Archive of Our Own

Two minutes into their new ‘hell’ as Damon calls it, Bonnie tries to stay positive.

Everything’s going to be just fine. They’re going to get out of here if it’s the last thing that Bonnie manages to do(she wonders, maybe if she’d be better off with oblivion).

No, of course not.

Bonnie is strong, Bonnie is smart, and she’ll figure this out. She won’t give up, because it’s not in her nature. She’ll do whatever it takes to survive this.

Whatever it takes.

~~

Three weeks into their new hell, Bonnie’s losing her cool a little.

She can’t do magic, and she’s stuck here with Damon for what could be an eternity, and she’s just not sure she can handle that.

“Please tell me you didn’t make the pancakes with the weird little vampire faces again,” Bonnie says, staring down at her crossword and almost wondering why she bothers. It never changes, but somehow it's comforting anyway.

“I didn’t make the pancakes with the adorable little vampire faces again,” Damon lies, and Bonnie rolls her eyes.

“You just can’t help yourself.”

“It breaks the tedium up a bit,” Damon says, placing a plate in front of her and sitting down across the table with his own.

“You could just stop making pancakes,” Bonnie points out. She likes pancakes, she really does, but they start to wear on a girl. “Shopping trip tomorrow,” she says. “Grab a cookbook and learn how to make something interesting.”

“I already know everything I need to know,” Damon says, tapping his temple with a finger. “If you’re so in need of something new to eat, then there’s the kitchen,” he waves toward it. “Go ahead.”

Bonnie shrugs and then smiles sweetly. “But why would I do that when I have you to do it for me?” And she smugly picks up her orange juice and takes a sip. She makes a mental note to add a little variance into their eating schedule, and tries to appreciate her circumstances. 

It could be worse, she supposes.

She could be stuck with—well, hmm.

A random stranger off the street might at least be interesting, she thinks. But Damon—well, she knows enough of his dirty secrets to know that there’s not much more about him that could surprise her.

“We should go on a trip today,” Damon says suddenly. “To the movies,” he declares.

“We’ve already seen all of the interesting movies,” Bonnie points out. It's 1994, and there's definitely nothing new. “And there’s no one there to make popcorn.”

“Then pop a bag and take it with us,” Damon says, “Because if we stay in this house any longer, I’m going to contemplate ripping your neck out with my bare teeth.”

Bonnie doesn’t even blink, because she’s heard it all before(and she may, possibly, be guilty of worse threats).

“Fine,” Bonnie says. “We’ll get ice cream after though.”

Damon shrugs. “Fine, but we might as well go before. It’s not like there’s anyone there to stop us.”

“Fine,” Bonnie says, and she takes a bite of her pancakes. At least they’re good pancakes.

~~

“Do you feel things?” Bonnie asks one day, about a month and a half in.

“Feel things?” Damon makes a face. “Like an overly emotional teenager in the throes of puberty?”

“I mean,” Bonnie sighs, “Do you feel things the way you’re supposed to? I mean, you have your vampire super senses, right?”

“Of course,” Damon says. “I still don’t see your point.”

“We’re dead,” Bonnie says, “But we don’t really feel all that dead. And we’ve been stuck here for a while, living the exact same day, except it’s not at all like Groundhog Day, because there’s no one else here that we can freak out with weird future knowledge. There’s  . . . nothing.”

Damon frowns. “If your plan was to depress me, then congratulations.”

Bonnie shakes her head. “I’m just lonely, that’s all,” Bonnie admits, and she’s a little surprised at herself for doing so. She’s trying to stay strong, she really is, but—well, some days it isn’t so easy. She thinks about her lonely little room across town where she hasn’t really slept at all, because somehow it feels safer to be here, even though it means she has to put up with Damon.

Better Damon than no one, she thinks. At least he’s mildly entertaining, and he doesn’t complain about all of the board games they play(though, to be fair, at least half of the time it’s his idea to play, and he even manages to avoid being an overly sore loser most of the time, which is impressive considering his track record).

And sometimes, well, sometimes they talk.

He’s had a long life, and while a lot of his stories are awful, maybe he needs to tell them. Bonnie’s not exactly his therapist, but sometimes you just need someone to listen, even if there’s no absolution she can offer up.

She has stories, too. She had dreams once—dreams about more than survival and just being able to see her friends again.

She wonders if she’ll ever get to dream those dreams again, or they’ll ever become reality.

Damon’s a sour puss, so first he says no, because there’s no hope, there’s no escape, and this is hell.

She calls him an ass, and he says hopefully.

She can live with that.

~~

They’re on the roof staring up at the stars, and Bonnie’s a little worried she’s going to break her neck, but she’s already dead, so who really cares?

She wobbles a little bit after Damon plants her there and flops down, and okay, yes, she cares, she cares.

Damon grabs her leg, steadying her, and she sends him a thankful glance before sitting down carefully, and his hand lingers for a moment, patting her awkwardly. He pulls away and leans back.

Bonnie looks up at the sky and sighs. “This was a good idea.”

“I occasionally have them,” Damon snarks, and Bonnie nudges him with her elbow and laughs.

“Not very often,” she teases.

“In the land of the living, you and I tended to be of the same mind,” Damon points out. “Especially when it came to Elena.”

Bonnie’s smile fades and she clears her throat. “Just because I agreed with a few of your ridiculous plans doesn’t mean anything. Plus, I did offer helpful hints that helped to drastically improve said plans.”

They’re both quiet now, and Bonnie enjoys the slight breeze and the sight of the sky.

“How is that even though the sky is the same every night, it’s still so incredibly beautiful?”

Bonnie feels Damon move beside her, like he’d looked up to look at her, but then he slides back. “It’s the damned universe, Bonnie. It’s a lot bigger than a few moments of staring up at the sky.”

Bonnie rolls her eyes. “I know that. And is it really the universe? Or is it some sort of pocket dimension, or—“

“How much Doctor Who have you seen?” Damon asks, then he laughs. “Don’t answer that.”

“I won’t,” Bonnie promises, and then she reaches out and grabs Damon’s hand, squeezing it gently.

He seems surprised, but after hesitating for a moment he squeezes back.

It’s nice, she thinks, to not be completely alone. Even if her only company is Damon.

~~

They fight, on occasion, and Bonnie stalks away, saying that she isn’t coming back, that she’s done with Damon and his childish ways, but she always comes back.

She always comes back.

But first—“You can’t throw pancake mix at me,” Damon says. “I’ll make you clean it up, which is going to suck since you still don’t have your witchy mojo back in working order.”

“I hate you,” Bonnie says, and at the moment she truly does. He’s insufferable, and he never stops talking.  Let’s not talk about the fact that Damon squirted maple syrup at her, and thus he’s the one who escalated the argument to food-slinging, but god forbid he take responsibility for his actions.

He’s the same selfish, oblivious vampire asshole he’s always been, and Bonnie doesn’t know why she bothers with him, and so she says as much.

“Then leave,” Damon says. “Leave, and don’t come back. It’s not like you have to be here.”

“Fine,” Bonnie grunts out angrily, turning to leave. 

She stalks upstairs to the room she’s been using and grabs her things, stuffing the things she actually cares about, like Mr. Cuddles, into a bag and stalking out.

She’s halfway down the road when she almost feels a twinge of guilt, but then she remembers Damon’s irritating face, and she’s back on the easy anger train.

Her childhood room isn’t the most comfortable, so she leans into the mattress in her dad’s room, and curls up in a ball.

She grabs the book she’s been meaning to read and stares at the pages for a few minutes before tossing it aside and sighing. She can’t get into it, because she’s too angry.

She closes her eyes and breathes, trying to push away the anger that’s been building for a few days now and had exploded when—well, actually, she can’t even remember what Damon had said to set her off.

She’s sure it was awful though.

She falls asleep on top of the bedspread, her arm wrapped around Mr. Cuddles’ neck.

When she wakes up the next day, she’s not even angry anymore, not really.

Damon’s annoying, but she knows that. Clearly, it’s just a little cabin fever, and they need to spend a few days apart.

She wanders around the house in her socks, sliding around and singing along to songs that definitely didn’t exist in 1994, but there’s no one here to care, it’s not like she’s actually been sent back in time or something, and she has to worry about spoiling the glory of some musical artist.

Stop being weird, Bonnie, she tells herself, but then she slides across the wood floors and laughs when she slams into a hallway wall.

By the end of the day, she’s almost ready to go back to Damon, but logically she knows they probably still need more time apart, just to be safe.

Plus, it’s not like he’s here, trying to apologize. She’s mostly sure that he started it.

Anyway, by the end of the second day she’s bored out of her mind. She might have underestimated her need for human contact. And so, okay, she misses him a little bit.

She’s never going to say that out loud though.

He’s all she has here, and so she’s grown a little attached. Before all of this, she didn’t necessarily like him, and sometimes she hated him, but she also understood him.

She understood his motivations, even if she didn’t agree with his means to achieve goals.

He hasn’t always been the most level-headed or nicest person(this goes back as long as she’s known him), but she understands him.

And when he’s on your side, he’s not so bad, unless you’re in the way of Elena’s survival, in which case you need to get out of the way if you want to stay alice.

They’ve developed a careful friendship here, in this place.

She doesn’t know if it’s real, if it could possibly translate back to the world, but they’d already had the foundation for it before, hadn’t they? There’d been moments when she’d thought they’d been developing a rapport.

And maybe they were, or are, or—well, she thinks, it doesn’t quite matter. It is what it is, for better or for worse.

A few days later, she wakes up to the smell of pancakes and bacon, which probably means that Damon’s in her house, but she grabs the baseball bat in the closet anyway, just to be safe.

“I come in peace,” Damon says, holding his hands up for a moment before grabbing an egg and tapping it against the side of a bowl.

“What are you doing here?” Bonnie asks, and she’s not aiming to be rude, not really, but she doesn’t exactly feel friendly either.

She’d been feeling positive up until this moment, but there’s something about Damon that always gets her hackles up.

“I’m making you breakfast,” Damon says, smiling as if they haven’t gone the past several days without seeing each other(it’s a weird thought, really, because their lives are so entwined here that one day feels like an eternity).

Bonnie narrows her eyes, and tries to figure out if she wants to fight or make this difficult, but she can’t seem to summon up the energy, so she sits down at the counter and decides to simply pretend that the fight didn’t happen at all.

“Thank you,” Bonnie says.

“No problem,” Damon says. “I thought I’d make sure that you got a decent breakfast for once.”

“I think decent might be—“ Bonnie cuts herself off, because there’s no need to go down that road. “Never mind.”

Damon smirks at her, and she considers going back on her initial plan to try not to argue with him.

They’re quiet while Damon finishes the food, and it’s a little awkward at first, but then it slips into a peaceful silence, much like they ones they’ve grown accustomed to here.

Sometimes, you need someone to talk to, and sometimes you just need someone there.

Bonnie eats her breakfast, and then pushes her plate away from her, and looks at Damon expectantly.

“You should come back today,” Damon says finally.

Bonnie cocks her head to the side and bites her lip. “Really?”

Damon shrugs. “If you want.”

“Ah,” Bonnie says. She lets him suffer for a few moments before giving him an answer to his non-question. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Damon repeats, like he hadn’t expected it to be that easy.

“Okay,” Bonnie says again, and she can literally see him hide a smile.

“Good,” Damon says. “Good.”

Bonnie taps her fingers on the counter and thinks about saying something else, but she really doesn’t have anything else to say at the moment. 

“I’m sure you had a great time dancing around and singing to yourself,” Damon says, and Bonnie narrows her eyes, because that sounds—oh. “But I’m sure the stress of going without my presence in your life was getting to you. Are you almost ready to go?”

“Were you stalking me?” How else would he know?

“Don’t be silly,” Damon says, cleaning up his little mess and shrugging. “Are you ready to go or not?”

“You were,” Bonnie says. “Oh my God.”

“I was just making sure that you were okay,” Damon says, shrugging like it doesn’t mean anything. He seems a little unnerved, and Bonnie’s really enjoying watching him squirm.

Bonnie smiles, slightly. “Aw, it’s cute. You missed me.” She nudges her shoulder against his and practically skips out of the house after grabbing Mr. Cuddles. The rest of the stuff can stay, in case she needs a long term break from him again.

“You’re ridiculous,” Damon says, and Bonnie turns around and walks backward, smiling brightly. “And you missed me. You were worried about me. It’s almost like we’re—“ she mock gasps—“Friends. Wow.”

“I’m regretting coming to get you,” Damon says. “Next time, I won’t.”

“You will,” Bonnie says firmly, surely like she knows it.

And hey, maybe she does.

~~

“Do you think Elena will still—“ Damon trails off, and Bonnie looks over at him from the couch she’s planted on. She’d been trying to read some witchy book, and honestly she’s getting nowhere, she might as well go back to reading Don Quixote.

They’d been relaxing in the living room, just coexisting peacefully and bam.

“I don’t know,” Bonnie says honestly. She loves Elena, and she knows Elena loves Damon, but Elena’s lost a lot of people, and she’s become adept at moving on. She clings to the people she still has left, because otherwise she’ll fall apart.

Bonnie can understand that, and Bonnie thinks Damon does too, but if they get out of here, Elena could have long since moved on, and that’s not an easy thing to accept when Elena’s a huge part of why he wants out of here. The other major parts being Stefan, of course, and, well, the fact that it sucks here.

“Do you think Jeremy is still waiting for you?” Damon asks, and Bonnie has the sick urge to laugh.

“I hope not,” she says, and she’s not sure if that’s true. “We might never get out of here. I want him to be happy,” she says firmly, and she believes it, she does.

“I’m not selfless enough for that,” Damon tells her, and Bonnie scrutinizes him.

“I think you want to want Elena to move on,” Bonnie says softly. “Which is progress, at least.”

Damon makes a face, and Bonnie looks back down at her book, but she’s not processing the words at all.

“Maybe,” Damon says finally, and Bonnie hopes she gets through this. She hopes they both do.

~~

Kai is—well, Kai is creepy, and she doesn’t trust him, but she and Damon will get through this like they always do.

But in that moment when she sends Damon back, and she’s alone again(because Kai doesn’t count), she doesn’t get through it.

She’s failed.

She’s alone, and this time it doesn’t look like there’s any hope at all.

She tries desperately not to fall apart, and in the end she fails.

She painstakingly puts herself back together again, like she always does, and she vows that if she gets a another chance at life, she's not going to let anything hold her back. 

~~

Later, when she finally gets home, she feels different.

She feels almost harder now, or maybe like someone scraped away bits of her, and now she’s sharper, somehow.

Elena hugs her first, and then Caroline tackles her, and it’s sweet, and heartwarming, and she’s grateful, she is.

Jeremy stares at her awkwardly when he sees her, and he cries, and she feels bad, because she loves him, and she used to be in love with him(used to be, she wonders?)

She’s not the same person anymore. She has more focus, she thinks, and she’s not going to make the same mistakes that she did before. She loves her friends, and she loves her town, but she’s different now.

She wants to be happy, and she wants to make her dreams into realities.

Matt’s hug is sweet and comforting, and for a moment she feels herself melt. He’s a good friend, she thinks. Loyal and kind, and she hopes the past months have been kinder to him than the last few years have been, because he, like the rest of them, deserves happiness.

She wonders if anyone’s told him that recently, and so she makes a mental note to do so.

They all want to tell her so much, and she cares, she really does, and she wants to spend time with them, but a part of her also just wants to go home and curl up in a ball and watch television.

She doesn’t say as much, but she says she’s tired, and she gets offers for sleepovers and all kinds of hangouts, and Bonnie should enjoy it now before the next crisis comes along, and there’s not time for it. Instead, she makes promises for later and hopes for her bed.

~~

Damon comes to her house that night, and she tries to keep it light.

“Where were you?” she asks with a slight smile, leaning against the doorjam. “You missed the welcome home party.”

Damon looks past her. “I was expecting an actual party.”

“I’ve grown accustomed to being alone,” Bonnie says, and it’s supposed to be a joke, but it sounds a little sad.

“Well,” Damon says a tad awkwardly. “Welcome back.”

“Mm,” Bonnie shrugs. “From you that doesn’t really carry as much weight, considering that we were basically living together for months.” She’s teasing, and Damon smiles slightly, and stops being so grumpy.

“Oh,” Damon says suddenly, and she frowns until he produces Mr. Cuddles.

“Aw,” Bonnie says, and she reaches out to grab him, hugging him tightly to her chest. She backs up so that Damon can come inside, and she nudges the door shut with her arm. “Thank you for taking care of him.”

“We’ve bonded,” Damon says. “I expect visitation rights. Or at least party rights. We’ll go drinking twice a week until he decides to stop drinking—oh yeah, your bear’s an alcoholic now.”

“That’s not funny,” Bonnie says, and Damon shrugs.

“I know,” Damon sits on the couch, and Bonnie sits down next to him.

This feels different, somehow. Bonnie thinks it’s probably just because they were trapped together in that little purgatory of theirs, but if they choose to spend time together back in the real world—well, that might make them actual friends.

Shudder at the thought, she thinks, and she hides a smile.

“So, thanks for the delivery,” Bonnie says, and she pulls her legs up under her on the couch so that she can get comfortable, and she turns to face Damon.  “So what’s going on with you and Elena?”

Damon winces. “Do you really care about that?”

“Sure,” Bonnie says, and she does. Elena and Caroline had taken her grocery shopping before she’d come back to her house, but they hadn’t said a word about their respective love lives, which had been weird.

Damon looks like he’s considering cutting and running, but then she gives him a knowing look and he sighs. “Fine. Well, Alaric decided to erase her memories of me, which was fun.”

“Ah,” Bonnie winces. “Harsh.”

“Yup. And then she remembered that she loved me, and we were going to get back together and then—“ Damon makes a wavey hand movement. “I don’t know, we were busy.”

“Since when have you ever been too busy for that?” Bonnie finds it a little hard to believe.

“I don’t know why we fought so hard to get you back,” Damon says conversationally. “Considering how annoying you are, witch.”

“Well,” Bonnie says. “I’m glad to be back.” She thinks she is, anyway. She’s beginning to remember how hard life here was, and how much she’d lost. Part of her wants to pack up, leave, and never come back.

That kind of defeats the purpose of wanting to come back to her friends though, doesn’t it?

Bonnie rubs her hands together and wonders if there might just be more to life. “So, Caroline’s going to compel me back into the land of the living.”

“Nice,” Damon says.

Now this is an awkward silence, Bonnie thinks. “So why aren’t you with Elena now?”

Damon shrugs. “Hell if I know.”

~~

Bonnie slips back into routines.

She has money from her Grams and her Dad—there’s a part of her that still hasn’t adjusted to how  very alone she feels.

Caroline tries to compel her back into college, but Bonnie just doesn’t know if this is what she wants.

She gets her family’s affairs in order, because she finally has the time, and she focuses on reconnecting with her magic.

Damon still comes by and visits on occasion, and it’s comforting. That somehow feels like the most normal part of all of this.

Damon and Elena still aren’t back together, and Bonnie is beginning to think that might be for the best. They hadn’t exactly brought out the best in each other, though she doesn’t say that to either of them.

They might take it as some sort of challenge, and that’s the last thing anyone needs.

Bonnie and Damon are making breakfast on a random Thursday when everything changes.

She supposes they could have invited the others, but this is their weird friend thing, and Bonnie likes it that way. Damon must agree, because he doesn’t ever even suggest inviting anyone else anyway.

“I wonder if Matt would be up for meaningless, friendly sex,” she mutters to herself, and she should know better, because hey, vamp hearing, but apparently not.

Damon turns to her. “Ew.”

“Sorry,” she says, “I don’t have a lot of choices. And I don’t want to put any actual emotional effort into it, and Jeremy’s—“ she sighs. “Into someone else, which is fine, because I didn’t want him to wait for me, but it’s been a while, and—“ this is all very word vomit-y, and it’s probably too much information.

“Hmm,” Damon says. “You could get yourself a Salvatore,” he says with a smile, and she laughs.

“Stefan’s not really my type, and I’m pretty sure he’s hung up on someone else anyway,” Bonnie says, and it’s fun to watch Damon get disgruntled.

“I meant me, silly Bonnie. I’m very good at meaningless sex.” 

Bonnie tilts her head to the side and narrows her eyes in thought. “I don’t think I could sleep with you.”

“I’m offended,” Damon says with a shrug.

“I don’t think we’re that kind of friends.”

Damon shakes his head. “Okay,” and he goes back to adding way too many chocolate chips to the pancakes.

Bonnie’s still thinking though. She was only jesting, really, but—well, would it really be so bad? Elena wouldn’t like it, she thinks with a wince. But Elena had just said that she didn’t think that she and Damon could possibly get back together anytime soon. Plus, it’s just sex.

Just sex, she repeats to herself.

“Were you serious about the meaningless sex?” Bonnie asks suddenly, and Damon looks back up at her.

“Uhhhh.”

“Because if you were, we should do it.” No pun intended, oops. “But if you weren’t, let’s pretend that I didn’t just say that.”

“Okay,” Damon says, and Bonnie knows he’s just messing with her.

“Okay what?”

“We’ll do it. Not now, obviously, because we’ve got pancakes, and then there’s food bloating, and who wants to have sex then—“ Damon trails off when Bonnie gets up and walks around the counter over to him and turns off the burners.

“Or, we could do it now,” Bonnie suggests lightly.

“Or we could do it now.”

~~

The first time is a little awkward, in part because it’s been a while, and in part because she’s only really been with Jeremy and—no, don’t think about Jeremy, don’t think about Jeremy.

“You’re thinking too loudly,” Damon says, and Bonnie winces.

“Sorry. I’m just distracted.”

“I think I might be out of practice,” Damon says. “Which is ridiculous, because sex is like riding a bicycle.”

“My cousin went ten years without riding a bicycle, and when she got back on one, she fell over for a while. It was like she had to completely relearn everything.” Again, with the word vomit, Bonnie thinks.

They’re on her bed, and this should be going better, but it’s not. But they’re friends, she thinks, they can be frank with each other. It’s like that movie Friends With Benefits, except no one is falling in love.

“That was helpful,” Damon says, and he just turns over and flops down onto his back.

“Maybe we’re too in our heads?” Bonnie suggests.”Or we could try a change of venue, or—“ she’s about to suggest music, which is kind of silly, but it doesn’t matter, because then Damon’s back on top of her, kissing her, and what was she thinking about again?

One of his hands is rubbing the outside of her underwear, and goddamn it let’s just get to the point, Damon, no one has time for teasing.

~~

The first time they’re together, she gets off, and he doesn’t, which seems a little unfair, but he just laughs and tells her that there’s always next time.

Next time, she thinks, there’s going to be a next time?

There are a lot of next times.

~~
“Hurry up,” Bonnie says, because her back is cramping against the wall, and she really doesn’t get the appeal of wall-sex. It feels a little overrated, and definitely uncomfortable. 

Damon’s lips are on her neck, and his fingers move to her clit, and her breath hitches, and she almost manages to forget the pain.

“Anyone could come in at any moment.” She's trying to hurry him up, but he's being difficult, as usual. 

Bonnie comes, and her thighs pulse with it, and Damon finally does too, and she sighs in relief as he collapses against her.

He’s heavy, but it’s a comforting sort of feeling, a closeness you just can’t quite fabricate by yourself. It’s closer than the sex itself, and she enjoys it for what it is.

The thought of that breeds a small panic in her heart, so she pushes him away. “I’ve got work at the bookstore in half an hour,” Bonnie reminds him, and she bends over to pick up her discarded clothes. “We need to stop having sex out in the open like that.”

“But it gets you so hot,” Damon points out, and Bonnie burns with embarrassment. She pulls her dress back over her head.

“I hate you,” Bonnie says, and she doesn’t, not really. There’s still heat behind it though, and Damon pulls her toward him, kissing her hard on the lips and pushing her back away.

It leaves her a little breathless and dizzy, but she tries to ignore the sensation. 

~~

Elena’s dating some new college boy, and Caroline’s definitely not pining over Stefan, thank you very much, she’s got a new boyfriend.

Bonnie’s enjoying the sex, and the glow of it, and Caroline finally notices a few weeks in.

“You know, I thought this was just generic ‘I came back from the dead so I’m kinda happy about it’ glow, but you seem really happy,” Caroline says while they’re having lunch in a café near campus.

“That’s exactly the kind of glow it is,” Bonnie says.

Caroline narrows her eyes at her. “You’re having sex.” Caroline snaps her fingers. “Who is it?”

“No comment,” Bonnie says, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Details, Bonnie,” Caroline demands. “Girl code.”

“Caroline,” Bonnie says patiently. “I’m just in a good mood.”

Caroline is clearly disgruntled, because she can tell that Bonnie is lying, and so Bonnie tries to think of something to distract her.

“How’s Jake?”

Caroline makes a face. “Not great. The longest in a long line of boys who just—“

“--aren’t Stefan Salvatore?” Bonnie finishes. She kind of misses the simpler days of Caroline and Tyler, or even Caroline and Matt, but there's no chance Caroline's going to head in either of those directions anytime soon.

“Don’t be silly,” Caroline says. “I have nothing but friendly feelings for him.”

“Uh huh,” Bonnie says, humoring her. “And you’re not a vampire. Or blond.”

Caroline reaches out a hand, and Bonnie takes it, squeezing it gently. “I didn’t realize that it had gotten that bad. I thought it would be easy to get over it, because nothing happened, but it’s just not.”

“It happens sometimes,” Bonnie says. “But you’re going to be fine. You’ll get through this.” Bonnie actually thinks that Stefan has feelings for Caroline too, but it’s just a feeling. She can’t quite prove anything, so she doesn’t say anything about it for fear of giving Caroline false hope.

Love is . . . complicated.  It’s better to avoid it altogether.

~~

“This movie is absolute garbage,” Bonnie says. They’re curled up with her laptop on his bed, and so long as it stays perfectly friendly while there’s any chance of someone coming by the Salvatore home, she’s fine with it. Damon’s supposed to warn her when anyone is in the house, which makes this whole thing a little easier.

Damon’s a sneaky bastard though, so she has to stay on high alert.

“Then pick something else,” Damon rolls his eyes.

“I don’t want to watch anything else,” Bonnie says, pressing a little harder against his side, because it’s comforting. “At least not any movies.”

“If that’s a hint that you want to start watching another multiple season show in one night, then you should know that I—“

Bonnie leans up her head and kisses him. “Fine,” he says when she pulls away. “But we need snacks.”

This is a hint that he wants her to go get them. It’s her turn though, so fine.

She’s going down the stairs when she literally runs into Stefan.

“Oh,” she says as he steadies her.

“Sorry, I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was going. I’ve been a little distracted," Stefan apologizes. 

“Uh huh,” Bonnie says. “I get that. I wasn’t either. I was, um—Damon and I were—“

“Don’t worry,  I won’t tell anyone,” Stefan says with a slight smile, and it’s clear that he knows. Damn it.

“I’d rather you didn’t know, but I guess that’s out of the window, isn’t it?” Bonnie can feel her skin burning with her embarrassment. 

“Has been for weeks,” Stefan admits.

“Does anyone else know?” Bonnie asks, because that could be a problem.

“Not that I know of,” Stefan assures her. “Anyway, I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing.”

He moves to the side, and she walks past him, and she wonders if this is some sort of sign.

If Stefan knows, then maybe it’s time to stop this before it gets completely out of control.

Or maybe, she thinks, as she grabs cookies, then puts them back, then grabs them again, it’s fine. Maybe she just needs to be more careful.

Yes, that’s it. Bonnie talks herself into being okay with her choices again, and she wonders if she can get Damon to commit to watching Bitten, even though it has werewolves in it.

Probably not, but she’s determined.

~~

Shower sex is slightly less uncomfortable than wall sex, but also slightly more awkward in terms of logistics.

It’s very slippery though, which leads to very soapy orgasms.

It’s so hard to get upset after soapy orgasms.

“I’m thinking about moving to LA,” Bonnie says afterward, when they’re naked and cuddly.

Damon’s hand stops caressing her back. “Really?”

It’s hard to read that ‘really’ and she’s gotten pretty proficient at Damon-speak.

“I really want to start over somewhere fresh,” she admits. "Somewhere new and bright, without all of the baggage of Mystic Falls. Maybe go to school or something."

“Go to school here,” Damon suggests lightly.

“I don’t want to,” Bonnie says with a sigh. “I need to get out of here. When I’m not with you, I feel like I can’t breathe.” She doesn’t mean it the way it sounds, she really doesn’t, but she can’t quite take the words back.

She’s not in love with him or anything, that would be a terrible idea.

Damon starts rubbing circles on her back again, and it seems her words have at least gotten him out of his temporary funk. She knew he would come around to her side.

“So what do you think?” she asks. “About California.”

“It’s overrated,” Damon says. “I don’t think you’d like it very much.”

“And you know what I like?” she asks, lifting a brow.

“I tend to think so,” he says, and his hands are on her again, and she’s lost in the sensation of it all again.

~~

The rest of her friends don’t take it so well.

“You can’t go,” Elena tells her.”We just got you back.”

“I need to go,” Bonnie says. “It’s not like I’ll never come back. I just don’t want to live my life here.” Bonnie thinks Elena should remember that she’s a vampire, because she won’t exactly be able to stay here forever either. But maybe that’s why she’s so resistant to change—because she knows she’s going to have to give up everything she loves here soon enough.

Bonnie can respect that, but she’s still going.

“I’ll go with you,” Caroline says, and that’s an idea, she supposes. She loves Caroline, but she’s not sure that’s what Caroline truly wants.

Bonnie’s not sure Caroline really knows what she wants these days. She has an eternity, and so much she could accomplish, but a lot of her bigger dreams can’t really happen now that she’s a vampire.

“You should go,” Matt says. “When you want something, you should make it happen.” Now Matt, on the other hand, definitely looks like he wants out of town. That, Bonnie thinks, she truly understands.

~~

She’s at home alone, which is a bit of an oddity these days, but it’s nice to get the time to herself.

This doesn’t last, of course, because that’s life. She hears a knock at the door, and she’s fully expecting a friend who wants her to stay, or maybe just Damon who wants to screw, but it’s Stefan.

“Uh, hi.” Stefan just sort of stands there awkwardly like someone planted him there, or like she went and knocked on his door or something.

“Hey, Stefan. What can I do for you?” She’s pretty sure that’s where this is going, because isn’t it always? She doesn’t mean that as some sort of condemnation, but something is always going wrong in this town, isn’t it?

“Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” Bonnie says, moving to the side so that he can come in. “I’ve been packing up some stuff.”

“Yeah, I heard about that,” Stefan says. “Good for you.”

“Thank you,” Bonnie says. Now that’s the answer she’d been hoping for from people.

Stefan just sort of stands awkwardly in the living room, so Bonnie motions for him to sit down, and she does too.

“We’ve been a bit incestuous, haven’t we?” he asks suddenly.

“Excuse me?” Bonnie’s not sure she understands what that’s supposed to mean. She grimaces.

“I mean dating-wise. There's been a lot of, well, partner-swapping.” That's one way to put it, she supposes.

“Okay,” Bonnie says, and yeah, she gets that. It’s very trashy teen television show of them, though she doesn’t say that.

Stefan looks down at his hands, then runs them through his hair, then sighs.

Bonnie reaches out and pats his arm awkwardly. “There, there.” She winces, because wow, Bonnie, good plan. She and Stefan have always had a nice, quiet little friendship, but they don’t really interact all that much by choice, especially not lately.

“Do you feel guilty for dating Damon?”

“Wow,” Bonnie says. “I’m not dating Damon.”

Stefan lifts a brow in kind of an ‘are you sure?’ look, and yes, she’s sure, don’t be silly.

“I’m not dating Damon,” Bonnie says again. “We’re friends, and we’re having sex. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Okay,” Stefan says with a smile. “Do you ever feel guilty for doing whatever you’re doing then?”

“I feel a twinge here and there, but Elena has made her intentions perfectly clear.” She doesn’t want Damon, and yeah if she did then Damon would go running back to her immediately but—"now what’s that twinge? She feels something when she thinks of that, and it makes her decidedly uncomfortable. 

“I have feelings for Caroline,” Stefan admits finally.

“Obviously,” Bonnie says, because she can’t help herself. “Sorry,” she winces.

“I think I may have missed my chance,” Stefan says softly, and Bonnie reaches out and pats his arm again, this time keeping the there, there to herself.

“Well, I’m sure another one will come around,” she says, and it’s probably not very helpful, but, “You’re vampires. Just because you have bad timing now doesn’t mean that you will forever.”

Bonnie thinks Stefan was expecting a little more support, and she’d like to give it to him, but Caroline’s her best friend. And Stefan is kind of annoying for not having realized all of this before.

“I spent too long thinking of her in one way," Stefan says. “I couldn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it.”

“It was easier not to,” Bonnie says. “And we have a habit of taking the easy way out sometimes. It’s in our nature.” She thinks about her own heart, and she wonders if there’s anything she’s denying.

“I don’t think I even deserve to have her still want me,” Stefan says, and Bonnie doesn’t know about that—love isn’t about deserving, it’s about trust, and respect, and the rightness of being together.

“If it’s meant to be,” Bonnie says, “Then it will be.” She wonders if Stefan and Caroline are meant to be, or if it’ll be Stefan and Elena, or Caroline and Tyler, or Caroline and Enzo—she winces, because she hopes not—or Damon and Elena.

Bonnie continues. “You can’t make someone feel something they don’t feel, but if the feelings are already there, and you just messed it up—maybe there’s a way to get around it. I think you should start with telling her how you feel, so that she can decide what she wants while knowing that.”

If you feel something, then you have to say it, even if it doesn’t change anything about your life. Even if it burns your life to the ground, she thinks, thinking about that one really depressing episode of Grey’s Anatomy, which is probably pretty vague, because there are a lot of depressing episodes of that show.

Bonnie grabs his hand and puts it over his heart, and it feels a little awkward, but she’s in the mood. “Say it, and go from there. Have that courage, or you definitely don’t deserve even a chance with her, and you’re not the Stefan Salvatore that I thought you were.”

Stefan nods slightly. “Thank you, Bonnie. You know, I’m going to miss you when you leave.”

“I’m very miss-able,” Bonnie says with a shrug and a smile.

“I’m not the only one,” Stefan says softly. “I think Damon is going to miss you too.”

“He’ll get over it,” Bonnie says. “I’m pretty sure he won’t notice that I’m even gone.”

“He will,” Stefan says, like he knows something she doesn’t know.

Bonnie shrugs. “He’ll get over it.” They always do.

~~

“If you’re going to eat my snacks, then you need to tell me so that I can replace them,” Bonnie says, shaking her head and sighing.

She’s leaving in two weeks, and she’s packing frantically, and there’s not much more irritating than looking for something she’s been looking forward to eating all day only to see that it’s gone.

“Sorry,” Damon says, and he doesn’t sound sorry at all, that asshole. “Maybe it’s a sign.”

“A sign of what? That I have an annoying vampire eating all of my food?” Bonnie quirks her head to the side. “Oh yeah, it’s definitely a sign of that,” she says with a smile, leaning in to kiss him quickly, and grabbing the bag of chips right out of his hands while he’s distracted.

“Rude,” Damon says. “I believe I'd claimed those chips as my own.”

“It’s not like they have cooties,” Bonnie teases, getting up onto the bed next to him. “I might share them, if I’m in a spectacularly good mood.”

“And are you in a spectacularly good mood today, oh Great and Powerful Bon Bon With the Chips I Want?” Damon asks.

“Don’t mock,” Bonnie says, holding up the chips. “Or I definitely won’t share.”

She steals another kiss, then tilts the bag towards him so that he can grab a few, which he does.

“Are we trading kisses for chips? Because I can get behind that,” Damon says, flipping her onto her back.

She rolls her eyes and can’t help but laughing.

“Of course you are,” she says.

“You know,” Damon says, “I could go with you. Or we could go on a trip around the world. It would be fun.”

She freezes where she is, and Damon just holds himself above her, and doesn’t move.

Bonnie tilts her head slightly to try to meet his eyes. “Why?”

“I’m—“ Damon trails off. “Never mind. We’ll pretend that I didn’t say that. Poof, it’s gone.”

“But you did,” Bonnie says. “Do you want to come with me?”

She closes her eyes and breathes him in, and tries to figure out what she wants him to say and—oh.

She’s scared, but she might—well, she might want him to want to.

“No, of course not,” he says, and her heart sinks, and his lips are back on her throat, and her hands grasp at his hair, and she wonders, just a little, why that hurts.

~~

They throw her a goodbye party, and promise to come visit, and she promises to come back on occasion, because they’re still friends, and this isn’t forever.

Or maybe it is, she thinks, because this couldn’t have gone on forever. Elena and Caroline are vampires, and this was sure to happen eventually.

Damon just gives her an odd look and a hug that almost makes her cry for some reason that she can’t quite let herself know, and then that’s over, and her other friends are hugging her and crying, and so she cries a little too.

The tears are cleansing, and when she gets into her car, she feels free.

~~

Damon shows up on her doorstep two weeks later without the slightest indication that he’s going to do so.

“Um. Hi.” She’s not sure what he’s doing here, and yes, maybe she’d been missing him a little bit, but she’s been missing all of her friends, and that’s just natural.

“Nice place,” Damon says.

“What are you doing here?” 

Damon waves his hand as if it’s totally not a big deal that he traveled across the country to see her without an actual reason. “I missed you.”

Oh. That's a reason.

“Oh,” Bonnie says. “I missed you too.” She leans over an hugs him tightly, and yes, good, that’s much better.

Bonnie wouldn’t say that she’s been pining for him, because she certainly hasn’t, but she had missed him, and now that he’s here in her arms, she’s not sure she wants him to leave.

Damon pulls away and kisses her, and Bonnie returns the kisses with fervor until they’re naked on her couch, and back to basics. 

~~

Later that night, she's drifting off to sleep when he decides to ruin everything. 

She’s almost asleep when it happens—she’s perfectly at peace and happy in Damon’s arms, and everything is going just fine when he says it.

“Bonnie?”

She doesn’t respond, because if she does, she’s probably going to wake back up, and she doesn’t really want to do that.

It’s easy to pretend to be asleep, because it’s practically true anyway—“I love you.” He says it like he means it, and it strikes fear right into her very core.

Well, fuck. She’s awake now.

She breathes in slowly, steadily, trying to keep herself calm. Eventually she hears him drift off to sleep, and she's just lying there, trying to figure out what the hell she's supposed to do next.

She kind of hates him in this moment(and that's a familiar feeling, so she clutches it tightly in her chest). 

~~

In the morning she nudges him off the bed 'accidentally.' It actually takes a dash of magic to manage it, but she'd never admit that.

"Ouch," he grunts.

"Oh, was that me? I'm so sorry." She's really not. 

 It's not very nice of her, but somehow she thinks she's justified. 

Damon gives her a careful look, and she does her best to look apologetic(but not too apologetic, because he'd get suspicious). When he finally looks away, she smiles brightly.

"So," Bonnie says. "How long do you think you'll be here?" 

Damon shrugs, like that's something he hasn't thought about, or even something he doesn't particularly care about, but she knows better.

She wants him to leave now, because she's trying to move on with her life, and the last thing she needs is for Damon Salvatore to make his way into her new, happy life and completely derail it.

He makes her feel itchy sometimes, like she's not quite comfortable in her skin. He makes her nervous, and she doesn't like it.

Damon moves to her kitchen and starts making breakfast, and part of her softens.

She doesn't know how this happened to her.

Does this mean something? Should it? These are the uncomfortable questions she doesn't want the answers to. She'd been perfectly happy enjoying the simplicity of their arrangement, but love?

Bonnie's trying to figure out how to love herself, and she doesn't know if she can do that if he's here.

Bonnie tries to shake off the discomfiting feeling and focus on the here and now, because Damon can't stay for long, clearly.

 ~~

A month later, she's completely settled, and she's starting a new job the next week, and--Damon's still in her apartment, for some reason.

He makes it seem natural, like he's supposed to be there, and it makes her want him there, and part of her doesn't want that, not really.

The devil's advocate on her shoulder suggests that that part that says she doesn't want him there is afraid.

And hey, maybe she is. Maybe she's afraid of wanting Damon.

She's spent a long time hating him, and almost as long trying to develop a careful friendship based on mutual respect.

She knows there have been days when Damon would have slit her throat himself if it had meant that Elena would survive, and Bonnie wonders what that means for them, if they could possibly be something with that history hanging in the air between them.

And yet, she can't seem to help herself, and she doesn't kick him out, or try to get him to leave. She lets herself get distracted by the feeling she gets when he's there right next to her.

It reminds her of their prison, of the long days of just having his company and no one else's. 

Here, too, is a truth. There's a part of her that misses that. She misses the simplicity of it, even though there'd been as many bad days as good ones. 

If she digs deeper, and she really doesn't want to, she can see the truth, which is that she's attached to Damon, even though she doesn't want to be.

Maybe, just maybe, she might love him too.

And that scares the crap out of her.

~~

"Your snoring is almost cute, but mostly annoying," Damon tells her, and she looks at him, frowning.

"I don't snore."

"You definitely snore," he says, and Bonnie rolls her eyes. 

"You're annoying," she says, and he laughs. 

"I'm aware," he says. "But that's why you love me."

Her breath catches in her throat and she coughs awkwardly. "You wish," she says lightly, but maybe not lightly enough.

"I do, actually," Damon says, and Bonnie looks down at her laptop, pretending to study something of the utmost importance. 

Damon moves across the room and kneels next to the chair she's sitting on. "Bonnie," he says impatiently.

"Damon," Bonnie says, because she knows it'll frustrate him, and there's a part of her that can't help herself. 

"Bonnie," Damon says again. "You're incredibly frustrating."

"Coming from you," Bonnie starts to say and then stops, sighing. She closes her laptop and leans forward to set it on the table. She closes her eyes and breathes in and out deeply before turning to face him. "You frustrate me."

"It's part of my charm," Damon says, and Bonnie rolls her eyes, and to a certain extent that's true.

"You're ridiculous," Bonnie tells him, and Damon puts a hand over his heart, like he's mock-insulted. 

"Bonnie, I--"

"If you're going to say that you love me," Bonnie interrupts him. "Then I want you to think about that carefully, because you and I don't have a very good history, and last time I checked you were completely in love with one of my best friends, and before that you spent over a hundred years obsessing over her doppelganger, so if you say those words to me, then I don't want caveats." She looks right into his eyes, and wills herself to stay strong.

"You love me," Damon says, surprising her. That's a different tactic, though she shouldn't be surprised. 

"You're in love with drama," Bonnie says, and she thinks they both notice that she didn't just deny it.

"I actively want to spend every moment with you," Damon says, and Bonnie loses the ability to retort. "When you were stuck in 1994 without me, I was looking for pieces of you everywhere. Somehow, I ended up actually caring about you."

"That's romantic," Bonnie says dryly. 

"I'm not done," Damon says, making a face. 

"Of course you aren't," Bonnie sighs. "Damon, I don't think this is a good idea."

"Bonnie, I'm in love with you," he says firmly and intensely, and there's something in his eyes that pulls at her, and she's trapped uncomfortably in the moment. 

"You think you are," Bonnie says gently, reaching out for one of his hands and squeezing it. "But I'm just a distraction from how you really feel. And I don't want to be a distraction, I want more."

"You aren't just a distraction," Damon tells her. "Who the hell told you that?"

"No one has to tell me that," Bonnie bites out. "I know you."

Damon tilts his head to the side, and Bonnie holds his gaze. "I'm here," Damon says. "I'm not in Mystic Falls. I'm here. And you've let me be here. That means something, and you know it."

Bonnie closes her eyes and tries to summon up the willpower to send him away, to end this right here and now, because the only person who is going to get hurt here is her. 

"You love me," Damon says again, and her eyes flutter open.

"You act like that's supposed to make a difference, Damon."

"It makes all of the difference in the world, Bonnie. You're afraid, and I get that, but if you don't let your heart make a decision for once instead of ignoring it for the sake of your friends, or your plans, or whatever else it always is, then why even bother living? Why else did you fight so hard to believe in a future for yourself?"

Bonnie might just be caught up in his words or the emotion of it, but in this moment he feels right, and maybe he is.

She'd been hoping for a future, right?

Maybe this is it.

"You're right," she says softly. "I am in love with you. And I want to believe that you love me too, but I don't know how."

"That's okay," Damon says. "One step at a time. Just give it time, and we're going to work this out, I promise."

She wants to tell him not to make promises that he can't keep, but instead she nods her head, and then he's pulling her into a hug and it feels so incredibly right that she can't argue with it.

Maybe, she thinks, she can pretend just for a little while.

~~

Sometimes when you pretend, she learns, it becomes real.

And maybe, she thinks, it might have been real all along.