You'll always mean something to me
I wrote this little drabble a while ago for Ric and Damon one morning when I was feeling a little low. It's nothing special and some of you have probably already read it since it went around on tumblr for a little bit, but I wanted to keep it somewhere that I could always find it.
He doesn’t like to use words such as epic and legendary to describe their friendship. Both words have been so overused that their meanings have dwindled down into something obsolete.
Instead he chooses the word spectacular, which is kind of ironic considering they never brought out the light in each other. Their friendship was brief, like a shooting star, but never bright. On the contrary, they were rather mediocre and their encounters tended to remain on the somber side. He never judged his friend for being a half-assed vampire slayer with a weakness for alcohol and Alaric never judged him for being a half-assed decent vampire with a weakness for a girl he’d never obtain.
But what was spectacular was their acceptance of one another. And that’s what makes Alaric’s passing the most painful. That for just a blink of an eye, there was one presence on this earth that didn’t shield him from who he was or try to protect him from it. Someone who didn’t expect him to be something he wasn’t. Instead Alaric Saltzman just allowed him to be - without deep discussion, debate or insight for why they were the way they were.
And although no one will ever look back and reminisce over how epic or legendary their friendship was, he’ll always remember the foundation that made it work. The acceptance of not just strengths, but also flaws that allowed them to make mistakes that turned them into badasses.
So, no, their friendship couldn’t be filed under some generic adjective with the backstory of two people who made each other’s lives better. But he’s okay with that. He much prefers the truth that eventually - after one hell of a rocky start - they each made the other’s life easier. And he much prefers the impact of the adjective spectacular when describing how that felt.