A/N: sooo, I gotta get my ass to bed but I'm finally done with this slice of fucked-up. Lots of thanks to all you lovely trash sisters who reviewed last chapter and prompted me to hurry up with the second part. Trigger warnings, I guess? Should I even say it at this point? I weirdly feel that, despite all the icky things I put them through, Bonkai are so pure. they're my bbies. So, they transcend trigger warnings, okay? #Bonkai5ever.

p.s. check out the playlist on 8tracks!

ii.

The art of our necessities is strange,

That can make vile things precious.

In the shower, the water is always cold, it always shreds the skin. It's possible to alter water. It's possible to pour enough bitter magic into it and turn it unsavory. But you'd have to be really damn petty.

He rinses his mouth. Each gulp is pulpy, full of tiny rocks and minerals, and he spits it down the drain. His throat is raw.

The water jet leaves red swatches across his back, even when he's being extra-careful.

Her claws, in another form.

Sometimes, he can almost feel her breath on his shoulder and he'll turn around and cup only air.

But he hears her voice, even when she is not there.

Look at yourself. Just look at yourself, she's saying in that sneering schoolmistress tone he abhors or adores. You should be ashamed.

He is back in chains for this portion of their weekly dalliances.

He doesn't mind it that much – can't even feel the weight of them around his body - since Bonnie Bennett is sitting at the bar naked.

She's not doing anything particularly interesting; she's casually flipping through a school brochure. But she could be rapping Vanilla Ice lyrics and he would still not be able to take his eyes off her.

"Caroline is opening a school for witches. She wants me to teach a few classes… She says I have lots of patience and experience. I'm not so sure about that." She unfolds her legs and leans back against the counter. Her tits swell and fall on the page, like heavy fruit sagging from branches. It would look obscene if she weren't so damn dignified.

Well, and really hot, but whatever. He's not about to lose this game.

"You and kids?" he muses, cocking his head to the side. "That's definitely not a good idea, and I actually killed a few, sooo."

Bonnie wrinkles her nose. "Her daughters happen to love me."

"You mean Alaric's offspring? That's not really raising the bar."

"I wasn't asking your opinion anyway," she rolls her eyes and flicks the page across her nipples.

Kai clicks his jaw. "Yeah, you do. You want me to tell you you'll be a great teacher."

"No," she denies a little too firmly. "I'm only wondering if I could pass on my knowledge to someone else. I mean I am the last Bennett…"

Kai can hear the underlying sadness in her tone, even while she's dressing it in detachment.

But he's not going to lend a sympathetic ear. He's going to shit on her dreams every time if it means he can kindle that ugly side of her which is his long-lost twin. Hell, he's part of the Gemini Coven, this is his birthright.

"Tell me you didn't get naked just to talk pedagogy."

Bonnie leans forward, covering her supple curves with the arch of her arms. She frowns, resting her chin in her hand. "What are you talking about?"

Kai rolls his eyes. "You. You're posing for a nude, like that buxom redhead in the movie about the boat."

"Titanic?"

He makes a gagging noise. "Don't remind me. Luke had me watch that piece of fluff when he was in my body. His favorite movie, apparently. I bet the rest of the gay community shunned him."

Bonnie twists around in the chair, giving him a wide view of her naked back. He feels like a dog with a gourmet bone that's only inches away.

"You talk like a grandpa. It's really offensive, you know."

"How is it offensive to mock a James Cameron movie? They guy's not really a thing anymore, is he? Oh God, please don't tell me he is."

"Well, uh, actually…"

"No," he shakes his head. "Don't change the subject. Why are you naked?"

She blinks, almost startled. "Are you serious? I'm fully dressed."

"Right, and I am not actually chained."

"You're crazy. I'm wearing a dress, see?" and she ruffles an invisible skirt, gliding her fingers across her naked thighs.

Kai feels a crick at the back of his neck. "Look, I'm not blind. The school nurse said I had 20/20 vision. Sure…that was 20 years ago but…"

Bonnie slips down from the stool, her petite figure undulating like the smooth spine of a harp, and he doesn't know why he thinks harps of all things, maybe because he can still hear music in his head, maybe he's been down here too long…

But she's clearly naked.

Isn't she?

Bonnie twirls in front of him, an hourglass without sand. Her flesh is firm, battered without bruises, thick without weights. She could possibly fly.

He remembers thinking she was an angel. Yeah, okay, that sounds dumb as shit, but when she first showed up in his Mystic Falls prison, she was wearing a soft pearly camisole and a dusty jacket, like she'd been on the road for ages, and her hair was cut short and wholesome, as if whoever had sunk the scissors into her locks couldn't make the blades work. She had pink nails, pared down to the bone, childish and nimble. She constantly stuck her upper lip forward, a mission girl on a magical quest. An angel who had finally come for his soul.

Because he had tried everything, even praying to some god – any god – to rescue him from his confinement. And maybe god had sent him a sweet little archangel, a dark-skinned Bjork who would lie down with his crimes and release him.

And she does – look in some way like an angel. She's got a diffuse quality, her fragments break up in the air like bad chemistry, she's got track lights under her arms, like the way cars speed at night and when you take a photo you only see blazing zigzags. She's zigzag, wry, lucent but because she shines you have to bear the brunt of darkness. She's that one flickering streetlight and you're the son-of-a-bitch in the shadows.

"God," she rolls her eyes, "here, you can touch the fabric, you weirdo."

She walks towards him in her imaginary dress and she stops only when her knee collides with his legs. She opens a pathway between them and she steps in between and her entrance leaves him slightly dizzy. She offers her bare thigh for recognition.

It's difficult to move in his chains, and he's quite close to spraining a wrist, but he manages to brush his fingers briefly against her hip.

"Mmm, cotton," he drawls, eyes gliding over the gentle slope of her belly. And if he travels further, he finds a dark memory, a petal of puckered skin under her breasts, left there by his knife.

He shudders, because shit – his cock is straining in his pants.

"No, it's velour," Bonnie corrects calmly. "You honestly can't see it?"

The image seems to glitch before his eyes. He can picture the dress. It's dark pink, something you wear for a special occasion. Something that reminds him of the pigs on the farm where his dad would take him to watch the slaughter.

"Do you have a hot date or something?"

Bonnie brushes the invisible wrinkles on her invisible dress. "Caroline is throwing a party for the school opening."

"Ah. Hoping you'll meet someone?"

He wants to rest his head between her thighs but he's not that pathetic.

"No. Unless you count parents of potential alumni as a great dating pool."

Kai rattles in his chains. "You're not going to a parents meet-up naked."

Bonnie scowls. "Stop saying that. It's not funny."

"It wasn't funny when the emperor did it either," he remarks. Who'd written that story anyway? He forgets. He's hungry.

"You're starting to see things," she shakes her head. "I guess it makes sense, given all your time spent here."

He wants to bite her face, to sink his teeth right under her eye. But he smirks instead. "You're trying to make me sound crazy, but it won't work."

"Oh, I don't know, you already sound delirious…" she trails off, her fingers grazing his jaw.

Kai sucks in a breath.

She lifts his chin.

Her breasts probably taste like apple pie or some other wholesome fragrance in the American family arsenal. And they're right there, level with his mouth and his teeth. It's really unfair to deny him this meal. Well, who doesn't want to eat breasts for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

"Say it," she murmurs softly. "Say my dress looks lovely."

Kai grits his teeth. "Na-ah."

"If you do, maybe…you can come a bit closer." Her fingers tickle his stubble.

Kai wars with himself. He's been humiliated in all unholy ways, but his mind has been left intact.

Well, what's another piece to his jailor?

"Say it."

His chains glide against her thighs.

"Your dress looks lovely, Bonnie."

She smiles, slapping his face away. "I'm naked, you moron."

And she walks away, a zigzag of light.

The walls vanish one day. They're just gone. The bar has collapsed, its environs dismantled. Like on the set of some popular 80s sitcom, where at the end of each season they take down the family living room. He is one dot of organic life in the middle of darkness.

Everything around him is a smooth black plain. He walks on solid ground but there's nothing solid around him. He's in a womb, but there's no heartbeat.

He's alone in this black square.

He opens his mouth to scream, but he can't hear himself. And does he really want to do this? Does he want to scream? Or is it some vestigial instinct, from when he was too young to remember?

He lies down and holds his knees to his mouth, like a fetus.

(He won't say it, won't admit it to himself, but as he lies there, he yearns for something. He wants her to hold him. He'd cling to her like Kate Winslet hogged that raft in Titanic. He'd hold onto her with every finger. Because this empty dark is not his friend.

Yeah, he'd hold her.

And then he'd choke her fucking throat.)

"I was teaching the twins about matter manipulation and I got curious. I mean, very few witches have experimented on prison worlds before." She tells him this in a proud, clean voice. No hard feelings. He's her guinea pig, he understands.

"You realize," he drawls disaffectedly, "you could've turned me into goo."

"That was part of the incentive, really," she jokes absently, tracing the glass of liquor with her nail.

Kai chews on his own cheek. He is leaning against the wall. He wants to feel its solid back against his spine. Yeah, prison worlds are all the same, but he likes walls, he likes for things to have the appearance of real.

"Careful, Bon. You're becoming a real sadist."

Bonnie glances up at him behind her lashes. It's almost coy. "You think so?"

The poker's end is sizzling. It's red – the red of corn syrup and field poppies. A red that pops.

It's a matter of pride that he will sit still and not make a sound. That's what he tells himself anyway. The chains won't allow him to go far, but he can retain some dignity.

The funny thing - the really fucked up thing, actually – is that none of this is done with animosity.

Because everything goes in the prison world. Everything is allowed. He has taught her that. And Bonnie is a quick study.

So she's not doing this to punish him. Not really. She's just…shucks, she's just doing what she wants, for once.

B-Bonnie, his mind blubbers, but his teeth bite down on his tongue. The hot poker is awfully close now and he knows that even if his skin heals this will fucking hurt.

And he's okay with pain as long as someone else is suffering.

Bonnie gazes at his bare chest for a few moments, judging her canvas. His stomach churns as her eyes linger at the swoop of his hips where his jeans drag down. He'd make a smarmy joke. Like what you see? But the truth is he's still a kid deep down, a forty year-old kid who never got the hang of things. And desire and pain are not that different after all and he never got the chance to draw the line.

She is very near now, he can feel the heat of the poker.

He closes his eyes, determined not to scream. Because she will be disappointed, won't she?

He almost jumps when her fingers skate across his abdomen.

"Baby-smooth," she muses.

And he knows what she's thinking. She's still got a scar from him. An ugly little souvenir. It still gets him hard sometimes, thinking of that scar. Honest to God, he'd do it again.

If you were to ask him – "would you still stab her, after everything?"

Holy fuck, yes.

"I'd still do it," he murmurs softly, staring down at her heart-shaped face.

And she might know what he means, because she's always right behind him, a faithful shadow.

When the scorching metal makes contact it's incandescent. It's fireworks.

Bonnie's face is lit up from within and he's never screamed harder in his life.

Every shower hurts. He's like a dog with rabies. He can't stand water. It hurts so fucking bad, and it hurts everywhere. The mark pulses like a second heart. She must've used some magic, because the skin doesn't heal right away. Or maybe his body refuses to conceal her violence.

He tries to touch it, but it hurts even worse.

His body is not his own.

"Lorenzo would need smelling salts," he mocks on the hundredth-something day since he's lived in her pocket.

"He wouldn't love you anymore, that's for sure," he continues leisurely, dangling his feet from the bar. "I mean, he'd never guess you were this….vicious. But I knew. I've always known you're a little freak." His smile is smug, defiant, but a little contemplative too – like, how is it that these anomalies hide in beautiful, sylphid bodies?

"I'm not a freak," she mutters, relinquishing her purse. "You're lucky I don't do worse."

"Uuu, I'm shivering in my boots."

Bonnie rolls her eyes. She approaches him almost amiably, and she pokes him right between the ribs.

Kai's face twists as ripples of pain shoot out of the raw wound.

His throat burns. He almost loses his balance. But fuck if he'll fall down at her feet one more time. He reaches out instead and he pokes her back. He knows the place by heart. He can still feel the knife going in, the way he cut into her like hot bread. His finger touches the raised skin under her shirt.

They're both fingering each other's scars.

And for a moment they contemplate destruction.

But in the next, he's dragging her neck forward with sharp talons, and their teeth knock together, lips peeled back, like hyenas. He yanks her on top of him and squeezes her ass and sinks his nails into her thighs and rakes her flesh like he wants to kill her with his bare hands. And well, there's no "like he wants". He does. Certainly, when it comes to her, life and death have always been homonyms. He can't contemplate her without violence. Oh, God, the things I want to do to you…

Sure you'd say – typical psychopath. And you'd be wrong.

Because he knew - from the first moment he made her skin prickle with sweat and fear – that she's as addicted to this fucking savagery as he is.

Bonnie can't ever be his victim, not really.

Because she's always willing.

And boy, that's like finding a soulmate, isn't it?

She sinks down on his cock slowly, and there's no air between her lips. Her mouth parts in surprise, but there's no oxygen. Because she has thought about it many times but it never felt like this in her nightmares. It never felt so damn still. Like she's about to turn to stone.

Kai's thumbs press into the hollows under her waist. They're called…the dimples of Venus. She remembers that from a girly magazine. She used to read it with Elena. If you had the dimples, it meant you were desirable.

"Move for me, Bon Bon," Kai moans, clutching her hips.

Move for me.

She does. She rolls her hips forward, feels him shift underneath her. She rolls her hips back and listens to him hiss.

And she doesn't go any faster than that. Ever.

Kai calls her a devious cunt and a mean bitch and he even puts his hands around her throat and tells her to fuck him.

"Just fucking fuck me, you little cunt or I'll fucking choke you, fuck me Bonnie, just God – don't make me - don't make me -"

He squeezes her throat so hard, she sees stars.

But she keeps it slow, slow, slow.

He's in agony, flopping like a dead fish, grinding against her.

They both come after what seems like hours of death.

(Shit-shit-shit-god-you-fucking-demon-you-fucking-harpy / they can't tell who says what)

She likes to infect his wounds.

She drinks straight from the burn.

She steps into the shower with him, and before Kai can acclimate with her hunger, she's on her knees in the cold water, and she's got her mouth on the burning flesh. The poker mark is still, at this point, raw. It will always be raw.

The little freak bares her teeth. She rips into the ugly bruise. She makes it bleed anew.

Kai slams his head against the tiles as she drinks his blood.

He fists one hand in her hair.

Thick, creamy jets trickle down her breasts.

With her cherry mouth soaked in blood, she looks down distracted. She didn't even notice his cock, spilling seed on her skin.

He didn't either.

He's like a Jack-in-the-box. It's not just the walls now. It's the space. She's getting better at this. He can hardly stand up, but he can't lie down. She's shrunk his prison to the size of a box.

He presses his hands against the solid dark. He's got a crick in his neck.

He's stuck like a cockroach between folds of ancient dust.

Kai knows that she will never let him die, not while she can do this.

"You were right before," she tells him, as she strokes his face with the strings of the popper. "You do mean something to me. You're important."

The whip falls gently against his Adam's apple.

"You're the highlight of my day," she murmurs.

He can tell she's lying – or rather, he can't. That's the real torture. She's whispering these soft, pretty things that sound so real, and he wants to stopper his ears but they're making his head spin, they're making his mouth wet.

"I could never give you up," she says, taunting him, but maybe issuing a confession? Is she just rattling him, or is she telling the truth? You can never damn tell with her.

Perhaps she knows that this is what really fucking does him in. The thing most normal people get to have, which he never did.

"You're important to me," she repeats, as she flicks the whip against his face.

"I need you," she adds softly, and he groans so bad, like he's five again and his mom just told him the only thing he's good for is siphoning - taking someone else's life.

He spells his name on her cunt. As his tongue swirls around her clit, his fangs prick her folds and leave a tattoo behind.

It's a message for her and anyone else who might dine here – she is mine.

Well, he doesn't need a tattoo. She is his because she didn't die when he killed her. And he is hers because he didn't die when she killed him. What other proof of possession could there be? Is there anything more symmetric, more gosh-darn commensurate than two bodies that survived each other's massacre?

But they're still trying.

That's the thing with them. They're persistent, like rats in the midst of a plague.

(She still gives him a rat sometimes, to remind him of their origins.)

"Do you want me to stop?" she asks him.

"Never," he grins with filthy rodents in his teeth.