"Look at him," the voice whispered softly.
Bonnie sighed. It had not taken long to get accustomed to it, that dry, cracking, hoarse voice that came vaguely from somewhere in the back half of her head. It was like having an extra, louder, evil conscience. Like how it would be if the little red devil on her shoulder was real and if it had turned into a talking worm and climbed into her ear. Just as annoying, just as relentless, just as repugnant, and just as useful. She looked up and found the object of Mags' interest. Damon.
Of course.
He was sitting on the windowsill, with his feet bare, one pressed against the glass and the other dangling loose and lazy. The sun was shining in on him, brightly. It shone off his hair, off his skin, made his lips seem almost redder, made his eyes seem…
"He has nice eyes. I'd confess that." She sighed again and refocused her attention on the beat-up yellow paged notebook. Mags' notebook, found in the bottom of a box in the least used corner of the Salvatore library. Damon had kept the witches things. Most of them, he'd boxed. The rest, he'd buried. Or so Mags suspected. Besides her chain of talismanic diamonds, there was an assorted array of witchy paraphernalia lying around unused somewhere: a ring, a ruby, a bag of bones she'd collected from various animals and you know… general knick-knacks. She was copying over spells from the old thing, typing them up on her laptop. Then… Well, then she was going to put it on her phone. File them under notes. Stupid in theory, but practical. What if someday, she was in the mall and Elena was back at her house and under attack? She'd have to teleport, right? No time for a clunky grimoire…
"He's perfect."
Bonnie didn't respond to that. She thought she'd seen it all when it came to unhealthy relationships. 8 hours a day in the Salvatore house had exposed her to all different forms of twisted. Chief among them the on-going love square with Katherine, Elena and the two vampires. She herself had ended up in a love square, disregarding the fact that two of its members were dead. Jeremy, the safest of all safes, the straight guy of any romantic comedy, was haunted by his two dead girlfriends. Both of them former vampires. Anna, she'd had a hand in killing, and Vicki… Well, the two of them had never been friends, really. Vicki being a stoner and a borderline prostitute, despite the fact that at one point in time she and Elena had been destined to be sisters-in-law…
But Mags took the cake.
It was beyond her ability to understand how any self-respecting woman could be so utterly pitiful. It was solid fact that Damon had throttled her to death with her necklace while they were… being intimate. It was solid fact that even while they'd both been alive and kicking, (she alive, him undead ), their relationship hadn't been based on open trust, and strong mutual affection. The picture she was getting was less Mags Homemaker and more Mags Dominatrix. She'd had what could be called a working contract with Damon where he'd supply the blood she needed to keep herself at her optimal power and she was to provide the know-how to emancipate Katherine, the lady of love and beauty. Along the way, Mags had gotten side-tracked. Sloppy. She'd started the collaboration based on a need for the blood and lost herself horribly in the Damon. The Damon. How? Who knew, but Damon had worked a number on the powerful woman. Damon, lethal even to succubi. DEspire being strong on the blood of countless werewolves and vampires, Damon had slimed his way through the woman's defences and reduced her to a phantom voice in a necklace.
He was drinking something. Wine… No not wine. Why would she ever think wine? Blood. Out of a wine glass with a straw. So Damon. He was watching something in the sky, a cloud or something, the book in his lap forgotten and threatening to topple down to the ground. He had his fingers on the paper, resting ever so lightly and Bonnie wondered if the fingers would rest so lightly on her skin…
"Stop it! I told you to stop doing that!"
Bonnie sucked in a mouthful of air and shook her head clear of the Damon fog. She would have to be careful. The fantasies were subtler now. Barely noticeable really, until that warmth started to blossom… down there. Then she'd snap out of it. Her time for crushing on a vampire had come and gone. There'd been a brief infatuation type thing with Stefan, but that had died off pretty fast. What, with his eternal, unending, stalkerish love for Elena. And even that had been a clean, wholsesome kind of infatuation, not so much lusting and gyrating and…
She would have to be careful. Two nights in a row now she'd waken up with her fingers… down there… and moaning Damon's name into her was not to be trusted. Her obsession with Damon had become paramount at that point where she'd died in his arms, his lips still on hers, his thing still inside of her … You'd think she'd hold a grudge over that. And she did, in a small, trivial kinda way. She still wanted sex with him, just angrier sex.
"He's the perfect specimen," Mags pressed.
"Prefect specimen for what?" Bonnie allowed, frowning down at the faint, faint, writing, and trying to decide if a letter was an e or a c. "I'm not doing the blood-drinking make-out thing again. I'm serious."
"Admit it; you're stronger with the blood. The spells are easier now, aren't they? Easier to memorise? Easier to get right? It's becoming second nature to you."
"It helps, yes. But I'm not doing that again."
"You shouldn't be afraid of him."
Ha! Bonnie snorted out an ungainly laugh. Damon didn't move. Whatever it was that had caught his attention out the window held him still. Thankfully. "I'm not afraid of him! He's like… He's like… I just don't like him!"
"Impossible."
"What's impossible? That I'm immune to his eyebrow thing, and the smirk, and the eyes, and the body, and the fingers, and the toes, and the belly hair and the V-line, and the abs, and the fingertips… Yes, I have the list memorised and I'm immune to everything on it."
"Impossible."
"It's impossible to not be in love with Damon Salvatore?"
Mags scoffed. Somehow effectively, even without a facial expression. "Not love, child. Damon's not the man you fall in love with. He's been on this planet for near two centuries and up until now no one's come out to claim owner's rights on him. What's that tell you? He's like a library book – borrow it, sleep on it, rip out some pages and hand it back in before you have to pay the fine."
"What happens when you're overdue? Get choked to death?"
That shut her up for a while and gave Bonnie the chance to concentrate. Just a little chance. Five minutes later Mags was back again. She wasn't normally so hard to subdue, but Damon's proximity had her all… hot and antsy.
"He's so easy to manipulate, Bonnie. He's a puppet begging for someone to pull his strings. Just look at him. Forget black cats, he's the perfect familiar. Don't think of him as a lover. Humans are lovers. Things like him… There just meant to be used by people like us. Use him!"
"For what?" He wasn't looking particularly useful right then, just staring out the window like the brain-dead jerkass she knew he was. Him? Easily manipulated? By Katherine, Elena and other unknown clones of Katherine, maybe. Not by her. Their fingers-crossed truce was as good as they'd get. He was helpful enough with gathering the items. Who else in the group was willing to break in the local zoo and cut out the tongue of a tiger? Or dig around in a cobra to find a heart? He'd gotten the ash. In two hours he'd be on a plane to Belfast to gouge out someone's eye. And while he was there, he'd cut off someone's ring-finger too. And he'd more or less volunteered to make the first go at tackling Elijah for the sword. Of course, he was only so helpful because of his vested interest in seeing Klaus dead… Still, a welcome reprise from Jeremy and Elena and Caroline and Tyler… And he hadn't made too much of a joke of her attacking him that night, either. There'd been two winks, some heavy smirking, some suggestive language and a half kiss – he'd been a relative gentleman about it. "I want to try the teleporting spell."
"You need blood for that. That's black magic through and through."
"Why, though? It's not like I want to teleport to hell."
"I shrug my shoulders."
God, she wanted the blood! Not for the taste of it, or the sick thrill of actually sucking it out. Just the strength in in. That's all. The power. 100 dead witches were all fine and good, but she was still the underdog. Maddox had her beat for one thing, and Klaus had another one up his sleeve. She needed more. She needed Mags. And she needed vampire blood. "How much blood?"
"Enough."
"Can't I drink it from a glass or something?"
"I've never done otherwise."
"I'm shocked."
"I never had fangs."
"Oh."
"But I like how you improvised. A telekinetic crushing of the windpipe and a French kiss. Wished I'd thought of that."
"You did. That was all you."
"Wished I'd thought of it while I was still alive and had my own tongue."
"Oh. But anyhow, Vampire blood works any way I take it, right?"
"More or less."
"Regardless of who the vampire is, right? I mean, I can get the blood from Stefan, can't I? I can explain the situation to Stefan, and he'll fill out a bag. He'll be more understanding than Damon, and I won't have to deal with your weird unresolved… thing."
"Stefan?"
"The good brother. He's better."
"He's not–"
"He's not Damon, but he's better." Bonnie sighed, then grinned. The answer had been staring her right in the face. Chucking the chain out a moving car would be the easiest way to deal with Mags and her Damon issue. But that way she'd be missing out on a golden opportunity. She was so close to true blue power she could feel it and smell it.
"Damon smells like the Egyptian cotton sheets he sleeps in…"
"Shut up!"
And Stefan would be easier to deal with. Definitely. He'd be like – sure, no problem Bonnie. Anytime. Stefan was the good one. Stefan was the better one. "Damon…"
He didn't respond, lost in his own world.
If at first you don't succeed… "Damon?"
"Hm?" He slid off the windowsill and drifted across the room to her, the lazy, redolent pout of his lips almost… "What does the witch want with me?"
"I…" She pushed the notebook off her phone and held it up for him. "New phone," she beamed, grinned as innocently as she could manage. It was. Her first iPhone. A lot of nice Apps… Touchscreen… "I haven't had a chance yet to transfer my contacts. Can you give me Stefan's number? I need to ask him something."
"Sure!" he nodded and plucked the phone out of her grasp. Then he hurled it to the wall.
It shattered.
He bit his bottom lip. "Damn butterfingers."
AN: YAY! Fan fic writing is fun. If I write a thousand more, I'll make a portfolio and apply to CW and destroy Delena. Joke. I was team Delena till I read the books and then I got converted in the bath-tub scene and the next scene with Matt? (Mutt). Then it was Bamon forever. Or Steffonnie - They were so cute in S1.