Title: She Hates Me

Synopsis: (AU) Follow-up to "No More I Love You's"; Bonnie deals with the aftermath or regaining her members and her sustained attraction to Damon despite being disillusioned with him.

Rated: PG-13 – Hard R/M (depending on the chapter)

Pairings: mainly Bonnie/Damon, Elena/Stefan.

A/N: Thanks to everyone who has read and/or reviewed my stories so far. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Sometimes you are attracted to the worst kind of person

Chapter One

Damon lets the warm liquid gush between his lips, glide over his teeth and swish around his tongue.

He has this system where he counts:

One

Two

Three

Then pull the blood straight into his open mouth.

He has gotten rather sloppy during the years, not caring if the blood stained his cheeks, or ran down his chin.

Perhaps it was his way of rebelling against the idea that he's not supposed to play with his food.

The girl wiggles under him, a cross between trying to escape and trying to get closer to the teeth embedded in her neck.

Damon didn't see this young woman for the individual she was, he didn't care for her name or life story. What she represented for him was a chance to work things out in his own head.

He whispers to her, his mouth pressed against her mouth, the taste of her own blood unable to wake her out of her compelled compliance.

He tells her things that she can't begin to understand but she smiles and nods, and tries to return the affection that he has bestowed upon her.

Bonnie swears off dating because it's the most sensible thing she can do at this moment. She buries herself in ancient books: folklore, grimoires, and the like. She attempts to attain ancient powers and she gives thanks to whoever is up there listening that she has survived another day.

This honesty policy thing, however... that might be the end of her.

"Honesty policy: sometimes I find it difficult to control my strength when Matt and I are, you know..." Caroline says in a way that makes it apparent that if she could still blush she would.

"We don't have to talk about this." Bonnie offers, shifting her school books from one arm to the other.

Caroline glanced around; the students of Mystic Fall public high school too busy in their own little worlds to pay attention to the tall blond and her shorter, brunette companion.

"I tried to talk to Stefan because he knows what it feels like to be a million times stronger than the person you're dating but he totally wigged out on me."

Bonnie could see how trying to talk to Stefan about sex might not go as well as expected.

"What seems to be the problem?" Bonnie decided that she will run the risk of hearing too much information in order to help her dear friend.

"Sometimes when I'm on top I feel like I'm going to break him." Caroline confides.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, "Yeah, I can't help with you that," Bonnie responds.

Caroline considers her friends response, "Oh. Do think Elena would know what to do?"

Women become a much too boring pastime and alcohol, although a nice diversion, leaves Damon's thoughts too fuddled to work through.

Luckily, baddies from every which way decide that Mystic Falls is the perfect place to make a name for one's self.

It's disgusting, really, how easily some of them fail at their own carefully laid out plans. How easy it is to trick, mold, and confuse.

That's not to say that every victory hasn't been hard-won or that there was never a moment when Damon didn't think about which side he was fighting on.

There is no real choice: Damon will likely choose which ever side Stefan is on.

That fact brings little comfort, especially if they lose.

Hence, they get together and pace in the Salvatore residence, coming up with plans with a million holes in them, and by some grace Damon's no longer sure he believes in, he wakes up day after day with all of his appendages in tact.

The meetings are all the same: Alaric says something, and although it's a more than logical argument, Damon bites his tongue from concluding that it's the dumbest idea he has ever heard.

He steals glances at Bonnie, whose face is too neutral not to be thinking the same thing, and he wonders if he could take back the mistake of telling her that everything he's ever done so far has been about Elena.

It's so much bigger than that, now. His world is no longer focused on the unattainable love of his ex-girlfriend's doppelganger.

It not like Bonnie would believe him anyway.

Instead, Damon uses this precious time to scoff at everyone's safe plans, and come up with disastrous strategies that only seem to work because they are so ridiculous.

He uses this time to remind Bonnie with every haughty gesture, and bawdy wink that he knows what she looks like naked.

An unofficial break is called and they all stroll around the boarding house and pretend not to be thinking about blood and death.

Damon saddles up to Bonnie like a rogue cowboy who has too much swagger for his own good and Bonnie doesn't want to have to deal with this.

"Do you think about it?" Damon asks as if she is supposed to know what he's referring to.

She wishes she had no clue but the mention of "it" brings up images of skin and heat and she is suddenly so helpless to the throbbing that has started low in her stomach.

Bonnie wonders if she can get away with using nonchalance, if she can she tap into her inner Damon and wear the fabric of disinterest like it's this year's fashion 'must have.'

She struggles to make her face as calm as it can be but she knows that somewhere she's breaking; somewhere, all she can think about is the few precious months that carried a simplicity she just can't have right now.

"I think about it." Damon says, staring at her so intently.

Bonnie shuns his statement and doesn't see a true admission for what it is, "I thought we agreed that we will forget about...it." Bonnie says pointedly.

She wonders if any of her so called friends will come to her rescue. Don't they see this maniac cornering her?

"No, you agreed. I didn't agree to shit," Damon responds, rebellious streak rising quick and fast.

"I can't do this with you," her lips speak but her feet stay planted right where they are.

"I liked you better when you were in a coma." Damon says. Something in him won't let him accept Bonnie's Zen demeanor without a fight.

"You're an imbecile," Bonnie responds, with less restraint than she had a moment ago.

Damon shrugs, "I've been called worse."

"You're an evil, conniving bastard."

"Again, not anything new," Damon conveyed with a boredom that would make the most excited person yawn in sympathy.

"When it dawned on me that I slept with you, I threw up. Twice."

Damon blinked rapidly, and for once he didn't care to disguise his hurt."That's a new one."

'Shit. Who knew Damon had feelings.' Bonnie thought.

Before Bonnie could find some way to take back what she said, the words sounding acerbic even to her own ears, Damon was already across the room, and everyone piles into the room to commence looking for a way to keep the one's they love safe, or at the very least, the quickest route out of this God forsaken town.

Bonnie realizes by Damon overly cool and aloof behavior that the insult runs deeper than she thought.

She has to apologize to him.

At this moment, she wouldn't be surprised to see a pig fly by.

Call her petty but she doesn't issue the apology immediately.

She waits until the next night when it's dark and sinister outside. She walks to the Salvatore boarding house and she enters the premises like she owns the place.

She hasn't lost that feeling of ownership and she wishes she could kick herself over it.

She opens Damon's bedroom door and the sight that greets her is not unlike the other times she has entered his room.

He shirtless and shoeless and his jeans are barely done-up. His hair looks as if someone has run their fingers all through it.

It's a plain as day to Bonnie and she doesn't need to hear the water running to know that there is a woman around here someplace.

The dull pain in Bonnie's temples is just a migraine not the green eyed monster rearing its ugly head.

"Don't you knock?" Damon slurs his words like he's binged on something truly indulgent.

He is relieved that the girl he brought home with him is in the bathroom somewhere scrubbing the caked and dried blood from her clothes and skin.

"I won't make this any more difficult then it already is. I'm sorry. What I said to you was uncalled for and even if you are vile, I shouldn't have said what I said."

She turns to leave, not bothering to hear Damon's response.

Damon takes it as a green light.

"If restraining orders worked on vampires, Bonnie would have slapped one on your ass a long time ago," Alaric says, laughing hardily at his own joke.

Damon sits drinking with the high school teacher in a bar where none of them will run into someone who has either had sex with Damon Salvatore, or failed a History class in the last five years.

It's a place for grownups who hate the world and Damon fits right in.

He fills Ric in on his late night exploits of watching a teenaged witch slip t-shirts over her head only to expose camisoles underneath. Or how Bonnie moans in her sleep because of dreams that leave her sweaty and aching.

And Alaric wishes he wasn't interested in listening because this girl sits in his class everyday and pretends he doesn't have any idea that she has the sort of powers that keep her delicate frame safe.

He wishes he could feel like a dirty old man and sometimes he does, but Damon is too entertaining not to pay attention to.

"She knows you're watching her." Alaric states, perceptiveness sounded out in every vowel.

"Probably," Damon shrugs in an easy manner that Alaric finds equally annoying and cool, "she always jumps into bed before she strips down to her underwear."

"Tease," Alaric affirms.

"You would know. How's Jenna?"

Alaric chokes on his beer just a little, "You tell me. She won't speak to me."

"Her loss." Damon says, with an absent mindedness that suggests he's thinking about something else.

"We're pinning over women who hate us," Alaric announces to no one in particular.

"You can't ask me to just drop everything and play chaperone to Damon." Bonnie insists, a crease of confusion between her eyebrows.

There weren't many people at Mystic Grill, and if it weren't for the staff, and an elderly man drinking coffee at the table in the corner, Bonnie and Stefan would be alone.

A few days ago, Alaric stumbled across knowledge of a book that heals all and kills everything. Damon volunteered to find it, the idea of a road trip appealing.

"Bonnie, I can't do it." Stefan says so softly that she momentarily forgets how, if pushed, Stefan could be the scariest thing on the planet.

Stefan wanted to stay here. He couldn't leave Elena.

"But why do I have to go with him?" Bonnie is aware that she might sound like a petulant child at the moment.

Stefan places his hands together, as if making peace with the world around him, "If Damon goes by himself he may get distracted."

It's not the worse thing he has said about his brother but it's the truest.

"You keep him in line," Stefan concludes.

Bonnie snorts, the air a short noise between her nose and mouth, "You're joking, right?"

Stefan thinks, wondering how much he should reveal, "What he feels for you keeps him in line. All of that time he spent with you wasn't an act."

"He said he did it for your girlfriend. If you can tell me that you honestly believe Damon is not in love with Elena then maybe I'll consider what you're asking me to do."

Bonnie watches the bunching and unbunching of Stefan's jaw, the muscles coiling under tight skin and she gets it; she gets why Elena is so damned crazy over the guy.

Stefan wants to tell Bonnie that Damon is in love with her but it's not in his place to tell.

He settles on "Damon...cares for Elena. He loves her, but it's not like before."

Bonnie doesn't know why that matters to her but it does.