When she enters the kitchen with her mug in her hand she finds him already sitting at the table, slowly sipping his own coffee while his eyes are down on a newspaper, oblivious to the world and immersed in thoughts.
The table is all set up with breakfast.
Finding that mug of coffee on the toilette table was unexpected and warming, like finding a refuge in a snow storm; Gram always made coffee mixed with cream and sugar, and now when she needs strength and comfort – when she needs someone and there's no one, never – she makes herself coffee mixed with cream and sugar. It's a bad surrogate of love but it's all she has. She's surprised to realize Damon has picked up this little thing about her, even if he doesn't know what that mug of coffee really means to her.
She'd like to thank him but he looks distracted and she's still trying to take in this odd intimacy to feel bold enough to break the calm of the morning with words.
The silence is good for Damon because the sound of her moaning in his head barely stopped and he doesn't need to hear her voice to imagine sensual inflections where are none.
He's still pathetically hard under the damn table.
She takes a bite of the scrambled eggs, plays around with the bacon in the plate, and then puts down the fork to take a sip of coffee.
He glances at her and takes her fork.
"Am I a good cook?" he asks, taking a bite of her eggs.
He traps the metal fork's teeth between his lips, knowing he won't find her taste but hoping to, all the same.
"You're not too bad," she admits with a sleepy voice.
Fuck, fuck, fuck – he thinks smiling to her to not give away his state - the bed-voice doesn't do any good to the bulge in his jeans.He forgot it takes her a bite to awake completely in the morning.
He looks down at the newspaper just to have a neutral activity to do even if he can't focus on a single letter. He swears, if it were Chinese he would still not understand the same amount of words.
Bonnie goes back to her breakfast until her cell phone rings and she takes it from the pocket of her jeans. She looks at the screen with hopeful eyes but the muscles of her face freeze and she pretends to not be disappointed by whatever name lights up. She just closes it and puts it on the table.
Damon steal a glance at her phone and then decides that this is a way like another to distract his mind, hoping the south region of his anatomy will decide to follow him at some point.
"Are you waiting for a call?" he asks, and then he thinks that maybe she's disappointed Jeremy didn't come to see her yet.
"No."
He thinks that maybe, since now she feels like she did before, she might love what she loved before. It would be normal, wouldn't it? So she misses Lover Boy, or Jerry-the-nobody.
Or- "It's your father?" he asks, without thinking.
Well, it's not like he's any better when he does think.
Her eyelashes tremble and she cleans her mouth with the napkin. He makes a point to stop staring at her soft lips and decides to hold onto this topic like it can save him from going crazy.
"Did you even hear from him in the last week?" he asks, knowing he's hurting her but not being able to stop. Somehow he really wants to know the scars she's covered in; he wants know them better than he knows his own; he wants to be able to call each of them by name.
"He texts me," she says, looking at her plate and going back to eating.
Her dad is away for work. He is always away for work.
The failure of his marriage made it unbearable for him to stay in the house that was supposed to see him grow old with the woman he chose for himself. Bonnie thinks he picks the longest trips so he won't have to be home.; so he won't have to see her.
"You look so much like your mother," her Gram always told her with an affectionate smile, and she hated to hear it. She hated to be reminded of why her father could barely be in the same room as her before something urgent came up and he had to go. I'm so sorry, sweetheart.
Bonnie is always been sorry too, but she could never tell him.
"My father used to beat me."
Bonnie doesn't know if she's more startled by his words or by the way it sounds. So jovial that for a moment she believes she must have heard it wrong.
He looks away with a bored expression on his face, and she looks to his eyes to try and find him. She believes she does.
"I was a lively kid. Always climbing trees or slipping in the stables to talk to the horses, and he was mad. At the world, I suppose. I don't know if he loved my mother but she soothed his temper, so when she died he was…"
He shrugs, like he can't find the words or can't bother to.
"Well, you know how it works. I couldn't hold my tongue and he beat me black and blue. Maybe it would have been different if he hadn't fancied scotch so much. He even had a distillery, so he couldn't pass up. Some good stuff, I have to say," his eyes travel on her like he's following the path of his memories, and he grins, "I could kill for one bottle now."
She is hypnotized by what she hears. But mostly, by what she sees: Damon Salvatore. Not bits of him forced out by the most catastrophic moments, but him baring himself in front of her out of choice.
"I wanted him to hear me out, but I did it wrong. There was nothing I could do right in the eyes of the great Giuseppe Salvatore. I didn't want to pursue an academic career and I didn't care to be a landowner, I couldn't be like him, so I joined the army to find my own path," he says, propping his elbow on the table, resting his chin on the palms of his hands and looking her straight in the eyes, "Sometimes that's really all you can do."
She can't bear to talk about the silly little girl she is, waiting for her dad to call or just care; waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to stay.
"He was supposed to love you," she says, voice hard like she's trying not lot let it break.
"Yes, he was, wasn't he?" he asks, his voice barely a whisper, "But they say love finds you."
Eyes into eyes and she can't remember what time is it or in what direction the world spins.
"You had Stefan," she says, just to break the silence before she falls God-knows-how.
"Yeah, my little brother," he smiles his first genuine smile all day, "He followed me anywhere, he wanted to do everything I did. And I took the beatings for him, too," he says, "His health was bad and I feared he couldn't take what I took, so I tried to make our father too angry at me to care about him," there's bitterness in his voice when he admits, "I think he never touched him, not to hug him nor to hit him. At least while I was there."
"What about after?" she asks, voicing the doubts he had when he was away looking for his own destiny.
"I don't know," he admits, "I suspected Stefan had his share, but I never asked him. I didn't want to know," he says, "I expected to find him angry at me for leaving him alone, but every time I came back he looked at me in that way, like I- like I was…"
Words escape him or maybe it's the courage to admit it out loud that he lacks.
"His hero?" she asks, with a light smile.
The same one Damon smiles.
He breaks eye contact only when he hears the front door opening and closing again.
"Here he comes," he says, voice bored again sipping on his coffee.
Stefan enters the room a few seconds later, and looks at both of them, leaving his eyes on Bonnie's naked neck. She's been wearing sweaters that covered her to the chin until the day before and this looks to him like a good sign. Damon explained what marked her body, and to see her clean skin makes him feel relived.
"Good Morning," he says.
"Good Morning," she answers.
"It was a good one, until you came around," Damon says with a bothered grin.
Bonnie rolls her eyes, "I'll translate for him, okay?" she asks, not waiting for an answer, "He's happy to see you."
"I'm sure," Stefan says with a gentle smile, taking a mug from the counter top and sitting at the table with them.
"Will you pass me a croissant?" he asks his brother while he pours himself some blood to mix with his coffee.
"I don't remember inviting you to join us," Damon says, reaching out to take a croissant from the basket on the side of the table to pass it to his brother.
"I live here," Stefan reminds him, dipping the brioche into his beverage.
"You pass here, because your things are casually in this house," he corrects him.
"Are you telling me you miss me?"
"Like I miss virginity," Damon grimaces, "Mine, of course, because I'm sure you still have yours."
Bonnie can only laugh watching them. They are such boys, and for a moment she lets herself feel part of this odd family. Lets herself look at them like her trusted brothers.
Well, one of them, at least.
Note: Next week I'm going away for a short vacation, all the same I'll do my best to try to update if I can.