Title: Casualties Of Accidental Dating
Author: skysamuelle
Author's Note: Betaed by Emmy/martinigirl15, inspired by impishdragon
Rating: PG 13ish
Timeline: Post 'Fool Me Once'
Summary: Extended version of my drabble 'Accidental First Date' that somehow morphed into a real fic. A series of accidental dates between Bonnie Bennett and Damon Salvatore stir feelings of a deeper nature than anyone would have guessed.
IV
"You are not very good at self-preservation, are you?"
Despite Damon's choice of words, his tone as he wraps his leather jacket around her shoulders is soft, indulgent in a saddened sort of way.
His gesture is not dictated so much by gallantry as much as it is by practical necessity: her purple dress is severely torn where her left shoulder meets her arm, allowing him to see the scraped skin there. His eyes rake over her shivering body, inspecting her for further damage while his arm surrounds her waist to keep her close to him.
Bonnie must be in shock, because she doesn't twist out of his hold, as he expected she would. It feels strange, the heat of her form drawn so closely to his cooler one. Instinct would command him to press her tightly to his side, but respect has him maintaining a minimal, considerate distance.
He doesn't smell fresh blood on her, and an unusual sensation twists inside him, in between relief and pride, at knowing she is not even bruised. She will probably have a few black and blue spots on her back in the morning, but nothing worse.
Even that angers him, makes him want to tear apart slowly, piece by useless piece, the mongrel who has dared to slam her against that wall.
He spares a glance at the werewolf, passed out on the floor and he feels his fangs grazing his tongue, a tightness pulling at his features like they are about to break into his 'game face' without his notice.
He doesn't know what to do with this thing that feels way too much like protectiveness and that unnerves him more and more when Bonnie stays quiet and unresponsive under his hands, just staring down at the unconscious body. So he decides to brush aside the confusion and resort to what he knows best. Mockery.
"Honestly, what is wrong with you? Do you know how to pick them, because-"
He hesitates to bring up the latest vampire playboy she went out with, the one who had eventually kidnapped her and led Grandma Bennett to her death. That confuses him, too. He is not usually known for sparing any punches to anyone, so why should it be different now?
Bonnie puts her arm on his, restraining him. "It's fine, I knew he would transform tonight. "
From the way she says it, it sounds like she is referring to one of her precognitive visions.
"You went willingly near a werewolf, in his first full moon night?" – he reiterates, not bothering to hide the incredulity- "I said it once and I will say it again: what's wrong with you?"
His tone seems to bring her back to reality, because she lets his arm go and shrugs off his touch, finally animate again, her voice no longer faint and distant when she replies. "I've known Tyler all my life. I know how it feels to find out that you are anything but normal, and I wanted to help him, if I could."
And naturally, there was no doubt in Bonnie' s mind that if Lockwood saw her witnessing his first transformation, he was going to confide in her.
Silly, suicidal little girl.
"I take back my question. You're either crazy or stupid."
"I don't expect you to understand," She snaps, defensive, moving away from him and toward the dog.
"Of course I don't," he replies, purely on the basis of principle, frowning as Bonnie kneels over Toby and gets an amulet out of her pocket to slip around his neck.
"It's not like I couldn't protect myself."
She had fought off Mr. Furry quite well for a while, to say the truth, but he wasn't about to admit it, not only because it would have meant admitting that he had laid low and watched the action from the shadows for some time.
"So you were just letting him toss you around for fun? I didn't know you liked t that rough."
Just remembering the werewolf 's taste in his mouth has Damon cringing. Bitter flavor, although the blood was powerful in its way. Not to mention the damned fur in his mouth, damn!
The fight before the feeding, instead, had been a decent workout. Very satisfying.
"I was trying to figure out a way to defend myself and knock him out without seriously hurting him. Sigils don't work on awake wolves."
As if on cue, the werewolf's form begins shifting back to the human, vaguely familiar bulky frame.
"I'll go with you being stupid" Damon exhales in a sigh of excessively exasperated disapproval, rolling his eyes upward. Stupid feels the appropriate word to him. You cannot neuter a werewolf permanently, so why bother with silliness as temporary sigils, risking your short, mortal existence on top of it?
"You are an asshole." The little witch bites back automatically, looking away from her shiny new protégé to narrow her eyes on him " but thank you for helping."
Always so polite.
Why did he help, anyway? A whim, he reminds to himself.
Merely a whim.
"I was hungry" –he shrugs off like it doesn't matter, because it doesn't- "and he was handy. Although wolf's blood doesn't compare to witch's blood at all. You were so much sweeter on the tongue, and the eyes. "
Once upon a happy time, that phrasing would have majorly upset her and sent her into a frenzy of hostility. By now, she has become wise to his ways, and it doesn't even faze her.
"You really know how to put someone at ease after an aggression, don't you? "
"I try"- the vampire smirks, nearly giddy under her quasi-praise – "what are you doing with him, now? Changing him into a toad until the night is over?"
It's her turn to roll her eyes at his antics. "Now I'm going to call Stefan, and we'll bring Tyler to his home, where he'll stay asleep until the morning."
"No need. I'm already here. " A deep voice comes from behind them and Stefan is standing between the two of them before anyone can blink.
Overdramatic, hero-complex-bearing little brother. Urgh.
"I will do it alone, before someone sees anything questionable." And at Bonnie' s nod, the younger vampire takes Tyler in his arms, bridal-style and jumps to the nearest roof. Bonnie blinks at the spot Stefan had occupied until a few seconds earlier, and Damon snickers at the image he will use to tease his brother for, like…years to come.
Thank you so much for the weaponry, Little Witch.
"Ah, now I've rescued you, you can stop bringing up that one time I nearly sucked you dry."
He says, somehow triumphantly, and he sees, out of the corner of his eye, that Bonnie is pulling his jacket tighter around her and biting her bottom lip trying not smile.
What an odd night, he considers, wondering why she is not rushing inside the club, back to Elena and her other, stupider friends.
Then it occurs to him that she is not exactly presentable, in her current state.
"If I will call us even, will you stop bringing that nice trauma up? "
"Perhaps, but I still will want that jacket back by the morning."
"Charming"
Damon doesn't mention how absolutely titillating he finds the idea of his favorite leather jacket absorbing the scent of his favorite witch.
"Thanks. Are you heading back home to curl up in your bed and cry, or do you care for a drink? I promise to be helpful regardless."
He can tell from the look on her face that she is dying to call him a sexual deviant or something similar, and fighting the urge not to give him any satisfaction. How cute of her.
"I'm not exactly eager to head back there, reduced like this" - she sighs, resigned, combing her hair with her fingers – "but if you compel barman to hand me a beer, you can sit across from me until Stefan returns and then get your precious jacket back."
AN: A special thank you to RockerChick08 for the constant support and awesome, thoughtful reviews. I don't think I can express with words how much I appreciated that, so… PM me a theme and I'll write the next drabble/one-shot on 'Witches and Vampires' just for you. :)
V
Some nights Bonnie awakens and just can't fall back to sleep. Some nights, she can't manage to get any sleep at all.
It's when her dreams become nebulous and disquieting for long stretches of time –weeks, occasionally- full of incoherent images and feelings she doesn't understand or find a connection to and she just gets that terrible sense of doom and ruin hovering over Mystical Falls.
So when there's that mood in the air, it's nice to have something to do instead of just tossing and turning around in her bed. Besides…every serious witch knows that the best moment to find and extract from ground Mandrake roots is past midnight on a Dark Moon night.
Meredith would have probably warned her against the prospect of having a long moonlight-less stroll in the woods, alone, a basket under her arm if Bonnie had made her intentions known. And the brunette knows that, if she had asked, Stefan would probably not have minded accompanying her, and Tyler…well, Tyler has made clear that he is very willing to repay the help she has recently given him to accept his family history.
Not going alone would have been more careful and Bonnie has always been nothing if not smart and prudent in her choices of action.
She doesn't regret taking the less safe road, for once. It's so much nicer, to feel nocturnal air on her skin as her energy ball floats ahead of her to light up her path, small noises of nature breaking the quiet. It feels good, knowing she has no need to fear those creatures that lurk hidden in the darkness, because she is one of them.
After being scared of her psychic abilities for so long, it feels amazing to fully embrace the power within and not be helpless.
Once she reaches the meadow – it has taken a lot of concentration and many attempts to divine the right spot where those plants grew with her pendulum- she puts her empty basket down in the grass, and sits, shedding her coat and taking off her shoes.
She is freezing at first, while she breathes in and out, listening in to her surroundings and before shifting her concentration inward. Then she begins to be aware only of the energy that moves inside and out of her, enclosing part of the meadow in a protective ring of light. It's like a rain of dancing glowworms is tracing a circle of power around her, and the sight is undeniably beautiful.
True magic is always poetry in motion, Bonnie. Parlor tricks are just whatever gets the job done- she can feel her grandmother's voice murmuring, in the back of her mind, and for the first time in a long, long time Bonnie feels safe and completely content. Almost happy.
She rises and begins to dance to a rhythm that comes from somewhere deep inside her, allowing the force dormant in her blood to stir slowly awake.
When he flies by, she doesn't notice the crow that silently perches on a fir just outside her protective circle, watching.
--
From his vantage point, Damon observes intently every move of hers, staying very still.
Her body undulates and glows in the darkness, and while her bare feet slap rapidly on the cold ground, her thin arms up in the air, he can sense the supernatural force thickening around her tiny, breakable figure… such an intoxicating, mesmerizing contrast.
Power seeps out of her wide, glazed eyes, her open lips, her sweaty visage and limbs. Her dark, messy locks whip her shoulders while she throws her head from side to side.
Damon wants to touch her, so badly than he can't think of anything but how she would feel, feverish and warm, bronzed skin wet with perspiration sliding easily against his, cooler and paler.
At this moment, Bonnie is not entirely herself, not entirely human anymore but the avatar for deities older than Time.
Her body arches and bends, slim and sinuous, her movements more and more frantic as the tempo grows and nears its peak.
He can suddenly picture himself very vividly, pinning her down in the grass, possessing her brutally until she clenches in a shuddering surrender around him.
His animal form quivers, itching to shift back to the original as the thirst for her blood screams loud inside his head, nearly silencing every other thought.
Yet he can't look away from her, not when he can feel the power raising once more. It fills her frail, human frame up like boiling water would fill a cup, furious and rash, flowing from bottom up in vibrating spirals.
Then, finally the invisible chord snaps inside of Bonnie. A violent rush of energy pours out of her, like blood from a deep cut, and she screams in the night, her wild, inarticulate cry emptying her of everything she has. Bonnie falls to her knees, laughing senselessly, spent but transparently exhilarated at the magic she has released into the world.
Several dark shapes shoot out of the ground to glide through the air and hang over her head and swirl above her in a circular motion. Leaves fall off and Damon realizes they are plants…mandrake plants, probably.
He keeps observing while the roots levitate in an ordinate succession toward and inside the basket on the ground.
The witch's eyelids have dropped closed and she is still subtly humming with sex and life and every good thing Damon has forgotten how to feel, every hair on her body raised.
She looks delicious.
He can hear how loud the irregular beating of her own heart is, and it excites him as much as her return to a more ordinary conscience, as her breath slows down.
The girl is shuddering, the ghost of a grin stretching her lips while she rubs her arms self-consciously, letting him know she is fully lucid again. Soon, she becomes aware of his presence and blinks dazedly, looking in his direction, irises glossy and wider than normal. Her pink tongue darts to wet her mouth slowly while she lifts herself up from the grass, sluggishly but also with a very self-aware sensuousness.
For a brief, hungry instant it's very easy to believe she is reeling him in on purpose, but then Bonnie shakes any lingering after-effect of her magic-high off and puts her coat back on, turning her back to him.
Her power circle dissolves like fairy dust as she walks away from him, among the trees, ignoring his very presence like he is invisible.
Pissed off and still quite aroused, the vampire takes a full minute to cool off before spreading his wings and flying after her retreating figure, cawing loudly in her wake.
She stops and waits when she hears him, no longer pretending but unsure about what this casual meeting will turn out to be. With Damon Salvatore, you never truly know what to expect.
He lands two feet from her and shape-shifts before even grazing the ground.
"You must really be bored."
She blurts out without thinking, her limbs very relaxed and her mind pleasantly blank, despite the unexpected situation. In all honesty, she still feels full of that languorous warmth that accompanies the aftermath of her magical workings, and she doesn't want to spoil her mood. Not even for the likes of a certain blue-eyed devil.
"Don't flatter yourself too much, Little Red Riding Hood. I'm not stalking you. I just got hungry and helped myself to a few campers. But don't worry, nobody died…this time."
"Good to know"-Bonnie nods, tucking a dark lock behind her ear and offering him a forced smile- "what do you want?"
Obviously, he ignores her question completely and moves so fast that he is suddenly in her face and peering into her basket.
"Mandrake roots"- he tut-tuts her with a smoldering, devious grin that jumbles her train of thought- "so it's true. Our resident Good Girl is going over to the dark side. Elena is very worried. "
And he has listened very comfortably from his bedroom to the heated ramblings that got dumped on Stefan at regular intervals. Damon, however, has found the fact that the last living Bennett was getting out of her comfort zone nothing but intriguing. He would have never guessed that someone so…straight-laced had it in her.
Bonnie holds her chin high, squaring her jaw and hardening her gaze slightly.
"For your information, mandrake roots do wonders in healing potions. "
"Hm. Call me paranoid, but I don't think that was the use you had in mind."
"What's you point?" she all but growls, obviously unnerved now, tapping her foot against the ground.
"Perhaps I have no point and we are just a guy and a girl, engaging in trivial conversation."
Although he makes it sound like a joke, in the fluorescent light of her energy ball, with his flawless white complexion and his eyes shining like azure crystals, he truly looks …very reassuringly boyish.
Less handsome and more beautiful if that makes sense to think of, and it may be an illusion but it still puts her at better ease.
"Unless we were a witch and a vampire, wandering in the woods."
When she gets walking again, he keeps up with her. The energy ball sizzles before them, leading them forward.
"Dark doesn't always mean evil," she adds eventually, without questioning herself about why.
Her voice sounds lower and breathier to her ears than she would have anticipated, and she forces herself to stare ahead, to not mind that she just invited the most vicious creature she knows to express judgment on her life.
"I should know," Damon acknowledges, his tone more amused than taunting. It's as close as he will allow himself to get to agreeing with her. Yet, leaving it at that doesn't satisfy him. He feels like he has said nothing at all, so he adds: "Evil is a human term, it's up to you to decide what it means. I have never known a powerful witch who has not redefined the boundaries to get in-depth."
Perhaps it sounds cryptic, but Bonnie nods like she understands.
Floods and tornados are not evil, yet they are incredibly destructive. Fire can be used to protect life or destroy it. Nature simply is, and it follows no moral code but a law of necessity that transcends the human conception of right and wrong. A witch cannot reach the fullness of her powers, unless she is willing to play along with that truth and face the shadow together with the light.
"I was surprised at how I liked it, being the one to control my powers, instead of having them control me. It was exhilarating."
That is something she has not ever really said to anyone before, and maybe she is saying it to him only because he is the one person -among her acquaintances- who might not judge her stance on this issue. And she had never realized before how much she wanted to just …say it and have someone see all of her.
"It becomes you," Damon whispers, and she doesn't ask what he means, however much that statement puzzles her.
They walk together, side by side, until they are out of the woods and the outline of her house cuts the horizon. When Bonnie turns to bid him goodbye and her eyes meet only empty space, it's not a surprise.
It doesn't ruin anything.