Note: This fic is dedicated to animeeyes21 / danwkind, who's always been supportive of my writing. I know it's nothing special, and I probabily didn't take the prompt as you expected, but I still hope you'll enjoy it.
#
She rolls on her back, sweaty and satisfied, as her eyes try to focus again on anything at all. The ceiling of her small bedroom never looked so good before. Her open hand presses down on the middle of her chest where her heart is hammering violently, and she can hardly catch her breath. Well, damn.
The woman shakes her head, like she needs to clear her mind, clouded with pleasure, and she speaks with laughter in her ecstatic voice. "That was good." She compliments him with no shyness nor hesitation. She's a woman in her forties and she's past the platitudes of a casual encounter. "I swear, I haven't been fucked like this in ages," she admits candidly, but to tell the truth maybe never. She turns her head to look at her bed companion, relaxed and looking barely aware of her appreciation, one arm bent behind his head as he lays in bed with her.
"I almost can't believe it," the woman adds, looking at him incredulously with a sardonic smile on her lips.
That seems to catch his attention.
Damon Salvatore turns his gaze on her, studying her, his interest finally piqued. "I told you I was good."
She turns on her side, covering her naked breasts with the sheets, more out of habit than modesty. "Yeah, but every man talks big. That's mostly to overcome their own insecurity. It certainly doesn't mean they are up to the task," she explains with giggle, pushing her blonde hair back from her face with one hand. She must be a mess right now, but she doesn't care. "You're young," she continues, "younger than me, anyway," she adds when his eyes look at her with a sort of mockery. "And you are gorgeous." And that seems to be the first reason she's surprised at his performance.
"My looks are supposed to decrease my worth in bed?" he asks, strangely entertained.
"Well…quite frankly…" she starts, internally debating if she should go on with this before deciding on it, "Yes. In my general experience, men like you think that half their job between the sheets is to look good and the other half is to call the woman names." She turns around to take her spare glasses from a drawer of the nightstand. "Less attractive men are used to fighting more for a woman's attention. They try harder to maintain their partner's interest even during the intercourse. So, they put in some real effort, you know," she says, looking at him better through her lenses. "You, Damon Salvatore, fuck with the intensity and the focus of an ugly man," she says smiling, "Or a rejected one." She looks at him from behind the glasses that she pushes up the bridge of her nose. Looking at her, he knows she's wondering about the girl that could reject him and yet, she doesn't look as surprised as he'd like.
She steps away from bed to take a robe from the closet and wrap herself in it.
For a moment the sly smile falls off Damon's lips, but he recovers quickly and she doesn't see the change as she stands with her back to him.
"I just like to keep my promises," he replies in a casual tone, a small voice asking him if it might be true, if centuries of being the second best has led him to putting more effort into his sexual encounters.
"Then, would you promise me another go?" she asks, turning around with a broad smile. She had tried to put up a fight when he first picked her up at the end of her shift, and now she's throwing herself at him, rubbing his ego just right after her little oversight concerning his tendency to get the shortest end of the stick in relationships.
Damon stands from the bed, bending over to take his clothes from the floor, happy to flaunt his body and confirm all her beliefs about his good looks. "I'm afraid I'm not available," he explains, trying to smooth the wrinkles off his t-shirt.
"Too bad," she sighs, showing her disappointment like a child that really, really wanted to go on the merry-go-around again but was denied permission because it was getting late. "So…it's not an open relationship, I take it?"
"What?" he asks, turning around while pulling up the zipper of his jeans.
"Well, I can hardly believe you don't have a girlfriend," she says, "And I have to admit, before you picked me up last night I heard you speaking to a girl on the phone," she continues, trying to fix her hair with her fingers, nails painted in a pastel plum, "So I thought maybe you had a sort of arrangement, but I may have told myself that because I didn't want to pass up the opportunity and I didn't want to admit to myself I was being the asshole that sleeps with another woman's man."
She's quite honest with herself, and with him. He enjoys that.
"You could say we're on a break," he admits, slightly annoyed "My girlfriend…" the word comes out strident between his teeth "…barely knows I exist at the moment, so it's fine," he explains, reluctantly.
Elena, his end all be all, had the brilliant idea of erasing every good thing about him from her mind – not that there were that many to begin with, probably – but it kind of hurts that she couldn't hold onto him and now she looks at him with that disdain on her face, like she can pass judgment. There's only one woman that has every right to look at him that way and then some, and that's not his fair Elena. Still, he doesn't want to think about that mess, hence the reason a night of sex with a stranger seemed like such a good idea in the first place, so he pushes back the idea of her, plucking his phone from the pocket of his jacket to check for missed calls. The idea that Elena might have actually called him irritates him, though.
"So I was your revenge sex?" she asks, wandering to herself if she's titillated at the idea.
"No, you were my I need to get laid, sex," he says plainly, shrugging. "I have been…sort of away from civilization for months, and I had some steam to let off."
"All alone in the woods looking for yourself?" she tries to guess, curious.
"Mostly looking for a way out," he explains, turning to look at himself in the mirror and distractedly manage his hair, "Together with my infallible, ride or die bestie."
The bestie mention gets a smile, she notices, and the change of his expression attracts her interest.
"And…is she pretty, this bestie of yours?"
"I sense an insinuation in there," he replies, turning around to observe her. "What was your name, again?"
She smiles, maybe he doesn't remember – it wouldn't be so bad, he made her come good after all, nothing else mattered after that – but he's picked this moment to ask because he needs to use this passive-aggressive attitude to keep his secrets safe, and she realizes with a certain sense of pride that she hasn't lost her touch.
"Well, your girlfriend gives you the cold treatment and you care so much that you looked for a stranger to fuck instead of a solution," she considers, sharing her thoughts.
"Is the stranger suddenly complaining about the way I fucked her?" They both know he is openly requesting her compliments and she's happy to oblige.
"Oh, not at all," she says with a smile, "But you don't look very heart-broken, and you thought the relationship with your bestie so important that you couldn't taint it with some hanky-panky."
"Hanky-panky?" he asks with a grimace.
She'd like to bring to his attention that he chose to focus on her language rather than what she has told him, but the phone rings in his hand, and she sees him smile.
He answers the call with a cheerful tone. "You miss my breakfast that much?" he asks without waiting for a reply, adding, "Awww, that's so sweet of you Bon. You can't see me now but I'm blushing all over."
#
Bonnie is wearing her pajamas, but it's not the one she wore on the other side. It's a shame, since the fit was smaller and hugged her curves in a more agreeable manner.
He comes to her door with croissants and hot coffee because he's not sure she has anything edible in the house - other than her own sweet person, but that's not something to tell her when she's cranky on an empty stomach.
She looks up at him, leaning against the door and biting her lower lip. If he didn't know any better he'd say she's trying to seduce him with this shy school girl scene, but as her eyes avoid him and he catches a breeze of perfume behind her he knows what's truly up.
"Am I disinvited?" he asks, realizing Elena is inside.
"Of course not," Bonnie replies, erasing his fear of being already old news in her book.
"So, you've decided to throw a party?" he asks, walking around her to get inside. The door closes behind him.
"No, she came around and I thought it was a good time for you guys to…resolve some issues."
"And you're doing that for my sake or hers?" He bends towards her ear. She's not wearing shoes and she's shorter than usual. The fact that she's so tiny and so powerful is such a contradiction, sometimes he catches himself enthralled with her.
"Does that really matter?" She rolls her eyes. It shouldn't, because he's getting something out of it anyway, but count on him to fixate on the wrong thing in the wrong moment.
"Our whole future depends on that," he declares, lifting his head when he hears the sound of Elena's steps stopping abruptly.
"What are you doing here?" she asks, looking suspiciously at him and then Bonnie.
He raises the hand holding the paper bag with their breakfast to explain, "I bring sustainment and a very aromatic pesticide."
"Doesn't he know how to speak to your heart?" Bonnie asks, shaking her head and pulling the bag out of his hand.
"Is this a bribe?" Elena asks unconvinced. "What mess did you make this time that Bonnie needs to clean up?"
There's nothing in that question that is not one hundred percent deserved and backed by a long history of wrongdoing, but Bonnie Bennett is his best friend and this stranger that Elena has become has no right to a say in the matter. Like she didn't use her and misuse her just the way he did whenever it suited her. At least they were sort of enemies before, but Elena has had the good fortune of her friendship all her life and still didn't care enough to protect her better.
"I think the word you're looking for is projection," he says, offering a tight smile, taking a step towards her like he's about to make a point – a mean one – but Bonnie grabs him by the t-shirt and pulls him back.
"Sit down, tiger," she admonishes with a sigh. "Do you want AB-positive with your pesticide?" she asks, trying to move the conversation along.
It's really too early in the morning to play referee in this match.
#
Damon Salvatore is sitting on her bed with his feet crossed when she turns the lights on and the sight almost gives a heart attack.
"Fuck!" she groans, her heart pounding away.
"If you insist," he sighs, shrugging with a sort of agreeable indifference.
"The fact that I've let you into my room once doesn't count as perpetual invitation," she explains trying to look calm.
"It does, if you are a vampire," he replies in the same tone.
"Funny," she says starkly. No one has the sense to take him seriously.
"To what do I own the pleasure?" she asks, hanging the jacket on the coat rack on the wall. She's come into town recently and could only manage to find a room to rent. It's hardly the best place she ever had but she needed a change of scenery and she has plenty of time to find something better. With a decent alarm system.
"You never told me your name," he says.
"I did, but you were more interested in other parts of me rather than the name," she explains with a smile. He's gorgeous, but he could still be a serial killer, "It's Mandy, by the way."
"Barry Manilow must have ruined your life," he considers aloud.
"You don't know the half of it," she replies, sitting on a chair.
"What do you do for a living?" he asks, crossing his arms on his chest.
"I'm a bartender," she says, quietly. "You should know since you picked me up at the end of my shift."
"You don't strike me as a bartender."
"You don't strike me like someone who's come here to fuck," she says, in the same tone.
"Yeah but you shouldn't put any limit to your luck."
It's hard to be mad at his trespassing and serial-killing tendencies when he's so funny and looking so good as he does it.
"I was a therapist once," she admits with a sigh.
"See? I know a shrink when I fuck one." He nods, satisfied with his deduction skills.
"And that's all you wanted? To know my curriculum vitae?" She rests her head over a closed fist as her elbow rests on the arm of the chair.
"I'm all about honesty," he proclaims, theatrically.
"Does that mean you told your bestie you're in love with her?" she asks, making sure to look bored and unimpressed as she does. She knows she shouldn't behave like this, but he's rubbed in her face something she doesn't want to talk about and it's fair to answer in kind.
It's really strange when people need for someone to hit them in the face with the truth to accept something they've known all along. His tone is surprised and yet not as he asks, "Come again?"
Oh, wouldn't she like that.
#
"Maybe you could try kidnapping?"
The whisky enters the wrong pipe and he coughs, choking on the amber liquid as he stares at her, shocked.
"I really rubbed off on you, didn't I?" A satisfied smile creeps up his face.
"I was trying to help," she replies, faking offence at his reaction. Bonnie's wearing her More issues than Vogue t-shirt and he is tempted to take it as a personal attack..
"Okay, maybe that's too much," Bonnie decides, hugging a cushion on his sofa. Her legs are stretched out on the red velvet and he should tell her to keep her feet off of it, but he lets it slide.
"I didn't say that," he clarifies, and she looks at him surlily. It spurs a sudden urge to tickle her until she's begging for mercy under him. Does that mean you told your bestie you're in love with her? The woman asks in his head.
His smile falls off and he can see the moment she realizes the change in him. "Listen, she loves you. Somewhere inside her heart she still loves you, she just…forgot."
"She chose to," he spells, hoping she'll admit that Elena is at fault. Hoping she'll say Elena doesn't deserve him.
"Just because it hurt that bad," she says, leaning only a little toward him, offering him warmth and support and hope. "Because you were that important."
"My fair Elena," he says, contemplative, "Always the main character in a Mexican telenovela."
Bonnie bites her lower lip not to laugh at that. She tries to look at him reproachfully but the result is tepid to say the least. He loves that, and if only other people would leave them alone long enough for him to suck all of her attention like a parasite, that would make him perfectly happy. Does that mean you told your bestie you're in love with her?
"My Spanish sucks," he adds for good measure. He wonders if a therapist would find that answer a way to call himself off the game, to say he's not able nor interested in continuing.
"I know you," Bonnie says, and it makes him feel good. Including in places of his anatomy that shouldn't be involved right now. "You would do just about anything for love."
#
"This is getting creepy," she says, finding Damon Salvatore sitting in her chair.
"I didn't wait on the bed," he says, like it makes a difference. "That would have been crossing a boundary."
"One could say the same thing about breaking and entering."
"There's really nothing to break here," he replies, looking around. "I can lend you a fantastic vacuum cleaner if you promise to be careful with it. The carpeting looks like it needs freshening-up." He crinkles his nose at the cheap tapestry.
"That's nice of you, Damon, but you shouldn't be here."
"I agree," he nods, reproachful. "It's really unethical to see your patients outside the office."
"I'm not a therapist anymore," she says. "You are not my patient," she clarifies. "You don't even pay me."
"I could pay you…" he offers, "…in sex."
"That only happens in porn movies," she replies readily, though from his expression she's starting to harbor doubts. "I think."
"Anyway," she starts again, sitting at the foot of the bed, taking her shoes off. They are killing her feet. "You don't want to have sex with me. This is why you're here. You want me to tell you that I was wrong and you don't have any feelings for your infallible, ride or die bestie for whom you want to make breakfast. So, sure, okay," she agrees readily, wanting him out of her room. "I was wrong. You're not in love with her."
"There's something spiteful about you," Damon decides, "I kind of like that." And he looks sincere as he says so.
"Women must have treated you horribly." That's half a joke, half a deduction. She should not let her insight block his own; but again, he's not her patient and she's not his therapist and she really needs to sleep.
"All of them," he admits with no inflection in his voice.
"But one?" she ventures.
"Oh no, her too," he replies with a proud smile, "but I deserved every bit of it and I don't know what's gotten into her to make her care about me in the first place." His expression, usually going from charming to predatory shifts into a boyish smile and it takes her by surprise.
"But you don't love her?" she asks gently.
"No, I don't love her," he says, like it really matters to him to clarify the point, "Not like that."
"How is like that supposed to be?" she asks again.
"You know…crazy, consuming, annihilating," he explains like it's a stupid question in the first place. Mandy seems fascinated, if by his answer or his transparency he doesn't know.
"A bit morbid."
"That too," he says with a smile, pointing a finger at her like she's getting the point.
"You're a romantic. You want to die for love…" she translates. "Wouldn't you die for her?"
His expression sobers immediately. "In a heartbeat."
"But you don't love her?"
"Right."
"Right. And you're not sexually attracted to her?"
"Right," he replies, looking a bit constipated.
"Right."
"You're redundant…" he decides. "I'm not sure you're putting effort into earning your orgasms."
"It's not me that you should give those orgasms to," she replies, sympathetic. People in love can be so fragile, especially when they doubt their feelings are returned. She wouldn't take advantage of that, not as a therapist, not as a bartender.
It takes him a minute of consideration. The silence lets her travel back to another life, when she had a husband yet and they were in love.
"She cares so much about me she's trying to help me out with my girlfriend."
"Maybe you could tell her to stop?"
"Bonnie? Stop helping?" He seems amused at that. "That's not something she's capable of. I'm not even sure she ever was, herself, but she wants people to be… happy."
"You don't have to change her," Mandy replies. "You just need to change her purpose." She shrugs. "Tell her the real way she could make you happy."
#
The heavy, incessant hitting on her front door is driving her crazy. Bonnie was in the middle of a very nice dream, and part of her brain is still entangled in it, in the desperate effort to go back there once she's kicked this intruder out.
She leans over the door to look through the peephole and she sighs, her palms open on the wood as she comes to terms with the fact that her chances of getting some, even in the oneiric form, have just faded into thin air.
Bonnie opens the door wide, absolutely annoyed at him for waking her up at the most inopportune moment. "What the hell can be so important for you to come here at such an ungodly hour?" she asks, all rightful indignation in her cute, small pajamas. He'd die for her.
Damon contemplates the question for a moment, then grabs her face and pulls her towards him as he lowers himself down to meet her lips. There's something very sexy about her size, and the way he can pick her up and help her wrap her legs around him. His hands are open on her back, pressing her towards him as he breathes the air of her lungs, stealing it with little regard.
"Damon…" Her voice is tiny, surprised, a little breathless, and she doesn't make any move to get off him. The warmth of her body and the familiar scent of her lotion wrapped around him makes his blood drive south, hardening him immediately. Fuck, he really wants her.
"I would do just about anything for love, included and not limited to, kidnapping," he admits with no shame, staring into her eyes, mouth almost moving against hers as he explains his thought process. "I'm not even ashamed to admit that I think I should have milked my chances when we were stuck on the other side and you didn't have any other sane, reasonable, though sexually not up to par, man to compare me with, but Bon…exceptional situations call for exceptional measures, wouldn't you agree?" he asks, stepping inside and kicking the door shut behind him using the heel of his boot.
Bonnie blinks, his words are sinking into her brain with some difficulty, still she nods, but it looks more a reflex than a conscious choice. She's not fully responsive right now but in pure Damon fashion he doesn't see a problem, only an advantage to exploit.
She's stunned by his kiss, shocked by his words, and this is the perfect moment to drag her into this delicious mess and put his stamina to the test.
"You know me," he says, hoping that will not make her escape from his hold.
"I think I do," she says, voice breathless, tasting his kiss on her humid lips.
"I don't want to ruin our friendship…" he explains, trying to sound very reasonable and agreeable, "I just want to bring it to the next level, make it mutual, exclusive, sexually gratifying and a lifetime commitment."
"What about Elena?" she asks quietly.
"Who?" he replies, hoping that will be enough to clarify the matter. She chose to forget about him, he did the same even if the only magic involved in that matter was Bonnie's mere presence.
Bonnie struggles for air, her eyes moving away from his electric blue gaze. Her fingers are stiff over the tense muscles of his shoulders and she can feel something pressing under her.
"Damon," she starts, her tone grave as she watches his expression fall. He can hear the words already — I don't love you like that. Maybe, with a twist of plot she could add — It's always been 'insert male name to kill here' for me. Instead she says: "How gratifying are we really talking here?"
"Straight to the important stuff," he replies with a smirk, feeling his chest filling with a raging sense of accomplishment. "I really rubbed off on you," he decides, nudging her nose with his own, before taking her mouth in a hungry kiss.