This is a companion piece to Weightless Under Gravity. It could be read as a standalone. If you have read that you can skip the background. I'm probably going to write one-shots for this verse. I don't know yet but it's very likely.
Background: This was intended to be a part of a larger story where Bonnie ends up transferring the sire bond to herself (Tyler comes to her for help and agrees to it) once she realizes she can't break it. She dies in order to give him his freedom (using the same kind of spell from 2.18) but withholds this all from him and he's the one who finds her dead.I'd started this before Abby died and at this point in canon I didn't think that Bonnie was all that interested in living and was kind of going through the motions, just surviving because that's what she was expected to do. Tyler in canon didn't have a place outside of Caroline, so I really wanted him to contemplate what being dead means: no kids, no aging, watching your friends and family die. It was basically masturbatory living dead meta (that I'm rolling my eyes over now) about Tyler living beyond his expiration date and dealing with that, and Bonnie feeling dead while alive. I think they could be real friends to each other (because nobody on this show is an actual friend) and I'm really just in love with the idea of that.
I have no beta and all mistakes are mine. And I don't think it needs any warnings beside sex, but if anyone thinks I should add something please let me know.
Death warmed over.
That's how she describes him. She says it in a rare moment of introspection when she's pulling off her clothes, the floorboards of the dusty old house creaking underneath her weight.
Tyler's uneasy here. It feels like it should be used for more than passionate romps on a makeshift bed (especially when he finds out why stepping over the threshold sends chills up his spine). It's a bit sacrilegious he thinks, but all the sins committed here are worth it. Being a vampire already feels like being eternally damned.
It can't get much worse.
Magic in general makes him antsy, but there's something about being here that puts him on edge.
Power.
He feels it simmering, vibrating with potential and he can easily admit that it scares him at the same time drawing him in.
He feels the same way with her.
It's not about magic even though she lights candles and teleports with ease (and that will never ceases to amaze him), but if anything Bonnie's full of latent energy. She's so full of life.
Bonnie is power.
Power is life.
There's nothing romantic about this, not even with the array of candles illuminating the room. Romance requires too much thought. Romance is a state of mind and Bonnie's not in it, an attempt at that would scare her off. Tyler's knows her best and he knows it'll easily feel like a betrayal. Don't make this a thing Tyler, please.
So it's her terms, her rules and since she doesn't want to this to be a thing, it's not a thing. She doesn't want to think, he doesn't make her. Tyler's never been a man of many words, but it's a good thing that they now come easier. If she doesn't want to talk, he fills the silence. This Bonnie, the one who's been playing Russian roulette for the past year needs to be reminded that someone's thinking about her, that she's still on his mind when she's lying beside him a million miles away.
She's so unaffected now, it takes so much to get a rise out of her, to get a word out of her, so it's surprising when she says, "you know how I told you I can feel death?"
"Yeah," he says as he finishes taking off his shirt. She walks over to him and runs her hands over his shoulders, down to his chest.
"Stefan and Damon feel …they lack heat and at first it use to scare me, but it's kind of comforting ,you know, dead things should feel dead… but with you…"
"With me what?"
"You feel…"
Alive.
He doesn't know why that pops into his head or why in the seconds it takes her to finish her thought it becomes so important that she says that.
"Like death warmed over…you still feel dead but there's something else there." There's no malice behind her words, not now, not when it takes so much to get any emotion out of her, but this somehow stings. He knows she won't further explain it, and he won't ask her to.
Because he gets it.
Tyler isn't in denial of what he is but he doesn't like to think about it. It's morbid, tragic, but with Bonnie it's always on his mind.
Death takes up space. It has seeped into almost everything that makes Tyler, Tyler and all he wants to do is not feel it. He feels everything (magnified) so it's an impossible feat but that small part of him that's left over clings on to the living, onto Bonnie. For a while, it's muted. He'll never be alive again, but maybe this weird contact high he gets around her is some sort of twisted consolation prize.
"Are you okay?" She asks, big eyes searching his and before he answers she cuts him off with a kiss. She gets it; they don't need to talk about it. The first time he kissed her he realizes that all words don't have to be spoken, it's a lesson he won't soon forget.
Lush lips press hard against his, and gently she licks into his mouth, soft tongue searching behind teeth for something –usually it's truths, something real, authentic. Today he doesn't know what it is.
He knows he's being used, Tyler's not stupid, however his motives aren't completely pure either, and when they're together he feels her power, her life.
Death is underwhelming and an eternity is a long time. She won't be here forever so he'll find solace in her thudding heart, a sure indication of vitality, for as long as he can. Life is everything, and it's just his luck he finds it in a girl who writes a love letter to death every time she does a big spell.
She does a lot of big spells.
Their lives are too fucked up not to take advantage of what they have. He's making the most of their situation, just like she is.
There are times when she's so unreachable, when she doesn't find what she's looking for and there's nothing he can do to fix that. But when she does find it, when she sighs into his mouth, bare blunt fingernails leaving half-moons in his skin, he feels a little less like a walking corpse.
She finds it today.
Bonnie pulls back with a gasp, sipping at stolen breaths, at stolen words. He's speechless now, but one day he'll ask her if she can taste it. Does death linger on her tongue long after he's gone? Is it bitter? Does she find it sweet? Maybe it comforts her.
Part of him hopes it does.
He feels her pushing him back and he falls against the blankets, her legs straddling either side of him. Tyler reaches up to cup her face to bring her down for a kiss but she resists. Her own hand trails along the skin of his arm, making its way up until she grasps his wrist. She turns her lips into his palm and kisses it. Her lips linger for a moment and her other hand finds its way between her legs.
"I can do that." He moves to touch there, but she gently slaps it away.
"So can I." He laughs with her, and it's one that he can still hear long after they're finished.
Death's never funny.
Tyler's hand drops away from her down to the blanket and her busy hand stops long enough to guide herself down on him. Her hair is already wild; her bangs in dire need of a trim curtain her face as she puts a balancing hand on his chest.
A prayer hitches in her throat, but his name makes its way through. Whether it's in need or want he can't tell, but the dead don't want for anything.
He doesn't think they need much either.
And if it is need, it's at one of the purest forms. The act of pleasing (and being pleased) is simplistic in its nature and complexity isn't what either one of them needs right now. They need easy. This comes easily to them.
Her eyes are fixed somewhere over his head as she feels weightless on top of him, like she could slip away at any second. But when he moves his hand to her center, her head drops, mouth falling open and she catches his eye.
She smiles, sort of (it's definitely not enough commitment to be a smirk), and then the smile feeds on itself. It's so subtle, the change in her body language, like she's aware of herself now, like she's aware of her power, her life. She doesn't ask for much from him, but she only gives parts of herself at a time, more out of a feeling of obligation than anything else, and this is such a small part but this is what makes it worth it.
Bonnie finally kisses him again, and it's timed at the beginning of a fall. She falls fast, fast, like boulders off the sides of mountains, tumbling, heavy, and he gets so caught up in this, this small yet at the same time tremendous display of life that he almost doesn't notice when it slows. Electricity spreads like lightly sprinkled sugar crystals, gently layering over itself as she trembles in his lap. He can feel her heart beating through the place their joined and his hips jerk up into her trying to taste the sweetness, feel the shock.
He's afraid that if he doesn't constantly remind himself of what life feels like, he'll forget, but every time this happens he remembers.
They rest for a while. She's blown all the candles out. The wind's knocking trees hard against the boarded windows. He thinks that soon it'll be too cold to come here.
School starts in a few hours, he's got a math test first period—he should probably get some sleep. Bonnie's still up, barely, and she cuddles her backside closer to him. Yawning she grabs his arm and pulls it around her.
"It's cold in here."
"I can take you home."
"My dad's at home and I don't want to leave you." She yawns again, her eyes fluttering shut.
"Keep me warm."
Thanks for reading and reviewing.
And if you're reading one of the other multi-chapter fics (CiT or GW) I have chapters almost completely finished but I just don't feel like writing for them and if I force myself they'll suck :( Sorry.
I'm also probably gonna change my penname bc I have always hated it and I know that's so confusing but ugh I hate it.