A/N: yet another self-indulgent AU from yours truly; this time Bonnie finds out she's addicted to Siphoning and we all re-establish that we're trash. enjoy! (you can also find the story on ao3!)
You can become addicted to powerlessness. It's really easy. You just take his hand.
Bonnie had read about Siphoners before in one of Grams' spine-cracked books, but she'd thought of them as an obsolete myth, an underwhelming Boogie Man for gullible witches.
She never realized they were real and not such a bad thing, relatively speaking.
Kai Parker is definitely bad, though.
She just – she knows what she's doing, okay?
The first shock is when she leans into his choking hold.
She doesn't mean to. Rationally, she should be afraid, but fear does not operate within reason.
Kai Parker jumps from the backseat and takes hold of her arms. He wraps his hand around her throat and slides his cheek against hers, but only faintly, like being tickled by the fuzz of a peach.
"Shhh, shhhh, shhhh," he quiets her. "It's time go home, Bonnie."
She stares into the rearview mirror and sees something strange in her eyes - a kind of elation. Maybe it's the adrenaline. But she's a witch. She knows better.
She should be afraid or disgusted. But his touch is like a drop of water on a hot stove. She remembers, out of nowhere, the theory of the communicant vessels she was taught in school. No matter the shape or volume of the connected vessels, the liquid settles equally everywhere. His touch is like that. Gently and uniformly, magic leaks out of her and pours into his waiting fingers.
She doesn't want to go home, not yet.
She leans into his touch and issues a small moan, eyes fluttering shut.
Kai speaks querulously into her ear. "You're not actually enjoying this, are you?"
He sounds pissed – and curious – and hungry.
Bonnie doesn't reply. She doesn't move. Her chest rises slowly under the pressure of his arm. She'd like to stay like this a little longer, even if it's wrong.
Kai lets go of her and slinks into the backseat, staring down at his hands.
He always makes the people hurt when he touches them. That's the rule. That's the trick. That's his whole power.
He stalks out of the car with a cold smile. "Get ready for the eclipse."
The second shock is when, during their not so cordial Thanksgiving dinner, they shake hands on a deal to split the Prison World in half and she doesn't let go of his hand, instead twines her fingers with his and stares down at their hands and just lets a shudder go through her arm and her entire body.
"God, that feels good," she hums, unable to censor herself.
The knife he kept behind his back slides from his grip to the ground.
He – he definitely can't kill this one.
This is every forty-something-stuck-in-a-teenage-body's dream: a beautiful, powerful, and essentially good witch who can't get enough of his touch.
In fact, she wants him to touch her everywhere.
It's not even – I mean, it is, but it's also not exactly - sexual.
It's weirdly transcendental. It's magic.
"I know you're awful, but I don't want to think about that. It's so nice not to have all of this inside me," she tells him by way of explanation, and he wants to understand. She is attached to her magic, yet there is a surplus, a tension, a prodigious power that needs a conduit.
Bonnie is lying on the couch as he experimentally runs his palm over her bare thigh. She lifts her leg up and her jean shorts ride up temptingly. His fingers slide under, but stay within bounds. She sighs happily. "Keep going…take as much as you want."
That fucks him up.
Take as much as you want.
It's not a good idea to give him free rein.
But somehow she knows he won't deplete her because that wouldn't be any fun.
He doesn't even touch her cunt and she comes really fucking hard right on the couch with his hands chastely scrubbing her calves of magic.
Kai stares, open-mouthed, at the young girl wracked by pleasure whose skin pulses red with his theft. Her toes curl and she pushes her feet in his lap, rubbing against his own painful erection.
He doesn't find relief. He'd really like to kill a living thing, just to even the balance a little. But maybe he doesn't need to do that. Maybe it's okay to make someone feel this way.
He puts his hand over her small feet. He caresses her skin, but not in order to take more magic. Just because.
They go for a swim in the abandoned pool, but the water is too cold, so they stick close for warmth, or at least that's their excuse. She wraps herself around him and they hold onto each other, her head on his bare chest.
Kai has never embraced someone like this and he doesn't know if he's doing a good job, but she's not complaining. How weird to hug someone who once flung a pickaxe at your chest.
"If we go back to the real world, will you kill a lot of people?" she asks, shivering with guilty joy as magic laps back and forth between them, like waves on water.
Kai shrugs into her hair. "I mean, only if they give me a hard time."
"That's kind of a given. You'll probably have a lot of enemies."
"Do you want me not to kill them?"
"If they're my friends, no. I don't want you to kill them."
"But if they're not friends of yours?"
Bonnie squints up at him. He's doing a valiant job of not looking at her breasts under the see-through t-shirt.
"Technically, you shouldn't kill anyone. But…the supernatural world is kind of a jungle. I mean, I've lost count of the times I've already died."
Kai frowns. She shouldn't sound so cavalier about it. His grip tightens. "Who – who killed you?"
"It wasn't always a person, per se. Sometimes it was me. I overdid it. I gave too much."
"You're giving right now," he says, looking down at their arms around each other, the magic pouring in and out.
"Yeah, but this is different."
He wants to ask her why it's different, but Bonnie pulls his face towards her and kisses him on the lips for the first time and that definitely shuts him up.
She's probably doing this to get more direct contact. Not because she actually wants to kiss him. But he'll take it.
She's an addict. She runs her hands through his hair as he sucks on the salty skin of her neck. It's going to leave a mark.
The way she's straddling his lap is downright obscene. What would Grams think? What about Elena and Caroline?
Would they be okay with the way she's unzipping him? Would they ever imagine Bonnie Bennett going down on her knees like that? Sure, she plays submissive a lot, but this is a whole other meal.
Kai stutters, afraid of coming too fast. Her mouth on his cock is the last thing he expected. His fingers card gently through her hair, reverent.
"Bon – aghhh – I'm not gonna last – I can't– please –"
He sounds like a young boy who desperately needs her approval and she gives it as she quickens her pace and laves him with her magic and feels the saltiness exploding on her tongue.
He can't help sinking his hand in her hair this time.
The night before they leave the Prison World, he makes dinner again, but it's not entirely edible. They drink cheap wine and play some 90s jams, to which he knows all the lyrics.
They leave the doors open and the music filters out into the empty night and they sit down on the porch together. The stars are always so bright on this eternal day, as if part of an elaborate fever dream. She's not sure, in fact, that she isn't dreaming, that she isn't hooked to some IV, stuck in a deep coma, unraveling her own fantasy.
But there's something real about this, she's sure.
At least the mosquito bites feel real.
She chases them away. She won't allow anyone or anything else to consume her.
Kai is telling her about his favorite Atari games. She pretends to listen, and sometimes she does. He's a strange figment of a person, more human than most.
He is her instrument, but she doesn't feel like she's using him. At least, he wants to be used. If she had to break it down, what he really does is take the pain of power away. She doesn't have to be anything. They can swap the magic, they can share the burden. They can make the weight feel like less.
An Atlas made of two people.
She leans into him. Kai wraps his arm around her, soaking up everything she gives.
"You know, I almost feel normal," he mumbles against her forehead.
"Me too," she mumbles back.
"I never thought I would. It's not so bad, being disgustingly average," he remarks philosophically.
"Yeah. It can be nice once in a while."
"Definitely beats being an abomination," he muses with worn-out humor, but she knows he's still aching for revenge and hurting and one day, that hurt will spill out. But they're communicating vessels, so it will be okay. She knows about anger festering inside. She can take it.
"Let's not tell anyone, though," he adds.
Bonnie shakes her head. "Oh no. We wouldn't want them getting any ideas."
And she can feel the warmth of his gaze, the overpowering feeling of gratefulness because she has allowed him to feel halfway decent.
He doesn't know how to express that gratitude. He's not sure if this is love, seeing as he never had much recourse to it.
"Say…do you know how Seinfeld ends? I figure it's not still running in 2014."
Bonnie frowns. She makes an effort to remember. That show was always running in the background at the Gilberts' house. "Actually, I think they all end up in jail in the last episode."
"Huh. Jail, you say? I wonder what that's like."
She laughs, full-throated, and this time he's the one who kisses her. And it's not just an exchange of magic anymore, and maybe it never was.
She knows she's an addict, okay? She knows he's bad news.
But even if she doesn't know what she's doing, she knows she wants to keep doing it forever.