Songs

Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (Q-Burns Abstract Message Remix) - The Pied Pipers, Johnny Mercer

Santa Baby (DJ Sleep, Alexkid Remix) - Earth Kitt

The Christmas Waltz - She and Him

Hypnotic (Vanic Remix) - Zella Day

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (Charles Webster Remix) - Ella Fitzgerald

14

He talked a lot of shit, but Kai loved Christmas. Bonnie could tell. He ripped off his shirt right in front of everyone just to put on the sweater she bought him the minute he unwrapped it. It was a knit Christmas sweater with patterns of bloody broken gingerbread men. And he loved it. He was so giddy about the sweater he almost knocked over her spiked egg nog.

They sat beside each other on the floor, near the fire. The couches were dominated by babies, Jo and Alaric, Caroline, Elena, the brothers… Enzo and Sarah were there. Matt and Penny would be on their way, and maybe Tyler Lockwood. It seemed to be Kai's instinct that he was under unspoken banishment to the floor, and so Bonnie joined him there. She didn't care if it looked suspicious. It was Christmas morning; red, green, blue, yellow and purple lights twinkled on the tree and from lit garlands embellishing every appropriate surface; the snow fell hard outside; there was so much shimmery tinsel lying around the house she worried someone would have a seizure; the kitchen island was stocked full of holiday cocktails, tiny pumpkin tarts, gingerbread cookies; it was the babies' first Christmas and a ton of pictures were being taken…it was a great day, and Bonnie had a mouthful of grinch-related insults waiting for anyone who had a problem with her sitting next to Kai.

As Stefan doled out the gifts from underneath the tree, Bonnie could already tell she was getting more presents than Kai, so she started letting him help unwrap hers. She was surprised by the amount of gifts she had, and the sizes of them. There was a huge rectangular box left behind from Nora, she couldn't possibly guess what was inside.

She got a tattered book on Haitian Vodou and a small textbook on public speaking from Alaric, a poorly crocheted scarf Jo made for her during the two weeks she took up the hobby out of boredom, a first edition Oxford dictionary from Damon that she was actually excited about, a blank diary from Stefan, a canister of her favorite loose leaf tea and a monogram mug from Elena, a thousand dollar gift card to Victoria's Secret from Caroline (which was a gift she chose for all of the women in the room and because Bonnie loved lingerie shopping, she decided to let this one example of immoral compulsion go), and from Kai a pair of green Beats headphones with a walkman and a burned CD, scribbled on with the words, the Bonnie mix, hiding inside. She couldn't wait to listen.

Nora's gift turned out to be a neoclassical dress box with a practically antique dress inside. The colors were so rich it had to have been made for royalty, Bonnie thought. Normal people didn't wear such bright pink and gold. There was a note lying over the top that said I hope you enjoy playing dress-up as much as I do. Caroline squealed and made her take the dress all the way out, hold it up against herself and pose for a picture she took with her cellphone and sent to Nora.

Bonnie returned the dress to its box, curled up back in her warm floor spot next to Kai and joyfully, finally, got to taking the first sip of her eggnog.

And she practically gagged.

"What did you spike this with?" she called out scornfully after forcing the sip down her throat.

"Damon's good bourbon..?" Caroline answered, having trouble unwrapping a big espresso machine while looking at Bonnie like her drink-mixing skills couldn't possibly be the problem.

"There's something wrong with your good bourbon," Bonnie choked at Damon, trying to swallow enough of her own saliva to wash down the aftertaste. Kai took the drink from Bonnie's hand and tried a sip.

"Maybe there's something wrong with your taste," Damon jabbed, looking directly from Bonnie to Kai, who swished his gulp around before swallowing it with a vague scowl.

"Maybe there's something wrong with your face," Bonnie mocked Damon, a cheap insult reminiscent of old times.

Kai shot Bonnie a look, but it wasn't related to Damon's comment, or hers. There was slight concern in his eyes. She didn't know what his expression meant and he didn't say anything to explain it. He looked away and gulped down the rest of her eggnog before she could ask what he was thinking.

There was a massacre of wrapping paper all over the floor by the time anyone noticed the pair of small presents still waiting underneath the tree, wrapped in Halloween paper.

"Oh my god," Bonnie said out loud when Stefan held them up for observation. She recognized them to be the Christmas presents Kai slipped into her suitcase forever ago. She completely forgot they existed. She thought she'd left them in her…suitcase…which was gone but…had been emptied and re-packed before the camping trip…so, "How did those get there?"

"These are yours?" Stefan asked, stepping over heaps of crumpled wrapping paper to bring them to her.

"Uh, yeah." Bonnie held her hands out and took the gifts, then looked at Kai. The small smile on his face was telling. "Did you—?" she began, but didn't know exactly what to accuse him of.

"I found them in your suitcase when I packed it for you. Figured you forgot."

"I did," she nodded, overly assuring, hoping he didn't think they were left unopened for any other reason. Although part of why she forgot them in the first place was because she was in too much mourning to unwrap them the previous Christmas.

"Well open them."

Bonnie took a deep breath. "Okay," she agreed, bracing herself. She felt like the whole room was watching her, but when she looked up nobody was. The cleaning process had already begun, Stefan collecting empty eggnog glasses and Caroline stuffing large handfuls of wrapping paper into a trash bag.

Bonnie tore into the first gift, a thin square box the size of a CD. When she lifted the lid, however, a strange and ravishing brooch stared up at her. She noticed then how the box hummed subtly of magic. A closer look at the gold band and the smattering of crystal-like shards fused around it made her shiver. There was something familiar about the materials…the shards looked more like broken glass, softened and tamed to be worn. Tiny gears were set sporadically between them.

"I made it," Kai said.

It reminded her of something, hauntingly.

"With the pieces of the ascendant," he added.

Bonnie couldn't speak. It was a dark gift to give her. Beautiful, but frightening. Heavier than it looked, in both physical and emotional weight.

"It's…" gorgeous, she couldn't say. "How did you do it?"

"I dicked around in the back of a Cartier boutique when I went Christmas shopping."

"And you…this…just like that?"

"I can be crafty," he said defensively. "Wanna wear it?"

"Later maybe."

"You're right, wear that later," he said, and lowered his voice in her ear to a husky, stimulating, not-quite-whispering, "And only that."

She shivered and elbowed him in the collarbone. "Perv."

Jo was watching them. And this, sitting so close their knees touched, whispering in each other's ears now and then like they had a world all their own and no one else was invited…it was exactly what Jo didn't want to be seeing.

Bonnie sat up straight, hardened her features, cleared her throat. She held the second gift in her palm, nearly as small as a ring box, almost too anxious to open this one. Jo watched patiently, bouncing Josie on her lap, and Alaric, catching on to his wife's hawklike surveillance, clasped his hands together and also watched.

Bonnie clawed the weakest corner with her forefinger and shed the small box of its wrapping. She bit her lip as she cautiously lifted the lid.

To her consternation, all that lay inside was a single pair of socks. Baby socks. Soft mint-colored teensy little socks with black contour cabbages smiling.

"Oh…"

"I forgot I grabbed those," Kai said. "Yeah…weird…I shouldn't've…I got them to convince you back in the…you can throw them away."

Bonnie felt her cheeks heat up. She didn't dare look at Jo.

"Awww!" Caroline squealed from across the room, having noticed what was in Bonnie's hands.

"What?" Jo seared. "You got the socks to convince Bonnie to do what?"

"Here, I'll take care of it," Kai muttered, reaching for the socks. But the minute his fingers pinched onto the little cotton toes, she pulled them away from him.

"It's okay," she said, "They're cute."

Something raw was swelling from Kai's energy beside her. She thought she felt him scooting closer but he didn't actually move.

"Yeah?" he breathed, looking her over.

Bonnie nodded, zoning out on the carpet as she kept her focus on the socks in her left periphery, and Kai's hovering astonishment in her right periphery.

"It shouldn't be legal…how cute they are."

She felt his breath, almost. She felt his thoughts, meandering like hers back to that field where they chanted together in the wind because he wanted to put life in her womb. She felt suddenly sick.

"Paris is dorky," Kai said in regard to the cute socks.

Bonnie flattened the socks over her knee, running her thumb on the soft stitching and remembering things, trying to ignore the unexpected flop her stomach had just performed.

"Weren't there three presents?"

Kai screwed up his eyebrows and shook his head, "Just two."

She nodded, even though she could've sworn there were three gifts. Or perhaps the mourning had warped her memory. She felt too nauseous to argue.

Staying at the boarding house under the same roof as Kai for the duration of the holidays and not being allowed to slink off into his bed at night was beginning to wear on Bonnie.

She liked to think of herself as a woman with too much self-control to stress out about how honestly horny she'd been feeling the last week. All she wanted was to be naked with him. All everyone else wanted, it seemed, was to keep them apart.

Bonnie kept finding that she and Kai were being dragged in different directions every minute of every day and maybe she was crazy but these separations felt plotted. The day before Christmas Eve, they had tried going out for lunch at the Grill but right before they left, Stefan and Damon beat them to it. "Last minute Christmas shopping," Damon had sneered at Kai. In other words, Kai couldn't leave the house. But it would be okay, or so they thought. Naturally, since they couldn't go out for lunch, they sneaked up to Kai's room and started making out on the bed. Then Alaric burst into the room with a screaming baby. Bonnie and Kai had practically blown apart like repelling magnets. "I need to get out of here, Bonnie, let's go Christmas shopping," Alaric begged with no attention paid to the fact that he just saw her with half her boob under Kai's palm and their faces melded together. Bonnie just shook her head and agreed to go, knowing Ric was put up to the interruption against his will.

It didn't stop there.

On Christmas Eve, Bonnie and Kai had planned to meet in the garage and try sex in the Firebird. On her way there, Bonnie was stopped by Jo who apparently needed her help picking Christmas day outfits for the girls. Later that night, after the house fell dark and quiet, Kai slipped into her room but before anything could happen, they both received a group text from Stefan that said: Did anyone else just hear Santa Clause? Meaning that he had heard Kai leave his room, and everyone in the house who had a cellphone was on the alert and probably confused. It bothered Bonnie more than it bothered Kai, and the idea of lighting a privacy candle came up but she felt too weird knowing that everyone had already guessed what they were up to, whether or not it was audible. Why Kai hadn't cloaked himself before even thinking about going to her room confounded the both of them.

Caroline and Elena seemed oblivious to what Bonnie and Kai had taken to calling the Cockblock Initiative in their texts. Bonnie was sure, too, that if she mentioned it to either of them, her friends would be on her side. They would help her get laid if it was the last thing they did. But she didn't want to involve them in what was either a ridiculous fiasco or a ridiculously paranoid delusional nightmare.

Over Christmas dinner, or rather under it while nobody was looking, Kai texted Bonnie from across the table:

Kai: i'm gonna murder the next cockblocker.

Bonnie: Don't.

Kai: I have three kinds of knives in front of me.

Bonnie: Maybe we should just wait until the holidays are over. The minute I get home, you sneak out. They can't get us there.

Kai: i'm not giving up. i will fuck you, soooooon.

Bonnie: No murdering.

Kai: i miss you.

Bonnie: I miss you too.

Kai: we're gross.

Bonnie: The grossest.

Kai: 8 days.

Bonnie: ?

Kai: 8 days since penis in vagina.

Bonnie: Sext tonight?

Kai: can't. will cry.

Bonnie: Pictures?

Kai: give me.

Bonnie: Ask nicely.

Kai: give me pictures now or murder.

Bonnie: Not nice.

Kai: hard to be nice with a boner the size of eiffel tower.

Bonnie: Patience. ;)

Kai: 8========== ~

Bonnie: Rude. Who taught you that.

Kai:..

Bonnie: Grow up lol

.

Bonnie: Seriously

.

Bonnie: Goodbye. Eat your dinner.

Kai: i would but it's in your panties.

Bonnie: You're hopeless.

After dinner, Bonnie sprawled out on her guest bed with new cherry tea brewed in her new monogram mug sitting on the bedside table, new walkman flat on her belly and new headphones on her ears. The rest of her presents sat in a neat pile on an armchair beside the door and Shakespeare curled up on the bed next to her feet. She had gathered a few candles from around the house and lit them with brain waves. Her room, though filled with haunted Salvatore antiques and otherwise impersonal, was the perfect shade of dusky orange and shadows. Bonnie thought herself quite good at creating ambience.

She pressed the play button on the walkman and Kai's mix began. She pulled her phone out of her pocket to text him.

Bonnie: Listening to your mix.

Kai: and liking it?

Bonnie: I'll let you know.

Kai: did you find the tracklist?

Bonnie: Where?

Kai: taped on bottom of walkman.

Bonnie put her phone down to inspect the CD player, and found nothing. Her phone buzzed a second time.

Kai: cloaked.

Bonnie smiled and whispered to the underside of the walkman. A square, folded up piece of notebook paper appeared.

Bonnie: Got it.

She unfolded the paper and read his crappy handwriting.

Bonster,

Here are just a few songs that make me think of you. Don't read too much into it.

-K

P.S. You're hot.

THE BONNIE MIX

1.) nine inch nails - closer

2.) depeche mode - barrel of a gun

3.) pearl jam - yellow ledbetter

4.) deftones - you've seen the butcher

5.) nine inch nails - discipline

6.) divinyls - i touch myself

7.) soundgarden - pretty noose

8.) marilyn manson - man that you fear

9.) nirvana - rape me

10.) radiohead - all i need

11.) ween - i fell in love today

12.) elvis depressedly - crazier with you

13.) eels - fresh blood

14.) nine inch nails - 13 ghosts II

15.) VAST - flames

Bonnie: Lots of nine inch nails

Kai: i missed lots of good stuff in 1994

Bonnie: You're kind of a romantic, you know.

Kai: sick.

Bonnie: So…I less than three you.

Kai: i know. i got your stupid voicemail.

Bonnie: oh

Kai: and i sent the stupid finch.

Bonnie: I know

Kai: jo is making me clean

Bonnie: Sad face.

Kai: pictures. now.

Bonnie: Maybe when you're alone like a normal person.

Kai: what is a normal person

Bonnie: Don't open it yet or I will kill you

Bonnie sighed, admonished herself with a quick shake of her head and lifted her shirt. She wasn't wearing a bra but she tried to give herself some cleavage when she held her phone up and took a picture. Hesitantly, the picture was sent and she started questioning herself.

Kai didn't respond until well past the last song on the CD played, and by then she was half asleep and too deeply touched to move.

She was stupid.

She was so stupid.

Kai was so helplessly in love with her. It was truly terrifying when she thought about what it meant.

What would happen when he left?

On New Year's Eve, she caved.

In the eleventh hour, she decided she would not stand to listen to the countdown, to watch all of the couples in the boarding house kiss in the new year while she stood stiffly on the opposite side of the room from Kai just as tense.

The babies were asleep in their crib and Jo and Ric were drunk on the couch fondling each other, Stefan was lost in Elena's attention by the ambient Christmas tree, music was playing but not too loudly, Caroline had an empty champagne flute in one hand and her bright cellphone in the other when she called out to the room, "Fifteen!" Damon rolled his eyes and stalked off to the bourbon decanter, "Fourteen," Matt and Penny laughed from somewhere in the room, "Thirteen," Kai was draped over the throne dropping his cellphone on his chest to look up for the eyes she hoped he could feel on him, "Twelve," Bonnie unzipped her hoodie and stepped out of the room, "Eleven," Enzo and Sarah were holding flutes and a bottle of champagne at the ready, "Ten," most everyone was already buzzed on cheater bottles of champagne from earlier, and no one would notice if two people… "Nine!"…slipped out… "Eight!" ….one by one… "Seven!" Caroline's voice was getting softer in the distance as Bonnie jogged to the top of the stairs. "Six!" She didn't look behind but she felt him, terrible and hungry, near.

"Five!"

She turned into her dark room and gasped when she ran into something hard.

"Four!"

He was already there, grabbing her arms and pulling her in. She kicked the door closed.

"Three!"

She wanted him more than he could've known. She yanked back harder than he pulled.

"Two!"

His back slammed against the door and it rattled. He panted through his open smile.

"One!"

New Year's day. Kai didn't find it as exciting as most people. For them, it was a brand new start. He could never seem to get one of those. But maybe this one would be different.

After all, he'd never woken up on the first day of a new year in the warm blanket twists of a restless sleeper like Bonnie. This was certainly a New Year's first.

He thought back on the midnight he just had. Her warm hands stripping him before herself, all in a frenzied kiss. She took control of him that night and he let her. She pushed him into the door, she pushed him onto the bed, she straddled and pushed herself onto his anxious dick. For once it felt like she wanted him as bad as he wanted her. She was already wetter than hell for him. Once he was inside her and her hips were slamming at a feverish pace, it was difficult to care if anyone came looking for them. Let them wonder. Let them search. Let them see. Of anyone, he hoped it would be Jo. She needed a lesson on how real this was, this thing with him and Bonnie.

He had listened in on his sister's advice and he needed, respectfully or disrespectfully, to disagree. If he was going to snap on anyone, it would be the next person to tell him that he wasn't good for Bonnie. He knew it well enough on his own and he didn't need to be told, but the fact that other people seemed to think he would actually harm her again just pissed him off. Normally with everyone expecting the worst from him, he loved to prove them right. Because what was the point in proving people wrong? What was the point in proving your worth to anyone? Whoever needed the proof wasn't worth his time.

But with Bonnie involved, it was something else.

Maybe he was just as wrong.

Maybe he was good for her. Because he was the one who upheaved his life so she wouldn't have to risk hers keeping Jo safe. He was the one needed to get her help when she was stuck in 1994 on her birthday, and he almost died getting it done. Not that he complained. He was the one opening her eyes to the witch community, her own kind. He was the one she chose to kiss at midnight. He was the one she was fucking.

No one else.

"Be my girlfriend," he had said when she rolled off of him, sweaty, skidding her wetness and his own cum down his side.

She laughed from her pillow, "What?" and he repeated himself, adding, "I just want to live a disgustingly normal life with you." To which she frowned and took to gazing at his lips for a moment. "Boyfriend," she said, leaving the word alone to hang out between their mouths, maybe trying to imagine it.

Her teeth had left an indent in her lips when she finally said, "Ok."

Now he felt he was in fragile territory. Because if he did something wrong, there was something for her to break. On top of that, he was supposed to be moving the coven elsewhere. What if he had to be the one who broke it?

He sat up in bed and she stirred with a sleepy moan.

"Good morning, girlfriend," he whispered, petting her hair.

She asked him to bring her coffee.

Kai hopped downstairs and into the kitchen to find that coffee was already made, and his sister was standing at the kitchen window in her robe with a mug in hand and the curtain in the other, watching something.

It was the way she stood that startled him. She didn't like whatever it was she was looking at.

"Hey, sis," he said, his voice quite loud in the emptiness of the early morning and Jo jumped, almost spilling coffee on herself. She looked away from the window long enough to roll her eyes and sigh at him.

"What are we watching?"

Kai approached the sink to hold the curtain for her and see what she was seeing.

Two obvious vampires, standing in the shades of the pines and talking to each other while they looked out, right through the house. Their faces weren't familiar, but their behavior was.

"They've been standing there for fifteen minutes, they know something's here."

"They can't see us, chillax."

"And the sun is up. It's day out, Kai."

"They have daylight rings…" Kai mused out loud in annoyance. That any other vampires out there walked in the sun with the help of witches agitated him. They didn't deserve the privilege.

"Jo…I want you to rejoin the coven."

His sister looked away from the window to scold him.

"Now? We have a problem here."

"I'll take care of it. But sissy…"

"I'm not even a witch anymore."

"Sure you are. Just without magic."

"Regardless, you must be out of your mind to ask me that."

"Why? We're family. It's only right that we—"

"I'm not an idiot, Kai. If I join, Josie and Lydia get looped in. And my daughters are not going through that fucked up merge."

"Josie and Lydia could be the future leaders of the coven, it's their destiny."

"How can you say their names, knowing what would happen to them? I dreaded that merge for half my life, so did Lucas and Olivia. God, they don't even have their own magic, Kai. It wouldn't work so go have your own doomed children and ruin their lives instead, please."

Kai raised an eyebrow and mentioned something as it came to mind. It was genius, really, He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it already.

"It would work if they're Heretics. Then the one who loses doesn't even have to die."

Jo closed her eyes and raised her coffee mug to her forehead like a cool rag.

"No, Kai. Just no."

"I just want my family back. I want us to always be together. Don't you miss that? Holidays in a full house like this, god damned witchy woo all out in the open, no vampires… And the merge…sucks, yeah, but it's tradition, Jo, it's the way things have always—"

"I said no!" Jo spat, her eyes flaring at him. She was devoid of magic but he could've sworn he felt a spark.

Kai cracked his jaw. Final answer? he wanted to ask, as he fantasized about grabbing his sister's hair and bashing her forehead against the window, just like old times.

He bit his tongue to hold himself back and nodded. He walked out of the kitchen, grabbing two stakes from a rack that hung on the wall, and went outside to purge.

Feeling refreshed and thoroughly sexed, Bonnie wrapped a robe around her happy body and wandered out to help Kai make coffee. It was a cold white morning, perfect for keeping close to another warm body, or as close as she could get before the hungover house started waking up. She shivered as she padded down the stairs, thinking she would have to sit by the window and read a book when she got home.

She passed the front door on the way to the kitchen in time to catch it opening. A gust of frozen air fogged into the foyer, making her pull her robe tighter and cross her arms. Her heart spiked when she saw the front of his shirt.

Red. Red. Red.

Blood splattered Kai's chest. Snow flecked his hair. He held two dripping stakes in one hand and gleams of satisfaction in his eyes, even as they rose to meet Bonnie's.

All she could think, quietly within herself, was that horrific word.

Boyfriend.