This was to be a special moment.
One for the books.
From those years when he would imagine their reunion, he would obsess over those warm brown eyes, thinking that as soon as life breathed back into her, the elation would be too much too contain.
She smiles and Damon is unresponsive.
Why did he ever think he was going to be elated? Was the occasion of reuniting with your sleeping beauty girlfriend to be a momentous occasion? Yes, certainly. But that euphoric feeling he had turned over and over in his brain when he was pining for her is not there, and he's appalled at himself for ever believing that there would be anything akin to euphoria for him ever again in a world without Bonnie in it.
The brunette fidgets and tucks her hair behind her ear when Stefan leads him to the bottom steps of the porch.
"I'm glad to see you here, Damon. I've been waiting to see you."
Damon scrunches his brow curiously at his moon and his stars, the light of his life and all that jazz.
"Waiting?" he turns the question over, not realizing that she didn't just claw herself up out of the dirt that morning to turn up at Caroline and Stefan's holiday party.
It had been months, three months to be exact for everyone to get used to her being back from the dead. They had time to process the switch. Bonnie for Elena. All the while his wife's death felt like it happened yesterday. Always yesterday. Day in, day out for 90 days, he never knew there was a breathing Elena walking around Mystic Falls because he avoided a funeral and all gatherings in his wife's memory, only coming out after dark to drink and feed until he could taste his victims heart give.
She wouldn't' like that. No his wife wouldn't.
He looks down at his hand and fingers a band of gold.
Caroline yells from inside the house for Elena's help and Elena excuses herself before their reunion could become any more awkward than it was.
Stefan holds the screen door open with the glossy box in hand, "Come on in, brother."
Damon musters a hello to Matt and Tyler, bypassing the other guests in the home for the kitchen, praying to any god that Caroline wasn't in the kitchen.
He opens cabinet after cabinet until he finds a stash hidden because he doesn't want to frighten his brother's guests by downing their spiked punch by sticking his head in it.
Bottle in hand he pours the bourbon into a red plastic cup, "She's alive," he laughs imitating, Dr. Frankenstein.
Stefan carefully places the cake on the counter and makes a drink as well, "I wanted to tell you a while back but.."
Damon waves his hand while he downs the contents of his cup and pours another, "I understand, brother. I mean, at one time this was to be the goddamn day, you know? The day I got Elena back and live happily ever after, yadda yadda yadda."
"We can never predict the future."
"Ain't that the truth," Damon snorts, filling his cup to the brim and then doing the same to Stefan's who motions his mouth to protest but acquiesces at the pain in his brother's narrowed eyes.
"I'm sorry. "
"Yeah, me too."
"Listen Damon, "Stefan starts, placing his hand on Damon's shoulder, "She doesn't want to upset you, so if this is too much, we all get it. Just let me know, and she and Donovan are gonna go to Lockwood's for have dinner. She realizes that tomorrow is not just Christmas for you."
"No, they don't have to do that. I'll be fine, just let me get a couple of drinks in me, okay?
Stefan kneaded his shoulder and nodded, "Good. I'll even finish two more of these with you," He smiled holding up the empty bourbon bottle.
Damon snorts and twirls his empty cup in his hand, "Where is she?"
And Stefan smiles and points his finger upwards. "
DBDBDBDBDBDB
Daylight.
The pair stirred only to wrap themselves around one another and make love again.
He held her, her cheek melded to his chest, playing with her tendrils, and the puncture wounds adorning her neck, thinking about fucking her again, and again, and again..
Pulling her in closer, he tugged at her earlobe with his teeth, "Why did we wait so long? All those groundhog days in flannel purgatory, we could have passed the time doing this, all over the boardinghouse. You know, I had a sex swing in my closet in '94" He says wagging his brows, "We could have even video taped it."
She snorted and side-eyed him, "Um, probably because you were in love with my best friend then, remember?"
"What does love have to do with these hips," He stated, biting down on his lip as he gripped her, moving her how he discovered he liked, "I mean if this is still a safe space for honesty, then I will be say that there wasn't a time that I wasn't sexually attracted to you, Judgy."
She playfully slapped him, "So not cool."
"Hey I didn't act on it, "He grinned, impishly and genuinely all at once, "But I'm a man, and you are gorgeous. I obviously did a bang up job hiding it cause you never thought of me twice."
Bonnie curled up her lip, "Well, that's not entirely true."
"Really?"
"I mean, spending all that time alone with you wasn't a piece a cake because of us being stuck on the other side, but of how close we were becoming there. I felt guilty for feeling anything for you other than protective out of my loyalty to Elena."
Damon smiled, drinking in Bonnie, her honesty and her open heart, and his own heart swells but reaches for the familiar.
"You were in love with me then, weren't you?"
"Shut your mouth." She says getting up from his embrace, the sunlight pouring over her brown body.
Trying to walk away, he yanked her back to the couch and quickly flipped her under him, pinning her with his weight. He held her face between his hands, "You know that I love you?'
"Do you?"
"Very much," He nodded, " So now I need to know what happens next?"
"You get maybe 80 years with me and then Elena and I pass the baton."
He frowned, "You know what I meant, even though we will need to discuss that too. "
Her face became somber and she ran her fingers through his har, "Why do you need a guarantee?"
"I like sure things. And uncertainty makes me crazy. I'm not gonna go through the coquettish games like I did with Katherine and Elena."
"I told you that I was in love with you, isn't that enough."
He pulled her fingers from his hair and scrambled to his feet, "No, where are they?"
"Outside of Moscow."
"For how long?"
"Our communication is strained as to be expected with our situation. But they will eventually end up in the Alps before spring, he said he would arrange for me to see them for an hour in a private lodge. "
"No trade-off?"
"Not this trip, but in the summer we will meet up and then it will be my turn, I don't care how he feels. "
And then you'll be the one zig-zagging the world with your life in danger."
"It's not my life that's in danger, Damon."
He was irritated, how quickly love changed things and here he was staring down at the petite witch, wondering at what point did he give her all the cards.
"Answer me this, Bonnie. You really think I'm going to pretend everything is rainbows and unicorns for the next few months until you disappear from my life for however long and be okay with that?"
She stared up at him, "All of this is temporary; you have me for now and then eventually you'll have Elena. From my point of view, you are winning.
And she reached for her clothes on the floor and dressed while he looked on at the sun through the glass doors unable to ask another a complicated question.
Author's Note
Thank ya'll for reading and reviewing. And I'm glad ya'll trust me to lead this story somewhere. Hopefully we end up at a satisfying end.
