A fic set five years in the future. Dedicated to everyone who ships Dalaric. We can decide this happened, instead of whatever's coming in twelve hours.
I'll be publishing in the next two days.
A couple of times a year Damon drifts into Mystic Falls. When he stays he stays in the boarding house but never in his old room. Every part of it wears a mark. Some mark of some memory. Only a little over a year, but so many memories.
He shouldn’t have made so many memories.
It takes Damon a long moment to get to his feet. It’s like that night. Getting to his knees and his feet beneath those, the leaning against the wall and then propelling himself toward the door.
On the ground a few feet from the entrance to the crypt is a body.
It’s a completely familiar body. Damon knows every inch of it. He knows where to kiss it to produce glorious moans. He knows what it tastes like.
Except no because Alaric is dead and more than dead; he is the ash in the coffin in there, slowly being taken away by the eddies of air that sneak into the crypt.
It is Alaric. It smells like Alaric. It’s wearing Alaric’s clothing. The clothing he died in and was resurrected in for a final time. Damon falls to his knees and reaches out. Dances his fingers over the small of Alaric’s back.
Stefan snuck some sort of wonderful hallucinogen into the bourbon.
When Damon rolls Alaric onto his back the first thing he notices is that Alaric is breathing which is fucking incredible. Vampires don’t breathe when they sleep. Not even unkillable Original-style vampires. Damon has slept with Rebekah enough times to know this. Damon shakes Alaric’s arm, but Alaric keeps breathing and sleeping.
Damon speaks: “Alaric. Ric.”
Damon presses his fingers to the pulse in Alaric’s neck. It is strong, very strong. Steady and strong.
It can’t be real, it really can’t.