Damon

They were in his bed. He could hear them from downstairs; their mingled groans and gasps, their sighs and pants — all of it echoed in his ear like a despised secret and he felt his muscles twitch with the impulse to break something. Kai was in his bed. With Bonnie. He knew it. And yet that wasn't enough. Damon had a sick need for proof, to tear himself up with the sight of them. He wouldn't believe it otherwise. Even if he knew what it was and who he was hearing.

The journey upstairs was swift and quiet; he was a whisper in the house. Slowly, he crept forward and made his way toward his bedroom, his eyes narrowing each time the moans got louder. If Damon listened to his rationality, he would turn back around and leave; he didn't know he'd react when he saw them together — everything with Bonnie was complicated. Anything could happen. And usually, Damon was at his most volatile in a situation where anything could happen. But, he thought to himself, when did he ever listen to his rationality?

The kiss had been stupid. Impulsive. Two words that were no stranger to Damon. It was a gut reaction, an urge and instead of ignoring it, he acted. Like always. And he felt guilty afterward. Like always. But he didn't regret it. Not the way his mouth swallowed her gasp when he thrust his lips against hers. Not the way her hands lay flat against his chest while his clutched either side of her face. He tried to regret it, tried to blame it on the hangover, tried to make it about Elena, about missing her but she wasn't the reason why it happened, her memory was just the reason why he felt like shit, felt like laying waste to all of Mystic Falls so the killing and the feed and the bloodlust could be an outlet for his shame.

Elena was the love of his life. She was the woman he was really searching for when he was foolishly waiting for Katherine; when she was here, he lived and died with every breath she took. So he couldn't wrap his mind around why kissing Bonnie felt so natural, so necessary to keeping his sanity. It had happened earlier that day. Bonnie had come to the Salvatore Mansion only to find him lying on the kitchen island, his hand still clutching the mostly empty bottle of whiskey.

"So this is what you've been doing the past three days," she said. "Going on a bender?"

Damon scrunched his eyes and winced at the harsh irritation in her tone. It made her voice louder. He groaned. "Stop talking."

"This is pathetic. Get up and shower."

"Bonnie…"

He heard her footsteps, they clinked against empty bottles on the floor. Then there was a harsh whoosh, the sound of blinds being forcefully pulled up, and everything was bright.

"Dammit!" he yelled, quickly putting his hands to his eyes. "Close them back!"

"Get up now," said Bonnie.

"Bonnie. I am a vampire. That means your voice is this extremely loud, extremely annoying pounding in my ears. So please. Close the damn blinds and shut. up."

His words were met with silence and he was about to mutter a sarcastic 'thank you' when he heard shattering and felt glass break beneath his shoes. She threw one of the empty bottles at him. And then another. And another. Using his speed, he got off the island and stood at the other end of the kitchen and saw her holding another bottle in her hand. She threw it directly at him and he moved to another corner.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Throwing bottles at you." Bonnie hurled another one at Damon's head and he moved again so that the bottle crashed against one of the cabinets.

"Why?"

"Because I'm tired of you feeling sorry for yourself." She bent down to pick up another bottle. "Because I'm not your maid." She flung it and it splattered against the fridge as Damon shifted to another spot. "Because it's been three months and you need to grow up."

"I need to grow up? You're the one throwing things in the house."

"This is the only kind of thing you respond to, Damon. I'm done being nice."

"When were you ever nice?"

Bonnie lobbed another bottle and it nearly cracked against Damon's forehead but he moved just in time. He was admittedly sluggish that afternoon. Hangovers made him move slowly.

"If you're going to drink yourself into oblivion for the next sixty years, fine but don't expect me to sit around and watch." Another bottle came catapulting toward Damon. "Not all of us are immortal." The next one broke against the sink. "I have other things to do with my time!"

"OK! Just stop throwing bottles all over my kitchen!"

"Not until you get upstairs and shower." Every word was said in quick succession and with every syllable, Bonnie threw a bottle that Damon had to dodge. "I mean do you know how crazy it is that I can keep picking up bottles?"

Damon pulled his mouth to side and looked at her. "You know, drinking myself into oblivion isn't really a big deal. It's not like I can get liver damage or anything."

Immediately, Damon knew he'd said the wrong thing. He saw the way Bonnie's eyes narrowed, the way her jaw tightened. And before he knew it he was pushed back against the wall and pinned by an invisible force and the remaining empty bottles levitated in the air. Bonnie held their position with her gaze.

"I can make sure every one of these hits you," she said. Her voice was quiet and threatening. Almost deadly. He'd only ever heard her speak this way when she was confronting an enemy. Like Klaus. Or Kai. Or him five years ago. He'd never told her how intimidating it was to be spoken to that way.

"OK just calm down," said Damon carefully. "I'll shower. I won't even drink for the rest of…well, the day. I can't make promises about what'll happen tonight. But no day drinking. At all. For a week."

"Fine," said Bonnie.

"Great."

There was a beat and then the bottles came charging at Damon, crashing against his body, piercing his skin; the pain was everywhere. He gritted his teeth but when he felt one of the shards cut further into his skin to his rib cage and then scrape against his heart, he screamed.

"Bonnie!"

Her stare was steel; unforgiving and severe, something Damon hadn't seen before, but eventually she closed her eyes and he was released from his invisible restraints. He sank to the floor, falling forward on his hands and knees and cried out in pain as he started pulling out the glass from his body.

"The hell, Bonnie? I said I would listen to you."

"I know," she said. And she turned around and walked out of the kitchen.

The shower had been a quick one but it was spent with Damon's mind on Bonnie's face before she released him from her spell; the unfamiliarity of her expression.

He'd always said that Elena was his redemption; she inspired in him the need to do whatever it took so she could love him. It just so happened that what she needed to love him was his best behaviour and so that was what he gave. Most of the time. But she never anchored him. Not the way Bonnie did. Bonnie was his clarity. She wasn't inspiring, she was demanding. Of his respect. Of his self-reliance. She brought him realization, awareness; the desire to be a better person absolutely. And she knew him. Knew him in a way that wasn't his choice, she simply understood him. Even when she couldn't stand him, even when he was her enemy, he was automatically vulnerable with her whether he liked it or not. It was astonishing how much she came to mean to him, how much he needed her by his side and it was astonishing how afraid he was of the fact that she wasn't as flexible as Elena — turning a blind eye wasn't something Bonnie Bennett did. But he didn't know what he'd do if he lost her, any part of her: her respect, her affection, her presence. That was why her stare bothered him so much. It was beyond cold, it was unrepentant and sinister, like she'd enjoyed causing him pain, like something in her had turned. It all happened quickly but feeling like he was losing Bonnie, even for the briefest of moments, wasn't something Damon could handle.

He hadn't bothered to dry his hair when he dressed and headed back downstairs. Bonnie was in the kitchen, standing at the griddle and flipping pancakes. She glanced at him as he walked toward her.

"Don't think this is a regular thing," she said. "I don't know how drunk you are and if you can handle cooking something without burning the house down and the only person who gets to kill you is me, you don't even have that right and —"

But he wasn't listening to her. Making pancakes was a regular thing, their thing, proof of their connection; an unspoken symbol of what they meant to each other. And Damon did it. He kissed her, cutting her off mid-sentence. Her palms were on his chest but she didn't push him away, she didn't stop him when his mouth started opening hers. It was strange how calming it was to kiss her; how everything seemed to come into focus; how this was something he didn't know he'd been wanting to do for a long time; how he felt profoundly terrible for not wanting to pull away. Clarity. She was his clarity.

She pulled away first; her expression unreadable.

"Bonnie…"

"I'm leaving."

"Bonnie, look —"

"I'm leaving, Damon."

And she was gone. The front door slammed behind her. It wasn't long before guilt had taken over Damon's bones, needling thoughts of Elena into his mind, thoughts of Bonnie and her friendship with Elena, of the position he forced her in by kissing her, the guilt he put on her. But even with that shame pricking at his conscience, he'd felt relieved and … happy. Bonnie had cooked for him — even if something in her was turning, she hadn't completely left; she'd come back to him.

Except she hadn't.

He was losing her.

To Kai.

Kai bit her, sunk his teeth into Bonnie's neck and everything in Damon shifted. The jealousy was overwhelming; the jealousy that her blood was on his tongue and he got to revel in it, in her, and the only time Damon bit Bonnie it had been about killing her and not tasting her. Kai had her in a way Damon thought Bonnie would never allow herself to be had and the revelation killed him. Kai was what was different about her. He was what turned in her. And Damon couldn't allow it. He wouldn't.

It wasn't that he felt like she was pure; it wasn't that he felt like she was innocent; it was that he felt like she was his. She was his. He'd known it since the nineties. He'd known it since the moment she'd pressed her palm against Kai's chest, the way he was agitated with anger at seeing her touch another man so intimately. He'd known it in the way they'd shout at each other, sometimes hurt each other but how he felt it absolutely necessary to kill anyone who tried to harm her. They were complicated but they were theirs. And he had to let Kai know.