Disclaimer: Not mine. Except for the fic itself.
AN: So, I've found out why they didn't let Bonnie and Rebekah interact in the show. It's because if they had, they'd have had to do a Bonbekah sexual tension SPEEDRUN. Remember how I said they'd probably develop only very slightly in this story? Yeah, no, apparently both Rebekah and Bonnie are too direct for that nonsense.
CONTENT WARNINGS: All the previously mentioned warnings apply.
*o0O0o*
*She's Come Undone and Set Free*
*Chapter 14 - One Door Opens, Another One Closes*
*o0O0o*
Bonnie knocked on the door quietly but didn't let herself be jittery about it. Just as she refused to jump in place when Rebekah drew the door open even before she could land the final knock, letting her arm drop and raising her eyebrow with humored judgment at Rebekah's clear attempt to fluster her.
"Rebekah," she greeted her.
"Bonnie." Rebekah's voice was a touch lower than Bonnie was beginning to get used to and she had to clear her throat to push down the instinctive spark of electricity that flashed through her veins and threatened to enter the visible spectrum when her magic rose with the sensation.
Keeping hold of Expression was still a struggle that was always at the back of her mind but during the past days, Bonnie was beginning to notice a difference in that struggle. Facing her rage and letting it loose against someone who deserved her wrath had sanded the inwardly pointed blades and she had a feeling that following her other suppressed hungers might help even more.
Not that this was the only reason she was here but- well it was simpler to think so.
"Can I come in?" she asked, keeping her own voice dry but deciding not to hide a touch of something tender-like that she knew was probably visible in her eyes. Was rewarded by a flutter of butterflies when Rebekah's smile seemed to soften in response.
"Sure," Rebekah told her and widened the doorway gap. Not all the way though. Bonnie's arm brushed against Rebekah's when she passed her.
She turned to face Rebekah again as soon as the door shut, enclosing them in the private space of her room.
"You wanted to talk about something?"
Bonnie let her eyes roam over Rebekah's form, - it was only fair, Rebekah had been running her own over Bonnie since the moment she'd opened the door - the blonde really was very beautiful. And the warning buzz of power that constantly reminded Bonnie that she was not only a vampire but an extremely powerful one just heightened the attraction she felt for her.
She wondered if it was the Bennett in her. She suspected the same sort of attraction had once caught Emily in Katherine's honeyed trap.
Bonnie refused to follow that lure to the same destination. She wouldn't tie herself to a Mikaelson as a witch. But she might let herself be ensnared in Rebekah's orbit as a woman. At least for a while.
There was a part of her that hated proving Elena's teasing right but. Okay. Yeah, alright, Rebekah was hot.
She was also surprisingly easy to talk to, and clearly just as interested in Bonnie, which- well, she needed that.
But she still let the moment solidify a little more, trying to decide if she really wanted this or if this was the insanity of living in Mystic Falls; the constant dancing on the edge of disaster that was now making a terrible decision look rational.
The answer to that didn't come. But the ways the air was nearly starting to catch fire in the space that separated her from Rebekah, made it very clear that Bonnie quite definitely wanted this.
"I have rules," she finally said once it was becoming almost unbearable, and removed the light button-down shirt she'd changed into after their messy game of impromptu tag from that morning, exposing the thin tank top beneath.
"Do tell." Rebekah's eyes darkened in a very gratifying way.
"No strings. No promises," Bonnie told her and slipped out of her sandals.
"Just fun?" Rebekah guessed with a tiny smile, - unknowingly echoing Caroline's suggestion to Bonnie - and erased the distance between them in a flash that ended with Rebekah's lowered face mere inches apart from Bonnie's. Not to be outdone, Bonnie pushed up her chin until their lips hovered just breaths apart and let her own eyes fill up with the same thirst she could so easily see in Rebekah's.
Her power thrummed under her skin.
There was something empowering about playing with fire, and something freeing in not quite caring if the flame singed her fingertips.
Rebekah placed a finger against the hollow of Bonnie's throat and trailed it slowly sideways, pushing the strap of her tank top aside and letting it fall down Bonnie's shoulder.
It seemed that Rebekah had a certain fascination with Bonnie's naked shoulders, she'd definitely been paying them a lot of attention.
Emboldened, Bonnie took hold of the zipper holding Rebekah's shirt closed in the front and slowly pulled down until it fell open exposing to the air - and to Bonnie's increasingly more heated gaze - Rebekah's dark red bra.
"A lot of fun," Bonnie said, more than a bit breathless.
It didn't help much when Rebekah's answer was to finally lean forward that little bit more and pull Bonnie into a kiss, the culmination of that anticipation felt like being caught in the eye of an inferno, her magic reacting in kind. The air filled with the smell of ozone, as something exploded behind Bonnie's turned back and covered the bedroom in a layer of feathers.
Rebekah didn't give Bonnie time to care about that though, just guiding her backward until her knees hit the side of the bed frame.
The one thing she did manage with the last of her higher brain function was mutter another silencing spell.
This next part was definitely not for the slightly too sensitive ears of her two friends.
Elijah was going through his contacts - reminding the living ones of the intelligence of paying back their debts or the value of earning a future favor from him - when someone rang the doorbell at the main entrance of the Salvatore mansion. He ended the latest call and walked over to open the door, seeing an unexpected visitor.
Elijah allowed himself only a moment of disappointment when it wasn't Elena that stood waiting.
"Miss Forbes, I did not expect to see you," he said, waving her in politely.
"I know," the young woman told him, face slightly pale but fragile stubbornness visible in the tightness of her shoulders.
"May I ask how you guessed that I-"
She snorted, "Please, your house is taken, Elena's is burned down," she sent him a keenly observant look before continuing "- not that you'd have chosen Elena's home for this anyway - where else would you have taken him?"
"You're here about the younger Mr. Salvatore," he added his own observation, deciding to ignore the knowing glint in the woman's pointed stare.
"I need to talk to him," she said.
Outwardly she looked calm, but Elijah couldn't help but hear the way her heart was beating heavily in her rib cage and notice the notable redness around her eyes. He could guess the subject that had brought her here and wasn't sure if the answers she'd get wouldn't harm her further. But as was getting to be a repeating case here, he well knew that this was not something that was up to him to add his opinion on.
"Of course," he said and led her into the foyer, "please wait here, I will have to give Mr. Salvatore some time to get... presentable."
She grimaced, nodding at Elijah, clearly guessing his meaning. But there was only a trace of grief and very little of any other emotion on Miss Forbes's face.
He left her behind, making two brief visits before his ultimate destination. One, a brief one to grab some animal blood - not at all adequate for quick healing but necessary when one was dealing with a Ripper - and another one to Stefan Salvatore's personal bedroom to grab the man a change of clothes.
"Get dressed," he ordered coldly, throwing the clothes at the feet of the vampire whose current apparel had long since largely burned away from his repeated dates with sunlight, and now hung in singed rags over his exhausted, trembling form.
"Why?" the Salvatore who Elijah now hated only slightly less than the man's brother, asked.
"Miss Forbes would like to have a word with you," he said and threw down the blood as well.
He looked terrible. Half-healed burns were visible on every exposed bit of skin she could see, cuts and bruises, and other painful-looking lacerations crisscrossing anything that didn't look like a burn.
Yesterday, Caroline would have been horrified, she'd have hovered over him and tried to help in whatever way she could. The impulse for it was still there, but she couldn't even quite manage to make herself go over to him.
"Caroline," he said, voice breaking - a distant corner of her mind wondered if that was because of what he must know Elena had told her, or because he'd spent long hours screaming his throat raw - "I'm sorry."
She swallowed.
"You knew what he'd done to me, Stefan," she said, her own voice empty. She had promised Elena that she wouldn't turn her emotions off but right now she found herself tempted again.
He said nothing, dropping his eyes to the floor as the last trace of doubt evaporated. He really had known.
"Were you ever my friend? Or was that just a lie meant to make you feel better?"
"You're my best friend Caroline," he told her. And suddenly she wished he'd said something else. She believed him, and it hurt more because she did. Why did it hurt more? Shouldn't it have at least felt like duct tape over the cut? But, no, instead Caroline felt like Stefan had just left an entirely new cut with those words.
"Shut up." She pressed her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes closed and trying to stop herself from understanding the full weight of his betrayal.
"If he ever did to you now-"
"I said shut up!" she screamed, rage rising to the surface again. "Do you think I didn't matter before you cared about me personally? That it was okay because you became my friend after? I was a person before I got turned, Stefan. And the fact that you'd have stopped Damon now? That's... that's worse, it means you could have stopped him then."
Caroline lost her battle with the flood of her pain, tears of both rage and heartbreak spilling over her cheeks as she glared at Stefan and made him watch what his old inaction had done to her.
And it was then that a carefully hidden truth hit her and her tears were cut short by a bitter laugh. Caroline had been on her way to falling in love with him. She hadn't yet gotten there - and she knew that now she never would - but all the elements for it had been waiting in the background.
With Elena out of Stefan's reach. And Caroline's feelings for Klaus allowed to gather dust? She could imagine that future. One where she'd never found out that Stefan had been keeping hidden his knowledge that Damon had been compelling her for sex as well as feeding? It could have happened.
She felt bile at the back of her throat again.
"I'm done," she said, forcing herself to regain the composure she'd come into this room with, and turned around.
"Wait," he said before she could leave "is Damon-"
Her back froze as Stefan's worry for his brother landed like a throwing knife between her shoulder blades. Her jaw clenched and she needed to take a moment to breathe away the agony from the blow.
"Better than he deserves," she said and then finished with a larger truth. "Better than he will be."
Then she left him and exited the house.
She took a minute to let herself break silently, biting into her wrist with her blunt set of teeth to swallow down this one last scream before she had to put it all away for some future time when she had the space and the strength to do it properly - and someone to hold her in their arms so that she could put herself back together too.
"I'm done here," she repeated, this time raising her voice so that the Original - who had politely left the premises far enough that he wouldn't be able to overhear Caroline's conversation with Stefan, - would know to return.
He returned with a flash of speed that was too great even for her vampire senses to follow and without comment offered her a handkerchief.
She let out an abrupt - and slightly wet - laugh. Elena had always been the Mom Friend of the group. Of course, Elijah Mikaelson would turn out to be the Dad Friend.
"My sister told me that you wished me to bring Mr. Salvatore to the road on the edge of town tonight around midnight."
"She did?"
"Did she not discuss this with you and E-lena?" he seemed to stumble over her friend's name in a way that made Caroline almost certain that he'd instinctively started with her given name, remembered that he maybe should have used 'Miss Gilbert' just as he always referred to Caroline as Miss Forbes, and then ultimately decided that it would be less noticeable an error if he finished Elena's name instead of trying to correct himself.
Caroline, of course, could have told him that there wasn't a way for him to have mentioned Elena without being incredibly transparent either way. Not when whatever moniker he chose came out in that particular gentle-sounding way. She decided to shelve the thought for some future date when she and Klaus's brother were no longer distant acquaintances.
A future that wasn't all that unlikely, what with all that she now knew about him and Elena.
"No," she told him instead, answering his question. Then she thought about it. And about that look she'd seen on Bonnie's face before Bonnie had excused herself from her own room and gone off toward the part of the house that held Rebekah's."Then again, I think your sister is... otherwise occupied."
His brows furrowed in confusion. Caroline just waved her arm like it didn't matter.
"But yeah, tonight should be fine."
"We will be there," he said. And then looked at her more directly. "Before you leave, Miss Forbes, I should inform you that my brother called to ask me to make sure that you are well. I did call him back with the assurance of your physical security after my meeting with Elena but... I don't think my brother will believe it until he can hear it directly from you yourself."
Caroline felt her breath stutter and made herself think about it.
Hearing Klaus's voice, even if it was through the phone again might... it might help. But would she be able to hide the things she didn't want him to know yet?
Her heart clenched like it always did, reminding Caroline again that she missed him. But her heart had proven to be so very dumb, on so many occasions. And, anyway, she'd already called him once, he had his own drama to deal with in New Orleans.
She opened her mouth, trying to come up with an excuse when "I'll call him back," came out instead.
Rebekah lay stretched out and boneless over the mattress, too satisfied to be bothered by the tickle of the feathers from the three pillows which Bonnie had blown up at the very beginning, and that with the intermingling of sweat and... other fluids, now lay glued to her skin in random places.
She had to give it to Bonnie, that truly had been a lot of fun.
"Did you make us float there at one point?" she wondered aloud.
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," was the answer that came, it was paired with the tingle of breath hitting her stomach, making the muscles under it twitch. It tickled. This time it was Bonnie who was using Rebekah's chest like a pillow.
"Liar," she hummed and then yawned loudly. She definitely remembered floating having happened somewhere in the middle there.
"I never said that truth was one of the rules," Bonnie shrugged.
"I'm adding it," she threw back immediately "No strings. No promises. No lying."
"Fine," Bonnie said, laughing a little under her breath and making Rebekah smile secretly toward the ceiling.
"Fine."
"Maybe there was some floating," Bonnie admitted and then added a not particularly solid-sounding argument "It might have been all those feathers."
"Uhuh," Rebekah said, injecting the appropriate amount of doubt into her tone. Considering what Rebekah had been doing with her mouth at the time she was pretty sure the credit went to her. A different question to ask struck her then, and she grinned, wondering how Bonnie would change the subject on that one to avoid a lie. "So, I've been thinking, what exactly did you, Elena, and Caroline talk about a few hours ago?"
She felt Bonnie moving her head and looked down to face a very unimpressed stare. Rebekah lifted her eyebrow.
The witch who Rebekah was very quickly starting to like more and more made an exaggerated face of surprise at her. Rebekah followed her gaze and looked on as Bonnie peeled one of the feathers that were stuck to Rebekah's upper torso off her skin and said "You need a shower."
Clever.
She smirked and moved her own hand to fish a few other feathers out of Bonnie's curls. "Well, will you look at that, so do you."
*o0O0o*
AN2: I know some of you probably aren't happy about Caroline's revelation about Stefan but... well, I'm having Caroline deal with things and it just felt incomplete not to address that particular elephant.
Alright, now for a question I have for you guys.
We're basically nearing the end of the story (there's a bit left (I'm thinking 3 or 4 chapters) but I've basically almost done with what I set out to do). BUT I do plan to do what is basically three epilogues to wrap up the Elejah, the Klaroline, and the Bonbekah and give them the endings I think they deserve (an 'in the following years' sort of deal).
My question is this. Do you want me to add those epilogues to the main story or do you think I should post them as three separate one-shots and make this into a series? The contents and length of the epilogues likely won't be affected by what I end up doing.
The reason I haven't decided yet is that those epilogues will carry an entirely different kind of pacing than the main story which might feel weird tacked on to this one. But on the other hand, there's a high chance that more people might miss those epilogues if they're not part of this story.
Anyway, let me know what you think I should do if you have a preference.