BKBKBKBKBKBK
After four episodes of Bewitched, and twenty vexing minutes of wriggling her nose at the balcony doors to get them to slam shut, Bonnie is convinced she is not a witch.
Her arms are flapping back and forth in front of the opened doors like she is clanging cymbals, "Close!" she yells at them, frustrated.
Death runs rampant in her mind and there won't be any sleep until she gets those damn doors to close.
She keeps seeing her bloated body, chewed flesh and exposed skull. And she's afraid if she can't get the doors to shut, proving she is no Samantha Stephens, then she really needs to see how far is that jump from the balcony down to the lawn so she can run to the nearest bus stop like a crazy person in her bathrobe.
In the few hours she has been on this Earth, she has become aware of three things.
First. She should follow her gut. She isn't positive of course, but she thinks not following her instincts is what killed her.
Second. Elijah is the Devil. He traded out his pitchfork and scaly red skin for a charming smile and a handsome face. And she believes their history is the reason why his presence unsettles her, makes her feel on guard. And she doesn't care to know why. She just wants him to stay the hell away from her.
Third. Klaus is the one who will bring her reckoning. He had the will to bring her back to this world and she's worried if she doesn't produce some magic soon, then he will be motivated to use that same will to take her out.
"Please close for me? Please?" She groans to the inanimate objects. Her hair is dry and wild, and riotous wavy tendrils get in the way of her eyesight and she tries to twist it up into a knot off her nape but it persistently comes undone from all her frantic hand gestures to the door, which have changed from her graciously suggesting them to shut, like a symphony conductor leading the strings, to her flipping the doors off.
Fed up, she grabs a hold of each crystal knob and is ready to call it quits when the hybrid - who has been sitting in the leather chair in the corner of her bedroom observing her antics for the past fifteen minutes - startles her and speaks up, "Are you wondering what I will do to you if you are not able to close those doors, Bonnie?
Her heart rate picks up, and she controls the subtle tremble of her fingers by folding her hands under her arms, and she glances over her shoulder to the rugged blonde seated behind her. He is still shirtless, the warm glow of the lamp lights casting shadows across one side of his face and planes of his chest, and his eyes are dark blue and penetrating, his mouth a straight line as he waits for her to answer him.
And her stomach flips from dread, because she is wondering what he will do, but the stomach flutter isn't from fear alone, there is something else mixed with it, and whatever that something else is, it warms the back of her neck when he looks at her, and makes her tongue thick when she opens up her mouth to speak to him.
With the conversation from Elijah in the back of her mind, and Klaus' speech on her resurrection solely happening because of her being valuable to him, she understands she is in a precarious situation. And her instincts are telling her that if she doesn't want her second shot at life to be cut short, then it will benefit her to build a rapport with the man who brought her back. So she answers him truthfully, "Yes," She whispers. And seeing no immediate reaction from him, she bravely continues without encouragement, "What's gonna happen to me if you resurrected the wrong person. What happens if you thought you got some crazy powerful witch but I turn out to be a plain ole' regular girl," She says, pointing to the fictional witch Samantha Stephens on the TV screen navigating a hoover around her living room by wriggling her pointed nose.
Klaus is amused by the spectacle.
The bedroom is in a complete disarray. The expensive bed sheets are crumpled and heaped on the polished floor at the foot of the bed, and it seems she split open one of the pillows because there are little white feathers scattered over the mattress and on the rug. Every light in the room is on, including the bright, intrusive light in the en-suite bathroom and the TV is loud and shrill when it cuts to an infomercial about knives. And Bonnie is eyeing him, hiding her shaky hands and trying to control her shaky voice, and though he has a better control on his bodily response to her right now than he did in the car, he is once again very aroused by her fear. His cock hardens from her heart racing and wobbly speech; he's still reeling from the effects of the profuse amount of alcohol he has consumed, and he even fantasizes how frenzied she would become if he were to take a sip of her, picturing his head buried in the lap of her golden brown thighs or his fangs clamped down into the velvety flesh of her breast.
But although she is delectable - blatantly terrified of him- and he could easily play on her trepidation, make her bend and bow to his whim with the threat of his wrath; he does not want her fear.
He slides further down into the chair, crossing his leg over his knee and smoothly says, "You can do more than make a vacuum go back and forth, love."
Her brilliant green eyes widen, "Really?" She asks before biting down hard on her bottom lip, "What can I do?" She asks timidly.
Pointing to the doors, he says, "You can close them, but you are scared. Your magic does not work well when you are afraid." He rises and crawls over the bed to her, reminding her of an animal, the way his sinewy muscles undulates under his skin and how he stealthily closes the space between them with ease, and she stares at the tattooed birds on his chest and wants to cover the markings with her hand, to feel his skin under her palm, and she whispers to the floor, too nervous to look at him directly, "I don't want to be scared, but I can't help it. I don't know you or Elijah, or where I'm fr-". Her voice hitches because he has wrapped his hand around her neck and jerked her head up to look at him and she makes a small sound from the back of her throat and his wide mouth curls up into an pleased smirk, "Do not look at the floor when you are speaking to me, or anyone else, Bonnie. You hold the power, and anyone in your presence should be made aware of that fact. And they will not, if you are talking to the nails in the floorboards."
She wants to cower from the intensity behind his eyes, his set brow, and there is another unexpected flutter but she doesn't dare tear her gaze away from his stare after his warning, "How are you so sure I have this power when I don't feel it."
He silently takes her hand in his, hers small and delicate in his rough one and places it over her left breast, and bends his mouth to her ear, "Do you hear that thump, love?" He asks gently, his breath on her neck, and she listens to her heart echoing in her throat as he continues, "That is your heart. Pumping gallons and gallons of blood per minute," He adds, his voice dropping an octave as his lips barely brush along an artery, "And curiously enough, it was not doing this a few hours ago, and the fact that it is now is because you are made of magic."
She closes her eyes involuntarily as his hand travels up her neck and into her hair, and she feels him grasp her curls in one hand and pull it up from her neck, "I saw you struggling with this earlier, maybe I can be of assistance while we try your magic once more before you rest. Shall we?"
"Yes."
Although she cannot see his face behind her closed lids, she knows he is smiling. She can feel the stretch of his mouth and smiling teeth on her neck. And he speaks again in to her ear, "You have no reason to be afraid of anything, Bonnie, least of all me. I want you to trust me. And I, you. And I want you to come to me and only me if someone hurts you, even if I am the one who has pained you. Is that possible for us, Bonnie?"
She affirms for him again and the grip on her hair tightens and his face quickly moves from her neck, "Keep your eyes closed," he commands and turns her body to the open breeze coming from the balcony. The dewy night air settles on her skin and she relaxes, feeling his firm chest behind her, holding her up, "Now that you know I want to protect you, and want your trust, I want you to forget about me for a moment and concentrate on the doors in front of you."
She tries not to become irritated picturing the doors that wouldn't close for her earlier and welcome the hypnotizing trance Klaus is trying to induce. "They are made of wood. They once were trees, can you see them, Bonnie?
Saplings in a desolate forest is what she sees, barren birch, and bony limbs and thousands and thousands of orange and brown leaves under foot.
"You control nature, Bonnie, bend the trees to your will."
She watches the branches sway and dance and she straightens her back, lifting her head up confidently as she looks at the trees and wills them to follow suit.
The leaves under her float upward, circling and flying and the trees whistle from the wind and Bonnie hones in on the saplings and she sees each spiraled grain, each wavy mark of life, and sees all the way to their roots, snarled under the earth. And she tentatively lifts her hands from her side, observing the fantastical scene around her, the hum of magic and smell of gunpowder, and with the flick of her wrist she uproots the saplings, cutting them off from their life source.
"Open your eyes, love." Klaus whispers into her ear, and she tumbles out of her imagination just in time to see the balcony doors magically slam shut.
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He pulls the white fitted sheet off the floor and begins to make up her bed, "You can sleep in the bathrobe if you like, but if you would prefer to be more comfortable, I can offer you a pair of my pajamas," He offers, swiping his hand over the sheet to make it lay flat against the mattress.
She nods that she would like to sleep in his clothes, and when he leaves her alone, she tries to collect the feathers around the room with her magic, but can't seem to reinvent that sense of assuredness she felt with him on her own.
He hands her a set of black satin pajamas, "We are leaving tomorrow." He tells her through the bathroom door as she changes.
"Where are we going?"
"To the middle of nowhere for a fortnight or so. Your magic is present, but you are unsure of yourself, which means we must practice, and it would be best for you to train away from prying eyes."
"You mean like from Elijah?" She asks curiously, emerging from the bathroom, drowning in his pajamas. The gold embossed "M" intended to rest at the shoulder, falling smack on her breast, and the scent of sandalwood from the drawers lingering in the satin and arresting her nostrils. She hops up onto her turned down bed, wrapping her arms around one of the pillows, snuggling it up against her chest, listening to the theme song of the Golden Girls play from the TV. "Earlier this evening, Elijah came up here. He said some stuff about wanting me to be comfortable here and taking me shopping tomorrow, "She says, talking to Klaus's back as he moves around, turning off the lamps in the room.
She lifts her mouth from the pillow so her words won't come out muffled and weak, "He said any questions that I may have that I need to address them to you, that you will be the one to give me answers." She says to him, as she recognizes the sitcom's opening song and hums, 'Thank you for being a friend.'
He turns to face her, and she notices how his jaw tightens, even though his eyes and brow show he is unfazed by her, "You have questions for me?" Klaus leans on the post of the bed, and Bonnie's eyes rove from his chest, to his creased stomach and lower belly and silver buckle of his belt, and there is that flutter again, and the lump in her throat thickens to where she thinks she will suffocate. She doesn't want to upset him. Not when she just made some sort of connection with him. She discards her barrage of questions for him, about him and his family, and instead says, "I want us to be friends, Klaus. You don't have to answer everything tonight, but can you promise me that you will tell me what I need and want to know in time?"
His blue eyes darken and Bonnie sighs, feeling that anxiety of loss and she fumbles over words, trying to explain herself when he interrupts her, "In due time, you will know everything and you will not need to question me."
"Okay, but for right now, can you tell me how did I die?"
He laughs, the sound is cruel and haunting, and makes Bonnie's skin crawls.
"I was not present at your untimely demise." He tells her, "But I can assume it had something to do with your heart," he explains as he moves to turn off the nightstand lamp, "But you need not worry love," his smirk illuminated by the glow, "For I will teach you not to have one."
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"Elijah is taking you shopping tomorrow, am I correct?"
She nods from the bed as he stands under the threshold of her bedroom door, "Be prepared to travel before the sun sets," He says flatly.
Bonnie fidgets with the remote in her hand, "Do you mind staying," she starts hesitantly, because she is not sure if she can count on him, but he said she could and that he wants her too, and the only way for her to know is to put it to test. "Just until I fall asleep and just for tonight, if you don't mind." She catches the corner of her mouth in her teeth and grimaces because being vulnerable hurts, "I keep seeing myself as I was, you know, before you found me and it's gonna be tough for me to sleep."
And in the several heartbeats while she waits for his response, she is hanging on a thread that she feels is about to be savagely cut but he steps back into her room, and he doesn't say a word, narrowing his eyes at her like he is perplexed. He sits on the edge of the other side of the bed, the mattress sinking under the weight of him, and the bed moves with him as he bends down to untie the laces of his fine leather boots and she can see his spine and the muscles in his arms through the shadowy light of the TV. And then there is a thud of his boots haphazardly tossed behind the bed. She blinks at him as he reaches over her, grabbing the remote on the side of hip, and he digs his body into the mattress, crossing his ankles and says, "If I have proven anything to you tonight, it should be that if you do not wake up." He points the remote to the TV, turning the volume down to a whisper, "Then I will come for you."
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As the sun rises, daylight shines where Bonnie lays, curled up into herself, next to Klaus who never went to sleep.
He watched over her, making sure her body rose and fell as it should.
And now he is staring at the sun through the glass panes in the veranda doors, listening to the footfall of intruders on his lawn, and Elijah's incessant knock on the door, informing them that they have company.
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Across town, Mama T's great-great-grandniece, Antoinette Guidry is pulling her rusted green Camry into Mama T's driveway. She is making her regular morning stop before class to check on her. Today she is bringing the old woman gossip and groceries. She has plastic Piggy Wiggly sacks in each hand, carrying milk, cornbread mix, green bell peppers and oranges.
Her Mama T loves fresh oranges.
And the freckled young woman is eager to tell her beloved relative about the rumor of a witch breaking the law by practicing magic. She wants to 'ooo and awwwee' with Mama T and boast to her that she was right in her prediction.
It did happen on the full moon.
And she hopes Mama T is right again in predicting that this offence will spark a rebellion.
She unlocks the door, and gasps, and down falls the plastic sacks, oranges rolling from her feet to where her Mama T sat in her old laz -z- boy, dressed in her all white priestess garb, her eyes wide open to match her ashen mouth in a perfect 'o' shape from where Papa Legba had reached into her to collect her soul in exchange for Bonnie Bennett.
Author's Note
Thank you all for reading.