Part 10: Clock's Ticking
"That was….completely embarrassing," she said on his chest. Her heart rate was back to normal, and his hand was still trapped between her legs.
"Looked like it felt really good to me."
"Oh, it did," she confirmed, closing her eyes. "It really did. But it was embarrassing. I sounded like…." She laughed. "I sounded like I had a speech problem. And I couldn't control my body. It was amazing," she sighed.
"You were amazing."
"You were amazing."
Tyler tightened his embrace.
"Oh my God, how long have we been in here?"
"Don't know, don't care."
"Well, you should." She sat up straight and turned to look at him as she got up, and she noticed his boner. "Uh…"
"Uh, we'll save that," he said, and he stood.
They went into separate stalls to clean themselves up.
"I don't think we should let another week go by before we do this again," Tyler said.
Bonnie smiled in her stall and hummed.
When they met at the sinks, Tyler held out her underwear. "Hold on," he said when she made to grab it. He held it to his nose and smelled the crotch. The wolf flashed in his eyes.
"Tyler!" Bonnie chastised and grabbed his forearms. "I've been wearing that all day."
"I'm an animal, Bonnie," he said, and the smile he gave her was characteristic of just that.
"Oh my God." She shut her eyes tight.
"It smells-"
"Don't say good. Don't lie."
"It does smell good. It doesn't smell like something you'd bottle up and put in the perfume aisle, but that doesn't mean it doesn't smell good. It's….heavy. Intense. Raw. It smells like your vagina. But, you know, over the day."
"Okay, that's-okay. Your eyes changed."
"I told you."
"You're a freak." She stepped closer and quietly asked, "Do you want to keep it?"
He grinned. "I'll take the next one."
She smiled, her heart thudding. She took the undergarment from him and put it on. They then washed the lower half of their faces and swished water in their mouths. They scrubbed their teeth with their index finger to get rid of any leftover blood. Bonnie washed her neck where she'd been bitten and then stuck her tongue out. Nothing she could do about that part.
Tyler scrubbed his arm where he'd bitten himself and then he scrubbed underneath his fingernails.
As he washed his hands, he ruminated on a startling truth: he'd wanted to Mark her in the stall. And he still wanted to. He wanted all of her, all of the time, and he wanted everyone to know. He, Adrian, and Kim had talked about Marking during the rest of the drive last week. He'd learned a little about the process from a section of the cave drawings, but the Betas had further enlightened him.
He started to blink excessively when he remembered that biting was one way to Mark a mate. But he'd been biting Bonnie to feed. Buthe had also wanted to claim her in that heated moment, and he'd spoken it, and she had said yes in so many words, a very key aspect of Marking.
He sent up a silent prayer that his status as a Hybrid didn't exempt him from the lycan rules for Marking. While a bond couldn't be chosen because it was cosmically emotional and, at base, tied to power, a Mark could be helped, and he felt that it was something that Bonnie needed to know and willingly submit to before he did it.
If he had accidentally done it, however….he wouldn't exactly lament it. He was positive that Bonnie liked him as more than a friend.
"Uh, got any on your clothes?" he asked as he turned off the faucet.
Bonnie's answer was stolen by the loud groaning of the pipes running behind the toilets. One stall, then all three. The fixture creaked and then the first burst, and the toilet bowl with water.
"Crap." Bonnie turned off the faucet and grabbed her phone, and they ran out just as the second toilet malfunctioned.
"What is up with that?" Tyler asked when they got to the stairway.
"I have a good idea, but I can't worry about that right now. Klaus is priority number one. I need to fill you in on what happened at his house, and then we need to go over the steps to kill him."
"Okay. You said you'd work on it over the weekend."
"I did. That's what we need to talk about. I had to give him the sword, Tyler."
He swallowed. That meant that Klaus knew that the sword had been stolen. "We should meet at my house. You said we should spend some time there," he reminded her with a small smile.
Bonnie smiled. "I have my powers back. The clock's ticking. Klaus is way too close. He needs to die this weekend."
He nodded, and they descended the stairs and broke out into the late afternoon. Bonnie didn't stop running. It felt good to run. The air felt fresh, cleaner somehow. Her sense of smell was sharper. She was smiling, and then she was laughing. She was happy. She was bright-eyed and energetic, and she ran faster.
Tyler ran after her, a little confused as to why she was laughing, but he was happy to see her looking so carefree.
They slowed to a walk when they got to the building housing the gym and stepped inside. "Should we go in together?" Tyler asked.
"I don't know. I have no idea how long we've been gone. It feels like an hour." Bonnie took off at a jog, and Tyler followed alongside her.
If they'd been gone for an unreasonable amount of time, there might be questions. It would look a little odd that he'd asked for space and Bonnie had gone off with Stefan and Damon, only for the two of them to come back together. He wasn't prepared to lie. Or rather, he didn't care to lie.
They entered the gym, and Bonnie looked for her messenger bag. It had been removed from its place by the chair that held the bags of balloons. Tyler tapped her arm and pointed to where Caroline had moved it: next to where laid her own bag as well as his backpack.
"There you are," Caroline said as she walked up beside them.
"Yeah," Bonnie answered as they walked to her bag. "Where are all of the balloons?"
"Popped," Caroline answered. "All of them. At the same time. I've sent some people on an emergency run, because we don't have any backup red ones."
Tyler wanted to tell Bonnie that the balloons had popped when she'd screamed for him.
"Well, I can't stay to blow them up. I need to go home." She picked up her bag. Boldly touching Tyler's chest, she said, "I'm showering, and then I'm coming over."
"Uh, coming over for what?" Caroline asked them.
Bonnie took her hand off his chest and looked at her. Tyler answered, "To talk about the Klaus situation."
"Oh perfect, I'll be there, too."
Bonnie and Tyler stared at her. Tyler forced himself to speak, "Uh...we've kind of talked about this."
"That me knowing is a risk? There's not telling me things, and then there's actively shutting me out when I'm telling you that I want to know and want to be there for you. I didn't even know you'd gone to the explosion site, Tyler. I didn't know you'd stolen from Klaus. I found out all of this with everyone else. I'm telling you right now that there is no risk. I want to be a part of this. Every conversation." She turned a challenging look on Bonnie, who calmly turned her attention to Tyler.
"Uh….yeah. Sure," Tyler answered. He was blinking a lot slower than he needed to.
"Perfect, then," Bonnie answered. "I'll see you guys in like an hour and half, maybe two. Where's Elena?"
"Damon called her, so she left," Caroline said. "He said you….went in another direction." She looked at Tyler and what she'd been considering in the time it had taken him and Bonnie to return to the gym solidified in her mind. They had met up.
"Okay," Bonnie said. "See you guys later." She turned and headed for the door. She hadn't had time to think of doing anything with Tyler at the meeting later, besides going over the spells to weaken Klaus for the kill, but Caroline's inclusion made her roll her eyes as she walked. At the door, she turned and scanned the room for April. She was gone.
"So, are you staying here, or are you heading home?" Tyler asked Caroline.
"I was thinking of staying a little bit. We can hang out here until Bonnie's ready. I don't think I'm going to the dance tonight."
"Why not?"
"You still want to go?"
"Not really, but I know how important this stuff is to you. Me not going is no reason for you to stay home."
"Well, I wasn't thinking of staying home. I was thinking of sleeping over tonight," she said as she stepped closer and played with the lapels of his jacket. "After what happened today, I just...I'm not in the mood to party."
He nodded. He hoped she didn't smell any leftover scent of the blood. "I can't hang out here. I'm gonna head home and shower, too," he said as he bent down to pick up his backpack.
Caroline did a half nod and blinked. That was a nice coincidence, that Bonnie needed a shower and now he did, too. She wanted to ask him what he needed to wash off. Instead, she said, "I'll delegate here, then, and go home to grab my stuff."
Tyler blinked and nodded. "I'll see you there, then."
"Tyler, wait. What took you so long to come back?"
"We were talking. About Klaus, about how the Kol story had gone. I didn't realize so much time had passed."
"It's been at least ten minutes since Elena left," she said with a shrug of her shoulder.
Tyler nodded. "I'll see you later."
Caroline stood very still as she watched him leave. For the first time, she considered the very strong possibility that Bonnie and Tyler were actually sleeping together, that it wasn't simply a question of Bonnie being into him or him being into her anymore, that they weren't simply talking and stealing and going places to do God knows what in their secret partnership. She knew what. She was pretty sure she did.
She turned from the exit after Tyler crossed it, and something about Bonnie came to the forefront of her conscious.
The bruise on her face was healed.
A/N: Alright y'all. Caroline's gonna call a spade a spade in the Lockwood home. But is she going to go off on Bonnie or Tyler? Put your guess in! It's already written, and the chapter is hella long.