"Ready to come out? Face the world?" Caroline's perfectly yellow, perfectly bouncy head of curls rounded the corner. "Feeling better?"
"Yes," Bonnie lied. She wasn't. "Are the crows gone, though?" she asked hopefully. She hadn't ventured out of her house for days. She'd reached as far as the front door but the hundred or so crows on the banister had been enough to deter her.
Caroline frowned and smiled at the same time – a trick she'd become very good at. Useful for those 'Sad that your boyfriend's a vampire now, but good to see that your still alive' situations. "So Jeremy wanted to know if you'd meet him at the Grille later." Which didn't answer Bonnie's question one way or the other so she assumed that yes, the crows were still there.
"Uhh…" she groaned and threw herself back into the tumble of blankets and feather soft pillows. She almost missed being on the other side.
"Come on," Caroline plopped down on the side of the bed, "He really needs that ring, and I know helping us vamps out is not your style but… he's your boyfriend, gotta count for something."
"How the hell, Caroline?" she groaned. "How does one wind up with a vampire boyfriend? You remember how this entire Jeremy situation started? It was to get away from the supernatural bullshit and be normal. Now I'm supposed to make a magic ring so my boyfriend doesn't turn to ash in the sunlight? How the hell?"
Caroline shook her head, her golden pretty porcelain head. "It's a good thing I think, because the alternative was pure death. Me and Tyler survived because of that spell you did, the whole guardians of Mystic Falls thing, but Jeremy would have flat out died."
Why are we even talking about Jeremy? "I have to move…"
"You can't move, Bonnie. A – it costs more than you think, and B… well, really, there's just the financial aspect… And then, me. Elena. You can't leave us. Your dad…"
"Fine," she pulled a pillow over her face. "Fine. No moving to Russia."
"A lot of work in the sex trade industry over there, I hear."
"It'll help with the rent."
"Then there's Damon."
Bonnie flinched at the sound of the name. Just the first syllable, and she'd gone plank stiff. "What about Damon?"
"He popped up at Alaric's."
"Alaric… the vampire hunter who got turned into a vampire." It sounded even less real out loud.
"Yeah… He was contaminating Alaric's liquor supply with his blood. And Jeremy somehow was drinking from Alaric's stash…"
"And now they're both vampires." Of course, they were vampires. Of course.
"Yup."
Her head sagged. "And you too. Is Damon going to turn everybody I care about into a vampire? I half expect to see my dad chumping down on the mailman."
"Mm, mailman." Caroline licked her lips. "We do love a good mailman in the morning to start the day right."
"Come on," Bonnie ruffled her friend's hair playfully. "I didn't mean that. It's just… dammit, I so totally completely hate Damon!"
Caroline pulled her legs up underneath her, and bounced, perky as hell, "Gimme the deets my peeps. What happened? The last thing I know is that you got this split personality problem with this super horny witch and you were sucking on Damon like all the time. Then he goes to England for the sword. You bleed Stefan dry, knock him out, burn the boarding house down and disappear. Then you get brought back here by some Brit right as rain and Damon comes back all 'He Walks with Darkness'. Whassup with dat? And who was the Brit? He was super hot, like Klaus times ten, and you were covered in blood, like drenched, and I was like – oo, you're entirely suspicious – but then, he was so ultra hot I was like – what's his name? He said he'd pay me a hundred dollars to lick the blood off you, which I thought was gross, but the way he said it–"
Right. "Ponytail?"
"Didn't notice. He just popped up for a second. I was distracted by the blood," she gave her trademark, airhead giggle, "Vampire, remember?"
"Tweed suit?"
"Didn't notice."
"What did you notice?"
"Just the accent, really. The – 'hello love' – super hot."
Bonnie sighed, not really feeling to be a killjoy bubble burster… "Remember getting your throat slit for Lucy's voodoo spell? Yeah that was to summon him. He's a demon. Jaxxon."
"Jaxxon?"
"Jaxxon."
"Uhh…." Caroline through herself back next to Bonnie. "Why are all the hot guys evil?"
"What happened to Tyler?"
"After he thawed out, you mean?"
"…Yeah."
"Well, Klaus killed his mom… so he had… orphan business to see to, I guess. Haven't seen him since… Didn't even get an invitation to the funeral."
"It was probably a closed-casket thing."
"That would so totally suck. I mean, what's the benefit of dying young if you wind up in a closed casket anyway? By the way, my mom's dead too," and she flipped her hair over her shoulder. "I was kinda bummed about it, but I'm a vampire, she was human. She was always going to die, so I'm trying to look at it in a practical way."
Bonnie sighed. She wished she was back in Witch country, holding hands in a guidance circle.
Klaus. She still had to kill Klaus.
By the way, my mom's dead too. Nobody should have to say that. "What's up with Elena?"
"Yeah… Let's talk about Damon instead," the vampire squared on her, excited like if her mother hadn't been murdered by a psychotic hybrid. "I want details. What happened? Sex? Did sex happen? You let Damon sign your V-card? Gave him a taste of the ol' cherry ice-cream?"
"What?" Some spit went down her windpipe.
"You let him deflower your rose garden?"
"Caroline!"
"You gave him a sample of Bonnie Butterscotch?"
She swung a pillow. "Caroline!"
"Come on! Details – Tongue fuck? Finger fuck? Standing up? Sitting down? Missionary? Doggy? Upside down cow-girl? Soixante-neuf Euro style?"
"The first four?"
Caroline froze in space and time. Her hair stopped, her breathing stopped, the sound at the tip of her tongue stopped. Like a whisper "What?"
Be brave, she commanded herself. If there was anybody in the world she could talk to about having sex with Damon, it would be Caroline. For a multitude of reasons. "First time in a bathroom–"
"First time?" Caroline's eyes widened. "How many times did you?"
"Three? Or four depending on how you count it–"
"By the total number of orgasms, Bonnie! How many times? How many–"
"Six?" She really wasn't sure. "Seven?" She hadn't been keeping track. "You know how it is with Damon when he–"
"Noooo!" Caroline covered her ears and screamed. "My God! Bonnie! It's Damon! What did you do?"
"It was in Klaus' apartment and–"
"Oh. My. God. You did a Damon-Klaus Sandwich. A manwich. Eww… And totally hot at the same time. Who's better? Damon? Klaus? Damon. Damon, right?"
"Didn't do a threesome, Caroline."
"Damon's not the sharing type… "
"It was all end-of-the-world dramatics." Everything with Damon was dramatic. And traumatic. "Totally meaningless. Everything's going to go back to normal in a couple of days."
Caroline slumped. "Used and abused on the Damon wheel… I know how it feels. Just a bed-warmer on his grand quest for the fair Elena. Or the not so fair, kinda swarthy Elena. You know what I mean."
Bonnie did.
She'd been coming up with a plan. Whatever happened in Witchy Tree-Hugger Land was going to stay right fucking there. Technically – biologically – speaking, she was still a fucking virgin. Fantasy mind-fucks and interdimensional magic-realm fucks didn't count. Damon had killed all the witnesses, anyway. She'd come clean to Caroline, but Caroline didn't matter. She wouldn't tell a soul. The two of them could probably form a support group or something. The 'If You've Spread Your Legs For Damon And Gotten Jilted In Favour Of Elena' support group. Totally anonymous.
Walk with a brown bag to put over your face. Meetings Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays – basically every day of the week to accommodate the numbers. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Special hotline available in case you get the urge to save face via suicide.
"What happened?" Caroline continued. "Were you drunk?"
Drunk on Damon. "Kinda. When you have Klaus breathing down your neck, you grab at anything."
"And what happened after?"
"This is after."
"Whoa… No closure whatsoever?" then she nodded, like if some kind of sage wisdom had floated down to her. "That's why the crows are outside, and why he was all holed up at Alaric's… Aww… This is cute."
"What's cute?"
"The two of you! This prolonged infatuation phase. He's–"
"Save it, Caroline. Don't try to sell me Damon. You should know better."
"I'm not selling anything you didn't already buy!" she flipped her hair over her shoulder again.
Advice from Cosmo in 5, 4, 3, 2…
"You totally have to make a play."
"Make a play?" She flicked some dirt out from under her fingernails, which reminded her that maybe she should bathe. According to how the rest of the day went, how the mood struck her.
Caroline's face was stern, which was rare. "Make a move! You're actually in the lead now, but you have to step up your game or you'll lose."
How many days had it been since she'd had a bath? Three perhaps. There was something unsettling in taking off her clothes with the crows, (Damon) right outside. Of course, she could shower in herclothes, but that would not be right. "What lead? What game?"
"The Beat Elena game."
"I don't play that, Caroline. I'm not a huge fan of those "We're friends but I secretly envy you your life" kinda games." Elena is always 'it', anyway.
"Oh come on." The girl pouted. "It's not one of those."
"It's not?"
"It's more like a 'I deserve a badass boyfriend too, so back to fuck off my man, bitch' kinda game."
"Problem with that is… he's not my man, Caroline. He's been waving the Elena flag since he moved into town. Things got a little confused or whatever," she shrugged and tried to sniff herself. Three days without a bath would carry a scent, she thought. Except it was winter, and she'd read that people in Europe in the olden, golden days could go a week without a scrub. She didn't smell, though. "Mistakes happened, Caroline. What's done is done. I have to get back to normal. I'd have to be drunk and brain-dead to actually try to start some kind of relationship with Damon just because we fake-hooked up."
"What do you mean fake?"
She didn't know how she meant it. How does one explain astral plains of existence to Caroline? "Complicated."
"How complicated?"
"Remember when I was practising that dream spell? And I came into your dream and helped you study for that biology test?"
"And I got a B… minus. Thanks."
"Well it was something like that."
"You went into Damon's dream and had sex with him."
If only it was as simple as that. There would be nothing to explain away. "Something like, except it was a community dream. The hundred dead ancestors, Grams, everybody. And Damon somehow ended up there, and we did the do, and then he went all bloodlust homicidal and killed everybody. He killed my dead grams, Caroline, like five seconds after we did it. He killed Grams twice."
Lines started to appear around Caroline eyes, as she struggled to follow. "What was Grams doing there, watching?"
"Kinda. And she was shouting and screaming and trying to do a spell on him… and… and I'm looking at her while Damon's in me, and it all… went to hell from there…"
"But you kinda like him." That was Caroline's conclusion.
"No."
"Come on! Bonnie! You've been saving it up since kindergarten, and magic realm or no magic realm, you wouldn't just do it if you didn't have some kinda… affection for him."
"Affection?" Bonnie scoffed. The only time she ever used that word was when she was signing Christmas and Easter cards to relatives whose face she had forgotten. With much affection, Bonnie. Damon wasn't like that. Her thing with Damon was at least more real than that. "Affection for Damon? Please. He's on my to-kill list with Klaus. He's evil, Caroline, regardless of what he says. We're talking about the vampire who compelled you the day after he showed up in town. The vampire who broke Jeremy's neck. And Alaric's. And he tried to kill me when I didn't open the tomb. Which part of that should I have affection for? And," more than anything else, "And this is the same "live–and-die-for-Elena" Damon. The "let's-sacrifice-Bonnie-to-save-Elena" Damon. If they still had bonfires in Mystic Falls he'd tie me to the stake himself, just to be the crying shoulder for Elena."
"Oohh… tied to a stake… You should write that down. Bedroom ideas…"
It actually would be kind of… exciting… being tied up and doing it with Damon, but that was beside the point. "Caroline… I bet you that right now that in this very moment he's over at Elena's."
Caroline's eyes looked away, a subconscious frown flickered over her face. "That's just because you burnt his house down. He has nowhere else to go. And besides, Elena's not there. Stefan's compelled to kill her, so she's hiding out at the lake house with Matt."
Of course. One thing about Caroline, she was good at summarisations. Concise. Anybody else would have taken half a day to get all that across.
"He's living with Elena." Of course. Three days later and he was living with her. Bitch. Both of them.
"What if I can prove for a fact that he's super into you?"
"He was super in me, Caroline."
"No need to be crude. Word from Alaric is that our dear friend Damon is veritably inconsolable."
As if. "Inconsolable? He's in her house! He killed my grandmother. Again!"
"Doesn't count."
"You can't say–"
"Killing dead people doesn't count. Throw that out the window. If he's into you, and you're into him, why not?"
"Me and Damon would be like Red Riding Hood and the wolf hooking up." Or worse, because she was smarter than Red Riding Hood. And she had magic. She really, really ought to know better; infinite shame and ignominy upon her if she didn't.
Caroline beamed, "Kinky. You see yourself going full throttle in the costume department? Because I have a cape I can lend you."
"Can you be serious?"
"Seriously, why not? Let's be realistic. Pros and Cons. I'll go first. Pro – he's uber-hot."
"Con – he's a vampire."
"Pro – 5 star sex."
"Con – he had sex with everybody else in Mystic Falls except Elena who's on his to do list."
"Pro – sense of humour."
"Con – evil."
"Pro – will be that good looking for all time. Permanent eye-candy."
"Con – I'll look like a cougar when I get older. Like Matt's mom."
"Super eww. Pro – you won't have to get older. He'd change you."
"Con – he'd change me. I don't want to be a vampire. No offense, and it's not even about the blood drinking. If I die and I turn, that's cool, but I don't want to be killed."
Caroline paused, seeming for a moment to be thoughtful, then, "Pro – 5 star sex."
"You said that already."
"Well, I don't know why you two can't have a physical thing even if you don't heart each other. He can go on Elena-lusting. You can keep making smoochy-face with Elena's kid brother, and every now and again, the two of you can accidentally go in to the same restroom stall and accidentally have sex. Oh, I got one! Pro – he's super into you and is totally hot and will ROCK YOUR WORLD!"
"Con – he's super, super into ELENA. Obsessed! And I refuse to play back up."
"Then don't!"
"I'm not!"
"No! What you're doing is giving up. Imagine you're in fifthteenth century England and you have to hook up with Mr Darcy or get evicted."
Shoot me now… "That wasn't fifteenth century."
"Whenever. Point is Damon's your Mr Darcy, and Elena is Bingley's annoying sister. We're at the part of the movie where you have to go trekking through the mud."
"What?"
"Time to get dirty. Time for the catfight. Anything goes. Hair-pulling. Eye-gouging. Back-stabbing. Flat out murder…"
"Murder. You want me to kill Elena. Are you serious?"
"Not kill kill. Just–"
"Just what?"
"Maim?"
The sun was setting, and if she really was going to spell a ring for Jeremy, she'd have to get started on it pretty soon. And it would be fun to go to the Grille. Karaoke night was always easy fun. She still had that new pair of jeans she'd bought so long ago… She'd wear that with the cashmere… No, the white tube… "Can we not talk about this anymore?" Her head hurt.
"What, Pride and Prejudice?"
"Damon. Can we not talk about him?" She made the pronoun resonate. Him.
"I don't see how. You're my number 1 BFF, and you're hot for the local bad boy… who's a homicidal vampire and incidentally my maker in an indirect way… who I also slept with… Of course we have to talk about it."
"Fine. You do the talking." She pulled out her grimoire from under her pillow. After letting Mags rearrange her brain, she really didn't need to check with it. She could bring a lot of spells to mind easily, but feeling the old leather binding was soothing, somehow. "What do you have to add? Say your piece"
"Okay… for instance, when Alaric called, I kinda told him to tell Damon that you'd be at the Grille tonight…"
Fuck. "Caroline!"
"What? You have to go anyway to give Jeremy his day-ring. Damon needs a new one too, by the way, so you can make one for him…propose…"
"I'm only making one for Jeremy! Damon can kiss my ass! Or get Elena to make one!"
"Ooh?" Caroline singsonged. "Jealous? Damon and Bonnie sitting in a tree, K-i-s-s-i-n-g. First comes–"
Bonnie levelled an aneurysm at the girl before she could finish. Nothing too potent. Just a little zap.
"Bonnie!"
"Caroline!"
"Witch bitch!"
"Vampire bitch!"
"Hottest vampire bitch ever, and you're the hottest witch bitch ever. Say it - I'm the hottest witch bitch ever!"