Chapter Twenty-Two
"Ugh. You're so annoying."
"I know."
It consumed his thoughts, and the memory of her kept replaying in his mind. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard her, smelled her, felt her, tasted her. He had imagined kissing her and doing so much more an innumerable amount of times before, but he hadn't expected it to be like that, to be more than he could have ever anticipated, and to leave him simultaneously wanting and fulfilled. Damon could not bring himself to regret it. In fact, he wanted to do it again. All he could think about was doing it again. And if he thought the little witch was under his skin before, she was buried there now.
Months ago, he had proposed they test the physical waters between them, and Bonnie had staunchly rejected. He wouldn't have dared to cross that line again while Elena was firmly back in the picture because he had been happy with her. Or at least that's what he told himself. But when it came to Bonnie, desire constantly lingered a hair's breadth outside of consciousness, bottled up and suppressed, and her kissing him had unleashed it. Damon wouldn't have stopped for anything if she hadn't said something. But of course she did. Bonnie had a stronger hold on boundaries and morality than him, but even that hadn't been enough to stop her from kissing him in the first place.
That in particular had caught him off guard. He had expected her to maybe tease him and then back off. He never expected her to actually press her lips against his, but she did, and the gesture set him off. He had to seize the moment. When would he ever have her in his arms, willing to kiss him again? He'd wanted it for so long, he couldn't not make the most of it, even if it was wrong of him to do so.
And that brought him to the thoughts he'd been avoiding. Thinking of his girlfriend reminded him of the dark cloud of guilt hanging over his head, though the cloud wasn't nearly as big as it should've been. At the time, Elena was in the farthest reaches of his mind until Bonnie had mentioned her and stopped him because of her. For that fact, there was a tiny, small, minuscule part of himself that irrationally resented the existence of his relationship with Elena, that thought if he wasn't with her, he would be free to pursue Bonnie, and it disturbed him how much the thought of pursuing Bonnie, of making her his, appealed to him.
Damon recognized how bad this was, how much of a fissure this would create in his relationship with Elena, but there was a chance she would forgive him. Certainly, if she could forgive him for everything else he'd done in the past, it was possible she could forgive him for this, but there was no doubt she would make him sever his relationship with Bonnie. With his current line of thought, it would be for the best, but his entire being rebelled against the idea. He'd made that mistake once, and he wasn't planning on making it again.
Damon knew that he should tell Elena what happened though, that the sooner this was all out in the open, the sooner they could move past it. But did he really want to move past this? Better yet, was he even capable of moving past this? Bonnie was a permanent fixture in his mind, and deep down he knew what he felt for her wasn't going away anytime soon.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and fate must've had it in for him because it was Elena's name that appeared across his screen. He answered it, and her voice filtered through the phone's speaker.
"Hey," she greeted, sounding almost hesitant.
"Hey," Damon responded.
"So," she dragged out the word a little, "I spontaneously decided to catch a flight down there." That was not what Damon expected her to say, and he knew the inflections of her voice well enough to hear the forced cheerfulness behind her tone. "I had two days off in a row this week so I thought I'd come see you."
This was not a surprise he wanted at this exact moment, and their last conversation had not left off on the best note. "Where are you?" He asked her.
"In a taxi on my way to your hotel. I should be there in a few minutes."
"I'll meet you in the lobby then."
It did not take long for Damon to get there. He had been wandering down Bourbon St., trying to clear his head of Bonnie and having no luck whatsoever, and even as he went to Elena, he thought of her, of the way her skin tasted, of what it might be like to sink his teeth into her neck, of the heavy, heated look in her green eyes right before she kissed him.
Walking into the hotel lobby, he found his girlfriend sitting in one of the chairs. She stood when she saw him, and Damon took in the sight of her. Her brown hair fell straight to her shoulders and her wide brown eyes brightened when she saw him. She wore a pale blue dress that hugged her slender body and she looked beautiful, but what Damon felt when he saw her was a muted version of what she used to make him feel. If he was entirely honest, it had been lessening since the moment they rescued her, and Damon was beginning to wonder if it wasn't supposed to feel like this, if this wasn't just him settling into the relationship, but really him steadily losing what they once had.
They didn't hug each other when she stopped in front of him, and she gave him a strained smile. It was obvious something was wrong. She was likely still upset from their last argument over the phone.
"What are you doing here?" Damon asked, a slight frown on his face.
"I thought maybe we could talk."
"It's dangerous here right now."
She looked around the room, eyes passing over the people scattered around the hotel lobby before her eyes came to rest back on Damon. She arched a brow. "Everything seems fine to me. Can we take this up to your room?"
Acquiescing without another word, he led the way to the elevator, Elena trailing behind him. He could feel her gaze on his back, watching him, and when the doors to the elevator closed, she finally reached out to hold his hand. Her palm slipped into his easily, and she leaned against his shoulder.
"I missed you," she said, and Damon glanced down at her.
"I missed you too," he said, but the words felt off with Bonnie still on his mind as the elevator doors opened and they walked down the hall. He was thinking of how it felt when his hand brushed hers, and there was no comparison between the faded emotion he felt at this moment and the something he felt then. Between them, the lack of something was somehow so much worse than before.
He pulled out his keycard, and they entered the room. He was staying in one of the more expensive suites, the room as large as an apartment. Elena let go of his hand to walk further in and she dropped her purse onto the sofa. Barely glancing at her surroundings, she turned around to face him.
"What did you want to talk about?" Damon asked, standing a few steps away from her in the middle of the living room area. Patiently, he waited for whatever she had to say, almost certain he knew where this all was headed on her part.
"I don't like this distance between us. I don't like the way things were left when we last spoke over the phone."
Damon was not eager to rehash that argument, so he cut straight to the chase. "I'm not coming back right now, so if you've come here to try and convince me again, then you've wasted your time."
She frowned, her lips pouty in a way that reminded him of Katherine. "I get it, but it feels like things aren't right between us, and I can't handle you being here anymore after you practically admitted you had feelings for Bonnie. It's making me worry about our future." His first instinct was to reassure her that she had nothing to worry about, but the thought of kissing Bonnie flashed in his mind. It would be a lie if he tried to quell her worries because she was right to be.
Guilt began to creep up inside him. The confession to what he'd done was on the tip of his tongue, but it wouldn't come out. "Bonnie is in danger," he said instead.
"That doesn't mean you have to put yourself in the middle of it with her."
"I owe it to her."
"And as your girlfriend, don't you owe me? You don't even call anymore, and I feel like it's me who's putting more effort into this relationship. The least you could do is come spend time with me on my days off."
He shook his head. "If something happens, I need to be here."
There was disdain in the downward curl of her lips. "That's an excuse. You want to be here. And I think that this isn't just about making it up to Bonnie. You told me all you wanted was friendship from her, but didn't deny that you had feelings for her. Something isn't adding up there, which is why you being here has made me so uneasy." She looked down at the carpet and a weight seemed to settle over her as she hung her head. "But that's not the only reason I've come here." There was a long pause where Damon waited for her to speak again. "You should know that I…I did something stupid after our last argument. I didn't want to tell you because I was ashamed that I let it happen, but I was out drinking with some of the other med students, and one of guys...I-we kissed." She raised her head to meet his eyes, remorse in her own. "I didn't stop it right away, and I regret that I didn't more than anything."
Damon wasn't sure how to react at first. Certainly, this hit a nerve with him and he had to reign in his natural comparisons to what has happened in the past with both Elena and Katherine. The person on the other side of this was a nobody, not his brother, and Elena clearly regretted it. It wasn't worse than what he'd done, but he felt like the impact should have been bigger, like he should have been angrier than he was. But he had no right to be upset. If anything, it lessened his own guilt. He had expected to be the betrayer. Instead, she had also betrayed him. It did hurt and he was surprised that it had happened, but it only made it easier to deliver his own crime.
"I kissed Bonnie." The words slipped off his tongue far more casually than he intended.
She blinked, once, twice, as it sunk in and she took a step back from him. Her expression turned quick from contrite to restrained anger. "I know I've done the same thing, but with Bonnie... It feels like you've stabbed me in the back. I trusted you. Now I feel like an idiot for doing so, and it turns out I was justified in feeling what I felt about you coming here," she scoffed. "God, first you make me wait for our future, and then you do this? Do you even love me anymore?"
"I could ask the same of you." Damon said coolly.
She looked offended by the question. "Of course I love you. It's why I'm here. It's why I've told you what I've done. I drunkenly let a guy kiss me at a bar, and I regret it. But you kissed Bonnie, one of my best friends, a person you said you have feelings for, and you don't even sound apologetic about it, so what am I supposed to think?" She continued. "You know, strangely, I've started to feel like I was losing you, and I guess I had been feeling that way for a while. But I thought we could fix this." She stared at him, searching his eyes while hurt and confusion swirled in her own. "Do you want to fix this?"
"I'm not sure we can go back to the way things were." It was a true answer, but the thought of letting Elena go after everything was hard for him to conceptualize. Who was he without her when he attributed everything good about himself to her influence?
"So what, are you giving up on us?"
"I don't know, but I need a break from this, from us, a real one, so I can figure some things out."
"You mean so you can figure out whether you still love me enough to be with me? Or so you can figure out whether you want to be with her more? Or is it both?" Damon didn't know how to answer that without twisting the knife because she had hit the nail on the head. So he sat there in silence unable to look her in the eye. When she was met with no response, she grabbed her purse from the sofa with a huff, getting ready to leave. "Fine. Take you break, figure out whatever it is you need to figure out, but don't expect me to be waiting in the wings for you to make up your mind." She sounded upset still, and there were tears forming in her eyes as she turned around one last time in front of the door. She clutched her bag against her hip. "It feels like yesterday you were talking about proposing to me. Now, look at us."
A heavy weight settled in his chest. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
"I am too."
For the rest of the morning, Damon busied himself with searching through the bayou for hunters on his own, but his mind constantly wandered between Elena and Bonnie. It bothered him that he wasn't more bothered by what just occurred between him and Elena. He was upset over it, and he felt guilty, but with his fading feelings, it was all too easy to be distant with her. A part of him, the part that still believed she was supposed to be the girl he spent the rest of his life with, wanted him not to give up on them, but that part of him was slipping into the background.
The more he thought about it, the more a weird frustration and irritation accumulated inside of him. He was trying to reconcile his feelings towards Bonnie with what he thought he should be feeling towards Elena.
Frustration mounting, he eventually pushed both of them out of his mind, focusing his thoughts on the hunter issue. It was clear that they were currently nowhere near New Orleans, but there was no doubt they would attack again sometime in the near future. However, if their goal was to take out all the supernatural in New Orleans, he was certain it would take some time to figure out how to permanently get rid of the Originals.
When the sun was nearing the middle of the sky, Damon received another call from Alaric.
"I found something that might be helpful in the Armory's archived magical objects," he started. "It's called a gleipnir, an ancient rope made from Norse magic in order to bind those infused with the power of the gods, and it's said to work against witches as well. I can send it to you, and we have a few old grimoires here that Bonnie could look through if she wanted."
"Don't send it. It'll be faster if I just drive over there to Dallas and pick it up." Damon was looking for an adequate distraction, and now he had one.
"Alright. Let me know when you're here." Alaric hung up.
Immediately afterwards, Damon called Bonnie. The phone rang four times before she finally picked up, and in that stretch of time he could practically hear her debating on whether or not to ignore him. "What is it?" She asked, sounding aloof and like she hadn't been shoving her tongue down his throat just this morning.
"Alaric called. He says he has something called a gleipnir that we might be able to use against this witch. I told him I would drive over to Dallas and get it…wanna come with?" He had wanted to get out of town, to give himself space away from her, but he couldn't' resist extending the invitation, the desire to see her pushing to the forefront inside him.
She was silent for a second. "I…" She trailed off.
"He also has a few grimoires he's willing to let you look at."
"Does he?"
"And I also need to borrow your car."
"Why?"
"It's faster than my rental." It was a shallow reason, but since he left his Camaro in Mystic Falls, he really did prefer driving her car.
"It sounds like you're making up an excuse to see me."
He was, but he wasn't going to admit to that. "Will you let me borrow the car or not?"
There was a long pause before she answered. "Come get the key then." She hung up.
Heading to her apartment, he arrived there after about twenty minutes. She opened the door in the same skin-tight navy shirt, but with a pair of loose track shorts instead of the tight black ones she'd been wearing earlier. Any thought of Elena faded into the background, and he could feel himself reacting to the mere sight of her as he imagined a continuation of earlier. It would be so easy to wrap his arms around her tiny waist, lift her up, and press her into the nearest wall, and he could almost feel the phantom sensation of her legs tight around his waist, pulling him against her the same way they had that morning.
With her typical stoic expression, she tossed him the key, which he easily caught. "So are you coming?"
"You and me in a car together for an eight-hour drive to and from Dallas? As much as I want to see the twins, I think I'll pass."
"Still cooling off," he teased, unable to stop the corner of his mouth tipping up.
She rolled her pretty green eyes.
His smirk grew wider. "It's okay. You don't have to admit it. It's clear you think it'll be too hard to keep your hands off me."
"I'm doing just fine aren't I?"
"Are you?" He questioned.
She scoffed, but her eyes flicked to his lips, and from the look in them, he would bet a million bucks she was thinking about earlier.
Her green eyes raised back to his with a more serious expression. "Your girlfriend left me a not so nice message earlier." That wiped the smirk right off his face as he stilled. Leave it to Bonnie to turn the subject back on Elena. "I actually didn't expect you to tell her, at least not right away," Bonnie said. She was plainly watching his reaction.
Damon shrugged, giving nothing away. "She showed up and surprised me not long after I left yours. Suffice to say, we're on a break now."
Her eyebrows raised in mild shock. "I'm sorry to hear that."
Damon breathed out a short breath through his nose. He highly doubted that she really cared. "Do you even still consider Elena to be a friend?"
She leaned a hip against the doorframe of her apartment. "I don't know. I made my peace with her being gone, and now that she's back, I just don't feel close to her anymore nor do I care to make an effort to be closer to her. For a long time, being around her made me feel small, insignificant, and unimportant, like I was her shadow or a backdrop in her story. Forgive me if I don't want to feel like that again."
"I understand what you mean." When he was younger, Damon had often felt like he lived in the shadow of Stefan. He was the child who could do no wrong while Damon did everything wrong. It was no surprise that Bonnie had begun to feel that way after being used by him and everyone else in Mystic Falls as a fix-it solution to their problems in the past.
"So are we not going to talk about what happened earlier at all?" He asked, changing the subject again.
"Why should we if it changes nothing between us?"
She was throwing his words back in his face to avoid talking directly about what happened, but that wasn't what he'd meant. He meant that it wouldn't change the fact that he was going to help her whether she wanted his help or not. For him, something was different, but if she wanted to play pretend again, he would let her if only to keep her from pushing him away.
She blinked evenly at him. "And shouldn't you be heading out. You have a long drive."
"I'll see you when I get back then?" The question underlying that was whether or not she would start trying to avoid him.
She nodded and Damon considered her assent a small victory. Stepping back into her apartment, she started to close the door. "If you see the twins, tell them I said hello," she said before the door shut behind her, and with her keys in hand, Damon headed off down the hallway towards the parking garage.
The drive to Alaric's was quicker than he expected. With his speedy driving, Damon managed to cut off about an hour. He left at one and he should've been getting there around nine, but he got there just before eight instead.
Alaric's house was a typical ranch style home in the suburbs outside of Dallas. He pulled up in the driveway of the one car garage and got out the car. It was a short walk along a concrete pathway to the porch of the house where Damon rang the doorbell.
He could hear the patter of footsteps rushing to the door and one of the twins yelling, "Someone's at the door!" before it opened and Damon was greeted with a little girl around the same age as Hope. Her little brown eyes were wide as she stared at Damon.
"Who are you?"
Although he had been doing work for Alaric, Damon had yet to meet the twins since he'd been awake.
"That is Uncle Stefan's brother." Alaric appeared from around a corner.
"Just call me Uncle Damon," Damon said.
"Uncle Stefan has a brother?" The other twin came bounding up behind Alaric.
"Yup. He just doesn't like to mention me because I'm the fun one." He playfully wiggled his eyebrows at the girls and they both giggled.
A beat passed before Alaric invited him in. "Come on in," he stepped back from the door, and Damon stepped inside the house. "Give me a second to get the stuff for Bonnie from the garage. You can wait in the living room." He motioned to a room just down the hallway through an archway. The twins followed him.
"You know Auntie Bonnie?"
"Your Auntie Bonnie is my best friend," he explained. "She says hello by the way."
They both continued to stare at him curiously, and Damon looked at the blonde one who easily reminded him of her namesake. "Let me guess, you're Lizzie." Her smile grew wide as she nodded. He turned to the other. "And you must be Josie." She smiled and nodded as well.
"How come Bonnie didn't come with you?" Lizzie asked.
"She was busy."
At that moment, Alaric returned with a cardboard box. "Everything is inside here," he said, handing the box to Damon.
"Thanks."
He turned towards the twins, raising his eyebrows. "Girls, shouldn't you be getting ready for bed." They both groaned, but they obediently headed towards the staircase, saying goodbye to Damon as they left the room.
"So how have you been?" Alaric asked.
"I've been alright," he answered. "The dad suit looks good on you."
"Thanks. They can be a handful sometimes though."
"I'm sure."
"Is she doing alright?"
"Bonnie's fine for the most part." He didn't want Alaric to worry more than necessary. "She's just annoyed that she has another problem to deal with."
Alaric nodded. "Are you doing alright?"
"Well, Elena and I are officially on a break, but other than that I'm peachy."
"Wait, what? What happened?"
Damon shrugged. "She kissed someone else...and I kissed Bonnie. Though it was more like Bonnie kissed me, but tomato to-mah-to."
"Damon," Alaric shook his head. "I never expected Elena to cheat on you, but I can't say I didn't see you and Bonnie coming."
He frowned. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"You're still a vampire, and you've been in New Orleans chasing after Bonnie instead of being with your girlfriend."
"I'm not chasing after Bonnie. I'm helping her. I just want to undo some of the damage that I've done. And Elena's been busy with school. It's not like she would be around."
"Come on, Damon. You don't even seem that upset over what Elena's done."
He shrugged. "I'm self-aware enough to know I don't have a right to be mad when I kissed Bonnie and I haven't been able to stop thinking about her since." To be completely honest, he hadn't been able to stop thinking about Bonnie since the moment she woke him up, but that was moot point.
"Still, what Elena did has to hurt," Alaric pointed out.
"It does, but that feeling is taking a back seat to the fact that I'm already confused and I don't' know what I want anymore."
"I think it's pretty obvious what you want at this point. Look at where you are and who you're with. You've clearly already made a choice, and if you can't understand what this means about how you feel about Bonnie, then you're an idiot."
Damon frowned again. "I know how I feel about her. I'm not that stupid."
Alaric tilted his head in doubt. "So you know you're in love with her then?"
The words hung in the air for a moment, the silence stretching between them. Love was a strong word, yet it didn't sound completely wrong, and Damon chose not to dwell on that.
Alaric took his silence as agreement. "If you know, then you need to let go of Elena. You may feel like you need her, but you don't. She was an obsession for you, and a love borne from that isn't a lasting thing. They do say that the best relationships start as friendships though."
"So what I'm hearing is you don't think Elena and I would've ever worked out."
"When I saw how you were with Bonnie after 1994 and Kai, I had my doubts before you desiccated. But if you're putting Elena on the backburner for her now and you don't love her, then you're dumber than I thought." He clapped him on the shoulder. "Sage advice, follow your heart, my friend."
Damon stared at his old friend dumbly. "Please tell me you didn't just tell me to follow my heart. That was cliché as hell even for you Ric." He shook his head, moving out into the hallway towards the door.
Alaric followed him. "I may have watched one too many Disney movies with the girls lately. Doesn't change my advice though." He opened the door and Damon stepped outside, balancing the box in one hand. "Give Bonnie my regards."
"Yeah. See you around." Damon raised his free hand up in goodbye and turned to walk back towards the car.
When he reached New Orleans, it was early morning before sunrise, so he went back to his hotel room. He slept for a while, then went to Bonnie's to drop off the things he picked up. It was early, and when she came to the door, she was in a simple black tank top and black pajama pants.
She opened the door further to let him inside. "You can place it on the floor beside the couch." He brushed past her and walked into the living room, placing the box beside the couch. The coffee table was still covered in grimoires.
"Made any progress."
"A bit. I found another binding spell that might be useful." She walked past him towards the other side of the room and he caught a glimpse of the tattoo on her back peeking out above the tank top.
"I could help you go through more grimoires," he offered.
She folded her arms underneath her chest, drawing Damon's attention to her lack of a bra and the outline of her perfectly perky breasts. His mind immediately sunk into the gutter as he lamented on not copping a feel when he had the chance. "Maybe later, I'm meeting Rebekah in an hour."
"Fine, but in the meantime, promise me you won't try any spells that leave you with a gaping hole in your leg."
"I promise. Now if you would kindly get out." She motioned at the door.
He winced dramatically. "Ouch. Kicking me out for a second time in forty-eight hours and for the original barbie no less," he said as he started back towards the door. He turned around once he was in front of it, staring at her as if he was waiting for something.
"What?" She asked, looking up at him.
"Don't' I get a thank you?"
"Thank you."
"See you later?"
She made a noncommittal noise as she opened the door and Damon left with a cheeky wave of his fingers. When she closed the door, his expression dropped and he sighed. Pulling out his phone, he called Eric.
He spent the next few hours of the day on the hunt for any of the hunters, and while he and Eric had no luck, he received a text later saying that one of the werewolves had found something and to head over to the border near Mississippi.
When he and Eric were near the location, they could already hear the fighting, and it didn't take them long to find the first hunter and kill them. The man had been running away from the fight and found himself right in front of Damon and Eric. Before he could get a shot off his gun, Eric sped behind him and snapped his neck. As they approached, the smell of death was already in the air, and they saw a few more bodies along the way. Some were hunters, and some were werewolves and vampires, the latter two being easy to tell because they looked as if they had been shot by the same poisonous bullets he had been shot by.
They must have found a sizable group of them because they could still hear the fighting going on up ahead. They joined the others, taking out another two hunters by surprise and receiving thanks from the werewolves that had been fighting them. Eric bent over to help one of the injured ones to their feet while Damon looked around the wood. That's when he saw Hayley further up ahead, facing off against a single hunter.
Hayley was behind a tree while the hunter shot at them, and Damon called out to her. "Is there only one?"
"Yeah, it looks like the rest are either dead or gone, but I want this one alive."
"Over my dead body," Damon heard the hunter yell, and damn if that voice didn't sound familiar.
When the shooting paused, he and Hayley nodded at each other and that's when they attacked form both sides. Damon wasn't shocked when he saw who it was, but they were shocked when they saw him. In that moment of hesitation, Damon knocked the gun out of his hand, and Hayley maneuvered him into a restraining hold on the ground.
He lifted his head to look at Damon, his face twisted up in anger as he struggled against Hayley's grip, but she had his arms pulled back with a tight grip and a leg resting over his. He couldn't escape. "What the fuck are you doing here?" Jeremy snarled.
Damon didn't answer as Hayley punched him in the back of the head, rendering him unconscious. "Thanks for the help," she said to Damon, getting off of Jeremy. She looked down at his body. "I was not expecting him to be here."
"Bonnie's going to want to know about this," Damon said.
Hayley eyed Damon. "And so would his sister, I imagine."
Damon picked up Jeremy's body, slinging it across his shoulder. "And we'll let her know…after we interrogate him."
Damon took Jeremy and ended up putting him in a cell beneath Klaus' house at Hayley's instruction. Luckily, the original hybrid was out with his daughter, so Damon didn't have to interact with them.
Bonnie was informed of the situation by Hayley and told her that she would be there in a few. She had not sounded happy over the phone. Damon leaded up against the wall, watching the unconscious Jeremy with contempt. This was the second time he had been found to be involved in the affairs of hunters who posed a danger to Bonnie.
"My daughter told me she met you." Hayley said, pulling him out of his thoughts.
"Interesting kid you've got there."
"She's quite smart for her age."
"And intuitive apparently."
Hayley nodded and silence lapsed between them for a moment. "You know, you're much calmer than you used to be."
"Yeah well your baby daddy is no longer wreaking havoc in the lives of people I care about."
She laughed a little at that. "Yeah, he's also a lot calmer than he used to be."
"I'm sure."
She looked over at Jeremy who groaned as he seemed to be coming to. "How much do you think we'll be able to get out of him?"
"No clue. He'll probably be stubborn."
"Not when Bonnie gets here," she said ominously.
Jeremy groaned again and his eyes fluttered open. Bringing a hand to his head, he dragged himself into a seated position. When he saw where he was and who was outside his cage, his gaze sharpened.
"Where am I? And what are you doing here?" He repeated the question from earlier, slowly rising to his feet.
"Little Gilbert," Damon clucked in disapproval, "you should've quit the hunter business a long time ago."
"And you should've already quit the vampire business and been settled down. You're lucky my sister still cares about you or you'd be dead." His eyes moved between him and Hayley. "So what happens now?"
"We wait for a few minutes, and then we start the interrogation."
"If you think you're going to get any information out of me, you're mistaken."
"We'll see," Hayley said in a cool manner.
Both Bonnie and Marcel arrived minutes later, and Bonnie looked mildly surprised to see Damon there. "You found him?" Marcel asked.
"I found him," Hayley answered, "and Damon helped take him down."
Momentarily, he allowed himself to be distracted by Bonnie's appearance. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was in pair of high-waisted jeans. The shirt she wore was a tight black t-shirt with a rather low V-neck, and the length of her onyx stone necklace briefly drew his attention to her breast.
Bonnie ignored the way he checked her out as she glanced over him with a smidgeon of worry in her expression. She was likely concerned that he had somehow gotten hurt again, but after a once over, she was satisfied and turned toward Jeremy.
When he saw Bonnie, the shock was plain across his face. "You're here too?"
She stepped towards the bars, all business now. "I live here. New Orleans is my home, a home which you and your people are threatening." Her voice was tight, restrained. One look at her and you could tell she was furious with him.
"So what? The both of you are working with the Originals now, after everything they did? I can't believe this."
"It doesn't matter who's on what side anymore. What matters is what you're going to tell us about the Venators," Bonnie said. She looked to Marcel who nodded, and gestured towards Jeremy.
"Be my guest," he said, smirking.
"Open the door," she said to Hayley.
The werewolf hybrid fished the key out the back pocket of her jeans and walked towards the lock.
Jeremy scoffed. "So you're going to interrogate me? Look Bon, I'm sorry for what happened before, but this place is a nest of the worst supernatural beings and it needs to be destroyed. I'm not going to give up any information."
He tensed as Hayley turned the lock and for a second, Damon thought he might try to run, but doing so with two hybrids and two vampires in front of him without a weapon would be stupid. Jeremy appeared to come to the same conclusion as he remained still, and Bonnie violently thrust him back into the wall with her magic. She held him there, her hand up with fingers open and outstretched.
"We can do this the easy way or the hard way, the easy way being you tell me everything you know, and the hard way being I get the information out of you by whatever means necessary." Her tone darkened over the latter half of the sentence and so did her expression. It had been a while since he'd seen this darker side of her, and it still fascinated him.
Jeremy raised his chin defiantly. "I can't do that."
Bonnie already wore an exasperated expression. "I can see you don't think I'm serious, but I am." She stepped towards him, stopping until she stood about an inch away. His heartbeat rose as she reached up to cup his face with both hands. "If you don't start talking, you will begin to feel the pain of every bone in your body breaking one after another. It'll only be happening in your head, but the pain will feel real and it will be excruciating. This is your last chance."
He had the decency to look a little nervous. "I won't talk no matter what you do."
Her eyes fell shut and she whispered a long string of words in a language that sounded more like Greek than Latin and he grunted, trying to twist his head out of her grasp, but Bonnie held his face with an iron grip. His heart began to race, his breathing picking up and he shouted at the phantom pain, looking down at his hand as if to see if it was still there. Fear colored his expression when he turned his gaze back on Bonnie.
"This isn't you."
"You don't know me anymore. A lot of friends have been killed by your little hunter group, and after our last encounter, I don't care how far I have to go to get you to talk. You're threatening my home, my life, and my peace which I have no tolerance for." Her eyes fell shut again in concentration and he grit his teeth through what was probably another bone breaking in his head.
"How many of you are there?" Bonnie asked.
Jeremy stared down at her for a second, breathing through clenched teeth. "I'm sorry, but the Originals need to go down." The last word trailed off into another shout of pain.
"How many are there?"
He breathed heavily, sweat starting to gather at his forehead. "Bonnie please."
"The quicker you answer, the sooner the spell stops."
He clenched his jaw hard, lodging another scream in his throat. "Two to three hundred," he bit out. Sagging in slight relief, he assumed the spell was going to stop, but Bonnie merely proceeded to the next question.
"Where?"
Another shout ripped from his throat before he could answer, his head falling back against the wall. "Please," he said in a strangled desperate breath.
"Where?" She repeated, unphased. Damon could not take his eyes off Bonnie. It was wrong on so many levels that this was turning him on.
"Just stop the spell and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."
She considered it for a second. "Alright," she let go of his face and took a step back, watching as he fell to his knees in front of her. He scanned the length of his body with something like shock, checking his hands, arms, and shoulders to see if he truly could still move everything.
He looked up at her from where he rested on his knees. "What happened to you?"
She ignored the question. "Where are the rest of them?"
Lowering his gaze, he still hesitated, but when Bonnie sighed and stepped back towards him, he flinched, and started to speak. "They're scattered in the surrounding states and northern Louisiana. I only know where my people are and a large group stationed over in Arkansas."
"When are you planning to attack?"
"In about a month."
She crouched down in front of him and he leaned further away. "Who made the poisoned bullets?" Her body tensed as she asked the question.
"A witch appeared out of nowhere and offered to help us."
"Was she the one who also got the hunters through the barrier?"
"Yes."
"What is her name?"
"Vanessa, I think."
Bonnie's face twisted as she tried and failed to suppress any show of her rising anger. "You've caused me more trouble than you know," she said. "Tell me something, were you also apart of that hunter attack here in February?"
"I was."
She appeared even angrier after that admission. "You've somehow managed to inadvertently be a part of a lot of terrible shit that's happened to me. It's an unfortunate coincidence, but I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Her eyes moved to his arm where the hunter's tattoo extended out from underneath the shirt he was wearing. She ran her hand over his shoulder in an almost gentle way before she grabbed his arm and her hand began to glow in a muted orange color. Gradually, the tattoo began to disappear.
Jeremy looked on in horrified confusion. "What-what are you…" He tried to back away, tugging on his arm, but he couldn't rip it from Bonnie's hand.
When the tattoo was completely gone, Bonnie let his hand flop to the ground. "Congratulations. You're no longer a proper hunter, and I swear if I ever run across you hunting vampires that I care about again, I will not hesitate to put you down." She stood up again and quickly turned away. "He's all yours Marcel."
She walked out of the cell and Damon saw the way her hand shook a little before she balled it into a fist. Nodding at Hayley, she barely glanced at him as she headed towards the staircase a ways down the passage hall. Naturally, he followed her.
"Bon," he grabbed her hand without thinking, stopping her at the bottom of the staircase. "You alright?"
"I'm fine," she said, but her hand was still trembling a little in his.
Based on what little Bonnie had told him of what happened to her, he had a guess as to what happened in February and why she was upset. "That hunter attack was when you died, wasn't it?"
She considered him for a second before she decided to be honest with him. "It was, and I know he wasn't the one who killed me, that he's not the only hunter leading them, and I'm not even really angry with him in particular. It's this entire situation." She looked away from him, lowering her head slightly. "And it scares me sometimes how easily I can turn it all off and not care about another person, especially one I used to have feelings for."
"If it's to protect the people you care about, then that's not a bad thing."
"Of course you would think so, but sometimes I wonder if I've changed for the worse."
"You haven't changed that much. You're still a stubborn, judgey witch who worries far too much about others and not enough about herself," his hand squeezed hers a little, "just the upgraded badass vampire-witch version."
She cracked the smallest of smiles and shook her head as she took her hand from his. "Look at you pulling the sappy card again when I least expect it."
He couldn't resist smirking. "Don't pretend you don't like it when I'm like this."
"I wasn't saying I didn't," she admitted.
Her green eyes stared at his, filled with a whole host of emotions he could barely decipher. Then they dipped to his lips for a second too long. The urge to kiss her rose up within him like the tide. How was he ever supposed to resist her when she was like this?
She read him easily. "What you want to do is written across your face."
"And if I did it, would you stop me?"
His head leaned towards hers, testing the answer to that question.
"I should stop you," she said, but she was already tilting her head up.
"But you don't want to." He caught her lips between his, and there it was again, that same spark he felt the last time. Slowly, her soft lips moved against his and he eased her into his arms, circling them around her waist. The kiss was unhurried and hot, Damon's tongue dipping into her mouth to taste her. He could feel her hesitate for a second before her arms crept up around his neck, and she gave in, fully kissing him back and softly moaning when his tongue brushed against hers again.
Her fingers slid into the back of his hair as she allowed his slow perusal of her mouth, as she let him commit the taste of her to memory. He savored every little noise she made, and Damon found himself thinking he could do this for hours. Everything about kissing her like this was mind numbingly sensual, and they were scarily in sync with the way they responded to each other.
It felt right, and like the first time, he could feel something unfolding inside him, a desire to draw her in and keep her locked in his embrace. He loved the way she felt against him. And when he kissed her, he could feel the power coiled inside her, the magic buzzing underneath her skin. She was like a drug he hadn't known he was already addicted to, and the only thought that passed through his mind was that he could never get enough of this.
Bonnie retreated first with Damon stealing one last kiss from her lips before he let her go. Her green eyes opened to meet his, and he could see her further retreating back into herself.
"So nothing's changed huh?" His voice was low, heated, as he watched her lick her lips
"Nothing's changed." She confirmed before walking away up the steps and leaving him staring after her, lamenting his current state and how easy it was to forget that there was another woman who he should've been thinking of, who he should be more hung up over, who he shouldn't be so quick to forget about when they had only just decided to go on a break the day before.
But in the presence of Bonnie, it seemed Elena didn't exist for him anymore.
A/N: I'm never sure of how to deal with DE, but hopefully it wasn't too bad. And in other news, I started watching the show from the very beginning for the first time in like ten years, and I know people have said Katherine was that bitch, but she really was THAT bitch ya'll. I live for her in early season 2.
Anyway, thanks for reading! Would've had this done earlier, but Animal Crossing came out and I've been obsessed lol.
Stay safe guys!