closed] [i'm a word that no one ever wants to say

Damon Salvatore ends up in Teleios after the end of Chicago, after too many decades in a world of hell where he lost track of himself and lost track of the meaning of anything. They make you pay for everything, and he has plenty to pay for. It was no less than he deserves so he doesn't talk about it.

He's grown more than any Damon does back in Mystic Falls, but he still has the typical Damon charm, the snark to it.

He arrives to this city to find Elena has married Stefan. Stefan and Elena are married. Husband and wife. They. are. together. Yes.

Klaus has managed to have a baby (the poor child, who the hell gave that psychopath the ability to reproduce?).

And also, Elena and Stefan are married. Did he mention that part? She's training to be a doctor, and it makes all too much sense. Also, she doesn't know him. At all. After missing her for all those decades, after the two years they spent in Chicago together looking out for each other and becoming best friends, it's painful. It's more painful than he can put to words so he doesn't in true Damon fashion. Mostly, they're both happy and plenty happy without him which is also not surprising so he stays out of their way.

He's at the bar getting served by some guardian angel who barely looks old enough to drink and sends him a jackass comment when Damon mentions this, but he is getting older and older by decades now.

Then he hears it.

There's an utterly familiar British accent as she orders her usual drink like she always has. She would have noticed him by now. Has she? He doesn't know. She is the type to always be so careful, to know who all was in the room before she entered it. She's bad ass and classy and better than him. They were both so guarded about everything. Neither of them dug in deeper than they had to. They enjoyed each other. They trusted each other. They didn't push, but they had incredible sex and spent time together, and he cared enough to try to protect her from what chased her, and she was one of the closest friends he made in that damned city which seems thousands of years ago now.

Damon would never admit it but there is a pang of fear. He has already gone through this once. Elena did not recognize him. She did not know the years and years they had lived together. Even Stefan, he barely understood, and never has he felt farther away from them both. He can't do this again.

"Looks like you could fuckin' use it." The boy behind the bar fills up his drink more before he walks off to kiss the hell out of Sarah (who also doesn't recognize him despite the fact he still remembers clearly what her panties look like).

Damon lifts the glass in toast to the kid and then downs it completely before he walks over to her, saunters over really. He is trying to be more like he was and less like he is. "Bela Talbot."

He breathes out her name, ignores the panic.

She turns, and he still can't figure out if she recognizes him or not. In a moment of panic, he moves in, grabbing her face with his hands and kissing her hard before she can speak out loud and ask Who the hell are you? It feels so intensely familiar. It aches through his chest. Hope. Like something he thought he'd broken the neck of a long time ago and buried deep.

Hope has a habit of being shattered.

As long as he's kissing her, it can't be shattered this time so his mouth parts further over her own, deepening the kiss.

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Bela isn't a girl who's used to things going her way. After Chicago, where most could argue she had it too well, she finds herself dumped in Teleios where all of her familiar faces fail to recognize her, and all of her pillars of support are gone. She's building herself up from scratch, again, and while she didn't dislike it the first time, this time it seems like a waste when the only clear pattern is that she's going to lose it all again.

Still, she tries. She goes out to bars, attempts to be social and for the most part blends into the background. That is, when strangers aren't accosting her out of nowhere.

She barely has a chance to respond to the sound of the name before suddenly someone is kissing her, and her fight-or-flight kicks in. She tenses at the assault, hands coming up to push at his shoulders, fingers digging into the meat of his shoulders until she gets the leverage to push him back, her hand flying across his face with a smack!

It isn't until after her hand connects with his skin that she recognizes the familiarity of the kiss. All the pieces fall into place as her hand comes to cover her mouth, staring at him in shock more than anything else, because it shouldn't be possible. It shouldn't be something she gets to regain, no matter how much this place is supposed to be perfect.

"Oh my God."

But he's there. He's real. And he called her Bela before he kissed her, not Rose. The realization that it is in fact her Damon comes hard and fast, and she doesn't give him much of a chance to be annoyed with her for slapping him. Her hands find his shirt as she draws him back in again, kissing him soundly for existing, and hoping that he won't take it too personally.

She'll probably never live it down, but that's a topic they can sort out for themselves later.

It's a good slap. Damon has been slapped many times in his hundreds of years, and this is one of those which would leave a mark if he didn't heal so fast. He bites down on his own tongue, and he feels the well of certainty that she has no idea who he is. It's like this eruption of pain within his chest. His face still stings, but he offers her a snarky smirk like always.

Pain is never acknowledged even when it is felt.

He's about to let a snarky comment come out of his mouth when she suddenly responds with an Oh my God, which he is so far from suspecting that he takes an unsteady step backwards.

Damon lets out a sound into her mouth once she draws him back in and kisses him soundly. His face still stings, but he can only guess either she realized after slapping him that his kiss was that amazing that she wanted another... or (and this one is harder to wrap his head around), it's his Bela.

His hand drags up her back as he deepens the kiss against her mouth, pressing her back against the bar, very openly kissing her. He's not quite ready to discover which it is.

Its his Bela.

His Bela, who thought she was never going to see him again. His Bela who ran into so many familiar faces who didn't know her and was almost certain that she was never going to see him again. That was the choice she made after all, and she wasn't looking to be teased with a carbon copy.

But there he is, and here she is, and after a moment, the urgency of the kiss fades to something softer, something with more affection than desperation and by the time she pulls back to actually look at him, she's trying not to be too emotional about the whole thing.

"Took you long enough."

Damon's mouth parts as he stares at her once they have pulled away from the kiss which was urgent and intense. He swallows because he understands. He understands seeing face after face only to lack the recognition. Even his own brother, he recognizes him but he thinks they are back on square one when they are not, when they went through hell to get to where they are today. He doesn't even know where to begin with Elena who was his best friend in Chicago, who he went through a lot with. Here she doesn't have any idea who he is, and he doesn't know how to start again (and knows he probably shouldn't because he's not any good for anyone).

Then he sees Bela. One of the only people he has ever trusted, one of his only friends with benefits and complications and needs. His gaze moves from her mouth up to her gaze again. He has lived for another hundred years since the last time he saw her, and so it is slowly that his hand lifts to frame her face like he doesn't believe in any of this.

"...you know me."

It's half question, half amazed statement. He'd curse at himself for the emotions if he were thinking more clearly but this is- It hardly seems real.

It hasn't been quite that long for her, but she's not a vampire so it feels like it's been long enough. Months of people filtering in and out of this place - some recognize her, some don't, for some that's good, for others it isn't. But here's Damon, exactly as he's supposed to be, and there's still a part of her that things it's too good to be true.

(She knows it is. The Two will yank him back out again as soon as he's served his purpose in getting her hopes up and making her happy for a short period of time and he'll forget this place entirely.

For once in her life, however, she doesn't really care.)

She nods in response to his statement. "Last time I saw you was just before Chicago ended." They didn't say goodbye, just because that's not the kind of people they were and they were going their separate ways, but she at least got to see him that one last time.

And now he's here.

Damon lets out the breath trapped up in his lungs as he stares at her. His gaze is arrested to this person who knows him. He feels the weight of all those years in every inch of him, and he doesn't know that he has energy to start anew in so many ways, but then there's this.

This makes sense.

This is his and hers, and it was simple and theirs.

"Last time I saw you too. Last time I saw anybody I knew," he says and now he's ordering a drink before he tugs her gently by the arm back to some dark corner of the bar where no one will see them. "How long have you been here?"

He's relatively new. He still hasn't put the pieces together about how this place works.

Bela follows his lead easily, trusting that he's not going to lead her into certain death, or some other kind of sudden but inevitable betrayal. They had a lot to catch up on, on both sides, but mostly she's just glad to see him above all else.

"Almost a year," she says with a shrug. "It's taken some ... adjusting, but as far as universes I could have landed in, it's not completely awful."

If the rumors are true, she'll be here longer than her natural life will allow, but she's not all that interested in Utopia as it was. She's more looking for an escape.

Damon's really glad to see her too. She knows who he is. She recognizes him, and she hasn't missed out on the years upon years of his life rebuilding something... better than what he would have become in Mystic Falls if he'd stayed there any longer.

Almost a year. It's a long time but some have been here for years.

"Not completely awful?" He smirks lightly though it doesn't quite meet his eyes. He's so grateful to see her he half wants some place more private because all he wants is to kiss her again. "You know how to sell a place, Bela."

She snorts softly, before shaking her head. "It's actually rather pleasant - to the point where it's almost boring. I've been trying to find a way out of here to some of the more interesting realms, but getting an agent to extend that kind of invitation takes quite a bit of patience."

And deciding which agent you want to hitch your horse too. Bela's been caught in bad deals before - she isn't about to do it again.

"Rather pleasant?" Damon grimaces almost as if he is disappointed by that. It's not that he... wants danger, trouble, but anything would be preferable to facing... things he doesn't want to face. Of course, Bela is here. Bela knows him. It might change his outlook on this place drastically.

"I've never been very good at patience. Plus, this feels like a place where if they give you something, you owe them something."

And owing someone with so much power... well.

"Ah, that is only if you don't wait for them to come to you," she grins a bit, because she's paid attention to that. She doesn't want to get caught in any bad deals again. "You bide your time, make the right friends in high places and before you know it, they're the ones coming to you for a favor."

"You've put a lot of thought into this, I see." Damon smirks at her (and the smirk is a little fond but shh don't tell), because it sounds just like her and he's missed her despite himself. It's nothing he can readily or easily admit but a hundred years in a universe that was so hell like, it changes a person.

Even a person like Damon Salvatore.

"How close do you think you are to getting someone to come to you?"

"Hard to say," she says with a sigh. "But I'd say I'm making some progress at least." She then glances back to him with a bit of a smirk. "And until then, I'd say the company has gotten infinitely better."

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closed] [i'm a word that no one ever wants to say

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