"Christmas Eve," Damon repeats his brother's words, and his forehead crinkles, and then he says it again and then again, the inflection of his voice changing each time as he slowly recognizes the significance of the day.
He slurs a jumble of excuses, how he is a mess, how he's lost track of time, how he's lost his mind, and his ramble trails off as he steadies himself onto his feet and gazes at his brother.
Stefan sighs and presses his fingers into his older sibling's shoulder, "Don't worry, Caroline and I have already taken care of everything. Take a shower and I'll make us another pot of coffee before we leave."
He got crumbs from her over the following weeks.
Small pieces dropped to clue him on where to follow her.
Her story weaved around what she refused to speak about directly, taking him for long strolls into their shared past.
"I can't believe you have Mr. Cuddles!" Her face was bright and shiny at the sight of her childhood toy. She clutched the teddy bear to her heart and closed her eyes, "You don't know how longed I looked for him, I thought I had lost him forever."
Placing a plate of pancakes in front of the witch and filling her glass with more champagne than orange juice he told her how the bear had been safe and sound with him and that she should have contacted him, he knew where he was.
Their easy banter over breakfast began to cool as they both remembered why they didn't look for the other and Damon saved it all by poking fun at her still wanting her teddy bear at her age.
She fiddled with the bear, placing him on the table, "I wanted to give him to someone."
"Who?"
She threw down more crumbs, and he bounded down an unexpected path.
He showers and dresses and thinks of how much blood would it take.
Their days became ritualized.
The position of the sun determined what sacred rite needed to be observed, whether it was their breakfast, always prepared by him, with her knees pressed up against her chest and a mimosa in her hand, telling him about some spell that went awry and turned her class into mutes for the day, or afternoons when the sun was at its highest point, and they would walk arm in arm through the cobble stone streets of the town, confusing the locals to think they were lovers, gazing into store-front windows and lounging at cafes, or when the sun disappeared for the moon, and Damon boiled pasta and made sauce, and poured wine, making sure they both had too much to drink, and then read her short stories and lines of poetry while sprawled on the couch, with her feet in his lap or her head nudged under his chin until he could hear her soft snore and he fell asleep himself, only to wake and start it all over again.
She helped him to sift through his possessions, deciding what belonged in the bedroom or the living room or the kitchen, there were many other rooms, but those were the only three of concern for them in those first two months, and the other taped boxes were shoved into those empty rooms.
She was the one to finish exhuming the contents in the box that Caroline had hid from him.
A delicate necklace was placed on the glass coffee table along with pictures and trinkets and even pressed flowers, and when she pulled out the leather journal with its telling torn page, she was stunned.
"You never wrote to her?"
He was about to give Bonnie the reason he had convinced himself of before she had arrived, how he was waiting to see Elena, how he wanted to be present with her when he recounted all that time he had spent missing her.
He answered her question with a question, "Do you write her?
She tossed the journal back into box and picked up the glass of wine that he had told her to let breathe
"I wrote her every day at first. I would start each page with, 'Dear Elena', and it was about one good year that I tried to write about things that I thought would make her happy to know, make her glad about whatever sacrifice she thought she was made, but then I realized that I was fabricating a life that wasn't mine to please someone who would only be alive once I was dead. I felt like a tourist in my own life. So then I started to write about what was really going on, the destruction and the depression, but also the love, lots of love and the things that made me happy and optimistic about my own future, so technically I don't write to her every day, but I write every day, and the diaries will still be given to her when she wakes up but they will be all mine, every word will be me."
She sipped the wine, "This is good, what is it?"
And although he hadn't tasted the wine, he knew she was only half-right. It wasn't just good, the wine was fantastic, superb even, and it should have been, it was a rare bottle of Chateau Lafite that was over a hundred years old. It was supposed to be the celebratory drink to be had once he had found Katherine, and then after finding her and dealing with that betrayal, he had decided to save it for another cause of celebration; like when Elena looked over to him and said he was the only one, but that never quite happen, and then she was put into a coffin and the wine was pushed off to be uncorked when she woke up in another eighty years or so to finish out the soul connection he believed that existed between them.
"I don't remember," He said drinking straight from the bottle.
Downstairs, Stefan tosses a warmed blood bag to his brother.
Damon tears into the plastic blood bag with his teeth and sucks, blood flowing over his gums and dribbling down his chin.
"We have to a make a stop on the way home."
Damon doesn't care, he drains the bag in hand and reaches for the other warm bag that Stefan has on the counter and drinks and drinks until the desire for her doesn't make him want to kill.
"Love is so short, forgetting so long…"
It was Neruda, his favorite, and he was going to finish off the evening reading Neruda, something he didn't get to do much because she preferred Mary Oliver.
And his face was flush from downing copious amounts of Chianti, and listening to the hum of her blood flowing through her veins when she rolled her head over his bare shoulder, her lips gently brushing against his skin and asked, "How often do you think about blood?"
His body responded to the press of her mouth, even if it wasn't meant to be sexual, even if it was only brief and unintended.
"About as often as I think about sex," He smirked, closing the book and inching off of the couch. "But sex is easier to come by," He said replacing the book onto the shelf.
Her mossy green eyes darkened when they stared up at him, "When was the last time you drank from the vein?"
And Damon lifted an eyebrow because he realized that he and Bonnie had become intimate without effort and that sudden realization changed everything.
Thinking of nothing else but blood and the feel of her lips, and wanting to push the thin straps of her tank off of her creamy shoulders and run his tongue over her graceful collar, he widened the space between them and told her that it was late and that it would be nice to have the couch to himself for once.
The Mystic Falls Mart is packed with all the last-minute shoppers, moms with screaming children trying to quickly fill their baskets with staples and then there were the dads who were sent out to fetch whatever missing ingredient a special dish called for at home.
Damon trails behind Stefan without a word.
There is some list that Stefan keeps talking about, something about Caroline needing a can of cranberry sauce, a package of rolls and milk.
The pair circumvent the traffic in each aisle to fill their cart with the three items, and Damon thinks about all that empty space, how they could have just carried these items in their hands.
"One last thing."
He follows his brother to the bakery and overhears Stefan tell the baker, an older man stuffed into a too-tight apron, that there was a pick up for Salvatore.
The man mumbles something to Stefan and produces a shiny white box on the glass counter.
Stefan thanks the man and places a round layered cake with bright pink icing and frosted rosettes framing the edges into their cart and begins to head to check out.
But Damon barks at Stefan to wait, his voice raspy and thin, and he quickly searches through the hanging racks of items under the pastry glass until he finds a thick candle shaped into a number one.
Author's Note
Again, I have no clue what I'm doing here. I'm just writing.
