Note: Thanks to everyone who reviewed, entertaining the audacity I had to start a new fic, lol! Excited for ya'll to get into this!
Enjoy xoxo
PT II
when you're alone with me
you never come up short
Straight after milkshakes as the sun was doing it's last rounds, Tyler and Bonnie took Gush, an overeager black Labrador for a walk.
Living in Mystic Falls meant living on the edge of a vast forest that encroached onto everyone's property. At the back of the Bennett house there was a low gate that swung open to a thin pathway leading into the trees.
Bonnie only walked this path when she had company, something her parent's had drilled into her from a young age, and even without Mrs Friedman, Tyler counted, so the two set off into the woods. They walked for a while with Gush on his leash, trotting obediently, but frothing over every new addition to the plant-life surrounding them.
"I'm gonna finish packing before the dance." Bonnie was saying as she took the leash off of her dog, letting him power forward happily.
"If you even slightly feel like not going, I'll ditch too." Tyler vowed.
"First of all, you're on the committee-"
"Which means, what exactly? If I don't want to be there, I won't be. They don't own me."
"You got this far, you should see it through." Bonnie advised, quirking a brow at him, and he rolled his eyes in return.
"I don't believe in doing anything purely under obligation anymore, it annoys me." Tyler said with a sigh. "I'm more interested in the things I actually want to do."
"Like what?" Bonnie said with a grin up at him.
"I don't fucking know, I got a backbone like a week ago, I'm still figuring it out," they laughed. "I was...though, sort of thinking about something."
"What?" But Bonnie was distracted by Gush's excited barking. "What is it, gush-gush?"
The dog kept barking, as it stood in front of a tree stump.
The two of them walked over to inspect it and saw a circle of crystals surrounding blood-splatter in the middle.
"Jesus-" Tyler immediately pulled Bonnie behind him.
"Should we call it in?" Bonnie wondered, peaking from around his shoulder. Gush nudged the back of her leg with his nose.
Tyler lifted a hand, hovering a palm over the collection of objects, lowering it.
"What are you doing?" Bonnie whispered, fretting.
"I don't know, it's warm."
"Warm?" Bonnie frowned, pulling his hand back. "We don't know what it is, Ty. Don't touch it."
"True." The boy replied, still eyeing the stump in front of them.
"I'm calling the Sheriff." Bonnie decided, reaching for her cellphone in her pocket.
The stump began to distort and a loud buzzing, like a loose current of electricity, began to zap at the center, causing them to jump back.
They could only watch at the tree stump twisted and bent, the crystals lifting and orbiting above as the wood cracked open, splintered and crumbling below.
"What the-"
"-actual fuck." Tyler finished for her. They stood frozen still, with Gush barking again, as the crystals rose a little more and came to hover above Bonnie's head. Startled tears pricked at the edges of her eyes as she watched Tyler's emotions play out across his face.
"Don't move," he said, one hand on her shoulder, the other, rising shakily to intercept one of the stones.
"What the hell is happening?" Bonnie gasped.
"It's kind of arranged as a crown-"
"A crown?-"
"Hang on, I'll take them off."
"Don't hurt yourself-" she worried her bottom lip between his teeth, her nervous hands at his waist, gripping the muscles there, for reassurance.
"Rather me than you," Tyler murmured under his breath, and Bonnie closed her eyes, bracing for impact.
A loud burst of wind came howling through the forest, circling the three of them, frightening them.
Tyler gave up on the crystals, and decided instead to simply cradle Bonnie to his chest as they rode out whatever it was.
Her hands wove around his middle soon after, and she buried her face in his chest, breathing hard.
The wind disappeared as suddenly as it came, but they stood like that, holding one another for a while longer, just in case.
All they could hear was Gush's low growling and their rattled breathing.
Tyler opened one eye, and watched Gush bare his teeth at something far off between the trees, the dog guarding Bonnie from a crouch. The tree stump was gone, so were the crystals.
Tyler's eye caught a flicker of light in the distance where the dog's attention was caught and something looked back. Chills burst all over his skin.
Bonnie's hands pulled back and he looked down at her, trying to gauge her expression.
"Are you okay?" He asked, but she seemed dazed. "Bon?"
"Yeah," she said swallowing, nodding as he tilted her face up to his. "I'm okay."
"Let's...let's go back inside." He decided, taking her hand, whistling for Gush to follow them. He took one last look over his shoulder, to convince himself that they were alone, but all it did was heighten his feeling of being watched, and he tugged Bonnie a little faster down the pathway back to her house.
Abigail was sitting on a stool beside the marble counter in the kitchen, when the two of them walked in through the back door.
She double-tapped the photo Bonnie had posted of Tyler squishing his face up against Gush's, with their garden in the background.
"Stay outside, Gushy." Bonnie said, shutting the door. Taking her shoes off, she put them next to Tyler's and watched him hug her mother hello.
"Have a good walk?" Abby wondered, folding her arms when Bonnie walked right by her instead of hugging her as well.
"It was more of a run," Bonnie spoke as she stuck her head in the fridge. "Can Ty stay for dinner?"
"Sure." Abby said, smiling at the boy who mouthed "thanks".
"Thank you." Bonnie said, a forced smile on her face, as she ticked her head up at Tyler, who followed after her as she went up to her room.
Abby watched them go, and sighed long and loud when she was alone in the kitchen again, feeling the quiet fill up all the empty space around her.
Hearing paws scratching against the ground, and ready to berate Gush's war against her flowers, Abigail hurried out the back door, curse-word at the ready.
She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw that, in the hole the dog was digging, was a pile of crystals.
With closer inspection, she realised that they were blood-binding crystals and ran back inside, grabbing the meat-mallet from the drawers and rushing back out.
Shushing Gush, and maneuvering him out of the way, she piled all the stones together and lifted the mallet, smacking the weight of it over and over until all that was left was a fine powder that she got into a pile. With one of the smaller shovels, she lifted the pile up and tossed them into the mouth of the fire pit. Making sure she didn't have any eyes on her, she looked back down and exhaled.
"Incendia." Abigail muttered, eyes lighting up with the colour of red and orange flame, as she turned the pile of crystal dust into ash, cleansing her and anyone else who'd come into contact with them, she hoped.
"Are we gonna talk about what happened in the woods?" Tyler began, as he shut her bedroom door behind him.
She'd already packed up most of her room; the lilac walls were bare, her records were all gone, along with the player and her guitar was in it's case. All of her clothes were in boxes, and true to form, she'd hung up all of her outfit's for her last week in Mystic Falls.
"You are such a Virgo." Tyler laughed, unable to stop himself, watching her dig through her art supplies.
"Here," she said suddenly, her voice serious and distant, drawing him closer. "Look familiar?" She asked.
She'd sketched herself, months ago by the date scrawled at the bottom, eyes shut, hair twirling in a phantom breeze, as the same crystals hovered over her head.
"Weird." Tyler decreed.
"No kidding." Bonnie said, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.
"Maybe you're a witch." He half-joked.
"Then where are the rest of them?" Bonnie wondered. "...the rest of the witches?"
"in a cave somewhere, chanting by candlelight."
"You watch too much TV." Bonnie said, putting her drawing aside.
"Okay, don't freak out. Supernatural shit always happens to people in small towns, in ways they can't prove or simulate, and now, we're just added to the list of people that have seen weird shit." Tyler said with a shrug. "Could that have been alien-related?"
"Maybe." Bonnie said, frowning as she threw her hands up. "Nothing like that has ever happened before."
"And the odds of it happening again, in the four days you have left here...are pretty slim."
"Fair. But-"
"Bon, nothing is going to happen to you. I'll be like the Kevin Costner to your off-key Whitney Houston."
"That's not funny-"
"I wasn't joking," Tyler said lifting his brows, "Have you heard you sing?"
"Shut up. I'm scared." She said, wrapping her arms around herself.
"And I'm saying I'm here." He said, smiling earnestly down at her, as he pulled her closer. "We can be scared, together."
"Was it really me kissing Caroline that stopped you from picking up one of the thousand times I called, or was it him?"
"What am I supposed to do without you?" Bonnie wondered, not really thinking about the consequences of that kind of question.
They were young. High school didn't matter much in the greater scheme of things. A year and a half apart wouldn't end their friendship.
But it wasn't that she wouldn't survive the distance her parent's were putting between them, it's that she didn't want to.
Tyler blinked a few times, and then pulled away, and a part of Bonnie's heart burst, and deflated, like a screaming balloon, as it tore away from the rest of her heart, to spiral down, to the bottoms of her feet. The pain was instant and inexplicable.
"Sorry...I didn't mean, I- fuck." She turned away from him, her heart pounding with pain and embarrassment. "So stupid," she turned, ready to denounce ever having felt a human emotion when she jerked back, surprised at how close he was standing to her.
She'd never seen that look on his face before, never for her.
"I was going to fight this question until my dying day, before you asked me that," he said, his voice low and gruff, his hands flexing helplessly as they hung at his sides, almost itching for something.
"Ask me." She said, because she'd be honest. Too honest, probably.
"...Can I kiss you?" She hadn't expected that.
She was nodding before she even knew what was happening. Up on the balls of her feet, she tipped her head back, and held his gaze as they closed their arms around one another, pulling, feeling. She felt the front of her body hit his, his fingertips dancing at the nape of her neck, the goosebumps running over his skin under her touch. Barely a few seconds had passed as their mouths neared one another.
There was a loud knock on the door, her father no doubt, that tore them apart.
Rudy Bennett, in his six foot plus glory, swung her door open, already talking, bespectacled eyes glued to his iPhone screen,
"-so I said who knows, I've never met a kid who didn't like pizza, but I know you," Rudy said looking up, "Tyler. Good to see ya son," he stuck out his hand, paying no mind to the flush permeating the boy's skin.
"Mr Bennett." Tyler said, making sure to grip the man's hand soundly.
"Does Bonnie still like pizza?" Rudy asked, smiling at his daughter before his gaze went back to her friend. "She's changed her mind about a lot of things lately, you see. So I wanted to be sure."
Tyler looked to Bonnie, but she had her gaze fixed on the floor.
"Pepperoni and mushroom, extra cheese." Tyler said after an awkward beat of silence. "It's her favourite."
"Excellent." Rudy beamed, "Keep this door open, I know you're both invested in the sanctitude of heterosexual relationships, and I fully support that, but I'd ask her to keep the door open no matter who was inside here, just to keep some kind of decorum in place. You understand, I'm sure." Rudy said with a wink, and Tyler put his hands in his jean pockets, unsure of what to say. "Oh," the man bent at the torso, having forgotten, "Which pizza would you like?"
"The same as Bon is good."
"Gotcha." Rudy said, eyes back on his phone, swinging the door shut behind him.
"Whoops!" He laughed, opening it back up and leaving them looking after him as he chuckled down the hallway.
"I think he's lost his mind." Bonnie said quietly after a while. "He's always talking these days, but he never really says anything anymore. You know?"
"My father is the mayor of this stupid town. Of course I know." Bonnie nodded, her mind elsewhere.
"Can we talk about that?" Tyler wondered. She looked up at him, a little confused, and too far away.
"I'm moving at the end of the week, and after break, we're both going to have lives away from each other. I can't lose any more of you than I'm already about to." Bonnie said, reverting to her sensible self.
"So...we're not going to kiss each other? Ever?" Tyler asked.
"It's not what I want anymore." Bonnie said, and Tyler nodded, gesturing vaguely behind him.
"Yeah, your dad mentioned something about that." He said, with a small sigh.
"Don't be a dick." Bonnie huffed, crossing her arms.
"Not really my style." Tyler agreed. "I know the timing is shit, Bon. I get that. But high school isn't forever... we might be." Her eyes filled up at his words.
"Then we'll get through this, won't we?" Bonnie said, pulling her sleeves past her hands, walking around him. "Let's go see what's on TV."
Stefan was sitting outside, long after sunset, eyes shut. Praying.
Well, that's what his father had always taught him to call it in case someone asked, but he knew what it really was.
He was casting.
His brother Damon had killed twenty-four students before skipping out of the ensuing chaos, only to be found later the same day, and gunned down in his bedroom.
So Stefan had taken to cleansing that house from top to bottom, even after his father had moved them out.
All the way next door.
He didn't want anyone else to be hurt by what had destroyed their family.
There used to be five of them.
His father Giuseppe, his mother Lily, his older brother Damon, and his younger brother, Enzo.
But only he and his father survived the thing that lived on in the house.
And now someone was going to move in over the weekend, and get drawn into the nexus of magic that ruled there.
Lily's magic.
Stefan's chest expanded as he cast spell after spell, letting waves of magic roll off of him, and into the house.
A light goes on, in Damon's room. Stefan feels it before he opens his eyes to see it.
His older brother stares back at him, ink black hair hanging over most of his face. But the gaze connects them, and holds them suspended.
"I miss you." Stefan says.
Damon disappears.
"Dinner's ready!" Giuseppe calls out to him. "Get inside here!"
As he stands to leave he doesn't see the figure of a woman appear in the kitchen window of his old home, watching him.
A/N: Lily is a wild one! Reviews give my muse wings!
Stay excellent xo