Disclaimer: Characters and situations belong to LJ Smith and respective copyright holders.
SLOPPY SECONDS
8
Deputy Rogers is a long time friend of Bonnie's father. He's also a good cop. If there was any time Bonnie's ever lamented Deputy Roger's moral rigidity and dedication to duty, it is now, as she sits in his office, waiting for the first official blemish on her permanent record.
"You were five times over the legal alcohol limit." Deputy Rogers shakes his head. "And that, young lady, is the over-21 legal alcohol limit."
"It isn't illegal to drink alcohol," Bonnie says miserably.
"It is illegal to drink and drive." Deputy Rogers types something into the computer. Bonnie feels sick; knowing the sentence he's just typed in will be the ruin of her professional life. He pins Bonnie with a look, "Where did you get the alcohol from?"
Bonnie presses her lips together tightly. "I don't know," she lies.
"You are already in great trouble," he warns.
"I really don't know."
"You would be in worse trouble if you don't tell," he says.
Bonnie shakes her head. She's watched her fair share of police dramas. She knows he doesn't have the power to make any bargains.
He shrugs. "Suit yourself." Bonnie hears an unpleasant echo of Katherine saying the exact same words.
As time drags on, the churning feeling in Bonnie's stomach worsens. Every tap she hears on the keyboard seems to directly knock on her head, like little hammers, striking hard at her brain. So when a knock sounds on the door, Bonnie almost jumps out of her seat. She turns, expecting to see her disappointed father. But instead, she sees Damon Salvatore.
Bonnie freezes, not sure what to think.
"Pete."
"Damon." Weirdly enough, Deputy Rogers is on a first-name basis with Damon. "This isn't the best time."
"So I see," Damon looks over Bonnie, who stiffens. "A drinking driving case, I hear. She's a friend of a friend," he continues. "Would it be alright if I had a word with her outside?"
Deputy Rogers nods.
Bonnie rises from her chair and follows Damon outside, to the starkly empty corridor. "What are you doing here?" she hisses.
"What are you doing here?" he fires right back at her. "What were you thinking, driving at that hour?"
"It was an emergency!"
"Your dog went missing, so I heard."
Bonnie's eyes narrow, "You were eavesdropping?"
"I heard a little," he says with a shrug. "Who was calling? I didn't recognise the voice."
He didn't recognise Katherine. Though maybe, it isn't so much a sign of his declining devotion, but a testament to the superiority of Katherine's skills in disguise. Bonnie lowers her eyes. She might detest him, but even so, she's not malicious enough to bring up Katherine. "What made you come after me?" she asks.
"When you didn't come back after an hour," he replies. "The others, they wanted to all look for you, but some of them were incapacitated."
Incapacitated, in other words, dead drunk. "All of them?"
Damon smiles wolfishly. "My brother would never leave me alone with Elena."
Which meant Elena was gone as well. Bonnie sighs, "Well, you can go back," she says, as lightly as she can. "I'm handling things fine. After Deputy Rogers releases my forms, I'm good to go."
His smile disappears, and his grey-green eyes darken. "You get arrested, and you say things are fine?"
"They are fine! People," Bonnie doesn't know why she's suddenly stumbling over her words, "people get arrested all the time!"
"Only idiots and criminals," Damon's voice drips with condensation. "You are neither."
"I'm glad about your high opinion of me," Bonnie says stiffly. "But this is my own mistake, my own burden to bear. You have nothing to do with it."
"Really? That's what you really think?"
Damon's mocking tone makes Bonnie feel humiliated. She's confused whether it is the painful, self-aware kind or just pure anger. "I do think that." The words feel like paste building blocks in her mouth. "There's no reason for you to help me. You are my best friend's boyfriend's brother. The connection is twice removed. Trust me, this time you would really have to extend yourself to help. Elena will understand if you can't, or won't. Besides we," Bonnie swallows. The pasty feeling doesn't go away. "We aren't even friends."
His grey eyes shutter. "Oh, we aren't?"
"You know we aren't," Bonnie snaps back, infuriated. But somehow, the minute the words escape her mouth, she wishes she could take it back. A distinctly unpleasant silence falls. She can't tell whether he's sardonically amused, or hurt. There's no reason for the latter, surely. Damon can't possibly be offended. Yet watching his lips twist into an ugly sneer, Bonnie's stomach bottoms out.
"Well," he drawls, his voice dangerously velvet, "I'll tell you as your best friend's boyfriend's brother, as a distant acquaintance, that your constant attempts of making a martyr of yourself fool no one. Especially not your so-called friends."
"Just because I don't want your help doesn't make me a martyr," Bonnie snarls.
"If you could help yourself, I would leave you alone!" Damon hisses back. "Tell me, Bonnie, how are you going to get yourself out of this one?"
Really, the only thing Bonnie knows is that she's meant to take her punishment, suck it up. Lost for words, she tastes the salty beginning of tears. "You don't get yourself out of crimes!" Bonnie retorts. "You repent them! That's what I'm doing now, repenting!"
"You didn't do anything wrong," he says.
Of course, he'd think so. Vampires had no moral compasses. Bonnie blinks hard, forcing back encroaching tears. "Tell me then, what about getting into a car drunk is right?"
"You didn't have a choice."
"I had a choice." Bonnie turns away from him. "I knew going out tonight was a bad idea. I really didn't want to, because of Yangtze. I knew it in my gut, I shouldn't have gone out. I didn't do enough to protect him, and now I'm repenting."
"Is your dog dead?" he asks softly.
Bonnie shakes her head. She's biting her cheek hard, because she doesn't want to cry in front of Damon Salvatore. She doesn't want to look any more pathetic.
"Was Katherine there?" he whispers.
Stunned, Bonnie's head jerks up. She just manages to bite back a revealing, 'How did you know?'
"You're easy to read," he says. "Of course she was there. So, she still snares her victims that way. Some people really don't change." He leans back against the wall, arms folded. "She circles them, breaking them down, bit by bit. She always hits at the weakest places. She got yours, didn't she?"
Bonnie reddens with shame. Vividly, she remembers Katherine's insidious words, 'You feel very lonely'. "She didn't get them good enough."
"Of course she didn't. You wouldn't be here right now."
Having about used the last of her patience, talking about herself, Bonnie closes her eyes and breathes deeply. "What was yours?" she asks bluntly, not really expecting him to answer, "How did she snare you?"
He stills beside her. "Katherine." He says her name hoarsely. "Katherine, she made me feel like I was the most important person in the world. The strongest, the fastest, the best, she promised that all to me. Truthfully, I was pathetic. I was dishonourably discharged from the army. I wasn't a good soldier. I wasn't a scholar, like Stefan, who shone in the academics. I had no head for managing the family's investments. I had no charm or charisma for people I did not know and like. But with Katherine, I had everything. With her by my side, I excelled at everything."
Stunned by his reply, Bonnie clumsily replies, "You mean regardless of everything, she was good for you."
"She was a selfish bitch," Damon's expression is filled with bitterness. "Eventually, I would have come to my own. I flourished without her."
"She helped you," Bonnie says. "There's no shame in admitting that."
His laughter at this is harsh, "Bonnie. Don't you understand? She helped me only because it served her, because it was easily within her power. Power and money, it buys everything in the world. It can buy anything you could ever want. Even love. The old adage is false. Power can definitely buy you love. It can buy you loyalty, if you know how to spend it."
"She couldn't buy your lasting loyalty," says Bonnie, very softly.
"That's because she no longer wants it." His words sound clipped, cold and impersonal. Too clipped, cold and impersonal. Damon's the master of convincing insouciance. He must have truly loved Katherine, Bonnie thinks, to be so affected.
Somehow, Bonnie's hit with the irrational need to consol him, "You don't know that yet." She adds, somewhat lamely, "Maybe she's got a greater plan that involves you. That's very possible."
"If so, I would never agree," Damon says, suddenly impassive.
His abrupt change of moods is unnerving. Bonnie stares hard at the blank wall opposite, wishing this talk was over. Facing her state-imposed punishment would be better than this, probably. "Why?" she asks, racking her brain for a way to smoothly end the conversation.
"Because, I'm better than that." And then he turns to her, his green-grey eyes aflame.
Bonnie takes a hasty step back. "I don't doubt it," she lies.
"Yes you do," he follows her, intent on something, Bonnie doesn't know. Her ears are roaring, her thoughts are scrambled, all of a sudden, she isn't sure of anything anymore.
She watches, stunned, as Damon reaches behind her, moving to re-enter Deputy Roger's office.
"What are you doing?" Bonnie struggles to stop him.
"Like it or not, Bonnie Bennet, I'm going to help you," he says.
Bonnie tries to cover the door handle. "This isn't the right way to start a friendship," she babbles. "The right way is to sit down together and discuss… our…" Not feelings, "mutual interests, over coffee or tea."
"We can do that later."
"And Deputy Rogers isn't the only person you have to deal with, you know. My dad also knows."
"I'll visit him too," Damon says simply, beginning to turn the knob.
Bonnie shakes her head furiously. "What about the gossip grapevine? It's a small town, everyone knows everyone's business."
"That doesn't start until at least six o'clock in the morning." Damon's clearly had experience with small town grapevines. "It is one o'clock now. We have five hours, easy."
One last thought occurs to Bonnie. "Vervain," she hisses into his ear. "The whole police force drinks it."
Damon's smile at this is almost luminous. "I hear their supplies have been compromised." With that said, he pushes her away firmly and opens the door.
Bonnie looks on, stupefied, as Damon Salvatore works his vampire charms.
Five hours later, at six o'clock, Bonnie has a hangover. Damon isn't helping. Apparently, his newfound moral compass and consequent friendship doesn't extend to the aftermath of alcoholic indulgence. Not that Bonnie ponders too hard about that now. With so many other worries in her mind, she's reduced to moping about how awfully her head hurts, and how pathetically relieved she is to still possess an unblemished civilian record.
Damon was right, damn him. She is grateful.
They're at the Salvatore residence. Stefan and Elena aren't home yet. Damon's drinking Scottish whisky, aged one hundred years in an oak barrel before finding its way into a crystal flagon. And then Damon's sensually shaped mouth.
Immediately following this line of thought, Bonnie mentally washes her mind out with soap. She must be still a little drunk. After all, she was five times over the legal alcohol limit.
Five! She curls into a tighter ball, burrowing further into the buttery leather of the Salvatore couch.
Sometime after nine o'clock, Bonnie locates a packet of chocolate Pop-tarts in the pantry. After eating two, she feels better enough to start a new day.
At ten o'clock, Bonnie eases out of the guest bathroom. She found a new packet of Ivory soap and used it as soap and shampoo. Which worked okay for her skin, but not so great for her hair. Her dark tresses are usually straight and smooth, but now it's a frizzy tangled mess no amount of moisturiser can subdue.
It is time for an appointment at Tina's Hairdressing salon, and new extensions. Contemplating the dent in her bank account, Bonnie feels very gloomy.
And she becomes gloomier still, seeing Damon waiting in the lounge room. He's working on a new glass of something. Not whisky. Blood. Which is totally okay to Bonnie, really. Or at least, she's valiantly trying to pretend this is a normal thing, seeing O-positive downed like orange juice. The difference really is a mere few syllables.
"Good morning," she says.
"Good morning," he responds, taking a seat next to her.
"Um, you have a good shower," Bonnie says awkwardly. "It's got really good, um, water pressure. It kind of blasted me right in the head." Her hugely frizzy hair is impossible to miss. She might as well try to excuse it.
But Damon's not interested in her hair. "I see you've found Stefan's supply of soap."
Stefan's an Ivory man. Figures. "It was in the bathroom," Bonnie says.
"Elena likes to use it," Damon says blandly.
Bonnie winces. That can only mean one thing. "I opened a new pack," she says hastily, "It was just there. And I would have liked to use something else, but I didn't want to impose."
Damon shrugs.
Bonnie sighs, exasperated. "Listen. I don't like Stefan, not in the way you like to think. So you can forget about your cosy alternate reality where you can hook up with Elena, guilt free, while I comfort Stefan. That's not going to happen."
Damon sips the blood, "I forgot. You don't take sloppy seconds."
She smiles reluctantly. "That's right. I don't take sloppy seconds."
"And you'll spend the rest of your life as a spinster," he continues, "Because everyone is a sloppy second from somebody."
The use of 'spinster' – which Bonnie's never encountered in real life – makes her crack up a little. She dampens her smile. "I'm only considering the direct cases," she says in correction, "People who have dated people I know. That rules out… most people I know."
There's a smear of blood on the corner of Damon's lip. Somehow, he's sitting closer to her, now. "Including Tyler Lockwood."
He's more observant than she realised. "Yes," Bonnie agrees. "That includes Tyler."
"Does Tyler know he's out of your consideration?"
"Tyler and I have an understanding," Bonnie says carefully. "Between the two of us. I can't tell."
"Not even a good friend?" Damon's voice is like velvet.
"I wouldn't even tell Elena," Bonnie says, trying to be as diplomatic as possible.
"Not even me?" Damon's voice, if possible, lowers to become even more persuasive.
Bonnie stares at him, surprised at this response. It is at that moment she realises two things. Firstly, Damon's close, so close, in fact, his lips tickle at her ear. Secondly, his drink is mixed with some highly alcoholic something, and he's completely drunk; he's been completely drunk all this time. He's been drunk for, oh, the past twelve hours.
It's very possible he might just forget this whole night. Which may be a good thing, because he looks like he's about to kiss her. And the last thing Bonnie wants is to turn him away.
A/N: I'm on a bit of a historical romance bent at the moment. I think it shows. So, our headstrong heroine is on the precipice of making an extremely bad (but oh so good) decision to take advantage of the inebriated hero. Will she, or won't she? And how does Katherine, and Elena and Stefan... and most of all, Tyler, have to do with this somewhat offlandish plot? Tune in next time!
Also, thank you very much to everyone who reviewed! I'm sorry about the lateness. Nevertheless, this story is on the verge of breaking into the three digit review mark! Yay!