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janie_tangerine“Can you tell me a new story tonight?”
Matt smiles as he looks down at his kid, who is currently lying under the covers of her bed, waiting for her evening fairytale, looking up at him with large dark eyes that kind of remind him of Elena, a bit, but then again… when he decided to adopt and found her and learned that was her actual name, he had felt like destiny was telling him something.
He doesn’t know if he’ll ever get to meet the actual Elena, who has been off with Stefan for years to Europe at this point, and it’s not a given that they will be back within their lifetimes.
Still, who knows.
“Of course,” he says, taking his usual seat. “What about?”
“I think I want a love story,” she says. “But not the usual stuff! I’m kind of tired of princesses and the likes.”
Matt thinks about it for one moment - princesses are, after all, most of the drivel he knows in that sense.
But -
Wait a moment.
He smiles to himself. He thinks he has it.
“And what if I told you that it was about vampires?”
Elena’s eyes brighten as she smiles, sitting up a bit. “Vampires are cool,” she declares. “Please?”
Matt smiles a bit wider. “But of course. So, let’s see. Once upon a time, though I would say not that long ago, there was a young vampire, young in the sense that he was turned when he was no older than twenty-five, even if he had lived a lot longer than that, for obvious reasons.”
Elena nods, urging him to go on.
“The vampire in question was… let’s say a bit of a difficult person. He was a good one, deep down, except that he had a very bad relationship with his parents, and his father especially mistreated him and downright hated him at times, and always preferred his younger brother. They both got turned when they fell in love for the same woman -”
“Let me guess, she was a vampire, too?”
“How did you know?”
Elena shrugs again. “I figured. That’s always how it goes.”
“So, as I was saying… she eventually turned out to not care for him, just for his brother, and so they had a very bad fallout and our protagonist kind of… spent a century or so hating himself and doing not exactly great things, and the fact that he and his brother had downright stopped talking didn’t help it. And when they met again, it was because they were both in love with the same woman, again.”
“... That’s bad luck,” Elena declares.
“Absolutely,” Matt says. “And they had a lot of issues to solve, even as the two brothers sort of became closer again, but that’s not what the story is about. See, our vampire protagonist had stopped trying to have friends after a certain point, as everyone seemed to assume that he was bad news while his brother was not… so it was to everyone’s surprise, his first and foremost, that after that century or so, he found himself one.”
“Did he?”
“Indeed. It was a history professor who had come to his town to… well, teach history, but then it turned out that he was a skilled vampire hunter. In the beginning, they seemed to hate each other, but then they started killing actual evil vampires together and became friends, even though they did realize it after the fact had actually happened.”
“That’s cute,” Elena says. “And that’s it? I hope not!”
“Not at all,” Matt goes on. “This is just the premise. What you have to know is that at some point after the brother and his girlfriend eloped together, our vampire and his friend were out defending the city from this savage werewolf that had appeared in the woods… and they won, of course. Except that the vampire… got hurt.”
“He got hurt?!”
“Not that badly,” Matt smiles. “But fact is… he kind of forgot who he was.”
--
“Damn it, Damon,” Alaric shouted, holding the other man’s head up and trying to feel for what could be pretty damn bad damage, since the asshole wasn’t waking up, “you’re not seriously going to die because Lockwood threw you around a bit now, are you?”
He gave the man a light slap on his cheek, trying to see if that would wake him up.
“Fuck,” Alaric said, “come on, it’s not even that bad -”
A moment later, Damon’s huge blue eyes blinked open, staring up into his, but -
Where Alaric had expected Damon to scoff and pretend that everything was fine and tease him for having worried, he just blinked, his lips falling open, a hand grasping Alaric’s shoulder.
“Do… do I know you?” He asked, bluntly, straightforward, and as Alaric stared back at him, he knew in his heart that Damon was not lying at all.
“You - you don’t remember me?” Alaric had asked, hoping for a different answer, helping Damon sit up, not quite noticing that he had a hand around his waist and another on his cheek.
“Not really,” Damon had said, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry, I - I don’t think I remember anything right now. Everything’s a bit fuzzy. But all things considered… you do seem like my knight in shining armor, after all.”
And then he had smiled at him, his cheeks slightly flushing, a small, sincere, open smile that Alaric wishes he’d seen on him in more than this one single occasion.
And then he realized what he had just thought.
--
“Really? He forgot everything?”
“He did! Actually, he even forgot that he was a vampire,” Matt whispers.
“Oh,” Elena says, her fingers grasping her pink blanket, “forever?”
“Well, you have to hear the rest. So, his friend first had no idea of what to do with that, because amnesiac vampires aren’t exactly common and all, but since he was a resourceful man, he immediately went into action, as there was no way he was going to just leave him there.”
--
“Here,” Alaric said, showing Damon the guest room - no way he was going to let him go back to the boarding house when the fridge was stocked full with blood bags -, “you can sleep here until you feel better. I mean, it’s not that you don’t have a house, but no one is there right now but you and it’s large and I don’t particularly like sleeping there, so -”
“That’s fine, Galahad, I appreciate your hospitality.”
“... How are you calling me?”
“Come on,” Damon replied, half-smiling, and fuck, there was none of that posturing smile he had half of the time, “you rescue me from whatever it is that made me forget every damned thing I know, you were so nice to tell me my name instead of keeping it for yourself, you’re even offering me a bed, you’re a literal knight in shining armor, how should I call you?”
“... Would that make you a fair maiden in this scenario? Or some kind of princess?”
Damon had laughed at that, loud, free in a way he never used to be, before… well, before.
“I wouldn’t object to it,” he winked, “you do look handsome, you know that?”
“You hit your head,” Alaric replied, and let him get a shower and tried to ignore that Damon had looked delighted at how he had stammered as he came up with that retort.
Jesus, was he flirting openly now when before Alaric couldn’t really be sure, not when he suspected but Damon hid whatever it was that he meant under so much innuendo and jokes and deflecting that he couldn’t be sure of that anymore?
--
“Oh,” Elena says, “that’s so cute! But does it mean -”
“You see,” Matt goes on, “most of their friends were sort of sure those two were into each other, but they never quite went there. Admittedly, our vampire had… issues in that sense.”
“What issues?”
“I told you before how he was, right? Well, he also was sure he was selfish, self-centered and vain and that he’d ruin anyone who stuck around him, and while everyone agreed that he was kind of vain all things considered… he was way better than he gave himself credit for. And his friend never exactly pointed out that they had something going on between them because he didn’t know where they stood, in that sense, and he also knew he was getting over both girls that actually loved his brother better than him, and so he never said a thing.”
“I guess that.. Changed? With the memory loss and all?”
“Oh, it absolutely did.”
--
“Shit,” Damon groaned, holding to his stomach.
“Easy,” Alaric said, wanting to know very, very much why it seemed that while Damon was under the impression that he was still human somehow his superior strength or reflexes didn’t seem to work, which was how he had gained a gang of five overeager kids beating him up entirely too easily because he saw them harassing this girl outside the Grill and he didn’t even think twice before putting himself in the middle of it.
“You say that,” Damon said, spitting blood. “Maybe I should leave the knight in shining armor routine to you and stay holed up in your castle.” And then he smiled, again, flirty, and fuck but Alaric did want to kiss him… except that he wasn’t going to until Damon was in his right mind.
As in, not now.
“Well, I’ll see to stay closer to you since you obviously can’t fight people worth a damn,” Alaric smiled back, wiping away blood from Damon’s cheek, feeling entirely how much he leaned into the touch as he did it.
Shit.
While he honestly couldn’t wait for Damon to figure his shit out, which Bonnie confirmed should happen at some point, he didn’t hit his head that bad and at some point that vampire healing was going to kick in, he kind of didn’t mind this new version who didn’t blink before stopping assholes from hurting half-drunk sorority girls or who always left money at the two local homeless centers whenever he went with Alaric to get groceries in the next town over, or who, when re-introduced with Bonnie, had been nothing short of… honestly lovely and charming and good-natured, and who didn’t smirk so easily and drank less and was the exact opposite of how Damon usually describes himself.
He remembers what Elena had told him once.
“He said he wished I met him one century before,” she had told him, and now Alaric wonders, was this the way he was… a century ago?, and for a moment he wishes that the elder Salvatore’s ghost was around just to give him a piece of his mind.
No point in wishing for that, now.
“Why,” Damon had smiled through bloodied teeth, “now that sounds nice. I see you understood exactly your role in this fairytale.”
“You’re an idiot,” Alaric had said before hugging him, and Damon had held him back without any of the usual tentativeness he had the few times he had before.
Yeah.
As if. Alaric knows even too well that this isn’t a fairytale and that it doesn’t end with true love’s kiss making the princess remember her lost past.
He knows that even too well.
--
“So he never was… a bad person at all?”
“No,” Matt agrees. “He just… convinced himself he was one. And he spent a month like that, you know. Being… a nice person.”
“But how could he survive if he didn’t remember being a vampire?”
“Uh, well, his friend slipped him blood inside his lunch or dinner and he didn’t quite figure that out because of course the taste would seem normal to him.”
“That’s… kind of sweet, though.”
“Oh, it was. And then… well. It happened that the vampire healing did kick in, and our hero remembered everything.”
“And did they get together? Please tell me they got together!”
Matt smiles very, very wide.
--
“See,” Alaric says, “you’re really not fooling anyone at this point.”
“Ric, don’t even go there. That’s not -”
“Stop right there. You’re not seriously going to tell me that the past month was a fluke and that the moment you don’t remember all your hang-ups you suddenly turn into a real life version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington because of magic. There was no fucking magic involved, Bonnie confirmed it. You just hit your head and it took a while to fix itself, but that was it. And honestly, from what your brother says, from what I gathered and from what seems obvious to me, that is the way you’d behave at any given time, or the way you want to behave at any given time, so how about you stop pretending that you’re this fairytale villain when in truth you’re everything but?”
Damon stared at him, blue eyes wide, and for a moment Alaric thought he was about to cry, and then he moved closer -
“Why,” he says, “because I’m the princess that has to be rescued by some brave knight instead?”
“What if you are?”
Damon shook his head, but he did take a step closer.
“Princesses usually don’t ruin their knights or most people they’re close to.” He doesn’t seem to be saying it with a lot of conviction, though.
Good.
“Yeah, except you’ve lived with me for a month and didn’t ruin anyone, least of all me, so how about you let knights do their jobs and play your part?”
At that, he had batted his eyelids, looking up at him. “Well then,” he said cautiously, “what are you waiting for?”
Alaric took the last step, held his face in his hands and kissed him, and Damon sighed into it, kissing him back eagerly, hands flying to Alaric’s shoulders, and so what if he was trembling a tiny bit?
Alaric reached out and held him back.
If he had to play his part, after all, he intended to do it properly.
“You know,” Damon whispered against his mouth later, “if the moral of this fairytale was that judging yourself too harshly is wrong and there’s no reason to... get trapped in your own shadow by your own doing, I think I’m starting to learn it.”
“Good,” Alaric says, “because by the time I’m done with you, you will have learned it thoroughly.”
And then he kissed him again.
--
“And so they got together,” Matt smiled, “and are still living happily ever after, last I know of.”
“Because you know them?” Elena asked excitedly.
Matt tried to not laugh out loud. “Oh, I used to. They don’t live here all of the time now, but when they’re back you could meet them, after all.”
Sure, he thinks as he kisses her forehead and turns off the light, closing the door, Damon might try to murder him the moment he finds out he spun the story like that…
But after all, they spun it like a damned fairytale themselves before he could even think about it.
They called for it, after all.
End.
