( amusement trickles through the link at the pet name, but damon doesn't respond in kind — he's too focused, too anxious, for silliness like that.
ways you know something is seriously wrong, tbh.
My brother is here. Stefan.
though the words filter through the link reluctantly, like half of damon doesn't want sam to get them at all, they do get through. each syllable is a miasma of feeling, protectiveness and concern, guilt and insecurity, all duking it out for prominence. damon is usually better at holding his emotions back than that, but stefan tears down his walls all the time, merely by existing. it's impossible to be the person he wants to be with stefan around to measure himself against, and damon doesn't look forward to having to be the bad brother to fulfill his role.
he doesn't really look forward to having to watch stefan and elena get the human happily ever after they've always wanted, either.
I can look after him or Elena, I can't do both. They're both stubborn morons with more heart than sense and they'll do something stupid eventually. I need you to help me keep an eye on them.)
[ There's a brief smile at the amusement, then he sobers more when Damon doesn't return it.
He focuses quietly on not only what Damon's saying, but what makes its way across their mental connection. The feelings that Damon doesn't talk about but are there anyway - the same way Damon had for him, when he was muffled by grief over Steve. ]
(I got a friend or two like that. I already would've watched over Elena, but if Stefan's important to you - I'll keep an eye on him, too.) [ He follows it up with a silent question, the brush of feathers over Damon's mind in a gentle probe for more - with the understanding that Sam'll back off if Damon doesn't want to talk about it. He always does.
But there's something more to this, particularly to the insecurity that he can feel, and Sam is here if Damon wants.
Well. He'll be here either way, but especially if Damon wants. ]
( there's the sensation of a held breath being released in relief — damon knew he could count on sam, but it's still good to know he has someone in his corner whenever stefan and elena do the dumbass things they're prone to doing. sam will likely be on their sides a lot of the time, being the Good person he is, but now he's promised to keep an eye on the two of them, and damon will rub that in his face as ruthlessly as he has to to get him to rein them in when damon can't. morality matters little in the face of all the danger his brother and elena manage to get themselves into, at least as far as damon's concerned. sam will have to agree with him to follow his promise.
the first brush of sam's feathers makes the fog damon habitually shrouds his thoughts in fill in instinctively, utterly opaque. for as much as he shares with sam, damon is still protective of his emotions, and while he can hand elena his heart on a silver platter, he's never found himself capable of talking about himself in as frank a way as he can talk about his love for others.
Good. He's going to need it.
he's not so great at gratitude, either. as far as he's concerned, it's implied in his tone, and acknowledging it out loud is unnecessary.
honestly, damon thought he'd be content to leave it there, take sam's promise and leave to quietly drink away his fears, but he finds himself lingering on the connection between them. the fog around his thoughts thins, and a piece of his anxiety leaks through — he doesn't want to be forgotten in the wake of his brother's arrival. by sam or... anyone else.
I'll have slightly more free time, now, he says, voice light with the feigned levity of someone who really hates what they're about to say, Elena will be hanging off his arm 24/7 for at least a few weeks now that he's showed up.)
[ Honestly, Sam can't say he won't agree with either Elena or Stefan in the future. He hasn't met Stefan - yet, but he's gonna have to change that soon if he's looking out for him - but he likes Elena, and he can tell they have some similar views on things. But it doesn't really matter, because Damon's right about one thing. Sam promised, and he'll do the best he can to protect them.
As far as gratitude goes, that's more than enough for Sam. He's used to spending time with people who have a hard time saying thank you, used to his veterans who'd gruffly talk about the progress they've made and mean it's because I've been coming here.
When Damon says that someone Sam promised to keep an eye on needs it, Sam knows what he means.
And he also knows better than to pry into Damon's emotions. He'll ask about them, sure, pick up on what flows freely or accidentally between them, but he won't push past the walls he helped build. There's a brief flicker of confusion at his first comment, but it smooths out at the second.
Oh. He knows what Elena means to Damon - and he knows what it's like, having feelings for someone that aren't returned, or caring about someone more than they care about you. ]
the words are dripping with both scorn and jealousy, the first veritably palpable to sam. the jealousy he tries to hide a little more, but it'd be obvious no matter what he tried to do.
As far as Elena's concerned she found out Stefan was a vampire right before she got here. As far as I'm concerned, there's been about a year of drama surrounding their star-crossed interspecies love affair. Now that he's here and human, all the complications in their lives are gone.
vampire. it's the first time he's said the word out loud to anyone but elena. granted it was only in connection to his brother, and damon still hasn't acknowledged that he himself is one, but it's close enough to an admission that he's suddenly uneasy. despite the fact that everyone can tell what he is, damon doesn't like to throw it around — life in mystic falls and throughout the last 145 years has taught him to keep the secret of his species close to the vest. he can talk about it to elena because she's elena, she needs to know, and would if she'd come to the station even a day later. she can be trusted, but nobody else in the nest can be.
nobody but sam, apparently. if anyone can be counted on not to be an asshole abou it, it's sam. at least, not one who's going to run through shril gathering stakes and torches. an asshole who might make twilight jokes, maybe. )
[ An asshole who might make Twilight jokes, definitely, but not right now. Now there's nothing but a hum of acknowledgment across their connection. Sam'd known, of course he had, maybe more than most others in the Nest; he's felt Damon's hunger - still does, sometimes - he's seen more of Damon's memories than he should have, and he's patched up both Elena and Ilde after Damon bit them.
But there's still a faint curl of gratitude, that Damon confirmed it. That he's actually willing to talk about this with him. ]
(And as far as Stefan's concerned?)
[ He's got some thoughts, on people being from different times but the same world. On just how many complications it makes when your memories don't line up - but it sounds like Damon's already just figured that of course they'll both leave him in the dust, and that...
( just as damon isn't good with acknowledging his own gratitude, the gratitude of others is foreign and uncomfortable. that sam is sharing his... it's weird. damon responds to that curl of gratitude with annoyance — you're too good sam, it's weird and upsetting and you must stop immediately.
Like I said. damon's voice is sharp, but quiet. defeated, almost. They're in love.
they're in love, and no matter what moments damon has had with elena in the month it's been since they showed up on the station, it won't matter. it'll always be stefan rings in his ears, and the effort he makes to keep it from sam is only half-assed. he should have known not to hope for anything more with elena. hope is a bitch, and no one knows that better than him — why he keeps letting himself get suckered into it, he doesn't know.
He's going to need help with his shields, by the way. I don't want to do it, so it's going to have to be you.
damon would rather die, probably, than be subject to stefan's memories and feelings, and he's not nice enough to ask sam. he's just going to assume sam will do it because sam is his friend and sam is agreeable that way. )
[ There's something that could almost be a chuckle if the situation weren't so humorless, and a sensation like a breeze tugging at Damon's hair, but he cuts it out. One day, he'll get Damon used to having these kinds of feelings directed at him, but for now, Sam won't push him more.
For now, he feels the echo of that defeat, the bitterness of a hope unrealized - the way it hurts so much more than not having that hope in the first place. Sam knows how that feels, more than from the way it bleeds out from Damon and onto him.
But he also knows that even worse is the prospect of having no hope at all, that no matter the pain, he'll always choose hope. ]
(Steve is like that. He's from my world, but we're from different times. I remember more than he does. It comes with its own set of complications.) [ Don't rule anything out, he means, don't assume that things will be the same here as they were back home. The relationship he has with Steve here is not the one that he has with Steve back home - though he likes to think it's damn near as strong. But he doesn't know Elena and Stefan's story, and he can't speak to anything for sure. ]
(If he'll let me, of course I will. You at the hotel?)
( there's only so much feeling damon can take in a day — the dashed hope of whatever was blooming between him and elena, the combined relief and disappointment at his brother's arrival, the panic and shock at his species switch... he's quite full up on feeling, at the moment, and he doesn't want to have to deal with any more, not even from sam. that sam can sense that and respect it is part of the reason why sam is rapidly becoming damon's favourite.
that sam has the luxury of choosing hope is not something damon says outright, but it is a feeling that he imparts. of course sam would choose hope. he's only been alive for a short time, not even half a century. he hasn't seen all the bullshit damon has. of course, he's had his own struggles, that much has been clear from the limited things sam has shared, but damon's lived through three wars, through torture, through heartbreak and loss and magical fuckery and never once has having hope worked out for him. it's better to believe the worst and be pleasantly surprised than hope for the best and get hurt for the millionth time.
How do they do that? Why? What advantage could it possibly give them?
the idea that anything might end differently... it seems so impossible as to be laughable. why would it? what could he offer elena that his brother, human and whole and wonderful, couldn't? why would she ever choose him, when her soulmate is here? she wouldn't. she wouldn't even think of it.
I dropped Stefan and Elena off there and left. I needed to... take a beat.)
[ The connection between them hums for a moment as Sam quietly concedes. He's not one to play trauma olympics - or at least, he isn't now, though there was a time - or to think that anyone else's pain is better or worse than his, just different. But he's also not one to challenge anyone on it, not unless they're bringing that shit into a support group and messing with other people's recoveries.
And not when it comes to the kind of stuff that Damon and Bucky have been through, the kind that Sam has only briefly experienced - well. With Damon, anyway, he's gotten a hell of a lot more from Bucky. Bucky doesn't see a lot of hope for himself, either, doesn't think he deserves anything good. Sam already believes enough for him, believes in reconciling the terrible things he did in the past - in how many times he got fucked over - with being a person now, with taking all of the good moments and holding onto them, with making good moments.
He can believe enough for Damon, too. He understands believing the worst and being surprised, and it's enough that Damon even considers the possibility. Sam'll believe for them both, until it happens. ]
(I don't know. I think it's bullshit, sometimes, I made that deal to come here to protect my team, and here they went and offered a similar deal to three of them.)
[ But there's nothing they can do about that now. They're away from the Station, they can't even go exploring it like Sam'd been trying to do before the mission. ]
(Okay. I got two offers for you. I can ask you what happened to make you so damn certain that no one would ever choose you - but I get the feeling that that's gonna be a long as hell answer, wind up in me having a whole lot of feelings at you, and it kind of seems like you're a little done with this feelings shit for today. So second one: you can come hang out with me at the pet store; see if London wants any new toys or remembers the little fluff balls he used to nest with.) [ There's a pause, then, ] (Or hell, option three - we can go have a couple of drinks, maybe break some shit, maybe finish a few fights that people always seem to start around here.)
( as far as damon's concerned, this isn't trauma olympics. not that he'd be above participating in it if it was, but that he's been through worse shit than sam isn't the point. whether or not he believes in quantifying all the bad shit they've gone through to compare it all, what he does know is that he's been through more than sam, just by virtue of the fact that he has 140 some-odd years on him. it's easy to be hopeful and bright when you're young — by the time damon was in his thirties, he still had hope too — but when you go through 171 years of the universe smacking you down at every turn, the safe thing to do is always expect the worst.
So did I. I accepted to keep Elena safe, so imagine my surprise when I woke up last month and there she was. From a time when she hated me, too, so that's been fun.
they were closer than they'd ever been when the enemy came after him and he had to leave for the station, even with the spectre of stefan hanging over them. if they'd come from the same time, at least damon wouldn't have had to spend so much time proving to her that he wasn't completely evil. they'd have been a unit from the beginning. instead elena remembered the bite marks on caroline's shoulders and all the murders he'd committed when he first came back to town. working back to a real friendship from step one in their relationship has gone more smoothly than damon had anticipated, but it'd still have been better not to have to do it at all.
Option three sounds like a great time if you ask me.
[ That's another reason why Sam concedes. No matter how young Damon and Bucky might look - no matter how young they might seem, sometimes, in the flashes that Sam gets from them - they've lived longer, lived more, than any human has.
And there's an argument that could be said that more doesn't necessarily mean anything, either, that one moment for someone can be just the same as ten years for someone else, that trauma means something different to everyone - but it's not an argument Sam'll make. Not now. Now he just tries to pull Damon from the feelings that threaten to overwhelm him, to give him something else to focus on without detaching from his emotions all together.
This, at least - oh, this he gets. There aren't many on the Station who are from the same world, even less who have this kind of dissonance - but Sam is one of them. ]
(Steve's from years before he met me. It sucked a hell of a lot, looking at someone who you've come a long way with and seeing that they don't trust you.)
[ Seeing that Sam was nothing to him, and honestly, that'd hurt more than anything else about coming to the Station. Sam hasn't told anyone that - not even Clint, though Clint's felt it. It's different now. Sam doesn't regret it, not when it means he's gotten the chance to know this Steve, but that don't mean it hadn't sucked.
There's the sensation of something like a smile, and Sam changes his direction. ]
(There's a new club by that alien punk store. They haven't figured out about changing the windows to concrete, like that other one has.) [ Which means the violent crowd has flocked there, the ones looking to start trouble with people who can't fight back. Might as well give them someone who can. ]
( the nest would be so much the lesser without sam wilson in it. damon doesn't know how to convey that, how he could possibly let sam know that he thinks that, so it remains on his side of the connection, affection festering quietly in his heart.
The last Elena saw of me, according to her, she was threatening to turn me in to the sherriff. I'd been...
it's not often that damon feels shame over the things he did when he first came to mystic falls. he wasn't exactly a different person then, but he might as well have been. his humanity was on a dimmer switch, he was angry and violent and worse than he is now by far, but it's not really his style to look backwards. he'd do things differently if he were coming back to mystic falls the person he is now, but he didn't, so it's pointless to think about it.
sam's good enough that that might be a problem.
I was using her best friend, at the time. I treated her like shit, because I didn't care about anything but getting what I wanted. Elena hated me, then, but we'd long since moved on when I'm from. She was my best friend.
it's not often that damon really thinks about the elena he left behind to do more than compare her to the one he has now. elena's here, and that's what matters, but that admission — the elena he came to the station to save, the one he left in mystic falls, was his best friend — makes his heart clench uncomfortably. it's strange to miss someone who's still right here.
If Steve didn't trust you immediately, he's a moron.
because sam is the best and anyone who can't see that is stupid!!! damon returns his smile, the link starting to thrum with anticipation.
[ Tell that to people like Ilde or the Darkling. Except no, don't - Sam is more than content to be able to make even a fraction of a difference in one person's life.
To be here with Damon, when he feels like no one else will choose him. Sam isn't his brother or the person he loves, but he can be his friend. He can commiserate with him like this, about the things that the Station has made complicated. About the best friends they've lost, even though there's another version of them close by, loved by them just as much.
When he feels Damon's heart clench, Sam's own echoes it back, a quiet acknowledgement. It's strange to miss someone who's both right there, and isn't.
As for the hint at the kind of person Damon was back then - well, Sam's not gonna throw around words like healthy, because Lord knows Damon's got a lot of coping mechanisms and a lot of views about himself that are anything but, it's just. Acknowledging that what you did back then isn't what you'd do now, accepting that you did it and you can't change it, knowing that it just means you'll do different going forward, well. It's what Sam'd do. What he does.
And it doesn't change what he thinks of Damon.
He skips over that part about Steve with a soft laugh - Steve trusts him now, Sam knows, and he trusts Steve, so that's all that matters - and moves on to the club itself. He'd meant to pull Damon's mind away from all this. ]
(And introduce you to the nicest people. You wanna take bets on how long we'll be there before someone comes to say hello?)
serious conversation time is over, time to be little shits. damon's pretty much emotionally exhausted for the day, he doesn't have any more feelings in him. that he's shared as much as he has is as much a testament to his growth as a person as it is to sam's miraculous skills at getting people to talk, but damon has reached the limit of his personal growth, and he doesn't feel like making sam talk any more than he already has. but it hasn't escaped his notice that sam isn't fazed by his admission of what he did to caroline — the barest bones admission, but still.
sam's probably too good of a person to really be damon's friend, but like hell damon's going to give him up now. )
(Lemme see what kind of crowd we're working with before I answer that.)
[ The majority of Sam's friends have done terrible things at some point in their lives - even back home. Clint and Natasha were assassins, Wanda had once tried to kill all of the Avengers, Bucky was the Winter Soldier, Tony was... well, that's about as far as Sam wanted to go. Point is, Sam is a good guy, and that's never stopped him from being friends with a lot of people.
It's never stopped him from showing up at clubs with the express intention of picking a fight with someone looking to start shit, either.
He pulls open the door to the club as he spots Damon approaching, and waits until he's gotten there before he steps in. Place like this, sometimes all you need to do is make eye contact. ]
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sizeofyourbaggage) wrote2016-05-22 03:26 pm
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ways you know something is seriously wrong, tbh.
My brother is here. Stefan.
though the words filter through the link reluctantly, like half of damon doesn't want sam to get them at all, they do get through. each syllable is a miasma of feeling, protectiveness and concern, guilt and insecurity, all duking it out for prominence. damon is usually better at holding his emotions back than that, but stefan tears down his walls all the time, merely by existing. it's impossible to be the person he wants to be with stefan around to measure himself against, and damon doesn't look forward to having to be the bad brother to fulfill his role.
he doesn't really look forward to having to watch stefan and elena get the human happily ever after they've always wanted, either.
I can look after him or Elena, I can't do both. They're both stubborn morons with more heart than sense and they'll do something stupid eventually. I need you to help me keep an eye on them. )
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He focuses quietly on not only what Damon's saying, but what makes its way across their mental connection. The feelings that Damon doesn't talk about but are there anyway - the same way Damon had for him, when he was muffled by grief over Steve. ]
( I got a friend or two like that. I already would've watched over Elena, but if Stefan's important to you - I'll keep an eye on him, too. ) [ He follows it up with a silent question, the brush of feathers over Damon's mind in a gentle probe for more - with the understanding that Sam'll back off if Damon doesn't want to talk about it. He always does.
But there's something more to this, particularly to the insecurity that he can feel, and Sam is here if Damon wants.
Well. He'll be here either way, but especially if Damon wants. ]
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the first brush of sam's feathers makes the fog damon habitually shrouds his thoughts in fill in instinctively, utterly opaque. for as much as he shares with sam, damon is still protective of his emotions, and while he can hand elena his heart on a silver platter, he's never found himself capable of talking about himself in as frank a way as he can talk about his love for others.
Good. He's going to need it.
he's not so great at gratitude, either. as far as he's concerned, it's implied in his tone, and acknowledging it out loud is unnecessary.
honestly, damon thought he'd be content to leave it there, take sam's promise and leave to quietly drink away his fears, but he finds himself lingering on the connection between them. the fog around his thoughts thins, and a piece of his anxiety leaks through — he doesn't want to be forgotten in the wake of his brother's arrival. by sam or... anyone else.
I'll have slightly more free time, now, he says, voice light with the feigned levity of someone who really hates what they're about to say, Elena will be hanging off his arm 24/7 for at least a few weeks now that he's showed up. )
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As far as gratitude goes, that's more than enough for Sam. He's used to spending time with people who have a hard time saying thank you, used to his veterans who'd gruffly talk about the progress they've made and mean it's because I've been coming here.
When Damon says that someone Sam promised to keep an eye on needs it, Sam knows what he means.
And he also knows better than to pry into Damon's emotions. He'll ask about them, sure, pick up on what flows freely or accidentally between them, but he won't push past the walls he helped build. There's a brief flicker of confusion at his first comment, but it smooths out at the second.
Oh. He knows what Elena means to Damon - and he knows what it's like, having feelings for someone that aren't returned, or caring about someone more than they care about you. ]
( You sound pretty damn sure of that. )
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the words are dripping with both scorn and jealousy, the first veritably palpable to sam. the jealousy he tries to hide a little more, but it'd be obvious no matter what he tried to do.
As far as Elena's concerned she found out Stefan was a vampire right before she got here. As far as I'm concerned, there's been about a year of drama surrounding their star-crossed interspecies love affair. Now that he's here and human, all the complications in their lives are gone.
vampire. it's the first time he's said the word out loud to anyone but elena. granted it was only in connection to his brother, and damon still hasn't acknowledged that he himself is one, but it's close enough to an admission that he's suddenly uneasy. despite the fact that everyone can tell what he is, damon doesn't like to throw it around — life in mystic falls and throughout the last 145 years has taught him to keep the secret of his species close to the vest. he can talk about it to elena because she's elena, she needs to know, and would if she'd come to the station even a day later. she can be trusted, but nobody else in the nest can be.
nobody but sam, apparently. if anyone can be counted on not to be an asshole abou it, it's sam. at least, not one who's going to run through shril gathering stakes and torches. an asshole who might make twilight jokes, maybe. )
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But there's still a faint curl of gratitude, that Damon confirmed it. That he's actually willing to talk about this with him. ]
( And as far as Stefan's concerned? )
[ He's got some thoughts, on people being from different times but the same world. On just how many complications it makes when your memories don't line up - but it sounds like Damon's already just figured that of course they'll both leave him in the dust, and that...
Well, that's another issue. ]
no subject
Like I said. damon's voice is sharp, but quiet. defeated, almost. They're in love.
they're in love, and no matter what moments damon has had with elena in the month it's been since they showed up on the station, it won't matter. it'll always be stefan rings in his ears, and the effort he makes to keep it from sam is only half-assed. he should have known not to hope for anything more with elena. hope is a bitch, and no one knows that better than him — why he keeps letting himself get suckered into it, he doesn't know.
He's going to need help with his shields, by the way. I don't want to do it, so it's going to have to be you.
damon would rather die, probably, than be subject to stefan's memories and feelings, and he's not nice enough to ask sam. he's just going to assume sam will do it because sam is his friend and sam is agreeable that way. )
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For now, he feels the echo of that defeat, the bitterness of a hope unrealized - the way it hurts so much more than not having that hope in the first place. Sam knows how that feels, more than from the way it bleeds out from Damon and onto him.
But he also knows that even worse is the prospect of having no hope at all, that no matter the pain, he'll always choose hope. ]
( Steve is like that. He's from my world, but we're from different times. I remember more than he does. It comes with its own set of complications. ) [ Don't rule anything out, he means, don't assume that things will be the same here as they were back home. The relationship he has with Steve here is not the one that he has with Steve back home - though he likes to think it's damn near as strong. But he doesn't know Elena and Stefan's story, and he can't speak to anything for sure. ]
( If he'll let me, of course I will. You at the hotel? )
no subject
that sam has the luxury of choosing hope is not something damon says outright, but it is a feeling that he imparts. of course sam would choose hope. he's only been alive for a short time, not even half a century. he hasn't seen all the bullshit damon has. of course, he's had his own struggles, that much has been clear from the limited things sam has shared, but damon's lived through three wars, through torture, through heartbreak and loss and magical fuckery and never once has having hope worked out for him. it's better to believe the worst and be pleasantly surprised than hope for the best and get hurt for the millionth time.
How do they do that? Why? What advantage could it possibly give them?
the idea that anything might end differently... it seems so impossible as to be laughable. why would it? what could he offer elena that his brother, human and whole and wonderful, couldn't? why would she ever choose him, when her soulmate is here? she wouldn't. she wouldn't even think of it.
I dropped Stefan and Elena off there and left. I needed to... take a beat. )
no subject
And not when it comes to the kind of stuff that Damon and Bucky have been through, the kind that Sam has only briefly experienced - well. With Damon, anyway, he's gotten a hell of a lot more from Bucky. Bucky doesn't see a lot of hope for himself, either, doesn't think he deserves anything good. Sam already believes enough for him, believes in reconciling the terrible things he did in the past - in how many times he got fucked over - with being a person now, with taking all of the good moments and holding onto them, with making good moments.
He can believe enough for Damon, too. He understands believing the worst and being surprised, and it's enough that Damon even considers the possibility. Sam'll believe for them both, until it happens. ]
( I don't know. I think it's bullshit, sometimes, I made that deal to come here to protect my team, and here they went and offered a similar deal to three of them. )
[ But there's nothing they can do about that now. They're away from the Station, they can't even go exploring it like Sam'd been trying to do before the mission. ]
( Okay. I got two offers for you. I can ask you what happened to make you so damn certain that no one would ever choose you - but I get the feeling that that's gonna be a long as hell answer, wind up in me having a whole lot of feelings at you, and it kind of seems like you're a little done with this feelings shit for today. So second one: you can come hang out with me at the pet store; see if London wants any new toys or remembers the little fluff balls he used to nest with. ) [ There's a pause, then, ] ( Or hell, option three - we can go have a couple of drinks, maybe break some shit, maybe finish a few fights that people always seem to start around here. )
no subject
So did I. I accepted to keep Elena safe, so imagine my surprise when I woke up last month and there she was. From a time when she hated me, too, so that's been fun.
they were closer than they'd ever been when the enemy came after him and he had to leave for the station, even with the spectre of stefan hanging over them. if they'd come from the same time, at least damon wouldn't have had to spend so much time proving to her that he wasn't completely evil. they'd have been a unit from the beginning. instead elena remembered the bite marks on caroline's shoulders and all the murders he'd committed when he first came back to town. working back to a real friendship from step one in their relationship has gone more smoothly than damon had anticipated, but it'd still have been better not to have to do it at all.
Option three sounds like a great time if you ask me.
let's go beat some aliens up, sammy!!! )
no subject
And there's an argument that could be said that more doesn't necessarily mean anything, either, that one moment for someone can be just the same as ten years for someone else, that trauma means something different to everyone - but it's not an argument Sam'll make. Not now. Now he just tries to pull Damon from the feelings that threaten to overwhelm him, to give him something else to focus on without detaching from his emotions all together.
This, at least - oh, this he gets. There aren't many on the Station who are from the same world, even less who have this kind of dissonance - but Sam is one of them. ]
( Steve's from years before he met me. It sucked a hell of a lot, looking at someone who you've come a long way with and seeing that they don't trust you. )
[ Seeing that Sam was nothing to him, and honestly, that'd hurt more than anything else about coming to the Station. Sam hasn't told anyone that - not even Clint, though Clint's felt it. It's different now. Sam doesn't regret it, not when it means he's gotten the chance to know this Steve, but that don't mean it hadn't sucked.
There's the sensation of something like a smile, and Sam changes his direction. ]
( There's a new club by that alien punk store. They haven't figured out about changing the windows to concrete, like that other one has. ) [ Which means the violent crowd has flocked there, the ones looking to start trouble with people who can't fight back. Might as well give them someone who can. ]
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The last Elena saw of me, according to her, she was threatening to turn me in to the sherriff. I'd been...
it's not often that damon feels shame over the things he did when he first came to mystic falls. he wasn't exactly a different person then, but he might as well have been. his humanity was on a dimmer switch, he was angry and violent and worse than he is now by far, but it's not really his style to look backwards. he'd do things differently if he were coming back to mystic falls the person he is now, but he didn't, so it's pointless to think about it.
sam's good enough that that might be a problem.
I was using her best friend, at the time. I treated her like shit, because I didn't care about anything but getting what I wanted. Elena hated me, then, but we'd long since moved on when I'm from. She was my best friend.
it's not often that damon really thinks about the elena he left behind to do more than compare her to the one he has now. elena's here, and that's what matters, but that admission — the elena he came to the station to save, the one he left in mystic falls, was his best friend — makes his heart clench uncomfortably. it's strange to miss someone who's still right here.
If Steve didn't trust you immediately, he's a moron.
because sam is the best and anyone who can't see that is stupid!!! damon returns his smile, the link starting to thrum with anticipation.
Sammy, you take me to the nicest places. )
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To be here with Damon, when he feels like no one else will choose him. Sam isn't his brother or the person he loves, but he can be his friend. He can commiserate with him like this, about the things that the Station has made complicated. About the best friends they've lost, even though there's another version of them close by, loved by them just as much.
When he feels Damon's heart clench, Sam's own echoes it back, a quiet acknowledgement. It's strange to miss someone who's both right there, and isn't.
As for the hint at the kind of person Damon was back then - well, Sam's not gonna throw around words like healthy, because Lord knows Damon's got a lot of coping mechanisms and a lot of views about himself that are anything but, it's just. Acknowledging that what you did back then isn't what you'd do now, accepting that you did it and you can't change it, knowing that it just means you'll do different going forward, well. It's what Sam'd do. What he does.
And it doesn't change what he thinks of Damon.
He skips over that part about Steve with a soft laugh - Steve trusts him now, Sam knows, and he trusts Steve, so that's all that matters - and moves on to the club itself. He'd meant to pull Damon's mind away from all this. ]
( And introduce you to the nicest people. You wanna take bets on how long we'll be there before someone comes to say hello? )
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serious conversation time is over, time to be little shits. damon's pretty much emotionally exhausted for the day, he doesn't have any more feelings in him. that he's shared as much as he has is as much a testament to his growth as a person as it is to sam's miraculous skills at getting people to talk, but damon has reached the limit of his personal growth, and he doesn't feel like making sam talk any more than he already has. but it hasn't escaped his notice that sam isn't fazed by his admission of what he did to caroline — the barest bones admission, but still.
sam's probably too good of a person to really be damon's friend, but like hell damon's going to give him up now. )
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[ The majority of Sam's friends have done terrible things at some point in their lives - even back home. Clint and Natasha were assassins, Wanda had once tried to kill all of the Avengers, Bucky was the Winter Soldier, Tony was... well, that's about as far as Sam wanted to go. Point is, Sam is a good guy, and that's never stopped him from being friends with a lot of people.
It's never stopped him from showing up at clubs with the express intention of picking a fight with someone looking to start shit, either.
He pulls open the door to the club as he spots Damon approaching, and waits until he's gotten there before he steps in. Place like this, sometimes all you need to do is make eye contact. ]