It's past dawn when she looks at the window of her bedroom through the windshield of her car and sighs, bending her head to press her forehead against the steering wheel.
It's been a crazy night, and she's not sure which part has been crazier.
This is usually the moment when she torments herself wondering if there was something she could have done differently to avoid the bereavement of the week, but this question today belongs to Damon.
She never saw this side of him; the aftershock, the moment when it's just him and what little remains. Somehow she had presumed he shrugged it all away, or maybe got drunk and moved on, or, more simply, just turned the care-button off. And yet, she had gone to him, to be there and stare at the emptiness with him, or whatever it was she went there for.
Without realizing it fully she knows that didn't go there only to keep up the appearances, but she can't care for someone else too because it means she'll have yet another person to lose and she can't. Above all she can't do that with Damon, the vampire that killed her mother, caused her gram's death and plays hide-and-seek with the truth. Yet, he's all for the truth and what's right, and the sanctity of January Sales when it ends in ruining her time with Jamie.
She takes off the jacket with a harsh movement.
His words punch a hole in her brain and she's fighting not to care while a good boy is waiting for her in her bedroom. Oh, but really, what does Damon know about her? She asks herself getting out of the car. And the answer is simple: nothing. It doesn't matter what he spits out when he needs to amuse himself.
I guess when you can't have what you need, you start to need what you can have.
He just needs to make someone miserable because he is, because Elena picked Stefan over him once again and he's the waste matter. And he always enjoyed making her life miserable out of anyone else. She could always count on this kind of fondness from him; riling her up keeps him entertained and satisfied. The kiss is just another kind of provocation and she's not going to fall for this trick.
She'll pretend it never happened; yes, that's what she'll do, she decides as she turns the key in the lock.
Bonnie slips off her shoes in the doorway to her room, leaves the jacket on the back of her chair and walks slowly to the bed, trying not to wake up Jamie. She forces back down the guilty feeling rising up as she lies next to him, because she's got no reason to feel guilty. Towards anybody.
#
With her luck he's going to make a joke as soon as he sees her, she thinks trying to gain some control.
Bonnie holds her breath as she waits for the Salvatore's mansion front door to open up and then releases it as soon as she fixes her eyes onto Stefan's gentle gaze.
"Hey there," he greets her with a smile, opening the door wider as he keeps his other hand in the pocket of his jeans.
"Hey there yourself," she replies, following him inside.
"Very punctual," he comments walking in the kitchen.
"That's one of my most seductive traits," she explains in a sarcastic tone.
"I don't mean to offend you in any way Bonnie, but I think you have no idea about the many things that are seductive about you," he says casually, like he's talking about the weather, "Coffee?"
It takes her a moment to metabolize his words. She's sure he has no intent other than being honest - because he's Stefan – but his words hit her all the same. Simply because Stefan doesn't say things he doesn't think. And so after being dumped for a ghost and kissed out of spite for the rejection of another girl, someone tells her she's desirable and it feels good.
"Yes, thanks," she answers trying not to turn red.
It's so unnerving really – she's a powerful witch that every now and then dies on convenience to set an original on the wrong track and she blushes when a guy notices her existence. She's just so glad about the color of her skin because otherwise everyone would know.
And Damon would give her hell about it.
Bonnie looks around her trying to catch the leather of his jacket or the nuisance of his presence but the house is tidy and tranquil and there's no trace of him. Well, she got lucky for once. Still when she smiles it feels a bit forced.
Must be the new loss they suffered. Alaric was such a support for them, and it's been barely a week since his death.
"How are things?" she asks, taking the mug Stefan's offering and holding it to her mouth with both hands.
"As good as they can be," he answers.
Bonnie just nods thinking about how Damon must have taken the blow and Stefan adds, "Damon doesn't talk about these kinds of things."
For a moment she wonders if she just telepathically conversed with him but she's pretty sure she didn't. She's almost on the point to tell him she didn't mean to inquire about Damon but then she realizes she's only being overly sensitive about this and Stefan only meant to answer her general question.
She's getting paranoid and she shouldn't be because there's no reason to. It's just that she remembers his slump shoulders the night Alaric died, when they were sitting next to each other on the humid grass without trying to rip off each other's throat, and for a few moments, Damon was not the nasty vampire she needed to keep in check, he was just Damon. If that makes any sense.
It's okay - she tells herself – this is called being compassionate. That's good. Even when it's about the older Salvatore.
"Shall we start?" Stefan asks her, breaking her thoughts.
#
Caroline laughs when Bonnie stops her from going too much into details about her previous night with Tyler. She really doesn't need to know how of an animal her boyfriend can be and in what kind of situation. She has to have gym class with the guy, for God's sake.
"We're best friends, we should share everything with each other," Caroline tells her.
"You're not this eager to share when it's about your skirts," Bonnie reminds her, but her friend just ignores her statement.
"I think we should put this to a vote," she declares, turning towards Elena when she doesn't get an answer.
"Earth to Elena," she says waving her hand in front of her.
"Oh, sorry," the girl looks startled and she smiles as an apology.
"You've been distracted all day, I feel very neglected," Caroline protests hugging a cushion on the couch, "What's distracting you? Come on, you can tell us."
"Damon," she answers with an apologetic face, "I don't see him much lately and I'm a bit worried about him."
"I think we all know why none of us has seen much of him lately," she says, "You didn't tell us what exactly happened on your last road trip but considering who's been your date to the ball, we can take a wild guess."
Elena lowers her head and Bonnie swallows something that's suddenly stuck in her throat.
Ignoring Damon's very existence has been one of her goals for the week, along with getting new curtains for her bedroom. She's been to the mansion three times in the last ten days and Damon was never around. He's been probably licking his wounds somewhere, thinking of Alaric and Elena, and she supposes it's okay as long as he's not taking drastic measures to lessen his pain. Like breaking someone's neck.
"He told me that he knows I'll never choose him," she answers weakly, "That I hurt him. Loving me hurts him," she adds. And it's quite a simple way to put it but it's true; and Bonnie smiles sadly thinking she knows what that feels like. She knows what's it's like to be in second place. She knows what's it like to love someone with all your heart but in the end, it means nothing. Bottom line, Damon's actions were dictated by rejection, and it's understandable, and of course it's not like she was going to reserve the church and write banns yet it hurts just a little bit to hear it like this. To have her friend – her lovers magnet friend – tell her that the kiss that made her restless was just some kind of surrogate.
It's not that great to be always right.
"He loves you very much," she forces herself to tell Elena, because she needs to recognize it herself.
"But I don't deserve it," Elena tells her, anxiously.
"Of course you do," Bonnie answers her, with a hug, "You deserve all the love in the world," and she doesn't say that she thinks that maybe she doesn't. Because this is not about her. Truthfully it's never about her, and she feels so petty and selfish having these thoughts that she needs to give her all to make up for this.
Caroline hugs them both as Elena tells them "You're the best friends in the world."
#
"Did she notice you yet?" Stefan asks him as Damon drinks his bourbon, sprawled on the couch. He didn't openly admit that he's following Bonnie around, that he looks at her from afar, but Stefan knows.
Damon looks at him like he's deciding if it's of any use to deny.
"I'm the king of the stalkers," he answers giving him a dirty look, like the question offended him.
"The fact that you pride yourself about it makes me worry," Stefan tells him back.
"That brooding forehead requires motivation, brother. You'd lose that little appeal you have without it. Luckily for you, you've got me," he piques with false good mood.
Stefan sits on the couch, nodding with a grin, and then hazards an observation, "I've never seen you giving up on anything before."
His brother takes a gulp of his drink, emptying his glass, "I'm protecting her the only way I can," he says, with a tense voice, "She fights me on every little thing, if she had me around she'd probably just kill herself and that would spoil the program, wouldn't it?"
"But she came to the dance with you, it must count for something."
"Sure it does. It means she would tear off her own arm if it meant to save Elena or stranger number twelve from death or an ingrown nail. That's why she accepted to go with me."
"Well, with a little planning I suppose we can arrange one catastrophe per day," Stefan jokes, "It's not that far from our standards, after all."
"I was just thinking the same," Damon replies with a bitter grin.
There's no need to explain how painful this is becoming for Damon. With every passing day, with every moment diverging from the past he shared with her, she's getting more and more distant from him; so alive and so eager to launch herself into the things that come natural to those of her age. Things like school events and clumsy boys and first times. Things that do not belong to him.
He followed her on her second date with Jamie at the Mystic Grill. He watched him take her hand on the wood table, he saw her smile and lower her eyes to hide what probably was a brilliant excitement. After that he waited outside, in a dark corner, like every proper maniac would so that he could avoid their first kiss and her happiness at the attention of someone else.
He followed her on her on her route between home and school. He watched her get ready for her third date, and the fourth one because he needs to make sure fate is not planning a new kick on him, and he's going to torture himself like this until she's safely passed her eighteen birthday.
And then he will pray for time to do what she promised it would. Even if he knows better.
#
Sometimes when she's with Stefan, Damon takes a break because his brother is with her and he will do anything to protect her. Sometimes Damon stays on a branch of a tree in the form of a crow and just watches her.
Today he has no strength to stay away from her nor the heart to watch her, so he keeps himself at the first floor and feeds himself a little lie. He imagines her back at living into his house. He imagines they are still what they were, whatever that was, and that she'll fall asleep against his shoulder that night.
He can physically feel his heart sink a bit into his chest.
He's tired of all the thinking and the lying and he sits at his piano like he can escape from all of this with a bunch of notes. Only, Bonnie is everywhere, and what will never come is too good to run from. That's why he plays the song she loved the most.
Damon realizes it only after the first thirty seconds, as his hands move on their own and his smile is just a wince of pain. He grit his teeth to not cry out, because he hopes so much that the world will remember what it was, what could have been, because he wants so much for her to take one step forward, just one.
For her to open the door that keeps him locked out to her.
As the melody decreases in the middle of the song, he hears the door opening. He tries his best not to hope against all odds, and when he sees her, wary and beautiful, he almost loses his tempo. The song flows back to his hands, to the air of the room and he keeps his eyes on her. His face unreadable, her body tense.
He looks back at the keyboard and feels her moving towards the piano, stopping two steps away. It's not close enough, but he'll take anything he can get. The crumbles will get him going for months. So refreshing, isn't it? But it doesn't matter how pathetic it can look. It doesn't matter as long as he can have a little of that warmth she shared with him when she poured him a drink, when she cooked with him in the kitchen and he would tease her a little.
"I was downstairs, and I heard the music…" she explains, nervously, like she caught him doing something terrible. Somehow it's true. She caught him doing yet again something she hoped he was not capable of. Like looking at her straight in the eyes, bare and honest. Like him admitting he needs her. Like him moving her to the core with a kiss. Even if it was somehow false and it meant anything to any of them.
"I don't usually have an audience," he says, "But it's okay for you to stay," he rushes to say when he sees her taking a step back.
Bonnie looks unsure about what to do; it's an endearing look on her because she's usually so firm, so strong, like she always knows what's best.
"You are the first I played this song for," and the only one, he thinks, "Was it good?"
"I can't tell. I don't know the original," she says, stiff, "But… it was touching," she adds trying to loosen her posture.
"Then I'm satisfied," he says moving his slender fingers on the keys in a little reprise.
"It's a song about an unrequited love," he explains raising his eyes on her, trying to lure her to the music, and to him.
"Yeah?" she asks, intrigued, eyes dancing on him.
"The song written for the music is in dialect of Apulia. The forgotten lover talks to the wind and tells it to let the girl he loves sleep because she can't hear his heart anymore. He begs the wind to let him go mad because she can't love him…"
"But if she truly loved him at some point, maybe that love can grow back again…" she says, making him fix his eyes on her,.
She told him to let go the night Alaric died, and she's telling him to hold on now. And in both occasions she didn't know what she was really doing to his heart. But his heart, it's so easy to please; it will do just about anything for the ghost of a chance.
It feels almost violent the way he looks at her but before she can recognize his emotion or her own fear of it, he turns his eyes again.
"I thought you were practicing your mojo with my little brother," he says, casually.
"I was but he had to leave. He didn't explain me why, he just told me to wait because he was going to come back soon."
"That sounds strange," he says, thinking aloud.
"He probably just forgot about a previous arrangement," she says, trying to not pull Elena in the conversation. Damon doesn't look like he's eager to take another blow. It doesn't take a big leap of imagination to guess that the song probably reminds him of Elena, "As soon as you started playing the song he remembered something."
Damon shakes his head, realizing Stefan did it on purpose to leave them alone, to procure him a chance, probably remembering the time he caught them in this same room, sitting on the piano stool.
"Then I must keep you entertained until his return," he proposes, "Or I will never hear the end of it."
"I don't think I should-"
"I'll send you an official invitation if you want, but it would be a lot more practical if you just stayed," he says, reasonably, "Stefan told you he'll be back soon," he reminds her.
"I come in peace," he insists, "And I'm going to shut up now and not add anything dirty to that," he says with a wink.
Bonnie shakes her head and tries to hold back a smile. All he gets is one corner of her plump mouth going up and it's more than he could hope for lately.
#
After that afternoon she stops coming to the mansion. Maybe she's busy with school, Stefan suggests. Maybe he's overdone it again.
Or maybe – he thinks watching her sit in his car parked outside her house – she's just too anxious to spend all her free time with Jerry boy. He flies in circles above the poor excuse for a car and then goes back to his house.
Today he can't take the sight of the happy couple. What could ever happen to her in the afternoon show at the local cinema? Aside from suicide induced by a new movie based on a Nicholas Spark's book where there's always one of the two star-crossed lovers who ends up dying painfully.
That is of course, if they are going to watch the movie at all, since the theater is one of the most popular spots to make out in. But he doesn't need to think of that. He needs to avoid thinking, and he's always been good at that.
Drink, fuck, party. And he does that. He starts by drinking, and once the bottles in the house are empty he goes to the Mystic Grill where he orders another drink and picks up a girl. All it takes him is a smile and a compliment and the brunette is all wrapped around his fingers.
But her skin is too white and this feels wrong so he just compels her to go away because he can't bother to explain to her or himself why she's not up against a wall with her underwear around her ankles.
He's not going to be celibate for long, it's just that he needs to keep Bonnie alive right now and he's going to do that.
The show is over when he gets to the theater and he flies over the streets looking for Jerry-boy's car. He stops on a signal to watch them pass by, driving behind a camion that transports wood poles. The boy drives slowly and turns his head towards her to reach out one hand and place his palm on her knee, Damon guesses.
Blue jeans, white shirt
Walked into the room you know you made my eyes burn
At least he drives safely, keeping the distances; it turns out to be very important when the driver of the camion hits the brakes when an animal cuts across his path. However, the relief is short-lived because one of the ropes holding the poles comes off and two poles slip from the pile. One ends up falling short on the hood, the other one aims directly at the windshield, on the side of the passenger.
Bonnie does not realize what's happening until it is too late.
It was like, James Dean, for sure
You're so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer
The pole breaking through the glass is dripping with blood but it doesn't touch her. Damon barely got there in time to fly in front of her before the pole ran through him.
"Fuck!" he hears Jamie screaming and she keeps her eyes on the drops of blood falling on her dress. It takes her a moment to get out of the car, without closing the door to not make the pole move again, and get in front of it to check Damon's conditions.
"What the hell…!" Jamie has both his hands on his head but Bonnie can't look at him right now. The pole is sank into Damon's chest and she can guess the hole is as large as her hand, and it's right next to his heart. One wrong movement and he'll be dust on the windshield of Jamie's car. The thought should be appealing but it's not. It's really not.
She has trouble breathing normally.
"Why do you have this tendency to do the most stupid things?" she bursts, angry at him for putting her into such a situation.
"Later?" he asks, with an effort, trying to postpone their little spat adding, "Busy not dying."
They both know he's going to if they don't take out that pole from his chest.
"What are we going to do?" Jamie asks.
"I need to take it out," Bonnie explains to Damon, getting closer, but as soon as she reaches out her hands she realizes the angulation in which the poles is plunged in is way too dangerous, "I'm going to kill you!" she says, withdrawing her hands. It's something he heard from her many times, but never with such a panicked voice.
You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop
But you fit me better than my favorite sweater and I know
That love is mean, and love hurts
But I still remember that day we met in December, oh baby
It almost makes it worth dying.
"Only words," he says with a pained grin.
"How can you even joke right now?" she asks, tempted to take him out of his misery with her own hands.
Damon chokes on his blood, the pole trembles so slightly and very threatening. She closes her fists in the air, trying to will the pole to still and he fixes his blue gaze on her.
"Okay," he says, gritting his teeth. She can't understand if he's trying to encourage her to take it out telling her that everything will be okay or trying to reassure her that his condition is better than what it actually looks like. In both cases she's not ready. She's not ready to do this, she's not ready for him to be kind like this.
"Okay," he repeats, doing his best to not wince in pain.
"…Okay," she says, raising one hand to try and use magic.
The words almost trip on her tongue and her forehead is covered in perspiration. The chanting last for less than thirty seconds but it feels like an age to her.
Once the pole is out Damon just rolls off the windshield to the ground and he's barely got any strength to cry out in pain.
Bonnie kneels next to him trying to help him up but he's heavy and weak and his vision is blurred. When she talks to him, telling him "I need to take you home," and "Can you stand," and "Do you hear me," his only answer is to say her name once. Then all his strength seems consumed and all he can do is follow her movements with his eyes.
"You need blood," she says.
"Home," he says, "Got blood home," he explains the best he can.
"You can't possibly wait that long," she says, reaching to pick from the concrete a piece of glass to cut her palm open.
"You can't-"
"Out of all the moments, you had to pick this one to be the gentleman?" she asks, angry, still high from the adrenaline, "Now drink!" she says covering his mouth with her wounded hand.
The first thing she feels is how cool his lips are, then the touch of his tongue. It makes her think to the night when he kissed her. She shakes her head to dismiss the thought immediately. But as she goes back to the situation, to Damon's mouth sucking on her palm, she instinctively draws her legs together to stop that tingling feeling from running down in between them, and failing. Miserably.
She turns her head to avoid his eyes fixed on her; at least the loss of blood will prevent her from blushing. This is the only consolation she can find right now, while this situation is getting out of hand. There's something very sexual about this, and Jamie is watching completely oblivious to it all.
"Go check on the driver," she tells him, to keep her mind to give in to the pleasure and just do something about this awkward situation.
I will love you till the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby can you see through the tears?
She doesn't wants to feel this way, but she does. And the way he looks at her it only makes it worse, because he looks hungry, but of a hunger that goes beyond blood. It's an ancestral need she feels reverberating through her whole being, and when he's done feeding it's not the blood loss that make her knees unsteady.
Yet she ignores it all – she's so good at ignoring things: her fears, her need, kisses that turn her vision upside-down, most of all Damon – and helps him standing.
Bonnie can feel him pressed against her side, hot because of her blood into his system. There's something almost fascinating in the concept but she won't indulge in that thought.
She helps him sit on the car's seat and because he's heavy she falls on him, with her hands on his shoulders; his hands fly to her sides to steady her and yet he barely makes a move to help her. She supposes it's because he's still too weak.
A part of her accuses her of lingering in his touch, because it takes her a moment too long to straighten up and take a step back.
"I'm going to call Stefan," she says once there's some distance between them.
He doesn't say a word, and it unnerves her more. She wants for them to throw insults at each other, at him to declare to the world his love for Elena, she wants for herself to feel for Jamie what she cannot bring herself to. But he just keeps on looking at her with that naked need and her skin feels sensitive even if only her own clothes are touching her.
"Something happened," she says once Stefan has answered the phone.
Something happened, she fears, and she doesn't know how to undo it.
Love you more than those bitches before
Say you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll remember
I will love you till the end of time
#
Note: It will be Christmas in a few days, so I wanted to give you this chapter as my personal, very modest gift to all of you. I wish for all of us to have our prayers answered and our hearts healed. Merry Christmas.
Note 2: The song used in this chapter is the well-known "Blue Jeans" by Lana Del Rey. See you next year.