Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/439940.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Vampire_Diaries_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Bonnie_Bennett/Damon_Salvatore, Elena_Gilbert/Stefan_Salvatore, Caroline
      Forbes/Tyler_Lockwood
  Character:
      Bonnie_Bennett, Damon_Salvatore, Elena_Gilbert, Caroline_Forbes, Stefan
      Salvatore, Tyler_Lockwood, Matt_Donovan
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Canon
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-06-21 Chapters: 14/14 Words: 32109
****** Causalities Of Accidental Dating ******
by SkySamuelle
Summary
     AU from Fool Me Once. A series of accidental dates between Bonnie
     Bennett and Damon Salvatore stir feelings of a deeper nature than
     anyone would have guessed.
Notes
     Betaed by Emmy/martinigirl15, inspired by impishdragon
     Timeline: Post Season 1 episode 'Fool Me Once'
     The fic title is a play of words between 'casualities' and 'causes'.
     Cover Art from the talented reader Salix, while the banner is my
     work.
***** Chapter 1 *****
 
I
Across the room, Caroline leans toward Matt, flirty smile in place, fingers
idly pulling at his collar. Bonnie wonders why a friend would insist that much
that she get out of her house, only to ditch her afterwards.
That's Caroline Forbes –the witch sighs. She doesn't mean to be self-centered,
she just…is. It's not in her nature to focus on anyone else's needs for more
than five minutes.
She probably thinks her job with me is done. I'm all cheered up.
And just to improve her already sour mood …
"You know"- a familiar and much-disliked voice brushes against her earlobe-
"Age is not really about how old you actually are."
Shrinking back, Bonnie warily eyes the vampire suddenly seated beside her, an
arrogant smirk on his perfect lips, ice-colored eyes fixed on her.
She nods with a blatantly insincere grin "I am sure it's not about how old you
really feel either, because then you wouldn't be any older than twelve."
He chuckles, probably surprised that she's playing along instead of walking
away. She is a bit surprised, as well. To say she hates him would probably be
an exaggeration, yet…
"And you, little witch, would be positively ancient. "
Annoyed that Damon made the effort to come to her just to be snarky with her,
Bonnie rolls her eyes upward and looks away, determined to ignore him.
He doesn't leave.
"An apple martini for the lady." He orders instead, compelling the barman so no
unnecessary questions will arise.
Bonnie' s expression as she turns toward her unwanted companion is nearly
outraged.
"What?" – he shrugs like the very picture of affected innocence, - You truly
look like you need one."
And then he invades her personal space some more, so their shoulders are
touching. Yes, this Salvatore definitely has the emotional maturity of a
spoiled child.
And, let's not forget, the destructive capacity of a hurricane.
"What game are you playing tonight, Damon? "
"No games, just a drink "– he sing-songs, half serious and half mocking, gaze
softening in amusement- "Doesn't misery love company? "
"Not yours," Bonnie snipes back, because it's really, really easy (and oddly
liberating) to be mean to him, whereas she has the opposite tendency with most
people.
Unlike Stefan, Damon is not a person.Her subconscious nastily adds.
Yet, Bonnie accepts the drink.
Or rather, she downs it before she can think better of it, throwing a filthy
look over her shoulder at a certain preening vampire.
"Oooh, you have a mean streak. I like it." His crooked smile gleams under the
artificial purple lighting, and his voice is strangely warm.
Bonnie doesn't like how easy it might be, to let his sex appeal and charming
mannerisms distract her from what he truly is: a cruel, selfish creature, even
putting vampirism aside. It's unfair that someone so superficially alluring is
also so vicious and just…plain evil on the inside.
Villains like Damon haven't any friends to hang out with, so it's probably not
too surprising that they are forced to consort with their enemies when they
feel chatty. Perhaps it's sort of sad, but it's also just another way they
usepeople like her.
"Unlike you, not everyone enjoy being back-handed, insincere and unnecessarily
cruel. I'm not playing with you, I genuinelydon't want you around."
The words tumble out of her mouth in a smooth rush, defensive but more self-
assured than she would have expected. It's the martini spurring her on, she
knows. It has run straight to her brain.
There's a beat of silence as their eyes meet and don't let go. His expression
is still, but not hostile, although she can see darkness flashing briefly
behind his gaze.
Then Damon breaks their standstill with an amused quirking of his lips and
leans toward her, seemingly delighted.
"That's exactly what I find so adorable about you."
The back of his hand intentionally brushes against the knuckles of hers, still
closed around the glass. The fleeting contact sends a wave of sensation through
her whole body, and it's not a real feeling but a casual, disturbing brush of
Damon's consciousness against hers.
For a moment, the witch glimpses the inner workings of his mind, bare and
uncomplicated. He truly doesn't mind being evil, because he honestly believes
that every man and woman on the planet is just a monster waiting to happen.
Circumstances and interests make the most virtuous individual capable of the
darkest deeds
And then… it's hard to reconcile the image of herself Bonnie sees echoing
inside his head with her actual reflection.
Damon doesn't think she is the same scum that everyone else does, not yet at
least.
In his eyes, she is something still untouched and unmarred by Life, a Pandora's
box sealed shut but humming with raw potential.
It's almost flattering, and she is ready to bet he would seriously consider
draining her if he only knew what he has just given away to her.
This new sliver of insight makes her confused and light-headed when she blinks
the glaze away and her focus returns fully on him. His closeness only increases
her sense of unbalance.
Bonnie sits up a bit straighter, moving her hand swiftly away from him.
Irritatingly, his smirk grows wolfish in front of the evidence of her
discomfort.
Fortunately, their first accidental date doesn't last any longer: Caroline and
Matt have finally taken notice of something else than each other, and they are
stomping to her rescue.
Unfortunately, it won't be the last time that Mystic Falls conspires to bring
two of its most powerful children closer together.
II
Meredith McCullough used to be one of Sheila Bennett's oldest and closest
friends. Easy to see how much those two women had in common…Meredith –or Auntie
Mer, as Bonnie used to call her when she was younger- was a direct descendent
of those famous Druids who had migrated to Mystic Falls even before the Bennett
women moved on the scene.
In town, Meredith is a kind of eccentric celebrity…more reserved than Sheila
was about her interest in occultism, she has a nice, normal-looking shop of
herbal products and is the author of several book on world mythology.
One thing Bonnie never knew about Meredith before her grandmother's funeral, is
that Meredith is a witch too.
A witch very interested in helping a novice better develop her abilities, so
Bonnie often visits her shop lately. It's both a way to honor Sheila's memory
and a distraction from Bonnie's recent troubles with Elena.
It's unsettling, the distance that has crept between two girls who have always
been closer than sisters. Suddenly, it's like they cannot talk without starting
a fight and the more Bonnie discovers herself, the more that dissonance between
her and Elena grows. They don't spend as much time as they used to together.
Bonnie has cheerleading and witchcraft and Caroline-supporting, Elena has
Stefan, her self-imposed outsider role and Damon-flavored drama. They don't
envy each other but they also don't share the same world anymore.
The abrupt change of pace in their relationship is weird and scary, but
thrilling, too.
Bonnie has never wanted the spotlight her best friend so naturally occupied-she
is glad to leave that to Caroline- but this feeling of being the protagonist of
her life is refreshing.
Meredith is a patient teacher, more hands-on than Sheila was, but also more
eager to reminisce, to share little magic-related anecdotes about her and her
late friend.
Sometimes Bonnie will offer to help out with the shop only to instigate a walk
down memory lane. It gives her a bittersweet comfort, to reconnect with those
family roots she has ignored for so long.
Once, she decides to pass by the shop for a surprise visit and inquire about a
few passages in a book she has recently borrowed…
"Meredith?" she calls out to an empty shop, and then there's just the hint of a
familiar 'presence' before a door creaks and from the back room someone
saunters happily behind the counter to greet her.
It's not a ruddy haired, 50-something lady with a toothy grin, but a despicable
young man whose impish smile sets her nerves immediately on edge.
Especially since his chin is smudged with blood.
It's not possible.
"You-you-" she sputters, rage making her speech falter and several jars jump on
their shelves.
"Hello, Bon. Have you been avoiding me? It's been ages since the last time we-"
"If you've killed her, I swear I'll set you on fire," she promises, and even in
the heat of the moment she is a bit surprised at how cold and firm her threat
sounds. She realizes at once, that she is ready to carry through that promise,
and it would not matter if it hurt Stefan, her friend Stefan.
No one will take anyone else she loves away from her and stay unpunished.
Damon tilts his head aside –a strangely bird-like gesture that never fails to
disturb her-and assesses her with more attention, arrogance melting into
curiosity.
He rubs the blood off his chin, pale eyes glittering with wicked amusement, and
purses his lips in a sarcastic pout.
"Oh, Bonnie, you must really stop assuming the worst of me. Otherwise, when
I'll be really be up to something interesting, you'll have taken all the fun
out of it."
The young witch takes a deep breath, trying to focus on anything but the anger
boiling up toward the surface, begging to be let out. She puts down the two
cappuccinos she brought over for herself and Meredith on the counter, and her
hands lay open on the wood surface with a strange calm.
"Where. Is. Meredith?" She asks, more collected, but it has no effect on her
opponent, who looks more entertained and irreverent than ever.
"You should get enraged more often, it gives you quite the sexy glow."
Before she has the chance to answer that or even to decide whether to set
Damon's pretty hair aflame or shove his sorry ass telekinetically against the
wall, a rustling from the back room draws her attention.
"Who 's there?"
A young girl, no older than fourteen, appears behind Damon, paler than normal
and with a scarf loosely draped around her neck, her carrot-colored hair in a
messy ponytail. Bonnie is so shocked that it takes her more than a few seconds
to recognize her as Jenny, Meredith silliest niece.
Jenny smiles, cheeks flushing profusely in embarrassment, and stutters that her
aunt is out of town for some appointment with her editor and so she left her to
attend to the shop for the evening.
Unsure at how she is supposed to react, Bonnie just glares and glares at Damon,
who has the gall to smirk and steal a cappuccino.
"You fed on a kid?"
"I am not-"
"She offered, and who am I to refuse some spicy Druid blood? It's not my fault
Twilight has created so many vampire groupies."
Jenny's head whips toward him, her freckled face registering little surprise at
his condescending tone.
"Do you think I'm a vampire groupie?"
"Sure. But don't worry, I won't spread it around." He winks at the girl, who
folds her thin arms around herself defensively and struggles very transparently
to maintain her cool.
Half of Bonnie wants to reach out to her, or to defend her, but another half
knows it would be better, in the long run, to let the teen take full credit for
her rash stupidity.
Damon pins the poor thing down with one of those cool, dismissive looks,
enjoying his hold on her before adding casually "Now, where's that special soap
I came for? "
"I'll get it now" Jenny snarls, turning on her heels and basically shooting
towards the back room once more, without sparing a glance to their audience.
Bonnie is left speechless by the whole display, unable to pinpoint if Damon's
attitude disturbs her more or less than Jenny's.
He sips his stolen cappuccino slowly, cocky as he turns to look at her with a
certain disdainful indifference.
Her brows rise up just as disdainfully in response.
"It's surprising how every time I meet you or I hear your name in conversation,
you have hit a new low."
And with that winning exit line, she smirks a little and brings her cappuccino
to her lips, slowly, to mirror his action. Childish contest or not, for now
this is the only confrontation she feels fully prepared to face him in, and it
feels important to stand her ground, somehow.
She pretends to not notice the way Damon's gaze lingers provocatively on her
mouth, trying to make her uncomfortable. It travels lower, to the book she
keeps tucked under her arm and pressed against her chest.
"Hexes and Counter-Curses: A Pagan Anthology," he reads title out loud with a
faint accent of approval "So that's what you have been doing lately: building
up a witchy culture."
Bonnie shrugs, relaxing a bit despite herself. "It beats moping over absentee
ex-lovers or plotting to steal my brother's woman."
There's a fine line between boldness and imprudence, and that comment might
just have crossed it, if the shadows flashing so briefly behind the ice of
Damon's eyes are of any indication. She should care more about that, but
strangely, this time, possible death wishes don't matter quite so much.
Even more strangely, the vampire chooses not to take offense.
"I would love watching you to try stealing anyone's woman, if that's your team.
I might even lend a few tips along the way…or lend Elena to you, since you
don't have a brother of your own. Now that would be a pl- "
She interrupts his increasingly sickening daydream, shaking her head in
disbelief."Have you ever had a conversation with a woman that didn't border on
sexual harassment? "
Damon places his cup down and scratches his chin pensively, like he is actually
considering the question.
"I don't think so," he smiles, and for an instant, his visage resembles a
mischievous child's, not a remorseless killer's." But this one was a nice
diversion. Feel free to invite me along for another coffee break any time. "
"I wouldn't hold your breath for that" she snorts at his back while he swaggers
toward the cashier, where little Jenny waits in resentful silence with a
colorfully wrapped package.
Guiltily, Bonnie reasons that it's a waste that such a bastard has such a fine
backside.
***** Chapter 2 *****
                                
III
Marquis de Sade states that the only sure way to a woman's heart is along the
path of torment, and as far as Damon Salvatore can tell, the libertine was
right. He has tormented females of every species –plain humans, werewolves,
witches, fellow vampires- and always with very pleasurable results. Insecure
women have jumped for a chance to prove their worth whether he put them down,
those strong ones could be drawn in with some flattery, or an open challenge to
sway his indifference and they would fold easily, becoming dependent on his
attention and very determined not to lose it.
Nothing is better than quality hate sex, right? And anger…anger can open doors
for the fiercest among passions.
It's a shame that sometimes, exceptions cannot be avoided.
Damon Salvatore and Bonnie Bennett have no real wish to be involved in each
other's lives anymore, quite the contrary.
They simply remind each other of far too many mistakes and too many pains. Yet
their existences run in parallel, inevitably connected by other people's
interference. His brother is one of her closest friends, for example. Her best
friend is his current obsession.
Damon will concede that Bonnie has received her fair share of torment from him,
although, for once, most of it was purely unintentional.
Attraction and repulsion, in his experience, have always been two faces of the
same coin. He will look at Elena and he will be both enthralled and disgusted
by the differences and the similarities between her and Katherine. He will feel
both sympathy and resentment for the girl's devotion to his brother …and he
will both admire and hate Katherine for having played him so well
Authentic feelings are rarely pure or simple. To him, at least.
This is why the straightforwardness of his interactions with Bonnie puzzles
him, more often than not. He has been the guardian of her family for
generations, and this pushes him to feel like he has some sort of ownership
right to her. He watches her, waiting to witness her fall from grace, because
adjectives like 'beautiful' and 'powerful' rarely match to 'naïve' and 'kind'
for very long. She is pure and good, so it feels real when she pulls away from
him. Bonnie' s dislike makes more sense than Elena's understanding, so it's
natural he feels a tiny bit of attraction for the witch.
He likes that she recognizes him for what he is, it amuses him that she is so
loyal and adamantly fair and caring to people who don't always deserve it
(nullities like Tyler Lockwood, Caroline and Mutt come to mind).
Damon likes Bonnie because he has reasons to, and she dislikes him because she
has reasons not to. Simple. Natural. Obvious. So why would he mind this status
quo?
Most days, the status quo keeps him on his toes and procures occasions for
verbal sparring he appreciates, but few others…
Well, there are situations where it's downright inconvenient that his little
witch hates his guts.
Like when they are stuck at the same table, side to side, for dinner.
Thanksgiving dinner, to be precise, and he is just there to run interference
between Elena and Stefan. All his clever manipulation of Jenna to score an
invitation, and he gets to sit at the opposite side of the table from his
intended targets, between good old Sheriff Forbes and Bonnie, Matt's mother
(who loathes him violently since he ended that meaningless fling of theirs)
right in front of him.
'I know you hate me'- he tugs at her mind telepathically, asking for attention-
'But this is just cruel.'
She keeps eating and nods at something insignificant Caroline has just giggled,
ignoring him for a long moment before answering in kind.
To her credit, Bonnie doesn't even try to deny she interfered with seating
arrangements.
'Please. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? You walked straight into this
one. '
'So? Get a life. Aren't you tired of playing overprotective handmaiden to the
fair Elena?'
'Elena and Stefan are my friends. I'm not letting you ruin this for them. '
'Has it occurred to you that if Elena didn't want me here, all she had to do
was ask me not to come? '
He has a point here, and that gains him a rather pensive pause in their silent
conversation. He can feel the tension running along the temporary link they
have created between their minds, and that suggests to him that she is not
ready to let the matter rest just yet.
'You and Elena'-Bonnie admits, more subdued- 'have in common this conviction
that you can have anything and everything you can possibly desire. It doesn't
work like that in real life. Nobody can have it all, no strings attached. When
it comes to the real choice, you know she will take Stefan just as well anyone
who has ever seen them together once knows it. You know it, and I think it's
why you hold onto the chase so much. '
There's a quality to her mind's voice that is nearly… gentle, when it should
have been hard. It shouldn't surprise him, because Bonnie Bennett is not the
type to kick the enemy when he's down. Her recalcitrant sympathy is offensive
in itself, but it's her opinion of his intentions that bothers him the most.
For whatever reason, he is miffed that the little witch refuses to take him
seriously, and thinks he is merely playing around pointlessly with her friend .
'Idowant Elena.'
'I believe that. But I also believe that it's easier for someone like you to
want someone you cannot ever truly have.'
His jaw clenches hard at that 'someone like you' delivered with something that
tastes like fucking pity. He won't defend himself before a measly, lowly human
girl.
Plus, the turn this mental chat is taking is far, far less entertaining than he
had planned for in the beginning.
Serious conversations are so annoying and boring, especially when he doesn't
have the upper hand.
'If you must talk nonsense to me, do it out loud. The Sheriff is looking
weirdly at me. '
When the link between their minds snaps shut, he doesn't expect that Bonnie
would be so collaborative to indulge his request. But before he can open his
mouth to flatter dear Elizabeth Forbes, the brunette turns toward him and
offers a random comment on Jenna's stuffed turkey.
He pretends he doesn't appreciate it and concentrates on how much prettier her
chocolate locks look when they are stylishly curled and pulled up like that, to
frame the caramel curve of her neck. He imagines, for a few seconds, that he
could just grab her and run his fangs along that lovely arc. To nip at that
soft, inviting skin before sinking his teeth in.
Damon kind of regrets that the first and only time he had tasted her, it had
been in anger.
***** Chapter 3 *****
                                           
IV
"You are not very good at self-preservation, are you?"
Despite Damon's choice of words, his tone as he wraps his leather jacket around
her shoulders is soft, indulgent in a saddened sort of way.
His gesture is not dictated so much by gallantry as much as it is by practical
necessity: her purple dress is severely torn where her left shoulder meets her
arm, allowing him to see the scraped skin there. His eyes rake over her
shivering body, inspecting her for further damage while his arm surrounds her
waist to keep her close to him.
Bonnie must be in shock, because she doesn't twist out of his hold, as he
expected she would. It feels strange, the heat of her form drawn so closely to
his cooler one. Instinct would command him to press her tightly to his side,
but respect has him maintaining a minimal, considerate distance.
He doesn't smell fresh blood on her, and an unusual sensation twists inside
him, in between relief and pride, at knowing she is not even bruised. She will
probably have a few black and blue spots on her back in the morning, but
nothing worse.
Even that angers him, makes him want to tear apart slowly, piece by useless
piece, the mongrel who has dared to slam her against that wall.
He spares a glance at the werewolf, passed out on the floor and he feels his
fangs grazing his tongue, a tightness pulling at his features like they are
about to break into his 'game face' without his notice.
He doesn't know what to do with this thing that feels way too much like
protectiveness and that unnerves him more and more when Bonnie stays quiet and
unresponsive under his hands, just staring down at the unconscious body. So he
decides to brush aside the confusion and resort to what he knows best. Mockery.
"Honestly, what is wrong with you? Do you know how to pick them, because-"
He hesitates to bring up the latest vampire playboy she went out with, the one
who had eventually kidnapped her and led Grandma Bennett to her death. That
confuses him, too. He is not usually known for sparing any punches to anyone,
so why should it be different now?
Bonnie puts her arm on his, restraining him. "It's fine, I knew he would
transform tonight. "
From the way she says it, it sounds like she is referring to one of her
precognitive visions.
"You went willingly near a werewolf, in his first full moon night?" – he
reiterates, not bothering to hide the incredulity- "I said it once and I will
say it again: what's wrong with you?"
His tone seems to bring her back to reality, because she lets his arm go and
shrugs off his touch, finally animate again, her voice no longer faint and
distant when she replies. "I've known Tyler all my life. I know how it feels to
find out that you are anything but normal, and I wanted to help him, if I
could."
And naturally, there was no doubt in Bonnie' s mind that if Lockwood saw her
witnessing his first transformation, he was going to confide in her.
Silly, suicidal little girl.
"I take back my question. You're either crazy or stupid."
"I don't expect you to understand," She snaps, defensive, moving away from him
and toward the dog.
"Of course I don't," he replies, purely on the basis of principle, frowning as
Bonnie kneels over Toby and gets an amulet out of her pocket to slip around his
neck.
"It's not like I couldn't protect myself."
She had fought off Mr. Furry quite well for a while, to say the truth, but he
wasn't about to admit it, not only because it would have meant admitting that
he had laid low and watched the action from the shadows for some time.
"So you were just letting him toss you around for fun? I didn't know you liked
t that rough."
Just remembering the werewolf 's taste in his mouth has Damon cringing. Bitter
flavor, although the blood was powerful in its way. Not to mention the damned
fur in his mouth, damn!
The fight before the feeding, instead, had been a decent workout. Very
satisfying.
"I was trying to figure out a way to defend myself and knock him out without
seriously hurting him. Sigils don't work on awake wolves."
As if on cue, the werewolf's form begins shifting back to the human, vaguely
familiar bulky frame.
"I'll go with you being stupid" Damon exhales in a sigh of excessively
exasperated disapproval, rolling his eyes upward. Stupid feels the appropriate
word to him. You cannot neuter a werewolf permanently, so why bother with
silliness as temporary sigils, risking your short, mortal existence on top of
it?
"You are an asshole." The little witch bites back automatically, looking away
from her shiny new protégé to narrow her eyes on him " but thank you for
helping."
Always so polite.
Why did he help, anyway? A whim, he reminds to himself.
Merely a whim.
"I was hungry" –he shrugs off like it doesn't matter, because it doesn't- "and
he was handy. Although wolf's blood doesn't compare to witch's blood at all.
You were so much sweeter on the tongue, and the eyes. "
Once upon a happy time, that phrasing would have majorly upset her and sent her
into a frenzy of hostility. By now, she has become wise to his ways, and it
doesn't even faze her.
"You really know how to put someone at ease after an aggression, don't you? "
"I try"- the vampire smirks, nearly giddy under her quasi-praise – "what are
you doing with him, now? Changing him into a toad until the night is over?"
It's her turn to roll her eyes at his antics. "Now I'm going to call Stefan,
and we'll bring Tyler to his home, where he'll stay asleep until the morning."
"No need. I'm already here. " A deep voice comes from behind them and Stefan is
standing between the two of them before anyone can blink.
Overdramatic, hero-complex-bearing little brother. Urgh.
"I will do it alone, before someone sees anything questionable." And at Bonnie'
s nod, the younger vampire takes Tyler in his arms, bridal-style and jumps to
the nearest roof. Bonnie blinks at the spot Stefan had occupied until a few
seconds earlier, and Damon snickers at the image he will use to tease his
brother for, like…years to come.
Thank you so much for the weaponry, Little Witch.
"Ah, now I've rescued you, you can stop bringing up that one time I nearly
sucked you dry."
He says, somehow triumphantly, and he sees, out of the corner of his eye, that
Bonnie is pulling his jacket tighter around her and biting her bottom lip
trying not smile.
What an odd night, he considers, wondering why she is not rushing inside the
club, back to Elena and her other, stupider friends.
Then it occurs to him that she is not exactly presentable, in her current
state.
"If I will call us even, will you stop bringing that nice trauma up? "
"Perhaps, but I still will want that jacket back by the morning."
"Charming"
Damon doesn't mention how absolutely titillatinghe finds the idea of his
favorite leather jacket absorbing the scent of his favorite witch.
"Thanks. Are you heading back home to curl up in your bed and cry, or do you
care for a drink? I promise to be helpful regardless."
He can tell from the look on her face that she is dying to call him a sexual
deviant or something similar, and fighting the urge not to give him any
satisfaction. How cute of her.
"I'm not exactly eager to head back there, reduced like this" - she sighs,
resigned, combing her hair with her fingers – "but if you compel barman to hand
me a beer, you can sit across from me until Stefan returns and then get your
precious jacket back."
AN: A special thank you to RockerChick08 for the constant support and awesome,
thoughtful reviews. I don't think I can express with words how much I
appreciated that, so… PM me a theme and I'll write the next drabble/one-shot on
'Witches and Vampires' just for you. :)
V
Some nights Bonnie awakens and just can't fall back to sleep. Some nights, she
can't manage to get any sleep at all.
It's when her dreams become nebulous and disquieting for long stretches of time
–weeks, occasionally- full of incoherent images and feelings she doesn't
understand or find a connection to and she just gets that terrible sense of
doom and ruin hovering over Mystical Falls.
So when there's that mood in the air, it's nice to have something to do instead
of just tossing and turning around in her bed. Besides…every serious witch
knows that the best moment to find and extract from ground Mandrake roots is
past midnight on a Dark Moon night.
Meredith would have probably warned her against the prospect of having a long
moonlight-less stroll in the woods, alone, a basket under her arm if Bonnie had
made her intentions known. And the brunette knows that, if she had asked,
Stefan would probably not have minded accompanying her, and Tyler…well, Tyler
has made clear that he is very willing to repay the help she has recently given
him to accept his family history.
Not going alone would have been more careful and Bonnie has always been nothing
if not smart and prudent in her choices of action.
She doesn't regret taking the less safe road, for once. It's so much nicer, to
feel nocturnal air on her skin as her energy ball floats ahead of her to light
up her path, small noises of nature breaking the quiet. It feels good, knowing
she has no need to fear those creatures that lurk hidden in the darkness,
because she is one of them.
After being scared of her psychic abilities for so long, it feels amazing to
fully embrace the power within and not be helpless.
Once she reaches the meadow – it has taken a lot of concentration and many
attempts to divine the right spot where those plants grew with her pendulum-
she puts her empty basket down in the grass, and sits, shedding her coat and
taking off her shoes.
She is freezing at first, while she breathes in and out, listening in to her
surroundings and before shifting her concentration inward. Then she begins to
be aware only of the energy that moves inside and out of her, enclosing part of
the meadow in a protective ring of light. It's like a rain of dancing glowworms
is tracing a circle of power around her, and the sight is undeniably beautiful.
True magic is always poetry in motion, Bonnie. Parlor tricks are just whatever
gets the job done-she can feel her grandmother's voice murmuring, in the back
of her mind, and for the first time in a long, long time Bonnie feels safe and
completely content. Almost happy.
She rises and begins to dance to a rhythm that comes from somewhere deep inside
her, allowing the force dormant in her blood to stir slowly awake.
When he flies by, she doesn't notice the crow that silently perches on a fir
just outside her protective circle, watching.
From his vantage point, Damon observes intently every move of hers, staying
very still.
Her body undulates and glows in the darkness, and while her bare feet slap
rapidly on the cold ground, her thin arms up in the air, he can sense the
supernatural force thickening around her tiny, breakable figure… such an
intoxicating, mesmerizing contrast.
Power seeps out of her wide, glazed eyes, her open lips, her sweaty visage and
limbs. Her dark, messy locks whip her shoulders while she throws her head from
side to side.
Damon wants to touch her, so badly than he can't think of anything but how she
would feel, feverish and warm, bronzed skin wet with perspiration sliding
easily against his, cooler and paler.
At this moment, Bonnie is not entirely herself, not entirely human anymore but
the avatar for deities older than Time.
Her body arches and bends, slim and sinuous, her movements more and more
frantic as the tempo grows and nears its peak.
He can suddenly picture himself very vividly, pinning her down in the grass,
possessing her brutally until she clenches in a shuddering surrender around
him.
His animal form quivers, itching to shift back to the original as the thirst
for her blood screams loud inside his head, nearly silencing every other
thought.
Yet he can't look away from her, not when he can feel the powerraising once
more. It fills her frail, human frame up like boiling water would fill a cup,
furious and rash, flowing from bottom up in vibrating spirals.
Then, finally the invisible chord snaps inside of Bonnie. A violent rush of
energy pours out of her, like blood from a deep cut, and she screams in the
night, her wild, inarticulate cry emptying her of everything she has. Bonnie
falls to her knees, laughing senselessly, spent but transparently exhilarated
at the magic she has released into the world.
Several dark shapes shoot out of the ground to glide through the air and hang
over her head and swirl above her in a circular motion. Leaves fall off and
Damon realizes they are plants…mandrake plants, probably.
He keeps observing while the roots levitate in an ordinate succession toward
and inside the basket on the ground.
The witch's eyelids have dropped closed and she is still subtly humming with
sex and life and every good thing Damon has forgotten how to feel, every hair
on her body raised.
She looks delicious.
He can hear how loud the irregular beating of her own heart is, and it excites
him as much as her return to a more ordinary conscience, as her breath slows
down.
The girl is shuddering, the ghost of a grin stretching her lips while she rubs
her arms self-consciously, letting him know she is fully lucid again. Soon, she
becomes aware of his presence and blinks dazedly, looking in his direction,
irises glossy and wider than normal. Her pink tongue darts to wet her mouth
slowly while she lifts herself up from the grass, sluggishly but also with a
very self-aware sensuousness.
For a brief, hungry instant it's very easy to believe she is reeling him in on
purpose, but then Bonnie shakes any lingering after-effect of her magic-high
off and puts her coat back on, turning her back to him.
Her power circle dissolves like fairy dust as she walks away from him, among
the trees, ignoring his very presence like he is invisible.
Pissed off and still quite aroused, the vampire takes a full minute to cool off
before spreading his wings and flying after her retreating figure, cawing
loudly in her wake.
She stops and waits when she hears him, no longer pretending but unsure about
what this casual meeting will turn out to be. With Damon Salvatore, you never
truly know what to expect.
He lands two feet from her and shape-shifts before even grazing the ground.
"You must really be bored."
She blurts out without thinking, her limbs very relaxed and her mind pleasantly
blank, despite the unexpected situation. In all honesty, she still feels full
of that languorous warmth that accompanies the aftermath of her magical
workings, and she doesn't want to spoil her mood. Not even for the likes of a
certain blue-eyed devil.
"Don't flatter yourself too much, Little Red Riding Hood. I'm not stalking you.
I just got hungry and helped myself to a few campers. But don't worry, nobody
died…this time."
"Good to know"-Bonnie nods, tucking a dark lock behind her ear and offering him
a forced smile- "what do you want?"
Obviously, he ignores her question completely and moves so fast that he is
suddenly in her face and peering into her basket.
"Mandrake roots"- he tut-tuts her with a smoldering, devious grin that jumbles
her train of thought- "so it's true. Our resident Good Girl is going over to
the dark side. Elena is very worried. "
And he has listened very comfortably from his bedroom to the heated ramblings
that got dumped on Stefan at regular intervals. Damon, however, has found the
fact that the last living Bennett was getting out of her comfort zone nothing
but intriguing. He would have never guessed that someone so…straight-laced had
it in her.
Bonnie holds her chin high, squaring her jaw and hardening her gaze slightly.
"For your information, mandrake roots do wonders in healing potions. "
"Hm. Call me paranoid, but I don't think that was the use you had in mind."
"What's you point?" she all but growls, obviously unnerved now, tapping her
foot against the ground.
"Perhaps I have no point and we are just a guy and a girl, engaging in trivial
conversation."
Although he makes it sound like a joke, in the fluorescent light of her energy
ball, with his flawless white complexion and his eyes shining like azure
crystals, he truly looks …very reassuringly boyish.
Less handsome and more beautiful if that makes sense to think of, and it may be
an illusion but it still puts her at better ease.
"Unless we were a witch and a vampire, wandering in the woods."
When she gets walking again, he keeps up with her. The energy ball sizzles
before them, leading them forward.
"Dark doesn't always mean evil," she adds eventually, without questioning
herself about why.
Her voice sounds lower and breathier to her ears than she would have
anticipated, and she forces herself to stare ahead, to not mind that she just
invited the most vicious creature she knows to express judgment on her life.
"I should know," Damon acknowledges, his tone more amused than taunting. It's
as close as he will allow himself to get to agreeing with her. Yet, leaving it
at that doesn't satisfy him. He feels like he has said nothing at all, so he
adds: "Evil is a human term, it's up to you to decide what it means. I have
never known a powerful witch who has not redefined the boundaries to get in-
depth."
Perhaps it sounds cryptic, but Bonnie nods like she understands.
Floods and tornados are not evil, yet they are incredibly destructive. Fire can
be used to protect life or destroy it. Nature simply is, and it follows no
moral code but a law of necessity that transcends the human conception of right
and wrong. A witch cannot reach the fullness of her powers, unless she is
willing to play along with that truth and face the shadow together with the
light.
"I was surprised at how I liked it, being the one to control my powers, instead
of having them control me. It was exhilarating."
That is something she has not ever really said to anyone before, and maybe she
is saying it to him only because he is the one person -among her acquaintances-
who might not judge her stance on this issue. And she had never realized before
how much she wanted to just …say it and have someone see all of her.
"It becomes you," Damon whispers, and she doesn't ask what he means, however
much that statement puzzles her.
They walk together, side by side, until they are out of the woods and the
outline of her house cuts the horizon. When Bonnie turns to bid him goodbye and
her eyes meet only empty space, it's not a surprise.
It doesn't ruin anything.
***** Chapter 4 *****
VI
Contrary to popular opinion, Mandrake roots are not useful when it comes to
fertility and love spells, although Bonnie supposes they could come handy in
healing a scarred uterus or something similar. Their main use is –surprise,
surprise –in the making of a poison that can be modified to affect in various
ways nearly every kind of magical creature- from trolls to pixies to vampires
to even darker monsters- to incapacitate or to kill, depending on the dosage.
Even more importantly, witches use mandrake for a very special kind of oil.
'The Flying Ointment', they called it in the Dark Ages, because the Inquisition
was certain that it enabled witches to fly on their brooms. In reality, the
only place it allowed them to fly to…was inside other people's dreams. Some
sorceresses had used them to bend people to their whims after plaguing them
with horrific nightmares, others had used it to drive a potential lover to
obsession, others yet had destroyed their enemies' sanity.
Bonnie had often shuddered reading of such terrible stories, but it had not
dissuaded from her intent. She trusts herself and her integrity to not abuse
her supernatural means, and she is determined to not be helpless ever again.
Since Grams died, the guilt of not being strong enough to save her or to
resolve her problems on her own plagued her constantly, together with the fear
of being forced into a similar situation before she is ready.
She knows now that there are threats, hidden in the darkness, and it would be
so very easy to give in to the terror of her visions, the fear of losing all
that she hold dear, only because of what she is. Unless she can be certain of
her capacity to fight back.
So she doesn't feel guilty and she doesn't blame Elena for being a bit
judgmental. Someday the other girl will thank her.
The real problem with mandrake roots is that they cannot be simply ripped from
the ground like you would do with every other plant. They are sort of…animated
and their scream when they are ripped out can truly either kill or send into a
coma the less experienced spell-worker. They need to be 'put to sleep' with
magic before being moved and you can't touch them with your bare hands because
they are poisonous. You can't even dice them like potatoes once you collect
them, because you need to kill them first...with alcohol poisoning. This
requires keeping each root separated from the others, inside a jar filled with
an alcoholic beverage for about three months.
Therefore, by the day after Bonnie's stroll in the woods, the young witch is
already wondering if she has not bitten off more than she is able to chew.
Now she has her bedroom's cupboard housing jittering jars with creepy, potato-
like things that are shaped like human bodies and somehow manage to blubber
while immersed in bourbon. Apparently they don't just get killed right away.
It's a relief that her father is out of town for work… she will have time to
replace the missing bottle without being seen.
The liquor store cashier eyed her with a certain suspicion when she went in,
but he wouldn't call her on her age when she eventually would go to him with
her purchase of choice. The popular high school crowd has its ways to procure
'heavy drinks' for parties and she asked Tyler to drop in a good word with his
'contact.'
Bonnie frowns, remembering the excuse she had used with her friend. She could
have trusted Tyler with the truth. After all, he knows she is a witch, and he
is a werewolf, so there is not much of a reason to lie with him. Sure, she saw
him being a real jerk with a lot of people through the years, but she was never
one of them.
So why had she told him that she had accidentally broken the bottle cleaning
house? She could have told at least part of the truth and for some reason, it
puzzles her to know that she lied on automatic pilot, relying on Tyler's
eagerness to please.
She is not using anyone, so why was she so sincere to a vampire she dislikes
and so reluctant to be that way with a wolf she likes?
Why is she even giving the fact all this importance?
"We keep meeting in the most interesting places."
She turns away from the string of bourbon bottles she has been glaring at, only
to focus the glare on Mystic Falls' resident source-of-all-evil, who stands at
the other end of the aisle.
It's bizarre how just one of those nasty smirks of his manages to transform the
most smoothly-pronounced line into a provocation.
"Is stalking a popular vampire hobby, or just yours?"
She doesn't add 'and Stefan's' out of loyalty, although she was a little
freaked out when Elena told her whole the story of how he stalked for months
before approaching her. It's details like this one that always remind her that
vampires are more than humans on a blood-diet. They don't think like men
anymore.
"I would call it a professional diversion."
Damon's smirk thins, but she sees it only for a few seconds because, only a
disturbance of air after, he is right behind her, his chest grazing her
shoulder, and she is not sure of how to move away without giving him a chance
to make it embarrassing.
"A century of experience, and you still don't get the concept of personal
space," she huffs instead, remaining very, very still.
"Oh, I get it all right. I just find it overrated in most cases. "
Turning around to face him and shouldering him away forcefully, Bonnie finds
herself mirroring what she calls 'his usual expression': a sugarcoated smile
with a bare hint of friendly, elegant threat.
"Unless it keeps Stefan away from your evil master plans"
"You don't get nearly enough credit for your wit."
Arching her brow inquisitively, she didn't step away from him. "Are you truly
quoting 'Gossip Girl'?"
"A good line is a good line, it doesn't matter where it comes from"- he tilts
his head, taking on a pensive pose- "I remember it because my memory is just as
impressive as the rest of me, what's your excuse?"
Unusually bold, the witch leans marginally closer, so that she is practically
breathing on his chin and looking up into his dilated blue eyes: "No need to
get defensive, Mr. Homicidal Maniac."
The action is so close to flirting that it sends a ripple of shock through the
brunette as soon it's done and the scene replays in her head.
When the realization has her shrinking back from him, her posture stiffer as
she straightens and bites the inside of her cheek to keep the smile unwavering,
she notices the same surprise reflected on his face, at least until his visage
goes utterly blank again and his gaze grows less genuine and more forceful,
challenging.
The moment passes between them where it feels like they are hanging on a
precarious balance. The vampire might push or the witch might retreat, and it
would change everything in a multitude of unexplainable ways.
But it passes, and they dismiss each other at the same moment with nothing but
a blink.
"So Bonnie, are you an alcoholic?"
Damon's tone is smarmy and insinuating, his body angled away from her. Bonnie
rolls her eyes at him, relieved that everything is normal again.
"It's like Hitler just asked Buddha if he ever had a single violent thought."
"I hope you understand the comparison is not exactly flattering to you."
"Goodbye, Damon"
She shakes her head like she finds him impossible to deal with, grabbing a
bottle off the shelf, and he grins over her exasperation but doesn't look after
her as she leaves.
He tells himself he doesn't want to. Why would he?
VII
The concept is simple.
Caroline has organized this nice school auction for beneficence: bide well and
you take off for a date with one of her hot cheerleaders.
Damon would think the whole ordeal pathetic if not for the significant
particular that the blonde has managed to rope in Elena as well and Stefan is
absolutely convinced that his older brother wouldn't miss an opportunity like
this to spirit her away for the evening.
It sounds like something he would do, but being lectured and warned off in
advance by Stefan has truly ruined all the anticipation, regardless of how much
he hates to disappoint.
Inspiration strikes him while he is feeding off Stefan's silent glowers and
Caroline and Elena's occasional concerned glances.
Bonnie walks up to the stage, gorgeous in her sea green, knee-length dress,
dark hair perfectly curled and in two loosened, naughty-school girl plaits, and
he can't avoid wetting his lips in satisfaction.
"This is my best friend, here – Caroline perks up into the microphone, in that
manner of hers he has always particularly disliked- So we will start the
bidding at 100 dollars."
"100 dollars." a geek parrots from the back.
"200 dollars," says a confident voice from Damon's right.
Stupid dog- the vampire condescendingly acknowledges, glancing at the jock and
sitting up with a devilish grin.
"500 dollars." He offers giddily, because if there's something Damon Salvatore
doesn't do, it's half-measures.
Eerie silence follows and the outraged expression on the witch's face is
priceless. Caroline's mouth is hanging open, Stefan's forehead is brooding
harder than usual and Elena's lovely lips are in a thin line.
Damon feels immensely satisfied.
"We have 500 dollars over there". -The blonde chirps with a blindingly
artificial grin - "Do I hear 600, somewhere?"
"600," Tyler Lockwood insists, much to Damon's annoyance. It makes his fangs
flash against his tongue that Bonnie lightens up from within instead. Honestly,
why would want someone like her to defile herself with that Neanderthal?
"Very well-" Caroline hurries up, eager to finish the deal, but she is not
truly given the chance to.
"1000 dollars."
Ignore Elena, bid on the best friend, piss off Stefan and all is right with the
world. -his subconscious sings along. It's quintessentially the perfect plan
and he is very proud of it.
People are staring at him and that just makes his triumph better.
The pause where Bonnie keeps glancing pleadingly at the werewolf and Stefan and
Elena whisper to each other stretches a bit long before Caroline finally
surrenders.
"Going once"- the head cheerleader announces to the room, visibly resigned-
"1000 going twice… sold."
Some nobodies clap while the witch strolls off the stage and makes her way over
to his seat.
"Congratulations"- she simpers sweetly while she sits beside him, green eyes
hostile and hard – "on ruining my evening."
"Thank you", he dishes back, grin actually reaching his eyes as he gives the
Lockwood boy a victorious little wave.
"You're welcome," Bonnie says, at the same time that her mind reaches out for
his, literally shoving a thought into his head: 'I know what you are doing and
I won't let you use me to bait Elena, is that clear?'
Once more, he is surprised at how easily she gets his schemes. Bright girl.
'Don't sell yourself short, sweetheart. It was 1000 dollars I just invested
into your company. Maybe I like it. And I have seriously won you major
popularity points, so why complain?'
'Gee, I don't know. Probably because every minute I spend with you, it's one
minute less I might be spending with someone who is not playing games, and whom
I might actually like?'
And with a mental snort, Bonnie's mind backs away from his and he feels that
loss more keenly than he thinks he should.
"We are all playing"- Damon comments out loud, casually running his thumb over
the back of her hand- "and you can do better than a drooling dog."
She shivers and flinches away from his touch, her expression wary. He doesn't
like it.
"Says the resident sociopath."
Damon brings her to see a British movie 'The Wicker Tree,' and while the
stubborn girl will not allow him to touch her, not even a little (he gets a
tiny electric jolt as soon as his palm grazes her knee) …he doesn't get bored.
Her opinions are not uninteresting to hear, and he gets to complain about the
2006 remake of a similar movie 'The Wicker Man' as long as he wants.
Apparently her grandmother got her to see the 1976 version once, and she was
disappointed when the version with Nicolas Cage turned out to be a pale
imitation of the original.
All things considered, it's the longest they've ever talked without her biting
his head off at some point. It makes him feel almost …accomplished.
He walks her home like he's the man he used to be before Katherine, and the
last thing Bonnie tells him is "this has been less painful than I thought it
was going to be"
"Ibehaved". -he preens a little-"do I get a reward?"
"Sure. I won't curse you into sparkling like Edward Cullen for dragging me into
your insane little plots."
But underneath the snark, there's something else that suggests to him he might
kiss her now and not have his hair set on fire, like she promised she would if
he tried anything. She looks relaxed, the same content glow about her he sees
on the witch when she is around her closest friends, having fun. Damon thinks
he might be pleased that he was the one to give her that, if he allowed himself
to be.
Something clenches inside him as he shakes the feeling off. Acting all
chivalrous and kissing naïve girls on their doorstep is not him.
"Feel free to share around with your girlfriends how brilliant of a gentleman I
can be."
And just like that, the sense of possibility hanging between them is shattered.
Her eyes lose some of that shine as her guard goes up again. "Dream on."
Bonnie doesn't sound disappointed or angry but he feels, deep down, that she
should be. It's what he feels.
Walking back to the Salvatore boarding house, he can't truly explain to himself
why he hadn't exploited that golden opportunity.
He could have kissed her, whether it was means for a purpose or not, and he
would have enjoyed it.
Since when is Damon Salvatore the one to deny himself anything?
It's because you know you don't deserve it, something like that, so pure and
good. You would destroy it. You would destroy her-taunts a voice that sounds
way too much like Katherine's, from the back of his mind.
Damon blocks it out until he has completely convinced himself that he never
heard it in the first place.
***** Chapter 5 *****
 
VIII
Bonnie would be the last person to deny she has issues with Damon Salvatore. He
has basically abused one of her childhood friends – God knows, it is easy to
feel protective of Caroline, with all the emotional baggage the other girl
drags alongside herself- and started a chain of events that brought her
grandmother to her death. She saw him being cruel to his younger brother and
shamelessly interested in her other best friend. She knows he doesn't often
concern himself with the consequences of his whims, that he is smart, but
constantly puts that intelligence to ill-use, that he likes hurting others for
his twisted fun and that he most likely doesn't mind the idea of killing again
in the near future.
He is crass and honest whenever it suits him, and a suave, manipulative liar
whenever it benefits him.
He is handsome, charming and very aware of it, even worse, he rarely shies away
from using it to his advantage.
He is capable of compassion occasionally, and the way he held onto his love for
Katherine, the same way he tries to love Elena now…is the way every woman
dreams of being loved someday.
So, you see, Bonnie is not blind to his faults and she doesn't need to pretend
they mean he has no feelings.
She doesn't hate Damon for being that way, but she decided long time ago she
was not ever going to like him. That is the root of all her present issues with
him, because –however much she has willed herself not to notice- all those
random meetings between her and the vampire are messing with her levelheaded
resolution.
When they are alone, it's easy to forget all the reasons she should not
appreciate his company. He is a brilliant conversationalist and his personality
is this unstoppable, magnetic force that eventually grows on you over time.
It scares Bonnie, that she has let herself get so used to his presence to
almost take for granted that Damon is part of the natural order of things.
Even worse, she had realized last night, she wanted to be kissed by him.
Although she knew his showing-off at the auction was all part of a ploy to get
at Elena, that date with Damon felt real to her. She had felt at the time that
it was real for him too, but by the morning after she was sure of the contrary.
Feeling anything for him is a betrayal of too many others in her life, but
before that, it's a betrayal of herself and everything she has ever believed
in. She knows he can't be trusted and it's silly to allow something so volatile
as desire to distract her from that.
Desire is a natural reaction, especially to a sexy, older, dangerous guy but
one that could be controlled and forgotten on a whim.
Particularly if there's another hot guy waiting in the wings, hounding her for
a date.
Hence, she stops stalling and accepts Tyler's offer of 'hanging out'. The witch
and the werewolf: it might just be the kind of normal that would work for her
right now. They could fit just fine together.
She wears her best tight-fitting jeans, a neo-hippie style emerald shirt and
her most contagious smile to meet Tyler at Mystic Grill. She has fun with him
for exactly 35 minutes before he gets up from their table to greet an old
friend he spotted at the bar.
Bonnie ends up waiting for the next 45 minutes, increasingly embarrassed and
willing him to return like she could conjure him up by the sheer refusal to
believe he could ditch her so callously.
What have I possibly done so wrong? –She is wondering, angrily scowling at her
milkshake until it starts boiling.
"You better get yourself under control, Glinda," The cool weight of a hand on
her shoulder brings her out of her trance-like confusion, and she blinks the
fury away, startled that she just lost control in a public place.
"Is that my new nickname?"
"It fits."
Bonnie doesn't complain as Damon plops down onto the seat Tyler is supposed to
be occupying. A cursory glance across the room demonstrates that nobody is
looking at her strangely.
"Did you see if anyone noticed?" she asks, cringing in shame, and half-
wondering why he is not already picking on her.
"No," the vampire shrugs jovially, sizing her up in transparent appreciation
and lingering on her cleavage. She would complain about it, but after being
dumped by Tyler on their first date, it kind of cheers her up, so she crosses
her arms in front of her chest and plays the oblivious card.
"Did you want something?" she tries her best to sound standoffish and secure,
but her voice is not working quite right. Of all the people she wanted
witnessing this moment of supreme social humiliation, he was the very last one
on the list.
"Just you." The rich, suggestive tone doesn't really leave much doubt as to
what he means and it sends a flush of heat creeping up her neck to her blushing
cheeks.
It has to be some sort of miracle that she manages to dissimulate her reaction
with a reproachful and firm: "We are not going to sleep together, Damon."
"Yet"
"Or ever"
"Witch, you wound me. That was cold."
"Yeah"- she replies, layering every word with heavy sarcasm- "if you had a
heart, I bet it would be broken."
Damon laughs, blue eyes crinkling in genuine amusement. "Oh, Bon-Bon you are
just so admirable. Whenever life puts you down, you are still full of spirit,
rejected or not."
More determined than ever to not let him see exactly how humiliated she
actually feels, Bonnie shakes her head and flashes a blinding smile at the
asshole.
"I was wondering how long it would take you to bring that up."
The vampire has the gall to wave his hand in the air in a dismissive gesture,
his flawless visage the very mask of annoyance.
"No reason to get all fussy over a little accident. Honestly, how much good
taste can you expect from a flea-bitten animal? Your hotness was wasted on him,
anyway."
"Hm, thank you"
How else was she supposed to respond to his confusing, abrupt change of tone?
What was it, a trick to disorient her? Was he bipolar, or something?
"You're welcome"
A bold hand skims over her leg, before she fights the shock off and violently
grips his wrist, digging her nails in and dragging it off her flesh.
"Ow."
"Be grateful we have an audience and I can't set you on fire"
"You know you don't really want to, Little Witch. Have we not danced around all
this sexual tension long enough?"
He sounds so serious that Bonnie almost believes him. This is why she bolts up
out of her seat, realizing that staying put is only giving him the impression
she wants it.
"I'm leaving " She assures unnecessarily, tone more faint than pissed off,
regardless of her intentions.
Damon doesn't reply, just leans his chin over his hand and regards her with a
mischievous expression she really doesn't care to interpret.
As a matter of fact, she barely manages to get out of Mystic Grill to the
parking lot before somethinggets a hold of her forearm and pulls her toward a
narrow space between two buildings, so fast that she doesn't really have the
time to resist properly.
"Are you insane?" – she hisses in the face of a very amused vampire-"Anyone
could have seen you!"
"I couldn't care less about who sees what."
Resigned to suffer through his antics until he has finished entertaining
himself at her expense, Bonnie tugs her arm free of his hold and huffs "Why are
we hiding here?"
Splaying his hands on her hips and backing her gently against the wall, he
leans forward, wearing a dangerous and inviting imitation of a smile. " I just
forgot to give something to you last night."
Suddenly, Damon presses his mouth to hers and runs his tongue over her lips. He
kisses her harshly, like he wants to punish her for something, or cleanse her
from his system.
And she kisses him back with an urgency she never thought herself capable of.
The pleasure is a liquid, alive thing slithering through her senses and making
everything but Damon's taste and touch hazy and unsubstantial. The vampire is
clutching her to him in a vice she couldn't escape from if she wanted to, but
even that mildly painful pressure adds to the fire igniting in her belly and
spreading rapidly to her blood. She has never felt so hot and so dirty at once,
yet she can't get enough of it. Her arms wrap around his neck eagerly, bringing
him closer, and her body grinds against his roughly as her back is pushed
harder against the wall.
The immediate intensity of their mutual response to each other is more than a
little overwhelming. Not to mention scary.
Their minds collide as well, and before she can think of putting a stop to it,
her thoughts and his are swirling together in a colorful blur of images and
sounds. Bonnie can perceive his lust, angry and predatory, urging him to stake
a claim on his 'territory'. His mouth slides along her jaw to her neck,
relentless and avid, and his fangs brush her oversensitive skin, leaving behind
an abraded trail.
His lips lay a wet, possessive kiss on her pulse point and then he pulls at her
hair hard and then the sharp, puncturing pain comes as his bite has her vision
swimming with tears.
Damon sips her blood slowly, rubbing her back in reassuring motions.
Just a taste – his voice echoes wantonly inside her head-I won't take too much.
Breathing becomes a hard, labored process and it feels like she is at the very
center of a kaleidoscope of contrasting sensations and impressions, pleasure
and pain entwining so tightly that it's impossible to tell them apart.
Yet, it's difficult to summon the energy to deny him, sensing just how much he
craves her essence flowing inside his veins.
Behind her closed eyelids images form and shatter. Tyler, Damon's hand on his
arm…Tyler bleary gaze fixated on Damon's. Damon's voice, smooth and imperious:
"You will leave now, and tomorrow, you will apologize and you
willrespectfullytell her that you are not interested in going out with her
again. "
Oh, God. No.
A senseless, cold rage courses through every single part of her as her eyes
snap open and she finds herself lucid and livid with anger.
Bonnie shivers, hating the numbness of her skin everywhere it touches his,
hating the apparent gentleness his hand is cradling her head with, assumedly to
not let her hit the wall while he feeds on her.
A blast of unadulterated power shoots from the very depth of her being, shoving
the vampire to the opposite wall like he was lighter than a twig.
He collects himself right away, barely staggering as he rises, cleaning his
blood-stained lips with the back of his hand.
"How could you do that to me?"
Bonnie feels ridiculous for even saying those words. What did Damon Salvatore
owe to her more than to anyone else? This is exactly what he did to everyone:
lying and manipulating to get whatever struck his temporary fancy, uncaring of
the consequences. Or anyone's feelings but his.
He shrugs, unrepentant grin tugging at his swollen lips, looking so proud of
himself that it makes her stupid heart ache.
"Sorry. I'm not exactly known for my unwavering impulse control."
The witch shakes her head, at a loss for words, forcing herself not to give in
to the impulse to cry. Not now, not in front of him.
"You compelled Tyler to ditch me," she accuses, closing the distance between
them as if physical proximity could convey her indignation better, or give her
a better chance to understand why.
"Yeah." He nods after a short pause, unfaltering and unfazed, and her hand hits
his cheek so hard that her palm burns, before she can fully register what she
is doing.
"I'm not your toy." She seethes, jaw clenched so hard that it hurts, while
Damon gingerly brings his fingers to touch his stinging, flushing cheek. Like
he still can't quite believe this is happening to him.
"I didn't think you were," he answers, with an emotionless calm she despises.
"What is this about, then?"
It's a challenge that falls on deaf ears, and they just study each other in a
tense silence until Bonnie decides to pursue it further:
"What are we?"
It comes out softer than she meant it to, and it doesn't help when Damon
snickers, like it's the most absurd thing he ever heard. "Do you want me to
define us now?"
"You don't need to"- the witch shakes her head, all weakness ebbing out of her
and leaving her hard and empty – "We are nothing. Even considering differently
would mean loathing myself as much I loath you."
Unexplainably and unexpectedly, that line seems to affect him more than her
slap did. His bravado shatters and for a brief, elusive moment he just looks
stricken and lost.
Then a chilly coolness erases every appearance of vulnerability from his
handsome features and Damon is once more the vampire she has always known,
arrogant and aloof.
It's downright perfect because Bonnie has no problem walking away from
thatversion of him without another word.
Even if his piercing, resentful eyes refuse to disengage from hers, and she can
feel them on her back when she turns.
Even if breathing hurts and it feels like her heart is splintering inside her
chest.
Well, I didn't protect her lineage for generations just so Bonnie Bennett could
go and taint it with the first horn dog that swatted his tail at her.
Damon grumbles at himself while he watches her back away from him, her taste
still so sweetly poignant on his tongue.
It's a dumb excuse and he knows it, but then again it makes just as much sense
as everything else where Bonnie is concerned.
Those feelings he is discovering in himself for the witch are nothing like the
burning devotion he has transferred from Katherine to the more deserving Elena.
Bonnie's presence usually has a way of firing him up and soothing him at once,
just like her willful resistance to him has the power to both irritate him
beyond belief and earn his respect.
That hunger laced with desperation Elena stirs inside him is what Damon used to
call love, but Bonnie… Bonnie has this annoying habit of awakening a part of
himself he thought was dead forever, along with that possessive desire to keep
her from death and from suffering, of being kind to her.
He doesn't even understand how it got to this point. When did she begin to
matter? When exactly had he lost it and let her in? Damon is only sure that he
has never meant to share anything with that headstrong, irksome sorceress,
except one night of fiery lust or two, maybe.
Damon can still feel the heat of her kisses on his mouth, tempting him to want
more.
He always gets what he wants. So what does he want the most?
Not her death, although drinking her up until the last tantalizing drop would
make everything so much simpler.
He wants the witch writhing and begging for mercy underneath him, nonetheless.
He wants to have the power to break her fragile human heart.
We are nothing. Even considering differently would mean loathing myself as much
I loath you.
He wants to silence the wrathful ache stirring at the echo of those fucking
words inside his memory.
Mostly, he wants Bonnie to quit making him feel like a man.
***** Chapter 6 *****
IX
Bonnie is not so naïve to even consider that her last slip with Damon Salvatore
will remain a secret for long, but that insidious certainty is not enough to
convince her to talk about it to Elena or Caroline.
She spends weeks waiting for the other shoe to drop instead, sure that he'll
slide in casual conversation with Stefan or Elena some ambiguous comment or
clear allusion at the most damaging moment possible.
They pretend to ignore each other in public until they have almost fooled
themselves into believing their lie, but the truth is that Damon stalks her, in
his animal form more often than in his human one, and she is very aware of his
covert scrutiny but does nothing about it.
Even now, playing billiards with Matt, the witch can breathe in the familiarity
of his presence around her, the intensity of his eyes boring on her back and
making her skin crawl.
It's wrong, so wrong that she knows the last thing she should be doing is
keeping this to herself, but at the same time she knows she will never
acknowledge it if she can help it.
Matt glances across the room and frowns, looking dubious for a few seconds
before looking back to her. "I don't know if you hate each other or you really,
really like each other."
"It's an ongoing debate"- Bonnie sighs, leaning back and meeting his calm blue
gaze with as much frankness she can- "Probably a bit of both. "
She immediately regrets saying anything because A) Damon has most definitely
heard her, courtesy of his fucking super-hearing and B) How can she ask the
blonde boy to keep her small confession to himself without making it sound like
she has something to hide?
But Matt is already giving her that small, co-conspirator smile he sometimes ha
since they were kids and she is reminded of one of his best qualities, that
gentle understanding that got him so little credit but made him such a good
friend.
"It'll be our secret" he says, and Bonnie feels incredibly relieved, even if
she is certain that her friend would be nowhere near so complacent if he knew
the whole story about the older Salvatore brother, or her situation with him.
That night, Bonnie's dream begins as a memory, although it feels more surreal
than that. She is running through the woods, as quick as her legs will carry
her and suddenly she is there, exactly in the spot where Emily destroyed the
crystal and where Damon had nearly killed her…he's terrifying, jumping on her,
lighting fast, all protruding sharp fangs and feverish, midnight-black eyes.
Except this time, she doesn't pass out, and Damon doesn't tear at her throat at
all… instead she can feel his weight on her, pinning her down on the cool
grass, his mouth wet and hot on her neck and jaw, branding her skin with
bruising kisses, his lower body sliding easily between her spread thighs, his
cutting whisper in her ear: " Deny it all you want, but you don't crave this
game any less than I do."
It becomes all too much then: her painful awareness of every part of him so
close to her, the growing, dark anticipation throbbing through her body, the
feeling of his lust weighing her down until she is merely a faint, brittle
version of herself. It's when she realizes everything is too vividly oppressive
to be a simple dream. She tries to wake up and it feels like she is kicking
through mobile sand until helets her go, bidding her goodbye with a lingering
kiss on her forehead.
Bonnie comes awake with a sound gasp, clutching her sheets to her chest like
they could actually shield her, or at least make her feel a little less raw and
exposed.
Something clangs repeatedly against glass and the witch's head turns with
startled swiftness toward the window of her bedroom.
The raven on her windowsill caws mockingly, proudly reaping the full credit for
her shock.
Heflies away before she can torch him alive with the flames promptly bursting
from her tingling fingers.
Damn Damon, and damn those romantic fairytales that coach unsuspecting girls to
wait for frogs and beasts who transform into princes out of the purest love.
How come nobody ever warns you that in plain old reality, simple wanting can
hurt and destroy so much?
X
Over time, Bonnie' s visions grow more consistent and detailed, until it
becomes apparent that a very old Master Vampire is keeping a low profile while
infiltrating the town with its semi-cult of brain-dead followers. Apparently
Mystic Falls is some sort of psychic energy epicenter, and said Mr. Evil is
planning to create the first all-vampire town, once he got the gist of which
residents are 'deserving' to join his family and which are better suited to
become food.
Bonnie and Stefan spend hours digging into the dusty, thick tomes of the
Salvatore's library, taking notes and comparing opinions and forwarding
suggestions. Elena is often not present and while Damon has occasionally
indulged a desire to interrupt their research with idle provocations, he mostly
prefers keeping to himself and overhearing their conversations while
comfortably sprawled on his bed
He doesn't really think much of the respect and trust so clear in the witch's
voice while she is talking to his brother, or the way Stefan's approach to the
girl expresses pretty much the same feelings but he still soaks up those quiet
interludes that reek of companionship and sympathy.
Damon tells himself he does it to keep track of their progress. He has vague
interest in learning Mr. Evil's identity if they can manage to discover it, and
it never hurts to know what is happening.
It doesn't explain that hollow, churning sensation at the pit of his stomach
whenever he 'accidentally' listens in on Bonnie confiding in his little
brother, the nausea her laughter causes him.
It turns out that new bad guy's name is Klaus.
Damon can't think of a single reason he should join the useless brigade Stefan
and Alaric are putting together in order to stop him. Hell, what has this town
got that's worthy of saving?
Elena may have gotten confused at some point in the past year, but she loves
Stefan, and now that her choice is made, Damon has learnt he is not all that
broken by it.
He can let go, finally and accept that maybe that twisted fascination with his
brother's girlfriend was what he needed to move on from Katherine. So Elena
never felt for him the way she does for Stefan, and she would prefer dying by
his side rather than allowing Damon to keep her safe…it matters little, because
Damon never felt for her the way Stefan does.
Maybe it was a nice thought for a while, that he could still be a romantic, a
believer, but somewhere, deep down, he knew it wasn't real.
"I heard you're skipping town."
Bonnie leans over his bedroom's threshold, arms crossed over her chest, her
narrowing gaze carrying through every accusation her voice refuses to.
"I'm not cut out for the good fight and I don't like joining in a massacre
unless I'm directing the show."
He shrugs, broadcasting careless indifference. Let Mystic Falls crumble to the
ground- all it has ever done for him is take away the things he valued.
"Stefan could use one more experienced ally watching his back."
"Probably, but it won't be me "
"Really? If he gets himself killed who will you torture forevermore?"
Damon brightens up at the insinuation, struts toward her with a flamboyant
smile that doesn't reach his icy eyes. "Interesting interrogative. How about I
turn you before you get yourself killed in his self-righteous crusade? "
She rolls her eyes but doesn't move away, not a little bit. "Bad idea, unless
you want to wake up every morning for the next century with a bad case of
sparkling skin."
He arches his brow condescendingly to her "What is up with those obsessive
references to Twilight of yours? "
She smirks a little, reminding him of something he might miss when he will be
gone (unless they don't decide to vamp her, which is extremely likely given her
witchy abilities). " I like the book so much better since Caroline mentioned
you hated it."
"Mature, Little Witch, very mature."
"You can talk, Mr-I'll-leave-my-brother-to-die-because-he-won't-ask-me-to-
stay."
"Do you never get tired of nagging like an old woman?"
Again, Bonnie rolls her eyes at him, dismissing his insult with a deep, bored
sigh. It disturbs him: nobody can quite make him feel so ineffective as this
pretty, bitchy little thing.
"Just stay, Damon. You know you'll regret it if we win without you."
He pretends to consider the option, like he was really just waiting for someone
to give him one single reason to stay (it might be true, but he flat out
refuses to recognize it), then he smirks a little wider.
"If I stay and save perfect Stefan's sanctimonious ass, what do I get in
return?"
She gazes up at him with a blatant distrust that flatters him beyond the
possibility of verbal expression.
"Are you working up to really asking for something or are you just fooling
around?"
He shakes his head in playful disapproval. "You're not playing it according to
the rules. You are supposed to line up everything you are ready to give up in
order to bribe me."
"Oh, shut up," she scoffs, half-weary and half-annoyed, and she closes her
eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose like this is the longest day she's ever
endured.
There's an intentional brush of her tired thoughts against his. 'For the
record, I think Stefan is at least as calculating as you are. And possibly more
than a little controlling. Not my definition of perfect, at all.'
Damon won't analyze why that random observation of hers makes him want to stay.
And perhaps burst into song?
He is not even sure why it makes him want to reach out and touch Bonnie, or
about what that rush of warmth inside means, when he leans infinitesimally
forward and tucks that dark curl behind her ear.
'I'll stay if you invite me in' the vampire reciprocates.
'In?'
'Your home, silly'
She scowls, looking every bit affronted at his proposition.
'I'm not handing you a free pass to my father's throat!'
'He's never there, anyway, and you can protect yourself just fine.'
There's a very strange, pregnant with hesitation pause, then Bonnie pushes
aside the hurt at that careless dig at her father's frequent absences and asks
the obvious 'Why would you even want to in my home?'
'As a symbol of my ruthless prevarication of you?'
'Seriously?'
Damon purses his lips and looks at her keenly, like he has something difficult
to articulate. 'Trust is a two-way street. I have a tradition of getting
screwed in this kind of deal, particularly if Elena and Stefan are somehow
involved. You beg me to stay and enjoy the bloodshed. I might not mind, but I
want insurance that *you* won't backstab me.'
Bonnie doesn't believe a word of his convoluted reasoning at first, but staring
him down has no effect whatsoever. He just stares back blankly, but intensely.
How does inviting Damon in prove anything? He has a standing invitation to the
Gilbert household and it doesn't make Elena trustworthy, so what is his real
deal?
Is his collaboration even worth the risk? Although, if Damon wanted to kill her
dad in retaliation for something, not having any free access to her home
wouldn't stop him…and Stefan needs Damon at his side, admit it or not.
"Okay," she nods and hopes it's the right choice.
XI
They wait for Klaus but they don't expect Klaus to come in with Katherine
Pierce on his arm.
"You knew it. That's why you insisted I didn't leave."
Bonnie raises her gaze from her homework to her right: Damon is leaning against
the window, his shoulder resting on the invisible barrier that keeps him out of
the house, like it's the most comfortable position in the world. His pale eyes
are a particularly frigid shade of blue, but alit with a predatory light and,
although his expression is very bland, she can tell he must feel betrayed.
"I wasn't sure that Stefan was going to be able to deal with her by himself,
especially if it comes to…Katherine looks too much like Elena, even if he had
not loved her for all those years."
A self-deprecating grin stretches slowly along his lips. "Whereas I would have
no problem with killing someone I used to worship."
"Aren't you always going on about the importance of murder and vengeance?"
Bonnie questions gently, folding her arms and tilting her head aside while she
leans on her side of the window.
"Would it have been easier if I had told you in advance?" She adds after a few
seconds, second-guessing her decision to keep that bit of information to
herself. Perhaps she had only wanted to know whether Damon was going to be able
to make the right choice for the right reasons.
"I don't know, but I don't like being played with." He answers, completely
still except for his moving lips, stare so firmly and utterly fixated on her
face that it just makes her uncomfortably aware of his inhumanity.
"I get it, manipulation is only acceptable when you are using it on other
people, to your exclusive advantage"- the witch breathes out, before frowning-
"but that's not what I was doing. I have only omitted that particular part of
my visions because I didn't know how to tell it to anyone,and things were
already so hard for everyone involved. I guess I kept postponing until the cat
was already out of the bag."
"Yes, I gathered that from the shock on my little brother and his girl's faces
when our sire showed up."
He taps his fingers on the immaterial barrier between them, silently reminding
her of their previous deal. It doesn't take a genius to see it's a test.
"Come in," Bonnie says, voice as unwavering as his gaze, loud and clear.
His mouth twitches in a smile that is both enigmatic and cocky before he climbs
over the window, agile like a cat.
"You will help me tear that bitch apart." Damon proclaims once he is inside,
moving past her to go and sit on her bed. He pronounces it as an order but the
witch perceives it for the question mark it really is.
"Sure."
Secret alliances with Damon Salvatore… what is my world coming to?
But if it's for keeping her best friend safe, Bonnie won't allow a small
inconsequentiality like irony to stop her.
They spend the night plotting against the enemy until the dawn.
It's almost fun, when compared to the day they just had.
***** Chapter 7 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
XII
Their plan is of a frightening simplicity. Katherine has a tendency to get
nostalgic whenever Bonnie is around, because of her old and controversial
friendship with Emily, and Klaus wouldn't mind a vampire witch in his
following.
So Damon and Bonnie make a concerted effort to get Katherine to consider how
good it would be to have a new Bennett as handmaiden, potentially forever, like
the idea is actually hers.
It's easier than they expect, because Katherine is nothing if not arrogant, and
a few staged meetings with Bonnie are enough to rouse her interest.
Stefan and Elena are kept in the dark about the scheme, since it's unlikely
that they would stand for letting Bonnie play bait under Damon's supervision,
and even if they agreed, they would most surely try to take the matter under
their control.
Bonnie manages to draw Katherine to the tomb's vicinity eventually, and this is
where the great battle takes place.
The female vampire fights back like Hell's fire is animating her, but in the
end the witch succeeds in immobilizing her long enough to allow her childe to
rip her heart out.
He stares into Bonnie's eyes as he does it with his bare hands, and there's
such a raw, unparalleled, raging agony in that gaze than it takes her breath
away.
They set the body on fire afterwards and sit side to side, watching the flames
consuming it.
His back against an oak tree, Damon struggles to contain his ragged breathing
and grits his teeth angrily, pushing aside the pain.
Bonnie eyes his cuts and bruises with a concern that takes her aback. She feels
like she might throw up, because the corpse looks really, really too much like
Elena, and she feels this irrational wave of horror for having contributed to
the bitch's death. She doesn't dare imagine how much worse it must be for
Damon, who has loved and longed to see Katherine again for more than a century,
just to have her obsessing over his brother and his human girlfriend once she
entered his life again.
"You aren't healing very fast," she comments softly, crawling in front of him
to examine better the wounds on his chest.
The truth is that he doesn't look like he is healing at all.
"I bled a lot"- he hisses-"I need to feed."
She nods, although she can see plainly he doesn't expect her to offer him
anything but a fast ride to the Salvatore's boarding house.
"Then you'll soon owe me a dinner."
She sighs, but the disbelief on his features, as she tugs her sleeve up to wave
her bare wrist under his nose, pulls soon a genuine smile out of her.
"That's not ideal for you. It would make it more painful, and it would take
longer to heal- "
"Well, not my neck either, my nerves are frayed enough for tonight."
Damon shrugs, biting the inside of his cheek. "Your shoulder will do fine."
"Okay"
Bonnie acquiesces, swallowing the knot in her throat, her back ramrod straight
as she moves to sit cross-legged at his left.
Despite herself, she shivers when Damon's fingers brush her hair gently aside,
baring her nape.
She fumbles her way through getting the first buttons of her shirt open, so he
can pull the cloth enough to expose her shoulder entirely.
"No need to be jittery"- he murmurs in her ear, nuzzling his nose in the crook
of her neck and inhaling her scent deeply- "I'll take care of you and this will
go over so much better if you're relaxed."
It doesn't sound like the vampire is talking about biting at all, and that
makes her flush even more intensely, although she truly should know better.
His cold lips kiss a reverent path from the spot behind her ear to the space
between her shoulder blades and her flesh melts like butter in response, her
eyelids fluttering closed.
Bonnie jumps when his fangs nip experimentally at her warm skin, whimpers when
they sink in. Her mind floats in a bright white nothing for awhile, but then
the pain recedes and all that remains is the odd sensation of Damon's mouth
suckling on her gently but greedily, like he's a newborn child and she is the
one giving life to him with every mouthful he takes.
Her blood throbs through her body and flows into his in steady, regular sips:
it builds up a peculiar sense of connection between them, and suddenly she
feels almost…protective, pleased that he needs her so much now.
She starts feeling lightheaded, and she notices she can't feel the fingers that
were clutching closed the ends of her half-unbuttoned shirt anymore.
"Stop, please"- she drawls in a drowsy, faint voice- "I'm starting to get
numb."
The witch feels the vampire jerking behind her and a sharp hit of unexpected
pain after, his fangs are gone and his tongue is soothing the area of his bite.
Sleepy and weak, Bonnie barely even realizes his hands are reaching around her,
buttoning her shirt swiftly before he scoops her up in his arms.
"Stay awake. You'll be good as new once I get some food into you. "
"You do owe dinner," she repeats lethargically, pressing her cheek against his
chest. He feels warmer and she decides he doesn't smell half-bad.
Sooner than she would think possible Bonnie is in her kitchen, standing by
Damon as he prepares pasta.
"Do you know of much of a cliché it is, the Italian boy who knows how to cook
spaghetti?"
"Shut up"- he grumbles, setting her steaming, inviting plate before her-"I am
not Italian and clichés are acceptable when used to get delectable little birds
like yourself to spread- "
"Thank you for breaking the illusion that you were civilized. It was beginning
to creep me out "
She grins and attacks her dinner with gusto, glad he is eating with her because
she really, really didn't feel like being alone tonight.
"It's good."
"Don't sound so surprised. I can be civilized if I want to be. "
He sounds like a sulking little boy when he gets defensive after real or
imaginary criticisms: Bonnie discovers it's dangerously close to becoming
endearing.
"Yeah, you can."
Damon volunteers to spend the night in the Bennett house instead of bringing
her over to Elena's, so they can both get some rest before they have to hand
out excuses and explanations right, left and center.
She hands him some of her father 's clothes and offers her father's bedroom and
there's a disturbing domesticity about the whole process.
Bonnie wakes up early the morning after, her heart in her throat, her legs
eager to swing out of bed. Her senses are befuddled and reaching out for
something she can't see and she doesn't know why.
Then she remembers and walks down, half-expecting to find her protector gone.
Damon is in her kitchen, by the stove, frying the bacon whose smell is
flavoring the room, scrambling some eggs while the coffee gets done.
He doesn't turn toward her, although he must have sensed her arrival.
"This is very surreal," she says, suddenly self-conscious of her bedhead and
morning breath, pulling her robe tighter around herself.
Which is stupid, she will reprimand. What does she care if a homicidal vampire
sees her looking like a mess?
"Good morning to you, too."
Damon greets her with that irritating, occasionally sexy smirk.
"Good morning."
She echoes, feeling an odd, soothing warmth filling her up slowly. For once,
she doesn't mind that her father is out of town, although she can hardly recall
the last time he waited around to have breakfast with her, even when he wasn't
physically away.
Chapter End Notes
     This story had an official soundtrack I listen on while elaborating
     my updates :
     Hazy by Rosi Golan
     A Lonely Septemberby Plain White Ts (most especially)
     Fight for all wrong reasons by Nickelback
     I'd Come For You by Nickelback
     Collide by Howie Day
***** Chapter 8 *****
XIII
Being a witch and fighting alongside your friends to keep an ancient vampire
master from invading your hometown doesn't mean you'll be spared from those
wonderful trials of adolescent angst.
Bonnie learns this simple truth after two hours of arguing back and forth with
her dad about her future, and what she will do with it now that her grades are
dropping. She is not exactly happy about her latest academic results, but it's
not like she can actually explain to her dad all the reasons why schoolwork,
since Grams died, has been at the bottom of her priority list.
She ends up promising and apologizing and reassuring that failing classes is
not her highest aspiration either, and she has almost convinced her father of
her good intentions… before the 'college issue' comes up.
The matter is, every ambition Bonnie used to cultivate before finding out she
was a witch feels extraneous and farfetched today. She is so deeply immersed in
occultism these days that she can't imagine her future the way she did before.
The one thing that feels true and passion-worthy right here and now is her
magic: it keeps her standing while everything else in her world spins and
changes, it keeps her true to herself in her darkest hours.
Obviously, her father can't ever know anything about this and it only adds to
the growing rift between them. He says he doesn't know her anymore and he
certainly doesn't understand why she would 'throw her intelligence away' to
follow in her grandmother's footsteps.
Bonnie leaves after a window accidentally cracks to pieces, without slamming
the door behind her, without any dramatic last words, without truly knowing
where she will go next.
She mostly drives around pointlessly until her temper has cooled and
disappointment has overtaken the anger.
This is when she realizes the one person with whom she wants to talk about her
horrible evening is Stefan. If there's someone who would understand, really
understand the sense of isolation and distance she has been fending off for so
long, it's him. He knows firsthand what it means, to feel and be different from
everyone else.
She inwardly cringes when it's Damon, not his younger brother, opening the door
to her. Things with Damon are always complicated and ambiguous and the last
thing she needs at the moment is more uncertainty.
Something indefinable flashes through his pale eyes as he looks up and down
her, like he's imprinting the very image of her on his threshold into his mind.
"Little Witch, it's always a pleasure. "
The vampire smirks and for some reason, it bothers her that he's perpetually
attaching those arbitrary etiquettes of his onto everyone he meets. It's, she
believes, just another way to diminish other people in his mind and let them
know.
"I have a name, you know. It wouldn't burn you if you used it, unlike certain
incantations I've learnt."
Damon' gaze brightens like she just praised him.
"You keep threatening me with fire and flames at each chance you get. I'm
starting to think it's either a metaphor for something else entirely, or one of
your fetishes. I hope for the latter, it would make for some very interesting
foreplay."
She rolls her eyes in exasperation.
"You are disgusting, and I'm looking for your brother. "
"Well, you are disgustingly cranky and my brother is checking the perimeter
with Alaric."
"Oh."
She doesn't really know what to say after that, because going back home doesn't
feel like a particularly good idea yet and there's no saying when Alaric and
Stefan will be done, if they are checking for vampire nests on Mystic Falls'
outskirts.
"Do you mind if I go through your family library by myself then?"
Bonnie asks at last, relieved she has at least one excuse to not look like a
complete fool.
Her interlocutor stands aside and welcomes her in with a mock bow."Not at all."
"Were you looking for something in particular?" He asks, his hand on the small
of her back while he guides her inside and toward a destination she already
knows quite well. It sounds like a casual, mildly curious inquiry but it's
probably all about Damon fishing for the real reason she wanted to see Stefan.
Damon has the annoying penchant to see too much, at the worst possible moment.
"No, I'm just bored and in the mood for a good read." She half-lies as he opens
the library's door to her.
"You look more melancholy than bored," the vampire comments a bit later with
apparent idleness, his back turned to her while he occupies himself with a
whiskey-filled decanter and two glasses. She stops examining the titles of
every tome on the shelf in front of her to focus her attention on him, frowning
and then looking back to the books.
The dark-haired witch refuses to acknowledge him verbally until he hands a
glass to her, his expression perfectly amiable like he is any sociable host.
"It does wonders for lifting the spirit, especially if you down it at once."
"I think I'll stick with a good book."
"Then you won't find it among my father's collection. Unless being bored to
tears is your brand of release."
Despite herself and her bad disposition toward everyone and everything, she
chuckles at both his wisecrack and the deliberately pompous tone he uses to
deliver it. "You should find yourself another drinking buddy. I'm not exactly
the ideal candidate."
"Oh, don't put yourself down like that. I promise you've done perfectly well so
far."
Now she thinks about it, it's impressive just how many drinks they have shared
on his instigation."Are you trying to corrupt me, Homicidal Vampire?"
He smiles fondly at the nickname and it makes him look younger, affable.
"Don't disappoint me, little Glinda. Let's have a toast."
She doesn't really understand or care, which is why she reacts by rolling her
eyes and taking the glass out of his hands. "What are we toasting to?"
Damon shrugs like it doesn't matter. "You decide."
"Hm, what about my dropping grades and sketchy college prospects?"
"That's why you are all gloomy and snappish?"- he shakes his head in blatant
disappointment- "Shame on you, sweetheart. Don't you know that education is for
those poor fools who can't magic anything they want into their lap?"
Smirking a little as she refills her glass under his approving gaze, Bonnie
can't resist provoking him a bit: "Or compelling anyone to give them anything?"
"You get my drift," he nods eagerly, sinking into his armchair, which happens
to be right beside her seat.
Bonnie sips her whiskey, enjoying the euphoric heat already rushing to her head
and untwisting all complications into their far simpler basics. "Go explain
that to my dad. "
"I take it he doesn't know what you are?"
"Dad is a very no-nonsense, practically-oriented type of person. If I told him
and showed him that I practice witchcraft, he would be hell-bent on forcing me
to quit. He already thought Grams acted batty. Can you imagine if he knew she
died in the backlash of a spell? I would never know another day of peace."
She shudders at the idea alone.
Damon snorts, apparently annoyed."It's not the spell that killed your grandma.
It's old age and strain."
"Yeah, magical strain"-Bonnie stresses, pissed that her happy-buzz bubble is
already cracking under the pressure of ugly memories- "but let's not open that
can of worms, okay? "
"Whatever."
Damon gulps down the remaining liquid in an oddly inelegant gesture, his
features fighting not to show some kind of conflict. Watching him makes the
witch feels unusually benevolent. And fuzzy.
Perhaps that is the whiskey's fault. She is definitely verging on tipsy now, a
pleasant lightness settling around her like a warm blanket, spurring her to be
chatty. "It's a paradox. I am a seer, but when it comes to my future, all I see
is a wide, nebulous space. "
He pats her shoulder companionably, shaking off her concerns with barely a
sliver of condescension. "You are a growing girl. It's normal."
"Is it?" – she continues, swirling her third drink lazily – "I used to be
invested in so many interests that don't mean anything anymore to me. But when
I do magic I feel so free, whole…. I never felt like that about anything
before. "
"Ordinary human lives are boring. Power never is. How can you compare them?"
His voice has grown lower, insinuating, way too close to her ear. She finds the
presence of mind to be surprised that his fingers are stroking her hair slowly.
It feels good, and she leans into his touch instinctively, a satisfied smile
forming on her lips.
"You are such a douchebag." –she half-moans, resigned- "You got me wasted on
purpose, didn't you? Are you planning to take advantage of me?"
Fingertips trace lazy patterns over her collarbone and follow the outline of
her shoulder.
"You know what you're doing"- he replies, defensive and slightly offended, then
he brushes her locks aside to expose to his lips the curve of her neck – "and I
don't hear you saying no."
"I should," Bonnie sighs, regretful. His palms keep sliding up and down her
arms, summoning sensations she has warned herself against, and his lips are
exploring every inch of skin he can reach, reminding her of that night she had
allowed him to feed on her.
But it feels even better, without the anxiety or the worry to hinder her
enjoyment.
His mouth sucking on her throat, his tongue tasting the sensitive spot behind
her earlobe, his breath on her flesh, her his fingers twisting in her hair, his
arm around her…it's intoxicating.
It's also something they have shared before and nowhere close to enough,
anymore. His nose nuzzles the hollow between her neck and her shoulder,
breathing her in deeply.
"Your scent is addictive"- the vampire murmurs, almost dreamily, before hiding
his visage in her soft curls- "I might do this all the day long. "
Bonnie giggles, rather uncertain whether she is drunker on the alcohol or the
vampire harassing her."I think you're less disturbing when you're threatening
my life."
"Stop being so sassy. It's not attractive." He admonishes, voice dark with
warning, his nails digging into her collarbone painfully.
You are only a grumpy little boy – she wants to snap, but he's fisting her hair
and pulling her up forcefully and all that crawls out of her mouth is a
strangled gasp.
He turns her around roughly so they are standing face to face and she can see
his unnaturally ink-black eyes, the bluish network of engorged veins around
them, his lips closed in a tight line but trembling like they are about to
break into an animalistic snarl. It should scare her, but it doesn't.
Bonnie looks on, mesmerized, as his visage shifts repeatedly from vampire to
human, again and again until humanity wins over the feral instincts and he's,
once more, the blue-eyed Lucifer that teases her and confuses her senses.
He touches her gentler now, drawing her close firmly but with a surprising
prudence, combing her mussed strands away from her face with a soothing
carefulness. His gaze is mournful, brimming with all the words he can't bring
himself to say, the agony of wanting something so very badly and not knowing
how to obtain it.
It awakens a bittersweet restlessness inside her, akin to a desire to wrap her
arms around him and allow him to have anything he needs. Her blood, her body,
her heart. Anything.
But it's such a risky caprice to indulge in, with him. She already trusts a lot
more than she should.
"We have many sound reasons not to do this to ourselves," the witch whispers
shakily.
"Too many of those reasons are flesh and bone people. It doesn't need to be
that complicated."
He mocks, impatient and frustrated. Ironically, the very net that has brought
them together would have -in her eyes, at least- always kept them apart. Matt,
Elena, Stefan, Caroline…he has broken each one of them in different ways and it
drives him to the wall, to know they all have a better claim on her than he
has.
Damon cups her face in his hands, caressing her warm cheekbones with his thumbs
and striving to memorize how her eyelids just fluttered closed to his touch.
"It doesn't?" she murmurs, unable to think properly while a thumb is tracing
the outline of her bottom lip. She is so tired of everything being complicated.
She wishes she could give in.
He mind-rapes people on a daily basis. - her conscience reminds her- He took
Vicky away from Matt. He enjoys inflicting pain on Stefan. He is the king of
psychological warfare and he's not even ashamed of how he has treated Caroline.
Will you just dismiss it? Because of a few occasions when you saw him not being
a monster?
"We can just take what we want, no questions asked, no consequence. "
Bonnie feels her throat tighten at the rare intensity reflected on his face,
the hypnotic seriousness of his voice. Eyes the startling, vibrant color of the
Pacific are staring down at her, and for a moment she's shocked at the sharp
contrast with a memory not so deeply buried. She has looked into those eyes
when they were cold like the frozen Atlantic, and she has already felt his
hands on her face, touching her softly only to better convey a threat. He
looked very, very cruel then, merciless even.
He doesn't look cruel right now. He only looks passionate, beautiful, a man.
It can't be enough. Not to respect him, not to care about him. How can you give
part of yourself up to someone you don't respect? - the witch wants to hang
onto that conviction and twist free of him, but then he lifts her chin so their
lips can meet and she can't remember anymore.
It's nothing like the last time Damon had kissed her. There's no aggression, no
fury, no coercion: his mouth just caresses hers teasingly, and his arms don't
force her to stay put but surround her with a strange care, like she is
something easily broken and all the more precious for it. Damon is kissing her
like it's both a promise and an offering.
Trembling, she leans into the kiss and then hesitatingly responds to it, her
eyes closing on their own accord.
He tastes of Death and of Night and of Wilderness, whiskey and manliness.
Something golden unfurls inside her as she relaxes into it, gratified by the
feeling of his hands roaming up and down her back. Bonnie puts hers on his
hips, pulling him closer before mirroring his caresses.
Being touched by him feels good, but touching him in return feels downright
natural and Bonnie finds herself praying to Hekate, the Witches' Goddess, -
Please, please let thisnotbe love.
She tucks her hand under his shirt regardless, exploring his lower back. His
skin feels pleasantly cool and smooth and she finds she can't stop reaching for
more.
Damon groans into her, pulling her backward while they deepen the kiss, until
her back hits the table and he can hoist her up, his palms greedily cupping her
ass before she is sitting on hard wood. All tenderness has given away to
hunger, every possibility of resistance is forgotten.
Bonnie clings to him, wrapping her legs around his waist while the vampire dips
his head lower and nibbles on her shoulder, his fingers running all over her
bare stomach. Leaning back and breathing out harshly, she has no idea of when
her shirt got completely unbuttoned and she doesn't care, either.
The sensation of his tongue sliding down, from her collarbone to the cleft
between her breasts, empties her of every coherent thought and fills her with
such a blazing, throbbing need that she can barely contain it.
She opens her eyes to the ceiling only to see more than a few books floating
high over her head.
"Oh," the witch gasps, shaken out of her lust-filled trance, and the guilty
objects all fall down suddenly, colliding with the floor in a loud crash that
has Damon flinching, startled.
The two look at the mess around them in a certain wonder, then focus on each
other with what might nearly become awkwardness.
"You are quite the powerful little thing." He drawls appreciatively, his nails
skimming over her legs.
Licking her dry lips, she chooses to stay quiet and just looks at him from
behind lowered eyelids. To be honest, her recent display makes her feel like a
freak. His touch creeps higher, lingering in snail-paced circles over her inner
thigh and her hips rise just a bit in response, her gaze a liquid brown-green
magnet that he finds too enthralling to resist.
Damon savors intently the very sight of her: his little witch looks as wild and
raw as that night he had spied on her in the woods, but also tense and easily
frightened. His lips graze her temple, her cheek, her forehead before finding
their way back to hers again.
"I want to do something for you." He all but purrs against her mouth after a
deep, gut-stirring kiss. Her gaze is unfocused and her breath is broken in
short endearing puffs of air as he kneels down between her parted legs. Her
heartbeat speeds up fiercely as she looks down at him, jitters and anticipation
chasing each other across her expression.
Just like a scared, helpless little bird – he thinks, remembering when he and
Stefan were children. They used to find young sparrows or robins fallen out of
their nests, unable to escape when he and his brother would capture them and
cup them in their hands. Damon remembers how fragile and small those creatures
felt in his hold, how fast their tiny heart would beat, so wild that he could
feel the erratic pulsation against his skin and fear that the bird would die of
sheer terror.
"My Little Bird, " the vampire utters against her stomach, brushing his lips on
the soft expanse of brown, supple skin. Bonnie quivers as his tongue trails
lingering circles around her bellybutton, fractures his name in stuttering
syllables when it delves inside.
He feels the beast roaring inside him, experiences a violent desire to cut to
the chase and bury himself inside her in every way possible. Resisting is
nearly impossible, with those breathy, soft, wanton sounds she is making and
the way her inviting scent surrounds him, taunting him with what he cannot
have. Yet.
Because even with lust raging through his veins at full volume, Damon is
perfectly aware that he needs to play his cards right. Taking everything he
needs from Bonnie now would mean being at a grave disadvantage once the witch
is fully sober and in defense mode.
He may not be all together certain of what he wants from her, but it sure as
hell isn't one glorious bout of sex, ruined by endless recriminations of how he
has taken advantage of her.
For some undefined reason, it feels extremely important to him not spook Bonnie
by rushing too much. He wants - he needs- to reel her in bit by bit and savor
every minor victory along the way.
He pushes her knees wider apart to get more room, and when he dips his head
down towards her wet folds, she flinches, her small body tightening at once in
nervous tension.
Damon caresses her thighs to calm her, but can't silence the self-satisfied
humming that vibrates across his throat at the evidence of her panic. He is
still a predator, and there is, deep underneath the surface of him, a
surprising jolt of guilt for partly enjoying her distress.
"You don't need to be scared" - he tries to amend, summoning his most
reassuring tone- I'll make sure you won't regret it."
His choice of words vaguely disturbs him –It is not as strictly sexual as it
sounded in his head- but it works. Bonnie finally relaxes under his touch,
allowing him to pull her underwear down, bunched around one ankle, and he keeps
the 'innocent' caressing up for another excruciatingly long awhile, merely for
her benefit. Although it takes considerable restraint: he can smell her arousal
and knowing she is so warm and ready for him makes his blood boil.
It truly amazes him that this woman can get him so hot and yet so
fuckingpatient, when she is so inexperienced and he is by nature so absolutely,
greedily selfish.
Eventually he lowers his head to taste her, parting her lips with his tongue
softly, and the most enticing sound falls from her mouth, in between a cry and
a whimper, while he lingers there, simply basking in the flavour of her
essence.
It gives him a heady, exhilarating feeling unlike anything else he has ever
experienced during sex. Who knew you could be that high on bringing pleasure to
someone else whilst withholding your own?
Fascinated with this utterly new concept, he decides to return to old school
basics, traces the alphabet with the tip of his tongue on her nub, overjoyed
when she wriggles against him and breathes shakily.
He barely reaches the 'H' and his usually self-contained little witch is
clutching at his hair and panting like there's no tomorrow. 'K' gets out of her
a drawn-out, lust-embedded moan that has his eyes blacken and his fangs clatter
together.
Damon freezes, every muscle painfully tense from the ferocious desire to
attack, but then her small hands pull him tighter to her sex, her hips buckling
in an instinctive, imprudent movement. Miraculously, that's all he needs to
push his cravings aside and be with her again.
Yet he draws back, allows his canines to slide along her thigh as he abruptly
pushes two fingers inside her wet heat, stretching and retreating a little just
to drive deeper, in rhythmic motions.
Bonnie abruptly lets go of his head, preferring to grip the table's edge to
maintain a semblance of balance.
She may have had sex before, but it was just a one-time deal, quite awkward and
uncomfortable and ...nothing like this.
Books keep falling from shelves and she is pretty sure a few things around her
are levitating, but it's really, really hard to concentrate on that.
Losing control feels good, incredibly good with Damon's fingers stroking her
inside, just the way she craves, just the way to make her toes curl in
pleasure. It feels like every stroke is winding a coil inside her, tighter and
tighter until she is drowning into a fiery, alien heat.
She is intensely aware of his mouth sucking on her thigh and it doesn't
surprise her when his teeth sink into her flesh, right as his fingers curl and
hit that perfect spot. "Yes," Bonnie groans, her eyes rolling into the back of
her head, her walls clamping and fluttering around him as she begins to shake
uncontrollably.
A startling tide of passion rises inside her, sweeping her violently up and
under, dragging her down, toward the void. Suddenly, she is over the invisible
edge, her hips are bucking and a loud, raw sound she has never made in her life
is scratching its way out of her throat as she tightens like a vice around his
hand.
He drinks every beautiful sensation of hers straight from her blood, moaning
into her caramel skin when her orgasm races across his system and pulls him
asunder right along with her.
Damon tastes every bit of her pleasure, feels it filling his head completely
until her release has become his release and he is drowning into the very
presence of her.
When she has calmed down and he senses the tang of her satisfaction blending in
with some pleasant soreness, he is reluctant to part himself from her. He
slides his fingers out her body before withdrawing his fangs, pops his fingers
into his mouth to enjoy the mixed flavor of her wetness and her blood.
Bonnie blinks down at him in a sort of awed daze, considering it's a
surprisingly erotic gesture. Bonelessly relaxed and pretty much speechless,
that's what Damon Salvatore has reduced her to.
"Wow."
"Wow is right," he repeats, licking his lips and sparing a cursory glance to
the chaos surrounding them Moments like this, he's almost sorry he has killed
Zach. Almost. "But I hope you know a spell to fix this disaster, because I'm no
desperate housewife."
***** Chapter 9 *****
XIV
Bonnie doesn't understand Damon, or where the maddening, nonstop push and pull
of their so-called relationship is heading.
She gets as far as accepting they have a connection, a nearly chemical reaction
to each other's presence. She is aware of him in a way she is not aware of
anything else. What does that mean? She has no clue at all.
She doesn't understand why he goes hot and cold all the time with her, whereas
with Katherine and Elena he was relentless and consistent. Every single time he
has touched her in desire he has backtracked to stalking from a safe distance
afterwards. And that's particularly offensive, because it's three freaking days
she can't get over how he made her feel that evening, with his face between her
legs and his hands all over her, looking at her like she was beautiful.
Damon is well known for boasting over every smallest thing. He is just that
much of a vain, arrogant, malicious dickhead.
Yet he won't breath a word of anything that's ever happened between them to
Caroline or his brother or Elena. It's absolutely out of character and Bonnie
doesn't understand why.
Why?
Sometimes she suspects he does it to keep her within his reach. Unless it's a
secret, she can't let the idea of him go. Secrecy keeps her guessing when or
how he might spit the truth out. It's pretty much clear that, once other people
know, they will warn her and threaten him and she will be reminded once more of
all the healthy reasons she should stay away from Damon.
They act antagonistic in public and it's not a front, yet when other people
aren't around, they fit just so naturally. It doesn't help any that since they
have confessed to killing Katherine, Stefan keeps pairing them together in
vigilante-duty. He says he trusts Bonnie to 'contain' his brother, whatever
that means.
"Sometimes I thought I could love him- Elena has told her, not so long ago-
although that feeling I got around Damon was very different from how I feel for
Stefan. I saw the loneliness and the need for passion in him and I wanted to
assuage them so badly. But mostly, I think I was fascinated with my hold over
him. There's something thrilling in having power on someone so unrestrained."
The way Bonnie feels toward Damon is very different. She doesn't feel that much
compassion for his misfortunes, because she is deeply convinced that he is the
one who chooses to bring them on himself. He has chosen to be alone, by chasing
women who would never truly belong to him, by destroying everything and
everyone else around him, by destroying himself for hatred or for love. Damon
is Damon's worst enemy, ironically.
Yet, there's that wilderness about him, that primitive capacity for unreserved
intensity …they call to the witch inside her. Damon mesmerizes her like storms
and lightning used to when she was a child.
Inviting the vampire into her home might just be the worst decision she ever
made: she has stopped counting the mornings she has awakened to find him
towering above her bed, still like a statue, and he has taken to this awesome
habit of visiting whenever he feels like, for however long he feels like.
Or at least, he behaved like that before she let him eat her out in his family
library. That was three days ago and he has not tried to harass her once since
then. She has not seen him since then, except for a few minutes yesterday
night, when Alaric organized an impromptu reunion to discuss the possible
location of Klaus's lair.
And now she has a crow perched on the tree before her bedroom window, spying on
her, and she has no idea of how she is supposed to act.
They are not dating, so there's no reason Damon should call her after sexing
her up a little. She doesn't want to date someone like him, anyway. That would
be inconceivable.
The problem is that when she stops and actually wastes her energy thinking
about it, it almost feels like they have been dating. They've made out more
than once, after all. He has paid for her drinks, more than once. He took her
out for a movie after that action. They had even had an accidental moonlight
stroll in the woods. He has cooked pasta for her!
And that isn't even counting the times he fed on her. Bonnie is not even sure
if the stupid murdering maniac wants her for food or sex! No wonder she is
confused!
And this is why she is pretending to read Emily's old Grimoire like she hasn't
noticed his presence at all. Moronic, narcissistic, temperamental, insensitive
crow.
"What are you reading about?"
The jovial, giddy voice right in her ear has her jumping out of her skin with a
sound, an embarrassing sound in between a gasp and a hiss.
Stupid, stupid vampire superspeed and unrepentant sadism!
Damon's hands reach for her hunched shoulders and are awarded with a jolt of
static electricity.
"Easy there, little witch…"
"How the fuck did you get in?" She spits, getting up abruptly and shaking his
touch off in anger.
"Your father has left the bathroom window open." He shrugs with a hint of
mocking disapproval, but transparent amusement at her distress.
"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"
"You looked so stiff and stressed, I thought I would cheer you up."
"Gee, thanks."
Her sarcasm hardly dents the vampire's enthusiasm and he gives her one of those
beaming, falsely innocent grins of his. "I haven't even begun."
In a smooth, quicksilver movement, his arms surround her waist and pull her
flush against him as his head dips down and his lips brush the corner of her
mouth.
Bonnie isn't so hypocritical as to fight it, but she waits until he is the one
to tilt her chin up and properly initiate the kiss before giving in completely.
Their kiss is lazy, soft but increasingly eager: it makes her whole body to hum
with delight.
"Smarmy jackass," she reproaches breathlessly, head falling backward as he
molds her body tightly against his with possessive, greedy caresses. She feels
like his hands are everywhere at once and she has no idea how that is possible.
Whoa, how has the mood warmed so fast?
"No biting," she warns, digging her nails into his shoulder when he kisses her
neck sloppily, dragging his teeth along the smooth hollow and down across her
collarbone, like he wants to cover as much ground as he can get away with.
"No more biting and more fucking," Damon acquiesces, squeezing her hips and
guiding her toward her bed until the back of her knees hit the mattress.
Falling down into a sitting position, Bonnie pushes the vampire forcefully
back, levering with her open palms on his chest.
"Not with my dad here and about."
How could she have forgotten? And most importantly how could he think she would
agree to fuck him with her dad in the house!
Damon smirks, undeterred, and lies down beside her, stretching languidly on his
side. His fingertips linger teasingly along the outline of her arm. "He won't
bother us. I've put him to sleep. "
"You did what?"
His eyes roll upward in a theatrical show of annoyance at her indignation. "By
simple Compulsion."
"Is that supposed to make it better? You can't treat my father like a…"
"-A helpless, hindering human?"
"Damon!" she seethes, her gaze brimming with fury.
"Bonnie!" he derides her in a small, whiny voice that gets on her nerves even
more.
"You are such a dickhead!"
"You are the most uptight teenager ever."
Still, he leans over, half-covering her with his larger figure, and cups the
back of her head to draw her lips back to his, unwilling to waste another
moment with what he perceives as useless stalling. Bonnie squirms and fights at
first, but when he rolls them over and entraps her under his weight, she moans
into his mouth and grants him as much access he wants.
His attempts to get her naked are, nonetheless, less than successful.
Which gets him quite spectacularly angry, because every time his fingers manage
to creep any higher than her belly under her shirt, she will shock him with
tiny jolts of electricity. It hurts like hell but it's also a major turn on.
He wants to bite her all over her bare flesh, to mar her brown skin with
superficial cuts from his fangs and lick the sweet blood oozing from her
wounds…to bleed her dry while she drinks from him.
Someday, maybe (probably) he will. But not today.
It's still unfair that she is allowed to discard his shirt and claw at his
naked back all she wants.
With a growl of frustration, Damon pulls at the cloth of her ankle-length skirt
and reaches underneath. The bitch allows him to run his palms along her legs
until he grazes her thighs. Then a stronger jolt has the vampire gritting his
teeth and almost passing out from the pain.
Exploiting his momentary incapacitation, Bonnie twists a hand into his hair,
pulling hard before rolling her hips and straddling him.
By the time she is on top of him, she doesn't even remember why she is so
furious, she only knows she needs more of him.
Just looking down at Damon under her, livid with anger and lust, eyes black as
coal, dangerous but helpless, his limbs nearly convulsing under her lighter
weight, makes her feel very unlike herself. Stronger, wilder, braver. Better.
Whole. Hungry.
It feels like the most natural thing in the world to unbutton his jeans and
lower them so she can sink herself onto him. She just takes him boldly in her
small, warm hand and guides him inside her, shakily pushing her underwear
aside.
And when she meets his gaze again, the fierce, desperate want she sees
reflected there is so terrifying she freezes, like the feeling of him halfway
in is suddenly threatening.
Damon snarls, less than pleased with her abrupt halt, his fangs clattering
together in an attempt to contain both his impatience and his appetite.
Bonnie breathes in deeply, letting the fear go, and lets herself slide down on
him, enjoying the wave of unadulterated pleasure that comes with the slow
movement.
"Bonnie," he grumbles, digging his fingers painfully into her hips, and hearing
her name spoken so roughly sends a thrill of dark contentment throughout her.
This is so fucked up. I'm so fucked up- she thinks, throwing her head back in
abandonment, moaning despite herself. But it's a pointless observation, because
she already knows she can't and won't stop.
Not when she is already falling apart at the seams. For him.
His hips buck up and his grip on her waist becomes bruising, driving his cock
deeper but not quite deep enough.
A fatigued gasp afterward, she's on her back again and Damon is bending one of
her legs at an uncomfortable angle so he can fill her more completely, animated
by a commanding desire to reach the very bottom of her.
Wrapped tightly around his body, Bonnie pants and writhes, her skin sweaty and
feverishly warm, her gaze unfocused as he thrusts into her again and again.
It's a blatant contrast to the unchanging, dry coolness of his skin but it
doesn't bother him at all. If anything, it feels good. Being inside her, being
covered with her scent and her perspiration…that's right to him, perfect even.
"Damon" she holds onto him like her life depends on it, crying his name out
like a prayer more than once, until her voice breaks and all that's left are
her sighs and groans of pleasure.
They move together frantically, with a jagged roughness that occasionally
borders on brutality but it's infinitely more satisfying than finesse for both
of them.
In the end, he is no more in charge then she is: they clutch at each other
blindly, their quivering limbs anchoring them together, skin to skin, while the
final release blazes through their senses and pulls them utterly, frighteningly
undone.
They stay still, spent and entwined for a long time after, Damon's face hidden
in her hair, Bonnie' s arms loose around him, listening to each other's
breathing as it evens out.
When Damon summons the strength and the will to roll onto his back,
disentangling from his very exhausted lover, it's like his brain can't function
properly but he feels like the king of the universe.
"Impressive." He exhales, his tone oozing satiation.
"Indeed." Bonnie nods beside him, her lips curling up dreamily although her
gaze refuses to let go of her ceiling.
***** Chapter 10 *****
Chapter Summary
     More hotness ensues... please review if you like.
XV
On the surface, their morbid excuse for a relationship is no more than a random
series of hook-ups.
That doesn't mean Bonnie and Damon have no rules. They have tons of them. Most
of them unspoken, only two actually acknowledged and verbally agreed upon.
The first one is fairly expected: nobody knows, so nobody will butt in and no
ulterior motives will have the chance to come into play.
The second one is that they will never owe each other anything. No demands, no
expectations, no attempt to 'improve' each other according to their personal
needs. They are only free to take from each other what's gratuitously offered.
Free companionship, free sex, free protection. She won't demand that he grow up
and be better only so she can feel less guilty about fucking a murderer, he
won't try to manipulate her into something dark and twisted like himself, only
to get a kick out of it.
There are times, when he passes her by and gives one of those secretive,
telling glances or when she enters a room and spots him in a corner, that
Bonnie feels this…giddy, low-burning feeling tugging at the very core of her.
She ignores it, of course, because having a crush on Damon is not an option for
so many sensible reasons. They have what they have and she tells herself it's a
temporary reprieve from the mad chaos surrounding them: it will pass. It's
enough to let her treasure their connection, the secret elation of his touch
and mouth on her skin.
There are nights Damon watches over her while she sleeps, silently horrified at
the purposeless fragility of her mortal life. He imagines that dark, soft skin
wrinkling, that supple flesh decaying, that pretty visage aging beyond repair:
it feels like an unbearable violation to him.
Those moments, he is seriously tempted to sire her before it's too late. She
might hate him for a while but eventually he would get her back. He might make
sure that she has nobody else to turn to, or he might spirit her away on some
secluded getaway until she saw what a gift immortality could be.
Then he realizes he doesn't want her to change in any way. He doesn't want to
see her innocence and compassion swept away by predatory instincts. That train
of thought always confuses him greatly, so he always dismisses it at once and
pretends he never considered it.
He is around her house constantly: to piss her off, to protect her from Klaus's
minions, to help her train with offensive spells, to give all the lust free
rein. They bicker, they discuss magic, they watch TV on her couch when they
aren't making out on it.
He complains or lectures endlessly about inane things she doesn't care about at
all, she will roll her eyes at him in disdain before quipping something like
"God, you love hearing yourself talk!" or "You need serious therapy. Or you
would, if I wasn't sure you would eat the shrink the moment he hits all the
right questions."
Then she usually sways boldly up to him, stands on her tiptoes and brushes her
lips against his, twining her hands around his neck and slipping her fingers
through his hair.
He will allow her to shut him up that way because he gets to hold her tightly,
to slide his hands under her shirt and rake his fingernails on the small of her
back. But sincerely? He only hates that she so rarely kisses him first.
Most of their time together, Bonnie will instigate him to initiate it, never
pretending she doesn't want it or that she doesn't know where all their
arguments and teasing eventually lead, but the first step toward sex is nearly
always up to him.
Damon shouldn't mind playing the instigator. That's a role he always favored
and excelled in. Yet, with his witch…it bothers him that she is not as
comfortable as she pretends to be with their 'arrangement.' It unnerves him to
think she might be a little ashamed of being so… biblically well-acquainted
with him.
So sometimes he gets a little rough, on purpose, marking her soft skin with
harsh teeth and nails. To remind her she is not that much of a good girl, it
doesn't matter how many others see her that way. He won't let her forget he
knows better. That he knows her better.
"I made you a CD."
Damon waves the mentioned object under her nose proudly and Bonnie smirks at
the mischievous glint in his cerulean eyes. She knows there has to be something
underneath the apparently sweet gesture. This Salvatore doesn't do romantic.
Not like this at least, and certainly not for her.
"Being around us poor, pathetic high-schoolers is getting to you, Homicidal
Vampire."
"Ah!" he snorts, amused, and rolls his eyes before doing that creepy-super-
speed-thing that gets him straight to her hi-fi.
"There are a few songs it would be simply a shame to not fuck you to,
regardless of your appalling taste in music."
"I feel insulted." The witch replies, sounding anything but. To tell the truth,
she is a bit intrigued at the idea of Damon fantasizing about fucking her to a
theme song.
She doesn't recognize the softly haunting melody as it rises into the air, but
when familiarity sets in, she smiles.
'Disarm you with a smile
And cut you like you want me to
Cut that little child
Inside of me and such a part of you
Ooh, the years burn'
"You get hot for Smashing Pumpkins? How appropriate."
Damon grins and a flashing moment after he is at her side, lunging for her.
"Nah, but I would get hot for you screaming my name over their best classic."
Only his voice could make such an asinine comment sound like a promise of
perdition. Bonnie shocks herself by letting him grope her from behind and
sucking on her earlobe without serving even a last ironic remark.
'I used to be a little boy
So old in my shoes
And what I choose is my choice
What's a boy supposed to do?
The killer in me is the killer in you
My love
I send this smile over to you'
She closes her eyes and leans into his chest, enjoying his hands all over her
body even while she refuses to take an active role. She can't explain why, but
sometimes she enjoys making it look like she is doing him a favor by giving in.
Damon calls it 'being a cock-tease', but Bonnie prefers considering it her way
to take him down a peg. After all, he usually achieves whatever he wants so
easily that he deserves to work hard for something once in awhile.
Not to mention how much she loves frustrating him, feeling him all focused and
tense over pleasing her. Deep down, she acknowledges this is her one trick to
deny his growing hold on her. It would be insane, to allow him to see how
easily he truly affects her. Or worse, how close she is coming to accepting his
most horrible flaws.
So when he coaxes her down, her back on her mattress, her spread thighs half-
off the bed, she holds onto the music and doesn't open her eyes at all. Even if
his fingers are smoothing out her hair so gently, draping her locks in a dark
halo around her head, and she 's dying to know the expression on his face. She
imagines it is intense, the look of an artist who adds a cherished, finishing
stroke to his last painting.
'Disarm you with a smile
And leave you like they left me here
To wither in denial
The bitterness of one who's left alone
Ooh, the years burn
Ooh, the years burn, burn, burn'
Damon undresses her slowly, completely lavishing with attention every inch of
skin that he bares. In this game, his nips are always playful and his caresses
always worshipful.
This is as close as they get to making love and it constantly brings her to
whimpering 'please'-s and 'yes'-s like pride and dignity are merely words.
"Come on, Little Bird- say my name." he orders, gripping her waist and raising
her hips off the mattress so the tip of his cock is brushing her opening,
sending a wave of arousal through her.
A smooth, powerful stroke and he is inside her, ramming in and out of her heat
with practiced ease.
It feels amazing, to be fisting her sheets and looking up into his burning
gaze, and so she gives him all he wants, intercalating wanton moans of his name
and broken sighs and crude sounds.
Damon pinches her clit, twists it roughly between his thumb and forefinger,
presses down in circular motions until she is arching off the bed and glowing
with lust.
To him, she is unbearably beautiful like that - radiant, even- and every
smallest shift of her expression when she is so close to orgasm fascinates him,
morbidly and irresistibly.
It doesn't matter how many times he sheaths himself inside her, he will never
get used to how incredible it feels. The way her hot slick walls flutter and
squeeze him so tight drives him nearly insane each and every single time. It's
too good.
Probably too good to last, but he wants what he wants and he will reach out to
grasp all he can get.
"Don't think I don't know what you are doing with Bonnie. I've been keeping
quiet because the situation is hectic enough as it is, for now, but you are
dead wrong if you hope I will let her become the next Bree. "
Stefan approaches the topic on a night Damon swaggers home reeking of sex and
Bonnie, a worrying skip to his step.
Stefan expects his brother to respond with a long face meant to both mock and
express utter indifference, but Damon's expression goes very still instead, icy
eyes narrowing more coldly than usual on his own.
"That must be the part where I stutter and shiver in my Armani jacket, scared
shitless from your frighteningly large and brooding forehead."
Even Damon's voice is cool, not as condescending as it might be. Stefan takes
it as the second signal of alarm, because the first reaction his brother
usually employs to divert anyone's interest in his affairs is relentless
sarcasm.
Perhaps there's more to the recent tryst between Damon and Bonnie than he has
considered at first outlook.
For his part, Damon is rather irritated by the sudden interference. Stefan
wasn't so saintly and prompt when it came to defending Caroline Forbes from
him, so there's no reason to change attitude now.
"I'm serious. Bonnie is my friend. She won't be the next witch you break to
forget a loss."
The older vampire snorts without any amusement.
"Please, are you listening to yourself? This is not a crossover between Buffy
and Cruel Intentions, and my little witch is very different from poor, clingy,
pathetic Bree."
"Bree was strong before your mind-games fucked her up."
"Bree was full of herself and too enamored with her self-delusions to see the
truth I was spitting in her face. If that's strong for you… well, it actually
explains most of your lifestyle choices."
"Damon-"
"I suggest you take the hint and drop this conversation while your tongue is
still attached to your mouth, brother. "
"No."
For some reason, Stefan's ready and firm refusal spikes Damon's irritation to
blinding anger with a swiftness of unprecedented levels. Fury literally blinds
him for a few seconds and before both vampires fully realize what is happening,
Stefan's back is against the wall and Damon's arm is across his throat, cutting
off painfully a breath he no longer needs, fortunately.
"Bonnie is not yours to protect. She is mine and I'll do whatever I fancy to
her. Without your interference and with your silent consent. Or else. Are we
clear? "
Damon squeezes his brother harder, punishing him for his failure to answer
right away. Then he notices that Stefan has no way to move, let alone talk in
his current position, and he drops the younger vampire, watching him collapse
on the ground with something akin to surprise.
How had he gotten so carried away?
Shaking off the panicky feeling prodding at his chest, he covers the hesitation
with his habitual bravado.
"I trust we have an understanding, don't we?"
With a flamboyant smirk and an unconcerned sprint to his gait, Damon turns his
back on his brother and leaves. Again.
Rubbing his sore throat, Stefan gives in to a hesitant smile. Perhaps it's
wrong to read too much into this recent confrontation, but there was something
very much like fear in Damon's eyes tonight, as he took in the magnitude of his
response.
Maybe, just maybe, Bonnie Bennett isn't set up to become the next target of
Damon's bitterness and disappointment with life. Maybe she is not a convenient
rebound or revenge. Maybe Elena was the rebound and now Damon has another shot
at the real thing.
Maybe…there is hope.
***** Chapter 11 *****
Chapter Summary
     Darkness, sex and reluctant fluff.
XVI
Bonnie feels that Damon is different lately, like there's something constantly
distracting him. He is perpetually on the edge between playing the standoffish
jackass and cornering her somewhere he can murmur the filthiest, hottest
endearments to her ear.
She doesn't question him openly because he's Damon Salvatore and being a
temperamental bastard is his trademark. Besides, each and every time she dares
to do as much as comment on his mood swings, he mocks her.
The witch constantly reminds herself that it's useless to play therapist to the
likes of him.
She will never understand him, that is something she accepted as fact a long
time ago.
Hell, she doesn't even understand how he can be so turned on after he has seen
her setting a bunch of Klaus's minions on fire.
Yet his eyes are flashing from surprised blue to hungry black and just
likethat, she is pressed between a tree trunk and his muscled, trembling-with-
tension body.
And she is sweaty, dirty with cinder and pretty sure she stinks of charred
meat, but his hips grind against hers and Bonnie has never felt sexier. Or more
alive.
She is dancing in a dark, infinite space, the heavy beat of an old indie rock
ballad reverberating through the air, and all that's covering her clammy,
hyper-aware body is a blood-red sundress. Her feet are bare as they slap the
hard, cold floor and there's a feeling of languid arousal spreading into her
blood.
She is all alone yet she feels a presence all around her, permeating every
corner of this pitch black, shapeless darkness. Nothing quite makes sense.
Slightly disturbed or not, she plays along with the charade and keeps dancing
until she feels like every inch of her skin is on fire, thousands of bold ghost
fingers creeping under her dress and crawling over every hidden curve.
Bonnie snaps, pushes the inappropriate touches away at once, enveloping herself
in a cocoon of white, warm light. "You are twisted." She states neutrally,
waiting.
A minute or two of absolute silence elapses before Damon's figure cuts the
darkness and the dream-reality shatters into a more pleasant setting. Damon's
very bedroom, unsurprisingly.
"You are getting better at detecting me," he boasts, like it's all thanks to
him.
Rat bastard. Bonnie thinks, rubbing her arms self-consciously.
"When I asked you to teach me to shield my dreams, I didn't mean you could
transform them into a non-stop-porn-channel!"
"Now Bonnie, let's not be ungrateful. I'm trying to motivate you, here. I'm
being subtle. Klaus is way more expert than I am at mind-control. You need to
be appropriately schooled. "
Just the way his lips go about pronouncing that last word makes it sound
filthy.
"You are a pig." Bonnie hisses, and if looks could maim, he would be in shreds
already. Obviously, Damon takes it as encouragement to be even more of a cocky
ass.
His eyes crinkle humorlessly and his smirk grows brazenly predatory: "No,
apparently I'm the vampire who twists your dreams into reality."
The witch snorts, holding her chin high in a show of untamed pride. "You were
manipulating my perceptions and sensations. Any physical response I
experienced, it was all your doing."
"I know"-suddenly, he is gone, only to materialize again behind her, his lips
on her nape - "Being in control is the best part."
Bonnie smiles slightly before fading out of his arms and reappearing seated at
the center of his bed. "You were in control. Let's not forget the past tense. "
The trick is always the same- he will sneak into her mind whenever her guard is
low, messing up her dreams and staying hidden until she will recognize his
presence in the background. Then it's all fair game and she can either propel
him out or fight fire with fire. It's starting to scare her, how much she is
learning to enjoy the second option.
She never used to be this competitive, confident, fierce person.
She never used to gasp in delight when Damon pinned her down, like he's doing
right now.
"I've always wondered how dream-fucking would feel if the other party was self-
aware, too."
Her nails claw at his shoulder and ass, drawing blood. Within her head, she can
hurt him as easily as he can hurt her.
"Let's find out." Bonnie whispers, grinds harder against him, nips at his lips.
Some violent foreplay later, she awakens panting, frustrated as hell because
there is certain 'business' you can't finish while sleeping.
But it doesn't matter because Damon is there, kneeled beside her, his rapacious
hands already reaching for her nightgown before she kisses him harshly.
XVII
He keeps getting this weird feeling whenever he is near to her: it proclaims
the witch as his own, and not the same way a piece of human cattle or an
elegant pair of shoes might be. Damon has always been possessive of his things
and of his prey, but this is something altogether different - he feels that
Bonnie belongs to him as much as his powers, his fangs, his past, his
proclivity for revenge and scheming do.
And this, he knows, is fucking stupid.
He shouldn't care that she is spending so much time with Matt Donovan since the
blonde guy and his even blonder surrogate of a girlfriend have broken up,
because that is how Bonnie is –a disgustingly good friend who would care about
the humiliation of a jock whose personal cheerleader has been cheating with his
werewolf of a best friend- even when there's a war between vampire clans
exploding around her.
The way Bonnie reacts to Matt's presence has never been sexual. Damon has, in
theory, virtually no reason to feel …bereft? Neglected?
It's him Bonnie shares her bed with, so who cares if she wastes her time
playing the emotional clutch to a pathetic little human boy?
"Damon, are you jealous?" she asks him once, amused.
"About what, exactly?" He scoffs, a half-tone more disdainful than strictly
necessary. "You are more attracted to your collection of hippie-styled purses
than you are to Mutt."
Bonnie shakes her head, her smile reshaping into a sassy smirk "So why are you
always pouting when he comes up in conversation? "
"I don't pout"- Damon scowls, the very picture of boy-ish indignation- "but I
know how male teenagers work. Right now you may feel sorry for him, but trust
me, the line between him crying on your shoulder and him fantasizing about you
putting out for his benefit is thin."
Crossing her arms in front of her chest, Bonnie looks more thoroughly
entertained than never before."So, in short, you arejealous."
"No, I am not"- he waves a finger under her nose, like she is simply too young
and silly to understand what he is truly explaining to her- "I just don't like
when other people think they can borrow my stuff."
Out of reflex, the witch's fist dives to hit his collarbone- he grabs her wrist
in mid-air and lifts it to his lips so he can trail lingering kisses from the
sensitive inside of her wrist to her knuckles.
"I'm not 'stuff'." She protests, although she is biting the inside of her cheek
trying not to grin. Or moan.
"Well"- he breathes on her mouth, right before tonguing it- "you're mine
anyway."
***** Chapter 12 *****
Chapter Summary
     Blood and blurring boundaries, plus an inevitable realization catches
     up to two very stubborn people. Finally.
XVIII
They like to pull at each other's strings until their defenses crack to
splinters and the animal raging inside their heads is finally free. It's not
often that they are soft with each other, but sometimes it happens.
Her hands clutch at his hips, grinding her pelvis into his as she slides her
palm under the silk of his shirt, patient fingers tracing the contours of his
abdomen and shoulders . In response, his eyelids sag close in delight because
he loves her newly discovered assertiveness, although he has never been the one
to literally melt under another's touch . An impatient growl reverberates from
his locked lips to her soft throat when she tries to break away to dispose
properly of his shirt.
"God, I want you," she purrs into his ear while he hoists her up, pressing
himself between her quivering thighs and progressively increasing the pressure
as the craving for the sensation of her body wrapped snugly around his grows
urgent.
Kissing her deeply, Damon twists his fingers into her raven locks and tries to
place the alien feeling of lightness spreading through his veins at her words.
It's a disorienting sort of exhilaration he can't remember ever experiencing-
before or after his turning- , terrifying in its utter unfamiliarity despite
its disarming pleasantness.
It confuses him so much that he almost loses his balance and trips on her bed.
"Sweet move, Salvatore" Bonnie giggles, falling under him. Usually Damon is not
fond of women who laugh at his expense, but this time the light, inebriating
feeling just intensifies.
He shakes his head to dispel it, crawling over her half-naked body and trying
to focus on the exciting sight of all that bare flesh on display. It doesn't
work.
He drags his sharpening fangs over the curve of her breast and her scent
overwhelms him, her breathy sigh stirs something akin to awe within his chest.
This is not normal – the vampire reasons to himself, frowning. Undulating
underneath him, Bonnie looks flawless, pulsating with life and heat, pure like
a fallen angel even while she arches into him with a helpless whimper ,
wordlessly begging for it. She is warm and vulnerable and all the more distant
for it, so distant that he can sense the most feral, primitive side of him
yearning to bridge the gap.
He pulls back, smirking at her disappointed gasp, and then, with mercurial
speed, plunges roughly inside her.
Rashly, her fingernails dig in his shoulder-blades as she cries out at the
unexpected sensation of fullness: it should satisfy him but the hunger keeps
raging on, thundering in his ears. This, too, is completely unprecedented but
he can't think, can't do anything but sink his teeth into his wrist until he
feels his own blood filling his mouth.
It's not until he forces his wound against her lips, disclosed in a moan, that
things start making sense again. She fights it at first, her hips still bucking
against his despite her struggle to resist, but then the taste of his blood
starts to exercise its dark appeal and she gives in.
She gives in, and Damon has never felt less dead.
The pressure of her warm mouth suckling on his wrist, her tongue eagerly
swiping against his cooler skin, the needful squeezing of her teeth on his
flesh: everything makes for the single most satisfying experience of his life.
Bonnie wakes up, that night, with his arm around her chest, keeping her
protectively tucked against him, his cheek flat against her shoulder, her loins
sore, her mind throbbing with memories not hers.
She sees him as a little boy, sneaking in to see his mother after she had just
given birth to Stefan just to find her empty-eyed and unresponsive to his
tugging little hands. She feels loving Stefan despite that. She sees his
father, commanding and severe, always making him feel less than he was, less
than Stefan was, less than anyone could ever be. She feels his need for freedom
and passion, his restlessness and dissatisfaction with his life. She senses him
finding a purpose in Katherine, swallowing the frustration of never being quite
enough for her, the humiliating suspicion that she preferred Stefan, his
adoration of Katherine's ruthlessness and power. His desire to deserve her, to
be just like her because, to him, she was the very image of perfection.
For the first time, Bonnie feels like she truly, entirely knows what intimacy
truly means. She should be repulsed, knowing how many horrible acts Damon has
committed only because he wanted to. She should be disgusted that he could love
so desperately someone so evil, both willingly and guiltlessly.
She should be angry that he fed his blood to her for no plausible reason or
ashamed that she has enjoyed it so easily.
She feels nothing but sated and content. Maybe even…at peace, for lack of any
better definitions. This is the only place she wants to be, and she is glad she
could share this with him.
She tries to memorize every sensation, to entrap this one perfect moment inside
the very depths of herself so it can last forever.
The funny part? She is not even certain what has made this night so precious to
her. There was something subtly different in Damon tonight, something special
that has made her feel particularly treasured. Nearly beloved.
I'm in love with him.– it surprises Bonnie how easily she surrenders to that
simple realization, considering how long and how hard she has been fighting it.
Yet, once the thought has popped into her head, there's no denying it.
It's not precisely a happy revelation because she has no idea whether he might
feel the same toward her. She is not exactly his type.
But she doesn't despise herself for it either. Perhaps loving someone is not
about approving their history or character, but just about finding a person you
can lay with like this, feeling like any miracle is possible.
XIX
In the end, their little brigade manages to locate Klaus' lair and decides to
break in. By daylight hours, of course. Bonnie takes care of tearing down the
magical barriers keeping the abandoned warehouse hidden from strangers' gazes
and sheltered from sunlight.
Then all hell breaks loose as Alaric, Damon, Stefan, and Tyler get in the
building. Elena stays by Bonnie's side, guarding her now exhausted friend from
any unexpected threats, until the witch feels strong enough to stand again,
strong enough to insist that they should follow their friends inside.
Incredibly, a few hours after, the nightmare is over. Klaus and his cohorts are
nothing but a memory blurred from fatigue and Bonnie is with Stefan, Elena,
Damon, Tyler, and an overly worried Caroline at Mystic Grill.
Bonnie grins as Tyler puts his arms around Caroline's waist, drawing her
struggling, gibbering self in his lap with a sly smirk on his lips. She can't
help feeling so very happy for Caroline, who has finally found a guy who cares
for her as much as she does for him. Even if their relationship started on the
wrong foot and they bicker most of the time.
Strangely, this makes the young witch miss Damon's presence beside her,
although they are usually careful to never act too amicable in public. Her
eyes, on instinct, seek him out only to find him standing behind the sitting
Stefan and Elena, his hands on their shoulders, smirking impishly and
whispering in Elena's ear something that makes Stefan cringe.
Always playing the three musketeers – Bonnie considers, pushing back a spike of
pained sadness that cuts her unexpectedly from inside.
The morning after, when Stefan knocks on her door to tell her that Damon has
left Mystic Falls on his classy sports car after a few shocking, caustic words
of goodbye to his brother and Elena, Bonnie feels like screaming her lungs out,
setting the whole town on fire, cursing her stupidity until her hair turns grey
and lank. But she is not truly surprised, she realizes right away.
She is angry and hurt and in serious need of spreading some violence around,
but she is not surprised.
Because they had both more or less taken for granted that their almost-
relationship was set on a precise expiration date: Klaus' downfall.
And now that Klaus is done in, of course that Damon would leave her without one
fucking word of warning. Like she means nothing, or perhaps like she means too
much, but Bonnie doesn't care to tell the difference because it infuriates her
beyond any chance of forgiveness.
"Look," Stefan tries to comfort her, his voice calmer and more soothing than
usual, "even my brother is not that stupid. He adores dramatic displays. If he
had not really cared about you, he would have come by, at least for a last…you
know. "
Bonnie' s lips twitch in a bitter flavored smile, because it's too easy to
picture Damon dropping by for a goodbye fuck, cocky and unapologetic as ever.
What ever possessed her to fall for such an asshole?
"He'll come back," Stefan insists with too serious, too gentle eyes that seem
to look disturbingly through her aloof façade to reach her aching, stupid
heart, "I know him. He may be slow on the uptake, but he will get it right at
last."
Bonnie appreciates the solidarity but still shakes her head, a cold fury
hardening her features.
"I don't know if I want that he returns."
Because, honestly, what chances do they have? His values and hers don't match.
Their lifestyles don't match.
They may have a terrific sexual chemistry, but Damon doesn't love her. He can't
love her. He doesn't even want to.
And he hurts her so damn easily.
"Just promise me you won't ever tell Elena anything about this."
"Bonnie, you don't need to be ashamed."
She smoothes imaginary wrinkles off from her skirt, refusing to meet the
younger Salvatore's gaze.
"I'm not, but I think I might hate her if she knew anything of this mess."
She has never envied Elena Gilbert over anything, and she won't begin today.
But being pitied from 'the unofficial other woman'? It's not a burden she would
be able to stand.
XX
At first, Damon tries to keep himself satisfied with women who are nothing like
her. Redheads, blondes, chestnut-haired beauties like Elena and Katherine.
He doesn't compel any of them until after he gets to the biting part, because
her voice is still in his head, complaining that compelling someone to have sex
with you is no less than a form of rape. Annoying Little Witch, so far away and
still spoiling his fun.
Two weeks of wandering all across the state and his mind is no less full of
Bonnie than it was when he left her. He is haunted by sensory impressions of
her: he lays down on a bed and the way her body curled against his will catch
up to him; he will close his eyes while fucking someone else and will miss the
contrast between her coffee complexion and his crisp white Egyptian cotton
sheets.
He notices constantly that his stuff no longer smells like her and the absence
of adequate verbal sparring gets on his nerves more and more every day.
It's maddening. He doesn't need Bonnie Bennett to make immortality
entertaining. That's what he already has Stefan for.
Yet, he can't hide that he misses being around her at least as much he misses
being inside her. Just being around her used to make him feel so…settled him
with himself, like everything was okay and perfect and brand new. Like nothing
was amiss. And experiencing her touch, her voice stuttering his name as she
came for him ,the trust in her gaze as she confided her thoughts to him… all of
it had felt like receiving some sort of undeserved forgiveness.
How had he never noticed any of this until she was gone?
It infuriates Damon, knowing he let someone have this level of power over him
again. Has he not learnt his lesson with Katherine?
He blames it all on Bonnie, obviously. She just looked too naïve, too un-
twisted to ever have the slimmest chance to affect him this profoundly .
So he finds a girl who looks enough like her-same exact complexion, full lips,
big doe eyes and raven hair- compels her to believe she's someone else, to
behave like someone else.
He convinces himself that a quick fix is all he needs to break the habit, that
tainting the memory of her with some kind of abuse will make her less
significant.
But it's difficult to preserve the mood, because the scent is all wrong, the
taste of blood and skin dull. He feels dirty just touching the look-alike and
he angrily wonders how Stefan could even stand it.
He can't even bear the way the other girl is touching him without shaking with
frustration.
'You are repulsive'Bonnie' s phantom voice taunts from the back of his mind
when he commands his victim to get on her knees.
So? -He snaps back inwardly, a self-deprecating imitation of a smirk settling
on his lips.
'You are better than this.'
No, I am not.
'You might be.'
I don't want to.
Nonetheless, he stops the small hands fumbling with his zipper and breathes out
in bitter, humiliating defeat.
After that particularly shaming episode, he decides to get spectacularly
trashed.
Getting drunk is not easy for a vampire, but Damon Salvatore is nothing if not
persistent. It takes emptying 17 bottles of vodka in less than 2 hours but his
head is finally a very quiet, clean place.
He can finally rest.
The morning after, he awakens on the floor of a cheap motel room with no idea
of how he got there. There are no corpses around and he doesn't know if he
should be relieved or not. He has never treated himself so poorly.
I've became Stefan- he realizes with a horrified groan- only a more idiotic- if
better looking- version.
Because Stefan had at least the sense to keep Elena, masochistic edge aside,
and where's Bonnie now?
Probably in full-rebound mode and allowing Mutt to plaster his grubby, unworthy
hands all over her.
The mental image alone sends a wave of bloodlust thundering through his skull
and it hurts so much that his eyes actually water. Damn hangover.
He craves tearing someone apart, but what would that solve?
What he really needs is feeling Bonnie underneath him again. Burrowing his face
in her long hair. Kissing her. Knowing she is glad to have him back.
I want her. I want her forever.- He admits to himself and it still doesn't feel
like a complete truth.
It's more than wanting or caring. He is in love with her.
He might still walk away from it, because living without love is a choice like
any other.
But he doesn't want to.
***** Chapter 13 *****
Chapter Summary
     Dreams, heated reunions and improvised confessions.
 
XXI
She CAN'T believe Caroline had the gall to buy this for her, but Bonnie still
turns the pages and giggles, a fond smile on her face as she notices some names
are actually underlined and have notes beside them like 'too macho-man
sounding?', 'too pompous?', 'too original?' or worse 'too canine?'
No one does 'fussing' like Caroline Forbes. Thank God.
"A baby names book? Now that's something that should never find its way into a
respectable vampire household. "
She raises her gaze to meet two startlingly blue eyes and her smile becomes
playful "I'll be the godmother. Apparently part of my duties is helping the
mother-to-be to pick suitable names for twins."
Damon snorts and swiftly steals the incriminating book out of her hands.
"Weirdos like Caroline Forbes and Tyler Lockwood should be forbidden from
procreating separately, let alone together. It's all bad blood. There should be
a law against it. "
"You are a horrible person." She complains without too much effort, distracted
from the fresh blood she can smell so well at this distance. It makes sense,
because she has been noticing how his eyes are at their most vibrant, dark blue
when he has just fed, while hers seem to pale from hazel-green to clear green
when she is hungry. It's just one among the many things they're polar opposites
in, yet it's undeniable that they are a flawless fit for each other.
He's warmer too, radiating a stolen heat that just makes her canines to
protrude against her tongue and her body ache for skin to skin contact.
Instinct bides her to feel slightly resentful and neglected, regardless of
their decision of never hunting together unless he's already sated. It's a long
road to go before she can control her appetites enough to handle it without his
supervision and leave her prey relatively unharmed.
Damon flashes a boisterous smirk like he knows every tainted thought running
through her mind, but chooses to plow down beside her, ignoring her and
flipping through the pages with sarcastic disapproval all over his features.
"Bonnie," he reads out loud, his tone exaggeratedly amiable, "it's of Scottish
origin and its meaning is 'beautiful, attractive, pretty' and also diminutive
of the French word 'bonne', meaning 'good'. Commonly used as a fond nickname.
The old nursery rhyme claims that "the child who is born on the Sabbath Day/is
bonny and blithe and good and gay", which makes this an appropriate name for a
Sunday's child."
Leaning toward her conspiratorially until his shoulder hits hers, her mate
brushes his lips against her jaw and keeps humoring her with a slightly darker
tone: "Well, beautiful, attractive and good . It sounds like a promising
package. What are you doing with a rotten, devious devil like myself? "
Sensing the cynic edge to those too light words, Bonnie flips him down to the
mattress, straddling him with a sun-bright smile and rolling her eyes in a
deliberate show of false annoyance.
"Your name doesn't translate as 'devil', you ignorant creep. It's actually from
the Greek root for 'spirit'."
Damon 's eyebrows arch mockingly "Aww, you researched our names to check if
they fit? That's so sweet!"
For some twisted reason – it's like drug tolerance, she decides- his being so
difficult is incredibly charming right now.
So she shuts his teasing up with a kiss.
Bonnie comes awake with a shudder of delight, but as soon her eyes flutter
open, her lips part in a sigh of defeat.
She thought the numbness was bad that first week after he left, but this…this
is worse. The dreaming of lifetimes with him, as a mortal and as a vampire,
knowing he will hold her again someday. She has been trying so hard to hate
him, to separate herself from her most tender feelings toward him. It's
impossible when visions keep reminding her what she's missing and what she
might have, if only she will take him back, once he returns to her. Whenever
this may be.
She doesn't want to wait around for the stubborn likes of Damon Salvatore. He
doesn't deserve it. He broke her before she could fully realize he was capable
of it.
He…made her better, she will own to it some days. He has shaped her from a
little girl to a woman, taught her the language of passion, shown to her those
elusive shades of grey between black and white.
That's why she doesn't regret anything, but it hardly matters when the world
around her feels like it has lost all the colors.
Every day she fights off the compulsion to just lie in her bed and sleep the
hours away. She gets up and goes through the motions of living until she can
get back to sleep.
Fortunately the school year is over and Stefan took Elena away for a short
vacation, so she is free to hang around Matt and just pretend she is feeling
something, anything. Matt won't question her and they will talk about
meaningless matters like they have no pressing future plans to decide on.
Bonnie has no energies to waste on college projects or to draw prospective on
what her life might become.
It's Damon's fault if she feels so distant from everything, and she doesn't
want to be angry or hopeful . She straight-out refuses to feel content at the
idea of his return.
He's been a prick to her and the concept of depending so much on someone so
fickle, selfish and plainly destructive is frankly terrifying. So, no she won't
accept how much exactly she wanted to be loved by him. She won't wonder if
those dreams are prophetic in nature or just her mind's way to grieve for him,
to prove to herself that she could do better than Katherine or Elena.
Because in those dreams, he is happy and she is the sole recipient of his
romantic affections.
Bonnie rejects all hope because she wouldn't be able to bear another
disappointment.
XXII
When Damon gets back, Bonnie can sense a subtle shift in the very atmosphere :
it happens suddenly, but without any fanfare. She just blinks once upon a
common May morning and knows this is the day they will be breathing the same
air again. She might focus, reach out with her mind and learn where he is and
what he's doing- it's a temptation she pulls back from harshly, in the space of
a few seconds.
Obviously, this doesn't improve her predicament much.
At their first meeting her fingers are desperately fumbling to get her key in
her lock while her arms are holding her full grocery bags to her chest.
Suddenly, pale hands reach out from behind to lift the bags out of her hold.
She doesn't need to turn to recognize who the bastard is.
Bonnie doesn't give him the satisfaction to see her shaken, forces her hyper-
aware body to freeze in place and her hitching breath to even out. She doesn't
even lift her eyes from the lock.
"What do you want?" she sounds pissed off, cold but collected. It's a strange
juxtaposition to how she truly feels. Like she's crumbling inside, piece by
piece, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.
"An extensive tour of your bedroom?" his voice is husky, mischievous, thick
with confidence. It's a tone she used to be used to. Now it kills her at least
as much it enrages her.
Bonnie inhales deeply, commands herself not to cry. "I think you signed off the
privilege when you decided I didn't deserve a goodbye."
She turns around just to spit the last few words in his face. If she expected
anger would grant her a shred of genuine emotion from Damon, she was wrong. He
remains handsome and so damn sure of himself, no regret or guilt flashing
behind those darkening cerulean eyes.
He drops her bags down to allow his arms to entrap her against the door. "Don't
be like that, Bon-Bon. You got me back. Isn't that all what matters?"
"Just go away" the witch hisses, pushing hard against his chest. Damon doesn't
budge.
"No."
"Why the hell not?" she all but snarls, her nails digging in his flesh
punishingly, seeking instinctively to hurt him the only way she can.
"Why, she asks…" Damon drawls, rolling his eyes upward, playing pretend to be
annoyed at her stubborn obliviousness. Then, abruptly, his body fluidly draws
back an inch from hers and his expression grows almost hesitant before shifting
back to boisterous:
"Because you love me."
He says it so smoothly that it comes across as unbearably cruel. She slaps him
as hard she can for daring to throw the ugly truth in her face.
"I don't even likeyou!" Bonnie defends herself, but her tone is too sharp, too
loud. She can't even convince herself.
"Liar" Damon mutters too close to her ear, becoming more serious as he gives
way to a quite annoyed rant:
"I didn't want be in this position again. To change everything around to make
someone else happy, fuckingly proud of being with me? It hasn't gotten me
anywhere so far. You and me were supposed to be fun: plain, simple and
transitory. I didn't want to get close and personal with you. I didn't want you
to matter to me. But you fucked all my plans up, so you will just have to live
with it, and if you don't love me already, I'll make you. "
Her response is narrowing her furious green eyes at him and slap him, again.
It's an even stronger slap than her first.
"That's the least romantic or sensitive apology I've ever heard!"
"It wasn't supposed to be an apology! " Damon frowns, indignant.
"What the fuck it was then? " she hisses, less than pleased.
"Me telling you we can have a relationship, you self-righteous little…" the
vampire trails off, searching his mind for any appropriate insult and finding
nothing fitting, much to his disbelief "…witch."
Visibly tempted to slap him again, but knowing it would accomplish nothing
except causing more pain to her stinging palm, Bonnie raises her hands in the
air and snaps an obviously exasperated "Gee, thank you!"
Obvious or not, this is when he kisses her. It's a firm, demanding kiss that
doesn't allow her to stay unresponsive, but the arm that surrounds her waist,
pulling her hips swiftly against his, is nothing but careful and gentle.
The moment is magical and not in a way that has anything to do with witchcraft.
Damon is not touching her in any inappropriate manner: for once, he seems
content enough with just kissing her mouth and keeping her as close possible.
That detail alone convinces her of his intentions somehow. She feels like she
is melting and flying at once, and he is her one anchor. She has never felt so
good before and wishes this could last forever.
'I missed you' his mental voice flits across the surface of her thoughts.
'I missed you too.' Bonnie replies in kind, still kissing him.
'I'll give you anything you might ever want. Forever.' The vampire promises
heatedly, a touch of desperation tingeing the words as he kisses harder,
deeper.
For a moment Bonnie falters because she knows this is what Love means to Damon:
offering everything he has and waiting to see the sacrifice adequately
compensated, to bend backwards only so he will have the person he wants staying
around.
It's a big, scary responsibility, being loved like this.
'As long as you don't leave me again and you don't go on any killing sprees, I
have everything I need. '
She wraps her arms around his neck knowing she might regret this admission.
Maybe even tomorrow, or two hours from now. Rome wasn't built in a day and
Damon can easily drive her insane, when he so elects.
But to hell with it.
'Deal.'
XXIII
It's not until they make love again, with her spread and bare under him, that
Bonnie actually hears THE words.
His lips are on her stomach, kissing circles around her bellybutton and his
mind delves again inside hers: 'Mine. So beautiful…so perfect. Mine. Love…love
you.'
His thoughts are too scattered and fragmented, and it is unintentional, but she
treasures it all the same. Perhaps even more.
His nose brushes the underside of her breast and Damon inhales the scent of her
skin like it's everything- food, sex, god- to him.
"Damon, I love you." Her mouth is confessing before she is ready to say the
words. It's too soon- she bites her bottom lip, panic fluttering in between her
heartbeats- although it feels like it's a long time overdue. She is not the
only one to be shocked: every one of Damon's muscles trembles as he gets nearly
immobile, and then he's literally springing on top of her, the despair in his
eyes so naked and raw that it takes her breath away. There's such desolation
behind that gaze, like a hunger that can never be completely sated. There are
years of obsession and resentment draining his capacity for true, straight-
forward emotion. There's a crippling solitude, a violent and devastating need
for contact, frustrated for way too long.
"Yes" he growls, taking her face between his hands and smoothing locks of her
hair away. "Yes."
It's the closest he can come to telling her what he feels, but it's
surprisingly okay. Bonnie discovers she doesn't need him to make it harder on
himself. She can just let herself go, here and now, to lose her heart to this
moment.
Damon's eyes tell her everything she needs to know. They tell her she is
necessary and not allowed to ever leave him.
And that, too, is okay with her.
***** EPILOGUE *****
Chapter Summary
     Each and every end is really nothing but the beginning of another
     course.
    
 
 
THE EPILOGUE
Love as Damon has experienced it is a bittersweet agony, a self-inflicted
torture that always promises more than it gives to you. He recognizes, to some
extent, that he had left Bonnie to her own devices because he despises the idea
of seeing her leaving him first. He couldn't –still can't- predict how he would
react or feel if she became the next participant in the 'let's pass Damon over
for something better' game, and this worries him.
He's familiar with the need to possess and covet, with the raw hunger of
desiring something barely out of his reach. He knows how to be a vampire, how
to protect what belongs to him.
Being with Bonnie puzzles him because, even having her all for himself and
knowing she freely acknowledges his claim on her, he doesn't feel in control at
all.
He expected to feel all-powerful and ready to take over the world, with his
little witch in his back pocket, but no: all he feels is refreshed and
unusually well-disposed to random strangers. He might be hitting obsessive with
his constant craving to be around her all the time, but that's always been a
salient trait of his personality, so he doesn't feel strange going along with
it.
He is snarkier and more energetic than usual, hornier and hungrier, more eager
for new things.
His days lately go like this- he wakes in his bed, with Bonnie draped over him,
and they make love. Often they feed from each other while they do, and it's
amazing, because it's the one moment he feels like she is nearly close enough.
Her essence runs underneath his skin and he knows she can feel him the same
way. It never lasts long enough, but he is confident that, in time, he will be
able to convince Bonnie to embrace vampirism.
He walks with her in the woods in the morning, whether she is set on harvesting
herbs for her potions or just on having a long nature stroll. He'll watch her
while she tries connecting with nature spirits, or meditating among trees, and
he'll study the subtle changes in her, will breathe in her power with a wary
arousal.
They don't hold hands, but their hands are always all over each other, in
public or private. The lust is like a fever they can't sweat out, it doesn't
matter how hard they try.
They talk more than they did before, he'll admit it. All because Bonnie has no
shame anymore, about questioning all random episodes of his life she sees while
his blood is humming inside her. He loves talking about himself, so why
shouldn't he be giving her all the answers she wants?
He's not even forced to quiz her back for fairness' sake, because Bonnie
volunteers information candidly, more adamant than he is about evening the
scale.
That's one more thing about her he likes, the willingness to give out as much
she takes. He knows from experience that, when you have considerable power,
it's easier to take advantage of those you love than of random strangers. It's
easier being fair to the ones who lack the ability to hurt you.
But not for Bonnie, and he respects her more for the strength it takes.
She is a fascinating work of art and the closer he looks, the more layers he
finds. Damon wants to unwrap them all, to discover what hides underneath, but
there's never enough time. So he worries incessantly, whenever he is not with
her, that something can happen and take her away before he can make her
indestructible, immortal.
Waiting until she is ready is troubling, but not when she's close enough to
touch. In those moments, he relaxes and all concerns feel distant,
insubstantial.
He's grateful that, for once, Stefan is so keen on living the 'human
experience' backpacking across Canada with his girlfriend (although, he can't
avoid shaking his head at their choice of destination. Canada? Why, Stefan,
why?).
It gives him more chances to keep his witch naked, now that her father is
around more often, spreading college brochures on every horizontal surface
available.
"I don't like how your father is pressuring you."
Because the only one allowed to put any sort of pressure on her, at this point,
should be him.
Damon has Bonnie on her stomach, languidly stretched underneath him and over
his bedspread. He has swept her hair away from her nape, so he could properly
kiss the path to her spine.
"It seriously worries me that you're thinking of my father now." She giggles
and it's a smoky, seductive sound that stirs in him so many appetites at once.
Yet, he doesn't give in. "He cock-blocks me with all his pep-talk."
Bonnie rolls her eyes, amused. "You are not the one who has to listen to it."
"No, but I'm the one who has to put up with your frowning face after you listen
to it."
A pillow is aimed to his head for that line, but it was worth it, and he avoids
it easily.
"I can stalk you anywhere"- he adds, playing it like a joke because he has
never truly learnt how to approach seriously this kind of matter- "but why
would you go, if it gets you so antsy?"
With a deep sigh, Bonnie rolls on her back, disentangling reluctantly from him.
"Because I'm smart, and smart people further their education in order to be
successful. "
"It sounds like a chore."
"Please, you are always complaining that our scholastic system teaches nothing
to no one anymore and how much better it was when you were alive. Why are you
throwing a bitch-fit over this?"
At first, Damon snickers at her use of the 'bitch-fit' word, then it dawns on
him that she is right, and his expression grows pensive.
Why does the idea of Bonnie going to college displease him so much? He has
nothing to lose, anywhere she choose to go.
College is fun. There are parties, alcohol, sororities. He loves college life.
"You are always looking uninterested and avoiding talk about that sort of
stuff. You don't want to go. "
He realizes, and it quite surprises him that he is able to be so affected by
her concerns, especially when they are that trivial.
"It's not that I don't want to go"- Bonnie interrupts him, in a rush- "I want
to. Just…I've always thought I would have definite projects when it was the
time to go, and now it's here and I've nothing but this sense of…being slowly
smothered and aggravated."
"Ah."
"Ah? That's all you have to say?"
"You wouldn't like to hear what I reallyhave to say."
"Try me." She challenges, arms crossed before her chest as she sits up, and
because Damon can never resist her when she looks so righteous and self-
important, he clears his throat and goes with brutal honesty.
"You can pretend with yourself all you want, but you know you are not cut out
for anything remotely resembling suburban life. You need more than the promise
of a good monthly check and a large house to be satisfied with yourself. You
live for the rush, the edge. The magic, if you want to call it that. Normality
kills you from within. Just like me."
She looks back him to him with a strange intensity before answering, "Perhaps,
but you are dead, and I'm not."
"That is easily remedied." He smirks, hopeful, just to have her shake her head
reproachfully at him.
"Don't even think about it."
Bonnie looks away from his suddenly blank features, but leans into his hands as
his fingers play with locks of her hair.
"You should be mine forever." He reminds her, his tone in between stern and
suggestive. It brings a smile to her lips because she can just see it, remember
the dreams she has never talked to him about, the secret future they will build
together.
"Someday,"- she promises, meeting his gaze once more- "eventually. But not
tomorrow or next week or month or-"
"I get the gist"
"Okay" she smiles at his bored timbre and moves in to kiss him, surprised when
he grips her chin gently and holds her back.
Damon looks serious again, and this, in her books, is rarely a good omen.
"There 's one more option, you know. I might just steal you away from this
hell-hole. You should just come away with me" He breaths on her lips, seductive
enough to daze her senses, and she misses those days when such a transparent
try to manipulate her would gain him nothing but a sound slap. It's harder to
deny him, when she understands it's not a game to him.
"What do you mean?"
He cups her face and caresses it softly, staring straight into her eyes.
"There's a whole world outside of here that you never imagined. I can hand it
to you, I can show you everything. You think about shamans in Africa, the Guild
of Dark Arts in Russia, the magical traditions of Ireland. Stonehenge. All
their secrets are just there, waiting for you, waiting to make your power
flourish. All you need to do is take a sabbatical, give me one year, allow me
to spirit you away."
Bonnie pries gently out of his touch, too shocked to take his proposition
seriously.
"You can't say things like that on a whim. "
He grips her wrists, tilts her chin to force her gaze back on him. "I want it."
"Well, that fixes everything"- the witch snaps, sarcastic- "never mind that a
week ago you could barely tell me how you felt. "
"Talking is cheap." Damon shrugs off her concerns, impatience and displeasure
chasing each other briefly across his attractive visage.
Bonnie doesn't get to reply properly because, in a matter of seconds, she finds
herself pinned under a dead weight. Literally speaking. Half of her admires his
determined conviction to be able to seduce anyone into anything. The other half
thinks her boyfriend's an idiot.
"Quit over-analyzing" -the bastard singsongs, taunting- "Put aside the smart
thing to do. Close your eyes and tell me you aren't tempted. "
"You are a bully."
"I'm right. "
"I hate you when you get like this." She ignores him, trying energetically to
squirm out of his arms, even while she knows it's an impossible feat. As a
matter of fact, it's just getting him more excited.
"Yes. Because you know I'm right."
"What you are"-she confesses, ceasing her recalcitrant movements –"is fickle
and impulsive."
"Except when I am not." Damon exploits the chance to nip at her jaw, run his
tongue on her throat "I look forward to taking care of you, Bonnie."
And inside his head, the decision is already made and cemented, so any
objection she can bring up now, the stubborn leech will just take as a
challenge.
Meet Damon Salvatore, the vampire steamroller.
In a sane world, she would be annoyed. Aggravated. Perhaps furious. Bonnie
Bennett's world has stopped being sane a long time ago. No complaints.
"If you say so-" she hums against his grinning mouth, kissing him.
It's not the most conventional manner to agree to both move in and travel
around the world with a psycho, but he gets her.
He gets her: between them, it's always been simple and complicated as that.
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