I'm not completely satisfied with this but it'll have to do cause I'm tired of staring at it. It's as good as it gets.
September 28th,
Stiles is entirely unsurprised when no one answers the door of the boarding house, even after ringing the bell and knocking multiple times. If not for his supernatural hearing being able to hone in on the music almost entirely muffled by the mansion's walls, he may have thought the whole place empty.
His day had gone well so far, he'd caught up with Bonnie in class to let her know he had ordered the supplies and would give her the store addresses if they turned out not to be schemes. In his free period, he'd thought about catching Jeremy up to speed on the supernatural state of things, but ended up walking into the kid and Vicky making out in a dark corner and backtracking as fast as possible without utilizing his supernatural powers. After class, he let Care know he would be busy all afternoon only to be reminded that his day better be free for cheer practice the next day and the car wash fundraiser on Wednesday. Finally, he'd driven over to the boarding house, figuring he'd given Damon enough time to put himself together and any more distance might make the man think he'd run away or didn't actually care, which would be wrong. He likes his research buddy, even if he is an ass- and a vampire.
"I know you're in there," Stiles announces in front of the closed door, starting to get annoyed. "I'm also good at picking locks, thought you ought to know!"
There's another moment of wait, but not as long as before, until Stefan opens the door only wide enough to speak through, "Stiles, this isn't the best time."
"I'm looking for Damon," he declares, ignoring the man's warning tone.
All that earns him is a weirdly intense look, "You need to turn around and go back home, Damon is- fine."
"Last I saw, he was anything but fine," he points out before something clicks in his mind and he narrows his eyes at Stefan, "and you, of course, are also a vampire."
"Wha-" the other teen gapes in surprise and Stiles takes advantage of that to push the door open, ducking Stefan's hurried attempt to stop him at the last second and slipping inside. "How do you-"
"Where's Damon?" Stiles asks, trying to focus on where the slightly louder music was coming from.
"You really shouldn't-" Stefan starts, but the smell of blood suddenly makes itself known and is much easier to track than the sound.
"Nevermind," he mutters, moving in the direction of the library.
Please don't let him be desecrating the books.
Approaching the room makes everything worse, the loud music assaulting his ears and the smell of blood becoming more overwhelming by the second. For a moment, he wonders if he really should confront Dmon right now, especially if blood is involved. What will he do, if he's confronted with one or more dead bodies? He knows what he's told Bonnie, but saying and acting on what you say are two different things. For one, he might puke. Or faint, it's a toss-up.
Only one way to find out.
Stepping into the library, the first thing he realizes is there are more than two people inside. It's very easy to spot, given the five scantly clad, college-aged looking, objectively hot girls dancing near the fireplace to the beat of the music, one of which has Damon's mouth glued to her neck in what Stiles guesses is not a very long attempt at a hickey.
"Damon!" Stiles yells in an attempt to be heard over the music, stepping closer to the group.
The vampire's eyes immediately snap to his and he releases the girl's neck, the red in Damon's eyes and veins under them receding slowly along with the fangs. "Stiles!" he exclaims with a cheerfulness that immediately screams wrong.
The lights suddenly turn on, undoing the job of the closed blackout curtains and making him look toward the entrance where Stefan had apparently come in right behind Stiles. The sound is the next to go as the younger Salvatore turns it off, earning groans of displeasure from all other occupants in the room other than Stiles.
"No. Buzzkill Bob," Damon complains, squinting in their direction, still holding the girl close. "Greetings, care to join the fun?"
"Damon-" Stefan starts, but is promptly interrupted.
"I wasn't talking to you, fun police." Damon motions dismissively with the hand not wrapped around a girl's chest then uses it to point at Stiles, "You don't mind some fun, right? Come on… they won't mind."
"The more the merrier," the blonde leaning on the writing desk assures him in a flirty tone that Stiles isn't sure how to feel about and proceeds to entirely ignore.
"I- think our definitions of fun are a bit different," Stiles says after a moment of inspecting the girls' visible skin and spotting various bite-shaped bruises. "I just wanted to see how you were, after-"
"Shhh-" Damon is suddenly there, right in front of him in the blink of an eye, hand covering Stiles' mouth to stop him from continuing. Stiles glances up at the man's eyes for a moment before narrowing his own and- "Did you seriously just lick me?" Damon asks incredulously, pulling his hand away.
"Stiles, you really should go, you don't know-" Stefan tries to insist, startling him by placing one hand on his shoulder when he hadn't even realized the other vampire had come close enough to his back to do so.
"Relax, Stef," Damon drawls, shoving Stefan's hand away from Stiles' shoulder and throwing his arm around it like he's forgotten the meaning of personal space, "He's a big boy, he can handle himself."
Stiles is, in full honestly, a little thrown off. He'd gone into the room ready to witness a massacre - he still might if those girls don't make it back to wherever they came from - but instead had come across some sort of private feeding party that looks like the potential start of an amateur porn shoot, with Damon clearly trying to pretend that everything is fine even after whatever episode he'd had on Saturday. Instead of focusing on any of that, he turns slightly to catch Stefan's eye.
"I'll be fine," he assures the younger-looking vampire, "you can go. We'll just talk."
Stefan hesitates, looking between them with puzzlement clear in his eyes but caving after Stiles throws him a pleading look. "Fine, I'll be in my room," he warns, probably trying to be reassuring. Not that Stiles needs it.
"I can think of better things to do than talk," Damon whispers close to his ear once Stefan leaves, still leaning into him and sending an involuntary shiver down Stiles' spine.
Nope, not going there.
"We can talk about those later, or not. I'd rather not," Stiles blurts out nervously, pushing Damon off of him lightly and sighing in relief when the man goes with it, turning back to the waiting girls instead. "What's with the tri-delts?" he can't help but ask, eyes following Damon to avoid the girls' exposed skin.
"I felt like eating takeout," the vampire shrugs in response, but something in his eyes makes it feel like a provocation.
"...Damon, what happened that night?" Stiles asks after a moment, choosing to focus on that first since it feels like the most important part.
Damon freezes in place for less than a second before turning his back to Stiles, motioning something at the two girls standing by him. They smile and nod before moving over to the other three standing on the higher part of the library as if giving them some space. When the vampire turns back toward him, it's with a slightly unnerving amount of intent.
"What did happen, Stiles?" Damon's tone is deceptively calm as he stalks back in his direction, "You. Pinned me. To the ground." he emphasizes his speech by pointing at Stiles and him in turn, "Who are you, really?"
"What?" Stiles exclaims in complete disbelief, not sure where that question had come from. "I'm me, obviously! Stiles Stilinski, I told you that already."
"Nope," the vampire circles him with a strangely focused analytical look for someone that looked blood-drunk – or maybe just drunk, can vampires even get drunk? – a minute earlier. "A vampire as old as you doesn't get to keep the same ident-"
Stiles' bark of laughter manages to cut him off before he can finish that massively wrong assumption, "I'm not a vampire!" he tries his best to hold back the humor in his tone but it's a lost cause, "What in the world makes you think I'm a vampire?"
Damon stops moving and Stiles very privately admits that the look of confusion on his face may be slightly cute, "You were strong, maybe stronger than me," he points out.
"Dude, that doesn't make me a vampire," Stiles points out, swaying slightly on the balls of his feet.
"What else would you be?" the vampire questions in a baffled tone, as if the existence of anything else but vampires was unthinkable.
"No idea," Stiles admits. "I can tell you how I think I got these weird abilities if we relocate to the couch."
Damon clearly isn't up to talking about what happened, but that doesn't mean Stiles wants to leave him alone in this state. And maybe he wants to make sure the girls actually make it home, so talking about his sudden introduction into the supernatural world doesn't feel like much of a chore.
"This I gotta hear," the older Salvatore decides, steering Stiles over to the couch facing the fireplace and taking a seat on the armchair by its side before motioning one of the girls over, "You don't mind the company, right? Good." he pulls the girl into his lap by the waist, earning a surprised yelp that melts into giggles from the clearly drunk girl – or is it a result of the blood loss? – who settles into it comfortably.
Stiles has to force his eyes away from how Damon's fingers keep lightly caressing her exposed belly, "You want me to talk about that in front of them?" he questions, a little confused. Isn't it supposed to be a secret? Does he not care because he plans on killing them? Does Stiles care if that's the plan? Yeah, a little bit, he decides.
"They won't tell," Damon smirks, winking at one of the girls. "I make a pretty compelling argument." At Stiles' clear look of confusion, the vampire frowns slightly before elaborating, "I've compelled them not to talk about anything that happens while they're with me."
"Compelled?" His interest piques at that, "Like hypnosis?" it sounds like what he saw Anna do at the Grill, she never did explain it.
"More like the Imperius," the vampire corrects, earning a snort at the comparison.
"You've read Harry Potter," Stiles states with some surprise.
"I was bored," Damon shrugs before his eyes focus back on Stiles, "like I am now. Wasn't there a story to tell?"
"Right," he forces himself to get back on track, "So… some background information is that I'm the Sheriff's kid and may or may not listen to my dad's calls every now and then," his audience doesn't look even slightly surprised. "At the start of the month, there was a call about finding one half of a girl's body, so naturally I went looking for the other half."
"Which half?" Damon interjects curiously.
"I didn't really think of that at the time," Stiles admits. "Anyway, there I was in the woods at night, when this huge wolf-ish thing comes at me. I tried to run but it ended up biting me on the side," his hand absently moves over to where the wound had been as he speaks, "I tripped running from it and actually fell on the other half of the body, the top half," he adds in response to the question. "My dad finds me and, after a hospital visit, decides he's had enough and ships me off to live here with Aunt Liz," he tries his best to keep his tone completely nonchalant, "everything's fine for like two weeks then suddenly I'm breaking a punching bag with super strength, like out of nowhere."
"So you're saying it's some delayed reaction to that bite?" The vampire's tone is skeptical.
"Pretty much, it does sound like some werewolf origin story," he replies.
"Werewolves don't exist," Damon is quick to affirm.
"Until yesterday, vampires didn't exist for me either," Stiles rebuts logically. "Besides, I'm plenty strong but not nearly as fast as the vampire I saw in the woods, she was like this blur-"
"She?" there's a painful sort of hopeful undertone in Damon's voice that Stiles feels some guilt about crushing.
"A girl and an older one. I met the girl again today, said her name was Anna and her mom was in the tomb," he elaborates, hesitating a moment before adding, "She explained that a witch locked those vampires in there to save them."
"She was supposed to save her, not them!" there's a pained whimper from the girl in Damon's lap and Stiles can't help but stand up and pull her up, inspecting her ribs that had been compressed due to the vampire's anger. "Don't take away my meal unless you feel like taking its place," Damon warns him in a dangerous tone, reaching for the girl, but Stiles pulls her behind him.
"How long does vervain stay in someone's blood?" he questions after a moment of thought.
"One or two days at most," Damon replies, early hostility replaced by mild confusion.
The last time he'd had the tea had been Friday, and for all his talk about staying safe, he'd actually forgotten to drink it again this morning in a rush to get to school after accidentally oversleeping, so it should have been cleared out of his system by now.
"Then sure," Stiles shrugs off his jacket and throws it on the couch, holding out his wrist to Damon since it was the more convenient body part he'd seen with a bite mark on the girls. "I don't mind if you feed, I told you my opinion already, but this- toying with your… food, just feels wrong."
Damon only stares at his offering with such an unreadable look that Stiles starts fidgeting with his other hand on the hem of his shirt, not sure what he'd been thinking or expecting by acting like that. Still, he didn't regret it. He may have some loose morals but he wasn't about to let an innocent be unnecessarily hurt, she was either a meal or not, but not a toy. The vampire may be a predator, but he was still capable of enough thought to know that cracking that girl's ribs wasn't necessary.
He's about to let his arm fall back to his side when a hand closes around his wrist, pulling him forward so suddenly that he ends up tripping over his feet and falling into Damon's lap. He tries to scramble off of him, but the man only chuckles and pulls him back against his chest, "You want to take her place? Stay."
Stiles almost pulls his arm back by force - he knows he's strong enough to do it - but something in Damon's tone, much like earlier, feels like goading. Some twisted test that the man's distressed mind came up with, maybe to see how much it takes for him to run? Too bad Stiles isn't one to back down from a challenge.
"Fine," he grunts out but makes a point of shifting enough to sit on the right arm of the chair, only his legs lying on top of one of Damon's knees between his spread legs, all without pulling his right wrist out of the man's hand.
There's a movement behind his back but he realizes it was Damon shooing the girl before placing that arm around his waist, uncomfortably snug. He huffs but doesn't say anything, keeping his eyes on Damon's as soon as they meet again, making it clear he's not backing down.
The vampire raises Stiles' wrist to his lips slowly, as if just waiting for it to be pulled from his grasp, but there it stays. Damon's sclera starts shifting into a dark red color and dark veins start rising under his eyes as his fangs drop. Still, Stiles doesn't move. He feels the sharpness of the fangs as they touch his wrist- and gets immediately pushed off the armchair, hitting the ground with enough force to make him wince slightly in some sort of deja-vu of that night in the forest, with Damon once again pinning him to the floor and looking like a chaotic mixture of confused, angry and hurt.
"What do you want from me?" The vampire demands, "I'm not your supernatural guru. Stefan will let you into the library, and you're letting me pin you down!"
"I'm your friend, you absolute asshole!" Stiles exclaims, almost too exasperated for words, "What I want is to know if you're okay!" he pushes against the man's hold, but it's with his human strength, and is unsurprised when Damon just rolls off of him to lay down on the floor by his side, staring at the ceiling.
"I spent the last one hundred forty-five years with one goal… get into that tomb to save her," Damon replies after a moment, completely deadpan. "I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"
There's way too much to unpack in that sentence, so Stiles starts from the part he's most curious about. "Who was she?"
"...Her name was Katherine," the vampire tells him after a pause long enough that Stiles thought he might not have.
They lay there in silence for a while longer, with Stiles waiting for any more information to be shared when a thought occurs to him and has him pulling his phone from his pocket.
Stiles(3:58p.m.): know anything about Katherine?
It takes a couple of minutes before his phone pings with a response.
Ms Cullen(4:01p.m.): I guess it doesn't matter now.
Ms Cullen(4:01p.m.): She was never in the tomb. Last I saw her was Chicago, 1983.
Ms Cullen(4:02p.m.): She could have come back any time, she just didn't care.
Stiles' blood feels like it's turning to ice in his veins at the thought of Damon learning of this. Of his friend finding out that this woman he dedicated over a hundred years to hadn't even cared to come back to him.
Stiles(4:03p.m.): how did she escape?
The answer takes long enough that he thinks she might not even know, but it comes eventually.
Ms Cullen(4:10p.m.): Mom says the guard that locked them in was obsessed with her. He let her out when she promised to turn him.
Ms Cullen(4:11p.m.): Tell Damon I'm sorry.
He stares at the screen for a while, but it's unthinkable not to let it be known, as awful as it will be. "Damon," he calls, waiting for the man's head to turn to him before holding out his phone, "Anna- she said Katherine was never in the tomb."
The phone is gone from his hand in the blink of an eye, and suddenly Damon is standing with it in his hands, eyes flitting from one side to the other as he reads, expression slowly hardening into an unreadable mask. He slowly stands up, hoping to comfort his friend, but flinches back when the phone cracks and then shatters in Damon's hands.
"Go," Damon's tone leaves very little for interpretation.
"Damon-" Stiles frowns slightly, not enjoying meeting the wall the vampire seems to have suddenly built between them, one that won't let any emotion out.
"Stiles," The tone doesn't change, but Damon finally meets his eyes. "Leave."
He leaves.
"Dude You'll never believe what happened today," Scott's loud voice isn't exactly what Stiles wants to hear at the end of this particular day, but his friend did call his Skype endlessly until he picked up.
"Why don't you tell me?" He asks, tone not as excited as he'd like it to be.
"Mr Argent- y'know, Allison's dad? Shot a mountain lion down in the parking lot of the school!" Scott announces, "How crazy is that?"
"Pretty crazy," but nothing close to the week I'm having buddy.
"Yeah, but hey at least they can close up three cases now, your dad might be less busy." That's Scott, always looking on the good side. Wait-
"Three?" Stiles repeats, "Wasn't it two?"
"Oh, right, there was this video store clerk who got attacked on Saturday too," Scott explains, "Uh- actually… Lydia was there."
"Is she ok?" He asks immediately, dreading giving Mrs Lockwood this news about her niece.
"She's… been in the hospital since Saturday," Scott admits in a sheepish tone, "some sort of coma? I dunno, Mom didn't tell me."
"Did you ask?" Stiles snaps but takes a deep breath before adding, "Sorry, it's just been one of those days. I'll talk to you later?"
"Sure!" Scott hangs up, leaving Stiles to realize - to the sound of the disconnected call - that a bad day could always get worse.
Damon is an ass but ugh I wanna hug him.
Nothing planned out for the next chapter yet since I need to rewatch the episode (S01E05) but Damon will be making a brief disappearance, for now.
In honor of Stiles' phone's noble sacrifice, have a little list of contacts he's saved so far and some he already had:
Hero Hair: Stefan Salvatore
Baby Gilbert: Jeremy Gilbert
Sexiest Salvatore: Damon Salvatore
Ms Cullen: Annabelle Zhu
Care Bear: Caroline Forbes
Boss Lady: Elizabeth Forbes
Cinnabon: Bonnie Bennett
Lydia 2.0: Carol Lockwood
I'm In: Danny Mahealani
Boss Man: Noah Stilinski
McClueless: Scott McCall
Ms Post: Elena Gilbert (in relation to Emily post, a novelist that wrote about manners and correct social behavior. Because Stiles is referencing that she wants to be a writer but also that he thinks she's bossy lol)