He tried not to hate the fluidity with which she moved about the house.
Sunlight peeked in from outside, untouched by yesterday's magically manufactured rainstorm. If he was guessing, he'd say it was six thirty. Seven at the latest. Whatever it was, that sun would be giving them its all. It was the prime time for sneaking out.
He lay on the couch where she left him after slipping out from underneath his sleeping form. The first shiver of wakefulness across her skin had in turn awakened him but he continued to play sleep, making himself heavier on purpose to give her a good hard time getting up.
He listened to her lithe body cut the air through the hallway, peeking just in time to catch the bottom of her tight ass turning the corner and he grinned. He heard the rustle of her clothes, only half dry, being picked up, her change of breath. She stayed gone a moment and the ascendant just upstairs crossed his mind. Bonnie didn't strike him as the snooping type, but she did tend to be the unpredictable type at times. Her quickening heartbeat sounded louder in his ears as she rounded by the couch again and he heard her padding on the tips of her feet into the kitchen, the familiar sound of the cap on his Tanqueray being unscrewed, followed by a sloshing. A swallowing. The cap's replacement.
He had been wondering if she had a problem; more often than not, though she exuded no motor evidence, she reeked of liquor. Now he was certain the shooters he dumped out of her purse the day before weren't packed for the road but simply an accessory, something he could probably dump out of her purse on any given day. He would have to decide later whether to ignore her habit until she got over it on her own or throw her an intervention party. She'd like the latter for sure.
The inevitable swishing and creaking of her approach to the front door filled his ear and it was time to make his move or let her leave. It was both cute and enraging how sneaky she obviously thought she was.
"Double cappuccino," he said from the couch. All movement halted.
He stood and advanced toward her, valuing the doe-in-headlights look on her face yet he couldn't help but burn in the notion that she should feel closer to him by now. After last night especially.
"Excuse me?" she said, narrowing her eyes. At least she wasn't trying to act innocent.
"You're going to pick up breakfast, right? I'll have a double cappuccino. And a donut. Oh, wait…you weren't sneaking out, were you? That would be so awkward. I mean considering what's done is done and the only person you can admit to later that you slept with the monster who ruined your life is, um, me, the monster who ruined your life."
He crossed his arms and she crossed one leg over the other, pursing her lips at him in uncertainty how to respond. He wanted to maul those lips out of their pout.
She had changed back into her own clothes. They were wrinkled and still damp; he could smell the rank aroma of old rain coming off them.
"Why don't you just walk home naked? No one will notice," he pressed.
Uncomfortably she clutched her bag to her stomach and lowered her eyes. It was unlike her not to spit a tart retort back at him. Something was bothering her. Something had her down. He opened his mouth to say another crude thing when she flitted forward and pecked him on the cheek. Feeling the heat of an embarrassing blush rising to his cheeks, he suppressed the wide-mouthed grin trying to tear through his face and looked at her sternly.
"What's that for?"
"Let's get breakfast," she proposed, her face just as stern.
"I can't," he said, gesturing toward the sunniness outside.
"Think you can make it rain again?" she asked.
He considered this. An invitation to both siphon and eat breakfast with his favorite girl sounded like a good morning indeed.
"For you? I can make it snow."
She bit her lip as she stepped forward. He reached for her shoulder and faltered, suddenly unsure which patch of her skin to pull the magic from, where to touch her, where to hurt her. Now that he was officially welcome to siphon, he overthought it. He felt confused by her demeanor. At last he chose the typical surface of her arm and gripped both in his hands, drumming his fingers over her soft skin trying to ignore the weight her energy threatened. Her magic, normally so hot, ready and hardy, felt dim. Wilted. She felt dying. But she was very alive before him, pushing her bottom lip out and looking down, anticipating pain. He wanted to disappoint the expectation this time. The promise of power to course through him, however, trumped all softness. Plus, wouldn't she look so cute in a scarf?
He tightened his fingers and squeezed her, concentrating on the whirl of humming inside her. Like a breath he pulled her power into him. Unusually, it left him feeling feather-light and paper-thin.
"Why are you holding back?" he asked.
"I'm not doing anything," she insisted without feeling.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"You're lying."
"So?"
He jerked her in his grip, trying only to shake the magic out if he could and realizing too late that he was being violent and it wasn't okay with Bonnie. Yet the jolt of fear it aroused in her enlivened her magic as well. He could feel it climbing to the ends of her nerves and out of her skin, a slowly waking creature seeping out from its cave within her, called to action by distress.
He closed his eyes and concentrated harder. With all his might he scoured her body, the pained sounds of her protest just barely breaking through like a bell in the distance. When he opened his eyes again, she was a panting heap of bones before him and the light coming in was no longer yellow but white.
Fucking gorgeous magic.
After a short stop at a department store where they could each grab a decent winter outfit, (hard to do while the store was stocked for summer), they made use of the tools in a local café where they would then sit to enjoy the fruits, or rather coffees, or their own labor. From the display case, Kai stole two chocolate muffins and a slice of banana loaf, most of which was already gone by the time he sat, and Bonnie stole herself a bear claw which she picked at gloomily.
Between swallowing a large chunk of muffin and taking a large gulp of his cappuccino, Kai declared, "So I've been weighing the pros and cons for the last, like, hour… I think it's time we just stop this dance already and move in together." Bonnie almost choked on the morsel in her mouth, but Kai continued. "My place is yellow and awesome, but small, and your place is cute and all, but kind of depressing, don't you think? I mean like why did your dad never sell it? And it's creepy how all of Sheila's things are still in there. But anyway. We can shop around, this world is ours basically so why hold back, you know? Let's find a mansion, settle down, have a couple imaginary kids…"
"Never. In. A million. Years."
"Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the couch."
"Fuck you," she said gently and sympathetically, without the bite she usually injected.
"Check. Last night. On the couch," he smirked, reaching for his cappuccino.
Bonnie spat a spell and Kai's mug burst into fragments, the hot liquid spattering all over him. He hissed at the steaming droplets rolling on his skin and brushed himself off, impressed at such a quick switch from calm to nasty insults. She seemed so off today. Maybe the world was dismantling her at last. Oh what fun he would have putting the pieces of Bonnie Dumpty back together again.
"Jeez. I thought I wasn't a morning person."
"Tell me, Kai," she said with a hint of a slur and he was forced to wonder if she'd snuck any other sips of liquor in the changing room back at the department store, "What exactly are the pros to living with you?"
He grinned, preparing a mental list.
"Well," he began, "Repeat of last night, obviously. You get the benefits of my mad kitchen skills, whether it's in the kitchen or in bed, and also my mad bed skills, whether it's in bed or in the kitchen. I'm a light sleeper, so if anything ever goes bump in the night I'm on it, and trust me, I know how those prison world spooks go. You know nothing is there, but you want to feel like you're not alone so bad that you create it and then it feels like there's a ghost and it's fucking terrifying."
"That's normal? I thought I was crazy."
"Yeah, you're not delusional. Only it didn't start happening to me until I was three years in, so you might have a loose screw. Anyway, what else… Sex anytime you want it. You feel the need, I got the seed-hey!" Bonnie had torn a piece of her bear claw and flung it at him. "Companionship," he emphasized. "Not to mention the fact that you'll have somebody to throw stuff at, since one of us tends to be a violent Vanessa. And…did I already say sex?"
"And the cons?" she asked, chucking her entire bear claw at him.
He flinched, but wasn't fazed. "Trick question. There are none."
"I see."
"Oh except that I don't do laundry. I can, I'm not like an idiot or anything. I just choose not to. I mean, can you picture it?"
"Are you serious?"
He nodded.
"Do you ever wear clean clothes?"
"Duh. I just throw away the dirty ones and go find clean ones."
"Wow. Just…wow."
"Wow as in wow, or wow as in Kai, I need more convincing to live in a sex mansion with you?"
"Would you like to hear my cons?"
"No, but sure. Because I'm a good listener, and total roommate material."
"I think if I move in with you, I'll end up killing you. And then you'll get mad. And I'll have to kill you again in self-defense. Who knows, I could spend the rest of my eternity sitting beside your dead body, waiting for you to wake up so I can just keep killing you. And that doesn't sound very becoming, I don't think my Grams would be very proud, so let's just keep our distance, ok?"
"And the pros?"
"Trick question."
"Ouch. Not even orgasms on demand?"
"What is your deal? You get to put it in a girl for the first time in twenty years and suddenly we're married and you get to harass me as if it's ever going to happen again?"
"Wait, back it up… Twenty years?" he laughed. "You think I'm harassing you because I'm desperate?"
She rolled her eyes.
"Bonnie, Bonnie," he tsk-tsked. "Remember that time when I stabbed you and escaped 1994, or was that so horrible that it just never happened in Bonnie-land? Remember that little blip in my life when I wasn't a prisoner in a fake Gemini world?"
She stared.
"I was a male stuck in solitary confinement for 18 years at my sexual prime. What do you think was the first order of business when I got out?"
"But who would—?"
"Fucked some twentysomething girl in a bathroom stall at the airport. Sounds risqué but that was the easy part. The hard part was being around so many people all of a sudden. But hey, the dick wants what it wants. I just shut off my nerves and it did all the thinking. Steered me like a bang compass."
"I don't need to hear anything else," she said, waving her hand as if she could shoo away the things he was telling her.
"No worries, it was totally consensual and legit and she walked away from it mostly okay. Although I may have broken the stall door with her."
"Moving on."
"My point is I'm not desperate, ok Bon? But hey, what about you? First conquest when you got out?"
He waited with a smile, though in secret he seethed. He didn't feel threatened by the idea of Bonnie being with Jeremy, or any other men, and he didn't feel bothered by the image of it in his mind. Contrarily he enjoyed that she was experienced, that she had indeed been with other men and after all would have sex with him as well. He was comfortable enough in their "non"-relationship to know that even if they zapped back into reality that minute, Bonnie would find unexpected comfort in him and in their history, in the misery they'd shared in their world together. It was the stuff of a Twilight Zone that nobody on the outside could ever hope to relate to, and because of how it bonded them she would inevitably remain more or less a part of his life. Hopefully more than less. What he couldn't stand the thought of, and what he wanted violently not to hear, was anything about Damon.
Kai was a fan of logic and he knew quite well that he had nothing to worry about. But he also knew or could somehow sense something in Bonnie that once fell, not in love or even like, but in curious with Damon. That part of her was now an unhealable wound left by his betrayal.
Bonnie didn't say anything. She picked a crumb off her plate and took her time chewing on it, looking down or out at the snow falling, anywhere but at Kai. And he understood.
"Oh how the tables have turned," he grinned in both amusement and relief.
Bonnie was quick to reject his fun.
"If you knew how much you damaged me you'd know that I wasn't looking for conquests when I got out. And I'm still not. I actually asked you to breakfast because I want your face full of sugar when I tell you that what we did last night can't happen again. And in fact I'm dying to go home and be alone. I don't think we should see each other for a few weeks."
His heart.
A few weeks? How was he supposed to survive a few weeks without her? And how was she supposed to survive seeing him after those weeks were over? The hunger would have him ripping her to shreds at the first heartbeat in his ear.
She started collecting herself to get up. He couldn't choose to be clingy and beg her not to do this, or to lay back and let her rip his heart out. He felt a longing for her so dark and ugly inside him clawing away at his guts, trying to scare up some kind of protest; malicious words to cut her back, unfavorable actions to make her stay.
"When you get sick of loneliness, don't call me," he said. She frowned at him and he finished his thought, "Because I'll be desiccating somewhere and you'll probably need to nurse me back to health."
"Don't be dramatic," she scolded. "You have blood bags. And can you even desiccate here?"
He shrugged and she shook her head.
"Goodbye, Kai," she said. And headed for the door.
An ear-splitting crash stopped her in her tracks. The glass of the display case burst, showering the floor of the café in crystals and shards. Bonnie glared back at Kai. With the furrow of a single brow he swiped all tablecloths off of their tables, adding a cacophony of crashing plates, silverware, glasses and stupid little vases to the mess. Not lifting his eyes from Bonnie's for even a second, he stood, twisted his arm upward and all the chairs in the café rose to float several feet off the ground.
"You're throwing a tantrum," Bonnie pointed out. "It's unattractive."
He let his fingers relax and all chairs fell with intended force, most of them snapping into wood chunks. He tried to tell her with a dull facial expression that he didn't care what she thought. He was hurt and he wanted to break things.
Bonnie put her hand on the doorknob to open it, and Kai willed it not to give. She began twisting it in frustration and the door wouldn't budge. Finally she groaned and threw her hands up.
"Let me go," she demanded. "Now."
"Okay, um, no."
"You know you just created about fifty sharp weapons out of wooden chair legs, right? I will kill you."
"Not if I kill you first."
She scoffed, "That's an old joke. Give it up, Kai. You're a teddy bear now. You can't kill me. You couldn't do it when it mattered, and you can't do it today. I wish you could, but, what's one more disappointment?"
Too angry to use magic, he resorted to the physical coping mechanism he knew all too well. He grabbed the edges of the table they'd been sitting at and turned it over. With vampire strength, it got some air and snapped in half under his grip before it ever touched the floor. He could see she was gritting her teeth and he was glad that he finally set her nerves on edge. He hadn't really lost his knack for that.
"Look at big man Malachai, throwing tables at a café," she derided. "You should be embarrassed. You can't kill me, and now you can't even handle your anger like an adult. It's so middle-grade villain, it's sad."
He went for her next, daring her to doubt him again. He herded her back against the door and slammed his hands on either side of her, caging her. She seemed unimpressed, but was still grinding her teeth in tightened jaws.
"Tell me I can't kill you, just one more time. Tell me that I can't," he growled, letting his breath fan her face, moving thin tendrils of hair to frame her unchanging expression.
"You can't," she stated quietly. And he knew she was right, but the fucking nerve. He stared into her eyes and they were miserable black pools. She was too calm, it unsettled him deep within. Though he was already in a rage, he felt his guts drooping inside of him. He knew it was partly a reaction of magic… With the connection they shared as born witches, emotions of a certain height were bound to affect the other in both mental and physical ways. He could ignore her sadness for an impressive amount of time, but this day was different. She was dripping with detachment and it drilled into his brain like a slow, agonizing screw.
He banged his hands against the door behind her. He didn't know why. To display some kind of forcefulness, to express how frustrated he was that she was right, how irritated he was that she wouldn't care. He considered siphoning her to get the kind of rise he sought, but he didn't, in fear that even siphoning couldn't bring her out of this state.
"Congratulations," she droned, "You're officially a reformed sociopath."
He smiled just a touch, though not an inch of it was genuine. Moving his face in close to hers, he clenched his teeth together and said, "So how do you like me now?"
"Stop it!" she yelled, shoving him away with one tough pound to his chest before she rounded on him with a hard smack across the face. And it was good to see that she still lived.
"You need to stop acting that way with me if you ever want to see me again," she threatened.
He recovered from the smack and laughed, "That's the beauty of this place. We can fuck each other up in the worst of ways, and we're still all we've got. You could stab me in the back a thousand more times and I'd have to get over it because I can't do forever without you, Bonnie. I can't even do a few weeks. Please don't make me," he demanded hoarsely. He meant it too much not to let his voice break.
Shattered by his beseeching, she upturned a table of her own. Violence upon an inanimate object apparently wasn't enough, and she returned to him. She alternated between shoving him and destroying café décor, and it wasn't long before the both of them were locked in a rigorous shoving game, vigilant to break any moveable thing in their paths. Kai imagined the ghosts of would-be patrons standing by, watching and not knowing what to do because the violence between them was chaos at its purest. It lacked objective and it lacked organization. Bonnie slid her own flesh across the jagged frame of glass in sweeping everything from the display case out into a heap, and Kai went from elbowing the espresso machine off the counter to whipping Bonnie out of lock so he could grab fistfuls of cash out of the cash register and heave hordes of bills and coins at Bonnie. It seemed a gleeful kind of anarchy but it was panic, it was agony for the both of them to have this much freedom and so little hope. Bonnie caught herself and stopped still to watch Kai scowling at her through a rain of feathering bills, and she remained when he grabbed more fistfuls of money and thrust them once more at her. When the last bills touched the ground, she let out a maniacal snigger, and kept on until her smile drooped and she was about to cry, at which point Kai advanced on her, picked her up in his rage-shaking hands and plopped her on the counter.
She let herself be pushed back so that her head hung off the other side of the counter where a cashier might have stood. Kai bent over her, his face above hers, and bared his teeth against her lips, savoring the willingness with which she let him. But he would not allow his fangs to descend this time. This wasn't about hunger of that kind. It wasn't even about hunger of a sexual kind. It was hunger of the soul that stirred in him, that gave him the inclination to fuck her again, to feel close to somebody after a lifetime of feeling so far. The night before, when she let him bury himself inside her with unprecedented significance, a new emotion arose within him that he still wasn't able to identify. He wanted to feel it at its summit again, and with haste, before she took those few weeks off his life.
He fumbled around at the front of his jeans for a moment, and then beneath the front of her dress and the band of her leggings, deciding at one point just to do away with her pants situation altogether and sliding them down her legs, panties in tow. When she was bare, he helped her sit up so he could pull her dress above her head, wanting to see all of her, or as much as she'd allow. Dead in the eyes, she returned the favor and pulled off his long-sleeved shirt, her delicate hands trailing cold up the sides of his ribs.
Except for the strappy bra he quite enjoyed seeing against her skin, they were both naked and draped over the ordering counter in a public café when they had sex for the second time. He pushed himself between her lips that were already wet with anticipation yet again, and he moved in her, amazed by the feel of her insides devouring him so greedily, and by the pleasure and the sadness both warring in flashes back and forth between her eyes.
He wished she was happier, but her emotions were her business and he knew the ups and downs of prison world adjustment. All he could do for her was remain constant, and influence with little pressure the normalcy he wanted her to feel. Those things and a little post-orgasm oxytocin were his best bet for a better eternity with Bonnie.
After they howled their ends for the empty world to hear, he freed her from his impaling dick, clothed himself first and left her there. It was mean, and he only knew that after he left because of the annoying emotion things he felt tugging him backward, telling him to go back to her and apologize, and hug her, and help her, and walk her home, and apologize twenty more times. But he didn't. Maybe if he broke her heart a little, she would stop breaking his. Maybe fewer weeks would pass before she felt the calling to see him again.
It was later that afternoon when it was still just a bit white out, when he was pacing his house looking for something to occupy his mind that something inside him gravely dimmed. It was as if all power in the house suddenly went out, or a loud source of music zipped silent. A hum faded too instantly into nothing.
He couldn't feel her.
And a blackness inside him pooled upward like vomit, only when it rose to the surface it manifested in water. The emptiness of the world overtook him, seized him strangely and strongly, and it was easier to sob than it was to breathe.
His heart seared and he thought his chest might cave in, but he had to run, to run to her house. He dropped everything and bolted, out the door and down the street, forgetting the thinning of the snow clouds and the imminence of a bright sunset. He ran.
Though it was pointless. He could already feel by the nothingness in the air, same as it was in 1994, that he was alone. She was dead.