Damon squeezed his sleep swollen eyes closed as he took the last swig from a leftover bottle of warm Hennessy from the night before. The flame sliced into his esophagus and the gagging threw his body forward, he instinctively put his head between his legs like he has done countless times. The hangover spins faded as the alcohol slowly spread through his nervous system. His brain felt like television static.
The bed sheets felt velvety under his calloused hands, he gripped them in his fists to maintain upright balance. Standing up was a chore, but the clock next to his bed stared at him with it's glowing eyes reading 9:38am, warning him that if he took any longer, his roommates would tear into him like a pack of wild dogs. He stood with a groan and looked at the spot on his bed where his body lay just a few minutes earlier; sweat and glitter clung to the delicate grey sheets and his heavy black duvet.
He gave a half shrug and shuffled to his bathroom.
The shower water burned more than the liquor. He stood with his arms braced against the shower tiles and let the scalding water run through his hair and down his back, between the webbings of old scars littered around his body and the fresh scar that orbited his abdomen. He watched the fine glitter run in streams on the slippery porcelain towards the drain. Once he was convinced he no longer reeked of cheap booze and sweaty bodies, he stepped out of the shower and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror but quickly ripped his eyes away to look at anything else.
He internally hit himself and forced his eyes to look up at his reflection.
His blue iris' were dim when they used to be bright and his pale skin harbored more shadows than a New York alleyway. He watched as he ran his hands down his arms, tracing the thin scars and fading runes left there from a mission he had completed a few days prior. The bruises were a reminder of his recklessness and how he was thrown 50 feet into a brick wall by a demon that resembled a freakshow elephant.
His body ached and screamed at him to stop, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
Damon cautiously poked his dark haired head out into the hallway to avoid as much ridicule and social interaction as possible, but to his surprise, and luck, nobody was around. He stepped out into the corridor and shut his bedroom door behind him with a sharp click. The walls slightly swirled around him in a mixture of dusty red with gold accents, negatively adding to his current state of self invoked vertigo. The witchlight torches burned into Damon's eyes with the strength of the sun as if the Angel himself was itching to burn holes into his retinas. He shielded his eyes with his hands and walked down the hall into the rickety elevator.
The elevator rocked gently, but still hurled drunk Damon against the walls of the cage. He braced his arms against the rusty crosshatch doors until the rocking stopped and he was able to open the box of scrap metal.
He slammed the library doors open to reveal an empty library, except for the middle of the room where Hodge Starkweather stood facing a slim womanly figure in a sleek black cloak that hid her hooded face. Before they had a chance to notice his intrusion, he felt a hand wrap around the collar of his shirt and was yanked to his right into one of the uninhabited bedrooms. The sudden movement threw him against the wall. The hand let go of his collar once the door was pulled shut by Alec.
"Don't go in there," hissed Isabelle. She got up in Damon's face.
"Jesus Christ," he spat, "what the fuck is your problem?" The yank caused his brain to do somersaults.
"That woman in there just burst in here like she owned the place, reeking of Ichor, and generally looked like she was ready to kill anything in her path-" Jace chimed in from the bed but was interrupted by Alec.
"I think she came to talk to Hodge, she should be gone soon." Alec stated this with exasperation, as if that woman's presence was doing something to bring out the aggression that has been pent up for a week.
"Nobody knows who she is?" Damon dusted off his shirt.
"None of us have seen her, but Hodge turned white as a ghost before he told us to leave," Jace poked in again.
"We seriously can't get a break-"
"What do you mean 'we'?" Isabelle interrupted Damon's mumble. Damon felt his eyebrows furrow and heat rise to his chest in repressed anger.
"I was just as involved in the war with Valentine as you guys were. Don't blame me for getting damn-near eviscerated by an Abaddon."
"We were under lockdown, Damon. You weren't allowed to leave, that's on you," she poked a manicured nail into his sternum, "it seems like no matter how many times we go over this, you can't seem to get it through your thick skull."
"And look what good a lockdown did, huh? We lost half of our army in the span of six hours, and one of our own." Isabelle cringed. Her once pink lips have been cracked and white like porcelain since the loss of her brother. Alec firmly grabbed Damon by the arm and gently pulled him back a step.
"I get it, we are all still on edge. Everything will go back the way it was-" The sound of the library doors slamming shut cut Alec off.
The dark-haired man popped his head out of the bedroom door, he looked down both sides of the hall and reported seeing nothing back to the group behind him. Damon shoved his way out the door only to come face to face with nothing except the smell of ichor.