❝nosey vampires❞

"ALRIGHT ROSEBUD, I NEED SOME ANSWERS." Damon approached the vampire who was hunched over on the couch, a frown crossing over his face when he saw her wipe underneath her eyes. "Oh, please don't tell me you're crying cause your buddy Trevor lost his head."

"Have you always been this sensitive?" Rose asked, dabbing a tissue beneath her eyes so she didn't ruin the makeup on her face.

Damon shrugged her off. "You know, there's a little vampire switch you can just pfft for this very reason. Takes the emotion right out of it."

"Yeah, you switch yours and I'll switch mine."

"Is that a dig?"

Rose shrugged, her cavalier attitude mirroring his own. "It's an observation. Hating your brother's girlfriend must cause some family drama that doesn't make anyone happy."

"My hatred of Elena has nothing to do with this." Damon gestured vaguely around the room, watching her observe him amusedly much to his increasing annoyance. He sped over to her, stopping a few inches away from her with a glare. "Don't get on my bad side."

"Then show me your good side." Rose came back with almost immediately, making him back away with a bitter smile.

"It died a very long time ago, Rosie." He winked at her, watching her roll her eyes at him. "Tell me how to find Klaus."

"You don't find Klaus, he finds you."

Damon faked irritance and turned away from her, missing the observant look that Rose gave him. "Come on. There's gotta be somebody somewhere who knows where he is, right?"

Rose shrugged, shoving her curiosity away. "Add another 200 somebodies to that, and you're still not even close."

"Humor me. You got in touch with Elijah. How'd you do it?"

"Through a very low somebody on the totem pole. A guy named Slater in Richmond."

"Perfect, I'll drive,"

"No." Rose immediately shot him down, gesturing to the sun shining outside. "You forget, not all of us can do sun."

Damon glanced out the window, and passed Rose with a pointed glare. "Then you drive."

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Damon got out of the blacked-out SUV with a roll of his eyes as he looked around the parking lot. "Back entrance. How convenient."

"That's the point." Rose glared at him. "We can't all have little daylight rings."

Damon lifted his hand up, flashing his ring smugly. "How do you know this Slater guy is even here?"

"I called him." She said simply. "He's here. He's always here."

"Good. Just one more thing." Damon said cheerfully, grabbing Rose's arm to spin her around and slam her against a concrete column. "If you are setting me up in any way, I will rip your heart out and shove it down your throat. It's kind of a talent of mine,"

Rose glared and grabbed his arm before he could continue on with his threats, turning him around and pin him against the SUV. "I'm older than you, and stronger. Don't get on my bad side."

She let him go, missing the exasperated look he gave her as she turned around. "You can trust me."

Damon pulled his phone and sent a text to Elijah as Rose walked into the cafe, completely oblivious of his plans. He wasn't lying about his threat, persay, he'd just left some details out in the midst of them, like the part where she'd have to run for another 500 years if she did something to cross him.

He eyed the cafe as they walked in, his blue irises scanning watchfully for any sign of the Original vampire he'd been in contact with recently. His eyebrows furrowed at the huge windows covering the walls, shining bright light into the entire cafe that was said to be filled with vampires. "Woah, what about the uh, sunlight?"

"Double-paned and tempered. UV rays can't penetrate. You see the appeal now?"

Damon opened his mouth, ready to retort back with a sharp 'no', but he stopped at the sound of an unfamiliar voice.

"That, and the free wi-fi,"

Rose gasped, a smile breaking out on her face as she embraced the man Damon presumed was Slater. "Hey, how are you?"

Slater patted her back, looking her over. "Good, I saw you come in. What are you doing here?"

Rose shrugged. "It's a long story. But I want you to meet–"

Slater's eyes fell to Damon, and he eyed the vampire up and down before he spoke. "Damon Salvatore. Turned 1864, Mystic Falls, by Katherine Pierce aka Katerina Petrova after a tragic accident."

Damon furrowed his eyebrows, not bothering to hide his shock at the strange vampire's knowledge of his existence. He eyed the man warily, taking in the consideration that he was more of a threat than originally thought. 

Slater turned back to Rose. "So I take it I was right. What I told you about the tomb under the church is true?"

"Yes." She nodded, smiling at her friend. "It was right. Thank you for the tip."

He seemed to preen at the information, turning his attention back to Damon and offering his hand for the vampire to shake. "It's nice to meet you." He noticed the Salvatore's hesitation, "Maybe."

Damon glanced to Rose, a look that Slater didn't miss. "What's going on, Rose? Where's, uh, Trevor?"

Damon turned away with a wince, and Rose's face fell before she gave him a weak, quivering smile. Slater eyed the two, and his friendly smile fell when the implication hit him.

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"And you're sure that Elijah's dead?"

"Beyond dead." Damon looked away briefly, but grabbed his coffee from the barista and followed the two vampires.

Slater shook his head. "Trevor was a good man. He helped me with my dissertation on sexual deviance in the baroque period. I was going for my Psych PhD."

"Slater's been in college since '74." Rose smiled proudly at her friend as she spoke to Damon, the three of them sitting down at a table right next to the large windows.

"When I was turned." Damon's eyes widened slightly, and he observed the young vampire closely. "I have 18 degrees, 3 master's and 4 PhDs."

"The point?" Damon asked, giving him an exasperated smile.

"Exactly." Slater shrugged, ignoring Damon's exasperation entirely. "I mean, what is the point? What should I be doing with my eternity? If you have an answer, please enlighten me."

Damon started to reply, but Rose interrupted with a pointed, scolding glare in his direction. She turned back to Slater, grabbing his wrist gently. "We need your help. If someone wanted to get in touch with Klaus, how would you hook 'em up?"

"Craigslist."

Damon's eyes widened and he spit a bit of his coffee out in surprise, his laughter coming out in short rasps. He eyed the two vampires sitting tepidly as they stared at him and he shrugged their glares off. He wiped his mouth off, setting the coffee down before looking to Slater in amused disbelief. "Really?"

"Seriously. I respond to a personal ad that gets sent to somebody who knows somebody who knows Elijah, who's dead, and that's where my connection ends." Slater shrugs, looking at his old friend somewhat helplessly.

Damon sits forward, his eyes darting out the window briefly and narrowing when he sees a flash of a familiar face. "Here's what I don't get– why would Klaus want to lift the curse of the sun and the moon?"

"To keep the werewolves from lifting it." Slater said, like it was obvious. "If a vampire breaks the sun curse, then the werewolves are stuck with the curse of the moon forever. And vice versa."

Rose sat forward, her eyes full of curiosity. "But werewolves are all but extinct."

Damon raised his eyebrows, the action going unnoticed by them. 

"True. I've never seen one, but rumor has it–"

Damon shook his head, remembering his not-so-friendly dealings with Mason Lockwood, and Katherine triggering Tyler's own curse. "Not such a rumor."

Slater and Rose both looked at him with wide eyes, Rose more so surprised that she hadn't been informed already that the people in Mystic Falls knew about werewolves. "Mystic Falls?" Slater asked, his tone filled with awe.

Damon shrugged, far too used to the chaos his life held, and Slater's jaw dropped slightly. "God, I've got to visit this place. It sounds awesome."

"Awesome doesn't even begin to describe it." Damon sighs sarcastically and looks out the window again, before tapping his fingers against the table. "Can we stop the curse from being broken at all?"

"Well, what do you mean?"

"Well, if we rendered the moonstone useless and stopped the curse from being broken,"

Rose's eyes narrowed in on Damon's sudden want for the curse to broken, as it meant Elena would survive. To her observation, and her preexisting knowledge, Damon didn't care what happened to the doppelgänger. She eyed him warily, her suspicions raised.

"Well, yeah, probably, but why would you wanna do that?" Slater shrugged, looking at Damon confusedly.

Damon ignored him, giving him a slightly aggressive smile. "Tell me how."

"You think I'm going to help you figure out how to do something that will piss off an Original? And keep me from walking in the sun?"

"You wanna walk in the sun? Well, I can make that happen." Damon leaned forward a bit, making Slater do the same.

"Why do you want to break the curse so bad? That just means that Katherine gets off easy, and after what she did to you, I can't imagine you'd want that." Slater said, nearly flinching back when Damon's gaze turned ice cold.

Rose looked between the two men confusedly, not knowing what Slater was referencing. As far as she knew, Damon had been with Katherine for a brief time. That's what she heard, anyway. What had the Petrova girl done that was so bad?

Damon backed away from the table, pointing an accusing finger at Slater. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Right as Slater went to retort, the windows shattered and the vampires in the cafe were sent flying. Glass shattered everywhere into thousands of pieces and Damon ducked down, trying to dodge any debris.

Screams echoed around him as the vampires started to burn, but he sat up, his eyes darting outside and briefly landing on Elijah before he disappeared entirely. Damon glared, letting out a heavy sigh.

He grabbed a jacket off the floor and covered Rose with it, trying to shield as much of her as possible from the sun as he and the rest of the vampires rushed out of the cafe.

He stopped, grabbing her legs and carried her to the SUV quickly, opening the back door and sliding her onto the backseat. "You're gonna be okay,"

"I know," She sighed, wincing as the burns scalding her skin slowly healed.

"Who was behind that?" Damon asked, silently praying no one had witnessed the Original vampire.

"I don't know." She shook her head. "Where's Slater?"

"Iowa by now. Who the hell knows?"

Rose waved his hostility off. "He's not behind this, he's a good guy. He wouldn't betray me."

"Then who did?"

"It's Klaus, don't you understand?!" She exclaimed, her voice breaking in the middle of her sentence. "You don't know this man. I'm dead. We're all dead."

Damon backed away as she began to cry, looking down at the ground with a frown. He shut the door, encasing Rose in the darkness as she healed. He needed to be more careful, and perhaps consider the fact that Elijah was a little more butthurt about the coat rack than he'd thought in the first place.

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author's note; damon and elijah are those friends that you 100% think hate one another by the way they talk about each other 

edited and published; 9.23.21.

- liz