Chapter Text
"I've Been Looking At You Too Much"
Friday nights used to be about keggers in the woods near the old church, late-night swimming at the Falls, football games against the rival town, pool and milkshakes at The Grille. That was before the picturesque simplicity of Mystic Falls exploded. That was before she regularly communed with the living dead. Bonnie vaguely remembered that time, Before. It seemed fantastical, much less real than the daily horror show in which she had a bit role. She once joked to Stefan that the sweet transvestite should appear any second now. His brow creased. Her eyes were on the verge of rolling when Damon yelled, "This isn't the junior chamber of commerce, Brad!"
That bit of pop cultural play formed the basis for a new recurring theme: partnership. That was it. It hit her Damon pillaged an industrial blood refrigerator. Here she was, a lookout for a vampire stealing blood from a hospital lab. On a Friday. Bonnie thought of a Friday without this exact same scenario. The date had a circle around it. Had it really been only three months? She fidgeted, shaking her head, trying to adjust the date.
"Hey."
Bonnie caught his eyes before pressing her face to the glass.
"You need to pee or something?"
"No."
"Then stop with the river dancing. It's not what your people do anyway."
Bonnie raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me? Not what my people do?"
"You know, the Witch people," Damon said. A corner of his mouth formed a parenthesis.
Bonnie made a face at him. "Go back to leeching."
He turned his back but not before he grinned. Ruthie, the stainless steel portable bloodmobile, had a decent amount of O and AB Positive. A little too decent. Bonnie was about to point it out when a silent alarm triggered in her stomach. She glanced down the corridor. "Shit," she breathed. A security guard and two shotgun-carrying police officers came stalking around the corner. Bonnie gave a low whistle. Damon grabbed a few random bags of blood and closed Ruthie. Bonnie went for the interior lab door but Damon grabbed her and hustled her into a supply closet just as the officers burst in.
"What the fuck?" Bonnie whispered.
"There was no way we'd make it out that fucking door in the three seconds."
"And you couldn't, you know," Bonnie imitated a karate chop, "do that or," she gestured back and forth between her face and his, "the compulsion thing?"
Damon leaned forward. Bonnie froze. His eyes shone in the dark. "I can't compel a bullet back into the chamber."
"Well, if you had used some restraint with the blood bags, we'd be back already."
"Really? Well, if you weren't busy ogling and squirming like a toddler, we wouldn't be stuck in a storage closet."
They stood a little too close. On any previous occasion, they would jump apart and pretend the moment out of existence, but they remained in the moment, and their silent gazing said more than any words.
Bonnie broke first. "This is a typical moment in a suspenseful romance. In any romance, actually."
"Your breath stinks."
"And there it goes, ruined."
"I'm honest. What does my breath smell like?"
She took a big whiff. "Rank."
"And that's reality, sweetheart. Now, what are we going to do about these idiots with guns?"
Bonnie shrugged. "I say let's just jump out the window."
"Agreed," Damon said.
Bonnie counted to five and threw open the door. The officers whirled around. Bonnie blew them back across the room. A shotgun blast nearly mulched half her face. Damon grabbed her and Ruthie, and lunged for the windows. Bonnie managed to magic the glass before they jumped. This happened so often now that they landed in stride. Bonnie put Ruthie in the backseat before Damon tossed her the keys. "I got a story to invent. Keep the car running."
He knocked on the driver side window a minute later. She slid over and frowned when he handed over the two shotguns.
"Let's do something," Damon said. He tapped the steering wheel.
Bonnie placed the guns on the backseat floor. "You mean aside from stealing blood, getting into a one-sided gunfight, and jumping ten stories," she said.
He started the car. "Do you really want to spend another Friday babysitting Elena?"
Bonnie thought about it. Typical Friday night procedure: they returned to the boarding house, Damon disappeared to the cellar, and Bonnie joined Stefan in Elenafretville before falling asleep during one of Elena's lessons. Around 2 a.m. she'd wake up and leave as quietly as possible in a house full of vampires. That was it. Not a hard choice.
"Something legal," Bonnie stressed.
"How about mostly legal?" Damon replied.
;)
Bonnie held a quarter to the moon. "Look at that. I blotted it out."
"This is some good shit." He repacked the bowl and passed it over. She blew fire and inhaled pleasant, acrid smoke. The coughing didn't double her over this time. His warm hand patted the space between her shoulder blades.
"So…" Bonnie listened to her voice in the crisp air. It didn't belong to her. It was too smoky, too steady, so far away.
Damon looked over at her. He smiled. His teeth blinded her. Bonnie squinted.
"So what? Why are you squinting? Are you high right now?"
"Maybe. I feel detached. Like a loose sheet of paper. Like when you rip it along the perforated edge and you stop because your pen dropped or your friend asked you something." Bonnie shook. "I'm rattling like a forgotten sheet of paper."
"No," Damon waved the bowl, "you're supposed to respond, 'Do you ever get nervous?' God, Bonnie, pull yourself together."
Bonnie crossed her ankles. She lifted her arms into the air and then let them fall like feathers. Quiet lapped around them.
"Do you ever get nervous?"
"Are we playing truth or dare?"
"No, god, do you even listen to anything other than the pitter patter of Elena's torn heart?" Bonnie exhaled. "No dare. Everything with you is a dare. "
"Fine," Damon hummed. "I do get nervous. I'm nervous right now."
"Why?"
"Because nothing goes right. It always swerves left. Fucking always."
Bonnie raised her eyebrows in total agreement. Damon continued to hum, then the hum turned into a beat, and the beat turned into rapping "HYFR" in the worst antebellum Southern accent Bonnie ever had to endure. They cracked up laughing.
Damon packed the last quarter of Purple Majesty in the bowl. Bonnie leaned over to do her magic. They took a hit, ladies' first. This time she didn't cough. His hand stayed put.
"By the by, your breath was quite fragrant."
Bonnie gave him a sidelong glance. "Are you making a move? Because I'm impaired right now. It wouldn't count in the consent column."
"Hey, drugs are bad for us too, but we didn't have D.A.R.E. to teach us any better," Damon said. He closed his eyes.
Bonnie turned her attention to the glitter-dusted sky. The stars scintillated. The moon cast a LED halo over the car. She inhaled. Exhaled. Varied the tempo. At one point she stopped breathing altogether but thought it was a bad idea. She might forget to start again.
"Remember this time last year? You hated me." Damon's voice seemed far away, but inside her head, like an echo of a thought.
Anyway, Bonnie remembered. Hate was too abstract. A person could hate tomatoes but still like ketchup. A person could hate a song. She didn't hate Damon. She loathed him. Every opportunity to kill him had been shat on by someone else's desire for his survival. Then the rules changed.
"Well, I don't anymore."
All the possible directions from that one response thickened the pause. Bonnie floated to the atmosphere, too high above the earthly realm to consider the implications and complications of actually admitting she no longer "hated" her natural enemy. Damon was on terra firma, and he considered them all.
"Why not?"
Bonnie reached for the pipe. She smoked the rest before answering, "I gave up on it."
He opened his eyes and saw her there with light shining around her. Damon qualified her beauty for the first time. It was the first time he saw a woman and didn't compare her to the Torch or judge whether to fuck, kill, or ruin. He thought of kissing her to see if it would align with this new image, but the woods waved their collective limbs in warning.
Damon folded an arm under his head and crossed his ankles. The rolling waves of Purple Majesty and her heartbeat rocked him to the first sleep in months. Bonnie nudged him. His face fell towards her. She turned on her side and examined each part of it. She preferred Stefan's, but it was startling when in repose. It invited you into its corner to read and drink an iced coffee and have a conversation. And with the radiating moon, it had allure. So much so Bonnie put her hand on his cheek. She ran the back of it down the side of his face. She smoothed an eyebrow, and touched the pad of a finger against the pad of his lips. She took her hand away and stared at him until her eyelids refused to support themselves.
Friday passed into Saturday with Damon and Bonnie asleep on the hood of the car, a cooler full of blood, and two shotguns in the backseat.