Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was the fourth time Bonnie had left the boarding house in the three weeks since she and Damon landed in this hell dimension.  This time, she thought, tracing patterns in the condensation that her glass left on the Grille’s bar, it would stick.  She hoped. 

The sound of crunching glass pulled her out of her thoughts.  She didn’t bother to turn, just rolled her eyes and downed the rest of her drink.  “Go away, Damon.”  “Witty” comment in three, two, one…

“You’ve made a mess, Bon-Bon.  Didn’t know you had it in you.”  She could just hear the smirk in his voice, and when she swiveled around she can see it, too, along with the mess he’s talking about.  The Mystic Grille’s doors were locked, so she’d thrown a rock through them to get in.  Wasn’t like there was anyone there to complain.

Right then, she felt like throwing her shot glass at Damon.  “Go away,” she said again.  “I came here to be alone.  As in away from you.”

Damon nodded, his lips pursed, and crossed his arms.  “What if I say I’m sorry?”

God, he could never just apologize, could he?  But that was a start for him, so she half-shrugged.  “Then I won’t throw this at you,” said Bonnie, tipping her glass vaguely in his direction.

“Could you even throw in a straight line right now?” Damon asked, raising an eyebrow.  “How many of those have you had?”

“A lot.”  Not too many, she didn’t think, but enough that everything was blurry at the edges and she wasn’t sure standing up was a good idea. 

The corner of his mouth quirked up.  “Still.  I shouldn’t have said that, earlier.”

Not quite an apology, but close enough.  Bonnie shrugged again.  It was hard to stay mad at him when he was all she had, and she wanted to tell him the thing she’d just realized, sitting at the bar.  “You’re safe for now.”

Damon took the barstool next to hers, but didn’t reach for a drink.  Bonnie poured herself another one to make up for that.  “You know what I think the problem is?  It’s this town.  This fucking town.”  She propped her elbow on the bar, turning towards him.  “We should leave.  Just take a car and—and go.”

“Hell is hell, Witchy.  Doesn’t matter what part of it we’re in.”

“You would say that.  You’ve got some kind of sick…thing for this town.”  She waved her glass for emphasis; she still hadn’t gotten around to drinking it yet, and tequila speckled Damon’s shirt.    “I always thought I’d get to travel, you know?  Thought I’d study abroad after college or something, maybe.  But instead I’ve been stuck here, dealing with all this magical, vampire-y bullshit.”

“You always talk this dirty when you’re drunk?”

She ignored him.  “I want to get out, Damon.  We might be stuck here, but I don’t want to be stuck in this shitty town anymore.”

Damon leaned back against the bar, legs sprawled so that his thigh brushed her knee.  She resisted the childish urge to thump him.  She expected a snarky remark; what she got instead was, “When do we leave?”

Bonnie frowned; she hadn’t expected him to just agree.  Practical thought hadn’t gone into this one, really.  Bonnie didn’t even know where she wanted to go, besides just…away.  Out. 

“As soon as I’m sober,” she said, and downed the rest of her tequila. 

Chapter Text

ii.

Bonnie woke to the smell of pancakes and coffee.  Nirvana was blasting way too loudly in the kitchen.

“Oh God,” she said, turning to bury her face in the—was it the couch pillow?  Had she slept on the couch?  No wonder the smells and sounds were too close.

“Morning, sunshine.  You sober yet?” Damon called over the music.

“Oh my fucking God.”  At least she wasn’t nauseous yet—she rolled over and, keeping her eyes squeezed shut and the pillow clutched to her face, tried to sit up.

Aaand there’s the nausea. 

iii.

They didn’t leave until nearly sunset, but time was pretty much meaningless in this dimension, anyway.  It wasn’t like they had a schedule to keep.  They fought over which car to steal—Bonnie wanted something with decent mileage, Damon wanted a classic—and eventually ended up hotwiring a new-looking red mustang.  Then they argued over which CDs to take, how many bags they were bringing (Damon only took along a blood bag, his toothbrush, and a clean pair of underwear, all wrapped in a flannel shirt.  God), and who was driving.

Finally, with Damon settled in the driver’s seat, Bonnie in the passenger’s, and TLC leaking through the speakers, they were ready to hit the road.

“So,” Damon asked, “where is this plan of yours taking us?”

Bonnie pulled open the map she’d taken from the boarding house.  Someone had kept a whole stash of them, and it had taken her forever to figure out which to use; she couldn’t remember getting directions from anything but a GPS.  “I was thinking we’d start with the beach,” she said.  “How does Orlando sound?”

“Next you’ll be telling me you’re going to Disney World,” Damon said with a snort.

“Are you telling me you don’t want to break in to Disney World?” asked Bonnie, pouting a little.  “C’mon, Damon.  It’ll be fun.”  And it wasn’t like there was anyone around to tell them not to. 

Damon gave her a long look.  Then he said, “God, you’re young,” and cranked the ignition.

Like he was so mature, Bonnie thought, rolling her eyes.

iv.

Bonnie fell asleep just before sunrise.  She’d been trying to for the last few hours, curled uncomfortably in the mustang’s seat.  Damon only noticed she was out because he’d gotten so used to her speaking up every few minutes.

He cranked the Red Hot Chili Peppers up a notch, just to see if she would comment.  No reaction, so she really was asleep, he thought.  Then he turned the music back down. 

His own eyes were itching, too, though he’d been trying to ignore it.  The rising sun wasn’t helping.  His ring might protect him from sunlight, but he was still a creature of the night and all that dramatic Dracula shit—it was uncomfortable, though bearable.  Plus Bonnie should probably sleep on something nicer than a car seat.  The last thing he needed was to be stuck all tomorrow in a car with sore, bitchy Bennett. 

He took the next exit that advertised a motel and left Bonnie in the car while he broke into one of the rooms.  It was a shitty roadside motel, the kind that would have made him worried about roaches if he’d seen anything alive in the last few months that wasn’t Bonnie.  The room he picked only had one bed, so he broke into the adjoining one as well; then he went back out to the car.

Bonnie hadn’t even twitched. 

She looked silly, drooling on the leather seats, her hair stuck to her face.  But it was weirdly—cute, too, Damon thought, and tried not to dwell on the adjective.

(Cute was fine, safe, the sort of thing it was okay to think about a girl who you were supposed to hate.  Sweet, beautiful, those weren’t.)

He considered shaking her awake for a second, but—he didn’t want her sniping at him again, did he?  Right.  After just a moment’s hesitation, he scooped her up, holding her gingerly against his chest, and bumped the car door shut with his hip. 

Damon left Bonnie on the bed.  Tucking her in—that was where he drew the line. 

Chapter Text

v.

“Day two of Road Trip with a Vampire—”

“Really?  That’s the best you can do, imitating Anne Rice?”

“—and Damon is still annoying as ever.”

“At least I didn’t get us lost for three hours in a world with no traffic.”

“Shut up, Damon.  Anyway—holy shit, slow down—”

“What?  No traffic, remember?  Besides, I’m a vampire.  Superhuman reflexes.”

“Yeah, but you still have to obey the laws of physics, Damon, which don’t like people going around a curve at 120 miles an hour.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of a killjoy, Bon-Bon?”

vi.

They reached Orlando in the mid-afternoon, during Bonnie’s turn at the wheel.  She tried her damnedest to ignore the eerie silence, the otherworldly desertion of the streets; she’d gotten good at that in Mystic Falls, but it was somehow different in a big city.  The six-lane interstate should have been full of traffic at this time of day. 

Whatever, Bonnie reminded herself.  She knew that she—that they were alone, here.  Just her and the living dead.

“So what now?” Damon asked.  His feet were on the dashboard, stolen sunglasses perched on the end of his nose.

Bonnie flexed her fingers on the steering wheel.  “Now we go to the beach.”

vii.

“Nightswimming deseeeeerves a quiet niiiiiiight—”

Bonnie splashed the vampire, and he broke off, sputtering and giving her a wounded look.  “It’s barely sunset,” she pointed out.  “C’mon, the water’s great.”

“You just want to see me strip,” said Damon, waggling his eyebrows at her. 

She rolled her eyes.  It was weird, though, wasn’t it—that for all Damon’s sex-crazed brain, she couldn’t remember him being anything but fully dressed around her.  And this bikini (much more expensive than anything else she’d worn, taken from a beachfront store) was the least he’d seen her in.  Of course, he hadn’t looked twice at her.  It wasn’t like she wanted him to creep on her, but—guys never seemed to look at her like that.  Guys who weren’t Jeremy, anyway. 

She shook her head.  Saltwater stung her eyes.  “If it gets you to stop singing, yeah,” she said.

When he reached for the hem of his shirt, she looked away. 

viii.

They sprawled out beside each other on the sand, water lapping halfway up their bodies.  It was the new moon tonight—well, every night, technically—but between the stars and streetlights, there was enough to see by.

“So,” said Damon.  His voice was hoarse, and his head was pillowed on his hands; his ring glinted faintly between strands of dark, sandy hair.  “Is it late enough that I can sing the song now?”  He wasn’t even out of breath, the bastard, even though they’d just had a truly epic splash fight.  Bonnie’d even managed to dunk him under water, once.

“It will never be the right time for you to sing anything.”  Bonnie turned her head to look at him, the damp sand smooth and cool under her cheek.  Damon flipped her off; she elbowed him, and turned back to look up at the sky.

It seemed impossibly huge, in that moment.  It was the same sky she’d looked at all her life, but for the first time it hit her, that she and Damon were the only living people under it. 

“God,” she said, nearly choking on the words, “we’re really alone, aren’t we?”

Damon propped himself up on his elbow, looming over her; there was a flash of fear, vulnerability, that he was seeing her like this.  Bonnie rubbed at her eyes, horrified to find them wet.  She hated crying, especially in front of him.  But there was none of the smugness or laughter in his voice that she’d come to expect when he said, almost flippantly, “No, we aren’t.”

Bonnie glared up at him, trying to plaster over vulnerability with anger.  It came to her so easily around him.  “Have you seen anyone else here?”

Damon bumped her shoulders with his knuckles and then just left his hand there, resting, the cool metal of his ring against her skin.  Then he gave her his best charming bad-boy grin.  “I know I’m not your first choice, Bon-Bon, but we aren’t here alone.  You’re stuck with me, remember?”

Chapter Text

ix.

It took some cajoling, but Bonnie finally got Damon to break into Disney World with her.

Well, it wasn’t really breaking in.  The gates were open; they just ducked under the ropes set up to control lines, and then they were standing in Main Street, U.S.A. 

“Should I have brought a camera?” Damon asked dryly.  The heat was oppressive; Bonnie didn’t know why he was still wearing jeans instead of shorts.  Maybe because he didn’t want his pasty legs to blind her. 

She ignored him, shading her eyes with her hand and taking in the sight of the empty theme park.  It was spooky in a way that the empty cities and highways weren’t, like the ghost of Mickey Mouse could pop up at any minute.

Damon was talking again, and Bonnie couldn’t help but tune back in.  With everything else so quiet, noise got her attention these days whether she wanted it to or not.  “You know, I never got the appeal of this place.”

“It’s a theme park,” Bonnie said.  “What’s not to get?  Fun rides, funnel cake, Mickey Mouse everywhere…”

“Yeah, he’s a creepy little bastard,” said Damon, making a face. 

She stared at him.  “You think…Mickey Mouse…is creepy?”

“It’s his eyes,” said Damon.  “Completely soulless.  That weirdass dog too.  And oh, hey, why does one dog get to wear clothes and act like a person, and the other one’s a pet?  Does Pluto have a kink or something?”

“Oh my God,” said Bonnie, and slugged him in the shoulder.  He had not just—just ruined that for her.  Damon rubbed his arm, pouting a little, but she held up her hand before he could speak.  “No.  You are done talking before you ruin more of my childhood.  C’mon.  We’re going to get these rides working.”

x.

They didn’t manage to get the rides working, unfortunately, but that was okay.  There was still lots more to do, like steal overpriced merchandise from the gift stores.  (It was a little disturbing how much she was coming to like stealing things, honestly.  Even with no else there to own the stuff, Bonnie still found it a little too satisfying to just rip off the price tags.)  She shoved a Walt Disney World visor on Damon’s head at one point; he protested, but he didn’t take it off.  Bonnie had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing every time she turned and saw him in it.

After a few hours, though, she was exhausted.  They stopped in one of the little restaurant things, and Damon went to check out the goods while Bonnie made herself a cup of soda. 

“Hey, there’s pizza back here!  What some?” he yelled.

“Yeah!”

“Great.”  He stuck his head out from the back room and beamed at her.  “Come get it yourself.”

 xi.

Bonnie must have dozed off in the little restaurant thing after they’d finished their pizza.  She’d been walking and sweating all day, so it wasn’t really a surprise.  What was a surprise was that it was nighttime—and Damon was gone.

As soon as she realized this, she jerked to her feet.  It wasn’t like she couldn’t handle herself if he’d ditched—what was here that could hurt her?  But she didn’t want him to leave, didn’t want to be alone, and what had she done to set him off anyway?  He'd stormed out on her before, but it had always been in the middle of an argument.

“Damon?” she called nervously.  Maybe he was just out of sight.  Or— “Da—oh.”

There was a note scribbled on a napkin, lying by where she’d been resting.  Cinderella castle, if you’re awake before the show starts.

Immediately, Bonnie felt stupid for having panicked.  God, what was her life coming to that she freaked out if he wasn’t here when she woke up?  That was a whole new level of codependency.  Damon was a monster, a murderer…and also, as he’d reminded her the other day, the only damn person she had.

Now that she thought about it, it was really weird that he’d left her a note at all.  Why would he care if she knew where he was?

Then the words sank in.  What show?

She looked around for the castle; it wasn’t hard to find, since it stood taller than almost everything else.  It was actually dark now—probably nine or ten, judging by the moon, and the sky was deep blue-black studded with stars. 

Bonnie didn’t make it all the way to the castle before she found out just what the show was. 

There was a loud whistling sound, and then above her a burst of sound and color.  Despite herself, she started smiling—fireworks.  Damon had figured out some way to put on a fireworks show. 

After four or five rounds of fireworks had gone off, Damon came jogging out of the castle.  “Save me a seat?” he asked; Bonnie raised an eyebrow, then patted the cement next to her.

“How did you do this?” she asked.  And why?  It seemed like the kind of thing he’d think was stupid or juvenile or something. 

Damon shrugged.  “It was all automatic.  Once I broke in, I just had to figure out which buttons to push.”  He sat down on the cement and looped his arms around his bent knees.  “Figured this place could use a little more noise.”

Bonnie nodded, tearing her eyes away from his face to watch the fireworks.  She hadn’t seen them in—God, ages, it felt like, and nothing this fancy.  “This whole dimension is too quiet,” she admitted. 

“Yeah, until you start running your mouth,” Damon agreed genially.  It was a half-hearted dig, basically a pleasantry at this point, and she ignored it.

Chapter Text

xii.

Bonnie walked through the door of the fancy suite Damon had claimed the night before.  His door was cracked, so she didn’t bother to knock, just pushed through.  Damon was passed out on the bed, sprawled so that he took up most of the king-size all by himself, and drooling a little on the pillow.

Before she realized what she was doing, she was smiling.  He was pretty cute like this, when she wasn’t waiting for him to make some kind of asshole comment.

Bonnie shook her head.  Before her thoughts took any weirder turns, she tossed the blood bag she’d nabbed earlier onto the pillow beside Damon.

He jerked up, hair falling into his eyes.  “Whazzat?” 

She bit her lip to hide a giggle.  “Breakfast in bed.  You’re welcome.”

“Oh.”  He picked up the blood bag, then casually vamped and bit in.  It used to freak Bonnie out, but now it was basically morning routine.  After a few seconds, the bag was drained, and Damon tossed it into the trash can.  “Thanks, Bon.”  He licked his lips, then sat up fully, the sheets falling to his waist. 

He did not wear shirts to bed, apparently.

It wasn’t that Bonnie hadn’t noticed Damon was hot.  He made it impossible not to notice—he used his looks, his charms, like weapons.  She had made herself immune to it, repressing any notice of Damon’s hotness because she had no interest in being screwed, literally or metaphorically.

But this kind of…domestic crap, Damon half-awake and still in bed, that got under her skin the way that his cocky grin didn’t. 

She looked away, glad that her skin at least hid her blushing, while Damon stretched.  “So!  You in the mood for pancakes?”

xiii.

Everything had been going pretty well, so of course they had to start fighting.

They were on the way out of Orlando; Bonnie was in the back seat, reading a gas station pulp novel.  She hadn’t said anything.  That was how she knew Damon was looking for a fight when he asked, “What did you ever see in baby Gilbert, anyway?”

Bonnie let out a deep breath through her nose.  “Jeremy is a nice guy.  A good person.”

“Nice.  Good.  Sounds to me like you just don’t want to say boring.”

She noted the page and shut her book, placing it carefully on the seat beside her.  “That’s because you don’t know anything about being a good person,” she said, voice sugar-sweet.

Damon adjusted his sunglasses with his middle finger.  She wasn’t sure if that was a coincidence—it probably was, though.  He was never subtle on purpose.  “How long did he last?  Two minutes?”

It took a second for Bonnie to realize that yeah, Damon actually had gone there; and if she had had her magic, she would have set his brain on fire.  “Oh please,” she spat out, “like you’re any better.”

“Baby—”  And what the hell was that—“I’ve got women all over the world who can tell you I am.”

“Probably because you compelled them,” Bonnie snapped.  “And don’t get me started on how creepy that is.  Besides, you can’t be that good.  Sex with Elena was probably just—”  She thrust her hips, no easy feat in the car seat, and imitated Damon’s seductive voice.  “’Oh, baby, tell me I’m better than Stefan!’”

xiv.

Half an hour of screaming later, Damon pulled over to the side of the highway.  “Get out.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Bonnie said, but she was so angry anyway that she would rather do that than spend another second with him.  She threw open the door, shoved herself out of the seat, and then slammed the door shut behind her.

Damon took off, tires squealing on the pavement. 

He’ll come back, Bonnie thought, watching him go.  He always comes back.  And she was going to get his ass when he did.

xv.

An hour after that, a completely different car pulled up to the small-town dive bar where Bonnie had ended up, sprawled out across the booth, eating peanuts and reading her book.

She looked up at Damon as he entered.  There was a tear across his t-shirt, speckled with blood, and a long dried streak of the stuff on his forehead matched it, but he didn’t seem to be hurt.

“I crashed the car,” he said, scowling vaguely in her direction but not actually looking at her.

Bonnie scowled back.  “I liked that car.”

Neither of them apologized.  That was fine. 

Chapter Text

xvi.

Alabama and Mississippi, in Damon's opinion, were two of the most boring states ever, and anyway he didn't know why Bonnie wanted to go to New Orleans so badly when there was no nightlife to be found there anymore. Since Damon had been making comments to this effect for the last several hours, Bonnie had gone past brushing over his concerns into tuning him out completely.

After the seventh church billboard, though, she finally listened. "Alright, alright, we can stop at the next exit." She said it like she was capitulating, but Damon could hear her stomach growl. Whatever. It was still Damon, one, Bonnie, zero.

The next exit had a few hotels to choose from. Bonnie pulled into a parking lot, and after Damon picked the lock to the building, she went straight for the lounge. Curious, Damon followed her; she emerged from behind the hotel bar with a bottle of wine (for her) and whiskey (for him).

He raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. "What's the occasion?"

"I've been sitting in a car with you for hours, that's what," Bonnie said. She tossed him the bottle of whiskey; it wasn't a very good toss, and only Damon's vampire reflexes kept it from hitting the ground. "Want to check out the kitchen?"

"Want to check out the bedrooms?" Damon asked, smirk widening, but Bonnie just rolled her eyes.

xvii.

"So," Bonnie said later, when they were both slumped on the lobby's loveseat. Her bottle of wine was half empty, and Damon was on his second bottle--bourbon, this time. "Truth or truth."

As always, Damon rolled his eyes at the stupid game. It was something Bonnie had come up with for when she wanted to tell him something but felt guilty about just saying it; he'd stopped protesting after the first few times. He picked up the cork of her wine bottle and threw it at her, not to hurt, just to be annoying. "Hard choice. I'll have to go with truth."

"I'm just telling you this because you're the only person here."

"I know, Bon."

"When we get back, you can't tell anyone."

They weren't ever getting back, but Damon humored her and drew his fingers across his mouth like he was pulling a zipper shut.

She took a fortifying swig from the bottle (Bonnie had never been this sloppy before their little road trip) and then said, "Sex with Jeremy really did suck."

Damon snorted mid-drink, then coughed as the alcohol burned its way into his sinuses. He'd been teasing her in the car, but Bonnie talking about sex was pretty much the last thing he'd expected. When the coughing subsided, she was glaring at him. "Do tell, Bennett," he said, grinning. He could always stand to hear someone talking shit about Jeremy Gilbert.

"It was my first time. Only time, actually, and Caroline and Elena had told me what it was like but I didn't really..." She eyed him warily, like she was expecting him to laugh.

Damn, though, no wonder she didn't want to talk about her sex life. She had no idea what a good time was like.

(He could fix that, if he could ever convince her to go for it. But Bonnie was his--friend, despite all his protests to the contrary. Even if his normal tricks would work on her, he didn't want to use them.)

Bonnie took another swig. She was radiating heat in a way that made him think she was blushing. "It was so awkward. I felt like I should have enjoyed it more, because I loved him and he was enjoying himself. But he wasn't...good. He bit me."

The horrifying image of Baby Gilbert on top of Bonnie was now in his head. Clearly the only way to make that bearable was to replace imaginary Jeremy with himself. "So?" Damon asked, trying not to dwell on the thought. It wasn't like he hadn't thought about it, many, many times. More than he used to think about killing her. But there was a difference between thinking about sex with Bonnie while alone in his room, and thinking about sex with Bonnie when she was sitting next to him in a low-cut top and tiny shorts. He snapped his teeth at her and gave her a lazy grin. "Vampire, Bon-Bon. Biting's not really a problem for me."

He thought about that a lot, too, staring at her neck sometimes when he was thirsty, wondering what it would take to get her to crawl in his lap and let him have a sip. He hadn't had warm blood from the tap in too long. Too bad she'd probably just set him on fire if he asked.

Bonnie's next words wiped that particular image out of his mind, though. "Okay, but even you know better than to bite a girl's nipples, right?"

Damon choked again, half with immature laughter and half with--something else. "Yep," he managed to say. "Definitely know better."

xviii.

"This is another thing you can't tell anyone when we get out," Bonnie warned him about an hour later. She'd given up trying to stay upright on her own--Damon did not miss human alcohol tolerance--and was now slumped against the back of the couch. When she turned to talk to him, her temple rested against his shoulder. It would have felt natural to loop an arm around her, tug her closer, but Damon was resisting the odd urge.

"Sure thing, Bennett."

She played with the hem of her shirt, not looking at him. "Sometimes I think that I just stick with Jeremy because he's the first guy to really notice me. Like, if I don't stick with him, then who else will care about me?"

Damon had been appreciating the view from over Bonnie's shoulder, so it took him a moment to process this. He frowned. "That's not right."

"It's my life, Damon, I think I'd know. Elena has had you, Matt, and Stefan all in love with her. Caroline had Tyler and Matt and Klaus. Even before all this magic stuff started, I was always the odd one out in the dating department."

What the hell. Damon wrapped an arm around Bonnie's shoulders. She stiffened for a second, then relaxed into it. "Truth."

"What?"

"Truth or truth, Bennett, it's my turn. Keep up." He took a fortifying drink. "Between you, Elena, and Caroline, you're the hottest."

She elbowed him. "Shut up," she said, but he thought she sounded pleased.

"I mean it. They're pretty in a...normal kind of way. If Elena hadn't looked like Katherine, and Caroline hadn't been convenient, I wouldn't have looked twice at either of them. But you're..." He gestured vaguely with the hand holding the bourbon.

"Don't say exotic."

"Striking." He grinned at her. "In both senses of the word."

"So if you had seen the three of us at a bar, without meeting any of us before or recognizing Elena?"

"I'd be going after you."

She frowned. "But you don't hit on me. You don't even look at me like that, and you're not exactly subtle."

"Bon-Bon, I've been looking down your shirt for the last fifteen minutes. Nice bra, by the way. Black's very classy."

She jerked away from him, yanking her shirt up at the same time.

"What?" he asked, ignoring her warning signs. "Can't blame a guy for enjoying the view."

"You're in love with my best friend--"

"Yeah, I am. I'm also very dead, Bon, in case you missed the memo." At he glare she gave him, he scowled. "What are you going to do, give me an aneurysm? Oh, right, you can't because you don't have magic. So we're stuck here."

"So that makes it just okay to forget about her and hit on me?!" Her heartbeat was going too fast now; her hands were screwed up into fists.

"I haven't forgotten about Elena, okay? But I'm pretty sure literally dying is a get-out-of-a-relationship free card. You're hot, I like looking, big deal."

Bonnie lurched to her feet. "We are not going to be stuck here forever. And you're a dick."

Damon rolled his eyes. No use arguing with that one. But he couldn't rationalize away the pit in his stomach as he watched her stomp away. Somehow, they always ended up here.

Chapter Text

xix.

Bonnie's head hurt.  

She'd spent hours, now, concentrating on the tiny hotel candle.  Fire was the first real magic she could do, after all--her visions didn't really count.  Bonnie could never control those.  But fire had been one of the first weapons in her arsenal, and there was no way it had abandoned her now.  Right?

When she and Damon had first realized they were stuck here, she would try to practice magic every day.  After a few weeks, though, it got old; she'd shoved Grams's grimoire and all her magical tools into a corner of her closet, promising she'd try later, when looking at the things didn't send a pit into her stomach.  As it turned out, the only motivation she needed was to have something she wanted to think about less than how bad of a witch she was.

Bonnie's temples throbbed.  "Incendium," she muttered one more time, hoping for the familiar burn of power in her veins--but, of course, there was nothing.  "Dammit."  She pushed the candle away to rub her head.  Now that she thought about it, maybe she was also experiencing the beginnings of a hangover, too.

Why was what Damon had said bothering her so much?  Him being a creep wasn't exactly new.  She'd just never felt the full force of it.  Bonnie tried to tell herself that the disgust was all she was feeling, and anger on behalf of Elena.  But that wasn't right, was it?  The real reason she was trying so hard not to think about the events of the last night was because she had liked it.  Damon had been flirting with her, not even trying to be subtle, and she'd wanted to push it further.  But he was a monster.  She had to remember that; he'd bitten her and turned her mother and hurt Caroline.  And now he was dating Elena.  Just being his friend felt like pushing the limits of morality.  More than that...

But he had changed, hadn't he?  The Damon in the prison world, Damon without the pressures of the real world on him and the constant worry that Elena would leave him, was so much better than the Damon Bonnie had known before.  He was...good to her.  Took care of her, did kind things, called her striking.  She couldn't remember feeling so touched by a compliment before.

The thing was, if--when--they got back, Bonnie didn't know it would stick.  She felt like she knew him better now, but if she got them out, wouldn't he just go right back to the old Damon?

A knock interrupted her thoughts.  Without waiting for a response, Damon opened the door and held out a heavily laden tray.  "Breakfast in bed, Bon-Bon.  Want some pancakes?"

xx.

"So what's the deal with the pancakes?" Bonnie asked after the edible bits of hers were gone.  Damon hadn't cooked them all the way, and they were more batter than pancake in the middle.

Damon shrugged and drained the last of his blood bag.  He'd stuck a straw in it like macabre juice box.  "They're pancakes, Bon.  Doesn't have to be a story."

"You never made them at home, and now you keep making them even though we both know they're terrible," said Bonnie.  "Come on, you've got to tell me something."

He left the blood bag sitting on the table as he pushed himself to his feet and gave her a tight smile.  "That's where you're wrong, witchy--I don't have to tell you a thing."  Before she could protest, he asked, "So how's the magic going?"

Her mouth snapped shut with an audible click, and Bonnie turned away.

xxi.  

"Today on Road Trip with a Vampire, it's been two weeks since we left Mystic Falls.  We should be in New Orleans in the next hour or so, probably less if Damon keeps driving like a crazy person."

"I'm driving like a person who doesn't have to worry about other cars, Bon.  Besides, we're already dead--it's not like we can get more dead."

"The way our lives work?  Yeah, we probably could.  Anyway, we're going to check out the historical sites in New Orleans, since now I can go there without worrying about a lot of pissed-off Originals."

"Which I still don't get.  Why bother looking at a bunch of old buildings?  And it's not even close to Mardi Gras, even if there were people to celebrate with--"

"Because those old buildings might hold grimoires that I could use, Damon."

"Yeah, I'm sure those will be a great help since you don't have any magic."

"I'll figure it out."

"Sure you will, witchy."

xxii.

Before the prison world happened, Bonnie's dreams were fairly normal.  Sometimes they were nightmares, but mostly they were just weird mishmashes of memories and TV shows and whatever random things her brain wanted to throw together.  But for whatever reason--maybe because there was little other source of entertainment in the prison world--they had been more vivid recently.  And a lot more disturbing.

In her dream the night after they arrived in New Orleans, she was back on the hotel couch where they'd sat the other day.  Instead of pulling away when Damon mentioned her bra, she'd smiled--she knew it was sultry and sexy, could somehow see herself in that weird dream-way--and asked if he wanted a better look.  He'd pulled her into his lap and helped tug her shirt off and--

Well.  It was a good dream, if she didn't think about it too closely.  She stared at her ceiling when she woke up, sweaty and flushed, and had bit her lip to keep from cursing when the door opened.  

"You need something, Bon?  Thought I heard my name."

She shook her head.  "It was just a dream.  A nightmare," she added quickly, before he could take it the wrong way.  Though it would actually be the right way, now that Bonnie thought of it...

Damon gave an exaggerated sniff, and waggled his eyebrows.  "Doesn't smell like a nightmare in here."

"Go away," she said, blushing.  This was not happening.  God, less than two months stuck with him and she was already losing her mind.

Chapter Text

xxiii.

Somehow, Bonnie hadn't expected finding a grimoire--just one grimoire--in New Orleans to be so difficult.  It was supposed to be full of witches, right?  It couldn't take that long.   She'd either overestimated the number of witches or underestimated New Orleans, because after eight freaking hours of breaking into houses, she hadn't found so much as a trace of magic.

Damon trailed behind her, helping her go through everything and thankfully not teasing her.  Oh, she could see his smirks and his eye rolls, but he wasn't pushing at her buttons.  Yet.  They weren't even keeping up their usual banter; Bonnie had at first, but then she became too focused, and then too irritated to bother.

"Can't you just, like, sniff out something magical?" she asked after a while when she was digging into a dresser drawer.  "Or couldn't you remember some old witch you had a fling with fifty years ago or something and take me to her house?"

Damon snorted.  "Trust me, Bon-Bon, if I had the power to end this farce quicker--I would."  

She opened her mouth to retort, but what came out instead was a startled cry--more surprise than pain.  She yanked her hand out of the dresser.  Her palm was bleeding, a jagged line ripped across it where she'd caught it on a nail.  Before she could do more than process the injury had happened, Damon bit into his own wrist--hurting himself more than she had, really--and offered it to her.  Bonnie's eyes widened.  "It's not that bad."

"You just think that because your pain threshold's been pushed too high.  I don't think you want stitches."  At her pause, he gave his arm an irritated jerk closer to her face.  "C'mon, judgy, it's already closing up."

It really didn't seem that bad, but--what the hell.  It wasn't like having Damon's blood in her system could hurt at this point.  Bonnie grabbed his arm just past the wound and drank.

Drinking vampire blood wasn't something she'd done many times, but it had always been in life-threatening situations, when she had to get it over with and concentrate on something else.  Now it felt almost surreal, like the situation was too ordinary for her to be doing something so odd.  Damon's blood tasted like a copper penny and was just as cool; as soon as it touched her tongue, she felt the wound on her hand begin to close up.  Before she'd had more than a sip, she pushed his arm away and wiped at her mouth.  

Bonnie could feel his eyes on her with the odd, single-minded intensity Damon had sometimes; so she met his gaze and nodded sharply.  "Thanks," she said.

He hadn't even hesitated.  She'd hurt herself, and he'd overreacted, then tried to play it off like he was just being practical--what was she supposed to think about that?

That Damon actually cared about her, she figured.  Maybe some other day she'd have teased him about it, but something about this felt too charged.

"Don't mention it," he said dryly, looking away from her and rolling down his sleeve; and just like that, the moment was gone.

xxiv.

Two hours later, Damon said, "You need a break."

Bonnie didn't even look up from the old journal she'd found.  "No, I don't."

"Let me rephrase: I need a break."

She waved a dismissive hand.  "Then go take one."

A pale hand covered up the page she was skimming and pushed the journal down.  Bonnie looked up from it to glare at Damon, who had somehow migrated into her personal space without her noticing. "Let me rephrase again: Bon-Bon, we've got all the time in the world to look through this city."  He kept eye contact with her as his hands covered hers and closed the journal.  "C'mon.  Have you ever had beignets?"

xxv.

“What if we made some?” Bonnie asked after Damon had broken into the small diner.  It was a clean little place; it looked homey, like in the real world the staff would know all the customer’s names.  And although the sign advertised fresh beignets, there were none to be found in the kitchen.  Now that Damon had planted the idea in her head, though, she was reluctant to leave without eating them.  “Look, there’s a recipe taped to the counter here.”

Damon pointed finger guns at her.  “I like the way you think, Bennett.  What do we need?”

They found the ingredients in the counters and started mixing them together.  And Bonnie found herself relaxing--it was easy to forget the awkward tension of the last few days when Damon was just being her friend.  By the time the dough was mixed and chilling in the fridge, they were both messy and grinning.

Bonnie leaned back against the kitchen counter, Damon beside her; his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and every now and then he’d knock her with his forearm like he was making sure she was still there.  She kept staring at his wrist where the bite mark had been earlier, tracing the bluish veins.  “Think they’ll come out okay?” Damon asked.

“Better than your pancakes, at least,” she said, smiling up at him; then she giggled.  “You’ve, ah, got something…”  Flour and water were smeared from the corner of his mouth to the point of his chin, a relic of their earlier battle over the ingredients.  

Damon frowned and swiped at his chin, but that just smeared it around more.  Bonnie sighed.  “Here, let me.”  She leaned over--way too close, his mouth too close to hers, one hand pressed against his chest to keep her balance--and dabbed at it with her fingers.  “Stop that.”

He grinned.  Bonnie didn’t look up at him.  “Stop what, Bonnie Beignet?”

At his stupid nickname/pun, she had to fight back a grin.  “You’re doing the sexy eye thing at me.  I can feel you burning a hole in the top of my head.”

“ What sexy eye thing?”

Bonnie glanced up and met his eyes.  They were narrowed, focused on her, and one eyebrow was artfully raised; she poked at his nose, not caring that she transferred flour there in doing so.  “ That thing.  Like the dramatic, intense eye thing you do, but with more seduction."

"Wait, wait, wait."  His smile transformed, becoming more genuine; she liked that one better than the smirk.  "You think I'm sexy.  You think I'm seductive."  He waggled his brows.

"I think you think you're sexy," Bonnie said, "not the same thing."

And then, because she wasn't having this conversation, she ran her fingers through the flour on the counter and flicked it right at his face.

xxvi.

"You know, I'm kinda going to miss this when we get back?" Bonnie said a couple hours later.  They were in one of the booths, getting flour and powdered sugar (the weapon of choice for Kitchen War III) all over the seats as they ate their piping-hot, slightly burned beignets.  

"Having me all to yourself?"

She rolled her eyes.  "Doing normal things.  When was the last time we had any kind of fun in Mystic Falls?  At least here, the worst has already happened, so we don't have to worry about it all the time."

"Yeah, well."  He stretched out his legs so that his boots rested on the seat next to her, and she bumped his calf with her knee.  "If you ever get your witchy juju back, and if you actually manage to get us home--maybe we can take a break from the danger and do more normal shit.  Make some pancakes, watch The Bodyguard."

She scraped up powdered sugar onto her finger and licked it off.  Now that Damon had said something earlier, she could tell he was tracking the movement--it was weirdly gratifying, emphasis on the weird.  Probably she shouldn't enjoy that he was still checking her out.  Probably she should stop thinking about it.  "When we get out of here, I'm never eating your pancakes again.  You can give them to whatever jerk shows up next in Mystic Falls and they'll run right back out."

"And if that fails, you can just throw flour at them til they surrender," Damon said.

"They won't know what hit them," Bonnie agreed.  "You know, that reminds me--it's been, like, a week since we watched The Bodyguard."

Damon threw his head back onto the seat and groaned dramatically.  "Really, Bennett?"

"I saw a copy at one of the houses we broke into..."

"Of course you did.  But I get to pick the next movie, alright?"

Chapter Text

xxvii.

Bonnie paused, fork still in her mouth, eyebrows raised in surprise.  "These are...actually pretty good," she said around a mouthful of pancakes.

His hand cupped around his ear, Damon leaned forward.  "What did you say?  This place must be driving me out of my mind, because I could have sworn..."  He gave her his best shit-eating grin from across the counter of the diner they'd broken into that morning.  Behind him, the soundtrack to The Bodyguard sounded from a stolen stereo.  After they had rewatched the movie last night, she'd been in the mood to listen to it again.

She swallowed her pancakes and returned his smile despite herself.  Then she poked his ear with her syrupy fork.  Damon recoiled with a disgruntled yelp.  "I guess you had to learn how to make them right sometime.  The fangs are still a little bit of an overkill, though."

"You just don't appreciate my genius," said Damon.

xxviii.

On day six of their (her) search, Bonnie hit gold.  She didn't just find a grimoire; she found a whole library of them.  

Damon whistled and leaned against the door frame.  He'd come when he heard her shout that she found something, and now she was leaning over a grimoire, the look on her face something close to reverence as she stroked its pages.  

"This must belong to a coven," she said, voice hushed.  Like an old church, the library demanded respect.  "Some of these go back hundreds of years..."

Damon did not respect churches or old, witchy libraries, so his voice was at its normal volume when he said, "Great.  You actually think they'll be able to get us out of here?"  Something cold had settled in his stomach.  There was no way Bonnie was going to be able to work her magic--no pun intended.  She didn't even have any, and they were dead, stuck here in his personal hell in a last twist of fate.  Finding a bunch of old witchy shit didn't change that.

"There has to be something," Bonnie said.  There was a determined set to her mouth, a life in her eyes that had been starting to fade after days of fruitless searching.  She looked gorgeous like this, vibrant with hope.  "Maybe there isn't a spell for this, but there might be a way to get my magic back.  Or enough of a guideline for me to make a spell to get us out.  Anything.  Damon--we're one step closer to getting out of here!"

He smiled, but it felt a little forced.  That wouldn't do; the witch would see right through him.  

"In that case," he said, "only one thing to do."

Now she looked wary.  "Yeah?"

"Celebrate."  In a flash, he had crossed the room to her and picked her up, bodyguard-style.  She squawked in indignation and hit him in the chest with the grimoire, but annoying Bonnie helped alleviate some of the weird tension in his chest.  For the moment, at least, she was stuck with him.  "Come on, Whitney; let's hit the town before we get to work."

xxix.

Admittedly, Damon's idea of celebration was pretty fun.  And as much as she itched to start working towards getting them back home, once they had broken into a club, Damon had started the lights flashing, and Bonnie had put on some music, she could admit that relaxing after a week of searching the city non-stop was doing her some good.  Partying with only two people was sort of depressing, but they had done it a few times in the last...what was it, month?  Two months?  So Bonnie was used to it.  They downed their first few shots together; then Damon declared that his jam was playing, hopped onto the stage, and grabbed a stripper pole.

"Work it, honey," Bonnie yelled at him, laughing as she watched.  Damon's version of "working it" was mostly fist-pumping and pelvic thrusting.  It wasn't titillating in the least, but it was funny.  She grabbed a dollar from the register and leaned up to tuck it into his waistband.  

He grabbed her wrist.  "Hey, hands off the merchandise."

"I'm trying to pay," said Bonnie, yanking her hand back.  He let her go easily; Damon rarely manhandled her like he had earlier.  Possibly it was a habit from her days of setting his brain on fire when he tried.  

Damon tapped his chin, head tilted.  "You," he said, "should dance with me."

She hardly ever danced with him.  The last time was at, what, the decade dance?  And that particular memory was fraught with tension.  But this time--this time they had already hit rock bottom, and they were on the way up.  Bonnie figured she could give dancing with Damon another shot.  She pulled herself onto the stage and extended a hand.  "Okay, let's go."

Damon took one of her hands in his, oddly careful, and looped an arm around her waist.  "Damon, what--" she started to say; he led her through a practiced series of steps, humming offbeat under his breath.  "Damon, you can't waltz to Salt-N-Pepa," she finished, rolling her eyes as she realized what was happening.  

"It's not a waltz," he said, offended.  "Waltzes are in 3/4 time."  Before she could ask what he was doing, he twirled her around and pulled her in so that her back pressed against his chest.  

"Sorry, some of us aren't from the 1800s," she said, resting her head on his shoulder.  She felt a little ridiculous, but no one else was there to see, so--who cared, really?  She found the rhythm to Damon's steps and followed along.  After they got out, he would be back to being all over Elena, and they would have to deal with the newest supernatural crisis.  Bonnie would enjoy this while she could.

xxx.

They left the club hours later.  Bonnie was exhausted and a bit tipsy; Damon, though, seemed like something was bothering him.  He was oddly fidgety, his teasing on the way back to the house with the grimoire library distracted and half-hearted.

She pushed open the door to the house and felt around for a light switch in the pitch darkness, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her.  "Yeah?"

Damon stared at her for a moment in that intense way he had.  "Can I try something?"

Since when did Damon ask for her permission to do things?  "Sure," she said, confused.

There was another pause as he looked at her.  Everything in the world, at that moment, seemed very still; there was nothing around to move but them, and they were frozen like statues except for the fluttering tension in Bonnie's chest.  

Then Damon took Bonnie's face in both his hands and kissed her.  

It wasn't what she thought kissing Damon would be like.  Bonnie had expected he would be all messy tongue and teeth.  But this was almost timid, a question, barely a brush of his mouth on hers.  Her hands came up to his chest, hovering, almost wanting to push him away; then she grabbed two handfuls of fabric and pulled him closer, telling him yes the only way she could right now.  

Bonnie felt like she had touched a livewire.  Everything in her was tense and shivery.  She felt the soft fabric of Damon's old flannel under her hands and Damon's cool mouth on hers, his thumbs tracing her cheekbones, pinkies trailing along her jawline.  Her brain had short-circuited.  She couldn't process that she was kissing Damon, because she was too busy doing it.

After much too long, he pulled away.  His eyes focused on hers, and then on something over her shoulder.  "Bonnie," he said, and his voice sounded a little hoarse.

What the hell had she just done?

"I, um, that was--"

"No, Bonnie, look," he said.

She turned.

The flames of every candle in the old house glowed in the darkness.

Chapter Text

xxxi.

So.  He'd done that.

Damon's hands flexed by his sides as he watched Bonnie's face transform from incomprehension to disbelief to understanding.  He didn't know what he was feeling.  Before he had kissed her there had only been the reckless want to do something that usually preceded his worst decisions, and now there was only numb shock.  So in the time it took Bonnie to understand what she was seeing and turn back to him, Damon had shoved his thoughts into some kind of order.  He had kissed Bonnie (stupid).  Bonnie had kissed him back (amazing, but stupid).  And now Bonnie had her magic back (what the fuck) which meant they could get out of here (good?).

Bonnie turned back to him.  Unconsciously, she licked her lips; if Damon's heart still worked, it would be fluttering.  Fuck.  Right, time to-- "Well, if that's what a kiss does," he said, grinning at her, "why don't we head to the bedroom and see what it takes to get us out of here?"

Funny; he could almost see her walls slam back down.

"How about no."  She shoved him, and Damon stumbled back.  "What the hell, Damon?"

"What the hell, Bonnie?" he snapped back, imitating her tone.  "You kissed me back."

Her scowl deepened; her hands clenched into fists at her sides.  Damon wondered if she was about to remember that oh, yeah, she could explode his brain again now.  "Yeah, I did.  And I shouldn't have.  But you started this, so what the hell?"

"I don't know, okay?  Because--I don't know.  I wanted to kiss you.  That's all."  He felt stupid and--and vulnerable, fucking hell.  She was his best friend, and he was pretty sure he had just colossally screwed this up.  What else was new?  Damon shook his head, tearing his eyes away from hers; Bonnie talked about him being intense, but she always seemed to look right through him.  "Chalk it up to me being me, alright?  I'm gonna go get some air.  I'm sure you've got some witchy shit to do."

xxxii.

Bonnie didn't get five words into a grimoire before she realized tonight was a lost cause.  It was three in the morning, she was still tipsy, and all she could think about was that kiss.  Her thoughts stayed on a loop as she slammed the book shut and went to bed.  Damn Damon; he had her so twisted up, she couldn't even be happy they were getting out of this place.

Chalk it up to me being me.  That being what, exactly?  A reckless horndog with no sense of boundaries?  But she had seen that side of Damon.  She had seen him seductive and aggressive, and that kiss--that whole night--had not been his style.  Part of Bonnie wanted to write the whole thing off as Damon just trying to get some, but she could read him too well for that.  Bonnie believed him when he said that he didn't know why he'd done it.  It scared her to think that she might know better than he did.

Damon liked her, in the ridiculous middle-school sense of the word.  He cared about her, no matter how much they both pretended to the contrary.  He had taken care of her almost as much as he'd antagonized her.  And that was fucking terrifying.  Bonnie had seen how Damon got when he decided he cared about a woman.  Could she handle that kind of intensity?

Still, his little...thing for her couldn't last now that they were on their way out of this dimension.  (Bonnie wasn't thinking about what would happen if she couldn't find a spell.  There had to be a way out, and if there wasn't, she would make one.)  Once they were back to the real world and Elena, Damon could be with the love of his life and forget he'd ever kissed judgy little Bonnie Bennett.

And what about her?  What did she feel about the kiss, about him?

Well.  Bonnie stared up at the dark ceiling and pressed her fingers against her lips.  There was only so much thinking a girl could do in one night.

xxxiii.

There were pancakes when Bonnie arrived in the kitchen the next morning (well, afternoon, but who was counting?) but no Damon.  It didn't even look like the kitchen had been used.  For a moment she grinned at the thought of Damon cooking his stupid vampcakes in another house, just so she didn't wake up, and bringing them here; but then Bonnie remembered the night before.  

An odd pang of loss hit her.  She and Damon had fought before.  They had said terrible things and rubbed salt into old wounds.  But they had always come back to each other by the next day.  A kiss shouldn't be able to fuck things up the way their fights hadn't.

Bonnie ate the goddamn pancakes.  Then she found the comb he'd appropriated, pulled off a few hairs, and did a tracking spell.

She half-expected to find Damon among the burning wreckage of a car or passed out somewhere, surrounded by bodies.  (She wasn't sure where he'd get bodies here, but it was Damon; he could have managed.)  Instead she found him almost as soon as she left the house.  He was sitting on the porch swing of the house next door, his head propped up in one hand, a grimoire in the other.  He looked up when she approached.  "Hey," he said, giving her a flash of his old grin.

"Hey."  Bonnie stopped in front of him, crossing her arms.  She refused to be uncomfortable when he was the one who had started all this.  "So...are we going to talk about this?"

He closed the grimoire with a snap.  "Far be it from me to deprive you of the chance to tell me how wrong I am, Judgy."

Bonnie rolled her eyes, but it was almost a relief to hear his snark.  Annoying as it could be, at least that remained a constant.  "I know you...like me, alright?  We're friends.  You're probably my best friend, and I think I'm that for you, too.  But whatever that was..."  She shook her head.  "I'm tired of being in second place, Damon.  And we both know that you'd rather be stuck here with Elena than with me."

Damon muttered something under his breath, not meeting her eyes.

"What?"

He took a deep breath and faced her as if it physically pained him.  "Not exactly," said Damon quietly.

The odd tension of the night before returned, pulling her toward him like a magnet, reminding her why she'd kissed him back in the first place.  No, no, she wasn't going to do this again; Bonnie shook her head, breaking the spell.  "Stop," Bonnie said.  She had to clench her hands to make sure she wasn't shaking.  "Damon, just...stop.  We've got a way out, and once we're back..."

He cleared his throat.  "Right.  I guess we should get to work, then."

"Yeah," said Bonnie.  She shifted from foot to foot, feeling as if there was something else she needed to say; but her mind was stubbornly blank, and after a few seconds she left him alone on the porch.

Chapter Text

xxxiv.

Surprisingly, Damon found what they were looking for first.

Well--not quite what they were looking for; not quite a way out.  But he did figure out where the hell they were, buried in an old grimoire.  It mentioned a particular coven's specialty, worlds set in an infinite loop of one day in time, based on a celestial event.  Such as a solar eclipse.  It was even a coven he and Bonnie knew--the Gemini coven.  

As soon as he read it and scanned the pages after to see if there was more they could use to get out (there was not), Damon shut the grimoire, marking the place with his thumb.  Then he leaned back against the couch and stared at the ceiling.

They had been stuck in this world for a little more than two months now.  Things with Bonnie were...uncomfortable, their weird domestic equilibrium gone down the toilet.  

So why did Damon feel reluctant to show her this newest lead?  He should want a way out, right?  He figured he would, eventually.  But going back meant dealing with yet another supernatural crisis.  Meant jealousy choking him every time Elena went back to Stefan, meant ricocheting between good and bad and always landing on the bad end of the spectrum, meant doing something shitty (because something inevitably came up) and then lying to her about it.

He was tired of being...kind of terrible with her.  And he wasn't looking forward to starting that again when he got back.

Damon frowned.  He wasn't looking forward to seeing her at all when he got back.  This was the kind of thing he'd talk over with Bonnie, if he didn't think she'd take it as him trying to woo her.  

He pushed himself to his feet.  Even if he didn't want to go back to the real world just yet, Bonnie deserved a shot at it.

xxxv.

"Today on road trip with a vampire, we're going to Portland.  Turns out that one--we're probably not dead, and two--the Gemini coven might have a way out for us.  I don't like to say I told you so, but..."

"Yeah, yeah, you told me so.  Don't let it go to your head."

"Too late.  Anyway, we're in the first rainstorm I've seen since we got here.  You'll notice I'm a little...damp.  That's because we pulled over to celebrate.  Damon is still driving too fast, because the laws of physics apparently don't apply to vampires, but I guess I'm used to it by now."

"I keep telling you, Bon, I've got it all under--shit--"

"Oh my g--"

A squeal of brakes, a crash of glass and metal, a crack as the video camera hits the pavement.  

"Bonnie? Oh God no no no--"

xxxvi.

When Bonnie woke up, everything was too bright.  She whimpered, shielding her eyes.  What had happened?  She hadn't had a hangover this bad in--

But no, this wasn't a hangover.  Bonnie remembered it had been raining.  Damon's shitty driving.  The car had crashed.  She had been...bad.  Bonnie had been hurt too many times, but none of those times compared to glass shrapnel embedded in her chest.  Weirdly though, nothing hurt that badly now; just her head, and her stomach.  And...her mouth?

"Hey," Damon said softly.  It wasn't a tone she'd ever heard him use, like he was trying to sweet-talk a puppy.  "How're you feeling, Bon?"

She squinted through her fingers.  The greyish sunlight was like the glare off of snow, too bright and painful to look at, but her eyes began to adjust.  "I told you to slow down," she said.  Something in her mouth felt off; the words were slightly garbled.  "You asshole."

"Glad to see you're still yourself, then," Damon said.  She noticed for the first time that he was gripping her other hand hard enough to hurt.  Blood smeared over both their fingers; Bonnie followed the trail and saw it staining the shreds of her shirt, her legs.  It crusted itchily along the side of her face.  "You were...in bad shape."  His voice broke, and he cleared his throat.

Something clicked.  Her sensitivity to light, her sore mouth--she ran her tongue over the tip of her canines, just to be sure.

"I died, didn't I?" she said.  Her heart sped up, as if it knew its beating days were numbered.  "I'm--I'm transitioning."

Damon took a deep breath.  He was still in vamp face, she noticed; probably all the blood.  It didn't bother her as much as it should have.  She'd look like that soon, too.  "Yeah.  But--please, don't--don't do anything stupid, you've gotta transition--"

"Oh, I'm transitioning."  Sorry, Grams.  "I didn't die just to get here and fucking die again.  Take me to the hospital and I'll finish it."  Bonnie pushed herself to her feet and the world blurred around her.  Vampire speed hit early, it seemed.  "We'll just have to find another way out."

Chapter Text

As I mentioned at the end of last chapter, Bonnie's vampirism wouldn't have been permanent.

Before transitioning, Bonnie would have a minor freakout--if she was in love with Damon, she might end up sire-bonded to him.  She reminds herself it's only temporary, she's not actually in love with him, and transitions anyway.  She isn't sire-bonded.

Damon would do a lot of groveling. So much.  Bonnie would be mad, but eventually just frustrated; a conversation would involve something along the lines of, "At least you weren't actually trying to hurt me this time."  Damon would apologize for biting her in S1.  Bonnie would say she didn't trust him for a long time, but they've moved past it.

On the road to get the cure, there would be a lot of sexual tension.  Bonnie would have trouble dealing with vampire senses and general emotional intensity, including intensified feelings for Damon.  They would probably make out once they stopped for the night, but Damon would put a stop to it.  They'd talk about how much changed after the transition, and Damon would say she could eventually get used to it.  The senses stopped being overwhelming, as did emotions.  There would be some exploration of my personal headcanon about vampire instincts (aka suddenly wanting to kill everything for the sake of it, and how terrifying that would be to a genuinely moral person).

Bonnie is unnerved and eager to get to the cure.  On the way, Damon admits to wanting to be human again.  She offers him the chance to take it after she has, but he turns her down.  She asks if it's for Elena; he says no, it's because she might need his blood again.  Then he says that when they make it back (showing some hope, for once), he might take it after all.

They get to the cure.  Bonnie takes it, is a witch again.  Decides to just go for it and kisses Damon.  Admits that she wants him as much as a human as she did as a vampire, and actually believes him about not being second place this time.  Things escalate, fade to black because I generally do not write porn.

That's most of the planning I did.  Of course they would eventually find their way out of the prison world, probably not too long after they'd gotten together because I'm not sure how many chapters of floof I could do before things got boring.  

Again, thank you for reading and I hope that this wrap-up at least gives a little closure.  <3