"Hello?" Alaric called out loudly, his finger pressing the doorbell hard enough that its normally melodious chime became choppy and off-key. "Anybody home?"

After a couple minutes, the door was opened by an attractive, pale woman in a belted woolen dress, looking perfectly alert despite the late hour. "Yes?" she answered, arms crossed and eyebrows arched in suspicion.

"Yes, hello," Alaric began, before realizing in a flash that he hadn't in fact planned out what he needed to say. Last time I make a house call after four double whiskeys, he thought ruefully, before trying to explain, "You probably don't remember me, but I'm Alaric. I'm Damon's...I was with him earlier."

A look of comprehension passed over the woman's pale features, and she gave him a small, enigmatic smile before moving to the side and saying, "Of course, I recognize you now. Would you like to come in?"

Alaric was tempted to make a joke about the irony of a vampire inviting a human inside, but decided against it on the grounds that for one thing, it would be rude, and for another, Pearl was undoubtedly capable of causing him worlds of pain.

Instead, he uttered a simple, "Thank you," and slipped past her into the house. His eyes immediately darted over the floor of the hallway, searching for the ring he had accidentally left there earlier that evening, the absence of which he had only realized after already drowning his sorrows enough to be well over the legal limit. Consequently, he had been forced to call a taxi to drive him to Pearl's house, and he was only now realizing just how reckless it had been to strand himself at a vampire nest in the middle of the night with no way home and no guarantee of his safety.

His unease must have shown on his face because Pearl interjected smoothly, "You need not have any concerns for your safety, Alaric. I have no wish to anger your...Damon any further this evening."

"Oh, I didn't think," Alaric began to object, but decided that he was a little too tired not to be truthful and settled instead on, "Thank you."

"Now, what exactly can I help you with this evening?" she asked, crossing her arms. "I'm assuming by the hour and your...state that this isn't a social call?"

Alaric blushed a little and muttered, "Sorry about that - I wouldn't have disturbed you like this if it weren't important."

Pearl waved him off with a graceful sweep of her hand and said, "Think nothing of it. Now, what is this important matter that brings you to my doorstep in the middle of the night?"

"My ring," Alaric said immediately, too preoccupied with its loss to bother leading up to the revelation. "I think I left it here tonight during, well, the brawl, and I need it back as soon as possible."

"I'm taking it that it has more than...sentimental value?" Pearl asked knowingly.

"You could say that," Alaric replied, not wishing to give Pearl more power over him than she already had. "Have you seen it?"

"I believe Harper may have said something about finding a ring earlier," she responded. "Please, make yourself comfortable; I'll just go and check with him."

Pearl sped off in a blur that made Alaric's head spin a bit, causing him to stumble back a step and plop down onto the couch with an inelegant thud. Yes, distinctly too drunk for this sort of thing, Alaric decided as he struggled to right himself on the couch.

It was barely a minute or two more before Pearl blew back into the room, with Alaric's ring held out triumphantly in her hand. "Is this what you were looking for?"

Alaric nodded eagerly and instinctively held out his palm. When Pearl placed the ring in it, her hand lingered for a few moments on his as she said, "Now, you will be sure to mention my cooperation to Damon. Let him know that helping you with your little problem is the least I can do to make up for what the others did to his brother today."

Alaric was very confused by this second implication that helping him in any way helped Damon, but he just put it down to the alcohol-induced haze currently clouding his thinking processes and replied, "Er, yes, I'll let him know."

"Good," said Pearl, looking pleased. "Now, if I'm not mistaken, you are in need of a ride home?"

Alaric blushed again and admitted, "Yes, I suppose I am. Wow, I really didn't think this through, did I?"

"Really, it's no trouble," Pearl said smoothly. "I'll just pull the car around front."

Alaric quickly closed his eyes this time to prevent another dizzy spell, opening them only when the silence indicated she had gone. He walked slowly through the hallway, which was thankfully no longer littered with dead vampires, toward the front door, and when he opened it, was only slightly amazed to see that Pearl had already managed to pull her Black Jeep up to the curb in front of the house. He stumbled forward, pulled open the door of the car, and made a concentrated effort to get all of his limbs inside the Jeep with a minimum of rearranging.

The second his head hit the headrest, Alaric was struck for the first time that night just how tired he was. He had been running on adrenaline since the fight, and now that it was wearing off, his body seemed eager to remind him just how much he'd abused it.

He had just begun to nod off when Pearl spoke. "The Salvatore mansion is on Maple, is it not?"

"Yes, I think - wait, what?" Alaric opened his eyes in surprise and begrudgingly expended the effort necessary to turn and look at Pearl.

"I just wanted to make sure I had the address right," she replied, misunderstanding the source of his confusion.

"No, I mean, why are we going to the Salvatore mansion? I live at 94 Carnegie Way," he said, sure that his tired and tipsy brain was just not processing something correctly.

Pearl opened her mouth as if to speak, but upon looking over and seeing his utterly baffled expression, she closed it again and returned her attention to the wheel.

"Pearl, why did you think I slept at the Salvatore mansion?" Alaric asked again.

"Oh, really, it was nothing. A misunderstanding, pay it no mind," she said, adding quickly, "Turn here, right?"

"Yes," Alaric replied, but was unwilling to let the matter drop. "I'm sure it's the alcohol's fault that this isn't processing, but what exactly did you misunderstand?"

"I just thought that you and Damon...oh, well, you know..." she trailed off, and Alaric would have sworn that if vampires could blush, she would have been.

"Damon and I what?" Alaric could not think of a single plausible end to that sentence.

"Between the bites on your neck and him trusting you enough to bring you on a rescue mission, I just assumed that you were...well, his," Pearl explained, still looking as embarrassed as was possible for a vampire.

"What?" Alaric exclaimed, so surprised that he sat straight up and hit his head on the roof of the car. "No! What? No! No! God, no!"

"I am very sorry," Pearl said quickly, "Clearly I was mistaken."

"Me and Damon? I hate him!" Alaric ranted. "He killed me, for God's sake! He actually stabbed me and watched me die."

Pearl shot him a slightly perplexed look, but said nothing, content to let him keep talking.

"I mean, okay, I did try to kill him first, but I thought he'd murdered my wife! And he did turn her into a vampire - at her request, but still, it's just not polite, is it?"

"You two did seem like you made a pretty good team tonight," Pearl observed, a strange expression passing over her face that Alaric couldn't quite place in the darkness of the car.

"You sound just like him! He actually gave me this whole speech at the Grille tonight about how he knows I hate him, about how everyone hates him, like that was going to make me feel sorry for him or something! And then, then, he turns to me and says, 'But you can't deny - we were badass.' "

"Badass?" Pearl asked, sounding amused.

"Badass!" Alaric insisted. "As if us killing a few rogue vamps together was supposed to make up for everything else...even if it was the most fun I've had in months. And then he sat there smirking at me, like he was just waiting for me to yell 'Hell yeah we were!' and give him a high five and count everything else as water under the bridge. It made me so mad I socked him right there in the bar, but God help me if that son-of-a-bitch didn't just smirk harder."

"He does seem to have a rather...high opinion of himself," Pearl said tactfully.

"High?" Alaric exclaimed incredulously, "He thinks he is God's gift to anyone who has the misfortune of meeting him. I mean, okay, I'll admit, he's hot, in a completely insufferable, "I know I'm gorgeous so I can behave like a total dick and still get laid," sort of way. Sure, it does seem sometimes like he's spent all of the last hundred and fifty years perfecting that 'seducing you with the eyebrows' thing. And, yes, leather jacketed bad boys with killer blue eyes and far too much swagger did use to be far too much my type, but you know, I'm done with that now. Totally over it. Just a phase."

Alaric paused in his tirade to take a breath before turning to Pearl and asking, "I'm sorry, I got a little lost, what were we talking about?"

"I believe you were telling me that the idea of you being romantically involved with Damon Salvatore was absurd," Pearl said, and, had he not known better, Alaric would have sworn she was trying hard not to laugh.

"Right," Alaric said while he did his best to ignore the growing feeling that he'd said something he shouldn't have. "Well, it is. Completely absurd."

"Of course," Pearl said, still smiling enigmatically. Before Alaric could ponder just why she looked so amused, Pearl stopped the car and announced, "Here you are, 94 Carnegie Way."

"Right," Alaric said and got down from the car, though he was struck with the unmistakable impression that Pearl now understood something about him that he didn't know himself. "Well, um, thanks for the ride, and for finding my ring."

"Don't worry about it," Pearl replied, and he could see in the light of the streetlamp that her smile was still infuriatingly sphinxlike. "It was quite...enlightening. Good night, Alaric." Before he could say anything further, she backed out of the driveway in one fluid motion and drove off into the night.

Yes, Alaric thought, troubled, as he fumbled for his keys, I'm definitely missing something. But I'm damned if I know what it is.