Disclaimer: Characters and situations belong to LJ Smith and respective copyright holders.
SLOPPY SECONDS
9
Damon Salvatore's lips. Or Bonnie's own sanity. The moral path should have been the easy choice, but it isn't, because… it just isn't. Bonnie almost unconsciously drifts towards Damon, eyes fluttering close, lips puckering up. Her face feels hot, her palms feel hot; Damon's presence, on the other hand is icy cool. And he's smiling.
He's never smiled at her like that before. It's not his oh-so-sexy come-hither smile, or his sardonic smile, or his cruel smile, the one Bonnie's most accustomed to. There's no disgust or triumph in his face; the only other explanation for it is that he's happy. Or polite. Suddenly aware of the ache in her cheeks, Bonnie realises that she's grinning like a fool.
For someone who is dead drunk, Damon's disturbingly lucid, except there's lightness to his smile, less deliberation to his gestures.
He should be drunk like this all the time, Bonnie thinks, slumping in her seat with a sigh.
"Bonnie. You didn't answer my question." His voice is like liquid chocolate to her ears.
Stupid, traitorous ears. It's like they have a direct line to her heart.
"It is personal." Bonnie scoots away from him. "It is secret. You're getting nothing out of me. And really, it won't endanger anyone."
"Elena worries about you," Damon says.
Of course, it all comes back to Elena. "Well, that's sweet of her," Bonnie says, wondering what Elena could have possibly told him. "How do you know?"
He raises a brow. Bonnie gamely matches his expression. When he raises his glass to take another sip, she quells down the urge to swat his hand. "Truth is," he says, "I followed her last date with Stefan."
"That's… quite creepy."
"You should tell them that." His lips curve to a delicate sneer. "They were following you. You went to Smallwood's house."
"His name is Lockwood," Bonnie corrects witheringly.
Grey-green eyes gleam. "He looks like a Smallwood."
"Why, you know one?" Bonnie can't resist the pointed quip, and the glance down.
In response, Damon doesn't say a word. He just locks his eyes on hers and smiles. And this time, it is his sexy, glittery-eyed smile. Bonnie colours and tears her eyes away, self-consciously lifting her hand to her frizzy head. Twining a strand around her fingers, she can hear a frizzle.
She drops her hand. "So what are we going to do about Katherine?" she asks, uncomfortably aware that Katherine's now a safe topic. Because she can't talk about her Dad anymore, or Elena, or Stefan, or Caroline – and certainly not Tyler, and Damon probably doesn't follow popular media, or even he does, she's not inclined to talk about it. He probably still has a harking for Ye Olde Confederates Pop, or whatever they listened to, back in the day.
He shrugs. "We sit and wait," he says. "She hasn't shown her hand yet. We don't know exactly why she wants you."
The way he says this, Bonnie's offended. "I wouldn't underestimate me if I were you," she warns.
"I'm not underestimating you," Damon says matter-of-factly. "Katherine is targeting you for a reason. She wants a witch with ties to Salem. But why, we have no clue."
"How do you know she wants a witch with ties to Salem?"
Damon takes another sip of blood. His eyes lower, almost lazily. "We found our rat into Katherine's pack, Rick and I. Isabel's minion killed a Salem-heritage witch, and Katherine was furious. Then Rick ran a check on Salem witch legacies. There really aren't that many out there. The bloodlines are dying out."
"There's so few?" Bonnie's alarmed. While she knew about her legacy, it was never something she really pursued. Everything she learned, she learned from Grams, or her grimoires. She never really thought to go out to find others exactly like her. But now, hearing this kind of news, she feels oddly hollow. Grams had been so proud of her Salem heritage.
"There are few, but we suspect Katherine's looking for several other criterion: old enough to have power, but young enough to be a virgin."
Bonnie retains her composure – barely. "You can't be serious about that."
"I'm very serious."
"Well, I'm not." The lie blurts out of her mouth, so easily, it really could have been the truth. She's not even sure why she lied, because it's something that she'd blithely admit to in any other circumstance. It's just that Damon makes her feel like she's six, instead of sixteen. Or rather, seventeen. She closes her eyes and grits her teeth. "Anyway, we are not going to talk about this."
Damon, the bastard, bursts out laughing. "Caroline's told me different."
"Caroline has a big mouth."
"And you blush every time our conversation remotely drifts towards sex."
Bonnie opens her mouth, then closes it with a snap, choosing to keep a dignified silence.
Damon lounges back into the couch, crossing an elegant ankle over his knee. "So who was your first?" he says conversationally.
Bonnie pulls herself upright. "It is personal," she says haughtily. "A lady never kisses and tells."
"The saying is a gentleman never kisses and tells," he corrects with a snort. "I'm definitely not a gentleman. My first was my governess. She was twenty-five, pretty as a milkmaid, and so busty, almost everything she wore looked obscene."
Bonnie has heard her share of shockingly blasé statements from her friends. That one, however, may have just taken the cake. She fixates her eyes on his almost-empty cup, wondering how their conversation had come down to this. "I'm surprised your father hired her," she murmurs finally. The words don't come out judge-y, at all.
"My father was an honourable. Remarkably like Stefan. I don't think he ever understood her charms. While I did, quite profoundly." Damon drains his cup dry.
He stands up to get another one, but Bonnie snatches the cup from his hand. "You're drunk." She speaks firmly.
"Not drunk enough." He looks directly into her eyes, his gaze vividly green-grey.
Bonnie looks away first. "You know, you'll regret it when you wake up, realising that you've told me all these personal stories."
His head cocks, considering the thought. "I don't think I will. I rarely regret a thing. Regrets are a waste of time. Most things past, you can't change."
"You must regret some things," Bonnie says. Because she certainly has many regrets. Never making an effort to know Grams before, until it was too late. Being a frequent cryer when she was a kid – something she wonders whether her crying annoyed her parents so much, they gratefully divorced. Letting her friendships with Elena and Caroline drift apart – sometimes, she knows she could have handled things better. Maybe organised some more group events, make an effort to push Elena and Caroline together. She should have never crushed so hard on Matt – God knows that went nowhere…
"You know what, I do." Bonnie's surprised by his answer. Then she glances up, to find him staring at her hair. Her massively frizzy hair. She should have changed her extensions after that dip in the lake…
"I used to know a watch. She came by way of Salem, just like you. I used her to help me find Katherine. She fell in love with me."
The way he states this outright, uncaringly; Bonnie cringes for the faceless, nameless girl.
"Knowing I loved Katherine, she did everything she could to look like her. She curled her hair – like you do, sometimes –" Bonnie doesn't try to correct this assumption. "When she found out that Katherine spoke Italian and French, she immediately took up lessons in those languages. After I told her Katherine adored classic novels, she began to read one a day. Every detail I told her about Katherine, she would emulate it, exactly. And then, she begged me to turn her into a vampire."
"Did you?"
"No."
Bonnie's response is silence.
"When I got tired of her, I abandoned her. And then one day, our paths crossed again. I needed some advice," Damon adds, when Bonnie raises a cynical brow. "It was years later, decades later. She was an entirely different person."
Already, the story has left a bitter taste of disgust and dread in Bonnie's mouth. "What, did you expect she wouldn't change, like you?"
"I didn't expect her to change so much. Back when I knew her, she was always covered in frills and frippery, much like Katherine. But when I next saw her, all her past pretences were stripped away. She was dressed much like you are now –" Bonnie's in last night's party clothes, skinny jeans, a fitted top – "Her face was bare, and her hair was just like yours. She was confident in herself, and I never found her more beautiful."
As he's drawing lines between beauty and Bonnie, she supposes she should be flattered, but this story clearly doesn't have a happy end. "What happened?"
"She tried to kill me. So I killed her."
Bonnie closes her eyes, for a moment. "And you regret killing her." Somehow, her voice is level.
"I regret never having known her. I was too blinded by my love for Katherine."
"Surely–" Temporary insanity hits Bonnie. She'd never have dared to ask the question otherwise. "You don't regret loving Katherine, do you?"
"No." His voice is faint, almost inaudible. "I regret never being able to let go. I still can't. It's my purpose for living."
"Being in love with her?" Something in Bonnie's heart twists painfully.
"I want to destroy her." His words are strong, vehement.
Bonnie stares down at her hands. "Then what happens afterwards?"
"Afterwards? After I stake her in her ice cold heart?" he laughs bitterly. "I don't know."
"What about Elena?" Bonnie doesn't know what inside her pushes the question forward. Some sadistic, evil side to her, no doubt.
A shadow of genuine amusement returns to Damon's face. "I'm not drunk enough to answer that," he says.
"I won't tell her."
"Of course you won't." Damon pauses. An expression akin to pity passes over his face. Bonnie stares at him, throat tight, confused. "I won't tell you," he says quietly.
In that horrible moment, she realises he knows. Damon Salvatore is centuries old. He can read people like books, and Bonnie's as transparent as waxed paper. He knows she likes him. That way. She wonders how long he's been aware of her irrational crush on him. She wonders what he really thinks. No wonder why he's always acts so vaguely disgusted…
"Don't," he whispers, almost as if he can read her thoughts. "Don't cry. It isn't your fault. God knows if I had any sense, I'd return your feelings. But I don't."
Bonnie swallows hard. She feels completely humiliated, like she's betrayed a secret side of herself. Surely, this couldn't have happened, had she thought better, thought clearer, hadn't been here now, had just left the room earlier…
There's no way to salvage her pride. There's no way she can justify this to herself. Because she doesn't really like him – like Damon Salvatore – in a real, romantic, serious way. Not really. Sure, she might admire the colour of his eyes, the muscle tone of his chest, and the curve of his cheek, but she doesn't like him, let alone loved him.
But her heart is breaking.
She stands up. Without another word, without another glance, she leaves the house. Her car is still in police possession. Damon had driven here. No matter. She could walk home. It's only three miles, easy peasy by foot.
Damon won't bring up this subject again, ever. Maybe he'll be too drunk to even remember. Even if not, it doesn't matter. It can't matter, because it is impossible.
Three miles. The distance stretches before her, the steps and minutes compressing in her mind like folded ribbon. Three miles should take an hour, maybe. Maybe more, if there's incline, or if she stops, if she stops to cry. Regardless, by the time she gets home, this thought will be gone from her memory, blocked for perpetuity.
A/N: This chapter was really hard to write – I wasn't sure whether I wanted to take the story this far. After trying to revise it, I realised there wasn't really much else it could go. Damon and Bonnie's hidden conflict had to come to head.
[And the title won't go centre. :( I tried fixing it, but the thing won't work. I tried editing three times!]
I hope the wait was worth it. My RL schedule is starting to get really hectic, but I'll try to squeeze some fanfic in when I have time. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. As always, thank you for the feedback! I really do look on them as inspiration!