A Land of Make Believe

Then she got the rest of it out. Stefan. Klaus. Damon’s expression changed almost imperceptibly, but there was no surprise there. His thumb moved slowly against the back of her neck while he looked at her, and for a second he said nothing. “Yeah.” The word came quietly. “I know Stefan’s with Klaus.” He hated saying it now. Hated the way it sounded after she’d just put herself through God knew what to tell him something he already knew.

Damon had known there was a chance Max would see something bad when she touched it. He’d warned her about that very possibility and then placed the damn thing in her hand anyway because Stefan was his brother and Damon was running out of options. Sitting here now, watching Max struggle to catch her breath, that warning felt less like caution and more like proof that he should have known better. Especially after Klaus.

Damon shifted closer until his knee pressed against hers, his hand leaving her neck only so he could cup the side of her face instead. “Look at me.” There was no sharpness to it, his eyes stayed fixed on hers, giving her something solid to focus on instead of whatever was still rattling around inside her head. “Forget the picture. Forget Stefan for a second.” His breathed out a sharp breath before he added, quieter, “Just stay here.”

He should’ve stopped it before it started. That thought had been chewing through him from the second she tore her hand away. Max had offered. He knew that. She’d looked him directly in the eye and told him she could handle it. Damon hadn’t forced anything on her. None of that mattered much when he remembered Klaus threatening her, using him to get what he wanted from her, putting Max in a position where fear and choice had gotten tangled together until Damon wasn’t sure she’d had much of the latter at all. And then tonight he’d needed something from her, and instead of telling her no, he’d taken what she offered.

Damon glanced toward the photograph before returning to her. His fingers shifted against her cheek, brushing a loose strand of hair away from her face. “I knew it could get ugly and I let you do it anyway because I need to find Stefan.” The words tasted bad, but he wasn’t going to dress them up. “That was selfish.” His hand dropped from her face only long enough to reach for the glass of water on the nightstand. Damon pressed it carefully into her hands, keeping his fingers around hers for a moment so she didn’t have to think too hard about holding it. “Drink.” His mouth pulled faintly to one side. “And psychic detective hour is officially over. Terrible program. One star.”

The joke barely had any life in it. His attention kept drifting over her face, checking whether her breathing had slowed, whether that distant look was beginning to leave her eyes. He wanted to ask what else she’d seen. The question was sitting right there, Damon could feel it behind his teeth. Every second Stefan remained with Klaus mattered and Max might have just handed him the first real lead he’d had. He hated that he still wanted it.

“Did you see where they were?” Damon asked eventually, keeping his voice low. The guilt hit almost immediately, visible in the brief tightening of his jaw. He shook his head before she could mistake the question for another request. “I mean something you already saw. Don’t go looking for it again.” His fingers tightened lightly around her knee. “A road sign, a building, a town. Anything that was already there.” He watched her for another moment before adding, “And if you didn’t, you didn’t. That’s it.”

It cost him something to say it. Stefan was out there with Klaus, and Damon knew exactly what Klaus could do to someone once he decided they belonged to him. Every useless hour made the pressure beneath Damon’s ribs worse. He wanted a direction. Something he could chase instead of sitting around imagining what Stefan was doing and how much of himself he was losing in the process but he wasn’t going to wring that answer out of Max. Damon had already watched Klaus turn her fear into leverage once. He wasn’t going to do the same thing just because his reasons were better.

“I need to find him, Max.” His voice had gone quieter. “You know I do.” His gaze dropped for a second, then lifted again. “He’s my brother. He’s an irritating, self-righteous pain in my ass who seems genetically incapable of making my life easy, but he’s my brother.” Damon’s thumb moved slowly against her knee. “But I’m not going to keep feeding you things until something in your head gives me an address.” He leaned over, picked up the photograph and slid it back into the leather case. Whatever care he’d shown the thing earlier was gone now. The clasp snapped shut, and Damon shoved it back into the drawer harder than necessary.

For a moment he stayed turned toward the nightstand, one hand braced against its edge. Guilt sat heavy beneath the anger, and the worst part was that he couldn’t even direct all of it at Klaus. Damon had made this choice tonight. No compulsion. No threat. No ancient hybrid forcing his hand. Just Damon needing something badly enough to let Max take the risk. When he turned back, the hardness in his expression had faded. “And for the record, seeing Klaus again after what he did to you was pretty much the exact opposite of what I wanted out of this.”

Damon moved beside her instead of remaining in front of her, pulling her into him without making a production out of it. One arm wrapped around her shoulders, settling her against his chest while his hand slid into her hair. He held her there, thumb moving absently against the back of her head. Max was his girlfriend. He wasn’t going to sit inches away from her acting like touching her required a formal application when she was shaking beside him. “So Stefan can wait five minutes,” he murmured. It sounded strange coming from him. For days, every minute had felt important. Every lead had been something to chase immediately because standing still meant thinking about what Klaus might be doing with Stefan. Right now, Damon stayed exactly where he was.

“It’s not your fault. I wanted to help.” She’d known what she was signing up for. Maybe she hadn’t known the full extent of it, but she knew it wouldn’t be all sunshine, rainbows, and puppy-dogs. Both hands wrapped around the glass when he handed it to her. Max didn’t trust that it wouldn’t slip right through her shaking fingers. But she did as she was told and took a few small sips of the water, before passing it back to him.

Slowly, her pulse slowed. Her eyes grew more focused. That fear faded into the background until it was nothing more than a low hum of anxiety in the back of her mind. Did you see where they were? That was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” That wasn’t the problem. The problem was figuring out how in the hell she was supposed to interpret what she’d seen into an actual location he could find.

“It’s okay,” she reassured him as she leaned into his hold. “I’m okay. Really. I see bad shit all the time, Damon.” Some of what she’d seen tonight might’ve been different from what she was used to, but it was pretty much more of the same. She just didn’t get into the details of it. (Didn’t tell him just how bad things got sometimes. Didn’t tell him that she’d once watched a man get skinned alive and hadn’t slept for days afterwards. Didn’t try and compare the sight of that to someone’s heart being ripped out of their chest or Damon ripping someone’s throat out with his teeth. She would unpack all that later, when he wasn’t around to witness it.)

“You don’t have to be sorry. I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t think I could handle it.” She took a few extra moments to breathe anyways. Let herself soak up the comfort he was giving and did her best to fully calm back down. Eventually, she pulled out of his arms, took a breath, and then his hands in hers. She didn’t quite meet his eyes. Not yet. Her gaze fell somewhere over his shoulder as it grew distant again—this time, it was a different kind of distant. The kind that came with being lost in thought.

“They were in a bar.” Of that much she was sure. “I think I…” Her brow furrowed. “I’m pretty sure I recognized it, actually. Not from Mystic Falls. From before. Before Virginia. God, what was the name of it…?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to visualize it again. To remember any little detail that would clue her in as to where it was. It wasn’t something she did often, trying to relive a vision. Usually she did her very best to forget about it the second it ended. This was different. This was for Damon.

Not quite a dive bar, but enough of one that no one looked at you twice when you entered. Full of faces that were already forgotten by the time you sat down. Dimly lit but clean, seasoned bartenders that didn’t take any shit, a jukebox in the corner, pool tables, and darts. For all intents and purposes, it was just a regular bar. Nothing to blink twice at.

Except for the big, neon sign behind the bar. Literally. Bright, glowing purple cursive that spelled out the bar’s name, right over the shelves lined with bottles of alcohol.

“Jody’s.” Her eyes snapped back open. “The bar’s called Jody’s. Where’s my phone?” She looked around for a moment, snatching it up once she found it, and started searching. “I think it was in one of the ‘I’ states. Indiana, Idaho…gimme a sec, I’ll know it when I see it.”

It took a few minutes of creative googling, but eventually she held her phone up for Damon to see the bar and its address. “This is it. They’re in Chicago. Or…they will be. I’m not sure when exactly, but they’re going to go to this bar.” She nodded. “I’m positive.”

God, she hoped that was enough. She opened her mouth, only to shut it again, her teeth pressing into her bottom lip, hesitating. She tried again. “I know Stefan’s your brother. I know you have to go after him. And…I know you don’t want me to go with you,” she started slowly. “And I get why. I do. But…I could warn you. If I was there, and something bad was going to happen, I could warn you.” She might be able to keep him from getting hurt.

this is a rp meme it's for roleplay purposes please feel free to reblog it & use it for that purpose, it's what it was made for!

"[Name]."

"[Name.]" (gently)

"I mean it. I want to know."

"I'm worried about you."

"Are you hurt?"

"What happened?"

"Do you need me to come home?"

"Have you eaten anything?"

"That's probably true, but let's get you checked over anyway, alright?"

"I believe you. Let me help, anyway?"

"The shower's running."

"Well, I'm not."

"I miss you."

"Don't."

"I don't believe you."

"I know."

"Will you stay with me?"

"Is that true?"

"That really scared me."

"You're crying."

"You're bleeding."

"Don't move yet."

"It looked bad."

"I brought you some water."

"I called your work to tell them you weren't coming in."

Her answer about words pulled a quieter smile from him. “They do,” he agreed. He had built most of his life around that fact...words could be rearranged, sharpened, softened, or delivered with exactly the right smile until a threat sounded like a joke and a confession sounded meaningless. “Bodies can lie too, if someone spends enough time teaching theirs how. They’re just not nearly as convincing.”

His had betrayed him twice in the last five minutes, after all. Damon watched her lay out the possibilities, each one offered with the same casual shrug. Convenient explanations, and none of them fit. He didn’t answer immediately, his gaze moved over her again, slower this time, no longer pretending he was doing anything other than assessing her.

“Not stupid,” he said first. There was no teasing in the answer. “Stupid people don’t collect information before deciding whether something is a threat. They usually decide based on whether it smiles at them.” And you’re not an adrenaline junkie. You weren’t excited when you decided I was dangerous.” Damon tapped one finger against the cover of his abandoned book. “You didn’t lean closer to see what I might do. You didn’t provoke me. You stayed exactly where you were and kept watching.”

That ruled out curiosity without caution. The last option was almost insulting. “As for having no self-preservation…” Damon looked pointedly toward the position she had chosen in the corner, then back at her. “You have plenty of self-preservation. Yours just doesn’t look like fear.” He leaned forward, forearms resting against the table between them. “So I think it’s both.” The conclusion came easily now. “You’ve met dangerous before. Enough times that you don’t need someone to bare their teeth before you recognize it.” His gaze lowered briefly to the hand resting near her book. “And you’re dangerous enough that recognizing it doesn’t automatically make you leave.”

Damon had known trained fighters. Soldiers, hunters, vampires who had survived long enough to stop wasting movement. Most of them carried it loudly once he knew what to look for...squared shoulders, restless hands, the constant need to establish control over a room. Cass was different. Stillness wasn’t something she forced onto herself. It was where she seemed most comfortable.

His eyes narrowed slightly when he caught the suspicion threaded beneath her curiosity. It wasn’t difficult to understand. Two strangers with sharper instincts than either of them should reasonably possess had found the same forgotten corner. If Damon were in her position, he wouldn’t believe in coincidence either.

“For whatever it’s worth, I didn’t come here looking for you.” He lifted his hand from the book. “I came for silence, found you instead, and made the questionable decision to introduce myself. Everything after that has been a very strange bonus.”

Cassandra Wayne was not dangerous. She had never met dangerous, aside from the few galas she had attended that were interrupted by a Rogue. She was the quiet, shy, adoptive daughter of Bruce Wayne who liked dancing and stuffed animals and fingernail paint. Dangerous was not in Cassandra’s vocabulary.

Cass, on the other hand, had learned every possible way to hurt a man by the time she turned eight. There was blood on her small hands, and she spent every night fighting crime, trying to atone for it. To protect rather than harm. Cass did not blink in the face of danger.

“Makes sense.” His reasoning was logical, she would give him that much. Elbows on the table, she rested her chin in her hands, clearly enjoying herself and their conversation, risky as the subject matter might be. “But then, who is more dangerous?” She was curious to see what he would decide. If he would go the cocky route and immediately say he was, if he would cater to her ego and say she was, or if he would take the question seriously and think on it.

Part of her itched to find out for herself, but getting into a fight with a man she just met, playful though it might be, would not be worth the potential fallout. She needed to avoid drawing extra attention to herself. Really, she should have left the library before ever introducing herself.

Too late now.

She felt a little better, seeing the truth in him when he said he hadn’t been looking for her. That did not mean she was in the clear just yet, but it was something. Then he put his book away and, as the others would say, threw a curveball at her.

(Baseball. Dumb. Too many rules.)

Cass blinked at him, her brow furrowing as her mind slowly worked to process his invitation. Trying to figure out what sort of invitation it was. Attraction, she had learned, did not necessarily mean flirting. Coffee shops, while a common place for dates to take place, were not solely for that purpose.

She had yet to figure out the difference between someone flirting and just being nice. Between a date and a hang-out. There were so many different social cues everyone else had learned, growing up, that Cass had not. She tried, but she did not always get it right. It was embarrassing when she did not.

Then came dangerous. Controlled. Predator. For the first time since he had joined her, Damon went completely still.

It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t even the defensive irritation Cass had warned him about. He simply looked at her, the forgotten book resting loosely between his hands. People had called Damon dangerous before, usually after witnessing something that made it painfully obvious. They had called him a monster, a murderer, and plenty of other things he had earned. No one had ever reached predator after watching him pretend to read three pages in a library.

His eyes dropped to the claws she made with her fingers, and a short, genuine laugh escaped him before he could stop it. “A jungle cat,” he repeated. “That’s what we’re going with?” Damon glanced down at himself as though searching for some evidence of whiskers before looking back at her. “I was hoping for something with a little more dignity, but I suppose I can work with it.”

The humor remained, but it had become quieter. More deliberate. “You were right,” he said. “People probably don’t like what you see.” He closed the book again, this time setting it aside completely. There was no point continuing the performance now. “Not because you’re wrong. That would be easy. They don’t like it because you skip past everything they put in the way.”

Damon leaned back, studying her with none of the subtlety she had shown him. If Cass could dissect him from across the table, pretending he wasn’t doing the same would have felt dishonest. “Most people see the smile, hear the jokes, decide I’m either charming or intolerable, and stop there.” His mouth tilted. “Usually intolerable. Their loss.” His gaze narrowed slightly, not with suspicion so much as concentration. “You went straight through it.”

He could have denied her conclusions. Old was subjective. Dangerous was dramatic. Predator was the kind of word that should have earned her another joke and nothing more. But Damon had asked, and Cass had warned him. Punishing her for giving him an honest answer would have been embarrassingly hypocritical, even for him. “So, no,” he said, answering the question she hadn’t asked aloud. “I’m not angry.” His eyes held hers. “A little offended by the cat comparison, maybe, but I’ll recover.”

Damon’s attention shifted briefly toward the main reading room. “You heard that chair move before anyone else bothered looking. Noticed it, checked it, and went right back to what you were doing.” His gaze returned to her. “You picked a corner where no one could come up behind you without making noise. You barely speak, but it isn’t because you’re nervous. You wait. You watch people until their bodies tell you what their mouths won’t.” He tipped his head, mirroring her earlier movement again. “And you looked at something you decided was dangerous without leaving”

Her smile was rueful. She shrugged, but did not look away. “Yes. I warned you.” He had asked her to tell him anyways. People always seemed to think it was some sort of trick. That she would list off a few, shallow observations, they could ooh and ahh about it, and move on. Taking her at her word, trusting her warnings, rarely happened. It made a part of her sad every time. It made her feel like something was wrong with her, and no amount of Bruce or Babs or Dick or Steph or any of them telling her there was nothing wrong with her would ever fix it.

She knew they spoke truth when they reassured her. It still did not help.

Just because someone believed something to be the truth did not make it so.

But she kept that part of herself on the inside. Held it close to her heart and did not let it out. She did not want to worry them, and besides, today they were not here to tell her. Today, she was with Damon, and while he did not like that she had seen through him so easily, he spoke truthfully when he said he was not angry.

“Big jungle cat,” she corrected, pretending she believed that might make him feel better, just for the fun of it. She nodded along as she spoke. “Very tough. Very strong. All other cats are jealous.” Stroking his ego felt like the right thing to do, even if it was teasingly.

When he started describing her, her lips pulled into a small frown. Not many people saw Cass. Her family did, but they were detectives, and she oftentimes let them see. For a stranger to see her so clearly…

Her eyes narrowed. Curiosity mixed with a hint of suspicion. “Observant.” Her finger tapped against the cover of her book for a moment. “Words lie.” Bodies did not. It was as much of an explanation as she planned on giving.

There were pieces of a puzzle being laid out before her, but she did not yet know what picture they made. Who was Damon, really? It seemed a little too coincidental that someone like him would just happen to stumble upon someone like her.

There was no malice in his words, voice, or body language, though. No malice and no threats. Only curiosity. Possibly even amusement. He thought she was interesting. She got the feeling he did not come across puzzles like her very often.

The farm sat far enough from the nearest town that Steve could sometimes go weeks without seeing anyone who hadn’t arrived on four legs. That didn’t mean unfamiliar cars were completely unheard of. Every once in a while someone took a wrong turn down the dirt road, a delivery driver trusted their GPS a little too much, or one of the locals decided it was finally time to introduce themselves to the guy who’d moved into the old farmhouse.

So the stranger behind the wheel didn’t immediately put him on edge.

There was something about her, though. Steve couldn’t quite put his finger on it yet. Nothing openly threatening, nothing that gave him any real reason to be suspicious, but years spent reading rooms and watching people had left him with instincts that were difficult to switch off simply because he’d traded the shield for a pair of dirt-stained work boots.

Her recognition caught him slightly off guard anyway. It probably shouldn’t have. Steve knew perfectly well his face had been plastered on museum walls, newspaper front pages, television screens, trading cards and God knew what else, but living all the way out here had made it surprisingly easy to forget sometimes.

And that was it. No staring. No sudden scramble for a photograph. No request for an autograph or a story about the Avengers. Instead, she asked him for a charger. Steve looked down at the phone she held up.

Charger seemed optimistic.

The screen was shattered badly enough that he doubted a little electricity was going to solve whatever had happened to it. His gaze lingered on it for half a second before returning to the stranger. “Yeah, I’ve got one.” He straightened away from the car, then nodded toward the farmhouse behind him. “But you can use my phone first. Save you waiting around to find out whether that thing’s still alive.” He stepped back, leaving enough room for her to open the door.

Inconvenient for her current purposes, but she would manage.

His skepticism at the sight of her phone had her lips twitching upwards the slightest bit. “It will work,” she assured him. “WayneTech. Very tough.” Her phone was also created specifically for vigilante use. Designed to take a beating and still be able to send out a distress beacon when needed.

Cass did not actually need to charge it to send a distress beacon—she could have done so before ever making it to Steve’s home. But she did not want Batman and all the others swooping in to her rescue.

Because Orphan did not use her distress beacon. If she did so now, they would think something was very wrong. They would think she was dying.

They would fuss. She did not want that.

If she could charge her phone a bit, just enough to turn it on and make a quick call, she could have one person come and pick her up. Preferably Stephanie. She was least likely to make a big deal out of things.

Her phone was also highly encrypted. She could not say the same for whatever phone Steve was using out here—former Captain America or not. “Thank you,” she said, stepping out of the car, “but I will use mine when it turns on. If that is okay.”

❛  that's it. that's my good girl / boy.  ❜ ❛  what a perfect pout you have.  ❜ ❛  you have the perfect lips for kissing.  ❜ ❛  i can't stop thinking about your ass.  ❜ ❛  i love the way you moan for me.  ❜ ❛  you always know just what i need.   ❜ ❛  i'm going to show you off to everyone.  ❜ ❛  take it for me, i know you can.  ❜ ❛  you really know how to use your fingers to get me off.  ❜ ❛  you have no idea what you're doing to me.  ❜ ❛  who's my beautiful girl / boy?  ❜ ❛  i'm so proud of you for taking me so well.  ❜ ❛  i love the way you look when you're on your knees.  ❜ ❛  you're such a pleasure to use.  ❜ ❛  you're so beautiful when you struggle for me.  ❜ ❛  look how hard / wet / aroused you get for me, perfect.  ❜ ❛  you take my cock so well.  ❜ ❛  one more for me, you're doing such a good job.  ❜ ❛  your body was made for me.  ❜ ❛  you want to be a good girl / boy for me, don't you?  ❜ ❛  what a sweet little treat you are.  ❜ ❛  you're doing so good. keep taking it ... just like that.  ❜ ❛  look how beautiful you look all spread out and ready for me.  ❜ ❛  you're such a good girl getting all wet for me. you're all mine, aren't you?  ❜ ❛  you look so precious when you're needy.  ❜ ❛  that's it, just let go. let yourself feel good.  ❜ ❛  i can't get enough of you and how you make me feel.  ❜ ❛  the sounds you make when i fuck you are so hot.  ❜ ❛  you give the best head i've ever had.  ❜ ❛  i can't believe how good you are at that.  ❜ ❛  there you go, just like that.  ❜ ❛  that feels good, doesn't it?  ❜ ❛  you're doing such a good job. i can't wait to fuck you.  ❜ ❛  don't hold back. let me hear how much you love it.  ❜ ❛  i'm going to come if you keep doing that.  ❜ ❛  say my name, i love the way you say it.  ❜ ❛  you're all mine to use, aren't you?  ❜ ❛  you can do it, just a little more.  ❜ ❛  now be a good girl / boy and come for me.  ❜ ❛  damn, you look so amazing right now.  ❜

Steve had stopped pretending the farm was quiet a while ago and was beginning to suspect he’d accidentally opened a petting zoo.

Between the goats demanding breakfast like it was a matter of life and death, the alpacas ignoring every boundary Steve tried to set, the dog following him everywhere, two cats that had simply decided the barn belonged to them now, and a cow currently dozing beneath the shade of an old tree, there was almost always something going on.

He was halfway through refilling a water trough when he heard the sound of a car coming up the drive. Setting the hose aside, Steve wiped his hands on his jeans and headed over, reaching the car just as the window rolled down. He bent slightly to look inside, one hand braced against the roof.

Why would he? She was nowhere near Gotham.

So she drove until she could not any longer. Found an old dirt road leading to a farmhouse and didn’t realize it was occupied until she saw the animals. At that point, it was too late to turn around. She was exhausted in every sense of the word, every part of her body ached, and she was far more likely to pass out behind the wheel before finding somewhere else to lay low.

She would have to improvise.

In Gotham City US Where are you?

Metropolis

She had to work to keep her hand steady as she wrote out the word. This was very quickly becoming very real, and it was terrifying.