His eyes are closed as he leans back against the concrete wall behind him, he can hear her steps, her labored breath as she does something forbidden. It's the only thing about her that reminds him of her age, the only innocent thing left of her, the way she approaches the Ripper thinking she's going to get a happy ending out of this. Her heart is beating, and her hands are sweating, and everything about him is forbidden, and dangerous and arousing.
Elena was always simple, even as human. And now that she's a vampire, she is the perfect little marionette.
He lets her stare at him through the bars, listening to her speeding heart as her hands wrap around the bars of the little window over the heavy iron door and he knows she's looking for a good excuse to open it. He is working on that, seducing her the way she wants him to.
"You're staring." His mouth curves, reenacting a moment he had treasured, a moment maybe a part of himself treasures still. Because he loved that girl. He loved her more than anything.
"I'm gazing," she replies, ready to let him lead her along memory lane.
"It's creepy." He opens his eyes on her.
"It's romantic," she retorts, eyes sparkling with the rush of adrenaline, the excitement of finding herself on the doorstep of a life she abandoned long ago, like a house that wasn't good enough for her anymore.
"You used to make me feel so special, so happy," she admits, more to herself that to him. She had forgotten. One day she died and she had forgotten.
"I didn't mean to stop. I'm sorry." He had been truly sorry, absolutely heartbroken. He's especially conscious of it now, because the horror of an empty heart when it had been so full of love had been unbearable. The space had to be filled, and he filled it, with disdain, with disgust. With the need to shield someone that was set on his same path, and then with the need to have her.
And it irks him the way she expects to twirl back into his life like she has so generously managed to clear her carnet for him, because she wants to know how hard this colder blend of man and Ripper can fuck her. Because she can't let anyone consume him, but her.
Elena shakes her head, glossy brown curls dancing around her face as her doe eyes grow larger. "It's not your fault. Things happened. Things changed. But they can change again." She sounds pitiful, desperate under her contrived desire to be there for him. The new and improved Elena Gilbert can only be there for herself. But that's fine. What he wants from her is not love and support, it's the damn key to his freedom, the one Caroline has in her possession. And this new and improved Elena Gilbert can steal it for him if he lets her believe it's a step forward to his atonement, to his return at her feet.
Stefan can see her suffocating with the need to find him again, the boy that wanted to give her the world, the wild animal that held back because she was everything precious, because for how tempting and all consuming the love she chose over his can be, it only made her more breathless, more hungry, perpetually unable to reach peace, like getting to the end of a tunnel only to realize it a hoop.
He would know a thing or two about that.
"You think so?" he asks sorrowfully. "I have one too many things to atone for. I'm not sure eternity is enough to fix them all."
"No, Stefan," she contradicts him, sounding pained. "You are the best person I've ever known, and you've done things because you were suffering. You were suffering and I wasn't there and I'm sorry," she tells him. And it's irking, the way she can dismiss so easily her betrayal, the way she can forget so readily about everyone, the way she expects him to forget Bonnie to fall at her feet again. "But I'm here now and I'm not going to leave you anymore."
The sheer need to tell her, in detail, all the ways he's longing to touch, and lick, and eat, and fuck Bonnie until they are bleeding and broken, it's like an itch he needs to ignore because he has to get out of this fucking cell before he starts picking at his brain with his fingernails.
"The best person you know?" he asks her, and she nods eager to convince him of her consideration.
"The best person I know is Bonnie," he says gravely, knowing that Elena's stomach is sinking, and her doubts and regrets are eating at her, because everything she holds dear, Bonnie has taken away without even breaking a sweat. "And look what I've done to her," he adds, sounding regretful.
"She'll understand, and she'll forgive you," she reassures him. Because of course that's what she has always expected of her friend—to understand and forgive and put herself aside when the moment came for Elena to shine and win hearts.
"How could she? The things I've done to her…" he begins, looking her in the eyes to catch a flicker of envy. "I've been…so… savage with her," he admits, sounding dismayed but feeling victorious. "I tried my best with you. I could hold back, but with her… I was desperate to have her in any way conceivable. And so proud of it, so needy," he explains, his mind racing to the image of Bonnie riding him in the tub, spread for him on the kitchen table, kneeling in the Salvatore foyer, pale nails sinking into the carpet as she moaned, "Stefan… yes…harder," and the desire blurs his vision for a short moment.
"It was the magic!" she protests, voice shrieking as she tries to convince him, convince herself. And she's good at telling herself the story she will like most. How she's the female lead of this romance, how it's her cursed fate to be forever torn between the undying love of two men, how she's the sun and the moon that fills their sky.
Elena Gilbert is dead, and the needy, self-centered thing that dares to speak to him with her mouth and her voice is a mosquito that refuses to go away and let him dream of Bonnie. He wants to swat her against the wall and wipe his bloody hand on her own clothes.
"Was it?" he asks, following the script he's written in his head. "I'm not sure it was. And if I never see her again how can I be sure?" he presses her. "Don't you see, Elena? The man you knew, he doesn't exist anymore, because I can never give my heart to anyone until I've looked her in the eyes, until I've asked for her forgiveness." He stresses the last word making it sound like the final goodbye he can never say, because he's stuck in a dark cell.
"We'll find a way. You and me, we'll find a way," she promises, anxious to feel that bond again, alive and vibrant. "We'll work it out. She will forgive you, everyone will, and whatever happens, you will always have me, Stefan."
A muscle under his jaw is pulling so hard it takes him a moment to offer her something resembling a smile but he's a master at this, he can do it, he reminds himself. Finding what's lacking from someone's life, dangling it in front of their eyes with the promise of completion.
"Believe me, I know."
#
In the dark, he can hear drop of water hitting the ceramic base of the shower with a slow cadence over the sound of Bonnie's breathing as she sleeps, restfully for once. Outside, cars are still driving to get to the highway, and someone is closing the rolling shutter of the cafeteria to finally go home. It's three in the morning, and in between sleepwalking and a nervous breakdown he hadn't slept for more than four or five hours in a week.
Sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and Bonnie curled under the duvet, facing the other way, her rediscovered quietude brings a sensation of peace that make his limbs feel like concrete. His eyes move from her dark curls to the plastic eyes of Miss Cuddles, sitting in the middle of bed, the comrade-in-arms that shares with him the duty of guarding over her and preventing her from doing herself harm.
Damon shakes his head to rid himself of the exhaustion, because though she's better at the moment, and though she doesn't seem to be rendered restless with dreams of Stefan and that desperate need that besotted her every hour since they left Mystic Falls, the possibility of her trying to kill herself in hope of become a vampire, just so she doesn't have to worry about what has lead them to this or the consequences of it all, is still very real. As real as the lingering warmth of her flesh under his fingers, marked on the palm of his hands like his heart line.
If he had let her go ahead with her suicide plan, using his blood to become a vampire and discarding the magic of her existence, maybe he'd have it easier now. Maybe he would be able to wash his hands off this thankless task, worry about his own shit, give a clean cut to this things with Elena, turn his back on the condescending superiority with which his brother regards him, leave behind the hellish little town where everything started and everything always seem to end.
Or maybe, maybe Bonnie would have awakened to a new need. One made of blood and of him alone, like it has happened before. And they wouldn't have to protect her from him, because he would take care of her, he would make her see the world and he would keep her fed and happy if only occasionally aggravated for the fun of it. The thought is less appealing that he supposed it would be, not only because he's not on the market of an Elena 2.0, but because he knows she would miss it; her fragile humanity, that connection he can't remember anymore, like a pulsing thing that keeps her anchored to life when there's nothing else left, while he's forever passing through, leaving the same trace nightmares do, that blurred, upsetting shadow people bush back because it's morning and they have a life to live.
Damon has been longing for that connection, desperately trying to find it in Katherine's languid deceits, in Elena's weightless promises, and waiting to finally belong. It is a hunger gnawing at him with the blunt teeth of a small pet, too unwitting to know what damage it's doing as it, so very slowly, erodes the edge of his rotting soul like a chew toy. And he doesn't want that for Bonnie.
Damon blinks his tiredness away, his senses slip from him to tack on the regular rhythm of Bonnie's breathing, a reflex he's picked up since his watch began, and it hypnotizes him.
He falls asleep, for no more than twenty minutes before he's startled back into his guard duty, body pushing forward to grab at her and stop her from doing whatever she might do and eyes growing wide as he tries to take in the room glowing with the first light of dawn, until he realizes that Bonnie is still sleeping; though, she makes a mmm sound that has him holding his breath and sitting back slowly to not disturb her.
He wants to argue with his fellow guardian to complain about the fact that she has let him fall asleep, but it is pointless and counterproductive. And yet, all the love goes to the furry companion that doesn't fight to keep her alive and doesn't clean after her messes and doesn't stand guard during the night like a proper guardian angel. Or a creepy stalker.
It is another hour before Bonnie wakes up. He can hear the change in her heartbeat as consciousness approaches and then the way it spikes when she remembers the night before, and her hands grip the blanket to secure it over her naked body as her head turns about the room to find him on the ground, his forearms resting on his knees.
She looks at him for a long moment, before turning her eyes to stare at the ceiling.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, getting no reply. "Do you want to eat something?" He still receives silence.
He's used to her stubbornness. Half the time it is endearing, but today he's tired and he finds nothing funny in slamming his head against her walls.
Every day, fighting against her will, against her pull, feels like rebelling to the grip of quicksand, only good for falling in faster. He doesn't know why he bothers, so he sits there, trying to regain some strength in the peaceful silence.
He's rubbing his eyes with hard fingers when she says, "I'm sorry," and he looks up at her confused. For a second, he thinks it's happened again, that he'd dozed off and dreamed the absurd scenario of Bonnie Bennett asking for his forgiveness, like he's not the scum of the earth.
She turns her head, holding his guarded gaze, and says, "I know it's hard for you."
"You know?" he asks, wary of her words, of her naked body under the blankets. Barely seven hours ago she smiled at him, soft and languid, and it turned out it was all part of the plan to make a fool of him and kill herself; so, now he can't help but wonder if it's another trick, if she's going to use her innocent eyes and her sinful curves to try and dupe him again.
"You haven't said as much, but I know you'd want to be anywhere else but here."
That is absolutely true, and absolutely not, and it seems like pushing his luck to give one answer or the other so he stays silent, watching her choose to look at the ceiling again as she admits, "You haven't slept in a week." And it surprises him that she noticed, or that she's willing to recognize his effort. "You've been trying to help and I only made it harder."
There is a long silence, and he thinks that she's done, but she's not. "And all the while you have to look at the girl you love while she can only think of Stefan."
His dark eyelashes tremble as he feels the world awakening around him to look upon his with a mild disdain, like he's not worth the effort. Her words make his stomach sink as she peels at his skin with manicured, slender fingers, looking under to find the living flesh and the blue veins.
Was it so clear? Was it so clear to her all along? He wonders, frantic and terrified.
"What?" he asks with a strangled voice, ready to deny to his last breath. Or maybe exhale it.
"I've been so focused on going back to Stefan that I didn't even stop to think that you're missing Elena, too," she says, making the blood flow away from his brain to leave him dizzy and safe with his pathetic little secret. "This hasn't been fun for either of us, but I can only think of myself. I can only think of Stefan," she corrects herself. "I haven't even stopped to consider that the last place you'd like to be now is in the middle of nowhere looking after someone that refuses to admit to anyone, let alone herself, that she needs help," she continues, swallowing the knot into her throat. "Someone that has tried to…" She can't even say the words. He sees her grimacing and he wonders if she's more repulsed by her attempt to kill herself to turn into everything she's always fought against, or her little seduction game, when she tried to offer him her blood, or her sex, whatever broke him first.
"You've been on my side. You've been pulling me back all the times I've acted stupid and put my life in danger. You've been on my side even when Elena has accused me of…" Again she doesn't finish, but he remembers her eyes, and the pain in them while his girlfriend did her little triumphal dance on the ruins of her self-esteem.
"She knows it's not true," he protests calmly, "otherwise she wouldn't have tried to use that doubt against y—"
"Will you stop it?" she demands, turning her face and her glossy eyes towards him. "Will you stop trying to be so… nice… to me?" She spits the words like an accusation. "Because I'm not going to be nice to you," she declares, warlike. "Because even though I know I own you, I'm not going to be nice to you."
And if she only knew the ways in which she truly owns him, she wouldn't be screaming like this.
Damon looks at her wide-eyed, before shrugging her words away. "Good. You know I'd get bored otherwise." He stands from the ground, muscles slightly sore from the position he's kept all night as he guarded her from her enemies. He brushes imaginary dust from his jeans before asking, distractedly, "Are we going to eat now?"
"Get into bed," she says instead, fingers wrapped around her blanket as she torments her lower lip.
"Come again?"
She's just swore that she wasn't going to be nice to him, and she doesn't look eager to make things easier, so this must be another trick. And he's really getting tired of them now.
"I want to sleep some more," she explains, turning on her side. "And you haven't slept in days. I have my problems without feeling guilty over that too, so just lay down and rest."
He stands there, looking at her shoulders, at the black curls resting on her pillow, trying to decide if he should believe her or not, if it would be wise of him to lay down next to her when just a few hours ago he let himself imagine taking her, touching her, and having her tremble around him.
"Don't make me say it again," she adds with a quiet tone that sounds like a request for a truce.
He's too tired to protest. He walks around the bed to lay down on the other side. Her eyes are stubbornly closed so as not to meet his, and he's fine with it. It's exhausting, the way she uncovers his secrets and yet doesn't at all, the way she always escapes him only to remain tangled in the recesses of his damn soul, the way his heartbeat mimics the rhythm of hers like she could teach him how to belong again.
His lungs open with her breaths, and sleeps approaches enveloping him with the scent of her clean skin. He's already slipping into unconsciousness when he realizes her fingers are spreading over his heart. His eyes go wide and his mouth open with a rasping breath as a jolt of energy that hits his heart like a defibrillator, stopping his heart painfully and restarting it again.
His reaction is fast as he rolls over her, trapping her under his body, wrists firmly trapped in his iron hold as he tries his best not to let his anger get the best of him. He's too hurt, and she smells too good and he couldn't predict his own move if his life depended on it, which is exactly how it is.
Instead of trying to pull away and fight him, her body is pliant under his. His weight, pressed between her slightly parted legs, is welcomed. Her round breasts are inviting, and her eyes are soft, like she can suddenly see him. Him, and his torn humanity, and his baggage, and the things he won't say.
"It's getting tiring," he hisses.
"Yes, I can believe that," she agrees, sounding surprised, though he can't tell by what. Yet, she looks unfazed by the closeness and the nudity, and the inconvenient hardening in his pants. They are in no position to ignore it, literally, but he can brush it off as a reaction to a week of celibacy, or to a morning wood, or whatever else crosses his mind the moment she says something about it.
But she doesn't protest, doesn't pull away and he notices the way their bodies fit together, and how the light in the room makes her look like she's stepped out of his most treasured dream, and how the contour of his sight is slightly blurred like he's been staring into a flame for too long.
Damon pulls back, leaving his hold on her wrists, to ask, "What's this?" as he looks around himself. "What's happening?"
"You decide what is happening," she replies with a smile and a wondering gaze. "I mean, this is definitly not what I expected but no judgmenthere." She pushes her weight onto her elbows to prop herself up as he pulls away trying to put some space between them.
"What did you do?" he asks when the room seems to shift around him, walls stretching and curling like a balloon filling with air.
"It's okay, don't fight it," she reassures him. "It's my peace offering." Her voice is soft, inviting him to get closer to listen to her every sigh.
"Are you trying to fuck with me?" he asks angrily, but the more violently he reacts to her approach, the more the room spins.
"Well, actually," she begins amusedly as she sits on the bed and reaches out a hand to grab at his t-shirt, pulling him back to her, "From the looks of it, it appears like you are the one that wants to fuck with me," she murmurs chuckling.
If I stay with you, if I'm choosing wrong
I don't care at all
The colors at the edges of his sight begin to change, becoming clearer or darker with every blink, and suddenly he has to ask, "Is this a dream?" as he finds himself guided on top of her. Her breasts large and soft under his chest, her thighs spreading to welcome him as one leg wraps around his waist, heel of her foot resting on the back of his thigh.
"Sort of…" she admits, reaching up to brush her nose against his. "In my infinite ingenuity I thought I was going to give you an Elena-filled universe, slow dancing under a rain of blood and shit like that. Instead, here I am, naked and loving," she recounts, sounding surprised. "And I'm not even on all fours. Who knew you had that in you."
His blue eyes search hers, incredulous, distrustful, while a voice in the back of his mind is trying to wake him up. What if she's hurting herself right now while he indulges in this castrated wet dream? Do not lower your defenses, the voice says. She's already made a mockery of them as it is, he would like to reply.
"Don't you feel me?" she asks. And he realizes it's not another attempt at seducing him. She's actually talking about her quiet energy. He can feel Bonnie sleeping, as he stares into the eyes of her girl under him. "It's okay, don't fight it," she repeats. "It's my peace offering," she adds again, kissing the hard line of his mouth with all the softness Damon knows Bonnie is capable of, though his knowledge is not firsthand.
He covers her like a blanket of snow, so cold it burns the skin. He holds her face, fits between her legs, discovers the softness of her mouth like a new world and is going to take his name, before pulling back.
"Don't," he says. "This is not you."
"It's not," she agrees amiably, "not entirely. But I talk like me, and I sound like me, and I taste like me." She smiles, seductively. The notion drips into his brain like that hateful drop of water that kept him company the whole night as he stood guard to Bonnie.
If I'm losing now, but I'm winning late
That's all I want
Bonnie is inviting and warm and and not thinking of anyone else but him, his personal torture in all her glory. Damon watches his hand move along the soft skin, fingertip brushing the tip of her nipple, unsure if he's trying to discover the texture of her or see if she's going to disappear the more intimate his touch becomes.
"Should I tell you how I taste? Huh?" she teases him as his eyes fixate on hers again commanded by her voice.
"Tell me," he nods, hypnotized.
Bonnie – the dream of Bonnie – brings her mouth to his ear to spell, "Like heaven," while he closes his eyes and wraps himself around her body, closing like a fist around her.
Damon wants to put it to good use, this peace offering of her, feel heaven pressed against his tongue, and wrapped around his engorged cock. Instead, he breathes in the scent of her skin, learns the warmth of it like the roads of a prohibited city, takes pleasure from her arms holding him with no fear nor shame.
"Ask me to love you," she murmurs. "I will." She presses her forehead to his, eyes promising the erotic pleasure of her confession as he slides into the hot humidity of her mouth, of her pussy. "I'll do anything," she vows, fingers sliding into his thick hair.
She will do anything he wants, as long as he wants it, because this dream is his, and for a while she is too. And that's exactly what he wants, what he can never tell her, not even to this version of her, this pliant, soft, loving version of her.
Whatever happens in the future, trust in destiny
Don't try to make anything else even when you feel
When Damon wakes up, feeling his chest so full he expects to hear the sound of a rib cracking, she's watching him, face half hidden behind a fist resting on her pillow. A mmm sound emerges from the back of his throat and he drives a hand through his hair, messing it up more, and the peaceful feeling of her acceptance seems to trail behind him as he approaches reality.
He can't help but wonder if that feeling will burn out fast leaving him destroyed.
"What was it like?" she asks when his electric blue eyes fix onto hers, curiosity getting the best of her as she tries to probe the result of her first experimentation with this particular spell. Luckily it required almost no effort, because considering the little control she has of her powers at the moment, she doesn't want to risk killing someone else, even if that someone is Damon.
"Like heaven," is all he says.
I don't care at all
I am lost
#
Note: If you read, please leave me a review (and while you're at it let me know, just out of curiosity, what team are you on, stefonnie or bamon). If you want (and you can) buy me a kofi (you'll find the link in my profile), but in any case, above all: please stay safe. My inbox over tumblr is open to promps. The song I used in this chapter is "My life is going on" by Cecilia Krull.