A/N: For those interested in how this short mini-fic wraps up. Enjoy.


14.

Before…

He couldn't relax not even with his head resting against the seat. He tried to picture the landscape and what it might look like during the day. Green fields, rocky hills the color of pewter, the occasional deer or fox, maybe even a coyote peeking from the chartreuse foliage waiting for the right moment to dart across the tight road.

He thought of slender brown arms lifted above her head, wind-blown locks, silver bracelets catching the sunlight temporarily blinding him as she rode shotgun in his Camaro. He thought of how she'd smile and roll her eyes at his jokes. Shove his shoulder. Grow quiet and reflective, a sign she was comfortable with him. Damon's fingers nervously twisted a stand of Bonnie's hair then checked her pulse. It was there. Faintly. His fingers hesitated when he felt a new patch of scabs right on the tendon of her neck.

"How much longer?" he growled.

"We're almost there," Kira announced as she raced her SUV up an incline so steep you would have thought they were in a shuttle headed for the moon.

Finally the truck stopped moving. Kira hopped out, opened the rear passenger door and stepped aside as Damon carefully emerged bringing an unconscious Bonnie with him. He swept her up in his arms and hurried after Kira who trotted up a pair of stairs that led to a traditional Japanese house.

Kira knocked on the sliding wooden doors and announced their presence in her native language. "If they decides to help are you willing to barter with something extremely important? They're not interested in money," she said.

It didn't matter to Damon. He just wanted Bonnie well. He nodded curtly and hugged Bonnie tighter to him.

Someone finally parted open the doors. Kira bowed. Damon mimicked her actions half-heartedly too impatient to yield to custom. He listened as Kira explained the situation. The burly lady in front of them eyed him with the usual repugnance he was used to. When she paid Bonnie the same kindness, Damon had to refrain from snarling at her to knock it the fuck off.

He stiffened when the lady reached out to touch Bonnie's limp wrist and quickly drew back her hand as if it had been bitten. Her shrill voice grated on the vampire's ears, but she was yelling to someone loitering in the house.

Kira thanked the woman, slipped off her boots, told Damon to remove his and Bonnie's shoes.

The ceiling of the antechamber was decorated in gold metal filigree with bright red gossamer silk woven through that draped to the floor like tassels on a uniform. Everywhere you could think to look there was red. Flowers, linens, candles. It was like walking through the heart of a dragon which was probably the idea.

The little old woman hustled them to a storeroom and started bustling around. She gestured for Damon to lay Bonnie on a wooden island cluttered with various plants growing in mason jars. She moved some aside to make room.

Damon got Bonnie situated, taking off his jacket, balling it up into a makeshift pillow. He stuffed it under Bonnie's head.

The woman conferred with Kira about something who turned and muttered quietly to Damon, "How good are you at not revealing anything, expression wise?"

He quirked a brow. "I'm okay at it. Why?"

"You'll see. Try not to stare," Kira nodded and the woman pushed open a hidden door disguised like a set of shelves.

Their benefactress shouted to whoever lived behind that hidden wall sending Damon on a miniature flashback of the day he spent reliving in the Phoenix stone. He shook it off, clasped Bonnie's hand that was growing colder by the second.

"We're going to get you fixed up, BonBon, just hold on a little longer."

He heard feet clopping up a set of stairs.

Damon would give himself credit for keeping a straight face. He had seen burn victims, people with rampant facial tumors, and those suffering with smallpox. None of it prepared him for this.

It was a man; that much he could tell. However, the entire left side of his body looked like moss and bark were growing from pus-filled sores. His nails were black, fingertips stained, and Damon was fairly sure the man was blind. The woman debriefed him on whatever it was she felt when she touched Bonnie. He glanced at the aforementioned witch barely clinging to life before his eyes volleyed between Kira and Damon.

"He's Mr. Nakanishi…a healer. The woman, Oren is his caretaker. If he agrees, he'll siphon what's killing Bonnie out of her body…for a price," Kira relayed.

"What's the price?"

"Oren sensed that she's a witch," Kira explained carefully. "Mr. Nakanishi wants her magic."

"WHAT?!" Damon shook his head furiously with every intention of picking Bonnie up and leaving when he heard her take her last breath.

Kira heard it too. "Her heart stopped," she shoved Damon aside, vaulted up on the table throwing out meaningless words to him in Japanese while shouting in English that she was starting CPR. "You have to decide, Damon now!"

Paralyzed. Damon couldn't make that kind of a decision for Bonnie. He looked furtively between Kira administering chest compressions and breathing into Bonnie's mouth, stared at the blank faces of Oren and Mr. Nakanishi, looked at Bonnie again, saw Kira trying to restart Bonnie's heart. On it went on a cycle leaving him with an enormous decision to make.

How many times had he been right here? Right on the cusp of losing Bonnie. Amara dying before he could be sure Qetsiyah's spell was complete. Bonnie sending him back with an arrow stuck in her abdomen bleeding to death.

They couldn't go through this again. He wouldn't be able to make it if she died. His conscience tsked and chided him: if you hadn't left she wouldn't be in this position. If you had sucked shit up, been a friend to Bonnie, a brother to Stefan, none of this would be happening.

"DAMON! You need to decide!" Kira shrieked as she continued to administer CPR.

At the sound of Bonnie wheezing, his mind was made up.

Damon swallowed and said, "My immortality," he met Mr. Nakanishi's gaze. "I'll give you my immortality. Just save her life."

Three pairs of eyeballs blinked at him.

Things happened quickly giving him no chance to change his mind. Damon was told to hoist himself on the table next to Bonnie who, for all intents and purposes, was half-dead.

It hadn't really crossed his mind what he was forfeiting. Bonnie deserved what was in his ability to give her and more, and that became his hymn. Though doubt lingered. And lingered, and grew louder and louder.

Mr. Nakanishi shuffled around the table placing himself at Bonnie and Damon's heads. His disfigured hands touched their foreheads. The vampire did his best not to flinch, but he twitched and settled, took one final glimpse of Bonnie, intertwined their fingers, closed his eyes.

Do you think it will hurt?

I don't kn—

Their chests rose like yeast symbiotically. Bonnie's mouth opened, Damon's molars clenched. Hands latched together so tightly both of their knuckles had gone white. A vacuum, a rush of eternity was sucked out of him like juice from a lemon. For Bonnie it was an infusion, revitalization, a renewal.

Twin tears rolled down their left cheeks.

It was done.


15.

Taking that first resuscitated breath, confused, jittery. She lifted her hands, examined them. The scabs were still there but the longer she looked the smaller they became. They were shrinking, fading away as if they'd never been there. She touched the back of one hand, moved to the other, and back again. The tiny ridges, calluses, blemishes were no longer raised like braille detailing the poison that ravaged her body. Bonnie touched her neck, the center of her chest and met with smooth skin.

She was whole. Clean.

Seeing Damon beside her at first made Bonnie smile, but it fled once she looked at him through bleary eyes remarking he was paler than usual and sweaty.

She shook him to find he was too warm for a vampire. "Damon?"

He moaned in response but didn't wake up. Bonnie glanced at Kira, unsure of who she was being she was partially unconscious when they met, noticed she was tense, worried.

"What happened to him?" Bonnie rasped.

"There was a trade," Kira begun gravely.

"Trade? W-what kind of trade?"

"In order to save you, something had to be sacrificed…Damon gave up his immortality for you."

For ten seconds Bonnie didn't blink or exhale. She understood the words perfectly, but the weight was lost. The seriousness. Damon would never…

Only he had.

"WHAT? No, no, no, no." Her heart swelled and corroded. She cried as she used what little energy she had left to sit him up. "Damon? Damon!"

Drowsy, heavy-lidded, he stared at her after coming to. Her tiny hands cradled his cheeks.

"Why? Why would you do that? Give up something so important to you…for me?"

Damon smiled wanly, "Because I love you."

Kira thought they'd kiss. After what just transpired it seemed to be the thing to do. She said nothing as Damon and Bonnie's head grew closer. Her brows shot up when their foreheads touched, and Kira began shifting her eyes away to give them some measure of privacy. Their rushed breathing foreshadowed what was about to occur. She waited to hear the first contact of lips on lips, and as the seconds passed and that telltale noise didn't happen, Kira peeked at them.

Their mouths were open just enough, as were their eyes. All either of them had to do was shift half an inch closer.

"We should go," Bonnie pulled back, cleared her throat. "Can you...do you think you can walk?"

"Y-yeah."

Kira's shoulders weren't the only shoulders to slump in disappointment.


16.

There weren't any flights leaving for Virginia until the next day. Anxious to get back, Bonnie was also anxious about Damon. Kira had been nice enough to drive them to a hotel near the airport and said she'd have Scott drop off their rental.

She sat on the edge of one of the double beds staring at the closed bathroom door.

Damon Salvatore—sans immortality—Damon Salvatore splashed cold water on his hot face. He stared blankly at his features studying the slope of his forehead, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the dark circles under his cerulean irises, the short black whiskers poking out around his jaw. He looked like he had been on a bender with Benicio del Toro.

He shut off the water and planted his palms on the tiny sink. Damon breathed evenly through his nose while his pulse skyrocketed.

A vampire without immortality. To Damon that was an abomination.

He elbowed the wall and had to squelch a yelp of pain. He hit his funny bone and there wasn't a damn thing funny about that shit.

"Damon?" came Bonnie's muffled voice, "you okay in there?"

"I'm fine."

He wasn't. Damon didn't know what he was feeling. Less than, more than, subzero. He closed his eyes and probably for the first time in his life he prayed.

Bonnie straightened when the bathroom door burst open. He stared at her for a moment, but she couldn't read his expression. Could only sit and wait. As she did so, Damon reached behind him and tugged his shirt up and off.

Heat rushed to Bonnie's cheeks and she told herself to look away. Topless Damon was nothing new; however, Bonnie had viewed him as an annoying older brother back then. It was safe to say he wasn't that now.

She slid over a little when Damon sat down beside her. It astounded and compounded her that she could feel his body heat. He was still a vampire but without the agelessness to go with it. Badly, Bonnie wanted to know how he honestly felt about it, but sensing that was a touchy subject she could wait.

For the moment they sat side-by-side saying nothing. She exhaled when he inhaled, and besides the muted sound of traffic from the interstate, and a couple having sex in the room next to theirs, it was painfully quiet between them.

Damon reached for her hand, rubbed his thumb where one of the bigger scabs had been. He did the same to her neck, gently tilting it and finding her throat perfect and unsullied.

"Do you want to call Stefan?" Bonnie asked mostly as a distraction.

"No."

"Are you hungry?"

The thought of blood concurrently made Damon hungry and nauseous. "I'll eat later," he worked the fingers that had been touching her neck into her hair.

"Mmm," Bonnie suppressed a shiver. "You should try to eat something now."

Damon's dirty mind hadn't altered. "I can think of one thing I'd like to eat."

Bonnie scowled. "A blood bag."

He smiled and watched as Bonnie rifled through his duffel. "You're mothering me which has to mean I've really been forgiven."

"We don't need to talk about forgiveness right now," she wiggled the blood bag in his face. Damon slipped his food from her fingers but didn't tear into it. Bonnie shifted on her feet wondering why he was looking at her in a way that, if he were a stranger, would make her self-conscious. "What?"

Damon shook his head. "Nothing."

Intuition snitched he was lying. Moreover there was something Bonnie needed to say.

She tipped Damon's head up by the chin, and finally let three years of the past, go. "Thank you."

It occurred to Damon that was his first time hearing those words from Bonnie. She thanked him for little things when they had been in 1994, but it had been a perfunctory, sarcastic kind of thanks. Thanks for drinking all the juice, thanks for eating all the eggs, thanks for picking up my favorite gum. Thank you for saving her life, rippled down his spine, filled his belly.

"You're welcome," he fell back against the mattress, stretching his arms above his head.

Bonnie's thoughts wandered for a moment. "Ms. Cuddles," she murmured absentmindedly.

"What about Ms. Cuddles?"

"We can get your immortality back."

"Bon…" he sat upright.

"Just hear me out. Kira said the healer wanted my magic. Maybe if we went back and I gave him my magic he might be willing to give you your immortality back. My magic is still in Ms. Cuddles."

"And where is Ms. Cuddles now?"

The hope that Bonnie could reach out and touch, vanished. She stared at Damon forlornly. "She was at the cabin."

The cabin Alex and her grunts burned to the ground.

"Da—,"

"No. I did the right thing and I don't regret it," he attested firmly, and rubbed the center of his palm. "I still have my speed and my strength. I can feel that. Though to tell you the truth I don't know what I'd prefer. Being fully human or this."

Bonnie retook her seat next to him.

"Who knows," he added a forged smirk, "I might become a real human boy after a number of years. Be my very own Benjamin Button."

That was unacceptable to the witch who was getting fired up. "We can't leave things like this, Damon. We should go back and get some answers."

"It's not gonna change anything, Bonnie. You're alive and staying that way. Deal with it."

Before things could dissolve into a full blown argument, there was a knock on the door. Bonnie answered revealing Scott and Kira.

Scott handed over the keys to their rental. "You guys doing all right? Need anything?"

"We're fine. Thank you so much, both of you."

With Kira right there, Bonnie debated if she should pull her aside and ask to take her back to wherever she had gotten healed. Damon would be pissed but she didn't care. It hadn't occurred to Bonnie that she easily segued into the old her who stopped at nothing for Damon.

She never got the chance. He came up behind her, nodding to Kira and Scott while handing her his phone. "It's Caroline."


17.

They gushed and cried about having more time. Made plans to go to the Grand Canyon and deep sea diving off the coast of Martinique. But the conversation took a turn when Bonnie opened up about how far Damon had gone to save her life. There was dead silence on the phone for a full minute and twenty-five seconds.

Bonnie leaned against a wall that was several doors down from their hotel room. She listened to traffic speeding along a not-too-distant highway as she waited out Caroline's shocked silence.

"He loves you more than he ever loved Elena."

That statement left Bonnie so flabbergasted when she swallowed, her saliva traveled down the wrong pipe. She coughed violently and rapped her chest.

"What are you talking about?" Bonnie squeaked. "Damon could…would never…"

"He does," Caroline sing songed. "I'd give you examples, but nothing can really trump giving up his immortality. When has he ever been that selfless?"

For the longest time the unspoken law was the Salvatore's could love no one more or above their love for Elena. To suggest otherwise made one look ignorant.

"You would have done the same for me," Bonnie disputed.

"Yes, I would have because you're my sister. And I haven't been immortal for nearly two hundred years, and my epic love isn't trapped in a sleeping beauty curse. It would have been easy as hell for me to give it up."

Green eyes shuttered closed. That's when it hit her. Damon didn't just give up living forever, he gave up having a future with Elena. For her. Bonnie's legs grew weak and she slumped to her butt on the hard concrete. In twelve hours or less she'd be arriving at Dulles and then making her way to storm The Armory as if it were the Bastille to save Enzo. Enzo whom she hadn't thought about since gaining consciousness. Enzo whom she thought loved her like no one else in her life had. Enzo who, if she thought long and hard about it, probably wouldn't have fallen for if certain events never happened.

She loved Enzo but it felt frail by comparison because everything with them had been secret and undercover. Low profile. His promises had become her gospel. Bonnie believed once everything was over they could have it all. Then Damon reappeared.

Damon changed everything.

"Give me your honest opinion," Bonnie pled.

"About…?"

"What I'm sure you've been dying to say to me for months."

"Ah, that. All right," Caroline took a breath. "Let me preface this by saying it's coming from a place of love but…I hate that you're with Enzo."

"What?"

"He's a lighter version of Damon but you know how I feel about knockoffs."

Bonnie trying not to feel offended, sighed, "Save for what you really want or don't bother at all."

"Exactly. Let's be real, any relationship that begins with a kidnapping, I don't see it having a happy ending. Stick two lonely and desperate people together, they'll bond, they'll bone, they may even fall in love. But what if one was already in love with someone else, and that someone else was gone? Then came back? Are those feelings really gone or dormant?

"I don't know what you see in Enzo, and I'm not trying to be mean when I say that. I'm just judging based off my experiences with him, and maybe he's different with you. Maybe he's a great guy who could never catch a break, or maybe he's a whiny opportunist. I don't know. He has you as his girlfriend and he's this seemingly brand new man. But your life…it hasn't really moved forward or improved since you've been with him. I could hear in your voice when we talked how hard you tried to sound happy."

Bonnie's chin quivered. She thought she had done a good job masking how lonely and depressed she was during those stretches of time Enzo had to make nice with Alex to keep his cover intact. Bonnie had brushed it aside as normal. It was normal to miss someone, but perhaps not feel crushed when they were away. It was…without him around Bonnie thought about everything she didn't want to think about. Being in that institute though scary she actually, in a weird way, enjoyed it because it meant having contact with other people. She felt she had a purpose beyond sitting around and waiting for Enzo.

"If you were honestly happy, you wouldn't have sounded like you were barely holding yourself together," Caroline was saying. "But you have to ask yourself, really ask: what's really binding you, love or obligation? And you also need to ask do you feel unconditionally loved?"

The sky Bonnie searched was lightening in color. Love versus obligation, conditional versus unconditional?

By the time Bonnie returned to the room, Damon was asleep. She watched him for a moment before climbing under the covers turning her back to him.

Blue-eyes opened. He had heard her entire conversation with Caroline.


18.

In the last seventy-three hours he slaughtered vampires, flew across the country, relinquished his immortality, saved a witch, and now he was running from a burning building.

Glass exploded and he ducked instinctively feeling shards of it rain on his head. Damon ditched the gas canister or lest suffer combustion as well. When he was some distance away he stopped and pivoted to watch his handiwork. Dark, thick plumes of black toxic smoke rose out of broken windows like an offering. Flames overtook The Armory burning whatever and whoever remained inside.

Dusting off his hands, Damon ran at a more leisurely pace to his car parked some ways on the side of the road. He glanced at the occupants taking up his backseat, jaw hardening as he fell behind the wheel.

Damon gunned the engine and burned rubber. He felt Bonnie staring at him as she sat with Enzo's head in her lap. Alex had worked him over good. They weren't sure what was done to Enzo as he was shaking, shivering, sweating and mumbling, but while Damon had been busy torching the place, Bonnie had fed Enzo some of her blood.

She looked down as he moved his heavy head. He kissed her hand, "…t-thank yo-u for sav-ving meee, lovvve," Enzo stuttered horribly.

"Don't thank me. Thank Damon. He saved both of us." Their gazes caught and held in the rearview mirror.

Damon broke away first, focusing on the road.

Thanks and accolades were not what he wanted. "Don't mention it," he muttered using everything in his arsenal to disguise his bitterness. "I'll drop you off at my rental and stay at the boardinghouse."

Alarm spiked through the witch. "No, you don't have to."

"It's fine, Bonnie." Besides, I'm not in the mood to hear you two simper over one another and fuck, that tidbit he kept to himself.

He was edgy and cranky. The reason for it was as complex as explaining the Krebs cycle. What was he really expecting? When would he stop being a hopeful fool?

Bonnie had the sinking feeling that Damon didn't want to leave her alone with Enzo, but he wasn't going to protest it either. A few days ago she would have rubbed salt in the wound by coddling and lavishing Enzo with kisses and murmurs of affection right in her estranged buddy's face. To prove a point. The point was dead now along with her anger toward Damon.

A hundred odd miles later, Damon pulled up on his rental property, and dumped Enzo upstairs. He said nothing as Bonnie adjusted the temperature on the thermostat and rub her cold arms.

"I have some blood in the fridge if he needs it."

His voice made Bonnie jump and whirl around. She offered him a tremulous smile.

"I guess this is it," he said.

"I guess so."

Neither moved. Were they saying goodbye for good or see you later?

Since she wasn't asking him to stay Damon took that to mean—leave. He headed for the door.

"Damon."

He paused. Bonnie crossed the expanse of the living room to stand in front of him. There was so much she wanted to say but couldn't figure out how. That had never been a problem, but nothing was the way it used to be. Everything she wanted to tell Damon got stuck somewhere between her courage and her will leaving her to fall back on familiarity.

"Please," Bonnie's timbre was low, shaky until she swallowed and remembered she wasn't seventeen and he wasn't the abusive dick she wanted to keep away from her friend. "Don't do anything reckless."

Damon hadn't allowed himself to hope she might say what he really wanted to hear. Yet he smiled anyways because her edict was something Bonnie would issue. "It's too late for that wouldn't you say?"

"Well, don't do anything else reckless. Not until we know more about your...non-immortality vampirism."

He snorted and cupped her cheek unable to help himself. Her warmth scorched his palm, made his arm tingle. "Don't worry, little witch I'm not leaving you until we're both ready to go."

Bonnie's eyes widened and her breath caught.

"I'll see you later."

He was gone and stole something from Bonnie as he left.


19.

Three weeks later and blood was still not an acquired taste. Whether taken fresh from the vein or sucked from a latex bag, he couldn't get past the rusty and coarse taste of it. Regardless he was a vampire and needed whatever nourishment blood supplied.

Once Stefan was clued in on the events of California, he stopped glowering whenever Damon entered a room; however, things remained formal and cool between them. Damon was used to it. His buddy Rick? Put a cork in blaming Damon for the problems of his life and offered—reluctantly—to look into any cases of a vampire walking around without immortality to back up his or her fangs. Being pseudo friends with a nerd paid off sometimes the elder Salvatore grunted.

As for his relationship with Bonnie, it had been radio silence. No calls, text, emails, visits. He heard just yesterday from Caroline Bonnie had been in Paris.

So that was that then. She was off having a romantic getaway in the city of love.

Damon acknowledged he should be happy for Bonnie, that she was living her life, doing things she'd never done before. But he'd never been very good at forcing himself to feel things that weren't there.

He thought of going to pay Elena's coffin a visit, but what would he say to her? Whether she could hear or not, no one wanted to hear that the person they loved would be dead by the time they woke up.

And that was the other half of Damon's misery. The constant worry about his life, the quality of it. The day after essentially handing Bonnie over to Enzo, he got drunk and wasted twenty-four hours puking and moaning on a couch about how he'd never drink again. At the bar he'd had an anxiety attack thinking of the numerous ways he could die from almost any fucking thing.

"All those women I had unprotected sex with," Damon lamented, stabbing his fingers though his hair, freaking out. The barkeep merely arched a brow at his muttering.

He learned something. Regeneration was a key component of immortality. With it gone, he healed at the same rate as a human. That loss was a bitter pill to swallow.

Each morning Damon checked his reflection for wrinkles and age spots. Would he start aging rapidly, or progressively? He had no clue. He just knew his days were numbered in a way they've never been before.

Loitering downstairs, Damon tinkered away with the grandfather clock.

The front door opening caught his ear. Damon glanced but then did a double take.

Bonnie.

He tasted his heart in his throat.

She wasn't looking at him but at a folded missive in her head, "…don't take this as leaving but stepping out of the way so that you can have the kind of life you should have had had Stefan and I never came back here. You won't see this as an act of love, but one of cowardice, and I can say it's both because I can't have your blood on my hands, Bonnie. The rate we're going that's exactly how your story would end and I love you too much to let that happen. Dying for your friends should not be the sum total of your life. Least of all dying for me…

"…You are salt, and you need to be here to give the world flavor, hell, love, and hope. Someone out there needs your smile, your hard ass righteousness, your loyalty, your ingenuity, your beauty. So let me do this because otherwise I'd just be in your way, holding you back, and you've been held back enough. I'll miss you more than I can express in this letter…

"…love you to life, your friend and bourbon supplier, Damon Salvatore," Bonnie chortled at that colorful salutation. She folded the letter.

His tongue was sand. "You read it."

"I read it."

"Why?"

"I needed closure."

A stone dropped to the bottom of Damon's stomach. He switched the topic to something he figured he could manage to bear. "I thought you were in Paris."

"I was."

"But…"

"I was there…alone."

Well, that changed things.

"I just need to know one thing," Bonnie said and moved closer.


20.

Her fingers were shaking. Had you ever been so nervous to touch someone? Too excited you could hardly wait but was petrified? That was Bonnie. All nerves and noddle limbs. She felt as if she were outside of her body watching someone else control her movements. She wasn't cupping the back of Damon's neck. She wasn't pulling at the neckline of his shirt as she brought him down to her to kiss him. Bonnie felt it—everywhere—when his mouth connected with hers. She braced for him to push or pull away. He did neither. In fact, he kissed her back. Took control.

Was this real life right now? Damon mused dizzily.

They traded breath, flavor, touches.

He and Bonnie fumbled their way to the couch. Damon groaned as his back smacked into leather and Bonnie's elbow caught him on the hip, but the pain died, was replaced and outsourced. Impatient fingers carded through her hair, angling her head the way he liked. Damon thought he'd lose this horny feeling or wouldn't feel it with the same level of chaotic urgency. It was there in each frenetic pound of his heart, in each unit of blood engorging his cock.

Her panties were wet and she wanted Damon to touch her between her legs. They had interlocked fingers, hugged; he even kissed her on the forehead that one time. He bit her. They had never done this. Pillage the other's mouth as if it contained the secrets of secrets, the spark of life and creation. It hurt to stop, it hurt to keep going, and neither paused as their mouths worked one another over.

Their shirts had ridden up, stomachs touched.

The salty taste of his neck melted on her tongue. Bonnie licked his fluttering pulse nearly sending Damon into convulsions. She grinned. That was an erogenous zone. His own external G-spot. She wrote her name across it. He shuddered again, held her closer.

Damon's ears were so warm he was certain steam rose from them. He felt their body heat pulse, meld and curl around one another. While it was happening he refused to believe life could be kind to him like this. Damon figured he had peaked, but sometimes when you thought you reached as high as you could go, life surprised you with another step.

This was a second chance he wasn't going to screw up.

Finally their feverish kissing slowed, stopped.

Bonnie panted, "Do you want to know if things are over between me and Enzo?"

It had not been easy breaking up with Enzo. Bonnie looked at him one morning and couldn't hide or run from the truth. She had considered fighting her feelings for Damon, try to keep things going with Enzo, but that would have been fucked up. Emotional infidelity. She'd be with Enzo in body, but her heart lied with another. She couldn't do that. Letting him go was the right and only thing to do.

Enzo hadn't been happy about it. Had actually threatened he wouldn't step aside quietly. Bonnie said that was his choice, but that its illogical to fight for a heart that was already gone.

She had taken another risk with Damon. He may have loved her platonically, but that didn't always translate into romance. He kissed her back, but again, Damon and promiscuity (when he wasn't committed) were intertwined. He thought sleeping with Krystal was cheating. What would he think of this?

She had to know either way.

"You wouldn't be here unless they were," he answered.

Bonnie flashed those big doe eyes coyly, "I guess you do know me after all."

Woozy, elated, scared beyond reckoning were just a few emotions ramming through Damon. The loudest of them though was joy unbridled, unhindered, unadulterated joy.

He smiled but it faltered. "There is one thing I don't know."

"What's that?"

"I don't know if you've forgiven me."

Arching up, Bonnie peered down at him. "Was me sucking your face not clear enough that I have?"

"Maybe we should go over it again to make sure I have it down pact," Damon elevated his head off the couch, lips seeking Bonnie's but she covered them with her fingers, pressed him back into the sofa.

"Do you want this? W-want me? Because yesterday was my last day without you, Salvatore."

Damon pecked the corner of Bonnie's mouth, the tip of her nose, her chin, "You have my word we're on the same page."

The End.

A/N: Thank you, kittens for reading. There's so much I want to say but it'll just detract from this update. If you follow me on twitter you should know I feel about certain characters and things. And I'll leave it at that. Support those who give you positive representation in their art, and definitely show love to us fanon writers who keep the spirit of Bonnie and Damon alive and in character while developing them. Love you!

Oh, and one more thing. I at first had made Damon human, but as I thought about it some more that would be too simple, and saw immortality as a "perk" of being a vampire, but that it could be taken away and he could still be a vampire but just age at a regular pace. Plus, I don't think the healer could take away vampirism in its totality and make someone human again. Okay, bye!