viii

Cerise has many things she can pride herself in and often one of those things is her calm attitude often dependent on her control over her hot temperament. Damon, however, has proved himself to be multiple times the one to shatter every single façade she has created and making her do rash decisions.

Tonight is no exception.

After she lets out the insult and pushes him, she spares no moment to advance towards him and punch his chest, scratch his face and more or less pull his hair. She is beyond furious. Cerise absolutely hates being at the mercy of anybody and if that somebody turns out to be one of the persons she hates, it doesn’t end well. Now, if she is to think about her actions, they are reckless and stupid, especially since she has nothing made out of wood on her and the man could easily snap her in half if he wishes to. Her ego and pride are however bigger than the rational side of her and tonight is all about being anything but the person she wants to paint herself as.

She slaps and punches, scratches and feels some of his blood getting under her long nails and she shudders slightly at the thought of having dried blood all over her hands. She kicks and screams and calls him all the names under the sun and she doesn’t know if this fight is even about Damon any more or if he was just the last straw that ultimately led to her exploding and letting out all the pent-up frustrations and emotions out and onto him. She has no idea if he did anything at all, perhaps tried to make her stop her mistreatment on him, maybe he was amused by her antics and simply enjoyed a show, her actions not exactly hurting him, but she has a vague memory of arms coming around her frame and she pushing them off in her rampant of rage. In the end, she’s still got that hunter blood inside of her, still knows the ways of the wild and how to protect herself from those alike him and it has never changed.

After some minutes after her outburst, she is bent over, hands on her knees, chest raising up and down furiously while trying to get her lungs to stop squeezing so hard, to get some of the much-need air into her system and to look over the damage and make an assumption of the treatment she needs to get back on her legs. She wonders what in the world is she going to tell Caroline if there are some obvious wounds from the fight. How in the world do you explain this?

She remains in that position a few more moments, basking in the silence between them and trying to simply focus on her breathing rather than on anything else, completely ignoring the fact that this is Damon’s best shot at taking her by surprise and return the favor and fuck her up beyond repair. You never, ever get distracted when you deal with a supernatural creature who is notorious for having a foul temperament with outbursts of psychosis. She doesn’t give a shit right now.

She somehow finds it in her power to straighten her back, to let her arms drop by her side and raise her head to stare at Damon and appraise the damage done on the man and after seconds of trying to narrow her eyes perfectly to take every single detail in—the dim light of the lamps situated all along the sidewalk doing her no good—she finds something so bloody amusing, something unknown and hidden and only for her to see that the surprise makes her throw her head back and laugh loudly at it, tears brimming the corners of her eyes. It’s a mad laughter, the kind that announces a fast-approaching breakdown she knows she will be hopeless in front of. But she laughs, laughs and laughs and brings her arms over her head before covering her face with her hands and wiping the few tears that have rolled down her cheeks, looking at him and trying to control herself and then bursting out in laughter again. Damon does nothing, simply because this is foreign to him and while he is pretty good with dealing with women, he absolutely does not know how to handle the nutjobs. Besides, it looks like she’s crying and he isn’t exactly the perfect person to comfort somebody who does so. So he opts to simply shut the fuck up and watch her, unmoving, and be prepared to do something if she decides to do something reckless that will endanger her life.

He doesn’t fancy her or like her all that much, but Caroline cares for her and they already have enough problems on their plate to consider avoiding having to explain her disappearance to the blonde and to Brandon who, he is sure, will more or less turn the town upside down in search for her. Besides, if he has to be completely honest—he finds her interesting. Interesting enough not to drain her of her blood and leave her on the side of the road, at least. She makes things more intriguing. She’s new, untouched land and he hasn’t figured her out yet to be able to allow her to face her demise yet.

Cerise doesn’t stop laughing. She doesn’t stop her entire charade at all, because something funny happens again in that pretty little head of hers and she’s moving around in circles, bending herself over and continuing that mad thing of hers. It’s a wonder people five streets away from them haven’t come here to see what in the world is happening and exactly who is being slaughtered.

But the brunette stops after a while, when the last ounce of energy leaves her body like the exhaling of nicotine, leaving her completely exhausted and spent and rooted to one spot, looking straight ahead and into Damon’s eyes without actually looking at him and the man is quite spooked by the outcome, mouth dry and mind blank, with absolutely nothing to say. So he stays in front of her unmoving, silent and awaiting for another outburst or anything from her part, but gets nothing and he doesn’t even know what exactly made him think for even a second that she’d say anything after that charade of hers. Instead, she sighs, shaking her head and raising her hands up and in front of her as if to stop him from going after her or talking to her and turns around on her heels, continuing on walking in the direction of Caroline’s house without as much as an apology or explanation for her actions. It leaves Damon completely unaware of what his next move and confused as hell, and he doesn’t like being left in the dark at all.

He allows her to walk away from him, however, to put some distance between them and give her the impression that he is going to leave it at that and once he is out of his vision, he chuckles, deciding that being a vampire surely uses its purpose some times, especially when he needs the element of surprise to be in his favour and thus, in less than five seconds, he is sitting down on the first steps of the porch, waiting patiently for Cerise to reach the house and finally hold that discussion. Seems like deciding against joining the rest of the gang at the Grill was a good decision.

//

Cerise’s brain process nothing but the harsh wind that rolls off the ground, from up north and whips her cheeks harshly, her whole face flushing red. Her hands make no movement of going up to her face and pushing the locks away from her eyes as she instead squints them, trying to at least make out the forms of the things she could possibly run into because of her lack of sight, hoping she could avoid them and get no bruises out of the encounter.