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Damon and Alaric didn’t grow up together.
Alaric grew up in the Boston Institute, and Damon in some smaller outpost in the south. The death of his father saw Damon and his little brother, Stefan, brought to Boston, where even if parental warmth was somewhat lacking at times at least they were surrounded by people who were prepared to try.
Stefan was young. Seven years old. Took the clave about a week to decide his best and safest option was to be raised in a proper family; he ended up in Philadelphia with people who knew how to raise him right and when to give him back. Damon agreed, with his chin jutting forward and his eyes cold as glass. He hugged his brother in the most stoic of ways and sent him off.
But Damon was fourteen, a child himself, though his father had strong feelings about childhood, and how soon it should end. He knew how to keep a bedroom tidy and drew runes with a greater degree of perfection than most of the adults in the clave, made a good impression. Few of them saw a child.
Alaric was fifteen. Warmer and gentler than some of those around him, if paradoxically possessed of a foul temper. Tall and broad, a good-looking kid, though still burdened by the self-consciousness of a boy who’d been plagued by dreaded adolescent skin problems barely two years ago.
He barely met Damon twice, that first week. Finding himself deeply unsettled by Damon’s thinly veiled disdain and consequent aloofness on both occasions, he hadn’t gone out of his way to make it a third.
The second week, though.
Years later Alaric still couldn’t be sure what had sent him out of his way that afternoon, to see if Damon wanted to do some training together. He felt as if someone had suggested he should, though he couldn’t think who might have done it. There was just the strange certainty that the idea had come from outside of his own head. All elbows and knees, he’d made his way to the wing where Damon’s room had been allocated (it seemed strangely far from everyone else, and he’d wondered at the time who had chosen it; could have been Damon himself) and paused at his door before knocking.
He waited five seconds, ten, wondering. Stoicism was valued in the clave, he knew that. People who were a little too emotional about anything tended to be looked down upon; outbursts were fine for children and Downworlders but not shadowhunters.
But the sound of Damon sobbing into a pillow had echoed in Alaric’s head.
He’d stepped away from the door, determined. Shuffled in front of it for a few seconds. He thought about finding his father; no one could give comfort the way Ed could. But in the end, after perhaps one long minute of deliberation (during which Damon’s sobs got no quieter) Alaric opened the door.
Damon was lying curled into the fetal position, back to the door, pillow held over his own face. His sweater had ridden up a couple of inches at the back and Alaric could see the bump of his vertebrae through thin, pale skin.
Took Damon a good five seconds to realize he wasn’t alone. He rolled over in surprise, eyes red and swollen, and narrowed his eyes in disgust.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he snarled, but Alaric pushed the door closed behind him and shook his head. The second and third command had no more impact than the first. And by the time Damon looked ready to pull out one of his father’s celebrated daggers (or maybe just a fucking thick book) Alaric had stretched out on the bed alongside him and held out his arms.
The offer of affection felt like a terrible risk. Alaric half expected to be laughed at, and at the very least, thrown out of the room (rumor had it Damon’s skills with runes were really advanced for his age). Or maybe Damon would punch him; which wouldn’t go well, since Alaric was older, bigger, stronger, and still had a hair trigger temper and a general dislike for anyone hitting him.
But it didn’t go that way.
Maybe no one had done it, before. Opened their arms to Damon. Or not since his father died. Alaric couldn’t remember anyone with so much as a hand on Damon’s shoulder, though in the days before the little one had left Damon had led him around by the hand everywhere they went. Not the same, though. It wasn't for Damon.
Not to make him feel better.
His face was buried in Alaric’s chest, fingers anchored in his worn sweatshirt while Alaric looped his arms loosely around who was, now, already, no question, his new best friend. They didn’t say a word, not even for the half hour they stayed where they were after Damon’s tears had finally dried up. But eventually, Damon’s arm rested stretched across Alaric’s stomach, and his breath was slow and even.
“You can share my room,” Alaric had said, hesitantly. He was an only child, and the youngest person in the Institute bar ten-year-old twin girls and a new born baby. He wasn’t used to sharing anything. But he rested his chin against Damon’s head, and after a long moment, Damon nodded.
“Fine,” he said, as if it was a terrible imposition, but there was relief in his voice.
So they didn’t grow up together. But after that day, they were inseparable.
They both worked hard. They were smart boys, both of them, though Damon’s abilities with runes outstripped Alaric’s, and Alaric’s strength and precision with weapons left Damon’s in the dust. That was okay, though. They spent long days together, studying in the morning, competition growing strong between them, though they never took anything but a fierce joy in it. The afternoons were spent training with blade and crossbow, fists and footwork which began to look more like a dance than anything else. They ate together, they fought together, they studied together, and on rougher nights Damon crawled into bed alongside Alaric and they slept together, too.
“There’s more there than just friendship,” one of the elders said to Alaric’s father, one night, over a chess board.
“If there is, it’s no one’s business but their own,” was Edward’s strong answer. “Leave it be.”
“Right.” A shrug. “Checkmate. I think it’s time I slept.”
––
Damon was sixteen, and Alaric seventeen, when the same elder suggested they should be Parabatai. It had been a long time since the ritual had been performed; most had never seen it. He found the boys bickering quietly over a translation that should have been beyond either of them, and sat down to watch their lesson.
Alaric looked up uneasily, and nodded. “Sir.”
“Don’t let me interrupt,” said the elder, whose name was Jonas. “You work well together.”
Damon had never learned not to resent the interruption of adult influences into their lives. His teeth had clenched, and he’d turned the page of his book, hoping the interruption would remove itself, ignored for long enough.
“Tell me, boys, what have you read about Parabatai?”
Alaric had looked up in surprise and stared a moment, glancing at Damon before shrugging. “Warriors paired for life,” he said. “The bond makes them stronger. Unstoppable, when they fight together. There’s a ritual. Is that what you mean?”
“That’s only the beginning of it,” Jonas had said, with a disinterested shrug. “But yes.” He’d produced a book and laid it just out of reach on the table. “Parabatai start out best friends, like the two of you, but become so much more. I thought it might interest you. Alaric, when do you turn eighteen?”
“In three months,” Alaric answered, staring longingly at the book; he was intrigued, sure, but also, there were so few books left in the entire building that he’d never read that he was salivating internally at the thought.
“Well.” Jonas stood, smoothing down the front of his jacket. “If it’s something that interests you, there isn’t much time. Have a look at the book, see what you think.”
What he didn’t say, was:
Parabatai can never fall in love, never be together, or they’re cursed.
He was reasonably sure Damon and Alaric had no idea that was what they’d been doing, the last two years. Until they started to spend more time outside the Institute they were so limited in their understanding of the world, and on material they could draw on to make sense of it. They didn’t know their endless training was a dance, or that the nights they shared Alaric’s bed would come to mean something very different once they realized that marriage wasn’t solely an institution to further political alliances and produce children. He didn’t tell them the lack of youngsters was weakening the clave, and the Institute, which endangered the city, and that in the absence of five young warriors two Parabatai would do. He didn’t tell them that if – no, when one died the other would wish they’d gone too, that their souls would be glued tight together until that moment passed, at which point the pain of loss would be so much worse than any physical sensation either one of them could experience in the meantime.
No. He’d suffered alone since his Parabatai had died, twenty years ago. No one had warned him. No one had told him that the words were more than words. Why should he tell these two?
Looking at them sharing their little looks and their loaded silences and their jibes and insults filled him with envy and rage and sometimes a hatred he didn’t want to examine too closely.
Let them decide for themselves.
Damon and Alaric didn’t grow up together but three days before Alaric’s eighteenth birthday, they held each other’s hands, looked into each other’s eyes, and pledged their souls to one another. They drew the runes that would link them for life and make it possible for them to feel each other even at a great distance. They made their promises, and drew runes on each other that shone like the sun and then cemented their bond forever; and in that moment, they both experienced a joy, and a feeling of utter safety, that neither would ever be able to explain.
––
Things didn’t seem different. Married in every way but one, their lives barely changed. They began to leave the Institute more often, in the company of the older clave members, fighting the demons that were doing their best to take over the city. They heard the whispers. People admired them and envied them, saw them as almost mystical, even in their world of magic. And they loved it, fighting with smiles on their faces and their backs almost pressed together, as if they had eight arms, twelve, instead of four between them.
And more. It was so easy to disappear from the Institute, once they knew how. After so many years cooped up with no one but adults for company, adults who seemed to start every sentence with either a deep sigh, or ‘don’t you have work you should be doing?’, the Downworlder bars were thrilling. Older Shadowhunters were generally disdained but until they’d proven otherwise, the young ones were generally assumed to be cool. Damon and Alaric discovered the glory of drunkenness, the thrill of magic performed for its own sake, the sheer exuberance of life lived where no one ever said ‘calm down’ until after the first few punches were thrown.
Damon was eighteen years old, and Alaric was nineteen, when a pretty vampire girl sidled up to Damon at a bar and asked how long he’d been with Alaric.
“Since I was fourteen. Whiskey,” he called, holding up a pair of empty jars.
“Early start for a couple of nice Shadowhunter boys like yourselves.”
Damon glanced at her, briefly, wondering how old she was. Fifty? Five hundred? She looked about twenty-five but then, they all did. He looked over his shoulder at Alaric, who was engaged in what was probably a painfully dull conversation about armor with some Seelie guy whose wrist cuffs had intrigued Alaric the last time they’d been here. Still he smiled – proper smile, not a smirk, because Alaric looked so serious, leaning in, listening hard, pointing to some feature or another. Sort of gorgeous, but he always was.
Fucking nerd. No one would ever guess he fought like a ballerina rhinoceros, as elegant as he was powerful.
“Not really. I hadn’t had much training then. Ric’s had a blade in his hand since he was about a month old, I think.”
“Oh,” said the vampire. “I meant, how long have you been together?”
“Parabatai? A year. Over a year.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why are you asking?”
“Parabatai?” She looked at Alaric, whose eyes had begun to wander, looking for Damon; and back at Damon, so determined to get back to him, and she laughed. “My apologies, dear. I thought you were a couple.”
Damon stared at her for a good five seconds, too irritated to find a good comeback, one of his famous cutting comments that might knock her fangs out of her head. His head swam. He looked across at where Alaric was beckoning him, half a smile on his face, and let himself ask a question that had never crossed his mind, in four years;
Was he in love with Alaric?
Alaric beckoned him impatiently, a smile on his face that few ever saw but Damon. Sort of indulgent. Damon saw where the runes on his neck crept out of his shirt. They were there for a reason, but on Alaric, they were attractive, too, made him look fierce. Those bright eyes, the hazel, a thousand specks of light, eyes Damon looked at a thousand times a day, sparkling in amusement or flashing in anger. Even stupid Alaric’s stupid hair he wouldn’t cut any other way because he was obviously stupid, hair Damon sort of wanted to pull, some days.
Was he in love with Alaric?
Alaric was looking at him like he sort of wanted a drink and mostly wanted Damon on hand.
Oh,
fuck.
––
They were both smacked over the back of their respective heads when they staggered back to the Institute in the early hours of the morning, but people expected a little rebellion. They’d all done it themselves. They were sent to bed with a warning not to wake anyone up if they didn’t want to spend the next month doing everyone’s cleaning duties on top of their own, and Rowena, the woman with the able smacking hand and better threats watched with amusement and a little envy as they clung to each other, trying not to bounce off walls as they found their sleeping quarters.
It didn’t happen often, anymore. But stripped down to boxer briefs Damon slipped into bed alongside Alaric and snugged against his side, knowing that just as he’d done it probably two hundred times before, Alaric would wrap an arm around him and they’d be asleep in seconds. And both of them were drunk enough so it would have taken very few seconds indeed. But Damon’s head was spinning, and not only with the alcohol.
“I can feel you staring at me.” Alaric rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. “Creepy.”
Damon had nothing to say to that. He rested his head on Alaric’s chest and stared out of the window. It was a night so cool and crisp that you could actually see a few of the brighter stars, the few that permeated the city glow. Pretty.
“Stop squirming.”
“I’m not squirming,” Damon snarled, squirming. He lifted himself up onto one elbow, and Alaric opened his eyes.
“What?”
Damon leaned in without letting his head take another second to consider the consequences, and pressed his lips to Alaric’s.
Neither of them were what you would call experienced. Such a sheltered life, in the Institute. Violence and death, sure, blades and blood and losing people they cared about, those things were second nature, but it was only in the last year, visiting the Downworlder bars that either of them had experienced sexual intimacy, strangely anticlimactic first times with people whose faces they couldn’t quite remember a week or more later. Very little experience to speak of. But they both knew, the moment their lips touched, that this was something different.
Their mouths were made to fit together. They moved like they’d been kissing for years. When Damon nudged Alaric’s lips apart Alaric took his tongue inside his mouth and murmured some strange untranslatable plea, and just as Damon pressed his hand to Alaric’s face, Alaric halted the kiss.
“We can’t,” he said, dully, clenching his eyes shut. The sound of two hearts breaking was deadened between the stone walls of their shared bedroom.
“I think I need my own room again,” Damon answered, stomach in knots as he settled into a drunken sleep.
––
They were expected to marry, of course. They were old enough.
Alaric played his part. He dated. Seriously, a couple of times; a woman from the Geneva clave came to stay in Boston for a month and he took her out to dinners, took her out dancing; Damon went along with them, with very different intentions.
(He never failed to get himself laid when he wanted to, and most of the time, Damon wanted to. Sex was a drug, dulling his senses, emptying out his head and letting him live in his body for as long as there were hands on it, whether he was pinned to a wall being stuffed full of warlock cock or luxuriating in the bed of some Seelie girl for a glorious hour or two.)
When Ingrid went home disappointed at the end of the month, not a word was said. After all, Alaric was only twenty, there was time.
Nothing else changed between Damon and Alaric. They fought as one, they trained as one, and when need arose they studied as one. Still joined at the hip, except when Damon’s hips were busy elsewhere.
Suitor number two arrived from Berlin the week Alaric turned twenty-one, and this time, it seemed she might stick. Alaric liked her. He wasn’t sure he loved her, but it seemed like a foreign concept; most married couples didn’t even seem to tolerate each other well, his own parents aside. But she left two months later without a word.
Meanwhile, Damon amused himself with vampires, faeries, warlocks, learning to contort into impossible positions and last for hours with just a little magic or a hastily improvised rune. Funny how no one suggested they should try to find him a wife. If he hadn’t been Alaric’s parabatai, if they hadn’t been so completely unstoppable when fighting side by side or back to back Alaric was afraid they might have asked him to leave. Jonas seemed satisfied in a way Alaric never learned to understand.
Alaric read late into the night, only sleeping when he heard Damon’s door, across the corridor, open and then click shut. He’d feel his stomach turn, wondering whose bed Damon had left, glad he had the sense never to bring anyone back to the Institute. He’d wait to hear the wooden bed frame groan quietly under Damon’s weight, set his book aside and snuff out the light, trying to work out when, exactly, this had all gone so fucking wrong.
He missed the nights they slept together. But it had been innocent, and there was nothing innocent about the way Alaric felt at twenty-one. He fantasized about Damon’s body rolling beneath him, that able mouth on him; he still took his stele and drew Damon’s runes, when he needed to. The distraction of the warm skin beneath his fingers made him wish there was someone else who could do it.
But he accepted it.
No other choice.
––
Jonas took Alaric aside one afternoon on the guise of going through a police report he had obtained from a Downworlder, detective in the Boston PD who was investigating a string of murders which looked to be the work of a vampire, or maybe a group of them. It was odd. Alaric didn’t like Jonas, and trusted him even less. He’d never quite shaken the feeling that Jonas had engineered this entire thing, deliberately keeping him and Damon apart. From the moment he’d sat down with his book that afternoon in the library. Had he known what he was doing?
Alaric only knew one thing, for sure. If he, himself, had realized then what he now knew to be true – that he was in love with Damon, that he always had been, and that they would die an inch apart and a world apart and never know what it was like to be truly loved – he would have thrown the book back in the old man’s face.
“By the way,” Jonas said, closing the file with a flourish once it had been agreed that Damon and Alaric would head out into the streets the following night and see what they could find out, “a dear friend of mine in the San Francisco clave has a granddaughter about your age. She’ll be spending some time here with us. I’d love for you to show her around Boston.”
“I’d be happy to,” Alaric said, dutifully, but crossed his arms over his body. “But I won’t marry her.”
Jonas scoffed. “Who said anything about marriage? And you could do worse, you know – she’s a beautiful girl, whip smart…”
“Jonas,” he said. “Sir. I will never marry. Never. You can stop. Understand? You can parade these girls through here every couple of months and I’ll disappoint every one of them. I’ll never marry.”
A battle of the wills.
“You know, family duty still matters a great deal here. Your family name…”
“Yeah, you should talk about that with my father. Funny thing is… he married my mother for love. And he doesn’t expect anything different from me. He doesn’t care if this is the end of the Saltzman line. He doesn’t. He’d rather we stop treating Downworlders like something you’d scrape off your shoe, teach them to fight, let them belong, grow our ranks that way, than force me into a loveless marriage for the sake of a couple of children.” He took a step forward. “It might have taken me a few years but I know what you did to me. And Damon.”
Jonas narrowed his eyes. “The way I remember it, you jumped at the chance to bind your name to his. I’ve never seen two young men study so hard in all my life. A pity Damon hasn’t dedicated himself to anything else with such vigor since.”
Alaric felt impotent tears burn his eyes. Yeah, easy to twist it that way. But he knew. “I know what you did. And there is nothing I can do about it now. But know this – you might have kept us apart. But I’ll love him my whole life.”
Alaric turned on his heel and headed for the door, slamming it so hard something broke inside the mechanism and it sprang back, a piece of metal bouncing off the ground. Another day it might have brought some measure of satisfaction, but that day, it couldn’t.
He felt eyes burning into the back of his head as he marched through the control room. No one approached him.
Alaric found the training room empty and spent a good ninety minutes pounding the crap out of the heavy bag, skipping rope until his calves screamed in three forgotten languages, and doing drills with a seraph blade until the sweat burned his eyes so badly the tears were forgotten.
––
Vampires made excellent lovers, as long as you didn’t mind making a donation, and Damon loved to bare his throat. The danger, he supposed. He loved the feeling of his skin parting beneath sharp fangs, the heat, the panic.
The vampire who had Damon pinned to the mattress right then was a little unusual in that this was not the first time Damon had slept with him; could have been seven or eight times, possibly, in the last year. Almost certainly part of it was the fact he was tall and broad with dirty blond hair and hazel eyes (although beyond the rough description he didn’t look all that much like Alaric). It was other things. He murmured beautiful words into Damon’s ear with a voice that was ragged and low and as masculine as Alaric’s was. It was easy to close his eyes and pretend. He fucked like he owned Damon, like he’d never be satisfied with anyone else, but the added bonus was that when they were done they were done and there was no small talk. That was fun. Goodbye. See you around.
Although, had to be said; Damon wasn’t picky. Repeats were rare but they happened; the pretty Seelie girl with the oversized green eyes and the heavy breasts who liked to fuck half-clothed against a wall, and told Damon he reminded her of a lover she’d lost a good forty years before. A five hundred year old warlock who had learned more tricks with his tongue in that time that Damon had thought possible, and who always had the best drugs. There were plenty of warm bodies (and some that were not warm so much as available). And while Damon’s body was flooded with hormones he could spend minutes at a time not thinking about what he’d lost.
Like Alaric, he worked hard not to let things change too much between them; that was half the point of these little excursions. Sated, he could fight by Alaric’s side or endure marathon training sessions, the scent of sweat and musk and the grin that hard exercise always put on Alaric’s face. Without it, he pined.
Fuuuuuuuuck. He pined anyway.
He snuck into the Institute sometime around four in the morning and found, as expected, a light on in Alaric’s room, the crack under the door bright. He didn’t bother knocking, just let himself in. Alaric grinned, looking up from his book for a second.
“You look satisfied with yourself,” he said, reaching for a bookmark. He always went to bed after Damon was home. It was the reason Damon never stayed out overnight. Damon stretched out on the bed alongside Alaric, with a little waggle of his eyebrows, and leaned in close enough to kiss.
But he didn’t, and he wouldn’t, and Alaric knew he wouldn’t.
“That vampire again. Elijah something or other. Jealous?”
Alaric grinned lopsidedly. “Nope. Never wanted to sleep with a vampire.”
Damon shrugged. They both knew that wasn’t what he was talking about. Didn’t matter. This was their affair. They spoke in two meanings and they looked and they wanted and they never touched. They knew, but they never spoke of what they knew.
Parabatai who fell in love were cursed.
Damon stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head. Alaric put his book on the dresser. “You smell like ass,” he complained. “And whatever home-distilled crap you were showering in earlier. You know you’re supposed to just drink it, right?”
“My bad.”
“If you think you’re sleeping in here, think again.”
Damon gave a weak smile, but said nothing. He didn’t need to. They both missed it, those days when it was nothing at all to sleep curled up like children in a cot. They were men, now. Alaric was the tallest man in the Institute, almost in the Clave. They were broad and strong from intense daily physical preparation for the only job that would ever matter. If they slept in the same bed… it wouldn’t be what it had been. That kind of closeness was dangerous. And neither would acknowledge it, which didn’t make it any less true;
Neither was afraid of dying. They were each afraid of watching the other die in their arms.
They were both afraid of being the one left alone. It didn’t matter how selfish that was.
Damon gave a brave, slutty wink and peeled himself off Alaric’s bed, crossing the room to the door. He put his hand on the knob, and paused.
“Did you know?”
“Know what?” Alaric sat up, arms linked loosely around his knees, his chest bare. He felt Damon look, hungry and miserable.
“Before we… before the ritual. Did you know?”
The moment was heavy between them, and Damon regretted saying one single word. But he had to know. Alaric’s face fell, and he looked away for a moment.
But he forced himself to meet Damon’s eyes again, fingers pressed to his Parabatai rune.
“If I’d known,” he promised, his jaw working beneath the skin, rage and love warring on his face for a moment, “I never would have gone through with it.”
––
Five years passed, and nothing changed. The way things were, the way they’d always been; if anything, they were more so. Alaric lived like a monk, almost. Went out drinking with Damon, sure, but he left when Damon’s eye had caught on someone because he couldn’t watch the next steps. He slept alone, untouched by anyone but his own hand, because he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone touching him if that person wasn’t Damon. Damon couldn’t bear not to be touched. His exploits became legendary. His link with Alaric was all that kept him safe in the Clave. Together they were unstoppable, feared, pushing back waves of demons that flooded into the city, keeping the place safe, or at least somewhat safer. The Institute started to swell at the seams as defeat after defeat seemed to do nothing but increase the determination of the demons to overrun its borders. Shadowhunters came from other parts of the country, even the world. Necessary, yes.
Comfortable?
“You have to be fucking kidding me, Jonas,” Alaric spat.
“Two unmarried men, Parabatai? When the Clave was bigger you would never have had your own rooms to start with. It suited you for five years, you’ll manage again. Does Damon even sleep? In his own bed, I mean, I know he doesn’t mind sullying himself in the beds of vampires and werewolves…”
Alaric felt his elbow tense, ready to break the old man’s jaw, and at the same time he felt Damon pull him back, drag him from the room. Alaric was barely aware of it, barely conscious of anything but the red tint over his eyes until the moment he hit the practice mats in the training room, thrown across the floor like a bag of bricks. He leapt to his feet, hands curved into fists at his sides, and Damon was instantly tense, reflecting his posture.
“You fucking idiot,” he snarled. “You wanna get thrown out of here?”
“They did this,” Alaric growled back. “They did this to us. Everyone knows Jonas… he knew, Damon, he knew and he did it anyway. To keep us apart and to make us warriors first before we could be anything else. So we’d belong to the Clave before we belonged to each other. And it’s been so fucking hard…”
Damon spat. “You think I don’t know that? You think it’s been easy for me?”
“I think you’ve fucked your way through the Seelie court and more than half the Downworlders in the city, while I lie in bed and night and wait to hear you come home! You seem to be doing just fine. It’s not the same and you know it.”
“I know you nearly got yourself arrested and charged with assault at the thought of sharing a room with me again. Want to make it any clearer how little you want to share a bed? Huh? Or you could beat me up the way you nearly beat old Jonas up, see if that makes you feel any better. You think, Ric? You tell me.”
Alaric took a threatening step forward. “Don’t you dare try to tell me what I want, Damon…”
“No, I’ll tell you what you are. You’re a coward.”
Alaric felt heat rise to his cheeks. “A coward.”
“You’re a fucking coward. You hear that parabatai who fall in love are cursed and you just wash your hands of it. You’ve read every book in the Institute at least twice. What’s the curse, Ric? Have you ever bothered to find out?”
“Someone dies, Damon, someone always dies –”
“We’re warriors, Ric! Someone dies anyway! What sort of life expectancy does a warrior have? You nearly got killed last month, and I would never have known what it was like to make love to you. Fuck the curse.”
“Oh, you… we made promises, Damon. To the Clave, to each other. To the fucking Host. Do you have no honor at all?”
“Honor? Who gives a shit about honor? You blame Jonas for this – was he acting honorably?”
“No, and we’re better than that.”
Damon swore and spat and came closer, balling his hands in Alaric’s shirt, pushing him against the wall. “Maybe you’re better than that,” he said, not even bothering to keep his voice down. “But I’m not. I’m not. I don’t care about the fucking curse. I love you and I’d risk it but you won’t.”
Alaric wouldn’t, couldn’t defend himself; couldn’t lift a hand against Damon. For a moment he imagined busting Damon’s lip, watching blood drip down his chin, but he couldn’t do it. He barely even tried to push him away.
“Damon, don’t.”
“Did you know?”
Alaric clenched his eyes shut. “How many times have you asked me that?”
“Not an answer, Alaric. Did you know? How we felt? Before we did the ritual?”
“No. I don’t know!”
“Why did you do it?” Damon’s eyes were dark and angry, a prickly red coloring his cheekbones.
“Because I wanted to make sure you couldn’t leave! Why did you do it?”
“Because I wanted to make sure you couldn’t ask me to!”
They stared at each other for a long moment, both breathing hard.
And suddenly Alaric had one hand wrapped around the back of Damon’s neck, dragging him in. His other arm curled around Damon's waist so he was almost bent over backwards with the force of the kiss. Rich and vicious enough so Alaric was sure he tasted copper. Their tongues brushed together, and Damon let out an unexpectedly possessive growl, fingers slipping beneath the hem of Alaric’s shirt, hungry for the skin he hadn’t touched in years, and barely seen, unless Alaric was bleeding and being tended to by a healer.
Damon’s back hit the practice mat and he rolled, pinning Alaric beneath him, one knee nudging Alaric's thighs apart, finally giving them both something to rut against. Alaric almost felt himself black out, as Damon’s mouth found his throat. How long had it been since anyone had touched him? Years, by then. He was hard, straining in his pants. Damon felt clean for the first time since he’d kissed Alaric for the first time and been so summarily rejected. Every hand that had ever touched him, kneaded his skin, every one of those shadows and imprints fell away as Alaric’s hands moved over him.
“We can’t…”
“Don’t even start that crap, Ric, we’re doing this.”
“Not in the fucking gymnasium, you idiot.”
Damon snickered against Alaric’s mouth, and stopped when Alaric rolled them again, heaving with exertion, his mouth already red and sore. It was the last moment either of them had to change their minds.
Neither did.
“My room,” Alaric said, with a nod, when he trusted himself to speak.
“Our room,” Damon answered, and closed his eyes as their foreheads met.
––
Damon had never been kissed so thoroughly, or so creatively; there didn’t seem to be any part of his body that wasn’t on fire. Maybe Alaric hadn’t had a lot of practice but he knew what he was doing, or maybe it was just because it was Alaric. Maybe just because it was the two of them, and there were exactly where they were supposed to be, for the first time in too many years. They weren’t infatuated kids. They were men who’d been kept pried apart for too long.
Damon wriggled out of his jeans with a breath of relief that only lasted as long as it took Alaric to get a hand wrapped around his cock, at which point relief was replaced with desperation as he fucked into the grip.
Moments later Alaric’s mouth replaced his hand, while the hand slipped beneath Damon's thigh, slippery fingers palpating his hole, and Damon almost blacked out. The minute it had taken him to slip into his own bedroom and find the lube had been a minute well-spent.
Alaric sensed right on time that Damon was close to finishing, and pulled off, ruined red mouth curving almost into a smile as Damon struggled to roll onto his stomach.
“This might be the only…”
“Ugh, shut up, Ric,” Damon snarled, as he felt his body stretch around Alaric’s cock. “I’m not planning to let you out of bed for the next thirty years. This isn’t the only time.”
“If it is,” Alaric groaned, pushing until he was pressed snugly against Damon’s ass, “it will have been worth it.”
“You always talk this much in bed?”
“I don’t know,” Alaric said, drawing his hips back, pulling out part of the way, torturously slow. “I can’t remember.”
“Fine, do you talk this much while you masturbate?”
Alaric only snickered as he slammed back in, reaching out to cover Damon’s hand with his own. He began to move in earnest. For a moment, almost out of habit, Damon started to let himself drift off, until he felt Alaric’s stubbled chin scratch over his shoulder, and his heart began to race again.
He didn’t need to be anesthetized; for the first time in years he actually wanted to be awake.
“You’re right,” Alaric murmured, his voice remarkably quiet and gentle considering the pounding he was delivering. Damon curled his body back, and threaded his fingers through Alaric’s. “Not once. I’m not going back on this.”
“Good. Now shut up and fuck me harder.”
Alaric obliged, cheerfully, nipping at Damon’s shoulder as they both approached climax.
––
Later, when they were both sated and spent, they lay bonelessly on the unmade bed, cold sun streaming through the window, and breathed each other’s air.
“D’you think we’ll know? Whether the curse thing is real or not?”
Alaric shrugged. “I thought you didn’t care.” He tucked his arm tighter around Damon’s body. Amazing how he’d missed the simple intimacy of their bodies pressed together, in all the years they’d so carefully kept each other at arm’s length. Damon’s head rested on Alaric’s chest and he wondered if he’d ever felt affection like this, and if he could live without it now that he knew. He knew he couldn’t let other hands press against his skin or other lips find his mouth, or sleep alone in a cold bed while Alaric breathed elsewhere.
If they were cursed, they were both cursed, and neither cared.