"Do you think someone took her?" The voice sounded exactly like Katerina's, just the way of speaking was different, softer and with a nuance of worry Katerina had never shown.

"Yes, Elena, a big, bad wolf mauled her and dragged her back into Hell," the dark-haired vampire snapped back. He supported who was presumably the werewolf.

"The poor guy looks like he's almost dead. What did you do to him, Katerina?" Elijah looked at the dangerously beautiful vampire, who, despite having no chance to run away from him again, stood there with a pouting expression.

"He's alive enough to suffice for your sacrifice. Damon is a vampire, and the moonstone is in his possession. There's even the doppelgänger!" Katerina threw her hands into the air in frustration. "What do you want more?"

"I'm not keen on letting this sacrifice happen, Katerina," Elijah said, letting his eyes travel back to the three people disappearing in the woods. "But I'm grateful you thought about me after all these centuries. I have to admit… I thought about you a lot, too."

Katerina gulped hard, no longer able to hide her fear and respect for him. As he reached out a hand, her eyes focused on his fingers, as if her stare alone was able to hold him back. It was not. Elijah cupped Katerina's chin.

"Please, I do anything," she promised, but Elijah knew very well that every sweet word from her tongue ended in a bitter lie.

The next morning greeted them with an annoying pair of chirping sparrows that sat on the windowsill. Damon shooed them away, only to find them sitting on the branches of a tree shortly afterwards. Their aim, despite cleaning their feathering, was apparently to wake Damon's guest.

Mason was sleeping in his bed, rays of sunlight dappling along the outline of his body under the white comforter. When they arrived in the middle of the night, he had still been heavily hurt. By now, most of the injuries had faded into bruises and a thin layer of reddish skin filled the deep holes Katherine's treatment had left. Mason was still pale. His tanned skin was ashen, and his lips dry and cracked. He looked nothing like himself.

Damon sat down on the edge of the bed. He looked at Mason's hand that lay atop of the blanket. There was still a visible hole in it. He literally watched it closing before taking Mason's hand into his – only to observe the wound more closely, of course.

"Are you holding my hand?"

Damon should have known it. He looked at Mason, who was already able to smile at him in a slightly arrogant way. His eyes were dull and bloodshot, and the dark circles underneath them gave Mason an unexpectedly huge amount of humanity. Damon would have never expected that a werewolf could look so vulnerable.

"You seem to need it. What kind of wolf are you that some light torture almost kills you?"

"Wolfsbane. It weakens me." Mason sounded tired. "And she gave me enough to turn ten wolves into puppies. Plus the witch."

"Excuses," said Damon, determined to make Mason feel as weak as he looked like. "I should keep it in mind, though. Next time I screw something up, I'll tell Stefan the vervain killed my brain cells."

Mason smiled at him, not the usual blindingly bright beam but it was getting closer. "You saved me."

The moment Damon had feared was there and he had not even seen it coming. He dropped Mason's hand.

"I actually came to rescue Elena. She begged me to drag you with me," he said, extinguishing Mason's weak smile as easily as the dying flame of a candle.

"Alright…" Mason tried to get up, but he hardly managed to support his weight on his elbow. While trying, the blanket fell from his shoulder and revealed his bare chest. Only then he seemed to notice the lack of clothes. "Then why am I in your bed… naked?"

"Your clothes were shredded and bloody," Damon explained. "You can't walk around like that. I'll borrow you some of my stuff later."

Mason retrieved his smile, the right corner of his mouth turning upwards into a seductive smile. "Later? After we did what exactly?"

Damon considered an answer unnecessary. He felt frozen when Mason lifted a hand and cupped the side of his neck. Involuntarily, Damon leant against the hand that pulled him down.

Their lips were almost touching when Mason asked, "How can I thank you?"

Damon felt the smirk tugging on his mouth, felt Mason's breath tickling on his lips, felt the kiss happening without his permission. He pulled away almost instantly, suddenly fearing the intimacy that overwhelmed him without warning.

Mason looked completely stunned now. He had not only lost his smile again, but his small brain was also unable to understand why Damon rejected him. To be honest, Damon did not know that himself.

"It's time for brunch." Damon rose from the bed, only to find Mason trying to follow him. "You will stay here. I'm going to get you something."

Mason sighed, but slumped back into the pillows. Damon left him alone and went into the kitchen, where it was easier to breathe again. On the kitchen counter stood a used tray with two cups and a vase holding a few roses. Stefan seemed to think that Damon had nothing better to do than clean his dishes while he faked being a good highschool student. And Elena did not care for dish washing either while pretending to be a normal highschool student.

Damon decided to ignore the dishes and focused on preparing bacon with eggs. Mason, being a werewolf and eating humans once a month, looked like he would like some meat much better than pancakes full of sugar and syrup.

"And he would surely want to do something else with the syrup," Damon muttered to himself.

"Indeed," a voice from behind said. Damon turned around to see Mason leaning against the frame of the door, pretending to be casual but actually needing the support. He had not noticed him coming.

"Mason." Damon shoved eggs and bacon on a plate. "You look better."

Mason laughed hoarsely, and that although Damon had not even lied. Mason did look a little better, but not good enough to walk around.

"Is that my shirt you're wearing?" Damon sized the grey henley up that stretched across Mason's torso.

"You looked horrible in it. I, on the other hand…" Mason smoothed the fabric over his stomach, nodding approvingly. "I can walk around like this."

"You can't," Damon said. "I bet you crawled down here. How do you think you get back home? Because I won't borrow you my car."

"I… I just need some air," Mason replied.

"My breakfast would be very sad… and cold." Damon gave the bacon and eggs a pointed look, making sure not to look disappointed but annoyed that someone actually tried to deny his delicious breakfast.

Mason's last protest was a soft sigh. It was impossible that he was not hungry after a pretty exhausting night. The way he scuffed his feet over the ground as he walked to the table made clear how tired he still was. Maybe he was too tired to eat. But Damon would not feed him.

He put the plate in front of Mason and sat down on the other side of the table. Damon pointed at the fork.

"Use that," he said, smirking.

Mason smiled back. He grabbed the fork and heaved one small mountain of food after another into his mouth. Damon watched him full of fascination. It was disgusting, but not disgusting enough not to picture that mouth busy with something else.

Damon's stubborn stare resulted in Mason munching a compliment: "That's good."

"I know," Damon said, forcing himself to look away before the desire to strip Mason with his eyes overwhelmed him. "I'm not a bad cook."

"You cook for humans?"

"It's not like I drip blood on my pancakes," Damon said instead of pointing out that Mason was not human. He looked so vulnerable, so weak, so human, and in comparison to Damon he was as easily breakable as a twig. Just another thing that needed protection. Damon was not good at protecting anything. He always screwed up.

"I wouldn't want to do naughty things with blood anyway," Mason said with a wink.

"Too bad, because there will be no syrup in my bed," Damon replied.

"Yeah…" Mason finished his food and left another dirty plate for Damon to clean. "You wanna go for a walk?"

"Not if I have to carry you again." Damon took the plate and walked to the sink. He needed to at least soak them. Stefan could wash the dishes later.

Mason joined him at the counter. "Do you want me to help?" Before Damon could answer, Mason put all the dirty cups and dishes from the tray into the sink. The vase with the roses ended up standing on the counter.

Damon shrugged, threw a towel over his shoulder and turned the water on. Mason gave him a push with his hip, so Damon stepped to the side and made a little room.

Washing dishes with a werewolf, that was incredibly weird.

Washing dishes with Mason was kind of nice, though.

Mason scrubbed and Damon dried the plates and cups. It was no hard work, but Damon still looked more than once at Mason's hand, buried in masses of white bubbles. He worried about the hole in Mason's palm – only because it would increase the work if it reopened and spread blood everywhere, of course.

When Mason handed him the last cup out, Damon found himself reaching for the other hand. Right before he touched Mason's fingers he stopped. This was pathetic. All morning he searched for stupid excuses to hold Mason's hand. If he wanted to, he should just do it.

Mason thrust the cup into Damon's hand, putting an end to all such thoughts.

"What about the walk now?" Mason asked, drying his hands. He could not stop doing things with his hands. Damon was unable to find an answer when Mason distracted him by tapping his fingers on the counter, running them through his hair, and ended up playing with the flowers Stefan had gifted Elena this morning.

"Roses, yeah?" Mason plucked one flower from the vase and sniffed at it. "For your brother's girlfriend."

"I see, walk means talk. That talk."

"You started talking about her," Mason said. He turned the rose in his fingers as he walked to the door, expecting Damon to follow him like an affectionate puppy. He did. But only because Mason's knees were still weak and he surely needed support to reach the doors that let into the garden. Damon did not help him.

The sun greeted them with warm rays of golden light, and a light breeze brushed over their faces. Mason closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The pair of sparrows had settled onto the rim of the fountain that emerged in the middle of the garden.

"That's better," Mason said, and he did indeed look better. Maybe it was the light of the sun that gave him his tan back. He sat on the edge of the fountain, and the sparrows stayed on the opposite. But when Damon walked closer the birds darted into the air. Animals hated him since he was dead.

"Where's Katherine?" Mason asked, still playing with the rose. The red petals suffered under his tight grip.

"Why? Do you want to crawl back to her after everything she did?"

"Yeah, but only to rip her heart out." Mason started with a petal, which he ripped out quite brutally. His emotional stability was obviously at an end. The veins on his hand pulsated around the faint mark Katherine's heel had left there. Damon had not expected such a reaction. If Mason needed a hug, Damon had to go and find Stefan.

"Look, Damon…" Mason let the rose fall on the ground and turned to look at Damon. "I will not end up as the plaything of a vampire again. Nothing good's gonna come of that. You've been a great distraction, and I won't tell you how unhealthy it is to be in love with Katherine's lookalike, but –"

"But you just did." And Damon was annoyed that everyone had to tell him how 'unhealthy' everything he did was.

Mason looked at him silently. His pale, exhausted face was easy to read. He could not handle being treated… being tortured and betrayed by the woman he loved. Damon himself had almost exploded after realising Katherine's betrayal. He did not want the same fate for Mason. They seemed to be so similar in so many aspects.

"I was thinking about going back to Florida," Mason eventually said. "Tyler doesn't want me here, you rather want Elena here, Katherine wants me dead… and breaking the curse won't work. I feel like I'm about to explode."

Damon frowned. "What do you mean, the curse-thing won't work?"

Mason's face hardened.

"Let's just talk about the interesting part," Damon said. "I'm not good at emotional faggy stuff."

Mason jumped to his feet, eyes flaring up with rage or pain but disappearing in werewolf-yellow before giving the exact emotion away. "Because breaking the curse would mean your precious Elena had to die. And I don't like killing people." He turned around, squashing the rose under the bottom of his foot. Damon jumped over the dead flower as he followed Mason.

"What? What does that mean?"

"I don't know. Ask Katherine." Mason still sounded angry, but his eyes had turned back to their usual blue – or green? No, blue – colour. Damon grabbed his wrist and stopped him from walking away like a drama queen. But he could not bring himself to tell Mason how stupid his behaviour was.

Mason's pulse bumped against his fingertips. Damon fought the strong urge to move his fingers to Mason's hand and hold it, squeeze it lightly and offer him a moment of comfort. But was that what Mason needed right now? And why did he care? Why did he think he knew what Mason needed? Just because they fell for the same bitch of a vampire? Hundreds of men did before.

"Let me go, Damon. I want to go home now," Mason said.

Damon shook his head. "You know what?" He used his free hand to cup Mason's cheek. "When I freaked out about Katherine and the shit she always pulls, I found myself something else to obsess about. Someone else. You."

"You want me to search myself a new obsession?" Mason asked, stupid as always.

"No," Damon replied, rolling his eyes. "I don't care what you do. All I want is for you to stay, so I won't freak out. I need you, Mason, because I'm a selfish bastard."

Surprisingly enough, Mason smiled again. He leant forward and pressed his mouth to Damon's. It was not a long kiss, but rather one of these Elena gave Stefan when they parted after school. Damon would not allow Mason to leave him now.

"I'll be selfish, too," Mason said and patted Damon's shoulder. "And… since you don't want me to thank you… I'll be leaving now."

Damon felt Mason's hands slip away from him. He gazed after Mason, who walked away without a hint of weak knees left.

Damon's knees felt like rubber as he tried to walk back to the house and not to run after a stupid, selfish werewolf.

"Vampires and Werewolves never make a good combination, don't you think so too, Katerina?" Elijah walked to the fountain, where the two men had exchanged a not-so-happy conversation. He picked the flower of the ground, a slightly squished rose. Stroking the petals straight again, he turned to Katerina.

She had to follow him, but had stopped talking a while ago. Her pouting lips remained sealed.

"I want you to do something for me," Elijah said, sniffing at the rose. The flower was ugly, but like this perfect for Katerina. He gave her the rose.

Katerina took it reluctantly. "As long as I don't have to play cupid for your new dream couple…"

"You said anything, don't forget that," Elijah said. "But then it again it is not like you had a choice."