Chapter Title: The Unbearable lightness of being
Synopsis: A/U. Katherine Pierce finds redemption and temptation in the streets of New York after her drug rehab.
Disclaimer: Scenes of drugs and mild kink.
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The air is different here, cold cindering frost. I like the cold, its cavity. I thrive here, a shivering dissected cadaver. I inhale recalling the composition of my respiratory system. My name is cadaver, a disserved corpse. My name is mort. How long have I been dead? I've digested myself, consume everything and I want to scream, yell out loud THE DRUGS HAVE STOPPED WORKING!
What am I without the pulsating nerves of my jittery wires, the coke made me feel, it helped me drown out Manhattan until its stench and its noise fused into the static of an old radio. I don't want to be clean, I'm not brave enough. I've never been brave enough for anything; it's all just been pretend.
My name is Katherine Pierce, the great pretender.
I watch Stefan Salvatore smoke in the paranoid high of an acid subway. I cling to his every move as his jalapeno red coat howls in the enraging cackle of a neon crowd. I'm a voyeur lusting over his cold bristled flesh and he glows like an Indian summer in Mumbai, golden like a sunshine puddle of morphine. I imagine myself to be the joint he slides into his perfect mouth, giddy like a sin. I would pluck it from his mouth and feed it into my own, feasting on its erotic potency as if I were feasting on Stefan Salvatore. My addiction is a shameless whore, a harlot, a slut pounding the greasy streets searching for her next fix. The drugs no longer work but Stefan is my new addiction. I crave his vibrant mortality, to rest his head on my alabaster thighs and weave golden sunlight in his golden hair. I want to plug his vein into my vein and inject myself with his pained beauty.
You are lovely; I say to him in my head.
So are you, he simpers with his bronze skin glowing in the dull sunlight.
You're my Adderall, I smile at him.
You're my speed, Stefan chuckles.
You're my cocaine; I hum before fisting his beautiful hair with my hand. I like the flow of the conversations Stefan and I have in my head. He always says the right things and I always measure up. I'm always enough.
"Katherine" Stefan says startling me awake "I haven't seen you since-"
"Rehab" I complete the sentence for him because in truth Stefan looks pained as his fugitive eyes struggle to look at me. The drugs have stripped the gold from his hair leaving him torn and bruised but I want him still. I want to chase the colour fleeting from his ruddy cheeks, pluck the crowd of stars from his green eyes. I want to suck out all the goodness in him and overdose on it.
"You look good" Stefan feigns a smile.
"You're a terrible liar Stefan Salvatore"
"Do you wanna grab some coffee?"
"Is that what we do now, grab coffee?"
"What else is there?" he shrugs his shoulders tossing the stub of his spent joint. Then wearily with great awkwardness, we climb out of the tunnels into the light and everything is burning neon. Brooklyn is a giddy psychedelic; she trembles like an addict craving angels. She's the manic crowds twitching along the pavements, elusive and jittery. She grows raw to every sound, every taste, texture and smell that bounds her geography.
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There was no coffee.
Diseased people often find more entertaining ways to satisfy their sickly appetites.
"Are you sure?" Stefan asks seeking my reassurance before he consumes me. I can feel his breath fanning my heaving belly as he wanders north, I can smell the faint scent of weed mingled with his breath.
"There's no going back Kat" he says, his hair tickling my neck but I hold him helpless in my arms. He loosens my thighs with his knee, his heartbeat erratic against my breast. His roving hands, his warm golden flesh and his thrust all stop my heart. His mouth halts my breath for a moment before I fist my hands in his hair and drag him deeper into my mouth. His tongue hunts and trails and my nails dig and scrape. The strangeness of his body sinks into my body and we float in our rubicund pool of melancholy.
Together we swim like tangible ghosts anchored to each other until sunrise.
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You're sublimely perfect, Stefan had uttered last night as he climaxed. I wish I could claim that the sex had shocked my heart to reception but I'm still an empty shell with no true capacity to feel. I want him to control me with his exquisite lips and I want him to suffocate me with his beautiful kiss but my angel sleeps. I watch his dreaming eyes as waxen pools of light play around his cheekbones, scattering off to toy with his hair. I knot my fingers in the riddles of his hair; he's golden again like purified honey. Let me die in the sin of this bad romance. He has been mine for one night. I wait for him to open his sweet eyes as my fingers trace the lines of his shoulder. I wait for his mouth to ravage mine once more, I wait for him as my hand trails down to the pulsing warmth between my thighs. I wait for him to take me again, to belong to me yet again.
I wait to feel something….anything….
Stefan moves beside me, cloying sheets sticking to his golden skin as he turns to seek me.
"Morning," he breaths and I smile because he hasn't forgotten about me. I'm not some extinct idea, I am still very present, here, nestled in his bed and tucked into the crook of his arm.
"Hey, "I murmur back, my wintry alabaster limbs tangled with the golden shimmer of his summer limbs. We're immortal seasons gleaming like autumn leaves in the sunrise of his bedroom.
"Do you ever feel like this is it, that there's nothing beyond this?" he says, his warm voice grasping and plucking my strings. I turn to crawl over him, my body crushing his body.
"I love it when you get deep at six in the morning" I whisper chasing the delight of his greedy mouth. Stefan kills me slowly with his luminous poison and I binge feeding my pain and quenching my lust with his kiss. Tomorrow I'll purge and hunt and hunt for a new fix again but at this moment I'm alive. Stefan is my master and I am his through gyrating strings plucked here and there by a puppeteer until we wound each other with our delicious poison.
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"Where're you going?" Stefan asks as he sprawls on his big rumpled bed watching as I dressed.
"Out" I shrug with a teasing smile that hopefully hides the shameful void that has become my body.
"Stop being an ass-hat, stay"
"Why?" I say struck by the fleeting lust entangled in his eyes. I know that I have now become his toy for him to ravish, something to cloud his judgement like the joint he smokes to veil the world from him. We are each other's drugs and like all drugs, they repel in the morning light until their need rises again.
"Because, "he mumbles combing fingers through his dishevelled hair.
"It's not me you want Stefan"
"Who do I want then?"
"Elena, you want Elena because she's just like you or how you used to be, beautiful and alive"
"I want you Kather-"
"Don't do that, don't be that guy who tries to adopt the stray cat" I say climbing into my jeans "you're not a cat person"
"Will you be okay?" he asks as I pick up my shoes from the blanched wooden floors of his now stifling bedroom. Suddenly I cannot get away from his fast enough. Rapidly, he makes me feel like a used syringe from last night's party, like a used condom in some graffiti back alley and all of a sudden I want to fuck something else until it loathes me. I want a long shimmering rail of coke and I want to ride it until I loathe myself.
As soon as I leave Stefan's sex cloaked apartment in Brooklyn, I stalk my mobile phone for my dealer's number and vaguely wonder if I should bother telling Elena about me and Stefan.