Bonnie woke late the next afternoon, sprawled hard in a strewn mess of new panties on her bedroom floor. She only vaguely remembered obsessing over which to wear for him first. Passing out in the middle of that process wasn't a memory that existed in her brain.
A headache pounded its alarm from ear to ear and she groaned. Looking at the sunlight pouring in the window, she could see by the positions of shadows it cast in her room she had little time before night returned. It had been this way lately; she slept the daylight away, her body favoring the cool mystique of darkness, Kai's supposed half of the world above her own bright and tiring half. Drinking, too, put her down in a way she liked, but it came in exchange for the willingness to get out of bed at all if the sun was up. Sometimes she didn't, day or night.
She stretched her arms out across all the panties and yawned. What a mess. And she didn't know which was messier: her house or herself.
For a good while she lay there awake debating whether to get up or not. Her body felt slack and tired, even after sleeping for so long. And what was she supposed to do when she got up? It all seemed so useless; waking up each day, finding something to eat, finding something to do before it was time to eat again, finding something else to do before it was time to sleep again. She stopped dreaming at night and sleep, for how she loved its escape, was beginning to feel as useless.
And what about all these underthings? Even drunk Bonnie should've known that was a useless shopping trip. There hadn't been a sign of Kai in so long; she had no idea when she would see him again. What was the point in planning anything, malicious or otherwise?
Everything made her more lethargic than emotional lately.
Even the thought of Elena, dead. Probably dead. She still didn't know. She wished she could have a mirror like the Beast gave to Belle, so she could see from her world through a window to the real one and just glimpse, just to know who was okay and who wasn't. Was Elena dead or alive? Was Damon losing his mind with grief? Was Caroline getting over it? How was Stefan? Jeremy? And poor, poor Alaric?
The closest thing Bonnie had to a magic mirror was alcohol, and she needed more of that, pronto. Thus began a repeat of the day before.
She was already drunk by the time she hit the shower and the hot water felt like a dream. Afterward, she dressed in an old t-shirt and an old pair of panties rather than one of the fifty new pairs, and floated to her kitchen for another glass of wine and a much needed joint.
High, she daydreamed of Kai's hands running over her body like they had, each fingertip in seeming worship, not of her skin or her submission to him, but simply her. She had no doubt he was falling hard, poor thing.
In his absence, she'd only tried touching herself once. It ended terribly and left her having to admit that she wanted him to come back now, more to fuck her than be played for an escape route. She recalled the feeling of him prying her apart from the surface to the core like he wanted to rip her; the way her cunt braced around him, hungering; the shame in her heart, ringing in her ears, heat skipping over the skin on her face each time she heard her own swooning breath. And the way he moved to fill her, inch up into the deepest end of her, ram his head against her cervix as if like a battering ram he could break it down and fuck his conquer through her entire body; as if it wouldn't hurt, or as if by hurting her he made his point.
She longed for that pain to happen again.
"Stop," she scolded out loud. And one defiant memory wriggled up: holding herself steady with a hand on his chest and feeling his heart beat underneath her palm as he rocked against her. It pounded wildly. And she remembered his face looked so concerned. Focused. Every good move he made was so precise for someone who put so much effort into making her life hell.
Stop. She turned the tip of her joint and pressed it into the skin on her wrist. Both she and her skin hissed at the ember sizzling to death as it scarred her. She hated that she wanted to hurt herself to stop her own thoughts. She hated it so much she wanted to break something, and so she thrust the joint at the floor in frustration, but it was such a light little thing it made no sound and was not appeasing. Desperate, she took a plate out of the cupboard and dropped it. As it clattered to pieces, she still felt no satisfaction. And another persistent thought: the glitch in his smirk when he fucked her. It made her think she shouldn't belittle the act by thinking of it as a fuck. He was clearly not just putting his dick any which where he could. The way he fucked was too devotional; it made her feel too spotlit and appreciated, and that confused her.
Bonnie's chest began to throb.
There was only one sure way to make the thoughts and the anxiety tremoring within her stop. Death here was only a nap. A nap was what she needed to clear her mind.
She took no time to debate. A little pistol she swiped from the neighbor's private cabinets now hid in her liquor and weed cabinet. She found it, and exacted a small bullet through her own brain.
By midnight, she was revived and pulling her knees into her chest while she cried on her bed. Her sixth glass of merlot sat half empty on the night stand. As usual, evidence that she attempted to return to normalcy lay unbothered nearby: a favorite book with the bookmark still stuck in the first chapter. She couldn't read anymore. She couldn't breathe. She could hardly do magic because of the pain that crept into her soul, transformed there and crawled out in apathetic wickedness. Bonnie Bennett, the wicked witch. Only occasionally did she allow her pain to consume her in its true form, because on these occasions it left her in a crippling fit of tears. But these moments were her hints that she still lived within herself. They were tormenting but she cherished them for their reminder.
She cried so hard she didn't notice the hum when it first began.
Minutes passed before the worming accost of his magic caught her attention and she looked up. A man was climbing in through her bedroom window. Briefly she entertained the idea that it might be someone unexpected, like Jeremy coming to her rescue after all this time, but that thought was promptly stamped out. It was obvious by the style of jeans, the troublemaker boots, the ironic blazer squaring his shoulders and the sly way this man's body moved, it was—
"Kai!" she gasped, trying to sound more angry than surprised.
She hurriedly wiped the tears from her face so that when he looked at her he might not notice that she was a complete disaster. He turned and she read the swishy words on his white shirt: Voulez-vous? It was both an uncharacteristic choice and so totally characteristic to wear such a dumb shirt and she wondered if it was a humorous nod to sexuality or ABBA. Regardless, it lightened the weighted cloud hanging over her just a little. There was something about him, she realized; she could always count on it to interest her. When he looked upon her, however, it was plain on his face that after all this time without her he was starving. She remembered how he starved himself of blood bags in favor of the fresher blood that ran through her veins. He panted in thirst. She could see him in his eyes as he pinned her with them, the blackness not fully coating yet. An aura of red lay in a deadly ring around his irises and his lips were pulled back, the fangs ready. Just the sight of him was enough to shock a tremble through her spine. She should be afraid. She should be very afraid.
But she wasn't.
On the contrary, she sat prettily in the radiation of his magic. She frowned to keep him thinking otherwise, but it felt good. His vibrancy ate her alive and he flowed through her, and she imagined he could feel the very same thing. Her body began to stiffen, however, as her mind digested his presence. He was actually there. She was actually not alone. It was nerve-wracking in its relief. Opposite her stiffening, she watched him calm as his eyes grew less fixed with each silently passing second that they stared at each other.
"You went shopping," he finally said, eyeing hungrily the mess of panties on the floor.
"What are you doing here?" she spat.
"You look like hell," he commented, ignoring her question. He was probably right. She killed herself when her hair was wet. It can't have dried in an attractive way. And she admitted inwardly that other hygienic qualities probably suffered without her attention. But she wanted to slit his throat for attacking her appearance after all he had done to her.
"You're not very good at apologizing," she said, resorting to diplomacy.
He shrugged. "I'm not very sorry."
Bonnie experienced a sudden mournful thought of her evaporated invitation barrier. Something had to be said in honor of its memory. Even though she knew he wouldn't care, she had to tell him.
"You can't just climb in people's windows at night. It's creepy. You can't just come here anymore. You can't just—"
"You're not going to ask where I've been?" he cut her off, taking a step closer to her bed, which did nothing to soothe her tensing muscles. The rigidity in her form made her feel like a snake at attention, ready to snap. And she would if he came any closer.
"I don't care," she informed him. She noted the threatening situation of his unannounced presence in her bedroom at night, advancing toward her bed where she sat half naked, quite a match in fight but quite less so in level of intoxication. She was essentially drunk, and he seemed confident in his air and gait. Even with her skill in magical defenses, he would overpower her in anything he might have planned. Then again, did it matter? If he killed her, she would rise. If he kissed her, she would pretend to like it, because that was her plan.
Smirking, he slipped his hand underneath his blazer and from some secret pocket pulled out a small box. Bonnie apprehensively watched him flip open the top and finger out what appeared to be a cigarette. He popped the cigarette between his lips and lit it with a snap of his fingers. Their eyes locked as he took his first drag, she realized the cigarette in his mouth was a pastel green color, and he tossed the box onto the bed before her criss-crossed legs. She made sure to tighten her eyes into a glare at him before acknowledging the box, not knowing why he was smoking in her room and throwing things at her.
Then, with jaw-dropping force, she remembered.