Title: Causalities Of Accidental Dating
Author: skysamuelle
Author's Note: This chapter was betaed by Alta
Rating: MATURE
Timeline: Post 'Fool Me Once'
Summary: A series of accidental dates between Bonnie Bennett and Damon Salvatore stir feelings of a deeper nature than anyone would have guessed. Currently on: Dreams, heated reunions and improvised confessions.
PART 13
XXI
She CAN'T believe Caroline had the gall to buy this for her, but Bonnie still turns the pages and giggles, a fond smile on her face as she notices some names are actually underlined and have notes beside them like 'too macho-man sounding?', 'too pompous?', 'too original?' or worse 'too canine?'
No one does 'fussing' like Caroline Forbes. Thank God.
"A baby names book? Now that's something that should never find its way into a respectable vampire household. "
She raises her gaze to meet two startlingly blue eyes and her smile becomes playful "I'll be the godmother. Apparently part of my duties is helping the mother-to-be to pick suitable names for twins."
Damon snorts and swiftly steals the incriminating book out of her hands. "Weirdos like Caroline Forbes and Tyler Lockwood should be forbidden from procreating separately, let alone together. It's all bad blood. There should be a law against it. "
"You are a horrible person." She complains without too much effort, distracted from the fresh blood she can smell so well at this distance. It makes sense, because she has been noticing how his eyes are at their most vibrant, dark blue when he has just fed, while hers seem to pale from hazel-green to clear green when she is hungry. It's just one among the many things they're polar opposites in, yet it's undeniable that they are a flawless fit for each other.
He's warmer too, radiating a stolen heat that just makes her canines to protrude against her tongue and her body ache for skin to skin contact. Instinct bides her to feel slightly resentful and neglected, regardless of their decision of never hunting together unless he's already sated. It's a long road to go before she can control her appetites enough to handle it without his supervision and leave her prey relatively unharmed.
Damon flashes a boisterous smirk like he knows every tainted thought running through her mind, but chooses to plow down beside her, ignoring her and flipping through the pages with sarcastic disapproval all over his features.
"Bonnie," he reads out loud, his tone exaggeratedly amiable, "it's of Scottish origin and its meaning is 'beautiful, attractive, pretty' and also diminutive of the French word 'bonne', meaning 'good'. Commonly used as a fond nickname. The old nursery rhyme claims that "the child who is born on the Sabbath Day/is bonny and blithe and good and gay", which makes this an appropriate name for a Sunday's child."
Leaning toward her conspiratorially until his shoulder hits hers, her mate brushes his lips against her jaw and keeps humoring her with a slightly darker tone: "Well, beautiful, attractive and good. It sounds like a promising package. What are you doing with a rotten, devious devil like myself? "
Sensing the cynic edge to those too light words, Bonnie flips him down to the mattress, straddling him with a sun-bright smile and rolling her eyes in a deliberate show of false annoyance.
"Your name doesn't translate as 'devil', you ignorant creep. It's actually from the Greek root for 'spirit'."
Damon 's eyebrows arch mockingly "Aww, you researched our names to check if they fit? That's so sweet!"
For some twisted reason – it's like drug tolerance, she decides- his being so difficult is incredibly charming right now.
So she shuts his teasing up with a kiss.
Bonnie comes awake with a shudder of delight, but as soon her eyes flutter open, her lips part in a sigh of defeat.
She thought the numbness was bad that first week after he left, but this…this is worse. The dreaming of lifetimes with him, as a mortal and as a vampire, knowing he will hold her again someday. She has been trying so hard to hate him, to separate herself from her most tender feelings toward him. It's impossible when visions keep reminding her what she's missing and what she might have, if only she will take him back, once he returns to her. Whenever this may be.
She doesn't want to wait around for the stubborn likes of Damon Salvatore. He doesn't deserve it. He broke her before she could fully realize he was capable of it.
He…made her better, she will own to it some days. He has shaped her from a little girl to a woman, taught her the language of passion, shown to her those elusive shades of grey between black and white.
That's why she doesn't regret anything, but it hardly matters when the world around her feels like it has lost all the colors.
Every day she fights off the compulsion to just lie in her bed and sleep the hours away. She gets up and goes through the motions of living until she can get back to sleep.
Fortunately the school year is over and Stefan took Elena away for a short vacation, so she is free to hang around Matt and just pretend she is feeling something, anything. Matt won't question her and they will talk about meaningless matters like they have no pressing future plans to decide on.
Bonnie has no energies to waste on college projects or to draw prospective on what her life might become.
It's Damon's fault if she feels so distant from everything, and she doesn't want to be angry or hopeful . She straight-out refuses to feel content at the idea of his return.
He's been a prick to her and the concept of depending so much on someone so fickle, selfish and plainly destructive is frankly terrifying. So, no she won't accept how much exactly she wanted to be loved by him. She won't wonder if those dreams are prophetic in nature or just her mind's way to grieve for him, to prove to herself that she could do better than Katherine or Elena.
Because in those dreams, he is happy and she is the sole recipient of his romantic affections.
Bonnie rejects all hope because she wouldn't be able to bear another disappointment.
XXII
When Damon gets back, Bonnie can sense a subtle shift in the very atmosphere : it happens suddenly, but without any fanfare. She just blinks once upon a common May morning and knows this is the day they will be breathing the same air again. She might focus, reach out with her mind and learn where he is and what he's doing- it's a temptation she pulls back from harshly, in the space of a few seconds.
Obviously, this doesn't improve her predicament much.
At their first meeting her fingers are desperately fumbling to get her key in her lock while her arms are holding her full grocery bags to her chest. Suddenly, pale hands reach out from behind to lift the bags out of her hold.
She doesn't need to turn to recognize who the bastard is.
Bonnie doesn't give him the satisfaction to see her shaken, forces her hyper-aware body to freeze in place and her hitching breath to even out. She doesn't even lift her eyes from the lock.
"What do you want?" she sounds pissed off, cold but collected. It's a strange juxtaposition to how she truly feels. Like she's crumbling inside, piece by piece, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.
"An extensive tour of your bedroom?" his voice is husky, mischievous, thick with confidence. It's a tone she used to be used to. Now it kills her at least as much it enrages her.
Bonnie inhales deeply, commands herself not to cry. "I think you signed off the privilege when you decided I didn't deserve a goodbye."
She turns around just to spit the last few words in his face. If she expected anger would grant her a shred of genuine emotion from Damon, she was wrong. He remains handsome and so damn sure of himself, no regret or guilt flashing behind those darkening cerulean eyes.
He drops her bags down to allow his arms to entrap her against the door. "Don't be like that, Bon-Bon. You got me back. Isn't that all what matters?"
"Just go away" the witch hisses, pushing hard against his chest. Damon doesn't budge.
"No."
"Why the hell not?" she all but snarls, her nails digging in his flesh punishingly, seeking instinctively to hurt him the only way she can.
"Why, she asks…" Damon drawls, rolling his eyes upward, playing pretend to be annoyed at her stubborn obliviousness. Then, abruptly, his body fluidly draws back an inch from hers and his expression grows almost hesitant before shifting back to boisterous:
"Because you love me."
He says it so smoothly that it comes across as unbearably cruel. She slaps him as hard she can for daring to throw the ugly truth in her face.
"I don't even like you!" Bonnie defends herself, but her tone is too sharp, too loud. She can't even convince herself.
"Liar" Damon mutters too close to her ear, becoming more serious as he gives way to a quite annoyed rant:
"I didn't want be in this position again. To change everything around to make someone else happy, fuckingly proud of being with me? It hasn't gotten me anywhere so far. You and me were supposed to be fun: plain, simple and transitory. I didn't want to get close and personal with you. I didn't want you to matter to me. But you fucked all my plans up, so you will just have to live with it, and if you don't love me already, I'll make you. "
Her response is narrowing her furious green eyes at him and slap him, again. It's an even stronger slap than her first.
"That's the least romantic or sensitive apology I've ever heard!"
"It wasn't supposed to be an apology! " Damon frowns, indignant.
"What the fuck it was then? " she hisses, less than pleased.
"Me telling you we can have a relationship, you self-righteous little…" the vampire trails off, searching his mind for any appropriate insult and finding nothing fitting, much to his disbelief "…witch."
Visibly tempted to slap him again, but knowing it would accomplish nothing except causing more pain to her stinging palm, Bonnie raises her hands in the air and snaps an obviously exasperated "Gee, thank you!"
Obvious or not, this is when he kisses her. It's a firm, demanding kiss that doesn't allow her to stay unresponsive, but the arm that surrounds her waist, pulling her hips swiftly against his, is nothing but careful and gentle.
The moment is magical and not in a way that has anything to do with witchcraft. Damon is not touching her in any inappropriate manner: for once, he seems content enough with just kissing her mouth and keeping her as close possible. That detail alone convinces her of his intentions somehow. She feels like she is melting and flying at once, and he is her one anchor. She has never felt so good before and wishes this could last forever.
'I missed you' his mental voice flits across the surface of her thoughts.
'I missed you too.' Bonnie replies in kind, still kissing him.
'I'll give you anything you might ever want. Forever.' The vampire promises heatedly, a touch of desperation tingeing the words as he kisses harder, deeper.
For a moment Bonnie falters because she knows this is what Love means to Damon: offering everything he has and waiting to see the sacrifice adequately compensated, to bend backwards only so he will have the person he wants staying around.
It's a big, scary responsibility, being loved like this.
'As long as you don't leave me again and you don't go on any killing sprees, I have everything I need. '
She wraps her arms around his neck knowing she might regret this admission. Maybe even tomorrow, or two hours from now. Rome wasn't built in a day and Damon can easily drive her insane, when he so elects.
But to hell with it.
'Deal.'
XXIII
It's not until they make love again, with her spread and bare under him, that Bonnie actually hears THE words.
His lips are on her stomach, kissing circles around her bellybutton and his mind delves again inside hers: 'Mine. So beautiful…so perfect. Mine. Love…love you.'
His thoughts are too scattered and fragmented, and it is unintentional, but she treasures it all the same. Perhaps even more.
His nose brushes the underside of her breast and Damon inhales the scent of her skin like it's everything- food, sex, god- to him.
"Damon, I love you." Her mouth is confessing before she is ready to say the words. It's too soon- she bites her bottom lip, panic fluttering in between her heartbeats- although it feels like it's a long time overdue. She is not the only one to be shocked: every one of Damon's muscles trembles as he gets nearly immobile, and then he's literally springing on top of her, the despair in his eyes so naked and raw that it takes her breath away. There's such desolation behind that gaze, like a hunger that can never be completely sated. There are years of obsession and resentment draining his capacity for true, straight-forward emotion. There's a crippling solitude, a violent and devastating need for contact, frustrated for way too long.
"Yes" he growls, taking her face between his hands and smoothing locks of her hair away. "Yes."
It's the closest he can come to telling her what he feels, but it's surprisingly okay. Bonnie discovers she doesn't need him to make it harder on himself. She can just let herself go, here and now, to lose her heart to this moment.
Damon's eyes tell her everything she needs to know. They tell her she is necessary and not allowed to ever leave him.
And that, too, is okay with her.
AN: Okay, I wanted to wait a bit before posting this one but considering the rarity of Bamon fics updates lately, I feel 'compelled' to keep our fandom spunky. This, my amazing readers, is the last chapter. I'm almost saddened to admit it. But…I have an epilogue in store for you before biding goodbye to this tale, so stay tuned!
Also, I'm evidently a review-addict so please, please keep them coming! I love reading your thoughts on each update!