A Land of Make Believe

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.

[WRITING | ✏️] Everything you write on your body will appear on your soulmate's body as well. ((Max & Roy au?))

-- Roy had taken to writing little notes on his wrists when he was lonely. He didn't know if whoever was on the other side ever read them, but it made him feel better to think that somewhere out there, someone was listening. Even when no one else was. Especially when no one else was.

Today, he was at it again, sharpie in hand as he wrote a few little words. I miss you.

A stupid sentiment, really. How could you miss someone you hadn't even met yet? He sighed, tapping the end of the sharpie against the table as he wondered, not for the first time, what he was even doing. This was ridiculous. There was no real evidence that this shit was even real.

The truth was, Max was scared. The person on the other end of these notes was supposedly her soulmate. What if she met them and it turned out they were completely incompatible? What if she replied and they decided they hated her? What if she screwed it up somehow before ever even meeting them?

I miss you.

Teeth pressed into her bottom lip as she stared at the words, twirling a pen between the fingers of her other hand. She took a breath and summoned all the courage she possibly could. Before she could second-guess herself, she wrote a reply beneath his words: We could meet somewhere?

By the time she finished, his grip on the glass had tightened enough to threaten the crystal. His anger had nowhere useful to go. Her parents weren’t in the room. Neither were the doctors who had spent years telling a frightened child that her own mind couldn’t be trusted. The only person in front of him was Max, looking like she regretted every word she’d just given him. When she held out her hand, Damon looked down at his bourbon. Then he stepped closer and placed the glass into it without argument. “Fair enough.”

He turned toward the liquor table and retrieved the bottle, pouring himself another drink rather than asking for his first one back. It gave him a moment to get his expression under control. Damon knew what pity looked like when someone aimed it at him, and he wasn’t going to inflict it on Max now. “You’re not crazy,” he said, facing her again. There was no teasing in his voice and none of the cautious softness people used when they didn’t believe what they were saying. “You’ve been seeing things no one around you understood, and instead of admitting they didn’t have an explanation, they decided you were the problem. There’s a difference.”

Damon took a drink and leaned back against the edge of the table. He didn’t close the distance again. Max had spent the last several minutes folding in on herself beneath his questions; crowding her now would only make this feel like another interrogation. “And for the record, if this is a mental break, it’s unusually committed.” He lifted his glass between them. “You invented me, Stefan, Klaus, the vervain, and an entire hidden population of vampires with centuries of deeply irritating history. That’s ambitious, even for you.”

The humor was slight, but it didn’t last long. His gaze settled on her again. “I believe you, Max.” The words came simply. Damon didn’t bury them beneath a joke or demand anything in return. Secrets didn’t simply appear in Klaus’s hands. Someone had seen something, heard something, or gotten close enough to Max to notice what she had spent most of her life hiding. Damon would figure out which one it was. He just wasn’t going to force her to tear herself apart looking for an answer she clearly didn’t have.

“So, Twenty Questions is officially suspended.” Damon turned the bourbon slowly in his glass. “You’ve answered enough for one night.” His eyes dropped briefly to the drink he had handed her before returning to her face. “But you’re right. I asked you to trust me with something you’ve spent your entire life protecting while giving you almost nothing in return.”

The admission came reluctantly, but it came. "I was born in 1839.” Damon took another drink, letting that settle without checking to see how absurd it sounded. “I became a vampire in 1864. I had vampire blood in my system when I died, woke up in transition, and was planning to let myself die for good until Stefan made sure I finished the process.”

His jaw shifted faintly at the memory. More than a century had passed, but some resentment survived simply because Damon had fed it too well to let it disappear. Damon pushed away from the table and moved to the sofa, sitting on its arm rather than pacing through another confession. “Sunlight burns vampires. This ring keeps it from killing me. Vervain burns us, weakens us, and stops compulsion. Wood through the heart, decapitation, and fire are all very effective, in case tonight hasn’t inspired enough confidence in me already.”

He glanced down at the ring on his hand, then back at Max. “I can move faster than you can see. I’m stronger than I look, which is saying something, and I can make people do what I want if I look them in the eye.” His expression tightened. “I haven’t done that to you.” That mattered enough for him to say plainly. Damon took another swallow of bourbon. “There. Several answers, no evasive sarcasm, and at least three pieces of information you could use to kill me.” A faint trace of his usual smirk returned. “I’d call that an excellent show of good faith.”

She took a swig of the alcohol and grimaced at the burn. God, she hated bourbon. Give her wine or a cocktail any day of the week. Hell, even a beer would do in a pinch, but dark liquors weren’t for her. Right now, though? She’d take what she could get.

The stronger the better.

She let out a shaky breath when Damon said he believed her—Max hadn’t realized just how badly she’d needed to hear that. Like a weight lifted off her chest, she felt like she could actually breathe again. Like maybe, just maybe, it was okay that he knew. Maybe things would be different this time.

She still didn’t know how Klaus had found out about her, but that could wait for another day. Examining her entire life, everyone she’d ever met, everyone she’d ever spoken to, was a bit much for today. She nodded, shoulders slumping with relief.

Holding the glass in both hands, she slowly drifted closer to Damon, taking in everything he was telling her, her mind struggling to properly process it all. Vampires weren’t supposed to be real. Someone born in 1839 should absolutely not be alive still. A magic ring that stopped the sunlight from killing him should just be a fairytale.

Her mind wanted to reject his words, write them off as lies, but she knew they weren’t. It was a gut feeling—the type she’d get that were never wrong. Every word out of his mouth was true, and a selfish, frightened part of her wanted to hide her head in the sand and pretend she’d never heard any of it. Wanted to go back to pretending everything was normal.

That they were normal.

But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—do him that disservice. Not when he hadn’t even flinched at her explanation. “…I believe you.” The words were quiet, but she meant them. The thought of some sort of mind control made her shift uncomfortably, but she trusted Damon. If he said he hadn’t used it on her, then he hadn’t.

She took a breath. Nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” For a second, she looked down at the glass in her hands. Then she lifted it to her mouth and tipped it back, drinking the rest of it in one go, nose wrinkled. She made a face when she finished, shaking her head like a dog shaking off water. “I don’t know how you drink that.” It probably sounded a bit ridiculous, considering she was already making her way over to the liquor table and pouring herself a couple more fingers of bourbon.

She had a feeling she was going to need it.

She sat a little ways away from him on the couch, but patted the spot next to her, having only been leaving enough room for him to move off of the arm and join her. “Sharing is caring.” She gave him a small smile. “And questions are how we get to know people,” she teased. “But you know that already.”

Then came the belated please. “That almost ruined it,” he told her. “You were doing so well without the unnecessary manners.” Damon marked his page with one finger, closed the book and adjusted his chair until he was facing her more directly. He hadn’t expected company when he came to the library, but Cass didn’t possess the usual qualities that made strangers exhausting. She hadn’t launched into pointless small talk, asked what he was reading or attempted to explain that she normally never disturbed people.

She had simply occupied the corner and waited to see what he would do about it. “You can stay,” he said. “Technically, I don’t own this part of the library. I’ve just been sitting here long enough that everyone else has accepted that I might.” A chair scraped loudly in the main reading room. Damon’s gaze flicked toward the sound before settling on Cass again. He hooked one foot around the leg of a nearby empty chair and dragged it farther into the alcove, narrowing the view from the busier part of the library. It gave them more privacy without closing them off completely.

“There. Now it’s our spot.” Damon paused. “Temporarily. Don’t get attached.” He opened his book again and leaned back, appearing prepared to return to it's contents. For nearly half a minute, he managed it. His eyes moved across the page, though his attention remained divided between the words and the quiet presence across from him.

Cass didn’t rush to fill the silence, and that alone made her unusual.Most people became uncomfortable when Damon stopped performing for them. They laughed too quickly, shifted in their seats or searched for something harmless to say. Cass seemed perfectly content to let the quiet remain exactly as it was.

Damon turned a page, then another. On the third, he lowered the book again.

“Fine. One question.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms against his knees while keeping his voice low enough not to carry beyond the alcove. His gaze dropped briefly to the book in her hands before returning to her face. “You watched me walk in, sit down and pretend to read while you figured me out.” There was no accusation in his tone. If anything, he sounded entertained. “You’ve barely looked at that page since I got here.” Damon tilted his head, matching the angle she had used while studying him.

The sound of a scraping chair immediately caught her attention, had her eyes flitting towards it. She was not on edge, but something behind her eyes shifted for just a moment. She was alone out here. No backup, and while backup was not something she necessarily required, it was something she had grown accustomed to having if she did need it. Cass knew that searching for League members, for her father’s men, on her own was akin to poking a hornet’s nest with a stick. It was still something she needed to do.

No loose ends.

She also knew that the League would not attack in the middle of a public library full of people. They were not stupid either. That half-second of wariness behind her eyes was there and gone in a flash. Her brows lifted at his declaration, but she did not comment. She simply hummed in agreement and looked back down at her book when he did.

Despite this, her attention remained on Damon. He wanted to speak. Most bodies were terrible at keeping secrets. There were always little signs, movements, that gave their owners away. Tells, as Bruce called them. Cass did what she was best at—she waited patiently. Damon lasted longer than most. Three page turns before he spoke again. Her eyes sparkled with amusement, lips tugging into a smirk.

It fell away when she realized what he wanted. She hesitated. Not because he had figured out she had been dissecting him with her gaze—she had already known that—but because she was unsure that she should divulge her findings. “People…do not like what I see.” A warning, plain and simple. Cass saw what people did not want her to see. It scared them. Made them angry. Self-conscious. Upset.

She did not like upsetting people, especially her friends and family, but she could not help the way she saw the world.

She let her words sink in. Watched him for any sign of hesitation. Any hint that he might change his mind. When she did not see one, she sighed, placed a colourful bookmark between her pages, and closed her book. Crossed her arms on top of it.

He understood before she had to finish. “I’ve got it.” Damon called back immediately, already crossing the hall. There was no teasing in his voice this time, nothing that might make her feel ridiculous for asking. He tried the handle from his side and found it unlocked.

He pushed the door open only far enough to step inside, gaze finding her before anything else. For half a second, Damon just looked at her. Clean now. Damp hair instead of blood-stiffened strands, skin scrubbed free of everything that had been on it when she came through his door. The red around her eyes remained, and there were some things no amount of hot water was going to wash away, but she looked more like Max again. That loosened something in his chest he hadn’t realized he’d been holding tight.

His attention shifted pointedly toward the shower. “See? Still attached to the wall.” Damon walked past her to turn it off himself, taking the handle between two fingers with exaggerated care before glancing back. “Honestly, little insulting that you thought you could take out my plumbing this easily. This house has survived Stefan’s hair products for over a century.” It was a weak joke, but Damon wasn’t trying to get a laugh so much as give her something normal to grab onto.

He’d left clothes folded on the counter while she showered, having gone through his drawers for the softest things he owned that wouldn’t require buttons, zippers, or anything else she could accidentally tear apart while trying to dress. An old black T-shirt and a pair of drawstring sweatpants. Damon picked up the stack and held it toward her. “No buttons. Nothing expensive. And before you start feeling guilty about borrowing my clothes, that shirt has survived considerably worse than you.” He didn’t linger after that. Damon backed toward the doorway, one hand resting against the frame. “Get dressed. I’ll be right there.”

Damon returned to the bedroom but didn’t go farther than the dresser. He opened the small refrigerator hidden inside the cabinet beneath it and pulled out one of the blood bags he kept there, staring down at it for longer than necessary. Max hadn’t asked who turned her again, he was grateful for that. Because while Damon had told her none of this was her fault, he hadn’t managed to extend the same generosity to himself. Somebody had put vampire blood into her system. Somebody had killed her afterward. Maybe it had been random. Maybe there was no grand design at all. He shoved the thought down before it could take root any deeper and carried the bag downstairs.

By the time he heard movement behind him, Damon had already made the thing look as little like a blood bag as possible. He’d poured it into one of the dark glasses from the cabinet rather than hand her plastic filled with something that looked disturbingly clinical. The bag itself had disappeared into the trash beneath several layers of equally unnecessary garbage. He’d even warmed the blood slightly because cold blood tasted awful, and there were certain pieces of vampire knowledge Max did not need to learn through trial and error tonight. Damon leaned against the kitchen island with his arms folded, waiting. The glass sat between them.

“This is the part where I tell you not to smell it first,” he said when she was close enough to hear him without raising his voice. “Which means naturally you’re going to want to smell it first. Don’t.”Damon reached across the island and turned the glass slightly so the rim faced her, then pulled his hand back. “Tonight, you drink this. Tomorrow, we start figuring out everything else.”

Tomorrow. He hadn’t been certain she’d have one a few hours ago.

The thought struck hard enough that Damon looked away, opening the refrigerator mostly so he had somewhere else to put his attention. There were more bags inside. Enough to keep her fed for a while without ever needing to go near another person. He’d get more if he had to. When he shut the refrigerator again, his expression had settled into something easier.

She took the clothes from him carefully, doing her best to keep her movements a normal speed. Moving too fast only made it worse. It only made her feel worse about herself and her situation. “I don’t feel guilty about that. I steal your clothes all the time.” This was just the first time she was actually worried about wrecking them. But she would be careful, and she would hopefully manage to get dressed without tearing anything.

She finished drying off once Damon left the room. Combed her fingers through her hair rather than use the hairbrush that’d wound up mixed in with Damon’s things when, a little while back, Max had grown tired of not having one after showering—a brush was just another object she might break. Then she dressed herself. Slowly, treating the shirt and sweats like they were the most delicate things she’d ever touched. The drawstring on the pants received even more care when she tied it. She let out a breath once she finished, relieved to be in clean clothes, that she hadn’t ruined them. Comforted by the softness of the items Damon had picked out, by the scent of him that lingered in the fabric.

Slipping out the door, she went looking for him. She found him in the kitchen, but her eyes immediately zeroed in on the glass in front of him. This is the part where I tell you not to smell it first. Well, that wasn’t foreboding at all. It definitely didn’t make her stomach churn with anxiety. She swallowed. Resisted the urge to take a step back and away. He was making it pretty damn clear what was in that glass.

Blood.

She didn’t want to be anywhere near it. She wanted it more than anything. She was utterly terrified of it. Her eyes flit up to Damon’s face for half a second before back down to the glass. Slowly, she moved closer. Forced herself to take one step after the other until she made it to the island. Her fingers curled around the glass—it was warm. She wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse. Holding her breath, she lifted it to her mouth.

It was like the first sip of water after being lost in the desert for weeks. The first bite of food after a hunger strike. The sweetest of nectars that satisfied a craving she still didn’t immediately recognize for what it was. Max drank greedily, her other hand coming up to steady the glass. Somehow, she managed not to spill any of the blood. Maybe she didn’t want any to go to waste.

She only breathed again once she finished the last of it, licked her lips as she pulled the glass away, her tongue chasing any stray drops. “That…shouldn’t taste that good.” It was weird. It was wrong. She’d always been squeamish with blood, and now…

Now it was the one thing she wanted more than anything.