ajar as she gasped against his mouth and moaned, the whiskey eyes that wouldn't let go of his, he couldn't tell which of the alternatives had ignited something inside him.
Deep down, he knew that this was not just sex. Deep down, he knew it was so much more. But instead of stopping what he was doing, turning his back and walking away, he found himself unable to separate his body from hers. More than that, he didn't want to separate his body from hers, he didn't want to stay away from her. She was beautiful, and somehow, she was his.
Emma was already soft against his body after the orgasms when he finally entered her, eliciting a loud moan from the girl. She was always so tight.
Damon didn't kiss her again. He moved slowly in and out of her, while looking into her eyes, because those eyes could hold him more than the pink lips he loved so much. Eyes that looked at him full of desire, trust and affection, making it hard for him to shake off the sentence that was dancing in his head, hunting him, almost running to the tip of his tongue. A sentence made up of short words, which he had said before, a long time ago, but which, now, inside Emma and looking into her eyes, he realized had been said in vain. Said it to wrong person. Because he had never felt what he was feeling at that moment.
Suddenly, angry at the direction his thoughts and feelings were taking him, Damon sped up his movements and moved in and out of Emma with force. He clamped his lips over hers, preventing the words from coming out. His eyes were red, with dark thick veins and his fangs came out of his itching gums, and then he finally ground his teeth painfully into her neck. He came inside her, as he felt the sweet, metallic taste of her blood against his tongue.
For the first time, Damon didn't feed her with his blood. He just held her in his arms, pressed her against his body, and waited for her to go back to sleep. He, however, could not close his eyes until long hours later.
Despite this, Damon woke up before Emma, embraced by the comfort of his bed and the warmth of the body next to him. The smell of vanilla was comforting. The vampire rolled over under the covers, facing the girl, who was still asleep.
He stared at the girl in front of him. Her expression was peaceful, her honey hair was spread across the white pillow, and he could count twenty-five spots on her shoulder and torso, touching each one with the tip of his index finger. The vampire noticed the dried bloodstain on her neck and stroked the wound with his fingertips. He felt guilty for wanting to somehow punish her for feelings that only he was responsible for. It was not Emma's fault that he felt confused and vulnerable. But the night before, he blamed her for giving herself to him with such devotion and affection. He blamed her for making the previous night not just about sex. Because that terrified him.
Damon was distracted from his own thoughts when Emma instinctively, still asleep, moved closer to him, seeking the warmth of his body. He stroked the length of her arm and planted a kiss on her shoulder. The gesture woke her, and the girl rubbed the tip of her nose lazily along the length of Damon's neck, and opened her eyes slowly, meeting his blue ones.
"Morning" she whispered, sleepily. Damon couldn't help but smile fondly at her; it was impossible not to. She smiled back. "Good mood today, aren't we?", Emma joked. "You should smile more often".
"I always smile" he defended himself.
"Not like this" she replied, and Damon frowned, annoyed again.
"Good to know you're still high from the amazing sex I gave you last night", he teased, trying not to get carried away by the feelings that haunted him. Emma rolled her eyes and snorted, "What? Am I lying?"
"No" the girl simply replied, mentally scolding herself for even briefly cogitating that the previous night had meant the same to him as it had to her.
Damon was hard to read. He gave her confusing signals. Sometimes he was affectionate, protective and treated her as if she were the only person in the world. Yet at other times he made it clear that they were nothing for each other. And this frustrated her, precisely because she had always believed she could read the signs.
Emma extricated herself from the vampire's embrace and sheets and walked to the bathroom. She turned on the shower and took a quick bath. Damon remained lying there, watching her from afar. The vampire watched from a distance as the girl washed her hair and massaged the soap over her body. He watched as she stepped out of the shower and towel-dried herself. He watched as she picked up a comb from the bathroom counter and combed her wet hair. And finally, he watched as she placed two fingers over the open wound on her neck and gently patted it dry.
Damon frowned when she didn't ask him to heal her, because deep down he was expecting her to confront him about it. The girl put on the clothes she had brought with her the night before and approached the bed. The vampire put on his mask and smirked. When Emma crouched down enough to kiss him goodbye, Damon deposited a quick kiss on her lips.
"Call me if you need a good sex before sleep today" he teased. Emma stared at him for only a fraction of a second before smiling weakly and nodding positively, but it was enough for him to realize that she was upset. And that meant two things: one, things were going too far. And two: it was past time for Damon to screw it all over.
.
To be honest, having Rebekah at the Boarding House was nothing close to having Mason Lockwood half-alive and making his life hell. Damn falling veil between the living and the dead. Weren't all his problems enough already? Damon drank his third glass of whiskey, irritated, sitting between Alaric and a not-so-dead Mason at the Grill counter. Emma, past the surprise of having visual confirmation that the werewolf was right there, just as Bonnie had told her earlier, walked briskly over to the men. Mason noticed her approach.
"It's really sad to have confirmation that you're still close to these two" the werewolf commented, taking a sip of his vodka. Damon punched the bar lightly and turned to Mason.
"Let's get to it. I killed you, and you want revenge. Get in the fucking line" the vampire grunted and, with a flick of his arm, pushed Emma so that the girl was behind him, between him and Alaric, well away from Mason. The gesture did not go unnoticed by the dead man.
"Didn't see that coming, I must confess" the werewolf commented. Emma frowned. "Are you seriously with him?"
"I'm not with him" Emma replied, and Damon pulled the air hard into his lungs.
"Don't you have a family to haunt?" the vampire teased him.
"That' exactly why I'm here. To help Tyler" Mason replied, and Damon rolled his eyes.
"Too bad he can't be helped as long Klaus is alive. Which is... always and forever. Kinda romantic, isn't it?".
"Damon, stop teasing" Emma scolded, and Damon rolled his eyes. The girl looked at Mason, feeling rather bad for the man. She liked Mason, he always treated her well, he was Jenna's friend, and the vampire next to her had killed him for the simple fact that he was what he was and, well, for falling in love with Katherine just like everyone else. Mason wasn't bad. "I'm sorry, Mason. Tyler is under some kind of bond or something. And Klaus can't be killed".
"He can with the right weapon" the werewolf replied, sounding less defensive as he spoke directly to her.
"Newsflash, we already tried that" Damon replied. Emma glared at him and snorted.
"Let me handle it, would ya?" Emma complained and moved closer to Mason, touching him on the arm. Damon watched the gesture with his eyebrows knitted together and felt anger. Emma had acted innocently, she was a tactile person, and he knew that she was trying to soften the werewolf up so that he wouldn't stick a wood chair foot into the vampire's chest again. But if Mason tried, if he dared, to lay even a finger on her, Damon swore to himself that he would kill him again, and again, and again, as many times as it took.
"There is a way to kill him" Mason said, looking directly at Emma and ignoring the other two men. With a smirk, he nodded to Damon. "I'll tell if he apologizes".
"That's not going to happen" Damon grunted and Alaric snorted.
"Are you fucking incapable of feeling remorse?" the man complained. "Just apologize, this is bigger than us".
"Not. Going. To. Happen" Damon replied pausingly. Mason sighed and turned his eyes back to Emma. Gently, he stroked the girl's hand that was resting on his arm.
"You shouldn't be in the middle of all this, Em", the werewolf said, and sounded sincere. "I'm so sorry about Jenna. I've... I've heard about her... On the other side".
Emma's eyebrows curved downward, and she felt her eyes water. The girl took a deep breath, trying to hold back the urge to cry.
"Was she there?" she couldn't restrain her question. Jeremy had confessed to her that he couldn't see Jenna, no matter how much he thought about his aunt. And that, deep down, worried Emma. She was not religious, far from it, but a nagging lodged itself in her chest at the knowledge that there was indeed an afterlife, and that Jenna might not be there.
"No", Mason replied.
Damon, irritated, caught the girl's hand and ended the contact between her and the werewolf. The vampire stared at him in irritation.
"Enough of that. Here's your apology. I didn't have to kill you. I do a lot of things I don't have to do", Damon said, staring at Mason with his eyebrows knitted together. "Are you happy?"
Mason took his eyes off Emma and smiled, amused at Damon's reaction. Information came and went from the other side, much of it concerning the Salvatores. Specifically regarding Damon, it was already known to the dead that he had a single weakness. And Mason had just confirmed what that weakness was. Well, who that weakness was.
"That's good enough" the werewolf replied and stood up from the stool, pushing the empty glasses to the center of the counter with his fingertips. "Meet me at the Lockwood cellar and bring a shovel".
Damon watched the werewolf leave the Grill with his eyebrows knitted together. How he wanted to tear that bastard apart! When he turned his eyes back to Emma, the girl was looking at him impatiently.
"What?", Damon asked.
"He's already dead. Can't you just cut him some slack?" she replied.
"Cut him some slack?", the vampire looked incredulous. "He would love to kill me, so don't be so chummy about him, Em".
Emma snorted and crossed her arms.
"Whatever, I'm not arguing with you" she replied. The girl looked from Damon to Alaric, who seemed oblivious to the subject since the werewolf mentioned Jenna. "So, at what time exactly do we have to meet him?"
"We?", Damon arched an eyebrow and spun the girl back to him. "You're not coming, doll".
"The hell I'm not" she replied louder than she intended. Looking around to make sure no one was paying attention to them, the girl turned back to Damon. "He's dead! And he actually likes me, which makes this situation the one and only opportunity for me to help without getting harmed".
"I'm not in the mood for this" Damon closed the subject, taking one last sip of his whiskey and getting up from the Grill counter. The vampire walked to the exit without looking back. Emma, annoyed, ran up to him and grabbed him by the wrist as soon as she could reach him on the sidewalk.
Damon turned to her, snorting.
"I just want to help" she said. "You've said it yourself. Mason hates you. So what if this is a trap? What if he takes you somewhere vampires can't come out? Like... Like the tomb?"
"He's not that smart" Damon teased. Emma took a deep breath.
"Klaus isn't here. Rebekah is busy living a surprisingly normal teenage life, and God knows where Elijah is right now. I can come".
"You're a human, you can't help. I can't be worrying about you while we're there doing whatever we're going to do", Damon explained. And it was true. The sincerity of his own words didn't even take him by surprise. It was pretty obvious to him that she couldn't stay at risk, that he couldn't focus on doing what should be done if she was in danger.
"Elena is a human too, and she's always in the middle of everything", Emma stubbornly remarked. Damon snorted.
"And she always makes stupid moves, doesn't she? You've said it yourself a thousand times".
Emma stared at him, not knowing what to say. She opened and closed her mouth several times but didn't know how to contradict him. After all, he was right. Damon smirked as he realized that she would not be able to refute him.
"Fine!" she finally exclaimed. "But as soon as you finish whatever this is, you'll call me. Okay?"
"Okay" Damon replied, smiling. The vampire lowered his face and caught her lips in his. "I love when you're bossy".
.
Emma kept her word and remained in the house but was unable to sleep. There was no sign of Damon. He hadn't called, hadn't texted, or sent any other sign that he was okay. So the girl simply gave up trying to sleep and stayed in the living room watching television, occasionally glancing at her cell phone screen.
When the doorbell rang, the girl jumped up. Damon didn't need to use the doorbell, he had free access to the house. Emma put on her slippers and walked carefully to the door. She unplugged a lamp and held it firmly in her hands, ready to defend herself if necessary.
She walked to the door, but when she opened it, she felt as if a hole had opened right under her feet. The man she thought she would probably never see again in her life was standing right in front of her, wearing a thin twill jacket and jeans that didn't quite fit him.
"Hello, Emma" John said, and before the girl could open her mouth to reply, he snuck into the house. It was going to be a long night.