Hiylo fellow readers.
It has been a long time since I've written something for you lovely people, so I figured I better stop setting this sequel on the backburner and finally get something done. It has taken me a while to build up the muse for writing this story, and I certainly didn't want to write something that I wasn't wholeheartedly committed/interested in. So I gave myself some time to recharge and started drafting. Turns out drafting for a fanfic is much harder to than than when working on your own work. Thus I figured I was better off just letting this story take on a life of its own the way I did the first couple chapters of "Rose In a Concrete World". So every surprise you experience will be a surprise for me as well, lol.
Now on to the actual story. This is the sequel to "RIACW" and I have to say the route I left open from that story was what made it hard for me to determine where to go with the continuation of this story. So many possibilities and so many eager people wanting to read this story forced me to dedicate nearly weeks on the first chapter alone simply because (for me anyway) the first chapter is the road to which my story will follow, and the route which I've set in stone endgame decisions. Now I'm pretty confident this is where/how I want the sequel to begin. So without further adue, this is my long awaited sequel, "Same Old Stuff".
Chapter 1 - Hand In Hand
Two hands intertwined their fingers with one another…
One hand was warm, caramel in color and soft to the touch. The other hand was slightly pale and slightly cold, hard yet smooth. One hand belonged to a witch, and the other hand belonged to a vampire. At one point in time these hands had two different objectives: the caramel hand was a magical guardian, most used when protecting. The pale hand was a destructive hand, destroying anything and everything it touched. Neither one of these hands had any business clenching one another, especially since their sole purpose was to destroy one another. But something happened. Something unexplainable and romantic and down right stupid happened. The owners of these two hands fell in love with each other and forced the hands to work together even when it was best for both of them not to. The hands were no longer enemies of one another, but a unit that worked together under dire circumstances.
These hands belonged to Bonnie Bennett and Damon Salvatore.
The man and woman sit next to each other hand in hand at a table inside the Mystic Grill. They smile at each other as they partake in mindless conversation, waiting for Stefan and Elena to meet up with them. Frequently Bonnie would feed Damon some of her curly fries while he would repay her with soft kisses to her rose-peddle lips. The two found themselves more in love then they figured they'd be, and the events that had unfolded five months prior no longer seemed like an issue. Since the duo had their battle against Katherine and Bonnie's mother, Nicole McCullough, for the Moonstone, both Bonnie and Damon had tried their hardest to let all of the negative situations of their past stay in the past. They tried not to think about all of the times they constantly tried to kill one another or the times they persuaded relationships that seemed to do more harm than good…they wanted to focus on a bright new future with one another. One where Bonnie would not have to worry about being the "convenient witch" for the rest of her life and instead just concentrate on normal, human stuff. And Damon, God willing, would focus on doing more "good" for the world. He knew that the amount of enemies he had made over the centuries still outweighed the amount of friends he had in his present immortality. In all honesty it wouldn't have mattered to the vampire whether he had more friends than enemies, but he didn't want his past mistakes (and future ones) to jeopardize what he had with Bonnie. If changing for the better was what would keep the Bennett girl around, then he'd do it.
Either way, both the witch and the vampire were making incredible strides towards a normal, healthy relationship in the five months they've been together. Hell, Damon even convinced Bonnie to overlook her paranoia of catching a disease and hence they stopped using condoms (though Damon wasn't really sure why they were using them to begin with. Sure it was to humor the girl's paranoid thoughts and he didn't want her feeling like she had to be forced one way or another, but still…it felt weird.)
As the couple sits next to each other, talking and smiling and kissing one another, Matt Donavan walks by with another tray of curly fries to occupy the empty one already present on the table. He wore his uniformed blue shirt with the greasy dish -towel slung neatly over it. Stretching out his hand and placing the food upon the table, Matt reaches into the pocket of the apron wrapped around his waist and pulls out a small pad and pen. Placing the tip of the pen on top of the pad, the young man looks over to Bonnie and grins.
"Is there anything else I can get you?" Matt asks, releasing a small sigh. The man keeps his eyes on Bonnie and Bonnie only.
"Um no, Matt, that should do it for now," the woman responds, "thank you."
"No problem." Matt immediately starts to write on the pad with his pen hurriedly. Bonnie knew why he was trying to avoid her table, but she wasn't going to let that stop her from saying what she was asked to say.
"Caroline really wants to talk to you," the Bennett woman says eagerly. "She says she's really trying to make it work between you guys, she just-"
"She just always has an excuse," Matt interrupts, stopping short of writing on his pad and looking up to glance at Bonnie. "Look, Bonnie, if Caroline is so concerned about where we stand as a couple…then it should be a stand that she makes on her own. Not a stand that her friend makes for her…no offence." The young witch gives a sad smile as she watches Matt rip the green paper from his small pad.
"Will you at least call her?" Bonnie asks, almost begging. Matt releases a small sigh before temporarily turning to look at an annoyed Damon Salvatore. It doesn't take long for the young boy to quickly turn back to the girl.
"I'll think about it."
The Donavan boy places his pad and pen back in his pocket and makes way back towards the restaurant's kitchen. Bonnie merely shakes her head as she watches Matt walk away.
"You know it's for the best, right?" Damon's voice breaks Bonnie's concentration and causes the woman to turn and look bewilderingly at her companion.
"What do you mean, it's for the best?" Bonnie inquires. Damon reaches forward and grabs a couple curly fries between his fingers before dropping them straight into his mouth.
He chews for a few seconds as he shrugs his shoulders and opens his mouth to speak again, "Matt and Caroline together is a terrible idea." Bonnie leans back and furrows her eyebrows. "Caroline has too many self-esteem issues and Matt is too concerned with everybody feeling sorry for his tragic life. You can't have two people looking for a pity party to form a relationship together." Damon looks at Bonnie as he gives his opinion, knowing that what he said was surely going to get him a earful. But he he's not worried about it. If anything, he was sort of looking forward to it. Since the two became an official couple they've been learning to cope with one another and learning to accept each other for who they really were, while still figuring out what needed to change to make the relationship work entirely. A lot of drastic measures were made on both sides, but if there was one thing that never changed, it was their banter.
Damon and Bonnie's love grew from hate in the form of sarcasm, attempted murder, and so many other delusional methods. Their love is one that made no sense on paper, but in reality it was obvious the two were made for each other. Their differences were no more apparent than their similarities. Damon and Bonnie shared so much which one another in the form of hate, that they didn't realize how much information they were sharing with one another and how much passion they were releasing into each other. Most relationships start with love at first sight. Theirs was hate. But at the end of the day, they grew to love one another…and that was what was important.
"Matt is going through a lot more than you realize," Bonnie says defensively, "not only is this Senior year in school, but he's not even sure if he's going to graduate with enough credits. Which means that he either has to quit his job to go to classes that start in the morning and the early evenings, or he drops out of school to work at the Mystic Grill for the rest of his life."
"Maybe Caroline should just turn him into a vampire?" Damon suggests rather loudly. The volume of the man's tone forces the young witch to smack him on the shoulder. It was her job to not only keep the supernatural world a secret but to instill the balance within it. She wasn't going to risk exposing any more innocent humans to her crazy world of vampires, witches, and werewolves because of mere curiosity.
Bonnie leans in closer to Damon, her eyes narrow as she speaks, "It wouldn't kill you to keep your voice down when you talk about such stuff. You know how I feel about talking about this subjects in public, anyway."
"You're right…it wouldn't kill me. Because I'm already dead!" Damon's last sentence is shouted throughout the Mystic Grill and causes Bonnie to snatch her hand away from his so that she could hold herself. Damon, peering his ocean blue eyes around the establishment, chuckles amongst himself as he waits to prove his point. "See, nobody cares one way or another."
"Why must you always change the subject into something much more uncomfortable?" the woman asks with cautious eyes overlooking the Mystic Grill.
"Because I know it gets you upset, which leads to a fight which leads to makeup sex which, in our case, is the best sex."
"Oh, lucky me for having such a romantic around."
Damon merely smiles at Bonnie's uptight attitude. He loved that things between them would never be as lovey-dovey as his brother's relationship with Elena. Sometimes he pondered whether he would still be the same person if he had ever made it official with Elena? Would he be comfortable being himself the way he was with Bonnie? Would the constant need of affection that Elena usually portrayed be too much for Damon to handle on a day to day basis? It didn't seem to matter anymore. Sure he still loved Elena and might have even still held a torch for her…but he couldn't deny the love he had with Bonnie. The realness he shared with the Bennett witch every day was something he didn't regret for one minute.
Bonnie shoots up from the vibration that erupts from within her jean's pocket. She immediately snatches her phone out and looks at the glowing screen before her. It's a text message from Elena, one that notifies Bonnie that she and Stefan would not be able to make lunch with them. Bonnie smacks her lips in disappointment as she moves the text message in front of Damon's face for him to read. The man merely perches his lips and shakes his head.
"That's the third time this week they bailed out on us," Damon reminds the woman as he goes for the leather jacket slung over the chair he's sitting on. "Clearly neither one of them cares that I have more important things to do in the week than wait for them to eat lunch with me." Bonnie merely shrugs as she drops her phone in the purse she slings over her shoulder.
"Elena told me this would be a busy week for she and Stefan. Maybe they just haven't got the time to hang out like they use to. Lest we forget, that whole Moonstone fiasco set Elena, Stefan and I back a couple letter grades so we'll be lucky if we pass this semester with a D."
"So I guess Stefan is too good to compel your teachers to give you all passing grades?" Bonnie only rolls her eyes at Damon's statement as she stands up with her purse over her shoulder and her jacket clutched in her hand. Damon puts on his leather jacket and stands as well, reaching into his pocket and dropping down cash upon the table for the food, but not before grabbing one last handful of curly fries. The couple walk out of the restaurant and go straight to Damon's black Camaro where they hop in, pull out of the Mystic Grill parking lot, and head towards Bonnie's home. They hold hands all the way to the witches home where her father, Noah Bennett, was probably up worried that she was spending her free time with the vampire he disapproved of. It seemed nothing Damon did was good enough to impress Noah.
When Damon's car finally came to a rolling stop in front of Bonnie's home, he turns to the woman and gives a mischievous smile before opening his mouth to speak, "I wanna come upstairs with you." The emerald eyed girl simply scoffs at Damon's insane suggestion that would most likely get him killed by the hands of her father.
"Yeah, sure Damon. Lets just go upstairs to my room while my father is still in the house. I'm sure he won't think anything inappropriate is going on between us. Lest we forget the countless amount of times my father has tried to kill you within these past five months?" Damon was unscathed by Bonnie's dismissal of his suggestion, leaning in and nibbling lightly on her neck.
"Who says he has to see me enter the house?" he asks, his teeth grazing across her velvet skin as he kisses more passionately on her. Bonnie reluctantly pushes the man away and instead keeps her eyes securely on the front door to her house, hoping to God that her father would not catch Damon kissing her the way he was. It was one thing to get caught kissing your bad boy boyfriend by your parent, it was another thing when that parent was a powerful wizard how could start infernos with his mind. Sometimes Bonnie questioned whether or not it was a good idea to give her father back his powers. On top of suddenly becoming a strict mentor in the art of magic, he was also more adamant with keeping tabs on the young witch's personal life from day to day. Ironic that now he wanted to dedicate every moment of his life to protecting Bonnie now that was more than capable of taking care of herself with the aid of Damon, but was nowhere to be found when she needed him the most in those first crucial moments of witchcraft. Obviously the woman loved her father dearly…but since he got his powers back….they only seemed to drift apart even further.
"It's not safe for you to come in the house while my dad is at home," Bonnie tells the man disappointingly. "As much as I'd love to believe my father when he tells me he's okay with the idea of us being a couple, I know he's not. And considering the amount of arguments we have on account of you and the instances he has set you fire, there's no telling what he might do if he sees you."
"You make it sound like I'm not able to defend myself," Damon retorts back almost insulted, "if Father Witch has beef with me, I'll handle it on my own. I don't need you to play guardian to my undead life."
"So it's alright when you watch out for my well being, but I can't do the same for you?"
"I don't need protection." Bonnie scoffs at the egotistical comment before shaking her head at her stubborn boyfriend.
"We already had this conversation once; you know damn well who you need protection from."
"Humor me."
Bonnie leans in to give Damon a quick kiss on the lips before reaching for the door handle and hopping out, "Yourself, Salvatore. You need protection from yourself." Closing the car door and smirking at the irritated vampire, Bonnie slowly makes way to her front door while the sound of screeching tires diminish in the background. No doubt Damon was upset with the witch's refusal, but the young woman knew what was best for the both of them…at least in terms to their safety and well-being. Opening her purse and going for her house keys buried beneath the many useless items, the swift opening of the front door came as no surprise to the Bennett girl. Bonnie stared up into chocolate eyes that furrowed in her presence and searched for unanswered explanations. "Hey, dad," Bonnie said timidly as she brushed her way past the six foot man who stood in the doorframe.
"You said you'd be home at five o'clock. It's now five forty-five." Noah Bennett's tone was filled with that of a man who hated for his orders to go ignored. Even despite all that he and Bonnie had through together five months prior and the understanding they came to learn from one another, he still thought it best to raise his daughter with an iron thumb.
"Sorry, but Damon and I were waiting for Stefan and Elena to meet with us at the Mystic Grill again. I don't know what else to tell you." The young witch tucks a strain of her long black hair behind her ear as she hang her jacket in the closet directly adjacent to the front door.
"This is the third time this week Elena and Stefan's tardiness has caused you to come home later than you said you'd be here." Bonnie clutches her purse tightly as she listens to Noah speak, already growing irritated from the monotonous speech that her father insists on spilling out every time something didn't go his way. It was tiring.
"Dad, just because I come home forty minutes later than I said I'd be home isn't merit for a lecture. I'm here now. Can't you just deal with that fact and let me live my life in peace?" The young witch glares at Noah in disbelief, not understanding what she would have to do to let him see that she was not this crazy, out of control, irresponsible girl that he must have figured she'd be; being a witch called for the opposite of all those traits. Harnessing the power of a Bennett witch meant that she had to be responsible and courteous of the people she exposed her magic to. Not to mention it meant that she had to maintain the all too frequently brought up "balance" of the supernatural world (at least according to her father.) She had already made the mistake of hindering on that balance by pursuing a relationship with Damon, so she knew she had to be extra cautious of herself.
Bonnie and Noah were silent as they look at one another, unsure how they could continue their conversation without it blowing up into a full blown argument. So without hesitation the young witch starts to make her way upstairs towards her room. It seems the two have so many unresolved issues that the relationship they are trying to rebuild is already tarnished.
"Wait, Bonnie," Noah calls out to his daughter. Bonnie stops at the top of the stairs, turning on her heels to look down at her father who holds a mellow expression on his face. "Tyler called earlier," Noah continued, "and he gave me the number to his new cell phone. I put the number on a piece of paper in your room. It's on your bed." Both Bennetts stand idly were they were, trying to enjoy the small exchange of normalcy in the trivial conversation.
"…thanks," Bonnie whispers lowly before turning for her room again. She walks in and looks around, wondering why she even considered her space a bedroom. Every day it felt less and less like home, and every day she prayed that her eighteenth birthday would come to rectify her of the tyranny she felt she was living under. Taking hold of her bedroom door, Bonnie turned her body towards the hallway as she shut the door shut.
"Nine zero nine…I think this is a California area code."
A surprise voice from behind Bonnie suddenly made itself present with causes the woman's heart to nearly jump out of her chest. With wide emerald eyes, the young woman turns to observe Damon suddenly sitting above her bed and reading the phone number from the piece of paper Noah left for her earlier. The petrified witch immediately goes for the man on her bed and snatches the piece of paper from his hands.
Bonnie hisses in between gritted teeth, "What the hell are you doing in my room? I told you not to come up here while my dad was still home." Damon just scoffs at the woman's anger, bringing his hands to the back of his head as he leans against her headboard.
"See, your mouth was saying 'no-no'…but your eyes were saying 'perhaps'. I think the latter has a lot more pull when dealing with somebody like me, wouldn't you agree?" Bonnie is unamused by the vampire's lack of concern towards her worry. Damon just rolls his eyes and let out a huge sigh when he sees how serious his girlfriend is. "Relax, okay? I just came up here to tell you that Stefan called to tell me that he and Elena will try to meet with us again tomorrow." The young woman is silent as she glares at the man before her, dubious of his reasoning for coming into her room.
"You could've called my cell phone," Bonne suggests more calmly.
Damon merely shrugs his shoulders, "I did call, but you weren't answering your phone so I figured you forgot to switch your phone back from vibrate to its normal ringtone." It took the Bennett woman a second to realize that she had done exactly what Damon accused her of doing before dropping her eyes to the ground and chuckling aloud to herself. Brining her eyes back up she walked over to her door and locked it before dropping her purse to the floor.
"I don't think I like how well you know me, Salvatore," Bonnie said crossing her arms over her chest and smirking at the man laying on her bed. Damon adjusts himself accordingly, ready to partake in the kissing that halted in his black Camaro. The black haired woman slowly makes her way to her bed, crawling beside the man and meeting her lips with his. They both smile as they lose each other in each other's touch. Damon leans over the caramel woman, his fingertips lightly going over her arm which is clutchd to his messy jet black hair. Damon pulls away momentarily as he looks down at the woman with those hypnotizing blue eyes of his.
"You sure you don't want to sneak in a quickie?" Damon asks in a whisper.
"Shut up, Damon," Bonnie responds with a breathy response.
The two can't keep their hands off each other. Their lips rediscovered the things they loved about one another and the feelings that could cause either one of them to erupt in pleasure. But something happened. Damon stopped kissing Bonnie and his body went completely stiff. He clutched the bed beside him, his hands shaking uncontrollably and his face beginning to contort uncomfortably. Bonnie took immediate notice and raised herself up on the bed to attend to the frozen vampire.
"Damon, what's the matter?" she asked worriedly, her hands brought up to the man's face. Her emerald eyes searched for an answer behind the low groans and moans that were now being rumbling from the vampire's mouth. "Damon, honey, what's wrong?"
"Can't…move…" Damon managed to force the words out of himself before his entire body was pulled off the bed by an invisible force, pinning him against the wall a few feet back. Bonnie couldn't help but let out a small yelp before her bedroom door crashed open, falling to the floor in a loud thud. The Bennett witch looked to her side in fear and felt her heart quicken in a way it had never quickened before. She turned her attention back on Damon who was pinned against the wall, groaning in pain as his skin suddenly began to burn significantly around his face.
Now, the once dominate fear that Bonnie was feeling began transferring into anger…even hate. The image of her father standing in her doorframe with his hands out towards Damon was enough to cause her to retaliate in the most severe degree.
"Dad, stop it!" Bonnie screamed out as she hopped off her bed.
"No, Bonnie!" Noah retorted back, "you wanted to be defiant and let this monster back in my home…then you have to deal with the consequences of disobeying me." A sizzling sound was growing louder the more Damon's face burned until his groans turned into to full-blown scream. Bonnie didn't know why she did it. In fact, it was probably the dumbest thing she could have done. But Damon was in trouble - he needed protection. And there was nobody, not even her father, that would hurt the man she loved.
Mumbling a quick Latin incantation, the young Bennett witch lifted a hand to her father which sent him back flying into the hallway, crashing hard on the hardwood flooring. Immediately Damon crashed on the ground below him, inhaling and exhaling deeply as the pain slowly began to subside. Bonnie ran to his side instantly, waiting for his scars to heal before placing a hand across his chiseled face. The vampire started to stagger his way back on his feet with the witch's assistance.
"Are you okay?" Bonnie asks worriedly, almost as if though she were about to cry. Damon merely nods in response. The young witch bites her bottom lip as she turns to the doorframe where her father was standing moments ago.
This was it. The last straw. The final act.
Bonnie would not allow herself to be subject to a man who would so willingly destroy the very thing that made her happy. The one person that she loved with her heart and soul. She could no longer live with the man that was so adamant with treating her like a naïve child…thus she decided she was going to move out.
Once Damon was fully healed and ready to make way out of the house in case Noah was looking to continue what he started, Bonnie went for the man's hand and clutched it tightly. She wasn't sure why, but the very image and sound of Damon in pain was enough to make her kneel over and die.
She hated it.
Deeply.
Going under her bed and grabbing the Grimoire, Bonnie drags both she and Damon out of the room and towards the stairs that would lead them out of the house. To the side of them Noah grumbles in pain and is barely swaying from side to side. Bonnie looks on at the pitiful sight, seeing so much of her own stubbornness in the man. Shaking her head and heading for the stairs which would lead Damon and Bonnie toward the front door, Noah speaks up.
"Bonnie…don't…don't do this," the man pleads. Bonnie just keeps her eyes away from the man. "Don't ruin your life…for that thing. That soulless demon." Damon just chuckled at Noah's insult of him.
"And here I am thinking we could be friends."
"I'd never be friends with your kind," Noah hissed.
"That's too bad," Damon continued, "because more than anything I have a deep respect for the Bennett lineage. Hell, I dedicated most of my immortality protecting generation after generation of Bennetts. But don't think just because you're Bonnie's father you get special treatment. I let a lot of shit go under the circumstances that you are a Bennett witch….but this is the last time you get a free pass from me. You've spent the past five months planning my demise, but you haven't even considered the fact that maybe I've already planned yours." Noah was silent, scared even, at Damon's threatening words. "Count yourself lucky that Bonnie was here during your little temper tantrum…otherwise there'd be one less Bennett witch on the family tree ." As Bonnie and Damon both held each other's hands tightly, they made their way downstairs and out the front door.
Bonnie and Damon figured that this was it; the biggest problematic factor in their relationship was dealt with, and now they could live life under the sun with no issue. But little did either of them know there were stronger forces out in the world planning to tear them apart. Thus the hand of the witch and the hand of the vampire would have to clutch each other much more strongly if they planned to stay together for the long haul.
The rose was already accustomed to the concrete world…it was the bystanders they had to worry about next.
So how'd you like it?
Forgive me if the characters are a bit off, I've gotta get a feeling for these two again, lol Please leave me your comments/thoughts/whatever you like. I can't promise a new chapter next week week, but more so the week after. Sadly these chapters will take much longer for me to shell out since I basically just started writing my fanfic again. But, on the upside, if you voice your opinions and what you'd like to see more of, it'll leave open a huge window of opportunity for you to see exactly what you'd like to see. Thank you so much again for making "Rose In a Concrete World" such a blast for me to share with you. The onslaught of positivity has been a humbling blessing. Granted I have no intention of EVER becoming a writer, but this is most certainly a nice outlet to release those creative ideas I have swimming around my crazy little brain. Thanx and peace :)
FUN FACT: "Rose In a Concrete World" was named after a song by R&B singer, Joe. This new volume, "Same Old Stuff" is derived from the song by British band, The Feeling. You guys should give it a listen and listen to the lyrics...it most definitely speaks about Bamon, lol
