A/N: Wanted to open with a couple of things! 1. Just to clear this up, Damon and Stefan aren't brothers in this fic - they've never met before. 2. This chapter's a little on the NSFW-side… you've been warned ;) 3. It's a little more Bamon-centric than the last, and meant to reveal a bit more about Damon. Again, though, this is fundamentally an ensemble so it should hopefully always balance out! 4. I knew getting into this fic that there would inevitably be some moments of pure outrageousness - I think this chapter has your first glimpse of that. I'm so sorry. I don't even know what happened. In any case, Gabi out.

Six Mornings After

Chapter Three: Easy Peasy

"…know it's here somewhere," Bonnie muttered, crouched down on the floor of the mostly dark kitchen, rummaging through their mess of a hardware drawer for their stash of batteries. Stefan was in the living room tinkering with the space heater, Caroline was lighting candles around the darker spots of the apartment, and Damon was sifting through their electricity-less fridge for things that needed to be transferred to Svetlana.

She pulled out an unmarked white box and lifted the lid.

Thumbtacks.

Now she finds them. When she was putting up all her physiology diagrams? Nowhere to be found.

She sighed, tossing the box back in the dark drawer with an impatient rattle and shoving the whole thing shut. "Take five," she grumbled, pushing her slight frame up to her feet and opening the cupboard hanging over the sink.

"Would you consider whipped cream essential?"

Bonnie's face crumpled as she attempted to reach back into cupboard. "Would you?"

"In certain contexts."

She'd walked right into that one. "Throw it in if there's room at the end, otherwise get rid of it."

"What about this Hershey's syr—"

"Keep it," she replied immediately, and his stare veered over to hers, languorously amused. "Don't be gross." She grimaced as she lifted onto her tiptoes, body straining as her fingers brushed the edge of the box. "I just like hot chocolate."

He dragged his gaze over her outstretched frame in a luxuriating once-over. "So do I."

Bonnie snorted. "'Cause when I said 'don't be gross', what I really meant was throw in some objectification with a fun splash of racial fetishization." A beat of silence passed, and her lips pursed. "You didn't get a word of that."

He lifted a bottle of something bright green to peer at it in the faint light filtering through the window. "Something about fetishes—the hell is this?"

She shot him a dry glance and he gave the glass bottle an indicative wiggle, pulling her face into a furrow. "Kombucha?"

His brows raised a fraction. "Did you just hex me?"

"Kombucha's a type of tea," she said with an eye roll, and he began twisting the cap off.

"You do give me a bit of a witchy vibe, what with all the hostility and muttering."

"Muttering?"

"Yeah, you're always mumbling out scientific-sounding shit as you read."

"Weird, it's almost like I'm studying medicine."

"I would argue medicine is a form of magic."

"Poetic."

The sound of him violently spitting something out was his response, and her gaze snapped down to the sight of him staring at the Kombucha in horror.

"What the fuck?"

She couldn't help her snort.

"People drink this?"

"Caroline drinks it every day."

"This is a chemical weapon."

"It's really healthy."

"This is a mix of battery acid—"

"Lots of people swear by it."

"—and the tears of dying children."

Bonnie shrugged. "Maybe next time you can ask her before you help yourself to whatever and she'll give you a warni—damn it," she hissed, whipping her hand down from the cupboard and dropping back onto her heels to inspect it. Paper cut.

Damon set down the bottle with a wry look. "What are you looking for again?"

"Batteries for the space heater," she muttered, shaking her hand out and glaring up at the cupboard.

"You seem a little out of your height league."

"If that's your mildly insulting way of offering to help, be my guest."

She heard the shuffle of him getting to his feet, and after a few moments, the heat of him easing up behind her. His voice was a shockingly close rumble in her ear. "I do love a good damsel in distress."

"Wow, okay, and I love boundaries," she replied, whirling around and taking a quick step to the side. The corner of his mouth curled upward, face draped in shadows as it loomed a solid foot above hers.

"Shame."

Her stare tapered, thinned by a mixture of scrutiny and annoyance. What was it with this guy? Innuendo this, innuendo that—was even possible to think about sex that much? "What is this?" He arched a brow, and she gestured at him with a loose hand. "This thing you do, the whole sex-crazed act. Defense mechanism, overcompensation, what?"

His stare glittered with amusement. "Does sex really make you that uncomfortable?"

"Not in the slightest, but someone hitting on literally anything that moves does strike me as a little odd."

"Hey, that's not fair," he said, mouth tugging into a childish pout. "I haven't hit on Stefan."

Bonnie scoffed. "Not yet."

The mockery in his expression shifted into curiosity. "Speaking of Stefan," he mused, stepping forward to reach up into the cabinet, "what's the deal with you two? Nerds-with-benefits?"

Her eyes narrowed on his profile. "Best friends, actually. Not that I'd imagine you have many of those."

"I happen to be very friendly." He illustrated this point by extracting the box of supplies with ease and brandishing it front of her. She reached up to take it and he thrust his arm up at the last second, holding it impossibly high over his head. "Ah, ah," he tsked, and Bonnie's stare flattened as he took what was probably supposed to be a 'seductive' step closer. "What do I get?"

She scoffed at the question. "The same thing I get: a space heater that works." He took a moment to consider this, and she shrugged. "I mean, if you think standing around like a slutty Statue of Liberty and freezing to death is a better option, go for it."

He sighed, dropping his arm and holding the box out. "You're no fun."

"Neither is hypothermia."

She grabbed the box and swiveled around, and he watched her waltz off with a glint in his gaze.

Caroline's roommate was no-nonsense as hell.

He had to give her props for taking literally none of his shit, though. Not today, not a week ago—not since he'd first come over, really. And it wasn't in that dramatic, uptight way he was used to people hating him in—it was level. Logical. Subtle in its sassiness. He hadn't really given a shit before, but now that he had nothing else to do?

Definitely starting to look like a bottomless source of entertainment.

Well…

He cocked his head to the side, dragging his stare to the swaying curve of her hips just as she cleared the doorway.

Maybe bottomless was the wrong word.

A whirl of blonde swept into the kitchen. "Is there anything more useless than matches that don't light up, like they have one job," Caroline snapped, flinging what must've been a defunct matchbox onto the kitchen table and making a beeline for the drawer Bonnie'd been rummaging through earlier.

Damon smirked as she all but ripped it open. "Someone's fiery."

Caroline glanced up suddenly, as if remembering something. "Oh, right, on that note—we're not having sex tonight."

He shrugged. "'Kay."

"Great," she replied, attention already having snapped back to finding new matches. His lips quirked briefly—he'd always liked that about Caroline, how straight-forward she was about what she wanted and what she didn't. He couldn't be sure what she was like in other contexts, but with him, she was clear as day: if she wanted him, she was in his lap, mouth on his ear, murmuring all of the things she wanted him to do to her; if she didn't, it was a raised palm and a 'no thanks'.

It didn't seem to be part of some game, either, like it was with some people. They'd pretend to be fine with 'no stings attached' because they thought they could turn him around and then blew up when they realized love wasn't something he dealt in. Caroline, though, didn't seem to be playing. She was straight up, like him, and he liked that.

"Actually, I was thinking we should stop hooking up in general."

Okay, maybe he didn't love it.

"You do realize," he began, letting his head fall to the side in thought, "that you're coming to this conclusion two hours after we find out we're going to be stuck under the same roof with nothing to do for the next 48 hours."

"Yep," she said, taking out a tray of odds and ends and setting it on the counter.

"Just checking."

She sighed as she rifled through the tray's contents. "Look, people tend to get all," she lifted a screwdriver and absently waved it around, "bond-y in these kinds of situations, and if we're hooking up, the lines of what this is could get blurred and I don't want to deal with that."

Despite the fact that he knew there was zero percent chance of that happening on his end, he merely shrugged. "Whatever you say, Goldilocks."

She shot him a brief smile, though her features promptly contorted in a wild look. "A-ha!" she cried, snatching a lighter up in victory. "I knew we had one!"

"But we're still doing poker and jello shots."

She scoffed, tossing her hair over her shoulder to stare at him. "Obviously."

His hands shot up in defense. "Hey, I don't know what Nun Caroline's down for."

She smirked. "Nun Caroline's down for destroying you at poker."

"Just not destroying me in bed."

"Nope." Her stare took on a playful glint. "Which isn't to say she couldn't, just. You know. Won't."

He sighed. "Nun Caroline's the worst."

She laughed just as a throat cleared, causing both of their heads to pivot toward the door to the living room. Stefan gave a stiff wave with one hand, the other lodged into his pocket. "I don't mean to interrupt your, uh…" he cast around for a word, hand awkwardly suspended in the air, and Caroline's stare grew pointed.

"Our what?"

He sighed, dropping his hand. "Whatever—look, this is kind of a shot in the dark, but are either of you good with circuits?"

She cocked her head to the side in a frosty look. "Why would that be a shot in the dark?"

He frowned, shoulder lifting briefly. "I don't know, don't you work in like fashion or something?"

Her brow arched. "And that means I can't know anything about circuits?"

His eyes tapered in confusion, mouth parting in search of how to navigate an answer. "I mean… do you?"

She held his stare for a long, cutting moment before shrugging. "No." And without waiting for a response, she plucked the lighter up and left the kitchen, breezing past him with an air so distinctly feline he could practically see a tail flicking behind her.

He stared at the door for a beat before switching his blank gaze over to Damon. "Do you understand anything she does?"

Damon shrugged, reaching over for a bag of chips that'd been abandoned on the counter and popping it open. "Sure."

Stefan gestured behind himself. "Then what was that?"

"Pretty sure that was her not liking you." Damon plucked a chip out and popped into his mouth, immediately grimacing at the flavor. "What the—" he lifted the bag up to read the label. "Veggie Sticks? Who the fuck eats this?"

"Honestly, I don't even know what I did to her."

"Everything in this kitchen is poison."

"Has she ever said anything to you?"

Damon popped another veggie stick into his mouth. "She rants about you a lot, actually."

"What?"

"Yeah—whole monologues, bro," he said, waving a be-veggiesticked hand, and Stefan's eyes narrowed in confusion. "They usually come right after we talk about our hopes and dreams buuuut before we gush about the latest Scandal episode."

His stare flattened, and Damon shot him an insouciant smirk before shoving another veggie stick in his mouth. "What's the big deal—you don't like her either, right?"

Stefan hesitated at the absoluteness of the question. "She's... not exactly my favorite person."

"Right, which is PC for hating someone, so who cares?"

He sighed, forcing himself to cast off his stubborn need to understand the situation. "You're right. Besides, none of this is going to matter when we all freeze to death 'cause no one can get the space heater to work."

"Oh, right—I can do that."

His stare shot up. "What?"

"I'm great with electrical stuff."

Stefan eyed him blankly. "Is that another joke, or—"

Damon chuckled. "Yeah."

Stefan sighed, pushing a hand through his hair as Damon fished a set of pliers and some electrical tape out of the drawer and set off for the living room. He glanced up with a puzzled look as Damon waltzed past. "What are you—"

"Double-joke: I actually am great with electrical stuff."

Damon ignored the thoroughly bemused look hitting the back of his head as he wandered over to the middle of the living room, where a stubborn little gaggle of limbs was fighting a losing battle against a big bad space heater. He clucked his tongue. "C'mon, witchy, you know what I said about damsels in distress."

Her eyes flashed up to the ceiling in shot of annoyance.

"Now you're just teasing me."

"Did you finish putting the stuff in the cooler?"

He rolled his eyes at the terse tone. "Relax, kid, your chocolate syrup can survive a few more minutes of room temperature."

"I'll relax when I know everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing instead of distracting the people that are, kid."

His brows flew up in vaguely amused surprise. "Keep a safe distance, folks, she bites."

She shook her head. "It's not funny. If I don't get this fixed we're—"

"—going to have to spend the night all pressed up against each other." He smiled innocently. "Body heat and whatnot. Shame—almost makes me not want to do this."

She frowned. "Do wha—hold o—what are you—" she stumbled back a bit as he plunked down next to her whirled the space heater around, positioning it so that the back was to him.

"First of all," he said, tapping a finger against a large, screwed-shut compartment as he glanced around the floor for something, "this is where you want to be looking."

Bonnie's gaze switched between him and the heater in disbelief. "You know how to fix this."

He stare lit with a salacious flash. "I've got a thing for portable radiation heaters."

"Aaaand the over-sexualization extends to objects, I see."

"I live an equal opportunity life—Phillip's." She frowned as he thrust a hand out without looking. He waited a beat before shaking it impatiently. "Come on, little bird, today."

"Phillip's as is in—"

"Phillip's head screwdriver, keep up."

She rolled her eyes as he snapped his fingers, grabbing the screwdriver and handing it to him. He leaned forward and swiftly unscrewed the lid open, and she noticed how his hands moved with a second-nature ease as he settled into the repair, fiddling with what looked to Bonnie like an indecipherable mess of wire. Curiosity began to brighten her gaze—Damon was the last person she would've pegged as handy. He was just... too glitzy. Too glossy. Every time Caroline brought him over, he was in the standard Financial District suit-and-tie fare, and it didn't exactly scream 'knows how to get his hands dirty'. Even when he poured out of her room in the mornings in a total state of disaster—hair a mess, Oxford undone, gaze a sly, sleepy blue—something about it still managed to scream 'Calvin Klein ad'.

Hell, even right now, sprawled out in an old pair of sweats Caroline had from college and a ratty t-shirt, he looked weirdly elegant.

Made the whole handyman thing a little hard to reconcile.

"Where'd you learn all this?" she ventured after a silent stretch of observation, and he squinted at something.

"Space heater school."

Another thing she was starting to notice: he never gave straight answers to anything. Whimsical this, flippant that. At least to her, anyway.

She was surprised when he elaborated. "Dad was kind of a mechanic—I picked up a few things."

Her ears hinged on the word 'was', trained to look for little clues like that after months of taking patient histories, and the tidbit stored itself into the brand new 'Damon' file in her head. "And your mom?"

He snorted. "Is this an interview?"

"Conversation, actually."

"Pretty sure the 'co' in conversation means that two people are equal participants."

She shrugged. "No one's stopping you from asking me stuff."

"What's the most orgasms you've had in one night?"

"Three."

The immediacy of the answer caught him slightly off-guard, and his hands paused, stare switching over to hers. The question had been intended to shake her a bit, to trigger the usual defense mechanisms uptight girls like her tended to have, but the stare that met his was a shrewd, steady green.

It took him a second to switch back into neutral. "I'd be happy to double that."

"What's your mom do?"

His brows ticked upward, vaguely irritated. "I'm not done with my questions."

"Fine—go."

He dropped his hands from the heater, twisting around to face her more directly. She really wanted to play this game?

"Dirtiest place you've ever given a blowjob."

"Anatomy Lab."

"Ever tasted your own cum?"

"No."

"Most fingers you've ever had inside you."

"Three."

"Screamer or moaner?"

"Scratcher."

His brows ticked up at that response, giving her just enough time to swoop in with quick, even-worded, "What does your mom do?"

He merely stared at her for a beat. She took the opportunity to stare back, curious about the brief flickers of… something she was getting out of him. She couldn't be sure what, exactly, but it almost felt like she was seeing small snaps of him out-of-character. Tiny glimpses of a boundary beneath what seemed like boundless flippancy.

After a few seconds, though, the levity was back. "I don't know," he said, shoulders easing into a shrug.

She frowned. "You don't know?"

"Nope," he said, resuming his space-heater-tinkering, and for a moment, she debated whether or not to ask why. Then she thought about the 'was' he'd used for talking about his dad, and decided maybe she was wading into more than she was bargaining for.

"Fine."

Damon snorted, stare trained on the wires. "I make you tell me how many fingers you've had inside you and you take an 'I don't know' for an answer? Gotta step up your game, witchy."

She shrugged, leaning back onto her palms in a casual stretch. "Maybe. Or maybe in the process of trying to throw me off with super pointless sex questions, you didn't actually learn anything about me whereas I learned just how badly you don't want to talk about your mom."

He tugged on a red wire and the space heater suddenly sputtered to life, effectively cutting off the conversation and letting him get away with no answer. He snapped the lid back on and shot her a flinty smirk. "You're welcome." She rolled her eyes at the pivot but welcomed the relief of knowing they weren't actually going to freeze to death—honestly, she'd take that over Real World: Damon anyway.

"Hey, look at that—nice job, man," Stefan said, sidling out of the kitchen and propping himself against the doorframe. "No offense, but I didn't take you for the handy type."

"His dad was a mechanic," Bonnie supplied a bit smugly, as if to prove who won their little interrogation war, and Damon smiled blithely.

"And Bonnie's a scratcher with a three-orgasm max."

Stefan blinked, lips parting in an 'uh' that was cut-off by a unimpressed, "That's it?" Caroline's expression was skeptical as she swept out of her room, lighter in hand and brow arched at Bonnie. "Three max?"

Bonnie sighed. "Great."

Damon's shoulders gave an easy shrug. "I offered to double it."

"You should take him up on that, he's good for it."

"I swear this conversation started off normal," Stefan observed, more to himself than anything, and Caroline scoffed.

"Because sex is so abnormal and you've never had it."

His jaw ticced in irritation. "Weirdly enough, I was referring to knowing hyper-specific details about my best friend's sex life and not sex in general, but go ahead and take it in whatever pre-determined way you're set on taking it."

Caroline's brows shot up, unexpected laugh bubbling up her throat. "Look who grew claws."

"Maybe he's a scratcher, too," Damon tossed out, shooting Bonnie a wink that she met with a frosty smile.

"Maybe your mom's a scratcher. Or maybe not. Who knows?"

"Whoaaaa, below the belt." His eyes flashed. "Right where I like it."

"What makes you think I care enough to have a pre-determined way of seeing you?" Caroline snorted, glancing over at Stefan, and he tossed a hand up.

"I don't know, Caroline, maybe the fact that you literally spelled it out an hour ago with your little 'yous' rap."

"Wow, the whole point of that speech was that you're not special, but of course this is what you got out of it."

"How is that at all what I'm saying?"

"How is it not?"

"Still think my questions were pointless, Anatomy Lab?" Damon drawled, voice blending into the intensifying duet, and Bonnie snorted.

"Oh, you mean the ones predicated on the idea that I'm somehow embarrassed by sex, which clearly I'm not?"

"That blush you're rockin' begs to differ."

"I'm black—nice try."

"I haven't even begun to try."

The four voices started blurring into each other, slowly rising in a cacophony of friction and dissonance and that spiraled louder and louder, pulling them all in with a magnetic sort of charge until suddenly, without warning, it was all out pandemonium.

"—no idea what the hell your problem with me is—"

"—hilarious that you think this act of yours has anyone fooled—"

"—only problem is that you think I care enough to have a problem with you—"

"—person acting here is obviously you—"

"—really going to pretend this isn't targeted—"

"—why would I target you—"

"—wasn't my idea to play therapist—"

"—literally two questions is 'playing therapist' now—"

"—been doing this since I met you, Caroline—"

"—been a self-righteous pseudo 'nice guy' since I met yo—"

Light burst into the apartment in a sudden flood, startling them all into a brief, blessed moment of silence. The weather channel flickered back onto the TV screen, the volume reduced to a low chatter that blended with the whir of appliances coming back to life throughout the apartment, and all of them looked around in various states of surprise.

Eventually, Caroline broke the silence. "Did I seriously just light sixteen thousand candles for no reason?"

Bonnie saw Stefan's mouth part in instinctive response and jumped in before he could. "Okay, so." She clapped her hands a bit awkwardly. "Power's back. Yaaaaaay." She waved a limp wrist in celebration, and Stefan squinted at her in confusion. "Maybe we should all just… do our own thing for a bit, you know. Cool off. Not sure fighting four hours into a 48 hour situations is the best idea."

It took some wrangling and a few near fire starts, but eventually, everyone retreated to their own spaces—Damon found some Die Hard marathon on TV, Stefan was half-watching, half-case-prepping on the armchair, Caroline had disappeared into her room to get some work done, and Bonnie was knee-deep in her Urology book, bed drowning in a sea of diagrams and scribbled notes. It turned out to be a great strategy: day passed to night in relative peace, and honestly, after the rocky start, it was the first indication Bonnie had that maybe this two day hostage situation wouldn't be that terrible.

Everyone just had to lie low stay out of each other's way for one more day.

24 hours.

Easy-peasy.

…

Or at least, that's what she thought, until a violent series of explosions had her rocketing awake at 3 AM.

POW. POW PA-POW POW. POW.

She shot up like a banshee, jolting out of her deep, death-like hangover sleep in a state of total disorientation.

PA-POW POW PAPAPAPAPOW. CRASH. BANG.

What the everloving hell were they being invaded by North Korea?

POW POW PA-POW POWOWOWOWOW. CRASH.

"WHAT THE HELL?" a strangled voice cried from the next room, and somewhere in her dazed head, she recognized it as Caroline's. The smell of smoke and something vaguely sulfuric began filling the air, mixing in with another round of whip-like cracks, and the combination was finally enough to snap Bonnie out of her stupor and get her to the door, which she swung-open with a frantic, wild-eyed look.

All she saw was smoke.

Sheets of it, plumes of it, wafting through their otherwise dark living room in waves. Her panicked gaze swung around in search of a source—the fireplace, the heater, anything—but before she could find anything, an ear-splitting crack went off about a foot away from her, sparking a sharp yellow in the inky darkness. She yelped, entire body leaping in the air, and that's when she heard it.

Muffled, strangled—undoubtedly smothered under two tightly layered hands.

A giggle.

Distantly, she heard Caroline's door swing open, but before the blonde could even say anything Bonnie lurched forward and flipped on the light switch.

To be honest, she wasn't entirely sure was she was expecting.

But she could say, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it sure as hell wasn't Damon standing stock-still behind a floor lamp, body rigid and unmoving like maybe if he was still enough she wouldn't see the 90% of him that wasn't hidden by a two-inch-thick rod, and Stefan half-shoved underneath their shag rug like it was some sort of boa constrictor in the process of swallowing him whole.

Well, that, and a bunch of detonated firecrackers.

"Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me."

Caroline's hiss was so sharply deadly that for a minute, Bonnie wondered if their rug really was a snake, but Stefan and Damon seemed totally unfazed as the former cleared his throat and the latter's shoulders started shaking. "He did it," Stefan deadpanned, attempting to fling a finger at Damon but his elbow got stuck in the rug and he ended up pointing at himself.

Bonnie forced herself to swallow. "Did you two. Actually just detonate fireworks. In our living room."

Damon's face was about to crack as he nodded profusely. "No."

"No way," Stefan added, legitimately a human pretzel under their rug at this point as he struggled to move in any meaningful way. "Abso…malutely not, what are firecrackers?"

Bonnie's eyes were furious. "I said fireworks."

Stefan erupted into a horribly concealed snort of laughter. "What are—" his shoulders began shaking, "—what are fireworks?"

"They go POWOWOWOWOWOW," Damon cried, and Stefan lapsed into full on, body-racking laughter, a limbless worm stuck in a shag rug.

"Are they DRUNK?" Bonnie hissed, completely fucking thrown by the unparalleled pile of male idiocy gathered before her: last time she'd seen them, Stefan had just finished his case and was about to go to bed and Damon was three movies deep into Die Hard.

"No," Caroline seethed, bending over to pluck something up and holding it so that Bonnie could see for herself. It was the bud of an abandoned blunt. Bonnie's eyes grew wide.

"They're high."

A/N: YOU DON'T CHOOSE THE CRACK LYFE THE CRACK LYFE CHOOSES YOU. I'm too exhausted to proofread this chapter so there's a SUPER strong chance it's a tonal MESS, but I had to crank this out. I might have to go back and edit the flow when I'm not sleep-deprived from studying, so drop a line if you can about what worked for you/what you liked and I can take that all into account moving forward! Do you feel like you got a slightly better sense for Damon? Are you feelin' the Bamon sparks yet? Do you like how Stefan and Caroline just keep feeding into their stereotypes of each other even though it's not an accurate depiction of who they fully are? Is any of that getting across or am I just flounderin' here. Holla atcho girllll. IN ANY CASE THANKS FOR READING MY RANDOM AU EXPERIMENT.