Notes: Not a sequel, exactly, but vaguely connected to my other story 'First Rule of Bite Club'. More exploration of what it means to date a vampire who actually enjoys being a vampire.

A Left Turn at the Evolutionary Tree

...

"You're such a bad influence on me," Damon murmured.

"Why's that?" Elena said, continuing to stroke her fingers through his hair.

He had been stretched across their picnic blanket with his head on her lap for the past half hour, his eyes closed serenely. He was like a great big cat lolling in the late afternoon sun; she almost expected him to start purring as her nails scratched lightly across his scalp.

"I haven't been on a picnic since the nineteenth century. It's..."

"Nice?" she ventured.

"Normal. Boring. We hardly fooled around at all."

"Almost like you enjoy my company or something."

His eyes flicked open and he scrunched his face at her. "I know, right? Weird."

He sat up quickly, then just as quickly leaned back till his face was level with hers, dropping a quick kiss on her mouth. "Wanna fool around now?"

She hesitated, thinking about it. "Actually, we should probably head back. It's getting late."

The sun was starting to drop lower over the hills behind them, it would be getting on to evening soon enough and it was about a mile back to the car from here. Earlier this afternoon they'd hiked up to the top of the gorge where the town's falls got their start, and ventured a little ways off the path to find this idyllic setting in which to while away a few hours. There wasn't anyone else around for miles, just the two of them under the trees with the water running nearby. Perfectly peaceful.

"Pfft. See? Boring."

Damon jumped to his feet and pulled her up easily with a light tug at her arm.

She bent to gather up the remains of their simple meal - sandwiches and several peaches he'd cut up and idly fed to her as they lay sprawled side by side on the blanket; a bottle of water for her, a thermos of blood for him. She stowed everything away neatly in her backpack, followed by the blanket which he stuffed in haphazardly before slinging the pack over his shoulder.

She rolled his eyes at his typical impatience and grabbed his hand as they made their way back to the trail.

"Admit it," she said. "It's been a lovely day, and you loved it. And now we're going to walk back to the car through the gorgeous trees in this beautiful fading sunlight and we're going to hold hands and it'll be totally romantic."

"Fine. But if we happen to see a stray puppy, I'm warning you right now, I'm going to kick it."

She nudged into his side playfully as they walked. "Dear Diary, today my adoring boyfriend showed just how much he loved me by whining every second we were together."

"Dear Diary, today my devilishly handsome sex-god of a boyfriend and I skipped through fields of wildflowers while holding hands and singing about rainbows." He dropped the fake girly voice. "Better?"

Her eyes narrowed at him. "I'm still holding your hand. Deal with it."

His head lowered towards hers as he did the eyebrow thing she not-so-secretly loved. "Doesn't my forbearance astound you?"

She nodded and patted his arm. "Sure."

"Of course it does. Like my ability to watch Glee and pretend to like it, it's one of my many special vampire powers that I know you appreciate."

"No it's not," she said, moving on from placation and giving in to the urge to argue. "I know all about your super special vampire powers, sorry, that's not one of them."

"Well maybe you don't know as much as you think you do."

"Really? Let's see, there's the super strength, and that flashy speed thing you do. The magical healing ability. Oh, sorry, being a jerk still doesn't count."

"Don't forget my incredible wit and charm. And they totally do."

"Let's see, then there's the compulsion. The never aging."

"My rampant sex appeal."

"That thing with the mist."

"Great hair."

"Yeah, that's not a special power, that's your ego."

"You don't like my hair?"

"Fine, yes you have great hair. Hey, how do you do it?"

"Not with a whole bunch of expensive salon products for men and an intensive hair care regimen, that's for sure."

"No, not your hair. The... fog thing. Where you," she waved a hand around vaguely, "Make it foggy? Out of nowhere?"

"Oh, that. You just kind of - pick it up as you go along."

"Can you do it right now?" The idea tickled her. The speed and the healing and stuff had almost become mundane by now, but this was something she hardly knew anything about. "Come on, I want to see you do it."

"What? No."

"Why not?"

"Because... I'm not a carnival show? I don't perform, Elena. It cheapens the whole thing."

"What's the good of having a vampire boyfriend if he won't use his special powers to entertain me? Please?" She squeezed his arm and looked up at him entreatingly.

He rolled his eyes and looked away dismissively, squinting off at the trees as they continued along the gently sloping path through the woods.

She decided to try a different tack, holding up her hands. "Oh, wait, I get it. Sorry, forget I asked."

This, unsurprisingly, drew his attention back to her. His look was suspicious as she tried to keep the smile off her face.

"The new and improved Damon Salvatore, much as I love the guy? Just not that much of a badass anymore," she concluded with a sigh. "I mean, he does go on picnics."

He stopped in his tracks. She kept walking until she reached the end of their joined hands and had to either turn and face him or let go. She chose the former but he dropped her hand anyway.

"So that's how you want to play this? Interesting." He shrugged. "Okay, well here's the thing, I can't do 'the fog thing', as you put it, standing here in the sunshine while my adoring girlfriend mocks me mercilessly. So you're going to have to turn around," he took her by the shoulders as he spoke, turning her away from him, then gave her a little push, "And start walking that way."

She only took a few steps before looking back to ask what was going on. "Why do I have to - Damon?"

He was gone.

She looked around, turning in a circle, but quickly concluded he had used vampire speed to take off on her.

"So what am I supposed to do now?" she said, knowing he could hear her. No answer came, of course, and she threw her hands up and began walking slowly along the path again. He had told her to walk, after all. "I'm not seeing any fog," she called out, as absolutely nothing continued to happen.

She wandered along for a few minutes with the growing feeling that he was right behind her, watching her. Which he probably was, she decided, fighting the urge to keep looking over her shoulder to see if he was there.

The sun went behind a cloud and the day seemed to darken but Damon couldn't move clouds in the sky, obviously, so she told herself she was just imagining how... creepy the woods seemed all of a sudden.

Everything was so quiet and the feeling of being followed, observed, was starting to do weird things to her head. That was all.

A twig snapping off amongst the trees had her spinning to face the sound, her pulse leaping. She pushed her hair off her face as she peered in that direction. "Damon? I get it - you're a champion stalker who's still the biggest badass of them all, okay?" She took a few steps off the narrow trail, eyes searching amongst the trees. "Where are you?"

She felt the sudden chill before she saw it, like cold damp fingers stealing over her skin. One minute the air was clear and the next the fog was all around her, rising up thick and disorienting.

She couldn't believe how close she was to being really, seriously afraid. Her heart was beating fast and she had to swallow down an instinctual panicky feeling starting to overtake her - she knew exactly what was going on, after all. Damon was probably no more than a few yards away, hiding behind a tree and laughing at her.

The thought was a calming one, and she let out a deep breath and forced herself to relax. There was no point wandering any further in the dense fog, she already doubted she knew which way she'd been heading and the swirling mist was thickest on the ground, completely obscuring the path. Since moving around wouldn't help, she just stayed where she was and waited.

"It's very cool, Damon," she called out. "I'm impressed. This is some really good fog." He still didn't show up and now she was wondering what he was waiting for. She rolled her eyes and added, "I'm sorry for mocking you, I promise it will never happen again."

She smiled a little, knowing he would take that as the bald-faced lie it was. She turned slowly in a circle, the sensation of being watched had never abated and now she could almost feel him drawing closer.

Any second now, he was going to pop up out of nowhere and scare the hell out of her.

Any second...

If she was ready for it, it wouldn't work. That's what she tried to tell herself as she spoke again. "Come on, aren't you getting a little bored of trying to freak me out by now? Because it's not working."

It was working a little.

She heard a sound and her head whipped towards it, squinting through the mist and still seeing nothing but the outline of trees fading into the near-distance. Her own breathing was loud in her ears against the otherwise oppressive silence, and the woods were growing darker as the sun began to set somewhere off through the fog and the foliage and the amassing sense of doom.

Predictably, when something appeared at the very corner of her vision it made her jump near out of her skin. She whirled around to face the looming dark figure just a few feet away where a second ago there had been nothing but a thick wall of fog.

"God Damon," she laughed, pressing a hand to her wildly thumping heart, "There you are. Finally. Okay, you are way too good at that, I kind of hate you right now."

She took a deep breath to calm down, and looked more closely at him as he remained silent. There was a strange expression on his face. He came forward slowly.

"What is it?" she asked, eyebrows drawing together in confusion. "Are you okay?"

"You know what a vampire is, Elena?"

Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open, speechless as he stood over her. She'd been expecting a smirking Damon, all proud of himself for scaring her, not the intensity with which he was regarding her right now.

"A vampire is the ultimate predator," he told her, his voice deceptively light but with a hint of steel lingering beneath his silky tones. "We're faster and stronger than you can ever be. We can hold our prey in thrall so you don't make so much as a peep when we tear out your throat. We can mess with your mind, we can manipulate the very air around you so you don't even know which way to run, and all of that stuff? We just get better at it as we get older. Much better. You can feel it, can't you? Deep down inside where you're still just a terrified primate questioning the wisdom of ever venturing down from the trees, you feel it."

"You want me to be scared of you?" She wasn't. Even now, with his obvious effort to intimidate, with the words he was speaking and the way he was looking at her, she wasn't. Creeped out, maybe...

"I want you to understand. You wanted to see this," he gestured around them and she realised the mist was starting to slowly dissipate. She realised the edge was fading from his voice, too, as he went on. "But in order to show you, I had to treat you like prey, Elena. I had to hunt you, get it? That's what this is - a way to make killing you that much easier."

"And more fun?"

His laugh was low, a little danger creeping back in. "And more fun. Well you can't blame me for enjoying it a little." He began to move forward again suddenly, forcing her to step back. He ran a finger lightly under her chin. "The way your pulse is racing right now, I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're enjoying it a little, too."

She let him back her up against a tree and he wasted no time pressing bodily against her, face hovering close to hers as he noted the slow flush rising up from her chest with interest. Of course knowing that he noticed just made it worse, heat flooding her cheeks.

"You're hard," she pointed out, going on the offensive. Her hips shifted against his as she wrapped an arm around his neck to draw him in even closer. "That's more than a little."

"It happens. Besides, it's you, Elena. I already know how you taste, every inch of you, inside and out. That's a hell of a draw."

The groan left her throat involuntarily as his mouth descended to her neck and he sucked slowly at her pulse.

"God I always swore I wasn't one of those lame vampire groupies."

He chuckled. "You are so into me right now."

And there it was, the smirking. She could feel it against the skin of her neck. She let her head fall back against the tree. "What can I say? No one's ever changed the weather just to get into my pants before. I'm only human."

"Don't be so hard on yourself. I'm fine with your natural inferiority, you should try to be, too."

"Ugh, bite me."

"Ooh, thought you'd never ask," he drawled, withdrawing a few inches as his face changed, his canines lengthening.

She used the brief pause to push back against his chest, and a second before his teeth sank into her neck she ducked under his arm and wriggled out from between him and the tree trunk.

"Hey...?" His arms spread wide as he turned to follow her retreat. "What the hell?"

"It's going to be dark soon, can't we save it till we get home?"

Even with his vampire face he still managed to look petulant and ridiculous. "Uh, no?"

"Well, I can, which means you'll have to."

"Is this because of the inferiority crack? You humans are sensitive little things, aren't you?"

Her mouth set, she turned away from him and started walking again along the now clearly visible trail.

"Oh come on, Elena," he called after her, "I'm a big scary predator and I kind of want to feast on your trembling flesh over here."

"There's a reason those primate ancestors of mine came out of the trees. Beds are much more comfortable."

She didn't bother hiding her smile, feeling his eyes filled with mute disgust locked on her back as he trudged dourly along behind her.

"Vampire groupie my ass," he muttered, as she reached back for his hand and he took it.