Title: If it was life-ruining, it involved a Salvatore.
Summary: Damon and Bonnie come back from a clash with the Heretics. Damon's hurt. Badly. And he's not healing. Fluffier than it sounds. Matt, Caroline, and Stefan the Bamon Fanboy make a brief appearance.
Rating: T
The door to the dark, quiet dorm swung open in a crash of conversation.
"…said you had him!"
"I did have him!"
"So letting him stab me was part of your plan!?"
"You mean the plan that flew out the window once you literally jumped into the middle of it?"
"I jumped in because he was about to stab you!"
"I HAD HIM BECAUSE HE WAS ABOUT TO STAB ME!"
"THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP HIM FROM STABBING ME—" a sharp hiss cut through the words as Bonnie's straining arms went slack, dumping a very-much-struggling Damon into the armchair by the fire. He collapsed into a chaotic pile of limbs, face sheened in sweat and drawn into a tight, jaw-clenching grimace. "Goddamn heretics."
"Stop talking," Bonnie said, anxiety brightening her voice as she began flipping through her Grimoire. Her movements were tense, twitchy, the line of her shoulders hunched so high with stress that they were practically touching her ears.
"How the hell did they… find a workaround for… supernatural healing?" he gritted out, head knocking back against the armchair as his breaths grew shallower, making it more difficult to talk.
"Vampire healing—I can still use magic if you'd shut up before you kill yourself," Bonnie snapped, her eyes darting down the page in a rush of nerves. Please be in here, please be in here, please be in here.
Damon's eyes fluttered shut, skin unbearably pale even in the warm light of the fire, and Bonnie scoured the Healing spells for one that worked on a vampire's strange immune system. There weren't many, given that vampires tended to heal so quickly without magic (and weren't exactly witches' best friends), but she swore she remembered reading about one because she'd wondered when the hell anyone would even need it.
"Okay, here we go, species-specific healing incantations," she said, attempting to inspire hope as her bright stare shot up to Damon's abdomen—God, he was losing a lot of blood. "Chimeras, werewolves…" she muttered, stare back to racing down the page, and it lit up when it snagged on the word 'vampires'. "Got it!"
"Not thrilled about the surprise in your voice," he managed to get out, breaths hitching in struggle, and she ignored him as she tore through the description, vaguely mouthing the Latin to get a feel for the incantation on her tongue.
"Sanare adhuc viventes mortuae," she murmured, closing her eyes to focus entirely on the words, pumping the syllables through her heart so that they'd charge her blood, burrow into her bones, and lace themselves into her DNA. It normally took her at least an hour to learn a spell, to go through the strange and intimate process of getting her magic to accept something new, but she didn't have an hour here.
Jesus, she wasn't even sure she had five minutes.
"Sanare adhuc viventes mortuae, sanare adhuc viventes mortuae," she repeated, inhaling deeply to couple the words with something her body already knew how to let in—air. Her heart was racing, brain cells firing at a million miles a minute as they tried to cope with the stress of learning a new spell and Damon fighting for his life at the same time, but after a minute or two, it nearly stopped.
Something new flooded her veins. Cold, uninvited, heart-achingly familiar, it spread through her like a void.
Death.
Her eyes flew open, "Damon?"
He was slack against the chair, body loose and tensionless like something split open. She lunged forward, knocking a table full of books over in her panic as she grabbed his face and forced it up to hers. "Damon."
No response. Her lips pressed into a tight line as her face threatened to crack into a mosaic of furious emotion, heart galloping in her throat as she shook him. "Damon!" Nothing. Panicked numbness began spreading through her—dull, swallowing, buzzing in her ears like the ring after a detonation—and without bothering to check for a pulse, she slammed two shaking palms against his chest.
"Sanare adhuc viventes mortuae," she muttered, eyes shut so tightly she could almost see her own capillaries, "sanare adhuc viventes mortuae." The words were still clumsy on her lips, tongue stumbling over certain syllables, but she continued to repeat them with everything she had. "Sanare adhuc viventes mortuae, sanare adhuc viventes mortuae—c'mon, Damon!" she growled, hands shaking so violently that it was reverberating through his chest.
He didn't respond, body cool and motionless beneath her hands, and in an impulse, she climbed on top of him and threw her whole weight against her hands. "Sanare adhuc viventes mortuae," she cried, desperate tears brightening her eyes as she felt any and all control of the situation slipping away from her, "sanare adhuc viventes mortuae!"
This couldn't be happening. Jesus Christ, this couldn't be happening, it was a stab wound—after over a century of being around, how could he die of a goddamn stab wound, how could he—how could this even—her breath hitched, throat closing around a sob that barely made it out of her throat—she couldn't do this, she couldn't lose another person, not now, not him—
And then suddenly, she stopped.
She stilled.
Her sobs quieted.
Not now, not him.
Her hands stopped shaking, the clench of her fingers slowly loosening.
Not now, not him.
She felt something ghosting over her—an old, ancient magic, raw and unpracticed, protective and instinctive, the same kind she'd felt when she'd lit the candle in the prison world, but a thousand fold more intense.
Not now.
Her eyes brightened into white-hot steel.
Not. Fucking. Him.
Her eyes closed, tears warm but forgotten, and the flames in the fireplace flickered. Her fingers spread over his heart, touch-feather light and steady, so still they looked like a statue's. With a frightening calm, she took in a slow breath, chest rising as she filled her lungs with the cold staleness of death around her and siphoned it out of the air, inch by inch, heartbeat by heartbeat.
And then, with a sudden gust of exhalation, her eyes flew open, entirely white. "Sanare adhuc viventes mortuae."
The flames surged into a roar in the fireplace, blasting her in wind and heat that had her hair flying wildly around her face, and Damon's body immediately arched forward, snapping his lolling head upright. His eyes flew open in a burst of magic, intensifying the blue to the brightest it'd ever been, and she struggled to hold his body down to the chair as the force of the spell rocked through him. He gasped, the intake ragged and hungry, and after a moment of struggle, fell back against the chair, chest heaving.
His eyes were bloodshot as they landed on hers. "What happened?"
Her otherworldly calm shattered at the ragged sound of his voice, snapping her out of her magical daze as her eyes returned to their usual color. The second they processed the weak, exhausted, but very much alivevampire beneath her, her heart caught in her throat.
It worked.
It… it worked, it—tears sprang into her eyes, breath hitching as a sudden, half-sob, half-laugh tore out of her throat, "It worked!" She fell into a dizzy, emotional laugh, surging forward and tackling him in a borderlineviolent hug that was all elbows and ferocity, causing him to wince.
"Ow!"
"It worked!" she whispered into his neck as if repeating it made it more real, tears freely falling down her face as she squeezed him even tighter, and after a moment of sustained confusion, he eased his arms around her, one wrapping around her waist as the other slipped up to her neck. The warmth—the aliveness—of the gesture broke her, and the laughter slowly dissipated, giving way to just tears.
He seemed to sense the shift, for after a moment, his hand slipped up into her hair, fingers quietly running over it in a soothing motion. She closed her eyes, burrowing her face into his neck.
"Bon," he murmured as her breath hitched, voice surprisingly gentle, "it's fine, it worked out."
She shook her head against his shoulder.
"Really? How else am I here getting slobbered all over, then?"
She couldn't help the slight laugh that escaped her throat, and the sound chimed like a bright, sunny bell in his ears. He had the sudden, most instinctive urge to make her make that sound again and again, to hear it on loop, a symphony of bell-like laughs, and the feeling was so out-of-left-field that it struck him for a moment, giving her enough time to slip back into somberness.
"I thought you died."
He scoffed. "Psh, from a hunting knife? Me? Never."
"Actually, I…" she exhaled shakily, and he felt the warm breath on his ear, "I think you did die."
"Fluke."
"No, Damon, I mean it."
She drew back a bit, forcing his arms to loosen slightly but never drop from her, and the gaze she hit him with was so strikingly, punch-to-the-gut vulnerable that he faltered. He saw the girl at the 60's dance in go-go boots and peace sign earrings telling him Klaus was going to kill her, gaze a chaotic green clash of fear and bravery. He saw the girl standing unsurely in his kitchen beside a plate of pancakes, tiny in his flannel shirt, impossible and yet so completely there, back in his life against all odds.
"I—I'm pretty sure you actually—" her eyes dropped, throat bobbing in shallow swallow as she tried to find her voice, and it snapped him into instinctive motion, hand lifting from her hair to cup her face.
"Even if I died," he cut her off in a murmur, stare an intense, unblinking blue as it held hers, "you're not the only one who always comes back." She merely stared at him, expression caught between lingering fear and the beginnings of watery relief, and without really thinking, he pressed his thumb into the corner of her mouth, lightly dragging it up into a smile. She lapsed into a small laugh, rolling her tear-sheened eyes, and his lungs caught—there it was again. The chiming bell.
"Guess we really are stuck with each other."
He shook off the distraction. "'Fraid so, Judgey."
"Don't make me have to do that ever again."
"Don't tell me you've got something handled when you obviously don—"
"I HAD HIM!"
"You were about to get stabbed!"
"I had a transfer spell on me that would've transfered the wound to him—he was killing himself!"
Damon's mouth, already opened in a pre-formed response, shut suddenly. His brow furrowed in consideration. "Oh."
"Yeah." She lifted a hand and shoved his shoulder, causing him to wince. "Trust me next time."
"Hi, still injured."
She arched a sassy brow. "And why is that?"
"Because I was trying to save your life."
She snorted, "If anyone just saved anyone's life here, it's definitely me."
"I had good intentions."
"You didn't trust me."
"It's not—" he began, floundering for a moment before sighing, "I mean, look, Bon, it wouldn't be the first time you got all proud and thought you had something under control that you didn't, alright?" She opened her mouth to say something and he lifted his hand. "Doesn't mean I don't trust you, it just means I know you."
"Well next time, know that if I need help, I'll ask for it."
"Fair enough."
"Good."
Her lips twitched a bit as she held his stare, undercutting the stern look she was giving him entirely, and the smile he shot her in return was warm, earnest, and just the slightest touch cocky—a particular Bonnie blend, he was noticing. She took him in with a similarly warm, exasperated expression, though after a beat, laughed.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Another beat, and she laughed again.
"What is it, Giggles?"
"Nothing, it's just," she waved a hand, "this is the part in like, movies and books and stuff where people kiss, and I just thought that was funny."
He merely blinked at her. Her chuckle caught slightly, smile growing a bit awkward at his lack of repsonse. "Well, I mean, because it's you." She gestured at herself. "And me. And… the thought of that's just…" he was just staring at her, so she cleared her throat, "funny."
His face was unsettlingly still, eyes darker than they'd been before, and for second, Bonnie wondered if she'd made him mad. Maybe that was too much, or too big of a reminder of Elena, or—
The speculation stopped when his gaze flickered down to her lips.
Did he just?
"Hilarious," he murmured in quiet, thick response.
Warmth slowly began spreading through her body, pooling in her cheeks and her stomach, causing her heart to dial it up to a notch she was sure he could hear. She was misintepreting this. I mean, obviously. This was Damon—singular-minded, solar-system-revolves-around Elena, BFF Damon—and yet, she was suddenly aware of the hand on her cheek.
Of the roughened thumb still lingering near her lips.
Of the warm press of her thighs around his hips.
Of the loose hands she still had on his chest.
Of the arm he had draped around the small of her back.
Of the way he was looking at her, like nothing was making any sense anymore.
Of the way it seemed like he didn't care.
Of the way his stare lifted back up to hers, hazy, debating, and flashed down to her mouth in a decisive move forward before—
"What the hell happened?" a voice crashed into the room, accompanied by the violent swing of a door as Caroline, Stefan, and Matt came storming in, appearances in various states of disarray. Bonnie and Damon immediately jolted apart, the former scrambling up to her feet in a graceless stumble and the latter scrubbing a quick hand over his face.
"Is he okay, did you find the spell?" Caroline asked, tornado-ing over to check on Damon in an uncharacteristic display of concern for the vampire, and Bonnie rubbed the back of her neck.
"Yep—yeah, he's fine, just… had a little bit of a scare but…" her eyes switched over to Stefan's, eager to avoid Damon's as she wasn't even sure which 'scare' she was referring to, though the look he was giving her was decidedly not the worried-about-my-brother kind.
It was strange. Surprised. Speculative. A lot of other s-words, and Bonnie didn't even want to think about what he might've seen to trigger them. She glanced at Matt to see if he was eyeing her, too, but he was watching Damon and Caroline with his typical worried frown, entirely unaware of any weird energy in the room.
Same with Caroline.
So really, it was just Stefan who knew something.
Well, and Damon, obviously.
Her jaw clenched, a sudden rush of annoyance mixing into her flustered anxiety: of course it was Stefan and Damon.
If it was life-ruining, it involved a Salvatore.
The Golden Rule of Mystic Falls.
A/N: If you liked this, drop a review about what you might like to see next! Open to ideas :)