Disclaimer: The characters and situations belong to L.J. Smith and all other relevant copyright holders.
SLOPPY SECONDS
4
"Remind me why we're doing this again?"
Elena has to shout over the pounding dance music, and even then, she repeats the question three times. Realising how ridiculous the situation is, Bonnie turns down the car stereo. "We couldn't refuse Caroline."
"We?"
"Fine. I. I couldn't refuse Caroline." Bonnie grips the steering wheel with white knuckled fists and attempts to smile. "She's recovered, and she's so excited about throwing the back-to-school party. It's nothing, having to drive down a dark, deserted road for another fifty miles. We'll be fine."
"If we don't turn deaf first," Elena says.
Loud as the music may be, Bonnie's barely processing the sound. The car doors are firmly locked, the windows rolled up tight. For no reason at all, Bonnie has the itchy feeling that something's about to go horribly wrong. Not that she wants to voice her fear aloud; she can't pinpoint why she's scared. It isn't the premonitory feeling she got when Tanner died; this is more a nervous tingle.
Elena sighs, tossing a glance behind her, at the load of tech equipment stacked in the back. They'd driven to the local college, to borrow deejay equipment from a friend of Caroline's. 'Friend' loosely translating to 'ex', a guy by the name of Justin who Caroline had a hotly intense fling with six months back. Matt wouldn't hear of Caroline going up upstate to visit Justin, but since she was desperate to cut costs for the party, she employed Bonnie and Elena as envoys.
"We should have brought Stefan along." Elena rests her head against the window.
But then Damon would have tagged along as well. He said as much this morning, while eying Elena the way a hungry cat eyes a mouse.
Him and Stefan being here right now? One word: awkward.
Bonnie cranks up the stereo. "We will be fine," she says firmly. "Forty-eight miles to go. It's less than an hour!"
She's glad the night's darkness hides her shaking hands.
As the car nears the Mystic Falls boundaries, the tingling bad feeling draws closer and closer. And it is ten miles to the border that Bonnie recognises what it is. Death. Not a life that directly touches hers. Not a fate she could have prevented. It won't be someone she's ever known before...
"Oh, my God. Bonnie, stop!"
Until now.
The moment the thought hits, Bonnie sees the body. Mere metres ahead, splayed on the dirt ground, bloody, even from the distance.
She slams the brakes.
"It isn't a vampire attack." Stefan surveys the body from the distance, his mouth drawn in a taut line. "Too much blood. No vampire would let that go to waste."
"Hungry, Stefan?" Damon leans against the nearby tree trunk, completely unaffected by the blood banquet. His cheeks are tinged pink, obviously he's already fed well tonight. "Go on right ahead. I won't judge."
His tone suggests that Elena certainly might. Stefan knows it. The line of Stefan's mouth tightens further.
Elena slumps against the hood of the car, arms hugged around her body tight. "It's definitely not Katherine? Or her minions?"
"No human has this kind of brute strength." Stefan's face is drawn in worried lines.
"What do we do?" Bonnie's tired, and her curfew is midnight, a mere hour away. She cuts to the chase. "Should we just leave it here?"
"And send the town up in arms?" Damon's voice is harsh. "No. We have to hide it."
"Like the excellent job you did with Vicki last time?" Bonnie can't resist the jibe.
Damon stiffens. Then, his eyes take on a dangerous gleam. He holds his hands up in an expression of surrender. "Well, thanks for volunteering to take my place, witch. Have fun and goodbye."
Bonnie suspects he really would have pulled a disappearing act there and then. But Stefan quickly lunges forward, holding Damon back. "Are you insane?"
"You're right," Damon says mock-thoughtfully. "She is incompetent. Or worse, she might frame us for his death, have us burned for sure, this time."
"I wouldn't do that to Stefan," Bonnie corrects sweetly. "Just you."
Elena hurriedly steps in the stop the escalating fight. "What is up with you two? Listen, Stefan and I will take care of the body."
Damon smirks, "Newsflash, Elena. Stefan can barely take care of himself. I, however—"
"We get it." Bonnie cuts in sharply, gagging at the thought of Damon pulling more sparkly-eyed nonsense on Elena. "You're the studliest, handsomest, bravest and bestest of them all. Seriously. I will do it. I can do this. The rest of you should just go home."
Whether it is a show of macho, or plain lack of conviction, Stefan, Damon and Elena stay firmly put.
"Erm, Bon. You haven't ever buried bodies before…" The end of Elena's sentence takes a squeak. "You haven't, right?"
Bonnie firms her chin and feigns careless bravado. "Of course not. But how hard can it be? Dig up ground. Plunk body in ground. Shovel back dirt to hide body. Cast a few spells to ward people off. I should be able to do all that… with no hands."
"And while you're doing that with no hands," Damon quips, "who knows what will leap out of the shadows and brutally murder you?"
"You're underestimating me."
"Yeah, I definitely underestimated your stupidity." Damon turns to Elena, dutiful, obliging, the picture of dazzling chivalry. "I'll go with her. You'll never forgive me if she dies."
Elena's smile in response is reluctant but bright. "That's right. You better protect her."
"We've spent enough time dawdling here." Stefan's quick to step possessively close to Elena. "We're lucky no other car has passed by." To Bonnie, "I've got some old sheets in the back of the car. You don't want anything leaking."
Leaking. At the very word, the very thought, nausea slams through Bonnie's body. She'd never paused to consider the disgusting practicality of hiding a corpse. Like wrapping up the body, shoving it in the back seat of her baby – the brand new Ford hatchback that she'd gotten for her seventeenth birthday.
Brave face. Brave face. Particularly since Damon's staring, probably thinking smug thoughts, waiting for her to chicken out.
Bonnie. Will. Never.
"Come on, expert." She strides to Stefan's convertible, Damon in tow. "Tell me where to start."
The moment Elena's gone, Damon's cheer and charm evaporates. The car ride to the nearby lake is tersely grim. Neither Bonnie nor Damon spare any words save the necessary: how to dispose of the body with most efficiency.
"Stop here," Damon orders.
Bonnie pulls the car to a stop. "We're walking from here?"
"Yes."
Who's going to carry the body? Bonnie's afraid to ask. Luckily, Damon silently assigns himself the task without further ado.
Bonnie locks up the car and pads after him, clenching bloody fists. She'd helped wrap up the body.
They walk. They walk, they walk a bit more. All the while, Bonnie checks her watch and silently groans. Her Dad won't be happy. No matter. The 'why can't you be more responsible and considerate' speech is inevitable. She's sure there's actually a quota parents must deliver to their kids before a certain age, and as a single parent, her father's adamant to meet alll the 'good parent' guidelines. Well, that's one down tonight… this morning.
Damon keeps walking.
Bonnie notices a liquid trail seeping from the seams of the 'package'. She opens her mouth to tell Damon, but seemingly, as though he's read her mind, he adjusts so the blood drips onto his shirt. Bonnie winces. That certainly deals with the problem, regardless of how palatable the act is. Now, she's pathetically grateful for Damon's presence. She certainly couldn't have levitated a dripping body for so long and bury it without turning into a corpse herself. Not that she'll ever express this gratitude out loud.
"What do you think about this spot?" Damon stops. He doesn't turn to face Bonnie.
'This spot' is hardly distinguished. Trees. Rotting leaves. Something large, lumpy and dark brown that Bonnie suspects to be a tower of animal excrement. "How far is it from the lake?"
"About two hundred feet." He gleans this piece of knowledge from merely sniffing the air.
"That should be far enough." Bonnie bites her lip. "Do you want me to start digging?"
He nods.
She closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and prepares to enter the spell by relaxing her body, tilting her head skywards, easing her breathing to become steady and even. Calm, her mind blank, she murmurs the incantation to move the ground below them.
The ground shakes. She pictures a hole gaping open, two feet away. The power shoves at the solid earth, forcing it to yield, to move upwards. It's hard at first, being surrounded by the latent power of the trees, urging them to cooperation. As she coaxes it, the barriers stopping the power flow slowly crumble away. She can feel the hole widening, deepening.
"That's more than adequate."
Snapping out of the spelling zone, Bonnie looks down to see a yawning pit. She can't see the bottom. Curiously, she throws down a rock. Counting the seconds until hearing the drop, it shocks her, figuring how deep she's dug. Several feet, More than ten.
"Is that too deep to be natural?"
He shrugs. "You think?"
"I'll spell again..."
"Don't tire yourself." He lowers the body to the ground. "You still have to use magic to cover the hole and burn the sheets."
She'd forgotten about burning the sheets. Of course, they can't leave it with the body. The body is placed in the pit. The cavity is half filled, and then the ashy remnants of the sheets mixes with the soil. Bonnie performs the incantation again, moving a few mounds of grass over the newly covered hole. Then she sets up various avoidance charms around the area to distract any possible passer bys: magical suggestions of 'There's leeches in this area', 'Is that deer over there?' and, 'Ew, something stinks.'
By the time she's finished, Bonnie's boneless. It's a struggle to stand upright, and she fights not to show it. So when Damon starts walking, she unquestioningly follows him. Too late, she realises he's walking towards the lake, not to the car.
"What are you doing?" she snaps.
"You want to go home looking like that? You won't be able to explain it."
"What else am I supposed to do?" She practically snarls with tiredness and frustration. She just wants to go home, not go for a scenic tour around the lake.
Scenic tour. Wait. What if he's trying to kill her? What if the scenic tour involves getting hog-tied and dumped at the bottom of the lake?
Her steps slow, "You know what? You go ahead and clean. I'll stay right here. I'll tell my parents I went mud wrestling, and it's a new in thing for teenagers. They'll buy it."
"Witch, you've got brains splattered in your collar. How does mud-wrestling explain that?"
Bonnie struggles with an explanation. Comes up with nothing. Right now, even standing is a taxing task. Despite all her best efforts, her stance sways a little. She grits her teeth, hating her inability to push herself a little more.
Elena probably could.
"I don't want to, alright?" She finally snaps. "You and I both know that the most dangerous thing out here is you. I don't trust you. I don't trust you right now, and I trust you even less around huge stretches of water."
He finally turns around, green-grey eyes vicious and mouth pulled to a sneer. "Don't flatter yourself. If it wasn't for Elena, I wouldn't even be here."
Bonnie's confused. Scared of getting murdered... she's flattering herself how?
Damon's confused about why she's confused… And then he gets it. "You think I want to kill you? Idiot. Like I'd bother to expend that kind of energy. This is all for Elena." He puts emphasis. "The whole good guy thing? I'd appreciate it if you dropped in a few words about me tomorrow, something like, 'He's so helpful, the way he disposed of that body was so manly…'" Said in falsetto.
"Oh please," Bonnie mutters.
"… And towards the end of the night," he continues in a hugely inaccurate imitation of girly Bonnie gossiping to Elena, "I was dead on my feet, and he scooped me up, like a knight in shining armour."
"I do not talk like that!" Bonnie begins irately. When Damon really does scoop her up, she's immediately breathless, winded with disbelief.
Suddenly, they're right by the lake's shore.
He sets her down, gently. "I'll be frank, Bonnie Bennett. You're Elena's best friend. I want you on my side, not Stefan's. I want you to believe I deserve Elena."
Bonnie feels shivery. Because of the chill night air. She presses her lips together, fixedly staring out at the lake, momentarily lost for anything to say. And then she finds it: her ability to speak. "You aren't a bad guy, Damon. You really aren't, and I know that, even if I mightn't act like that's so most of the time. But…" This part is hardest to speak, despite the fact it's the truth, because it is difficult to voice it aloud, without feeling bitter, sounding bitter, and wistful, particularly with the events recently transpired. "She's your brother's girlfriend. It will never be right."
He laughs. "So how do you justify lusting after your best friend's boyfriend?"
Re-watching the episodes definitely helped! :) A lot of tVD comms are doing rewatches now (with the CW schedule), particularly on livejournal. Of course, there's the awesome damon_elena comm, nothing yet on damonandbonnie (yeah, I lurk there more than I should) and a teeny little post on stefanandelena that begs for more comments.
Thanks to all the reviewers on the last chapter! Hugely appreciated! And no, this fic will not be heading down the path of Bonnie and Stefan or Bonnie and Matt. I'm finding I'm covering a lot more on the struggles of Elena and Bonnie's friendship that I ever intended to. But it will get better between them... soon!