Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s fun having a best friend, it really is; the inside jokes, the loyalty, dependence, meme culture, etc, etc, but falling in love with said best friend… that’s just a shit storm.

For starters, Bonnie is touchy. He hadn’t noticed it before, when he wasn’t, you know, in love with her, but now he’s freshly cognisant and dying inside – he’s noticed. Boy, he’s noticed. Whether it be the sudden clutch of his wrist when she’s excited or the nonchalant brush of Bennett fingers on his back, she’s everywhere and it’s rudely intoxicating.

What’s worse, in the past few days, he’s been promoted from best friend to Gay Best Friend and is frequently called on for fashion advice. The old Damon would have brazenly enjoyed having a pretty woman twirl around in a criminally skin-tight dress but now it’s like having the thing you want most in the world - but can’t have - paraded in front of you.

Not like, Damon corrects, is. It is the thing he wants most in the world only this time, he’s too moral to just fuck the consequences and have it.

He’s played out the conversation a thousand times:

“Bon, it’s stupid but I’m in love with you. Do you want to maybe make out or just continue this episode of Gossip Girl?”

To which Bonnie will, first, assume he means a family love and scrunch her nose up and make her eyes all wide and Disney and probably snuggle into his chest, her head like a damned dagger to his dead, unbeating heart. When he explains that, tragically, he means love love, she’ll go very still and say, “What about Elena?” like he isn’t aware that loving Bonnie Bennett makes for a tricky conversation with his comatose girlfriend. He’ll probably make a joke like, “Lucky for me, you won’t be around at the same time” and it will land flat and heavy on the couch because a world without Bonnie Bennett isn’t his.

“Damon, I-”

That’s what she’ll say. A broken line, the words unformed because how can she tell him without breaking his heart? How can you say ‘I’m not’ in a language that doesn’t devastate?

You can’t. So, he’ll save both of them the pain and keep this…complication to himself.

“Have you thought about what Elena said?”

Damon stalls on his mouthful. “Huh?”

Bonnie’s face twists with disgust. “Okay, gross, a bit of turkey just fell out.”

“You love it,” he responds instinctually, but drags the napkin across his mouth anyway, a little embarrassed. “Elena said many things, Bon-bon. Specificity, please.”

The witch loosens her arms off the picnic bench. “About you, you know,” she gesticulates aimlessly, looking like a flailing bird (and he smiles before his brain reprimands that finding Bonnie Bennett cute is not beneficial to anyone), “dating again.”

His mouth re-aligns. “What?”

“It’s just, we have a good sixty years or so before I disappear from this earth,” she winks and he cringes, inwardly, and probably outwardly, at the thought, “that’s a long old time for seducer extraordinaire Damon Salvatore to wait.”

She fills his silence with something more tentative, “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with waiting. It’s,” Bonnie glances down at her hands, “pretty romantic, I think.”

His best friend has acquired a kind of dreamy, dimpled look and it’s a testament to how fucked he is that this is all he can focus on – now, when she’s wondering if he’ll consider dating someone other than the supposed love of his damned life.

Why does everything have to be so confusing?

“I don’t know, I guess I haven’t really thought about it,” he manages, lamely.

Bonnie’s brow quirks, “Seriously? For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been Mr Babe-magnet-”

“- Don’t ever say that again.”

“- Fine. Flirt, charmer, whatever you want to call it. Has no-one taken your fancy?”

And right on cue, there’s the drum of a phantom heart only the witch has managed to arouse, from the depths of his darkness, screwed-upness, monstrosity: the human.

His vision is assaulted by a darting hand. “Hello?” Bonnie trills, “Earth to Damon.”

Maybe he deserves this? After all the death and heart-break he’s caused, maybe he deserves this? Maybe looking into her searching eyes and saying ‘no’, above the screaming in his lungs, his chest, the heart she’s reviving, is his comeuppance?

She leans back against her chair, brow furrowed. “I don’t believe it.”

Because it’s a lie.

Damon flicks his hand across the table to steal a fry. “Sixty-years is quite generous Bon-bon. What’s to say we won’t die again and get trapped in another Prison World?”

“Well then I guess you’ll be stuck with me forever,” she grins and his chest concaves.

“Sounds awful.”

She laughs and it’s brilliant, as usual. “You used to be able to do that snarky, I-hate-you-Bonnie thing so well. I almost miss it. That attempt was just pitiful.”

He threads a hand through his hair and she watches; he notices and tries not to smoulder. “Be careful what you wish for, Bonniekins.”

“Is it possible for you to just say my name?” her mouth flirts with a smile.

“Obviously, Bonnie….” Damon pauses for dramatic effect, then puffs his cheeks to say, “…Boop,” with a satisfying pop.

She snorts and calls him a child, which he takes, proudly, and twirls the straw of his coke with his tongue, smug and almost happy.

(And almost happy isn’t a bad life, she’s showing him that.)

When she knocks on his door all jittery and giggly the following morning, Damon’s convinced she’s just been asked out by bloody James Franco or someone and the scowl that films his features is just friendly (not-so-friendly) jealousy at the idea.

“I’ve got you a date,” is what she grins instead and Damon doesn’t say anything but ‘oh’.

“It’s not a big deal, just a friendly meet-up with a stranger, that’s all,” she hurries, pushing past him into the Boarding House hallway, reminding him of Caroline Forbes on a mission – terrifying, avoid at all costs – “It’s been almost a year and a half now,” she smiles, “I think this is a good thing.”

Several emotions jostle for prominence in his mind but, as he stares at the witch in the centre of his living room, her eyes rounded in trepidation, he’s too exhausted to argue.

“Is she human?”

Surprise flashes across her face then she laughs, quickly, “Wow our lives are strange. Yup, she’s human. Don’t eat her,” she blushes, “You know what I mean.”

He briefly enjoys her embarrassment and flings his body on the couch, massaging his temples at the forming headache. Well, as close to a headache a vampire can get. “Don’t drink her blood, don’t compel her, be normal. Got it.”

Bonnie pushes at his legs to make room for her on the couch; the cushions sigh a little with the added weight. “Are you okay?” she asks softly, running her hand along lower region of his pant leg. It’s so affectionate, he squeezes his eyes shut. See, touchy.

“Fine.”

“Shit, Damon, I’m sorry. I just… I want you to be happy and recently, I don’t know, it seems like something’s been on your mind.”

“I’m fine,” he snaps without meaning to.

The couch groans as she shifts, wriggling up the crevice between him and the back cushions until she’s got her head just below his shoulder and her arms wrapped around his front. Her touch, her scent, is nauseating, and he hates how fucking safe he feels. His fingers are running along her hands and her next words dance on the shell of his ear.

“Are you happy?”

Damon shivers. The softness of her breasts are pressing against him and his veins actually thicken with the effort of control. He stays very still. Almost, his fingers seem unbidden to stop stroking hers, that sliver of touch that’s allowed, that she won’t question.

“Talk to me,” Bonnie whispers and then she kisses him. It’s a near silent brush of skin against skin, the nakedness of his exposed neck, connecting with the warmth of her lips. And if it weren’t for the throb of lifted contact, the itch of his hand to touch where she met him, he might have imagined it.

“What was that?”

He feels her tense around his frame. “I said, talk to me.”

“No,” his frustration swarms, “No, what was that?”

“Nothing.”

Damon flinches, ripping open Bonnie’s cage around his chest, freeing himself from the couch and her stupid kisses that aren’t kisses; love that isn’t really love.

“Damon?” Bonnie pushes up from the cushions, her hair static and poking the air in awkward angles. He yanks away from her concerned stare and paces toward the fireplace – the Bourbon waiting for him. “Damon, what the hell?”

He chucks the liquid down his throat, ignoring her. The vampire pours himself another glass but at the hand on his shoulder, he pivots, fangs probing at his gums.

Shock flickers across the witch’s eyes but not fear, she doesn’t fear her best friend and today, that makes him angrier.

“What the fuck was that?” he says again, trembling with the effort of control. Bonnie doesn’t take a step back; doesn’t remove her hand from his shoulder, instead, she places her other one.

“Damon”- the pulse through her finger tips is steady – “Talk to me.”

“Bonnie, let go,” he says carefully, and the jolt her heartbeat is betraying. She senses, as does Damon, his danger.

The witch shakes her head. “No.” Her breath thickens with the slow crawl of veins but she doesn’t flinch. “I’m not going anywhere, you know that. Not now, not ever.”

His mouth twitches with the influx of pointed canines – torn between releasing the monster to push her away, terrified that when he does, she will. Her fingers flutter over his skin, the translucent horror of it, and land, feather-light, tracing the veins that scratch and burn. His world compresses into that touch.

“Please,” her voice breaks, “Talk to me.”

Damon slams his eyes shut. Almost happy. Almost happy.

Her breath tickles; her fingers sliding from beneath his eyes to his chin, down his neck. Her pulse rises and then nothing, silence, and she’s kissing him. The tremor in her bottom lip as it pulls a tentative response from his. Unravelling and colliding, the coils of tension, his fangs, re-absorbing, and Bonnie, Bonnie’s kissing him.

And then she’s not.

Chapter Text

Bonnie gapes into their distance - the step she made to release him. Damon’s expression is hung between shock and something more electric, something she can’t analyse right now. She pulls a hand across her eyes and says, “I shouldn’t have done that” just he says, “What took you so long?”

“What?”

“What?”

If the whole situation wasn’t so strained, if she didn’t have to be so delicate, she might have laughed… both of them might have.

“I just mean…” Bonnie stalls under his stare; it’s so damn intense and that kiss was so damn good and he looks so damn sad. “Now it will be weird, won’t it? We’ve… we’ve never done that before.”

Damon blinks slowly, processing, then his eyes storm over, shutting her out. “So why did you?”

It feels like an accusation and Bonnie can’t understand why when he kissed her back – like, a lot, fact, it was so much, she pulled away because she was scared of falling into him. Drowning in someone like Damon Salvatore is a death sentence and she already loves him too much.  

“I could see you trying to fight it. You wouldn’t talk to me. I- I don’t know, I just did. I wasn’t thinking.”

The vampire folds his arms across his chest. “And now you’ve thought, you’re disgusted.”

His face morphed back when their lips made contact but Bonnie could still taste the terror, an intensity (and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t thrill her). Even now, in the swell of evening light, there’s the remnants of a red temper dusting his eyes. “Of course, I wasn’t disgusted. Why would you think that?”

Damon’s lips loosen in a disbelieving laugh, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you jolted away like you’d been stung? Maybe because, as you said, we’ve never done that before?”

Bonnie tenses. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was obligated to kiss you. I didn’t realise that was a requirement to being your friend,” she snaps, matching his sarcasm.

“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.”

“No, I don’t know, Damon! One minute, we’re on the couch and the next you’re shaking and your eyes are turning black. I was scared for you.” She waits for his response, a flicker of understanding, something that she can understand.

But it’s Damon and he’s obstinate. “Right, so when you’re scared for Stefan, you kiss him? Or Caroline or-”

“Why are you being such a child!?”

“Because I need you to know!”

Massaging her temple, she groans, the itching of a Damon sized headache forming. “This is exactly why I shouldn’t have done it. You’re being neurotic.”

His eyes bulge at her words, “Neurotic!? I’m just trying to figure out why the fuck my best friend decides to kiss me.”

An eyebrow curves above the sharp and blue accusatory glare. And Bonnie’s thoroughly irritated now. “You kissed me back!”

“Of course, I did!”

She’s pushing her mouth into a retort when it makes sense, all of it. The realisation slams into her chest.

Damon’s mouth has assumed a strange sort of twitching, like he wants to protest what is clicking into place but doesn’t know where to begin. That, and the red flush creeping up his neck, confirm the ridiculousness that Damon Salvatore, enemy turned best friend, star-struck lover of Elena Gilbert, is, somehow, in love with her.

Well, shit.

Bonnie sits down on the couch. “When did this happen?”

His reply is rapid. “When did what happen?”

“You’re…” she knits absent words with her hands, “feelings for me?”

Surprise flashes, but defeat settles. “Oh, that.” He joins her on the couch, the safe distance of a single cushion between them. “I’d like to say sometime these past few months but,” he weaves fingers through his hair, “it’s probably been much longer than that.”

She studies him.  “How much longer?”

“I don’t know, Bon, when you came back from the Prison World, in the Prison World, the first day you witchy jujued my head?”

“You’re kidding.”

Damon gives a wry smile. “I didn’t know, really know, until recently. And I didn’t really, really, know until just…” he swings a hand towards the fireplace, where they kissed, and Bonnie cringes, “then.”

He continues over her silence, “It’s hardly surprising is it? A) I’m cursed with a lifetime of unrequited love and B) it’s you. It would have to be you,” she observes how his mouth kicks up, affectionate in a way that makes her stomach swoop, “the most irritating, judgemental, little smart-ass I know.”

“Speak for yourself,” she says quietly, “I’m surprised because it’s you.”

Damon straightens. “Explain.”

“Elena, Damon, Elena.” Bonnie sighs at his confused brow. “You know, in the Prison World? At first, I wanted to kill you but… then I just didn’t anymore. It kinda freaked me out… liking your company. It freaked me out even more when I realised, I liked you, quite a lot.”

It’s the most attentive she’s ever seen the vampire, listening, very still, and the memories continue to fall upon her mind. “Do you remember that evening when it was my turn to cook dinner and I couldn’t remember the ratio of cheese to milk in the lasagne my dad used to make and then it just hit me how alone we were and I just started to cry?”

Damon nods.

“And then you found me out on the porch and brought a blanket and two bowls and you said that you finished the lasagne and that it probably wasn’t as good how my dad makes it but you tried anyway?”

“I do.”

Bonnie feels the smile in her words, “It was the most caring I’d ever seen you be. You didn’t want anything from me – I had nothing to give. We were just trapped alone in another dimension and you made the lasagne with those shitty value pasta sheets from the store.”

“And…?” He speaks like he’s scared of the answer.

“And then we came back and it was just Elena,” she replies, and deflates a little.

“Bonnie,” Damon begins, eyes wide and searching, “You know how much I missed you… how much I wanted you back.”

“No, I know, but… not like how I secretly hoped you missed me,” Bonnie swallows, “You went from being my person to Elena’s and that… that was just something I had to come to terms with. And I did.”

“Enzo?”

She nods in answer. “It felt so good to be chosen,” she admits, something she isn’t sure she’s ever really admitted to herself.

The silence folds, then Damon says, very quietly, barely there. “What are you saying, Bonnie?”

I don’t know. “I don’t know,” she winces, tilting her head to look at him, “Is that okay?”

And softly her best friend says, “That’s okay.” There’s a pause and then the corner of his mouth lifts, “Gilmore girls?”

It’s absurd – all of it – but she agrees and Damon fumbles for the remote. The opening montage bursts to life; Bonnie stretches her legs and her toes flinch against Damon’s thigh. She thinks about curling up but his warmth is nice, it really is, and if he’s noticed, he hasn’t objected.

“Bon?”

She picks her head up from the cushions. “Yeah?”

“Will you go on a date with me?”

The question flips about in her mind for a little bit (not unpleasantly, definitely not). “Okay.”

Bonnie’s watching the screen but she knows he’s grinning when he says, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” And her socked feet work their way up Damon’s thigh and into his lap.

Chapter Text

Damon lowers his book at the witch’s aggressive intrusion. He peers over the spine, “What’s got you in a grump?”

Bonnie slumps into the cushions, scowling like a petulant child. It’s quite amusing. “Caroline.” She lifts a brow to his equally dejected posture. “And you?”

“Stefan.”

The witch groans. “I don’t understand why they can’t just let us be. I mean, I’m perfectly happy on my own.”

Damon folds the corner of his book page. “Just as I happen to like being a moody bachelor without ties.”

“Exactly!” She debates whether to expand or not, then, deciding she needs someone to rant to, adds, “Caroline put me on a dating app.”

The vampire releases a low whistle. “Bet all the old farts loved you.”

“Rude,” Bonnie retorts, leaning across the cushions to flick him, “A lot of them were actually pretty cute.”

“But?”

“But I’d rather not go to my best friend’s anniversary party with a stranger from the internet.”

They sit in agreeable silence for a while until Damon says, “You realise they’re not going to stop until we find someone, right?”

“I’m beginning to.” The weight of his stare lingers and Bonnie glares at him, “What?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he hums, privately enjoying the witch’s paranoia.

“Damon Salvatore. What?”

“Nothing. It was just a stupid idea.”

“Tell me,” Bonnie demands, definitely not in the mood for Salvatore playtime.  

He feigns indifference, walking his fingers over the top of the couch in boredom. “They’d never believe it.”

“What!?” She’s irritated now; Damon relents before things get ugly.

“What if we went together?”

She shifts on the pillow to stare at him. “I don’t understand.”

“You know like together, together only… fake. We’ll be pretending.”

“Pretending to date?”

“It’s stupid, right. We could never pull it off.”

He chews on his cheek, fixated by the fireplace, waiting for her answer. Bonnie fights a laugh. “Damon, I can’t believe I’m saying this but… that’s genius.”

“Really!?” It it’s a rare occurrence: Bonnie praising him. “I mean, yeah, obviously.”

“But…,” her brow folds in thought, “I have a few ground rules.”

“Shocking.”

Bonnie throws him her best ‘I’m serious’ expression. “No… kissing or anything.”

“Bold of you to assume I’d even want to.” He pushes at the strands on his forehead, a smirk tickling the corner of his lip, “So, when are we telling the other Salvatore’s, babe?”

“Ew, no way. No ‘babe’.”

Damon’s eyes crinkle with amusement. Already, this is shaping up to be his best idea yet. “What am I supposed to call you?”

“What did you used to call Elena?”

The memory of his past relationship stings a little. “Er, just Elena, I guess.” God, we were boring.

She thinks for a moment; he already has so many nicknames, it’s like he enjoys flirting with her name, spinning it longer, shorter, how it sounds on his tongue. “I think Bon-bon’s fine.”

He doesn’t realise he’s smirking until she says, “What?” in her defensive way.

“I knew you liked being called that.”

“Shut up,” she eye-rolls.

Damon wags a finger. “Nuh, uh. If we’re going to be convincing, we need to look the picture of love. That means no ‘shut ups’ or ‘asshole’ or ‘dick’,” another smirk, “Unless…”

“Ground rules. No.”

“I’m joking. Chillax. This will be fun.”

And, whilst Damon beams internally with the promise of embarrassing, flirting, and making her squirm, Bonnie wonders what the hell she’s got herself into.

When Damon told Stefan his date was going to be Bonnie, the man merely lifted an eyebrow.

“What? No shock? No cries of ‘no don’t corrupt our dear, saviour Bonnie’?”

The former vampire only held up a tie. “Red or blue?”

“Stefan.”

His brother sighed. “Damon, you and Bonnie, it was inevitable. You’ve always had a connection.”

“What connection?” Damon hurried then back-tracked, “I mean, yeah, it’s electric.”

And Bonnie too experienced a similar reaction from Caroline: the blonde’s mouth folding smugly, an expression that said, I knew it.

“Is it really that unsurprising?”

“Honestly, I’m more surprised by how long it took. I kind of expected you two to start fucking as soon as Elena dumped Damon.”

Bonnie’s eyes bulged at that.

“They’re crazy,” Damon says now, phone balanced between ear and shoulder as he attempts to stuff his toes into patent dress shoes. “You know, Bon, you should really be helping me find an outfit. As my girlfriend and everything.” His lip curls with the image of her reaction.

“Yes, because finding a suit is so strenuous,” is her expectedly snarky reply.

 “It’s hard finding one that looks good,” he whines to his reflection (because he’s not so proud to not fish for compliments.)

“Oh please, you know you look good in a suit,” she quips and his mouth twitches with a smile.

“Are you flirting with me, Bon-bon?”

“And I’m hanging up.”

Bonnie cuts him off mid-chuckle. It’s two days until the party and nerves are already making their unwelcomed home in her stomach. She shouldn’t be anxious. Not really. It’s Damon, for goodness sake. Her somewhat problematic best friend. But… it’s also the fact that it’s Damon, in all his unpredictability, that makes her so jittery. Not to mention, they’ll have an audience: Matt and Rick and friends from Whitmore, observing them.

I should have just found a dude from online.

At four pm, the demanding vampire pings across her phone screen, ordering her to pick up a parcel from the front step. Grumbling, Bonnie unpeels herself from the couch and shuffles across the hall to open the front door.

The box is square and white and tied with an illustrious black bow. She toes it with her slipper, half expecting something to jump out and terrify her. Nothing. It’s only when she bends towards it for closer inspection that she notices a gold label that reads: To match my tie. Bonnie flips it over: And your eyes.  

Rolling said eyes at the cliché, Bonnie scoops the box from the step and edges back inside. She places the box on the coffee table and maybe there’s just a little bit of intrigue there? It’s been a while since her wardrobe acquired a new garment.

With quiet excitement, she unties the bow and eases off the lid. A gasp falls from her mouth. Elena would always gush over how lavish Damon’s gifts were but this… this is just unnecessary.

Fifteen minutes later, she sends him a text:

Damon, the dress is too much.

He replies instantly:

Have you tried it on?

Yes.

And?

It’s beautiful but I can’t accept it.

Don’t be stupid, you need to look in my league ;)

Bonnie touches the silk again. It’s green, not a colour she would usually go for, but, Damon’s right, it does match her eyes. She felt pretty, beautiful even, and the knowledge that he chose it specially makes her feel oddly fluttery – something like excitement coalescing with all those nerves. Weird.

Someone’s taking their sweet time. Damon shoves his hand on the horn again. Is she deaf? Growing irritable just sitting in his car, the vampire probes the driver’s door handle and steps onto the street, his suffocating patent brougue-things squeaking with the effort. Time is money, Bon-bon, he thinks, marching up to her house and raising a hand to bang on it.

The motion matches Bonnie’s – she opens the door to his raised arm and mildly pissed off scowl. “Wow, impatient much,” she grumbles but his irritation’s dissolved, along with any thought other than damn.

It takes a moment before she understands this is him checking her out. His eyes roam slowly over her frame, pausing for breath on her cleavage before widening at her face in surprise. Bonnie wonders if she should be offended. Does she really look that bad usually?

“Um, are we done gawking?”

Damon’s jaw re-aligns. “I wasn’t gawking,” he lies, fighting the blush with gritted teeth. It really is unfortunate that he still manages to do that… being dead and all.

Bonnie’s face dimples with amusement. She pulls the door to a close and begins making her way to the car, throwing an innocent, “Well, you chose the dress,” over her shoulder with satisfaction.

He animates a second later, jogging to beat her to the car door. “Let me get that for you, Bon-bon,” he charms.

She quirks a brow. “Is this what it’s going to be like? Mr Chivalry all night?”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Bonnie sweeps over his sharp features, the teasing smirk, and that suit – a Salvatore in a suit really is something else – and decides, “No. I could get used to it.”

“Good. Because I want my girlfriend to be happy.” He says it so flippantly, they both stall: Damon, at how natural it sounded, Bonnie, at how fluttery (again!) it made her feel.

The vampire climbs into the driver’s seat and reassures that he’s just getting into the role; the witch smooths the folds in her green dress and blames it on the anticipation of pretence.

…

“I think we need a game plan,” Damon announces later, pulling into the car park. The party’s at the Country Hall, barely recognisable now with all the twinkling and sparkling emanating from the walls. Caroline’s decked the whole damn thing out in string lights – he squints at the sight.

Bonnie turns from the window. “What did you have in mind?”

“Hand-holding. You know, for when we walk in.”

“So romantic,” she teases.

“Is that a no?”

The flickering glow catches in her eye-roll. “I think I can manage holding your hand without being too disgusted.”

“Great,” he leans back into the car’s soft leather, “Got any other bright ideas?”

“Maybe like… whispering?”

Damon snorts. “What?”

“Like private jokes, that kind of thing,” she finishes, regretting saying anything at all.

The vampire widens his eyes in understanding. “Stefan already thinks we do that.”

“Well, there we go. We just need to look… couple-y.”

Damon glances at his watch. “Ten to. You ready, Bon-bon?”

She looks nervous, a strained smile stretching her pretty mouth. He reaches to pat her knee, “We got this.”

He exits the car first, lifting an amicable hand at several well-dressed couples. No idea who the fuck you are. Damon swings round to the other side, fingers on the handle, and hesitates – Bonnie is chewing on her nails, terrified, poor thing. She senses his stare and smiles again, equally as strained. Damon rolls his eyes and yanks open the door, “You know, we’ll be a lot more convincing if you don’t look like you want to run away.”

“I’m not used to doing this,” she admits, “Lying.”

“Well, Bon-bon, good job we’re learning to live a little.” He flashes a mischievous grin and her stomach tumbles (can it stop doing that?). She blinks at his outstretched hand, pale, slender fingers waiting for hers.

Show-time.

There’s at once a comforting familiarity and foreign wildness to holding Bonnie’s hand. He swings their arms to shake it away – the former or latter, he doesn’t know, whatever one’s worse. The building glows, inviting in its warmth, and Damon’s almost excited… celebrating his brother’s marriage, spending the night with his best friend. Life has been worse, he smiles, a little astounded, when he thinks, has it ever been better?

The movement of his thumb across the back of her hand is nice, comforting. The sweeping sensation it sends to her stomach is just hunger, she needs a snack. Bonnie smiles at the other couples, recognising a few faces from lectures or high school dances. Their eyes fall to her entwinned hand and Damon tightens around her fingers. Rick, who is hovering by the door with a cigarette, calls them over.

“Damon! Bonnie!”

She expects the vampire to drop her hand when he embraces his friend but it remains attached to hers, thumb still brushing against her skin. Rick notices and grins, patting Damon on the back.

“Nice to see you finally make a move,” he chuckles.

“She took a lot of winning over,” Damon jokes, settling into his role easily. He slides his gaze to Bonnie, wondering how she’ll react, but to his delight, she’s eye-rolling, playing along.

“I said yes just to shut him up,” she says dryly and Rick laughs.

“With Damon, I don’t blame you.”

They say their goodbyes and continue their advances into the hall, Damon, once again, near blinded by the exuberance of string lights. Blondie really is something else. Several tables are scattered around the room, draped in ivy and candles and he’s near-convinced he’s taken a time-machine to three years ago.

He lowers towards Bonnie’s ear. “Is it just me, or have we done this before?”

Her chuckle pleases him. “You know, Caroline. One wedding isn’t enough.”

Damon has a point though; the word extra comes to Bonnie’s mind. Still, she spots the couple in the corner, toasting to one another and entertaining a small cluster of guests, she’s happy. After all the shit they’ve been through, they’re more than allowed to be greedy with their happiness. Her mouth curves with the realisation that she’s pretty happy right now too.

“Bonnie!” She turns to see a tall girl in a pixie crop rushing over to her.

“Alison! Wow, you look great.”

“And you. It’s been ages,” she twists her grin to Damon, eyebrow raised expectantly, “Hi, I’m Alison. Bonnie and I had Art History together at Whitmore.”

“Damon,” he says tightly (because he’s never been the warmest at meeting new people). Her smile loosens and Bonnie quickly asks another question, leaving him to study the hall, attached to her hand like some sort of estranged limb. He hasn’t felt like this since Elena. Placing a hand on the small of her back, he leans towards her and says softly, “I’ll get you a drink”. Bonnie inclines her head to thank him and he kisses her cheek, just like that, fuck. He expects her to glare but her eyes merely swell a little in surprise and then she’s turning back to Allison, who is commenting on how cute they both are.

It’s sickening and none of this is real but… he finds himself agreeing.

Stefan joins at him the bar with a nudge. “You and Bon look cosy.”

Damon gestures around the hall, the extravagance of it all, “Like you can talk.”

“True.” He frowns for a moment, subsiding into serious Stefan, “Seriously though, I’m happy for you. I really am.”

“Thanks, brother,” he says, unable to look him in the eyes.

The night picks up quickly. With the buzz of guests, champagne, a golden light, the atmosphere shifts into elegance, sultry even. And it dawns on Bonnie just how many couples there are. Allison left to go and dance with her fiancé and she found a chair to perch on, watching the room from afar, admiring the dresses and love and, in the middle, hanging off Stefan’s neck, her oldest friend. A pang of jealousy strikes uncomfortably and she scratches at it, affronted by the feeling when she’s so happy for her, she is. Caroline deserves this.

But I do too, she thinks quietly.

Damon begins to meander his way back to the witch: tonight’s appointed girlfriend. He’s got Bonnie a glass of rose – her favourite – and is focussing all his vamp balance on not spilling it. That is, until he notices her expression, and then, his only concern is getting to her quickly.

“Are you okay?” he worries, placing her now half-spilled glass on the table. “You look sad?”

Bonnie blinks and shakes her face into a smile. “Great. Is that rose?”

Damon produces a proud smirk, “Of course.” He wiggles his way round to her side, stealing a chair from another table to sit next to her. The distance looks awkward so he says, “Just playing the part,” and drapes his arm over her shoulder.

Bonnie reaches to play with his loose fingers, pushing up into the open space so their hands are entwinned once again. “Me too.”

They don’t need to, Caroline and Stefan are clearly pre-occupied but it’s not an entirely hideous feeling, his proximity. He smells of pine needles; it’s homely.

“I think we should dance,” Damon announces.

“Now?”

“Now.”

She laughs as he lifts his arm, hands still attached, causing her to spin off her chair and into his chest. He steadies her dizziness – hands on her shoulders and even there, his thumb brushes. Bonnie drops her gaze; Damon releases her skin.

They carve a space between the couples and she smiles, embarrassed, he can tell. Damon holds his hand aloof, catching hers in the air above them. “The last time we did this was at their wedding,” he whispers into her ear, Bonnie’s frame a breath from his. “And then I did this.” He spins her suddenly, her laugh thrilling in a way he knows it isn’t supposed to. She falls back into his arms, eyes bright, wild.

“I remember.”

“You’ve always been my favourite dance partner, Bon-Bon,” he says (because he’s feeling reckless and the string lights have turned him giddy).

“Careful,” she whispers, “I think the party’s making you soft.”

The skin around his eyes crinkle. “Maybe, or maybe I’m just in love with you.”

Bonnie laughs, “You’re a good actor, Damon Salvatore,” and he’s trying to understand why he didn’t want that to be her reaction.

It’s a little frightening how much his statement didn’t frighten him.

At twenty to twelve, Caroline taps a spoon to her champagne glass, giggles, and calls for a speech. Her words are sweet, interjected by more bubbly-induced giggles, and Stefan holds her hand throughout it all, utterly captivated. Bonnie risks a glance at Damon, the other Salvatore, his brow buried in thought. His hair is ruffled – tousled, as he corrected – and maybe it’s the wine but she feels such a surge of affection staring at him, she has to touch his hand.

The vampire glances at it, then her, then nods. “Right, sorry, I forgot.”

She doesn’t know how to tell him that she had forgotten to.

“And, on the theme of love, I wanted to give a shout-out to my brother.” Stefan’s toast makes them flinch. He grins at them, “To Bonnie and Damon, may you be as happy as Care and I.”

The room erupts in applause and this is too much. Bonnie heats with the attention, the falsity, but Damon, he stands, Bourbon in hand, lifting the glass to his brother.

“Damon, why don’t you say something?” the younger Salvatore probes and Damon thinks fuck it, live a little right, Bonnie?

He clears his throat and tries to avoid her startled expression, eyes rounded in whatever you’re doing stop, please but he’s always gone after what he’s wanted and right now, in this stupidly sparkly hall, it’s never been clearer.

“Bonnie, Bon-bon, we’ve had an interesting relationship,” he gives a wry smile, “There have been times you’ve tried to kill me, times I’ve tried to kill you,” – the room laughs, obviously unaware that what he’s saying is literally true - “times where we’ve laughed, bickered, danced, times I’ve thrashed you at monopoly, one time you thrashed me,” – another trickle of laughter – “and I wouldn’t change any of it. All the years. Even the ones in between.” He moistens his lips and dares to look at her, the inevitable panic, but what he sees, the something, in those green eyes, enlivened by that green dress, makes him say, “And it’s been real. All of it.”

He resumes his seat to a chorus of awes and claps, his sister-in-law almost bursting with the sappiness of it all. Damon chases the room with a smile until at last, it lands on Bonnie. “Was that okay?” He says quietly, “Not too much?”

She threads her fingers together, hooking and unhooking until the silence has stretched too long and she has to answer. “I didn’t expect that,” she says honestly.

Damon blows out a breath. “You’re telling me.”

“It was real,” she repeats quoting him, “All of it.” A smirk flirts with her words, “Are you going to write poetry about me now?”

“Don’t be an ass,” he grumbles.

“Maybe a song? ‘It was real’ has a nice, Daniel Bedingfield ring to it?”

“Funny.”

“That’s me,” she grins but takes his hand and holds it, on her lap, under the table, just for them.

Chapter Text

The warehouse doors are flung open with a curl of her wrist. Assaulting her senses, the stench of blood lurches against her throat, making her want to gag. She doesn’t – Bonnie knows that flinching in the cold stare that observes her is what he wants.

“Can I help you?” In his hands hangs a body – almost, the shuddery breath and Damon’s glistening crimson mouth send an involuntary shiver. The vampire’s hands twitch and the girl drops to the ground with an echoing crack. “Oops.”

Bonnie summons magic from her core, tensing with the simmering authority beneath her skin. Damon just swirls his tongue around each digit, watching her, waiting, as he cleans life off his bloodied hand.

“So,” he sighs, “What’s the plan? Tie me up, vervain me, pop a blood vessel, burn the thing humanity-me loves most in the world?”

Her voice is low, “Actually, I’m just going to ask you.”

“Ask me?” His eyebrow curves disbelievingly.

“Yes. Will you come back to Mystic Falls?”

And there’s nothing more than iced, dead, indifference as he says, “No.”

But for Bonnie, there’s a delicate power. “Okay,” she says simply and turns on her heel.

“That’s it? You’re giving up easily.”

She teeters on the ball of her foot, torn between indulging him or leaving with the thrill of, for once in her life, not being the saviour. “I came because Stefan asked me to.”

Damon drags his gaze across the room, his iris’ blackening at the mirrored blood-stains. “Well that’s predictable. I would ask how my little brother is but honestly, I don’t give a fuck.”

And Bonnie almost smiles, “Which is exactly why I’m going to walk away and leave you to your destruction because honestly, I don’t give a fuck either.”

Something scrapes against his mind as he hears her drive away. Maybe hurt? Betrayal? Damon smacks his lips together and admires the still oozing neck of the attractive blonde by his feet. Nope, just hunger.

…

Her hands tremble around the steering wheel: the leaping drum of adrenalin and fear. She doesn’t care, not anymore. She’s not indebted to him – she’s not his Elena. She shouldn’t have to pick up the scraps of Damon Salvatore when he doesn’t care enough to stick around. He made that choice when he decided to desiccate, choosing a shrivelled shell of a human over being her best friend.

“Fuck you,” she says out loud. It feels good, so she says it again, shouts it. But Bonnie wants more - her rage pulses - she needs more than saying it to herself.

The warehouse doors are still open, gaping like a wound and, Damon, in the centre, unfeeling, unloving, the coward-

“Fuck you.”

Surprise flickers before his switch re-asserts, smoothing his features into blankness. “I’m down.”

“Fuck you,” Bonnie says again, louder, “And your cop outs. The rest of the world has to deal with shit – shit that you made. We don’t get do-overs, or pauses, or switches.” She wants to scream it; the experience perversely liberating. “Yes, your girlfriend is in a coma and that sucks, but she’s not your whole damn world, Damon!”

Her raging pulse is both irritating and arousing. “Bonnie darling, don’t make me kill you to just to shut you up.”

She steps further into the room, heeled boots attacking the matt floor. “What about Stefan? Rick? Caroline?” Bonnie inhales, “What about me? You chose me. You saved my life even when it meant losing Elena?”

“Bonnie,” he drawls, “My heart bleeds for you, really. You seemed to have forgotten that flipping my switch means that all the shit you’re saying right now,” he gestures around his mouth, “is nothing more than just watching your lips flap up and down.”

The moisture in her eyes build. If you start crying bitch, I will have to suck that magic blood dry. His mouth kicks up at the idea.

“You’re a coward, Damon Salvatore,” she continues, “And I’m an idiot to have ever felt something for you.”

All these women… so angsty about him. He lifts a foot to hop over the blonde meal and swaggers over to the tiny witch, bored of listening to her tell him what a dick he is. “Aw are you crying because you like me? Has someone got a big girl crush on the big bad vampire?” His eyes flare. “Do I turn you on?” And her shiver is delicious; his laugh cuts the air. “Are you… oh, that’s tragic… are you in-love with me?”

“Shut up.”

“I mean, you’re pretty and all, but-”

The intensity of the pain buckles his legs. Bonnie keeps her eyes trained on the vampire as he sprawls on the ground, pulling at his head in agony.

“You bitch!” He screams, the sound ricocheting off every wall and into her fury. She stalks towards him, bending over the writhing thing with incensed power.

Only when she’s a breath away from his ear does the pain cease, allowing her to whisper, “Anything I felt for you died when you got in that coffin.”

Damon’s chest heaves with the effort of recovery. “You don’t mean that,” he spits out, eyes still scrunched shut.

Bonnie stretches. “Oh, I do. You’re nothing to me, Damon.”

“Was that them?” He croaks to her retreating back, “Your last words?”

She tilts her chin in the yawning doorway. “Actually, I wanted to thank you.” Even through his blurred vision, he’s sure she smiles, “For showing me that I deserve more.”

Wait. Damon’s muscles twinge with the effort of lifting his head. Wait! Something scratches at his mind again, expect this time, it falls to his chest, taps at the place where his heart used to drum. She yanks open the car door without a backward glance and, as she drives away for a second time, he realises he’s fighting the urge to yell her name. Make her stay. Damon throws his head back on the concrete.

Well, shit. Bonnie Bennett, my kryptonite. 

He winces at the murder scene; the blonde’s eyelids now marbled. Another corpse to his already mounted conscience. Damon sighs, brushes the lint off his pants, salutes the bodies he’s going to have to atone for in whatever hell awaits him, and staggers out of the warehouse. 

Chapter Text

He’s started grocery shopping on Monday mornings. It feels productive, domestic, and he has first choice of the more exotic fruit and vegetables. The mini-mart is usually dead at 8am but for him and a couple of grannies humming along to Take That on the store speaker. He’s starting wearing earphones whilst he browses too – an eclectic blend of Led Zeppelin and, regretfully, the Hamilton soundtrack – which is why he only the notices the child when a small hand tugs on his jeans.

Damon flicks his earphone cable; the girl points a finger at the shelf.

“Excuse me, can you get that button squash?”

He can’t remember the last time he interacted with children… maybe Rick and Caroline’s kids? He was probably less than Uncle material, back then. Something about his all black, mild indifference, doesn’t make Damon Salvatore the most approachable. “The butternut squash?”

Impatience flickers across her round eyes. “Yes, the button squash. My mommy can’t reach it.”

He reaches an arm over the broccoli, a little dumbfounded. She grins at him when he hands her the vegetable, a black square where one of her baby teeth used to be. Damon frowns.

“Where is your mommy?”

“She’s just-”

“Amaryllis!”

“Here, mommy!”

The voice sparks an estranged familiarity in a buried part of his brain. He frowns again, turning from the crates of veg to watch the kid race down the aisle and into the arms of her mother.

“What did I say about running off?” She says into the girl’s hair and again, his mind twinges. She sounds almost like-

His mouth unhooks as the woman stands, the apologetic smile in her lips dissolving to shock.

Bonnie.

“You’re back,” he says without thinking and despite everything, his grin is reflexive, itching at all his features – the need to run to her.

“I’m back.” Bonnie looks as though she wants to run too, away or into him, he can’t tell, it’s been too long.

“Mommy?”

The kid hanging off her arm is hers. Damon spins a bit under the weight of that; his right hand clutches the edge of the Fresh Fruit and Veg table.

“Relly,” Bonnie says softly, “this is Damon. Mommies friend.” She looks up, shy and isn’t is crazy, how abruptly the past can crash into your present? “Damon, this is my baby girl.”

“I’m not a baby! I’m five.” The kid protests, bottom lip jutting out indignation.

He’s fascinated by her fingers, how delicately they twirl the coils of the – her - little girl’s hair.

“My big girl,” Bonnie corrects with a teasing smile and he should probably speak again now, shouldn’t he? There are words tumbling around his mind but nothing makes sense and there is still so much space between them, crates of tomatoes and potato spuds.

It’s been six years since he’s seen that smile.

“Why are you both just staring?”

Nervous laughter escapes, from both, and the kid’s brow deepens, darting between them, trying to understand something that Damon is scared to comprehend himself. An older lady shuffles down the aisle, momentarily breaking their view, and Bonnie laughs again, in the awkwardness; it’s wonderful, he’s missed her – all of her.

“Mommy,” she whispers (the kind only kids use – barely a decibel above normal speech), “I think you should give him a hug.”

And it’s like a damn piano plays on his heart when Bonnie looks at him. The kid tugs her hand, taking the lead across the shiny floor until she’s in front of him, just like that, here again. Damon takes a breath and pulls her into his chest; Bonnie breathes too, falls onto her tiptoes to hang off his neck.

He wants to say, how are you, you smell different, don’t let go, but all that comes out is “Hey Bon-bon.”

When they pull away her eyes are marbled, glossy – she blinks and threads, again, her fingers through her daughter’s hair. “You look good. Human… it looks good on you.”

Damon resists reaching for her again. “Weird hearing a heartbeat, huh?”

“Weird seeing you at all.”

“Touché.” He glances at the little girl tucked behind Bonnie’s leg because now she’s shy. “Would you like to come over for tea?”

Bonnie looks as surprised as he feels. “Tea? Who are you and what have you done with Damon Salvatore?”

His mouth kicks up – he’s forgotten how it used to do that.

“I’m changed man. Literally.”

She chuckles then, it’s warming. “Tea sounds nice. We’d like that.”

He promises to meet them by his car: “Is it the same one?” “The Camaro? Of course.” He piles his groceries in the back and leans against the trunk, unable to talk the smile off his face. They stumble out the glass doors, Bonnie laden with bags, and he animates, rushing to lift the shopping onto his shoulder.

“I’m not used to seeing you so chivalrous,” Bonnie jokes, her free hand clasping around the girl’s.

“What does shifulrus?” she questions, before he can remark.

Bonnie pushes the hair out of her daughter’s face. “You know those Princess books we like to read? Well, the Prince in them is always very chivalrous.”

“So,” her tiny face twists, “He’s like your prince?”

“Who?”

And Damon feels another tug on his pant leg as the girl says, “Him.”

There’s a painfully awkward moment, one that would, back then, be filled with an eyeroll, but Bonnie suddenly can’t look at him and Damon feels too guilty about how far removed from that moniker he really is.

Luckily for them, kids move on quickly, immune to unexplained tension. “What’s your name again?”

“Damon.” He yanks open the trunk and places their shopping next to his, the space looking smaller than it has in years. “And yours?”

“Amaryllis,” she says proudly. “But mommy calls me Relly.”

He glances at Bonnie above the girl’s head. “Like the flower?”

Her mouth indents at the corners.  “Like the flower.”

The unspoken is punctuated by Amaryllis’ dramatic sigh. “Mommy, can we go? I’m hungry.”

“Yup,” Bonnie rouses, “Stay here with Damon, I’ll go get your car-seat.”

He stares at the kid with mild horror – Amaryllis just beams at him, like he’s the damned entertainment at a birthday party.

“Can I ask you something?”

The hands on her hips unsettles him. “Um, sure.”

“Why did your mouth go like this-” she drops her jaw into an ‘O’ – “when you saw Mommy?”

Well, aren’t you perceptive? Like mother, like daughter, he thinks, and smiles at the little Bonnie, their shared bossiness.

“Because I hadn’t seen Bon- your mom – in a while. I was surprised.”

She chews on her lip, digesting his answer, deciding if it qualifies. Saved by the bell. Bonnie calls her name and she turns, eyes widening.

“Cuddles!” She squeals, jumping up and down at the bear in tucked in the crook of Bonnie’s arm.

“Is that… The Miss Cuddles?” He asks with a quirk of his lip, watching the kid squeeze the life out of the bear in delight.

“The one and only,” Bonnie says dryly, “She found her when she was two and hasn’t been able to part with it.”

Two. And it hurts suddenly, watching this little girl, already so big, so Bonnie, because he missed it all. Where does she live? Has Caroline met her? Who’s her dad? That one makes him pivot to Bonnie, mouth laden with questions.

She senses it, he can tell, her eyes dim and the shake of her head is barely perceptible. Not now. Later.

And, understanding, he speaks to the little girl smoothing Miss Cuddles’ fur. “Amaryllis, are you ready to have a ride in the greatest car in the world?”

Chapter Text

He looks human. She wasn’t sure if that was even possible, vampires blending into the world’s fabric unnoticed, but with Damon, it’s in his eyes. The icy blue has softened into something sky-like, searching, unclouded by hunger and impulse.

The man tilts his head to her stare and Bonnie flits upwards, glancing in the rear-view mirror at her chatting five-year-old, throwing her legs like she’s on a swing. Relly’s as fascinated by him as me. Age has begun to assert itself in the corners of his eyes, somehow making him even more handsome. The phrase like fine wine comes to mind and she frowns inwardly at her superficiality. How ridiculous to come home, unannounced, to just admire the face she’d kidded herself she’d forgotten?

Bonnie waits for a lull in her daughters’ monologue. “I didn’t expect you to still be here.”

Her words make his hands sigh against the steering wheel; his eyes flicker in tentative pain. “I tried leaving. Many times.”

“But?” she prompts.

Damon shakes his head, “It sounds stupid but leaving felt like I was forgetting him.”

“Stefan.”

He exhales in answer. “This is our home.”

Bonnie shifts to the window – the dull buzz of main-street fading into suburbs, forest, where she laughed, cried, lost, loved, died. There are pieces of her all over this town.

“Who’s Stefan?”

They share a smile at Relly’s perpetual curiosity. Bonnie’s loves that about her – the world is too rich and hidden to not want more.

“Stefan’s my brother,” Damon answers, and there’s honour in his voice.

Her next question is anticipated but no less painful. “Is he having tea with us?”

She readies the words to tell her daughter another person she loved isn’t here anymore, winces in the inevitable why, mommy. It’s always quiet and hurt like the person left because they didn’t want to meet her, the best thing she’s ever done, her little world.

“Stefan’s actually on a very brave adventure right now,” Damon says instead.

“Oh,” Relly chews on her lip, “Do you miss him?”

“All the time.”

And Bonnie reaches over to Damon’s lap, the hand lying limp atop his leg, and squeezes warm, pulse fuelled fingers. He tenses like someone hasn’t held his hand in a while.

 She knows he’s aching to ask the question – how he looks at her baby girl and sees a half of someone he doesn’t know. But she’s not ready yet. Maybe it’s selfish but she wants to be Bon-bon again.

Even if just for a day.

They rattle over the gravel to Amaryllis’ sudden intake of breath. “Mommy this is a castle.”

Bonnie laughs in agreement, “It’s definitely a big house.” She glances at the man pulling the car into park. “Is Elena here?”

Like Damon, she’s been holding onto a question and that was hers. The last thing she heard was that the brunette was in London for work, she’d assumed that he had followed, as he had always done, Elena his life-line.

“She’s in London,” Damon says simply, hooking a finger around the door handle and swinging out onto the drive.

“And you…?”

He smiles at her over the roof of the Camaro, sad and weighted, “Mystic Falls is where I’m meant to be.”

The Salvatore Boarding House had always been occupied with guests both welcomed and unwanted, now it’s just him. Her eyes sweep over its vastness then Damon, suddenly so human, and he says, “I’ve been alone for over a century, Bon, six months isn’t a big deal.”

“Are you okay?” she asks without thinking but he doesn’t respond. She hears the shopping bags being lifted out of the trunk and onto the gravel and unbuckles Relly’s seatbelt.

Her daughter pulls on her t-shirt, lifting her mouth to Bonnie’s ear, her breath hot and tickly, “Why is Damon sad?”

She curves a hand over Relly’s cheek, pushing the curls away from her forehead. Her sweet, caring, little girl. “We’ll cheer him up, don’t you worry.”

Relly beams and wiggles to be free of the car seat, hopping out of the Camaro with a slam of her new sneakers. They light up on impact – tiny stars barely luminous in the bright morning sun. They were a bribing present: come with Mommy on a trip across the country, we’re going to stay in the empty house that belonged to Mommy’s Gram’s.

Driving the rental car past the ‘Welcome To Mystic Falls’ sign was like entering into a black and white photograph; you know it did happen but the past feels too disconnected to the present, it’s like you’re not even there.

Only when she saw Damon gaping at her in the fruit and veg aisle did the colours come pooling in.

“This is much bigger than me and Mommy’s house,” Relly announces.

Bonnie feels suddenly nauseous at Damon’s quirked brow, afraid of what her daughter might say.

“Mommy sleeps in the living room when Daddy-”

“Relly?”

“Hm?” Her daughter falls back into step – well, skip – with her mother.

Bonnie can see the cogs whirring in Damon’s brain. “That’s enough, please.”

“I was just going to tell him about my Princess bed,” she sulks, dragging her feet over the stones and carving a trail.

“A Princess bed?” Damon calls, turning from the key in the front door and her daughter’s lip retracts a little.

“It’s pink and has a curtain,” she begins, rushing up to meet him at the wooden porch. The lock clicks and he pushes on the door, exposing the dark beams of a hallway Bonnie hasn’t entered in six years.

“A curtain?” Damon probes but Relly is too busy gazing at the extravagance of the Boarding House, her little mouth hung ajar.

She remembers the first time she stumbled into the vampire brothers’ home, her expression much the same, albeit more fearful.

Damon shifts awkwardly on his feet – it’s an action that looks so uncomfortable on the once brooding vampire that Bonnie smiles without thinking.

He drags a hand along the back of his neck, “I’ll put the kettle on.”

“Mommy,” Amaryllis breathes, eyes trained on the staircase in delight, “I want to play hide and seek.”

She glances at the open kitchen door, the clatter as he begins to put their shopping in the fridge, and feels dizzy. “You want to go and explore?”

Relly nods fervently.

“Okay, but if I call you downstairs, you come, yeah?”

Her daughter throws her thumb in the air then darts into the living room, skirting her hand over the red couch to reach the staircase. And if it wasn’t for the running five-year-old, the Boarding House looks exactly as she left it.

Bonnie releases a breath and walks to the kitchen door, knocks lightly on the wood, and smiles again at Damon’s twitch in surprise.

“It’s nice to see you jumpy for once,” she comments, joining him on the floor to put the milk away.

Damon brushes her arm as he reaches for the shelf. “Sorry,” he says quickly, as if touching her is wrong now. “Where’s Amaryllis?”

He says her name delicately, it’s pretty, it’s always been a pretty name but with Damon, the syllables are softer somehow. Bonnie watches the veins in his arms tense under the crate of beer: everything about him is softer.

“She’s exploring. Sorry, I probably should have asked you first.”

“I don’t mind.”

They’re both saying sorry for the wrong things, it’s treading on egg shells. So many elephants in the room that neither can breathe quite right.

A clatter from upstairs makes her freeze, eyes barrelled in sudden fear. Damon animates first, dropping the last of the shopping and hurrying out in the hallway.

She follows him up the stairs, comforted by the lack of wailing that usually accompanies her daughter’s falls. Damon yanks open the door to Stefan’s room.

“I didn’t mean to,” Relly rushes, staring at the collapsed pile of diaries then back at Damon. The man just blinks at the mess, almost stunned. “Don’t be angry,” she whispers into his silence.

“Relly, it’s okay.” Bonnie nudges past him, holding out her hand to lead her little girl out of the bedroom. Damon’s still staring – the dust the journals have thrown up dancing in the air around his face. “Let’s go play downstairs, okay?”

She nods, looking back at Damon in fear. “He’s angry at me, isn’t he?”

And Bonnie hates him, the man that made her daughter feel like this; made her look at another man with frozen eyes and recoiled hands, hands she’s learned to clasp over her ears when he shouts too loud, when mommy shouts back.

“He’s not angry, baby,” Bonnie says softly, “He just hasn’t been in that room for a while.”

This seems to soothe her and she hops off the last step and flings herself on the couch, thumb in mouth. “Can I have some food now, mommy?”

“Sure, stay here, okay?”

She notices the photograph when she’s by the fridge a second time – searching for some jelly to put in Relly’s PB&J sandwich. It’s her – younger and scowling at him, a leather clad Damon Salvatore, mouth thrown open in a laugh.  There’s a picture of Stefan too, on his wedding day, holding hands with Caroline whilst she grins in the background, bouquet thrust in the air. Both are flattened by magnets, the corners folded from age.

The guilt swells so violently she has to look away.

It had felt easy to leave, that’s the worst part. Packing a bag and slamming her passport on the security desk, Where to? Anywhere. Stefan was dead, Caroline had the girls, Damon had Elena. With Enzo’s ghost curled in her left hand, she boarded a plane and refused to look out the window at shrinking Virginia.

She Face-Timed Caroline once every few months and they’d talk about Stefan, how they never realised he was the once tying everyone together. Their lives whirred and Caroline moved to live near Rick and Bonnie boarded more planes and Damon… he was Elena’s.

One evening in Paris she clicked on the brunette’s name, secretly hoping she’d hear him, maybe that he’d grab the phone and sing her name in that way she pretended not to love. All these secrets – when she hung up, she promised herself to move on.

Sudden laughter interrupts her thought and she grabs the plate and nudges open the kitchen door. Across the hall her daughter is spinning, hanging off Damon’s shoulders as she squeals and screams and almost passes out from giddiness.

“Mommy- I’m- flying-” she splutters between laughs, gripping the top of the man’s head in terror.

“Damon, careful!” Bonnie’s maternal instinct lurches but she can’t help but laugh too.

“Okay, okay, fun police,” he says and slows to a halt much to Relly’s groan.

“Again, again. Please.”

“Sorry, kid, I’ve got to stay in Mom’s good books.” And the wink he throws Bonnie’s way is so Damon, she wonders how she survived for six years.

Chapter Text

He’s not sure how one day he was sitting alone on the couch, pretending not to be lonely, and the next, he’s sharing it with a slightly precocious five-year-old. Still, stranger things have happened.

Damon glances up from his newspaper – at her tongue kicked up in concentration, the woman turning the pages and whispering sentences in silly voices – liar, he thinks. The second the kid asked for button squash and Bonnie Bennett smiled like he was the magic she lost when she saved their asses, he knew. Life just changed.

It’s just surprising that she stayed. It wasn’t intention; it just happened. Amaryllis had fallen asleep on the couch, her legs splayed like she owned the place. Like mother, like daughter.

“I didn’t realise how late it was,” Bonnie yawned, “I’ll carry her to the car.”

“You don’t have to,” he hurried, like keeping them there was the most important thing. It kinda was.

Bonnie frowned, “No, that’s too much-”

He didn’t know how to say the Boarding House is so fucking empty without them – all of them, even Bonnie and her eye rolls and sarcasm (the fluttery things he sometimes felt). Elena never irritated him like that.

“Bon,” he interrupted, “I’ve got a million spare rooms. It will be nice to have the company.” He added that last bit with a shy smile and she sunk against the cushions in acquiescence.

“She won’t sleep in her own room.”

“You can both take the room next to mine. It’s the biggest.”

Bonnie smiled in thanks. “Just for tonight though. That’s all.”

Damon shrugged.

Yet, six evenings later, Bonnie’s stopped extending her stay with a comment and just excepted she’ll sleep with her daughter in the King bed a wall away from his. He holds his breath every time the kid yawns, waits for her to say they’ll go back home tonight.

She sighs now, snuggling against Bonnie’s chest, her eyelids dropping with the weight of consciousness. Damon’s tired too. They’d driven further today – to the city zoo – and the persistency of Amaryllis’ demand for attention is exhausting.

“Damon, why is that lion doing that?”

“Oooo I love monkeys. Damon, what’s your favourite animal?”

“Why not a monkey? Do you not like monkeys?”

“Damon, please can I have an ice cream?”

“Noooo, don’t ask mommy. She won’t say yes.”

“Damon, listen.”

A week later and she’s still curiously trying to unpick the inner depths of his mind and he wouldn’t change it for the world.

“You tired, Relly?” Bonnie murmurs, winking at Damon over the top of Amaryllis’ curls.

“No,” she says stubbornly.

“Damon’s tired aren’t you, Damon?”

He nods, faking a yawn (which turns into a very real one). “Soooo tired.”

The kid squints at him. Damon curves a brow.

“I am a bit tired,” she admits.

“Good, because it’s bedtime missy,” Bonnie pats the kid’s thigh, “Up you get. Say goodnight to Damon.”

The goodnights are shy, brown eyes peering at him from under lashes, the sleeve of her poor Frozen pyjamas getting ravaged by tiny teeth. “Night,” she mumbles.

“Goodnight,” Damon says back, just as awkwardly.

Bonnie waves her hand and Amaryllis fits into it like a puzzle piece, mini Bonnie, just as sassy, just as cute. Cute. Is he allowed to say that?

He resumes reading his article.

Fuck, this town is boring without vampires.

Fifteen minutes later, the floorboards croak: Bonnie’s finished bedtime. There’s always the pleasant moment when he hears her padding down the stairs in a pair of his old slippers, Amaryllis under the covers, knowing she’ll curl on the armchair opposite him and smile like she still can’t believe she’s here and he’s there.

She reaches for the glass of gin and tonic he’d made for her and takes a long, contented sip.

“Nice?”

“Necessary.” Her tongue swipes along her bottom lip, not that he’s watching. “Thanks for today, by the way.”

Damon rustles the paper into a fold. “Believe it or not, I’ve always wanted to visit the zoo.”

“I’m surprised you hadn’t before. Compelling yourself entry and all – that place was expensive.”

“Not so much fun on your own,” he says dryly but there’s a heaviness neither expected.

“Damon,” Bonnie says quietly.

He shakes his head. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“I could have called.”

“So could I.”

She picks at the loose thread on her pyjama bottoms, twirling the length around her finger, tugging to break the bond.  “I know it’s unfair not telling you.”

He doesn’t need to ask what: that clutters around his mind every time he sees the kid laugh or scrunch her nose or tug on his jeans.

“I just,” she exhales, long and shaky, “I don’t know how.”

“I only care if you’re happy, Bonnie, that’s all.”

And this makes her laugh. It’s strained and choked and her winces in the sound. He waits, he doesn’t know how long, it doesn’t matter, only that he waits, and, sometime that night, she speaks:

“I was sad. And drunk. I can’t even remember what city I was in. Somewhere in Europe. He was American and travelling, like me, and we danced together in some seedy bar. The music was so bad, I remember that, but he made me feel warm. I was still seeing Enzo at this point, I could feel him watching me dance in the corner of the room. I know what you’re thinking – I slept with him that night and got pregnant. Some part of me wishes I had.

He got my number and we spoke every day, on the phone, for almost two weeks. It was so nice, Damon, Enzo was so cold and you were…. I liked him. A lot. He was human and didn’t know about my ridiculous past and what I’d lost. By the end of the month, I’d met him again. I flew back to America, went to stay with him in Atlanta. I never noticed how much he drunk until we were back in the US. There wasn’t music to dance to or beaches to laugh on, just me in a stranger’s home. I tried to leave but Relly. She was growing and for a few months he changed, brought me flowers, took me to dinner. Caroline even met him, just once, she said she was happy for me. I didn’t tell her about the other nights.

We don’t live together anymore. When Relly was almost three, I moved out. He was nicer at weekends – he brought her gifts and took her to soft play. It was only when the alcohol kicked in that he’d shout and try to stay the night.”

By this time, Damon was almost shaking, his pallor paled, fingers curled into his palm. “He hurt you.”

“Not physically.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s complicated,” she shuts her eyes, speaking as though it pained her, “Because you were happy.”

“But you weren’t! The person who deserved it the most!”

“I wasn’t not happy. He got better. We had a good couple of years before Relly got sick and the medical bills came through. Then, he started drinking again.”

“Bonnie.”

“What were you going to do, Damon? Pin him against the wall like you were a vampire again? Threaten his life?”

He wants to. He wants to hunt him down and kill the bastard. “I could have been there for you.”

She searches for more thread to pull at. “It was my mess.”

And that pisses him off. “When are you going to realise that your mess is our mess? All of ours!? You could have been in fucking Timbuktu and I would have come if you needed me.”

Bonnie stills, blinking at the garish owl motif on her pyjama pant, like it holds all the answers. “Maybe I didn’t want anyone to know,” she says eventually, unable to look at him.

Damon’s forehead creases, “Why not?”

“Because I was embarrassed!” Her words come out louder than either of them anticipated. Bonnie groans and runs a hand over her eyes, like she wasn’t supposed to admit that.

“Bon?” he probes softly.

“I wanted her to have a better life than mine. Something more than disappoints and trying to be brave all the time,” when she looks at him, her eyes are glassy, “What had I given her? A list of dead relatives and a shitty dad?”

Damon crosses the rug separating them. There isn’t enough room for him on the armchair so he crouches at her feet and touches her leg and tells her, it’s okay, she’ll be okay, he’s sorry, sorry for all the times he made feel anything less than family.

Bonnie cries silently and that hurts more. Anger rises in flames, licking at his chest, his throat, his mind, until he’s holding her hand through a thin layer of crimson. It’s the colour that would precede the fangs, the veins, the monster.

“I should never have let you go,” he mutters, more to himself than her but Bonnie’s head snaps up.

“No, no, I can’t regret it. He gave me my little girl,” her eyes flutter close and she speaks like a prayer, “My saving grace.”

This only makes him shudder. How can a man be anything but the dad that kid deserves?

“Mommy.”

“Was that…?”

Damon straightens to touch a hand to her shoulder; his fingers are brushing a tear off her cheek before his brain assesses the risk. “I’ll go,” he says simply.

Surprise flickers in those green eyes he’d forgotten how much he’d missed. “Are you sure?”

“If I need you, I’ll call.”

He leaves her nestled into the crook of the chair, watching him with a soft, unbidden, gaze as he ascends the stairs.

“Mommy,” Amaryllis calls to the footsteps. Her face crumples when Damon toes open the door. “Where’s mommy?”

“She’s downstairs having a sleep,” he hesitates on the threshold, terrified suddenly of scaring her, of being him, “Do you want me to get her?”

Her lip trembles but she shakes her head, pushing herself back down under the covers so that only her face is visible, her dark curls a halo. “I had a scary dream.”

“That’s okay,” he says carefully, taking it as his cue to enter. “Dreams aren’t real.”

This seems to only upset her more, little fingers clutching at the duvet. “I don’t want to go to sleep again.”

He’s way out of his depth here, comforting a child about scary dreams of monsters that he knows first-hand exist. Hell, he’s probably made cameos in several nightmares before. “What was scary about your dream?” he tries.

Amaryllis shakes her head. “Can’t say.”

“Why not?”

“Mommy won’t let me.”

And Damon understands. That fucking dick. He blows breath onto his fringe, reminding himself to be present. The kid needs him now.

“Can you stay?” she says quietly.

“Until you fall asleep?”

She nods.

“Er, okay.” He shuffles onto the other pillow, legs stretched three times the length of hers, hands clasped atop his chest. “Like this.”

“Yes.”

“And you-”

“Sh!”

His mouth curves with a smile. “Alright, alright, bossy boots.”

In the darkness, Amaryllis releases a tired giggle. “That’s what Mommy always calls me.”

“Huh, that’s weird.”

Another breath. “Why?”

And Damon’s face shifts with the grin, “Because your mommy is the bossiest person I know.”

Her giggle dissolves and he tilts his head on the pillow: the kid out like a damned light. He doesn’t move though, something about needing to be there if she wakes up again, to show her not all men are like her daddy – his bloody past pushes a bile-like guilt up this throat – or at least, not all men stay like that.

“Sweet dreams, kid,” he whispers.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, when it’s dark outside and her thoughts collect under the moon, she thinks about how she got here. All of here. From normal to supernatural, from student to Witch, from lonely to mother – in the warm light of the Salvatore kitchen, Relly is perched on the counter-top as Damon cooks – from enemy to best friend, best friend to… here.

She’s extended her stay for two weeks now; it feels right. Most of the time. It’s only when he bends his head to smile at her with more than his smirk that she feels like a fraud, a thief. Taking something that should have been Elena’s. It’s then she needs space – the air turning crisp, the night tilting into silence.

Bonnie twists again to the Boarding House light. The window is shut but she can practically see her daughter’s giggle, a spoon hanging off the former-vampire’s nose, eyes drawn inward in a stupid face.

You’re not making this easy, Damon Salvatore.

“Mommy, dinner’s ready!” Damon holds Relly steady as she swings suddenly out the window, welcoming Bonnie back to the present. Like coming home.

“Coming,” she sing-songs in response, nods in thanks to the moon and crunches over the gravel to Damon’s cooking and teasing and loving.

Is it okay if a little bit of me can imagine staying here?

“In the dining room, Bon!”

How about a lot of me?

Relly’s tongue is just visible above her lip as she lays the table. When she places the fork where the knife should be, Damon prods her gently, a whisper in her hair.

“Sit down, Mommy!” She orders.

“You Bennetts,” Damon exhales, “Always so bossy.” A dish towel is flung over his right shoulder and it’s embarrassing how attractive Bonnie finds the sight. It’s an image lodged in the pre-death part of her mind – before her life peeled apart and she was magic and a weapon and had more important things to think about than what her husband would look like cooking for their family.

“You okay, Bon?”

She blinks and blows hot breath on her chilled hands. “Hungry.”

“Good because I have prepared a banquet fit for a Queen and a Princess,” he winks.

“Daddy calls me Princess,” Relly says brightly but the light fades and she frowns, breaking Bonnie’s heart a little, “But not very soon.”

Damon’s hands tighten around the dish, the blue of his eyes hardening, and if he wasn’t human, Bonnie would be bracing to pacify the vampire. His reaction stalls her response momentarily before she snaps into Mom mode with the sole goal of ensuring her baby knows her fucking perfect she is.

“You’re way cooler than a Princess, Relly,” she begins, flicking to Damon for assistance (to Relly, his word is sacred). “Princess’ don’t get to fly.”

“Your Mom’s right,” Damon affirms, placing the lasagne on the table and wiggling the chair next to Relly out of its place. “Princess’ are pretty but I know something much prettier and cooler and it can fly.”

“What?” Relly breathes, wide eyed in the promise of his fantasy.

The former vampire twists to Bonnie but she just shakes her head, just as intrigued. “Go on.”

“Um… yeah… a fairy queen?”

And she has to laugh, the once big-bad vampire and his adorable attempt at cheering her daughter up.

Relly scowls at Bonnie’s snicker before addressing Damon. “Do fairy queens have a wand?”

“For magic?”

“Yes! Turning people into frogs and… making milkshakes!”

“Milkshakes!?”

Relly giggles, “One million hundred milkshakes.”

“One million hundred!?”

His mouth is tilted in that same goofy smile he wore when she came back from the Prison World, what’s she’s come to recognise as happiness – what’s come to make her happy too. He was her best friend and she was selfish. Watching Elena, watching him watch Elena, it hurt when, where, it wasn’t supposed to, when she was mourning Enzo, where she was leaving for her own adventure (not to escape the impossibility of the one she couldn’t have, but might’ve, wanted).

“Magic, Damon. It can do anything.”

And he pulls away from her daughter, goofy smile dissolving into something that flutters her heart. “I know, Bon-bon,” he says softly, “I’ve seen you.”

Elena calls him when they’re at the park. He lets it ring, silencing the ringtone and slipping his cell face down back in his jean pocket.

“Damon! Push me on the swing!”

“Sorry, I’m on it,” he hurries, unable to shake the frown out of his words, off his face. Elena never calls, the last contact they had was one month ago – sorting out bills and car insurance.

“Faster!” Amaryllis demands.

“Okay but hold on tight? Bonnie wasn’t happy when I brought you home with a graze yesterday.”

“I ammmmm. Just moreeee.”

He’d called Elena the evening before the grocery shopping, before Amaryllis clattered into his life… before Bonnie began laughing in his thoughts again. She hadn’t picked up. Obviously. Their love had faded and neither of them knew why. Liquored up, he wondered if it was ever really there.

Damon pushes the little girl through the air a few more swings before he realises, he’s irritated by the woman’s intrusion. The last few weeks of mornings he’s woken up happy – Elena’s absence swallowed by a little girl in Frozen pyjamas and her little Mama (he’s wanted to call her that for days now – the name dangling on his tongue, daring to earn him an eyeroll) cooking up breakfast. It’s what he’s thought human would look like. Not 1864 with his curled hair and waist coats and an empty hole he believed Katherine could fill. Happy human.

“Oh shit.”

“Did you just say a bad word?”

“I saw a ship.”

“No, you didn’t. We’re at the park.”

Maybe this has always been dormant? Maybe the whole fine line between love and hate bullshit has some weight? Maybe Stefan was right that one time he mentioned it? Maybe he’s been waiting for her the last six years? Maybe that’s why he and Elena drifted apart… and why she’s in his kitchen now, reading a trashy magazine and eating the overpriced cashews she persuaded him to buy?

Shit.

He flexes his palms on Relly’s back, sending her whizzing through the air with a squeal.

I’m in love with your Mommy, kid.  

Chapter Text

Six months ago.

“Elena…” It was the fourth time he’d said her name – left it hanging there, down the line, over the miles. “You know it hasn’t been working. We can pretend but,” he groaned, dragging a hand down his face in the reflection. He looked haggard: humanity and arguments in the lines around his face, the pale hollowness of his under eyes.

“I thought you were figuring things out? That’s why you left.”

Damon winced at the frailness of her voice. “I did leave to figure things out, Elena, but I shouldn’t have had to. It should be enough to just be there…” He let ‘with you’ drop into silence, the insinuation palpable – stiffening in a tension that made him pull the phone away from his ear.

“So, this is it,” she said at last.

“Surely you saw this coming?”

“I know we’re not the same as we were Damon,” a tired laugh, an exhale, “I stopped waiting for you to propose a year ago.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her. There was nothing else, and he was.

“Me too.”

The line died and his reflection began to cry. He was alone. Mystic Falls was all cobwebs of their old life now – even Matt had fucked off to Washington or somewhere, fell in love, probably had a blonde-blue eyed kid running about.

“Fuck you, Stefan,” he croaked like he did sometimes when he was angry at him, the martyr. “Look at the sad shit you sacrificed yourself for?”

Their wedding photo smiles on the mantel piece – Stefan and Caroline, him and Bonnie. He cried for his once best friend, then too.

“I’m a mess, Bon-bon,” he whispered at his hands, the familiar comfort of that nickname choking a little. He scrolled for her number and tapped before reason clawed him away. It rung twice – then a male voice.

“Who is this?”

“Is this not Bonnie’s-”

“Who the fuck are you?”

There was a scrabble and faintly, before the line clicked off and he was alone again, he heard her say his name. He imagined it; he was sure. Some sort of emotional crux, like when he hears Stefan. He deleted the number sat in the wine cellar, drinking Bourbon until his pathetic human body passed out.

Relly’s a little firecracker in the mornings, dancing and singing, her hair wild and untamed.

“Shh, crazy girl, you’ll wake Damon up.”

Her daughter puffs out her chest and yells: “Wake upppppp, Damon!”

“Relly!” Bonnie scolds but scoops her up and blows a raspberry on her stomach, eliciting even more noise.

Damon emerges zombie-fied, his hair nearly as big as Relly’s. “I didn’t realise I ordered a new alarm clock,” he grumbles, his voice thick with morning.

“You’ve naked,” Relly giggles and she’s trying, she really is, but Damon’s clearly kept in shape all these human years, the dips and curves of his torso just as she definitely shouldn’t have remembered.

Damon’s eyes round. “Oh, right, yeah, sorry,” he hurries and falls back into his bedroom.

The differences between the arrogant look at how hot I am vampire and the blushing, slightly awkward man sometimes startle her. That teasing, flirtatious smirk she’d accepted as his face comes in flashes – what’s taken residence recently is that goofy, love-sick grin directed at her daughter, maybe even at her. He’s happy and that makes her heart swell… and shatter because she hasn’t told him yet.

Fleeing Atlanta gave Bonnie her spirit back. She caught it in the air and it carried her home.

“Okay, I’m decent. Pancakes?”

Relly’s face splits into a grin, bouncing on the front of her toes, curls launching forward. Damon holds out his hand, Relly takes it, and the shy, pleased smile in his mouth is near-crippling.

It was always a return ticket. They left but like a damned elastic band, they have to spring back. Her work, Relly’s school, the smattering of friends she’s collected over the years… even her baby’s dad. One month. That’s all she’d stolen.

Today, Bonnie. But every morning this week she’s woken with this resolve, and every evening, when they’re curled in their respective chairs and his brow is furrowed above his glasses (his eyes have been giving him trouble recently) – she can’t do it. The words are there; they dissolve with the wink he offers before lifting the scotch glass to his mouth.

“You shouldn’t drink so much,” she said last night instead.

“Shit, Bon, I’m so sorry.” He placed the glass on the table, eyes melting with concern.

“It’s okay, I know you’re not-” she swallowed, “I just mean for your health.”

Damon relaxed against the couch with her reassurance. “I’m cold, come and sit here.”

The words made her chest flutter. “Get a blanket.”

“You don’t want to snuggle?” He teased, smirk pushing against his mouth.

“When have we ever snuggled?” Bonnie eye-rolled, lifting the book to cover his frame. Something about the evening intensified his attractiveness, his smell, everything. Probably the low light – and the pink gin tingling about in her head.

“Wasted opportunity, if you ask me, Bon-bon.”

Bonnie turned the page. “You’re being very Damon, tonight.”

He laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know… vampire Damon,” she hesitated, “Flirty.”

“Ah.”

She lowered the book, risking a glance. The man wiggled his eyebrows like an idiot. Bonnie told him as such.

“You break my heart, you Bennetts.”

“Hmm, Relly told me she had to tell you off today.”

“Snitch,” he muttered and the loose smile in his words is something she’d never seen on her daughter’s dad.

“Fine,” she snapped her book shut, “I’ll come and sit with you.”

Maybe it’s selfish? Hiding her suitcase and boarding passes under the bed, pretending this isn’t just a dream and reality always comes knocking? It’s Friday now and they leave tomorrow. She just hasn’t been able to tell him – even last week – she couldn’t ruin it, give him, them, this thing they’ve carved, a count down.

Because more than anything, she’s scared of what she’ll realise when she’s up in the air, Relly watching Disney movies beside her, princesses and princes falling love, happily ever after. She wants that for her baby girl… why can’t she risk it for herself?

“Damon do the teeth thing!”

“Ah, hear that Bon?” he shouts, “Your daughter likes the squirty cream fangs.”

Relly’s tongue pokes out, tracing the motion, as he turns the blueberry smiles in vampires.

“Et voila.”

“Yay!”

“Don’t worry, yours are cream free,” he calls to the footsteps nearing the kitchen doorway, “Just blueberries for Miss-” He stops short at Bonnie’s face, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You look like you’ve been crying.”

Relly picks her head up to frown at the woman. “Mommy?”

“I’m fine, baby.”

Liar. Damon leaves the plate on the side and takes Bonnie arm, ushering her into the hallway, away from the kid. Only when Relly resumes chattering to herself does he speak, arms crossed, brow low. “What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head, pulling away from his gaze, chasing the portraits of Salvatore’s past.

“Bonnie,” he tries again, softer, “Let me make this better.”

Her eyes brush close; a breath. “I should have told you weeks ago. I’m sorry.”

“Told me what?”

“My… the flight…”

And the little world they’ve built unravels. Just like that.

“When is it?” he says at last.

“Tomorrow.”

He’s staring at the spools of the last month, watching them tumble, taking the little girl, he’s grown to love, and the woman, he’s probably always, with it.

Their last day is happy, despite everything. A tender happiness, absent of too much eye contact or adult conversation but Relly is spoilt and tickled and loved and listened to until she’s a dead weight against Damon’s thigh.

She’s hurt him. She can see it in his gaze, the hand that picks at Relly’s hair, and Bonnie’s never felt more cruel, taking her from him… taking him from her.

“We’ll book another trip back soon. Maybe Easter or-”

“Does she know?” Damon interrupts.

“She knows it’s just a holiday. Not forever.”

“Yes, but does she know tomorrow?”

The word seems to tear in his mouth. “I told her this morning but I don’t think she understood. I think she thinks that you’re…”

Damon waits, eyes rounded, for Bonnie to finish. She doesn’t. She can’t.

“You’ll visit, right? I – we- both- want – need - you in our life now.”

He inhales, the air between them threatened by his next words. “Bonnie, I have to tell you something.”

“I know,” she breathes, “But you can’t.”

He doesn’t sleep that night, just lies coffin-like as he used to as vampire, time eating but never lessening. They’ll hug and he’ll want to kiss her but won’t, will want to tell her the thing she’s asked him not to, and won’t. Amaryllis will say something like ‘remember to watch Frozen, okay?’, which will make him laugh then but devastate him later when the house is empty and echoey and he’s wondering how he lost literally everyone.

At six am, he pushes up from the covers to make them breakfast. He spends way too much time collecting random paraphernalia for a fairy-queen pancake, complete with cucumber stick wand. It looks shit and he walks to the trash can, flipping the lid to empty it in, pausing only when he hears the floorboards sigh.

“You made breakfast,” Bonnie says to the spread table, Amaryllis tucked behind her thigh, thumb in mouth.

“I did.”

He’s lost his appetite and so has the kid; she picks at the chocolate buttons of the crown, a pout pulling her face downward.

Damon taps her leg with his foot, “You all packed?”

She shrugs without looking at him.

“Relly,” Bonnie prompts but the girl’s frown deepens into a glare and she yanks her arm away.

Me and you both, kid.

At eight, he takes their cases from the spare bedroom and carries them to the front door. Amaryllis presents him a drawing – the three of them, Damon’s head stretched to monstrous size it’s comical.

“It’s beautiful,” he tells her and she barrels into his legs. He lifts his head to Bonnie but finds no words.

“Okay, baby, let Damon go.”

He sags without the grip of tiny hands holding him steady – forcing a smile into his gums, his eyes, as he says, “I’ll see you soon, I promise.”

And then it’s the Bonnie-goodbye. She folds around his neck, pushing onto her tiptoes to fit on his shoulder and they both inhale like idiots, too stubborn to say the right things.

“Eight years was too long,” she whispers.

He kisses her temple and they part. The door closes and Damon’s nails bite against his palms, fighting to yank it open again.

They’re barely five minutes down the road when Relly starts screaming. Bonnie fumbles in her rucksack for Miss Cuddles but her daughter flings the bear on the ground, shaking with fury and pain. Her face is scrunched tight, her breathing collecting into near retching and nothing is making it stop.

“Relly, please, you need to calm down. I can’t drive with you like this.”

Her wails fight harder, pushing against her lungs like they did when she was baby. Bonnie blinks away her own tears. Fuck it, she thinks, and stops the car.

…

She doesn’t give Damon time to react, thrusting her daughter over the door-way and into his arms. “I’m sorry she won’t stop screaming. I think she just wants to say goodbye again and I didn’t know what else to do – she’s going to make herself throw up.”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m here, it’s okay,” he whispers into her hair, rubbing circles over her shivering back. He glances at Bonnie in concern. She sags against the porch, eyes pulling shut.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this.”

“Then don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t leave. Stay.”

Relly’s subsided to a gentle sobbing now, buried in Damon’s chest. “Damon, you can’t say things like that in front of her.”

“I’m not just saying things. I mean it. You said it yourself, you wanted things to be different for her… this is different,” he even smiles, like it’s easy, “This is good.”

And her voice halves. “I can’t risk it. What if one day you decide you don’t want to do this; you leave and it breaks her.” Breaks me.

He shakes his head. “I’m never going to leave.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he shifts Relly onto one arm, reaching for Bonnie with the other, “I do. Bon, these last few weeks I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been. Do you understand that? I’m happy.”

She wants to take his hand. She aches with the want. Relly tilts her head, pleading to her with raw eyes, “Mommy please.”

Bonnie shifts back to Damon, desperate. “How do we know if we’ll even work?”

“We were stuck together completely isolated for months-”

“That was then.”

“Well then we’ll make it work,” he tells her, “We’ll make it work for Relly – I mean – Amaryllis.”

But she’s snuggling into his chest again, arms tight around his neck. Her little girl has never let anyone else call her Relly, not even her dad.

“This is crazy, Damon,” she says, softer.

His eyes twinkle, like he knows she’s melting, “You and I both know crazier things have happened.”

“But the flight?”

“Your excuses are getting weaker, Bon-bon,” he sing-songs and twirls from the doorway to retreat into the house.

“Damon, you can’t just abduct our child?” She finds herself laughing with the absurdity of the situation, only noticing the slip when he pivots to meet her stare, that happiness glittering. The same she’d seen after she hugged him returning from the prison world (the first time she realised she might love him a little bit).

“Okay,” she says, more to herself than him, the former vampire now, much to Relly’s delight, pretending to be a dinosaur, “Okay, we’ll stay.”

Chapter Text

This is life, he thinks, hands against damp tarmac, stare on the heavy moon, waiting. He’d kicked his shoes over street after street, humming the national anthem like a true patriot, and licking the dark lunch-stains from his lips, before deciding on this spot to lie plank-esque, his perfected killing trap. There is a wanton pleasure in his victims concerned faces hovering over his frame – the moral panic. Adorable, really.

Damon flicks his eyes shut in the boredom, harnessing his hearing to pick up the rumble of a car.

“Elena, I’m fine. I just needed a walk… No, I’m not drunk, I’m-”

He’s sprung on his feet before the girl can finish her sentence. She laughs. Unusual reaction.

“Shit, you scared me,” She takes the phone from her ear and pushes it into her pocket, “You from the party?”

It isn’t often he lets them get the first word in, a scream maybe sure, if he’s feeling generous, but a question? Compulsion bites before small talk.

“Let me guess, beer in plastic cups, testosterone teenagers? Not really my scene.”

“Mine neither.”

Her gaze falls to the puddle between them and he has an unfamiliar urge to ask the girl her name.

“I’m Damon,” he offers instead.

She lifts a brow, it teases her face, soft, pretty. “Are you going to kidnap me, Damon?”

Drunk. The liar. His smirk pricks the corner of his mouth, “Lucky for you, I already have someone on my mind.”

“Well, that’s terrifying,” she says dryly, then, with a smile, “I hope she kicks you in the balls.”

“What’s your name?” he rushes, because she’s intriguing him. Over a century on this earth has a way of dampening one’s curiosity – she’s different, refreshing.

“Bonnie. Bonnie Bennett.”

Ah. That’s why. Damon pushes the surprise into neutrality, “Lovely to meet you, Bonnie Bennett.”

She laughs again, he even flinches at the lightness of it. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

There are some similarities, he thinks, chasing the arcs of her features under moonlight, definitely an Emily Bennett spark. “Here, on the road, or here in life?”

“I don’t know,” she lifts her eyes to his, a falling motion that brushes like the heartbeat he no longer has. “Both, maybe?”

He’s going to have to use her. It’s almost sad, but he’s waited too long to let a witch with striking eyes prevent his chance of rescuing Katherine. He closes the distance, armed to compel, and –

“What do you want from life, Bonnie?”

She stills with his sudden proximity, but doesn’t retreat. The question is absorbed by her eyes, he sees it, a fluttering hope.

“I don’t know.”

A second lie. “Yes, you do. You know exactly what you want.”

Her voice lowers: “And what’s that, strange man in the middle of the road?”

Just compel her, idiot. But he can’t, not yet. He wants this moment – wants her to have it too. “You want everything. Every taste of life.”

“That sounds… overwhelming-”

“Exciting.”

And she smiles, made a little more alive in the promise. “Have you?”

“Have I what?”

Her brow curves again. “Tasted life?”

“Not quite,” he whispers and delivers the compulsion before she can ask what.

I wouldn’t know, anyway.

Chapter Text

“Bonnie!” Elena bundles her into a hug, “I was worried!”

“I just wanted a walk,” she shrugs, offering a forced and that was all smile.

“You okay? You seem kinda spaced out?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. How’s… the Matt situation?”

The brunette’s face twists, “Not great. I’ve called my parents to pick me up actually. You wanna come with?”

Bonnie shakes her head. “No, it’s okay. I might try my shot with Devon,” she lies, looking over at the blonde by the pool table, who, until just a few minutes ago, was the most beautiful guy she’d ever seen.

“The senior?” Elena follows her gaze, “You and half the school.”

They laugh, a little strained, and her best friend tilts her head in that there’s something you’re not telling me way. “You seem weird, Bon? Let’s both get out of here. Let my dad give you a lift.”

From behind them, a guy in a red polo yells Beeeeeer Pongggg to a few cheers. Bonnie gestures towards his direction, “Thanks but I think I’m gonna try and show the boys up by playing.”

Elena’s mouth unhinges in protest and Bonnie says, “We still on for ice cream tomorrow?”

“It’s Saturday. Of course.”

They hug again and she waits until Elena is hidden by trees to walk the opposite direction to the cheering boys. She would have gone back to the road to find him, if Elena hadn’t been heading that way. Will he find her too? Whisper that she wants ‘everything’? The thought is unpleasant. Mystic Falls is a small town – very small – and its not often she stumbles across an unfamiliar face (especially a face that looks like that).

“Go back to the party and forget ever meeting me. But remember that you want to taste life, all of it, because you do. You’re hungry.”

His pupils had danced as he spoke, holding hers hostage, a blue flame. Then, he disappeared. Bonnie frowned, even called his name in her intoxication, but the mystery-guy was living up to his moniker. She traipsed back through the trees towards the music, head spinning, into Elena’s arms.

//

The living room light is on; her Gram’s flicking through a photo album.

“I didn’t think you’d still be up,” Bonnie offers as hello. She jumps at the album snapping shut.

“Something’s changed.”

Fighting the urge to eye-roll at her Gram’s spirit crap, she crouches on the floor to unzip her boots.

“What happened tonight?”

Bonnie pulls to free her foot from the shoe. “Nothing. I danced with Caroline and Elena?”

“You met someone.”

Okay, that’s freaky. “How did you know I-”

“What did he say to you?”

She straightens from the matt, her Gram’s grave expression unsettling. “This is really weird.”

“Answer me, Bonnie.”

“He… he said his name was Damon?”

“Did you tell him yours?”

“Yeah, I don’t-”

“And your last name?” the older woman interrupts again.

Bonnie cringes. “I think so.”

There’s a pause before her Grams asks, very calmly, “Did he tell you to forget him?”

And Bonnie’s pulse thickens, “Grams… what’s going on?”

“Did he tell you to forget him?”

She nods, near terrified now.

“Bonnie, come here,” the woman demands, holding out her hands towards her granddaughter.

“You’re scaring me.”

“Hold my hands.” Shaking, she walks towards the couch, and takes the cold fingers. Her Gram’s inhales, running a thumb over the skin. “I’m going to perform a memory spell-”

“What!?”

“I know you’re confused and scared but this Damon is not good, Bonnie. Really not good,” her voice toughens, “I need you to forget ever meeting him.”

“By performing a spell?” She struggles against the grip on her hands, “Do you know crazy you sound?”

There’s a sad smile in her Gram’s next words: “When the time is right, you’ll understand. But for now, please, indulge me. You deserve to be a child a little longer, Bonnie… Close your eyes.”

“This is insane,” she mutters but closes them anyway, responding to the woman’s softened instruction.

The language that tumbles out of her Gram’s mouth tugs at her very veins, a sudden impetuosity that longs her mouth to echo. Her heart leaps in the strange warmth, their hands buzzing with some impossible energy, and then there’s Damon. He assumes the blankness of her mind, leaning towards her, whispering. His smirk pulling a smile from her lips. Bonnie wants him to take her hand, she tries, but he starts to evaporate into, or eaten by, a mist. She focusses on forcing his features back into place, reaching for the vapour to re-form the man but she’s forgetting what he looks like… forgetting… forgotten… she opens her eyes. Her Gram’s touches the damp beneath them.

“Why am I crying?”

She smiles. “It’s late, you should go to sleep.”

Bonnie frowns but nods, suddenly consumed by fatigue. “Yeah… night Grams.”

Her bed is strewn with potential outfit options and she sweeps the clothes onto the floor, unpeeling the covers to crawl inside. Sleep snatches without hesitation; the man waiting below her window smiles.

“See you in a few months, Bonnie,” he says to the night.

The front door unlatches, announcing the oldest living Bennett. “The spell is done,” she tells him, “She won’t remember.”

Damon thrusts his palms down his pant pockets. “You look like you have more to say.”

“I don’t trust you –”

“- Probably wise.”

“- But I expect you to keep to your word.”

The vampire’s cheek creases with his smirk, “Mystic Falls isn’t ready for a Salvatore return just yet.”

She nods and turns to re-enter the house. His gaze flies back up to the second-floor window, one last time.

“Don’t fall in love with her.”

Damon chuckles at the woman’s reappearance. “Couldn’t get enough?”

“I mean it,” she warns.

“Bonnie?” He blows out a breath, “Relax, my heart is already preoccupied.”

“She’s special.”

“I know,” he says without thinking.

The woman’s eyes widen. “You’ll hurt her.”

I know. “I hurt everyone. Don’t take it personally.”

“This isn’t a game, Damon.”

And he doesn’t push it. He’d heard the mini-witch call his name, blatantly uncompelled, cursed himself for being so stupid, and went to find a Bennett for his bidding. Of course, the granny was as hostile as her ancestors and gave him a nasty brain aneurysm the second she opened the door to him on her porch. Wisdom is knowing when to pick your battles, and he doesn’t fancy sprawling on the front lawn, mucking up his new denim. Besides, falling in love with a Bennett? He chuckles as he saunters down the street, destination who the fuck cares. Bonnie’s a pawn in his plan, nothing more.

Chapter Text

The church buzzes with colour: green hats, orange scarves, even a band. Damon glances down at his black suit. No invite; how the hell was I supposed to get the memo? Somewhere on the periphery is Caroline. Maybe. A lot of wood can graze the heart in sixty something years… and it only takes a particularly pointy one.

“You want to sit down, young man?”

She shuffles along the pew, throwing him a wonky smile missing a few teeth. The musicians cease playing and the room vibrates with a low applause. This is funeral for fucks sake. At an angle, on the platform, is her picture – a woman he doesn’t recognise, lined and folded. There’s a laugh in her eyes he wants to believe is magic, her magic, not humanity. The dying kind.

A man clears his throat: “Bonnie Bennett was a vibrant woman. Loving, joyful-”

And Damon turns from the old lady’s hesitant question and strides, like a fleeing bride, back up the aisle. Every head turns at the pressured groan of the doors; the dude in the blue shirt pauses his cookie-cutter lamentation. Damon’s fingers flirt on the handle. He twists his hand as the man introduces Samuel Layton, Bonnie’s husband, prepared with a poem.

The outside wind is whipping itself into a panic. Damon inhales, air-starved, his pulse-less blood drumming. He needs to feed, distract himself from the Bonnie that isn’t Bonnie, dead, gone, the world emptied. What has he done for the last sixty years but lose himself in blood and women? What has she done but build a perfect, normal life?

Feeling nauseous, he lifts his chin to the pinkening sky. The church-yard graves only make him feel sicker, or worse, want to cry. And what kind of hypocrite would he be if he cried at the funeral of the woman he hasn’t bothered to see for the last six decades? Damon bends to sit on the last step of the church, the chorus of a gospel hymn vibrating through the wood. Like a man in worship, his eyes flutter close.

“Hey, stranger.”

Bonnie’s voice warms all of him; a smile loosens his frown.

“Open your eyes, silly.”

And there, arms draped over the railing, is his Bonnie Bennett, luminous, young again. The laugh that falls out of his mouth is delicate, almost dis-believing. Almost.

“Did you forget I was a witch, Damon Salvatore?”

She’s so beautiful, his mouth just hangs ajar. Bonnie’s face breaks with a grin, “I’m glowing, aren’t I?” She unhooks from the railing, walking around the side to join him on the step, so close he could touch her. Bonnie notices the flinch of his fingers and sighs, “I can’t feel anything. I’m just between stages,” her gaze lifts to the sky, eyes closing like his had done, “Holding on until I have to let go.”

“How did you know I’d come?” He asks, his voice returning in careful syllables.

“I didn’t. But I had hope,” and her smile is one he can’t recognise, wise and forgiving, “I’ve always had hope, Damon.”

“I should have seen you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Her question is soft but it claws, unanswerable. “How long do you have?” He asks instead.

 “Not long.” She searches his face so intensely he has to look away.

“You should be with your husband.”

Bonnie exhales in mist. “I’ve already visited him.”

“Like this?” he asks, gesturing at her golden-tinted youth.

“No…” she forces his eyes to hers, “He never loved this version.”

His next words fight for breath: “And I did?”

And Bonnie smiles like it’s too late. “Are you sad?” she says after a beat, continuing the dance of question after question. Answers too agonising.

This is what he’s waited for. Why he fell away. He needed to leave Bonnie behind, to prepare for losing her: so he could open his arms to the love of his life when she awoke calling his name.

“Yes,” he tells her.

“I’m not immortal. You knew this was going to happen.”

He wants to ask if she was happy with him, this Simon. Did she have children? Did she travel the world? Was it the world she dreamed about? He wants to ask and not know.

“Cheer up,” Bonnie says softly, “The rest of your life is starting today.”

The hymns have stopped; a solemn silence behind the doors, between them. The wind has settled now, merely flickering with the leaves on the ground, and he’s never wanted to hold her more.

“I know it’s selfish, staying here, keeping Elena from you… but… this is my last moment on earth, and in my eighty-four years of life, I’ve realised I deserve to be a little selfish sometimes.”

“You deserved more than all of us, Bon-bon,” he confesses, the nick-name surprising, not unpleasant. Wonderful, actually.

The woman hums in thought. “Simon tried to call me Bon-bon once. I didn’t let him.”

Ignoring the tumbling in his chest he says, “I assumed you hated me.”

Bonnie chuckles, “Oh, I did. I was furious, also with myself for letting you affect me so much. Then I just missed you.” Her eyes glimmer, “At one point I came to the terrifying conclusion that I must be in love with you.”

His mouth dries up, words thick in his gums. Bonnie pushes from the step to stand facing the graveyard. The slipping sun has warmed the world in fire-light – she is now the brightest thing, and probably always was, Damon can see.

“I should let you go,” she says without facing him, “Give Elena her life back.” Nothing he wants to do can be delivered in words and Bonnie speaks over his painful silence, “I like being this me, Damon. I like the me I am with you.”

Stop. Please.

“Imagine if I didn’t leave… stayed this young me with glowing hands. I’ve died before and carried on living… what’s one more?”

There’s a humour to her words that only makes them heavier and Damon wants to scream, turn back time, grab her fucking luminous hand and pull her into him.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, pathetically.

With that same wise, forgiving smile, Bonnie looks over her shoulder. “I was happy, Damon. I was happy with you, and I was happy after you.”

“Bonnie…”

“They’re singing again… this is the last hymn,” she hums along with the melody, “I’ve always loved this one.”

“Let me try and touch you,” he hurries, standing too, reaching for her vaporous arm. If falls to nothing and he almost collapses.

“The service is nearly finished. I think that’s my cue.”

“Bonnie…”

But she shakes her head, curls bouncing like a halo. “It’s time, Damon.” She lifts a brow, the expression crushingly familiar, “I know I asked for colour at my funeral but that Salvatore suit, your trademark black… I’d be disappointed with anything less.”

He searches for words to keep her there, even if only for a minute more, but the doors groan and the congregation pours out. Damon is carried with the crowd, across the grass, searching for her amongst the gravestones, the trees. The fingers that slip over his are pulse-less but palpable.

“You ready to come back now?” Caroline whispers, squeezing the hand, still reaching for Bonnie, back to life.

An elderly woman in the distance watches them, green shawl blowing in the returned wind. Her smile says it’s okay to let me go.

“Okay,” he answers, “let’s go home.”

Chapter Text

“If you’re just going to stand there, I have more…pleasurable things to attend to.”

Bonnie kicks her features into a scowl. “I told you, I was looking for Elena.”

“Well,” the vampire’s eyes bulge, “She’s not here so run along.”

Dick. He has a way of making her feel like a child when he doesn’t need her and Mystic Falls’ freaking saviour when he does. All for his own gain, of course. Unless Elena’s involved – a Titanic sized love flashes across his annoyingly blue eyes whenever the brunette is in the room.

And, because everything Damon does sets her teeth on edge, he has to look like that topless.

“Well,” Bonnie snaps back (she’s not sure communication between them is possible without some kind of venom), “if you see her, tell her I need her.”

This makes his brow curve. “No offense, Bonnie, but she’s a little preoccupied with staying alive right now.”

Right, the Klaus thing. “But the other vampire… Elijah? He’s dead?”

“So?”

Damon leans against the staircase and the stare that regards her is so uninterested her magic pulses with the need to make him care. What about, she has no idea. Definitely not her.

“So, how can Klaus know where Elena is?”

The vampire blinks. “Seriously?” He sighs into her silence, eyes pushing up to the ceiling like she’s literally the most annoying thing to ever stand in his living room. “Klaus is an Original. Think Voldemort with no horcruxes… And a nose.”

“Did you just make a joke?” A smile poked her mouth at his comment; unnerving because a) this is the guy after her best friend and b) Damon doesn’t say things that produce that reaction. Ever.

It’s only when his face pushes back into indifference that she realises he was almost smiling too. “Why don’t you just call her?”

“Elena?”

“Obviously.”

Bonnie toes the edge of the rug, face heating. “Erm, it’s probably a conversation better had in person.”

“Ah. Girl stuff.”

“Okay, this just got weird.”

Damon laughs. And it’s not sarcastic. A grin cracks across his face and the vein in his neck, that Bonnie regrets noticing, tenses with the release.

“I’ve never seen you look more uncomfortable, little witch.”

Little witch. It’s… endearing. But it’s Damon so why the fuck did it make her stomach flutter?

“It’s Jeremy,” she says stupidly.

Damon folds his (rudely muscly) arms across his chest. “You and Jeremy, huh?”

“No! No… well, not yet, or… Why am I talking about this to you?”

“Hmm, notice it didn’t take any coercion. You just blurted that baby right out,” the vampire frowns in thought, “Do you have… feelings for him?”

The question, any question about her, is so unfamiliar from the vampire that the stretching pause is more from surprise than figuring out how to answer (because I don’t know is fairly straight forward). Damon’s interactions with Bonnie consist of imperatives, eye rolls and, more often than not, her emphatic NO.

“You like just standing there gormlessly, don’t you little –”

The emergence of a woman at the top of the staircase cuts his witticism short (and the nickname his tongue has apparently adopted into his language). Bonnie recognises the woman, vampire, as Rose, wrapped in a silky night gown, bare feet gracefully descending to Damon’s side. The touch she smooths over his exposed shoulder is intimate. Pleasurable things to attend to. Got it.

“You’re the witch, right?” She says by way of introduction, voice cold.

“I am.”

“A Bennett?”

Bonnie inclines her chin, a quiet pride thrumming through her words. “That’s me.”

“She’s cute,” Rose says to Damon. The vampire shrugs, and just like that, is back to being the Damon she wants to avoid.

“I’ll leave you guys to it,” she says lamely, turning from the stairs and Damon’s falsely sweet bye, come again soon.

She throws the front door open with magic: resumed irritation, humiliation, confusion, unbalancing her control. Outside, the autumn leaves storm in circles like Luka had shown her. Luka, Jeremy… Damon. Bonnie flexes her fingers and the wind thrusts towards her outstretched arms. Only then, in the power, does she breathe.

“Let me get this straight. Elijah isn’t dead and Stefan is in the tomb with Katherine?”

“Yes.”

Jeremy places a cup of peppermint tea under her nose, as if hot drinks can cure the shit show that is their life. “Thanks,” she says anyway and he smiles, shy and inconvenient because she needs to save the world.

Bonnie addresses her question to Elena: “And… what do you need me to do?”

“Use the moonstone and break the barrier spell. Got it? Fabulous, witch away.”

“Damon,” Elena warns and the vampire lifts his palms in insincere apology.

“And you have the moonstone,” Bonnie says, again to Elena, purposefully ignoring the infuriating figure by the window.

“No, I do,” Damon preens, waving the translucent rock in the air. “Looks like you’ll have to acknowledge me now, smart ass.”

“You are pathetic,” she grumbles but pushes back the kitchen chair and retrieves the stone from his outstretched palm anyway.

“Charmed as always, Bonnie. Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Do you think you can break it?” Elena probes.

“Don’t do anything that could hurt you, Bonnie,” Jeremy hurries.

“Whatever you do, just do it fast,” Damon snaps.

And it’s all so fucking much she holds back a scream.

“I need time,” she says instead, turning the soap-sized thing in her palm.

Elena reaches for her arm; a light squeeze as she says, “I believe in you.”

“I’ll need to take it home,” Bonnie tells them, avoiding Elena’s hopeful eyes pinning too much on her.

Damon animates from the window, vamp-speeding to her side. “Like hell you’re walking home with our only chance of rescuing Stefan.”

“I can’t do it without my spell books,” she retorts, pocketing the stone, pushing up from the table.

Damon’s hand slams on hers. She snatches it away. “Then I’m taking you.”

“I don’t need an escort.”

“This isn’t the time for some feminist bullshit. I’m taking you home and waiting until you get it done.”

Outraged, she swivels to the Gilberts, expecting Jeremy at least to jump to her defence.

“Damon’s right, Bon,” he says quietly, “it’s not safe for you to have it alone.”

“Seriously?”

 “Come on,” the vampire announces, “We’re going.”

“I’m not a dog,” Bonnie hisses but pulls her denim jacket around her frame, angered magic in her finger tips as she threads the buttons through the holes.

She’s pulled into Elena’s chest as Damon taps his foot impatiently. “Promise you’ll call me or Jeremy if anything happens?

“I’ll try not to kill him,” Bonnie says dryly, to which Damon snorts in disbelief.

“You have ten seconds, then we’re vamp-speeding.”

Jeremy glares at the vampire; Elena just smiles apologetically.

“Relax, I’m coming.”

“Got the moonstone?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go, little witch.”

And her stomach twitches again, a lone butterfly wing that scratches away at just a bit of her anger.  

It isn’t exactly surprising that she didn’t invite him inside but still, sitting on her Gram’s front porch, he can’t help but feel a little rejected. Definitely the more humbling consequence of vampirism.

Tick-tock, Bennet.

“Hello, Damon.”

He launches off the step in a beat, palms curled in fists, stare darting around the front yard for a weapon; yet in the moment calculating how quickly he can wrench the wooden fence post out of the flower bed, Elijah is in front of him, pupils dilating.

“Tell Bonnie she needs to come outside with the moonstone,” he instructs, “But don’t tell her I’m here.” He lifts a ringed finger to his lips and breaks contact, abandoning Damon to the will of compulsion.

That’s the worst thing about this new vamp on vamp compelling development: you know you’re being compelled and there’s fuck all you can do about it. He knocks twice on the door, calls her name. Shouts it.

“I’m not letting you in!” Is the call from inside.

“I know, which is why I need you to come out. It’s important.”

“I thought breaking the spell was important!”

The supernatural pushes words forward: “This is about the spell. Please.”

There’s a shuffle as she unlocks the door, her face just visible in the crack. “I didn’t know you knew that word.”

He tenses against the force, tries with everything to resist, shake his head as he says, “Come outside with the moonstone. Just on the front step. I’ve remembered something.”

Bonnie eyes him curiously. Come on, Bonnie. See through it. “Fine. I’ll come out,” she sighs and dread bites at the compulsion’s numbing.

The witch slips from the warmth of the house and out onto to the front porch, closing the door behind her. She barely has time to form a question when Elijah has gripped her arm. Bonnie screams, her power leaping, shocking the Original, making him stumble.

Command delivered, Damon is free to grab the fence post he eyed before, the panel splintering in his hand. Elijah straightens his tie, toys with the cufflinks on his shirt, and smiles. The bastard.

“It’s admirable, really, Damon, you putting up a fight, but me and the young lady both know you only care about the moonstone.”

“Bonnie, get back inside!” Damon yells, fence post held in the air like a sword.

She pivots to push on the front door but Elijah is faster – much – and barricades the door with a disappointed sigh. “I’m afraid, this isn’t how tonight’s going to go.” He nods his head at Damon, “Thank you for your help,” grabs Bonnie and blurs away, leaving him panting, near stupefied, waving a garden fence around his head.

“Damn you, Elijah!” He shouts at the night, piercing the fence, upside down, in to the soil. That’s when he notices something gleaming, catching the moonlight, throwing it across the lawn.

You surprise me, Bonnie.

The moonstone was in her hand; she must have dropped it as she was being taken. Clever little witch. He doesn’t feel completely victorious though. Even with the stone, smooth in his palm, anxiety, unease, fear? Something claws at his buried conscience.

Elena will never speak to me again if I don’t get her back. The rescue is for Elena. That’s all. Elijah’s right, he doesn’t care about her. Bonnie’s arrogant, irritating, judegy, only a semi-competent witch and yet… he wants to get her back. Needs to.

If anyone’s going to kill Bonnie Bennett, it will be me.

Chapter Text

“After you.”

Bonnie doesn’t move; Elijah chuckles.

“I’m not a heathen, Bonnie. Please. Sit in the passenger seat.”

Her feet fall forward, still dizzy from the supernatural speed that he carried her. The Original catches her arm, but not her fear. That claws its way up her stomach and, almost, in a whimper out her mouth.

You’re a witch. Do something!

He sighs like he can read her mind. Maybe he can? There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of limitation to these super-vampires. Definitely not death. “I do hope you’re not considering trying to outwit me. Or…” he half-smiles, fondly, nearly, “Using magic against me.”

Do it now. But her power has dried, what little she can feel in her fingertips has gone limp. She could barely lift a leaf, let alone stall a gazillion year old vampire.

“No?”

“No,” she answers, the word heavy, like shame.

Elijah gestures again at the open door. “Shall we?”

“Do I have a choice?”

His dark eyes flare at her indignation. “No, I suppose you don’t.”

As far as abductions go, Elijah’s methods are… unusual. And Lord knows, this town has seen enough to recognise a strange one. Still, the suit, his charm, that power: she’s shaking as she climbs into the car. The vampire closes the door like a chauffeur and, in a blink, is in the driver’s seat. And Bonnie, like a fool, turns to the window in desperation, looking for him.

“Men like Damon are notoriously unreliable.” He turns the key in the ignition; the car (fancy, silver, Mercedes) roaring to life. Bonnie tries to match her breathing to the engine, her pulse deafening even to her, let alone the vampire. “He strikes me as having a rather obsessive personality. And,” the car animates, “evidently you aren’t one of them. A pity.”

“Where are you taking me?” Bonnie rushes, refusing to look at him. His handsome features only intensify his danger, like a snare or trap, seduce the women, drain them dry. (And even now she thinks again that stupidly hot must be a pre-requisite for the un-dead.)

“To my home. Well, temporary home. I have yet to secure somewhere suitable for my needs.”

Her magic simmers, restoring its strength in bubbles beneath her skin. “You want the moonstone, right?”

“Yes, but you so expertly dropped it, didn’t you?”

Fear swells. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve lived on this earth for over a millennium. It will take more than that to fool me, I can assure you.”

The silence only magnifies the dread so she asks the question every dumb girl in every dumb thriller does: “Are you going to kill me?”

Elijah releases a long breath, “Killing you would be counter-productive to my purpose.” He turns his head to regard her - Bonnie dares to meet his eyes - “Besides, I rather respect witches.”

//

Loaded with Alaric’s various vampire-destroying utensils, and six and a half ripe AB blood-bags (he got peckish whilst packing), Damon kicks his car into reverse, scattering the gravel from his drive. It’s been almost two hours since the bastard snatched her and he’s finally equipped to face the dragon and rescue the irritating, probably ungrateful, princess.

Now, where the fuck could he have gone?

This is where Bonnie is at her most useful: location spells.

“Well this is just brilliant,” he snaps aloud, “The only person who could find you is you.”

Still, he pulls out onto the highway, speeding towards destination wherever, hoping the Original has pulled into the hard shoulder to have a piss in the shrubbery. Right, because vampires need to pee.

“You better open the damned tomb tonight after all this, little witch,” he growls (because he will find her, and it will be tonight).

About fifteen minutes into frantic, but aimless, driving he gets a call from Elena.

“You okay?” In lieu of hello.

“Damon?”

“Yeah?”

“Where are you?”

She sounds stressed, her voice strained. “Elena? What’s happened?”

There’s a beat before she responds, “I got a text. I… I think it’s from Elijah?”

What is this shit? Pretty Little Liars? “Was it about Bonnie!?”

Another beat. “I think so. He said he has someone I care about-”

“Let me guess, he needs you to come save her?”

“I don’t know what he wants. Me or the moonstone… or both?” Her words thicken; breathing shallowed.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay-”

“No, it’s not Damon! With Stefan in the tomb and now this?” She’s really crying now – Damon holds the phone a further distance from his ear.

“Elena, it will be okay.”

“Of course, you would say that! You hate her!”

He right hand tightens on the steering wheel. “Who?”

“Bonnie, Damon! And now she’s gone because you didn’t protect her like you promis-”

And for the first time in his Elena-centric life, he cuts her off. Ends the call.

He shoots off a text:

Bad signal. Send me the address Elijah gave you.

And then another:

By the way, I never hated her.

//

“Would you like something to drink?” The vampire looks up from his novel lazily, as if just now remembering her presence.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Dr. Jonas gives an admirable attempt at English Tea.”

The tall man in the kitchen raises a brow. Bonnie had recognised him immediately, received the same chill as that one in Grill. Unflinching, the older witch merely stepped aside for Elijah to sweep into the apartment.

“Very kind of you, Elijah,” Luka’s dad remarks, then, finally, addresses Bonnie, “I have Diet Coke, if that’s more to your liking.”

She wants to scream at him why!? What do you get out of this? What about your son? Where is he? But under Elijah’s waiting stare, she only declines again.

Elijah’s gaze slips back to the page, his mouth tracing the words as he reads. Bonnie shifts on the chair, making it creak, willing the Dr to look at her. She’s pretty certain witch telepathy isn’t a thing but she was also pretty certain vampires weren’t before Stefan and his dick of a brother came to town.

Damon’s betrayal shouldn’t hurt, it’s Damon after all, but it does. It really fucking does. He used her – walked her home in all his Little Witch this and Little Witch that only to hand over to an Original. She knew this would happen when she dropped the stone. She gave him what he wanted; he’ll find another plaything of a witch to undo the tomb spell. And she’ll become the project of Elijah’s ‘purpose’… like her Gram’s was Damon’s.

The vampire slams his book shut; Bonnie jumps. Then she hears what he must have: a whistle.

“You said he wasn’t home until late tonight.”

The Dr. moves lethargically, evidently unbothered by the Original’s irritation. “He’s a teenage boy, I can’t control him.”

Luka. Naïve as it may be, her heart leaps.

“He can’t see her,” Elijah warns, “Get rid of him.”

“Relax. Luka doesn’t know her.”

The door unlocks before the vampire can respond, and Bonnie process the Dr’s lie. Luka unhooks his earphone to greet his dad, his eyes shifting immediately to the compelling presence of the Original, then, to her.

Bonnie’s not sure what her face does in that moment but it communicates something because Luka frowns and says, “Why is there a girl in our living room?”

“She’s with me,” Elijah announces.

Luka nods. “Well, I’ve got some homework to do so….” He eyes flicker, pulling on hers, “Nice to meet you.”

“Can I use the bathroom?” Bonnie hurries, as Luka turns out the room.

Elijah inclines his head to the Dr. “Can she?”

“Down the corridor, on the left.”

Her legs feel borrowed when she stands. “Thank you.”

“Bonnie?” The power in the Original’s voice makes her turn.

“Yes?”

He smiles; a warning. “Hurry back.”

Luka’s door is ajar as she passes it, his sneakers hanging off the bed. Praying he’s listening, she turns the handle of the bathroom door, and closes it firmly behind her. Unlocked.

Come on, Luka.

She flicks the faucet on to dampen Elijah’s inevitably tuned in vamp-hearing. Whilst Luka and his dad have shown no signs of knowing her… ‘It will take more than that to fool me, I can assure you.’

The bathroom door opens and closes in a motion; Luka brushes past her to turn on the other tap. “We don’t have long,” he whispers. “He’s keeping you here, right?”

“Yes, and my magic-”

“He’s an Original. It will take more than just our magic. We need to be smart.”

“No,” Bonnie reaches for his arm, “He’ll kill you.”

“Not if we’re smart.” His eyes dart around the bathroom, then to the window. “There’s a fire escape just the other side.”

“I won’t have time. He’ll find me.”

His fingers find hers, warm… and buzzing with magic. “I’m going to the seal door. My dad will open it and when he does, I’ll be lying against the bath. Like you knocked me out, okay?”

“Luka?”

The voice startles them both, Bonnie’s eyes rounding in terror. Luka closes his eyes, a spell tumbling from his mouth.

Move.

Bonnie flips the toilet seat shut and hitches her foot on the lid. The window is jammed, a little rusty, and she huffs with the effort of wrangling the latch.

The Dr. calls again for his son, closer this time. Outside the bathroom door.

Move!

Magic darts from her fingertips; the window swings open; the outside breeze swells in the room. Luka is still murmuring the spell when she pushes over the ledge. Her boots meet the clang of metal, the sound reverberating up her legs. Bonnie twists to the window – shuts it on Luka’s encouraging smile, the Dr now calling her name as he tries the bathroom door.

Move.

Chapter Text

The fire-escape trembles as she hurtles down it – a rattle that that the Original must be able to hear. Adrenaline shocks her movements, her body kicked into flight mode, carrying her fear, her leaping heart, down the stairs. At the last step she launches into a run, immediately steering left down the sidewalk. Distance, however futile, is imperative.

She’s almost at the next block when she sees Damon’s Camaro crawling towards her. His eyes round through the windscreen. “Need a ride?” He grins, sticking his head out the window.

“Are you serious?” Her question fragments into breaths, chest heaving.

Damon waves his hand at her. “You look like someone on the run.”

Bonnie twists behind to the, thankfully, empty street, hating having to keep still. Running from two vampires in a day is more than she can take. “So you can give me back to Elijah?”

“What?” Damon’s brow near flies off his forehead, “Why would I do that? I came to rescue you, idiot.”

“Rescue me!?”

“Yes. Rescue you.”

She hesitates, looking for the lie in the blue that stares, shocked, back at her. “Why?”

Damon bangs on the car door. “Because.”

“Because?”

He groans. “Just get in the car, Bonnie. Please.”

Please. Maybe it’s the delirium of peril but she smirks. “Fine. But only because there’s a centuries old vampire after me.”

He exhales; masks it as a shrug. “As good a reason as any.”

Address received; Damon drove like a newly passed teenage boy, even scratched his beloved car. Only when he neared the apartment block did he slow. He had a plan… kinda. It mainly involved running in guns blazing, ready to stab anyone or anything that tried to stop the rescue. To see the witch sprinting down the street like a runaway munchkin was such a relief he could have leaped out the car and hugged her. He didn’t, of course. He played it cool, rolling down the window and making a quip like vampire-James Bond.

Damon glances at her in the passenger seat. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Well, that’s a lie. Her little heart is still sprinting and she’s looking at the rear-view mirror every other second.

“You don’t seem o-”

“Because I’ve just made an Original vampire very angry!” She snaps. Her hands are shaking on her lap and he has a strange desire to reach over and hold them still. He doesn’t.

“Welcome to my world: making people angry.” He tries for a smile; she throws him a look nothing short of withering.

“I thought you’d be protecting Elena.”

Is that… bitterness? Damon pushes on the accelerator. “Sometimes I do stupid things, clearly this was one of them as turns out you didn’t need my sword wielding skills. How did you get out anyway?”

“Aw, are you jealous you didn’t get to have your hero moment?” Bonnie’s mouth curves. “Like Elijah wouldn’t have taken your head off.”

“Watch yourself. I could turn around.”

She rests her head on the window, as if, finally, relaxed. “But you won’t.”

But I won’t.

“Did you witchify him?” He asks after a beat.

Her face is turned away from him but he can feel the eye roll. “Witchify?”

“Yes, magic, pow-pow, oops your brain is on fire.”

Another beat. “I couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t fry his annoying, British ass? Don’t tell me you’ve got the hots for Elijah. Stockholm Syndrome much.”

He receives a slap on his arm for that. Probably merited.

“Believe it or not, I’m not all-powerful,” she hesitates, poking her tongue against her cheek, “I… had help.”

“From who!?”

And there’s definitely a smile as she says, “A friend.”

“Okay cryptic. Must be some friend.” His words carry a frown. Almost like he’s jealous, which he isn’t, obviously. He just hates mystery.

“He’s clever. And brave.”

“Gross. You sound like you’re in love with him. Thought you had Jeremy on the go?”

She twists to glare at him. “I don’t have anyone ‘on the go’.”

“Whatever you say,” he says coyly, watching the road but feeling the fire of her stare. Why does annoying her feel so good?

“I mean it, Damon.”

“I mean it, Damon,” he imitates, like a seven-year-old on the school playground. Flirting. Shut up, he scolds himself.

“One hundred and eighty something years old. Mature.”

He laughs; the ease is disconcerting. Is he enjoying Bonnie Bennett’s company? “One hundred and eight something years old and sexy. You can’t be both.”

Damon’s stare flickers to the witch in his periphery. She’s smiling at something in her palm (and not at his joke).

“What’s that?”

“A message from Luka - the friend. He says it worked; Elijah has no idea.”

“Great,” he relaxes against the leather seat, “tell your boyfriend thanks for the weather report.”

“Not my boyfriend,” she corrects, smoothing the magic paper of its wrinkles, folding it into four like she’s saving it for scrapbooking. Did that thing seriously just poof into her hand?

“But you want him to be?”

“No.” The paper is slipped into her pant pocket.

“Because of Jeremy?”

Bonnie blows out a breath, “I don’t know.” He readies for more questioning but the witch cuts him off. “Why are you suddenly so interested in my love life? My life in general? It wasn’t that long you didn’t care if I, and I quote, ‘lived or died’?”

That gets him stumped. It’s just happened – an unexpected happening – that he now does. Like a lot. Like enough to get his car scratched, risk his life kind of does. And it can’t be just for Elena because he hasn’t even texted to say he found her. Shit. I should probably do that.

“Well?” Bonnie probes, evidently as impatient as him.

Damon shrugs. “It means you’re tolerable. And can occasionally do useful spells.”

“Or maybe you like me a little bit?”

He nearly slams on the breaks. “What!?”

“Not like that, idiot,” Bonnie eyerolls, “Ew.”

Ew… yeah. Damon frowns the counterthought out of his mind. “Frenemies,” he declares.

“Frenemies?”

“Yeah. Between.”

She shakes her head, muttering something about him being a complete man-child, but agrees, lifts a brow and says, “Okay, frenemies.”

They drive a few minutes in silence; Bonnie leans her head against the window again. He checks his watch: 8:25pm. Not bad… Elena will- SHIT. Elena.

“Text Elena and let her know you’re safe.”

“With what phone?”

“Mine, sassy.” He flicks it onto her lap. “Tell her to stay indoors.”

“Shall I tell her where we’re going? Where are we going?”

“No and I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Damon fights an eyeroll of his own. “Relax, okay? We’re just putting distance between us and the suit.” Elijah’s new nickname amuses him; he glances at Bonnie to see if it did her. Unamused would be an apt description.

“What about the others, Damon? Won’t Elijah just go after them?” She stares out the window, stiff with indignance, “This is selfish.”

“No, being selfish would be enjoying the time I have with Elena whilst Stefan is in the tomb,” he snaps, admitting something he hasn’t even admitted to himself.

Bonnie lifts her head. Her eyes are round with understanding, fucking understanding, and that just irritates him more. Bonnie the good, Bonnie the moral, Bonnie the empath… even with the dick in love with his brother’s ex-girlfriend.

“Can you just text her?” He says sharply, “She’s worried.”

“Right, sorry.”

Damon relaxes in the silence. The witch is watching, again, the blur of car lights beyond the window, and it’s nice to get out of Mystic Falls, it is. Leave Elena and his web of feelings.

“Can I ask you something?” Bonnie says suddenly.

“Depends.”

“Why are you waiting for Elena to choose you?”

Yeah, no. “That’s outside the boundaries of frenemies.”

She chews her lip, “I just think you’re restricting your-”

“Are you tired?” He interrupts, “There’s a motel in about 10 miles. I saw a sign.”

He watches the cogs in her brain whir.

“Separate rooms, don’t panic.”

“Um sure. I’m… can I eat first?”

She doesn’t have money, so I’ll be paying. Basically, a Bonnie and Damon date night.

“I think there’s a restaurant next to the motel. Don’t be awkward and say you’re vegan or something.”

She chuckles; Damon’s eyes narrow.

“Coming from the vampire it just sounds… funny.”

“Now who’s mature?”

They slip back into the silence. Almost. Bonnie’s question is invading his peace so he switches the radio on, filling his mind with some Led Zeppelin. Before long Sheldon’s Motel and Restaurant flashes its epileptic yellow sign and he pulls off the highway. The parking lot is empty but for an old truck. Classy.

“Your castle awaits,” he says dryly, stepping out onto the gravel-weeds hybrid.

Bonnie pushes on the car door and immediately pivots left and right, her heartbeat bouncing back into his senses.

“Hey,” he touches her arm, “Elijah’s too fancy to set foot in this place.”

She blinks down at the contact; Damon swiftly picks his hand off her jacket. “Let’s eat.”

Eating dinner opposite Damon Salvatore was definitely not in Bonnie’s agenda for the week – or ever. Neither was getting abducted. She reaches for another fry, or five, pushing the Original out of her mind.

“Wow you were hungry,” the vampire comments.

“Shut up,” she mumbles through her mouthful, “I’ve been through trauma.”

He lifts his palms. “No judgement, little witch, just an observation.”

And again, warmth simmers at the nickname. She’s comfortable with him, there’s an ease to their interactions… the same she noticed that morning at the Boarding House, before Rose slid her arm over his torso.

“Besides, Luka and Jeremy might like a more… cuddly woman.”

Doesn’t mean he’s not a dick.

“Such a charmer, Damon.”

“Please,” he grins (it sets his eyes alight), “You couldn’t handle my charm.”

Try me. Bonnie reddens at the instinctual response, grateful sense and reason swallowed it before release. She takes a large gulp of milkshake, willing his eyes to stop studying her. He kept glancing at her in the car too.

“Who do you think Sheldon is then?”

“The Motel owner? Probably dead.”

The vampire winks. “Or alive.”

She leans across the table for another chip – Damon snatches the basket away with a victorious eyebrow raise. “You were stealing them all.”

Bonnie settles for more milkshake. “What’s it like being… alive?” She asks after a sip; the question just sort of falling out. Immortality has never appealed to her. Living indefinitely… it must take the intensity out of life.

But looking at Damon’s stunned expression, she regrets it immediately. Should have saved that for Stefan or Caroline – an actual friend. “I don’t know why I said that,” she says lamely, to her plate.

“It’s tiring.”

Bonnie looks up.

“You feel like you’re always trying to find that thing… the thing that makes it all worth it.” Damon threads a hand through his hair, something unreadable in his eyes – maybe sadness – and then it melts back into a cold, blue absence. “I’ll go get us rooms,” he announces, pushing back his chair.

And the mystery of Damon Salvatore continues.

“Get us two rooms,” he speaks at the greasy haired clerk at the desk, “Overlooking the road, not the woods.”

The puppeteer nod pleases him; the vacant understanding of compelled eyes. Bonnie wouldn’t agree with this but he doesn’t answer to her. He doesn’t answer to anyone. She’s asked too many questions tonight that have set him thinking. Damon Salvatore doesn’t think.

“Here are your keys. Room 7 and 8.”

He takes without a thank you and trudges moodily back to the diner to collect the witch. She smiles at him. When has she ever smiled at me?

“Room 7 or 8. Take your pick.”

“Er, eight I guess.” She’s trying to read him again but he’s not going to let her. Bonnie and her smiles and her questions… He’s completely unbothered.

He strides ahead of her down the brown carpeted corridor, fighting to put some distance between them – space to empty his head, get drunk on blood.

“This is me,” he announces, “Night.”

“Damon…”

“I just need a drink,” he tells her, twisting the key in the lock.

“No, I mean… I don’t want to be alone.”

What the hell is she suggesting?

“Believe me, under any other circumstances I wouldn’t ask but…”

Her sneaker traces over a stain in the carpet; through the cracks in the window, a breeze forces its way into the corridor. Is he seriously….?

“A few hours ago, you wouldn’t even let me in your house. Now you want to share a room?”

 Bonnie chews her lip, wide eyes looking everywhere but him. “I didn’t trust you… I’m sorry.”

Fuck is their relationship making strides today. Damon pushes on the door – opens it for her. Bonnie shuffles through, all her Bennet-spunk dissolved.

“I sleep on the left,” he says by way of acceptance.

“Okay.”

He shuts the door, inhaling the damp of the room. Even the bed is brown.

“I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Right.”

The bed groans with his weight. I wonder how many murders have happened in this room? Damon twists to get comfortable and feels the round shape of the moonstone in his pocket. He places it on the bedside table just as Bonnie renters the room.

“You got it then?” She asks.

“Smart thinking.”

Bonnie shrugs, still standing by the bathroom door, hesitant to move towards the bed.

“I’ve decided not to sleep naked tonight,” he tells her, suddenly wanting to break the awkwardness, settle back into banter. Banter that’s now become their thing.

Bonnie looks even more uncomfortable. “I think I should sleep on the floor.”

Charming. “Don’t be stupid. You said it yourself, you trust me now. I’m not going to kill you.”

“You know ‘I’m not going to kill you’ aren’t always the most assuring words.” But she edges closer anyway.

“And if you’re worried about the other activities, you’re not my type anyway.”

The weight of a pillow collides with his head. “Neither are you.”

Well that doesn’t sit right. “What do you mean? I’m everyone’s type.”

“The fact that you’re not even being facetious with that…” The witch rolls her eyes. “Never been rejected, Damon Salvatore?”

Katherine. Elena. “No, it’s a new experience. Not sure I’m enjoying it.”

She’s wriggled her way under the covers, eyes glittering with amusement. Glittering? Damon rolls over. Away from her.

“I forgot. You like the Jeremy’s of the world.”

“Something like that… Can you switch the light off?”

He leans across the bedside table, plunging the room in darkness.

“Damon?” Bonnie’s pulse beats steadily – he finds himself counting.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.” Her hand brushes against his leg, an accident, judging by her fast it darts away, but the shock it sent through him… slightly terrifying. “Sorry.”

He wants to say something but his words have dried and the clock in the corner of the room keeps ticking and he lets what might have been fade to silence. Bonnie’s breathing has become rhythmic anyway. Out like a light.

An hour later his phone rings: the number unknown. Bonnie stirs with the sound and he slips out of the warm bed (much warmer than his one back at the Boarding House, nearly three times the size and often empty) into the bathroom, careful not to wake her.

“Elijah,” he hisses into the speaker. Back to the old Pretty Little Liars shit.

“I see I’m predictable,” the vampire drawls. “How is my witch?”

He shivers at the phrase. “She’s not your anything,” Damon snaps, “What do you want?”

Elijah exhales. “My brother Niklaus has found himself in some trouble and, being the noble older brother, I am required to assist him. This means leaving Mystic Falls…” The smile in his words is palpable, “You’re welcome.”

Damon leans against the door. “So that’s it?”

“Unfortunately, life doesn’t work quite like that Damon. My brother will be wanting the girl –”

“If you lay another hand on Bonnie…”

“Bonnie? I meant Elena,” the Original chuckles, “I was mistaken. She is one of your obsessions.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he hisses, teeth gritted.

“Elena, Bonnie… what other poor girl are you going to latch onto?”

“I’m not in love with Bonnie.”

 “I never said anything about love. Interesting.”

What I would do to punch his smug face…. “Remind me why I’m still taking to you?”

Elijah laughs again. “Always a pleasure, Damon. I hope you can keep yourselves entertained before my return.”

“Oh, we’ll try,” he snarks, resisting, with all his will, the urge to tell the bastard where to put it.

“I see what you like about her, by the way. She’s… vibrant.”

And this time Damon can’t be assed with niceties; he hangs up and climbs back into bed, the little witch’s snore titling his mouth upwards.

Chapter Text

Bonnie wakes to the vampire staring at her. A blink, then he’s frowning out the window, embarrassed, obviously, at getting caught. Damon Salvatore embarrassed. She folds away her smile.

“You’re awake,” he says from the window, “Finally.”

“What’s the time?”

“Seven am.”

“Damon.”

He shrugs, hair all ruffed up from lying on the pillows. “Breakfast finishes at eight. I checked.”

“Wow. Didn’t realise you were such a pancake fanatic.”

His mouth twitches at her comment, like some secret she doesn’t have access to. “You sleep okay?” he asks, and again, she’s startled at his ease, the… kindness? It isn’t an adjective she ever expected to attribute to the vampire but his gaze, and it is a gaze, possesses a dewiness in the waking sun. It’s unnerving how… pretty he looks in the morning. “Yes, no? Not hard.”

“Er, yeah. Surprisingly.”

Damon picks at a wonky strand of hair, curls it with his thumb. “Good.”

And Bonnie’s suddenly very aware that she’s lying in a bed – and that he’s leaning against the window just watching her. She tugs at words, tries to string a comment, but her unlikely roommate has coherent thought held captive. Get it together, idiot.

“I can hear your heart. You scared?” She touches her chest and of course, the betrayer. Damon pushes from the window ledge and for a moment, it’s as though he’s going to walk over to the bed, to her, but he turns to the understated vanity in the corner, continues arranging his hair. “By the way Elijah’s not going to be a problem anymore. For now, at least.”

And now her pulse freezes. “What!?”

“He called me last night. Was all ‘My brother, I must be duteous and save my family’,” he says nonchalantly, butchering the Original’s English drawl.

Bonnie sits up, enlivened. “And you were going to tell me this when!?”

“Over pancakes.” He throws a glance over his shoulder, chuckles at Bonnie’s disbelief, “You were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“He’s just leaving? No consequences.”

In the mirror, Damon gives her a pointed look. “They’re the Original’s. First vampires ever aka the most dramatic,” he lifts a brow, “I know what you’re thinking and yes, more dramatic than me. They’ll come back guns blazing-”

“Fangs thrashing.”

“Huh?”

Why did I just say that? “I just… trying to make a joke,” she trails off.

Damon looks genuinely perplexed. “I didn’t know you did that? Made jokes.”

The smile bounces back, flirting with her mouth. “I guess it’s just the relief of imminent death being … less imminent.”

“Noted,” He folds his arms, leaning back against the dresser, surveying her, “It suits you.”

The time is 9:05am, they’re half an hour into their road-trip, heavy with pancakes and – Damon glances to the witch in his periphery – they’re happy. Well, as happy as one can be with a brother trapped in a tomb, a family of vampires coming for blood and the best friend of the girl you’re in love with as passenger who, just earlier this week, was a particularly prickly thorn in your side. Bonnie begins to hum along to the song he’s got coming from the radio, pitchy, (he plays with something witty to say) and against all odds, pretty damn happy.

“So… frenemy,” he says, enjoying the sound of it in his mouth. Something about her name – Bonnie – is so unsatisfactory on its own. He likes nicknames; he likes her nicknames.

“Hmm I think the enemy side is pretty lacking. You rescuing me etc.”

“Oh, I’m sure that can be arranged,” he says casually, beaming internally at her acknowledgement. He’s not a saviour, far from it, but doing the Right Thing™… he’s starting to understand why his brother abandoned head ripping. Kinda. “I guess Elijah channelled all my anger.”

“True. Or you’ve just got tired of being an ignorant asshole.”

“Ouch.”

She smooths her grin into indifference. Not fast enough. Damon drums on the steering wheel, ignoring what her comment did to his… everywhere? He’s always taken a quiet pride, or pleasure, or both, in being called an asshole by Bonnie Bennett.

“I see what you like about her, by the way. She’s… vibrant.”

Fuck off Elijah. “Okay: Man-witch or Little Gilbert. Which one?” He asks over the Original’s insinuating comments.

“You’re obsessed,” she groans.

“And you’re blushing.”

“Focus on the road, Damon.”

“Come on, we’ve bonded now. You’ve discovered I’m actually quite charming and I’ll even go as far as to call you tolerable.” He smirks, unable to suppress the glee at her discomfort.

“Believe it or not, I wasn’t weighing up their strengths and weaknesses whilst fearing for my life.”

“Bullshit. Girls always think about a guy before they go to sleep. Who was it?”

Bonnie looks oddly uncomfortable. “No-one. And they don’t.”

“You’re lying, little witch.”

“Were you?” she throws back, irritated.

“Thinking about Jeremy. Guilty. Couldn’t help myself.”

“You know who I mean.”

Elena.

“Yeah, I guess,” he lies, because saying actually I was thinking about you could easily be mis-interpreted.

The car fills with the radio, like there is nothing else that needs saying.

Elena is standing on the porch, arms wrapped around herself in the chill. Jeremy stands beside her, grinning at the Camaro, at Bonnie.

“Home sweet home,” Damon says softly and she doesn’t check to see who he’s looking at as he says it. Elena’s there, that’s all that matters now.

Bonnie pushes on the passenger door and raises her hand in an awkward wave, unused to a homecoming party. Jeremy moves first, reaching to pull her frame into his, his hands, splayed over her back, say you’re not disappearing again. It’s nice, he’s nice, so why is she looking at them, Damon and Elena, watching as she stands a breath away from him, watching as she reaches to touch his cheek, watching him completely, captivated, watching her. She has his whole heart in that touch.

“You’re okay, right?”

Jeremy re-centres her focus. She smiles up at him (because she will feign content until she is). “I’m okay.”

“Good,” his hand is in her hair, “I’m… that’s good.”

“Okaaaay, let’s break out the scotch,” announces Damon loudly. “None for you Little Gilbert, it’s a school night,” he remarks, pushing past them, Elena in tow.

“It’s midday, Damon,” Bonnie goes to say but Elena beats to her to it. Earns the smirk, the wink.

Jeremy puts space between them, cheeks tinged red. “After you,” he says.

…

Damon pours Bourbon into several glass tumblers, an extra for himself, and pushes them across the table. Bonnie catches hers in cupped hands; something flickers in the vampire’s stare, a victory, and she lifts it to her lips, inhaling the bitter tang.

“To Bonnie.” He raises his glass, “Our little witch.”

“To Bonnie,” the Gilbert’s chorus and she allows herself, for a moment, to feel loved, to feel seen.

Then Damon places the Moonstone on the table and the moment collapses. “Spell-breaking take two.” She stares at it; Damon drums on the table. “Bonnie.”

“Damon, patience. Do you think you can do the spell?” That’s Elena. Soon it will be Jeremy, soon it will be the whole damned world.

“Now,” she says, defeated. It doesn’t need to be posed as a question.

“Do you need your books?”

Bonnie looks at the vampire, hoping foolishly to find something other than function in his eyes. Just this morning was… dewiness, fresh, wondering.

“No, I think I’ve got it.” She stands, picks up the stone, and exits into the corridor, throat tightening. It’s pathetic, it is, wanting to cry when really, why should she ever have expected anything less? This is who she is. Who her Grams was.

“Bonnie?” It’s Jeremy, kind Jeremy: with his palms in his pockets he looks about as unsure as she feels.

She turns away from him, re-adjusts the mask. “Can I use the living room? I need space to-”

“You know you don’t have to do this right now.”

And she laughs, a little broken. “It’s Stefan. Of course, I do.”

“I know but…” His words dissolve, “Yeah, it’s… You can use whatever room you’d like.” He hovers in the doorway, Elena and Damon’s chatter – “Did you annoy her?” “Oh, only about as much as she annoyed me” “You’re too hard on her, Damon” “Don’t I get hero points though?” – smothering. He looks like he wants to say sorry but Bonnie’s never been one for pity so she smiles, sucks it up, and promises she’ll save the gentlemanly Salvatore.

“The living room will be fine. Thanks.”

She yanks on the curtains to make an artificial night, scrambles in the drawers for matches, and, placing the Moonstone on the coffee table, sits cross legged on the carpet. Bonnie breathes and the candles light themselves. Magic is fuelled by emotion and she’s vibrating with it. Eyes closed, she begins the incantation, chanting softly. When she holds the stone in her palm, it’s so cold it whispers to her.

“How much longer?” Damon speaks from the doorway; her eyes fly open.

“Are you fucking serious?”

His eyes enlarge. “What?”

She wants to control the emotion in her voice, bury it like always, but she’s hurt and thrumming with magic and Damon, Damon- “So we’re back to this? You treating me like I’m not a human being.”

“Are you- are you crying?”

Bonnie stands, the stone enclosed in her fist. “I actually thought – stupidly – that I was becoming more to you than just an accessory.”

Damon goes to speak but Elena’s voice freezes the thought.  

“Go,” she says coldly, “Elena’s calling.” She chucks him the stone, his reflexes receiving it effortlessly, if not a little taken aback, “It should work. If not, you have my number.”

It’s only when the front door slams shut that his brain kicks his ass into gear and says go after her, idiot. Pocketing the stone, he yanks, rather dramatically, on the door, ignoring Elena’s confused demands regarding the commotion because fuck, he’s confused too. All he knows is that Bonnie’s upset and he cares about stuff like that now.

“Wait, Bonnie! You don’t have to go.”

She pivots, eyes dark. “I did my job. Working hours are over.”

“Look,” he begins, descending the porch steps, “I’m sorry you feel you’ve been treated like-”

“How can you know what I feel?” Her voice layers, “No one’s ever bothered to ask,” then halves, “I lost my Grams because of you.” He’s hanging off the bottom step, halted. “And you know what’s the really shitty thing?” She almost smiles. “I’m no-one’s first choice. You’re all always going to choose Elena, Jeremy included.”

“That’s not true.”

“Of course, it is. I’m not even my own first choice.”

Damon moves at this, her pain, it draws out his honesty. “I chose you.”

“Please,” she lifts a hand, as if to stop his motion, “don’t pretend like saving Stefan wasn’t the first thing on your mind. I get it – he’s your brother –”

“Actually, the first thing on my mind was that I really, really didn’t want you to die.” He steps forward, undeterred. “Not for the spell, not even for Elena, but for me. Selfish Damon.” She’s gone quiet; her stare burns. Damon continues, he has to, “And I did choose you. I had the moonstone. I do have other witches in my life, you know,” he swallows, “Just none as… important as you. You’re… vibrant.”

Bonnie’s eyes narrow, disbelieving. He cringes. “I’m… vibrant?”

“Yeah, you’re -  fuck you, Elijah - vibrant and it’s addicting and scary and I don’t know what to feel around you anymore.” How the hell did it get to this Damon? Bonnie of all people.

Because she is all people. He feels uncharacteristically nauseous.

“What are you saying, Damon?”

Nothing. Everything. Why do I keep moving closer?

Her eyes are fixed on his, a determination, he’s always liked that: he should speak again. “You deserve more than how we’ve treated you. And-” He thinks of Elena in the house just behind him, the thrilling pain of loving her; he looks at Bonnie and feels a warmth vampires aren’t supposed to feel anymore, something quietly human, still fluttering. Terrifying.

Bonnie softens, the fire about her lessens. “I think I know what you mean. It’s…”

“Damon!” He’d been so focussed on the witch he hadn’t registered Elena’s presence on the porch. She rushes forward. “Is everything okay? Bonnie… what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” It’s scary how easily she fakes a smile, “I’ve finished the spell. Damon has the stone.”

“You’re amazing,” Elena tells her and he sees it, he does, the way the light in her eyes goes out at the empty affirmation. “We’ll go and get him now won’t we Damon? Damon?”

“Yeah,” he speaks to Bonnie, “You coming?”

She shakes her head. “I’m pretty exhausted after the spell. You go. Tell Stefan I said hi.”

And again, as she walks away, his brain, damn, even his heart, say go after her, idiot, but Elena’s hand has found its way into his and that’s all he’s ever wanted, right?

Stefan calls her at three in the morning. She answers immediately, thrusting the phone to her ear in a whisper.

“Stefan! Is everything okay?”

“Bonnie, wow, I didn’t think you’d be awake but I just had to try.”

She pulls at the zip of her hoodie, “Yeah I… haven’t really been able to sleep.”

“I heard about what happened with Elijah. That must have been scary.”

Bonnie nods, then remembering she’s on the phone says, “A little but you know, just another day in Mystic Falls.”

He chuckles, “That I do. I, er, I just wanted to say thank you. For the spell… We do appreciate everything you do for us.”

Ah. Bonnie fights the eyeroll. “Did Damon put you up to this?”

“What? No. I wanted to say thank you.”

“But the other bit…” she draws a pattern on the covers with her forefinger, “We do appreciate everything you do for us.” Stefan stalls. Busted. “Tell Damon, it’s cute, but he can do better than getting his younger- AH!”

She drops the phone, the vampire’s tinny, “Bonnie! Are you okay!?” reverberating from her pillow. Damon Salvatore, the dick, twinkles his fingers out her window. Bonnie presses against her heart to calm it down and brings the phone back to her ear: “Hi, sorry, I just saw a… cat.”

“A cat?”

“Yeah. It’s three a.m. – I’m delirious,” she glares at Damon through the window, “Sorry. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for calling.”

Hanging up, she marches to the glass and pushes hard on the window, nearly sending him flying off the tree he’s perched on – good. “What are you doing here?” She hisses.

“Good evening, Bonnie. What did my brother want?”

She folds her arms, feeling suddenly stupid in her old pink zip-up and Monsters Inc. pyjama pants. “To say thank you. It’s rude to eavesdrop.”

Damon flings her a lazy grin. “Can’t help it,” he flicks his ear, “vamp-hearing.”

There’s a beat; Damon re-adjusts his balance on the branch. “Do you want to come in?”

“Really?”

“Don’t make me change my mind.”

In a blink he’s standing in front of her, surveying her childhood bedroom with amusement. His stare lingers on her bed. “So, this is where the Bonnie Bennett magic happens,” his mouth curves, “Don’t give me that look – I meant real magic. Your magic.”

Your magic. The warmth returns.

“You came to my house at three in the morning just to see my bedroom?”

Damon brings his eyes back to hers. “No,” he says simply, “I came to your house at three in the morning to see you.” He smirks. “We spend one night together and now I can’t get enough.”

Bonnie ignores that. “I’m glad the spell worked... and Katherine?”

“We can deal with her.” A pause stretches and Bonnie looks around the room, catches herself in the mirror, cringes. Damon clears his throat. “I thought about what you said. In the car. About Elena. You asked me why I’m waiting for,” his tongue wets his lip (because she’s back to him again), “And I’ll admit I may have got a bit defensive.”

Her pulse is loud. “Shall we sit down?”

Damon glances at the bed, “No… I need to say this standing.” He weaves a hand through his hair, ruffling it up like it was in the motel room. “I’ve been a dick to you.”

Her pulse is loud, louder than her voice even. “Not… all the time.”

“You’re right,” his eyes glint mischief, “Sometimes I was victim.” He reaches for her arm, playfully, yes, but there’s that shock again. The one she’d felt in the motel.

“This is strange,” she says honestly.

“A guy in your bedroom? I’m sure.”

Familiar territory, banter: she relaxes. Almost. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“Never. I did say you were addicting.” Bonnie swallows, a little electrified. Damon steps forward, his height distracting, thrilling, Bonnie stop. She leans back but he catches her arm, keeps her upright. “I’m usually very impulsive but I can’t do that with you,” his voice is breathy, a murmur, for her, himself, them, “As much as I want to.”

And her own breath reaches for him. “Do what?”

Damon pushes his mouth into a smile, she feels the effort, the tension, taut, as he pulls away. “Goodnight, Bon-bon. Can I call you that?” The smile slips into a smirk, teasing, dangerous. “I’m going to call you that.”

The vampire winks and jumps into the night, just like that, ever the dramatic. She falls back onto her bed, heart leaping, a smile too, ridiculously, unfolding across her whole face.

Bon-bon.

Chapter Text

She’d made him feel again. No, differently. Or, maybe just how feeling is... supposed to feel. She’d woken him up; he wanted to run. Avoiding Bonnie Bennett would be easy, if she weren’t always in his house, if she didn’t laugh like that, if her magic didn’t leave such a disorientating mist (power and intrigue and a little danger?). And even then, emptying Bonnie Bennett from his brain would probably involve some minor - major - brain surgery. Or magic... which, fuck , she did so brilliantly. 

Damon threw the Bourbon down his throat. Defeated. 

“I’m in love, brother.”

 “Again?” Stefan looked mildly amused, yet not surprised. 

The vampire exhaled. “Apparently not.”

The night is quiet. Not silent. There’s a humming to it – in her hands, her soul, the moon. She inhales, magic like salt on her lips… In the exhale, the vampire is there.

“What are you doing, Damon?”

“How did you know it was me?”

She opens her eyes, blinks at the dark-haired figure towering against the sky. “You’re the only one that would disturb me whilst I’m trying to do magic.”

He swings his foot across the gravel, feigning nonchalance, or whatever it is that Damon does when he’s busted. “I didn’t know you were doing magic.”

“Damon,” she pushes up from the ground to stare at him face on, “I literally said, ‘Okay, I’m going to practise a spell.’”

“Didn’t hear you.”

Bonnie waits, brow raised, unimpressed. Something has definitely shifted around him recently. Like he’s… awkward almost. And Damon Salvatore has never been awkward, not once. Arrogant, brash, abrasive, impulsive, sometimes just a straight up homicidal dickhead, but awkward? It looks funny on him. Almost cute. Her frown deepens.

“What do you want?”

His eyes enlarge momentarily, as if opening to catch something invisible to her, and then the corner of his mouth tilts. A smirk.

“I was wondering if you wanted a… chat?”

And that’s when she realises, his eyes have her held too softly, that his hands are pushed into his pant pockets, and the Damon Salvatore smirk is, under moonlight, actually a smile. A shy one.

So, naturally, she bursts out laughing.

“That has got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say to me.”

He tilts onto the balls of his feet, affronted. “What? Why?”

“A chat? Are you hearing yourself?”

“We chat, don’t we? It’s not weird.”

He actually looks hurt. Bonnie closes her eyes, pushes down the laughter, tries to be rational. “Okay, fine, we can chat.”

Damon remains frowning.

“What?” she probes. He looks like a petulant child, all bunched up, fighting a cry. “You can’t blame me for being surprised.”

“I thought… We’re… you know…”

“We’re what?”

His fingers find their way into his hair, like this is painful for him. “We’re… cool.”

“Me and you?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course, we’re cool, idiot. I’ve been living in your house for the last couple of weeks.”

She thinks that will ease him, but it doesn’t. He looks at her like she’s unfinished – like she, or him, or anyone needs to speak and smooth it all out. What little of the spell remains bubbling on her tongue dissolves. “Are you… okay?”

He brightens, falsely. “Yeah! Good. Excellent. Fabulous.”

“Fabulous?”

Damon clears his throat. Takes a step back. “You know what, maybe you should finish your spell. I… shouldn’t have disturbed you. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. We can… chat if you need to-”

“No, that’s fine.” He smiles again, a borrowed smile. Something he’s taken off a lesser man and tried to fit onto his usually smirking, and yes, charming, face. “Have a good night.”

He turns, heading back towards the yellow lit Boarding House, and Bonnie flings her gaze up at the moon, mouthing what the hell.

What the hell?

Never, in all his years of interacting with Bonnie Bennett, hell, women, has he ever been so socially inept. From the instant she sensed him watching her, he crumbled, caught in the momentum of her building power. It’s a real curse – his realisation – because now she’s not just Bonnie, but Bonnie, and being around her is like having a tiny, persistent exclamation point going ping, ping, ping in his chest.

She’d laughed in his face. Sure, it was brilliant, like always, but he’d rather not hear it directed at him… or his poor attempt at whatever the fuck he was attempting. He’s like a school boy with a crush.

Get it together, vampire. How many years have you been doing this woman thing? A lot.

But she’s different.

Enough with the she’s different! I know she is!

“Damon?”

His brother grins in the doorway, arms folded, a little amused.

“You look perturbed,” he comments, entering the room with an air of superiority Damon usually has the pleasure of wearing.

Damon glares at him. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

Stefan shrugs. “It’s just nice to see you go after someone I haven’t had relations with.”

“Ha. Ha.”

“And… I don’t think Bonnie is going to be an easy win. Which will also be nice to watch.”

Damon flops onto his bed in a groan, dramatic as always, and rightfully so because Stefan is right, Bonnie is going to be a damned uphill battle with no guarantee of a prize.

Not that she’s an object.

Shit, she’s changed him.

“What’s your plan then, Mr Romance?”

“Stay in bed forever and accept defeat.”

Stefan laughs. Then lobs a pillow at his head. “Damon. When have you ever accepted defeat?”

He’s right again. Never.

“But this is Bonnie. I don’t know what’s happening to me, I can’t even talk to her properly, I’m like…” he flails his arms about, “awkward.”

His brother rolls his eyes. “As much as I’d like to see that, you just need to get out your head. You’re right, this is Bonnie. Your best friend – don’t protest, you guys are – and yes, you’ve realised you’re in love with her and that’s amazing, so stop stressing and just be yourself.”

“Never thought I’d hear you tell me to be myself,” he mumbles (words now muffled because his face has found itself in his pillow).

“Never thought the situation would call for it.”

“But… I don’t know who I am anymore. She’s made me question it all.”

And Damon feels the exasperated exhale. “Just hang out with her. You’ll figure it out - and hopefully she will too.”

Just hang out with her. A simple enough instruction only… hanging out with her is loving her and loving her is proving to be a very stressful experience. Unfortunately, there is no alternative. She exists and he loves her.

Here we go.

Chapter Text

She’s used to waking up earlier than the Salvatore brothers, savouring the sleepy mornings of utter, and beautiful, normality before the supernatural crashes into her day. In spring, the day starts fresh and crisp – a peeking sun and birdsong to carry, if only for a little while, the pressures of magic and responsibility and… Damon. Hence her surprise, to walk into the kitchen and see the elder vampire sitting at the breakfast table at the ripening time of eight am.

He smiles at her over his coffee cup. Another of his new smiles.

“I thought your morning started in the afternoon?” she quips, pushing for banter, for them, because the smile is making her uneasy (and not in an entirely unpleasant way).

Damon laughs; takes her in. She’s in an old Mickey Mouse sweater and Winne the Pooh pyjama pants that have somehow grown with her over the years, and her hair, catching it in the oven reflection, resembles a small shrub. Here it comes. The sarcasm. But his smile slips into concern and the moment’s lost. She actually misses the insult.

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Okay, yeah,” she says, walking behind him for a mug.

“Just okay?”

Bonnie flicks the kettle on. “It’s always just okay.”

“Do you… want to talk about it?”

What the fuck is going on?

“No,” she says sharply, “I don’t.”

Damon looks terrified. Good.

Living at the Salvatore’s has consisted of two things: the first being space, lots of it, copious rooms and corridors and corners to throw up a few spells, call Caroline, read, anything. Yet the second, being Damon. Wherever she’d find, he’d be there, all hey Bon-bon, smirk stretching half-way round his face, palm pressed against the book case, Mr Confident. It was what she expected.

This, she thinks, pulling away from the vampire’s unnatural hesitancy, is not.

“Maybe you should have slept a bit more then,” he says eventually and it’s pathetic the way her pulse thickens at the promise of a witty exchange.

“I like my morning cup of tea vampire-free.” She hides the smile in her words, pours the boiling water.

But he moves, actually stands, pushes back his chair and shares an apologetic smile. It’s far too timid on the mouth she’s used to seeing pulled upwards, daring her. “Noted. I’ll see you later, Bon… Bonnie.”

Bonnie.

He might as well have called her Elena.

“Idiot,” he hisses, falling into a jog immediately. Their back yard is warming in the spring sunshine and he needs air. And blood. And his confidence back.

Idiot. You’re being weird. Stop being WEIRD.

It’s like his limbs don’t function normally around her anymore – like everything is heavy or switched around and all he can do is smile at her in this silly way. Even in her kid’s jammies and unbrushed hair, his words dried up and all he wanted to do was make her feel loved. Fuck.

STOP BEING WEIRD.

Damon pushes his feet harder into the ground, increasing speed. Harder still. The rush of wind feels good, dissolves her a bit.

“Damon.”

He hears his name from her mouth and collides to a stand-still. She’s leaning against the back-door, arms folded.

“Ah good, you can hear me. I’m going into town, if you wanted to come. Or drive.”

Be cool. Be cool.

He tries for a nonchalant stroll over to her but he’s jogging before his mind can chastise his legs. Bonnie laughs, her eyes snatching at the light and for fucks sake, Damon Salvatore.

“Never seen you so enthusiastic for a town trip.”

“Yeah, I need some new… pants.” He feels her eyes travel to his standard back denim. “Thought I’d try blue. Something different.”

This isn’t cool.

“Really?”

“Do you not think so?”

She could tell him to buy yellow leggings right now and he’d probably skip to the store. But she doesn’t, thankfully, she just wrinkles her nose and says, “You suit black.”

It’s a compliment. He’s used to pushing for compliments and the old Damon bites at his tongue with a ‘I’d suit you’ just to make her squirm. The pleasure, however, is lost when it’s what he actually wants– then her disgusted reaction is not amusing, just painful.

“Thank you,” he says instead.

Something flickers across her stare – irritation maybe, only it’s not the fiery spark of frustration he’s used to eliciting. This is more disappointing. “Shall we ask Stefan?”

He wants to say no but he’s failing so miserably at being anything but an awkward mess right now that he just shrugs in a non-committal sure and ten minutes later, they’re all in his Camaro heading towards Mystic Falls.

Stefan has taken the backseat, like a true bro, leaving Damon to glance at his passenger – probably a little too often.

A question falls out: “Is that a new dress?”

Bonnie bites her cheek, closing around a smile, he’s sure, and his stomach flips a bit. “Didn’t think you noticed these things.”

“I can’t help it.”

Well, shit. That was a bit too honest.

“Are you…blush-”

“Stefan?” He interrupts, “Where do you think I should park?”

He can feel Bonnie’s eyes on him, trying to figure him out. Good luck. I still can’t.  

“You don’t usually care,” his brother quips, a tone not too dissimilar to Bonnie’s, “But any where’s fine. Presuming you actually pay for a parking ticket.”

“When has Damon ever paid for a parking ticket?”

They laugh together so he joins in. A little late, a little hesitant. He’s trying to detect any disappointment in Bonnie’s tone. Does she want him to start paying for parking tickets? Because he can. He will.

You need to be knocked out, Salvatore.

They pull up along the curb outside the Grille, Stefan and Bonnie chatting easily about what they want to eat for lunch. Damon exits the car first, speeds to her side and, like an idiot, reaches for the passenger door. She’s pushed it into his hand before even his vamp senses intersect.

“Ouch,” he winces.

“Were you?” she stares at him, shock, amusement, confusion, “Were you going to open the door for me?”

And he understands now, with crushing clarity, that this was all a terrible, terrible idea. Not just trying be chivalrous but all of it – just trying at all. He steps back, laughs, tries not to die inside.

“Okay, he’s being weird isn’t he. Like it’s just not me? He’s completely different.”

The younger vampire shrugs, reaches for a fry. “He’s Damon. His moods change.”

“Stefan,” Bonnie groans, “This isn’t a mood change. A mood change is when he’s drunk too much Bourbon and is grumpy… or flirty. Not this.”

Stefan shrugs again. “I’m sure he’ll be back to irritating Damon soon enough.” He glances at his brother making his way back to their table and lowers his voice, “Make the most of it.”

“Got you a milkshake,” Damon tells her. It’s big and pink, all squirty cream and sprinkles.

“I didn’t ask for a milkshake.”

His fingers flinch around the glass. “I just thought-”

“You thought wrong,” she says simply, daring him. Damon pulls back his arm. “I like vanilla anyway.”

Something flickers across his face, something hard and sharp, something him. She can almost see the tongue curling behind his lips, ready to pounce, and she’s made a little electric in the promise.

“I love strawberry,” Stefan says, offering his hand, and instantly dissolving the tension.

Damon passes him the shake, breaking from her stare. The air’s gone limp – something she never thought she’d feel around Damon Salvatore. Even in the very beginning of death threats and fire, oxygen felt different around him. Like it was harder to breathe… and unsatisfying when she did.

He doesn’t talk much for the rest of lunch, brow furrowed in inner monologue. Again, something she’s used to hearing, not guessing.

“Still surprised we don’t have loyalty cards for this place,” she says, trying for laughter but it’s only Stefan’s light chuckle that carries over the table and Damon’s silence feels physically heavy.

She kicks his leg under the table; he kicks hers back and she grins only-

“Sorry,” he mutters. Apologetic.

Now she wants to kick him in the head.

Bonnie turns to Stefan. “How’s the milkshake?”

“It’s good. A bit rich but-”

“I’m going for a walk,” Damon interrupts, standing from the booth, not looking at either of them. There’s defiance in his words though, a reckless impulsivity that she, all of them, recognise as his. He must too because he reddens suddenly, embarrassed, brings a hand to the base of his neck, plays with the wild strands of hair there: “Sorry, I just… need to clear my head.”

“Good.”

He stares at her – she holds it boldly – then leaves the Grille.

Bonnie’s silent in the car ride home. It’s his fault, entirely. She’s frustrated, he’s frustrated – she just wants her friend back, and he doesn’t want a friend at all.

There’s the selfish bastard they all know and love.

Her hands, curled on her lap, dance, on instinct, to the song he has playing on the stereo. He wonders if she notices she’s doing it.

Damon winds the window down, fighting the ache in his own fingers to tangle themselves in hers. The same breeze he felt this morning empties into the vehicle only this time Bonnie’s scent and pulse are swept up in it.

“I’m going to keep working on that spell,” she says as he opens the front door, “Don’t worry about dinner.”

He lets her go because he should. This is exhausting him. He’ll find a way to stop looking at her like she’s magic, even if it means forcing his facial muscles into indifference. He has to.

Stefan pats his shoulder in condolence. “You know, Damon, this actually isn’t at all entertaining. It’s just painful.”

“How do I stop it all?”

His little brother smiles, suddenly wiser. “You can’t. But you can tell her.”

“She’ll laugh.”

Stefan’s nod feels like a wooden stake. “She might.” He glances up the stairs, to where she just ascended, oblivious and angry, “But this isn’t fair to her.”

Nothing is fair.

But, for her, for Bonnie … he might just try.

…

Damon’s on his second blood-bag when she pads downstairs. He’s overwhelmed by the residue of whatever spell she’s been practising before he sees her: she’s still glittering with it when he does.

“Sorry, I didn’t think you’d be-”

“It’s okay,” he stops her, “I’m going upstairs soon.”

She hangs in the silence, green eyes chasing around his face, trying to find something concrete, and as much as he hates he can’t just hold her, he hates more that he can’t be normal. For her.

“How’s the spell going?” he offers.

“It wasn’t easy but… I think I’ve got it now.”

She’s even a couple of metres away and every sense is on overdrive, teasing him. Her purple dressing gown wrapped around her small frame, that delicious magic in her skin, her hair, her words: he’s never wanted anyone more.

And yet, he doesn’t move. He smiles, and she wilts because he can’t seem to do any of this without disappointing her somehow. She makes to cross the room towards the hall then pivots, suddenly ablaze.

“What is wrong with you!?”

Everything in him tenses. “What?”

“You know what! You! You’re just…” her arms fly towards him, “Sitting there. You’re always just sitting there.”

“I don’t-”

“You used to be in my face all the time. Making comments, touching me, being so annoying.” She paces around the living room, like a tiny flame, “Even now you’re still sitting there and letting me talk and-” she stops suddenly, facing him, outraged, “What is wrong with you!?”

You should definitely speak now, idiot.

“Bonnie, I-”

“And why Bonnie all of sudden!?”

He slams his mouth shut, utterly perplexed and then… Ah. He wrestles the grin away from his words, “You miss Bon-bon?” It’s pushing into a smirk rather quickly and he expects her to eye roll or harden her stare but her eyes widen like she’s relieved. Like she can breathe again.

“Maybe,” she says quietly, “And more. I just miss… the banter.”

His mouth dries; something burns and he’s not sure if its within him or the whole of her. He wants to ask what that means. Missing it. Missing it how?

She’s crossed her arms again, irritation scratching away at the hope in her gaze. “Just tell me, Damon. Talk to me.”

“I don’t know how to,” he admits, and it’s the most honest he’s been with her in a long time.

“Talk to me or tell me?”

His hands find his hair again. “Both, I guess.”

She moves suddenly, folding her legs under her so she’s sitting crossed legged on the carpet like a school girl. “Try.”

So, he looks at her and tries to find the beginning. Separate before from now – loving her and… Did I ever not? He feels strangely dizzy, like he hasn’t blood in a while. Bonnie watches from the carpet; does she see all this in his face?

“I don’t know how to be around you anymore,” he tells her, “It’s… it’s honestly a fucking pain in the ass.”

And when she laughs, suddenly, he can’t help but join in. Delight in the ease of what they’ve always done so well.

“What’s changed?” She asks, after the moment.

He thinks about saying you but she hasn’t – she’s still the same Bonnie. He was just a blind idiot. “Me.”

“Well, duh.” And he must have smiled because she says, “Right there! You never used to smile at me like that.”

“What am I smiling like?” It’s a dangerous question.

“Like…” she bites her lip, playing with the words, “Like I’m the only person you see.” And a dangerous answer. “Obviously I know I am now, like it’s just me in this room but-”

He stands, cutting her rambling short. Bonnie’s pulse proliferates, and kicks at the place where his should be.

“Why do I feel like you’re going to say you’re in love with me right now?” It’s on that terrifying line between a joke and a stone-cold truth. Bonnie stands too, meeting him, a person sized width apart. “That’s crazy isn’t it?” Her voice loses certainty in his waiting silence, “Isn’t it?”

Her heartbeat is near deafening now, it’s hard to focus. “Yes, it’s crazy.” She’s knotting the tie of her dressing gown around her fingers and that’s all he can see right now, because looking at her would reveal too much. He’d know her answer in those eyes before he even has the chance to say it. “But I’ve always been crazy.”

She stops fiddling with the purple tie and his whole world stills. “For real?”

“The only time it really has been, I think.”

And he looks at her eyes, like a damned gravitational pull, she really is, and has been, the only person he sees. It’s not happiness and it’s not terror and it’s not awe and it’s not shock, but neither is it laughter. Perhaps it’s all of them combined.

Perhaps that’s love.

Chapter Text

She’s never seen him like this. Thoughtful. Picking flowers by the stem and lifting them into the sunshine, to his nose, inhaling, thinking, replacing. Perfectionist. He buries his palms in his jean pocket, face all scrunched as he envisages the right bouquet to make her smile.

“I’m thinking the pink ones.”

Bonnie glances at the blue hydrangea in her hand. “Yeah, she’ll like pink.”

“But will she love it?” He’s looking at her with some far-off intensity, beyond her, through her, maybe she’s just morphed into Elena now. Either way, it’s unsettling so she laughs.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Bon. You’re not allowed to mock me for this, remember?”

But he’s scowling at the flowers again and it’s hard not to smile. She’d been dancing around her kitchen to the seminal Take Me Home album when her phone buzzed and ‘Don’t Pick Up It’s Damon’ flashed on her lock-screen. A rather redundant contact name because, nine times out of ten, she does. The message read:

Meet me in town in twenty mins. Need help planning the perfect date.

Can’t I finish my solo dance party to One Direction?

No.

And that’s disgusting.

Damon shifts his scowl to her. “I can feel you mocking me, witchy.”

She shrugs, stepping forward so she can pluck the stem from his fingers and smell it herself. “I just never imagined you’d be such a romantic.”

The vampire snorts; snatches the flower back. “Please. I’m a textbook romantic.”

“I’ve never noticed.”

“That,” he sing-songs, smirking in that very Damon way he does, “is because you’re blind to my charms. A good thing because my heart can only handle one at a time.”

He thumbs another perfect pink something – lifts it from the box to squint at the colour in comparison. “I don’t think anyone would be able to compete with Elena for that, Damon,” Bonnie quips but he doesn’t hear, or ignores her, and is back to waving flowers in front of her face.

“These yes? All pink?”

“Um, maybe throw in another colour? Like a pop.”

Damon’s eyes enlarge. “A pop.”

“Here,” she reaches across him, plucks something bright and yellow, and thrusts it into the three-part flower arrangement he has constructed in his hand. “It’s pretty, see.”

He smiles, quick and fluttery. Kinda cute. “Yeah. It’s pretty.”

They shuffle into the shop to queue, Damon’s selected flower types stiff inside his curled fist. “It’s hot today. Do you wanna grab a drink or something after this?”

Bonnie looks up at him. “Can you even get hot?”

“Can I… get hot?” His brow has quirked which means she, naturally, must eye roll.

“Ha. Ha.”

Damon nudges her with his elbow, smirk stretching to its rightful place. “That was a question.”

“You know you’re hot. Stop fishing.”

“You think I’m hot?”

She blushes. Idiot. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned about Elena’s opinion.”

“Why would I be concerned?” he smiles at the florist beckoning them forward, “I know Elena knows I’m hot.”

The shop ceiling pulls on her eyes, as with many things the conceited vampire tells her. She watches, amused, as he charms the lady behind the desk. Flirts with her, compliments. She’s easily fifty something and loving it.

“One perfect bouquet of flowers, thanks to Dawn here,” he winks, pivoting to grin at Bonnie all victorious.

“Three hours later. Woo.”

He pushes her arm. “Come on cranky pants, let me buy you an iced latte.”

“You really think I’m that basic,” she retorts, easily fitting under the curve of his arm, raised to hold the door open. Thoughtful, again.

“You don’t want an iced latte?”

She hesitates on the sidewalk, looks up at him in the heat and sun – behind that ridiculously large and mostly pink bouquet, a silly, easy smile – and sighs. “No, of course, I want an iced latte.”

Damon winks, as flippantly as he did to the florist. “Women. So easy to please.”

Now she pushes his arm. “Asshole.”

“Careful! The flowers.”

“The flowers,” she imitates, matching his stride down Main Street. They don’t often hang out just the two of them – very rarely if at all. But… this is nice. “Was this all you wanted help with?” she asks, strangely hoping that he’ll say no.

“It takes more than flowers for a perfect date, witchy.” They stop outside Mystic Meg’s, the little cafetiere on the corner, and he steers her back towards a table in the shade. “Grab a seat. I’ll go get your drink.”

Bonnie watches him stroll through the open doors, then dart back to hand her the bouquet, a grin in his eyes, and all she can think is: he’s so happy. Love does that to you – stretches across your heart, your face, your world, until everything is intensified and glittering and nothing is really enough. She almost catches a hum of it watching him. She almost feels something else… something uncomfortable. Bonnie frowns; pushes at it with a smile. Happiness isn’t quantified – there’s plenty for Elena, for Damon, for Caroline, for Stefan, for all of them. And her. It’s a little quiet at the moment, stuck in shadows and memories she cries about in the sleepless hours but it will come.

For now, she thinks, smiling at the vampire strolling back towards her, I will be satisfied with whatever is emanating from Damon’s.

“You owe me $5,” he announces. Bonnie reaches for her purse and Damon slaps her hand. “I’m joking, idiot.”

“You see, this is the paradox I have to try and understand,” she pulls at the straw with her tongue, “You’re nice and buy me a drink and then you call me idiot.”

“I’m a mysterious vamp, Bonniekins,” he says, watching her drink, “Gotta keep you on your toes. Though, you’re pretty short already.”

“Petite.”

He laughs. It cuts into the skin around his mouth, his eyes, and she looks back down at her drink, plugs the straw. “Fine. You’re pretty petite already.”

“Pretty and petite,” she teases, smiling as she attempts to play his favourite game.

Damon curves a brow. “You want me to tell you you’re pretty?”

Shit. He’s better. “Erm, no, I-”

“You’re very pretty. Pretty annoying and pretty pretty.” He sounds as nonchalant as if he were ordering fries at the Grille. Damon stands, “I’m gonna grab a blood bag from the car. In a bit.”

She mirrors his salute, with a limp, slightly confused wave, his comment flipping about too wildly in her mind.

…

“Is there a reason that this, you know, why this date is so special?” She says awkwardly from behind him. Damon’s taking her on a cross country trek through some woodland, insisting he saw a viewing spot on Pinterest. He’d splayed his palms over the café table, mouth still tinged red with blood, and said “let’s go.”

“Yup,” he throws a grin over his shoulder, “Gonna tell her I love her.”

Bonnie stops walking. “Wait, you haven’t yet?”

“Why are you surprised?” He turns to face her – a twig in his hair that she wants to reach for and untangle.

“It’s just… obvious isn’t it? Like how you are with, or around, someone. Like it’s easy.”

“Like it’s easy?”

She stalls, suddenly conscious that she hasn’t been in love - or, at least not an Elena/Damon kind – and her choice of adjective probably sounded very stupid. “You’ve proved you’re such a romantic now, I guess I just expected you to blurt it out straight away,” she says instead.

“Blurt it out. Hmm. Yeah, let’s leave the love declarations to me.”

She shrugs, relieved when he continues striding through the undergrowth towards who knows where. The summer air is hot and sticky but the trees spread their wide limbs, offering shade and dancing shadows. It really is nice, she thinks, hanging out with him.

“Ah,” the vampire halts – she almost collides into his back. “Think I see it.”

“What?”

Damon pushes her in front of him, hands on her shoulders to steer her and is he always this touchy? “There. Can you see?”

“The tower thing.”

“That’s it.”

“What is that?”

“A tower thing.” He grins at her eye roll. “Come on, Judgey. You gotta see the potential.”

She bites away the smile at another of his many nicknames for her. “How do we get up there?”

The vampire stretches. “You’re gonna have to hold on tight.”

“Damon.” He smirks, reaching for her. Bonnie steps back. “Damon, no-”

He grabs her waist, pulling her frame into his chest, and she’s sure her heartbeat must be entirely consuming for him, because it’s really quite consuming for her, and then everything blurs and all she can feel, smell and see is Damon. And a lot of flying colour.

In a breath she’s released.

“Damon!” His hand is still on her back, steadying her. “You can’t just do that!”

“Really? But I just did.” He releases contact to smirk at her, openly enjoying her outrage with glittering eyes.

She inhales, dizzy from the speed in which he carried her, but insisting on continuing to chastise him. It’s what he needs, the asshole. You can’t just go grabbing people and vamp-speeding. Especially not people that aren’t your girlfriend. Bonnie pushes her mouth to form these words aloud when her new surroundings pours into her senses. She’s in the sky: her home town, scattered below, runs away from her… her anger too. Damon’s expression tells her she’s smiling before she can.

“Do you think at night? Up here.”

She steps forward, places her hands on the crumbling wall, dares to look down, then settles on looking out. “At sunset. With wine.”

“Wine.”

“I love wine.”

She feels his presence next to her. The quiet awe of their town, so distant, so still. “Does Elena?”

Elena, Bonnie. Elena. “Yeah. Everyone loves wine.”

“What’s her favourite?”

She squints at the Virginian forest beyond. “I’m not sure actually.”

“What’s your favourite?”

“Rosé,” she says instantly.

Damon nods. “Easy. I’ll get that then.”

They stand in silence for a moment. Looking. Thinking. (And Bonnie’s heart is still beating a bit fast, she’s not sure why).

“I think you need fairy lights,” she says, just as Damon says, “I thought you loved white wine.”

They laugh, it’s almost awkward. The vampire turns his back on the view to stare at her, arms crossed, leaning casually against the wall. “What the hell are fairy lights?”

“Little lights. On a wire. They’re magical.”

His cheeks dimple. “Your eyes are lighting up just thinking about them.”

“They just add to the ambiance of a place. You could hang them over the wall and,” she spins, directing her hands like a conductor, “here. You could get loads.”

He watches her, a little dumbfounded. “Don’t they use electricity?”

“You can get battery operated ones.”

“From where?”

She frowns. “When is this date?”

“Tonight.”

“What!?”

He pushes from the wall, palms connecting with her shoulders again. “Relax, Bon. If you think fire-fly-”

“Fairy-”

“Whatever lights are that important, I’ll drive to the hard ware store now. Buy a shit load.”

She looks up at his amused face, alight with that buzzing love she’d noticed earlier. She feels it in his fingers – her shoulders shiver under them. “Any girl would be very happy with a shit load of fairy-lights.”

“Exactly,” he lifts his hands in triumph, “Women. So easy to please.”

He tells her she looks beautiful. She smiles. He smiles. They’re all smiles. She asks him where they’re going and he throws her a charming smirk and says, “Somewhere special,” and she doesn’t eyeroll.

Damon parks the Camaro, helps his date out the car. Elena finds his hand in the dark – they’d missed sunset. It was okay. He almost didn’t want to see it without Bonnie there anyway. She was so enamoured with that view.

“Where are you taking me, Mr Mysterious?”

He squeezes her hand. “You’ll see.”

They walk in whispers through the forest and he’s nervous, he is. It has to be perfect. Because she’s perfect and he doesn’t deserve her anyway -

“Damon?”

“Yes?”

“You okay?”

“Very.”

She leans into his side; in her other arm that bouquet. It really is pink.

“Yellow,” she’d said in surprise, “Bold choice.”

“It’s a pop of colour,” he offered.

Elena drew her slender finger over a rose.

They reach the clearing and he asks if she’ll be carried up there, vamp-speed. Elena giggles, kisses him, lets him pull her close. He breathes: they’re up the tower.

“Wow.”

Wow indeed, Bon-bon. The witch was right, the fairy-lights were an excellent idea. Elena sweeps her eyes across the golden space, hovering on the horizon and the town below, before gazing up at Damon in delight. It’s everything he could have hoped.

“Elena, I…”

“Yes?”

He tilts her chin with his fingers, readying to share what’s on his heart. She smiles at him, Elena, his love, she smiles and he wishes it was Bonnie.

He wishes it was Bonnie.

Damon jolts, breaks contact, screws his eyes shut. What the fuck?

“Everything okay?” Elena asks him, moving forward, pressing her palm on his chest, the other on his neck and no, no, no-

“I just remembered something important,” he rushes.

“I don’t need it-”

“No! This you will.” He smiles, or tries, tells her to wait here, and speeds away, out of earshot, fumbles for his phone.

It rings. Rings off. He tries again. And again.

“Damon what-”

“It’s all wrong.”

“What?”

“The date.”

He feels her pause. “Elena doesn’t like it?”

“No,” he pulls a hand through his hair, “She loves it.”

 “Yeah, I’m trying to follow but I can’t…”

Damon’s eyes close. “It’s just what you said. About it being… easy.”

“Oh. Yeah, Damon, I don’t really know anything about that-”

He cuts Bonnie off, clarity rising like dangerous wave. “I think you’re right though. It is. Elena,” he glances up at the tower, her silhouette stares out onto the view, “Elena’s not.”

“Damon. This is just fear because you’re about to tell the woman you love that you do love her and-”

“No.”

He thinks about today, the ease of it, with her, Bonnie, in her jeans and sneakers and eye rolls. He thinks of the too pink bouquet and that blue flower she held throughout his musing. How she brushed against his arm when reaching for the yellow; how he made every excuse to touch her after that to test if it felt the same. It was easy to call her pretty, easy to make her laugh, easy to irritate her, easy to show her the only world she’s known from a height only they existed in.

“No? Damon…?”

“I’m going to break up with Elena.”

“Are you crazy!?”

He glances at the silhouette again, pained. She really does deserve better. “She’s probably going to hate me so… be on hand to comfort her with Blondie. Feel free to indulge in the name calling. I’m sure dick will be thrown around a lot.”

“Hey,” she says softly, “I’m not going to call you a dick but… is really now the best time. On this grand romantic date?”

No, probably not, but he’s impulsive and notoriously selfish.

“Damon?”

He folds under the way she says his name – like her heart is aches with his. “Yes?”

“I know you care about her. And even though she’s probably going to be very hurt for a while, she’ll understand. Eventually. I… don’t know much about love but I imagine, when it’s right, it’s mutual. So, when it’s not….” She lets the insinuation fall.

He nods, forgetting she can’t see, and, because he’s impulsive and notoriously selfish, adds: “I had the best day with you today, Bon.”

There’s a pause before she replies, embarrassed, he’s sure, “Me too. We should… I mean, maybe not yet but, I’d like to hang out again. More.” Another pause. “Just to mock you, of course.”

“Charming.”

They hang in the silence. He has more to say, and she must feel it. In fact, Damon’s sure Bonnie is thrumming with words too but Elena is waiting for him and it isn’t fair. On any of them: the witch included.

“Okay,” they say at once and laugh again, like they had on the tower.

“Okay,” Bonnie takes control, and good because he’s not sure he’ll leave otherwise, “Go and do your thing.”

He exhales. “Yes.”

“And Damon?”

He stills. “Yes?”

“Don’t be a dick about it.”

He chuckles, a little defeated, a little alive. “No. I’m going to be honest.”

Chapter Text

She doesn’t want to go. Even though it’s her best friend’s birthday, even though according to Caroline ‘they all need to let loose and have fun’, even though she’s been in her bedroom for days on end, seeing nobody but the cast of Gossip Girl and her dad occasionally, on his way and in and out from work, it takes her vampire friend’s supernatural grip to drag her out of bed.

“I’m just going to bring the mood down.”

“Bonnie Bennett. This is Elena’s birthday. You’re coming.”

But saying no to Caroline takes more effort than she has available so, begrudgingly, she lets the blonde yank at her hair, draw a black wing over her eyelids, and zip her into a dress she hasn’t worn since she was sixteen.

Bonnie doesn’t look in the mirror for long – the face she sees feels borrowed. Even more so when Caroline asks her to smile. Her muscles are tight and sadness tugs on her limbs, seducing her back to bed. It’s easier there, hidden from expectation. The magic beneath her skin has retreated and alone, she has no reason to call for it back.

“You can do this, Bon.”

Caroline squeezes her hand, crushing bone a little, but it’s nice, the contact. A reminder.

The Boarding House door is open and they stroll right in – well, Caroline does, Bonnie shuffles behind, holding the heels the blonde insisted on in her hand. It’s been a few weeks since she’s stood in the Salvatore living room and she sticks to the edges, the peripheries, watching as Caroline zips about with balloons.

“Bonnie!” Stefan’s smile is warm. “It’s really good to see you.” He hesitates before opening his arms to hug her, as if he’s worried the contact will snap her in half. “How have you been?”

“You know, getting by.”

He’s about to speak again when Damon sweeps in and something in her kickstarts. “Elena needs you,” he says to Stefan, then sweeps right out again. Stefan says something to her she doesn’t hear: all her senses have become a heartbeat.

The first dream happened three weeks ago. It’s not unusual to have strange, unwanted fantasies in dreams but what the fuck was her second thought, not the first. The first was a startling how do I get back there?

Describing Damon as a homicidal dickhead would be kind. It wasn’t so long ago her blood was fuelled with such hatred for the vampire that imagining killing him became her happy place. He has always shown little to no interest in wanting to preserve her life but one day, tragically, she looked at his smirk and felt a lone butterfly. It wasn’t much that he did, because he never did much other than nearly ruin their lives, but they’d all been walking back from life threatening situation number seventy-two and Stefan had tripped on his laces. It was a barely perceptible stumble but for a vampire to stumble, outrageous, and a snort flew up her throat and into the air. She hadn’t thought anyone had heard it but when she looked around to check, Damon was smirking.

In the sadness (because dying and coming back to life again and again is not the greatest for one’s mental health), engaging with Damon Salvatore in her dreams has become a new type of happy place. One that has followed her into the daylight too. Before now, in his house, with this fleet of angry butterflies, Bonnie saw no harm in indulging: she had become a recluse anyway, retired from her witch duties, and only replying to messages hours, sometimes days, after they’d been sent. Seeing Damon again wasn’t on her agenda and besides, fantasy Damon was just that – fantasy. Actual, living (kinda) Damon Salvatore is a dickhead and one smirk and several dreams can’t change that.

“Bon!” Caroline yelps, “Grab the balloon!”

She bends to catch the white heart drifting by her feet, grateful for an action to interrupt her thoughts.

“Where do you want it?”

Caroline squints at the room. “By the fireplace. No. Wait, yes. The fireplace.”

She’s tying the balloon when a flood of voices crashes into one another and Caroline jumps down from the window sill to greet the first load of guests. Somewhere, music starts and Bonnie clenches her eyes shut in the swelling panic. Breathe. You don’t have to stay for long. Just see Elena and then you can go.

It feels like walking in slow motion as more and more guests arrive, most of them probably compelled judging by the numbers. Elena is on the first step, chatting away to some friends from school – she sees Bonnie and splits open in a grin.

“There you are!”

Bonnie holds the hug, tells her happy birthday, compliments her outfit, but she feels herself shrinking away from it all, even in a pretty dress and Caroline’s makeup. Because it’s easier there.

“I’ll get you a drink,” Elena says loudly, over the noise of the party.

“No, it’s okay-”

“Don’t be silly. Wait here.”

She tries, she does, but her face is hot and she should never have come. It takes a lot of squeezing between people to reach the emptiness of the hallway, though her exhale is sliced in half.

“Escaping already?” Damon leans in the kitchen door frame, arms folded, brow quirked.

She prays he can’t hear her pulse. “I’m not really in the party mood.”

“Ah, come on, Bon. I think we deserve this. You especially.”

He’s looking at her in a way that makes her very aware of the dress she’s wearing, of herself altogether. Like he’s the mirror she’s been avoiding.

She speaks to her slippers (the heels never made it on). “I… I don’t think I can tonight.”

“But you made an effort.” His gaze snakes down her, lazy but intentional, his unique, frustrating, power. “Maybe not the shoe choice.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” she manages to say, because they’ve never been like this. Or, she’s never been like this – nervous and…electrified.

Damon’s always been charming.

Fuck.

“You’ve been very disappointing actually,” he lifts the tumbler to his lips, “I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I may have even been missing you.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“No? Caroline isn’t nearly as fun to wind up.”

She can’t decide where to look, or where to go. The need to flee bubbles but another movement is now playing across her mind: a forward motion, towards him.

Then Elena rushes into the hallway and Damon straightens. Electrified, of course, because he probably still loves her. “You’re not going, are you?”

“Erm,” she stumbles because her friend looks sad, pleading.

Damon strides into the middle of them. “Nope. She’s just looking for suitable shoes.”

Satisfied with the answer, Elena grins and flits back into the living room. Damon follows and, her pulse leaps at this, throws Bonnie a wink.

It says, I dare you, in a very dangerous language.

She gives in because feeling alive is addictive.

Her shoes are halfway under the couch; she has to push away a few pairs of legs to drag them out. Bonnie fiddles with the strap and when she stands, wobbling from the added height, he is watching her, smirking. Damon raises his glass a little in the air. Her eyes roll without thinking, like a reflex, and it makes him smirk harder, cutting up one side of his face.

Caroline steals her from his stare. “Okay, we are dancing. Now.”

“What?”

“To the song, duh.”

Gripping her hand, the blonde parts the crowd, and though Bonnie can no longer see the vampire, she’s acutely aware that he is still looking at her. She buzzes at that, this stupid crush, revels in it.

And dances.

They entwine hands, like they used to before the Salvatore’s, before all of it, and jump and spin and laugh. She’s shouting along to the lyrics when he feels him.

“Would you look at that,” Damon says from behind her, “she can smile.” In turning to face him, she stumbles. His fingers are around her arm in a breath – one stolen with the contact on her skin. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.”

“Falling over?”

Damon hums with a laugh but if there was more to say, he keeps it for himself. His fingers, though, remain on her arm and her heart beat flies to that spot, pounding beneath them. Is he feeling this too?

Caroline has started to dance with a guy she recognises from English; his friend is trying to catch Bonnie’s eye. She dodges but with Damon, his fingers now brushing up and down her arm, his body shifting to the beat of the music, she cannot. Bonnie looks up; he lifts his hand.

A voice is in her ear: “Can I just say, I think you’re absolutely beautiful.” It’s not Damon’s.

She smiles, probably unconvincingly, at the friend. He’s attractive, maybe, but her skin is still hot from where the vampire was touching her.

“Do you mind?” he says to Damon.

If hesitation flickers in his gaze it evaporates just as quickly as it came. He steps back, “Be my guest. This girl’s magic.”

And there’s that smirk, just for them, a secret, at his joke.

The other man leans for her ear again, says something about how he’s already under her spell, gross, but she’s watching the vampire captivate the room. He brushes his hand along every girl’s back, smiles, winks, charms, has them all hostage and takes another tumbler from the table, but as he ascends the staircase, he looks behind him, into her stare, and mouths ‘good luck.'

Chapter Text

Her backs against the wall. Leather heels reaching up her thighs, black, like her nails and dress and the memory of him. It’s one year later and, still, every shade of Damon Salvatore fuse into darkness – a chasm that she confronts in the black of her own closed her eyes, or here, in an alley, where her friends laugh over cocktails inside the bar.

But love is bright.

Love is bold.

Love is kind.

“I’m trying to understand it,” she says into the phone, “because I don’t see anything there but it sticks, Damon, it sticks like a fucking…” She tilts her head back on the brick. “I’m doing everything I wanted to do. Being normal and going out and this city is fun, I have friends,”

Her breathing has layered. She presses a hand over her chest, where her heart is black and swirls with him.

“I speak to Caroline and check in with Stefan and he tells me that you’re okay, you’re travelling, wasting time, I,”

But love is patient.

“Fucking hell, Damon. I think about you, okay, all the time. It sneaks up on me but it’s dark, kind of crushing and,”

Love doesn’t feel like this.

“Why do I love you anyway.”

Shit. She drops her phone onto the pavement.

SHIT.

The battery has fallen out; it’s just a cheap one she picked up at the supermarket, barely even has a camera but that voicemail, that fucking voicemail. She scrambles on the floor, gathering the halves of her phone and cursing again and again.

She waits as the screen loads, sitting back against the bricks and when Bonnie closes her eyes, the darkness has brightened.

He listens sitting on the hood of his Camaro, staring at a mountain on the side of the highway, squeezing the last dregs of blood out of the bag.

It’s one year later and still, her voice kicks at his dead pulse. She sounds drunk and his mouth does something it’s not supposed to anymore: it smirks.

She isn’t making much sense and it’s hard to hear over the noise of the city (Detroit, he knows, he checks in with Stefan) but when she says that she thinks about him, he feels nauseous, like the blood is flushing back up his throat.

Bonnie pauses; Damon hangs his pathetic life in that pause.

“Where are you going to go?” He said from the doorway. He hated watching her pack, hated that he had nothing to say to make her stay.

  “I don’t know. Dad had some family out West somewhere, I think.”

  “Will you come back?”

  Bonnie hesitated at the wardrobe. “Maybe.” She yanked it open: “Don’t worry. I’ll let you know when I’m on my death bed.”

  “Bon. It’s not… it’s not like that.”

  But it was like that. Bonnie was alive; Elena was not.

  “I get it, Damon, I really do. She’s the love of your life and-”

 " You’re my -”

 " Something. Yes,” she looked up at him, “I’ve always just been something to other people. I need to go and figure out who the hell I actually am. For me.”

  He hated that he didn’t know how to tell her how incredible she is without hurting them. How the time he almost said he loved her she stood up from the couch and said, please don’t.

  “I might not be here when you come back,” he said instead.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to be.”

  “Can I call you?”

  Bonnie’s eyes said what they had before, please don’t.

The pause snaps, there’s a muffled line he can’t decipher, a crash and a beep. Damon winces at the sound.

Dammit, Bonnie.

 There are about fifty drafted, unsent texts to Bon Voyage on his phone, most of them bourbon induced.

I’m an idiot.

I’m near Detroit. I know you won’t want to see me but please.

Can we talk?

Can’t believe it’s been a year, Bon. I’ve almost forgotten how annoying you are.

Are you okay?

I miss you.

Fuck, Bon. How do I stop thinking about you?

It’s definitely too fucking late to say this but I think I fell in love with you back in the prison world. I shouldn’t have, I know, but I’m always that dick who wants what I can’t have.

Stefan says I just need to go and see you but I’m scared I’ll hurt you.

He drafts another one:

I missed your voice so much.

Then he sends it, like that dick who wants what he can’t have always does.

“You’re blind,” Bonnie’s friend, Alessia, laughs, “He’s head over heels for you, boo.”

“I really don’t think so…”

“Look,” her friend grabs her by the shoulders, steering her towards the bar. The tall man polishing glasses glances the other way, embarrassed. “See. He’s whipped.”

“Fine, fine,” Bonnie rolls her eyes, “I’ll go over.”

“That’s my girl.”

She’s been trying a new thing in this city called, going for it. Mystic Falls sapped the life, and magic, out of her. Surrounded by normality proved that all she needed was to appreciate herself, not just what she could do, or who she could save, to feel like a person, not a novelty.

“Hi,” she smiles at the man, “I’m Bonnie.”

He looks terrified to see her standing in front of him, his mouth hanging a little lopsided and Bonnie bites her lip from wanting to laugh.

“I’m, er, Daniel. Hi. You, er, hi.”

“Nice to meet you, Daniel. You going to pour me a drink or…?”

“Oh! Yes, um, what, what do you want?”

“Surprise me,” she says sweetly, enjoying how flustered this makes him. Going for it means reclaiming back some of that sparkle she used to have, mimicking the power she’d seen paraded around her old town.

The text comes through as she’s sipping her second martini and Daniel is telling her about his forensics degree at the university. Her phone doesn’t display the text just: New Message from D and all the air in the bar condenses.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” she rushes but she can’t concentrate and the empty stool beside her is occupied by him now, by Damon, he’s leaning on his hand, smirk leaning towards the right side of his face, beautiful, infuriating and-

“Actually, I’m just going to go to the bathroom. Sorry.”

She reads the single line on the toilet. Then again. And again. She reads every word individually, lingering on the syllables (because she’s always made poetry out of Damon Salvatore and that’s always been her downfall).

Now that she knows she loves him she can fight it. With the Daniels of the world, with the freedom of being Bonnie Bennett the woman, nothing more, nothing less. And she loves this power, she really does…

She just might love Damon more.

Shit.

Her head’s spinning from the cocktails. It’s not the first time she’s hovered over his name and debated pressing call – before leaving that voicemail, she’s sat in this very cubicle several nights, her entire body pulsing with wanting to hear him. Then she’ll think of Elena and remember that she left second choice behind when she left Mystic Falls.

But now.

Now.

Love is impulsive.

She counts the rings. One, two, three-

“Bonnie!?”

Love is

“Bonnie? You’re there!? Hello?”

Love is

“Damon.”

His laugh activates the muscle memory in her mouth – a stupid, child’s smile.

“I just listened to your voice mail and-” he stops, “Wait, is everything okay? Are you in trouble?”

“No, no, I’m fine. Really. I just…wanted to say hi.”

Bonnie cringes at how lame it sounds but Damon hums, a low murmur that makes her ache to see him, for real, even though it might just kill her. “Well, hello to you too, Bon-bon.”

“No one’s called me that in a while.”

“Bon-bon. Bon-bon. Bon-bon.”

She laughs without thinking.

“You sound happy,” he says, “It’s a happy sound.”

“I’m…”

But Damon is speaking again. “Why has this taken so long for us to do? I’m grinning like an idiot on the side of the road, Bon. Fuck. This is amazing.”

It is amazing, it feels like how flying might, which is why she’s stopped herself every time she’s wanted to.

“I’ve got to go,” she tells him, “My friend is waiting.”

“Wait? What!?”

“I’m sorry. I-”

“No, Bonnie, please.”

She won’t go anywhere now. Love is painful, it’s always been painful.

“Damon.” She pours the darkness into his name, pleading with him to understand all that she’s been battling.

“Just tell me,” he says quietly, like they’re the only two people left in the world, “what did you say?”

How can her heart beat this fast without passing out? “When?”

“The end of your voicemail got cut off. There was a crash thing and,” he sighs, “I don’t know what you said.”

When Bonnie came to this city, she ripped off her shadows and left them to the wind. They followed her, of course, tightening in her chest at night, smelling of Damon and what she could have had, but she kept moving: going for it.

“Bon, I have to know. Even if you never call me again, just tell me. Please.”

He really is the only person left in this world as she does the Bonnie Bennett thing and goes for it.  

“I said,” she fights through the constriction of her throat, “I said, why do I love you anyway.”

Chapter Text

Over the last one hundred and eighty something years, Damon’s learned many things: how to ride a horse, how to drive a car, how to stop killing people, how to make pancakes and not burn them, how to make pancakes and burn them on purpose to annoy Bonnie, how to flirt with Bonnie, how to annoy Bonnie, how to fall in love with Bonnie (though that didn’t really take much learning).

So why the fuck can’t he express himself when the woman he loves has literally just confessed to him?

The silence wasn’t long but it was long enough.

“I really shouldn’t have said that. I- Bye, Damon.” And she hung up the phone.

He called her back: straight to voicemail. He tried again: it didn’t even ring.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he scolds himself. Of course, his mind hits back with a tirade of misdeeds (most of which involve draining the blood of innocent men and women) but somehow Bonnie always remains his biggest regret.

It’s a mess – his life, his mind, his inability to use the English language when he most desperately needs to – and he’s speeding down the highway towards Mystic Falls, Virginia because he’s finally admitted that his younger brother is wiser than him.

In the few hours it takes for him to pull into the drive of the Salvatore Boarding House, Damon has recounted every second of their conversation about a million times, in multiple directions. He lingers longest on her laugh.

He yanks the key out of his jeans pocket and strides on inside, following the sound of chatter into the kitchen where Stefan and Caroline are staring at him, mouth ajar.

“No time for reunion hugs,” Damon announces, slumping down in a chair, “I need help.”

“Don’t tell me one of the Originals is back,” Caroline says, just about recovering from his sudden intrusion.

“Worse.”

“Worse!?” the two vampires say at the same time.

It’s been a few months since he’s been back home and it’s nice to see his brother and Blondie still as cosy as ever. Simple.

Damon’s not sure he was born for simple.

“Once again, I have fallen in love with someone I shouldn’t.”

“Damon.”

“Don’t Damon me, Stefan. I’ve been Damoning myself the whole damned journey over here!” He presses his forehead on the table, “I’ve been Damoning myself for the past year.”

“Am I missing something here?” Caroline begins, “I thought the love of your life was El-”

“He’s talking about Bonnie,” Stefan interrupts.

“BONNIE!” Blondie seems to forget that they all have super hearing and that her random shrieks cause physical pain. “Sorry,” she lowers her voice, “but how can it be Bonnie when Elena- Oh. OH!”

“You’re shouting again,” Damon groans on the table. He’s decided he won’t lift his head until his problems have miraculously solved themselves (aka Stefan and Caroline have told him what to do).

“A few nights before she left, we went out drinking. Bonnie felt really tired so we agreed to go back to mine but she said, ‘No, I want to go to Damon’s.’ I laughed because she was really drunk but Bon kept insisting.”

If he still had a pulse, it would be speeding around his whole body.

“She said she had a secret that she wanted to tell you but she shouldn’t.”

Damon looks up now, “Okay? What happened?”

“Oh, um,” Blondie wrinkles her nose, “Then she threw up over her shoes.”

Classic, Bon-bon.

“Right.”

“Obliviously the secret was that she loves you but she couldn’t say anything because of Elena. Wow. Everything makes sense now.”

“That’s nice for you, Caroline,” Damon says dryly and flops back down onto the table.

His brother snorts. “You’re being an idiot, you know that.”

“Noted.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times you just need to talk to her.”

Damon tilts his head to stare up at the two vampires from his resting position on the wood. “I did. That’s why I’m stuck.”

Blondie’s eyes widen. “You told Bonnie that you love her!?”

“No, I listened to her confess to me and didn’t say anything.”

Stefan folds his arms. “You’re joking.”

“Look at me brother. I’m pathetic.” Something sharp pokes him under the table. “Ouch.”

“Damon,” Caroline says sharply, “Bonnie Bennett is my best friend and I’m sure the last thing she wanted to do was fall in love with you, no offence, but she has and it’s probably been eating her up inside –”

“How is this supposed to help?”

She kicks him again, “Shut up and listen. You need to man, or, vampire, up and tell her that you feel the same way. Yes, I know, but what about Elena, what about hurting her, what about hurting Bonnie, but for fucks sake Damon, my best friend deserves, more than anyone, to be happy.”

Damon stares at her, feeling a surreal urge to clap after her speech and a more surreal urge to cry. “It sounds so…easy,” he says after a while.

“Because it is.”

No, it never is. Not for him. He has a way of touching anything special and burning it; he can’t stay in love with Elena without dragging someone else into his fire.

“She won’t pick up my calls,” he says limply.

“Don’t call her!” Caroline has shot up from her seat, exasperated, “Go and find her. Go to Detroit right now and sweep her off her feet.”

“This isn’t a rom-com,” Damon snaps. He isn’t sure why he’s suddenly angry but anger is simpler than hurting or guilt. “There’s a reason why I’ve never told her before because I’ll do what I always do.”

“And what’s that? Be a coward?” Caroline snaps back.

“No. I’ll give her everything I have until I can’t anymore.”

The blonde is silenced; Damon too. They sit in the pause and he’s sure, if his ache had a sound, they’d all be wincing.

“Damon,” Stefan says softly, “It’s okay to let Elena go.”

“No,” he says, head shaking, “Of course it isn’t. She’s waiting for me. She’ll wake up when, when Bonnie, Bonnie –”

He doesn’t want to talk anymore.

“I know you love Elena, you’ve always loved her, but maybe it’s different?” Stefan says carefully. “Maybe Bonnie’s a different kind of love to how you loved and love Elena? I’m not sure it’s a one love-fits-all scenario.”

He’s right: it’s never been the same. Elena was a whirlwind – Bonnie was patchwork of laughs and eyerolls and silence. He learned a lot about her, about him, in their silence.

“I’d be really annoyed at you for being wise if it weren’t helping,” Damon grumbles and Caroline chuckles, reaching for the hand squashed under his elbow.

“I want you to be happy too, Damon,” she tells him.

It seems impossible to achieve – like one of those adverts to a beautiful private island you see on billboards but it’s photoshopped. Happiness with Bonnie is something he’s dreamed about privately, fighting through doubt and reality: how could someone like Bonnie love him? How could he possibly be who Bonnie deserves to be loved by? How can he love Bonnie when he loves Elena? Why didn’t he just kiss her that time on the couch, instead of watching her walk away?

Happiness, like this, this happy, probably doesn’t exist for Damon Salvatore but he’ll try.

“The next flight leaves for Detroit in two hours,” Caroline announces.

“What!?”

“Uh huh, that means you need to get up, hop in the shower and go.”

“The shower part is a bit mean,” Damon says.

She gives him a look. “You’ve been sweating in your car for months. Bonnie deserves a fresh Damon.”

“I do shower,” he protests as the blonde pushes him out the room. “Stefan, control her please.”

His brother just lifts his hands. “I’m not getting involved.”

He rolls his eyes and hurries up the stairs to his untouched bedroom, tries to be excited as he unpeels his (fine, slightly sweaty) t-shirt, but

What Bonnie deserves.

Caroline kept using that word. Deserves.

Nothing about who Damon is should be worthy of Bonnie Bennett and, as much as it gives them a chance at that elusive Billboard happiness, he almost hates that she loves him.  

She said it herself: “But why do I love you anyway?”

Damon is still standing in his bathroom, staring at the jet of water gushing out the shower head when Stefan knocks on his door.

“Damon?”

“Not ready.”

“No, Damon, you need to come downstairs.”

“I haven’t showered yet.”

“Damon, seriously. Come down.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

“Damon,” Stefan’s voice is sharp, “You need to.”

She thought it would feel strange: buying the ticket, waiting at the gate, sitting in her seat on the plane, but Virginia rolled under the window in comforting familiarity. The Bonnie Bennett that took a taxi from the airport to the city, then a bus to Mystic Falls is free now.

Knocking on the Boarding House door, she wasn’t sure what to expect. She hadn’t told Caroline she was heading home, probably because she wasn’t even sure she’d make it to the airport. The call ended and she booked a flight – it was what she needed, let him go, welcome herself home.

When her best friend opened the door she, first, screamed in her face, then, launched at her, squeezing until Bonnie yelped, “Okay, okay, this hurts.”

“Bonnie this is INSANE! I missed you so much, obliviously, but WHAT!” The blonde was jumping up and down. “Damon said that it wasn’t a rom-com but like, explain this.”

She felt suddenly sick. “Damon what?”

“He said- STEFAN! Go and get him!”

“What?” She started to shake. “Damon’s here?”

“Yes!” Caroline had eyes like a Disney Princess. “He just appeared out of nowhere like you did. This is too epic.”

“No, Caroline, you don’t understand, I can’t see him-”

But the blonde had grabbed her hand and pulled her into the house, directing her to the living room where she waits now, barely able to listen to her best friend’s gabbling over the literal pounding of her heart.

“You look so cute, by the way,” Caroline says, fiddling with Bonnie’s jacket. When Bonnie doesn’t respond she peers at her, “You okay?”

I’m going to throw up.

“I just realised this is probably kind of a shock, right? Seeing him again but trust me, it’s going to be amaz-”

“Bonnie.”

Nothing about him has changed: grey t-shirt, black jeans, dark choppy hair that flicks at his ears where he’s let it grow too long.

Nothing about him has changed but for the way he says ‘Bonnie’, like he’s trying her name out for the first time.

She manages to stand and he drops to the bottom step; the distance between them, from the staircase to the couch, is a year.

“I was,” he presses his hand on the back of his neck and it’s so familiar she thinks she might just hug him, despite making a love out of the darkness, despite the silence when she offered it to him. “I was just coming to find you.”

Her voice barely makes it across to him. “Where?”

Damon’s mouth twitches. “Detroit.”

“Care,” Stefan says suddenly, “let’s give them some space?”

“Right, yes. Of course. We’ll be in the kitchen, when you’re ready.” She squeezes Bonnie’s hand, winks at her like all of this is the simplest thing in the world.

The kitchen door closes and it’s just Bonnie and Damon, trying to remember how to breathe around each other.

“Why…” Bonnie closes her eyes, finding centre, “Why would you come to Detroit?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

“Okay?”

“I mean, because I let you go in the first place.”

“Damon, just talk.”

“It’s not that…easy,” he says and she wants to close the year, erase it, so she can lean her head on his shoulder, make it simple like he wants.

“Just try.”

“Fuck, I,” he scrambles in his jean pockets and pulls out his phone, “Hold on.”

She watches as he taps and taps on the screen then, ping, ping, ping – “Damon, what?”

“Check your phone,” he says.

“Is this a game?” Her throat is thick, “Because if it is, I can’t-”

“No!” And he rushes towards her, stopping just before her feet. “Bon,” he reaches for her hand, she lets him take it, like a fool, she gives him her broken heart. “Check your phone,” he says again, softly now, like a prayer.

There are 48 New Messages from D:

You’ve been gone for a day and I’m already missing you.

Bonnie, bonnie, bonnie. Sometimes I say your name out-loud like a creep because I miss you that much.

Remember that red dress you wore to Stefan’s birthday party? It was soooooo sexy. I never told you.

I need to stop drunk drafting texts in case I accidentally send them.

You’re kind of my favourite person in the universe and it’s really fucked up I can’t tell you that.

Wild idea: why don’t we just avoid each other but…together?

Damon Salvatore is an idiot. Pass it on.

She’s reading the last message when another, New Message from D, pops up on the screen.

In case it wasn’t obvious: I love you. Honestly, nothing about however I’ve loved before has been simple. Happiness doesn’t seem simple for me and maybe it isn’t for us but loving you has always been easy, Bon. It’s probably the easiest thing I’ve ever done.

Bonnie doesn’t have time to re-read the message, make a poem out of the man in front of her because he’s taken the phone of her hand, thrown it on the couch and pulled her into his chest.

“Permission to do something I’ve always wanted to,” he says into her ear. He smells like she remembers, when she used to inhale his scent like a secret.

“Yes,” she breathes - his mouth has condensed the year until a single second - “permission granted.”

He kisses her like they’ve just met, like they’ve been waiting a life time, like he’s kissed her a thousand times, like it’s the last they’ll ever have.

Like it’s impossible.

One Week Later

“Your turn,” Damon says into her hair.

“I can’t move with you holding me,” Bonnie laughs. “Move, you lump.”

He spins so that he’s flopped over her lap, grinning up at her. “Moved,” he says sweetly.

“Stop staring at me. You’re throwing off my dice.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Just stop.” She presses a hand over his eyes and throws the dice across the Monopoly board.

“I like staring at you. I’m making up for a years’ worth of not.”

“You sound like a stalker,” Bonnie quips but she’s smiling, she hasn’t stopped smiling.

He’d been wrong about him not being what she deserves. It didn’t matter. He’d spent years trying to mould himself into a man worthy of Elena Gilbert’s love but with Bonnie, he never had to try.

Stefan is right: it’s different.

He left her a voicemail the first night she came home, when she was sleeping in the spare bedroom because, as much as he didn’t want to, he knew they needed to be careful with this.

“Hi Bon-bon,” he said, leaning against the side of the boarding house, “It’s my turn to leave a mess of a voicemail. I’m completely sober, promise, just drunk on youuu.”

He laughed, “I can see your eye-roll perfectly. But, really, I’ve missed you and kissing you like that was… fucking amazing. I was going to say that we were stupid for not doing it earlier but I think you needed to go to Detroit. I can see it on you: you’re confident again, like the Bonnie I first met, before witchy woo and Mystic Falls bad guys. You’re great at saving our asses and killing them, sure, but you’re better at being Bonnie Bennett, the bad ass. You’re also like really, really, beautiful. Seriously. I’m the hot one, stop taking my job.”

Damon chuckled again then cleared his throat, “There were times when I loved you so much I didn’t know what to do around you. Especially when I knew I wasn’t supposed to. I’m probably going to fuck it up sometimes but I want you to know that, whatever happens, I’ll never regret being the Damon I am with you. I really like him, actually.

Okay, I’m done now. I’ll kiss you again tomorrow. Goodnight, Bon-bon.”

Chapter Text

 Amaryllis: Happily Ever After

Damon’s not sure the last time he felt this much pressure. Bonnie had woken him up this morning with a black coffee and the ‘simple’ task of buying decorations for Relly’s birthday party, nothing too major just make it pink and pretty, because she’s turning six tomorrow, remember?

No, he hadn’t remembered. He can barely remember how to get dressed in the morning he’s been so tired, and happy, but tired, caring for mini-Bonnie the almost six-year-old, whilst her Mommy heads into the city to work. Now he’s standing in Party City staring at the sparkling aisle of pink streamers, having a panic over which shade of pink will look best with purple balloons.

Are purple balloons even included in the pink and pretty requirement?

“Do you need any help, Sir?” A smiley worker wearing Tiger ears asks him.

“Yes! Please.”

She laughs. “Let me guess, planning a birthday party for your daughter?”

“You got it.” He doesn’t correct the ‘daughter’ part, the same way he didn’t correct Relly when she called him Daddy the other week, fighting through giggles during a lethal tickle fight.

“How old is she turning?”

“Six,” he says proudly because he’s missed so many birthdays, all of them, but number six, he’s here for. And seven and eight and nine and ten and – Tiger Ears is thrusting a unicorn helium balloon in his face.

“This is our Glitter Pink Unicorn in size XL. We do also have Super XL out back if you want?”

“Oh,” Damon adjusts his eyes to the neon monstrosity, “Do you have any pink dinosaur balloons? She really loves dinosaurs.”

“Dinosaurs?” She looks surprised, “We have some glow in the dark dino stickers and,” she reaches behind the pack of paper plates, “Here. Rainbow dinosaur banners.”

“I’ll take them,” he says instantly. There was a time when his impulsivity looked like sinking his fangs into a slender neck, or pushing a stake through a vampire’s heart. Party shopping is surprisingly more fulfilling.

Forty minutes later, Damon Salvatore is pushing a trolley full of glittering pink and rainbow decorations. It’s like the campest dinosaur ever to exist has thrown up in here, he thinks with a smile.

Relly’s at the park with Caroline and her twins; he’ll swing by to pick her up after hiding the goodies. Before anything though, he needs to boast about his party shop victory.

“Bon-bon,” he announces into his phone, “I am officially on party planning duty forever.”

“Hmm. What about when she’s thirteen and wants an Instagram style party?”

He loves how easily they talk about their future: even if they’ve never really discussed what they are and he’s only kissed her once, softly in the garden at moonlight, and thought about the smile that whispered on her lips every night since. It’s okay though, he understands that Bonnie doesn’t want to rush and the last seven months of her life have been about relocating back home, finding a job and sharing her daughter with someone who will wait forever to kiss her again.

“Okay well a) Instagram won’t be a thing then and b) if it is, she’s not having it.”

“Good luck with that, Damon. She’s not even six years old and already has you wrapped her around her little finger.”

“Not fair! I only give her squirty cream once a week now,” he protests, grinning like a mad-man in the Party City parking lot.

It’s the simple joy of his life now: tiny things like dinosaur slippers strewn across his bedroom floor, how Bonnie squeezes his shoulder on the couch when coming back from work, dance parties in the kitchen when they’re all too tired to move but Relly holds their hands and they find the energy to jump about anyway.

Damon Salvatore, you’re the luckiest bastard in the world.

“Really? I’m impressed. But seriously, thank you. How much did it all come to?”

He’d marry her tomorrow, no hesitation, but Bonnie’s careful with her heart now. She gives him all she’s able to and saves the rest as a safety net.

“I know that I love you,” she told him once, a week or so after they missed their flight back to Atlanta all those months ago. “But I can’t just… I can’t open myself up like that so fast. There’s so much we need to talk about and with Relly… I just…”

“I know,” he said, holding her hands under his chin, “I know.”

“You don’t mind? It’s not forever, I can’t,” she smiled then, “I can’t wait forever.”

  There’s something immortal about being human that he never had when he was a vampire: his words. That’s why when he said, “I’ll wait forever anyway,” he meant it.

“Bon, don’t be silly.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, thank you. Ah! I’ve got to get back to work now. I’ll see you later at home. Give her a kiss from me.”

“She doesn’t like my kisses,” Damon chuckles, “She says my stubble is scratchy.”

“Maybe it’s time you shaved then…”

“Why? Do you want to kiss me, Bon-bon.”

And she hangs up, making him laugh out loud to the parking lot.

…

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“It’s my birthday tomorrow.”

“What!?”

“Shhh. They’ll hear us.”

“Okay, okay, being quiet.” Damon cups his hands around his mouth and whispers, “What!?” again.

“Mommy says she has a special surprise for me,” Relly whispers back. Her breath on his face  smells like raspberry lollipops.

“Not fair. I want a special surprise.”

“It’s not your birthday.”

Damon pokes her side and Relly squeals. “Shhh,” Damon hisses, “We need to stay quiet.”

They’re curled up inside the yellow tube that runs under the slide, hiding from Caroline’s twins. He hadn’t intended on playing at the park but Relly looked so happy giggling with her cousins, that he left his phone and keys with Auntie Blondie on the bench and joined in with the kid’s game.

“Do you know how old I’ll be?” Relly asks, tracing stars on the plastic ceiling.

“189,” Damon says easily. It’s his own age – one he’s started counting now.

“Damon,” Relly says with an eye roll and it really is like watching his Bonnie Bennett only shrunk down and cuter (just).

“Of course, I know,” he whispers, “You’re going to be six.” Relly’s smile is brighter than whatever wobbly stars she’d imagined on the tunnel; then it dies and Damon panics. “What?”

“Will you still want to play with me?”

Damon reaches for her hair – an action he’s seen Bonnie do so many times, he’s adopted it into his own reflexes. “I’m always going to want to play with you.”

“Even when I’m a hundred?”

“Yes! I’m never going to get bored of hide and seek, even if-”

“Found you!” Two giggling heads stick into the tunnel, bursting their moment but Damon doesn’t mind, Relly is smiling again. That’s his prerogative now.

They walk hand in hand back home, the kid quieter than usual. When he bends down to look at her, he can hear a gentle, happy hum.

“What are you humming?”

Her mouth twitches like Bonnie’s does when she’s hiding something. “Nothing.”

“Relly, Relly, Relly.”

She hums again, louder this time, then stops abruptly when he looks at her. This a game now, huh.

“That’s funny,” Damon says to the sky, “It sounds like the clouds are humming Let it Go.”

She giggles then bursts out, “It was me, Damon, me!”

He doesn’t understand how her mind works most of the time but it never stops being beautiful. He pockets it as something to tell her later, in a few years, when she’ll really believe him, maybe even call her Daddy for real, not just in tickle fights or as she’s falling asleep.

“What are we cooking tonight?” she asks him, bending under his elbow as he works the key in the lock. She’s become his mini chef assistant, washing vegetables and shouting way too loudly when the pot starts to boil.

“This is your last night being five years old. You decide.”

Relly bites on her lip, possibilities running around her little mind. “Mmmm pancakes,” she decides eventually, then looks at him naughtily, “With lots and lots and LOTS of squirty cream.”

She follows him into the kitchen, waiting for his answer. She knows it will be a yes, even if he says Relly, that’s not dinner food, she’ll stick her lip out and he’ll be flipping pancakes listening to the Frozen soundtrack for the 80^th time that week.

Relly’s favourite song is the duet: she makes Damon sing all the male parts and corrects him when he gets the words wrong (the one-time Damon corrected her, she stomped off to sit on the couch with her arms crossed. Also, adorable).

He’s learning everyday how to be the best he can be for her and sure, maybe, sometimes he does give in too easily but it’s her birthday and he loves how much she loves his pancakes. It reminds him of a certain witch back in the prison world.

…

When Bonnie comes home that evening, Relly is a hyperactive dino-fairy. Her words, not Damon’s – he just added hyperactive.

“Did you give her sugar or something?” Bonnie asks and at his stall she rolls her eyes, “Damon Salvatore, you are the biggest push over.”

“It’s her last night of being five, Bon! She wanted pancakes!”

Relly charges down the hallway shouting about fairy dust and claws. “What the hell did you make the pancakes out of? Smarties?”

“Don’t give her any ideas,” he whispers, coming up next to her because although he can’t exactly touch her how he wants to, he can stand close enough to make their hands graze.

Bonnie tucks a finger into his palm. “Hi,” she says softly, “thanks again for getting all the party stuff.”

“I’m not joking when I say this is a career change for me.”

“Oh yeah,” she says, leaning against him and making his heart buzz, “reformed vampire turned human party planner. What a story arc.”

I love you, he thinks, but they don’t say things like that, not yet. They say I love you in how their hands brush against each other, how they dance with Relly and put her to bed, kissing either side of her cheeks at once. Damon says I love you now by promising to start decorating as soon as the dino-fairy has settled her wings.

“I’ll come down and help as soon as she’s asleep,” is how Bonnie says it back.

Bonnie doesn’t have time to be surprised by the soft sight of the ex-vampire hanging up dinosaur balloons because-

“Fuck, stupid tying fuck things,” Damon grunts, struggling with the string.

“Need some help there, big guy?”

He turns on the step ladder, almost wobbling off it. “Fuck,” Damon hisses again.

“You’ve done a great job,” Bonnie reassures him, gesturing around the chaotic living room. There are pink, glittery streamers and dinosaur heads and an inflatable unicorn with party hats stuck all the way along its back like a stegosaurus. She feels suddenly emotional looking at the ugly unicorn-dino hybrid – at how much this man loves, really loves, her daughter. More often than not she thinks ‘our’.

“Did Relly get off to sleep okay?” Damon asks, brow a deep crease as he battles the string again.

“I had to read her two stories but yes, eventually.”

“That’s good – FUCK.” The balloon falls to the bottom of the ladder, joining the little collection of fallen soldiers below his feet.

“Damon, it’s okay. I can do it.”

“I just want it to be perfect, Bon. There,” he rubs his face, “She’s not going to have that many people there.”

“Damon-”

“I just can’t help thinking of everyone that should be here. Like your mom, your dad, your Grams, fuck.” Bonnie’s not sure if he’s frustrated at the balloons or their reality. “Relly would have actual family if it weren’t for-”

“Damon. Don’t you dare.” He looks up at her, for the first time since she’d walked in the room. “We’ve all lost people to our crazy lives, Damon, and I miss them every single day, Stefan too, but don’t you dare feel unworthy of being at her birthday party. Not when we’ve both never been happier.”

The man stares at her, then hops down off the step ladder. “Okay.”

“Just okay?”

He crosses over the rug she’d made him buy, big and fluffy like a cloud. She wants him to kiss her as he takes her face in his hands, like he’d done in the garden, when he’d set off a firework in her chest, terrifying in its explosion and – he kisses her forehead. “I need you to do the balloons.”

…

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!”

Her bed is shaking.

“Mommy, wake upppppp! You have to come see!”

Now there’s a lump on her chest, tiny fingers peeling at her eyelids: “Okay, okay, birthday girl, I’m awake.”

And there she is, her beautiful six-year-old, smiling like she’s at Disney World. “Mommy, you need to come see!”

“First,” Bonnie says, reaching for her, “I need cuddles. Six cuddles for my big, birthday girl.”

“Onetwothreefourfivesix,” Relly races, struggling out of her mama’s arms. “Done! Let’s gooooo.”

She pretends to be shocked at the decorated living room and gasps at all the details Relly points out to her, Look at the dinosaurs! This is pink and so so so sparkly! Mommy, look at this balloon!

“You came downstairs, very early, baby,” she says, pushing for another snuggle but Relly won’t stay still.

“Damon woke me up!”

“Guilty,” the man says from the door way. She hadn’t heard him come downstairs but he’s still in his pyjamas (aka boxers and a dressing gown not working hard enough to cover his chest). “I was too excited.”

Bonnie has to fight hard the urge to rush over there and kiss him against the door, but she has morning breath and her daughter is here and she promised herself that she’d wait because this happiness is too precious to be reckless with.

“When can I open presents!” Relly shouts, whirling around the room.

“Who said anything about presents, missy?”

“Damon!”

“Guilty again,” the man says, walking into the living room and standing just close enough for her hand to brush against his knuckle. “It’s just a little something.”

“Can I have it now Mommy, please, please, pleaaaaseee.”

And this her daughter’s Disney World: pink, glitter, dinosaurs… and Damon. “Fine. Go and sit on the couch, okay?”

“Hold your hands out,” Damon instructs, kneeling in front of. Her little girl is shaking with excitement, eyes squeezed tightly as if battling with herself not to peek. “Keep those eyes closed.”

“I am, I am.”

But when Damon leans forward, he doesn’t put anything in her hands. Instead, he reaches for her hair, tucks a wild curl behind her ear and slides a bright pink flower clip in place.

Relly’s eyes go wide as she feels for what Damon has fastened in her hair. “What is it?”

“It’s a very, very special flower,” Damon says softly, Relly gazing at him like he’s the answer to every question she’s ever had, “Do you know why?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s an Amaryllis flower.”

The tears were probably forming before Relly breathed, Oh, and threw herself around Damon’s neck, hugging and hugging him, but they wet her cheeks like fresh rain as Damon rubs her daughter’s back and tells her she is as beautiful as the flower in her hair.

Chapter Text

“Relly, you’re going to tire yourself out,” Bonnie laughs, reaching for the bouncing six-year-old and pulling her close.

“Noooo, Mommy,” she protests, still managing to bounce up and down on her ballet slippers, even within the confines of her mother’s arms, “Too excited.”

“At least she’s self-aware,” Damon murmurs.

Bonnie reaches for his hand and squeezes it, momentarily. She might as well have squeezed his heart.

The doorbell goes and Relly is unleashed in a blur of pink sparkles, the spiky green dinosaur headband nearly flying off her head. “It’s Auntie Caroline!” she squeals and, reaching on her tip-topes, yanks open the front door.

“Hi birthday Princess!” Blondie exclaims, scooping the dino fairy into her arms. Her own kids are dressed in coloured poufy dresses and laden down with bags of presents (something Damon knows Relly is about to lose her shit over).

“I’ll take those,” he says smoothly, lifting the present bags high above Relly’s head. “Do you girls want to come through into the living room?”

“I’ll show them!” Relly hollers, any notion of ‘inside voice’ redundant on a six-year-old’s birthday. He watches, fondly, as she grabs her cousin’s hands and takes them into the confetti explosion that was once his brooding living room. When he looks up, Caroline is smiling at him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says, still smiling, “Just…fatherhood. It suits you.”

Damon’s on door duty for the next half an hour, welcoming various children into his home. There was a time when a knock on the Salvatore Boarding House bore a werewolf or a thousand-year-old vampire with a revenge kink; now, he’s like the pied piper of Mystic Falls.

It’s a relief, though, seeing the house fill up with children from Relly's class and chatting parents. Helps to quell the sinking guilt in his stomach.

Relly is showing her friends the flower clip he gave her this morning, gently placing it in each of their cupped hands and proudly declaring that it shares her name. It can’t possibly make up for what he’s taken from her, all the lives and family members the monster has deprived her of, but it’s a start.

It’s a promise.

The last knock on the door is a familiar blonde and blue-eyed Matt Donovan: a pretty woman with straight black hair, holding the hand of a small boy, tucked next to him.

“Er, hi! Bonnie said-”

And then he does something entirely unexpected. He hugs him. Damon Salvatore, former vampire, hugs the great useless lump that is Matt Donovan. Maybe it’s because they’re both human, united in their mortality and aging metabolism. Maybe it’s because he knows Matt was a fierce friend to Bonnie throughout the years and he never once said thank you.

“Er, wow, hi,” Matt stumbles, awkwardly patting Damon’s back.

Damon releases him, suddenly stiff, and focuses his attention on the woman and the kid. “You must be Matt’s…”

“Wife,” she says, with an accent, “I’m Nari. This is Maxwell, our son.”

“Hey buddy.”

Maxwell shoves his thumb in his mouth by way of greeting. Damon ruffles his hair. 

It all must be pretty shocking to Donovan, who, until this moment, had only seen Damon as the (sometime) homicidal dick in (all the time) black jeans and a leather jacket.

“Matt!?” Bonnie comes hurtling down the corridor, much like her daughter, and practically pushes Damon aside to envelop her towering friend. “You came! It’s so, so good to see you.”

“Good to see you too, Bon,” Matt chuckles, hugging her back, “I’ve got some people I want you to meet.”

Damon leaves them to their introductions and steals away into the kitchen for another coffee (a habit which apparently will stain his teeth? Fuck, being human is one long descent). The sight of Blondie downing a blood bag in the corner freaks him out for a second.

“Oh, hey,” she says, around the tube, “Sorry, it’s been such a rush, I forgot to drink this morning.”

“No judgement here.”

Her eyes glint with a Caroline Forbes scheme and he braces himself. “When are you going to take her on a date?”

“Who?”

“Don’t play dumb, Salvatore. You know Stefan would have kicked your ass by now.”

Damon simultaneously relaxes and stiffens at the mention of his brother. The immediate comfort, the crushing absence, clenches in his stomach. “Yeah, I know.”

“You love her, don’t you?”

He walks towards the fridge, “Don’t play dumb, Forbes.”

This makes her laugh. “What’s the wait then?”

“DAMON!” He pivots to see Relly shouting in the kitchen doorway, her tiny face crumpled in distress.

“Relly, what-” she hurls herself into the room, into his waiting arms, and begins to sob against his shoulder.

“I’ll get Bonnie,” Caroline says swiftly.

“No M-Mommy,” her words tumble out between soggy breaths, “Don’t g-get Mommy, on-only D- Damon.”

“Okay, okay, kid,” Damon whispers into her hair, “It’s just me.” He glances at Caroline over the top of Relly’s head; she offers him a sympathetic smile and bows out the room. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong, sweetheart?”

Relly’s fingers dig into his shoulder blades. “You’ll be upset with me,” she chokes, “And you’ll tell Mommy. Please, please, don’t tell Mommy.”

Damon gently lifts her from his chest, holding her so he can examine her tear-stained cheeks. “I won’t be upset,” he tells her.

“And Mommy-”

“I won’t tell Mommy.” She heaves a shuddery sigh, like an adult returning home from a long day at work. Damon adjusts the dino band atop her head, kisses her wet cheek. “It’s your birthday, Relly, we can’t have you crying.” Her bottom lip wobbles again and Damon thrusts his finger in the air, just hovering above her tummy, where he knows she’s most ticklish. “Does the Tickle Dino need to say Happy Birthday?” He warns.

Relly sucks in her stomach, wriggling away from him. “No, no, no, not now.”

Damon lifts a brow. “Are you sure?” He risks one tiny poke; Relly squeals.

“No, Damon!! No Tickle,” she yelps, twisting away from him.

Damon folds the protruding finger into his palm. “Okay, he’s gone,” he says solemnly. There’s a tiny smile in Relly’s mouth and she’s rubbing her hands over her eyes, where more tears had been gathering. “Will you tell me now?”

She nods. “Look,” she breathes and thrusts a corner of her pink dress under Damon’s nose.

He tilts his head back, having to adjust his eyes (more human delights). “What am I looking for?”

“Look,” she says again, this time jabbing a finger at a tiny tear in the satin, then whispers, “I ripped it.” Damon looks up at her wide, round, Bonnie-eyes and bundles her into him. “You not angry?”

“No,” he says, “I just love you.”

“Oh, I knew that,” she replies simply and he hugs her tighter. He can’t give her grandparents but love, love she knows.

He slips his hands away from her back, the kid still clinging on to him, and tears a tiny corner of his shirt. “Hey, Relly,” he says softly, “Look what I just noticed?”

She looks down at his fingers on the rip in his shirt and gasps. “How?”

“Must have been an accident,” he says, frowning, then, with a grin, “Never mind.”

Relly thumbs over the tear in her own dress. “Never mind,” she repeats and he hopes, one day, he’ll have shown her enough years of love to believe it.

By the time they walk, hand in hand, back into the living room, everyone is gathered around a rather impressive stegosaurus birthday cake displaying six brightly burning candles along its back. Relly doesn’t let go of him throughout the entire song, even when she reaches onto her tiptoes to blow out (aka spray spit over) the candles, her little hand stays fixed in his.

The remainder of Relly’s sixth birthday party passes in a whirlwind of screams, glitter, dinosaurs and pink. Damon is the Ultimate Party Dad, rushing around the house, fetching band aids for cut fingers and endless coffee rounds for parents. Maxwell, Matt’s four-year-old, attaches to Relly like a limpet, following her everywhere with a kind of wide-eyed adoration.

“They’re so cute together,” he overhears Bonnie telling Matt.

“Sure are. I’m so happy for you Bon,” he says to her and Damon has the strange urge to bear hug him again.

The Donovan’s are the last to leave the chaos, with Matt carrying his kid fireman style out the house with promises to visit again later in the week. Damon closes the door and looks back at his own family: how Relly hangs off Bonnie’s hand, how her mother glows with a sleepy, contented happiness. This is how I want us to always feel, he thinks, with sudden fierceness, this is what we’ve all fought for.

…

“Did you have a good birthday, baby?”

“I got so many presents!” Damon hears the whispered reply from his position on the stairs. It makes his heart buzz.

“You know birthdays aren’t all about presents, Relly.”

“I know,” the six-year-old replies, sounding suddenly very wise, “It’s about the people who give you presents.”

He peers through the crack in the door way, his smile, at Bonnie’s hunched form hugging Miss Cuddles and stroking the birthday girl’s hair, a reflex. “That’s right,” she murmurs and kisses her on the nose. “Sleep now, okay?”

“Night Mommy.”

His smile broadens as Bonnie moves away from her head, exposing the Amaryllis flower clip still fastened in her hair. “She wouldn’t take it off,” Bonnie whispers to him, squeezing through the door and closing it behind her. She nudges his slipper with her sock, “Thank you for today.”

He kisses her forehead, lips lingering a little longer on the softness of her skin. He thinks about what Caroline had said in the kitchen. “Bon, I want to-”

“Damon,” a voice tiptoes out from the bedroom.

Bonnie rolls her eyes, “You’re her favourite, you know that.”

“Aren’t I everyone’s?”

She flaps her hand at his chest playfully, though the impact makes them both stall. He wants to hold her fingers against his heart.

“Damon,” the little voice is more insistent.

“Go,” Bonnie says, steering him towards the door.

“You okay, Relly?” he asks softly, into the darkness. She is sitting up in bed, the whites of her eyes like stars. He treads across the floorboards over to her and she snatches Cuddles from Bonnie’s pillow, crushing the bear against her Frozen pyjama top.

“Why didn’t Daddy come?”

Damon’s heart thumps. He swallows thickly, lubricating his suddenly dry throat. “You wanted to him come?”

Relly flops back against the pillows and speaks into Miss Cuddles ears. “I thought he would. That’s why I cried about my dress.”

A rise of hatred burns through him – the kind that he would sink teeth into flesh to pacify. “You thought he’d be angry at you?”

The bear nods its head. “And Mommy.”

Damon nudges Cuddles away from Relly’s face but she is insistent. “You don’t need to worry about him being angry anymore,” he tells the fluffy face of the bear instead, “I mean it.”

Wide brown eyes peak out from behind the fur. “Damon,” she asks, hesitant, “Are you my daddy now?”

“I’ll be whoever you want me to be. A prince,” he kisses her hand around the bear’s neck, “Or a dinosaur.” Relly giggles as he snaps his hands into dino like claws and begins pecking Cuddles’ fur.

“Stop,” she says, laughing, wriggling underneath the covers so only the curls of her hair poke out.

“A prince then,” Damon confirms and peels back the duvet to leave another princely kiss on her skin.

“I think,” she says, yawning, “I think Daddy is good.”

Damon stares, in simmering wonder, at Relly’s closed eyelids. He’s failed at a lot of things over the years but he vows to himself, here, sitting on her bed, that he will never fail at being her dad.

Bonnie looks up from her book to see her daughter (she recognises the fluffy koala socks, at least) hidden behind a red dress she hasn’t seen in years.

“Relly? What have you got there?”

She shuffles over to her and throws the dress on the blanket giggling. “You have to wear it, Mommy.”

“When?”

This makes her daughter giggle more. “Now.”

“Amaryllis Bennett,” she says, mock sternly, “What are you up to.”

“You’ll look very, very, very, very, very, very, very pretty.”

Bonnie picks at the dress in confusion. “Where did you even get this, baby?”

“Auntie Caroline.”

Ah. “But why do I need to wear it now?”

Relly releases an exasperated sigh. “You’re going on a date, silly Mommy.”

“A date?”

Damon. Her heart picks up, a smile flittering in her next words. “Where?”

“The garden,” Relly says simply and jumps up onto the bed behind her, taking her hair in tiny fingers and twirling it, “Auntie Caroline has been helping me.”

“Helping you do what?” She flips her daughter over into her lap, “Why are you being so secretive, missy?”

“Uncle Matty and Maxy are coming to get me. We are going to the cinema.”

Bonnie shakes her head in amazement. “Since when did my Saturday night get taken over by a six-year-old?”

Relly leaps out of her arms. “For Daddy!” Then she bites her lip, glancing at Bonnie worriedly.

Daddy. Bonnie tucks a curl behind Relly’s ear, “Ah, I see. It’s a date for me and Daddy.”

…

The sky hangs in the dusky kiss of sunset. Relly had insisted Bonnie wear a pair of outrageously high heels, also a gift from Caroline, and she totters out into the garden, feeling like a new-born giraffe. She sees Damon and almost slips completely.

He waves at her from a picnic blanket laden in food. “Need some help there, Bon-bon?”

Fuck this, she thinks and frees her poor feet from her daughter’s misguided shoe choice. She pads, barefoot, over to the blanket and Damon stands, brushing down his suit (as his gaze brushes all the way down her body).

“Wow. I haven’t seen you in a suit in years.”

He fiddles with his collar, at once both endearingly awkward and… incredibly sexy. “Relly picked it out.”

“I’ll have to thank her,” she says, following the lines of the jacket, to the white cuffs ending before his veined hands, “I remember when I first saw you in a suit.”

“You do?”

They sit down on the blanket, making space for themselves amongst the plates of Relly influenced and Caroline executed snacks.  

“Of course. I was instantly angry at how irrationally hot you looked.”

There’s a hint of the old, seductive vampire in his smirk. “Are you angry now?”

“No. I’m stupidly happy.”

His smirk melts into a wonky, unabashed smile. 

Fuck, I love you, she thinks, the wonderful, piercing clarity of it almost calming. "I know we're meant to be eating right now but can I just-"

"Yes.”

She leans towards him; her hand curls around his tie. "You don't even know what I'm going to ask, Mr Salvatore?"

"Bonnie," he whispers, whimpers even and her heart proliferates in the sudden power, "Please."

She tugs on his tie, guiding his face to hers. "Have you been imagining this?"

He speaks directly to her mouth. "For longer than I should have been."

Bonnie draws her tongue along her bottom lip, teasing his gaze. "And what might that be?" She lifts her eyes to his – the want in them pushes a fervent heat all around her body. 

"If you don't kiss me right now, Bonnie Bennett, I will-"

"What?" she asks, releasing his tie suddenly and falling back onto her elbows, "You'll do what, Damon?"

He stares down at her, wild with lust and...love. So much love. She barely has a second to settle in that feeling, though, because he’s pushed her back against the picnic blanket, squishing the mini sausage rolls her daughter lovingly picked out, and kissing her senseless. 

"I'll take matters into my own hands," he breathes, his mouth moving to her neck, along her exposed collarbone.

"Damon...we’re… in your…garden," she manages, her words nipped by each kiss he leaves along her skin. 

"Good job I don't have any neighbours."

She laughs as he shifts his weight, trying to gain access to the zipper on her dress, and shoves his hand in the purple jello bowl – Relly's second favourite dessert after pancakes.  

"Is this what sex is like, having a kid?" He groans, shaking his fingers.

"It's not glamorous."

"No," he licks at his finger, laughing now too, "but I wouldn't want it any other way."

"Really? Even with the jello?”

He lowers his body down towards hers again, "Especially with the jello."

Bonnie cups his face in her hands and holds all of him, the vampire he was, the human he is now: "I am so, completely in love with you. We both are. You know that right?"

Bonnie's never seen Damon cry. All those times death ripped his heart, she never saw tears; a vulnerability he kept hidden, even from himself. His cloudless eyes have glassed over and she keeps her fingers on his face, ready to catch, to kiss away whatever falls. "You're her dad, Damon," she whispers, as his eyes flicker shut and the moisture rains over his pale skin, "I think you've always meant to be."

He kisses her again, softer this time, his cheeks a little damp against hers. Bonnie curls her hand around his neck, plays with the wispy strands of hair she needs to trim, and he leaves a whispering moan along her jaw.

"Relly, wait! Don’t go out-”

Damon’s weight lifts off Bonnie’s immediately, at the sound of their little girl running into the garden, Matt calling after her.

"Mommy! Mommy! Do you like it?" She leaps onto the picnic blanket like a puppy then her eyes round suddenly, comically even. "Mommy!" she scolds, "You're meant to eat the sausages, not lie on them!"

Damon pulls Relly onto his lap and nuzzles into her curls, chuckling softly. He looks at Bonnie over her head, the suspicion in the six-year-old's voice as she surveys the uneaten, half destroyed picnic food and mouths, "Later," with a wink.

"Later," says her returned grin.

Chapter Text

Flash. Light, so white it burns, collides with skin. Bang. The hand in his spasms. Above them, slashed in red and blue, the sky splinters. He looks, panicked, down at her face.  There is a breathy murmur emptying from her lips. He would kiss them, if it weren't the literal end of the world.

The thought explodes. 

Along with everything with else. 

"Bonnie." 

"No way."

"Bonnie."

"No, this can't be happening."

"What's happening!?"

"I don't understand...how?"

"HELLO," Damon tries to push up from whatever he's lying on but gravity has him pinned like he's a dead body on a slab- OH. "Your witchy woo didn't work."

"What an astute observation, Damon."

"Nice to see sarcasm still lands in the afterlife."

"This can't be the afterlife," Bonnie says firmly, a little desperately even. 

"Hmm, we're stuck to the floor in pitch-black darkness. It's not looking good."

"It's not pitch-black darkness?" 

Damon laughs dryly.  "Good prank, Bennett."

"No," she says, her voice suddenly close enough to tickle his ear, "I can see and move. Watch."

The instant her hand makes contact with his arm, murky blue shapes, as if waiting in the wings, begin to enter into the darkness. One of those shapes is Bonnie Bennett. 

Her skin possesses an ethereal shimmer - and that's not a flowery compliment, it literally looks ghostly, like she's half here and half somewhere else. Damon lifts his own hand in front of his face and observes the same pallor. 

"Where the hell are we then?" He frowns, "You're sure this isn't actually hell?"

"Honestly," Bonnie settles herself in a crouching position, hugging her knees as if cold, "being stuck with you for eternity, that was my first thought." 

He ignores her jibe. "Are you seeing these dark spidery things in the sky?"

"Tree branches? Yeah."

Damon pushes down through his hands, tentatively lifting himself up to a sitting position beside her. "Okay so we have trees, glowy light, a vampire and a witch. Sounds like the beginning of a cheap porn movie."

"You're gross."

They're quiet for a moment, or many, he's not sure if time even exists in this realm. Like all the deaths he's experienced (half or full, merely semantics), this was a lightning speed snatch from one breath to the next. He inhaled, tried to keep Bonnie upright as she fought spell with spell, and exhaled on the forest floor. In the space between, them, the world, time, altered. 

He flops back onto the ground - closes his eyes.  Flash. 

"Bonnie."

"Damon, I'm thinking."

"No, Bon. You need to close your eyes."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

He waits, there's a gasp and then-

"Holy shit."

"You saw it too!?"

"I saw..." she struggles to make sense of it, Damon wishes she wouldn't bother, sense is redundant here, "I was sitting at a bench and... you were-"

"Walking towards you. Yup."

He was in a blue suit, expensive, for sure, and carrying a brown brief case. Bonnie was flicking through a text book just metres away from him - evidently his desired target. 

"Close your eyes again," he demands now, "Both of us. Let's see if something else happens."

She doesn't protest. Damon sets his head back on the mossy ground and invites the scene into his mind. 

"I remember you," he says casually, throwing his briefcase onto the table, "You were with your friend. About this tall, long straight brown hair..."

The girl barely glances up from her book. "Let me guess, you want her number."

A smirk pushes at his mouth. "Are you offering?"

"No! You creep."

The outrage amuses him. "Since when has expressing an interest been creepy?"

"You saw us in a coffee shop, then came onto a college campus to ask me for my friend's number," she says icily. 

"Ah. That means you saw me too," his smirk tiptoes further up his face, "Are you jealous I'm not asking for yours?

"No!?"

"Really? You're blushing."

She holds the book in front of her face. "You're harassing me. Go away."

"Okay, okay," he swipes his briefcase off the table, "Have a nice day."

She doesn't wish him anything back.

"BONNIE."

"What!?"

Damon rolls his head on the floor to gape at her, "Why did you do that?"

"Why did I-!? You were the weirdo hitting on my friend!?"

That stare that she's pinning him with is so much warmer than the behind-closed-eyes Bonnie's protective glare (a catchier nickname is pending...it's Damon, he's great at nicknames). It's accusatory but there's no fear. Why hadn't he noticed how differently she looks at him now that they've established a... friendship? No, that's too strong. A companionship? No, that sounds like they're dried up pensioners-

"Elena, Bonnie, Elena," he snaps, to break the spiralling questions her stare has caused his brain, "The love of my life, the-"

"Okay I get it. You don't need to be so dramatic."

"We are literally trapped in some other dimension. It invites some drama."

Bonnie releases a sigh. "Fine. What do you think is happening?"

"Well let's see. Sexy Suit Damon is trying to find Elena - who is obviously the key to getting us out of here and realigned in the correct timeline, reality, dimension, whatever you want to call it. But SOMEONE," he throws daggers at Bonnie (though she's long since staring at him, having taken fascination with the eerie tree branches), "has just cockblocked us to eternal imprisonment."

"If the fate of our world is dependent on you getting Elena's number, be less fucking creepy about it. Besides, you don't need me for that. Just go and find her as you're destined to and everything will click into place."

Damon rolls onto his side, propping his head up with his elbow. It's like they're sharing a bed (it takes tremendous effort to not say this aloud to Bonnie). "You don't believe me, do you?" 

"Do I believe that true loves kiss will get us out of here? No."

"You're underestimating how good of a kisser I am, Bennett."

Her eyeroll is deliberate - in the moonlit underworld, they look like pearls. 

Damon grins, "You'll be thanking these lips when they rescue us." 

"I doubt that."

"Got any other bright ideas?"

She hesitates then releases a quiet, "No."

"Good so be less cockblocky." He's about to close his eyes when an estranged thought returns to him. "Let's kiss each other first, just make sure."

"What!?"

He was half-joking but the panic in her voice makes him say, "Would that be so bad?"

"It's a stupid idea. You're going to kiss Elena."

"Thought you said that was the stupid idea."

"They're both ridiculous," Bonnie snaps, and the way she rolls onto her side, away from him, gives him the uncannily familiar feeling of a lovers spat in bed. "But it makes much more sense to kiss Elena, considering dream dude Damon wants to.

He threads his hands together and arranges them on his chest. "What about this Damon?"

Bonnie snorts. "Please. You've been pining after her more than ever."

"Pining sounds... a bit pathetic."

"Mhm. Okay, I'm closing my eyes again now."

Damon frowns but does the same, trying to steer his mind off kissing Bonnie Bennett. He's always been a bit of a monomaniac, coupled with always wanting things he can't have: Elena, a 1980s Porsche 911, Elena, again, and now...


Now he's leaning against the counter, dabbing coffee off his blue suit; a young woman, the very same who refused to give him the pretty brunette's number, delivering the most heavily sarcastic apology he's ever heard.

Chapter Text

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so clumsy.”

He stares first at her, then at the blooming coffee stain on his white shirt. “Actually, I think you have excellent aim,” he says icily.

She folds her arms across her chest. “Maybe you should go home and change your clothes?”

“Maybe you should-“

“Bonnie?”

Damon gifts ‘Bonnie’ his Victory Smirk, “- introduce me to your friend?” Oh, if he could bottle up that scowl and drink it for breakfast.

“This is Elena,” she offers begrudgingly, gesturing towards the new arrival.

“Damon Salvatore,” he says, with affected confidence, offering a hand to the pretty woman like he’s entered a board meeting.

“Hi, er, are you friends with Bonnie?”

“No,” Bonnie snaps, as Damon says “Yep.”

He flashes a tight smile at Elena, “Would you excuse us for a second?”

“Er, sure, I’ll get a coffee.” She looks back at him with a delicate mixture of concern and curiosity. He can work with that.

“What do you want?” Bonnie hisses.

“You know what I want, ‘Bonnie’.” Her name is surprisingly satisfying to say; a name he can have endless fun with. Bon, Bon-Bon, Bonniekins, Bon Jovi.

“Well, get over it!”

“I will, if you can give me one good reason why I can’t ask her out.”

They glare at each other like two cowboys in a western film. Damon wonders if Bonnie might have another coffee behind her back to chuck at him.

“I…she’s…”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“Uh. What?”

“Damon, what the hell? That wasn’t the plan?” Bonnie is saying, as reality collides with his senses. Not that the strange, silky forest feels particularly real.

“I don’t know why I did that,” he lies.

“I guess Dream Damon is hoping a date with Dream Bonnie will make Dream Elena jealous,” she laughs, “That sounded completely insane.”

Damon can’t laugh - there’s a creeping pounding in his ears, gathering strength and speed as he strains to find the origin. He grabs Bonnie’s hand to gauge her pulse.

“Okay, why are we holding hands?”

Something insidious is leaping up his throat. “Do you feel that?”

Bonnie’s palm shifts under his. “I don’t feel- Damon?”

She wriggles on the ground until she’s pressed against him. The pounding has usurped his entire fucking body - it’s going to kill him, again, Bonnie Bennett is going to kill him.

Her other hand reaches up to his neck; her breath is warm on his cheek as she says, “Your heart is beating.”

“That’s impossible.”

She guides their entwined hands over to his chest. Damon doesn’t dare breathe for fear she’ll jump back, disturbed by their intimacy. But her fingers on his pulse have found his hair and his damned heart is going to break out of his chest and curl up in her palm.

“I think maybe we should kiss now,” whispers Bonnie, “for science.”

“Yes,” whispers Damon, “for science.”

Spells are a funny thing: you think you’re saving the world when you’re actually re-starting a heartbeat.

A week passes and Bonnie supposes Damon is angry with her for rendering him mortal, maybe he’s gone to be with Elena, she doesn’t know, she lies and says she doesn’t care, and then he’s standing on her porch step in a knitted hat and scarf because his human body feels the autumn chill in new ways.

“Open the door, Bon, it’s fucking freezing!”

“How long have you been out here?” She calls from the sidewalk, arms weighed down by a grocery bag.

His cheeks are flushed when he turns round. “A while.”

“Idiot.”

“I’ve come to ask you out for a drink.”

“Oh, you have?” She fights the smile in her words, “You could have texted.”

“I could have,” he says, and hops off the step to meet her coming up the path.

It’s a simple, chaste kiss because neither of them are sure what might happen; whether it will send them back to the woods or steal the pulse back from under Damon’s skin.

“Well?” she asks into his scarf, “Do you feel any different?”

“I feel,” he murmurs into her hair, “like my nipples will fall off any second they’re that cold. Please, open the damn door.”

She enjoys stumbling across his pulse whenever they kiss. She enjoys watching him struggle with a band aid when he cuts his thumb chopping onions. He embraces mortality as he embraces her love – tentatively, as if worried he’ll break it. So she reminds him, between kisses and bleeding thumbs, that this is what human is.

Chapter Text

“It’s nice,” he says, looking around at the painted yellow cupboards, “Very you,” and all Bonnie can think is You’re in my kitchen.

She hands him a glass of - water, not scotch - and when he takes it, careless with his touch on her fingers, all Bonnie can think is You’re in my kitchen. 

He’s never been particularly tall but he looks giant here, standing in her 400 square foot apartment: too Damon for this city, her life now.

“You’re in my kitchen,” she says into the silence.

“Yup.” He pushes his palms into his jean pockets. The last time she saw them, they were hanging half off her bed, like an unfinished sentence.

“I just…never expected to have you here.”

“Stranger things have happened, Bon,” he says and threads his fingers through his hair.

It’s longer. “Your hair is longer.”

“I’ve been growing it. Going for that rock star look.”

He smiles at her slight eye roll. She smiles back.

Then her fingers are in his hair, because that one night was enough to make a habit.

“Careful,” Damon murmurs, “Don’t come any closer.”

Which is an invitation, she knows, to kiss him against the kitchen cupboards, like before.

But this isn’t two years ago and her stomach isn’t buzzing with cheap wine.

She drops her hand. “Shall we-“

“Let’s go out,” he says, suddenly, his eyes bright with possibility.

“I was going to suggest, order some food, maybe…talk?”

“Let’s go dancing.”

Bonnie laughs but he’s serious. “Damon.”

“You always said my name like that, Damon, like a warning. Like I’m dangerous.”

You are dangerous, you’re leaning against the cupboard, my cupboard, and if we go out dancing we’ll fall asleep together, in the bed, my bed, and that can’t happen again, that’s why I moved to this city, away from you and us - but all Bonnie can say is, “Don’t make me be the sensible one again.”

“Bonnie.”

She folds her arms across her body, as if doing the opposite of what feels natural - reaching for him - will trick her brain into believing he’s the opposite of what she wants. “And you always said my name like that.”

His brow furrows, a bemused quirk of his mouth. She’s watched that expression, how it nudges his handsome, structured face into something vulnerable, a hundred times before. He never looked at Elena like that and she assumed that meant it was friendly, until two years ago, in the Salvatore kitchen, his girlfriend in a magical coma and Bonnie, the living equivalent of his star crossed love. “Like what?”

Like you’re giving in to a desire, a secret, and Bonnie thinks ‘fuck it.’

Chapter Text

“So,” Stefan takes a sip of wine, smiles, it’s awkward, another sip, “I spoke to Mom-“

“Great. The Mommy’s Boy club is back,” Damon snaps. He lifts his own drink - the cheapest beer on the menu because he wasn’t having Stefan pay for him again - and chucks the bitterness down his throat. 

He knows what’s coming next. It’s hung over them in a sticky pressure the last few months, Stefan breaching the subject as a drunken “joke”, but now he’s played the Mom card and Damon knows he’s fucked. 

“We just worry about you.” Stefan’s eyes plead mercy. 

But Damon is not God. 

“Worry about that moustache you’re trying to grow. I’m flippin-fantastic.” He clinks his bottle against Stefan’s wine glass. 

“Damon, this isn’t a game. I’m not- I’m not trying to sound condescending but the music thing- “

“The ‘music thing’ sounds pretty fucking condescending.”

“I’m not saying you give it up! Just, give something else a try too. Something more…sustainable.”

He sits back in the chair, drags his beer across the table towards his chest. “So I can afford fancy wine like you?”

Stefan just sighs. 

Humiliation: that’s what Damon Salvatore feels standing in the foyer of Falls Publishing, wearing one of his little brother’s suits. There’s a stench of capitalism in the air that makes his nose wrinkle. 

Stefan approaches him tentatively, like this is a nature documentary and Damon is a lesser spotted fuck-knows what. 

“Hey!” It’s overly cheery; Damon strangles his optimism with a loathsome glare.  

“Are you going to take a picture for Mom?” 

“We could take a selfie?”

“If I murder you, will that get me fired?”

Stefan laughs, which deepens Damon’s scowl. He hates everything about this place already and he’s barely stepped out of the elevator. It’s not that he hates books, he has respect for all forms of creative expression, but a fancy publishing house like this just oozes money, not art, and Damon has spent his whole life trying to bury the Ivy League, old money shadow of his parents. 

The main office is a bright, airy space punctuated by large, mahogany desks crowned by Macs. Neat bookshelves line the walls beneath the windows, and black framed posters of novels and sultry faced looking authors holding novels decorate the empty wall space. It’s like the Apple Store, IKEA and MOMA had a book-making baby. 

His hatred deepens when Stefan introduces him to Jeremy (a child who clearly has an obsessive relationship with the weight machine), the other intern. The office is heavily air conditioned but Jeremy is in a beanie hat, an artsy cross earring dangling from one ear. 

“Hey dude,” says Jeremy, “You cool with socials?”

“You’re going to need to show him how TikTok works, Jer,” Stefan grins. 

What fresh hell is this.

TikTok, as it transpires, is the medium through which a major publishing house uncovers “trends” to construct the next bestseller. Or, that’s all Stefan thinks Damon can manage. It’s a truly, soul crushing task and boredom sweeps up the pieces, until he looks up, three hours into hell, and sees his brother talking to a woman in a deep green pant suit. 

“Who’s that talking to Stefan?”

Jeremy glances up from his MacBook. “Bonnie Bennett. The boss.”

Stefan kept ‘I have a hot boss’ a silent bargaining chip. 

He is captivated most by how she stands. She’s a tiny woman, petite and elegant , with pointed black boots, but she holds herself as if she were taller than Stefan. Her gestures are deliberate; cutting through air with sharp slices of her hands, leading his brother down corridors of thought and ideas. 

(Damon can already feel the promise of song lyrics licking his brain).

Jeremy pokes his arm. “Dude. You’re, like, really staring.”

At 12:30pm, it is the interns job to go downstairs and collect everyone’s lunch. 

“So we’re corporate bitches now?” He mutters, moodily gathering his suit jacket. 

Jeremy seems unperturbed by the humbling. “Where did you go to college, brother?” 

They’re standing in line at Starbucks, surrounded by either suit wearers, like him, or beanie hat, single earring bros, like Jeremy. Clearly, the building is divided into this alien binary. 

“Yale,” Damon says, begrudgingly. In his usual circles, he dodges this question or straight up lies that he ever attended college. For Jeremy, college biography seems to be a safe bonding ground.

“Oh like Stef! I went to Duke.”

“Nice.” He doesn’t try too hard to mask his sarcasm. 

Jeremy fills his bulging arms with brown parcel bags of food, and Damon is handed a cardboard tray of pastel coloured drinks. Each one has a name scribbled on it in Sharpie: Stef makes him feel nauseous, reminding him of fraternity nights and “Little Stef Salvatore” on his first day at Yale, all collared up in a Ralph Polo, upside down over a keg stand. 

“Do we have to do this everyday?” Damon asks, as the elevator doors open to the fifth floor. 

Jeremy grins. “We all gotta start somewhere.”

They arrange the salads, sandwiches and smoothies on a large table against the wall. 

“Does everyone just come and grab their food?”

“Yep. Well, except Bonnie. I take hers to her office.”

“Let me do it,” Damon rushes, then, back tracks, “I mean, I should go and introduce myself.”

Jeremy is looking at him with amusement - and pity. Definitely some pity. “Dude.”

Bonnie Bennett: Head Editor, reads the plaque. He likes her name: the alliteration, the way his mouth forms around the double B, his tongue clicks at the T. Names have always had a significance to him. Not in the snobbish, lineage-fuelled questioning of his parents but sonically, like a song. 

Damon knocks on the door. 

“Come in.”

The office is a world away from the sterile minimalism of the main work area. There are books everywhere, stacked up in piles over the floor, in the corners, on and across and over book shelves. Plants sit in large Moroccan style pots, some upright, other drooping in a mess of sprawling leaves. He stands in the centre, palms open with the salad, a little bewildered. 

“Just leave it on my desk, please Jeremy.” 

“Oh, I’m not-“

Bonnie looks up from her laptop - he’d barely seen her amidst the towers of bound novels and almost-novels that guarded her desk. Face to face, her beauty is startling. Bonnie narrows her eyes, studying him. 

“Ah,” she says, impassive, “You must be the other Salvatore.”

“The original Salvatore,” he corrects, offering the first of his flirtatious smirks. 

Nothing. Not a quirk of the brow, a blush, a reaction, good or bad, nothing at all; she resumes typing on her laptop. 

“You have…a lot of books,” he says, taking a step toward her desk.

“It’s my job.”

“Right, of course,” he laughs, placing the salad beside her laptop. 

She frowns at the writing on the screen. 

And Damon is  suddenly willing to embrace, completely, full intern bitch mode and ask if she needs anything else?, like a simpering, slave to the establishment, or, simply a slave to the most enchanting woman he’s ever seen.

That is, until, Bonnie looks up again, and says, “Thank you, Damon,” dismissing him with a ruthless, heartbreaking, sexy, indifference. 

Outside, back to her office door, he experiences that arresting concoction of feeling foolish - and smitten. 

His brother, who is waiting outside to deliver a letter, stares at his pathetic-ness. “Seriously, Damon? It’s not even been a day.”

Chapter Text

He cheated. She was hurt. It was more a reflex than anything else; downloading the app, finding that picture. She didn’t care to be modest – not anymore. Right or left. It was a simple enough formula and she needed simple. A stranger’s touch, desire, anything to rid the shame of him choosing someone else. She wanted to be enough for anyone, even if for just an hour. Maybe less, depending.

Bonnie flicked her fingers across the screen, right, right, right, right. I’m crying, she realised, pathetic. Another swipe and a boy that looked very much like Jeremy made her scowl. Left. Rage, not sadness. That’s what she needed if she was going to do this.

It was 1am and the few decrepit stragglers desperate enough for a booty call looked nothing less than slimy. Still, Bonnie could do slimy, hell, even scaly, anything to silence the sickening blend of anger, betrayal and ugliness growling within her. Ted, 27 could tell her she was beautiful and for a fleeting moment, she’d believe him.

She scrolled through her messages, numb to the crude pick up lines. Here she was, shopping for a man to lie in her bed and leave once he, she, they, were satisfied. It both thrilled and disgusted her… tonight, though, she was hungry. He cheated and she was hurt.

Yours or mine?

Bonnie stared at the message, then at his picture. Damon, 25. Presumptuous and… gorgeous. She enlarged his profile and blew out a breath.

Mine.

What if I’m a serial killer?

My roommates are in. One of them does karate.

Fun. They can join in.

He looked like what Caroline would describe as a ‘fuck-boy’: sexy but fully aware, thus sending their attractiveness plummeting. It was only after she sent her address that it dawned on her that he really could be a serial killer, or, at least, a cat-fish. She debated waking Klaus or Caroline but that would defeat her spontaneity. She was doing this for her, not Jeremy, not who the world decided her to be, the star student, the creative, the friend, the girlfriend. Bonnie was under no illusion that Damon was magic, or ‘the answer.’ He was merely a warm body she could forget herself into.

Fifteen minutes. He didn’t live far, apparently. How she hadn’t seen him around town before, she didn’t know. Probably is a catfish. Typed in hot brunette male and found some blue-eyed dude on Instagram. And if he’s not? Bonnie observed her reflection in the mirror, the oversized t-shirt shapeless and definitely not what she’d describe as sexy. What even was the etiquette of dating app hook-ups? Did you offer them a drink or was it straight down to business, no small-talk? She yanked open her underwear drawer, scrambling for something red or lacey and finding nothing but some period pants and a faded sports bra. Shit. Caroline had an extensive selection of lingerie but was a light sleeper and would 100% wake up if she sifted through her drawers. Bonnie cursed again.  Why did I have to choose the best-looking guy on there!?

A knock. Her heart drummed as she walked towards the door. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. The image of Jeremy kissing Ana flashed through her mind and - yes, I have to - Bonnie turned the handle.

Damon lifted his eyebrows, a smirk twisting his mouth upwards, playful, seductive. “You look terrified.”

“Thanks.”

His smirk deepened. “Like your t-shirt.”

“I didn’t have anything else.”

“You could run and put on that nice little red dress.”

Bonnie faltered.

“I’m joking. Are you going to invite me in?”

“Right. Sorry.”

He followed her through the flat and into her bedroom. Damon blinked in the harsh light, “Nice room.”

Now he was in her space she felt sick. Normal people cry with ice cream and their best friend… she invited a stranger over to sleep with her. His eyes scanned her frame and she heated up, her heart proliferating. He had an intense, undressing stare that made Bonnie shiver.

Damon twinkled. “I can’t do a lot with you standing over there, Bonnie.”

Feeling incredibly stupid in the baggy t-shirt and oh fuck, slippers, she still had her slippers on, she stepped closer. Damon flipped the light switch and his words curled around her ear. “Everything’s better in moonlight.”

Bonnie could barely process a response before he was kissing her neck, slowly, gently, methodically taking her skin in his lips. It was pleasurable, extremely so, and she even sighed, the whisper of arousal swirling below.  

“You can touch me, you know,” Damon breathed and Bonnie reddened. Her hands were wound in fists, stiff against her sides.

“Right.”

She thought about touching his hair but it felt too intimate for a stranger, too affectionate. She settled for his torso, splaying her hands over the toned base beneath his t-shirt. Bonnie felt braver, Damon had lowered to her collar bone, and it was making her slightly dizzy. She slid her hand in his and pulled away, turning before she could discern his expression.

The bed was made, thankfully, and Bonnie slid her body onto the covers. Damon lifted an eyebrow, “As you wish.”

He stretched above her, his hands by her head and she was forced to look at his eyes, cooled by the moon-lit bedroom. Bonnie willed herself to think of him, Jeremy, and the hurt crashed again, obliging her mouth to his. Damon’s hands began to dance, teasing under her t-shirt.

“May I?”

Bonnie nodded and those blue eyes flickered. He pulled at the garment and inhaled, his lips finding new skin to explore. “You’re beautiful.”

Damon was, no doubt, skilled. And Bonnie tried, she tried so damn hard, to fall into his touches, guide him further but-

“Are you okay?” He frowned. “You’re crying.”

“It’s fine.” Bonnie waved her hand, “We can continue.”

“Did I make you cry?”

“No.”

Her words came out heavy, choked, and she turned her head into the pillow.

“Bonnie,” Damon touched her shoulder, concern threaded in her name.

“You should probably go, I’m sorry.”

She felt the bed shift, his weight lying next to her. “I’m not leaving you sobbing in your pillow,” Damon paused, “Quite cliché actually.”

Bonnie yanked her t-shirt down. “You came here for a sex and I can’t,” her voice halved, pathetic, “I can’t do that right now.”

“Correct, I did, but now I’m here, why don’t we… talk?” He sounded so unsure that Bonnie tilted on the pillow to look at him. Damon’s gaze was firmly fixed on the ceiling.

“Talk?”

“Hmhm. There’s a reason you wanted sexy time at 1am. Why?”

“You really want to know?”

Damon shrugged, “Got nothing else to do.”

In terms of random confidants, I could do worse.

“Fine. My boyfriend cheated on me. I broke up with him and felt so….”

“Unworthy, not enough, repulsive, hurt, angry,” Damon finished dryly, “Yep, been there before.”

There was a pause before Bonnie asked, “Is that why you’re here?”

And Damon laughed, empty and pained. “The first time. Then I fell in love,” he turned his head, “With the girl that’s dating my brother.”

“Ouch.”

The man hummed. “We’re a couple of sad fucks, aren’t we Bonnie?”

His words hung limp around them. They stayed like that, lying parallel on her bed, sometimes sharing, sometimes listening, sometimes silent. It was oddly comforting, his unfamiliar company.

An hour later Damon animated, pushing up from the covers with a sigh. “As much as I’d love to stay talking to you all night, I think I should go.”

Bonnie was surprised how quickly the words fell out of her mouth. “You don’t have to.”

His mouth twitched. “I didn’t realise I was such a good conversationalist. Have I been doing hook-ups all wrong?”

It made her laugh, he did, in his facetious, arrogant way. Damon smiled, “Thanks for an unexpected night,” he paused, “I’d be careful, by the way, inviting strangers into your home.”

“Don’t worry, it won’t be happening again.”

Damon’s face assumed a strange expression, morphed by the lack of light. “Good.”

He let himself out. Bonnie kicked her slippers off and unflapped the duvet. It smelt of him, like old pine, comforting. She glanced at her phone, the 20 unread messages from horny Mystic Falls’ residents, and exited the app, preparing to delete. Then, Damon, 25; the message blinked:

Tomorrow, 4pm. Wear something cute.

What?

A date. Duh.

Bonnie responded with her cell number and, a single butterfly tumbling in her stomach, deactivated her account.

Chapter Text

“They call it the Unsinkable.”

Damon’s mouth twitched with a whisper, “Seems a little presumptuous don’t you think, brother?”

The youngest Salvatore, however, was distracted. His father frowned in Damon’s direction. Do not embarrass me, son.

“The world’s largest passenger ship. Measuring at 269 meters!” The man puffed his chest, proud and powerful atop a floating hunk of steel. Damon, who was easily bored by other people’s fascinations and achievements, lost his gaze in the swarms below him. There were hundreds, thrusting their collected weight up the ramp and into the Unsinkable’s great belly.  Being Salvatore’s, they’d been escorted aboard first, presented with all the majesty and glimmer of what was, really, a glorified sailing boat destined for the New World.

“How long until we set sail?” He asked lazily, drawing a finger across the golden railing. “Hm, this is  dusty.”

The talking man turned beetroot and hurried his words together: sorrysirwewillgetaerserviceonthatimmediately. Damon felt the disapproving furrow of his father’s brow; his brother’s flickered eyeroll.

“We set sail at noon. Please, make yourself comfortable atop the deck. Departing will be a momentous occasion.”

He wished he could share Stefan’s excitement, his splendour at all things shiny and designed. Unfortunately, the only object that had ever held Damon’s attention was Miss Katherine, and she was far more deadly. Women were the most dangerous of infatuations – the world’s largest passenger ship was healthier, albeit failed to set his heart alight.

Ticket pressed into her palm, hair licking itself in the wind, she grinned at the man in blue. He lifted a brow. “You’re cutting it fine, young lady.”

“Where’s the excitement in being early?”

He grunted. “You found a found a ticket then?”

“Won it,” she responded proudly, “Third class.”

His mouth fell open in a laugh, “Fancy gambling away a third-class ticket on the Titanic.”

The wail of a horn cut between them and her eyes widened, thrilled. “May I?”

“As you wish, Miss…?”

“Bonnie. Bonnie Bennett.” She tipped her cap as she rushed past him, and attached herself to the last of the procession – the march to freedom, to adventure.

The ship pulled away in slow, tortuous heaves. Damon caught the faces of waving children, mothers, fathers, workers, dreamers, all marvelling at the vessel. Again, the blunt edge of heartbreak numbed and hollowed and he released his hand from the railing, intent on pouring some scotch down his throat.

“How can you leave this?” Stefan’s head shook with the effort of trying to decipher him. It was a worthless feat – Damon was born an enigma, he struggled to comprehend himself most days.

“I am parched.”

The ship groaned but did not tremble – the undulations of the tide slapped noiseless, passive, against its shell. And, striding through the empty hall, Damon felt equally as unmoved.

On that first day, Bonnie spent every hour of daylight, and well into the night, out on the deck. She lay on across the wooden slats of a bench and watched as blue ran into purples and pinks, then black. England was a vaguely blinking shadow now – the open water felt as close to infinity as humanly possible.

When not fixated by the arching sky, Bonnie was collecting the passenger’s stories. First Class were palpable; their movements slowed by laden petticoats and an inherent lack of urgency. They were beautiful, aloof and delicate but, like her, tittered with the excitement of being on the maiden voyage.

The sea air bit at her exposed ankles, attacking with the prelude of a coming storm. Just ahead of her, leaning against the rails, under a Parasol, were two men. From her line of sight, stretched horizontal across the bench, she could only discern the features of a handsome golden-haired passenger, talking animatedly to a shorter, more slumped frame. Bonnie received hints of conversation carried by the wind.

“You have to understand, Damon, he just wants what is best for us. We could not have remained there. You know this. Why must you be so obstinate about it?”

“Obstinacy is stubbornness, brother,” the other man flung his arms in the air theatrically, “I am here, am I not? Aboard the Great Titanic.”

“Have you never thought that maybe this is meant to be?”

“Of course. And I have reached the conclusion that the Lord does not care for Damon Salvatore.”

Bonnie sighed at this statement. Little rich boy. Whilst she was being bruised and leered at, this Damon was learning Latin and naming ducks on their estate’s lake. Whilst she was leaping from poor house to poor house, peeling scraps from the warehouse floor and carrying all the wealth she owned in a single pocket, he was serenading bonnet-tipped ladies and sipping from imported wine. She folded her arms behind her head and lost herself in the sky once more.

A day had passed and still, he remained indifferent. Breakfasts and dinners satisfied his hunger, and little else. Stefan’s patience was thinning – he didn’t care to entertain a brother whose presence felt like a melancholy burden. Damon began retreating to the upper deck, to the stare at the sea, fighting, to no avail, against the ship’s intrusion.

He also liked to look at the girl on the bench. She mostly had her eyes fixated on the sky, as if the wispy clouds were letters and she were reading. Her ankles were dark, much darker than he was familiar with, her hair coiled and bouncy. She didn’t look more than a maid in browns and creams, and yet, he couldn’t stop looking at her, wondering.

On the second afternoon of sailing, the sky growled and along came the rain. Naturally, everyone squealed and tugged on the hem of their dresses, rushing to the safety of ceilings. Damon turned from the railing and the girl on the bench was grinning. Laughing. The rain pounded his waistcoat as he walked towards her.

“Are you insane?”

The girl shifted her grin to his question. Her prettiness was… quite startling. “It’s only water.”

Damon bent his head towards the decking. “And freezing. You will catch your death.”

She wiped a hand across her eye, blinking in the pooling rain. “Then let death catch me. I dare it.”

Bonnie shivered inside the blanket. It was scratchy and yellow and warmer than anything she’d ever wrapped around her frame before. Maybe the rich boy was right. Still, she couldn’t regret it. For a single moment, an empty deck, an empty sea, the world was hers.

“You coming to dinner?”

The woman had two children hanging off each hand, a smile in her eyes.

She nodded at her cabin-mate, Leena. “I’m starving. Well, hungry.” Bonnie knew what starving felt like.

They ascended the stairs with several other third-class passengers – each with a glint in their eye, a shared delight that they were going to be eating on the Atlantic Sea.

Dinning for steerage did not overlook the ocean but the buzz in that orange-lit room became its own kind of wonder. She ate and laughed and ate again: plum pudding and freshly baked bread. Tucking a roll or two into her pocket was a habit more than anything.

“You going up top again?”

She twisted her head to smile at Leena, “Always.”

Bonnie’s eyes fluttered close as she inhaled salted air; already, she’d made a home on the sea. Rounding the corner though, she faltered. Her bench was occupied.

Damon sat with his back straight, staring at the water with an austerity that made her hesitate. His hair had curled wildly, shaking like tiny tails in the breeze, and his fingers were bound together on his lap. Thought chased itself across his brow, the sharp blue of his eyes, his frown.

Bonnie tread closer; Damon’s mouth loosened a little.

“I was wondering when you would return.”

“I was at dinner. We… we eat later than you.”

Damon tilted his head, “You’re welcome to sit down, you know.”

“Yes.”

Aside from a few intoxicated second class hugging the railings and singing songs to the sea, they were alone. Bonnie sat a about a meter or so from his left… for precaution.

“My name is Damon Salvatore but I cannot imagine that means much to you.”

Bonnie moistened her lip. “I like names but… no, Salvatore just sounds like a pretty one.”

He chuckled and the skin around his eyes folded in short lines. Perhaps only then did it dawn her just how attractive the rich stranger was. “What is yours?”

“Um, Bonnie. Bonnie Bennett.

“Pleasure to meet you um, Bonnie. Bonnie Bennett.”

She swallowed her smile with a question. “What are you going to do when you get there?”

“Where?”

It was her turn to laugh. “New York, of course.”

Damon’s eyes hardened again. “Right. I suppose whatever my father needs me to do. Marry or-”

“Bullshit.”

He stared at her in disbelief. Bonnie blanched and covered her mouth. “Sorry, I… sorry.”

“No, I am intrigued. Why did that elicit such… profanity.” There was a smirk in his words, she could see it – something teasing in his eye that made her stomach jump a little.

She answered with hesitance. “I just mean… you’re a man, you’re rich…. The world is designed for people like you. Why waste it?”

There was a long pause; only the sound of a drunken chorus circled. Damon regarded her, thinking. Bonnie squirmed under his gaze, feeling suddenly very foolish. The poor girl, atop a ship headed to America, talking to him.

“Do tell me then, Miss… Bonnie, what are you going to do when we are back on land?”

It was a question she hadn’t even asked herself. Damon ran his thumb along the back of his hand – slender and pale. They looked cold.

“I don’t know,” she replied honestly, “but I think that’s what makes it so brilliant.”

Chapter Text

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Not then: she, sprawled on the couch, him, absentmindedly massaging her socked feet, the Superbowl enlivening the TV screen. Damon felt his wife shift, groan, fold over; he caught the panic in her eyes. Too early. Too early.

“Damon.”

“What’s happening?”

“Damon.”

Bonnie’s fingers pulsed around his. Too early. Too early.

“Is it happening?” Caroline began to panic, leaping from the couch she and Stefan were slumped on. “Oh my God, Bonnie.”

His wife clutched at the mound, their tiny future, fighting for air, now, three weeks early. Persistent little thing.

“We need to get to the hospital. Damon. The hospital.”

“Right, right, of course.” He released her hand, helped her up, curled her arm around his waist, pulled her weight against him.

Stefan moved fast, opening doors and scrabbling for shoes. “Does she have a bag?”

“A bag?”

“Like a hospital bag.”

The groans Bonnie was releasing terrified him. “Bon, baby, do you have a bag?”

“Of course, I don’t have a bag! I’m – fuck, ow, ow, ow, - three weeks, oomph, early!”

Caroline swallowed. “I’ll get the essentials. Meet you guys in the car.”

Damon eased her onto the back seat. The sheen of sweat gathering on her chest made his heart jump. Too early. Too early.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Bonnie snapped.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m going to die or something,” she managed a sluggish eyeroll, “It’s just birth, Damon. We’ve been through a lot worse.”

He kissed her forehead, sliding his hands back into hers, clammy. “You can’t magic yourself out of this one, Bon-bon.”

Her smile slipped into something drowsy, dream-like. “Can’t I?”

“I’m here!”

Caroline began to babble about hospital supplies, listing off instructions to Damon like stay with her, make sure she has some water, I couldn’t find her slippers, only crocs, don’t kill me Bonnie (to which his wife mumbled ‘oh, I will’).

Stefan peered round the driver’s seat. “All ready?”

“Have you seen her!? Yes!”

And Damon felt suddenly very helpless. He’s her husband, he’s Damon Salvatore for fucks sake, notorious former vampire, bad-ass, kick-ass lover to Bonnie Bennett and yet, without his brother and sister-in-law, he would have come undone. He ran his thumb along the back of his wife’s hand as if to say, I’m here now.

The drive to the hospital was short and punctuated by Bonnie’s contractions. Caroline filled the silences in between, talking the car through stages of labour, what the men are supposed to do, how to assist. Stefan glanced at Damon in the overhead mirror – his eyes read, get ready brother, your world is about to change.

“There’s a queue. Why is there a queue!?” They found a wheelchair and bundled her onto it, her face now red, her hand trembling. Damon raised his voice, “Can’t they see she’s in fucking labour!?”

A nurse touched his arm, asked him to control his language. “When did the contractions start?”

Caroline answered for him. “About forty-five minutes ago. She’s early. The due date isn’t for another three weeks.”

The movements blurred: the nurse, pushing forward, Bonnie’s chair carving a path through the unusually busy hospital corridor, forms, doctors, too soon, too soon, a door. “Are you the father?”

It was Bonnie’s hand, clenched around his - that was the only thing concrete.

She looked so small in that bed, her clothes stripped off, shrunk in something blue and paper-like. Stefan touched his shoulder. “I’m going to get us some coffee.”

Bonnie smiled at him through the mid-wives, reassuring him like the strong woman she was: his magical wonder-Bennett. He’d tell her that, when they were holding their baby. Our baby.

His hand was squeezed. “It’s okay.”

“Hey, I’m meant to be the one consoling you.”

“You look terrified.”

The midwife called for another push; the cry of pain made him wince. “Bonnie?” She let out a carnal sound, more animalistic than human.  “Bonnie?”

She spoke through gritted teeth, “Shut up, I’m trying to bring our child into the world.”

By the second hour, Damon was unravelling. Bonnie’s eyes were lulling; the midwives had gathered in clusters, whispering in concern. Too early.There were talks of injections: corti-something to help the baby’s lungs. Lungs. Tiny lungs wanting to awake.

He was almost here now - their miracle child. Caroline had gone to the toilet but Damon was stiff, his hand still fiercely in his wife’s. She eyed him from the pillow, green eyes swollen with emotion, pain and fear. There was fear there.

“Alright Bonnie, we are so close now. Just one more push, sweetheart.”

The tiny thing tumbled into latex gloves. Damon inhaled as Bonnie’s head hit the pillow with a whimper. They were taking him away. No, no, no, no.Their little boy, curled within two hands, twitching and shuddering and too soon.

“Where are you taking him?” His voice came out too quiet. He asked again, louder. “Where are you taking him?”

Bonnie murmured against the bed, her hand now limp in his, her hair damp against her forehead. Blood pooled over the sheets like a tiny murder scene and their baby… Damon searched for his purple son. His eyes darted from doctor to doctor, he checked their hands. Nothing.

The midwife spoke carefully. “We’ve taken him to the NICU.”

“What the hell is that!?”

“The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit,” she paused, “Mr Salvatore, I know you’re concerned but please, try and stay calm. For your wife’s sake at least.”

He glanced at the door: Caroline and Stefan were talking to a doctor, the blonde looked angry. They weren’t letting them re-enter.

Bonnie’s lips were parted, her skin drained. “Damon?”

“I’m here, I’m here. I’m here, baby.”

“He’s too small, isn’t he?”

Her words broke, and he looked at the midwife in desperation. She touched Bonnie’s arm, soothing her, hushing her, speaking no words about their boy, just calls for rest. It angered him.

“Why aren’t you telling us more? You can’t just take him away like that. I don’t care if it’s the neo- whatever the hell it was, he’s my son,” he felt his own words build, his throat narrow, “I want to see my son.”

And he was ushered outside, the door closed shut behind him. Damon trembled, his eyes heavy in the artificial light, feverish with questions. The doctor that greeted him, shook his hand.

“Dr Moses.”

“What’s happening to our baby?”

The doctor nodded, “I understand your stress, Mr Salvatore. As I just explained to your brother, your baby is in the best care.” She took a breath, “As you know, Mrs Salvatore gave birth early which means your baby is undeveloped. He’s been taken to an incubator to keep him warm.”

“For how long?”

“We’re not sure,” the doctor replied honestly, “We need to regulate his body temperature, and assess any problems with the lungs.”

Damon tensed. “What problems with the lungs? Is he going to be okay?”

“Your baby suffered from something called Infant Apnea,” she answered before he could ask, “That’s when the baby stops breathing for a short period of time, causing the skin to turn a pale blue. We have a pulmonologist in the NICU now.” The doctor bit her lip. “Mr Salvatore? There’s no need to panic just yet. As I said, your baby is in the best care.”

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Ever since the turn all those centuries ago, Damon’s habitual reaction has been Anger. His hands curl, his eyes harden – the veins begin their hungry crawl. And then his fangs, pushing from gums in an impetuous need to damage, tear apart. He thought of his baby, blue and fighting for breath and, although human, the phantom fangs lurched forward. He wanted to pin the doctor against the wall, growl until she promised to give her life for their child, bleed for him.

“Damon.” Stefan’s voice was as firm as the hand on his arm. Breathe. “Thank you, Doctor. Please, keep us informed of any developments.”

“Of course.”

His brother led him to the plastic bench where Caroline was gnawing on the skin around her nails.

“Drink.” Stefan thrust a coffee under Damon’s nose. “You need it.”

Damon poured the liquid down his throat and sputtered. “Bourbon!?”

“Your baby’s on life support. No judgement.”

He downed the rest of the styrofoam cup in one swoop. “Bon’s basically passed out. She didn’t even get to touch him.”

The statement ballooned into a heavy silence. Caroline placed a hand on his knee.

Twenty minutes later, the midwife opened the door and he was allowed back in. Caroline and Stefan shuffled behind him; their eyes rounded in concern. Bonnie’s smile was watery.

“Hey.”

Caroline rushed to her side. “Oh, Bonnie.”

They circled around her, trying to give reassuring smiles but they sat like lies atop their faces and Damon wanted to collapse.

Bonnie gripped his hand, and her words fell in a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“How small was he?” He caught a tear on his thumb.

Damon lowered to kiss her forehead. “He’s got Bennett blood. He’s strong.”

“Tiny but powerful?”

“Tiny but powerful.”

He kissed at her tears, alarmed at his own. Bonnie studied him. “I hate seeing you cry.”

“I hate this.”

Time crawled in that hospital room. Caroline and Stefan took turns on the arm chair, sometimes disappearing to gather more snacks from the vending machine, coffee breaks, and Doctor chasing. Somewhere in those corridors, was their baby boy. The thought was paralysing.

“If he makes it-”

“He’s going to make it.”

Bonnie gave a sad smile. “If he makes it, let’s call him that.”

“What?”

“Small but powerful. Type it in on google. I want a name that means that.”

Damon let out a breath. He unearthed his phone from his pocket and typed the words. The list was long: a mixture of Gaelic and Disney Prince sounding.

Bonnie lifted her eyes. “Well?”

“There’s one that means small, but mighty. I like that.”

“Small, but mighty,” a smile poked at her mouth, “Our little warrior.” She traced a vein on his hand. “What is it?”

“Mr Salvatore.”

Dr Moses didn’t knock before entering and Bonnie’s nail scratched against his palm. If he were still a vampire, the noise of her heart would have deafened him. Damon stood up.

“Is he okay?”

“We’ve had to hook him up through IV, but he’s stable.” She played with the folds of her doctor’s coat, “Would you like to meet him?”

“Yes. Yes, definitely.”

Bonnie latched on to his finger, pulling softly. Her eyes were glossed with tears. “Wait, what’s his name?”

And Damon kissed her. Once, twice, a third time. She laughed softly, “Tell me, idiot.”

He grinned like a madman, giddy with the existence of him, their baby, small but mighty. “Renny,” he faltered suddenly, “Do you like it?”

Bonnie’s mouth folded around the name, trying it out for size, her tongue chasing the syllables. She laughed again. “Renny. That’s perfect.”

He was told to wash his hands. Put this gown on. Wear this mask. Everything about him was stripped down, pushed into something sterile, hospitalised. He squinted in the light of the room.

The incubators looked like tiny cages, lined up in formation – a curled, purple life-form sleeping or wriggling in each. It frightened him, not knowing which was his.

“He’s got an infusion pump, a tube inserted into the belly button, feeding him something we call TPN.”

Damon winced at another bloody acronym. These doctors talk in a different language.

“This gives him the nutrients he needs to feed and grow.” The nurse smiled tentatively, “You can touch him, he responds well to physical touch.”

“How?”

She smiled again, “Through the holes. It might be nice to hold his hand.” She turned away, busying herself with another tiny child too fragile for the world.

Renny had his eyes squeezed shut, shrivelled above a button nose and upturned mouth. Damon traced his shape over the plastic. His swollen stomach twitched; the blue of his skin looked frozen.

“Hi, little man.”

The baby coughed.

“I’m your daddy… I’m sorry you’re in a plastic house but it seems you couldn’t wait to meet me and your mummy, huh?” He brought his face closer, examined the bunched fist, wondered how to touch him, terrified of doing it wrong, hurting his puckered skin, sending his lungs into disarray with a scream. “You’re going to love her. Not more than I do, that would be impossible, but just as much. She’s brilliant, brave and strong. Like you.” He dared to poke at the opening; his gloved finger scraped against a hand. “I don’t know if I’m going to be a very good father, Renny, but I’ll promise you this: I’m never going to stop loving you. Ever.” He brushed against his baby’s skin, whispering it awake. “And I’m always going to be here. You got that, right? Even when you’re angry at me and you try to push me away, you’re my son. You’re stuck with me, Ren-ren.”

Renny shivered; his hand unfurled for a moment, fleetingly, before re-curling – this time, with Damon’s finger in the centre.

They visited the NCIU every day, at multiple hours. When Bonnie had enough strength to see him, she cried. Gloved hands splayed over his plastic home, she told him how much she loved him, how much she wanted to hold him. Renny coughed and caught her in his open eye. Bonnie buried herself in Damon’s chest; he stroked her hair and promised his baby all the love in the world.

Caroline thought he was beautiful. By the third day, he had darkened, a milky chocolate pooling over the violet. The blonde tickled his palms through the holes and giggled at his wriggling. Stefan bought some stickers from their children’s craft box and together they, made a picture on the plastic cover, above his feet.

“It’s like a blanket,” said Bonnie.

Dr. Moses said he could come in the next week and his wife recruited the other Salvatore’s on nursery duty, handing Caroline the readily accepted role of interior designer.

“Your Auntie Caroline’s crazy, little man,” Damon whispered, his finger trapped by all of his son’s. “Actually, I’m afraid this whole family is crazy,” he sighed, “Make that the whole town.” Renny sighed too, content. “It’s home though… You’ll get to meet it properly soon, don’t worry.  It doesn’t look very fun in that plastic box.”

When the day came, he felt sick. The anticipation of driving to the hospital, knowing that he would be holding him, fully, completely, would wake up to him, say goodnight to him, from now until the day his son moved away.

Bonnie held him first – he fit in her arms like a jigsaw piece, still so very small. Damon inhaled his scent, folding around his wife, unable to resist the moment. It was the happiest he’d ever been. Those years of chasing, drinking, killing, falling, in love, out of it, to get to here.

Renny accepted his finger silently. It was their agreement – daddy’s hand, his to hold. Forever.

“So Renny almost died!?”

He nods. “Yup.”

“Cool.”

“Hey!” The boy frowns at his sister. “That’s mean.”

“But you didn’t, that’s the main thing.”

Renny ignores her. “Did you really cry, dad?”

“Maybe.”

Both children screw up their faces. “I didn’t even know you could cry.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Mia.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Well, a long, long time ago, your Uncle Stefan and I-”

“Damon.”

With a chuckle at his wife’s warning, he winks at his children. “Ask me in a few years.”

Chapter Text

Dear Diary, 

I am writing this sitting in the back of the car next to Roo. He is asleep. Phew. He’s very cute but also very chatty and I really just wanted to write. There is a lot happening! We are on the way to Mystic Falls! We go there every summer -  duh - but this summer is extra extra special. 

Omg Dad just said that I’m going to make myself sick writing in the car. Erm, Dad, we are in a traffic jam. Oh wait. We’re moving again now. Catch you laterrrrr xoxo

***

I’m back! I’d forgotten how HUGE the house is. I swear it gets bigger every summer. I’m in my own room again and it’s SO much bigger than my room in Richmond. Also way darker. I’ve stolen Cuddles back from Roo. He is sharing with Mom and Dad because he gets nightmares like I used to. 

Matt and Nari aren’t here yet!! Don’t tell anyone but I’m a littleeeeeeee bit nervous about seeing Maxwell. He only turned twelve like two months ago so he’s literally a baby and all my friends like older boys like the fourteen year olds who skateboard. But when I texted him HBD he replied “Thx xxxx” with four kisses. FOUR. 

Soz Dad is calling me downstairs to choose take-out. I hope pizza wins! 

Dear Diary,

Ignore EVERYTHING I wrote about Maxwell. He is a total baby. Very immature. I can’t believeeeee I was nervous about seeing him. Cringe. Amaryllis Bennett-Salvatore is a thirteen year old independent woman. Remember that Relly!! 

Nari said that she loved my braids. She’s so pretty. She also promised to teach me how to write my name in Korean. Megan will be so jel - she’s K-pop obsessed. Matt gave Mom a really lovely bouquet of orange tulips, it was so cute.

So far today the adults have spent a lot of time chatting in the kitchen. I can hear them laughing downstairs now. Rufus and Maxwell are playing outside - Max just threw a ball at my window. Ugh. BOYS. 

Tomorrow Dad is taking me shopping yay!! I’m sooooo excited to choose a dress.

***

Omg I’m using my phone torch to write this because it’s late but I just had to update you. I just said goodnight to everyone and Maxwell said he liked my t-shirt AND my braids. He’s still a baby but that was nice. I texted Megan and she replied “he’s in lurve lol”. 

Dear Diary,

I HAD THE BEST DAY. So much happened so I’ll try and include as much detail as I can remember.

First of all, I woke up at 8 and went downstairs for breakfast. Dad had made us all his special pancakes with the fangs. Mom pretends not to like them but we all know she does. I think Twilight was a big thing for them in the old days?? I haven’t seen it. 

We moved out of Mystic Falls just before Roo was born so it was nice to do our kitchen routine there again. I have really happy memories from that kitchen. 

Dad is EXTRA kissy with Mom at the moment but I supposeeeee it makes sense. I still tell him that it’s gross though and that makes him give my cheek a big sloppy, scratchy kiss. He is so embarrassing but I love him. 

Dad let me choose the PRETTIEST dress ever. It’s purple with little silver flowers hanging in the skirt. I sent a pic to Megan and she died LOL. Dad pretended to die when he saw me (see!? embarrassing) and said that I was gonna break hearts. I wonder what Max will think?

I am keeping it a surprise from Mom, even though I’ve seen her dress. 

After shopping we got burgers and milkshakes from the Grill. My school friends don’t like hanging out with their dads but that’s because theirs are so boring. Sometimes I think that Dad is my best friend? 

Omg with all that soppy stuff I almost forgot the REALLY WEIRD THING!! It happened as we were walking out the Grill. There was this little patch of dandelions and as I walked past they all suddenly blew away. But it wasn’t like wind - they were swirling around me like a hurricane !! Then they all just fell. Dad helped me pick bits out of my hair. Maybe I’m a fairy or something lol.

Damon taps a rhythm on the bedroom door frame; Bonnie looks up from the photo album on her lap.

She smiles at him. “Someone made our daughter very happy.”

Damon folds in a bow: “Just doing my job.”

Bonnie gestures him over to the bed and he curls his arm around her waist, looking down at the photos of them as idiots in love. “She’s writing about it in her diary right now.”

“How very Stefan,” he says softly, fingers tracing the smile on his brother’s face in the photograph. 

Bonnie rests her head on his shoulder. “Have you seen how Maxwell looks at her?”

“Obviously. I know he’s only twelve but I don’t trust him.”

Bonnie snorts. “You’ve known him since he was four.”

Damon pulls his love in closer. He kisses the top of her head, one, two, three, then: “Bon,” he murmurs into her hair, “It happened.”

She pulls away instantly, staring at him with wild eyes. “Her magic?”

Damon nods. 

“What was it like?” She breathes, hands clasped around his. 

He remembers Relly in a white storm of dandelions; he remembers the delight on her face. “It was beautiful.” 

A small, proud smile dances across Bonnie’s mouth. “Did you tell her?”

Damon shakes his head, decisive. “That’s a Mom and daughter conversation.”

“I…I wasn’t sure it would happen at all. But I suppose it makes sense for the town to…” She looks at him, suddenly pained. “I don’t want it to become a burden for her.”

And Damon is fierce. “It won’t. We’ll protect her,” he glances down at the photo album, “Like we all should have protected you.” 

Bonnie brushes her fingers under his chin, pulling him away from the guilt that still crept on him. “Hey. I know you will.” She searches his eyes. “Did she look scared?”

Now Damon smiles. “She looked alive.”

“Relly the witch,” Bonnie says softly.

Damon presses his forehead against hers. 

They stay like that for a while, connected, and then their four year old barrels into the room and into his lap, riding an intense sugar high - if Roo’s chocolate smeared face is anything to go by. 

“Hey little man,” he laughs, “I think Mommy wants some chocolate kisses too.”

Dear Diary, 

The house was CRAZY today. There were soooo many people here decorating. Eeeeeek. 

I met Mom’s old friends and they all said that I look just like her which made me happy. Mom is the most beautiful woman in the world (according to Dad anyway!). Roo had a massive tantrum about something stupid and I took him outside to the back yard to watch the string lights being put around the trees. Maxwell came out too and we chatted about stuff. He has started playing piano! That’s pretty cool. I like that more than skateboarding. 

There was ANOTHER weird flower thing today too. When I  touched one of the tulips Matt gave Mom, it opened up???? I was joking about being a fairy but EXPLAIN THAT. 

**

Sorry, Dad just came in to kiss me good night. He asked if I was excited for tomorrow. DUH. I asked him if he was nervous and he said a bit but they’re excited nerves. He gave me a big hug and said “I love you Relly-bean. You and Roo-bear are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

I wanted to write that down because he really is such a big softie. 

I’m so sleepy. Night xxxx 

Dear Diary, 

Today was the best day of my life. I need to write it allllll down. Everyone is still downstairs dancing but I told Mom I HAD to go write. I don’t want to forget a single detail. Memories are important. Dad says Uncle Stefan would alway say that.

So in the morning, Dad, Matt, Maxwell, Roo and Alaric all left the house so the girls could get ready in peace. Mom let me do her eye shadow!! Not her eyeliner though *sad face*. She looked GORGEOUS. Her dress is green with floaty sleeves. She didn’t want a boring traditional white one. 

When she saw my dress she cried. I told her that she’d ruin her makeup!

I stayed upstairs with Mom as everyone finished getting everything ready outside.  Then Nari knocked on the door and said “It’s time” and I held Mom’s hand all the way down the stairs. When we reached the back door I gave her the little  amaryllis flower bouquet that Dad had ordered specially. She hugged me really tight. 

It was soooooooo hard not to cry as we walked down the aisle arm in arm. Dad and Rufus stood waiting at the end in matching white suits - Roo had a green tie to match Mom’s dress and Dad surprised me with a purple one to match mine. He’s the cutest! He was grinning at Mom so much and squeezed my hand lots. He was also so nervous that he dropped the ring! That made everyone laugh. Roo found it on the lawn and yelled “Got it Daddy!” and everyone called him a hero. It was just so happy. Matt said “you may kiss the bride” and Dad swooped Mom up in his arms like a movie star. 

Everyone followed them back into the house to cut the cake and Maxwell tapped me on the shoulder and said “You look really pretty Relly.” When I go back downstairs I think I’ll ask him to dance. MAYBE. He is still only twelve. 

Speaking of dancingggg after the cake cutting and toasts that made everyone cry, Alaric and Matt pushed the couches to the side to make a dance floor. Mom’s friends pushed Mom and Dad into the middle and they started dancing together. The song was Harvest Moon by Neil Young (Max told me). At the second chorus, Dad put Roo on his shoulders and Mom grabbed my hand and we all danced together. Dad spun Mom around, then he spun me around. The whole house and yard sparkled! It looks extra extra pretty now it’s nighttime. 

But now for the most amazing part…….You won’t believe this but I swear it JUST happened. After lots of dancing, Mom took me out onto the front porch. She then did something really strange: she told me to put my hands out and close my eyes. I felt something really soft and fluffy but when I tried to open my eyes Mom told me to keep them closed and imagine the feathers floating. Suuuuperrrr weird. BUT WAIT. I kept them closed and thought about them floating and then Mom started to laugh like really really excited and happy and I opened my eyes. THE. FEATHERS. WERE. FLOATING. I was totally amazed. Obvi.

Mom’s eyes were shining and she whispered “You’re magic, baby. I’ll help you. I’ll show you all the wonders.”

HOW CRAZY IS THAT !!!!!!!!!

Oh I have to go! I can hear me and Daddy’s favourite duet song starting downstairs! He used to let me stand on his feet as we waltzed around the kitchen. Okay…he still does. The song is Always a Woman by Billy Joel by the way, in case older Relly forgets. 

Okay Dad is demanding his dance partner!!! Love u bye. 

Chapter Text

Cake balanced on knees, champagne flutes are lifted towards the fireplace. Caroline, in a powder blue dress, unfolds the paper in her hands. 

“Um, hi! Hi, everyone,”  she looks at Bonnie, who offers her an encouraging smile, “I would like to speak on behalf of not just myself but Stefan Salvatore, Damon’s brother.” Her fingers tremble around the page. “He would deliver this speech better than me. He was a wordsmith through and through.” She glances up at the bride and groom, and a smile forms around her next words. “Stefan and I would talk a lot about Bonnie and Damon - he even nicknamed you guys Bamon,” this is received with a smattering of laughter, “long before you ever fell in love, or, admitted to one another that you were.” She exhales slightly, barely perceptible. “We agreed that you two becoming friends was the best thing that could have happened to you, Damon. We said that Bonnie made you a better man but, and I know Stefan will agree with me, wherever he is, this did you a disservice. Both of you. You don’t make each other better, you make each other real.” Caroline is crying now, she flicks away the tears dancing on her cheek bones with a laugh. “I think you are your truest selves when you’re together. And,” she places a blue manicured hand over her heart, “I wish you and your beautiful family all the happiness that Stefan always knew you deserved.”

There’s beat of appreciative silence - then the living room begins to clap and Matt announces, “Cheers to that, Care!”

She flops back on the couch, satisfied, and Damon reaches over to squeeze her knee. Caroline places her hand atop of his, and returns the gesture. 

The groom prepares to make a closing toast but his new bride whispers something in his ear. Damon’s mouth creases - it’s almost a smirk. 

Bonnie stands at the fireplace, green eyes aglow with all the string lights, and fiddles with the corner of her speech. “I, er, wrote something too.” She shakes her head with a memory: “Damon once wrote a letter to me many years ago and delivered it to me on the porch of this very house. I thought it was about time I returned the favour.” Husband looks at wife - it’s as if they are alone in the room. “I first entered this house as a frightened teenager,” Bonnie begins to read from the page, “and I think it’s fair to say that Damon and I didn’t exactly hit it off. It was many years, and many tears later, when fate trapped us together for a while, that we became friends.” There are a few knowing smiles on the faces of their old life. “I have never had a friend like Damon. I have had brilliant and beautiful friendships like Care,” she grins at her friend, still grasping Damon’s hand, “And Matt,” she carries her grin to the tall man standing behind the couch, “and Elena, it means so much that you came today, really.” Elena, whose head is resting on her partner’s shoulder, mouths ‘of course’ to her oldest friend. “I love you all so much,” Bonnie continues, “but these are friendships that were born out of childhood. You’ve always been family, when my own felt so lacking. There isn’t an earned loyalty there.” She looks back up again, to speak to the man gazing at her. “Damon’s friendship was torturous, I mean it, we damn nearly killed each other, we broke one another in two, we were clumsy with the reparation but,” her voice crackles with emotion, “we realised that what we had become was a kind of echo. Where I went, Damon returned. Where Damon went, I felt pulled towards.” Bonnie laughs, more to herself than the room,  “In those six years apart, I heard his stupid jokes and sarcasm everywhere and he, too, I know, heard me scolding him, calling him a dick.” She flickers to her youngest child, sat on the floor by Damon’s feet, picking the icing off his Dad’s cake slice. “Don’t repeat that word, kiddo.” Bonnie takes a breath, much like Caroline did. “I am not me without him now, Damon I-” she finds his waiting gaze again, “My love, in whatever universe, whatever form, whatever realm or timeline, I will come back to you. Being Bonnie will always bring me Back To You.”

Stefan watches his brother leap from the couch and embrace his wife with such a Damon-esque impetuousness, it makes him laugh. They sway together, as Matt declares another “Cheers!”, and happiness sweeps  through the Salvatore living room.

Stefan observes every face lit up with love, his own a mirror of their joy. He remains unnoticed, existing here, now, as a whisper in the fabric of the universe,  invisible to all except - Stefan’s eyes widen in surprise at the curious stare holding him. Amaryllis’ brow is furrowed as though she is trying to figure him out, and it’s so like Damon that Stefan’s smile becomes a full, face-cracking grin. He has no idea if his niece understands that she is looking at a memory of the uncle she never got to meet - all he knows is that the grin she returns him is brilliant. 

And that he loves her, this child who allowed his brother the happiness of this room. 

***

Bamon Writing Playlist. 

Chapter Text

There is a growing knot of suited and booted men at the foot of the grand staircase, and Bonnie squeezes through to find a spot along the wall. She leans against the floral wallpaper, half-hidden by a ridiculously large plant pot, and waits for the show to begin.

“Can I get you a drink?” asks a low voice.

She’s so tired, she wonders if the plant is hitting on her.

It isn’t. It’s a man.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she replies, hoping her tone is enough of a closed door.

“Pretty girl like you should be waiting up there with the other Miss Mystic Falls hopefuls.”

Bonnie forces herself to smile up at her admirer. “The spotlight’s not really my thing.”

The man, of course, interprets her humility as flirtation. “Am I?”

“I think not.” The vampire materialises out of nowhere, startling both Bonnie and the man.

“Who are you? Her boyfriend?”

“No!” Bonnie splutters, and heat creeps like a vine up her neck.

Damon gives the man a conspiratorial eyeroll. “Trouble in paradise.”

The idiot doesn’t take the bait. He folds his arms across his chest, irritatingly taller than the vampire. (Irritating only because he can’t snap his neck in a crowd). Damon, instead, leans forward as if to exchange a secret, and whispers, “Take yourself for a walk, buddy.”

The man blinks back at him, processing the compelled instruction, but Damon doesn’t wait for it to sink in. He takes an outraged Bonnie by the elbow and steers her down the corridor, away from the waiting cluster by the stairs. Behind them, someone hits play on the ‘Classical’ CD, and a cheap imitation of a piano silences the chatter.

Bonnie tries to wrench herself free but his hold is firm. “Let me go, asshole,” she hisses. "I promised Caroline I'd watch her."

Damon nudges open a door to his right and ushers her inside.

“What the hell!?” Bonnie demands.

The vampire closes the door to the cramped room: the cloak closet, he realises, flicking on the light and sparing a thought for the optics of emerging from such a hide-out.

He spins back to face the witch in all her tiny fury. “You’re welcome, by the way."

“Oh, you’re Mr Chivalrous now? Saving me from predatory men?”

Damon absentmindedly thumbs the bottom of a silk jacket. “Why aren’t you Miss Mystic Falls anyway?”

“Seriously!?” The heat under Bonnie’s skin gathers ferocity. Gathers flame. She could flay him alive in here, she’s learned more of her strength now. “You’re so full of bullshit. Just leave me alone.”

“Look, I know you’re not exactly Team Vamp at the moment–”

“Damon.”

Hearing his name said like that trails a finger of ice down his spine. Her eyes are dark, clouding over with a spell, and he is suddenly a caged creature being observed by a malicious, yet enchanting, gaze.

“I should kill you and save us all the trouble,” Bonnie hums; at least that’s how Damon experiences the threat – a vibration that burrows deep beneath his skin.

The witch’s hands itch with magic, and there is a breath in which it sweeps through her so violently that she almost avenges her Gram’s death in the Lockwood’s coat closet.

But the expression on Damon’s face re-routes the electric pulse in her bloodstream. His pink mouth is slightly parted, his sharp blue eyes glazed and wide; but not wide like fear, wide like anticipation. She’s never seen his face arrange itself in this way. It’s nothing like the puppy-dog longing he has when looking at Elena, and nothing like the grim annoyance that so often stares back at her.

It awakens a different flame.

Damon’s shoulders relax as the witch drops her gaze.

“May I go, Prince Saviour?” she snaps, though the sarcasm has lost its bite and Damon wonders what’s rattled her.

He turns the door handle, bowing as she pushes past him out into the corridor.

“Save me a dance, Princess?”

“Sure. If you can dance with a million popping blood vessels.”

Damon smirks. “You’d be surprised how well I can dance under duress.”

He wants to appreciate her disgusted face, but she’s stalked off, heels striking the parquet floor as harshly as her pulse.

Damon hovers there for a moment, staring after her, caught in the echo of that racing heartbeat – wanting to follow wherever it leads. 

Chapter Text

Blondie is especially persistent today. Damon is leaning against the dormitory doorjamb, watching Caroline thrust mini-dress upon mini-dress at Bonnie.

“Parties are good for you,” she whines. “And this dress even more so. Damon, help me out here. Won’t she look hot in this?”

She waves the scrap of fabric in the air. It’s red. Bonnie would look very hot in it.

“I don’t want to go either,” he says instead.

“What!? It’s literally the party of the semester.”

“Literally,” Damon mimics, making Caroline scowl – and Bonnie bite down a smile.

“God, when did you two get so boring?” huffs the blonde. “I’d think after being cooped up in 1994 or whatever you’d want to have some actual fun.”

“We had fun,” says Bonnie, and something flutters a bit in Damon’s chest.

Caroline rolls her eyes. “You’ve forgotten what real fun is, Bon.”

“Maybe,” says Damon, stepping further into the room, “she’s just come to appreciate the finer things in life.”

“And what’s that?”

He smirks. “Yours truly.”

Bonnie snorts. “You’ve got way too much ego to miss out on this party.” She flops back onto the cushions, tugging Miss Cuddles out from under the pile of clothes. “You two go. I’m not leaving my bed.”

Caroline spins toward Damon in exasperation, but he just shrugs. “Elena will be there, right?”

“Yeah, but…” she trails off. Shakes her head. 

It’s been a few months since his return, less time for Bonnie, and it’s still fucking weird to see his ex-girlfriend look at him with the easy emptiness of someone who’s never loved him. He had tried to fight for their memories at first. He arrived back in the present day disorientated, anchorless, Bonnie-less, and Elena was a blank slate.

Then, one day, he walked into his kitchen and saw her, Bonnie, standing there, grinning at him, and his mind and body slotted back into place. There is little that makes sense in the convoluted chaos of vampires and witchcraft and curses and Prison Worlds, but somehow, they do. Bonnie and Damon. Best friends.

“Budge up,” he says, settling down on the bed beside her. Caroline grabs the red dress and whirls out of the room. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Damon calls after her.

Bonnie jabs him in the ribs. “You’re an ass.”

“Speaking off asses. You would have looked especially divine in that dress.”

“Ha ha. Must I really spend my evening with you?”

“Absolutely. And the night.” He shifts down the bed, so that his head rests on her shoulder. “Platonically of course. No fondling.”

“Gross.”

They’re quiet for a while, and Bonnie’s breath drifts out across his cheek, steady and comforting. And though he loves her differently to how she does him, it’s a shared light: steady and comforting.

“Is it really because Elena’s there?”

Damon reaches for Miss Cuddles’ paw. “No. Maybe? I dunno. She’s so different now.”

“As are you.”

He tilts his head, needing to catch the meaning in her eyes. She smiles. He loves her.

“I think…one day, you two could reconnect. It would be simpler, without all the love triangles and baggage. We haven’t had a big bad to fight in a while. You two could actually go on dates.”

Damon tugs at the bear, dislodging it from under Bonnie’s arm. She lets him take it. “I don’t know if we’d work without all that.”

“What do you mean?”

He wishes Miss Cuddles could talk. That way he could be brave through the bear. “Elena and I were so… intense.”

Bonnie chuckles. “That’s an understatement.”

Damon stares into the bear’s ink-pooled eyes. “Intense was the only kind of love I’d ever experienced before. I didn’t know there was anything else.”

“Passion is important though, no?”

“I don’t…” The bear is glaring at him. Stop being a fucking coward. “Passion is important, yes. But so is friendship.”

It’s been almost two centuries since he felt his pulse, but that feeling is resurrected here, on Bonnie Bennett’s bed, lying side by side.

“Were you and Elena not friends?”

It’s like the bear has grabbed his chin in its fluffy paw. Now or never, sweet cheeks. “Not like you and me.”

There is a charged silence. The kind of silence that precedes a bomb or a kiss. And in that silence, Damon understands that the ghost-pulse he can feel is alive, and it’s not his at all. It’s Bonnie’s – racing beneath her skin like a question.

His fingers twitch on the bedcovers.

Meet hers.

Bonnie’s breath hitches.

Chapter Text

"Stick with me Bonnie Bennet. I might just have the answer to all your prayers."

- 6x17 A Bird in a Gilded Cage

Elena says the ‘forever’ thing and dammit, if that isn’t his kryptonite. Immortality is a turn on: fact. Forever looking sexy as hell? Yes, please. Next thing you know, his mouth is a sticky heat against hers, and he’s hitched her up on kitchen counter. Elena sighs and twists under his touch; Damon angles his head down the shaft of her neck, curls his tongue and draws a line up the shaft. There's a heartbeat, a vein, throb, throb, throb, and it’s so delicious he moans, feverish, vampiristic,  daring to puncture the skin with his teasing fangs.

His words caress her neck in a heated breath: "I want to taste you, Bon-Bon."

"What?"

The fingers on his chin are cold, heartless, scaled and frozen - like his. He blinks at the tiny bite mark on his girlfriend’s neck; he watches it shrink back into porcelain skin. Damon splays his hand over her shoulder, and tries not to wince at the absence of warm blood, magic blood - the kind he’s tasted only in touches just the right side of friends, inhaled after the witch has left the room, green eyes singed with power and--

"Damon!" He pulls away, scolded by Elena’s eyes swelling with fury and betrayal. "You did it again. Why do you keep saying her name?"

He moistens his lips with his tongue, brow heavy atop his eyes. Sure, he’s had a few sex dreams about the witch recently but all that tells him is that he’s a horny man (vampire), which he was more than aware of already. "I--" Damon turns his head, and that's a fun magic trick, the devil herself is standing in the doorway. 

"Sorry… awkward timing."

Elena jumps off the counter. "No, no, no, it’s fine. I have to actually go check in on Ric to find out how things are going with Stefan and Caroline so…" Her smile is tight, strained and Damon isn’t sure where to look because it sure as hell can’t be the witch right now. Elena’s eyes flare with something he’s only ever seen in Katherine before. She kisses him goodbye, and Damon responds with hesitance. "See you later."

And then it’s just them. Bonnie and Damon, in the kitchen where she'd do cross-word puzzles and grimace at his pancakes and bicker and laugh and-

"Your lip is bleeding."

He presses a finger to the dissolving wound. "This better be good."

Bonnie walks towards him, and there’s that heartbeat, thud, thud, thud. It’s intoxicating - he can smell her damn magic from here. Damon turns to the window.

"I just wanted to thank you, for helping me find closure today…"

Is her pulse always this loud? It’s a wonder how he can get anything done. 

Damon flicks the water on to drown his senses. "You know there's a crazy lady up there that wants to open that prison world up more than anything, right?" 

Bonnie steps closer still. "But we're never going back there, right?"

"No. We're not." 

Her eyes round comically. "Good." And then she twists the faucet back off and all he can hear is her dancing little pulse again. "Because I have something for you. A gift from 1994. I was gonna give it to you yesterday but then you acted like an ass, and you didn't deserve it."

"Well, I-" He can't focus on what she's saying, not when his traitorous mind is pushing her against the kitchen table and dragging a hand through her hair. Damon scrunches his eyes shut, but they fly open almost as fast.

Bonnie is holding out a black box; his breath is a sharp sword in his chest. "That's not what I think it is, is it?"

"If it wasn't for your notes on the map of Nova Scotia I would've never remembered that there was magic on that island-"

Damon can't look away from her, even when the box is in her hands, he finds himself searching for the truth in her face. 

"-there's a good chance I wouldn't be here today," she finishes, and Damon has never felt dizzier in all his life. He is desiccating before her, terrified of what he knows she is holding and what he is supposed to do with it. And terrified why even now, with the box between them, perhaps because of the box between them, he wants to kiss her. 

"So from my '94 road trip, I got you a little something."

Her fingers spark with electricity against his. He wants to hold her hands beneath his own: open this damned box together. But she steps backward, allowing him the space she thinks he needs. 

He takes a second. He wants an eternity. "The cure." Damon leans his hip against the kitchen counter-top. "The cure to vampirism."

And Bonnie smiles.  "I knew you were planning on getting it yourself. You had the whole route mapped out down to the kilometre."

"Why are you giving me this?"

It's too much, he wants to say. Take it back. I've wanted it too much and now I feel sick with the power. 

"Because my mom's surprisingly happy as a vampire. And I have full faith that we'll get Caroline back to normal the old-fashioned way." She glances out the window, then back to him. "But mostly because I knew you wanted it for Elena."

He needs to shake his thoughts into order, but ever since the prison world his mind has been a collision of want and fear and Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie. 

Damon fingers tremble against the case. "What if I don't want it for her now?"

Bonnie hides her surprise well, but not well enough. He catches it darting across her eyes. "That's none of my business. I'm just finishing what you started. You can give it to her or not." She reaches for his hand, warm and blood-filled atop his, and Damon wants to take it for himself. He wants the cure, he wants this. Her. 

"It's up to you," Bonnie says softly, and then she pulls away. 

And there is a single thought that lances through him with the clarity of a lightning bolt ripping through a dark night: he loves her. Lust, he could have continued to push down, exercise in the quiet solace of his bed-covers when everyone else had gone to sleep. But love is an unpredictable bastard, and Damon doesn't much want it caged. 

He'd had it all wrong. He didn't have the answer to all her prayers, but she had his. 

Chapter Text

Damon is gazing out of the window like a child staying up for Santa (if one substitutes the Blood n’ Bourbon in his glass for milk) when he gets the text:

It’s just not a good idea. I’m sorry.

His fingers buzz with static as he types: Please. I’ve hired a DJ I’m not convinced isn’t a highschooler and he’s on a strict musical diet of Beyoncé and Beyoncé only.

Damon’s phone starts to vibrate and he pushes through the throng of friends and sort of friends and onto the front porch. “Bon!”

“I can’t just pretend–” The signal stutters.

“Bon? The line’s shitty. Bon?”

“Damon? Can you – I can’t – sad – Elena – miss you but – not a good idea.”

“I can’t hear you! Just. Bonnie, please. I only threw this party for you.”

The line goes dead, and he groans aloud.

“I did warn you.” Damon turns to see Caroline leaning against the wall, an empty B positive crumpled in her hand. “I told you she wouldn’t come.”

“Because she’s a self-sacrificing little martyr who doesn’t know how to have what she deserves!”

Caroline blows out a breath. “And is this,” she gestures at the house, “what she deserves?”

Damon drags his shoe in a figure of eight across the gravel driveway. “It’s part of it. She deserves to feel celebrated, the centre of things for once – and not because we need her to be. She deserves to dance to her favourite songs without worrying we’re all going to fucking die if she doesn’t save us.”

The blonde’s eyes are round, soft almost, as she studies him. “You’re like in love love with her, aren’t you?”

“Yes. And she’s being painstakingly stubborn about it.” Damon winces. “Look at me. Elena’s barely been asleep for six months and here I am being Damon about everything.”

Caroline chews on her lip. “I dunno. I think being ‘Damon’ is a better thing when you’re with Bonnie. Maybe even a good thing.”

…

Four days ago, he had gambled with their friendship – the Bonnie and Damon ‘good thing’ – when he’d leaned across the Monopoly board and ran his thumb along her jaw. She’d closed her eyes, breath hitched, pulse scattering, and that response had cemented his recklessness.

Kissing Bonnie was a slow death. He’d always known it would be, even subconsciously; crossing that line would sever him in two. Before and after, forever altered. And if she didn’t want to taste his love like this, if she felt she couldn’t want it, he’d become a ghost.

“Damon,” Bonnie panted, his mouth falling upon the pulse point of her neck. “We shouldn’t–we shouldn’t be doing this–”

But her fingers were in his hair, tugging on the overgrown strands that had begun to curl, and his moan sunk into her skin.

“Fuck, Damon, you–”

Arousal built thick and fast within him. He gripped her waist, guiding her body so that she straddled his lap, the motion of her hips catalysing a violent storm of pleasure. (The Monopoly board was the scene of abject destruction).

“We’re wearing too many clothes,” he breathed against her ear. “Can I?”

Bonnie laughed, though it stuttered as his kisses continued to trail down her neck, dancing along her collarbone. “Are my – are my sweats – not sexy enough for you?”

Damon hummed with pleasure, nipping at her skin. Bonnie’s hands had found their way under his t-shirt, mapping their way over his torso and stomach, warm and wanting. He let her yank the shirt over his head, revelling in the silky dilation of her pupils as she stared down at him.

Damon was sucking on her deliciously full bottom lip, fumbling with the buttons of her top, when she pushed on his bare shoulders. Pushed him away.

It was a shattered spell; Damon blinked at her, dazed and frightened.

“We can’t,” Bonnie said, chest heaving beneath her half-undone shirt.

Damon could have screamed.

“It’s not right,” she continued, hastily trying to conceal herself back up. “It isn’t.”

The vampire fell back onto his elbows. “Who are you trying to convince?”

“Damon. We can’t.”

“Is this about El–”

“Of course, it’s about Elena! Isn’t it always!?” Bonnie pressed two fingers to her glistening bottom lip, as if shocked by the admission. “I didn’t mean–”

“You did,” he said softly. “And you’re allowed to mean it.”

Bonnie closed her eyes. “I promised I’d be her boyfriend’s best friend not… not that.”

“You are my best friend,” Damon insisted, reaching for her hand. “Or at least you were, before you stopped us doing that.” He traced his thumb along her wrist, counting the beats of her pulse as he did so. It was still feverish, still desperate. “Didn’t that feel good, Bon? Like scarily good?”

“Terrifying,” Bonnie whispered, and she reached forward to cup his cheek with her spare hand. “Damn you, Salvatore.”

Damon turned his face to press a kiss to her palm. “You have damned me, Bennett.”

And then, to ease the tension (explicitly sexual in his case), he nodded to the Monopoly board. “You’ve also damned our game. I think I win that round.”

She flicked him with his rumpled t-shirt. “You kissed me!”

“And I’d do it again, and again, and again. If you'll let me.”

Bonnie pushed herself onto her feet, and Damon was sure he didn’t imagine how unsteady she seemed. “I’m going to grab some ice cream.”

Damon leaned his head against the bottom of the couch, looking up at her through his lashes. “Bonnie.”

She stepped over the destroyed gameboard, then hesitated, turning back. “I’ll think about it.”

“It?”

“Us. That. This. I’ll just… I’ll think about it. Okay?”

Damon groaned. “Can you think fast because this is torture.”

“Go take a cold shower. You’ll survive.”

She was wrong about that.

…

“She sounded excited about the party when I told her. Before she started,” he flaps his hand, “overthinking again.”

“She’s Bonnie. She’s loyal to a fault.”

“But this is her one life! She’ll get what? Six, seven, eight decades at a push to live it before–” Damon can’t finish that sentence. He can’t seem to fit Elena and Bonnie in the same thought anymore. He supposes one has always eclipsed the other.

“Isn’t that just it, though? Elena will wake up, and Bonnie will live every minute of her time with you knowing that.”

Damon whips his head to the blonde. “Does she think she’s some girlfriend stand-in!?”

“Can you blame her, if she does?”

The Boarding House door is thrown open then, emptying a slightly inebriated Stefan onto the porch. Inside, the DJ is playing ‘Naughty Girl’.

Bonnie had danced to this song in Amsterdam, one of the many nights that Damon had debated throwing caution to the damn wind and kissing her. He watched her snake her hips to the song, hypnotised, until another tourist had tapped him on the shoulder.

“She yours?”

“Excuse me?”

“The lass in the red dress, dancing all sexy like that. Is she yours? Or can I make my move?”

Damon looked him up and down. He wasn’t bad looking, and he had an Irish accent which he knew Bonnie would enjoy.

“She’s my wife,” he said.

The Irish guy shook his hand, grinning. “She’s a keeper.”

Bonnie had dragged him onto the dance floor when the first beat of ‘Mi Gente’ started up, exclaiming that she wanted to make out with the DJ for this Beyoncé playlist heavy playlist.

“Why don’t you make out with me instead?”

Bonnie threw her head back and cackled.

“My dearest brother!” Stefan throws an arm over Damon’s shoulders, causing him to stumble. “Miss Bonnie is certainly missing out on an agreeable night.”

Damon shakes him off. “You go all 1864 when you’ve had one too many drinks, dearest brother.”

Caroline, laughter in her eyes, holds out her hand for a Salvatore. “Come on. Stefan’s right. You’ve thrown a great party, and you might as well enjoy it.”

Damon is quite sure he won’t enjoy anything ever again unless he’s with his witch.

The dress – emerald green, backless – hangs on Bonnie’s closet door. She’d bought it in town after Damon had informed her that he was throwing the ‘Bonnie Bennett Bonanza’ of the age.

She laughed. “What’s the occasion?”

“You.” She could feel his grin down the phone. “But we don’t have to tell the other guests that. I know you’ll find that weird.”

“Soooo it’s a clandestine Triple B?”

“Triple B! Excellent work, young nickname apprentice.”

Bonnie laughed again, something free and giddy. “You’re such a dork.”

“Your dork.”

She let that giddiness carry her afloat until the heavy stone of reality dragged her back down to earth. She wasn’t allowed to be in love Damon Salvatore, to allow Damon Salvatore to be in love with her. After their kiss her skin had felt charged for the remainder of the evening, singing with longing where his fingers had been. But it wasn’t only the betrayal that made Bonnie pull away: it was the agonising truth that if Elena were awake that kiss would likely never have happened, and she would likely always be waiting for it.

Bonnie’s phone pings with a text from Stefan.

Miss Bonnie you must cone to pasty and cheer ip Demon

Correction: a text from drunk Stefan.

She types, He knows why I can’t, then deletes it character by character.

It’s her party. She should be there, doing shots with Care (or Stefan, apparently), revelling in a night in Mystic Falls where the literal fate of the literal world isn’t on her shoulders. And she doesn’t have to kiss Damon, regardless of how her entire body has ached for him since he pressed against her, murmured her name, low and guttural, like she’d been giving him something he’d starved for. (How long has he hungered for her like that? Amsterdam, definitely – she’d felt the soaked weight of his gaze more than once – but before that? Before Elena even?).

Bonnie shivers. Wearing the backless dress probably won’t help her fragile vow of Damon abstinence but it’s a fucking Bonnie Bennett Bonanza.

“And you’re Bonnie Bennett, aren’t you?” she says to the mirror, drawing eyeliner across her lid.

The one and only.

Chapter Text

Bonnie has never had that Disney Cinderella moment before. She’s been present for other people’s – Caroline’s, Elena’s (several times) – but never one that has been solely hers. And, fine, it’s not quite the elegant ballroom, and the people who gape at her are more than a bit intoxicated, but she stands in the living room doorway and doesn’t shrink away. She knows instinctively, though, that he isn’t one of them. Damon Salvatore’s gaze is a unique, skin-tingling, champagne-light yet fire-hot full-body possession.

“You look fucking insane,” gushes a petite brunette with wide blue eyes who Bonnie might have had a class with at Whitmore? (Damon must have invited anyone who hadn’t tried to kill them one time or another).

Bonnie laughs. “Thanks. I like your suit.”

She’s is looking for him in the crowded living room, only dimly aware that ‘Beautiful Liar’ is weaving its sensuous beat around the dancers. Bonnie can feel the way every eye in the room follows her movement like a camera lens: it’s not unpleasant, but she’d trade every admiring glance in the world for Damon’s. She makes it to the staircase, seeking a better vantage point.

There’s a palpable shift to the space when the vampires finally materialise. In any room, anywhere, the arrival of the Salvatore brothers will cause a ripple of hushed awe. Especially when accompanied by the addictive refrain of ‘Diva’ – and Stefan Salvatore decides that the time has arrived to unleash his inner drag queen. Bonnie clasps a hand over her mouth as he begins to actuallytwerk… kind of. Lessons are definitely required.

Caroline cackles; Damon takes an indulgent drink of his Bourbon. He’s in an ice blue shirt, intensifying the already pretty damning enchantment of his eyes, and his hair is slightly tousled. And sweaty. A loose strand or two curls against his high and noble forehead, giving him the appearance of a ninety’s movie star. He’s so stupidly gorgeous Bonnie is mildly irritated.

And then he looks up at the staircase, and his drink misses his mouth.

She laughs as he wipes at his chin, as a shit-eating grin contorts his face with joy. (The very kind he’d given her when she returned home from the prison world, and she’d thought I don’t think there is anyone else is the whole world who would look at me like that).

Bonnie is on the second step so when he stands before her, they’re the same height.

“You’re here,” he says, like she’s a miracle. “You’re actually here and,” his eyes graze her body like a million tiny pin-pricks, “look at you.”

Bonnie swallows. She has been desired before, of course, but it has never felt like this: like she’s got one foot hanging over a cliff-edge.

I may be young but I’m ready

To give you all my love

I told my girls you can get it

Don’t slow it down, just let it go

So in love, I’ll give it all away

Just don’t tell nobody tomorrow

So tonight, I’ll do it every way

Speakers knockin’ ‘til the morning light

‘Cause we like to party

“Well,” Damon offers his hand, “you heard Queen Bey. Let’s party.”

His fingers squeeze hers as he helps her down the steps, and Bonnie can’t stop smiling. And then his spare hand brushes along her exposed back and the smile melts. Caroline is there to scoop Bonnie into her arms, though she stays hanging off Damon’s hand like an extended limb.

Stefan gifts Bonnie the remainder of his beer, and she drinks like she’s quenching a different kind of thirst. He twirls Caroline under his hand, dipping her in gesture borrowed a different time. Damon wraps his arms around Bonnie’s waist, pulling her flush against him. His breath is hot on her ear: “I don’t know how you expect me to breathe around you when you’re looking like this.”

She doesn’t say anything; her entire body is a single, pulsating flame. They sway together to the song, the lyrics eerily applicable to her current predicament. Is it a predicament? She’s so dizzy, it’s hard to remember why she ever pushed him away.

Your touch is drivin’ me crazy

I can’t explain the way I feel

Top down, with the radio on and the night belongs to us

Just hold me close, don’t let me go

So in love, I don’t care what they say

I don’t care if they talkin’ tomorrow

‘Cause tonight’s the night, oh-oh-oh-oh

That I give you everything

Music knockin’ ‘til the morning light

‘Cause we like to party

“Come on.” He presses a kiss to her shoulder. “This DJ isn’t the only Bonnie-centric surprise.”

If he leads her up to his bedroom right now, she is not sure she’ll have the strength to stop him. But the hand around hers is guiding them through bodies towards the kitchen, and not up the stairs. She kids herself she’s relieved.

“Ta-da!” Damon waves his arm over the array of cakes and snacks adorning the kitchen table. “We have Bon-Bon’s, duh, and Banana Bread, because BB are your initials, also duh.”

He’s talking so fast, pointing out the silly treats like a child, and she wants to cry. She is crying: emotion has glossed over her eyes.

Damon holds up a miniature Bon-offee Pie, but his adorable, proud little smile slips. “What is it?”

Bonnie blinks at her building tears. “Nothing. It’s just…”

Damon empties his hands of food to hold her arms. His head is tilted towards her, concern folding his brow. “Go on. Please.”

“I’ve just… never felt this loved before,” she finishes quietly.

Relief sweeps his frown away. “Well get used it to it. I plan on reminding you for a very long time.”

Later, when Damon and Caroline are engaged in an intense dance battle, Bonnie slips outside under the guise of grabbing another drink. She inhales the backyard moon like it could purify her.

How the hell can she do this? Pretend that they aren’t what they’ve become? Perhaps the knot of the desire may ease eventually, but there is another ache, deep enough to drown inside, and she isn’t sure she could stop the tide even if she wanted to.

“I knew you’d come,” says a voice from the lawn. Bonnie jumps. She hadn’t noticed Stefan lying there like some sleepy stargazer. The grass tickles her back as she lies down beside him.

“You did?”

“It’s Damon. You always will.”

It’s a simple truth; Bonnie can’t even remember a time when they didn’t show up for each other, even though there was – a long time – when she meant nothing to him and he meant nothing but pain to her.

(She’s still in pain, not because he doesn’t love her but because he does. Unquestionably so).

“You loved Elena, didn’t you?” Bonnie asks quietly.

Stefan turns his head on the lawn to study her. “I did.”

“And now you love Caroline.”

“I do. Very much.”

Bonnie isn’t sure what she’s trying to hear, only — “And so it’s possible…for a love like that to shift and reform. Find someone else.”

“No.”

Bonnie stares at him. Stefan smiles.

“The love I had for Elena was me and Elena’s. The love between me and Caroline is completely new, completely different. I’m new and different. We’ve shaped each other into our love, not the other way round.”

Bonnie’s heart is fluttering. It feels like freedom. “So-”

“Why hello, brother,” Stefan interrupts.

She sits up, violently, twisting to see the vampire silhouetted in the glow of the open door. “How long have you been there!?”

“Not long. I was wondering where the guest of honour had got to, and here she is hidden away with my little bro. How scandalous.”

Stefan sits up too, stretching his arms with a yawn. “My buzz is wearing off. Do you think Caroline will let me go to bed?”

“Blondie’s on her own buzz now. Tidying up the kitchen.”

“Ah.” Stefan shakes his head, chuckling. “I’ll go see if she wants any help.”

As he passes his older brother, he squeezes his shoulder – like he’s transferring him some confidence. The sound of the backdoor closing behind him sends a shock of anticipation through her body. They are alone, and she knows she can have what she wants now.

When Damon speaks, his voice is softer, more hesitant, than Bonnie had been expecting. “Did he give you some wise advice? He’s irritatingly good at that.”

She waits for him to come and join her on the lawn before saying, “I think so.”

Damon tips his head back into the night. “You think? Bonnie, when will you know?”

“I–”

“Because I can be patient, I can. I waited over a century for a psycho woman I never even really loved to escape from a damn tomb — but with you, I’m—-” He reaches for her hand, pressing it between both of his like a prayer book. “You know that I love you, I know you know that, and if that’s not enough I don’t know what else I can do to show you. I can’t wake Elena up and tell her that I want to be with you instead. I can’t time travel back to all the times I never chose you, or made you feel you were an option out of convenience. I can’t—-”

“Damon, just, just shut up a second.”

He blinks at her, stunned. Bonnie shuffles on the lawn so that she is kneeling before him; she takes his chin in her fingers, and his eyes flutter.

“If you’re done talking,” she breathes, “I’m done thinking.”

The vampire nods, rendered for once completely speechless. It’s a thrilling power, her blood vibrates with it, and Damon just stares up at her. At her mercy.

Bonnie tightens her grip on his chin, angling his head so that his neck is a long, pale column in the moonlight. He is so tense, the vein that runs down his skin is throbbing.

“Bonnie,” he whimpers.

“I thought I told you,” she hums in a low voice, “to stop talking.”

A strangled sort of sound escapes his mouth. If she were crueller, she might make him wait for it a little longer – but she isn’t cruel, not now, not when she has given herself permission to kiss him guilt free.

Damon gasps as she takes his bottom lip between her teeth. He tries to regain the control he’s accustomed to – his right hand reaching up her neck, his left resting on her waist, lowering to her ass – but she doesn’t let him, not this time. There is magic in her touch, and she wants him to revel in it. In her.

“I thought I imagined the way you looked at me when I did a spell,” she says, holding back his chin so that he is blinking up at her, eyes wild and desperate. “Even when we were fighting, you’d get this look.”

“Like–like what?” Damon pants, trying to lunge forward.

She smiles, and pushes on his shoulders so that he is lying down. “Like you wanted to undress me.”

“Fuck. Bonnie.”

The smile becomes a grin. She is alive with arousal and magic. It sings out of her, into Damon, her fingers on his neck as she grinds against him. He tries to touch her, again, but she slaps at his hand, making him yelp at the electric charge. (Okay, maybe she is a little cruel).

“You said it yourself, Salvatore. You know how to be patient.”

Damon’s hands have curled into quivering fists at his sides. “Not–not with you.”

She licks at the beads of sweat gathering on his neck, relishing in the way his whole-body shivers under her tongue. She’d always imagined her first time with Damon would involve the vampire assuming lead, but this is better. This is taking charge of her own destiny.

“Do you think,” she murmurs, deft fingers unbuttoning his shirt, “that Stefan will have had the foresight to compel the remaining guests out of the house.”

Damon’s abdomen convulses as she presses a kiss to the taut, damp skin there. “Wh-why?”

“Because,” Bonnie says sweetly, “I intend to make you scream.”