"What happened here?" Her question comes out with the high pitch of panic as she places her open hands on his chest and looks up into his eyes, to extract the answers from them before he can even think of what to say to her.
He holds her by the shoulders, brushing the palms over them before actually gripping, looking fixedly into her eyes, to reassure her. "Everything's alright," he says and his voice is firm, so much so that she's tempted to believe him.
"There's blood on the kitchen floor!" she insists, frustrated by the fact that he won't tell her what she wants to know.
"Bonnie wounded her hand while she was cutting the vegetables, that's all," he reassures her again, moving to get to the period cabinet where he keeps the best bottles of bourbon.
He would like nothing more than to comfort her, but he's tired and she looks at him like she's trying to decide whether to accuse him or hold him. So he doesn't reach for her cheek, the way he would normally.
"I don't believe you!"
"Elena, calm down." Stefan's voice makes her turn around and she shakes her head, as if none of the brothers can really understand her worry. Bonnie is part of her family and there's nothing she can do for her.
"I can't," she replies in a lament. Stefan comes close to take her hand and guide her to the sofa, while Damon pours himself a bourbon. Once he's done he sits opposite them and massages the base of his neck with one hand.
The cool air of the night has dried the fabric, yet he can still feel his shirt damp with Bonnie's tears.
"I need to know the truth, Damon," she says. Her eyes seem to plead with him.
"I already told you, Elena."
"She can cook perfectly well," she says. "She's been making meals for herself since she was ten," she insists.
Damon can picture her: the delightful child she was at ten, with her hair up in a ponytail, kneeling on a chair next to the stove because she was too short to reach them on her own.
"She was trembling from withdrawal," he explains. "It's okay now."
"How can you say that?" she protests, her bafflement getting the better of her, "You don't care for her, but it's different for me. I can't go away and leave her alone to face all this."
Damon looks at her, disconcerted and uncomfortable. He told her so many times that he doesn't care for anyone's life but hers that he's almost ready to say those words again - with the feeling of a broken record - before Stefan cuts in.
"Damon is helping her, you saw him," he reminds her, covering one of her hands with his. "I know you would like to be there for her. She knows that too, but you can't right now."
"I know," she admits. "But what if she hurts herself on purpose next time?"
"She won't," Damon says. "She's not a coward."
As if she was not an addict, before it all got out of her hands. And she was not a killer, before – probably - killing a guy.
"You don't know," she insists. "We should do something!"
"Like what?" Damon asks, losing his patience and opening both his arms like to surrender to the bad mood she's inducing in him. His drink spills from the glass and lands on the carpet; the Persian one, he always liked that carpet and now it needs urgent cleaning. Great.
"I don't know," she answers. "Maybe we could tie her up, during the night, so she won't do anything extreme."
"What?" Damon's expression is one of hilarity, but his eyes are wide and sarcasm drips from him even before he can grimace. "She's not an animal!"
It's ridiculous she could even think of such a solution; as if it could accomplish anything but to humiliate her.
"No one is going to tie her up," Stefan says, trying to make both of them be reasonable."Elena is just worried," he says to his brother, looking straight at him.
"I know," Damon says before taking a sip of his drink. He needs a barrel of it.
"I'll stay here tonight, just in case," Stefan informs them. "That way we'll all be more at peace."
"Sure, little brother," Damon answers. "I can't wait for the pajama party."
#
"You should rest," Stefan says to his brother, for the third time in the last two minutes.
"You keep talking to me and I'll fall asleep in the middle of this exciting conversation," Damon answers, as they both head upstairs.
"That's one way to put you to sleep."
"When you say it like that you make me suspect you want actually tuck me in and read me a story," he says horrified, as they walk to their respective rooms.
"You got any preference?" Stefan asks, keeping up the joke.
"Oh, I like all of them," Damon says, before turning his head toward his brother and titling it to the side, to add, "in their porno version, of course. But I think it would be awkward for you to read me that, little brother."
"Probably," he admits, with a nod, "Do they exist?" he asked in a sudden moment of curiosity.
"Are you for real?" the other one asks, showing his disconcertment, stopping three steps away from Stefan's room. "Now I know what to give you for Christmas," he decides. "What do you prefer, Naughty Cinderella or Ravishing Rapunzel?"
"I think I'll pass."
"Then I'll choose," he says, going to his bedroom's door.
Stefan sees him stealing a glance to Bonnie's bedroom door, which is exactly in between theirs; hands slow on the knob, eyes empty while he concentrates on listening to the movements of the girl inside.
"I don't need to sleep," he says, turning the knob and looking in front of him, "I'll take care of her if she needs anything."
"Sounds perfect," is Damon's bored answer.
#
As he lies on the bed, Damon absently taps his fingers on his stomach and listens intently to the rustling sound of sheets in the next room. Her unstable heartbeat. The sound of the mattress when she gets up and then goes back to bed.
Stefan told him he would have taken care of her, and he knows that his righteous brother will not break his word, yet he can't help listening even if he tells himself it does not concern him. She does not concern him tonight.
But the truth is, he can only manage to sleep when she sleeps too.
#
Stefan sits in a chair, absent-mindedly reading a book. His mind is on Bonnie, one wall apart from him, fighting daemons in her head, whom he knows way too well; he remains on the same line of the book for half a hour.
The hard cover is smooth against his hand as it lies open on its palm.
"Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."
#
Stefan gets up from the floor once he hears the sound Bonnie is making inside the room. He brushes away the dust from his jeans and raises his head when she opens the door only to find himself with his back against the wall.
He couldn't read nor do anything else so he spent the night guarding her door from any danger, even if her true enemy is inside her, and he ended up falling asleep just one hour before.
"What are you doing?" she asks, perplexed.
"Nothing," he answers quickly. "Want to join me for breakfast?"
It takes her a moment to get back to the conversation, because she hates to talk before having her coffee, but as she's about to answer him the sound of a door opening and closing again stops them, and they both turn to see Damon walk in between them and pass them by, saying "I don't know about you, but I really need a coffee."
"After you," Stefan says, bowing lightly.
#
When they join Damon in the kitchen he's pouring them coffee. Stefan can smell the metallic scent of blood mixed with the strong, earthly edge of caffeine.
Bonnie takes a mug already filled with dark, hot liquid and Stefan is pretty sure she chose the only mug without blood. It suddenly occurs to him that she didn't need to know where the blood was, because she simply took the mug she usually takes. She took her mug. She actually has a mug that belongs to her, even if everything in the house is theirs, and Damon knows which one it is.
Bonnie leans with her elbows against the counter top and sips her coffee looking like she wants to sleep for another day or two; Damon takes a bite from a butter biscuit.
They often eat human food, hoping that one day they will get to remember how it really tastes, because all they can actually taste is just a shadow of it.
"Will you stay around today?" Damon asks Stefan, completely ignoring the girl in the room.
"I have to leave for a few hours, but I'll come back as soon as I can," he says, regretting the fact that he has to leave them alone.
"No big deal."
Once Bonnie's mug is half emptied Damon looks at her, to tell her "Morning, little bird."
"Morning Damon."
"We have eggs and milk if you want to make breakfast, but I think you'll have to ask for another delivery."
"Yeah, no problem."
"I'm welcoming pimply pervert this time," he states.
"No, you're not," she grimaces. "You're going to scare him."
He looks like he's waiting for her to add something, then says, "I still have to hear what the flaw is in my plan."
"You're impossible," she accuses him.
"That's part of my charm, Judgy," he grins.
"I don't know what the problem is here," Stefan says, cutting into their oddly intimate routine. "But I can go and buy whatever you need," he tells Bonnie.
"Thank you, desperate housewife."
The girl doesn't listen to Damon's comment, instead looking at Stefan with the ghost of a smile.
Stefan always had the capacity to slip under her skin with his gentlemanly manners, and even if she can feel black magic whispering to her that he's a puppet to dispose of, she wants to let herself feel for him again.
It's like Damon made a hole in the walls around her heart the night before, and now she gets to look at the world through that hole. And she kind of misses it.
"That would be okay," she nods to his gentle gaze, "I'll make you a list."
"Sure."
Note: The book Stefan is reading in this chapter is The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.