ALMOST IS NEVER ENOUGH | TVD [3]

XIII • TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART

His brother's old friend walks in, "It was my idea if it makes you feel any better." He offers his hand to Stefan, "Enzo. Remember? We met when--"

"When you were trying to tear Damon's head off. Yeah. I remember." He turns to face his hot mess of a brother, "So, what, you guys are old pals again, murder buddies, is that it?" A pair of twisted Bonnie and Clyde.

"Oh, you know how it goes. I mean, I left him for dead, he tried to kill me, we worked things out. You spend five years with someone in a dungeon, you have a pretty unbreakable bond." Damon gives his best friend the glass bottle over his tired, concerned younger brother's shoulder casually.

"Say, you haven't heard from Dr. Wes Maxfield by any chance?" Enzo brought up, "Bloke's next on the Augustine hit list, and he's a slippery little devil." Like a little cricket or a cockroach that can crawl quite as fast.

"Is that the plan? Kill off Augustine and then go back to your sadistic, psychotic old self?" Stefan asked his drunk brother anxiously.

"I happen to like my old sadistic self, Stefan. In fact, I miss that guy. That guy was dumb enough to try and change himself to get a girl." Damon mocked.

"Hmm."

"So, get another hobby, brother, because I'm not in the mood to be saved."

"What do you say? Shall we get you a new hobby? Golf...scrapbooking?" Enzo listed out the suggestions for the younger brother in the room.

"Scrapbooking." The older brother repeated.

"Come on, Damon. You're better than this." Stefan encouraged him.

"On the contrary, brother. I'm better 'like' this." As his own self, perhaps.

Stefan leaves the pair of old best friends alone as he walks out of the room.

****

Abandoned Building

Dr. Wes Maxfield, in his signature lab coat, walks into a room which he had turned into his brand new laboratory rather than the underground one and examines his brand new 'patient' closely, "Hello. How are you holding up?"

A cluelessly puzzled young man is tied up to a spring box (bottom part of a bed), suspicious when he sees him, "What's going on? Who are you?"

"My name is Dr. Wes Maxfield, and you're Joey, right? I saw your name stitched on your work shirt when I grabbed you." The persistently curious researcher looks at the vampire's face, pointing a flashlight at him, who flinches and closes his eyes, "Apologies, but I never managed to make proper acquaintance of the janitorial staff before the hospital lost its funding. It's depressing, isn't it? The economy is no friend to medicine."

"What do you want from me? I don't have any money."

"Ironically, Joey, neither do I." He prepares an IV bag for his experiment.

"What did you do to me? Why am I so hungry?"

"Well, in simple terms, I turned you into a vampire. Now, I'm going to condition you to feed on other vampires instead of humans." Wes spoke.