Disclaimer: I don't own TVD. Anyways, this is a little different than some other things I've written, but I was in a slightly odd mood.
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This is not a fairy tale.
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It takes the would-be hero very little time to fall completely and utterly in love with the lovely, twisted Katherine.
It takes him over a hundred years to get over her—and he's never really sure if he ever will.
Katherine is not the heroine.
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It takes almost a hundred and fifty years for the heroine to be born, but that's okay, because timing is everything.
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The anti-hero gets closer and closer to becoming a true hero with every moment, and no one really notices at first, and that's mostly because falling in love with your brother's girlfriend is never really a good idea and kind of distracts from the whole 'hero' thing.
Especially when you're still in love with your psycho bitch ex-girlfriend who looks exactly like her.
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The first time they meet, there's a moment.
It's dismissed immediately, obviously. On her side it's almost instant distrust, on his side it's disinterest.
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It's disinterest until he realizes who she is, what that means, and needs to get that damned necklace back.
The heroine is then possessed by her witchy ancestor, and the almost-hero isn't so heroic and almost kills her.
But he doesn't—but not by choice.
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It becomes more and more clear that the heroine hates him.
He's rather evil, and she's . . . the only one willing to really stand up to him.
No one notices, and if they do they don't care because there's a tomb-ful of vampires to deal with, and Bonnie is still grieving over the death of her Grams.
She blames him.
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She lets him live, even though she knows she doesn't have to, and that this may make things worse, but she does it for Elena.
Friendship, it seems, is more important here.
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It's at this point that she's becoming a heroine—she already is, in a way.
It's at this point, when he thinks he's kissing Elena, that he still isn't.
In the end it doesn't matter.
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She starts to date Jeremy, so there's that. But he's Jeremy. It's nice.
But this isn't a fairy tale, so she's not really holding out for more anymore than she's expecting things to last with him. That's just how it works.
She does notice in passing that Damon is dating Andie, and this seems to mean that he's bothering Elena less.
She's irrationally happy about this, mostly because she hates him.
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Nothing really changes until the moment when he realizes she's killing herself to save Elena—and almost wants to let her.
In the days leading up to the day Klaus is going to try to make the sacrifice, he isn't sure what he's going to do about that.
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In the end Elena lives—and Bonnie almost dies.
At this point in the tale things take a dark turn.
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At this point the heroine is in crisis, and doesn't seem to know who she is anymore.
There's drinking, and dabbling in dark magic, and deep sadness.
She ends things with Jeremy right when he's ready to call it quits.
And she ends up alone.
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Damon sees her tumbling into darkness.
He does nothing.
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Correction: He's forced by Caroline and Stefan tag teaming him to let Andie go back to her life, and suddenly he's spinning out of control just as much as she.
He decides to do something about it.
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She still hates him, she says through a drunken haze.
It's okay, because he still hates her.
And when they grab for each other and fuck in the bathroom at the Mystic Grill, they still do.
It changes nothing. Yet.
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Things start to hurt more first.
And the hero and heroine lose themselves—not just in each other, but seemingly altogether.
No one else seems to notice.
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But they notice each other—when Bonnie moans against his neck, and he bites into her, and that's okay.
And there's no compulsion, because there simply doesn't need to be.
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She really likes when he shows up where she is—that he somehow knows her schedule—and they hastily grope in a closet, or she gives him a handjob while he fingers her in the backseat of his car.
It works for a while.
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Suddenly Elena is in danger again.
They decide to team up—somehow a vampire and a witch should be able to do some damage, or so their logic goes.
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They make a good team.
But they don't admit it.
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Damon and Bonnie save Elena's life from some crazy ancient original doppelganger and just hope it's finally over.
It's at that point—where they still aren't even friends, or anything less that enemies/occasional reluctant partners—that their affair ends.
But only because Elena gets caught up in the moment and kisses Damon.
Moments later, when Stefan shows up Bonnie can only send a sympathetic glance towards him and watch as his heart breaks.
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Stefan doesn't see Damon push Elena away, and look around confused, toward where Bonnie was standing.
And neither does Bonnie, because she's done with that.
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Damon refuses to have feelings for Bonnie, because that's simply ridiculous.
He doesn't.
But he also isn't in love with Elena anymore—and he's beginning to question whether he was ever truly in love with her.
The answer is probably no.
And sometimes he still misses Katherine.
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When Elena says she loves him, Damon makes the right choice for the first time in a while and chooses Stefan instead.
Stefan and Elena are already over, but Damon still makes this choice.
It gets him closer to being hero material than he's ever been before.
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The heroine puts her life back together, remembers what matters, goes on a date with Tyler of all people, who is in love Caroline, so there isn't a second date after she realizes that.
She apologizes to Jeremy, and he forgives her.
Darkness, pain, spiraling. He gets it. He wonders whether they should try again.
She says no. Friends? Friends he agrees.
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He corners her at the Grill, where it all started, and sits down next to her, surprisingly.
But then suddenly his hand is traveling up her thigh, and it rests, patting softly against her pussy as she protests—but he notes just as she does that he doesn't just witchily voodoo him a headache.
So at least there's that.
She gets so wet she's practically begging for it under her breath, and he leans over, whispers in her ear that she should meet him outside, and leaves.
She counts to ten.
She tells herself she isn't going.
She goes anyway.
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It takes him two months to get her to have sex with him in his home—and she only agrees because Stefan isn't there—he's taken Caroline out on some summer globetrotting experience so that they can get over their dismal love lives.
She has no intention of doing anything other than having sex on every surface of that damned house.
That's only the beginning.
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It's also the first night they spend together. Bonnie lies on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. "I'm sorry."
"What?" He's surprised, obviously. "Do my ears betray me? I thought I heard you say you were sorry," he says it partially in jest, but he's also partially curious.
"You're an idiot, but you aren't that bad."
"I was," he admits.
"But you aren't anymore," it's a statement, and a slightly confused statement about that.
"You know how they say love should make you a better person?"
Bonnie lifts an eyebrow, even though he isn't really looking at her. "What, are you going to do some lame ass thing like say you're in love with me now?"
"No." It's weird, because he's never really thought about it like that before. And now that he is, it almost makes sense. "Sometimes not being in love can set you free. And sometimes thinking you love someone makes you a worse person. Happens all the time with people."
It's true.
Bonnie isn't sure how to respond to that, so she slides her hand slightly toward him and squeezes his.
He squeezes back.
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After that it's a series of sexual hazes and late night discussions about everything and anything—occasionally even about their mutual dislike, and Bonnie still takes him to task for his behavior, and Damon still calls her on being self righteous and judgy.
It works.
But they aren't in love—and if they are, they certainly aren't ready to admit it.
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It hits Damon the day he realizes she's going off to college.
She turns in the last of her applications, and it doesn't really phase him. It's the acceptances that scare him, which is ridiculous, because why would he be scared?
It's not like he thought he could have her all to himself, right?
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He's not even mildly jealous when Stefan and Elena try their hand at a relationship again—mostly because he'd done a bit of matchmaking, to be honest.
He is upset when Bonnie declares that she's going to California for school.
But he can't exactly tell her that.
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Our hero doesn't even realize as he stops wanting to randomly kill people, or wanting to give into the darker part of being a vampire—he doesn't even realize it.
The weird thing is that even when he's upset, she doesn't fuel the fire.
She calms him.
It's at this point that the hero realizes he needs the heroine.
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The heroine is a bit more obtuse. She moves to California, and gets halfway through her first semester before cracking.
She refuses to miss him, doesn't call, doesn't do anything. No contact, she's declared.
She breaks this rule at 3 AM PCT during midterm season, which pretty much screws up everything.
He tells her he's moving to California, and her breath catches, and she smiles beyond her control.
They spend the next three hours talking about nothing in particular.
Not once do they say 'I miss you' or 'I love you.'
It's pretty clear what they mean though.
The first time she sees him again she jumps him. Literally jumps him.
They make it into a bush before they start to rip each other's clothes off.
Minutes later, sated, they smile and say hello.
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He says I love you first—which is for the best, because she had no intention of doing that, honestly.
She knows how he is with women, she points out.
"You know how I am with you too, Bon Bon—" he points out.
She doesn't really have a reaction to that.
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It takes her two hours to say the words back and mean them. "I love you."
He smiles, doesn't smirk. "I know."
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They have weirdly blood-related sex.
It comes in handy when she's coming home from work one night a few years later and saves a woman from an attacker, only to get blindsided by a bullet to the brain.
Hours later Damon is freaking out, but when he sees her, realizes what's happened, he pulls her in tightly for a hug and refuses to ever let go again.
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It isn't quite a fairy tale.
There's a hero, a heroine—both mildly reluctant at first, and possibly even beyond that.
There are hurdles to be overcome, and battles to be won.
And there's a happily ever after.
But it's never quite a fairy tale, and that's okay.
It's better.
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Thoughts?