21 / devour
What is he doing what is he doing what is he doing...
"What are you doing?" he whispers to himself.
Driving home, his hands are tight and sure on the wheel, but his mind is busying itself into a panic. Bonnie droops in the passenger seat. She's drunk. His lips still sting from the sensation of her kissing them. His loins ache. He is imagining what he could do to her now that this threshold has been crossed, what she may have imagined him doing to her if she would go so far as to put her mouth on his. What does she want from him? What could he take from her?
He hopes he played it cool enough. She doesn't seem to suspect anything. The little twinges in his chest aren't evident to her. He doesn't know whether to let them show or keep his dumb heart safe. Maybe the less she knows about this part of him the better. He knows he can be manipulative, but she is just as crafty. The only difference is that she tries looking for the good in people before she decides to crush them. And once she's decided...that's that.
He still, on occasion, wonders if his fate is already sealed with her. She seems to have settled into this thing with him, but what if she's playing a long game?
One thing he knows...the days are getting warmer. Little by little. Soon the sap that runs from the trees will no longer be sweet enough to make syrup. The proprietors won't need them anymore. He's afraid of the shift, the time of change that is to come. After two decades stuck in one season, it is hard adapting to the seasons as they change. They won't have the cabin, for one, or a job, for two, but thirdly, what could it mean for their arrangement? For this living, just the two of them? Will she want to part ways? Will she want to go back home? She said she doesn't want to go back to Mystic Falls, but minds change.
He could do the terrible thing on his mind and swerve off course. Forget the cabin. Forget the goddamn syrup. He could drive them all night to someplace far and fearsome, make her his, keep her like a fledgling in a shoebox until she realizes she never wants to leave him. His pet. His prize. His very own goddess of the underworld. He would feed her figs and raspberries, see to it that she lived like a queen, drifting through the halls of their dark castle with Gemini spells on her lips. He would do his best to please her in any way she required. He would spoil her, so long as she stayed.
All he wants is...
What does he want?
Kai turns down the dirt drive to the cabin and ponders. Scores of trees flash by in the dark. It's nearly three in the morning. They've had their fun and not enough water. He looks over at her, sleeping, her head resting on the passenger door, bouncing with the motion of the car.
All he wants is her heart for himself.
To hand his heart, dripping with all its evil, over to her wanting hands.
Metaphorically, of course. If he didn't have a smattering of lives depending on the continued beat of his heart, sure, maybe then he'd physically give it over. Some kind of extra fucked up Van Gogh-type gesture. She isn't asking for that, he knows. But...he feels like something in her would like that. Some part of her she isn't completely in touch with yet. He has a crush on all of her, but especially the version of her in her anecdotes of having Expression. He wishes he could've met that Bonnie. He wonders if he could've siphoned the Expression from her when it became too much. What would it have meant for him? How much power...
He loses himself down-spiral in her stories. He was trapped for so long, it infuriates him, some of the things he's missed. But it does him no good to wonder.
He pulls into the driveway and turns the car off. When he opens the passenger door, he has to think quick and catch her careening body. She makes a surprised sound but doesn't fully register that she almost just fell out of a car.
"You're so wasted," he chides, and helps her inside.
The ladder is an ominous sight with her full weight leaning against him. He doesn't even want to try. He helps her to the couch instead, laying her down so that she's sure not to fall off of it, tucking her in under twice as many quilts as he would use when the couch was his domain. Before she starts her snoring, he fills a large jar with cold water and nags her awake enough to drink. Four gulps and he's satisfied. She's still younger than he is. The hangover will be easy.
He stands over her and watches as she falls back into instant sleep, sets the water jar on the side table, hands on his hips, catches himself biting his evilly grinning lip. He wonders how frowned-upon it would be to cuddle her. She looks so unbearably adorable, he could squeeze the life out of her with his affection. What is this burning in his mandible, the desperate urge to unhinge it and bite until he swallows her whole? He isn't a vampire. That's not his area of lust. Still, he wants to devour her.
The ring on her left hand catches his sight again. Quietly, he crouches and gently scoops her hand into his, looking at the ring but not so much the ring itself as the sight of it on her finger, his conquer, even if it is a sham. Would it be problematic? Surely it would be. He is problematic. He knows this about himself. If nothing else, he can take this from her. He plants his lips delicately over the plastic gem, feels her cold hand against him. He kisses her there, on the hand, over the ring, breathing in the scent of her lotion, her skin, her Bonnie-ness, letting his tongue touch down just enough to taste a patch of her, to be scraped by the damned plastic. A soft sound comes from her lips. Is she dreaming of him? Would she condemn him for this?
He isn't ashamed of what he's done. He tucks her hand under her blankets. He sets up camp on the floor beside the couch, wrapping himself in his own blankets, freezing again, inching like the worm he is as close to the stove as he can get without catching on actual fire. Settling into where he is and everything he's taken from her, he lets his eyes water as he stares into the fire in the stove, hoping she won't step on his head in the morning, but knowing that he will still be in love with her regardless.