Wednesday came and Bonnie felt on edge all day. Each time she tried entertaining herself with magic, it came out weak in parts and too strong in others. She had gotten used to her weekly encounters with Kai, and now that she had nothing to look forward to or expect, her day felt useless. Since their last intense conversation, his magic hadn't even skimmed hers on jogs. She had the chance to sleep uninterrupted, yet her body conformed still to the clock he set her on and she found herself waking naturally to the ultramarine color of four thirty in the morning. Only there was no thrill to rise for.
She didn't get very far into the afternoon before she decided that she couldn't change her body's schedule. The trauma of the blood loss and the high of the following heal beckoned. She was addicted. She was going to Kai's house, and she was going to hold him to their arrangement. He probably didn't mean what he said anyway. He was the kind of person to lash out, to make brash statements he didn't mean if it served a temporary purpose. Bonnie imagined herself arriving at his doorstep, offering blood he couldn't resist and falling victim to that frenzied embrace yet again.
Strange.
Imagining his arms around her in that desperate way, she realized for certain that she didn't actually hate it. Her shameful fantasy convinced her. Next time it happened, maybe she wouldn't bar her arm between them. Maybe she would let the feed take over her just as well as him. Something akin to flattery swelled in her chest when she thought of how lost Kai got when he fed; how frantically he held onto her; how needed she was; how wanted she felt. Perhaps letting herself relish this didn't have to be far off from enough, enough to justify giving him so much of herself.
His house swelled with malice.
Bonnie clopped up to his door in a carefully chosen set of heels. To hell with standards; she needed a little leg to apologize. And anyway, she wore grey jeans to balance out the impression of effort, tight as they were. She knew they rounded out her ass nicely so even they had a counteracting clothing item: a shapeless white sweater. And it didn't dip into a V or a shoulder-rider at any point. The sweater was deterrent at its purest.
"I told you not to come," he said when he found her anxious on the porch.
"I chose not to believe you."
"Ballsy," he simpered. He was barefoot in sweatpants and a black shirt that swanked his shoulders. His hair looked cared for but he was unshaven and Bonnie couldn't tell if he actually thought she wouldn't show up tonight. He assessed her for a cruel moment.
"So…are you going to let me in?" she prompted.
"Oh, did you want to come in this time? That might be a problem. I haven't cooked, the place is a sty, and also I'm a horrible person."
Bonnie sighed heavily and said, "I'm sorry I hurt your feeling."
"Thanks? Ouch again?"
"Are you hungry or not?"
Kai glanced again at the dry purple bite on her neck, the infected looking evidence from last week's feeding. She noticed a vein of thirst betray him. He backed into his house and walked away, leaving the door open for Bonnie to let herself in.
She followed him into the kitchen. He was pulling a frozen pizza out of his freezer and eyeing the instructions on the box. She noticed a cellphone sitting out on the island. "Is that a cellphone?" she asked, going to pick it up.
Kai laughed. "You're not the brightest crayon in the box, are you?"
She ignored this insult. "Why do you have one?"
"Do you not?" he asked, turning a dial on his oven.
"No one to call," she jabbed.
Bonnie clicked the backlight on to find that his lockscreen background was a picture of a celebrity in a red bikini. "Really?" she chided, holding up the phone.
He smirked. "The combination is 552444 if you want to go ahead and make yourself my only contact. Or do I need to ply you with liquor first?"
Bonnie suppressed a smile. She did still have her phone. Out of habit, she'd searched for it soon after landing in the prison world and found it at the Salvatore house. She was hanging on to it but hopelessly kept it in a box in her bedroom closet and rarely looked at it. She would never admit to having tried calling Jeremy and Caroline with it in times of need, to no answer.
"I haven't even looked at my phone in…forever," she said wistfully, trying not to reminisce.
He repeated, "552444."
Whether or not to give Kai her number took little debate. In the real world, an instant and solid No would suffice. Now, here, she had a choice but keeping her number to herself was dumb. She unlocked his phone and added herself to his contacts.
"Are you actually doing it?" he asked in shock. "Wow. I was expecting to be the last man on earth and still not deserve your number."
She offered him a self-loathing smile. She was glad that he was glad, but she hated that he had to rub her flimsy dignity in her face. "You can still ply me with liquor," she admitted, hoping that he would. He smiled at her, satisfied, and then prepared her a glass of gin on ice.
The pizza was finished and they sat with their plates on opposite sides of the island. Kai was not prepared to sit through another minute of false patience. He chomped off half of a pizza slice in one bite, chewed thoroughly while wiping his hands on his napkin, washed down the bite with a swig of iced gin and announced, "Let's get down to business, shall we? What do I have to do for some femoral?"
Bonnie grimaced and spat an ice cube from her mouth back into her glass. She hadn't been in the house for more than twenty minutes and it was already all about the blood. Kai knew she would hate it. He knew he should've waited for a better segue way to present itself. But she had an answer: "Die and go to heaven."
He considered this. "Check," he said.
"You're literally in hell."
"I will literally kneel before you." She raised a brow and he continued, "Seriously. I'll do anything." He suppressed a smirk, hoping that she too was now picturing him kneeling before her with his face buried in her thighs. The image alone stirred the boiling hunger for blood in him, among other things, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek.
Bonnie cut herself a bite of pizza with her fork, speared the bite and pointed at him when she said, "Try chopping off your dick so you can't make it weird. Then we'll talk."
Kai blended a sigh and laugh together. She said 'Your dick.' It was funny. "I told you that was involuntary."
"Same rules apply."
"Bonnie…" he groaned, readying himself to beg.
She threw her hands up. "French cigarettes. From France. Bring me those. And I'll think about it."
Kai found this resolution so amusing he could hardly contain himself. He clasped his hands together showed her an open mouthed grin. "You don't even smoke."
"I don't hang out with psychos either. Yet here we are."
This he found quite a bit less amusing. With just a minor shift in his posture as her warning, he reached across the island for her resting arm, grabbed hold and let the burn of a siphoning expend her. The wave of magic entered him through the soul and he breathed against the wonderful feeling. Bonnie's magic, despite her constant unease around him, was full of love. It was so kind and strong that even a monster like him couldn't hate it. Every time he took some from her, part of his consciousness drifted off to a distant time when he did feel loved, by his mother and his sister. Pressing his lips together, he watched Bonnie's eyelids flutter over eyeballs rolling back into her head from the pain, her teeth bared. This was wrong. He let go.
Bonnie ripped her hand free and let it boomerang swiftly across Kai's face. He was a vampire now and his body remained unaffected, but he wouldn't deny that if he were still human the slap might have knocked him out of his chair. Hiding how impressed he was behind a glare, he turned his reddened face up, debating whether to discipline her for this.
"You know I hate that," Bonnie snapped.
"You know I'm a sociopath, right?" he drawled.
"You know I'm your only friend, right?" she retorted harshly.
Kai's guard fell down in pleasant surprise. He was in just enough control of himself not to gush. However angry, Bonnie brushed the exchange off and continued eating her slice of pizza.
"We're friends?" he asked, needing to hear her confirm it for his own pleasure.
"Fuck," she said with her mouth full and rolled her eyes. "I miss eating dinner with people who aren't you."
"Wish I could say likewise." He shrugged, "You're the only dinner I've ever had."
She ignored this comment. "I miss restaurant food," she said, starting to sound frustrated.
"So walk into your favorite restaurant and use their shit," he suggested. It was kind of a no-brainer.
"Can't cook," she admitted.
"You can learn. You've got time." His thoughts drifted momentarily upward to the ascendant hiding neatly in the drawer next to his bed.
"I never thought I would say this," Bonnie started, "But I miss having a schedule. Somewhere to be. Something to do. Nothing I do matters here. Nothing is expected of me."
Not true.
"I miss bad weather. Snow. The cold. Storm clouds, thunder, lightning and rain."
She said the word rain like the name of someone she loved dearly and lost. He could see the emotion in her, crawling out of everything about her in that moment. In that moment, she couldn't hide. She went on listing the things she missed, and Kai wanted to feel bored but hearing her pour herself out to him, whether or not she meant to, caused unwarranted sympathy. Pay attention.
"Birds. All animals, honestly. Even the bad ones. I miss life, and congregation. God, I miss Caroline. If she was stuck here with us there would be a party every weekend."
Thank god we're alone.
"And I miss Elena."
The mention of Elena turned Kai's mood. All of this was his fault, but the fact that even in the real world Bonnie had things to suffer for, also because of his doing, kicked up an unfamiliarly strong cloud of guilt.
"I wonder what he told her," Bonnie mused. She had stopped touching her food. Most of her pizza still sat on her plate but it was clear that dinner was over.
"Probably goodbye," Kai answered.
"I bet his guilt eats him alive," she said hopefully.
Mine did.
"I bet she doesn't even know, honestly."
"Elena?" Kai clarified.
"Who else?"
"You must be confused," he treaded carefully. "Elena's still asleep."
Bonnie tapered her eyes at him. "What?"
"The spell isn't broken."
She stared at him, dumbfounded.
"What, you thought just because you left her plane of existence she got to wake up? The point of my father putting me in the prison world was to punish me without killing me. You may be dead to the world, Bonnie, but you're not dead. Elena sleeps. I thought you knew that."