For his part, Stefan was finding the morning's little get-together quite enlightening. With all of the various dramas in the last year keeping Stefan away from home most of the last year he had failed to notice exactly how close Bonnie and Damon had gotten. Watching Damon and Bonnie laugh, finish each other's sentences and eat from each other's plates was amusing, if unexpected. Watching them occasionally eat off one another's plates and feed each other bits of this and that was honestly kind of shocking. They, however had failed to give any indication they were acting unusual so Stefan politely failed to comment.

Bonnie had piled her food with mostly healthy fare, fresh fruit, whole wheat toast, some eggs. Damon, on the other hand, had a plate full of sticky, sweet food, with some nice greasy food to round it out. French toast with syrup, pancakes with whipped cream, bacon, sausage, the works. Damon wasn't generally much for eating, but he was slowly savoring his breakfast with impressive relish. Very quickly Bonnie's attention was shifted from her responsible and well-rounded breakfast to the paradise on Damon's plate. As Damon's pleased purring gave way to an occasional moan, Stefan was struggling to hang onto his laughter.

"Are you enjoying your breakfast, brother?" Stefan asked in a tone that was strained by his effort not to laugh out loud.

Damon paused his very impressive taunting of Bonnie to grant Stefan the gift of his attention. "Oh, it's delicious. Normally I wouldn't indulge but," he returned his attention to Bonnie, "you have to give in to some of the pleasures in life, don't you?"

Bonnie knew that she was not immortal and she would doubtless regret having a mountain of sugar and grease for breakfast, but her resolve was steadily crumbling. Damon just looked like he was having so much fun and even with the distant awareness he was likely teasing her on purpose at the back of her mind, she was still falling for it. "Damon, I'm going to have to run so much to work this off if I give in."

Damon just smiled, stole a strawberry from her plate, dipped it in whipped cream and waved it in front of her mouth. "Or you can do no such thing," he whispered with a saucy waggle of his eyebrows. "I won't tell a soul."

There was no way any woman would manage to resist Damon when he was doing a full court press, and Bonnie was but a mere mortal. She ate that fresh strawberry right out of his hands and licked the whipped cream off his fingers. Damon laughed and proceeded to repeat the process. For the fifth time they had entirely forgotten Stefan was also at the table, not that he was keeping count.

Stefan had no interest in finding out how far that would carry on if he didn't make his presence known, so he cleared his throat and cast about for something to say. "So…it's been awhile since we were all in one place. How have you two been?"

Damon and Bonnie both shrugged. "We're alive," started Bonnie. "And that is better than the alternative," Damon finished.

Stefan chuckled at that bittersweet sentiment. "I hope at some point we settle enough things that surviving isn't as good at it gets for us."

Bonnie looked pointedly at Damon's French toast and then up at his face. "Would you just like my plate, Miss Bennett?" he asked in an exaggeratedly polite tone. She shook her head gently and smiled at him and he took the cue to give her another bite. Just one, because she was absolutely not going to gorge herself. How much Bonnie was enjoying doing just that registered clearly on her face.

"Well," she started, "as long as you have decent company even that isn't always so bad," Bonnie added thoughtfully. Damon opened his mouth like he was about to contradict her, so she rushed on. "Not that I have any intention of repeating the experience any time soon."

Stefan was quickly piecing together what had transpired between them in his absence, but he was still a bit curious what their day to day was like. "Do you two usually start the day with bourbon, or was today a special occasion?" he asked.

"Today was a special occasion," they answered in unison.

Stefan laughed and shook his head. "Dare I ask what the special occasion was?"

Bonnie answered with a dramatic eyeroll that was nearly upstaged by the sigh that followed. "Damon was in a mood and he generally prefers not to drink alone."

Stefan felt awfully stupid for even asking that question. They had been having such a cozy time he forgot the reason he had come to begin with. "I'm pretty sure I was the cause of that," he said as the beginnings of a proper brood settled across his handsome features.

Bonnie knew very well that they were heading towards disaster right from that moment. "I think we've been doing just fine not discussing that all morning, wouldn't you gentlemen say?" Bonnie, Damon and Stefan had all been performing a reasonable facsimile of people having a friendly meal. Bonnie and Stefan were certainly doing a better job at it than Damon, but that was to be expected. He focused most of his attention on Bonnie and paid just enough attention to Stefan that he could avoid an accusation of outright rudeness. That was a rather precarious balance and Stefan was officially tipping it.

Unfortunately for all parties involved, once Stefan was in the mood for a thorough flogging there was no stopping him. "I can certainly understand why that might be…a sensitive subject. Honestly, I've spent so much of these last months making a general wreck of my life that I wouldn't know where to start about any of it."

Damon could feel the tell-tale tickle of involuntary laughter at the back of his throat, but he held it at bay. Mostly. He did cough a little. "Please, Stefan, regale us with your absurdly detailed accounts of your many shameful shames. We can make it a drinking game."

Stefan glared. He did not appreciate Damon's mirth in the face of his earnestness.

Damon feigned innocent bewilderment. "What?" he asked. "We've fed the human, I'm sure she can keep up."

Bonnie squeezed her eyes shut and asked the spirits for patience. "Damon, don't." She gave Stefan a sympathetic look and patted his hand across the table. "There are worst things in the world than remorse."

That was enough to get Damon to entirely give up on keeping his composure and outright laugh. "Oh, you think that's what this is? Remorse?" He laughed a bit more. "I'll tell you what this is Bon," he continued with a wink and a fake smile.

"—And just what is it, Damon? I'm dying to know," Stefan spat with such fury that Bonnie's stomach dropped just a bit.

Damon was entirely unimpressed with his offended displeasure. "This is the part where you get all tortured and angsty. So fucking guilty and heartbroken. And it'll work on her."

Stefan shook his head in angsty confusion. "What will work on her? What are you talking about?"

"Bonnie's going to make you feel better for what you did to her. How could she do anything less?" Any traces of amusement completely vanished from Damon's hardening expression. "I mean, how could she do anything less? You're so sad and so eager to lay her bullshit at her feet. And she is such a nice girl."

Bonnie glared at that bit about her being a nice girl.

"Sorry Bon," he said grabbing her hand. "She's a nice woman, so she won't want to see you in pain. And fortunately for you, you won't have to be. Even without you doing a goddamned thing, you'll be absolved."

Stefan's offended honor brought him to a standing position with such speed and force he knocked his chair over. All that sudden motion caused Bonnie to flinch and subconsciously take Damon's hand for comfort, but Damon was not affected all. He had known from the beginning that eventually any conversation he had with Stefan would work its way to exactly this moment. A glance at the grandfather clock confirmed that he was right, almost to the minute. Moments like this he wished Ric was still his best friend so he could win that bet.

Damon took his free hand that Bonnie was not holding and raised his glass in a mocking toast. "You never disappoint, Brother. Here's the special occasion we were drinking for. Stefan's biannual 'make me feel better because I fucked you over' speech."

Bonnie was finding she was more affected than the previous evening's dustup than she had expected she would be. Normally Stefan's bullshit wouldn't be enough to cause more than a minor headache. But Stefan's anger was too reminiscent of her still-fresh close encounter with his worst half for her to deal with it placidly so soon. Her heart was pounding and she was finding herself starting to stare off into the middle distance.

Damon could hear her heartbeat pounding in his ears, and with his normal senses notice the increasing tension radiating from Bonnie. That was heightening his irritation in the direction of a full-blown rage, but he knew it was not the time to let his temper loose. Damon took a moment to focus on Bonnie and turned towards her and gently lifted her chin so she was looking at him. He gave her a little smile and squeezed her hand to help bring her to the present moment. With that matter settled, he turned to look at Stefan and addressed him with a deceptively calm tone. "We would appreciate it if you'd sit. Unless you were planning to leave, that is."

Stefan felt about an inch tall, so he might as well sit. "If you'd like me to leave…"

Damon rolled his eyes and heaved a beleaguered sigh. "What I would like, Brother, is for you to just pretend that when you hurt people it causes them pain. And that you care about their pain even half as much as you care about how people see you. Do you actually care that you could have hurt Bonnie, or just that you have yet again hurt your own feelings?"

Stefan knew he had earned that comment, so, with as much grace—and as little pouting—as he could manage, he sat back down. "I care that I could have hurt her," Stefan said. But his lack of eye contact cast that statement into doubt.

Damon narrowed his eyes sharply at Stefan, but continued to speak in a deliberately measured tone to avoid spooking Bonnie with another escalation. "Ordinarily I'd avoid speaking for Bonnie, but hopefully she will allow it right now," he started before pausing to meet Bonnie's eyes. She knew simply from a glance what he was about to say, so she nodded for him to continue. "You're here right now, as opposed to locked in our cellar or strewn across the yard because Bonnie proposed a friendship as a solution. If you can't manage to be civil unless we're all lying, that's fucking impossible. So, either do it or we're going to have to figure. Something. Else. Out."

Stefan involuntarily gulped at the way Damon said those last words. A cat definitely had his tongue and he couldn't quite make himself say anything. The tense silence was starting to stretch when urgent knocking interrupted their exchange. In their lives that could mean almost anything, so Damon took a defensive stance and Bonnie grabbed the nearest weapon. That left Stefan to answer the door.

Stefan cautiously approached the door and opened it. Initially he didn't see anyone at all, and that was not a good sign. Suddenly something heavy struck him in the chest, and before he could react he found himself with his arms full of Valerie. The fact that she approached the house invisibly and then promptly lost consciousness in his arms did not bode well.

Stefan picked her up and shouted over his shoulder to Damon and Bonnie. "It's Valerie! And she doesn't look great."

After depositing her on the couch, Stefan and Damon both went out front to see if she had been pursued or if anyone else was out there, while Bonnie heated up a cup of blood for Valerie. She set the cup down on the coffee table, sat down next to Valerie's prone form and folded her arms. When Damon and Stefan's quick survey found nothing, they came in. Bonnie was positively fuming at Damon and neither of them looked precisely surprised. It seems Stefan had missed yet another thing.