Bonnie was a mystery and Stefan wanted to solve her.
He couldn't shrug the fact that ever since she disappeared a few weeks ago, he had been losing sleep from the painful need to be with her. He found himself jerked up at night, hearing her soft voice calling his name a few times. He saw her in his dream—sitting on the edge of his bed with the black dress she wore that night, hair tousled and her bra unlaced, watching him sleep before he was forced to be awake again and lose the sight of her.
"We were hurt, Stefan. And I owe nothing,"
She was in his arms, small and vulnerable and she smelled sweet like honey. His fingers drawing lines on her back as she nuzzled her face into his neck, softly mumbling something like a comforting spell. She was sleepy and her lips pressed firmly on his skin. It felt warm, tingling. She kept breathing hard as his hand went from her waist to the part that made her moan under pleasure, shuddering with her eyes closed.
"Why would I put myself in misery when there's you,"
She is Elena's best friend. The martyr life companion. She is the witch who saved Katherine. Emily's bloodline. One who fears death less than anyone he knew. And there she was in his dream, tangled around his body as he tried to release her from the pain.
"Don't tell me sweet nothing, Stefan. That wouldn't work on me,"
She pinned him down and his hands ran through her hair—soft and beautiful and very much would never be his. A groan coming from his mouth as she planted fire on his ribcage and kept going lower to his hardness.
"I would give you everything, Bonnie, I promise. Just please don't stop," he sighed,
"Please don't ever stop,"
Eyes secretive and forbidden under the dim light, she was known to possess such innocent yet her effect on him was lethal. One moment she was tiny, curled up in his arms to feel protected and the next thing he knew is that she made his world spinning with desire.
She was hurting and those stupid boys didn't deserve her. If only he could make this last forever, to keep her magic from people who used her. To ease her pain and turn it into something wonderful, he would give her anything.
"Elena turned your world around and now you want this to never stop?"
Bonnie's eyes were dangerously beautiful as she kept going. The sound of his breath was rapid while his finger tightly dug onto her hair. She made him lose his mind as well as turning his emotion on again because of the lust he had for her.
"You came to me because Elena left you. You thought sleeping with her best friend would hurt her, don't you? you thought you seduced me but instead you crave me more and more by day and it drove you crazy,"
He was seeing Elena dancing with Damon at the ball-palm rested possessively on her waist as he swirled her twice with a smug look on his face.
He was reliving the time she told him the truth. That she liked his brother because he offered her something she was craving for a long time, that she couldn't choose what kind of love she wanted and she didn't want to lose both of them because that is how she was, selfish and wanting to keep everyone around for herself so she wouldn't be left alone. But Stefan thought he had enough.
"What if I tell you that I decided to stop being her shadow?"
Then there was Bonnie, standing with an empty glass of cocktail. Looking like a goddess herself with a black dress that was hugging her curve amazingly and suddenly he was wondering how her honey skin would feel against his. He was Stefan with his emotion switched off seeking something fun after being dumped by a girl he was willing to do everything for. He was looking for something to play with. A body to feed on. And Bonnie was there. Beautiful, inviting,
Hurting.
He could hear her pulse from afar, beating in rhythm and he was curious what it would taste like.
She said the guy who was supposed to be her date ditched her last minute and Stefan could imagine how sorry he would be if he knew she would show up in a black tight dress and a pearl necklace resting elegantly on her bare neck. Bonnie doesn't deserve stupid teenage boys who dumped her. She deserved to be with someone who offers her comfort as well as adrenaline, someone who could be gentle but able to fulfill her desire. She was tired of trying to start a relationship, and Stefan knew she needed something more than a little date on Mystic Grill and sloppy kisses after inside her car.
She needed something that Stefan with his emotion turned off is good at.
"You said it was a one-time thing, but you keep coming to me like a hungry dog,"
She was against the idea at first because she thought of every little thing that could go wrong. But Stefan knew there were times when he was still with Elena that Bonnie's eyes lingered on him longer than she should. Although they would never admit that every time they left alone there were tension hanging on the air and faithful Stefan would not give a chance at the possibility. But Elena has made her choice and it wasn't him. So having her best friend as his bed buddy for quite some time is not something he should really care about.
"You were feeding me and you know I don't waste food,"
He invited her to his place and then one passionate kiss turned into rounds of amazing sex. They did it in the living room, near the fireplace, on his desk. He was livid but she didn't resist. After everything that happened with her mom, Bonnie had learned a spell to reduce her overflowing emotion and she became someone less nurturing as she started to care more about her happiness. She showed up with her chin up, dragging him as she ripped his clothes, leading him to the bedroom and not giving any concern over the fact that he was her best friend's ex.
"Do you think she would cry if she sees us like this?"
He was reliving the same dream since the day she suddenly decided to stop coming over. Their last time was at his place when Damon and Elena weren't around. She left that cold morning with the trail of her scents on the sheets, leaving Stefan breathless with a hope to have another kiss.
And a hope to see her again.
But apparently for a long time he didn't.
And a week after that, Bonnie didn't show up at the places she was expected to be. Her house was empty and nobody had seen her.
She went missing, and Stefan missed her touch. Everyone was looking for her trying to figure out where and why. Damon was pacing back and forth because he needed to find Bonnie for Elena. Because he needed to play his role in the relationship, putting her priorities first and pretending to care even though everybody knew he didn't.
Stefan switched on his emotion again after his mind went wild with the constant need of seeing her. Nobody knew about their secret affair. Nobody knew that he had been helping Matt to track down Bonnie's last bank transaction because he kept seeing her naked in his dreams.
He wanted her to lay down clues so he can solve her, put her pieces together as one and then he would take her away from the crowd, pound her until the last thing she remembers was his name and nothing else.
"Look for me, Stefan. Find me. I am not the comfort you get after being dumped by her. I am not a second choice because we're both hurting and there was nobody left for us. Look for me. See me. Beg for me."
He was desperate to find her so they could share their bare truth under the soft sheet again, with her fingers digs into his skin as he whispers sweet nothings in her ears.
Stefan didn't want to be the good brother, or the good ex, or the good friend.
He only wanted another glimpse of her skin, to be touched again because she left him hanging and he realized he is starting something he couldn't end.
One rainy night, he saw Damon burning papers down their fireplace—empty glass of bourbon on his hand while he stared at the hot flame. He asked him what's wrong but his brother was just standing there in silence,
"Why you keep leaving your girlfriend alone? I thought you guys couldn't stand a minute apart from each other."
Damon was having the best time of his life with the girl he finally got. They went on different road trips together, partying and living their immortal life as if nobody was out there trying to get them, seeking danger and adrenaline because vampire Elena likes adventure more than being locked in her room with nothing but a fear of someone coming after her.
When Damon heard about Bonnie, he flew back from New York right away. With crying Elena in his arm, he was trying to be the perfect boyfriend even though Stefan knew he was having a hard time dealing with her rollercoaster emotion and constant self-blaming behavior.
"Don't act like I didn't know about you and your missing bed buddy,"
Stefan walked closer and he knew Damon was talking about him and Bonnie. He didn't have the best relationship with the witch, but Stefan knew he likes her more alive than dead. Bonnie was one of his pioneers in winning Elena's heart. Caring for her best friend had earned him double points and Damon didn't want to lose the jackpot.
"Why would you care about me and Bonnie, brother? You got the girl. You won,"
Stefan didn't look at him. He assumed his brother already knew that he had turned his emotion off because if he wasn't he would run to everyone and everything right now looking for Bonnie like Damon did for the past few weeks. Comforting Elena and telling her that he would find her best friend whatever it takes.
Stefan did try to find her. Threatening Jamie to tell him when was the last time he saw her. Getting into Bonnie's home to look for her grimoire. Asking Matt to track down her phone record.
or having sex dreams about her and writing them out in a form of letters.
"It's Bonnie, Stefan. Do you think I wouldn't care about her?"
Stefan sneered at Damon's lame effort of trying to be the wise one. The good boyfriend image didn't match him at all. He wasn't made for this caring and loving persona. The way his brother love was selfish and he didn't care about anyone except for Elena.
"I think Katherine has something to do with this. She wanted something, but I don't know what it is. Bonnie is in danger, Stefan. It's not the best time for you to be mad at me. We need to find her as soon as possible,"
Damon saw her once when she sneaked out from his brother's room, walking on her toes with a creased shirt that she stole from Stefan. He pretended to not hear it when Stefan thought he wasn't home and they were humping each other against the wall. He wanted to not care about it because why would he? Stefan was right, the most important part was that he got Elena. Nothing else matters to him anymore,
But Bonnie is his friend. He never really considered someone as a friend before and he could see that Stefan didn't do this because of Elena. It wasn't about her anymore. He had erased her, he switched his emotion off along with the pain. Maybe Bonnie was an escape, one bad choice that led to another. But what if Stefan wasn't only using her for comfort sex? What if he turned his emotion back on because what he felt for her was sincere?
What if his brother fell for the little bird?
"It wasn't enough for Elena to chose you? Now all of a sudden you wanted to know how her best friend was like in bed? "
Bonnie was stronger and braver. Her curve was placed on the perfect part of her body. She smelled sweet and she didn't hesitate to scream his name. The way their skin brushed on each other, burning with pain but also with desire. She was the greatest witch of all time. With power hiding under that tiny palms she could turn their town on fire if she wants. Letting the people who misheard her, people who left her smoldering on their death bed. But she never thought of that, she never thought of hurting someone because Bonnie was too good and Stefan wanted her to stop being good.
"I don't care if she threw her body over you one time because that Jamie kid or Little Gilbert dumped her. I don't care seeing her sneaking around from your room, even hearing the sound of her fast heartbeat as you do whatever it is that I didn't want to imagine. But she is Bonnie, Stefan. You knew she wasn't a girl you met randomly one night. She is Elena's friend, our friend. And with you having your emotion switched on and off, still feeling betrayed and using her to make up for your pain would end up hurting her,"
Damon clearly didn't mean what he was saying because all this time the one who hurt her the most was him. He was the one who kept Bonnie around so she could save the martyr, the one who turned her mother into a vampire so Elena would always be in his arm at all times.
"Oh, you know so much about hurting her, don't you? You're afraid we don't have our handy dandy witch to rescue the day? You want to find her for Elena so she would stop crying like a fucking baby in front of you?"
Both of them knew it was true. There was no other reason Damon wanted to find her alive other than to keep her in case something bad happened to them. Damon didn't care about her hurting, he didn't have the time to spend aside from worshiping Elena like an obedient dog.
"She is one of us. Elena's friend or not, my friend or not. I owe her something and she'd better come back alive."
Damon took a step forward, almost grabbing him by the collar. His eyes filled with rage and Stefan didn't know if this was his rage towards the fact that Bonnie went missing and he happened to be in this mess or that Damon's rage was pointing to the image of Bonnie in his bedroom. Naked, carefree, and despised him for what he did to her mother.
"I know you hate me because Elena chose me. But don't treat her like she's one of your ripper victims. Help me find her. I know you want to find her."
Stefan saw a newly bought journal laying on his desk with pages been ripped off forcefully and pen marks showing all over. Damon had been spending his night scribbling things or making a plan to take down anyone he was suspecting has something to do with Bonnie's disappearance. Looking for ways to grow a white oak tree so he can kill Klaus and Elijah in case they were the ones who did this. He was awake at all times and walking back and forth while Elena waited for him on their bed.
Stefan gave him a mocking smile, "Do you think she went missing because Katherine or Klaus caught her? Because she was the leverage to lure us so they can get what they really wanted?"
Damon rolled his eyes, "You know the drill, brother. People hold grudges against us or want something from Elena, that is the only reason we're always in danger. They probably got her to get to us. This wasn't the first time,"
Everything around them had always been that way. Someone took Bonnie, Caroline, Tyler, or anyone important to Elena to threaten her because they know she would always choose her loved one first. Later they would demand what they wanted in change for whoever the hostage was. A moonstone. A necklace. Some stupid talisman. Being born as Katherine's doppelganger made Elena worth so much because she possessed something everybody wants.
Stefan poured himself a glass of bourbon and then sat on the armchair. He stared at nothing.
"what if she just went missing because she was sick of all the problems we brought her in?"
Bonnie was hurting and nobody noticed. Not even her best friend because she was busy showing off her bad vampire boyfriend to the world and justifying their love. Professing what she wanted, to not lose the two brothers because she liked the attention. To keep Stefan as her friend even though she knew it would be more painful to him. Leaving Bonnie who always put her life at risk just to save her ass.
Damon went silent, his eyes glaring at the flame. he was holding the glass too tight until his knuckles turned white.
"What if she wanted to be free and run away because she realized Elena's life not worth her own?"
Maybe Stefan was laying down the truth. She never heard Bonnie said that precisely but he knew she was tired of this.
"She wouldn't leave Elena like that," Damon tried to convince himself and it made Stefan sneered at him.
"What do you know about her? What do you know about that witch who could literally kill anyone but choose not to because she was that noble? Did you know that she almost lost her will to live? Did you know that she had been looking for ways to stop her ability to feel?"
He was turning his emotion off because he thought he still loves Elena. Bonnie learned some spells so she can hide her feelings and be done with the world because she thought she didn't have enough strength to go on. Damon knows nothing. He never paid attention to her because all he ever thinks about was how to be with Elena forever.
"I may not be there for her, Stefan. If you were me, you wouldn't have the balls to approach someone who had been hurting too many times because of you. I may look like I didn't care. But I do, I really do."
Last night, Stefan found a piece of the ripped page and decided to read it. It was Bonnie's name written in Damon's handwriting. Messily, in tiny cursive and soon he realized, he had been writing her letters all this time. Trying to get in contact with her.
Dying to find her.
He saw the rest of the paper on the carpet and took it. Damon tried to take that away from him but It was too late.
"You said you care about her but what you've been doing? Writing her letters and burn them?"
"I burn them because I read somewhere she could get the message," Damon sighed.
Stefan couldn't read most of it because Damon has already ripped them apart, but he found words like Elena, my friend, and little bird. And he wondered if his brother was onto something.
Stefan has written many of them for her—letters and an apology—but he didn't want her to read it and know that she was right. She was right that he was making a mistake for choosing her for fun while his entire body wanted her so bad right now.
"You wrote to her too. I saw them on your bedside table."
Damon knew about his journal and how Stefan always writes whenever he felt something because he wanted to document everything. So when he found envelopes laying around his bedroom, he knew right away it was for Bonnie.
" The police are out there, Matt had already put out a missing person report and they would host a search party for her later this weekend. I don't know if burning letters are going to send her a message, but if it did. I would burn all of them with you,"
Stefan gathered the rest of the paper and throw them into their fireplace, seeing them turning into ashes and slowly disappeared. He took a sip of his bourbon, thinking about where she would be now.
"I know this would sound like a joke because especially it is coming for me, but you don't get to hurt her, Stefan. If you're still butt hurt about me and Elena, then go feed on someone. Kill a bunny. Get into your ripper mode. But you don't get to hurt Bonnie because she's our friend and I wouldn't forgive you if she was missing because of you."
Damon's voice was serious and Stefan thinking of punching him for what he said but he didn't. The way he talked about Bonnie was like he knew her so well but clearly he didn't. The way he wrote all these letters somehow reminded him of the time when he pretended to not care about Elena's presence but later strived to get her attention and eventually took her away from him.
"She told me she had been learning about a spell to keep her from hurting and I helped her ease that pain," Stefan came forward, his jaw clenched and he could feel his head boils with anger towards his brother's ridiculous accusation.
"Whether it was only sex or not, it doesn't really matter because I was the one who tried to comfort her and she accepted me. I didn't push her. You can go back to Elena and tell her that there is a possibility that she didn't want to be found because she was sick of all our crap and she wanted to be left alone. But don't warn me that what I did was hurting her because if anything it was only made everything less painful for her,"
Stefan put his glass down. If they want to find Bonnie then they would do it in their separate ways now. He wanted her to go back to his arm, hiding underneath the warm blanket and tell her that everything was his fault. Damon could assume anything-that he was using Bonnie, or he shouldn't do it in the first place, or that it was a mistake. He didn't care.
"I never told anyone this but we kissed once,"
Suddenly Damon opened his mouth, and what came from him was something Stefan would never expect.
"We kissed once back at the prison world. It was a mistake and we never talked about it. But I've spent 4 months with her alone, Stefan. And let me tell you I know her better than you thought,"
Stefan didn't respond and proceeds to go into their study room, trying to get the vision of Damon and Bonnie together in the prison world out of his mind. But then he found another letter lying around the table that clearly not his, and with that he wondered if they were going to repeat this history for the third time.