Sorry this is a short update. But, on the up side, the next chapter is longer and up on my site. ;) Twitter/X: RosabelReed
As expected, Bonnie hadn't seen Damon all weekend. He'd texted her a couple times, trying to keep their conversation casual and redirecting when she'd try to bring up anything else. After the first day, it'd gotten to the point where she'd thrown her phone across the room, ceasing all communication.
Damon hadn't liked that, of course, and had annoyingly called her all night until she'd picked up. Stalkerish? A bit. But she'd caved and given him his way.
Like usual.
She really needed to stop that. How would she ever get the upper hand?
She'd been thinking about it all weekend, and all of Monday when he didn't show. They'd been supposed to have a game night with Mary, Frank, and Meredith, who'd made free time to be there. And if she could do that, among her all-consuming new job and PhD classes, Damon; the uber-rich, investment-funded vampire; could too.
But all she'd been left with was an excuse.
I wish I could. But not tonight. I have something I need to do.
Not even an "I'm sorry". He'd just flat-out bailed an hour before everyone was supposed to show up. To do what?
She'd thought of a hundred alternatives for his evening. And most of them had had to do with Gemma. The dirty-blond bane of her existence.
The others, also plausible, had had to do with him finding someone to compel, someone to lure in and sink his fangs into. It would've been easy for him to do. He was sex incarnate. He was darkness disguised as light; sin laced with repentance. And it was heaven when he'd hold so tight that you were forced to contemplate if he might break you.
Somehow, that idea had been worse than imagining him with Gemma. It had scraped through Bonnie's mind, tearing her apart, leaving her with thorns she couldn't dislodge.
It'd never been a secret that Damon had no taste for Gemma's blood, and it wasn't well hidden that hers was like chocolate sating his sweet tooth. It always had been, even when he'd taken from Elena those times that seemed so long ago.
Damon had come to her even then, defeated and ashamed at his lack of satisfaction. He'd linger, beat around the bush, prodding to see if he could tap into her veins, or if she was opposed.
Bonnie never had been.
Near-death experiences had horribly disrupted her pain tolerance, because nothing would ever compare to watching him almost die.
Damon acted as though she was immune, resilient to their shared trauma. But it'd left a deep scar, carving out a hole only partially repaired by his revival. It still stung at his loss, at the lack of his company.
Bonnie's idea of dealing with it had completely differed from his. To keep from losing him again, she would never let him go. Bonnie would share every waking moment with him if she could, just so she never had to experience another lonely second unaccompanied by his presence. She'd be able to see he was alive and well with her own two eyes, and she'd be able to slowly replace the image of him on his deathbed with something happier and full of existence.
He'd been so stupid to save her that day.
It wasn't fair that he'd gotten to decide her fate while she'd had to stand aside and watch as the consequences took over. There'd been nothing she could do to help, even though she'd tried, clutching the sharpest rock she could find and pushing it into her wrist. She'd been prepared to slice herself open and let her life flow into him. But Elena and Meredith had both stopped her, realizing its uselessness far before her own mind could comprehend it. She'd had to simply stand back as Stefan hauled Damon over his shoulder, watch as her vampire's sallow body flopped over his brother's back, a wound meant for her run through his chest.
She'd had to wait, three agonizing days, seventy-two endless hours, while some witch worked her magic. The only thing left for her to do had been to ponder what life would be like without him.
Dull and pointless and not for her.
Yet, Damon had had the audacity to tout his fears of losing her, choosing to solve them with distance over closeness. And lots of it.
They weren't on the same page, yet she'd been given no choice but to etch herself onto his, stuck like leftover pencil marks the eraser couldn't quite remove. When she was the one who'd seen what it looked like for him to be truly lifeless. Not close to death, not unconscious. Gone.
What could she do except fight?
The only problem was, she'd entered the battlefield with no weapons, no strategy to curb a monster displaying not a single Achilles' heel.
Meredith paused their board game while Bonnie stepped into the bathroom.
Dripping into the toilet bowl, she cursed at the sight of the transparent water tinging crimson. Had that time come again already?
Bonnie examined the paper after wiping, searching for clues of heaviness when it hit her. She was staring at his weakness. The answer had been there all along, flowing through her, making her up.
She was dealing with a vampire. One that was refusing to drink at this very moment. Which meant that he was getting hungrier by the day, and she had just what he wanted.
All she'd have to do was nick her finger on a piece of paper "by accident" and he'd have no choice but to tend to her. And wouldn't be so inconvenient if there were no band-aids?
She'd have to hide them, make sure the cut wasn't too shallow.
He'd only had a little taste of her last week. Not enough to satisfy his thirst, but enough to stimulate it.