Mistletoe

AN: Trigger warnings: violence, domestic violence, abuse, drowning, murder, suicide.

There was more than one way to be powerful.

After Bonnie put her magic in a teddy bear, she figured that out. She had lost her power – as she had before – but Kai lost his, too, as far as magic was concerned. He couldn't take hers, because she had none to give.

After Damon left, another kind of power struggle emerged between them. The kind that drags a baseball bat down hallways tracing the splatter of blood. The kind that wraps its fingers around your neck and breathes down your throat. The kind that jabs you in the neck with a dull pen, or shoots you in the stomach with a cross bow.

Kai got lost in it.

Bonnie, however, did not.

No, she quickly learned he could over power her if he got too close. Her best bets were small, sharp objects and deftly aimed projectiles. And running. Running was always good. He was stronger than her, for one. On top of that, he had almost two decades on her to get to know this version of the world.

Plus, there was the ever-diminishing difference between what each was willing to do to another human being: Kai was a natural at gutting someone, whereas Bonnie was more of the let's-just-go-our-separate-ways-forever type.

Besides, Bonnie was always more about strategy than brute force.

It was in one of those moments, when her wound was healing, that she started to realize there was something, besides magic, that she was better than Kai at after all.

He was towering over her, in the living room of the Lockwood manor. They each had their hands on a fire poker aimed at her head – Kai trying to lower it towards her, Bonnie struggling to keep it from inching closer. Her forehead was furrowed, her eyes were narrowed and intent. She had been fighting him off for days. She was tired, she was numb. She was alone.

Kai, on the other hand, was smiling. His full lips hung open, tilted up at either end. His eyes were bright and focused. She was going to be murdered by a psychopath in a Carebears T-shirt.

"Give it up, Bonnie," he said, his voice low, as if there was someone else in the world who might hear them. He grunted as she pushed back against the poker. He leaned forward and her shoulder blades met the wall again.

"You can't beat me," he said. She growled as the poker inched closer and closer to her eye. Her grip was slipping. Her arms ached.

He was right, she thought. But she could out-smart him.

Bonnie stepped to the side and let go of the poker, letting it slide through her fingers and into the wall beside her from the weight of Kai's strength.

He turned to her, eyes aflame, hands still on the poker, trying to pull it from the wall. He was surprised to find her face so close to his. She seemed pleased with herself – almost elated. Maybe it's the adrenaline that turned her eyes from steely determination to glorious victory. Or maybe she was just like him.

Bonnie should have run. That was her chance – while he stupidly wasted time, she should have been pulling the kitchen knife from her boot and killing him for the second time that day.

But, in the split second between run! and hide! her brain twitched and she did something else entirely. Because Kai's intent eyes turned admiring, and they dipped from hers to her lips. Then his tongue darted out, and her heart thudded with adrenaline.

And it was all too easy. She leaned forward, closed the scant inches between them, tilted her head, and kissed him.

His lips shouldn't have been so soft, or warm.

Kai didn't move as Bonnie pressed her lips against his. His hands, instead, grew limp on the poker. His eyes didn't close, and neither did hers. His vision grew hazy as she scraped her teeth against his bottom lip. He forgot to breathe.

And then she stabbed him in the windpipe and was gone.

The next time she needed to, she flicked her tongue against his ear. She remembered the first time she kissed Jeremy's ears and his eyes practically rolled up into his head and his breathing got heavy. She had enjoyed the rush of power – that such a simple touch could leave her boyfriend breathless.

Kai wasn't much different. He had sought her out in every room of Caroline's house. But this one she definitely knew better than he did. When he turned the wrong corner, she lunged at him, landing on his back and wrapping her arms around his neck. She closed her hands over his windpipe and squeezed.

Kai backed Bonnie into a wall – once, twice. He hit her against it, trying to dislodge her, or knock her out.

That's when she did it.

Fuck you, he wanted to say, but only the first word comes out, in a shuddered moan. He was suddenly very, very aware of her breasts pressed into his back, and of her legs wrapped around his waist. Her lips and tongue and teeth scraped against the hollows of his ears and the sensations go south, fast.

And maybe she was adjusting her balance, or maybe she was rubbing herself against him, or maybe he was just going crazy because how, how can anything feel this good? It had never felt this good. None of the over-the-blouse make outs, none of the quick finishes in the backseat of his car, none of the movie theatre feel ups had ever, ever, felt like this.

"Kai," she whispered in his ear, because she knew he wanted her to.

He gritted his teeth against the pleasure of it all. Then he took a step forward, and pried her legs loose from his waist. She fell down gracelessly on the small space allotted to her.

He took a deep breath, and then he walked away. He definitely, definitely, did not turn around.

He surprised her two days later, again on the Lockwood property. He grabbed her from behind with fishing line in hand. In one deft move, he had pulled it over her neck and was pulling tight.

"Did you think you were safe?" he asked, his lips deliberately grazing her ear. He tightened the rope as she struggled for breath.

"Did you think that was all it took?" She struggled in front of him, thrashing against his hold, her hands clawing at his arms, trying to pry them loose. She stepped backwards to alleviate the pressure on her neck and found herself pressed right up against him. "That it would be that easy?"

She closed her eyes. She let the moment overtake her.

Strategy, she thought.

She let her hands fall to her sides, palm faced away from her. Then she pressed it against his leg and squeezed lightly. She continued the trail up and felt his body tense as she slid her fingers, nails scratching denim, into the waistband of his pants. The line at her throat loosened as her fingers grazed his hipbone. Her hand drifted behind her, finger brushing lower past his navel, tugging lightly on the hair that leads from there, down. Her other hand followed suite.

The noose becomes a necklace as his grip loosened. Kai's breath was hot and heavy on her neck. He leaned forward into her touch. She turned, slightly, and brushed her lips against his neck. His eyes were closed, and he let out a delicious exhale that tells her, she's won.

He dropped the line, and was about to put his hands all over her in another way entirely, when she curled her fingers around his hair and pulled. Hard.

He screamed, but she had already turned and kneed him between the legs. As he went down, he grabbed at her, but she kicked him in the head, too, and he was knocked out. Gone.

She sauntered away.

Every erogenous zone was a target.

Bonnie ran them through her mind constantly. Maybe too constantly. They had been fighting less and less. Or rather, they had been starting fights as much, they just weren't lasting as long or finishing as often in death or injury. At least not to her.

Besides his ears, he had sensitive hands. She discovered this when he put his hand over her mouth as she made a run for the Camaro. She flicked her tongue out, darting between two fingers, and he had loosened his grasp enough for her to run her lips and the tip of her tongue along his fingers. She sucked one into her mouth, eliciting a heated exhale, in the same second that she grabbed the keys and gauged his eye out.

He was also a sucker for her bare hands on his skin. He loved it when she dipped a finger beneath his jeans waistband; loved it even more when she looked him in the eyes as she did it. He liked when she lay her hands flat against his abdomen or scratched her nails against his back. He had stalked towards her once, and she had stopped him with a touch and a deliberate look.

He also preferred soft touches to hard ones. He preferred the intimacy of her eyes on his, maybe so he knew she wasn't imagining someone else. He had taken to scanning her eyes recently, trying to decipher why she was doing this – why she had started it – why she hadn't stopped.

The last time her lips touched his, he had responded, eagerly, like he had been waiting for that kiss his entire life. She had meant it to be as tentative and brief as the first, but he had dropped his weapon, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her, properly, back.

He had slanted his mouth over hers, and parted his lips, inviting her to bite down on his bottom lip (which was still busted open from a slap to the face moments before). Then his tongue had slid against the inside of her top lip, and she had moaned – in surprise, of course – and soon they were full on making out. When she stopped focusing on the way his lips were making her thighs clench and her heart thud, she realized his bare hands were on her bare back – skin to skin. He even reached down to grab her ass in one palm and let out a pleased, grateful sound as he squeezed it.

"I want you," he had whispered, sliding his hands lower.

So, naturally, she killed him.

Kai couldn't stand Bonnie.

He hadn't been touched in so long, she knew, and she was the only one who could touch him, ever. That made her a lot harder for him to kill.

He tried to avoid her, and could barely manage it for a day. His body was betraying him. Instead of feeling angry and enraged at the thought of her, he felt – for lack of a better word – turned on. His hands grew clammy. His lips felt like they were on fire – tingling from the memory of hers. When he closed his eyes, he wondered what it would feel like if those deft little hands had reached lower than his waistband. He wanted her to tug at his neck until her kisses left marks.

Hell, he even wanted to kiss her back. He wanted her to be the one thinking of him, like this, late at night. He wanted her to be the one wishing that her bed wasn't empty.

He wanted the power.

He wanted her to eat jam off his fingers.

He started to think, this might not be hell after all. There might be better ways to spend eternity than killing the most kissable woman he had met in two decades.

"What are you planning?" Bonnie asked one day. They had been circling each other for a week, but he hadn't made a move to attack her. Bonnie was a defensive player, so she wasn't going to make the first move and breach any tentative peace they had between them. She cornered him in the Gilbert house, on their couch, with his hands behind his head and his eyes closed. Pretending to sleep.

"Nothing," Kai said without opening his eyes.

Tentatively, she approached, and sat on an armchair out of his reach. "I don't believe you."

"You were right," he said, opening one eye to look at her. She was wearing a low cut top and a short skirt with ankle boots. He forgot how good she looked uninjured and unafraid. "We are both stuck here, forever. What's the point in fighting?" He shrugged, closing his eyes again. "Besides, neither of us have magic, so we might as well get used to each other."

"I don't want to get used to you," Bonnie said.

Kai's eyes snapped open then. He turned to her with that stupid smile on his face, and winked. "You already are, Bon-Bon."

"I am not," she recoiled.

"Then why are you here?"

Kai kissed Bonnie first. After two weeks of no interaction, he had surprised her by showing up at the boarding house. She had the knife block on her side. She had already thrown two at him as he made his approach, which he deflected with a cast-iron pan.

"I don't want to fight, Bonnie," Kai said, dropping the pan. He wrapped his left hand around her right wrist. Her hand still clenched a knife, angled it against his stomach.

"Don't come any closer," she warned him.

"I just want to kiss you," he said. His hand came up and, very gently, rested on her cheek. He brushed her face with his thumb. His eyes dropped to her lips, and came back up to her eyes, like he was asking permission.

"I don't trust you," Bonnie said.

"Good," Kai said, brushing his thumb against her lips. She didn't flinch. He paused, but she didn't tell him to stop. Which was good, because he didn't want to steal her kisses, he wanted to be kissed. He wanted to be wanted back.

He kissed her, once. Softly. Quickly. If her eyes weren't open, she might have missed it.

And then he let her go.

The next day, she walked in on him destroying the ascendant. He picked apart a screw here, a metal latch there, and tossed them over his shoulders as he walked through the town. She remembered the day he made her "find" it. The way he looked at her when her hand landed on his pocket. The way he said he just wanted her to touch his chest.

"What are you doing?" Bonnie called out from behind him. He stopped in his tracks. When he turned, it was slowly. He threw another piece up in the air behind him.

"Giving up," he said.

"Really?" She didn't seem to believe him. She even crossed her arms.

He shrugged. "Happens every couple of years or so. Why not now?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. She started to walk towards him, and he did the same. "Does that mean you're going to stop trying to kill me?"

"Trying to kill you?" he paused as if in consideration, "Yes, I've somewhat lost interest in that."

"So," she said slowly. He saw the pen in her hand. She clicked and unclicked the top as she spoke. "We will go our separate ways?"

"Oh, no, no, no," Kai said, snapping part of the ascendant. He put the glass in his mouth and smashed it between his teeth, then spit it out beside them. "You're the one who trapped us here. Together. You obviously weren't ready to part ways."

He grinned at her, and his teeth were pink with diluted blood.

"If you think we're just going to… be friends," Bonnie began when, in one swift motion, Kai grabbed her by the waist and tugged her against him. He leaned forward and nipped at her lips, smiled, and did it again. Crumbs of glass clung to both of them now.

His eyes were half closed, his voice low, when he spoke against her mouth. "That's what you wanted, right, Bon-Bon? What we both want?"

Bonnie stabbed him in the neck with the pen. He went down. He gurgled blood before he died, saying something that sounded an awful lot like, worth it.

So, kisses weren't going to cut it. Every time he tried it, she was unfazed. And, even worse, when she got into it, and kissed him back, he got hazy-minded. She knew just when to nip and where to lick and when to say his name.

Fine. He was over that, anyway.

It had been three days of attempted kisses –some resulting in his death, others she let him walk away from unscathed – when he tried something different entirely.

He grabbed her as she left the boarding house one day, and pulled her into the back seat of the Camaro. She didn't try to stop him, just raised a brow as if she was bored. He pulled her clumsily on top of him. Her legs were spread on either side of him, clad in the smallest jeans.

Bonnie met Kai's eyes as his hands landed on her hips.

"What are you doing?"

"Whatever you'll let me," Kai winked. His hands skimmed under her top, making their way up the bare skin of her waist to her underarms unimpeded. She wasn't wearing a bra. He raised her legs so she was higher on him, her head hitting the roof lightly.

Then he got to work.

He started with the sides of her torso, above her waist, but below her breasts. She jerked against him when pressed an open-mouthed kiss against her there. He bit her skin, then soothed it with his tongue. He sucked against her until small red marks appeared.

She squirmed against him, and when her moans became whimpers, he angled his knee so that, if she wanted to, she could lean forward and get the friction he knew she craved – that they both craved.

Kai pulled her shirt over her head and worshiped her as if he'd never seen breasts before. He mumbled about how soft, and warm, and smooth she was. He used his hands and tongue to reduce her to a pile of shivers.

Soon, she was sinking into him, her body hot against his thigh. She writhed, grinding into him as his kisses became more aggressive. One hand pressed into her hips, spurring her on. The other cupped her cheek, his tongue brushing her lips. Her tongue darted out and licked his finger and then he was the one groaning.

Bonnie sank onto him, leaning forward. Even with hormones swimming and heart thudding, she knew what this was.

This was war.

As his hands continued their onslaught, she began one of her own – on that long column of neck. Now they were both making sounds that bounced around in the Camaro. He pulled her firmly onto his lap, and she ground herself against him. Right there. He threw his head back in surrender.

"Can I?" her breath fanned over his neck.

"Yes," he barely managed to get out. Then again, and again – "yes."

She fumbled with his jeans button, and pulled the zipper down to find him naked. She raised a brow at him, her lips quirking up. He dared her on with an intent gaze and a sly, open-mouth smile.

As soon as she touched him, it was over.

She laughed. At him. Normally, that would've made him draw in to himself, put up his walls, and start planning her gruesome death. He hated being laughed at. He hated being humiliated.

But then she wrapped her arms around his neck and smacked his lips with a hard kiss, and whispered into his mouth: "Next time," another peck, "it's my turn."

Then she leaned against him, burrowed her face into his nape, and took a few steadying breaths. Before he could pull himself together, she left.

He knew she had a knife in her hand when he confronted her at the Grille. He had watched her walk in, hips swaying, and take a seat in a booth. She had sighed as she looked around at the empty establishment. Then she had grabbed some old menus and started to peruse them, as if someone was coming to take her order.

It was so easy to get her where he wanted her. A few overturned tables, really. Then she was coming towards him. She kneed him in the crotch first, but he was prepared this time. He went down willingly, with a smirk on his face. His hands immediately found her waist and she stumbled into him.

"Kai," Bonnie warned, her head tilted.

"It's next time," he winked.

His body curved around hers, holding her in place. His hands slid up and down her smooth legs. When his tongue found the back of her knee, she almost fell into him. She moaned as he sucked on her skin, pausing to appreciate every red mark he left behind. One hand disappeared up her short, short skirt.

She wobbled on her feet as his fingers of his right hand curved around her ass and squeezed, holding her like a chalice.

"Kai," she said again, but there was no warning in it. Her brows were pulled together. She was trying to keep her breathing steady.

"Bonnie," he replied. He pressed two fingers against her and found her hot and damp. He kissed the inside of her thigh and she fell against him, her fingers curling against his shoulders. He felt the blade against his skin and kissed her harder. The little sounds she made reverberated throughout the Grille. They bounced inside his head, spurring his heart to pound faster and faster, his mouth to water.

Finally, Kai pulled her flimsy panties aside - "Still wearing underwear, are we?" - and deftly flicked his tongue between her legs.

Bonnie squirmed as his breath hit her flesh, but she didn't move away.

He repositioned her easily until she had one leg over his shoulder, the other flat on the ground. He had one arm pressed against her ass, supporting her weight, and the other wrapped around her straight leg, tickling the back of her knee.

He licked her again, long and steady this time.

She steadied herself on a nearby chair, her knuckles turning white as she gripped it.

"I've always wanted to do this," he said. He grinned up at her, her brows furrowed together. "And I bet you've always wanted me to."

"Shut up," Bonnie said, and Kai soothed the harshness in her voice by pressing his lips lightly against her.

"So?" he whispered against her, "Should I continue?"

"I…" Bonnie hesitated. Part of her knew that she should say No, but the other part of her knew that if she did, he would stop.

He ran his tongue against her upper thigh, and she shivered.

"Yes," she said, with her eyes closed and her brows knitted together.

Kai kissed her until she was a shivering wreck in his arms. He felt her body pulse and clench against his mouth. It both shocked and thrilled him – that he could make her cry out like that, cling to his shirt and push her gorgeous body against him like she wanted him, no, needed him to survive. When she came, it was with a sweet, broken moan and a long pull of her claws against his back.

He was about to pull her down, onto the floor, where they could continue where they had left off in the car, but there was a sharp pain to his clavicle, and then his blood was spurting everywhere. And Bonnie, breathless, was backing away, her eyes on him, her face aghast.

Three months after Damon left, Bonnie had accepted that no one was coming to get her. She did her version of destroying the ascendant – she drove the Camaro off of Wickery Bridge.

She didn't expect to open her eyes again, but when she did, Kai was leaning over her, drenched, his shirt sticking to him, his hair matted. His lips were beaded with water as he huffed above her, hitting her back until she coughed up all the water. His eyes were angrier than she had ever seen them and his face was, uncharacteristically, distant.

Bonnie lay down on Wickery Bridge. Alive. Stuck. She cried.

"Why did you do that?"

"What, save your life?" He glanced at her and then away.

"Yes!" She pulled herself to sitting up.

He shrugged.

"What's the point?" she sobbed, slamming her fist against the bridge. She hiccoughed, and didn't bother to wipe the tears from her eyes or the snot from her nose.

"You are," Kai said, his voice low but angry. His eyes intent but filled with – was that, fear? Worry? Concern? "You're the fucking point, Bonnie Bennett."

She glared at him, her brows knitting together. He glanced away from her, his jaw clicking. Then he, too, collapsed on the bridge. He put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

"Don't leave me, Bon-Bon. I can't do this eternal prison thing without you."

They didn't bring it up again. The Camaro re-appeared the next day, as if the whole world just reset itself, except for them. Kai took to hovering around her, realizing, regretfully, that more power was in Bonnie's hands than he'd like to admit.

He had saved her – and Kai didn't save, or even spare, anyone.

And she could do it again. Kill herself. Leave him, here, alone.

"I'm not depressed," Bonnie said. "I just don't see the point in being here."

"I know," Kai replied, because he did.

Bonnie didn't tell him how foreign her body had felt, on the bridge: without magic, without hope. Her skin was clammy, her fingers shook, and her lips were numb – yet, looking at him, her heart thudded unreasonably to life.

And Kai would deny to his dying day how desperate he had felt, pulling her back – how afraid he was of being alone, of being without her – how he had felt about Bonnie Bennett.

He followed her around for days making sure she didn't do it again. She didn't talk much, at first, so he filled the silence with his own mumblings. First, about all the ways he had tried to off himself in the prison world. Then, when that didn't get a smile, he told her, sparingly, about his family and the merge and what it was like to be raised to either murder or be murdered. He even regaled her with useless facts, like what other organs you could live without, or that mistletoe was actually poisonous.

Finally, he got her to tell him about her world. About what the fuck an iPod was. Sometimes he thought she just said things to hurt him – like, that a girly musical covered his favorite Nirvana song, or that no one used pagers anymore. Other times, he was sure she was just making words up – like Google, and Twitter, and "shipping" meaning something other than import/export.

"I ship us," Kai had tried the word out while they were watching old movies at the local theatre. Bonnie had burst out laughing. She threw popcorn at him.

"You can't ship us. That's not a thing."

"It could be."

She snorted. "You're so lucky you didn't make it back. You'd just embarrass yourself."

Soon, they were back to their old routines.

Except this time, the kisses were slower and more desperate. Like he could make her stay if he did it right, if he held her gently enough, if he let her make the moves, if he told her that she was honest and loyal and kind.

Bonnie still carried her knife. She still watched him from the corner of her eye. She didn't trust him, and he didn't blame her. He wasn't trustworthy.

And yet, she secretly enjoyed seeing the marks her brutal kisses made on his neck, peeking proudly above his shirt collar. She even enjoyed the way he unabashedly stared at her, holding his breath, mouth agape, when she walked about in short skirts.

"I just think we should have sex like, once," Kai said after a particularly heated session that concluded with her finishing on his fingers, and his fingers ending up in his mouth. "Just once, Bon." That wicked smile as he concluded: "A year."

"Let me guess," Bonnie said, nodding against his nape where her head rested. "On May 10, 1994?"

"Well," she felt his grin as he kissed her forehead, "it is our anniversary."

"I'm too tired to kill you for that," Bonnie sighed and he tugged her closer.

"Maybe later," he offered, generously.

Then he felt her smile, and his heart swelled in a way that was becoming all too familiar.

One night, six months after Damon left, Bonnie made her way to Kai's room with only a cotton underwear set for armor.

He had taken to sleeping in the Boarding House, moving up from the downstairs couch to what Bonnie knew as Stefan's room.

She crawled on top of his topless form, pressing her face against his skin and laying nipping kisses. She dragged the knife against his flesh, and he was about to tackle her – about to give in to his instincts to protect himself – when she rolled to the side and tugged him on top of her. He obliged, holding himself up above her, and quickly found her legs locked around his waist.

"You would kill me if it suited you," Bonnie said, her fingers readjusting themselves over the knife blade.

"Probably," he admitted. She dragged the knife from his neck to his stomach, pausing to pin his eyes with hers when he says, breathlessly: "But it doesn't suit me."

"No?" She raised a challenging brow.

"This suits me," he said, his eyes half-lidded.

He leaned forward to kiss her, his stomach pressed precariously against the blade between them. Slowly, he coaxed her with his lips and tongue to life like she wanted him to. He rocked against her, and she realized that, under the blanket, he was naked. And ready and willing and wanting her. He moaned into her mouth and she couldn't be blamed for her hips jerking up in response.

Her hand moved to the side, but she didn't drop the knife.

Bonnie's mouth was as slick and warm as the rest of her, and her lingerie-clad form was doing all sorts of hot, heady things to him as she pressed against his bare skin. It felt like he was touching her everywhere at once, sucking on her neck and licking her ear and kissing the inside of her elbow. He tugged her bra aside and hissed as her breasts made contact with his chest. It took a second for him to untangle their legs, free her of her panties, and tangle them up again. He grabbed her ass, slid his hand down her thigh, and encouraged her to lock her legs around him again.

She did.

For the first time, they were both naked, both sweating and writhing and on the edge of something. She left bruises on his skin from open-mouthed kisses, and he wrapped his fingers around her body for pleasure rather than pain.

She dragged her free hand through his hair. She rubbed her body against his. She used every trick she had learned over the past few months to drive him to the point, just the point, of crying her name. Of begging her for what they both wanted. Of being the first to break.

When he was about to slide into her, he flicked his eyes up to hers, and waited. Bonnie met his gaze, evenly.

"I don't like you," she said.

"I don't like you, either." His jaw clenched and he glanced away.

"Good." The knife clanged to the floor. "As long as we're clear."

For a brief, startling moment, Kai's eyes filled with wonder. And before she grabbed him and pulled him forward, Bonnie couldn't help but wink.

...

AN: Thank you for reading! There will be another Bonkai one-shot next Wednesday! :)