A/N: I was listening to love songs and randomly decided to write some Bamon angst. It's kind of a hot mess so please keep expectations low.

x. Voicemail

Her backs against the wall. Leather heels reaching up her thighs, black, like her nails and dress and the memory of him. It's one year later and, still, every shade of Damon Salvatore fuse into darkness – a chasm that she confronts in the black of her own closed her eyes, or here, in an alley, where her friends laugh over cocktails inside the bar.

But love is bright.

Love is bold.

Love is kind.

"I'm trying to understand it," she says into the phone, "because I don't see anything there but it sticks, Damon, it sticks like a fucking…" She tilts her head back on the brick. "I'm doing everything I wanted to do. Being normal and going out and this city is fun, I have friends,"

Her breathing has layered. She presses a hand over her chest, where her heart is black and swirls with him.

"I speak to Caroline and check in with Stefan and he tells me that you're okay, you're travelling, wasting time, I,"

But love is patient.

"Fucking hell, Damon. I think about you, okay, all the time. It sneaks up on me but it's dark, kind of crushing and,"

Love doesn't feel like this.

"Why do I love you anyway."

Shit. She drops her phone onto the pavement.

SHIT.

The battery has fallen out; it's just a cheap one she picked up at the supermarket, barely even has a camera but that voicemail, that fucking voicemail. She scrambles on the floor, gathering the halves of her phone and cursing again and again.

She waits as the screen loads, sitting back against the bricks and when Bonnie closes her eyes, the darkness has brightened.

/

He listens sitting on the hood of his Camaro, staring at a mountain on the side of the highway, squeezing the last dregs of blood out of the bag.

It's one year later and still, her voice kicks at his dead pulse. She sounds drunk and his mouth does something it's not supposed to anymore: it smirks.

She isn't making much sense and it's hard to hear over the noise of the city (Detroit, he knows, he checks in with Stefan) but when she says that she thinks about him, he feels nauseous, like the blood is flushing back up his throat.

Bonnie pauses; Damon hangs his pathetic life in that pause.

"Where are you going to go?" He said from the doorway. He hated watching her pack, hated that he had nothing to say to make her stay.

"I don't know. Dad had some family out West somewhere, I think."

"Will you come back?"

Bonnie hesitated at the wardrobe. "Maybe." She yanked it open: "Don't worry. I'll let you know when I'm on my death bed."

"Bon. It's not… it's not like that."

But it was like that. Bonnie was alive; Elena was not.

"I get it, Damon, I really do. She's the love of your life and-"

"You're my -"

"Something. Yes," she looked up at him, "I've always just been something to other people. I need to go and figure out who the hell I actually am. For me."

He hated that he didn't know how to tell her how incredible she is without hurting them. How the time he almost said he loved her she stood up from the couch and said, please don't.

"I might not be here when you come back," he said instead.

"I wouldn't expect you to be."

"Can I call you?"

Bonnie's eyes said what they had before, please don't.

The pause snaps, there's a muffled line he can't decipher, a crash and a beep. Damon winces at the sound.

Dammit, Bonnie.

There are about fifty drafted, unsent texts to Bon Voyage on his phone, most of them bourbon induced.

I'm an idiot.

I'm near Detroit. I know you won't want to see me but please.

Can we talk?

Can't believe it's been a year, Bon. I've almost forgotten how annoying you are.

Are you okay?

I miss you.

Fuck, Bon. How do I stop thinking about you?

It's definitely too fucking late to say this but I think I fell in love with you back in the prison world. I shouldn't have, I know, but I'm always that dick who wants what I can't have.

Stefan says I just need to go and see you but I'm scared I'll hurt you.

He drafts another one:

I missed your voice so much.

Then he sends it, like that dick who wants what he can't have always does.

/

"You're blind," Bonnie's friend, Alessia, laughs, "He's head over heels for you, boo."

"I really don't think so…"

"Look," her friend grabs her by the shoulders, steering her towards the bar. The tall man polishing glasses glances the other way, embarrassed. "See. He's whipped."

"Fine, fine," Bonnie rolls her eyes, "I'll go over."

"That's my girl."

She's been trying a new thing in this city called, going for it. Mystic Falls sapped the life, and magic, out of her. Surrounded by normality proved that all she needed was to appreciate herself, not just what she could do, or who she could save, to feel like a person, not a novelty.

"Hi," she smiles at the man, "I'm Bonnie."

He looks terrified to see her standing in front of him, his mouth hanging a little lopsided and Bonnie bites her lip from wanting to laugh.

"I'm, er, Daniel. Hi. You, er, hi."

"Nice to meet you, Daniel. You going to pour me a drink or…?"

"Oh! Yes, um, what, what do you want?"

"Surprise me," she says sweetly, enjoying how flustered this makes him. Going for it means reclaiming back some of that sparkle she used to have, mimicking the power she'd seen paraded around her old town.

The text comes through as she's sipping her second martini and Daniel is telling her about his forensics degree at the university. Her phone doesn't display the text just: New Message from D and all the air in the bar condenses.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah, fine," she rushes but she can't concentrate and the empty stool beside her is occupied by him now, by Damon, he's leaning on his hand, smirk leaning towards the right side of his face, beautiful, infuriating and-

"Actually, I'm just going to go to the bathroom. Sorry."

She reads the single line on the toilet. Then again. And again. She reads every word individually, lingering on the syllables (because she's always made poetry out of Damon Salvatore and that's always been her downfall).

Now that she knows she loves him she can fight it. With the Daniels of the world, with the freedom of being Bonnie Bennett the woman, nothing more, nothing less. And she loves this power, she really does…

She just might love Damon more.

Shit.

Her head's spinning from the cocktails. It's not the first time she's hovered over his name and debated pressing call – before leaving that voicemail, she's sat in this very cubicle several nights, her entire body pulsing with wanting to hear him. Then she'll think of Elena and remember that she left second choice behind when she left Mystic Falls.

But now.

Now.

Love is impulsive.

She counts the rings. One, two, three-

"Bonnie!?"

Love is

"Bonnie? You're there!? Hello?"

Love is

"Damon."

His laugh activates the muscle memory in her mouth – a stupid, child's smile.

"I just listened to your voice mail and-" he stops, "Wait, is everything okay? Are you in trouble?"

"No, no, I'm fine. Really. I just…wanted to say hi."

Bonnie cringes at how lame it sounds but Damon hums, a low murmur that makes her ache to see him, for real, even though it might just kill her. "Well, hello to you too, Bon-bon."

"No one's called me that in a while."

"Bon-bon. Bon-bon. Bon-bon."

She laughs without thinking.

"You sound happy," he says, "It's a happy sound."

"I'm…"

But Damon is speaking again. "Why has this taken so long for us to do? I'm grinning like an idiot on the side of the road, Bon. Fuck. This is amazing."

It is amazing, it feels like how flying might, which is why she's stopped herself every time she's wanted to.

"I've got to go," she tells him, "My friend is waiting."

"Wait? What!?"

"I'm sorry. I-"

"No, Bonnie, please."

She won't go anywhere now. Love is painful, it's always been painful.

"Damon." She pours the darkness into his name, pleading with him to understand all that she's been battling.

"Just tell me," he says quietly, like they're the only two people left in the world, "what did you say?"

How can her heart beat this fast without passing out? "When?"

"The end of your voicemail got cut off. There was a crash thing and," he sighs, "I don't know what you said."

When Bonnie came to this city, she ripped off her shadows and left them to the wind. They followed her, of course, tightening in her chest at night, smelling of Damon and what she could have had, but she kept moving: going for it.

"Bon, I have to know. Even if you never call me again, just tell me. Please."

He really is the only person left in this world as she does the Bonnie Bennett thing and goes for it.

"I said," she fights through the constriction of her throat, "I said, why do I love you anyway."

A/N: evil cliffy SORRY. I'll be back.