AN… this chapter is days after the last one. Bonnie's been slumming it in the wild hiding out while Damon was on his version of a wine tasting tour.
He appeared in a storm of shadow, crows, rain, blood and dragonflies. A unicorn bolted pass her and shot into the thick tangle of the jungle. A midget ran after it, followed by a flying cat. Bonnie froze.
So much for the Invisibility spell. He was looking right at her. Hey… you found me…
"What a coincidence!" he smiled in faux surprise. "A couple of birdies said you might be around these parts. Shame running into you though, while I'm so underdressed," he looked down at himself, his erect cock standing out, long and hard and red. "Apologies for my… state of arousal. But it couldn't be helped."
Of course it couldn't be helped. Perfectly natural. Bonnie remained statuesque. Not as if she hadn't seen a penis before. In the throes of confusion, she nodded. She'd been exposed to crazy Damon a handful of times, enough to know that he was missing a few marbles up top in a pathological way, but this version… She'd never seen this version before.
Sexy, caveman Damon, with a shadow of a beard on his cheeks. Even the buckets of rain couldn't dislodge the chunks of clotted blood caught up in the fibrous mesh of his hair. Blood was on his skin too, caked down like Plaster of Paris. His eyes had gone beyond their usual wild and were practically going staccato up and down and all over her. Everything about him had gone staccato. All his movements, his smile, his face, the interchange of frown and smile. Her eyes hurt just looking at him. Like some greek god out of a Hollywood movie, Caligula probably, he stood there, naked, basking in the shadow around him, watching her. "Damon?"
"Yes, my lover?"
Was he laughing at her?
Was he playing at some game?
"Are you drunk?"
"I've been… drinking. And I've drank a lot, but I don't feel particularly drunk." He flickered over to a tree and began to tandem walk up the trunk. Vertically up the trunk. He did a Michael Jackson moonwalk when he reached a branch, summersaulted, made three and a half rotations, landed on his toes and stuck his finger on his nose. "Could I do that if I was drunk?"
To be on the safe side she shook her head.
"Rain looks good on you," he enunciated, eyes devouring her, making her feel like a Double D girl in a wet t-shirt competition.
"Damon…" She moved her hand over her chest.
The crow in the tree above her cawed. Laughed. "Stop saying my name like that," he drawled darkly.
"Like what?"
"Like if I'm walking cancer." He stretched out a hand in front of him and flipped it over… "Is it the blood? Most of this is unicorn. And a couple witches. Hope they weren't your friends. Eventually, I'll have to kill everybody so I guess it doesn't really matter. Though I could probably leave your friends for last. You could make a list of their names, maybe…"
Bonnie took another step back.
"If you try to run from me again, I'll break your feet. One foot," he leered. "The left foot. Not badly. Probably just some toes, to make walking painful."
"You're not… Damon?"
He frowned. Or she thought he frowned. The blood and the stubble made it hard to tell. "Who do you want me to be?"
What?
"Because I don't have to be like this. I can change. I can be more like Stefan if you want. I'll still have to hunt real food, because I won't do that retarded as fuck vegan diet, but in most ways I can be Stefan. Easy. Like that –" He creased his forehead, "Which Stefan do you want? Ripper or Sourpuss, cause I've been doing a lot of ripping lately… And of course, you want Sourpuss Stefan… I can do that. I can be brooding…"
"Why…" she took a step closer to him, hand outstretched and pointing, "Why are you wearing a collar?" Property of Jaxxon, it read.
"Collar?" He felt the band around his neck. "Oh… Yeah… this. Didn't notice it. I had to sell my soul," he answered flippantly. "That's old news."
He had to sell his soul…
"To Jaxxon? Jaxxon the demon? Why would you do that?"
"To get him to save you. Your body. Klaus was going to kill you, so I–"
"Sold your soul? Are you crazy? Jaxxon's a demon! A bad one."
"He gave me a fair price, I thought. Your life, for a shoddy, useless…"
She regretted letting him close the space between them. Something about him was dangerous. His eyes had always been hypnotic, but now they were… she couldn't even look away. Compulsion? She was in danger of something other than his fangs and his speed and his strength and his strange, noisy, sharp-beaked birds. He was attacking her with some new power.
"Damon…" she didn't want to be cruel. Though, she'd give her right hand for a broomstick just to keep him back. As hard and as harsh as he was, he could be breakable and fragile too, like a mountain of jagged glass. "I'm a witch. And you're a vampire. You tried to kill me. We can't. We shouldn't even–"
"I know! I know…" he sank to the ground. Leaves and mud squelched under his knees. The rain came down on his face, soaking through his hair wonderfully. "I can change…"
Has he ever changed? He's dead. And frozen. "You can't change back to being alive, Damon."
"I'll pretend. I can pretend. If I feed enough, I can get close to body temperature. Look at how long I pretended with Liz, and she didn't know until Mason told her and–"
"I already know what you are!" she shouted over the storm even though he could hear her whispers.
"What am I?"
Sad. Kneeling, five feet away from her, so lost… so pliant, so soft… Hug him? Set him on fire? "You're a vampire."
"I love you."
"And you kill people."
"I never killed you. I love you."
"You killed human beings, Damon."
"Forget that."
"Forget that? How?"
"It's easy," he smiled, "Nobody else matters. They were all going to die anyway."
"Everybody's going to die at some point. Living people die, Damon."
"Not everybody. You won't."
"Eventually I'll die too. Everybody dies." A peal of thunder echoed her words.
"No. I'll change you," he whispered.
"I don't want to be a vampire."
"Why not? It's fun."
It's sad. "I want to get married someday. Marry a stockbroker, live in the suburbs, have three girls–"
He laughed, sincerely amused, "You–," his eyebrows furrowed, "You think I'd let you do something like that?" his lips curled into a snickering grin. "I'd kill your stockbroker and rip his foetus out of your womb."
"Damon…"
"Kidding," he smiled it away, like a boy lying to his mother. "I'd crash your wedding and make inappropriate toasts, but I wouldn't kill… Why stockbroker? Is money the issue? Because I've got money. We don't have to live in the boarding house with Stefan and Elena. I can by a house, in any suburb you like. "
"I don't want to live in a suburb with you, Damon! I–" she took a step back.
In half a second he had one of her ankles in his wrist. He squeezed. Felt the bone pop and heal…
She kicked him. Right in the chest. Hard.
Ahh…
Now that he thought about it, why in hell had he thrown a wish away on her? So she could kick him around?
That hadn't been smart.
"Super healing?" he asked, still propped against the tree that the force of her kick had pummelled him into. His chest hurt. "Super strong… You know, you've got me to thank for that, you know." He tensed as broken ribs healed. "You'll make one hell of a dominatrix, Bonnie."
The next thing she tried was an aneurysm.
It didn't register. "You're not the only one with fancy upgrades. I stopped feeling it about my fifth unicorn in. Witch Country's been good to me too. Try fire. You like fire."
She did try it.
It felt… like falling into a pit of Brazilian fire ants… as opposed to the normal feeling of being flayed and boiled alive in methylated spirit. Thank you, unicorns.
After a couple of minutes when he failed to go up in noxious fumes and ash, she let it go.
They stood staring at each other. Sizing up each other. Then he knelt.
"It's customary for the guy to kneel, right?"
"Do not propose to me, Damon."
He shrugged, "No ring, so this is more like a suggestion than a proposal." He passed his fingers across his own throat, bringing forth a dark red line of blood. "Bind yourself to me."
"What?"
"Drink. Drink of me…" Talk like a creepy vampire much? "Drink my blood, Bonnie."
"I don't want to."
"You have to. It'll make tracking you down that much easier."
"I don't want to be tracked. Why don't my feelings count?"
"Because they're changeable. You can change, every which way the wind blows, but I need this. I need you." He inched towards her. "I know I'm dead, but I still need things and I need you. If I was human, I'd court you with roses and picnics but I'm a vampire. I have to tempt you with darkness. I have to tempt you with lust and shadows, with the wild rains of summer storms."
"Damon–"
"Bonnie, please," he bit his bottom lip. "I'm down on my knees. Asking you, please…"
His eyes begged on his behalf. She'd never seen his eyes like that. She'd never seen him like that. Almost…
He slit his throat again as the first wound began to heal. "You'll be able to summon me. All you'd have to do is snap your fingers – perfect. Even if you don't love me right now, that's okay. Love doesn't have to be mutual. We can work off of mutual need. I'll just love you extra to make up the slack, and you'll come around to it after some time. When I kill everybody else, you won't have a choice. I'd be that proverbial 'last man on earth'.
"Grams–"
"Fuck Grams. Pretty soon, you'll forget about all the stupid, dead humans and witches. You'll be saying 'Grams, who?' Promise. You're mine, Bonnie. You don't belong to your Grams or to Mystic Falls or –"
"I don't belong to you."
"I'll belong to you then, no matter. Same diff. Me and you– Sorry, you and I – maybe you can do some kind of pregnancy spell or something, then we could try the white picket fence thing. Not a lot of hardwares around here so we might have to make the fence out of bones instead of wood. Same diff. And I'd need more people to feed on, because something about this place makes me really hungry... but I guess if we have children, I could feed off them. It'd be like having a designated blood donor. Only temporary, of course, until we figure out a way to get back to the real world where I can get fresh prey."
For a while, neither of them said anything.
"Someone please call 911,"he sang, his voice less than perfect, and slurring a bit. Maybe he was drunk.
"Tell them I've just been shot down."
"The assailant's five foot one"
"And she shot me through my soul…"
He couldn't remember any further than that. Haitian reggae music was never his thing, but it seemed applicable, the lyrics.
"Feel my body going cold…" that was the next line, and indeed his body was a little bit on the chilled side. "If this is the love my mother used to warn me about, then I'm in trouble. I'm in deep, deep trouble… Do you know that song?"
"No." She trembled, in cold or fear. Both, maybe. The rain continued to pour down, drenching her, making her dress stick to her like a second skin.
His fangs retracted. She wasn't for biting. She was made for soft touches, tender kisses… His eyes swept over her again, making note of all the places his mouth and his fingers had to explore: the contours of her face, the graceful line of her neck, the under-curve of her breasts and her engorged nipples, the slim muscle of her belly, her sunken navel, the power of her thighs and the wet lips between them… Her knees, her calves… Down to her toes, I love her. Bonnie. Light of my life. "Make love to me, Bonnie."
"What?"
"Make love to me," he whispered back with wet eyes. "I want you–"
"Because I'm the only person here and you want somebody to fuck. Go back to the real world and go chase after Elena."
"No!" This time, he actually was crying. And she'd never seen anything near so beautiful. For all his vanity, he'd kept that part of himself tucked away. His eyes were almost glowing in the darkness, like blue fire. "I want you, Bonnie," he ground out.
"Since when? I'm not going to be your back-up closet girl!"
"Since…"
"Even if you make something up now, I'm not going to believe it."
"Since that time when you pretended to be dead. When you were willing to die for Elena at the dance. I was going to let you, too, but a part of me wondered why there wasn't someone crazily in love with you, because you're perfect."
"Damon…"
"You're perfect."
"I'm not perfect."
"You could as well as be. Your flaws are so minuscule–"
"What flaws?"
"Jeremy's one. Epic flaw."
"Jeremy?"
"I thought it was a joke, at first. Jeremy? Of all people? You do realise that he was going to let you die to save his sister right?"
"Of all people? Of all which people? I repel people."
"As the sun repels lesser life forms. It's still perfectly majestic. Divine. Celestial. You're my own personal heaven, Bonnie."
"Damon… Don't try to make me love you because you're suddenly lonely."
"I'm not suddenly lonely. I've been lonely since… since I was human. I'm suddenly in love with you."
"Damon…"
"Stop trying to not want me."
"What?"
"You know you want me. You're a woman – you can't naturally not want me – but you're so preoccupied with what everybody else will think. What will they say about good little Ms Chastity Virgin? Dare she stand amongst the scornful?"
"Damon…"
"I dare you to be with me," he crawled two paces forward on his knees. "Kiss me, I dare you. I double dare you. I double dog dare you. Nobody's watching."
"You can't bully me into–"
"Bully you? You? You're scared of everything. You're scared of what you see, you're scared of what I did, of what I am, but most of all you ought to be scared of walking away from me and never feeling the rest of your whole life the way you feel when you're with me. I'm not bullying you…" he spread his arms wide, grinning. "I'm just a vampire, the ghost of a vampire, kneeling in front of a witch, asking her to love him."
"Damon,"
"I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do."
"You don't believe in love, Damon."
"Well, I believe in your soul, my cock, your pussy, the small of your back… curve balls, high fibre diets, good scotch, that the novels of Anne Rice are self-indulgent, underrated perfection… I believe Arnold knocking up the help a decade ago is totally forgivable. I believe that Darwin had the right of it. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing tofu and fake meat…. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. And I believe I love you."
She smiled at that. Couldn't help it. Old school Kevin Costner. Cheesy.
"It is my lady…" he drawled, lost in her smile. "O, it is my love. O that she knew she were."
"Damon, I need–"
"You need kissing, badly." He raked his hair back with his fingers. "That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how."
"I know for certain that you've used that line on Elena. You did, that time in the park–"
"Here's looking at you, kid. I'm only looking at you."
"You bit me, Damon. Mauled me and–"
"Love means I never have to say I'm sorry."
"Get over it, Damon!"
"I wish I knew how to quit you."
"We're friends Damon, but–"
"Love is friendship on fire."
Could the rain stop falling for five minutes? "Stop trying to look as though you're suffering. Stop begging. Get off your knees–"
"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love; but then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love; to be happy then is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy; therefore to be unhappy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness."
"This is crazy." A hand went to her hips, as she imagined how embarrassing the scene would be if it had happened in any other dimension. Here they were, the two of them, alone in the rain, him on his knees… "I'm not jumping into your obsession."
"Love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. If you don't start with that, what are you going to end up with? Fall head over heels. You can love me like crazy and I'll love you the same way back. You've found me. Forget your head and listen to your heart. I'm not hearing any heart from you, Bonnie. Run the risk on me, if you get hurt, go back to your safe zone. Because, the truth is there is no sense living your life without this. You have to try. Because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived."
"Damon," she frowned. "I'm…"
Wavering… She was wavering. He could tell because suddenly, she wouldn't meet his eyes. Finally. His flesh was screaming out for her.
He inched towards her on his knees. "We should be lovers, and that's a fact."
"Do we have to solve this now?" she asked looking down at him. He was close enough for her to reach out and touch. Close enough… Her hand went tentatively, brushing out a glob of blood from his eyebrow.
"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."
"This is insane,"
"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides we'll have to make a decision. We have to work out whether our roots have become so entwined together that it's inconceivable that we should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which I can convince you easily that we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away. You and I have it, we have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms fall from our branches we'll find that we are one tree and not two."
She was wavering, she knew. Swooning, into his arms. Damn. "Go on," she prompted. "Get it out of your system."
"I love you. You're my only reason to stay alive… if that's what I am."
"That's Twilight, Damon. Don't quote Twilight." I love you too.
"That's how desperate I am, Bonnie. Kiss me and shut me up."
AN: This was my most fun chapter to write.
I started making it up, and then after the Harry Met Sally modification I wanted to see how many movie lines I could drop in here. So many quotes I can't even remember where all of them are from. I wanted to have Damon do this the cheesiest, cutest way he could. My favourites from all of them is the one from Meet Joe Black – "Love is passion…" Anthony Hopkins is the best. And "Love is a temporary madness…" Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
I realise at the end now that if you haven't seen any of these movies, or if you don't geek out over movies and memorise random lines, that this might be kind of lame, and I'll apologise for that. I hope at least one person gets it. I hope at least one person laughed at "I wish I knew how to quit you." (Just picture it, Damon watching Brokeback Mountain, close your eyes, picture that and see if you don't laugh.)
Remember when Stefan used to go to school and do history? Classical Literature and Romcoms should be Damon's thing. They never show these guys having hobbies but Damon looks like a closet romantic… If only he wasn't so Elena obsessed, sigh.