~5~
~Chapter Five~
And live just the way we please
We'll make ourselves a little home
A garden and a fire
Forget the shit we left behind
And follow our desires
~Toadies, We Burned the City Down~
Place: 22 Broken Arrow Road
Mystic Falls, Virginia
Date: May 23rd, 1994 ~ Damon and Bonnie time.
The following morning, I wake up to find myself tangled in a pile of blankets, pillows, and Damon's limbs. The TV is still on, though instead of the romantic comedy I forced Damon to sit through (he didn't, though he did fire off a round of snarky comments before drifting to sleep) the night before, I'm met with a commercial for a block of cartoons.
My back aches and my right leg has fallen asleep underneath Damon's arm. I try to remember how we ended up in this position—his head on my lap, my torso propped up against the sofa, the hardwood floor unforgiving despite the heap of pillows we arranged to combat it. It's funny, in an ironic kind of way. Originally, Damon and I had opted to sprawl out on the couch but did this instead because we couldn't agree on who got the extra cushion space.
He's such a child when it comes to compromising.
I can't help but smile at the memory, however, I get rid of it quickly when I nudge Damon on the shoulder—hard, so I don't have to keep prodding him. "Damon, wake up! You're crushing me!"
"Hm?" he mumbles, opening an eye.
"You're ten times my size; you're squishing me to death."
"Then why are you still nagging me? Shouldn't you focus on… oh, I don't know, breathing?"
I'm about to unleash an expletive-filled rant on him, and he must be able to tell because he suddenly has a jolt of energy, which he uses to sit up. I glare at him—it figures he wouldn't be stiff after sleeping on the ground for eight hours.
He's unflappable.
Or an alien… and I'm not sure I entirely believe in them. Though I will admit, Damon makes a pretty strong case in their favor—he does some pretty strange things.
The late-night walks, the way he drinks like a fish and manages to wake up without a hangover the next day, how he is so fast; not to mention stealthy.
But I know I don't have a leg to stand on. Damon claims I do some pretty odd things myself, but those instances are coincidences. When you cook, there's a chance something will burn, if you're not careful. And I can reluctantly agree with him on that point—I'm somehow the world's most dangerous woman in the kitchen. The candle incident that happened weeks ago… that was just us being in a new place, unaware of what was inside the house.
"So, what do you want to do today?" he asks, diverting my anger before I get the opportunity to voice it.
"I don't know," I fumble around for our makeshift calendar. We've gotten in the habit of having it nearby at all times to make note of any changes we see. Now, I find it on the edge of the coffee table. "We're in week three, I think. Day two… does that make it a Monday or Tuesday?"
"We've been over this—we decided that a new week would start when we reached Sunday."
"Yeah, well, you forgot to check yesterday's column." I thrust the paper—which is growing more and more worn by the day—and stare at him with a haughty smirk.
I've been trying to copy his—right down to the subtle twitch he has when his lips quirk up on the left. My goal is to get him to realize how fucking annoying it is—but he remains unaffected.
The jerk.
"It's still a Monday," he snips, folding the paper and shoving it into the pocket of his jeans.
"Fine, it's Monday."
"I say we raid the CD shop on the corner of Spruce and Briarcliff."
I think this over for a minute—music would be nice. In the back of Damon's closet, we came across a record player and a small CD player; a compact boombox with a cassette slot in the middle. We searched for disks of any kind to break up the monotony of Baywatch playing in the background while we ate a meal, or played a game, or read books on the couch (I've opted to work on the selection in Damon's room, hoping that it would keep my mind off the old, dusty books that are just down the hall).
Unsurprisingly, it has only worked when Damon supplied his opinion on whatever book I happened to be poring over.
Anyway, we even went into the attic, searching through old boxes of useless junk—old diaries that are locked, keys lost, weird necklaces, a bin filled with different colored candles, and a book about plants.
No CDs. No records.
Just cobwebs, spiders, furniture that appears to be broken, and if it doesn't look that way, then it's seen better days. I almost tripped over the leg of a chair jutting out from beneath a white sheet, nearly crashing into a shelf of glass jars.
Damon, with his extremely agile reflexes, grabbed me before I made contact with the wall, and the buzzing electricity that ran up my arm took my breath away. An even bigger shock than the very first time it happened because I'd actually adapted to it—Damon and I frequently ended up touching one another, by accident, and out of instinct sometimes.
It comes with the territory of being unlikely roommates. And, you know, being the only two people in town.
It was probably just an adrenaline rush—I did almost impale myself on a rickety slab of wood, after all, but something about the way he looked at me afterward, how we just stood there for a while, locked in an awkward embrace, told me that there was more to it than that.
"Yeah, that sounds good."
"Good, because I was going to drag you along anyway."
"I'm walking away from you now," I say, standing up and stretching my arms over my head.
I'm halfway upstairs when he says, "I'm making pancakes for breakfast."
I groan internally. While Damon has demonstrated the know-how to make other breakfast foods, pancakes are his go-to. I've had all different flavors: blueberry, chocolate chip, cinnamon. And while I liked them all, I think he doubled down on it because of a remark I made when I walked into the kitchen, though I can't recall the exact day I said it.
"Oh, look, you made pancakes… again. Did you have a traumatic experience with French toast or something?"
That evening, he used the leftover batter to make muffins—two batches of them. That man is the Mary Poppins of pancakes.
So, this time, I just stick my tongue out at him, hurrying to my bedroom before he reacts—he'll just have to save the snark for when I'm done with my morning routine.
~~X~~
After my shower, I am in my bedroom, sifting through my closet, when I come across the shirt I wore to bed our first night here. The one from a comet festival. When my fingertips brush the fabric, I don't like the nagging suspicion that takes over me.
For a brief moment, when I decided to make use of the washer and dryer across from the bathroom. I came across it when I grabbed a pile of clothes from the hamper. This was after we found out the current year, and I was thoroughly confused by the date printed on it.
Because 2009 is about fourteen years from now.
And—for obvious reasons—that information didn't sit well with me. I tossed the offending shirt back into the hamper and haven't thought about it again until now.
Which sucks—I wrack my brain, thinking I must've put it back without realizing it, but that's crazy. If seeing it now gives me the creeps, then I definitely would've remembered hanging it up.
The only plausible explanation—that Damon did laundry for both of us and kindly decided to go the extra mile and put it in the closet—isn't plausible at all.
Damon and I have an agreement about household responsibilities: he cooks, I do laundry.
This has been a thing since he ruined the only matching bra and underwear set I had when he threw them in the washing machine with his jeans. And this was upsetting—not because I care about that sort of thing, but because, when I saw them, I got this very random thought that I had no idea what to do with.
Maybe thought is the wrong way to put it. It was more like advice, I suppose. And the voice of whoever dispensed it sounded eerily familiar:
"Ugh, you guys can't be that hopeless. You two need to own underwear that doesn't look like you bought it in the Juniors section of Walmart. You never know when you'll run into a hot guy."
Of course, because the voice isn't mine, I don't recognize it.
I yank the t-shirt from its hanger, ball it up, and throw it in the back of my closet.
I throw on some clothes and go back downstairs. And I'm starting to regret my lack of enthusiasm for Damon's pancakes—the familiar, comforting smell wafts into the foyer, and thoughts about the laundry mix-up fade away. They are so far gone that I'm able to lock it up in the deep recesses of my consciousness and throw away the key.
Like it never even happened.
"Just in time, Bon Bon. I just made our plates."
Damon is standing in front of the kitchen table, two stacks of pancakes at each place setting. However, the one at my spot has double the number of the one at his.
I look from him to our food, and back at him again. "That's a lot of pancakes. Too many."
"I know how you hate sharing," Damon tells me, taking the dishtowel off of his shoulder, tossing it onto the island. "So, I decided to give you the most."
"How sweet of you," I give him a tight smile, sitting down on my chair.
He shrugs, gazing at me with fake humility before he transfers his stare to the tiled floor. And then, when he speaks, the bashfulness in his tone is over-the-top. "Aw, Bon Bon. How kind of you to say that, but that's just me. A gentleman."
"The gentlest."
"Only when the situation calls for it, though."
"You sound like an ass," I comment, stabbing my first pancake with more anger than I feel.
"And you sound sanctimonious," he fires back, sticking his tongue out in what I'm assuming is supposed to be a (very poor) imitation of me.
I roll my eyes. "You give yourself way too much credit."
"Not true," he says with a pout. I try not to look in his eyes for too long, the emotional depth in them is something that I get distracted by far too often. "I'm pretty fucking amazing."
"Arrogant," I correct.
"Awesome."
"Egotistical."
"Hot."
"Overrated."
"Mysterious."
"If you call being predictable mysterious, maybe."
"You need to learn how to loosen up."
"Oh, and how do you suppose I do that?"
"Well, since you asked so nicely, I'm happy to show you."
"This isn't going to be fun, is it?"
"Oh, au contraire my little Bon Bon—I'm going to have loads of fun."
The walk to the record shop is a nice one, the weather much warmer than it was before. If you had asked me to guess the time of year based upon how it felt outside when I first got here, I'd guesstimate that it was late March, maybe early April, but ever since I laid eyes on that newspaper, it's been sunnier.
We pass the grocery store, a tiny drug store, a restaurant that looks like it hasn't been open in a long while, and a bar with a wooden sign on the front, The Mystic Grille painted on it in large, block lettering.
I stop and stare into the window. I can see the bar and the shelves of bottles and glasses behind it, tall stools line the counter, and tables with chairs on top of them are scattered throughout the room. If I crane my neck a little, I see a pool table in the corner and a large dartboard on the wall adjacent to it. The little note on the glass is hand-written, to the point…
Sorry, we're closed. Come back soon.
"That's kind of spooky, don't you think?" I tap the window.
Damon, who had to double-back when he noticed I wasn't beside him anymore, takes a glance inside The Grille, as the words printed on the door so nicely shortened it. "It's not any creepier than any other abandoned store around here. You didn't think that place was all that strange," he nods his head toward the fast-food place on the corner of the strip mall.
"It didn't have a note like this one," I argue, eyebrows raised in a ha, ha, I know what I'm saying kind of way.
Damon gives me the most exaggerated look of agitation I've seen on him yet. "I didn't say it was normal; I said it was the same as every other building we've seen."
"Well, I don't have a good feeling about the place—we shouldn't go in there."
"I already have."
"Those trips you take in the middle of the night are bourbon runs?" I exclaim though I don't know why I sound so shocked—that is exactly the kind of thing Damon would do. And it's not as if I should be so… hurt by it—we are both adults; we can do whatever we want.
And he always comes home.
But I'm still worried that something might go belly-up when he's out.
That's the main issue I have with it, as alcohol doesn't seem like a necessity, but then there's that little part of me that wonders if he hasn't asked me to go because he thinks I'm too lame to have real fun.
It's irrational—and probably a bit hypocritical—because there have been times when I wanted to lock him out of the house. Peace and quiet and Damon can't co-exist. It's to be expected that we'd need a break from one another once in a while, but I've grown way too fond of him to not care if he left and never came back.
"Not all the time—I've stopped in here once or twice. It's on the way to the hospital."
That's not what I was anticipating… "Why do you need to go to the hospital? Are you okay?"
"Is that you saying you care?"
"No," I say quickly, tilting my chin up in defiance.
He shrugs as if my response meant nothing to him one way or the other. "Fine… I guess you don't want to know why, then."
Damon begins to walk away, hands tucked inside the pockets of his black jeans.
"Wait," I call after him, jogging to catch up. "I do care, okay? I just don't want you to hold it over my head."
"Bonster, I'm hurt," he sounds like an old woman clutching her pearls. "Do you really think I'm the kind of man that would stoop to blackmail?"
I shoot him a dirty look.
"… I was getting medical supplies—band-aids and antibiotics. You know, in case of that emergency you're always bitching about. You know, the one that never actually happens."
Oh. That's a reasonable explanation. I feel embarrassed by my strong reaction now. "Right… sorry."
"It's okay," he pats my head condescendingly. "I'm sure you'll find a way to make it up to me."
"Probably not," I quip, moving past him and walking straight into the music store.
The focal point of the store's layout is the rows upon rows of CDs in the center of the room. I choose to go down the first aisle—the one with a huge banner signaling that albums by artists A through E could be found here.
I hear the bell on the door ring, and I know without looking that Damon has come inside. Who else would it be? So, I continue thumbing through the CDs until the sound of static booms through the speaker system.
I'm startled, and I nearly drop the case I'd been examining. Across the room, I watch as Damon fiddles with the CD player located behind the cash register. A tune with an upbeat, rock 'n roll tempo blares overhead.
"Damon, you shouldn't be touching all of this stuff. What if something breaks?"
"Then I'll just use one of those," he points to the display of radios, and stereos behind me. Damon regards me with an amused expression, eyes glittering mischievously. "Have some fun, Bon Bon—it won't kill you."
"It's not the fun I'm worried about," I remind him sternly.
"So? There's no point in being so paranoid and uptight—it's just me and you here—" he holds his arms up, stretching them out as if he has picked up the entire universe and dropped it at my feet. "Embrace it."
He grabs me by the hands and pulls me close.
"You know that's a loaded statement."
"Yeah, but if you keep stressing the fuck out over every little noise, you'll die of a heart attack before whatever monster you've dreamt about comes and gets you."
The validity of his words isn't lost on me, but how did he know about my strange dreams?
"You talk in your sleep," he says before I can ask. "Oh, you also snore. And drool."
"No, I don't."
"Okay…" he pauses very deliberately. "But you do."
"Shut up," I snap.
"Only if you dance with me," he presses, and it's like he knows he's won before I officially throw in the towel.
"Fine," I grumble. "I'm only going to humor you because I'd do just about anything to shut you up."
He smirks. "Remind me to up the ante the next time we negotiate."
"I'm pretty sure this is extortion."
"Or fate… this song was made for you," he puts his finger to my lips, urging me to listen to the song's lyrics. "The Spin Doctors—Little Miss Never Wrong."
"Ha, ha, ha—how clever of you… not."
Instead of trying to provoke me, he wraps his arms around my waist. We sway back and forth for a few beats, before he twirls me under his arm, dipping me so I'm staring straight up at the ceiling.
At some point (and I'm not entirely sure when my mood changed, resistance melting off of me), I let go, and I find myself doing all types of tricks. Cartwheels, spins, the moonwalk. And it's so fun, almost freeing in a way—like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
It becomes clear, while Damon is light on his feet, that I'm the better dancer. "I didn't know you had it in you, Bon."
That sounds very much like a double entendre, but I go right by it and answer him honestly. "Neither did I."
"You're full of surprises, aren't you?"
"Only because I can't remember anything."
He grins at me. "I can't argue with that."
The song comes to a close, the second track blending into the outro seamlessly. Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. Instead of the fancy footwork, I watch Damon as he plays the air guitar.
And rather than feeling annoyed by his blasé attitude, I find it to be endearing.
~~X~~
After grabbing a few CDs to bring home with me, I perch myself atop one of the large speakers cattycorner to where Damon is dancing and singing along to the song with perfect timing. He doesn't even miss a lyric—I've been reading the insert inside the album as it plays.
I've got to give him credit because I would've bungled every line of the song if I were just going off what I heard.
About an hour later, Damon is lying on the floor directly beside where I'm sitting.
He proclaimed that he is now exhausted and "collapsed" onto the floor, despite my warning about us having tracked in dirt and germs from the outside. But when he snorted at me derisively, telling me to take a good look around, I saw that everything is practically brand-new.
None of the CD cases look like they've been touched by anyone besides Damon and me—there aren't any smudges or fingerprints marring the plastic. The parts of the floor that are tiled are spotless; freshly buffed, like no one has walked on them since before they finished stocking the shelves. And the portion that is carpeted rivals the fluffiness of the one that covers the upstairs hallway at home.
Come to think of it, even the sidewalks and roads are perfect, the paint marking of crosswalks bright, the pavement free of cracks or potholes. Every flower bed around town is perfect, even though there is no one around that's tending to them. The grassy areas (yards, the park, and the cemetery) never seem to grow longer or brown from the lack of rain.
"Damon?"
"Yes?" he tilts his head upward.
"This is… nice."
"I was right."
I slide off the speaker, tucking my legs under me, as I sink to the ground. I lean over Damon, glaring at his upside-down face. "The appropriate response would be, 'thank you, Bonnie.'"
"I don't do 'appropriate,' Bennett. We've been stuck together for weeks and you haven't figured that out yet?"
"It's impossible not to," I tell him, poking him in the ribs. "You're just lucky you can cook."
"Thank God for small miracles."
"Right?"
"… Bennett?"
"Yes?"
"… you haven't reached your fun limit, have you?"
"Hey! I find that offensive—I spent a total of eight songs dancing with you!"
"Okay," he begins, propping himself up so our noses are touching. "Head bobbing isn't the same as dancing and I just wanted to know if you wanted to take a walk with me after dinner."
"To the hospital?" I wrinkle my nose. That doesn't sound entertaining at all. "I don't want to fight over whether or not we should steal bedpans."
"There's several labs' worth of useful stuff and you think I'd go for a bedpan? Don't answer that—and no, somewhere else."
I regard him skeptically. "Where?"
"It's a secret," he says devilishly.
I pretend to give it a moment of consideration. "Hm… no."
"You'll have fun. And I'll bring the good bourbon with us, I'll even share it." He bats his eyelashes at me, in the way that I'm sure has made many girls swoon.
Not me—Damon and surprises? They shouldn't be used in the same sentence. "You can do better than that."
"… Fine, will you please accompany me on a late-night stroll, Bon Bon?"
"That depends… what are you making for dinner?"
"Not pancakes," Damon assures me. "I was thinking tacos."
"Well, I'm in then—you used the magic word."
"Please?"
"No," I say with a chuckle. "Tacos."
