A/N: Sorry about the delay in updating - my internet went out for a few days, and then I had deadlines at work, but I'm back now, hopefully. Thanks for reading and reviews are much appreciated!

Chapter 17

Damon and Becca had just walked back into the boarding house when Stefan approached. He stared at Damon. "What are you wearing?"

Damon glanced down at himself. He had forgotten about the ridiculous yellow t-shirt. He shrugged.

Becca chimed in mischievously. "Damon lost his shirt."

Stefan grinned. "I don't suppose I'm going to get the story of how? And how you ended up wearing that?"

Damon shook his head. "You don't want to know, Stefan."

"Yeah, I think I do."

"Nope." Damon headed for the stairs, dragging Becca after him. "I'm going to go take a shower. And burn this shirt." Both Stefan and Becca laughed at that, and he sighed.

It was when Damon came back downstairs after his shower, now dressed in one of his own designer black button-down shirts and a clean pair of jeans, that the trouble started.

Stefan found him in the library. "You fed today, didn't you?"

Damon didn't meet his brother's eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You went hunting. For humans."

Damon shrugged. "So what if I did? Drop it, Stefan."

Stefan sounded worried. "Damon . . . ."

"I didn't kill anyone, alright Stefan? The girl I fed from will be just fine after a good meal. Unlike you, I have control."

Stefan's forehead wrinkles were twice their usual size. "Did Becca put you up to this?"

Damon knew his eyes were flashing with annoyance. "Becca has nothing to do with it. I make my own choices, Stefan."

Things only got worse when Elena crept into the room, looking stricken. Damon had a bad feeling that she had overheard too much of that conversation, and her words confirmed it. "Damon, don't do this. Please."

He played dumb. "Do what?"

Elena looked at him with those big brown eyes. "Don't go back to being the vampire you were when you arrived here, the one that didn't care about anything and terrorized the town."

Damon ran his fingers through his hair. "Jesus, Elena. I'm not going back, okay? But sometimes a guy needs to eat a fresh meal."

Elena gave him another pleading look. "Damon, she was a person."

Damon decided not to correct the past tense. Apparently they didn't get that the girl was still alive. "And I'm a vampire. Who eats people. I can't fucking change that, even if I wanted to." He paused before adding, "which, by the way, I don't." Stefan and Elena were both staring at him with nearly identical expressions of condemnation, and Damon rolled his eyes as he looked from one to the other. "This conversation is over." He left the room.

•••••

Becca found him upstairs in his bedroom, staring out his window. She slipped quietly up beside him. "I am sorry. It was my idea." She had heard the whole argument with Stefan and Elena, of course, and she had barely been able to hold herself back from rushing in there to defend Damon and take the blame, even though she knew he wouldn't want her to do that.

Damon glanced down at her. "You heard that, did you?" He turned his gaze back out the window. "It's not your fault. It was a great idea, and I'm glad we did it."

Becca's heart broke at the hurt look in his blue eyes. "I am still sorry. You should not have had to go through that."

"Nothing I do will ever be good enough." She could hear the hurt in his voice now.

She touched his arm softly. "Damon, that is not true."

"It's the story of my life." His voice dripped with bitterness. "You asked about when I was human – Stefan was the golden boy and I was the screw-up. And it's still like that."

"No, it is not." Becca reached up and grabbed Damon's head, gently turning him to look at her. She needed him to hear this. "You are beautiful and amazing and strong. I do not know what you were like before, but I know that you have found your way to being a good vampire, a vampire who cares. I know that you will do anything for the people you love, including Stefan and Elena, and they have no right to say those things to you." She felt tears in her own eyes.

Damon shook his head slightly, looking doubtful. "You've only known me a few months, Becca. . . ."

She cut him off before he could say another thing to disparage himself. "That does not matter. I know who you are now." She hesitated a moment before continuing. Her instincts, like Damon's, were to avoid emotional vulnerability, but he was stripped bare before her right now and she wanted him to know that he wasn't alone in his insecurities. "As for you and Stefan, it is hard to avoid falling into old patterns. When I saw my sister Magdalena in Chicago . . . Well, she has always been so beautiful and elegant, and she still makes me feel dumpy and messy and childish."

Damon stared at her. "You? Becca, you're the most beautiful woman in the world." His blue eyes were filled now with love and compassion, and he seemed to have forgotten entirely about his own pain to soothe her fears. Becca smiled to herself at that – Damon had a sweet and caring side that he hid from almost everyone, and she loved the many layers to him.

She kept her voice light. "You might be biased."

Damon shook his head, his own tone teasing now. "Nope, I've done an extensive study."

"Oh, really?"

"Mmm hmm." He brushed his lips gently against hers before pulling away teasingly. Becca tugged his head back down to her, determined to keep him distracted. Plus, she never got tired of kissing Damon.

•••••

Stefan listened with one ear as Becca tried to offer comfort to Damon upstairs. Like so many conversations with his brother, that had not gone at all like he had intended. He hadn't meant to hurt Damon or accuse him of anything. He did understand that his brother wasn't like him and could feed without killing, and he knew that was perfectly normal and acceptable behavior for a vampire, even if he didn't personally exactly approve. He had just wanted to make sure that was in fact what Damon was doing. But of course Elena had walked in and everything had gone wrong, because she didn't understand what it meant to be a vampire.

And Elena was still there, looking at him with worry shining from her eyes. "It's Becca, isn't it? She's a bad influence on him."

Stefan shook his head. He had no idea how to fix this now. "I don't think it's that simple, Elena. I'm not going to say that I have Becca figured out, because I don't, but . . . "

Elena cut him off before he could finish. "Of course, it's that simple. She's convinced him to start feeding from humans again."

Stefan sighed. "It's true that Becca may encourage Damon to lead more of a vampire lifestyle than you or I would like, but he's right that he can feed without killing. He's the opposite of me, Elena. I can't control the bloodlust, and he's always had that under control. When Damon snaps, it's because he gets overwhelmed by his emotions. And . . ." Stefan paused, thinking about how to say what he had to say next. "I think Becca can help him with that. I think she really loves him, and he loves her." He smiled softly at Elena. "And you and I both know how powerful a force love can be."

He knew that was a bit of a blatant manipulation, especially given how their relationship had been going lately, but he needed to get through to her somehow. Stefan thought back to the previous day when Damon and Becca and Alaric had returned with a slightly disappointed Caroline (because she had wanted to help more with the rescue). Everyone had been so relieved to find Damon safe, if more than a little disheveled, that they had gathered around demanding the full story. Damon and Ric had been explaining everything when Damon had suddenly realized that Becca, who, oddly, had been just as disheveled as Damon, had slipped out of the room. A moment later, Damon was leaving, too, following the Original upstairs, and Stefan had started to stop his brother before he felt Alaric's hand on his arm. "Let him go," the teacher had said. "I saw how distraught he was – they both were – when they thought they had lost each other. Let them just be together."

Stefan had nodded reluctantly, and he had listened as Alaric did his best to fill everyone in on the rest of the story. It was a few hours later when he had gently shoved open his brother's door, aware of the silence inside and hoping he might be able to get some answers. He had found Damon and Becca asleep, Damon possessively holding Becca to him and their bodies locked together. Stefan remembered how he had frozen in surprise, mostly because he had never considered his vampire big brother the type to cuddle. In fact, he had planned to give Damon a hard time about that at the first opportunity, but he had thought better of it when he considered that, although it might seem out-of-character for the bad ass vampire Damon, his human brother had been exactly the type to cuddle all night with the woman he loved.

As a boy, Damon had been both rebellious and soft-hearted, and Stefan wasn't sure which characteristic their father had hated more. Damon had been about thirteen, he remembered, when the two of them had found a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. They had decided to raise it themselves and hidden it in the barn, but one of the cats had gotten to it the next day. Giuseppe had caught Damon crying over the dead bird, and he had beaten Damon mercilessly while Stefan had hidden, too young and scared to know what to do. Stefan would never forget how Damon had whimpered all night, unable to sleep with his back torn to shreds because compassion was not a characteristic to be encouraged in Southern gentlemen. Stefan suspected that their father had sent Damon to war in part to break that side of his brother, and whatever the war had done to him had been augmented by Katherine – the two had so blended together that Stefan had never sorted out exactly who Damon had become at that point, and none of them would ever know how Damon might have righted himself if Katherine had never come to Mystic Falls.

But Stefan would never forget the brother he had grown up with, how Damon had been an entirely different person before Katherine and the war, and before Stefan himself had shattered his brother's soul and forced him to become a vampire. Stefan had always known that he could never get that brother back, that he had kept his brother with him for eternity at the cost of losing a large part of him forever.

The sight of Damon and Becca together that night, holding each other almost desperately, had been the first time that he had thought that it might be Becca who restored another piece of Damon's humanity. Stefan's experiences with Klaus and Elijah had led to a distrust of Originals, but he was starting to think that Becca might be different. Maybe she really did want nothing more than a life with his brother.

And Stefan would be lying if he said he didn't feel a sense of relief that Damon was no longer pursuing Elena. He was well aware of Elena's jealousy at the prospect of Damon having moved on, but Stefan hoped that if Damon was truly no longer interested in Elena, he might still be able to salvage his own relationship.