author's note: crossposted on AO3, same username.

"Someone asked me if I'm gonna miss my twin too much while she's away on her honeymoon, and the answer is obviously no—" the man of honour says with a mischievous grin, throwing in a dramatic pause, "—because duh, I'll be the one piloting their jet!"

Laughter ripples through the crowd. The bride, radiant in lace, whispers something in her groom's ear and a wide grin stretches across his face. The sun dipping below the horizon casts a golden glow on them, and a canopy of fairy lights twinkles around them like stars.

After wrapping up his toast, Kai sits back down between his father Joshua, and his Bonnie. He takes a sip of champagne and pleasant bubbles caress his tongue. He doesn't overanalyse the crowd, and if they perhaps laughed like actors hitting their mark, because he's certain he aced it. He always does.

Sitting across from Kai, with a face he never seems to be able to commit to memory, his brother Joey's wife glances at her husband with a shy smile. "Remember our wedding?"

Joey chuckles. "How could I not? You cried through the entire ceremony!"

She gasps, feigning offence, "I so did not!" before giggling along with the others around the table.

His Bonnie places a dainty, well-manicured hand on his own, beaming at him. He's just starting to appreciate the loving gleam in her eyes before she turns back to Olivia and Lucas, who are holding her captive with a squabble about something or the other. His dad, who's been watching the newlyweds sway their first slow dance, with a look of fondness unusual for someone so sentimentally bankrupt, turns to Kai. Hazy pride glitters his eyes.

"I'm proud of you, son," he says, seemingly not wanting to, or not being able to hold back on the affections on this night. "I can't believe you pulled this off."

Maybe it's the booze. Or maybe magical weddings really turn even the most cold-blooded bastards soft, Kai thinks, moving cake around his plate with a tiny, golden fork. He usually loves dessert, but this one is perfectly tasteless.

"It's nothing really, a little magic here and there," he answers, purposely addressing the sprawling vineyard and the turnout and the intimate reception. "Bonnie and her friends helped," he adds fondly. But fuck, who'd been on cake duty? Probably Lucas.

"Hm?" his Bonnie turns to him when hearing her name, but he just smiles with an imperceptible head-shake and a light squeeze of her hand, before he turns back to his father. He's met with an expression so earnest that Kai almost wishes they had weddings to attend every day.

"You know what I mean. It sure takes a Gemini prodigy to make this dream reality," Joshua continues.

He gestures at Kai with one hand, and with the other towards the dance floor, where his twin sister is dancing to her heart's content, surrounded by grandparents waltzing and teenagers trying to teach groomsmen the latest trending dance.

"Just the fact that I can watch both my kids grow up together, and have you deliver a wonderful speech like that—" his father's voice trembles before he's able to continue at all, "—it's all a parent could ever ask for."

Ah yes. The good old family tradition of ritual killings. The unspoken reminder hits Kai with a stupid, familiar ache. Previously unavoidable. Doomed, like Madagascan twins.

He nods meekly, but the warm, pink flush on his face gives him away. He's proud, all right. He did find a way to keep both the Gemini and twins like himself and Josette alive. Have his cake and eat it too, so if anyone, he could die happy and full of delicious cake. And spirits, did it taste better than the one on the plate before him now.

"Thanks, Dad," he mumbles, raising his glass of champagne, momentarily forgetting how it's bad etiquette to toast yourself.

.

.

Later in the evening, Kai finally finds his baby girl again. Having lost her to what had felt like an eternal tangle of bouquet and garter tossing and somehow another cake cutting, and they still haven't reached the last dance before the grand send-off. He grabs her gently from behind in a hug and holds meaningful hands on her belly. "What do you think of Ruby?" he murmurs into her temple. "Ruby and Annie if twins."

"Kai, shh," she chides, but fails to stifle a pleased giggle. She clasps her own hands over his. "You promised, no pregnancy announcements at your sister's wedding."

"Not an announcement if you're cloaked," he tuts, twirling her around, and then, away from the reception.

She wraps her arms around his waist, like a parachute for his safety. Resting her head on his shoulder, they sway softly to the distant music. A slow song that should make them feel so safe. The party's long since moved indoors, giving them privacy beneath the stars. The scent of fresh white roses lingers around them, intoxicating him. Kai rubs her arms to keep her warm in the chilly evening. He suddenly longs to defend her against something.

"And why would you cloak us?" Bonnie asks with feigned concern, her eyes twinkling playfully and her voice honeyed and rich.

"Because you just had to—" Kai starts, allowing his hands to dip down her form, hovering one just below the small of her back and the other to trail under the chiffon of her green dress until it grips a naked thigh "—go and out-dress the bride."

She gasps, inhaling his warm and familiar scent.

"Hey," she protests when he lifts her up and sets her against the platform of a nearby marble statue, and god, isn't she just two little wings away from being his very own Tinker Bell. He forgets how small she is when she occupies a space so large in him. He trails kisses down her cheek to her collarbone, while fumbling with layers of ruffled underskirts.

"I caught a fairy," he mumbles and his Bonnie smiles shyly. It suits her.

She sinks her hands into his hair and arches her back, squealing softly when he enters her. He's the one she had chosen out of any other, and Kai still can't believe it; feeling like a man touched by God. He kisses the tip of her nose. They're fucking just outside the wedding party, and although cloaked and definitely hidden away from the others, it's still voyeuristic in a way that thrills him closer to climax.

He hears something, somewhere in the distance, that might be important. Might be the meaning of life important, but the world has shrunk to just one marble base and the two of them. He holds her face and kisses her forehead instead of her mouth, so he can keep listening to her pretty whimpers: more, please please, and I love you Kai, and so, so much and the breathless thank you baby before his own hips stutter, and she holds him and strokes his face until his panting stills and he can look into her green, mossy eyes again.

"There's a good girl," he gasps with a wink, knowing how it makes her shudder, like a little leaf in a really enjoyable hurricane.

.

.

They hadn't been gone that long, and it doesn't even seem like they've been missed, yet he's unable to shake the feeling that something is amiss when he joins the reception again.

In fact, everything is perfect. Though, perfect like someone excitedly claiming their horrible, terrible life is finally perfect because they've done a three-sixty, when they should've meant a one-eighty.

Perfect like a fucking find five mistakes brain teaser because his sister Olivia is suddenly wearing pearls (she'd never wear pearls?) Or would she? It comes out of nowhere, the feeling that he doesn't truly know her as much as a big brother should. He doesn't know why that is.

Do you ever feel like something isn't right? he's desperate to ask his Bonnie but she'd promptly gone off to 'powder her nose.'

He reaches for a flute of champagne on a waiter's tray but it's empty. You're not supposed to be here and Death should be permanent are two bizarre thoughts that blitz through his head in response. He pulls his hand back like he's been burned, and looks at the waiter with a confused look, when the eeriness just as suddenly fades, and he feels soothed once again. It must mean his Bonnie is back, like the morning sun chasing away the night creeps for those scared of the dark.

She slips her hand into his and standing up on her tippy-toes, her lips barely brush his ear. "You're tense."

He wants to reply that actually, not anymore because you came back for me, but a strange man, in a well-fitted suit without a tie, appears by the exit with a gaze all sharp and calculating. Not a wedding guest, Kai's sure of it. Like a forensic's hyper-bright light would spot cleaned up blood, his magic senses something dead and rotten.

"There's a man over there," Kai says. "He's not supposed to be here."

Bonnie looks at him with eyes full of doubt. Strange. She usually trusts his judgement. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. So stay back baby," Kai warns, exhaling slowly, never allowing his voice to go louder than a whisper. He can't prove it now, but he'd immediately believe it if someone had revealed the truth to him about the beasts of the night, and of their unmerited share of magical advantages. "I'll be right back."

"Kai! Don't—"

Before his Bonnie can utter another word of disapproval, he's cloaked and gone. He knows she'll give him a second chance tonight, even if it's preceded by hours of cold and angry silence. Because he's got it all under control, he always has.

He's fast, but the abomination of nature is faster. His confidence falters when screams erupt and the music cuts out and people start ducking under tables. It returns twofold when he realises why. The staked abomination, although successfully defeated, is quite a sight.

Kai groans. He uncloaks himself, revealing his form ungraciously laying half-propped up against the stage, suit rumpled and... blood— there's so much damn blood trickling down his neck, and the pain is sharp and burning. It can't be his own, he thinks, even though his vision blurs and the back of his head throbs like a brain freeze from hell.

Because he succeeded. He fucking succeeded.

His Bonnie is running towards him. "Kai, what the hell?" she screams, falling down to her knees next to him. She's breathless, and immediately preoccupied with dabbing away blood with a linen napkin, but she only makes a bigger, redder mess. Tears stream down her face.

It's just a scrape, he wants to tell her. He'll heal it with magic, easy peasy. He smiles.

Her darkened eyes are not impressed. "What were you thinking?"

"Sorry," he groans. "I was worried about Josie, and the twins."

"You lunatic. They die if you die," Bonnie says, anger definitely not allayed. "Don't you ever do that again, okay?" and her voice is shrill, laced with a disappointment he didn't want to know he could ever be on the receiving end of. "I couldn't live without you, none of us could," she adds, her fingers tracing his inherited family heirloom ring. A symbol of his plight as the Gemini coven leader, their patria potestas.

He tries and fails to grip the free hand of hers, the one not making a mess out of his blood. If his vision hadn't been so blurred and him so aware of that, he'd be alarmed by the way his hand keeps missing hers like she's made out of mist.

"Please," he says, suddenly frightened. "It was a gut reaction!"

But what he means to say is, hold me and don't ever let go because if you do I'll die and I'm really fucking scared of what disaster my death might bring upon the earth.

"Don't play hero," Bonnie answers coldly, and without a trace of her familiar sympathy. She's still dabbing at the exact same spot on his neck without making any progress, trapping them into what seems like an endless, gory loop. "You were gonna kill my babies, just like that."

He frowns, and his voice carries a crossness with it that he normally would never dare to direct at her. "Don't fucking be like that, Bon."

"But you were. You almost killed my babies."

"Don't say it like that!" Thick fury envelopes his chest, constricting him from feeling anything else. "It's our babies."

She shakes her head very slowly, before she looks down at the gush of crimson soaking through the green dress. She puts her hands over her abdomen, and they turn slick with dark red blood.

Kai stares like he's hypnotised, between the life that's supposed to be safe in her middle and the life being blurred out of her face. He doesn't understand why it snows so fucking much in June.

"Bon…Bonnie?"

"You killed my babies."

"No!"

"You did. You killed my babies, Kai."

"They're our babies!" he corrects desperately and his screaming is too loud even to himself, but how could he be gentle, when someone just took a knife and punctured his entire world.

"No, Kai. You killed my babies," and the voice is slightly different from his Bonnie's. He doesn't notice that, too absorbed by the hands he's gripping, and how they, right before his eyes, pale in colour, until they match his own. Red-stained white replaces green and teary blue replaces teary green, one after the other; until he's forced to hold his blood-soaked twin sister, who's still screaming in agony.

Still?

The ground tilts beneath their feet, making him almost slide across the floor and away from her. Like he's in a plane going through terribly gusty crosswinds, at the mercy of a horrible fucking pilot.

"Help!" he screams, chanting to himself that witches do not die, that they will float. "Somebody help! Please! She needs help!"

And then—

Bonnie's voice cuts through the loud, frantic pounding of his own heart in his ears.

"You need more than blood, maybe some ointment? 'Cause gross."

His lips move, and he thinks he asks her something, like when the hell she had time to change into regular clothes. He thinks he laughs while teasing her about it. Wasn't for me, was it? because he's actually not that squeamish about blood, and then something else, something more important.

Something about how everything will be okay. Something about the babies, and something about how much he promises he'll fix everything this time. But his own words are muffled by the static in his head and the searing agony cracking through his bones, one by one.

ouch!