Putting Back the Pieces of Us (damon/bonnie, tvd fic)
Title: Putting Back the Pieces of Us
Fandom: TVD
Pairing: Damon/Bonnie (faint implications of Damon/Elena, Bonnie/Jeremy if you squint mightily, especially the latter) Summary: Sometimes, we fall to pieces or life collapses around us. We put ourselves together again. Maybe not perfectly, but that's how we learn to survive . AU early season 3.
Warnings: sex, dark angst, some violence, blood play, adult language, NC17 Dark Ships meme: "we're in this together" Spoilers: none really
Disclaimer: I'm poor. I have nothing.
Feedback: Is better than Damon's hair on a good day.
AN: This is totally unnecessary but I just thought I'd explicitly state that I'm opposed to the idea of Elena dying in any way on the show, just on principle. I guess she'll be a vampire soon enough, and I'll deal, but I'm sort of incapable of even writing it in fic. For this story, my original intent was to write something 'humorous' about how Bonnie and Damon come together in weird and wonderful ways because of Elena, since that's how so many things happen on the show. But the story got darker, became about how two people deal with loss and find some semblance of something in the aftermath of a bad experience. Elena, Stefan etc.'s stories drifted away from me in the final quick edit. But she's isn't dead. The melodrama of how Elena impacts their lives, at least initially, is still here -- it's something that makes me laugh and simultaneously shake my head when I watch the show because they do bludgeon the point home rather frequently. I tried to tone it down but yeah...it just wasn't happening in this one. Anyway, Damon continues to freak me out. Still figuring all these characters out. Fake mythology included at the end, also half-breed creatures appear briefly. Not beta'd, and I got tired of looking at it so perfectly aware of its shortcomings, oy. Next time: I need to write about Bonnie, Caro and Elena or the frigging Bennetts, enough het ship stories already.
Putting Back the Pieces of Us I
Bonnie wonders if she has not made a mistake. Often, we make bogey men out of the things we hate and fear. We convince ourselves that their hearts are made of lead. Or better yet, we take comfort that they have no hearts. The living, beating, breathing kind - as if love and sorrow, and hate can be contained in flushed corpuscles and webbed veins. But when she sees Damon Salvatore fall to his knees, landing heavily in a mess of disjointed limbs, like an abandoned marionette, doubt creeps into her mind - fingers of it that flutter inside, fester. His eyes are shadowed. And not vampire shadows, not soul-less. But something else that’s broken, and guilty. Dull and gray like smoke in a shuttered room. Lost.
He brings his shaking hand, blood-tipped fingers to the still-warm corpse on the ground. And the cry which rips from somewhere deep, hidden, beneath where all those corpuscles and blood vessels should be is not inhuman at all.
---
She looks at the body herself. And her eyes don’t want to believe. She closes them, but wet tears seep out and she feels a sound that isn’t even language come out of her. Magical energy vibrates at her fingertips, hard and brittle; and she wishes that there was someone she could blame. Anyone. This can’t be happening.
---
Maybe, in grief, we're all inhuman humans, hollowed out, and cracked, dead.
II
She comes like clockwork. There is comfort in routine, she thinks. People are like trained dogs that way.
He’s waiting for her, just as he always is. He opens the door before she even knocks. Crystal-shard eyes meet green in silence. He sizes her up, and she feels, all at once like an insignificant thing and a piece of meat dipped in blood. Then she remembers who it is, and to him, she probably is a walking steak or something. As to the gaping sensation of being nothing but negative space in his eyes, he’s looked at everything and everyone that way since she died. She can’t judge. She’s looked the same. He stands aside. She walks passed wordlessly.
---
The boarding house is cavernous. Even filled with furniture, it feels empty, like an echo chamber. The bitter tinge of smoke from the fireplace lingers on the air; there’s a jagged pile of crushed furniture strewn across the hallway. She imagines his fists running through them at night. She also imagines that there are a few chair legs whittled, half-whittled to misshapen points. She looks again. It’s not a figment; he’s apparently been making stakes for himself. For some reason, she almost wishes he’d just do it - just kill himself already. But that’d be too easy for both of them. So of course he won’t do it.
---
His lips are rough against her throat. She can feel him graze skin, and the sting as her blood leaks out, the swipe of his tongue. And then he thrusts hard. Hard enough that it hurts; she makes a small, animal sound in the back of her throat and lets her fingers score his back. The ceiling is high. From this position, on the floor, against the plush rug by his bed, it’s almost dizzyingly high. He brings his mouth up to hers, and she can taste her blood on his tongue. And it’s not kissing as she’s always known it. There’s no intimacy, no closeness, no sharing of the self with another person, no affection. But, strangely, she’s never felt anything more real. And maybe that’s what this is all about. That’s why she finds herself here on odd days, even days; every day.
Life’s started to feel like an extended dream or a hallucination where everything and everyone moves around in the half-light; there’s an invisible wall of non-feeling and nothing can penetrate through it. Nothing except this and him, the two of them.
III
Damon feels his ears prickle. She’s nearby. Of course, he knew that; he knew she was coming. But for some reason, every day, he’s taken to tricking himself. To hoping that she just won’t show. That she’s had enough; that maybe he took too much or he got too rough; and the Bonnie he knew when he first came back to this shit hole of a town would come and kick his ass. Maybe even kill him. And everything would be right with the world.
But she doesn’t.
She comes, every day, and almost always at the same time. And he hates that a small part of him breathes a sigh of relief. Because he doesn’t want her here but he needs her - he needs this.
---
He fucks her against the door this time. She locks her legs around his hips and fucks him right back. Her clothes aren’t even all off and he can feel the heels of her boots dig painfully into the base of his spine. She drags at the hair on top of his head and he gets even harder at the twinge. When he hears her sob right by his ear and feels the wet damp of tears, he doesn’t stop rutting.
---
They’re both sweating, dripping with it, and he can feel her heart thrum through the thin linen shirt. He wants to reach inside and gouge it out, warm blood all over his hand, and just end this. And maybe it’ll make him feel, or forget. He doesn’t though. A small voice tells him that it’s because of her. But that small voice - it fades sometimes. And that scares him more than anything.
---
It’s not the first time she’s cried and it definitely won’t be the last.
IV
Jeremy looks at her funny across the table, limpidly, and she feels like she just kicked a puppy or something and she hasn’t even said a word. “Look, Bonnie, I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“I know it’s been hard - it’s been hard on all of us.” His eyes are shiny.
She fidgets uncomfortably in her seat. The old Bonnie would have reached across the table, maybe touched his hand, his shoulder to let him know he wasn’t alone. But right now, she feels itchy, like she needs to run away from this, from him and his tears, and his grief that he shows so freely to the world. Or she wants to slap him and tell him not to be so weak. But that would be insensitive. So she stays quiet and lets him talk. That’s what he needs right now anyway.
“… I just - I miss her so much, you know? And part of me - I just, I wish I’d given her the ring, or made her wear it, or something - I wish I’d done something more.” His fingers twist the wide band of silver round and round and round. She clenches her fist so her nails dig painfully into her palm.
“I know.”
---
She rides on top this time. They made it onto his bed. She holds onto the wrought-iron headboard above his head and rises and falls above him, turns her hips in a circle, feels the rough abrasion against her clit, and cries out. He clamps his hands on her hips and guides her movement, thrusts up to meet her each time. He cranes his neck upwards to latch onto her left nipple, roll it around on his tongue, and drag his teeth across the sensitive tip. He pierces her flesh with his fangs; the warm honey skin just around her nipple. And the pain makes her bite the inside of her cheek. She can feel her blood trickle down to her stomach, and taste it in her mouth. He laps at every drop on her upper abdomen, her breasts. Pure sensation contracts to a single point where his mouth wraps itself around her. One last drive and she splinters; he follows her and she feels his slick come deep inside. She flops down onto him, sprawled across his chest. She’s tempted for about a second to rest there, to let their sweat mingle, to pretend to listen for a heartbeat, to linger. She is in grave danger of becoming attached to this.
She leaves.
V
Caroline’s come to visit. She talks a lot and he lets her. It’s something to fill the silence before she gets here. She comes out of some misguided idea that she can make him feel better, or is it loyalty? He’s technically her sire after all. As much as he’s tried not to cultivate any attachment, she has the clinging power of a barnacle when she wants to --- and for some reason she does with him.
Most new vampires become selfish assholes when they turn. Sure, they try to play nice but eventually the blood-hunger takes over, they turn the switch off, and go and paint whatever they can red - literally. They might mellow out after a while or have an epiphany, like Stefan did, or just get old and tired, like he did. They might not.
Caroline was different. She was one of those who actively tried, even after she’d failed those first few days, to be good. She was hanging out with a werewolf for god’s sake. What was worse was that unlike Stefan, she didn’t even have the courtesy to look miserable about it.
“Okay! Well, I’ll be back in a couple of days with some blood for you.”
He winces at her chirpiness. No one should be that bouncy.
She heads to the door when he doesn’t reply. “Hey, Caroline.” He stops her with those two words. She turns to face him, hopeful. “Thank you.” A smile wreathes her pretty face and he turns back toward the fireplace. “You’re welcome, Damon.”
VI
He honestly doesn’t know how the hell he got here. It wasn’t only stupid, it was risky. Before he can knock, the door swings open. “Damon?” She looks surprised and - irritated. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I don’t know.” He really fucking doesn’t. --- It’s awkward. When she comes to his house, they don’t really talk about things - usually they just get on with it. They fuck; they come, multiple times; she leaves and doesn’t say goodbye; he doesn’t bat an eyelid when he hears her feet hit the stairs. He’s changed that by coming here.
“Do you want something to drink?” She interrupts his fiddling with a framed photograph on the mantle of her, Caroline and Elena at some football game or pep rally, bright red MFH letters painted on their cheeks.
“Not particularly, are you offering?” If all else fails, turn to obnoxiousness. --- Bonnie shakes her head and plops down on a couch because she’s not entirely sure what else she’s supposed to do in this situation. Damon Salvatore is in her house, touching her things and it’s weird and kind of unpleasant. “Seriously, what are you doing here?”
“I told you, I don’t know,” he says shortly. Bonnie purses her mouth. “Don’t be an ass, okay? You’re here, in my house, and I think I deserve an explanation or - you could, I don't know, just get lost.”
He looks at the ground for a good five minutes. “I - I got bored of hanging around in the boarding house in the dark. Decided to take a walk and ended up here.” He drops into the nearest chair nonchalantly as if he spends every damn day of his life lounging around in it.
She nods, her jaw set stiffly. “Well, you can’t stick around for too long - my dad gets back in a couple of hours. I don’t think I can explain the strange man lurking in his living room.”
“Wow, have you always been this inhospitable or is this something you put on especially for me?”
---
How did this happen?
Bonnie scrunches the sheets between her fingers and closes her eyes against the man moving above her. She wraps her legs around his waist and purrs at the sensation of him swelling inside of her. They’re in her room. It’s broad daylight, the sun wafts through her open windows, a breeze ruffles the curtains. Her dad could come home any minute and she doesn’t particularly care. A tiny part of her almost wants him to find them like this. He’d probably freak out or he’d simply walk away and do whatever it was he did to keep busy and keep from coming home to this house filled with all the memories of his wife and the life he once had. Damon thrusts at an angle that makes her eyes fly open in shocked pleasure. "Oh, yes.”
She smiles at him. It’s the first time she’s ever done that. Maybe it’s the image of her dad being his typical self in this particular situation that makes her giggle, like a gag scene out of a bad comedy. Feeling a sudden and inexplicable wave of affection, she reaches up to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck. He looks mystified, disconcerted, and that makes her laugh harder.
---
Damon almost topples over the bed at the sight of her smile. She’s never done that before. Or else, he’s never had his eyes open long enough to look and see her smile when they’re fucking. It confuses him because Bonnie Bennett’s never willingly smiled at him, not unless she’s giving him an aneurysm or else he’s gotten in the way of a smile she’s giving to Elena, Jeremy, or Caroline or someone else behind him. So this right here throws him for a loop for all that it says without her even uttering a word. Because it means somewhere along the way, she's stopped judging him. She's stopped seeing the indivisible line that separated people like him from people like her. For all he knows, she’s stopped hating him. He doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge but it makes him uncomfortable.
He meets her eyes, she’s chuckling now at some joke that he doesn’t know. There’s a sweetness to her face right then that suits her - more than the hard edges he’s used to. Her fingers are soft and cool at his neck, soothing even with the feel of her pussy tightening around him with each snort of amusement. He finds himself smiling back, and falling down onto his elbows to taste her laughter.
VII
They call them ley lines. If you imagine the mystical world built along plates of magical stability, and over on the jagged edges or on fault lines in between, darkness and light coalesce, blood and tragedy and it acts like a lodestone for any idiot supernatural creature with a yen for some trouble. That’s Mystic Falls.
---
He’s ripping someone’s throat out and remembering just how good it can feel to give in to his nature, to feed and kill - when he hears her scream. It pulls him up short and he throws the desiccated body in his hand on the ground, feels blood dripping from his mouth, his hands. He looks at the five or so lupine vampires closing in on him, he can almost smell their confidence. They’re nothing but a bunch of half-breed newborns with shit for brains. Mixing vampire and wolf goes against nature itself, they’re really not meant to exist; he’s almost doing them a favor. It doesn’t even take him more than five minutes.
---
He finds her leaning against a tree. Her face jaundiced in the scant light; eyes closed as though she’s sleeping. Before he can blink he’s at her side; sniffing the air to see how much blood she’s spilt, the extent of her wounds and something unpleasant churns in his stomach. If vampires got indigestion, he thinks this may well be what it would feel like. Her eyes drift open slowly and she looks up to see him. He can’t tell what his facial expression is but she shakes her head as if answering a question. “I’m fine - that was just - a big spell to close all of you in the circle.”
He doesn’t reply; simply reaches out to help her to her feet. She staggers a little and he holds her up as gently as possible; then he lets his fingers trail down her cheek and notices the sticky path of dark red blood he leaves on her smooth skin. He blinks, confounded by what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. He feels like he’s in the middle of a play he sure as hell didn’t sign up for. He’s going through motions, following cues and hoping someone will just put a stop to it. Or that she’ll pull her chin from his hand and take a step back, wipe his touch off of her. She doesn’t. He rubs his thumb along her jaw. Oh, fuck.
---
Bonnie holds her breath, and does her best not to lean into his fingers or close her eyes, maybe even smile, because that would be absurd. She also tries valiantly to block out the fact that the hand on her face is drenched in blood and the pungent, coppery scent that makes her head swim. She catches a movement behind him and finds herself face to face with Jeremy Gilbert… and everyone else. Caroline is shocked at the spectacle, but she’s also smiling. Alaric, bloody stake clutched in his hand, is suspicious and awkward. Matt is trying hard not to look at them while he wipes his bloody hands off all over his jeans. And Tyler rolls his eyes, mutters something about how he smelt the two of them months ago. Caroline promptly slaps the back of his head and says, “Don’t be gross, Ty.”
It breaks the ice and everyone laughs half-heartedly. Jeremy walks away.
---
She follows him until he comes to a clearing near the ruins of Old Falls Church. The moon is barely a sliver of white in the sky; it does nothing to light the shadows in the forest. After the fight, everything seems quiet, expectant of some mighty confrontation.
“So you and Damon are a thing, hunh.”
It’s not a question.
She lays a hand on his arm. “Jeremy…” He jerks from her touch, and shoots her a look, betrayed and angry.
“You don’t - you don’t have to explain anything to me.”
She frowns and bites her lip. She wasn’t going to explain herself; she didn’t think there was anything to explain - not to him or anyone. Before she can think of something to say, he’s started off down the path, his battle-axe swung over his shoulder.
“He’ll get over it.” Damon’s voice is a soft burr behind her.
She lets out a breath and shrugs, turning to face him. “I’m not sure there’s anything to get over.”
He moves toward her, hobbling slightly from a thigh gouged out by one of the half-breed wolves. It hurts like hell, he grunts at the twinge - he’ll need at least three bags of blood for his natural healing to kick in. “You’re limping.”
“I’m fine.” Despite his reassurance, she still lays a hand on his chest and murmurs an incantation under her breath, and he feels the warmth emanate from her hand, flow through his body and prickle at the aching joints.
“Thanks,” he says quietly as the pain ebbs. S
he flicks her gaze up to his, intent and a glimmer of mockery in her tired eyes. “Hunh, see - you can be polite when you try to be. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
He stops her from lifting her hand from his ribcage, holding her wrist captive for a second. “There’s always something to get over, Bonnie. Shit happens to everyone, messes with your mind. You just learn how to put the pieces back together somehow and you move on.” Nodding, she makes to head back to the town. He falls in step beside her. They don’t speak. He slips his hand in hers and she clasps his still-damp fingers.
Fin