Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nothing changes between them.

Or at least not anything Bonnie can quantify. Every morning starts in exactly the same way: a clear dawn breaking, pancakes and terrible 90s music blaring with Damon, Bonnie poring over Gram's grimoire in the hope of a solution, and Damon being outrageously annoying and obnoxious in his own special way.

As usual. The more things change, and so on. Bonnie might not have gone to college, but she knows what's up, philosophically speaking.

Even though they don't ever talk about it, Bonnie knows they're both trying to change things up in their own way. For Damon, it's alternating the CD that plays each morning, so that they never hear the same iconic tune twice.

(One morning Bonnie heard "Whatta Man" for the second time. Damon gave her a mildly horrified look when she mentioned it was a repeat, and she never heard it again. Damon applying the song to himself is . . . interesting, if Bonnie found that kind of thing interesting, which she definitely doesn't, and anyway, she doesn't want to think about it. So she doesn't.)

For Bonnie, it's the routine of the day. Will she go for a walk in the morning? Start with the grimoire? Eat pancakes with whipped-cream vampire fangs and blueberries for eyes? Who knows. It's truly a cornucopia of possibilities.

Occasionally Bonnie even surprises herself. One morning she demands that Damon teach her how to make pancakes.

"Okay." He says it like a challenge, tone rising near the end, eyes half-lidded. It's enough to make Bonnie want to beat him in every contest ever.

She barely manages to flip the pancakes with a spatula, and even then, they're broken, split down the middle. Not exactly the way Damon does it, with just a flick of the wrist and the pan itself, slick and easy. No tools necessary.

On questioning, his only response is a restrained smile (he's laughing at her on the inside, she can tell, she's spent enough days with Damon fucking Salvatore's crazy eyes to tell), looking down at her. Bonnie seethes, and is determined to mitigate her incomplete skills.

"You've had a hundred and fifty years to practice," she says, with a hint of pique.

"It's understandable," he says gently, as though he were doing her a favor. "You poor thing. You just can't compete."

Bonnie presses her lips together, shoulders stiffening. "Watch me," she hisses, like this actually matters (like anything they do here actually matters). She doesn't meet his gaze; instead, her gaze is fixed on their hands, together, folded around the pan's handle. It doesn't matter.

But she still wants to win.

The eclipse happens every morning, like clockwork. (It practically is clockwork; they measure the passage of time by it, even if they don't say acknowledge it out loud.) The day is bright, sunny and clear, and then it isn't. It's almost as if night falls during the day (which, duh, what did you think an eclipse was, Bonnie; she can almost hear Caroline's voice echo in her head).

It's just an eclipse. A perfectly scientific, predictable phenomenon. But every time the sky darkens and the shadows move across the countertop, the mood changes. Bonnie's breath catches in her throat, like it's a surprise each time, blue and dusky. Usually she ignores it.

Today she looks up at Damon.

His upper lip is caught between his teeth. She can see only the barest indentation. The pressure of it catches her attention, the yellow against his red mouth. For a moment, she is transfixed in a way she hasn't been since landing in this stupid Groundhog Day story. Dimly flitting through her mind are impressions: blood vessels, desire, those teeth (fangs) catching on - something else. Skin, maybe. Someone else's lips.

Their gazes meet, and his gaze is dark, darker than usual. Maybe it's just the light, or it's possible he could be fucking with her by wearing eyeliner he found in someone's bathroom. But as he looks at her, Bonnie feels a possibility bloom in her mind: they could be something else, something other than two nemeses forced together by a shitty situation. She fancies she can see his eyes widen, too, at the realization.

A really ridiculous thought. The ridiculousness is underscored by the way he smirks in the next moment, as though he didn't notice their little . . . moment. Of course he wouldn't, Bonnie thinks. Because there wasn't a moment at all.

She smirks in reply. A few years of being in Damon's proximity have given her an excellent exemplar and a lot of practice.

The eclipse keeps stunning her, though, taking her by surprise, and every time it happens she thinks of that moment. So stupid, so weird. Why would she have thought that way about him? It must be something about the loneliness, she decides. They're the only two other people they have in contact; they meet no other soul in 1994's version of Mystic Falls, no matter how many days pass. (13, 32, 49, 57. She can't keep count on paper, since everything resets, but she tries to keep it straight in her head. Damon helps. But there's no one, or nothing, to verify for them.)

Hopelessness, maybe. She's starting to get used to the idea that she might be stuck with Damon forever. The thought is horrifying, although - strangely - less so than when they'd first gotten stuck. Now that's something she doesn't want to think about.

There are some days they don't speak at all. Or at least not in words; they rely on expressions, body language, the barest lift of a shoulder, the raised eyebrow. Sometimes talking is all they do, to fill the silence; sometimes they can't bear to speak at all. Bonnie's voice goes rough and croaky from disuse every once in a while. Yet, even though they must be getting sick of each other, they don't go off on their own, too afraid that no one will be there when they return. Instead, they settle into their routines.

There is one morning. Just one, where she beats him to the griddle. It's pure luck that she wakes up as early as she does, but she takes advantage of it, putting "Whatta Man" into the CD player and getting everything set up for pancake heaven. By now everything in the Salvatore house is familiar: the cabinets, the countertops, the appliances. The smell of pancake batter as it spatters and hisses.

"Uh." There's Damon, right on time. Leaning against the doorway, he rubs at his eyes.

Bonnie only gives him a sunny smile, whisking the batter while praying she doesn't over-mix it. In the background, she hears Salt 'N' Pepa croon, He dresses like a dapper don, but even in jeans, he's a God-sent original.

"I thought I was on breakfast duty," he continues, eyeing Bonnie with what looks like curiosity. "Permanently. Owing to your lack of . . ." He gestures with what is obviously supposed to be his condolences for her woeful lack of skills.

"Lemon-ricotta pancakes," is her only reply, cutting him off.

One of Damon's eyebrows rises in a gesture she's become all too familiar with. "I didn't realize you knew how to make lemon-ricotta pancakes."

With her free hand, Bonnie holds up a recipe book she'd collected from her house earlier that morning. "The other family grimoire: Gram's cookbook."

Damon gives her a look that might have almost been impressed, if it wasn't Damon giving it. "Well, then." He spreads his hands. "Let's see these fancy schmancy pancakes of yours then."

When he reaches to break off a piece of a cooked pancake for quality control, exactly what she was expecting, she knocks his hand away with the spatula. He scowls at her, but she's spent enough time with him to realize that it's a charade. Instead of getting really angry, she shoulders him away from the plate of pancakes, and says only, "Make yourself useful, there's some fruit in the fridge." That she put there.

"Yes, ma'am." Don't take him for a sucker 'cause that's not what he's about.

"Slice the strawberries," she adds, probably superfluously.

He's not quite smirking, but there's something about his mouth, or the slant of it, that reminds her of that. He has a very nice mouth, and the gesture is intimate and knowing. It's not that she's never noticed, but before it had been something academic, something that made her think Oh, that's what Elena sees in him. It hadn't been personal.

Until now. She looks away, more flustered than she'd like, while he cuts strawberries at her elbow.

When she chances looking up at him again, he takes one of the whole strawberries and bites into it. Juicy and sweet: those are her first impressions. Like he's some kind of porn star or something. She would normally be annoyed, scornful, but at the sight of his tongue flicking out to catch a stray drop, something tightens in her gut, something she hasn't felt since she landed here, in this stupid retro version of Mystic Falls - and not even the cool kind of retro, just the lame kind, who cares about the nineties - and she has to look away. There are only so many options, so she fixes her attention on the pan. Bubbles are rising all over the pancake and popping sluggishly.

"Here," Damon says, with a touch of annoyance, but quietly. He wraps his hand around the handle - around her hand, and suddenly she's aware of how much smaller her hands are than his - and tilts the pan down, then flicks it up in a practiced gesture. The pancake lands perfectly, of course, nothing out of place.

Every time I need him, he always got my back.

He doesn't move away from her. She doesn't thank him. But she doesn't push him away, either, and she doesn't try to pull her hand away from the saucepan.

"There it is," he continues. His grip on her tightens for a moment, then releases.

"There it is," she agrees, and dances a little to the final chorus.

To her surprise, he joins her.