Work Text:
Damon had been different lately. He and Stefan weren’t getting along—which wasn’t exactly new, but tensions between the two brothers had risen sharply. I didn’t know why, and no one seemed interested in telling me. Damon would disappear for days at a time, and Stefan or Elena would ask me, in a falsely casual way, if I had heard from him. (I hadn’t.) Then one night he would just show up on my walk home, as if everything were normal.
But it wasn’t normal. We didn’t talk like we used to. If Damon said anything at all, it was angry and bitter; and he didn’t seem interested in hearing about what I was doing, or our mutual friends. I didn’t even dare mention Stefan at all.
I watched events play out for a while, unsure of my place in them. But Damon wasn’t acting like the person I enjoyed any longer. Sometimes I didn’t even look forward to seeing him. I didn’t want to continue like that.
“So, what have you been up to lately?” I asked conversationally as we walked home late one night. The sky was overcast and the wind chill as it swept around the corners of the deserted buildings.
“Nothing,” he answered automatically. The response requiring the least thought.
I wasn’t ready to give up yet. “You’ve been going out of town a lot,” I observed leadingly.
“Oh have I?” he shot back, as though this were an interesting assumption on my part.
That piqued my interest. “Well, I just haven’t seen you as often,” I clarified, wondering if he was finally going to say something substantial.
“Did you miss me?” he asked. His tone was mean and mocking; it had the obviously desired effect of pushing me away.
I certainly didn’t miss this behavior. “Not really.”
“Good.” We walked along in frosty silence. I was more disappointed than anything else—I had really started to like Damon and thought we might be headed towards an even more interesting relationship, despite our differences. But if he was going to reveal himself as just a one-hundred-sixty-year-old brat, I wasn’t going to bother with him further.
As if reading my thoughts—though I was fairly certain he couldn’t do that—he suddenly declared, “You know, it’s pretty stupid for a human to hang out with a vampire.” Clearly, I was the one being stupid. I could tell he was building up to something larger that was bothering him, though, so I ignored the insult.
“As I recall, you vampires started hanging out with humans first,” I couldn’t help but point out.
“I like to play with my food,” he shot back glibly, and I rolled my eyes. I had thought maybe this had something to do with Stefan, but Damon’s sarcasm was usually a dead end in a conversation.
Suddenly he stopped walking and grabbed my arm, forcing me to look up at him. “You would be the food,” he emphasized seriously.
I yanked my arm away from him in irritation. “Yeah, thanks, I got that part,” I replied sarcastically. This was rapidly going downhill—at least, my mood was—and I didn’t want to say something I’d regret later. For all his confidence Damon could be easily wounded with the right barb, and I knew several that would sting.
He grabbed my arm again, more tightly this time. “See, I don’t think you do,” he told me angrily. “You just don’t get it. You’re not a friend, you’re a snack.” I gave him a look meant to express how unimpressed I was with this sentiment. In response he shook my arm in an unpleasant way, dragging my face closer to his. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded, as though truly mystified.
I pushed him away and he let me go, still wary of hurting me. A grip like his could easily crush bone, let alone bruise skin. “What’s wrong with me?” I repeated, my face flushed with anger. It felt slightly exhilarating. “You’re the one threatening to eat people!” Thunder rumbled somewhere high above us.
“And you’re not taking it seriously!”
I stepped back, took a breath, tried to calm myself and think clearly. As with many people strong emotions clouded my mind and impaired my judgment, and I needed all my wits to untangle the situation before me.
“Damon, I don’t understand what you want me to do,” I admitted. “You want me to be your friend, but also to be afraid of you?” His expression and body language said I was all wrong, but I wasn’t a mind reader either. “I’m not gonna do that,” I persisted. “It’s one or the other.”
He looked up at me and I knew immediately that something was wrong. He didn’t have the demonic transformation that had frightened the dog away a few short weeks ago, but there was something in his eyes, the set of his jaw—something hard and unfamiliar, something that told me things were about to get much, much worse.
“Then you should be afraid,” he told me, and with lightning-fast speed he pinned me to the wall in the depths of the alley across the street.
“Damon—“
“Go ahead and scream,” he taunted. “I’ll break your neck before the first sound gets out.” He smirked as he spoke, like he was enjoying himself, but his eyes were cold. Maybe even regretful.
“I’m not going to scream,” I told him with irritation. The rough brick of the wall scraped against my hands where he pinned them and the cold from it seeped through my clothes. Plus the alley carried a distinctive smell of rotting garbage that I wasn’t enjoying either. “I just don’t want to play this game!” I snapped.
“It’s not a game,” he growled, going for my neck.
Before, I had allowed myself to imagine him kissing me. The setup was ironically similar to the one we were in now, but this was horribly twisted. “Damon, don’t,” I begged, hoping I could talk him out of this still. “Please, don’t bite me.”
“Are you scared now?” he hissed in my ear.
I thought about saying yes to see if it pacified him, but his mouth moved back to my neck and I could feel his breath hovering over my skin. “Don’t bite me,” I repeated more urgently. “Please, I don’t know what will happen!”
“I do.” And he bit.
It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would—a sharp sting like an insect bite, then unnatural numbness, as if he had released an anesthetic into the wound. Something in vampire saliva, perhaps? Concentrating on the mechanics helped to keep the panic at bay—it was very unsettling, psychologically, to know that someone had bitten you and was drinking your blood.
After only a few seconds, though, he started to shudder and pulled away, his grip loosening. I shoved him aside and he collapsed unceremoniously to the ground, curling up instinctively as he continued to shake. I didn’t wait to see if he was okay—I just stumbled out of the alley and ran the rest of the way home through a shower of icy rain.
I wasn’t terribly surprised when there was an urgent rattle at my bedroom window later that night. My room was in the attic, which sounded unpleasant to some people, but the space was finished and I had privacy, including my own bathroom. At this time of night everyone else in the house was asleep anyway, so there shouldn’t be anyone to overhear what was certain to be an interesting conversation.
I pulled aside the curtains and saw Damon hovering there outside the window. It looked like he was just standing on a platform attached to the outside of the house. I opened the window and sat down on the window seat to talk to him, glad of my flannel pajamas (pink with cupcakes, to be exact)—the freezing rain had turned to snow and a chill breeze entered my room.
Damon would not be following it. I had never invited him in. He put his hand out anyway and felt the barrier at the open window, as if testing its strength. It was an ancient form of magic, though, related to the sacredness of the human home and its protection against the evils of the supernatural world, and Damon wasn’t going to break it no matter how angry he was.
And he was angry. And frustrated, and confused.
“You have to come out sometime,” he hissed.
“Why this sudden desire to kill me?” I asked curiously. “I don’t understand this.” I had been thinking over the events of the evening a great deal and come up with a few ideas, but I really preferred that he explain himself.
“It was inevitable,” he claimed. “People taste better when you know them.” My look told him I knew that was a lie. “You can’t be surprised,” he insisted. “You had a tiger and you treated it like a housecat. You had to know that eventually, you’d get scratched.”
I wondered how long he’d been working on that speech. “I take it you’re the tiger in this scenario?” I asked, my tone suggesting his metaphor could use some work.
He didn’t like that. His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Let me in, Daisy,” he told me, attempting to work the mind compulsion on me. I looked away just as he started.
“Look, I see your point,” I allowed, “but I think you’re overreacting. I’ve never tried to make you change who you are.”
“That’s my point, you stupid girl!” he exclaimed. I read the insult as more an expression of his own frustration. “I feed on human beings, I kill them and I don’t care! Why doesn’t that bother you? Elena can barely even stand to look at me—“
“I’m not Elena,” I stated coolly. “And neither of us is Katherine. And I’m really not interested in playing this ‘why can’t you be more like my ex who broke my heart’ game.”
The mention of Katherine’s name struck him like a blow. But maybe this really was the root of the matter. I didn’t know too much about this mystery woman except that both he and Stefan had been in love with her and she died before the situation could be resolved. Even though it had happened a long time ago the scars ran deep and for a while it had seemed that Elena would be caught in the middle of the tension it caused between the brothers.
I wondered about this Katherine. Was she really so special to have inspired over a century and a half of feuding, or had her legend and the emotions associated with it just grown in their minds over the years, creating their own epic tragedy worthy of Aeschylus or Shakespeare?
It certainly involved enough dead bodies.
“Come out here,” he growled, trying to compel me again.
I sighed. If Damon was feeling out of balance, maybe it was time for the balance to change.
“Fine.” I started to climb out the window and he rushed to grab me.
“What are you doing?!” he asked, surprised and alarmed.
“Just what you wanted,” I pointed out. “Now let me go.” His expression questioned my sanity. “I said, let me go!” I gave a small push and he was flung away from me, bouncing off the roof of the back porch with a thud. He scrambled back up and, to his credit, looked as if he meant to yet save me from falling—only to freeze, open-mouthed with astonishment, when he saw me hovering in mid-air on my own, the snow swirling around me.
“What are you?” he breathed.
I didn’t have a good answer for him. “A little different,” I shrugged.
He zipped to my side in an instant, grabbing my jaw to tilt my head. He was faster than me, I’d give him that. “Your neck—“ he started to observe, looking at the unblemished skin he’d bitten not so long ago.
I slapped his hand away. “No pawing.”
Old habits die hard and he narrowed his eyes and reached for me again. I grabbed his wrist and spun him around, twisting his arm behind his back. I didn’t know if his grunt was one of surprise or pain—a human’s arm would be broken right now. “Do you have some kind of problem, that I have to repeat everything I say?” I asked him in annoyance. “Stop grabbing me. I’m not a stuffed animal.”
I let him go with a shove and floated upwards through the snowflakes, settling on the roof of the house near my skylight. A moment later he reappeared several feet away, nursing his arm and regarding me with a newfound wariness. Who’s the tiger now? I thought, but the smugness gave me only momentary satisfaction before fading into oblivion. Whatever my abilities, I had spent too much time alone because of them to relish their advantages.
Damon inched closer, cautious and alert. “I see why it doesn’t bother you to walk home alone at night,” he noted slowly, testing the waters.
“Or even with a vampire,” I added pointedly.
He conceded that. “Your blood is…” He trailed off, remembering. “I’ve never tasted anything like that.”
“Yeah, well, I warned you not to,” I reminded him. He eased himself down on the roof beside me. “I’m glad it didn’t hurt you. I guess,” I decided after a minute. Then I yawned.
“Are you tired?” he asked in surprise. “Does using your powers make you tired?”
He was already trying to suss me out. “No, vampires who keep me up past my bedtime make me tired,” I corrected crankily. “I get cold, too, and hungry, and sometimes I even have to go to the bathroom.”
“Wow, your superpowers s—k,” Damon judged cheerfully.
I decided not to remind him I had just kicked his a-s. “I’m going to bed.”
“Wait a second,” he said, catching my hand. Gently, not in a grabby way. He shifted uncomfortably and finally said, “Daisy… I can’t stop thinking about…” I leaned in a little, watching his face in the dim light. “…your blood. Can I have a little more?” I sat back, deflated.
“Wow, you’re such a romantic,” I told him sarcastically, pulling my hand away.
“Romance? What?” he sputtered as I floated back down to my open window.
“Dry out for a few days,” I suggested coolly. “You’ll probably be fine.” I went back to my room, shut the window and the curtains, and went to bed.
Monday morning before school I was out on the back porch watering the ferns when Damon appeared at the foot of the stairs. I hadn’t heard from him all weekend and I was beginning to wonder if I ever would again. He climbed the steps and crossed the threshold gingerly, uncertain of both me and the house protection rules—porches could be ambiguous sometimes, as to whether they were considered part of the living space or not. Fortunately for him, ours wasn’t.
“Hi,” I greeted, testing the waters.
“I had a very bad weekend because of you,” he replied immediately.
“I’m not sure how to take that,” I admitted.
He encroached on my personal space, backing me up against the wall of the house—but slowly, giving me ample time to object if I chose. Apparently he had learned his lesson Friday night. It was cool and dim in the corner, with the ferns in their hanging baskets rustling softly in the breeze. I could smell the leather of his jacket when he raised one arm to lean against the wall beside me, further cutting me off from the outside world. It was not an unpleasant feeling.
Then he pulled off his sunglasses and my eyes widened in surprise. His eyes were all puffy and bloodshot. “What happened?”
“Uh, you,” he replied obnoxiously. “I’ve been in withdrawal all weekend.”
“From my blood?” I hadn’t given the matter much though; it apparently affected him more than I’d expected.
“Are you on any drugs?” he asked speculatively. “I once bit a heroin addict and it was kind of a strange experience for me.”
“No drugs,” I assured him with a smile. “Just my natural biochemistry.”
He moved in even closer. “How ‘bout another hit, then?”
I put my hand on his chest to stop him and only had to apply a little pressure to show that I was serious. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I hedged. “Maybe you should just wait a few more days and see if you feel better.”
“I’ll feel better when I’ve bitten you,” he growled impatiently, leaning forward.
I stopped him with a force that should not have been unexpected—so much for learning lessons. “Hey,” I said sharply. He backed up enough to look at me, the skin around his eyes even more red with protruding veins as he anticipated blood. “If you’re going to be pushy, you might as well put those away and leave.”
Damon grinned, showing off the half-extended fangs that retracted only with effort. I was not impressed. “What are you?” he asked, with a mixture of frustration and fascination. His pupils dilated suddenly and the irises took on a peculiar shine. “Tell me what you are.”
“I am… not subject to vampire compulsion,” I replied, since he obviously hadn’t picked up on this before.
He blinked a few times in confusion and his eyes went back to normal, or at least the way they’d been before. He looked me over curiously. “Do you have any vervain on you?” he asked. “Do you take any herbal supplements, tea…?”
“No vervain, no herbs,” I promised him.
I could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he compared all he knew about me with the whole of his experience. I doubted he’d come up with anything definitive. “You’re not a vampire,” he decided thoughtfully. “Are you a witch?” He didn’t think it likely, from his tone.
“Are you gonna guess every supernatural creature you can think of?” I asked with a smirk.
“That was my plan, yes.”
“Actually, I’m a Smurf,” I teased.
He smirked as well. “I think you’re the wrong”—I raised an eyebrow, daring him to say ‘color’—“height. I seem to remember them being only three apples high.”
“I do take vitamins.”
He seemed to realize he wasn’t going to get an easy answer from me and went back to the matter of more immediate importance to him. “May I please have another bite?”
I frowned. “I don’t want you to—become some kind of addict,” I warned. That wasn’t my intention.
“Too late, you’re vampire meth,” he quipped. “One hit and I’m lost.”
I sensed he was exaggerating—a little bit, anyway. “You had other blood this weekend, didn’t you?” I checked.
He rolled his eyes. “Yes. I went all the way to Cape Royal and ate some bum who smelled really bad,” he complained. “It was fine.”
“’Cause you’re not going to feed from me,” I cautioned. “It’s just a taste.”
He licked his lips indecently. “That’ll do.” He tilted his head a little, as if looking me over in my entirety. “For now.”
Reluctantly I began to unbutton my cardigan. His eyes flickered down to my fingers, then back up to my neck, then around behind him to make sure there were no witnesses. “My mom already left for work,” I informed him, “and my grandma’s inside watching the Weather Channel.”
“I know, I can hear it,” he said, making an effort to be patient as I put the sweater out of harm’s way. “It’s going to be cloudy today…” His gaze lingered on the new flesh displayed by my tank top, and I realized biting me wasn’t the only thing on his mind. My heartbeat sped up as he reached behind me, pulling my hair away from the side he intended to bite and draping it over my other shoulder. Then his fingers grazed my neck, almost caressing as they slid down to my shoulder and pushed the straps for my tank top and bra aside. “Baby pink?” he observed of the latter with a smirk. “Wouldn’t have thought that was really your color.”
“It’s laundry day,” I replied, shrugging the shoulder he touched. My throat was suddenly dry. “You think about my underwear color a lot?”
“Bold colors go better with my flooring,” he quipped, biting me before I could react to that.
It stung less than the first time, more when his teeth pulled out than when they went in, and his lips felt more like he was kissing me this time. Almost immediately, though, he began to twitch and jerk against me, groaning like he’d been hit with a bolt of electricity.
“Damon?” I eased him away but he was already going, leaning heavily on the porch railing for support. Then he decided to just sit down on the porch floor entirely. “Damon?”
He shook his head and blinked up at me, his eyes their usual brilliant pale blue again. Then he reached up and pulled me down onto his lap, leaning forward to lick the remaining blood off my skin. “Waste not, want not,” he claimed cheekily. If there was any evidence of the injury left at all, it was probably just a few red marks. He made a thorough examination of the area with his tongue just to be sure.
Then his lips started to move farther up my neck. I closed my eyes and tilted my head, giving him better access, and slid my hands up his chest and around his shoulders. He nuzzled below my ear, then across my jaw, and his hands settled on my lower back, holding me steady as I turned my head to meet his lips with my own. It was hard to think clearly, to remember we were on the porch on a Monday morning and I had to go to school and my grandma was just a few yards away, when I was tasting a coppery tang in his mouth from my own blood and running my fingers freely through his hair.
We pulled back, then changed our minds for a few more moments. Then finally I sat back on his lap—moving his hands back up to my waist—while he leaned against the porch railing and gave me a cryptic look. I smiled in return and kept my hands on his shoulders, playing with a few errant strands of hair against the nape of his neck.
“I’m not a nice person,” Damon finally said, and it sounded like a warning.
“What makes you think I am?” I shot back, unable to keep the grin off my face.
“I’m serious, Daisy,” he insisted, more earnest than—well, ever. “People get hurt when I’m around. You don’t want to get involved with me.”
I settled more closely over his hips, his body moving unconsciously under mine to line us up. His arms tightened around me. “I think I can handle you,” I said flirtatiously, wiping a speck of blood away from the corner of his mouth. He captured my finger in his mouth and sucked on it lightly, his eyes never leaving mine.
I pulled my hand back and licked the finger myself, deliberately over the top, and he grinned suddenly. “I’m wondering if I can handle you,” he replied sardonically.
“Now that’s a good question,” I teased.
Then I sat back and gave him a serious look. “Oh, G-d,” he sighed, anticipating something unpleasant.
But I felt I couldn’t not say anything about it. “I don’t want you trying to bite me again if I tell you no,” I said to him. He made a pained noise, as if I were being unreasonable.
“What, you want me to promise?” he asked snidely when I gave him an expectant look.
“No, I just want you to acknowledge my warning,” I replied casually and his eyebrows shot up.
“Your warning. Okay, acknowledged,” he agreed with some amusement.
“I understand, you’ll feel the need to try again,” I assured him. “I’ll try not to break anything really important.” He seemed entertained by this but there was also a slight wariness in his eyes as he remembered my behavior the last time we were together. “I have to go to school,” I informed him reluctantly.
His arms didn’t unlock around me. “Do you really?” he tempted. “Why don’t we relocate to my place? There’s fewer… plants,” he added with distaste, glancing around at the fern jungle.
I pushed away more insistently and he let me go, standing with me. “These aren’t just plants,” I informed him. Our intertwined hands finally separated when I pulled on my sweater, and his hand dropped to rest against my hip. “They’re the stolen souls of my ex-boyfriends.”
He narrowed his eyes. “From now on there’s gonna be this little voice in the back of my head warning me that you might not be joking,” he claimed.
“They’re just plants,” I promised him with a smirk. “Isn’t that right, Chet?” I said to one of the ferns, stroking a frond.
“You had a boyfriend named Chet?” Damon tossed back.
“Didn’t we all?” His expression said, intriguingly, that he knew what I meant.
“I’ll give you a ride to school,” he offered as I straightened my hair and clothes. “So you won’t be late.”
“Okay,” I agreed readily. I stepped back into the house to grab my book bag and say good-bye to my grandma.
Damon waved at her through the open doorway. “Hi, Grandma Rose!” She snorted and turned back to the TV, cranking the volume further. He winced and stepped back. I rolled my eyes a little at her behavior, then shut the door behind me. “I think she’d like me better if I could come in the house,” he hinted obviously as we walked around to his car.
“I think she’d like you better if you were black, and a minister,” I corrected cheerfully. “Who had no interest in having sex with me.”
“Wow. So not gonna happen,” he agreed. “We can talk more about my interest in having sex with you, though.”
“Maybe later.”
“I think I’ll put the top down on the car,” he decided suddenly, looking up at the brilliant blue sky. “I thought it was supposed to be cloudy today.”
“It’s hard to predict the future,” I observed, helping him fold back the car’s roof.
“I’ll pick you up from school, too,” he said as we got in. This time it sounded less like an offer and more like a resolution, which didn’t really bother me. I bit back a grin before answering.
“Okay. I have a newspaper meeting until 6:30,” I replied, which he didn’t seem to appreciate. “I thought you liked all my extra-curriculars,” I teased as we peeled out of the driveway and down the street.
“They kept you out of trouble,” he claimed breezily. “But now I want to get you in to trouble.”
“I thought vampires couldn’t procreate,” I deadpanned, and he did a double-take.
“Yeah, I want my vampire spawn taking over the world,” he declared grandly, playing along. Then he corrected, “Half-vampire. What’s the other half again?”
“Daisy,” I replied innocently, refusing his fishing attempt.
“That’s a weird image,” he decided. “Half flower and half… awesomeness.” I laughed.
“Six-thirty, then I need dinner, then we can hang out until ten,” I offered.
“Wow, let me schedule that in Outlook,” he mocked.
“Of course if you’re too busy rolling bums I’d understand,” I shot back.
“I would really like to make some jokes about rolling bums,” he admitted, and he didn’t mean homeless people, “but we’ve just entered a School Zone.”
“The children appreciate your restraint,” I assured him. I found myself reluctant to leave the car. “Thanks for the ride.”
He felt the same way. “If I hit the gas right now, we could be at one of those riverboat casinos by ten.”
“If you hit the gas right now, you’d kill my math teacher,” I observed, as the man crossed the driveway a few feet in front of us. Damon looked suitably tempted.
His eyes flickered past me, and then suddenly he grabbed me and pulled me into a good-bye kiss. I smirked as I drew away, letting him know I realized it was for the benefit of some audience—whose questions I would have to face while he drove off.
Not that we both didn’t enjoy it.
“Bye,” I told him, finally leaving the car. Sure enough, both Elena and Stefan were standing on the sidewalk in front of the school, their expressions a mixture of surprise and concern. Damon gave an obnoxious little wave and sped away, squealing his tires.
“So, are you and Damon… dating?” Elena asked me at the first reasonably private moment she could. Her tone indicated she didn’t think this was a good idea.
“Hmm, I don’t know,” I hedged, not wanting to commit him to a new status. I couldn’t imagine actually discussing the subject with him, unless for some reason I was looking for scathing mockery. “I hope things are moving in that direction,” I added, since she seemed to want more from me.
She looked like she wasn’t quite sure if this was a joke or not—and with Damon, that was always a possibility—but that wasn’t going to stop her from listing all the reasons why I should get away while I still could. Bless her heart.
“Okay. Um, do you know that he’s, um…” Elena trailed off, suddenly uncertain how much she should say. “That he’s, um, kind of—different?” she understated.
I thought about teasing her, wondering what she would say if I feigned ignorance of her meaning. But her motivation was sweet, so instead I answered, “You mean, not quite as alive as advertised?”
Elena was at once relieved that she didn’t have to explain this to me and shocked that I already knew—and alarmed that it didn’t put me off. We had hung out a lot more starting this past summer, but now she was realizing that she didn’t really know if I could be trusted with such a momentous secret.
Well, it wasn’t really her secret, was it?
“Damon’s not—“ She paused, trying to figure out how to phrase it. “I mean, Stefan only eats animals. Damon—doesn’t.”
“I don’t eat animals either,” I deadpanned.
She gave me a look. “He can be dangerous,” she finally said bluntly. “You saw how he treated Caroline, didn’t you?”
Here she had a point. “Yeah, he treated Caroline like c—p,” I acknowledged plainly. “There’s no excuse for it. I’m gonna make sure that doesn’t happen to me.”
She nodded, slightly encouraged. “Do you know that he can—make you do things, or forget that you’ve done something?” She unconsciously touched the vervain pendant Stefan had given her.
“The compulsion? Yes, I know about that,” I assured her. “He’s not going to do that to me.”
“He’s not,” Elena repeated dubiously, no doubt wondering if he already had.
“It’s been discussed. He’s not.” My vague statement, while technically true, had the effect of making Damon seem more noble and restrained than he really was—or maybe making me seem more foolish. But I had no intention of sharing any of my secrets with Elena, unfair as she would no doubt see that.
I decided to cut her off before she could present any more objections. “I really appreciate your concern, Elena,” I told her, perfect in my sincerity. “I think it will be a relationship with some interesting challenges.” To say the least. “I’m glad I’ll have you to talk to about it.” This idea appealed strongly to her; Elena felt burdened by secrets, even ones she understood the importance of keeping.
She finally relaxed slightly. “It definitely takes some time to get used to the idea,” she agreed, then added impishly, “There are certain advantages, though.”
“Oh really?” I said with interest.
But then she turned serious again. “Damon’s not like Stefan,” she warned. “He doesn’t always treat people like he should. Even people I know he cares about.” It was funny, and perhaps sweet, to see the lengths she was going to, to avoid calling Damon a ‘bad person.’ She really saw something good in him, however deeply it was buried.
I didn’t consider Elena the best judge of character, however.
“I know how he acts,” I reminded her, reining in my impatience. She meant well, and she didn’t have all the information I did. “We’ve spent some time together. I know he can be… difficult.”
“You did get him to go to a musical with you,” she nodded, still mystified about this accomplishment. Actually it was more than one, but that was hardly worth bragging about—Damon liked going to the theatre, he just needed convincing that a local production would be well done. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with him,” she decided, sounding only somewhat forced, “since he already likes spending time with you.”
“Well we can only hope,” I replied dryly.
Our school newspaper wasn’t very important in the scheme of extra-curriculars, but as our adviser was always telling us, it had a long and ‘glorious’ history at Mystic Falls High, which we were obligated to continue. I was merely an assistant editor—or ‘a-s editor,’ as Damon liked to abbreviate it—and mostly did the proofreading and badgering of errant contributors, which suited me fine. It was mildly interesting, didn’t take up much time, and gave me a good excuse to dig into local archives for my occasional town history stories.
We broke up a little before 6:30 and I headed out into the dimly-lit school hallway, promptly running into Elena. “Cheerleader practice,” she explained.
“Newspaper,” I replied.
“Can I play?” Stefan asked, joining us. “Football practice.”
“Maybe I should try out for a sport in the spring,” I mused. “Volleyball or softball or something.” Stefan and Elena glanced at me dubiously. “What?”
“I didn’t realize you were interested in sports,” Elena covered quickly. “You never mention it.”
I hid a smirk at her attempt to avoid saying I didn’t seem very athletic. “Well, I think it’s boring to watch them on TV,” I agreed. “But I like to go to the live games. Damon and I went to the football game in Charlestown a few weeks ago.”
Speak of the devil and you see his horns. Or perhaps fangs. I felt him coming but didn’t have time to react before I was whooshed towards the wall of lockers, my back stopped a mere inch from being slammed into the metal. Damon smirked down at me—I may have uttered a startled cry, and my books were definitely all over the floor—then engulfed my lips with his own. It was not a quick kiss.
I smiled up at him when he finally backed up a millimeter or two and tried to regain some semblance of normalcy. “Did you, by any chance, remember to pick up dinner?” I asked, prepared for the answer to be ‘no.’
“Yes,” he replied instead, quite pleased with himself. “I got some Thai food for you, with tofu and little egg pieces. And I got a Thai cook for me. He’s in the trunk, keeping your food warm.” Stefan, who had solicitously picked up my books, handed them to Elena and zipped outside to check on Damon’s claim. “Psych,” Damon smirked, once his brother was out of earshot.
Elena huffed in exasperation and handed me my books as I opened my locker. “Thank you for remembering dinner,” I told Damon sweetly.
“I want you to know I’m a good provider,” he deadpanned. Then he leaned around the locker door to check on Elena’s expression, which was suitably shocked. “Nice leotard,” he told her, back to the form she recognized. “Aren’t those endangered?”
I shook my head as I stuffed books into my bag. “Puns are no longer the highest form of humor, thank goodness.”
“I’m kind of old-fashioned,” he claimed. Stefan swooped back in, rolling his eyes at his brother’s prank. “So, how was school today?” Damon asked in an obnoxiously parental tone. “Do you have a lot of homework? Did the other kids play nice at practice?”
“Are you two dating?” Elena asked boldly. I noticed she waited until Stefan was at her side again.
“I changed my relationship status on Facebook,” Damon replied, mock-earnest. “Now it says, ‘it’s complicated.’”
“I consider it more of a rent-to-own situation,” I told them flatly.
Damon laughed, which pleased me inordinately. I almost missed the twin expressions of disbelief on Stefan and Elena’s faces. “We’ll have to discuss who you make the payments to,” he claimed. “Why are you taking all these books with you?” he added, the impressive level of patience he’d been showing wearing thin. “You’re not gonna be doing homework.” He seemed quite certain of this.
“I might do some when I get home tonight, or tomorrow morning,” I replied, and he rolled his eyes at my studiousness.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” Stefan requested tactfully of his brother.
Tactful was generally wasted on Damon. “You need a permission slip signed for a field trip?” he asked sarcastically, not moving a muscle. “I know how you love the woolly mammoths at the museum.”
“If you don’t mind,” Stefan insisted, giving him a look.
“Oh, fine,” Damon sighed in a long-suffering way. He pushed himself away from the wall and sauntered after Stefan farther down the hall. “If you’re gonna warn me about Daisy and her wicked ways, I’m way ahead of you on that.”
Elena joined me at my locker as the boys’ conversation dropped beyond our range of hearing. “So, what are you guys doing tonight?” she asked, trying to act like this was a normal new relationship for one of her friends.
“I’m guessing it will basically be making out for three hours,” I judged. “Hopefully I’ll get to eat first.” Some people didn’t really want the truth, I remembered, as Elena blinked at me. “Or maybe we’ll discuss the finer points of post-modern literature,” I corrected dryly. “In which case eating isn’t really necessary.”
“I’m just worried about you, Daisy,” she told me seriously.
“So that’s where the condom goes!” Damon said loudly from down the hall, to Stefan’s mortification.
“I can’t imagine why,” I deadpanned to Elena. “No, I know,” I acknowledged, touching her arm. “But it’s fine, really. Tomorrow you can strip me down again and look for bite marks, if you want,” I offered.
Damon was suddenly very close to us. “Did you say ‘again’?” he asked with considerable interest.
I shut my locker forcefully and looped an arm through his, maneuvering him towards the exit. “Come on, I’m hungry,” I told him.
“Insatiable,” he tossed back over his shoulder, indicating me. “I’m gonna have to drink someone on Red Bull to keep up with her.”
“Well, we’ll see if that works,” I shot back, clearly implying he had failed in this regard in the past. He barked out a shocked laugh and chased me out the door, leaving Stefan and Elena staring after us.
I did get to eat dinner—with Damon staring at me the whole time as though fascinated by the act—but I didn’t get to linger over it. As soon as he could Damon pulled me onto the couch and started, as he termed it, an ‘in-depth investigation of my resiliency.’
We were at his apartment in the ‘new’ part of town, at the top of a multi-story building with all the modern amenities, including extra soundproofing. It hadn’t take him long to mention that to me. He was more reticent about why he maintained a separate residence from the old boarding house where his and Stefan’s bedrooms were shrines to their long and adventurous lives. Predictably he joked about wanting space from Stefan and his ‘broodiness,’ and certainly the bland apartment made a good location for any activities he didn’t want Stefan to nobly spoil—but I felt there was something more to it as well. The purpose of the boarding house was to contain memories, but perhaps it was also the numerous memories that occasionally drove Damon out.
Most of these thoughts occurred to me as I was eating, because after than my brain was otherwise occupied. Along with the rest of me.
“Your skin’s not even turning red,” Damon complained, after sucking on my neck (fang-free) for a while.
“Did you want it to turn red?” I asked, dubious of the worth of this goal.
“I hoped you might have a hickey tomorrow,” he admitted, then covered his disappointment by adding cheekily, “Gotta leave something for Elena to find when she strip-searches you.” This imagery was going to get a lot of play in his mind, I could tell. “Let’s test if you need to breathe,” he decided, closing in on me again.
I put my hand on his chest to stop him and gave him a coy smile in response to his questioning look. “Let’s see if I can make your fangs pop,” I countered suggestively, pushing him back onto the couch. Two could play this game.
It didn’t take too long to hear a growl in my ear. “Stop if you don’t want me to—“ I stopped but kept him close, my arms tight around him while he tried to relax whatever controlled the vampiric transformation of his face.
“Blood I understand,” I commented conversationally, and he whimpered in protest at my use of an unhelpful word, “but what is it about sex that triggers this response?”
“It’s any strong emotion,” he muttered, chin resting on my shoulder. “Anger, lust…”
I waited. “Are those all you can think of?” I teased.
“Well, once it happened when I was laughing at Lenny Bruce’s stand-up act in New York,” he claimed. “Fortunately it was dark in the audience, and everyone was on drugs anyway…” He leaned back and his face had returned to the very attractive one that made my heart beat a little faster, especially when he gave an amused little smirk.
“So what you’re saying is,” I began slowly, “you find me really, really… funny?”
His lips twitched. “I’m not sure yet,” he quipped. “I’m gonna need to test that some more.”
A while later. “Slow down there,” I told him, pulling back and moving his hands.
He blinked at me. “Why?” he asked, in an obnoxious tone.
It set my teeth on edge. “Because I said so,” I replied coolly.
Apparently he didn’t think this reason was good enough, because he started to push me back down onto the couch. I rolled us both onto the floor with a thump, making sure he was the one who hit the ground first, and ended up straddling him, a situation he didn’t seem to mind. “I said—“ I began, pushing his roaming hands away.
With a grin that was suddenly not so charming he merely moved his hands to a new location, equally unacceptable to me, zipping them out of my grasp with vampire speed. “Sorry, what were you saying?” he asked smugly.
Really, I should’ve expected him to push whatever boundaries I tried to set. If I insisted, I thought he would stop, albeit ungraciously. Or, I could take a shortcut and point out that I could make him stop. That was what he was really looking for. I didn’t like to play that card so obviously, but somehow Damon managed to get under my skin that way. Gritting my teeth, I focused and snatched both of his hands out of mid-air, catching them at a painful angle. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I cautioned him, as he realized he couldn’t move his hands in my grip, not a millimeter. The expression on his face was mildly satisfying. “If you can’t behave I’m going to leave.”
“Very clever,” Damon commented, sounding a bit petulant. I got the feeling he was used to being the strongest person in any given situation. Narrowing his eyes, he set his jaw and applied what had to be considerable strength trying to free himself. Without warning I released his hands and they jerked away, one of them crashing into the nearby coffee table.
“It’s all fun and games until someone loses a leg,” I deadpanned, looking at the hobbled table.
Damon stared at me, then suddenly started laughing, the angry tension he’d built up dissolving. I couldn’t resist and leaned over him, kissing him deeply. “Well now you’re just sending me mixed messages,” he observed tactlessly once we parted.
“You’re a smart guy,” I replied dryly, sitting back over his hips. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”
He propped himself up on his elbows to look at me. “Right now I’m trying to figure out just how much warm-up you require.”
I could have protested his assumptions about my sexual proclivities, but that seemed needlessly disingenuous. “I’m looking forward to having sex with you,” I told him, and my frankness was definitely appealing to him, “but I want to wait until we have more time.”
He sat up fully and wrapped his arms around me. “You don’t have to be home for an hour and a half,” he pointed out, nuzzling the skin below my ear. “I can do some very nice things in an hour and a half.”
“I believe you,” I breathed, sliding my hands through his hair as his lips moved along my jaw. “But I was thinking”—a difficult task at the moment—“that a better way to start would be… all night.”
“Good plan,” he murmured, nipping at my lips. “Should we say you’re having a sleepover at Elena’s, or will your mom be so drunk she won’t even realize you didn’t come home?”
I leaned back to look at him. “Sometimes I think talking is not your strong point,” I noted, unoffended.
“How about you invite Elena over here for a sleepover?” he went on cheekily.
“Maybe for your birthday,” I tossed off and his eyes flared with interest. “But back to reality,” I went on heartlessly. “There’s a Shakespeare festival in Neoga this weekend—“
“Oh my G-d,” Damon groaned. “Let’s at least have sex once before the torture begins.”
I smiled at that. “Eight hours of Shakespeare on Saturday, eight hours on Sunday,” I proposed, “leaving roughly thirty-two hours of the weekend to fill with… other activities.”
He looked suspicious. “Like sleeping?” he queried. “You seem to need a lot of it.”
“I like sleeping,” I replied, sidestepping the implied question. “You sleep.”
“It’s relaxing,” he claimed. “And I like dreaming.” Hmm, interesting. “But I don’t really need it.”
“Well I’ll drink some Red Bull to keep up with you,” I smirked, echoing his earlier words. “We could drive over Friday evening, after my drama club meeting.”
“Why are you even in drama club?” he complained. “You don’t sing or dance or act. On stage, anyway,” he added with exaggerated significance.
“Because I love theatre,” I shot back. “Hence sixteen hours of Shakespeare in a weekend. And I’m good at managing people. So what do you say?”
He pretended to think about it. “Hmm, a weekend filled with dirty jokes no one gets, acrobatic swordplay, heaving bosoms in corsets, and dramatic bloodletting. And a Shakespeare festival, too.”
I grinned. “I don’t own a corset,” I corrected him.
“Well, you’ve got ‘til Friday,” he allowed.
That weekend…
We weren’t done for the night. We were just taking a break, relaxing on the hotel room bed, contemplating the new information we’d just learned about each other. I knew Damon was thinking about it the same way I was.
Not to say it wasn’t also extremely pleasant.
I shivered a little in a stray breeze and he gathered up the covers we’d shoved to the foot of the bed earlier. “My body temperature’s lower than yours,” he commented, the slightest hint of apology in his tone.
“I like it,” I said, leaning back against him when he resumed his position behind me. “It’s comfortable.”
“You’ll find my picture next to that word in the dictionary,” he murmured dryly into my ear.
Our arms were stretched out across the bed in front of us, on top of the blankets, and our hands brushed each other, slowly intertwining. Damon lay very still behind me as I idly traced his fingers with my own, his other hand resting possessively on my hip.
“Did you do a lot of writing?” I asked suddenly, recognizing the distinctive callus on his middle finger. It must have formed when he was still human.
“I guess I did,” he agreed, after a moment’s hesitation. Perhaps he’d never thought about it before. “Letters to Penthouse, 19th-century-style,” he quipped.
“Lots of bare ankles?” I guessed.
“Ooh, no, too hardcore,” he claimed. “More like, pictures of women’s underwear. Just the underwear.” He was quiet for a long moment, then added, “Not as many people could read and write back then, so my services were sometimes in demand.”
“As well as your handwriting skills,” I deadpanned.
“Ooh, beat me to it,” he noted appreciatively. “I had very nice handwriting, I want you to know.”
I thought it was interesting that he used the past tense. “You do have nice handwriting,” I agreed. “It’s very elegant.” He snorted. “I’m not sure I would trust you to write a letter for me, if I couldn’t read it myself,” I teased, and his fingers suddenly tensed around mine for a moment before relaxing.
“You’re right, I changed things a lot,” he admitted, his voice oddly soft. “I didn’t—We were already losing the war. I didn’t want to tell the other soldiers’ families how bad things really were in the camps.”
I smiled a little, although he couldn’t see it, and threaded my fingers through his. “If I looked in the town archives, would I find some letters that were actually written by you?” I asked in a lighter tone.
“Ken Burns used one in his miniseries,” he claimed. “They flashed the quote up on the screen and Stefan nearly choked,” he added with a snicker. Tired of this subject, Damon gripped my hands in his and rolled above me to examine them more closely. “Hmm, no calluses at all,” he observed playfully. “Obviously the hands of a gentlewoman. Perhaps a member of the nobility.”
“Moisturizers,” I countered, “a girl’s best friend. Diamonds are nice but they don’t keep you young.”
“I’ll remember that,” he said, leaning down to kiss me again. We were definitely not done for the night.