Happy holidays. Sorry this is so short. I swear, these days it's like the word count decreases the more I write. But this was comforting for me, so I hope it's comforting for you. 3
December 24, 2014
"Who knew this boring ass little town had this many fucking people?" Damon asks loudly, leaning carelessly on the handle of the shopping cart and scowling as yet another blond-streaked bob atop a face buried in a phone screen with absolutely no regard to its owner's surroundings sideswipes them.
"It doesn't actually." Stefan stops to grab some bags of chips off the shelf and throws them into the cart. "It's the Christmas effect."
"The hell is the Christmas effect?"
Stefan looks surreptitiously between Damon and Bonnie, then over his shoulder, before stepping in closer to whisper, "Most of them are undercover elves."
Damon just squints at him. "You're not funny."
"He's not joking, Damon," Bonnie chimes in, lowering her voice to the same mockingly discreet cadence. "Look, there's one right there." She jerks her head toward a man a few feet in front of them on the other side of the aisle, who despite the freezing winter weather outside the store is clad only in athletic slides, gym shorts, and a tattered muscle shirt with the sleeves cut all the way down the sides bearing a design of an American flag composed entirely of assault rifles on both its front and back, not at all covertly reaching his hand into his pants as he decides between brands of marshmallow fluff. "He knows how bad of a boy you've been this year."
"I'm gonna go from bad to worse if you idiots don't drop this bit," Damon growls. "I've always known my brother has no sense of humor, but Bonnie, what the hell? How many awful New York comedy clubs have you been to that you're this far gone?"
"See, this is exactly what Santa was telling us the other day," Stefan says to Bonnie behind his hand. "Such a Scrooge." She nods conspiratorially in response.
"Okay, fine, fuck you both. Neither of you are getting ANY of my famous cranberry sauce this year." They've reached the end of the aisle and Damon cranes his neck to look down the next one. "If I can find the goddamn walnuts, that is. Christ, this place was not this confusing in 1994."
"That's because this place wasn't even here in 1994, Damon," Bonnie replies, patting his shoulder the way a parent would a flustered child. "The one we went to was up north on Old Miller Road. It's that shitty gas station now."
"Well maybe we should've just gone there. Six bucks for a can of walnuts?" He scowls yet again, this time at the can, and shakes it near his ear before throwing it in the cart with the rest of their haul.
"Says the guy who spent half a grand on a single bottle of bourbon the other day." Bonnie checks the crumpled shopping list she's been carrying around in her pocket all morning, which is mostly filled with an intense duel between Caroline's impeccable half-cursive script and Stefan's near-illegible scrawl, the already crowded edges occasionally lined with an item or two in Damon's blocky all-caps. It's pretty much impossible to read, but Bonnie has still smiled every time she's pulled it out, so full of warmth from being with her friends again.
"You certainly had no qualms with drinking it, so . . . we're all hedonists."
"Well I'm sure as hell not disputing that." She folds up the list again and puts it back in her pocket. "I think all we have left to get is veggies and drinks. Wanna split up so we can get the hell out of here as soon as possible?"
"Sure, but I'll do the drinks." Stefan claps Damon on the shoulder. "Don't trust this rotgutter to make any good beer decisions."
Damon rolls his eyes as Stefan walks toward the other side of the store. "None of that fruity shit, brother. And nothing below six percent!" he calls after him.
"I swear, I can't take you two anywhere," Bonnie says.
The subdued flurries that drifted down from the clean grey sky all morning have picked up in both intensity and density as they finally pull into the Salvatore house driveway, which, judging by the amount of snow gradually piling up, won't be nearly as easy to pull out of. The white flakes dusting the brick stairs before the front door remind her of how different things had been just a year ago, and how grateful she is for how quiet things had been (at least in comparison) this holiday season. And when the three of them all actually walk into the house, yule-muled with stuffed-full reusable bags and assorted six-packs, when Bonnie hears the beautiful sounds of cooking and drinking and music and laughter as soon as the door swings open, she's almost brought to tears by how happy she is to be alive.
It's a full house, a condition upon which Bonnie and Nora had vehemently insisted when they first began planning their trip. Caroline and Ric had showed up with the twins bright and early, apparently eager to pass the childcare responsibilities on for a bit, because as soon as Josie was in Bonnie's arms and Lizzie in Nora's, both parents had immediately gone into nap mode: Caroline shamelessly bounding upstairs to the guest room wing, Ric dozing off not long after slumping down onto the couch across from them and "resting his eyes for just a bit." As is often the case, however, both girls were incredibly well-behaved the whole time; at nine months, both had started their incessant crawling phase, so after a few games of peekaboo and a quick diaper change they'd just set off on the sprawling floor of the living room to investigate the various toys and books Stefan had set out. He also made everyone breakfast, and after they ate he, Bonnie, and Damon had left for their supplementary shopping trip. While they were out everyone else had apparently steadily trickled in: Beau and Coryn from their new place in Richmond; Valerie fresh off a plane from Buenos Aires, the latest of many stops in her globetrotting adventure; Abby in from Raleigh, where she'd been visiting Jamie; Enzo from god knows where as he exhausts the Armory's remaining resources to find the Maxwell bell, if it even exists; even Tyler, who's back in town to pack up the rest of the stuff left in his old house. Matt couldn't make it this year, but it wasn't (or so Bonnie hoped) because he didn't want to; apparently something had happened to his mom down in Atlanta and he had to go check it out.
Despite Nora's reassurances, Bonnie had been nervous about how well everyone was going to get along, from the sound of things—clinking glasses, constant conversation, the frantic noises of an apparently thrilling game of Mario Party—seem to be going swimmingly as they unload the groceries in the kitchen. Well, more like as Damon unloads the groceries, while Stefan and Bonnie drape themselves around Caroline in a sloppy group hug as she somehow manages to keep cooking the heaping pan of festive red-pepper-flake-and-rosemary fries she has on the stove in front of her. "Are you two high?"
Stefan's "no" and Bonnie's "not yet" come out at the exact same time, and Caroline laughs. "Aw, so you just missed me this much."
This time they both say the same thing, word for word: "You know I did, baby." And all three of them laugh.
"Can I get some help over here, or what?" Damon calls from behind them. "I think this refrigerator is about to burst at the seams."
"Well, we can leave at least the beer on the porch since it's so cold," Bonnie says, unpeeling herself from Caroline and leaning down to pick up the six-packs. She's on her way back to the door when she runs into Tyler returning from the bathroom, and so she sets the beers right back down again and wraps her arms tightly around him.
"You have no idea how much I've missed you, Bonnie Bennett," he says into the crook of her neck as he returns the hug.
"Oh, well this is embarrassing," she replies. "It starts with a . . . T, right?"
"Ha. T-Money is actually what they call me in Appalachia."
Bonnie pulls away from the hug to get a better look at her friend. Not only does he physically look different—slightly slimmer physique; longer, curlier hair; well-groomed goatee—but he also exudes a totally new energy, calm and collected and reserved rather than constantly tensed-up and hotwired. "Dude, you look great! What have you been up to? And where have you been up to it?"
"All over. Been driving a lot of trucks and I'm honestly really enjoying it. Pays way better than you'd expect and pretty much every month I get to find a new place to turn. Visited some old friends in the Smoky Mountains, stumbled across a pack I've never even heard of in Yellowstone. This time last year I was still deep in denial about being a wolf again, so I feel like I've come a long way since then. Feeling good."
"That's so great, Tyler. Somehow I knew that you were doing well, and I'm so glad to see that intuition was right. Do you know if any of your routes ever make it up to New England?"
He smiles. "Maybe. Is this you coming out as a New Yorker to me?"
"Shh!" Bonnie puts a finger to her lips and looks around paranoiacally. "If I add the '-er' before the five-year mark the rats will come for me. But yeah. I live there, at least, and I love it. We love it." She picks up the stack of beer cases again and gestures toward the door. "You wanna step outside with me for a second?"
"Of course. Valerie can hold her own in Mario Party without me for a bit." As Tyler opens the door for her, he says more quietly, "I think Caroline is trying to set us up."
Bonnie laughs even as the biting cold of the outdoors cuts into the skin of her face. "And? What do you think?"
"Well, she's beautiful of course, and we definitely mesh well. But I don't know, I'm driving all over the country trying to figure myself out and it seems like she's doing the same on a much larger scale. Might not be the right time for either of us."
"Fair enough." Bonnie sets down all the drinks in the snow next to the steps, then swirls her hands and mutters an incantation which makes the air in their immediate vicinity feel 20 degrees warmer. "I was gonna light up out here since we have the twins inside; you interested?"
Tyler grins. "Oh, that would actually be really nice. Been a while since I've let myself have a break."
"Hell yeah. Just gotta invite someone else, or she'll kill me." Bonnie tightly squeezes the onyx bauble on her simple braided twine necklace, which corresponds to one made of jade on Nora's, and less than twenty seconds later the brunette heretic joins them outside. "You two have met, right?" Bonnie asks.
"Oh boy, have we," Tyler answers, and he and Nora glare at each other with the sort of vitriol that can only be born out of a tense Nintendo rivalry.
"Valerie is blaming your absence for her subpar performance," Nora says with a wry smile.
"Oh no. What did she do?"
"Let's just say you two won't be winning the minigame star."
"Well shit, if I don't win this game, I'll have nothing."
"Having something is overrated," Bonnie chimes in, offering the freshly lit joint to Tyler, who accepts and puffs it like a seasoned professional.
"That's only something people who lose at Mario Party say," Nora shoots back. She's the next to take a hit, and she sighs with contentment as the smoke leaves her lips in the impossibly graceful way that never fails to mesmerize Bonnie. "Did we get everything we need for dinner?"
"As far as I know." Bonnie flings her hands up. "But whatever we have, I'm sure the culinary wonder-couple can whip something up. And only like half of us have to eat anyway, right?"
"Well, especially after this, if I don't get to eat you may have to reckon with the wrath of not just a wolfman, but a wolfman trucker." Tyler chuckles, then suddenly draws his face again in mock austerity. "But seriously. I was promised food. I better get food."
"We'll take it under advisement, your highness." Bonnie can feel the very familiar but somehow never banal warmth spread through her body, made even more soothing by the comfortable contrast of the snow twirling outside of their heat bubble.
"Thanks for noticing my highness, I guess. I thought I was hiding it pretty well." Tyler giggles at his own joke.
"Damn, if this truck driving thing doesn't work out, you should try standup."
"Maybe I will. And whenever I have a set, neither of you are invited."
Under any other circumstances, Christmas karaoke would undoubtedly have been a terrible idea, especially after a game of Monopoly threatened to make the good-natured rivalries established by Mario party not so good-natured, but when the time rolls around, everyone just happens to be the exactly level of drunk and/or high to where poorly singing along to a bunch of awful carols and festive songs sounds like the perfect course of action. And that's how Bonnie ends up poised on a makeshift stage, back to back with her favorite person in the world, both of them belting the words to an atrocious EDM remix of Mariah's version of "All I Want for Christmas Is You" at the top of their lungs as the remainder of her favorite people in the world laugh and cheer them on, and once again she is saturated by a feeling that was once so deeply unfamiliar, a feeling that not only everything is alright, but that everything is going to be alright. And that, really, is all she ever wanted for Christmas.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .