A/N: I took a break from my Jeremy POV fic to bring you this. It takes place the morning of 2.19 in the Witch House
Foreplay
"Ready?"
"No."
"Yes."
"I said no!"
He moves his hands towards their target and quickly snatches them back, a threat, a warning.
She flinches hard.
He laughs at her jittery composure, and she laughs hard in return.
"So you're ready."
"There's no need for me to be ready, because I said no."
They're in a standoff, both sitting on their calves and leaning towards each other, his hands aimed at her stomach and her hands held up, ready to defend her precious and sensitive ribcage.
The time-worn floorboards of the old house creak intermittently: in the basement they occupy, the stairs that lead to the first floor, the flooring near the door, and on and on, and some creaks are louder than others.
It further dramatizes their standoff.
"Should've never flinched the first time. Should've never let me know."
"It doesn't mean you have to do anything!"
"It's like a rule. I have to."
They'd woken up oddly in good spirits, something they didn't question, not even in the wake of the event that unfolded at the decade dance the night before. They still wore their 60s get-ups, and Bonnie's hair was in the same style from the night before.
"Did you know that some people have a tickling fetish?"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. It arouses them, all that touching, the physicality, the comfort. The trust."
The look she'd noticed when she'd gotten off the computer with Elena the night before, the look that made it seem like he was seeing something in her that no one else had ever seen before, that look is back, and it changes the tone of what they're doing.
"Does it arouse you?"
"I don't think so."
"No?"
"No. Just something I read online."
"Mmm. What else have you read about?"
She's very aware of his hands. She holds his eyes, but she's never been more aware of someone's hands as she was in that moment, because there was the big possibility that he was having this conversation just to distract her and then pounce on her.
"The other stuff I know, I learned from experience."
"Really."
"Mmm-hmm. Lots of experience. Does being tickled arouse you?"
"I don't think so."
"But you're not sure."
"Jeremy."
"You're never gonna know unless you go through the experience."
"I've gone through the experience before."
"But not like this."
A deep breath from her.
"Close to this. Once."
"Oh yeah? How was it?"
A slow smile that she tries to contain.
"Good. It didn't lead anywhere. We were just flirting. But...I did like the touching. And I think he did too. But if you do anything!"
She says the last bit in a hurry, a response to him jerking forward.
"You'll what? Use your powers on me?"
"You'd love that."
She means to warn, instead she makes a promise. She doesn't mind the way it came out once she sees the effect it has on him. It shows in his eyes, and that does distract her for a second. It's a fatal second, because he chooses that moment to attack.
Her scream of "no" is loud and tragic. She fights valiantly kicking (no use) and using her hands to block, but his arms are stronger than hers.
He has her on her back before long, and her laugh comes from deep in her stomach.
He lets her breathe, because he's not cruel. Not yet.
She surprises him with her speed. She's a flurry of orange, red, and pink dress, brown skin, and black hair as she springs up and attacks him.
He doesn't go down, trapping her hands in his, making her struggle to release them.
"You are such a loser!"
"I'm the loser?"
"Yes!"
Because he hadn't let her win at pool either. The memory came to her now: he'd been happy to beat her (repeatedly) and gloat about it while barely acting like he wasn't gloating.
He lets go of her left hand fast enough to tickle her left side before she can stop him.
"No!"
He's leaning on his right which leaves his left exposed, so she seizes the opportunity.
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Bonnie, no!"
She uses her power to hold him down, and the floorboards creak loudly, as if the dead of the house are cheering her on.
"That's not fair!"
He laughs and protests, but he's not totally committed to the struggle he puts up. Being trapped by her does something to him. He has only a narrow space in which to move and react to her fingers, otherwise he's bound, stuck to the floor. He secretly hopes that if he struggles enough, she'll keep it up.
She brings him to the brink, the brink of annoyance, the edge where the game mutates into a fight, and then she lets him go, knowing that he would retaliate.
He does, and he takes her over the edge, past the brink, wanting to see what she'll be like in that state.
"I'm not aroused! Jeremy! Stop it! This isn't making me horny!"
She yells the last at the top of her lungs, so he lets her go, laughing and shielding himself with his hands.
She sits up and heaves, slicing him to pieces with her eyes. The hem of her dress is around her upper things.
He throws his head back and continues to laugh, never having seen her angry in this context before.
She supports her weight on her hands and works her mouth slowly, her annoyance dying now that her sides are free from the insistent pressure of his fingers.
"I'm sorry."
He sounds and looks sincere enough. Except for the part where he'd done it on purpose, and they both knew it.
She purses her mouth and looks away.
Time to grovel. On his hands and knees, he crawls to her and kisses her turned cheek, once, twice, three times, four, five, a long six, a longer seven, and the cheek puffs up when she smiles, eight to the puffy cheek, nine to the puffy cheek...
She turns and receives the tenth kiss on her nose, and she chuckles.
"So what does turn you on?"
She's quiet a moment as she mulls over her answer.
"This conversation. Talking about sex. You. Your neck."
"My-"
"Neck. Your neck."
"Well, that's..."
"I don't know. There's just something about it."
He sits back on his haunches and deliberately leaves himself open to her revenge.
She tucks her legs under her, and he glimpses her orange underwear when she does, and she walks on her knees and pushes him down, but she doesn't assault his sides. Instead she holds him down with her magic.
"And magic. My magic turns me on. Sometimes."
She hikes her dress up, and he sees her underwear again, and she climbs on top of him, straddles him, shifts so that she's sitting on his dick.
"That's a...coincidence. Because it turns me on too."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
He's glad she's never noticed.
"Why?"
It's his turn to think about his answer.
"It's...you always look..." He settles on "...powerful."
She smiles because she's skeptical.
"I'm serious. You're focused; you look like you know exactly what you're doing. You look like you're right where you belong."
He thinks about her power demonstration a couple of days ago, when she tapped into the powers of one hundred witches and changed the weather.
"Like nothing can move you."
His eyes were hovering somewhere near her bust, and he shifts them to look her in the eyes.
"There's just something about the fact that you can make things happen, good or bad. Good and bad."
He'll never forget the first time he watched her do magic, when she put the seal in one of the entertainment rooms at the Lockwood mansion in order to trap Katherine. He couldn't see what she'd done, there had been no visible change in the room, but the look on her face as she'd been chanting had been enough to make him believe that something was changing.
"Like this?"
She closes her eyes orients herself. Her facial muscles relax. Her body relaxes on top of his and she settles deeper on his crotch. She inhales. She exhales. She connects to the atmosphere, holds the air in the room between her thumb and index finger. She focuses on minute points in the atmosphere. And when she opens her eyes, all of the candles he had blown out when they'd woken up earlier lit up.
He turns his head about on the floor, his mouth open, his eyes alit with interest as the wicks of the candles flicker with life.
But she watches him. Waits for him to look at her. When he does, she holds her hands, palms facing the ceiling. She closes them as well as her eyes. She opens her eyes and hands simultaneously, and she holds fire in her palms.
He smiles because she's doing magic. She smiles because she feels him hardening between her thighs.
The flames become violent, swaying as if from a harsh wind.
They disappear when she closes her hands. She watches him because she wants to show him something else. She rubs her hands together as if putting on lotion. And every inch of skin grazed by her fingers catches on fire.
"Oh my God!"
He bucks beneath her and when he wiggles, trying to slide away, she gives him room to go, using her calves to lift herself.
The flames that had burned her ancestors and their friends, crawled up their skin while they'd screamed, determined not to save themselves, women, a few men, children and teenagers, mostly female. They'd all burned, and she'd felt all of it when she'd broken through her ancestors' barrier in order to access their power, had to have felt it so that she would understand, until they'd felt she understood the legacy she was asking to take on. They weren't just a source of power. She'd had to understand how they'd become such: through the cruelty of the White settlers next door, through their own resistance not to fight back and damn even the mortal Blacks, both free and enslaved, by showing they were more than human. She'd needed to understand how her ancestors and their friends had become a source of power through their strength of will and their sacrifice.
She'd needed to see them as people first. People who had lived and built a community. People who had protected. People who had suffered. People who had been brutality murdered.
So she'd burned while he'd watched. While he'd been forced to watch, whereas his ancestor Jonathan Gilbert had averted his eyes out of guilt while Emily had burned. A mere month later Jonathan Gilbert had convinced himself that it was for the best, had actually convinced himself that Emily hadn't felt anything. Hadn't felt the flames. Because Emily wasn't human. Not like him. Because Emily had been able to do things he couldn't do. Things he wanted to do.
She'd screamed as her skin had heated to an unbearable degree, until the pricking at her neck became a stab, her head had grown hot, her cheeks had felt like something was eating through them. Fire.
She hasn't told him that that's what she'd been experiencing. That's why she'd screamed. She didn't know if she would tell him, hasn't decided yet.
The fire that had been used against her ancestors now dances on her skin.
He calms when he sees how still she is.
"It doesn't hurt?"
"No."
"Do you feel it?"
"Yeah. Enough to let me know that it's not normal, you know?"
"Yeah."
She's static, and he gravitates back to her, slides back under her, but he doesn't stop looking at her hands, as if he can't completely believe that it doesn't hurt.
She sweeps one hand over the other twice and the fire disappears. When she opens her hands, the wicks are aflame again.
And he visibly releases the breath he's been holding.
"Like that?"
He inclines his head.
"Yeah. Like that."
She's not done.
She settles on his crotch again, puts her hands on his chest, and closes her eyes. She channels him. Leaves the room and connects to his body, his flesh, the water beneath, his heart, his lungs, the air passing through his nose, connects to everything that makes him alive, living. And she manipulates them. Uses them to give herself power, uses them to make him feel her power.
She's very aware of her vulva, and it's not because of his tented pants.
"When I use my magic..."
A small shudder takes her over.
"It's like I'm channeling myself. It's less intense than what I'm doing to you. Less intense than having someone do it to me."
Luka.
"Sometimes I don't feel it. It's funny. It's easier to feel the bad. The pain. It's easier to feel when I'm pushing past my limit. When the headache starts and the nosebleed and the lightheadedness before...Anyways. I do feel it sometimes. Because with every spell, I do what I'm doing to you to myself. I use my energy. Except unlike here..."
She places one hand over his heart, feels how fast it's beating, while she continues caressing him with the other.
"I don't give anything back to myself when I do a spell. It's impossible."
Vaginal lube slips from her opening onto her underwear.
He rises up to kiss her, but she tells him to lie back down. With her hand on his heart, she makes them rise, lifts his body, makes him weightless as she sits on top of him. She hears his breath seize. His eyes skitter to the floor they're slowly leaving behind, and his hands grab her waist.
They rise until her head almost touches the ceiling. His neck starts hurting so he looks up and lets out a loud breath.
He's tense under her.
She slowly takes her hands off of him.
His hands on her waist start to bruise.
"Ouch, that hurts."
"Okay, but don't...don't drop us. What the hell are you doing?"
He's nervous.
She smiles.
"Floating."
He swallows. He can rest his head now. There's a support under him, not as stiff as a board but not as cushy as a bed. The same invisible support allows her to keep her legs bent just like they were when they'd been resting on the floor.
Her weight on him feels the same.
His dick is harder, his heart beating faster. He's short of breath. His hands are not digging at her waist anymore. Now he's holding her just to hold her. Now he relaxes. She smiles. Her heart seizes. She realizes she's in love. Her stomach drops as the realization sets in. She's in love.
The sun rises higher in the sky, trying to reach noon, still hours away.
They stay in the air and she pushes, tests her focus in a subtle way: she slowly leans down, slow because she's new at this, and kisses him. Slowly. He deepens the kiss and forgets to worry about how high they are, how dangerous it would be if they fell. He forgets, but she can't. He abandons himself to the kiss, but she can't. She put them up here, and she can't forget that.
She enjoys the kiss, but her focus is primary.
She is as slow to lift from his lips as she'd been to touch them.
When he opens his eyes, they're still in the air.
She puts her hands on his chest again and they descend.
"Did you know that some people are aroused by channeling? Being channeled."
He smiles.
She starts unbuttoning his psychedelic shirt.
"Yeah, I mean...all that touching, the physicality, the comfort. The trust."
She glances up to where they'd been in order to emphasize her point.
"Mmm. Where'd you read that?"
"Nowhere. I'm speaking from experience."
She gets to the last button and spreads the shirt open, runs the tips of her fingers down his chest, without magic. She plays with his chest and then with a glance at him, she takes off her dress, struggling to get it past her torso because it fits too tight in the middle.
This time, she doesn't stop him when he sits up. She settles on his lap. He doesn't ask her if she can do this after last night, just prays she doesn't pass out or lapse into a coma in the middle of it. She takes off his sleeveless black vest and his shirt, and he takes off her bra.
The floorboards continue their uneven chorus while he laps at her breast, and she's nervous when he moves her underwear to the side and fiddles her clit because she's sitting so close to him. He can see everything on her face, how his thumb simply feels good at first, how it starts affecting her to the point where she has to move her hips, how it starts impacting her breathing, how his thumb on her clit becomes unbearable, how it pushes her over the edge. She wasn't ready for him to watch her come, not sitting this close to each other. But she gets used to it. He gives her two more opportunities to get used to it before he tells her to take off her underwear.
Amidst kissing and groping he loses his pants and underwear.
They only use one of the condoms in his wallet, but it soon becomes unnecessary when they run into a problem: his thrusting yields nothing from her, while he's on the verge of coming. She sputters but then she tells him to keep going, and she doesn't start feeling put out until he emphatically refuses. That's when she pushes his hips, signaling him to withdraw. He holds the base of his cock to keep his orgasm at bay.
"I guess I'm...wound up, uh, from last night."
"Not totally wound up. You were coming before. Come here."
She lies down, and he rubs the tip of his cock against her clit. He fingers her soon after, and she comes. He fingers her while rubbing her clit, and she comes. He curls his fingers, teasing her insides, and her body becomes stiff as a board as her orgasm approaches, but she comes.
He curses and touches his dick. He doesn't enter her again, not for the rest of the day, but she's interested in his hand on his dick.
"Do it."
She scoots back towards him. He straddles her and gets rid of the condom and jerks himself off until he comes on her abdomen. As he shakes above her, she takes his dick from his hand and strokes it the way she saw him do it, rubbing her thumb on the tip every time she comes to it and loves the way he flinches back every time. She licks her thumb experimentally and likes the taste. They use his vest to wipe the come off her stomach and then she folds it a couple of times and uses it to wipe herself.
"Jesus."
"What? I'm using what I have."
They lie together afterwards, him running his fingers up and down her side while she tells him in all seriousness not to tickle her, and she caressing his arm and occasionally channeling him.
She experiences the moment where it feels like a dream. As the sun continues to head towards midday, it feels surreal, lying with him, content from sex after she'd woken from the dead the night before. Just like being asked to play pool the day after she'd passed out from a nosebleed had felt surreal.
The End