Chapter Text
Damon’s breath hitched as he saw who walked into the bar. Of all the freaking times and places for /him/ to show up. He was good enough not to let it rattle him though and continued the drink he was making while thinking up a story to explain his ‘job’. His lips twitched in amusement as the drink was ordered absentminded and he hadn’t even been looked at yet. He already had the drink ready before he’d even got there though, knowing exactly what the order would be and it wasn’t until he pressed it into his brother’s hand that Stefan turned to look at him and thank him. “Thank…Damon?!” Stefan said incredulously.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Damon chuckled.
“What are you doing here?” Stefan asked suspiciously. Was he just following him around waiting for him to settle down somewhere so he could insert himself?
“Working, in case it isn’t obvious,” Damon said wryly. “Excuse me,” he said before he went to take another drink order. And then another. By the time he got back to his brother for a refill, he had most everyone else settled for the moment.
“How long have you been working here?” Stefan asked with narrowed eyes.
“Three weeks,” Damon said honestly. Of course, he didn’t mention that he was setting a trap for a vampire spiking people’s drinks with his blood.
That made Stefan feel a bit better. He’d only been there for a week himself and Damon couldn’t have known that he would be settling here three weeks ago. “Why?” he still had to ask.
“Why not?” Damon shrugged. “It’s a nice atmosphere, plenty of people coming through to meet and chat with, good place to pick up chicks, and unlimited access to booze. Why do you get jobs?”
“To have something to do with my time that I enjoy,” Stefan admitted, seeing Damon’s point. He supposed if he had to imagine a job for his brother, bartender would have been in his top ten. Though he would have suspected something more like a strip club before a laid-back bar like this.
“Excuse me again,” Damon said amusedly before making another round of replacing drinks, even stopping to chat with a few of the people before he made it back to his brother for another refill. “So what are you up to? Just passing through or sticking around for a while.”
“I’m still debating,” Stefan told him. Or was now debating again if Damon was going to be here. He’d been planning to settle here for a time, but he wasn’t sure if that was a good idea now. He would give it a week or so to decide.
“Well I can give some recommendations for good places around here if you like,” Damon said to make conversation, glad that they’d made it this far without an argument starting.
“I might take you up on that,” Stefan said noncommittally before Damon had more orders to fill and that was the start of the nighttime rush so Damon didn’t have time to do more than refill his drink for the next few hours. Stefan decided that was probably for the best and left by the time the rush ended. When he got up the nerve to go back again a week later, Damon was gone. Some questioning told him that Damon had apparently quit and left town three days after he’d last seen him. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that but soon put it out of his mind.
It was almost a year later when Stefan was driving through a small city, flipping through radio stations, and he heard something odd. He reached for the back button. It couldn’t be…once he was back to the station he’d thought he heard it on, he realized that it was. That was Damon’s voice. The hell? Damon was doing a radio show? As he listened, he realized it was even weirder than that. A radio psychic?! The hell?! Unlike bartending, that was a job he would never have imagined his brother doing in a million years. It was just…completely unfathomable. He even pulled over to listen to the rest of the show, trying to see if there was some agenda Damon was working towards, something that would make this make sense.
He listened as Damon took on callers, using his ‘psychic’ abilities to give them advice about careers, love lives, school, whatever, but he couldn’t manage to find an agenda hidden there. There wasn’t a particular direction he was steering people. If Stefan didn’t know any better, he would swear that Damon was just trying to /help/ people. But that was insane. He couldn’t help but snort in amusement every time one of the likely bored housewives told him how sexy his voice was, and he wondered if that was the agenda. Picking up women. Obviously, he wouldn’t do so on air, but he could be getting their details for later hookups maybe. He had said that was one of the draws of bartending after all.
Stefan got a hotel room but was careful not to run into his brother as he tuned into the show every day. At least for the next four days until they had a new radio psychic in his place. Apparently, he’d ‘foreseen’ that it was time for him to move on. Why even do it if he was only going to last a few weeks? Unless he was just trying out all kinds of jobs to find what he liked maybe? But how the hell did radio psychic even make the list in the first place? Unless he was just running out of ideas? It had been almost a year since he’d last saw him as a bartender, after all. If he was only spending a few weeks in each job, he could have been through a /lot/ in that time. He wondered if maybe his brother was searching for something. It could be the start of a real change in him. Maybe he could use some guidance? He wasn’t sure if he wanted to risk setting himself up for that again though. He would have to think about it.
Six months after his radio show gig, Damon was wandering the stands of the baseball game, selling peanuts and team flags from the case around his neck. He was just glad he’d managed to keep his usual jacket, though it had taken a bit of compulsion for it to be allowed. Getting out of the rest of the ridiculous uniform would have drawn too much notice though. At least he didn’t have to dress like a giant hot dog or one of the team mascots. His target would be in the audience. Using magic to influence professional sports games was a big deal, but he would sense it once he got close enough. He resisted the urge to groan when he spotted a familiar face in the stands. He knew Stefan was a baseball fan and all, but did he have to be /here/ at this particular game? And of course the guy next to him was waving Damon down. He plastered a cheerful smile on his face as he made his way over.
Stefan did a double take at the vendor. “Damon?!” he asked incredulously.
“Fancy meeting you here, little brother,” he chuckled. “But I’m rather busy at the moment, so…” was all he said before he walked away, continuing his loud advertisement of his wares as he walked the aisles, trying to sense any magic nearby. He did manage to finally find the witch he was looking for and slipped a tracker on him while handing peanuts to the guy behind him. Or ‘a’ witch at least. The tracker would also record any magic cast, so he would know one way or another by the end of the game and he still kept his senses sharp for any other witches present. At least Stefan hadn’t shown up last week when he was playing batboy to make sure none of the team members had any enchantments.
Stefan barely had his attention on the rest of the game at all, spending most of his time confusedly watching his brother as he walked through the stands, trying to figure out his motive for /this/ unfathomable job. If Damon was a baseball fan, he might have understood it, but he wasn’t. And even if he was, he was barely paying attention to the game anyway. After the game he tried to find his brother, but didn’t have any luck, so he just found a bar to drink away his confusion. It was late and he was just contemplating leaving when he had company on a stool next to him. “Why?” was the only word Stefan could manage to get out.
“Free entrance into the games? Why not?” Damon shrugged. He’d just finished his job and got the witch taken care of and he considered whether or not to just avoid Stefan, but better that he get these kinds of questions out of the way now than leave him to come up with god only knew what kind of insane explanations.
“You don’t even like baseball. Or any sport really,” Stefan pointed out.
“How would you know what I like,” Damon laughed derisively. “We’ve spent, what? Two months total together in almost a century and a half?”
Stefan couldn’t really dispute that. Except for the fact that he knew his brother better than that and Damon hadn’t even been paying any attention to the game. If that was his motive, then he would have been. He didn’t clue him in on his suspicions, but did decide to keep a better eye out. Maybe try to follow Damon for a while and see if his previous suspicion was right. That he was changing and looking for some sort of stability in his life. If that was the case, then maybe he could offer his help and they could be brothers again. He wasn’t ready to take that leap just yet, but since they were there, he decided to start laying some groundwork and started making small talk.