Coltrane blared from modern speakers carefully rigged to the portable dusty record player. The worn album crackled and popped beneath the strain of the needle adding a melodic imperfection in those silent breaks between the blare of the tenor sax.
Damon listened for those low hisses and scratches on the record; he thought the way they interrupted the jazz masterpiece was nothing short of beautiful.
As he unpacked a life that spanned almost two centuries, he was positive that no other Coltrane album sounded exactly like his copy, and that made him smile, even if he didn't exactly know why that made him smile.
There was a box marked "At Your Own Risk".
Funny girl, that Caroline, she was the one who had packed away all those things she thought he wouldn't want to see anymore after Elena had fell into a coma and Bonnie had decided to skip town.
Pocketknife in hand, he sliced through the layers of packing tape and stared down into the brown button eyes of a teddy bear. The stuffed animal had its stubby fur lined arms outreached toward him like it had laid on top of that stack- memorabilia of his slumbering lady love- waiting for him to open that box for six years.
He snorted as he reached for the thick leather journal underneath it, flipping through the empty pages.
He had only written Elena once. And after reading what he had written in the light of day, he winced after each line thinking he had turned into Stefan.
Everyone else could keep up the practice of writing her a diary, but not him. Elena wouldn't be surprised; she knew he was a lone wolf. And besides, he thought it was better to just catch her up on what he wanted her to know, skim over all those days that were just like all the other days, the many where he got nice and drunk and contemplated his existence and daydreamed about her like he had when she was his brother's true love.
Throwing the un-kept promise back into the box, he caught the hard stare of Mr. Cuddles.
"Don't judge me."
His cell phone vibrated against his leg; it was a collect call.
"Damon?"
It was her; she was at the airport, she was sorry for the short notice but she needed a ride and a place to stay and she wondered if she could crash with him for a while.
He nodded his head to her requests as 'A Love Supreme' played in the background.
DBDBDBDBDBD
The airport was over an hour away and he tried to use that time to quell his excitement but the delight of surprise couldn't be contained.
After their meeting in New Orleans, when he was watching her leave the bar, he had believed that that would be the last time he would have a moment like that with Bonnie. Sure, he knew he would eventually hear from her, and even see her again. She would be good for a Christmas card or a short email to catch up a year from now, and he presumed they would bump into each other in Mystic Falls when Caroline and Stefan finally decided to marry, but it would never be like how it was when they were in New Orleans.
He understood the magnitude of what had easily occurred between them back in New Orleans. It was pure magic. It had to be. Because he hadn't planned a stay in the city, he had had an unexpected overnight layover on his way to the Caribbean and decided to make the most of the day and stop being afraid of seeing the one person he longed to see that wasn't in a coffin, and then there was the darling part where she was willing to see him, even after all those years, even after all those things left unsaid, even after how they had left each other in Mystic. Magic. And he thought since that time with her was so fucking special that it wouldn't last, it had to have been just for those few hours. It was to be remembered as that time the gods shone down on them, throwing them a bone, here, here's your chance to heal a wound, kiss a scar, tell the other you're sorry, but that would be it. He would have to toss their serendipitous meeting in the ephemera with all the other hoped for objects.
But getting a collect call from a payphone from Bonnie Bennett saying that she needed him proved that he might be fucking all wrong.
He pulled into passenger pick-up and spotted her dressed in all black, standing next to an army green duffle bag with her hair pinned back severely, wearing black ray-bans even though it was night.
"Bonnie."
He smiled and her upper lip curved.
"Thank you for coming to get me," She said softly.
His forehead folded, and his mouth opened to make a smart-ass remark. Like, what was he gonna do? Just let her sit at the airport? Come on, they were friends and so much better than that. But she had slipped the dark shades off her nose while he was grasping how to articulate his indignation and Damon did something he rarely did.
He bit his tongue.
They stood face to face while he glared at the dark concave bags under her swollen eyes and she waited for a joke.
But he threw the duffle bag over his shoulder and leaned down to kiss the top of her head, "It's okay Judgy, I'm gonna take care of you."
DBDBDBDBDBDB
She wasn't hungry.
What she was; was guarded and exhausted.
Damon had a million questions but knew it was best to let her spill out when she was ready.
He told her he would give her the grand tour in the morning and laid out towels and a robe in the bathroom for her.
While she showered, he flipped through albums, thinking about connecting his cd player so he could play Pearl Jam and they could reminisce about pancakes and 1994, but when he heard a hushed gasp of tears through the walls, he switched out the Coltrane for Billie Holiday and turned up the volume.
DBDBDBDBDBD
"Where will you sleep?" She asked, hair damp and still dripping onto the living room floor.
"Out here," He said pointing to the couch as he counted the droplets on the stone floor and traced them to the rivulets running down her collar and over her bare skin under the robe.
"Take this. It will help." He said, shaking a glass of bourbon.
She stared at him, "You think so?"
"When has liquor ever failed to solve a problem?"
She laughed and the sound of her ran down his spine and reminded him of New Orleans.
"What's that face?" She asked when he didn't say anything.
"Nothing," He said quickly, "You want another drink?"
And they drank and talked about traveling, places he had been, places she had been, and Damon played deejay, playing an album and telling her the story about when he first heard it, this one he had heard one morning after doing a bag of coke with Alice Cooper, or this is when he was going through an urban cowboy stage, but there was also the real story, like where was he living, and how far away was it from Stefan, every dust-covered album had a tale.
He dropped the needle to Sinatra and as old blue eyes sang about the wee small hours of the morning he finally asked Bonnie why she was in Italy.
And she told him she had to leave New Orleans because every corner had a memory and it broke her heart every time the sun came up over the Quarter.
He didn't ask her to explain or to go into detail; he just let the Sinatra play and listened for the imperfections.
