[fic] The Morally Dubious Princess & Her King (& Their Witch)
Title: The Morally Dubious Princess & Her King (& Their Witch)
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Bonnie POV; Damon/Elena, Jeremy/Bonnie
Word Count: ~2000
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything through 5x06, with mild speculation for 5x07 (but mostly so I could write a scene between Bonnie and Damon that we'll never see).
Summary:
Author's notes: The first section of this came from a prompt that bornonthursday left for me a couple weeks ago. I wrote the first section in the comments of that thread originally, but then I had this idea for more, on an expanded plane, with regard to Bonnie's perspective on Damon and Elena, so I wanted to write more. There are minor edits to the original text plus two more scenes.
Bonnie's seen Grease like a hundred times, and she and Elena had often daydreamed about the hunky boys who served as lifeguards at the public pool when they were in middle school. One of them would be drowning, and their hero would come along and give them the kiss of life, which would obviously lead to other, real kisses that would lead to true love.
To have a summer romance was just a rite of passage for a young girl, right? It would have thrilled either of them to have had such an experience, but of course, Caroline was the only one who ever had one, the summer before high school. With a jerk, who literally never called her again after he got to second base.
So, Bonnie's opinion of the idea of a summer of love had gone downhill from there, and she stopped imagining things like that. And then Elena's parents had died right before summer started two years after that, so obviously that had affected their opinions collectively.
But the first summer that they're dead (Bonnie's a ghost, but Elena's a vampire), Elena gets it, finally. She gets the summer romance they'd always fantasized about, and it's really, terribly romantic.
The first time Bonnie pops in accidentally to a "moment" between her best friend and Damon, she almost immediately pops back out, because she doesn't want to get an eyeful. She's not a peeping Tom, after all, she's a ghost, checking in on her loved ones. It's just that Elena's always with Damon, so catching them even partially dressed is a freaking miracle.
It's Elena's smile that stops Bonnie from leaving as quickly as she had arrived. It's so bright and wide, and Damon is actually tracing her lips with his index finger, and remarking on her beautifully straight teeth.
"I never even had to wear braces, can you believe it? Bonnie and Caroline both had them freshman year, but I never needed them," Elena says, her smile somehow growing larger.
Her admirer leans closer (they're sitting in upright positions on the sofa in the Salvatore living room) and whispers, right before pressing a kiss to her bottom lip, "Good genes," and then Elena's head tips back and Damon's mouth continues down her throat.
Bonnie almost leaves then, but she's sort of captivated by the exchange of kisses between them. The kisses themselves are remarkably PG, soft and sweet; the man and the woman take turns, lavishing each other with affection that causes tears to come to Bonnie's unfeeling eyes. After he places several kisses along the length of her throat, Elena's hands come up to push Damon's head back; she deposits kisses across his face--cheeks, nose, and brow--before settling in on his mouth. Bonnie, by that time, is mesmerized; it's like she's watching a movie, and she's completely caught up in it.
They make out for a long time, just kissing, and kissing, and kissing. Bonnie's not sure how much time ticks away, but eventually, Damon's hands roam down Elena's back to cup her ass, and he pulls her across his lap, until she's straddling him.
Elena's head snaps up suddenly, breaking their continued string of kisses, as well as Bonnie's reverie. "We can't do this here," Elena gasps. "Jeremy might come home at any time," she says, putting her hands on Damon's shoulders to put space between them.
"We'll hear him before he comes in," Damon says, and Bonnie supposes he thinks he sounds completely rational, but he just sounds like a guy who doesn't want to be interrupted from what he's doing.
(Bonnie can't really blame him; their passion for each other is...electrifying.)
Elena keeps her wits about her, though, and the smile reshapes her face again into a burning fixture of love as she climbs off his lap and pulls him up with her. They laugh and kiss, whispering I love you and I want you, and it takes at least five minutes for them to even get down the hallway, so Bonnie keeps watching until they disappear up the stairs.
For all the things she has disliked about Damon over the years, he can pretty much be forgiven for anything for making Elena smile like that, for causing so much joy to infuse her countenance. Bonnie hasn't seen her that carefree and happy since those days when they imagined some hot older guy who would find them interesting.
Wiping away tears, Bonnie goes in search of where Jeremy might be on this hot summer night; she misses everyone, but she realizes now what she'd love to be a part of is that: Elena's happiness. She'll do whatever she has to, to protect it, for as long as possible.
(She'll make Jeremy help her.)
There must be something wrong with Elena, Bonnie thinks, because she just stands there; she doesn't even utter a word to stop Damon from feeding Katherine to Silas. He doesn't hesitate, not even when Elena's doppelganger starts to cry, when she pleads for her life, when she, Katerina Petrova, the one who has wreaked havoc across every corner of their lives, has her most human moment to date.
Damon and Elena both are unmoved.
It changes nothing, and Bonnie finally understands what she's been witnessing in the days since Damon and Elena were informed of her death: There was a time when Damon negotiated Bonnie's life for Elena's with only Bonnie's promise that she could make it look like she was dead; she knows he didn't care then, either way. If it kept Elena alive, that was all that mattered. If Bonnie happened to survive, fine. If she didn't, he would figure something else out, he always did.
And now, if it brings Bonnie back, and makes Elena happy, Damon easily murders a woman he pined for, for a century and a half. It's incredible.
Incredibly horrifying, and sort of touching? Bonnie thinks being on the other side has really screwed with her head and her sense of right and wrong. Then again, it's not like she called out for them to stop, though they can't hear her even if she had.
Elena regrets nothing; Bonnie can see it plainly, when Silas pops up and promises them, in his sardonic way, that they will get Bonnie back.
Damon has the frantic eyes of a skeptic masquerading as a believer, as someone who knows that a creature such as Silas can't be trusted, but when Elena turns to him with a hopeful smile, he smooths the worry from his own brow and hugs her close to his chest.
Bonnie leaves them, choking on more tears because she has somehow become invested in this relationship of theirs. Maybe it's because her own with Jeremy has taken on an intensity when she can't even feel him, but whatever it is, it's overwhelming. Damon. Elena. Damon and Elena. Bonnie, watching them, seeing how it actually causes Damon pain when he thinks he can't deliver on this crazy plan of his to bring her back from the dead.
It's only the next night when Jeremy tells her he loves her, and she feels his skin pressed against hers for the first time in so many months.
(When Tessa passes through her, she doesn't tell Jeremy. No reason to make the light dim in his eyes, after all she's put him through.)
"You okay?" Damon asks, the glass of bourbon in his hand extended towards her.
She would reprimand him with the fact that it's only nine o'clock in the morning, but some werewolf in Louisiana just died and the pain had been unbearable. Jeremy had left for school and Elena and Caroline had run to get Bonnie's things out of storage.
That just left the two of them at the Boarding House, and by the looks of him, Damon seemed to be brooding as much as Stefan usually did.
Bonnie silently accepts the glass and takes a shuddering swallow of the bitter liquid. "Ugh," she moans. "I don't know how you drink this stuff all the time."
Damon's lips quirk upward. "That's what Elena used to say. Now," he emphasizes, "she drinks me under the table."
He sits next to her on the sofa and Bonnie tries not to look at him sideways, because it's sort of weird, and they don't do this. Or rather, they never used to do this.
Times have changed, obviously.
"So," Damon says around a sip from his own glass. "What's being the Anchor mean, exactly?" Bonnie glances at him from the corner of her eye, but he's not looking at her. His gaze rests on the never-ending flames on the hearth, and his expression tells her he knows somehow that it's not a good thing, this exchange they made to cause her to be flesh and bone again.
Damon doesn't need to be protected, and Bonnie knows she won't be able to keep them from her pain, even if she's managed to do so for about 12 hours thus far. Elena and Jeremy, Caroline and Matt, they'll all know eventually. She supposes the dead won't bother to pass through only when she's all alone.
"I feel every supernatural death, now," she says in a soft voice. She throws back the rest of her drink, and it burns all the way down, but the warmth that spreads through her does seem indicative of what she might use to weather the coming storms in her life.
Damon sighs, but doesn't speak. She turns to look at him completely, and he's eying the fire like it might give some grand advice to help them out of this pickle, too. When he does finally say, "I kinda figured it had to be something not so great, based on Crazypants' attempts at chewing her hands off," his eyes swing around to Bonnie's and he tips his head slightly. "But that's 2000 years worth. I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out quicker than that, right?"
The determined glint in his blue eyes makes her feel compelled to nod her head. "Well, I do have a stack of grimiores that I've never even looked at, that were the Martins." He raises an eyebrow in question. "The warlocks that tried to get their sister and daughter back from Klaus, remember? Greta? Didn't you kill her?"
He scoffs, waving a hand in her direction. "I don't keep track of stuff like that, you ought to know that by now."
Bonnie laughs, and then abruptly covers her mouth with her hand. It's not funny, it's not, and yet...
Their eyes meet, and Damon's mouth hitches up on one side, but he doesn't say anything.
Bonnie reaches out, wrapping her fingers around his arm. "Thank you," she says sincerely. "For fighting so hard to get me back."
He snorts now. "Even though it sucks? Yeah, you're super welcome."
She shakes her head. "There had to be a price, there always is. At least now I'm with the people I love."
Damon drops her gaze, and she swears she can see a blush taint his cheeks. "Yeah, well, I had to get Jer's girl back for him, otherwise he's always gonna be interrupting me with mine, you know?"
Smiling, she squeezes his wrist. "I also wanted to thank you, for making Elena so happy."
His eyes come back to hers instantly. "As short-lived as it was," he mocks, but his face is soft, and she realizes for the first time the true beauty of Elena Gilbert being happy: It's that Damon Salvatore is also happy.
(They will find a way of out this; they always do.)
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Bonnie POV; Damon/Elena, Jeremy/Bonnie
Word Count: ~2000
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything through 5x06, with mild speculation for 5x07 (but mostly so I could write a scene between Bonnie and Damon that we'll never see).
Summary:
Author's notes: The first section of this came from a prompt that bornonthursday left for me a couple weeks ago. I wrote the first section in the comments of that thread originally, but then I had this idea for more, on an expanded plane, with regard to Bonnie's perspective on Damon and Elena, so I wanted to write more. There are minor edits to the original text plus two more scenes.
Bonnie's seen Grease like a hundred times, and she and Elena had often daydreamed about the hunky boys who served as lifeguards at the public pool when they were in middle school. One of them would be drowning, and their hero would come along and give them the kiss of life, which would obviously lead to other, real kisses that would lead to true love.
To have a summer romance was just a rite of passage for a young girl, right? It would have thrilled either of them to have had such an experience, but of course, Caroline was the only one who ever had one, the summer before high school. With a jerk, who literally never called her again after he got to second base.
So, Bonnie's opinion of the idea of a summer of love had gone downhill from there, and she stopped imagining things like that. And then Elena's parents had died right before summer started two years after that, so obviously that had affected their opinions collectively.
But the first summer that they're dead (Bonnie's a ghost, but Elena's a vampire), Elena gets it, finally. She gets the summer romance they'd always fantasized about, and it's really, terribly romantic.
The first time Bonnie pops in accidentally to a "moment" between her best friend and Damon, she almost immediately pops back out, because she doesn't want to get an eyeful. She's not a peeping Tom, after all, she's a ghost, checking in on her loved ones. It's just that Elena's always with Damon, so catching them even partially dressed is a freaking miracle.
It's Elena's smile that stops Bonnie from leaving as quickly as she had arrived. It's so bright and wide, and Damon is actually tracing her lips with his index finger, and remarking on her beautifully straight teeth.
"I never even had to wear braces, can you believe it? Bonnie and Caroline both had them freshman year, but I never needed them," Elena says, her smile somehow growing larger.
Her admirer leans closer (they're sitting in upright positions on the sofa in the Salvatore living room) and whispers, right before pressing a kiss to her bottom lip, "Good genes," and then Elena's head tips back and Damon's mouth continues down her throat.
Bonnie almost leaves then, but she's sort of captivated by the exchange of kisses between them. The kisses themselves are remarkably PG, soft and sweet; the man and the woman take turns, lavishing each other with affection that causes tears to come to Bonnie's unfeeling eyes. After he places several kisses along the length of her throat, Elena's hands come up to push Damon's head back; she deposits kisses across his face--cheeks, nose, and brow--before settling in on his mouth. Bonnie, by that time, is mesmerized; it's like she's watching a movie, and she's completely caught up in it.
They make out for a long time, just kissing, and kissing, and kissing. Bonnie's not sure how much time ticks away, but eventually, Damon's hands roam down Elena's back to cup her ass, and he pulls her across his lap, until she's straddling him.
Elena's head snaps up suddenly, breaking their continued string of kisses, as well as Bonnie's reverie. "We can't do this here," Elena gasps. "Jeremy might come home at any time," she says, putting her hands on Damon's shoulders to put space between them.
"We'll hear him before he comes in," Damon says, and Bonnie supposes he thinks he sounds completely rational, but he just sounds like a guy who doesn't want to be interrupted from what he's doing.
(Bonnie can't really blame him; their passion for each other is...electrifying.)
Elena keeps her wits about her, though, and the smile reshapes her face again into a burning fixture of love as she climbs off his lap and pulls him up with her. They laugh and kiss, whispering I love you and I want you, and it takes at least five minutes for them to even get down the hallway, so Bonnie keeps watching until they disappear up the stairs.
For all the things she has disliked about Damon over the years, he can pretty much be forgiven for anything for making Elena smile like that, for causing so much joy to infuse her countenance. Bonnie hasn't seen her that carefree and happy since those days when they imagined some hot older guy who would find them interesting.
Wiping away tears, Bonnie goes in search of where Jeremy might be on this hot summer night; she misses everyone, but she realizes now what she'd love to be a part of is that: Elena's happiness. She'll do whatever she has to, to protect it, for as long as possible.
(She'll make Jeremy help her.)
There must be something wrong with Elena, Bonnie thinks, because she just stands there; she doesn't even utter a word to stop Damon from feeding Katherine to Silas. He doesn't hesitate, not even when Elena's doppelganger starts to cry, when she pleads for her life, when she, Katerina Petrova, the one who has wreaked havoc across every corner of their lives, has her most human moment to date.
Damon and Elena both are unmoved.
It changes nothing, and Bonnie finally understands what she's been witnessing in the days since Damon and Elena were informed of her death: There was a time when Damon negotiated Bonnie's life for Elena's with only Bonnie's promise that she could make it look like she was dead; she knows he didn't care then, either way. If it kept Elena alive, that was all that mattered. If Bonnie happened to survive, fine. If she didn't, he would figure something else out, he always did.
And now, if it brings Bonnie back, and makes Elena happy, Damon easily murders a woman he pined for, for a century and a half. It's incredible.
Incredibly horrifying, and sort of touching? Bonnie thinks being on the other side has really screwed with her head and her sense of right and wrong. Then again, it's not like she called out for them to stop, though they can't hear her even if she had.
Elena regrets nothing; Bonnie can see it plainly, when Silas pops up and promises them, in his sardonic way, that they will get Bonnie back.
Damon has the frantic eyes of a skeptic masquerading as a believer, as someone who knows that a creature such as Silas can't be trusted, but when Elena turns to him with a hopeful smile, he smooths the worry from his own brow and hugs her close to his chest.
Bonnie leaves them, choking on more tears because she has somehow become invested in this relationship of theirs. Maybe it's because her own with Jeremy has taken on an intensity when she can't even feel him, but whatever it is, it's overwhelming. Damon. Elena. Damon and Elena. Bonnie, watching them, seeing how it actually causes Damon pain when he thinks he can't deliver on this crazy plan of his to bring her back from the dead.
It's only the next night when Jeremy tells her he loves her, and she feels his skin pressed against hers for the first time in so many months.
(When Tessa passes through her, she doesn't tell Jeremy. No reason to make the light dim in his eyes, after all she's put him through.)
"You okay?" Damon asks, the glass of bourbon in his hand extended towards her.
She would reprimand him with the fact that it's only nine o'clock in the morning, but some werewolf in Louisiana just died and the pain had been unbearable. Jeremy had left for school and Elena and Caroline had run to get Bonnie's things out of storage.
That just left the two of them at the Boarding House, and by the looks of him, Damon seemed to be brooding as much as Stefan usually did.
Bonnie silently accepts the glass and takes a shuddering swallow of the bitter liquid. "Ugh," she moans. "I don't know how you drink this stuff all the time."
Damon's lips quirk upward. "That's what Elena used to say. Now," he emphasizes, "she drinks me under the table."
He sits next to her on the sofa and Bonnie tries not to look at him sideways, because it's sort of weird, and they don't do this. Or rather, they never used to do this.
Times have changed, obviously.
"So," Damon says around a sip from his own glass. "What's being the Anchor mean, exactly?" Bonnie glances at him from the corner of her eye, but he's not looking at her. His gaze rests on the never-ending flames on the hearth, and his expression tells her he knows somehow that it's not a good thing, this exchange they made to cause her to be flesh and bone again.
Damon doesn't need to be protected, and Bonnie knows she won't be able to keep them from her pain, even if she's managed to do so for about 12 hours thus far. Elena and Jeremy, Caroline and Matt, they'll all know eventually. She supposes the dead won't bother to pass through only when she's all alone.
"I feel every supernatural death, now," she says in a soft voice. She throws back the rest of her drink, and it burns all the way down, but the warmth that spreads through her does seem indicative of what she might use to weather the coming storms in her life.
Damon sighs, but doesn't speak. She turns to look at him completely, and he's eying the fire like it might give some grand advice to help them out of this pickle, too. When he does finally say, "I kinda figured it had to be something not so great, based on Crazypants' attempts at chewing her hands off," his eyes swing around to Bonnie's and he tips his head slightly. "But that's 2000 years worth. I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out quicker than that, right?"
The determined glint in his blue eyes makes her feel compelled to nod her head. "Well, I do have a stack of grimiores that I've never even looked at, that were the Martins." He raises an eyebrow in question. "The warlocks that tried to get their sister and daughter back from Klaus, remember? Greta? Didn't you kill her?"
He scoffs, waving a hand in her direction. "I don't keep track of stuff like that, you ought to know that by now."
Bonnie laughs, and then abruptly covers her mouth with her hand. It's not funny, it's not, and yet...
Their eyes meet, and Damon's mouth hitches up on one side, but he doesn't say anything.
Bonnie reaches out, wrapping her fingers around his arm. "Thank you," she says sincerely. "For fighting so hard to get me back."
He snorts now. "Even though it sucks? Yeah, you're super welcome."
She shakes her head. "There had to be a price, there always is. At least now I'm with the people I love."
Damon drops her gaze, and she swears she can see a blush taint his cheeks. "Yeah, well, I had to get Jer's girl back for him, otherwise he's always gonna be interrupting me with mine, you know?"
Smiling, she squeezes his wrist. "I also wanted to thank you, for making Elena so happy."
His eyes come back to hers instantly. "As short-lived as it was," he mocks, but his face is soft, and she realizes for the first time the true beauty of Elena Gilbert being happy: It's that Damon Salvatore is also happy.
(They will find a way of out this; they always do.)