Hurt and Heal

Chapter 15: Bonnie Bennett II

"Bonnie... Bon-bon? You up? Come on, Judgy, there you go! Now, why did you come here?"

Slap! Her palm to his cheek, the sound resonating throughout the room. Panting, she looks around and doesn't recognize her surroundings so she asks him where she is. He glares, rubbing his abused cheek, red and most likely throbbing, but answers nonetheless.

"My bedroom." He smirks and leers at her. She has to fight back the instinct to hit him again, it's hard though. The look in his eyes makes her feel small, weak, and she hates it, that's what she used to feel before. Before she found out she was a witch, before she learned and trained, before the death and heartache. Before becoming strong. But there is something else swimming at the further, most darkened corner of his eyes, something uncertain, afraid even, maybe.

Stupid thought, Bennett! He's Damon Fucking Salvatore! He kills without batting an eye, what does he have to fear? Especially from little old you?!She scowls at her own traitorous thoughts, but focuses on him, and on why she came out so late. He does need to know this however much she might have enjoyed pissing him off more. There are moments for that later, when their lives are not in danger, when they don't have to fight. She can wait until then.

"The ritual. I found it! I think I can change it to stop feeding – Trotter? – anyway, him, power. But instead the target. Meaning Klaus in this case." She realizes she has no reason, no nothing really, to smile about, particularly at the vampire, but she finds herself doing it nonetheless and he answers with a quick grin of his own, before he drops into his thinking stance. She takes the time to study him, to really see him for the first time in a very long while. She'd noticed his eyes before, of course, - which girl or woman, sane or otherwise, could deny their beauty? – but they seemed to sparkle in the dim lights, dancing with ... she couldn't possibly name the emotion in them, she didn't want to know. She let herself trace the lines of his face next, not as hard as she'd always imagined him in her mind, softer somehow now, maybe she was seeing things though; she has just woken up from a long coma. And finally, without her approval, her eyes fall to his lips, slightly parted in thought, with pink, supple flesh that she could almost feel on her own. His breath was slow, calm and even, and so warm and close. When did we get so close?

She blinked and the moment was broken though not forgotten in the slightest as he drew impossibly closer that her, air stuck in her lungs, and her heart lurched painfully in her chest. What was he doing? Was he going to –? No, he was just reaching for his phone which seemed to be ringing and probably had been for quite a while whilst she'd been daydreaming. That's when she'd felt it. The ... that heartbeat wasn't her owns!

He had missed a call from the mayor, he saw as the ringing ceased as he hadn't answered it in time. But he'd been distracted by the little witch studying him so thoroughly that he almost missed the sound entirely. He was just about to confront her about her voyeuristic tendencies when he notices something wasn't right. The look on her face, small frown, pursed lips and stormy green eyes, said as much and so he quirked an eyebrow in confusion.

"What is it, my little Bon-fire?" he almost, almost grimaced at the horribly pun, but her startle was too suspicious. She had seen ... what exactly?

She spoke of nothing though, just reached a hand tentatively towards him, letting it drop to his neck and pressed two fingers firmly over his pulse point, or where it should have been. Her brow furled and a frown appeared. Now he was worried.

"Judgy, however much I may enjoy this, if you don't speak up soon, I'll just have to find another way of getting you to talk that I'm sure you won't both approve or like. So what?! The ?! Hell?!" he stressed the last question enough to get her to snap her view from her hand still at his neck to his blue eyes. She looked as worried as he felt. And the heat and press of her fingers on his neck was doing things to him he hadn't felt since Katherine.