ALMOST IS NEVER ENOUGH | TVD [3]

XXV • BLACK HOLE SUN

"Damon..." Minerva warned him.

"Or I could just torture you until you say something useful." Damon threatened him lowly, determined to actually do so-- by his predictable self.

"If you torture me, I'll get mad, and then I won't want to help you." A confused Kai spoke slowly and looks toward Bonnie, with his eyebrows furrowed, "What kind of person needs to have that explained to them?"

Bonnie reaches over and takes the sharp knife out of Damon's hand, who roughly lets Kai go that he laughs as Minerva shakes her head a little.

"Play nice." The Bennett girl told him.

"Stop trying to impress the new guy." Damon said while Kai sits on the double seated couch where Minerva watches him open the jar of jam.

"Why don't you just tell him your story?" The caramel brunette suggested.

"Maybe because I don't want to talk about the worst thing I ever did, Minerva." Damon retorted without turning to face the girl who shares the exact lovely face of the one woman who he attempts to move on from.

"Ooooh, now I'm listening." Kai scoops out some strawberry jam from the jar with his right hand and eats it, which earns him a disgusted look from Minerva who he only smiles up at, leaving many stains around his lips.

****

Salvatore Boarding House, 1994

Damon has just rung the doorbell and has his back leaning against the main  door of the boarding house; the door opens from inside and he turns to come face to face with Stefan Salvatore inside, to which Damon holds up the same newspaper Minerva has been reading for the last four months to show it to him, "Ready for some bad news?" Probably.

The front page of the newspaper has an article about Kurt Cobain's suicide. Stefan leans against the main door as his brother chuckles and moves forward to get inside, only to be stopped by an invisible barrier in the threshold, "Barely seen you in fifty years, Stefan. You could invite a brother in." Or whoever's alive enough to hold the deed of this boarding house.

Stefan gives him a judgmental look, "Give me one good reason why."

"Check your answering machine, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf."

"Oh, I heard your message. I also heard you sent Lexi some flowers, seventeen years after you left her to burn to death on a rooftop."

"Well--"

The green-eyed younger vampire brother cuts in, "It's a little late, but I see you're trying to make amends. I just want to know why." He's sorry?

"Uh, well, I can tell you this, Stefan — I'm tired of tearing up New York City to search for Rosie. And, maybe it's the partying, or maybe it's my conscious--"

Stefan looks away from him, "Well, I believe that would require one."

Damon ignores him, "And then, I had this moment of clarity, and I said, 'Wouldn't it be great if I just woke up in my own bed and could have a fresh start'?" With his own brother? He smiles at his own smug sense of self.

Zach Salvatore comes up behind Stefan who mentioned him out of genuine curiosity and kindness, "You must be Damon." Salvatore, of course.