Hope everyone had/is having a nice holiday! :)
And if you're still reading after the last chapter, all I can say is, well... he is a vampire. ;D
As always, thanks for reading, and if you wanna read on, you know where to go. Hopefully. :)
The picture-covered hall felt so different now. She'd been living with her sister for four years, those halls were home, but her world was not the same.
She'd had him once intimately, a second ferally, and her body was wholly attached to his. No longer did she belong to the earth but to him. He was her sun, her moon, bringing light to her days, tossing her still waters. He was her gravity, keeping her on her feet, drawing her closer. Her heart beat only because he told it to. But it was prepared to stop at his will.
The bites on her thigh stung, the tender red dots chafing as she walked. They would've been noticeable, too, if not for the night.
But for Bonnie, darkness would not matter. She would see the pinpoint punctures even in pitch black, because she'd never forget the places his fangs had been.
"Lord, I was just about to check on you. Never thought you'd come out of the— Damon." Mary's eyes were bright with wonder, a smile battling to bend her lips. "I didn't know you were here."
"Sorry. I forgot to text you." Bonnie offered her best apologetic smile. Inside, she was shaking, recalling every skilled flick of Damon's tongue.
"It's ok." Her sister's curious orbs flicked between them. "You know you're always welcome, Damon."
Damon smiled in that way that scrunched his eyes, making them seem kinder than Bonnie knew them to be. "I was just keeping this one company while you were working late. But I'm going to run. Have to be up early for another meeting."
Ah yes, the "company" he owned. Which was really just a bunch of investments that luck and old money had acquired him and Stefan.
Bonnie could see the puzzle pieces connecting in her sister's head.
"Ok. You'll come by next week though? For game night? You missed the last one."
Bonnie had to give Mary credit. She was quick on her feet, manipulative even, to shamelessly guilt trip a vampire. For what reason? There was no game night planned for next week.
"I'll do my best." Damon flashed his sweetest grin.
Mary cocked her hip into the counter, sifting through unopened mail.
"Follow me out?"
Bonnie nodded to their usual routine.
"Don't be too long. No one likes a cold cookie." Mary's voice tinged with bitterness.
One of them was ebbing on Mary's bad side—a place no one wanted to be. And Bonnie was fairly certain it wasn't her.
"She'll be right back." Bonnie's shoulders went stiff as Damon caught them, leading her toward the front door.
The metal latch clicked, and Bonnie flinched, thinking back to the bathroom, to his predatory stare.
Facing Damon on the porch was déjà vu. But she had a feeling this time wouldn't end as fun as the last.
"Was it worth it? Are you proud of yourself for finally breaking me down?" His voice held all the anger she'd been expecting.
But she still shrunk beneath it. "I didn't mean for it to go that far."
"Is that why you asked me over earlier?" he countered.
"I ..." How could she say no when she'd stood in the bathroom pressing a pair of scissors into her finger? When she'd sat on the couch devising ways to make herself bleed?
"You didn't just miss me like you said, did you?"
"I did!" And she had. Terribly. Her life consisted of missing him.
But Damon just tutted, brushing her off. "You truly are so much more deceptive than I credit you for."
Bonnie shrugged, a hard jar of her shoulders that jolted her bones in their sockets. "You know I'm not happy with this situation, Damon."
"I could've killed you."
She groaned at the colorless sky. "Yes, and so could a car, or a fall down some stairs, or even a sip of water the wrong way. I'm human. I could die to anything at any moment."
"That's not the point, Bonnie. You just keep pushing, and you never stop because you just assume that I won't hurt you, that I'm not dangerous."
Her curls swayed side to side with the shake of her head. "You're not a monster."
Damon crossed the distance between them, only stopping once he was towering over her. "I wanted to drain every last drop of blood from your body."
She inched closer. "Then I would've died in ecstasy. Poetic."
Damon reared back, his hand wringing his hair as his head tipped to the sky. "You're psychotic."
"And you're cruel." Tears filled to her lash line. "You're everything I've ever wanted, and you refuse to want me back. It's so much worse than rejection, Damon. It's so much worse."
Damon hands went over his face, the heels pressing into his eyes. "I think we …" His voice broke. "I think we need some space."
Bonnie's hands went into the air. "Is that your answer for everything?"
"Staying isn't going to make anything better."
Tears trickled onto her cheeks like tiny raindrops. Bonnie swiped them away. "Once again, we disagree."
Damon sighed, a hard whoosh of breath tinged in his frustrations.
They were no match for her own.
"You can be mad at me—"
"I am," Bonnie snapped, feeling the tension in her jaw.
Damon's eyes rolled into the back of his skull. "That's fine. But I need time—"
"For what?"
"To figure out how to look at you without tasting your cunt on my fucking tongue, Bonnie!" Damon's chest heaved with breath he didn't need, his eyes an unfathomable black.
Bonnie chilled against them, his words wreaking havoc on her insides. "I never asked you to do that."
"No. You just baited me."
Her jaw cracked in her ear. "You had to want it for me to bait you."
She thought she had him, checkmated with no way out.
But Damon's teeth flashed, his thunderous laugh splitting their silence.
"My love, I always want you." He walked closer, taking her face in his hands and turning it up to his. "The fact of the matter is that I can't trust you with those feelings. You exploit them like the bratty little witch that you are."
Bonnie jerked as he swooped down, catching her lips in a hard, almost violent, kiss.
He broke it in the same manner, unexpected and rough, dragging his human teeth along a place she'd made sore between her canines.
"You promised. No more long goodbyes." She went onto her toes, catching his lower lip between hers. The simple act warmed her body in all the places it was starting to feel cold.
Damon indulged her with a quick swipe of his tongue. "I promised that to a girl I could trust with my feelings."
He pulled back, skimming his nose along hers. "That's not you."
As soon as his hands fell away, Bonnie swung. The smack of her palm on his cheek echoed.
A slow smile bloomed across Damon's lips.
His tongue clicked. "Tell Mary I won't be coming to that game night."
He spun, bounding down the steps.
"Don't bother coming back at all! Don't you ever come back here!" Bonnie screamed at his back as it blended with the darkness and then became a speck of feathers invisible in the night sky. "I never want to see you again!"
She didn't care if Mary heard; if the distant neighbors looked out their windows. She didn't care.
Bonnie dropped to her knees, sobs wracking her slight frame as it crumpled to the loss of him, to the loss of them. Whatever they'd even been. It was all just dust, nothing more than dirt to be swept up and thrown away.
Damon could never be what she needed.
Her wails quieted into silent cries that constricted her windpipe.
Bonnie hugged her body tight, afraid that if she let go, she would never be able to put the pieces back together. But an extra pair of arms held her together, stronger, warmer.
"I'm here. I'm here. I've got you," Mary said in her softest voice, knelt beside her on the porch.
Bonnie leaned into her only comfort, her sister, the one that had always been there for her. A best friend, a mother when they'd lost theirs, a role model. Mary was all in one, a superhero of a human being that Bonnie wasn't sure she'd ever equate to.
Mary didn't try to move her, didn't constrict her too tight. She just sat, holding on, letting her light sink in to wash all the darkness away.
"Wh-what if he doesn't come back?" Bonnie hiccupped.
Mary cradled Bonnie's head as she flopped it onto her sister's shoulder. "He will."
Bonnie was sure this was the first time her sister would be wrong.