His father was raging again and it had woken Damon up quite suddenly. He had always been quite sensitive to his father's raised voice.
He didn't move though from his place on top of his bed, his pale sheets twisted underneath him. He stared at the ceiling and listened, waited on getting a clear picture if he was the cause of the ire. He heard a woman's shrill voice, loud but quivering with fear.
Damon sighed. He wasn't the focus of his father's anger today, it seemed like that title was going to his father's new wife, a woman he met at the bar two towns over and married after only a week. She was much younger than his father and Damon thought she was simply more of a teen runaway, rebelling against her family, rather than someone who was actually interested in her father. She was only a couple of years older than Damon himself.
As he heard her scream out in pain, he told himself to ignore it, it was her fault for marrying a man she had only known for a week. It was her fault for not taking Damon's very blunt advice about getting away while she still could.
Damon slammed his eyes shut in an futile attempt to block out the beating. It was so loud it was a wonder the neighbors couldn't hear it. He didn't expect them to do anything though, they never did when it was his voice doing the screaming.
Unable to take it anymore, Damon rolled over and climbed out of his rumpled bed and onto his messy floor and grabbed his phone off the floor where it had fallen. He glanced at his clock, noting it wasn't even six in the morning yet. He groaned underneath his breath as he slid his shoes onto his feet and headed for his window. He lifted the glass and exited the screen-less window, dropping down onto messy, faded mulch.
He closed his window back and headed around his house and towards the road. He pulled his hood up over his head and shoved his hands into his pockets. His nose began to run because of the coldness in the early morning air hitting his face. He sniffed loudly and pulled his phone out as he made it to a familiar street just five minutes later. He dialed a familiar number he had memorized but hadn't added to his contacts. It would have mattered anyway, it would have been the only number.
She picked up on the fifth ring, voice groggy with sleep and a little snappy. A smile weaved itself across his lips.
"Let me in," he ordered and hung up before she could complain about it.
He finally reached the two-story white house he had spent many nights sneaking off to and moved around back. She was waiting there in a pair of pink pajama bottoms and a white tank top, she hugged herself and stared at him with sleepy and slightly sad green eyes.
He ignored the sadness that he knew was for him and stepped up onto the patio with her. The patio light buzzed above them in that way he hated.
"Are you hurt?" Bonnie Bennett asked, eyes skipping up and down his body. He noticed she had her first-aid kit next to her feet. He rolled his eyes, despite how uncomfortable he was about the fact that she bought a first aid-kit for him about two years ago. It made him feel even worse knowing that sometimes that she even had to use it on him.
Damon hated being vulnerable, which was ironic, because that was all he was. A vulnerable sixteen year old, abandoned by his mother and abused by his father. He was poor and the only friend he had in the whole world was a fifteen year old girl who had started off as just some kid he bullied when they were in elementary school.
"Its cold out here." He said instead of answering her question. He sniffed loudly. Bonnie sighed and unfolded herself, she picked up the first aid kit and turned and headed back into the house, Damon right on her heels. "Your grams out?" He asked as they stepped into the kitchen. He took a seat at the island while Bonnie returned the first-aid kit underneath the kitchen cabinet and started making their coco.
"Out cold, face down on her bed. She's still breathing and smelling like vodka though, which is good. The still breathing part anyway." She shrugged, she glanced at him over her shoulder. "What happened?"
Damon shrugged. "Mommy and daddy are having an argument is all." He scoffed.
Bonnie finished making the coco and slid a cup to him and joined him at the island with her own cup. Silence reigned supreme for a while. "How did the visit with your mother and brother go?" She asked taking a sip of her coco and staring him down with those eyes of hers, as if he wasn't straight with her with his words she would get the truth out of him by just staring him down anyway.
Damon looked down into his cup and shrugged as if he didn't care. He honestly wasn't sure if he cared or not. He saw his mother and brother about once a year when they came Italy. Ten years ago his mother had taken his little brother after years of being abused by her husband and fled, only problem was she left him. She left him with a man that called a six year old a sissy and beat him with a belt for leaving toys on the floor. He never quite got a clear answer out of her why she did it.
His mother's family was rich and from Italy, while his father was just some foster kid from the states she found herself falling in love with and turning back on her family for. But the love faded when the money got tight and his father started taking his anger out on them with his fists. His mother moved back home with Stefan and left him. She left him. He had an idea why she left him, though she had never told him so, it was just something he over heard her saying over the phone in one of her screaming matches with his father. She had said that he was to much like his father, that he had the same anger he did and the same darkness in his eyes. Stefan was sweeter, gentler, more fragile, she had to save him from his father. Damon just didn't matter.
He tried to pretend that didn't hurt, that he should find some type of joy knowing in some round about way his mother was saying he was strong enough to survive his father. He tried to see it that way when he was younger but the resentment only grew and he knew the real reason his mother left him and not Stefan was because she loved Stefan and not him.
That was why when they visited, sending a car to pick him up from his father's house and taking him to some hotel, where then his mother would take him to some amusement park or to the beach, and spends tons of money on him for that one day she was there, that was why it was always filled with so much tension.
He hated seeing Stefan, who seemed well-rounded with plenty of friends, fluent in three languages, wearing nice clothes, and most of all not having to worry about being woken up by his father punching him in the face because of some stupid trash not being taken out.
"She bought me some new shoes." Damon finally answered Bonnie's question. Her eyes flickered down to his well-worn white sneakers. The ones he wore all of the time.
"You must of hated them." She said.
Damon shook his head. "I picked them out myself." He said simply.
Bonnie frowned. "That's it? I mean, I know you hate the visit thing, but usually you love bragging about all of the expensive stuff you get."
"I guess I'm just over it." He shrugged again. Bonnie met his eyes as she read him a like a book, annoying him slightly. She always did that.
"Are you going to school later?" She asked, thankfully letting it go. That was one thing he liked about Bonnie being able to read him so easily, she knew when to let things go.
Damon finished off his coco. "Its Monday, Bonbon, you know I don't do school on Mondays." He got up and placed his mug in the sink.
"You're suppose to," she reminded him with a sigh. "How are you going to go to college together if you don't start going to school?"
"Well, I think you know the answer to that." He said slowly. "Anyway, you have plenty of friends that can go off and play college student with you, Bons. Blondie and the blonde jock for one."
Bonnie rolled her eyes. "Caroline and Matt, we've all know each other since third grade, you know their names." He waved his hand dismissively. "Anyway, I want to go with you. I think it would be fun, you and me away from this town, experiencing life." Damon gave her a look of constipation as if the idea was sickening. "Oh come, Damon, you're my best friend. I want to experience this with you."
Looking at her hopeful face, Damon's heart squeezed tightly, so he looked away. "Look, I'll consider it if all you're going to do is whine about it."
Bonnie grinned, hoped off her stool and skipped around the island and throwing her arms around him. He quickly returned the hug, fighting back a smile. "I mean, I could just follow you to college, sleep on the floor of your dorm room."
Bonnie pulled away and gave him a dry look. "Don't be ridiculous, Damon." She stepped out of his arms and he fought to ignore the warmth he hadn't even noticed come to him, slip away.
Damon liked to be honest with himself most of the time, so he knew his feelings for his best friend wasn't completely platonic, but he also knew he couldn't and shouldn't go there. First of all, Bonnie was to good for him. Her life wasn't perfect with a mother who abandoned her like his had, an alcoholic grandmother, and a father with a whole other life and family a state away, but he knew having him as anything other than a best friend would only make her life worse.
He wasn't going anywhere fast and he knew Bonnie was.
(BS)
Bonnie wasn't able to convince him to go to school on that Monday, but he said he would attend the rest of the week.
Instead of going home, he wondered around his small home of Mystic Falls a little before ambling into the Mystic Grill a local hang out spot for everyone. He hated the place, it was always crowded and Bonnie always wanted to go there. But the options were limited in Mystic Falls.
He took a seat at the bar and stared at the bartender until he finally broke.
"I'm not going to give you any alcohol and get fired and be charged with aiding the delinquency of a minor, Damon, go home." Frank Smiles, wasn't smiling as he roughly wiped down the bar.
Damon leaned back into his seat and sighed. "You're no fun, Mr. Smiles. I'm just a young youth wanting to having the experience of tasting alcohol, you know, see what all of the buzz is about."
Frank snorted, "Sure, Damon. Go on home before I call your pa." Damon glared at the man at the mention of his father.
"What's so wrong with allowing a youth to experience the taste of alcohol? Curb the curiosity in the presence of a responsible adult?"
Damon jumped in surprise as he quickly moved his head around to stare at woman that had just spoken on his behalf. His eyebrows shot up. She didn't seem that much older than him. She had curled brown hair and olive skin and when she turned to smile at him, he took in her warm brow. His eyes trailed down her body, which she had leaning against the bar besides him. He took in the tight shirt and leather pants, heeled boots, and her curves.
Damon raised an eyebrow.
"Well, its illegal." Frank said dryly. "So, I'll have to see some identification for you to."
The woman smiled and leaned forward in a way Damon thought at first was her trying to flash the man a little cleavage. She looked eyes with Frank and smiled innocently. "You don't have to see anything. You're going to bring me and this boy here as many glasses of your best bourbon as we want and think nothing of it."
Damon watched as Frank stared at the woman, mouth agape as if he were transfixed. Frank then nodded slowly. "A glass of bourbon for the lady and Damon, coming right up." He droned off before turning away, going to fix the drinks.
Damon stared at him, completely confused.
"I'm Katherine," the woman pulled his attention back to her as she held out her hand, "and you're Damon." She smiled.
Damon hesitated a moment, feeling awkward before he held out his hand and shook hers. "Uh, yeah." He said dumbly. "How did you do that?"
Katherine laughed as if he had just said something funny and not as if he was asking a serious question. "A little persuasion goes a long way, Damon. You just gotta know what it is you're doing." Frank returned with the drinks and set them in front of them. Katherine sipped hers and nodded towards his. "Go ahead."
Damon looked down at the glass of bourbon for a moment before shrugging and taking the glass. He took a testing sip and scrunched up his nose at the new taste. He took another sip not even a second later though.
"You like it?" Katherine asked.
Damon nodded. "I think I do." Usually he sneaked his father's cheap beer and he use to smuggle Bonnie's Gram's vodka before she started to notice. The bourbon was his favorite. "You're new here." He stated it as a fact. He knew everyone in the this town, if not by name then by face.
"Its obvious isn't it?" She questioned in a way which he knew wasn't actually a question. "Yeah, decided to check this town out for a while, see what it has? What can I say, I'm looking for an adventure." She smirked.
"Well, you're about to waste your time, lady. You're diffidently ain't gonna find an adventure here. " He snorted into his glass.
She turned to him fully, she cocked her head and licked her red painted lips. Her long hair feel over her tanned shoulder as she smiled charmingly at Damon, who felt a stirring begin up inside of him. She was hot, he had to admit. "Oh come on, there has to be something to do around here?"
Damon couldn't take his gaze off her. "Not really," he shook his head. He frowned. "You're going to leave now?" He asked, for some reason disappointed about the thought.
As if reading his mind, Katherine smiled. "I think I'll stick around awhile. I already found something I find very interesting."
Damon smirked back, because he knew she meant him.