Forget All, Remember None | slow updates

DAMON SALVATORE

Living with Rhysand, existing with him, being in his general presence, it'd begun to feel a lot easier as time passed them by. As Damon sat in the small café owned by a few witches that wasn't ten minutes out from the MFU campus, he found himself not resenting Rhysand, but also not loving him as fiercely as he once had.

It was towards Rhysand that Damon merely felt a sort of indifference towards. At times, it was a loving indifference, but it was an indifference nonetheless. Damon considered that an accomplishment.

Damon caught sight of Rhysands grin as he watched Rhysand enter the café, the smile a winning one.

Rhysand had cut his hair short on the sides, leaving it to grow a little on the top. His eyes were a warm brown, skin a warm brown as well. He was fit, leanly muscled and gorgeous. It seemed just to be a Rhysand thing, though. Gorgeous was the only word Damon could ever have thought of in order to describe Rhysand accurately. His accent was gorgeous, too. It was thick—though in the time Damon had known Rhysand, it'd been thicker still—and his voice was sort of deep. It wasn't the voice of a smoker, though Rhysand certainly didn't shy away from his cigarettes.

"Drinking tea today, are we?" Rhysand asked as he sat, gesturing to the mug that Damon held with both hands. "I would've thought you asked if they had alcohol on hand."

"I ordered you a London fog latte," Damon said. "And yes. I—with Katherine, and the tomb vamps, I figured I could use some tea to help with the nerves."

"We'll get Stefan out of the house," Rhysand said. Damon could've laughed. Rhysand was always the first one to provide adequate reassurances. "I was thinking about it, actually. You know Alaric Saltzman?"

"The history teacher? He's dead."

"It seems not," Rhysand said. "He was brought back to life by the Gilbert ring, Elena says. He's also the towns vampire hunter extraordinaire, so my proposal is simply using those two qualities to our advantage."

"Are you suggesting sending a human into a house full of vampires?" Damon asked, though some part of him loved the idea.

"A human who you thought you'd killed," Rhysand said pointedly. "And one with a spelled ring that brings him to life, as well as the full equipment to manage at least decently, because of his status as a vampire hunter."

"He could be an aspiring vampire hunter."

"Aspiring or practicing, he's probably got the weapons needed to kill a house that's practically crawling with them," Rhysand said. "He's on the revenge path because his wife was killed by one. When your wife is killed by a vamp, it's a natural progression to begin the possession of all necessary tools to kill them, is it not?"

"Not for a particularly sane person," Damon said as a waitress delivered the mug of tea that Damon had ordered on Rhysands behalf.

"Who are we to make the assumption that the death of his wife, the want to find her killer, hasn't drove Saltzman to insanity?" Rhysand asked, bringing the mug into his hands and taking a sip of his tea. "Or, perhaps, it's the spelled ring? A magic ring that keeps bringing someone back to life could correlate with a mind that's not exactly sound, could it not?"

"It could, but I doubt it's the ring," Damon said. "Fine, though. We'll see the history teacher, get him to help us. This plan of yours could work, Abernathy."

"That's the end goal of all of my plans, Salvatore," Rhysand said. "That they work, that the fallout with them is never too catastrophic. I'm glad that it's something you've at last come to notice."

Damon let himself grin, took a sip of his tea and almost reached across the table, almost took Rhysands hand in his own, for the simple fact that it felt like it used to, for a single moment in time.

Those moments were always the ones that caught him by surprise. In those split seconds, it felt as though they'd been as they once were, two idiots in love, sitting and chatting it up in a gay bar because it was the only place they could be accepted as they were, Damon drinking bourbon where Rhysand took to whiskey.

"Yeah, yeah, Abernathy," Damon said. "We'll deal with it tonight. Tea and conversation seems the best option right now, though, if it's not something you mind?"

"For the first time in a long time, I don't hate the idea of talking to you for the sole purpose of doing it and having a good chat, Salvatore, so of course I don't."

Damon let his grin become hidden by the mug he held, bringing the tea up to his lips and registering that the moment he was experiencing was one he didn't want to come to an end.