Title: Closer
Category: The Vampire Diaries
Genre: Romance / Angst
Rating: T
Pairing: Bonkai
Summary: Wedding bells and witchy-woo are in the air.
Author's Note: I've got to say some of this season has been utterly predictable (like: spoiler alert! Bonnie tricking and leaving Kai in the prison world) and other moments have come completely out of left field (like Kai sucking up the Travelers' spell, because tbqh that was badass). This is borne out of me speculating about what the season six finale could entail but really the need to write for my trash ship. Something short and sweet. Just a oneshot. I miss my dumpster baby so much.
Closer is by Kings Of Leon.
She took my heart, I think she took my soul…
"Ladies first."
He may be wearing a tux and the scruff taking an extended residence on his jawline ages him in a way his eighteen year staycation in a prison world didn't, but no matter how charming his grin is he's still him. Underneath that oozing sincerity and perpetual habit of standing a little too close, who he is remains cemented in his bones. And for that, Bonnie Bennett can't trust him.
She mirrors him with her own sticky sweet smile. "Oh, no. Age before beauty. I insist."
Kai Parker's eyebrows tick up and he bites back his amusement. He can't blame her, not really. That doesn't mean it isn't fucking infuriating to continually need to convince her. He is not the same man who got sentenced to that prison world and he's not the same man who came out of its other end. He knows that and, no, he doesn't need her validation to prove it. But it would be nice if she wasn't always tensed like a spooked cat around him.
He winks. "Only because you insist."
Taking the knife situated on the table between them, he places the tip to his palm. He only pricks his index finger, nothing that won't clot in a matter of minutes. His predilections for blood have severely decreased as of late and he can't decide if he likes that or not. He passes the knife to Bonnie, hilt first. She cuts her eyes from him, focuses on her own palm, and sets the knife aside, her fist clenched.
A few drops of Parker blood fall into the circle of salt. The candle flames quiver, casting a glow on their faces. Bonnie tries to not pay attention to it.
There was a time, a very short period of her life, when she found this setting soothing. Romantic, even. But she quickly learned to associate the bliss with agony, power with vulnerability. Invincibility is a farce. There's always a hitch, a footfall. Never again would she fully enjoy the exhilaration of channeling another witch.
She bites back the stinging pain from the slice in the middle of her hand and squeezes, a short stream of Bennett blood dripping to the table. Kai pops his finger into his mouth, tonguing the tiny gash. "As the leader of the Gemini Coven, we thank you for your generosity."
"Bite me."
Her eyelids droop shut and Latin tumbles from her lips, trembling. The windows are closed but a wind whips through the room, unsettling the waves she painstakingly curled into her hair and whispering at the backs of her knees.
Bonnie should've known she wouldn't make the ceremony. Even while slipping into her crimson sundress, she did so with much scoffing and eye rolling. She hardly knows Jo Parker and Alaric Saltzman hasn't exactly been someone she'd call 'friend', but she received an invitation nonetheless. And of course she's not at the wedding. She's miles away in the library of the Salvatore boarding house doing a spell to save someone she doesn't quite believe deserves saving.
Surprise, surprise.
Kai tugs at the knot of his black tie. He thought to shed it on the car ride over. It'd been a delusional choice to dress up for the occasion. No invite came in the mail addressed to him. Why would Jo want the person who killed half her family and haunted her dreams for nearly twenty years present while she stood at the altar? She wouldn't, but he showed up regardless. Alaric wouldn't even let him past the lobby.
"Are you terribly sure you want to do this?" his words filter through her spell casting. "I mean, didn't you almost die the last time you linked yourself to someone?"
Her eyes remaining closed, she pauses the incantation. "I died shortly thereafter anyway. I like to think this time the motivations aren't so shortsighted."
Then she continues and Kai sinks his teeth into his bottom lip.
He grew up envious, watching everyone around him relish in their ability to manipulate the elements. It drove him crazy to sit beside Josette while she learned incantation after incantation but never being able to partake himself. The first time he saw his younger brother Joey successfully light a candle at age five Kai punched a hole in his bedroom wall.
This is different, though. Watching Bonnie do magic is always different. In 1994, he pushed her because it benefited him. But there's something else. She approaches it with a sense of respect, a purity. She's fully aware of the power she wields. Maybe because she's been on the wrong side of it. Maybe because having gone so long without it fostered a reverence within her.
Either way the glow of the light, the wind sweeping tendrils of hair off her shoulders and playing with the airy material of her dress' bodice… Well, Kai can appreciate more than just the ceremony of it all.
His gaze returns to the table to watch the effect her words are having. The puddle her blood made snakes towards his offering. All things considered, it's moving at a snail's pace and the clock's ticking, but the spell is working. Bennett blood meets Parker blood, mixing and intermingling. The candles rejoice, their flames growing brighter and hotter, signaling the completion of the spell.
"I now pronounce you…" he chuckles to himself. This seems fitting. Performing a linking spell on his twin sister's big day. Ironic.
When Kai looks up, Bonnie's watching him with an intensity he's not used to seeing from her. Usually she's guarded or her eyes are darting around to find the nearest weapon in case of a blitzkrieg. Now there's a curiosity in her expression.
"Why didn't you kill me?"
"Which time?" he smirks because he only knows how to joke about it. If he can't joke about it, he's overcome with crippling guilt, guilt which makes him lash out, and he has to keep his wits about him today.
"Thanksgiving. A twist of the knife or a few centimeters higher and I would've been dead." Her hand goes to her chiffon covered abdomen and his eyes follow. "But you knew to stab me enough to incapacitate me. Why?"
"You really want to have this conversation right now? I'm pretty sure we're missing the part when the reverend asks for objections and I just think Josette deserves better than her baby boo."
"Kai…" she places her hands on the table, ignoring her bleeding wound smearing against the finish. "A vengeful ripper matriarch is on the loose, hellbent on destroying the coven responsible for imprisoning her. A coven of which you are now the leader. I've linked myself to you, and by proxy every witch and warlock of your coven. The least you could do is give me a straight answer."
To do that, Kai would have to face the monster currently caged and sleeping in his chest. The sociopath whose rationale afforded collateral damage like he was shaking dirt from the toes of his boots. It doesn't take much nudging. He's always ready and willing to rear his grotesque head.
The appearance of a Bennett witch in his prison was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it was her blood necessary for his release and a curse because his escape attempts were twice foiled by her. The second time, though, was the most telling. The one when he realized desperate times, desperate measures.
It was a curious thing seeing this witch sacrifice herself for a vampire, one some could argue was undeserving. It was a whole 'nother can of worms watching the same witch give up her only known chance at life for an eternity imprisoned. She was risking her existence by playing into the hands of a certifiable sociopath. And for what? To protect loved ones who did the bare minimum to save her? To spare the lives of a coven she'd never met who took more from the Bennetts than they gave?
He could list a number of noble virtues and would promptly spit on each and everyone of them.
No, death wasn't fitting, not for her, and Kai Parker is always one to make a statement. A lasting impression. The only way to do that is to go to the extreme. Drug her and bind her, take her across country, wine and dine her, ply her by waxing nostalgia, and then betray her. That would teach her.
Kai rounds the table, pulls his handkerchief out of his pocket, and pinches it between two fingers. She grudgingly takes it and balls it in her fist, a sick satisfaction growing as she stains the white material. He reaches out, tucks a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. She flinches. His touch is like ice.
"You didn't care about yourself, Bonnie. Killing you would've been merciful. If I had driven that knife into your heart, that would've been grace smiling on you." He says this without a smile or the slightest sense of gratification. As much as he misses the feeling of crushing a rosebud in his palm, it doesn't sate him as it once did. He finds it pretty pathetic, actually.
She purses her plump lips and takes this in.
She sees it differently. She asked to leave unharmed and harm is exactly what she got. She was willing to share that prison world with him, as long as he stayed on his side of their line of demarcation. She didn't want to die. Not the first nor the second time.
And for a while, she wondered if, had he'd stayed, would she have sought him out? Maybe after a few months, maybe sooner. See if they could live together amicably. Probably not in the same house, not even the same block. But close enough that the solitude didn't feel so torturous. But the what ifs entertaining his presence only added to the pain of isolation, so she abandoned the idea altogether.
She narrows her gaze, challenging his own. "What about now? How are you so sure I'm any different?"
"Your friends keep so much from you. Damon doesn't tell you his mother's a ripper before recruiting you for his nineteen oh three rescue mission. Your boy toy Gilbert doesn't tell you how exactly he managed to be in ninety-four so he could open that garage door in the nick of time."
Bonnie rolls her eyes.
Her and Jeremy had a reunion albeit a brief one. Dressed in his Sunday finest, he walked in on her and Kai having a hushed conversation about a few loose vampires. The proximity of their bodies, Kai's hand resting on the small of her back, the way her skin vibrated, both wanting to shed his touch like a second skin yet equally reveling in the fact that she was being shown physical attention, did not go unnoticed by the younger Gilbert.
"What are you talking about?"
"Who do you think did the spell to get your friends over to the prison world? The spell that tipped them off to the fact that you wanted to kill yourself? I saw you on the brink, Bonnie. And I saw you pull yourself back from it. After the fact. I've got to say you've got spunk. Those video diaries… I half expected you to record over your goodbye message.
"There's a ferocity inside a person who is solely responsible for bringing herself back from the edge. Besides, you're a Bennett. I know you'll fight harder than anyone."
She averts her clouding eyes, instead focusing on their blood. She'll carry that day with her for a long time. The sensation in the pit of her stomach and in the back of her throat, a stifling hollow ache. And she'll always blame him for the push, how his desertion opened the door to the possibility of shutting it all off. It's a wonder she said yes to this at all.
Until further notice, she is the livelihood of an innumerable amount of people, including Jo's unborn child. But she won't fall to the same mistakes that have been made countless times before. Slipped into her recitations was a fail safe. The lives of the Gemini coven hinge on the current leader, Kai. By linking him to her, their lives are now in Bonnie's hands. For all intents and purposes, Bonnie is presently the leader of his coven and she wonders if he really thought that through.
If Lily Salvatore comes for Bonnie, she has the power to channel a coven's worth of magic, amplified by her own and the residual Expression she keeps tucked away for a rainy day. If Lily goes for Kai, well, his days were numbered anyway and no one else gets hurt.
"And when I stabbed you in the back in nineteen oh three? You had magic, your own magic. But you didn't retaliate. It was nice watching you groveling, I'll admit, but. You could've fought me." She turns back to him, her brow furrowed. "You should've fought me."
She had expected him to fight back. A darker part of her, an animalistic urging wanted him to. She expected a face full of ash, her back breaking against a tree from the force of his magic. She had prepared for a battle in a snowdrift. Her knife in his heart was definitely on the menu, but it'd been too easy.
"What would that have proved?" His hand falls to her bare shoulder, his fingers like ghosts down her arm, flesh rising with goosebumps. It'd be so simple to siphon her magic. Sure he had his own, but when had he ever touched a witch without debating whether or not to take a little taste? "That I was the same ol' Malachai Parker? Don't you get sick of being a one trick pony?"
Her mind backtracks, wondering if she should clue him in. If he can be this honest, she could extend the same courtesy. Bygones may never be bygones between them, but they've both learned better than to deal double with each other. At the very least, she could tell him to be careful.
She opens her mouth to speak, his full attention on the parting of her lips, but footsteps sound down the hallway.
Damon Salvatore rushes in, a harried Elena Gilbert a few steps behind him. His suit and tie are still as crisp as though he'd just ironed them and her lavender dress fits her figure like it was tailored for her. "Did you do it? Did it work?"
Bonnie clears her throat and takes a step back from Kai. "Uh, we're working on it. It's kind of hard to locate this many vampires at once."
They lock eyes.
Their temporary alliance is something they can keep on a strictly need-to-know basis and the linking spell is a preventative measure. For now, Kai will blame the candles for the heat under his collar and poke fun at the vampires getting to revel in the day's frivolity, asking if Elena caught the bouquet. Bonnie will tell herself the flush of her cheeks is due to the rush of magic underneath her skin, decline when Damon offers his blood to heal her hand, and focus on the task she lied and said she would start immediately.
Time to work on a locator spell to find Lily and her cohorts.
And it's coming closer…