A/N: sometimes i wonder if i'm alive. JUST KIDDING. "thefudge" is really tired and grumpy and needs to stop writing monumentally long fics at 4 AM in the morning. Oh, i should mention, this is gonna be another duology (two-parter) like my bonkai project, because i have become a duologist, apparently. Basically, I wanted to explore Bonnie and Klaus grieving their loved ones in a post-TVD scenario because their storylines are actually quite interesting parallels beyond canon. Like come on, Bonnie mourning Enzo, Klaus mourning Cami, them mourning together? Anyone?

Some things to keep in mind: this, as usual, turns weird. Bonnie and Klaus aren't always likable. Grief is a strange, ugly process.

p.s. Anastasia-G is very concerned about my sleeping patterns, so go read her fics and read this one too to support out life-threatening literary endeavors.

p.p.s. I know next to nothing about Machu Picchu, so don't base your future holiday on this, just sayin'. I make stuff up (that also goes for any TO-related stuff. I don't really watch that show, sorry)

Enjoy!

i.

Grief is a mountain that you are supposed to scale on your own, rock by solitary rock. You may stop on the way to catch your breath and watch the world unfold below, but if you meet a fellow traveler, you're supposed to nod and move on. You must not, under any circumstances, say hello.

She catches the back of his head; the shaggy, rebellious curls of a captive lion. Recognition doesn't hit her right away; she has to peel back layers of herself to remember that, once upon a time, she used to know someone by the name of Klaus Mikaelson.

What the hell is he doing here in Machu Picchu of all places?

But no - no way.

It can't really be him. She can't associate touristy sites with a blood-thirsty hybrid. There are loud, happy families frolicking around them, for god's sake.

Bonnie swivels her heavy rucksack, bent on ignoring this insolent Klaus double, whoever he may be.

But in her rush to get away, she accidentally kicks a stone with her new hiking shoes (she's been trying to break them in, but it's more likely the other way around) and when he turns his head to find the source of the noise, it's too late. He's seen her.

She recognizes him all right. Only he could look both shocked and displeased in the same breath. As if the world were a constant source of irritation. His mulish mouth is set in a thin line, and his chin is strung out, ready to bite. Classic Klaus.

"Well, this is a surprise," he drawls, straightening himself.

And she notices he's wearing proper hiking gear in faded camouflage green. It doesn't fit badly on him, but he looks quite unlike himself. Parochial and quaint, like a housebroken feline. She would laugh, maybe, but she's in no mood for his brand of asshole.

"Hello, Klaus," she mutters. "I'm sure you're here for a supernatural artifact that involves some kind of human sacrifice, so…I'm going to steer clear."

He raises a condescending eyebrow. "The Andean tribes were more inclined towards animal sacrifice."

Bonnie bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying something mean.

Nope, here she goes. "Did you read that in the tourist handbook?"

Klaus looks beyond her at the patch of verdant green that ends, quite, suddenly in rough stone. "…yes."

Her look of surprise is hardly subtle. "Really."

This doesn't sound like the old cocky immortal.

"Well," he shrugs, "I never found these people that compelling to visit when they were alive."

Bonnie thinks about the fact that this man, standing before her, renders her contemporary with the age of the Inca and beyond. It is, for a moment, completely disturbing. No one should be this old and look this young. She's known vampires all her life, but he sticks out like a sore thumb.

"So why visit now?" she asks, like a fool. She should really just say "bye, then" and move along, but there's something really pathetic about the all-menacing hybrid on a tourist trail in Machu Picchu, and she can't help poking the bear one last time.

He smiles, out of the blue, like a sphinx in the desert. A twisted, half-moon parody of a smile.

"It was one of Camille's destinations."

Bonnie takes the smooth piece of paper from his hand.

It bears no wrinkle or crease, proving that he keeps it among his most valuable possessions.

She surveys it with what seems to be an idle, disinterested eye, but she is curious, against her better judgment.

It documents Camille O'Connell's "travel goals". All the places she wanted to see and never got a chance to. All the cities and sites she wanted to explore.

"Well, she was rather whimsical," Klaus muses in a tight voice. "There's nothing there that doesn't belong in a rote Michelin guide."

Bonnie's finger traces the most wonderful cliché of all, Paris.

They're sitting in one of the wooden shacks that stands for a bar-stop along the tourist trail. Their lagers of beer lie partially abandoned. It's so quaint, having beer with Klaus Mikaelson. He offered to pay anyway. And suppose she was willing to hear more about this mysterious Camille.

It shocks her that Klaus briefly fell in love with a mortal. His infatuation with Caroline was only skin-deep and rather incidental. She remembers it like a game without stakes. But this –this sounds serious and gut-wrenching. He can't bring himself to talk about Camille directly; he alludes to her in mock-remarks or unfinished sentences. Like shielding your eyes from the painful glare of the sun.

She doesn't know what to say to him – to this stranger, really. Because as much history as they share, she's never seen this part of him, never thought him capable.

The only thing she can say is, "Enzo and I went to Paris. I didn't know it would be our only trip together in this life."

Klaus rests his chin in the heel of his hand. "I thought I had more than this life. Surely, you did too. Lorenzo was a vampire, wasn't he?"

Bonnie nods and ducks her head almost bashfully.

"Are you afraid I'll call you a hypocrite?" he asks with a hint of the old irony.

"You just did," she says, reaching for her warm lager.

"I suppose you were always bound to join our lot."

Bonnie stares at the amber liquid, almost transparent in the green light. Everything here has a patina of arborous green. It's as if nature swallowed whole civilizations just to play a trick of light in her glass.

"Why's that?"

He shrugs. "You seemed to like damaged things."

.

It was rumored at one time that this was the site of the Lost City of Gold, that Machu Picchu was El Dorado. That every slab of granite was bedecked in a fine sheen of gold that would smudge your fingers upon contact. That it was a gleaming jewel under the open sky. That men became proud of their treasure and wanted to show it to the world. That the gods got angry and blew away the gold, so that when strangers arrived to see their marvel, there was only stone.

To punish them for thinking that anything truly belongs to you.

.

"So," he sighs, because even he feels some strain after climbing three hundred steps in a row. Bonnie is drenched in her own sweat, can't even blink without wincing, but she feels a warm glow in the middle of her forehead. There is relief in blinding pain.

Pushing on despite the discomfort is a reward in its own way.

"That is the lesson I was supposed to grasp, apparently."

She nods grimly, too exhausted to speak. She pulls out the water bottle. It's warm and sticky like the beer she drank, but it satisfies her in a way. All of these efforts are continuous, they share the same flavor. You just keep going in the same fashion.

When her throat is less parched, she chances a glance at him. "Did it –I don't know- humble you?"

Klaus smirks in the fashion of tricksters and scoundrels and ne'er-do-wells, but the impishness, the solid charm of his past decadence is now chipped away, is now a pale copy.

"Hardly."

"The lesson, as far as I can tell, is that immortality is a well-crafted lie. There is no such thing, really. Either everything lives forever, or nothing does. Camille could not live forever. Therefore, nothing can."

"I don't find that grief ennobles us in any way," he remarks as they stand on the promontory facing the wide valley. She likes how nature has stubbornly cracked through the granite, and thick vines kiss between minerals.

Bonnie bites her cracked lips. "Maybe not…but Enzo expects me to be on my best behavior. He expects me to do great things."

Klaus points below, where the tourists walk like busy ants. "Look at the poor fools, swarming with purpose. If one of them could drop dead right now and Lorenzo were returned to you, what would you do?"

Bonnie opens her mouth to deny his claim, to draw the line she would never cross.

Her lips stay parted, but the words never come.

Klaus smiles. "I thought so."

The selfishness startles her, the amoral pit in the valve of her heart. Everyone has one, a dark chamber where one keeps something in chains.

The question becomes urgent when one decides to break the chains.

Everyone knows, Bonnie Bennett has never shrunk from the unorthodox. But what will she shrink from?

"How many would you kill to get Camille back?" she asks, stretching her knee.

"Count the stars and you will know," he replies with a wry movement of his eyebrows, inviting her to look above, where the afternoon sky is already bruised red.

"You know she'd never forgive you if you spilled blood in her name."

She wonders why she bothers to tell him this; Klaus will do what he will.

Except, there is nothing he can do. He told her he's run out of supernatural backdoors. And she has exhausted all her outposts with Enzo. There is only hope now, hope that they will be reunited in the beyond.

It's hard, but it's also easy. She has run out of options, which means she is not tempted to reach for the dark arts of the soul. She can still trick herself into thinking she would make the right choice.

"Yes," he replies tightly, "but I do not seek forgiveness. I seek her."

I seek her.

I seek her.

I seek her.

What will he find in her? What will she find in Enzo?

Is there an end-point, a cul-de-sac to love? Will she ever feel she's had enough?

She doesn't look where she's going, her foot misses a step. She stumbles and almost loses her bearings.

She feels his sharp fingers digging in the flesh of her arm, pulling her up with brute, indelicate force.

"Watch your step."

She could have trundled down this infinite slope of earth-bound stairs and split her head open. She could've died a ridiculous death in Machu Picchu.

She looks up at him with resentment. Maybe you should've let me.

The next day, the climb is easier and she makes it to a higher promontory. Five hundred stairs, in all. The clouds look different from up here; not like clouds, but like air beaten into submission. You can see the treacherous fluff, their stratagem of substance.

She has not harbored suicidal thoughts in a long time. She is, to simplify matters, a warrior, and her ancestors have left her with this fearless inheritance. Never give up.

Most pop-psychology books and self-help manuals have rendered this saying moot, have turned it into sawdust. Never give up! Stay on top of your game! The race is on!

But there is something arcane and sibylline about never ceasing. There is something belonging-to-women about a slow and steady trek across the monuments of men.

Klaus is sitting at the bar-stop, nursing a beer.

She plops down in the seat in front of him, rucksack sagging with her belongings.

"I'm dead," she heaves, leaning her head against the hollow wood. It's a good kind of tired.

Klaus raises an eyebrow. "Why are you dragging your luggage with you?"

She wipes away the sweat from her face. "I'm not staying at a hotel. I'm sleeping in the tent camp."

It's funny, this is the first time he looks like his old self because he is slightly scandalized at the idea. "On the ground."

"I have a sleeping bag, but yeah."

"Gods, I truly don't miss sleeping on the ground," he says with a distant, withering stare.

"No one's asking you to."

He walks with her to the tent camp because he's curious. It's packed with young stragglers, old hippies, and starry-eyed newlyweds who feel this is the height of romance.

There is a campfire and everything. They even have marshmallows.

Bonnie finds a spot next to a raspberry bush and sits down with her legs crossed. Klaus stands with arms folded, watching the fire.

The hippies start singing campfire songs. Someone cranks up Bohemian Rhapsody in a drunken slur.

Bonnie looks up at him. "Sorry, this isn't really your scene."

Klaus shrugs. "It's not like you invited me."

Which she wonders about. They're imposing on each other because they're the only people they know in Machu Picchu. And it strikes her that she thinks: "people". Are they really that? It seems that they never learned how to "people".

She grabs a bag of marshmallows and pops it open. "So, how many of her destinations do you have left?"

Camille floats in blue ether between them.

Klaus flinches. "Enough."

And something clicks in her head, because this kind of grief-fuelled thinking is second nature to her by now.

"You're gonna do this for a while, aren't you? I mean, long-term."

"What is a "while" anyway?" he asks, flicking a piece of coal back into the fire.

"What about New Orleans – and your family?"

There is no hesitation in his voice when he says, with perfect aplomb, "they'll manage."

She ogles him for a moment in disbelief. And it is within this surprise that she sees him properly, better than before. His face is gaunt in the fire light, his youth not quite so youthful anymore.

"Camille didn't die recently, did she?"

He foresees her line of inquiry and it displeases him. "See you in the morning, witch. If and when."

He leaves, carrying away a question. What happened to you?

They stand in front of the temple of Pachamama where an improvised service is being performed by new age worshippers. They're part indigenous locals, part extravagant foreigners. One of the tourist guides claps his hands in time with the music.

Bonnie and Klaus are standing a little out of the way, watching the worshippers throw vats of hot paint on the ground. The colors are vivid, aggressive. They meld into each other and make a thick, gooey soup which releases bubbles of steam into the air. It reminds her of cutting the belly of an animal. She shudders.

Tourists are encouraged to dip their toes, if they dare. Their feet look like rainbows.

Bonnie pictures lying face-down in the hot paint, letting the acid eat at her skin.

Klaus stands rigidly with arms clasped behind his back, like a connoisseur who is appalled by what he's witnessing. "Such a waste of color."

"It's a ritual," she argues.

"Waste is a ritual. Come on. Let's go inside the temple."

Bonnie raises her eyebrows. "It's closed off to visitors."

"Still a stickler for rules, eh?" he taunts with a trace of rusty humor.

Inside, everything is crumbling, everything is hot and sultry, like being inside an ocean of sweat and tears. The granite is unrelenting; it brushes against her teeth, she feels its consistency on her tongue.

The temple has lost shape and meaning but there is a real hazard of getting injured. They have to tread carefully between the ruins.

Accidents happen. She grazes her knees when she tries to climb over a boulder to reach the hanging terrace.

"Shit."

Red bubbles, like steam, pop on the surface of her skin.

Bonnie sits down on the boulder, clasping her knee. "Shit," she repeats because, usually it's good that it hurts. But this is one of those times where it's not so good. She doesn't want to be here with Klaus, she doesn't want to be in this temple. She doesn't want to be alone either, and she doesn't want to mourn anymore, but she keeps mourning anyway.

She stifles a sob deep in her throat. Why didn't they part ways already? He is so unnecessary to her.

Klaus pauses in front of her. His face is neither sympathetic nor cruel, but in this moment she wishes he would look away.

She tells him, actually. "Please don't look at me."

She'd rather not cry in front of him. Not because she's embarrassed by the flood under her eyelids, but because she doesn't want to share her world of grief with him.

While she's hiding her face, he bends down until he is level with her legs.

His hands, which are cool and dry, reach out to find the soft joints under her knees. He pulls them forward until her legs are stretched out before him.

He lowers his head and cups his lips around her bloody knee.

He drinks the blood without vampiric lust. But he drinks it all the same.

He takes each knee in his mouth and licks at her weeping skin. Bonnie watches him, wide-eyed, breathless.

There is, in this stifling temple, a haze of intimacy which jumps over wheels of history. It doesn't matter who they are, what they are doing. It never did.

He cleans her of blood and then walks away, his fingers lingering only briefly on her ankles.

She joins him in the evening at his hotel because they have a well-stocked restaurant and she hasn't eaten a warm meal in a week.

Klaus orders her a rich dish of buttered turnips and corned beef. He settles with a glass of wine.

She eats like a little she-wolf, starved from within. He is content to watch her.

They don't talk about his mouth on her knees, and it suits them both fine.

It was a freakness of the temple.

There's a football match on TV and they're the only diners not watching it.

Bonnie sets down her knife. "What happened after Camille died?"

Klaus stares at the knife she has abandoned and she wonders if the blunt edge tempts him.

"Nothing, really. Nothing worth mentioning."

"How many years?"

"Five," he rasps.

"And…where were you during those years?"

Klaus picks up her knife idly and taps it against his finger. "Removed from current events, let's say."

"By whom?"

He runs his finger over the blade. "An offspring of mine. I disappointed him."

Bonnie blinks. "That's…unexpected."

Klaus looks up. "Which part? Surely not the disappointment."

"The regret. Your regret," she clarifies, taking back her knife from his hand.

"What, you think I've never had regrets before? I regret not killing you when I had the chance," he says it casually, almost like a joke and she could take it as such, or she could take him seriously, and then it would be an acknowledgement that she, like him, can't seem to die.

"I was so young back then," she muses. "I was so sure I could defeat you on my own. It mattered so much to me."

He issues an opaque laugh. "It took you roughly ten years to gain wisdom. It took me, oh, a millennium."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asks.

"It should, if you've still got a grip on mathematics."

And she laughs too, opaquely.

She climbs up to his room which is modest for his usual tastes (there are no gilt-frame mirrors, no oriental vases, no polished marble) but vastly more comfortable than a tent. The bed makes her mouth water. Not to mention the other amenities.

"Oh, God, I miss a shower that's not communal," she says with a hankering, eyeing his private bathroom.

Klaus opens his palms. "Be my guest."

Bonnie hesitates. "It feels weird to…"

"Bathe? On the contrary, even the barbarians did it."

He settles on the balcony with a newspaper.

Bonnie warns him about the mosquitoes outside but then she remembers, they wouldn't bite him. They'd know he's dead.

She steps into the bathroom with a giddy feeling that she's doing something forbidden. Climbing old ruins is less exciting than taking a luxurious shower in a hotel room where Klaus is sitting on the balcony.

And she's sloshing the water in her mouth and laughing mid-stream as the torrent falls violently on her face.

She and Klaus Mikaelson are getting along! All right, they're not really. But they're acting like it!

The water runs down her back, warming her bones.

Life is such a patient teacher, eventually it will pull out all your teeth. All your preconceptions and carefully-laid plans and battlefields will disappear and instead you'll only have a handful of teeth. And you won't even recognize them.

"What's the matter?" Klaus asks gruffly and she almost jumps out of her skin because he's at the bathroom door.

"Nothing!"

"I thought I heard screaming."

"No, I was just laughing," she assures him with a replica of just such a laugh.

She thinks she hears a frustrated sigh, but it could just be the gush of water.

"I believe I can tell the difference. You were screaming," he insists dryly.

Bonnie touches the base of her throat. She swallows the drops of water and licks her lips. "Do you – do you want to come in?"

"What for?" he asks like a parent asking the child to explain their logic. Except, he drags out the "for" until the children disappear.

"I don't mind," she says quickly, because there is no shower curtain and if he opens the door he will see everything.

She remembers how Enzo would welcome her out of the shower with a soft towel and clasp her in his arms like she was precious.

Klaus pushes open the door. His shirt is buttoned halfway, his arms are empty. He holds no towel for her, and he doesn't regard her as precious.

But his eyes dwell on the slopes of her changed body, rearrange the peaks and valleys, relish the cliffs. He watches her for several minutes from the open door as water runs down her body.

Bonnie has her back to him, pretending to take things in stride.

She hears something plop on the floor. Then the rumbling of a belt. His linen shirt and trousers have been discarded. He does short work of his garments as he steps almost mechanically into the shower with her.

Bonnie presses her trembling face into the cool tiles, suddenly convinced she's made a terrible mistake, that this is not like in the movies, and that she's not up for any of it.

But he stops a few inches from her body and places a dry hand on the arch of her shoulder blade.

"I suppose it will be easier if you don't look at me."

She is flooded with small relief. Yes, if she stares at the wall it will be so much easier.

He presses her further into the tiles, which are sticky like beer, and parts her legs.

He runs warm fingers between her thighs, but only for a moment, as he prepares his entrance.

It's miraculous how he knows she doesn't want flimsy foreplay or tender caresses. She is slick enough for him, though it still hurts a little when he enters her swiftly, without preamble.

Hurt is good.

Water still runs like rain between them.

He drives into her lackadaisically, at first, letting her get adjusted to his length.

Bonnie breathes hard through her nostrils, inhaling the wall, melting into it while the other half of her body is his. His hands are gripping her hips, keeping her still while he thrusts deep and long.

Bonnie gasps each time, though she swallows the sound in her throat.

Klaus' groans are also muted, though present. They are both hiding from each other, even as he's inside her. She can feel his heated breath on her spine.

He picks up the pace and uses the hybrid's prowess to drive them both, artificially, close to the edge, thrusting faster and faster as the water beats down on them mercilessly – and then he pulls back, slows down by degrees, almost lazily, stealing desperate whimpers from her frame.

But neither is really interested in the other's pleasure or even pleasure itself.

They are interested in the chase, the infernal chase through each other's bodies. If I enter you, maybe I will be someone else.

He slams his hips against her ass in a careless, vulgar, delicious, terrible storm of dead passion.

Bonnie bites down on her fist. She can't think this is Enzo fucking her, she really can't. Does he think she is Camille?

"Aah." He pulls out of her in time and spills his seed down the side of her thigh, which the shower cleans away.

She comes at the thought of their dead lovers watching them.

They pant together in the shower, his dick going soft against her thigh, her eyes closed against the guilt. He touches her shoulder again, not quite a caress, but an allowance.

It's just sex.

He steps out of the shower and picks up his clothes and returns quietly to the balcony with his newspaper.

She sleeps in his bed that night because he insists that she should enjoy the relatively clean sheets and the eiderdown pillows, while he roams the minibar downstairs.

She feels odd, lying down where his body has been resting, where his body has been tormenting. But she falls asleep quickly.

He, on the other hand, plies himself with alcohol all night, standing on the mosquito-ridden terrace, the only ghost the insects won't touch.

Camille is sitting opposite from him, smiling like a darling, her beaming face brighter than the moon. She often sits with him like this, but she doesn't speak anymore, no matter how hard he compels her. He's learned to accept her unreachable presence.

She touches his hand, but it only feels like a ticklish tug, and she nudges her head forward, telling him to go back inside.

Klaus shakes his head. "Come here. Let me hold you."

He knows it's pointless, but he likes to sound the words to her, to make believe that it can happen.

She shakes her head and smiles, smiles, smiles. Until the corners of her mouth tremble. Her fingers draw letters on the sticky table.

I, a symbol of a heart, U.

The table clatters rudely as he pushes out of the chair.

She wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of cicadas and gnats buzzing against the panes. He's still sitting on the balcony, legs propped up against the railing.

Bonnie sits up in bed.

"You should lie down," she calls out to him.

"I prefer verticality," he answers hoarsely, his voice webbed by uninterrupted quiet. He sounds as if another word might do him in. He needs verticality, and silence.

"All the same…" she trails off, "you should lie down."

With you? is the question he asks in that webbed silence.

She sets her head back on the pillow, but after what feels like hours, he creeps back into the room.

He rather insolently expects her to be awake, which happens to be so.

Klaus snatches the comforter from her body, bunches it up and throws it in a corner.

Bonnie's hands move to the hem of her T-shirt to remove it, but he shakes his head.

"You can keep it on."

She lies back down and lets him remove her shorts and panties as he positions himself between her legs. He wants nothing to do with her other half, it seems. She would feel insulted and unwanted, but she feels the same about his half too. They are deviants who don't care for each other's face. He slips inside of her with the same lack of decorum as before and she does him the favor of not trying to grip his back and pull him towards her. He, too, tries to hold on to the sheets and not her body. Bonnie stares at the ceiling, breathing regularly, Klaus stares at the colorful Hard Rock Café logo on her T-Shirt.

She must've gotten that in Paris with Lorenzo.

The reminder stirs him on, as does Camille's table-drawn heart. These little keepsakes are torture, but they also make life worth living.

Horizontal, however, is different from vertical. It is different.

He can't help but touch her body more often when they are tethered like this, flattened against the bed. Her knees collide with the side of his ribs, his palm accidentally skims the side of her waist. Her hands, while clutching the sheets, brush against his own fingers.

"Raise your arms up against the bedstead," he orders her swiftly.

Bonnie obliges, but this unfortunately has the undesired effect of raising the T-shirt a few inches, until he can see her soft belly.

A shadow falls across his face.

She understands his chagrin. She must not be rendered loving flesh. He must be a statue. The both of them must only perform the wasteful rites of sex and go on grieving. And she'd like to oblige in this too, but she doesn't know how. She's never done this before, she's never had sex without feelings. It's not that it's so terribly hard, but there is an art to expediency, there is an art to using someone. And the trouble is, they're not quite strangers.

"Place them in your mouth," he says instead, darkly.

"What?"

"Your hands."

Bonnie trembles, but she slowly plunges her fingers in her mouth and holds them there, biting down gently on her joints.

This seems to solve their problems.

He goes on fucking her with halting moves, avoiding her closeness, diving into it.

Bonnie gets to know the taste of her own skin.

The only real hick-up is at the end, when her saliva-slathered hands accidentally collide with his chin as he's rising from her body.

Their eyes reflect the same shock, but not a trace of disgust. Not when their fluids are commingled between her thighs.

"Did you come?" he asks her domestically, clinically, and she feels little needles prickling her skin.

She shrugs. "Sort of."

"So you didn't."

"I was close."

"Do you want me to…" he trails off.

"With your finger?" she asks, feeling squeamish.

"If that's what you like."

"No… I guess, I just want to lie down."

So this is what they do, they lie down next to each other in the bed, with space enough for Jesus, as folks in her old town might say.

She's still naked from the waist down. The cicadas are still buzzing against the panes.

"I could bite you," Klaus proposes neutrally, absently.

"What?"

"If you know how to do it, and I do, it acts as a stimulant," he clarifies, stretching a hand behind his head.

Bonnie laughs petulantly. "An orgasm from your fangs? No thanks."

"Suit yourself."

"…does it hurt? Because I have been bitten by vampires and it's no merry-go-round."

Klaus frowns. "Well, yes, those blokes wanted to harm you, I imagine. Intent is everything, love."

Love. He hasn't said that in a while.

"The vampire knows what to release into the mortal body to make it suffer or delight. Both, if you're a special case. It's really quite simple. Lorenzo must have taught you."

"Uh…no, he didn't like or want to bite me."

Klaus glances at her through the fog of their own recent activity. "What is not to like?"

Bonnie rolls her eyes. "He was afraid of hurting me."

"Nonsense. There is a technique to it, we're not all stabbing in the dark. Pun intended."

She smiles a fuzzy, nostalgic smile. "Enzo just liked to make love."

Klaus scowls. "Don't call it that, will you? It unsettles the copious amounts of alcohol I just ingested."

Bonnie runs a hand over her bare stomach. "Did Camille like it when you bit her?"

Something turns stony between them.

"Let's pretend we tolerate each other and trust that when we wake up, neither of us will have killed the other one, all right?" he asks, quarrelsome but gentle.

Bonnie acquiesces.

I was lying on the grass on Sunday morning of last week
Indulging in my self-defeat

At first the lyrics don't impose upon their restless sleep and they can almost ignore the peppy music, but once the chorus comes in, it's a fool's errant to go on pretending to be unconscious.

I know it's up for me
If you steal my sunshine
Making sure I'm not in too deep
If you steal my sunshine

It's the kind of popular jam you can't help humming to. Your brain is wired to sing along.

Klaus swats an angry fist at whatever technological contraption is emitting the contagious sounds. He aims for the nightstand. But there's nothing there.

"Mmm…who is playing that?" Bonnie asks with a drag to her voice.

Klaus pinches the bridge of his nose. "My future hangover cocktail."

Bonnie clambers out of the bed without any underwear on, and walks butt-naked to the window, her Hard Rock Café T-Shirt riding up her waist. She wants to find the source of the song.

I know it's done for me
If you steal my sunshine
Not something hard to see
If you steal my sunshine
Keeping dumb and built to beat
If you steal my sunshine….

The mystery's resolution is underwhelming. Their neighbors from the adjacent room are sitting on their balcony and playing the song on their iPhones.

They're young-ish, although Bonnie can't put a specific age to their frame, because they're the kind of youth who grow up too fast and become cynical at an alarming rate. They're sharing a cigarette that looks suspiciously like a blunt and they are wearing their complimentary hotel bathrobes. The two men huddle close, laughing at some inane thing, shaking their heads to the song.

Beyond them, the Inca Empire lies in stagnant ruins, spread out like scattered Lego pieces against a chrome sky. Everything is still here, alive and normal.

She turns her head sideways and is startled by his proximity. Klaus has dragged himself out of bed and has joined her at the window. He is barely a hair's breadth away.

His body stands vertical behind hers as he watches the careless, indifferent youth.

She feels the air between them turn from stone to wax to dusty light. And she feels tempted to lean back into his chest, not because he is a comforting presence, but because there is a dizziness in her body – probably from the early morning heat – and she can't be on her own two legs right now.

His arms land on her elbows, steadying her, thumbs grazing skin.

"I think I may have sunburn," she says softly, leaning into the warmth that cocoons his body, but not directly on his chest.

"Did you take any medication?" he asks matter-of-factly.

"I, uh, used some magic on myself."

Klaus pinches the skin under her arms.

"Ouch," she complains.

"Magic doesn't cover sunshine."

(I know it's done for me

If you steal my sunshine

sunshine

sunshine

.unshine

..nshine

...shine

...hine

...ine

...ne

...e)

"There's a drugstore in town. The modern one, I mean," he specifies.

Bonnie heaves a sigh. "I guess we could go."

"We?" he scoffs. "I'm going hiking. You can tend to your own ailments."

She feels a sharp tug in the back of her scalp. It's weird how many migraines you get as an adult. She can't remember a time when her brain was on fire as a child.

She knocks into him when she turns around.

"Considering I still have a bit of your dry cum on the inside of my thigh, I think you'll give me a ride to town."

Klaus is momentarily startled by her blunt honesty. He sees the words falling from her lips and he feels a strange stirring below his abdomen at the thought of the vulgar lexicon she keeps buried under her tongue.

His mouth purses mulishly to conceal any allowance. "A ride?"

"I don't feel like dealing with normal speed today."

"You want me to zip-line you to the pharmacy?" he asks, slightly incredulous.

"Unless you want me to go on about…" she points ambiguously to her thighs.

"Intercourse with you is not very simple, is it?"

The song is changed abruptly mid-argument and they are graced with the first chords of an auto-tuned version of George Michael's Freedom '90.

The culprits have moved from the balcony but have left their devices on the straw-backed table.

Klaus rubs the back of his head. "Should I speed you into town with your bottom out for public display or will you put on some clothes?"

Bonnie presses an accusing finger into his chest. "You were the one who removed my underwear."

He shrugs carelessly. "They're somewhere around here."

Bonnie thinks how, under different circumstances, this could pose as charming banter between two people whose physical interactions are affectionate or in any case, deliberately fond. It's jarring to know they used each other for sex but can't bring themselves to act like it.

She wants to be cooler somehow, more detached from their local tragedies. She wants to open her mouth and say that after she gets her medicine he can drop her off at the tent camp and they can finally put these past three days behind them, but instead.

Instead, she pushes past him and runs to the bed.

She jumps on the bed like the warrior she is.

All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don't belong to you
And you don't belong to me
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom

She jumps on the bed to the beat of the song, taking a pillow in her arms and squeezing it tight before flinging it away.

Klaus watches her with rapt attention. He's either too shocked or too horrified to intervene.

There are some moments of irregularity in life that cannot be translated into a mutable, flexible expression.

He simply stares.

Bonnie laughs manically, spinning on the uneven mattress.

"Why in God's name are you laughing?" he asks, as if it's the laughter that stands out more than the rest.

"I don't know!" Bonnie screams over the song and her own athletic jump-kicks. "I think it's funny!"

"What?"

"Everything! He's never coming back! And she's never coming back either!" she yells, pointing at him, at the girl in the ether lying dead in his memory. "But we're here! We. Are. Here. Hahahahaa…"

Klaus grabs the second pillow from her arms and means to pull her down, but she wrestles with him until he can feel an inkling of magic.

He grabs onto her ankle and yanks hard, and she glides down on the sheets like a sleigh on hard-packed snow. He's on top of her, trying to subdue her, while she flails happily under him, giggling. This time their bodies are inevitably meshed. They touch. More than flesh on flesh, it is fragments on fragments.

They fight and wrestle among the bedclothes, rolling against each other, Bonnie still laughing, Klaus panting hard, trying not to laugh, both of them feeling dejected and uplifted at the same time.

There is no sex, no feelings, just two wrestling bodies in the middle of a song, in the middle of laughter.

You've gotta give for what you take
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom
You've gotta give for what you take

.

Bonnie holds the map over her head in place of a shield. She hasn't bothered looking over it for the past half hour. She doesn't care if she finds her way out of the maze of ruins. Their tour guide devised a kind of competition; whoever reaches the center gets a prize. Klaus meanders behind her, studying the bygone masonry.

"I can't wait to get out of this place," she mumbles at length. She's taken her sun allergy medicine but she still feels like her head is about to split open. The trip to the pharmacy, though a little hectic, was fruitful. She got herself a diaphragm, which should hold her out until she gets back on the pill. It didn't use to be necessary with Enzo. But Klaus can have children. (Will he ever go back to that girl, his daughter? Was it a daughter? She can't recall). Now yes, ideally, this is a one-or-two time thing. But just in case.

She uncorks her water and takes a gulp.

Bonnie knows that this is a momentary reprieve; the suspicious calm that reigns over her consciousness will give away to panic and guilt and shame. And she will welcome these feelings and choose to blame Machu Picchu and the weather, and running into old faces.

Klaus stands next to her now with an odd glint in his eye.

"Would you like to see the actual Lost City of Gold?"

"What?"

"You know, El Dorado."

"It doesn't really exist…does it?"

Klaus smiles wistfully. "Oh, the rumors are true, it's here all right. It's just not readily available to people with a pulse."

Bonnie chokes back the water. "What – are you serious?"

"As a heart attack. I can escort you into the heart of it, if you wish to see it. But it is rather underwhelming. Excessive gilding is never a good thing."

"I…you can actually take me there?"

"Of course. I haven't lived so long without knowing a forbidden secret or two."

Her blood pounds in her ears. Her migraine is only getting worse, but his offer is tantalizing, exciting even. Hasn't this always been the point of creatures like him? To open windows into another universe? To unlock secrets?

She opens her mouth to say "yes, show me", but she stares at his face and she dwells on the slant of his mouth, the broad, flaring nostrils, the short blue veins around his eyes which indicate he's recently fed and he's totally fucking with her.

Bonnie groans and pushes past him angrily.

"Bastard."

"I can't believe you fell for that," Klaus scoffs behind her, chuckling gleefully, but also mourning the fact that he really can't open any windows into another universe. Immortality is a well-crafted lie and the best he can do is make fun. It cannot sustain them, it cannot soothe them, but… pushing on despite discomfort is a reward in its own way.

It is the only way.

TBC