A/N: So this here little nugget is inspired by Kat's upcoming short films titled "Muse" due to be released on Feb. 10th. This of course doesn't really follow anything that's canon, apart from some minor background. I didn't name the guy Bonnie is with but I'll just say, yeah I was writing mostly from a particular Salvatore's POV, but anyone else could have worked in this "role" just as well. Enjoy! Oh, and this is AH.

Disclaimer: These characters belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended.


Christ. My head throbbed like a sonofabitch, mouth drier than cotton, and I was fairly sure without having to look, my eyes were redder than bull's balls. Tossing the sweat soaked sheets off my body, I blindly reached for my smokes and lighter on the messy night table, but then tossed a glance over my shoulder and noticed the spot behind me was empty.

Stabbing a cig in my mouth, I shook the lighter before flicking it open, cupping my hand around that precious red-orange flame so it wouldn't burn out before lighting my smoke. The sweet acrid taste of nicotine, and about a thousand different chemicals that'll kill a man several years after his first Marlboro, filled my nose, trachea, and lungs. Instant relief, but then the fucking pounding in my head intensified.

Wincing slightly against the pain, I inhaled more toxic smoke into my lungs, scratched my chest, and scanned the crappy hotel we settled in for the night. One of many rolling suitcases was thrown open, the contents rifled through. A shoe here, sock there, my briefs hanging on the doorknob leading to…hell I didn't really know and wasn't going to find out.

My lady love was nowhere to be found, but I knew she was near. Beyond the haze of billowy white-gray smoke, I could detect hints of her perfume. Something French I didn't know the name of. She wore it all the time, dabbed it carefully behind her ears, on her wrists, between her tits, and right below her navel. If we were going someplace special she'd dab some on the inside of her thighs. You could say I thoroughly enjoyed going on a sniffing exploration at the end of the night.

Right before I was about to bellow her name, I could hear her humming in the bathroom. A tune I knew by heart, had all the nuances memorized and could hum it right along with her and on key, too.

Once again it was something French she once explained when I questioned her about it after a night of fucking that literally had me gasping for breath.

"What's that song you're always humming?" I asked once I learned how to breathe less sporadically.

Her bowed mouth stretched into a smile, but her eyes failed to match the joy happening beneath her button nose.

There was pain there lodged in her heart, caught in her eyes, but she never let her smile in on what had gone awry.

She threw one thick, hosiery covered thigh over my legs, straddling me. "It's an untitled song about a woman who loved a man that was promised to her sister. She dreamt about him nightly, about the kind of life they could have if he would just notice her, but her sister was too classically beautiful that everyone else around her was invisible. Her sister's good looks made her feel entitled, she enjoyed the attention, but could love no one outside of herself. So the other sister kept quiet and watched her love marry another. Invisibility, I know what that feels like."

And I believed her, though it was hard because she's a fucking knockout, but I believed her because tears filled her eyes that she quickly laughed off and blinked away.

I never asked her any personal questions because I liked the bubble of mystery her diminutive frame was shrouded in, and she never offered up any details about her life prior to us meeting in some dive bar in Virginia. She had been on a quest of reinvention, and I was searching for a muse to spark my hunger for films and photography once more. She provided me with a blank canvas on which to create, and I promised her anonymity and freedom.

That day, the day which changed everything I thought I believed in, was one I'd never forget.

The door to the bathroom flew open and she stood there at the sink, dressed in thigh-highs, garter belt, lacy boy shorts, bra, and patent leather fuck me pumps—every single article in the color she wore religiously, black.

Gotdamn she was a vision.

She teased her short, wavy hair with slender fingers, puckered her lips, made love to her mirrored reflection before smiling at me.

"Good morning," she went back to posing and touching up her makeup.

I don't ever think I've ever seen her without any makeup on. As an artist I wanted to get beneath that veneer, but she chose to keep me at arm's length in that regard.

My eyes trailed down her silhouette, her flat stomach, the flare of her hips, her sculpted calves, before journeying upward to her heaving breasts.

Feeling inspired, I bounded out of bed, stubbed my toe on a chair, cursed, then ruffled through my equipment bag looking for my Rolleliflex TLR camera.

I had been filming my muse for weeks, documentary style doing the most mundane things to those needing an NC-17 rating, not that I had any plans to produce that footage. She moved liked a spirit not of this world, had the voice of a sultry blues singer, and the aesthetics of a cover model from the 40's. It was a little embarrassing I found myself addicted to damn near everything about her, yet there was little about her I'd actually put up any effort to change.

Once I had everything set up I began snapping away. She had gotten used the intrusion of me filming her during her private time, and for the most part ignored me like she was doing now as she brushed her teeth.

"Who will we be today?" she asked the second her grooming was complete.

My muse paused right in the threshold and jutted out her hip, folded her arms pushing up her tits in the process.

"I don't know. What do you have in mind?" I clicked away, eyes darting between her and the lens of the camera.

Assuming different identities had become our thing. She said she never wanted to be the same person twice because she had gotten stuck in who she used to be. Cryptic speak that gave no further insight into who she really was. It did make me curious if she was running from someone, but she didn't seem the battered type. Or at the very least didn't carry any physical scars that suggested domestic violence. When she spoke of home, on those rare occasions, she did so with melancholy as the garnishment. A little bitterness, but never rage.

"I miss home, but that's about it," she'd say and distract me so I'd forget I didn't really know a thing about her that was the truth.

"I was thinking," she ground the toe of her pump into the rust hued carpet, "I was thinking you could be Iago and I could be…"

"Desdemona?"

"No, Michael-a Cassio. Wonder if anyone would make the connection."

"Probably not. The only play of Shakespeare's most people remember from high school is Romeo & Juliet."

"You'd be surprised."

"Doubt it. I look like an Iago?" my face contorted into bemusement.

She assessed me, pushed away from the doorjamb and approached. I didn't cease in my picture taking. The disjointed, unfocused images sometimes proved to be more beautiful and meaningful than something perfectly executed.

My muse draped her thin, muscular arms over my shoulders. The four inch heels on her feet didn't even come close to making us equal in height, but she could almost stare me directly in the eye. Doll size, that was her.

"You can pass for anything or anyone because your look is so ubiquitous," she threaded her fingers through my tousled hair.

That earned her grin which faded the moment my stomach growled.

She stepped away from me and lowered her gaze to my bare torso. She laughed and then pouted. "Guess you need food before we do anything too…strenuous today."

Now that she mentioned it, my lower back was fucking killing me because I put it down like I'd never get to feel, touch, taste, or stroke a pussy another day of my life.

My muse pecked my lips, pivoted, and retrieved her tan trench coat that covered very little. "I'll make a run for some eats. You stay, shower, and wait for me."

"Just a suggestion…but don't you think you should at least put on a shirt?"

She stared down at herself. "Hmm, you're right. No need in getting pulled over by the cops since neither one of us has bail money."

I picked up my wrinkled Oxford and held it out to her. She took it and threw it over her undergarments. That wasn't necessarily an improvement, but she was more covered than she had been seconds ago.

"I'll be back," she whispered and kissed me again, this time slipping her tongue in my mouth.

I hated that she had to taste cigarette smoke and morning breath. She deserved much better than that.

When she pulled away she definitely let her repulsion show. "Ugh, brush your gotdamn teeth, too."

I laughed and swatted her thick ass. She yelped and glared, but the glare melted into a shy smile, and she sashayed her way out of the room once she had her purse and my car keys in hand.

She hadn't been gone two seconds before loneliness crept up on me like fog rolling over a bayou. Was I codependent? My muse made me need her in ways that defied belief, and I would like to think she needed me just as much. We had been roaming around living a nomad lifestyle for eight months—my longest relationship to date. It had to mean something to her, too, right?

Like this one night we went out in particular. It was December. Slush on the ground, the meteorologist forecasting more snow, as we as pedestrians waded through gridlocked traffic. We held hands mostly so she wouldn't slip and break her ankle in the ridiculous pumps she couldn't go without since they "matched her outfit perfectly". We made our way to a lower Manhattan speakeasy. I paid the cover charge, she bought the drinks, and in no time we were seated in a booth, our hands doing naughty things to one another.

At some point she grew distracted and when I finally took notice of what held her attention, I could say I was surprised.

It was another woman. Ebony skin, long straight hair, dark eyes, a body that was a mile long. She whispered if she should ask her to dance, I told her to go for it.

Shyly she approached the woman who probably spent a majority of the night swatting away suitors like flies. But she allowed my Muse to sit down, share a drink, and then the both of them were laughing like old friends.

I can't explain how it happened, how everything unfolded. I sat alone, watching them, chugging whiskey until my tongue was numb, and the next minute both of them were sliding into the booth with me, one on each side. The statuesque woman extended her hand, introduced herself as "Tiny" which could have been the biggest oxymoron I had come across. I told her it was nice to meet her. We traded stats, had drinks, and Tiny casually invited us back to her place.

She was living out of a suitcase, she explained, the minute we stepped foot in the hotel penthouse suite. She had a layover before catching a flight to Martinique where she was from.

More drinks were dispensed, music began streaming, and my Muse and the amazon from Martinique began dancing, tentatively touching one another.

I always carried a camera with me and I began filming them, but stopped once Tiny frowned in my direction. But then she smiled and asked if I wanted to see a show? I mutely nodded while she whispered to my Muse who blushed and shrugged.

Tiny led her to a bedroom, panties were pulled down, and my eyes doubled in size as I watched my Muse being eaten by a woman.

The litany of emotions that crossed her face left my jaw hanging by a thread, and my dick so hard I could hit a homerun straight out of the park.

Tiny had stopped her feasting for only a moment, lips and chin glistening, and she crooked her finger for me to join. I did.

We departed early in the am, my Muse barely able to walk straight, me unable to stop grinning like a loon. "Did you enjoy it…what she did?" I asked her in the quiet of our less glamorous, shabby hotel room.

"I did but I prefer your tongue over anyone else's. I know what I'm getting when I'm with you, and you're more than enough for me."

That was the closest she'd ever come to saying she trusted me.

Presently I shivered and forced myself away from that particular memory since I was alone and unable to work out my frustration.

No time like the present to check my messages, my cell phone, one of various sources of communication with the outside word. Of course it would be dead once I found it, and had to go on a five-minute hunt through shoes, garter belts, fishnets, mink wraps, t-shirts to find the charger.

Plugging it in, I dashed in the bathroom and got presentable. Washed the sleep out of my eyes, scrubbed the bacteria from my mouth, and cleansed my body to the point my skin was overly tight as if I had received a full body injection of Botox.

By the time I was done, I had enough juice in my cell to power it on and scroll through missed calls, emails, and text messages. There hadn't been that many. Just a text from someone I left behind on the pursuit to actually do something productive with my life. Before I left home, people only reached out to me if the person they really wanted to talk to couldn't be found, so I wasn't terribly surprised that I couldn't shake this one person.

I typed a quick, noncommittal response and shutdown my phone.

My Muse returned with two paper bags filled with burgers, fries, and milkshakes.

I cleaned off the kitchenette table despising we had to live in such squalor, but my Muse didn't seem to mind. She never complained, never turned up her nose—well not much. If there was a real foul odor then she would get to railing, but other than that, nothing seemed to bother her.

We sat down, ate our artery clogging meal in companionable silence. Intermittingly she'd suck ketchup off her fingers in an inadvertently suggestive way.

"Trying to get me hard?" I viciously bit into my quarter pounder with cheese.

"You're always hard."

I shrugged because denying the truth of her words would only make me out to be a liar.

"What time are we leaving for the boardwalk?" she asked.

"I was thinking we could head out around five. There should be less people and that'll give us a few hours of sunlight before dusk, Michaela," I tested out her new name.

She slurped from her straw and laughed. "Do you have a favorite Shakespeare villain?"

I had to think about that for a moment. Growing up, I read just about every last one of his comedies, tragedies, and historical plays, even the ones not as well-known such as The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Troilus and Cressida.

"Yes…Hamlet."

She sputtered, "Hamlet? Hamlet wasn't a villain."

"He may have been written as the protagonist but the dude was a whiny daddy's boy who drove his own girlfriend crazy, drove her to suicide then killed her brother and father in his quest to kill his mom and her new husband that yes admittedly plotted and had assassinated his dad."

"Well…I guess when you put it like that, but it was written as a tragedy and I took it as a lesson about what happens when you try to take revenge into your own hands. It doesn't end well."

"Can't say that was the lesson ole Bill Shakespeare was going for,"—she laughed—"but it's a good lesson, regardless."

"Don't you have something in common with Hamlet?" my Muse batted her lashes.

I smirked and judiciously decided not to answer.

My muse grew deceptively quiet. "I thought about it once."

"Thought about what?"

She hesitated before saying, "Suicide."

I stopped chewing, stopped breathing, sat my unfinished burger down and gawked. "Y-you…why?"

Her dainty shoulders shrugged. Her vibrant green eyes became dull, practically lifeless as she looked straight through me, seeing something I couldn't see.

"Why would you want to end your life?"

She leaned her elbows on the table, drew closer, the sweet smell of the chocolate milkshake on her breath, "Do you see a survivor when you see me? Do you see the depth of my sorrow? My survival is in the footsteps of those who came before me, runs through my blood, strengthens my skin; and my sorrow I carried in my hair, that's why I chopped it all off. I was alone in every way imaginable. I saw my father being murdered and couldn't stop it. I was only feet away when my mom was killed. My grandmother died in her sleep. My friends they didn't love me, not as much as I loved them. Orphaned, emotionally bankrupt and I wanted the pain to end. Death is the avenger to happiness and it courted me relentlessly until I gave it what it wanted…me."

"But you're still here."

My muse smiled, making her cheekbones pop, and grazed my chin with her sharp nails. "Am I? Or are you just dreaming?"

The question was asked with the kind of foreboding which made me speculate if she knew something I didn't. Like the audience being clued in on who the killer was before the detectives working the case. My muse slid out of her chair and onto my lap, hooking her arms around my neck. The warmth of her body soaked through my clothes, heated my flesh in response. So close to me and I couldn't think. Her essence always scrambled my brain like eggs.

With one hand I began unbuttoning my shirt, exposing her creamy brown skin. "I'm sorry about your family," I said sincerely. She merely blinked. "Your friends are assholes not to take care of a gem like you, be there for you when you needed them the most. But I'm here now. I'm not going anywhere."

"Everything is temporary."

"Not me," I asserted heatedly. "Not us."

She kissed me, just the barest press of her mouth on mine. "Are you looking to turn me into an honest woman?"

"One day."

"You mate for life?"

"Only with you."

"Why?"

I brushed the shirt off her shoulders. It fluttered to the floor and I greedily drank her in, in black and lace.

"Because," my hand reached behind her for the clasp to her bra. "We're two sides of the same coin. Cut from the same cloth."

Her shoulders moved as I worked the straps of her bra down her arms and it too joined the shirt on the stained carpet. Two globes rose and fell with every breath my Muse took. Her nipples were already puckering and I had yet to fondle or taste them. She had joked with me once that I could make her climax just by looking at her while spread out naked on a bed. She said my eyes were capable of touch just like my hands were. Of course I had to put that particular theory to test, and well the results had been conclusive. My gaze alone could get her off.

You could only imagine what that did for my ego.

Deft fingers sank into my shoulders and raked their way south. I returned the gesture with strokes along her ribcage that made her quiver, and cry out the minute I palmed a tit and rubbed her nipple gently.

Her eyes closed and her head fell back. "Do you feel like filming?" she asked.

"I do."

"Time to make another short."

I grinned. Anytime between us was never short.

A/N: Maybe continue later?