Chapter Twelve
"I have moved on."
"No, I don't think you have. Don't hate me for saying this, but there was something there, and you denying it has only amplified everything you felt towards him. I think if you just admit it, you'll be able to let go."
Damon hadn't meant to go there.
Bonnie was tossing and turning in her sleep, tears falling from her eyes as she had another nightmare. He went to help her, to dream-walk her into another memory from 1994, but he hadn't meant for it to be that one.
Bonnie closed the cover of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening", finally finished.
Damon looked over at her. "How was it?"
They were sitting on the couch in the living room area of the boarding house. Bonnie's legs were sprawled across his again, one of her legs hanging off his thigh and the other slightly bent at the knee, her foot resting on the other side of him while the rest of her leg leaned against his torso. She was wearing short shorts, the kind that hugged her ass perfectly, and one of his hands rested on the inside of the bent thigh while he watched some movie he had thrown on. For the past few minutes, his thumb absentmindedly made a small movement back and forth on the inside of her thigh, and the light scent of her slight arousal pervaded the air between them. He took a deep breath, having the wayward thought that he would very much enjoy burying his face between her legs.
Unaware of his obscene thoughts, her dainty fingers tapped the book's cover as she took a second to think about her answer to his question. "The ending was depressing, but the novel itself was beautiful in its own way. I'm actually surprised you like such a feminist novel," She smiled. "Though maybe I shouldn't be."
His thumb made another circle against her skin. "Why's that?" Her legs always seemed to be so smooth, and he might be developing a slight obsession with them.
"From the stories you've told me of the past, you seemed pretty progressive for the nineteenth century, and you would never admit it, but you're a romantic at heart. People wanting to defy against societal rules in the name of love is somehow something that sounds like you."
She began to move, sliding her legs off his as she rose from the couch. Damon's eyes went straight to her ass, watching it as she walked over to the bookcase, putting the book back where it belonged. Recently, between the lack of bras and the short shorts, sometimes he could swear she was trying to torture him, though this was a kind of torture he didn't mind. Still, he wasn't sure how much longer he would last with all the teasing. Lately, they had been doing it a lot, and it became evident that she liked getting a reaction from him, liked seeing him watch her, and Damon took his own pleasure watching, though he liked it even better when he could find an excuse to touch her.
Looking back at him over her shoulder, she caught his gaze before she turned back around, but he could tell she was biting her lip.
It was a game they'd been playing, a give and take, a back and forth, a touch and be touched. Damon wasn't sure when it had started, but they both should've known better, should've stopped while they were ahead. He hadn't wanted it to stop though, and he was certain she hadn't wanted it to stop either.
There was something about the combination of her looks and personality that drew him in. Even before they were stuck here, Damon had the occasional stray thought about her, but the more he spent time with her and the closer they became in the prison world, the more frequent those sorts of thoughts became.
He did try to keep some semblance of distance between them. That distance, however, probably wasn't as far as it should've been. In the prison world, Damon craved physical contact far more than usual. Without anyone else in this world, it was as if touch had become a reaffirmation of the fact that they were still alive, a reminder that they weren't dead. Bonnie had become his anchor, and if something ever happened to her and he was left alone, he wasn't sure how long he would be able to last. In the loneliness of this place, he wouldn't be surprised if Bonnie was so receptive to his touch because she too needed that physical contact to remember she was still alive.
As the focus of his thoughts stood before the shelves, searching for her next read, she looked lost. Damon stood from the couch and walked over to her, his intentions pure, but his thoughts in the gutter as his wayward mind recklessly imagined pushing her up against the bookcase and having his way with her.
Pushing those delinquent thoughts aside, he approached her from behind. It took her a moment to notice. "Need another recommendation." He stood closer than he should've, invading her personal space, but she was used to that by now.
She turned around and looked up at him, lightly brushing her shoulder against his chest. "Sure. I could use one, but maybe something with a less depressing ending this time." There was a soft smile on her face and the way the light hit her made her green eyes glimmer and her skin glow in a way that made him pause. They stared at one another for a long moment. Then his eyes dropped to her lips. All thoughts of giving her any recommendation were gone, and he found himself encroaching upon her and pushing her into the bookcase. When her scent hit him, Damon stopped thinking altogether.
With her back against the shelf, he towered over her. She stared up at him with an unreadable expression, her hands bracing themselves on his arms while his hands went to her waist. He leaned down until their noses brushed, and Bonnie's eyes fluttered shut, her grip on his arms tightening before shifting to his shoulders as he pressed further into her. There was no space between them now, and his hands slipped from her waist to slide over her hips, effortlessly pulling up her thighs so her legs would wrap around him. A tiny gasp left her lips as he pushed their lower halves together. Then she tilted her head, and let her nose brush against his again as she inhaled the scent of him. When her eyes opened, he drowned in a sea of green. Their lips were a centimeter apart and Damon closed that small distance until their lips barely touched, but something kept him at bay.
"Damon," Bonnie whispered against his lips. "What are we doing?"
Good question. "You tell me Bonnie." He could sense her hesitation. Her lips brushed against his, setting them on fire and he wanted so badly to close his mouth around hers. In the back of his mind, he had known why he shouldn't do this no matter how much he wanted her in that moment, but he was half listening to, half ignoring that voice.
Bonnie, on the other hand, was still completely listening to her conscience. There was one word she could utter to put an end to it, one word, and she was going to utter it, ruin the moment, and later Damon would guiltily masturbate to the thought of making her scream his name while he fucked her against this bookshelf. In that moment, however, he wouldn't completely regret not kissing her, but he wasn't sure he could say the same in present day.
The movement was microscopic, but she had started to press her lips against his, and before she could hesitate, pull away, and remind him that they both had significant others, Damon pressed forward, capturing her bottom lip between his.
The kiss ended far too soon as it took less than a second before Bonnie was pushing him off of her, and she shot up out of her bed, grabbing Damon's hand from her forehead. "What do you think you're doing?" There was a furious expression on her face directed at him where he sat beside her on the bed.
He raised up both hands in a placating gesture. "It wasn't entirely intentional." Bonnie looked doubtful of that, but Damon was being honest. He hadn't intended to go back to that night, but it had been on his mind lately, and manipulating a person's dreams was a tricky thing. It wasn't impossible for his subconscious to lead them into a memory different than he intended.
She glared at him. "Just stay out of my head, Damon"
"So we're going to keep pretending like you didn't already know I was helping you with your nightmares."
She gripped the covers, turning away from his gaze and looking down at her hands. "And I appreciated that, but you went to far with that one. You should've known I wouldn't let you replay that night the way you wished it had ended."
"Afraid of what might've happened next?"
"Afraid?" Bonnie scoffed, eyes raising back to his. "What would I have to be afraid of? I mean what did you think would happen? Did you think it would've been a life-altering kiss that changed my entire world and made me forget why I'm still upset with you? News flash Damon, I don't want you that way. So tell me, I'm curious to know what exactly you were thinking when you decided you were going to actually kiss me?"
Damon was quiet for a moment, mulling over the question when he wasn't entirely sure of the answer himself. He hadn't been thinking. Impulse had driven him, but if he were to give a reason… "I guess I needed to know," he said, shrugging.
"Know what?"
"What it would be like to stop denying that there's nothing here, between us."
She blew out a frustrated breath. "There isn't anything here. That night was a momentary lapse in judgement."
"Just that night? As I recall there was one in Europe too."
Bonnie looked away from him, obviously not expecting him to bring that up. "Another momentary lapse in judgement. I was drunk, and we both agreed we got carried away."
"No. You were the one that said we got carried away and swept the whole thing under the rug."
"Regardless, we went back to our rooms with different people. You…doing what you did to me in the middle of that club doesn't mean there's something here."
"Then prove it to me," Damon leaned closer. "Prove it to me that there's nothing between us," he baited.
Bonnie said nothing, her eyes flicking down to his lips. Maybe it was his imagination, but Damon could've sworn she moved a fraction of an inch closer. One corner of her mouth turned up ever so slightly as she snorted at him and shook her head. "I'm not an idiot, Damon. I know what you want from me."
"And what's that?"
Her gaze was unflinching over her next words. "To shove your tongue down my throat and put your dick inside me."
While that wasn't entirely untrue, the vulgarity of her response had been unexpected. Hearing her talk like that was more of a turn on than he'd thought it'd be though. He smirked, unable to help himself. "We both know you'd enjoy it."
"That may be true," she surprisingly admitted, "but we're past the point of you having your cake and eating it too. It will never happen." Somehow Damon doubted she believed that. She almost sounded like she was trying to convince herself. And if she was aware of the dreams, she could've stopped him at any time, but she hadn't.
His smirk grew wider. "You're a professional at this, aren't you?"
Her expression was a mixture of confusion and forced neutrality. "A professional at what?"
"Denial."
She frowned at him as that particular word seemed to get under her skin. "Okay. You want to talk about denial, then let's talk. Why are you suddenly trying to make me acknowledge that there's something between us? You have Elena, Damon. We're about to go rescue her for god's sake, and you're sitting here practically propositioning me. I don't know what's going through your head, but you're in denial if you think that she'd ever be okay with this."
"'Propositioning' is a bit of a strong word. It's not like I suggested we have sex. You're the one talking about putting my dick inside you."
"Damon..." She warned in a tone that told him he was pushing it.
He went quiet again.
Alright. So maybe she was right, and Damon wasn't quite sure what was going through his head himself. He had Elena, loved Elena, yet he wanted Bonnie. Admittedly, he had wanted her even before he desiccated, and being around Bonnie after waking up, he had thought it would be easier to let that attraction go, but nothing had changed. Underneath his own layer of denial, desire for her festered inside of him now just like it had back then, and the more time he spent around her, the more he was falling back into old thought patterns, wavering between desiring her and repressing that desire as he remembered all the reasons why he shouldn't go there.
Yes, maybe he had technically just been thinking about cheating on Elena with one of her best friends, but in his defense, he hadn't actually done anything wrong. Besides, was it actually cheating if he didn't know whether Elena was actually awake or not? And maybe he had tried to kiss her in the dream, but the dream wasn't even real. It didn't count. He knew he had been wrong to push the boundary between them that far, but it was a subconscious impulse, not his active intentions. Still, it was scary how easy it was for him to even subconsciously put Elena on the back burner, but it wasn't as if he didn't feel the same way he'd always felt towards her. That love was still there, even though peripherally, it was on the verge of being overshadowed by the intense pull he felt towards Bonnie alongside the need to regain her friendship.
He ran a hand through his hair.
How had he gotten here? How had his attraction to her become this excessive? It felt like only yesterday he was still clinging to the notion that the only reason he'd been fixated on Bonnie was only because he'd been stuck with her in 1994.
Damon may not fully understand, but where it all stemmed from was obvious. Never having truly explored his physical attraction to her, Damon had been left to wonder, and it had started to eat at him. They say people always want what they can't have, and this was no different. Damon had placed Bonnie on a pedestal, marked her as a forbidden fruit. And because she reinforced the distance between them, he had managed to resist temptation. Now, for some reason, he was finding it harder and harder to want to keep his distance. When she almost died before he desiccated, it had been easier to let go because he considered himself a hazard to her safety, but after waking up, everything he'd ever felt for her came rushing back. He repressed the part of him that wanted her physically, partially out of habit, partially because Bonnie, outside of 1994 and a few isolated moments in Europe, gave him the impression that she wanted to keep things platonic despite the undercurrent of attraction between them. But now that he was looking down the barrel of a future singularly with Elena, Damon was naturally curious. He wanted a taste of the forbidden fruit before it slipped from his grasp forever because he needed to somehow make sure that his feelings towards her didn't run any deeper than they already did.
A full minute passed, and Damon still hadn't said anything when her phone rang out of the blue. Bonnie turned to stare at it, probably wondering who might be calling her at four a.m. in the morning. She answered. "Hello?"
"Bonnie! Thank god!" The familiar voice of a certain blonde vampire flitted through the phone. "I just got off the phone with Alaric and he told me what happened. We're on our way back from Nepal now."
"Nepal? I thought you two were in Europe."
"Well we were in Europe, but Stefan made this joke about having sex at the top of Mt. Everest and well…the details don't really matter, but as for why we couldn't answer, besides the fact that there's no reception on Mt. Everest, our phones were stolen in one of the towns we visited while we were distracted, and for some reason I let Stefan convince me we should go without technology for another week."
"Are you telling me you hiked up Mt. Everest?" There was a hint of disbelief in Bonnie's voice.
"Hey! I can be outdoorsy. Remember that summer camp in middle school. We went hiking then, and I enjoyed it."
A slow smile spread across Bonnie's face, lighting up her features. "Caroline, you hated it and almost had a meltdown when you found a tick on your arm."
"That did happen didn't it," she laughed a little, then grew silent for a second. "I've missed you Bon. We haven't talked in eons."
The smile slowly fell from Bonnie's face. "I know. I've missed you too, and I'm sorry for the things I said the last time we spoke."
"No. I'm the one that should apologize for what I said, and I'm sorry you've had to deal with this on your own."
She looked over at Damon. "I haven't exactly been on my own."
"Right. Alaric told me he was up and about, but you and I both know that having his help is just as good as being on your own." Damon took offense to that. In the past, there were quite a few situations where he had been far more useful than she'd ever been. I mean, without him, Bonnie might still be trapped in the prison world. "Is he there?"
"I'm here blondie, and I can hear you talking shit about me."
"Good. I want you to know, for all the hurt you've caused, I'll be talking shit about you until the day you die."
"Is Stefan around?"
The was a short pause. "He's here."
"Put him on."
There was a rustling as the phone was handed off on the other side of the line, and Bonnie handed Damon her phone.
"What is it?" Stefan asked. He sounded the same as ever, but Damon knew his brother well enough to hear the tinge of annoyance in his voice.
Damon bit back his pride. "I'm sorry."
Stefan didn't say anything for a long moment.
"You still there?"
"I am. I'm just shocked that the first thing to come out of your mouth is an apology."
"Yeah well. Don't get used to it." Damon passed the phone back to Bonnie.
"Stefan?"
"What did you say to him?"
"To make him apologize. Nothing in particular, though I do recall telling him that I might have been more inclined to forgive him if an apology had been the first thing to come out of his mouth."
"And they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks."
Bonnie snorted at that.
"So have you found any leads on her yet?"
"We have a possible location, and we're headed there today."
"Send it to us, and we'll try to get there as soon as we can. We should be there within 24 hours…"
Caroline's voice suddenly came through the phone. "Please don't do anything drastic before we get back."
"I can't promise that, but I'll see you guys when you get here."
"Alright. You better keep her safe, Damon."
Considering how Bonnie could very much handle herself, he almost scoffed at that, but then he remembered that they had no clue she was a vampire-witch. "I will," he said instead.
They hung up, and Bonnie put the phone down on the bed. She looked at Damon, then down at the time her phone. "It's a nine-hour drive to Amarillo, so we might as well get ready to go. I'm going to get dressed," Bonnie said before disappearing into the bathroom with her bag.
Damon moved back to his bed and laid back. They would have to make at least one stop today before they went to Texas. All he had to wear was the ruined suit from the mansion, so he would need new clothes. And before they left the motel, Bonnie would have to feed, be it from him or from a random human in the vicinity.
Based on the way she had been acting recently after drinking form him, Damon doubted she was going to continue. Though, at the same time feeding on people was still outside of Bonnie's moral standards.
When she came out, Damon figured he might as well go ahead and address the feeding issue. "Before we go, you should eat so there's option one where you go back to feeding on humans or there's option two where you keep feeding from me. Which is it going to be?"
"I…" She hesitated.
"If you want to keep using me, I'm fine with it."
She bit her lip, reluctant to say what came out of her mouth next. "I don't want to feed from any more humans if possible, but there's something I should tell you."
He looked at her expectantly.
"When I feed from you, I've started to feel your emotions."
Well that explained her behavior back at the mansion. "What exactly does that mean? To what extent do you feel my emotions?"
"It's difficult to explain, but when I'm drinking your blood, I can taste whatever you're feeling. At first it was only surface emotions, but every time I drink from you, it goes deeper."
Damon was quiet for a long moment.
"Does it bother you?"
"That you know how I feel? Yes and no. But I was just thinking how it might be easier for you to forgive me if you understood how I genuinely regret what I've done."
Bonnie sighed. "Me understanding doesn't make it any easier. I know you regret it, but I can't trust that you won't do the same thing again if I decided to let you back into my life."
"Even if I promise I'll be on my best behavior?"
"You know I can't trust that, and after what just happened earlier, maybe it's best if we keep our distance from one another."
She was probably right, but that was the last thing Damon wanted. She wasn't going to get rid of him that easily. "So you aren't going to feed from me,"
"I didn't say that."
"Then here." Damon stood up and walked over to her. She grabbed his arm, bringing his wrist to her mouth, and he watched her face change as her mouth clamped down on his veins and pulled the blood from them as usual. While she drank, he watched her and wondered if she was already feeling his emotions. Could she tell how he craved her in ways he shouldn't, that her biting him affected him more than he let on? Beyond that, could she tell how much he cared about her, that he cared about her enough to let go of her? Could she tell that it still gnawed at him, the thought of what it would've been like to wake up and find she was dead? He still thought about that occasionally, and every time it made his chest tighten. He hated that feeling, and if he could help it, he was never letting her go again. He couldn't imagine it. Damon didn't like to think too deeply on his emotions, but there was so much he felt about her, for her, much of which couldn't be put into words. Could she feel all of that when she drank from him?
When she finished, she let go of his wrist on her own and stared up at him, a light sheen of water in her eyes. After she blinked a few times, they were clear again.
"Bonnie?"
"I...I need to go make a phone call. Meet me outside by the car in a few minutes" She grabbed her phone and headed out of the room.
They started on their way to Amarillo, Texas, following navigation to the location that Lianne had given them. On the way, they made a quick pit stop at a store to get Damon more clothes, then they were back on the road again.
"When we get there, we should just scope out the place. If we think we can handle it, we go in. If not, we'll wait until Stefan and Caroline get here before we make a move," Damon said.
"Alright."
The car ride grew quiet again. There were questions Damon thought to ask, but ever since they left the motel, she'd been in a weird mood. He figured he'd agitated her enough today and two hours passed in silence until out of nowhere, white smoke began to filter out from under the hood of the car. "Are you kidding me?" Bonnie mumbled under her breath. They pulled over to the side of the road, and Bonnie got out. Damon immediately opened the hood to figure out what the problem is, and a burst a of white smoke flooded into his face. He waved his hand back and forth over the engine, trying to clear the smoke away. There was probably a coolant leak, and after looking around, it seemed like the source of the leak might be one of the radiator hoses.
He looked back at Bonnie. She was standing beside the hood with her arms folded across her chest. "We're going to have to call someone for this."
They called a tow truck and had the car towed to the nearest repair shop where they could fix it. The mechanic was a part of a gas station and there was nowhere to really wait, but outside on a nearby bench or inside of the convenience store. Bonnie mumbled something about not wanting to be out in the open like this, and the gas station just happened to be near a shopping center, so while they fixed their car, they headed over to wait in the coffee shop across the street.
Bonnie ordered herself a latte while Damon took a seat in a corner and Bonnie went to join him.
Since the car had broken down, there had been something strange going on with Bonnie. She looked extra vigilant, more so than usual which was saying a lot. Her eyes darted around the coffee shop, looking at everyone at least twice before she took a sip of her coffee.
"Something wrong?" She was looking around the coffee shop for the third time when he asked her.
"I don't know," she said.
"You're acting weird."
"Since we left, I keep feeling like someone's watching me."
Damon let his eyes wander around the room but saw no one even remotely paying any attention to them. It wasn't as if the coffee shop was all that full anyway. There was a couple in the corner, and a few more people sitting at tables alone. All of them seemed to be minding their own business.
The door opened and another person came in, Bonnie tensed, and her eyes immediately went to them. After a moment she released some of that tension. "I think maybe we should leave." She stood up, grabbing her cup of coffee. She started to head for the door when she looked outside and something made her stop.
Damon followed her line of vision to a woman in a dark green sundress, tanned with black curly hair and light eyes. She didn't look like a threat, but when he looked back at Bonnie, there was a panicked expression on her face.
Before the woman entered the building, Bonnie grabbed Damon's shirt and tugged him in the opposite direction of the door, around the corner and towards the bathroom area where there was another exit. "Who was that?"
"We need to get out of here."
Damon could tell Bonnie was trying not to look too panicked and failing. She led him out the exit and sped off to a spot beside another store on the opposite side of the shopping center, as far away form the coffee shop as she could get without leaving the area.
She pulled out her phone and immediately called someone. Whoever it was picked up on the second ring. "The spell is still going right?"
"It should be, why?" they answered. It was a woman, but the voice wasn't one Damon recognized.
"Because I just saw her."
"I'll check on it." There was some movement, then they spoke again. "Only two of the decoy marks have disappeared on the map. There are still four more, but she could've just gotten lucky. Has she seen you?"
"I wouldn't be talking to you if she'd seen me."
"Then you need to run."
"We can't just run. The car randomly broke down and is being fixed. And honestly, I might be paranoid, but I think it might've somehow been her."
"Where are you?"
"In Kansas still, at a shopping center off of the highway."
"Okay, I see you moving on the map. I'll try to throw her off and draw her away from there by concealing where you are and sending the mark elsewhere, but in order for it to work, I'll need you to conceal your presence there as well."
"Thank you." Bonnie hung up.
"So let me get this straight, that woman back there is after you," Damon noted.
"Yes, that woman back there is after me," Bonnie repeated in confirmation.
"Are you going to tell me who she is or why?"
Bonnie sighed. "All you need to know is that she wants to kill me for something I did, and she's extremely powerful and extremely dangerous."
"What did you do?"
Bonnie grimaced. "Only what had to be done."
"Does this have something to do with the nightmares?" He had originally thought they might have to do with her days as a huntress, but the way she had looked just now after he asked her what she'd done made him think otherwise.
"I'm not going to talk about the details with you. Now stand close to me."
He moved beside her, and Bonnie whispered the invisique spell, cloaking the both of them, and they waited in the shadow of the buildings, vigilant, but her friend's spell must have worked because no one found them, and they remained safe until the time the car was fixed and they could get back on the road, but even after they were back on the road, Damon's thoughts were on what it was Bonnie could've done and just how powerful that person had to be to cause her to panic the way she had back there.
A/N: Sorry for any mistakes and thanks for reading! Trying to get inside Damon's mind in the first half of this chapter almost gave me an aneurysm. I don't know what it is, but my thoughts on his thoughts are a mess because his thoughts are a mess, and I'm sitting here trying to make sense of that mess, and it came out messy so I tried to make it less messy, then I said screw it and decided to post the chapter lol.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who's been favoriting, following, or reviewing this story! You guys honestly gave me the strength I needed to ignore my responsibilities and finish this chapter way sooner than I thought it would be done!
